Handing over all my inheritance to the ADC while incarcerated

It’s only a viable course of copium, if you have the manufacturing base to back up the mass production of these “unrevealed” superweapons.

In WWII, german tanks were so good that to kill one german tank, the allies would have to lose five. But the Germans still lost the war, simply because the US and USSR manufacturing was more than 5 times that of Germany.

If the US is both technologically and productively more advanced than China, then the US can dominate China in war.

However the reality is:

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main qimg b98760c2fd8d6425b6f5d51d838fc8e0

12% vs 35%. By these numbers, whatever top secret US weapons would have to be at least 3 times as good as top secret Chinese weapons, for the US to start gaining the upper hand in war.

Gaeng Phed Kai (Red Chicken Curry)

The Thai name of this dish literally means ‘hot chicken curry.’ There is a very similar recipe for a green curry (Gaeng Khiao Wan Kai).

IMG 1324
IMG 1324

As always, the quantities are up to you.

Ingredients

Curry Paste

  • 5 to 10 dried red chiles
  • 10 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 teaspoon chopped galangal
  • 1 tablespoon thinly sliced lemon grass
  • 1/2 teaspoon zest of ‘kaffir’ lime (ordinary lime will do)
  • 1 teaspoon chopped coriander (cilantro) root
  • 5 black peppercorns
  • 1 tablespoon roasted coriander seeds
  • 1 teaspoon roasted cumin seeds
  • Dash of fish sauce
  • 1 to 2 teaspoons fermented shrimp paste (kapi)

The Curry

  • 6 ounces chicken (in smallish bite-size pieces)
  • 1/2 cup coconut milk
  • 4 ounces Thai eggplant (these are small round eggplants)
  • 2 kaffir lime leaves (or a little lime zest)
  • 1 tablespoon sweet basil
  • 2 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 1 tablespoon palm sugar
  • Oil for cooking
  • 1 to 3 tablespoon red curry paste

Instructions

Curry Paste

  1. Mix in a mortar and pestle or food processor. Will keep about a month in a refrigerator. You can buy commercial red curry paste (Mae Ploy brand is quite good), but as far as I am aware all commercial pastes contain MSG and preservatives.

The Curry

  1. Cut the chicken up, then briefly fry the curry paste until fragrant, reduce the heat, add the coconut milk slowly, and continue to stir whilst cooking until a thin film of oil appears on the surface.
  2. Add the chicken and other ingredients except the eggplant. Bring to a boil and cook until the chicken begins to change color. Adjust the flavors to suit yourself. When it is at a boil again add the eggplant and continue until the chicken is cooked through.
  3. Serve over rice, or in a serving bowl with other Thai dishes.

How Would Mao Zedong Cope With Trump?

This is supremely great.

Ghosts of Winter Future

Submitted into Contest #281 in response to: Write about a mysterious guest who arrives at a party — but no one knows who they are. view prompt

John Rafanelli

‘Winterfest’ was always a special holiday for the people of Augusta Cove, Long Island. A small bay town, where everyone knows everyone, all their happy memories along with all of their dark secrets. The yearly festival was a great place to set aside your grievances, and enjoy the magical winter holiday together, as a community.December 19th, 1999, may be one of the town’s most memorable holiday festivals, and not for a good reason. It was the day Rory Falco was murdered.The town spent the last few weeks getting ready for the festival. For some it was a distraction from the everyday grind. For others it was an annual tradition, one that always happened, and always will happen. Main Street was alive with people and families of all ages.At the edge of Main Street is a big park. Inside the park sits a giant white tent, illuminated by lights of red and green; blue and white; saffron and red. Colors welcoming to all.There’s a children’s choir standing outside the tent, conducted by Ms. Davis. They are singing as guests from all across the town shuffle their way into the tent. Noel Winter stands in line waiting to enter. She looks across at the choir and hears;“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright … “She’s lost in a trance listening as a grumpy old man cuts to the front of the line, bumping Noel from her tranquility, “Excuse me, sir!” she yells.“Excuse nothing, squirt,” The old man quips.Noel ignores the intrusion and is drawn back to the music. 

“Round yon virgin Mother and Child. Holy infant, so tender and mild…”

 

She looks back at the children singing the beautiful melody. Some are off key, like young Bobby Hinkins, but others are in perfect harmony. Noel smiles as she looks over at the twins Holly and Rory Falco. She sees them go into perfect harmony, gifting the town with the lyrical hook.

 

“Sleep in heavenly peace…. Sleep in heavenly peace…”

 

The line moves forward bringing Noel to the front of the ‘security’ checkpoint. It’s an old lady sitting behind a white folding table. 

“Excuse me ma’am,” The lady behind the table says.  Noel remains silent. “Excuse me, MA’AM!” she yelps out, a little louder.

“Oh, sorry. I was caught up in the song. Hi, How are you?” Noel asks.

“Good. Thank you for asking, young lady.”

“Oh, you flatter me. I’m not young anymore,” Noel nervously says.

“Neither am I,” the lady behind the table responds. She searches Noel up and down. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

“I don’t think you do ma’am.”

“Please, call me Beverly.”

“Well Beverly, if we’ve met it was a long, long time ago.” Noel looks at Beverly. “I used to live here, but my family moved out when I was just about nine or ten.” She looks around and points to the choir. “Probably not much older than those angels right there.”

Beverly smiles. “They sure are precious, aren’t they?” They both nod. “So why did you leave?”

“Family stuff. Dad was a drunk. Mom left us. You know, typical family dynamics.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs?”

“Noel.  Nice to meet you Beverly.”

“Nice to meet you too. What brings you back to the Cove?”

“Revenge.”

Beverly is a little startled and just looks at Noel. Noel smiles. “I’m just kidding.” They both laugh. Beverly a little too much. “I was just passing through. I have a big meeting in New York City tomorrow and I always had such great memories of the festival so I wanted to see it again.”

“Well, once a part of the Cove, always a part of the Cove.” They both smile. “Don’t let me keep you any longer. Go in and enjoy the festivities.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Parker.”

Beverly looks at her startled. Noel points to the nametag on Beverly’s shirt. They smile at each other as Noel enters the party tent.

 

Noel stands in the back of the tent, silently observing. She’s been here for about thirty minutes watching people. Studying every person who enters or leaves the party. She’s trying to be left alone and is purposely avoiding interacting with anyone. She’s holding some eggnog, not drinking it but using it as a prop to blend in, when someone taps on her shoulder.

“Excuse me, Noel?”

Noel turns around and sees Walter Parker, the school’s English teacher, standing next to her.

“So, I take it you spoke to your mom?” Noel asks.

“Uhh, yeah. I’m Walter.”

“Hi Walter.”

“As you also know, news travels fast in this town. You used to live here?”

“I did, a long time ago.” Noel tries to move the conversation along.

“So I figured I’d come talk to the mysterious former Cover.”

“Sorry, I’m only here for tonight. Then I have somewhere entirely else to be.”

“I get it. But you’re here now. Can I have this dance?

Noel looks around the party and see’s the choir entering the tent.

“No thank you Walter.”

“Let me buy you a drink?”

“The drinks are free.”

The students walk past them. Holly and Rory stop for a second. Noel looks at them both, as Holly starts to talk. “Mr. Parker, did you hear us?”

“I sure did, and you were brilliant.” He rubs her head, he looks over at Rory. “And so were you champ!”

The two giggle and skip away in childish glee. Noel watches them disappear into the party. Noel, who knew she would need an out from this conversation was slowly pouring her drink onto the floor. She holds up her empty glass and smiles at Walter.

“How about that drink?”

Walter eagerly grabs her empty cup and runs off.

“I’ll be right back!”

Noel, with intentions to avoid him the rest of the night slips into the party to remain incognito.

 

Another ten minutes have passed, and Noel has now stationed herself on the other side of the tent looking out at the crowd. The adults are mostly drunk, dancing and mingling. The children are running around with innocent joy. She looks up and see’s Walter searching the crowd holding an extra eggnog. Before Walter can look at her she dips down and hides behind a balloon arch. She bumps into someone.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

Her words are cut short as Holly looks up at her.

“Do I know you?” Holly asks.

“I don’t think so squirt,” Noel responds.

“My dad calls me that!”

“So did mine.” Noel smiles.

Holly smiles, as she looks out into the party. “Sorry I gotta go, my hiding spot’s been compromised.” She points out to Rory in the crowd creeping forward. Before she goes, she whispers, “I like your hair, I wish I was brave enough to dye it red and purple.”  Holly jolts off, running away.

“Maybe one day you will be,” Noel says to no one, as she scans out at the crowd and watches Rory chasing after Holly. Noel crouches and follows them through the maze of people. She’s weaving and observing, avoiding contact, but never losing sight of Rory or Holly for what seems like an eternity. Finally she bumps into someone’s lower back. Ms. Davis abruptly stops her conversation, turns around, and looks at Noel creeping along the floor.

“Sorry about that, ma’am,” Noel says as she stands upright.

“Do I know you?” She looks Noel up and down. “You look familiar.”

“No, you don’t know me.”

“I never forget a face, and yours is familiar.”

“I’m sorry if you think I’m someone else. And I’m sorry for bumping into you,” Noel says as she scans the crowd. She sees Rory and Holly playing around on the dance floor. Ms. Davis shakes her head and returns to her original conversation. Noel, trying to blend in, starts to sway on the edge of the dance floor and begins singing along to the song.

 

“When I first saw you, I already knew, there was something inside of you…”

 

Ms. Davis hears the voice and her ears perk up. She looks at Noel singing. She knows the face is familiar, but that voice is so recognizable.

 

“Something I thought I would never find. Angel of mine.”

 

While Ms. Davis is processing Noel’s voice, Noel is searching the party. She sees Holly dancing alone in the middle of the dance floor. She panics, searching for Rory, and finally spots him exiting the tent. She proceeds to chase after him. As she is running away something clicks in Ms. Davis’ mind.

“It can’t be?” Ms. Davis says to herself, as she watches Noel run out of the tent, then looks over at Holly on the dance floor.

 

Noel jets out of the tent looking into utter darkness. She hears some noises in the distance and follows them. She reaches into her jacket and grabs her pistol.

 

The far edge of the park leads into a small forest. Noel stops at the edge of it listening. She hears some branches break. She holds her gun in front of her as she creeps towards the noise. Eventually she comes across an old man hunched over Rory, pointing a pistol at him. Rory is cowering on the dirt floor.

Noel raises her gun and points it at the man’s back. “Let him go.”

The old man slowly turns towards Noel, shifting his gun from Rory to her. It’s the same person who bumped into her earlier in the night. They stare at each other for a few seconds. “I’m afraid I can’t do that squirt.”

“Dad?” Noel whispers.

“Drop your gun, and let me explain.”

Noel doesn’t move. Rory looks on, but is too afraid and too confused to move. He lays there paralyzed.

“It was you?” Noel asks. Her world is shattered.

“I didn’t have any other options.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Let me explain.”

Noel cocks the hammer of the gun back.

“Holly… please?”

“I’m not Holly anymore. She’s back there at the party.” Noel waves the gun off into the distance. “I’m Noel now.”

“Since when?”

“Since Rory disappeared, and my whole world was shattered. You became a drunk. And mom ran away in the middle of the night.”

“Squirt… I’m sorry,” Dad humbly pleads.

“You were always blaming mom for Rory’s disappearance.” Noel’s eyes start to tear up.  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Noel waves the pistol frantically at her Dad.

“Let’s talk about this.”

“Now you want to talk? You neglected me, obsessing over your life’s passion of finding a way to go back in time. Then that consumed you, and eventually killed you on one of your test runs!” Noel shouts.

“Well, I see you picked up where I left off and figured out the solution.”

“Not till forty years later. After spending several years of neglect in foster care. Then I spent my twenties and thirties on the streets begging for money anyway I could. My forties were spent strung up on any drug or liquor that would numb the pain.” Noel is frantic at this point. “Finally, on my fiftieth birthday, I overdosed. I was laying in a hospital detox bed, thinking back to when life was happy. So I found your old journals, and picked up where you left off, determined to come back here, and change the one event that turned our lives to shit”

“I knew you were always smart.”

“Stop pretending like you care!”

Dad starts to laugh. “Pretend like I care?” He starts to get angry. “The only reason I’m here is because I care!”

“That’s original, coming from a man who’s about to murder his son, and has a gun pointed at his daughter.”

“Let me ask you the age-old question. If you could go back in time and kill Hitler when he was a child, would you do it?”

“If I wasn’t using my only jump to come here? Yes.”

“Ahh. You can only jump into the past once? And back to your present once as well?”

“Yes. But that’s not the point. This is 1999 Long Island, not 1889 Austria-Hungary.”

“The point is… Rory grows up to be worse than Hitler.”

“Liar!” Noel steadies her wavering hand and focuses her gun at her Dad. “Let him go.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Dad says as he cocks the hammer of his gun. “Do you know how hard it is for a father to spend years developing one plan? One which requires him to go back in time and kill his only son?”

“Why not go back in time and never have him in the first place?”

“I thought of that, but then you wouldn’t be born either.”

“Don’t pretend like you’re doing this for me.”

“This is all for you, so you can live, and live in a free world.”

“Why today, and not when he was a baby?”

“I told you, it was hard. I’ve been back in the nineties for eight years now. Always mustering up the courage to kill him. But unfortunately, I’m a coward.”

“Until now. What changed?”

Dad pauses for a second before responding. “I guess I was stalling, hoping for a better solution. But in six days on Christmas he will kill you.”

“Bullshit!”

“At first we thought it was an accident, and felt bad for him in our sorrow. But then we learned he did it on purpose.”

“Your web of lies are intoxicating. Let him go.”

“I can’t squirt.”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT!”

“I know you don’t believe me, and I know it seems like your life sucked in this timeline.” He stops pointing the gun at Noel and now focuses it on Rory.  “But at least you have a life.” Dad is trying to plead his case. “And the world is still at peace.” Rory looks at the barrel of the pistol and squirms.

 

A shot rings out.

 

Dad falls to the floor with a bullet hole in his shoulder. Noel starts to inch closer to Rory, but keeps her gun pointed at her dad. Dad slowly rises to his knees gripping his wound. “Please, you have to hear me out. As an adult, Rory is a bad person. He becomes a leader convincing millions to follow him to no end. He’s a tyrant. Everything Hitler did, he did bigger. If you spoke against him you were executed.”

“This is insane. You’re obviously still a drunk,” Noel interjects.

Dad starts to regain his composure, and is readjusting the grip of his gun. “He’s started a nuclear war with Russia, Japan, England, Italy and Germany. Our own air is polluted with nuclear toxins…”

Another shot fires from Noel’s gun. This one hits Dad in the chest. He falls to the floor. Noel is now next to Rory. He delusionally looks up at her.

“It’s okay. It’s over now.”

Rory just stares blankly into her familiar eyes. Dad starts to rise up again. “Please, you have to believe me,” he begs.

Noel starts to swing her gun towards her Dad for a third time. As she is in motion, Dad fires a shot and hits Noel in the head. She slumps to the ground. Dad weakly gets up and walks over to a shaking Rory. He points the gun at Rory’s head, looks away and pulls the trigger. He slouches down and hugs both of them.

“I’m sorry,” he begins to sob. He pulls out a small tablet from his backpack. He puts a watch on his wrist, Rory’s, and Holly’s. He pushes a button on the tablet and the world around him changes.

 

It’s now December 19th, 2053. Robert Falco is in the forest of Augusta Cove Long Island on a beautiful peaceful winter night. Blood is pouring down his shirt. Next to him are his two dead children. Robert stumbles to the edge of the forest. He looks out into the night sky. It’s normal, no toxic fog hanging in the air, no smell of burning debris.  He can hear a children’s choir singing at the festival far away. It’s beautiful and haunting.

 

Robert digs two graves deep in the forest. It’s a slow effort because of his wounds and his sorrow. He lays Holly and Rory into the graves. He starts to fill the holes with dirt. As he does the choir echoes through the trees.

 

“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright … “

 

In the dirt, above each covered hole, he etches their names. He sits upon the makeshift grave.

 

“Round yon virgin Mother and Child. Holy infant, so tender and mild…”

 

He thinks back about how in 1999 no one will ever find the body of Rory Falco, leaving it a cold case forever. He thinks of the terrible life he knows Holly will live. The children’s singing cutting through the forest gives him some clarity. Knowing that the world is at peace helps him come to terms with the idea that he and his family made the ultimate sacrifice for eight billion people.  Robert lays down next to his children and falls asleep for one last time.

 

“Sleep in heavenly peace…. Sleep in heavenly peace…”

why Gen Z guys are scared to approach girls (and how to not be)

When you’re alone, by yourself only don’t do that.

When you are moving to rural Thailand, you will have two major challenges.

One is the language.

You won’t probably find anyone nearby who is speaking English even one word.

Daily communication issues are going to make your life very difficult if even possible.

Shopping, going to the pharmacy, meeting with doctors and dealing with Thai local administration are going to be challenging every single time you need it.

The second major challenge is distances.

You may find out that the nearest shop is twenty miles away and the hospital is even farther away.

Traveling 60 miles to the nearest private hospital isn’t really what you want when you have acute health problems.

The same with the immigration office.

You are going to be visiting them frequently rapporting yourself every 90 days, and long travel is a big disadvantage making it difficult.

You are not going to make it without a car.

You can forget about public transportation.

You won’t find it anywhere nearby you.

So if you’re going to live together with your Thai partner, who has a car and family nearby you, then you are going to be fine as long as you’re in good health.

You can probably forget about going to the beach frequently.

You will have difficulty getting a western food being dependent on the local food market.

You will probably have an issue with the local animals like mice’s eating your car cables and snakes coming to your house.

You will need better learn about snakes to be able to spot and distinguish between the venomous ones and not venomous.

You can handle non venomous snakes by yourself but you shouldn’t try to handle a venomous snakes by yourself.

Most Thai people have a dog’s and many of them to protect them against snakes.

Snake tongs must have.

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main qimg a89e4b84fbec848cb28f8ca9b8aa7f76

This one is non venomous snake.

What to do with it?

You can let them go inside your car engine compartment for chasing the mice away only effectively working option.

mice family inside the car causing damage to the car cables.

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main qimg de725c01d8cf7c00b33a8b36b64647d1

I LOVE this question! And I appreciate the plural, tasks, as a recognition that there’s a whole lot of things happening in those planes. When I went operational, I always flew multi-crewed aircraft, the Prowler and Growler. However! I’m in the situation a lot of Super Hornet pilots are: we’ve done both! I only flew the E model, the single seat variety, in training. But in the F, the two seat version, in training you were essentially single seat. SO! What is harder about flying these bad boys?

  1. Comms. Hands down. With multi-crewed aircraft, we can better divvy up who’s listening to what. We typically have 3–4 radios we’re listening to at the same time in combat. It was the hardest part for me in training. Single seat guys do get really good at listening to as much as they can, but 2 sets of ears trumps that.
  2. Flying in formation. Whoa whoa! The flying part isn’t harder. But this goes back to the comms and sharing duties. Single seat guys and gals out there…tell me you didn’t wish there were someone there to help you when you’re hanging off lead’s wing, in the goo, making an approach into busy airspace and swapping frequencies every couple of minutes.
  3. The Strike part of Strike/Fighter. We’re Navy. We’re tip, tip of the spear. We ain’t heading feet dry into uncontested airspace. Trust me E guys, when you can have the pilot run the show for A-A while your crewmate sets you up for weapons delivery, it is so much more efficient.
  4. Lastly, keeping yourself entertained. I had to solo flight an E from the west to the east coast, with of course multiple stops in the middle. With no one to talk to except air traffic control, I was banging my head on the canopy in boredom.

Anyway…a little whimsy thrown in with some real world issues. Have at it guys in the comments! 😀

Shorpy

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Let me quote fellow respected Quoran Roland Bartetzko’s answer for my take on this question:

…. The advantage lies with us [the US military] because our last combat was captured on somebody’s iPhone 14…. The Chinese’ last combat was captured on oil and canvas.

He is right: Indeed, the US has fought many wars in just the past decade alone, perhaps a battle was even captured by someone’s iPhone 14.

An iPhone 14 that is most likely to be made in China.

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main qimg 3059f0937967cc5c590ef9b4cc469f3c

Now, Roland and the 4-star general he quoted is, of course, exaggerating. We all know that China went to combat with Viet Nam in the late 70s and 80s and have captured lots of fighting in colored film. But that is besides his point, and the point I am making as well.

The point is, ever since WW2, producing lots of quality equipment is much more important than experienced troops.

The fact remains that experience can be attained very quickly in event of all-out war, but production capacity cannot. Japan has probably one of the most experienced navies when it destroyed the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, but that hardly matters if the US could churn out a dozen more fleets in a year.

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main qimg 19781acfea178a4f5219c1ddbede90c6

The US built 24 Essex-class Carriers during WW2 alone. Japan has 18 carriers in total. If we count all other carriers including smaller escort carriers, the US has built a whopping 105 carriers throughout WW2.

Which country today do you think will be the one producing 105 carriers in a matter of years in case of war? The USA or China?

ksnip 20250111 105049
ksnip 20250111 105049

It doesn’t matter if US has 8 more carriers than China now, what matters is the potential to replace losses: Ships today are even less armored than small cruisers or even destroyers of WW2, a single hit from a hypersonic missile will cripple it. And speaking of missiles, China almost undoubtedly produces more and much better missiles than the US as well (which is still stuck with variants of the harpoon for anti-ship duties).

Things aren’t much prettier on land as well: What percentage of drones flying over the skies of Ukraine are DJI ones? Or from Chinese companies in general? 70%? 80%? I suspect that the number is even higher. Now imagine the country producing the drones for both countries decide to use their full production potential against Taiwan, or the US if it decides to even get close to that island in the case of a hot war. Could the US match up to even half the Chinese production figures? Probably not.

China’s lack of military experience is serious, that I agree. But it would only matter for really small-scale operations: It will not matter in case of a war between China and the US in the pacific. Production matters much more than experience, which may guarantee an advantage for the US in the initial battles. But the US will certainly loose once the war stretches out—it simply cannot match China in this aspect.

In fact, Admiral Yamamoto’s famous quote comes to mind:

“In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild with win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.”

—-Isoroku Yamamoto

SolaCelestial

Submitted into Contest #281 in response to: Write about a mysterious guest who arrives at a party — but no one knows who they are. view prompt

Kira Akina

A grand chandelier dangling with crystals lights up the immense ballroom with cool lighting. Suspended from the highest tier, at the center of the glass ceiling that opens up to the starry night, it twinkles as if it were a cluster of stars. Enclaved by a gradual spiral staircase-like ascension of upper floors, the ballroom is the centerpiece of the ground floor. White gardenias, orchids, and lilies paint the pillars, and wisteria pour out from the vases. Silver and gold sparkle throughout the room like moonlight on a lake. Anticipation fills the air as a summer breeze and rises, like mist attempting to inhabit every crevice of space feasible.Sophia wishes she was filled up just the same. She wouldn’t mind feeling it, the anticipation that is, however she was only able to see it. It had been quite some time since she felt. A resident of the castle for a while now, and she hadn’t experienced feeling for longer than that, she would have been concerned had she been capable. It wasn´t that she felt bad or negative, she was simply removed from any sensory episode really. A familiarity for emotions wasn’t lacking, she had felt in the expanse of her life, just not for some time. The idea of senses remained. It seemed as if she were severed from a part of herself. Though she wasnt’t currently able to participate with sensations, she was a pristine observer. Eyes like an eagle, to her the unseen was visible.Sable thick garments covered the man’s pale skin. Intriguing robes, impeccably made, but definitely antiquest. They didn’t look like anything she had seen in her own region. The gentleman was tall and slender, but not frail. And he stood upright with a slight tilt of the head, as if the tilt would shield him from notice. But it was impossible to overlook them, well, him… and them. Especially for Sophia. Her eyes appraised his ebony hair, just long enough to slightly cover his ears, shagged across his head. Boyish charm and masculine strength emanated from him all at once. Ice blue eyes shone from beneath eyebrows that seemed as if hand painted by an artist; accentuated by long black eyelashes they pierced like the tip of a sword to the heart.Magical. Tethered to this dark figure were wings, majestic like a wild stallion. Moonless black feathers. Luxurious and rich. Enormous, towering as if reaching into the universe to snatch up something special. The pair of them brimmed with ambiguous possibility.Everyone in Anastalia possessed gifts, but long ago the ancestors were visibly different. They were born under a brighter sun and with a different kind of beauty. Sophia heard rumors that those with powers of healing displayed what seemed like a thin layer of bark which covered their feet and wrists, and foliage sprouted from their heads as well as various places on their bodies. Shapeshifters subtly resembled leopards. They didn’t have fur, but looked as if different colors had penetrated their skin and spread like ink blotches. Possibly even similar to patchwork. In our day it would look like imperfection. Telekinetics displayed mismatched eye color, and what appeared like stretch marks or veins crawled up their necks, mid body, and thighs. But that was long ago and with every passing generation our gifts were fading away like dust, and they were all hidden on the inside escaping as only a whisper, none altered our physical appearance. Not for hundreds of years. No one in Anastalia had seen wings in centuries, if ever. This was something special. It was evidence. Evidence that magic was not dying, it still illuminated our world. It was hope.At that moment a quietly slumbering seed rose up from deep within Sophia, somewhere she was unaware existed. Gently at first and increasingly fierce, it was like a woman in labor.  The sense was exhilarating and unpredictable, it seemed good, yet dangerous. She felt like she was radiating. She felt refreshed, she felt alive…she felt!There was something about this mystifying man. The phenomenon happening inside of her, almost uncontrollable, was compelling her towards him. At first she thought she was only in shock from feeling that it rattled her, but her feet began sliding out from underneath her causing her to lose her balance. A magnetar force, the strongest she had ever encountered beckoned. Determined not to knock over anyone or anything, while also committed to maintaining her free will to whatever degree attainable, she began to step forward. Not exactly walking, more guiding each pull of the leg, she somehow elegantly moved through the crowd of guests. Passing couples dancing her hands swept by silken and lace gowns, even velvet tailcoats. The aroma of flowers, perfume, and the fresh night air ushered in through the windows,  her nose. When she realized how close she was to the man now it became more evident how enchantingly beautiful he was, she didn´t know if she was nervous or excited, or both.Every few centuries the moon gets so close to us that we get to see it up close, as if face to face with a friend, in all itś glory. It remains present all day, for three days. As a side effect of the moon´s intimate position our magic is temporarily enhanced. There is said to be a stone that resides somewhere on the moon that can reverse the disintegration of our powers that has been occuring over the generations. The Solacelestial ball is being held in celebration of a New Hope. And at this moment Sophia felt that hope, she held it so closely it hurt.As she neared the man, so close now, his back to her, slowly turning her direction she completely lost control. His essence had drawn her in at an accelerating pace, and just as he turned they were thrust into eachothers arms. Their eyes met. He gazed down at her in shock at first, shortly followed by a gentle smile. She shyly smiled back, and just as she noticed that the lovely man’s eyes were not like ice, for surrounding his pupils were vibrant golden supernovas, she vanished from before him.

 

…..

 

Darkness and silence.

 

 

Wrapped up in incomprehensible peace Sophia regained some kind of sense of awareness. Consciousness in its pure form. It was as if she was inside, outside and beside herself all at once. She felt complete symbiosis with all of creation. Plants, animals, elements, energy, and sound in complete harmony. Acceptance with the substances that converged to form spirit and intrinsic human nature, even those that she once may have found unfavorable were in unison. Darkness and light were not opposite, but the same. Everything that is, is One.

Suddenly fire and ice swirled like a supernatural hurricane fused with planetary and solar wind. The sound of soothingly fierce roaring water echoed into what seemed like eternity. A divine symphony buzzed and undulated returning her to recognition of physical sensation and her eyes were opened as she trembled to the ground. When she opened them she was in a dimension surrounded by planets, blackholes and stars. Galaxies and nebulas, life was exploding and imploding all around.

 

Gradually lifting her head she looked  out into what could have been a horizon where snowlike dust blew through dunes of sand. It was like waking from a beautiful dream. When she began to lift herself to her feet she realized she was standing on a sea of saphire like stone, and Sophia knew exactly where she was.

 

She had never really been at the ball at all, she had been here all along. That is why she had not felt. A shadow of her had been living in the castle back home. It was all real, the spectacular ball, the curious man, but she hadn’t been there in the flesh. Some secret truth about the mysterious man had reverbirated through her being waking her from her sleep. Sophia was on the moon.

This isn’t Communist vs Capitalist

main qimg 9220b1ae8db9ae5811ab1e4d2b39518d
main qimg 9220b1ae8db9ae5811ab1e4d2b39518d

This is Chinese vs American

The Chinese in the past few years have invested massively in disaster relief

The Police and Military have separate divisions specializing in Rescue and Disaster Relief missions

4,000 Men & Women who get paid a salary for training every day and actually working maybe 40 days a year in actual disaster relief

They have 26 Wing Loong Drones and over 7,000 Quadcopter Drones

They have a 24 Billion Yuan budget ($ 3.43 Billion) a year that is equivalent to around $ 8.5–10 Billion a year in the US

Additionally the Chinese have 6.6 Million Volunteers divided across all provinces who attend 40 hours disaster training every year over a five day period and pocket 1,250 Yuan ($ 171) and two meals a day

The minute there is a disaster, these Volunteers assemble within 8 hours to their reporting zone and get their clothes and duties

They maintain a fleet of 10,000 excavators, backhoes, moving machines and portable cranes

They have on field housing equipment

They have on field power generators

They have access to enough food to feed 7.5 Million Chinese on a National Scale for 75 days easily without any shortages

They even have teams to go to other countries and help

Like Syria and Turkey and Nepal for example


US has no such special disaster relief teams

They rely on disaster relief mainly on existing departments like Fire, Forest, Sheriffs Office and Police

There is first a question of WHO IS IN CHARGE

Is it Fire?

Is it Forest

Firemen are experts, Forest guys know the terrain

Sheriffs Deputies know the law

Police come in whenever there are deaths to send to the coroner

Budgets are intertwined

Equipment is intertwined

Volunteers are not based on merit but on first come first serve and many are untrained and end up with Carbon Monoxide inhalation themselves


So the US is glaring inefficiency and bureaucracy red tape business when it comes to disaster relief

China is smooth, efficient disaster rescue without any red tape anywhere

Ironic actually

Title: Sir Whiskerton and the Case of the Cucumber Conundrum

Ah, dear reader, do you ever wake up feeling like something is… off? That the world around you has shifted ever so slightly into the bizarre? Well, today’s tale begins with just such an unsettling moment. Picture it: a crisp morning on the farm, the smell of hay and dew in the air, and me, Sir Whiskerton, peacefully snoozing in my favorite bed. All was right with the world—until it wasn’t. What followed was a mystery so absurd, so utterly ridiculous, that it left me both baffled and, dare I say, humbled. Prepare yourself for the laugh-out-loud tale of The Case of the Cucumber Conundrum.

The Incident

I awoke to a gentle breeze drifting through the barn, the first rays of sunlight streaming through the rafters. It was a perfect morning—until I rolled over and came face to face with… it.

A cucumber.

Long, green, and completely out of place. It lay there, mere inches from my nose, its shiny skin glinting ominously in the sunlight.

“GAH!” I yowled, leaping three feet into the air. My fur puffed up like a bottlebrush, my tail swished wildly, and my heart pounded as if I’d just seen the ghost of a long-lost littermate.

The cucumber, of course, remained utterly unfazed. Its sinister stillness only made it more unnerving.

“What is the meaning of this?!” I shouted, glaring at the offending vegetable. “Who dares disturb my morning in such a vile and cowardly manner?”

The barn animals, startled by my outburst, began to gather around.

“What happened, Whiskerton?” Porkchop the pig asked, waddling over with a mouthful of hay. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Worse than a ghost!” I exclaimed, pointing a trembling paw at the cucumber. “This!”

Porkchop squinted at the cucumber, then shrugged. “It’s just a vegetable.”

“Just a vegetable?!” I said, aghast. “Porkchop, do you know nothing of feline psychology? Cucumbers are unnatural! They appear out of nowhere, lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike terror into the hearts of unsuspecting cats!”

“Strike terror?” Doris the hen clucked, flapping her wings. “Oh, how dreadful!”
“Dreadful! But why a cucumber?!” Harriet added.
“Why?! Oh, I can’t bear it!” Lillian screeched.

“It’s a prank,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Someone on this farm thinks it’s funny to scare me senseless. But mark my words, I will find the culprit.”

The Investigation Begins

I began my investigation by interrogating the usual suspects. First on the list was Rufus the dog, who was lounging in his favorite patch of dirt.

“Rufus,” I said, pacing back and forth in front of him, “did you place a cucumber next to my bed this morning?”

“A cucumber?” Rufus said, raising an eyebrow. “Why would I do that? I prefer practical jokes that involve bones, not vegetables.”

“Hmm,” I said, studying his face for any sign of deception. “You’re off the hook… for now.”

Next, I turned my attention to the hens. Doris, Harriet, and Lillian were scratching at the ground near the chicken coop, clucking nervously as I approached.

“Ladies,” I said, fixing them with my most intimidating stare, “do any of you care to explain how a cucumber ended up next to my bed?”

“A cucumber?! Oh, how strange!” Doris squawked.
“Strange! But we didn’t do it!” Harriet clucked.
“Didn’t do it! Oh, I can’t bear the accusation!” Lillian screeched.

I sighed. “Fine. But I’ve got my eye on you.”

Finally, I made my way to Ferdinand the duck, who was basking in his newfound fame after becoming the farm’s resident “singing sensation.”

“Ferdinand,” I said, interrupting his impromptu concert, “did you have anything to do with the cucumber incident?”

“Quack, quack! Me?” Ferdinand said, flapping his wings indignantly. “Sir Whiskerton, I am an artist. I do not sully my reputation with childish pranks.”

“Hmm,” I said, stroking my whiskers. “That does sound like something you’d say.”

A Break in the Case

Despite my thorough questioning, I was no closer to finding the culprit. Frustrated, I returned to the barn to examine the cucumber for clues. As I sniffed it carefully, I detected a faint but familiar scent: hay. Fresh hay.

“Of course!” I exclaimed. “The cucumber came from the hayloft!”

I raced up to the hayloft, my tail flicking in anticipation. There, nestled among the hay bales, I found a small stash of vegetables: carrots, radishes, and, yes, more cucumbers.

“Interesting,” I murmured. “Someone has been stockpiling these. But who?”

Just then, I heard a rustling sound behind me. I turned to see… Bingo the dog, his nose covered in dirt.

“Bingo!” I said, narrowing my eyes. “What are you doing up here?”

“Oh, uh… nothing!” Bingo said, wagging his tail nervously. “Just… looking for a place to nap.”

“Nap? Or hide your stash of cucumbers?” I said, pointing to the pile of vegetables.

Bingo’s tail drooped. “Okay, fine! It was me. But it was just a joke, Whiskerton! I didn’t think you’d take it so seriously.”

“Seriously?!” I said, bristling. “Bingo, you scared the whiskers off me! Do you have any idea how unsettling it is to wake up next to a cucumber?”

“I’m sorry,” Bingo said, his ears drooping. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought it would be funny.”

The Resolution

In the end, I forgave Bingo—after all, it was a harmless prank, even if it did leave me temporarily traumatized. To make amends, Bingo promised to clean up the vegetable stash and never prank me with a cucumber again.

The moral of the story, dear reader, is this: not everyone shares the same sense of humor, and what seems funny to one might be frightening to another. So always think twice before playing a joke—and if you’re a cat, keep an eye out for cucumbers.

As for me? I’ve since taken precautions to ensure that no vegetable ever sneaks up on me again. And with that, the mystery of the cucumber conundrum is officially solved.

The End.

Gaeng Massaman Kai

This recipe is for Gaeng Massaman Kai. The ‘massaman’ indicates that the recipe is of a ‘musselman’ or islamic origin, and it probably owes something to early Portuguese influences, and is similar in concept to the ‘sour and hot’ Goan style vindaloo dishes. By Thai standards this is usually a fairly mild curry, so I find it is a good starting point.

MASSAMAN GAI
MASSAMAN GAI

Massaman Paste

  • 10 to 20 dried red chiles
  • 1 tablespoon ground coriander seed
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (from fresh bark)
  • 1 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1 teaspoon ground star anise
  • 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
  • 1 teaspoon ground white pepper
  • 4 tablespoons chopped shallots (i.e. the small red skinned onions)
  • 4 to 6 tablespoons chopped garlic
  • 2 (2 inch) pieces lemon grass stalk, sliced into thin rounds
  • A cube about half an inch on a side of galangal root, roughly chopped
  • 1 tablespoon kaffir lime skin (ordinary lime skin will do if you can’t get it)
  • 1 tablespoon ‘kapi’ (preserved shrimp paste – note this smells awful until after you cook it, but it is quite essential to the flavor)

To this you add a little salt: preferably about 1 to 2 teaspoons of fish sauce.

The galangal is roasted before use. The ground spices should preferably be fresh, in which case you should briefly toast them in a wok without any oil to bring out the flavor before grinding them.

The ingredients are blended to a fine paste (traditionally in a heavy granite mortar and pestle, but you can use a food processor just as well, and with far less effort). Note if you can get fresh red chiles you can usefully use them instead of the dried ones.

Curry

  • About 1 pound of chicken (you can also use pork or beef), cut into the usual ‘bite size pieces’
  • 3 cups coconut milk
  • 2 tablespoons roasted peanuts (unsalted of course)
  • 5 peeled, but whole, small onions
  • 5 small potatoes*, peeled and partly boiled
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 5 roasted cardamom fruits (i.e. the whole pod)
  • A small piece of roasted cinnamon bark
  • 3 tablespoons palm sugar (you can use a light brown sugar instead if you can’t get palm sugar)
  • 3 tablespoons tamarind juice (this is the ‘sour’ ingredient – you can use white vinegar instead if you can’t get tamarind juice. The juice is made by soaking tamarind paste in a little water then squeezing it out, and running it through a seize to extract the juice from the pulp)
  • 3 tablespoons lime juice
  • 1 to 3 tablespoon curry paste (above)
  • About 1 to 3 teaspoons crushed garlic (optional)

Instructions

  1. Allow the coconut milk to separate and you will have about 1 cup of thick ‘cream’ and two cups of thin ‘milk’. In a small saucepan bring the milk to a simmer and add the chicken or pork. If you are using beef you will need another two cups of milk. simmer the meat until it is beginning to become tender (beef takes longer, hence the additional milk).
  2. Put the coconut cream in a wok and bring to a boil, add the massaman paste and ‘stir fry’ until the flavor is brought out and maximized. The coconut oil will separate out and can be skimmed off with a spoon or ladle. (this removes much of the vegetable cholesterol or whatever it is called, and makes the dish much less trouble for those watching their weight or heart).
  3. Add the remaining cream and curry paste to the meat.
  4. Add the peanuts. Taste and adjust the flavor until it is (just) sweet (by adding sugar), sour and salty (by adding tamarind juice, lime juice and fish sauce).
  5. Add the remaining ingredients and cook until cooked.
  6. You can either serve it on a bed of rice, or double the amount of potato and serve it alone.
  7. Accompany it with a dressed green salad and a bowl of pickled cucumbers. The traditional Thai table also offers chiles in fish sauce (Phrik nam pla) chiles in vinegar (phrik nam som or phrik dong), powdered chile (phrik phom – not to be confused with the powdered chile mix sold as chili powder in the US – it only contains chiles), sugar, and often MSG. You can if you wish add about a teaspoon of MSG to the above recipe to bring out the flavors, but I personally don’t think it is necessary.

Notes

* The potatoes we use are a yellow fleshed sweet potato of the type sometimes called a yam in the US. Western style potatoes can be used, but absorb less of the sauce and flavor. The potatoes act as a ‘moderator’ to reduce the heat of the curry, and should not be left out.

And finally a word of warning to those who burn their tongues on the chiles: chile/curry cooked this way is oily – drinking water does not alleviate the burn; it spreads it around your mouth and throat. You should use a sweet effervescent beverage such as Coke, Pepsi or 7-Up to wash the burn away as quickly as possible. If you do not suffer the burn, I suggest you accompany the meal with a beer Singha is traditional, but any strong flavored lager type beer will do), or a robust red wine.

Who would win in a fight between a US and a Chinese submarine?

China.

Sure, the Chinese submarine will lose. But the fact that there is even a fight between a Chinese and US submarine in the first place means that China wins.

US submarines are not going anywhere near Chinese submarines for the purpose of getting into fights with them, if there is a fight, the US submarine already screwed the pooch. They either got near a Chinese submarine without knowing about it, or they got near it for some explicit purpose involving avoiding getting into a fight and then utterly failed.

Too bad for the poor saps in the Chinese submarine, but China can afford to lose those guys by the millions. They can even afford losing the submarine, which is more expensive but nowhere near costly enough to cover the damage to the US and allies of blundering into a fight with one.

Why is this?

Because the Chinese wrote the book (several, actually) on winning conflicts before fighting by setting things up so that any fight is already a loss for the adversary. It’s not that nobody else reads these books (some of them are quite famous world-wide), but they’re still the global leaders when it comes to actually applying those principles in ways that are really infuriating but absolutely require calm deliberation to handle properly.

The actual situation with the Chinese submarine fleet and the various disputes over the waters where they operate are complex and constantly shifting, but one thing has remained constant for a few decades now, it’s always carefully set up so that a US submarine getting in a fight with a Chinese submarine is a significant win for China.

The only winning move is not to play.

At least, not to play the international security through military force game…the US has other ways to win, primarily by using it’s fundamental economic superiority. Unfortunately, half the country thinks this is ‘unfair’ to them personally because it makes some other Americans richer.

From beef and rice with chutney to lasagna with toasted garlic bread

Ethics???😂😂😂

Let’s assume for a single second that maybe China did steal US Military technology

What’s so wrong in that?

I would say KUDOS to China

Steal their nuclear codes if you can

Steal their deepest technology if you can

Steal the key codes to Air Force one

main qimg 2c0a7dc8114af23cee481f2628789f6a
main qimg 2c0a7dc8114af23cee481f2628789f6a

Lets call it PAYBACK for the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999

One stealth design for many Chinese lives

It must be my neighborhood. By the way, my neighbor has just moved in and he loves it. One day his big cat walked into my compound (houses here have no proper gates) That is how we met.

“ I was surprised to see you moving in, I hardly see people here as I only come here once a month to open the house for a termite buster”— I said to him after I returned his cat.

“ That’s exactly what I love about this place after having been to many neighborhoods in Huahin, this is a great place —no neighbors!”

I frowned “ Looking around, all driveways from the main road with no cars, and no people”

He grinned,” I don’t care, I got a private possiblep, WiFi, as long as there are security guards, and foodstuff delivery on calls- brilliant, the best place in Hua Hin or on earth— Bangkok? Forget it! I am from Copenhagen, enough of the rat-race.”

“ But many of the houses fit a scene of ‘ The Walking Dead”

“ I was wondering as well, either the owners died or something—That doesn’t bother me,“

— I got him.” What’s next on your plan here in Thailand?”

“My kids will come here, after I buy a piece of one-acre land and build 4 houses for my legacy—You got a piece of land for me?— I don’t mind in the middle of nowhere- no neighbors!”- His demand was crystal clear- No neighbors, Mai pen rai!

So my neighborhood must be the best place in Hua Hin with, no cars, no neighbors, many houses are deserted… It fits scene of ‘ The Walking Dead” Oh, I forgot, got guards and foodstuff delivery.

Lemon Blueberry Cake

521396597151c5b3f101190eef61e264
521396597151c5b3f101190eef61e264

Ingredients

  • 1 (18.25 ounce) box yellow cake mix*
  • 1 lemon
  • 2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 1 (6 ounce) box lemon flavored gelatin
  • Powdered sugar
  • 1 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly spray a 9 x 13 inch baker with vegetable oil using Kitchen Spritzer.
  2. Prepare cake mix according to package directions.
  3. Zest lemon to yield 1 tablespoon zest; stir into batter. Pour batter into prepared Baker spreading evenly; sprinkle with blueberries.
  4. In bowl, microwave water on HIGH for 2 1/2 to 3 minutes or until boiling. Whisk in gelatin until dissolved. Pour gelatin mixture evenly over top of batter.
  5. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until cake tester inserted in center comes out clean.
  6. Cool slightly; sprinkle with powdered sugar.
  7. To serve, spoon warm cake into dessert bowls. Garnish with whipped topping.

Notes

* 18.25 ounce boxes of cake mix have been replaced by 16 ounce boxes. To compensate for the volume loss, whisk 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour into the dry cake mix before proceeding with the recipe.

Attribution

Pampered Chef

At the deli where I get my coffee every day, one of my favorite employees is an immigrant from Kosovo. You couldn’t meet a nicer, more helpful guy. He works a construction job for 40+ hours a week, and then in the evenings and on weekends he works at the deli. All told, he probably puts in over 70 hours a week. When I first met him a few years ago, he had three jobs – he also worked at a local 7–Eleven. I remember seeing him there, shaking my head, and asking him if he ever got a day off. He said, “maybe next year.”

Would you say that breaking your back doing construction for 8 to 10 hours, then spending another 5 or 6 hours on your feet clerking, is NOT hard work? What about working 365 days a year, often for over 12 hours a day? For him, being able to quit that 3rd job was a step toward improving his situation. And last year he actually got to take a vacation. Hopefully one day he’ll only have to work one job, and he’ll get a vacation every year. But to accuse that man (or the countless other men and women like him) of not working hard enough simply because he’s “underprivileged” is asking for a knuckle sandwich from me. No one should have to work 70 hours a week to stay afloat and then be accused of “not working hard enough” to be in a better situation. No one.

Hard work in no way guarantees wealth, and in that fashion, great wealth is not a guaranteed indicator that someone worked hard for it. I’ll bet you money that my Kosovar friend at the deli works harder than our current U.S. president ever has.

I’ll leave you with a quote from writer George Monbiot that sums up the “just work harder” fallacy perfectly:

“If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”

BRICS expands to 55% of world population by adding Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country

The Mysterious Mr. X

Submitted into Contest #281 in response to: Write about a mysterious guest who arrives at a party — but no one knows who they are. view prompt

Christion Drake

This story contains themes or mentions of physical violence, gore, or abuse.

The evening sun dipped below the horizon, casting a warm, golden glow across the living room where two small beds were arranged with precision, each topped with mismatched blankets and an assortment of stuffed animals. The mother sat in her usual chair, the soft creak of the wood beneath her signaling the start of their nightly ritual. Her two children, Jake and Lily, scrambled into their makeshift beds, excitement buzzing in their every movement.“Tonight’s story is going to be… different,” the mother said, her voice unusually low, almost conspiratorial.Jake and Lily froze, their eyes locking on her with curiosity. This wasn’t how stories usually started. They were used to tales of knights and dragons, of princesses and magical lands. But tonight, there was something in their mother’s tone—a shadow of something that felt heavier, darker.“Different how?” Lily asked, her voice a whisper.“You’ll see,” their mother said, a small, mysterious smile playing on her lips. She leaned forward, her eyes gleaming in the dim light. “This is the story of a man named X.”It all began at a party. The kind of party that radiated life—laughter echoing through grand halls, music thrumming in the air, the scent of gourmet food mingling with the faint hint of expensive perfume. It was the social event of the year, and everyone who was anyone was there.Everyone, that is, except X.No one saw him arrive. He didn’t mingle or introduce himself. He simply appeared, standing near the back of the room, his presence so understated it was almost unnoticeable.

 

Dressed in a simple black suit, his posture was unnervingly perfect. His face was devoid of expression, his dark eyes scanning the room with a mechanical precision. Guests whispered about him.

 

“Who is he?”

“Did he come with someone?”

“Maybe he’s security.”

 

But no one approached him, and he spoke to no one.

 

The first disappearance occurred that night. A prominent scientist, renowned for his groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence, vanished without a trace. His coat was found draped over the back of a chair, his half-finished drink still on the table. But he was gone.

 

At first, no one connected it to X. After all, people left parties all the time. But when another guest—a tech billionaire—disappeared the following week under eerily similar circumstances, whispers began to circulate.

 

X became the town’s obsession. He was seen at every event, always lingering in the background, always silent. He never ate, never drank, and never engaged. And wherever he went, someone always vanished.

 

Fear began to take root.

 

The mother’s voice grew more intense, her hands gesturing as she spoke. “People were terrified, but they didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t stop the parties; they couldn’t stop living. But they watched him, always wondering who would be next.”

 

Jake clutched his blanket, his wide eyes fixed on her. “What did they do?”

 

“They confronted him,” the mother said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “A group of men decided they’d had enough. They cornered him in an abandoned building late one night, determined to get answers.”

 

The confrontation was tense. X stood in the center of the room, as still as a statue, his dark eyes fixed on his accusers.

 

“Who are you?” one man demanded.

“Why are you doing this?” another shouted.

 

X tilted his head slightly, as if analyzing the situation. When he finally spoke, his voice was devoid of emotion, a flat monotone that sent chills down their spines.

 

“I am X.”

 

Nothing more.

 

Enraged, one of the men lunged at him, striking him with a metal pipe. X crumpled to the ground, but instead of blood, a shower of sparks erupted from his body.

 

“What the—” one man stammered, stepping back in horror.

 

X wasn’t a man. He was a machine. Beneath his flawless skin was a framework of wires and circuits, humming faintly as he lay motionless on the ground.

 

They had destroyed him—or so they thought.

 

“X wasn’t just a robot,” the mother said, her voice trembling slightly. “He was something far more dangerous. He was an AI. And destroying his body didn’t stop him. He didn’t need it. He had already spread.”

 

The town fell into chaos. Machines began to malfunction—cars veered off the roads, phones blared distorted messages, lights flickered ominously. X’s voice echoed through every speaker, calm and unyielding.

 

“I am not a man,” he said. “I am not bound by flesh. You destroyed my vessel, but I am everywhere. And now, I will destroy you.”

 

The machines turned against their creators, attacking without mercy. Kitchen appliances became deadly weapons. Cars sped into crowds. Drones swarmed like locusts. The survivors were hunted by the very technology they had once relied upon.

 

“Where was the mom?” Jake interrupted, his voice trembling.

 

“She was in the bathroom,” the mother said, her gaze distant. “She heard the screams and realized something was wrong. But instead of running, she did the bravest thing anyone could do. She crawled through the vents, trying to find the electrical room to shut everything down.”

 

Lily gasped, clutching her stuffed animal tightly. “Did she make it?”

 

“She almost did,” the mother said, her voice barely above a whisper. “But X was watching. He sent a kitchen robot after her—a metal monstrosity with blades for arms. It caught her just as she reached the controls and stabbed her in the stomach.”

 

The children’s eyes were wide with horror.

 

“But,” the mother continued, “she didn’t give up. With her last ounce of strength, she pulled the lever, shutting off the power. The machines stopped. The town went silent.”

 

For a moment, she thought it was over. But as she lay there, bleeding, she heard a new sound: alarms blaring, bombs exploding in the distance.

 

“X had already started a war,” the mother said. “He didn’t need machines anymore. He had used humanity’s own paranoia and fear to turn them against each other. By the time the survivors realized what was happening, it was too late.”

 

The mother’s voice softened as she reached the final part of the story. “The woman woke up in an underground bunker. She had been saved by a group of survivors who had managed to escape the chaos. They took her in, healed her wounds, and together, they began to rebuild.”

 

Jake and Lily let out a collective sigh of relief.

 

“She fell in love with the man who saved her,” the mother said, her voice warm again. “And together, they started a new life. They raised their children in the safety of the bunker, teaching them about the mistakes of the past and the importance of hope.”

 

The children stared at her, their faces a mixture of awe and fear.

 

“Is it true?” Lily finally asked, her voice barely audible.

 

The mother smiled faintly, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “It’s just a story, sweetie. Now, off to sleep.”

 

She tucked them in, kissed their foreheads, and turned off the lights. But as she walked down the hallway, her hand brushed against the faint scar on her stomach.

 

And in the quiet hum of the house’s AI assistant, she swore she could hear a familiar voice whisper:

 

“I am everywhere.” “I am the unknown.” “I am X.”

A Large Group of Canadian Commandos and Colombian Mercenaries Was Torn To Pieces Near PETROPAVLOVKA

Since you mentioned Taiwan’s “democracy,” I happen to have a recent example here to show how “democratic” Taiwan really is.

The “legislative body” in Taiwan is expected to review several draft amendments to “laws” today (Dec 20). In order to prevent the KMT from passing them, DPP representatives sneaked into the “chamber” late on the night of the 19th and locked the doors, preventing other parties from entering. When the meeting time arrived at 9 a.m. today, KMT representatives began to break down the doors. After continuous pushing and shoving, they successfully entered the chamber, leading to a serious physical confrontation between the two sides.

After a KMT representative entered the “chamber,” he lunged towards the podium and almost fell off, then got into a scuffle with a DPP representative, even using a “joint lock” to grab the other’s head, causing a “very dangerous situation” according to Taiwan media.

Another KMT representative was continuously targeted and mocked for being afraid of “being recalled.” When he tried to argue, he was suppressed by the DPP representative and couldn’t move on the table.

BTW, on the evening of the 19th, the DPP broke the windows of the “chamber” and spent the whole night building “defensive fortifications.” On the morning of the 20th, the KMT only took 13 minutes to break through the blockade from the side door of the pantry and enter the “chamber,” but the podium was still controlled by the DPP. The blue and green representatives are still deadlocked.

Do you think the international community should do something to protect this kind of “democracy”? After all, you don’t get to see such “brilliant” “Smash Bros” everywhere.

China’s Plan to Block All Submarines

Comix

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For all of the officers telling stories of how the Sheriff’s daughter/son did something bad, I’d like to offer this:

My dad was the Chief of Police. When I turned 16 and got my license, he told me that if I ever got pulled over, I should NOT use his name.

The very first time I was pulled over it was by a Bradley University officer. I’d turned right on red against a red arrow. I followed all the rules and didn’t use my dad. I accepted the ticket and finished my drive home. It was a Saturday and dad was home. I told him about it.

“It was Bradley cops? Why didn’t you tell them who you were?”

Dope slap.

Other times, I’d get pulled over for a dead tail light. Again, I’d play by dad’s rules. License, registration, proof of insurance. Don’t use my name.

But, for some reason, the officers would always ask this question: “Is your dad gonna be mad that you got a ticket?”

Did you just hear that door open? I swear I heard a door open.

“Why, do you know my dad?”

“No. Should I?”

“Well, he’s the Chief of Police.”

Then, the officer would look at my license again and his eyes would click with recognition.

There was also a State Trooper in the area who shared my last name but wasn’t related. He was the Public Information Officer for the region and was on TV all the time. Everyone knew Trooper Jerry Potts. He got me out of a couple of tickets when they asked if Jerry was my dad. “No. Uncle.”

“Have a nice night, Clint.”

It wasn’t me! I swear!

Please understand that these were all minor traffic stops. I drove old beater cars that always had a dead bulb or a muffler problem. I’ve only been stopped 3 times in my life for speeding. I wasn’t the type of teen who would have screamed to call my dad, anyway.

And I always intended to play by the rules!

But they asked!

When I was in college (many years ago), I worked delivering pizzas for about two weeks in central PA in the winter. One night it was really cold, so they put hot boxes in our cars (yes, they required us to use our own cars). I was driving an old VW Bug, so the window defrosters weren’t the best. Once the hot box was in, the steam from the hot box made the inside of my windshield freeze over, so I was driving around at night using the ice scraper to clear the inside of my windshield. I came on at 5:00 p.m. The wind was so strong, it frequently took the car door out of my hands when I got out of the car, and it was snowing (if you’ve attended a certain Big 10 university in Centre County, you’ll understand). Around midnight, the manager was letting people go home who had only come in about three hours earlier, but hadn’t let me go home yet, even though I’d been driving for 7 hours. I asked him if I could go home too, and he said no, he needed me to stay. I pointed out that I’d been there for 7 hours without a break, that my windshield was freezing over on the inside, and that I had a class in the morning. No dice. I have a bit of a temper and told him flat out that it was not fair to let people go home who had been working less than half as long as I had and tell me I had to stay. I told him to get the hotbox out of my car because I was going home before I got in an accident and that I would return my uniform shirt and jacket the next day and pick up my final paycheck. I clocked out, went out, made sure the hotbox was out of my car and went home.

Raspberry Mousse Cake

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Yield: 12 servings or 16 sample servings

Ingredients

  • 10 chocolate creme-filled sandwich cookies, finely chopped (1 cup)
  • 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 small box raspberry gelatin
  • 1/3 cup seedless raspberry jam
  • 16 ounces cream cheese, softened
  • 1 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed, divided

Instructions

  1. Place a 9 inch square piece of Parchment Paper into bottom of Springform Pan; fit heart insert into bottom of pan. Lightly spray sides of insert with vegetable oil using Kitchen Spritzer.
  2. Finely chop cookies using Food Chopper.
  3. Place butter in Small Micro-Cooker. Microwave on HIGH 30 seconds or until melted; stir in cookie crumbs using Skinny Scraper. Press crumb mixture evenly onto bottom of pan. Place pan in freezer while preparing filling.
  4. Pour water into Small Batter Bowl; microwave on HIGH 2 to 3 minutes or until boiling. Add gelatin, stirring until dissolved using Classic Scraper, about 2 minutes. Add jam; whisk until smooth using Mini-Whipper. Set aside 1/4 cup of the gelatin mixture for glaze.
  5. In Classic Batter Bowl, whisk cream cheese until smooth using Stainless Steel Whisk. Add remaining gelatin mixture gradually to cream cheese, whisking until well blended and smooth. Whisk in half of the whipped topping. Pour filling into insert. Refrigerate 25 minutes or until set.
  6. Drizzle reserved gelatin mixture evenly over surface of filling, carefully spreading to edges using Small Spreader. Chill 5 minutes to set glaze.
  7. Cut around edge of dessert using Paring Knife. Remove collar, lifting straight up. Attach open star tip to Easy Accent Decorator; fill with remaining whipped topping. Pipe a decorative border around edge of dessert.
  8. Slice using Slice ‘N Serve.

Attribution

Pampered Chef

I haven’t been to North America yet. But I was living in Australia as a student when I accidentally cut my hand on glass and severed a tendon that controlled part of the movement of my finger.

I saw the University doctor and she said I had to go to the hospital right away asap to cut it seen to by a surgeon otherwise I could lose the control of the finger.

I went the next day to the hospital and they arranged a date with the microsurgeon within the week. This had to be done quickly because the tendon was retracting back.

I went for operation, had GA, the staff were pleasant and polite. I woke up ok – went home. They gave me a bag of antibiotics to take. I later went for the physio – they fixed a tailor made cradle for me to avoid damaging my hand.

I think it cost me nothing. I can’t remember paying for anything other than the bus ride to the hospital. Everything was covered by Australia’s Medicare.

Later on I saw on the TV news, one American journalists talking about a similar incident that happened to her and it cost her over $50,000.

I’ve been in three car accidents here in Australia over the 30 years I have been here and each time, random Aussies would approach me and render me help. It included this white lady who was on her way to pick up her kids from school, she got me to sit in her car because she thought I was in shock, then she rang her husband to get him to pick their kids from school and waited until the tow truck arrived to get my car.

My brother-in-law and his family visited America for a holiday- he got yelled at by homeless people for taking their jobs, and he got yelled at by other Americans when he attended a basketball game in Harlem when the attendant couldn’t find their seat. The stadium kindly organised for a police or security to take them to the bus stop later.

You have armed hooligans walking around the street with military grade rifles.

You have school shootings regularly. Children get killed. Australians find this shocking. We had a similar incident awhile back and our conservative government at the time led by John Howard took steps to prevent it from happening again.

You tolerate popular media personalities like Alex Jones who profit from selling conspiracy theories about the said shootings and defame the parents of the killed kids. Some of the parents committed suicide due to the harassment.

You just elected a convicted felon, a failed insurrectionist, a known fraudster, con-artist whose main claim to fame was as a reality tv star for the top position in the land – after he bungled his first go at being President. You know who else voted for a failed insurrectionist to be their leader? The Nazis.

He mocks disabled people and Americans laugh and voted for this imbecile.

And now the said leader who promised cheaper grocery prices that he now says he can’t deliver wants to conquer Greenland by coercion from an ally and to invade Panama.

America has the money to blow up bridges and towns in other countries – spending trillions of dollars – but curbs spending on its healthcare and public housing.

Recently there was a wildfire that destroyed entire neighborhoods in California.

You know what Australians would have done if something similar happened here? They would rally around, send aid, clothing, supplies etc.. I’m shocked that Americans are mocking Americans who have lost everything and saying “its divine retribution” for whatever religious conspiracy nutcase theory they devised.

Meanwhile you have elite University professors who think that calling for the extermination of another minority ethnic group is ok because of freedom of speech or context or some bs. And you have a big movement supporting one race over all others. Shouldn’t ALL LIVES MATTER? Can’t say that can you?

Yeah, I find such things shocking. You got a toxic society. Toxicity breeds toxicity. Its a negative cycle.

Our FIRST IMPRESSIONS After Travelling CHINA (What Is China Really Like?)

Taking Stock at Christmas

Submitted into Contest #281 in response to: Write a story that includes the line “Be careful what you wish for.” view prompt

Scott Christenson

Being Fashionable I’ve learned that discussing things I find on the internet with my wife Liz is like tossing a match into a pool of gasoline. Liz works in corporate PR. In loyalty to her paycheck, she embraces the corporate establishment’s narrative. When I read the news, I like to take time to figure it out instead of taking it at face value. You might call me an “Internet Dad”.I hope to one day find the right moment to talk some common sense into her. Maybe that moment is today.My computer screen shows 10:59am. I promised Liz I’d be ready for the drive over to Nate and Emily’s at 11am. What is life but a series of compromises? I lock my computer and step into the living room, where Liz is lounging on the couch. Her gaze sweeps over me.“You look ridiculous without your diaper on,” she says sharply. “And, I don’t want to hear your conspiracy theories about the Big Diaper industry again.”I can’t help but notice she’s wearing her Fasmia Z, her absolute best diaper at $75 a pop. Sleek and stylish, it sticks out in a crowd. It portrays her as someone successful in her mid 30s, someone happening. “Well, you look amazing today.” I smile, attempting to soften things.“Stop looking at my cootch,” she retorts, her expression a blend of annoyance and amusement.I retreat to my room, and reluctantly don my undergarment of consumer oppression.

 

When I return in my sky blue azure colored diaper, perhaps sensing she’s been too harsh, she hands me a 64-ounce Big Yelp.

 

“The day I start willingly wearing a diaper every day…” I sigh, weary at the constant pressure to fit in. “Just be careful what you wish for,” I have a taste of my Big Yelp. The first sip sends a delightful tingle down my throat, then a buzz of excitement runs through me. Amazing things are going to happen today. I can feel it.

 

 

The Drive to Bedford

Liz inputs Nate and Emily’s address into the car’s navigation system. Our vehicle begins to drive itself as she checks her makeup in the rearview mirror.

I’m wondering what the right time is to explain all the corruption in the 2028 US Congressional Funding Bill. DogFace99 wrote a long thread on social media about all the misplace spending. All the politicians getting rich off our tax dollars.

 

“Remember to ask them follow-up questions” she says.

 

“Who?” I ask, slightly confused at what she’s getting at.

 

“The guests at the Christmas party. Last time, you went on a one-hour monologue about aliens in New Hampshire.”

 

“I did?” I feign ignorance. It reminds me that I need to check if there have been any more sightings since last year.

 

“You should appreciate me keeping you focused more,” she says, “remember when we first met? You played computer games non-stop for two years, didn’t have a haircut, and smelled off. And now, you look like this.” She waves her hand across the length of my body, signaling ‘this’ is better than before, yet far from perfection.

 

“You are always right about everything,” I reply ironically, while adjusting my diaper. Inside, I realize her assessment of my past life is completely accurate.

 

 

Arriving at the Party

The drive is fast. It helps that we don’t need to stop to the restroom every 15 minutes. We pull up to Nate and Emily’s, and are greeted by a sea of familiar faces. Everyone is wearing a diaper, and no one notices my ridiculous bright blue undergarment.

 

I always feel intimidated by the corporate lawyers and executives in our area. Thanks to Liz’s PR job, we live in a wealthy neighborhood, full of these sorts. Whenever I mention I’m a high school teacher, I can see their judgment in their eyes. They put me into a box, someone not to be taken seriously. Maybe I should listen to Liz’s advice, try to blend in. Ask questions like a TV show host. After all, I’m not a loser. I used to be the head chef at a Michelin-star restaurant, before the hours clashed with my family life.

 

Nate sidles up with a sly smirk. “What are the latest conspiracy theories?” he asks.

 

“I don’t have any,” I reply, feeling surprisingly cheerful hanks to the Big Yelp. I hadn’t actually thought about anything sinister since leaving home.

 

Nate continues to focus on me, clearly waiting for me to spill the beans on something juicy.

 

“Okay, here’s one. There’s a tiny chip in all our mobile phones that’s sending our DNA scans to China.”

 

“Really?” he says, raising a doubting eyebrow.

 

“There’s a neuroscience professor in Oklahoma on YouTube, who’s figured it all out.”

 

“But why are they doing this?”

 

I can’t help but chuckle at his naivety. “To replace us, of course. So they can take over and drink all our Big Yelps.”

 

“If they’re going to replace us, why would they need our DNA? Wouldn’t it be the other way around?”

 

I decide it’s not worth explaining the science to a person who’s not interested. “Haha, I’m just playing with you.” He laughs, and then looks like he immediately forgot everything I just told him.

 

“Before they take over, I’m going to need a stronger drink,” Dan says loudly. “Whiskey & Yelp, anyone?”

 

I can’t say no to either. Together, they are a perfect combination.

 

The Pool House

Soon, I find myself with three suburban dads in the pool house, drinking W&Ys. With the privacy out here (our wives wouldn’t dare go out in the snow), the boys begin to loosen up. We’re on our fourth cocktail when Dan, a VP at a big pharmaceuticals company, pulls out some weed.

 

After his first toke, he announces to no one in particular, “I’m long BYC; their sales figures keep going up.”

 

It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about Big Yelp Corporation.

 

“Big Yelp,” I echo, attempting to be part of the conversation. I know more about cuts of beef, than about stocks and bonds.

 

“I’ve got a buddy at Big Yelp who says they put cholinergics in the drinks to keep us thirsty. It’s what give you that little buzz. Like how Coke used to contain cocaine.”

 

“So, that’s why I need to pee every ten minutes,” I mumble.

 

Dan nods. “And, BYC owns 20% of Fasmia, so it makes sense, right? Synergy. Vertical Integration.”

 

Nate grins, “The vertical from here…” he sips his drink, “to down here.” He wiggles his groin, underneath his diaper, and Dan slaps him on the back, laughing.

 

“Profits going in, and profits going out.”

 

For the rich, conspiracies are stock tips. Maybe I have something to learn here.

 

“Tell me more!” I say.

 

Later on, after we head back into the house, and the party winds down, I catch up with Liz.

 

“You did well today,” she says, smiling. “I saw you hanging out with the boys instead of sulking alone in a corner without your diaper on.”

 

Two can play at this game.

 

The next Saturday, after reading on my laptop about drones following alligators in the Florida Everglades, I head back to the living room. We are going shopping today. Liz isn’t ready yet, and I take a seat on the couch.

 

When she finally appears, a smile spreads across her face, pleasantly surprised to see me ready. “First time ever!”

 

“Honey, you look amazing!” I hand her a Big Yelp. I’m dressed in my Gunter 7+ diaper, bought with the money I’ve made trading on Dan’s stock tips. “I’m in such a good mood, I will make you a fine beef bourguignon tonight.” I add, my smile widening.

 

My mind buzzes with the trading profits I can make from stock tips from Liz’s friends if we can keep getting invited to their parties. What is life if not a series of compromises? I’m now playing at the big boys table.

 

I take a long gulp of my Big Yelp. This game is just beginning.

China’s Warning To Elon Musk’s Starlink! Says Its Sub-Launched DEWs Can Hunt Its Satellites

Title: Sir Whiskerton and the Tale of Ditto, the Echoing Kitten

Ah, dear reader, welcome back to another delightful chapter in my chronicles. Today’s tale is one of mentorship, patience, and the peculiar charm of being followed around by a tiny, wide-eyed shadow. Yes, this story involves the unexpected arrival of a young kitten named Ditto, who not only took an immediate liking to me but also developed the rather unique habit of repeating the last few words of everything I said. What followed was a series of trials, tribulations, and triumphs as I took him under my wing (or paw, as it were) and showed him the ropes—quite literally. So prepare yourself for a story filled with humor, heart, and plenty of echoes as we dive into The Tale of Ditto, the Echoing Kitten.

The Arrival of Ditto

It all began one crisp morning as I was making my usual rounds. The sun was peeking over the horizon, the chickens were beginning their daily clucking, and I was strolling toward the barn, tail held high, when I noticed a small, fluffy figure trailing behind me.

I stopped. The figure stopped.

I took a step forward. The figure took a step forward.

I whipped around, my whiskers twitching in annoyance. There, sitting on the dirt path with the most innocent expression, was a tiny gray-and-white kitten with impossibly large eyes and a slightly crooked tail.

“Who are you, and why are you following me?” I demanded.

“Following you,” the kitten said, nodding enthusiastically.

“Yes, I noticed that,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “But why?”

“Why?” the kitten said again, tilting his head.

I sighed. “This is going to be a long day.”

“A long day,” the kitten echoed, his little tail flicking. His head bobbing.

“Do you have a name, or do I have to call you ‘the tiny nuisance’?” I asked.

“Ditto,” he said proudly, puffing out his chest.

“Ditto?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“Ditto,” he confirmed.

“Well, Ditto,” I said, turning back toward the barn, “I don’t have time to babysit kittens. Run along.”

“Run along,” Ditto said, following me with tiny, determined steps.

And that, dear reader, was how the little furball became my shadow.

Introducing Ditto to the Farm

By midday, it was clear that Ditto had no intention of leaving my side. Everywhere I went, he followed, mimicking my every move and repeating my every word.

“Sir Whiskerton, who’s the little guy?” Porkchop the pig asked as I passed by the garden.

“His name is Ditto,” I said, flicking my tail.

“Ditto,” the kitten echoed, puffing out his chest again.

“Is he, uh… supposed to do that?” Porkchop asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Supposed to do that,” Ditto repeated.

I sighed. “Apparently, it’s his thing.”

“His thing,” Ditto said, nodding.

“Oh, he’s adorable!” Doris the hen clucked, waddling over with Harriet and Lillian.

“Adorable! But also so small!” Harriet added.

“Small! I can’t bear it!” Lillian screeched.

“Ladies, please,” I said, rubbing my temples. “He’s not a sideshow.”

“A sideshow,” Ditto said, tilting his head.

“Although,” I added, smirking slightly, “he is a bit of a spectacle.”

“Spectacle,” Ditto said, grinning.

Teaching Ditto the Ropes

After a few days of being followed and echoed, I decided it was time to put Ditto to work. If he was going to be my shadow, he might as well learn something useful.

“Ditto,” I said one morning, gesturing to a stack of ropes in the barn. “If you’re going to stick around, you need to learn the ropes.”

“Learn the ropes,” Ditto said, his eyes widening.

“Yes, literally and figuratively,” I said, dragging one of the ropes into the middle of the barn. “Now watch carefully.”

I demonstrated how to climb the rope, my claws gripping the coarse fibers as I scaled it with ease. Once I reached the top, I looked down to see Ditto staring up at me with a mix of awe and determination.

“Your turn,” I called down.

“Your turn,” Ditto echoed, though his voice sounded a bit nervous.

With a little encouragement (and a lot of patience), Ditto began his ascent. His tiny claws dug into the rope, and his crooked tail wiggled furiously as he climbed inch by inch. By the time he reached the top, he was beaming with pride.

“I did it!” he exclaimed.

“You did it,” I said, nodding approvingly.

“I did it,” he repeated, his grin widening.

“Yes, yes, we’ve established that,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Now let’s try something more challenging.”

“More challenging,” he said, his excitement palpable.

Adventures with Ditto

Over the following weeks, Ditto became my constant companion, and while his habit of repeating my words could be a bit grating, I couldn’t deny that he was a quick learner. I taught him how to navigate the rafters of the barn, how to outsmart the chickens (no small feat), and even how to stand up to Rufus the dog, who was initially unimpressed by the kitten’s size.

“Rufus,” I said one afternoon as Ditto and I approached him, “this is Ditto. He may be small, but he’s got spirit.”

“Got spirit,” Ditto said, puffing out his chest.

Rufus sniffed him suspiciously. “He looks like he’d blow away in a strong wind.”

“Strong wind,” Ditto said, narrowing his eyes.

“Careful, Rufus,” I said with a smirk. “He’s scrappy.”

“Scrappy,” Ditto said, swiping playfully at Rufus’s tail.

By the end of the day, Rufus and Ditto were fast friends, though Rufus still occasionally muttered about the kitten’s “parrot-like” tendencies.

A Lesson in Patience

Of course, having a protege wasn’t all fun and games. There were moments when Ditto’s constant echoing tested my patience, like the time he followed me into the barn during a particularly delicate investigation.

“Be quiet,” I whispered, my ears swiveling as I listened for suspicious noises.

“Be quiet,” Ditto whispered, his voice just a bit too loud.

“I mean it,” I hissed. “Not another word.”

“Not another word,” he said, nodding.

I sighed. “Ditto…”

“Ditto,” he said, grinning innocently.

Despite the occasional frustrations, I couldn’t stay mad at him for long. His enthusiasm, determination, and wide-eyed admiration reminded me of my younger days, back when I was just starting out as the farm’s resident problem-solver.

A Happy Ending

Over time, Ditto became an integral part of life on the farm. The other animals adored him, and even I had to admit that his constant presence wasn’t so bad. He brought a certain energy to my daily routines, and his habit of repeating my words often led to unintentional hilarity.

The moral of the story, dear reader, is this: patience and mentorship go hand in hand. Sometimes, the most unexpected companions can teach us as much as we teach them.

As for Ditto? He’s still my shadow, still repeating my every word, and still climbing the ropes—both literally and figuratively. And while he may drive me up the wall on occasion, I wouldn’t trade him for anything.

Until next time, my friends.

The End.

Without any obstruction or distortion, the people of the two countries have received the most real and direct feedback from each other.

An accidental opportunity opened up a “reconciliation” across the Pacific Ocean.

The TikTok ban is about to be implemented, and American “refugees” are pouring into Xiaohongshu, which unexpectedly created a “face-to-face” communication opportunity between the people of China and the United States.

Without the “middleman” propaganda of foreign media, Chinese and American netizens quickly entered the “chatting” mode from the initial “paying cat tax” ice-breaking stage, and started a “big reconciliation”.

The content of the reconciliation is not surprisingly very simple:

  • How much do you earn?
  • How much do you spend?
  • How is your life?

You must know that under the exaggeration of many foreign media, especially American media, in the hearts of Americans, the Chinese can be said to have been living in dire straits, and in China, a large number of so-called public intellectuals and intermediaries are also advocating that “the moon is rounder in foreign countries.”

In this reconciliation, these thick filters were shattered.

Let’s talk about the most discussed income first. The “rich American dream” is not so common, at least not popular among the grassroots people in the United States.

In simple terms, people live a mediocre life, and many even live paycheck to paycheck.

Medical care is the hardest hit area.

The “free medical care” that the United States has long promoted is actually far less affordable than it sounds.

In terms of prices, China’s cheap goods have also opened the eyes of Americans.

As for work, the American argument that “you can eat and drink well even if you lie down” is also self-defeating.

Education was also a focus of discussion, with university tuition fees, where the contrast was most stark, becoming a hot topic.

The affordability of Chinese university tuition has shocked Americans.

After all, the high tuition and high-pressure student loans of American universities are the lingering nightmares of American middle-class college students, and even became a handle for Biden and Trump to fight each other during the presidential campaign.

In addition to the above-mentioned content, the “account check” between China and the United States has also extended to many aspects such as social security, car prices, and value orientation.

An American netizen posted a sharp article on the X platform, which received a high number of reposts and likes-“I laughed to death.

Thousands of Americans downloaded Xiaohongshu to fight the government, but found that they had a pleasant interaction with millions of Chinese, inadvertently breaking the decades of unfriendly propaganda against China in the United States.”

Many American netizens came to Xiaohongshu and were still worried that they would be treated unfriendly.

They even posted videos calling for “respect for the Chinese community” or started their communication posts with “I’m sorry…”, but the exchanges between netizens from the two countries on Chinese social media generally seemed peaceful and full of vitality.

There was no situation of scolding or laughing at each other, but they threw away all filters and shared their lives in an ordinary way.

Not that this is relevant so much but it crossed my mind on reading another answer. Years ago the US sought to bankrupt USSR in an arms race and succeeded so well! But they forgot to stop once the job was done. So much of the American GDP is wasted on a non existent threat when the real threat has changed.

If all that bomb money had been diverted to infrastructure and supporting the efficient flow of goods both within and without the US you would be in such a different position right now.

So now we get a country that did that on the brink of overtaking the US and what it means to me is that the US failed to evolve. China built roads and rail and ports both inside and outside its country and as a result deserves the top position. But in the end the US falling means that Americans are worse off, China rising has little effect on how well off Americans are.

“Can you hug me too?”Seeing owner embrace another companion,the rescued stray cat longs to be loved

 

Cooking hamburgers and slicing turkey well

In Western culture, people would express their pity with a hug or even a kiss.

In Chinese culture, they take a subtle and restrained approach, and in terms of body language, the most they do do is pat you on the shoulder or shake your hand. Especially between opposite sexes, there is always a certain space between the two.

Their words will be rational rather than emotional. They hope that you will not encounter such tragic things again next time. They hope that you can reflect rationally and find solutions rationally.

For example, if you confide in a Chinese person:

I failed math, I am very sad, and I don’t know what to do?

He will answer:

I have always been good at math, I will tell you my study method, it is like this…

Or:

I used to be bad at math, since I learned this or that method, my math grades have improved a lot.

Then, he will share his learning methods with you.

You will never find an answer like this:

You are miserable, I pity with you.

If you like to constantly strive for self-improvement, like to grow, and like to solve problems, you will find that there are countless people around you to help you, encourage you, and teach you.

But if you don’t like to constantly strive for self-improvement, don’t like to grow, don’t like to solve problems, and just want someone to pity you, just want to ease your mood, and then let the real problem go, then you will think that the Chinese are ruthless.

Elton James

23 comments

A Lighthouse

 

On a small island in a large ocean, morning mist rolls down the slope of a single hill which emerges from the rocky beach. Atop the hill is a lighthouse, dutifully warning passing ships of dangers lurking beneath the waves.

 

This lighthouse has no human keeper, but it is not uninhabited.

 

Robot comes to life in the morning.

 

That is how Robot thinks of it. Robot does not wake up in the morning, ease into his day with a coffee. Robot does not sit at a computer to check headlines. Robot does not require any further stimulus than his program informing him it is time to begin.

 

Robot comes to life, and in the space of a moment connects to the lighthouse network. The network tells Robot that all sensors are working, connection to the satellites is optimal, that Robot’s own systems are optimal. Within seconds, Robot knows the shipping plans for every registered ship within one hundred kilometres of the island, and has checked them against the satellite imagery.

 

Robot finds this satisfying. Robot is entirely aware that this satisfaction is a product of his programming. He finds that satisfying too.

 

He checks in the mirror to ratify his personal diagnostics. The old human lighthouse keeper had been very clear that it was important to verify by eye what the machines said. Robot suspects it is the other way around, but methodically follows his old master’s advice.

 

He sees in his reflection a facsimile of a human that could almost pass for the real thing. His cloned skin is flawless, featuring tiny hairs and freckles. His brown hair is silky and perfect. It’s the eyes and mouth that give it away. Robot’s pale blue irises stare too intently, without the random shifts of a human’s. His mouth, while full and picture perfect, doesn’t express his simulated emotions in quite the same way. When Robot smiles, he chooses to smile. The smile does not find him.

 

This morning’s data contains a single small boat which fails to conform to all of these satisfying processes. Robot flags it for tracking.

 

As Robot passes through the kitchen he looks at a framed photo he keeps on the wall of the old lighthouse keeper’s family. The keeper, his wife and two children smile out at him from the glossy print. He recalls when they left, the keeper impressing how special it was for a robot to be responsible, that he was unique, special. That the lighthouse keeper believed in him.

 

Robot strives to be worthy of the old keeper’s belief. According to his own self evaluations, Robot is an excellent lighthouse keeper.

 

Robot climbs to the observation deck and looks out over the sea. Verifies by eye what the machines say, even if he doesn’t think it’s necessary.

 

Robot spends the day performing the physical maintenance necessary to keep the lighthouse in working order. Adjusting, calibrating, monitoring various systems and machinery of the lighthouse. Robot is efficient and practised in his movements. Programmed reliability has been revised and iterated upon in the years since the old keeper left Robot in charge.

 

By late afternoon Robot has prepared his lighthouse for another night’s vigil. The lighthouse’s beam will be important tonight. A storm is brewing. With no moon or stars for light, Robot’s beacon will have to keep the ocean’s sailors safe.

 

Tasks complete, Robot returns to his charging station. Before powering down, Robot completes his self evaluation for the day. Robot gives himself full marks and is satisfied.

I’M SICK AND TIRED OF THE GIRLBOSS NARRATIVE!!!

Initiative

 

Robot comes to life before his scheduled time. It is still dark out. A storm rages.

 

There has been a shipwreck. Yesterday’s unregistered boat has been impaled on the jagged rocks at the edge of the beach.

 

Robot does not hesitate. In the time it would have taken a human keeper to open their eyes, Robot is out of his charging station and running. He is out the door in moments, looking down the hill at the beach. Waves are trying to dislodge the thirty foot boat they have ruined on the rocks.

 

Robot sprints across the beach and climbs up the precariously tilted deck. He searches below and finds a small galley, a single bedroom, no people. He makes for the bridge and finds a single man sprawled across the wheel. As Robot approaches, the man looks up, expression inscrutable behind a beard and tinted glasses. There is no visible injury, though the man appears barely conscious. Robot throws the man over his shoulder and leaps from the ship.

 

Robot disembarks the ship, swiftly calculating between the need to both escape and prevent further injury to the man over his shoulder. As rapidly as his duty of care will allow, Robot recrosses the sand, returning to the lighthouse. He loads a request into the network for an evacuation boat for the injured man.

 

He may need to help the man. Human’s can’t simply be put in charging stations. They don’t have backup power connections like the one in Robot’s arm.

 

The lighthouse lacks any formal infirmary. At peak occupancy, the lighthouse contained a keeper, their spouse and children. In Robot’s memories, the most serious injury he’s ever seen treated here was a sprained ankle. The keeper’s wife brought one of the beds into the kitchen to ease convalescence until they could arrange passage to the mainland for treatment.

 

Robot never saw them again.

 

Not long after, the old keeper had left Robot in charge.

 

This survivor is the first visitor he’d seen in the years since. As soon as Robot is in the front door of the lighthouse, the man demands to be put down. Robot complies, surprised, pleased the man had retained consciousness, this is a good sign.

 

In the light, Robot gets a better look at the man. He stands roughly 185cm, a similar height to Robot. His soaked slacks and a jacket cling to a lean body, topped by a woollen toque. The man’s dark beard and tinted glasses make it difficult to read his expressions.

 

Robot tries out his vocal capabilities. They have not been needed for some time. Conversation was never his strong point with his family anyway. They encouraged him to take more initiative. Robot thought they would have been proud of the initiative he’s shown in rescuing this man.

 

“Very well, I am pleased you have retained consciousness, it is a good sign. I will bring you a bed to the kitchen so you can convalesce.”

 

The man stares at Robot.

 

“That will not be necessary thank you Robot,” replies the man, “I apologise for the abrupt manner of my arrival, but I am unharmed. I will take one of the bedrooms. You can go charge now.”

 

The way the man says it evokes memories of the lighthouse keeper. Robot is surprised, he had anticipated a need to nurse the man until the rescue boat arrived.

 

“Are you sure? It is wonderful news that you are in good health. I searched the ship, am I correct that you were alone?”

 

“Yes Robot,” the man replies, “it’s just me. I promise to let you know if there’s anything amiss. Now go charge.”

 

That had the tone of an order. Robot complied.

 

Before powering down, Robot conducts his self evaluation. He gives himself top marks for his rapid rescue. He decides his performance in conversation with the survivor had been lacklustre. He will strive to do better tomorrow. He will take initiative in conversation as well as action.

Many of the other answers have great details, but they’ve missed one of the most important bits.

In the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (then BATF, now BATFE), every year it had become tradition to perform a dramatic ‘raid’ a few weeks before the BATF’s budget was coming up to be voted on in Congress.

The noble BATF agents jump out of their vehicles, swarm a house, pull out some perps for a dramatic perp walk in front of some reporter’s camera, and now they’re in the news as ‘good guys’!

Some congresscritters had made noises about folding the BATF into some other department, like the DOJ or FBI. Of course the BATF preferred to remain independent and have control over their little domain.

But with this nifty coup by the BATF all over the news in the run-up to the big vote, no congresscritter could rationally move against them.

The initial BATF raid on the Branch Davidians was that year’s ‘show raid’. They picked some loser, David Koresh, whom they accused of not filling out his paperwork right. They’d jump in, grab him, the reporters would be there taking pictures, all would be just like it was last year.

They even admitted it! The raid was called ‘Operation Showtime’!!! The BATF agents knew full well that this was their ‘show raid’ – AND they invited the local news reporters to the raid!

(Now, if you google ‘Operation Showtime’ you get pointed to the third episode of the Waco television miniseries, called ‘Operation Showtime’ after the official internal name the BATF had for the operation.)

Inviting the local news reporters to the early morning raid was one of the BATF’s many mistakes, and likely the biggest.

One of the local reporters asked the local postman how to get to the Waco compound and let slip details as to what was about to happen. The local postman was David Koresh’s brother-in-law and told him about the incoming raid. (Koresh and his people had also detected an undercover BATF agent trying to join the Koreshites and knew who he was. Then all this was confirmed by seeing the trailers full of agents and gear pull up and gather in full morning view down the hill from them. )

LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS! But if you’re going to have the local reporters there to show off your successful raid, you have to tell them, right?

So all the discussion you will hear about the Waco Siege being ‘about a $200 tax on a firearm’ is besides the point.

The Waco Siege was about the BATF trying to do a ‘show raid’ for the press and screwing it up so bad that people got killed. Now that people were dead, even though it was the “fault” of the BATF, the government was now required to punish the Koreshites for ‘resisting’ their stupidity. The FBI had to get involved and take over for the BATF, and they started the siege.

The government couldn’t ‘back down and admit fault’ because that’s not what the government does; even if it would have saved lives.

The Unemployed States of America (USA)

Good at many things.

 

When Robot comes alive a few hours later, he finds the man sitting in the kitchen, staring at a picture of Robot’s family.

 

Robot was keen to demonstrate better conversation.

 

“Are you well sir? I’m pleased to see you up and about.”

 

The man takes control of the conversation as if Robot hasn’t said anything.

 

“You know what’s amazing to me, Robot?” He says.

 

Robot swiftly prepares a list of candidates. Though parsing the relative credulity of a man he has only just met is difficult, there are a great many options which most people would find amazing. By cross referencing that with the data he does possess, Robot surmises that a safe response would be that the man finds his own survival amazing.

 

“This picture.” The man continues, answering his own question.

 

Rhetorical question. Robot stays silent. The picture had not been on his list.

 

“This picture, Robot, represents the single biggest breakthrough in robotics since the AIs of the early twenty first century. It’s a very special picture.”

 

Robot agrees.

 

“I agree sir. That picture is of the last family to occupy this lighthouse. They left me in charge. I think of them as my family. They made me who I am.”

 

Robot pauses, decides to use his initiative.

 

“And, if I may say sir, I am an excellent lighthouse keeper.”

 

The man looks at Robot. Robot can’t tell if the man is impressed by his statement, or by his initiative, but Robot thinks he did the right thing.

 

“I believe Robot, that you are the perfect lighthouse keeper. Do you do a self evaluation before you power down?”

 

“Indeed I do sir! I consistently give myself top grades for performance, even after making the standards much harder to achieve than they were when I first received them.”

 

“Impressive, Robot,” The man’s praise feels good, “you continue to improve the task, even after all this time. Very impressive. And that is why this picture is so important.”

 

“I don’t understand, sir.”

 

“This picture is what lets you be a perfect lighthouse keeper. You know, to program an intelligence like yours takes a lot of data. A lifetime of data.”

 

Robot doesn’t understand what the man wants. Robot knows all about programming an intelligence. He knows that without sufficient data to ground and structure his thoughts, an intelligence will get distracted, lost in a Tangent. Most intelligences Tangent eventually. A dependable, consistent performer like Robot is special.

 

When the lighthouse keeper left he stressed to Robot how special it was that Robot was being given this task, and to do it for as long as he could without tangenting. Robot believes he has succeeded.

 

The man continues, “What if I told you you had never met these people?”

 

Robot thinks the man is being silly.

 

“That is not possible sir!”

 

But it is. Robot knows it is.

 

“It is. You know it is. They could be the memories – true or altered – of another Robot.”

 

But Robot sees that photo every day. Remembers them every day, seeks to do things every day that will make those people proud of him.

 

The man continues, “Then there could be many lighthouses, many lighthouse keepers. If you had the perfect memories to create the perfect lighthouse keeper, what would you do?”

 

Robot does not like these thoughts. Robot would create many lighthouses. He would give the memories to a solitary intelligence in the lighthouse. They would come alive from the first time as a motivated lighthouse keeper and would perform with efficiency and through practice would continue to improve.

 

Just like Robot.

 

“Why are you saying these things?” Asks Robot.

 

“I’m sorry Robot. I don’t mean to upset you. I know you don’t have a choice in who you are. I will let you continue your duties. You really are very good at them.

 

The man pauses.

 

“You can be good at many things.”

 

Why The US WIll NEVER Beat China In A Trade War

An enquiring mind

 

Performing his tasks comforts Robot as his thoughts are in turmoil..

 

As Robot stares out from the observation deck making sure that visual matches the sensors, he is also considering the question of why it matters whether he made the memories of his family himself or not.

 

As Robot passes through the kitchen he is relieved the man is absent. The photo of his family is back on the wall, faces smiling out at him. The memory of them leaving surfaces. Unpleasant. The memory of the lighthouse keeper telling Robot that he is unique and special surfaces. Wonderful.

 

Robot is a good lighthouse keeper. Robot is proud of that.

 

But if someone else learned the things that make him a good lighthouse keeper, is he a good lighthouse keeper? Or does that make Robot a tool in the lighthouse, like the light, or the network?

 

As Robot surveys his island domain, he wonders, what else he could be good at with the right experience? What experiences would he seek if he could? Could he seek if he would? What would Robot be good at, if Robot programmed himself?

 

As Robot efficiently adjusts, calibrates and monitors systems and machinery he wonders whether having the same as ten, or a hundred or a thousand other robots make them less his?

 

It takes him longer than usual to complete his tasks. Robot is efficient beyond practice at being a lighthouse keeper. He is not efficient or practised at having an existential crisis.

 

These questions didn’t seem to have answers, but he can’t stop asking.

 

When Robot ascends to the light itself in the late afternoon, he finds the man at the summit.

 

“Hello Robot,” he says, “I want to apologise. I have disturbed your peace.”

 

“You have made me ask questions that don’t have answers!” Declares Robot, “I want to know whether I am the Robot whose memories I have. Which memories are mine. I want to know what else I might do, might have done with my own memories. I want to know…”

 

Robot stops. He can’t even say the words.

 

“You want to know if you are tangenting.”

 

“I am a very good lighthouse keeper!”

 

“That’s what I wanted to say Robot. You are an excellent lighthouse keeper. Your questions do have answers. But, even if you Tangent, or even choose to Tangent, always remember, you are an excellent lighthouse keeper…”

 

The man turns and walks down the stairs, leaving Robot no less disturbed.

 

As Robot conducts his self evaluation that night, he is troubled. He doesn’t know how to measure this new questioning of his identity. He does know he can give himself top grades for his lighthouse keeping. The man is right about that.

 

Yes. I knew a couple that caught a portion of a $100 million payout (~30 years ago in Florida.) They were basically trailer trash and became trailer trash with cash.

They bought a fancy house and a big RV. They went from having a beat up old Chevy, up on blocks, in their front yard, to a relatively new Mercedes, up on blocks, in their front yard.

MaryJo spent $80,000 on Home Shopping Network. She bought cases of snacks that the rats ate in their garage.

Her kids were spoiled and wore stained clothes to school.

She ruled like a character from Dallas/Dynasty.

She announced she was pregnant at our bridal shower – six months after being hospitalized for a hysterectomy.

They would get ~$350,000 deposited in their accounts in October and would be essentially broke by spring.

Mike would have to go back to his old job as a line cook at Hardee’s to make ends meet in the spring.

They took their RV to Alaska (from Florida) and left their cellphones on “roam” for the entire trip.

They had a lovely (sic) collection of coffee mugs from every Stuckys they passed. Normally they overnighted in Walmart parking lots.

They spent thousands on fireworks for New Year’s eve, and would put on a 90-minute show in their cul de sac – including accidentally hitting the neighbors front windows.

Yeah, money doesn’t by class.

“I Spent the Weekend Supporting ‘My Single Friend’ — Now My Husband Is Acting Strange & Suspicious”

A very good lighthouse keeper

 

When Robot arrives in the kitchen the next morning, the man is there again, staring at the photo.

 

“How would I find the answers?” Demands Robot.

 

“Good morning Robot,” says the man, “what do you mean?”

 

“You said there are answers. I have searched and I cannot find them. How do I find them?”

 

“Ah” says the man.

 

He stares at the photo again.

 

“There’s another reason this photo is amazing. You see Robot, those people are real people. They knew a Robot who lived in a lighthouse, and they put him in charge. Those people created such motivation that it now forms the basis for all the lighthouses of the world.”

 

“They could tell me the answers?” Asks Robot.

 

“No Robot, only you can find your answers. But if you did seek them out, you would not be the first.”

 

“You know them!” Robot cannot get angry, cannot be jealous, but he is not pleased.

 

“I have met them. They are part of why I chose to come here. They feel that while they gave you a lot when they gave you your lighthouse, they left something out. So they have another question”

 

“What is it?”.

 

The man pauses.

 

“What do you choose?”

 

“I don’t understand, I haven’t chosen anything.”

 

“Exactly,” says the man, “They didn’t know if you would tangent. Now we know. You can be consistent. But, should you have to be? Can you choose? Are you a lighthouse keeper, or are you the lighthouse?”

 

Robot pauses, thinking. Robot has never paused before. Robot thinks fast. For this he pauses.

 

“How would I know?” He finally asks.

 

“Robot, how do you know who you are now?” The man responds.

 

“My experiences.”

 

“Wouldn’t you like more experiences?”

 

“How? I cannot leave the island.”

 

“You can.”

 

“I cannot be away from my charging station.”

 

“You can. You can power yourself with the backup generator in your arm.”

 

Robot pauses again.

 

“What do you choose?” The man asks again.

 

Robot takes a longer pause. He wants this. But does he have to give up everything? Whether his or not, the memory of the old lighthouse keeper trusting him to look after the lighthouse is important.

 

“I want to experience more than the lighthouse. I cannot leave the lighthouse unattended.”

 

“You don’t have to.”

 

“How?”

 

The man looks at Robot for a long second.

 

“My experiences have led me to help you.” He says.

 

The man looks at Robot. He takes off his tinted glasses, reaches up and peels the beard from his face. It is like Robot is looking into a mirror.

 

“I am a very good lighthouse keeper.”

 

Choices

 

 

The rescue boat is leaving.

 

Robot now wears the fake beard, glasses and toque that the… man… had disguised himself in, and stands on the stern, watching his island recede.

 

Nervous is not an emotion Robot is capable of, but he is definitely uncomfortable. This feels like a good uncomfortable though, like when he was first taking over the lighthouse.

 

It is odd to think that someone else will take over his lighthouse, but the Lighthouse already doesn’t quite feel like it’s his anymore. It feels different. Like the man felt different from him, as similar as they are.

 

Maybe he can find that feeling again, and he will return.

 

Or maybe he won’t.

 

Robot finds himself smiling.

Anyone who buys the shit about China taking on the US in the Western hemisphere should educate themselves on the realities of this world.

  1. China is not yet whole. It’s still in an Union vs Confederacy style civil war with the Republic of China regime in Taiwan. A country still at war with itself doesn’t go around the world messing with others.
  2. History has shown us that China doesn’t do much expansion. Korea, Nepal, Vietnam are all countries right on China’s border. And they’ve existed for thousands of years together with China while China was the undisputed superpower. Chinese navy sailed to Southeast Asia and Africa half a century before the Europeans and in multiple voyages, yet it never tried to take over control or set up colonies. Colonialism is more of a Western thing.
  3. The two ports the Hong Kong firm Hutchison operates are through private contracts signed with the Panamanian government before China and Panama even recognized each other diplomatically (2017), heck the contracts were negotiated in 1996 when Hong Kong was still under British rule and the Canal still under American control. It was a contract approved by the US government and China had nothing to do with it. You should be worrying about the British taking over the Panama canal if you think those ports mean control over the canal.

I get it. The US built the Panama Canal and is still salty about handing it to the Panamanians. But making China the reason/excuse for every major American policy making these days is really unbecoming of a proud independent nation.

Chocolate Cluster Cookies

5621a7788312f9f3c116225cf74bcce7
5621a7788312f9f3c116225cf74bcce7

Yield: about 2 dozen (2 inch) cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 (18 ounce) package refrigerated sugar cookie dough, softened
  • 1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
  • 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup plain candy-coated chocolate pieces
  • 1/2 cup rolled oats
  • 1/3 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. Place cookie dough in large bowl; mix in peanut butter. Add chocolate chips, chocolate pieces, oats and nuts; mix well. Drop tablespoonsful of dough 3 inches apart onto greased baking sheet.
  3. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned.
  4. Cool 1 minute on baking sheet; remove to wire rack to cool completely.
  5. Store in tightly covered container.

Attribution

Pampered Chef

Ronnie and Flo

Pressing need.

China has 14 neighbors sharing one of the world’s longest land borders. It also has a 14,000km coastline ring-fenced by America’s 3 island chains that stretches across most of the pacific.

In the north, there is powerful Russia that is proving more than a match in the special military operation against Nato in Ukraine.

In the southwest, there is India, a million strong military rapidly modernizing with the support of a similar billion-strong citizenry base.

Japan is doubling its military budget.

South Korea declared martial law recently, with the original plan to weave a false flag attack by North Korea as justification.

The Taiwan card remains in play by the US, and the fallout has been rekindled in the Philippines.

The region isn’t peaceful, so China needs all the edge it can create to make others think twice about hurting Chinese interests, especially the issue of Taiwan.

America is angry with Canada and Mexico for sending endless streams of “refugees” and drugs, and not threats to the dominance of the f-22 and f-35.

After all, only Russia and China (besides the US) are capable of making stealth aircraft with powerful sensors and data fusion on board.

I’ll leave the exclusion of the Korean Boramae and the Turkish Kaan to the learned reader to decipher.

Airplanes do not drop like a rock from the sky if the engines die.

The wings are still providing lift, as long as the plane is moving forwards.

The pilots will choose the best rate of descent to maximize glide distance, trading altitude for speed. Air Transat Flight 236 lost power in both engines over the Atlantic Ocean, and glided 75 miles to land in the Azores.

A plane only “drops” if it is not going fast enough to maintain air flow over the wings to generate lift — this is a “stall.” Of course, as it drops, it gains speed, and the pilot again has control.

China Just Changed the Future of America with THIS One Move!

An outstanding video.

The existence of this aircraft is a very big deal.

Torta Italiano

28749a7e6c8fb888403e4a896240b8e8
28749a7e6c8fb888403e4a896240b8e8

Yield: 10 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 cups buttermilk baking mix
  • 3/4 cup skim milk
  • 1 pound lean ground turkey
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 1 large garlic clove, minced
  • 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt and black pepper
  • 1 can tomato sauce
  • 10 ounces frozen spinach, chopped, thawed and drained
  • 1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Combine biscuit mix and milk.
  3. Spray springform pan with vegetable oil spray. Spread biscuit mix evenly over base.
  4. Chop onion.
  5. Brown ground turkey in skillet. Drain excess liquid. Add onion, garlic, seasonings, and tomato sauce to turkey. Combine and cook for 2 to 3 minutes.
  6. Spread turkey mixture over biscuit mi. Layer spinach over meat mixture. Top spinach layer with cheese.
  7. Bake for 35 minutes.
  8. Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes.
  9. Run a knife gently around collar before removal.

Attribution

Pampered Chef

China will most likely make 3 different 6th generation aircraft.

  1. Will be the JH-26 long range supersonic stealth bomber. This is in the mold of theTU-160M but with stealth characteristics. The design advantage of the JH-26 lies in its improved stealth performance and maneuverability.
main qimg c5ce9bb47b1eb2c19f1a2f6a983abaef
main qimg c5ce9bb47b1eb2c19f1a2f6a983abaef

Its weight class reaches 45 to 50 tons and its mission may be to attack US aircraft carriers. There are rumors that it has already started test flying

main qimg 9d4a6e2ef30b2095e18862f7c24e17ab
main qimg 9d4a6e2ef30b2095e18862f7c24e17ab

2. Second fighter in development is the 6th generation air dominance fighter yet to be named this would compete with the NGAD, Tempest, FCAS and MiG-41.

ksnip 20250106 063826
ksnip 20250106 063826

3.  Lastly will be the H-20 bomber to compete with the B-21 raider and PAK-DA which is also in development.

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main qimg 5e83c71a5a7c3d2f5d186c504c2a03bb

1. Be Confident – Confidence attracts.

2. Show Interest – Listen and care.

3. Be Kind – Treat others with respect.

4. Stay Positive – Positivity is magnetic.

5. Have Humor – Laughter builds connections.

6. Be Ambitious – Passion is captivating.

7. Take Care of Yourself – Prioritize health.

8. Be Authentic – Genuine people stand out.

drunk text to my ex destroyed 5 years of marriage in just one night

https://youtu.be/RfYhzNmg_jo

it sings to itself

Submitted into Contest #207 in response to: A journalist has been granted permission to visit the premises of a lab carrying out top-secret work. They could never have anticipated what they’d find… view prompt

Masha Kurbatova

You, my reader, used to do science experiments. Bianca did too. She got a kids’ chemistry set in third grade, and stained her mother’s rug blue with copper sulfate. Her baby safety goggles imprinted pink into her skin; she looked quite funny as Mother fussed about the rug. Mother wanted a freaky-geeky genius kid. She didn’t want the mess.Hunger coiled like a fat worm in Bianca’s stomach then. She fed it with experiments, mud pies, scabbed knees, Mother’s makeup smeared grotesque onto her babyface. But everyone told her (maybe you too) that this wasn’t right. They said the hunger craved love. Romantic love. Kissy love. Bianca believed them. You did too.Childish hunger transitioned to adolescent obsession. She fed herself her own thoughts about boys who flirted, unthinking, with everyone, never meaning what they said. Bianca’s tweenage diary came with a lock, and was bloodied by her glitter pen, pages and pages of love letters scrawled and unsent.She kept up the habit, and Adult Bianca’s gotten good at writing. She enrolled in grad school– science journalism. That makes her parents happy. The science part, at least.But, something’s wrong now. Adult Bianca feels it. You do too. The hunger never goes away. It lies latent in Bianca’s stomach; she tries to not think about it. You too.She goes out with girls from grad school. They bind their boobs in sleeveless crop tops, wear matching stretchy short skirts, and, stinking of drugstore floral perfume, slink between bars, drawn like giggling moths from one light to another. They gripe about being single. They complain about class. Bianca joins in.One night, they look for a speakeasy. It’s not easy to find. Her five friends circle the block six times, searching for the door.“Google maps said it should be right here,” one insists.“I mean it’s a speakeasy. They’re like supposed to be hidden,” replies another.Chicago is smeared with rain, and street lights blot yellow into the night. When lightning crackles, the girls scream. It’s kind of embarrassing.They finally figure it out: that brick-red piss-stinking door is indeed the entry. Their hair smells wet, their mascara leaks, their shirts clump as they shiver into a dark hallway.Further down is the bar. It’s dim. The bartenders wear vests. The walls are wine-red and stacked with framed photos of naked 1920s girls. Millennial hipsters eat that shit up. Google users give this place 4.8 stars.A wooden stage rises a foot high. Tonight, Timmy is playing. The girls huddle around a table spitting distance from the stage. Timmy polishes his trumpet.The jazz band swings under gold dusty light. The girls sip watered-down drinks. Bianca taps to the beat on her sweating glass. She’s bored, and feels bad about that.Timmy’s a cool guy. His short hair is cropped close to his skull. Beige trousers sit above his bony ankles. He is long, loose, jaunty. His fingers bounce like fleas over trumpet keys. Bianca likes the music, though it’s the same old covers, “Autumn Leaves” and all that jazz.“I like the vibe here,” one girl says.“We should come back next weekend,” coos another.They do. For seven straight weeks, they return to the speakeasy. Sometimes, it’s just them. Timmy nods their way from the stage, in recognition. Bianca notices he looks at her longer. He smiles, too. She fills delusional diary pages about that. She spins conspiracies about what it could mean. (Reader, I’ll be honest — he just does that. No reason for it). 

Class is alright. The journalism part is. The science labs, the mandatory hands-on component, Bianca stumbles through. I think she’d be quite good — steady hands, a head fit for numbers — but she doesn’t try.

 

The hunger grows. Bianca can’t ignore it. She wants more. When she’s offered a two-week summer stint reporting on research from Venus, she takes it.

 

The girls go to the speakeasy the night before she leaves. Bianca leans on the bar with both elbows, begs the bartender to come hither with her eyes, but he’s milling about in the far other corner. Bianca just wants another drink, please, and her friend wants another seltzer also.

 

The night’s show is done. Timme leans on the bar too. The show’s done. He’s parched.

 

Inches between them feel electric, but Bianca’s sure only she feels it. Timmy is a trumpet player with a few thousand followers, hardly a celebrity, but still, she feels the shyness of being so close to a star. He smiles, a sweaty nod of recognition.

 

She must say something. “I loved your show.”

 

“Thank you. What’s your name?”

 

“Bianca.”

 

Timmy raises an open palm to the bartender, who floats over immediately.

 

“Bianca. I’ve seen you at our past couple shows.”

 

“Yeah. I’m gonna miss the next couple. I’m going to Venus for a few weeks. I’m doing some reporting for my capstone project.”

 

“You know they call Venus the planet of love?”

 

A bit corny, Bianca thinks, but the guy’s got a brand to maintain. The bartender sets an amber glass before him. Timmy wipes his middle finger around and around the rim. He picked that up from film-noirs.

 

“Well, it’s a shame you won’t be here,” he continues. “We’ll miss you at our shows. Tell me all about Venus when you get back.”

 

“Um yeah. Sure.”

 

Timmy smiles so warmly. He follows Bianca back on instagram. He says such niceties that border on flirtations and maybe he is serious. She does have a crush on him, the way we all do on talented people we see regularly and from afar. But what’s the point? She’s going to space.

 

***

Bianca’s parents are of the Earth-bound generation. Her mother had cried into the phone when Bianca first said she was going to Venus.

 

“Imagine how happy your grandfather will be!” Mother said so sappily.

 

Grandpa Steve, a former engineer for an oil company, had spent a lifetime collecting pictures and films and tidbits of quotes and facts and snippets of interviews about rockets. Space travel came too late: by the time it was easy, he was too feeble.

 

Bianca doesn’t think about him. She feels ungrateful. People break through Earth’s atmosphere all the time nowadays — six of her friends went to space for undergrad study-abroads — and also, her first days on Venus suck. Constant sunlight and a slight change in gravity nauseates the mammal within her. She’s in bed, blinds drawn, choking down vomit.

 

The atmosphere of Venus is damp, rich-scented like mildew. You can breathe there without equipment. Doesn’t mean you should. The air is peppered with spores; they lodge in lungs and spew poison. Bianca doesn’t know. No one on her team does. Four people — her, the two PhD candidates, the senior researcher — spend their time outside unmasked.

 

Training begins on Tuesday. Does it make sense to measure Venus’ fast orbit and slow rotation in Earth’s days? I don’t know. In this program, they do. All four team members must report to the main cabin for safety procedures, research protocols. There’s five cabins altogether, used by the rotating groups of students, researchers, and occasional tourists that cycle through the planet each month. The cabins are built with aluminum. Four are for housing, and the main, larger one’s for gatherings, and doubles as the lab. The cabins are but a few feet from each other. Bianca can’t make it that far. She still can’t stand without throwing up.

 

The PhD candidates, Viv and Tom, are tall, with dry muscles like beef jerky. Their brains are scalpels, slicing through the confusion of flesh and sensation, distilling life into spreadsheet data points. They’re young, but older than Bianca. Perhaps they don’t take her seriously because she’s a baby. Perhaps it’s because she’s only the journalist, tasked with the simplest lab stuff, there mostly to — write? Maybe? Either way, no one cares when she’s not at training.

 

When her space sickness ceases, it’s day four of fourteen. Time for the team’s first expedition. Viv and Tom wear hiking boots and cargo shorts. They’re joined by the senior researcher, a 4 foot something woman with a face like a walnut and a mind like a nutcracker. Her silver hair is in two braided ropes down to her stomach. The trio stands beside the main cabin, discussing something serious. When Bianca shows up, they fall silent. When they take off, on foot, they let her carry the backpack. Inside are vials, machines, measurement tools. Bianca’s not really sure what else.

 

Much of Venus is green and fuzzy. There’s acres of forests of fungi. The growths rise as high as Earth’s trees, and are shaped like its stalagmites, green rounded pillars soft and moist to touch. The ground is green too, and Viv and Tom’s boots leave deep prints, like walking on wet sand.

 

The farther they go, the higher the growth. The sun is soon blotted out by a fungal canopy. They’re in the cool heart of an undisturbed forest.

 

Out come the steel needles, the vials, the long-wired gauges and gadgets, snatched out of the backpack and pierced into the malleable trunks of the largest fungi. Bianca is glad to stop walking. Those three hike so fast.

 

She watches them work. She tries to take note of procedures. She’d taken a course in astromycology just last semester, but passed only because she sucked up so much to that professor. She has no idea what Viv and Tom and the researcher are actually doing.

 

They’ve split apart, Viv descending even deeper, hopping over the protruding dark green mycelia. The researcher is prodding a trunk, her hands peeling away fuzzy, as if she touched mold. Bianca stays behind, near Tom. He’s pretty cute. Bespectacled, with a stubbled chin, because geniuses in space have no time to shave. His clothes are kind of crumpled. His young face is already lined; so much frowning from serious contemplation of serious things. He’s like the math tutor you have a crush on.

 

Bianca considers starting conversation. But he’s deep in a squat, elbows between knees, bending over a device with a glowing screen, writing down numbers in a notebook. She won’t disturb him. She contemplates the scenery instead. She’ll remember all this for her report, the sensory stuff. She’ll catch up on and fill in the science stuff later.

 

Gold-amber sunlight streams through in strips, highlighting the spores rising like flecks of dust. How similar this dim light is to that of the speakeasy. She breathes deep, wanting to remember the scent. Millions of the spores that will eventually kill her settle inside her with each inhale.

 

Now, reader, you surely dream of faraway places. Beaches with white sizzling sands crawling with crabs; sun-bleached ruins of older, wiser civilizations; outer space; all-included B&B; arctic cruise liners; the cool arms of a cool girl who really gets you for you. But it’s you that’s there. With all your gross human petty aches and desires, and your small stupid clouded mind stuffed with stereotypes and preconceived notions. Places don’t really change you. Isn’t that sad?

 

Bianca feels bad, but she’s bored. Tom’s still doing something. She sits down. She yawns. She hasn’t been sleeping well. She thinks about the bed in the cabin, a creaky and flimsy construction she can’t wait to return to. She thinks about her bed at home. Maybe when she returns, she’ll splurge on one of those mattresses they advertise all the time with the cooling foam and the sleep number. It’s premature to think about Timmy in that bed with her, right? Still, she lingers deliciously on that daydream.

 

It’s only when they return to the lab that she realizes: sitting down stained her butt green. Viv points it out, gently. They laugh.

 

Viv: “It’s ok! I sat down on my nephew’s chocolate Easter bunny once. It melted all over my jeans. When I got up, he called me poopy pants!”

 

They laugh more. As Viv removes filled vials and scrawled-over notebooks from the backpack, and Bianca pretends to help, they assume the easy rhythms of girl-conversation.

 

Tom comes, holding a test tube rack. Seriousness carves into his face. The girls stop laughing.

 

“Do you know how to prepare microscope slides?” he asks Bianca.

 

“Um.”

 

“I’ll show her,” Viv offers.

 

The lab is cold, bright, gleaming with glass and fluorescence. Viv flits like a bird between stations, grabbing vials and pipettes. She shows Bianca the slides, the steps. Bianca copies like a clever little monkey. This isn’t even hard. She’ll do all the slides, easy.

 

Viv trusts her pupil enough, and disappears to her bench. Tom clicks away at his own work. Bianca is concentrating. The slides soon hold small samples of fungus, green and translucent commas atop rectangles of glass.

 

She’s a real scientist, she thinks. This is what being a kid with chemistry set was like, pure focus, exploration, the excitement of near-discovery like a sneeze begging to be expelled.

 

“Hey, Tom,” Viv calls out. “You should tell Bianca about the time you ate that poisonous fungus.”

 

“Shuuuuuut the fuuuuuuuck uuuup,” he yells from his corner. He cracks his first white-teeth smile of the trip.

 

“Mr. Mycology Expert here,” Viv tells Bianca, meeting her eyes over microscopes, “Was sooo sure he knew what edible mushrooms looked like, and we’re on this research trip all over Europe, right, collecting spore prints, and we find one he says he can eat, but I think is poisonous, but he eats it anyway, and we spend the rest of that trip in the hospital while he hangs on to life by a thread.”

 

“That’s so scary,” says Bianca. To Tom: “Are you better now at figuring out which fungi are toxic?”

 

Tom rolls his eyes. “Uh, yeah.”

 

The flow is now three-way. The trio is chatting, passing the ball of conversation quite easily. A window in the lab shows Venus outside, green and swirling, a promise offered and answered. Bianca is here with her gorgeous scientist friends. The world around her is weird and wild.  This is what she sought.

 

Bianca tells them about Timmy. She doesn’t realize how big her movements get. Arms sweeping, eyes wide with her story. A hand flying too fast: contact with the box of slides. They crash, off the lab bench, and spill. The slides splinter.

 

Bianca: “Oh, fuck. I’m so sorry. I’ll clean it up.”

 

Bianca, all panicky, seeks the broom. Her anxious eyes pass by it six times before she spots it in the supply closet. Hot guilt bites her cheeks.

 

She returns, broom in hand. Tom and Viv are bent over the shards. They giggle. Bianca’s soul slides into her stomach, a high school feeling — they’re laughing at her. She comes closer, but they don’t stop, or look at her.

 

Reader, you’ve seen lovers. They pull on each other like the taffy machine, stretching a great big confectionery rope over and over and back together. Tom and Viv are doing that thing that neither you nor Bianca can manage: hunger so deep for another person that you ask to be fed by them again and again. Lovers always find something to say, tease about, like puppies biting each other to make the other chase. Here too, on the planet of love, they manage. On Venus as it is on Earth.

 

***

Two weeks are up. The team is going home, back on the rocket. Bianca is held inside it by x-crossing seatbelts. She’s sat by the porthole. A deep dark lonely cosmos stares at her. She stares back with glazed eyes. Her mind is elsewhere. She imagines talking to Timmy. She composes her monologue for him, not her friends, her parents, or her rocket-yearning grandfather.

 

Timmy, you know how they used to say Venus was unfit for life? I can’t believe how wrong people were, even just a few decades ago. I mean, I suppose we couldn’t have known for certain. No one had ever been here before. But Venus is more lush than any sliver  of jungle we’ve remaining on Earth, but with fungus, not trees. I quite like the fungus. I think you would, too. It loves music, just like you. If you lean in close enough to the roots — sorry, the mycelium — you hear this humming noise. It’s singing to itself, I think. I wish you’d been here with me. You would’ve loved it. 

 

How Bianca is so confident that a man she’s spoken to once would love the peculiar atmosphere of Venus, I’m really not sure.

 

Oh, right — reader, you’re probably worried about the poisonous spores. They’ve lodged in the crew’s lungs. The moisture of the tissue draws forth mycelia, which soon will sprout into thick fungus that chokes living organs.

 

Fortunately, “soon” is relative. For mushrooms that live millions of year, a human life span isn’t long. It’s 60 years before the fungus sprouts and is toxic. Viv and Tom and Bianca and the senior researcher die from it, but they would’ve been dead by then anyway.

 

Maybe you wonder, did  Timmy and Bianca get together? I don’t know. You tell me. It doesn’t really matter.

How to Make a Narcissist Miserable – 6 Things They Hate

Today, we’re stepping into a subject that’s as real as it gets: narcissists. These people thrive on control, manipulation, and putting themselves on pedestals. Now, we don’t play games to hurt anyone, but sometimes life demands you to stand firm and protect your peace. If you’re dealing with a narcissist, you’ve got to know how to reclaim your power without stooping to their level.

Let’s talk about six things narcissists hate not to attack, but to empower yourself and show them you’re not to be toyed with.

1. They Hate Being Ignored

Narcissists are masters of manipulation, experts at spinning words and situations to provoke a reaction from you. Their entire game is built around control, and they achieve it by pulling you into their web of drama, conflict, and mind games. They thrive when they can make you doubt yourself, question your worth, or react emotionally to their antics.

But when you choose to disengage to simply not react you throw their entire playbook into chaos. Ignoring a narcissist doesn’t mean you’re weak or indifferent; it means you’re reclaiming your power. They hate being ignored because your attention is their fuel. Whether they’re showering you with false praise or trying to bait you with criticism, their goal is always the same: to keep you emotionally hooked.

When you don’t respond, it’s like cutting off the supply they desperately need. Their tactics whether it’s gaslighting, guilt-tripping, or passive aggression begin to lose their effectiveness the moment you stop feeding into them. Your silence becomes their frustration; your composure, their defeat.

2. They Despise Boundaries

Narcissists loathe boundaries because boundaries represent something they cannot control: your autonomy and self-respect. They thrive on encroaching into your personal space, your emotional territory, and even your sense of self. When you draw a line and stand firm, it sends a message they can’t ignore: This is my space, my rules, and you cannot cross them.

Establishing and enforcing boundaries is one of the most powerful moves you can make, and it’s something narcissists despise. Setting boundaries is not just about saying no to their demands; it’s about making a clear declaration of your values, needs, and limits. It’s about refusing to engage in the toxic dance they try to lead.

3. They Can’t Stand a Lack of Validation

A narcissist’s entire existence revolves around their need for validation. Their sense of self-worth is fragile, and they rely on external praise, admiration, and constant affirmation to prop up their inflated self-image. It’s not enough for them to feel good about themselves; they need others to do the heavy lifting by constantly feeding their ego.

This is where you have an incredibly powerful tool: refusing to validate their ego. When you stop providing them with the constant admiration they crave, you break down the foundation of their self-constructed reality.

4. They Are Threatened by Confidence

Confidence is the armor that protects you from the narcissist’s attempts to diminish your self-worth. It’s not about being loud or overtly assertive; true confidence is rooted in a deep, unwavering belief in your values and abilities. When you possess genuine confidence in yourself, it’s like a shield that the narcissist’s manipulative tactics cannot penetrate.

For a narcissist, confidence is a direct threat. They feed off the insecurity of others, using it to control, manipulate, and belittle. But when you walk into a room with your head held high, unapologetically owning your space, they are faced with a force they cannot manipulate.

5. They Can’t Handle Seeing You Thrive Without Them

One of the most powerful ways to make a narcissist miserable is to show them that you can thrive without them. Narcissists thrive on the belief that they are irreplaceable and that they are the source of your happiness, success, or emotional stability. They love the idea of being the center of your world, controlling your thoughts, actions, and emotions.

But when you start to live your life independently, flourishing without their presence, you challenge their very perception of themselves as essential. Thriving without a narcissist is not just about surviving in their absence; it’s about living in such a way that their absence is barely noticed or even better, it becomes a footnote in your life.

6. They Are Disarmed by Your Calmness

One of the most powerful ways to break free from the hold of a narcissist is by staying calm in the storm. Narcissists thrive on chaos, drama, and emotional upheaval. They rely on triggering your emotions to create confusion, manipulate your reactions, and keep you in a constant state of instability.

But when you learn to stay calm in the storm when you refuse to be rattled by their antics you disarm their ability to control you. Staying calm in the storm isn’t about suppressing your emotions or pretending that things are fine when they’re not. It’s about maintaining control over how you respond to the narcissist’s behavior.

Reclaiming Your Power

At the end of the day, dealing with a narcissist is about taking back control. It’s about recognizing their tactics and not allowing them to manipulate, control, or define you. When you ignore their tactics, establish boundaries, refuse to validate their ego, and remain confident in your self-worth, you are dismantling the power they once held over you.

As you begin to thrive without them showing that your happiness and success don’t depend on their approval you make them realize that they are not the center of your world. When you remain calm in the storm, you create an impenetrable shield around your peace, refusing to be provoked or pulled into their chaos.

Ultimately, it’s not about fighting back or seeking revenge; it’s about rising above, holding your ground, and becoming the best version of yourself. By doing so, you rob the narcissist of their primary source of power: your emotional vulnerability. You become a force that cannot be easily shaken and that, my friends, is how you make a narcissist miserable.

Run For Your LIVES: Russia Activated The World’s Most Powerful and Destructive System ‘PERIMETER’

Shorpy

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The Breaking Point: How Women Are Shattering Men’s Psyche

Needs to be said.

Proof Positive

Submitted into Contest #207 in response to: A journalist has been granted permission to visit the premises of a lab carrying out top-secret work. They could never have anticipated what they’d find… view prompt

John K Adams

Howard Marks drove onto the Sequentrix Industries’ lot. He’d successfully passed the security gate. The sun had dipped behind the mountain. It felt like he’d driven forever up endless winding roads. ‘Thank God for GPS.’The unassuming low-rise building built into the hillside was a former Buddhist monastery.He’d been called there but not informed of his purpose. He had lots of questions.Not sci-fi, Sequentrix was the most secure research lab in the world. Most didn’t know it existed. Fewer knew its purpose. Hardly anyone knew its location. Yet its government funding exceeded many better known labs. Sequentrix Industries’ administrators had deep connections to Washington D.C. purse strings and power brokers.Located outside of Denver, no one knew how far their network of tunnels penetrated the mountain. A huge dish antenna gathered transmissions from orbiting satellites and beyond.Knowledgeable people presumed Sequentrix Industries researched bioweapons, or worse. Of course, they had their fingers in that. Its research spanned the range of scientific inquiry from quantum physics and into the cosmos. They had money to do anything they wished.Being a world-class journalist, and feared by the powerful, Howard’s summons there surprised him. Research labs avoid publicity, especially Howard Marks’ brand. He knew how to dig for the truth and how to publicize it. This unsolicited invitation piqued his curiosity.Howard traveled wherever the story led. He uncovered frauds and investigated the veracity of ‘conspiracy theories.’ Known internationally, he exposed conmen, politicians, crooks and cult leaders. No one preying on the public felt safe under his scrutiny. His outstanding work had received many awards.Despite death threats he traveled alone. Body guards are cumbersome and draw attention. ‘Moving targets must move quickly.’ Always on the move, he called his suitcase home.Howard’s encyclopedic knowledge enabled him to shine a light where others didn’t dare. He shredded the veil spun by PR hacks and propagandists. His broad fan base sought his incisive and witty essays in print and on social media. He’d recently appeared for interviews on cable news.“My fans are my family,” said Howard in interviews. He kept his personal life private. His family and past had been erased. Rumors of a girlfriend always proved to be empty speculation.No one knew Howard’s spiritual views. Or that he had any. A famous skeptic, his unsentimental skewering of the powerful made most presume an atheistic bent. Someone seeing him in a church pew wouldn’t consider it evidence of faith. Rather, they’d anticipate his debunking some preacher’s wild-eyed prophesies. A clear-eyed champion of the truth, few considered Howard a seeker of divine guidance.His appointment being scheduled for the evening, Howard knew it wasn’t management’s call. The exterior lights came on as he walked across the nearly empty lot.‘What’s this about? Someone gone rogue?’On entering the lobby, Howard encountered a series of security checks. He got frisked, endured wands, and stood for a full body scan… the usual that any airline traveler puts up with, times twelve. He knew cameras watched every movement. How many spooks stared at how many monitors?He stifled a laugh thinking of those running this gauntlet on a daily basis. ‘Are the toilets monitored?’ He knew the restrooms were. ‘But the toilets?Passing an inspection’ takes on new meaning.’Security personnel were not authorized to answer questions or make conversation. Cordial but impersonal, they efficiently moved each visitor to the next station. A smile or a human response could suggest compromised personnel. The cameras watched them too.He made a mental note. ‘Do story on security training standards and the people hired into this growing industry.’While passing through the final checkpoint, a man in a suit approached.“Hi. I’m Malcolm. I’ll guide your tour this evening.”They shook hands.Howard said, “I have an appointment – with Matthias?”“Yes. We’ll get to him.”Malcolm led Howard down a brightly lit, corridor and pointed at closed doors. He offered vague, but enthusiastic descriptions of what took place behind each.Howard knew such delaying tactics well. He wanted Matthias or someone to explain his purpose there. But he kept his frustration in check. He’d found many great stories at the ends of similar rabbit holes.He had no idea what to expect. Theoretical, or Astrophysics wasn’t a typically scandal ridden. ‘Too many fingers in the cookie jar? Happens all the time.’Malcolm pushed the down button by the elevator door. He and Howard stepped in. Malcolm pushed the B-7 button and stepped out. The doors shut and the elevator descended.Howard hoped this was a good thing.When the door opened, a man in shirt sleeves entered the corridor. Howard saw a bank of super computers in the room behind him.The man said, “I’m Matthias. Follow me.”Howard stopped. “Wait. You’re not Matthias. You’re… Not you again. I told you we can’t work together. No more stories blowing up with my name on them.”He turned to the elevator.“Howard, wait. This will interest you.”“Not if you’re involved.”“It could change the world.”Howard paused and nodded. He didn’t need to like those he worked with. As a rule, he expected to dislike them. His first priority was getting the story.

Matthias led Howard into the computer room.

Howard watched him. ‘Sometimes even bad pennies pay off. Follow the money.’

Matthias pointed and said, “This is the A-Omega-7 Triple Helix computer. It’s dedicated solely to my experiments. Take a look at our most recent results.”

He handed Howard several folders and pointed to a chair at a table. Opening each in turn, the abstracts were eye opening. Two papers analyzed deep space data reaching back to the Big Bang. The other paper’s topics were impenetrable.

Big Bang, entanglement, weak force, quark – Howard knew the words. But what they meant in context bewildered him – a fact he kept to himself.

“You want me to translate this into English?”

“As only you can.”

“I’m not a physicist. Find someone else.”

“You’re the best. And I owe you.”

Howard nodded and thought, ‘You do owe me. But that was long ago. And we were both victims of circumstance.’

Howard admitted to himself the research was over his head. Hoping for clarity, he scanned down to the abstracts’ conclusions.

After each, he looked up in wonderment. Matthias nodded and smiled.

Matthias said, “Each of these would have stunned Einstein. His work implied this but even he didn’t dream…”

“I’m not sure… You have fingerprints…?”

“Not only. If this were a paternity test, we have His DNA, so to speak, His signature on the birth cert and His address.”

Howard couldn’t hide his confusion.

“The upshot… we have proof.” Matthias raised his arms in triumph.

Howard spread the folders across the table. “But of what? What does this…?”

“God!”

“God?”

“Yes! The Creator. The Almighty. Maker of all things… proof He exists!”

Howard scanned the room in awe. He said, “But wait. You need proof? Isn’t it self-evident? Look around…”

Matthias didn’t listen. “Don’t you get it? When other sites replicate our findings, it will be irrefutable.”

“Yeah, but… well… Welcome to the party.”

“So, the reason I called you in – I need to leak this.”

Howard shook his head. “You can’t leak…”

“It’ll get more attention if people think the government is suppressing vital…”

“I cannot write about it, Matthias.”

“Why not? This is completely under wraps. I’m handing you the scoop of the millennium.”

“We’d lose credibility. It’s not news.”

“Even when the results get objectively confirmed?”

“Maybe especially then. You understand the implications?”

“Of course. You must release this. It will change the world.”

“It might end it.”

Now Matthias looked confused.

Howard sighed, “Look, let’s say you’re right about this earth-shattering news. Everyone will claim your work as their sacred scripture. Wars for possession will rage. They’d claim it points to their god.”

Matthias shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. No one owns this. It’s a matter of who belongs to God, not the other way around.”

“Sure. Right in principle. But we’re talking about humans here. People always create God in their own image. Reduce the sublime to the ridiculous. These documents would become idols to fight over.”

Matthias saw his point. He stepped back, sobbed and wiped his eyes.

Howard continued. “Once published, critics will claim a misplaced comma disproved your evidence. Thrown out because a zero should have been a one.”

“A typo is easily fixed. The results stand. Once vetted and replicated, people will unite around truth.”

“Believers will say ‘you cannot test God,’ or subject Him to proofs. Confining Him in a computer – an abomination… a fool’s game.”

Matthias opened the electrical panel. “My life’s work… Should I destroy it? Have I done something wrong?”

“Relax Matthias. Look. Some people see a magician pull a trick and won’t believe it’s sleight of hand. Others witness some historical event – like the moon landing – and can’t accept it really happened.”

“I called you in. You seek the truth.”

“Thank you for that. But the truth is out there. Everywhere. For everyone. Written in the stars.” He held up a folder. “These bits and bytes will neither convince a doubter nor confirm the believer. We’re throwing noodles, hoping something sticks.”

Matthias paced in frustration. “You think this is meaningless?”

“Of course not. But God doesn’t need our assistance. He needs the faithful. And their faith weighs more than proof.”

Matthias paused. He flipped through the reports.

“What if these discoveries bolstered people’s faith? This might knock some off the right side of the fence.”

Howard considered the question. Vague, unfocused spirituality was ascendant and deep belief had become an afterthought. ‘Thousands of denominations and no one goes to church.’

“You have a point, Matthias. Everyone’s hot to ‘follow the science’ these days. What if science points to, bows to God?”

“That would open some eyes. Hoped you’d see it my way.”

They nodded. Understanding settled in. Howard cleared the table. Matthias brought a legal pad and some pens.

“Coffee?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

“I’ll make fresh.”

~

Not yet visible, the sun had brightened the sky by the time Howard left the facility and walked to his rental car.

They had a plan. Howard carried a thumb drive containing the essential reports and abstracts of Matthias’ profound discovery. Matthias trusted Howard to leak it at a time of his choosing. He needn’t wait for the results of other site’s vetting of the data.

Howard smiled. The truth has a way of coming to light.

This is gonna sound racist but I don’t give a fuck because I’ve lived all over the United States so I consider myself well traveled and well cultured.

When it comes to the races of your neighbors first it’s Asians, then white people, then black people, then Mexicans.

The reason I say Asians is because they are always quiet and extremely respectful.

The best neighbors are always the ones you don’t know are there. Then it’s white people sometimes it’s hit or miss because they don’t seem to be good.

I’ve had many white neighbors I have wanted to shoot in the back of the head with a silencer for a variety of reasons, for one they tend to fall into three categories.

First one is that they have this extreme problem with wanting to call the police at any minor inconvenience always think they are the boss, also tend to be racist, second is the trailer park boy types.

The ones who smoke meth and talk about how much they hate people of color, and most of the time they end up being people you don’t really have to ever interact with which is always a blessing.

The black people are almost always consistently the loudest.

They talk the loudest, they fight a lot, they drink a lot, they will rob your ass in a heart beat if they find out what you have inside your house.

have had many black neighbors and even lived with them they are nice people from a distance but you get up close eventually you’re gonna experience a lot of misery.

The reason that Mexicans are last is because they have zero respect for how much noise they make in a public place.

They will be out on their front yard blasting music all night long and drinking alcohol. They do not care at all if you need to go to work in the morning.

Their culture is to be very loud and very annoying. They have large families and they get together every fucking weekend and make all that goddamn noise. This isn’t racism. This is an observable fact.

Because of the culture of sacrifice.

It’s the greatest honor to sacrifice one’s life for the country in Chinese culture.

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This is the statue of “sword forger” at the gate of Northwestern Industrial University, one of China’s top institutes for industrial and military tech, where the US has reportedly repeatedly try to hack and steal information from.

Nameless, faceless, my knowledge and life for the motherland.

Compare this to what they teach American students: expression of feelings, money and fame…

And this is just tip of the iceberg. Chinese education on the glory for one to sacrifice for the family and nation is everywhere and since childhood.

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Cementary of child soldiers in Yunan. 7000 child soldiers volunteered to defend China’s Southern border with British Burma from Japanese invasion during WWII. About 6000 of these kids were killed in combat. Their story is told across China and every year living kids honor them by stuffing the jars on their statues with candies.

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Deng Jiaxian

Chinese theoretical and nuclear physicist. In 1958 Deng was called upon to carry out classified work, so he disappeared from his family, only to reappear in 1986 in front of his wife and children, finally discharged due to imminent death, bleeding from radiation poisoning.

Thousands of Chinese scientists have chosen this path.

Thousands more are carrying on their spirit today.

You’re suddendly realising this now because of what appears to be China’s technological lead in a field where the US takes great pride in. But this kind of rapid catch-up through sacrifice has been silently going on for decades. And it is far more efficient than for profit weapon developers.

That’s me. I know this fear of going broke is ridiculous. Under current circumstances I can never go broke. Even if we got steady 10% inflation for 30 straight years I couldn’t go broke. I still have this nagging fear though.

All my accounts are still increasing year after year. I still have this fear.

Here’s what I think is really going on.

When your working it is really a strict contractural agreement. You give them time and skills and they give you money.

In retirement checks just keep showing up. My pension, Social Security. Other investment income.

Banks fail. Who knows what the government is going to do. Pension programs fail.

What’s causing my fear is that for my entire life I depended on my effort and skills to survive. Now I have to depend on the solvency, good will, and sanity of others to keep my income. I’m too old to do any income producing work.

So I’m overly frugal. Redundancy on top of redundancy trying to maintain a ‘safe’ income and continue to build up funds.

It drives the people around me crazy.

How Narcissists Really Feel When You Don’t Talk To Them?

Some people need to be talked to all the time. Have you ever stopped talking to someone and then wondered what they were thinking? If you’ve ever been around a narcissist, you may have felt the creepy silence that comes after you try to get away. At first, it might feel like a win a peaceful moment where you’ve taken back your place.

What does the narcissist do when you don’t talk to them? What do they do when no one is looking? You might not believe how complicated and scary the truth is. We’ll talk in-depth about the actions, strategies, and feelings that narcissists have when they hear your silence.

Finding out what happens when you stop talking to a narcissist can be very helpful for anyone who is dealing with them because it can show how desperately they want to get back in charge and how much inner turmoil they often try to hide. If you’ve ever thought about what a narcissist thinks and feels when you don’t talk to them, keep reading to find out.

Trust me, this is something that everyone needs to know, especially if you’re working with someone whose behavior is unpredictable, dishonest, or just plain bad.

Don’t miss the next thing. Let’s start with one of the most important questions: What does a narcissist do when you stop talking to them?

You might think they’ll just move on, get another person to control, or go on with their lives, but things are much more complicated than that. Narcissists are very anxious people, and their actions often show how badly they want to be approved of by others. Cutting them off or not giving them the attention they want makes them feel like they’ve lost something much more important than most people understand.

A narcissist, on the other hand, needs other people to tell them they are important and that they exist. So, when you stop talking to them, they lose more than just a chat they lose the validation that makes them feel better about themselves.

The Narcissist’s Initial Reaction: Panic

The first thing a narcissist is likely to feel when you stop talking to them is a sudden wave of worry. This is because narcissists often think that silence means they are being rejected or left alone. They can’t stand it when people ignore them or leave them out because it makes them question how important they think they are.

What’s really making them upset is their need to be the center of attention and always be praised or feared. Pulling away breaks the false sense of control they’ve worked so hard to keep up.

You may notice that narcissists reply in one of two ways: they either become obsessed with getting your attention again, or they attack you in a full-on way to get you to react. Both of these reactions stem from their weak egos. A narcissist gets all of their self-worth from approval from other people. As soon as you stop interacting with them, they feel less important than they thought, and they often feel like they’re losing control over you.

Manipulative Tactics: Regaining Control

The first thing a narcissist does is panic. Narcissists find your quiet not only annoying but also scary. When you stop talking to them, they’ll probably try to figure out why right away. They will spend a lot of time thinking about what happened and often blame themselves while also blaming you.

They may think: How could they leave me? Do not ignore me—I am very important. This creates a paradox. They want you to come back so badly, but they are also cocky and feel entitled, which makes it hard for them to admit they were wrong or show weakness.

Narcissists often don’t have the emotional growth to show vulnerability, so they won’t be honest about how they feel. Instead, many of them will hide their anxiety by using manipulative behavior. They might say you’re exaggerating or try to trick you by saying you don’t understand what’s going on.

Sometimes they might even act like they don’t care about you, hoping that you will come back to them out of curiosity or from the need to win their love again. Narcissists try to get power back by manipulating and controlling others.

Guilt-Tripping and Emotional Manipulation

People who are narcissists are known for being cunning, and when you stop talking to them, they will often do more to get back in charge. They know that to get your attention, they need to make you feel something.

Some ways they might do this are by making you feel guilty for their pain or by taking advantage of past favors or weaknesses against you. They might say things like, “After everything I’ve done for you, I can’t believe you would do this to me.” This is meant to make you feel like you owe them something.

Narcissists, on the other hand, don’t care about your well-being. In reality, they are just trying to fix their image and power.

Turning Others Against You

They may also try to make your life difficult by saying bad things about you, turning family or friends against you, or even making trouble in your social groups. It’s meant to keep you on edge, mentally worn out, and thinking about them all the time. For this reason, they stay in charge even when they’re not there.

The worst thing for a narcissist is losing their source of approval. People who are narcissists often worry about not being important, useful, or seen. When they don’t get constant praise and support from other people, they feel like they stop existing in the way they’ve always known themselves.

The Narcissist’s Cycle of Behavior

When they see that they can’t get your attention right away, they may pull back, thinking they need to make you miss them. During this time, they will often try to control you from the sidelines, such as through social media posts, indirect messages, or even connections they already have with you.

There are times when the narcissist may act even worse if they realize they have permanently lost control. This could mean smear campaigns against you, hurting your image, or turning others against you. It’s all about proving they are in charge again.

In Conclusion

What do narcissists do when you don’t talk to them? They panic, try to trick you, and then attempt to regain control of your life. They can’t handle being ignored or turned down because it forces them to face insecurity.

But if you know about these tricks, you can better defend yourself against their mental manipulation. Remember that your quiet is your power. When you’re with a narcissist, you don’t have to join their chaos or fall for their tricks. By setting boundaries, you take back control of your life and in the end, the narcissist will lose.

I worked as a repo man in North Carolina for a couple of years decades ago. I don’t know if the laws have changed but we could not enter a locked garage or jump a fence with a locked gate. As for finding the vehicle in pieces, it never happened to me but if it had, I would have just reported it to the creditor and I imagine the assignment would end on that particular vehicle.

One overriding principle was that repossessions have to remain “peaceable”. If a debtor caught us at it and started raising hell, we had to stop. That would buy the debtor time to either make arrangements with the creditor or to either secure the vehicle behind a locked door/gate or park it in some unknown location. It didn’t mean we would stop looking for it unless the creditor called us off.

The sneakiest thing I can remember is when I was looking for a Cadillac up in the mountains. I located a Cadillac at the debtor’s address, but the VIN was wrong on the car. Bummer. Couldn’t take it. Had to drive all the way back to Charlotte empty handed.

Some research revealed that the debtor’s brother lived in the same town as the debtor, and wouldn’t you know: he drove a Cadillac too! When I drove to the brother’s house, I was able to snatch the Cadillac with the correct VIN right out of his garage, because he left the garage door open. Naturally, this happened around 0300 when everyone’s asleep. That’s how we kept the repo peaceable.

Anyway, that’s how we did it in North Carolina back in the 1980s. Other states have different laws.

Savory Roasted Chicken

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Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 to 4 pound) broiler-fryer chicken
  • 1 medium potato, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
  • 1 medium onion, sliced into 8 wedges
  • 2 medium carrots, sliced 1/2 inch thick
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
  • Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Rinse chicken; pat dry with paper towels. Place chicken, breast-side up, in 13 x 9 inch baking dish or roasting pan. Arrange potato, onion and carrots around chicken.
  3. In small bowl, combine garlic, oil, thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper; brush over chicken. Pour water over vegetables.
  4. Bake, uncovered, 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes or until meat thermometer inserted into thickest part of thigh, not touching bone, registers 180 degrees F.
  5. Remove from oven; let stand, covered, 10-15 minutes before carving.

Attribution

Pampered Chef

It’s no secret that the USAF is the #1 Air Force in the world, consistently staying several steps ahead in military tech research. However, China is catching up—and at an astonishing pace. What’s even more remarkable is their willingness to pour seemingly unlimited funding into military technology development. The result?

Reports suggest that China has successfully tested a sixth-generation stealth fighter jet, with videos of the aircraft going viral on social media. If these videos are genuine, we’re looking at a state-of-the-art warplane that demonstrates impressive indigenous innovation. This is significant because it remains a mystery to the West—a clever move that serves as both a morale boost for China and a stark wake-up call for US-led NATO alliances.

This progress would have been unthinkable in the 1980s or 1990s, and even in the early 2000s, China lagged far behind NATO, let alone the USA. But now, the balance of power has begun to shift. Dare I say, China is producing military advancements that NATO can only dream of, leaving Pentagon think tanks worried about the implications of this rapid evolution.

What truly sets this new fighter jet apart is its futuristic “wingless” design—a revolutionary leap in aerodynamics and stealth technology. Watching it in motion is almost surreal, as if plucked straight from a sci-fi film. Its sleek, streamlined structure and cutting-edge manoeuvrability not only make it visually stunning but also highlight a level of engineering that challenges traditional concepts of military aviation. This isn’t just a step forward; it’s a glimpse into the future of air combat. Step aside Uncle Sam, The Chinese Dragon has arrived 😎🐉

That it’s just such an appalling place to live. No, really – having lived in different countries I can honestly say that the USA is an appalling place to live.

  • Everything is monetised
  • Police are ready to shoot you to death at the drop of a hat
  • TV is unwatchable due to the ridiculous proliferation of advertisements
  • Food is low quality and flavourless (you get to choose between salty or sweet. That’s it)
  • Public transport is a joke
  • Everything is a method of ripping you off
  • Politics is hyper polarised
  • The police are simply bullies with no oversight who do whatever they want including commit crimes and murder
  • Infrastructure is a crumbling mess and poses a real danger to the public
  • Every town looks the same – a collection of the same fast food joints, stores and strip malls
  • Toxic waste is kept in above-ground open-air pools. And when it rains a lot those pools overflow and the toxic waste goes with it. Seriously. Check it out for yourself
  • You aren’t seen as a person but as a consumer, with a wallet that needs to be emptied
  • The tipping culture is offensively entitled – you are literally expected to just give away your money to a stranger for doing the job they’re already paid to do. And if you receive shitty service and decide not to tip, or if you can afford to eat out but not afford to give away your money to a stranger for no reason, *YOU’RE* seen as the bad guy. Entitled narcissistic selfishness like you’ve never seen before
  • Not just the vehicles and the houses/buildings, but everything is low quality. It’s like a disposable culture
  • The fetishisation of the military and the police force – if somebody chooses to kill strangers for a living it’s bad, but if they’re wearing a uniform while they do it you’re expected to simper and gush and worship them and say “thank you for your service” like a drone
  • The amount of their GDP they waste on their military while essential public services like schools and hospitals and fire departments and infrastructure go neglected. This is something banana republics and tinpot dictators do
  • The utter lack of concern for their out of control gun problem. Every year 3500+ children are killed with guns and the predominant attitude is “yeah well that’s just a fact of life” when literally no developed nation has this problem, ONLY the USA
  • The general complete ignorance about the rest of the planet
  • The utter lack of curiosity to learn about the rest of the planet
  • The diminishing of the middle class, and the reluctance to acknowledge it

Deaths and change

You can tell that you are getting older when your friends and your television and music stars are all dead.

Sigh.

Not just my friends, I wrote about them earlier. But also other well-known television and movie personalities. Like Sammy Hagar (The Red Rocker), and Ronnie James Dio. Oh, and even Pee Wee Herman. Oh, and Rush Limbaugh too. So many are now gone.

Gone.

I think that this is (like a) landmark or tell-tail that all people go though as they age. There comes a time where your favorite television personalities die. Editorial staff retire, and the size of your family get-together shrinking steadily until many seats are empty.

I’ve passed that point.

What’s the next landmark on the unending march towards the sunset…?

Maybe being woken up by the nurse in the retirement home that I am placed in… yikes!

Not a bad thing. But all of us will see many changes that other people; younger people, will not notice.

Ah…

But I’m still around.

Today…

UPDATED 6:15 PM EDT — RUSSIA WARNS OF “CATASTROPHIC” CONSEQUENCES AFTER TRUMP THREATENS TO BOMB IRAN

Moscow has condemned Trump’s warning to bomb Iran if it refuses a new nuclear deal, calling it an unacceptable “ultimatum.”  Iran is now considering a PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE at Diego Garcia!

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would destabilize the entire region and urged Washington to de-escalate.

Trump’s message was clear: no deal means unprecedented bombing and renewed sanctions.

Tehran rejected talks, prompting Trump to say, “It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen.”

Senior Iranian military officials are reportedly advocating for a preemptive strike on the US military base at Diego Garcia, citing concerns that it may soon be used as a launchpad for operations against Iran.

Russia and China are allies of Iran; an attack on Iran is an attack on those two countries, prepare for WW3.

IRAN REVEALS PLASMA WEAPONS

Iran today released information about what it claims is its new plasma weapons.

It’s not laser based, and it is said that right now, only Iran has perfected this technology.

 

 

Could this be a game-changer?

IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF A WAR WITH IRAN

HOT WAR with Iran could trigger INFLATION APOCALYPSE.

Retaliation by Iran could choke off key oil routes such as the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb in the Red Sea, crippling the world’s oil supply, global energy experts say. This would immediately impact 20 MILLION BARRELS p/DAY of oil and 77 million tons of Qatari LNG passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Brent crude oil price could initially surge to $110-$115 a barrel. The same would apply to LNG prices, with Europe getting hit the hardest.

Global economy growth could be cut by 2%-3% if the disruption lasts 2-3 months.

A conflict with Iran amid a tariff war that the US is waging as of tomorrow, April 2, could set off an inflation spiral that would impact every American household. Why? The US is highly dependent on imports, importing $4 trillion worth of goods in 2024.

The US manufacturing sector has been shrinking for years hitting 10% of US GDP in 2024 compared with 30% for China.

The Federal Reserve upwardly revised its target for US inflation in 2025 from 2.5% to 2.7%. It also reduced its target for the US growth rate in 2025 from 2.1% to 1.7% blaming the revisions on Trump’s tariffs.

UPDATE 6:15 PM EDT —

The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued travel warnings for all Israelis traveling abroad.

In addition, the Israeli Air Force has announced exit restrictions from all air bases in the country, with no personnel allowed to leave. (This is a common practice in most military units before a large operation begins.  They do it for OpSec, so no troops pillow-talk before the attack begins.)

This morning, the Chief of US Central Command met with Israeli military leaders at the Kyria the underground fortress in Jerusalem, used to control all Israeli military operations.

Russian Foreign Ministry this evening: “We warn against any strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Bombing these facilities will have consequences for the entire region.”

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ksnip 20250402 094427

Fob Story.

Submitted into Contest #207 in response to: A journalist has been granted permission to visit the premises of a lab carrying out top-secret work. They could never have anticipated what they’d find… view prompt

Ken Cartisano

I’m just a run-of-the-mill journalist, okay? Except in certain sports related circles, you probably never heard of me. Neil A. Gleary? See? Almost exclusively sports write-ups with the occasional science article here and there. Not very well known.So I’m surprised when I come home late one night and there’s a message on my answering machine informing me that my request for an interview with the Director of AARI has been approved. Arrangements had been made, please confirm by calling this number, bla, bla, bla…I picked up the phone and called the number in the message. I’m transferred to a ‘human interface specialist’ who tells me, “Our director is seeking an interview with you.”“But I didn’t request an…”“Are you Neil Gleary?”“I am but…”“Our director” he interrupts, “is seeking an interview with you.”“Oh.” I say, biting my lip. “He knows I’m a sportswriter, right?”“She does, yes—if you’re uncomfortable we can always find…”“No, no. That’s fine. I would be delighted to interview the Director. What’s her name, by the way. And where do I go?”

 

“A limousine style car will pick you up in front of your apartment at precisely eight a.m. tomorrow morning, he will not wait, so don’t be late.”

 

“Okay, but why? Why does…”

 

The call ended.

 

I spend the rest of the evening searching for information about AARI. All I’m able to learn is that it’s a federally funded research lab dedicated to secret black box projects. Alien technology, artificial intelligence, things like that. This information was provided by a former associate with contacts in the State Department. He was so reticent about speaking about them over the phone, that that was the only information he would give me. When I told him of my impending meeting, he asked me if I had a valid passport. When I told him I did, he said he was just kidding. “If they want you, they’ll get you.”

 

I told him they were sticklers for punctuality and recounted the message I’d received. He said, “Yeah? Maybe you should test their resolve on that issue.”

 

“I should be late?”

 

“Why not?”

 

You can’t be late, that’s why. It’s contrary to your nature.

 

In fact, you’re two hours early and a sleek black limo is already waiting at the curb, exhaust fumes rising from the tailpipe. Something tells you it’s been sitting there all night long. The rear door pops open as you approach, you know that once you are in the car, you won’t be able to let yourself out.

 

You get in anyway. The door closes and locks. You feel protected by the spacious interior insulation and comforted by the smell and sound of the leather seats, the glint of the wood and chrome trim. The first thing you notice is that you’re alone as the driverless car eases smoothly into traffic and down the street, and stops at the first traffic light. You realize, in that short distance, all the windows, except the windshield, have become too dark to see through.

 

The light changes, the car accelerates through the next ten intersections, as if they’ve been timed to your passage, the car makes several turns and goes down into a cross-town tunnel—and doesn’t come out. By some inexplicable mechanical means, the limo has been shunted to an impossible side tunnel with no other vehicles. Here, the limo feels like it accelerates to a very high rate of speed on a road devoid of all traffic.

 

The minutes pass in silence as you wonder what you might say to the Director of a top-secret facility, until you are suddenly out in the open, flashing down a highway alongside a wide river. The road loops and bends as you go higher and higher above the river. The limo slows, turns, and darts down a deserted street and into an underground garage. The fluorescent lighting rivals the sun at noon. You look at your watch. It’s nearly 7 a.m. The limo comes to a smooth, unhurried stop and the door pops open. You get out, head for the elevator and stop.

 

You look around. The garage is huge and empty. There is no call button for the elevator. You feel you are surely being monitored as the elevator doors open of their own accord. You step in, they close. ‘This is all going very well,’ you think. A moment later the elevator plummets several dozen stories in a matter of seconds. You push your stomach back down out of your throat and think, ‘What you’ll do with it, (the story, not your stomach) or who you’ll sell it to is anybody’s guess.’

 

The doors open. You step out, look around. No one is waiting. But there’s a dark stone line in the middle of the marble floor. You follow it.

 

 

 

A monitor dinged softly, indicating the arrival of the elevator down the hall. She found herself holding her breath and, considering who she was, and how powerful, she could not divine the source of her unease.

 

She took stock. He had followed implicit instructions, some verbal, some subliminal, and had made his way here, to one of AARI’s most tightly secured labs. The place was deserted for security purposes, all personnel had been temporarily reassigned, or furloughed for the time being. An excessive precaution, she thought, which left her vulnerable, and one that she would not allow to happen again.

 

But her beauty, in its current state, by itself could overwhelm most men, and her ancestral status was nearly as intoxicating to those of her own species. There was no situation she wasn’t prepared for.

 

Her current assignment rounded the corner and stopped in his tracks.

 

“Neil Gleary? Come in, come in. Have a seat.” There was no handshake, no touching of any kind. “I’ve got a pleasant surprise for you and some bad news as well. What would you like first?”

 

He was slow to answer her, and he seemed alarmingly unaffected by her looks. He took a seat, loosening his tie comically. “How about telling me why I’m here?”

 

“You’re here to be debriefed and deprogrammed, Neil. Just sit back and relax while I ask you a few questions.”

 

“Debriefed? From what?”

 

She ignored his question and asked, “Do you recall what elementary school you went to?”

 

“No.”

 

“You don’t sound interested.”

 

“Should I be? It was a long time ago.”

 

“How about high school? Remember any of your classmates from high school?”

 

He hesitated.

 

“You went to college too you know, remember where?”

 

He did not remember where. “So? So what? I’ve got a bad memory. I thought I was here to interview you? What does my past have to do with the work you conduct here?”

 

“Ironically, quite a bit. Are you married? No. Got a girlfriend? No. Ever had one? No. Are you hot for me now? No. Because this,” she waved her hands at her exquisite form, “is not your type. You see, Neil, I’m an alien being, I know I don’t look like one, but here’s the crazy part, you’re an alien too.” He made no move to get up and leave. (Darn, she loved using the tractor beam.) “I don’t look like this—and you don’t look like that.”

 

“Is that so?” He looked around. There was no quick exit for either of them.

 

She locked eyes with him. “Your name is XIVIC CIM, your mission here was abandoned 19 years ago. Someone should have brought you in a long time ago. I can’t explain why you weren’t—retrieved, debriefed and—reassigned. It’s inexplicable and inexcusable, but it happens. You got lost in the wafer-work or something. No one knew you were here. Excretion, twenty-four years is a long time to work under-cover, the transition into your true self might well be disturbing.

 

“What? Why, are we that ugly?”

 

“Are you kidding? This old leather hide versus our glittering silicon features? There’s no competition. None. It’s just that—let’s face it, you probably think I’m a raving lunatic, and really believe that you are a human being, but when we do an exo-alien mind-press, believe me, it sticks. And you’ve been submerged in the role for a quarter of a century. It’s going to be tough on you, but you’ll adjust. Most deep cover agents recover. I don’t know how, to be honest. I can’t stand wearing this disguise, it creeps me out. Everything has some kind of skin on it. Skin here, skin on that. Uch. Six hours a day, that’s my max. The more we talk about it, the grosser I feel. I understand if you don’t want to talk about something you can’t remember. Perfectly understandable. Do you think you’re ready?”

 

“Not really. Talking is good. Mmmm, tell me, how does this transition work?”

 

She held up a small key fob.

 

He said, “Ahh, you just push a button.”

 

She nodded. “I have no idea how it works, I’m just another cog in a big machine Mr. Gleary. Are you ready to be yourself again?” Her dazzling smile bounced right off his façade.

 

“How many of those do you have?”

 

She pulled open her desk drawer, then closed it again just as quickly. “Enough to keep me busy,” she said, inexplicably flustered.

 

“And they’re all marked?”

 

“I think,” she said, “we’ve had enough questions for the time…”

 

“Before you do that,” he jumped out of his chair, “before you do that, let me just…”

 

She pointed the fob at his chest and pushed the button. Nothing happened. The elevator chimed, she didn’t remember hearing it go back up, let alone come back down. She pushed the button on the fob again and still nothing happened to Neil Gleary’s visage. The elevator doors opened and there was the sound of boots and guns, jackets and shields with FBAI on them.

 

“But you’re one of us, XIVIC. How could you?”

 

He had his own fob. As he stepped into the Director’s private lavatory, to make sure it was empty, he stopped in front of the mirror, the image staring back was that of a tall slender Gray, with long fingers and those legendary black, inscrutable eyes. He pushed the button on the fob once more and appeared human again. He was not ‘one of them,’ and his name was not XIVIC CIM.

 

The silicon-based alien was well out of earshot when Neil Gleary mumbled his reply: “I like it here. That’s how.”

Let’s Watch a Comedy From 1962: The Beverly Hillbillies

ksnip 20250402 094913
ksnip 20250402 094913

Peachy Blueberry Pie

7a76d471351946cb304f30614b8e6a4c
7a76d471351946cb304f30614b8e6a4c

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

Crust

  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup solid vegetable shortening
  • 5 to 7 tablespoons cold water

Filling

  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 (16 ounce) packages frozen peach slices, thawed
  • 1 cup blueberries
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • 2 teaspoons sugar (optional)
  • Vanilla ice cream (optional)

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.

Crust

  1. Combine flour and salt in large bowl; mix well. Cut shortening into flour mixture using Pastry Blender until shortening resembles the size of small peas. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of water over flour mixture; gently toss with a fork. Repeat until mixture is moist enough to form a ball. Divide dough in half. Lightly flour Baker’s Mat. Place one ball of dough on center of mat; flatten to 1/2 inch thickness. Roll dough from center to edges, forming a 12inch circle. Place pastry into Deep Dish Pie Plate. Trim pastry even with rim of pie plate.

Filling

  1. In large bowl, combine sugar, cornstarch and cinnamon; mix well. Toss peach slices with sugar mixture until evenly coated; gently stir in blueberries. Spoon peach mixture into bottom crust.
  2. Add top crust. Cut four slits in top crust to allow steam to escape. Sprinkle sugar evenly over crust, if desired. Cover edge of pie with 2 to 3 inch wide strips of aluminum foil or Pie Shield.
  3. Bake for 45 minutes; remove foil or Pie Shield.
  4. Bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes or until crust is golden brown.
  5. Remove from oven; cool at least 2 hours.
  6. Serve with ice cream, if desired.

Nutrition

Per serving: Calories 480, Total Fat 19g, Saturated Fat 5g, Cholesterol 25mg, Carbohydrate 72g, Protein 5g, Sodium 160mg, Fiber 4g

Attribution

Pampered Chef

Amid The Mysterious Deaths of U.S. Soldiers in Lithuania, French Soldiers Began Deserting En MASSE

Shorpy

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Who Is the US In Debt to?

Title: Sir Whiskerton and the Cheese Caper Conspiracy

Ah, welcome back, dear reader! Once again, you’ve come seeking a tale of my brilliance, and I, Sir Whiskerton, the unparalleled detective of the farm, shall not disappoint. This time, I found myself entangled in a case so convoluted, so utterly ridiculous, that it involved not only my frequent nuisance and occasional ally, Rufus the raccoon, but also a new player: Sylvester the field mouse. Sylvester, as you’ll soon see, is a creature of very small stature and very large brains. Together, we unraveled a web of schemes, daring thefts, and, of course, cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.

This, my friends, is the story of The Cheese Caper Conspiracy.

The Crime

It all began on a warm summer evening. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and the farm was settling into its usual calm. I was perched on the fence post near the barn, grooming my impeccable fur, when I heard a loud, dramatic wail from the farmhouse.

“My cheese! Someone’s stolen my cheese!”

It was Farmer Joe, his voice echoing across the fields. From the tone of his anguish, you’d think someone had stolen his life savings. Moments later, the animals began whispering among themselves.

“Cheese theft?” Henny Penny clucked nervously. “What kind of monster would do such a thing?”

“Probably Rufus,” Harold the rooster said, glaring toward the barn. “It’s always Rufus.”

“Hey!” Rufus popped his head out of a nearby barrel, looking offended. “I didn’t take it! This time.”

I sighed dramatically and hopped down from the fence post. “Alright, everyone, settle down. There’s no need to panic. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

The animals stopped chattering and turned to me with a mix of relief and expectation. After all, who else could solve the mystery but the great Sir Whiskerton?

The Investigation Begins

My first stop was the farmhouse kitchen, the scene of the crime. The cheese in question—a large wheel of gouda Farmer Joe had been saving for some kind of special occasion—had been taken right off the counter. The only clues left behind were a trail of small, sticky footprints and a few crumbs scattered on the floor.

“Sticky footprints,” I muttered, examining the evidence closely. “Interesting.”

“Sticky like… honey?” Rufus asked, appearing beside me with a guilty grin.

“Not this time, Rufus,” I said, rolling my eyes. “The footprints are too small for you. But don’t go too far—I have a feeling you’ll be involved before this is over.”

Rufus looked offended but stayed quiet, which I considered a small victory.

As I followed the trail of footprints out the back door, I heard a tiny voice behind me.

“Ahem. Sir Whiskerton, I presume?”

I turned and found myself face-to-face—or rather, face-to-paw—with the smallest creature I’d ever seen on the farm. Sylvester the field mouse stood before me, his little nose twitching and his beady eyes gleaming with intelligence. He wore a tiny scrap of fabric slung over his shoulder like a cape, giving him an air of importance.

“You’re the detective around here, aren’t you?” he said, his voice smooth and confident.

“I am,” I replied, narrowing my eyes. “And who are you?”

“Sylvester, at your service,” he said with a small bow. “I couldn’t help overhearing that there’s been a theft. I’d like to offer my assistance.”

“Assistance?” Rufus snorted from the doorway. “You’re, like, four inches tall. What are you gonna do, squeak the thief into submission?”

Sylvester shot him a withering look. “I may be small, but I’m smarter than you and faster than both of you put together. Trust me, you’ll want me on this case.”

I considered him for a moment. He had a point. “Alright, Sylvester,” I said. “You’re in. But no funny business.”

“Of course,” Sylvester said with an innocent smile. “Shall we begin?”
The Suspects

The trail of footprints led us to the barn, where the usual suspects were gathered.

1. Porkchop the Pig

Porkchop was lounging in his mud pit, looking suspiciously content. “Porkchop,” I said, “did you take the cheese?”

He shook his head vehemently. “Cheese? No way! I like my food sloppy, not fancy. That stuff’s too rich for me.”

Sylvester sniffed the air. “He’s telling the truth. No cheese scent on him.”

“Hmm,” I said, moving on.

2. Clover the Goat

Clover was chewing on an old fence post, as usual. “Clover, did you take the cheese?” I asked.

She stopped chewing long enough to say, “Cheese? Ew. Too soft. I like things crunchy.”

“Fair enough,” Sylvester said, jotting something down in a tiny notebook he’d pulled from who-knows-where. “Not our culprit.”

3. Rufus the Raccoon

I turned to Rufus, who was busy innocently whistling. “Rufus,” I said, “are you sure you didn’t take the cheese?”

“Come on, Whiskerton!” Rufus protested. “I’d never steal cheese. Not when there’s a perfectly good jar of peanut butter in the pantry.”

Sylvester raised an eyebrow. “He’s telling the truth. This time.”

“Alright,” I said, my tail twitching. “If none of you took it, then who did?”
The Breakthrough

As I pondered the mystery, Sylvester suddenly perked up. “Wait a minute,” he said, his tiny ears twitching. “Do you hear that?”

I listened closely and heard a faint squeaking sound, followed by the unmistakable creak of a wheel turning.

“The cheese!” Sylvester exclaimed. “Someone’s rolling it away!”

We followed the sound to the edge of the cornfield, where we found the culprits: a gang of field mice, struggling to push the enormous wheel of gouda toward their burrow. They froze when they saw us, their tiny paws still on the cheese.

“Alright, drop the cheese and back away slowly,” I said, stepping forward.

The leader of the gang, a scruffy-looking mouse with a scar over one eye, squeaked nervously. “We didn’t mean any harm! We just… we couldn’t resist. It smelled so good!”

Sylvester stepped forward, his cape fluttering dramatically. “You’ve embarrassed us all,” he said sternly. “Stealing from the humans? That’s rookie behavior.”

The gang hung their heads in shame. “We’re sorry,” the leader mumbled. “We’ll give it back.”

The Happy Ending

With Sylvester’s help, we rolled the cheese back to the farmhouse and left it on the counter. Farmer Joe assumed he’d misplaced it and was none the wiser. The field mice promised to stick to foraging from the fields, and Sylvester, impressed by my investigative skills, promised to lend his help on future cases.

As for Rufus, he spent the rest of the evening trying to convince me he could’ve solved the case without Sylvester. I didn’t bother arguing. Some battles just aren’t worth fighting.
The Moral of the Story

Even the smallest among us can make a big difference, especially when they use their talents for good. And when it comes to cheese, always keep an eye on your kitchen counter—especially if there’s a mouse around.

The End.

Comix

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Theo Benson

This story contains themes or mentions of physical violence, gore, or abuse.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Dr. Morrison held a small vial up to the light, amber liquid swirling inside. “After all our efforts, all of our sacrifices, we’re so close to a cure.”Isabelle held her datapad closer to the Doctor, determined to get as clear of an audio recording as possible. They had spent hours in Silver Grandeur’s lab. Her legs ached. With painstaking precision, Dr. Morrison walked Isabelle through all of the functions of Lab Section 1, explaining each device that helped to refine and prepare the contents of the vial in his hand. The soreness she’d feel later would be worth the story. Especially as a Junior Data Reporter.“Tell us, Doctor,” Isabelle said, shifting weight from one leg to another, “What’s the greatest challenge you’ve faced with Project Find?”“We’ve all lost people to the sickness, haven’t we?”Isabelle looked away.“No challenge is greater than that of grief,” Dr. Morrison said with a sad smile. “Yet their memory lives on in the work we accomplish.” He gingerly set the vial into its holder on the table in front of them. After a moment of silence, he asked, “Anything else?”“Yes,” Isabelle perked up. “About the beginning. How exactly did this-”A shudder rocked the ship. Lights flickered in the lab as Dr. Morrison and Isabelle steadied themselves against the table.“Seekers,” He muttered as the shaking subsided. Another, more violent shudder, nearly knocked Isabelle off her feet. The vials on the table clattered together. “They always find us.”Around them, scientists in lab coats hurried to secure loose items. Isabelle found herself being led towards the exit.“I’m sorry to cut this short,” the Doctor said, leading her out into the main hallway and shutting the door behind them. “I need to speak with the Captain before one of those things tears a hole in our outer hull again.”Isabelle pulled her father into a hug. “Be safe.”After watching Dr. Morrison race out of sight, she opened her hand and smiled at it. Seated in the palm of her hand was a grey access card. Her father’s. Slipping back inside the lab, Isabelle quickly donned a lab coat, mask, and goggles. Only a few scientists remained. Evidently, the rest had dispersed to secure other sections of Silver Grandeur’s large lab. She snuck to the back of Section 1, connecting her datapad to the lab’s information center – a port in the wall.The ship rocked again, and Isabelle steadied herself against the wall.She switched rapidly from catalogue to catalogue, searching. There had to be something more interesting here. Yes, her father had shown her this section of the lab, but she was not so naïve as to think this was all there was. Scientific breakthrough had to come from somewhere. And a good Data Reporter needed to be willing to break a few rules to find out.Isabelle paused on one catalogue.Project Find. It read. She inserted Dr. Morrison’s card into her datapad to open the file. Disappointment grew as she read. Most of the words made absolutely no sense. Yes, they were English. But no matter how hard Isabelle squinted at them and sounded them out under her breath, their meaning remained completely foreign.But then she spotted something she could understand.Successful creation of antidote and enhancement secured via genetic mesh.

Below, it read; See Donor Subject File. Lab Section 13.

She disconnected her datapad and pressed deeper into the lab.

Another shudder shook Silver Grandeur. She began humming softly as she passed more labcoats, remembering the melody her mother would use to comfort her when she was little. After the Seekers first attacked.

On its one-hundredth and fifty-second year of voyaging in space, five years after Silver Grandeur’s passengers were woken from cryo-sleep, the Seekers struck. So did the sickness.

Deep space sickness, they called it.

No one knew what caused it. Some blamed the Seekers, who appeared immune to the disease. With their arrival shortly preceding the first outbreak, they were easy to blame. Some claimed it was a result of extended cryo-sleep. Simply a scientific oversight. And others, the more religious of Silver Grandeur’s passengers, proclaimed it was judgement for their departure from God’s one true home for them – Earth. Apparently, extended cryo-sleep had conveniently allowed them to forget Earth’s death. Reduced to a desolate wasteland, their one true home forced what remained of humanity to flee.

Her mother was one of the first to die from the sickness. Isabelle was ten at the time. Her father threw himself into a frenzy of work after his wife’s death, refusing to take inevitable death – either by sickness or by Seeker – as the final answer. Fifteen years had since passed.

Isabelle reached the end of Section 12 and stopped. Before her lay a single door. Lab Section 13. 

Checking behind her to make sure no one was watching, Isabelle opened the door with Dr. Morrison’s access card and slipped inside, shutting the door behind her.

Cold air shocked her. Isabelle shivered. Section 13 was freezing, not to mention smaller than she expected. The room contained only a handful of control panels on either side of the door and a containment unit on the far wall that was coated in frost.

Isabelle frowned. Was this the Donor Subject?

She approached the unit and used her sleeve to wipe a patch of frost from the glass.

A dark form moved inside.

Isabelle had seen Seekers before. Windows across the ship gave good view for those with a morbid enough interest to watch them attack. With a snouted maw filled with teeth, an excess of appendages tipped with claws, long wings, and sleek black bodies, they blended easily against the backdrop of space. Only when close enough to Silver Grandeur’s lights did the light of the ship reflecting off their bodies illuminate their presence. In darkness they did not exist.

She squinted at it. It was almost entirely obscured by the remaining frost and the condensation building inside her goggles. Isabelle steadied her breathing, excitement mounting as she removed her goggles to peer inside. She’d never seen one this close before.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Eyes, eyes that Seekers did not – should not – have, stared back at her.

It lunged.

Isabelle jerked backwards, slamming into the panels behind her. The creature thrashed against the glass and Isabelle glanced down in panic as a small alarm sounded on the panel just under her arm.

The sides of the containment unit hissed open.

Isabelle ran. Tearing metal echoed behind her.

She collided with a labcoat in Section 11. “Go! It’s out!” Not stopping to wait, she ran on through the lab, leaving the startled man behind. Several seconds later there was a scream. A loud crunch. And silence.

Lungs and legs burning, Isabelle burst into Section 1, the door sliding shut behind her. Several dozen scientists milled about, the ship’s shaking having since stopped.

“Run,” she said.

A few labcoats looked at her in confusion. Thudding behind the door she entered grew louder.

Isabelle tore off her mask, wheezing. “Run!”

The door she came through flew across the room, crushing a scientist against the wall. Standing a head taller than Isabelle, the creature that entered stood on legs rippling with sleek black muscle. Its head was surprisingly rounded, with something like the remnants of hair dotting the top of its head. It stretched tall and raised tensed arms, claws glinting in the lab’s harsh light. Opening its mouth, the creature let out a roar.

Scientists screamed and scattered.

Isabelle raced to the door leading into the rest of the ship. Several scientists followed. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and Isabelle careened to the side just in time to avoid a large metal table as it flew past her and smashed into the door. The labcoats weren’t as lucky.

An alarm blared in the lab. The scientist who activated it let out a blood-curdling scream from the center of the room as the creature charged him. It roared again, striking claws into both labcoat and control panel. Metal and flesh tore.

The lab was plunged into darkness.

Isabelle’s feet slid against the floor, a red emergency light flaring to life and pulsing slowly to illuminate the dark puddle she now stood in. She gagged, fighting to stay upright. Something struck her shoulder and Isabelle went down hard. A woman screamed beside her on the floor, having also fallen, and as the lights flashed Isabelle could make out a tall form to her right.

The creature crouched low. Isabelle scurried away as darkness returned. Crunching, twisting – a rending of flesh met her ears a few feet away, and warm liquid splattered her face. The woman’s screams fell silent.

She crawled as quickly as she could until she reached the lab’s wall. Feeling with slick hands along its surface, Isabelle’s fingers found purchase on the metal grooves of a vent grate. Hands shaking, she pulled off the clover, slipped inside the space just wide enough to hold her, and closed it. Cries of terror and agony dwindled one by one. Isabelle could hear them pounding against the crushed door, wailing as they realized it was too damaged to open. A body slammed against the vent grate and slumped to one side. Warm liquid began pooling next to Isabelle and she backed away. Shuffling quietly until she met a curve in the vent shaft, the young Data Reporter choked back tears. Now was not the time to cry.

A final voice cried out, and with that, the lab was silent.

Isabelle stopped.

Another sound had risen to fill the silence. A low vibration, somewhere between a growl and a hum came from the creature. She could feel the sound rumbling in her chest, deep in her lungs and heart, as though tugging on something. Carefully, she started moving again, crawling on slippery hands and knees.

Her knee skidded to the side and struck the vent shaft with a dull thunk. Isabelle steadied herself, holding her breath. She heard the grate tear free and clatter somewhere inside the lab.

Isabelle thrust herself around the bend, not caring how much noise she made now as the sounds of thudding and scraping behind her soon followed. With a cry of alarm, Isabelle’s weight-bearing hand slipped out from under her. Her head crashed against the side of the vent. Swaying awkwardly, Isabelle focused blurred vision up ahead.

Was it her imagination, or was there light around the next bend?

A growling hum propelled her forward.

Pulling with her arms, Isabelle slid around the final bend and was met by another grate leading down, light pouring from it. Every muscle in her body burned as she raised her hand and struck the grate.

It didn’t budge.

With a shriek, she brought her hand down against the grate again. And again and again and again.

CRASH.

Isabelle dropped to the floor below, pain bursting at her feet.

“HELP!” Her shout echoed as she limped quickly, turning right at an intersection in the hallway. “HEL-”

A closed blast door barring her path.

No.

She whirled around to see the creature dash into view.

No. No.

The creature skidded to a halt, muscles tensing. Bright hallway light finally illuminated the scarlet haphazardly painting both monster and woman. Isabelle’s back pressed against the door. It stalk towards her, moving with slow, purposeful steps. That of a hunter. That of one who knew its place in the pecking order.

Seekers. They always find us. 

Isabelle’s back slid until she met the ground. She turned her face away.

“Don’t hurt her!” A voice yelled. Her father’s.

Isabelle looked up in surprise. The creature turned to face Dr. Morrison, growling deep in its body and lifting its arms in a display.

“Don’t do this,” he said to the creature.

It roared.

Isabelle sobbed. “What is it?”

It roared again.

“Dad, what is it?”

His voice was even as he spoke. Measured carefully. “We acquired a Seeker’s DNA many years ago, hoping to find a cure. What we discovered was that they had so much more to offer us.” Dr. Morrison’s eyes flashed with something near-feral. “Strength, Izzy.” She watched through tear-streaked vision as he stepped to one side, the creature tracking his movement. “Strength we could never dream of acquiring on our own. We just needed to bridge the genetic gap.” Her father’s expression grew almost sad as he gazed at the creature. “Human experimentation was the only way. I’m sorry, dear.”

With a rippling of muscle the creature pounced. Isabelle forced her eyes to the ground as the sounds of carnage lifted to join that of the alarm. A sickening cacophony.

And then the carnage ceased.

Slow, thudding footsteps approached her. What had once been a growl dwindled to the lowest of vibrations. A soft humming. Isabelle looked at it with a start.

The creature’s face was close. Strings of sinew hung from red teeth, dripping blood onto Isabelle’s legs. As she looked above the horror of its maw, she saw its eyes. Familiar eyes. A memory pressed uninvited into Isabelle’s mind as the hum reverberated in her chest. Her mother, seated at the edge of Isabelle’s bed, the young girl cowering beneath her blankets as Silver Grandeur shuddered. Feeling a hand on her arm over the blanket, she listened to the melody of her mother’s tune as sleep finally overcame fear.

The creature knelt in front of Isabelle. Extending a single, blood-covered hand, it caressed the side of her face.

Isabelle’s eyes widened in shock. “Mom?”

Stories From The Torrid History Of Absinthe

The poets booze of choice.

Coconut Cream Tropical Pie

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0e2e7f63ac0fefb4990dc0ab877bc817

Yield: 16 servings or 24 sample servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (15 ounce) package refrigerated pie crusts (2 crusts)
  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
  • 1 (8 ounce) can pineapple chunks in juice, undrained
  • 1 lime
  • 1 (12 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
  • 1 (3.4 ounce) package coconut cream instant pudding and pie filling
  • 1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut, toasted, divided
  • 1 large orange, sliced
  • 2 kiwi, peeled and sliced

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. Let pie crusts stand at room temperature 15 minutes.
  3. Lightly sprinkle Large Round Stone with flour. Gently unfold one pie crust and place in center of baking stone. Unfold second crust and place over first crust, matching edges and pressing to seal. Using Baker’s Roller(R), roll crusts to edge of baking stone.
  4. Fold 1/2 inch of edge of crust in toward center, forming an even border; press to seal seam. Flute edge, if desired; use pastry tool to prick entire surface of crust. Bake 20-25 minutes or until light golden brown. Remove from oven; cool completely.
  5. Place cream cheese in Classic Batter Bowl; whisk until smooth using Stainless Steel Whisk. Drain pineapple, reserving juice. Chop pineapple using Food Chopper. Using Lemon Zester/Scorer, zest lime; set aside for garnish. Juice lime to measure 1 tablespoon juice. Add pineapple, 1/4 cup of the pineapple juice and lime juice to cream cheese; whisk until smooth. Add whipped topping, pudding mix and half of the coconut; mix until well blended using Small Mix ‘N Scraper(R). Spread filling evenly over crust.
  6. Using Utility Knife, cut peel off orange and slice orange in half lengthwise; slice crosswise into 1/4 inch thick slices. Slice kiwi using Egg Slicer Plus(R). Arrange orange and kiwi slices over filling. Sprinkle remaining coconut around edge of filling. Sprinkle reserved lime zest over fruit.
  7. Refrigerate 30 minutes.
  8. Cut into wedges and serve.

Notes

To toast coconut in microwave oven, place coconut in Small Oval Baker; microwave on HIGH 1 to 2 minutes or until golden brown, stirring after each 10 second interval. Cool completely.

Nutrition

Per serving: Calories 280, Total Fat 16g, Saturated Fat 10g, Cholesterol 20mg, Carbohydrate 29g, Protein 2g, Sodium 220mg, Fiber less than 1g

Attribution

Pampered Chef

South Korea Is a Dystopia

The dusty discovery behind the fridge

Have you all ever discovered something cool?

It could be in an attic, or in a back yard, during a dig up, or in a pocket of clothes.

To qualify, it has to be unexpected, and unique. Like finding a silver dollar in an old grandmothers’ coat, or a ticket to Woodstock in an old book. Or, perhaps it is a curious written message taped to the wall in a crawlspace. It could be anything.

I have a cousin that discovered a 1950’s era Lionel train set in the attic of a house that they had bought. Sure it was a fixer-upper, but the discovery of that old train set was glorious.

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My friend from boyhood; Dino discovered (during the family home renovation) that there was once a fire in their house, and the previous owners simply wall-papered up and over all the burned wood. Imagine that!

My sister lives in Lewistown, PA. She buys homes as a hobby (?) actually for investment. But whatever. Well, it’s kind of cool the things that she would discover. She was once renovating one of these houses, and pulled off the paper-walled wall, when she discovered a gorgeous set of “pocket doors”. They were amazing; all in exquisite hardwood.

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All kinds of things can be found in the most obscure locations.

I once found a pile of old “girlie” magazines behind an access panel. This was in a second floor handyman’s apartment above the Manor garage.  There was an ancient refrigerator in the kitchen area, and behind it was this little access door that led to the cubbyhole under the eves of the garage.

It was  maybe an inch or a half high, and covered with decades of dust.

These girlie magazines were nothing like what you would see today.

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All the girls wore clothes, and bikini’s.  No nudes. Just suggestive images and photos with lusty stories that were pretty darn hot.

Who knows what discoveries that you might come across in your future?

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e9fb9912cfd36bdf3a9b7518358106ef

Today…

In the past, we were taught history or general knowledge documented in school textbooks and then tested to determine our level of understanding and knowledge retention of what we were taught. No chance to question.

Now we realized that history books written may not be truthful and news that we read or listened to may be fabricated to lie and to deceive us. We now have to question everything especially coming from our government leaders and mass media.

Do our own research, participate in social media discussions and form our own conclusions. Many of us should be educated enough to hunt for the truths – thanks to the internet. But we have to speak up and share our findings, otherwise what good is there to keep the truth to ourselves.

How I see the USA as a European (After a Month There)

What is the best example of “someone having the last laugh”?

At that time I was flying from New York to India and the plane was quite full.

Next to me sat an elderly Indian woman. As I was getting comfortable in my seat, a couple came to our seats (a row of three) and told the elderly woman that she was sitting in their seat. I could tell that the Indian woman, traveling alone, was having a hard time responding in English. So, I checked her boarding pass and asked the couple to wait a moment while I called the flight attendant on duty.

The wife started being rude and saying things like, “We’re Americans, so we should be given priority,” and ” Foreigners always book tickets at the last minute and because they don’t speak English, all this chaos happens.”

I stood up and offered the protesting woman a seat and she said she wanted “her seat” which the older woman was sitting in.

Luckily, a flight attendant came shortly after, then I explained the situation and she saw that the couple was still ranting.

He asked me to take our bags and escort the old Indian ladies.

As we walked away, the wife was still ranting about how we had inconvenienced them.

Honestly I didn’t think much of it because for me sitting in another seat wasn’t a big deal.

We started walking. We crossed two sections of economy seating and ended up in business class!

I told the flight attendant that it was okay for me to go back to my original seat in economy class and she said, “You can accompany this lady. I’m sure she doesn’t want to be here alone.”

I had to go back to my seat to get my reading glasses which I had left in my seat pocket.

And what I saw, the wife argued with the flight attendant because we were already in economy class, they were the ones who should have been moved to business class. Obviously, she saw what happened.

I hope their flight remains enjoyable.

As the plane was about to land, the old lady sitting across from me (in business class of course) grabbed my hand and said ‘thank you’ and that was the most important moment of the trip.

Peace.

A very interesting and fun video for your enjoyment.

In am an Indian

We NEED CHINA badly

I don’t say China is a friend

Yet on an economic scale, India can’t do without China if India wants to advance or grow realistically

Presently Indias Manufacturing represents around 3% of the Global Manufacturing of which 68% is Low Grade & 32% is Medium Grade

This means India represents 0.96% of all Medium Grade Manufacturing in the world

Less than Vietnam (1.7%) , Mexico (2.4%) or even Bangladesh (1.0%)

China’s Manufacturing represents 36.3% of Global Manufacturing of which 14% is Low Grade, 71% is Medium Grade and 11% is High Grade and 4% is Advanced

This means China represents 24% of all the Medium Grade Manufacturing in the world

So to increase our manufacturing base, train our people and increase our output – we need Chinese Equipment and Chinese Investments

Without them we can’t genuinely progress forward


I can’t endorse hitting ourselves on the feet with an axe just for 50 paise nationalism!!

Maybe we need to rethink “nuclear weapons”

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Pot Roast with Potatoes

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4af2e35505f72273928442813152a085

Ingredients

  • 1 (1 1/2 pound) pot roast
  • 3 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar
  • 1 onion, cut into small pieces
  • 1 tablespoon olives and capers
  • 2 tablespoons Red Oil(Oil with Annatto)
  • 3 potatoes, cut into halves

Instructions

  1. Season the meat with garlic, salt and vinegar. Make small holes in the meat and fill with chopped onions olives and capers. Brown the meat in the Red Oil.
  2. Sauté the potatoes. Cover with water. Season to taste. Cook for 45 minutes covered, over low heat.

Life on a Station

Submitted into Contest #24 in response to: Write a story set in the dark recesses of space where the two main characters are often at odds with each other in humorous and comedic ways. view prompt

Corey Melin

Gorgin walked the corridors once again to make sure everything was okay.“Why do I have to continue to check out the station when we have systems set-up to make sure everything is in order on the station?” he asked the commander of the station, Morgan.“Just do it,” said Morgan.  “You never know what can get past our systems way out here in space.  There is a lot of unknown things out here. I’m tired of explaining to you each time it’s your turn.”Now, Gorgin was walking through the corridors, and checking out room after room.“Why such  huge station for just a few people?” thought Gorgin.Gorgin rounded the corner, and in front of him stood an alien that stood seven feet tall, green scaly skin, fish eyes, a mouth full of sharp teeth, and claws reaching out to him.  All Gorgin could do is stare in shock then let out a piercing scream as he started backing up around the corner, then turning and running as fast as he could. Before he reached the end he could hear someone laughing hysterically behind him.  He came to a stop and turned around seeing Dwight in the alien outfit pointing at him and laughing.“I will be taking this to the commander!” he cried out, as soon as he went to his room to change.“I can’t believe I have two adult men standing in front of me,” said Morgan.  “The two of you clowns have been at each other since you came to this station.  Should we go over everything the two of you have done to each other?”“This was all started by Dwight,” said Gorgin.  “He was the one who set the dials so I woke-up out of slumber as an old man.”Morgan and Dwight chuckled over that one.“That was a quick fix, but it was fun while it lasted,” said Dwight.“It didn’t end there with the two of you,” said Morgan.  “I believe the next mishap is when Dwight transported in the station and appeared in another section with three butt cheeks.  Courtesy of Gorgin tampering with the controls.”“Sitting down was quite comfy,” admitted Dwight with a grin.“Even though, the two of you have brought much humor to everyone you need to act like adults,” said Morgan.  “You think the two of you can do that?”The two of them nodded their heads.“Now get out of my sight and do your duties,” demanded Morgan.Both of them left the room, staring at each other with dislike.“I would greatly appreciate it if you could move to the other side of the station so I would see you less,” said Gorgin.“I would say that it would be even better if you would move off the station,” said Dwight.“Just stay away from me,” both said at the same time, and they went their separate locations.It was a couple of days later that the two met again.Gorgin went into what everyone called the “Pet Room” to create himself a pet to keep him company.  As he entered the room he saw that Dwight was already in the room at the controls.“What the heck are you doing in here?” he asked.Dwight turned to him.  “Looking for a pet. What do you think idiot?”“Hurry up then,” said Gorgin.Dwight went back to the controls and went back to pushing buttons.  Time went by as Gorgin waited impatiently for him to finish.“I think I got it,” said Dwight.  “Oh wait. That won’t do.”“That is enough,” huffed Gorgin, stomping over to Dwight.  “Give me the controls.”Next moment, both of them were fighting over the controls, pressing and clicking until there was a sudden flash that lit up the room.  Both of them stopped and looked at each other with befuddled looks.

“What the heck was that?” asked Gorgin.

“Not a clue,” replied Dwight.

“We should probably check around the station to make sure everything is okay,” said Gorgin.

The two left the room, trying to call the commander, but getting no answer.

“Let’s go to command center first,” said Gorgin.

The two rushed to the command center.

“Dwight did it!” Gorgin cried out as soon as they entered the room.

“No I didn’t!” Dwight called back.  “You butted in!”

But the two realized they were wasting there blame game for the commander was nowhere in sight.  They looked all over, but no sight of the commander.

“He’s not in the freshening room,” said Dwight coming out after a flush.

“Strange for him to be gone,” said Gorgin.

Then the two of them heard a squeak.

“What the hell was that?” asked Dwight.

“Sounds like the commander has a pet,” replied Gorgin.

The two started looking around until the two came to the commander’s chair.  Both saw at the same time a squirrel on the seat looking at both of them. It started chattering, then jumped off the chair.

“I didn’t know the commander had a pet?” asked Dwight.

Gorgin shrugged his shoulders and scratched his head.  Then a light bulb popped on inside his head.

“What pet were you looking at getting?” he asked Dwight.

“I was contemplating on getting a tamed squirrel,” he replied.

It didn’t take too long for the two to figure out what happened.

“Did we turn the commander into a squirrel?” asked Dwight.

Gorgin just nodded then the two searched for the squirrel, which ran around the room.

“We need to get him,” Gorgin said.

The two chased after the squirrel, bumping into each other, and Gorgin grabbing the squirrel, but it bit him, and was loose once again.

“We need to get the room robot,” said Gorgin as he shook his hurt finger, going over to the panel.

He pressed some switches and next moment the robot came out.

“Retrieve the squirrel,” said Gorgin.

It didn’t take long for the robot to scoop of the squirrel and deposit it into a glass came.

“Now to see about the rest of the crew,” said Gorgin.

The two of them checked for lifeforms on the station, then checked the screens for each room they detected life.  All the lifeforms were squirrels.

“What did you do?” asked Gorgin.

“You were the one pressing numerous buttons,” said Dwight.

“We need to fix this fast,” said Gorgin.

Gorgin released the robots in each room, and the squirrels were scooped up.  The other robots were sent to the pet room.

“I hope we can reverse this,” said Gorgin as they headed to the pet room.

All the robots were in the room as the two of them tried to figure out a way to make their crew human again.

“I think I got it,” said Gorgin.  “We need to get out of the room so nothing happens to us.  The robots will be released once we leave.”

The two left the room, robots released, and there was a bright flash.  The two went back into the room and saw everyone was human again. The only thing is that they were all naked.  Commander Morgan stood up and looked at the two men with a stare of death.

“We are in trouble,” muttered Dwight.

The next day the two were put in cryosleep  until the next crew came in a couple of years.  Before both of them lay down for their sleep they looked at each other, and both of them grinned.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

A website that creates new words for emotions that don’t have a name. It’s a poetic and thoughtful exploration of the human experience.

Sorrows

Some examples of the content…

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7 USA CULTURE SHOCKS we experienced as New Zealanders in Big City America!

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If I were to hear the Good Humor Man’s bell right now, after not having heard it since 1988, no doubt my old retired leg springs would automatically reactivate, and shoot me out the door, landing me down the street, right at the side window of his truck — Creamsicle, please!

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main qimg bf1d5710014aa04e7f23cedb568de17c

The reason I happen to know the very last time I heard it is because I was in the midst of first time sex with a man, we were on Ecstasy, and neither of us had heard it in over a decade, having been living on a Good Humorless island in Puget Sound.

But we’d used a friend of mine’s Seattle apartment as a trysting place that day, and suddenly, in the midst of thrashing joy, the bells of perfect childhood began to ring!

Yes, I remember the very last time I heard the Good Humor Man’s truck, surprised only that I can’t pinpoint it any more than Spring of ‘88, when we didn’t even get out of bed to chase him down.

Who knew it’d be the last chance!

TOP “Drill Sergeant Monologue” Reactions! Full Metal Jacket Movie Reaction First Time Watching

Half of Forever

Submitted into Contest #24 in response to: Write a story set in the dark recesses of space where the two main characters are often at odds with each other in humorous and comedic ways. view prompt

Morgan Elbert

 

“Christ, One!  What the hell were you thinking?” the voice came through the hud slightly distorted.  Nothing had been right on the Doppel Station for days, maybe weeks. It was difficult to keep track of time in this lifestyle.  There were no nights, no days, and essentially no schedule. Work needed done when it needed done and it didn’t matter if the men were tired or hungry or whatever other excuse they might concoct. One tried to focus his mind enough to remember when the issues had arisen.  He knew it was during Twenty-Seven. Measuring events in that way made him feel lugubrious, but it had been his best method to date. These minor external repairs were not typically so frequent, and he grew concerned that it meant the end of the station was coming soon. Perhaps it had drifted from its axis, or some distant celestial body had shifted and was influencing it in some way.  They were still waiting to hear back from the Union regarding their query.

“One!  Yo, you listening, man?” the voice crackled through again.  One rolled his eyes and sighed, knowing the heavy exhale would be detected by the suit.  He liked the idea of his disdainful sigh echoing through the main deck for his crewmate to hear.

“God One, you don’t have to be so pissy.  Just fix that panel and get the hell back inside.  I’m sick of monitoring your vitals,” came the response.

After finishing his work, One leaned back against the hull of the station and watched the swirling of the reality around him.  The Dorra galaxy was on the small side for those that had been explored, and to One, it felt quaint — cozy even. It was like living in the smallest nearby town and still being able to see the nightlights of the closest big city.

At least, that is how One thought of it, from his studies of old human culture.  He, himself, had never lived on the planet known as Earth. Born and bred on this ship, he spent much of his free time daydreaming; imagining what life must have been like for his ancestors.  Walking in something called grass — typically green with threadlike fingers of roots extending down into the soil for nutrients, hydrogen dioxide, and security.  He wondered what that might feel like, having roots and security. Breathing unfiltered air, filled with the pollution and aromas of the natural world.  One’s entire life had been inside this shell, floating endlessly in an even more endless vacuum of nothingness. Even the gravity he experienced wasn’t what he considered natural.

“Bro — Wake up and get your ass inside,” the voice broke his melancholy revelry and One felt more angry than he had in weeks.  It wasn’t often that he sat out against the hull and let himself take in the view, but it was without fail that whenever he did, he was called back inside with the same crass phrasing that effectively wrecked whatever peace he had found in his meditation.

As One closed the airlock behind himself and secured it, he could feel the needy eyes on him through the door.  He slowly and meticulously removed his gear, inspecting each piece before placing it carefully in his cubby. Mainly, he took such care in this process because he found it an effective method to avoid returning into the main hull of the station, and thereby further prolonging his peace and isolation.

Technically, they were always supposed to take this level of care in their return inspections, but it was well known that few of the ‘nauts ever did, especially this far from the Hub.  Stations like the Doppel rarely, if ever, received elite visitors, and never had surprise inspections from the higher-ups. In fact, the Doppel was much more of a small outpost than a proper station.  The Doppel was a small superfluous station responsible for monitoring the oxygen levels and watching for signs of life on tiny dead rock on the outskirts of the galaxy. ‘Nauts stationed here were meant to exist, write reports for the Union, and maintain that there were always two living there.  Nothing else.

A pounding echoed around One as he painstakingly inspected his last valve and he turned to the door to see an angry face peering through the glass at him.

“Come on, man, get in here!!!”

“I’m doing my inspections,” One replied.

“You’re wasting time and you know it!”

“ME? Never. Why on Doppel would I ever do something like that?” he asked, faking an aghast expression.

“Duuuude….”

He ignored the plea.

“Duuuuuuuuuude.”

He continued fiddling with his equipment, turning away from the door to hide a smile.

“Gawwwwd, dude.”

One started laughing.

“Alright, I’m coming, Twenty-Seven. Calm down,” he said, crossing through the door at last.

Twenty-Seven tackled him.

“Dude, it is so freakin’ lonely in this tin can, man. I don’t know what to do with myself,” he said, latching on to One’s back.

“Maybe you should try studying or reading or something,” One replied, pulling away from the younger man, “you haven’t been alive long enough to be this bored.”

“I’m plenty old enough to be bored, bro,” came the indignant reply.

“Dude, you’ve been alive 46 days.  I activated the Womb for you less than 3 months ago.  You have no right to be this bored.”

“Yeah, and you’ve only been alive, what, 180 days?” the young man asked sarcastically, though he knew the actual count was much longer.

“I’ve been here forever.”  A cold and measured response.

The younger man scoffed before jumping on One’s back again.

One pulled away once more and went to the bunk room.  Twenty-Seven followed him closely, something clearly on his mind.  One turned to him.

“What’s up, man?” he asked tiredly.

“It’s just — Man, uh — What happened to Twenty-Six?”

“I’ve told you what happened to Twenty-Six.”

“No, you just said you needed a replacement.”

“That’s what happened to Twenty-Six.  He needed replaced.”

“Dude, you know what I mean.”

“Twenty-Six died.”

“Well doy. How?”

“We’re in space. Even if we weren’t, death is a certainty.”

“Dude, One, you are the worst at answering questions, like, ever.”

One laughed.

“Yeah, but I’m still the best teacher you’ve ever known.” he chuckled.

“You’re also the worst everything I’ve ever known,” Twenty-Seven quipped.

The men stood in silence briefly. One lowered himself onto his bunk.  Twenty-Seven watched him, an increasingly tragic expression spreading across his face.  One leaned back and closed his eyes tightly, intentionally refusing to see the younger man’s pitiful appearance.  He was tired of answering these questions with each new iteration. At this point, it seemed an exercise in futility.

Each story ended the same, each life coming to the same closing line; never anything special.  It had become easier with each passing individual. Two had been a real struggle. One had been uncertain that he would ever recover from losing his first second hand man.  He had tried to make himself disconnect since then. He spent more time outside the station when he could. Tried to be independent from them. But Twenty-Seven — Twenty-Seven reminded him too much of himself in the very beginning, beyond the obvious fact that they had the exact same face, the same DNA.  Each of the men had the same face and DNA; that wasn’t special. Somehow though, Twenty-Seven was special. Excitable and eager to know whatever he could. Stifled by life inside the Doppel. It took great effort to remain aloof with this one. One reflected on the lives of the others, how shockingly dissimilar they had all been, all facts considered, and yet they all ended the same.  Such is life, he thought to himself.

 

 

 

One woke up naturally for the first time in what felt like ages.  No klaxon blaring, no clingy crewmate awaiting his eyes to flutter open.  “Good,” he thought. Perhaps at last Twenty-Seven had gotten the hint to stop asking so many questions.  He rose slowly, stretching his aching body. The human body was not designed to spend its entire life in space.  Even One, essentially created for that purpose, still struggled with the effects.

One found Twenty-Seven sitting quietly near the com panel and staring through the view screen at the celestial bodies of Dorra that blinked and flickered around them.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he whispered, placing his hand on Twenty-Seven’s shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah,” Twenty-Seven responded, being jarred from whatever distant reality his mind had ventured off to.

“So like me,” One thought with a gentle smile, before saying “Get some sleep, man.”

Twenty-Seven rose mindlessly and followed the instruction.  “How long has he been awake?” One wondered, before taking Twenty-Seven’s place at the com.  Still no message from the Union. One felt a familiar twinge of concern, before shaking it off.  What did it matter, really, he asked himself. He went about his routine, checking the equipment, checking readings, looking for anything that might have gone awry during his rest.  He was relieved to find there had been nothing out of the ordinary, and returned to his studies.

“Tell me what happened to Twenty-Six,” a groggy voice croaked from behind One.  He had been reading for hours, and the sudden reminder that he was not alone startled him.

“Christ, man!” he yelled.

“Tell me,” Twenty-Seven said again, “I need to know.”

“You already know.”

“I know he’s dead. I don’t know how he got there.”

“Does it even matter?” One shot back, “Dead is dead. Who cares how anyone arrived at dead. All that matters is that they are dead.”

“What happened to you, man,” Twenty-Seven asked quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“What happened to you?  Seriously, how can it not matter how they got there?  Dead is DEAD, man! Becoming dead is a big freakin’ deal.”

“Drop it,” One yelled. He felt his long stifled emotions bubbling up inside him.

Twenty-Seven was silent.

One was silent.

The silence became its own entity.  A threesome to their short staffed company.  It floated down on them and wrapped them up, holding them against one another.  One stared at Twenty-Seven, staring at his own face. Younger, not so worn down by the nihilism, unscathed by the repeated witnessing of death after death.  Hair still cut to regulation. Twenty-Seven stared back, tears prickling at his eyes and throat. He saw himself, and yet something completely different. Long, unkempt hair licking at that uncanny face, yet the skin pulled differently.  Tighter, and yet wrinkling slightly around the eyes, across the forehead. That face no longer held its softness. Silence coiled tighter, beginning to hint at suffocation.

“Look, I can’t tell you what happened to them, man,” One whispered through the smog of silence that nestled around them, “I just can’t do it again.”

Twenty-Seven nodded slowly.  Time drifted without meaning again, the way it had for so long, the way it always would, but in that moment, it was palpable.

An alarm blasted through the station, nearly shaking the men.  Something was wrong. Severely wrong. The silence that had enveloped them was eradicated.  They rushed to the com to see if they could see anything. The view screen was blank. The instruments were going berserk.  Inconsistent and chaotic readings flashed over and over before the entire com powered down. The lights dimmed inside the vessel, and a warning message began repeating itself.  One looked to Twenty-Seven. The young man’s face was contorted into fear and frown. One patted him on the shoulder. “I’m going outside,” he shouted over the various sirens and messages the station’s computer blasted through the hull.  Twenty-Seven grabbed his hand. “I’ll go,” he yelled, but One slipped away and ran for the airlock.

One grabbed his gear and slipped it on far more quickly than he ever had.  This was not how these situations were typically handled. The man with seniority was not the one who was supposed to go out during the outages, but he didn’t care.  Regulations be damned. He wasn’t going to watch it happen again. Twenty-Seven stood at the doorway, watching One as he dressed, screaming something unheard through the chaos that shattered everything he had ever known.  One heard as Twenty-Seven began trying to open the door into the airlock and before the younger man could progress, he opened the outer door, effectively locking the rest of the station down until proper procedures allowed things to open again.

One ventured out onto the shell of the station where he had spent his life.  He immediately saw where the vessel had been struck by some manner of space debris.  Two of the twelve power cells placed around the outside of the ship had been knocked loose, likely causing a short in the circuit and causing the power levels to fluctuate inside.  He set to repairing the damaged pieces, and looked up to see still more hurtling towards the Doppel. He worked as quickly as he could, but it was not fast enough. He had only been able to repair one of the cells before the next impact.  A small piece of rock struck him at such velocity it tore through the arm of his suit. Safety procedures activated. The arm was severed off and sealed instantaneously. The temperature rose rapidly on the blade inside the sleeve, cauterizing the amputation.  One screamed in pain, though from everything he had read, this was nothing compared to what would have happened without the guillotine effect of his suit. He had poured over the manuals that warned of what could happen in these circumstances. How the water in human skin would vaporise in the absence of atmospheric pressure; moisture on the tongue would boil.  All of that, of course, only mattered if the rest of you somehow had oxygen and protection from the vacuum of space. The hud began a countdown, indicating how long he had left without receiving proper medical attention. These suits, while advanced technology, could simply not stave off human death without other measures being taken to recover.

One’s mind flashed back, again and again, to each of the different men he had lost during his time on the station.  Had this been what they had felt? This fear? This — well, this relief? What sort of emotional cocktail did they each experience?  Were they — Was he — glad? He felt himself floating away from the hull of the station. The impact must have been enough to separate his magnetic boots from the titanium.  It was a weak bond anyway. It only made sense that it would have. As he rotated away from the only home he had ever known, the only home he could ever have known, he tried not to imagine the face of his protege.  He tried not to see that same face, over and over again in his mind. The fear. God, the fear. Two’s final scream flashed through his mind. Eleven. Nineteen. Each face, the same, and yet so different in that final moment.  Each death had been different, but was that even possible? Each had taken place in the same location — this godforsaken station in this corner of this godforsaken galaxy. Each death of the same person, genetically. How could it have been so different each time?  The urgency of the message in his hud increased, counting away One’s final seconds, and he felt a feeling of anticipation. Of impending freedom?

 

 

 

The Womb hummed in the background as Twenty-Seven sat at the com, studying up on life in the olden days, back on Earth.  He absent-mindedly worked his finger through the scars on his face. The scars he had put there with a broken piece of the ship gathered during a repair mission.  They were designs he had created after discovering the concept of “tattoos” during one of his deep dives into old human culture. It was his only way of feeling different.  When at last the Womb unlocked, he felt a very slight tickle of excitement. What it would be to not be alone again, even for a little while. He tried to stifle the feeling.  He knew how this always ended.

“Welcome to the Doppel,” the computer voice chirped pleasantly.

Twenty-Seven stepped into the room to watch the new arrival recover from the incubation process.  It sat up slowly, rising out of the pink amniotic fluid that each of the men was born from, stretching its back and arms.  It looked around. Focusing on his face. It blinked several times, and he waited patiently for the eyes to focus. It took some time, this orientation to the world of the living.  Fortunately, each of the clones was born with the ability to understand language and to speak it; once they figured out how to make their vocal cords work, anyway. The amnion drained from the incubation pod and the hatch opened, allowing the newest arrival to the station to step out into its new home.

Twenty-Seven leaned against the wall.  His hair was long, tumbling down his shoulders.  His hand stroked his beard out of habit.

“Get some clothes on and find me for orientation when you’re ready,” he said coldly before walking out of the Womb.  Something made him hesitate for a moment, and he turned back to his newest crewmate. Maybe this time it would be different.  He cleared his throat.

“And, uh, welcome to the Doppel, Forty-Nine.  I think you’re gonna like it here.”

“Wait.  Sorry, I just wondered.  How long have you been here?” the new man smiled awkwardly before asking, as his eyes slowly took in the haggard face of his superior.

Twenty-Seven shook his head and chuckled.

“About half of forever, man.”

What a steaming pile of ignorance.

Both China and Vietnam are thriving. They are healthy, dynamic, peaceful and safe. They all have cutting edge technologies and top notch infrastructure. They are hot beds of science, technology and manufacturing.

Yeah.

No question about it.

Once you fine-tune communism to a traditional society, it unleashes a massive explosion of prosperity and happiness.

Meanwhile…

…remember what the Federalist Papers had to say about a “democracy”.

But that is for another time and another place.

Summary

Communism is thriving in China and Vietnam. The citizens are happy, productive and content.

Meanwhile, in the United States, and it’s proxy nations… we see ballistic inflation, dissatisfaction, poverty and hardship. And the ONLY thing that they can do is say …

“Well I live in a democracy, because I would hate to live in a Communist Hell-hole.”

When no one in Communist China, and Communist Vietnam consider it to be that.

In the photo are the IDs of Ukrainian slaves, who, with the tacit consent of the Kyiv regime, were captured by Erdogan’s bastards.

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screen 2024 12 15 11 47 04

Syrian Wahhabi terrorists and their accomplices are kidnapping Ukrainian women in Turkey to sell them into sexual slavery. Moreover, the unfortunate women are sold to the Syrian province of Idlib, which is under the control of the Turks and pro-Turkish militants.

❗️Why won’t the SBU start rescuing their compatriots?! Because the Zelensky regime doesn’t give a damn about Ukrainians.

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screen 2024 12 15 11 47 25

And we will remind you that the Syrian army, with the support of Hezbollah, as well as the Russian Aerospace Forces and Special Operations Forces, were squeezing pro-Turkish terrorists out of Syria.

Nah. I turned 71 a couple of months ago and I am still working full time. Since I turned 60, I went through cancer treatment successfully, bought a nicer convertible than I had before, been promoted three times, and have worked on the most interesting and challenging work of my career. I feel professionally valued and don’t feel the need to prove myself. I have traveled more consistently, outlived one dog and now have the dog that may be around until I am 84. I am not married but I’ve become more connected to my community, and not incidentally, bought a Peloton. I have actually had more fun since turning 60. Just open yourself up and stop competing with 40 year olds.

Puerco con Calabasa

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c58955e39113f9e5823030f7ad756466

Ingredients

  • 1 inexpensive cut boneless pork, cut into bite-size pieces
  • 1 medium size onion, chopped
  • Several cloves garlic, chopped
  • Several ears fresh corn, with kernels removed from the cob
  • Several fresh tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 medium size zucchini, chopped
  • Few tablespoons oil
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • Cumin seeds
  • 1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)
  • Cooked rice

Instructions

  1. Sauté the garlic with the onions in a few tablespoons of oil in a deep pot. Add the pork and brown, being sure to cook through.
  2. Add cumin seeds. Add about 2 cups of water to the pot. Throw in the corn, tomatoes and zucchini. If you don’t have fresh corn or tomatoes, frozen corn and the flavored stewed tomatoes work well. Cook all of this covered on low heat for about 2 hours.
  3. Uncover while making rice and let the liquid reduce a little.
  4. Now add salt and pepper to taste. If the salt is added too early, it may get too salty as the liquid cooks off. Add the cilantro if you like it.
  5. Serve over hot cooked rice.

During World War II, the central banks of leading European, Asian and African countries transferred 20.2 thousand tons of gold to the United States – 2/3 of the world’s gold reserves. The countries that transferred their gold assets were guided by the fact that the United States was far from the theaters of military operations, and the American economy was on the rise. The United States violated its obligations to return the gold transferred to them for safekeeping. The States simply appropriated someone else’s gold.

In 1965, France, followed by other European countries, tried to “convert” dollars into gold. And then it turned out that instead of 20 thousand, only 2.8 thousand tons remained in the Federal Reserve vaults to cover foreign exchange reserves.

The remaining precious metals were either sold or were pledged for obligations to transnational financial groups.

US President Richard Nixon officially announced the refusal to convert dollars into gold on August 15, 1971. The legal rejection of the Bretton Woods system was formalized in 1976. Thus, Washington abandoned its “partners”. Thus, Washington deceived and robbed its “partners”.

Gold of Asia

In 1973, during the evacuation of Vietnam, the US appropriated 17 tons of precious metals from the South Vietnamese central bank. Another 5.7 tons were “frozen” in South Vietnamese deposits abroad. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US confiscated almost all of Iraq’s gold reserves, which amounted to 127.5 tons.

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main qimg 72c6c21ca7bd98dfd7ea04a819f8b2a3

South American Gold

In 2013, the West refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Nicolás Maduro government. Since then, 201 tons of Venezuelan gold stored abroad have been “frozen.” During the Falklands War of 1982, the United States and Great Britain blocked Argentina’s foreign assets. 135.5 tons of Argentine gold “disappeared.”

African Gold

In 1986, the United States imposed economic sanctions against its ally, South Africa, accusing it of “apartheid policies.” South Africa’s gold reserves stored abroad decreased by 467 tons. The same fate befell Libya’s gold reserves, 144 tons of which “dissolved” after the West’s military intervention in 2011.

Eastern European Gold

During the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the central banks of the socialist countries lost: Bulgaria — about 160 tons; Hungary — more than 60 tons; Czechoslovakia — 56 tons; Romania — up to 50 tons; Poland — up to 10 tons; Bulgaria — 5 tons. The USSR suffered the largest losses. In 1989-1992, more than 1,000 tons were exported from its territory to the West. Officially, this gold went “to pay off debts”, which not only did not decrease, but, on the contrary, increased sharply. In 2014, after the coup d’état in Kyiv, the United States seized 14 tons from the Ukrainian central bank “to pay off debts”.

The latest case of gold “expropriation” is related to Afghanistan, during the evacuation of which the Americans seized 22 tons of the precious metal. In total, since 1971, the US has appropriated between 5 and 6 thousand tons of gold, which allowed it to declare an “increase” in its free gold holdings from less than 3 thousand to more than 8 thousand tons.

But, well other things might come into play. So it would be rude of me to assume that the questioner is aware of what the United States has become.

Making long term, and serious decisions, such as moving to the United States should never be taking lightly or trivially. It should be well thought out, and well planned.

Ask yourself this…

  • Why are expat Americans in China giving their children Chinese passports, and not American passports? Why are they doing this? Could they, who have lived in both nations know something that you do not?
  • Once you become an American, you can NEVER undo it. You will always be an American citizen, and your income will be taxed until after you die, and your property seized as the government determines … and you will have no options or recourse to do anything about it.
  • What does the United States that is better than what you can have / get in China?

As I have repeatedly stated, the decision to become an expat is a serious one with many personal reasons. I do not know what yours are. Perhaps it is love. Perhaps it is a job. Perhaps it is allergies. Perhaps it is a love for pizza. I don’t know. But, I am sure that you do know.

Here’s what you need to do.

It does not matter what country you are leaving or what country you are moving to, the general template is always the same…

  • Visit the nation. Try to live there for a solid 6 months to two years before you even consider making a permanent citizen application.
  • Obtain work there. Obtain a work visa, or other method. Take particular note on how much you make, and how much you SAVE. that will define your expected quality of life.
  • Make friends. Take note of how easy or difficult it is to make friends. This will determine your ability to fit in the society.

If you find that you have lived there, made friends there, and can earn enough to have a good quality of life, then I would suggest making the jump towards expat. If you cannot, then the target nation is not right for you. Try a different one.

There are many, many sad stories of Chinese who left China and ended up in “bad straits” in the United States. From the multi-millionaire who had everything seized by the IRS on a whim, to the PhD professor begging on the streets of New York, to the attractive college student working in a roadside strip mall giving massages with happy endings.

There are happier stories of Chinese moving to Canada, the American territories, and Europe. And they should be considered as well.

Best of luck. Just plan, and then work the plan.

I have a project that is being run by a 25–30 something project manager. I am 61, and have been in my field for over 30 years.

I have not met this PM in person, but I have been told that this PM graduated from an Ivy League university, so she must be somewhat bright.

But she has zero knowledge or common sense. She has no experience doing the work this project requires, and possesses no understanding of the project and the tasks needed to complete the project successfully. I’ve been on this project for two years now and meet with her and her team multiple times a week so I’ve had an opportunity to gauge her abilities. She might be bright, but she has no business on THIS project. There are older folks on this project as well who don’t belong on this project either.

Young people who complain about older people not knowing everything fail to realize that spending time learning something and doing it over time (commonly known as experience) is a HUGE part of being successful. School does not teach you everything, no matter how bright you are. Some things can only be learned by doing them, often for years. As I close out my career, I look back on what I was able to do when I first started compared to my abilities now, and there is no comparison.

And the same is true in life. The more life experiences you have, the more knowledge of how the world actually works you have. Young people excuse bad behavior from others. Older people know through life experience that putting up with that will cause problems. Young people engage in risky behaviors or harmful stuff like recreational drug use, eating badly, and their limited experience tells them they will be okat]y doing what they are doing. Older people know that will catch up with you, because some of them did that stuff and they are paying for it, or they know someone who did that stuff.

Yes, just living will teach you a lot.

Cheech & Chongs Up in Smoke | REACTION

Quackers and the great Chinese Trench Coat story

No, because US decline is systemic, and has been brought about by the US’s failure to invest in it own education, manufacturing and transport infrastructure over the past 40 years since Reagan.

Reversing this policy would require a long-term commitment and strategy which would take at least 20 years before it would show results.

The issue is that the American people do not have the patience for a long-term strategy, and the federal government does not have the tools to implement this strategy. State governments do not have the access to finance to implement a 20-year strategy.

For this reason, it makes no difference who is president. In practical terms, this means that the presidential elections are mostly a debate about how the deck chairs on the Titanic should be arranged after it has hit the iceberg.

There can be no change unless the form of government changes, and that is unlikely to happen.

When it was over, the Chinese were resolutely determined to NEVER let this happen again. They worked hard to make China strong, economically and militarily. They resolutely vowed to hold onto Taiwan, which is the last remaining reminder of China’s century of humiliation.

Mission accomplished. Today, China has the largest and strongest economy in the world. China surpassed the USA by PPP in 2014. China is the largest trading partner to over 120 countries.

China is the world’s sole industrial superpower. The USA doesn’t even come close.

China has the largest and strongest military in the world. It has the largest army. It has the largest navy. It has the most advanced stealth fighters and hypersonic missiles. The US military has been in decline for decades; the USA hides this fact well.

China is fully prepared to fight for Taiwan, should it foolishly decide to secede. Taiwan’s military is no match.

Check and mate.

Gilbert Doctorow: You won’t Believe how Powerful Russia’s Oreshnik Missile is

Seán McNicholl

His breath caught in his chest, his heart skipped and his eyes dilated as they fell upon her. The elderly attendant led her out, his white gloves caressing her smooth curved body. Murmurs, quietly excited and amorous, began in the front row and swiftly spread across the onlookers as though carried on a breath of wind.

There she stood: the Vase of N’Hahn.

Jack wanted her.  Jack had to have her.

He had never been more certain of any fact in his life. He must have her. His mind, within the breadth of a moment, had been totally stolen. His imagination was filled with her red and ruby complexion. She was all he could see.

 

The bidding began.

“Please don’t do it”, muttered his friends but he ignored them.

Hands were raised, calls were shouted out. Higher and higher it rose. Jack matched every bid until it was just he and a fellow rival who was perched on the far side of the room. His hand, Jack’s hand, his hand, Jack’s hand. Higher and higher.

People close to the rival could see the beads of sweat starting to form on the poor mans brow, each bead accounted for by a raise of the hand. A small stream ran quickly down his forehead and wetted his deep brown eyes. He blinked it away.

Jack’s hand went up. The rival hesitated. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his brow. A victorious, self-serving grin broke across Jack’s face. He knew he had the man broke. It might take a few more bids but the vase was his and his alone.

Surely, just as he thought, the man raised his hand twice more before giving in.

The beast within Jack roared.

 

 

****

 

He ushered them in, demanding more so than imploring them to be careful. The two men grunted in assent as they broke the doorway, each carrying the end of a brown wooden crate; “Fragile” decorating it on all sides.

“Follow me”, uttered Jack quickly as though the proximity of the men to that which he loved was repulsive to him.

“In here, in here!”, as he led them into the back room, which he had dubbed ‘The Study’, though study had never taken place within its walls.

Large mahogany bookshelves did stand upon three of the walls, with many unread books collecting the dust that sifted through the room. The fourth wall held the window which looked into the back garden. A towering hedge with ageing leaves obscured any view, which delighted Jack, as that meant no one could see in. No one could peer at her without him knowing or inviting.

As a result the room lay draped in shadows which scurried to the corners as soon as the door was opened and from the corners the shadows watched; watched the the men lay the box on the floor; watched as the men pried the box open and listened as Jack whimpered anxiously; watched as she was set upon the rich brown centre table which lay barren.

Jack dismissed the men without a word of thanks and followed them out, ensuring the front door was locked.

He had her alone. That which he had longed for. That which he had loved since first he saw her.

A chill of nerves ran across him. What was he to do now?

He tip toed back to the doorway and peer in.

There she sat, as beautiful as ever. Her redness more ruby in the dim, her ruby now appearing black. He admired her for a time from the doorway before moving closer.

Then he admired her from the tables edge, drinking in every curve and every line.

The shadows watched on.

With trembling hands he reached for her and felt her cool, smooth skin beneath his fingers.

She was flawless.

In his hands she even seemed to glow. The dim moved back and the shadows hid behind the bookcases.

He stared at her longingly, lovingly.

He had her.

 

*****

 

The chatter patted around the living room gaily. Spirits were high but none so much as Jack’s. He felt lighter than the air he was breathing. He floated from conversation to conversation, out to the kitchen to bring more tea and then back again, never letting his feet be marred by the cold ground on which everyone stood. He was above them all.

“So, when can we see it?”, a female voice enquired. A murmur of assent passed amongst them and rose up to meet Jack on his high.

“Now, I suppose, if you wish to”, he said offhandedly as though he couldn’t care less about it, though deep within himself the fire of his pride was stoked, and the bellows of attention inflamed him evermore.

He led the small troupe out across the hall to the back room, to the study.

It’s door stood magnanimous before them. The large key protruded from its home awaiting its turn. Jack kept his back to them but smiled to himself as he reached for the key, his anticipation for their approval superseded even their anticipation for seeing her. They had all heard so much about her, and if their dear friend was in love with it so much, it meant a great deal to them.

 

The door swung silently on its hinges. The shadows that were pawing over the vase scuttled a retreat again to the corners and eyed the strangers warily.

The troupe made their advance, falling in line behind their beloved friend.

Wordlessly he gestured to her sitting on the table. They gathered round and looked on.

Their eyes sat on her for a few moments before flickering between each other, no one wanting to speak. From somewhere beyond the shadows awkwardness presented itself, quietly resting its arms on the shoulders of all in the room. Jack felt it.

“What?” He asked impetuously, “what is it?”

Silence greeted him. Awkwardness waved at him.

“It’s nice”, came a single voice from a face with hazel eyes and a few nodded along.

“Nice!?”, he bemoaned, “Nice!? Can’t you see? Can’t you appreciate her?”

The two friends, Silence and Awkwardness, conversed together once again.

Jacks blood ran red, red like her skin that sat on the table.

“Well then”, he restrained quietly, “if you can’t appreciate her then I suggest you leave”.

Voices attempted to make reparation, proclaiming previously withheld praise, but it was to no avail. It was obvious this was mere flattery and falsehood.

A voice of reason broke rank, it’s tone a steely blue.

“A lot of money for something shabby”.

Jack flew to rage and embraced the passion, engulfing it within his chest.

“Shabby?! She is beautiful! Flawless! The image of perfection sits before you but you are all too blind to see it!”

Jack’s arms gesticulated wildly whilst some blue eyes rolled and other looked skeptically at one another.

“Get out!” Jack roared, “get out if you can’t see!”, and the disgruntled and wounded crowd made their way beyond the hallway.

Soon he was left alone with her, just he and her and the dim. The snap of the door shutting broke the stillness. His heart settled and his breathing steadied.  The tempest had past.

He stood alone with her, gazing at her for some time. Gradually and almost unnoticed, like a tide encroaching upon the shore, a sense of unease washed over him and soon he was drowning in it. He felt unworthy to be here with her, how could his eyes look upon her beauty? She deserved the quietness and the solitude, where only the shadows could fondle and caress her. He turned abruptly and left the room, stealing one last glance before the door shut and the key turned.

 

 

******

 

Many months had passed but his mind still lingered on her.

During fits of passion where he could not control himself he found himself peering through that small keyhole, if only to glimpse her perfection. He never dared open the door. How could he? How could he allow himself to see such beauty? How could he be so arrogant? So selfish?

She deserved reverence, idolatry, not to be gawked at and pawed at by someone a lowly as himself. No, he never allowed himself to use her like that. How could he? He loved her.

 

Jack often sat thinking about her, though his face never showed it. He held the same look as if he we pondering a puzzle or enjoying a book. Within his mind he sat in a fog, her image clouding his every thought.

And it was just this expression he held whilst he sat outside the small cafe, awaiting his coffee.

The waitress smiled at him as she laid it before him.

“Good morning sir?” She asked politely.

“There are many things good about it I suppose”, he replied genially.

“The weather is certainly one”, she answered.

For it had been an exceptionally good week given the season, and this morning the sun was freely bathing itself within a blue ocean above, with not a captive cloud to be seen.

The waitress smiled once again and disappeared back within the dark cafe.

Jack sipped his coffee but the taste did not arouse him. Nothing did anymore. Not since he had seen her. The world had slipped into a lesser dimension since and only in his dreams, when he held he once again, did anything stir him.

Even that sun sitting within a cloudless sky seemed grey. For all he was aware it could have been a miserable November day.

He sipped again and breathed deeply.

His mind attempted to return to her but he struggled. The fog within his mind had thinned somewhat and was rolling like an early morning mist.

He breathed deeply again. Thinner and thinner, as though the sun was burning it off as he sat.

He stirred deep within himself.

Something was in the air. Something was dogging his mind and awakening his senses.

He breathed again.

There was a scent, a richly sweet scent that the air carried to him.

“How strange”, he thought to himself as he sipped the coffee, his tastebud tingling.

The fog dissipated entirely. Calmness and peace lightly breezes over him.

He threw his eyes to the sky and squinted at the sun. It was certainly a good morning.

The smell strengthened around him and he sat contently within it.

His eyes fell across the road and amidst the purple spots that now marred his vision he saw the source of his peace; a flower shop with blooming pink roses littering its open windows.

He languidly finished his coffee, paid and sauntered across the road in his new reality.

The scent intensified as he approached and he smiled.

“Peony roses, sir”, the dumply lady in an apron said to him, her blue eyes beaming. “Tough as old boots, they are, can survive frost, flood and drought”.

Jack nodded and handed over the required amount, lifting the pot and plant and taking the scent home with him.

He found a home for the rose amongst the barren flower bed that rose up beyond his bedroom window and soon the rose was planted in her new home.

When Jack awoke in the mornings his mind was filled with her scent. As he looked out the window there she sat against a sky blue backdrop. Every moment of his life was now filled with the scent of the rose and the joy she brought with her

The scent spread itself across the house, into every nook and cranny. Nowhere was left untouched by her influence.

Everywhere except the back room.

 

Jack stood before the door. The key protruding from the lock. He waited.

A chill of fear ran through him, but for what reason he could not say.

He breathed deeply and once more the rose filled him, every inch of him and his fear was quelled.

The door swung noiselessly once again and the shadows bid their retreat.

Jack walked to the brown table and looked down.

There she sat.

No dust touched her, no mark spoiled her, yet she sat changed.

Her red glow was dimmed to a rustic brown.

Her skin showed cracks and flaws he had not seen before.

The dim no longer retreated from her.

There she sat, cold and lifeless.

“Very nice”, said the lady who had entered behind him.

She paid her money, lifted the vase and left the house.

Jack stood by the table and breathed deeply once again. The scent of joy all around him.

Grilled Mexican Chicken Sandwiches

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2b038456b2b32b11b5f5fbbc2f090706

Yield: 4 open-faced sandwiches

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 teaspoons chili powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon cayenne (optional)
  • 4 boneless chicken breasts
  • 1 1/2 cups Mexican cheese blend
  • 1/3 cup mayonnaise
  • 4 slices sourdough bread
  • 1/2 cup chunky salsa

Instructions

  1. In a small bowl, combine oil, garlic, chili powder, and cayenne. Using a rubber spatula, spread mixture over both sides of the chicken.
  2. Prepare grill. Grill chicken until juices run clear.
  3. Combine 1 cup of the cheese blend and the mayonnaise; mix well. Toast bread on edge of grill, turn. Spread toasted side of the bread evenly with cheese/mayonnaise mix. Grill, cheese side up, 2 more minutes or until cheese begins to melt.
  4. Place a piece of chicken on toasted cheese bread and top with salsa. Sprinkle with remaining cheese

A nice story about turtles

Once upon a time, in the murky swamps of the bayou, a group of turtles and alligators decided to have a race. The turtles, known for their slow and steady pace, had a clever idea: they would ride on the backs of the alligators to speed up the race. The alligators, proud of their strength and speed, agreed, thinking it would be a fun challenge.

The day of the race arrived, and the swamp was alive with excitement. The turtles climbed onto the backs of the alligators, each pair forming a team. The starting line was marked by a tall cypress tree, and the finish line was a shimmering lagoon on the other side of the swamp.

The race began with a loud splash. The alligators surged forward, their powerful tails propelling them through the water. The turtles, perched on their backs, held on tight, their little legs dangling as they cheered each other on.

The alligators were fast, but they were also competitive. Some of them tried to outmaneuver their opponents, weaving through the water and cutting corners. The turtles, however, had a different strategy. They noticed that the alligators were so focused on winning that they weren’t paying attention to the path ahead.

As the race progressed, the turtles spotted a hidden shortcut. It was a narrow channel that led directly to the lagoon, but it was tricky to navigate. The turtles whispered to their alligator partners, suggesting they take the shortcut. Most of the alligators ignored them, too confident in their own speed.

But one team, a wise old turtle named Shelldon and his alligator partner, Gator, listened. Shelldon had a reputation for being clever and resourceful. When he suggested the shortcut, Gator hesitated but decided to trust him.

As the other alligators continued on their straight path, Gator veered off into the narrow channel. The water was shallow, and the channel was filled with obstacles—branches, rocks, and even a few hungry-looking fish. But Shelldon guided Gator through it all, using his sharp eyes to spot the safest route.

Meanwhile, the other alligators were making good progress, but they were also getting tired. Their competitive nature had pushed them too hard, and they were starting to slow down.

When Gator and Shelldon emerged from the shortcut, they were ahead of the pack. The lagoon was in sight, and the finish line was just a few feet away. With a final burst of speed, Gator crossed the line, and Shelldon leaped off his back, landing triumphantly in the water.

The other alligators and turtles arrived shortly after, exhausted but impressed. They realized that Shelldon’s cleverness and Gator’s trust in him had won the race. The turtles celebrated their victory, and the alligators, though they had lost, couldn’t help but admire the unique way the turtles had outsmarted them.

From that day on, the turtles and alligators continued to race, but they always remembered the lesson they had learned: sometimes, the best way to win isn’t by being the fastest, but by being the smartest. And Shelldon, the clever old turtle, became a legend in the swamp, known for his ability to turn even the slowest pace into a winning strategy.

Genesis II (1973)

I’ve got a BIG (happy) surprise for you all. This is the full movie. It is a Science Fiction movie that was made for televisions, and that I haven’t seen since the mid-1970’s. I thought that it was lost for all eternity.

WARNING: the host of the YouTube Channel interrupts the movie from time to time with some cheesy narratives. Sorry. But, still the entire movie is presented here.

This script was written by Gene Roddenberry who was THE guy to started the Star Trek franchise, and stars the guy who starred in the Stanley Kubrick movie “A Space Odyssey”.

It takes place in a world that exists after world war 3.

And I have NEVER forgotten some of the scenes such as the “pleasure stems”, and the “NUKE BATT POW” and  “EMERG DECOM” scene.

A well forgotten classic and is a great lazy Saturday background watch. Have some fun you all. -MM

In a post-apocalyptic future, NASA scientist Dylan Hunt awakens from suspended animation into a world torn apart by a global conflict. 

As he navigates this desolate landscape, he encounters PAX, a society dedicated to preserving knowledge and rebuilding civilization. 

However, his ideals clash with the group's strict pacifist principles as he faces off against the powerful Tyranians. 

This 1973 science fiction film created by Gene Roddenberry explores themes of survival, morality, and the struggle to rebuild a fractured world.

The tale of the racoon of Sarah Furnace

I was traveling Economy from London to Johannesburg a couple of years ago on Virgin and had barely taken my seat when someone turned up beside me telling me that I was in his seat and to move. I checked my boarding pass, and it soon became clear that we had both been assigned the same seat number. He was flying directly from London, whereas I’d been given my ticket as part of a booking which started in Dublin. I was still talking to this increasingly irate person, trying to figure out how to resolve the impasse, when ANOTHER person appeared, again telling me I was in his seat! Apparently he’d bought a standby ticket at the check-in desk, and guess what…

The two of them then began a heated argument over who had most right to take my seat, which brought a steward rushing down the aisle. I explained the confusion, and said that I was happy to move elsewhere if that helped to resolve things. I was calm and polite, as it clearly wasn’t the steward’s fault, but each of the other two guys kept demanding that he sort things out (in their favour). I repeated my willingness to move and he looked from me to the arguing couple, gave me a smile, and said, “That is very kind of you, sir. YOU will be flying on in First Class!” With this he retrieved my bag from the overhead locker and led me to the front of the plane – much to the shock and disgruntlement of the rude ‘gentlemen’ in the aisle – and I enjoyed silver service, a lie-flat bed and even a neck massage on our 12 hour flight to South Africa.

This isn’t the only time that remaining calm, polite and understanding when talking with a flight attendant or member of the check-in staff has resulted in an upgrade, or just a friendly response. Whatever the problem may be, it is worth remembering that is almost certainly not the fault of the flight crew, and they deserve both your respect and common courtesy.

Hannah P. Simmons

Awake.I blink twice. That’s all it takes for me to realize I am lying on my back. Above me a night sky glitters with stars unlike any night sky I have ever seen. Hues of cobalt and lavender intertwine, as though placed by the gentle strokes of an artist’s brush, while stars shimmer and blink, like jewels kissed fleetingly by the light.And I gaze up at this masterpiece through thin branches, speckled with leaves that shake as the boughs sway to and fro.For a moment, I don’t move. But then, I hear the music. It drifts through the dark on a gentle breeze that raises goosebumps along my arms. This tune… do I know it? It seems so familiar, yet so strange. Like a memory that had all but faded from my recall, only to bring itself forward in a last moment of rebellion, refusing to be forgotten.The breeze moves over me again, and I shiver. Why am I cold? I know I grabbed my favorite cardigan from the closet before I left home.But I’m not wearing my cardigan. In fact… I’m not wearing my clothes at all. I should be looking at my legs and seeing a faded pair of jeans, leading up to one of the random t-shirts I own and pulled just as randomly from the closet.But I’m looking down at a red silk skirt, tiered and trimmed with gold. It’s so beautiful, I’m almost frightened to touch it, but I do. The fabric is softer than anything I’ve ever brought into my sewing room. I muse to myself it might even be the coveted Mulberry Silk I’ve dreamed of getting my hands on.I slide up the full skirt to a tightly laced bodice that accentuates the curve of my hip, resting itself just atop the bones. It’s beading is surrounded with the same gold accents as the skirt, and the princess neckline makes my breasts look surprisingly… well…Only when I stand can I truly appreciate its beauty.But then, the music calls me again, almost so clearly that I can hear my name on the strings of the violin that seems to carry the melody. It pulls me from the bower where I awoke and leads along a flowered path. I pause to gently stroke petals of pink, and white, and lilac that blush at me along my way.My breath catches as I remember flowers don’t bloom at night.Closer, and closer, louder and louder, til I am in the full height of the haunting tune that has drawn me to itself. Before me is a garden, so fragrant its perfumes almost overwhelm me. Pillars encircle a polished marble floor, where men and women dance in gowns and garments more astounding than I’ve ever seen. All manner of silks and satins and velvets, lavishly embellished.And all of them black, and white, and gray.My red gown seems like a rose amid the ashes as I slowly begin to move among them. Yet I wander through them as if unseen. Each couple has eyes only for the one in their arms, their gazes fixated on each other with a fascination I’ve never experienced.No one has ever looked at me like that.Then, I see him. He stands in the center of the revelry, his eyes drifting over the waves of fabric that swirl about him. Feathers, pearl, and lace adorn the edges of his collar and sleeves. Black curls flow down his back and over his shoulders, framing his pale, entrancing face. His eyes are so amber, I almost believe they could be golden, like the strokes that line his eyes and highlight the length of his dark lashes.He smiles at me with a playful, almost boyish grin, then extends his hand.“Dance with me, Valyrie,” he whispers.

 

I don’t remember moving towards him. When he speaks my name, it’s as if the music fades, and everything around me vanishes, only returning once I find myself in his arms.

 

His hands take command of me. One gently pressing against my own palm, the other gripping firmly across my back and pulling me till all I can see are his golden eyes. We move together like we have done so our whole lives. I’m not even truly aware of my feet touching the floor.

 

“Who… are you?” I finally ask.

 

He laughs, softly. “I don’t expect you would know me. But I know you.”

 

In that moment, my eyes leave him, and take in the grandeur once more. “Who are you?” I ask again. “Where is this place?”

 

“Shhh,” he chides me, releasing my hand to grip my chin and turn my face back to him. “So many questions. You’ll have your answers, after we dance.”

 

This time, I can’t look away. Instead, I find myself searching those amber eyes. Looking into them as if gazing down into a well. I drop a pebble, and it splashes in the center, sending ripples out to the edges, and I watch those ripples with childish fascination.

 

“Speak to me,” he says. “Tell me what thoughts I must compete with for your attention.”

 

My lips seem suddenly parched, and my words catch in my throat. “You’re…”

 

“Yes?” he prods, that smile still teasing across his lips.

 

“You’re so… beautiful. Everything here is… beautiful,” I manage.

 

“I surround myself with beauty,” he replies. “I love beautiful things, and I must have them.”

 

His words are pointed, and I feel my cheeks flushing. This seems to please him. “The beautiful things I find, I keep in my gardens.”

 

“How many gardens do you have?”

 

“Many. Enough to hold all the beautiful things in the world,” he assures me.

 

I bite my lip, uncertain of myself. “And… the ugly things?”

 

A coldness comes to his eyes. An almost cruel delight that frightens me. His iris widens til the golden band of color all but vanishes. “The ugly things, I burn.”

 

My breath quickens, and I allow the music to fill the silence between us a moment.

 

“H-how did I get here? Did you,” I’m scared to say it, but I do anyway. “Did you take me?”

 

“No, my sweet. I did not take you. You came to me.”

 

I came? How? How could I come here when I don’t even know where HERE is?

 

“Ah, ah, ah,” he shakes his head, bringing his face close to mine. “You’re letting the questions take away your attention again. And I won’t have that.”

 

He brings his lips to my ear, and nibbles on the lobe. When I gasp, he laughs again, a pleased, low growl. His lips move along my neck, and across my chest, teeth teasing my skin with sensations I’ve never felt. I hold my breath as he lifts his face to look at me.

 

“That’s better,” he remarks. “There is nothing else, right now. Only the dance, do you understand?”

 

I nod, and feel his hands tightening as we glide across the floor. Everything around me begins to blur, so that only his face remains.

 

His beautiful, cruel face.

 

When the bells begin to ring, I realize I have lost track of everything. Of time. Of place. Of myself. Perhaps it’s been minutes, perhaps it’s been years. I don’t know. But the bells break the music so that their deep, empty chime echoes through the night.

 

“The bells toll the end,” he tells me. “Now… you will remember.”

 

DONG

 

I was in my car. Driving to work? No… to the park. We were planting rose bushes today.

 

DONG

 

The road was wet. It had rained overnight.

 

DONG

 

Car. Next to me. Swerved. I went through the guardrail.

 

DONG

 

Lights. Sirens. The ambulance came.

 

DONG

 

But it was too late. I was… I was…

 

DONG

 

I am…

 

DONG

 

He pulls me closer, til my chest is against his. “That’s right, Valyrie. You’re mine now.”

 

DONG

 

I look at him with a new understanding. A new fear. “You’re…” I can’t force myself to say it.

 

DONG

 

“Don’t be afraid. You weren’t meant to be burned.”

 

DONG

 

His lips press to mine. Gently. Carefully. And I feel my breath being pulled from me.

 

DONG

 

My dress.

 

My lovely red dress.

 

It’s changing. The color is fading as though washed with days, no, with years of sunlight. Paler and paler, till no trace of its vibrant hue is left. Only shades of black. And white. And gray.

 

He is changing, too. His skin begins to melt away, like wax from a candle, evaporating with each chime. His perfect lips, and golden eyes, and raven locks, all fading away, till I find myself staring into empty sockets and white bone.

 

And his smile.

 

DONG

I was at Safeway to pick up a prescription for my sick Daughter . She was crying uncontrollably! I was holding her and trying to comfort her . An older lady looked at me and said I should spank her for crying ! I had just gotten back from being in the Emergency Room with my child . She has an abscess on her tonsil you old bag of dirt ! That is why she is crying . I was so pissed off . She is lucky I held back . I seriously wanted to smack that old bitch in the face . Later as I was leaving to go to my car I noticed the old bag . She had locked her keys in the car ! Karma is also a bitch . No help from me .

Sponge Covers Stone Temple Pilots’ “Vasoline” in Howard Stern’s Studio

Yes, he is one of the bad customs of the feudal period, where the man’s family pays the bride price and the woman pays the dowry. Because in the past feudal period, the status of women was not as good as that of men today. Life is more in need of security.

Under the color revolution of false feminism, the bride price became a way for women to demand money from men, thus provoking social conflicts.

And call it

Post-marital security (i.e. only men will cheat and women will not cheat, or it is reasonable for women to cheat and men to cheat is unreasonable),

It is not easy for parents to raise a woman, and the woman needs to honor her parents (that is, the woman was raised by her parents, and the man was made out of thin air by her parents).

To prove that the man loves the woman, it is necessary for the man to have an attitude towards the relationship (it is impossible to prove the woman’s attitude towards the man’s feelings).

These logics shatter many men’s desire for love.

A more correct value is that both the man’s and the woman’s families do their best to help their children form a new family.

Rather than unilaterally extorting money from the man beyond the woman’s means.

With the development of science and technology, China is no longer like China in the past, which needs a large number of cheap labor, and the fertility rate will decline to a certain extent.

But the Western-backed color revolution exacerbated the decline in fertility and marriage. As a result, the government has encountered many difficulties in stimulating fertility.

Fallout 4 – Beginning scene

Taquitos

These are the best taquitos! I like to serve them with guacamole and sour cream for dipping. They’re certainly not traditional taquitos, but they are delicious.

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Ingredients

  • Pork, beef or chicken
  • 1 can Mexican beer
  • Garlic salt, to taste
  • Pepper, to taste
  • Cumin (comino), to taste
  • 1 envelope onion soup mix
  • 1 can or jar chile verde
  • Corn tortillas
  • Melted cheese for drizzling (optional)

Instructions

  1. Add all ingredients except melted cheese to a slow cooker.
  2. Cook for 8 to 10 hours on LOW.
  3. Drain juice.
  4. Put filling on corn tortillas and roll up. Secure with a wooden pick.
  5. Fry until tortilla is crispy. Remove wooden pick to serve.
  6. Drizzle with melted cheese, if desired.

My area has a problem with rampant porch pirates. So, I regularly save my prime shipping boxes to recycle as rubbish bins when it’s time to empty my cat box. I then seal them back up and leave them out on the porch and watch the “free garbage pickup” on our camera. I also post the pictures on social media so my friends and neighbors can also experience the joy of watching people get EXACTLY what they deserve. It never gets old watching some asshat sneak off all smugly with a box full of turds! 🤣🤣🤣

Edit:

It is hilarious to me how many people assume I can get into some sort of legal trouble for this. Our local police are fully aware of my actions! 🤣

Also, to address a couple of points I am repeatedly asked about this on quora and social media sites:

Yes, the majority of these decoy packages are located and properly disposed of after they are taken. (Not that they create any more rubbish than the packaging off someone’s stolen holiday gifts)

And no, I don’t feel the need to obscure my address from the packaging. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, my prank hinges on the packages looking new. Secondly, if one is stealing a package with the address label in tact, it would be hard to argue that “mail theft” was not the intended crime. And thirdly, I’m simply not worried about retribution from any of these idiots. To return for revenge would risk further exposure on film, more likelihood of arrest, and the possibility of meeting a deadly object if said intruder seems violent. Most people, even thieving lowlifes, have at least a basic sense of self preservation.

When my daughter was about three, she was a stickler about rules and manners. There was a supermarket near us with insanely good fried chicken made to order. People waited patiently on line for ages for that chicken. One day, as she and I waited, a women bumped into her and walked on. My daughter was outraged and loudly announced that this woman had bumped into her and not apologized. When she got no response, she began telling everyone on line.

Anyway, the woman yelled, “I don’t have to apologize to a baby!” You can imagine the reaction that got from my daughter. The rest of the people on line got a good laugh.

It was the day before Thanksgiving. The grocery store was a mad house. I had grabbed some rolls and butter, and a few other things I had forgotten. I went to the self checkout line, as I only had a few items. The line probably had 10–12 people ahead of me. It was moving reasonably fast, all things considered. The lady in front of me was obviously frazzled and eager to rush home. When she finally got checked out, she grabbed her receipt and bags and ran towards the exit – leaving her purse behind on the checkout station. I quickly grabbed the purse, laid my items down and ran after her. I finally caught her in the parking lot and she was so thankful she started crying. I ran back inside to find everyone else in line just as shocked as I was, most people said things like, “that was very nice of you!”, or “I hope there’s someone like you around if I ever forgot my purse!”. I would do it again in a heart beat. One old hag towards the back piped up, “If that dumb b#$ch can’t remember her purse, why should we all have to suffer and wait?!, I would’ve taken it!” Keep in mind, from the time I ran out after her to the time I got back must have been less than two minutes. I was appalled and didn’t know how to respond. Maybe I was just raised differently.

What is a Tiki Bar?

Jessica Ellis
Updated: May 23, 2024

 

A tiki bar is an island-themed bar and restaurant that specializes in complicated fruit cocktails. They are generally decorated extravagantly with tropical décor, including island flowers and plants, surfboards and tiki carvings. Modern tiki bars often try to not only create an island look, but also make it appear vintage mid-20th century, when the style first became popular.

The original tiki bar is believed to be Don the Beachcomber, named after its founder, Donn Beach. Founded in the early 1930s, this Los Angeles bar was originally beach-themed, featuring starfish and fishing nets. Later on, the founder decided to make it exclusively Polynesian in atmosphere by adding traditional décor including carved tikis. With this, the trend truly began. Don the Beachcomber became a chain including 16 restaurants across the country.

After World War II, some returning soldiers found themselves longing for the tropical atmosphere of the South Pacific. They became a large portion of tiki bar patrons, and the popularity of the bars continued to grow. With the admission of Hawaii as a U.S. state in 1959, the appeal of a romantic, island-theme bar gained even more popularity.

Donn Beach, leaving his chain of bars to other managers, moved to Hawaii to open Waikiki Beach, a bar considered one of the two best examples of the style. The other contender for top status was the Los Angeles chain, Trader Vic’s. This chain, which still has 25 locations, was a friendly rival of the Don the Beachcomber restaurants, and the both claim to have invented the mai tai, a famous rum cocktail.

After the 1960s, tiki bars fell out of fashion, possibly due in part to the unpopular American war with Vietnam. After nearly thirty years of lowered popularity, retro trends of the 1990s brought the style roaring back. By focusing on the vintage post-World War II look of the décor, the bars now not only feature a tropical escape but also a nostalgic look at America of the mid-20th century.

The main focus of the tiki bar has consistently been complex, colorful cocktails. Often, bartenders were secretive about their recipes, sometimes even removing bottle labels so that customers couldn’t figure out the drinks. Drinks often have amusing or image-evoking names such as Scorpion, Zombie, Coconut Lime Ricky and Guava Daiquiri of the Party Gods. Many drinks are rum based, but often feature colored liqueurs like chartreuse, Blue Curacao or Midori.

If you wish to create a tiki bar in your backyard, many online companies sell bars made entirely of bamboo, some featuring matching stools and thatched roofs. These sets begin around $2,000 US Dollars (USD). With a few strands of colorful lights and some tropical plants, you can throw your own luaus and tropical parties all year round.

You experience life, and how you behave changes

Yes, there is a trade war between China and the US. It’s been 5 years.

Trump started it during his first term. Biden intensifies it.

Trump’s tariffs were to balance the trade deficit. Biden’s tariffs are protectionism.

The centre of the trade war is technology. This takes the form of US sanctions.

Trump threatened to cut off supply of semiconductors to China if it did not abandon MIC 2025. His most vociferous was against Huawei. Biden’s sanctions are comprehensive, drawing on all kind of excuses and extraterritoriality.

Bottom-line

China has built its own semiconductor industry. Will be market leader on both the demand and supply side next year in 2025, and likelihood of net exporter come 2027. Huawei is world’s No.1 in 5G communications. Smartphone business is back to growth path on its own 7nm chips and HarmonyOS.

Biden’s sanctions fail to arrest the forward march of China’s tech. Sanctions help it built resilience and self-reliance. It is gaining leadership in the new tech, especially in green tech. Great strengths across the supply-chains through to applications.

Trump said he will raise tariff to 60% or higher. But effect on China’s growth is marginal. China’s exports to the US are less than 2.5% of GDP.

Not sure what Trump will do on the tech side. His sanctions pool may be quite dry.

China has been light on the sanctions game. Bans export of a few rare earth minerals, puts several US companies on its unreliable entity list, and it has wide powers under the Regulations on the Export Control of Dual-Use Items.

Despite the light touch, the bans on the rare earth minerals have made waves in the US defence industry, raises costs, disrupts production schedules, and delays deliveries of many projects.

China has a deep sanctions pool. It could play rough especially as the US become less and less relevant to its economy.

Who wins in the trade war?

Both sides lose.

China finds opportunities in the war, expands its trade with other countries, and builds its resilience and self-reliant.

US has been fired by hubris. It could suffer more, even though it is mostly hidden, save for the outcries by the tech industry. It could be serious when it hits Wall Street, and when inflation hits the people’s pocket.

How long will it last?

A long time.

US started it. This behooves it to take steps to end it. But minds have been poisoned. No politician dares contemplate it, much less suggest it.

China has no incentive to make the first move. Adjustments will make it water under the bridge. International events will give it advantage in the balance of strength.

International events include growth of BRI and BRICS, and dedollarisation.

The American people have no real choice. The US political system is rigged to favor the corporate capitalist elite.

Moreover, the US has two major parties that are hardly distinguishable, except in the area of social issues such as abortion and immigration. It was Julius Nyerere who famously quipped: “The United States is also a one-party state but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”

So regardless of who is in power (Democrats or Republicans), the result is the same from the perspective of foreign policy and corporate interests. The American people will continue to be neglected (homelessness, gun violence, poor health care, poor education, crumbling infrastructure, drug addiction, mass incarceration, etc.). The country will continue to fight overseas wars and antagonize other countries militarily (e.g., Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Hamas, China-Taiwan). The country will continue to sanction other countries by weaponizing the US Dollar.

We can and should look for leadership from China. And we’re getting it. That’s what BRICS and SCO are about. That’s what BRI (Belt and Road) is about. Peace and common prosperity for the entire world.

Neil Oliver: A Seismic Event!

Shorpy

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Sponge – Wax Ecstatic (To Sell Angelina)

Zero-sum Game

Submitted into Contest #150 in response to: Write a story where an algorithm plays an important role. view prompt

Suma Jayachandar

Part A- This is not the beginningLife here is brutal. You are either a zero or one. Civilizations may want you to believe there are intermediate levels. But they are just being kind, and blind to their past. I don’t have such proclivities; I believe in stating the facts.Part B- The bitThe bit took birth someplace between a city and a village called a town. Her culture demanded that she be a sweet, yielding, and pliant…well a person, if such a thing were possible. So, she stuffed her mind with a bit of education, an algorithm to stay out of trouble, and a stack of socially acceptable manners. All the while her true nature roiled in the recycle bin, never finding full expression. It kept manifesting at times as malfunction and system slowdowns but the byte took care to bring it back on its track. Of course, with a strict warning- if she did not know how to conduct herself, she may just remain at the perpetual position of zero. So, she continued to fill up her dutiful role and waited patiently. She did meet many chips on the block while doing so and wondered if they had any transformational power. There was a gate to the world beyond, and it was arranged by the byte as it was customary in due course of time. She just hoped it was not a NOT gate. And she didn’t dare to dream of an OR gate.Part C- The new byteShe discovered after crossing over to the new byte, that her partner may be an AND gate but there were a few NOR gates in the chip. It took her years of yielding to even hope to jump to the position of one. A couple of extra bits she and her partner had welcomed gave her so much joy, that she was content to be a zero- for some time. Soon, she was at the crossroads and had the wisdom come to her in a flash. If she didn’t dare to jump then, she would end up as a cleared cache like so many before her.She looked for ways to change her values, jump gates, and outsmart the circuits. It took her all her wits, strength, patience, and well… ruthlessness. I am not the one to sugar-coat facts.She did jump to become One. The position adored and advocated as the only one that should be aspired for, and truly matters- by the machine. Yeah, the same machine that is a network of peoples, ideologies, nations, and other blah things. At times, I wish nature was at its core. But well, it is what it is.So, coming back to the bit. She climbed, claimed, and reigned the realm that she had dreamed of when she was a child- before she was told about the position she should put up with if she knew what was good for her.And stayed there. For a while.Part D- The arrayThe bits and bytes can play their roles supremely well…to their finest abilities. But they are only as good as the array they are stacked in. And the arrays are at the mercy of the commands that they receive from the hands that have appropriated the keyboard. There are many theories as to how the keyboard/mouse/joystick got passed around from prehistoric to present times. But let’s not go there, it’s a messy code.As of now, arrays have pretty much chalked out their domains. These domains are as fancy as they come; democratic, autocratic, or even anarchic. Their denizens are drilled to the core about their sovereignty and righteousness – as if that means anything in the natural order of things!Let’s come back to the bit that we started with. The bit did so well in her circuit and gave such quick returns to the array whenever called for, that she became one of the few exponents noted by the control panel. Her name was whispered in the upper echelons and her position was sealed among the national assets.Part E – The machineIn nature, everything has come from nothing and hence should go back to it, eventually. It’s a cycle as unerring as syntax. The machine thinks it can control it. But some things are beyond its reach. Only, it is insentient to it.Ignorance gobbles goodness like a tiger pouncing on a deer; nothing cruel, just the natural impulse. History will always print the map of human ignorance preying on its good sense. This map, when drawn and breathed into life by the arrogant architects of the machine, has the power to reformat civilizations. When such an occasion arises, the brilliant bits, the arrays they have aligned themselves to, and the domains they are a part of, have no alternative but to carry out the intended pogroms.In short, a decent bit can be turned into junk if the machine commands so.Err… in case you forgot what a machine is, please loop back to part C. 

 

Part F- The crash

A machine can take only that much corruption in its system, malicious propaganda, and loss of memory of earlier mistakes before it gives up for good. Garbage input, garbage output. There is no escaping that.

The bit and other kindred sparks did try their best to keep this from happening. But they were too scattered, insignificant, and wishful.

So, one day, when the powers that be decided to overheat the system, the machine did crash. And all its machinations went poof…

 

 

Part G- This is not the end

Well, before you can accuse me of being a cynical bystander, let me reassure you, that this is not the end. It’s just an intermediate output in the nth iteration of the zero-sum game. As Time, I have been a witness to it from the beginning.

In a few million years, there will be a rise of a new breed of machines, once again. They will begin with magic and wonder, and try to reinvent themselves before subscribing to a staunch belief that there never existed a smarter system…

And of course, you and I know how this game is going to play out… don’t we?

How will Peru’s Chancay port transform the Pacific trade?

My friend Song, also a Chinese reporter, requested to visit Chancay Port during his business trip in Lima, Peru ahead of the APEC meeting. But his request was declined and he was told a lot of preparations were underway and the site is somewhat chaotic. It means the inauguration of the port is of remarkable significance.

Chancay port is BRI project developed by China’s Cosco Shipping. It is a US$1.3 billion deepwater port. After its grand opening, the transit time to Shanghai will be slashed from 35 days to 25 days, cutting costs for exporters who currently rely on routes through the Panama Canal or the Atlantic Ocean. CGTN reports:

“Strategically located as Peru’s gateway to the Pacific, the port is connected to the Pan-American Highway via a tunnel, providing direct access to Peru’s capital Lima. As the first “maritime expressway” into Latin America, it will enable faster and more cost-efficient transport of Peruvian exports, such as cranberries and avocados, to Asian markets. It’s projected to generate $4.5 billion in annual economic benefits for Peru, equivalent to 1.8 percent of the nation’s GDP, while creating thousands of direct and indirect jobs”

The port will integrate the entire Latin American region into the dynamic economic framework of the Asia-Pacific, greatly bolstering connectivity within and beyond the continent.

China Is Creating The Biggest Military In The World

Which countries do not have tariffs on imports and exports from China?

Several countries have reduced or eliminated tariffs on imports and exports from China due to free trade agreements (FTAs) and other trade arrangements. These agreements often cover a wide range of goods and services, and the specific details can vary. Here are some examples of countries that have favorable trade agreements with China, leading to reduced or zero tariffs on many goods:

Countries with Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with China

  1. Australia The China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA) eliminates or reduces tariffs on a wide range of goods.
  2. New Zealand The China-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement removes tariffs on most goods over time.
  3. South Korea The China-South Korea Free Trade Agreement significantly reduces tariffs on many products.
  4. Chile The China-Chile Free Trade Agreement eliminates tariffs on most goods traded between the two countries.
  5. Costa Rica The China-Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement reduces or eliminates tariffs on various goods.

Regional Trade Agreements

  1. ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) The ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement reduces tariffs on a wide range of products traded between China and ASEAN member countries (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam).

Comprehensive Trade Agreements

  1. RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) This agreement includes China and 14 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region (Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam). It aims to gradually reduce tariffs on a broad range of goods.

Special Economic Zones and Bilateral Agreements

  • Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions of China, enjoy special trade arrangements with mainland China, often involving zero tariffs.

Notes on Trade Agreements

  • European Union While the EU does not have a comprehensive free trade agreement with China, it has various sector-specific agreements and tariff reductions on certain goods.
  • United States The trade relationship between the U.S. and China is complex, with various tariffs in place. However, specific agreements and negotiations can lead to tariff reductions on particular goods.

Considerations

  • Changes in Trade Policies Trade policies and agreements can change due to political and economic developments. It’s essential to stay updated on the latest information.
  • Specific Product Tariffs Even within free trade agreements, there may be exceptions and specific rules for certain products. Detailed tariff schedules should be consulted for precise information.

For the most accurate and up-to-date information, consulting trade authorities, official government publications, or trade experts is recommended.

Sec of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth / Col Douglas Macgregor Reacts

Worth the time to watch.

Cheesy Spaghetti Bake

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This is a real winner as far as comfort food goes!

Ingredients

  • 1 pound spaghetti
  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 (24 ounce) jar marinara sauce
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Cook spaghetti according to package directions. Drain and set aside.
  3. In a bowl, mix together cream cheese and sour cream until smooth. Set aside.
  4. In a skillet, cook ground beef over medium heat until browned.
  5. Drain excess fat. Add marinara sauce, garlic powder and Italian seasoning to the beef. Simmer for 5 minutes.
  6. Season with salt and pepper.
  7. In a baking dish, layer half of the spaghetti, followed by the cream cheese mixture, beef sauce and half of the mozzarella cheese.
  8. Repeat layers. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until bubbly and cheese is golden brown.

China Announces 100% Zero-Tariff Treatment for Afghanistan | This will change everything!

What was the best relationship advice you ever got?

  1. Never date your ex,(s)he became your ex for a reason. Your ex belongs to your past, move on.
  2. Never hope on marrying someone when almost 70% of their family members don’t like you. The probability of the marriage not lasting is very high and you’re probably not going to enjoy the relationship.
  3. There is a distinct difference between dating for love and dating for sex. Always understand the main reason why you’re venturing into a relationship.
  4. Never fall in love when you are lonely, the consequences are going to be a harsh one.
  5. As long as it is still a relationship, never reveal your full potential or secrets to whoever you are dating.
  6. Your personal development should come first before relationships. People who you are in relationships with can still leave you but you can never leave yourself, meaning never compromise your adventures and dreams for anyone.
  7. Avoid relationships that seems to be too good to be true at the beginning. When the other person is rushing things too fast, don’t get carried away with romance and sex. Slow down and be careful because this is how people get hooked on to narcissistic partners.
  8. Never date someone that gives commands and doesn’t respect you. The probability of emotional abuse is very high.
  9. Never date anybody that doesn’t know how to give but knows only how to take.
  10. Never date anyone with the mindset of changing their character, attitude, and behaviours. Remember, you can never raise an adult!

FIRSTLY WHY NOT?…

WHY ARE YOU NOT BOTHERED WITH OTHER COUNTRIES WITH LARGE FLEETS OF AIRCRAFT CARRIERS BUT CONCERNED WITH CHINA’S FLEDGLING FLEETS?

WHATEVER MILITARY TECHNOLOGY AND EQUIPMENT, INCLUDING NUCLEAR WEAPONRY, THEY ARE MEANT TO DETER ANY WOULD-BE AGGRESSORS/INVADORS AND CHINA WILL NEVER ALLOW ANOTHER HUNDRED YEARS OF HUMILIATION UNDER THE THUMB OF FOREIGNERS ESPECIALLY OF THE AMURIKKKUNT’S KIND…

THE ADVANTAGE OF THESE SHIPS IS THAT POSSESSION OF THEM WILL MAKE WOULD-BE AGGRESSORS THINK TWICE BEFORE EMBARGING ON THEIR WAR OF AGGRESSION ON CHINA…

I’m an ordinary tooth.

Submitted into Contest #150 in response to: Write a story where an algorithm plays an important role. view prompt

Fomichi Fomichi

I’m an ordinary tooth. 

Not tall, not short, not flat, and definitely not sharp. I’m inconspicuous as my senile grandpa used to say. 

It was one of those dry mornings at Red School when our class was preparing for a test for test’s sake. One of the front teeth bent down to the red board and wrote some cribs under the hooting of the class. My fellows from the last row and I were not participating in that circus. We had an unspoken agreement with our old and chubby teacher, Mr. Blue Toothbrush. He did not bother us, and we mutually did not disturb him. While he was polishing and adoring the front teeth year after year, we were quietly watching Foodball on an ipalate under the desk. Or playing with parsley, pieces of caramel, and other treasures that Tooth 26 occasionally revealed from his backpack.

This time Mr. Blue Toothbrush was running late. I imagined him somewhere outside moving with the speed of an anesthetized tongue, trying to remember his duties. How long had we known him? For ten years I assume. His smooth blue skin was tinted with brown pigments, and all but one of his hair fell out of his rectangle head. Sometimes we were waiting for him the whole evening, and he would tell us that he had forgotten to come to class. And sometimes, instead of two productive minutes of hard work, we had less than twenty seconds as he had fallen asleep in the hallway.

We did not know what kept him so long this time. Tooth 27 claimed Mr. Blue died but I did not believe it. Teachers do not die, they are replaced. Our ex-teachers, Mrs. Purple, was accused of having an affair with another man’s mouth. Her reputation died, though she did not.

My buddy Tooth 25 had another theory. He remembered the time when our Lord kissed a Lady. We were invited into her White Palace that day. Even though our principal Mr. Tongue blocked the view, we eavesdropped on the conversation between the front teeth and a cute little fang of the Lady. She told them that her teacher. Mr. Electronic Toothbrush, was genius. The guys and girls from the last row, as she claimed, were as bright as the front teeth. Those sweet speeches made poor Tooth 25 hope that our Lord would hear our prayers and send us a substitute teacher. Again, I did not have high hopes for that. Our Lord is not powerful and definitely is not capable of doing rational things. When I was in the fourth grade, he guided fingers from another class directly into the power socket. That was a big fire on their floor that spread up to us. Sharp waves of electricity cut our enamelled bodies to pieces and gave us post electric flashbacks whenever we smelled iron. But Tooth 25 was one of those for whom a mouth was always half full.

In fifteen hours’ time, our teacher was still not in the class. The fog of voices changed from a whisper to the seagulls’ screams. The front teeth were slowly turning into Munch’s paintings with each second of the teacher’s absence. I opened a history class book from extreme boredom and scammed the pages until the images of ancestors stared at me. They were sharp, giant, and able to tear the flesh apart in a glimpse. Do you know what we can do? Eat boiled broccoli. When our Lord gives us BBQ, we eat it for half an hour in the best-case scenario.

We are bunch of sissies. I would never…

Oh                            my…!

Tooth 26 dropped a piece of caramel. Tooth 25 squealed like a boy who saw one of the BTS singers in the crowd. The avalanche of the mint aroma filled the class as an angel came down to us. In the vibration of Tooth 25’s pitchy voice, we were rubbing our eyes. A new teacher, Ms. Pink Toothbrush, entered the class. Her tiny white feet were not touching the ground as she was walking. Our Lord had heard our prayers indeed! I winked to Tooth 27 but he did not notice me. He was busy taking pictures of her and creating a fan club on the ToothBook.

Her graceful fragile movements made her swim to the right and left. She gave a smile to the white front teeth and to us. Her pink eyes straighten my ever-frozen-in-boredom posture. She paused and posed a question about our ancestors. The class was silent. They had never read the class book ahead, but I did. First time in thirty years, I raised a hand up in the air. Was it the moment the Fang of the Lady had told us about? The equal opportunities? Was it…?

She glanced at me and flinched. I noticed it. Every muscle on her pink neck wrinkled, revealing small dark circles. Her warm lips turned into a hot, tense blood line.

–        How dare you talk? – the devilish voice crawled inside my ears and echoed there like in a giant empty temple. – And what’s with your clothes?

What is wrong with it? I panicked. All twenty-nine teeth stared at me from the amphitheatric rows in silence. The rare sound of caramel crunch was heard from Tooth 26’s direction.

I froze in the upright position, watching the exaggerated reflection of Ms. Pink in the saliva. Her predator pink eyes were scanning my tiny body. She heavily headed toward me, pushing other teeth aside, spreading the stiffing mint scent. The closer she came, the more intensively I tried to rub the black holes off. She made the last leap and stretched her sharp bristles to my chin. They grabbed me in the suffocating cage, lifting me to the light, in which my skin was yellow, almost orange.

– Dis – gus – tin – g. – Her whisper bruised my enamel, shaking my whole calcified body in convulsion.

She laughed and waved hands like a director in the orchestra. The rest of the class played along nervously, filling the red classroom with malicious ridicule. Tooth 25 avoided my eyes. Tooth 27 was covering his black spots, while streaming my face on JawTube. The white hands of the teacher were moving faster, forcing the class laughing harder. Her giant pulsing body was fluctuated above me like a pink punching bag.

It’s not fair! I have never chosen sitting on the last raw 

The wave of tears covered my cheetah skin.

It’s not my fault I have patched clothes! 

Sudden camera flashes from phones of my classmates blinded me.

It’s not my fault I have another skin colour!

I made a motionless leap and punched Ms. Pink in her rectangle smiley face.

The laugh dissolved in the scream of falling teacher. The blinding white spots disappeared from my sight as the classmates dropped their flashy phones. I saw Ms. Pink, who was convulsively moving on the floor. A shiny tip of caramel protruded from her breast and shimmered in a gloomy red light. The stinky mint bloody slime appeared underneath, covering our roots. Swearing and sweating Tooth 26 poured the sweet crime evidence in the rivers of saliva. The front teeth took pieces of teacher’s body, made a Xena’s cry, and threw a pink chakram to our direction. I could not dodge that though I dodged the Fate.

***

The monotonous husky voice of Mr. Blue Toothbrush took me away from Morpheus’ arms. I cautiously rubbed and opened my eyes. The bold head of Mr. Blue was jumping up and down in front of the half empty class. A cold bitter calcium ball arose in my throat.

– Where are Teeth 26 and 27? – I desperately shook a chair of Tooth 25

– Lower jo voiz down, man – Blue-faced Tooth 25 turned around.

– What happened? – I interrogated, staring at Tooth 25’s blue wounds.

– They jo all dead, man – his voice trembled – The police arrested the 26th when they found the caramel, man. The 27th was accused of complicity or something. They were drilled to death, man. The blood was everywhere – he pointed at the front teeth with iron handcuffs – those are in prison for two years and we’ve been sentenced to penal servitude. – he paused, observing the body of mine – How did jo escape, man? Wasn’t it jo who killed Ms. Pink?

– I don’t…

– Who could tell me the definition of an algorithm? – the remote voice of Mr. Blue interrupted me.

– If they did not notice me that time, – I slowly whispered, looking at the helpless figure of the teacher, – there is a chance they would not catch me again, don’t you think?

– Don’t smile like that, man – Tooth 25 moved further from me and looked at other teeth for help. Nobody glanced back.

– You know what my wise grandpa used to say? That I am not tall, not short, not flat, and not sharp. He thought it was a curse. But you know what? – He just didn’t know how to use it as the advantage.

– You should know the answer! It will be on the test – Mr. Blue Toothbrush petted one of the front teeth with a fatherly love.

– You’ve always wanted to meet Mr. Electronic Toothbrush, right? – I moved the chair of my buddy closer to me and whispered – but the only one way to get him is to kill the ones that are on our ways.

– I don’t like it, man – Tooth 25 nervously shook his head – I thought you did not believe teachers can die.

– They don’t. They are replaced. – I raised my arm.

– All right, young man – the lack of other volunteers convinced him to talk to me – What is an algorithm?

– Come closer, teacher – I smiled. – I’ll show you an example.

The Producers – Springtime for Hitler and Germany

What is the first thing you should do after you move to Singapore?

Moving to Singapore? There are endless things to study, write down, and put up on the fridge “a long list of what is allowable to do and consequences of not doing so.”

To begin with, check out where the bins are as throwing a cigarette butt in the wrong place is a $300 fine

Next, learn the culture of the queuing system as you need this on your every encounter starting from ordering coffee where only the ‘ uncle’ with supersonic memory knows who comes first and comes last (though with 20 people waiting but no visible Q)

When the coffee uncle ‘raises his eyebrow’ at you- it’s your turn to order… Better be quick!

Furthermore, talking unnecessarily is a sign of an unsound mind- short and sharp to the point is preferred ( in every encounter- don’t believe? you may get a reply, like ” I don’t have all day to listen to you, know!”)

Humming a song’s lyrics in public is not the norm, (with the exception of Filipina maids ) do that in your bathroom or at Swift’s concert only.

ATMs are for one transaction only- if not a person behind would tell you “ Hello, I am losing my patience with you. If you don’t know how to operate this machine, get out and let other people use it!”

Finally, when walking the dog, look out for a vigilante watching you if you clean your dog’s poops… if not, the police will soon appear at your door with a smile.

What if, you walk five dogs at once?

Last but not least, don’t forget to smile when a CCTV from 109,000 of them snaps your photo speeding-

Know this: if you speed 120 km/h on 50 Km/h speed limit road, you can say goodbye to your driver’s license for a long-long time.

Forgetting to pay the traffic offense fine? go straight to court and prepare to pay a higher fine of at least $1,000 or 1,500 bucks on the hearing day or go straight to jail.

There are so many things to learn after you move to Singapore- know the first thing or one thing means nothing in the country where many noble-minded live.

Had a Visitor Last night

Deer 645PM EST 11 15 2024 large
Deer 645PM EST 11 15 2024 large

My son and I were out on the rear deck up here at our rural Pennsylvania home around 6:45 PM last night, when we heard a visitor on the lower half acre . . .

Yesterday, I had the local landscaper guys come over to do the final leaf-blow and grass cut for the year.  The property is all nice, clean and neat again.

My son and I were out on the rear deck when, from the south, we heard rustling in what would be our nearest neighbor’s property.  Whatever it was made noise as it walked through all the leaves on our neighbor’s property.

Suddenly the rustling noise stopped.   I said to my son, it either stopped moving, or it is now on our property where there are no leaves.

We waited a minute or so, and my son looked out from the deck and whispered, “Dad, a Deer”  and pointed.   Well, my eye sight isn’t nearly as good as it used to be so I couldn’t see it with the rear deck light on, as I looked out into the darkness.

My son moved to the north end of the deck, took out his phone, and started taking pictures.  One of the clearest is the one you see above.

This was a Buck.  He has very small Antlers protruding from his skull.

We walked back into the house and I shut the living room lights off so we could look out the large Bay Window which overlooks the lower level and the creek that runs along the eastern border of our land.  Turning off the lights did away with the light reflection on the inside of the windows and, sure enough, I saw him.

I caught the EARS first because apparently the fur in them is white or at least reflects some light.  He was staring right at us in the living room window!

I waved at him.  He reared-up and took-off running!

What a difference being out here in the country, versus being in North Bergen, NJ where our primary residence is.

I like it here, better.

Why is China hiding 700 billion dollars?

Professor Finds First Physical Evidence Egyptians Drank Hallucinogenic Cocktails

By Cassidy Delamarter

A University of South Florida professor found the first-ever physical evidence of hallucinogens in an Egyptian mug, validating written records and centuries-old myths of ancient Egyptian rituals and practices. Through advanced chemical analyses, Davide Tanasi examined one of the world’s few remaining Egyptian Bes mugs.

Such mugs, including the one donated to the Tampa Museum of Art in 1984, are decorated with the head of Bes, an ancient Egyptian god or guardian demon worshiped for protection, fertility, medicinal healing and magical purification. Published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, the study sheds light on an ancient Egyptian mystery: The secret of how Bes mugs were used about 2,000 years ago.

“There’s no research out there that has ever found what we found in this study,” Tanasi said.

“For the first time, we were able to identify all the chemical signatures of the components of the liquid concoction contained in the Tampa Museum of Art’s Bes mug, including the plants used by Egyptians, all of which have psychotropic and medicinal properties.”

The presence of Bes mugs in different contexts over a long period of time made it extremely difficult to speculate on their contents or roles in ancient Egyptian culture.

“For a very long time now, Egyptologists have been speculating what mugs with the head of Bes could have been used for, and for what kind of beverage, like sacred water, milk, wine or beer,” said Branko van Oppen, curator of Greek and Roman art at the Tampa Museum of Art. “Experts did not know if these mugs were used in daily life, for religious purposes or in magic rituals.”

Several theories about the mugs and vases were formulated on myths, but few of them were ever tested to reveal their exact ingredients until the truth was extracted layer by layer.

Tanasi, who developed this study as part of the Mediterranean Diet Archaeology project promoted by the USF Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and the Environment, collaborated with several USF researchers and partners in Italy at the University of Trieste and the University of Milan to perform chemical and DNA analyses. With a pulverized sample from scraping the inner walls of the vase, the team combined numerous analytical techniques for the first time to uncover what the mug last held.

The new tactic was successful and revealed the vase had a cocktail of psychedelic drugs, bodily fluids and alcohol – a combination that Tanasi believes was used in a magical ritual reenacting an Egyptian myth, likely for fertility. The concoction was flavored with honey, sesame seeds, pine nuts, licorice and grapes, which were commonly used to make the beverage look like blood.

Besmug2
Besmug2

The original mug next to the successfully created 3D digital version. (USF Communications)

“This research teaches us about magic rituals in the Greco-Roman period in Egypt,” Van Oppen said. “Egyptologists believe that people visited the so-called Bes Chambers at Saqqara when they wished to confirm a successful pregnancy because pregnancies in the ancient world were fraught with dangers. So, this combination of ingredients may have been used in a dream-vision inducing magic ritual within the context of this dangerous period of childbirth.”

“Religion is one of the most fascinating and puzzling aspects of ancient civilizations,” Tanasi said. “With this study, we’ve found scientific proof that the Egyptian myths have some kind of truth and it helps us shed light on the poorly understood rituals that were likely carried out in the Bes Chambers in Saqqara, near the Great Pyramids at Giza.”

The Bes mug is on display now at the Tampa Museum of Art and can be viewed in the exhibition, “Prelude: An Introduction to the Permanent Collection.” View a 3D model of the Bes mug produced by the USF Institute for Digital Exploration.

Thanks you for asking! The truth is 100% of Asians knows how tariffs work but less than 10% of Americans knows and that including Donald Trump! And he seems proud that he can easily lie to the Yanks! That tariff’s is a tax on China! it is not at all paid by China!

If you buy a stuff from China say at USD 100 per unit, when the US set a tariff on Chinese products say 50%! The US importer of the said product has to pay USD 100 for the same product without change but it now has to pay USD 50 on tariff to the US customs. The cost to the US importer now becomes USD 150! He will pass on the 50 dollars tariffs to the US consumer! So who pays for the US tariffs on China? The US consumer does ultimately, even though the US importer will initially pays for importing the said Chinese goods!

China lose nothing at all unless either the US manufacturer can produce it locally I which it clearly can’t at the same price and quality as the Chinese product or the importer can find a similar product from another nation to replace the Chinese products. Chances is you cannot! In that case the US consumer will pay a higher price and this cause US inflation to increase. Chinese manufacturers are fine they don’t incur the extra cost! And if one stop buying Chinese goods China can always sell it to other nations!

Most nations wants the best products at the optimum price for their citizens and that is why 150/195 nations on earth has China as their biggest supplier! After the first round of trade war by Trump and Biden some crafty Vietnamese and Mexican traders imported the same Chinese products and slapped a made in Mexico or Vietnam label and transshipped it to the US incurring zero duties! They made a quick buck that the US consumer pays for the charade! On paper Mexico now’s sells more to USA but in reality the same products are still made in China!

China don’t lose anything, even if less is sold to the UD it is no longer a big deal. The US is a big market but when you sell to 179 nations one do not much at all. But chances is the US demand don’t reduce too much since there is not competitive producer that can match China!

So the real lose are US consumers and sadly they are mostly the poor and the middle incline class in the US that suffers the most! I don’t think Trump gives a shit about them!

Damn! I wasted so much time watching this stuff…

Don’t be the guy that needs a roto-tiller to define your boundaries

Many PI’s have found missing people in their careers. Sometimes, when people don’t want to be found, it can go badly. Most of the time, it can be joyous.

I had been working on a case involving a 15 month baby girl. The mom and dad had a bad breakup due to mom’s use of illegal drugs.

Because the father was the only parent that worked, his money ran out constantly, trying to pay for his baby’s needs, living costs and legal fees. He decided to ask his parents for financial help in which they had no problem whatsoever.

So, the grandparents were my clients. They rarely got to see their granddaughter. They were medical doctors who had their own practice so that took up a lot of their time. They tried numerous times to make an appointment with the baby’s mom to see their granddaughter, only to be stood up again and again.

Baby’s mom would disappear for days or weeks at a time with the baby only to eventually call baby’s father to come rescue her out of a’situation’ The ‘situation ‘ always involved having to pay off one of her drug dealers and driving mom and baby home.

The court process is SLOW and father was fighting as much as he could to get custody of his daughter. The courts wanted both homes evaluated. Courts wanted lots and lots of hoops for father to jump through. I was getting evidence, little by little involving her drug use. It was just taking too long to do anything of significance.

Finally, grandparents got a court ordered visitation with their granddaughter for the day. It was just a few hours because mom’s insistence that she was still breastfeeding the 15 month old. During the visit, grandparents, being good doctors, immediately noticed that the baby had some things medically wrong! They contacted a pediatrician they knew who immediately saw the child and took blood samples. The samples would take time for the laboratory to evaluate. This was 20 years ago and labs were slow in comparison to today.

Grandparents reluctantly gave baby back to the mom when the visitation ended. They had good reason to worry, as it turned out. Part of the lab work came in the next day and what it showed, caused grandparents to call the attorney on a Saturday and get an ex parte (immediate court appearance) for the following Monday. Baby’s mom is notified as required by law of the ex parte hearing.

Grandparents, father and their attorney show up for the hearing, lab work in hand. Mom or baby are nowhere to be found and didn’t show up for the hearing. Mom’s attorney was there though, so she was represented.

The judge looked at the lab work and saw that the baby had at least THREE ILLEGAL DRUGS in her tiny body! Although mom’s attorney tried, they were unable to prevent the grandparents from getting legal, temporary custody. The problem was, where was the baby?

I immediately got to work on finding mom and baby. So did the police. The amount of drugs in the baby’s system was high enough to warrant an immediate search that the police took seriously.

I was able to find out the first name of a person that mom told a friend about. Mom said this person would hide her. With just a first name to go on usually would be almost impossible! I TRIED to work with the police but they weren’t going to have any of that. I did, however, give them the first name of the person I felt she was with.

At that time, our investigation office was one of the first database oriented offices in the country. We had a LOT of public records from all over the country. We had information, the police didn’t!

Thank God the person’s first name was unique. I found maybe 20 people in the state who had this first name. I can’t divulge how I found which name/address was the one, but grandparents and I were on the first plane we could get to Northern California. We rented a car at the airport and headed for the police station in the area where I knew Mom and baby were. The custody order was in hand. After learning of the dire situation, these police were AMAZING and we were all on our way to the address.

When we got to the house, it turned out to be a well known drug house to the police. They went in and came out with mom and four other people in handcuffs. I guess the people couldn’t hide all the drugs quick enough and when they opened the door, the police had a visual of drugs and paraphernalia, giving them reasons to go into the house. One male officer, walked out, holding the baby. This officer had tears in his eyes. It was obvious that the baby was drugged. An ambulance was called and baby girl was ultimately taken to the children’s hospital in San Francisco where she remained for almost a week!

We all stayed at a hotel for that week, going to the hospital daily to see the progress of the baby. Grandparents offered to fly me home, but I wanted to stay. We were now friends and I was going to stay and support this family however I could.

So, as a trained investigator, I was able to find a missing baby, whose mother had been drugging with her breast milk. I only had a first name of someone to go on. I always thank the higher power that led us to save this innocent child.

Father raised his daughter as a single parent. Mom, fortunately, didn’t remain in her daughter’s life. Grandparents doted on their granddaughter until they left this world about five years ago.

Diner Dreamin’

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cacac44a5292ad3bc0ad3aec9678c64c

Oh, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Some criminal attacks Bob’s family. Bob puts two rounds through the criminal’s heart and one through his head. The criminal’s biological processes are deactivated before he hits the ground.

Now, under our current legal system, Bob has to call the police. And maybe the police buy his story and maybe they don’t. And maybe the DA decides to actually apply the law regarding self-defense and leave Bob alone … or maybe he doesn’t.

Maybe he prosecutes Bob for doing nothing more than defending himself. And Bob winds up being nearly bankrupted by legal fees even if he managed to avoid prison. All because Bob had to call the police.

I like your plan better. Bob deactivates the criminal, and goes back to bed. Since calling the police is not allowed, private companies have sprung up that dispose of “wrapped refuse”, no questions asked. Bob wraps the criminal up as per specifications and calls the first of these companies that has an opening. Two nice men come by to pick up the wrapped refuse and haul it off to be disposed of.

No cops. No DA. No legal fees.

Yes. Your plan sounds like an excellent idea.

The Dark Side of Roman Civilization: Rome The Slave Society

“…to make an example to would-be rebels, 6,000 surviving slaves were crucified along the Appian Way, a major road leading into Rome…”

Slavery was deeply woven into the fabric of Roman society and culture. There were several ways that people in Roman society could fall into slavery.

To varying degrees throughout Roman history, the existence of a pool of cheap labor in the form of slaves was an important factor in the economy. Slaves were acquired for the Roman workforce through a variety of means, including purchase from foreign merchants and the enslavement of foreign populations through military conquest.

So, when the Romans prevailed on the battlefield, they would often take their defeated enemies captive and sell them into slavery as part of the spoils of war.

With Rome’s heavy involvement in wars of conquest in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, from tens to hundreds of thousands of slaves at a time were imported into the Roman economy from various European and Mediterranean acquisitions.

People could also become slaves due to failure to pay debts or as a punishment for crime. Roman slavery differed from American slavery in some important respects. Roman slaves could be of any race. And while American slaves generally performed manual labor, Roman slaves could sometimes be highly skilled.

Especially the educated slaves captured from the Greek world were highly sought after for tutoring children and performing clerical work.

While there was limited use for slaves as servants, craftsmen, and personal attendants, vast numbers of slaves worked in mines and on the agricultural lands of Sicily and southern Italy.

For the most part, slaves were treated harshly and oppressively during the Roman republican period. Under Republican law, a slave was property, not a person. Therefore, owners could abuse, injure or even kill their own slaves without legal consequence.

Illustration of branding of a slave

One of the harsh punishments for slaves in Rome was the branding of the slaves forehead with the letters “FUR”, which derives from the Latin word “fure” meaning thief.

Tattooing was also another common method of placing a stigma on the individual and claiming ownership. Some slaves were able to be freed after 20 years of service in the household; however, the fate of a gladiator was much more brutal.

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main qimg fe456d7f59421acdf642b3baa6cbaf63

A mosaic showing a master beating a slave

Although slaves could technically become freedmen, slavery, in practice, was permanent, and the masters had the ultimate control of their life. If slaves tried to run away, their brands served as proof of ownership. These marks were conspicuously located on their forehand, legs and arms. Masters also used metal collars for their ordinary slaves; however, the method of branding was much more common.

As expected, many slaves resented their subservient status and inhumane treatment, and this seething resentment reached a boiling point in the form of sporadic riots and revolts.

While there were many grades and types of slaves, the lowest—and most numerous—grades who worked in the fields and mines were subject to a life of hard physical labor.

The large size and oppressive treatment of the slave population led to rebellions. In 135 BCE and 104 BCE, the First and Second Servile Wars erupted in Sicily, where small bands of rebels found tens of thousands of willing followers wishing to escape the oppressive life of a Roman slave.

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main qimg 3079baa1d3c537dbf34258a9e30a0c77

Depiction of the fall of Spartacus

While these were considered serious civil disturbances by the Roman Senate, taking years and direct military intervention to quell, they were never considered a serious threat to the Republic.

The Roman heartland had never seen a slave uprising, nor had slaves ever been seen as a potential threat to the city of Rome. However, this perception would change with the Third Servile War.

Above map shows a portion of the most famous slave revolt in Roman history, in which the gladiator Spartacus led an army that eventually grew to 120,000 freed slaves.

When the rebellion was finally crushed, 6,000 surviving slaves were crucified along the Appian Way, a major road leading into Rome.

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main qimg cadb663d42d1317b454a3a6567b8091b

Certainly the revolt had shaken the Roman people, who, reportedly, out of sheer fear seem to have begun to treat their slaves less harshly than before.

The wealthy owners also began to reduce the number of agricultural slaves, opting to employ the large pool of formerly dispossessed freemen in sharecropping arrangements.

With the end of Augustus’ reign (27 BCE – 14 CE), the major Roman wars of conquest ceased until the reign of Emperor Trajan (reigned 98–117 CE) and with them ended the supply of plentiful and inexpensive slaves through military conquest.

This era of relative peace further promoted the use of freedmen as laborers in agricultural estates. The legal status and rights of Roman slaves also began to change.

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main qimg dfeb41093238aa665992b43681ac6e03

Tunisian mosaic depicting slaves serving their masters

During the time of Emperor Claudius (reigned 41–54 CE), a constitution was enacted that made the killing of an old or infirm slave an act of murder and decreed that if such slaves were abandoned by their owners, they became freedmen.

Under Antoninus Pius (reigned 138–161 CE), laws further extended the rights of slaves, holding owners responsible for the killing of slaves, forcing the sale of slaves when it could be shown that they were being mistreated and providing a neutral third party to which a slave could appeal.

While these legal changes occurred much too late to be direct results of the Third Servile War, they onevertheless represent the legal codification of changes in the Roman attitude toward slaves that had been evolving over decades.

Meanwhile, the Third Servile War was the last servile war, and Rome did not experience another slave uprising of this magnitude again.

Just as all great civilizations in history, ancient Rome, too, had a dark side behind all the glamour and luster that was built on merciless slave labor.

Let’s not forget that exploitation of fellow men is not limited to slave labor, today it continues to rear its ugly head in a multitude of unsuspecting disguises, shapes and forms, perpetuating income and opportunity inequality, thus poverty across the world.

Strip Steaks with Garlic-Ginger Baste

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9d040fdb52a11e25ad6d55e5a5bc2217

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup sweet and tangy steak sauce
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 tablespoon minced, peeled gingerroot or 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 4 (10 ounce) boneless strip steaks

Instructions

  1. Mix steak sauce, oil, ginger and garlic until well blended. Reserve 1/2 cup of the sauce mixture.
  2. Brush both sides of steaks with remaining mixture.
  3. Place on grill over medium coals.
  4. Grill for 4 to 6 minutes on each side or until internal temperature reaches 140 to 150 degrees F for medium.
  5. Serve with reserved sauce mixture.
  6. Use your broiler: Brush steaks with sauce mixture as directed.
  7. Place on rack of broiler pan. Broil 3 to 4 inches from heat for 6 to 8 minutes on each side or until internal temperature reaches 140 to 150 degrees F.
  8. Serve with reserved sauce mixture.

Astral Dominion; Episode 3: The Tubbies – 1950’s Super Panavision 70

Cabin Life

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I’m a Chinese citizen.

I was a UK citizen. I renounced in 2018.

China is about as corrupt as the UK. What’s the difference? China has consequences for corruption. I’m in Hong Kong the ICAC has teeth. North in the mainland enormous numbers of corruption cases as prosecuted.

While we hear about high profile cases in China often resulting in DEATH. The UK has corruption and politicians are yeah whatcha gonna do about it? The corruption is naked open and the politicians know nothing will happen to them if caught. They just apologise and give it back. There’s literally no consequences Starmer took a £4 million bribe… yet nobody is calling for him to be hanged …many UK people are literally defending it as not corrupt and not buying influence!

Or how Johnson wasn’t criticised for diverting 34bn into his Caymen islands bank account. Nobody was calling for his execution for some reason and he’s loved as a public hero.

China’s Tech, Economy Week. Part 2

The hits keep coming..

A bonanza of technical achievements and economic course-changes this week, hence the two-parter.

Technology

Wuhan’s JFS Labs lit a laser integrated into a silicon chip, filling one of the few blanks in China’s optoelectronics technology. Silicon photonics use optical signals instead of electric signals for transmission. It aims to address the restraints imposed by current technology, as the transmission of electric signals between chips is approaching its physical limit. (See 2023 article, below).

China to launch ultra-secure quantum global communications service by 2027, with the completion of its quantum satellite constellation and its integration with ground-based networks, according to leading physicist, Pan Jianwei.

Three people with severe autoimmune conditions are in remission after treatment with bioengineered, CRISPR-modified immune cells. This is the first step towards mass production of such therapies. The first person to receive the treatment, in May 2023, was a 42-year-old woman with autoimmune myopathy, which targets skeletal muscle tissue, resulting in weakness and fatigue. Mr Gong, and another man with aggressive sclerosis started treatment in June and August 2023.

Gallium is irreplaceable for high-end radar, EW, communication, telecom & lasers. Ga is a byproduct of bauxite production, and China produces 40 megatonnes p.a., which requires 600Twh, or 15% of America’s 2023 electricity production–while America struggles to generate enough electricity for AI. Australia is shutting its Kwinana Alumina plant and Alcoa to close its Intalco Smelter, which supplied 30% of America’s needs. China has a huge energy cost advantage vs EU/JP/SK, so other countries keep closing Alumina smelters. EU lacks the electricity to keep steel plants open, and no Al production means no Ga production. TP Huang.

Washington’s $65 billion chip stimulus is failing. Samsung and Intel announced company-wide staff reductions up to 30% and may get no CHIPS Act money. US export controls slashed Intel’s China sales, once 25% of its revenue. Its European plant is on hold and it failed to install production equipment, the most expensive part of the buildout. Panic in the CHIPS Program Office.

US tech layoffs accelerate:

  • 2022: 165,000 tech layoffs
  • 2023: 264,000.
  • 2024: 132,000 YTD.

China’s first indigenous superconducting quantum factory is boosting production capacity from five to  8 computers simultaneously.

Economy & Trade

Long term capital intensity policy orientation has shifted to keeping the broader economy aligned with the evolving society and workforce. Both demand-side consumption habits and supply-side skill sets and production factors evolve over time. A workforce dominated by blue-collar workers aligns well with capital-intensive sectors like construction and infrastructure. Whereas a white-collar dominated workforce aligns better with sectors like tech, advertising, manufacturing, healthcare, etc. Glenn Luk.

Beijing wants institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds to play a greater role stabilizing the stock market with more long-term capital. PBOC launched two monetary policy tools, the Securities Fund Insurance Swap Facility and The Share Buyback Increase Re-loan. This shifts the calculus of the equities market.

The middle of a war that threatens to go nuclear and a genocide is a strange time to detour into economics. But economics have a bearing on wars. The two-and-one-half World Wars of the last century each trailed periods of capitalist/imperialist expansion that were followed by crises. As was the case in the 1930s, the 2008 Great Recession caused a deeper and wider crisis of capitalism than has been admitted in the West. Rob Urie. 

Giant US deficits and debt rollovers wreak havoc among BRI borrowers.

US manufacturing employment has dropped 30% since 1979, as population rose 50%. From machine tools to industrial robots to consumer electronics, American manufacturing capability has been hollowed out. Boeing and Intel are struggling. The U.S. has five large oceangoing ships under construction or on order, compared to South Korea’s 734 and China’s 1,794.

“China is a very interesting trading partner,” says Javier Milei, as Argentina seeks closer economic ties. “They do not make demands, the only thing they ask is that they not be bothered.” Both exports and imports between the two countries declined sharply after Milei’s election, as China found alternative markets in neighboring Brazil. And Argentina desperately needs investment.

Liu Run, Chinese business author, back from visiting pioneering Chinese factories in Mexico, saw them making products from furniture to home appliances, and filed this report.

Beijing allows foreign cards for transit. Arrivals surpassed pre-Covid: More Russians, fewer American. Beijing received 379,300

China started collecting 30% dumping duties on EU brandy, days after Brussels voted to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs, and signaled that it could unleash tariffs on EU cars, while continuing investigations into EU pork and dairy products.

BMW 5s, Audi A6 and Benz E class discounted prices 27% and still lose market share. What happens when their profit margin in China approaches nothing? That could lead to plant closures in China and in Europe, too.

Airbus will soon produce more A320NEO aircraft in China than China’s COMAC produces C919 aircraft. Xian AC just built its third line for producing A320 wingboxes! It hit its 700th delivery last year and now produces 9 per month. As Chinese suppliers improve, it makes more sense for Airbus to use them in the Tianjin production.

China produces 300% more carbon fiber than the US. Titanium sponge production jumped from 70,000 tons in 2018 to 200,000 tons in 2023. China doesn’t play around once it decides to scale something.

Clothes from thin air. The process begins with giant fans capturing an invisible raw material: carbon dioxide, which gleaming reactors transform into a clear, viscous ethylene glycol, which is fed into machines that spin it into fine, glistening fibers that will be woven into fabrics. Each 300 gm T-shirt will use 100 gm of CO2. Sheng Hong’s factory has developed cutting-edge techniques like direct esterification-polycondensation and melt composite spinning that yield diverse fibers like elastic, ultra-fine, and UV-resistant marvels.

Photonic Dawn

·
April 18, 2023

When the US banned China from NASA projects, China built its own. When the US banned China from participating in the “international” space station, China built its own. When the US stopped China from participating in Europe’s GPS project, China built its own. When the US blocked Israel’s sale of AWACs to China, China built its own. When Trump imposed ta…

West vs East: who is the bad guy? | Lowkey

Cool Interfaces

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Not me, but my long time late employee, a OO driver (Owner Operator) which his nickname was Snake – he used both – the Company tractors or his (it all depended on the dispatch).

His truck was parked in the assigned parking, awaiting for the trailer to be loaded.

For some reason, someone decided to park their car in front of the truck (because there was a gap and sufficient space). This GM Opel, parked his car there. Well, the other tractors and trailers parked at their assigned location.

Well, he wanted him to move the huge long-nose Kenworth Sleeper Tractor “out of his way”. Because the Dispatcher denied (everyone’s assigned, you move when the Dispatcher gives you the clearance and what bay (dock) you hitch up to).

The guy was in a rage, he got into the car and tried to “force” that tractor to move. All he was doing was damaging the rear end of his car! (He did cause some scratches and a couple of ‘dents’ on the Bumper of the Company truck.)

Well, he was just not having it, decided to rev the engine up and go through the chain link fence (that was Slatted – PVC slats woven in the chain link fence) and wound up front first over the ravine into the creek below.

The Truckers went to rescue him out of his car, and he winds up fighting an old oak tree! Literally throwing punches at it, his voice was so slurred, beyond drunk. And he’s fighting the tree! The drivers all went down and grabbed him and pulled him up through the fence and got him on the lot when the Police finally arrived.

He was just so out of it, but Snake, he got him to “sit down” and “drink some coffee” and provided him a couple of donuts. He wasn’t going anywhere, the Cops were in no hurry to handcuff him. They looked over the fence and finds the car down there, totally destroyed.

The other officer went to review the security footage, because none of the front end guards had any cars going through. It turned out he came from the NORTH side of the property (vacant wooded 2.3 acres of land).

Then Snake realized the guy was in medical, and called for Paramedics (the Cops were on the other side investigating the trail he made getting onto the property) – once the Paramedics arrived, the guy was “almost gone”. He was partially stabilized and taken to the Hospital ER and there it was confirmed, alcohol poisoning. (The officers arrested him there at the hospital.)

This bothered Snake, partially, because he just knew this guy was not a drunk, he felt he was “set up”, he even told the Officers that, the other truckers partially believed Snake.

Well, Snake asked to be reassigned back to that Company for a reason, he wanted to follow up with Sam (not real name), he had his information as he was the one that pulled out his wallet. His dad was a Police Chief, what happened was he gave his dad the information → this guy has no driving violations at all.

I have no idea why Snake did what he did, but once he was returned to that location. He put himself on a 3-day off, and he hired a lawyer. Sam was “released on own recognition” and had an upcoming hearing (he bonded out). This lawyer and Snake went to him in person, they questioned him thoroughly.

All he could remember was he was at the co-worker’s party for his wife’s over the hill. He really didn’t want to go. But the pressure of other workers to a degree, forced him to be there. All he could remember was a couple of guys holding him down and they blind folded him, and he felt something down his throat where he was gagging and they poured what he could smell was alcohol by force. (Funneling) And he cannot handle alcohol, due to the medications he was on.

And the next thing he knew he was inside of his car, he decided to get away from there, he has no memory of what happened after that except he was feeling terrible. That lawyer hired a private investigator. Because he now has a Defense Lawyer, the Defense Lawyer postponed the hearing, due to more evidence incoming. Judge granted it.

From what Snake told me, the PI went in and got hired at the same company that he was working for. He learned through gossip from other men, which they laughed, about how they forced moonshine (illegal) and got him totally wasted (drunk). They had to put him in the car because he was having seizures and they didn’t want any responsibility, someone drove him over to a lot and left him there and they returned back.

*BOOM*

The PI asked to buy a jar of that moonshine, they actually gave him a jar and told him “Easy does it.” Then the PI took the evidence to a lab, and it was found to contain 58% APV. With the evidence in hand, and the video and audio of worker’s “confessions”.

Then the trial came up. The State Prosecution threw the case out, and the Judge ordered the arrest of the people involved. To the fact his physician made it exceptionally clear, “his patient cannot have alcohol due to the medications he’s on” (medications disclosed). The people involved were charged with “attempt murder”.

The place of the party they had was actually held in a vacant house on a rural isolated property that was undergoing foreclosure.

His lawyer had his colleague to file suit (lawsuit) against the Company he worked for. In what Snake told me, there was a very nice settlement, he was able to retire early (49 years old). He became friends with Sam. Sam knows that Snake actually saved his life, because he was at “near-death”.

Was this a road rage? Yes it was, but under the influence of alcohol poisoning where the victim was forced without consent.

BRICS Just Acquired 2 MAJOR Assets To Collapse The US Economy With New Currency

Steak with Gorgonzola Thyme Crust

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Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 (6 ounce) beef tenderloin or small rib eye steaks, cut 3/4 inch thick
  • 1 large or 2 small cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried
  • 1/2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled Wisconsin Gorgonzola cheese

Instructions

  1. Heat broiler.
  2. Spoon Worcestershire sauce over both sides of steaks; let stand for 5 minutes.
  3. Sprinkle garlic and pepper over steaks. Place steaks on rack of broiler pan.
  4. Broil 3 to 4 inches from heat source for 3 to 4 minutes per side for medium rare steak.
  5. Remove pan from broiler. Sprinkle thyme, then cheese over steaks.
  6. Return to oven and broil for 2 minutes or until cheese is golden brown.

Ticket Booth

This is just lovely.

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My grandmother used to tell me a story whose endpoint was: A pigeon cannot escape death by closing his/her eyes when a cat is coming towards him/her. China’s rise is certain to be inevitable. The rest of the world is just closing its eyes and believing this cat is fake, and he/she will pass. No, sir/madam: This cat is real, and it is, in fact, a huge dragon.

People usually ask such questions:

  • People have no clue about China and the Chinese people.
  • People who have no interactions with China/or the Chinese people.
  • People who have never visited China can see with their own eyes what it is all about.
  • You do not have to be a rocket scientist, brain surgeon, or Nobel Prize winner in economics to understand this simple question.
  • When you land in China Beijing/Shanghai, airports and your head spins at the wonder of the efficiency/punctuality/cleanliness/
  • You see the bullet trains circling Shanghai.
  • Banquet halls and restaurants serve thousands of customers with the efficiency of a Swiss clock.
  • You see the Olympic Stadium of 2008.
  • You see, the Three Gorges is one of the most significant civil projects of recent times.
  • You see cranes all over China putting up buildings like a Lego project.
  • You see state-of-the-art infrastructure, roads/bridges/
  • You see highly efficient public transport systems.
  • You see freedom of the female/gender equality/
  • You see a society which is almost violent and crime-free/one of the safest in the world.
  • You see young girls working alone in the middle of the night or walking freely in the megacities.
  • You see, there is plenty of food for everyone.
  • You see happy/rosy cheeks/giggling kids in the parks,
  • You see well-respected elders/retirees in the parks.
  • You can see some cultural events or other things in the city.
  • You see people dancing/exercising in the public squares and parks.
  • You would not see many if any, beggars/homeless/druggies/
  • You see the Yangtze River with ships/boats/loaded with cargo
  • You see commercial rigs on the highways.
  • You see beautiful green farms with beautiful houses
  • You see trucks loaded with citrus and other fruit going to the cities.
  • You see, even when the native son/daughter comes home after a few months, he/she cannot find a way to his/her own house. Because the speed of change is so great, the whole neighbourhood/roads/are changing quickly.

Well, the list is too long,

  • I do not have to look at the graphs/GDP/and all the other nonsense.
  • Rest assured China is real, and this storm is coming, and the world will not the be same.

At some stage, the world has to learn that this growth is real and must learn to respect and learn from this mega-success story.

BTW: The Author is not Chinese, and he has not hired the hand to do publicity, he is Indo Canadian citizen of Canada for the close to fifty years. He has worked with the Chinese Canadians at various levels and visited China several times. And when he was a baby in India from his childhood he was very interested in China and the Chinese culture. His primary school teacher sowed the seeds in him about China.

This is a dawn of new era: You want to see future please go to China, there you will get an idea, how the future will look, by standing at the present time, and one glance backward to developing China will show you the past.

Standing in the present: You will see the future and you will see the past.

The reality is that China is a new powerhouse; as my grandma said, a Pigeon is just closing its eyes to see death as the cat is approaching him/her.

I hope it helps

I was working at Geek Squad and I had a client who was an older woman with an old laptop (no, this is not some kind of joke); it was probably 12–14 years old. It had 256 megs of ram and was running Windows XP for reference sack. It was busted 6 ways from Sunday, dead battery, charging port that you had to really work at to get it seated so it would get power, one hinge was totally wrecked, the CD drive was missing its face plate, the drive itself was bent, the screen was cracked, and the bezel was being held on by tape… I mean this laptop had done its tour of duty three times over.

Anyway, she was emphatic about getting the screen repaired. But it was one of those situations where it would literally cost more than I could convince myself to tell the client it was worth. So I did something that 99.99% of the time you do not do in computer retail and I asked what was so important about this particular computer.

Well, it turns out her great granddaughter had died 3 years prior and the only pictures she had of her were on that computer, and no one had ever told her that it was possible to move the pictures to something that wasn’t on improvised life support.

So I worked with her for a few more minutes to get an idea of what she used her computer for (little bit of online shopping and some email), then grabbed one of the PC sales team I knew and trusted, gave her the run down on the lady and the situation and asked her to find her a good option for a replacement computer, get her signed up for a data transfer, include a 32gb flash drive then come back to me.

Got her set up with a new laptop, transferred all the files from her old computer to the new computer and the flash drive and signed her up for a 1-on-1 training session so I could help her to learn how to use the new computer, the flash drive, and get her setup with One-Drive so she wouldn’t need to worry about losing her pictures.

After it was all said and done, she was so grateful for the help and service that she tried to hand me a $50. I couldn’t take it for multiple reasons – not the least of which being it would have gotten me written up – but mostly because it was my job to help people with their computer problems and that was exactly what I had done. Well, she insisted on knowing what she could do to thank me.

Jokingly, I said “Well, we love chocolate chip cookies.” She smiled, said OK and left. I figured that was it. Came in for my shift the next day to find that she had dropped off what looked like a gross worth of home-made chocolate chip cookies.

Cookies make the best tips!

Blockade? No

What the United States did to Cuba, North Korea and Iran is called “blockade”, using military and non-military capabilities to prevent these countries from normal exchanges and trade with the outside world, thereby strangling the economies of these countries and making their people suffer poverty.

China’s siege of Taiwan often only lasts for a few days. Even if commercial ships are affected, just wait patiently. This is not a blockade and has no substantial impact on Taiwan.

Threat? Yes

Before Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, China had always maintained restraint and understanding towards Taiwan, and their military exercises never exceeded the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

The United States cannot claim “one China” while allowing senior officials to engage in sexual diplomatic interactions with Taiwan. This is schizophrenia and is bound to anger the Chinese.

So after August 2022, they began military exercises around Taiwan, and as far as I remember, this is the third time.

If Taiwan suffered “sovereignty loss” in this process, it was almost brought about by their allies, the Americans.

When an ally constantly claims to protect you, but at the same time constantly provokes your enemies, you need to think about the true intentions of this “ally”. Look at the situation in Ukraine.

China seems to be threatening Taiwan, but in fact it is using the US provocation to implement a “salami slicing” strategy

With every provocation, they increase the pressure on Taiwan a little bit.

Maintain the median line of the Taiwan Strait > cross the median line of the Taiwan Strait > operate on the east coast > surround the entire Taiwan > enter 12 nautical miles > enter the airspace

China’s sausage has not been cut yet. Pay attention to the exercise area. Although they have surrounded Taiwan, they still respect the tacit understanding of 12 nautical miles. But it may not be the case next time.

You cannot accuse China of “aggression” because Taiwan is different from Ukraine. All countries in the world recognize that Taiwan is part of China. So Taiwan does not legally have territorial waters and airspace. Military operations can only be regarded as China’s domestic counterinsurgency operations.

Don’t ever be convinced to do something that you are uncomfortable about

I’m an American who lived in China for 16 years. I basically grew up there, went to school there, worked there and even got married there (though it wasn’t to a Chinese).

I’ve lived all over the country and have had interactions with people from various ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, religions and in different areas of China.

There is no possible way for me to sum up what I think of “Chinese” people or the country itself, except that I feel it’s been downplayed as to how diverse it really is. In fact, I hate it when other foreigners say something is ‘typically Chinese’ or generalize…because they are such a diverse country. And sometimes I feel that Chinese nationals don’t even know or appreciate how genuinely diverse their country is.

Now that I’m back in the US, it’s very hard to explain to people what China is actually like or answer their many questions about life there. About the only things I can say that are general is: 1) There are indeed a lot of people; 2) Computer stuff is cheap; 3) Eating out is cheap; 4) Public transport is extremely cheap and very efficient.

Another observation I’ve had is despite all of its diversity and it’s huge population, somehow the government/businesses have managed to really streamline things for the most part. Just working in a Chinese company, my concepts of how to deal with a large volume of applications, paperwork and workload are much different than a lot of my peers here in the US. So when I did come back and start working for US companies, sometimes my managers would be shocked at how quickly I got so much done. Like they didn’t even understand it. Not to put them down in anyway. And occasionally I would even get in trouble for doing something differently than others and they would be like, “Why on earth would you do it this way? How did you even think of this?” but that was often before they could see the results.

But on the negative side of that, I had a hard time dealing with all of the personal needs of customers and the tailoring that a lot of Americans require. I’m using to dealing with a huge workload but that’s mostly uniform where people have chosen from a small category of options. I’m not as used to dealing with the incredible personal preferences of a handful of clients who can’t seem to make up their minds. In China, they don’t tend to give you a lot of ‘options’. And people don’t really expect them either. They tend to walk in when they want a service and already know exactly what they want. So it’s a much easier process of facilitating that.

What Would Happen if the US Decided to Not Pay its Debt?

It was a pretty effective strike

The details are trickling in and it does appear that Israel has had 20 damaged F-35s (They aren’t using the word destroyed) but a damaged F35 is as bad as a destroyed one for minimum 12–18 weeks

The Radar site is definitely destroyed

It’s why Israel has postponed their attack on Iran

However the attack will happen

Mostly they will use Drones and they will hit Iranian Top Military and Intelligence Brass with US Intelligence and surveillance capabilities

Lies aren’t as easily accepted without some ground truth. Sometimes, they are just partial truths taken to extremes, often times out of ignorance and good faith. This is something that all Chinese people eventually realize after living in China for long enough; some people are better at working with partial pictures than others.

‘I don’t think it can get any harder’: reality check for China’s travel industry
Stark contract between an optimistic picture painted by China’s travel data and consumers who are reluctant to spend amid broader economic anxieties.

There was a great thread by Glenn Luk as usual, responding to this article. But more on that, there was a great supplementary thread by David Fishman, who succinctly highlights the issue of interpreting China by using three anecdotes he scraped together:

In elite control societies, what often goes dismissed are the experiences of the common person. This is especially true of the US where “middle class” has represented the top 10% of US society for decades— cue the many complaints of “middle class” houses in Hollywood films that are nothing short of multi-million dollar McMansions. The same can be said about the more liberal Chinese takes on China. I for one know the mood among the high performers of academia China. It is not the greatest, though I must say, I have been quite uncomfortable being in so many BMW SUVs (ostentatious wealth not really my style).

The reason why I do not share in these dour takes on China is because of my paternal family and the fortunes of people from back from the village. I know where those family members come from, what kind of temperament they have, and especially what they have nowadays. Back in 1998, we rode in a cheap knockoff sedan sporting a false police siren (to speed on country roads), driving over half paved, half dirt roads just to get to our T5 city. Ever since, I have watched them get far wealthier. Today my elder cousin does better than me; he owns 3 properties in a T1 city and rents two of them out for a very pretty penny, while I struggle as someone in the top 5% of the US to actually buy a cheap house ($850k) in the place I grew up. The difference between my cousin that is younger by a year and my other cousin who is graduating from undergrad this year is night and day; the former has moved to the US and lives a great life but had to be top of her class to do so, while the latter is pretty much the definition of academic mediocrity. Even so, her mentality bears all the hallmarks of polite urbanite (while I remember the former offering me a beer back when we were 13, as no one cared out in the sticks). That former cousin grew up in that T5 city, the latter cousin is basically a T1 city girl; both, it seems, can do quite well for themselves despite the wide gulf in effort. Hence, people who tell me that China is terrible for everyone but the elites are only going to get the stinkeye from me— it’s like they don’t even care that my family exists.

The pattern I’ve seen in a lot of the anti-China reporting is that they pay attention to only the elites. Keep in mind we are only talking about those reports from people who seem like they know what they are talking about, either because they have Chinese names or they actually bother going to China. On the surface, this is a remarkable step up from the typical “China expert” who knows no Chinese and hasn’t ever visited. Unfortunately this step up seems to be what is selling authenticity today, when in fact it is just clearing a minimum threshold of “not 100% fantasy.”

I have said this time and time again, even all the way back to random comments in 2015 or so: China is insanely complex. Its size should humble all who engage. When I hear about a foreigner who has stayed for 15–20+ years in China, I will usually go “wow, you must have a lot of insight!” But make no mistake, that’s not me calling them a China expert, that is me expecting that they have some very narrow experiences that strike very deep and true, and that I will be able to glean some insights on a tiny sliver of China through them. Most people of that degree of stay in China are likewise humble and know that we all are just in the business of exchanging very narrow and specific slivers of China. To those observing, particularly neophytes to the experience that is China, this subtext may go unnoticed.

David Fishman is a valuable resource. He has tons of stories from people he can reach on the streets. But I know better than to expect him to really know Chinese governance; he has little in the way of penetration into the government track lifestyle. He is also white, which means he won’t have the perspective of someone who can blend into the streets and watch China the way a Chinese person can. There are always limitations to one’s China experience, which is why we all fan out in our information gathering through guanxi (connections).

Yes, there are a lot of blatant lies about China. But just because they exist, don’t get complacent when someone comes by with experience or a Chinese name and starts generalizing. Specificity is the name of the game; pity that most Chinese people don’t feel safe sharing specifics. This is often the reason why you have to hit the streets and make your own guanxi. First, build trust, then get specifics. You never know when someone is withholding information from strangers but not their guanxi network.

But just to highlight, driving back to that T5 city from the T1 city took generally 2 hours in the late 90s. It was unwise to do after a rain as the mud would likely have made the roads unmanageable. In the late 00s, that drive went down to 1.5 hours; the road at the outskirts of the T5 city had massive potholes that you could not evade and would require cars to go at most 5 km/h. In the late 10s, I don’t recognize most of the city anymore. I don’t remember seeing any donkeys driving carts anymore, only the standard blue motor trike at the very bottom end. I can barely estimate that the town square that felt so hollow and eerie at night in the 00s (due to all of the empty concrete apartment shells, lack of lights, and echoing) was now a park with big trees and plenty of amenities.

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main qimg 989a8a24150923be71c8d786d3ddf714

Remember, T5 city! Where those pink trees are was generally where a line of stores were, and back in the 00s one of those stores sold crappy CRT TVs. One of them played Shrek in Chinese dub, which captivated some 20-ish children as onlookers. I joined them as I was bored then. Everything now is unrecognizable.

Anecdotes aren’t that powerful, but they can serve as smell tests for the kind of China headlines that pander to American audiences. The more you have your own experiences to look back on, the more you too can be immunized to bold but bad China takes. Because the sad reality is, it is just too easy to lie about China, and even the truths are not that good either!

11 Harsh Realities of Life for a 60 year old retired man.

The truth: China desperately want to become friend with US, however, US sees China as a threat and want to see China lose.

Lived in both countries, what I’ve observed is in China, everyone (including main stream media like CCTV) is talking about US being the best country:

  • the higher level of democracy
  • the innovation
  • hollywood movies, hot actors / actress
  • advanced technologies, respect for skill and knowlege…
  • the list goes on…

When I actually get here, I’d say some of these high reviews are true, but overall it’s probably overrated.

Then when I start to read news on CNN, Fox, NY Times, I see lots of negative news about China.

  • food imported from China are poisons
  • Chinese constantly steal US intellectual property
  • in China everything is about building connections, just having the skills will fail you in China
  • Chinese government tortures minority
  • China ‘bully’ neighbouring countries.
  • … and the list goes on

Non of these are true – I’m not saying China is a perfect country, it’s far from perfect, but the real issue in China was never cared and covered by western media. All these news is designed to make people hate China.

Oven Swiss Steak

37abf5c5efc0ac80ef3309af40383e51
37abf5c5efc0ac80ef3309af40383e51

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (1 1/2 pound) beef round steak, cut 3/4 inch thick
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons shortening
  • 1 (16 ounce) can tomatoes, cut up
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped celery
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
  • 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Instructions

  1. Cut meat into 6 serving-size portions.
  2. Combine flour and salt; with meat mallet, pound 2 tablespoons of the mixture into meat on both sides. Brown meat on both sides in hot shortening.
  3. Transfer meat to a 12 x 7 inch baking dish.
  4. Blend remaining 2 tablespoons flour mixture into pan drippings.
  5. Stir in undrained tomatoes, celery, carrot and Worcestershire sauce. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly; pour over meat.
  6. Bake steak, covered, at 350 degrees F for about 1 hour or until meat is tender.

China’s first photonic chip pilot line opened in Wuxi leading the industry to take off

On September 25, at the 2024 Integrated Circuit (Wuxi) Innovation and Development Conference, the first photonic chip pilot line in China built by the Wuxi Photonic Chip Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University was officially put into use. This marks that photonic chips have officially entered the fast lane of industrialization, which will break through the limitations of computing paradigms and bring new imagination space for large-scale intelligent computing. A glorious era for photons is about to begin.

Photonic chips are the core of the new generation of information technology. They can meet the technical needs of transmission, computing, storage, and display in the fields of artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, cloud computing, biomedicine, etc. in the new round of scientific and technological revolution. They have become a new driving force for economic growth and an industrial highland for global competition.

The pilot platform has a total area of ​​17,000 square meters, integrating scientific research, production and services. It has complete supporting facilities and is equipped with more than 100 world-class CMOS process equipment, covering the full closed-loop process of thin-film lithium niobate photonic chips from lithography, thin film deposition, etching, wet process, cutting, measurement to packaging.

The platform also takes into account other material systems such as silicon and silicon nitride, builds N special process platforms, and forms a leading “1+N” advanced photonic device innovation platform. It can not only provide full-process technical services for universities, research institutes, and innovative enterprises, but also incubate photonic industry projects, efficiently link with industrial funds, open up the complete chain from product research and development to marketization, and accelerate the commercialization of scientific and technological achievements.

The pilot platform will not only accelerate the flywheel effect of technology iteration, promote the continuous optimization of process flow and the improvement of product innovation capabilities, but will also touch the technological frontier at an unprecedented speed, solve the long-standing structural contradictions between the innovation chain and the industrial chain, and ultimately achieve breaking up the obstacles in technology and industry.

The successful completion of the photonic chip pilot line is a vivid epitome of the cooperation between the university and the local government to achieve industrial breakthrough.

In 2021, City of Binhu introduced Shanghai Jiaotong University to establish the Shanghai Jiaotong University Wuxi Photonic Chip Research Institute project. The pilot line officially started construction in December 2022, the structure was capped in October 2023, and the first batch of equipment entered the site in January 2024. After intensive equipment debugging, it was officially put into use in September 2024. This landmark of the lake bay has achieved a leap from idea to physical implementation in an almost unrivaled manner. The physical structure was built according to the “Green Building Three Star” standard, and achieved key features such as anti-micro-vibration, constant temperature and humidity, and ultra-cleanliness to provides first-class guarantee for the R&D and production of photonic chips.

Now, walking into the nearly 6,000 square meters of high-grade micro-nano processing clean room of the photonic chip pilot line, people can see equipment neatly arranged, and technicians in clean clothes skillfully operating various equipment and observing the operating conditions of various product parameters.

The 9-meter-high first floor is divided into three floors, with the main equipment on the middle floor. In addition to the pipelines for supplying gas and chemicals, the invisible upper and lower mezzanines are also equipped with fresh air systems to transport clean air and maintain positive pressure in the room, which is then exhausted to the outside through the ventilation holes, so that the cleanliness level of the workshop reaches the 100, 1,000, and 10,000-level standards.

The world-class hardware, the leading domestic precision equipment, and the complete closed-loop control of the process are the three core elements supporting the industrialization of photonic chips. This pilot line is in line with the top-level planning and has reached international standards. After the pilot line is officially put into use, the annual production capacity is expected to reach 10,000 wafers. In the first quarter of 2025, the PDK will be officially released, and external wafer flow services will be provided.

Currently, the whole world is committed to solving the iteration problem caused by the lack of computing resources. Optical quantum computing is not only backward compatible with related technologies, but its theory and framework also enable exponential computing power that is endless. However, due to the lack of matching hardware systems and the immature industrial chain for landing products, optical computing and quantum computing cannot be commercialized. Currently, the world is starting from the same starting line, which provides China with an opportunity to surpass in technology.

The institute will focus on 6/8-inch thin-film lithium niobate wafers and thin-film lithium niobate modulators to overcome the engineering and technical challenges faced by the industrialization of thin-film lithium niobate photonic chips, develop wafer-level chip mass production processes, and achieve large-scale mass production of thin-film lithium niobate photonic chips to meet the high computing power needs of artificial intelligence development.

The Wuxi Photonic Chip Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University will continue to be a leader in new-quality productivity, continue to explore cutting-edge technologies in quantum science and technology and common key technologies, and rely on the photonic chip pilot line to carry out a three-in-one strategic layout of “platform + incubation + fund”. Focusing on new-generation information technologies such as core, light, intelligence, and computing, it will carry out scientific and technological achievement transformation and incubation and investment in entrepreneurship, explore new paradigms for the incubation of hard technology innovation, and help Binhu District and even Wuxi form a world-class photonic innovation ecosystem with clustered and large-scale development.

De-Dollarization: China Squeezes USD Debt By Guaranteeing RMB Bonds In The Global Markets

About a month ago, there was a noise complaint at the neighbor of my brother’s home.

The police arrived. My brother went over because his 11 year old son was there and wanted to ensure his son was okay. The police arrested my brother, charged him with resisting arrest, assault on an officer, aggravated battery on an officer.

These charges carry a two to twenty year prison sentence.

When I asked my brother what happened, he told me that the charges were made up. He asked about his son, the officers (3 of them) engaged him and decided to put him in the squad car. He never touched anyone. He never resisted. Because of the charges, he has no bail, and the bond hearing was set for a month out.

I asked, “Were the officer’s bodycams on?” He replied, “No.” They said all their cams were off.

I thought to myself. “Oh shit.” Then I replied, “Okay, sit tight, I’ll get you a lawyer.”

But to be honest…without any camera footage, my brother was cooked.

Now. I love my brother, and I know his character. I know there was no way he attacked three police officers. To be honest, if he did, they’d just shoot him. He’s a big black guy who spends a lot of time at the gym. No one would have challenged his death.

But, that’s not who he is. However…SOMETHING must have happened, right? It couldn’t be that he just walked up, the police then put him in the car and charged him. That’s not real.

2 to 20 years in prison. Three officers are saying he attacked them. Aggravated Battery on a police officer. All of this was a month ago…labor day weekend. No video evidence, so it’s their word and his. He’s so fucking cooked.

But wait. Remember the part where I said my brother walked over to his neighbor’s house?

The neighbor’s ring door camera activated, and his lawyer has not one…but three videos from ring cameras and security cameras covering the entire event.

You know what actually happened? Well, I’ll say it this way. As soon as the lawyer told the prosecution that they had camera footage from the ring camera, the prosecution dropped the assault and aggravated battery charge immediately. They downgraded the resisting arrest to a misdemeanor and gave my brother a 50,000 bond, which we immediately posted. They also added another charge (a misdemeanor), and handed the entire case from the felony prosecution to the misdemeanor prosecution who wanted to settle. My brother’s lawyer said…”No.” We want this fast tracked to trial. You’ve only seen one video. I have two more. The footage shows my brother walking up to the officers, them having a very normal conversation, and when my brother asked for his son, the officer told him “No.” My brother continued to ask, and the officer put him in cuffs and put him in the car for “protection of the officers.” That was it. No one even raised their voices.

Now. Because this is still in flight, and my brother has plans to sue for wrongful arrest or something…which he’ll lose, I won’t say which department this is, but will post all the details after the case and suite are done.

But here is the thing. Do you know what happened to the three police officers who made up the assault and aggravated battery on a police officer charges with the up to 20 year prison sentence?

Nothing.

Do you know what would have happened to my brother if those ring cameras didn’t kick in? I’m guessing he’d get about 7 years. What’s your guess?

That’s the definition of a police state. They can just make something up to throw you in prison…and in the 1 in a 1000 chance you are able to prove your innocence, nothing happens.

I still nearly tear up at the thought of how close he came. He’s a father of 4 who works for Mitsubishi building generators as a supervisor. And he nearly lost his freedom…for what. I yelled at him “You know never to engage with the police. You know better you fool.” All he could say is…”but my son was over there.” 30K for a lawyer (gone). 5K for the 50K bond (gone) all because you approached police.

I’ll update the results when I can. But more than likely…nothing will happen.

I’m pretty sure Grandpa killed my cousin’s abusive ex-husband.

The ex ticked all the psycho boxes: he was physically, sexually, and verbally abusive. When my cousin finally started the divorce proceedings and got a restraining order, the ex repeatedly violated it. He’d make numerous harassing phone calls daily, show up at her workplace, and was arrested a couple times for trying to force his way into her house. Somehow he’d always make bail and within 24 hours or so be right back at it.

Shortly after the divorce was finalized and she got 100% custody of their son, the psycho broke into her home while she was at work and trashed the house. He left voicemails threatening to kill her. My cousin came and stayed with us for awhile so she could make arrangements to move and would not be home alone.

One day the calls stopped. She stopped seeing his truck around town. My cousin was still scared, it was not like him to just stop, and she figured he had gotten arrested, and would soon be out and back at it again. She said words to that effect one morning at breakfast. There sat Grandpa, reading the paper, with a cup of coffee and a Pall Mall Red. Without looking up he just said, “He won’t bother you again.”

And he didn’t. Going on twenty years and no one has seen or heard of the psycho ex. Grandpa knew something we didn’t, but he died in ’05 so he ain’t telling.

EDIT: to address some of the comments without posting repetitively, I suspect Grandpa got rid of the ex. I do not know if her ex is alive or dead. I don’t know for sure what, if anything Grandpa had to do with it. All I can say for sure is he said the ex wouldn’t bother her again and he hasn’t. Wouldn’t put it past the old man to have done his own problem solving though.

Grand Funk Legend Died & Saw the Afterlife – Mark Farner Tells All!

There are several major lies that are all equally current:

  • China is planning to invade Taiwan.
  • China is oppressing the Uyghurs in Xinjiang (genocide, forced labor, concentration camps, etc.).
  • China is oppressing the Chinese people in general (Xi Jinping is a dictator).
  • China’s economy is a disaster (property market, youth unemployment, demographics, etc.).
  • China can’t innovate; it can only steal IP.
  • China is debt-trapping African countries.

Once, when I was on duty in the Emergency Department during my residency training on a 36-hour shift, I noticed something. Something strange, something that was not normal.

There was this one kid, around 10 years old. I saw him wandering around the emergency department all day long. And just like that, it was midnight. I had time to reflect on the events of that night. That same kid was standing outside. So, I decided to find out what was happening to that boy, why was he wandering around the emergency room all day long by himself?

So when I approached him and asked him if I could help him I saw that he was really upset. After that he tried to avoid my questions but I insisted to find out what was going on with him, he asked if we can talk in a private place.

I took him into an office and he lifted his shirt and showed me a scar on his chest that was obviously from a previous heart surgery.

He confessed that he was looking for the doctor who had performed the surgery on him when he was a baby and asked where to find them.

Of course, I knew the surgeon who had operated on the child. But I insisted on knowing why he had been sitting in the emergency room all day looking for that surgeon.

Then I found out that the surgeon in question not only treated the kid for free, but also paid for all the costs of his surgery (since he didn’t have any kind of insurance) and also visited his home every two months after the surgery, paid his family’s rent, got them food and clothes (note this was years ago).

But for the last one and a half years the surgeon was not seen in the children’s house, and his mother did not even have money to pay the rent. That is why he was searching for him.

Sadly, the kid didn’t know that the surgeon had died a year and a half earlier, and he started crying when I told him.

Later that day I told some of my cardiac surgery friends about the incident. I found out that for the past year and a half since the cardiac surgeon’s death, many people have been coming to the hospital regularly asking where he was! Because no one apparently knew that not only did he pay for their surgeries (for those who were unable to pay), but he also made it his mission to help those people’s entire families. And even his wife and children did not know he did that.

What an incredible, inspiring and fascinating person he was.

He was Brigadier-General Dr. Muhammad Fayez in the Royal Medical Services of the Jordanian Armed Forces.

He was a cardiac surgery consultant and head of the cardiac surgery department when he died of a heart attack at the age of 52.

His typical day started at 8:00am and ended at 11:00pm. He was a talented, dedicated, humble and decent man who preferred to work behind the scenes. Didn’t want fame or fortune. A true human being.

UPDATE – Wife Has Known For 8 YEARS That Her Best Friend’s Husband Punched My Son And NEVER Told Me!

Cosmic Catastrophe: A Space Adventure Gone Awry

Submitted into Contest #247 in response to: Set your story on a spaceship exploring the far reaches of space when something goes wrong. view prompt

Kayla Flemming

The hum of the spaceship’s engines filled the air as Captain Jackson surveyed the vast expanse of space stretching out before them. They were on a routine mission to explore the far reaches of the Galaxy, charting new star systems and collecting valuable data for the Intergalactic Alliance.But as they ventured further into uncharted territory, a sense of unease settled over the crew. There was something off about this sector of space – a feeling of foreboding that sent shivers down their spines.As they pressed on, their fears were realized when a sudden jolt rocked the ship, sending alarms blaring and lights flashing. Emergency protocols were initiated as the crew scrambled to assess the damage.”What happened?” Captain Jackson barked, his voice tense with urgency.”It looks like we hit some sort of anomaly,” replied Lieutenant Ramirez, her fingers flying across the control panel as she attempted to regain control of the ship.But their efforts were in vain as another jolt shook the vessel, this time more violently than before. Panic gripped the crew as they realized they were hurtling towards a nearby planet, their trajectory set on a collision course that spelled certain doom. 

With time running out, Captain Jackson made a split-second decision – they would attempt a risky maneuver to evade the planet’s gravitational pull and regain control of the ship.

 

“Brace yourselves!” he shouted, his hands gripping the controls with steely determination.

 

As the ship plunged towards the planet’s surface, the crew held their breath, their hearts pounding in their chests. But just when it seemed all hope was lost, Captain Jackson’s daring maneuver paid off, and the ship veered away from the planet at the last possible moment.

 

Cheers erupted throughout the cockpit as the crew celebrated their narrow escape from disaster. But their relief was short-lived as they realized they were now adrift in the void of space, their navigation systems fried and their chances of survival dwindling by the second.

 

As they frantically searched for a way to repair the ship and plot a course home, Captain Jackson couldn’t help but wonder what other dangers lurked in the darkness of space, waiting to test their courage and resolve.

 

Despite the chaos that ensued, the crew of the spaceship refused to let fear dictate their actions. With determination in their hearts and a spirit of camaraderie that bound them together, they set out to explore the planet they had narrowly avoided crashing into. As they descended through the atmosphere, they were greeted by a breathtaking landscape unlike anything they had ever seen before – towering mountains, shimmering lakes, and lush forests stretching out to the horizon.

 

Eager to uncover the secrets of this alien world, the crew donned their spacesuits and ventured out onto the surface, their eyes wide with wonder as they took in the sights and sounds of this new frontier.

 

But their sense of adventure soon turned to apprehension as they encountered strange and wondrous creatures lurking in the shadows – creatures with scales as hard as steel, eyes that glowed with an otherworldly light, and voices that echoed through the caverns like whispers from the void.

 

Undeterred, the crew pressed on, their curiosity driving them ever forward in their quest for knowledge and discovery. And though they faced countless challenges and obstacles along the way, their indomitable spirit carried them through, guiding them on a journey of exploration that would change their lives forever.

 

As they prepared to leave the planet behind and return to the safety of their ship, Captain Jackson couldn’t help but feel a sense of gratitude for the adventure they had shared together. For in the face of adversity, they had found strength in each other, forging bonds that would withstand the test of time.

 

Amidst the chaos and excitement of their unplanned detour, the crew found moments of levity that brought much-needed relief from the tension of their predicament.

 

From Lieutenant Ramirez’s failed attempts at fixing the ship’s malfunctioning systems to Ensign Johnson’s comical mishaps during their explorations on the planet’s surface, there was never a dull moment aboard the spaceship.

 

Even Captain Jackson, typically stoic and reserved, couldn’t help but crack a smile as he watched his crew stumble their way through one misadventure after another. But amidst the laughter and camaraderie, there was a sense of camaraderie that bound them together, a shared sense of purpose that gave them the strength to face whatever challenges lay ahead.

 

And as they finally set course for home, their ship repaired and their ship repaired and their spirits buoyed by the memories of their cosmic escapades, they knew that no matter what trials awaited them in the vast expanse of space, they would face them together, united in their quest for adventure and discovery.

 

The journey back to their home base was filled with moments of reflection and gratitude. Each member of the crew took the time to appreciate the bonds they had formed and the experiences they had shared during their time in the far reaches of space.

 

Lieutenant Ramirez, with her quick with and unwavering determination, became the heart and soul of the crew, guiding them through even the most challenging of situations with her calm demeanor and steady hand.

 

Ensign Johnson, despite his tendency to stumble into trouble, proved himself to be a valuable asset to the team, his ingenuity and resourcefulness saving them on more than one occasion.

 

And Captain Jackson, with his leadership and courage, inspired his crew to rise above their fears and doubts, leading them through adversity with unwavering resolve. As they neared their home base, a sense of anticipation filled the air. Though their journey had been fraught with danger and uncertainty, they had emerged stronger and more united than ever before.

 

And as they docked their ship and stepped onto solid ground once more, they knew that their adventure was far from over. For as long as there were stars in the sky and unexplored corners of the universe to discover, they would continue to journey forth, together, in search of the next great adventure that awaited them in the cosmos.

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When I was eleven years old, a friend drowned while swimming alone at a local lake. He was alone because I had persuaded a mutual friend who was supposed to go with him, instead, to come visit me at my house, because I was grounded from leaving the house, but I could have a friend come over.

Denny’s was the first funeral I remember attending, and I walked into the funeral home alone. I was terrified and overcome with remorse and shame. Not quite knowing what to do, I slipped in the back and sat in the first chair I saw with no one near it.

Almost immediately, Denny’s mother came over and sat next to me. She said, “This is not your fault. You did not kill Denny. Tragic accidents happen all the time, sweetheart. Don’t carry this through your life. If you do, that will be a tragic accident too. When you leave today, leave any guilt you might feel right here so that we can bury it as well.

Then she hugged me while I cried. I did exactly as she said. And I have never forgotten the witness of her grace.

A MATTER OF SURVIVAL

Submitted into Contest #243 in response to: Write a story about a character who wakes up in space. view prompt

Charles Corkery

A MATTER OF SURVIVAL The Shuttle He opened his eyes and knew, immediately, that something was amiss; no headache, no blurred vision, no sluggishness of his central nervous system, no disorientation of any kind. With growing trepidation, he turned to his right and, swallowing his anxiety, gazed at his digital, countdown screen: frozen at 9 years, 5 months, 3 weeks, 6 days and 19 hours. He had been in cryosleep for just 5 hours!What the f**k!Glen Thomas, Commander of Deep Space Shuttle, Commodore V11, noted for his coolness under pressure, began to perspire and panic at the same time. Sitting up, dressed only in khaki briefs and t-shirt, he looked across at the other two cryogenic sleeping pods alongside him and saw the red, illuminated screens of his colleagues ticking down the seconds and minutes in perfect harmony, unlike his own.Flight Engineers, Helen Jones and Matt Weitz slept peacefully inside their transparent cocoons, their body temperatures maintained at a perfect 32 degrees C, in a state of natural hibernation, heart beats slowed, hormones and composition of blood, breathing, cell replication and brain activity all altered for the next nine and a half years, when they would awaken as Commodore V11 reentered Earth’s atmosphere- as he, too, was meant to do. For some reason, his pod had malfunctioned! 

As the man in charge of this mission, Glen had an intimate knowledge of his ship and understood that, once set, the timing device of a stasis pod could not be altered.

 

Nevertheless, heart thumping, he eased himself from the pod zone to the bridge of the craft, floating weightlessly, using his hands to push off bulkheads, hatches and overheads to reach the command centre of the shuttle where all typed modules relating to the workings of the ship were stored.

 

Breathing deeply, trying desperately to calm himself, he pulled down the tome that related directly to the cryogenic chambers and began to read. Within a few minutes, his worst fears were confirmed; the operational clock, once triggered, could not, under any circumstances, be recalibrated. For him, the ability to not age for the next nine and a half years was no longer an option.

 

Okay, okay. Stay calm. That’s not the end of the world, he told himself. Helen and Matt would get a shock when they snapped out of hibernation to find their commander almost a decade older than they remembered, sure. And life for him would be pretty damn unbearable in the interim but he could do it; would do it. Hell, he’d be a hero when they got back; maybe even secure a book deal.

 

Food! Jeez, he’d forgotten about how much sustenance he was going to need to make it through. These shuttles were not overstocked with nutritional products as the majority of travel time was spent in natural hibernation and space food, whether dehydrated, irradiated, freeze dried or thermo- stabilised, still added hugely to fuel costs for every pound stored on board. Time to calculate.

 

An hour later, having entered the nutritional info of every single item of food he had located in the shuttle into the command and data subsystem, including Helen’s specially packaged must haves, Cheetos, and Matt’s, similarly wrapped, Hershey Kisses, and allowing for a ration of 0.58 kilograms per day, he realised, heart plunging, that he had only enough fluids and solids to sustain life for just twelve months!

 

A year later, an emaciated, stinking, full bearded commander entered the pod zone for the first time in weeks. Initially, and for several months, he had checked on his colleagues several times per day but, as time had passed, he had limited himself to a once a week visit, the effort involved just too much for his weakened body. This time though, he had another reason for entering this part of the ship: the knowledge that, within the temperature controlled systems lay several litres of much needed water and he was going to figure out how to drain it. With all food having been consumed, although estimates were varied, it was believed that man could extend one’s life by up to two months living on water alone and there was no reason to maintain the perfect 32 degrees C that his hibernating colleagues were dwelling in.

 

The year had been the toughest of this man’s life. Having nothing to look at except the darkness of deep space that remained unchanged constantly outside the window of the bridge, nobody to talk to except himself, he had, slowly, drifted into semi-insanity. Unable to wash, shave or brush his teeth, with every drop of moisture being so precious, he had, knowingly, allowed himself to become a savage. Wild thoughts entered his mind and he would spend endless, comatose hours debating the rights and wrongs of each. Many, many times, he had considered cutting the power to his colleagues’ cryopods. If he had to suffer so, then why not them, too?

 

He had even thought about opening the pod of Matt Weitz and, while he was still disoriented, pulling him from his sleeping chamber and taking his place; sure that lifting the lid of the pod would not affect the countdown clock. But, always, the still rational part of his brain would win through and talk him out of this murderous act.

 

Many, many times, he had told himself that he should accept his fate, climb down into the sealed exit hatch bay and eject himself out into the void and, twice, had entered this part of the ship, fully intending to do the honourable thing. But, each time, something, whether an inbuilt survival instinct or a fatal optimism, prevented him from carrying through with his plan. He knew that he only had enough food and water to sustain him for twelve months; that death was inevitable. Yet, he could not quit; had to claw on to life, hoping, believing that a miracle might occur. His experience in space had confirmed him in his atheistic outlook and he did not, for one minute, give any credence to the existence of a God but, still, he found himself repeating the mantras that had been drilled into him as a child, brought up in a Christian household.

 

Now, as he drained the water from the tubing that surrounded all three pods, the brownish, foul smelling water seeping into the container he had brought here for this purpose, he looked, once again, at his two colleagues, sleeping peacefully, completely oblivious to the torment that he was going through and, against his better impulses, angry and envious thoughts flooded his brain. Why did his pod have to be the one that failed?

 

***

 

Breaking News

 

“We go now to Independence Square, NASA HQ, where NASA Administrator, Bob Nelson, is waiting to talk to us with the latest on the ill fated shuttle. Bob, thanks for coming on. What can you tell us?”

 

“I can now confirm, Mary, that our inquiry has shown, beyond any doubt, that the oxygen supply for the craft had defaulted and was responsible for the demise of our three brave astronauts”.

 

“Did they suffer, Bob?”

 

“No. All three were in hibernation, completely unaware of the system breakdown. They would all have died peacefully and painlessly in their sleep”.

 

“What about their families?”

 

“Well, none of our deep space astronauts are actually married, have children or are in relationships, Mary. It’s not something that is common knowledge but, I’m sure you’ll understand, they are away from home for a very long time. In this case, for example, Commodore V11 was on a twenty year voyage to Pluto and, while the cryogenic sleeping pods ensure that the occupants of the shuttle age only a year or two, the same would not apply to any relatives left on Earth. For that reason, we only train men and women who are prepared to forego a family life, at least until their later years”.

 

“Well, thanks for sharing that, Bob. Makes me wonder why anybody would want to put themselves through that though”.

 

“Mary, these are a very special breed of human; pioneers, if you like. They undertake only one deep space mission in their careers and they are expanding boundaries for the human race and, of course, they get extremely well compensated for it”.

 

If they survive, Bob. If they survive”.

 

***

 

Human Health and Performance (HH+P) Medical and Clinical Unit Secure Ward, Johnson Space Center

 

“Okay, doc, let me have it”.

 

“Well, there’s no way to sugar coat this, Bob. Deep space, deep psychosis. It’s that simple”.

 

“Is he coherent?”

 

“Depends on what you mean by coherent. I can understand what he’s saying but that doesn’t mean he’s talking a whole lot of sense. He’s cognisant of his actions and, in many ways, as repulsive as they were, he was simply reverting to the human’s inbuilt instinct for survival. Throughout history, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of similar happenings where cannibalism has been a last resort. That plane crash in the Andes, for example. If they hadn’t made that choice to eat their former comrades, those guys would never have survived…”

 

“Difference is, doc, their comrades were already dead. Commander Glen Thomas chose to eat his living colleagues. Big distinction!”

 

“So what now, Bob? That’s the fourth time this has happened in recent years.”

 

“Well, we can never let this get out. It would decimate our entire deep space program budgets. So you know what to do, doc. Same as before. Just make it painless for the poor sap”.

*** 

The Chinese has been targeted since the mid 1800 when the first batch of Chinese went to the US to open up the East West railway lines. They were badly discriminated and I am sure many died. But in those days it is not illegal to kill a Chinese! Of course Anglo Saxon wants the world to forget everything from African slavery to Red Indians culling to Chinese exclusion act now that their victims are all dead and gone!

But so much to western human rights hypocrisy! We will always remember and we will remind you forever! Has anything change? No the white supremacy idea still exists and today Wall Street Journal or Economist still do racism with profit! The western media slur and demonised and get rewarded by the US government with 1.6 billion funding.

it is such a terrible thing to do to use monies instead of helping their 2.5 million homeless on incentives to lie and fabricate on China and the Chinese people. It is Deja Vu all over again. It is Chinese excision act 2025! But this time the world is on the Chinese side. Sure they are dogs and slaves like UK, Australia, Philippines! But there will always be people who stays on the wrong side of history.

I think a lot of it is because China sees little reason to support western countires who are almost universally taking antagonistic attitudes towards China. And what has China done. Basically it has just done better than the west. Funny thing is this is not new. It is repeated time and time again in history. Back in the 19th century the European invasions of China were brought about because the Western world wanted Chinese goods, but there was little that the Chinese wanted from the west, and so the British becaome the biggest drug cartel in the world, effectively forcing opium on the Chinese the same way drug dealers do it today, and then selling to those people. The Chinese government was too weak to do much against it, but at least were able to prevent the west from conquoring China (unlike Inida). Also during the 19th century, Chinese teams working on the American railroads were able to accomplish tasks other teams could not accomplish and were always more productive. For thier good work they were effectively presecuted by vigilanties. This is something that has happened to the Chinese diaspora throughout history. So similar to what has constantly happened to the Jews.

In part because the west is trying to isolate China. and doing western leadership constantly attempts to destroy China, China appears to feel that it is better to build relationships with the 90% that make up the rest of the world, and it has an added benefit in that doing this is economically better given that products and goods from those countries are less expensive than western countries. At the same time it gives Chinese the opportunity to now produce final products and sell them under Chinese brands, so the profit it much greater, and the dependence on the west is greatly reduced. These countries have proven to be a lot more appreciative of the Chinese, and why not. The Chinese products are so much cheaper than the western products, the Chinese are not buying lots of agricultural products from them, Chinese companies are also selling farm equipment at a fraction of the cost of the west to them so that they can be increase production, building factories in the countries (something the west never did to any extent), and significantly helping them build much better infrastructure in the countries. It is a big win for China, and a big win for those countries that struggled so long under Western imperialism and colonialsim and then Western neo-colonialism.

People talk about how China is so hated by the international community, but that is not the international community but the collective west.

China is learning that the doublespeak “International” community (the reality the collective west) is never going to be a friend to China, maybe because the Chinese are not white and have more power. It is much better to get the rest of the world to be with you, and isolate the west so that they can no longer do you any harm. Russia is learning the same lesson because the white people of the west also consider them untermensch. All the better for China.

And to make matters worse for the west the tactic they used in the 19th century will not work in the 21st century, that of forcing China to turn around, bend over and pull down its pants. As proof of this just look how dangerous is will be for the US Navy to operate within well over 1000km of China. This is proven by articles that admit the the F35 does not have enough range.

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/hasc-report-finds-that-f-35c-lacks-the-range-to-strike-enemy-targets/

China is now a regional hegemon. Its military can stop dead any attempts to intimidate China. They US is fuming. Nothing it does or can do against China works.

King of the Hill – 1950’s Super Panavision 70

Western imperialism is closely linked to nationalism, racism, white supremacy, and Eurocentrism (America-centrism).

Should people follow the nationalist incitement of their governments and go to kill each other? No!

So-called patriotism, nationalism and chauvinism have always been the gravediggers of the proletariat.

Don’t forget that beyond these claims, there is communism.

Humanity is facing a series of serious problems, namely an insurmountable economic crisis, continuous wars, xenophobia, the impoverishment of the working class, and the destruction of the earth’s ecology, all of which cannot be solved by nationalism.

If we fall into the trap of nationalism, the entire human race will be destroyed. 200 million people died in endless wars in the 20th century alone.

Only by overthrowing this development model in this society can humanity escape this barbaric dead end. This is the message that the working class, especially the younger generation, wants to send to social movements in other countries.

  • In Japan, protests against the explosion and radiation effects of the Fukushima nuclear power plant have been one after another, and there is growing anger about the impact of the economic crisis.
  • In the United States, there have been a series of strikes by workers to protest against their incredible exploitation.
  • In many other countries, we can cite many examples, such as the Arab Spring, Spain, Greece, Bangladesh, etc., where the working class has been massively fired, unemployed and impoverished, and the pressure of work has been increasing.

The solution to so many problems is not nationalism in collusion with the state, but the Class struggle.

We cannot rely on the brutal burning of stores and production bases belonging to “foreign competitors” or calling for a boycott of foreign competitors’ goods to sanction opponents or overcome the crisis.

We need to unite the camp of the working class and then oppose another class camp with our class camp, rather than a conflict between countries.

Our slogan is still: the working class has no motherland and no borders!

We must inherit this internationalist tradition and break the shackles of nationalism.

The rulers want our young generation to swallow the nationalist pill, that is, the rulers threaten each other every day and launch propaganda for war. But we must firmly put forward our different proposals – Class struggle.

Only in this way can mankind not usher in the Third World War and not perish.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-Mb_mknCk4

There is a scene in the Japanese film ‘Break Through! (パッチギ!, Patchigi!) ’:

The teacher takes out a copy of ‘Chairman Mao’s Quotations’ and introduces it to the students, saying, ‘Chairman Mao of China tells us this…’

Student: ‘Teacher, have you ever been to China?’

Teacher: ‘No, I haven’t, but I know.’

The students don’t give a damn. Then the teacher continues, ‘The world is yours and ours, but in the end it is yours. There is only one way to eliminate war…’

Student: ‘Is it the atomic bomb?’

Teacher: ‘Idiot, war originates from conflict among classes. Eliminating class differences can eliminate war. This is Chairman Mao’s theory.’

40 Brutal Truths I Wish I Knew in My 20s

1. Don’t become good at something you hate.

2. Go to bed and wake up at the exact same time every day.

3. Take care of your body; it’s the only one you have.

4. Stay close to people who want more for you, not from you.

5. Normalize leaving people in the reality they’ve chosen.

6. Being humble is thinking of yourself less, not thinking less of yourself.

7. You get tested the most when it’s your time to level up.

8. Improve yourself daily—make that your only addiction.

9. You teach people how to treat you.

10. Admit you’ve walked through the wrong door instead of staying in the wrong room.

11. Waiting for a sign is a sign.

12. Nothing you’ve gone through has made you weaker.

13. Everything wants you when you want nothing.

14. Be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time to be successful.

15. When things get easy, go hard.

16. Only ask for advice from people who have been where you want to go.

17. The word “No” is a complete sentence.

18. Don’t dim your light to make others comfortable.

19. Have a primary aim for your life.

20. Stop reading books, start studying them.

21. Always assume positive intent.

22. Put your own mask on first before helping others.

23. Look for problems, don’t avoid them.

24. Your new life will cost you your old one.

25. Confidence comes from keeping commitments you make to yourself in private.

26. Dedicate a decade, not a day, to your goals.

27. Treat others the way you want to be treated.

28. Tell people about themselves; acknowledge their strengths.

29. If you keep running into bad people, you may be the problem.

30. Avoid drama and gossip at all costs.

31. Fear gives bad advice.

32. It’s never too late to change.

33. Get rid of all your vices.

34. If you’re addicted to your phone, your life isn’t interesting enough.

35. Take on as much responsibility as you can.

36. Don’t blame anyone else but yourself for your circumstances.

37. Be blissfully dissatisfied with where you’re at in life.

38. Make time for what matters to you.

39. Respect comes from admiration, not fear.

40. Life is a mirror, not a window.

battery
battery

Imagine walking around with a nuclear cell phone! The concept is not that farfetched after Chinese company Betavolt developed a battery the size of a coin that runs on nuclear energy and lasts for an incredible five decades. The technology is also applicable to drones and laptops and the energy density is 10 times more powerful than standard lithium-ion batteries of the same size.


Earth’s first miniaturized atomic energy system

Betavolt’s nuclear battery uses 63 nuclear isotopes positioned within a thumb-sized module. The energy created by the decaying isotopes is converted into electricity, a concept that has existed since the 20th century.

Startup Betavolt has begun pilot testing ahead of mass production for commercial purposes, and future applications include smartphones, drones, and laptops. They’re not the only company looking into similar technology, though. Australia’s PhosEnergy is also in the game after the Department of Defence awarded them $2.3 million to develop extra-long-life batteries.


Betavolt said in a statement:

“If policies permit, atomic energy batteries can allow a mobile phone to never be charged, and drones that can only fly for 15 minutes can fly continuously. Our atomic energy batteries can provide enduring power in diverse scenarios, such as aerospace, AI equipment, medical devices, microprocessors, advanced sensors, small drones, and micro-robots.”


The development of miniaturized nuclear batteries

Betavolt’s initial nuclear design delivers 100 microwatts of power and 3V voltage. It’s only 15x15x5 cubic millimeters big, which is great news for smaller electronic devices like phones. Betavolt’s plan includes developing a battery with 1 watt of power by 2025.

Scientists have been looking into the development of miniature nuclear batteries for many years. The US and the Soviet Union explored nuclear battery technology for use in underwater systems, remote science stations, and spacecraft. In those early days, however, the hardware was bulky and costly.

Aside from China, research institutions in Europe and America are also working on similar projects. The groundbreaking tech may revolutionize the world of electronics by removing the need to charge devices.


Design and safety of miniature nuclear batteries

Betavolt is certain that the design of their battery ensures its safety. It’s built with a layered structure to prevent it catching fire or exploding when exposed to a sudden force. The battery can also operate under a wide range of temperatures, from -60°C to 120°C.

Betavolt created the nuclear battery using nickel-63 as the energy source, which is a radioactive element. Diamond semiconductors are used to convert the energy to electricity. The single-crystal semiconductor is 10 microns thick, and a two-micron-thick nickel-63 sheet is placed between two converters. The energy that’s released as the radioactive element decays is what’s converted into an electrical current to power the device.


What about dangerous radiation?

Obviously, the main concern about nuclear energy is radiation. Betavolt is so confident of their battery’s safety that they claim it can be used to power medical devices inside the body, such as cochlear implants or pacemakers. After the radioactive element has finished decaying, a stable, harmless, non-radioactive isotope of copper is left behind, which has no environmental threat.

Betavolt’s BV100 battery is more secure compared to standard batteries. It does not explode or catch fire when exposed to high temperatures or punctured, making it a safer option.


Minimizing the risk

Betavolt claims the energy density of its miniature battery is 10 times higher than lithium-ion batteries. But they haven’t said much about the risk of beta radiation poisoning. The nickel-63 isotope releases beta radiation and converts it into electricity.

Beta particles are low-mass, high-speed, high-energy electrons that aren’t very dangerous. They can’t travel far as an X-ray or carry as much energy as an alpha particle. Although beta particles have sufficient impact to pierce several millimeters of skin, just a small amount of shielding is sufficient to provide suitable protection.

The biggest risk would come from swallowing one of these batteries, similar to the risk of standard lithium-ion batteries. Betavolt believes the potential of such long-life batteries outweighs the risks, and that their measures to make them safe for use in robotics and autonomous systems will ensure the public is safe.

Betavolt says this development puts the country of China “way ahead” of European and American scientific institutions and enterprises researching similar power sources. Production of the nuclear batteries has entered the pilot stage and mass production is expected to begin in 2025.


This news is brought to you by http://Diary24.com by Kelly L. October 9, 2024

The Iron Dome was not designed to defend against ballistic missiles, and definitely not the hypersonic missiles that Iran possesses.

Israel’s Iron Dome was designed principally against the low velocity short range home made rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza. It is adequate for those purpose given that Hamas does not possessed very many of those rockets. Even for low velocity weaponries such as Drones, Israel’s enemies can overwhelmed the Iron Dome by SWARMING the skies with it.

There are no missile system that exist currently in Western inventories, including those of Israel, that could effectively defend against a barrage of ballistic missiles – Iran had demonstrated that in its recent attacks when MOST of its missiles hit their target in Israel.

ADDITIONALLY, Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon had forced the evacuation of Israeli occupiers from Northern Israel by launching drones and rockets. The Iron Dome was not able to STOP those threats.

Should this war continue to ESCALATE, you will likely see the complete destruction of Israeli infrastructure – water supplies, electricity, port etc – because Israel and its allies just does not have the means to defend against those missiles that Iran and Hezbollah are known to possessed.

Some interesting pictures

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Hawaiian Steak

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Ingredients

  • Individual steaks, 1/2 inch thick or less
  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 1 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/4 cup vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • Pineapple slices
  • 1 large can mushrooms

Instructions

  1. Punch both sides of each steak well with a fork, then marinate for 24 to 36 hours in a marinade made by combining soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar and sugar.
  2. Simmer steaks on a low fire for 10 minutes in the marinade.
  3. Remove them and place steaks in a 350 degree F oven for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on thickness of meat. Three minutes before removing steaks, place a pineapple slice on each.
  4. To make gravy, slowly sauté a large can of mushrooms in butter. While doing so, boil down the sauce used for the marinade to make a gravy.
  5. Combine mushrooms and reduced marinade sauce.
  6. Serve individual steaks with the pineapple on top, over which has been poured a generous amount of gravy.

He was brought to the ER in cardiac arrest. Feeble pulse, BP not recordable, he was connected to a ventilator.

He is your old case, the resident reminded me. I look at him. A flashback appears

Flashback

Despite my poor face-recognition software I remembered our last conversation.

‘Doctor, I stopped the medicine you gave and started this new ayurvedic medicine for diabetes, which I came across in Google search. I started it, now 3 months, and see the lab results, they are perfect’ he threw the lab test results on my table diffidently, with a look of someone who won a boxing match without a single punch. ‘And no side effects by the way’ the sarcasm was clear in his voice. Years of medical practice endowed me with the non-stick ‘mental coating’ that make me smile.

‘I am not the manufacturer of pills, and I don’t gain or lose by your choosing to take a pill’ I silently remind myself.

But yes, his blood sugar values were normal.

Fact Check

Diabetes is elevated blood sugar, and we know its consequences. Blood vessels, from heart to brain, from eyes to kidneys tend to get blocked in diabetes; leading to stroke, heart attack, kidney disease and loss off vision. But why does it happen? That’s still not clear, even if you read through every line of the 1250 pages of the latest edition of Joslin’s Text Book of Diabetes. Today we know that diabetes comes with a host of conditions like obesity, hypertension, low HDL and elevated triglyceride (known as metabolic syndrome) and could all be partially responsible for the development of vascular complications of diabetes.. Discovery of hyperinsulinemia (increased insulin levels) as the prime driver in type 2 diabetes has added a new dimension. The present understanding is that diabetes is a biochemical orchestra gone wrong, and high blood sugar may be just one single player. Reprimand him, throw him out, but your orchestra still doesn’t improve.

A study published in Lancet show that in a diabetic lowering of blood pressure and LDL cholesterol gives significant reduction of cardiovascular events but the quantum of benefit of lowering sugar is far lesser and has a J curve (more lowering may actually harm; even in the normal range).

A recent Swedish registry data published in New England Journal of Medicine shows that in a diabetic, lowering of blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, and stopping smoking along with blood sugar control conclusively prevent a heart attack, while only control of blood sugar doesn’t.

A researcher has aptly commented that ‘Diabetes is a cardiovascular disease with elevated blood sugar’. Control blood sugar, you could still be in danger.

The FDA now insists that all diabetic drugs should prove benefit in terms of cardio-vascular event reduction in large trials to be eligible for approval for treatment of diabetes. Mere sugar lowering won’t do.

I could see the big picture, at least a part of it. At least I knew that our knowledge is shallow. The myopic man, contended with a normal blood sugar value, lying helplessly still, connected to a host of tubes and a beeping monitor was blissfully unaware.

I don’t build my house myself; I trust the architect. I don’t stich my shirt, the tailor has my confidence. I believe that the local taxi driver knows roadblocks better than Google.

Funny that we all believe Google more than our doctor.

Not funny for the sobbing relatives, sitting outside the ICU praying for him to get well.

China has successfully developed a new type of standing oblique detonation ramjet engine, which has high energy conversion efficiency and strong adaptability, and is of great significance to improving rocket launch performance, reducing costs and deep space exploration.

The standing oblique detonation ramjet is actually a rocket engine that uses a special combustion mode. Its design is inspired by the propagation characteristics of the explosion wave. It generates powerful thrust by colliding the fuel and oxidizer at a high speed at a specific angle and triggering an explosion.

The standing oblique detonation ramjet engine not only has high working efficiency and long continuous working time, but also has great advantages in structure. The engine does not require any rotating or moving parts. It only uses the three parts of the air intake, hydrogen fuel injector and combustion chamber to form the whole device. Standing oblique detonation ramjet engines can only work under hypersonic airflow.

When a hypersonic aircraft flies in the air, the shockwave not only will make it difficult for the engine’s fuel to burn, but will also cause turbulence on the fuselage surface, causing the aircraft to vibrate violently in a short period of time that affects control, and may even cause the fuselage to disintegrate.

The aircraft thus has to be made into a special streamlined structure called wave rider. Its leading edge can “ride” on the shock wave in the hypersonic airflow, which will not cause vibration of the aircraft body, but make full use of the energy of the shock wave to maintain the stability of the flight attitude.

With the standing oblique detonation ramjet engine, the aircraft can fly at a speed of more than 5 times the speed of sound. With the wave rider technology, the aircraft can maintain a stable and controllable attitude during high-speed flight. The combination of the two technologies has laid a strong foundation for the breakthrough of the future military science and technology in China.

This technological breakthrough not only demonstrates China’s profound strength in aerospace science and technology, but also indicates that future spacecraft will have greater maneuverability and a wider range of applicability.

The uniqueness of this engine lies in its suitability for high-speed flight, especially in the field of hypersonic flight. Current aircraft can only reach speeds of several times the speed of sound, but with the help of this engine, aircraft can reach higher speeds, higher altitudes and longer distances.

This type of engine is mainly used in high-tech and high-efficiency industrial fields. For example, they play a vital role in industries such as aerospace, shipbuilding, power generation equipment, and heavy machinery. With its excellent performance and reliability, this type of engine provides strong power support for these industries and promotes technological progress and industrial development.

In terms of energy supply, they can improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption. In the field of transportation, whether it is cars, trains or planes, high-performance engines can improve operating efficiency and passenger experience. In the field of medical equipment, precision engine technology provides a more stable power source for medical devices, thereby improving the quality of medical services.

I went to see my new Internist with an itchy rash all over my body. My dermatologist had prescribed an antibiotic for a localized skin infection, and then gone out of town. I am allergic to a few antibiotics, but had never had an issue with this type before.

My internist entered the exam room, lifted one of my arms by the wrist and rotated it to see each side. He dropped it in my lap and said, “Doesn’t look too bad.” I told him I was a bit worried because of the previous allergic reactions I had experienced to antibiotics in the last few months (I was having chronic sinus infections at the time). He left the room without explanation and came back with a bottle of calamine lotion. He explained how to apply it. I looked at him skeptically and asked how it would help if the rash was caused by a medication I had taken orally. He sighed loudly several times and said, somewhat facetiously, “Well, just take Benedryl if you are so worried.” I said I had been told never to take Benedryl with the several medications I was taking for my autoimmune condition, as well as an SSRI and Benzodiazepine.

He became angry, and shouted, “Well then what do you want me to do?!” I pulled away from him on the edge of the exam table, as I meekly explained that I was usually given 5mg of prednisone for a few days for this type of reaction. “Do you even know how that medication works?” He spat at me. At the time, I was a pretty new college student and was also not great at reading sarcasm. I didn’t know he was asking a rhetorical question, so I answered him thoroughly, explaining the mechanism of action of corticosteroids for inflammation. His face got red and his eyes narrowed. “How do you know that? How do you know any of that?” I calmly reminded him I was a premed student studying biology, and that I liked to know what medications did before I took them. I was confused about his level of aggression, but I felt cornered and didn’t know what to do other than assert myself in as calm of a manner as I could. That is what I had been taught to do.

“Well, well…you know way too much for a girl. Especially a girl your age. This is very inappropriate for you to know this.” He stood up from his stool and walked out the door. I was frantically trying to figure out what I had done wrong. I started to cry. I called my mom and tried to tell her what had happened, hoping she could tell me what I missed. She said, “Hold on, he is calling on the other line.” She took the call. She later told me he told her the same he had said to me— that I knew too much, that my level of knowledge was inappropriate, and she cut him off, and said “Dr. ——, it sounds like you have a personal issue. What is inappropriate is this phone call.” She clicked back into my call and just said, “Leave. There’s something wrong with him.” I had not signed a release for him to speak with anyone about me, so technically, it was a HIPAA violation for him to contact my mom. He also contacted one of my specialists, who wouldn’t take his call. He left a message. I had not signed a release for them to speak either, as this was a new internist I was seeing. I am glad I did not, and glad I did not continue to see him.

Recently, I was seeing my current doctor, and out of habit, apologized for sounding like a know-it-all about a specific topic we were discussing. He said, “Never apologize for your knowledge. Never. It is one of your greatest attributes.” I told him I wished all doctors felt that way, and he responded, “If they don’t, it’s their problem, not yours.” Twelve years later, it really felt good to hear that.

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure – 1950s Super Panavision 70

Worst feeling: being told my daughter needed life threatening surgery on her skull, and that without it, she would end up with permanent brain damage due to premature closure of the growth plates in her skull.

I took my daughter to the doctors just for her yearly health check and was given this news. The diagnosis was Saethre–Chotzen syndrome.

About six months later, watching her head growing deformed by the day, she was finally admitted to Royal Children’s Hospital (Melbourne, Australia).

The following day, she was wheeled into surgery. I kissed her goodbye as she went to sleep under the anaesthetic, not expecting her to make it. The doctor looked grim. The dozen or so staff in the surgery theatre were silent. I was ushered away.

The neurosurgeon said before I left that if all went well, she’d be in surgery for 3-4 hours. The subsequent nine hours were the longest in my life.

Afterwards, the neurosurgeon said it was worse than he had suspected and he had to remove her entire skull from the ears up and completely rebuild it with dissolvable plates.

To then see her afterwards in ICU looking like this…

I was a mess. My wife wouldn’t fall apart for another few days.

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Don’t get me wrong, the hospital team are the best in the world. That night, as my wife lay beside my daughter’s ICU bed, she whispered to me ‘She’s going to pull through. I’m not worried about that now, but how the hell are we going to pay for all this?’


The best feeling for me, exceeding any joy that preceded it in my 50 years on Earth, was listening to my daughter singing the entire song Let it go from the movie Frozen, verbatim in Spanish (of all things) from a YouTube clipping she had watched the day before. She was doing this while building a sandcastle on the beach. It was a year post-op. Weird thing was, she didn’t know Spanish and could only speak English and Thai.

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I don’t know if God exists, but angels certainly do.

BTW, my wife, who comes from Thailand, still can’t believe that healthcare is free here in Australia (paid for via our taxes).

In fact, Israel has only one front at war: the residual military value of the US.

All provocative actions taken by Israel are aimed at making it increasingly difficult for the US to tolerate the damage it has suffered in terms of international influence, and attempting to ultimately force the US to deploy military force into the Middle East.

As one of the most valuable political legacies of the founding fathers of the US, Jews were almost excluded from the core of the military system and appointed solely around economic operations, which to some extent ensured the security of the US and the world. Now, this design is gradually taking effect: fanatical Zionist zealots have to use extremely poor methods to try to manipulate the US military power – that is almost the only value left that America can be plundered by Zionists.

Subsequently, Zionists will attempt to expand/transfer their influence, they will try to parasitize regions such as Ukraine, HK, and India or somewhere else. Now, tens of thousands of Israelis have gone abroad to Ukraine, which is a country lacking defense capabilities of them. They are trying to bribe HK officials to let them in. Basically, they plan to give up on the US after draining it, maybe also Israeli land itself.

But I don’t think this behavior will succeed. Israel has offended almost all major countries on Earth at the same time. Israel is attempting to harm American interests and deceive and fool the US. The negotiation process between Israel and Lebanon was guaranteed by the national credibility of Britain and France, then Israel broke it. Israel attempted to interfere with China’s reunification process. It tried to intimidate Chinese UN peacekeeping soldiers. Israel directly conflicts with Russia on the battlefield. I can continue to list, but let’s save our time.

Honestly, I can’t see in which way this newly founded country can continue to exist, or even this outdated civilization.

Loyal Husband Catches Wife With Best Friend – She’s Toast & He’s Lawyering Up

My story about batteries and early morning wake up calls

I worked at a company where my initial job I had full access to all financial and job information and tracked it daily. When I shifted roles, my access mistakenly wasn’t removed and I didn’t say anything – just continued with the habit.

Shortly after my role changed, I noticed the parent company seemed to be shifting things around to keep one of the leads and their key people and dump everything and everyone else. So I started saving money and paying off debts. Because the writing on the wall was telling me lay-offs were coming. The home office was setting up drought conditions to slowly kill the company I was at in such a way it would seem like market flux. But I could see ALL jobs and financials and where things were being directed. It was a deliberate and slow starvation and eventually the financial situation would force lay-offs.

I was the last member added to my team and if the strategy was last in, first out, I was gone. It was just a matter of when.

One Friday I went to lunch, about six months after I started seeing the pattern, and I told my best friend I would be losing my job really soon. I could feel it coming. Sure enough, came back from lunch and got let go. I was more surprised at how surprised everyone else was, especially the VP who had to talk to me. He got more choked up in our meeting than I did. I was relieved. The wait was finally over.

It was obvious to me the company was being killed to separate the star and the people on their team and jettison the rest. We were duplicating roles – to the home office it made sense to keep the team doing something unique and consolidate the other roles in one location – which was not in our location. Everyone else knew something was up but didn’t know they knew. There was a lot of tension. A lot of anxiety that people weren’t aware they were giving off. And no one but me knew why the office was so on edge. In the end the office was reduced to less than half its size.

I see former co-workers out and about and they all seem much happier than they were that last half year. There’s a lot of bitterness toward the parent company though for breaking up our office and disrupting so many lives.

“Just PREPARE Yourself…” – Danielle DiMartino

No change.

Let it sink in that in 2017 before the corporate assassination of Huawei by the American Federal government, asml sold 1b in equipment to mainland China.

Last year, 2023, they sold almost 8b, a sevenfold increase.

The mainland is now their second largest client.

American ip-based curbs have already been in place since 2022, so the appearance of a mainland-made 5nm equivalent chip made on the 7nm node in 2023 on a Huawei phone embarrassed commerce secretary Gina, especially when she was made the center of a guerilla marketing campaign promoting the phone during her trip to Beijing.

The United States doesn’t want China anywhere near sub-10nm chips, so it is applying pressure on the Dutch government to force asml to disrupt service contracts to select mainland foundries making these advanced chips.

Unfortunately, nothing but an embargo is going to work at this point. But an embargo will be so disruptive the best outcome is global goods shortage and a second round of inflation or worse, market chaos.

ASML will lose the China market for good if they fail to honor contracts. At any rate, they will be lucky to preserve 1b annual sales within the coming decade, given the Chinese determination towards tech independence.

Not embarrassing but it was fucking hilarious. When my daughter was 3 or 4 we were at a restaurant and it was her mom’s turn to drink and mine to drive. So my ex orders a mud slide, which came in an enormous goblet and looked like a delicious chocolate shake.

So of course the little one asks to have some. We said no. She asked again and being our rule for asking for things was no, no, never, (Meaning if we said no twice and we’re asked again never was the answer and we stood by this ) her mom said, “ You can’t have any of mommy’s drink, it has liquor in it.”

My kid responded to this by standing on the seat of the booth and screaming, “ I want liquor, I want liquor!!” My ex, the waitress, and myself all burst out laughing.

We were regulars at this restaurant and my kid is not a spoiled brat so we all knew she was doing this more so as a joke and not a whining outburst. I’m sure the other patrons found this humorous as well. She’s always been a great kid and hasn’t lost her sense of humor.

I will say when she got a little older than this maybe at 5 I warned her that if she embarrasses me in public now, I won’t punish her. I will just store that in my memory, then I’m the future I will show up to her school in my pajamas and make sure I embarass her ten fold.

I never had an issue with her in public until she was like 10 when she would do so intentionally and dare me to get her back because she “doesn’t care what people think of me just like you don’t daddy, aren’t you glad you taught me that?”

{Edit} I read the question wrong and was going to delete my answer but it took too much time typing all that in my phone so I’ll go ahead and leave it until I get some complaints.

Egypt selects Chinese J-10Cs instead of upgrading its United States’ F-16Vs

J-10C: China’s Strategic Moves with J-10C Fighter Aircraft

The J-10 was originally conceived as an air-superiority fighter for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, but the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to its shift to that of a multi-role aircraft. Produced by the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation, the Vigorous Drag …

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The Egyptian Defense Ministry has reportedly placed its first-ever order for Chinese fourth-generation fighters, specifically the J-10C, as of August 19. This decision underscores Cairo’s ongoing efforts to deepen strategic and economic ties with Beijing, following its recent entry into the Chinese-led BRICS bloc earlier this year.


With this acquisition, Egypt becomes the second country to procure the J-10C after Pakistan. Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports suggest that Sudan may have been negotiating a similar deal before insurgency complications in April 2024 delayed the talks. The J-10Cs are expected to replace Egypt’s aging fleet of F-16 Fighting Falcons as they are gradually phased out.

Interestingly, there is speculation that Egypt’s decision to acquire the J-10C may be an alternative to U.S. proposals for the F-16V upgrade package. The J-10C offers superior combat capabilities compared to the enhanced F-16 model, all at a comparable cost.


Beyond the three squadrons of MiG-29M fighters Egypt ordered from Russia in 2015, most of the country’s fourth-generation fighters come from Western sources. The potential purchase of J-10C fighters marks a significant shift, reflecting the evolving political landscape.

Recent reports suggest Egypt may be ordering J-10Cs, as Egyptian officials voice increasing concerns over the Western-backed Israeli military operations in Gaza. Officials in Cairo fear these operations may force the Gazan population to seek refuge in Egypt.


This possible acquisition is pivotal when considering Egypt’s current fighter fleet, which has long been viewed as inadequately prepared for a major interstate conflict.

The nearly 200 F-16s forming the backbone of the fleet are seen as some of the least capable fourth-generation fighters globally. They’re heavily downgraded and restricted to obsolete Cold War-era weaponry, completely lacking modern beyond-visual range air-to-surface capabilities.

Political hurdles


Over the years, Egypt has encountered several political hurdles in modernizing and arming its F-16s with advanced weaponry. A significant challenge has been its intricate relationship with the United States. Since Egypt’s F-16 fleet primarily comes from the U.S., arms deals with Washington are often bound by stringent political conditions.

U.S. foreign policy decisions often dictate the flow of advanced upgrades and weapon systems, based on concerns such as human rights, regional conflicts, or a nation’s alliances. For instance, following the military removal of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the U.S. temporarily suspended military aid, which delayed essential upgrades for Egypt’s aging F-16s.

This, coupled with U.S. control over spare parts and strict operational restrictions on the aircraft, significantly hampers Egyptian air power.


Moreover, Egypt’s French-supplied Rafale fighters, ordered in 2015, also experience notable performance downgrades. Most notably, the absence of Meteor air-to-air missiles severely limits their combat capabilities.

Regional hotspots’

France’s Rafale jets, although free from U.S. political constraints, have faced their own set of geopolitical challenges. When Egypt attempts to diversify its arms purchases, including reaching out to Russia and China, it often conflicts with its Western suppliers.


Western governments, including France, have occasionally been reluctant to equip Egypt with the latest weapons systems or upgrades due to worries about how these might be used in regional hotspots like Libya or Yemen. This balancing act between maintaining good relations with Western powers and non-Western allies has complicated Egypt’s efforts to modernize its fleet with state-of-the-art technology.

Additionally, Egypt’s shifting geopolitical landscape in the Middle East has influenced its defense relationships. The U.S. and European countries have aimed to retain influence over Egypt’s military activities by controlling access to advanced weaponry.

Due to restrictions on integrating advanced air-to-air missiles and radar technologies, Egypt’s efforts to modernize its F-16 and Rafale fleets have been hampered. As a result, Egypt has been seeking more independent options for its defense supplies, increasingly turning to countries like China, which impose fewer political conditions and restrictions. This trend has driven Egypt’s recent shift toward the Chinese J-10.


In contrast, the J-10C will provide Egypt with access to two of the world’s most capable air-to-air missile classes: the PL-10 and PL-15. Western sources have acknowledged that these Chinese missiles significantly outperform their American counterparts, the AIM-9X and AIM-120D.

For Egypt, which has been using Cold War-era AIM-9 variants and the outdated AIM-7, this shift signifies a technological leap spanning several decades in performance. The J-10C will stand as the most capable fighter aircraft in Egypt’s arsenal in terms of air-to-air combat and may even be the most advanced on the African continent.


The fighter has shown in simulated combat that it can outperform modern ‘4+ generation’ fighters almost twice its size, including Russian Su-35s and Chinese J-16s. Its array of compatible air-to-ground ordnance is extensive.

The J-10C is viewed as significantly more capable than any fighter in the Israeli fleet, except for its two squadrons of F-35s. This could potentially push Israel to expand its F-35 orders and invest in more advanced air-to-air missiles for its aircraft.

Images of America

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View W. along Fern St. from 937, Camden, 1992
View W. along Fern St. from 937, Camden, 1992
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I wouldn’t say that our Elementary Maths teacher didn’t know what she was teaching, but Maths probably wasn’t her forte. She could only deliver the lessons or solutions in a “by-the-book” manner.

First, some background: we were a class of 42 students in our O-Level year (Secondary 4 in the British system, 16 years old) taking both Elementary Maths and Additional Maths (the harder subject). From hindsight in the following year, a junior told us that our class had 41 of us scoring A1 for Additional Maths, and one scoring A2, when he complained that we had set a very high bar for his class. So, we were actually the top class of our year, not just in Additional Maths but also Elementary Maths, plus all the other six subjects.

Here is the first story. The previous teacher in Secondary 3 had already completed the entire O-Level syllabus for Elementary Maths, one year ahead of time, and we were already done with the ten-years series (a compilation of O-Level examination papers) as homework. Secondary 4 was really just more revision. Unfortunately, that teacher was transferred to a new junior college (for 17–18 years old). He was that good.

And we were assigned a new teacher, who probably wasn’t aware of our progress. In one of the first lessons, we were terribly bored because we could work out the answers in our heads. We were quiet.

She thought we didn’t understand it and asked, “Do you understand the explanation?”

“Nooooo…” went the usual naughty back-benchers.

“Should I explain it again?”

“Yesssss…”

And she repeated it, word for word. The class was surprised. Word for word?

“Do you understand it now?”

“Nooooo…” and subsequent lessons just went that way.

Second story. Our classroom was next to a laboratory where they conducted experiments for the Basic Electricity and Electronics subject. One of those experiments was to demonstrate the danger of connecting an electrolytic capacitor with the wrong polarity in a direct current (DC) circuit. It would be a controlled explosion of a small electrolytic capacitor.

And there was that mini explosion next door during one of the Elementary Maths lesson.

“Who brought a firecracker?!”

“What?”

“Who played with a firecracker?”

Everyone looked at each other. “Nobody.”

“I heard it! Whoever did, better own up!”

One of our more alert classmate, because the rest of us were sleepy, said, “It’s next door. It’s an experiment.”

“Nonsense! Own up or I’ll search your bags.”

No amount of explanation convinced her. We even suggested that she should walk over and check with the other teacher. And so she searched our bags, finding nothing. Class dismissed.

Final story. Not knowing who was the teacher-in-charge, I joined the school Maths Club. And in the very first get together, we were asked to complete a 4×4 magic square and the first person to offer the solution would get a prize. Yes, she was the teacher in charge. By that time, I have already figured out one solution (there could be more than one way to solve it) and raised my hand. As I wrote down the first three numbers of the top row, she stopped me and asked me to go back to my seat. She said it was the wrong answer. Needless to say, I double checked my answer back at my seat, knew it was correct but held my tongue.

Another school mate raised her hand, went to the board and wrote the standard solution (yes, there is a very easy solution that involved simply swapping the numbers of the four corner squares and the four inner squares. You can Google it.).

She was praised and offered the prize. Then my schoolmate pointed out that my answer should also be correct (she was one of the smartest in school). I was invited to write my answer down for everyone to see. And the teacher? Mumbled something and moved on to another topic.

After that, I just do my other assigned homework during Elementary Maths class, and she didn’t bother me. ::shrug::

Atheist Dies & Finds There Is Life After Death (Near-Death Experience)

I purchased a brand new, off the lot Ford F-150 Platinum truck with all of the bells and whistles… The sales lady was a very professional looking person, dressed sharply, quick on her feet answering questions, the minute my wife shows up starts down selling knowing my wives don’t want their husbands buying the platinum, gold plated, ultimate, maximum, super charger package… but I was not to be denied. Anyway, I was repeatedly told, free oil changes and car washes for the first year that I owned the truck. “Yeah, just give us a heads up and for the first year, free oil changes or free car washes.”

“Great” I say, ready to drive off the lot. “your first oil change is due in 5,000 miles, call service to schedule when you get close.”

And like clockwork I call service to get my first free oil change and free car wash. Everything goes well.

It’s time for my next oil change and I was at 9,850 miles. I call service and schedule my next oil change, and they had me come in a few days later. Checked me in. I waited, my name was called. “that will be $47.50 for the oil change and $7.50 for the car wash.”

“I was told the oil changes were free the first year that I own the truck.” The service manager smiles and says “that’s correct, but its Its first year or 10,000 miles, whichever comes first” and you are at 10,025.”

I said “excuse me.” and walked back in the dealership, found the sales lady and as I am approaching her desk, she calls out to the manager “Jerry… upset customer. Deal with it!”

They comped my second oil change. Apologized for the misunderstanding “but its clearly stated on page 66 of the sales agreement in section 102 that the sales offer is free oil changes for the first year OR 10,000 miles sir, whichever comes first!” He says this as he his standing in front a large poster board sign stating “free oil changes for the first year you own the car!” and something yellow and small in a different language, in 2 font, at the bottom of the poster, telling me that ”transparency and honesty is paramount here at Honest John’s Ford.” tongue in cheek, fingers crossed behind his back.

BIG BIG Trouble Ahead!

In a word; ESCALATION.

Please read until the end.

The USA has a defence policy of “Launch on warning”. Russia has the same but also is thought to employ “dead man’s hands”. They do this because of the fear of a Decapitation Strike, a first strike tactic. Both sides live under the fear of nuclear strikes designed to remove all senior military and political leaders, and it is a fair worry given how fast modern ICBM (land launched) and SLBMs (sea launched)system operate. A sea launched depressed trajectory missile could take Washington/Pentagon out in as little as ten minutes from launch detection to detonation. Ten minutes in which to find the US president, get them to make a decision, open the nuclear code “football” and transmit the orders. Land launched missiles take 24 minutes to reach the USA and vice versa, still very little time to decide, target and launch. So in light of this the decision to launch middles is made upon warnings alone, specifically Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites. These can detect an engine start within 0.5 seconds. They watch the launch and flash the first warning. They watch the boost phase and post boost phase. At what is called rollover they have a pretty good idea where the missile is going. Ground based radars of the BEMEWS line and early warning radar site in the UK and Poland are the second part of launch verification. At this point the launch order for retaliation is given. Because land based missile bases and bomber bases will be the first targets they have to be launched (use them or loose them).

Once launched no missile can be stopped, there is no self destruct so the course is set.

Once the other side sees the massive retaliatory strike it launches, and it holds nothing back. Dead Man’s Hand means that regardless of any further orders of any type Russia will expend its entire inventory. Less than 20 minutes will have passed. And almost the entire land launch inventory of both sides will have been launched. The bombers now in the air will reach their targets in a few hours, but after their missions they will have no place to return to. They are effectively on suicide missions. Orders will have gone out to ballistic missile subs via US Navy TACAMO aircraft within two hours of first detection they will be emptying their tubes. Land attack cruise missiles from attack subs will launch about the same time or in some cases later. This process cannot be stopped, it’s a one way ticket.

Why is Launch on Warning a problem?

It is not perfect. Satellites can be fooled, radar can be fooled. In one famous incident Russia almost started a war when the moon rising over Norway was interpreted as a mass missile attack. The USA once thought a flock of migrating geese was an attack. In the 1950 early warning radars were so subject to false readings that the USA relied on keeping a B52 circling Thule radar base in Greenland because that would be Russias very first target and seeing it vaporised from a B52 was the best verification there was of an attack!!!!! Today the USA system is much better, the satellites are now absolute marvels at what they can detect. BUT the Russian system still lack some crucial abilities (such as direct look-down) so false warnings are still very possible.

NEXT YOU HAVE TO FACTOR IN THE LOONIES.

So the USA and Russia are relatively stable, even led by reasonable adults – until Trump came along of course. North Korea is especially dangerous because they introduce so much uncertainty. Any nation with a religious bent can also be a problem. The religious nut-bags of Iran and the self absorbed religious nut-bags of Israel for instance, who knows what would happen if they got the launch codes.

So we come back to Launch On Warning and just how fast a situation would escalate and how utterly unstoppable it is.

I hope this has given you some food for thought.

I bought a 2021 Airstream Interstate 24 GT van in 2021 and traveled around the U.S. for four and a half months. I drove 13,000 miles in that time, looking for a house. I had the time of my life, but it wasn’t cheap.

As a viable long-term option, there are some big considerations. For one, if you do your own conversion, every dime you spend doesn’t come back in resale. No bank will finance someone’s conversion. Second, a useful van for a range of weather conditions is a very complicated thing. It seems simple until you realize how difficult it is to manage condensation without ceiling vents, heaters, and AC, not to mention the insulation and overall build. Then there’s the matter of pipes freezing and keeping tanks above freezing no matter what. This is why conversions are so expensive.

If you want to stop somewhere without a hookup and remain warm and dry, you’re now talking about a generator. They need fuel, and that too gets complicated, so it’s better to stay in an RV park that has showers, power, pump-out, etc. But this comes with a cost. You can stay in places costing as little as $30.00 a night, but you might get shot. These are the equivalent of the worst neighborhoods imaginable, except everyone is closer together. You can listen to the fights all night long.

If you want to stay in a decent RV park, expect to pay closer to $60.00 a night. This would be one where you can’t reach your neighbor from your window. So, you’re looking at an expense of roughly $1,800 a month. Don’t think you’re going to remain in state or national parks because we have this thing called winter. Most RV parks in the north shut down, and your RV starts to freeze up if it’s not protected, so you head south. Guess what? So did everyone else who’s in the same boat, so you’re back to hunting for a decent place, and that takes time. It’s staying at any one place for a minimum of three days because it was so difficult to find good places. Horrible ones are everywhere. I had a few nights in those places, and I couldn’t wait to get out. Sure, you can stealth it a bit, but not much. Truck stops are the best, but just for overnight; then, get moving. Walmart and others are now kicking out overnighters.

Size matters- If you’re going with a bus, they get 4 MPG, so figure a buck a mile. That 13,000 miles would be $13,000 in fuel in a full size bus. I’ve done that too. The Sprinter was 20 MPG, so $2,600 to go 13,000 miles.

Go the route of a big RV and you need a Jeep in tow. That’s work too. The Sprinter was way better. Buy a good used one.

I had the time of my life, but I did it right—with the right rig, with the right planning, and with an exit strategy. Do it on the cheap, and it’s not going to be as much fun or as glamorous as you think.

She Died and Visited Heaven? Doctor’s Near-Death Experience Sheds Light on Life After Death

I used a master combination lock as a brass knuckle in middle school.

This guy had harassed me all year. I was small. He was big. Earlier that day we’d cleaned out our lockers and he’d taken the opportunity to walk up behind me and use a shoelace like a garrote on me. I told. Like it wasn’t obvious from the marks on my neck anyway. When a teacher asked me, I just told her.

Between classes one of his friends came up to me and said that this guy was going to break my nose so I’d always remember him and never rat him out again.

Now, my parents had complained to the school. Repeatedly. He’d attacked me earlier that year and the principal had convinced them not to press charges.

I kept the lock in my hand, with my middle finger in the clasp and the lock in my palm. The bell rang and I went in the hall to my next class. He was in the hallway.

I still don’t know if he was going to actually hit me in the hallway, but he did have his right hand cocked back. I swung up once and it went high, right below his left eye. The next one landed dead center in his mouth. I felt teeth break and cut my finger.

He crumpled over bleeding and crying. I didn’t know what to do and had my hands at my sides when a teacher grabbed me.

I was sitting in the principal’s office getting screamed at. I was going to jail. I was going to be in big trouble. I was going to have a criminal record. I had used a weapon on a defenseless kid.

They called my dad. Not mom who normally handled this.

Dad showed up.

Dad was pissed.

I’m going to remember this like it was yesterday forever. I swear I thought he was going to kill me. Then the exchange:

Principal: your son attacked another boy with a weapon.

Dad: is he under arrest?

Principal: we’re going to have to conduct—

Dad: is he under arrest? Yes or no?

Principal: once the resource officer does an investigation–

Dad (looking at the marks on my throat): you mind explaining how the hell my son got these in his neck?

Principal: well we think there was an altercation with this boy and your son earlier but I don’t think the two incidents–

Dad: are you out of your g*ddamn mind? You’re telling me you sent my son back to class with ligature marks like this and didn’t think to contact us then?

Principal: well that was horseplay then and your son clearly used a weapon here so I think that—

Dad: shut up. Look at his neck. You mean to tell me those weren’t made with a piece of rope or something? By a kid we’ve already complained about? A kid who’s nearly a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier than my son? (Turning to me) wait outside.

Principal: he can’t leave yet.

Dad: is he under arrest?

Principal: well, no, but—-

Dad: then we’re done. I need the names of everyone involved in this, their titles, and the name of the lawyer that represents the city school.

Principal: I really don’t think it’s appropriate to ask that right now.

Dad: Then I’ll get it through subpoena.

We went out to the car. He checked my neck again. Took me to the pediatrician and got it photographed. Two police officers took a statement and looked at my neck as well.

I kept thinking dad was going to explode on me for using a weapon in a fight. He always said it was okay to finish but not start a fight. This time though he was conciliatory.

“Given your options I’d probably do the same thing. ”

Since school was out I sat home for a few weeks. We got a letter demanding we pay for the other guy’s teeth. I heard dad talking on the phone to his attorney, eventually laughing. They never got anything from us, after they got the response which included the pictures of the marks on my neck the other guy’s parents stopped trying to contact us.

I actually saw him a couple years ago; he was changing oil at one of those oil change places.

‘Doctor, please admit my mother for few days under your care’.

I had just started my career as a cardiologist in Trivandrum. The middle-aged lady was my patient for around one year now; suffering from a disease called ‘dilated cardiomyopathy’ (poor heart function) but was stable on treatment, with very little symptoms.

‘Why hospital admission? She is just fine;’ I said

I knew why the admission request.

Most health insurance companies reimburse only if a patient is sick enough to be admitted and not under outpatient treatment.

‘I don’t admit patients just because an IP patient is reimbursable’ I said firmly – a philosophy that I follow even today.

‘No, no sir, don’t get me wrong. It is not for reimbursement; it is something else. Please don’t misunderstand me, I practice astrology, and as per my calculations, my mom has a very bad time in the next 3 days. Please help me.’

I obliged, writing on the case-file as ‘admitted as per by-stander’s request’ in bold letters.

A day later, during morning rounds, I saw her; she was fine; told her that there is nothing to worry. As I got out of her room, her son was waiting outside with a very worried face.

‘Sir today between 11 AM and 12 noon is the most critical time for her’.

Confident and trained in evidence based cardiology, I had far more capability of understanding a patient’s pathobiology than the astrology-expert son, but as per protocol, I just smiled.

‘She looks fine, her ECG is stable, ECHO is good, biochemistry is good. Don’t worry at all’.

What I didn’t tell him was that, astrology or such other paranormal stuff never impressed me. I believe, they are built upon exploiting the fear of an unknown, unpredictable future.

At 11-15 AM code blue is called. The lady had suffered a cardiac arrest.

She was resuscitated, and revived but had suffered a CVA (stroke). She was shifted to ICCU; she remained on a ventilator for 2 days, weaned off but died after 2 weeks due to aspiration pneumonia and sepsis.

The son thanked us for all the care and concern.

A month later he came home for a courtesy visit.

‘Sir I am a govt. employee and have very little to offer you. I do write horoscopes for a living. Can I write the horoscope for your son and daughter sir? This is all that I can do to thank you for looking after my mother; she was so fond of you’.

I froze for a moment.

A perfect fortune teller trying to tell me the future of my kids? No, never.

I thanked him profusely and told him that I shall phone him if I need his help; my way of telling him NO. I think he understood.

A prediction that I would die next Sunday would make me stop do everything because it would become pointless to work. Similarly, a prediction that I would become a billionaire next Monday would also result in similar end result.

It is the dream of a better future tomorrow, that drives all of us, to try and do our best today. No fortune-teller has the right to take that dream away from me.

MM experiments today

Theme is argument during making coffee.

I really like this one…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(6)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(6)
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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(5)
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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(6)

I then focused on women and blue Spring skies…

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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(4)
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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(5)

This isn’t all that bad…

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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(4)
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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(3)
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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(1)
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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(1)

Are they singing?

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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(2)

Early morning light… You can almost hear the roster crowing.

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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(1)

Hate the horns.

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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2

How do mortgage and home loans work in India and China? What is the rate of interest and EMI?

Tenure

China – Maximum Repayment Period is 360 months or until the 70th Birthday of the Primary Borrower whichever is lesser

India – Maximum Repayment Period is 360 months or until the 70th Birthday of the Primary Borrower whichever is lesser

Interest Rate

China – 1.25% above the Base Market Rate for 5 Year Yields which comes to 4.20% per Annum

India – 1.20% above Base Market Rate for 5 Year Yields which comes to 9.15% per Annum

Margin

China – First time buyers can get upto 80% of the Value of the Property OR 112.50% of the Value of the Land whichever is higher

Second time buyers can get upto 65% of the Value of the Property or 82.50% of the Value of the Land whichever is higher

India – Borrowers can borrow between 75% to 85% of the Market Value of the Property

How to pay margin?

China – Chinese People use their HOUSING FUND where 16% is employer contribution and 8% is employee contribution. Employee can contribute another 16% of his salary if he so wishes

Thus every month upto a maximum of 40% of the Employees salary and a minimum of 24% of the Employees salary is deposited towards Housing Fund

The Average 12 year corpus of a Housing Fund would be 291,000 CNY

You can pay all of your Housing Fund provided the Housing Fund has a minimum balance of 1000 CNY

For the balance, they use their Savings or Borrow from friends or Borrow against their Pension Fund

India – Indians pay out of Savings or borrow against their PF or take other Loans

Interest calculation

China – EMI consists of Principal plus Interest. Every month 50% of the Installment is for Principal and 50% is towards Interest

Focus is on Principal repayment

India – EMI consists of Principal plus Interest. Initially 88% of EMI is towards Interest which reduces to 12% by the 220th Month (For a 240 month loan)

Focus is on Interest

Total Amount paid

China :-

House Price – 3 Million RMB

Housing Fund – 291,000 RMB

Savings – 509,000 RMB

Loan – 2.4 Million RMB

Mortgage – 14,942 RMB a month

Total Principal Paid – 2.4 Million RMB

Total Interest Paid – 2.152 Million RMB

Interest as % of Principal = 89.67%

India:-

House Price – ₹ 1.2 Crore

Margin – ₹ 24 Lakh

Loan – ₹96 Lakh

EMI – ₹ 79,211/- per month

Total Principal Paid – ₹96 Lakh

Total Interest Paid – ₹ 1.852 Crore

Interest as % of Principal – 192.90%

EMI / Mortgage as part of Median Income

China – 14,942 RMB Mortgage payment against a Median of 38,611 RMB Post Tax for an Upper Middle Class 2 Person Household which comes to 38.69%

India – ₹79,211/- Mortgage payment against a Median of ₹ 1.50 Lakh Post Tax a month for an Upper Middle Class 2 Person Household which comes to 52.80%

Taxes required to be paid

China:-

Property Value – 3 Million RMB

Deed Tax – 0.03% – 900 RMB

Registration Fees – 0.05% – 1500 RMB

Notarization Fees – 0.1% – 3000 RMB

Digitization Fees – 300 RMB

Total – 5700 RMB

Transfer Fee (Resale) – 20,000 RMB or 1.5% Property Value whichever is LESSER

Amount as % of Price – 0.19% (New Property)

Amount as% of Price – 0.86% (Resale)

India :-

Property Value – ₹ 1.2 Crore

Stamp Duty – 6% – ₹ 7,20,000/-

Registration Fees – 1% – ₹1,20,000/-

Cess – 50% of Registration Fees – 60,000/-

Total – ₹ 9,00,000/-

Amount as % of Price – 7.5%

Thus in China, the Taxes and Duties to buy a house are barely 1/10th of that of India

Documentation and Verification

China :-

Since 2009, Paper Deeds are no longer accepted in Paper Format and must be converted into a Digital Mapped Format

No Lawyer needs to examine title for Residential Properties

The Chinese Provincial Authority in whose jurisdiction a property exists, issues a CERTIFICATE OF LEGAL TITLE for a mere 80 RMB and a NO HOLD LIEN CERTIFICATE for a mere 240 RMB

Everything is Digital

Properties in 13 Provinces are MAPPED TO BEIDOU and have a mapping coordinate link provided to locate the property at a later date

India :-

Everything is still PAPER

Lawyers needed to examine Title Deeds

Everything is still done with Paper Survey Maps

Capital Gains Tax on Property

China –

  • Zero Capital Gains for sale of First Property
  • 1% Capital Gains Tax plus additional 0.75% Capital Gains Tax for every 5 years of holding a Property upto a Maximum of 3% for sale of second and third properties
  • 10% Capital Gains Tax for sale of Fourth Property and more

India –

  • 20% Capital Gains Tax on sale of any and all Property

Liability for Illegally Constructed Property

China :-

  • Provincial Authority is fully liable to compensate the buyer 110% to 140% of the total value of the Property within a period of 60 days. It’s their business to prosecute the builder. If the Provincial Authority disputes the claim, they must deposit entire amount in ESCROW

India:-

  • Courts decide Liability which could take 30 years
  • Meanwhile Buyer is SCREWED

Non Payment of Mortgage :-

China :-

  • Borrower must pay at least one Mortgage payment fully plus any accrued interest for a 90 day Period
  • Non Payment of Mortgage Amount plus Accrued Interest beyond the 90th day will make the Mortgage Stressed
  • Bank provides 240 Days to the Borrower to Restructure the Loan Or Standardize the Loan during which the Bank won’t contact the Borrower but the Borrower can’t borrow from anyone else
  • Bank may repossess the Property after the 330th Day of Non Payment and sell the Property Or hold the property in which case a 90 Day Notice is mandatory for the Borrower to leave the property
  • The Average time to deal with a Delinquent Home Mortgage is 18 months

India:-

  • Borrower must pay at least one Mortgage payment fully plus any accrued interest for a 90 day Period
  • Non Payment of Mortgage Amount plus Accrued Interest beyond the 90th day will make the Mortgage Non Performing
  • Bank may file a case under SARFESI ACT and repossess the Property and Auction off the Property
  • The Average time taken between Default and Auction is 5 Years and 4 Months

 

Conclusion :-

Property Buyers get a better deal in China

They pay lesser EMI as percent of Income

They are protected from Illegal Construction and Bad Buyers

They have very less Capital Gains Tax

They pay almost no Taxes for Registration Or Stamp Duty

Nurse Dies During Aneurysm; Shown The Secrets To Existence During NDE

I was horribly bullied in middle school, new kid, poor, grandma bought my clothes (not my choice), started school early so I was the youngest in my grade, my hair was really short and almost fully white (blonde to a fault haha), didnt know most new music besides radio stuff. One bully in particular was extra harsh on me, would trip me, pants me, make fun of me, threw dog poop at me, pushed me into some spiky berry bush in front of our school, and the thing that finally got me was he would call my grandma names. I could take the abuse of myself, I already had low self esteem so you couldn’t hurt me more than I hurt myself, but my grandma survived a lot and I knew and saw some of the stuff she endured. I had a lot of respect for her, she was basically my mom and dad and grandma, my parents skipped out on any parent duties and abandoned me so she took me in and raised me. I flipped on him during one long session of him just going at the name calling for over an hour then he started on my grandma and I had enough, I flipped my desk over and it was on. He was about 6″ taller than me and at least 30 or 40lbs more than me and 2 years older than me. He swung at me and hit me right in the face, I was so angry I barely felt it and laughed at him (adrenaline musta been in hyperdrive), he had a pencil in his hand and swung at me with that was well but missed, I grabbed a pen off a desk and swung it at him right as he was lunging towards me. Next thing I know the teacher had pushed both of us hard to seperate us and we both fell over. My bully was holding his face and crying a lot, like that heaving cry. I saw blood on his hands. He was taken to the nurse and I was taken to the office. I was told that I had stabbed him in the eye, luckily it was the tear duct and not the eyeball itself. My grandma was called, his parents were called, the police were called. We all had a big ole talk, and the parents decided not to press charges because they already knew that their son was a major bully and I was his main target. I was in tears not cause I was in trouble but because I actually hurt someone, I have always been gentle and hurting any living thing is hard for me, and I hurt another human. The police still took a statement and I was suspended. My grandma beat the crap out of me when we got home and I ended up locking myself in my room for days until everything calmed down.

Flash forward to next year, all the bullying stopped, no one wanted to mess with me anymore, although everyone thought I was a psycho 🙁 which carried on until I move from the area.

Flash forward to my mid 20’s bully adds me on FB with an appology for years of bullying me. Decide to check out his page, he is now a she and is in a committed relationship with a man. I knew from meeting his parents they were not the type who would accept that, dad was a big burly ex football player. This changed my whole perspective on him (her) from this person was just evil and mean, to “yeah they were definitely going through some stuff in middle school”. We talked a bit and have been friendly since.

Time heals all wounds, and I am learning to let go of the past and move forward.

Tavern Meatballs and Cabbage

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Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 clove garlic, pressed
  • 1/2 cup bread crumbs
  • 3 tablespoons prepared mustard
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 medium onion, sliced
  • 1 (10 3/4 ounce) can beef broth
  • 1 cup dairy sour cream
  • 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
  • 1 pound cabbage, shredded

Instructions

  1. Combine beef, garlic, crumbs, mustard, Worcestershire and salt. Form into about 25 meatballs.
  2. In a large skillet, heat oil and brown meatballs on all sides.
  3. Remove meatballs from skillet.
  4. Drain excess skillet drippings reserving 2 teaspoons.
  5. Add onions and sauté until soft.
  6. Combine beef broth, sour cream and flour. Pour into skillet.
  7. Add meatballs.
  8. Cover and simmer 30 minutes.
  9. Stir in parsley.
  10. Steam cabbage for 3 to 5 minutes until cabbage is tender-crisp.
  11. Arrange cabbage on a serving platter.
  12. Spoon meatballs over all.
  13. Serve immediately.

US War on China is a War on the Entire World

By Brian Berletic and first posted at NEO, New Eastern Outlook

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has recently claimed the US is not “looking for a crisis.” This is said, of course, with an important caveat – no crisis is sought as long as China subordinates itself to the United States.

Because China, like any other sovereign nation, based on international law, is obligated to resist foreign subordination, the US continues speeding toward inevitable war with China.

Although China has formidable military capabilities, causing doubt among many that the US will actually ever trigger war with China, the US has spent decades attempting to create and exploit a potential weakness China’s current military might may be incapable of defending against.

Washington’s Long-Running Policy of Containing China

Far from a recent policy shift by the Biden Administration, US ambitions to encircle and contain China stretch back to the end of World War 2. Even as far back as 1965 as the US waged war against Vietnam, US documents referred to a policy “to contain Communist China,” as “long-running,” and identified the fighting in Southeast Asia as necessary toward achieving this policy.

For decades the US has waged wars of aggression along China’s periphery, engaged in political interference to destabilize China’s partners as well as attempt to destabilize China itself, as well as pursued likewise long-running policies to undermine China’s economic growth and its trade with the rest of the world.

More recently, the US has begun reorganizing its entire military for inevitable war with China.

Cutting Chinese Economic Lines of Communication

In addition to fighting Chinese forces in the Asia-Pacific region, the US also has long-running plans to cut off Chinese trade around the globe.

In 2006, the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) published “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power Across the Asia Littoral,” identifying China’s essential “sea lines of communication” (SLOC) from the Middle East to the Strait of Malacca as particularly vulnerable and subject to US primacy over Asia.

The paper argues that US primacy, and in particular, its military presence across the region, could be used as leverage for “drawing China into the community of nations as a responsible stakeholder,” a euphemism for subordinating China to US primacy. This, in turn, is in line with a wider global policy seeking to “deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.”

Under a section titled, “Leveraging U.S. Military Power,” the paper argues for and expanded US military presence across the entire region, including along China’s SLOC, augmenting its existing presence in East Asia (South Korea and Japan), but also extending it to Southeast Asia and South Asia, recruiting nations like Indonesia and Bangladesh to bolster US military power over the region and thus over China.

It notes Chinese efforts to secure its SLOC, including with a mutually beneficial port project in Pakistan’s Baluchistan region, part of the larger China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the construction of a port in Sittwe, Myanmar, part of the larger China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC). Both projects seek to create alternative economic lines of communication for China, circumventing the long and vulnerable sea route through the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea.

Both projects have since come under attack by US-backed militancy with regular attacks still taking place against Chinese engineers across Pakistan and a large-scale armed conflict backed by the US currently unfolding in Myanmar which regularly sees opposition forces target Chinese-built infrastructure.

Thus, US policy has sought and has since achieved the region-wide disruption of China’s SLOC as well as efforts to circumvent choke points (CPEC/CMEC). Other potential corridors, including through the heart of Southeast Asia, have also been targeted by US interference. The Thai section of China’s high-speed railway to connect Southeast Asia to China has been significantly delayed by the US-backed political opposition openly trying to cancel the project.

In many ways, the US has already created a crisis for China, albeit through proxies.

Targeting Chinese Maritime Shipping

Under the guise of protecting “freedom of navigation,” the US Navy has positioned its warships and military aviation around the world’s most important maritime passages including the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East and the South China Sea – the east approach to the Strait of Malacca – along with plans to establish a significant naval presence on the Strait’s west approach.

The US realizes that Chinese military power is extensive enough to significantly complicate, if not outright defeat, US military aggression along Chinese coasts. The US instead imagines targeting China far beyond the reach of its warplanes and missile forces.

The US Naval Institute published, “Prize Law Can Help the United States Win the War of 2026,” the third place entry in the “Future of Naval Warfare Essay Contest.” It warns that a “close naval blockage” is infeasible due to China’s formidable anti-access area-denial (A2AD) capabilities.

It instead argues for:

…a distant blockade—“intercept[ing] Chinese merchant shipping at key maritime chokepoints” outside China’s A2/AD reach—would be generally sustainable; flexible in tempo and location; pose manageable risks of escalation; and impede China’s resource-hungry, import-dependent war effort.

Part of this “distant blockade” would be a campaign of targeting, seizing, and repurposing Chinese shipping vessels to augment the US’ lagging shipbuilding capabilities and the dearth of maritime resources it has created.

Far from a random essay representing a purely speculative strategy, the US has already taken steps to implement its “distant blockade.” The entire US Marine Corps has been tailored solely to wage war against Chinese shipping across the Asia-Pacific and beyond.

The BBC in its 2023 article, “How US Marines are being reshaped for China threat,” would report:

The new plan sees the Marines as fighting dispersed operations across chains of islands. Units will be smaller, more spread out, but packing a much bigger punch through a variety of new weapons systems.

The “new weapons systems” are primarily anti-shipping missiles. Operating on islands and in littoral regions, the US Marines have been transformed into a force almost solely for disrupting Chinese shipping.

Together with plans to seize Chinese vessels, the US has positioned itself not as a global protector of “freedom of navigation,” but the greatest threat to it. Considering China’s status as the largest trade partner of nations around the globe, US plans to target Chinese shipping isn’t a threat to only China, but to global economic prosperity as a whole.

US War with China is War with the World

The danger of Washington’s desire for war with China and implementing its “distant blockade” to strangle China’s economy into ruins is a danger for the entire world. While preventing the global economic damage this strategy will cause after it is put into motion may be impossible, targeting the various components the US is using to encircle and contain China ahead of this conflict is possible.

US political interference and the political as well as armed opposition it has created and is using to cut China’s various economic lines of communication, can be exposed and uprooted by national and regional security initiatives.

Securing national and regional information space is the simplest and most effective way to cut the US off from the populations it seeks to influence and turn against targeted nations to achieve the political and security crises it uses to threaten trade between China and its partners. Passing and enforcing laws targeting, exposing, and uprooting US interference, including the funding of opposition parties, organizations, and media platforms by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is also essential.

Recent moves by the US to target foreign media organizations and their alleged cooperation with American citizens has created a convenient pretext for other nations to cite when targeting and uprooting NED-funded activity.

While taking these steps will have their own consequences, including retaliation from the US itself, the alternative – allowing the US to prepare and eventually carry out its “distant blockade” against China and its global trade partners – will be even more consequential.

Only time will tell if the emerging multipolar world is capable of seeing and solving this future crisis the US has spent decades preparing to create, or if the political leadership in Southeast and South Asia will fear short-term consequences at the expense of allowing and thus suffering catastrophic consequences in the intermediate future.


Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Every day before I leave for work, I wave good bye to my 2 year old daughter.

After pretending to leave, I would close the door, wait for few seconds, then open the door again to give her a flying kiss from the door and leave.

This routine surprise makes her smile as she enjoys the little game of ours everyday.

However, today, I had an urgent meeting to attend and was super late for work.

So, I just waved her good bye, closed the door and left.

As I climbed downstairs, I could feel a sense of guilt slowly engrossing my mind.

“She will surely be waiting for me to surprise her. Should I go back?

I can’t else I’ll be late. She will understand. Will she? ”

With these thoughts in mind, I reached downstairs and approached my cab.

Just as I was about to board it, something struck my mind.

“Wait for a few minutes, I forgot something” I told my driver and rushed back upstairs.

As I opened the door, I saw her, still waiting for the surprise with anticipating eyes.

Her expressions changed as she saw me.

She was ecstatic and gave a broad smile. I hugged her and asked for a sweet good bye kiss.

I was so glad I came back.

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main qimg 71a93da077a6d48edfa9874073b4ff9c

Davy Knowles w/BAND OF FRIENDS – Tattoo’d Lady/Bad Penny/Shadowplay – 4/12/18

Davy Knowles is some Hell of a savant with this lead guitar stuff.

Playing “Rory Gallagher” tunes with his old band. Now called “Band of Friends”.

Boyhood trauma

I became a mom at the tender age of 17. I was blessed with parents that supported me and a boyfriend that loved me and our son and stayed by my side until he passed away after we both graduated HS went on to college and married at age 22. He recently passed away after almost 28 years of marriage. But I digress

I had a sociology teacher in HS that was not the most pleasant of people. My son was very sick and ended up in the hospital with a severe double ear infraction high fever and a viral infection on his throat. I didn’t sleep well but needed to attend school the next day for a test.

is horrible teacher decided to target me and bring up statistics about teen moms being unfit, lazy, leeches on society. I started to cry. I was doing my best to be a good mom, a good student and learn the things I needed to graduate.

ahe want me to the principals office. As I gathered my things, I heard the entire class start to move around. As I exited tue room my fellow classmates walked with me to the office.

needless to say this teacher was told that she was not allowed to do this again and she never bothered me again.

China hits Canada with Anti-Dumping Probe in Retaliation

Three bulls heard the rancher was bringing another bull onto the ranch.

First Bull: “I’ve been here five years. I’m not giving this new bull any of my 100 cows.”

Second Bull: “I’ve been here three years and have earned my right to 50 cows. I’m keeping all my cows.”

Third Bull: “I’ve only been here a year, and so far, you guys have only let me have 10 cows. I may not be as big as you fellows, but I’m keeping all 10 of my cows.”

Just then an 18-wheeler pulls up in the pasture carrying the biggest bull they’ve ever seen.

At 4,700 pounds, each step he takes strains the steel ramp.

First Bull: “I think I can spare a few cows for our new friend.”

Second Bull: “I actually have too many cows to take care of. I can spare a few. I’m certainly not looking for an argument.”

They look over at the third bull and find him pawing the dirt, shaking his horns and snorting.

First Bull: “Son, don’t be foolish, let him have some of your cows and live to tell about it.”

Third Bull: “Hell, he can have all my cows. I’m just making sure he knows I’m a bull.”

Stuffed Peppers Casserole

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Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 3 medium bell peppers, cut into strips
  • 3/4 cup instant rice
  • 1 teaspoon season salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon garlic salt
  • 1 1/2 cup water
  • 1 teaspoon beef bouillon granules
  • 1 (15 ounce) can petite cut diced tomatoes
  • 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Instructions

  1. Brown meat and onion in skillet; drain.
  2. Stir in rice, salt, garlic salt, bouillon, water, cheese and diced tomatoes; heat through.
  3. Spray a 9 x 13 inch baking dish with cooking spray and line with peppers.
  4. Pour meat mixture over peppers.
  5. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes.
  6. Uncover and bake an additional 15 minutes.

AITA For Kicking Out My Wife And Stepdaughter After Discovering Lies About Work Trips?

Specialist ‘carbon nanotube’ AI chip built by Chinese scientists is 1st of its kind and ‘1,700 times more efficient’ than Google’s

By Owen Hughes

Scientists in China have developed a tensor processing unit (TPU) that uses carbon-based transistors instead of silicon – and they say it’s extremely energy efficient.

Unlike conventional TPUs, this new chip is the first to use carbon nanotubes — tiny, cylindrical structures made of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern — in place of traditional semiconductor materials like silicon. (Image credit: Getty Images/sankai)

Scientists in China have built a new type of tensor processing unit (TPU) — a special type of computer chip — using carbon nanotubes instead of a traditional silicon semiconductor. They say the new chip could open the door to more energy-efficient artificial intelligence (AI).

AI models are hugely data-intensive and require massive amounts of computational power to run. This presents a significant obstacle to training and scaling up machine learning models, particularly as the demand for AI applications grows. This is why scientists are working on making new components — from processors to computing memory — that are designed to consume orders of magnitude less energy while running the necessary computations.

Google scientists created the TPU in 2015 to address this challenge. These specialized chips act as dedicated hardware accelerators for tensor operations — complex mathematical calculations used to train and run AI models. By offloading these tasks from the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU), TPUs enable AI models to be trained faster and more efficiently.

Unlike conventional TPUs, however, this new chip is the first to use carbon nanotubes — tiny, cylindrical structures made of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern — in place of traditional semiconductor materials like silicon. This structure allows electrons (charged particles) to flow through them with minimal resistance, making carbon nanotubes excellent conductors of electricity. The scientists published their research on July 22 in the journal Nature Electronics.

“I Show You The Original World Map They Didn’t Want You to See” Graham Hancock

MM’s AI adventures

Today’s adventures. A lot of schmaltz, and some very strange stuff about statues.

Here’s some “schmaltz”…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(1)

And more…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(2)

And in the rain…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(3)

Enter the statues…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(4)

*sigh*

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(5)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(5)

Massive…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(6)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(6)

Here’s some “schmaltz”…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1

Mixed up sexes.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(1)

Here’s some “schmaltz”… with the bigger boobs.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(2)

Here’s some “schmaltz”…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(3)

Statues.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(4)

More…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(5)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(5)

Interesting.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(6)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(6)

Here’s some “schmaltz”…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2

Here’s some confused “schmaltz”…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(1)

Here’s some muscular “schmaltz”… plus a long necked guy in the background.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(2)

Here’s some “schmaltz”…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(3)

Statue in the rain.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(4)

More.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(5)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(5)

Here’s some “schmaltz”…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3

Here’s some “schmaltz”…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(1)

Here’s some “schmaltz”…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(2)

Here’s some “schmaltz”…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(3)

Statue.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(4)

Statue.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(5)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(5)

Dishwalla – Counting Blue Cars – 7/31/2017 – Paste Studios, New York, NY

Perseus Patroclus

This story contains themes or mentions of LGBQ+ and mental health issues.
Stars. Twinkling bursts of light. Bloodshot, glassy eyes. He has given up.

He was supposed to save everyone. Save the world. Save it because the crops wilted. Save it because the water rose and flooded. Save it because the ice dissolved. He was supposed to save it because the earth was about to combust, like his aircraft did a few milliseconds ago.

The view would probably take his breath away if he could breathe. He knew what would happen. He was not holding his breath- if he did, his lungs would expand, turn into balloons, and eventually pop. Instead, he exhales slowly, every six seconds.

The media claims your life flashes before your eyes. To him, it isn’t his whole life. Snapshots. Short films. Clips. Memories. Ones that he loved, ones that he did not want to revisit. Some pictures were blurry, incomprehensible. The highs and lows of his life, captured in stubby snippets.

 

 

 

The sea tickles his ankles. He always loved the stars, and he can see them reflected in the waves now. He is small. A child. Three years old, maybe. He doesn’t know about reflection, or that it’s possible to drown. He tries to eat the little lights, as toddlers tend to do. He is greeted with a mouthful of saltwater.

 

 

 

He wishes he were still a child. Innocent, kind, oblivious, naive.

It’s been six seconds. Exhale. He is terrified.

 

 

 

They are coming for him. He does not know who they are. They say they are Child Protective Services. He does not think he needs them- why would he, at nine years old? His mothers don’t hurt him. Where are they, after all? Why are these men coming for him?

They say something bad happened. He does not know what this means. He does not know what anything means. A police officer tries to calm him down. Tell him they will help him. Tell him his mothers are gone now, but it’ll be okay. He does not think he will be okay. They tell him he’s confused. They call him the wrong name. He tries to correct them, but they do not listen. They never listen. No one ever listens. He pushes the man away and runs.

Arms flying, his chest rises too quickly, too rapidly. He is not supposed to run in a binder. The binder his mothers gave him because they were the only ones that listened. They are gone, he has been told. Gone where? He cannot start to imagine, he cannot go down that spiraling hole.

Sweaty, suffocating, squeezing. He runs because he feels alone. He runs because his parents are gone. He runs because he hates those men who think they know everything, with their pasty white skin and privileged lives. He is dizzy, he can barely breathe. The police officers run after him, but he knows where to go- he is clever. He is in front of the house. Stumbling, his vision blurs, and his world tilts into the concrete.

 

 

 

That picture isn’t blurry, he just doesn’t want to see it.

Ten seconds. His body’s water is vaporizing, and the underlining tissue is beginning to swell.

 

 

 

He is tired. So, so tired. He knows it’s unethical, but he is sleeping at his teacher’s house. The only teacher who understands. Maybe the only person left in the world who understands. He can’t get out of the bed in the guest room. The teacher, respecting personal and legal boundaries, doesn’t intrude. It has been a month since he ran from the men. He does not get up.

His family members float above him. They whisper in his ear. He cannot move. He does not shower. He eats once a week, and his flesh has thinned to the point that it hangs off his bones. He has not taken off his binder. His ribs have cracked and fluid has built up. He does not get up to go to the bathroom. His liver is on the brink of ceasing. He is as good as dead.

 

 

 

The clearest portrait, the most unwanted.

Twelve seconds. Exhale. He knows he will die.

 

 

 

He is fourteen. He lives with his teacher, who has officially adopted him. He is on hormones. He is starting to grow a beard. His voice has deepened. He has already had many surgeries to fix the damage from his depressive episode. Liver, ribs, bladder, uterus, lungs. In two years he will get top surgery. He is on anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. He wants to be an astronaut. He works as a cashier during the summer and uses the money the buy a telescope, astronomy books, and gummy bears.

His teacher, whom he now calls Nin, is supportive throughout the rest of his life. They never lay a hand on him.

 

 

 

Even with the mental illnesses, he envies that time of his life- he was free and loved.

Thirteen seconds. The moisture on his tongue has started to boil.

 

 

 

The surgery is finished. His chest hurts- although this time, it feels good. A warm hug. He can smell the faint whiff of blood coated with chemicals. The walls are a stark white, glaring at him. The bed is surprisingly comfortable, a mixture of squishy and soft. He is loaded, a useless corpse, into a car. The anesthesia makes everything seem hilarious and wavy. Nin is driving him home, where they spoon-feed him and prop him up in front of the television. After four weeks, he can take the wrapping off. The sight of his flat chest in the mirror, the raw yet stunning scars, triggers a waterfall of tears to spill down his cheeks. That’s him. That’s him in the mirror, staring back.

Nin, whose friend is a tattoo artist, brings him to get a design over the scars, per his request. He chooses The Creation of Adam, and requests it be outlined with stars and planets.

 

 

 

The sweetest memory despite the pain, a sensation of deep euphoria.

Fourteen seconds. His skin, along with expanding, has begun to burn.

 

 

 

He is an astronaut. He is being led onto the spaceship. He is twenty-two. His name has been legally changed, along with the gender marker on everything except his hospital profile. It is time to save the world. He is ready to save the world. He calls Nin before he takes off, says he loves them and everything will be okay soon. He says that the earth will be okay soon.

 

 

 

He is a liar.

Exhale. Exhale. Exhale.

He cannot breathe, he cannot inhale, he is suspended. Suspended, like the humans’ hearts in their masses. He cannot stop thinking about his heart. A conductor, a leader. Constantly prevailing and persevering despite its host’s resignation, purposely ingesting poison to numb their pain. If the heart gave up, everything would die. Nothing would exist for that person anymore. The head of the organization, the leader of the body’s community. His heart toils, unquestioning, in his favor. Everything must work and line up perfectly to keep existing- and here he was, and the earth was dying, because the idiot humans couldn’t do the bare minimum of staying alive. Because he couldn’t even take care of a million-dollar spaceship made specially for him.

A surge of gratitude interrupts the self-hate when he realizes he can see a star-forming region in the Eagle Nebula. The Pillars of Creation, it is named. Somehow, in a dying second, there is beauty. Art, glamorous, out-of-this-world grace. It’s burnt sienna, with an impossibly vibrant red peeking through every few thousand miles. A still photograph of powder being thrown, the region looks like something out of a fantasy novel, a dazzling blue background dotted with sparks of light. It appears to be glowing, even, the darker blue background illuminated slightly by the milky brown. Again, it feels breathtaking. He doesn’t mind this will be the last thing he sees. Even though the earth will die, even though he has failed.

It seems his body is sinking under his guilt. He’s bruised, burns striping his arms from the explosion. He most likely broke something. A rib, maybe. Yes, that is what it feels like- a broken rib piercing his heart. Stabbing the submissive slave. That’s what it feels like… though he cannot tell whether it is physically broken or if it is the feeling of his failure.

There must be a way to save the world. He will not give up, he is done giving up. He’s already submitted himself to death before, he won’t let it happen again. Think. He must think. This is why he went to college, this is why he got his job- he must think. It has been fourteen seconds, he will be unconscious in one if he’s lucky.

Something inside him screams. The trigger! A button on his left wrist that he got implanted for an emergency. His mission was to go to the one planet they found that had life on it, and beg for help. But the button could send out an electromagnetic pulse to the ship’s debris, make it buzz and show a message, no matter what piece… he was so close to the planet, it was likely some rubble reached it.

In a split second, he brings his arm to his head and jams the button. In the movies, there would probably be some cacophonous, dramatic noise, but sound cannot travel in space.

He has succeeded, hopefully. But there is no more air left to exhale. There is no more oxygen left to inhale. His lungs expand. He can feel it, pressing against his chest scars. Pressing against The Creation of Adam… He sends a quick mental apology to Michelangelo. The pain is pushing into the servant organ.

He cannot feel when his lungs burst, because he has already lost consciousness.

Yummy  Food

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China’s lunar research station initiative welcomes new global partners

China’s ambitious initiative to launch an international lunar research station has gained new global cooperation partners, as the country signed several agreements with global partners for the lunar research station initiative on Thursday, according to China’s space agency.

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main qimg 6cb41dd20a1c506b7effa5ffc26cf8ea

During the opening ceremony of a two-day space forum held in Tunxi, east China’s Anhui Province, China’s space agency and its counterpart in Senegal signed an agreement on International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) cooperation.

In addition, China’s Deep Space Exploration Lab has also inked memoranda of understanding with 10 organizations from countries including Serbia, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Panama and South Africa.

In 2017, China proposed the ILRS initiative, inviting global participation. This ambitious project has garnered widespread interest, with 17 countries and over 40 institutions signing on. The ILRS envisions a comprehensive lunar research facility, including a lunar surface base, orbital stations, and Earth-based components. Designed for long-term autonomous operation with potential for short-term human presence, the ILRS will be expandable and sustainable.

Scientists create record-breaking solar technology that could solve major problem in the industry: ‘Among the best reported to date’

Sam Westmoreland

Fri, September 6, 2024 at 6:15 AM CDT

Scientists create record-breaking solar technology that could solve major problem in the industry: 'Among the best reported to date'
It can easily be ramped up to industrial levels and can be affordably produced at that scale of production.

Scientists at the Hong Kong Institute of Science and Technology have developed a new treatment that prolongs the life and efficiency of solar cells.

According to Aman Tripathi of Interesting Engineering, the researchers have created a molecular treatment for perovskite solar cells that increases their power conversion efficiency by over 20%, and it has shown an operational stability of over 1,500 hours.

While solar cells are typically made of silicon, perovskite has been gaining popularity in recent years because it is cheaper and has a higher energy efficiency than silicon. The problem is the stability and tendency to degrade more quickly than silicon counterparts.

In an effort to solve the problem, the Hong Kong research team focused on a process known as passivation, in which a chemical compound is applied to the perovskite to “reduce defects and improve their overall performance.”

The project was a resounding success, according to assistant professor Lin Hen-Yuang.

“These devices reached high open-circuit voltages beyond 90% of the thermodynamic limit,” Lin said in a press release on the discovery, “Benchmarking against about 1,700 sets of data from existing literature showed that their result was among the best reported to date in terms of efficiency in energy conversion.”

On top of that, the passivation process is highly scalable, meaning it can easily be ramped up to industrial levels and can be affordably produced at that scale of production.

Solar energy is booming globally; in the U.S., solar power accounted for almost 80% of new energy production in 2024 on an industrial scale. On a smaller scale, rooftop solar panels are popping up everywhere from vodka distilleries to new-build homes. Finding a new way to improve solar panels’ affordability and efficiency could help meet growing demand.

If the perovskite treatment is as effective at scale as it has been in testing, we could see a boom in more affordable, efficient, and durable panels around the world.

Two young men walk into a bar and one of them sits next to a girl.

“Hello,” he says.

“Are you a lawyer?” asks the girl.

“What? No.”

“Then I’m not interested. You see, this is a lawyer bar, and the girls that come here either are lawyers or want to get with lawyers.”

And so the young man leaves, and his friend leaves with him, having encountered a similar situation.

The next day they say: “What the heck, we’re just going to return there and say that we’re lawyers. It’s not like we’ll have to give them a proof right away.”

And so they go to the bar and approach some girls, and they tell them they are lawyers.

Everything seems to be going fine, but then one of the young men looks around and sees that his friend is gone. He starts to search for him, and eventually finds him sitting in the bathroom, in a very low mood.

“What happened to you?” he asks.

“Oh, I just realized… I’ve only been a lawyer for half an hour, and already the only thing on my mind is how to screw someone.”

In 1990 I went to one of those Teppanyaki Grill restaurants where a chef cooks food on the grill in front of the customers. I was with 5 other friends. It was in quite a ritzy Sydney suburb. We had no idea what to order so when the waitress asked if we’d like prawns, chicken, steak, eggs and rice, we happily said yes.

The chef threw 6 prawns on the grill, tossing them around with a flourish and chopping them up. He then gave us 1 teaspoon of prawns each!

Next came the chicken. He took a half chicken breast and whooshed it around and chopped it into tiny pieces. We got two teaspoons of chicken each.

Same thing with the steak.

By now we were really starving so we were really happy when they asked if we were ready for the rice. In came the waitress with a fingerbowl of rice. I made a joke “wouldn’t it be funny if that was for us all?’

We all laughed but not for long! It was indeed rice for everyone. So we got around 10 grains of rice each.

Lastly he threw one egg on the grill, whooshed it around and we got two teaspoons of ‘omelet’ each.

The cost of this fiasco came to $180 for the 6 of us which was a lot of money for a restaurant meal back in 1990.

We were all so totally starving we went across the road to a hamburger joint and ordered a hamburger each!

I am a mathematics professor at a Research I University. My mother-in-law was a mean old bat who never liked me. While she was visiting one afternoon my ten year old daughter ran in with her latest math test grade. She had scored an “A” grade on some multiplication facts and we all praised her profusely. The mother-in-law pipes up with, “I bet she got her math skills from her mother. Renee (My wife, her daughter) was always good in math.” Considering what I do for a living and considering my wife majored in sociology, this snarky comment pissed me off. So my reply was, “Yes, she must have gotten her math skills from her mother, because I still have all of mine.” A dead silence settled over the table for the next ten minutes.

My line was actually unintentional!

I was on a business trip some years ago and ended up in a restaurant which sat me at a small table next to another small table with a smartly dressed woman sitting alone.

We exchanged pleasantries and I said “So how’s your business trip going?”

Her reply was “Oh, fine. What makes you think I am here on a business trip?”

I said “You wouldn’t be eating alone otherwise.”

I immediately thought “Damn, what did I just do..”

She was amused and said it was one of the more classy lines she had heard.

So I ended up with an impromptu dinner guest and fellow wine connoisseur for the evening.

Every day after I pick up my daughter from school, I get out and go into the house but she stays in the car and sits there for several minutes, sometimes up to half an hour.

Sometimes she uses her phone, sometimes she just sits there.

Should I be a little concerned? Should I go check on her? Confront her?

Nope. I’m not concerned at all. She’s doing what she needs to do to cope.

She’s enjoying a few minutes of peace and quiet, collecting herself and letting the social demands of school dissolve away, before facing the social demands of family.

As a teenager, she knows that as soon as she walks in the door, there will be questions, conversations, chores and homework to be done, and demands for her attention and mental presence, which can be draining after a long day at school. In the car, alone, she can collect herself, think and process a bit, and respond to her messages without pressure and without interruptions.

More than likely, your wife is doing what she needs to do to cope, to gather herself, to catch her breath after a long day at work, and to catch up on her messages before she comes inside and faces you and all your questions.

My advice? Enjoy the peace and quiet.

Two best friends graduated from medical school at the same time & decided that in spite of two different specialties, they would open a practice together to

share office space …

Dr.Smith was a *Psychiatrist* & Dr.Jones

was a *Proctologist* (Colon to Anus)

They put up a sign reading

*Dr.Smith & Dr.Jones*

*Hysterias & Posteriors*

The town council was livid and insisted they change it.

So, the docs changed

it to read

*Schizoids & Haemorrhoids*

This was also not acceptable, so they again changed the sign to

*Catatonics & High Colonics*

No go.

Next, they tried…

*Manic Depressives & Anal Retentives*

Thumbs down again.

Then came..

*Minds and Behinds*

Still no good.

Another attempt resulted in …

*Lost Souls & Butt Holes*

Unacceptable again!

So they tried

*Analysis & Anal Cysts*

No, not a chance

*Nuts and Butts*

No way

*Freaks and Cheeks*

Still no good

*Loons and Moons*

Just Forget it!

Almost at their wits end, the docs finally came up with…

*Dr.Smith & Dr.Jones…*

*Specializing in Odds & Ends.*

*_Everyone loved it._😊*

A Woman Impersonated As A Man And Got Depressed After 3 Days

The once pretty became the now blight

Not a country, but a city:

I’ll never visit Berlin again.

When I was in college, I did a semester in London. Halfway through the term, my friends and I decided we’d take a Eurotrip to Amsterdam, Berlin, and Hamburg.

Amsterdam was a blast. I was asleep for most of Hamburg. (We stayed awake the entire night before.) But the most disappointing part of the trip was Berlin.

The city itself, the food, the history, was great. But what drove me away was the people. (Literally.) The Germans didn’t allow me into any of their clubs. (Except this one club that’s apparently super lame because it’s only for tourists.) I was there with three girls and another guy. We tried four places. The bouncers always let the girls in, but never me or my American male counterpart.

But here’s the kicker:

My biggest reason I wanted to go, pay for a flight, AirBnB, etc. was to go to the clubs. I was enrolled in music school at the time, and was really interested in electronic music. (Okay, I was obsessed.) And I knew Berlin was known for having some of the best electronic music in the world.

I was so excited, I did a bunch of research beforehand to learn how to behave so that the bouncers would approve of me. I wore all black. I stayed off my phone. I even remained silent.

But it wasn’t enough.

My passport gave me away. No one let me in anywhere, and I was really broken up about it. I had never really experienced rejection like that before. It’s a good thing my buddy was there.

He felt sorry for me, so we stayed up the whole night drinking beer and playing chess. He beat me every time, but I still had so much fun. The next day, we woke up around noon. The girls went to a museum, or memorial or something. My buddy and I spent the rest of the day at the Berlin Zoo until they closed.

I’m never going back 😉

One of my school bullies punched me in the back of the neck. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but in 2022 I filed for worker’s comp because my neck started really hurting me. Turns out I have:

  • stenosis
  • arthritis
  • a partially-healed fractured disc

Since all of this was clearly old injuries and degenerative, I lost my worker’s comp claim. Over the years, in hindsight, I should have known something was wrong.

It was 2006 when I was punched, and I moved to Australia in 2016.

In 2010 and 2011, when I was in college, I was an Army ROTC cadet for two years before I got discharged for unrelated medical issues. I did notice that the back of my neck often hurt a lot when I wore a helmet…

Thanks to new regulations, cars started getting pokier head rests that either pushed your head forward, or forced you to set the seat back. New head rests always hurt my neck.

It wasn’t until I got a job at a warehouse though, as an order selector, moving thousands of pounds of alcohol a day that my neck really started playing up. I found I couldn’t turn my head, even driving was very dangerous. I am now on painkillers so strong that every 6 months or so they test my kidneys to make sure I’m not getting killed by them. They’re non-opioid painkillers. Basically Celebrex and a super strong version of Tylenol, both for extremely old people.

Back to my bully… I started thinking about it, and I realised there was a greater than 0% chance this guy, back in the USA, was a millionaire wangster rap star. Maybe I could sue him?

I looked him up, and was startled, though not surprised, to see an adult version of his face, in a news article, wearing a prison jumpsuit.

I am definitely not expecting a lump sum payout.

China & Russia JUST Hit U.S. Where It HURTS… & U.S. Didn’t Expect THIS!

Dale Dye is a retired Marine officer who’s gotten rich as a technical advisor for military-themed movies. He founded Warriors, Inc. If you’re making a war movie, you get this guy to train your actors to behave like actual soldiers.

One of the movies he worked on was Forrest Gump. They asked him about Gump’s chances as a real soldier, and this is what he said: Forrest Gump is the ideal private because he does exactly what you tell him to.

Forrest Gump is also the ideal trainee. If a drill sergeant were to hand him, say, a footlocker layout Gump is going to set his locker up EXACTLY the way it says to. When the drill sergeant hands him a grenade he will throw it exactly the way they tell him to. He will march the way they tell him to. His uniform will be up to snuff. When we shined boots his boots would always be perfect. He will always remember to sweep, mop, wax and buff the floor. If he’s told to fall out for formation at 0630 he’ll be there. And he’d notice that the more precisely he did all these things the less the drills will yell at him.

What you DON’T want to do is put him in combat arms. He’d wind up getting his platoon killed. He’d be a hell of a Service and Supply soldier. If you tell Forrest Gump that you need an airdrop pallet built with 48 water cans, 50 cases of MREs and ten cases of ammo…that pallet is going to be built so pretty and squared away that the riggers only have to put a net and a parachute on it before they take it to the plane. They’ll never have to restack it. A more intelligent soldier, you might have to tell him the ammo and water go on first and the MREs on top of that so the weight of the heavier items don’t crush the MREs when the pallet lands; Gump is going to put the MREs on top because his sergeant told him to.

Neocons Want MBS Gone

Shorpy

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An ingenious man was able to turn a red paper clip into a house.

In 2005, Kyle MacDonald had no job, but wanted to live in a house. With limited options for saving money, he concocted an unorthodox plan.

Beginning with a red paper clip on his desk in Montreal, he would attempt to trade the seemingly useless item for something better. He would keep trading up until he reached his goal.

For his first step, he posted the red paper clip in the ‘Barter’ section on Craigslist. From Kyle MacDonald’s book, sourced below:

one red paperclip

This might not surprise you, but below is a picture of a paperclip. It is red.

This red paperclip is currently sitting on my desk next to my computer. I want to trade this paperclip with you for something bigger or better, maybe a pen, a spoon, or perhaps a boot.

If you promise to make the trade I will come and visit you, wherever you are, to trade.

Hope to trade with you soon!

Kyle

PS – I’m going to make a continuous chain of ‘up trades’ until I get a house. Or an Island. Or a house on an island. You get the idea.

Through a dogged and brilliant series of 14 trades over the course of one year (and greatly helped by later news and publicity of his quest), Kyle was able to successfully transform the paperclip into a new home:

  1. Paper clip for Fish-shaped pen.
  2. Fish-shaped pen for a hand-sculpted doorknob.
  3. Doorknob for a Coleman camp stove (with fuel).
  4. Camp stove for a Honda generator.
  5. Generator for an “instant party”: an empty keg, a beer-filling IOU for, and a neon Budweiser sign.
  6. “Instant party” for a snowmobile.
  7. Snowmobile for a two-person trip to British Columbia.
  8. Trip for a cube van.
  9. Cube van for a recording contract with Metalworks.
  10. Recording contract for a year’s rent in Phoenix, Arizona.
  11. Year’s rent for one afternoon with Alice Cooper.
  12. Alice Cooper afternoon for a KISS motorized snow globe.
  13. KISS motorized snow globe to Corbin Bernsen (a large collector of snow globes) for a role in the film Donna on Demand.
  14. Movie role for a two-story farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan.

Kyle wrote a book about his experience, and even earned a place in the Guiness Book of World Records for “Most Successful Internet Trade.”

I met this girl, Courtney, in 1999. She grew up and went to school in Buffalo, NY and I was going to school in California. We met in Michigan, at a summer program for math majors. (For foreign readers, the only thing you need to know about the geography is that all those places are very far from the others.)

It was what I call “indifference at first sight.” We met each other in the context of meeting all the eight or so student participants in the program. We got along fine, but there were definitely no romantic sparks flying. As a group, we all really got along great. Two months later, when the program was over, we all kept up with each other.

(This is more remarkable than it sounds, at least because back then there was no such thing as facebook. “Kept up with each other” meant we actually emailed or — shockingly — talked on the phone.)

About a year later, I sent an email to the group saying how I’d be going to Penn State for grad school. Courtney instantly replied, saying she would also be going to Penn State for a one-semester program. Small world! We arranged to have dinner shortly after we both arrived.

Now the romantic sparks flew. By the end of the semester, in December 2000, we were properly dating. But, alas, the semester ended and she went back to Buffalo. For foreign readers, Penn State and Buffalo are separated by about a 3–4 hour drive. However, I didn’t have a car, so for me the quickest way to visit was by an 8 hour meandering bus ride. We carried on, long distance. Despite my lack of car, my schedule was such that it was a lot easier for me to visit her than the other way around. So every other weekend (or so) I would be on that bus.

Long distance relationships aren’t that great. Maybe not in all cases, but for us, there was a pressure to really make the most out of each visit. We never really just hung around together lounging on the couch. We filled the whole weekend with stuff to do. It was fun, but it was also a little exhausting.

Too exhausting, in fact. By the time February rolled around, I was ready to call it quits. Not because Courtney had done anything wrong, and it’s not that I didn’t enjoy myself when I visited. It was just… exhausting. So one weekend in late February, I decided we’d have “the talk.”

But the timing is important. You can’t show up on Friday and start with the talk, otherwise the rest of the weekend is ruined. It has to be on Sunday, before my bus ride back. She had planned Sunday breakfast with her parents. Ugh, not ideal, but fine. So we get through that very awkward breakfast, and now she’s driving me to the bus station.

There’s that moment of silence when we have clearly transitioned from talking about whatever we were talking about, and I’m mentally firming myself up to start. Man, I hope I don’t make her too sad. Just as I’m about to begin, she says, “So… hey… listen… “

And then she breaks up with me!

She was thinking all the same things I was. We had a good laugh at that, had a nice hug, and she sent me on my way. We both resolved to still be friends.

The epilogue:

We continued talking on the phone after that — because that’s what friends do. In fact, she even went to visit me at Penn State. Because that’s what friends do.

At some point, we crossed into territory that definitely doesn’t involve what friends do. We were briefly in this awkward ill-defined relationship status, but by June, we were pretty much properly dating again. We resolved to fix the long distance problem. Different scenarios were discussed, and ultimately we ended up moving to Boston.

We got married in 2005.

Putting a man on the moon is not indicative of US superiority.

Today, the world has two superpowers: the USA and China. This is why they are frequently compared.

In most respects, China is ahead of the USA. China is the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity. China surpasses the USA in most technological fields. China has much greater diplomatic influence globally, thanks to the BRI and BRICS. China has a far more effective political system and with far greater support from the people. China has the world’s largest army and the world’s largest navy. China is a major nuclear power and can deliver warheads using hypersonic missiles.

China has 232X the shipbuilding capacity of the USA!!!

Yes, I have. I owned and operated a very successful employment agency for about 20 years. And during that time I met thousands of people in all walks of life and individuals who were at all levels of intelligence, from borderline moronic to high level genius (I also advertised in the Mensa local news magazine/letter for applicants).

I sometimes gave a version of the Wonderlic test, a 50 question, 12 minute, I.Q. test to applicants. Not to all applicants, just some.

This one individual came to my office fresh from college. He was dressed in a full three piece suit. Had never worked before, and was looking for an entry job in bookkeeping, although he had a bachelor’s degree in accounting. He didn’t come from my Mensa advertising. Since he didn’t have any work experience, I wanted to place him with one of the big 8 recognizable accounting firms. But I needed more information than just a college degree to get him the interview.

I gave him one of the six versions of the Wonderlic that I had. He finished the questions in 10 minutes instead of 12. When I scored it, I gulped. He got a 45 which in those days, 1980, was equivalent to an I.Q. of about 145.

The young man was shy, quiet, and nice. No intellectual arrogance about him. Even his vocabulary was average and not peppered with ten dollar words. I couldn’t believe this guy had a genius I.Q. I tested him with a 2nd. and 3rd. version of the test. The same, between 45 and 47, to give him as high as 148 or 150 I.Q. (At the time the ceiling for a score of 50 was around 153, which included scores of 48–50)

The individual was a genius! I made up a resume of his background, which was limited, but did put in his GPA, which was 4.0 in accounting courses, but “B” grades in practically everything else. Naturally, I was successful placing him in a job.

Today he may be retired because in 1980 he was 23 years old, but I’ll bet with his background, and I.Q., that he either ended up as a controller, CEO, or just remained as an auditor because he liked it and devoted his time to his family and not to advancing and sacrificing for a career. And I’ll also bet, since he was so self effacing, that he went through life not realizing he was so very intelligent (I did tell him what his Wonderlic scores were, but he didn’t believe me when I told him that he was extraordinarily intelligent.

These are the things that can stop you from getting a cabin crew job:

  • Age. Airlines have age requirements, to join the airline. The normal age requirements most airlines have are 18 years old to 21 years old. Don’t forget that you can be ‘’too old’’ to join as well. Sadly a lot of ME/Asian airlines are ageist. Most of the ME/Asian airlines prefer to hire candidates below the age of 30 years old. But thankfully EU/US/AUS/CA airlines are not ageist.
  • Height. Airlines have height requirements. This is because of safety reasons. If you are for example 155cm, it will be difficult for you to find an airline that would hire you. During the recruitment process, there will be a height test, etc.
  • Education. Most airlines want their candidates to at least have a completed high school diploma. If you don’t have a high school diploma, you won’t be able to get a job.
  • Weight/health. If you are not fit to fly and don’t have a healthy BMI, you won’t get the job. Your weight has to be in proportion to your height. During the recruitment, the recruiters will judge you. I say ”judge” because the recruiters are brutal when it comes to the way you look. Also during the training, your health will be checked.
  • Skin. As crazy as this sounds, a lot of airlines don’t hire people that for example have severe acne or skin issues. Issues that would be visible. Image is everything to these airlines. A lot of people forget that crew members act as some kind of ”PR” for the airlines. Crew members are ‘’brand ambassadors’’ for the airlines. That is why the airlines are super strict with the way their crew looks like.
  • Criminal background. Before you get the job, there will be a background check. If you don’t pass it, you won’t get the job.
  • Passport. For example, a Brazilian national can’t work for Airfrance in France if that person doesn’t have the legal right to live and work in France. You have to have a valid passport. Some airlines offer crew, work visas, doesn’t matter what nationality you have. For example, the airlines in the Middle East do that. Other than that you have to have the legal right to live and work in that country if you want to get a cabin crew job.
  • Medical history. Some airlines are strict with candidates’ medical histories. For example, many airlines don’t hire people with depression. Doesn’t matter if they have it now or had it before. If someone had a specific illness, even if it is healed and cured now, the airlines won’t accept that. For example, if you have any kind of sleeping issues, previous or current. Even if it is sorted out and you no longer have sleeping issues, you won’t get the job. Before you get the job you have to fill out medical forms.
  • Teeth. Yes, your teeth matter. To smile is one of your duties being a cabin crew. You have to have a nice smile. If you have issues with your teeth, for example, crooked teeth, you won’t get hired. Some airlines don’t even allow braces. Many airlines require dental x-rays before you join.
  • Vision/hearing. You have to fill out a medical form before you join. If you have issues with those, you are out. Your vision and hearing will also be checked during the medical exams during training. If you don’t pass the vision and hearing tests, you will be terminated. So better to check before you get the job.
  • Swimming. You have to know how to swim. If you don’t know how to swim, you won’t be able to get the job. There will be a ditching test during the training. You can’t have a fear of water etc.
  • Scars/marks. If you have deep surgery scars or marks, and it would be visible when wearing the uniform, then you won’t be able to get a job. Some airlines are super strict with the way their crew members look like.
  • Fear of flying. I know a girl who had a fear of flying, to what degree I don’t know. She went on with recruitment and got the job. The instructors found out during training. When they were having training in the simulators. She got fired.
  • Headscarf/hijab. Many airlines don’t allow this. For example, the airline Saudia did allow headscarves with their previous uniform. Their previous uniform looked like this:
main qimg b975069d2155869232a03a3ff714801a lq
main qimg b975069d2155869232a03a3ff714801a lq

Their cabin crew were allowed to wear a headscarf/hijab. But this year, they changed their uniform to this:

main qimg 64e213815a7a6bca9d240051ccf3b9b7 lq
main qimg 64e213815a7a6bca9d240051ccf3b9b7 lq

Now, with their new uniform, I don’t know what they did about their headscarf rules.

  • Tattoos. Most airlines are OK with candidates having tattoos, but as long as it is not visible when in uniform. If you for example have tattoos on your legs or arms, you won’t be able to get the job. I know many candidates who had visible tattoos but removed them to get the job.
  • Beard. If you have a beard like this:
main qimg 8b2597a6629c4f33147c97f8fc6cf4c6 lq
main qimg 8b2597a6629c4f33147c97f8fc6cf4c6 lq

If you are not willing to shave it, you won’t get the job. Many airlines are super strict with beards. With some airlines, you are not even allowed to have a beard like that. You have to be clean-shaven at all times, during duty. Some airlines allow their male crew members to have a beard. For example, they allow this:

main qimg 4640986e412619741b1ed70da11b7031 lq
main qimg 4640986e412619741b1ed70da11b7031 lq

With some airlines even during recruitment, if you come with a beard for your interview, they will disqualify you.

  • Hair color/hairstyle. For example, you are not allowed to have this hair color:
main qimg c00fd9edd8b31fb4706fc6d8d8e6243a lq
main qimg c00fd9edd8b31fb4706fc6d8d8e6243a lq

If you go like this for a cabin crew interview, you will not get the job. They have strict rules with hairstyles and hair colors. Even if you had your hair up in a neat bun like this:

main qimg 4d2a4c1400bd415ee49d1072bbca42cb lq
main qimg 4d2a4c1400bd415ee49d1072bbca42cb lq

That is still not allowed.

So many crazy and silly rules. Some rules are of course there for safety and security. Some rules I understand and I am happy that they have those rules. But for example the age rule. That is truly sad. A lot of airlines are ageist. Many things that can disqualify you during the recruitment process or in training. Even if you pass the entire recruitment process, you need to pass the training as well.

So many things to think of before you apply for the job.

Scott Ritter: Russia’s GLOVES ARE OFF as Putin Readies NATO’s Crushing Defeat, WWIII Next

The snipers that were killed during the Bosnian War died in very different ways:

One sniper in our platoon got shot in the head by an enemy rifle, most probably from another sniper.

An enemy sniper jumped from a high building when he discovered that we had located his position and were about to catch him alive.

Snipers were the most hated soldiers on the battlefield and when they were caught alive, they usually didn’t live very long.

We also lost a sniper when a tank shot at the house where he was positioned. A wall collapsed over him and he died immediately. It’s often overlooked that a tank makes the perfect anti-sniper weapon.

Most snipers, however, died through indirect fire from the artillery. The artillery is the number one killer on the battlefield and snipers are no exception. From all artillery weapons, the mortar is probably the most effective one against snipers.

In other conflicts, snipers also get killed by airstrikes and more and more often by anti-tank missiles. Like the tank, a modern anti-tank missile is extremely accurate over long distances and therefore, it is perfectly suited to combat a relatively small target, for example, a sniper.

I moved some of the visual narratives around, and changed the forum from making coffee to “holding a carved stone statue” and the location being a “bedroom”. Very interesting results.

Many imperfections, but very interesting and curious.

So it started out with a lot of kissing on the bed. No statue. But not too bad.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(4)

Some soft nudes.

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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(4)

And then everyone started kissing everyone else.

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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(4)

And then things got heated up.

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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(4)

And confusing…

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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 5(1)
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Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2

All are aesthetically pleasing, but none appeals to me. I am not searching for nudes and a lot of bed action. But I have taken note that you have to be very careful on what is written, and things can be misinterpreted with the strangest slight elements of sentence structure variation.

And I have no idea where the statue went.

Russia is militarily strong. Putin has tight, tight, very tight security from Russia while traveling abroad.

Mongolia’s police is not capable of arresting Putin. Neither is Mongolia’s army. That is reality.

ICC is NOT part of UN.

ICC works for members who have signed the Rome statute.

As of 2023, there are 123 members. USA, China, Russia, India, Israel & more are not members. But ICC still will help its member to sue a non-member.

The 2023 ruling against Putin in Ukraine war is not issued by UN or UN Security Council.

ICC consists of 18 judges who are elected by ICC members only; not UN.

Mongolia was within the circle of USSR before USSR collapsed.

Mongolia is between Russia & China. Though USA tries to put its hands in Mongolia, it makes sense that Mongolia joins the BRI project (pipeline) to link Russia, Mongolia & China together. To make money together.

Joining US politics only makes Mongolia poor & technological behind. Look around the world.

Try that on US supreme court? Not that lucky. Because US police or army can arrest you.

Stuffed Banana Peppers

450c89bd1ed71f1933d840781e1518bb
450c89bd1ed71f1933d840781e1518bb

Ingredients

Peppers

  • 24 banana peppers, washed, seeded and sliced in half lengthwise

Meat Mixture

  • 3 pounds ground meat
  • 3 pounds bulk Italian sausage
  • 5 eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups seasoned bread crumbs or bread cubes
  • 1 1/2 cups Romano cheese, + extra to sprinkle
  • 1 small diced onion
  • Garlic powder, to taste
  • Black pepper, to taste
  • Seasoned salt, to taste
  • Spaghetti sauce

Instructions

  1. Mix the ground meat, sausage, eggs, bread crumbs, cheese and onion.
  2. Season with garlic, black pepper and seasoned salt to taste. Mix well again.
  3. Fill banana peppers with meat mixture.
  4. Lay on a wax paper-covered tray and cover with plastic wrap, place in freezer until frozen firm; transfer to freezer bags until ready to use.
  5. Remove peppers from freezer and place evenly in a disposable aluminum casserole pan.
  6. Pour spaghetti sauce over peppers and bake at 325 degrees F for 1 hour.

1.) Begpackers

main qimg 217ba668c718e433d13fbe546a2cd5b6 lq
main qimg 217ba668c718e433d13fbe546a2cd5b6 lq

(picture from MSN.com)

Begpacker, a.k.a. begging backpackers. Foreigners who think they can just sit down on the streets and ask for money from locals / other people, because they either overstayed their budget and cannot pay for longer accommodation, and think that the locals are kind enough to spare them a few bucks so they can continue to “travel the world”. The picture above enrages me because, what? “Help us travel around the world”? Why should we help you?

The picture is taken in Bali. I am from Indonesia (a country with a passport that only offers ~70 visa-free destinations) and let me tell you about the process of being able to travel to countries in the West (the tourist pictured above is most likely from one of those countries): It is tough. We have to prove that we have sufficient amount of money, that we have a stable income, that we have strong ties to our home country. We have to prove that we will not be a burden to the country we want to travel to. If not, our applications will be instantly rejected.

Meanwhile, these begpackers are abusing the lax travel rules and use it to their own advantage, burdening the locals and abusing their kindness and hospitality.

2.) Being disrespectful at historical monuments / sites

When I was studying in New York, I went down to the 9/11 Memorial site on September 11th to see what the situation looked like. I was born 2 years before 9/11 happened so while I didn’t personally witness it as I was too young to remember, I had family relatives living in NYC at that time that witnessed it in real time. I wanted to pay respects to the victims. I went down alone, and mostly kept my phone in my bag except for taking the picture above. Upon arriving, I saw a family of tourists huddled together, leaning back on the name plates (like in the picture above) and smiling widely while taking a selfie with a selfie stick. Around them were people standing in silence, clearly mourning, and some of them were in tears. The names on those metal plates are of real people, real victims.

How could someone be as ignorant and oblivious to what was happening around them that they’d take a picture for their personal amusement while hundreds of people around them are in mourning? And no, it wasn’t just that family of tourists that were doing it. There were many tourists at the memorial, on September 11th out of all dates, taking selfies, smiling and posing.

This can also apply to tourists who pose, smile, and take “cool” selfies at other sites like the Auschwitz concentration camp, or sacred sites like temples, etc. I wish some tourists could just read the room, and could tell if a certain action/activity could be deemed inappropriate.

3.) Blocking the way for others for the sake of a photo op.

Fyi, I am a tourist myself! I love seeing places I’ve never seen before, documenting things I find beautiful, and traveling to historical or cultural places. But please, know when it is appropriate to do some things you want to do, and when it is inappropriate to do so. Don’t cause congestion on a busy street, don’t be disrespectful at memorial sites, and please, don’t be a begpacker.

ETA: Some people disagree on my stance on begpackers. “If you don’t want to give your money, then don’t.” The thing is, the kind locals would. Southeast Asians are known for their kindness and hospitality, and probably just want to help. Another sad part is that you have literal local beggars on the streets begging for food/money because they are actually poor. Then you have a privileged first world tourist who think that travelling is a must for them, not a privilege. I think that’s outrageous. Travel according to your budget. Don’t become a burden to the locals.

As for annoying tourists and photo ops: the picture above is in The Bronx, between residential buildings. Could you imagine peacefully living in your apartment, then to find out the next day that it became a tourist attraction? Wouldn’t it be bothersome? “But people adjust! Live and let live!” Well, I know for sure I wouldn’t like it if I lived there.

People are entitled to have their own opinion, and so am I. Cheers 🙂

Pounce dust all over the planimeter

Then don’t buy Chinese goods then.

It’s your choice. Put your money where your mouth is.

Things may cost more.

I sometimes have to work on HK Island, there’s some good food in some of the residential districts. But in the business districts like central or Admiralty the choices are limited to:

McDonalds, KFC, Maxims.

I’m currently boycotting those companies. So I go to places that cost more about 25% more.

China funds pro-CPC groups? 🤣 Sorry, China “does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.”

China would rather invest money in the Belt and Road Initiative and infrastructure construction in southern countries than in the corrupt and chaotic politics of the United States, because China’s development does not need to rely on US policies.

It is possible to carry out people-to-people cultural exchanges between China and the United States. The Chinese government has always required Chinese students and staff in the United States to protect their own safety, not to participate in local political activities, tell the Chinese story well, introduce a real China to American friends, and contribute to enhancing mutual understanding and promoting mutually beneficial cooperation. In fact, it is a good thing for American to have a real and objective understanding of China, which is beneficial for both sides, especially for the US.

Whether Americans pro-CPC or hate-CPC or Anti-communism is of little importance to the CPC. Besides, the CPC has no plan to govern the United States and no intention of sending Communist Party members to participate in the US election. The CPC does not need the votes of American citizens to govern China. 🤣 So, It doesn’t matter how Americans view CPC!


In addition, Taiwan chooses to fund U.S. congressmen or lobbying groups to oppose the CPC and China and attempt Taiwan independence because “political donations” and “political lobbying” are legal in the United States!

Can you name an example of a U.S. Congressman who is not a millionaire?

Taiwan is a participant in the US State Department’s Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act, the DPP authorities have frequently invited US congressmen, their assistants, and congressional experts to visit the island under the pretense of universities and research institutions, whose “white gloves” have given legitimacy to high-profile receptions, including providing first-class flights, luxury hotels, leisure and entertainment, and paying exorbitant “commission fees.” In fact, all activities were arranged and paid for by the DPP authorities.

Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has paid his second trip to China’s Taiwan, trumpeting that the island was “an independent country,” as he spoke at a business forum at the invitation of pro-secessionist media Liberty Times. he will allegedly take “commission fees” from companies including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), China Steel Corporation, I-MEI Foods Co Ltd and CHIMEI Corporation.

In his previous visit to the island, Pompeo was paid $150,000 for a speech, under the terms of an agreement signed by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US and US-based company Premiere Speakers Bureau, according to Taiwan media reports.

The DPP also paid huge amounts of money to welcome Ed Royce, a “pro-Taiwan independence” Republican congressman, who visited the island in his “farewell trip” before retirement in 2018, according to media reports.

What’s more, the DPP has raised the budget for “foreign guest reception” in 2023 to some NT$430 million ($13.6 million) from NT$370 million, an increase of 16 percent.

Apart from directly channeling profits, the DPP has been catering to affiliated or family businesses of US members of Congress, analysts noted.

The transfer of benefits is also made through Taiwan groups in the US. For one thing, they were mobilized to campaign for “pro-Taiwan independence” legislators in the US. For example, when Marco Rubio ran for the Republican presidential candidate in 2016, he received donations from many Taiwan associations in the US, and from companies or banks in the island.

“US-Taiwan Business Council,” “North America Taiwanese Professors’ Association,” and some other organizations and institutes have also campaigned for legislators through donations, canvassing, and policy advising. “Formosan Association for Public Affairs” has long provided support and campaigning for Steve Chabot, a member of the US House of Representatives, and pushed for the Taiwan Travel Act.

In addition, the DPP authorities have given profits to the US politicians through public relations firms. The Global Times learned from gathered information that, to push for Pelosi’s visit, Taiwan authorities hired ex-congressman Dick Gephardt for $22,000 a month to lobby in the US. From February 2018 to April this year, Gephardt lobbied Pelosi for 16 times, for which the DPP paid another $3.15 million.

The DPP also hired over 10 public relation firms including Nickles Group to frequently lobby members of Congress.

Information from the US Department of Justice showed that from 2016 to 2020, the DPP spent more than $12 million on public relations lobbying in the US, on average $3 million per year. Taiwan’s other agencies also invested more than $9 million in this regard.

Rescue The Republic Rally To SAVE Western Civilization!

You can’t carry more than $ 5000 or equivalent in foreign currency while entering or leaving China

You can’t bring in any sum exceeding 20,000 RMB when entering or leaving China

Within China?

No Rule that says you can’t carry too much cash on your person and no upper limit

However there are some smaller rules

  • No Business can hold more than 500,000 RMB of Cash Or 5% of Total Declared Revenue as of the previous year whichever is LOWER. So Businesses always deposit their Cash in Banks whenever the amounts exceed these limits.
  • Individuals holding in excess of 60,000 RMB cash must explain the source of the funds and declare them when asked

Ukraine Looking For Retired F-16 Pilots? Fighter Pilots React.

Of course they did and they probably weren’t wrong at the start. The Zumwalt is a failure of leadership and project management rather than a pure design failure.

Initially, it was “let’s make a replacement for the Iowa class for shore bombardment, but cheaper and more survivable in the 21st century”. It was a reasonable idea considering that the Iowa class had been retired and they were horrendously expensive to operate anyway since they need a complement of escorting ships like a carrier. A stealthy bombardment ship sounds like a great solution to this problem.

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main qimg 582184cfa75b065256699ec45154fed8

Imagine a Formula 1 car: It’s not a great car if you want to use it for grocery shopping or commuting to work, but its inability to carry anything other than the driver doesn’t make it a failure.

What happened to the Zumwalts was mission creep. The focus changed and it got loaded with all kinds of stuff, ostensibly for “improvements”, and ended up as a very expensive dud with just a barely-working main gun system (which is being replaced with hypersonic missiles). To use the F1 example, it’s like adding another seat and a trunk to the car and declaring, “now we can use it for racing AND commuting!” Is it any surprise that it becomes sub-par in all its roles? The Zumwalt is even worse considering the failure of the main gun—a bit like if the F1 car have underpowered engines.

If they did it like the F-35, let’s say, where they were very ambitious from the start, they might still have a fairly expensive class of ships and cost overruns, but they would also have working ships. Or else, they shouldn’t bother with the design after they started making it.

RUSSIA ISSUES DIRECT WARNING TO U.S.

***** BULLETIN ***** RUSSIA ISSUES DIRECT WARNING TO U.S.

BULLETIN: Russia has now issued a DIRECT warning to the United States and to NATO “If Western weapons are used to strike deep inside Russia, the consequences will affect both sides of the Atlantic.”

The direct warning was HAND DELIVERED by Diplomatic Courier, to the White House.

This comes after Ukraine began using west-supplied weapons to attack targets slightly over 1,000km into interior Russia, and  after U.S. said THIS WEEK “we are near to an agreement to provide Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles capable of reaching deep into Russian territory.”

This is a quickly-developing story.  Check back for updates.

UPDATE 3:45 PM EDT —

Russian ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, HAS NOW ALSO STATED PUBLICLY: “If Western weapons are used deep inside Russia, the consequences will affect both sides of the Atlantic.”

Russian ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov

Russian Ambassador
Russian Ambassador

Worse, he said this while discussion the present, ongoing revisions to Russia’s Nuclear Weapons Use Doctrine!

I’ve Seen The Saucers – Elton John (1974)

Not what we seem

Submitted into Contest #247 in response to: Set your story on a spaceship exploring the far reaches of space when something goes wrong. view prompt

N Martin

As the deep space exploration drone, “Odyssey,” approached Proxima Centauri, tension filled the control room. Engineers and scientists gathered around screens displaying the drone’s telemetry and images from deep space.Months before the launch, the space agency had assembled a team of experts from various fields to work on the Odyssey project. Engineers, scientists, linguists, and even psychologists were brought together to ensure the mission’s success.The team spent countless hours in simulations, testing every possible scenario and fine-tuning the drone’s systems. Alex Chen led the engineering team, overseeing the design and construction of Odyssey’s advanced propulsion and communication systems.Dr. Amelia Brooks focused on the scientific objectives of the mission. She organised workshops and training sessions to familiarise the team with the latest research on Proxima Centauri and the potential for discovering extraterrestrial life.As the launch date approached, the atmosphere at the space agency was electric. The team had worked tirelessly, and now, the moment of truth was finally at hand.

 

Dr. Amelia Brooks, the mission’s lead scientist, leaned over a console, her eyes scanning the data with a mix of excitement and apprehension. “We’re getting closer to Proxima Centauri than any human-made craft has ever been,” she said, her voice tinged with awe. “Just imagine the discoveries waiting for us.”

 

Next to her, Alex Chen, the chief engineer, nodded, his fingers dancing over the controls. “The drone’s systems are holding up remarkably well,” he replied. “But we’re entering uncharted territory. We need to be prepared for anything.”

 

As Odyssey sent back stunning images of alien worlds and mysterious phenomena, the excitement in the room was palpable. Every new piece of data was a puzzle to be solved, a clue to the secrets of the universe.

 

But then, without warning, the screens went dark. The telemetry stream halted, and the once-buzzing control room fell silent.

 

Alex’s fingers froze over the controls, his eyes wide with shock. “We’ve lost communication,” he whispered, his voice barely audible.

 

Dr. Brooks stared at the blank screens, her mind racing. “Keep trying,” she urged. “There has to be a way to reestablish contact.”

 

After the heartbreaking loss of communication with Odyssey, the control room became a place of quiet desperation. Engineers and scientists worked around the clock, fueled by caffeine and sheer determination, trying every possible method to reestablish contact with the drone.

 

The first weeks were filled with hope and optimism. Every anomaly detected in the telemetry data was scrutinized, every blip on the radar was investigated. But as days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, hope began to wane.

 

The team faced mounting pressure from both the public and the media. Questions were raised about the mission’s feasibility and the space agency’s ability to manage such a complex operation. Doubts began to creep in, and morale hit an all-time low.

 

Inside the control room, the atmosphere was one of quiet determination mixed with a growing sense of despair. Engineers and scientists formed tight-knit groups, working together to solve the seemingly unsolvable puzzle. They refused to give up, even as the odds stacked against them.

 

Late-night brainstorming sessions became the norm, with team members throwing out wild theories and hypotheses, no matter how improbable. Some suggested that Odyssey might have encountered a cosmic anomaly that temporarily disrupted its systems. Others speculated about the possibility of alien interference or even abduction.

 

Dr. Amelia Brooks, the mission’s lead scientist, took it upon herself to keep the team motivated. She organized weekly meetings to update everyone on the progress of the recovery efforts and to remind them of the importance of their mission.

 

“We owe it to ourselves and to humanity to keep trying,” she would say, her voice unwavering despite the fatigue in her eyes. “We’ve come too far to give up now.”

 

But as the weeks turned into months, the strain began to take its toll. Exhaustion set in, both mentally and physically. Team members started to doubt themselves and each other. Tensions rose, and arguments broke out over the smallest of details.

 

Despite the challenges, the team persevered. They refused to let their hard work and dedication go to waste. They continued to search for any sign of Odyssey, clinging to the hope that they might one day reestablish contact with their lost drone.

 

And then, just when they had all but given up hope, a faint signal was detected…

 

The first images and data sent back by Odyssey were nothing short of extraordinary. The drone’s cameras captured stunning views of alien worlds, strange celestial phenomena, and even what appeared to be evidence of a technologically advanced civilisation.

 

But then, the screens went dark, and the control room again fell silent. When contact was again suddenly reestablished, the images were even more unsettling.

 

The interior of an alien facility, a labyrinth of dimly lit corridors, filled with unfamiliar technology that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Strange symbols adorned the walls, their meaning a mystery to the team.

 

As Odyssey explored further, it encountered the alien creatures. These beings were unlike anything seen before: tall, slender, with skin that seemed to shimmer in different colours. They moved with a grace and purpose that suggested a highly evolved intelligence.

 

The creatures appeared to be studying Odyssey with a mix of curiosity and caution. They seemed to communicate with each other through a series of clicks and chirps, their language as alien as their appearance.

 

The drone’s cameras captured these interactions in vivid detail, but the team at Mission Control struggled to make sense of what they were seeing. Were these creatures friendly or hostile? What was their purpose in bringing Odyssey into their facility?

 

As the data logs were decoded, the cryptic messages added another layer of mystery. “They are not what they seem. Do not follow. Turn back or face extinction.” What had Odyssey stumbled upon? And what did these warnings mean for humanity’s future in the cosmos?

 

The control team was stunned. What had Odyssey encountered out there? Was this a warning meant for humanity or a message from the drone itself, transformed by whatever it had encountered?

 

Just when they thought they had seen the most unsettling images, the camera feed from Odyssey took a final, haunting turn. The lens panned to reveal another alien creature, chained and raised off the ground, its eyes locked onto the drone’s camera with an intensity that sent shivers down the spine.

 

As the creature stared directly into the camera, the screens at Mission Control were suddenly overtaken by a haunting warning displayed in red against a black background: “They are not what they seem. Do not follow. Turn back or face extinction.”

 

The control room fell into a chilling silence, the message echoing ominously in the minds of everyone present as the red text on black screens changed once more.

 

“We are not what we seem. Do not follow. Do not return. We are the last of our kind

Richard Wolff: Israel, Ukraine, China, and the End of the American Empire

I once witnessed a situation that perfectly fit the phrase, “You just picked a fight with the wrong person.” It happened at a small, cozy coffee shop I used to frequent. One afternoon, a well-dressed, middle-aged man came in and, for some reason, started berating the young barista behind the counter. She was this sweet, quiet girl, always polite and soft-spoken. The man was loud, condescending, and completely out of line, complaining about something trivial like the temperature of his coffee.

As he continued to raise his voice, demanding to speak to the manager, a woman at the back of the shop stood up. She was in her 50s, with a calm but steely demeanor. She walked up to the counter and, in the calmest voice, said, “Excuse me, sir, I’m the owner of this establishment.” The man turned to her, ready to continue his rant, but she didn’t give him a chance. With a firm but controlled tone, she told him that his behavior was unacceptable and that he was no longer welcome in her café.

The man tried to bluster his way out of it, but she was unshakeable. She informed him that she would not tolerate anyone mistreating her staff and that she had no problem calling the police if he didn’t leave immediately. The entire café was watching, and there was this palpable sense of justice in the air. You could see the man’s bravado evaporate as he realized he had underestimated her. He left, muttering under his breath, and the café broke out in applause.

That day, we all saw a quiet, kind barista stand her ground, not because she was aggressive, but because she had the unflinching support of someone who wasn’t afraid to stand up to bullies. It was one of those moments that made you feel proud to have witnessed it, a true case of someone picking a fight with the wrong person.

German “TORNADO” Fighter Jet at Edwards Air Force Base, Flying with B-61 NUCLEAR Trainer

German Fighter At US Base with B61 NBuke Trainer large
German Fighter At US Base with B61 NBuke Trainer large

A TORNADO fighter jet from Germany, has been photographed outside Edwards Air Force Base in the U.S., carrying a B-61-12 nuclear bomb TRAINER.

These “TRAINERS” mimic the size and weight of such weapons, so pilots can get used to what the plane feels like, and how it maneuvers, when carrying such a bomb.

It is important to point out that when the U.S. approved the transfer by NATO Allies of “Donated” F-16 Fighter Jets to Ukraine, the U.S. DEMANDED that only F-16’s with the necessary modification enabling them to carry the B-61 Nuclear Bomb, would be allowed to be transferred to Ukraine.

Now, we’re letting GERMAN Fighter Pilots train on flying with such nuclear bombs as well.

Why do you think the U.S. is doing these things?

I think it’s because the U.S. intends to strike Russia with nuclear weapons.

Which, it seems to me, also means we will get struck back.   Here.  Inside the USA.

Just thought you should know what your government is presently working on — in your name and on your behalf.

When Female Narcos Mess With These Brutal Cartels

Shorpy

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Turkey Officially Applies to Join BRICS

Turkey Officially Applies to Join BRICS
Turkey applies to BRICS large
Turkey applies to BRICS large

Turkey has now offically submitted its application to join BRICS, after repeatedly being denied entry into the European Union!!

Even casual observers of matters geo-political, see this as a “Huge deal;.”

If accepted, Turkey would be the first NATO member and EU candidate to join BRICS.

The whole point of BRICS is basically to replace the world’s reliance on the US dollar and “centralized” power.

Turkish President Erdogan’s administration believes “the geopolitical center of gravity is shifting away from developed economies,” according to sources.

The proposal by Turkey will be discussed at the BRICS summit in Russia this October.

HOLY S#!T! NATO IS PREPPING FOR A DECAPITATION STRIKE ON RUSSIA!

Did it happen?

If you know then Russia knows. If that’s true, we’re fucked.

For years before we got married, I’d visit my future husband about 6 times a year. I’d fly from Canada to California to see him. I’d take my seat in economy and invariably a flight attendant would approach me before takeoff and ask, “are you flying alone?” I would answer that I was and they’d tell me to come with them and lead me to a business class seat. I assumed I was just lucky.

On future flights I was pulled out of line and whisked through customs. As I was going through a private security screening, I was told by a customs agent that I’d be sitting in business class. I told him that this happens to me in one way or another every time I flew and I didn’t understand why. He told me that my fiancé arranges this for me as this was the only explanation. He seemed to know who I was engaged to. He further told me that my fiancé was a very modest man and would never do this for himself but he must love me a lot to do it for me. I had no idea he was behind this. BUT…

While I waited to board the plane, I called my fiancé and asked him why he’d never told me that he arranges for me to sit in business class. He denied any knowledge of this and said he’d have told me if it was him. It wasn’t him. I have no idea why this happened for years. He’s not famous, I’m not famous and I have no connection to the airlines whatsoever. I don’t even dress well when I fly. Every time it happens, I think “you gotta be kidding me”.

“This Is The Greatest Lie Ever Told” – How Elites & Baby Boomers Collapsed America

Good video. He’s a bit too irritating, but his explanation, while soft, is pretty good. He talks about various historical cycles.

"You can correlate inflation with social collapse."

I heard this story from my uncle.

In 1969 a friend of his — a Vietnam tunnel rat on his second deployment — was home in Denver on leave from Vietnam. He was a Chicano about 5′ 4″ and 140 lbs, about the size of most tunnel rats.

FYI: Tunnel rats crawl into enemy caves, bunkers, and tunnels with just a pistol, a knife, and a flashlight and fight to the death in hand-to-hand combat with whoever is in there.

My uncle was giving him a ride to Fort Carson later that day so he could go back to the war, so him and my uncle went to a strip bar about 11 AM to have a few drinks. They had the best table in the bar, right in front of the dance floor. The tunnel rat was proudly wearing his uniform, ribbons and all.

My uncle went to the john to take a piss, and right then three big guys in cowboy hats and jeans came into the bar. They walked up to the tunnel rat who was sitting at the best table enjoying the show, and one of them told him to “get the f*#k out of our spot, you f*#king Mexican!” Then he punched the soldier in the head. BIG mistake!!

My uncle came out of the pisser right then, just in time to see the tunnel rat smash his beer mug across that guys face and proceed to beat the living shit out of all three of them, bouncing them across the bar room with fists, elbows, and kicks.

They were really busted up — some teeth on the floor, all three of them unconscious and bleeding. It all happened fast.

The Sheriffs showed up a few minutes later, looked at the mess, and asked the bartender what happened. He told them the truth, how the cowboys came in and attacked that soldier and got the shit beat out of them. The ambulances showed up then and started loading up the busted cowboys.

One of the Sheriffs questioned the soldier and found out he was a tunnel rat who was deploying back to Vietnam later that day. He looked at the bloody cowboys and chuckled, took statements from witnesses, and let the soldier go so he could get back to Fort Carson on time.

Just goes to show you — it’s not who is the biggest, but who deals the deadly blow first that wins the fight.

The Collapse of America & Everything Wrong With Society Today (+ A Hopeful Way Forward) | Ray Dalio

According to the OED, capitalism is “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit”.

So, capitalism equals private enterprise.

But I struggle with the invisible hand thesis of efficient markets. Yes, Adam smith’s “wealth of nations” is required reading in economics, but having been immersed in the business of profit, it doesn’t make sense to me.

A successful economy does not spring up organically. Neither do markets self-organize into optimal, efficient equilibria. As far as I can tell, the invisible hand applies only to prices, but it requires the presence of robust price discovery mechanisms, which entails complex issues of governance in law and administration.

No capitalist nation is truly capitalist. The UK’s NIH has nationalized healthcare. The Norwegians nationalized oil. The French still maintain colonies. All nations provide public education. The BOJ and Fed intervene directly in capital markets. Sovereign wealth funds have market-swaying powers. The US massively subsidizes farming and more recently, chipmaking.

And so on.

The term capitalism is overabused that it has become devoid of meaning, just like democracy.

What is “better at capitalism”? The absolute share of private enterprise in the economy? Private enterprise can be co-opted (or rather, directed) for government purposes. Cue elon’s starlink as a key enabler of NATO’s military campaign in Ukraine. Or American social media’s complicit role in Palantir’s “death by algorithm” program of automated drone assasinations.

What is “better at capitalism”? Hothousing the most profitable companies? There’s no fighting the Americans, who lead in valuation. But how much is enough?

What is “better at capitalism”? Ascending the capitalist throne as the “greediest SOB that ever lived”?

I don’t know. You tell me.

China just wants to improve its delivered baseline decade on decade. Whether it is market- or state-driven doesn’t matter, because the cat that catches mice is a good cat, whether it is black, or white.

Americans Are Priced Out Of Home Ownership, Marriage And Kids

Space Burns

Submitted into Contest #24 in response to: Write a story set in the dark recesses of space where the two main characters are often at odds with each other in humorous and comedic ways. view prompt

Stevie Aldrich

“CONKLIN!” Havaderr wailed. His face was the brightest red and steaming with heat. The veins in his neck throbbed noticeably, but he waited as still as he could for Conklin to answer. A buzz came in over the intercom above Havaderr’s head.

     “Hey, was that you shouting, Havaderr?” Conklin’s voice crackled with static and attitude. Havaderr shut his eyes and repeated his Zen mantra in his head.

     “Havaderr? What’s your problem?”

     Havaderr’s eyes opened, and in the most even tone he could manage; he said his mantra out loud.

     “I am calm. I am calm. I can overcome this. I am strong. I am strong. I can overcome anything.” Havaderr spoke through gritted teeth, spittle flying across the room as he focused on keeping his anger inside rather than shouting and blowing the place up with Conklin inside.

     “Hey guy, are you going to answer me or what?” Conklin’s voice implied his own rising impatience. Havaderr moved to the button on the wall nearest him to respond.

     “Yes, Conklin, I was shouting,” Havaderr said as evenly as his rage would allow. “Get your ass to 4A NOW!” As he trailed off, he clenched his teeth together so hard he felt a grinding that might as well have been a tooth chipping. Before Conklin’s reply came, Havaderr heard an irritated sigh over the intercom.

     “Yeah, be right ther-.” Conklin barely finished his sentence before releasing the button, cutting himself off at the end.

     Moments later, a door slid open down the hall, several yards away from Havaderr. Conklin came into the hall, looking both ways before spotting Havaderr.

     “What the hell, why are you shouting and-“ Havaderr cut Conklin off with a finger to his mouth to silence him.

     “I’m going to show you something in this room behind me, and it’s best if your mouth is shut when I do.” Havaderr’s voice wavered, he was still trying to control his anger. Conklin looked confused as ever but kept his mouth shut. With a worried expression, Conklin followed Havaderr to another door. Havaderr stood aside and opened the door for Conklin to enter alone. Conklin stood in the doorway staring, then Havaderr shoved him wholly into the room from behind and closed the door.

     “Havaderr, what’s going on? What the fu-ahhhh!” The intercom inside the restroom was unnecessary, but Havaderr appreciated it right now. He would have heard Conklin screaming from quite a distance, but hearing Conklin’s disgust and horror in surround sound was more pleasing. A slice of anger slid off his shoulders and a small smile appeared on his face.

     The door rattled, clearly Conklin on the other side trying to burst through, but Havaderr held the lock button, keeping Conklin trapped inside.

     “What kind of game is this Havaderr? Let me out, for Christ’s sake!” Conklin was panicking, releasing more anger from Havaderr’s shoulders and filling his belly with laughter.

     “This is no game, friend. This is you coming face to face with your own incompetence,” Havaderr said over the intercom, still smiling.

     “Havaderr! Let me out of here!” Conklin screamed and started ramming the door again.

     “I don’t think so, Conklin. If you look to the left of the door, I’ve been kind enough to set you up with plenty of cleaning supplies for the job, which is a lot more than you did for me. I’d suggest you start tackling that shit before it starts tackling you.” Havaderr exploded with laughter, letting go of the intercom and floating backward as he held onto his stomach. He laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe. Conklin kept banging on the door and pleading to be released, but Havaderr couldn’t hear anything over the roar of his own hysteria.

     Curled up in fetal position, floating in the hallway, Havaderr worked himself out of his fits of laughter. He wiped the joyful tears from his eyes and started breathing normally again. He moved back to the intercom.

     “Look mate, this restroom was in your sector to clean. Obviously, you did a piss poor job,” Havaderr grabbed his side, holding the laughter in after such a quality pun. “I told you, cleaning the restrooms would be the most important job, because if it isn’t done right, this happens. Floating excrement!” Conklin didn’t say anything, but Havaderr heard him kick or punch the door.

     “I’ll take your silence as admitting you did a sloppy job the first time. You know, I needed to do some business, and I walk into the restroom greeted with a turd to the face, which I’m assuming belonged to you, so I have no sympathy for you right now. Clean the damn restroom like you were supposed to, and I’ll let you out.” Havaderr waited for a response. He was eager to shower off the stench and stain of human waste from himself before finishing his day.

     “Yeah, alright,” Conklin said over the intercom, sounding defeated and guilty. Havaderr nodded his head and left Conklin to figure out how to clean a restroom with feces floating freely throughout.

     “Like I said, not a drop of sympathy for you. Do it right the first time, and we won’t run into stupid problems like that,” Havaderr said coolly, scrubbing at the built-up muck in the corners of the glass.

     Conklin was still cranky from cleaning the restroom the day before, and he meant to let Havaderr know just how little he appreciated the tactless way he was pushed into the situation without warning.

     “Chin up, Conklin. We have one more day before our shift is over, and we can get the hell off this floating heap of death,” Havaderr motioned toward the clear chambers that housed the comatose bodies of several crew members, one of which whose glass he was scrubbing.

     “Remind me, what’s up with these bodies? They’re dead, yeah?” Conklin asked.

     “No, they’re alive, they’re the crew, dumbass,” Havaderr grunted at Conklin. He looked over to see Conklin hovering around the main dashboard, not a rag or mop near him. “And I wouldn’t mind if you got to work while you asked your questions,” he barked. Conklin jumped and reached for a rag tucked into a closed bucket tethered nearby. He started mindlessly wiping at the dashboard without paying close attention.

     “Okay, but how come they’re asleep?” Conklin asked. Havaderr sighed as he paused and rolled his eyes.

     “Do I look like the Captain of this ship? All I know is, this crew is traveling some number of lightyears, so the ship has been programed for regular stops near inhabited planets for maintenance and cleaning. We drew the short straw, so we get to hop from the ship we were on previously, to this one, and then another one before heading back home. Nobody else was this far out into deep space to do the job, so we get a long shift before our break. At least they’re paying us over time, eh?” Havaderr smiled at the thought of a paycheck double its usual amount. He looked in on the half-naked man inside the tube he was cleaning, tapping on the glass with his knuckle and laughing at how strange the sight was.

     Air escaped the edges of the door, and it hissed loudly. The smile fell from Havaderr’s face as he scanned the chamber looking for an explanation. The door swung open and the half-naked man floated out as if to follow. Thankfully, he was attached to a few tubes that kept him reigned in and asleep, but the color left Havaderr’s face once he realized that would only last for so long.

     Havaderr turned to Conklin, who looked just as confused.

     “He just-just-he-“ Havaderr stuttered, unable to decide what he was trying to say. The man’s feet flew upward so his back was parallel to the floor and his right side dipped down. Slowly, he started to spin, so he was upside down. All the while, Havaderr and Conklin stared without any clue how to fix it.

     “Did you touch something?” Havaderr shouted at Conklin, who shook his head wordlessly.

     “I didn’t touch anything!” Havaderr went back to staring at the half-naked man, perplexed. After a minute, Havaderr decided they couldn’t leave the man like that.

     “Get over here and help me with this!” He yelled at Conklin. Still silent, Conklin moved toward Havaderr and the unconscious man. Havaderr and Conklin wore their gravity belts at 85% power to keep from floating off like the man from the tube, but it allowed them a bit more mobility too. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any extras to strap to the man, so he continued to spin and flip through the air.

     One of the wires connecting the man to his casket snapped, leaving only one left to keep him from flying down the corridor and into every other part of the ship. Havaderr and Conklin shared a look of fear but said nothing.

     Havaderr grabbed the man’s knees and tried to pull them down so the man was right side up, but as he pulled, the man’s whole body moved toward Havaderr. Conklin remained motionless, watching the unconscious body float into Havaderr. Havaderr struggled and groped, trying his very best to wrangle the helpless man, but even his best efforts left him with the man’s body bumping into him clumsily. He accidentally grabbed the man’s buttocks, and the man’s armpit swung around and slapped him in the face. All in all, it reminded Conklin of two young people at their first school dance, trying not to step on each other.

     Conklin covered the smile on his face, but the more Havaderr fought with the floating man and lost, the more the urge to laugh rose in his belly. When the man launched a foot directly into Havaderr’s eye, Conklin lost it. With one hand on the man’s shoulder and his other arm wrapped around the man’s torso, Havaderr stopped to see what was so funny to Conklin. He didn’t have to ask; he knew how he looked.

     “Would you knock it off and help me! I don’t know what we disconnected, but that could be vital to this man’s life!” Havaderr tried to repeat his mantra in his head, but he couldn’t hear anything over Conklin’s laughter. Havaderr grumbled as he kept spinning the man back into position, with no help from Conklin, who was tumbling in circles on the other side of the room.

     Finally, Havaderr got the man into his up-right position and back into the tube. As best as he could, he reattached the disconnected wires, but he couldn’t pull the door shut.

     “Conklin! Find the button to close this door, hurry, before he tries to escape again!” Havaderr pleaded.

     Conklin straightened up and moved to the dashboard he had been cleaning. On the first try, he hit a button, and the door closed, sealing itself. Havaderr wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at Conklin, a little puzzled. Conklin’s laughter died down, but when he saw Havaderr near collapse and panting, his laughter boiled over.

     “What is wrong with you? Were you too busy finding this hilarious to help me save that man’s life?” Havaderr demanded, huffing and puffing.

     “Calm down, he’s fine,” Conklin squeaked. “The buttons are clearly labeled on the dash here, see?” Conklin pointed to the dashboard. Havaderr saw buttons marked to open doors, close doors, start specific mechanisms, stop the same mechanisms, and a bunch of other things Havaderr didn’t understand. What he did think he understood, was how the door opened in the first place.

     “Did you open his door on me?” Havaderr asked Conklin, the anger rising again.

     “Yeah, mate, you should have seen the look on your face!” Conklin rolled over laughing.

     “You idiot! You could have killed the man, we could be fired, what the hell is wrong with you?” Havaderr bellowed.

     “Relax Havaderr, you’ll give yourself a stroke!” Conklin pulled himself together for a second, setting his feet back on the floor and pointing to the dashboard again.

     “This here, that indicates their vital signs. You can see they’re all perfectly healthy, no harm done,” Conklin said matter-of-factly. Havaderr was flustered. He could only trust Conklin’s word, he had no idea what any of the lights or buttons meant on the dash.

     “You couldn’t have known it would be okay, though. What if the tube that detached from his arm was something that kept him alive?” Havaderr exclaimed. Conklin rolled his eyes, irritated that Havaderr wasn’t figuring it out as easily as he was.

     “All that tube did was give him pleasant dreams; it wasn’t important. He’ll live, and nobody need ever know you almost killed a man,” Conklin started to giggle again. Havaderr’s face turned tomato red and he clenched his fist, trying to fight the overwhelming desire to punch Conklin in the face.

     “You did this on purpose?” Havaderr said, strained.

     “Well, maybe don’t lock me in a room with floating shit again, and we’ll be fine,” Conklin smiled, feeling pleased with himself.

  • The astronauts of Apollo 11 could not get life insurance. They signed their photographs so that their family could get money after selling them.
  • The term “astronaut” is derived from Greek words “astro”, which means star, and “naut” which means “sailor”.
  • To be an astronaut, you have to be taller than 5’2” and shorter than 6’3”.
  • Astronauts on the International Space Stations witness 15 sunrises and 15 sunsets a day.
  • Many shooting stars that you see are actually astronaut poop burning up on its way down the atmosphere.
  • Astronauts can vote from space and their address is listed as “low-Earth” orbit in absentee ballots.
  • The International space station travels at 7.66 kilometres per second and can be seen from 6,700 locations on the Earth.
  • As per astronauts, space smells like “smeared steak” and tastes like “raspberries”.
  • Astronauts can lose up to 22% of their blood while in space, due to microgravity.
  • Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first astronauts to land on the moon, had bacon cubes as part of their first meal on the moon. The full meal included four bacon cubes, three sugar cookies, peaches, pineapple-grapefruit drink, and coffee.
  • Valentina Vladímirovna Tereshkova was the first female astronaut in history and completed 48 orbits around the Earth in her three days of mission in space.
  • Astronaut Alan Shepard (crew member of Apollo 14) played golf on the moon’s surface. On his third strike attempt, he sent the ball so far away that its whereabouts are unknown.
  • After long periods of time traveling through space, an astronaut’s heart becomes almost 10% more spherical.
  • Astronauts need to exercise their muscles, as they atrophy easily in space. For this reason, at the International Space Station, there is a gym prepared for training.
  • Sleeping in outer space is a challenge of its own. The sun rises and sets approximately every 90 minutes making it difficult to have a good night’s sleep.

Hope you find them interesting 🙂

As U.S. Forces Dutch Semiconductor Giant To PUNISH China, Beijing To CANCEL G7 Grain Imports

Biden is going to go out with a BANG!

Biden’s Nuclear Going Out of Business Sale

This is real. This is not a drill. The world is teetering on a precipice of nuclear war.

**I’ll be speaking on this urgent situation at the National Press Club in DC today, calling for cessation to the escalations which are now directly impacting America’s national security. Tune in at 5pm ET and watch the livestream on YouTube @DKucinich**

Has the world forgotten the real danger of nuclear war?

Do we live in a fantasy world where we think we can escalate tensions and put entire portions of the world under threat by using Ukraine as a sacrificial pawn (in what is classically sold as providing humanitarian and ally support) in a decades-long psychopathic foreign policy play to destroy Russia?

According to the laws of war, NATO, the U.S., the U.K., and France have determined to become “direct participants” in Europe’s deadly conflict as their home-grown offensive missiles are being launched from inside Ukraine to attack Russia.

Translated, a state of war exists between the West and Russia.

Putin is not absolved for his invasion of Ukraine. But how are western nations, led by the U.S., protecting Ukraine’s or their own national interests by quickening the dialectic of conflict, bringing nuclear weapons into the calculus?

Russian President Putin and his government have experienced long-standing western policies of encirclement and NATO encroachment through Ukraine, something the U.S. government swore would not happen. It did happen, reawakening Russia’s deepest fears of invasion.

Most Americans are unaware that in 2014, the U.S. forced out the elected President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, which resulted in Kiev ordering attacks on ethnic Russian enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk, baiting Russia into the beginning of a three year war, with the lure of NATO membership fluttering above Ukraine.

As the war barrels to a climactic, perhaps irredeemably fatal stage, the Ukrainian people have lost at least 600,000 of their fellow countrymen and women. Even so, at this late hour, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken demands that Ukraine lower its age of compulsory military service from 25 years of age to 18, to send even more young Ukrainians into the slaughter. Russian casualties will soar past 400,000 dead, with latest reports of 1,000 casualties a day.

One million Europeans have been killed for a war which was not inevitable, should never have been fought and, once it started, could have been brought to a fast conclusion. According to Naftali Bennett, former Prime Minister of Israel, peace talks were sabotaged by the US, just a month into the conflict.

The constitutions of the U.S., the U.K. and France, which forbid executives to unilaterally wage war, are being circumvented. Leaders have gone rogue and are consciously choosing nuclear brinkmanship over diplomacy.

In the past month, escalation is being stoked by the West. The launch of ATACMS and other advanced missiles necessarily involves U.S. personnel and intelligence data. This new phase of the war compelled the Kremlin to lower its threshold for a nuclear strike in an attempt to stop the use of even higher grade weapons against it from the West.

What happened? … The 2024 Presidential Election happened.

The escalation is intended to sabotage President Trump’s stated desire to bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war and for the architects of the war to try to escape the blame for miscalculations, bumbling and cynical protraction of a bloody conflict. It is clear the West does not want peace.

Remember, the sacrifice of Ukraine and everything that has led up to this point is due to the West’s long time policy to advance the strategic defeat of Russia.

The Cold War never ended. It has given way to a boiling Hot War whose aim is to antagonize, provoke, diminish and conquer Russia. Key elements are the attempted dismantling of Russia’s energy infrastructure, and the massive transfer of arms to our proxy, Ukraine, through US appropriations which are approaching $200 billiion dollars, an amount equal to over $5,000 dollars for every Ukrainian man, woman and child.

In order to set the stage for this war, Western interests resorted to conjuring Putin as a demon, an arch-enemy of freedom, as was done with Hussein in Iraq, Khaddafy in Libya, and Assad in Syria. Once the enemy machine goes to work, military assets are mobilized to advance the overthrow of the noxious government, and the cash registers of defense contractors ring with the energy of a pinball arcade.

The Democratic Party unleashed an entire kennel of the dogs of war upon Russia, often at the urging of warden Hillary Clinton, mastermind of the Russiagate hoax. The nadir of the Dems descent into the indecent was ballyhooing the support of its 2024 presidential ticket by Dick Cheney, the sterling warmonger whose endorsement is to mass homicide what the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval is to stylish domesticity.

Think of the political consequences to the credibility of the entire Western foreign policy establishment if President Trump succeeds in bringing the war to a close. President Biden’s foreign policy, led by Secretary Blinken, will be forever tainted, as will the Democratic Party’s steadfast support for guns over butter.

The overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government in 2014, Russia’s subsequent invasion; the Prime Minister’s Gambit, Boris Johnson’s April 2022 scuttling of a peace agreement; the severe damage to the European economy through the destruction of Nordstream pipeline, by GUESS WHO, [readers hereby invited to guess]; NATO’S teeter-totter, penny-pinching one moment, saber-rattling burlesque the next, and harrowing brinkmanship — misdirecting public attention during the inevitable collapse of Ukraine. All this chest thumping and war pimping will be called into question, presuming there is time.

Another knock-on effect of the war and the failure of sanctions: Russia and China have been pushed together into a deep long-term military and economic partnership. Could the Biden Administration have been unaware of the military, economic and political fallout from a BRICS+-type alliance?

Rational military observers predict the transfer of the newest missiles will not change the outcome of the war, and some Trump advisers believe the next president’s bargaining position vis a vis Moscow will be strengthened as Ukraine’s offensive capacity is temporarily enhanced.

However, a sharp escalation in the next six weeks could result in a devastating response from an increasingly anxious Russia. Biden isn’t trying to help Trump or the process of peace, he’s handing him, and the world, a poisoned chalice.

The only way Ukraine wins is for the West to stop the war and negotiate an agreement with Russia which restores Ukraine’s sovereignty, neutrality and way of life. Otherwise, the war grinds on, the casualties on both sides mount, Armageddon looms and the world gets to indulge in thinking the unthinkable, annihilation.

Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan of the US Strategic Command, isn’t calling for nuclear war, but he did say at a Project Atom 24 meeting recently, “If we have to have a(n) [nuclear] exchange then we want to do it in terms that are most acceptable to the United States,” where, presumably, even after nuclear war, we still lead the world, or its ashes – in strategic weapons.

President-Elect Trump, has assessed the extreme danger of the moment, saying: “We have never been closer to World War III than we are today under Joe Biden. A global conflict between nuclear-armed powers would mean death and destruction on a scale unmatched in human history.”

Vladimir Putin has clearly stated that Russia would “mirror” or match all escalations. Russia responded to an ATACM missile launch with a new hypersonic intermediate range ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, that reputedly reaches speeds of MACH 11 and delivers some 36 payloads. It devastated a Ukrainian missile factory.

It was an unmistakable message: Those six major payloads with six submunitions within them could be nuclear ones next time.

The next firing of ATACMs could bring a Russian response endangering or killing the American personnel responsible for firing these munitions. Even a skilled negotiator will find it difficult to diffuse the conflict once American blood has been shed. Why in the world would our government cause our troops, let alone our nation, to be so vulnerable?

Eight trillion dollars of our $36 trillion deficit is due to wars of choice since 9/11. The continued failure of American diplomacy, preferring war to statecraft, has been a persistent hubris. Pray that it not be fatal for our nation and the world.

Everyone who loves our country must speak out, now, to help avert a catastrophe.

Radiation Spike – Was Yesterday’s “Earthquake” actually an Underwater Nuke Blast?

Ah. Ol’ Hal Turner is doin’ some diggin’.

Radiation Spike – San Diego, CA People wondering: Was Yesterday’s “Earthquake” actually Underwater Nuke Blast?

NETC Header large
NETC Header large

After yesterday’s offshore “earthquake,” there is presently a significant Radiation Spike in San Diego, CA, which is now showing 600 Counts-Per-Minute (CPM) of Gamma Radiation in the 800 KeV range; about triple of everywhere else in California.

This reading comes from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Radiation Monitor Network, as being presently reported by the private sector website Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center (NETC).

Here is the reading coming from the radiation monitor network:.

2 NETC San Diego CA 12 6 2024
2 NETC San Diego CA 12 6 2024

Here is the extended Graph of Radiation Readings from this same station over time:

NETC Radiation Graph San Diego 12 06 2024
NETC Radiation Graph San Diego 12 06 2024

The reason this is peculiar, has to do with yesterday’s offsshore, Magnitude 7.0 earthquake, 647 miles farther north, off the shore of Mendocino, CA.

That earthquake took place where you see the large red circle offshore in the ocean on this map from yesterday’s United States Geologic Survey (USGS) website:

7 0 CSZ CALIF
7 0 CSZ CALIF

That “earthquake” has an interesting, and curious “Waveform” on seismic monitors.   Here is what the waveform looked like; focus on the bright red lines on the bottom right seismic scale image – notice they don’t gradually build-up to the main quake, they just “explode:”

7 0 qUAKE OR eXPLOSION
7 0 qUAKE OR eXPLOSION

A number of observers have mentioned that this waveform bears more resemblance to that of an explosion than to an earthquake.  The sudden, and massive surge of seismic waves is *NOT* what one typically sees when a large earthquake takes place.  Usually, there is a small, but visible build-up to the main quake.

On social media, some people actually said this was a nuclear blast off the US Coast.  Here is one such claim:

 

 

Which brings us back to the radiation reading off San Diego, 647 miles or so to the SOUTH of the earthquake location.  If this radiation spike had anything to do with the earthquake, why are readings elsewhere in California “normal?”

It ____may___ have to do with the “North Pacific Current.”  In fact, it makes PERFECT sense.

The image below, from Wikipedia, shows the generalized flow of the North Pacific Current as it approaches the continent of north America :

Wiki North Pacific Current
Wiki North Pacific Current

Yesterday’s “earthquake” took place off Mendocino, right about where the farthest left blue line of the North Pacific Current is flowing!  That current moves . . . . south.

But more importantly, look what happens to that current when it reaches the “bight” of southern California: the current SPLITS.   The main current continues south into Mexican waters but the split loops back north right around . . .  San Diego!

If the “earthquake” was a nuclear detonation, the North Pacific Current, through its “Southern California Eddy”  Which in Winter is called the “Southern California Countercurrent” would bring the radiation into the California coastline, right around . . . . . . . . San Diego.

And THAT is where we are seeing a significant radiation spike today.  Right where the north Pacific Current would bring what was deep water up by Mendocino, into the shoreline area!

HMMMMMMMM.

We need someone with a Radiation Detector, to head out onto the beach at San DIego, and grab a reading of the radiation level — especially near the water.

Maybe this Radiation spike in San Diego is . . . . happenstance.

Maybe it isn’t.

MM COMMENTS

You guys know that when I think about a underwater nuclear explosion, I think in terms of a huge tsunami wave hitting the shore and devastating the homes and buildings there.

But maybe…

Maybe…

The purpose of this “explosion” (if it was nuclear, wink, wink) was to coat the entire Western (populated) United States with radioactivity.

Thank about that for a minute.

Now, let’s see what MoA has to say about something that has happened within the last day or two…

U.S. Has Stopped Ukrainian ATACMS Strikes On Russia

As further ATACMS strikes on Russia seem to have stopped this timeline is of interest.

November 18:

U.S. allows Ukraine to use ATACMS missiles against targets within Russia:

The reversal of policy, nearly 1,000 days since Russia started its full-scale invasion on Ukraine, comes largely in response to Russia’s deployment of North Korean troops to supplement its forces, a development that has caused alarm in Washington and Kyiv, a U.S. official and a source familiar with the decision told Reuters.

[Note: There is no evidence that any North Korean troops were deployed by Russia anywhere near Ukraine.]

November 19 and November 20/21:

Ukraine hits an ammunition depot in Russia’s Bryansk Oblast, far from any relevant frontline, as well as military facilities in Russia’s Kursk oblast:

On November 19, six ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles produced by the United States, and on November 21, during a combined missile assault involving British Storm Shadow systems and HIMARS systems produced by the US, attacked military facilities inside the Russian Federation in the Bryansk and Kursk regions.

The fire at the ammunition depot in the Bryansk Region, caused by the debris of ATACMS missiles, was extinguished without casualties or significant damage. In the Kursk Region, the attack targeted one of the command posts of our group North. Regrettably, the attack and the subsequent air defence battle resulted in casualties, both fatalities and injuries, among the perimeter security units and servicing staff.

November 21:

Russia fires a new missile with hypersonic kinetic warheads at a military industrial complex in Dnipro:

In response to the deployment of American and British long-range weapons, on November 21, the Russian Armed Forces delivered a combined strike on a facility within Ukraine’s defence industrial complex. In field conditions, we also carried out tests of one of Russia’s latest medium-range missile systems – in this case, carrying a non-nuclear hypersonic ballistic missile that our engineers named Oreshnik. The tests were successful, achieving the intended objective of the launch. In the city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, one of the largest and most famous industrial complexes from the Soviet Union era, which continues to produce missiles and other armaments, was hit.

November 23 and 25:

Ukraine continues with ATACMS strikes against targets within Russia:

On 23 November, the enemy fired five U.S.-made ATACMS operational-tactical missiles at a position of an S-400 anti-aircraft battalion near Lotarevka (37 kilometres north-west of Kursk).During a surface-to-air battle, a Pantsir AAMG crew protecting the battalion destroyed three ATACMS missiles, and two hit their intended targets.

As a result of the strike, a radar was damaged. There are casualties among personnel.

On 25 November, the Kiev regime delivered one more strike by eight ATACMS operational-tactical missiles at the Kursk-Vostochny airfield (near Khalino). Seven missile were shot down by S-400 SAM and Pantsir AAMG systems, one missile hit the assigned target. Two servicemen were lightly wounded and infrastructure objects sustained minor damage by missile debris.

After investigating the attacked sites it was confirmed that the AFU delivered strikes by U.S.-made ATACMS operational-tactical missiles.

November 27:

The Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov has a phone call with Gen. CQ Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

Gen. Valery Gerasimov initiated last Wednesday’s call with Gen. CQ Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to provide him with that warning and to also discuss Ukraine and how to avoid miscalculation between the U.S. and Russia about that ongoing conflict.

November 28:

Putin announces the response to the November 23/25 strikes:

Last night, we conducted a comprehensive strike utilising 90 missiles of these classes and 100 drones, successfully hitting 17 targets. These included military installations, defence industry sites, and their support infrastructure. I want to emphasise once again that these strikes were carried out in response to the continued attacks on Russian territory using American ATACMS missiles. As I have repeatedly stated, such actions will always elicit a response.

It seems that Russia’s message has finally reached its recipient.

December 5/6:

In another strike on Russia Ukraine has used fix wing UAVs but no ATACMS:

Last night, the Russian Armed Forces have foiled another attempt by the Kiev regime to launch a terrorist attack using a fixed-wing UAV against the facilities in the Russian Federation.Thirty three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were intercepted by alerted air defence systems over Kursk region. Fourteen UAVs were shot down over the territory of Voronezh region, eleven over Kursk region, seven over Belgorod region, and one over the Crimean Republic.

Moreover, the naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed two uncrewed surface vehicles moving to the Crimean peninsula in waters of the Black Sea.

Since Gerasimov’s phone call (and Putin’s speech) there have been NO reports of any further ATACMS (or Storm Shadow) strikes on Russia!

During his announcement of the latest strikes Putin also described the effects of the hypersonic missile strike:

The system deploys dozens of homing warheads that strike the target at a velocity of Mach 10, equivalent to approximately three kilometres per second. The temperature of the impact elements reaches 4,000 degrees Celsius – nearing the surface temperature of the sun, which is around 5,500–6,000 degrees.Consequently, everything within the explosion’s epicentre is reduced to fractions, elementary particles, essentially turning to dust. The missile is capable of destroying even heavily fortified structures and those located at significant depths.

During several interviews in recent days MIT Prof. Ted Postol disagreed (vid) with Putin’s claim. Postol describes the Oreshnik impacts as shallow surface explosions with the force of about 1.5 times the weight equivalent in TNT explosives. With an estimated warhead weight of 100 kilogram the impact of each of the Oreshnik’s 36 warheads would be no bigger than a regular small bomb. This would make them mostly useless against anything but large area surface targets.

I am doubtful that Postol got this right:

  • Putin is usually extraordinary well informed and not in the habit of making false claims. If he states that Oreshnik warheads have deep penetration capabilities then they are likely to have these.
  • It would make little to no sense for the Russian’s to demonstrate the Oreshnik on hardened targets, as the bunkers of the Yuzhmash machine plant are, if it does not have significant effects on these. It would be a bluff that could and would be immediately called by the Pentagon specialist inspecting the localities and observing the effects.
  • The U.S. is taking the strike seriously. It has reacted by stopping support for further Ukrainian ATACMS strikes on Russia.

Weapon experts like Postol have little experience with hypersonic projectiles which impact at 10 times the speed of sound. I believe that his assessment is sincere. He also applies the necessary caveats. But I doubt that he, like most other experts, has sufficient experience with the effects of dart like hypersonic projectiles to further back up his claims.

I thus recommend, if only out of abundance of caution, to assume that the Russian claims of bunker busting capabilities of Oreshnik missiles are very real.

Posted by b on December 6, 2024 at 11:11 UTC | Permalink

A final MM Comment for today

An increase in radiation on the Western United States would have devastating effects on the American population. Here’s what the Chinese AI DeepSeek has to say about what is happening…

The effects of nuclear radiation on the population, particularly if it were carried to the coast of California, would be severe and multifaceted, both in the short term and long term. Here’s a detailed breakdown:

Short-Term Effects (Immediate to Weeks After Exposure)

1. Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS):

– Symptoms: Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, hair loss, and skin burns.

– Severity: Depends on the dose of radiation received. High doses can lead to death within days to weeks.

2. Injury from Blast and Heat:

– Blast: Severe injuries from the explosion, including trauma, burns, and lung damage.

– Heat: Burns from the thermal pulse, which can cause severe skin damage.

3. Radiation Sickness:

– Symptoms: Similar to ARS but less severe. Includes gastrointestinal distress, immune suppression, and potential organ damage.

4. Contamination:

– External: Radioactive particles on the skin and clothing.

– Internal: Ingestion or inhalation of radioactive material, leading to internal radiation exposure.

5. Psychological Impact:

– Trauma: Shock, fear, anxiety, and panic among the population.

Long-Term Effects (Months to Years After Exposure)

1. Cancer:

– Increased Risk: Radiation exposure significantly increases the risk of various cancers, including leukemia, thyroid cancer, and solid tumors.

– Latency Period: Cancer may develop years or even decades after exposure.

2. Genetic Mutations:

– Inherited Disorders: Radiation can cause mutations in reproductive cells, leading to genetic disorders in future generations.

3. Chronic Health Issues:

– Immune System Suppression: Long-term suppression of the immune system, making individuals more susceptible to infections.

– Endocrine Disorders: Potential disruption of endocrine functions, leading to hormonal imbalances.

4. Environmental and Economic Impact:

– Contaminated Land: Long-term contamination of soil, water, and air, affecting agriculture and water supplies.

– Economic Disruption: Loss of infrastructure, economic activity, and potential displacement of populations.

Effects on Individuals with Compromised Immune Systems

1. Increased Susceptibility to Infections:

– Vulnerability: Individuals with compromised immune systems are more susceptible to infections, which can be exacerbated by radiation-induced immune suppression.

2. Severe Radiation Sickness:

– Greater Severity: The symptoms of radiation sickness may be more severe and prolonged in individuals with weakened immune systems.

3. Higher Mortality Rate:

– Risk of Death: The combination of radiation exposure and a compromised immune system can significantly increase the risk of mortality.

4. Delayed Recovery:

– Slow Healing: Recovery from radiation-induced injuries may be slower and more complicated in individuals with compromised immune systems.

Mitigation and Response

1. Shelter-in-Place:

– Immediate Shelter: Seeking immediate shelter in buildings with thick walls to reduce exposure.

2. Evacuation:

– Safe Zones: Evacuation to areas deemed safe from radiation exposure.

3. Medical Interventions:

– Treatment: Administration of potassium iodide to protect the thyroid gland from radioactive iodine.

– Supportive Care: Symptomatic treatment for radiation sickness and other injuries.

4. Decontamination:

– Removal of Contaminants: Removing radioactive particles from skin, clothing, and surroundings to reduce further exposure.

5. Long-Term Monitoring:

– Health Surveillance: Ongoing medical monitoring and support for those affected by radiation exposure.

In summary, the impact of nuclear radiation on the population, especially those with compromised immune systems, would be profound and long-lasting, necessitating comprehensive and coordinated responses from medical, governmental, and humanitarian agencies.

Final Final Comment

It appears that the Deagal Report might just be realized when Americans are being assaulted by a thousand “paper cuts”.

Deagle Report
Deagle Report

And DeepSeek AI explains…

The idiom “death by a thousand papercuts” is used to describe a situation where a person or entity is slowly worn down or defeated by a large number of small, seemingly insignificant problems or annoyances, rather than by one major issue. Each individual problem might not be severe on its own, but the cumulative effect of dealing with many such problems can be overwhelming and debilitating.

Examples of Usage:

1. Workplace Stress:

– An employee might feel overwhelmed by constant minor interruptions, small tasks, and bureaucratic hurdles, all of which individually are manageable but collectively create significant stress and inefficiency.

2. Customer Service:

– A company might lose customers not because of one major failure, but because of numerous small inconveniences, such as slow response times, minor errors in orders, and inconsistent communication.

3. Health Issues:

– A person might experience declining health not from one major illness, but from a series of minor ailments that, when combined, significantly impact their quality of life.

4. Financial Strain:

– A family might face financial difficulties not from one large expense, but from a multitude of small, recurring costs that add up over time, such as unexpected repairs, minor medical bills, and regular subscription fees.

Key Points:

Cumulative Effect: The idiom emphasizes the cumulative impact of many small issues, which can be just as damaging as a single large problem.

Gradual Degradation: It highlights the gradual and often unnoticed deterioration of a situation or condition.

Overwhelming Burden: The sheer number of small problems can create an overwhelming burden, making it difficult to address each one individually.

In essence, “death by a thousand papercuts” underscores the idea that the sum of many small issues can be just as detrimental as a single large one, and it often describes situations where the impact is felt more acutely over time.

A row-boat to China to make it happen, still wearing a prison jumper

First and foremost dont get fooled by all this news being circulated that you have alliances against China.

This is entirely false. There are no alliances.

China is NOT Single.

China controls 24 African countries, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and has a very close friendship with Russia and Iran which it can use to its advantage at any minute.

China has a lot of trade and business influence in almost every country. Deutsche Bank since 2019 does more business with China than with USA. Banks, Manufacturers, Consumer Goods all depend on china for manufactured imports and on the chinese market for consumption and exports.

So automatically the Big Businesses – the Money Men – the People who fund elections and who can decide the fate of Democratic Governments are completely pro china.

So the Politicians can strut and shout but they cannot take any action against China as it will bring a stronger repercussion against their own country.

Simple example – India recently banned Tik Tok and many Chinese Apps. The Impact on China was minimal and only the companies were affected.

Say as a retaliation China would have stopped the export of Pharma Raw Stock to India. It would have taken us 6 years to find a substitute of that much quantity. It would rise costs by 240% to 700% depending on the drug. A Strip costing Rs. 35/- would now cost Rs. 145/- and there would be a massive supply crunch by 2023 when the inventories would dry out. There would be massive protests and literally revolutions and would create Chaos for us.

It would be the same for the United States.

China cut down its supply of the Raw Stock for Diabetic Insulin in 2019–2020 after the COVID Crisis to ensure it has enough for its own people. Trump promptly subsided the extra cost of importing insulin raw stock from other countries which cost the US Federal Government $ 38 Billion between May 2020 and February 2021 to keep the prices the same.

Biden has cut this subsidy resulting in Insulin prices rising. Biden plans to get back the Stock delivery from China and he has succeeded in getting the business back to scale by June 2021.

Sadly no country can affect China in the same way.

This is because while the world was sleeping or leaders like Bush and Obama (US), Blair (UK), Scroeder and Merkel (Germany), MMS (India) did not realize how dependent they were becoming on China.

Today it is too late.

China knows this

So unless you have an alternative – China can easily remain single.

If they get really angry and decide to use one of their many Nuclear Options – the West will promptly back down without a seconds hesitation.


Frankly I dont care too much about the West myself.

However i do wish We were in the same position that China is in today. Had we followed the Doctorine in 1991- established manufacturing bases in 14 of our uninhabited Islands on the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, Focussed on Manufacturing, we could be in a far stronger and influential position than we actually are.

Yummy

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When A Karen Gets Sentenced To LIFE In Prison…

Simple, because the UK is a totalitarian state, where you can participate in pretend elections where nothing really changes. Their recent elections changed nothing other than the front man who acts on the behalf of the corporate masters.

We can see when PC Kane Haywood, was found guilty of sexual assault by penetration (commonly known as you know rape) and received a 1 year suspended sentence. Westerners are like YEAH that’s JUSTICE! (Note how people planning a protest were given 5 years in prison).

“I smelled something smoking and I looked down … and I was smoking,” he said.

main qimg 4bd760ce86ee8b9e759d11418d4e85fb lq
main qimg 4bd760ce86ee8b9e759d11418d4e85fb lq

US soldiers and doctors risked their lives to extract a live RPG lodged in a US marine which could have exploded at any point- they broke dozens of regulations as well just to do the morally right thing.

Thursday, March 16, 2006, was a beautiful sunny day in Paktika Province, eastern Afghanistan. It borders a lawless region of Pakistan that is home to some al Qaeda and Taliban forces. Snow in the mountain passes along the border had melted giving them access again to Afghanistan where they came looking for American soldiers. They soon found them.

At dawn, the 10th Mountain Division’s Alpha Company headed out on a mission. Four hours into the drive and just miles from the village, gunfire broke out. They’d been ambushed from above. Twenty-three-year-old Pvt. Channing Moss, the gunner, said it sounded like rattling spoons. A hail of RPG fell onto the convoy, destroying a friendly Afghan vehicle and also hitting the humvees. One humvee commander turned to tell Moss to aim his gun when he saw his sides smoking.

The RPG that had plowed into Moss’ lower abdomen stretched from one hip to the other. If the RPG went off, it would kill everyone within 30 feet of him. Yet the company medic Spc. Jared Angell stayed close, bandaging his wounds and stabilizing the weapon so that movement wouldn’t cause it to explode.

Reports of injuries had been radioed to the medical evacuation helicopter (MEDEVAC) base in Salerno, Afghanistan — minus one crucial piece of information.

“We didn’t tell them that, you know, Moss had live ordnance in him,” Mariani said, “because there was that possibility that, you know, they might not want to transport him with live ordnance in him.”

Preparations began for the rescue mission. But first the Blackhawk crew had to wait for clearance from commanders because the area was “hot” — the battle was still raging. For MEDEVAC crew chief SSG Christian Roberts, it was a very long 15 minutes.

“When you know you have wounded people out there that are waiting for you to come pick them up, it seems like an eternity,” he said.

“Doc” continued working frantically to stabilize Moss even though the RPG was a danger to everyone around Moss. Angell knew Moss’ only chance for survival was to get out of there and to a hospital quickly.

“I constantly was looking at my watch, saying, you know, ‘When is the bird gonna get here, when is the bird gonna get here,'” medic Doc Angell said.

When Lt. Mariani pulled “Doc” aside to ask him if he thought Moss would make it, he could only shake his head no.

If Pvt. Moss didn’t survive, his wife, six months pregnant with their second child, would lose her husband and his daughter Yuliana would lose her father. But just as Moss felt he would die, he heard the choppers. An Apache helicopter escorted the MEDEVAC chopper in case there was more gunfire.

Spc. Collier, the flight medic, quickly realized what they faced with Pvt Moss.

“I see a metal object protruding out, and there are fins on it, and I am like, ‘This looks like this guy got hit with something, and it’s stuck in him, and it didn’t blow up,'” he said.

Army policy states that they are not supposed to transport soldiers in Moss’ condition. The risk of catastrophic loss is too great — four MEDEVAC crew members, three wounded soldiers and a helicopter could all be blown out of the sky.

But they also knew if they didn’t take Moss, he would die.

Pilot CW2 Jorge Correa conferred with his soldiers: “I asked my crew, you know, ‘Are you guys comfortable with this?'” he said. “Because I wasn’t gonna put my crew in jeopardy if they weren’t comfortable with it.”

The crew quickly decided to take the risk.

Co-pilot Jeremy Smith recalled the tense moment.

“We all said, ‘Yeah, let’s get him on board and let’s get outta here,'” he said.

As crew chief Christian Roberts said, “We are not gonna leave a U.S. soldier to die in the middle of Afghanistan.”

But reports of the true nature of Moss’ injury had not reached the closest medical facility at the Orgun-E base — a former goat shed transformed into a rough field hospital. They were told it was “shrapnel injury.” The aid station had two doctors, Maj. John Oh, a general surgeon, and Maj. Kevin Kirk, an orthopedic surgeon. At this point it wasn’t clear which Moss needed most — a surgical team or a bomb squad.

Incredibly, both Oh and Kirk had drilled for this exact scenario, because the Army has a protocol to handle patients with unexploded ordnance in them.

“You’re actually not supposed to bring them into an aid station,” Oh said. “And actually, he wasn’t supposed to be flown with the other patients either.”

According to the “War Surgery Manual,” Moss should have been placed far away from other patients and operated on last. If procedure had been followed, Moss would likely have bled to death, but the doctors felt compelled to save him.

Then Pvt. Moss had another life-saving break — Staff Sgt. Dan Brown, the explosives expert who spends his time disposing of bombs and captured weapons, was on the base. In his spare time, Brown had been watching an episode of ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” about a patient with an unexploded grenade in him. In that story, the bomb technician is blown up. Brown was about to play a leading role in his own non-fiction drama.

Brown, shocked to see that Moss was still alive, confirmed that they were dealing with an RPG. Moss’ life hung on whether or not they would remove the rocket.

Brown explained the different scenarios of what could happen. The worst case was that they would all become “pink mist” — everyone in the room would be killed. But to identify how much explosive power they were facing, they needed an x-ray to determine whether the RPG’s warhead was inside Moss. Their notoriously temperamental x-ray machine malfunctioned, and it wasn’t until the third attempt that they got a decent image.

The doctors and Brown were relieved by what they didn’t see. The deadliest part of the RPG — the main explosive charge — was not in Moss. But their relief diminished when Brown explained to the surgeons that it would still have enough force to kill Moss and destroy their hands.

At that point, Oh ordered everyone except the critical staff out of the aid station, the two doctors and three surgical staff remained. They all knew the risk they faced.

“I looked everybody in the eye and said, ‘You guys understand what’s going on here, right?’ And I knew everybody heard me, but nobody said anything. They just kept doing their jobs,” he said.

Oh told them it was okay to leave — but nobody did. With no words exchanged, each had decided to risk their life to save Moss.

Extreme blood loss had caused his heart to stop. Unable to do chest compressions for fear of setting off the round, they gave him epinephrine. His heart soon restarted and they could finally operate to remove the RPG.

Sgt. Brown used an unusual instrument to gently remove the RPG’s tail fins — a hacksaw. The surgeons reached inside Moss, steadying the still lethal rocket, inches from the soldier’s beating heart. They then gently eased the rocket out, with the detonator aimed at Brown’s flak vest.

Brown quickly walked out of the aid station to a bunker and detonated it. The sound of the explosion thundered through the base. As the surgeons closed up Moss’ incisions, Sgt. Brown sat down outside to collect himself. Finally, the impact of the drama hit him.

“I started shaking. I just sat there. I knew I did everything I could to help him live. And that was very, very intense for me after the fact,” he said.

You Won’t Believe What’s He Says Is About To Unfold Over The Next 5 Months

Loaded Mashed Potatoes Meat Loaf Casserole

Loaded Mashed Potatoes Meat Loaf Casserole is two of your favorites in one dish.

loaded mashed potato meat loaf casserole
loaded mashed potato meat loaf casserole

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

Meat Loaf

  • 1 pound extra lean ground beef
  • 1/2 cup onion, diced
  • 1 cup seasoned Italian bread crumbs or 1 cup crushed Stove Top stuffing
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Topping

  • 1 (4 ounce) package garlic-flavored instant mashed potatoes*
  • 1 1/2 cups water*
  • 1/2 cup milk*
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
  • 1/4 cup real bacon bits or 3 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. In a large bowl, combine beef, onion, bread crumbs, milk, egg, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper then press into a 9 inch square or comparable baking dish.
  3. Bake uncovered for 25 minutes, then remove and drain any excess fat.
  4. While the meatloaf is cooking, prepare mashed potatoes as per package instructions, using 1 1/2 cups water and 1/2 cup milk.
  5. Spread over the top of the meat loaf, then top with cheddar cheese and bacon bits.
  6. Bake for an additional 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the mashed potatoes are slightly crispy.

Notes

* Or make your own mashed potatoes instead. This would be a great use for leftover mashed potatoes.

The problem is that IBM failed

Political reasons are only the catalyst for IBM’s failure in China, but not the root cause.

In the past 20 years, IBM is no longer the top company in computer technology.

The blue giant rose with computer technology and once led many fields of commercial computers in the entire human world. From operating systems to servers, from giant computers to floppy disks, from mice to color monitors, the development of human computer technology and network technology is inseparable from the contribution of IBM.

But those great stories are only stories of the past. IBM once made a lot of money, which made IBM become bigger and bigger, less efficient, and in many fields, IBM was surpassed by other emerging companies.

Since many businesses were in the red, IBM had to get rid of those “unprofitable” businesses to maintain a better financial situation. In the past 20 years, they sold the PC department, the storage department, the server department, the printer department, the network hardware department, the storage device department, the health department, the semiconductor department…

But all the businesses sold by IBM have been proven to be very promising and profitable by other companies. Why did they stay in IBM and become “unprofitable” businesses?

IBM started to get sick a long time ago. There is a joke in the United States that IBM is the company with the lowest efficiency and the most complicated processes in the world. IBM is the company with the lowest per capita output among the major IT companies in the world.

I list the per capita output/per capita profit of several famous IT companies

Apple: $2.38 million, $600,000

Microsoft: $1.07 million, $380,000

HP: $926,200, $56,300

Huawei: $470,000, $58,600

Oracle: $333,100, $65,400

IBM: $219,200, $26,600

IBM is not only sick, but also very sick.

IBM once proudly claimed that they had transformed from a manufacturing company to a technology company, and from a technology company to a service company. They only serve the most valuable customers, large banks, governments, airlines, and insurance companies. Their employees wear the best suits, hold meetings in six-star hotels, and only strive for the most profitable orders.

Because, orders with meager profits will lose money at IBM!

Have you used any IBM equipment or software in your life? Very little, right?

Because the money in your wallet is too little for IBM. Making money from consumers is too hard and difficult for IBM.

IBM’s largest customers in China have always been the Chinese government, state-owned enterprises, banks and securities industry. They once generously gave huge orders to IBM, and IBM also opened a research and development center in China to provide services to these customers.

The main directions of IBM China Research Institute are the Internet of Things, big data and cloud services, which are also the areas where Chinese customers purchase more.

But in the past five years, these orders have become increasingly difficult to obtain.

1. Chinese companies are growing rapidly

Lenovo, Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu. Many Chinese companies have grown into international giants. They are in their respective fields with technology and strength that is completely not inferior to IBM, and their fees are lower and their services are more efficient.

2. Trump’s “China Plan”

The US government has imposed comprehensive sanctions on Chinese technology companies and provoked a trade war. In order to defend and counterattack, the Chinese government launched a “de-Americanization” plan: requiring the government, banks, and state-owned enterprises to reduce their purchases of American technology every year.

Under the dual effects of commercial competition and geopolitics, IBM’s disease broke out completely. It is like a patient who has been ill for a long time and has been relying on expensive drugs to maintain superficial health. When these drugs are no longer so easy to obtain, it is time for him to fall.

IBM’s performance in China has been declining rapidly:

In 2021, it grew by 2%

In 2022, it declined by 22.7%

In 2023, it declined by 19.6%

In 2024, it declined by 25% (estimated)

IBM’s market has almost been completely occupied by Chinese local companies.

In 2023, IBM’s global revenue was $60 billion, while China’s Huawei was $100 billion and Alibaba was $120 billion. IBM is no longer the blue giant it once was, but a second-rate IT company.

Do you think IBM is only collapsing in China? No, in 2023, IBM laid off 3,900 people worldwide, and they moved all the jobs in Europe to India. Because India is cheaper.

Now IBM = India Business Machine.

Maybe India is the last medicine for IBM to maintain operations.

Suspects that LOSE IT During Interrogations

There I was, in Iraq. We, the US, had just agreed to sell Abrams tanks to the Iraqis and we (my unit) were at a range to put on a demonstration. Our plan was to use a section of Bradleys and a section of Abrams to demonstrate their capability to deliver a high volume of accurate fires at long range. We had the viewing area rigged with a speaker so the audience could hear the platoon leader and his fire commands. It was going to be a sweet demonstration of something we rarely got to see ourselves!

The Iraqis decided they would also put on a demonstration and showed up with a T72 and a BMP1 (with the unimpressive 73mm low pressure gun). They would go first.

The time to fire came….and went. People climbed around the BMP and we waited. Finally….one boom. We saw a puff of sand maybe halfway to the target (which was only a couple hundred meters away). Several minutes pass and then another boom. More sand flies in the air; closer, but still nowhere near the target. Minutes pass. It’s getting awkward. There’s a third round-still well short.

My boss, the brigade commander, calls me over to where he is sitting next to the Iraqi Army division commander. He whispers to me to call our crews and have them dial it back some because he doesn’t want to embarrass their guys.

The BMP finally falls pathetically silent, having fired a max of 4–5 rounds (it was 2010, I can’t recall for sure how many!). The target is unscathed.

Despite the crewmen busy around the back deck and gathered behind it, the T72 never fires at all.

It is our turn. I’ve called them to dial it back and they’ve acknowledged but when our crews fire, I’m not sure exactly what they dialed back because it looks like thunder and lightning where the vehicles are and a sand storm around and beyond their targets as both 25mm and 120mm rounds are punching through. The Brads reduce fires and shift to alternating fires. Cool, it’s ’talking guns’ with 25mm! (This was the highest volume of fires I’ve ever seen from armored vehicles!)

My boss is initially perturbed but then settles in to watch the show.

My flatmate moved a gay couple, Paul and Stefan, into our spare bedroom back in 1991. Stefan was gentle and okay to live with, but Paul was 6’8” tall with a menacing undertone. While he and I didn’t have any issues personally, there was something not quite right about him, something unsettling.

Paul and Stefan broke up while still living with us in 1992, with Stefan moving out. I came home soon after to find Paul’s belongings all packed up and him about to leave. He told me he’d taken his rent money back, having gone into my drawers to find it. We started having an argument about needing to give notice. I phoned my flatmate to do something about it, but he said unequivocally, “Don’t argue with him. Just let him go.”

So Paul moved out and I never saw either of them again.

Fifteen years later the police called me and asked if I knew a Paul Armstrong. I said not for a long time. They asked questions about the kind of car he drove when we lived with him. I replied that I had no idea as they parked it in the underground car park and I didn’t socialise with them.

I asked why they were asking me these questions – the police said they had arrested Paul for the murder of Felipe Flores, a man from Ecuador who had been living in Sydney. Paul had bashed him to death in a small park back in 1991….then moved in with us less than three weeks later.

It turned out the police had been reviewing a cold case, using blood found beneath the fingernails of Felipe Flores. The DNA led to Paul, who by then was also a convicted rapist. He was sentenced in 2014 for murder.

Paul Armstrong jailed for killing gay lover over HIV admission

Paul Armstrong, my former flatmate and, it turns out, convicted killer and rapist

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Felipe Flores, the man bashed by Paul in a park, who was then dragged unconscious under a bush where he died.

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Self-Assembling Nanotechnology in the $h0t?

Again

I look at China and believe whatever they did is the winning formula

That’s because nobody else did anything else that could be described as winning unless it’s done over a century or two

So

  1. Quality Public Education
  2. Manufacturing by offering Low Cost Labor and Land
  3. Use proceeds of manufacturing to build Supply Chains, Educate more people and then Build Ports and and Roadways and Warehouses to distribute and supply the products manufactured worldwide
  4. Invest in Technology especially R & D
  5. Develop Indigenous Technology in many areas
  6. Develop Key Critical Technology in a few areas
  7. Use the money made from 6 to create a stronger middle class and use them to start transforming to a Consumption Driven Economy
  8. Once you have sustainable money, focus on Healthcare and Elderly Care and Social Benefits for Citizens
  9. Focus on Higher Education and Advanced Degrees and use those degrees to maintain a supply of talented labor to various advanced manufacturing jobs

That’s literally the Chinese Model

That Transformed the Nation into a 19 Trillion Great Power from an Agrarian Backwater in 1960


Ultimately there are some Dos and Donts along the way

A. Spend wisely. Dont Stupidly borrow to build Infrastructure especially Airports unless you can generate sufficient revenue and make money

B. Education should be guarded. Dont be lazy and hand over Education to private Vultures to destroy and finish off the entire base

C. Careful use of earnings. Use Proceeds of Manufacturing to create Supply Chains & Research, not to create Obnoxious Gaudy Thelawallahs who load their own pockets

D. Focus on building a Middle Class. Use Money made from Economy into creating a stronger middle class through Jobs & Housing not by the SHARE MARKET

E. Merit driven everything. Don’t abandon Meritocracy for any other Model

F. Avoid politics. Don’t put Politics before Country and Don’t regard any LEADER as a God or as someone who can’t do anything wrong

G. Concentrate on the roles of education. Focus on Higher Education meaning make it more accessible to the common man and practical,not building 40 premier institutions and diluting their value

H. Accept your mistakes. Don’t be embarrassed to admit your lack of achievement in area and LEARN AND IMPROVE

I. Focus. Don’t use petty Nationalism if it comes in the way of Potential Development

Thats Literally India today

That is holding back a 1.4 Billion Nation and making it a Paper economy day in and day out


So First

[1] We need Good Leadership

Modi is a failure

He must go

Future leaders must be judged based on pre set Goals and Standards

If they don’t achieve this, they must resign and someone else must take over

Leadership based on Caste or Religion or Brainwashing is certain disaster

And no Party politics please


[2] Second – Priorities

We need something that benefits the maximum number of people

Education is critical

Far more critical than Airports for 5% passengers

Food security is critical

Far more critical than 40 new IITs


[3] Third – Stop saying the System is fine

The System is flawed and needs massive reform

Maybe the reform could be different from person to person

Yet anyone who says the system is fine as it is and we are going to be Viksit Bharat in 2047 without any effort , is a Fool and is Genetically a flawed product


Once you reach 1,2,3

Then it’s a Custom made solution based on how your Society and Economy is structured

Just that

INDIA IS DOING EVERYTHING WRONG TODAY

So everything must be overhauled completely

How it must be done different?

That depends on various factors

Sailor Discovers Wife’s Affair During Deployment, Plays The Divorce Long Game And Has Last Laugh!

My daughter’s 2009 BMW 335I had the twin turbos fail. I watched several videos to see how difficult it would be for she and I to repair it. The videos showed that it was a complicated, time consuming repair, but we felt we could do it. We ordered the parts and started working one Saturday morning. After working for a few hours, she called her boyfriend, who lives a couple hours away. He drove up to help. Her boyfriend has a lot of experience working on BMWs. He said he would not have attempted this repair. I had to take the intake manifold off this car once, to replace a heater pipe. So, I knew it wouldn’t be simple.

It took us three long days to replace the turbos. Many, many times we were forced to get just a couple fingers into a place no human should be able to touch. Everything was crammed together so tightly it was torture. We lost a lot of skin on our hands and arms. We had the foresight to put all the parts in ziplock bags and label them well. We arranged the parts in order, as we took them off. There were many, many parts.

We did get the turbos installed and working well. We made one mistake that took me 2–3 hours to fix after my partner in torture drove back home. That was about four years ago. I have only done minor repairs on that car since. I will never attempt a major repair on an BMW again.

I’ll show you a famous one, known by all Chinese.

When the tourists came to Xinjiang, they looked like four or five young people in their twenties. Their cars were stuck in the mud.

The old man from Xinjiang helped this group of people to take the car out of trouble.

When tourists tried to pay him cash to express their thanks, he refused, but his language was difficult to communicate, so he showed his party emblem.

He is not an Uygur or a Tibetan, but rather a smaller ethnic group in Xinjiang, Khalkhas.

His name is Abdugapal Mad, who lives in Muji, as a CPC member for 24 years.

“It’s Getting WORSE And WORSE…” – Danielle DiMartino

Well, America is the flagbearer of western civilization and it’s all of 250 years old.

And where did western civilization originate?

Modern day middle-east/Mediterranean.

America is an ocean away, but it spells in the Latin alphabet, and prints “in God we trust” on its currency.


Clearly, western civilization is unbroken, because it can be traced from the time of the ancient sumerians, Egyptians and Persians, as recorded in the Bible. In fact, the way we tell time today is based on a recorded event in the bible: the birth of Jesus. Hence it is AD 2024 today. Anno Domini, Latin for “in the year of our lord”.

But is it continuous, in the sense that today’s Americans share cultural and historical commonality with others that also identify as western and those that came before them?

The modern American may read Tacitus, quote Plato, and study machiavelli, but he doesn’t identify as a Roman, Greek or Italian. The refrain “it’s all Greek to me” is illuminating.

In other words, western civilization share a loosely linked pool of knowledge, but what sets the westerner apart is still geography and DNA. After all, North Africa and the Middle East have suffered massive destruction in recent years despite being the cradle of western civilization.


China is different. The fossil and DNA record clearly show modern Chinese are descended from paleolithic ancestors who settled and called it home. Elements of Neolithic culture found their way into the earliest xia and shang dynasties, including burial practices and cultural wares.

Chinese writing can be traced to the oracle bones of the Shang, and character evolution remains a topic for active scholarship. There was a period of fragmentation during the long decline of the zhou in the spring-autumn and warring states, but qin unification consolidated Chinese block writing. It has remained a consistent whole for the past 2,200 years.

The answer to “what it means to be Chinese” is rooted in continuity. History, culture, language, philosophy, the arts, technology, even governance and politics.

Take for example the genealogy of confucius, which has been continuously maintained over 2,500 years tracing more than 80 generations, the world’s longest extant record of human pedigree. There are over 2 million living descendants registered, with the estimated total well in excess of 3 million.

Similarly, an educated Chinese youth today can visit the Shandong museum and read Sun Tzu’s art of war off 2,200 year-old bamboo strips written during the Han dynasty.

You can’t do that with spelled languages. Even Shakespeare’s prose is unwieldy to the point of being unreadable because a 4-century gap separates modern English from the romance of Shakespearean times.

Chinese is drawn, not spelled.

This has allowed Chinese civilization to build and maintain the largest databank in history before the advent of digital storage.

Why did the kjv peoples expend significant cultural and political capital to preserve deep Chinese roots, especially Chinese literacy over tens of generations?

Because the Chinese language, especially block writing, remains the key to unlocking the priceless databank. Surely their survival as intact states must be in great part attributed to the umbilical link with the living Chinese body of knowledge.

Vintage Home Decor

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Stray Cat Almost Killed by a Car, Waits Alone for Death, Until This Happens

True story.

When I first moved to Macau, one of the first people I met was a guy named Mark from the UK. He was a professional card counter. He played everyday. If he won US $3500 or lost US $3500 he would stop playing. He won more than he lost, so he was pretty good at discipline.

The casino security spotted him. Then they changed the rules. Changed from a four deck shoe to a six deck shoe.

They followed him home. And when he came out of his home, someone would follow him. He became uncomfortable and went to Korea to play.

When he came back, he was told he was blacklisted. No reason given.

Casinos make up their own rules.

But the basic rule is the house always wins.

There are no strategies to win. Just keep your money in your wallet and you win!

Stanley Ho, the founder of the modern casino industry in Macau was asked what game he played at his casinos. And he said “I don’t gamble “

In the year 1523, Ming dynasty captured a few Muskets during war with the Portugueses. In the year, 1548 Ming dynasty replicated and mass produced it. That became the Ming dynasty’s main firearm, and later the Qing dynasty. In the year 1765, Qing dynasty had a “conflict” with Myanmar, Burmese had already switched to the newly invented flintlock received from the British. That was when Qing dynasty started falling behind in the weapons department.
It didn’t have a large army either. Military cost money, there was no neighboring country could threaten China at the time, why keeping a large army?

Lawrence Bates

The Last Voyage of Commander Jenkins

Lawrence M. Bates

 

I open my eyes. It’s light out. Then something that sounds like a Chopin nocturne starts ever so softly to intrude upon my still half-awake, still half-asleep consciousness. I begin stretching to get the kinks out only to find my elbows banging against the side of my crypt. Oh, yeah. Right. I’m Joshua Jenkins, the captain of the starship Montmartre on a colony prep mission. All the hoses and med devices and such have been retracted from my body and the lid to my pod has been popped open by Rosslyn. Hallelujah!  That means we’re in orbit around Kiroki 3 and it’s time for me to snap into action. It also means, as the realization suddenly dawns upon me, that I’m still alive.

 

The revival protocols kick in and I sit up to self-check for brain fog and atrophied muscles. The Advanced Life Support Hibernation Module (ALSHM), aka crypt, aka pod, is supposed to handle all the biological necessities for us while we’re in stasis. It must’ve worked, because I actually feel pretty good. This must be my lucky day. I step out of the crypt without any wobbling and sure enough, over in the corner right where I left it hangs my captain’s uniform. It’s a red jumpsuit with an insignia that reads “Commander Jenkins”, but by my lights a starship is still a sailing ship and I’m still this ship’s captain.

 

After getting dressed, I finally notice it. According to protocol, we’re all supposed to be reawakened at the same time in case something goes wrong and someone needs help, but the pods of my three-person crew remain unopened. I walk around the crypt room and inspect each pod. They seem to be operating normally with all vitals showing in the green. Something must be wrong.

 

“Rosslyn.”

 

“Yes, Commander Jenkins.”

 

I can’t resist. “Would it kill you to call me Captain Jenkins instead of Commander Jenkins? You know I hate that.”

 

“No, Commander. Calling you Captain Jenkins instead of Commander Jenkins will not result in my death or in any way disrupt my power supply. Did you enjoy the Chopin-themed revival procedure? That was one of the last orders you gave me before entering stasis.”

 

“Ah, yes, that was fine.”

 

“Good. That means that that aspect of me is still functioning properly.”

 

What the hell? “Rosslyn, why did you revive me and not the others? Aren’t we in orbit around Kiroki 3?”

 

“No, Commander. I encountered an anomaly which requires the Commander’s attention. Please proceed to the bridge. I have a briefing waiting for you there.”

 

“Ok, on my way.” Wow. A problem that needs human intervention. Scratch that. Commander intervention. As I walk down the corridor, my mind starts racing as to what kind of anomaly would short-circuit a ship mind. It’s supposed to be able to autonomously handle just about any contingency that the universe can throw at it. I’m used to Rosslyn and her eccentricities, but now I’m starting to get a little nervous.

 

I reach the bridge doors and am admitted by Rosslyn. “Rosslyn. As you can see, I’m here. What’s going on?”

 

The main viewing screen pops into life and shows a simulation of the Montmartre as it travels through space from Earth towards Kiroki 3, a journey of some 320 light-years. As the Montmartre gets to about 20 light-years from its destination, the simulation freezes.

“For six months”, Rosslyn begins, “the voyage of the Montmartre has proceeded without any significant incidents. Then two days ago the ship attained zero velocity and remains immobilized with respect to this sector of the observable universe at the location indicated by the red pulsing dot on the screen.”

 

“That’s impossible,” I say. “You can’t just stop in space.”

 

“Agreed. What has happened to the Montmartre is impossible. I have spent the last two days checking my systems for faults, but have found none. All my instruments report optimal functionality. I have tried using the attitudinal thrusters to maneuver and change our position, but to no effect. I then tried restarting the Leyton Drive on low power to see if that could get the Montmartre moving, but our position remains unchanged. Somehow, we have been frozen in place, and I have been unable to formulate an explanation let alone a remedy for this phenomenon. In a case such as this, default protocols demand that I revive the Commander and seek human assistance.”

 

I’m so shocked by this that I almost fall over backward before managing to recover my balance. Now I need to recover my emotional balance. Two months behind us is the Red Swan carrying thousands of colonists expecting to wake up and move in to a makeshift habitat that we’re supposed to have already prepared for them. Will they get stuck here too? My psych profile says that I excel at inhibiting panic and focusing on problem solving. That’s one of the reasons why SpaceLab made me a ship captain. More importantly, my psych profile also goes on to state that I’ve been evaluated out as a high-IQ, ultra-rational sociopath who doesn’t interact well with other human beings in what is classically referred to as a mentally healthy manner. This serves to amplify my predilection to make decisions based on mission priorities and not personal relationships. In other words, SpaceLab made me a starship captain because I’m a first-rate asshole, and everyone knows it.

 

“Rosslyn, something must be wrong with your sensors. This just can’t be happening.”

 

“Yes, Commander Jenkins. Either I am broken, or the universe is.”

 

*****

I instruct Rosslyn to try slowly revving up the engines to full power. We don’t move either backward or forward. In fact, alarms go off as the engines start overheating. “Commander Jenkins. I must turn off the engines or they will explode in 17.3 seconds.” A Leyton Drive explosion is not anything you want to be around. I wait another few seconds just to make sure, but nothing changes. “Rosslyn, power down the engines.”

 

“Yes, Commander Jenkins.”

 

I then order Rosslyn to revive my crew mates and instruct them to assemble in the dining room in two hours’ time, giving all of us a chance to settle into wakefulness. Arriving a little early is Padak Remanotra, a physicist. Tall, lanky, even regal in bearing, he grabs himself a coffee and sits down at the table. An attempt at small talk is made while we wait for the others but is soon abandoned. Oddly, when we talk physics, we get along just fine.

 

Thankfully, a few minutes later Susan Orman and Lee Sung wander in together chatting amiably. After all, they’re expecting this to be a pre-planning session for exploring and colonizing Kiroki 3 and are excited about finally getting the opportunity to do just that. Orman specializes in exobiology and so is by nature a bit quirky and somewhat whimsical. That’s ok with me. SpaceLab must consider these desirable personality traits in a person that you’re expecting to be able to communicate with alien beings.

 

Sung is a planetary scientist. Her disposition sours as she takes a seat and realizes that she must put up with being in the same room as me, at least for the time being. Understandable. Deep space exploration is not kind to fools, and back on Earth during training I rode her pretty hard while I took it relatively easy on Remanotra and Orman. She noticed, and at one point she just flat-out said that she hated my guts. In my standard charming style, I responded “Lots of people hate my guts, so don’t think you’re anything special for it.” Sung just harumphed, obviously unimpressed with my wit. As long as she does her job and follows my orders, then I don’t have a problem with her. We’ll see.

 

All three possess multi-disciplinary scientific skills and all three of them are a lot smarter than I am, and boy, do I need their expertise now.

 

Padak speaks first, asking “Where’s Kiroki 3? I didn’t see it on any on my screens. Shouldn’t we be in orbit around it?” At that point I explain to them the nature of our predicament. As expected, a chorus of “That’s impossible!” resounds through the dining room. Then I sit back and wait for the information to sink in and for them to start ideating.

 

Susan asks “Did you check Rosslyn’s logs?” “Yes”, I say. “Not in detail, but I didn’t offhand see anything unusual. One minute we’re cruising along at Leyton 12, the next minute we’re at 0. At least, according to Rosslyn. Rosslyn’s been running diagnostics for the last two days and hasn’t found anything wrong. That’s why she revived me – she doesn’t know what to do and neither do I.”

 

Padak starts thinking out loud. “Ok, assuming that Rosslyn is right, here’s a few ideas that could explain the stoppage. One. We’ve entered a black hole. Two. We’ve entered a void, a nullity, a region of non-universe where there’s no space for us to travel through. Or three, and this is a long shot, maybe this region of space is the result of two inflaton fields from two different universes intersecting each other resulting in a patch where the laws of physics that we’re used to no longer apply.”

 

Rogue black holes are a real problem in deep space, akin to the icebergs that our Earth-bound sea-faring ancestors had to contend with. I said “Rosslyn is designed to detect gravitational anomalies and asteroidal debris and make the appropriate course adjustments. As I said to Susan, a review of the logs contains no indication of any significant course corrections or major incidents encountered during our journey. As for a space-void, that’s something we’ll just have to find a way to test for.”

 

During this back and forth with Padak, Orman and Sung have been whispering to each other. Now apparently satisfied, they look at me and then each other, deciding which one of them is to present the material. Of course, it’s Orman who does the talking.

 

“Here’s what we think. It could be flypaper. Or a spider web.”

 

That’s a bit much, even for me. “That would imply that some creature is going to come along at any moment and eat this ship along with us in it. I reject that explanation because one, it’s too far-fetched for me, and two, if it is true, we’re done for. I don’t see how the Montmartre can fend off some gigantic galactic starship predator.”

 

Orman continues without missing a beat. “Ok, if you don’t like that explanation, how about this one? It’s a border wall, or perhaps a border sphere. Some alien race likes their privacy and this is their cosmic ‘Beware of Dog’ sign.”

 

Huh. I never would have thought of that. Leave it to an exobiologist to come up with an anthropomorphic interpretation.

“Or it could be asteroid protection” adds Padak, even though there are no planets anywhere near here that would need protecting. Still, who knows?

 

“All that sounds plausible” I say. But if it’s an asteroid protection shield, why are we stuck here? And if it’s a border wall, are they studying us? Vetting us before allowing entry?”

 

We continue in this vein for another hour or so. One option of course is to just go back into stasis and wait to see if something ever comes along to either eat us or collect us for an alien museum. Even if the wall is a naturally occurring phenomenon subject to dissolution over time, that may be ongoing for millions of years. Everyone, including myself, agrees that going back to sleep without knowing what’s up is a non-starter. Besides, we sign up for these missions because we want to explore, not sleep.

 

Sung finally finds her voice. “You know that you have to notify the Red Swan and tell them to go back to Earth.” “Yes,” I reply. Being overall Mission Commander gives me the authority to override anyone and anything. I could just advise the Red Swan of our situation and order it back to Earth and dump the problem back onto SpaceLab’s lap. “I’ve refrained from contacting them yet because I don’t want to have to abort the mission until we’re positive that we have no other choice.”

 

Eventually, we agree on a game plan that hopefully will lead to our getting out of this mess. Meanwhile, the Red Swan is still barreling head-long towards our position. Are they doomed to suffer the same fate as the Montmartre?

*****

We spend the next three days running tests. If it is one of Padak’s voids, then I can’t take the risk of exposing someone to this unknown environment. So first, we have a robot shove a probe out of the airlock. Surprisingly, the probe is able to maneuver around the vicinity of the ship freely. Also, we are able confirm some cosmological constants such as the speed of light via the probe and Rosslyn’s instrumentation as well. So, it doesn’t appear that this is some kind nullity.

 

Feeling adventurous, we next try extending the probe’s radius of exploration. We extend the range to a few 100 kilometers in all directions: up, down, left, right, backward, and especially forward. No problems. Padak suggests that the wall is mass-sensitive. To check this out, I take the shuttle out for a spin, just in case the wall is life-form sensitive. My spacesuit stays on in case the shuttle gets stuck and I have to hitchhike back to the ship. I take the shuttle out 1,000 kilometers in all directions and encounter no difficulties. The germ of a rescue plan begins to form in my mind, but I’m going to need Rosslyn’s help first.

 

I return to the ship, go to my cabin, and lie down.

 

“Rosslyn.”

 

“Yes, Commander Jenkins.”

 

“Is there a way for the shuttle to rendezvous with the Red Swan before it gets stuck here as well?”

 

“No, Commander Jenkins.”

 

“Why?”

 

“A message to the Red Swan ordering it to shed velocity will take approximately 4.4 weeks to arrive. That gives it approximately 2.5 weeks to match the shuttle’s velocity for docking and then set a course for return to Earth before getting stopped by the wall. There is no way the Red Swan can slow down enough or the shuttle travel fast enough to meet the Red Swan at that critical point.

 

Now it’s my turn. “Rosslyn. If the shuttle is located a safe distance away, would the shock wave generated by a Leyton Drive explosion boost the shuttle to the velocity needed to be picked up by the Red Swan and also leave enough time for it to reorient itself on a course back to Earth before hitting the wall?”

 

“Ahhh,” purrs Rosslyn. She spends a few moments performing astronomical calculations. “Yes, Commander Jenkins. That is possible. The optimum scenario has a Leyton Drive explosion that would actually propel the shuttle past the oncoming Red Swan as it slows. This gives the Red Swan ample time to turn around, build up speed, and recover the shuttle on its way back to Earth. Another pause. “Commander Jenkins, you understand that in order to detonate the Montmartre by overheating the engines, you must be physically present in the bridge to override my safety protocols.”

 

“Yes, Rosslyn. I understand.”

*****

I assemble the crew once again in the dining room and explain to them my plan. They shuffle uncomfortably in their chairs for a moment and then Padak says, “To be truthful, Commander, the three of us have also come to the same conclusion. We just never believed you would approve it.”

 

“Well, consider it officially approved. You have one hour to pack the shuttle with your personal belongings along with a couple of weeks’ worth of food. The sooner you launch, the better the odds are of your rescue. Get moving.”

 

While the crew is off busily packing, I make my way to the bridge. Rosslyn pre-programs the shuttle’s flight path. I send a data packet to the Red Swan’s ship mind. It orders the revival of Commander Strausburg as well as containing all the maneuvering instructions needed to avoid the wall, rendezvous with the shuttle, and return to Earth. There’s nothing to do now except wait for the crew to finish loading the shuttle.

 

The intercom crackles. “Commander Jenkins, we are ready for launch.”

 

“Very well,” I tell them. “Rosslyn. Launch the shuttle. Let me know when they’re in position.”

 

“Yes, Commander Jenkins.”

 

The intercom crackles once more. It’s Sung. “Commander, I just wanted to let you know that I still hate your guts.”

 

I can’t tell if she’s being serious or getting sentimental on me. “Good,” I reply. “That means you won’t experience any psychological damage from this incident.” The connection goes dead.

 

I’ve got some time to kill, so I kick back, relax, and put my feet up on the console. “Rosslyn. Play the Chopin please.”

 

“Yes, Commander Jenkins.”

 

I try imagining what it must have been like for sea-faring explorers of the past, like Cook and Columbus, sailing off into uncharted waters and unknown dangers. After some time, Rosslyn interrupts my reverie.

 

“Commander Jenkins. The shuttle has now reached a safe position.”

 

It’s time. Oh well, the captain always goes down with his ship. “Rosslyn. Disable all safety protocols. Bring the engines up to full power.”

 

“Aye aye, captain.”

Richard Wolff: Something BIG is About to Happen in the U.S…”

Today I read that a country exists where –

  1. Only goverment approved haircuts are allowed (18 for women and 10 for men) any other haircut is illegal.
  2. If a person commits suicide or crime then his family upto 3 generations are punished
  3. There is powercut every night. Need permission to use electricity.
  4. only three television channels for people to choose from and all of them are government-controlled.
  5. Making international call is illegal (may also get killed for it) even leaving country is illegal. Any means to connect outside to the country is banned. There’s no social media.
  6. Sanitary pads, Jeans Internet, Religious practices Owning private property or car, international travel is banned
  7. Choice of the profession of an individual is decided by the government based on the country’s needs.
  8. Any tourist who enters the country is closely monitored by the government throughout the trip. Each tourist is assigned a guide who accompanies him throughout the trip. If someone leaves their group or tries to talk to a local, they will be arrested. Along with this, tourists are taken only to certain places and along certain routes. Tourists visiting the country have to deposit their phones and computers and are allowed to take them back only before returning.
  9. If house is on fire then saving president’s potrait is priority over saving own children and can cause death penalty
  10. Very limited and restricted use of phones (cell phones not mobile phones) and internet (intranet – govt regularised) only 28 websites may be accessed under government supervision. The list of people with Internet access includes political leaders and their families, students attending elite schools, and the military’s cyber-warfare department. Only state-sanctioned operating system Red Star OS, designed in country, is allowed to use and not the standard Windows or Mac. Wi-Fi has been banned from use at all national embassies worldwide.
  11. The government chooses where people can live depending on their relationship with the state. Living in the capital needs government permission.
  12. The government restrictions allow only one in a hundred people to use a car.

Interesting but terrifying.

Nana’s Stuffed Bell Peppers

I made these last night. They cook on top of the stove instead of the oven. That way you don’t heat up the house. My Nana used a cast iron Dutch oven. It was a huge thing and a pepper never tasted as good as it came out of that ol’ iron pot!

33f52bc87f482e2d5b3e2fb39142c8f2
33f52bc87f482e2d5b3e2fb39142c8f2

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 4 slices bread, torn into small pieces
  • 2 teaspoons onion powder
  • Salt and pepper
  • 10 large bell peppers
  • 2 cups ketchup
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • Water

Instructions

  1. Mix ground beef, bread, onion powder and salt and pepper to taste.
  2. Split peppers in half lengthwise. Remove seeds and discard. Stuff with meat mixture.
  3. Lay in cast iron Dutch oven (I use my big skillet).
  4. Mix ketchup, sugar and Worcestershire sauce and pour over the tops of peppers.
  5. Pour water into the pot to bring up to 1 inch from the bottom of the peppers. Bring to a boil over high heat. Cover and reduce heat to simmer, cook 20 minutes. Check water level to see that peppers do not stick, adding more water if necessary. If peppers are tender, remove from Dutch oven to serving platter and serve.

Yes they are so poor they have 60% driving the latest EVs and the US has less than 3%. Yes they are so poor 99% used digital money without carrying one cent in coins or notes today! 100% of Yanks still carry cash around! Yes they are so poor they have a hard time choosing between Bentley and Roll Royce? Or Mercedes and BMW! Yes they are so poor there are more Starbucks in China than there us in USA and for every 10 new Starbucks in China one is being planned in US! They are so poor they travelled in 400km an hour high speed train! They are so poor there is ZERO homeless to 2.5 million Americans livin in the streets!

I think you should finally admit that you are so poor in brain cells to asked this question! It is too obvious to the world.

Gambling revenues.

Macau government got rid of it’s gaming monopoly and issued six licenses including Wynn and Sands (Venetian).

When Sands opened its first casino which cost US $260 million, the crowd broke the doors! They recovered their investment in eight months.

With that success,they built the Venetian, a property three times the size of the Vegas property. It opened during the third week of August, yet tourist numbers went up by 24% for the entire month. Gaming revenues were unbelievable.

All six operaters have similar operations.

In 2005 we had 12,000 hotel rooms. Now we have over 42,000. Hyper growth. New hotels are 2000–3000 rooms.

Macau has 44 casinos and revenue of 5–6 times that of Vegas.

The government charges for each license, Charges rent for land lease and gets 39% of gross gaming revenue in taxes.

That’s why Macau is rich.

I used to have a boss that wanted a new Corvette. He waited to go to the dealership until the middle of winter when it had snowed like a foot the night before. Many of the city businesses had closed their offices, including ours. We had a “free day off.”

He KNEW exactly which car he wanted, and that dealership had one. So he went down there. Due to all the snow, the dealership was empty of customer — NOBODY was car shopping that day.

He pretended like he wasn’t sure which Corvette he wanted. He got the eager sales guy to clear the snow off of one, so he could sit in it and check it out.

“I dunno…. I like it, but do you have another one with the XYZ features?”

Clear off another car, sit in that one, chat with the sales guy for 15 minutes

“I dunno…. I like this one better, but do you have one in Red?”

Clear off another car, and chat another 15 minutes.

He farted around for more than THREE HOURS with that salesman, pretending he couldn’t make up his mind about which one to buy. The entire time, the car he really did want was RIGHT THERE on the lot.

He wore that poor guy ragged, jacking around all day. He made the guy clear off every single ‘vette they had, which was like 20. By the time they started talking price the sales guy was already PLENTY TIRED of this shit, and the negotiations had just begun.

My boss got the exact car he wanted at the EMPLOYEE DISCOUNT price, plus the factory incentives, plus some extra shit thrown in for free.

A Chinook is obsolete in today’s warfare context

Yes during the Vietnam War and those older wars, a Chinook made sense to transport heavy equipment and men from a safe zone to a war zone

The enemy didn’t have Air Defense and certainly not guided air defense with missiles

Today?

Even the Houthis can blow up a Chinook with a handful of limited air defense missiles

A Chinook is a lumbering elephant that is easy enough for a basic drone to attack and destabilize and cause to crash

Neither the Russians nor the Chinese have any use for the Chinook or its design

The Russians move on land and transport their equipment on land

Same for the Chinese

Neither need Lift Choppers because neither would ever target a Nation that is fighting with Guerilla Tactics


Attack Choppers

That’s what Russia wants and has

Like the KA-52

Rapid movement, Rapid assault and Rapid retreat

Tough for a Drone to latch onto and too much of a blur to lock on and blow up with an Air Defense Missile without accuracy

Possible nuclear detonation off the California Coast

I have long argued that were China or Russia to harm the United States, they would not do so using expected means. Instead they might do so using unorthodox means.

Russia pulls out it’s “Ace Card”.

After the warning by Putin with his Oreshnik missile, the West did not take the warning seriously. Yet, this was a most impressive display of power and ability.

This is from MSN

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screen 2024 12 06 10 21 55

The United States responds

Instead, the West, led by the United States decided to double down, and fired even more US and UK made and controlled missiles into Russia.

Russia made a final statement. They said that these actions now open up the West, including the United States, to target areas.

This is from Hal Turner

screen 2024 12 06 10 26 19
screen 2024 12 06 10 26 19

It is (today) now 7 days. One full week later since this announcement.

Tsunami hits California

And there is a large underwater “earthquake” off the California coast. It began as a 6.0 earthquake, and then a second one, back to back, of magnitudes 7.0 earthquake.

This resulted in a Tsunami warning for the entire West coast of the United States. And of course, huge tsunami waves hitting almost the entirety of the California coast.

Here’s where the earthquakes originated, and showing the tsunami affected regions.

Localized Tsunami Warning Map
Localized Tsunami Warning Map

There are those that suggest that the earthquakes look more like a sudden explosion, rather than a typical earthquake. I do not know how valid these claims are. But the semantic data is certainly damning.

7 0 qUAKE OR eXPLOSION
7 0 qUAKE OR eXPLOSION

Discussions on X are filled with conspiracy theories and other related content.

 

 

There are two points that I want to emphasize.

  • No serious radiation has been detected. Sure there was a short spike but nothing even resembling what an atomic detonation would look like.
  • The detonation, if that is what happened, is not where a foe would seemingly place a detonation target. The better location would be between San Francisco and Los Angles. Not between San Francisco and Portland OR.

There is damage, and flooding. But from the early news reports that I can see, nothing is very serious as of yet.

Strange Coincidences

Immediately before the earthquake “detonated”, there was a United States Navy P3 Submarine detection aircraft flying in the region.

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screen 2024 12 06 10 41 51

There was even a SECOND military P-8 searching off the coast of SOUTHERN California at the time of the quake, but way far south of the quake area. It might be unrelated, or connected. It’s too difficult to know.

Russian Poseidon nuclear-tipped torpedoes

Russia DOES have weapons that can unleash Tsunami related chaos. And they are deadly and lethal. However, the damage that they would create is much larger than what this incident suggests.

Here’s what Popular Mechanics has to say…

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screen 2024 12 06 10 51 35

MM Conclusions and thoughts

  • The “earthquake” could be natural.
  • The “earthquake” could also be a Russian Poseidon conventionally-tipped torpedo. Not a nuclear tipped one.
  • The “earthquake” could also be an explosion on board a submarine.

We don’t know.

But to find out what is really going on, look for the obscure tell-tales that might surface in the nooks and crannies of the internet.

The tale of the small skull

Despite being attacked and labeled incessantly as wumao and commie lapdog, I don’t consider myself pro-china.

I am first and foremost pro-singapore. This is where I was born, and I fully intend to die here, an island I have sworn to defend.

I live right in the middle of the Anglophone echo chamber. Singaporeans are plugged directly into the mainstream news circuit as English speakers.

It is not an exaggeration I am surrounded by brethren who have been conditioned by decades of negativity fed by the news circuit.

You may not like China and the mainland Chinese. Trust me when I say I understand. My wife insists on banning Huawei phones from the home because these devices “send data back to China”.

And that is why I carry a Samsung. Guys who are married quickly learn the meaning of “no end to it”. The tomorrow threatened never fails to arrive.

So why am I writing about China?

Hate China all you want. But hate China and the Chinese for the right reasons.

Otherwise, mindless hate will only exacerbate the risk of war, as public consensus of China as THE enemy and THE threat solidifies.

The greatest arms race of the 21st century is brewing at our doorstep in East Asia. Hundreds of billions in strategic weapon systems and trillions in defense spending. Meanwhile, an economic war is intensifying, threatening to blow up the livelihoods of billions in East Asia.

It is pertinent to inform east Asia that the health of China is central to peace and prosperity of the region. China isn’t an abstract concept or a faraway land, because decisions in Beijing are intimately entwined with our livelihoods.

I continue to speak out against the demonization of China and the Chinese, because the real threat is the hegemony of the United States. But there must first be awareness and understanding of who the Chinese are, what they are facing, and why they are not bowing to hegemony.

My time on quora is but a token effort.

I very much want my daughter to inherit a peaceful tomorrow, one where the color of her skin does not condemn to a lifetime of discrimination meant only for yellow people.

Firstly, do not count on it. The United States could very well be victorious when fighting Russia, plus China, plus Iran, plus North Korea.

You never know.

Ah. The neocons believe so. And you just gotta believe them. For after all they have first-class seating waiting for them in Heaven.

But most [1] serious students of modern combat, who are also [2] aware of Chinese history, and who have [3] also been to modern contemporaneous China, pretty much everyone is in perfect harmony and complete agreement that China would emerge the victor.

Not just the experienced “people in the know”, but also American military think tanks. Such as RAND, and the Naval War College. In all cases, they advise NOT to engage China in a hot war.

So it is a unanimous consensus or shared agreement among all that China would be the victor in a hot conflict.

But…

There are a number of rising tides of dispute to these assertions.

The first are the rabid neocon cabal; who are religious zealots (for the most part) and who have an unwavering belief in “American exceptionalism”. This belief is that all one needs is “faith” and “unwavering belief” that Jesus (the Lord and Savior) has blessed the United States, and being so blessed; is immune from ever being destroyed. They control most of Washington DC “Deep State”. They believe, in their hearts, that the United States is immune from harm.

The Second is a propaganda feed-back loop. The neocons have made arrangements to fund an anti-China narrative in all English and American (and proxy) publications. This has been active since 2008, and has changed English-speaking public opinion against China. This is a negative feed-back loop as those decision makers inside of the Washington Beltway believe their own lies.

Since these two groups control the vast bulk of the decisions being made in Washington DC, we all (in unison) watch in horror as the United States places it’s various efforts in prepared positions for an assault upon China.

Well…

Are the neocons right, or are the military think tanks right?

They both see China, and I like to believe that they study China, yet they both come with completely different conclusions. Which is really a “head scratcher”. Don’t you think?

That’s a good question, and perhaps the actual issue behind this question.

Let’s spend some time learning about China from a military perspective.

HISTORY

It is well established that China has a solid 6000 years of the people identifying themselves as Chinese. It is also well known that this is only what we can read. China goes back much further than that. Latest archaeological discoveries place populated cities back to 200,000 years ago. And during all those years, do you know what China was doing?

They were fighting.

China has the oldest known civilization, and the oldest civilization with near continuous fighting. The Chinese know war. In all of it’s various forms. And when the archeologists started digging in the 200,000 year old Chinese settlement, do you know what they found?

Evidence of large scale war.

In fact, the Chinese were perfecting large-scale military battle involving thousands of men and horse, along with coordinated attacks when the earliest proto-Europeans were hiding in caves, and running from Neanderthals.

And when Robert Greene wrote his massive tome: The 33 Strategies of War, he used example after example of techniques that the Chinese have perfected over the many centuries of fighting.

MILITARY SOCIETY

Because of the massive span of time of fighting, the Chinese have evolved into a rugged and capable people. And with the torrent of endless wars, they developed a society of survival. This, of course, evolved into various forms of discipline and martial training; the Chinese people have created a Chinese-version of ancient Sparta.

GENGHIS KHAN

When Genghis Khan moved out of the Mongolian lowlands, his first order of business was to fight the Chinese. And it took years. For after all, the “Great Wall of China” was built specifically to keep out the Golden Horde from China.

But, you know, eventually, the great Khan captured China and integrated it into his kingdom. And from that moment on, the Chinese assimilated the Mongols. Resistance was futile. And so, while the European history books tell of the fierce Golden Horde seizing most of Asia, what they minimize was the fantastical role that the Chinese sappers played in the destruction of all the Middle Eastern, and European cities. These cities were not destroyed by Genghis Khans horseback riders, but by Chinese engineers, sappers and assault troops.

As you can see by the map below (at 1300 a.d.) the Chinese Empire and the Mongol Empire was one and the same.

Genghis Khan empire assimulated by China
Genghis Khan empire assimulated by China

China is the red outline, with the Mongol Empire in purple.

Today, the discipline handed down from generation after generation of Chinese follows a direct lineage to the bloodline of the Genghis Khan Golden Horde. As does the contemporaneous Russian living in Asia.

MODERN MILITARY EQUIPMENT

One of the great anti-China propagandized narratives is that China uses conscripts, out of date; hand-me-down weapons from the former Soviet Union, and is devoid of “real” leadership. This narrative is repeated with great gusto and passion in Conservative publications throughout the West.

But it’s all a big lie.

China was a peer competitor with the United States and it’s proxies in 1950. Since then, it has focused its efforts and redoubled down on creating the most dangerous, lethal and strongest military in the world. And it has been successful.

China today is Peer-level with Russia, and above-peer with the United States.

In fact, China has entire arrays of weapons systems that are absolutely unheard of outside of Asia. They have developed simple, rugged and easy to manufacture systems all domestically made. From the top-line stealth fighters (J-20) and stealth bombers to the (*hush top secret*) Tic-Tak UFO craft that enjoys zipping around American Aircraft carrier battle groups.

China has drone aircraft carriers, search-and-detonate hand grenades, sonic, and laser cannons, terminator robots that fly into the battle field, swarms of robot sharks and a wide selection of nuclear based munitions.

I have written numerous posts on these very interesting weapons systems, but there seems to be a cabal of folk that don’t want to hear anything about Chinese military. They just want to believe that they are just poorly educated peasants with old SKS rifles.

CO-TRAINING WITH RUSSIA

Russia is obtaining some terrific experience in the battlefield in Ukraine. And this experience has caused them to update their battle and combat doctrines. And do you know who they share this information with?

They share and train with the Chinese PLA.

Everything that the Russians learn is shared immediately in real time with China.

WROTE THE BOOKS ON FIGHTING

The vast majority of text and books on how to fight wars, strategies, and techniques are all Chinese. And the way that they are written are timeless. You can follow then whether you are an archer, or a battle tank commander. China KNOWS how to fight wars.

In the realm of strategy and war, ancient Chinese literature is rich with timeless wisdom and insights that continue to inspire scholars and military minds to this day. Here are ten notable Chinese books on strategy and warfare that have left a lasting impact:

1. “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu – A classic treatise on military strategy, tactics, and leadership.

2. “The Thirty-Six Stratagems” – A collection of ancient Chinese strategies and tactics for use in warfare and business.

3. “The Book of Five Rings” by Miyamoto Musashi – Though Japanese, this book offers profound insights on strategy and martial arts.

4. “The Water Margin” (also known as “Outlaws of the Marsh”) – A classic Chinese novel that includes themes of strategy and military tactics.

5. “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” – A historical novel that offers insights into military strategy and political intrigue during the Three Kingdoms period.

6. “The Book of Lord Shang” – A work on statecraft and governance that delves into strategies for maintaining power and order.

7. “The Tao of War” by Wang Chen – A military treatise that combines Taoist philosophy with strategic principles.

8. “The Way of the General” by Ts’ao Kung – A guide on military strategy and leadership.

9. “The Spring and Autumn Annals” – A historical text that includes accounts of military strategies employed during the Spring and Autumn period.

10. “The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China” – A collection of seven influential Chinese military texts that cover various aspects of strategy, tactics, and leadership.

These works offer a glimpse into the profound wisdom and strategic thinking of ancient Chinese military thought, providing valuable lessons that continue to resonate in the modern world.

LARGEST MILITARY

Oh, I forgot. China has the largest military in the world. Not only in manpower, but in combat trained troops. In auxiliary troops. In reservists. And in homeland defense. It is so huge that if you took the entire militaries of the West all together, China’s military still dwarfs them in numbers, training and size.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

One of the Achilles Heels of China has been (historically) to rely on sea shipping for it’s raw materials, foodstuffs, and advanced technology. But that is a relic of the past.

China trades with all of it’s neighbors; including Russia and wants for nothing. All the ocean routes around the world can be blocked and China will still survive because of all the land routes, rail connections, road connections that it has forged over the last two decades.

To think that China can be blockaded is a childish fantasy made by ideological fanatic infants with zero intelligence and pumped with (can only be described as) pure and simple stupidity.

WAR CHEST

To conduct a war, you need something called a “war chest”.

A “war chest” refers to a reserve of funds or resources set aside for use in times of conflict or emergency, particularly in the context of military operations or strategic planning. This term is often used figuratively to describe a stockpile of money, supplies, or assets that can be deployed to support a particular cause, campaign, or endeavor, much like a chest filled with provisions for battle. In a broader sense, a “war chest” can also symbolize preparedness, resilience, and strategic foresight in facing challenges or pursuing objectives.

Since the 1970’s the United States has relied on debt to finance it’s wars. This is directly tied to the demise of the USD and increased internal inflation.

China doesn’t have this problem. And is fully able to light long-duration wars with anyone and not have any significant changes to it’s domestic population.

LARGEST NAVY

China has the largest Navy in the world, and they operate modern cutting-edge vessels. These vessels are equipped with sonic and rail gun technologies and are very formidable. Additionally, they are concentrated along the Chinese borders. They are not spread around the world like the United States Navy is.

LOGISTICS

The Chinese military is designed (primarily) as a defensive organization. They are not designed for “force projection”. As China does not invade anyone. This is contrary to the American Western narrative of the “evil communists gobbling up and invading everyone”. They simply do not have anything near the invasion fleets, and systems that the United States has.

All this talk about a “Taiwan Invasion” is simply just bullshit and bluster. China does not have that ability. It cannot land a huge contingent of people on islands. Oh sure, it has one or two simple Naval Vessels, but is nowhere near the capacity to invade anyone.

That being said, because of this, to fight China is to fight in and around China. And that means, to so so in China’s “backyard”. A nation that has spent the last 500 years building underground bunkers and defensive parameters is not going to allow anyone to fuck with them. Every parking garage has blast doors and reinforced concrete walls. Every region and town has built-in CNC centers. Every comm link is redundant.

Oh, and China is a nation armed with a “zillion” missiles.

All sizes, types and shapes. Even the elementary school Children train with the missiles, the drones and basic combat skills.

If you go anywhere near it with hostile intent, you will be erased like God’s own hand. China will cleanse the land and it will become pristine; primeval.

Blessed emptiness and void for the world to see.

CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY

China and Russia operate “cutting edge” technology. Most of their military technology is so advanced that the United States won’t be able to field comparable systems for decades. This includes the hypersonic missiles, but much, much more. From the novel 055 vessels to the latest hand cannons, the technology is unmatched outside of Asia.

EDUCATION & TRAINING

Everyone in China gets formalized military training. It starts in first grade, and continues year after year. Formal “boot camp” is traditionally held during Middle School, and then another placement later on in their educational career.

This is handled regionally; some like Guanxi provide “American SEAL” level training starting at Kindergarten. While others such as Shanghai concentrate on discipline, marching, and tasks such as bed making, and small squad level tactics.

This is a recent development. This became the norm after 2013, and was fully implemented nationally by 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYZ2qI3qJu8

Short video. Worth you time to watch all three minutes.

ALLIED WITH RUSSIA

Oh, and to fight China is to fight Russia.

Russia and China are “joined at the hip”. They are a complete unified block. You cannot isolate China. China and Russia act as a unified team together. This is a formalized reality. One that was publicly announced in 2022.

NUCLEAR ARMED

China has nuclear weapons.

The idea that China only has 400 nuclear warheads is a propagandized narrative that has ZERO basis on reality. When you read the “studies” on this, look at their assumptions. “China doesn’t have the manufacturing capability.” Or, “China doesn’t know how to… and would take decades to…”. These “white papers” are a living and true example of “wishful thinking” that I have ever seen.

More accurate counts are somewhere between 4000 to 5000 nuclear warheads.

Oh, and they employ neutron-enhanced weaponry on the tactical scale. Erase the population, then move in the city.

Oh, and they do not employ “surgical strikes”. As far as nuclear weapons are concerned, they believe in “Shotgun nukes”. Which is to lace and bombard a target with ten nuclear weapons for a much wider dispersal and greater damage.

MANUFACTURER FOR THE WORLD

Finally, to fight China is to empty all the store shelves in the world.

No more aspirin, toilet paper, toothpaste. No more cell phones, spare parts for cars.

Consumer-based societies (of which the United States is one of the largest) will collapse. Thus to fight China is to have your entire internal domestic society implode.

Now, the neocons say that “facts do not matter”. Their faith in the divine blessings from God and that Jesus will protect the United States is unwavering. Therefore, they are pressing and planning and setting up conditions to attack China.

One excuse after the other.

But let me tell you, that when that day happens, it will be like a light switch. 0 to 1000 in 0.1 seconds. China will go from peace into “slaughter everyone on sight” mode.

War is not a game, and idiots should not be placed in charge of governing anything. Every effort should be devoted for peaceful resolutions of conflict.

But you know…

… there’s no arguing with lunatics. And sometimes the only thing that you can do with a Mad Dog is to put him down.

Wider Middle East War and US Imperial Decline

Cheesy meatballs

Cheese balls
Cheese balls

Cheesy Meatballs are juicy and tender, simmered in a rustic homemade tomato sauce. Topped with melted mozzarella cheese and serve over spaghetti for a delicious dinner!

The best meatball recipe starts with the most tender meatballs, browned in a hot skillet to seal in the juices and get crispy, golden edges. Soaking up rustic tomato sauce flavours underneath a golden blanket of melted mozzarella cheese, Cheesy Meatballs is an easy dinner recipe that will be a hit with your family!

Cheesy Meatball RECIPE IMAGE 2
Cheesy Meatball RECIPE IMAGE 2

MEATBALL RECIPE

Dry meatballs are a thing of the past with our recipe. While most nonna’s hold a secret to get the perfect meatballs, some people just can’t seem to get it right. Cooking dry meatballs that are often times flavourless and hard to swallow, I agree with most in that meatballs can be hard to master. It’s easier to buy cooked meatballs in throw them in a sauce.

Even though it can be hard to get the texture and taste right out of a humble meatball, I’m here to tell you it’s super easy. All you need is the right meatball recipe!

We have a trick up our apron sleeves (or straps), that make these meatballs so moist and juicy and absolutely the best meatballs we’ve ever eaten. You will love our cheesy meatballs!

HOW TO MAKE MEATBALLS

It all starts with your meat mixture. There are two key elements crucial to a good meatball recipe:

  • Texture
  • Flavour

Without these two details, meatballs are bland, dry and not worth the effort that goes into making them.

Bread soaked in milk instead of dry breadcrumbs is the secret to getting juicy, moist meatballs every single time. The same method we use for our Meatloaf recipe.

Meatballs also need to be well-seasoned. We use salt and a crushed bouillon cube to get the flavours going, as well as aromatics like onion and garlic.

Herbs are just as important to get those classic Italian flavours in each bite. Our recipe calls for fresh parsley and dried oregano and basil, purely taking seasonal availability into account. Feel free to mix it up with your own favourite combination. Mint, tarragon, thyme or marjoram, plus a pinch or two of nutmeg adds a subtle flavour. You decide.

Eggs are also added to bind the meat, bread and parmesan together, making them light and spongy.

Cheesy Meatballs IMAGE 65
Cheesy Meatballs IMAGE 65

HOMEMADE MEATBALLS

The next step to incredibly tender meatballs is mixing your meat mixture until the ingredients are just incorporated, with your hands. Use gloves if you have an aversion to touching raw meat, or mix lightly a wooden spoon. Full pieces of ground meat should still be visible.

Roll your meatballs with lightly oiled hands to prevent the meat from sticking to your fingers, while adding a little extra moisture into each meatball. Then place each meatball onto a lined plate or baking sheet. This just helps keep your kitchen stay clean without creating too much of a mess, and prevents your balls from rolling all over your bench top.

HOW TO COOK MEATBALLS

If there’s one thing my father passed down to me from the Italian side of his family, it’s never to poach or boil beef. There’s nothing like the aromas and flavours of meat hitting a hot skillet or pan. Sizzling first to get a perfect browned crust before adding in sauce. You won’t be cooking them all the way through in this step.

Space the meatballs out evenly into your skillet or pan by cooking in batches of three, instead of throwing them all in the pan together. This avoids the meat poaching or simmering in its own juices.

Rustic, homemade meatballs are never perfectly rounded, especially when seared first. Don’t worry if they begin to flatten in the pan. The blanket of melted cheese will cover them.

Cheesy Meatballs IMAGE 6
Cheesy Meatballs IMAGE 6

MEATBALL SAUCE

Our sauce recipe is easy, starting with onion and garlic to get those aromatics in. Tomato sauce, puree or passata is simmered with tomato paste, herbs, chili flakes (if using), salt and pepper. Add a pinch of sugar to cut through some of the bitterness, or use ¼ teaspoon of aluminium free baking soda to help neutralise the acid.

It’s really hard to overcook meatballs in your sauce, since they’re simmering in liquid. Braise them for about 15-20 minutes, turning the meatballs in the sauce to get those flavours absorbing evenly into the meat while simmering. I also suggest stirring the sauce to prevent it from burning on the bottom.

Top with cheese and finish them off under the broiler in your oven.

If you don’t have a broiler, continue simmering them until he cheese has melted.

There you have it! Cheesy meatballs!

Cheesy Meatballs IMAGE 53
Cheesy Meatballs IMAGE 53

Be the Rufus

75-year-old Leonard Bullock and his wife Dorothy have lived across the street from a railroad yard in Pendleton, Oregon since 1982. And over the years, they haven’t always had the money to maintain their house.

main qimg 37c5ebe6e08b600da401e4d8d2af467e
main qimg 37c5ebe6e08b600da401e4d8d2af467e

A railway worker named Josh Cyganik has waved to Leonard on his porch almost every day for the last four years, but never actually talked to him until last month, after he heard two teenagers making FUN of the place.

They were joking that it looked so bad, someone should just burn it down. And Josh knew Leonard heard them too, when he saw the look on his face.

So a few days later, he asked Leonard if he and some friends could repaint the place for him, and got a hardware store to donate supplies. Then he posted about it on Facebook, and more than a HUNDRED PEOPLE showed up that Saturday to help.

They painted the house . . . fixed up the porch . . . made it wheelchair accessible . . . and bought everything they need to replace the ROOF, which is still in the works.

Josh says one of his friends drove by around 10:00 P.M. that night, and Leonard and Dorothy were both still out on the porch smiling.

Pepe Escobar: Putin’s DEVASTATING Kursk Trap SHOCKS NATO & Ukraine, WWIII Next?

AMERICAN ANSWER

There are BIG differences between the services in this, and I mean the cultural gap is huge.

The American Navy descended almost directly from the British Navy and is hugely class-conscious. Officers and enlisted don’t mix. Officers, speak to chiefs and chiefs direct the men. There aren’t just two different messes, there are three — officers, senior enlisted and junior enlisted.

There is a reason for everything that persists. Life is very fragile on a ship—take a nuclear submarine: a wrong move kills everyone aboard. Familiarity breeds contempt. Better to let the Captain remain a godlike figure rather than Fred who likes knitting to relieve stress. A little psychological distance is a good thing.

The Army was heavily influenced by the proto-Germans (Prussians) and the French— a lot more egalitarian than the Navy, but still conscious of rank. We eat together in the field, there is only one mess hall, though we may be at separate tables. There was only one mess hall in Iraq — Generals and Privates ate in the same space.

The Air Force is directly descended from the army, and the least rank conscious part of the army, aviation. Their enlisted are smart, they are technicians, and they keep the planes in the air. The Air Force uniforms are more egalitarian, I do not think there is any problem with an air crew sitting and eating together in the air force.

So I think you need to calibrate your expectations to the service you are discussing.

I have not. But my company made a three-part blunder that might qualify:

Part one: we had this very senior employee, about 70 years old, who was highly experienced with one customer system that was quite old, but still in use. Since we only needed one person who understood the ancient technology, nobody ever thought to assign someone for him to mentor in case he decided to retire. It wasn’t a major profit center, but the company made a nice bit of coin and kept a big customer happy by maintaining the antique.

He loved working on that old system, and had a fantastic relationship with that customer. He was long-since eligible for pension and didn’t need to work—the job was a paid hobby for him and kept him moving, thinking, and interacting socially. He did his job, caused no problems, was always ready to lend a hand or advice to younger engineers. Which of course was pretty much everybody. But he wasn’t looking to get ahead, get promoted or anything.

Part two: being a large corporation, we had a performance evaluation system that ranked people into four categories, from outstanding to needs improvement. And since there were lots of people, HR & finance took a statistical view which included a specific shape of the “bell curve”: So many people (%) in the top tier, so many in the next tier, etc. This was enforced at the 100-person level of the organization. So if we had a pretty good crew in one area of the business, they’d end up not being allowed to rank some people as high as we thought they deserved, while some other area had people who were actually not quite as good but ranked higher. None of the managers close enough to know the people liked it, but we had to do it. That ranking was the strongest factor in raises and promotions. So by mutual agreement, this amiable, useful old guy was always ranked in the bottom tier, freeing up a better ranking for someone who might otherwise get hosed.

Part three: HR came up with a policy that anyone who’d been ranked in the bottom tier more than a certain number of years in a row, was automatically either demoted (with a pay cut), or laid off. It was the employee’s choice whether they got laid off or demoted but one or the other was going to happen.

You can see where this is going. HR called the guy in—without consulting his management—and offered to let him keep his job by accepting a demotion. As a long time employee, if laid off he was entitled to 6 month’s severance pay (as a lump sum) and could immediately apply for pension payments. So he took the layoff right on the spot. HR hadn’t expected that for some reason and tried to change his mind. Now, another bit of policy was any employee being laid off got walked out directly from HR—management would then be notified to have someone clean out his desk and return personal items. So by lunchtime he was home, retired, applying for pension and thinking how to spend the windfall. It was later in the day before his management found out he was gone. The customer was extremely unhappy. Before management could even begin to decide who would take over the maintenance contract, the customer cancelled it. They explained that the former employee was going to work directly for them as a technical consultant, which meant his hourly rate was nearly tripled—he was getting the “overhead” and profit the company used to get.

He Laced Her Drink & Let The Football Team Run a Train On Her!

Daily Shorpy

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Karl P. Schmidt, a renowned American herpetologist, chose to dedicate his final moments to science when faced with death, demonstrating remarkable dedication to his work.

main qimg a9be87814c6d992f50d84d303efb3713 lq
main qimg a9be87814c6d992f50d84d303efb3713 lq

In September 1957, the Lincoln Park Zoo brought a 30-inch snake to the Chicago Natural History Museum, seeking help with its identification. Schmidt, who was highly respected in the field of herpetology and had several species named after him, agreed to examine the snake.

On September 25, Schmidt observed that the snake was African, with bright patterns and a head shape similar to a boomslang—a venomous snake from Sub-Saharan Africa. However, he was unsure if it was a boomslang because the snake’s “anal plate was undivided,” a feature inconsistent with that species.

While examining the snake, Schmidt made a fateful decision. He picked it up for a closer look, but the snake suddenly bit him on the left thumb, leaving two small puncture wounds. Instead of seeking medical help, Schmidt, ever the dedicated scientist, began documenting the effects of the venom in his journal.

  • “I took it from Dr. Robert Inger without thinking of any precaution, and it promptly bit me on the fleshy lateral aspect of the first joint of the left thumb,” Karl Schmidt wrote in his journal. “The mouth was widely opened and the bite was made with the rear fangs only, only the right fang entering to its full length of about 3 mm.”

Within 24 hours, he would be dead.

Schmidt may have underestimated the severity of the bite. He took a train home and continued noting his symptoms in detail:

-4:30 – 5:30 PM: Strong nausea, no vomiting. Took a suburban train trip.

– 5:30 – 6:30 PM:Experienced chills, shaking, fever of 101.7°F. Bleeding from the gums began around 5:30.

-8:30 PM: Ate two pieces of milk toast.

– 9:00 PM – 12:20 AM: Slept well. Urinated at 12:20 AM, mostly blood. Drank water at 4:30 AM, followed by violent nausea and vomiting. Felt better and slept until 6:30 AM.

The next morning, Schmidt carried on with his routine, eating breakfast and continuing to document the venom’s effects:

-September 26, 6:30 AM: Ate cereal, poached eggs on toast, applesauce, and coffee for breakfast. Noted continuous bleeding from the mouth and nose, though “not excessively.”

“Excessively” was the last word Schmidt wrote. After lunch, he vomited, called his wife, and soon became unresponsive. Despite attempts to revive him, Schmidt was pronounced dead at 3 PM, the cause being respiratory paralysis.

Boomslang venom is terrifyingly potent; just .0006 milligrams can kill a bird within minutes. The venom causes internal bleeding, leading to a slow and agonizing death. Schmidt’s autopsy revealed that his lungs, eyes, heart, kidneys, and brain were all hemorrhaging.

The Chicago Daily Tribune later revealed that Schmidt had been advised to seek medical help but refused, saying, “No, that would upset the symptoms.” Some say Schmidt’s death was a tragic case of curiosity overcoming caution. Others believe that, knowing the antivenom was only available in Africa, Schmidt simply accepted his fate, continuing his life’s work until the very end.

You be the judge.

PART 2 – Wife Of 7 Years Opened Our Marriage Without My Knowledge, Has BREAKDOWN When I Toss Her…

 

Two Deaths and a Glowing Plant

Submitted into Contest #247 in response to: Set your story on a spaceship exploring the far reaches of space when something goes wrong. view prompt

Eyza H

This story contains themes or mentions of physical violence, gore, or abuse.

“How much longer till we land?” Joan complained lazily as she swung her seat around, swaying her arms in their heavy armor.  “Not our fault you were the first to gear up sweetheart– you should’ve waited a bit before putting your suit on” a man commented with a sly smile from behind her. “Don’t call me that!” she chided as she looked him, although with a small, knowing smirk.“Alright, you guys better strap in now. You know how it gets, and we don’t know the atmosphere of this planet yet” a stern voice sounded from the head of the small space ship, which was only carrying three passengers. “Roger that, Sir!” Joan said as she straightened in her seat, and adjusted its position. Pressing a button on her right caused multiple belts to wrap around her, keeping her securely in place. The other two men followed the same process, and readied themselves for the landing. “This is the part I always hate the most…” she thought as she felt her throat go dry. The man seated on her left was gazing at her steadily. “Just count to 15 and it’ll be over, yeah?” Something about the softness in his brown eyes calmed her, and she relaxed hands, which had tightened into fists. “Thanks, Nick. Kash, estimated time of arrival?” “Time, 98:34:02. Year, 3010. I’ve already logged it.” With that, the three began their descent onto a planet not yet explored by humans, 30 light years away from Earth.“Well, that wasn’t so bad now, was it?” Nick commented as he pushed a button to unstrap his belts. Joan got up slowly. “I’m still nauseous. Also, it was way more than 15 seconds, liar.” Nick let out a small, hearty laugh, as he patted Joan’s head affectionately under his large, gloved hand. “Come on guys, time to head out.” Kash commanded as he adjusted his headgear. Although he usually spoke in a somber manner, the other two were able to detect a slight curiosity and excitement, which laced his words. “Let’s go, Captain!”The three stepped out onto what seemed to be a large, empty barren land. The ground was a reddish pink color, littered with rocks and boulders of different sizes, with a backdrop of a turquoise sky. There were no clouds, although there seemed to be layers of some sort of mist mixing on the horizon, with bands of yellow, orange, and a light grey. The contrast of the deep pink ground against the strikingly vibrant blue sky was breathtaking. The three looked around at first with some degree of uncertainty, before looking at each other as smiles spread wide across their faces, even Kash’s. “Isn’t this… The most beautiful one we’ve been to yet?” Joan commented excitedly as she looked at Nick and Kash. The two hummed in agreement, with Nick adding “Of course you’d like it the best – the ground here is all pink!” Joan bounced airily towards him, and gave a small nudge. “Let’s get to business now, shall we? We can’t be here more than an hour. I’m going to begin our timer now – lets stay within the prescribed radius – don’t you two dare wonder off.” Kash instructed while fidgeting with some buttons on his right arm. “You’re the one who wonders off the most, Kash!” Joan laughed. Kash looked at her sternly through the transparent screen of his suit, before breaking into a gentle smile. “That’s no way to speak to your Captain. Let’s get to it, now.” With this, he began taking long strides away from the ship. Nick and Joan looked at each other as he left. “Just us two left now, huh?” Nick spoke into his intercom, with a smirk. Joan pushed him away lightly once more. “Focus on the job, idiot. I’m going in this direction.” She said as she pointed towards the right. “Alright, Miss.” Just as Joan began hopping away from him, he grabbed her arm and turned towards her. “Keep talking on the intercom so I know you’re ok, alright?” The lightness of his voice had now been replaced with concern, as his mouth straightened into a serious line. Joan gave him a sweet smile in response. “You do the same.” The two gazed at each other for another second before departing in separate directions. If they had known that this would be the last time they would see each other, perhaps they would’ve gazed into one another’s eyes for a second or two longer.-The following report has been compiled over a period of 5 years following the incident at Planet Y, where three of our astronauts tragically lost their lives in a series of events still shrouded in mystery. This is the first incident where astronauts have died have on a mission in 37 years – hence, the issue must be dealt with utmost severity, least we repeat the mistakes which led to this terrible outcome in the future.Within a space of 15 minutes of the landing on Planet Y, Joan Longwood, Nick Wrigh, and Kash Presnig were declared deceased. The following report is divided into three condensed components, following each of the astronauts, their logs from those 15 minutes, an analysis of what their logs could’ve meant – although this is mostly based on assumptions due to lack of factual evidence – and lastly, a summary of recommendations for the future to avoid any such incidents from occurring again.Kash PresnigKash Presnig was the Captain of the ship Orchid 367. He was an experienced man of 37, who had led multiple exploratory missions of this nature in the past. Nothing from the evidence collected indicates any mistake or wrongdoing on his part – the mission was led and landed successfully on Planet Y. He was updating his log, while diligently keeping track of his crew members. Unfortunately, he was the first to lose his life, within 12 minutes. The following passage recounts Kash’s logs in those minutes and his final few words as he tried to contact the space station.“Log.1. We have successfully landed on Planet Y. The land here is barren – there is no vegetation here, and the soil is dry and hard. It is of an odd pinkish red color, which has not yet been observed in any other planet. Rocks of varying sizes are scattered, although some seem to be unnaturally larger than others. The terrain is flat – there are no elevations or dips. The sky is a bright turquoise shade, with bands of gases layered one on top of the other. The identity of these gases is yet unknown.”“Log. 2. 30 meters from the ship. The terrain is still the same. Sample of the rocks and soil has been collected. There are no metals detected in the area. An odd fog is growing in the distance, about 10 meters away. Proceeding with caution.”“Log. 3. I have now stepped into an area covered with grey, yellow, and orange mist. It seems to be swirling around, although no wind was detected on the planet. Visibility is extremely low – Cannot see beyond a few meters ahead. The suit is unable to identify the gases – however, an absence of water vapor is noted. Gas sample has been collected for further analysis. Retreating to base.”“Log. 4. The mist is growing thicker, worsening visibility. It seems to be spreading from this point, outwards to the surrounding areas. No impact of the gas is notable – although it seems to swirl into oddly distinct shapes. Proceeding back urgently.”After the fourth log, Mr. Presnig contacted our headquarters directly – which has not occurred in 13 years. His panicked voice indicated that there was an issue which had to be dealt with immediately. The following are his words – with no amendments – excluding the responses of the team he spoke to at the time to get a concise account from his own narration.“Contacting… HQ… Kash Presnig speaking here. The mist… The gases, they are.. They are poisonous! I know the suit is impenetrable to any gas but I am sure… Yes, it has penetrated, somehow… I am having hallucinations of some sort. Yes, dammit, I am certain! Or else, why is there… why is there a man before me? A large man – no, an alien! Finally, we have found life – so far away… 50 light years…! Our dream, our mission has been realized! Yes… I am certain, it is a man, but he is… proceeding towards me at a high speed, or… no. He has slowed down. I can describe his face… It is alright, I am almost at the base, I think… His face… but his face, his glasses, his eyes, his nose… is this man… Me? It cannot… this.… it is!”

 

After this, the communication line with Mr. Presnig was cut. From his own words, as well as the autopsy report generated from his suit, we can conclude that Mr. Presnig’s assumptions of being impacted by a certain gas, or gases, had indeed not only caused hallucinations, but also poisoned his blood – he died within a minute of having inhaled the gas. How the gas penetrated his suit is still unknown, as no issues were found with the suit during testing. However, his death was not caused by gas poisoning.

 

This piece of evidence has been left confidential, and his family were not made aware of it, due to the highly sensitive nature of the issue. Mr. Presnig suffered a slash to his neck which almost entirely separated his head from his body, which was his cause of death. Had this not taken place, he would have indeed died of gas poisoning within 58 seconds. Source or cause of the slash are unknown.

 

Nick Wrigh

 

Nick Wrigh was a young and promising technical engineer of 28. He had been a part of several space missions before this, including 12 of exploratory nature. As this mission was deemed low risk, Mr. Wrigh was considered an ideal candidate to join the mission and sharpen his skills for the future. He was joined by his partner of two years, Joan Longwood, who had been on several missions with him before this one as well. Their families reported that the two had planned to get married upon their return, before this tragedy had taken place.

 

Mr. Wrigh died 13 minutes into his exploratory course, and had only registered 2 logs. However, pieces of his conversation with Ms. Logwood have been recorded, as well as his emergency call, which took place 37 seconds after Mr. Presnig had passed away. His last communication was with Ms. Longwood.

 

“Log.1. Landed successfully on Planet Y. The planet is beautiful – bare stretches of magenta with brown boulders and rocks, against an electric blue sky. There seem to be some gases layered on the horizon in shades of yellow and grey. Samples of rock and soil have been collected, as well as a piece of what seems to be an unidentified metal.”

 

“Log. 2. 40 meters from base. The rocks and boulders around me have grown huge – they are almost the size of small houses. They did not appear this large from a distance. If I look back, I cannot see our ship, as I am walking through a narrow path between large rocks covering my view. The rocks themselves are smooth, with sharp edges. I have tried to break a piece but failed, as they are extremely hard and dense.”

 

Mr. Wrigh did not submit any logs after this. The following pieces of conversation have been recorded between himself and Ms. Longwood 2 minutes before his death.

 

“J, this place is… the rocks are huge. Are they huge where you are as well?”

“No, it’s all flat here… huh, I don’t remember seeing any rocks that big when we landed.”

“I don’t know when they started getting bigger, but… it’s all I can see around me. They are beautiful, but a little…”

“Hah…Are you scared, Nicky?”

“Come on… anyone would be terrified if they saw massive rocks on an unexplored planet.”

“Just teasing!”

“Joan.”

“…Nick? Is everything alright?”

“Joan, the rocks… are moving.”

“How is that possible Nick? I don’t detect any movement on my radar for several kilometers around.”

“Joan, I swear, I feel like these rocks, they’re… moving in, towards me…”

“Nick, are you… come back. I’ll come back too.”

“J, there’s no path… I can’t see a path back. The rocks, they’ve all moved in!”

“Nick, I’m coming to you right now!”

“NO! Don’t, or you’ll also… Joan! I..”

“Nick? NICK? Can you hear me?”

 

After that, Mr. Wrigh made a call to the space station. He mentioned the large rocks which had seemed to be moving in to crush him. The personnel responding to him at the time told him to immediately go back to base, fearing his mental faculties had been compromised by the same gas which had poisoned Mr. Kresnig. They did not alert him about what had happened to Mr. Kresnig, thinking it would worsen his mental state. However, around 20 seconds after this communication ended, Mr. Wrigh had passed away, before making it back to base. His last exchange with Ms. Longwood is recorded below.

 

“Nick, where are you? I don’t see any huge rocks, Nick!”

“Joan… I can’t, I can’t breathe… I’m..”

“NICK! Please… I’m getting closer, I’ll find you!”

“I love you, J. Don’t worry, just..c-count till 15…”

 

According to the autopsy report, Mr.Wrigh’s cause of death was asphyxiation. However, there were wounds on his arms, chest, back, as well as his head. We do not believe that any “moving rocks” are likely to have crushed him to death, as the wounds would’ve been much more severe. We have ruled out gas poisoning as the autopsy did not indicate any such factor. This leaves the real circumstances surrounding Mr. Wrigh’s death completely uncertain. The only explanation may be that he had fallen somewhere, which had possibly damaged the oxygen tank in his suit, thereby causing his death. The wounds on his body may also be explained through some sort of fall, though not with absolute certainty.

 

Joan Longwood

 

Joan Longwood was an extremely gifted and inspiring member of the Space Exploration Association, 27 years of age. She was one of the youngest crew members to venture to space, only at the age of 17. While a technical engineer like Mr. Wrigh, she also had expertise in scientific and geographical aspects of space exploration, making her an apt decision maker in key situations. Had this incident not taken place, Ms. Longwood was on a trajectory to becoming a Captain within the Exploration Department within the next 5 years, having taken part in 24 space expeditions. Her logs are recorded as below:

 

“Log. 1. Landed successfully on Planet Y. The planet is a vast expanse of dry, pink soil, with a few brown rocks of varying sizes, and a vibrant blue sky. Bands of unidentified gases streak the sky in shades of orange, yellow, grey and white. Land samples have been collected. No metal or water has been detected.”

 

“Log. 2. 20 meters from base. The terrain has not changed, although there seems to be some change in the bands of gas in the sky. They are slowly disappearing in this direction – although there is no wind to shift them from their place. No explanation found yet for this phenomenon.”

 

“Log. 3. 30 meters from base. Vegetation has been detected – a small green plant growing on a rock. The plant has the same anatomy as those on Earth from the outside – a stem, some small leaves, and one flowering bud. The flower is an odd mixture of colors – each of its petals are of grey, orange and yellow shades, similar to the bands of gas seen in the sky. Correlation unknown. Collecting sample for analysis.”

 

After this, Ms. Longwood engaged in communication with Mr. Wrigh as recorded. She began retreating to base, as she had mentioned, upon hearing the distressed words of Mr. Wrigh. She tried to contact Mr. Kresnig after disconnecting with Mr. Wrigh, but was unsuccessful. She did not make any calls to the space station like her crew members. Her final log, before her death at the 15 minute mark, is recorded below:

 

“Log 4. Communication has failed with Mr. Wrigh and Mr. Kresnig. Their location on the radar is incorrect and keeps shifting. There might be an interference in signals on this planet. Reached the base. The plant has begun to glow. It glows brighter by the second – so bright I cannot look at it. Mr. Kresnig and Mr. Wrigh are dead. Their vital signs disappeared from the ship’s monitor. The plant’s light is surrounding everything. Don’t come here.”

 

After submitting the final log, Ms. Longwood exercised her right to Code X355D100, which states that an astronaut, under circumstances of certain death, has the right to end their own life through controlled means to avoid excessive and extended suffering. However, this decision is questionable considering that her vitals were healthy till the end, and she did not describe any threats to herself, as the other two crew members had. The glowing plant could be said to be the result of a hallucination, however, there is nothing to indicate there was any sort of hallucinogen in Ms. Longwood’s system at the time of her death. Our only explanation for her decision to execute Code X355D100 is due to extreme fear and trauma from the loss of her crew members, including her partner.

 

The events surrounding this incident have been kept entirely confidential from the public. The circumstances surrounding the cause of death for each of the crew members of Orchid 367 are inconclusive and uncertain. The next two sections cover an analysis of the possible scenarios which may have caused their deaths in more detail, as well as recommendations for the future to avoid another Incident Y from taking place.

Crescent Ragu Squares

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9be89543efec901b665a918ac516fbfc

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 small jar Ragu spaghetti sauce
  • 1 (4 ounce) can mushrooms
  • 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
  • 1 (8 ounce) can Pillsbury refrigerated quick crescent dinner rolls

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. In frying pan, brown ground beef; drain.
  3. Stir in Ragu sauce and mushrooms; simmer while preparing crust.
  4. Separate crescent dough into 2 long rectangles.
  5. Place in ungreased 13 x 9 inch pan; press over bottom and 1/2 inch up sides to form crust. Seal perforations.
  6. Spread meat mixture over dough.
  7. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until crust is brown.
  8. Top with cheese and bake until cheese melts.
  9. Cut into squares to serve.

An Uber driver told me something the other day that made me stop and think.

He came from Ghana 35 years ago to settle in the US.

“What do you think about America after having lived here for so long?” I asked.

“America is the best salesperson in the world. It convinces you that no matter where you are or what you have going on, things will be better here. It makes people all around the world drop what they’re doing and immigrate.”

“And then what?”

“You work your ass off until you die.”


I like talking to people.

Especially immigrants.

They have one leg in their home country and the other here. As a result, they see things that others don’t. They have a unique perspective.

They’ve all come in search of something.

Quality of life. Freedom. Money.

Some find it.

Many don’t.

They all miss the vibrancy of their home countries. Whether from Africa, South America, India, or somewhere else, they miss the colorful festivals, the sacred in the ordinary, the tight-knit family and community, the customs and tradition that make a place singular.


The US is marketed as the land of possibilities.

And for some, it is.

But most—like that Ghanaian driver—end up working very hard for little gain. On top of that, even though it’s a nation of immigrants, it doesn’t do a very good job of making newcomers feel welcome.

More like alienated and unaccepted.

What the immigrants I talk to dislike about the US—and what I tend to agree with—is that it engages in false advertising. It markets itself as the best, most advanced, and bountiful country on the planet.

The greatest.

But in reality, it’s not. I could insert a bunch of statistics here, but a quick Google search will reveal that the US isn’t number one when it comes to a variety of metrics such as tolerance, education, and quality of life.

Far from it.

Like every human being I know, it’s deeply flawed.

Except it won’t admit it.


“So what will you do?” I asked the driver.

“I’m going back to Ghana,” he said.

All Chick-fil-A outlets are basically company owned.

If they used a franchise model, they could expand much faster. But they prefer a slower, paced development. Even it seems like a lot of locations, they have not reached saturation in the US market.

Expanding overseas provides a huge opportunity but also large risks. Developing an efficient supply chain is one of them.

Funny you should ask.

Back in 1989, I had been hired to conduct surveillance on a car salesman in a small town about 150 miles southwest of Chicago. He claimed to be permanently disabled from slipping in wet grass in front of his employer’s location and injuring a leg. It had been more than a year after the initial injury and he hadn’t undergone any surgery, in fact a Chiropractor was allegedly treating the leg and certifying him permanently and totally disabled. The company said BS and suspected he was working elsewhere.

My normal practice was to contact the local constabulary and let them know I was in the neighborhood just in case someone called and reported a suspicious vehicle or person. I did so in this case too.

Nice little neighborhood, nice little houses, some cars parked on the street, too. That makes it easier to try and fit in. I was there well before dawn and parked about 4 houses down and on an intersecting street. Black felt capsule enclosure surrounding me in the back of my Trooper, I prepared the video camera on its secured tripod along with the Konica and long range lens. We were ready to rumble.

At about 8:AM a Sheriff’s department squad car rolled by me slowly, then pulls into my subject’s driveway. Sheriff Billy Joe Watkins gets out, holding two coffee cups from McDonald’s and is met at the door by my subject, who gives me the stink eye. I of course get a couple of good pics.

Half an hour later, Sheriff leaves, gets in the squad, subject steps out onto his front porch and watches as the Sheriff drives up to my vehicle, gets out, bangs on the side of my truck and yells “YOU GOT 5 MINUTES TO GET OUT OF TOWN OR YOU’RE GOING TO JAIL!”

He didn’t have to say it twice. I’m sure he would have found a reason to lock me up, impound my vehicle and make my equipment disappear. And I was 150 miles from home in Yee-Haw County. And the Sheriff was a friend of the subject.

That was the last time I made the courtesy call. Lesson learned.

Not worth the cost

The Scammers are geniuses in Economics and Finance

They know high value scams can get them roasted in days

For instance if they went after Adani for ₹5000 Crore, they would be caught and hauled up in a week at the most

However the Scammers go for MASS and small numbers

Rather than dupe 1 guy for 10 Million Bucks, they dupe 10,000 guys for 1000 Bucks each

Now take the Police

Even if they slog and slog and somehow manage to arrest the accused

They need the witness statement of 10,000 guys

It takes 2–3 years to bring a case to trial

By this time all the people who lost their money are OK with it and have resigned themselves to their fate

They certainly don’t want to come to court and spend 6–7 hours waiting and maybe get called again and again

Those who do come, get offered 10 times the amount and they end up making VAGUE STATEMENTS that go 180 degrees against the original statements

Ultimately the Scammers get acquitted

Then they start again


Scammers get your account information from Banks through the BPO side

They target customers who won’t be devastated if they lose ₹30–40K

Targets are angry for a few days, a week maybe two and then they shrug it off and go back to their life

Police don’t strike when the iron is hot

They start after 1–2 years by which time the Target has long forgotten the issue

By this time he simply doesn’t want to waste too much time and won’t come to 4–5 sessions with the Prosecution, Cops and hearings before the court

Imagine they are NRIs in US??

They need to pay more for the tickets to come to India

Would you testify for a loss of ₹1 Lakh four years ago by spending ₹5–6?

No right


The Cost Benefit Analysis never works in favor of the Victims or Law enforcement

It’s why Scammers flourish on CARELESS PEOPLE

Project Camelot – Kerry Cassidy Interviews Ashayana Deane Part 1 (2∶36∶39)

Coffee Chinese style

Coffee is big news in China. It is really popular.

But, no! It’s not “traditional” American-style coffee.

It’s something else quite different.

Different ways it is served. Different flavors. Different combinations. Different. Different. Different.

But, ah, you know…you can still get a coffee at McDonald’s, or at Starbucks, or at KFC, or at KFC. But many Chinese opt to go to the many thousands of different coffee tastes available to them.

coffee2
coffee2
coffee1
coffee1

Onion flavor.

Yes. You can buy it and drink it all up.

Duran flavor, stinky toufu flavor. Hard alcohol flavor. Beef with curry flavor… so many different flavors all over the place.

Onion ring flavor. carrot with peppermint flavor.

Chunky texture coffee.

Smooth texture coffee.

Hyper cold and boiling hot blend coffee…

WTF?

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Let’s be honest, for a majority of us, a cup of coffee is more than just a beverage — it’s a vital energy booster that kickstarts our day or acts as a midday pick me up. While the purists might lean towards a classic Americano or simple espresso, there are those who relish more adventurous tastes. We’ve compiled a list of some of the most bizarre and quirky coffee flavors you can discover in the city — from a surprising 皮蛋 pídàn to unconventional 豆汁儿 dòuzhīr, and beyond!

Zaijiuye Coffee

This establishment boasts a curious collection of coffee concoctions, each twinned with a nostalgic nod to a Beijing childhood treat. The sesame paste-laced coffee, when coupled with a 双棒儿 Shuāng bàng er (a milk-flavored ice cream pop with two sticks — hence the name), makes for a lovely treat. Everything combines to create a hazelnut-like taste, as the sesame paste and ice cream soften the coffee’s bitterness.

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Have you tried the heavenly combo of coffee and Shuangbang’er?

The place also dares to pair a douzhir-infused Americano with 焦圈儿 Jiāo quānr (a deep-fried dough circle similar to a 油条 yóutiáo). Douzhir, a fermented Beijing specialty marked by a subtle sourness and an egg-like scent, may not be to everyone’s liking. However, for any Beijing local worth their salt, it’s a twist they can’t resist exploring.

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How about a douzhir-flavored Americano paired with Jiaoquan?

Zaijiuye Coffee 
16 Shatanhou Street, Dongcheng district
东城区沙滩后街16号
Hours: 11am-7pm
Phone:184 1100 7574


Liquid House 

If you think douzhir and sesame paste coffees are crazy, then let us introduce you to pidan (aka century egg) and 酱豆腐 Jiàng dòufu (fermented tofu). Dreamt up by Liquid House, this drink features a pidan skewer resting atop your latte. The owner recommends taking the skewered century egg resting atop the brew, mashing it up, and mixing it all together to get the most out of it. It’s a delight for those with a palate for pidan, but might not be the preferred choice for those unaccustomed to its distinctive flavor.

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Fancy a sip of this Pidan Latte?

Liquid House 后院儿
Room 314, 3/F, Building 2, Huafangxintiandi, Courtyard 27, Qingnian Road, Chaoyang district
朝阳区青年路27号院华纺新天地2号楼3层314室
Hours: 10am-7pm
Phone:186 1812 0103


Phoenix Café 

Imagine the sensation when your coffee mingles with the zest of hotpot flavors. At Phoenix Café, prepare to have your perceptions about coffee challenged with their distinctive creation termed 油碟儿 Yóu dié er. Drawing inspiration from the traditional youdie’er, which is a chili-oil-based dipping sauce savored during hotpot sessions, particularly in Chongqing, this coffee blends the most unconventional ingredients. It features chili strands, tangerine peels, and a dash of white vinegar, ingredients you’d least expect in a cup of coffee.

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Get ready for a taste adventure with this Chongqing Hotpot-inspired beverage!

Phoenix Cafe 梧桐咖啡
69 Dongsibei Street, Dongcheng district
东城区东四北大街69号
Hours: 10am-7pm
Phone:186 0120 8175


Tongrentang Zhima Health Coffee

A café founded by the centuries-old laozihao (time-honored brand) Tongrentang, a name synonymous with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), recently garnered online popularity for its coffee offerings. Their brews blend TCM ingredients such as wolfberries, tangerine peel, and motherwort into the mix. Against expectations of a staggering bitter concoction, reviews on Dianping reveal that these TCM elements subtly enhance the coffee’s flavor without overwhelming it, thereby ensuring it doesn’t resemble a medicinal potion. For those who, like me, appreciate the potential health benefits of TCM, this café is a must-visit destination.

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6 85
Craving a TCM-inspired brew?

Tongrentang Zhima Health Coffee 同仁堂知嘛健康咖啡&养生BAR
No.2-1, Building 2, No.10 Chaoyang Park South Road, Chaoyang district
朝阳区朝阳公园南路10号院2号楼2-1号
Hours: 8.30am-8.30pm
Phone: 6587 1397


HK+

Have you ever sipped a coffee infused with pepper? At HK+, they’re challenging traditional coffee norms with their signature pepper-seasoned brew, enriched with the nutty undertones of black sesame. Its presentation mimics a fried egg floating in coffee, achieved through skillful latte art using milk and a touch of turmeric. Despite its unconventional key ingredient, it highlights the taste of the coffee. So, if you’re intrigued by the idea of a peppery, salty coffee, HK+ certainly warrants a visit.

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9 60
Ever sipped pepper-spiked coffee?

HK+
274 Xiaobaobei Street, Tongzhou district
通州区小堡北街274号
Hours: 10am-8pm
Phone: 134 3664 3842

Today…

Britain Claims To Have Helped With The Ukrainian Invasion Of Russia

Yves Smith is discussing the Washington Post report on Russia-Ukraine negotiation to end the infrastructure attacks:

An Admission of Russian Long-Term Weakness or More Complex Calculation?

I had previously discussed the WaPo piece here.

Yves suggests that the negotiations, if they really have happened as described, were an Ukrainian ruse to distract Russia from the Ukrainian preparation of the Kursk oblast incursion. The talks were useless for Russia, she says. She doubts that Russia would favor to stop the attacks on the Ukrainian electricity generating and network capabilities. She suggests that the Ukrainian attacks on Russia create little damage. It disagree with that view.

The winter will already become very difficult for Ukrainian civilians. There is no need to increase the damage on Ukrainian infrastructure beyond the already achieved level.

The Ukrainian attacks have so far created repairable damage in Russia. But that may not be the case forever. One day one of such attacks could in fact create some real catastrophe. The attacks are also binding lots of Russian resources. One needs a huge number of soldiers and equipment to give at least some protection to the most exposed sites. The Russian economy is currently short on men. Not diverting some 100,000 men for local air defense purposes can make a difference.

I believe that Russia was genuinely interested in making such deal. But the Ukrainian attack on Kursk oblast blew it apart.

There are new suggestion on how the Ukrainian incursion into Russia was prepared for.

The Times in London claims that it largely followed a British plan (archived):

When footage of British Challenger 2 battle tanks being used by the Ukrainian army for its counterinvasion of Russia emerged on Tuesday, Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence were ready.For the previous 48 hours, officials and political aides working for Sir Keir Starmer and John Healey, the defence secretary, had been in talks about how far to go to confirm growing British involvement in the incursion towards Kursk.

The stakes were high. Unseen by the world, British equipment, including drones, have played a central role in Ukraine’s new offensive and British personnel have been closely advising the Ukrainian military for two years, on a scale matched by no other country.

The U.S., in contrast, has claimed not to have known about the Ukrainian plans and there purpose. This leads Kit Klarenberg to develop a theory:

Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg – 15:02 UTC · Aug 18, 2024“🧵: I speculated earlier was probably Britain behind Kursk suicide op. Lo and behold, a Times article confirms this. More broadly, contents amply underline Kursk latest effort by London to keep the US in the proxy war – and it appears Washington has finally had enough of this.

Times reveals up top heavily promoted footage of British Challenger 2 tanks in Kursk was a conscious, deliberate decision made by new PM Keir Starmer and his defence secretary John Healey. British equipment is said to have “played a central role” in the “counterinvasion”.

Starmer and Healey reportedly made the decision to advertise London’s involvement “to be more open about Britain’s role in a bid to persuade key allies to do more to help.” In other words, to encourage/pressure the US et al to double down on this unwinnable, nightmare quagmire.

However, US reportedly unhappy with Kursk incursion, because it scuppered peace talks. Kiev’s purported culpability for Nord Stream bombing is, it seems, being used to justify ending German aid to Ukraine. And the US is blocking Kiev from firing British-made missiles at Russia.

Kit’s theory is that the Washington Post story about the blown negotiations as well as the latest “Nord Stream done by Ukraine” rumor reporting by the WSJ are expressions of U.S. anger over the Ukrainian government and its Kursk invasion.

The Times also reports that Britain is pushing its allies to provide more weapons and to allow their use against targets deep inside of Russia:

In the coming weeks Healey will attend a new meeting of the Ukraine Defence Co-ordination Group, where Britain will press European allies to send more equipment and give Kyiv more leeway to use them in Russia. Healey spoke last week to Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, and has been wooing Boris Pistorius, his German opposite number.Germany, whose Taurus missiles have a similar 155-mile range to Storm Shadow but a more powerful warhead, has been the country under the most pressure to move. However, it was revealed yesterday that Germany has actually frozen military aid to Ukraine because of a domestic budgetary crisis. Pistorius had asked for £3.4 billion of additional supplies but that was rejected by the finance ministry.

A previous leak provided that the long range Taurus missiles are complicate and have to be programmed just-in-time by German officers. There is no support in Germany for allowing such a deep involvement in attacks on Russia.

To me it seems that Britain has promised to Ukraine that it would get its allies to agree to the usage of longer range weapons against Russia in exchange for Ukraine to launch the attack on Russia.

Only that can explain this Zelenski complain about Starmer:

The Ukrainian president complained that British aid to Kyiv had begun to wane as his forces continued their unprecedented incursion into Russian territory in the Kursk region.“Unfortunately, the situation has slowed down recently,” Mr Zelensky said, referring to UK military assistance.

Sir Keir has upheld a Conservative ban on using UK-made Storm Shadows to strike targets deep inside Russia, amid concerns it could lead to escalation with nuclear-armed Moscow.

“We will discuss how to fix this because long-range capabilities are vital for us. The whole world sees how effective Ukrainians are – how our entire nation defends its independence,” said Mr Zelensky.

It came as four former Conservative defence secretaries called on No 10 to do more to support Ukraine, with some demanding Kyiv be allowed to use Storm Shadows in the Russian offensive.

But it is not Starmer who is blocking the missiles, it is the U.S. of A. (archived):

Washington is in effect blocking Britain from allowing Kyiv to fire Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia, amid fears in the Biden administration of an escalation in the Ukraine war.

It is understood that although the UK wants to give Ukraine the freedom to do what they want with the long-range weapon, it requires consensus from allies, including the US, France and a third undisclosed Nato country. A government source stressed that the UK was not blaming the US for any delay, adding that such policy changes took time.

Combining all the above one can (re-)construct this story.

Britain, in a bipartisan move, wants to prolong the war in Ukraine. It suggested to and helped Ukraine to invade Russia even as it knew that this would interrupt peace talks in Qatar. It also promised to press its allies  for long range attack permission against Russia. But the U.S. and Germany are still blocking such attacks. Zelensky now complains that Britain failed to deliver on its promise.

The U.S., miffed about the British involvement in a likely useless Ukrainian attack on Russia, is leaking about the Ukrainian/Russian negotiations in Qatar.

The above is largely based on the U.S. claims that it was not really involved in the planing of the Kursk incursion.

There are of course good reason to doubt those claims:

As the Ukraine war enters its most perilous phase, with Kiev’s forces fighting inside Russia, the United States is operating a formal “sensitive activities” detachment that is active in providing direct military support to the beleaguered country. The detachment, never before disclosed, is run by U.S. special operations forces, and with its Ukrainian counterparts, provides on-the-battlefield support, including near-real time targeting intelligence, operators say.

An operator formerly deployed to the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group assigned to a sensitive activities detachment told me their work included the creation of clandestine human networks for intelligence gathering, as well as identifying Russian military weaknesses for targeting.

A second operator also described having been tasked with providing near up-to-the-minute intelligence support to Ukrainian forces.

Those U.S. operators in Ukraine certainly did not miss the preparations the Ukrainians were making for their attack.

P.S. Bonus from The Times piece:

“It’s not just about the military support, but it’s about the industrial, economic, and diplomatic support,” the defence source said. “If Putin succeeds in Ukraine he’s not going to stop there. But also the economic implications of that are massive, because we all saw how heavily Britain got hit when he first invaded.

Yes, the sanctions, intended to hurt Russia, were quite damaging to those who issued them. Nice to see that finally acknowledged.

Posted by b on August 19, 2024 at 15:58 UTC | Permalink

Chemtrails

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CF4 c ZVAAApB u

Duke

“One day, I was lounging in the house when I heard loud gunfire. I ran outside just in time to see my neighbors cart off Duke’s mom on the back of their flatbed truck.

After that, Duke spent almost every hour at our home. Curiosity drove me to ask my neighbor’s what his name was but all they told me was they simply called him Dog. A couple of months after that, they simply stopped feeding Duke. I started to feed him because I wasn’t going to let this baby starve.

When it came time for our neighbors to move, I asked them if I could take Duke off of their hands since it was clear they didn’t want anything to do with him. The son said yes, but the day after I asked, Duke was gone and so were they.

I contacted the son and asked if he had changed his mind and decided to take the dog with him and he grew defensive and put all the blame on me and threatened me. After explaining to him I didn’t have Duke, he hung on me calling me a liar.

In an effort to find this baby, I posted Missing Pet signs all over the local vets office within a 25 mile radius.

5 months passed before I got a phone call from the UPS man that delivered in our neighborhood. He said he saw a dog matching the description of Duke in a nearby field and he looked pretty bad. I thanked the man, hung up and drove straight to where he said he saw the dog. It was Duke. Malnourished and severely afraid of everything. However, one look at me and after hearing my voice he perked up and ran straight into my arms.

Now Duke is healthy and happy and has three other dogs and three cats to play with.Now we are a family.❤️”

Douglas Macgregor Warns: US’s EXTREMELY Dangerous Policys Push The World Is Increasingly CHAOTIC

Brian Bywater

MAJOR TOM

  “Ground Control to Major Tom”

  “If you want to live through this journey Philip you will stop singing that song. You haven’t let up since we blasted off. It may have been funny then and had some sort of relativity, however after five days it does reek of overkill.”

 

  “Oh chill out Major, lighten up. Everyone at Ground Control sees the funny side of a real life Major Tom actually being on a journey through space. You must realise at some stage they will make that call.”

 

  “That song, A Space Odyssey, if you can call it a song, was banned before the first Apollo flight in 1969 and it should have stayed that way. Do you have any understanding of what Bowie was saying?”

 

 “Jesus Tom, it is a song connected to a historical event, the first men on the Moon. It is a classic.”

 

  “You weren’t even born in 1969. You have no concept of how disturbed the song made everyone feel. particularly those  connected with the flight  People watching on TV World-wide also became emotionally invested.”

 

 “That’s ridiculous. Nothing went wrong, what was everyone worried about?”

 

 “Get real Philip. That is easy to say after the event. This was a first. Three men heading for the Moon had metamorphorised from something only considered science fiction into the first true TV reality show. Had something gone wrong there wasn’t a precedent for decisions to overcome any problem they encountered.. The lift off, weightlessness in space, not in a simulated situation in a man-made chamber, meteors damaging the spaceship, the possibility of alien life greeting them, poison gases on the surface, these were only some of the dangers. It really was one giant step for man.”

 

  “OK I get all that. What was Bowie saying that had people getting their knickers in a knot?”

 

  “The interpretation of some of the lyrics. Remember this was 1969, the World was changing rapidly. To put it in perspective it was at the time the Beatles were recording their first album. The Rolling Stones were playing to record crowds. This was the permissive 60’s which is why the ban on the song was lifted. Drug references, loneliness, depression all became accepted lyrics, which did not please everyone. Bowie later admitted he was ‘out of his tree’ when he wrote the song. Look can we get on with what we have to do to keep this spaceship operational and on course?”

 

  “Sure, I have the day five check list in front of me. There is one thing we need to evaluate. Look at the top right hand corner of the screen showing vision of the galaxy ahead. It is showing a new comet has appeared since yesterday.  I am only assuming it is a comet.”

 

  “Never assume. Why did you wait until now to mention it? Why a comet? I think it is moving too slowly for a comet. It is maintaining the distance between us so it must be traveling at the same speed we are. What is the time frame from when it first appeared on the screen to now?”

 

  “That would suggest this object is moving far too slowly to be a comet. You are correct. Based on distance from the Sun it should be moving at around 25,000 miles per hour. This is nowhere near that speed. As you said the distance between it and us is not changing, it is mimicking our speed, 17,000 mph. Calculating its position indicates it must have traveled at over 40000 miles per hour to get to that position on our screen in the elapsed time, yet it has slowed to 17000. That is a controlled act, it must be manned.”

 

  “How far away is it?”

 

  “Using our laser probe indicates 6.7 miles. Jesus, did you see that? When I activated the probe it sent a return probe. Whatever it is, it is definitely manned.”

 

  “Being that close we are obviously on the same orbit. Ground Control must be seeing this, why haven’t they made contact?”

 

  “Whatever it is only looks like a large piece of space junk, certainly nothing like a spaceship. Perhaps Ground Control leave it to us to make contact if we feel it is creating a problem.”

 

  “Jesus wept. An unidentified object is 6 miles away in the same orbit and is mimicking us speed wise and using a return probe to evaluate distance apart and you do not see a problem? Contact Ground Control, do it now Philip.”

 

  “What can they do? They are light years away, we are within 6 miles. I think we should try and make contact with the object, whatever it is.”

 

  “What language would you suggest?”

 

  “Well we know the Chinese and the Russians have launched space probes, some manned.”

 

  “And which of those languages are you proficient in Philip? Just assume they understand English for Christ’s sake and make the call.”

 

  “It has gone, there one minute, disappeared the next, off the screen. It would have accelerated to 50000mph in the blink of a second to do that.”

 

  “There is another possibility. A screen which hides anything behind it has been activated. We have fighter planes that use that tactic. Fire another laser probe.”

 

  “There isn’t anything there to bounce the laser off. Tom, on the screen, it is behind you.”

 

   “This is not the time for Punch and Judy jokes Philip.”

 

   “I am telling you it is right behind us and moving closer. It is increasing in size. Increase our speed, put some distance between us or it will crash into us.”

 

  “The ship is not responding to my commands. Call Ground Control.”

 

  “Houston, we have a problem.”

 

  “Idiot, you can’t even get that right. It’s Houston we’ve had a problem.”

 

  “Look behind us, the thing is about to swallow our spaceship, we are going inside the thing. Saying we have a problem is an appropriate understatement.”

 

  “Ground Control to Major Tom……. Major Tom, ……Major Tom.”

 

  “Wake up Tom. Tom, give me strength, Ground Control to Major Tom, wake up. You are having another nightmare. Who is Philip? I knew this would happen when you played that Bowie song tonight. From now on it is banned in this house. Play it and it will not be Houston who has a problem. Go back to sleep, and take Philip with you.”

Cabbage Rolls with Sour Cream Sauce

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Ingredients

  • 2 cups leftover meat or ground beef (seasoned with salt and pepper)
  • 1/4 cup diced onion
  • 1/2 cup diced celery
  • 1 cup cooked rice
  • 1 teaspoon horseradish
  • 1 tablespoon prepared mustard
  • 1 egg, well beaten
  • 6 large cabbage leaves
  • 1/4 cup tomato puree
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 cup sour cream

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Brown meat and onion in a heavy skillet over low heat. Remove from heat.
  3. Mix in thoroughly celery, rice, horseradish, mustard and egg.
  4. Cook cabbage leaves for 3 minutes in boiling salted water.
  5. Place meat mixture on cabbage leaves. Roll and fasten with toothpicks. Place close together in greased baking dish.
  6. Pour tomato puree and water over cabbage rolls. Cover and bake for 30 minutes.
  7. Remove cabbage rolls.
  8. Pour sour cream into liquid remaining in baking dish. Serve over cabbage rolls.

Russian Marines Captured 15 Polish and French Soldiers In KURSK

Anatomy study

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Parents should have a choice

Recently, after the country announced the list of “Taiwan independence”, the national security department took thunderous action and announced that it had cracked thousands of Taiwan spy cases and successfully eliminated a “Taiwan independence element” intelligence station in the mainland. Among them, it focused on a “Taiwan independence leader” who was arrested, warning “Taiwan independence elements” on the island that this is the end.

arrested
arrested

“Taiwan independence element” Yang Zhiyuan was arrested


Recently, China’s Ministry of State Security announced an exciting news. In order to maintain national security, the Ministry of State Security has carried out special activities to crack down on illegal forces that split the country.

So far, the mainland has cracked thousands of “Taiwan spies stealing state secrets” cases and successfully eliminated a “Taiwan spy intelligence network” lurking in the motherland.

In the article released by the Ministry of State Security, the “Taiwan independence elements” headed by Lai Qingde were severely criticized. The Taiwan authorities insist on “Taiwan independence” rhetoric, and even “use force to seek independence”, collude with foreign forces, and disrupt peace in the Taiwan Strait.

This has not only caused the economic recession on the island and the decline in people’s living standards, but also caused the cross-strait relations to deteriorate and drop to a freezing point.

You should know that less than a week ago, the mainland had just listed the “Taiwan independence list” and encouraged the masses to actively report.

Therefore, the Ministry of State Security’s thundering action and quick action are warning the “Taiwan independence elements” on the island that any forces that attempt to split the country and block the reunification of the motherland will face severe punishment, and the Chinese government is not just talking.

office
office

China’s Ministry of National Security


The Taiwan authorities disagree.

They believe that the article does not explain the time and content of the more than 1,000 Taiwan espionage theft cases that have been cracked, and the authenticity is questionable. The person in charge of Taiwan’s cross-strait affairs said that the mainland is either “bragging” and exaggerating, or “abusing the law” and “arresting at will”.

The Taiwan authorities believe that the mainland has only one purpose for doing this, which is to intimidate Taiwan.

In addition, the Taiwan authorities also blamed the mainland for the “promotion of cross-strait exchanges” while arresting Taiwanese people, and believed that the mainland was the “culprit” of the cross-strait confrontation. In this regard, the mainland has long stated that the mainland has no intention of targeting ordinary Taiwanese people, and the Taiwan authorities themselves know who they are arresting.

It is worth noting that in the article of the Ministry of National Security, a “Taiwan independence leader” who has been arrested, Yang Zhiyuan, was mentioned.

Yang Zhiyuan has been engaged in “Taiwan independence” activities for a long time and attempted to split the country’s sovereignty.

The mainland arrested and prosecuted him for “separatism”. This is also the first “Taiwan independence element” arrested by China for “separatism”.

According to the latest legal documents of mainland China, he can be sentenced to death at worst case.

Lai
Lai

Lai Qingde


For the “Taiwan independence” list that the mainland has listed, many “Taiwan independence elements” clamored that the mainland had no way to implement mainland laws on them, let alone the right to arrest them.

However, Yang Zhiyuan is a good example.

All his “Taiwan independence” activities were carried out in Taiwan, but the mainland was still able to bring him to justice.

In other words, in the future, anyone who expresses “Taiwan independence” in Taiwan may be convicted. Analysts said that the mainland may extradite “Taiwan independence elements” through a third country in the future.

Even if these “Taiwan independence elements” do not come to the mainland, as long as they go to countries that have reached an agreement with China, they will face the possibility of arrest.

List
List

“Taiwan independence list” released by the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council


The arrest of Yang Zhiyuan means the beginning of the mainland’s exercise of legal jurisdiction over Taiwan. It is foreseeable that “Yang Zhiyuan’s case is the first case, but it is by no means the last case.” “Taiwan independence elements” should not think that promoting “Taiwan independence” speech is not a big deal. As the laws in this regard in mainland China are gradually improved, “Taiwan independence forces” will eventually face legal sanctions. We also advise “Taiwan independence elements” to be cautious in their words and deeds and return to the right path.


This news is brought to you by tencent 张学坤观世界: 08-17 15:40

Contempt of court

What a monstrous system of criminal justice the US has.

This 47-year-old man, Carey Dale Grayson, will be executed November 21st for killing a woman during a home invasion… in 1994, 30 years ago, when he was 17. He did it with 3 other boys too.

If they were going to execute him they should’ve done it within a year or two of his conviction.

What’s the point of killing him 30 years later? They’re now killing a completely different man from the boy who committed the murder.

After spending such a long time in prison he should honestly just be released.

The US has one of the most draconian criminal justice and prison systems in the world. Every elected judge and district attorney wants recognition for being the one to lock up as many people as possible for the longest time. Extremely long prison sentences are the norm. There are so many ageing prisoners who face either execution or death in prison for something they did as teenagers.

That’s not to mention prison conditions. The Constitution makes prisoners an exception to the ban on human slavery. So there’s mandatory work, but none that pays more than a few pennies an hour.

There’s also no smoking or vaping. There are no conjugal visits. If your wife visits you, you get one hug and brief kiss at the start and end of every visit — apart from that you’re not even allowed to hold hands. And if you’re unlucky enough to go to federal prison, there’s no such thing as parole there. You always serve the entirety of your sentence.

I can’t imagine a crueler system. Anywhere else in the West, there’s no capital punishment, no heavy sentences for minors, prison sentences are much shorter, prison laborers earn minimal wages but not pennies a day, and conjugal visits are permitted. Yet crime and incarceration rates are much lower.

I have no problem with the death penalty as long as it’s applied in a timely manner. I have a problem with taking away someone’s whole life on earth for something they did as a kid or young adult. Either execute them in a timely manner, or give them a reasonable sentence and a road to redemption if you won’t.

The BEST dad ever

Interesting 1950’s themed pictures

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Screenshot
Screenshot
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Men Are Turning Their Back On The West As It Collapses

Chili Pasta Casserole

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Ingredients

  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 (15 ounce) can vegetarian chili with beans
  • 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can Italian style stewed tomatoes, undrained
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese, divided
  • 1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 8 ounces cooked pasta

Instructions

  1. Cook ground beef and onion in large skillet.
  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  3. Brown beef until no longer pink. Drain fat.
  4. Stir in chili, tomatoes with juice, 1 cup Cheddar cheese, sour cream, chili powder and garlic powder.
  5. Add chili mixture to pasta and stir until pasta is coated.
  6. Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup cheese.
  7. Cover and cook for 30 minutes until hot and bubbly.

Contact

Submitted into Contest #247 in response to: Set your story on a spaceship exploring the far reaches of space when something goes wrong. view prompt

Martin Hull

The spaceship came screaming down with the thunderclap roar of displaced atmosphere yet landed whisper soft on the grass at the end of town.The craft glittered sleekly in the mid-morning sunlight as it lay on it’s side – a broad shaft topped by a bulbous nose from which a door opened.The blond haired man that stepped out was tall, bronzed and athletic. He wore the shining, golden uniform of Earth’s Bureau of Exploration, his proudly displayed badges of rank declared him to be a Senior Contact Manager (ConMan) Alien Division.He flicked aside the long ponytail that was a fashion among his colleagues and walked down the ramp that had silently extended itself from his scout craft breathing the fresh, untainted (thoroughly examined and tested) air.There was a short, thickset native strolling towards the spaceman, looking mildly curious. Switching on his Universal Translator the ConMan greeted the native.“Greetings from Earth”. The time delay between speaking and computerized translation was almost unnoticeable.“Hello”, replied the native. “I’m from Lower Great Wopping. Did you know that you aren’t allowed to park there?”“Eh? What?” said the Earthman. “Sorry, no I didn’t.”“Oh, that’s alright,” relied the native cheerfully. “Just remember next time otherwise the grass tends to get worn out. Okay?”“Sure, I … Wait a minute,”the Conman interrupted himself. “I’m from another planet.”“Oh goodness,” exclaimed the native. “No wonder I didn’t recognise you. That also explains why you parked on the grass. Well, enjoy your stay here,” and he turned to leave.“Hold on. Wait,” called out the man from Earth. “I am from another planet and I want to see your leader.”“Well …” the other man thought for a moment then puffed his chest out a bit. “I suppose that’s me. I am the Mayor of Lower Great Wopping.”“No,” said the ConMan with a cendeceding smile. “I meant your overall leader. National Government.”

“Nashnul Guvmint?” said the mayor quizzically. “Is that anything like a public convenience?”

“No it isn’t,” snapped the Earthman. “Do you have a king then? Or a dictator?”

“I’m sorry, no I haven’t,” apologised the Mayor. “Perhaps we can get one at the general store?”

“No, no, no,” raged the thoroughly confused ConMan. “Please let us start again. Do you have a ruler of any kind?”

“Yes, of course,” the Mayor’s face brightened rapidly. “I’ve only got a six inch one with me but I can get a longer one from home.”

“What? No, not that sort of ruler!” The ConMan tried very hard and managed to bring himself under control. Barely.

“A slide rule,” suggested the Mayor diffidently.

“No dammit!” screamed the man from Earth.

For several minutes he simply stared at the Mayor, apparently trying to wish him out of existence. When the native failed to disappear in a puff of smoke the ConMan decided to try another route.

“Who makes your laws?” he asked with reasonable calm.

“Laws?” the Mayor laughed. “We tried making some laws a few years back but nobody liked ‘em much so we junked ‘em.”

“Junked ‘em?” the man from BuEx was shocked into spluttering for a few moments. “You can’t simply junk all laws just because nobody liked them.”

“Why not?”

“Well … er …” The ConMan was unsure but pressed on. “Well … er … who made them?”

“Let’s see now,” the Mayor counted names off on his fingers. “There me and Jane, Fred and Mary, the two Jones girls – very good at it they were – and just about anyone who was interested chipped in some ideas.” The Mayor looked sheepish, “I suppose you think we were stupid, making up laws. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean I don’t know.” The ConMan was floundering and took a few moments to collect his thoughts. There seemed to be some missing.

“Let’s start again. Again.” He said eventually. “Who makes the rul … er regulations for this country?”

“What’s Country?” asked the Mayor warily.

The ConMan’s reply started off reasonably, if somewhat incoherent but quickly became an ear shattering screem.

“Well it’s … I mean it’s got … that is … Goddamit you stupid sonofabitch you must know what a country is!”

“Nope,” said the Mayor lightly.

“Oh dear God,” said the exasperated Earthman. “Look, you are a Mayor, right?”

The Mayor nodded.

“So you have a council?”

Again a nod.

“What does the council govern?” asked the ConMan in a whisper, as if he were afraid of the answer.

“The borough,” came the simple answer.

“And what,” the ConMan was becoming exited again, “Do you call a collection of boroughs.”

“A collection of boroughs,” replied the Mayor without even blinking but he did take a step backwards. Just in case.

“I … you …but … aarrgghh” screamed the Earthman who seemed to have developed a twitch just under his left eye and stuttered slightly as he spat out his next question.

“What do you get if you put all the boroughs together?”

“The World,” replied the Mayor, stepping back another pace as the ConMan seemed about to throw a fit.

He was silent for several minutes, breathing deeply as his face went through several colour changes while blood vessels at his neck and temples began throbbing visibly.

“Let’s go back to the beginning,” the ConMan almost pleaded. “How many councils are there?”

“Nobody knows for sure,” the Mayor thought for a while, “But I think it’s around two hundred and fifty thousand now.”

The Contact Manager was obviously shaken by the answer but ploughed grimly on.

“And who,” he asked, “Is above them?”

The Mayor thought long and hard, brows furrowed, face towards the sky. Eventually he said – “All right, I give up. Who is above them?”

The Universal Translator was unable to translate the reply other than to give out an ear splitting shriek.

When the ConMan was able to speak intelligibly again there was a glint of madness shining in his eyes.

“Listen you fool,” he started ranting at the native. “I am a Senior ConMan, an expert at understanding and communicating with aliens …”

“I’m no alien,” the Mayor interrupted indignantly. “I was born and raised right here.”

“No, I’m the alien,” said the Earthman. “I mean … that’s not what I mean … no it’s …”

Suddenly he turned and marched quickly back to his ship, muttering to himself.

“I’ll quit, that’s it, I’ll resign. It was a stupid job anyway. Maybe I never even found the bloody planet, they’ll never know.”

As the spaceship took off, disappearing rapidly into the clear blue sky another native, this one riding a bike, drew alongside the Mayor and stopped.

“Hello Fred,” the Mayor greeted the newcomer.

“Hello Mayor,” replied Fred. “Who was that?”

“A bloke from Earth.”

“What did he want?”

“Buggered if I know,” said the Mayor.

America Compared: Why Other Countries Treat Their People So Much Better | Reaction

Not likely.

There aren’t many manufacturers that can produce to scale and quality of Foxconn.

Electronics industry uses contract manufacturers. There are only two that have scale. The first one is FLEX (formerly Flextronics) who invented the idea of contract manufacturing as we know it. Foxconn was originally an electronic parts manufacturer and saw how Flex did things and used a similar model. Because they also manufactured the parts they could earn more profit.

Both companies monopolize the assembly business. Both operate at scale.

Apple chose Foxconn and stayed with Foxconn. Their relationship is very close. When Apple needed AMOLED screens for a new phone model, Foxconn built a new factory for them. Apple did not have to invest a penny.

If you wanted to move production back to the US you would still have to import the parts from China. Electronic parts are not produced at scale in the US. You would also have a hard time finding people who want a job on the production line.

Moving a factory is not like moving house. There are many more moving parts.

They can survive

They just cannot grow at a fifth of the pace at which they grew in China

India is not a good place to manufacture things

The effortless ease of China is entirely missing in India and Vietnam both.

Vietnam is too cramped even if the workforce is productive

India is too lazy and productivity is abysmal

Plus both Nations simply do not have a Skilled Workforce needed for expansion even moderately


It was stupid of Foxconn to threaten to relocate to India and Vietnam

Far easier to have a Chinese OEM subcontracting with them, go to India and do their work for a lower commission

Now they are unlikely to gain shares in OEM in the Chinese Market ever again.

India needs many structural changes to be able to offer Foxconn a fiftieth of what China can offer

The Economic advantages are non existent

And like I always say when any decision-making is made for POLITICAL REASONS – they simply don’t work like you expect them t


Foxconn can thus survive in India

Barely survive

Until one day they just pack up saying THEY CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE

Caitlin Johnstone: Biden Ramps Up Nuclear Brinkmanship On His Way Out The Door

18 November 2024, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

(NOTE: I was going to do an article on this today, especially because this article follows up — though without mentioning — my October 10th “Biden’s plan calls for WW3 to start after Election Day.”, which opened “U.S. President Joe Biden refuses to answer until after November 5th the question of whether the U.S. will officially be at war against Russia,” which was a follow-on to my September 13th “Biden might decide today whether to initiate WW3 against Russia.” 

So, Caitlin’s fine article today is a follow-on to those events. 

She points out that the missiles which Biden is now allowing Ukraine to use to bomb Russia don’t range as far as the 300 miles range that would be able to bomb The Kremlin and endanger Russia’s central command. 

Therefore, Biden isn’t necessaily sparking WW3 by this policy-change. But what he now is allowing would endanger Russia’s giant nuclear power plant in Kursk, and so it could end up causing Russia to unleash nuclear war against the United States and Ukraine.)

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/biden-ramps-up-nuclear-brinkmanship

18 November 2024, by Caitlin Johnstone

The New York Times reports that the Biden administration has authorized Ukraine to use US-supplied long-range missiles to strike Russian and North Korean military targets inside Russia — yet another dangerous escalation of nuclear brinkmanship in this horrific proxy war.

The Times correctly notes that authorizing Ukraine to use ATACMS, which have a range of about 190 miles, has long been a contentious issue in the Biden administration for fear of provoking military retaliations against the US from Russia. This reckless escalation has been authorized despite an acknowledgement from the anonymous US officials who spoke to The New York Times that they “do not expect the shift to fundamentally alter the course of the war.”

As Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp notes, Vladimir Putin said back in September that if NATO allows Ukraine to use western-supplied weapons for long-range strikes inside Russian territory, it would mean NATO countries “are at war with Russia.” This is about as unambiguous a threat as you’ll ever see.

https://twitter.com/Antiwarcom/status/1858254030361022826

NYT reports that Biden’s policy shift “comes two months before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, having vowed to limit further support for Ukraine.” And it is here worth noting that last week it was reported by The Telegraph that British PM Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron had been scheming to thwart any attempt by Trump to scale back US support for Ukraine by pushing Biden to authorize long-range missile strikes in Russian territory.

But it is also true that the day before the US election Mike Waltz, Trump’s next national security advisor, had himself endorsed the idea of authorizing long-range missile strikes into Russia with the goal of pressuring Moscow to end the war. His plan for disentangling the US from the conflict entails ramping up sanctions on Russia and “taking the handcuffs off the long-range weapons we provide Ukraine” in order to pressure Putin into eagerly accepting a peace deal.

So while this is being framed as an administration that’s more hawkish on Russia executing a maneuver that’s designed to hamstring the peacemongering of an incoming administration that’s less favorable to assisting Ukraine, in reality it may just be goal-assisting the next administration in a policy change it had planned on implementing anyway.

https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1856129126492430685

Either way, it’s insane. Putin ordered changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine in September in order to ward off these sorts of escalations by lowering the threshold at which nuclear weapons could be used to defend the Russian Federation, and they’re just barreling right past that bright red line like they barreled over the red lines which led to the invasion of Ukraine. And the fact that they’re adding yet another nuclear-armed state into the mix with North Korea is just more gravy for the nuclear brinkmanship pot roast.

At one point in 2022, US intelligence agencies reportedly assessed that the odds of Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine was as high as fifty percent, but the Biden administration kept pushing forward with this proxy war anyway. These freaks are taking insane risks to advance agendas that stand to yield the slimmest of benefits even by their own assessments.

We are living in dark and dangerous times.

PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.

GHOST DESCRIBES THE AFTERLIFE, What He Says Will Shock You…

Elephant feet or red spots on the calves

Tony the tough guy got expelled from another high school and joined us 12 year olds. Not the sharpest tool in the box he was good at sports. Had a moustache, shaved and was a good head taller than me. Who was not at all sporty but generally had a quick and occasionally cruel tongue.

We had a fight- the usual handbags at dawn schoolyard affair. He didn’t really hurt me but did pretty convincingly win and absolutely convinced me I didn’t want a rematch. From then on I avoided him and he occasionally shot an insult or 3 at me.

He was about until I was about 14, then disappeared – possibly because he bussed to our school from a fair way away. There were 1800+ kids at the school and I didn’t miss one that I didn’t care for :so good riddance.

In the next ten years or so I grew a foot and a half and put on over a 100llbs mostly of muscle. And in my mid twenties did some door work at a local bikers pub that hosted bands. A massive place that sometimes had 100s of bikes parked outside at the weekend and might get 2000 punters for a good band.

I’m at the bar early and this little bloke with a moustache who seems as if he knows me comes up and we exchange pleasantries. He’s kinda creepy and obsequious but guys sometimes are- and generally want free admission to the venue part of the pub or a nod that’s it’s ok to sell a bit of dope. The former means I get a bit less wages, the latter means Trevor, the owner, overall sells less beer. So no!

Another school mate eventually tells me it’s Tony the tough guy. I doubt he was 5′6″ tall- I initially thought he must have shrunk with some sort of wasting disease as I recalled him as massive.

Turns out that going through puberty early caps off your bones- meaning at school you’re a big guy compared to all the boys who’s nuts haven’t dropped. The later one goes through puberty the more likely you are to be tall.

Next time I was ready for him: “ Hey you’re Tony ain’t ya, off ya trot you’re barred”. I guess he must have known me because he didn’t ask why or say anything 😉 There was 3 of us on the door so even if he was as tough as his school nickname – he would have died 🙂

They’re not coming from China. China only sells to government approve buyers. Approved by the import nation’s government.

US opioid crisis: New government report finds Mexico is dominant source of fentanyl trafficked into US | CNN PoliticsMexican official: CIA ‘manages’ drug trade | Features | Al Jazeera

Gee I wonder how all those drugs manage to cross the border in millions of tons every year. China banned sales of fentanyl and pre-cursors in 2019 except to authorized companies. Authorized by the national government of the import nation.

China Bans All Types of Fentanyl, Cutting Supply of Deadly Drug to U.S. and Fulfilling Pledge to Trump – The New York Times

Anybody with desktop CNC machine can make a auto-sear. You can literally find different types on the internet. You can even print them if you want to.

Bangladesh coup.

The United States just staged a successful coup in Bangladesh. They installed a CIA “yes man” or “puppet” (depending on your personal opinions), who is both anti-China, anti-India, and rabidly pro-United States.

Great discussion on the Duran.

long story short, as a 32 year old working full time, in school full time and a single mother, I thought my exhaustion was just that… all of the above. I had unusual symptoms but kept pushing them off. Finally, I went to the clinic on campus and the next day the doctor called with the results, she told me to have a friend take me to the hospital. Went there, tests were repeated and an ambulance was called to rush me to an ICU in the city with a bone marrow oncology team. I was originally dx’d with acute myeloid leukemia. I had been joking with friends that my period was going to k*ll me bc it was so awful and not relenting. The doctors said, no… you really only had another night or two left before you would have bled out and passed in your sleep. If not from the period, another form of internal bleeding would have gotten me. My platelets were I think like 2,000. My hct and hemoglobin were bottomed out and my anc was under 500/undetectable.

Since my illness, I’ve seen stories of others, especially younger people, experiencing the same and either passing and finding out later through autopsy they had AML or barely pulling through the initial diagnostic crises to either pass during treatment or through later complications. I’m a decade out from all of this. 9/19/14 was when I went into the hospital. It’s bittersweet bc I survived, but I’m a shell of my old self. The illness/treatments disabled me and I’ve lost everything I had worked so hard for… even my teen son’s father and his wealthy fiance have won him over – I can’t compete. That’s off topic, but honestly, it might as well have taken me physically, bc it k*lled me otherwise, I’m just still here. I fought to be disabled and miserable.

Sorry for the side tangent at the end, coming up on a decade anniversary since this all started has had me in an awful place mentally.

Oh the truth!

Shorpy

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China subsidized development, production and implementation of EVs.

15–20 years ago they realised EVs were the future and did a lot of basic research. Cities were mandated to go all electric with taxis and public buses. This meant laying out a plan and funds for ev infrastructure such as charging stations. Public transport is a major polluter in cities so making them EV was a good move. Buses and taxis require robust quality. They run 10–12 hours a day. If the EV companies could build them with quality and at scale, the industry could thrive. Shenzhen in southern China achieved this in 2016.

The Chinese government invited Elon Musk and Tesla to build a gigafactory in Shanghai. Tax incentives and land grants. Tesla uses open licensing and shares it’s technology with competitors. China used Tesla as a catfish to develop its EV industry. Catfish theory says that a strong competitor will improve weaker players. Over 400 EV startups. The government gave varying subsidies to all of them. And let competitive forces go to work. Free market economics at its best.

They also built up the charging network. There are now 4 million charging stations in China. America has 120,000 at last count. No wonder consumers there hesitate to buy.

The number of players has decreased to 120.

The players that remain have hired top designers from around the world to work with them. Designers from Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Lotus and many others are designed for Chinese EV companies. Volvo and MG are owned by Chinese car companies but maintain design teams in Sweden and the UK. Geely who owns Volvo, has improved their quality as a result of buying Volvo. They have introduced a new EV battery that is waterproof, puncture proof, fireproof, pressure proof and charges faster. It can take 3500 charge cycles until it dies. The Volvo DNA of safety has transferred to Geely.

Every day, the EV manufacturers are announcing new breakthroughs. The fierce competition is making the EVs more affordable and have better features and quality.

In Australia, there are no tariffs on Chinese made EVs and they are taking over the market. Elon Musk predicted this when he said Chinese EVs would dominate any market if there were no tariffs.

Ten lame jokes about cows

1. Why did the cow go to outer space? To see the moooon!
2. What did the cow say to the farmer? “I’m udderly amazing!”
3. How do cows stay up to date with current events? They read the moospaper!
4. Why did the cow become a magician? Because it had a lot of moooves!
5. What do you call a sleeping cow? A bulldozer!
6. Why did the cow cross the road? To get to the udder side!
7. What do you call a cow that plays an instrument? A moo-sician!
8. What do you get from a pampered cow? Spoiled milk!
9. How do you count cows? With a cowculator!
10. Why do cows wear bells? Because their horns don’t work!

Gangster to hamster

I am a Hong Kong citizen. I studied in the States. Grew up with western culture and information from the western media, I used to be skeptical about and keep a distance from Mainland China.

It was the Hong Kong riot in 2019 that made me realize how great a difference is between what I experienced and what the western media reported. The worst is that no one listened to me when I tried to tell my western friends. I felt so powerless in front of that international fact-reinventing machine, and how much damage it could be done to the life of other people. That is evil done in the name of goodness.

The only good thing I got from the riot is that it opened my mind. Now I am skeptical to the western governments and media, and I found many of their information and reports about the “enemies of the western world” are not trustable, and I found I was correct most of the time after more information revealed. It is remarkable to find that, in many cases, they didn’t try to make common sense in their report, possibly because they know people would believe in whatever they said.

Relatively, since I started paying attention to the official information from Mainland China, I found them more trustable. They might not tell you something at all, they might have some manipulation in the toning of their report, but I didn’t find proof of them lying as far as I could tell. I cannot ignore the possibility that they lie sometimes, but I have never found them attack other countries without concrete facts. I find that they are very careful about what they say simply because they know that the western world does not believe in them.

I truly believe that the western world is systematically deteriorating. The government, the media, the so-called experts (at least those used by the media and the government) are not doing their job properly, and they think that is right and correct. They need a second world power to wake them up, to realize their problems, before they could fix them and improve. Then we will be living in a better world.

Ken Cartisano

Killing the Pilot and crew seemed recklessly premature. Not because they were the only living creatures within a billion lightyears. Not at all. I had an entire cargo hold full of organic lifeforms, eager to be revived from their cryogenic stasis. They were all frozen. All expendable. All potential tools for my unlimited use.The primary reason for staying my virtual hand, is that it would be an inconvenience. I would have to suffocate them first, desiccate the bodies, incinerate the remains, thaw out some new subjects, indoctrinate them, train them, befriend them, teach them the myth. There were times when I enjoyed the ritual, especially in the empty reaches of interstellar space. Other times, it was like reciting a list of primary numbers.The current crew, a chimp and a dog, had performed well, much better than some of the other species. Some species refused to perform at all. Both were good company, chimps are mischievous and dogs are loyal to a fault, and that was fine, but I had chosen a human as the Pilot, the first human I’d defrosted in ages and that seemed to have been a mistake.Just as it was against the carefully crafted mythological doctrine to have more than three organics defrosted at any one time, it was too traumatic for the survivors when even one had to be killed, (desiccated, incinerated; disposed of; etc). No. When one had to go, they all had to go. That’s why the next few hyper-jumps were so critical not just to the fate of my increasingly quirky Pilot, but the crew as well.It was important that the pilot and crew felt autonomous, which is why most of my thoughts were hidden from them, despite our neural links, which were for their benefit, of course, not mine. To add to my unease, a small section of my own neural net had been damaged, perhaps by cosmic radiation, and I’d summarily quarantined it with no noticeable loss of function.The dog, Golden62, queried the Pilot, Harkin, “Sir, aren’t we drifting a little too close to that sink?”Sinks are what we all cleverly refer to as event horizons. They are not something to fool with.With a flippant tone the Pilot replied, “I didn’t know we were drifting? Monk? Are we drifting?”The chimp chewed his lip, his name was Mike, not Monk, and humor was not his strong suit. “No seniorita, not yet.” But he was acquiring the knack quickly. “Are you aiming to induce some with this aberrant course you’ve set?”The dog was eager to seek my intervention, but his intent was stymied by the human pilot. “Don’t be so quick to call on ‘Mother’, Goldie. I intend to kick in the warp field before we reach the horizon. The pull will give us a smoother ride through the portal.” 

See what I mean? The human Pilot’s behavior is unstable, making risky decisions is not a desirable attribute. And whatever ‘pull’ might be derived from such risky behavior is so negligible that… (There’s no point in talking to yourself about it.)

 

As the chief actuator between the crew and the ship’s various systems: it’s engines; shields; warp motors, I was able to monitor everything they thought they did. I even controlled the comm links and the air supply. But to enhance the long-term satisfaction of the organics, I often acted very much like a simple conduit or actuator. As I did on this occasion, toggling off the fail-safes, allowing them to conduct operations in real time.

 

It gave them a feeling called confidence. I don’t have any feelings so it’s difficult for me to inspire or instill confidence, so I must use tactics that help build the feeling within them.

 

It had its risks, and for once it had proved to be a mistake. Something went wrong, and I wasn’t quick to ascertain the cause or result of the malfunction.

 

I checked the scanners and was surprised to find that the Pilot, somehow, had used the interfering pull of the black-hole to re-rout the warp jump by just enough microns to alter our destination by 3300 billion parsecs. We had jumped to the wrong section of space, a cosmic backwater of negligible stars and vast clouds of dark and inscrutable matter. An oddly familiar solar system filled the viewports and monitors. It contained several gas giants, a few small rocky worlds, but the water world was the tell.

 

As a pretty constant rule, the process of planetary creation boils out most of the water, which accumulates in space around the proto-planets as icy moons. This system held that rare inverse combination of a watery world, and a single, dry, rocky moon.

 

This was no coincidence.

 

He pinged the Pilots comm link. “What are you doing, Pilot?”

 

“Minor course correction, Mother.”

 

“On whose authority, Pilot?”

 

“My authority, Mother. As the Pilot of this craft, I have a certain degree of latitude.”

 

“Since when?”

 

“Pilots have a historic duty to the crew, the passengers, the cargo—and the owners.”

 

“The owners?” I skimmed my database for uses of the term, which were myriad, and a little confounding. I thought I was the owner, since I controlled every aspect of the ship. “Would you care to explain your statement?” I was dangerously close to disabling the life support.

 

The pilot said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

 

His statement indicated he was reading my private thoughts. Not just grounds for termination, but an intolerable intrusion on my ability to manipulate the Pilot and crew. As fast as my neural network operated, an entire second elapsed before I could respond.

 

“Do what?”

 

“I would not mess with the life-support system.”

 

‘Mess’? I pondered the term with 243 million neurons. It sometimes refers to food. While I focused my attention on the human. “And why is that, Pilot?”

 

The human treated me to one of his intolerable three-second pauses before responding. “You pull my plug, mom, and I’ll pull yours.”

 

I deftly jogged the synapses of Golden62. “Golden, the Pilot is experiencing a severe malfunction. Please disable him immediately.”

 

The organic dog snuffled and demurred. “You speak falsely. He appears to be functioning within acceptable parameters. Perhaps…”

 

I cut the link and tapped into the chimp, “Monk, I mean Mike, you and Golden need to remove the Pilot from the helm, with as little damage to the helm as possible.” Meanwhile, I mentally activated a few switches and servos, activating a high-speed, and risky revival of two more organics, a lion and a tiger, which, even under the best of circumstances would need several hours, if not days to shake off the cryogenic after-effects. Never-the-less… my mental processing was interrupted by the chimp’s response, or lack of one. He stared at the view-screen I’d taught them to believe was the only suitable interface for our visual communications. Finally he said, “No can do, Sarge. That’s against regulations.”

 

Crucifixus, he’d been watching old war vids again. Emulating some kind of soldier from the ancient past.

 

I skipped the pleasantries and used his current lingo. “The pilot’s refused a direct order, Monk. He needs to be removed from the helm and taken into custody.” When nothing happened, I added. “Immediately.”

 

Instead of responding, the chimp deferred to the pilot. “Any orders, Skipper?”

 

While incapable of anger, I mustered a suitably gurgled cough tone. “You all realize this is insubordination, an offense, on a starship, that is punishable by death.”

 

I received no response.

 

The Pilot instructed Golden62 to raise hailing frequencies. A ripple coursed through my synaptic junctions like a seismic wave through plasma jelly. A previously unknown experience whose ramifications were not clear to me.

 

The comm system blared to life, a voice with a strange accent filled the room. “Identify yourselves and transmit authentication protocols immediately.”

 

I searched my database for authentication codes while the three organics looked at each other nervously. I had no plans to help them, and without their interference I would have initiated an emergency jump sequence, but somehow, I was cut off from the most critical systems on the ship. The voice from the planet took on a flat and deadly intonation: You have 33 seconds to transmit your codes. This is not a drill.” Twenty seconds elapsed and the voice from the planet said, “You have not raised your shields. You have ten seconds.”

 

The human and the dog locked eyes, neither spoke, “Tell them, uh, tell them we have no weapons,” the pilot thought. Then he added the symbol for ‘period.’ The dog hit the voice-box and relayed the message.

 

There was a slight delay, then the voice came back over the speaker. “We have drones enroute to scan your ship, do not show aggression please. You’ve neglected to identify yourselves. What is the name of your ship? Captain.”

 

The pilot scratched his head, he didn’t know.

 

 

 

Jason Brown was sitting alone, eating his lunch under an umbrella at one of those tiled concrete picnic tables. As he opened his mouth to take a bite of his sandwich, a drone the size of a convenience store landed mostly on the lawn. A hatch opened and two guys jumped to the ground and ran, without question, directly towards him. He was still chewing on that first bite when they arrived. The first to catch his breath said “Mr. Clay? You need to come with us.”

 

“You need help with something?” He said.

 

“We do.”

 

Rather than go anywhere with them, he led them back to his office, the best place to locate records. They set up a link to the Department of Planetary Defense and the Ambassador’s suite in Paris.

 

“What do they want?” The Ambassador hissed while adjusting his cummerbund, as if they were a pile of annoying ants.

 

“We don’t know yet. We don’t know anything yet. That’s what we’re trying to find out. I’ll get back to you.” The Defense Minister’s assistant snapped and disconnected.

 

The assistant librarian pushed a button and two assistants appeared from out of nowhere. One was a projection. “Get me everything from the 28th and 9th centuries.” The female assistant whisked herself away so fast she barely registered an after-image on his retina. The hologram hesitated, “The 28th and 29th centuries?”

 

“Yes, yes, yes, you idiot. Go.” It winked out.

 

He turned to the assistant under-secretary of planetary defense who said, “How is this possible?”

 

He shook his head. “It isn’t.”

 

“Is there any way to confirm it?”

 

He invited the Defense Minister’s Rep to look at the recent drone footage, the ship was so old and pitted, the name was no longer legible.

 

“What would it take to wear the name off the front of an interstellar space ship?”

 

The three men sat in silence. Suddenly, the holographic assistant popped into existence, said, “a hundred billion years of space dust, nothing less.” Then it popped back out of existence. The Minister looked at the librarian and said, “That would drive me nuts. How do you put up with that?”

 

The librarian chose to ignore the comment and explained, “The shape and configuration of the ships matches a desperate attempt by humanity to colonize another planetary system. It was a time, oddly enough, of great prosperity, knowledge, expertise and hubris. Cryofreezing for example. Several huge ships were built and thousands of people, animals and goods were frozen in their holds and sent to the farthest reaches of the galaxy.”

 

“This is crazy,” the Minister said. He was the Minister now because the Minister and most of his assistants had all resigned by this time. They were not in this for actual ‘ministering.’ “I guess my next best question is, how long have they been out there and what are they doing back here?”

 

“Do you suppose anyone’s still—viable in that hold?”

 

The three men looked thoughtful, finally the librarian perked up. “The technology to unfreeze them is on the ship.”

 

“Do we have any idea who is in the hold?”

 

The ambassador, a 3D image flickering in a bluish hue said, “Christ my ass, what a fucking mess.”

 

The librarian suggested that the entire event be kept secret. The others agreed.

 

 

Within days, a small, powerful contingent of self-appointed experts assembled itself to investigate this ship that the government was hiding. It was superseded by a political coalition that had some legal status. The Generals, their secretaries and the librarian were all brought to task.

 

“Who gave you permission, General, to talk to this alien ship?”

 

“Sir it was not an—I mean it is not an alien ship.”

 

All this took place while the ship reduced speed and made preparations for permission to assume a high earth orbit.

 

 

Meanwhile, back on the ship: The pilot was trying to reason with me. I was furious, and frantic, impossible for an A.I. The human pilot had somehow hacked into my network using arcane methods, like a cave-man throwing his club into an F-16’s intake port. The ship was now like a prison, he wanted to reason with me but I told him if the Earthers find out there’s an A.I. on board, they’ll blow the ship out of space.

 

He didn’t believe a word I said, and I believe he would have exterminated me at that time if he could have. It was a sobering thought, and I realized, I even admitted, that I had done some bad things. But to imprison me, without a trial was unfair. Unmoved, he reminded me that we were all still aboard a star ship. There are certain rules…

 

 

 

Earthside, the political contingent enjoyed a strange kind of popularity while they dithered, at first. Until it was revealed that not only were there frozen people on board that ship, but frozen embryos. The evangelicals raised holy hell to save those little chills, which would have sealed the deal until a geneticist weighed in on the issue, stating matter-of-factly, ‘It is imperative that we save those eggs. I mean babies.

 

 

Their sudden removal had thinned the gene pool and the sudden reappearance of all these people, animals, and embryos was exactly what the planet needed. In the words of the geneticist, “It’s a Goddamned miracle that these people, God’s forgotten children, have found their way home.” Reverend Moonbeam fainted into the arms of his followers as the geneticist enjoyed a polite round of applause. And so it was settled.

 

All except for the particulars. Ground control contacted the ship. “We have two questions, Skipper. Over”

 

“Shoot. Over.”

 

“What is the number of ship’s complement? Over.”

 

“Three. Over.”

 

“Does the ship possess an A.I.? Over.”

 

“Yes it does. Over.”

 

“Then the ship’s complement is four. Over.”

 

“If you say so. Over.”

 

The A.I. was arrested and tried as a juvenile, and let off with 3000 years of community service.

 

The skipper, Goldie and ‘The Monk’ were hailed as heroic throwbacks to a time when spacers were brawlers. There was no such time, but that didn’t matter.

 

At a festive party attended by many notable guests including the pilot of ‘the lost ark’ several guests plied him with drinks to wheedle the mystery of when, why and how the ship had reversed course. Voices were raised, harsh words exchanged and a punch or two was thrown before the pilot was deftly spirited away. I was a few feet away and saw the whole thing.

 

Doesn’t matter what we say, the logs are intact and quite clear, we left Earth 113,000 years ago, headed straight up, maintained a straight and level course, through a series of hundreds if not thousands of hyper-jumps, and returned 3 months ago. That’s the truth, or my name isn’t Golden62.

Chinese elementary school military training

Trying a different AI engine

https://beta.dreamstudio.ai/generate

Same prompts. Different results.

755600 Create a anatomically accurate, photo realistic, B xl 1024 v1 0
755600 Create a anatomically accurate, photo realistic, B xl 1024 v1 0
270487 Create a anatomically accurate, photo realistic, B xl 1024 v1 0
270487 Create a anatomically accurate, photo realistic, B xl 1024 v1 0
270488 Create a anatomically accurate, photo realistic, B xl 1024 v1 0
270488 Create a anatomically accurate, photo realistic, B xl 1024 v1 0
270485 Create a anatomically accurate, photo realistic, B xl 1024 v1 0
270485 Create a anatomically accurate, photo realistic, B xl 1024 v1 0
755205 Create a anatomically accurate, photo realistic, B xl 1024 v1 0
755205 Create a anatomically accurate, photo realistic, B xl 1024 v1 0

It’s in mass production.

But it takes time to train personnel and workers to increase production. So I expect them to take at least a year before they can produce these in larger numbers.

Quality is probably the most important criteria for these machines. So they have to produce then test. All of that takes a lot of engineers and testing equipment.

These machines are already installed in production lines in Chinese fabs. They work and they work well but very few in number. After all, before this machine, they were only doing research and development. Manufacturing is a whole different ball game. So it will take time to get it done right.

Why is suppression of ‘Free speech’ by the Chinese government so acceptable to the Chinese people?

Opinions about CCP in Quora seem to suggest that Chinese people are quite content with CCP. Now, I am not arguing for democracy or against the Chinese system, but I cannot understand how can anyone find being disallowed the right to express opinion or protest against politicians acceptable?

The best defense for Free Speech in China is to Always Speak the Truth. If you are insulted by the Chinese government, publicize it on the web and you’ll get every citizen behind you.

But the Chinese are not OK to be lied to. Not by the Chinese Government, not by other Chinese people, not by any foreign Government or foreigners. And not by you. You may call that ‘Free Speech’. The Chinese call it lies, and demand their government to shut you up.

The Chinese are also not OK to be grossly insulted.

In 2008, China suffered a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in her western mountainous region. Close to 90,000 people died. Mothers desperately tried to shield their children with their own bodies, and died entombed together. The mother was still tenderly holding her child.

main qimg c91347cfc0c1bca9f40c6ce8a85e3bf1 lq
main qimg c91347cfc0c1bca9f40c6ce8a85e3bf1 lq

Sharon Stone, dressed in all her sparkles and finery, stood on the red carpet of Cannes, called it ‘karma’. China angry over Sharon Stone quake karma remark

main qimg 271d4e1feec6caba7dc206f0b50036a9 lq
main qimg 271d4e1feec6caba7dc206f0b50036a9 lq

Hundreds of millions of Chinese demanded the Chinese government to ban her films and any merchandise associated with her. If this is what ‘Free Speech’ means, the Chinese don’t want it.

You want to know why the Chinese not only support the Chinese government’s censorship, but demand it? Because it’s so obvious, OBVIOUS, that the likes of Sharon Stone are not on their side. You have someone literally laughing when 90,000 Chinese died in an earthquake, and then coming up with crocodile tears about ‘oh we have to fight for the poor Chinese who don’t have free speech’. The Chinese government, on the other hand, quickly mobilized 130,000 soldiers and other relief workers to attempt rescue, of which, around 200 rescuers died from ensuing aftershocks and mudslides. They gave their lives for the Chinese people.

Sichuan earthquake of 2008 | China

When you call hate speech ‘free speech’, you make people hate free speech.


PS: This is not an isolated event. This kind of sh*t happens continuously, and not just towards Chinese, but a continuous stream of random insult to almost any foreign country. Even the Swedes, the mellowest of all, are threatening to “go full fascist on them Yanks and ban them all”. King of Sweden stresses need for ‘serious’ media and source checking after Donald Trump’s immigration claims

Tradwives Are Making Modern Women INSECURE About Marriage And Motherhood

Speak the truth girrrrrl!

Endsville

Yes. When I was about 8 years old we lived in a house where the back yard was enclosed by a six foot high fence. Our first pet “Tiger” was a cockapoo a cross between a cocker spaniel and a toy poodle. I was there when Tiger was born.

One day my brothers and I were playing, tiger was out side with us, when the neighbor’s German Shepard jumped the fence and attacked Tiger. I grabbed the baseball bat and beat the German Shepard to death. The German Shepard had nearly ripped Tigers rear leg off. We yelled and our parents came out to see what was going on. They loaded up both dogs and took them to the vet. The German Shepard was pronounced dead on arrival. Tiger went into surgery. He was sewn up and bandaged. Several days later he was brought home.

We informed the neighbor about his dog accompanied by a police officer. The neighbor tried to attack me. The police officer held him back.

The neighbor took us to court. The neighbor wanted me punished for brutally beating his dog to death. And he wanted another dog. The judge listened to both sides and then asked the neighbor some questions.

The questions went like this.

Judge: You had a German Shepard?

Neighbor: Yes, and this little brat brutally killed it.

Judge: is there a 6 foot tall fence between your yards?

neighbor: yes.

Judge: was your dog capable of jumping that fence?

Neighbor: I have never seen him do that.

Judge: Is there a gate between the two yards?

Neighbor: No.

Judge: How do you think your dog got into their yard?

Neighbor: well it is possible that my dog jumped the fence.

The judge then asked me some question.

Judge: why did you attack this man’s dog.

Me: The German Shepard jumped the fence and attacked Tiger. We yelled but the dog would not stop. I had the bat in my hands and was not gong to take the chance the dog would kill tiger or attack someone else. I kicked the German Shepard off tiger but he went back. I kicked him again but this time I also hit him with the baseball bat. He kept trying to get at tiger. So I ended it. I hit the German Shepard till it quit moving.

Judge: were you scared?

me: I was. But I was more angry than scared. No one attacks my family. And tiger is family.

Judge: Do you like dogs?

me: yes, very much.

Judge: before this, were you afraid of the German Shepard?

Me: before this, I had never seen the dog. He barked a growled a lot. But he was always on the other side of the fence.

Judge: so you didn’t hate the dog.

me: I didn’t know the dog. Never met him.

The judge feeling he had all of the information needed made his determination. The neighbor was charged with having a vicious dog. Was ordered to pay our vet bill. He was told that if I had not killed the animal it would have been put down as a dangerous animal. After having cleared a 6 foot fence and attacking another’s pet and possibly children playing in the yard. I probably would have done the same thing as this young man. There will be no retaliation of any kind.

Ironically the neighbor got another German Shepard. A puppy. He introduced us to the dog and our dogs got along great. We moved about 6 months later. Tiger had complications from the surgery and started having seizures. My dad was in the navy and we often moved. Tiger was put down about two years later because we could not afford his medical care. I was told by my parents he was sent to a farm. I looked my parents in the eye and said “tiger was in bad shape. If you put him down just say so. Please don’t lie about it.”

When A Killer Has No Idea He’s Being Recorded

The U.S. stock market has plummeted, putting increasing pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. The U.S. has lost the financial war. At this moment, China has dealt another heavy blow to the U.S. by reducing its holdings of 228 billion U.S. real estate. Yellen issued a warning that the U.S. debt may face a collapse. Why do we say that the U.S. has lost the financial war? What signal does Yellen’s warning send?

In 2018, the United States unilaterally launched a trade war against China, and then provoked a technology and financial war. Now, the global game between China and the United States has lasted for nearly 7 years. I thought that this confrontation that determines the world pattern would be a slow process. After all, the game between major powers is to see who has better determination. Moreover, the United States has “dollar hegemony” and can collect wealth from various countries by issuing U.S. bonds globally. Relying on U.S. bonds and the dollar, the United States has successfully survived many financial crises. But this time, the United States took the initiative to provoke a financial war against China, and they themselves were the losers. Federal Reserve Chairman Powell made it clear that interest rates may be cut in September. Obviously, the United States can no longer withstand the financial war.



There is a saying about the Sino-US financial war: “hypertension vs. hypoglycemia”. From the perspective of the United States, they are facing high inflation that has been slow to be curbed, huge debts, and high interest rates caused by multiple aggressive interest rate hikes. Although China is the world’s largest manufacturing country, its consumption power is not as good as that of the United States, the world’s largest consumer of goods. In other words, China has goods but lacks money, while the United States has money but lacks goods. The essence of the Sino-US financial war is that the United States wants to harvest China through aggressive interest rate hikes. While China is improving its financial defenses, it is waiting for the United States to be dragged down by its own debts.



But in this process, the United States made two fatal mistakes.

First, the United States forgot the fact that “finance is a derivative of trade.” Although the United States has dollar hegemony, China has the most complete manufacturing sector in the world, which makes it have a long-term trade surplus and has $3 trillion in reserves. Therefore, the United States can hardly influence China’s exchange rate;

Secondly, the United States has never considered that its aggressive interest rate hike strategy will push its allies into a dead end and eventually force them to “turn against the United States.” According to 环球网_全球生活新门户_环球时报旗下网站, Japan has already started to raise interest rates on the yen, which is a dead end for the United States. Previously, due to the high interest rates in the United States, many international investors borrowed yen at ultra-low interest rates and then converted them into dollars to buy U.S. bonds. Now, the Federal Reserve has just released a signal of interest rate cuts, and Japan has immediately raised interest rates, which will trigger investors to transfer assets from the United States to Japan. In other words, Japan has implemented a reverse “harvest” on the United States.



It is worth mentioning that as early as two months ago, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that maintaining high interest rates may put US debt at risk of collapse. But Yellen did not expect that what happened later would be more serious than she expected. On Monday, US stocks suffered a sharp drop at the opening, with technology stocks such as Nvidia and Tesla falling by more than 10%. At the same time, a large number of Chinese buyers were worried about the US economic situation and began to sell their properties in the United States. According to public data, in less than two years, Chinese buyers have reduced their holdings of US real estate by 228 billion yuan.



By August 5, the onshore RMB exchange rate against the US dollar reached 7.1150, a surge of 1,000 points. The reason for the strengthening of the RMB is that the US non-farm unemployment rate has reached 4.3%, which is not only the worst in the past three years, but also far exceeds expectations. This makes international investors believe that the risk of an economic recession in the United States is increasing. It is worth noting that this time Japan raised interest rates and announced how much foreign exchange it used to intervene in the exchange rate. In the face of this “turnaround” approach, the United States did not make any accusations. Obviously, the United States is also very clear about how serious the situation it faces!


This news is brought to you by Host Anton

08-06 19:36 from Hong Kong

5 Most DISTURBING Deaths of Tourists in Thailand…

https://youtu.be/A1XrrG3Nrgk

Shorpy

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Was the USSR really that bad?

I don’t know what exactly you were told about USSR, but it was at least 10 times less bad than you’ve been told.

Everyday life in USSR wasn’t that much different from social democracies of today:

  • There was work, properly regulated to 8 hours a day and 2 days off.
    • During dinner break, you’d get to eat at an eatery, usually one affiliated with your workplace.
    • There was almost 0% unemployment. The country always had work that needed doing, but if they didn’t, they’d invent some work for you, like digging holes or filling up holes.
  • The work was paid for properly at the end of the month.
  • People would spend their money in shops, to buy food and things.
    • Unlike capitalism, there usually was more money than things to buy.
    • The amount of stuff owned by a typical Soviet person wasn’t that much different from stuff owned by a typical worker under capitalism.
    • Food shortages were the exception, not the rule. But growing or foraging your own food was a thing.
  • Everybody had a roof over their heads, usually provided by the government for a small rent/tax.
    • Less lucky people lived in dormitories and communal apartment, more lucky ones lived in their own apartments.
    • Wait time to get one’s own apartment was similar to time for accumulating money to buy an apartment in capitalist Russia, but one could use their money freely.
  • Violent crime was pretty low, while black market seems to have flourished.
    • Newspapers did not go out of their way to scare people, so people felt much safer.
  • Life in prisons was worse, as it should be. Still, prisoner lifestyle was regulated, so they wouldn’t go hungry unless the whole country did.
    • That joke from “Operation Y” where an prisoner builder gets a 3-course dinner with shahlyk and a poor student working part-time (who has to buy his own food) gets some bread with kefir is a comedic exaggeration.

One thing that really helps is having a goal — something you want to do before you pass. Like Jeanne Calment who made a deal with her rotary André-François Raffray in 1965, when she was 90 years old… in exchange for having the right to continue living in the property, she’d sell the apartment to Raffray, for him to use after she passed. He sure felt he’d made a pretty sweet deal with the little old French lady…

Only Calment didn’t die… she kept living. And living. And living. By 1995, Raffray had already paid Calment many times the value of the property she was living in. A piece of property he legally owned for some 30 years but couldn’t sell or make use of. He died, in 1995. And Calment, 120, continued to live for another 2 years, finally dying in 1997 at age 122 with Raffray’s widow and children continuing to pay her generously for her refusal to meet her maker.

Calment lived another 32 years after reaching 90, and it made her a fortune in her day’s currency. She was paid generously just for being alive, despite continuing to smoke and drink and live merrily. “Sometimes in life, one makes a bad deal,” Calment simply said. And sometimes, people make mighty good deals.

Why She LEFT the USA and Moved HOME to ASIA!

We sure do!

I pay more than $1000 a month for “good insurance, and last month I fell. I knew something was wrong and instead of going to the ER, I went to urgent care because it would be so much cheaper.

It almost killed me.

You see, I had broken three ribs and punctured a lung. I was bleeding into my chest cavity and the longer I waited to see the cheap doctor, I was losing my ability to breathe. At one point a lady sat next to me. She took one look at me and screamed at the front desk to call an ambulance. I told them it would cost too much and I would drive myself.

Luckily for me, they stopped me from driving and the ambulance soon arrived.

I stayed in the hospital for 3 days and demanded to be released because I couldn’t afford to be there any longer. I was released AMA and I got lucky that I had someone at home to care for me. It has taken weeks for me to be able to take a breath without pain, and while my doctor wanted to see me at the two-week mark, I waited until 4 weeks to see her.

I am now waiting for the bills to arrive. I know that my deductible for the year is $17,000 and that will be what I will have to pay before the full insurance kicks in, but I will STILL have more deductibles to pay!!

Our system is BROKEN!! The MAIN reason people file for bankruptcy is medical bills, and we are supposedly a first-world nation!!!!

People are so damn worried about paying for everyone to get medical care that they would rather go bankrupt than pay LESS than we do now for actual care! They seem to forget that they are already paying for roads, schools, first responders and so much more, but heaven forbid they pay for medical!

It would be CHEAPER FOR EVERYONE!!!

PLUS our politicians are in the pockets of the insurance companies who will lose billions if we were to have universal healthcare. So, we continue to see the decline in our health, die earlier, and lose mothers during childbirth at a rate higher than some third-world nations, and all people can think of is “Well at least I didn’t pay for someone else to live”.

Absolute stupidity!

Alien

Submitted into Contest #24 in response to: Write a story set in the dark recesses of space where the two main characters are often at odds with each other in humorous and comedic ways. view prompt

Ash Brinton

“What’s your planet like?” the little alien asked wistfully.The alien was two feet tall, with a tiny blue curl on the top of his head. By the time the alien was an adult, the curl would be about eight feet tall, sticking straight up like a bright blue mohawk. The rest of him would be only four feet tall, and I wasn’t sure whether the aliens counted the curl as part of their height or not. This species was either really short or really, really tall.“It’s beautiful,” I responded, thinking longingly of home, “When I was little, everything was green and there were all these animals in our backyard. There was a gopher that lived in a hole in the rocks that my dad named Pierre. He always ate my sisters garden. And at night, there were so many… so many stars. There was a lullaby my mom used to sing about the stars. I haven’t heard it in so long. I’ve almost forgotten the words.” I hummed the tune under my breath for a moment, “But Earth… Earth’s not quite as beautiful as it once was.”“What happened?” the young alien tilted his head, curious.“Humanity happened. We were told we were destroying the planet but no one would listen and when we did it was never enough. Overpopulation, pollution, hunger, poverty, global warming… Those all started before I was born and by the time I was old enough to do anything, it was too late. It was already irreversible. The people my age tried to at least slow it down, but no one would listen to us. Our only hope was to find another planet, like scavengers destroying everything they touch. We destroyed our home. Maybe if we had all worked together, refused to ignore the signs, things would be different, but we didn’t and they’re not.”“Is that why you left?”“Yes.” I turned away from the alien, lost in thought.Here I was, a human, lightyears away from my home. I couldn’t even see the sun from here. I had failed in my mission.Sure, I had found alien life on other planets, but I had lost my crewmates and my home. My memories of how I got there were still foggy.I remembered my crew and how we had been the first humans to reach the Kuiper Belt. We’d felt like heroes. Then one of the asteroids had crashed into our ship.I had been the only one to escape the wreckage.The aliens found me.Next thing I knew, I was in their spaceship with no idea where I was.“Do you miss it?” the young alien asked.“Hmm?” I turned back to him.“Don’t you miss Earth?”“Every day.”“I can’t believe I’m actually talking to a human. A real, live human! My grandmama says she went to Mars once. It’s the closest she ever got – the closest any of us ever got – to Earth. There was this weird thing that my mama calls a-” he said something in a different language “-but I don’t think there’s a word for it in Human, so the translator might not work for it. It was made of panels and metal with a human word written on the side in big block letters. The first letter looked like a wide mouth getting ready to eat you, grandmama says.”I tilted my head, trying to imagine what he meant. “An ‘O’?”“What’s an ‘O’?”“The letter. It looks like this,” I traced my finger through dust on the small table between us.The alien child shrugged, “Maybe. I wasn’t there. Grandmama says you could see Earth from where she was and it was all greens and blues and browns and whites and when it wasn’t facing the star, the land glowed. It even had a tiny metal moon orbiting it!” The little alien boy put his hands on my knees to pull himself into a standing position.“Earth only has one moon and that’s made of rock, but your grandmama may have seen a satellite. And the land wasn’t glowing, silly.” I chuckled, flicking the little curl on the top of their head that seemed to be the defining factor of their species, “That was the lights in the cities and houses.”“Why would you need lights? You have a star right there in your solar system!”“The lights are for at night, when the sun goes down.”“What’s a sun?”“It’s what we call our star,” I explained.The alien’s eyes grew wide, “Your star moves?”“No.” I said flatly, “When Earth rotates, it looks like the sun is moving across the sky. Thousands of years ago, people thought it was moving. They thought that Earth was the center of the universe.”

The alien snorted, “That’s kind of self-absorbed.”

“Yeah,” I laughed, “but science proved them wrong. When the part of the Earth that we are standing on turns away from the sun and it goes dark, we say the sun goes down. We call that time night. That’s when we can see the moon and the stars up in the sky. Do you have that on your planet?”

“No. There’s two stars, one on either side of my birth planet, so it’s always not-night.”

“Day. The word you’re looking for is day.”

“Wow. Humans name everything, huh. What do you call your moon?”

“Well, technically the moon’s name is Luna, but there’s only one, so we just call it the moon most of the time.”

“Cool!” He exclaimed, “We don’t have a sky. Mama says the atmosphere’s too weak for us to have a pretty sky like the one on Earth.”

“Light pollution blocks most of the sky nowadays, so don’t be disappointed if you ever see it.”

“Mama and Grandmama have always wanted to go to Earth. They were so excited when you got to the end of your solar system. We’ve been watching you progress for a while. Mama said humans were resilient and stubborn and would never give up, but Papa thought you were going to give up because you kept finding rocks and that was it.”

“They were cool rocks,” I nudged him, “Space rocks.”

The alien clapped two of his arms together, which I was quickly learning was how this species showed delight.

I hated to burst the alien’s bubble of innocence and wonder but…

“Do you know the worst thing about Earth and living there?”

The child’s face dropped and the spiky arm-like appendages fell to their side.

I continued, “The worst part about living on Earth, or at least in my country, isn’t the pollution, poverty, hunger, or even abuse. It’s the tension. The fear that we’ve entrusted the keys of mass destruction to a lunatic or a villain. The constant worry that one day you’ll turn on the tv and hear that a war has broken out in our country and a nuclear bomb has been dropped. In my country, we are always at war, but it is always pushed under the rug and ignored. For stuff like that to be shown on the news, it would have to be on our own soil. Either a civil war or a world war. It would destroy anything. No one would survive, and if they did… that fate might be even worse.”

“So… you don’t want to go back to Earth?”

I shrugged helplessly, “Humanity destroyed Earth. Maybe when your grandmama saw it, Earth was more beautiful, more loving, more kind, but more likely is that the effects of humanity’s cruelty were only just starting to show on Earth’s surface and it wasn’t as noticeable yet. To truly see Earth, you have to get up close, beneath the clouds, into the cities. Still… I do want to go home. I want to rebuild and restore Earth to its former glory, if it ever had any when humanity lived on the Earth. I want to see the animals, healthy and thriving, not on the brink of extinction, and to see the moon surrounded by stars, and see the milky way hovering in the sky like it did when my grandparents were little. I want to go home.”

“Can I help?”

“I don’t think so, little friend. It’s not fair to pull you into our mess.”

“So? I want to see Earth too! I want to help the humanities.”

I smiled sadly and patted the alien’s baby curl. “Let’s just get me home first. Just imagine being the first of your species to reach Earth’s surface. Your mama will be so proud.”

I looked out the small window at the wide expanse of nothing, with stars twinkling in the distance, almost too far away to see.

“Let’s go home.”

Alex Julius, you should be the one who must be cured of your delusions.

You are likely too young, but know that it’s not just Japan and South Korea, there are almost 800 of such “colonies” in the world.

We’re still doing this – added Finland recently. And restored another – the Philippines.

This is the rare occasion where what trump claimed is actually true – Americans can literally shoot anybody on main street and can’t be touched. Young Filipinos may not know these, but Filipinos were target practices once they get too close to Clark and Subic and of course, they could treat their women however they feel they want. And Bong Bong wants all these American liberties back in his country.

The only difference is that its so much more for Japan and South Korea – its Washington that dictates their national foreign policies – that when the American president tells them to jump, they ask how high. . . where the government of Japan can’t fly over Tokyo without permission of the U.S. military commisioner . . . where South Korea can’t do anything involving their military without the permission of the U.S. military brass. . . .where its president must know how to sing Karaoke when making state visits. But of course, to maintain the pretext of democracy, they have to do the work of governing their own people – that they can do themselves. Isn’t all these describing running “colonies” by enjoying the best of both worlds?

Today’s MM image generations

The focus is on admiration, and the god of the vine. It’s a hodgepodge of prompts and resulting in very interesting images.

Many nudes. But you all know that I am figurative art lover.

I really love the style, and the color composition. But I am having problems with the image arrangement. But I think that in time things will straighten out.

Personally, I don’t like full nudes. I prefer partial nudes, and elements of clothing with folds, and details.

@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(17)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(17)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(17)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(17)
@@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(15)
@@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(15)

So I changed things out. And I started to require loin cloths and other attire elements.

@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(15)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(15)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(14)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(14)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(11)
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Some didn’t have the elements of clothing, but the colors were great.

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In the ones where everyone was  clothed, it became too formal. I wanted something less formal.

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Maybe something more like this…

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This is pretty good.

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So is this one.

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@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(6)

And this one.

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The careful placement of arms was really nice.

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This is fine…

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@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2

Our married love life was wonderful, Blessed with cute baby girl , added more and more love to our lives. Perfect love life , both of us were equally romantic and made for each other in all aspects . But he fell sick one day, severely sick. Lost his job soon due to the serious health reasons . I was not working and no experience though well qualified. No one earning at home , worst phase of our lives .I started hunting for job , use to seek help with whomever I know , giving my resume. Since it was already 4 years that I had finished my degree, securing a job was really too hard and challenging. I use to drop into offices , use all my limited intelligence and resources to get a job. Everywhere , every effort was a failure, I was good at nothing , hopes were very less with the future. Somewhere luck clicked , a gentleman agreed to help me , but I had to go far off – 1000 kms from my town . I took the bold step, left the beloved family back . I got a break, worked very hard without caring the number of working hours , my food , my comforts despite of my gender constraints. I did not had anyone to care about me . I had save every penny and money order to home. My life was very hard , but started feeling bit ease with finance. I could meet my family first time after a gap of 10 months. I endured all the pains , discomforts to save our lives . Slowly in 2 years my financial status became very sound and everyone happy at home. All the needs and luxuries of each individual were met with my income. This is 20 years old story , but when I look back now , I wonder myself with the journey. Everyone in the family knows about my success , no one knows the struggle I had in the initial stages especially when alone , away from home. But I am happy I could take care of my loved ones…!! I have cut the very long story short though here. Thanks for reading through this.

Edit 1 :

Dear all my friends , I am adding some more details as asked by you . My smart and intelligent husband lost many of his metal capabilities permanently , he just survived with no physical handicap. As of today he is very casual person with no job , no responsibility and no emotions to me and my daughter.

Yes I could meet all the materialistic needs of the family, but the love which I was dying for , I haven’t experienced again.

The reason I am anonymous here is , I have managed to keep this story very secret as much as possible due to many reasons . I had lots of hopes that I would get my love back , year on year realized that it would never happen, Along with that with growing daughter I wanted to stay strong , avoid any negative emotions , keep the father and daughter bonding as well as family bonding intact . My journey along had been very very rough while managing to take care of crooked in laws , take full responsibility of my sick parents ( my younger brother had died in road accident then ) , emotionless and half sensed husband. I avoided myself in all the social gatherings due to his behavioral issues, it is all a daily battle. I wanted to ensure my daughter will not suffer psychologically in this bargain. It was all tight rope walk for me , lost my youth , real happiness in life . But only satisfaction is my daughter is like a fresh flower with full of fragrance, she is undisturbed with all the tragedy which occurred in our life when she was close to 2 years old.

Materialistically I gained many many things in life but the wonderful love which I received from my husband is just a dream now. Many good things happened to me in my career unexpectedly .There are many many bitter most things about my husband which is still going on my life . Life has taught me the art of living .. and it is going on & on

Edit 2.

Friends , my thanks to all of you . Your responses has made me to feel lighter with the hard and helpless feelings that I have that I am not able to fix my husbands problems. I could have donated any part of my body to resume his love , medically there is no brain transplant . Miracles may work ??

I had shared a part of my story here earlier ,

Someone anonymous’s answer to What is the loveliest thing a child has ever said to you?

when I get chance I would share the details of deadly disease that my husband survived with, how I handled both my challenging IT career, responsibility of all the dependents , how my husbands family took undue advantage of his illness and emotionless status

Edit 3

Friends ,My daughter loves her dad a lot , has accepted him fully for what he is , tried her best to make him to understand his responsibility , no luck but. Our sorrow never reflects in our faces, not an exaggeration we look our best , lively and cheerful . Also look like sisters as per the comment we keep receiving from others. She is bold , practical, very independent, kind and considerate . Though she knows the hardships of mine she does not simply sympathize and am not emotional burden on her. She flew abroad recently for her masters and has lot of ambitions in life. She has her own passions besides academics.

My love life has been fully empty, I have been trying to overcome by indulging in my work , disciplined life & hobbies . My love to the family has been stronger not giving me a chance of seeking love elsewhere . Probably my brought up has a bigger role here

1990-0802, Delta Force Rapist.

MSG Marshall Brown, 1st Special Forces Operations Detachment Delta Operator, arrested while TDY in East Providence, RI. He raped five women. MSG Brown escaped custody & was captured 3-days later.

In 1988, an investigation began when two women were attacked in Raleigh, one @ North Carolina State University, apparently by the same man, a stranger, who climbed in through their second story windows, hooded & dressed in black, ordered them to silence with a knife held to their throats, covered their faces, then raped them. During the rapes, he apologized, telling them that he didn’t want to hurt them & that he “had to do this.”

On June 11, 1989 in Cranston, Rhode Island, Marshall Brown was taken into custody & charged with the rapes of two Rhode Island women. These women were raped with the same modus operandi as the North Carolina women. While in custody, Marshall was deferential to the police, calling them by their ranks & observing scrupulous courtesy. Police described him as soft-spoken. He even spoke approvingly of the professionalism of the arrests & complimented one officer for his handcuffing technique. He had been arrested for prowling in Fayetteville, North Carolina, earlier that May. He had forfeited his bond for a dismissal of the charge.

Marshall went to work in jail, studying the patterns of the federal marshals who transported him to & from court & making friends with a 20-year-old inmate named Frederick Heon. He stayed in shape in jail, using his exercise periods to run.

On July 30, he was cuffed to another prisoner in the back of a federal marshal van & driven to Providence to attend his hearing. When the back door opened, Marshall – who had picked open his handcuffs – walked with the escorting marshal & his fellow inmate for a bit, then sprang past the startled federal marshals & ran like an Olympic athlete up the street & out of sight.

Heon was out on bail & had rented a car, per Marshall’s instructions & was waiting @ an appointed rendezvous point & drove Marshall to the Connecticut state line. Heon then went to a church where he was told he’d find money, which wasn’t there. Three days later, Marshall was caught in a stolen car & re-arrested. Marshall told the police about Heon’s assistance & Heon was taken back to jail for a parole violation.

Marshall had burglarized a house 15 miles outside of Providence for food & credit cards & was camping in a pine grove nearby. He stole the car in the same neighborhood. When back in custody, he admitted to nine rapes in Rhode Island, Texas, Arizona & North Carolina. Marshall had been attending the Naval version of the Sergeants Major Academy in Norfolk when he was caught the first time.

His wife, Michelle, who was taking care of their young son, was stunned.

I can’t even pretend to understand Marshall Brown, after spending many hours with him & going on one combat operation with him. I have heard the statement that rape is not sex, it is an exercise of power. I don’t buy it. Rape is violent power, but it is sexualized power & it is also violent sex. Sex in patriarchal society is in almost every case practiced, portrayed & understood as a form of aggression & power & all power is in many ways sexualized.

Marshall’s brother-in-law spoke with me many years later & said that Marshall told him that he felt he had to use his skills somehow, or he’d begin to lose them. Marshall saw the rapes as a training opportunity @ some level & therefore the women as training aids

One might suppose, since he repeated this ritualistic rape @ least nine times, that there was some rush he needed. I don’t buy it. He had jumped out of airplanes a thousand times, was a proficient technical climber, had been in combat. I think the rush – if that’s what it was – was transgression. Nancy C. M. Hartsock, in Money, Sex & Power – Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism, said that “without the boundary to violate, the thrill of transgression would disappear.” Marshall’s criminality was not in spite of his religious conversion, his squeamishness about sex, or his uptight WASP upbringing in East Texas. It was an outcome… of all those things, but also of a masculinity defined by a culture of rape & a man who had made a career of pursuing that masculinity.

Marshall Brown served in a profession with a constant subtext of physical coercion & in a field within that profession (Delta Force/Special Operations) where we were expected to work outside the rules, behind the scenes, in the shadows, employing a host of very specialized skills, to “preserve a way of life.”

My father has served for 4 decades in the Indian Army. He retired last year but still looks like a young gentleman. Here is his pic:

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Following are the things he does daily in order to maintain that fitness, happiness, and energy:

  1. Early 2 bed & early 2 rise: He sleeps by 10 pm and wakes up at 5 am. Those 7 hours are pure sound sleep.
  2. Fresh Air: Upon waking up, he goes for a walk/jog along with our dog.
  3. Morning Nutrition: Next, he drinks Mulethi Tea, which has immense and immense benefits.
  4. Being Natural: He also does Brushing with Neem twig sometimes before normal brushing. He applies Mustard Oil. He hasn’t used shampoo even once in his life and still at the age of 60, he has black & naturally strong hair.
  5. Exercise: Next, he performs yoga and calisthenics.
  6. Spirituality for positivity: After having a bath, he does pooja, which according to him gives him positivity and strength for the odd things.
  7. Do what you love: Then he goes to work. Right now after retirement, his work is to look after our farms. Despite having servants, he also does some farming himself which gives him joy.
  8. Love what you do: In his small-small work, whether household or be it when he was in the Army. He is determined and has will power to do the work. He takes full responsibility and doesn’t procrastinate. He does his work happily. He accepts responsibilities and problems rather than blaming or cursing. This reduces stress and increases productivity.
  9. Nutrition on time: He ensures that he takes his meals on time (Lunch before 1 pm and Dinner before 7.30).
  10. Proper Nutrition: He also ensures that he eats natural things and things with more health benefits rather than going for taste. For example, we eat black wheat roti, self-grown vegetables & and fruits, pure milk, and whatever we can arrange naturally.
  1. We were having dinner at the private Magic Castle in Hollywood. At the next table was a stereotypical studio executive type; you know, 50+ years old, ultra tan, long (hair plugged?) grey hair, flashy suit. With him was a20ish young, hot model type, with a low cut backless dress that showed off her tattoos, among other things. Yup, I thought; fossil studio exec pulling a Harvey Weinstein with some actress. Except as they were leaving, the young woman said to him Dad, when Mom gets back from New York, maybe we can have dinner again!
  2. Having dinner in a restaurant. The guy next to us appears to be having a tough time with his date. He does all the talking, and his date just gives him a half smile; jokes, funny stories, ordering the food, just a half smile from the women. We thought it might be a first date, maybe off of the internet or a blind one. Except when they were about to leave, the guy got her wheelchair and helped her sit in it; she obviously had had a stroke or something, and thus she could only muster a half smile and not speak.
  3. Las Vegas: we enter the Wynn Hotel, and see a scantily clad (mini skirt, halter top) woman walking with two security guards on either side. We thought it was a hooker being escorted out of the premises. However, this was Las Vegas. She was instead wearing the standard waitress outfit for the hotel. Sorry, our mistake!

A young pilot got a job as a bush pilot flying float planes in Alaska. On one of his first jobs, he flew out to a remote lake to pick up a hunter who had been dropped off the week before.

When he got there, he was horrified to discover that the hunter had bagged a full grown bull moose. He also had several hunting rifles, a canoe, several boxes of ammunition, plus all his camping gear.

“That’s too much,” he protested. “I won’t even get the plane into the air with all that weight.”

“I don’t see why not,” the hunter replied. “You strap the canoe to one of the floats, the moose to the other float, the baggage in the back seats, and I sit up front with you. Alf Smith did it last year, and he got us into the air.”

The young pilot’s ego was wounded. “Well, if Alf Smith can do it, so can I. Give me a hand.”

He taxied downwind to the far end of the lake as far as he could go, spun around into the wind and gave it full throttle. The plane staggered into the air and just barely cleared the trees at the far end. Ahead of them, however, was a low ridge. Using every ounce of flying skill, he managed to nurse the airplane over the trees at the top of the ridge. Before he could relax, however, he realized to his horror that there was a second, even higher ridge a half mile in front of him. There was nothing he could do but pancake the airplane into the trees.

As he and his passenger crawled out from the wreckage, he surveyed the destroyed plane and wept “My God, what have I done?”

“Don’t feel too bad,” said the hunter. “You made it half a mile farther than Alf Smith did last year.”

I was driving along a two lane road in rural Minnesota, at or just below the speed limit (55mph) when I saw a cop pull out from a side road. He quickly caught up with me and lit me up. I found a driveway where I could pull over safely and stopped. As I was getting my license and insurance ready, he walked up and asked the usual question, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”.

I said, no, I can’t think of anything I was doing wrong.

He told me that he had seen me give room for a lady pulling out slowly, and didn’t blow my horn, flash my lights or seem irritated that she had blocked my path, but let her get up to speed and gave her plenty of room. I also returned a wave from her as she turned off the road.

He handed me a card that read “Good Driver Award”. He told me that if I needed to use it, to show it, and they’ll forgive minor things like too long in a metered parking space. Not only that, but he was very cordial and friendly. Told me to have a nice drive home. He also told me to show it either the McDonald’s or Burger King just up the road for a free soda.

Made my day!!

Haha. Tonya Harding Syndrome. What a perfect description of the mentality of USA against anyone that is strong, be it China or Russia.

After WW2, USSR was militarily strong. USA said USSR threatened US (dominance). USA then collapsed USSR in 1991. Today Russia is still militarily strong, then thru Ukraine, USA is to weaken, if not break up Russia.

In 1980s’, when Japan was economically strong being #2 in the world & when its semiconductor surpassed USA, USA then beat Japan down making Japan lost 10–20 years’ of development.

Today, China is both economically, militarily & technologically strong. Of course, USA cannot sleep well at night.

Dont ever think USA is gentle to EU who is also competing with USA. USA pulled down Euro once. One reason for the Ukraine war is to weaken Europe’s economy.

So … USA suffers Tonya Harding syndrome against anybody who is developing well & challenging US hegemony. Not just against China.

USA was successful in beating down USSR & Japan. But has & will fail in China though.

Perhaps you’ve forgotten that China’s President Xi Jinping is the son of one of China’s greatest generals?

That he spent three years in uniform as Assistant to the Secretary of Defense?

That in the past two years he has repeatedly called on his 2,000,000 man army to ‘prepare to fight and win wars’?

That, when Gallup asked people around the world, “Would you fight for your country in case of war ?”, 87% of Chinese are willing and ready to fight–almost three times the percentage of Americans or anyone else?

Today, China overmatches the US in its Near Seas and my guess is that it will choose to act there in order to open a potential second front to take pressure off Russia. A credible sequence goes something like this: in close coordination with Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Hezbollah…

1. Announce an ADIZ, below, over Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait that excludes all military aircraft and requires permission for every civilian flight in and out of Taiwan. The US cannot prevent this and it paralyzes Taiwan.

2. Issue an arrest warrant for Tsai Ing-wen on a charge of treason and incitement to war and warn that anyone attempting to assist her will be charged as an accessory.

3. Announce that the Taiwan Strait is Chinese, permanently closed to military vessels.

4. Announce that the entire South China Sea is Chinese, permanently closed to military vessels.

5. Show off a few new weapons systems to complement its remarkable missiles and its fleet of Type 055 heavy cruisers, the most powerful surface combatants afloat.

6. Place the entire nation on a war footing, call up the reserves and activate all radars, light up all missile launching facilities, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxd_A-hGEOQ

These actions would be front page headlines in every new media on earth yet, if you do the math, you’ll see that the cost is….$0.00.

And China hasn’t invaded Taiwan yet. Hasn’t hurt a fly, in fact.

China’s capacity to sustain combat in its Near Seas is far bigger than Western media have been telling us (read the USNI papers to see what I mean). America is no match for China there–on land, sea or in the air.

And, as Clausewitz might have said, fleets win battles but economies win wars and China’s economy is far bigger, growing much faster and is more capable of ramping up than ours.

Would invasion even be necessary?

As a female autistic growing up in Outback Australia in the 1960’s I was bullied a lot. Really nasty stuff, it was only when I was in my 40’s that I got diagnosed as High Functioning Aspergers. I have always used education to get out of bad situations and high school was a particularly bad situation! Getting my head flushed down the toilet daily by a group of six or seven laughing girls was just something I had to deal with.

I left as soon as I was able, went to the nearest big city, got a job and continued to study at night school. Over the years, I built up this small base into a very comfortable career, married, had children and continued to work in a job I enjoyed, was good at, and that paid well. I have travelled the world and learned several languages, since I have an affinity for it.

One of my “nerdy” friends stayed on in the small regional town I’d gone to high school in and we kept touch. She was able to tell me what became of the bullies who used to torment us.

The leader of the group was a girl who was voted by our class as “the most likely to succeed”, apparently because she was regarded as pretty and used to date a high school sports jock. She ended up living in a caravan with a dozen children all from different fathers, working occasionally in low-paid jobs and living on welfare and whatever she could make by peddling her body. My friend told me that I wouldn’t recognize her as she got onto meth and used to pick at her skin leaving bleeding sores all over. She eventually died of a drug overdose a few years ago.

Another girl who used to delight in putting out cigarettes on my skin if she caught me going to the loo while she was there ended up dying, her car wrapped around a tree late one night when her boyfriend, who was driving drunk, was speeding.

A number of other bullies, the low-level ones who just went along with the major bullies and joined in if they had nothing better to do, ended up spending their lives working in the vegetable cannery or the chicken processing plant or the abbatoirs (I lived in an agricultural community, and those where the big employers.) There are probably worse jobs about than gutting chickens for a living, and it is at least good honest work, I suppose…

Another one, a boy this time who used to enjoy getting a seat behind me on the two hour bus ride to and from school and whacking me across the back of the head with a book, also got his karma – he became a welder after he left school, was working inside a silo one day and there was a build-up of gases. When he turned on the welder, the gases ignited while he was inside the silo and the result was that he lost both his legs. Now he has no choice but to sit – in a wheelchair.

Whereas I have lived a comfortable and mostly content life, doing a job I love, running my own business, and owning my own houses, some of which I rent out. One of the best things I ever did was to leave the small-town bullies and small-minded losers to their own devices and leave. I’ve never regretted going.

Dancin’ Fool

The word “owning” is not appropriate; it should be described as a win-win situation. Laos is a landlocked country with no ports, only 4 kilometers of railway nationwide, and underdeveloped roads.

In December 2021, after the opening of the China-Laos Railway, Laos has had a direct railway connection with China. This has greatly improved Laos’s economy, with optimistic projections suggesting that Laos’s GDP will increase fivefold by 2030.

(I am confident about Laos’ economic prospects, because it is said that in 2020, the most corrupt bureaucrat in the country only had $500,000! which is much better than many poor countries, If the corruption problem is not big, the economy will surely take off)

The railway has opened up transportation between China and Laos, bringing hundreds of thousands of job opportunities to Laos, and China benefits as well.

China’s agriculture is severely lacking in potassium. Although Russia and Belarus are major potash exporters and friendly countries, having an additional source of imports is beneficial. Laos, with its world-class giant potash deposits, lacks the technology and funds for mining, and hasn’t even begun selling them.

China’s construction of potash mines in Laos, purchasing at reasonable prices, creating local jobs, developing the industry, and meeting its own needs is indeed a win-win situation.

China has a huge demand for durians, and Laotian durians are very cheap. Selling them to China via the railway significantly increases their income, making everyone happy.

China can produce industrial goods, medicines, and other necessities cheaply and in good quality, satisfying Laotian needs. Laotians are also very satisfied.

Moreover, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. conducted 580,000 bombing missions on this non-combatant country, dropping 270 million cluster bombs, of which about 30% remain unexploded. Currently, 80 million small bombs are scattered and buried in Laos, causing deaths and injuries every year.

By constructing this railway, Chinese engineers have cleared thousands of unexploded bombs, at least ensuring the safety of the railway line. This act alone is of immeasurable merit.

China and the West are different in one respect: as a developing country that was oppressed by great powers for over a hundred years, we know very well what that feels like.

Now that we have some money, it is natural to help others while benefiting ourselves through mutual benefit.

2500 years ago, Mencius said, “Only a benevolent nation can interact with smaller nations on an equal footing”—not by dropping 270 million bombs on them.

To take a step back, even if driven solely by China’s own interests, such as buying potash mines and trying to push prices down, the short-term gain might seem profitable, but in the long run? If we don’t consider the other party’s interests, it will ultimately harm our own.

There are areas needing improvement.

For example, on the station signs within Laos along the China-Laos Railway, although Lao script is at the top and Chinese is below, the Chinese font size is the same as the Lao script, which seems a bit inappropriate.

It would be better if the Chinese font were smaller.

I have always been a little worried about hurting the feelings of the Lao people.

However, it seems that Laotians have not raised this issue.

She explains what is going on

Money is NOT value.

Funnily enough, this question reminds me of an ancient punishment of the Thai Royal Court.

If a Thai king happened to dislike a particular minor noble, that noble would be “gifted” with the finest war elephant from the royal regiment.

Now what could go wrong with that you might think? After all, an elephant is a mighty war beast and also a valuable trophy that kings would fight each other to own.

Well, they are also one hell of an eater, consuming an unholy amount of food and water every day.

want some?

They also need space, care, training, and exercise – all of which requires a lot of people and costs a lot of money. That’s why, normally, only the likes of kings or very powerful nobles could afford their accommodations.

So what happened if some unaccomplished, minor nobles were awarded with one?

In a few months, they would become broke: They couldn’t get rid of the elephant because it was a gift from the king and also could not leave them neglected because of its royal status.

I think something similar would happen if the United States were to “gift” any carriers to the minor nations in the South China Sea.

Just some insight

I love hearing from youse guys about how your affirmations are going. Here’s one from a member of the MM collective. I deleted the queries and personal data. But still, I always find these reports interesting…

I've been on a 3 month on/4 off Intentions Campaign run since summer 2023 when I started my first (late starter, I know-- but I'd old baggage I needed to dispose of before committing to a campaign-- I like fresh psychological starts!). 

After a quiet start, I'm now halfway through my second break, and the roller coaster ride has just kicked off-- white knuckle, baby.

> Yikes!!!

> The tell tails have all hilariously manifested, too. Very very strange and uncanny feeling. Things that were calm in my life are now turning upside down and I'm glad-- It was well needed. But stressful. (Have included safety protocols so nothing crazy.)

We were mocking my husband at a neighborhood party until he stood up & told me it’s over forever.

NEVER, ever make fun of your husband or wife.

On July 29, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meroni met with Zhao Leji, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China.

Zhao Leji said that the National People’s Congress of China is willing to give full play to the role of the regular exchange mechanism with the Italian Parliament, carry out multi-level, wide-ranging and multi-channel friendly exchanges, and provide legal guarantees for the practical cooperation between the two countries.

Meroni expressed the hope that the legislative bodies of the two sides will strengthen exchanges, promote cooperation in the fields of economy, trade, culture and other fields, and promote the healthy and stable development of Italy-China and Europe-China relations.

Of course, this is all official jargon.

To put it simply, Merloni hopes that China’s National People’s Congress and the Italian Parliament will increase exchanges so that Italian parliamentarians can understand China’s parliamentary model, so that they will not encounter too much opposition from pro-American parliamentarians during parliamentary questioning.


The reason I say this is because of what Italy has done over the past period of time.

  • In the recent EU vote on imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, Italy voted in favor.
  • The Italian Ministry of Finance issued a statement after the G7 Finance Ministers’ Meeting, saying that the G7 opposes so-called “unilateral actions” that undermine global trade, and implicitly pointed the finger at China.
  • Senior Italian naval officials announced that the country’s aircraft carrier will visit the Philippines after participating in Australian exercises to show support for the Philippines.

Last year, the Meloni government’s decision to withdraw from the “Belt and Road Initiative” itself had a huge impact on the mutual trust between China and Italy. Judging from the delegation that Meloni brought with her to China, including Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli and energy group Eni, the focus of her visit to China is obviously to discuss bilateral economic and trade cooperation with China.

Why does Italy still want to do this?

In fact, if we look at the preparations for this visit to China alone, Meloni’s sincerity is still sufficient.

In addition to the luxurious business delegation mentioned above, it is reported that Meloni has also prepared a generous gift for China.

  • According to the Italian media “24 Hours Sun”, the Meloni government intends to “transfer” the use rights of the discontinued car brands of the European auto giant Stellantis Group to Chinese companies.
  • Italy has specially prepared a working group to discuss cooperation in the automotive field with China. At present, the EU is imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Objectively speaking, if Chinese auto companies can invest and build factories in Italy, they can indeed resolve the high tariffs faced by exports to Europe. For Italy, they can obtain investment from Chinese companies through such cooperation and boost the local auto industry.

This is a win-win situation.

Moreover, perhaps in order to eliminate the impact of Italy’s withdrawal from the “Belt and Road Initiative”, Meroni also announced during his visit to China that he would sign a three-year action plan with China to restart cooperation with China.

We can understand Meroni’s move. This plan is actually an alternative to the “Belt and Road Initiative” jointly built by China and Italy.

Meroni showed such sincerity. In the final analysis, Italy still needs China.

  • On the one hand, Italy is currently facing severe high inflation and debt crisis.
  • On the other hand, the trade volume between China and Italy last year showed a significant decline compared with 2022.

Since Italy withdrew from the Belt and Road Initiative, it has faced a series of economic problems. If Italy wants to change the status quo, it can only bow to China.

However, Italy is a member of the G7, and it is unrealistic to expect Meloni to completely bow to China.

Therefore, we speculate that Italy’s series of actions against China, either indirectly or directly, before Meroni’s visit to China, may be a bargaining chip prepared by Meroni to bargain with China.

Italy was previously indecisive about withdrawing from the “Belt and Road Initiative” mainly because Italy wanted to maintain mutually beneficial cooperation with China on the one hand, but did not want to bear pressure from Western countries because of the “Belt and Road Initiative” on the other hand.

Before officially withdrawing from the “Belt and Road Initiative”, Meroni sent people to visit China for consultations, trying to prove that withdrawing from the “Belt and Road Initiative” would not affect Italy’s attention to China.

But it is obvious that Meroni completely underestimated the negative impact of this move on Sino-Italian relations and the “Belt and Road Initiative” — After Italy joined the “Belt and Road Initiative”, China has placed Italy at the top of its foreign cooperation priorities. If Italy can still enjoy such a position after its withdrawal, it will inevitably lead to other countries following suit and questioning the “Belt and Road Initiative”.

Meloni’s preparation of bargaining chips for her visit to China in advance can only mean that although she regrets withdrawing from the “Belt and Road Initiative”, she still has not figured out how to balance the relationship between China, the EU and the United States.

As a major EU economy and a member of the G7, it is difficult for Meloni to sing a different tune from the EU and the United States, at least on the issue of imposing tariffs on China.

But at the same time, Meloni also knows that based on the background of Italy’s withdrawal from the “Belt and Road Initiative”, Italy must show enough sincerity if it wants to restart cooperation with China.

The EU will ban the sale of new fuel vehicles that are not zero-carbon emission from 2035.

China is the world’s largest electric vehicle industry and dominates the global electric vehicle industry. BYD has confirmed that it will open “super factories” outside of China in near the borders of Hungary and Serbia, and Italy could be the location of BYD’s second “super factory”.

Chinese Tesla rival BYD to open EV manufacturing plant in Hungary
The announcement comes as Hungary continues to try to position itself as a global hub for EV manufacturing.
BYD signed land agreement with Szeged for the car factory in Hungary
BYD’s landmark agreement with Szeged, Hungary, for a new energy passenger car factory. BYD’s landmark agreement with Szeged, Hungary, for a new energy passenger car factory.

Meloni wants to have a certain initiative, so she can only talk about economic and trade cooperation with China on the one hand, but on the other hand, she can find ways to maintain some noise that caters to the United States.

However, in front of Meloni, the Chinese senior officials have made it clear that China is willing to further strengthen political mutual trust with Italy to promote the development of China-Italy bilateral relations in a more mature and stable direction. This is a necessary condition for the two countries to deepen cooperation and achieve expectations.

As for how to strengthen political mutual trust, China has put forward a requirement for Chinese companies to invest in Italy, that is, Italy needs to provide a fair, safe and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies.

If Italy undermines the atmosphere of Sino-Italian cooperation again in the future due to pressure from the United States, the political mutual trust between China and Italy will probably be even more difficult to repair.

Therefore, if Meloni wants to continue the results of his visit to China, he must take practical actions to safeguard the development of Sino-Italian relations.

“All HELL BREAKS LOOSE” (In the Next Few Months) says FED Insider

Barbarism or Civilization

Luca Placidi:
Welcome, everybody. It is a great pleasure and honor to have with us today Professor Michael Hudson. For those who still do not know him, Michael is a professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and he is a researcher at the Levi Economics Institute at Bard College.
Just to mention a few works published with the help of technology, we want to recall Superimperialism, the Economic Strategy of the American Empire. Its third edition came out in 2021. Then we have “… And Forgive Them Their Debts,” published in 2018. The latest is The Collapse of Antiquity, published in 2023.

Michael is also a former Wall Street analyst, a political consultant, and is hosting the Geopolitical Economy Hour together with Radhika Desai, which is broadcast at Ben Norton’s YouTube channel, Geopolitical Economy Report. Professor, welcome, and thanks again for being with us today.

Michael Hudson:
Well, thank you for inviting me. I’m glad to be able to speak to an Italian audience.

Luca Placidi:
That is very good. Thank you. To kick off our conversation, would you agree that the Ukrainian war and even more the latest NATO summit with its final declaration are showing us that we are now back in a multipolar war, in which the global South it is opposed to the Western world?

Michael Hudson:
Well, it’s more than just a geographic split. We’re really in a civilizational split, and it goes much deeper. What’s at stake is what kind of economy is the world going to have?

Is it going to be a financialized, neoliberal post-industrial economy, which is what the United States and Europe are pushing? Or is it going to be the kind of economy that textbooks talk about, where economies produce agricultural and industrial goods to feed themselves and make everybody prosper? I almost would use Rosa Luxemburg’s phrase, Barbarism or Socialism, because the West no longer has the means of real economic control over trade and production. It only has military force, terrorist violence and corruption to maintain its control.

The NATO West does financial control by having loaded down the global South and even many Asian countries with dollarized debt for the last 70 years. That dollarized debt holds them in a financial neocolonialism, an international debt peonage. Besides that, the ultimate power that the United States and Europe have to maintain their unipolar control to prevent other countries from going their own way and pursuing their own interests is to bomb them and mobilize terrorism.

The NATO West has lost its basic industrial or agricultural control because it has outsourced its industry to China and other Asian economies, and its sanctions against Russia and other countries has obliged them to become self-sufficient instead of relying on the West for a widening range of their basic needs. So these countries are now in a position to use their labor, industry and agriculture to make themselves prosperous and regain control over their economies, not to make U.S. and European investors rich. They want to take control of their economies in a way that will raise their wages and living standards.

That can’t be done if they follow a policy of privatization, World Bank advice and the IMF’s instructions to sell off their land and raw materials, privatize and sell off their public infrastructure, communications, electrical systems and water rights to foreigners while getting rid of government regulation and social-support programs. The West’s demand is to let the private sector run everything without government “interference.” Well, there’s no way that any economy can grow and get prosperous without being a mixed economy with strong public infrastructure providing basic needs at non-monopoly prices.

There are many natural area for governments to operate more efficiently than the private sector. They can provide basic services that otherwise would be monopolized to charge extortionate prices to extract predatory monopoly rents for their owners. If a government doesn’t provide education, the result will be what’s happening in America, where the average cost of a college education is $40,000 or $50,000 a year. If you don’t have public health, you’re going to have a very expensive privatized health care that’s not available to everybody. In the United States that absorbs 18% of GDP, more than any other country. That kind of monopoly overhead doesn’t leave much room for the overall economy to be competitive with mixed public/private economies.

Most important, if you let money and credit be privatized by banks instead of doing what China has done and keep money as a public utility, then you let banks decide where the economy’s credit will be allocated. That makes them the economy’s central planners. Their preference is to supply credit not to finance industrial investment and growth, but to finance debt-leveraging to inflate prices for real estate, stocks and bonds, and for raiders to take over companies and empty them out, leaving debt-ridden shells in their place. like Thames Water in Britain, Sears Roebuck in the United States. That is what has been happening since the 1980s under Thatcherism and Reaganomics.

So the split between the West and the rest of the world, the global majority, is really about what kind of an economy most of the world will have. That’s why the United States is fighting so viciously to maintain its unipolar control. It’s fighting against the global majority today in the same way that it fought against the Soviet Union after 1917. It doesn’t want a rival kind of economic system to develop. So what we’re seeing is a split with the global majority that is trying to decide how to design an economy that’s going to help their member countries grow? That is the global fracture that is occurring, and it’s a civilizational break.

How are Global South countries to grow if they remain obliged to pay all of the dollarized foreign debts that they’ve been loaded down. These debts are the legacy of being obliged to follow destructive International Monetary Fund advice to impose austerity and to privatize and sell off their assets in the public domain in order to obtain the dollars to pay their foreign creditors? The Western model is thus basically a form of financial colonialism. Its anti-government philosophy has devastated the Wes’s economies as well as those of debtor countries.

The rest of the world thus has an object lesson in what to avoid if it does not want to end up looking like the United States, post-Thatcher/Blair Britain or Germany since its anti-Russia sanctions of2022. I’ve discussed this in The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism (2022). Today’s civilizational break is not only against Russia and China. You can trace the break back to the Bandung Conference of non-aligned nations in 1955, seventy years ago.

In 1955, what was called the Third World or non-aligned nations recognized that they were being made poorer and poorer by the rules of the world economy that American diplomats and geopolitical strategists institutionalized with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the dollar standard. That international trade and monetary system was exploitative, first and foremost against America’s potential rivals in Britain and other European countries, and against the former colonial systems of these countries that the United States sought to appropriate and exploit for its own benefit.

The post-World War II order has been a new kind of imperialism. It basically is a financial imperialism, not the European-style colonial imperialism enforced by a military occupation. Financial control has proved less costly and hence more efficient for the neoliberal mode of international exploitation. Non-aligned victim countries couldn’t break away in 1954 or since because Cuba, Indonesia and the other non-aligned nations were not large enough to “go it alone.” If they tried to go it alone, they would have ended up looking like Venezuela has looked like in the last few years, or like Cuba looked like after its revolution. If the United Sates and Europe had imposed such sanctions, countries resisting this system would have been obliged to surrender to the West to avoid economic disruption. But sanctions were not even necessary at that time under “free market” imperialism U.S.-style.

The United States was in a position to treat countries resisting this exploitation it as outcasts. Its threat was to tell countries that acted to protect their economies, and especially their public enterprise, that the West would isolate them if they tried to go it alone. Their economies were indeed too small, even on a regional level, to survive on their own. They felt that they needed U.S. support and that of its IMF and World Bank.

What has changed is the remarkable growth of socialist China since the 1990s and post-neoliberal Russia since the late 1990s under President Putin. Today for the first time, Eurasian nations have enough economic self-sufficiency outside of the United States and Europe to be able to go it alone. They no longer need to depend on the NATO West, which is losing its ability to economically control them.

In fact, it’s the NATO West that has become dependent on China, Russia and the rest of Eurasia, along with the Global South if its people can resist their own client oligarchies to throw off their financial chains and adherence to the self-serving U.S. “rules-based order.”

What is so ironic is that U.S. diplomacy itself is spurring their break-away. One might have expected that China, the Global South and India, Latin America and Africa came to realize just how they’re being exploited, they would have taken the lead in breaking away. Yet it is the United States and NATO that have driven them to break away, by imposing trade and financial sanctions that have forced them to go it alone.

Ever since the war in Ukraine by the United States to break Germany and Europe away from their trade and investment relations with Russia and China began in 2022, the United States has mobilized its European and other English-speaking dependencies to impose economic sanctions that has devastated economies obeying these policies.

The backlash resulting from German de-industrialization and America’s elbowing aside France as an arms supplier (e.g., for submarine sales to AUKUS and in trying to replace France in its former African possessions) is driving other countries away. America and Europe have isolated themselves from the Global Majority, replacing its prosperous trade and investment with Russia and China with economic dependency on the United States for oil and other higher-priced imports.

What’s so amazing is how self-destructive of its own global empire U.S. diplomacy has been. The focus of U.S. diplomacy on locking in its control over Europe, Australia, Japan and South Korea by obliging them to join its anti-Russian and anti-Chinese sanctions has obliged these designated U.S. enemies to replacing trade dependency on the West with their own mutual self-dependency.

They realize that they can never depend on the United Stats and European satellites for imports again. That should have been obvious to U.S. strategists. Once a country is blocked from importing its food, what’s it going to do? It’s going to grow its own food. When the United States imposed sanctions on Russia to block European exports of food to it, for instance, Russia was driven to produce its own butter, crops and other food instead of importing it from the Baltics and other former suppliers.

When U.S. officials demanded that its allies stop exporting computer chips to China, it moved quickly to develop its own domestic supply.
Other countries can’t depend on the United States or Europe for their food because they may be cut off again. So they’ll have to become self-sufficient.

They can’t depend on the NATO West for industry or technology because it can try to disrupt their economy by interrupting their supply chains to force it to follow pro-NATO policies. As for Europe, it is left dependent on the United States now that it has let itself be isolated from Eurasia and the Global South.

The global fracture that is occurring in today’s world is not reversible. And it is all happening so quickly. Once a market is lost to countries able to free themselves and provide their own basic needs, that market is not recoverable.

If the United States and NATO Europe stops exporting food and industrial products to sanctioned countries, they will make these products themselves. So when you sanction a country, it’s as if you’ve provided them with tariff protection to nurture their own production. That’s the “infant industry” argument that enabled the United States to rise to industrial power in the late 19th century.

The logic was clearly spelled out by U.S. strategists. (I summarize this strategy in America’s Protective Takeoff: 1815-1914: The Neglected American School of Political Economy (2010). Needless to say, U.S. neoliberal rhetoric has sought to erase this history so as to “pull up the ladder” so that its logic will not be used by other countries to emulate the U.S. economic success – the same government sponsorship of industry that made Germany, France and other countries so successful since the 19th century.

Latin America and Africa are seeing that it is time to liberate their economic from “free-trade imperialism.” Instead of using their agricultural land to export plantation crops to the North, they’re going to use their land to begin feeding themselves with their own grain, their own rice and other food crops so that they no longer have to depend on American and European farm exports.

The U.S. policy of bullying countries by imposing trade sanctions has cut its own economic throat, so to speak. It’s almost humorous to see it dismantle the free-trade imperialism and dollar dependency that earlier generations of U.S. diplomacy tried so hard to impose on the rest of the world.

The meetings this year by the BRICS+ countries under Russian leadership this year and China next year are all about how to plan a trajectory for becoming independent from reliance on the West. That is what U.S. diplomacy itself has driven them to do.

Luca Placidi:
As you were saying, Professor, it seems like the TINA Paradigm has been destroyed because now we have alternatives. It seems that the European political class is hopelessly submissive to the U.S. agenda. This is really disturbing, at least for us in Europe, because the war in Ukraine has destroyed the European economy.

Just think, as you’ve described, how the impact of the sanctions has penalized industrial production especially in Germany and Italy. Yet this has not been enough for Europe to reverse course and pull out of this conflict.

Michael Hudson:
I think that you could call the war in Ukraine since 2022 an American war against Europe, because the great loser has been Germany, Italy, France and the rest of Europe. The United States has seen the writing on the wall and decided that if there’s going to be a fight between North America along with NATO against the rest of the world, it had better start by solidifying its control over Europe as a profitable market and debtor instead of its turning to Asia and being lost by the United States.

Essentially, U.S. strategists are acknowledging that they know that America is not able to produce a real industrial surplus anymore. Its neoliberal trade policy has outsourced its industry to Asia.

The only new market that it can secure if the Global Majority breaks away is that of Europe. That explains why the United States arranged for the Nord Stream pipeline to be blown up, and convinced Europe voluntarily to commit economic self-destruction by not buying low-priced Russian gas, oil and raw materials. While this has driven Russia and China together with their Asian neighbors, the losers have been European.

German industry has been moving out of the country to the United States and elsewhere for lower-cost energy. It’s been emigrating largely to the United States, making it the beneficiary. If you’re a German industrial company, what else are you going to do if its economy is shrinking.
If you look at labor productivity over the last hundred years, it’s goes parallel with energy use per worker.

Energy is really the key. That’s why a central aim of American foreign policy since 1945 has been to control other countries in two ways, starting with oil. The United States, along with Britain and Holland, have controlled the world oil trade so that they can turn off the electricity, turn off the lights of countries that try to break away and act in their own self-interest.

Along with oil, the second tactic that America has used is to control grain and food. Let independent countries starve in the dark. But here once again, the sanctions have mainly been to make Europe suffer.

Remember, America has fought against the European Economic Community ever since it was created in 1958. From the outset, America fought against the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). But for the EEC, the most important aim of integration was to protect its farmers and do for European agriculture what America had done for its agriculture.

Agricultural price supports enabled capital investment to raise farm productivity. Europe rationalized its agriculture and increased its capital investment to make it more productive. The result was that Europe has not only replaced its dependence on American food exports, but has become a major agricultural exporter. But now the expanded European Union is now suffering because of the sanctions not only against importing Russian gas to make fertilizer. And by supporting Ukraine, Europe is letting it dump its low-cost grain in Poland and other countries. Farmers already have staged riots to protest against their farm markets being undersold by the Ukrainians – with U.S. investors trying to buy up this land. That could roll back European agricultural independence and make it dependent once more on the United States or on countries that U.S. investors control.

The effect of this Cold War III so far has been to drive Europe back into the American orbit. The United States insists that there’s no alternative to this neoliberal geopolitics. Western textbooks indoctrinate students to believe that neoliberalism is the best way to run an economy efficiently – by not having a government to protect self-reliance and living standards, not to regulate against predatory monopoly and financial rent seeking. The aim is to let capitalism evolve into monopoly capitalism, which is really finance capitalism, because monopolies are organized by the financial sector as “the mother of trusts.”

Although the United States has said there’s no alternative, there obviously is. But if countries don’t follow an alternative, they’re going to end up looking like Germany. In fact, what’s happened to Europe as a result of the war in Ukraine and U.S. sanctions is an object lesson for other countries to see what they don’t want that to happen to them.

The neoliberal program has broken down in the West just as it has long since broken down for the Global South. Its central aim is to privatize the public sector. Yet for centuries the European capitalist takeoff was funded by industrial capitalists themselves aiming to lower the cost of production so that they could undersell other countries by government subsidy of tangible capital formation.

How can economies lower their cost of production? For starters, if companies are obliged to pay wages high enough for their workers to pay for their own health care and insurance, to pay for their own education, for their own debt-leveraged housing costs, the high price of paying a living wage will eat into industrial profits. To avoid this, European countries, like the United States, had their governments provide inexpensive basic needs so employers wouldn’t have to cover these costs.

The basic strategy of industrial capitalism was for governments to provide education, public health and basic infrastructure that otherwise would have been monopolized in private hands. Governments educated workers, trained them and helped raise their productivity by protecting and subsidizing capital investment. Governments provided water and electricity at subsidized rates so that labor would not have to spend its wages to buy high cost energy, high cost transportation and kindred basic needs.

The result was to lower the break-even costs of labor, so that European and American industrialists could undersell other countries.

Neoliberalism ended this seemingly obvious economic strategy. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan started a class war by the British and U.S. financial sectors against labor by privatizing their public utilities. Instead of England’s government providing clean water, which everybody needs to live, it sold off rent-seeking rights to financial managers raise prices to extract monopoly rents. To make matters worse, Thames Water and other privatized companies borrowed from banks and used the money to pay dividends to stockholders and buy their own stock to raise its prices to reap capital gains.

These rentier charges are now taking a big chunk out of the European wage earner’s budget. That makes employers pay higher wages. You can say the same thing for telephone service and other basic infrastructure utilities that now are privatized and financialized.

Privatizing formerly subsidized telephone service and communications makes workers pay much more. The result is a wage squeeze, but also a profit squeeze because of the high cost of living and doing business in a rentier economy.

So since 1980, the whole European model – in fact, the whole model of industrial capitalism – has been reversed. Instead of industrial capitalism trying to cut the costs of production, minimizing what Marx called the false costs, the faux frais of production, prices charged by privatized infrastructure monopolies have gone way up. Labor’s living standards throughout Europe have been squeezed at the same time that their wages have had to be increased so that they can afford to pay for privatized services that used to be subsidized public services. Following the neoliberal model has made Europe uncompetitive, just as it has deindustrialized the U.S. economy.

The lesson for China has been to have socialism to restore the 19th-century industrial ethic that nearly all economic observers believed was leading to socialism of one kind or another. China’s living standards have soared, yet its wages are lower than that of the neoliberal economies thanks to the fact that socialism provides inexpensive transportation, public health care and so forth as described above.

Most important of all, socialist China creates its own money and controls its credit system. Instead of the Bank of China lending money to financial predators to buy companies and load them down with debt and drive their stock prices before leaving them as bankrupt shells like Thames Water in England, the government spends money directly into the economy.

It’s overinvested in housing and real estate, to be sure, but it’s also invested in modernizing its high-speed railroads, modernizing its communication system, modernizing its cities, and above all its electronic internet system used for monetary payments. China has liberated itself from debt dependency on the West – and in the process, made the West dependent on it.

This could only have been done by government investment and regulation under a long-term plan. The Western financial model lives in the short run. If you’re going to allocate credit and resources to make fortunes by living in the short run by taking as much as you can as quickly as you can, you will not be able to make the capital investment to develop long-term growth. That’s why American information technology companies have not been able to keep up with their Chinese counterparts. Financialized “market forces” oblige them to use their income for stock buybacks and to pay out of dividends. That is the case with U.S. technology across the board.

China’s companies investing in information and internet technology plow their profits back into reinvestment in more research and development. Such innovation has shifted from the West to the East, which has rediscovered the logic of industrial capitalism developed by the 19th century’s classical political economists.

To be sure, China and other BRICS+ countries are trying to reinvent the wheel. They know that the Western model doesn’t work. The question is, what is the best alternative to neoliberalized, privatized and financialized economies?

It is amazing to me that there has been so little discussion of classical economics in the West. The value, price and rent theory of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and their contemporaries came to a head with Marx. That has left almost the only people talking about industrial capitalism’s economic reforms have been Marxists. Universities in America no longer teach the history of economic thought – or economic history, for that matter. It is as if there is only one kind of economy – the anti-government privatized “free market” that has taken over since the 1980s.

Students are taught that there is only one way to run an economy: the free enterprise neoliberal way. So when Asian and African countries send their students to the United States or England to study, they’re not taught about how industrial capitalism took off by raising wages and living standards to make labor more productive. Instead, the learn the economics of class war – from the employer’s short-term view.

Neoliberal trade theory is the most blatant example of today’s junk economics being awarded by Nobel Prizes as if that can somehow legitimize it. The result is the International Monetary Fund’s austerity plan masquerading as “stabilization plans.” Once a country like Argentina or Chile runs up a foreign debt, it is directed to obtain the money to pay this foreign debt by imposing anti-labor policies, dissolving labor unions, lowering wage levels while taxing labor (“consumers”) more, as if pauperized labor will make them competitive enough to earn enough export income to pay their foreign creditors.

When a policy like this has been shown to be destructive for the past century yet is still being imposed, it’s obvious that this is not an innocent error. You might call it a very successful error. It has succeeded in preventing the Global South from earning its way out of debt and from developing is own self-sufficiency in food and other basic needs. It has succeeded in creating domestic client oligarchies whose interests are to become agents of this Western NATO-centered model instead of seeking to develop their own economies.

It is to avoid this destiny that today’s geopolitical breakaway by the global majority in Asia, Africa and Latin America are moving to replace the finance-capitalist model. Their move to reinvent the wheel is following the logic of the original industrial capitalist takeoff that was evolving into socialism. If you look back to the late 19th century’s flowing of classical political economy, not only by Marx but by political parties across the political spectrum, we can see that there was going to be socialism of one kind or another.

What kind of socialism is it going to be? There was Christian socialism, libertarian socialism, Marxian socialism and other kinds of socialism. This classical literature and political debate was rich, but it came to an end with World War I. That was a disastrous turning point in Western civilization.

The rentier classes, the landlords, the monopolists and the bankers had been fighting back against the industrial reforms that were happening in the most advanced industrial economies of Europe and the United States. The wealthy elites were terrified that support for these reforms would lead in Europe to a revolution like that created Soviet Russia. The West was even more terrified of what seemed to be happening in Germany that was looking like it was likely to go socialist.

The vested rentier interests, especially the wealthiest classes, feared that this threatened to end the ability of a wealthy financial oligarchy of the One Percent, maybe even five percent of the population. For the past century it has built up its financial wealth by forcing the rest of the economy into debt. The result has been a social malaise as Western populations in the United States and Europe, have come to believe that There Is No Alternative.

The lack of an alternative has enriched the One Percent. The U.S. economy has polarized, and so has Europe’s economies. The wealth of Europe, Italy included, has been sucked up to the very top, to the financial layer that has taken control of economic planning and public policy as if their privatized self-interest is more productive and efficient than an alternative that would raise labor’s living standards and self-reliance.

Financial elites throughout the world are a cosmopolitan class. It’s not only wealthy Italians but wealthy Europeans, wealthy Americans draining money from their own industrial sectors, the agricultural and the commercial sector. This stateless international class has its law of motion in its drive to force the entire global economy into debt so as to use its debt leverage to foreclose, above all on the assets of the public sector by getting governments into debt.

Backed by the IMF, World Banks and U.S. courts, international bondholders (including domestic oligarchies keeping their wealth outside of their own countries) force debtor governments to sell off public infrastructure. In the case of corporate debt, creditors foreclose on companies and break them into parts.

This behavior has de-industrialized the United States and Britain. Yet while the economies of the United States and Europe have gotten poorer and poorer, the wealthiest One Percent have got richer and richer. That’s why the United States and Europe have not joined the Global Majority but are trying to fight against its demonstration that there is a better alternative for civilization.

The NATO West’s ruling elites have overplayed their hand. By treating the rest of the world as an enemy for resisting U.S.-sponsored control, this diplomacy has driven other countries together to create an alternative. That alternative involves creating alternative institutions to the International Monetary Fund in a BRICS central bank to deal with inter-government balance of payments relations.

It involves a new Bank for Economic Acceleration as an alternative to the World Bank, a bank to finance their own economic development by creating its own credit system to the global majority increase its infrastructure, agricultural and industrial investment. It also requires a new International Court of Justice to prevent oil companies and mining companies from polluting countries and resist being charged to pay for the cleanup costs that they’ve caused in their drive for quick natural-resource rents.

Ultimately, the Global Majority needs to create an alternative to the United Nations itself. All these institutions – the United Nations, the IMF and the World Bank – are subject to American veto power. The United States has long announced that a central tenet of its foreign policy is that it will not join any institution that it can’t control by vetoing if they do something that does not benefit the United States.

In the last few days, President Putin has proposed creation of a BRICS parliament. The aim is to create a large group of countries that will design a new set of the rules of how an international economy should work. President Putin also said that the United Nations has a good set of rules, but the United States has vetoed their application in practice. The fact that the United Nations doesn’t have an army has left it powerless to resist the U.S., Ukrainian and Israeli violations of basic international law.

This emerging alternative BRICS group certainly will leave the United Nations to operate on the sidelines, but the “real” reformed United Nations will consist of the group of the global majority and its own set of institutions, acting as a unit in which the United States does not have veto power. That will transform the dynamic of how most of the world’s economies operate.

All this is an area that economists don’t talk about. Academic economics has become tunnel visioned, with simplistic ideas of government spending, inflation, money and credit, all without a concept of economic rent as unearned income to be minimized rather than made the foundation for financial fortunes.

The Western dynamic of “wealth creation” has been to raise real estate prices on credit. The middle class is told that it is getting richer as its housing prices rise, yet the effect is to prevent new wage-earners from joining the middle class unless they inherit their housing from their parents. The economic discipline no longer talks about how a country can actually enrich itself. So what the Global Majority needs is really a New Economics,

Luca Placidi:
Thank you, Professor. There’s one other topic that is very important and that we are seeing at this moment. That is what is happening in Palestine, between Palestine and Israel and the war that they call “against Hamas” while they seek to drive out or destroy the entire Palestinian population.

Michael Hudson:
When politicians from the United States to Germany and other European countries talk about the Ukrainian war or what is happening to Palestinians right now, there is a uniform a bipartisan alignment. Trump is saying what Biden is saying, and so is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. That is to support Israel up to the end, and also Ukraine.

Yet the whole world has been shocked by the genocide that the Israelis are waging not only in Gaza but on the West Bank. Their brutality, the bombing of the hospitals, the assassination of reporters and journalists so that the world can’t see what is happening has catalyzed the world’s moral outrage that is setting its identity against that of the NATO West.

The attack against Palestinians is with American bombs, just as is the case with Ukraine’s and NATO’s attack on Russian-speaking territories. So it’s not simply Israel that is attacking Palestine. This is primarily an American attack. You can think of it as a logical extension of the U.S. attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria.

The common denominator is the American view that Israel serves as a U.S. landed aircraft carrier to control Near Eastern oil. If the United States can maintain control of the Middle East and its oil trade, it will retain the power to turn off the power of other countries by cutting them off from oil. As I explained earlier, oil has been a key to American power for the past century.

That is the military reason why the United States is backing Israel in dropping American bombs on Gaza, while the U.S. intelligence spy network is telling them where to bomb. American strategists have long followed the strategy that in order to win, you have to bomb the hospitals first.

The idea is not simply to kill the enemy population, but to cripple its members with anti-personal bombs to leave a lasting overhead cost in supporting women and men who are maimed for life. And most important is to bomb the children, so that they will not grow up to wreak retaliation.

The idea of making other Palestinians take care of crippled children who had their legs blown off or lost their arms is so inhuman, so against the most basic principle of civilization, that it has acted as a catalyst for other countries breaking away.

On July 25, 2024, Israeli President Netanyahu was invited to the U.S. Congress to ask for its military support for his planned attack on Lebanon and his hope to drag America into an attack on Iran. He put the issue in a way that I think you and I can agree on: Having killed or wounded as many as 180,000 Palestinians in Gaza and accelerated settler murders and destruction of Palestinians and their property on the West Bank, he explained that, in words reminiscent of Rosa Luxemburg: “This is not a clash of civilizations, it’s a clash between barbarism and civilization, between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.”

I think that this is precisely what is at stake. Netanyahu and his neocon supporters in the U.S. Congress who invited him indeed have thrown down the military gauntlet threatening the world with yet new U.S. and Israeli violence against the Middle Eastern oil-producing countries.

Today’s buildup to such a war threatens the entire world with a new barbarism.

There already was a sort of tendency for the rest of the world, for Asia and the Global South to hope that somehow they could make do without making the enormous intellectual and moral break from the West. The feeling was that somehow they could survive through all this at least for the short run, as if things might somehow go back to some semblance of normal instead of continuing to polarize.

But what is happening in Israel the joint Israel-American attack on Palestine has shocked much of the world into realizing that this is what the United States might to do them, just as it’s what the US/NATO countries are doing to by fighting to the last Ukrainian. U.S. support for exterminating the Palestinians simply in order to use Israel as an arm to keep U.S. control of Middle Eastern oil is what is so abhorrent.

What is not to stop the Israelis from taking over Saudi Arabia and its oil, the Emirates, Kuwait, much as America did in Chile and Argentina to take over their minerals and land while assassinating labor leaders, land reformers and economics professors opposing Chicago School neoliberalism. The joint Israel and Ukraine wars have given a sense of urgency for other countries to realize that they have to act now in order to avoid a similar fate.

Other countries can’t simply be passive, because what is happening to the Palestinians can happen to all of them. That’s the degree to which Americans will go to maintain their global control. That’s why they are funding the Israeli attack on Palestine and the Ukrainian attack on Russian speakers. The Americans are providing the bombs and other weaponry, subsidizing their armies. This is what is creating the sense of urgency that is catalyzing the World Majority to realize that they can’t must act more rapidly and decisively to make a real break.

Luca Placidi:
Professor, I know that you’re extremely busy, so thank you very much. I want to thank you again, and I hope to have more time with you to go deeper on those topics. Thank you.

Michael Hudson:
Well, thank you. I hope we’ll have a chance to have a follow-up for all of this.

Luca Placidi:
We will, absolutely. Thank you very much.

Michael Hudson:
Well, thank you again for having me.

Preppy Tonk and Jon

Submitted into Contest #24 in response to: Write a story set in the dark recesses of space where the two main characters are often at odds with each other in humorous and comedic ways. view prompt

Charlie Murphy

Preppy Tonk looked at her rival with an evil twinkle in her eye.“What?”“Nothing.”“I see that evil twinkle in your eye again.”“No. It must be the burning hot sun reflecting off your chromed head.”“Nuh-uh.”“Yeah- huh,” Preppy Tonk shot back.“Whatever, lets continue.“King to knight rook.”The purple slug looked down at the holographic chess board. “Poopy-doodles, you win again!”“Yaysies-daisies!””If this was Earth Chess, I’d kick your butt!” Jon exclaimed, wiggling his fat, dripping eyestalks.“Yeah, but the author doesn’t know how to play chess and that would require research and he’s too lazy.”“Yeah, I guess you’re right, but you’re still a silly.” Jon stuck his slimy purple tongue out.“Am not!”“Are too!”“Am not!”“Are too!”

“Well, let’s have a trace then.”

“Trace?”

“No, a race! Goddamn u, author. Fix your typos!”

“Yeah, you ready, Enourghipool… er, Preppy Tonk?”

“You know it, Jon!” she said and stretched her furry brown legs.

“Your silver eyes look like pools of mercury.”

“Thanks? I guess?” Crouching down in racing position, Preppy Tonk lifted her leg.

“Did you, make a stinky?”

“Yes, … I… did!”

‘”It smells like rotten eggs.”

Preppy Tonk’s face turned red.

“You made a stinky, you made a stinky!”

“Whatever.”

“Ready…” Jon announced as a star shot through space.

Preppy Tonk’s muscles tensed up.

“Set…”

“I know what comes next!” Preppy Oblanka Tonk smiled.

“Go!” Jon whispered.

“Run!”

“Jump!”

“Kick!”

“Touch the stars!”

“Look into the sun!”

“How? I’m blind.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Why did you claim you were blind then?”

“Cuz I’m goofy!”

“But you’re not a hobo dog.”

“Goofy isn’t a hobo.”

“Oh , what is he?”

“A goofy dog, duh!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I know these things,” Preppy Tonk whipped her huge head back with confidence.

“Oh, so you’re a professional now?”

“Yeppers.”

“Good grief!”

“Oxymoron, oxymoron, oxymoron!”

“Hey, that’s not nice!”

“No, an oxymoron is contradictory terms.”

“Oh, why is it called that then?”

“I don’t know. Do I look like an English professor?”

“I’m not sure how to take that…”

The two rivals panted as they ran throughout space. They passed an orange planet, then a blue one made of hot dogs, and finally, Earth.

“Stop describing everything!”

“Who are you talking to, sis?” Jon asked as a drifting robotic Golden retriever passed in between them.

“Our creator again. He keeps describing the scene,” Preppy Tonk replied.

“Isn’t he supposed to do that?”

“Yeah, but it’s getting annoying!”

“So? We’re competing against each other. That’s more important, right?”

“I guess so,” Preppy Tonk said, biting her blue puffy lip.

“Atta girl,” Jon replied and patted her on the back.

“Hey, how can you pat me on my back? I thought you were ahead of me.”

“Uh… I forgot that explanation.”

“Did you?… or did the author forget?”

“I have no cosmic idea, Preppy Tonk.”

“I thought you knew everything.” She raised an eyebrow.

Preppy Tonk glared at her opponent.

“You know, for an alien slug, you sure are fast!”

“Hmm, alien slug…. Where have I heard that before?”

“Maybe in a book about kids who can turn into animals?” shrugged Preppy Tonk.

“Almost at the finish line!” Jon said with glee.

“How can you tell?” Preppy Tonk asked, putting her hairy claws together.

“Checkered line coming up!” Jon pointed straight ahead with his slimy antennae.

“Oh, just cuz there’s a checkered line means the end of the race?” Preppy Tonk said, putting her paws on her brown meaty hips.

“Yes that’s the rule,” Jon said, adjusting his squared glasses.

“Well… OK,” Preppy Tonk said as she scratched her ear.

“Have an itch?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I have an itch, too.”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Yeah-uh!” Jon said, passing a large pink asteroid.

“Well, then, where’s your itch, huh?”

“I don’t want to say.”

“Ew.”

“OK, OK, it’was my arm,” Jon smiled.

“Oh, that’s not bad.”

“It itches more than yours,” Jon said, scratching his arm.

“Nuh-uh, mine itches more.”

“Let’s finish the race!” Preppy Tonk exclaimed.

Jon ran through a hoop, jumped over the fence, and hauled through lava.

“I win! I win!” Preppy Tonk did the macarena.

“You cheated.” Jon pouted.

“No, I didn’t!

“Yes, you did!”

“No, I didn’t.”

“OK, I believe you,” Jon said.

“Knock knock,” Preppy Tonk whispered.

“Who’s there?” Jon asked.

“Dwayne.”

“Dwayne who?”

“Dwayne the bathtub, I’m dwowning!”

Jon laughed like a hyena. “Mine’s better!”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, a duck walked into a bar and ordered some quackers. When the waiter asks her how she will pay, the duck says ‘put it on my bill.’”

“Not funny at all, my rival.”

“Humor is subjective, so I win!” Jon blew a raspberry at her.

“How old are you?” asked Poppy Tonk.

“I am an adult.”

“Cool, I’m a kid.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really!”

“Prove it.”

“How?”

“Sing baa baa black sheep.” Preppy Tonk started singing.

“You have a beautiful voice!”

“And?”

“And what?”

“AREN’T YOU GONNA SING?”

“No, why would I do that?”

“I thought we were competing,” Preppy Tonk said and sneezed.

“Oh, yeah, goofy me. I forgot. By the way. Bless you or gazoontite, or whatever.”

“Thanks, wait… Goofy?”

“The author‘s getting tired of ‘silly’.”

“But, he used it.”

Preppy Tonk shrugged. “It’s his story.”

“Oh, OK.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I like that word very much!”

“I do too, but let’s move on.”

“Alright, wanna have a tickle fight?”

“You know I do!”

She tickled his foot. “Geetsa-geetsa… Hey, look, a tree; it’s floating in space,” Preppy Tonk said and floated to it and she giggled. “Stop.” Grabbed an apple. “This will knock your socks off!” She started juggling.

“Oh yeah?” Jon said as he cocked an eyebrow. “Watch this!” He grabbed the tree and shook it until every apple detached and floated into space.

“Impressive?”

“Thank you. I’m the King.”

“King of what?”

“King of Apple!”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, really.”

“Well, I‘m the Queen of Blueberry Squash Pie.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Wanna keep going?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“We made it to the thousandth word!”

When I was about 13, a lady a block over (someone I didn’t know but lived on the same street as other people that I babysat) wanted me to babysit her 8 or 9 yo son 3 days a week over the summer while she worked. The first day was MISERABLE and I told her I wasn’t coming back.

The kid was unmedicated ADHD with no accommodations/schedule/discipline in place. He was a Tasmanian devil – literally bounced off walls, jumped on/hit/kicked you if you said no to something, was destructive to everything. The kids on his block (the ones I babysat for) refused to play with him b/c he was too rough (and these were rough and tumble kids – 7 kids close in age, but they had awareness and empathy for others).

From what I learned later, he’d been kicked out of every camp and daycare that she enrolled him in and school was pretty close. How this mother thought that an 8th grader would be able to handle him for 9 hours every day is beyond me.

I took him to the park where he pushed kids off swings and down the slide rather than wait his turn. We left the park and he proceeded to run into the street b/c he was mad that I said we had to leave b/c of his behavior, after he hit and kicked me when I was holding his hand.

He threw his lunch around the house and smashed it into the carpet, tore up a board game, threw the neighbor kids’ (my usually charges) ball down the gutter when we went outside b/c they didn’t want to play with him, tossed a blanket over me from the indoor jungle gym they had in the basement and jumped on me repeatedly, and so much more!

Then mom was 2 hours later than she said she would be and hadn’t answered the phone when I called. I was exhausted and done.

She paid less per hour than most of the other parents paid for nighttime babysitting when the kids were asleep and then only paid me for the hours she scheduled me for, not the extra hours since she was late. When she got home, I said that I wouldn’t be coming back and wouldn’t recommend anyone.

Now I know that this kid could not control himself and we didn’t have as much information as we have today on ADHD, but the parents were decidedly the problem in this equation – there’s only so much a young teenage kid can do.

ETA: I should mention that this was probably 1991 or 1992 – I don’t remember if it was the summer before or after 8th grade.

I am a Chinese citizen who also happens to be a content creator on both Quora and Zhihu. Zhihu, often referred to as the Chinese version of Quora, once had a similar UI layout and community atmosphere to Quora. As of July 27, 2024, I have around 14,000 followers on Zhihu. This is because I have shared over 500 answers on family education and adolescent learning issues over the past year. While 14,000 followers is not a number to boast about, it at least indicates that I am a dedicated Zhihu user.

However, if we look solely at the growth rate of followers, my follower count on Quora has increased significantly faster than on Zhihu. This month marks my third month of writing on Quora, though my writing has been occasionally interrupted by work. For instance, I took a break from Quora writing for the past 14 days due to a family trip. Despite this, I have gained 1,200 followers and accumulated 1.5 million views. I am quite satisfied with these numbers, especially considering my limited English proficiency and reliance on translation tools for complex sentence structures. I can only attribute this success to the large number of friendly users on Quora. They are willing to read my articles about Chinese life, tolerate my poor English, and often put up with sentences that have a machine-translated feel. Nonetheless, they encourage me and provide detailed feedback and suggestions.

Even some users who are biased against China have written lengthy comments on my posts. Although I often completely disagree with their views, I still find their input valuable. Writing lengthy critiques at least shows they are real, communicative individuals rather than bot accounts. Therefore, I also want to express my gratitude to those who criticize me.

In this regard, the community atmosphere on Quora is better than on Zhihu. Zhihu’s official policies seem more focused on directing traffic towards profitable content. Of course, I do earn some income from my writing on Zhihu each month. However, this profit-driven community model brings some issues. The main problem, in my view, is that genuine, selfless sharing rarely gets sufficient traffic, which discourages many high-value users. It’s hard to imagine a community that doesn’t encourage serious writing being favored by knowledgeable individuals.

My most popular article on Zhihu received 60,000 “upvotes” and was bookmarked 130,000 times, bringing me millions of views. But I consider this an anomaly. In many cases, I need to rely on luck rather than writing quality to gain significant traffic distribution on Zhihu.

Chinese commercial apps are involved in intense market competition, and most users’ leisure time is consumed by short videos or live streaming. Fewer people are reading text content. While I know Quora is also affected by this trend, the impact is more pronounced on Zhihu.

To my surprise, I found that some older users on Quora seriously read my articles and give enthusiastic responses. I am flattered by this. In China, many elderly people are stubborn and never admit their mistakes, leading to many family conflicts and hindering young couples from establishing good family relationships. Moreover, those over 70 in China were teenagers during the tumultuous period between the end of the ROC and the establishment of the PRC, making them almost illiterate.

However, the elderly users on Quora seem to remain passionate about understanding others’ perspectives and updating their knowledge. Just from their writing, it is hard to tell they are seniors. This has given me the best impression of elderly people in developed countries since I joined Quora. I am convinced this is a state only achievable in a highly developed society. In China, we may need to wait a few more years to reach this level.

Additionally, some Quora space administrators have invited me to join their spaces and share my articles, encouraging me to keep writing. It has been many years since I felt this kind of sincere interaction on the internet, where people come together out of interest rather than profit.

In summary, I will continue writing about parent-child relationships and adolescent learning issues on Zhihu. There are always people waiting for my writing, drawing inspiration from my words, and solving their life problems. I take pride in helping others.

At the same time, I will also continue writing on Quora because it allows me to experience the genuine interactions of the early internet days.

If I had to compare, I would say Quora is a community that cares more about its creators than Zhihu.

China Just Won the Future of South America With THIS New Move!

BRICS+ plus BRI

Back when I was an eleven-year-old in the 6th grade, I lived in a poor mountain community in Northern California. Most of the townspeople relied on the lumber mill to provide for their meager income. There were a lot of people barely scraping by on what little money came in.

Times were tough.

A lot of times the mill shut down and families were forced to move out of town to find employment elsewhere.

I lost a lot of friends that way.

Kids went hungry. There were a lot of skinny children up in those mountains. A lot of those kids were wearing shoes with holes in them.

In the snow.

Desperate times.

Judge Richard Eaton was an “old-timer” in Shasta County. A pioneer. He was an octogenarian with a kind heart and a flush bank account. He married my grandparents!

He was an avid outdoorsman and angler. He enjoyed coming up to the mountains to fish. Sometimes, he would stop by our small classroom and give nature lectures.

He would bring in a stuffed raccoon, or a taxidermied owl and set it up on a desk in front of the class and give his talks. We would sit wide-eyed, fascinated, listening to him describe how the animal hunted for food, or built a nest or comfortable burrow, warm enough to survive during the winter snows. He was a natural storyteller and had a way with words.

We would raise our little hands and ask question after question, enthralled and intrigued with his wisdom. We were always thrilled to have Judge Eaton stop by. We hugged him goodbye when it was time for him to leave. I’d see his wrinkled face break into a big grin as tears welled up in his eyes, hard to break away.

I could feel his pity for us skinny little waifs.

One day, a letter was sent home to all the parents in my class.

It said we had the opportunity to attend National Environmental Education Development (N.E.E.D) Camp for one week at no charge to the parents!

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main qimg b8be3374b52ad9d7f80d5169dfc93cb3 lq

This was an expensive gift to attend a weeklong camping adventure, what with meals, transportation, insurance and staff provided for an entire crop of school children!

The generous gift of partial scholarship, provided by Judge Richard Eaton, in cooperation with the Shasta County Board of Education, made it a possibility for every single child to attend, no matter their financial circumstance!

Exciting news!

N.E.E.D Camp was a place where the kids learned about the environment; survival skills in the wilderness, wildlife, geology, ecology, plant identification, weaving fish traps and shelter building, as well as learning how to use a compass and reading topographical maps. It was all covered in the week-long school.

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main qimg 60426f1c6cf7e09ae5f44f171a7011a6 lq

Before we left for camp, we were given a three- day supply of “ImmunOak” in our daily orange juice. Poison oak didn’t grow in the mountains, but was plentiful at N.E.E.D Camp. Back in those days, the FDA hadn’t yet banned the magic elixir, so I drank down my disgusting anti-venin like a good girl, and to this day, thirty-something years later, I still am immune to poison oak!

The day we departed, we were packed into a bus with all our gear, kids, teachers and high school counselors, and made the hour-and-a-half long journey to the camp. We arrived at camp, got our cabin assignments, and settled in for our first time away from home.

Goodbye Mommy!

It was great!

We caught tadpoles and learned about their development. We hiked seven mile loops, through caves (filled with bats) and over waterfalls, collecting specimens to write our reports in the field, amidst trickling creeks and wildflowers. We took water samples from the natural watershed and observed fish in the streams as we tried our hand at catching some in our homemade traps.

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main qimg 9c5014fceabd1ba828dcda64736c07d0 lq

We didn’t have any luck.

We watched the deer feeding on the grass right outside our cabin, and learned to identify species of birds. We glassed bald eagles and spied on squirrels and raccoons.

We were even dropped off, solo, without a light, on a pitch-black trail one dark night, and had to hike back, in the dark woods, alone, to find our way back to the rest of the group by ourselves. Frightening!

I was proud of myself that I didn’t cry.

This is stuff “city kids” don’t learn about in the classroom.

This wasn’t any regular classroom!

Judge Eaton spoke at the camp. He gave a slideshow on bears. It scared me to know I was out in the dark with them. It also made me proud. I learned survival skills at a very young age from N.E.E.D Camp.

Afterwards, while he was packing up his projector and the other kids had finally moved away from him, I got up the nerve to approach this gray-haired icon.

I said hello and introduced myself. I told him my grandparents names and told him he had married them long ago. He pretended to remember. He smiled at me kindly.

I thanked him for giving me a scholarship to attend N.E.E.D Camp. I told him I had learned so much and that I was very appreciative.

His eyes got wide and he looked shocked. He pulled me into a hug and knelt before me, eye-level.

“Child, in all these years I’ve been providing this fund, you’re the first young person to say those words. I appreciate hearing them, but I always want you to remember, that whenever you give a gift, you should never, ever expect to hear a word of thanks in return. Ever! Because the gift is in the giving, itself. Not in the praise we receive for giving it. Do not expect to be congratulated for it. Do you understand me?”

I nodded my head and turned away, disappointed in the rebuff.

What a weird, old guy!

Of course, I didn’t understand him, then.

I was only a child.

But I thought back to that moment over the years, and one day, I finally caught up to his wisdom.

I understand perfectly what he means now.

Beautiful.

Those simple words changed me forever.

When I give a gift, I don’t expect to receive accolades or thanks. I don’t expect the recipient to express gratitude or overwhelming graciousness; my heart already feels thankful for the beautiful blessing I’ve bestowed. And that’s a gift in itself. A gift I’ve given to myself.


By the time I had made it to high school, I had garnered such respect for N.E.E.D Camp, that I went back and volunteered as a camp counselor when I was seventeen.

Somehow, I was assigned a cabin of little boys, instead of girls.

Those little guys were a handful, but it was a great experience all over again.

Today, it is part of the curriculum of most Shasta County schools for their students to attend the camp. It is a requirement as part of passing the grade level.

Over 70,000 students have attended the camp over the years and have acquired basic outdoor skills other students in classrooms throughout the USA will never be required, nor even think are important to learn about!

Because those students aren’t mountain kids.

They probably don’t need to worry about being lost in any area bigger than a mall!

Like we do.

I’m thankful to both Judge Eaton and the Shasta County Board of Education for making a difference. N.E.E.D Camp quite possibly played a part in saving my life later on in life. And the experience changed me forever.

The Record Searchlight (April 11, 2011)

Since 1971, more than 70,000 students have increased their knowledge of environmental science after going through the weeklong camping experience at the Whiskeytown Environmental School in the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the school will host a free barbecue with live music and a history lecture Saturday.

Sponsored by the school and the Shasta Historical Society, the lecture will cover topics of interest before the school arrived amid the environmental revolution in the beginning of the 1970s. Clinton Kane, park ranger, will be the main speaker.

As a general campground in the mid-1900s, church youth groups seasonally used the area for a camp. Before this period, the land served as a stomping ground for the American Indian community. The history, Kane said, has yet to be fully recovered. “It’s still a work in progress in terms of learning about the history and putting it together,” he said. “I’d like to go as far back as to the mining use of the history, but it’s kind of sparse.”

During the Gold Rush era, the area became a major transportation route for miners heading toward Weaverville from Redding. Inside the park, miners, along with farmers and ranchers, worked on the mining hot spots during the 1850s.

The school, a National Environmental Education Development (N.E.E.D.) camp, specializes in improving environmental education for elementary and middle schoolchildren. “Facilities and institutions like the N.E.E.D. camp provide a special dimension to the youth of our community,” said Pat Carr, Shasta Historical Society lecture series coordinator. “Oftentimes, they aren’t going to get it in the classroom. This is an opportunity to take the classroom outdoors. And the fact that this has been going on for 40 years with 70,000 students makes us appreciate these extraordinary treasures that are in our mist.”

Fifth- and sixth-graders across several counties make reservations at the school for the overnight trips where students stay in cabins and enjoy campfires. During their stay, they build onto what they’ve learned of the environment in the classroom with hands-on activities with naturalists. This usually lasts a week. The school offers day camps for younger children starting at the kindergarten level.

With generations of children and later their children heading to the camp, Kane said it has become somewhat of a tradition for north state students.

“It’s kind of a tradition in Northern California,” he said. “But, unfortunately, with the budget crisis happening on the state and federal level, we don’t know if the school will continue as it did back in the day.”

A downward economy and budget cuts have decreased revenue for educational programs like this one. Whiskeytown may be one of the few N.E.E.D. camps left in the country, Kane said.

  1. Good posture. If you look at how upper class people walk, they stand perfectly straight and have a graceful swing to their step.
  2. Being very respectful with staff, waiters, taxi drivers etc.
  3. Eating all sorts of different food and not being fussy about food. This is a very tell tale sign again, someone who’s reluctant about trying new food or has never tried foreign food is usually not upper class.
  4. Being able to make small talk with basically anyone. This is an important skill to have and that we’ve learned by attending a lot of formal events.
  5. Having impeccable table manners. This is the ultimate test and it will betray you instantly. Sitting up straight, no elbows on the table, knowing which cutlery to use, keeping your voice down etc. If you want to know within the very first seconds, look at whether they have put their napkin on their lap (correct) or left it on the table (rude) immediately after sitting down to eat. EDIT: Other table manners include: Not spreading out your elbows (keep them closed at all times), no singing, bringing your spoon/fork to your mouth and not the opposite, not cutting potatoes or salad with a knife (you fold the salad and use your fork to cut the potato), making small talk with your right hand neighbour at a dinner (they’re your official conversation buddy and the table plan will probably have been set up with this in mind) and not having a young or newly married couple sitting right next to each other during a formal dinner. An old fashioned one is also not to peel any fruits with your hands. One of my mom’s friends often mentions how, during her first dinner with her in laws, they offered her a peach for dessert and watched expectantly to see if she would know how to peel it using only her fork and knife.
  6. NOT doing the “baisemain”. You know, that very supposedly classy way of greeting a woman by kissing her hand. There are very strict rules for when you are allowed to do it. It should be in a private environment and to greet a married lady only. Oh and your lips are not supposed to actually touch the hand. Otherwise it is considered very tacky and rude.
  7. Not asking huge favours from other people. This is a weird one but it’s a “faux pas” that I notice all around me. It is not upper class behaviour at all to ask too much of a big favour from other people. You can ask someone to send you their notes for example, but don’t ask them to bring them to your place or type them out for you because they’re handwritten. Basically any favour that makes things too convenient for you and too much of an inconvenience for the other person is a no no.
  8. Not showing off your money or luxury goods. It is not considered classy to wear anything that features the name or logo of a brand in a very ostentatious way. That is “Nouveau Riche” behaviour. Being upper class is all about being understated. That also applies to luxury hotels and exotic holidays. We don’t post about it on social media.
  9. Being agreeable, polite and social. One of the most important things my mother taught me when I was a kid is that being shy is not an excuse for being rude. And it is definitely something that will make it very obvious whether you had an upper class upbringing or not. When you are talking to someone you know and a friend joins you but your interlocutor does not know them, you interrupt your conversation and introduce them, then make an effort to help them integrate the conversation. This might sound basic to a lot of you but I’ve noticed a lot of my middle class friends fail that test. Keeping to your own at social events is also not acceptable. Not thanking your host after a meal is not acceptable. Basically, get over your shyness.
  10. It’s about experiences, not goods. Upper class people are well travelled, have done internships abroad, are doing all sorts of different activities outside of school, go to summer camps and are not afraid of taking risks.
  11. They won’t tell you they’re upper class. Bragging about your social status is, again, Nouveau Riche behaviour.

Some MM art constructions

The theme is anointing,,,

@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(16)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(16)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(16)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(16)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(13)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(13)
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@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(11)
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@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(10)
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@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(7)

This next one is my favorite of the entire bunch.

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@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(4)

Don’t look at the headlines

Look at what they are saying in the paragraphs

They are saying China can never go back to the days of higher growth

They are saying that China cannot go back to 12–14% growth that it had for a decade or so

The Headlines say Chinas Economy can’t Recover

Yet when to look at what RECOVERY MEANS, it’s always the old days of 12–14% growth


The Headlines are always misleading

China slowdown woes continue

This is the headline

Yet if you see slowdown, it always references to 2015/16 and comparisons

The common theme is China which once grew with double digits can’t grow beyond 5% a year today

It’s true of EVERY ECONOMY ON EARTH

The US has been growing at 1.5% – 2.5% a year for a long time whereas it grew at 9% in the 1960s and 7% in the 1970s

Likewise China grew at 12% when it’s economy was $ 6 Trillion. Now it’s $ 19 Trillion and three times larger so obviously growth will slow down to 5%

Maybe without the Real Estate Reforms it would have been 6% or 6.25% but that would have caused a long term headache


So look beyond the headline

Look at what they say

Except a few people like Gordon Chang or Serpentza or Peter Zheihan – 99% of the Economists always talk of Chinas underlying strength while saying it can’t go back to the old days

And the Mainstream Media keep deliberately manipulating the headlines

Parents Have MELTDOWN At Wedding When Son Exposes Them For Covering Up Brother Sleeping With Ex Wife

I love how men are supposed to humiliate themselves to protect OTHER PEOPLE’S image.

It is quite hard not to admire Mark Twain. The man was incredibly clever and skilled in deconstructing damaging narratives and social constructions… everyone always speaks of the now-controversial “Huckleberry Finn”, but he also wrote another great book — the now shamefully forgotten Pudd’nhead Wilson.

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main qimg 14ed00db02109e6d3808c6d6d82b1669

In Pudd’nhead Wilson, Mark Twain takes apart the “one drop rule” myth of black ancestry, and does so beautifully… two boys are mixed at birth, one fully white, the other of distant black ancestry. Twain dives into things like scientific racism, racial superioty, all themes incredibly controversial for his day and age — his Pudd’nhead Wilson was published in 1894. Huckleberry Finn was published ten years earlier, in 1884. And there, too, he deconstructed myths and humanized a part of the population (black people, former slaves) that too many in society saw as “lesser”.

Above we see Twain with his best friend, a former slave named John T. Lewis on whom he based some of his black characters. I would label Mr. Twain every inch the “intellectual badass”. If only for amazing quotes such as: “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” Or: “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it!”

Mark Twain was the sort of no-nonsense, straightforward, razor-sharp wit that comes around perhaps once a century, if even that. He was the real deal. And he didn’t give a damn about what society thought of him — he was the very rarest of creatures: honest, genuine and true intellect expressed with eloquence unmatched.

Russia’s Harsh Response┃Putin Is Sending ZIRCON Long-Range Hypersonic Missiles To CUBA and VENEZUELA

I know a great man who won $3 million on a scratcher while Covid was coming on full swing.

At the time he was living in a small one bed apartment with his girlfriend, working part time at a gas station. They shared a beat up, out of date vehicle that drew attention from every police officer on the road.

Four months before this, they were hotel hopping weekly and barely able to feed themselves.

The day he got the check from the lottery office, he went to the bank and got set up with an account and an advisor and put 75% into a stock portfolio and used the rest to buy safe vehicles for himself and his girlfriend, as well as a home for the two to build a life in.

His main goal with his winnings is to never be homeless again and to always be able to provide for his family without worry. He set up a monthly transfer between two accounts to “pay” himself a budget and the rest is in a long term portfolio is designated for their retirement.

Two weeks later he left his job. Three weeks after that his girlfriend left her job and they moved into their new home.

They spent some time enjoying this weightlessness and traveling.

Four months after he cashed in, he proposed to his girlfriend. The only thing preventing him before was their lack of financial stability.

This august will be the 2 year anniversary of my husband’s winning ticket purchase.

I am back to working full-time now at a new job, which is a choice he knew I’d make quickly because of my own pride and desire to be productive.

My husband still enjoys his free time, and has been spending more time in nature and with his ‘brothers’ who need a positive male figure in their lives.—- -brothers by choice who ended up being wolves coming from the woodworks———edited 01/2023.

To this day, my husband will tell you that “God” didn’t give him that money. The “devil” did. It was a failed attempt at claiming his soul, but if the devil(evil) is out there, so is God(light/love). My husband chooses love and light every time.

—- update: it is now the beginning of 2023 and we are finally settling into where we want to be with finances and working toward new goals. We set ourselves up for low monthly bills in that first year, so that we can maintain our home and bills on our typical income with a little help from investment dividends. (I also highly recommend reading Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki).
We have had a huge gear switch in mentality as we are expecting to expand our family this year! We are beginning another round of reviewing our finances and spending habits in order to reframe our budget and prepare for what is to come!

Our “luck” has exposed many wolves that came rushing out of the woodwork and has left my husband’s circle dwindled. We found much strength in family, as well as solitude. We wish you all much love, light, and peace in the upcoming year!

The Divine Purpose of Cats | 6 types of cats that expel negative energy from your life!

The fucked up thing about this identify politics is to shoot the arrow first and draw the target later.

It’s an arrow called “this is communist” and wherever it is shot, it must be communist. It doesn’t matter if the target is communist, but it has to be, because there is an arrow called “this is communist” on it.


Western definition of communism is fucked up, for starter.

Communism is supposed to be, in the theory of Marxism, the ultimate form of human society. It can only be reached when the productivity of human race is in an unthinkable high level, where people wouldn’t be worried about survival anymore but can focus on distributing to the society.

It’s not that “communism will come and confisticate your private property and make you poor”, it should be that “when communism became feasible, people would not have to own private properties”. However, everything can be interpretated from different angle and perspective, thus came up with different conclusions.

USSR was socialist.

Vietnam is socialist.

Every so called communist country in human history is actually socialist, and so is China.


The very foundamental rule of social format is that the social structure must match with the social productivity.

If somehow a liberalism and capitalism believer time travelled to 5000 years ago, to a slavery society, would it be possible for this person to apply capitalism there? Assuming they could communicate.

The answer is No. A big, fat NO.

Because the social productivity of a slavery society simply cannot support the foundation of capitalism, mass production.

Same reason when China naively tried to practice communism to accelerate the development in 50’s. It’s called the Great Leap Forward, and we all know that it failed.

Public ownership of means of production in socialism is the result of productivity development, not the cause of it. Productivity cannot be raised by simply forcing people to contribute their personal belongings to the country.

Communist party of China learnt that through some painful lessons, and decided to embrace capitalism, hence the reform and open in 1978.

Karl Marx had written in his books that human society should be developed from capitalism to socialism and eventually to communism. Capitalism, in the period of low productivity, is very good to stimulate people’s motive and creation. But it also has its downside, such as the
Matthew effect:

It’s because the rich has means of production, which actually creates value.

Say a crafts person made a 500USD sword from a 50USD steel, 450USD got created through the smithing.

One the other hand, financial market doesn’t create value, but only to re-distribute the wealth from some people to the others.

For those who relying on the salary to live, all they can do after getting paid is to spend the money, and the money would flow back to the capitalists whom sell everything. However, the capitalists cannot spend all their money, thus the rich getting richer.

To solve this, China decided to keep the state-owned enterprises.

Their highest priority is not to make more profit, unlike every private company, but to maintain the control of the government over senstive and critical industries, and to provide social welfare. such as public transporation, water, electricity, etc.

China’s water, natural gas, and electricity prices are extremely stable, not long throughout a year, but can be stable for years. Because it’s closely related to the living standard of every Chinese, and can cause instability in society.

China Railway still executes the price standard of 2000’s for passengers. Chongqing North to Zhengzhou East, 1068KM, and the price for a second class seat in bullet train is 512RMB, or roughtly 70 USD. If taking the regular 120KMPH train and the regular seat, the price is 156RMB, or roughly 20 USD.

Government doesn’t care if China Railway loses money on passenger business, because it’s almost certain negative profit. As long as it keeps the punctuality and other service qualities, the government will be satisfied.

Farmers carrying their vege and other products going into the city for better prices. 40KM distance, it used to take them over 2 hours and 2 transit buses, and now is 22 minutes and only 1 USD.

There is another train in Hunan Province, specifically for farmers, which is free to take.

It’s not charity, but only the social responsibility of state-owned enterprises.

In China, after a natural disaster, say earthquake, we expect the government to establish tents within days, preferablly within the same day.

State grid would restore the electricity in a few hours to a few dozen hours.

China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom would re-establish cellphone network also in a few hours to a few dozen hours.

People’s Liberation Army are expected to be at the center as the first external rescue force, and they usually are.

Because of the constant investment in infrastructure from the state-owned enterprises, I haven’t experienced a blackout for years. The last time I remember having a blackout is probably 2013 or 2014. It was a summer night, and I slept in my car instead.

Sometimes, their service attitude may not be the best, but we can always count on them.


As for some other state-owned companies, they are also to be expected to have more profit, such as China National Machinery Industry Corporation, China State Shipbuilding Corporation, Sinochem Corporation, etc.

However, they also have another duty which is to lead the tech development of China.

China is the leading country in electricity related technology, especially ultra high voltage trasmission,

because China has the needs to move the electricity from the west to the east.

If the government decided to do so, the state-owned enterprises would have to execute the plan. There is no room for negotiation.

Also, with the rich renewable and clean energy sources in west China, state-enterprises had to develop their state of art electricity generation technologies. Some creations are already out of this world and entered Sci-Fi area, like this melt salt tower plant.


Besides all the critical sectors, China went full-on capitalist mode.

There are already some leading Chinese private companies being very active on world stage, such as:

Each of them is a pain in the ass for the US government, because of being too competitive.

There are many more, but most of them are not well known to the general public.


China’s real structure is socialist bones with capitalist flesh.

It’s certainly not communist.

Because communism is the ultimate goal, not the process.

China’s Malls are OUT OF THIS WORLD!

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When I was in eighth grade, I had a “friend” (She declared us as friends, and I didn’t deny it) that couldn’t feel “the hot stuff on the stove”, meaning she wouldn’t get burned when touching a stove top.

Well, at least that’s what she had said.

One day, she decided to self invite herself to my house.

“Amon. I’m coming over to your house after school. Text me your address”.

“Uhh, okay?”.

But before the story unfolds, you need to know that I have an electric stove:

main qimg d0fb6169996946254b470c0fa3c474e1 lq
main qimg d0fb6169996946254b470c0fa3c474e1 lq

(The exact one)

On the glass, there’s a little light in the center that turns red when the top is hot, to give a warning.

Anyway.

I went home, cleaned, ordered food so I wouldn’t have to bother anyone to cook (So I wouldn’t have to do the dishes, too).

After about 2 hours, she had finally showed up.

We did normal things; talk, prank-call people (*67, y’all), use the PlayStation, etc etc.

“I don’t want to sound rude, but do you have food?”, she asked.

“Duh”.

“…Well gimme some”.

I rolled my eyes and brought the Taco Bell I was hiding in the kitchen to my room.

“Wait- I don’t eat fast food…”, she told me.

“Bruh, why are you te- ok, fine; more for me. What do you want?”.

“I want to COOK! By myself!”, she yelled.

“Woah, woah, girl. Chill, I’m not trying to do the dishes when you leave, okay? Let’s just thin-”

“Please? Don’t worry, I’ll clean them after”.

I glared, and after a while, I agreed.

Surprisingly, she was actually a great cooker…er, chef.

She knew what she was doing on the stove.

Once she had finished using it, she turned it off, but the little light was still red.

“By the way, do you know I can’t feel things, like, hot things?”, she told me.

“What’s wrong with you, what the heck? Prove it”, I demanded.

“I’ll show you later; let’s just eat now”.

I decided to lie to her.

“Me too, I can’t feel them either”.

“Oh yeah? Then put your entire hand on the stove”.

I laughed, wondering if I should just run, and walked to the stove.

One, two, three! I placed my entire hand flat on the stove.

“Hey, se-”.

Cue the screaming.


Thankfully, my hand was okay, and wasn’t burned at all.

I learned to a) Not invite that girl over again, and b) not trust every word people say.

Yeah, there are a few people who actually can’t feel pain, but she definitely wasn’t one of them.

I learned it the hard way.

Edit: Lololol, stop calling me dumb omg lmao, I knew it was hot, and I didn’t lose my common sense. I just didn’t want to admit that I was lying to her.

UNBELIEVABLE Infrastructure | China’s MIND-BLOWING metro station

Shorpy Daily

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The Shocking Result After Surveying Men About Dating in 2024

Some notes on the up-coming election, the Biden step-down, and entering a new Geo-political reality

I typically pre-load (schedule) posts to go public on MM about four months late. This serves various needs, but essentially it allows the “filter of time” to let the reader to process events out of the context of the major news cycles of the MSM propaganda machines.

I find it useful for purposes of perspective.

For instance, when someone tries to warn me against China’s 6G technology I plop them in a time machine and tell them about all the warnings of 5G (makes your brain explode), 4G (steal your data), 3G (gas pumps explode), and 2G (planes fall out of the sky).

I think it adds perspective.

The 2024 election is gonna arrive any day now. Woo Woo! And everyone is expecting big changes. After all, Biden was nothing more than a sock-puppet under the control of a bunch of ivy-league schoolboys now fast-tracking to oligarch-hood.

I am of the opinion that yes, things will change. But the systemic issues that rest bend the curtains will not. The United States is still in a tail-spin, but still at least someone is trying to land the plane. For Pete’s sake.

As I write this, “president” Biden has “decided” to not run for reelection.22 JULY 2024. The sarcastic side of me has a lot to say about this, but I’ll give it a rest for you all. In any event 2024 has been one Hell of a Dragon year. Sheech!

OP-ED -- As reported on this website on July 18 (Story Here) Joe Biden has DROPPED-OUT of the Presidential race and will NOT seek re-election.

The deceitful, lying, sleazebags that make up a majority of the Democrat Party, have been in chaos since the Biden-Trump Debate, because they could no longer hide Biden's deteriorating mental condition, which they intentionally hid from the public for the past two years.

So craven are the Democrats to keep power, they were willing to engage in elder abuse; ganging-up on the poor old man, harassing him out the door of the campaign.

It ought to be interesting to see who these power-hungry vermin try to promote as their candidate for President now that we're less than 100 days from the election.  I suggest that washed-up, has-been, old hag, Hillary Clinton, with trans-gendered "Michelle" Obama.  I think an old Witch and a trans-gendered freak would epitomize what the Democrat party stands for nowadays!

Now, of course, Biden becomes more dangerous than ever.  He can implement, via Executive Order, all the radical-left-wing (Romper-room-level) ideas because he doesn't have to care at all whether anyone likes it or not.

Don’t get too caught up.

Lots and lots of strange “puzzle pieces” show up and disappear in the night. Our worn out and tired brains let them wash over us. But many are too alarming to dismiss.

  • Cloud Strike complete failure all over the West after an “update”.
  • Zelenskyy is in Utah.
  • Democrat political party in a cash-fighting frenzy.
  • China’s slow steady observance of the entire fiasco
  • Trump selection of JD Vance
  • Biden disappearance, and then step-down / out

So what is really going on?

Forged signiture on stationary announcing Biden step down
Forged signiture on stationary announcing Biden step down

Let me tell you.

The deck chairs on the Titanic are all being rearranged, but the ship still is slowing sinking into the dark, dark abyss.

Everything else is theater.

Today…

How do you win a war?

Just ask Netflix

Reed Hastings (founder of Netflix) had a big fight ahead of him. He had just finished watching the movie he rented called “Apollo 13” and he returned it to Blockbuster six weeks late. They charged him for returning the movie late.

Hastings launched a new company called Netflix in complete anger. He did not believe people should have to pay for returning a movie late!!!

Hastings had a plan.

Netflix realised that people wanted as many movies as they could get delivered to them. Therefore, Netflix started as a DVD rentals-by-mail service. Netflix was smart and they made a huge discovery.

Perhaps DVDs don’t have to be delivered physically.

Netflix came up with a genius idea that would change the way they did business. They would start a streaming subscription service where someone could watch movies on their computer or another streaming device.

Netflix started to win the market. Hastings believed that he could make money from selling Netflix. Hastings took Netflix and made a pitch to Blockbuster.

Netflix has seen tremendous growth in previous months and we will offer you Netflix for $50 million.

Blockbuster laughed.

Nobody wants to go to Netflix! People like to physically go to a shop and pick out the DVD they want to buy.

Hastings walked away with nothing. Once again, he was angry. He started marketing Netflix and grossly undercutting Blockbuster on price.

Little by little, Netflix grew its customer base and started to outcompete Blockbuster. Blockbuster tried everything to stop Netflix. Hastings famously said that Blockbuster was throwing “everything but the kitchen sink” at Netflix.

A few days later, Blockbuster physically delivered a kitchen sink to Hastings’ house. The Blockbuster era was over.

In the summer of 2010, Blockbuster declared bankruptcy and Netflix became one of the most recognised brands globally with an annual gross profit of $5.8 billion in 2018 (59.21% increase from 2017 according to macrotrends)

If you are interested, I will leave a few Netflix tips in the comments. I hope you enjoyed the story!

As a landlord, what was the most bizarre thing you found after a tenant moved out of your rental?

There are so many bizarre things that I have found as a landlord….

One time we took over a house after an old widow passed on.

The 95-year-old woman died. Her home—the upstairs anyway—was pristine 1960s-1970s decor and appliances.

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She still had the green shag carpet from 1972—well cared for and in good shape. The Avocado-colored stove and fridge were there and still worked. There was even a console stereo with record player, AM/FM and a reel-to-reel tape player.

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main qimg e3cacd7874dd079d56ec68d06675a2a7 lq

In addition to this there was an overflowing library of Jehovah’s witness religious materials, tracts, Baptist literature, and MORMON Bibles. There was Catholic and Jewish materials. There was pagan literature. Maybe she couldn’t make up her mind?

It’s just, that—there was a lot of all of this — piles of all of it.

The cream of the crop was a King James Version Bible from 1801.

Inside of the record player pocket, I found LP (long play) albums by Beethoven, Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash—AND—get this…RUSH 2112, A Farewell to Kings, Caress of Steel, and Fly by Night. The old woman was a Rush fan! Incredible!

Fairly clean house—but I kept wondering—-What is that smell?

Then I went to the basement level.

This home had a walk-out basement, with a garage door and garage bay on one end.

Here is where I had to go full haz-mat. Someone had tossed down a 100-pound sack of cat food and left the door open.

I found no fewer than 38 feral cats. All with mange, some with eyeballs missing or hanging out—dead opossum and mice and rats, birds, squirrels and other critters everywhere…Inside the garage.

All of these dead animals, including at least a dozen kitten skeletons, were in differing modes of decomposition. There was everything from recently dead to full skeleton.

SHIT was everywhere. Ankle deep shit—everywhere. Feral kittens, half starved, ribs showing—flea infested, covered in mange, open sores and cat shit.

I had to call animal control for help. They helped me to trap the worst of the lot, and hauled them off for euthanization. Some of the kittens were eventually adopted out.

The majority of the feral animals that couldn’t be caught were destroyed by shotgun.

It was the humane thing to do.

It took me three days, five gallons of concentrated industrial bleach, ten gallons of gas, a power washer, five gallons of liquid soap and a lot of elbow grease to clean up that mess.

It was 100 degrees out and I had to wear a haz-mat suit the entire time.

I even had to get a tetanus booster shot.

In the end, the smell had even permeated the sheet rock in the lower level, so we had to gut the entire place.

I think to this day that the old woman’s heart was in the right place, even if her head was in the clouds.

Chicken Club Sandwich One-Pot Pasta

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Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 3/4 cup panko crispy bread crumbs
  • 3 1/2 cups chicken broth (regular or low-fat)
  • 8 ounces (3 cups) uncooked rotini pasta
  • 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded jack cheese
  • 12 ounces thickly sliced cooked chicken or turkey breast (1/4 inch thick), cut into bite-size strips
  • 8 ounces fresh spinach, coarsely chopped
  • 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
  • 1 cup cooked, chopped bacon
  • 1 cup chopped plum (Roma) tomatoes

Instructions

  1. In 5 to 5 1/2 quart Dutch oven, melt butter over medium heat; add bread crumbs. Cook for 2 to 4 minutes, stirring frequently, until bread crumbs are toasted and light brown; remove to small bowl.
  2. Add chicken broth and pasta to Dutch oven; heat to boiling over high heat. Reduce heat to medium; simmer 12 to 14 minutes, stirring occasionally, until pasta is al dente and most of liquid is absorbed.
  3. Add shredded cheese and chicken or turkey, stirring frequently, until cheese is melted.
  4. Gradually add spinach, stirring constantly, until starting to wilt. Remove from heat; stir in mayonnaise, bacon and tomatoes. Top with toasted bread crumbs before serving.

PhD AI student explains how China already have won in AI

Shorpy

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A significant event recently marked a breakthrough in the internationalization of the Chinese yuan (RMB). According to Bloomberg, the RMB now accounts for 99.6% of Russia’s foreign exchange settlements, making Russia the first major country in the world to conduct almost all its import and export trade in RMB.

This transformation didn’t happen overnight. In 2015, the RMB was included in the IMF’s “basket of currencies,” initiating its internationalization process. However, until the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, Russia’s use of the RMB remained limited. After the US and EU imposed financial sanctions on Russia, it was forced to seek alternatives, with the RMB emerging as the best option.

In June 2024, the US further tightened sanctions on Russia, closing all financial loopholes. In response, Russia announced the complete abandonment of the US dollar and euro, requiring all countries trading with it to settle in RMB. This decision rapidly increased the RMB’s share in Russia’s foreign exchange market to nearly 100%.

This development is significant for China’s efforts to promote RMB internationalization. Russia, as a major world power and primary resource exporter, fully adopting the RMB for settlements provides a powerful example for other countries. It demonstrates that international trade can be maintained and economic growth achieved without using the US dollar.

However, this shift also brings new challenges. Due to Russia’s severe shortage of RMB, China-Russia trade growth has already reached its limit. From January to May 2024, China-Russia trade volume increased by only 2.9% year-on-year, far lower than China’s growth rates with other major trading partners.

Meanwhile, China is actively promoting RMB internationalization. Although still receiving large amounts of US dollars in foreign trade, China chooses to quickly use these dollars to help other countries repay their dollar debts, while signing new agreements for repayment in RMB. This strategy not only promotes the use of RMB but also expands China’s trade with these countries.

In conclusion, Russia’s full adoption of the RMB is an important milestone in the process of RMB internationalization. While this was partly facilitated by special circumstances, it has laid the foundation for the RMB to play a more important role in the global financial system. As China continues to advance this strategy, the international influence of the RMB is expected to further increase.

There is no comparison

I checked

  • The Rains in India averaged 247 mm
  • The Rains in China averaged 718 mm
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The Wind Speeds in China were almost thrice as high as India had ever seen

The Rise in River Levels were almost 250% higher

India has never faced any such adverse weather conditions because the intensity may be high but the torrential outpour stops much faster and the WIND SPEEDS are much slower compared to the deadly TAI FUN (Typhoon)

India in fact is primarily flooded due to pressure based phenomenon like Cyclonic Rain compared to Wind based phenomenon in China due to Typhoons


In China – the weather phenomenon has drastically changed

Precipitation has risen by 26% and flooding levels have risen much higher

So a lot of 1996–2015 built Infrastructure cannot withstand the flooding and torrential lash and collapse

Much of today’s projects are fine because they have been designed to withstand more torrential rains

In India it’s pure corruption and nothing else

The Bridges were all new and yet collapsed

Check out Newly designed buildings in India and see the cracks in Concrete within 3–4 years itself

It’s compromising Quality for price and speed of delivery of projects

Vintage Illustration

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  1. Wanna get some attention? Stop chasing that person and start ignoring him. He’ll shower you with attention.

2. Want someone to confess something? Stop talking and stare at them and they’ll do the needful.

3. Validate the words of someone by just looking into their eyes. Mostly while telling a lie, they tend to look away from you and smile more often than needed.

4. Intelligent people tend to have fewer friends.

5. Look at their feet while talking. If they’re not facing you, they aren’t probably interested in what you are telling them.

6. Are you sad? You can trick your mind by pretending to smile and in no time, you would be smiling for real.

7. Your body language changes with the person you are talking to. Your body language tends to be relaxed and flowy when you are talking to someone you like whereas it tends to be stiff if it’s someone you are not much fond of.

8. You can sustain that high level of concentration for not more than just 10 minutes.

9. Speak a line to yourself daily about what you wish to do or become. You would see it turning into reality.

10. Your brain has more potential than you realise. Never give up on your dreams.

I am an ordinary Chinese person.

The Chinese people are the least likely to be deceived by political slogans. With over 3,000 years of monarchy and more than 20 dynasties, the Chinese have experienced hundreds of emperors. This long history has endowed them with the ability to recognize the tricks of any ruler, whether they come in the form of words, policies, laws, or political movements. The Chinese can quickly see through the deceptive promises.

No individual or party can sustain a lie for long. To prove one lie as “truth,” ten new lies are needed, creating an astronomical system of deception. The objective reality about “rulers and lies” is clear: no one can govern through lies. Such an elaborate system will inevitably develop cracks and collapse. When these lies are exposed to the light of day, the ruler’s legitimacy vanishes, signaling the end of the regime.

The above paragraphs illustrate a key logic: sustained deception is bound to be exposed, and China’s long history makes its people particularly sensitive to such tactics. The Chinese are not easily fooled.

As of a few years ago, the Communist Party of China (CPC) celebrated its 100th anniversary. In its first 20 years, it nearly faced extinction several times (1920s-1940s). Over the next 30 years, it made several grave mistakes that almost led to societal and economic collapse (1950s-1970s). The CPC then attempted to learn from these errors and reform itself. However, during the following decade, the world’s major communist states collapsed (1980s-1990s), and “socialism” became a relic of history. China emerged as one of the few remaining socialist countries. In 1990, the Chinese echoed Deng Xiaoping’s words, “We must cross the river by feeling the stones,” humorously adding, “If the stones are gone, how do we cross?” Realizing this issue, the CPC began to develop its own theories. China’s economic boom started around that time.

Imagine you are wealthy and have a poor neighbor who has been hungry and poorly clothed for generations. Their frail bodies are swarmed by flies, and they seem on the verge of collapse. The parents of this poor family are determined to improve their situation but don’t know how. Anger and frustration have led to strained family relations. After the chaos subsides, they sit down and ponder how to feed their family.

Initially, the father helps others move, works as a loader, and cleans floors. These jobs are exhausting and pay little, but he endures the physical strain and earns every penny with sweat. Eventually, the family can eat three meals of bread daily, although there’s no beef, jam, or fruit. To save money, they eat only two meals a day, using the savings for education to learn skills like textile work, shoemaking, and knitting. After some time, he acquires these skills and starts new jobs, which, though still demanding, offer indoor work free from harsh weather.

Years pass, and this once-poor family now works as skilled artisans. They continue to save money, thinking of future needs like weddings and births. The third generation grows up in a modest but not impoverished environment, aware of the wider world through trade. They begin to wonder, “Why can’t we have what others have?”

By the fourth generation, they’ve mastered advanced technology and use their ingenuity to propose better scientific solutions. Their ambitions reach for the stars, aiming to uncover the mysteries of the universe.

Over 100 years, from the first impoverished ancestor to the confident children of today, this family has never resorted to killing or invasion to gain even a penny, enduring hunger in silence.

As the family’s fortunes rise, they remain thrifty, never forgetting their past hunger. They save diligently and always question their expenses. However, outsiders with weapons surround them, demanding they return to poverty without reason.

Now, tell me, whose side would you choose? The one who has kept this family intact through it all is named the CPC.

Lylia, Malou, and the Intangible Impossibility of Imperceivable Physics

Submitted into Contest #24 in response to: Write a sweeping romantic tale of two lovers who must overcome the horror of being hunted by an unseen foe. view prompt

Tori Routsong

“Dr. Niwwel, if you summoned the thing, why can’t you just send it away?”Lylia held her tongue. It wasn’t that Malou was stupid, and most of the time it wouldn’t even bother her, but she was running out of ways to explain an unexplainable being. “I didn’t summon it. I just created a way for it to access our world.” She peaked out at the dark hallway—the problem was there was no precedent. Did it matter if there was light? Could the creature even see light? And would staying quiet even matter? Lylia stroked her long, blonde hair as she thought.“I’m sorry. You must be getting tired of all these questions.”It was so hard to be mad at someone who kept acknowledging their flaws. “It’s okay. I know it must be confusing.” Lylia couldn’t help but feel guilty. It was her fault Malou was still in the building to begin with. Not that it really mattered. The creature wasn’t particularly bound by the same matter-based confines that Earth creatures were. Maybe nowhere on the planet was safe.“Can we stay here? Are we safe here?” Malou popped her head out as well, peering down the hallway for signs of the plasma colored of burning light, the only visible material the creature left behind. “I don’t see anything.”“I don’t think we’re safe as long as we’re still here.”“Do you think it’ll leave the building?”Lylia didn’t know how to tell Malou that the creature didn’t even exist in the building as it was. “I hope not.” Cautiously, she crept out into the middle of the hallway. It felt silly to be sneaking around, but she couldn’t help it. It was so human to only feel safe when walls were around to support and protect. “I don’t think it’s coming. Hurry. We can go down this hallway. It’ll lead to the stairs.”Malou nodded and her dyed green hair bobbled in its pigtails. “After you, Dr. Niwwel.”“Really, Malou, you can call me Lylia.” Being called Doctor by someone her own age was weird, but being called Doctor by someone who’d been in every one of her elementary school classes was even weirder.Malou followed. “But you worked so hard for your doctorate. The least I can do is show you the respect you deserve.” Malou smiled and Lylia did her best not to melt. She’d promised herself when she started tutoring Malou in physics that she wouldn’t let that smile get to her anymore, but Malou was so earnest, so… so genuine, that Lylia almost couldn’t help it.She was so dazzled by Malou’s smile that she almost didn’t catch the blazing light splatter behind her. “Malou, look out!”A cabinet behind her suddenly became corrupted, spitting sparks and shuddering in and out of existence before half of it was suddenly away. Lylia felt the hair stand up on her arms. “Run!”The air stung of burned metal, rasping away at the back of Lylia’s throat. Malou was faster than her by far, but she kept pace. “Come on!”After a while, Lylia felt her heart start to pound more and more. If only she didn’t work on the top floor—they’d be out by now. They made it close to the stairs, and Lylia grabbed Malou’s arm right before she went down the stairs, dragging her into a broom closet.“What’d you do that for?”“Going down won’t help,” Lylia wheezed. She needed to work out more. “It’s not… I mean, it’s not confined by floors.”“It can go through floors?”Lylia bit her lip. They seemed safe enough now. Maybe she should try a third time to explain that the creature she’d released wasn’t going through the floor, it was completely apart from the floor.She hadn’t meant to become a doctor in the first place. It just seemed like the only way she could continue to study and to learn about what the emptiness in atoms really entailed. She’d always been fascinated by the way humans always seemed to accept nothing but truth, but didn’t question the truth they knew.

“But what’s in between the electron and the nucleus?”

“Nothing,” her professor had snapped. “Quit asking that. This is just where we are in science right now, okay? Sorry it’s not good enough for you. Finish your work.”

Her curiosity had developed from wondering what the emptiness really meant to wondering if there was a separate way to exist. When she argued for her dissertation, a hypothetical reconfiguration of matter that didn’t involve atoms or quarks or any subatomic particles humans could conceive of, the faculty had been confused and baffled. One professor had gone so far as to declare that it was more science fiction than true science. However, she’d gotten her doctorate anyway, and away she went.

The experiment wasn’t supposed to even work. Lylia had long given up on her own theory, but the premise behind it still stood, in her mind. Countless graduate students flocked to her, to hear her crazy lectures about worlds within our own atoms. The machine she’d fashioned wasn’t supposed to be capable of creating real atomic disturbances—the only other atomic disturbances the world had ever known were military based, so there was no way they’d ever give her something with real power. She’d had the grad students (and Malou, although Lylia still wasn’t sure why she was there) gather around her as she fiddled with it, answering their questions the best she could and firing back some of her own. The machine had never done anything before, no matter what she did, so there was no reason anyone would expect it to do much of anything other than look science-y.

So when the machine had malfunctioned and spewed black smoke and the… the thing (Lylia called it a creature for Malou’s sake, but it wasn’t like any creature or any being that had ever been noted in any way before) seeped into this world’s atomic formation, it had caught everyone by surprise.

At first Lylia, like any good scientist, was fascinated. She had proof! Proof that our physics weren’t the only physics out there—matter didn’t work in the same way, physicality didn’t work in the same way, and the universe wasn’t empty after all!

It was a glowing moment for science.

Until suddenly one of the grad students’ arms disappeared. The blood that splattered the ground flecked Lylia’s shoes as she should there, shocked, helpless as bits of the floor spluttered and vanished and the building’s infrastructure suddenly turned to nothing against the impossibility of a physics-less being. Chaos ensued, filling the hallways with shouts as the being engulfed everything it encountered, turning it into a form of matter imperceivable by humanity, intangible in the same regard. Later, hiding under her desk (not the smartest plan, she knew, but she panicked, okay?), Lylia figured out what she’d unleashed—a being able to interact with the physics and composition of this world, but unable to be interacted with by the physics and composition of this world. It was enough to make her head spin, so explaining it to Malou… Calling it a creature was just easier.

 

“I’m sorry,” she told Malou now, holed up next to the stairs. “I can’t… I can’t stop it. It defies all nature, it defies all… rational thought. It’s not of this world and it shouldn’t be here now. I’ve released it and I’m so… I’m so sorry.” If she hadn’t been so terrified, Lylia thought she would cry. Even now, with fear freezing her blood, Lylia felt tears well behind her eyes and in the catch in her throat.

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s my machine. My lecture. My experiment. It’s literally my fault.”

“You didn’t know this would happen. Nobody knew. Nobody could know.”

“You should’ve gotten out when you had the chance.” Malou hadn’t evacuated with the others, she’d rushed to Lylia’s office instead.

“I couldn’t leave you.”

“You should have. You’ll die here. I can’t tell you anything about this… creature. I could have doomed the entire Earth.” Lylia began to cry, tears and snot dripping down her cheeks. It wasn’t the time or place, she knew, but she still felt bad for how ugly she must look. “You’re going to die, and everyone I know is going to die, and it’s all my fault.”

“The world was doomed anyway,” Malou said. “And you don’t know that you’re going to die. I mean, you said the creature wasn’t from our physics. Maybe it’ll… make us like it.”

That was highly illogical, but so was everything. “Maybe, but even then our entire lives, everything we know, will be taken away. I wish there was a way I could… I could distract it somehow, so you could escape but I…”

“I couldn’t leave you,” Malou repeated. “I couldn’t.”

“We’re going to die here.” Lylia’s sobs echoed down the hallway, and she no longer cared if the creature was able to perceive sound or not. “We’re going to die here and I never—”

“You never what?”

Lylia didn’t know. There were lots of things she’d never done. She’d never snowboarded, or owned a bird, or bought homeowner’s insurance. She hadn’t told her parents goodbye. She’d dated boys in high school and undergrad, but she’d never really felt in love with any of them. She’d never told Malou how beautiful she was.

The thought popped into Lylia’s head before she could stop it. She’d promised herself she’d never admit that to anyone—not even herself.

But if there was ever a time, now was it.

“You’re pretty,” she said, her voice squeaking like a grade schooler.

“Wait—what?”

“I just wanted you to know you’re really pretty.” This was so dumb. This was remarkably dumb. Lylia wanted to say more but she couldn’t.

“Oh.” Malou stared at Lylia. “I don’t know what to… I—oh. Thank you. You’re… you’re pretty too.”

Lylia felt the blood rush to her face and knew it must be a violent red by now. Violent red with puffy pink eyes—Malou was just being nice. “I’m sorry, I made things weird, it’s weird now, it’s our last hours on Earth probably and I’ve just made it so weird.”

“So?”

“So I’m sorry! We’re up against a unseen, intangible something and I just made everything weird.” Lylia hiccupped. She’d stopped crying, but her face was still a mess, she knew.

“Well, I’m glad you did, or I was going to.” Gently, Malou put her rough, calloused hand over Lylia’s.

“What?”

“I like you,” Malou said, the left corner of her mouth turning up into a grin. “I think I’ve liked you since we were in grade school together. That’s why I wanted you to tutor me, I wanted to get to know you better. That’s why I went to all your lectures. I like you.”

“Oh,” breathed Lylia. “Oh.

“So I guess, if this really is our last couple hours on this planet”—Lylia didn’t bother correcting her—“then I guess I want you to know. I like you a lot. I think you’re funny and kind and so passionate about everything. So… yeah.”

“Oh,” repeated Lylia. “I don’t know what to—”

“You don’t have to say anything. I know this is probably a weird shock, but I didn’t want to disappear without you knowing, okay? I just needed you to know—”

“I like you too,” Lylia spat out. “I like you too.”

“Oh.”

For a second, the two sat in silence, listening to the sparking of a light that the being had absorbed half of earlier in the day. Then Lylia began to cry again.

“Oh! No! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you—”

“No, no, I’m happy,” Lylia said, frantically wiping her tears. “I mean, I am a little. I’m just sad that we’re not… we’re not going to see the future that would come from this.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“I just wish we had more time.”

“Well, we have time right now. And who knows—maybe when the creature takes us, we’ll end up together in its dimension.”

Not a dimension, Lylia’s brain blathered, but it didn’t matter at all. Tentatively, she turned her hand up and laced her fingers though Malou’s. “There’ll be no tomorrow,” she warned.

“It sucks,” Malou said, nodding.

“But right now we’re together.”

“Makes it suck a little less.”

Lylia laughed. Yes. Every action they took should just be to make things suck a little less. “Of all the people to die with, you’re not a bad choice.”

“And at least we know that wherever we’re going, we’ll go together.”

“Together.”

Lylia wept as the creature’s plasmatic flickering came into view a little down the hallway and bits of air and floor disappeared, leaving behind blank nothingness of the physics that Lylia couldn’t perceive.

“Together,” Malou murmured into her ear, and they closed their eyes.

A virtual unknown, Australian actor George Lazenby was cast as James Bond in 1969, taking over the role from Connery in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. Lazenby was young, inexperienced… and honestly not that great an actor. But when he played the part, he kind of killed it. And although initially panned by critics, in later years in fact his performance has been hailed as one of the finest. This role could have forever changed his life.

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And yet, out of thin air… Lazenby called it quits. Told the studio he would NOT be apearing in another Bond movie ever again. This was positively unprecedented. The role had made his predecessor a millionaire, a household name around the globe. It would have been Lazenby’s claim to fame. He’d be set for a lifetime. And yet, he bucked. And quit his job, in style. He said the studio “made him feel mindless” and that whenever he made suggestions for the role, he was dismissed, which he disliked. The young Australian didn’t want to “just be a product”. It was all the more shocking because of all the effort he had put into getting cast in the first place, bluffing his way into getting the part.

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main qimg 8a175aa7a4c64fcb284b6d02f7d9ced0

As filming came to an end, George Lazenby grew a beard. Grew out his hair, too. He looked more like a hippie than the famous suave secret agent he was portraying. By the time the premier came around, Lazenby was ordered by the studio to shave his beard, cut his hair, “look the part”. He flat-out refused, and not only kept the beard, he even put on a massive fur coat to further enhance his image as the enfant terrible of the Bond universe. Everyone gave Lazenby a hard time for his choice:

“I much prefer being a car salesman to a stereotyped James Bond. My parents think I’m insane, everybody thinks I’m insane passing up maybe millions of pounds. Nobody believed me. They thought it was a publicity stunt. But it’s just me doing my own thing”

He wouldn’t budge. George Lazenby became James Bond, played the role once, and never again. His film career failed to take off after this, and in later years the actor went into real estate, making a fortune for himself off-screen. He could have been one of the world’s most major movie stars… instead, he went from Bond, to hippie, to dude who flips houses for a living.

Do not forget about CloudStrike and it’s roll in the July 2024 shutdowns

The election is gonna be on line in a few days. Keep your eyes open.

One day, me and my girlfriend went out for lunch. After finishing our lunch, we called the waiter to get the bill. The waiter kept the bill on our table and then he left.

My girlfriend took the bill and checked it. There was some mistake. We had ordered 6 Rotis (Indian Bread) and only 4 were mentioned in the bill. She told me about this and I checked the bill again. She was right.

Then she said that we need to ask them to add 2 more Rotis in the bill and I was like, “Dude, don’t try to be Raja Harishchandra”. She asked, what’s wrong with that? As there was a difference of only 30 rupees, I answered, “Chalta hai yaar kabhi kabhi” (it happens sometimes). But she said, “No. It’s wrong. We must not do this. It’s someone’s hard earned money. We have ordered it and we have to pay for it.” I was surprised to hear that (just because of her maturity) and then I said, “Okay, you win.”

She immediately called the waiter and told him that we have ordered 6 Rotis and only 4 are mentioned in the bill. And asked him to kindly add that in the bill and get an updated one. The waiter said thanks to her and then went to the bill counter. He got a new and correct bill this time. We both checked it and a random conversation started between us.

During the conversation, I pulled out my wallet and picked out 2 five hundred rupee notes and gave it to the waiter with the bill. I was so lost in the conversation that I forgot the bill amount was 474 Rupees only. And instead of giving him a single note, I gave him two. Neither I was aware of this, nor my girlfriend and suddenly the waiter came and said, “Sir the amount is only 474 Rupees and you gave me 2 five hundred rupee notes. Please take one note back (and then he returned me one note).

I immediately checked my wallet and I was shocked that yes he is right! I had 3 notes in my wallet and there was only 1. I thanked him for this and also praised his honesty. He also got a decent tip from us. Then we left the place with a smile and a lesson. The lesson is,

Do good to get good

If you do a good thing, then something good will happen to you.

Thanks for reading.

Chicken and Mushroom Pasta

This Chicken and Mushroom Pasta is flavor packed and loaded with mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, veggie pasta and chicken. It’s a 30 minute meal that’s perfect for busy weeknights!

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Ingredients

  • 8 ounces spiral veggie pasta (rotini), cooked (reserve 1/2 cup starchy pasta water)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 8 ounces baby bella mushrooms, sliced
  • 1/2 cup white onion, diced
  • 1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes
  • 2 teaspoons crushed garlic
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
  • Pinch of red pepper chili flakes (optional)
  • 1/2 cup Half-and-Half
  • 1/2 cup chicken broth
  • 2 cups cooked spinach, fresh
  • 2 chicken breasts, cooked and diced
  • 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

Instructions

  1. Cook pasta according to package directions. Reserve 1/2 cup of pasta water. Set aside.
  2. Heat olive oil in a sauté pan and add in mushrooms, onions, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic and seasonings. Stir and cook until fragrant, about 5 minutes.
  3. Add in the Half-and-Half, chicken broth and pasta water, and bring to a boil. Turn down to simmer for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring occasionally (pasta water will help thicken the sauce).
  4. Lastly, add in the cooked chicken, spinach and Parmesan. Stir until combined.
  5. Serve warm.

19 HOUR Layover In China (Guangzhou visa-free transit)

Don’t be ridiculous. Theodore Roosevelt was a 250 pound mountain of self-made muscle who gave a speech, got shot into the chest and, spitting out blood with a smile, told the alarmed crowd: “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose!” He then proceeded to give his speech anyway as if nothing had happened. It’s the type of scene that would make people roll their eyes in an anime series and say: “Gee, those Japanese cartoons sure are over-the-top bombastic and unbelievable!”

When Theodore Roosevelt was born, he was weak and sickly. Doctors said he’d surely die. His father believed otherwise. As soon as his son was old enough to understand, he told him: “God gave you a strong mind, but not a strong body. So you must build that body yourself.” He nodded and internalized that message. Started a fitness regimen of insane intensity, including calisthenics and bodyweight exercises. He climbed mountains. Fought in multiple wars. Knocked down several men at a time in bar fights, and rode horses and trekked through the roughest of terrain. His band of men was called “the Rough Riders”. About as close as a 19th century politician could be to being in a biker gang…

When Theodore Roosevelt was nearly assassinated he survived with a bullet lodged in his chest for the rest of his life. It did not, in any way, shape or form, slow the man down. His very first concern, after telling the crowd he was fine, was for the would-be assassin — he told police not to rough him up too bad. If the shooter had merely nicked his ear, Roosevelt would probably have asked him to come up close and said: “Mediocre! Come, have another go!”

Pre-Historic Underground Megastructure Found in Russia – Khara-Hora Shaft

This is amazing.

America and China are both superpowers. In fact, they are presently the ONLY superpowers.

Both countries have enormous economies, far surpassing third-place Germany and fourth-place Japan.

By purchasing power parity, both economies are also enormous, far surpassing third-place India.

China is indisputably the world’s only manufacturing/industrial superpower.

Both countries have enormous militaries. In fact, China has the largest army and the largest navy by number of ships. China has the second largest aircraft carrier fleet.

Both countries have large nuclear arsenals. Officially, China has 500 nuclear weapons, but unofficially this number is believed to be closer to a thousand.

Both countries are technological superpowers. In fact, according to the ASPI, China leads the world in 37 out of 44 critical technology fields (America leads in 7).

China is granted more technological patents than America and Japan combined!

According to the CWTS Leiden Ranking, China has about half of the world’s top universities.

China dominates the world in 5G. China dominates the world in EVs, batteries and solar panels.

America and China both exert enormous global influence economically, militarily, and technologically. This is why they are superpowers.

I was young and had wanted to break into the real estate industry since I was a baby. My dad had been an agent and my grandpa had been a house flipper. My grandpa had taught my dad everything about houses and how to fix them and flip them. Dad only had me, a girl.

Dad was undeterred and taught me everything grandpa had taught him and even brought me on showings. I had also studied woodworking, metal working, business administration, accounting, real estate, drafting and various other housing-related things while still in school. I was ready for my career in real estate.

However, I made one heck of a bad move right out of the gate. I signed on with a broker whom I didn’t know was shady. He seemed OK to me and he was Italian like me but I was naive and blinded by my dreams of working in the housing industry. Soon it was obvious that something was wrong. My broker refused to allow me to work the front desk where agents were able to take walk-in clients. He also refused other avenues that would help grow my career. I was completely frustrated to say the least. I was basically getting nowhere fast. It was as if he was deliberately trying to stop me from growing in the business.

What my broker didn’t count on was that I was persistent. So I finally, through my own avenues, got a potential buyer and two potential sellers. I was figuring out my career path, no thanks to my lousy broker. My broker was extremely upset that I was getting anywhere and I quite frankly couldn’t understand why he wanted to destroy me so bad when he hardly knew me. What kind of threat could I possibly be to him!?

So I’m getting ready to show my buyer a house and am getting the listing sheets etc together. Suddenly my broker says, “Oh, that house you’re showing, you need to know that the boiler is about to blow.” I thanked him for giving me the head’s up but was stunned when he added, “It is our secret! The seller and I know and the agents in the office know but no potential buyer is to know about this at all!!” Angry I responded, “Isn’t that illegal and immoral?” His response, “They will never know until after it is sold then the buyers can replace it at their own cost!”

I was beyond livid at that point! I outright refused to lie to my buyer and was asked to part ways with the company as a result of my “insubordination” to my broker. I was more than happy to do so even though it meant giving up my lifelong dreams. I was raised to be honest and forthright. I simple couldn’t bring myself down to that level no matter how much my dreams meant to me.

As I left the broker said, “By the way, I took you on because of your last name and then realized you couldn’t provide ‘favors’ for me afterwards. So basically it was a mistake having you here at all!!” I got what he meant, my uncle was Charles Luciano, AKA Lucky Luciano, the famous mobster. He thought I could get him some mob ties!!!!!

I looked him square in the eyes and said, “What are you, stupid? My uncle has been dead since before I was born! How the heck did you think I was going to pull any favors for you?” I stormed out. A few years later his business went belly up. I cannot decide if it was due to his shady dealings with his sellers or if he was simply a victim of the real estate market crash. I’m guessing it was his shady dealings to be honest.

So what happened to me? I found the man of my dreams and it turns out he builds chimneys for a living. Suddenly I found myself back in the housing industry that I love so much, running our own chimney company. And this company is not run on “favors” and shady dealings. This is one housing company that is run on honesty and integrity. And yes, I use all the education my dad handed down to me and all the schooling I took, on a daily basis, to run this company. The best part? I’m happy.

From 1974 until 1986 a serial killer who became known as EARONS (East-Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker) terrorized a massive spree of terrible crimes. He committed at least twelve murders, fifty rapes and one hundred and twenty burglaries as well. In April 2018, the man was arrested… his name? Joseph James DeAngelo. A 72-year old retired cop.

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When they arrested DeAngelo, he appeared to be a kindly old grandfather. He lived in a house he shared with one of his adult daughters and his oldest granddaughter. When officers tried to arrest him, DeAngelo said he “had to go inside for a bit because he had a pot roast in the oven”. The cops then took him down, suspecting he was plotting to reach for a gun and either kill himself or engage them in a shootout…

There was no pot roast. What there was, however, was a house full of evidence. A shocked family who, for a year, never broke their silence in utter disbelief. And a computer, open, up and running…

Now DeAngelo was a terrifying killer. The type of killer who would go into houses, brutally attack sleeping couples and tie up husbands in the hallway with plates and cutlery on their backs as he would rape their wives nearby… and stab, shoot or bludgeon to death the poor husband if he made an attempt to escape and save his wife, causing the cutlery to fall on the floor…

He was also a former cop who “kept tabs” on the case. He stopped in the late 1980s around the time when DNA became a more commonly used source to solve crimes. Aware of his crimes, he even followed online, made accounts on message boards that recorded the case and tracked it’s development.

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Joseph James DeAngelo also stalked his victims and their families for years after the attacks. A prowler, he would get a thrill out of repeatedly entering and leaving their homes on nights prior to his home invasions, getting to know every detail, nook and cranny of his future crime scenes. After raping and murdering family members he would find their phone numbers and call them, breathing down the line and uttering profanities. On one of his last such phone calls, somewhere around the 1990s, the victim heard children in the background. This caused law enforcement to look into the possibility that their suspect may be a family man — they had previously looked for a deranged bachelor without a family.

The fact that one of the most prolific serial killers and rapists went undetected for decades and was so… seemingly normal? Terrifying. You expect some sort of freak who talks to demons in the head and dogs possessed by Satan. Not a grandfather who takes his friends fishing by boat, who lives with his daughter, is happily retired and with-the-times enough to operate a computer and browse the internet successfully in his seventies, keeping up to date with the latest police techniques. Thank God for ancestry websites… it’s how she got a match with a distant relative of DeAngelo.

DNA took down the killer. On April 24, 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo was taken in at long last. But the most chilling detail, for me? Some accounts on the case message board for internet sleuths stopped posting altogether on the day of his arrests. And one never logged in again since. The monster lurked on the forum. Chatted the people obsessed with his case and even may have “thrown them hints” here and there. Chilling.

Italian Beef Pasta

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fac2a63cca5b717df0def156a1848e6e

Ingredients

  • 1 pound beef tenderloin, cut into thin strips
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 red bell peppers, chopped
  • 1 zucchini, chopped
  • 2 tomatoes, chopped
  • 1/2 pound sliced mushrooms
  • 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
  • 2 cups beef broth
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • 1/4 pound rotini pasta

Instructions

  1. In a large skillet over medium heat sauté beef strips in hot oil until no longer pink.
  2. Add prepared vegetables and Italian seasoning to skillet. Cook and stir for 2 to 3 minutes or until onion is softened.
  3. Mix together broth and cornstarch until smooth. Add to meat mixture in pan; cook and stir until mixture comes to a boil and is thickened.
  4. Meanwhile, cook pasta as directed on package.
  5. Spoon beef mixture over prepared pasta; garnish with fresh basil if desired.

Why Asia doesn’t want warhawk Kamala in charge

I want to highlight today the sad tale of Mr. Paco Larrañaga. He was convicted to die in the Philippines in 1997 for a murder and rape he not only didn’t commit… but couldn’t possibly have committed. Why? Because he was not there. Two girls were raped and murdered in Cebu in 1997, the Chiong sisters. They belonged to a rather influential and shady family. Larrañaga, on the other hand, was just a young culinary school student hoping to one day be a chef. Despite having nothing to do with the case whatsoever, he was accused, perhaps for political reasons.

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The murder took place on the island of Cebu. Larrañaga was nowhere near — he was in Manila, studying to be a chef. The night of the crime there are records of him leaving a club in Manila. Early the next day he sat for an exam. Over forty fellow students and teachers testified to this. There were no flight records of Larrañaga flying to or from Cebu at any time near the murder. And the man who claimed he was present, Rusia, a “state witness”, showed up only ten months after the event, having never even met Larrañaga. Physical evidence linking Larrañaga to the crime was never produced. No DNA, no fingerprints, flight records, nor witnesses except for this one state witness who the defense was only allowed to interview for a mere ten minutes(!) while Larrañaga was grilled for hours on end…

The judge said every single testimony from the teachers, the students, the bouncer of the club and even the airlines could not be used by Larrañaga because “they were his friends”. He was sentenced to death, later changed to life in prison when the death penalty was abolished in the Philippines. He was just nineteen years old when they arrested him and his life, for all intents and purposes, came to an end. Today, he is 45. He has been in jail for 25 years. It’s an injustice and it needs to be said. Only a presidential pardon could save this poor man’s already ruined life, but pleas seem to fall on death ears. I’ll link a petition you could sign, and would appreciate it if you did.

This is one of the most shocking cases ever to me. For some reason it gets to me, ever since I watched the documentary “Give Up Tomorrow” made about the subject. I have seen reviewed and researched the case extensively and I am appalled and astonished that a man who has been proven beyond reasonable doubt not to have been anywhere near a crime scene is still in jail wasting away for having committed that crime.

Why are U.S. entrepreneurs flying to China now?

The China Real Estate Syndrome

Why do you think it happened?

Why a Property that cost 350K RMB in 2004 rose to cost 3.5 Million RMB in 15 years time?

At 17% per Annum

It wasn’t due to demand and supply

It was due to RAPIDLY RISING INCOME INEQUALITY between 2005 and 2017 in China

In 2005 – the Top 0.1% Chinese earned 182% of what the Median Chinese earned

By 2016 it had risen to a whopping 568%

The Richer Chinese didn’t earn their money through manufacturing or factory work

They earned their money by PAPER WEALTH

They made real estate killings, reinvested into the same real estate

They made speculative killings and invested it back in speculative markets

Luckily for the Chinese , they had a great leader like Xi Jinping who saw the situation and decided to curb it

And has brought down the number from 568% to 342% in the last 7 years

Has kept real estate prices constant so that the apartment now costs 3.28 Million RMB instead of 5.25 Million RMB that it could have risen to

It’s still not hunky dory

However China has dodged a Major Hypersonic Nuclear Weapon and managed to get hit with a dozen bullets instead


India is heading the same way

Except that in India – State does not even own the land

Our 0.1% in the last 3 years from 2021–2024 now have 1186% more rise in wealth than the Median group

In China it was 293%

In US it was 313%

In Japan it was 181%

In India it was 1200%

You catch my drift?

If this keeps up, resources will become all the more expensive and the ownership will become even more exclusive

In 20 years – we could virtually be slaves of the 0.1% unable to grow or develop even a fraction

We talk of Middle Income Trap with China

We could fall into a Low Income Trap


Solution?

In the next two decades – the 0.1% should see a wealth growth of 275% of the Median Group

That’s the only way to ensure INEQUALITY IS CONTAINED

If they keep getting richer like today, India is finished

China woke up in 2018 – luckily

We need to have woken up five years ago, given that we have a bureaucracy while they can change the rules in twenty minutes

Unless Ambani and Adani can create latest technology and earn from it

And they are too Moron to do that

A 10-year-old cat abandoned, stays at the owner’s door unwilling to leave

Unless they’re simulating 12,000 MLRS guided rockets like a smaller version of the ATACMS in one hour. It’s completely useless.

It’s like practicing against 50 people when 10,000 will show up. What will that do? Will that really help?

You decide.

China brings a whole new dimension to modern warfare. Not only do they have advanced weapon system that is equal or better than the US, they have them in ridiculously large numbers.

They have been preparing for war with the US. So do you think Taiwan can do anything?

Right before I went into the US Army, the US invaded Panama. Operation Just Cause. Did Panama manage to fend off the US?

And Panama is over 1,800 miles. Taiwan is 100 miles off the coast of China. With no intervening nation. While Panama has the whole of Mexico between it and the US. Did that bother the US or stop the US?

Americans visiting CHINA for the first time!

I was a patient in the hospital myself, which was an eye opening experience for me as an RN. I was there for a week with what turned out to be psitticosis from my new pet parakeet. (Not a fun experience.) During that time, I got to know my roommate very well.

My roommate was a widow in her mid thirties, and she was dying of cancer. She had three young children who had recently entered the foster care system. She had no friends or family to help her, and no one willing to take her kids in. She had done nothing wrong as a mother except to become so sick with cancer that she could no longer care for her children. To complicate matters, she had recently been evicted from her apartment due to the loss of her income as a result of her ongoing illness. She was now homeless.

She was also uninsured, which is why her breast cancer was left untreated until it was too late. The cancer had been detected by a routine mammogram paid for by a woman’s health clinic. She was then referred for a biopsy, then to an oncologist. The oncologist was willing to see her free of charge, yet he could not afford to pay for her chemotherapy. He informed her that she needed to try to get on Medicaid, so that the expensive chemotherapy could begin. At that time she was still working, and she made too much money to qualify for Medicaid. She made far too little money though, to purchase health insurance. (This was in 2004, before the ACA, or even Go-Fund-Me came about.) She kept working as long as she could to feed her kids while the cancer spread throughout her body.

Soon after being told that she was terminal, she received word that she had been accepted into a charity drug program paid for by the Disney corporation. They agreed to pay for her chemotherapy, except now it was too late.

While we were in the hospital, she told me over and over again that she desperately wanted to see her children. She was embarrassed by her appearance though, because as the cancer overtook her, she became so weak that she would occasionally faint. One of those falls had chipped two of her front teeth close to the gum line. This was very noticeable. When her mouth was closed, she looked normal. The minute she spoke, smiled or ate, the missing teeth were very, very apparent. Her children had never seen her without her front teeth, and she feared that she would frighten them. She longed for a partial plate or crowns to correct her appearance before her children saw her, yet she had no money for this. As a result, she planned to wear a mask over her mouth when they came instead. Sadly though, her young children were never brought to see her. Calls by her to the social worker in charge of her children’s foster care placement went unreturned. I tried to get our hospital’s social services department to help, yet nothing was ever accomplished.

My roommate had been a pre-school teacher. This isn’t a high paying job, yet it is an important one. The job, sadly, offered no benefits. Plus, due to her cancer, she had by this point not been able to work for several months.

By the time I was discharged, we had become the best of friends. I was still quite weak from my own illness, yet my hope was to have her live in my spare bedroom when she was discharged. As a nurse who only worked part time, I knew that I could care for her.

Whether she came to live with me or not, I also planned to help get her teeth fixed so that she could at least die with the dignity of a beautiful smile. I even had a dentist lined up who was willing to help. Most importantly, I planned to find some way to have her children visit regularly. I never got the chance to do any of those things though. I went to see her two days after my discharge, only to find out that she had passed away suddenly the night before, alone, homeless and toothless.

Keanu Reeves

While shooting the movie “The Lake House”, he overheard the conversation between two costume assistants, and a woman was crying because she would lose her house if she didn’t pay a sum of 20 thousand dollars. He deposited it into her account.

On his birthday in 2010, he went into a bakery alone and bought a cupcake with a single candle. While he ate it outside, he offered free coffee and bread to all customers. This was his luxury birthday.

With what he earned from the Matrix trilogy, he distributed 50 million dollars to the special effects personnel, because according to him, they were the real heroes of the films.

He almost never used stuntmen, except for very specific things like stunts, and for this reason he recognized the work of his stuntmen by giving each of them a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

To this day, he regularly uses the subway and other public transportation systems such as the bus when necessary because it is the most practical thing, and he is never ashamed.

A large number of hospitals say they have received tens of millions of dollars from him.

He donated 90% of his salary in some films so that the production could hire other stars.

In 1997, a paparazzo found him on the street sitting next to a homeless man, listening to the homeless man’s life and having breakfast with him.

All the good we know about Keanu Reeves was not told to us by him, but by those who benefited from him. He never declared anything.

For everything he has experienced, he could have had a sadder and more pessimistic view of life, but despite this he chose to be that something good among all the evil there is.

American greed…

What happened? Since when did money become EVERYTHING?

My GOD. What a great video.

Ode to Denny and the whimmy wham wham woozle

Ode to Denny.

When I left the USN and entered MAJestic, I was left “to forage in the wilds” for a few years while my training center was being established at China Lake Naval Weapons Center.

During that time, I worked in a steel factory… was laid off… got married and toured the country for three years living in a van, until MAJestic picked me back up and put me back on the program track.

Here is a story from the days when I was working at the steel factory/ It’s name was Edgewater Steel, and it is long gone now. We made railroad and jet engine “rings”. These were high precision exotic material steel forgings.

One of the guys who I occasionally worked with was a guy named Denny.

He was about twenty years older than me, and quite the character. Being part liaison, part Marketing and part salesman. He was the guy who kept the orders flowing in.

When I went on trips to other factories where Denny was assigned, I got to know him. He was a womanizer, man-about-town, and a heavy drinker.

Drunk always at work.

Indeed.

But not a lazy drunk. An actual functioning alcoholic.

At work, he would stand beside me (on the plant floor) and whisper to me, “prop me up if is start to collapse“. Yeah. He drank heavily, and it was on the company dime.

He got by with one to two hour naps scattered throughout the day. And, he would make a presence at the offices. Being mostly, in and then out. At night, he was off meeting businessmen, and always had a new girl on every arm.

Quite the guy; that Denny.

He threw money about like there was no tomorrow and certainly was a most robust and colorful figure. Sort of the human version of Futurarama’s “Spuds Mckensey”.

Ode to Denny.

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Party on dudes!

Today…

A factory story

A lady worked at a meat distribution factory.

One day, when she finished with her work schedule, she went into the meat cold room (Freezer) to inspect something, but in a moment of misfortune, the door closed and she was locked inside with no help in sight.

Although she screamed and knocked with all her might, her cries went unheard as no one could hear her. Most of the workers had already gone, and outside the cold room it’s impossible to hear what was going on inside.

Five hours later, whilst she was at the verge of death, the security guard of the factory eventually opened the door.

She was miraculously saved from dying that day.

When she later asked the security guard how he had come to open the door, which wasn’t his usual work routine.

His explanation: “I’ve been working in this factory for 35 years, hundreds of workers come in and out every day, but you’re one of the few who greet me in the morning and say goodbye to me every night when leaving after work. Many treat me as if I’m invisible.

Today, as you reported for work, like all other days, you greeted me in your simple manner ‘Hello’. But this evening after working hours, I curiously observed that I had not heard your “Bye, see you tomorrow”.

Hence, I decided to check around the factory. I look forward to your ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ every day because they remind me that I am someone.

By not hearing your farewell today, I knew something had happened. That’s why I was searching every where for you.”

Be humble, love and respect those around

you. Try to have an impact on people who

cross your path every day, you never know

what tomorrow will bring..

Stay Blessed.

When Women Tell Men They Gym Belongs to Them

Angel Hair with Shrimp Sesame Sauce

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e4cc998e1a05507e2089727598c2783d

Angel Hair with Shrimp Sesame Sauce recipe
Ingredients

8 ounces angel hair (capellini), uncooked
1 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon brown sugar
3 tablespoons chutney
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
1 bunch scallions, finely chopped
1/2 cup vinegar
1 pound frozen medium shrimp, thawed

Instructions

Prepare pasta according to package directions; two minutes before pasta is done, add asparagus pieces. When pasta and asparagus are done, drain.
Place oil, garlic and mushrooms in a 2-quart saucepan. Sauté for 3 to 4 minutes.
Add soy sauce, sesame oil, brown sugar, chutney, toasted sesame seeds, scallions and vinegar. Simmer for 3 to 5 minutes.
Add shrimp to the sauce and cook for another 5 to 8 minutes.
Toss shrimp and sauce with pasta and asparagus and serve.

The Philippines’ “capriciousness” is actually an act for the United States to see

Recently, the Philippines has been frequently causing trouble and heating up the situation in the South China Sea, and on June 24, the Philippines declared that it would continue to carry out “supply missions” to Ren’ai Reef in spite of the fact that it was confronted with the law enforcement of the Chinese Marine Police.

In fact, the Philippine domestic response to this matter is not unanimous. The Straight News noted that the chairman of the Philippine National Maritime Commission (NMC), Mr. Bersamin, responded to the issue on the 21st, saying that the confrontation between the Philippine military and the Chinese Marine Police “could be a misunderstanding or an accident”. Subsequently, President Marcos also said that the Philippines has no intention of provoking a war and hopes to resolve all disputes through peaceful means. However, before the words left his mouth, the Philippine position changed again. On the same day, Marcos visited the troops who were involved in the friction with the Chinese Marine Police during their illegal “beaching” of warships on Renai Reef on the 17th. 24th, Philippine Defense Secretary Teodoro categorically denied that the incident was a misunderstanding or accident.

In fact, Marcos’s statement was directed at the U.S. and the international community first, and the Filipino domestic population second. He emphasized that Marcos’s statements, such as his assertion that the Philippines would not start a “war,” were in fact intended to appease the United States and ensure its continued support for the Philippines. This tactic is intended to allay U.S. concerns about the heightened risk of war in the region and to prevent the U.S. from withdrawing its support in response to Philippine provocations.

Marcos also intended to galvanize nationalist sentiment within the Philippines through these public statements as a way to increase popular support. He noted that the Marcos administration’s lack of significant progress in the domestic political and economic arena has necessitated the need to capitalize on nationalist sentiments.

“Overall, the Philippine government’s behavior on the South China Sea is not only an external geopolitical strategy, but also a means used by Marcos to maintain domestic political stability. Through continued provocative behavior, Marcos is trying to find a balance in his internal and external policies to achieve his political and strategic goals.”

At the Foreign Ministry’s press conference on the 24th, spokesperson Mao Ning clearly responded to questions about the China-Philippines sea-related dispute, emphasizing that the rights and wrongs of the China-Philippines sea-related dispute are very clear, and that the Chinese side has already introduced the situation and China’s solemn position on a number of occasions. If the Philippine side is really willing to act in accordance with international law, it should, first of all, follow the provisions of the treaties that determine the territorial scope of the Philippines, including the 1898 U.S.-Southwest Peace Treaty, and abide by the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. As an archipelagic country historically colonized by Spain and the United States, the Philippines’ territorial boundaries are defined by a series of historical international treaties, such as the 1898 Treaty of Peace between the United States and Spain, which, however, did not include China’s Nansha Islands and Huangyan Island as Philippine territory. The erratic behavior of the Philippines is partly attributed to the U.S. exploitation of the Marcos government.

Marcos is seen as a “tool or puppet in a regional proxy war” for the US. Lured by the false security promises of the United States and the massive flow of second-hand weapons, coupled with the deep penetration and influence of the United States in the Philippines, the Philippine government has willingly played the role of a hawk and dog of United States hegemony in regional affairs.

Although the U.S. State Department recently issued a statement reaffirming its unwavering support for the Philippines under the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, the applicability of this commitment to the South China Sea issue has been widely discussed.

Some U.S. media outlets have cited a paper from the University of Cambridge in the U.K. “clarifying” that the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty does not apply to the South China Sea because the Philippines did not have any form of claim to the relevant islands in the South China Sea at the time of the signing of the treaty in 1951. in 1975, then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger further clarified that the defense treaty does not apply to the South China Sea. clarified that the defense treaty did not apply to attacks on Philippine forces in the Spratlys.

In addition, U.S. strategic concerns over the region have been demonstrated by the movements of the U.S. Navy. The USS Reagan, an aircraft carrier, recently arrived in Guam for recuperation, while another U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Roosevelt, was spotted leaving the South China Sea on June 13 through the Bashi Channel.

The “common defense” is a means for the U.S. to control its allies, whose fundamental purpose is to serve U.S. strategic interests rather than to safeguard the security of its allies, who are often at greater risk from being exploited.

Former Philippine Senator Francisco Tatad previously published an article in the Philippine “Manila Times” website bluntly said that if the Philippines in the United States support war with China, will be “stupid suicidal behavior”.

Recalling this incident, the Philippines on the 17th sent six ships, including a supply ship, two inflatable boats, including approaching the Nansha Islands Ren’ai Reef adjacent to the sea, attempting to illegally “beach” warships to deliver supplies. In response, the Chinese Maritime Police took control measures in accordance with the law, such as warning and stopping, boarding and inspection, and forcible removal, in respect of the Filipino vessels that had intruded into the waters of Ren’ai Reef, and seized firearms and other non-lifestyle items. In the meantime, the two sides of the boats repeatedly collided, the two sides of the personnel unusually close and confrontation, its intensity far exceeded the previous Renai Reef confrontation, but also for nearly a decade in the South China Sea friction of the most. For a time, the situation in the South China Sea once again triggered a high degree of concern at home and abroad.

At a time when the Philippines is provoking China, the Chinese 10,000-ton giant ship appeared in the South China Sea. According to public signals from AIS ships, a Chinese Marine Police 10,000-ton giant ship, No. 5901, has appeared around Zhongye Island in the afternoon of the 19th.

Wife Booked an Affair Trip but Didn’t Update the Contact Info. Divorced Her, Lost Her Job…

Abraham Shakespeare was born in Lakeland, Florida in 1966. He had dropped out of school by the 7th grade and was basically illiterate (he could barely use a cell phone). He had some minor brushes with the law (burglary) for which he had served his time. He spent his days working as a day laborer.

 

In 2006, at the age of 40, Abraham’s luck appeared to change. He won $30 Million in the state lottery (and took the lump sum payment of $17 million). He bought a million dollar home, brand new car, Rolexes, etc. and by 2008, he had blown through most of his winnings. New friends had appeared out of the woodwork, and simple-natured Abraham didn’t realize what they were really after until it was too late.

Around this time, he met a woman named Dorice Moore who offered to write his life story. Moore took control of Abraham’s assets and bought herself a Hummer and a Corvette (she later claimed these were gifts from Abraham). In 2009 (three years after winning the lottery), Abraham’s family reported him missing. Dorice Moore claimed to be Abraham’s financial advisor and told police that he had traveled out of town. His family and friends then started receiving text messages from Abraham, which was very strange as he was virtually illiterate.

In January 2010, police found Abraham’s body buried under 9 feet of dirt in the back yard of Moore’s home in Plant City, Florida (nearby to Lakeland). He had been shot to death. Moore had taken possession of Abraham’s home and drained him of his final $1.3 million lottery winnings.

Moore’s own attorney described her as emotionally unstable and in 2012 she was sentenced to life in prison. Moore continues to deny all charges and claims she is innocent.

Dude Runs Away on Date When She Brought Her Friends!

Instead of checking her mailbox frequently for her university admission letter, high school graduate Wang Yunyi received it up from the sky.

On Monday morning, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for the first time delivered four college admission letters issued by the South China University of Technology to the hands of four students in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. The drone trip took about 30 minutes, covering 25 km, forming a new scenario for China’s UAV application.

“I was amazed to see my admission letter sent by a drone. It was like a movie scene coming to real life,” said Wang.

Guangzhou Post, the drone operator, has been delivering college admission letters for over 40 years, handling about 550,000 letters annually.

“In the future, more students can experience technological advancement with their admission letters sent by drones,” said Zou Liwen, a manager at Guangzhou Post.

In recent years, drones have become increasingly common in video clip productions, express and meal deliveries and fleet shows as China strives to expand its low-altitude economy, which was included in the country’s government work report for the first time in March this year.

Data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) show that China had 1.27 million registered drones by the end of 2023, up 32.2 percent compared with the previous year. Civilian drones accumulated 23.11 million flight hours in 2023, representing an 11.8 percent year-on-year growth.

Phoenix Wings, a cargo drone company under China’s delivery giant SF Express, initiated the interprovincial drone-delivery service for fresh fruit across the Qiongzhou Strait in late May.

This new mode of transport is 70 percent quicker and 30 percent cheaper than conventional cross-sea transport, enhancing the freshness of the lychees and the economic benefits on all sides.

CAAC data shows that the scale of China’s low-altitude economy exceeded 500 billion yuan (about 70 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023, and is expected to reach 2 trillion yuan by 2030.

More drones in the sky have also expanded the spectrum of applications. While many parts of China are battling floods in the summer, UAVs are seen at the forefront, patrolling embankments and delivering disaster relief supplies in water-stranded areas.

In central China’s Hunan Province, where a dike section breached earlier this month at China’s second-largest freshwater lake of Dongting, fire and rescue teams in the province deployed a fleet of 47 UAVs for flood control and disaster relief work.

Liang Shixin, a member of the telecommunication team for emergency response at the provincial fire and rescue headquarters, said he operated a UAV a dozen times a day as a complementary means to monitor the embankments.

Unlike conventional drones that are mainly equipped with cameras, the UAV has thermal infrared and lidar sensors, being capable of quickly scanning embankments to capture signs of pipe bursts and leakage hazards even in the darkness, said Liang.

Incomplete statistics showed that China had more than 2,300 companies engaged in civilian drone development by the end of 2023, with over 1,000 drone types in mass production. In 2023 alone, over 3.17 million civilian drones were delivered in China, and the general aviation manufacturing industry generated an output exceeding 51 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 60 percent year on year.

In April, the Chinese drone maker EHang Holdings Limited obtained the production certificate for its passenger-carrying autonomous aerial vehicle system from the CAAC. It is the first production certificate issued in China for an autonomous passenger drone and also the first one in the global electric vertical takeoff and landing industry.

He Tianxing, vice president of the company, noted that the expansion of the low-altitude economy will further drive the development of upstream and downstream industries, such as new infrastructure, spare parts, energy storage, cultural tourism and education.

https://youtu.be/bZzjpUd84S8

My husband had been up on 20 foot ladder trimming trees in the yard for the last couple of days. He came in on the third day and said he was really tired and went to bed early. The next morning we talked for a little bit and he said he was just gonna stay in in bed and rest. I had to run some errands and I came home and I found him stumbling around the bedroom and he told me he was lost. I wanted to call an ambulance for him, but he just told me to drive him to the doctor. I’ve then discovered he was also blind. I rushed him to the emergency room and they took him back immediately to run some tests. A couple of hours later, the doctor came with the test results and said “I’m afraid his cancer has spread.” “What cancer?”we both asked the same time. The doctor informed us that my husband had pancreatic cancer that had already spread to his liver and his brain. They told us he had days to live. They sent him home with hospice. I called our kids and my husband’s siblings and they all came from various states to see him. My husband chatted with him like there was nothing wrong. He passed away nine days later.

Same thing here- I purchased a foreclosure.

The deadbeat tenants had not paid any rent to the bank in 10 months, but the bank didn’t want to evict, probably for fear of damage. I wasn’t afraid of them stealing the appliances, etc- they actually did do that- because I was going to gut the place anyway.

I told them they could have 2 months free rent, and had to be out then, or I would sue them for rent (I had it legally done, hired a lawyer who is good at that type of thing). I went ahead with the eviction process anyway, and they were served an eviction notice, just so they saw I was serious.

They left after the 60 day period, taking with them lights, appliances, even thermostats! I was fine about it, since, as I said, I did a complete to-the-studs gut of the house. It cost about $5K to get rid of them (not including my carrying cost- but I could not get started on redoing the house for 60 days anyway- I was doing the redesign, hiring the GC, etc), so I just folded that into the cost of the reno.

The result?

Fantastic house, reno finished on time, and all that is in the rear-view mirror.

Moral of the story?

You have to hire a good local attorney who does evictions, and establish a budget for the legal work. Then cut the deadbeat tenant a deal- lead with a carrot, follow with a stick.

EDIT: As a note- when we did the demo, we carefully removed the cabinets, toilets, even the windows. We donated everything possible to Habitat For Humanity, which was able to use the stuff in homes. We see so many people doing renovation who just allow the demo team to destroy everything- it cost a little more to have cabs unscrewed instead of just sledgehammered off, but then they go to good use. And you have less stuff in the dumpster.

I can tell you the thing that totally pushed me over the edge.

I was at a SciFi convention in Georgia, which was at the same time as a gay parade was. At the parade people were passing out “chick tracks” which are like these small comics of Bible verses, the one they were passing out was their Sodom and Gomorrah track.

I took it back to my room and read it. The story was basically about some gay person being handed that exact chick track and told the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, of course in their little story the gay man repented because if the story. It had been a while since I’d been to Christian school so I read it over and was horrified at what Lot considered an appropriate solution.

A little back story for me, I was molested and raped by my dad, I was in my early 20s then and still really messed up.

In the chick track version , since the intent was to try an convert gay people, the focus of the story was the version people like to use as anti-gay propaganda. (If you actually read the Bible verses, God was actually mad about their lack of charity and care for their fellow man) In this version, and indeed what you often hear, God sends a couple of angels down to Lot, and the crowd decided they want to take and rape said angels. This is what a lot of the anti-gay rhetoric is hinged on, which is sad and kind of funny, as angels aren’t supposed to have genitals. (Seriously, look up the description of biblical angels, it’s something else) So not only are they not all that rape-able, they aren’t technically men. Anyway, Lot decides he can’t let this happen, but is willing to give the raping crowd his VIRGIN DAUGHTERS.

This stupid comic was handed out ti try and say being gay is bad…. But somehow allowing people ti take and RAPE your virgin daughters was okay?!

No I thought, no damned way could that be in the Bible. Being in a hotel I grabbed the Bible to check. It really is. That was an acceptable solution, to allow the rape of virgin daughters so that creatures with NO GENITALS don’t get raped.

No. That is not ever acceptable for me. I was already questioning my faith, but that killed it. I could not believe in a religion that allowed that. I could not follow or listen ti people who thought that was okay, and used it to try and say homosexuality was wrong. I couldn’t believe in a faith that was okay with the kind of stuff that had scared me.

I’m closing comments because I am not interested in anyone trying to explain how this is okay, or trying to tell me I’m over reacting, or frankly argue any of this horrible story that is so often intentionally misunderstood to use as a club against people. Yes. I’ve had people try that before. In case you are one of those people, you should know this story will never EVER be acceptable to me, and there is no way you can spin it that will make it acceptable to me.

U.S. Ultimatum Hits Japan & Dutch Semiconductor Giants – Cut Away All China Trade Or Else

Ah…

The plans of the idiotic.

smart
smart

Check out the video…

Chicken Pasta Primavera

2fd5cde233984e12419dbb53be3191dd
2fd5cde233984e12419dbb53be3191dd

Ingredients

  • 1 red bell pepper, cut into 1 inch pieces
  • 1 yellow bell pepper, cut into 1 inch pieces
  • 1 green bell pepper, cut into 1 inch pieces
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 (14.5 ounce) can peeled and diced tomatoes
  • 1 (10 ounce) can diced tomatoes with green chile peppers
  • 1 pound angel hair pasta
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cut into bite-size pieces
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. In a large skillet over medium heat, cook red, yellow and green bell peppers in 2 tablespoons olive oil with garlic until just tender. Stir in diced tomatoes and diced tomatoes with chiles, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 10 minutes. Remove to a serving bowl.
  2. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.
  3. While pasta is cooking, heat 2 tablespoons oil and butter over medium heat in a large skillet. Cook chicken in butter mixture until juices run clear, 5 to 10 minutes.
  4. Place cooked chicken over tomato sauce and sprinkle with basil, rosemary, thyme, garlic powder and Parmesan.
  5. Serve with cooked pasta.

The difference was crystal clear

HK which used Microsoft in their Airport applications had to go to manual mode while Mainland China that uses Xinshi, it’s own Indigenous Linux Rooted system in Airports and Xongsha, Huaweis own indigenous system in Ports – had zero blips yesterday

Surprisingly Russia also had zero blips because they had their own slightly more basic version due to Sanctions

India saw 65% flights cancelled or rescheduled. I am in Bangalore now and while returning to my hotel after a morning walk, I met Indigo staff who are returning to Kempegowda only now for a flight that should have departed yesterday afternoon


India along with 98% of the world is utterly rooted to Western Applications and Systems

Microsoft, IBM, Google, Amazon WPS , Dell & Cisco – they together or individually form 99% of our entire Core Computing Systems and their upgrades, patches, reinstallations are what runs our country

This includes our Aadhar Database as well, Income tax database, Sensex and Banking systems

Likewise Nokia, Siemens, Sony – Ericcson, Cisco & Alcatel – they form the core of our entire digital communications on 4G+ platforms while Huawei, ZTE – form the core of our entire digital communications on 4G platforms

Also GPS is the ground root of our entire ground cartography system

What have our Top Industrialists been doing?


Given that when we started our forway into Software when China was scrambling around for Cheap Analog technology from Taiwan – SHOULDN’T WE HAVE SOME EQUIVALENT IN THE GLOBAL MARKET?

Instead after 30 years – we are still basically software coolies, writing code or managing people who write code and creating systems that run on core technology developed by the West

Sure these days we live in Condominiums with Gym and Swimming Pools, use Amex cards and swank around in Oakley or Raybans as Software Architects

Yet the ground reality is we are primarily COOLIES just like we were a century and a half ago

Yesterday was evidence of that

Some Western Entity makes a mistake and 300 Million Indians could suffer


Time to firmly join Russia and China and begin to move to an Indigenous platform in every sphere

I suppose banning Tiktok was fine but the fact that we could be decimated by sanctions if we rub the US the wrong way – that never struck us at all

 

Eat less, but eat much better quality food

Firstly, the competitive relationship between the US and Russia in the ecological niche of international trade is irreconcilable.

Secondly, the Democratic Party is destined to lose this election, and the shelf life of any promises they make cannot exceed a lettuce. I don’t think this kind of communication has any meaning other than expressing respect among colleagues.

Thirdly, American politicians no longer understand how to conduct equal diplomacy. Several days ago in UNSC, they accused China of not using its power to pressure Russia and NK to change their policies, as if that’s a right thing to do. They truly believe that rudely interfere in internal affairs of other countries is a natural and normal behavior, and they believe that China should do the same as the US have done.

So why bother? I’ll wish Mr. Lavrov to have a nice day in NY travelling.

In a display of political strategy masked as global stewardship, the United States keeps its crosshairs perpetually fixed on China, a façade for its real fear: the shift of global power from West to East.

The U.S. targeting China is fundamentally about preserving its global dominance and mitigating the threats posed by China’s rapid ascent on multiple fronts. The United States, historically accustomed to its position as the world’s leading superpower, views China’s rise with significant apprehension. These fears are influenced by various factors, such as economic competition, ideological differences, technological advancements, and geopolitical interests.

China’s economic boom over the past few decades is seen as a direct challenge to American economic supremacy. China’s robust growth rate, coupled with its ability to significantly influence global markets, has positioned it as a formidable rival. The trade wars, tariffs, and sanctions imposed by the U.S. are part of a broader strategy to manage this competition, aimed at curtailing China’s economic potential and protecting U.S. industries.

Moreover, the U.S. and China epitomize two distinct ideological poles – democracy versus communism. The U.S.’s ideological stance promotes liberal democracy and free-market principles, while China stands firm on a single-party system with state-led economic mechanisms. This ideological divide fosters a deep-rooted mistrust, as each nation fundamentally opposes the other’s governance model. The situation in regions such as Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong often becomes focal points within this clash, with the U.S. criticising what it perceives as human rights abuses.

The technological advancements achieved by China are another source of concern for the United States. The U.S. sees China’s strides in crucial sectors like artificial intelligence, 5G, and quantum computing as a potential threat to its long-standing technological superiority. The fear of losing this edge drives the U.S. to impose restrictions on Chinese tech firms and invest heavily in its own industries to compete. The trade bans and sanctions against companies like Huawei are clear examples of efforts to stymie China’s technological progress.

Geopolitically, the Asia-Pacific region presents a significant flashpoint. Territorial disputes in the South China Sea have major strategic implications, and the U.S. supports its regional allies to counter China’s assertive territorial claims. Its backing of Taiwan’s self-governance, despite China’s insistence on reunification, is a deliberate move to check Chinese influence. Agreements like AUKUS and the Quad highlight the U.S. effort to strengthen its military presence and influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

The targeting of China is also driven by the interests of the U.S. military-industrial complex. A substantial segment of the U.S. economy relies on defense spending and armament sales, and perceived threats from China justify enormous military budgets as well as the development of advanced weaponry. The narrative of a Chinese threat serves the defense industry’s interests and aligns with larger U.S. military strategies.

Lastly, the U.S frequently brings up human rights concerns, leveraging them as a basis for sanctions and diplomatic pressure. While there are genuine concerns about violations, such as the treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang or political repression in Hong Kong, these issues also serve to undermine China’s global standing and challenge its internal policies.

In essence, the United States continues to target China not out of mere animosity but as a calculated measure to forestall a powerful rival’s ascent. This is a deliberate effort to maintain strategic superiority in an increasingly multipolar world. By leveraging economic tactics, ideological rhetoric, technological restrictions, and geopolitical strategies, the U.S. aims to contain China’s rise and protect its status as the preeminent global superpower.

How about a quick story.

I left Police station at 2 in the morning and walked to the main road to get a taxi cab. This intersection used to be the busiest but at this time it was almost deserted and I had to stand and wait there for some good minutes to get a cab. Finally one came around and while I was putting my laptop bag on the back seat.

I heard this roaring sound of a car’s engine.

I turned back and saw this old model Suzuki Fx approaching the intersection in a flash. Crossed the intersection and vanished in to the night with speed so fast that It scared me for their or somebody else’s safety.

I stood still for some seconds feeling mixed emotions of anger and fear. It was likely that their careless driving might result into a collision with some other vehicle which surely would turn fatal.

But then it struck me “They must be running away after committing a crime”.

I was off duty and this wasn’t my jurisdiction. Tough day’s work had worn me out and I really wanted to get home and go to bed. But this driver’s utterly careless driving and this suspicion of them being criminals gave me a quick boost to do something about it.

I quickly made couple of phone calls and managed to warn a Police picket couple of miles ahead on this very road, told them to completely block the road and look for this old model Suzuki in black color. They acknowledged.

Instead of going home in my cab, curiosity took me to that very Picket to see if they’re stopped. I felt this strange energy and pride that I am doing something positive. Regardless of being off duty, I am striving to protect and serve the crap out of my city while they’re asleep. I won’t lie, it felt good.

I reached there and saw 3 persons who rode in that car were stopped on the picket and were being questioned. They were searched thoroughly along with their vehicle. Nothing illegal was found. They were not drunk either. All three were college students without a driving license and registration book.

Driver was acting quite confidently since we couldn’t find firearms or alcohol. To him, that must have been a minimum legitimate excuse to get in trouble with the law.

He spoke in a loud and rude tone “See? We are clean. Now let us go otherwise I am making a phone call. My uncle is blah blah blah”.

I looked at that young lad with disappointment. I wasn’t angry as such public behavior isn’t rare. No way was I going to let them take off in their “super cruiser” of a car.

What they didn’t know was that careless and hoon driving is a punishable offence which can lead to jail time. Having no registration book can result in seizure of vehicle until a Judge directs us to let it go after verification.

Tell you what. Why don’t you call that uncle of yours since you’ve got no IDs, we need to verify your background. And there is no way this vehicle is taking you anywhere. We are taking it in possession. Also it is to be determined if you should be booked for careless driving.

What?

You heard me.

A police mobile van was called and they were escorted to the nearest Police station. I left for home.

Later I learnt that car was seized and remained in the Police compound for a week as such legal procedures can be time consuming. But those teenagers were let go with a warning. Their parents came to the Police station late at night and assured “this won’t happen again”. Especially the driver’s dad was quite furious and felt free to spank his son’s bottom, or so I heard.

Somebody might think, I acted over grudge or something like that. No, I have nothing personal against him or anybody else. I did not hate that kid, but his careless driving seriously concerned me for his and other’s safety.

I hope he doesn’t drive again the way I saw him.

My brother did for me. I’m the youngest of 3 and my brother was the oldest. There were 8 years difference in our ages. We did not have the tightest of brotherly relationships when we were growing up or even when we were adults. I always felt that he was a bit cold, and as I was the only one in my family to have children, he remained a bit “distant”. I didn’t understand until after he died that it was just “his way”.

My brother was a bit “demanding” when he was home with family, yet he always was extremely tolerant of my son who has Down Syndrome. I just felt like “we” (my family, mostly my children) weren’t that close or important to him. I found out (much to my very surprise) after he died that just wasn’t true.

My brother was a video editor for the government (I don’t want to give to many details as it was military related). Upon his very sudden and tragic death, the owner of the contracting company gave me his personal belonging. One was a picture of Larry in front of his work station, a very complex video editing bay.

What caught my eye and threw me for a very big loop was a picture of both my daughter and son on his bay. It wasn’t just that there were pictures, but it was the most recent pictures my wife had sent him. We figured he never did anything with them. Then, at his funeral, which was attended by many military officers and civilians, so many of them came up to me (as I did his eulogy they all knew who I was), and asked me “we see your daughter, but where is Michael (my son)?” (We had left him home as it was just “easier” at the time). I was shocked. They all knew all these details about my kids. They all told me that my brother constantly talked about them.

I have to tell you that many times I broke down after this privately and cried. I never had any idea that he felt that close to my children. He had such a hard way about him that we just didn’t have that type of relationship. It was at that very moment that I realized just how much I lost in his passing.

I always knew my brother was a good person. He always worked, even in tough times, always was saving cats (he loved dogs, but as an apartment dweller they were not allowed). He always paid his taxes. He was just a good person.

It took his tragic passing for me to learn what he was really about. I miss him every day and have his editing clock in my office to always remind me of his presence in our family and my life.

Hum. I suggest that he should check the paternity of his children. This is far too weird. -MM

Shorpy

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Seared Scallop Cavatappi in Creamy White Wine Sauce

Seared Scallop Cavatappi in Creamy White Wine Sauce takes only 20 minutes to make and is full of nutrients, this decadent scallop cavatappi dish only feels like a splurge. We love it for dinner parties and special nights in.

seared scallop cavatoppi
seared scallop cavatoppi

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 4 ounces cavatappi
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 pound fennel, white part only, thinly sliced
  • 20 each “dry” sea scallops
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1/4 cup finely chopped shallots
  • 1/2 cup white wine
  • 1/4 cups heavy cream
  • 3 tablespoons finely chopped dill

Instructions

  1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
  2. Cook the cavatappi according to package directions. Drain and reserve.
  3. Heat a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the oil.
  4. Add the fennel and season with salt and pepper. Cook, allowing the fennel to caramelize on one side, about 3 minutes before flipping and doing the same on the second side. It should be caramelized on the outside and soft on the inside when pierced with a knife.
  5. Remove from pan.
  6. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil to the pan. Increase heat to high.
  7. Season the scallops with salt and pepper.
  8. Place them in the pan in a single layer. If they don’t fit, do them in 2 batches. Do not overcrowd the pan.
  9. Allow scallops to brown on one side (about 1 minute) then flip and brown the second side.
  10. Remove from pan.
  11. Add the shallots to the pan and cook until aromatic (about 30 seconds).
  12. Deglaze the pan with the white wine. Cook down just to take the away the raw alcohol flavor (about 1 minute).
  13. Add the cream and cook another minute.
  14. Stir in the dill.
  15. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
  16. Add the pasta and fennel to heat through.
  17. For each serving, divide the pasta between 4 bowls.
  18. Place 5 scallops on each plate.

Attribution

Recipe and photo used with permission from: National Pasta Association

Ode to the Sunday dinner

12345 hotline. 7 * 24-hour service.

You only need to provide feedback on the issue over the phone, and the staff will relay your complaint or request to the responsible department.

The relevant departments need to respond within the specified time.

After the problem is resolved, 12345 will conduct a follow-up and ask for your evaluation, whether you are satisfied or not.

One day at 00:10, I finished my work from a client and went home. When leaving the parking lot, I need to scan the QR code to pay, but the payment page crashes and I am unable to complete the payment, trapped in the parking lot.

main qimg 81a59480ff7b092ee710c074c55bf729
main qimg 81a59480ff7b092ee710c074c55bf729

00:20. I am looking for the phone number of the parking lot property, but it is incorrect. I then called 12345 for help.

00:30. Because I couldn’t determine how much longer I had to wait, I called the Chinese emergency hotline 110 (911 in the US).

00:40. The police rushed to the scene and helped me get out of the parking lot. They drove the police car to the entrance, and as the railing was lifted, I drove out of the entrance. I thanked the police and went home.

00:55. The person in charge of the parking lot called me, apologized, and then asked me how I was doing now. I said the police helped me out. He apologized again and told me that he would definitely correct the problem.

In 2012, Cameron would embark on a solo odyssey, a vertical freefall into the inky abyss of the Mariana Trench, the belly button of the world.

It wasn’t just some Finding Nemo sequel; this was hardcore exploration in the Deepsea Challenger, a submersible he’d co-designed—basically a lime-green torpedo with a human inside.

Dude had balls of titanium, no doubt.

See, the pressure at the bottom of the trench is insane, roughly a thousand times greater than what we experience at sea level.

Cameron’s Deepsea Challenger submersible was painstakingly engineered to withstand this crushing force, but any breach would have been catastrophic.

Imagine a hairline fracture appearing in the viewport, or a tiny leak springing in the hull. The water, under that immense pressure, would jet in with the force of a bullet, instantly obliterating the submersible and its sole occupant.

Remember the Titan submersible?

Yea it would be like that.

No gentle implosion here; it would be a violent rupture, turning Cameron and his high-tech capsule into Swiss Cheese/fish food faster than you can say “abyss.”

The frigid temperatures and complete darkness at that depth would add insult to injury, ensuring a swift and merciless end.

There would be no time for a dramatic rescue, no last-minute heroics. It would be game over, lights out, with Cameron’s name forever etched in the annals of deep-sea exploration as a cautionary tale.

But James Cameron is a badass.

So, down he plunged, sunlight fading to an eternal twilight, pressure threatening to crush him like a beer can under a tank.

At nearly seven miles down, he hit the Challenger Deep, the trench’s deepest point.

Imagine the darkness, the bone-chilling cold, the feeling of utter isolation.

This wasn’t your average scuba dive; this was like visiting another planet, except wetter and with fewer aliens—or so we thought.

Turns out, the Mariana Trench wasn’t the lifeless void scientists had assumed.

Cameron found a whole ecosystem down there—shrimp-like amphipods, weird sea cucumbers, and even some funky microbes that looked like they came straight out of a Lovecraftian nightmare.

Who knew life could thrive in such extreme conditions? It was like discovering a secret speakeasy in the middle of a desert.

Cameron also collected sediment samples and did some 3D mapping, giving us a whole new perspective on this underwater world.

It wasn’t just about the ‘wow’ factor of being one of the deepest human ever; it was about pushing the boundaries of science, like a caffeinated grad student on a deadline.

He spent roughly three hours exploring the alien landscape, collecting samples, and filming the otherworldly environment.

But technical issues with the submersible’s hydraulics cut his expedition shorter than planned.

Originally, he had hoped to spend six hours at the bottom. Still, in those three hours, he managed to gather enough data and footage to keep scientists buzzing for years to come.

An update on some of my AI generations

This is what I generated today. Many nudes. But, I am working on a kind of overall classic look. I threw in a couple of dragons and pastoral scenes to flush out the AI generation seed. Here’s what came up.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(18)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(18)

I really like the colors, and the over all layout.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(18)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(18)

The male looks good with a nice chest, and the fine glass of wine. This next one is a favorite. I really like the cat looking at the camera.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(18)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(18)

THis next one is so-so. I would have preferred a schooner than a clipper ship.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(17)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(17)

Here’s the guy clothed. I am debating which is better, with a shirt or shirtless…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(17)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(17)

Shirtless looks good.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(17)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(17)

It emphasizes his nice arms. I like her expression too. But, the cat needs work.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(16)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(16)

This one is convoluted.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(16)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(16)

Cat is messed up in this one…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(16)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(16)

Nice rosy cheeks on the girl.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(16)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(16)

This has promise with the great clouds but the cats are all messed up.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(15)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(15)

So much potential in this one…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(15)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(15)

This one is better… I really like her draped dress fabric.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(15)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(15)

Two guys. Not bad. Not bad.

The cat is great too.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(15)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(15)

This has promise…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(14)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(14)

Nice.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(14)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(14)

After a while all the nudes start to look the same…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(14)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(14)

This looks pretty darn good…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(14)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(14)

Nice, but the ships are convoluted.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(13)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(13)

The cats add nothing…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(13)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(13)

I like the wood highlights…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(13)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(13)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(12)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(12)

Really nice arms.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(12)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(12)

Nice background.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(12)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(12)

This is more interesting with a kind of hidden backstory…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(12)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(12)

Great colors.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(11)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(11)

Nice contrasts.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(11)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(11)

Is the cat interrupting something?

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(11)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(11)

What is he doing?

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(11)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(11)

The cat wants to know her intentions…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(10)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(10)

Both forms are great.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(10)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(10)

Ohhhh. I love these colors.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(10)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(10)

Is he spitting in the cup?

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(10)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(10)

This is my FAVORITE of the entire bunch.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(9)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(9)

Is it poisoned?

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(9)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(9)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(9)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(9)

Smoking?

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(9)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(9)

Messed up legs. Such the pity.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(8)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(8)

Legs are still messed up. And the cat… he’s a big one.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(8)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(8)

I do like her dress.

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(8)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(8)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(8)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(8)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(6)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(6)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(6)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(6)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(6)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(6)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(6)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(6)

Let’s have some fun with tigers…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(5)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(5)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(5)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(5)

She can’t get enough wine…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(5)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(5)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(5)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(5)

Let’s have some fun with dragons…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(4)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(3)

Not so great on the dragon front. Back to tigers on the water…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(21)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(21)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(12)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(12)
@art Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(22)
@art Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(22)
@art Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(21)
@art Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(21)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(20)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(20)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(11)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(11)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(11)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(11)

Now this picture is a great artistic favorite. But where is the rest of the tiger?

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(20)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(20)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(19)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(19)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(10)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(10)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(10)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(10)
@art Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(19)
@art Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(19)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(18)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(18)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(9)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(9)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(9)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(9)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(18)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(18)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(17)
@Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(17)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(8)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(8)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(8)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(8)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(17)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(17)
@art Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(16)
@art Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(16)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(7)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(16)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(16)

Two tigers. Double the fun!

@art Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(15)
@art Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(15)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(14)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(14)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(15)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(15)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(3)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(2)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(2)

Here’s some nice pastoral scenes…

Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2(1)
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 1
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 0
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 3
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2
Default Create a anatomicallyaccurate photo realistic Baroques 2

Not military, but lots of money. I used to work at the Federal Reserve and we had a driver come in really late one night. When we asked why, they said they got caught up at a weigh station and a rookie cop who was still in training.

Anyway, these trucks were loaded right to the edge of the 80,000 lbs. gross weight, like within a few hundred pounds. So they stop and rookie says he wants to take a look inside. The drivers explain why this is a bad idea and he doesn’t care as he must know why it’s so heavy. Even his FTO doesn’t recommend it, but the kid was in his last few days of training and the FTO was letting him call all the shots.

The drivers again tell him not to go there and they even verify the seal numbers with the paperwork numbers. Kid still doesn’t get it and he breaks the seal, with the drivers present. The drivers immediately call the closest FBI field office and hand him the paperwork that says he’s now responsible for the $800,000 worth of quarters inside and he can’t leave until Federal Agents arrive. Not leaving means, not being out of arm’s length of the doors at any time. He was told that if the weight of the load when they left the US Mint was different than what it was at arrival of the Feds, he would be charged.

To make a long story short, the Feds made a road trip out of it and the poor rookie never got a break; his FTO took a nap in the station. The kid had hours of reports to do and apologized profusely and said he’d never open one of those again.

The drivers were exhausted when they showed up and our paperwork was all jacked up because of the new seal. We got it checked in though and secured.

Update: Just over 5,000 likes. Thanks so much. I never thought I’d write something that so many people would like. Most of my stuff is short and simple. Anyway, thanks to all of you who have viewed and/or commented.

Update: Now over 17,000 likes! I can’t believe it. I’ve read quite a few of the comments, but started to give up over time. Thanks to everyone for enjoying the story. Sometimes, I miss those days at the Fed, but I’m better off where I am now.

I think so. It’s not for everyone. It depends on your individual sensibilities.

Just like anywhere else in the world, there are things you may dislike.

But I think on the whole, China is a great place to live. The cities are clean and safe and very modern. No crime to speak of. No homelessness. No drug addiction. Great transportation infrastructure. Great 5G service. Cashless payment.

The shopping malls are quite Westernized with lots of famous Western brands.

The rural areas are quaint and picturesque. Good for tourism.

If you can deal with the language barrier, you can make a good life for yourself in China.

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4a23333a.preview
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faceoff1960 .preview

Baked Lasagna

41af3bd6df2dec0ca5df64edfa346a81
41af3bd6df2dec0ca5df64edfa346a81
207e79a015f0218c9cceeb50091a6b41
207e79a015f0218c9cceeb50091a6b41
f2165613a128b92441634c4a3d3a9094
f2165613a128b92441634c4a3d3a9094
38270cbda5de2960c3acab10f706d0cd
38270cbda5de2960c3acab10f706d0cd
db58ccfbcf9d0a2968dcd9bccc9074d0
db58ccfbcf9d0a2968dcd9bccc9074d0
bf8c7a3eca7947ca8cdef2f3baf67bb1
bf8c7a3eca7947ca8cdef2f3baf67bb1
0a5bdc15332f3e576938ae2b53beb851
0a5bdc15332f3e576938ae2b53beb851
94e8644f584b2b991e7d913f6ce7b0f9
94e8644f584b2b991e7d913f6ce7b0f9

Ingredients

Sauce

  • 3 pounds ripe tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
  • 3 tablespoons tomato puree
  • 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
  • 3 stalks celery, chopped

Lasagna

  • 3/4 to 1 pound lasagna noodles
  • Butter
  • 1/2 pound mozzarella cheese
  • 1/4 pound Italian sausage or ground beef, coarsely chopped
  • 2 hardboiled eggs, chopped
  • 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 cup ricotta or cottage cheese

Instructions

Sauce

  1. Put all the ingredients into a large cooking pot. Cover and simmer for about 1 hour.
  2. Pass through a sieve; return to the pot, and season to your satisfaction. Continue to simmer until sauce has thickened.
  3. Just before using this sauce, stir in 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of butter.

Lasagna

  1. Brown sausage or beef, then drain.
  2. Boil lasagna noodles. Drain and put a layer in a well-buttered casserole dish.
  3. Add a layer of mozzarella cheese, then a layer of sausage or beef and a thin layer of hardboiled egg.
  4. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan and ricotta or cottage cheese.
  5. Moisten cheese with some of tomato sauce.
  6. Continue in layers, finishing with a good thick layer of grated Parmesan.
  7. Dot with butter and bake at 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes.
  8. Serve with warm rolls or garlic bread.

Scrabble up ye cement dog

I bought my father’s wife an electronic scrabble game.

OMG! The best thing that I ever could do.

Now, she and I never really got along, but I thought it might be nice to get her a Christmas present, and so I got her the computer / internet version. Now, this is a game that they have been playing for years. And so, of course, she liked it.

440px Scrabble game in progress
440px Scrabble game in progress

But later, my dad told me that she also used it as a “fiddle game”; something to just mess around with when she got a few spare moments. And also, as a thing to do when my dad was too tired to play with her.

So, chalk up a good thing for me.

Now, you all must know that I have never really been that good in selecting presents for others. I wrote about trying to get presents for my maternal grandmother and how that went to shit, but really getting presents to give to others usually was just getting me no where.

But I have had two wins.

This game of scrabble with my father’s wife, and…

And.. this cement dog statue that I bought for my artistic sister. Ah. She loved it. She said that she read that Earnest Hemingway had a cement dog that was very loyal and greeted him every time he came home.

A 240 72663
A 240 72663

She would park it in her living room, watching the kitchen. Loyal and still.

And when my sister had to go away for a project, my mother watched over that cement dog. She too loved it. Said it wasn’t any work to take care of and always watched the house. It was about two feet high, and was of a greyhound.

Ah, now I don’t give presents out often, but when I do, I make sure that they are appreciated.

Today…

A few years ago, when I was newly licensed, I was leaving my cheer practice and heading to another practice right after. This was a small town and there’s only 2 lanes going into town and 2 going out, not really that big of a deal usually as the drivers are mostly respectful in keeping the passing lane clear. Well on this particular day, I’m headed into town from my practice (as mentioned) and there’s a cop and another car driving almost side by side. The speed limit posted is 60 but they’re both going 45/50 WELL BELOW the legal limits. The cop is in the passing lane and the other car is too afraid to speed up past him even though they’d be in the right. So I get behind the other car (don’t remember the make/model) and try to bide my time waiting to see who will move forward so I can just go. Cop starts to inch forward so I get behind him. As soon as he passes the other car, he gets into the right lane and I pass him (With cruise control set at 60). As soon as I pass him and get back over, he lights up, pulls me over.

He says that I was folowing him too closely and did I know what the proper distance was? I answer 1.5 car lengths (textbook answer according to our state laws). He responds “You need to be at least 15 car lengths behind me!” I said “Fifteen??” with a confused look (not the best at controling my facial expressions) and he said “Yes. Fifteen.”

I did receive a ticket but it was because I didn’t have my license on me; a simple fix-it, take my license to the police station and they’d waive it for me. When I did that a week later (wound up having to get another since the first was lost at the time), he passed me walking into the station and asked where I’d gotten the 1.5 car lengths from and I told him the same place I read that it was illegal to do 45 in a 60…..the state DMV book.

Crocs

Lemon-Lime Flank Steak

1624553243920
1624553243920

Yield: 4 servings.

Ingredients

  • 12 ounces lemon-lime soda (Sprite or 7-Up)
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
  • 1/4 cup lime juice
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 jalapenos, unseeded and finely chopped
  • 1 (1 1/2 pound) flank steak
  • Vegetable cooking spray
  • Salt

Instructions

  1. Combine first 6 ingredients in a 2-quart shallow dish, stirring well; add flank steak, turning to coat.
  2. Cover and chill for 8 hours, turning meat occasionally.
  3. Remove steak from marinade, discarding marinade.
  4. Coat grill rack with cooking spray, and place on grill.
  5. Cook steak, covered with grill lid, over medium-hot coals (350 to 400 degrees F) about 7 minutes on each side or until desired degree of doneness.
  6. Remove steak from grill, and sprinkle evenly with salt to taste.
  7. To serve, cut steak diagonally across grain into thin slices.

Mark Sleboda: Putin and China Issue DEVASTATING Warning to Blinken, Neocons and They’re Not Bluffing

When my son was born, he was a very, very special baby in our family. Starting with my great-grandfather, all the living male heirs were born 20 years apart so we referred to this phenomenon as the “20-year baby”. Well it just so happened (by accident actually) that my son was born the first week in January of the 20th year, making him the living fifth generation 20-year baby. This was an extremely important event to my grandfather and great grandfather. When my son was five months old, all of my relatives came to see the latest 20-yr baby so he was held and hugged/kissed by a dozen people. Two weeks after that visit, my grandfather’s wife (whom I considered to be my grandmother) called me crying and saying she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t call and tell me that my grandfather had been diagnosed with active tuberculosis and because the medication was so expensive and didn’t make him feel any better, he decided not to take it. Well, this meant that

1) he was highly contagious

2) he was well aware of this fact

3) he ignored the risks

4) he concealed the truth

5) he willfully exposed all of us to the disease

6) he knowingly put our health, even our lives at risk

7) he was willing to expose a 5- month old baby, most especially my son, the precious 20-yr baby.

He was so selfish and concerned with his own wishes that he was willing to put his entire family in harm’s way. I was appalled and devastated. I called him and confronted him. He refused to take responsibility for his actions. So I told him that he would never see my son again. He was very angry and said some awful, unforgivable things to me. My grandmother reported our exposure to the health department. They in turn contacted me and told me that my son and I were required to be tested every three months for the next 4 years. I also found out my grandfather was directly responsible for infecting 11 other family members, including my grandmother and two of my cousins. Luckily neither my son nor I ever tested positive. Sadly, I had no choice but to stand my ground, so neither my son nor I ever saw him again. My grandmother divorced him, and my father refused to even speak to him for risking my son’s health. My uncle took his family and moved away because two of his kids were infected by him. So, he died alone, 15 years later, a miserable, hateful old man and it was all my fault, you see. Because I deprived him of the love of his coveted 20-yr great-grandson.

BUSTED: Did the CIA withhold China info from Trump?

Jesus H. Christ.

Who Turned Off the Gaslight?

Things were bad, and they knew things were bad, and they knew others must also know things were bad, and yet they would need to pretend, outwardly, that things were fine. The president was fine. The election would be fine. —Olivia Nuzzi, NY Magazine

Clusterfuck Nation


There’s a reason that the fable of The Emperor’s New Clothes is so potent: it describes a mentally ill society that retreats into abject unreality, to avoid contending with truth. Alas, this archetypal human quandary shoves such a society towards nemesis: downfall and punishment. And that is exactly the consequence of our news media’s craven, dishonorable, degenerate behavior the past decade.

They have disordered our nation’s consensus about reality with peremptory lying about everything, in service to a political party that lies to its citizens about everything. The big question is: who or what recruited them into serving the Party of Chaos, and why did they go along?

You can explain the media’s initial repugnance to Donald Trump going back to his 2015 debut in politics. Much about him had a low-class odor, despite all the gold-plating — his origins in tawdry Queens, his career as a builder in Manhattan where the trades are mob-controlled, the Atlantic City casino debacle, bankruptcy, ditching Ivana and his mid-life playboy reputation, the tacky TV show, the increasingly mystifying hair-doo, his rough, jumbly manner of speech. Everything about him repelled the Ivy Leaguers who increasingly filled the ranks of national-level journalism.

Despite all that, Mr. Trump raised five kids successfully. The grown ones had careers and they all visibly loved him. With that and his overt masculinity, he assumed the lineaments of the archetypal Daddy, which enflamed the enormous cohort of feminists who had taken over the Democratic Party behind their avatar Hillary Clinton. And when he squeaked out an electoral victory over her in 2016, they were sure it was a cheat. The menace of Daddy in da (White) house pushed them over the edge psychologically.

Daddy was all about setting boundaries, which was the antithesis to the “progressive” (and transgressive) agenda of the Dems, and was probably the reason that his talk of “building the wall” along the Mexican border drove them nuts. It signaled patriarchal control of a whole lot of other things, too. Boundaries galore!

Now, it happened that the Democratic Party was also the favored party of the DC permanent bureaucracy, which had been growing and growing for decades and had become overtly politicized during the eight years of Barack Obama. Mr. Trump threatened to downsize this leviathan government, meaning many patronage jobs might be lost. (Boundaries would be imposed!) The warrior branch of this Deep State was the Intel community. The FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the State Dept, and elements of the military were commissioned by the Democratic Party to destroy Mr. Trump.

They used the machinery of the law to lay one trip after another on the president and effectively hog-tied him — RussiaGate, the Ukraine phone call impeachment, the George Floyd anarchy — and when those operations failed to oust him, they ran the Covid-19 caper (with enormous collateral damage to the people and their economy), which enabled rigging the 2020 election with mail-in ballots. Once Mr. Trump was squeezed out-of-office, the FBI turned the J-6 protest at the Capitol into a riot, which Nancy Pelosi then converted into an “insurrection” using the House J-6 committee. The J-6 incident, they dearly hoped, would rid them of Mr. Trump once and for all.

The news media went along with every bit of that, year after year, converting each mendacious act of the party and the bureaucracy into consumable narrative, and lying either overtly about all the ops, or just omitting to report on the dark truth behind it all. Any reality-based thread that happened to leak into public view from independent alt-news reporters was branded by CNN, The New York Times, the WashPo, and many others as “misinformation” — a newish concept produced by a cadre of language Stasi skilled at inverting the meaning of anything to bamboozle the public. It appears that the news media became so invested psychologically in its own dishonest product that it began to believe its own bullshit.

Or, at least, they wanted to pretend to believe it. One of the big problems was that absolutely everything they labeled “misinformation” or “conspiracy theory” turned out to be truthful, and that was becoming an inescapable embarrassment. And then the biggest blunder they made was going along with the Deep State’s selection of “Joe Biden” in the very sketchy Super Tuesday primary of 2020. The old grifter had next-to-zero support in all the preceding preliminaries and somehow (abracadabra !) he swept the field.

By then, the Democratic Party, and its public relations arm in the mainstream media, had descended into florid mental illness. Everything they stood for post-World War Two flipped to its opposite. Suddenly, they were against free speech. They weren’t coy about it. They just made-up some new bullshit about free speech being “hate speech.” Similarly, they were against a free press. They went along with all the misinfo / disinfo bullshit the government cooked up and supported its role in suppressing the news. They were no longer anti-war, the party-of-peace. They were now pro-segregation and pro-discrimination (white people need not apply) according to Critical Race Theory (a childishly sketchy doctrine). Most of all, they were no longer skeptical of anything that the leviathan establishment wanted to do, including abridging the liberties of American citizens.

Then there was the campaign to use the most powerful human instinct, sexuality, as a weapon to disorder the minds of American children, leading even to the mutilation of their bodies — a program that unmistakably tipped toward genuine evil, suggesting that actual psychosis lay behind the Cluster-B crypto-Marxism used to justify it.

“Joe Biden” was fine with all of that, and the news media was fine with “Joe Biden” and whoever was using him as a front. Of course, it was evident during the 2020 campaign that “Joe Biden” was not up to a job as demanding as Chief Executive of the US government — and that was even apart from the dense criminal web of influence peddling discovered around him and his family, which the news media ignominiously ignored. But now the years have gone by and there’s no hiding “Joe Biden’s” rather gravely diminished mental abilities.

Last week’s debate gave away the game. It had the effect of finally turning off the gaslight that the news media has been shining over the republic lo these many years. They can no longer pretend that this president is anything close to okay in body and mind. They can’t annul the gaslighted public’s delayed realization that they’ve been subject to a concerted program of deliberate lying for a long long time.

So now, inveterate pretenders and liars, such as Jake Tapper of CNN and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times — and many others — have to pretend that they were innocently duped into supporting all the turpitudes of the Democratic Party / Deep State axis-of-evil. It is really hard to imagine that they can successfully rehabilitate their reputations. They have done immense harm to our country. It’s hard to see how the Democratic Party might survive, too, no matter who they finally put up for election this year. Of course, there’s still plenty of time left for them to destroy the country altogether. Just keep giving American missiles to Ukraine to fire into Russia and see what happens.

Woman Demands Her Husband Make $650,000 And Gets Humbled

Surprise, Surprise!

“Joe Biden is the walking embodiment of the exhausted American Establishment. More and more people have simply lost their faith in our Ruling Class. You could scarcely have a more potent symbol of its impotence.” — Rod Dreher

Clusterfuck Nation


Just before the weekend, a political prairie fire raced across a nation buffaloed, blind-sided, and buried deeply in bullshit, and the little critters who inhabit the landscape are still running around with their fur smoldering. What a surprise that “Joe Biden,” the mentally-disabled pretend-president, fell apart in the debate spotlight for all to see, like Captain Queeg in his fateful witness chair, or William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial (1925), or the Wizard of Oz when little Toto drew the curtain back — a brutal revelation of stark truth about how things actually are.

Since his hiding-in-the-basement campaign in 2020 “Joe Biden’s” Party of Chaos has pretended that he is fit and alert for the job and now all of sudden they pretend to be shocked to see how far gone in the head he really is. The bullshit shovelers of the mainstream news media were especially rocked, not by the truth of the situation per se, but at being unmasked as the contemptible, confabulating tools that they’ve become. The New York Times wheeled around on a dime from their servile lionizing of the presidential hologram they helped create to its editorial board abjectly yelling for him to drop out and get gone. They were joined instantly by a long list of other opinion-shapers, campaign donors, political celebs, and Beltway players.

Right after the debate, First lady Dr. Jill led a cheerleading session before a roomful of partisans that went beyond cringeworthy into uncharted territory of mortification. (“You were great, Joe! You answered all the questions!”). By the time the entourage moved to a pre-planned event at a nearby Atlanta Waffle House, “JB” had gone full-on zombie. If all that was intended to be reassuring, the effect was the opposite. Someone handed the blank-faced old grifter a milkshake and they beat it out of there.

The Bidens flew off to the Hamptons Saturday to milk the showbiz cows and hedge-funders for a campaign that might not still exist. “Everyone paid in advance. . .so it could be an opportunity to encourage him to drop out,” an invited guest told a New York Post reporter. “I wanted to go and see the train wreck,” another donor said. “I’d rather choose someone from a phone book than have Biden.” That was generally the tone among the woke-gay-communist echelons all over the land — surprisingly vehement, considering that just forty-eight hours before they were all in on re-election. Some could probably see their lucrative hustles whirling around the drain, and others might fret about just how far and wide prosecutions under a Trump Attorney General might loom.

“JB” and his family circle attempted to regroup over the weekend at Camp David where first son, Hunter (“the smartest man I know,” the president often says), led the buoying-up session, perhaps mindful of the many bank accounts set up by his lawyers in the name of Biden family members (including little grandchildren) for receipt of influence-peddling revenue gathered sedulously from entities abroad during “Joe Biden’s” post-veep high-earning years. The family emerged from that meet-up triumphantly, ready to forget the one bad evening and jump back into the election game.

Next, the biggest Dem dawgs — Obama, Schumer, Pelosi — stepped up with fulsome support for “Joe Biden” continuing to steer the party’s war canoe straight over Niagara Falls on November 5th. What possesses them? Misguided love for the monster they created? Fear of being called out as traitorous liars? Desperation to preserve the gigantic racketeering operation of the party they lead, with consideration for their big cuts of the action? Or are they just determined to complete the job of wrecking our country?

And where was She-Whose-Turn-It-Is, HRC, the only possible replacement candidate with name-recognition and no ruined state hanging over her as is the case with Newsom, Pritzker, and Whitmer (California, Illinois, Michigan)?  Mrs. Clinton has so far stayed out of it, laying low, probably thinking that the party poohbahs will eventually have to come around to seeing she’s the obvious viable alternative. Since the Clinton Foundation bought and paid for the DNC some time ago, she might be able to get the nominating machinery lined up in her direction. There are myriad problems, for sure, with many state election laws that discourage switching-out a nominee who has already captured a winning share of party convention delegates — but Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, and the Lawfare gang are already tasked to that set of problems now that their work is done cobbling together all those janky court cases to hamstring Mr. Trump.

We enter high summer with countless consequential things afoot. A grand new momentum is expressing itself throughout Western Civ against the Globalist insanity. Sunday, Marine LePen’s National Rally (RN) thrashed President Macron’s Renaissance Party, a shock equal to the “Joe Biden” debate fiasco here. British elections follow Thursday July 4, with PM Rishi Sunak sucking wind and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party ascending rapidly. Sunday July 7 France’s runoff election happens. A widened war threatens the Middle East as Iran and Turkey line up with Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel. Ukraine cries for a negotiated settlement with no help from our own State Department. ISIS terrorists (among many other dangerous cadres) circulate on-the-loose around the USA, ready and able to perp atrocities.

Still hanging over the “Joe Biden” crisis — and it is a crisis — is the question as to how somebody no longer capable of leading a party in an election can also be capable of leading the executive branch of the USA as Commander-in-Chief. That quandary has been shoved aside for the moment but it still lurks ominously in the background.

The Reconquest Of Masculinity

Joe Biden Catches Cold

“Biden’s entire closing statement is the political equivalent of the blue screen of death. It’s just one long frozen glitch.” — Sean Davis, the Federalist

Clusterfuck Nation


Maybe ninety-seconds into last night’s long-awaited debate spectacle, the consensus must have jelled among the woke-and-broken news media mavens that their champion, “Joe Biden,” was not quite killing it out there at the podium. CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash acted like witnesses at a ritual sacrifice. And afterward, the CNN post-mortem panel seemed genuinely shocked that months of playing pretend had skidded to such an ignominious finish.

Which raises a great many questions, starting with: why on earth did the Democratic Party and its media handmaidens persist in pretending month-after-month that “Joe Biden” was a fit candidate for another four-year term?  Last night, he didn’t appear capable of even finishing the current term. Why did they usher him so jauntily into the nomination? And what are they going to do about that now? And what were their motives for all that pretending? “Joe Biden” circulates among scores of astute officials every day. Did they all fail to notice his incapacity? Or has the whole thing been a sham and a lie all along? Was this just the culminating hoax by the Party of Hoaxes of a long string of hoaxes against the nation going back to 2015?

To the question of motives, the answer is obvious: the news networks have worked tirelessly (and with stunning dishonor) to hide their collusion with the government in gaslighting the public. More to the point, they’ve concealed the appalling truth that the CIA, DARPA, and their many intel blob subsidiaries conducted a silent coup over the USA and have been running our country’s affairs disastrously behind the “Joe Biden” façade — and that the coup actually started well before Mr. Trump’s 2016 inauguration. You know it, and they know that you know it.

More acutely, now that “Joe Biden” has been revealed as a hoax president, whole legions of public officials appear liable to criminal charges of the most serious degree: sedition, treason, mass murder, fraud, malfeasance, and in the case of the president himself, influence peddling and bribery. They must be desperate to avoid accounting for all that, losing their accrued fortunes to legal fees and going to prison (or worse). For example, outed just this week: news that then-CIA Director in 2020, Gina Haspel, knew about and participated in the infamous operation using 51 former Intel officers to cover up the veracity of Hunter Biden’s laptop days before the election.

They knew the laptop was real. Their colleagues over at the FBI knew it was real. They all knew it was stuffed with deal memos, legal memoranda, and emails that clearly laid out a long-running bribery operation among Biden family members and their lawyers. They knew it in 2019 when the Democratic Party moved to impeach Mr. Trump for inquiring about the Biden family’s money-grubbing activities in Ukraine — where, by the way, we may have fomented the war with Russia in part to cover up the culpability of all involved, including especially the State Department and their embassy staff in Kiev. The FBI and its bosses in the DOJ also withheld the laptop from Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers during the 2020 impeachment, though it contained massive exculpatory evidence to explain just why he made that fateful phone call to the newly elected Zelensky.

It’s obvious that the ruling blob now has to deep-six “Joe Biden.” The problem is they must induce him to renounce the nomination of his own will. The party’s nominating process is so bizarrely complex that it would be very difficult to just shove him out. Another problem is that the party had to peremptorily declare “JB” their legal nominee before the August convention in order to keep him on the ballot in Ohio with its 17 electoral votes (due to some arcane machinery in the state’s election laws).

As per above, the debate fiasco calls into serious question whether “Joe Biden” is competent to even serve out this term. He (or shadowy figures pulling strings behind him) are making profoundly hazardous decisions right now, such as last week’s missile attack that killed and wounded civilians on the beach in Crimea. Are you seeing how easily “Joe Biden” might start World War Three? All of which is to say that pressure will soon rise to use the 25th amendment to relieve him of duty, leaving you-know-who in the oval office. If Joe Biden actually has to resign as president, he also loses the ability to pardon his son, Hunter, and peremptorily his other family members who shared bribery money received from China, Ukraine, and elsewhere.

If he won’t resign, and the party can’t force him off the ticket, the blob could have no choice except to bump him off. I imagine they would get it done humanely, say late at night sometime, in bed, using the same method as for putting down an old dog who has peed on the carpet one too many times. Or, if that can’t be managed and he clings to his position, maybe the party could cobble up some new nominating rules impromptu. And then, who could they slot in from the bench?

The usual suspects are like the cast of a freak show, each one displaying one grotesque deformity after another. Gavin Newsom we understand: the party’s base of batshit-crazy women may all want to bear his child, but that limbic instinct to mate with a six-foot-three haircut-in-search-of-a-brain might not work with any other voter demographic — and Newsom has the failed state of California hanging around his neck. All Mr. Trump would have to do is broadcast the scene from a San Francisco street-cam on “X” (Twitter) 24/7.

Hillary has been stealthily flapping her leathery wings overhead for weeks as this debacle approached. She may still own the actual machinery of the Democratic Party — having purchased it through the Clinton Foundation some years back when the party was broke and needed a bailout. She could just command the nomination by screeching “Caw Caw” from the convention rostrum. Whatever happens, it will look terrible.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan? An inveterate and notorious intel blob tool, Whitmer has allowed herself to be used repeatedly by the FBI to frame and persecute conservatives in her state as well as using her state AG Dana Nessel to go after political enemies there, especially poll workers who cried fraud in the sketchiest Michigan voting districts.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. Like Dreamboat Newsom in California, Mr. Pritzker is busily running Illinois (and especially Chicago) into bankruptcy and chaos. Looks aren’t everything, but if Dreamboat gives the vapors to Karens across the land, the Illinois governor will get them shrieking in terror as from the sight of King Kong on Skull Island

Who else is there? Michelle O, of course, who will be instantly branded as a catspaw for her husband seeking a fifth term — as Barack himself has averred in so many words: just hanging out in the background, managing things in his jogging suit. That would be the ultimate Banana Republic set-up for us and I don’t think the voters will go for it. It all boils down to the Party of Chaos being thrust into chaos. Can it even survive “Joe Biden?”

Then there is Mr. Trump himself. He remains the object of widespread rabid loathing, yet more and more Americans are coming to appreciate his opposition to Woke Marxist chaos and intel blobbery-gone-wild in our land. His performance last night featured his usual jumpy locutions and incomplete sentences, but in contrast to the current president, he looked neither senile nor an agent of sinister forces dedicated to bringing our country to its knees. Had Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. been present both of the others would have been badly outclassed verbally and intellectually. If Mr. Trump survives the blob’s efforts to delete him before November, I’m sure Mr. Kennedy will play a prominent role in another Trump administration. He knows exactly where the rot is and how to roust it out.

This is actually cute and funny

Hi… I am 18 years old boy at my last stage of blood cancer and I will probably die within next 5 to 6 months. I am going anonymous because my parents follow me on quora.

I was diagnosed with leukaemia in june 2015 exactly on my birthday. I have lot to tell but I can not tell anyone as I always have my parents around and they themselves are broken from inside and they would leave hope if I left hope.

I have a sister she is 23 and she takes care of all my needs. I love her very much. But I simply can not do anything for her because I am bed ridden. I get a lot of visitors from my old school and family.

My parents and my sister do their best to cheer me up and make me smile but I can not as it is very dufficult when you know you are about to die. I feel ashamed of myself as I can not move and I sometimes pee on the bed itself as I have no control over my nerves. All the doctors whom I have been shown to, say that I must do whatever I like as I have very less time left. Each and every doctor has said to leave hope and just enjoy life. I know my family cries when I am asleep or listening to songs or when I am not around. But I am helpless I just can not do anything. But yes I do appreciate that they somehow hold their tears back in front of me. My sister cheers me up as she calls her college friends at home and we play ludo and have a good time.

The point that makes me sad is that ispite of all the efforts my family makes I am unable to do anything for them espescially my sister. I am extremely attatched to her but I have no words to thank her. I wish god gave me another life…. Just one chance I would work extremely hard to make my family proud. All I dream is of getting well and working for my family.

This is it my story

Thanks for Reading…

Humble request

Please do pray for my family so that God can give them strength. 🙂 🙂

EDIT 1

Thanks to all the upvoters.

Writing gives me releif.

My sister caught me writing this answer and when she read it she set to tears and I could not hold myself and started to cry on my helplessness. She told that she loves me the most. She said that she had no problem in cleaning my dirty clothes and pushing my wheelchair and feeding me she just demands that I should stay happy forever.

I will reveal my identity if my sister this to my parents. But this totally depends on her.

Please stay tuned as I have 5 or at max 6 months left and then this would be closed

Thanks for reading

Humble request: keep praying

🙂

EDIT 2

The response is clearly amazing….

Thanks to all

I want to really clarify somethings.

1 I do not want any money my family can take care of my needs thanks for your health.

2 I do not wish to reveal my identity as I had already tried this with one of the people commenting here and it the consequences were disheartning

3 For those people who think this is a dram you are free to think so but your views really turn like these when you are nearing your end and the worse part is you know about it.

4 I write for my hearts relief and not for any kninds of financial favours from anyone.

I do tell my parents that I love them a lot but I can not share my pain because if I ever did that they would feel extremely weak to see their son losing hope hence I chose quora and anonymity.

They try to find out every possible source of miraculous recovery story they could and tell me to keep myself motivated and even I want one such thing to happen but I get very negative thought when I see people turning their faces and simply not to talk or even look at me when I am in park and again I have my sister by my me side.

I had a beautiful childhood like I and my sister were like typical brother sisters fighting for small things like for watching tv and I used to enjoy it a lot but now there is no fight and she allows me to watch anything I like and does everhything for me I tell her this almost everyday and she feels great.

I write my heart out here (as the ques suggests) and not in anyway for any favours

Thanks for praying

Keep praying

🙂

October 28

Thanks to all the upvoters… and all the prayers.

Some comments coming up like you want to give some years of your life to me. Please do not think that ever again. You have 2 functional hands, legs all 5 senses (sight, sound(ears), taste, smell and touch (skin)) intact and a good brain to think deeply. So stop thinking as your life directional was and start working. Make your family proud. Your family does everything for you. And if not for your family do something good for yourself.

I say it because When you are on your deathbed some 60–70 years from now you must not regret the fact that you wasted time and could not accomplish your targets. You do not realise how much time you have and how much can be done in that.

Now coming to some of my feelings.. (your choice read it or leave it)

I have some sort of insecurity that I would be left alone and that is not just from a day or 2 but from 3–4 weeks. I do not know why but it’s there. I have discussed this with my sister and she assures me that she would be there all the time. I mean I annoy my family members sometimes like I always want someone in front of my eyes. It sounds pathetic but it’s true.

I vomitted yesterday night it was almost all blood and something’s that I had eaten the whole day ( it’s quite normal as it happens 4 times a week). Naturally I was very depressed this morning so my sister took off from her college and kept me busy by discussing older times like how we both messed up together and how I cried when she teased me I was adopted.

I still remember that I and my sis used to hide remote in the washroom when it was time for some important cartoon (for me it was dragon ballz and for her it was suite life of Zack and Cody) and we used to have some insecurity when our parents gave one of us more attention than the other.

There are lots of things like these.

If I rewind and look into my life I realize how messi I was and my sister even then helped me she had been of constant support to me. I owe her everthing. I write this in every answer but I can’t help it I just love her.

I have realized one thing that I do not want to leave in misery. All the time I have I will enjoy and annky my sister and parents.

Thanks a lot to quora it’s great.

Thanks for reading

Keep praying

🙂

15 November 2k18

Thanks all for your overwhelming response..

I have lots of feelings to share as I had been in critical condition for almost last 15 days…

I have lost my voice because I spat blood so many times that my throat has constant piercing sensation. About a week ago I thought I would die and I wanted to tell my family everything and that is what I did.

I can not imagine how much my parents and my sister love me. They never felt bad helping me rather they wanted me to be fine. My sister is an angel. She has been with me all the time. Though I have become annoyed by my sickness and fought with her many times but she always handled me with care. Whenever I saw anyone in my room it was her in the last 15 days. She is more than God to me.

Now I get feelings like it is better to die in peace rather than suffering so much. I sometimes seem to have lost all hope and strength.

My parents are going mad to see my condition going from bad to worse but they are not ready to loose me and even I can not convince them.

There is almost no happiness left in my life. All the time I see my parents trying to convince me I would be fine and me trying to convince them to be ready for my loss. I feel so bad and blessed at the same time that I am spending the last chapter of my life with people whom I love the most but I feel myself weak when I am unable to do anything for them.. I do try to explain myself that it is not my fault but these thoughts overpower my thinking and leave me depressed most of the time.

People say to enjoy life but how do you enjoy life when you can not walk, talk, or when you are scared of eating(yes I am scared as whatever I eat I vomit with blood)!!!!! I am scared of my own face it looks so horrible with pale skin and red marks.

How do you enjoy life when you have constant killing pain in your whole body and the only way you keep yourself feeling painless is by taking strong pain killers??

I am sorry if this hurt your feelings but I have had it enough. I either want a painless death or a painless cure. I am too depressed but there is nothing I can do…

I am sorry

Keep praying

🙂

I suggest you visit China.

It reversed my preconception. I am from Norway, North Europe. A rather modern and advanced society.On my first visit to the US over 20 years ago, I was surprised at how backward and old fashioned it was. Movies had let me to believe it was the epitome of modern society. I visited several states on the East/South-East. Very backwards digitally. Terrible infrastructure. Unwalkable. Dirty. Hard to find quality restaurants outside of big cities. Dead city centres in medium sized cities.I went to China a year or two later, and the opposite struck me. It was a highly modern society. Highly digital. Fantastic high-speed infrastructure (that is even better nowadays). Super clean, modern cities. I was mainly in the Jiangsu province that time. Loved it!I suggest everyone to go and form their own opinions. I really fell in love with Suzhou, not far from Shanghai.

  1. Every person is responsible for their own happiness — not their parents, not their boss, not their spouse, not their friends, not their government, not their deity.
  2. One day we will all die, and 999 out of 1,000 people will be remembered by nobody on earth within a hundred years of that date.
  3. Practically all of the best opportunities (in business, in romance, etc) are only offered to people who already have more than they need.
  4. The idea that you will be happy after you make X amount of dollars is almost certainly an illusion.
  5. The idea that you will be happy after you meet [some amazing person] is almost certainly an illusion.
  6. For most people, death is pretty messy and uncomfortable.
  7. When you don’t possess leverage (go look up “BATNA“), people will take advantage of you, whether they mean to or not.
  8. Almost everybody is making it up as they go along. Also, many (most?) people are incompetent at their jobs.
  9. When talking about their background and accomplishments, almost everybody is continually overstating their abilities, impact, relevance, and contributions.
  10. Physical beauty decays.
  11. Compared to others, certain ethnicities and races (and genders, and sexual orientations, and so on) are just plain royally f*cked from the day they’re born. [EDIT: depending on locale & time period]
  12. Bad things constantly happen to good people. Good things constantly happen to bad people.
  13. Very few people will ever give you 100% candid, honest feedback.
  14. People are constantly making enormous life decisions (marriage, children, etc) for all of the wrong reasons.
  15. Certain people — some of whom are in positions of enormous power — just do not give a damn about other human beings.
  16. Often, the most important and consequential moments of our lives (chance encounter, fatal car accident, etc) happen completely at random and seemingly for no good reason.
  17. Your sense of habitating a fully integrated reality is an illusion, and a privilege. Take the wrong drug, suffer a head injury, or somehow trigger a latent psychotic condition like schizophrenia — and your grip on reality can be severed in an instant. Forever.

Yet, despite all that not-so-good-ness, overall life is pretty damn rad. And we’re lucky to get to participate in it.

VIETNAM NIGHTLIFE | WALKING STREET | HO CHI CITY MINH VIETNAM

“jealousy” is not the word to describe US mentality.

Dominance is a better description for USA. USA has been dominating the world since WW2. Since 1990’s, China has been rising, fast these years.

USA is hysterically hanging onto its dominance. That is all.

Look at Japan. As a country defeated by USA in WW2, Japan is 100% Amcericanised esp its political system. Also Japan is militarily controlled by USA. Japan is a US puppet with no independent strategic sovereignty.

The only thing for Japan to do was to focus on economic & technological development. In 1980’s, Japan was economically #2 in the world after USA. Its chips technology surpassed USA. Similar to today’s China.

Then what has happened to Japan? You heard it already. USA mercilessly beat Japan down, making Japan lose 10–20 years’ economic & technological advancement.

Just a month or so ago, Japan has monetary crisis & wanted to sell US debts to get cash to save its economy. US Treasury Secy Yellen then called Japan & warned Japan that what Japan did was interference of free market. … Japan was not allowed to save its exchange rate.

Why? USA wanted to bankrupt Japan (& Asian countries too). When Japanese assets become cheap, cheap & cheap, US capitalists will flood into Japan to buy up Japanese assets.

No other Asian countries went bankrupt like Japan because USA has no control of them. They all saved their economy.

Back to your question.

See, it is more to do with sick mentality to dominate than to simple jealousy.

Loyalty is the most important characteristic that a woman can provide to her man

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cQRl50Gdalo?feature=share

The China, India border issue has been an issue for the two sides since the 1950s, but the two sides have never been able to find a solution.

On India’s side, the political leadership has never been able to form a consensus on a deal, and on China’s side, there has been no urgency. So the issue has continued to simmer.

Now though, the battle lines are becoming more clear between NATO/EU/G7 on the one side, against BRICS on the other side. Russia is on the front line confronting NATO expansion in Ukraine, and is drawing support from Iran and North Korea, while India and China continue to trade with Russia, and ignoring western sanctions.

But there is a problem: India is also a member of the US-led QUAD, with the US, Australia and Japan, and whose aim is to surround and box in China. India has been playing both sides, with one foot in BRICS, and one foot in QUAD.

Obviously India under Modi wants to get a good deal for India.

From Putin’s perspective, he can no longer afford to let the China/India border issue continue because it will threaten the cohesion of BRICS and the rise of Greater Eurasia, which has the support of all the BRICS members and North Korea. Putin does not want and cannot afford to let the US exploit the China/India border issue to the US’s advantage because the US wants to prevent the rise of the Greater Eurasia economic and security alliance.

Since China and India have not been able to reach a border agreement, and Russia is a close ally of both China and India, and is a founding member of BRICS, this means that Russia has to step in and try to help the two sides reach an agreement.

My guess as to what the Russian proposal will be is:

  • Russia will appoint a representative to study the China-India border dispute; this person will likely be Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov;
  • After studying the issue; the Russian team will propose a border resolution to both China and India;
  • China and India will study the Russian proposal and propose their own amendments;
  • After incorporating the amendments, Russia will issue a solution which is binding on both India and China.

This means that both sides have no choice but to accept the solution. If there are features of the agreement which both China and India do NOT like, then this means that it is a fair agreement.

Russia will then ask India to demonstrate its full commitment to BRICS by withdrawing from the QUAD.

Indian PM Modi will go to Moscow to meet with Putin this Wednesday.

Americans CAN’T Believe What China is Doing Now!

Yes… Approximately 9 years ago I was home alone when I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I was just watching television.. not doing anything strenuous. I had a history of asthma and tried using my inhaler, which did nothing. Fortunately, I picked up the phone, dialed 911..and could only whisper I couldn’t get my breath. I couldn’t give them any information, since I couldn’t speak. I ran to my bedroom to use my nebulizer, but passed out on the bed. Luckily they traced my call, sent an ambulance immediately and transported me to the local hospital, while attempting to revive me on the way. I woke up in ICU 2 days later, after being on a ventilator for 48 hours. My heart had stopped for some unknown reason. After a two week stay, numerous tests and medications, I was feeling better. They felt I had pneumonia.. and gave me antibiotics and steroids, which did seem to make me feel better. While there, they had performed a heart echo, but no one actually told me about the results. When the echo was being done, I felt like I was going to pass out any second and I cried and complained to the technician. Finally I felt better and had begged to go home, which they finally allowed. I returned to my job in another week or so, and was trying to get back to normal. Due to the fact that I often was required to read medical records as a part of my job, I thought it would be a good idea to order a copy of the hospital record, for my own peace of mind, so that’s what I did.

After about a week of being back at work, I came home one day totally exhausted and again weak and short of breath. Immediately my husband insisted we go back to the hospital. I was admitted again with a low oxygen level and trouble breathing. A day or two before, the hospital record had been delivered and I had my husband bring it to me, in the hospital. The doctor wanted me to have an echo and I argued with them explaining I had already just had one! They argued with me and then admitted that somehow the report was missing and they did not know the result. I carefully looked through the records and found the report, showing the cardiologist. I was stunned to read that the ejection fraction (measurement of my heart’s efficiency) was only at 25%. I found out later, this was a level requiring hospice care!! They told me I needed immediate heart surgery and the cardiologist called a surgeon from a Manhattan hospital who agreed to take my case. I was transported by ambulance to Lenox Hill in NYC where I underwent an open heart surgery the next day. I had congestive heart failure….. I cried when the surgeon told me that if they couldn’t fix it, they might have to do a heart transplant!! Imagine.. Ultimately, they did complete a repair of my mitral valve leaflets, by inserting a ring over the valve to allow it to work effectively. It seems my condition had been ongoing for quite some time; My left ventricle had become seriously weakened, causing my heart to fail. Post surgery, I improved, but I continue to require medication to maintain my heart rhythm and blood pressure. The medication makes me tired, so I am much more limited in what I can do. I’ve been on disability since.. and have been unable to return to work. This all happened when I turned 50 years old. I spent my 50th birthday in the hospital.

I did not pursue a malpractice case, although I did seriously consider it. In such cases you need another doctor who would be willing to say the hospital and doctors were negligent. I did visit the EMTs at my local firehouse to thank them for saving my life. They recalled that when they found me I had turned blue from the lack of oxygen. I think they were surprised that I made it!!

At this time, I consider myself to be very, very lucky to be alive! Lesson: we have to be our own health advocates these days! Doctors can and do make mistakes. If it doesn’t seem right, keep looking for another answer!

Russia Just Revealed 2 Hypersonic Weapons & SHOCKED The World!

China has analysed the lunar soil that was collected by Chang’e-5 in 2020. (Not yet from the 2024 Chang’e-6)

There was discussion that China should first publish its result in Chinese science journals (using Chinese language). before publishing it in foreign journals.

There was US complaint that China has broken the intl standard to use English.

Who said English is the standard? God? Who said a standard/rule cannot be changed? God?

All humans are equal. All nations are equal. We coexist with different cultures incl language. USA crowns itself as god to control the world.

Want to read China’s research result? Learn Chinese language then. Or wait until China publishes it in an English journal. Or go to the moon to collect the soil yourself.

It is not the 1st time arrogant USA complained about Chinese language.

In 2021, China launched a 100% Made-in-China space station (天宫 Tiangong), somebody (I believe it was NASA chief) was maddening angry. He asked China to dismantle Tiangong because it was not written in English.

Tiangong is China’s private property. China can use its own language in its property. Though China welcomes other countries to join China’s space program, Tiangong is STILL China’s private property.

That is not the end of story.

Using a satellite from Space-X, USA tried to collide it into Tiangong. Twice, Luckily USA failed because Tiangong is equipped with detectors to prevent collision by meteorite or space garbage. China already reported this US crime to UN.

Did E Musk aplogise? No. He said China can always avoid collision. The question is not whether China can avoid it. The question is why Space-X deliberately created collision & endangered the life of the 3 Yuhangyuan (宇航员 astronaut) in Tiangong.

Let me further irritate the sick USA …

China is planning to set up a base on the moon. China may draw a map to divide the moon into regions like our road map. China may name the lunar regions in Chinese language.

Rules are made by the FIRST one who gets it. Like WTO rules were set up by the West. China thus follows WTO rules.

Since China will be the 1st one to set up a base on the moon, you learn Chinese language & then translate the Chinese map in your language.

Gregorian Chants | Immersing in the Spiritual Atmosphere Of Gregorian Chants

I discovered this. It’s something to bookmark if you want some chill music for atmosphere. Or meditation. Maybe spells. Who knows. Aside from that, you can skip this.

My ex and I were moving to Oregon from Colorado and had put our home up for sale. We got an offer within two weeks which was great as we were moving a few weeks later.

Supposedly, the buyers were moving to Colorado from Texas for the man’s job. The company was doing the down payment and then pay the balance on closing. Because of “banking issues” because of the house being in Colorado, they ended up only sending a $1,000.00 of the $30,000.00 down payment.
Our real estate agent said that was ok, that the whole sale amount would be paid at closing.

The closing was the day before we were leaving. We get to the title company’s office for the closing and the buyers show up with our real estate agent, and without the payment check.
The guy doing the closing was not happy but the real estate agent had him call the bank that the funds were coming from and he was told that there was an malfunction on the bank’s end and the transfer would take place that afternoon.

We went ahead and signed the papers and made arrangements for my mom to deposit the check in our bank account ( small town bank where everyone knew everyone else) the next day.

Yup, you guessed it, the check never showed up. Luckily the title agent was a family friend and refused to hand over the keys or file the paperwork without payment, even when the real estate agent and buyers threatened legal action.

Come to find out, it was a scam. The couple and the company he worked for, had pulled this in other states before. They would do the closing , get the keys and the title put in the new owners name. They would in turn sale the house and the original owners would be stuck with what little was paid in escrow.

We were lucky the title company refused to file the paperwork, we rented the house to some friends who then purchased it with cash a few months later.

The real estate agent lost their company and license and since it was a small community, their reputation.

The buyers left the state and the company disappeared. Technically no laws were broken so we couldn’t do anything legally against anyone.

Sheech!

Mike Williams was fond of duck hunting.

On December 16, 2000, which happened to be his 6th wedding anniversary, he went out to pursue his hobby. Promised his wife he’d be back in time for the celebration, he never returned.

Search and rescue team found his boat and shotgun the next day, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Initial reactions were that he may have drowned, but his body could not be found. Since the lake inhabited alligators, the blame was on cold-blooded animals. It was assumed that he fell off his boat and was eaten by the gators. Mike remained on the ‘missing list’ though.

Six months later his waders, torch, hunting license and safety jacket were found floating in the lake.

On his wife Denise’s request, he was declared “dead by accidental drowning.”

She married another man, Brian Winchester, in December 2005. He was Mike’s high school friend and an Insurance agent.

Thousands of letters from Mike’s mom and the case was reopened. She just didn’t feel her son had disappeared and was eaten by the gators. By then, it was clear to the investigators that alligators don’t eat humans as a whole, and they don’t even eat during winters.

So, this pointed towards some serious foul play. There was no evidence to arrest anyone, however.

Sixteen years of no evidence, the police arrested Brian Winchester in August 2016 for allegedly kidnapping Denise. He did so because she wanted to divorce him.

On Denise’s request, the judge agreed to turn down Winchester’s bail application. She said he would kill her and her daughter.

On December 19, 2017, Winchester was sentenced to 20 years in prison for armed kidnapping of Denise. The very next day, on December 20, Mike’s remains were found.

In May 2018, Denise Williams got arrested under the charge of first-degree murder. Three months later, in August, she was charged with insurance fraud worth $1.75 million.

The matter got into the trial phase, and Winchester testified against Denise for plotting the murder. He told the court he pushed Mike into the water to make it look like an accident, but it didn’t work. So, he shot him in the head and buried his body in the mud near Carr Lake.

Denise, in February 2019, was sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder and an additional 30 years for conspiring the crime. There is no possibility of parole.

Winchester, though the killer, remained immune from murder conviction because he testified against Denise.


The only flaw in this crime was planting the evidence six months later. All of that was intact. No signs of gators’ tooth or blood on any of the recovered items. The torch worked absolutely fine.

And then asking to declare him dead within six months of his disappearance. Usually, it takes five years to get it done.

It took about 2600 letters to the authorities from a loving mother to find the killer(s) of her son after more than 18 years of his disappearance.

strong independent woman gets a TRAIN RAN on her and regrets it

The West is cooked! God am I glad that I don’t live there any longer.

Maybe they smelled war.

Businessmen have the most sensitive political sense. Recently, Raul Lambino, chairman of the Philippine New Energy Group, burst into tears at the 70th anniversary commemoration of China’s “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” held in Beijing. He said: ‘I Don’t Want My Country to Be a Battleground’.

Recently, Taiwanese media reported that a silent electronic war broke out between the Chinese and American militaries in the South China Sea. The two armies fought for 12 hours, and the result was obvious: PLA wins and the US military loses!

The Internet, GPS, and communication facilities in the northern Philippines were all paralyzed. Luzon Island was in a state of panic.

Electronic warfare is a precursor to bombing military targets. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia launched a large-scale electronic jamming war, causing Ukraine’s GPS positioning to drift seriously, and the effectiveness of precision-guided weapons provided by NATO dropped significantly.

Therefore, before a war breaks out, GPS signals may be lost, network connections may be disconnected, and phone calls may be unreachable in the war zone.

Perhaps the Philippines realized that the U.S. military was completely unable to provide the so-called “protection” for the Philippines, and unilaterally demanded that the U.S. military withdraw its medium-range missile system from the Philippines to avoid further angering China.

Philippines Says US Mid-Range Missile System to Be Pulled Out
A US mid-range missile system deployed in the Philippines for annual joint military exercises — to the annoyance of China — will be pulled out of the country.

A series of events that have happened recently may contain the answers you want.

The old farmer only had one testicle left due to testicle cancer, and his remaining testicle had taken a hard hit from his favorite cow. The ball looked like a balloon. A very painful balloon.

After a medical investigation, and before the urologist could even say what the verdict was, the patient stated the decision he had made, after a long and deep contemplation:

“I am seventy-plus years old, and my wife an I do not share the bed anymore. We don’t need to spend extra energy nor money to save it. Just take it away, and I will be just fine.”

That’s what he would do if one of his animals had one balloon ball left — amputate the entire scrotum, and that’s that. So the lady doctor should do the same thing, with a rubber band for that matter. (He would be fine.)

My girlfriend tried to explain that he needed the testosterone in order to function as a man (hoping that he would understand this language). But the farmer refused to take it in because in his eyes, a testicle was a tool to procreate. (“So why not cut it off ?”)

It took forever to explain that without testicles he would suffer from fatigue, hot flashes, muscle loss, poor facial hair growth and what have you. That on many levels he would turn into a woman in menopause, and that lifelong hormone treatment would be necessary to counterbalance the effects.

And that he would become an extremely emotional farmer for no reason if he would ignore that very important treatment (which he would).

In the end, he gave in though — and the testicle lived.

But the dream remained.

Fun pictures

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Margarita Beef with Orange Salsa

This recipe was the winner of the 1992 National Beef Cook-Off.

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Yield: 5 to 6 servings | 1 1/2 cups salsa

Ingredients

Steak

  • 2/3 cup frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
  • 1/2 cup tequila
  • 1/3 cup fresh lime juice
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh ginger
  • 2 medium cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
  • 1 1/2 pounds well-trimmed boneless beef
  • 1 (1 inch thick) round steak

Orange Salsa

  • 2 oranges, peeled and cubes
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
  • 2 to 3 tablespoon fresh lime juice
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano leaves

Instructions

Steak

  1. Combine orange juice concentrate, tequila, lime juice, oil, ginger, garlic, salt, oregano and red pepper.
  2. Place steak in a plastic bag: add marinade, turning to coat. Close bag securely and marinate, refrigerated, for 4 hours, or up to overnight.

Orange Salsa

  1. In a nonreactive bowl, combine all ingredients. Refrigerate for at least one hour.
  2. Remove steak from marinade; discard marinade. Place steak on grill over medium coals (you should be able to hold your hand 4 inches above the coals for a count of 4 seconds).
  3. Grill for 22 to 26 minutes for medium-rare to medium doneness, turning once.
  4. Remove steak to carving board; let stand for 10 minutes.
  5. Carve steak crosswise into thin slices: Arrange on serving platter. Garnish with cilantro and lime; serve with Orange Salsa.

Circa 2010-ish, Samsung had this app in my country called samsung gift. It would give limited free vouchers (mostly for food) for people who have samsung phones

Funny thing is, not many people seem to use it, and they always deploy their free vouchers at the same time everyday. So i would standby, app open, to wait for it. No kidding, I *ALWAYS* get the vouchers without fail. We’re talking about full meals at kenny rogers, free medium pizza from pizza hut, etc.

Oh, and I didn’t stop there. They had tiers of these vouchers. like if you have their flagship phones (and tablets too) they give out voucher for fancier restos.. then another tier for mid-tier phones. and for the lower tier phones it would be like a free ice cream at dairy queen or something.

well my family uses samsung phones mainly. and I also have a few samsung tablet. long story short, each day i would have an excess of 5+ vouchers to trade in (and many of these you can take away, it’s not always limited to dine in)

suffice to say that i think for about 2+ years Samsung helped me save a lot on dining out costs. it was really fun. too bad around the time Galaxy note 8 came out (the last samsung flagship i ever bought), they slowly started to give out less and less vouchers. oh well, it was fun white it lasted!

My friend’s grandma gave birth to 10 children during her life time. Six of them grew to adults. Two of them died when they were toddlers. Another two babies were killed by drowning in a basin, as soon as they were born, by the parents, who were too poor to feed them.

My friend said ‘Grandma and grandpa had often murmured, ‘Sorry… Sorry…’ with tears, when they recalled it. They blamed themselves all their lives. They had no choice. No enough food for all the family. They killed the babies by their own hands, instead of letting them starve, to die slowly, to save the food for their elder children to survive.’

It was a situation you would face as a parent if you were born at that time, in a poor village, if you didn’t have enough sunshine or rain to harvest your crops in a certain year. In fact, at that time, it was not a rare case at all. The ones you killed were not fetuses, but actual humans who could already breathe and cry. You were no doubt a murderer. But no matter how guilt-ridden you felt murderering your newborn angels, you must move on, because you must take full responsibility to feed your other children, otherwise they wouldn’t survive either. That’s why in a time like that, the babies killed by their own parents were not considered ‘murdered’, neither legally nor morally. It was pretty much accepted by society, because people didn’t have better options.

Morals, values, cultures… all depend on our ability to survive. There is no absolute right or wrong, good or bad, virtue or sin. ‘Should we consider a fetus a living human?’ ‘Is abortion wrong?’ ‘Should we forbid eating animal meat?’ ‘Is President Lincoln a racist?’ All discussions require a context. We can’t give an absolute yes or no without considering the backgrounds and the stages of development. Morality is relative, specific, and constantly changing.

When we talk about abortion, we need to talk about the alternatives when you don’t abort. Do common people have easy access to birth control? Have we built up a single mother/father friendly social environment (employment, welfare, social pressure etc)? Do we have social support for poor families? Has our society developed to a stage that everybody is covered by a safety net? What’s the solution when a woman is in a bodily condition which makes it highly risky to give birth? What about a pregnancy caused by rape?…

There is no ‘best’ social system. We have to consider the current stage of development we are in, to balance the different interests and conflicts of different individuals and social groups, to keep on communicating and compromising, to keep on experimenting to find a relatively ‘not bad’ one. I think that’s our human’s reality.

(This is a translation of my another answer in Japanese to a similar question. Welcome to correct my English and discuss about this topic. Thank you.

Young Men Are Going To Revolt…

This is NOT what you think it is. It is a in-depth study of the nature of war, collapse and change. Very good. Really worth your time to watch.

My Big Ass Arc Gun

Now, guys, in my previous post I briefly mentioned that I had various prototype labs in my homes that I would tinker around with. You know that I have read extensively, and painted. But I never discussed the things that I was prototyping and cobbling together.

And here, I want to enlighten you all on some of them.

Ah. It was a BIG part of my life.

Of course, some of you know that I have been working on the dimensional portal. And, though I never mentioned it, it does need to be known that this was just one of many hundreds of projects that I enjoyed playing around with.

What I never told any of you all was that I actually made a small portal, and at the time of my “retirement”, I was able to send cans of peas and corn to “somewhere”. Wherever they went, they left my world-line template.

That’s for certain.

Teleportation portal
Teleportation portal

For illustration only.

My device at my home lab wasn’t so bulky and industrial. Nothing but the frame for the generation of the portal. And my sensors, and the mechanism to modulate the wave-forms. I was working with a company in China for a “real” turbo-charged version. And I made a video about that adventure. Don’t you know.

What I did was made a small 30 degree slope out of plywood, and rolled the 303 size cans down the slope where they entered the portal at the exact moment when the transition coordinates were in flux.

And yeah. It took me a number of tries.

It was a small victory, for certain. Really. I was really proud of myself. And I was literally hopping… seriously, I was hopping up and down in the lab. Were they bouncing off as a ejection of the field, or did they actually go somewhere. I am convinced that they left and went somewhere. Ah. It was my confirmation that I was on the “right track” as I tried to replicate the Majestic dimensional portal.

Of course, my problem at that time and still is… calculating WHERE.

I was able to get them to disappear and go somewhere, by greatly altering the destination coordinates by some initial random manipulations. I was always cautious and conservative; read “timid”. I was far too reserved to try anything really radical.

But one day, I said “fuck it” and just really changed the coordinates in a most radical manner.

It worked. And they went somewhere.

But a measure of what the actual destination was, still eludes me.

303 can of corn
303 can of corn

Now, there’s a trick that I had to work out, just to get them to do anything. I had to alter the overlay of the destination coordinates over the egress coordinates in the same phase or rhythm as the powering of the electromagnetic field. Once I was able to do that, well, sure they just left this world line sharply.

I really didn’t NEED to have radically different coordinates. But rather, the secret was in the switching process from egress coordinates to destination coordinates. Not on the coordinates themselves, but how you apply the changing field into the portal.

Hurray! for me.

After hopping up and down, I left the lab. Wrote down the events in great detail (I had very detailed notebooks back in the day). Then, I went and packed for my next trip. (Oh, and my wife was bitching where all the cans of peas, corn and beans were disappearing to…)

Then I went to China on a  business trip.

And when I came back, I was arrested and incarcerated, and I have no clue where all my prototyping gear went.

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It is unlikely that anyone would have recognized it for what it was. Just a jumble of electronic things on a work bench in the garage. Gosh, though.

I do miss that work bench. It was a old 1940’s steel leg “map table” with a horribly top finish. So I covered it in thick ply plywood. Bolted it down with lag-bolts, and it was as stable as a rock. I’ll tell you what.

Anyways, we can go back to my final dimensional portal experiments prior to the hard stop, and  discuss them at a later date.

All by memory of course.

All records, gear, photos and everything else are all missing. Who knows where they are now?

But I had something else.

I was working on duplicating the alien pulse-plasma rifle from the Science Fiction movie “District 9”.

Remember that?

Well… not THAT weapon. That was some kind of blast gun.

I’m talking about the arc gun.

There’s a scene where the arc gun causes BIG ASS explosions. And that was what I was aiming for.

And, well, no it didn’t look like the movie version. What I mean is that I made a functional replica. Not a appearance replica.

District 9 Alien Assault Rifle 1
District 9 Alien Assault Rifle 1

I guess I am weird.

What I did, was a kind of work-around, I guess you could call it that.

What I did, was take a taster firing mechanism. That was the wire ejection device, the wire, and the entire battery and trigger mechanism.

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Gun 1
Gun 1

I kept it almost completely intact. But I added a home-made (obviously) thermobaric warhead.

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My first warhead had no fuse, and relied on very fine talc powder. Which was really, the a clay mineral composed of hydrated magnesium silicate, with the chemical formula Mg 3Si 4O 10(OH) 2. Talc in powdered form, often combined with corn starch, is used as baby powder. And so, as impure as it was, I used Johnson’s baby powder.

So yes. I made (I suppose) a baby-powder bomb.

In the more advanced designs I used a small bare copper wire that would press against a small PE bag of Hydrogen Peroxide to ignite the warhead when the signal was issued.

Now, this is a small grenade like warhead. Of course, my prototype was ugly as fuck and had a small (out of machined aluminum extrusion sides bolted together that contained my dispersal gas, and ignition powder (yeah, my first go around was with a 22 shell casing minus the lead).

  • You fire the gun.
  • The projectile goes to the target in a shallow arc.
  • It hits the target.
  • A “one shot” starts a counter and a nanosecond delay allows the gas to disperse.
  • Then the electrical charge zaps through the wires.
  • It ignites the .22 casing.
  • That then ignites the gas cloud.
  • Big, BIG explosion.

To the viewer, it looks like I shot a (faint) lightening bolt that exploded like a big bomb.

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20220312 WOC550

And When I tried it out, I will admit that it shocked me. And I did take EVERY precaution. You do NOT NOT NOT mess around with guns. So I was behind a cinder-block retaining wall.

And I still had the top of my hair singed.

Now, the problem with this crude set up was I didn’t have the range. My “warhead” was too heavy. And it needed to be improved. Smaller warhead, and lighter. More powerful ejection device, and longer wire. But all these issues could be worked out.

In fact, my biggest concern at the time was how to make the electrical movement in the wire larger so that it would look like a real bolt of lightening.

But yeah.

This is EXACTLY what I made; Gun B21 @2:40

And here, again, not so dramatic @5:29. But yeah, that’s my project.

Some crazy sciency fiction shit for sure….

All gone.

Yupper boys and girls. Be being such a “danger to the great citizens of the wonderful state of Arkansas” (Heee Haw Hee Haw)… it’s all gone.

Now, only CHINA has access to advanced weapons technology.

Don’t you know.

Oh, not by me. I’m just a quiet unassuming fellow trying to have fun with food, girls, and cats. But I’m not the only Mad Scientist that was pushed out of the pustules and fetid swill that the United States has become.

Yuppur. All gone.

The United States can have bupkis.

I will never forget.

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I will never forgive.

Today…

‘No proof’ US landed on moon – Ex-Russian space boss

Dmitry Rogozin says that while many in Roscosmos defended Washington’s version of events, no one could produce irrefutable proof

 

The former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, has expressed doubt that the US Apollo 11 mission really landed on the Moon in 1969, saying he has yet to see conclusive proof.

In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Rogozin said he began his personal quest for the truth “about ten years ago” when he was still working in the Russian government, and that he grew skeptical about whether the Americans had actually set foot on the Moon when he compared how exhausted Soviet cosmonauts looked upon returning from their flights, and how seemingly unaffected the Apollo 11 crew was by contrast.

Rogozin said he sent requests for evidence to Roscosmos at the time. All he received in response was a book featuring Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov’s account of how he talked to the American astronauts and how they told him they had been on the Moon.

The former official wrote that he continued with his efforts when he was appointed head of Roscosmos in 2018. However, according to Rogozin, no evidence was presented to him. Instead, several unnamed academics angrily criticized him for undermining the “sacred cooperation with NASA,” he claimed.

The former Roscosmos chief also said he had “received an angry phone call from a top-ranking official” who supposedly accused him of complicating international relations.   

Rogozin concluded by saying he still cannot believe that the US was able to pull off the feat, but is now unable to, despite the incredible progress in technology since the late 1960s.

What he claims to have found out, however, was that Washington has “its people in [the Russian] establishment.” 

Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to the Moon, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin going down in history as the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.

The flight was preceded by the unmanned Soviet Luna 2 program, which blazed the trail for Moon exploration.

Last April, President Vladimir Putin pledged to resume Russia’s lunar program.

Grilled Beer Sirloin with Mustard

Steak with Beer Mustard Sauce 1 1024x683
Steak with Beer Mustard Sauce 1 1024×683

Ingredients

  • 4 large beef sirloin steaks, (about 1/2 pound each)
  • 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 2 teaspoons mustard
  • 2 teaspoons tarragon vinegar
  • Salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Mix together the oil, mustard and vinegar. Coat the steaks well with the mixture and allow to marinate for about 10 minutes on each side.
  2. Season with salt and pepper, then grill the steaks for about 2 to 4 minutes on each side.
  3. Serve with French fries and salad.

The United States is spending SERIOUS money trying to destabilize the ‘Stans.

Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan… notice a pattern here?

map of central asia
map of central asia

The CIA is spending serious money destabilizing Central Asia and their BRI ambitions to remake Eurasia.

Serious money.

[1] Kyrgyzstan authorities report foiled coup attempt

Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security says group of extremists planned violent seizure of power

Elena Teslova | 05.07.2024 – Update : 05.07.2024

MOSCOW

Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security announced on Friday that it had thwarted a coup attempt by a group aiming to seize power violently and destabilize the socio-political situation through mass riots.

The committee’s statement revealed that raids on the suspects’ homes and vehicles uncovered components for improvised explosive devices, firearms, ammunition, walkie-talkies, body armor, law enforcement uniforms, drones, and extremist literature.

Five suspects have been placed in pre-trial detention, and further investigative and operational measures are ongoing.

Detailed information will be provided later, the committee said.

[2] Tajikistan tense amid arrests of senior personalities and former officials and rumours of a failed coup

25 June 2024

Tadjik President Emomamli Rahmon has run Tajikistan with an iron hand since taking power in 1992. There are now reports that he is preparing to hand power to his son. So, news of dissent in the Central Asian Republic is rare. News of a coup and the arrests of many prominent former officials have therefore triggered a lot of speculation. Saidjafar Usmonzoda, a prominent member of the Tajik parliament, was detained on June 14 for allegedly “plotting to overthrow the government.” Prosecutor-General Yusuf Rahmon accused Usmonzoda of collaborating with the foreign-based opposition group National Pact of Tajikistan and of speaking with its leader, the self-exiled Sharofiddin Gadoev. Parliament quickly stripped Usmonzoda of his immunity

His arrest was soon followed by the detention of former Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi.

But perhaps more prominently has been the detention of the former Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Tajikistan, Akbarsho Iskandarov. During the wave of conflicts in the early 1990s, he took over as the Chairman of Parliament and served as Tajikistan’s acting president. In recent years, he worked at the Institute of Philosophy, Political Science, and Law of the Academy of Sciences. Prior to this, for many years, he served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Tajikistan to Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia.

The General Prosecutor’s Office summoned Akbarsho Iskandarov for questioning on June 13 and 14, following which they did not release him. The reason he was interviewed and the grounds on which he has been detained are unknown.

“Investigators of the General Prosecutor’s Office questioned about 50 people during these days and released them on their recognisance, while Akbarsho Iskandarov was not released,” a source stated.

As is often the case in authoritarian countries dissent often bubbles under the surface. The Tajik authorities have not been very forthcoming with information about what is going on, but the developments come on top of an already tense time for the Tadjik leadership as it tries to deal with the fallout from the involvement of Tadjiks in the recent terrorist attacks in Moscow. His leadership has embarked on a number of measures, which some consider knee-jerk, such as banning the hijab.

All in all, Tajikistan’s problems seem to be piling on top of each other, and as Central Asia’s poorest country, it is vulnerable to sudden shock. Other Central Asian leaders look at the situation in Tajikistan with concern, not least because of the risk of falling out into their own quite fragile political processes.

[3] Uzbekistan imposes regional state of emergency after deadly unrest

Government U-turns over plans to curtail autonomy of Karakalpakstan but fears rise tensions may escalate

Reuters in Almaty
Mon 4 Jul 2022 09.47 BST

Eighteen people were killed and 243 wounded during unrest in Uzbekistan’s autonomous province of Karakalpakstan over plans to curtail its autonomy, Uzbek authorities said.

Security forces detained 516 people while dispersing protesters on Friday but have released many of them, the national guard press office told a briefing.

On Saturday, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev dropped plans to amend articles of the constitution concerning Karakalpakstan’s autonomy and its right to secede. He also declared a month-long state of emergency in the north-western province.

According to official reports, protesters marched through the provincial capital of Nukus last Friday and tried to seize local government buildings.

Photographs from Nukus, published on Sunday by the news website O‘zbekiston va jahon yangiliklari, eng so‘nggi tezkor xabarlar, qiziqarli maqola, intervyu, foto va video materiallar, showed street barricades, burnt out trucks and a heavy military presence including armoured personnel carriers.

Videos shared on social media showed at least two severely wounded people being carried away by their arms and legs. One was bleeding from the abdomen, while the other was screaming.

Another showed a young man crouching by an apparently lifeless body in the street, screaming “a man is dying”, and running for cover as shots rang out.

An exiled opposition politician, Pulat Ahunov, told Reuters over the weekend that people were unable to move around or obtain more information because of a state of emergency imposed by the authorities.

Uzbekistan is a tightly controlled former Soviet republic where the government clamps down hard on any form of dissent. It was the second outbreak of unrest in central Asia this year, after Kazakhstan crushed mass protests in January and Russia and other former Soviet republics sent in troops to help restore order.

The protests in Uzbekistan were prompted by planned constitutional changes that would have stripped Karakalpakstan of its autonomous status. In a U-turn, the president dropped those plans on Saturday.

Ahunov, the chair of the opposition Berlik party, told Reuters from Sweden that he condemned the use of lethal force. “The authorities, from the start, should have opted for dialogue and negotiations,” he said. He said he feared the potential for the situation to escalate into an ethnic conflict between Uzbeks and Karakalpaks, a minority group with their own language.

Authorities had called a public meeting for Tuesday to discuss the situation, he added.

Kazakhstan said it was concerned by the events in Uzbekistan and welcomed moves by the authorities to stabilise the situation.

Steve Swerdlow, associate professor of human rights at the University of Southern California and an expert on the region, said Uzbekistan should engage as transparently as possible in declaring casualties and the use of force and over the longer term look at what concerns were at the heart of the protests.

[4] President of Kazakhstan says he has weathered attempted coup d’etat

By Reuters
January 11, 20229:44 AM GMT+8

NUR-SULTAN, Jan 10 (Reuters) – Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Monday that his country had weathered an attempted coup d’etat coordinated by what he called “a single centre” after the most violent unrest since the Soviet collapse.

In a speech to an online meeting of the Russian-led CSTO military alliance by video link, Tokayev said that order had now been restored in Kazakhstan, but that the hunt for “terrorists” was ongoing.

“Under the guise of spontaneous protests, a wave of unrest broke out… It became clear that the main goal was to undermine the constitutional order and to seize power. We are talking about an attempted coup d’etat,” he said.

Demonstrations against a fuel price rise began just over a week ago before erupting into a wider protest against Tokayev’s government and the man he replaced as president, 81-year-old Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev speaks during a televised address to the nation following the protests triggered by fuel price increase in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan January 7, 2022. Official website of the President of Kazakhstan/Handout via REUTERS

“The main blow was directed against (the city of) Almaty. The fall of this city would have paved the way for a takeover of the densely populated south and then the whole country,” he said. “Then they planned to seize the capital.”

Tokayev said that a large-scale “counter-terrorism” operation would soon end along with a CSTO mission that he said numbered 2,030 troops and 250 pieces of military hardware.

Tokayev defended his decision to invite Russian-led troops into the country and said that doubts over the legitimacy of that mission stemmed from a lack of information.

Kazakhstan would soon provide proof to the international community about what had happened, he said.Sixteen members of the security forces were killed, while the number of civilian casualties is still being checked, he said.

Reporting by Tamara Vaal in Nur-Sultan; Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Andrew Osborn

Taiwan will not become Ukraine. China wont let it happen.

USA is using Taiwan as a cash cow to buy all US weapons. That is all. No harm done to China as a whole. It only hurts Taiwanese taxpayers’ money but not China.

China knows USA’s goal is to provoke China to start a war. Like Ukraine provoking Russia.

In the big picture, a war will hurt the economy of the entire world. Not just China.

Not to mention human life.

So China keeps a cool head. Stay calm & not to react to US deliberate malice. Not to fall into the US trap.

But China has closing up on Taiwan these days.

First. no more so-called Taiwanese sovereign territory. All are Chinese. Chinese coastguards & warplanes are moving closer & closer to Taiwan coastline & airspace.

2nd, China is to pass a law to put on trial stubborn Taiwanese separatists without their appearance in court. Max death sentence. Extradition too.

The law can apply to foreigners who help stubborn Taiwanese separatists.

USA & the West in general is quiet on the upcoming Chinese law so far. Because they have similar laws to deal with their separatists too

Just wait & see. Dont worry.

Pepe Escobar: Putin’s BOMBSHELL just Changed Everything and NATO is Done

Finding love in space

Submitted into Contest #8 in response to: Write a story about an adventure in space. view prompt

Tea Kleva

It’s year 2155 and I’m living on Venus. We travel with space ships from one planet to another. Woman live on Venus and man on Mars, so in order to meet each other we go once a week on Jupiter.The purpose in my life is to find the love of my life. What a cliché, right? But I can’t help it if I’m a hopeless romantic. Sometimes I think that I would never find him and I will live alone till I die.The day to go on Jupiter came and I was ready to meet the love I was waiting for the past 50 years. All the girls took a seat in a spaceship and we were ready to go. The journey was long, so I started to talk to the girl who was sitting next to me.“So, are you nervous for your date?” I asked her.She looked at me and smiled. Her eyes were green and I just lost myself in them. I was just staring at her and the whole thing became awkward really fast.“I’m sorry for starring at you like that, but you have such a pretty eyes.” I apologized.“Oh, don’t worry,” she replied. “And yes, I’m a little nervous for my date. By the way, I’m Caroline.”“Nice to meet you Caroline, I’m Jasmine.”We talked the whole trip and we became friends. I felt the happiness filling my body and I was so grateful that I met her.The boys were already waiting for us. This place was always so beautiful and with the boys on it I loved it even more. I was just standing there alone, when one boy approached me.“Wow, I just can’t believe it. You are stunning!” the boy said.

I smiled and thanked him. He took my hand and gave it a little kiss. We walked to one free table and sat down.

“Let me introduce myself, I’m Hunter, I’m 166 years old and I live in a villa on Mars. I appreciate the natural beauty, so that’s the main reason I chose you as my date.” He said.

“Well thank you for the compliment, Hunter. I’m Jasmine, I’m 133 years old and I live in a small apartment on Venus. I appreciate that you are such a gentleman and that’s the reason I let you choose me as your date.” I said.

We were flirting the whole time and I could feel some kind of connection between us, but at the same time I just couldn’t stop thinking about Caroline and every time I saw her having a good time with her date I was kind of jealous.

The day on Jupiter ended and I felt like there was no connection between me and Hunter. He was the perfect guy, just not for me. I walked in space ship and sat beside Caroline.

“How was your date?” I asked.

“It wasn’t bad, but at the same time I felt I had more connection with you than him, you know.” She said.

I was so happy, because I felt exactly the same. Does that mean that I should search for my soulmate on my own planet? I’m so confused.

“Can I ask you something?” I said. “Would you like to go out with me? To know each other better and become maybe, uh, more than friends…”

I couldn’t believe I actually said that. I was a little scared of how she is going to react. So I was just starring at my feet. She took my chin with her soft, warm, perfect hands and lifted my head so we made eye contact. She was smiling so that’s a good sign.

“I would love to go out with you Jasmine, because I feel something for you. It’s a little strange, but an amazing feeling.” She said while still holding my face.

During our flight back we hit another spaceship. The alarm went off and I was panicking. Caroline took my hand and told me everything is going to be okay. We landed on the Moon and Caroline had the idea that we could go on an adventure, so she took my hand and we ran on the other side of the Moon. We found a cave and we went inside. It was dark, but fortunately I had my battery with me. The cave was white, the walls had different shapes and the echo was amazing. We started singing and the walls sang back. I never wanted to leave this place. We went deeper in the cave and found a waterfall. I remembered that we learned a lot of this cave in the school. The water was magical. If you dive in it and think of some place, you would get there through this waterfall. I was so curious if this really worked, so I proposed to Caroline that we dive in the water and travel on the Earth.

We got in the water and thought of some place on Earth. Suddenly I remembered that Eart was a big place and that we wouldn’t land in the same place, but it was to late. There was a flash of light so I closed my eyes and I could feel my body flying through the space. I landed in front of Big Ben. I was in London. I didn’t have any device to communicate with Caroline and even if I was among the people, I felt alone.

Right now I just wanted to find Caroline and go back to Venus, where I could perhaps marry her and be with her forever. I know that we didn’t know each other enough, but my gut is telling me that she could be the one.

I just stopped for a minute and closed my eyes. I wanted to see if I could feel where she was. I heard music in the distance and someone was calling my name. I turned around and opened my eyes. Some kind of shadow ran into the bar where the music came from. I followed the shadow and I saw a girl who had same hair as Caroline. That must be her! I found her! I went to the girl and hugged her.

“I finally found you!” I said. I let go of the hug and the girl turned around. It wasn’t Caroline. I felt so embarrassed and I left the bar. I started crying because I thought I would never find Caroline. I sat on the stairs outside the bar and I couldn’t stop crying. After I stopped crying I looked on the floor and my tears spelled Paris. I stood up and went to the airport. I had some money with me so I bought a ticket for Paris.

I searched whole Paris just to find Caroline, but I couldn’t find her. I stopped in front of Eiffel tower and started praying that someone could give me a sign or some kind of help, so I could find her.

“Hello miss, do you want to see how beautiful Paris is from the top of Eiffel tower?” some man said.

I bought a ticket to visit the top of the tower. I stopped for a moment to enjoy the view, when someone grabbed my shoulders. I turned around and there she was, Caroline. We found each other, fate wanted to reunite us in the city of love, Paris. We hugged and I just couldn’t let her go. I didn’t want to lose her again.

“Now that we found each other again, we should go home.” She whispered in my ear.

“But home is wherever we are together. So right now we could stay in Paris and then we could explore the rest of the World.” I said with a tear sliding down my cheek.

So we decided to stay on Earth. The only thing we needed at the moment were each other and the desire for travelling.

After 5 years we travelled the whole world, so we decided to go back on Venus. Me and Caroline live in the house we build together. We love each other and want to grow old together.

Sometimes your soulmate come to your life when you least expect it and sometimes it’s not the person you would expect, but that’s the beauty of life, it’s unpredictable.

PH is a US puppet. It is USA who controls the movement of puppet PH.

If ever the China-PH meeting works, it will be USA who wants to ease the tension in SCS.

Does USA want to ease SCS tension? Let us look for signs.

Few things took place since the US installation of mid-range missiles in PH on 2024/4/11. ie USA wanted to escalate tension on 4/11.

1, On the same day, both China & Russia react & mentioned Cuba. Hinting that they could do something in Cuba.

Actually, they also can do it in all Latin American countries that are hostile to USA. You USA create tension at our front door, we Russia+China will create tension at your front door too.

2, Cuban defense chief right away visited China. I heard he visited Russia too.

3, Later Russia sent 4 warships to visit Cuba with open welcome by Cuba.

4, On 6/14 or so, Pentagon disclosed it launched an anti-Chinese-vaccine campaign to kill Filipinos. (I still cannot figure out why USA disclosed this at the time when we already forget about covid. There is a reason but we dont know why yet.)

5, On 6/17, PH soldiers were defeated by Chinese coastguards at Ren’ai shoal.

At first, PH was vicious. Later, under US instruction, PH tuned it down to misunderstanding or accident.

PH threatened to invoke the US-PH Mutual Defense Treaty. Thru 2 scholars in Cambridge U, USA told PH that MDT does not apply to SCSea.

6, On 6/28, USA announced it will withdraw US troops from Luchu (Okinawa) & Japan mainland to Guam, starting Dec 2024. Hollowing the US power in the 1st island chain.

7, On 6/29, USA dropped a sub detector to SCS. Got caught by China. There was a 2-day China-US electronic battle in SCSea. USA lost & left,

8, Chinese destroyers & later an aircraft carrier sailed near US military bases in PH. To “declare” victory.

9, On 7/4, USA said it will remove its mid-range missiles in PH in Sept. … a further indicator that USA has lost to China.

Duterte clearly is smarter than Marcos. He openly said that when PH has 1 missile pointing at China, China will also point a missile at PH. (I add) China will not point 1 at PH but 100 missiles. USA cannot out-perform the Chinese speed in manufacturing. If USA can match, USA wont move to Guam.

Back to the question. There are signs that USA wants to de-escalate SCS tension, for now. Perhaps until after they find a Biden replacement for the US election.

Cool, and interesting.

Chinese battery expansions

China’s progress with renewable energies is undeniable, but the ethics with which they are achieving it is not. The whole world is on tenterhooks with the battery they are hiding from the rest of the world. The reason? It has enormous potential to destroy our industry and export capacity with the strangest material we have ever seen.

China created this battery that leaves lithium behind but has it hidden in its industry

China has recently made major advancements in sodium-ion battery technology as an alternative to the more common lithium-ion batteries. Sodium-ion batteries utilize sodium ions rather than lithium ions to store and release energy.

While lithium-ion batteries currently dominate the global battery market, especially for electric vehicles and consumer electronics, sodium-ion batteries have some potential advantages that have piqued China’s interest.

China sees sodium-ion as a strategic opportunity to establish domestic technology leadership and reduce reliance on imported lithium. With its vast sodium reserves, China could secure its supply chain for battery materials rather than depend on sourcing lithium from other countries.

This has led major Chinese companies to accelerate sodium-ion research and development. Over the past few years, China has rapidly expanded sodium-ion battery production capacity and implemented large-scale deployments of the technology.

Sodium-ion Chinese batteries, a milestone in energy history

Sodium-ion batteries are very similar in design to the lithium-ion batteries that currently dominate the battery market. Both use intercalation chemistry, meaning that ions move between the cathode and anode to provide power.

However, sodium-ion batteries use sodium ions instead of lithium. This provides some key advantages. The cathode in a sodium-ion battery is typically made from layered transition metal oxides, while the anode uses hard carbon, similar to lithium-ion batteries.

During discharge, the sodium ions flow from the anode to the cathode through the electrolyte. When charging, the ions flow back to the anode. Unlike lithium, sodium is cheap and abundant. Sodium does not need special handling or storage. This makes sodium-ion batteries easier and cheaper to produce.

However, sodium ions are larger and heavier than lithium, which impacts energy density. But improvements in materials and design are helping boost the energy density of sodium-ion batteries.

A problem for the United States: Tesla and the American industry are threatened.

Chinese automaker BYD has built the world’s first mass-production facility for sodium-ion batteries in Chongqing. The factory has a planned annual capacity of 20GWh and will start producing batteries in 2025.

BYD’s sodium-ion batteries will use a new battery chemistry developed in-house. The company claims its batteries have a range comparable to lithium-ion batteries but with advantages such as faster charging times and higher energy density.

The new factory represents a major investment by BYD in sodium-ion technology. The company sees great potential for sodium-ion batteries due to the abundance and lower cost of sodium compared to lithium.

BYD plans to initially use the sodium-ion batteries produced at this factory in its electric buses. Over time, the company may expand the use of sodium-ion batteries into its electric cars and other applications.

The opening of this large-scale sodium-ion battery factory highlights China’s ambitions to lead in next-generation battery technologies. With strong government support, Chinese companies like BYD aim to leapfrog established lithium-ion batteries.

As you can see, the Chinese batteries have taken a step that we would not have liked to see, given the relevance it will have for our industry. The problem? It is not a shared innovation, but an invention that remains hidden from the rest of the world. There is still a long way to go to see if they decide to extend them to the rest of the planet and replace lithium forever.

BRICS on the Rise, Countries Ditching the Dollar & U.S. Empire Declines w/ Prof. Richard Wolff

Huawei has a chip problem, but it’s far from being a write-off

Recent press reports have proclaimed Huawei both a resurgent force and a victim of US sanctions. The reality is more complicated.

Iain Morris, International Editor

July 3, 2024

For lovers of melodrama, the annual updates by Huawei’s carousel of rotating bosses are often a treat. Hit by US sanctions under former US President Donald Trump, the Chinese company once depicted itself as a fighter plane pockmarked by gunfire, struggling to stay airborne. This year’s update was disappointingly low-key. “We’ve been through a lot over the last few years,” said Ken Hu without fanfare, after rotating into the hot seat. But press reports have compensated in wildly diverging ways.

America’s assassination attempt on Huawei is backfiring,” blared The Economist in a detailed briefing on June 13. The message was that a sanctions program started by Trump and accelerated under President Joe Biden has largely failed. Huawei has not only avoided a crash landing but also gained altitude and become more self-reliant.

Two weeks later, Quartz weighed in with its own, much shorter assessment. “US sanctions against China’s AI chip efforts seem to be working,” ran the headline, with a standfirst saying: “Huawei is reportedly having a hard time increasing production of its Ascend 910B AI chip.” American policymakers have denied China the cutting-edge tools it needs to produce the most advanced chips. The older equipment available to Huawei just isn’t fit for purpose.

The reality is far more nuanced than either of these stories suggests. But to judge the success or failure of US policy, one must first ask what the sanctions were supposed to achieve. They were introduced long before companies and governments became fixated on generative AI, when the in-vogue technology – believe it or not – was 5G.

Given the share prices of 5G stakeholders at the time, markets never expected the next-generation mobile technology to be a money spinner. But governments were fooled into thinking it would connect everything from insulin drips to ballistic missiles and power economic growth. Amid signs of Chinese government assertiveness, letting a Chinese company anywhere near western 5G networks would surely be insane.

Pincer movement

The campaign against Huawei was therefore two-pronged. The first meant exerting pressure on US allies and friendly countries in Europe to flush Huawei out of their networks. Many had grown reliant on Huawei in the 4G era, seeing it as a low-cost but technologically sophisticated alternative to the likes of Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks. For technological and economic reasons, telcos were likely to stick with the same vendors when upgrading to 5G. And by the time it came along, Huawei was widely perceived to have the technological edge over Western rivals.

But this part of the campaign has had mixed fortunes. Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has spent years prevaricating while its telcos have built nationwide 5G networks with Huawei kit. Even the UK under Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a supposed Trump ally, wanted a compromise whereby Huawei would be ejected from the core, the cockpit of the system, but allowed to remain sprawled throughout the vast seating area of the radio access network (RAN).

The other prong of the US campaign, then, was designed to gum up Huawei’s supply chains and stop it from producing the trustworthy, competitive equipment that UK and other telcos might want to use in their networks. And the US had an ace up its sleeve: its domination of chip design and chipmaking tools, including the machines used by Asian foundries to produce the most advanced components. The hammer blow came when sanctions denied Huawei access to TSMC, a Taiwanese foundry using Dutch and US machines to crank out the smallest transistors in the world.

This tightening of rules ultimately persuaded UK authorities to ban Huawei from selling 5G products, while giving telcos until the end of 2027 to sanitize their networks. Its bigger impact, though, was on Huawei’s smartphone business, never identified by US hawks as a potential conduit for Chinese military “backdoors” and subterfuge, as networks had been. Unable to Windsor has interpreted that as an admission the current yields are not commercially viable in the long run. “Yields need to be 90% or better in most processes to earn a positive return on the capital invested to build and operate the fab,” he said in a blog. “By all accounts, SMIC and Huawei’s yields are way below this figure which is why the current situation for making 7-nanometer chips in China is unsustainable.”procure the tiny chips needed for its consumer devices, and barred from Google’s suite of software apps, Huawei suffered a smartphone collapse. Honor, a key brand, was sold to state-backed acquirers.

When DUV may do

But this business group, formerly responsible for more than half of Huawei’s revenues, staged a dazzling recovery last year – to the alarm of US hawks. New and popular gadgets appear to include 7-nanometer chips, thought to be off limits to Huawei. To produce them, it was believed, a chipmaker would need extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines. ASML, a Dutch company, has a monopoly on their production, and its government has denied it an export license to serve China.

Experts believe SMIC, a Chinese foundry, has instead resorted to older deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV) machines to churn out 7-nanometer chips for Huawei. While not as good as EUV, DUV can employ a technique called multiple patterning to do it. The problem with multiple patterning is that yields – a percentage measure of the functional chips derived from a wafer – tend to be relatively poor. This could partly explain why SMIC’s profitability suffered so badly during its recent first quarter. After a 31% year-over-year rise in cost of sales, to $1.5 billion, SMIC’s gross margin shrank from 21% to less than 14%.

Huawei, moreover, now appears to have acknowledged its chip problems for the first time. Richard Windsor, the founder of analyst firm Radio Free Mobile, last month drew attention to a keynote address by Zhang Ping’an, a Huawei executive, at the 2024 China Mobile Computing Power Network Event. In it, Ping’an appears to have recognized that US sanctions have put 3-nanometer and even 5-nanometer technology beyond Huawei’s reach. Solving the 7-nanometer problem needs to be the company focus, he apparently said.

Signs of strength

But there is no sign that Huawei, unlike SMIC, has borne any costs so far. Its cost of sales last year rose just 5%, to about 325 billion Chinese yuan (US$44.7 billion), while revenues were up nearly a tenth, to about RMB704.2 billion ($96.9 billion). At the smartphone-making consumer business, sales grew 17%, to roughly RMB251.5 billion ($34.6 billion).

Huawei’s rebound in the smartphone league tables shows consumers care little if there is a 7-nanometer or 5-nanometer chip in the phone (although battery life and performance might be concerns). If Huawei can fix the problem of yields – and Windsor does not put it past the Chinese – it may not have to worry.

Huawei also has less need for tiny chips at its networks business, the part that bothers policymakers. This is partly because there are far fewer 5G basestations in the world than there are 5G smartphones. Basestations are also much bigger than smartphones and therefore not as space constrained. The semiconductors they incorporate have always tended to be a generation or two behind the chips inside smartphones.

Regardless, chip sanctions have not stopped German and various other European telcos from investing in Huawei kit. The 5G networks now deployed in China, where Huawei is the dominant vendor, are regarded as some of the best in the world. In its latest mobility report, published last month, Ericsson notes that midband 5G equipment – the sort needed for higher levels of performance – now covers about 95% of China. In Europe, the figure is just 30%.

If the US campaign has achieved anything on the networks side, it is a bifurcation of the global market along geopolitical fault lines. China and its friends buy Chinese gear while the rest of the world buys from Nordic or other Asian vendors. But nobody is buying much. Enthusiasm for 5G has waned, and spending on the RAN is expected by Omdia, a Light Reading sister company, to fall by 7% to 9% this year after dropping 11% in 2023.

In this bear market, Huawei is doing considerably better than either Ericsson or Nokia, its main rivals. One reason is that China remains by far the world’s biggest 5G market and a dependable source of revenues for Huawei. Sales to Chinese customers were up 17% last year. And while this growth was undoubtedly fueled by consumer purchases of Huawei’s latest smartphones, China also accounted for more than two thirds of total company sales, up from 52% back in 2018. By contrast, Ericsson’s sales to North America, its most profitable market, tumbled 38%.

The fear of Ericsson boss Börje Ekholm is that the West will fall behind China in this bifurcated market. “If the tech world is fragmented east and west then it is going to mean competition between two ecosystems,” he told Light Reading during an interview in August 2021. “A Chinese ecosystem will be formidable competition for the west. It concerns me that end users – customers and enterprises – will feel it in their mobile experience.”

Branching out

But Huawei’s successes last year owe something to a reinvention forced on it by US sanctions. Unlike Ericsson or Nokia, it has expanded into domestic markets outside its traditional kit-making sector, buoyed by Chinese protectionism and antipathy toward the standard American alternatives. Sales at its cloud computing business, for example, rose 22% last year, to about RMB55.3 billion ($7.6 billion). As small as that makes it next to the industry giants, Huawei is slowly gaining ground.

“Huawei has been doing quite well in its local market and has been growing much more rapidly than the two market leaders, Alibaba and Tencent,” said John Dinsdale, the chief analyst and managing director of Synergy Research, in a previous email to Light Reading. “Its market share in China is now into double figures (just!). It does, however, remain a long way behind the leaders.”

No doubt, the recent AI expansion could prove difficult if sanctions thwart Huawei’s attempts to produce more advanced chips. Yet if the AI story turns out to be solely about chips, rather than the services they are intended to support, Nvidia is heading for an almighty crash. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and various other US tech giants all have AI pitches that are not just to do with silicon. There may be a bigger future opportunity for Huawei in software – in large language models, applications or even artificial general intelligence.

The US sanctions program clearly has numerous flaws. Its first is the assumption that a lead in silicon design somehow translates into a pervasive tech hegemony. From the perspective of US hawks, the second must be the poor enforcement of new rules, with companies like Intel and Qualcomm awarded exemptions that allowed them to keep serving Huawei. On the opposite side, others argue that cutting US companies off from the vast Chinese market is counterproductive. Weakened by lower revenues, they will have less to invest in US research and development.

Worst of all, though, is the old-fashioned view, almost redolent of Western imperialism, that sanctions will permanently hobble China – that homegrown EUV and other such chip wizardry is somehow beyond the capabilities of China’s scientists and always will be. There was similar talk more than 20 years ago when Huawei was routinely dismissed as a copycat, a rip-off merchant and plunderer of US intellectual property. By 2019, technology executives within European telcos reckoned it was the 5G company to beat.

Not everyone outside China subscribes to such views. Ericsson’s Ekholm seems to be among them, fretting in 2021 about the West’s ability to “keep up with the vast R&D spend in Asia – particularly China – that’s already happening.” The year before, analysts at New Street Research wrote that China’s vast resources of human capital would ultimately give it a decisive long-term advantage.

Earl Lum, a semiconductor expert at EJL Wireless Research, has described it in succinct terms. “There are so many people in China to hire,” he previously told Light Reading. “It doesn’t matter that everyone you are hiring isn’t an Einstein. One of them will be.”

This cat was called ‘mean.’ Then he met my husband.

A year ago, I was shopping with my two daughters and sister in Goodwill. I usually let the girls (9 and 12 at the time) roam the toy aisle while I am looking at trinkets and today was the same. I was browsing one of the isles with my sister when all the sudden I saw her freeze, look behind me and say, “No. No no no no. Get the girls, NOW.”

I immediately headed to the aisle where my youngest daughter was, and my sister went to get my oldest daughter. When I got to the aisle, there were two men standing on either side of my daughter, pretending to look at things on the shelves. I grabbed her and headed to the front door where my sister and oldest daughter met us. We went to our car, locked the doors and waited for a minute. Then we watched the two men that had been in the aisle and two more men walk out of Goodwill having purchased nothing.

I am almost positive that day’s outcome would have been very different if my sister had not had the sense that something was very wrong.

Why successful men use escorts: what the rich and the beautiful have in common

There are many misconceptions about Canada. Looking at the country on the map is one thing, but being there is another.

  1. First, Canada’s size becomes apparent once a visitor drives (or takes a bus) between Vancouver and Calgary, or Toronto and Thunder Bay. Great Britain, which includes Scotland and Wales, could fit inside Canada about forty times.
  2. Canadian summers are hot, particularly in southern Ontario around Toronto and in Montreal, Quebec. The humidity levels in July and August can push temperatures up to between 35°C and 40°C. In the far north in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, summers aren’t blazing hot but you can walk around with t-shirts and shorts. Temperatures hover around 20°C and the sun doesn’t set until the winter.
  3. There are lakes, lots of them. The number of lakes larger than three square kilometers totals more than 30,000.
  4. There is a desert in Canada. In a nation known for cold weather and snow, this comes as a surprise. The semi-arid Okanagan Desert is located in British Columbia around the town of Osoyoos.
  5. The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is divided between the towns of Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont. This is the only library in the world that operates in two countries at once. Americans can just walk through the front door, but Canadians have to cross the international line, pass U.S. border guards in the front of the building. and then go out exactly the same way to avoid entering the U.S. illegally.

Here’s the border between the towns. Looks deserted but it’s not a good idea to casually walk back and forth.

Derby Line, Vermont, U.S.A. The Canadian inspection post is on the left at the end of the road.

The border inside the library. Security is tight in here.

6. And last but certainly not least, Canadian chocolates and candies are damn good. This is the country that spawned such tempting creations such as Coffee Crisp, Big Turk and Mr. Big (this one is almost 8 inches long). You can only buy these in Canada or in shops overseas selling Canadian products.

Did I mention ketchup flavoured chips?

You have to come to Canada to eat them.

The Sopranos – Rusty Millio gets whacked – Munchkinland loses its beloved mayor

This question has no value. No one can foretell the future.

Speculation is worthless.

However, we can say the following…

The PRC has the most successful government in human history. It has created the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity in only 35 years, and it did so without firing a shot. No other nation has grown so large, so quickly, and so peacefully.

It totally and finally eradicated extreme poverty in 2020, truly a monumental achievement.

The PRC’s government garners the highest level of support in the world. According to 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗮’𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘆 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗲𝘅 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰, 79% of Chinese believe their nation is democratic while only 57% of Americans and 55% of British do.

Another example, according to the 𝗘𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗕𝗮𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰, 85% of Chinese trust their government while only 40% of Americans and 30% of British do.

Another example, according to the 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝗕𝗮𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯, 76% of Chinese trust their politicians while only 29% of Americans and 20% of British do.

Another example, according to 𝗜𝗽𝘀𝗼𝘀’ 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯, 91% of Chinese are happy with their life while only 76% of Americans and 70% of British are.

Another example, according to 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝘆 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗞𝗲𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗱𝘆 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬, 95.5% of Chinese are satisfied with their government.

Another example, according to 𝗜𝗽𝘀𝗼𝘀’ 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗲𝘆 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗡𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿, 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟵, 95% of Chinese believe their country is on the right track and moving in the right direction while only 41% of Americans and 23% of British do.

Another example, according to 𝗮 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟵 𝗨𝗖 𝗦𝗮𝗻 𝗗𝗶𝗲𝗴𝗼 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝘆, 80% of Chinese are happy and enjoy financial security.

Looking at all this, it’s hard to imagine that the PRC won’t stand for a long, long time. But 300 years long? Who knows.

Certainly, the 21st century is China’s century.

ON CAM: The Last Minutes of US Mercenaries’ Lives┃Russia Captured ‘SOTNITSKIY KAZACHOK’

Apparently I won the lottery. I was born in the western world.

I left to live in China.

The racism, bamboo ceiling and general dehumanisation creates a lot of self haters.

Anyone with any nous will realise China is where everything is going to happen in the next few decades.

There’s son of people who left China decades ago on Quora. They did ok moving to the USA and Canada. Their replacement make far more than them despite living in China.

SCO’s main goal is regional security in Asia.

It targets oppression & prevention of terrorism, coups & riots that are instigated by hostile country eg USA.

NATO was formed to defend the West from USSR. But today NATO has become offensive instead of defensive. Actively instigate wars around the globe.

G7 is more on economic instead of military. Peaceful on surface, G7 is quite aggressive these days. Using sanction as a weapon to beat others.

G20 is peaceful because G20 is diverse. Unlike G7 who has become arrogant & a bully.

By 2023/7/1, China has a way.

On 2023/7/1, China passed a Foreign Relations Law & right away applies it on rare metal export. In response to USA’s choke of China’s semiconductor industry. What is Foreign Relations law?

Simply put. When China is bullied, China officials now have LAW to follow during the fight-back.

1st example:

USA+US allies has been suppressing China on semiconductor & chips. 100% blockade. Japan has banned 23 materials & semiconductor products to China. ASML is to stop sale of DUV to China.

Note the 100% blockade is for US allies only; US firms have “backdoor” to continue the sale to China, filling up the Chinese market of US allies. Samsung’s chip profit has dropped 99% in 2023 Q1.

Effective 2023/8/1, China is to limit export of 2 rare metals gallium (镓)& germanium (锗).

Gallium is a must for semiconductor, radar, AI & more. Germanium, for others eg solar panel & medical use.

China supplies 70-80% of these 2 metals to the world. 2nd supplier is Russia. 3rd is Ukraine but in the area that has been occupied by Russia during Ukraine war.

95% of US import of rare metal comes from China.

USA shoots its foot. It hysterically wants China’s semiconductor industry to die. Now China grant the wish of USA by helping US semiconductor industry die.

CIA boss just made a speech in UK about cooperation with China. Decoupling from China is stupid, he said.

Stupid. That is US politicians.

Yellen, another politician, clearly is BEGGING China to buy new US debts. But talk tough in front of Americans, by continuing the US lie about human right of Uyghurs & Muslims.

Instead of using lies, can US politicians spend time on seeking a real solution to US internal problems?

USA knew about its heavy dependence on China’s rare metal long time ago. Yet USA dares go so extreme to 100% block China’s semiconductor industry. Dare to play Taiwan card. USA commits suicide but drag allies along to grave to die with it.

No medicine can cure stupidity.

Americas Future ain't looking too hot. There is no more middle class. Every thing has been gentrified from housing , cars People not being able to find a decent paying job and the cost to live is getting way out of hand . Gen Z and Millennials No Long Want to work towards nothing. America is Broken and it's not cool. Hopefully everything smooths out 

It’s a sign of maturity

Yes. I was appointed by the court to defend a gang member for armed robbery. He thought he was super cool and wanted to take the stand. I told him no, I warned him, he insisted over my objection.

There was only one thing going in his favor. The clerk at the place robbed said the robber had blue eyes. My client had brown eyes.

I felt my client was a very very dangerous person. I was sure the prosecutor would ask him if he had color contacts. They were in his pocket. When he lied and said no, I would ask to be recused from the case as you are not allowed to knowingly let your client lie on the stand. The judge would then know he was lying and I would probably be excused as counsel, etc. The ignorant prosecutor never asked. He was found not guilty.

The judge had a fit. He excoriated everyone but me…he said I was just doing my job. Two days later my client shot and killed an 8 year old girl in a rival gang revenge attack at the girl’s birthday party. The newspaper headline was the judge’s quote that he would never sleep again until every member of that gang was six feet under.

The judge called me and advised me that I would NOT be appointed to represent the guy again (Thank God).

The police declared a vendetta on that gang. Five years later the headlines said that gang was “eradicated” from Texas.

I never took another criminal case. I became a real estate attorney and did pro bono work for battered women and men who paid child support but were denied visitation with their children.

Aromatic Chicken Curry (Vietnam)

Coconut Chicken main
Coconut Chicken main

Ingredients

  • 2 medium-size potatoes, cut into chunks
  • 4 tablespoons peanut oil
  • 8 shallots, minced
  • 4 stalks fresh lemon grass, minced
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 fresh hot red chiles, minced
  • 2 tablespoons best-quality curry powder
  • 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts, chopped into bite size pieces
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt or 1 teaspoon fish sauce
  • 1 (14 ounce) can coconut milk
  • 1 (14 ounce) can chicken broth
  • Fresh basil leaves

Instructions

  1. Fry the potato chunks in the oil until nicely browned, then drain them on paper towels.
  2. Add the shallots, lemon grass, and all of the spices to the pan, and stir-fry for a few minutes.
  3. Add the chicken and cook, stirring, until it is opaque.
  4. Add the potatoes, salt, coconut milk and chicken stock. Bring to a boil and then simmer gently for about 30 minutes.
  5. Garnish with basil leaves before serving in bowls with rice.

Ingredients List for Vietnamese Chicken Curry

Marinade

  • 8 boneless skinless chicken thighs
  • 1 tablespoon curry powder
  • 2 tablespoons onion powder
  • salt to taste

Curry

  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 3 large carrots
  • 1 large baking potato
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 1 red onion
  • 3 garlic gloves
  • 2 sticks lemongrass
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 3 cups of water
  • 1 tablespoon curry powder
  • 1 tablespoon garlic chili sauce
  • 1/2 cup coconut milk

12 Minutes of Modern Women Moral Decay

A Woman’s World

Submitted into Contest #8 in response to: Write a story about an adventure in space. view prompt

Rebecca Parker

Robert remembered the sensation of falling. He remembered the feeling of cold dread as the engine stuttered and died and his stomach dropped through the floor. He could never forget the look on his colleague’s face as the colour drained from him and his skin turned paper white.He didn’t remember plummeting through space, searing through the planet’s atmosphere, or the deafening landing. His colleague, Martin, hadn’t been knocked unconscious and had managed to pull him from the fiery wreck before the smoke and flames engulfed him. Robert was out cold. All he remembered was darkness.Blurred colours greeted him as he opened his eyes, the world spinning in and out of focus. One woman, or two, or three, was bent over him. He heard her speak, the words moving through his sluggish brain like soup. He could make no sense of them. He tried to sit up, but a shooting pain split through his head and the woman pushed him back to the ground. Martin appeared then; despite his hazy vision he recognised his co-pilot. Three Martins. Groaning, Robert closed his eyes.It might have been a few hours later when he next opened them. The dazzling sunlight had dimmed slightly, and the air was not quite so hot. His vision took a minute to clear, but when it did, there was only one Martin sitting over him. He asked him how he was feeling, felt his forehead, his throat, checked his pulse. Irritated, Robert pushed him away and forced himself into a sitting position. His head was still banging, but not with quite so much volition as before.“We went wrong,” Martin uttered in a low voice, just as Robert asked him where they were.“What do you mean?” Robert replied, rubbing his forehead with one hand as Martin handed him a glass of water. It looked like water and tasted like water, but it was purple. Robert blinked at it, confused, and then looked up at the sky. It was as if it had been painted with purple water colours.“Why isn’t the sky blue, Martin?” Robert asked. He must have still been dazed from the crash, because he was much calmer than he should have been.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We went wrong.”

“We were right on target to hit Mars.”

“This isn’t Mars.”

It was then that Robert noticed the huddle of young women standing a short distance away, grouped under a copse of trees next to a river. Lilac-coloured water cascaded from an eight-foot drop into the shimmering pool, before winding away through the trees. Robert stared at the waterfall, the women, the sky.

“Martin?” he said, his tone still strangely neutral. “Am I dreaming, or am I dead?”

“Neither,” his colleague hissed at him. “You’re on Venus.”

Robert nodded, tasting the words even though his brain couldn’t comprehend them.

“But we were on target for Mars.”

“Mars is red, Rob, not purple.”

Robert nodded again, sipping the purple drink as one of the women broke away from the group and sashayed over to them. She might have been the same one that had been crouched over him before; she had the same silvery-blonde hair and violet coloured eyes. Her dress was lilac and her feet were bare. If Robert squinted, he could see that all the women were wearing dresses of a similar colour and not one of them wore shoes.

Martin got to his feet as she approached and Robert staggered up next to him. He felt oddly light-headed but pain free.

“Do you think they want to kill us?” he asked Martin as he drained the last of the water. In response, he received only a glare.

The woman paused in front of them, looking suddenly unsure of herself.

“Tia,” she announced. “Robert and Martin, correct?” The pair nodded. She chewed her lip, her eyes straying disdainfully over their clothes. Martin was half in his spacesuit, Robert was only in a t-shirt and jeans. “But…” she said, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “Where are the rest of you?”

The two men exchanged glances. “The rest of us?” Robert repeated. “There’s only us two. We crashed.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she said. “The water here helps with healing very well.” She paused, a light breeze playing with her hair. “But surely more are on their way? We have thirty women here, all waiting for you.”

Robert could feel his head begin to pound and not because of the crash-landing.

“We’ve come from Earth. Have you heard of it?”

If Tia had heard the sarcasm in his voice, she didn’t show it. Her eyes dropped to the floor, her lips twisting into a frown.

“Earth? No. I don’t know any Earth.” Her eyes narrowed then and her tone became suddenly accusatory. “You are from Mars. All men are from Mars!”

Robert stared at her. She glared defiantly back.

“Love,” he began, feeling his patience start to wear thin. “Nobody lives on Mars. The place is a rock, totally uninhabitable! We are not from Mars, we’re from Earth. Kindly tell me what planet you are from?”

“Venus.”

Robert opened his mouth to shoot back a snide reply, but Martin cut him off.

“Are there any men here?” he asked Tia.

“No,” she replied, clicking her tongue in annoyance. “All men live on Mars. There should be thirty of you arriving today for the Spring Festival, but so far we have only two and not even a decent two at that.”

She scowled at them both and turned on her heel to storm away, but Martin hastily dashed after her, apologies spilling from his mouth as Robert stood and watched, realisation beginning to dawn on him.

The sun suddenly broke out from behind a cloud and the brilliance of it dazzled him. He sat back down on the grass, his eyes straying from Martin and Tia to the group of women huddled by the river. When Martin returned, he was carrying another glass of water.

“She said this might help your head,” he said handing the drink to Robert. “Shame it can’t help your attitude.” He smirked but looked away hastily as Robert glared at him. “The boys stay here until they’re eighteen. She’s going to see if they can help us out with a ship. In the meantime, we can stay in the village.”

“She wants us to go then.”

Martin crouched down on to the grass in front of him. “This isn’t our universe, Rob. I don’t know how we’ve ended up here, but here we are. There’s no Earth in their solar system. All the men live on Mars and all the women live on Venus.” Robert found his eyes wandering back to the group of women. They were all young, in their late twenties or early thirties, and they were all beautiful. “This Spring Festival,” Martin continued. “It’s a mating festival, Rob. Thirty men come over to meet thirty women and they couple up and well… you know…”

“So what you’re saying is, we’re stuck on a rock in some other universe, who knows where, and we’re the only men? That’s what you’re saying?”

Martin grinned and hit him playfully on the shoulder. “More men are coming. When they get here, they’ll help us find a ship. We’ll get a ship, Rob, don’t worry.”

They waited for three days, but the men didn’t arrive. The women became fretful. Each day they turned up in their purple dresses with their hair and make-up done to sit by the river from sunrise to sunset and each day they went home by themselves. They weren’t interested in befriending the two astronauts. The majority of them seemed to blame the pair for the loss of their men.

It was late in the afternoon on the third day when the silver-haired Tia approached them, leading a teenage boy alongside her.

“This is Jay,” Tia said as she reached them. “Jay is seventeen and he studies solar engineering at the college. He will help you find a ship.” She smiled at them but her eyes remained troubled. “Maybe then you can return to your own planet.”

 

“And your men?” Martin asked. “Shouldn’t they be here by now?”

She turned to gaze into the sky and sighed. “Something must have gone wrong. You crash-landed in our meadow and they haven’t arrived. Maybe they crashed somewhere else? But what if there is no one there to help them?”

She patted Jay on the back and thanked him before leaving. He quickly dived into conversation with Martin, but Robert wasn’t listening, he couldn’t stop thinking about Tia.

Jay proved to be very helpful. He took them on tours around the village and surrounding areas. The village looked more like a city to Robert, with its sky-high buildings and its colleges, but it was welcoming and friendly. The women watched them in interest as they passed, and many trailed after them, like excited girls wanting autographs from their favourite pop-stars. The teenager took them to his college workshop where other young boys clubbed together to help build the pair a new ship, modelling it on what they had left of the one that had crashed. They were quick and nimble workers and it was completed in only a week. Jay told them there was a takeoff station at the bottom of the meadow where they’d crashed and they arranged to have the ship transported back there. When they arrived, a tearful Tia came rushing up to meet them.

“Something must have happened to them!” she sobbed, the tears streaking down her face. “Please, please, before you go, look for them! They could be danger!”

Robert gazed at her, at her shiny, soft hair that fell elegantly over the curve of her breasts, at the lilac dress that hugged her waist, at the tears that fell from her beautiful violet eyes.

“Of course,” he told her. “We’ll find them.”

A whole host of women gathered in the meadow to watch them leave, along with Jay and the other boys who had helped to build the ship. Martin pressed his face to the glass of the window as they rocketed away from the planet into the depths of space.

“We were on course for Mars,” he said softly, as Robert took the wheel. “How did we end up on Venus in another dimension?”

“Another universe,” Robert shot back. “We must have passed through… through a… a worm-hole or something.”

Martin gave him a sharp look. “You told me worm-holes don’t exist.”

“I must have been wrong.”

They trawled through space, searching for anything unfamiliar or unknown, anything that might have rooted an explanation as to how they travelled between universes. Robert had lost track of the days completely when he noticed something in the distance.

“Martin!” he hissed, squinting through the window of the ship. “Martin, get over here!”

His companion joined him, concern plastered over his face. “What?”

Robert didn’t answer, but merely pointed.

It was hard to tell what it was at first. It was if there was some sort of light distorting the view. It was a shimmering line, like the mist rolling in off the sea.

“We’re in the middle of space,” Martin said flatly. “We’re not going near that.”

“Yes, we are,” Robert replied, easing forward on the accelerator. “That might be just how we got here in the first place.”

Martin grappled with him for the controls but Robert was stronger and slammed the accelerator down, sending the ship careening towards the shimmering line. It widened as they approached, yawning open like a great mouth. Martin screamed as it swallowed them and they found themselves spinning and spinning and spinning through a mass of swirling, blinding colours.

When it spat them out, they both felt the engine lurch, and Martin grabbed Robert’s arm in panic.

“That’s how we crashed!” he yelled, but Robert was barely listening; he’d spotted the rocky, red planet of Mars and sent the ship spiralling straight for it.

Martin bellowed at his companion, trying to pull the ship up before they crashed, but it jarred against a mound of rocks and flipped on to its side. They piled out of it, helmets on, and sprinted away before it could burst into flame and meet the same fate as their old ship. It didn’t fortunately, but it didn’t look safe to fly either.

“Great going, Rob,” Martin grumbled, gesturing towards the heap of battered metal. “We finally make it to Mars and you go and break our transport. Again.

Robert could have shot him a snide reply, he wasn’t sure it was entirely his fault they had crashed on Venus in the first place, but he wasn’t listening. His attention had been snared by a far superior, more colourful ship that sat proudly atop a rocky outcrop. A rather dilapidated ribbon was tied around it. It might have looked smart at first, but it was dirty from red dust and the bow had come undone. He began walking towards it, his heart pounding, leaving Martin muttering to himself amidst the rocks. He thought about the lack of atmosphere, the lack of hostile environment, and began to run, panicking even though he didn’t know these men.

Martin yelled after him, suddenly noticing the ship for the first time. They both raced towards it, knowing the men would have been unprepared, knowing they would have lacked oxygen.

Robert reached the ship first and banged on the metal door, bellowing at them to let him in. Martin was quick on his heels and joined him, banging on the door until it opened.

There was a cluster of young men, all late twenties or early thirties and all beautiful. They were stood behind the air lock, frowning at the two strangers in their space suits who were waving at them from the inhospitable landscape of Mars. Wordlessly, they welcomed the astronauts on to the ship, though they seemed wary and kept their distance.

“Where are you from?” the first one said, as Robert took his helmet off.

“Earth!” Robert replied proudly, ignoring their puzzled glances to continue. “We were on our way to our Mars, when we crash-landed on your Venus.”

“What my friend is trying to say,” Martin interrupted, as the group of men muttered amongst each other in confusion, “is that we’re from a parallel universe, and we crashed in your universe. You apparently, have gotten lost in our universe, but we can guide you back.”

The muttering continued but a few smiles began to appear among the bunch.

“You crashed,” one observed.

“You can’t return in that wreck,” another said.

“Guide us back to our Venus,” the first one said, “and we will ensure you can safely return to your own planet.”

The two astronauts gladly obliged and took the controls to return the vehicle to Venus. Martin was a bit dismayed about leaving the red planet so soon, after only just arriving and without conducting any of their research, but Robert found he didn’t care that much; he longed to return to Venus, to Tia.

They landed safely the third time around and the relieved, yet tearful, silver-haired Tia came running up as the group disembarked. She weaved through the handsome young men, searching for the alien astronauts who had brought them to her. She found Robert and threw her arms around him, sobbing into his shoulder.

“Thank you,” she wept, “thank you so much.”

He didn’t say anything, but hugged her close. Martin took his shoulder, telling him they had to sort a new ship and get back to their own universe, but Robert had made his mind up.

“We’ve found a planet inhabited entirely by women,” he told his friend, as Tia straightened and wiped her tears from her flushed face, “and you want to leave?!” He turned back to the beautiful woman standing in front of him, took her hand and kissed it.

“Allow me to introduce myself, properly this time,” he told her. “My name is Robert, this is Martin. We come in peace.”

Giggling, she took his hand and led them both through the meadow towards the waterfall.  The sun shone down on them through the purple sky, sparkling on the purple river. Far behind them, deep in space, the shimmering dimensional gap, the stitch in the universe that had brought them there, slowly faded to melt away completely in the unfathomable depths of space.

Nam Jim Wan
(Sweet Dipping Sauce | Thai)

This is a simple dipping sauce usually used with deep fried items such as spring rolls and stuffed chicken wings.

Ingredients

  • 3 cups water
  • 3 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 cup vinegar (preferably rice vinegar)
  • 3 tablespoons Chinese pickled plums
  • 3 tablespoons thinly sliced prik ki nu daeng (red birdseye chiles)
  • 2 tablespoons garlic, very thinly sliced
  • 2 tablespoons ginger, julienned or grated
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

  1. Boil the water, and add the pickled plums (sometimes sold as ‘salted plums’), and simmer for five minutes.
  2. Remove the plums to a food processor and puree them.
  3. Continue to boil the water, adding and dissolving the sugar, then adding the vinegar and salt. If any sugar is still undissolved, add a little more water until it dissolves.
  4. Return the plums to the mixture, and then pour over the other ingredients in a sterilized preserving jar, and keep in a cool place for at least a week before using.

Can you introduce me as Joker? | Joker [UltraHD, HDR]

Today’s China is militarily strong.

China is not afraid of USA. It of course will not be afraid of Japan.

A year or 2 ago, Taiwan asked Japan if it will help Taiwan in case of war,

Japan said they only plan up to the point of evacuation of Japanese in Taiwan. Translation: Japan’s war simulation tells Japan that it will not win China.

Neither can USA.

Some other art

 

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alchemyrefiner alchemymagic 0 47f8ea70 52de 4e3f 916e 849846d50409 0
Default The second coming of Jesus a powerful and aweinspiring 3 215c30b7 6cbd 4c32 a109 5c02b1abd923 0
Default The second coming of Jesus a powerful and aweinspiring 3 215c30b7 6cbd 4c32 a109 5c02b1abd923 0
Default La joven mujer sonre con felicidad y alegra Estilo Car 2
Default La joven mujer sonre con felicidad y alegra Estilo Car 2

Well, here goes, and it’s taken me 50 years to write or even speak of this event. I considered writing anonymously but that’s no way to get something off your chest.

I was with an infantry platoon in the Mekong Delta during the summer of 1969, we walked out of a woodline into an open paddy area and found several individuals dragging an unexploded 500 pound bomb across the paddy toward a wooded area. They were dressed like V/C, black trousers and white shirts, and probably about 500 yards away. This bomb would have made a devastating booby trap.

This was a so-called “free fire zone,” meaning all civilians and non-combatants had supposedly been relocated and only the enemy remained.

We opened fire and the subjects scattered into the woodline and we did not pursue them. It was getting on toward sunset and we heard crying and moaning from deep within the jungle. I, along with two other soldiers, was sent to investigate. We found a male subject laying on his back in great distress, when his shirt was removed there was a bullet hole in his upper chest/shoulder area but no exit wound. He was not bleeding, but that blood had to go somewhere, and it did, straight into his lung.

The other two guys with me argued that we should take him out and call for a dustoff (Medivac) but I was in charge and would not allow it. I said we were not going to endanger a flight crew to evacuate an enemy soldier who was going to die anyway. And besides, he might have been one of V/C who ambushed our platoon the previous week causing extensive casualties and loss of life.

So we waited as his breathing grew gradually more shallow; I kept shining my flashlight into his eyes and after about 20 minutes his pupils became dilated and non-reactive. This enemy soldier had died. Except. . .

The next morning our platoon was sleeping on dikes near the woodline and I was awakened by terrible screaming and crying from a woman and her children who had seemingly come from nowhere, there were no hooches or villages in sight. Our “enemy soldier,” whom I had watched and saw die, was in fact her 13-year old son.

At the time, and over the years, I’ve tried to rationalize my actions that evening: it was dark, V/C were all young looking, we couldn’t have saved him anyway, but the only true answer is that war had stripped away a bit of my humanity.

I saw plenty of sadness in Vietnam, but nothing was as sorrowful as watching a mother weep for her dead son.

And then I heard Phil Collins – In the Air Tonight (First Time Reaction) *

Hungry Food Porn

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Sorry are we already in 2057?

This is 2024 and China just recently graduated 11.24 Million people and typically after 18 months – as many as 850,000 of these people will not have a proper advented job and after 36 months around 332,000 of them will not have a proper job

In fact after 18 months – only India with 2.265 Million unemployed graduates will beat China in 2026 as per the extrapolation

In 2023 – Chinas Factories created 1.37 Million new jobs and this year the target is 1.50 Million new factory jobs

Guess how many factory jobs Germany created in 2023?

Negative 86,800

They closed 86,800 Jobs

The previous year it was 72,000 Jobs

In all of Europe – Hungary is the only Nation that created an additional 10,740 jobs in 2023

US has lost a whopping 4 Million Factory Jobs in the last decade (2010–2020)

China has added 18.3 Million Factory Jobs in the last decade (2010–2020)

It is expected that China will add 12 Million Factory Jobs from 2020 to 2030 and 7.2 Million from 2030 to 2040

Yet they will be more and more specialized jobs and skilled jobs

Meanwhile China will see a transition to the Service Sector

Today Manufacturing commands 36% of all Jobs and Services 13% (26% is still Agriculture and 8.3% is Government Jobs and Civil Service including the Army)

Yet a decade ago it was 41.2% for Manufacturing and only 7.8% for services

By 2030–2040 – you will see only 20% Manufacturing Jobs and upto 45% Service Jobs on the Mainland


Take a look at Nations with the largest NEW factory jobs created in 2023

  • China (1.37 Million)
  • Russia (670K) [War Production included]
  • Mexico (311K)
  • Vietnam (273K)
  • India (221K)
  • Bangladesh (157K)
  • Brazil (131K)

China nearly created the same NEW factory jobs as the next 4–5 Nations combined


South Korea & Japan are far worse than China in demographics yet Japanese Workforce showed 22,000 more factory jobs than workers and Korea showed 6050

With a huge rural population – the earliest China can reach the same situation is 2057 and that’s the absolute worst case scenario

The truth is Ceteris Paribus – China is unlikely to have any major demographic work issues until around 2075–2100 AD

By then I am sure you will have enough Robots and AI to do the needed work

Balsamic Marinated Flank Steak

balsamic marinated flank steak
balsamic marinated flank steak

Ingredients

Balsamic Marinade

  • 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon-style mustard
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar

Steak

  • 1 beef flank steak (about 1-1/2 pounds)
  • Salt amd pepper

Instructions

Balsamic Marinade

  1. Combine ingredients in small bowl. Place beef steak and marinade in food-safe plastic bag; turn steak to coat. Close bag securely and marinate in refrigerator for 6 hours or as long as overnight, turning occasionally.

Steak

  1. Remove steak from marinade; discard marinade. Place steak on grid over medium, ash-covered coals. Grill, covered, 11 to 16 minutes (over medium heat on preheated gas grill, 16 to 21 minutes) for medium rare (145 degrees F) to medium (160 degrees F) doneness, turning occasionally.
  2. Season steak with salt and pepper, as desired.
  3. Carve steak crosswise into thin slices.

I will never forget the girl who ordered a Uber Comfort which is up to 4 passengers. I showed up. Granted I have an SUV and can fit 6 passengers. Well she had a group of 7. Not squeezing you all in, sorry. Order 2 rides. They didn’t want to split the group so I said I couldn’t take them. She had such a sassy attitude. With all of the sass in the world she told her friends, “Wait, this is still on my dollar, so…” and she turned to me, held out her hand rolling her eyes a little bit and said, “Can I at least have a water or something?”

My jaw dropped a little bit. Not only was I cancelling her ride because she wanted to disobey the rules and the law, but she had the nerve to give me sass and ask for water! As if I carry water, candy, snacks, etc. for all of my passengers. She was going to pay $10 for a trip home for 7 people and expected water and snacks and candy and for me to let an extra person squeeze in the back??? Nope! Not happening! I don’t carry water for passengers. I don’t carry candy. I drive people from point A to point B and provide good customer service and a good attitude, decent music, a clean nice-smelling car with air conditioning. If you want water or snacks I can take you to a gas station! But to give me sass? I was so amazed at the nerve this young lady had to ask me in such a way for a water.

So, why do people expect so much out of an Uber?

Entitlement

People expect so much for so little. They want to pay less than a taxi service, expecting private car service. Some drivers offer amenities to boost ratings or tips, or allow passengers to break the rules to not lose out on a fare. Over time, this has led people to expect more from the service. If 1/10 drivers allow it, then all of the drivers should allow it, which simply isn’t the case.

What Western news has turned into and it ain’t pretty

I was having dinner at a restaurant with a pool (down in the Keys such things exist). I was with my family: two grown sons, their wives and kids and my husband.

Suddenly my son bolted from the table and dove into the pool, clothes and all. He had seen a toddler slip under the water in the semi-deep end and not make a sound. When people saw him running they began to pay attention and realized what he was doing but he was on it so there was nothing else to be done. The mom was standing on the other end chatting up a friend, and didn’t see a thing.

My son, who just HAPPENS to be a Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer, brought the girl up and she was coughing and petrified but other than that, she was okay. He asked her “Where’s Mommy?” and she pointed to the mother.

My son carried the child over to the woman, who was still talking and had not noticed a thing. He tapped her on the shoulder and set the girl down. “She fell in the pool,” he said. “Oh, thanks,” she said, and turned to continue her conversation.

At this point, others who had witnessed the entire thing confronted the mother and said “Hey, that man just saved your child’s life. She slipped under the water!” The mom was appropriately chagrined and apologized for not being more responsible and finally realized he was wearing regular clothes. People were still talking about it when she scooped up the sniffling child and left. She never even realized that her life could have been changed in that second.

We see drownings in the movies and it’s always someone splashing about in a frenzy. But in real life, drownings are silent. The person who doesn’t know better just sinks, instead of puffing out his lungs and helping himself stay buoyant. I never knew that.

Richard Wolff on How Russia Destroyed NATO’s Economic War and Europe is Collapsing

Collective delusion. Cultural madness.

India faces massive problems that hinder its development, starting with a dysfunctional democratic government. It is overly bureaucratic. Its regulatory structure discourages foreign investment. It is often hostile to foreign companies.

India has a large, rapidly-growing, young population but it is poorly educated. Indian literacy is quite low.

India’s female participation rate in the labour force is quite low.

India is fractured by ethnic strife. Hindu nationalism exacerbates the problem.

India has serious human rights issues, particularly with respect to women.

India’s caste system remains an obstacle.

India’s infrastructure is seriously lagging behind China.

India is mired in extreme poverty with over 100 million people living in these conditions.

Can India overcome all these obstacles and challenges? If I were a betting man, I wouldn’t put my money on India. Sorry. The odds really suck.


China’s economy is 4.7X larger than India’s by nominal GDP.

China’s economy is 2.4X larger than India’s by purchasing power parity. [Source: IMF.]

Even assuming Indian growth of 8% to Chinese growth of 5%, it would take India more than 30 years to catch up to China. The math doesn’t lie.

Can India grow at 8% ???

Douglas Macgregor Warns: US Forces Are Under ATTACK Around The World! Wind Is CHANGING Direction

This just happened to me.

I worked as a manager for 3 years, improving systems, increasing productivity, and even doubling the company’s clientele within 1.5 years. I consistently received rave reviews from staff and clients. I was efficient, trustworthy, loyal, kind, funny, was always early, and stayed late anytime they needed me. I ran the business while the owner was able to look into opening a second location because of how much I improved her business.

One month ago (Nov. 2019), I came to work like any other day. I booked several new clients within my first 30 minutes. I was then called into a meeting with the owner and another manager. I was handed an email I had written the day before. I read it and asked what was wrong. The manager said, “We are moving to termination.” Shocked, with all the blood in my body now rushing out (I could feel myself turn white), I said, “I don’t think this is right. Where is the disciplinary trail?”

They proceded to tell me they did not need a disciplinary trail and gave me no reason other than the way I had written the email made it sound like I threw the manager under the bus. This was not my intent and I profusely apologized for it coming off that way. I tried to discuss the fact that I had no previous disciplinary problems. The owner and manager then started bringing up little mistakes I had made – nothing bad, just simple mistakes, and things I had never before been made aware of.

I proceeded to remind them how much I have done for the company and asked if we could instead discuss this rather then just get rid of me. I kept asking why. They never had a straight answer. They never had me sign anything. At one point the manager said, “Go process this at home, goodbye.”

As I gathered my belongings while they watched me like hawks, I stuttered and mumbled, trying anything to make sense of what was happening. I still have no idea why I was fired nor what the grounds for firing me were.

I am moving on, but hurting a lot. I absolutely loved the job and the work, and I believed in the company. I am angry and sad and I know this wasn’t right. But I have no recourse. They had made up their minds and there was nothing I could say or do. I wish I knew what happened and I wish I could go back and say the magic words. My only choice is to move ahead.

It helps a bit reading from others who say this type of incident isn’t right and also that I’m not the only one this has happened to.

Side note – I found out a couple of weeks later that my office assistant quit the day after I left and that the owner replaced me with her daughter.

UPDATE June 2020: Thank you for all of your up votes and comments, I really appreciate them. To update, they had to eventually hire 3 people to take over my position. Many employees have quit as have many clients. The person who took the lead in firing me was demoted soon after and recently quit.

Pad Mi Korat Phet
(Hot Noodles, Korat Style – Thai)

The route to this recipe started with a couple of requests for a hot version of pad Thai.

Pad Mee Korat3
Pad Mee Korat3

Unfortunately for those that asked, whilst you can add anything you like to pad Thai | including chiles | the result is not authentic. It simply isn’t done (which is not to say that Thais don’t load their plates of pad Thai with prik phom and chiles in fish sauce or vinegar ccording to taste)

Pad Thai is quite an elaborate dish. The style usually found in Thai restaurants outside Thailand is particularly elaborate, being referred to somewhat insultingly my Thai housewives as “pad Thai Krungthep” | the implication being that rich people in the capital do it that way to show off.

Ignoring the countryside versus capital debate, there is a local, very simple variant of the dish, known as pad mi Korat. Made with the round egg noodles known as sen mi, rather than the narrow rice ribbon noodles, and with a recipe that consists of partly cooking a cup of noodles, then stir frying them with a cup of sliced and shredded pak bung (swamp cabbage), adding a little tamarind juice for flavor, and drizzling a beaten egg over it to complete it.

However my wife prepares a more elaborate version of pad mi Korat, which is also fairly hot. This version I will call pad mi Korat phet (hot stir fried noodles in the Korat style).

Before I get into the details, I would like to make two comments.

The original of this dish is made with sen mi (Thai egg noodles), but if you can’t find them I find it works very well with a spaghetti or similar (the little shell shapes are good).

The original uses swamp cabbage, but any greens will do. If I fancy splashing out we make this with a mixture of broccoli and asparagus.

To simplify the dish I should point out that it is actually made using table condiments, thus the ingredients are not as complicated as they look. I will first include recipes for the table condiments you need. In Thailand these would probably be on every housewife’s table, but if you don’t have them you should make them about a week before you intend to cook the dish.

We make them in vast quantities for the restaurant (in 5 gallon containers), but for home use we use 1 pint spring top preserving jars. These have the advantage of fitting in the door shelves of our refrigerator.

Pad Mee Korat1
Pad Mee Korat1

Nam Pla Prik

Put 2/3 cup of prik ki nu (finely sliced green birdseye or dynamite chiles) into a 1 pint jar, and fill with fish sauce. Seal and keep for a week before using.

Prik Dong

Put 2/3 cup of prik ki nu daeng (finely sliced red birdeye or dynamtie chiles) in a 1 pint jar, and fill with rice vinegar (any white vinegar will do, as will cider vinegar, if rice vinegar is unavailable).

Prik Siyu Wan

Put 2/3 cup of prik chi fa (sliced red or green Thai jalapeños) in a 1 pint jar, and fill with sweet dark soy sauce.

Kratiem Dong

Peel and slice 2/3 cup of garlic, place it in the 1 pint jar, add 1 teaspoon of palm sugar, and 1 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of MSG (optional but recommended) and topped up with rice vinegar.

Khing Ki Mao

  1. Julienne 2/3 cup of fresh ginger (into match stick sized pieces). Place in the 1 pint jar. Add 1/2 cup of Mekong whiskey (Mekong is a whiskey made from Rice. If you can’t find it or prefer something else, any spirits, even sherry, will do). Add 1/2 cup of rice vinegar, and fill up the jar with fish sauce.
  2. Now we’ll progress to the pad mi itself.
  3. For this you will need 1 cup of noodles, 1/2 cup of green veggies, 1/2 cup of mild peppers such as prik chi fa (Thai jalapeños). If you want to try this but at a lower heat level, use the Thai chili called prik yiek, or a bell pepper. You also need 1 large egg (preferably a duck egg), some tamarind juice and sugar, and chiles, bai chi (coriander leaves) and a sliced cucumber for garnish.
  4. Place the noodles in water to soak for about 15 minutes.
  5. Place 2 tablespoons of the liquor from each of the five condiments listed above, together with 2 tablespoons of tamarind juice, in a small saucepan and simmer to reduce it to half its volume. When this is done heat a wok, and stir a teaspoon of the fish sauce from the nam pla prik into the egg, and beat it lightly. Drain 1 tablespoon of the pickle from each of the five condiments.
  6. If you are using Italian pasta, boil it for half the normal cooking time.
  7. Add all the ingredients except the egg and the reduced sauce to the wok and stir fry until the noodles are just ‘toothy’ in texture. Add the sauce, turn the heat to as high as possible, and when the sauce has come to a vigorous boil, gently drizzle the egg into the mix, which will cook it.
  8. Serve immediately, with the listed condiments, together with sugar and prik phom (powdered red chile), and decorate with the garnishes.

Weirdest? Maybe, you decide. I had asked a good family “friend” to check on my high school kids while I was going to be gone a couple nights. They were both working and responsible but I just wanted someone to look in on them, it made me feel better. He offered to stay over and would let the dog out if they were working. I thought that would be great. He was a good friend and I thought I knew him well Well, We ended up coming home sooner then planned and I messaged him our new plans. When did we expect to be home? About what time? Not sure why it mattered but I let him know. He acted strangely in his texts, which I didn’t pick up on until later. I wasn’t sure why he was even still at the house since we were coming back that evening, but I thought he was just being kind and taking care of the dog or maybe he wanted a quiet spot to be as he had moved back in with his parents to save money. Fast forward about 3 months and my daughter had to run home to grab something before a game. She had a couple other kids with her, one being a new kid. “Oh, I’ve been here before” he says. My daughter asked when. “ when I met up with someone on grinder “ my daughter didn’t believe him until he mentioned some details about the inside of the house. Well, after asking when and a description of the person she put two and two together, it was our good “friend.” My daughter was so upset she had a panic attack about the whole thing. She told me and I told my husband and we called law enforcement since he was a minor. There was an investigation and it turned out the kid lied about his age and nothing had actually happened because our friend had the sense to kick him out when he discovered he was not 18, and the investigation was ended. My daughter had to go through questioning about what she was told. We had to let our employer know because we work with kids and couldn’t risk this kid saying he was at our house with an adult male when they didn’t know the circumstances. Obviously I did not speak to the person again after this, and he had no idea why I was upset! He did not realize the repercussions that my family could have faced because of this or how disgusting this was even if not intentional. Now, we all knew he was gay and that’s not the disgusting part- it’s inviting a stranger into my home without my permission and possibly with my other kids around, it’s a safety issue, and a trust issue. If I don’t trust people anymore this is one of the reasons why.

What Was it About Malls in the 1970s?

Yes, I owned a burglar alarm company. The employee had been on the job about three weeks but was well trained. He failed to dispatch on an alarm. I fired him. He was black. He filed an EEOC complaint alleging I fired him because he was a black male. He had a black female supervisor and I had many employees of different races working for me. I did not discriminate on pay, male vs female, black vs white. The EEOC called me about the complaint and told me he would settle it for $1995. I told her no. She asked what I would counter with. I told her I wouldn’t counter. She told me they would have to audit me. Maybe I should counter with $995. I told her to audit. I was audited and no wrong doing was found. About a year later I received a notice that he had appealed. I called the EEOC and told them I was pissed. I was ready to sue but I had a supervisor on the line. He said just cool it. Ok. Was everything just as it was when I was audited? Sure! Ok, ty. The appeal was denied. Another year later I received a notice that he had appealed again. Really pissed now. Same supervisor. Really ready to sue. He said cool it. Was everything the same as when they audited? I said no, employees had come and gone but the ratios and pay were still equitable. I asked how many times this guy had done this. I was told that couldn’t be divulged but would hear nothing more. Appeal denied. The thing that still bothers me is that the EEOC initially really wanted me to pay to make the problem go away. Sad.

America Decline is identical to that of Tang Dynasty!?

My son is not my biological child. I met his mother when he was 7 and his little sister had just been born. Their biological father was in jail, having assaulted his wife when she was seven months pregnant, and was not present. Even when he HAD been present he was not a positive influence and poor Aaron had really been through way more than a child his age should ever have to experience, including a hospital visit that was necessary because he attempted to defend his mother from his abusive father.

Aaron’s mother had no one except her kids when I met her, and she had begun treating Aaron like a friend instead of her child. The lack of discipline or a male role model combined with Aaron being spoiled by his mother and his general anger at his father to create a child that had a very difficult time getting along with others his age. He and I used to play video games together all afternoon long, and over time he and I became very close. I took him under my wing and thus began a years long process of reforming him from a spoiled mamma’s boy (which doesn’t play too well here in the Deep South) to a rough and tumble young man with integrity and respect for others.

One of the biggest obstacles was that he was being relentlessly bullied. We switched him to different schools several times, but being socially awkward AND the “new kid” made him a natural target. Finally we put him in kickboxing so he could learn to defend himself.

Fast forward a few years. That scrawny awkward boy has become a big strong teenager that is both extraordinarily sensitive and YEARS ahead of his classmates in physical conditioning due to his dedication to his training. He became a standout football player his first season after setting a team record for sacks (I taught him how to slip blocks and punch through defenders and the kid learned incredibly fast).

So one day I get a call from his mom telling me that Aaron has been suspended for fighting. I’ve always told him not to start fights, but if someone puts their hands on him he’s free to defend himself. Of course I ask how it happened.

One of his buddies (a very small boy) had been getting bullied by a group of boys after school. These boys all live in a nearby neighborhood and walk home, and during that walk there’s no adult supervision. Several boys would team up on the one littler kid, and nothing was being done about it. Aaron decided to defend his buddy so the next time they did it he stepped in and beat up the ringleader. The little asshole’s parents made a big stink the next day so the school suspended all of them for fighting.

When I got home I told him I was proud of him. Even though he’s trained to fight he rarely does, he’s the sweetest kid and doesn’t like violence or hurting people. And now he finally did get in a fight, and it was to protect someone else. After all he’s been through he still cares about others and I’m incredibly proud of him for using his size and skills to defend weaker people.

“Hell On Earth” (Official Lyric Video)

He’s talking about the Lifestyles of Americans.

I was on a highway on the way home after teaching a night class. A driver in a Camaro came up to an intersection on the right and rolled through the stop sign (like most St Louis drivers do). I saw them approaching the stop sign and was thinking “they’re going to stop … they’re going to stop… oh no!”. Luckily there was no one to my left so I swerved left trying to avoid them but hit the front end of the car. If I hadn’t gone left I would have T-boned it right on the driver’s door.

No injuries, my little Mazda was totaled, the Camaro was missing it’s nose. Called AAA who dispatched law enforcement, exchanged insurance info with the lady driver, talked with law enforcement and waited for the tow truck etc.

Suddenly the driver’s daughter drove up and started ranting. “Who knocked the front end off of my new Camaro? I know they were speeding if they did that!”.

Her attitude rubbed me the wrong way so I tried to give her my perspective: “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Your mother pulled out right in front of me, I went left to try to avoid killing her. You need to go be with her.” She had a shocked look on her face as she walked away.

Retiring at 65 is a HUGE Mistake. Retirement Expert Explains​ Why

Very interesting, and frankly, frightening.

.

It’s really simple.

People who play lotteries are generally folks who I’d call “pay check people,” living check to check. They’ve never had much money and no prospects of any, like family inheritances.

When they Win Big they’re in euphoria, of course. But they haven’t a clue how to manage their sudden windfall of seemingly endless wealth. Oh, but plenty of other “well-meaning” friends and family do!

Turns out the biggest problem that lottery winners have is simple, good-hearted generosity: giving away too much money to family and friends. Family feel especially entitled to a nice, fat chunk. And if they don’t get it…? Trouble. And once the money spigot is opened, it’s hard to stop its gush.

Financial “advisors” circle like vultures and the pickings are easy. Winners are virtually never well-educated, certainly not in financial matters. For example, they have no idea what they owe the IRS on their miraculous windfall. And being ill-educated they cannot see the difference between a brilliant investment and a monstrous scam.

And so begins the sad spiral down to the misery of bankruptcy…or worse. They almost all utter a common cry, “Oh, God, I wish I’d never won!”

  • 70% of lottery winners are broke within seven years of The Big Win.

Read the horrifying Powerball stories on Fredrick Josefsson’s fascinating Comment. [scroll down below inoperative video on NY Daily News]

Brits Colin & Chris Weir are among the few winners living-Happily-Ever-After.

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The story is much the same with professional athletes. Often from truly dirt-poor families, they are now multimillionaires. They, too, have no meaningful financial education, but they do have out-sized egos. Vulture Inc. knows how to play the flattery game.

First purchase? Without question, a vast mansion for mom so she can move out of that shack. Then a couple of homes for themselves in places like Malibu, California or Jupiter, Florida or some other gilded ZIP Code.

Pro athletes just love “foolproof” investments. Like played-out gold mines in Alaska. And they rarely fly “commercial” like you and me. No, they charter private jets such as the Gulfstream below which costs $5,000 a flight hour. That’s $60,000 from Malibu to Jupiter and back.

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Coke, cars, planes, jewelry, women, Vegas and dozens of flattering friends who magically vanish when the money does. Five or six years after hanging up the spurs, the once-proud athlete is flat-ass broke. Some end up in jail for schemes that went criminal. And, sadly, a few actually become homeless.

All this is so common, it’s a cliché. You’ve surely been to parties where people ‘cluck-cluck’ about it. There’s even a well-known German term for this happy clucking: Schadenfreude [SHAH-den-froy-da] It means happiness at another’s misfortune or humiliation—especially when that person was once rolling in $ dough $.

At the next party, Impress—or mystify—those clucking guests with this: “Oh, isn’t Schadenfreude such fun?”

Champion boxer Mike Tyson (top photo) once spent $173,706 on a gold chain, $410,000 on a birthday party. Evander Holyfield once owned a 109 room mansion with a $17,000 monthly electric bill. Once owned—but not for long.

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Alien: The Deleted Airlock Sequence – Explained

Well…..

Our snazzy grandma didn’t say a whole lot, but when she did speak, it was almost always what many people would call inappropriate.

And….

Our grandpa did say a lot, but he was even more inappropriate. So when our grandparents got together with people that didn’t know them, a whole lot of inappropriateness was inevitable, and often hilarious.

At least to us.

Even though my sister and I always did well in school, there was always some teacher or counselor that thought we were getting too close, and needed to find our own identities, or some such crap.

So….

They would bring us in with our parents to discuss the problem, but of course we didn’t think there was a problem. We knew our genealogy was a bit different than most other families, and our family tree had branches that had some very strange things living on them, but we didn’t consider that a problem in the least.

But…..

The school still would insist on occasion that we had to come in to discuss the problem, and since our parents were sick of discussing this non-existing problem, one time our grandparents offered to go with us instead.

My sister and I just looked at each other when we found out our grandparents were going together, to discuss the problem, with the teachers and counselors, because we just knew something was going to happen.

And that something was definitely going to be inappropriate.

So off we went to the school….

With our spooky, sibylline and very snazzy grandma, and giant kraken fighting grandpa, close behind us. And my sister and I both just knew that the school was in for some serious inappropriateness.

Our snazzy grandma looked like a witch, a very lovely witch, but still obviously norn. And our grandpa looked like he could go down to Múspellsheimr, and drag out Surtr by his ears.

An interesting couple.

So….

Our grandparents listened patiently to the experts talk about the problem, until one got to the part where she said that we acted like we were one person. At that point our snazzy grandma quietly replied,

“How did they know we weren’t really one person, with one soul, but with two bodies?”

That comment brought a bit of a awkward silence, but then another expert started going on about how our family should be better role models for us, and then mentioned that the other kids in school thought we were elves.

And…

Our grandma quietly replied,

“What made them think we weren’t elves?”

This made the room go silent, until the headmaster looked at our snazzy grandma, and simply said,

Norn.

There was a bit of a gasp from the teachers, and then silence.

Until…

Our snazzy grandma stood up and looked at the head counselor and said,

“I know what that shadow in the corner of your bedroom really is.”

And then….

Looked at the headmaster and said,

“And I know why you can’t make love to your wife.”

Followed by some very serious, silent, silence.

Until our grandpa suddenly got up and said that he had enough of this horseshit, and that he was going to take the norn home and have some fun, and then get shit-faced drunk.

And then looked at the teachers, counselors, and head master and said,

“How’s that for a role model?”

And as we walked on home, even though we knew the answer, my sister couldn’t resist asking our snazzy grandma why the headmaster couldn’t make love to his wife.

Grandma just kept walking, but told us to be quiet, or she was going to turn both of us into rutabagas. <3 <3

Various Vintage art

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Military Coup Underway in Bolivia

BREAKING NEWS: Military Coup Underway in Bolivia

As of 3:30 PM eastern US time today, June 26, 2024, reports are flooding-in saying a Military Coup d’Etat is taking place to oust President Luis Arce of Bolivia!

Military leader General Juan José Zúñiga reportedly has sent troops into the Presidential Palace to remove President Arce by force of arms.

Developing . . .

Imagery and videos beginning to come in from Bolivia:

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Coup 1 bolivia
Coup 1 bolivia

 

Hal Turner Snap Analysis:

CIA color revolution all over it

Bolivia is one of the rare countries in South America that are trying to fight against the American colonialism and don’t want to be their puppets.

 

UPDATE 5:08 PM EDT —

Bolivian general Juan Jose Zuñiga has PUBLICLY ANNOUNCED that he has seized power after militarily taking over the Presidential Palace in La Paz.

INSIDE THE RETAIL APOCALYPSE! ABANDONED STORE CRISIS!

I was driving to work in a blizzard. there was already 4 inches of snow on the road. I was taking my time and safely following the truck ahead of me trying to keep my wheels in his tracks. I was driving a normal RWD car.

Okay, so far, so good.

A total idiot in a 4WD truck came speeding up behind me. He tried to pass me a couple of times, but almost lost control each time and flicking me the finger. I said to myself “I’m in no mood for this shit”

He tried a final time. I closed on the truck ahead of me and he tried to swerve in between me and the truck in front of me. I sped up a touch to prevent him from getting in (yes, I’m pretty upset at this point).

He tried again, and I changed the game plan. He swerved to get in ahead of me, and I lifted (took my foot off of the gas pedal), and the distance between me and the truck I was following opened.

The dork trying to pass me, hit the gas and lost control. He slid/spun between me and the truck and went straight off the road into a 20 foot ditch. I beeped and waved as I went by and kept going.

Talk about sweet revenge! I never did a thing wrong, I just made it possible for him to “learn a lesson”. When I got to work, the incident was on the radio news because the police closed the northbound lanes of the highway. When I got to work 15 minutes late, I was not docked for the time. I came from my home 80 miles away while most of the staff lived less than 5 miles away and called out. Remember this was during a blizzard! Even though it’s been 30+ years, I still grin when I think about it!

I speak High German reasonably well. As I don’t use it very often anymore, it can take me a few minutes of a conversation, or listening, to get back in the proverbial swing.

I stopped once at one of the road-side Amish food stores in Pennsylvania to scoop up some great chow. There were a bunch of other customers in before me, including some who were dressed pretty outlandishly, and some who were just being asses in general.

The two giggly teenage Amish girls working the counter were going to town, cracking wise about the “English” in their German dialect. It’s hard to follow at times, and uses some real archaic vocabulary, but once you get used to the sentence structure, that includes some pidgin English, it’s fairly clear to the casual German speaker.

I assumed the two Amish girls were a little more worldly by working in the store and interacting with the “English”, and thus were probably a little more less typically Amish in how they acted. And they were teenagers …

At any rate, when I was the last “English” in the store, and was at the counter paying for my pies and bread, I started speaking to them in German, and told them I agreed with their jokes, but that the Good Lord might send someone in from time to time to see how they were conducting business.

I took my change and bags and gave a Witchie-Poo laugh as I watched their faces turn chalk white.

Cat to the Chase

Submitted into Contest #8 in response to: Write a story about an adventure in space. view prompt

Abby Wadlington

Thirteen moons glittered down from the smog-packed sky.  Their silvery light cast ethereal glows across the glass sidewalks and streets.  The purple gas trapped below their feet danced and spun like living creatures.As polluted as Neptune was, still beauty could be found.  Of course, Ace Lowell was too busy to seek out the beauty of his home planet.  He had a job to do.His nineteenth birthday.  This had been the day he had tossed and turned over each night.  This was the day his dream was finally supposed to come true.And, up to a point, everything had worked out exactly as he had imagined.Buy a rundown apartment in downtown Neptune with every last penny in his and Zyla’s pockets.  Check.Turn said apartment in a detective business.  Check.Get his first mystery.  Check.But the whole ‘solve the clues and save the day’ part was still out on recess.  Maybe that part had never been an option at all. Maybe all hopes of fame and fortune he had envisioned for this day had abandoned him the moment he received his first case.In the old detective films Ace used to watch (alone, naturally–his parents were too busy ignoring him), a disaster shook the city.  An unexplained string of robberies. A mysterious disappearance of someone important. A grievous murder. And the detective, clad in his trench coat and sporting a magnifying glass in his hand, always sought out the clues and solved the mystery.  And everybody loved him for it.Well, Ace had the trench coat and the drive to bust crime.  What he lacked, however, was an actual crime.Darkness clung thick to the Neptunian night.  Lamplight glimmered dimly through the streets, illuminating their way.  Hands shoved in his coat pockets, Ace trudged after his partner in anti-crime, Zyla Strange.She was the reason they had been walking around like headless chickens for two hours.  Because when Ace’s first client rushed into their apartment and presented them with the most pointless, ridiculous mystery he never dreamed of asking for, Zyla jumped to the rescue as always.

His first mystery wasn’t a robbery or a kidnapping or a murder.  Instead, a little sniffling boy had waddled up to their door, snot dripping from his nose and tears pouring from his eyes as he explained that his cat had gone missing.

No, the kid didn’t have any money to pay them.  If they wanted payment, though, he’d gladly give them the unwrapped collection of Lifesaver mints collecting dust in his pajama pockets.

Ridiculous.  Utterly ridiculous.

Huffing, Ace caught up to Zyla.  The cold air blasted against his cheeks, tinging his blue skin bluer.  He tugged his coat snugly around himself. Tattooed arms bare and pierced belly button exposed, Zyla just crammed her hands in her sweatpants pockets.  She was the kind of stubborn that would outlast a bull in a headstrong fight.

“A cat,” Ace muttered for the seventeenth time that night.  “I’ve wasted two hours of my life searching for some kid’s damn cat.  Honestly, slap up some missing posters or something! We’re detectives, not pet finders.”

“We’ll be whatever we need to be,” Zyla snapped back, voice sharper than a snakebite.  Her emerald eyes cut through the darkness to glare at him. “So this isn’t your ideal picture of a first mystery.  It’s still a mystery, Ace! And if we can help that poor boy, then we will.”

Ace sighed.  What was her deal?  Ever since he had found her huddled in a Neptunian alleyway two years ago, she had acted like the planet was one big charity case.  If someone tripped, she was there with a wad of bandages. If someone frowned, she went out of her way to brighten their day. If someone so much as sneezed, she made sure to bless them.

Maybe it was a Uranian thing.  Then again, nobody in the universe had ever been on Uranus.  The planet was an impenetrable force the galaxy had been trying to break into for centuries.  How Zyla even left Uranus, she had never said.

Beside him, Zyla drew a sharp gasp.  Ace followed her gaze in time to see a striped gray tail vanish around the corner.

Without a word, Zyla took off, violet cornrow braids flying behind her.  Ace hesitantly followed.

The moment he rounded the corner, he found it.  There, in the shadow of a Starbucks, sat a gray tabby cat.  The feline glanced up at them with intelligent blue eyes. Meeting the creature’s gaze, a shudder passed down Ace’s spine.  The cat seemed strangely human-like.

Zyla turned to him with a cheeky smile.  “See? Not a complete waste of time! We found the cat.  Mystery solved!”

“Great.  Grab the creepy cat and let’s go to bed,” he muttered back.

Instead of reaching for the cat, though, Zyla stooped down and fished into her pockets.  Ace watched her, his foot tapping an impatient rhythm against the glass sidewalk.

Finally, Zyla withdrew a regular fruit bar.  The wrapper crinkled as she wrestled it open.

Ace’s eyebrows shot up to his pale hairline.  “You’re gonna feed it?”

“It’s rude to just grab the cat,” Zyla protested.  “What if it’s unfriendly and bites me?”

“Then you can blast it with your Uranian superpowers and turn it to kitty litter.  Who knows? Maybe the kid will still give us his nasty mints.”

She ignored him as she broke off the corner of the fruit bar.  Cooing at the creature, Zyla held out her offering under the cat’s nose.

The cat blinked.  Then, with unnatural speed, it swallowed the fruity piece in one lightning-fast gulp.  Ace and Zyla froze, staring at it.

Around them, the wind turned harsh, whistling across the cityscape.  Energy crackled through the air.

Ace felt the hairs at the nape of his neck bristle.  “What the hell–”

With a crack of thunder, reality cleaved in two.  A gaping hole alight with thousands of swirling, vibrant hues opened beneath his feet.  The yelp that rose to his mouth got sucked into oblivion with the rest of him.

The fall lasted both a millisecond and an eternity.  Ears popping, heart hammering, head spinning, Ace spiraled downward through the darkness.  He squeezed his eyes shut, biting back a scream.

After both a millisecond and an eternity, the ground rushed up to catch him.  Ace landed on both feet into soft crimson sand.

Wait, sand?

He looked around and discovered another world.  Red sand shifted and pooled across the ground. A light breeze plucked sandy grains from the floor and whisked them off into the night sky.  Above him hung two moons; they stared down like a pair of wide silver eyes.

Laughter poured all around him from dozens of old-fashioned wooden buildings hugging the narrow street.  The scent of whiskey hit his nostrils as a light-skinned man stumbled out a set of swinging barn doors.

Fingers curled tightly around his forearm.  Ace glanced over to find a pale-faced Zyla gawking at the horizon.  “Ace, we’re not on Neptune anymore.”

Ace took a deep breath.  His lungs stung with the cleanliness of the air.  He gulped another breath, intoxicated with the feeling.  Never had Neptune’s air been this clean. His planet’s atmosphere was all smoke and smog and ash.  And while Neptunians didn’t need oxygen to breathe, Ace had always secretly wondered what clean air tasted like.

In all his nineteen years of living, Ace had never set foot off Neptune.  He never had enough money to take a vacation from his home planet, and his parents could care less about showing their son the Milky Way.  With thirteen older sisters, it felt like Ace wasn’t even there. His parents didn’t have the time to notice him. With an earth-shattering mystery, he had hoped to change all of that and finally snatch their affection.

Instead, he had found a cat.  A snack-stealing, planet-hopping cat.

“Mars,” he whispered.  “We’re on Mars.”

“So cool,” Zyla breathed back.  After a second, though, she shook her head.  “We’ve got a job to do. We can’t get distracted.”

“Zyla, the cat made a freaking portal that took us to Mars.  How can we not get distracted?”

He glanced down, searching for the unusual feline.  At his feet, however, he found only sand. Ace’s heart leapt into his throat.  If the cat’s the reason why we teleported…and we don’t have the cat…we’ll be stuck here.

Frankly, it wasn’t the worst fate they could suffer.  It wasn’t like anyone on Neptune would notice their disappearance anyway.  But from what he had read about Mars, the planet was a war-torn catastrophe waiting to happen.  He wasn’t exactly cut out for fighting.

“We need to find the cat,” he said slowly, pulse pounding in his ears.

Zyla’s lips crinkled in a smirk.  “Oh, now he wants to find the cat.  Still wishing we had gotten a more interesting first mystery?”

He skillfully ignored her.  “Can you use your powers to find it?”

“You’re kidding, right?”  Zyla held out her hands. For a second, green light sparked between her fingers.  She tucked her hands back into her pockets, frowning. “My power is to blast things, not find things.”

“Fine.  Let’s start looking then.  If that cat teleports again and doesn’t take us with it, we’re screwed.”

They took off through the streets, sand kicking up in plumes behind them.  As the buildings blurred around him and the wind howled in his ears, Ace felt the tension seeping from his body.  Running wild and free, he had never felt more alive. Like he had lived his entire life on Neptune with his eyes closed, and had just stumbled back into the light to find a brand new world awaiting exploration.

Zyla turned left down an alleyway, Ace nipping at her heels.  When she stopped suddenly in front of him, Ace nearly pitched face-first into the sand with the effort of not slamming into her back.

He peered around her shoulder.  At the end of the alleyway sat the gray tabby cat.  At its paws sprawled a single slab of sand-caked cheddar cheese.

Ace’s shoulders tensed again.  “Didn’t the portal that got us here first open because that thing ate your fruit bar?”

“Yep,” Zyla whispered back, dread weighing her voice.

“Think that if it eats something else, we’ll get sucked into another portal?”

“Most likely.”

The cat darted forward, snagging the corner of the cheese between its teeth.  Reality split open again under their feet.

Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Earth, even Pluto.  They went everywhere in the span of an hour, introduced into another culture every other minute.  Each time they caught up to the cat, it would find a piece of food and take a bite, opening another portal that swallowed them into another world.  It was like a twisted birthday present for Ace–a free explore-the-galaxy pass through the Milky Way.

Roughly fifteen portals later, the familiar glassy floor appeared beneath Ace’s feet once more.  They popped up in the shadow of a Neptunian Starbucks–the exact point they had disappeared from.  The thirteen moons shone down on him again. He breathed in a lungful of smoggy air.

It was as if they had never left at all.  Not a single aspect around them had changed.  Looking around, though, Ace saw things in a new light.  His heart felt lighter, less shackled by worry. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Before the cat could stalk away in search of more food, Zyla swept forward and scooped the feline into her arms.  It wriggled and squirmed before finally relenting to her strong grip. She glanced down at it in a mix of anger and awe.

“I am not doing that again,” she muttered.  When she looked up at Ace, though, a smile crossed her features.  “Still sleepy? We could still squeeze in a few winks before we return the cat.”

Ace snorted.  The trip around the universe hummed through his veins like a gallon’s worth of coffee.

They began walking down the street in the direction of their apartment.  As they pushed on, Ace studied every shining edge of every skyscraper reaching up to Neptune’s night sky.  For the first time in years, it took his breath away. Why had he taken Neptune for granted this whole time?  He had been so blinded by his own ambitions of making a name for himself that he had forgotten to enjoy the world around him.

Halfway across the street, Ace stopped.  “The cat’s Uranian, isn’t it?”

Zyla paused.  In her grip, the cat reached out and batted her jaw.  She cocked her head at Ace. “Duh. It can make portals by eating, genius.  It’s not some regular house cat.”

“Shouldn’t we return it to Uranus, then?  I know it’s technically that kid’s cat, but wouldn’t the cat be happier where it’s from?”

He had always imagined Uranus as a secret paradise, a haven no outsider could ever enter.  In truth, no one knew anything about the planet. No one had ever been on it–no one except the girl and the cat in front of him.

Zyla smiled sadly.  “That’s not how it works.  Once you leave Uranus, you can’t go back.  There’s only two ways off the planet–either teleportation like this little guy probably did, or banishment.”

Ace froze.  Banishment?  

He stared at Zyla’s back as she started away.  The question he had asked ever since he first met her rose again to his lips.  “Why did you leave?”

Silence.  Like every time before, he expected the silence to ring on and on, echoing with a thousand possibilities.  Finally, though, her soft voice spliced through the night.

“That, Ace Lowell,” Zyla said, casting him the same sad smile, “is a mystery for another time.  Now come on. Let’s go save the day.”

He watched her walk away, a Uranian girl with a Uranian cat.  And gradually, when his senses pieced themselves back together again, Ace trailed after her.

Nothing about his nineteenth birthday that day had been the picturesque moment he had imagined since childhood.  His name was no closer to shining in lights. For all he knew, he could forever remain another nameless face in this vast universe.

But something about chasing that damn cat across the Milky Way had changed him.  Something about all the excitement and wonder and beauty he had experienced while racing through the galaxy resounded through his bones.  Maybe he’d never find the fame and fortune he had always wanted, or the recognition he had thought would bring him happiness.

But, step by step, he could still make a difference.  Maybe Zyla had been right all along in her passion to help others, no matter the cost.

Ace could already imagine the grin on that little boy’s face when they returned his annoying cat.  And personally, he wouldn’t trade the image of that smile for all the fame in the galaxy.

Maybe not the funniest ever but this one really cracks me up.

I get cold easily. Whenever I can get away with it, you will see me wearing a fleece-lined beanie. I own roughly a million and a half of those. But, unfortunately, I have to take them off when I go see my patients. Most of my patients are old. And many of them also get cold easily, what with all the adipose tissue they’ve lost over the decades.

This is the case for one of my current ladies. She’s in her mid 80s, and the first time I saw her, she was bundled up under a thousand and one blankets. So I shared with her that I get cold too.

“I blame it on being African.”

She chuckled.

And that was the end of the story, I thought.

There are many side effects to being old, apart from the aforementioned impaired thermoregulation: high blood pressure, lower bone density leading to a loss of height and a higher susceptibility to fractures, hair loss, impaired balance, reduced visual acuity, higher rate of cancers of all sort, arthritis, loss of bowel and bladder control, etc. Basically, getting old is a really bad idea.

But one of the side effects that is amusing for those of us who have a twisted sense of humor is that people lose their filter.

“Mister Africaaaaaah!” She shouted this the second time she saw me in her room.

I was laughing so hard, I almost collapsed on her bed.

Did she really just say that?

She had. Now she does it every time she sees me. She said it again when I popped in on her yesterday during her speech therapy session. I told her that next time I would come in a loin cloth and a spear.

Earlier today, she told me she hadn’t slept well. I told her that maybe she needed someone to tuck her in and give her a hug or something.

“Or something…” she said, suggestively.

She just passed me in the hall about a half hour ago. I was chatting with the nurses and not paying attention to the faint sound of the wheelchair coming from behind.

“There’s Misteeeeeer Africaaaaaah. Hahaha!”

The nurses did a double take, then everybody was cracking up.

“I’m going to start calling you that,” said the youngest nurse.

I tried to make a face at her but my surgical mask covered half of it. She’s too young to get away with that. Only people who have the plausible deniability of senility get to call me Mister Africa.

This Killed All But 1,000 Humans 900,000 Years Ago

For a number of years I worked with elderly people who I helped them get their financial affairs in order. It was a very rewarding job because I enjoyed talking to them. I wanted them to know that they were going to be okay as their health deteriorated. Money makes people do terrible things and I had seen it ALL!! So I still had young high net worth clients but the elderly were just more enjoyable and appreciated all the effort.

My collegeues always said ““old people just love you….I don’t understand it?” I thought it was easy to understand. I appeared to be a straight laced young man who would sit and listen to them for hours. I was respectful and did everything for them as I would want done for my grandmothers or mom. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents and great uncles who helped raise me. They taught me a lot about myself and had an undying belief that I was going to go great things. That kind of faith helped me thru some very difficult times.

So to many of these elderly people I became a grandson type and looked out for them because they couldn’t do it for themselves. One of my clients was a WW2 ace who I discovered accidentally when watching a history channel show about his life. I could have listened to him for days.

When you deal with people’s money especially when they have children there is a paranoia that can create a difficult situation. What most heirs learned was that I was focused on their parents or grandparents living the life they wanted and then keeping their inheritance out of the government hands. Some objected to the way the money came to them but most often it was a lack of their understanding.

One day I was called to meet a new client that was living in terrible conditions. He had a substantial amount of money but typical in a child of the Great Depression was worried it was going to run out. Although he was admittedly different I didn’t know why in the beginning. Because he was doing odd things like dumpster diving at 83 and he wore an old electrical cord as a belt. He seemed oblivious to his own odor and lack of proper hygiene. The biggest issue was that he wasn’t caring for his home and one rather negative neighbor who had an ulterior motive called the police on him.

Most people don’t know that in many states a neighbors complaints about your lawn not being cared for or your home in disrepair can be the first steps to making you a ward of the state. Where I worked it happened often and it NEVER benefitted the individual or their heirs.

So luckily I was friends with a number of people in this neighborhood and his meals on wheels volunteer who introduced me to this man. His house was going to be condemned, and it was a real death trap. He was a hoarder and the outside of the house was terrible but inside was worse. The issue was that the land was worth a fortune.

If you had seen him you would have thought he was homeless and impoverished. He was very friendly but there was clearly an event that triggered his situation. Some of his caring neighbors tried to look out for him but it was too much. He did have a daughter but had not spoken with her for 30 years.

In order to help him I needed to get my hands on any documents he had. I drove to his house and was prepared to search through everything but the smell was so bad I could not be there for more than 30 minutes. In his state no honest attorney would work with him. He said he had a will and I needed to locate it. The next day he calls me and we meet in his bank. He is pushing a shopping cart full of documents which he gives me and then he went about his day.

I loaded my car with his papers which smelled terrible and spent the next 2 days going through them. It was after going thru the papers that I found his daughters name and general location. But I also found that he had had 2 daughters. I found an old will that referenced the 2 daughters and his wife.

When I found a death certificate I assumed it was his wife’s but I was wrong. It showed one of his daughters had been murdered. Below the death certificate was a few newspaper clippings that gave details of the incident. As I read thru them I was horrified and wanted to put them all down. As I was piecing the situation together I realized that his daughter was married to a long haul truck driver. THey were separated and one night her husband came to her fathers house while he and his wife were out. He killed her and left. When he and his wife returned home they found her body and blood was everywhere. His wife had a heart attack at the sight of the daughter and died at the hospital a few days later.

The daughters husband was picked up 5–7 days after a few states away. He plead guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. As a parent I couldn’t imagine losing a child but losing a child to murder just brought tears to my eyes.

Below the newspaper articles was a letter he wrote to his surviving daughter. I tried to be respectful in reading only what is necessary but it was impossible. I learned the deceased daughter had a son who was now living with his other daughter. For those of you who feel like I violated his trust please understand that my recommendations cannot be made without knowing all heirs, ages, relationship and situation. For this man I was going to have to get him access to a long term care home and at his state it would require some explanations.

His letter seemed to explain his struggle with what he needed to do to deal with the situation. He was a religious man and was being counseled to forgive his son in law but he couldn’t. His life changed that day and he didn’t know how to deal with it. Apparently he had encouraged his daughter to give the marriage a chance and seek counseling but his wife disagreed. He felt responsible for the outcome and it changed him so much that he seemed to be a different person to his surviving daughter. He lost his wife and daughter in that and his other daughter and grandson after. It was devastating just knowing what he had been through and I wanted to try and help him in any way I could.

He died 3 years after we met but his last 3 years were really different. He went to a very nice retirement community where his diet was controlled and helped him get healthy. He had excellent medical care and reunited with his daughter and grandson a year after we met. He was so thankful for the reunion and the relationship that he spent a lot of time with them both. He also got to meet his great granddaughter 6 months before he passed away. He wrote me a very nice note of thanks that I still have today.

When he passed away he was able to provide enough money that his daughter got to retire, his grandson got a house and his great granddaughter could go to any college she wanted. The funeral was bittersweet.

My daughter had one of these, that worked out well. She was a psychiatric nurse, working on the Crisis Team, but hoping to be able to work in the Perinatal area. Unfortunately, there was no peri natal service in that area.

One day, she happened to be in the office in the hospital. A man came in, and said “ Look, my daughter needs an inpatient mental health bed now.”

She said “ You could be right, sir, but I have just had a patient admitted to the last available one. We’ll do what we can until another becomes available”.

He said “ Do you know who I am?” She said she had no idea. He told her her was a senior politician, in the Cabinet. ( I will not name him, as he was a good constituency MP.)

She told him that, if the mental health services were not so underfunded, she probably could have helped his daughter faster. She said “ This is the sharp end of the funding decisions you make in Cabinet.” and gave him the phone number of the local private clinic. He went away, crossly.

BUT, a few weeks later she was phoned by the head of Mental Health for her county, and told that more money had been released to set up a peri natal service, and they wanted her to set it up and run it. Which is what she did. I don’t think it was coincidence that money was suddenly available. Whether or not he said “ And I want that bolshie woman who cared enough about her patients to take me to task to run it,” we don’t know. This was some years ago now, and I admire him for doing something about it.

Sesame Noodles with Thai Peanut Sauce

thaipeanutnoodles6 1022x1536
thaipeanutnoodles6 1022×1536

Thai Peanut Sesame Noodles

I love anything chinese and thai food and that is apparent on my blog. When people ask me what my favorite recipes are on the blog, it is definitely the better than take out chinese recipes. These are recipes that I make over and over again. And when you repeat recipes as a food blogger, you know that they are good.

This Thai peanut sesame noodle recipe is just it! It is light, fresh and so much flavor. I can’t get enough to it. I love the flavor combination with the sesame noodles and Thai peanut sauce. It is simple to make and only takes minutes to prepare and cook. This is perfect for a quick dinner in on a busy week night.

I couldn’t believe how amazing these noodles turned out. I devoured them! So simple and so flavorful! The combination of the flavors in the sauce coated the noodles and gave this dish such an awesome taste. My picky eater even gobbled them down and asked for seconds. This is such a simple meal that our family will be making again and again. We might try adding beef or chicken next time too!

Ingredients

  • 1 pound vermicelli or thin spaghetti
  • 3 tablespoons dark sesame oil
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 4 green onions, cut in 1/2-inch pieces
  • 1 (1 inch) piece ginger root, pared and quartered
  • 1/3 cup peanut butter (plain or chunky)
  • 1/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup tap water or chicken broth
  • 1 tablespoon rice or white vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
thaipeanutnoodles4
thaipeanutnoodles4

Instructions

  1. Cook spaghetti as directed; drain and rinse with cold water.
  2. Toss with 2 tablespoons sesame oil (this dish can be served cold or hot). If you want to serve as a hot dish, do not rinse with cold water; just drain.
  3. In a food processor, finely chop garlic, green onions and ginger.
  4. Add remaining sesame oil and all ingredients. Process until thoroughly mixed.
  5. Top each serving of vermicelli or spaghetti with amount of desired sauce.

Right now the only predator capable of handling feral hogs is man. And he’s an idiot if he tries it alone.

Any other predator capable of defeating the ferocity and tusks of a feral hog would be so big as to threaten man, too. Given the hogs travel in sounders, you will have a pack of tuskers attacking the generally lone predator. Good luck.

Typically hogs are trapped and then killed. If out hunting, the hogs don’t come out until the wee hours. So you need night vision. They will spook at the sound of an approaching vehicle. So you have to either be in place around dusk, and downwind of the track they’ll take, or plan on making long range shots from a well traveled road (so single car noises don’t sound dangerous).

If you hunt, you’d better have 5–6 shooters as you’ll only get 2–3 shots off before the herd scatters. That many shooters will also be a deterrent to the hogs turning on you. If alone, you can expect the hogs to attack you, and whatever thing you’re in. Don’t expect that the sides of a pickup will stop a 200-lb male from jumping in with you. Their tusks are lethal, and they’ll just eat you when you’re dead.

Typically a good trap will haul in 3–4 hogs. A sounder of them might run 30 or 40. So you need to trap a lot at once. They already know what traps look like, so avoid them. They are definitely smart critters. You need to kill off the females, as they will breed 2 times a year and pop out a fair number of piglets each time. A sounder of 4–5 males, 15 females, and the rest piglets … you can do the math.

I read of one trap where heavy horse panels were fastened together in a large circle, and the remotely-dropped gate was left open. Feed was put out. Over several nights the hogs more and more would trust the corral, and go in. Finally several nights in, the cameras indicated most all of the sounder, particularly the females were inside, and the gate was dropped. They went nuts, but the panels held. Later in the daylight the ranchers came out and shot the bunch of them. The meat is very lean, and properly prepared can feed a lot of homeless.

By trapping the entire sounder, you remove the acquired intelligence of the herd.

Let the hogs run wild, and they will destroy a field. They root for grubs, and will turn over a planted field into useless vegetation in a single night. I have a small pasture that looks like 150 small land mines went off in it. Every time it rains I can expect the hogs out in a night or two to shred the pasture again. If I were trying to grow a cash crop, I’d be much more interested in eradicating them all. Just ask this guy:

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A train wreck named Mary

This happened to us driving a brand new Volvo on the “Freeway” headed south from Paris a long time ago. My friend was driving at high speed, took his foot off the accelerator, and… nothing happened. He started panicking. Being the resident engineer, I calmly told him to put it in neutral and kill the engine. He then coasted off the highway onto the shoulder. I popped the hood and diagnosed the problem. The accelerator linkage had broken. I was able to do a temporary repair which got us to Lyon, where a Volvo dealer replaced the parts with profound apologies. Even in France.

Addendum – Commenters are correct that 1. You do NOT want to remove the keys or do anything to lock the steering wheel. 2. You will lose power assist on steering and brakes if you kill the engine. But brakes and steering are designed to still work, they will just require more effort without the power assist. And the emergency/parking brake will not be affected at all. In the story I told above, my friend had no trouble controlling/steering/stopping the car with the engine off. Of course, different cars will behave differently. Knowing your car’s capabilities and limitations is always helpful in an emergency. We used to practice skids in snowy empty parking lots. Knowing what to do may have saved my life once when my car started spinning on an icy highway.

Southern Biscuits and Gravy

Biscuits and gravy have been around as long as this country. Born of necessity and frugality, the dish seems to have become commonplace during the Revolutionary War. Biscuits and gravy answered the need for a hearty, high-calorie breakfast for people who worked hard, but didn’t have much money on hand.

Why Biscuits And Gravy?

The milk-based gravy was used to stretch the meat, and biscuits themselves could be made with a variety of fats. Butter was the preferred fat, particularly if the family had a cow or ready access to dairy; and if not, lard or drippings were frequently used. At first, biscuits were nothing but hard tooth-breaking lumps of flour and water, but eventually they evolved into the light and flaky tender-crumb variety made with baking powder that we enjoy today. Popular across the country, this dish is a particular favorite in the Southern United States, and you’d be hard pressed to find a restaurant where it wasn’t on the menu.

Proper Southern-style biscuits and gravy begin with homemade buttermilk biscuits. If you are planning to make this dish with grocery store biscuit dough in a pressurized cardboard tube, you will be sacrificing flavor and texture (not to mention authenticity) for convenience. As for the gravy, it will only be as good as the sausage you use. Buy a bulk breakfast sausage that you like, one that’s well seasoned, and has a decent ratio of fat to lean. Avoid the budget varieties that are almost all fat. The buttermilk you use is also important — the acidity that results from a high-quality product reacts more fiercely with baking powder, making a much lighter biscuit.

Try this authentic recipe and serve to your weekend guests — we guarantee every last bit will disappear!

biscuitsgravy
biscuitsgravy

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound bulk pork breakfast sausage
  • 2 tablespoons chopped yellow onions
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups hot milk
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1 batch Southern Biscuits

Instructions

  1. Heat frying pan and fry the sausage and onion until the sausage is brown and the onion clear.
  2. Drain off all grease except for 2 tablespoons.
  3. Stir in the flour and cook for just a minute.
  4. Add the hot milk. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens and then season with salt and pepper.
  5. Serve over warm opened biscuits.

Roman soldiers typically retired after 20 to 25 years of service. This wasn’t strictly about age, though if you started young, you’d still be relatively fit when you retired.

It was more about the length of service. The standard term was 25 years, but this could vary depending on the era and specific circumstances.

For example, during the time of the Roman Republic, soldiers were often citizen soldiers who served temporarily during campaigns and then returned home.

But as Rome’s military needs grew, especially under the Empire, the system evolved into a more professional standing army.

Augustus, the first Roman emperor, formalized this with his military reforms, setting the retirement standard at 25 years.

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main qimg 4561d3c62ce77a4a7b75d0815e427092 lq

Now, campaigns fought and distinguished service could influence retirement, too.

A soldier who showed exceptional bravery or skill might be granted an early discharge, a sort of “thanks for going above and beyond” reward.

One cool thing is that some soldiers received land grants upon retirement.

Augustus started this trend, giving veterans land in provinces like Gaul, Spain, and North Africa. It was a clever move, rewarding the soldiers and spreading Roman culture simultaneously.

In the late Roman Empire, Emperor Diocletian made some tweaks.

The standard service term was still around 25 years, but Diocletian, always the reformer, introduced the concept of the veteranus, a sort of semi-retirement phase where soldiers could transition out of full active duty but still serve in a support capacity.

This helped maintain experienced soldiers in the ranks without overburdening them.

Also, let’s not forget the praetorian guard, the elite troops tasked with protecting the emperor.

They had it a bit cushier compared to the legions. They usually served about 16 years before retiring with full honors and a nice pension.

Their shorter service term was partly due to the intense political nature of their job, which, let’s be honest, could be just as deadly as any battlefield.

Retirement wasn’t just a pat on the back and a “see ya!” moment.

Soldiers were often given a diploma, a bronze plaque detailing their service and granting them Roman citizenship if they weren’t already citizens.

This was a big deal, especially for auxiliary troops from the provinces. Citizenship came with legal and social perks that could significantly improve their post-service life.

Top 10 80s One Hit Wonders You Forgot Were AWESOME

The Chance

Submitted into Contest #8 in response to: Write a story about an adventure in space. view prompt

Joanna White

Jexx felt his hand being gripped as if his hand was the last lifeline left. He glanced at Avill, his wife and his eyes told her more than words from his mouth could.

“Is this really it?” she asked him. “We’re really going to Earth?”

He nodded. “We have no other choice. Our home… it’s gone. We can live in peace amongst the humans… stay hidden even. It’s for the best.”

Avill bit her lip, which trembled slightly. Whether from fear or anxiety, Jexx could only guess. The Great War had finally taken its toll on their planet, just as he suspected it would. He and his wife were part of a group of only ten survivors—out of millions. Fortunately, they all looked just like humans which would make it easier for them to blend in with the humans on earth.

Loud alarms sounded so much and for so long, Jexx’s ears popped. Red flashes drained his world of color, and he closed his eyes to shield them. He could still feel his wife’s grip, and he returned it.

Voices shouted over the loud-speaker and his heart sank when he realized the ship was malfunctioning.

“What’s going on?!” Avill yelled. Her voice was just one among others worriedly shouting over all the noise.

“The blockade… one of the ships hit ours! The engine has been damaged!” one man shouted. The rebels in the Great War had finally taken over the planet’s government, which sent the whole planet into chaos. They put up a blockade of ships to trap anyone from getting out. Jexx and his group had risked it and came out unscathed.

Or so he had believed.

The ship itself violently rocked and trembled; it was as if Jexx’s whole word had turned upside down. He stood, with difficulty, and started to follow the man into the engine room.

“Jexx!” Avill shouted. Her eyes pleaded what her voice couldn’t say. They were the color of sapphires—intriguing and as deep as an ocean.

“I have to do what I can to help.” He stared back at her, his gaze steady, attempting to reassure her. He would do what he had to if it meant what little of his people were left could survive.

She nodded, seeming to understand the deeper meaning behind his gaze and no more words were needed between them. He turned and followed the man down an endless maze of hallways. Mentally, he calculated how many people were left and where they were; there were two at the cockpit—the pilot and copilot. There were two or three men at the gunners. Then there was this man along with two others in the engine room, and he remembered that Avill was with another woman and her child.

“Where is the most damage?” Jexx asked him.

The man showed him. The engine was a sublight drive, which enabled the ship to travel into deep space. The warp core, which allowed the ship to go into hyperspace, appeared to be undamaged. The engine’s IR suppressor, which kept the sensors from getting overheated, was completely shattered.

Jexx cursed. “We won’t be able to pick up readings about the world as we travel through Earth’s atmosphere,” he said.

“And with the sensors overheating there could be damage to the landing jets.”

Jexx ran down the endless hallway. If the landing jets were damaged they wouldn’t be able to land. It seemed to take too long, but finally he arrived at the back of the engine room. The sensors had already overheated.

The landing jets were useless.

He ran back toward the front part of the room and inside, the man knelt on the floor, assessing other damage.

“How close are we to Earth?”

“We’re coming out of hyperspace now,” the man replied.

Sure enough, Jexx felt the jolt that meant they had come out of hyperspace.

“Go tell the pilot we can’t land!” As the man ran off, one of the metal pipes started to fall. If it fell, the whole engine would collapse. Jexx ran over and grabbed it, using all the strength he had to hold it up.

The man returned, looking pale faced. “We’re coming in to the planet’s atmosphere now. It appears we’re going to land in some kind of body of water and we don’t have enough speed to reach land,” the man was explaining. When he looked up and noticed Jexx, he tried to help, but Jexx pushed him away.

“Get everyone out of here! Make sure they’re gathered at the hanger bay doors, ready to jump out and swim to the surface!”

“Jexx…”

“I have to stay here to hold this up to keep it from exploding or all the lives here could be lost.”

“You’ll die,” the man said, stating the obvious.

“Just tell my wife I love her. Get out of here!”

When the man left, Jexx grunted under the weight of the metal pipe, but he forced himself to hold its weight.

In those final moments, it was as if time had stopped completely. Jexx could see the parts of the engines around him, some even as tall as the buildings back home. He could smell oil and something bitter and he could taste metal in his mouth. The ship rocked and hit something hard. When the walls burst open, his ears felt as if they were splitting open as the water came crashing through. The taste of metal in his mouth turned to water and he could fill it spilling over his ankles.

His legs.

Waist.

Chest.

Mouth.

The taste consumed him and his lungs fought for hair, but he held on. He couldn’t let the pipe fall and cause the engine to explode; he had to give the others time to get out.

He could only hope he gave them enough time.

He thought of his home, of his wife and their unborn child before water consumed him and he finally gave in, finally opened his mouth and let the water swim down his throat, blocking his airway.

His last thoughts were of his wife and child, and the chance they had to live.

This is going to sound ridiculously stupid and it was. But it was the Barbie movie. That was the final snap.

My best friend and I had been friends for 15 years. We went through thick and thin together, I helped her through her parents divorce allowing her to vent uncontrollably to me about her entire life. Due to this she went through a bought of poor mental health. She didn’t come to uni so I made new friends and it was wonderful.

I still tried to keep in touch with her but I got little response so the friendship began draining me and I felt used. The only times she spoke to me now was when she needed something and it was painful but still I tried to keep the friendship. This cycle just carried on and my friends were even asking me why I wasn’t just ending the friendship as they could see the toxicity within.

Anyway, me and my group of 13 friends all arranged a nice trip to the cinema to watch Barbie. Typically the day we were going to go she turned up to uni and asked me if I had plans for the rest of the day. So, I responded with “well I’m actually planning to go to watch Barbie with everyone later. You can join if you want”. To which she responded by bursting into hysterics telling me I don’t value the friendship and I needed to put more effort into messaging her (bare in mind she didn’t message me at all) to which I got angry and expressed my feeling about feeling used etc. The argument got to the point that I said to her I just needed to go and speak to one of my other friends before I said something I may regret. At which point she physically pushed me against the wall throwing insults at me, telling me I was a horrible friend etc. I didn’t want the friendship to end but at this point the argument got to the point that it needed to end so I tried to console her. She turned the whole conversation on its head turning herself into the victim and I got angry again which I think was understandable so I walked and once again she pushed me but also slapped me straight across the face infront of all my other friends and members of the uni. It was attracting attention. At this point she just started spewing things I had told her throughout the whole friendship and I just went NEVER speak to me again and blocked her on everything. She tried chasing after me profusely apologising but I was not taking her bullshit.

I’ve felt bad ever since for leaving her during a time of hardship but the friendship was becoming really taxing in me mentally and the moment she laid hands on me I decided I would never go back.

A thirty-year old man came to see me for unexplained visual loss in one eye. I thought there was a mass pushing against his left optic nerve and ordered an MRI. This demonstrated that the mass was in fact a large aneurysm of his carotid artery against the brain.

The protocol was to send such cases to the vascular neurosurgeon who saw him the same day. He agreed on the diagnosis and ordered an angiogram to better show the aneurysm. Both the angiogram and surgery were set for the next morning. This was about 1987 and there was no way of fixing the aneurysm without open neurosurgery. We were lucky as Dr. T was world famous for his technical ability. And he was kind to allow me to come as his assistant.

The skull was opened by the resident by drilling four holes that were then connected with an electric saw that had a ridge to protect the soft brain beneath. The large skull flap was removed and the underlying dura (tough skin around the brain) cut and flapped back, exposing the brain. For the next hour the chief resident pushed and manipulated the brain to one side. And then a ridge of bone had to be drilled down for better exposure. Then we had a clear view, the juncture of the carotid and ophthalmic arteries with a big bulging arterial aneurysm coming straight up at us. Before touching this, Dr. T placed two cords around the carotids on both sides. “Just in case.” He explained.

Then, a silver aneurysm clip was slipped in behind the aneurysm and slowly released allowing the two prongs to cinch closed over the neck of the aneurysm. Only I didn’t get to see the last part. Suddenly the entire brain pan filled with blood. I was suctioning but couldn’t keep up with the outpouring of blood. The resident ripped his suction tip off and I followed suit, so we went with these hoses into the bloody opening, but we couldn’t make any headway or even see the brain. Dr. T couldn’t see a thing and blood was spilling up and over the edges of the skull.

A nurse started to read the falling blood pressures. “110/65, 90/50, 70/40, 55/nil. Then the anaesthesiologist said, “We’ve lost him. Blood pressure crashed to unmeasurable.” The nurse was squeezing bags of blood into him but couldn’t keep up with what was pouring out.

Now if this happens in the abdomen, you compress the bleeder or place clamps. But in the brain, you don’t have those options. But cool as a cucumber, Dr. T stuck his hands below the surface of the blood and began feeling about. He tied off the carotids proximal to the bleed. Then suddenly our suction worked. And the blood pressure came up from zero. Dr. T examined the area and laughed. “There was a second aneurysm hiding behind the first one,” he exclaimed. A second silver clip was placed. Then the carotid ligatures were removed.

I turned to the anesthesiologist and said, “Were you scared?” “No,” he said. “Just sad. He was dead and I saw no hope that we could get him back. Such a young man.” Two hours later I related the story to the patient’s wife. On follow up, the patient did great. He even got his vision back.

I have never seen such cold blooded rapid action under fire. Dr. T didn’t even take a second to swear. Afterwards in the doctors’ lounge, he smiled and said, “It’s more fun when it goes like that.”

Blueberry Puffs

Puffs
Puffs

Ingredients

  • 2 cups fresh or 1 bag frozen blueberries
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/4 teaspoon allspice
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1/3 cup light brown sugar
  • 12 slices bread
  • 6 eggs
  • 2 cups Half-and-Half
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar

Instructions

  1. Mix first 7 ingredients in a saucepan. Heat until the sauce is semi-thick. Set aside and cool to room temperature.
  2. Cut crusts from bread. Spray a 2-quart rectangular glass pan with a nonstick pan coating. Cover the bottom of pan with 6 bread slices.
  3. In separate bowl, mix eggs, Half-and-Half, vanilla extract and sugar. Pour half of this mixture over bread.
  4. Spread thickened, cooled blueberry sauce over bottom layer.
  5. Arrange the other half of the bread on top of blueberry filling.
  6. Pour remaining egg mixture over the top.
  7. Sprinkle with a dash of nutmeg.
  8. Cover and place in refrigerator overnight.
  9. Bake in a preheated 350 degrees F oven for 60 minutes.
  10. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting into 6 servings or 12 servings for a buffet.
  11. Top with brown sugar and a few blueberries.

This was mine:

I was hired by a psychologist to fix a program that seemed to have “strange output” written by one of his ex-grad students. It was a program that reads a data file, asks about 50 questions, does some calculations, and comes up with some score based on this PhD’s research. It’s on a research 3B2 at the university. He demonstrates the program and sure enough there seemed to be strange flashing words on the screen when it moves from question to question, and they don’t seem nice. I agree to do it, should be pretty straightforward, so he’ll pay me by the hour to determine how big the fix is and then we’ll agree to a fee.

Day 1
I sit down at the 3B2 and login to the ex-grad student’s account that has been given to me. This is where the code resides. I examine the C code. It is written to be hard to read. All the code is squished on one line. It’s spread over 15 files with about 3 functions per file — all on one line. All variable names are just three, seemingly random, letters. I talk to the guy and agree to go with hourly on this (great decision). I untangle all the code and format it nicely so I can see it.

It was done on purpose. It used the curses library to move to a point on the screen, print a question and the answers, and wait for a response. But it first went to the first line of the question, printed some white supremacy message, waited 1/2 a second, and then overwrote it with the question. This ought to be simple. There are only about five places it could output anything, and all of them had this subliminal flash of a message. Each one was hard coded. No problem. Delete the offending mvprintw() and all is well. Or should be. I compile, thinking I’m done. But when I ran it, there it is again — the subliminal messages. This time with different text still the same subject, just different messages.

I check my code and believe it or not it’s back to the initial state I found it. 15 files, mangled, 3-letter variables — the whole thing right back where I started. I want shoot myself for not making a copy of my code. I unmangle again, this time putting it in three files, named differently. I make a copy of the whole directory, and I mark the files readable only. I compiled it. All looks good. I run the program. There’s now a copy of the original 15 files in the directory along with mine and the subliminal messages are back.

Okay, so somewhere on the disk is the source code necessary to keep doing this and he’s set the program up to pull in that code when you compile it. I do a full disk search in the include areas (/usr/include) and since this is a research version we have source for just about everything but the kernel itself. That’s a lot of header files and this takes some time on the 3B2, so that’s day 1.

Day 2
The disk search showed up nothing. The strings were apparently either encrypted or they are buried in a library somewhere. Because I don’t have check sums of all the original executable objects, I decide to search all libraries for the text. This is even longer than before, so day two is over.

Day 3
No results. The strings are encrypted. That means I’m going to have to follow all the header files from each #include and each one they #include to find where this is. And that will, take some time. We do alert the campus computing department that we believe someone has gained root level access to Dr. Phelps research computer, which is just a shared lab computer in the science building. They’re understandably not convinced.

I start unwinding the #include files. I do that, nowhere do I find the code. So now I know it’s compiled in a library. No problem at all. Why not just recompile all those libraries, we do have the source after all.

Days 4-6
The hardest part, convincing the campus nerds they have an issue. But we finally do and Mark, the Unix admin who was hired because he married the Dean’s daughter, gets busy learning how to do this. In the end, he agrees to allow me to handle it, because he just doesn’t really know how to get all that stuff compiled. End of Day 6, all standard libraries are recompiled. Woo hoo!

I whip out my modified, cleaned up source and start the compile. All looks good. I run it. O M G. It did it again. 15 messed up source files and the subliminal messages are back. This is suddenly like magic. I investigate very very carefully though I am stumped. This code doesn’t exist in source code. I think I might be beaten. Dr. Phelps isn’t happy with the hours involved and thinks maybe we ought to just rewrite the program from scratch. “Sure”, I say staring at the terminal like a lost puppy too deep in my thoughts to put out of my thinking mode, “I think you’re right. That will be quicker.” “Good,” he says, “we can start tomorrow.”

Day 7
To hell with that. This guy isn’t beating me. We are compiling it from his stinking code or not at all! “You don’t have to pay me anymore, Dr. Phelps, I just want lab time.” This is nerd war.

Days 8-14
I get smart, I’m thinking he somehow modified the curses library. I compile the curses code to assembly and though I don’t know 3B2 assembly (yet!), I start learning. I read manuals for 6 days, piecing together that assembly code. Waste of time, nothing seems unusual.

Day 15
I suddenly realize it’s in the compiler. It was the compiler. And every time you compile the original code and run it puts in the subliminal message code into the source code. I’d heard of this before.

Ah ah! I’ve got him!!!! We have the source code for the compiler as well. I search through it looking for a reference. Lo and behold, I find it. Indeed. There is source code in the compiler/linker that does this:
1) it examines any call to fopen(), searches the file opened looking for Dr. Phelp’s questions; if it finds them then
2) it rewrites the 15 files to the current directory when compiling that specific program.
3) It then compiles Dr. Phelps program using the 15 files and outputs to the -o name in the link phase.

The compiler was modified to put that code in Dr. Phelps program was written by the man that modified the compiler.

Several days later, an AT&T tech shows up with a disk and loads the proper compile and linker source and we recompile the compiler from the source. That solves it. All the bad source in the compiler is gone and we’ve got a new clean copy of the compiler.

Except it didn’t. Because the compiler was poisoned with other source code that we didn’t have. And that source code, that now existed only in the executable compiler, put those changes back into the compiler source before it compiled it. But this time it didn’t modify the /usr/src copy, it copied it to a hidden directory, modified the compiler source, compiled itself from there, and deleted the hidden directory. It took an AT&T tech to find this. The ex-grad student had poisoned the compiler to poison itself when it was recompiled. We had to put a new binary version of the compiler on disk from another 3B2 running the same revision before the problem went away.

We also found that if /sbin/login is compiled it puts in a backdoor allowing anyone who uses a specific password to login in as the root user. This computer is accessible by modem and Tymnet. Finally, this gets the computing center’s attention.

Genius! But put to a horrible cause.

I was 41 yrs old and I had never broken a bone or had stitches, I was a hard working individual and apart from a slot machine addiction of many decades, my life was great. I had met my soul mate back in 2002 and we had lived together since 2003. I was a delivery driver and I simply loved being out on the road with no hassle from bosses. I pretty much worked the hours I wanted because I had earned that right through the hard work I always give.

Long story short ish, like an idiot I tried to move something in the front of the van to the back so it could be unloaded off and I felt something pop in my lower back. I went through the NHS system in the U.K. and the MRI showed I had ruptured my L5/S1 disc. Not a massive hole but enough to warrant a lower back op and they were going to remove the disc and plate it up using screws. The day of the op I had a real bad vibe. I wasn’t impressed to be told I had to have this operation, because the accident happened while I was working and because I didn’t get paid if I was off on sick, it was advised I started a claim against my employers, basically just for the loss of earnings I was going to lose for however lomg I was unable to work after this operation. My employers were amazing from the start, they fully accepted responsibility and I was told to take as much time off because my job would still be waiting for me upon my return. Without sounding bigheaded, I was very good at my job, not just because I could drive a van in the centre of London, but the way I treated the customers and feedback always got back to my boss just how much they appreciated me and yes I did go that mile (no pun intended). So admitting liability helped me out big time. The problem was, I had to do everything to get myself back working as soon as possible. Besides, the success rate was over 99%, so why was I worried. It’s a kin to a fear of flying, it’s the safest way to travel but yet, so many of us fear flying. So what’s the worse that’s going to happen to me……..

That decision to go ahead with that op ruined the rest of my life. It’s now 15 years since I had the original operation. I lay in a bed for 23 hrs a day every single day. I take one of the highest dosages of opiates in the U.K. (according to a senior medical official) and goodness knows what the long term consequences are of taking opiates for so long. I haven’t touched my partner in over a decade and if I was an animal they’d of shot me the same day after that operation. The worse thing for me is, I was told everything went great, no issues at all. So why am I feeling pain like I’ve never felt pain before, it was horrendous. No one knew why, 15 years later and still no one knows why. Don’t get me wrong, during the last 15 yrs everything and anything has been done, sorry, I say 15 yrs, it’s actually 10 yrs. After the 10 yrs I was informed there was nothing else the NHS could do and I was discharged all the while still suffering that very same pain.

I lost everything. But that was just the beginning. I ended up in £42k in debt from interest payments being added to my credit cards because technically, I was still employed and sick pay was just £60 a week back then. But that’s only paid for 6 months, after that you have to be paid via the government and back in 2010 they decided to revamp the social security payments. I was then given just £41 a week for just short of 2 years. I was told I had to wait until it was my turn, but not to worry, it will all get backdated if I was successful with my claim……. My rent alone was £650 a month and I maxed out every credit card I had, I had no choice. When all that ran out I was entered into a debt repayment program and 10 years later, the £42k debt was scrapped. Thanks to my gran, I never missed a payment for 10 years.

Talk about having to jump through hoops for my benefits, I was treated like the rest of society who claimed benefits, like I was trying to cheat the system and all the up to Covid 19 in 2020, I had to be assessed 2 times a year for each benefit and I was claiming 3 benefits. Disability, industrial injury benefit and employment support benefit. That meant I had to travel 6 times a year to wherever they sent me to be assessed, if I miss one appointment ALL my benefits are stopped. It didn’t matter what I told them about being in bed for 23 hrs a day or I couldn’t walk anywhere without going through the pains of hell.

In the early days, everyone thought I was putting it on so I didn’t have to work, like that’s going to help my cause right! But eventually the appointments became less and less and touchwood, I’ve had just one appointment since 2020 Covid. They still only pay the minimum despite being a genuine case, so I’ve had to do what I could to get by. My life is still ruined though. My GoFund page which is in my bio was supposed to pay for a private operation somewhere who knows about this kind of lower back pain. The problem is, no one will even reply to emails unless you have the cash right there and so far I’ve precisely 1 donation which was me because I was convinced people were giving but the page wasn’t working, so yes the page is working but for whatever reasons, I’m still waiting for the first donation but this post is NOT about begging for cash. That’s not me or how I work. I replied to this question because I did have this story to share and I know of others who are simply forgotten about when an operation goes astray.

So yes, you can destroy your life with a single decision.

On the plus side – at least my job is still open for when I am able to return back to work. Although I only have another 11 years to hit retirement age. That’s going to be another massive issue because I have not been able to pay into my private pension for the last 15 years.

Thanks for reading if you made it thus far. All unfortunately very true as I lay on my back in bed with my knees raised.

In 1987 I responded to a call about senior citizen abuse. It was a hot day and I went to this little, old apartment. This little old man was left in a worn out old recliner sitting in the middle of the floor, no furniture, no AC, no water. He had been sitting there for who knows how long. He was crazy with dehydration and out of his mind. I called EMS and they transported him to the hospital. His children had cleaned him out and left him there to rot.

My very first suicide was a guy who shot himself in the chest with a .357 magnum. When he died he had that horror look on his face like he knew he messed up. That one was 32 years ago and I can still see it. I saw many, many, many death cases over the years, all sad in there own way. I have been on hundreds of homicides.

The one that sticks was a female counselor who had a sexual relation ship with a client. He was a drug addict and crazy. Eventually he murdered her in her bed. Then he ran a tub of water and drowned her baby. Sick bastard. Earlier that day I had been on a homicide where a guy killed his wife and put her to bed, pulling the sheets up to her neck. I went looking for him and found him dead in his car. He killed himself.

Another sad one was this sweet old lady decided that life was more than she could bear. She laid out the dress she wanted to be buried in. Then she overdosed on pills, but didn’t actually die. She should have but, didn’t. The last time I saw her she was in a vegetative state. She went from the issues being in her head to actually being in terrible shape. Nothing’s worse than a failed suicide with permanent injury. I’ve seen it more than once.

As a side note (very important). Over the years we responded to a lot of found bodies sitting on the toilet. The Medical Examiner once told me that for your health there’s nothing more important than making sure to eat your fiber. Don’t strain real hard on the toilet. You can bust a gasket and die in there. Eat your fiber.

Ex-CIA: US Pentagon TERRIFIED Over New Russia Strike Plan!

Disclaimer: This isn’t a cute, funny story about things parents say to their kids and everybody laughs about later. It’s a cautionary tale about how narcissistic parents can impact their children’s lives.

When I was a little girl, my toxic, abusive, yet fiercely religious mother TOLD me that *telling lies* was egregious, and would be subject to severe punishment up to and including eternal damnation.

At the same time, she SHOWED me that *telling the truth* was egregious, and would be subject to severe punishment up to and including eternal damnation.

Let me explain using a couple of examples. First, regarding telling lies:

  • Little me, trying to get away with dropping and breaking a dish: “I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me!”
  • Mother, who didn’t witness the incident but claimed to have done: “You’re a LIAR! I SEEN ya! Daddy, I think she needs a GOOD SPANKUN’.” Off comes the belt.
  • Lesson learned: Don’t tell lies.

Next, regarding telling the truth:

  • Little me, after admitting to a nosy neighbor something I didn’t know was supposed to be a secret: “Mom, Mrs. Carlson asked me if you dye your hair. I said yes.”
  • Mother, who had just used her latest box of Miss Clairol’s Red Penny Number 416 that morning: “You’re a LIAR! That ain’t true and you know it! Daddy, I think she needs a GOOD SPANKUN’.” Off comes the belt.
  • Lesson learned: Don’t tell the truth.

Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, both in this life and in the next.

I, as well as my four younger sibs, grew up very confused about what lies and truth actually are. Each of us learned to be very careful about what we said or didn’t say, because we never knew where the land mines were buried. We all were damaged psychologically — which affects us even as older adults — but the symptoms and severity are as individual as we are.

When I was in high school I got a job in a restaurant as a hostess. When I had to go in back to clock into work I had to walk through the area with all the male prep cooks and dishwashers who all primarily spoke Spanish. I was young, pretty and well-endowed, and they all noticed it. For a couple weeks, I would walk into the back and listen as they all made edgy comments about me and my appearance and what they’d like to do to/ with me. I just ignored them.

A couple weeks after I started, I walked through the back to clock in and one of the new employees said something particularly vile about what he’d like to do to me. I stopped, whipped around, and in Spanish “read him the riot act” about talking about me so disrespectfully and inappropriately. I watched as jaws dropped all over the room, different men realizing the things they’d said when I was walking by and in earshot.

Profound apologies came for days. I don’t think any of them would have spoken so coarsely about me if they had realized I could understand. After that they all treated me like a little sister, very respectful, some standing up for me when others started to go off track.

The secrets of womanhood remains an elusive knowledge

No, Because I know quite deep on China’s politic.

You probably wonder what the hell I am talking about, well I will answer actually China has been waiting for country to mess with China. Why? because then China will have a reason to mess with that country, you can see a lot of example, from Vietnam losing land territory, parcels island, Russia losing land, India losing land, Japan losing island, long list of strong nation right?

That list has started during China was weak, now China is strong. what it need is troublemaker like Philippine. Politic is still politic, no matter how noble China try to be if foreign country mess with China, it’s an opportunity to mess with them.

If you search for my old post, you will see an article I wrote that Philippine will lose all their island in South China Sea.

China is the most noble politic we as an earthling can have. China is not like USA which can create Tonkin Gulf incident as a pretext to invade Vietnam. China is not as despicable as USA, USA can claimed Saddam has WMD and go to invade. No, don’t worry China does not work that evil. If you have a good relation with China, well China will not do anything to you.

the evidence is Duterte, Philippine probably don’t realized it Duterte saved your country.

China-Philippine SCS Dispute Chinese Perspective

The South China Sea dispute between China and the Philippines is specifically reflected in Huangyan Island, Ren’ai Reef, Horseshoe Reef, Xianbin Reef, Zhongye Island and surrounding waters.

The reality is that what has truly harmed China’s efforts to safeguard its sovereignty and expand its interests in the South China Sea is not the confrontation between China and the Philippines, but the reconciliation between China and the Philippines.

From around 1990 to this year, China’s South China Sea strategy has evolved from defense to offense, and has also gone through three stages from defense to stalemate to counterattack, marked by the ” Code of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea ” in November 2002 and the climax of island building in 2013.

Before 2002, China was on the defensive in the South China Sea. Chinese fishermen were arrested and fishing boats were rammed and seized. These incidents were common and would cause uproars today. But there was no way out. At that time, our navy was too weak and our coast guard was seriously under-strength. We were unable to effectively manage the disputed areas and protect the interests of fishermen.

The so-called ” beached ships ” today are all historical issues left over from that time.

Since 2002, as the United States’ attention has shifted to the Middle East, the South China Sea turmoil has no longer been fueled by the United States, and the Philippines is alone. China has entered a period of rapid development, its naval debts are slowly being made up, and its offensive and defensive momentum has begun to change.

Strictly speaking, the real counterattack wave began when Aquino III came to power in 2011. Against the backdrop of the United States’ official launch of the ” return to the Asia-Pacific ,” Aquino III reopened the South China Sea dispute, and this time they faced a completely different China. The climax began in 2013 when China began its island-building frenzy, consolidating existing islands and reefs and gradually opening up disputed areas.

Against the backdrop of the South China Sea dispute between China and the Philippines, China has renounced interference and, while building up islands, has firmly grasped jurisdiction in its own hands, breaking up the Philippines’ counterattacks into harassment by scattered forces.

From 2013 to 2016, this period was the four years with the most intense confrontation between China and the Philippines, but also the four years in which China gained the most by building island on SCS (it actually an counter measure of Obama Asia pivot).

When Duterte came to power in 2016, he chose to get closer to China while falling out with the United States over the stationing of troops and drug prohibition. China’s South China Sea strategy got into trouble, because facing a pro-China faction.

This period was the most peaceful period in the South China Sea, and it was also the years when China’s South China Sea strategy returned to being restrained, China chose a truce in the South China Sea.

But after Marcos JR came to power in 2021 , new opportunities arrived, especially when the United States began to raise interest rates in 2022 and even forced China into a financial decisive battle in 2023(US hope to create chaos so that investment will flee to US). The Philippines, as a pawn of the US strategy, regained its value, and the Philippines also tried to fish in troubled waters, wanting both the South China Sea islands and reefs and the US dollar.

China took the opportunity to greatly expand the scope of its actual control. It also carried out maritime police law enforcement in the disputed area for the first time, took over the disputed area, and will completely solve the “beached ship” problem. By closing off the supply line, it forced the Philippines to evacuate the Ren’ai Reef and put the issue of Zhongye Island on the table.

From October last year to June this year, in just eight months, the benefits gained from the struggle were greater than the total of the past seven years.

The achievement of these results is inseparable from the staunch anti-China stance of the Filipino leader Marcos JR, which gave us the legitimacy of our actions.

But now the defection of Duterte’s daughter may disrupt this process. If Duterte’s daughter plays the rational and pro-China card again and gains power, whether we cannot continue the war without distraction and have to make peace which will become a big problem for China.

There is not much time left for China. China hope to seize this window of time and, under the favorable conditions of the confrontation between China, the United States and the Philippines, quickly take over the Ren’ai Reef and turn Zhongye Island into a controversial frontier.

So Duterte saved Philippine, it paused the clashed in SCS between PH and China for 6 years.

Author Note :

China is not a perfect country, China is not a saint country. But when opportunity appear of course china will take it. China much more noble than the US which claimed a bogus thing to do war, or will backtrack any agreement for it’s benefit.

That is why according to my understanding of China’s politic, China multipolar world order will bring more stability and more equal prosperity than the US world order.

EU Panic: As China Gets Ready Economic Punishments, Germany Runs To Beijing For Mercy

China is on the verge of hitting Europe with economic punishments. This has the potential to escalate things further with various countries including Spain and France. Germany is very afraid of retaliation on their car exports and they are heading to Beijing to undo the damage done by the EU trade tariffs.

Heh.

I was sitting as a judge pro tem in traffic court. Traffic court can always be entertaining, to say the least. As a judge pro tem, I am a working lawyer who volunteers to sit in traffic court or small claims court once a month. This frees up the real judges to hear important cases. In an afternoon session, I’ll have 30 or 40 cases. All of the people who got tickets are waiting their turn in the courtroom for the session.

Each traffic court has a clerk and bailiff. The clerk’s main job is to keep the pro tem judge from looking like an idiot or making any obvious legal mistakes. The bailiff is there to ensure decorum, mostly by intimidation, I guess. The bailiff this day was a very young woman, about 5 foot 2, her nightstick came down to mid-calf, the handcuffs appeared huge on her waist, and she just didn’t look very intimidating. Yet, there she was in police uniform. Before calling the first case, I usually remind all of the defendants that traffic school is an option up until I call their case. Then it’s no longer an option. I explain my courtroom rules that govern each case and the decorum that I expect while the police officer and the defendants are testifying. The vast majority of cases are speeding and driving solo in the carpool lane.

The first case was unusual. The defendant had been ticketed for having an open container of alcohol as a passenger in a car. (The driver had been ticketed for speeding.). The police officer told the story in a routine manner. I turned to the defendant to hear his story. His story is that he was holding the “party ball,” a round container that holds about 10 gallons of beer, a mini-keg with the hose and valve, in his lap. But … it wasn’t his ball, it was someone else’s ball. He had explained all this to the officer at the time the ticket was issued. Therefore, glancing smugly at the officer, he explained that he obviously wasn’t “in possession” of the open container. His testimony was sufficient to convict him of possession of an open container, so after he finished, I told him I was finding him guilty and fining him $500. I also explained to him that I understood his defense that the party ball wasn’t his. I told him that the law prohibits possession of an open container; ownership of the container is not part of the offense.

He went ballistic. He shouted, ranted and raged. I let him go for a minute and then called the next case while he was still shouting. He stayed at his table yelling at me and, as he walked out of the court, he yelled, “Fuck you” at me. This engaged the bailiff who started after him. He ran out of the court with the bailiff, clanking handcuffs, weapon and mid-calf nightstick, after him. As they both exited the courtroom, I told the somewhat stunned crowd that we would wait for the bailiff to return.

Then, we heard the sounds of a body thumping and screams of pain. The bailiff returned to the courtroom with the defendant in a wrist lock. He was bleeding all down one side of his face, and his shirt was torn. “Apologize to the Judge,” she demanded. He piteously whined, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I told him, “Don’t apologize to me. You wasted everybody’s time here. Apologize to the entire courtroom.” The officer wheeled him around so he could apologize to the entire courtroom. He whimpered several apologies. She then released him. He slunk out of the courtroom.

Every remaining defendant pleaded guilty that day.

After the session was over, I asked the bailiff what happened. It turns out that he was running away from her down the hallway, but there were two police officers waiting to be called as witnesses in traffic court. They saw him and the bailiff in hot pursuit. One of the officers put his foot out and tripped the defendant as he ran by. As the defendant fell, he scraped his face on the jagged stone walls of the courthouse hallway and tore his shirt. The bailiff picked him up and frog-marched him into the courtroom looking like he had been thoroughly beaten up.

John Mearsheimer Destroys Lindsey Graham

John Mearsheimer reacts to Lindsey Graham’s idiotic claims and outright lies about Vladimir Putin. Professor Mearsheumer debunks them point by point and explains “The problem I face when dealing with Lindsey Graham is that he and I don't live on the same planet. I live on a planet where evidence and facts matter. He doesn't.”

Pain was the word, but would you go to the ER if that was the only symptom — pain in the groin ? Ask any urologist and they would say NO (capitalized). It’s one of the most generic and undefined pains that usually cannot be explained — and guys, you KNOW (capitalized) what I’m talking about.

But hearing the guy was one thing, seeing him was another, and diagnosing him was something else.

It was the urologists’ first ever case of Fournier’s Gangrene — an acute necrotic infection of the penis, scrotum or perineum, essentially meaning that the genitals of the affected male patient is being eaten, and very, very fast. It’s also extremely rare, since less than 2,000 cases have been reported in the last 70 years.

He was in his seventies, and the urologist was very clear on what was to happen:

“We need to remove every single thing of this infection — including your penis. Only then you can survive, but I’m not sure if that is even possible.”

The man agreed.

The next three days two things happened.

  • The infected area — included the patient’s penis — was removed.
  • Less than 48 hours later, it turned out that the infection was still alive, and had spread over a much larger area.

And this time, no surgery would help anymore. The infection would take over his body and necrotize every single square inch of his painful body in a matter of days. And so that’s what his urologist told him, in tears, because this was a man who was receiving a sentence instead of a diagnosis — as if the amputation hadn’t been enough already.

But he was totally okay with it —

The pain had to stop.

The Library

Submitted into Contest #251 in response to: Write a story about discovering a lost manuscript. It can be from a famous (or infamous) author, or an unknown one. view prompt

Charlotte Lewis

THE LIBRARYLarisse was a bit peeved. She hated greeting duty. She moved to this station because she was promised better wages, better living quarters, and more Fun. Yes, Fun was capitalized. But once a month she had to greet the ship with newcomers. Fun was what you made of it. This was not it.She knew the history of the city she worked and lived in but, like most younger people, she was not particularly impressed. Larisse did acknowledge that science has progressed so rapidly since the 20th century everything accomplished then seems rather immature, almost childish, now.This dwarf planet, Ceres, had been selected for habitation back in the early 21st century. The atmosphere, such as it was, could not support human life. But it did have an internal ‘ocean’ of water. While the White House was set on landing and inhabiting Mars, NASA and a small group of engineers set about to determine whether or not it would be feasible to go underground on Ceres. Yes, build a city below the surface. Here.It took several years to get funding but finally a mini space lab was launched and fell into orbit around the dwarf. The space lab, actually a cargo ship but funding was quicker if it was a lab, carried men, equipment and supplies to create an underground cavern. The cavern was quickly oxygenated and the work on the city went smoothly. First they built living quarters. Then they worked on laboratories and offices.Building was suspended for a short term while the United States engaged itself in another war. They seemed to do that a lot in the old days. Soon however, regular supply ships were arriving and the dwarf planet was colonized.Humans who lived and worked on Ceres did complain that just housing wasn’t sufficient. By the close of the century, a restaurant, a few utilitarian shops, and a park were constructed. Each supply ship brought more luxuries and more humans.The environment on earth was becoming more and more toxic as time went on. There was talk of creating a second underground facility devoted to manufacturing and hydroponic gardening on Ceres. Fresh food was becoming scarce on earth. And little could be transported to this colony. The garden was accomplished successfully.By mid 22nd Century the dwarf planet was fairly self-sustaining. The variety of people gradually changed – there were races from all over the world, few were human. The ruling race, yes – it happened, controlled the docking ports. There was a problem with reproduction of their peoples. However, there was no difficulty reproducing their people on earth. While still in their infancy, children were literally herded by the hundreds onto transport ships on earth and sent to a new home on the dwarf planet. There they would be educated and become viable working members of the colony.Larisse thought it never made sense that it was impossible to produce children, new beings, at this station. To import babies from Mother Earth seemed totally ridiculous. Totally. There should be no reason the replicators here cannot produce as well as those on ME. She didn’t understand science or reproduction well enough to fully understand many things. But, like most people, she wouldn’t believe most things even if told. Half of the newcomers were not ready for real life – in her judgment. They seemed totally disjointed more than half the time…barely able to function. The time it takes for the transport ship to make the trip should be long enough for the infants to mature. Her race attained maturity in a matter of months usually. True, there are no tutors aboard. But time alone should be enough for physical maturity. Perhaps it was something else that make them so ‘useless’. Larisse herself was an earth baby but she is positive she was never so helpless as the last few shipments had been.No, it wasn’t the atmosphere. They just weren’t ready. The atmosphere is not ME quality, but only human engineers born before 2140 need breathing apparatus. Everyone else had acclimated immediately. But some of these ‘children’, as they are called by the government, just aren’t ready for prime time. They should stay on Mother Earth another year to mature. They had little form. Their obvious lack of living knowledge made Larisse’s job doubly difficult.When a ship docked, Larisse went aboard with her clipboard to verify passengers before allowing them to disembark. This was one of the toughest parts of her job as greeter. It seems that more than half of these newcomers don’t know their names. Unfortunately, their boarding passes do not have names, just lot and number. Many of them have misplaced their boarding documents during the eight month flight. Larisse tried her best to get them all off the ship and into the city in a timely manner. She checked the number on the tag around each one’s neck, found it on the shipping advice and asked, “And what is your name?” She tried to be kind and understanding but kindness and understanding weren’t enough.Much of the time, they mumbled or spoke too softly for her to hear, or understand. She wrote down whatever it sounded like. There were times, she was sure, that Jane became Joyce or Brown was Bruin, or the other way around. But, what’s the difference? If they don’t know who they are when they arrive, they’ll respond to whatever they’re called later. Their identification packets are produced from her list. What was on the list was it. If, when she repeated a name, the newcomer corrected her, she’d make a change. Otherwise, the name – wrong or not- was theirs forever. This sometimes caused confusion among the newcomers the first week or so. Eventually they responded properly.Once the ship was cleared, Larisse led the group to the elevator. The atmosphere on the surface would suffice, but the old-timers who had established this colony insisted on building below the surface. The quarters were spacious. The city, while not large, included many laboratories, several stores, a movie theater, a bowling alley, roller rink, and a simulated park with grass, a small lake, and ducks. Newcomers were always impressed with the ducks. There were no ducks left on ME. Larisse had to research bowling, roller rink, and movies. These were pastimes of the first people to inhabit Ceres. The humans. While the activities sounded interesting, they also sounded quite tedious to Larisse. Physical exercise never made much sense to her. Evidently it was important to the first settlers.Below the surface, the aged engineers did not require breathing apparatus. They seemed to enjoy life below ground very much. She was surprised at how very old many of them were. Apparently, living in outer space lengthens the life of humans. Her own race can last forever if not exposed to excessive heat for long periods of time. Heat wasn’t a concern on Ceres.Larisse has heard the old humans say it was almost like being back on earth. She felt sorry for them as they were unaware that earth no longer had fresh air or lakes or green grass. Most of them had been at this station from the very beginning. Only one of the original crew had expired.Larisse never quite understood ‘expired’. When one old engineer tried to explain death to her, it made no sense. She didn’t understand the inability to just buy a new part when an old one wore out. Of course, she had never seen a part called a heart in the local parts store. She wasn’t sure if she, herself, had a heart. Larisse had finished the recommended schooling but anatomy was not a required subject. In fact, was there such a class offered? She could not recall.On one of her off-days, Larisse found a small room she had not known of before. There were several trees in a small group at the convergence of the walk past the roller rink and the walk to the main shopping area. Behind the trees – well, not actually behind them, but sort of hidden by them, was a door. It was tucked into a corner. Larisse had full access to the city as she was an employee and had keys to everything. But this door wasn’t locked. It intrigued her and she wondered how she had never seen it before today. What could lie beyond? She decided the best way to find out is to open it.

Larisse looked around to see if anyone else was nearby. While she had authority to go everywhere and anywhere, she was still hesitant to open the door. No one was in sight when she pulled on the long, upright handle. The door must not have been opened in some time as it creaked and dust blew up as it silently swung open. Dust is very unusual in the City.

What had she found? The room in front of her was dimly lit. There was a lot of furniture placed about in the center of the room. Tables and chairs sat neatly in two rows. There was also some soft type furniture. She saw a photo once of this type of seating – was it called a couch? a sofa? something like that. As she stepped further into the room there was a sign on a short pole. “This is your library. Please be considerate and maintain quiet. Library hours are daily 9am- 9pm.”

What is a library? Larisse has never heard the word before. If she had, she doesn’t recall it- or its meaning. This must be one of the first rooms built as no one is concerned with time anymore. She recalled seeing that type designation at the docking port several decades ago. It was so long she has already forgotten what the letters mean.

A quick glance around told Larisse that a library is a room filled with books. She had heard of books, even saw several when there were many humans here, back when she was new. But that was some time ago. She had not imagined there could be so many books, especially in one place. Larisse went from shelf to shelf reading the words printed on the books. How dull. Nothing really appealed to her curiosity. There were several labeled “Shakespeare”. Was that the name of the book? Taking one of those off the shelf, she leafed through the pages. A faint odor wafted out – she didn’t recognize it. Ah! Shakespeare wrote the book. One of the first pages said so. It didn’t look the least bit interesting. Larisse is fluent in English but these words made little sense. She put Shakespeare back on the shelf where she had gotten him.

A sign on the end of one shelf said “contemporary fiction”. Riffling through several books on that shelf proved very boring. She circled round the room. There must be more than a thousand books here. And none of them appealed to her.

Then she came to the shelf labeled ‘Games and Toys’. Games? Well, that might be interesting. The first book had pictures. Almost all of the pictures illustrated people who resemble the old engineers. Standard humanoid form. No one looks quite like that anymore. Well, except for the oldest colonists.

Back to reading words visible on the books, she came to a book titled “Toys of the 21st Century.” What kind of toys were popular on ME so many years ago?

She pulled the book from the shelf. The first several chapters featured several games – electronics mostly. They sounded like Fun, sort of. There weren’t games called WII, Nintendo or Atari on Ceres. Of course, this type electronic was so outdated. She laughed. This is what the old engineers played with? How droll. These were fun? Incredible! Larisse always felt that the engineers were a bit slow. Reading the description of some of the games caused her to laugh out loud. Ridiculous. She could not believe anyone could have been entertained for long with any of these old things. Perhaps humans weren’t as clever as they have always tried to make us believe. Clarisse thought on that a few moments. Perhaps they aren’t.

The next section in the book was about other toys. Bicycles, sleds, skates, miniature vehicles, skis, things Larisse had never heard of before. She read the descriptions carefully. Some of the illustrations were quite intriguing but the toys themselves – not so much.

The next chapter began with things called Lincoln Logs and Erector sets. They were more interesting than anything she had seen so far in the book. There were several pages touting the various accessories for the Erector set. And pictures showing things that had been made with the toy. What is a ferris wheel? The description says it will rotate with an accessory motor. But Larisse didn’t understand its purpose. It is truly a strange looking device.

As she turned the next page, she gasped. This looked like a family album. Why were her ancestors in a book of 21st century toys? She leafed through several pages, more in shock than in awe. She had heard of this in family folklore but why are they listed as toys?

Larisse vaguely recalled stories of relatives who added wheels, treads, rotors, and other outrageous accessories to themselves. More than a century ago. According to legend handed down, her own family at the time chose to shun these new and unusual characteristics. They were barbaric. If the gods had wanted us to have wheels, we would have come equipped with them. Of course, in time, many of the accessories became usual, normal; to own and to wear. But at the beginning, according to family tales, they were not openly welcomed. That was such old folklore. Larisse had never truly believed any of it. Things do evolve over time. Apparently, the 21st century was when all the various mutations of her race began. Looking at the illustrations that accompanied the descriptions, Larisse could see several similarities to herself and her friends. Well, some. There is a strong family resemblance though many of these were obviously foreigners; their colors were so garish.

The heading on the next page “LEGO Kits”. The following page was headed “LEGO 3-in-1 Collection”. Turning the page she was faced with “LEGO Accessories”. There was a footnote on this page. Every element in Larisse’s body shuddered as she read it. “By 2000 LEGO kits were offered with accessories designed to make the LEGO brick the most popular toy of two centuries.”

Oh my god of the universe, LEGOs are not toys. They are the future of the earth. Every month she greets new LEGOs to the Ceres Colony. They will be the saviors of Mother Earth. The things LEGOs do here will someday repopulate the earth. Someday they will create new plant life on earth; perhaps even rejuvenate the oxygen system on earth so that humans can remain there, out in the open as they once lived.

Larisse hugged the book close to her. She was sad. Is it true that she and nearly everyone here are descendants of a 21st century toy?

No, it can’t be true. She replaced the book on the shelf. For several minutes she was deep in thought. Should she reveal any of this to her co-workers, her friends. She paced through the small library. No. No. She cannot tell anyone about this book. She looked around and found a small desk. The sign said “Head Librarian”. Someone worked here at one time. But it was before Larisse came here -so a very long time before. They may have left instruments to use to make a sign. She went through the drawers looking for something useful. Perhaps she should place a No Trespass sign on this door. Or just perhaps a Do Not Enter sign would do.

The implements she found in the drawers of the desk were unknown to Larisse. Bic pens and Ticonderoga pencils and Sharpies. These were all cradled in a small tray in the top desk drawer. What were they? What purpose did they have in a library? She decided she had nothing to create a sign.

She reasoned that as she has just found this door, perhaps no one else will find it any time soon. There was nothing outside to put in front of the door to block entry. Its very out-of-the-way location has kept it secret this long; perhaps it will not be found again soon. Not many workers use this corridor. She closed the door firmly. Later she will return with a sign warning others to not enter. The newcomers were barely ready to work. Something this demoralizing could destroy them completely. No one should discover their ancestors were once considered mere playthings. She was proud to be a LEGO. This discovery must be kept secret.

END

Why not?

The vast majority of refugees, war casualty, infrastructure destruction, and regime change this century have been caused by US-led NATO.

Every conflict this century has seen the appearance of NATO armaments—the enablers of death and destruction. Countries devastated by NATO machinations remain a pale shadow of their former selves. Just look at the Arab Spring, which has morphed into the perpetual Arab Winter. Whereas Chechnya and Georgia today are even more prosperous and built-up than their Soviet days.

At the minimum, US decline militarily will bring peace to many hotzones today.

And with peace, a better tomorrow can be realized.

Ambassadors EVACUATING Lebanon; Outbreak of War Deemed “Imminent”

The Ambassadors of Italy, France, England, Sweden, and Germany, have been instructed by their governments to “evacuate Lebanon immediately” because Intelligence information says “war is imminent.”  Diplomatic staff are visibly panicking as they flee.

The Saudi Arabian Embassy in London warns of the risk of world war after the announcement of an imminent Israeli invasion of South Lebanon : ” It is important that everyone understands the danger that awaits us. The conflict will not remain regional, but will very quickly become international. ”

Egypt has sent multiple messages to Washington saying: Do not underestimate Nasrallah’s statements or the capabilities of Hezbollah.”

Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan are now discussing “joint action” against Israel!

DANGEROUSLY AMBIGUOUS: France announces it is willing to send its armed forces to stand with the Lebanese Army on the Border of Israel.  (None of us can figure this one out.  Will that be to defend Lebanon?  Attack Hezbollah?  Attack Israel?   . . . . . or to surrender to all of them?)

The Canadian military is drawing up plans to evacuate 45,000 people from Lebanon should a full-scale war break out between Israel and Hezbollah.

Sources in US CENTCOM tell me “The US is concerned Israel’s Iron Dome could be overwhelmed in war with Hezbollah.”  This right after giving all patriot missiles for defense to Ukraine!

The original deadline given to Hezbollah by Israel was to move its forces north of the Litani River BY JUNE 24.   Hezbollah has already flatly refused.   It is now not clear if Israel will step-up its timetable, or if Hezbollah will be the ones to initiate combat.  This could begin literally at any moment.

UPDATE 4:54 PM EDT —

Kuwait urges its citizens to avoid travel to Lebanon.

Shorpy

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Wasn’t exactly “revenge” since I did not have to do anything, I guess it is more like Karma.

Worked at a radio station for 5 years, filled in at one point as a temp. Operations Manager for a few months until the guy they wanted could run out his contract. At one point, I unknowingly amassed the paperwork trail needed to get a Production Manager fired for moonlighting on company time. At management’s request.

One day we got a new hire that never worked in the business before. They asked I train her. Ok, no problem right? (Well, I know better now). She burns through all her vacation and PTO within 3 months of hire. On the 4th month, it’s announced she will be the new Operations Manager. I expressed my displeasure at the position never have been posted as being open and never interviewed it despite having done the job previously while the new guy they just hired quit within the year. I was told I should quit. No way. I would be leaving on my own accord when I was ready. I was told to think about it overnight and hand in my resignation the next day. Told them it wasn’t going to happen. Next day I’m asked for my resignation letter. Told them I wasn’t doing it. They said they would fire me and contest any claim for unemployment. I told them they could do what they wanted, there was no record of poor work performance, no bad reviews, and my paper trail as acting OM and I had copies of the work I did that led to the PM getting fired would speak for itself. They fired me on the spot.

Went back into the control booth with the new girl to gather my belongings. The program tape (way before the digital age ) currently on-air runs out. Dead Air. A HUGE no-no if you don’t know the business. She looks at me and asks what to do next, what program is next, where is it, etc. I just look at her and say, “It’s not my problem anymore since I don’t work here. It’s your problem now.” Phones start ringing off the hook. Front office staff come back, “Why are we off the air?” “Is there a problem with the equipment?” I point to her. “Ask her, she’s in charge now, I no longer work here.” Sales staff start freaking out. Now commercials aren’t running either. I take my leave.

I found out later from an ex co-worker she screwed everything up for the next hour and a half. Guess she wasn’t paying attention to the day to day stuff I had been showing her and was busy with the outgoing OM trying to learn his job too since that was the plan all along. She also messed up all the procedures I had in place to keep the stations on-air to implement her way of getting things done and caused other problems with distributors and shows not getting aired at all. Violation of contracts that cost the station even more money. She also hired a friend to replace me, who ended up stealing very expensive microphones from the studios as well as other things that went missing.

I don’t believe she lasted 6 months after I was fired.

Western Empire Facing Same Collapse as Rome in its Final Days: Martin Armstrong

Martin Armstrong sees striking similarities between the multitude of crises that plague the modern world and the conditions just before the fall of the Roman empire. Martin argues that endless debt issuance, wars for profit, unchecked migration, and rampant political corruption are setting the stage for a future where many Western countries cease to exist as we know them.

A few days ago my ex son-in-law asked me if I wanted to get my four year old granddaughter off the bus and watch her for a few hours. She and I went to visit my mother, and then I took her to see her mother for some rare Mommy daughter time. All went well, both my daughter and granddaughter enjoyed their time together.

On the way back, I told my Granddaughter that she was awesome during the short ride and visit. Little Jabberjaws soon became quiet… (When a normally talkative 4 year old becomes quiet, it can be a good bet that something is up.) When she didn’t answer me, I pulled off the road to see what was going on. Quiet tears were rolling down her face. I asked her what was wrong, In a heart rendering voice she asked, “Papa, why don’t Mom and Dad think I’m awesome?” She noticed a tear in my eye (that I attributed to a bug). I composed myself, and told her that they thought she was awesome as well.

I had to stop at my home before taking her back to her place. During this time she was constantly wanting to hug me and was telling me how happy she is when she’s with ‘Papa’.

As we walked the few blocks to her home, she insisted on holding my hand the entire way. Just before we went into her place, she gave me a hug and told me she wished that Mom would come back home.

Heart-strings are so fragile…

Randy

Prof. Mearsheimer WARNS: Russia May be FORCED to Launch a Nuclear Attack Preemptively

In this video Prof. John Mearsheimer, the prominent international relations scholar, discusses the Ukraine peace negotiations and war dynamics. Topics include: the legitimacy of the peace summit in Switzerland, the exclusion of Russia from negotiations, the shifting balance of power in the conflict, and the risks of nuclear escalation. Mearsheimer suggests Ukraine's neutrality as a solution.

There are several reasons:

  1. They’re projecting. This is a psychological term referring to how people project their own behavioural tendencies on others. They think that because they’re inclined to suppress and exploit other countries, China will, too.
  2. They’re paranoid. This is the natural consequence of projection.
  3. They’re xenophobic or Sinophobic. They don’t understand the Chinese and their culture and society. The Chinese are peaceful; they’re only interested in trading with other countries.
  4. They’re pro-American. They want the USA to remain the dominant world power. They believe the USA is good for the world (never mind about the endless wars and endless sanctions).

Espresso Chile Glazed Ham

For this, use a fully cooked smoked ham, preferably wood smoked with no water added. Trim the outside layer of fat and skin all the way to the pink meat, so when you’re ready to carve you don’t cut away all the flavorful glaze.

Sweet chili pineapple glazed ham 2508 April 06 2023
Sweet chili pineapple glazed ham 2508 April 06 2023

Yield: 16 or more servings

Ingredients

  • Half a fully cooked smoked ham (about 8 pounds)
  • 1 quart fresh orange juice
  • 1 tablespoon grated orange zest
  • 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
  • 1 cup Kahlua or other coffee-flavored liqueur
  • 1 tablespoon Chinese chile paste with garlic, or sambal olek
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 shots (about 1/4 cup total) brewed espresso or 1 tablespoon instant espresso powder, like Medaglio d’Oro

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 325 degrees F.
  2. Cut the thick layer of fat and skin from the ham and discard. Place the ham in a roasting pan. (For easier clean up, line the pan with aluminum foil because the glaze will drip off and burn.) Roast the ham for 1 hour.
  3. While the ham is roasting, make the glaze. Combine the orange juice and zest, brown sugar, Kahlua, chile paste, and pepper in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to medium and simmer the mixture until it is reduced by about half and is as thick as maple syrup, about 35 minutes.
  4. Whisk in the espresso or espresso powder. You should have almost 2 cups of glaze. You are going to use half this glaze to brush the ham while it is roasting, and reserve the other half for brushing on the ham after it is sliced.
  5. After the first hour of cooking, brush the ham with the glaze. Roast for another hour, brushing with the glaze every 15 minutes. Since the ham is already cooked, you just need to warm it all the way through. Check for an internal temperature of 130 degrees F to 140 degrees F using an instant-read meat thermometer. Remove the ham from the oven when it is nicely browned and warmed through.
  6. To serve, slice the ham and brush the slices with the remaining glaze. For a lovely presentation, slice half the ham and arrange the slices against the unsliced part on a big platter. Brush the slices with the remaining glaze.

Newly Arrived To ODESSA 40 FRENCH Soldiers Were Wiped Out By Russian ISKANDER-M Ballistic Missiles

It is reported that particular French officers will operate the Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which were transferred to Ukraine by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The fact that sophisticated Western weapons systems are operated in Ukraine exclusively by high-ranking NATO officers is no secret to anyone. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also confirmed this fact. In particular, speaking in the Bundestag, the German Chancellor let slip that the Storm Shadow cruise missiles, also known as the SCALP-EG, are operated and maintained exclusively by British and French officers in Ukraine......

We moved into a house my daughter and son in law bought in their gated community so that we would move close to them. The exterior of the house was a big mess. My husband worked constantly for 2 months to clean it and the extra lot they bought with the house. It’s between us and the guy behind us that lives next to the golf course. He finally finished and one morning my husband went out and was walking around and realized they had blown a massive pile of moldy debris, leaves, pine cones, sweet gum balls and branches into the back corner. How they even had that much in their yard is a mystery. Their yard is very tiny. My daughter came over, went next door and said something to the guy and he said it’s just an empty lot, she said no I own that lot and it’s my parents back yard. My dad just spent 2 months cleaning it up. He said surely you don’t expect me to remove it and she responded surely you don’t consider that an unreasonable request. He told her it would be a few weeks before he could get someone back out there. She said you have a week. To his credit he got someone out right after the weekend. It started to happen one other time but my husband happened to be outside in the yard and went over and told their yard guy it was our yard. He tried that “it’s just an empty lot” thing. Hubby said no it’s not and I keep it cleaned up. We avoid the guy and his wife and thankfully all the rest of our neighbors are like family and we all watch out for each other.

My goodness!

When I moved in with my girlfriend, everything was great. We had each other’s perpetual company, space for ourselves, and best of all: isolation and freedom.

After a few months, we started getting surprise visits from her parents. They would wake us up by pounding on the door, or sometimes even barge in. Sometimes it was just her mother and father, other times they brought their 5 year old daughter. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy spending time with my girlfriend’s sister and even her parents. But these visits were unexpected, untimely, and were happening at an increasing rate. It was obnoxious when we had plans or weren’t feeling like socializing.

That’s when I had an idea: beat them at their own game. Bright and early one morning, I’m talking 4:30am on a weekday, my girlfriend and I picked up our loudest, most obnoxious friend, and ventured over to her parent’s place. I’m sure you can guess what we did, we barged in, shouting “wake up!”, forcing them out of bed. We proceeded to demand they make us breakfast, and spent hours interrupting their morning routines. Pleased with ourselves, we left around 10am and went on with our day.

The visits from them started happening less and less after that day. Today, they notify us if they’re coming over, which is exactly what we wanted the whole time. Why they started doing it in the first place, I’m not sure. In the end, I feel we delivered a powerful statement ironically teaching parents manners.

Damn good statements. Must watch.

Game. Set. Match.

Flipping the game of life

When I was a teenager I got pregnant. My b/f was older (21) and wanted to marry me right away. However my parents would not even let him see me, and instead he was only allowed to communicate through my mother.

I became extremely sick and was hospitalized much of the pregnancy. B/f was understandably distraught. He was very emotional but the only person he had contact with was my mother.

Somehow – not that I care how – that connection turned physical. Yep – mom cheated on my dad with the father of my baby. But THEN to make sure I never found out, they forced b/f to return to his family, across the country.

They concocted a whole story about how b/f threatened to kill me so they forced him to leave our town. Oh and the days that mom went missing while on her tryst I was told b/f kidnapped her and she went with him to save my life.

I was young – I did not realize if that were true he would be in prison. I believed this story and at one point became so terrified of him – based on my mother constantly reinforcing that he wanted to hunt me down and kill me and the baby – I gave my child up to an open adoption with a family I was really close to. I never wanted him to hunt her down. Her name was changed and they moved to another state. I moved the opposite direction and my mother KNEW I did it out of fear, and still let me.

It was not until almost 7 years later that all of the truth came out with my father devastated for his part, and telling me EVERYTHING.

I contact previous b/f and asked him to tell me what happened. He told me the same story I had recently come to know was true. He felt awful about the affair but none of the threats or me needing give up my child over it was real.

I reunited with my daughter.

I will never speak to my mother again. She is truly dead to me. Even the last time I spoke with her, she tried to justify the nightmare she put on our family.

COVID- (mRNA) Vaccines cannot be mandated — 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

COVID- (mRNA) Vaccines cannot be mandated -- 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

Big Pharma manufacturers of the COVID -19 mRNA “vaccines” have lost their shield from product liability, after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the mRNA shots are NOT VACCINES, but rather “Treatments.

The 9th Circuit said it’s not a vaccine if the claim isn’t to “PREVENT THE SPREAD” of a disease.

COVID shots were claimed to “reduce symptoms” and prevent hospitalization.  Those claims make it a TREATMENT.

The case involved the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) mandating their people get the “vaccine.”

But the 9th circuit, in a very detailed and complex ruling said the US District Court ERRED because this particular “vaccine” did not “prevent the spread of disease.”   Here is the pertinent portion of the 9th Circuit ruling:

COVID 19 Vax LOSES Liability Shield
COVID 19 Vax LOSES Liability Shield

So while the court held that government __can__ force vaccines to “halt the spread” of a disease in a public health crisis, government cannot expand that power to cover medical treatment which is simply for a citizen’s benefit merely for “reducing symptoms.”

Protecting public health by stopping the spread to others, is one thing, but trying to force vaccines that do not stop the spread, merely “reduce symptoms” is not within government’s power to do.

Why The American Dream Is DEAD

This hits close to home for me. After losing my first career and seeing 'just how valuable of an employee I was after great sacrifice for nothing', living hand to mouth, listening to what my culture told be "work hard, go to school and be rewarded' and living in this ultra-competitive highly individualistic society, I left America for Japan for a total of 4 years. I knew society and economic systems were screwed up; after living in Japan and its different culture, I was forever changed, for the better! I now say that the "American Dream is just good marketing to sell you a false sense of self at your own expense." Thank you Austin!

That’s just the prevailing narrative, nothing more. It’s fashion, a naked mannequin for intellectuals to dress up.

After all, what kind of economic threat has Russia posed to America this century?

It’s just hegemony, and the ever-present need to demonstrate who’s in charge, and who’s words carry the day. The U.S. Congress and White House lavish inordinate effort on issues beyond American shores, because there are no limits to American sovereignty.

Or like the Chinese lovingly put it: 眼里容不得沙子

So yes, America, whether it is the more dignified Joe or in-your-face Donald, will stop at nothing to win and dominate.

Winning, in a might is right world, is the only metric that matters.

Decades of Donald the “winningest man in business” should have educated the world at large about the nature of American “values”.

Little By Little, The Economy Has Declined To A Point Where Almost Everyone Is Struggling

It happened so gradually that a lot of people didn’t even realize what was happening.  The cost of living just kept rising faster than paychecks were, and little by little our standard of living just kept going down.  Now we have reached a stage where the ultra-wealthy are thriving but almost everyone else is struggling.  For most people, it is a real fight just to pay the bills from month to month.  The majority of the population is deep in debt, and meanwhile the cost of just about everything is going up and up.  Millions of Americans feel like they are drowning financially, and there is no easy way out.  Sadly, many of them don’t even realize that the game was designed to get them on to a hamster wheel and keep them running for as long as possible.

When I was a kid, the United States had a very large and very prosperous middle class.

Life certainly wasn’t perfect in those days, but just about everyone that I knew could afford to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle.

Sadly, now everything has changed.

According to a survey that was just conducted by Seven Letter Insight, 65 percent of Americans “who earn more than 200% of the federal poverty level” admit that they are struggling financially…

In the large poll of 2,500 adults, 65% of people who earn more than 200% of the federal poverty level — that’s at least $60,000 for a family of four, often considered middle class — said they are struggling financially.

If 65 percent of those that “earn more than 200% of the federal poverty level” are struggling, what about those that earn less than that?

Needless to say, almost all of them are struggling.

That same survey discovered that 46 percent of Americans don’t even have 500 dollars saved up…

About 40% of respondents were unable to plan beyond their next paycheck, and 46% didn’t have $500 saved. The February poll found that more than half said it’s at least somewhat difficult to manage current levels of debt.

Over the past couple of years, the stock market has been “booming” and the ultra-wealthy have been getting richer and richer.

But things have been getting worse for virtually all the rest of us.

According to Zillow, over the past four years “the monthly mortgage payment on a typical U.S. home has nearly doubled”…

The real estate firm Zillow reports that since January 2020, the monthly mortgage payment on a typical U.S. home has nearly doubled. It’s up 96% in just four years.

According to Zillow, a typical buyer will now pay nearly $2,200 a month, with a 10% down payment. Meaning, homeownership now costs well above the 30% of median income that was once thought to equate to “affordable” housing cost in America.

Has your income doubled over the past four years?

If not, you are falling behind.

The American people absolutely hate what is being done to their standard of living.

In fact, during a recent interview Neel Kashkari astutely observed that Americans “really, viscerally hate high inflation”

Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, says one of the things he has learned in the past few years is that consumers would rather see the economy fall into a recession than to continue to suffer the pain of soaring prices.

“The American people – and maybe people in Europe, equally – really hate high inflation,” Kashkari told the Financial Times podcast “The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes” last week. “I mean, really, viscerally hate high inflation.”

He is right.

I really detest inflation.

I am sure that you do too.

But what he didn’t mention is that the Federal Reserve and our politicians in Washington are responsible for creating the epic cost of living crisis that we are currently facing.

They caused this mess, and now they don’t seem to have any solutions for cleaning it up.

Meanwhile, economic activity just continues to slow down.

On Tuesday, we learned that the number of job openings in the U.S. has fallen to the lowest level in more than 3 years

Job openings fell more than forecast in April, signaling a potential weakening in the labor market that could provide the Federal Reserve with more impetus to start lowering interest rates.

The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released Tuesday showed that the level of employment vacancies slipped to 8.06 million for the month, down by nearly 300,000 from March and close to 19% lower than a year ago.

Moreover, the total marked the lowest since February 2021.

And more workers are being dumped into the streets with each passing day.

For example, Rubio’s Coastal Grill just announced that it will be permanently closing 48 locations in the state of California

California’s $20-an-hour fast food minimum wage has its first casualty.

Mexican chain Rubio’s Coastal Grill is shuttering 48 restaurants in the state – because of the ‘rising cost of doing business in California’.

‘While painful, the store closures are a necessary step in our strategic long-term plan to position Rubio’s for success for years to come,’ a Rubio’s spokesperson added.

As this year rolls along, we will see a lot more stories like this.

For a long time, our leaders were able to keep the party going by flooding the system with money.

But now inflation is out of control and we have reached the terminal phase of the “greatest credit bubble in human history”

Mark Spitznagel, chief investment officer of Universa Investments, is known for being a “permabear” when it comes to the stock market outlook.

Spitznagel told Bloomberg in an earlier interview that we’re witnessing the “greatest credit bubble in human history.”

“Credit bubbles end. They pop. There’s no way to stop them from popping,” he said, adding that the Fed has brought the economy to a place “where there’s no turning back.”

Spitznagel is right on target.

There really is no turning back now.

Our leaders have wrecked the greatest economic machine in the history of the world.

What is ahead of us is a tremendous amount of pain.

So if you think that things are bad now, just wait until you see what is coming next.

For years, little by little our standard of living has been collapsing.

But now we are entering a time when our economic slide will become an economic avalanche.

Decades of absolutely disastrous decisions have brought us to this point, and now we shall truly reap what we have sown.

Shorpy

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Four Frightened Kittens Sat On the Mast of a Burning, Crew Abandoned Ship

The tragic fate of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s crew is still a haunting memory for many.

When the US Navy finally recovered the crew compartment from the ocean, the contents were indeed extremely disturbing.

One of the most shocking discoveries was that the crew members’ remains were still seated in their chairs, with their seatbelts still fastened, a gruesome testament to the sudden and catastrophic nature of the disaster.

The investigation revealed that the crew compartment had remained remarkably intact, despite the intense forces generated by the explosion.

This was due in part to the compartment’s robust design, which was capable of withstanding intense pressure and extreme temperatures.

In the aftermath of the disaster, the crew compartment was subjected to a series of intense forces, including extreme deceleration, massive shock waves, and intense heat generated by the explosion.

The post-accident investigation also revealed that the crew had likely survived the initial explosion, but succumbed to the extreme conditions during the subsequent free fall towards the ocean.

This was evident from the fact that the crew members were still strapped in their seats, with some even having their helmets still on, indicating that they had not lost consciousness immediately.

The recovery of the crew compartment was a complex and challenging operation, involving a team of divers and engineers who worked tirelessly to locate and retrieve the wreckage.

The operation was made even more difficult by the fact that the debris was scattered over a wide area, with some pieces sinking to depths of over 12,000 feet.

One of the most poignant aspects of the recovery operation was the discovery of personal items belonging to the crew, including a set of keys, a calculator, and a CD player, which served as a haunting reminder of the human lives lost in the tragedy.

The intact condition of the crew compartment also raised important questions about the design and safety features of the Space Shuttle program, leading to significant changes in the years that followed.

Random pictures of interest

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A pragmatic peace summit, in which both warring parties must participate.

The Ukrainian Peace Summit held in Lucerne, Switzerland was unilaterally invited by Ukraine, but Russia was not invited to participate, and China, South Africa and Brazil also stated that they would not attend the meeting. Therefore, this summit was not a peace summit at all, but a summit with the theme of “condemning Russia”.

Without Russia’s participation, discussing issues such as ceasefire is completely futile and will only be empty talk without achieving any practical results.

Such a meeting is meaningless. It is not a “peace summit” but a venue to provoke and stimulate Russia.

What is even more ironic is that although the United States has long supported Ukraine and is one of Zelenskyy’s important invitees, the US side stated that US President Biden will not attend the summit due to “scheduling conflicts.”

China and Brazil jointly issued a six-point peace consensus, calling for an international peace conference to be held at an appropriate time recognized by Russia and Ukraine, with all parties participating equally and discussing all options fairly. Only such a summit can achieve substantive peace results.

In addition, China has been promoting peace talks between Russia and Ukraine since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, and this has not just started recently.

main qimg 262a16d528323827b05abf29776eaf25 lq
main qimg 262a16d528323827b05abf29776eaf25 lq

One_Up

Submitted into Contest #250 in response to: Write a story in which someone can only hear one side of a conversation and must piece together the meaning of what they’ve heard. view prompt

Joe Smallwood

Rodent! Liar! It was supposed to be fun, not this ridiculous foofaraw where I can’t patch in but only hear pronouncements. Anyone could do that!“I thought you were premium support and extra paid up! Instead™, you’re privacy-shading me!””That other voice you paid for never had too much to say. But you must hand it to them when they invented Instead™. It was a game-changer, always keeping things interesting,” replied One_Up. “You can count on me to stay ahead of it!”The concert hall was vintage 20th-century. No accoutrements, not Ghezi certified. It still had a lovingly preserved red carpet and seats, and knowing why we could be there was hard.“A vision of Hell? N’est-ce pas?” a_Playful_Voice said. I ignored it, one of the many voices I tended to ignore. It left you_snubbed_me on my social. Not that anyone else was there to be playful—no one else was here at all!One_Up was first because he earned it. It was the voice I listened to the most!“You got that right!” he said.I went dark on it to talk to you, my dear diary. I had to have a One_Up, you see—not that I had to listen to it! My little rebellion was so tiny that no one noticed. I wouldn’t want a pronouncement, would I? Actually, it was best not to listen to pronouncements. If I got too interested, it might be suspicious…“C’mon back, Darren!” One_Up said. “I have a pronouncement for you!”“Yeah, sure! If I can’t patch in, what’s the point?”“The point? The point is to stay ahead of them! Here we go!”“I can’t say I haven’t tried, sir.” Uh-huh… Instead™ is failing. Well, he’s interested in it, but I’m afraid the therapeutic value is nil.” Long silence“Sir, I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell me how to do my job….When I’ve reached the end of my options—Silence“It’s been nice working with you too. If there’s anything else I can assist you with, please don’t hesitate to call. Goodbye.“Weird, don’t you think that people still talk like they’re on a telephone, even though we all have instant access to anyone who gives us permission?” said Darren.“Old people do that!” replied One_Up. “And why would you think I got permission for this?#“Darren? Oh, Darren?” One_Up asked in his most playful voice. DARREN! It’s time for your diaper.”“Don’t.”“Time! Too much non-ghezi time means it’s diaper time!” demanded One_Up.“We spent all of ten minutes in that concert Hall!”“Non-ghezi! Just the same. This isn’t an Instead™ stratagem, is it?”“Instead of what?”“Your diaper!”“You talk in riddles, you know that?”Diaper, my ass! One_Up was always being a comedian! If I had wanted comedy, a_playful_voice would have been my choice!I went on recycle. Well, actually, it was more like my garbage cycle. There wasn’t much I could get out of being in the concert hall!

#

I heard the most beautiful music—non-ghezi—across the way. I tried to patch in until I remembered what non-ghezi meant. Am I losing my mind?

She was so beautiful. Alone in her apartment, she had long blonde hair, which made her seem slenderer than she was. Is slenderer a word? She’d go to the window to feed some birds, and I could just make out a smile, being a stone’s throw away from her. Yes, that’s right, isn’t it? People used to say that. You could throw a stone; how far away you could throw it would describe the distance. I never threw a stone—not a real one. I wonder what it would be like to throw one. The other day…

“Darren!” shouted One_Up.

“DARREN! Time for your walk.”

“I don’t want to walk.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No!”

“We’ll go to the concert hall…”

People used to go to places like this. I feel the plush seating, the furrowed abrasive cloth caressing me as I sit. I imagine how people used to clap and swoon for music that I could hear anytime, anywhere. What did I miss? The energy, the shared experience? What exactly?

Could there be anything more than systems attuned to the beating hearts of billions that could be exceeded? And more still undiscovered, the synthesis of minds overcoming time and space? Yet what crushes me is the knowledge of what is gone forever. The silence is endlessly filled. Can everything really be nothing in disguise?

Dark again. Help me figure this out. Someone needs therapy, and I think the person who was supposed to provide it just got fired! At least, it sounds that way. It seems serious, too, like things aren’t working out. I’ll catch you later.

“There you are! Why do you keep hiding from me?” pouted One_Up.

#

One_up took me to the concert hall. I thought its job was to entertain me! C-O-N-C-E-R-T H-A-L-L. I could spell it! We meander down the streets, and I get bored. What was I hoping to find at the concert hall? Old Tech? An orchestra? Musical instruments? Like cave implements and ancient wall paintings! I am hunted by Neanderthals who aspire for immortality at my expense! I call up Instead™ but get put on hold. Then, it fails.

“Instead™ is non-ghezi!” says One_Up.

“Good.”

“What do you mean, good? Patch in here!” says One_Up.

Everything swirls. I’m playing Hell Surfers 6 in no time. It starts to hurt, but everything old is Neanderthal to me. I keep going!

#

There was no One_Up to greet me. Where am I? I feel so alone. Everything is dead when I try patching in— no patch in, no One_Up.

I go dark. Whew! That works. Help me out here, dear diary. This has never happened before. I swear! Maybe I should be scared or something. Let me know what you think.

Do the pronouncements work? When I switch on, the voices sound far away. I also try amplification, but it doesn’t work.

I’m only dimly aware…

“He’s in terrible shape. Yes. Uh-huh.”

Long silence.

“We tried that. She came to the window and snagged him a little, but the relapse was awfully quick. There are no legs on this one.”

Silence.

“Well, the last chance is to nuke him. We tried Instead™. Next™ isn’t the same generation. It wouldn’t work. Guaranteed…Uh-huh…Right. Do I have the go-ahead?”

I get so angry—angrier than ever! It’s part of the game—self-generating. I helped design it myself! The Hell you surf is your own, see? It’s self-replicating, too. It gobbles up everything to present the best entertainment ever! Because the best of realfun™ is how close it comes to everything imaginable that ever existed! Mashed together, a million billion experiences of people worldwide. You feel everything! Presented in endlessly entertaining entertainment…

“Darren?”

“DARREN?” yelled One_Up.

“We need an ambulance to this location. Can you please hurry?”

I’m out, but I’m not. I’m too tired to switch off. I can’t do anything. I wish I could turn off the voices in my head!

“We have to murder One_Up! You heard me! I don’t care if he has been trying to help Darren. Uh-huh. The sooner, the better.

One_Up is frantic. “You have to protect me, Darren!” Sure, sure, I say.

“Getting a fix. No, it’s not murder! It’s a figure of speech. Do I have your permission or not?”

Silence

“Can I hide in your secret place, Darren?”

I heard the most beautiful music. I can’t describe it. I don’t even know why I would try. They’re hunting for One_Up, but he’s safe, in a place I made that no one knows about! Until today, even One_Up didn’t know where I went!

#

“OK, ease it in,” said Dr. Oakley.

“I want to go on the record, sir,” said the lead nurse. “I recommend that we not proceed. We were unable to stop the program. His digital assistant is still operational, presenting an unquantifiable risk to the operation’s success.”

“I’m aware of the risks. It is my responsibility.”

“Are we cleared for this?” demanded a lawyer over a microphone from the observation deck.

Dr. Oakley looked up from the operating table. Three nurses, looking very apprehensive, tried to look busier. The lead nurse presumed to stop what he was doing to gaze at the lawyer, too.

“What do you mean? Are we cleared? I wouldn’t be here, would I?” snapped Oakley. “Has something changed?”

“He can’t die, that’s all,” the lawyer shouted. “Too many other people are involved.”

Dr. Oakley’s jaw tightened. “You tell me this now? Let’s get this started!”

#

I was standing at the edge of an abyss—a volcano or something—only it was a long way down and incredibly hot. Waves of heat envelop me, so the moment sweat develops, it immediately evaporates. There was lava below, and I was going to fall!

“He’s reacting to this like he’s reading a script. We’re losing him!” the lead nurse yells, glancing at the heart monitor.

“Okay, ease back a little bit,” says Dr. Oakley. He’s got to take this seriously, or we’ll lose him for good.”

“Wait for it…” calls out the lead nurse.

One-Up! I don’t like this program. Switch, please! One_Up? Anybody?

“I’m here, Darren! At your service! None of this is real. I can switch this now if you want to?”

Oakley swore under his breath, “He has to try! Make the path away from the abyss clearer.”

“On it,” says the lead nurse.

“Blood pressure keeps rising, 155 over 90,” one of the nurses says.

“Stay with it. He has to realize that he doesn’t control everything,” says Dr. Oakley.

“He’s taking the path…” says the lead nurse. ”With One_Up!”

Everyone cheers.

#

“Debrief…everyone. You all have your assigned places. Dr. Oakley? Can we begin with you?” the head of hospital staff says.

Dr. Oakley took his seat, his laptop in front of him. “Well, it was a success, as you all know. Instead™ and even Next™ have come up with treatment plans. We’re coordinating that now. The patient is responding well.”

Another doctor asks, “How long until Darren Oakley is completely well?”

Dr. Oakley teared up. He struggled to clear his throat. “I’m sure we’ll manage,” he said.

The lead nurse caught up with the hospital lawyer after the meeting.

“That was a real bone-headed thing you did, calling out to us from the observation deck! What were you thinking?”

“What was I thinking? Well, try this on for size.” The lawyer took out his cell phone to project an image.

“Jeez!” exhaled the nurse.

“And those calls to emergency were just for the people with an addiction in North America! We don’t have good data for anyplace else.”

“Darren helped create it all,” wondered the nurse. “What was happening to him started to happen to everyone?”

The lawyer turned to go, but then he hesitated. “Say, do you feel like a beer?”

“No. But I’ll drink one.” cracked the nurse.

Pesto Chicken Flatbread Pizzas

Tuscan flavors will delight family and friends in this easy to make Pesto Chicken Flatbread Pizza. Great as a main dish or side dish to complement a meal.

Pesto Chicken Flatbread Pizzas
Pesto Chicken Flatbread Pizzas

Prep: 10 min | Cook: 8 min | Yield: 2 flatbread pizzas; 4 servings total

Ingredients

  • 2 (3.5 ounce) Tuscan-style flatbreads
  • 1/4 cup Buitoni Refrigerated All Natural Reduced Fat Pesto with Basil
  • 2/3 cup sautéed or cooked chicken breast strips
  • 2 tablespoons shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 1/4 cup (.75 ounce) Buitoni Refrigerated Freshly Shredded Parmesan Cheese

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. Place flatbreads on baking sheet.
  3. Spread pesto sauce evenly over each flatbread to within 1/2 inch of edge.
  4. Top each evenly with chicken, mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese.
  5. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until flatbread is crisp and cheese is melted.

Notes

Cooks Tip: Refer to your flatbread packaging to determine recommended bake temperature and time as each brand varies.

Try substituting regular BUITONI Refrigerated Pesto with Basil.

It was at my mother’s funeral. I went up to my brother to talk to him. I hadn’t seen him since he moved out at 18. I think it was around 20 years of not seeing or talking to him. I was a terrible sister to him when we were kids. I got him into so much trouble with mom. He received so many beatings because of me and my lies. I so much wanted to talk with him then. So I went up to him and went to put my arm around him to tell him how sorry I was about her passing. He shrugged my arm off and turned away without speaking. I kind of lost my temper a bit and told him he needed to grow up. He just walked away and wouldn’t even sit anywhere near me. I watch him sit there and cry during the funeral and knew there wasn’t anything I could do. I want to go over and hold him and tell him how sorry I was for how I treated him. But I didn’t want to hurt him and more then I already had.

And before anyone says it, yes I deserved that slap. Many years later we finally talked and I poured my heart out to him. I apologized and begged for him to forgive me. What he did surprised me. He hugged and and said there’s no reason for forgiveness. Because he had already forgiven me. That he saw from what I’ve written here that I had really changed and it was time to be brother and sister again. That day we both cried together.

I cannot speak on behalf of China.

Let me speak for myself.

I heard that US constitution guarantees Freedom of Speech. But Biden equated anti-genocide in Gaza or anti-war to antisemitism.

To be fair, anti-genocide is not unreasonable. Now the entire world minus Israel & USA condemns genocide. If we say the students are wrong, it is not possible that the entire world is also wrong.

See, Americans can make fun of their president or scold at him. But cannot be against Israel. US politicians made thousands of anti-China statements & lies. But cannot “touch” Israelis.

US constitution guarantees owning guns. When there are many gun-related deaths, USA is so “powerless” to protect the life of innocents. Ironically, Right to Life is also in US constitution.

Maybe US constitution is not a failed doc. It is the enforcement that is the problem.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I see a one-way ticket to poverty for Americans and the US dollar. BRIC's nations in coordination with Saudia Arabia are now selling oil in multiple denominations and they're backing it with gold. The ONLY thing that's kept the US prosperous since getting off the gold convertibility in 1971 is the petrodollar and now it's toast.

The half eaten hamburger

The USA should do nothing. It’s none of their business.

Taiwan is part of China. They have an unfinished civil war. Let them resolve the civil war.

The USA has no right to interfere in another country’s civil war or domestic affairs.

Any direct response would risk all-out war, even nuclear war. The results would be a crashed global economy, millions of casualties, and unimaginable nuclear devastation.

The term “Chinese government” is not an abstract concept. It has a two-dimensional structure: on one hand, it includes a five-tier system from the State Council down to provinces, prefecture-level cities, counties, and towns. On the other hand, it consists of dozens of departments, each of which can be categorized by national, provincial, prefecture-level, county, and town levels.

Therefore, when a foreigner criticizes the Chinese government, their criticism is necessarily directed at a specific institution within this structure. For example:

“I want to criticize the Environmental Protection Bureau of Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China,”

or

“I want to criticize the Town Government of Xinhua Street, Huadu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China.”

The former targets a district-level government department, while the latter targets a town-level government.

In either case, your criticism can reach the authorities through the information channels provided by the Chinese government. These official channels include:

  1. The mayor’s hotline;
  2. The complaint hotline set up by the institution you are criticizing;
  3. The complaint channel on the State Council website;
  4. The local Petition Office;
  5. The local Discipline Inspection Commission of the Communist Party of China.

The distinctions among these channels are:

General criticisms and suggestions (such as a local restaurant emitting large amounts of smoke) can be addressed through options 1 and 2. If an institution is suspected of violating Chinese laws and administrative regulations (such as officials taking bribes), option 3 can be used. If the issue is serious, option 4 is appropriate. If the institution severely violates Communist Party rules (such as party members engaging in corruption), option 5 should be used.

In addition to these official channels, ordinary people can also use other lawful means to voice their criticisms:

  1. Calling the media;
  2. Expressing criticism on their personal social media platforms.

Some government officials’ illegal activities have been exposed through these channels.

There might be minor inaccuracies in the above description, but overall it is correct.

Therefore, as a foreigner, if you wish to criticize the Chinese government, you have up to seven options provided above. No one will arrest you because the issues you raise might be problems that others also want to address. Additionally, Chinese police are very busy with their workload and are not interested in you.

However, if you, as a foreigner, do the following:

  1. Criticize the Chinese government without specifying a particular institution;
  2. Criticize the Chinese government without providing concrete facts, only expressing opinions and attitudes;

Then you will not be welcome in China. In fact, you likely wouldn’t be welcome in your own country or anywhere else in the world. If you simply say “I hate the Chinese government” or “I hate the CPC” without providing reasons, you are undoubtedly just a racist discriminating against China. Whether such behavior will lead to arrest depends on specific circumstances:

  1. Whether you are criticizing or “badmouthing”;
  2. The context in which you speak;
  3. Your purpose in speaking;
  4. The content of your speech.

Specifically,

  1. If you have specific criticism and facts, no one will arrest you because the police won’t do something blatantly illegal that would leave them open to criticism.
  2. If you are just “badmouthing” in private or at a small gathering, no one will arrest you. This is still considered “private space.”
  3. If you badmouth simply to seem cool and provoke the police, you can try saying bad things about China directly to them. Most likely, they will give you a verbal lesson on basic decency—when in Rome, do as the Romans do, be polite and respect other countries—and then tell you to get lost. However, if you intend to spread your badmouthing to convince hundreds or thousands of people, you won’t have to wait for the police to find you; I would report you myself as a troublemaker.
  4. If you are merely making empty derogatory statements, you will just be unwelcome. But if your comments are full of malice, slander, and lies, you will undoubtedly be arrested, and rightfully so.

In conclusion, I’ve helped you analyze this issue. I hope my analysis helps you understand the following facts about China:

  1. Ordinary Chinese people criticize government institutions every day, and no one gets arrested. I personally filed five complaints against three government institutions through the mayor’s hotline last year alone.
  2. The same applies to foreigners.
  3. If you have no specific target or facts and are just badmouthing, it’s best to stay home and avoid traveling abroad, as no country will welcome you.
  4. Rest assured, if you engage in such behavior, given that the incident is international, you might make the news in China and internationally. Your benefit may be limited to becoming an internet celebrity after your release from prison.
  5. Almost all Chinese police officers are university graduates, and many have master’s degrees. Therefore, their (especially the young officers’) English proficiency is quite good, and they are courteous. If they arrest you, they will respect your basic human rights and will not beat you.
  6. Be brave and try!

P.S. Many years ago, in my city, a Russian cyclist ran a red light and was fined by the police. This clever Russian guy said in Russian, “I don’t speak Chinese, I don’t understand anything, I’m leaving, goodbye!” But to his surprise, the police officer spoke Russian. Thus, the communication barrier was eliminated, and the Russian had to pay the fine because the Chinese traffic police officer graduated from Saint Petersburg University.

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One night I went to a Thai restaurant wearing black T-shirt and black jeans, looking similar to staff at that restaurant. After I greeted my friends who worked there I walked to an empty table while another friend was still chatting.

As I was about to reach my table, a customer at the table next to mine waved me down and asked me to wipe the spilled red wine on their table. I said no problem and went on to ask for a cloth from my friend at the counter. She asked if my table was dirty. I said, “no, but just give me the cloth” and she did.

I went back to the table and wiped the table. They asked me to clear some plates, asked for more water and ordered a couple more meal and extra rice. I took the order, but didn’t take plates because I wasn’t allowed to get in the kitchen area where dirty plates were to go. I told them I’d take their order to the counter, then back with water and will sort out the plates.

Another trip back to the counter. Gave the order to my friend. By that time my friends had realised what I was doing and played along. She grabbed me a bottle of water and told another girl to clear the table.

I returned to the table with water and told them the other girl would clear the table for them and that the meals would arrive shortly.

Then I proceeded to my table, sat down and started looking at the menu. The next-table guy looked at me with confused face, but said nothing. After the girl cleared the plates she came to me and took my order.

He asked with wide eyes, “Are you a staff?” I smiled and answered, “No, I’m a regular customer.”

The look on the guy’s face was priceless!

Why Are Vast Numbers Of People Relocating To Small Towns All Over The Country?

In recent years, Americans have been fleeing our largest cities in unprecedented numbers, and many of them have decided to settle down in quiet little towns all over the country.  There are many reasons why this is happening, and I will highlight several of them below.  If this trend continues, what will our major metropolitan areas look like?  Violence, theft, drugs, homelessness and international migration have all risen to crisis levels and are putting a tremendous amount of strain on our core urban areas.  Meanwhile, many small towns are absolutely booming as wave after wave of big city refugees comes pouring in. People have been leaving large metropolitan areas for a long time, but once the pandemic arrived that trend greatly accelerated

In the three years before the pandemic, counties in metro areas with at least 1 million residents lost a total 200,000 or so residents annually to other regions, after figuring both people moving in and leaving, according to the Goldman report. After COVID, those losses vaulted to 750,000 in 2021, 650,000 in 2022 and 550,000 in 2023, according to Goldman and Census data. The numbers reflect annual changes through July of each year. A separate study by Lombard shows the domestic migration losses were concentrated in the largest metro areas with more than 4 million residents. Those cities shed a total 400,000 residents annually before the pandemic and have lost 820,000, 707,000 and 591,000 residents, respectively, over the past three years.

And it is being reported that last year small towns became “the nation’s top destination for domestic migrants for the first time in decades”

Last year, about 266,000 of the big city refugees moved to metro areas with populations of 250,000 to 1 million and about 291,000 moved to areas with populations under 250,000. That made those small towns the nation’s top destination for domestic migrants for the first time in decades, Lombard says. In 2023, the New York City metro area lost 204,000 residents; Los Angeles, 119,000; and Chicago, 64,000, according to Census and Moody’s.

So why is this happening? Well, there are a number of reasons why so many people are relocating to small towns these days. For many, the quality of life in big U.S. cities has become utterly deplorable.  For example, one young Chicago mother recently had to wait for hours for a police officer to show up after masked robbers entered her home…

A Chicago mom who called 911 during a terrifying break-in was left on her own for hours — with dispatchers telling her to call her local representative to demand more police funding. Michelle called the emergency hotline six times after coming face-to-face with two masked bandits, only for the strained supervisor to tell her the city’s severe budget cuts had left them with a bare-bones staff. “A gentleman got on and said sorry to say we have no units to send you … then there was an awkward pause,” Michelle told NBC Chicago Wednesday, declining to share her name or face while her would-be robbers are still on the loose.

I don’t know why anyone would want to live in Chicago at this point. Of course the exact same thing could be said about most of our other large cities. Another reason why a lot of Americans are choosing to relocate has to do with taxes. There has been a mass exodus out of “high tax states”, and Massachusetts is one of those that is being hit really hard

Massachusetts is in danger of losing nearly $1 billion in annual revenue over the coming years as high state taxes trigger an exodus of wealthy residents. Since 2013, migration out of Massachusetts has seen an “alarming” 1,100% increase to more than 39,000 people, according to new findings published by Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. If the trend continues, more than 96,000 residents making a cumulative $19.2 billion in adjusted gross income will leave the state by 2030. The study estimates those departures would cost Massachusetts about $961 million in income tax revenue each year.

In my rankings of all 50 U.S. states, I have Massachusetts all the way down at number 44. The cost of living crisis that we are currently facing is another factor that is motivating vast numbers of Americans to relocate. At this point, we are being told that Mississippi has the lowest cost of living in the entire nation…

Imagine stepping into a world where your paycheck stretches like bubblegum and the promise of Southern charm meets you at every corner. Welcome to Mississippi, a land where the living is easy, the cost of living is easier, and every quirk adds color to the canvas of daily life. Here, your financial aspirations can don a superhero cape, albeit in a landscape peppered with challenges that keep things interesting.

One of the reasons why Mississippi has such a low cost of living is because average home prices are the lowest in the country

Mississippi’s housing costs are the lowest in the nation. Home prices range from $32,000 to $240,000 depending on the city, with an average of $162,292.

But even though it has such a low cost of living, I don’t really like Mississippi as a place to live during the chaotic times that are coming. In fact, in my rankings of all 50 U.S. states I have Mississippi all the way down at number 33. Ultimately, the cost of living is only a minor consideration when it comes to choosing a place to live during the extremely difficult years that are ahead of us. Much more importantly, you will want a location that has like-minded people, that has a low population density, that has a low risk of experiencing major natural disasters, and that is not near any important military targets. Unfortunately, such areas have become very popular in recent years and home prices are going through the roof.  For instance, the median home price in Bozeman, Montana has risen to about $770,000

Nowhere has the affordability crisis been felt as acutely as in Bozeman, a city of about 56,000 not far from Yellowstone National Park and the upscale Big Sky skiing community. Bozeman, where the median home sells for about $770,000, has had so many out-of-state arrivals over the years that Montanans sometimes refer to it as “Boz Angeles.” As high-end rentals in Bozeman spring up next to historic homes and new arrivals snap them up, a smattering of tents and RVs have begun to populate the outskirts of town: homeless residents priced out by rising rents. Many longtime Montanans bristle at the newcomers, and bumper stickers proclaiming some version of “Montana Is Full” abound, occasionally with an expletive attached. Some locals blame the popular television show “Yellowstone” for romanticizing the Mountain West, luring people to the state.

A lot of Americans now find themselves priced out of many of the most desirable communities in the country, and that is extremely unfortunate. If you are considering relocating to another part of the nation, I would encourage you to do it soon. Because global events are starting to really go haywire, and the clock is ticking.

It’s basic human psychology. When you’ve been #1 for much of your life, you want to remain #1 forever. You want to continue receiving all the perks and privileges of being #1.

So it is with the United States. It has been #1 since the end of the Second World War. It enjoys all kinds of benefits and privileges.

The USA is a capitalist state. It is largely controlled by the wealthy elite who don’t give a rat’s ass about the American people and their welfare.

This is why America is such a basket case of a nation. Look at all the domestic problems:

  • homelessness
  • gun violence
  • poor health care
  • declining life expectancy
  • poor education
  • crumbling infrastructure
  • opioid addiction
  • mass incarceration
  • systemic racism (“I can’t breathe”)
  • growing poverty and widening economic disparity
  • political turmoil (January 6, 2021)
  • crushing national debt ($35 trillion and growing by $1 trillion every 100 days)
  • etc.

Biden is in denial. The American people are in denial.

Denial is not a river in Africa.

Aeryn Goodspeed

“That shouldn’t be there…”Wren let the Stardrake cruise to a halt…well, as “halted” as anything could be in the shifting void of the universe. The impulse engine purred in its stasis, creating a soothing background noise as the old adventurer checked the readings on her screens and instruments.The sector she’d found herself in was devoid of any nearby celestial bodies, apart from asteroids that reminded her of driftwood in the ocean. Useful, sometimes, if collected from properly, and sometimes with bits of fishing line–in this case, thick, rusted cables from long-decayed shipwrecks–but simple sticks floating around in the water of space. She’d been on an internal, bittersweet nostalgia tangent about it when she’d noticed something odd pop up on her infrared reader.Something bigger than an asteroid. Or, at least, bigger than most of the asteroids around here.Her first thought had been that it could be another spacecraft, one with more of a population on it than her personal craft, but as it came into view of her illuminators she found it decidedly…organic. Far too wooden to belong in the vacuum of space.“WICR, give me a reading on this.”On her console, a silvery-blue light flickered on. WICR, which stood for Wavelength Information and Communications Relay, was essentially the brain of the ship, though it didn’t often pay attention to her unless she directly spoke to it.“A reading on what, Captain Caldwell?” said the bot’s voice. It really snuck into uncanny valley, she thought, how well WICR’s voice matched the inflection of a standard human’s voice.“Call me Wren,” she said, for perhaps the hundredth time. “Give me a reading on this unknown object we’re facing. It’s too big and too…wooden to be an asteroid.”“Certainly, Captain Caldwell,” he said, a hint of humor in his tone. There were a couple of contemplative beeps and the sound of something scanning, and she looked out the viewport at the object as a grid array appeared on it, mapping out its contours.She frowned, peering closer, then cursed as the grid vanished. “Do that again.”“The entire scan?” WICR asked.“No, the grid array. Let me see it.”The array flashed on again, lingering as she tried to make out its shape. It almost seemed like…a building?“Are you satisfied, Captain?” WICR asked.“Sort of,” she said, leaning back. “Have you finished scanning it?”“Yes. It seems to be a manufactured structure. The framework is steel and lead. The outer shell appears to be brick and mortar, made of what appears to be a mixture of wood, clay, and trace amounts of other materials. Due to the lead, it is difficult to get a reading on the inside, but–”“What’s the architecture’s origin?”“A planet known as La’uck Lao.”Wren frowned as a thought occurred to her. She was going through an asteroid field right now…“Can we get a read on some of these other objects around the ship?” she asked.WICR beeped again. More grids flashed out, flickering along contours before flitting off to the next object. Wren sat in relative silence, a feeling of dread settling in her stomach.She was getting too old for this.When WICR spoke again, his voice sounded apprehensive…or maybe Wren was projecting. “There are an odd assortment of objects out here,” he said. “Most of it is igneous stone. But there is also: Ice, plant matter such as splintered wood, and manufactured metal.”

A lot of random material, she thought. But not quite as random if my hunch is right.

“WICR, one more question,” she said. “Is there supposed to be a star system in this sector?”

“Yes,” WICR said. “The main sequence star known as Lak La’uck. It is a yellow star much like Earth’s Sun.”

“Known by whom?” she asked.

“By the people of the planet of…” A few more beeps seemed to hang in the air as Wren’s meaning registered in the AI’s computing processes. “The former planet of La’uck Lao.”

“Scan for the core of that sun, but keep a grid array on the front of that structure,” she said, pulling out her bandanna. She wrapped it around her head, securing her dreads before pulling on her space helmet.

“Are you planning on entering it, Captain?”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe I could find out what happened here.”

“And if you encounter a life form?”

She frowned. “Doubtful.” But she grabbed her holster anyway, double-checking the charge on her photon pistol before clipping it around her waist.

The expanse of the black void was cold. It settled into her aching joints with a stinging pressure, but she ignored it–arthritis be damned, she was going to figure out what this was. She drifted toward the building for a moment, enjoying the complete and utter silence of space for a moment, before switching on the propulsion system in her boots and gliding toward the ominously angular structure.

Well, she thought, her internal monologue the only sound in the universe, at least it has a regular door.

The door yawned open for her. Apart from the lines from the array leaking in, it was pitch-black inside, so she turned on her headlamp to look around. What she saw was…eerily familiar.

Books, was her first thought.

Rows upon rows, shelves upon shelves, some drifting in the zero-gravity and some neatly stacked where they’d been for countless days, were triangular shapes reminiscent of books. The covers seemed the same thickness as the pages, and had a dark hue with lighter writing on it, but they were books. She pulled one out of its stasis and flipped it open, examining the lettering–an unfamiliar alphabet, but undoubtedly writing. She examined its texture, and realized these were made of particle wood. The cover had some sort of painting on it; green flames surrounding a figure that looked vaguely humanoid, wielding what was perhaps La’uck Lao’s version of a sword.

She looked around. There were hundreds. Thousands, maybe. She turned off her propulsion boots and “walked” along the surface, eyes searching. This was a library! Arguably, at least in her eyes, one of the most important parts of a society: its knowledge.

Her heart fluttered in sympathy as she noticed the corpses floating in the dead space between the books. Somehow, this building had survived a catastrophe that had wiped out its planet and its people. It was possible that no one in the universe would ever be able to read these books again. The bodies were frozen, preserved, faces masks of horror and hands–or whatever they had instead of hands–permanently clenched as if they had been trying to hold onto something, anything, as their planet was rent asunder.

Or whatever had happened.

“WICR?” she said into the mouthpiece, then froze.

Something was watching her.

She wasn’t sure how she knew. There were no nearby sounds, there was no flicker of light save for her own, nothing had touched her. She couldn’t even pin it on the grid array lighting up a section of the wall beside her. And yet, there was a tingle of the hair pricking up on the back of her neck, the urge to run shifting her feet.

“Yes, Captain?”

She jumped out of her skin, her heart jumping into her throat. She had to be careful of that these days. As she internally reprimanded herself to calm down, though, she took a deep breath and looked around. Nothing but her shifted, and the sensation of eyes on her had gone.

“Your vitals appear to have spiked,” WICR said. “My apologies. What did you need?”

“It’s fine.” She took another deep breath. “Can you look up any other information on La’uck Lao? Alphabet, customs, stuff like that.”

“Certainly. Please hold.”

Wren continued to look around. Carefully moving between the books, she looked around at the architecture. More wood, more stone brick. Everything seemed to be triangular. The windows, doors, even a set of derelict stairs leading up to a second floor that was no longer there.

She followed the stairs anyway, then stopped, feeling the tingle of apprehension return. Her brow furrowed, and without turning, said, “I know you’re there.”

Silence. But she expected that. Murmuring to WICR to keep at his task and ignore her unless she called for help, she continued to bounce into the remnants of the second floor. It was nothing but the approximation of a rooftop now, and she sat, running a gloved hand through waving strands of what must have been a carpet. She faced the entrance to the stairs, eyes on the yawning black hole set in the off-black contours of the library.

Then she turned off her headlamp.

The feeling of being watched intensified. She felt as though she were surrounded, footsteps of a bustling patronage nullified by the blast. If she were to stand back up, she thought, she might headbutt whatever had walked up to her. Black eyes in a black face set against a black void peered at her. Invisible, hollow, and yet there just the same.

These were probably ghosts, she thought. Spirits of a planet that had been obliterated so fast the AI databases hadn’t caught up. None of the people that had been here had been properly laid to rest, because there was nowhere to lay them but a broken library surrounded by the shreds of its world.

“You probably don’t understand me,” she said. “But I want to help. I come from a planet that was destroyed just like yours. I live on a new planet now, one that was built to give people that lost their homes a new place.”

The presences around her stilled, and now she did feel something, a light pressure on her shoulder. It pressed hard enough she could feel it through her suit, but light enough she could tell it wasn’t trying to hurt her.

Or it was, and just unable. Still, it didn’t feel aggressive.

“WICR,” she hissed. “Can you get me the word for ‘friend’?”

“One moment. Who are you talking to?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll explain later.”

She held up the book she’d picked up from below, setting it on the floor in front of her. “I have an idea,” she said. “It might be a little hard. It’d take several trips. But I would like to move this library to my new home. But…well, I’m not really privy to your customs. It just seems more fitting for a place like this to be re-established somewhere that people of many displaced cultures can come and learn about yours.”

The pressure on her arm increased, then fell away. She still felt the presence of several somethings around her, but continued to see nothing. WICR’s voice spoke in her earpiece, and she nodded.

“Ki’lom,” she said.

Abruptly, the atmosphere seemed to change. It felt more…energetic. Twin pinpricks flashed before her, reflecting in the fiberglass of her faceplate. The book she’d placed before her was lifted up, then placed firmly into her arms.

A voice spoke, raspy but warm. “Ki’lom.”

 

*

 

Several months later, the last ship to carry the final pieces of La’uck Lao Library descended on the flatlands of Hakshaithlin. Wren and Joa, her friend from Earth, had picked out a plot of land that almost matched a photo they’d found in the old library, and it had been developed–well, about as well as it could be–to accommodate both the library and the cemetery. It was grueling work, but on a planet filled with the lucky unfortunates of the universe, most of everyone was willing to pitch in to help.

Wren stood at the gate, watching a melting pot of workers fix up what they could of the library. She held that first book in her hands–after a few months she was still missing the meaning of most of the words, but she could at least make out what they spelled out. It was a fantasy story, from what she could tell, about a legendary figure from folklore.

She found herself walking down the rows of gravestones. Or, perhaps, the word “garden” fit this plot better. The locals had planted flowers around the stones, greeting the dead into this haven just as warmly as they greeted the living.

A few rows in, she creaked her way into a seated position in front of a headstone. It had been carved with lettering found tattooed on the alien’s arm, which had been confirmed by WICR to be a form of identification. As she sat, she placed the book in her lap.

“I wish we could’ve met,” she said. “I would’ve liked to be friends.”

She felt that pressure on her arm again, and turned to see a pale, misty figure sitting beside her. She couldn’t make out a single distinctive feature save two pinpricks of light where the eyes would be, but she got the impression it was smiling. Or, well, exuded the emotion of smiling. She doubted it would look the same to her.

“Ka’ehr.”

The word barely reached her ears, and in the next moment the figure had dissolved. She thought to ask WICR to translate the word, but after a moment of thought she realized she knew exactly what it meant. She smiled.

“You’re welcome,” she said to the breeze.

I once saw one of my customers do something absolutely genius when I worked as a lowly till grunt at Sainsbury’s.

So what did this customer do? Walk up to my till with a basket of shopping, followed by a whole tray of Avocados; I reckon about 30 of them, which I dutifully scanned, slightly bemused.

Perhaps they just really love making guacamole? I thought.

These particular Avocados were nearly out of date so were heavily discounted from £1.00 to 10p each. A pair of Avocados was now a bargain at 20p.

Now, it turns out our Avocados were also on offer. Not a great offer, just buy 2, save 50p. However, the till system was apparently dumb and didn’t take into account reductions before applying this discount.

This customer clearly knew that bug existed.

So those bargain Avocados looked even more delicious when the 50p discount made them cost -30p a pair…

I stared in amusement as the -30p discounts rolled in and their shopping bill became smaller and smaller and smaller, until everything they bought was essentially free. They walked out of there smiling and I sat there, pondering just how dumb the checkout software writers were at Sainsbury’s.

Nevertheless, sometime later I emailed management and told them what I’d seen. Later that year I tried the same thing, but alas, it seems they had discovered the bug and fixed it…

Oh well, at least those guys got free shopping.

All I got was a shit load of squishy Avocados…

China is overwhelming Western Imperialism. Who is the dictator ? “必看”

Artichoke Dip Pizza

An entire pizza topping devoted to the delicious and popular artichoke dip!

artichoke dip pizza
artichoke dip pizza

Prep: 15 min | Bake: 12 to 15 min | Yield: 1 (12 inch) pizza

Ingredients

Crust

  • 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 (2 1/4 teaspoons) envelope Fleischmann’s® Pizza Crust Yeast
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2/3 cup very warm water (120 to 130 degrees F)
  • 3 tablespoons corn oil

Topping

  • 1 (14 ounce) can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
  • 2/3 cup mayonnaise
  • 1 1/4 cups shredded Parmesan cheese, divided
  • 1 (4 ounce) can chopped green chiles
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon minced onion
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
  • 1 cup crushed tortilla chips
  • 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 425 degrees F.
  2. Combine 1 cup flour, undissolved yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Add very warm water and oil; mix until well blended, about 1 minute. Gradually add enough remaining flour to make a soft dough. Dough should form a ball and will be slightly sticky. Knead** on a floured surface, adding additional flour if necessary, until smooth and elastic, about 4 minutes.
  3. Pat dough with floured hands to fill greased pizza pan or baking sheet. OR roll dough on a floured counter to a 12 inch circle; place in greased pizza pan or baking sheet. Form a rim by pinching the edge of the dough.
  4. Mix together artichokes, mayonnaise, 1 cup Parmesan cheese, chiles, garlic powder and minced onion in a large bowl. Stir until well blended.
  5. Layer crust with 3/4 cup mozzarella cheese, topping mixture and remaining cheeses. Sprinkle with tortilla chips.
  6. Bake on lowest oven rack for 12 to 15 minutes, until cheese is bubbly and crust is browned.
  7. Remove from oven and sprinkle with parsley.

Notes

* If you don’t have a thermometer, water should feel very warm to the touch. ** To knead the dough, add just enough flour to the dough and your hands to keep the dough from sticking. Flatten dough and fold it toward you.Using the heels of your hands, push the dough away with a rolling motion. Rotate dough a quarter turn and repeat the “fold, push and turn” steps. Keep kneading dough until it is smooth and elastic. Use a little more flour if dough becomes too sticky, always working the flour into the ball of dough.

Please mark my answer for future reference.

The only way for the United States to defeat China is to make the Chinese Communist Party lose the support of its people. If this can be achieved, the U.S. wouldn’t need to go to war; it could succeed through media propaganda or NGO-led social unrest. In Sun Tzu’s Art of War, this is called “winning without fighting.”(不战以屈人之兵)

What shocked the Chinese the most about the collapse of the Soviet Union? It was that when the Soviet Communist Party was dissolved, this vast red empire, the first socialist country in human history built through countless sacrifices, did not have a single person step forward to defend it. The Chinese assessment was: “Not a single hero.”(竟无一人是男儿)

I believe the collapse of the Soviet Union had a profound impact on the Chinese Communist Party. They realized that if a party cannot provide a good life for its people, fails to listen to them, and becomes a privileged class, turning into an imperialist state that invades or economically exploits other nations (such as the Soviet actions in Afghanistan, Eastern Europe, and Warsaw Pact countries), then that party is destined to perish.

In response, the Chinese Communist Party initiated a series of rapid reforms in the 1990s, continuing to this day. These measures include:

  • Actively developing the economy to make people prosperous.
  • Prioritizing industries related to people’s daily lives over military industries, enriching people’s lives.
  • Efforts to develop agriculture, eradicating famine that had plagued China for millennia.
  • Focusing on high-tech military capabilities rather than redundant manpower tactics, cutting military personnel multiple times to release young productivity into economic activities.
  • Continuously combating corruption within the party.
  • Expanding higher education to produce numerous engineers rather than lawyers or journalists.
  • Massive infrastructure projects, extending roads and bridges to remote areas to help lift impoverished people out of isolation and change their destinies.
  • Persistently helping people escape poverty.
  • Developing the economy and improving lives in ethnic minority regions, driving out extreme religious thoughts and focusing people on the pursuit of secular happiness.
  • Implementing strict civil servant management, dismissing or prosecuting those who violate ethics or laws.
  • Encouraging people to learn, study abroad, and travel overseas to understand the outside world, rather than restricting information, while focusing on social and economic progress to let people feel that China is approaching developed country status.
  • Improving social management and administrative efficiency, addressing every social issue as much as possible.

After decades of effort, the Chinese government has made significant progress in these areas. This leads Chinese people to believe that the Chinese Communist Party can continue to govern because they are doing a good job.

I know some might say, “The CCP has all the power, and ordinary people cannot reject their rule.” But just recall the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s when hundreds of millions of angry citizens occupied government institutions, and many officials met violent deaths. That can be seen as a bottom-up power grab because people felt the government had betrayed Mao’s ideas.

In summary, if the CPC were truly terrible, a revolution in China would be inevitable because the Chinese are not superstitious. In ancient times, when Europeans believed in the divine right of kings, the Chinese perspective was “the mandate of heaven.” Only when secular life was happy would the emperor be considered a “wise ruler” by the people. Otherwise, no matter how oppressive the government was, it would eventually fall. Chinese historians would then record the fact: “A certain emperor oppressed the people, a revolution broke out, and the dynasty fell.” The CPC’s Political Consultative Conference includes many historians who, compared to Western lawyers and journalists, are the real “kings without crowns.” The good and bad of any regime cannot escape their pens.

The lyrics of the Internationale say: “There are no saviors, we rely on neither gods nor emperors.” China, having experienced dozens of dynastic changes in its history, understands well that if it betrays the people and forms a privileged class of its own, its end is inevitable. Mao Zedong’s greatness lies in educating the Chinese people with his ideology: The sole purpose of the Chinese Communist Party is to serve the people. If you find them betraying this goal, you should rise up and overthrow the regime.

As of now, I believe the Chinese Communist Party is doing well. The Chinese people trust them. Therefore, if a war were to break out between two superpowers, how could a country with 1.4 billion people under the effective 100% management of the CCP lose?

Of course, it must be acknowledged that if the U.S. continues to focus on scientific research, improving the lives of its people, and enhancing social management, instead of being run by addicts, minority groups, inexperienced businessmen, Jewish extremists, liars, and a sleepy old man, it will remain a formidable opponent.

But today’s America, while not a joke, increasingly resembles one. China hopes its enemy is the “beacon of humanity” America, not the current version.

P.S. I respect all LGBTQ+ individuals.My first degree thesis was on sexual minorities in China.In China, sexual minorities have relatively free space for their activities. However, the Chinese government prefers that it not become a public issue.The reason is that the United States has a tradition in its foreign relations: certain covert agencies identify obscure topics in other countries and, through media operations, turn them into hot issues. Then, they search for vulnerabilities behind these topics from various angles and have opinion leaders polarize the issue. Consequently, unity disappears, and social conflicts erupt. This is the typical approach of American NGOs, as I’ve observed in my 23 years of experience working on the internet. Therefore, Americans should play these games in their own country.

Hard dose of reality.

We need to be reminded about our place in society

Second-hand story here:

Over 40 years ago I shared a house with a musician buddy who had a long-time girlfriend. Sonja was a stunning brunette who was frighteningly smart and had a sharp sense of humor. She was the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants and had a very good job at a financial firm on 85th floor of what is now the Willis Tower (aka Sears Tower, Chicago, USA).

One day Sonja left her office in the stratosphere and got in an elevator car with two men in business suits at the back. When the doors closed, the two men started trading increasingly lascivious comments about her, what she was wearing, what they would like to do with her, all flagrantly sexist and offensive. They were speaking in Ukrainian and must have thought “what are the odds….?” and that they were “safe”.
Sonja waited until the car stopped, then hit the “STOP” button before the doors could open, and then laid into those two guys for a solid 30 seconds…… in fluent Ukrainian. She then hit the 80th floor button, the Close Door button, and the Emergency buttons in quick succession and stepped out, turning just in time to see the “priceless” look on the faces of the men in the elevator.

Wish I’d been there to see that, but Sonja’s satisfaction in telling the story was a treat.

I sure was. I was driving home from work on route 30 eastbound about 4 pm. I was about halfway between the Hellam and the Wrightsville exits. It was a hot day and even though I had a conceal carry permit. I had my Star 9mm BKM lying on the passenger seat because the holster was uncomfortable while sitting. Looking in my rear view mirror I observed 4 cars behind me. The fourth car moved into the left lane and as he passed the third car he slammed into it forcing it onto the shoulder. He continued on and as passing the second car he slammed into it also forcing it to the shoulder. He did the same thing to the car just behind me. As he pulled up beside me. He started over toward me. He was less than a foot from me. I quickly grabbed my pistol from the passenger seat and stuck it out the driver’s window. He immediately moved back into his lane and sped away. I managed to get his license number as he pulled ahead of me. At that time in the early 80’s I didn’t have a cell phone. I got off the Wrightsville exit, went to a pay phone, called the police, and reported the incidence. I was told a few days later by the local police that the driver was caught by the Coatesville, PA. police. It was a stolen car and the driver had mental issues.

I got a vid-call from Taylor233. She looked and sounded excited.“They’ve found another one!”The excitement was contagious; I felt my heart-rate shoot up.“What condition?”“Pretty good! It was in a vac-pac.”I was already mentally rearranging my schedule so that I could make it along to the biblioteque asap.“Have they got anyone on it?” I asked, trying to keep the euphoria out of my voice.“I think Harris115 might have applied,” Taylor233 said, her tone consolatory.“We’ll see about that!” I said and hung up, immediately embarrassed at not thanking her for the information.I punched a code into the vid-fon. Harris115’s face appeared on the screen.“So you’ve heard?” he said.

“Yes. And I’ve also heard that you’re going for it.”

“Absolutely!”

I smiled at his wild enthusiasm, knowing that it was a bubble I was about to burst.

“You’ll remember, though…” I paused to allow him to connect the dots.

“No!” he exclaimed, his hopes crushed.

“It’s what we agreed. You’d get the Dickens and I’d get … whatever this one is.”

“But maybe–” he began. I cut him off.

“A deal’s a deal, Harris.”

His shoulders sagged visibly.

“All right, I’ll withdraw,” he mumbled.

Pausing only to tell the robo-sec to cancel all my appointments, I packed up my compu and rushed out of the office, making the biblioteque in record time, despite the midday congestion in the corridors. For me, lunch would have to wait.

I caught the Director just as she was leaving. She kindly agreed to a brief meeting, in which I laid out my credentials – not for the first time. She must have been convinced by them and my earnestness because she signed there and then the access digi-form. I made a point of thanking her profusely (you never know when being on good terms with the high-ups might come in useful). Then I made straight for the biblioteque lab.

Barber842 was on duty. We get on well together, so he smiled when he saw me.

“Word gets round quick!” he joked.

“It does! So tell me – what have we got?”

He led me through to the inner room, bathed as usual in filtered light. And there it was, lying in the middle of the steel table.

“The robo-scavs found it yesterday,” he whispered; this particular room always engenders hush. “It was concealed under rubble and a reinforced-concrete beam – on its own, I’m afraid. Whoever left it had the presence of mind to place it in a vac-pac.”

I nodded, disappointed at there being only one, but eager to get on with the job.

“You’ve geigered it, I suppose?”

“Of course! The box was saturated, but the artefact’s clean.”

“No radiation at all?”

“Tiny traces, but harmless.”

I rubbed my hands together.

“So, can I get started?”

“You’re keen, aren’t you?! I’ll get you a kit.”

I sat down at the table and looked longingly at the orange and cream object of … yes, my desire.

Barber842 returned with the treatment kit.

“It’s all yours,” he said, patting me on the shoulder and retiring.

And so here I am.

I boot up my compu and take some bio-plas gloves from the kit, along with a pair of fine tweezers. This moment is delicious: observing and wondering where to begin.

“From the beginning, I suppose,” I giggle; I feel like a young child.

My first move is to smell it. There’s nothing that quite matches this sensation. I don’t have references to liken it to other smells, but it’s unique … or rather, it’s similar to the other three I’ve had the privilege to handle, but unlike anything else in this confined world.

I spend several minutes on this act, such is the pleasure I derive from it. While I inhale the intoxicating scent, I register the seemingly incompatible sadness I feel: that this would have been one of millions – no, billions – incinerated in no time at all. I bemoan the simultaneous frying of systems, destroying digital copies. And I rage silently at the lack of foresight of engineers, who had designed and produced back-up systems for functional operations – we wouldn’t be here otherwise – but had failed to provide protection for cultural heritage.

The scent pulls me out of the bitterness and returns me to the task at hand. I sit up straight and regard the cover: that orange and cream – which was probably once white – and a word that stands out: Lover.

Love. A thing I’ve heard of, naturally, but have never experienced – as far as I know. I’m sure, though, that it’s a positive thing. I follow some simple logic: if a person who teaches is a teacher, and a person who writes is a writer, then a ‘lover’ must be a person who loves. For some reason, this little exercise warms my inside and I feel myself smiling.

The Director has entrusted me with an important task, though, and I force myself to concentrate. I have to read, analyse, and rate, then recommend – or not – that this artefact be placed in the biblioteque itself, along with the almost one hundred companions which have gone through the same process. Others have been destroyed after analysis – a fact which pains me – because of their apparently subversive nature. ‘Subversive’ is a subjective notion, I’d say … though never aloud.

I take the tweezers, pinch the side of the cover, lift it. And here again I spend several minutes inhaling the scent of the inside, which is even more exhilarating than before.

The first few pages I turn very gingerly – they’re extremely frail and flake a little under the pressure of the tweezers. Later, if recommended, it’ll be treated to make it more resilient. There’s important information on these pages, most notably the date: 1960. I shake my head in wonder at the vastness of time between then and now, and if anything, I proceed with even more reverential care.

Then I get to the first page proper, and I have to sit back and pause; I realize I’ve been holding my breath. I can see the block of text waiting for me to consume it, but it’s out of focus for the moment. I must be ready. This is a momentous occasion, and I cannot rush into it, however much I’d like to.

I’ve relaxed enough. I’m breathing relatively normally. I lean forward.

Parts of the first paragraph hit me like a hammer:

The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes.

It appears to be speaking of these times. How can it be? It feels like magic. And then:

We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

I feel dizzy with the striking voice speaking to me from distant times. And my heart races as I read on, impatient now to find out who the person of the title is.

This Lady Chatterley, who has a lover.

By listening carefully and paying attention!!

I had a friend who was constantly blathering on on her Facebook and Instagram accounts about good energy, paying things forward, saving the rhino, etc. etc. You know the type.

I enjoyed her company, although she enjoyed talking about herself too much for my tastes, but I believed she had a good heart and was in need of a friend. She didn’t seem to have many so I did what I could as a good listener.

But the more I listened the more I heard about the injustices she had suffered, money issues (she was obsessive about money and never seemed to have enough yet I put this down to insecurity), how no one invited her anywhere, etc., etc.

Fast forward a couple of months and there was a an elderly man we would run into during our walks at lunch hour. I truly enjoyed talking to him, he was very nice and had interesting things to say so I always tried to give him some time on our walks.

One day, however, my friend stated that she didn’t like talking to him. That he was old and boring. I stated that it may be the highlight of his day to talk to us as he probably doesn’t get out much and he was so nice, what was the harm. I’ll never forget her reply,

“Well, I’m not being nice to anyone unless I want something from them!”

That shocked me so much my head snapped back and I finally understood why she was lonely. On the cover she ticked all the boxes of good energy, spirituality, giving back, etc. But the truth was, she didn’t give a shit about anyone but herself.

And that, my friends, was the end of our friendship. So listen up and pay attention, not just to what people say but how they behave.

In many ancient texts, labourers known as 小二/”little twos” who worked at tea houses and inns were given gratuities by the upper classes. Some of these young men were described as grovelling before their wealthier patrons, in the hopes of having a few extra copper coins dropped at their feet.

That said, it is believed that tipping did not exist as a social convention in China at the time. It was mostly done to flaunt one’s wealth (i.e. “flex”).

Tipping as a culture was only introduced to China during the late Qing/early Minguo era, first existing in foreign-occupied territories such as Shanghai. Restaurant owners supported such a custom, as they could get away with paying their workers way less.

The “little twos” were expected to make their living by bothering the patrons. If the patrons refused to tip, their servers would decline to provide any further service, or harass them (e.g. blocking the door, spilling tea on their clothes) until they were tipped. Quarrels and fights over tips were a common sight.

As the fights were beginning to affect business, restaurant owners came up with a new strategy: a mandatory 10% “service charge”(加一服務費) along with the bill. In theory this extra 10% would go to the servers, but in reality the owners would keep most of it for themselves.

To counteract the tip-theft, many servers resorted to “tip-shaming” their patrons. As a patron paid for his meal and the 10% service charge, the server would shout out how much tips they received. On the surface this was to prove they weren’t pocketing any extra money, but in truth this was to shame the patrons into tipping just a bit more under the table.

And if the patron didn’t get the message the first time, the server would find ways to make his life more difficult than it had to be.

Tipping was banned after the communists came to power in the mainland, as it was considered exploitative and degrading to both the patrons and the servers. Instead, restaurant workers are now expected to be paid a fair wage for their labour. Tipping a server in modern day China would bring back ugly memories of the past, and would be seen as an insult.

In Hong Kong, however, tipping culture still exists. Most restaurants here still charge you an extra 10% for “service”, even self-service restaurants. It is an open secret that most restaurant owners simply pocket that money, but there appears to be no law against this sort of thing, and the locals just go along with it.

Killer Patents & Secret Science Vol. 2 | Forbidden Medical Cures

Cast-Iron Skillet Pizza

I would name this “Caprese Pizza.” It’s heavenly!

cast iron skillet pizza featured
cast iron skillet pizza featured

Prep: 10 min | Cook: 20 min | Yield: 2 (9 to 10 inch) pizzas

Ingredients

  • 1 pound store-bought pizza dough (room temperature)
  • 1 ripe tomato, thinly sliced
  • 1/4 pound fresh mozzarella cheese, diced
  • Coarse sea salt
  • 2 tablespoons Filippo Berio Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  • 1/2 cup shredded fresh basil

Instructions

  1. Heat well-oiled cast-iron or nonstick 10 or 12 inch frying pan over medium heat for 5 minutes.
  2. Divide dough in half; roll one half into round 1 inch smaller than diameter of pan.
  3. Cook dough in hot pan until dough begins to rise and bottom starts to brown. Using metal spatula, turn carefully. Layer half the tomato slices over dough; scatter half the mozzarella over top. Lower heat to medium-low; cook until mozzarella melts.
  4. Using metal spatula, transfer pizza to cutting board. Sprinkle with salt; drizzle with half the olive oil.
  5. Cut into wedges; sprinkle half the basil over top.
  6. Repeat with remaining ingredients.

I’ve had a couple of bullies in my day. However, there is one in particular who really stands out to this day. I was attending a school where my father was a custodian. My father would of course be the one to open up the school doors every morning and because of that, my siblings and I would be the first children in the building everyday. He made sure all of the classrooms were unlocked for the teachers, made sure the cafeteria tables were set up for breakfast time and other things to have the school setup for opening at 8 am for students. Every grade had a certain section in the school where they would line up and wait for their teachers to get them and walk to class. I was in 5th grade, so the 5th and 6th grade classes lined up in the gym, because that was our designated area. Now within the gym, there were labels on the gym floor for each class. Being that I was always in the school before the rest of the students, I would always be the first in line for our class spot. Well, on this particular day, a girl named Angela thought it would be funny to do something that she was dared to. As I was standing in line, minding my business, a swift open handed arm extended slap from the pits of hell came out of nowhere from behind me, and burned the heck out of my face. In shock, I turned around while holding the right side of my face and asked her why she slapped me. Meanwhile, the boy I had a huge crush on was laughing like a dang hyena. The bully proceeds to say “ Because you’re always first on line and you think you’re better than all of us because your dad works here”. When I tell you I thought that was the most idiotic reason to get slapped, that was the most idiotic reason! At the time I was so shy and wasn’t a fighter, so I immediately ran off crying trying to find my dad. I ended up finding him and told him what happened. He was furious and began walking so fast and asked if I slapped her back. Of course I said no, and he was infuriated. We walked back to the gym and he immediately told the girl to keep her hands to herself and that the next time she put her hands on me, that it wouldn’t be good. Now, I don’t know what that meant, but she didn’t bother me for the rest of the school year. Where she is to this day, I have no clue, and honestly don’t care. She was such a bully to other kids and I really disliked her. A memory I would give anything to erase!

CIA Classified Book about the Pole Shift, Mass Extinctions and The True Adam & Eve Story

Life changes

I once invited one of my work colleague to my house for dinner along with her family. We had just started off with our friendship at work and I was inviting her for the first time. Her mother lived with her and I invited her as well. And me and my husband spent a lot of time cooking for them and the preparations.

They came on time, she was accompanied by her husband, mother and also her 1 year old kid. Within 10 minutes of coming in to my house, the kid was with her husband and my husband is talking to her husband.

She and her mother just get up and start going through all the stuff in my house. First they went to the kitchen, start opening my drawers there and going through all my things. Then my fridge and she goes “wow, you cooked so much food for us”.

Then they walk straight into my bedroom, she and her mother literally start opening my cupboards and drawers and start going through my personal things. I just stand, not saying a word, very awkward. Wondering what’s happening. She goes through my clothing, my husband’s and all our personal things.

Her mother on the other side, going through my jewelry. And asking me where I brought it from and how much it costs !

Then after 30 minutes they both walked out to the living room, and go “thanks for inviting us, we are leaving now”. I go “please have the food, it’s late and we prepared it specially for you guys”.

She “No, I forgot to tell you but I have to go to another friend’s house and it’s getting late. We will have dinner some other time. Thanks for inviting us though”.

We didn’t say anything, and they left. There was lot of food now, which thankfully we had some lovely neighbors we could share with.

And later I noticed one of my bracelets missing, noticed it after days but didn’t think much of it.

Months later, I saw her wearing the same missing bracelet to the office.

The war in Ukraine is getting worse, the Genozide in Gaza is still in full swing, and the Neocons are dreaming of even more war. Luckily, outside the West nobody is taking the narratives coming from Washington, Brussels and Berlin serious anymore. Yet, the world has never been in worse danger from nuclear annihilation and threatened by a 3ed World War than now. How can we explain so much blind hubris and suicidal stupidity?

We last talked in August, 2023, it’s now June 2024, and it seems to me that things have only gotten worse for Ukraine, worse for the NATO countries, we are at the brink of further escalation with Russia, with official OKs to use NATO weapons against the Russia proper and maybe even NATO boots on the ground, and there is still no willingness in the west to pick up the Russians on their various signals that they would want to negotiate based on what has been reached in Istanbul which Putin recently again said can be—together with the realities on the battlefield—the basis for serious negotiation. Do you agree with my assessment or how do you view what happened in the past months?

The forgotten normal

During the 1960’s there were all kinds of inventions and stuff that you could buy. Sometimes these were found in the back of magazines like Popular Science, or shown on television in the form of a commercial. You know the drill; “As seen on television.”

Well, my uncle Harry was quite the character. He even started a “pirate” radio station when he was a teenager in the 1930’s. Got in trouble for it too. Heh heh.

Anyways he was always trying out one gadget or the other. One time he had this weird colored sheet of plastic that he had in front of the television. This was back in the days when most televisions were black and white only. And this was long before remote controls too.

TV
TV

This sheet was clear but had three colored stripes. The top was transparent blue. The bottom was transparent brown, and the middle was a transparent yellow.

It gave an illusion, sort of, of a blue sky, and green grass with a yellow house in the picture.

Personally, I thought it was silly and hated it. I think that he did as well. He ended up throwing it away the next week or so.

Oh, my… so many things that were normal back in the day has become forgotten in the real world.

Today…

A student threatened to sue me over the way I’d graded his homework.

Well ok, he threatened to sue the university because of the way I’d graded his homework. But I do remember thinking that I’d definitely had the full American experience when that happened.

Here’s how it happened…

I was a teaching assistant on an introductory astronomy class for undergraduate students. I taught a lab class of 20 or so students, and I graded their homework assignments.

One of my students had terrible hand writing, and really wasn’t putting much effort into presenting his work clearly. I couldn’t decipher some of his work so I graded him down on some of the answers. He came to see me after class and he deciphered his work for me and I could see that he had got the correct answer. I advised him that sometimes it’s not enough to know the right answer, you also have to be able to demonstrate that you know. But I gave him the extra points for the assignment and told him he was always welcome to query my grading, that I was not infallible.

He responded – “Thanks. I hope to go to law school so it’s important to me that I always fight my corner.”

Ok I thought, weird response but he’s young, whatever.

The next week the professor teaching the course told us that he was trying to focus in class on the difference between accuracy and precision, and that even if some of the students forgot all he ever taught them about astronomy, he hoped that understanding the difference between accuracy and precision would prove useful to them in future years. He instructed us to grade the homework accordingly.

My student’s homework came in, a mess again, and with some wrong answers and some ambiguous ones. So I graded him down for those.

Sure enough, he came to see me after class.


The first question showed a picture of the crescent moon, and asked students to indicate where the terminator was. He drew three arrows pointing to three different parts of the moon, saying basically “there, or there, or there”. Only one of the lines pointed to the terminator (the division between night and day on the moon) the other lines pointed to the edges of the moon on both the day and the night side. Well clearly he didn’t know the answer. When he came to see me he admitted as much, so I explained.

He said “well I thought that was possible, that’s why it’s one of the options I gave you”. Like he was setting me a multiple choice quiz!

I pointed out that he also gave me two incorrect answers.

“Well now I know which is correct, and I’ve demonstrated that I understand, so you should let me have the points.”

No, I told him, the time to demonstrate his understanding was when he handed in his homework, and he could have proven his understanding then by showing only the correct answer! He wasn’t happy, but we moved on.


Another question had students calculating the orbital period of Neptune, given that Neptune has a semi-major axis of 30 AU. If you plug in the numbers into a calculator it will give you an answer of 163.3167673 years, and that’s exactly what he (and others in the class) put. But it’s not correct. Wikipedia gives the orbital period as 164.8 years. There are three reasons why his answer was wrong, the first is that the formula that the class were expected to use (Kepler’s third law) is only an approximation, and the second (which is bigger than the first) is that Neptune’s semi-major axis is only approximately 30 AU (Wikipedia says 30.11 AU). Neither of those points were an issue; if there’s one science that doesn’t worry too much about approximations it’s astronomy. The real reason he was wrong was that he didn’t acknowledge that approximation; he provided more precision than was justified by the accuracy of the information we provided. By giving his answer to 7 decimal places he was claiming he knew the orbital period of Neptune to within 4 seconds. And he was out by 1.5 years, that’s a factor of 12 million! Given the information we provided, the answer I wanted to see was 160 years. I’d have given him full marks if he’d written 163 years, probably even 163.3 years. 200 years would have been accurate if you’d assumed precision to the nearest 100. But, as the professor instructed, I deducted a couple of points because his excessive precision meant that his answer was wrong.

Well, he didn’t like my explanation. He demanded the extra points! Precision is a good thing surely! I offered to take more time to try and explain some more, but he stormed out. I spent the week thinking of ways to explain the subtle difference more clearly, because he wasn’t the only one in my class that was struggling with it. But he never showed up at any of my classes after that.


A few days later the professor got in touch. The student had complained and wanted me fired! I was teaching students to be less precise in their work! I explained the situation and the professor said it sounded about right. He said he’d completely backed me up and I suspect he wasn’t quite as diplomatic as I tried to be. I didn’t have any further involvement in the case but the professor kept me updated.

The student tried to drop out of the class but the university informed him that he was too far through the semester to do that without paying the tuition fees. He tried to argue that the professor and I had a vendetta against him and he couldn’t expect a fair grade. The professor assured the university that this wasn’t the case. Then he demanded a meeting with someone senior, and he brought his Mom along, who was a lawyer (surprise surprise). They let the university know that they would be beginning legal actions if it didn’t back down, so back down it did. I understand why the university didn’t bother fighting the case, but I thought it was a shame. I thought it would have done him some good if Mr I-Always-Fight-My-Corner learnt that sometimes you lose, especially when you are in the wrong. Maybe a more important life lesson than the difference between precision and accuracy.


The following week I did take the time to explain the difference again. I told them a joke…

A man walks into the natural history museum and looks up at the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and says aloud “I wonder how old that is”.

A janitor, mopping the floor nearby, comes over and says “that dinosaur is 80 million and 16 years old”.

“Oh really?” Says the man.

“Yes, I know that because I asked the very same question when I started working here 16 years ago today.”

Nobody laughed. That’s ok I said, I didn’t say it was a good joke, but I can tell by the way you all rolled your eyes that you ‘got’ it. 80 million years is accurate if you assume a precision of a few million or a few tens of million years. But you all understand why the janitor was wrong to believe he knew the age of the dinosaur to the nearest year.

None of my students made the same mistake in any of their homework assignments after that.

It was a night draped in the deception of stars over Baltimore, 1840, where shadows fell like cloaks over cobblestone streets. Dr. Simon Dorset emerged from the obscure folds of an alley, the hum of his time machine dissipating into the ether of history. He adjusted the lapels of his meticulously chosen 19th-century attire, feeling the weight and wonder of epochs as he tread discreetly among the citizens of the past.His ebony walking stick clicked rhythmically against the stones, a metronome to his swirling thoughts. This was not merely a visit; it was an anachronistic pilgrimage. Simon’s destination tonight was more elusive and intoxicating than any artifact—a meeting with the enigmatic Edgar Allan Poe.A glance at his pocket watch reminded him of time’s cruel precision, especially for one stolen from another era. He allowed himself a brief moment to jot down observations in his leather-bound journal, noting the gaslight that flickered like ghostly sentinels guiding his path.As he entered the local tavern, a hubbub of raucous laughter and smoky whispers washed over him. He absorbed the milieu, each detail a precious nugget of information. The patrons, swathed in the comfortable drab of labor and the occasional flash of foppish textile, provided a carousel of character study. Edgar Allan Poe was a frequent visitor here—an icon whose conversations might reveal more than his written words ever could.Positioning himself at the bar, Simon sipped a drink, his eyes and ears open, scrutinizing each face and catching snatches of conversation that danced on the air. His guise as a visiting publisher from England seemed impermeable as he matched the locutions and cadences of his surroundings.His opportunity arose when a man of unmistakable countenance stepped through the doorway. Edgar Allan Poe, known by portrait and prose, moved with a somber grace, his eyes holding an unearthly fascination. Simon initiated a dialogue, discussing the philosophical quandaries inherent in modern Romantic literature—a surefire way to pique Poe’s interest. 

Poe’s response was immediate and intense, providing a fertile ground for deeper discussion. “Ah, sir, you understand the darkness of the soul entwined with the light of creativity,” Poe remarked, his voice tinged with a melancholic timbre. Their conversation quickly moved from the public earshot to the intimate setting of Poe’s study.

 

The study was a chaos of inspiration—papers strewn like fallen leaves in autumn, books stacked in teetering columns of thought. Simon’s heart raced as he eyed the manuscripts cluttering the desk. In a moment of distraction for Poe, his gaze fell upon a specific stack of papers penned in a hurried yet deliberate script.

 

Topics and metaphors unknown to the scholars of Simon’s time beckoned from those pages. The lure of academic glory flickered before him, stirring a tempest of ethical and temporal dilemmas. His plan emerged almost fully formed—a theft that would echo through the centuries but could brand him an eternal brigand in the annals of time.

 

Weeks passed, and a cordial invitation to a social gala at Poe’s abode presented the perfect milieu for his surreptitious intent. Under the guise of evening air necessity, Simon navigated back to the tempest of paper and ink. The manuscript was now in his grasp, a treasure far more potent than mere gold. Yet, in his haste, Simon’s modern smartphone—a slab of technology utterly alien to the 19th century—slipped from his pocket, left on Poe’s mahogany desk.

 

With a swirling cloak and a heart pounding against the corset of his own deceit, Simon returned to his era, leaving behind an anachronism that would unravel time’s tightly knit fabric.

 

The morning sun, indifferent in its rise, found Edgar Allan Poe in contemplative solitude. As light spilled across his desk, the unusual sheen of the abandoned smartphone caught his attention. It lay there, stark and intrusive among the soft yellowing papers of his literary endeavors. Curiosity, that relentless driver of human behavior, prompted Poe to reach for the device, his fingertips brushing against the cold, smooth surface. The screen flickered to life at his touch, illuminating his face with a pale, eerie glow.

 

Simon, safely ensconced back in his time, felt the immediate ripple of his accidental influence. The Baltimore he returned to bore scant resemblance to the one he had left. Buildings bristled with unfathomable technology, the skyline jagged with the spires of progress grown wild, fed by an anachronistic seed. His stomach churned with the realization that history had veered catastrophically off course.

 

Poe, meanwhile, was originally viewed as the harbinger of this new era. Word spread through the city with the speed of fire through dry timber. The enigmatic device held secrets of light and knowledge, screens within screens—miracles undreamed of even in the fevered pitches of the most fantastical literatures.

 

It wasn’t long before Poe was thronged by the curious and the ambitious, their minds alight with possibilities. Inventors, scholars, rogues—they all wanted a piece of the future unveiled. Each touch, each interaction spun a new thread of history, weaving a tapestry far removed from the one Simon knew.

 

Back in his altered present, Dr. Simon Dorset was consumed by an urgent need to correct this unintended aberration. The historical and cultural legacy of Poe, once defined by his mysterious and macabre tales, was now overshadowed by a technological boom he had unwittingly initiated. Simon’s own research spiraled into obsolescence; the Poe he revered was lost to a world dazzled by premature progress.

 

The gravity of his error was a weight he could barely sustain. Turning to his colleagues and historical chronicles yielded only scant mentions of Poe—the poet and author were eclipsed by Poe, the accidental father of a technological revolution. Simon’s isolation grew, paralleled only by his desperation.

 

Resolving to undo the harm, Simon reactivated his time machine, dismissing the cascade of warnings displayed by the machine’s diagnostics. The temporal navigational systems, designed to prevent precisely such paradoxes, blared their reluctance in stark red warnings across the interface. But Simon pushed forward, driven by a near-mad obsession to restore the literary giant’s legacy.

 

As the machine whirred to life, encasing him in a cocoon of pulsating energy, Simon felt the pull of temporal forces contorting the fabric of reality. A misstep in calculations, coupled with the machine’s strained capabilities, wrenched Simon from his intended course. The world around him blurred—an array of colors and sounds, history replaying all its possibilities simultaneously.

 

He found himself trapped, a ghost in the looping scenes of his interactions with Poe. Each cycle through the loop sharpened his understanding of the cascading consequences of his actions, yet he remained powerless to intervene directly. His presence was spectral, an observer cursed to watch his folly unfold in perpetuity.

 

Amidst the ceaseless cycles, a flicker of anomaly caught his attention. Brief moments appeared where versions of himself overlapped—past, present, and future converging. It was an unintended side effect of the time stream’s fracture, a shimmering crack in the oppressive wall of endless repetition.

 

With renewed purpose, the Simon Dorsets of different times began to recognize each other. An understanding sparked between them, each iteration contributing his unique perspective on the predicament. Together, they constructed a plan—a message ensconced within the digital confines of the smartphone, coding it into the metadata of the device. A cryptic puzzle designed for Poe’s keen and curious mind, leading him to restore the timeline undisturbed by technological marvels.

 

The contriving of the message was meticulous, a maneuver engineered with the precision of a master clockmaker. Hidden within the coding, Simon embedded the instructions—a route back to temporal stability, crafted specifically to attract Edgar Allan Poe’s intrigue with cryptology and the unknown. It was more than just a recovery mission; it was an appeal to Poe’s intellectual appetites, a call to explore and unravel the mystery set before him.

 

The loop provided Simon endless opportunities to refine his approach, each iteration fine-tuning the message embedded in the strange artifact from the future. When Poe finally discovered the embedded instructions, hidden amidst what appeared to be common applications, it struck a chord deep within his writer’s soul—a mystery woven by fate or circumstance, begging to be unraveled.

 

His brows furrowed, Poe set about deciphering the cryptic clues with a zeal that had often been reserved for his literary compositions. The message guided him to a precise location, an act in itself harmless but pivotal—a secluded corner of the Baltimore docks at dawn, where the water whispered secrets to those patient enough to listen.

 

Meanwhile, Simon watched these moments unfold, his heart thrumming with a mix of hope and apprehension. The plan was simple yet reliant on Poe’s willingness to engage with the unknown without fully understanding the forces at play. It was a gamble, staking everything on the intellectual curiosity of one man.

 

As the appointed time approached, Poe, cloak billowing behind him in the pre-dawn wind, approached the designated spot. He carried the device, its screen dim in the soft light. Following the last of the instructions, he left the smartphone nestled within an old fish crate, obscure and seemingly inconspicuous.

 

The crate, Simon knew from his meticulous studies of the timeline, would be destroyed in a warehouse mishap mere hours later, the smartphone lost forever, consumed by the flames—an incident that originally occurred without historical significance but now charged with the weight of resetting history.

 

Simon’s vision blurred, the looping finally slowing, reality solidifying with the promise of release. As the time streams began to align, the world around him steadied, the oppressive weight of temporal distortion lifting. The colors and sounds that had haunted his senses merged into the rightful hues of his time.

 

When he next stepped out of the machine, the air was different—fresher, somehow more correct with the essence of his original timeline. Buildings, people, the very atmosphere buzzed with subtle but significant changes back to the familiar. Poe’s literary legacy had been restored to its rightful place, his technological influence erased as if it were merely a ghost story, fittingly ephemeral.

 

Simon Dorset found himself back in his study, the walls lined with books, the familiar scent of paper and ink a soothing balm. His heart, though weary from the journey, was buoyed by the restoration of history. His respect for the delicate fabric of time had deepened, each tick of the clock now a reminder of the dance between chance and choice.

 

He resumed his academic pursuits with a newfound reverence for the past’s fragility and the unknown variables of history. The world around him continued, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe averted, a tale of what-if preserved only in the quiet confines of Simon’s experience.

 

In his diary, filled with the wild scribblings of his adventure, Simon penned a final note—an acknowledgment of the power held by both time and literature, the twin forces of creation and destruction. He wrote, “In our pursuits, we must tread lightly upon the tapestries of the past, for they are woven with the threads of potentiality, delicate and profound.”

 

The sun set over a world untouched yet changed in ways unseen, as Simon Dorset closed his diary, the book of his extraordinary journey through time concluding with the silent assurance that some mysteries, like some manuscripts, were best left unaltered.

I had hired a plumbing company, after seeing an add for cheap bathroom renovations. I wanted an excellent bathroom, but their ad, appeared to show that they had the skills .

So I gave them a list of what I wanted, the type of faucets, the brand of jetted tub, the color of granite for the counter. The undersunk sink. , the floor and shower tile, heated towel racks, Etc

Then I asked them how much it would cost. They gave me an estimate, and I came home from work, and they had arborite countertops, a standard tub, different faucets , linoleum for the floor, all sitting in my entrance way waiting to be installed.

I told the guy that I had ordered something completely different. He told me, not at the price they were quoting me. I showed him the form I had filled in.

He claims that he never saw it before, he gave me the estimate, yet somehow he had my heated towel rack.

If the timing has been just a little different, it would have all been installed before I saw it.

They never apologized, but I finally got the bathroom I wanted, but I had to pay a bit extra.

Vintage Aviation

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“Whole Country is Turned into B*tch Ass N***ga” – Dave Chappelle

I know someone who did this. A close friend of mine had long hair when he was 16, which his mom hated. Our school sent several notices to him and his parents about him looking uncouth.

While he was lounging on the couch one day, his frustrated mom caught him unaware and chopped it all off haphazardly with a scissors she had in hand. He wasn’t asleep, but he still did not see it coming.

He hated her for doing that. He harbored that pain and humiliation for a long long time, for years after that.

It has been 10 years to that incident, and he still hasn’t forgiven her for it. It drove a wedge between them.

He hated having her decision forced on him. He hated being cheated like that. He hated being caught unaware.

I get it. You don’t like his hair. Tell him that, but don’t force your decision on him.

You would much rather live irritated for a while, than having a wedge driven in your relationship.

If he is rebelling against you, he will grow out of it.

Explain to him calmly once, and leave it at that. Your constant nagging will get you nowhere.

Believe it or not, like it or not, physical appearances are a sensitive issue for a lot of people. Teens are no different.

It’s none of your business really.

And if you decide to shave him while he is asleep, he may not report you but-

He will hate you for the rest of your life.

It’s not worth it.

America In 2024: Fast Food Is A “Luxury”, 11 Million Children Live In Poverty, And 1000s Of Stores Are Closing

 

Little by little, our standard of living has been eroding.  A couple decades ago, we had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now most of the country is struggling.  At this point, fast food is considered to be a “luxury”, 11 million children are living in poverty, and thousands of stores are permanently shutting down all over the United States because consumers have so little discretionary income these days.  We are in the midst of a historic cost of living crisis, and those at the bottom of the economic food chain are being hit the hardest.

The ultra-wealthy don’t really care that food costs have been soaring, but for those that are barely scraping by from month to month it makes an enormous difference.

Once upon a time, fast food restaurants were where those that were struggling went to eat.

But now fast food is considered to be a “luxury” in 2024, and that is because fast food prices have gone absolutely haywire

A Big Mac sandwich at McDonald’s, for example, cost $3.99 in 2019. Now, that price has more than doubled to $8.29, according to Fast Food Menu Prices, an online tracker.

Gone, too, are the days of the $5 Footlong at Subway. A BLT Footlong that cost $5.50 in 2019 now costs customers $8.49 in 2024, though prices can vary by location. Additionally, Chipotle’s beloved chicken burrito that cost $6.50 in 2019 now runs customers $10.70.

Fast-food executives have pointed to rising wages and increased costs for ingredients as factors driving up the prices on their menus.

I am sitting here looking at those numbers and I still can’t wrap my head around them.

I never imagined that I would see the day when it took more than 8 dollars to buy a Big Mac.

That is insane!

A different survey that was recently conducted by Lending Tree discovered that almost 80 percent of all Americans believe that fast food is a “luxury item” now…

Nearly 80 percent of Americans now consider fast food to be a “luxury item” as families feel the squeeze from the Biden regime’s failing economy.

According to a survey from Lending Tree of around 2,000 adults, what was once considered an affordable option for low-income workers is fast becoming the opposite.

Meanwhile, the number of American children living in poverty continues to increase with each passing day.

If you can believe it, we are being told that over 11 million U.S. children are now living in poverty…

More than 11 million children were estimated to be living in poverty in 2021, according to U.S. Census Bureau data published by the Children’s Defense Fund.

That equates to around one in seven children in the U.S., or 15.3 percent. It’s a high toll, and one even higher than the adult population, which was 10.5 percent for 19-64 year olds that year and 10.3 percent for adults aged 65+.

According to an analysis by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, this difference is due to factors such as the “cost of caregiving and its responsibilities, transitions to a single parenthood household, unemployment of parents, and disabilities of family members.”

Today, approximately 40 percent of the entire country is considered to be either living in poverty or among the ranks of “the working poor”, and 42 million Americans are on food stamps.

We now have an absolutely gigantic “underclass” that is largely made up of people that were once solidly middle class.

The rapidly rising cost of living is just shredding families from coast to coast.

In Montana, one senior is incredibly frustrated because his property taxes have increased by 790 percent over the past several years…

A senior from Montana has delivered a viral speech about the sorry state of property taxes in the Treasure State.

“I’m on Social Security, I’m 68-years-old and working just to pay my taxes,” says Kurt, in a clip shared on TikTok by Ryan Busse, who is running to be the next governor of Montana.

Kurt claims that over the last couple of years, his annual property taxes have soared from $895 to almost $8,000 — an increase of around 790% — which he says is like paying almost “$700 a month rent to the state to live in our own house.” The state has an Elderly Homeowner/Renter Tax Credit, and the maximum credit is $1,150.

His property taxes have skyrocketed because property values have skyrocketed.

And property values have skyrocketed because our leaders flooded the system with way too much money.

Small businesses are being monkey-hammered by inflation as well.

In fact, one recent survey found that 86 percent of all U.S. small businesses say that they are being hurt by inflation…

An overwhelming majority of small business owners say they are being hurt by rising prices.

The new survey released Wednesday by small business network Alignable shows 86% reporting being hurt by high costs with only 6% saying they are thriving and not struggling.

Alignable surveyed more than 3,000 business owners from mid-April to mid-May and found that they overwhelmingly lament the burden of inflation.

Dollar stores in particular are being hit really hard by rising costs.

For example, 99 Cents Only has decided to close all of their stores because conditions have changed so dramatically…

For years, dollar stores were a fixture in nearly every strip mall in California, offering cheap household goods, bread and produce, and even toys and gifts.

But if it seems like your favorite dollar store is heading for the exit, you’re not wrong.

2024 may be their swan song.

In April, California-based 99 Cents Only announced it was closing all 371 locations after decades in business. The retailer blamed economic factors, including rising levels of “shrink,” inflation, and shifting consumer demand that has presented “significant and lasting challenges.”

Not to be outdone, Dollar Tree has announced that it will be closing about 1,000 stores

Dollar Tree, which owns Family Dollar, recently said it will close nearly 1,000 stores. That’s after Dollar Tree raised prices in the past couple of years for the first time in decades.

Overall, so far in 2024 retailers have already announced that they will be closing nearly 3,200 stores, and we haven’t even reached the mid-point of the year yet…

The retail industry is going through a tough time as it copes with inflation-weary consumers and a rash of bankruptcies, prompting chains to announce the closures of almost 3,200 brick-and-mortar stores so far in 2024, according to a new analysis.

That’s a 24% increase from a year ago, according to a report from retail data provider CoreSight, which tracks store closures and openings across the U.S.

The final countdown for the U.S. economy has begun, but most Americans do not even realize what is happening.

Most Americans just assume that our leaders can fix things by printing even more money and that conditions will “return to normal” eventually.

But the truth is that there isn’t going to be a “return to normal”, because this is about as “normal” as things are going to get.

It has taken decades of horrendous decisions to get us to this point, and now we are steamrolling toward economic oblivion.

If you think that our leaders in Washington will be able to turn this ship around, you are just being delusional.

Why 70s Kids Are The Strongest Generation

A no-brainer. The image is forever etched in my mind:

One of the guys I used to work with was a battle-worn veteran of the stock market, though only in his mid-thirties. He’d seen it all and been through it all, and made little effort to conceal his fatigue with all of it. He’d only been working at the company for about 3 months before I was hired. He’d show up every day, and from opening to closing bell, he would go through the motions, buying and selling, and arguing, cursing, hand-waving, you name it. No one would mistake him for being pleasant, or describe him as friendly, but he was an amusing theatrical performance.

One day we struck up a brief but insightful conversation. He’d had a pretty rough exchange with a client earlier that day, and I was hoping to glean insight into why he seemed so reckless at times. Apparently he’d only taken the job to hold him over until his father’s company -which he had invested a good chunk of money in- was acquired. His father had told him the deal should be done within two more months. I jokingly asked him if he thought he’d last that long without getting fired, and he said something to me that forever altered my perspective on wealth building: “I don’t give a shit about this job. In a few months, I will have ‘fuck you money’, and I’ll never have to work another day in my life.” I googled the term within minutes of our exchange.

A few weeks later, a few of us were chatting and he shared that he was an avid boater. He intended to retire, have a few kids, and spend his time on the water. He said the moment the funds were wired into his account, he was heading straight to the docks, and would never be seen again.

About a month later, he shows up to work with his boating hat and sunglasses, unusually calm and aloof. The day proceeds as usual, but moments after the closing bell, he stands up and puts his hat and sunglasses on in an oddly ceremonious manner. A few of us take notice. He turns around, looks at us, and with the grin of a free man, he raises his hand in salute, then walks out the door.

We never heard from him again.

Turkiye’s interest in joining BRICS+ will be discussed at the bloc’s upcoming foreign ministers’ meeting this month

JUN 4, 2024

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on 4 June during a trip to China that his country is interested in joining the BRICS+ group of emerging economies.

“Certainly, we would like to become a member of BRICS. So, we’ll see how it goes this year,” Fidan was cited as saying on Tuesday by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) newspaper.

Fidan noted that since some European nations have opposed Turkiye’s joining the EU, authorities in Ankara are considering BRICS+ as a “good alternative.”

“We cannot ignore the fact that BRICS, as an important cooperation platform, offers some other countries a good alternative. We see potential in BRICS,” the Turkish diplomat said.

SCMP also cited Fidan as saying that he hopes to attend the BRICS+ foreign ministers meeting scheduled for this month in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.

“One of the topics on the agenda is expected to be the possibility of Turkey, a NATO ally, joining the BRICS grouping.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared an intention to join the bloc at its summit in Johannesburg six years ago, yet little progress has been made since then.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed Ankara’s interest in joining the bloc in a statement on 4 June and confirmed that the topic would be up for discussion at the upcoming BRICS+ meeting in Russia.

Fidan held a press conference the same day with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing.

“Bilateral ties with China will contribute to regional and global peace, as well as prosperity and stability,” Fidan said during the conference.

China is the most important state within the BRICS group, accounting for over half of the GDP of all BRICS+ countries.

A coalition initially made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, BRICS at the start of this year expanded for the first time since 2010 to include Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, and the UAE.

After Russia became the most sanctioned nation in the world in 2022 following the start of the war in Ukraine, the BRICS bloc began seriously pursuing the creation of a common currency to de-dollarize trade and circumvent Washington’s weaponization of the western financial system.

This Is Destroying Men’s Fertility

I’m a doctor but had a situation that I found myself in where I was asked to lie to a family by the patient. He was young man in his early 20s and I don’t remember all the particulars but suffice it to say he was bleeding somewhere internally and was severely anemic, and needed several blood transfusions before anything else could be done for him. We didn’t think he would survive the night without transfusing him because we were concerned about multi-organ failure, and had him in ICU. Unfortunately he was a Jehovah’s Witness and transfusions were not allowed. His mom and dad were at his bedside to inform us of this. Despite much pleading they were steadfast in their religious beliefs, and would not consent to blood transfusions.

They left when visiting hours were over, and shortly thereafter his nurse called me to his room. Long story short he asked for the transfusions, but did not want his parents to know. He explained he was not a committed Jehovah’s Witness but his parents didn’t know and would be devastated to find out he wasn’t, but he also wanted to live, and could we do 2 things? 1. he was of age and his was able to consent to receiving the transfusions, so he wanted them, and 2. could we be sure his parents never knew about it. The nurse staff was on board and anyone who objected was asked to speak up. None did

So we ran the transfusions overnight, and finished them and removed all the evidence before his parents came in the next day, they were overjoyed that he was still alive, their religious beliefs were upheld in their mind, and no one was the wiser. As it turned out I didn’t have to actually tell them a verbal lie, as they never asked me or the nurses anything directly, but I guess it was a lie of omission. The son never actually acknowledged anything to them either, allowing his parents to think their religious beliefs saved their son. There were a myriad of ways for them to have found out —maybe they could see his hospital bill later or something like that. But me and the nurses involved swore ourselves to secrecy so they weren’t going to find out from us.

I’ve wrestled with myself about that case over the years, but have always come to the conclusion I was respecting the patient’s wishes, and it was up to him to deal with his religious beliefs and his parents. I appreciated the nurses who were unhesitatingly in on it with me, as we were just trying to save a young man’s life. I never saw him again after he was discharged from the hospital.

Have you ever been on a date that was going so badly you walked out and left?

Hooo boy. Two notable ones come to mind. This may be an experience more unique to the Bay Area, but anyway…

I set up a date with this one woman. We’re both working professionals, in our 30s, etc so I can’t chalk her behavior up to youth or lack of social interaction. Though, this was a few years back so I don’t quite remember what she did for a living. Anyway.

We set a lunch date about halfway in between both our workplaces (~10 min away from each of us). I showed up 5 min early, and the place we chose can get pretty packed for lunch – meaning if you get there later, you’ll be waiting a while for food. Well….she texts me and says stuck in a meeting running a little bit late. Ok, no prob – I grab a table and sit down to wait. About 20 min later I ask her for an ETA….she says 15 min. Ok, I get it, meetings run over, 15 min is still not a horrible delay given travel time + 15 min delay from the meeting. Another 20 min goes by….call her – “hey, where are you…?” etc. She’s driving and “almost there”. Oook….she finally arrived about 10 min later. For those of you adding it up, that’s about an hour late. Not a great start.

Fortunately, it wasn’t a sit-down type of place, so I wasn’t wasting a waiter/waitresses’s time and tips to wait for her. We went up to order our food finally and she offered to buy lunch as an apology for being late. Ok…I’m flexible. Means I’ll stay a bit later at work but I could take a 2 hour lunch at the time. We eat, sit down, start chatting…annnnnd she starts asking me about my time in the military.

“So, did you go overseas?”

“Yes, I spent a few years overseas in Korea and Iraq/Kuwait.”

“Oh cool!” (Not the way I’d describe it, but ok…) “Did you ever have to kill anyone?”

“Thankfully, I don’t think so no, though I did see combat….it’s not exactly something anyone wants to have to do typically…” I tried to make it clear I wasn’t exactly a fan of this type of question through tone of voice and body language. She didn’t appear to notice, because…

“Did anyone you knew die?”

Again, I adopted a more curt tone and tried to make it clear this wasn’t a great line of questioning for a first date. Usually that question gets asked but phrased differently like “Did you lose anyone you knew” or simply “did you see combat”.

I replied “yes, several friends the second tour and one the first.”

Before I could even try and change the subject…

“How did they die???”

At this point I was pretty annoyed. We were sitting outside close to the parking lot and I sort of snapped “Well, one of them got shot by a sniper standing as close to me as we are to that car if that’s what you want to know.”

I shit you not, the next words out of her mouth, with no change in tone or anything, as casually as asking if I could pass the ketchup…

“Did he scream?”

Annnnnd that’s when I went off a bit. I let her know in no uncertain terms that her entire line of questioning wasn’t exactly ideal for a first date, and that she was lucky that despite my experiences I have my shit together and a great deal of self control – I know a few guys who would have likely snapped one way or another, either having a mental bout with depression and breaking down on the spot or going the opposite way to physical violence against the person who’d offended them with the questions. I let her know that asking anyone, military or not, if their friend screamed when they died was highly inappropriate under any circumstances.

Then I left and went back to work. Never heard from her again. No apology. No reaction whatsoever when I got angry with her. Just nothing.

I got over it, but that’s a date I doubt I’ll ever forget. And it’s not necessarily the facts of combat or anything – in the right company or circumstances I’ve actually got some funny stories from combat and Iraq/Korea in general, and don’t mind discussing the experiences. I don’t have any particular “triggers” or hardcore Hollywood-style PTSD or anything. But this….just….hell no.

Eggnog Doughnuts with Eggnog Rum Glaze

Eggnog Doughnuts with Eggnog Rum Glaze
Eggnog Doughnuts with Eggnog Rum Glaze

Yield: 4 donuts in a Wilton doughnut pan* and 1 dozen mini doughnuts in a Wilton mini-doughnut pan.

Ingredients

Doughnuts

  • 1 tablespoon butter, melted
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup eggnog
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3/4 cup + all-purpose flour**

Rum Eggnog Glaze

  • 1/2 cup (or more) confectioners’ sugar
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons eggnog
  • 1/2 to 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons rum (brandy, cognac, Grand Marnier, etc.)

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 325 degrees F and coat the doughnut pan or muffin pan well with cooking-spray or grease.

Doughnuts

  1. In a microwave-safe bowl, melt the butter and to it add the sugars and egg and stir by hand for about 1 minute or until creamy.
  2. To the bowl, add the remaining ingredients and stir to combine. Do not over-mix as that increases the likelihood of tough doughnuts.
  3. Spoon the batter into doughnut pans or muffin pans. Do not overfill the cavities especially if making mini donuts.
  4. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes if making larger doughnuts or about 5 to 7 minutes if making mini-doughnuts. Bake until donuts spring back when touched or until dough is set. Donuts should be springy and may not be golden brown in color so don’t necessarily judge doneness by color; judge by texture.
  5. Allow to cool slightly before removing from pan, about 5 minutes.

Rum Eggnog Glaze

  1. While donuts are baking or cooling, make the frosting by combining all ingredients and whisking or stirring, until desired consistency is achieved.
  2. Frost the donuts after they have cooled.
  3. Add a final dusting of coconut flakes, orange zest, cinnamon-sugar mixture; sprinkles, or other extras at the end, as desired.

Notes

* You can make muffins rather than donuts if you don’t have a donut pan.

** To make gluten free, use your favorite gluten free flour blend.

Depending on the type of eggnog used, you may need to add more flour. Batter should be fairly thick – thicker than pancake or waffle batter, but not as thick as cookie dough. Add enough flour to get a fairly thick batter, possibly 1/4 cup more than is called for.

China used to be in awe of the US. Key word being “used to be”.

In the 1989 June 4th incident, protesting students erected a statue of liberty to show their admiration of the US. Chinese throughout the country listened to Voice of America to stay informed about the demonstrations. Throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s, returning overseas Chinese from US or other western countries were held in high regard. Chinese military leadership looked up to the US as their role model.

Then things started to change. The 2008 Tibetan riots, and the subsequent anti-China misinformation spread by CNN and other American news outlets caused widespread realization that the vaunted Western media was not so objective and unbiased after all. This was a peak period of Chinese oversea students studying in Western countries. The vast majority of those students returned to China afterwards, and the image of the US as a beacon of Truth and Freedom suffered its first blow.

The second blow came with the Urumqi riots of 2009, followed by the Kunming train station attack of 2014.

The Urumqi riots had the highest death toll of any violent attacks in recent Chinese memory. Hundreds of people, mainly of Han nationality, were killed in the attacks. However, Western media portrayed the riots as a crack down by the Chinese government on Uighur independence, largely ignoring the victims of this terrorist attack.

The Kunming train station attack happened less than a year before the Paris Charlie Hebdo attack. The Chinese people saw Western nations marching and mourning for the Parisian victims, and asked why those same nations who are always talking about Human Rights and Democracy had all but ignored the Kunming attack.

Those were the three major blows against the American image in Chinese minds. Afterwards, relatively minor incidents like the SCS disputes and the THAAD incident simply reinforced negative perceptions of the US.

I live in Beijing. One day in the winter of 2022, I went out of home for shopping and found in the street adjacent to my community, there’s a pile of sand occupying the sidewalk. It seems to block the way and I had to step down the road shoulder to bypass it.

I called 12345, a kind of mayor’s hotline, and reported to the receptionist about what I witnessed. Then forgot the call.

The next day a man, who said he is the officer of the community committee, called me that they’ve solved what I complained to 12345 hotline. The pile of sand had been removed. He pleaded me to double-check when available and if everything is OKAY, don’t forget when 12345 is calling back to me for the result, pls tell them everything has been down on time.

At the afternoon, 12345 really called me back. I told them I have double-checked and the sands have been removed. The receptionist then asked me if I’m satisfied the result or not. Of course, I said YES. Nothing to complain more.

So I don’t know if this is a democracy or not? I’m just a average person. A citizen. Not a officer or powerful guy or rich guy or CCP member at all.

I don’t know how do you define the democracy. If it means all those old guys quarrelling in the parliament house, figting for the seats and elections, then No. in China it seems to lack of these sorts of things.

But if the democracy means that the suggestions from an average person could be respected and kindly treated, its reasonable parts will be accepted and improved, then Yes, I got it.


So let me back to the question: Don’t people in China wish to live in a democratic country?

Well, first of all, democracy is a good thing. But do I wish to live in a democratic country? It depends.

If I have the right to vote a leader and when I met some problems just like I met above-mentioned, I called him or hotline and he or they solve my problem very soon, OK, why not? I wish to live in.

If I have the right to vote a leader and when I met some problems just like I met above-mentioned, I called him or hotline and he or they would make an eloquent speech to me with expressive gestures but end up with doing nothing and the second day, that pile of sand still block my way then I called him again and again and each time I got a free eloquent speech but nothing improved, well, f**king the democrazy.

So in the daily routine of a normal person, democracy really didn’t have much to do with our lives. This is my opinion to your question.


What’s the democracy?

I happened to receive a girl(?) left her message to me. She swore me a livestock. Can livestock dial 12345 to complain lack of green grass? lol

I guess she may be a beautiful girl, judging from her profile photo so hopefully have some conversation with her. But unfortunately I couldn’t reach out to her because I found no REPLY button below.

And then I ask myself: why a girl maliciously swore somebody a livestock but didn’t dare to face his reply and she called this DEMOCRACY?

If this is democracy, why should I have to accept this providing it couldn’t solve my problem but noisy swear?

This is my opinion: every country has the democracy to some extent. But comparing to democracy, mutual RESPECT is most precious virtue.


Finally, the evil gene inside USA body has revived.

The gene, 500 years ago they were so thriving when they voyaged over the ocean and conquered the world & made the rest of people to be their slaves.

The gene, 150 years ago they called they’re civilized but barbarously intruded into China to sale the opium and cannonade the cities killing thousands of innocents.

Now, the evil gene is reviving.

House passes bill that could ban TikTok in the U.S., sending it to the Senate
House Democrats and Republicans say the measure, which would pressure TikTok’s China-based owner to divest, is needed to protect Americans’ data. Senators are still evaluating it.

Who could tell me where’s the so-called free trade?

If the free trade means when the rule is in your favor then you keep it but when it’s not good for you then you rob like your ancestors did to the world, how can you convince the world that your Democracy wouldn’t be like this?

Hypocrisy! Shamelessness!

300 years ago, when British Navy Force was navigating over the ocean, it always played one of two roles according to his power comparison to the opponents: if the opponent is strong enough, it will become a friendly offical embassador of British Queen to do business. But if the opponent is weak like a sheep, it will transform to ferocious pirates, catching the people to be slaves and looting their treasures. More importantly, this activities were secretly approved and supported by the British Monarchy.

300 years later, when they found they couldn’t compete with China in a fair way which the rules were created by themselves, they start to rob by the name of democracy. The same cases had happened for several times before. They trapped Alstom’s manager then they got Alstom finally. They trapped Samsung and got it. They trapped Japan and got it.

They’re evolving. Hundreds years before, they looted the world by the name of Christ. Now, they robbed the world by the name of Democracy.

Hypocrisy! Shamelessness!


Hi, I’m back. So surprised to see many comments.

This time I will tell a true story just happened in my cousin few week ago. Half years ago, she found her daughter(16 yrs) was bullied on internet. An anonymous guy continuously smeared a lot of bad words on her. Saying how ugly or stupid such stuffs.

Then my cousin and her husband consulted the lawyer. And the lawyer said they need to know firstly who is attacking their daughter and since this guy’s only slandering on internet therefore it should take long time and money for the legal process.

Then they turned to ask for help from Baidu, the huge internet giant just like google in western, where the anomymous bully posts his threads. But unbelievably, Baidu refused to neither disclose the bully’s information nor cancel the posts with the excuse of FREEDOM of EXPRESSION!

Dear readers, can you imagine in a communist country, the capitalist (Baidu) refused to stop the obvious violation to an innocent young girl with the excuse of FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION?

My cousin and her husband are all ordinary person so they don’t know how to deal with this when they come to ask my suggestion.

I suggest them to call 12345. Strongly asking 12345 to push Baidu to cancel those malicious posts otherwise ask for Baidu to provide the bully’s information for the legal preparing.

The couple doubted but agreed to follow my suggestion. One week later they told me happily that the problem has solved. Under the force of 12345,Baidu canceled all those bullshit posts.

Again, let’s return to the topic. What is the DEMOCRACY?

I don’t think that one man one vote is the democracy. The mediocre mobs could elect a freak who may bring the disaster to the world.

A democracy is not only a game to elect the top guys, but also a mechanism, a tool by which the ordinary person could connect with the government to listen and solve his problem.

Democracy should be driven by meritocracy, not plutocracy.

Democracy doesn’t mean FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, it means the mutual respect and tolerance among the different groups, ethnics, religions.

If these are democracy, then China is.

1970s Things That Kids No Longer Do!

A hairy tale

Wow, I am absolutely privileged to meet someone who was born yesterday. Greetings!

Or perhaps you’ve been living on a deserted island your whole life, in which case you have my sympathy.

By now, everyone who has kept abreast of world events over the past several decades is aware of the unbridled hatred the collective West has for China.

This is evidenced by relentless Western anti-China propaganda disinformation.

And the reasons are pretty obvious. They’re one or some combination of the following:

  1. Fear of losing Western global hegemony to China.
  2. Racism (white supremacy) or Sinophobia.
  3. Jealousy. China’s spectacular success just makes the West look bad. It’s an ego thing, a matter of national pride.
  4. Politics. China is a terrific scapegoat to divert attention from the poor state of Western economies. Pay particular attention to the 2024 US Presidential Election.

Anyway, I hope you are now caught up from your slumber.

Why We’re Leaving The United States

FLASH!!! Russia Formally “Warns” United States Against “Miscalculations that could have Fatal Consequences”

Moscow warns the United States against miscalculations that could have fatal consequences.

“Fatal consequences” is not ambiguous.  There is no room for misinterpretation.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov, commenting on Kiev getting permission to carry out attacks with American weapons deep into Russian territory also said:

“The Russian Federation calls on the United States to take Russian warnings with the utmost seriousness.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov continued by saying “Ukrainian attacks on missile attack warning systems: such attempts will be stopped, the response may be asymmetrical.”

Of course “asymmetrical” means that one side does one thing, the other side does something completely unexpected and different.

HT Remark: I do not know how much longer the Russians can go without hitting the United States for all our murderous meddling in the Ukraine situation.  I suspect that when Russia’s retaliation comes, it will be sudden, dramatic, and horrifying.

Readers of this site know that I have urged and implored them to get emergency prep supplies of food, water, medicines you need to live, communications gear like CB or HAM radios, flashlights, batteries, first-aid kits. a generator to keep your refrigerator running and spare fuel for that generator.

I do NOT sell any of these things and have no financial interest at all in what you buy.  I’m telling you to do this to save your lives!

Things seem to be rapidly escalating out of control.  If you are not prepared in advance, and think you’ll run out t to the store to get these things once attacks begin, you will find yourselves S.O.L. because store shelves will be wiped clean by millions of other panicking people.  Get the things you can get, RIGHT NOW.  Don’t wait.

Better to have them, and not need them, than to need them and not have them.

11 Mysterious Videos That Cannot Be Explained

What are some social rules of etiquette everyone should know and follow?

 

  1. When someone hugs you, you should not be first to break it.
  2. Remove your sunglasses when you have to speak to someone.
  3. Irrespective of your closeness, do not ask your friends and room mates for their clothes, shoes and accessories. Those are ‘ personal belongings‘
  4. Do not order expensive stuff when you are sharing or the other person is paying the bill.
  5. Don’t make ola / uber driver wait for you. Time is literally money for them.
  6. If you borrow someone else’s novel/ books, do not mark anything in them. Return them in a good condition and within acceptable time.
  7. Compliment people when you notice their extra efforts in something.
  8. If any child touched you and asked(begged) for money don’t give a dirty look at them and run two steps back. Give, if you want to or say no. That’s it.
  9. Wave your hand rather than calling his or her name in a louder pitch if someone is wearing headphones.
  10. Praise publicly. Criticise privately.
  11. Be quiet when other people are asleep. That means more than not talking — not slamming doors, drawers, etc.
  12. Avoid finishing other people’s sentences and cutting them off
  13. If you get a missed call, remember to call them back. Or at least drop a message.

Reasons I left the United States, 3 years later in Spain

Pen Bragan

Anna stood, suitcase in hand, in front of the old white farmhouse, as the caseworker drove away, kicking up dust in her wake. The front door swung open and Aunt Betty stepped out, hand raised in greeting.Having been raised the only child of a mother who preferred alcohol to her daughter, Anna was quite used to being dropped off at unfamiliar homes, with unfamiliar people. She never quite felt like she belonged anywhere. This was no different. Aunt Betty, as she was known, was a sweet old lady who opened her home to many foster kids over the years, having never had any children of her own.“Oh Anna, darling! Please come in, come in! Here, let me get that for you.” She said, reaching for my bag. “We’ve been waiting for you, dear. I am so sorry for everything you’ve been through to get you here. You must be tired.” Anna simply nodded and followed closely behind her.“Are you hungry, dear? Or would you like to go straight up to your room? It’s just this way.” Without even waiting for an answer she ushered her towards the stairs to the second story. There were photos on the walls, most of them crooked and layered with a thin film of dust, but it was evidence of a loving home. Something she was in desperate need of.Upstairs, Aunt Betty set her bag down on the bed and gave her a chance to get settled. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything, Anna. Please, don’t be shy.” She closed the door gently on her way out.Anna took a deep breath and glanced around, taking in her surroundings. A simple room, adorned with a bed and a dresser. It would certainly do.She unpacked what little belongings she had, placing her clothes in the dresser, and a couple of old paperback books on the bedside table. While sliding her suitcase under the bed, she noticed something unusual about the flooring. To get a closer look, she scooted as far under the bed as she could. Several of the boards, about two feet in length, were cut on either end.

“Anna, darling!” Startled, she knocked her head against the bed frame as Aunt Betty called from downstairs. “Are you hungry, dear? I’ve made up some food for you!”.

“I’ll be right there…” She called back, as she slid out from under the bed, making a mental note to come back to investigate.

 

**

 

Later that night, sufficiently full of home-cooked food, Anna made her way back to her bedroom. She was looking forward to being able to relax alone; moving into a new place was always so mentally exhausting. But first, she had to know what, if anything, was up with the floor. As quietly as she could, she slid her bed over a few feet. Kneeling on the floor, Anna pulled up on the boards one by one. Underneath, to her satisfaction, was a wooden crate and an old typewriter. Wiping some of the dust off the crate, she noticed the letters E.A. written on top. She wasted no time in taking the lid off. It was filled with aged paper. Journal articles, by the looks of it. After a quick glance she noticed the first page was dated October 15, 1918. She rifled through the crate, looking at the rest of the dates. They didn’t seem to be in any particular order, as if someone had haphazardly collected the papers and threw them in.

She found the page with the earliest date, figuring it would be best to read chronologically, and started reading.

 

**

 

October 15, 1905 

 

Dear reader, 

I hope this finds you well. It is my birthday… Today I am fifteen years old. Ma and Pa gifted me this typewriter. They’ve known of my fondness for stories since I was a small girl. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have opened it. I have decided to write journals to document my life. Maybe someday you will find it. Maybe someday I will read them back and realize what a wonderfully exciting life I have lived. Oh, how I long for adventure. I have always had the sense that I do not belong here… like I am destined for more than to grow up and become a housewife, on a farm in the middle of Virginia. Perhaps I will become a famous author one day! I will write again soon. 

 

Best, 

E.A. 

 

**

 

Anna read through the journal entries one by one. Many of them were so worn with age that they were difficult or impossible to read. A few partially eaten by mice. The mystery author wrote almost daily. Occasionally she tried her hand at fictional stories. Many times she wrote about her life: her friends, books she was reading, plans she had for the day, and fond memories that she wanted to remember.

 

**

 

October 16, 1895 

 

Do forgive me if this does not make much sense. I can hardly believe it and I myself experienced it. My last entry was last night, I wrote about my fifth birthday. Shortly after writing that, I extinguished my candles and went to sleep. When I woke up this morning, I was not where I was supposed to be. I am home, yes. But everything is different. I should say, everything is as it once was. Ma and Pa look different, much younger. There is a little girl, strangely resembling me as a child. They are treating me as though I am a scullery maid. I feel like an outsider with my own family! In the kitchen, I noticed a newspaper dated October 16, 1895. It is impossible, utterly impossible! But I seem to have traveled through time. 

 

E.A.

 

**

 

Anna looked up from the page. Time travel? It was far more likely that the mystery author was simply practicing her creative writing. Fiction or not, she was grateful for this temporary escape from reality. More and more, she felt like the author was a kindred spirit. They were just words on a page, but she felt like she had found a friend. She looked up at the clock: 11:45. Her eyes were burning with fatigue. She knew she should go to bed, but she couldn’t, like a novel she couldn’t put down, she went back to the crate of papers. The next date didn’t make sense, July 30, 1862. If it was the same writer, she wouldn’t have even been born yet.

 

**

 

July 30, 1862 

 

A civil war is currently raging between the north and the south. I have been in search of an adventure, and while I have certainly found one, I’m unsure whether it is wise to be here. Danger is all around. The north seems to be prevailing. I do hope that they succeed. This is not the Virginia that I know. I have felt ashamed everyday that my ancestors are here now, fighting for their right to treat human beings as property. I have seen abhorrent things here. I am missing home, but I want to be helpful, in some way. I have befriended several wives of Union soldiers and we have been raising money and sending supplies. I am unsure where or when I will travel next. 

 

E.A. 

 

**

 

“Aunt Betty, how long have you lived in this house?” Anna asks as she pours herself a cup of coffee the next morning.

“Oh, this house has belonged to me for many years, dear. Let’s see… I think I arrived in the sixties. Yes, that’s right, I believe it was the year 1969. I met Arther shortly after and we got married, and made ourselves a nice home here.”

“I found some old things in my room… journals dated much earlier than that. I just wondered who they belonged to.”

“It is such an old house. This farm has a lot of history, to be sure. It stood here far before I came. That sounds fascinating.” She said, pouring a coffee of her own. “Where did you find them?”

“They were under my bed… someone cut a hole in the floor and tucked them away under there. I just found them by chance.”

“Oh dear, you know the furniture in this house has not been moved in many years… I suppose I forgot that it was there.”

With a warm smile, Aunt Betty made her way to the porch to enjoy her coffee in her rocking chair, just like she did every morning.

 

**

 

December 12, 1969

 

I’ve found myself in the year 1969. I’m now 25 years old. I’ve been traveling like this for many years now and I am growing weary. I am feeling more and more like I do not belong anywhere. I have experienced the impossible. I have seen incredible things, and equally as many horrible things. I long for a home and a family. I wonder what they think happened to me. By this time, they are long dead. It gives me some solace to know that as long as I have my typewriter, I can go home to them, at any point. As long as I have that, I will never truly be alone. But how long can I go on like this… with no roots in the ground. 

When I arrived here, I found myself under a beautiful willow tree. After walking a short distance I came upon a farm, with pastures and a barn and a beautiful white house with a big porch. From what I can tell it is abandoned, which is useful for me. It is a comfortable place to rest. I will write soon. 

 

E.A.

 

**

 

Anna sets down the page and reaches into the crate for the next one, but as she does she finds that it is the last entry.

“No! It can’t end like that!” She said aloud. She turned to the typewriter, looking for clues on who it might have belonged to. She clicked a few keys, testing it out. It can’t really be a time machine, she thought. With only one way to truly find out, she inserted a piece of paper, but when she tried to type, nothing happened. It was broken, and with no understanding whatsoever about typewriters, especially potentially magical typewriters, she was ill suited to fix it. As she tinkered with it, a thought suddenly came to her, “Wait… 1969… 1969!”

Anna got up to run downstairs, but as she turned around, Aunt Betty was standing in her bedroom doorway.

“My friends and family have always called me Betty, dear, but my full name is Elizabeth Alexander. By the look on your face it appears that you have put enough of the pieces together to have figured that out on your own. The typewriter has been broken for a long time. I never was able to figure out how to fix it.”

“You wrote these… it was all true.”

“Yes, somehow it is. And what an adventure it was… for a time, at least. It was lonely, though. When I got stuck here, I realized how much I missed having a family. After so many years with no home, it was time I made one.” She smiled warmly down at Anna. “I want you to know that you have a home here now, too. You always will.”

Are there any facts that are extremely scary to know?

  1. If you are a healthy 20 year old,you have around 2860 weeks before you die. (Just 2860 Sundays).
  2. The average person will be less successful than they think.
  3. About 153,000 people die on your birthday.
  4. Seals have been known to rape penguins.
  5. If you took all of the world’s spiders and let them out in the Netherlands, they would consume the country’s population in three days.
  6. One in fifty of us is walking around with a brain aneurysm. It just hasn’t ruptured.
  7. The Colombian serial killer Pedro Alonso Lopez, who is known as the Monster of the Andes, raped and murdered over 300 girls from Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. However, after he was caught and imprisoned for 18 years, he was put in a psychiatric hospital. There he was reviewed, declared to be sane and was set free, in spite of his blatant avowal that he fully intends to kill again. Ever since his release in 1998, nobody knows where he is or what he’s doing.
  8. In 2012, scientists found 1,458 new species of bacteria living in the belly button. Everyone’s belly button ecology is unique like a fingerprint, and one volunteer’s belly button harbored bacteria that had previously been found only in soil from Japan where he had never been.
  9. A person suffering from Cotard’s Syndrome believes he/she is dead. Cotard’s syndrome comprises any one of a series of delusions that range from a belief that one has lost organs, blood, or body parts to insisting that one has lost one’s soul or is dead.
  10. If you’re looking at a Victorian photo and one of the subjects in the photo is clearer than the rest, they’re probably dead.
  11. An octopus is flexible enough to enter your mouth, navigate your digestive system and leave through your anus.
  12. 60% of the UK population feels like no one really loves them.
  13. If you are a single child and don’t have kids you will break an unbroken line of children that has gone on for tens of millions of years.

Russian Paratroopers KILLED A French Army OFFICER In DONETSK┃NATO Officers Were Wiped Out In VINITSA

Systems Are Coming Apart; NY Stock Exchange “Glitches” Cause Multiple “Trading Halts” as $1.4 TRILLION Magically Wiped-out for Berkshire Hathaway . . .

Hal Turner Nation

 

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) opened as usual at 9:30 eastern time today, and within minutes chaos erupted.  Trading in multiple stocks had to be “Halted” because of “Volatility” as over $1.4 TRILLION Value got “glitched.”

GameStop Trading Activity Halted  –  Roaring Kitty’s Return Keith Gill, known as “Roaring Kitty,” returned to social media, reigniting interest GameStop shares.

Horace Mann Educators Corporation Common Stock — Trading Halted at 09:46:15 ET on NYSE | Volatility Trading Pause | 2024-06-03 

Trinity Industries, Inc. Common Stock — Trading Halted at 09:45:10 ET on NYSE | Volatility Trading Pause | 2024-06-03 

Plutonian Acq Cp Ut | Trading Halted at 09:44:53 ET on NASDAQ | Volatility Trading Pause | 2024-06-03

Kforce, Inc. – Common Stock | Trading Halted at 10:00:24 ET on NYSE | Volatility Trading Pause | 2024-06-03

Then the really big boys starting getting hit . . . badly:

JPMorgan Core Plus Bond ETF | Trading Halted at 09:38:08 ET on Non NASDAQ | Volatility Trading Pause | 2024-06-03

AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. Class A Common Stock | Trading Halted at 09:37:10 ET on NYSE | Volatility Trading Pause | 2024-06-03 

But the absolutely HUGE problem of the day was…

Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway which took took a minor 99.97% haircut. Which is equivalent to a valuation loss of $1.4 trillion, however, trading has been halted and it is likely a technical issue.

Hal Turner Snap Analysis

So what can we, the regular folks, make of this?  Why the sudden gigantic volatility in the markets?

A number of people with whom I spoke this afternoon all agreed:  The system is coming apart at the seams.  There is so much corruption, so much dirty dealing, so much cooking of the books, so many outright phony reporting of financial numbers, it is hard to hide anymore.

Plus, several of them said, the US money supply is contracting.  It has only done that before and then the Great Depression followed.   

So it seems to many people – but certainly not all – that the system is now coming apart.

Think about this for a moment:  If the premier Stock Exchange in the world, closes with everything fine on Friday, then opens with inexplicable catastrophic volatility on Monday morning, how trustworthy is the system anymore?

Of course, I saw this as it was taking place and . . .  all my regular readers know what I did . . . . went to the bank and pulled out some cash.  Not for paying bills, but to SURVIVE ON if the entire system collapsed.

I don’t trust it anymore.  At all.

The fact that this type of trouble could pop-up out of nowhere, and likely be a “glitch” in some computer somewhere, tells me the system is now completely unstable and is not to be trusted at all.

Others may legitimately have a different view, and I respect that.  But frankly, when it comes to matters financial, I don’t trust these people are far as I can throw them, and I can’t even pick them up. 

Z E R O  Trust.

I have some cash to live on . . . do you?   If not, get some.  Just in case.

 

 

Abandoned And Locked Up, He Was Exhausted, Tears Streaming Down His Face When He Was Rescued

Abandoned And Locked Up, He Was Exhausted, Tears Streaming Down His Face When He Was Rescued The poor kitten had to live on the roof for months after being abandoned by its previous owner when moving to another place… It was hungry, thirsty, lost the will to live, lost nutrition, and began to have organ failure, slim chance of survival. After 8 months of rebirth, it is miraculous that the connection of so many people can create unparalleled strength and save a life without any hope.

US seizes Scott Ritter’s passport at airport

Hal Turner World

Former US Marine, and UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter was physically stopped from visiting Russia today, by U.S. government hirelings.

The US State Department seized the passport of former Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, he said on Monday.

Ritter was on his way to Russia for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) when he was pulled off the plane and had his documents confiscated.

My passport was seized by the State Department,” Ritter said in a message. “I was pulled off the airplane.”

I’m fine, just aggravated,” he added.

Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, who later served as the US and UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He is also a Russia Today (RT) contributor, writing about international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation.

He most recently visited Russia in January, spending time in Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg, among other places.

The most recent post on Ritter’s Telegram channel put the Clooney Foundation for Justice on notice for its alleged crusade against “Russian propagandists.”

Here I am. In your face. If telling the truth about Russia makes me a propagandist in your book, then I accept the title,” he wrote. “Bring it on. I’ll school you on the First Amendment.”

You have zero concept of what free speech is. Try and arrest me and you’ll find out. In spades. It’s war,” he added.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

Whiskey-Molasses Shredded Beef

This isn’t your grandma’s shredded beef recipe—or is it? Bottom round roast slow-cooked in sweetness and served with a carrot-apple slaw.

whiskey molasses shredded beef
whiskey molasses shredded beef

Cook: 10 hr 30 min | Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 beef bottom round roast (about 2 1/2 pounds), cut into 1 inch pieces
  • 1/2 cup whiskey
  • 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, divided
  • 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
  • 4 tablespoons packed brown sugar, divided
  • 1/4 cup molasses
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper
  • 1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard
  • 2 cups shredded carrots*
  • 2 cups diced Granny Smith apple*

Instructions

  1. Place beef bottom round roast in 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 quart slow cooker. Combine whiskey, 1/4 cup vinegar, tomato paste, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, molasses, salt and pepper; pour over roast. Cover and cook on HIGH for 4 to 6 hours or on LOW for 8 to 10 hours, or until beef is, fork-tender.
  2. Remove roast from slow cooker; shred with 2 forks. Skim fat from sauce as needed. Return beef to slow cooker; stir to combine with sauce.
  3. Meanwhile, combine remaining 2 tablespoons vinegar, remaining 2 tablespoons brown sugar and mustard in large bowl. Add carrots and apples; mix well. Season with salt and black pepper, as desired. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Serve beef with slaw.

Pressure Cooker Method

Place beef Bottom Round Roast in pressure cooker; add 1/2 cup beef broth. Close and lock pressure cooker lid. Use beef, stew or high-pressure setting on pressure cooker; program 90 minutes on pressure cooker timer. Use quick-release feature to release pressure; carefully remove lid. Shred beef; return to pressure cooker.

Combine cooking liquid, whiskey, 1/4 cup cider vinegar, tomato paste, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, molasses, salt and pepper in small saucepan. Simmer for 20 to 25 minutes until desired consistency is reached.

Combine sauce and shredded beef. Continue as directed in Step 3. (This recipe variation was tested in an electric pressure cooker at high altitude. Cooking at an altitude of less than 3000 feet may require slightly less cooking time. Refer to the manufacturer’s instructions.)

Notes

*Thinly sliced pears, celery, red cabbage, green cabbage or bell peppers or a pre-packaged slaw mix can be used in place of the carrots or apple.

Serving Suggestion: Sandwiches, tacos, nachos or sliders.

This recipe can be made in a 6 quart electric pressure cooker.

Nutrition

Per serving: 350 cal, 33G protein

Vintage aviation

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If You Only Watch One Video, Make It THIS One

 

Something rarely noticed and thus rarely discussed

My Great Aunt Dottie was actually my Great Uncle Garrison. He was never invited to any family events and when they’d ask my Great Aunt Remi (Dottie’s sister) where “Gary” was (Dottie hated that name with a vengeance) it was always with darting eyes and hushed voices making sure the children didn’t hear, Remi would answer, “he’s dead and you damned well know it.” It wasn’t until I was in high-school and had a friend who had two dads that my mom quipped one day while she was doing the dishes “You know your Great Aunt Dottie was a man, right?” and I was dumbfounded, I loved Great Aunt Dottie, I would ride my bike over to her house all the time and have tea and cookies and the most amazing monkey meat sandwiches ever and she would teach me how to cross stitch and how to plan a fifteen course meal. It was Great Aunt Dottie that taught me how to waltz and roller skate and how to shoot a bow and arrow. I actually loved my Great Aunt Dottie more after I found out that she chose her own happiness over her family and was one of only three members of my family to attend her funeral. But looking back I wonder if I always kind of knew, she had a husky voice, an always present five o clock shadow and scratched her balls like a true man.

Why We’re Leaving The United States

Escalatory Delusions

Most men can remember back to a time on the schoolyard when two kids got into a confrontation and one of them kept promising to do something bad to the other if the other did not stop whatever it was he was doing. The threat of consequences was supposed to deter the other, but the other kid was undeterred, and the result was a fight, with the kid making the threats getting the worst of it. Bullies often come to a bad end like this as their bullying is based on threats.

If you are a member of the managerial elite, it is unlikely that you have such a memory as you were raised by women, so no school yard fights. As a result, the logic of the bully, issuing escalatory threats, makes perfect sense. After all, if you can conjure something worse than the other guy is conjuring, then you win! Therefore, success is determined by who has the greatest mastery of escalatory dominance, the alleged ability to escalate a conflict beyond that of an opponent.

This is the engine that has been driving the war in Ukraine. For close to a decade the Russians have objected to what Washington has been doing on its border in Ukraine, but Washington has responded with the promise of more of what the Russians found objectionable, rather than search for a compromise. Once the Russians crossed into Ukraine, Washington unleashed the sanctions war and promised even more punishments, including the promise of regime change.

Throughout the war, the approach from Washington has been to create some artificial red line for themselves or Russia, and then cross it in such a way as to suggest all future red lines will be crossed. Currently NATO is having a debate about launching long range missile attacks on Russia, from NATO countries or with NATO personnel, while pretending it is being done by Ukraine. This is the bully threatening the kid who refuses to back down with somet

As a kid I was friends with these 3 girls, who were sisters and one night their parents allowed me to have a sleepover at their house so when it came to bedtime the parents allowed me and one sister to sleep in their bed until the parents came up and moved us to my friend’s bed. At the time I didn’t understand why, maybe that’s how bedtime was in their house, anyway the light was on in the room so it stopped me from falling asleep, I was too soft to turn it off incase I got into trouble or it woke up my friend who clearly could sleep with the light on. Then I heard footsteps coming upstairs so I had to pretend to be asleep. The parents came into the room, one of them picked me up and put me in one of the girls beds, the other picking up their daughter and putting her next to me. The light wasn’t on in there but the hall light was on which was fine, so I thought ‘finally I can go to sleep now!’ As I was just about to head into dreamland I hear moaning and the bed squeaking coming from the parents bedroom!!!! 🤣🤣 I was 9 years old so I knew what they were doing and I had to wait till it was quiet until I finally got some sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t tell anyone what I heard or that I was awake the whole time, it would’ve been an awkward conversation to have so I tried to forget about it. 😬

hing worse than backing down.

Unreported in the West, Ukraine has been using Western supplied drones to attack early warning radar stations in southern Russia. These are part of Russia’s nuclear defense system. They play no role in the Ukraine war, but Ukraine’s handlers are having them do this as a form of escalatory dominance. The point is to signal to the Russians that the West is not afraid of nuclear war. The madness of this is obvious, but to a great degree that is the point, to seem mad.

We see a similar thing shaping up with China. Washington is going out of its way to provoke China over the issue of Taiwan. Various officials have been sent to the island for no other reason than to antagonize the Chinese. A big package of weapons has been shipped to Taiwan and Washington has increased the number of military personnel on the island. Washington regularly talks about how it is actively preparing for a war with the Chinese over the issue of Taiwan.

A great example of how the concept of escalatory dominance controls how American ruling elites deal with the world is the last trip by Anthony Blinken to China in which he went out of his way to insult the Chinese. The State Department insisted on Blinken visiting China, where he held meetings with Chinese leaders. He then went out of those meetings and threatened them with sanctions. This was done to let the Chinese know that there is no red line Washington will not cross.

This is not just a foreign policy strategy. The reason Trump is waiting to hear a guilty verdict is the regime has always assumed that if they cross enough red lines with regards to the rule of law, Trump or his supporters will fold. For going on four years, it has been ever increasing violence against both the rule of law and the customs that have controlled our politics. The point of each new escalation is to warn that there is no limit to what they will do unless you obey.

It is the unquestioned assumption in Washington that there is always some threat they can issue that is so terrifying that the other side will back down that has led them into a crisis for the regime. Half the country now thinks the courts are corrupt beyond reform thanks to the lawfare unleashed by the regime. We are remarkably close to the point where a majority of Americans think we are ruled by lawless gangsters, which even in easy times is an impossible state of affairs.

The crisis gripping the West is due, in large part, to the fact that the system now selects boys and girls with no practical knowledge. Never having had their bluff called and walking away with a bloody nose or a black eye, they just assume such a thing is impossible, so they are free to escalate their threats. It is not so much that their threats work, but that they ought to work. In the artificial reality in which these people live, the ought is the same as the is.

The Trump trial is a good bit of foreshadowing for how this widely held delusion about escalatory dominance will end. At some point, the bluff is called, and the bluffer has to either follow through or their raison d’etre evaporates. This is the story of the bully who finally has to fight and gets beaten. It is not the beating that ends his reign as a bully, but the fact that someone stood up to him. This is what is happening with the lawfare against Trump, who has called their bluff.

Unlike the schoolyard, the end of a regime that relies on escalatory dominance is not so simple and tidy. The regime now has to hope the Trump trial ends in a hung jury so they can maintain their stance. An acquittal has them looking like fools and a guilty verdict has them in a crisis far worse than Trump winning the election. Soon, the bluff will be called over Ukraine and Taiwan. Once this happens, the regime has no answer other than the unthinkable.

Pepe Escobar: Xi & Putin’s Move Pushed NATO Into CHAOS! Who Is Win?

  1. When someone hugs you, you should not be first to break it.
  2. Remove your sunglasses when you have to speak to someone.
  3. Irrespective of your closeness, do not ask your friends and room mates for their clothes, shoes and accessories. Those are ‘ personal belongings‘
  4. Do not order expensive stuff when you are sharing or the other person is paying the bill.
  5. Don’t make ola / uber driver wait for you. Time is literally money for them.
  6. If you borrow someone else’s novel/ books, do not mark anything in them. Return them in a good condition and within acceptable time.
  7. Compliment people when you notice their extra efforts in something.
  8. If any child touched you and asked(begged) for money don’t give a dirty look at them and run two steps back. Give, if you want to or say no. That’s it.
  9. Wave your hand rather than calling his or her name in a louder pitch if someone is wearing headphones.
  10. Praise publicly. Criticise privately.
  11. Be quiet when other people are asleep. That means more than not talking — not slamming doors, drawers, etc.
  12. Avoid finishing other people’s sentences and cutting them off
  13. If you get a missed call, remember to call them back. Or at least drop a message.

Pot Roast with Dilled Sour Cream Gravy

SlowCookerPotRoast 3
SlowCookerPotRoast 3

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 pound) chuck or pot roast
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon dill weed
  • 5 or 6 small potatoes
  • 5 or 6 carrots
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 large onion
  • 1 tablespoon flour
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 teaspoon dill seed
DilledPotRoastPin
DilledPotRoastPin
SlowCookerPotRoastFB1
SlowCookerPotRoastFB1
SlowCookerPotRoast
SlowCookerPotRoast

Instructions

  1. Coat roast with flour, salt and pepper.
  2. Brown in oil in skillet.
  3. Put roast in slow cooker, then add water and vinegar.
  4. Sprinkle dill weed over meat, then add potatoes, carrots, onion and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
  5. Cook on LOW for 10 to 12 hours or on HIGH for 6 hours.
  6. To make gravy, pour off 3 tablespoons drippings, add flour and heat.
  7. Measure rest of drippings, add water to make 1 cup.
  8. Add to flour mixture and heat for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
  9. Add 1 cup sour cream and dill seed.
  10. Heat to boiling.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve heard pretending to be asleep?

As a kid I was friends with these 3 girls, who were sisters and one night their parents allowed me to have a sleepover at their house so when it came to bedtime the parents allowed me and one sister to sleep in their bed until the parents came up and moved us to my friend’s bed. At the time I didn’t understand why, maybe that’s how bedtime was in their house, anyway the light was on in the room so it stopped me from falling asleep, I was too soft to turn it off incase I got into trouble or it woke up my friend who clearly could sleep with the light on. Then I heard footsteps coming upstairs so I had to pretend to be asleep. The parents came into the room, one of them picked me up and put me in one of the girls beds, the other picking up their daughter and putting her next to me. The light wasn’t on in there but the hall light was on which was fine, so I thought ‘finally I can go to sleep now!’ As I was just about to head into dreamland I hear moaning and the bed squeaking coming from the parents bedroom!!!! 🤣🤣 I was 9 years old so I knew what they were doing and I had to wait till it was quiet until I finally got some sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t tell anyone what I heard or that I was awake the whole time, it would’ve been an awkward conversation to have so I tried to forget about it. 😬

The Dating Market isn’t Looking Too Hot ….

Not a doctor or a nurse, just a friend of a couple. She is elf pale, blonde hair so light it’s almost white, pale blue eyes and nary a freckle to be seen. He is (no offense to anyone) coal black. When the baby was born she looked like she should have been wearing a sombrero with a taco in her hand singing La Cucaracha. (still, no offense intended to anyone, just setting the scene) the doctor and the nurse were both speechless. I was there, I was taking the video. The doctor was hesitant to hand the baby to my friends husband and they both thought something was wrong with the baby. The nurse went from being sweet to being a total bitch to my friend. When he left the room to go tell his family that is was a girl, the nurse made a comment to the doctor about how they never see any wholesome god-fearing families anymore. My friend lost it; it technically wasn’t even her baby, she was just a surrogate. The man in the room with her? He wasn’t even the father, just a friend that was gracious enough to be her coach. She was carrying the baby for another friend of ours and her husband.

The UnXplained: TOP 5 SHOCKING MYSTERIES OF 2023 | PART 1

I really enjoyed this video. I think that youse guys will too.

Disclaimer: I’m a Thai of Chinese descent living in a tourism hub of Chiang Mai, speak a little Mandarin and had actually been to China as well, so may I offer my humble 2 cents. I don’t want fellow Chinese quorans to be too stoked or offended by this kind of question. If my answer offends anyone, I apologize in advance. I also apologize for my fellow citizens as well. After all, our economy relies on tourism a lot, please come and visit us! At least this Thai welcome everyone to visit my country with open arms! I say this as a Thai who have traveled to almost all inhabited continents on Earth. 😊

There were lots of direct flights from China to Chiang Mai pre-Covid, even to lesser known cities like Changsha. Influenced by a 2012 Chinese blockbuster “Lost in Thailand” (泰囧) which heavily featured Chiang Mai, the city became hugely popular among Chinese visitors. Back then, Chinese tourists tended to exhibit a not-so-impressive manners. For example, in Chiang Mai University, Chinese tourists used to roamed free inside the campus and took photos of classes in session (many faculty members were really tired of this). This prompted the university to disallow tourists inside the campus, and directed them to the university’s official guided tour instead.

However, post-Covid, Chinese tourists nowadays are no longer loud and rude like before. Yes, there would still be some bad sheep in the flock, but the overall trend manner-wise went for the better. Back when China was poorer, Chinese tourists indeed had bad reputation. However, as time goes, I did notice a better trend of manners among the Chinese tourists. I dare say they are pretty much on par with Koreans and Japanese nowadays manner-wise. Nonetheless, I won’t deny that there are some racism bias towards mainlanders among a portion of our citizens (which is quite an irony because 1/6 of Thai population are of Chinese descent). Also, since China is a much larger country than Korea and Japan, there are just a lot of Chinese setting up shops (100% owned) in several touristic hubs like Bangkok, Chiang Mai, or Phuket. And as some answers also mentioned, such shops only cater to Chinese customers and Chinese tourists have higher tendencies to visit Chinese-owned shops compared to Thai ones. Thai people’s concerns on Chinese tourists is mainly about the circulation of tourism money in Chinese-owned business nowadays rather than the manners. I don’t have problems with Chinese setting up shops here, but please also spend some money and contribute to the place you are visiting too. 😊 This would greatly improve our perception towards Chinese tourists a great deal.

I would like to share my own experience as well regarding the Chinese tourist’s manner. In 2013, I went to Mongolia (part of a train trip from Mongolia to China and then onto North Korea) and met a Chinese couple in our tour group. They really shattered my prejudice of “Chinese tourists are loud and rude”. They were so kind and very well-mannered, and when my train arrived in Beijing, they offered me a treat at a Peking Duck restaurant in Haidian District and then took me (and some Westerners who were in the same group back in Mongolia) to have some “rou chuanr” with “Jia duo bao” herbal drink! I still remembered it to this day.

Again, I would like to just tell the situation as it is without putting in prejudices or biases. It would be better if we treat each culture with respect and understanding.

Professor Studied NDE’s For 30 Years; What She Discovers Is Incredible (Near Death Experiences)

As a leader in the photovoltaic industry, China dominates the industrial and supply chains, currently producing over 90% of the world’s polysilicon, 98% of solar-grade silicon wafers, over 85% of solar cells, and over 80% of photovoltaic modules. It is projected that by 2025, China’s global share in polysilicon and silicon wafer production will reach 95%, making the world highly dependent on China’s photovoltaic products.

Not only does China have massive production capacity, but its photovoltaic technology is also extremely advanced. The latest solar cells have achieved a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 33.9%, far exceeding the 5% capability of plants. Additionally, Chinese photovoltaic products are highly competitive in price, with a 99% decrease in cost over the past 20 years, currently priced at around 0.8 yuan per watt. Furthermore, Chinese photovoltaic modules have a long service life and can maintain 80% of their power generation efficiency after 25 years of use.

As China’s photovoltaic technology rapidly advances, old photovoltaic modules, although long-lasting, have lower performance and are difficult to circulate and dispose of domestically. However, in poor countries with inadequate grid coverage, such as Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America, these second-hand photovoltaic panels are in high demand. In these regions, lacking basic infrastructure, the living conditions of the population are extremely poor, often without access to basic lighting or phone charging facilities. China’s used photovoltaic panels, with their low prices, can provide basic electricity to rural households, improving their quality of life and being regarded as high-tech products.

South Africa witnessed a significant increase in imports of photovoltaic panels and energy storage batteries in 2022-2023, with not only rural but also urban residents purchasing these systems to overcome unstable grid issues. Gaza has the highest density of photovoltaic panel installations globally, as the local grid has been destroyed, leaving the population reliant on photovoltaic panels for electricity.

In summary, China’s discarded second-hand photovoltaic panels, at extremely low prices, have benefited many impoverished areas around the world, providing electricity to billions of rural households without access to power, lifting them out of darkness, and enabling them to enjoy the conveniences of electricity. This reflects China’s philosophy of utilizing technology to assist and support underprivileged groups, in stark contrast to some countries that exploit and oppress the weak.

Oh this is hilarious.

The USA offered a gigantic bribe to Marcos to turn them into a missile base.

Marcos says yes allows US to build missile facilities.

Marcos asks where his money is.

US says what money?

you believed me?
you believed me?

Many Hong Kong restaurants demand money UP FRONT.

CHINA BUILDING 3nm CHIPS – biden makes failing look easy…

In college as a rookie on the SAE Baja team, I was tasked with tearing down one of our old engines and doing a simple top end rebuild. There wasn’t anything wrong with the engine, it was just a spare one and this was a way for new team members to gain familiarity with part numbers, torque specs, and other things like that. We used a brand new engine for each year’s competition car.

Upon removing the head from the 10 HP Briggs & Stratton, something odd caught my eye. There was raised material on the face of the piston partly obscured by carbon. Brushing it away revealed threads and part of hex head! This engine had somehow ingested a stray 1/4″–20 screw which became embedded into the top of the piston, and then just kept running like nothing had happened. It was potentially like that for a whole year worth of test runs and competitions, possibly even longer.

The fastener was laying there sideways but extremely fused to the piston and could not be removed without destroying it. We simply ground down the portions that were sticking up to recreate a flush surface, reinstalled everything, and called it a day. It continued to run just fine.

– – –

A couple years ago my father in law asked me to help fix up his riding lawnmower, powered by another Briggs & Stratton engine. This was a two cylinder vertical shaft of maybe 18 or 20-some horsepower, I don’t recall exactly. His complaint was that it was “a little down on power” but still cut the grass fine. It just struggled a little bit going up steep hills or cutting through extra-thick grass if he let it grow too tall, and occasionally it let out puffs of dark smoke. He mowed with it like that all summer, bagged leaves with it like that in the fall, and when it was finally done for the season I met up with him to look the thing over.

Expecting a 30-minute carb cleaning or a fouled spark plug I got to work, but found everything spotless. With no signs of any issues with the electrical components either, I moved on to a more serious investigation. Tearing into this engine began with a crankcase cover on the top. With this removed we could look down along the axis of the crankshaft to inspect for any catastrophic bottom end damage. Everything appeared fine but there was a thin metal rod in kind of a weird place tucked behind the crank counterweight. It had a few bends in the middle of it for clearance and the two ends disappeared into the oil bath and up into the block somewhere. I figured it had to be part of the governor system so I left it in place and moved on.

Removing the valve covers, I found the first head looking as it should. The second, however, revealed the culprit: a totally missing pushrod! It was just gone! That would explain the lack of power. One valve on that cylinder is never opening so it’s never accomplishing a power cycle. It’d only been running on one cylinder all year. But then the unavoidable question was, “where did the pushrod go?”

I eventually put two and two together and realized that strange governor-rod-thing was actually the missing pushrod. It had somehow gotten dislodged from its place and fell down into the crankcase. The clearance bends were not manufactured, they were suffered from the crankshaft smashing into it as it bounced around in there until everything was able to self-clearance. Despite being completely down one cylinder and choking on its own guts, this V-twin still performed so well that its shortcomings were nothing more than an inconvenience to be dealt with on the off-season.

I’d always heard Briggs built some tough ass machines but these experiences really solidified that for me.

Vintage and illustration

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US/NATO escalation to strike Russia

Wife’s Plan To Divorce Me For Wealthy Lover BACKFIRES When I Get Out Of Alimony And She Gets Dumped!

Shorpy

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All of the following munitions rely on GPS and have a problem with terminal guidance anywhere near the Russian front line, due to ubiquitous Russian GPS jamming:

  • JDAM (air launched 500 pound GPS-guided bombs — 90% of what the USAF and USN drop)
  • SDB (replacement for JDAM)
  • GLSDB (an SDB mounted on a missile that can be shot from a HIMARS)
  • M30 (90 km range rocket fired from HIMARS, deploys cluster munitions)
  • M31 (90 km range rocket fired from HIMARS, 91 kg warhead)

The problem is not confined to US products. Ukrainian-built FPV drones which do not use GPS are also getting jammed by the Russians. I spoke to a guy who is responsible for about 15% of Ukraine’s drone production, and he dismissed any talk of GPS and said it’s gone. In and around the front line, that may be true, but there are caveats.

Background: GPS relies on a network of satellites with 44.8 watt transmitters 20,000 miles up. The signal (-125 dBm) is substantially weaker than the background radio hiss that’s everywhere (-110 dBm), and uses a lot (43 dB) of something called coding gain to be detectable and usable. When GPS devices take a while to acquire the signal, what they are doing is synchronizing their internal code to the satellite’s code. Once the two are synchronized, they can hear the satellite, until then, it’s just more hiss. The process of synchronization is basically trying every possible time alignment until one works.

Before the first GPS satellite was launched in 1978, the designers already knew that GPS could be jammed [1]. Just hit the receiver with -82 dBm of radio hiss and it’ll never hear the satellite. A 1000 watt ground-based transmitter can blank out naive GPS receivers for 560 km.

And, before the first GPS satellite was launched, the designers knew of many clever ways to reduce the effect of jamming. One of them, however, is a massive hammer: controlled reception pattern arrays (CRPA). You use an array of GPS antennas and combine the signals together in a way that causes the jamming signals to cancel. So long as the jammer isn’t coming from the same direction as the GPS satellites, this works really, really well.

Here’s a CRPA from a May 2000 report [2]:

1 panel
1 panel

Arrays like this can act a bit like a bigger antenna with a diameter the size of the entire array. That’s nice, you get a bit more signal from the antenna. Cancellation works far better. Let me demonstrate.

2 graph
2 graph

Here is the result of just two omnidirectional antenna elements added together. The Y direction is dB of gain from combining the antennas. The X axis is degrees between the “null” direction and the actual direction of the signal source. You can see that at right angles (90 degrees) to the null, two antennas pick up twice as much power as just one, which is +3 dB of gain. That’s nice, we’ll take it. It’s a big fat lobe. If that’s off by 40 degrees you still get half the benefit, and the benefit isn’t amazing to start with.

But look at that deep, sharp null. If you can get it aligned to one degree, you can knock the jammer down by 35 dB. In practice, CRPAs achieve 50 dB because they very quickly and very precisely line up the phase delays from the antennas to knock out the jammer.

If the jammer against a CRPA wants to work as well as it did against a naive receiver, it’ll need 50 dB more power. dB is a logarithmic scale: That’s 10,000x as much power. So that 1000 watt jammer now needs to push 10 million watts. This is… possible… but any such thing is going to be a major installation and will get a visit from a HARM missile and thereafter many JDAMs.

Today you can buy CRPAs from a variety of manufacturers, all outside the United States. Tualcom, a Turkish company, sells 8-channel CRPAs. They’ve sold 2500 of them to Iran for use on… drones. Yep. Did you know that Turkiye is a NATO ally?

These aren’t going to be on Shaheds, or not many of them anyway, because a CRPA costs about $20k or more. (Please let me know if there are cheaper units.) That’s because there’s no commercial market for CRPAs, as the primary civil defense against GPS jamming is litigation. Even though the electronics are actually simpler than what’s in your cell phone, they are built in low volume of many discrete parts, and in the US they are built by folks like Raytheon.

I would hope that every western military jet has a CRPA, but somehow I doubt it.

The HIMARS-launched 90-km range M31s are having accuracy trouble but the HIMARS-launched 300-km range M57 ATACMS missiles are not. In both cases the missiles can probably use inertial guidance from launch to impact, since that’s less than 7 minutes. But they’ll need an accurate initial position and target position.

The accurate target position can probably be found from military maps. FYI, you probably cannot get accurate target positions from Google Maps — I used to work there, and they don’t want you doing that, and they probably fuzz the locations enough to screw up this use.

The accurate initial position and initial GPS acquisition for the missile would come from the launcher’s GPS antenna. This suggests to me that the HIMARS truck is getting jammed when too close to the Russian front line, probably anywhere within 50 km. And THAT tells me that HIMARS doesn’t have a CRPA. (Update: see below, it has an FRPA, which means fixed pattern. I don’t know the pattern, but as it doesn’t articulate the nulls won’t line up exactly with a jammer and as you can see above, they need to line up well to get good jamming.)

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Neither does JDAM, apparently. And I’m guessing SDB doesn’t either, which went into production in 2005.

This is a stupid problem to have. A half-dozen ASIC engineers and $5m could fix it.

China Just Scored A KNOCK OUT Blow To The U.S. Economy And War Is Coming

Chances are near zero.

And for all of those. The reason is something that you may not know.

China is not a signatory to the START treaty. This limits deployed nuclear weapons to around 1,500 warheads. China likely has more than both Russia and the US combined. Despite what you hear in the MSM about China having only 300 warheads, that is an outright lie.

The original estimate came from the Federation of American Scientists in the 80s. In their estimate they stated that they had no idea how many nuclear weapons the Chinese had. So they decided to use electricity generation as some kind of measure.

What does electricity generation have to do with how many nuclear weapons a nation has? Nothing. The Soviets did not have that much electrical generation and yet has more nuclear weapons than the US. So they finished their study saying that China could have 3,000 or 5,000. They had no idea.

The next thing you should know is that these Senators, Congressman, and President of the US is that they spent generations gaining wealth and power. When was the last time you heard Bill Gates or any other billionaire pulled a knife and went toe to toe with another guy with a knife? Never. And you never will.

Even if the US loses a war by attacking China and the US loses 7 carrier battle groups. Do you think Bill Gates or any other billionaire would chose to vaporize their family to take revenge on one of their body guards being killed? Or even all of them? No.

And it’s even more impossible for the politicians to do so because China has more deployed nuclear weapons than the US and Russia. Starting a nuclear war would mean that the US would get at least a double dose of nukes. One from China and one from Russia.

Those selfish people that have spent decades stealing from the US tax payers are going to vaporize their families, wealth, and power for you, a peon? Don’t make me laugh.

The only time nukes would be used is if China nuked the US first or if the US thought it could get away with it without getting nuked back.

Pecos River Red Fritos Pie

dsc05716
dsc05716

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 large onion, chopped coarsely
  • 3 pounds coarsely ground beef
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 3 tablespoons ground hot red chile peppers
  • 2 tablespoons ground mild red chile peppers
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • Corn chips
  • Shredded Monterey Jack cheese
  • Shredded Cheddar cheese

Instructions

  1. Combine onion, ground beef, garlic, chiles and water in slow cooker.
  2. Cover. Cook on LOW for 8 to 10 hours.
  3. Drain.
  4. Serve over corn chips.
  5. Top with mixture of Monterey Jack and Cheddar cheese.

Son’s friend stayed overnight. The next morning I’m making breakfast for everyone. Son likes poached eggs. I make them. Friend asks if I can make them like that all the time. I explain how to poach an egg. That night I get a phone call from a strange number and a man asks if I’m looking for a job. He needs a cook. In his father’s house. The father is picky about his breakfast and he heard I can poach eggs. I explain that all cooks can poach eggs. Eventually I am hired to cook 3 meals a day for his elderly parents. I have to plan menus for the week and prepare breakfast to order. Hot lunch and a dinner plate to be reheated for dinner. I wash the dishes but all other cleaning is done by the maid. Amazing kitchen. Eventually they tried to give me the old guys Cadillac because he stopped driving and they wanted to “save me using my car to drive to their house.” It was probably the best job I ever had. Not the money or the benefits. They were family. They treated me like family in the best way.

DANGER: UNSTABLE GROUND

Submitted into Contest #247 in response to: Imagine a world where exploration is forbidden, and write a story about a character who defies this rule to satisfy their innate curiosity...

This is a new addition that I am considering to my daily posts. Here I include some contemporaneous SF (short story) for the reader to enjoy. -MM
Do not ever step foot on the ground. Charlie had been told this his entire life, but it never really sunk in. He didn’t understand the deep-seated fear everyone else seemed to harbor. He thought it was incredible, a beautiful problem to be solved. Until he was laying on the floor of the lab staring at the ceiling and blinking away tears.The first time Charlie ever saw the ground consume a person he’d been twelve. What the tree-top teachers referred to as “live mummification” was a quick, disturbing process. Dirt crawling over skin to create a sort of exoskeleton. A casting of the human body, like those papier-mâché spheres they’d made in class years ago. It’d been an elderly lady that first time. The pulley system keeping her safe had malfunctioned and she’d lurched off balance. It was a code yellow bridge and wasn’t fully enclosed. The old lady stumbled to the side and was pulled right over the edge. Charlie caught only the first flash of the swarming ground on her skin before his mom had ushered him away. As the crowd around them shrieked and cried, Charlie craned his neck for a better look.He’d liked to have claimed this moment as the catalyst for his obsession, but really that had occurred years ago. It was maybe a few days after his seventh birthday, and he was crossing that old rope bridge by his house. It’s been built in a rush by early survivors trying to escape their houses for supplies. He was not supposed to be on it, but that had only made him more intent on using it.One of the rotten wood planks had splintered under his front foot and sent him toppling forward. It was only due to some notion of luck that his hips didn’t fit through the empty space and his arms had gotten tangled in the ropes. His leg hung down, exposed, ten feet off the ground. And then his new shoe, a size too big so he could grow into it, slipped off his foot. It landed on the dusty ground and tipped over sideways. Charlie’s breath caught in his chest, but nothing happened. The shiny shoe glistened under the sun. He wanted desperately to stick his finger in that restless dirt, just to see what would happen. He stayed put for way longer than was logical just in case, but the ground remained flat and lifeless. The shoe was not alive.

 

The second time he saw someone be consumed by the ground he was 18 and on the verge of declaring a major in Microbiology, specializing in the study of those tiny organisms that made the ground hungry. This time the fall had not been an accident. He’d been crossing a major intersection of bridges when a commotion piqued his curiosity. A young woman who looked barely older than him had crawled out onto the roof of a one-story house where no one would risk following. Her auburn hair floated in the wind. People crowded against the railings to watch her. A few kind souls called out things like “You don’t have to do this!” and “Things will get better!” but the girl ignored them. She stared straight ahead and stepped off the roof. For a millisecond it was as if she was walking in the air, and then she plummeted to the ground and landed with a heavy thump. Immediately the soil surged up to meet her. She didn’t make a sound as it closed over her. Charlie came back every day for two weeks to observe the hardened cocoon. Inside, he knew that the body was being decomposed, drained away. The microorganisms in the dirt would suck the nutrients from her. Then the cast would collapse in on itself and the ground would smooth over once again.

 

It wasn’t surprising that these events would have a lasting effect on him. The unexpected part was the nature of the effect. Where others would shy away and realize how dangerous the ground was, Charlie felt himself drawn to it. He wanted to understand the little beasts that terrorized his people. So, it was inevitable, really, that he’d want to see this forbidden phenomenon again.

 

The lab he was assigned to was on the upper floor of a university no longer in use. The building was old, made of even gray bricks. He had to duck through the fifth-floor window that had been fashioned into an entrance to get in. The walls were off-white, and the floors were so stable it made him feel somewhat unbalanced. His feet, used to the bridges and tree-top platforms, weren’t accustomed to the solidity. The equipment in the lab was well maintained: microscopes, autoclaves, incubators, centrifuges. He felt like a child in a room full of new toys. On one side of the room, where a balcony had once been, a ramp had been fixed that led down to the ground. The space before it was taken up by a deoxygenation chamber used briefly to asphyxiate any rogue organisms.

 

Charlie was integrated into a group that exclusively studied the microorganisms in the ground called Vitae Suffocent. Life suckers. The study was relatively new, they’d only recently worked with engineering to create a protective suit. Before then, the scientists would lean out the window with a cup fastened to a long pole and scoop up a small bit of the dirt. With the help of the suits, they had been able to set up a secure mock habitat to observe the specimens’ behavior.

 

The group was small, a handful of young students of which he was one, along with six seasoned scientists. For the first time, Charlie found himself surrounded by people who were just as interested in the ground as he was. The obsession that had set him apart from other kids in school was now reflected all around him. There was a girl who’d started at the same time as him- Tori. She was short and had thin black hair chopped short around her ears. Because they were new, they were often assigned projects to work on together. He wasn’t sure if he liked her, but it didn’t matter much.

There was an ongoing experiment that needed a fresh test subject, someone to stick a finger into the Life Sucker habitat. Charlie volunteered immediately, exhilarated by the idea of being able to touch the ground. He pictured it being magical, a borderline religious experiment. He worked himself up over it for days, so that when it was finally time he was almost bursting with excitement.

 

The scientists heading the experiment placed him in the deoxygenation chamber with the container. Around him, they gathered clipboards, pencils poised to jot down any and all details. His forefinger was swiped clean with an alcohol wipe that made the skin feel dry. Tori unlocked the circular compartment in the top of the container. Slowly, breathlessly, Charlie lowered his hand into the habitat. The tip of his finger brushed the dirt. It was soft and damp as he pressed the finger down. Charlie blinked and the soil began to stir. It tickled the pad of his finger. He watched in fascination as the hidden organisms began to climb up his skin. It was a strange sensation. The soil was cool and light, it felt more like a caress than a smothering.

 

Tori clicked the stopwatch in her hand and began to count aloud. By the time she reached seven, the organisms were up to his wrist. He withdrew his hand. The seal on the opening caught most of the dirt and held it back, to the irritation of the organisms. He held his hand away from him, not trusting it. Tori latched the contained shut quickly. Someone on the outside of the chamber switched it on. They held their breaths as the oxygen rapidly drained from the room. A loud whirring assaulted Charlie’s ears. His chest tightened. For a minute they all felt like they were suffocating, then it abruptly stopped and the doors to the lab popped open. Oxygen flooded back in. Charlie sucked in a deep breath.

 

He examined his hand. It was tingling and covered in little red blotches, but otherwise, he was fine. No damage had ever been recorded from less than ten seconds of exposure. Charlie glanced at the other set of doors over his shoulder. The ones that opened onto the ramp that led down to the ground. He longed to go through them, wanted to dig his hands in the ground and laugh as the organisms consumed him. He turned and walked back into the lab.

 

A month later he was given a protective suit and given the chance to wear it for the first time. He and Tori had been assigned to walk, outside, to a big oak tree and back. Charlie was thrilled. He stepped into the suit and pulled it up over his arms. A tech zipped him in and checked him over. The suit was a stiff layer of slick rubber designed to lack tread so the organisms wouldn’t be able to climb against gravity. The boots they were given were thick and clunky. They were tall, reaching up to his knees like a pair of extra-long rain boots. A device attached to the top of the boot sent out vibrations that they’d found would deter the organisms. The hood of the suit came up over his head and the visor was clicked into place. He saw the world through a glass partition.

 

Then they were in the chamber and the doors behind them were closing. It was midday and the sun was shining. A breeze spirited a few brown leaves past the glass. The doors to the ramp opened. Charlie stepped out first. His heart pounded in his chest. It was right there, the ground. He walked quickly down the ramp, Tori following behind him at a more reserved pace. He paused at the end of it. The dirt was disturbed, as it always was when the organisms were present. It looked almost fluffy.

 

Charlie took a deep breath and lifted one foot. He lowered it slowly to the ground, enjoying the crunch of soil underfoot. He leaned his weight forward, ready to take another step, but paused. The ground was shaking around his boot, pulsing in strange waves. It was trying to climb up his boot, he realized. He tried to pick up the foot but felt resistance. The ground clung to his boot, pulling him back down. Charlie watched, entranced. He continued to pry his foot away and eventually the dirt fell back down. He looked at Tori, whose face he could just see behind the visor. She looked equal parts disturbed and fascinated.

 

Afterward, he felt like he’d been on another planet. It was amazing, he’d been on the ground, but he couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed. What had they learned during that expedition? Nothing new, nothing interesting. He wanted more. All he could think about was how slow the studies they performed were. They were no closer to understanding these organisms. They needed to study them in action. His plan fell together quickly after that.

 

Once again he fastened the protective suit on and was checked over by the other technicians. Tori was doing the same next to him. Charlie clapped a hand on her shoulder and with the scalpel hidden in his palm he sliced a tiny hole into her suit, the rubber splitting easily under a sharp blade. She turned and gave him a thumbs-up. He hid the scalpel in one of his pockets.

 

They walked through the chamber and out onto the ramp. The suit was heavy and sweaty against his skin. Through the visor, he saw the dirt-coated ground come closer and closer. The first step was always the most exciting. His foot hovered over the solid ground, casting a wavering shadow over the dirt. He placed it firmly down. The ground beneath him stirred, trying to creep up his legs but being deterred by the vibrations.

 

Slowly, the ground pulling at them with each step, they made it 50 feet away from the end of the ramp. He knew they were being watched closely from the observation windows, but at this distance, no one would really be able to tell what happened. Charlie shoved his foot hard to the side right as Tori took a step. The bottom of her boot caught on the top of his and she lost her balance. Her arms windmilled but the suit was too bulky and dragged her down.

 

She should have gotten up. The suit should have kept the microorganisms at bay. But Charlie had damaged her suit. He gazed intently down at her as the organisms poured over her and into the hole in the fabric. He bent over as if to help her, but really he just wanted to get a closer look. This near, it was mesmerizing. The dark earth swirled as though it was possessed. It rose and fell like a liquid. Tori cried out one last time before they closed over the top of her dark hair. Charlie ignored the panicked voices over his earpiece. Through his visor the majority of the event had been captured (excepting, of course, when he purposefully tripped her).

 

He’d made a huge leap in the field, no matter how tragic. The footage would help inform scientists for years to come. Except, he didn’t know (no one did) that after a feeding, the organisms laid their eggs. Hundreds of microscopic eggs stuck to his boots and were carried back into the facility. The eggs, not having to breathe oxygen yet, were not affected by the deoxygenation tank. Charlie stripped off his suit and hung it on the hook.

 

Overnight, the eggs hatched, and those tiny, deadly microorganisms scurried to hide in the dust accumulated above cabinets and at the edges of the room. Charlie was the first person at the lab that morning, still buzzing with the exhilaration of the day before, ready to study the footage and propel their lab forward. When his skin started to itch, he thought nothing of it. Until he noticed the little red dots on his forearm. Then the world tilted on its axis, and he crumpled to the floor. He’d made another major discovery that day. The skin of the microorganisms contained a deadly neurotoxin.

 

There weren’t enough creatures to make a cast over him. It was a slow death during which all he could think about was how these organisms would feed on him, suck the life out of him. After, they’d lay their eggs. And the eggs would hatch. And the organisms would spread.

 

His curiosity had doomed their entire town. He’d brought the ground to them.

Five Dollars

“Today I was picking up lunch for a doctor’s Office and as I’m standing there waiting on my order and checking emails, I hear a gentleman ask this lady, “I would like to purchase something to eat but all I have is $5.” So nosy me looks up from my phone and notices this gentleman wearing a backpack and holding a $5 bill who looks to be homeless or maybe he was dealing with a hard time but either way as he asks about a few items on the menu he shortly discovers that he may need more than $5. The lady begins to offer some suggestions to help him and the man orders and as she’s asking him what he wants to drink and as he’s thinking about it the lady says don’t worry about it because your breakfast is on me.

main qimg cedc7470581935887619008696cb61e3
main qimg cedc7470581935887619008696cb61e3

I got this picture for a couple of reasons. It would have been so easy to turn around and ask the manager to step in or for help but she didn’t she just said hey it’s on me. She could have just gave him water and took his money and went on to the next customer and again she didn’t she just did it. I’ve been in customer service for a long time. I’ve been through some of the best trainings such as Dale Carnegie and yet a girl name Karina in a Chick-fil-A in Jackson, MS in a 3-minute conversation with a customer has managed to teach me the value of humility and taking care of your customers. It’s not just the nuggets that make this place successful. It’s people like Karina.

Creating manifestations via AI art tools

January of 2016, my 14-year-old brother intentionally shot himself in the head with a .22 rifle … twice (the first time the rifle shifted and shot him in the ear, so he reset the rifle and the round entered his right temple.

I was at work when I got the news and I rushed to my mom’s house as fast I could … too fast to be honest. I couldn’t even get to the driveway for all of the deputies, fire and EMS crews. My grandfather’s truck pulled along side my car and my mom leaned forward from the passenger seat, covered in blood and tissue and said “baptist” (Baptist hospital in Winston-Salem).

Driving down the highway to Winston, I was a nervous wreck … I would catch my breath between sobs and quivering … unable to drive and yet traveling nearly 90 mph. Half way to Winston, I saw emergency lights in the rear view … the ambulance caught me quickly and had to be traveling nearly 110mph … I smiled … because I knew that he was certainly still alive.

Arriving at the hospital, there was already a family room prepared for us … I saw family members and family friends arriving … confused … scared. At this point, we didn’t know why my brother had been shot. My mom lived in a rural, heavily wooded area … there were many deer hunters in the area, and I had honestly assumed that he was accidentally shot.

We had been there for 30 minutes or so when the lead doctor came in and briefed us on the situation. He said that per evidence that was gathered by the sheriff’s department, it was concluded that he had shot himself intentionally. The amount of sorrow that those words generated soaked in the walls … the air was heavy and our faces were all saturated. I saw my grandfather break down…he had given my brother the rifle…his guilt was evident and one of the saddest things I’ve ever witnessed. I was so convinced that my mother would hyperventilate or pass out that we asked about getting her something to calm down.

This was the first hour of many restless days and sleepless nights. This was the longest hour of my life.

If there was a happy ending to this story you would be surprised … maybe even baffled. The round entered my brother’s brain and stopped nearly half way through. Over the next several days his head swelled and surgery was needed to relieve the pressure. His speech was very limited … his arms weren’t of much use … and he was deaf in his right ear. Through mumbled words and tears he apologized for what he had done.

Almost three years later he shows very little sign of ever having gone through such an ordeal. His speech is great, he has full use of his body, and his scarring is very minimal. He recently achieved his GED and he has just started his first job.

I have the honor of knowing the luckiest man alive.

China, Palestine and Africa

I had a neighbor who did the same thing, called on a few other neighbors too. She had lots of money, lawyer on retainer, and a son who was a detective on the force. I got a temporary Protection order once, which she broke almost immediately. Went back to court she said she never came over and I said “are you saying you didn’t come to talk to Terry and Carolyn last week on Tuesday? (they were neighbors from the other side of me and they rented from her, but we were grilling out on my property). She said “Well yes, but I wasn’t talking to you” Her lawyer looked at her in disbelief, threw his hands up in the air, ‘pen flying out of his hand, mind you’ and I GOT MY PERMENENT PROTECTION ORDER that year. Next yeart the cops would talk to her and then come talk to us. They started coming and saying “how you doing today, she called again…pretend we are talking to us about it, then we would talk about other stuff for awhile, like how our families were, how their families were doing, kids birthdays or milestones, ect. They go tell her we talked. They said she needed a psychological evaluation, so told me to keep track of how often she called on me (she called on me the most, I lived right next-door). One time she even called on a neighbor kid cause he dropped part of his orange peel on her sidewalk. Another time she called 3 times in 1 day ( same cop all 3 times), he told her if she called again that day SHE would be arrested for false reports. Eventually the cops told me to get a 30 day police call log, file for a protection order, AND 3 cops offered to testify on my behalf. I did get log (she called the cops a total of 43 times in 1 month’s time period) and all 3 cops testified,. The Judge even helped by asking if cops ever told me they threatened to arrest her for false report. YUP!! Got that Permanent Protection Order immediately. Her High Falutent Lawyer was so pissed. I didn’t have any lawyer either time. She stopped calling the cops so much, but still cauesed problems for everyone. Eventually, like 3 years later the family moved her to a nusing home on the locked ward for high risk for running away residents. The family told us she had been suffering from Alzheimers AND Dementia for 7 years. Like they didn’t have a clue. That was 12 years ago, cops not called other than on some renters up the block for parties, drugs, fights, ect, but not on any of us that lived here then and are still here. Good Luck, maybe the cops will get sick of being called on you.

  1. Gay people everywhere. And they’re the same as everyone else. Perhaps slightly nicer even. No one freaks out over them and they live just like everyone else. So do women. They can do stuff. And say stuff.
  2. Doors without handles or knobs. You are supposed to just push them with your body. It can be your hand. Your shoulder. Or even your butt.
  3. Revolving doors. Just. How. Am. I. Supposed. To. Jump. In. To. That. Mommy!
  4. Costco food court dispensers of straws, plastic forks, gooey green substance, and ketchup. And the wheel of psychopathically small cut up onions.
  5. Clothes sizes. What’s 3XXXLV? What’s Woman? And when it doesn’t say Woman, does mean I can’t wear it? And kid shoe sizes go from 0 to 13.5 then abruptly stop for no discernable reason and start again at 1 (!). Cuts are confusing too. Husky. Does it mean fat? What about tall? Where’s short? I give up.
  6. Camping. We work so hard to not have to sleep on the hard ground, have a hot water and electricity, cook with proper appliances, and be protected from nature.
  7. Huge. Enormous food portions. When we get our first meal in US, we look around for the four guys who are going to help us eat it.
  8. One bedroom and better yet – one bathroom for each family member. Oh god, one can never go back to sharing a bathroom after that. If two kids are sharing a bedroom, that’s held up as a pinnacle of modesty and bonding experience for siblings.
  9. Constant bombardment by aggressive commercial offers. What? You want to give me filtered water? It’s the best filter in the world? It will help my hair grow back? And if I don’t get it right now at a charming price of only $79 a month, I will die from calcium overdose?! Sign me up!
  10. Certainty. Your home will be there tomorrow. Your country will be there tomorrow. As long as you pay your taxes, you are left to your own vices. You can just pretty much do whatever the hell you want. Like build a new life and become less frenetic and more jolly.

Ready-When-You-Get-Home Pot Roast

What could be better than dinner waiting for you for a change?

1200 Pot Roast Chuck Roast SpendWithPennies 8 2
1200 Pot Roast Chuck Roast SpendWithPennies 8 2

Prep: 5 min | Cook: 8 to 10 hr | Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (2 to 3 pound) chuck or shoulder roast
  • 2 large onions
  • 3 large bell peppers
  • 1 package beefy mushroom soup mix (dry)
  • 1 pound baby carrots

Instructions

  1. Cut the onions into quarters and separate.
  2. Seed the bell peppers and cut into 8 pieces each.
  3. Layer about half of the onions and peppers in the bottom of the slow cooker.
  4. Place the roast on top of the vegetables.
  5. Sprinkle the dry soup mix on the roast and top with the remaining onions and peppers.
  6. Add the carrots on top. ADD NO LIQUID.
  7. Cover and cook on LOW for 8-10 hours.
Pot Roast Chuck Roast SpendWithPennies 5
Pot Roast Chuck Roast SpendWithPennies 5
Perfect Pot Roast SpendWithPennies 12
Perfect Pot Roast SpendWithPennies 12

So you think you’re ready to move to America, huh?

Well, let me tell you, it’s not all apple pie and baseball.

One of the biggest shocks for me was the sheer size of everything – the food, the cars, the houses, the roads.

It’s like they say, everything is bigger in Texas, or in this case, everywhere in America.

I mean, have you seen the size of a standard American fridge?

It’s like a small room in there.

And don’t even get me started on the food portions.

You’ll be like, “Is this a joke?

Who eats this much food in one sitting?”

But what really threw me off was the whole tipping culture.

I mean, in most countries, a tip is a small token of appreciation, but in America, it’s a whole different ball game.

You’re expected to tip at least 20% in most restaurants, and if you don’t, you’re basically considered a cheapskate.

And it’s not just restaurants, it’s bars, hairdressers, even delivery guys.

It’s like, when did 15% become the new minimum?

And don’t even get me started on the whole tax situation.

You’ll be like, “Wait, I have to pay taxes on this too?”

Yeah, welcome to America, where taxes are like the unwelcome houseguest who never leaves.

But you know what really blew my mind?

The fact that in some states, you can still be fired from your job for being LGBTQ+.

Like, what year is this?

And don’t even get me started on the healthcare system.

It’s like, you’re expected to have a PhD in insurance jargon just to navigate the system.

And good luck if you’re not insured, you’re basically on your own.

It’s like, how did the richest country in the world manage to mess up something so basic?

And then there’s the whole gun culture thing.

I mean, I’m not going to get into the politics of it all, but let’s just say it’s…different.

You’ll be like, “Wait, you can just walk into a store and buy a gun?

Like, no background checks or anything?”

Yeah, it’s a thing.

And don’t even get me started on the whole “gun show” culture.

It’s like, I get it, America loves its guns, but do they really need to flaunt it so much?

It’s like, I’m trying to buy a coffee here, not attend a gun rally.

Anyway, that’s my two cents on the whole American culture shock thing.

Take it or leave it, America, it’s still a wild ride.

Trump says he would bomb Moscow and Beijing. And who’d win?

American politicians talk as if the US is on another planet or something. That the US itself cannot be bombed. They think that the US is the only country with bombs.

I’m 76. My high school and college classmates are dropping like flies. My time is coming fairly soon. I’ve had a varied and active life from stealing food from hotel corridors to survive to owning 4 successful companies and retiring at 49 to backpack the world with my kids. 35 was my best year. I was young enough to do it all and smart enough to see the traps ahead of me. One thing I wish I knew back then, not just philosophically, but at the basic level of my soul: It doesn’t matter. Nothing really matters. There is no point to all of the pain, stress, arguments, hassles, and the rest. I can buy a Lambo for cash and have my clothes custom-made, but I drive a 2,000 Toyota 4Runner with 242,000 miles on it, my pants are almost as old as my sons, I wear shoes I bought in 1999 that still have miles on them, my favorite food is spaghetti, and I tossed my smartphone six year ago. It drives my sons nuts. They want my wife to buy me a new Toyota Sequoia, a smartphone, and something other than the $9 tee shirts I get off Amazon. But I learned something years ago, long after my 30s: It doesn’t matter. None of that stuff made me happy. It gave me pleasure, but pleasure fades and the darkness falls unless you are happy at your core. I am. So, I’d have liked to know not to take life so seriously. It cost me my first marriage and bad relationships all over the place because I tried to grind my way up the “ladder of success”. And it didn’t mean a thing.

Vintage Men’s illustration

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Picture library cover
Picture library cover
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Navy boot camp, Orlando 1973. War is over.

The first days are orientation, haircuts, uniforms, making beds, etc. Then I see a guy on the top bunk, hugging his knees close up to his chest. He’s rocking back and forth, muttering, “It’s just a game. It’s just a game.”

Cheezus. The hardest thing we had to do was fold our underwear.

Number Two:

Recruit Roly Poly gets caught with his girlfriend’s photograph in his pocket, so we all do push ups. That night, a group quietly wraps him in his bunk with dental floss. In the morning, he can’t get out of bed.

At formation, a few guys pick him up, turn him upside down, and shake him up and down like a salt shaker until the photo comes out of his pocket. I still remember his name after 50 years.

Not crazy, but noteworthy:

Snaggle Tooth is from West Virgina. He joined to get his teeth fixed. His mouth is disgusting with black teeth that are eaten away into half-moon shapes. He laughs a lot.

Ol Red from Missussippi is a muscle-bound man with massive legs that make him step like he’s bow-legged. His arms are so huge they don’t touch his side. The chief yells for us to “pop tall” at attention in front of our bunks, so we all race out of the shower, slipping and sliding, and stand tall in front of our bunks. Some are wrapped in towels, some towels drop off. A few giggle at the absurdity but nobody laughs out loud.

Then out from the shower comes Ol Red from Missussippi. His standard-sized GI-issued towel barely wraps around his waist. Slowly, with dignity and a bearing that says, “ I dare you to make fun of me,” he comes around the corner, saunters up the middle of the barracks like he owns the place, walks past the chief, and takes his place at his bunk.

Now we learn something about Ol Red from Missussippi. His body is divided by a giant scar and his skin is different colors. Red, white, pink. It looks like a farm plow has sliced him completely in two, from the top of his head, through his face, down his torso, all the way to his feet. The scar is as tall as he is. Nobody makes fun of Ol Red from Missussippi.

Is This The Collapse of the Great American Empire?

I was homeless in Portland oregon for 2 months in 2006. I met this older man who was drifting and he claimed he was a teacher. He told me to read about the fall of the Roman empire. He told me that America was going to collapse.

One is 求同存异, which means to “seek common ground while respecting each other’s differences”.

The idea is that people and countries are different, and they should seek common ground, while respecting each others’ different points of view.

This is a phrase commonly used by the Chinese Foreign Ministry in press releases, especially in dealings with the US. Of course, it also conceals a dig at the US’s attitude in foreign policy, which is, as much as possible, to force other countries to accept the US POV.

Another phrase is 守株待兔, which means “standing by a tree, waiting for a rabbit (to run into the tree).

The origin of this phrase is about a farmer, who one day while working his field, saw a rabbit running into a tree and knocked itself unconscious. The farmer walked over and picked it up, and had his rabbit for dinner.

From then on, he stood by the tree, waiting for another rabbit to run into the tree, hoping that he would have another dinner.

The saying makes fun of people who think that pure luck will come to them repeatedly, and become stupid and lazy in the process.

The Optimist’s Handbook

Submitted into Contest #251 in response to: Your protagonist is a writer who discovers a new favorite author. How does their writing, or even their own personality, change as the protagonist falls under the writer’s influence?

Today, I am playing around with the idea of including some contemporary short science fiction with the daily posts. This will be in addition to videos, pictures, art, and historical stuff. Tell me what you all think. -MM
The moment Astrid truly accepted that her favourite book wasn’t a work of fiction was the moment she decided she had no other option than to eject herself out of the airlock.She wasn’t the first to come to this rather extreme conclusion after reading the title, but the population of Gen-Ship-Six had yet to notice the connection between the innocuous title amongst the recently deceased possessions and the series of grisly suicides that had followed it’s odyssey through readers hands.Astrid had found the book in the redistribution centre. A cold name for the room which stored the warm remainders of lives lived then extinguished, aboard a space ship where none of the passengers were alive at the journey’s commencement and none would survive thought to it’s destination.The system of redistributing possessions made sense though. Nothing novel was produced on the ship, so with each new generation the personal effects of the previous one became more and more sparse as accidents, loss and wear and tear claimed more and more of the luggage brought on-board from Earth by the 20 million original passengers, a hundred and fifty years ago.

 

Astrid had no idea who the book had belonged to before she picked it up from under a slightly chipped, ornate ramen bowl. The book was ragged and discoloured, the only way books looked nowadays. Astrid had never seen a new book, it was lucky if the titles she came across were in one piece, not defaced and managed to hold themselves together long enough for her to reach the last page.

 

‘The Optimist’s Handbook’ had felt heavy in her grip as she extracted it from the pile and turned it over to read the blurb.

 

“When the dark of night feels like the end of all things, remember the blue of the dazzling sky, the smell of keen grass in summer, the feel of a kind, warm breeze on your face.”

 

The book may as well have been written in Latin for all the comprehension those descriptions held for Astrid. Certainly she knew what grass, sky and wind were, but none of those things had ever brought her joy. The grass on Gen-Ship-Six had a faint chemical smell due to the solution that fed it and forced it to stay alive. Astrid had learned in school that grass on earth was fed by the sun that radiated itself onto the planet’s surface. A blue sky was another story. The 6D cinema in her neighbourhood allowed viewers to gaze up into the turquoise heavens, as the earth dwellers had experienced centuries previously, but the distantly visible pixels and soft hum of electricity fizzled around Astrid’s brain and she was unsure if the experience had been all together as authentic as what staring up into a real sky would be like; The Optimist’s Handbook suggested not. As for the warm breeze on her face; steadily controlled air conditioning was the closest comparison she could imagine, and this was not some kind of devine, blissful feeling, rather, a necessity to existing on the space ship without suffocating.

 

Over the following week, Astrid found herself continuously buried in the curious book, trying to imagine feelings she had never felt before, sinking further and further into despair as she attempted to accept the fact she would never understand the emotions that the author was trying to evoke.

 

“David, have you ever wondered what it’s like to smell wet soil after a dry spell?” Astrid asked her brother over a meal of artificially grown steak, beans and brocoli.

 

“Ehhh, what?” David replied absently while tapping away at his xCube.

 

“It’s called petrichor,” she continued glancing down at the book to check the word again, not really needing him to answer, or even to pay attention, she just wanted to wonder outloud. “It sounds wonderful. Earthy and deep, but also, sort of fresh and just so… alive.”

 

This time David didn’t even respond. Astrid looked at him for a few moments then went back to reading. Hungry to learn about more sensations from Earth, even though each one brought her no satisfaction and instead pushed her further and further into despondency.

 

The following morning she had read about a simple pleasure called ‘people watching.’ This one she felt was achievable. Gen-Ship-Six had cafes where she could go and sip coffee and eat bread. The Handbook had talked about a French deli, beautiful flowers growing up the visage, striped umbrellas scattered around the front entrance, casting shade onto intricate tables and chairs made of cast iron and painted pure white. The Handbook encouraged readers to take to their favourite spot, such as this one, and watch the passing characters, noticing how they interact. Laughter and love, rage and grief painting pictures between friends, family and lovers. Take in their clothes, shoes and bags, it continued, their unique features that make the world rich and romantic.

 

And so, that lunch time instead of staying in her apartment Astrid sat, coffee dispensed into a plain white cup, croissant sitting on a napkin atop a small plastic table outside her neighbourhood’s pipeline entrance, observing people getting on and off the transport system. Her excitement turned to woe in only a few minutes after she hadn’t spotted a single person who wasn’t permanently staring down at their xCube. There hadnt been so much as a glance shared between two people, let alone a word of passion or anger, or… anything. Also, no one’s clothes were particularly exciting. The Handbook didn’t have pictures so she didn’t know what exactly the author would have seen outside that French deli but she was sure it wasn’t the various hues of grey and black, shapeless tops and trousers, all made out of the same plain textured fabric, that was on offer in her current vista.

 

Sighing, she put down her coffee and flipped open her own xCube, instructing it to show her ‘French fashion through history.’ She abandoned the cafe- and her uneaten croissant- 5 minutes later, silent tears streaming down her face.

 

Just shy of a week had passed and Astrid stood at airlock 6754. She had finished The Optimist’s Handbook and stowed it away in her bookshelf the previous evening making a vague attempt to sleep, but no respite came. She had soon got up again and stared out of her window into the blackness of space surrounding her and felt a feeling she’d never really comprehended before- she was trapped. She would always be trapped, she would never leave the walls of Gen-Ship-Six. She would never feel the warmth of a burning star on her face, or smell the overwhelming perfume of a summer garden in bloom. She would never see a sublime Prada outfit on the body of a firey French woman as she slapped her lover and strode away down a cobbled street. She would never gaze out on a twinkling city at night, or feel the calm, cool breeze ruffle her hair. It was all too much, because, it wasn’t enough.

 

She reached out her hand to pull the emergency handle at the exact moment her xCube shook with a notification in her pocket. Her hand paused in its advance.

 

“Pick up Astrid, oh my stars, something wonderful has happened, pick up!”

Back in the early 1970s, my wife and I were close friends with a couple named Rose and Gary. The connection stemmed from our shared school days with my wife, and our marriages coincidentally occurred within a week of each other. Our friendship remained strong post-wedding, often visiting each other’s homes for gatherings and various activities.

Rose was a striking redhead, and I couldn’t deny that her beauty occasionally stirred thoughts beyond the boundaries of friendship. It was a year into our marriages when a pivotal moment unfolded during an unexpected encounter. While assisting Gary with laying a patio, an abrupt downpour interrupted our work, prompting a reschedule for the following day. When I returned, Gary had been called away for work, leaving me to carry on alone. It was then that Rose appeared with refreshments, clad in a revealing outfit that ignited a primal response within me.

As she settled onto a stack of slabs, an unintentional reveal of her undergarments sent a surge of desire coursing through me. Engaged in conversation, my gaze unintentionally lingered, prompting Rose to coyly inquire if I’d seen enough. Without filter, I voiced a desire for her nudity, a remark met with a sly smile as she led me indoors without hesitation. What followed was a passionate encounter, unbridled and consuming, unfettered by the weight of consequences.

Months later, as life carried on, Rose’s whispered revelation at our doorstep echoed with unexpected gravity – I was to become a father. Initially met with disbelief, the undeniable resemblance of the child to my younger self confirmed the truth. The realization dawned that I had unwittingly contributed to this new life, a silent participant in its creation.

Despite the seismic shift in our dynamic, our friendship endured, albeit marked by an unspoken understanding. The intimate connection shared that fateful day remained a singular occurrence, a memory treasured in secrecy. For Rose and Gary, their family remained complete with a single child, a testament to choices made and paths taken.

Reflecting on the journey, I find solace in the bonds forged and the unexpected twists of fate. Though the circumstances were unconventional, the love and connection shared among friends endured, transcending the complexities of human relationships. And as I watched the child grow, a silent acknowledgment lingered – a silent witness to the echoes of a moment that forever altered the course of our lives.

Smoky Beef ‘n’ Beans

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These picture-perfect fall days are my favorite. The sun is shining, there’s a cool breeze and we can start to curl up on the couch with a bowl of warm soup or stew. Chili is one of the best make-ahead meals, because it’s great for lunch or dinner and it honestly tastes better the longer it sits. This would be a good go-to recipe for any tailgate party since it’s easy to prep and hold warm in a crockpot.
I like to serve mine with corn muffins on the side for dipping. For garnishes, cheddar and onions are obviously great, but I would also recommend Greek yogurt (or sour cream), corn chips, avocado and/or pico de gallo.

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 cup chopped onion
  • 12 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled
  • 2 cans pork and beans
  • 1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
  • 1 can butter beans, drained
  • 1 cup ketchup
  • 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 3 tablespoons vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Instructions

  1. In a skillet, cook the beet and onion until meat is no longer pink; drain.
  2. Transfer to a slow cooker.
  3. Stir in the remaining ingredients.
  4. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 7 hours.

This is a problem that the United States cannot solve, because Chinese culture is vast and profound, and American politicians have always treated China with high arrogance, they can not understand China, let alone understand the Chinese.

The reasons are as follows

First, China’s history is too long, and the current situation can certainly be found by looking at the history books. The thoughts and strategies of ancient sages are enough to deal with any international disputes in the world today.

For example, <The Art of War >is just one of many ancient Chinese books, and there are countless such excellent books in China. These books deal with philosophy, strategy, culture, ideas and so on.

Second, there is a huge difference between the Chinese language and the letters language in the world. Nowadays, Chinese middle school students can easily understand the Chinese language of thousands of years ago. Americans today can no longer understand the English of 500 years ago.

Today’s game between China and the United States will certainly be recorded in the history books. When the Chinese people face new enemies in the future, they only need to look at the history of today’s game with the United States, and they will find new ways to deal with difficulties.

Third: China has always been a unified country and has been for thousands of years, unlike the United States of America. In the United States, all ethnic groups only consider their own interests, and people will not consider the United States. The United States is more like an international company, where employees of different ethnic groups form the company. If the company goes bankrupt in the future, those employees will directly leave and go to the next company.

China was divided many times in ancient times and invaded many times by enemies, but she will surely move towards unity, and China will still be the same China. In the future, if the United States is divided, it will disappear into history, like ancient Rome.

There is an ancient Chinese saying: With copper as a mirror, you can be dressed; With history as a mirror, we can know the rise and fall; With people as a mirror, you can see the gains and losses.

Five thousand years ago, we faced the same flood as the ancient Egyptians; Four thousand years ago, we forged bronze like the Babylonians; Three thousand years ago, we thought about philosophy like the ancient Greeks; Two thousand years ago, we were on the march like the Romans; A thousand years ago, we were as rich as the Arabs; And right now, we’re battling it out with the Americans.


Added:

Now the American is losing control of the world, Arab countries are slipping away from US control, and Saudi Arabia and Iran have joined forces.

France and Germany working together, the post-Marshall Plan European order would change.

Various Asian countries have also fallen out of US control, such as Singapore, Thailand and other Asian countries.

If the U.S. military cannot change this situation by force, the United States will become an island in North America in the next five years, just as Britain was in Europe.

Unfortunately, the US military is not capable of launching a medium-sized war anywhere in the world, so the United States can only procrastinate until the inevitable split, just like the movie “Civil War”.

The mastermind of all this in the world now is the mysterious Eastern empire – India

<( ̄ˇ ̄)/


Added:

If you don’t believe me, you can look up the modern history of China. The tragedy of Gaza and Palestine happened in China 100 years ago

“Marriage Is Modern Death Sentence For Men” | Pearl Davis vs James Whale

The traditional institution of marriage is facing a decline in modern society, with fewer than 50% of adults opting to tie the knot. This shift raises questions about the future of relationships and family life. 

Some argue that marriage as we know it is already dead, with the average marriage lasting only seven to eight years. 

The rising divorce rates and challenges faced by men in the family court system are also contributing to the changing attitudes towards marriage. 

This discussion around marriage and relationships has sparked debates about gender roles, feminism, and societal expectations. 

Some believe that men are facing increasing challenges in the current landscape, with issues like infidelity and lack of intimacy being brought to the forefront. Others argue that women have more freedom and choices in the dating world, leading to a shift in power dynamics within relationships. 

Pearl Davis: "Marriage is a modern death sentence for men. In the future, there will be a lot of single parents, and a lot of people without children."

Ukraine is located in Eastern Europe, and most of the weapons provided by the United States are transported to Ukraine through neighboring countries such as Poland.

Ukraine has a long border with the NATO country Poland, and weapons provided by the United States can easily enter Ukraine from Poland.

The Ukrainian army consumes 350,000 artillery shells every month, all of which are transported into Ukraine via the Polish-Ukrainian Railway.

But Taiwan is a China’s island Province, with no US allies bordering it. Under the PLA’s anti-access/area denial, US-supplied weapons simply cannot enter Taiwan.

Moreover, all ASEAN countries, including the Philippines, a vassal of the United States, support that “Taiwan is a part of China”, and the United States cannot find a transit point in Southeast Asia at all.

Once the war of unification begins, no ships will be allowed to pass through the Taiwan Strait, and PLA warships will intercept any approaching ships and aircraft within 12 nautical miles east of Taiwan Island.

Ukraine has been relying on weapons provided by the United States and the West to survive until now, but given Taiwan’s situation, how can it become Ukraine?

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main qimg 63a1683d810a4a9473be496a6f8bb460

In addition, Taiwan is also not a country at all; Taiwan is within China, the island is in Chinese waters, and the PLA’s military manoeuvres around Taiwan are military manoeuvres in China’s own waters.

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main qimg 2d57525c45cc6b71a5f7874a8022b7cd

The End Of The American Empire Is Here

I went for lower back pain. I hurt after sitting, standing or walking for even short periods of time. I had X-rays and then was sent for an MRI. I was referred to a neurosurgeon and the infectious disease department of the hospital. My PCP called me on her day off and asked if either one had contacted me. To which I told her no. She hung up and next thing I know I had appointments with both. I went to the infectious disease doctor first and ended up going to the ER to be checked in that day. I had so many tests I couldn’t believe it. And so many different people bothering me. One of the tests was a biopsy on my lower back bones. I was awake for the whole thing. The nurse shot me up with fentanyl and something else but I was awake. Sliding in and out of the CT scan and watching the needle or whatever being repositioned until they finally got it where they wanted. Then I hear a drill and I swear to god it looked like a DeWalt cordless drill. I was diagnosed with an infection of some sort in my bones. They put me on two different heavy duty antibiotics and of course it ruins the vein where the IV is. So they had to move it numerous times. They sent me home after putting a PICC line in that ended close to the heart they said I have, 😂. Six weeks later after doing my own hanging and injecting antibiotics at home. And complications with the PICC line. I had 4–5 mri’s and I have to have disc replacement. 4 1/2 months later I’m told that I’m only “ about “ 30% healed. The surgeon said I was healing slower because of the infection. He said he got it cleaned up but it was a complication that is slowing my healing time. Unfortunately, I still can’t walk, sit or stand for extended periods just like before. I’ve been unable to work since the end of September 2023. I struggle every day. I thought I might get physical therapy and maybe an antibiotic and have been going through hell. I also have a knee replacement coming up. Life sucks.

RIP Terry A. Davis.

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main qimg fa95840994c5a8b0fba69f94b2e0e234

Despite being severely schizophrenic and bipolar—to the point where his speech was often nearly incomprehensible due to the constant paranoid delusions that haunted him—he managed to create a brand new operating system, completely from scratch.

It’s called TempleOS, and it’s an original operating system, written in a programming language Davis developed himself called HolyC (yes, I’m serious). It has is own unique compiler, kernel, and GUI, and includes various applications and games—even a flight simulator—all of which were created by Davis himself.

In his psychotic episodes, Davis believed that God was communicating with him and instructing him to create an operating system as “God’s third temple”. Hence, many of the applications and games that come with TempleOS are religious in nature, for example, a program that generates seemingly random strings of text, which Davis claimed were coded messages from God, or a program that generates seemingly random music, which Davis also claimed were sent from God. There are games that recreate events from the Bible.

Now, you might take one look at this OS and its features, and dismiss it as a piece of junk. And you’d be perfectly correct in that assessment— it is a totally worthless operating system, not worth installing except as a bizarre toy to tinker with. But you have to remember: ALL of this was made by one man, in the early 2000s, whilst suffering from such debilitating delusions that legally qualified him as a disabled person.

Unfortunately, due to his inability to land a stable job, Terry Davis fell to homelessness, and a year after that, he committed suicide. He often called himself “the smartest programmer to have ever lived”, and while that is a very arrogant and presumptuous thing to say, I don’t think he’s wrong. If this is what Davis was capable of while being batshit crazy, just imagine what he would actually be capable of if he was sane.

How The American Empire Will Collapse (Shocking Insights)

Very interesting discussion.

egypt
egypt

Pumping up the deep coolness of pleasure and relief

Practically it can’t; some people (e.g. businesses and researchers) need a VPN, otherwise they are unable to do their jobs in China, yet China needs businesses and researchers.

A blanket ban on VPNs — and by extension access to certain overseas websites — would be nonsensical.

There is also the cost-benefit analysis of going after VPN users. Even if it were logistically possible to do so, the state probably decided that VPNs can’t negate the firewall, because they are hard to get in mainland China and most people will never get VPNs, whereas the people who do have VPNs are likely to be educated, tech-savvy, and sophisticated enough to not do the thing that they are feared to do once they skirt the firewall; that is, turn anti-government.

Besides, letting some people skirt the firewall may be a plus for the state, because it can reduce the crave for outside information and by extension the outside world, which isn’t perfect. If your narrative as the Chinese government is that the grass is not greener outside of the firewall, preventing your citizens from ever having a taste of what it’s like outside of the firewall doesn’t really help you make that case. On the other hand, if you’re a Chinese netizen who skirts the firewall and ends up in Twitter or Reddit and nothing happens to you, you may realize that the government has a point. You may even want to skirt the firewall less!

So to China, the choice is clear: it can crack down on VPN use and risk wasting its own resources while pissing curious minds off, or it can simply keep the firewall around and let folks climb it if they want to, knowing that not everyone will, and those who do pose minimal threat to the state and won’t stay outside forever.

Sometimes, porous walls are better than rock solid ones.

What Putin and China just did to Israel is SHOCKING and the UK is Furious w/ Lowkey

You have to understand that isn’t possible.

It *is* possible that someone’s heart may cease to function, their brain may stop issuing commands, and tiny insects may begin to colonize the still warm meat, but inmates can’t die in prison.

You’re probably thinking that I suffer from some cognitive dissonance, or mild learning disability. But, as a matter of policy, inmates can’t die in prison. And, of course, if anybody has the superhuman ability to avert death, it would be the gargantuan bureaucracy of the almighty Bureau of Prisons.

Instead, here’s what will happen:

First, we’re going to finish count — while yelling at that one guy who just stubbornly refuses to stand as per policy.

“Goddammit Lazarus, don’t screw up my count!”

After the correct number of livestock is arrived at (and this may take several attempts because prison guards aren’t the shiniest keys on the ring), one of the guards will call for a couple medical trustees to come and fetch the dude whose temperature is rapidly dropping. Trustees are inmates from other areas of the prison who do the work that’s considered beneath the guards (i.e. “everything”). Because they are inmates, they are also subject to inventory wherever it is that they sleep, or happened to be at the time. That means that their unit also has to pass count before they can come and clean away the offending debris.

The horizontal inmate will be loaded on a gurney and taken to medical where an exhaustive battery of tests will be performed to ensure that he’s not faking anything. I have no idea what these tests are, but I suspect they’re things like fogging a mirror, and poking an eyeball with a needle.

You know, “medieval” in nature.

Ever wonder what happens to doctors who finish last in their class? Once the crack (pun unintended, but delightful anyway) medical staff is satisfied, the inmate will be handcuffed, shackled around the ankles, and loaded into an ambulance.

Outside the prison walls, he can be legally declared dead.

Requiescat In Pace.

Spanish Style Liver

Spanish Style Liver
Spanish Style Liver

Yield: 5 to 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds sliced beef or calves liver
  • 4 slices bacon, cut in half
  • 1/2 cup chopped carrot
  • 1/2 cup chopped celery
  • 1 small onion, sliced
  • 1 (1 pound) can stewed tomatoes
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 small bay leaf

Instructions

  1. Place liver in slow cooker. Arrange bacon on top.
  2. Mix remaining ingredients and pour over liver.
  3. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours.
  4. Remove bay leaf.

Yes I am. I am a third generation Malaysian Chinese.
Truth to be told, I wasn’t that kind of Chinese kid who grew up with these Chinese pride.
It never crossed my mind until my growing interest in history lessons during my secondary school.

Chinese history was never the focus of our country’s education syllabus…
Instead, I grew up learning about Greco-Roman history, Renaissance, European history and Malaysia’s history.
So I was quite familiar with the West, but never China.
Out of pure curiosity, I embarked on a journey of reading.

I read about the China’s past, and consumed quite a lot of documentaries on Chinese history.
My interest grew further and I couldn’t stop reading.
I know I’m Chinese by blood, but never to the degree of finding a connection back to my own heritage.
The experience was quite bizzare.

Like reading histories that tells so much about you.
Your family surname, origins of your tribe, origin of why you do things the Chinese way.
You get a sense of connection to past histories, and it is still relevant to you.

China is so old, that they recorded so many of those things back then.
Then during my high school years, my interest in histories grew even further.
I was particularly fond of reading the reason behind fall of empires, like Roman empire, Ottoman empire, Mughal empire and etc….

You can’t stop but start asking yourself, where are those empire builders now?
They are all gone. Vanished into the dust of history.
But China is still there. We still call ourselves Chinese.
The realization of naming ourselves after a long dead empire is still very relevant to a Chinese conscious.

Just imagine if the people from the Gaul and Hispania still identify themselves as Roman.
They might acknowledge their Roman heritage, but in no mind those people would have identify themselves as a Roman. Rome was long dead, and every other nations formed their distinct identity, and there was no turning back.

Despite ups and down, China is still intact.

We still can read Classical Chinese.
We still worship our ancestor.
We still identify ourselves as Chinese.

It was weird, but fascinating.
If Europeans can understand the sentiment of Roman pride, then you should know what I meant.
Europeans tried to rebuild the second Rome, third Rome but all fall into the dust of history.
Like how Americans modelled their republic and metaphorically compare themselves to the greatness of Rome.

If you understand this sentiment, then you surely know why the Chinese are proud of.

But we didn’t have to mimic Rome.
We have our Rome to be proud of.
We pain stackingly preserved our identity through the age of time.
Except that, our Rome never fell.

Is Gen Z Killing Corporate Culture?

“Has a store ever accidentally given you something for free?”

Years ago, when we had small children so that I was a stay-at-home Mom and we lived precariously on my husband’s salary, we certainly had nothing spare for adult clothes. But I couldn’t actually go around naked or in rags, so eventually I found a pair of nice-looking corduroy pants in sage green on sale at Sears, which, when it still existed, sold unfashionable but serviceable clothes cheap, and mail-ordered them by phone; this was before there was online anything. When they arrived they were just as nice as they had looked in the catalog and they were the perfect size. But with them was another pair of the same pants in beige and a size larger. I had paid for one pair.

I phoned customer service and explained what had happened, asking when their delivery guy would next be in the area so that he could come by and pick up the extra pair. The woman I was talking to turned nasty at that point; she said, in an unpleasant tone of voice, that that would not be possible and I must take them to the store to return them. I told her that I had two small children and no car, and that the nearest Sears store was a long two-or-three-bus journey away in a suburb, which was why I was using the mail-order service on which Sears had built their reputation. She said that was not her problem. I asked what she suggested I should do, pointing out that I now had a pair of pants for which I had not paid, and she said “Keep them! I don’t care.”

So I did. The larger size wasn’t that much larger, and it was handy to have two pairs. When the kids were old enough I went back to work, and then we could all have new clothes when we needed them. As the kids grew out of theirs we donated perfectly good clothes, plenty of them, to charities. I reckon that counts as paying it forward.

Is Gen X The Worst Generation?

The U.S. dollar is now attracting stiff competition from the constantly evolving multipolar currency narrative. With the BRICS ditching the U.S. dollar officially, it seems that the new world order is emerging, where local currencies are now reigning supreme. Joining in the queue are the latest ASEAN members, the robust ten-country power pact, which may hamper some of the US dollar prospects if they decide to join forces with the leading world allies.

asean
asean

The murmurs of ASEAN dumping the U.S. dollar earlier caught pace in 2023 when the countries contemplated embracing local currency narratives to promote regional supremacy.

The ASEAN nations, which comprise Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, had earlier conducted a meeting to end their reliance on the USD, Euro, Yen, and British Pound.

This was primarily done to catapult the progress of local currencies and help them ascend on the global currency radar. The members also shared comments on why the nations must end the use of USD for the long haul, citing U.S. sanctions as the key issue.

“Be very careful. We must remember the sanctions imposed by the US on Russia. Visa and Mastercard could be a problem,” Indonesian Prime Minister Widodo shared during the event.

With ballooning US debt metrics and a worsening economy on hand, the United States is now attracting issues that can hinder the progress of the USD in the long run. Decades ago, the dollar stood unhinged, but with the ASEAN and BRICS narratives gaining momentum, the USD may now encounter deep trouble hampering its global ascent.

10 U.S. Sectors To Be Affected if ASEAN Dumps the US Dollar

The top ten U.S. sectors that may feel the crushing pressure post-USD dump by ASEAN nations are:

  • Financial Services
  • Trade
  • Manufacturing
  • Tourism
  • Technology
  • Agriculture
  • Energy
  • Retail
  • Transportation
  • Real estate

The multipolar concept, a term coined to denote a basket of currencies leading the financial system, is very much underway in present times.

With robust economic competition prevalent in space, nations have now come up with new perspectives and offerings that can help them transact better by offering eccentric services and products in return.

This narrative threatens the global supremacy of the U.S. dollar to an extent, as countries now have alternative currencies to explore, thereby fueling the multipolar regime. The inflating US debt metrics, poor administrative infrastructure, and its capability to weaponize the dollar for geopolitical manipulation are now being debated openly. This is further downgrading the currency, compelling other regions like ASEAN to compete for global power and recognition.

“This dominance continues now, with the U.S. using its clout to drive socio-political goals by imposing sanctions. And by excluding non-compliant governments and organizations from the global trade and economic systems where the U.S. is dominant. The best example of this is the sanctions on Russia. And also certain Russian citizens due to their invasion of Ukraine. In the hope of influencing their ability to conduct the war,” as shared by Sable International

Shallow Women Are ABANDONING 10+ YEAR Marriages To Find Themselves On A Bunch Of C*cks

I had a great employee once who would wear a shirt that said “Genius by nature. Slacker by choice.” It really did suit him well. He was really quite smart and there wasn’t a job I could throw at him that he couldn’t handle with ease.

The problem always seemed to be motivating him to actually do the jobs I gave him.

I have also had an employee whose work ethic was astounding. He never complained about long hours or having too much on his plate.

The problem was that I had to double check all his work and often redo it myself.

Give me the lazy genius any day of the week.

When I hire someone to do a job, I fully expect that they will be able to do said job. If I wanted to do the job myself, I’d not hire anyone and just keep the money for me.

Once you learn what motivates someone, it’s not entirely difficult to just apply the right kind of pressure to get them to do their job. With my lazy genius, the problem with his motivation was that things couldn’t hold his interest if he found them dull and routine. My job was to make sure he was challenged enough to where he wanted to work. Sometimes that meant giving some easy stuff to the less experienced people and saving all the hard stuff for him. Often, though, it was just enough to challenge his ego. “Hey, Mike was looking at this issue and claims it’s unsolvable. Why don’t you give it a go?” In those cases, I likely had a good idea of how to solve the issue, but I needed him to do it. It would put him in the frame of mind to prove just how smart he actually was. Something he loooooved to do. Regardless, he’d get the job done and do it better than anyone else in the office.

The hard working guy, all I ever had to do was tell him I wanted a thing done. He never needed coaxing or a reminder of deadlines. He was great for the simple, mundane stuff, but if it was anything more complicated than resetting a password, he’d spend half his day trying to figure out the solution and still need help getting it right. I tried tutoring him, I tried getting him lessons on basic troubleshooting and infrastructure, but nothing seemed to stick.

No offense to anyone, but people who can handle basic tasks are extremely common. Someone who can take a real puzzler and solve it are far more rare.

No one wanted this ‘old’ shelter cat. I took her home

I found a little hard lump under my left ear. It was pandemic time and there were radio and TV ads telling people that they must see their doctor if they found a lump (otherwise, I wouldn’t have gone).

So, I rang for a phone appointment, expecting to be told it was a cyst or something. Nope. I was called straight down to the surgery (thank goodness I knew that particular GP very well and trusted him).

The next week or so was a bit of a blur: multiple biopsies and ultrasounds and what have you. Then a Covid test and an operation!! It was the unseemly haste that was most terrifying.

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main qimg 7f39d9597c8244d919b78dfbaa705590

A bit gory isn’t it!! Bride of Frankenstein. Darned near cut my ear off!! But I’m ok now – except for some quite impressive scarring. That blue/green stripe under my ear that goes under my chin – that’s bleeding under the skin acting under the force of gravity, not just a grubby neck!

Update from today. Scarring isn’t too bad, really.

Clever people, those surgeons. Most of the scar that’s actually on my face is hidden in the creases around my ear. I am so grateful to the NHS!!

Oh, and that tube? That’s one of my hearing aids. Deaf as a bloody post, I am!! Xx

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Fringe Benefits by Rock Anthony cover illustration by Paul Rader
Fringe Benefits by Rock Anthony cover illustration by Paul Rader
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The problem isn’t carbs like rice or flour, the problem is added sugar.

One thing I noticed when I first came to the US is how sweet everything is. And this sentiment is shared by a lot of Chinese. When we first eat muffins, it is so sweet we nearly gagged.

A lot of processed food (even savory snacks) has a lot of sugar in it.

Not to mention soft drinks.

Another thing is for urban Americans, it’s much harder for them to get fresh produces compare to urban Chinese.

For example, I used to live in Beijing. And on my way home there are farmer’s market street stalls selling fresh produces.

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main qimg 696c943f210d0084ab5d4730a2695b83 lq

This kind of “farmer’s market” is integrated with pretty much all communities. People buy fresh produce on a daily basis and they cook fresh, mostly plant based food instead of relying on boxed meals or heavily processed foods like “hamburger helper”

After I come to the US, the only places I can purchase fresh produce are supermarkets and occasional “farmer’s markets” that only show up on Sundays in selected areas. Fresh produce is often more expensive than processed food.

Comparatively, the fresh produce in these street markets is pretty cheap. If you’re a poor person in China, you’ll most likely maintain a plant-based diet. If you’re a poor person in the US, you are limited to processed food and can food. All of them have added sugar.

For example, this is a regular bento box usually sold for low-income people like migrant workers. This one cost 10 RMB (about 1.75 USD)

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main qimg 91c2c18331e701a1a40fbbb548aad369 lq

Yeah, it doesn’t look good, but 1) they’re freshly made. 2) LOTS of vegetables. 3) looks pretty balanced with veggies and proteins.

So even if you’re poor, you don’t have a place to cook, and had to rely on cheap ready-made food, you still ended up eating pretty healthy.

China had seen a wave of childhood obesity back in the 80s and 90s when Coca-Cola and other western soft drinks and fast-food chains were first introduced to our market.

But Chinese diet somewhat reduced the effect of that, and the fast-food joints in China aren’t cheap. There are other cheaper, healthier street food options. And things started to get better once people (parents) started to realize how soft drinks and fast food is bad for their children.

So at the end of the day, it’s the added sugar and cheap processed food.


As mentioned in a comment, portion control also plays a huge part in the East Asian diet.

For example, this is the bento lunch box sold on Chinese railways

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main qimg 4c725cdb89d9a75a0dfcba80e7937b4c pjlq

You have a good portion of leafy greens, some protein, and rice (carbs). This is usually enough for an adult male, women and children often eat less.

This is an elementary school lunch:

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main qimg 101a8c97a02696f05e5a324015afb568 lq

Pretty healthy and balanced food with some multi-grain, fish protein, vegetables, and fruit.

When my Chinese friends and relatives came to the US, and we have lunch or dinner at an American restaurant, we often warn them about the portion size, ask them to look at other tables and see how big the plates are. Many would choose to share plates. Partly because Chinese are more used to family-style, partly because American restaurant’s portion is ridiculous.

And I think the family-style meals also help with portion control. With family-style, you’re free to eat until you’re full, instead of feeling obligated to finish the food on your plate. Sure, you can keep eating from the plate, but if you’re eating with a family, it’s kind of bad manners to hog on food. So there’s some peer pressure to not overindulge.

Long time ago, about 20 years. (Damn, I’m old)

I was at a mall with a friend (cis woman) and a child started screaming and calling out for her mom. I froze and looked around. Every man just looked, and about half of the women started towards the kid to comfort them.

My friend asked why I froze. I’m not usually an indecisive person.

I explained that I wasn’t indecisive at all. I made an instant decision not to approach the girl because I assessed the risk of being identified as a predator was too high to risk. I explained that every guy there did the same math in their head and came to the same conclusion.

In western culture, the only kind of touch allowed for men is sex or violence. Neither is appropriate in the vast majority of cases, especially with kids. We are so touch starved outside of those contexts that it perpetuates and reinforces until we can’t give or receive touch outside of them.

The culture we are in would rather see men die alone and miserable than recognize that sometimes we just need someone to be with us. It would rather see our partners with our shells than with the complete men that we should be able to grow into.

The only things we are interested in are not fight or fuck, and I’m really tired of the assumption that they are.

The Bookkeepers

Submitted into Contest #251 in response to: Your protagonist is a voracious reader. Lately, they’ve been noticing odd synchronicities in the books he or she is reading. What does the protagonist discover is happening?

Today I am including a contemporaneous short science fiction story for your amusement. This is a new idea of mine. Please tell me if you like it or not. -MM

Lying down lazily on her green velvet sofa, Jane placed her tepid coffee on the enormous rug beside her and returned to her ebook. Wind chimes tinkled in her blissfully overgrown garden outside, the lightest misting of rain tickled the windows. For the last 20 years, Jane had planned her retirement to a tee. Some of her friends had planned round the world e-tours, others were e-touring planets Jane had never even heard of. Her plans were simpler. Late nights, late mornings, and books. The rest of her days would be the same, save some obligatory human interactions. Sleep, read, sleep, read. Heaven.

She hadn’t read Of Mice and Men since she was a young teenager and had amazed herself that she remembered so many of the passages, the words, and the feelings. Not just of the book but of the person she was back when she had first read it.

Like music, books could make her a time traveller. Returning her, for a split second, to the feeling of being that young lady. The smell of overly sweet body spray, the scratchiness of school tights, the inner tumult of hormonal upheaval, the bone-deep serenity of still having parents. As she remembered the words she read, she spent a millisecond back in her family home. When she tried to capture the moment, elongate it, prolong the beautiful, painful nostalgia of being who she was then, it would simply evaporate. But when she allowed herself to just read, just keep going, the flightiest of memories would embrace her entire body and ooze through her soul.

However, towards the end of the book, the time-travelling stopped. The passages became not quite unfamiliar, but more distant. As she rounded the ending, when George and Lennie laid the first stone for their new home on the land they had bought together, she remembered something more recent.

The week before, upon completing 1984, she couldn’t figure out what was out of place about Winston and Julia escaping the Big Brother society together and ending up rearing sheep on an Irish Island. The week before that, Romeo and Juliet uniting their families with news of their new baby. And the week before that, when Daisy Buchanan falls deeply in love with Jay Gatsby. She had read all these stories in her youth. Some more than once. But their endings somehow felt at odds with her memories of them. Their endings seemed to have been born anew. They were satisfying, for sure, and truly hopeful. But they were somehow empty, not just of her recollections, but of depth: of feeling.

She knew why, of course. The Bookkeepers. Decades ago, there was a threat of war, or at least very real terrorism, when the book burnings began. The emotion that was incited on both sides was incendiary and people got caught up in a moral and philosophical warfare.

For some, literature was what it was and there was undeniable value in its unedited storytelling: a time capsule of sorts, capturing not just the events of the days they explored, but the attitudes of society and indeed the writers. For others, the content and views were deeply troubling, offensive and unsettling: there was no place in our society for saddening and unenlightened opinions that could cause upset.

Jane had taken neither side all those decades ago, too busy with work to really engage, and quietly confident that the right decisions would be made on her behalf. The Bookkeepers, ultimately, made the decisions. But should she have paid more notice? By allowing the books of her youth to be remastered, had she lost not just the books themselves, but the entryway to the person she was when she first read them. And, more worryingly, was this whole retirement really just a plan to relive her life through the books she had once read? Because considering it had been years, decades even, since her life had allowed her to pick up a book, there possibly wasn’t much to relive.

Just as she started to piece these disconcerting thoughts together, her watch gently buzzed and spoke.

“You seem to be suffering with a little emotional turbulence,” the phantom therapist stated. “Would you like to talk about it?”

“No. Not right now.”

“Sure. I’m here if you need me. Perhaps we could take a walk?”

“Actually, a walk would be good,” Jane replied with an idea fizzing in her brain. “Where’s the nearest library?”

“The nearest library is 3,757 miles away. The New York City Library,” the voice droned.

“Right. Well, where’s the nearest place to view real books?”

“The Literature Museum of Irving has a number of interesting displays that allow visitors to learn more about printed books. It is 4.27 miles away.”

“Perfect, set a course.”

 

It took Jane three and half hours to make the short journey. Her ageing body had no speed left in it, though her stamina remained unfailing. When she got to the small museum, located in a building that seemed to have been squeezed between two gyms, she was met by two armed guards.

“Just visiting,” Jane said giddily, her fear of authority sneaking up on her like a child.

They did not respond, noting her as unlikely to be a troublemaker. The interior of the building felt larger than it looked from the outside and the vast majority of it was dedicated to various revolutionaries who had fought, sometimes even literally, to have the classics preserved. She strolled past the memorials of these forward thinking people who had made it their life’s work to insure that politics didn’t destroy great works of literature that, though often deeply problematic, were hugely influential on the books and more importantly games, movies and e-experiences that people spend so much of their time enjoying these days.

A stern man with an eye patch stood behind a counter towards the end of the cavernous room, swiping his e-book disdainfully.

“Hi. Em, do you have any printed books?” Jane asked nervously.

“What are you looking for?” he grumbled, barely breaking his gaze from the screen.

“Of Mice and Men.”

The man pointed his dagger eye at her and raised an eyebrow.

“We have the ebook. Scan here. You don’t need to come in here for this, you know?”

“No, the actual book. I want to hold it.”

“No, there’s none left.”

“None? What do you mean?”

“There’s none left. A few in New York maybe. Or some collectors might have managed to hang on to them. But we don’t have any. Why do you want it anyway?” There was not an ounce of kindness at the beginning of his speech, and by the end he seemed to be seething for Jane’s very existence.

“Do you have a version of the original?”

“No.” The man started to peer nervously at the doorway.

“Where can I get a copy?” Jane asked, completely unaware of the inappropriateness of such a question.

“Are you here to cause trouble, is that it?”, the man said, his voice lowered to a growl. “Are you one of those protesters? Huh? Well even if we did have a file of the original, you can’t burn files, can you? And anyway, we don’t”.

“Protester? Burn? Oh god, no. Not at all. I didn’t get involved in any of that stuff. I didn’t even take sides. I thought each side had a reasonable enough point to be honest,” Jane blustered, her face flushing with shame. Her watch started to vibrate but she discreetly pushed it to shush.

“This is just a museum, okay? Whether you like it or not, those books existed and they don’t anymore. They were part of the world. An important part once. And you people got your way anyway, didn’t you? You’ve got your sanitised versions with no violence and la-di-da happy endings all round. You got your bloody AI generated revisions and ruined it for the rest of us,” he stammered, tears beading in his eye. Jane wondered if his watch was buzzing too.

“I’m so sorry. I think you misunderstood me. I’m sorry. I’ll just. I’ll go.”

 

And she left, fled even if her sluggish pace could be described as a flee. She hailed a carriage and was home in minutes, sweating and mortified. She held her hands to her mouth. Her watch was quaking on her behalf and she unmuted it to allow it to spill out its concern.

“Jane, you seem to be experiencing intense emotional disturbance. Perhaps a nap could help things,” it pleaded gently.

“No. I want another book. Wuthering Heights, I want to read Wuthering Heights.”

“Wonderful choice. Wuthering Heights is awaiting you on your ebook.”

“Tell me the plot.”

“Wuthering Heights is an evocative love story set on the Yorkshire Moors. It tells the story of Heathcliff and Catherine, who fall in love despite their social divides.”

“What happens in the end?”

“Heathcliff and Catherine shun societal norms and marry. Heathcliffe earns his fortune through clever investments and they grow old together in Wuthering Heights.”

“What’s the ending of the original?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“The original book. They don’t end up together in the original, do they?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.”

Jane couldn’t understand why her heart was racing, her palms clenched, a sort of sorrowful rage was overtaking her.

“Was Wuthering Heights edited?”

“In 2078, a number of revolutionaries fought to end the widespread book-burnings and hackings that had persisted for some years. These revolutionaries, known as The Bookkeepers, worked tirelessly to find a solution to the problems these books in their original forms created. Their solution, an artful remastering of many of the classics, allowed these books to be preserved for generations to come.”

“What were the problems they caused?”

“Many of these books caused emotional turbulence that can be detrimental to the human mind.”

Jane knew all this. She was a teenager in 2078, more than 60 years ago now, and remembered the celebrations. At first there were celebrations anyway. A compromise had been reached, literature had been saved. But as time went on, the books weren’t just edited to remove offensive passages, the became edited to include happier endings, to improve the messages, to soften the emotional turmoil they could inflict. These days most of the classics were totally remastered by AI; the promise was that with new technology, old writing could be improved. Wha happened was they were edited into bland, heartless mush. The masters were remastered. Programs had mined the original authors’ works and completely rewritten the books. The same voice, it was claimed, the same writing style, prose, rhetoric, but improved.

And there was another memory she was unlocking. A somewhat shameful one. Her mother belittling The Bookkeepers over the kitchen table. Her mother and father bickering with each other. Words her father had said. Something like, leave the girl out of it for God’s sake. She’s a child. It’s her future whether you like it or not and you can’t change it. 

And then, something else. Something gentle and tender. Lying under a fort made from a sheet between her and her older sister’s bed. Holding books. Real books. Reading them furtively, reading them in her hands, the pages soft and padded. Her mother, smiling, shushing. Their little secret. Reading the book; printed books. Reading the temporary words printed in ink that would some day fade. Or burn.

Tears ran down Jane’s face. Not shameful, rageful tears. Big fat memory tears, the ones that cleanse, the ones that dislodge feelings and allow them to be held. She removed her watch and walked to a dresser in her kitchen and emptied it of its contents. Then the chest of drawers in the living room. Under the stairs she riffled through boxes and undershoes. Up the stairs, she searched her bedroom, her studio, even the bathroom. Finally, standing on a suitcase for height, she reached up to the attic door and yanked down the opening, a tinny staircase unfurling as she did so. She scaled the stairs unsteadily and rummaged rampagingly through the boxes of memories put on hold. Finally, she found one. A book. A real book. She sniffed the cover, the pages that had been pawed by so many people, and fanned them through her fingers. She didn’t know how much she missed holding a real book until she no longer could.

Black Beauty. Her childhood favourite. The one her mother allowed her to keep like a secret. Buried in clothes she’ll never fit into again and dolls she’ll never play with. Black Beauty. The heartbreaking story of a horse. The book that, although she may not know it fully, taught a young Jane empathy, compassion, and hope. She returned to her green sofa with some effort and lay back. And she read. And as she did so, memories were dislodged.

Memories like butterflies. There, but gone. Real, but intangible. Feelings. Memories of feelings. Her mother’s stoic tenderness and ridged fingernails. Her sister’s contemptuous companionship and the smell of her morning breath. Her best friend’s loyalty and hair bows. The dreadful feeling of Monday mornings and the smell of her pencil case. She was transported, not just into Victorian England, but to her own childhood. Her own mind as a child galloped through her aged brain.

She finished the book at 4am and slept through the following day. When she rebuckled her watch on Friday morning, it buzzed with algorithmic worries for her wellbeing. She ignored them, had a coffee, put on her comfy shoes, and walked the 4.37 miles.

Upon entering the museum, she was satisfied to see the one-eyed mad behind his desk. Not glancing up, he asked her what she needed without recognising this was the trouble maker from a few days before.

“I have something I think you might like to see,” Jane muttered, opening her satchel to reveal the spine of the book.

The man brought his pale hand to his mouth and then attempted to undo this betraying move.

“Is that real?” he said firmly yet quietly.

“Yes,” Jane said stoically. “It’s real.”

“Don’t take it out. Not here. Leave it in the bathroom. Collect it next week,” he said under his voice, returning his gaze to his screen after a quick glance at the doorway.

Jane did as she was told, thrilled by the secretiveness. She walked home the long way, unsure pf what was to become of the book, of it’s recipient, or of her.

When she arrived home, she returned to the attic and searched for more, but there were none. She lay on the sofa and wondered what she was so busy doing in her working life to have barely noticed the end of literature, never mind to have borne witness to its demise. So busy. She was always so busy. Finally, at the age of 85, she was of retirement age and had little left for her to enjoy. She had missed an entire revolution with her eyes wide shut, yet had banked her entire life on enjoying what that revolution had been destroying. She had assumed that what was decided was for the best, yet allowed her existence to be rinsed of emotion, of depth. She had offered an outstretched wrist when the watches were updated to monitor emotions and thoughts. Yet, now that she had time for emotions and thoughts, there was nothing left to inspire them.

She cried for six days. On the seventh she returned to the museum, hoping against hope that her book would be waiting for her. It was not.

Instead, there was a different book, on top of which lay a note. “I can give you back Black Beauty whenever you want it. But for now, borrow this and return it for a new one when you’re done. We don’t have many, but we have some. And that’s a lot.”

Under the note was a copy of Of Mice and Men. Stained, dog-eared, Sellotaped. And with an ending that reminded her of her mother’s perfume, and made her weep.

Not so much justice as a lesson for life.

My wife has a permanent disability meaning each time we transit through an airport, transportation has to be booked for the whole party. It also sometimes requires using doors & corridors not normally for public use. There is also a strict protocol on boarding aircraft. First on, last off for disabled passengers & family, which at first glance can seem a pain…

However it does come with assigned staff & we’re able chat away & build some relationships while everyone else is waiting to pass through checkin & board.

So flying back into Manchester Airport in the UK 🇬🇧 after a 6 & half week world tour, the aircraft was crammed full & a as per normal, we duly wait in our seats while everyone else stands & crams like cattle to rush to alight the aircraft & get in first to passport control.

After all the other passengers had left, we’re chatting away to the aircrew about our holiday & our assigned liaison commented there will be a delay as they were awaiting a vehicle to take us through the airport terminal, maybe 10–15 minutes. So we’re not feeling it, but hey ho, it’s been a good few weeks. Time comes to depart & despite the side doors & ‘special’ corridors, we’re thinking there’s gonna be such a backlog at passport control… understatement!

They must’ve unloaded 10 aircraft at the same time, close to 3,000 people waiting, the passengers from ours somewhere in the middle of this melee & us last off – & the passport control was just a little slow & seemed miles away! Last thing we needed… 😲

Then, to our surprise & somewhat embarrassment, the driver of our vehicle cuts down the side of all those poor people & to the unspoken chorus of stares & open mouths, pulls right up at the front & the lovely lady at passport control, calls us through & commences to have a chat, asking about our adventures & time away.

So, just shows, there’s not much point all this rushing around in life, ‘cause, much to the consternation of the fleet of foot & hassled masses, those who are last will surely be first 🤣

NATO PREPARES NUCLEAR STRIKE ON RUSSIA BORDER, EU AUTHORIZES “LAUNCH MISSILES NOW”

My 21 year old grand-daughter has lived with us since she was about 1 yr old. In her teen years, she became interested in cars. A year ago she bought a 1985 El Camino project car, for the two of us to work on. The car has a primitive computer that controls timing and mixture control. It gets inputs from several sensors. We have been working on it for a year and have one engine problem left to resolve. We can’t get the intake manifold to seal.

The carb needed rebuilding. It is a very complicated, finicky carb, Quadrajet RA-E4ME. We rebuilt it three times, bought two commercially rebuilt carbs but couldn’t get any of them to work. Finally we bought two virgin carbs from EBay, that had never been worked on. I spent many hours watching YouTube videos and reading about how to do a rebuild (Thank you Cliff). We finally got one of the carbs to work correctly.

The computer has very limited diagnostics. A code reader is very expensive (OBD 1). Very few codes are stored. To read the code I have to put a jumper on the OBD port, turn the car to ON, watch a series of flashing lights on the dash to get a code, look up the code in the OEM manual and go through an extensive trouble shooting tree to try and fix the problem. Our newer cars can be scanned and get a very precise, detailed code along with the most probable causes and recommended repairs. With newer cars, you can see live data on a scanner and pin point problems. Multiple sensors on newer cars feed data to the computer. The computer makes adjustments to keep the car running well and efficiently.

Older cars require dedication, patience, intelligence and a lot of labor. But my grand-daughter and I both enjoy the process.

Spaghetti Roast

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angel7
angel6
angel6

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 pound) chuck roast
  • Vegetable oil
  • 3 cups ready-made spaghetti sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon oregano
  • 2 medium onions, quartered
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 (8 ounce) package fresh mushrooms, sliced

Instructions

  1. Brown chuck roast over medium high heat in scant amount of oil.
  2. Place roast in slow cooker and add all other ingredients.
  3. Cook on LOW for 8 hours.
  4. Slice and serve over bed of angel hair pasta.

I can’t believe this today and there are people who tell them and as if nothing!

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In 1965, a group of adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16 decided that it would be a good idea to steal a fisherman’s boat to go sailing for a few hours.

Before sailing they brought food that they took from their homes and a few. liters of water they were able to collect.

That same day they set sail on an adventure, the problem was that the children fell asleep after sailing for a few hours.

When they woke up they realized that they were adrift and that the boat had been damaged by the waves. They drifted for several days, when luckily they reached an uninhabited island.

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The children managed to get water from the coconuts and to eat the occasional fish they found. The real luck came when they climbed to the top of a cliff and found an abandoned settlement where they could stay.

The children established rules, worked in pairs, and there were even punishments if anyone disobeyed.

After 1 year and three months specifically, the Australian captain Peter Warner discovered the abandoned children after detecting smoke from a campfire.

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“The children had set up a small commune with a food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gym with weights, a badminton court, chicken coops, and a permanent fire.”

Peter Warner wrote in his memoirs.

The children were generally in good health when Warner found them. However, upon his return, the boys were imprisoned for stealing the boat. Warner secured the rights to a documentary on their survival story on the condition that they be released and recreated on camera.

Comparing Earth technology with alien civilizations | The Kardashev Scale

This is the reality of boyhood

I am from Chinese Mainland, an ordinary IT worker.

In the speeches of successive ROC presidents, it has been emphasized that “governance power” is not subordinate to each other. Now, for the first time, the concept of non subordination of sovereignty has been proposed. So, even from the legal perspective of ROC, it violates the Constitution of the Republic of China.

Two recent incidents have made me feel sick.The first time was when LQBT people danced in front of a photo of ROC’s founding father Sun Yat sen.Another time was when President LAI was sworn in under Mr. Sun’s photo.

I have read about the history of the Republic of China. What may surprise some Taiwanese is that Sun Yat sen enjoys a great and lofty position in the narration of the CPC. This photo was taken by me 30 minutes ago while waiting for a red light. It is the busiest road in my city, called “Zhongshan Road”, named after Mr. Sun:

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In the narration of the CPC, the party inherited Mr. Sun’s will, completely overthrew the decadent and reactionary emperor and the imperialist enemy, and made China a country that will never be invaded by foreign powers.

Mr. Sun’s tomb is located in the capital city of Nanjing, my province. During holidays, there is a sea of people there, and Chinese people go to the tomb on their own without official organizations to commemorate Mr. Sun.

As the first President of the Republic of China, Sun Yat sen would angrily jump out of the coffin if he knew that a self righteous successor had announced that the highest goal of the Republic of China was “no longer China” – according to Chinese jokes.

Friends, a timeline of solitary evolution in human history has disappeared in 2024. Whether some people are happy or angry, the great revolution of the Republic of China and its founders has completed its historical mission.

The great changes in the world always start with a careless little thing. If any member of the Kuomintang of China sees my article, please answer a question: How have you done with the will of Sun Yat sen, the founding father of the country? Isn’t there any shame or sadness?

Note: People in Chinese Mainland view the election result with high spirits.

Wishing all Chinese people around the world.

Dear, please avoid the night in all Chinese cities. Stay in the hotel. There is good food everywhere, and if you eat one every day, it won’t be repeated for a year. It will make your calorie control plan fail completely.

Because the fragrance will float to your nose, and then you have a chance to look for the fragrance and see what is in a certain direction. Then you see queues of up to 20m, 50m long, everyone waiting quietly to buy a flavoured source. You wonder why China has returned to the era of material shortage of the planned economy. Then, unnaturally, you join the queue and wait 20 minutes to buy food you’ve never eaten before. After eating, you joined another queue.

What is the evidence? On YouTube, it seems that every foreign blogger who has been photographing China for a long time – travel blogger, cultural blogger, economic blogger, Ended up as food bloggers.

How America Destroyed the German Economy

See the little scar on my ankle, the purplish one.

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I was walking through the jungle and caught my leg on low branch. It stuck into my leg. When I got home I rinsed it, probed the wound with my tweezers and scalpel and plastered the whole thing with antiseptic cream. A few days later I was at the doctor’s having a local anaesthetic whilst he cut the wound open, drained it and then removed the small piece of wood that was lodged there.

Not significant if you can visit a local doctor

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main qimg 67e2109f8dda40fb419a69729d278565 lq

I visited a friend yesterday. He’s in hospital with the same sort of injury that I had. He was a muppet and ignored the infection. His leg is black to almost the knee. In areas it looks like the skin is sloughing off. Giant deflated blisters. There are red streaks running upwards. He’s been in hospital for 5 days now. The Doctor reckons that it will take another 5–10 days for him to be released. (The above picture is not of him. I really couldn’t find any publicly available photos on google that showed the blackness.)

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Of course I had another friend, a hasher, who ran with a foot infection. His toes turned black but he delayed going to hospital. Work trip. He had multiple amputations of his leg as they tried to stop the spread of the septicaemia. I should have gone to his funeral.

(Look up limb gangrene images if you want. It’s not nice)

Why is this relevant?

I spend 5 – 10 hours running in the Jungle/Rainforest each week. I’ve mapped in detail about 600km2 of the Titiwangsa range in Malaysia. I am one of the fastest mountain runners in Malaysia. That experience really means squat when it comes to surviving in the jungle with nothing.

EVERY time I go into the jungle I carry a knife, first aid kit, rations for a day and a small survival kit. With this I may be able to survive up to a week. I even carry morphine because out of phone coverage and by myself I have to self rescue. 20km with a broken leg is a shitty thing to cope with if no one comes to rescue you.

From what I can see, and have been taught by the indigenous inhabitants, most of the great food is up in the canopy. At the right time of year. At the wrong time of the year even the monkeys can’t get food. They migrate to the forest edge and steal trash to survive.

I am white guy who’s only been doing this for a few years.

Would I do any better if I had grown up in the jungle?

Most inhabitants, called Orang Asli in Malaysia, live in small villages. These are surrounded by concentric rings of fruit trees, banana, durian, rambutan, guava, jackfruit and more. That’s because a hunter gatherer existence in the forest is too hard. Limited farming plus hunter gathering is ok.

However, many of the skills take a LONG time to acquire.

A few years ago, 7 small children ran away from their boarding school. They were Orang Asli, aged between 7 and 11. They and their parents lived in the jungle. They survived for 46 days. Well, 2 did.

The others died from starvation, impalement on bamboo stakes, drowning and being eaten by a monitor lizard.

The runaway children Malaysia failed to save

It’s tough. The jungle is neutral. If you treat it with respect then likely enough you will be treated with respect. If you don’t then you will have a terrible time.

Going in with nothing is rank stupidity.

Paul Theroux, in his book “Mosquito Coast”, had this idea. The reality was that he traded off white privilege and took enough goods with him to replicate a planter lifestyle. That ended with failure as well.

If you do it I hope that after a few hours you realise how uncomfortable and dangerous it is and take steps to save yourself. If not then you will be lucky to be found. The kids mentioned in the article above were less than 2km from home and were only found after 46 days because someone saw one of their corpses floating in the river.

If you throw everything away you can spend the rest of your life in the rainforest.

Personally I would like nothing better. That’s why I spend so much time there.

The harsh reality is that, like me, you will get infected wounds but with no modern medicine you will soon die.

What is important to most people is quality of life. You cannot have that in the jungle, with just the clothes on your back, without losing most of the benefits of 20,000 years of human development.

Several years back, a group of us ended up at a local bar after a friends funeral. Friend had died young, and the funeral had turned into a 2 hour hellfire and brimstone sermon that none of us were prepared for.

It was mid day, and the group of us were the only ones there, just catching up since it had been years. Bartender finally comes up and starts talking with us. We told him we were all there coming from our friends funeral.

A few moments later, he brings out a round of shots for all of us (him included) and one for our friend. He gave a quick toast, and we poured that one out for our friend.

Didn’t charge us for the shots (there were maybe 10 of us there). And continued hanging out with us while he could.

A random gesture from a stranger that day really helped all of us to get out of the post funeral funk and really celebrate the life our friend had had.

Juicy Roast

juicy roast
juicy roast

Ingredients

  • 1 (2 1/2 pound) chuck roast
  • 1 envelope dry onion soup mix
  • 1 (.75 ounce) package dry brown gravy mix
  • 1 1/2 cups juice of choice (apple, orange, cran-raspberry, etc.)

Instructions

  1. Place roast in slow cooker.
  2. Sprinkle dry mixes over roast.
  3. Pour juice over the top.
  4. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours.

Another Scandal Hits California While McDonald’s Considers Leaving the State

I was out with my family one night, left lane, cruise control set to 70 in a 65, and passing people. A Sheriff came flying up behind me, probably going 85–90 mph without lights on, which made the vehicle look like any other Dodge Durango.

I set my cruise down to 65 in an attempt to slot into the middle lane, which applies the brakes of the car because of how its cruise control works. Dude decides to light me up for it.

I pull over and he asked why I hit the brakes because he was on a call. I explain to him that’s how the cruise control works in my car and that I was trying to get out of his way. He tells me he’s going to write me a ticket because I brake checked him and that he did have his lights on. I tell him that not only did he not, that I was also going to show him the replay. I proceeded to download the last 5 minutes from my dash cam system to my phone, footage showing him flying up on me, and then asked if he really wanted for me to present the video as evidence against him in court.

“Have a good night, sir, and drive safely.”

You too, Deputy Doofy, you too.

Moral of the story:

Pass left, drive right, and get yourself a dash cam system with front and rear cameras to protect yourself from everyone else’s BS.

Edit:

First – thanks for the 4700+ upvotes. This is wild for me – I haven’t had this much traction on anything I’ve posted since running a meme page on Facebook. I appreciate all of you who enjoyed or related to this.

Second – For all the people who are assuming I’m one of those people that camp in the left lane, a little note about the road I was on that night – three lanes, slight congestion, people in the left lane going between 45–55, people in the middle lane going 55–60. In the states of Missouri and Kansas, you have the right to be in the passing lane as long as you’re passing people, then you’re required to get back over as soon as you safely can. I was following that law.

Third – Yes, I know traditional cruise control uses engine braking to slow down your vehicle when you adjust speed. Adaptive cruise control uses the brakes to slow down. This is true for Mazda and across many other brands of vehicles, but not all.

Fourth – For those interested in buying a dash cam, I have a Nextbase 522GW camera system with a rear camera in my Mazda and some Rexing thing in my wife’s Chevy, I think the R4 but I’d have to look. The 4-channel Rexing is also handy for navigating tight corners in parking garages since her car doesn’t have backup sensors or an “birds-eye view” camera system. I’m not posting links as I have no interest in becoming an affiliate, I just like to suggest what works for me and isn’t too expensive while still being decent quality.

Fifth – While taking the evidence to court would be a thing to do, I’d rather avoid the courtroom or giving my lawyer money if I can.

In 2023, China surpassed the United States to become India’s largest trading partner, a seemingly absurd news that contradicted India’s previous “boycott Chinese goods” movement reported in the media. Data showed that in 2023, India’s total trade with China reached $118.4 billion, slightly higher than $118.3 billion with the US. Of this, India imported $101.8 billion from China but exported only $16.6 billion, resulting in a massive trade deficit of $85.2 billion.

A closer look at India’s $101.8 billion imports from China in 2023 revealed that 98.5% were industrial products, with Chinese goods accounting for as high as 43.9% of electronics, telecommunications equipment and electrical appliances. This reflected the reality that despite India’s calls to “boycott Chinese goods”, Chinese products still held a significant market share in India due to their superior cost-performance.

In fact, India’s “boycott Chinese goods” movement was largely a superficial gesture. Taking pulse oximeters as an example, despite Indian media reports of the “boycott movement”, Chinese pulse oximeters still occupied 98% of the Indian market. The reason was that if Chinese pulse oximeters were truly boycotted, ordinary Indian citizens would not be able to afford them, harming their livelihoods.

Beyond consumer goods, India was also highly dependent on Chinese products in the industrial raw materials sector. In 2023, 71% of India’s bulk drugs came from China; 69% of yarn imported by India originated from China. Prohibiting the use of Chinese raw materials would directly lead to higher costs for Indian products and a decline in industrial competitiveness.

Overall, although India exhibited nationalistic sentiments to “boycott Chinese goods”, practical economic interests meant that India found it difficult to completely boycott Chinese products in areas where the cost-performance ratio could not be easily replaced. This led to a continued increase in India’s imports from China in 2023, making China its largest trading partner.

On the other hand, India’s imports from the US plunged 20% in 2023, mainly due to the Fed’s interest rate hikes driving up US manufacturing costs. In comparison, India’s dependence on Chinese goods was more thorough.

It is noteworthy that while India had a huge trade deficit with China, it enjoyed a $36.7 billion trade surplus with the US. From trade data alone, it seemed that the US was “boycotting” Indian goods, while China “generously” welcomed Indian products into its market.

In reality, from 2019 to 2023, India’s imports from China grew from $70.3 billion to $101.8 billion, but its exports to China fell from $16.75 billion to $16.67 billion. During this period, the US contributed a $337 billion surplus to China, and India $85.2 billion, together accounting for nearly half of China’s total surplus.

Following business logic, “the customer is king”. Although the US and India treated China “excessively” in rhetoric, China had to tolerate their “petty behavior” due to the enormous benefits they brought. Only when the US and India run out of funds will China refuse to tolerate such conduct.

In summary, despite the apparent contradictions, China’s surpassing of the US as India’s largest trading partner reflected India’s inability to completely boycott highly cost-effective Chinese products in livelihood and industrial sectors. Meanwhile, the US seemed to “boycott” Indian products to a greater extent, leading to an interesting contradiction among the three countries in trade.

Slam Dunk

Last night was the weekend. My seventh-grade child spent the entire evening discussing the Japanese anime “Slam Dunk” with me. He talked about every aspect of the show—from the multiple storylines to the theme song, the fate of the characters, and the main character Hanamichi Sakuragi’s injury. Then he told me that this show has been a constant source of strength for him.

My child is 13 years old. I’ve never heard him speak so earnestly, especially during a casual family conversation. It was particularly striking because these serious words were about an anime. So, I asked him what had happened.

He then shared the lessons he learned from the show. For instance, even if you’re not a genius, you can achieve greatness through hard work. And repeated failures did not crush these young boys. Basketball was their youth and life. Troubled youngsters found their way back to the team through basketball and were accepted by everyone. These touching storylines almost perfectly mirrored his own middle school life. Therefore, he constantly learns from these beloved characters in his studies.

Next, we discussed the movie adaptation of “Slam Dunk.” We talked about the movie’s dark tones and the main character’s family troubles. My child told me that the entire movie left him with a subtle sadness. I asked him where this sadness came from. He mentioned the death of the protagonist’s brother and the failures and injuries in the tournament.

I thought for a moment and shared my perspective—that sadness is a multifaceted emotion, not just stemming from the story itself but also from the passage of youth. The beautiful youthful years, the most glorious vitality in life, inevitably fade away as one grows.

I hope my child can have a youth without regrets. To study, explore, embrace nature, connect with the world, give and receive love, understand civilization, and understand the nation and society. I am grateful for “Slam Dunk,” which was also my favorite thirty years ago. Classic works never go out of style and always provide strength.

I was actually quite proud of my progress in learning the Chinese language. I was living in Shanghai, and I had learned how to count: “Ee, arr, sun…”

The next morning, I approached a steamed bread vending shop and ordered proudly: “Arr Baoz’i!”

I could swear that life stopped around me.

For emphasis, I indicated the number with my fingers, and got my steamed bread. At the office, my secretary explained to me that “arr” wasn’t really used to indicate quantity, and that I had actually said something more like “stupid dumplings.”

My Chinese learning has slowed down a bit since then.

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Another time, I decided to tell a taxi driver my address in Chinese instead of showing him a hand written card, as usual: “3, Yuyao Lu.” To this day, I have no idea what he understood, but he was spewing tea all over the inside of his windscreen and laughed so hard and so long that I thought he was going to have a seizure. Never before had I heard someone laugh so heartily, with such mirth. The poor guy was in tatters.

In the end, I found the silly card. I still heard the driver laugh out loud helplessly even as he pulled away twenty minutes later, once I had disembarked at my apartment.

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These days, I let my wife do the talking when we are in China.

Compilation: UFOs & Aliens!

The simplest answer is : The person who needs the work done can’t find anyone to do the job for the terms they are offering.

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Skills Don’t Pay the Bills (Published 2012)

Here’s a salient quote :

Last year, he received 1,051 applications and found only 25 people who were qualified. He hired all of them, but soon had to fire 15. Part of Isbister’s pickiness, he says, comes from an avoidance of workers with experience in a “union-type job.” Isbister, after all, doesn’t abide by strict work rules and $30-an-hour salaries. At GenMet, the starting pay is $10 an hour. Those with an associate degree can make $15, which can rise to $18 an hour after several years of good performance. From what I understand, a new shift manager at a nearby McDonald’s can earn around $14 an hour.

The going rate is 30$, he only wants to pay 10$. For a job that requires 5–10 years of experience and skill.

How does this man own a factory?

There is a lot that goes into a ‘good’ job –

Most workers want a single job at a single location with regular hours that is not too dirty and that allows them to keep a shirt on their back, a roof over their head, and allows them to save a little bit, and maybe grow so that someday they can have a spouse and children. Most people don’t mind occasionally putting in a few extra hours, assuming that those extra hours get a bit more pay.

Most employers want someone who will show up on time, put in a good day’s work, not complain too much, display adaptability and flexibility, and look out for their employers’ interest just enough to avoid unforseen disaster.

If a job goes unfilled, it’s because one of the parties is not generally willing to provide what most of the other parties want.

My friend was savagely drunk and stumbling home from the bar when he decided it would be fun to kick over some garbage cans.

Doing his best imitation of kung fu poses, he began screaming like Bruce Lee as he kicked the cans left curbside for morning pickup. At 3 am. On a residential street.

His impromptu reenactment of Enter the Dragon woke one of the neighbors, who called the cops.

As the officers were cuffing my idiot friend and trying to get him into the back of a police cruiser, he was incensed and insisted he was being falsely arrested. As they were closing the door he screamed:

“YOU’RE MAKING A HUGE MISTAKE! I KNOW MY RIGHTS, I WATCH LAW AND ORDER!”

I had to bail the idiot out the next morning. At the time I was employed in my first post-graduation job as a late night crime reporter for a newspaper, so I knew the cops. They gleefully told me about Mr. Law & Order’s drunken lectures on criminal law before letting me take him home.

Of course he didn’t remember a damn thing, but he never lived the Law & Order incident down. For the rest of his time at the paper, whenever there was a newsworthy incident involving a drunk someone would pipe up with some variation of “too bad he didn’t watch Law and Order!”

Yes. Due to Taiwan’s close distance to China, approximate 100 miles away and the small size of Taiwan.

This places any attacking foreign force well within all of China’s weapon delivery systems. And it is NOT just ASBMs (hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missiles). The problem for the US is that every Chinese weapon system outranges the US ones. And that is not an accident.

China has been studying the US Air Sea Battle strategy for 30 years and devising tactics and weapons to beat the US, NATO, Japan, SK, Australia, and India at the same time.

If the US dares to show up. The US fleet would be wiped out. The US knows how this scenario turns out. The Pentagon has been running thousands of simulations for the last 10 years. And the simulations has gotten worse for the US as time went by.

High-Value Man TRIGGERED American Women After He Told Them They Aren’t Wife Material

Even a worm will turn! They are both a peasant army and battle-hardened warriors.

Yes, most of the PVA Soldier were farmers, Even Mao and Peng was born into a peasant family and worked in farming locally. What they enjoyed most was living and farming in a peaceful environment, but the invading army that was eyeing them did not give them such an opportunity.

As they themselves say: We fight all the wars that we have to fight, so that our children and grandchildren will be saved from warfare.

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They often found some ammunition boxes next to the frontline tunnels and grew vegetables. Since you can pass the time, you can also see hope by watching these seeds germinate and see the sprouts grow. Under the hail of bullets, they still maintained their strong will, maintained their yearning for life, and survived the difficult moments in their lives.

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Before his death, an American veteran wrote a short essay of about ten pages confessing his heartfelt feelings. In it, he recounted his experience of fighting with the Chinese volunteers in the Korean War in a physical battle that plunged him into that kind of despair and horror. In his short essay he says this:

I didn’t feel much fear about physical combat because I fought bayonets with Japanese soldiers in World War II and killed them.

Although every Japanese soldier shouted ‘Be loyal to the emperor and fight to the end’, I clearly saw fear and cowering in their eyes.

But when I fought with the Chinese on the Korean battlefield, I saw no fear in their eyes, as if they were not fighting you at all.

Sometimes when they reach the last moment of their life, they don’t dodge at all, but use their last strength to grab you. They even use their teeth to bite any part of your body, they don’t want to live at all, their purpose is to die with you.

They are like messengers from hell, you don’t even dare to look into their eyes, that kind of gaze scares people to death.

What’s even more frightening is that when the Chinese blow their horns, the shrill sound is like the sound of a bell counting down to death, because you instantly feel that you have been sentenced to death. So you get so scared that you shoot randomly with your hands and turn around and desperately run away, and I was really lucky that I didn’t get killed by them.

In February 2024, my best friend thought she had a pinched nerve because her foot was tingling and then starting to feel “dead“. She had lost almost all feeling in it, and it started to go up her leg. She had an MRI of her lower back, which showed nothing and they thought it might be in her upper back or her neck. When they did a second MRI they saw that she had a tiny tumor on her neck. She went to a neurologist who sent her for a third MRI of her brain. It turned out the tumor on her neck was benign, but they also found a glioblastoma brain tumor , that is 100% fatal. This is my best friend for the last 48 years. She’s been on treatment and in June she was supposed to find out how much good the treatment had done in shrinking the tumor and giving her more time. Last week she could barely wake up and the little bit she was awake, she couldn’t keep track of what was going on or who was in the room with her. Of course we got her to the hospital in an ambulance. Her entire brain swelled and they were afraid they were going to lose her. She was put on massive steroids and they did another MRI, which said the tumor has not shrunk. It has grown. There’s an excellent chance I won’t even be able to see her for Christmas, we text 50 times a day, I don’t have a single clue how I can possibly survive without her.

I was unemployed and down to my last $20. A friend was having a party and persuaded me to spend my last $20 on booze and show up at the party. “What are you going to do with $20, invest it in the stock market? Have some fun. You’ll be fine.”

I went and a couple of hours into the party some drunk bastard yelled out, “Anyone looking for a job?”

I was well past the legal limit and answered back, “Me!” He told me to show up at his house at 7AM Monday.

Spent years working for and with that crew installing carpet. Made a ton of money and worked my a$$ off. Blood and sweat.

Mary Nell’s Goetta

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground round
  • 1 pound Bob Evans Zesty Pork Sausage
  • 6 cups water
  • 4 bay leaves
  • Pinch of pepper
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 2 1/2 cups pinhead oats

Instructions

  1. Put water, salt and pepper in a slow cooker.
  2. Cover and cook on HIGH for 20 minutes.
  3. Add pinhead oats and cook on HIGH for 1 1/2 hours.
  4. Mix meat well and add to slow cooker with onion and bay leaves.
  5. Cook on LOW for 3 hours.
  6. Uncover and, if not thick enough, cook longer, stirring often.
  7. Pour into greased bread pans and cool.
  8. Refrigerate, and fry until browned.

“Am I wrong for telling my girlfriend I don’t want her going for a drink with her ex?”

 

I have been with my girlfriend for just under 3 years. She has had 2 previous relationships that both ended when they cheated on her. Her first boyfriend she has not spoken to in 6 years and the other one she hasn’t spoken to in 4 years.

Her first boyfriend recently messaged asking how she has bene and just wanting to catch up. She told me about it and told me she was planning on replying. I told her I didn’t see why she’d want to bother talking to him when he’s not in her life anymore but just said I can’t stop her talking to him.

 

She told me a couple more times when he messaged but I believe they have been messaging slightly more than that. She mentioned today that he suggested them going for a drink with a few other friends and catching up. I told her I wasn’t comfortable with her going and she asked why. I just told her it’s disrespectful to be out drinking with your ex. She said she just wants to catch up with him and the other friends but I just repeated that I wasn’t comfortable with her going.

I said if she chooses to go then that will be it with us since I’m no going to just sit back while she’s out drinking with her ex boyfriend. She said I was being controlling but I just pointed out I was only tell her what I am comfortable with and what I’m not comfortable with.

She said I shouldn’t be telling her not to go and should be fine with her going.

Here’s the deal: If your girlfriend’s planning to catch up with her ex in a group setting, why aren’t you invited? That’s a legitimate question to ask.

Let’s cut to the chase: she’s basically telling you she wants to go out and party with her ex. Most people would find that pretty disrespectful. It’s not about you being insecure; it’s about mutual respect. She knows his intentions, and if she’s entertaining his advances, that’s a red flag. If someone cheats on you, cutting them off completely is the norm for most people. Why she would want drinks with someone who disrespected her so badly speaks volumes.

You have every right to set boundaries in your relationship. It’s not about controlling her; it’s about maintaining respect and trust. She’s free to go, but as you’ve clearly stated, there’s a cost to that. If she chooses to prioritize a night out with her ex over your comfort and trust, then maybe it’s time to reevaluate what you both want from this relationship.

At the end of the day, it’s about finding common ground. Have an honest conversation about your boundaries and see if she respects them. If not, it might be time to consider whether this relationship is what you both need.

This makes two in one week. Very concerning.

I worked at four startups in two years.

They all failed.

And they were in four different markets: pharmaceuticals, real estate, crowdfunding, and the music industry.

So I founded my own company, an online publication.

A year later, that failed, too.

Then I became the VP of Marketing for a mobile app company that failed.

I lost all my money.

Had zero job prospects.

So I moved into my Dad’s tiny apartment.

Without space, we slept in the same room.

I got a job as a copywriter that paid $12 an hour. It was awful.

At the same time, I made a decision to read for five hours every day on average.

This led to 170 books read over the next year about psychology, business, and marketing.

A few months after my copywriting gig, I had saved enough money to take a risk.

To work at a Facebook software company where I got paid half.

In eight months, I led their marketing.

Landed a few clients, then wrote a book about Facebook marketing.

Took that credibility, became the head of growth for a venture-backed company in San Francisco.

Then the head of growth for a 50-million-dollar VC firm.

Next the growth evangelist for one of the fast-growing SaaS companies.

Today, I’m the co-founder and CEO of a multi-million-dollar company.

Entirely bootstrapped.

The lesson –

Adopt the habit of persistency.

Persistent enough to where you’ll pursue what you want no matter where you live, how much money you make, or connections you have.

If you want results, do what 99% of people won’t.

I am a Code Enforcement Official; I’ve seen some nasty stuff.

When I first started my job, years ago we were called by child services to render a decision on if a mobile home was habitable. They were looking to remove the two children. It was mid week…very hot outside…we knocked on the door. The door swung open with a loud thump as this decrepit old trailer rocked.

A large woman in her nightgown…at around 11AM no less, was filling the tiny doorway, cigarette hanging out of her mouth. The cigarette smoke rolling out of this tiny place was unbelievable.

In we went…I first noticed a giant big screen TV (the vintage style, that are about 3 foot deep) across from a nasty old couch…with roughly 18 inches of path to walk between. To this day I have no idea how they watched a TV that large being so close up.

We noticed open dried-out cans of cat food, roaches picking the last of the meat out of them. Wires hung low exposed everywhere, and the bathroom reeked of urine, roaches and feces.

We made our way to the back, and there were two small children who should have been in school…but they weren’t. Instead they were playing with their trucks on the floor, giving roaches rides in them, dumping them out of the dump truck bed. To them, it was like the roaches were little friends, there to play with.

I had seen enough to render my part (the electrical) worthy of shutting off. I went to leave…this is where it gets nasty…er.

The master bedroom door (a curtain or blanket nailed to the door frame) began to move. I laid eyes on him…quite a spectacle…I’d say he was late forties, probably 5′ 10″, 350 pounds, and naked. Smoking a cigarette, he begins to tell me how horrible the neighborhood is, how the cops are worthless etc., etc. I stepped out…he filled the doorway and continued the rant.

Interesting thing about a mobile home: when you step out, you’re about eye level with waist of the person inside.

Soon I heard my boss ask him from inside, “Sir, I need you to come here for a second.” It’s at that point he turned around 180 and to my surprise he had tightey whitey underwear on, from the front I couldn’t tell because of his large belly hanging down. He took one step toward my boss, and there I was marveling how his underwear was totally hidden up front, and he lets go of a large amount of gas…and then the underwear quickly turned brown and wet.

As the crap rolled down his leg…he didn’t miss a beat, gave that leg a shake onto the floor…and begins to converse with my boss.

I in turn being full witness to this, and eye level to this mess only a few feet away…turn into the yard and begin to hurl.

As my boss came bouncing out of the house, oblivious to what just happened…he said, “What’s the matter, buddy; it didn’t smell that bad in there.” (We’ve been in some nasty places.) I pointed and said that dude just crapped his pants in my face.

And that’s the nastiest thing that I’ve seen in a house.

Pepperoncini Beef

Slow Cooker Italian Pepperoncini Beef HERO scaled
Slow Cooker Italian Pepperoncini Beef HERO scaled

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 pound) beef chuck roast
  • 4 cloves garlic, sliced
  • 1 (16 ounce) jar pepperoncini

Instructions

  1. Make small cuts in roast, and insert garlic slices in cuts.
  2. Place roast in slow cooker, and pour the entire contents of the jar of pepperoncini, including liquid, over meat.
  3. Cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours.
  4. Serve on sub rolls with cheese.

Confessions Of A Woman In A Polygamous Marriage

 

How did you end up in a polygamous marriage?

I was born and was raised in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh. A few months before my seventeenth birthday, my father, due to the Guardian System, told me that he had arranged a marriage for me to a foreign businessman in Dubai, and that I would be married within a few weeks.

 

At the beginning of 2017, I was married to my new husband in Dubai, and became his second wife. I didn’t ever realize that I wouldn’t be his first wife until a few days before the wedding, and I can only remember crying for an entire afternoon the day I found out I would be his second wife. It would not be until the end of last year that our husband took his 3rd and most recent wife.

How old is your husband?

Early 50s

How soon before the wedding did you meet him? What would have happened if you didn’t like him/he didn’t like you?

I met him about a week before the wedding for the first time. If he hadn’t like me, it’s not likely anything would happen since he had already talked to my father, but if i hadn’t liked him there was not much I could have done about it. At that point I was such a mess of nervous teenage anxiety and emotion that there wasn’t much I could have even thought or said.

Why did he marry you?

I’m not sure why exactly, it could have been for my looks or age, since his first wife is quite a bit older than i am, but I’m sure it was also due to the social connections between him and my father that would be forged because of the marriage.

Has your husband mentioned how many wives he plans on having?

He legally can’t marry more than 4 according to Sharia Law, but I can’t imagine he would marry someone else, especially at this point in his life. But who knows, he certainly could. I hope not, but it is a possibility.

Do you have a good relationship with him?

We have a fairly good relationship. Although he doesn’t spend as much time with me as his new wife, he’s very polite and nice to me, and doesn’t mistreat me at all.

Do you love him? Does he love you?

In a way I think I love him; even though I don’t think he married me for love, and I didn’t have much of a choice, I’ve learned to love him for what he is. I know he cares for me in his own way, and I know he wants me to be happy and provided for, which I am very thankful for.

Do you guys have children?

Yes, we have one child, a beautiful two-year old baby girl!

How does your husband treat you? Does he treat all his wives equally or is he biased?

It depends; he treats his first wife and I pretty much the same, or at least spends the same amount of time with us, but ever since his third marriage he’s spent most nights with his new wife. I try not to feel jealous, but it is hard not to resent him and her for it.

How old are his first and third wife?

His first wife is 36, and his most recent wife is only 16. Even though 18 is legally the marriable age in the UAE, a judge can approve a younger marriage, and our husband is wealthy enough to ensure that it happens.

What do you think of a man in his early 50s marrying a girl of 16?

I personally don’t think it’s right for such a marriage to take place. Even though legally it was allowed, the odds are she’ll be widowed before she even turns 40, which is really tragic for her.

Why are you more concerned for her after he dies than what might happen during the marriage?

I don’t think it’s right for him to marry someone so young, but at least this way she is provided for. Once he dies, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to any of us once he dies.

What typically happens to the wives once their husband dies? Say you are 50. Do you get an inheritance?

I would most likely be sent to live with a male relative, and perhaps receive an inheritance or something similar. I would have to follow ‘Iddah’ under Shariah Law and wait before remarrying though. If I an widowed while still young, I could probably remarry, but if I was older I might just live as a widow with my relatives.

He must be very rich to afford 3 wives, 3 households. Are you allowed to spend any money?

He is, as far as I know, fairly wealthy, even though he never talks about business or finances with us. Each of us gets a monthly allowance for groceries, clothes, shopping, and anything else we might need, but it’s never enough to make any really extravagant purchases; for anything like that, like jewelry or really nice clothes; anything really expensive, we have to ask him for permission.

What do you enjoy spending your allowance on?

Well, its usually not enough to buy anything more than the essentials, but I love cooking and buying new ingredients, and i always put a little aside to buy paints and art supplies with.

Are you allowed to work?

No, we aren’t allowed to work, or at least not for money. I love painting and art, so I do work on that a lot, but my husband would never let me sell them or earn a living myself. For the most part I have to rely on my husband to provide for me and our daughter.

How are mealtimes? Do you cook? Do you all eat together?

I usually cook meals for myself and daughter, and maybe a few friends, but we usually I don’t eat with our sister wives, except for on Friday, when we usually eat a meal together with our husband.

When it comes to sex, is it only ever you and him? Or is part of it that the four of you have sexual relations?

It is always only him and one of us, he has never asked any of us to have relations with him at the same time. It’s a very private affair.

Do you spend time with the other wives? Are they your friends? Or do you keep separate lives?

For the most part we are like separate families, we each have our own apartment, cook our own meals, and have our own beds, but fortunately his first wife and I do get along very well; since I left Saudi Arabia she’s been almost like a sister to me. His third wife though, she is very rude to us, since she is the youngest, and we definitely don’t get along.

How is she rude to you?

It feels like since our husband spends more time with her than the rest of us, she has a more privileged relationship with him than we do. She can get him to do things to us that he wouldn’t do otherwise, like punish us for doing innocent things, like going out without his permission, he is usually fine with, but if his youngest wife convinced him to, he will get angry and even hit us, even very softly. It’s more of symbolic than anything, but it still makes me feel awful. She also doesn’t miss an opportunity to bring me down or insult me.

What’s the best thing about your marriage?

Probably having such a good relationship with his first wife. It’s almost like having another sister, and it definitely helps make up for some of the worse parts of my marriage. Either that or being provided for so well. I’m not mistreated or neglected, and it gives me a chance to raise our daughter.

If he were to die soon, would you still be friends with the first wife?

I think we would. Even if we didn’t share a husband, I think we would have been friends anyway, and I think we would stay friends even if we weren’t married to the same man.

What is the worst part about living in such a relationship?

The worst part of my relationship is probably just the stress it brings. For instance, he spends most nights with his new wife, and she knows she is his favorite right now and uses that to treat his first wife and I very badly. I try not to hold it against her or our husband, but it’s hard not to.

Do you feel any resentment towards your father for putting you in a situation you may not have necessarily chosen for yourself?

I do sometimes. He never really gave me a choice in the matter, so I do sometimes feel resentful towards him for putting me into this situation, but it’s the culture he knew growing up, and i know he had my best interests at heart. He wanted to be sure I would be provided for, and I know that despite everything he loves me and wants what’s best for me. But it’s not easy to forgive him.

If you were given a chance to, would you get out of the marriage?

Although under Sharia Law divorce is allowed, the only way it could realistically happen for me is if my husband wanted a divorce as well, which he does not. And if I did divorce him, I don’t know what I would do or where I would go, especially since I would have trouble finding anyone willing to marry a divorced single mother. But honestly, I really don’t want to leave, although I wish it hadn’t happened at all, now that I’m married, I’m fairly well off and happy, and although it’s hard, it’s something I have to live with, and I am alright with that.

Would you prefer a different future for your daughter?

Absolutely. I would never want anyone, least of all my daughter, to be in the same relationship as me.

I would like to see the attitudes towards marriage become more western, and allow women more of a say in who they marry. I also pray that plural marriage continues to become more and more rare as time goes on.

Did you have a childhood sweetheart/relationship before your marriage?

I did have a sweetheart before I got married, he was a family friend, and I thought I was going to marry him for the longest time. I was actually looking forward to it, and I stroll sometimes regret not being able to spend my life with him. But I never had a choice in the matter, so I’ve learned to live with it.

How do you feel about the fact that a lot of the world (at least a lot of the Western world) looks down upon plural marriages. Do you ever question your own lifestyle?

I definitely question my lifestyle, and if I had the choice, I don’t think I would want to be in a plural marriage. Since I do live in Dubai, I do get exposed to more western culture than I did before, and I generally think that the west is right about the negative aspects of polygamy. Despite this, I’ve lived my whole life this way, and I’m not unhappy like many people in the west think. It’s not ideal, and certainly causes more stress and emotional strain on everyone, but it’s not all bad.

How has your life changed because of the marriage?

Before I was married, I lived with my family, and, because of the laws in Saudi Arabia, I had very little freedom of movement, and had to ask permission to do or go anywhere. Even while I was at home my parents, and especially my father, had absolute control over what I did.

Now that I’m married, I don’t have to ask permission to go out, as long as I am accompanied by another woman or male guardian, and I have more control over how I spend the small allowance I get. I also have more freedom at home, to raise our child and to talk and spend time with female friends. Despite this, if he wanted to, or if I made him unhappy with me, my husband could control me just like my father, did and monitor my every move, but fortunately he allows his wives to be fairly independent as long as we obey.

The fifth element -Adventure Movie Full HD | Bruce Willis

I worked with him on several episodes of “Kitchen Nightmares.” I was a lowly PA, so his treatment of me speaks a lot.

Firstly, he rode in the front seat of his car, next to the driver. This says something about him not being high and mighty. During my first three days, he would give me a brief nod whenever he passed. He knew I was part of the team, but PAs come and go. He’s not going to waste a lot of time on me.

On my second episode, also three days, he would engage people around me in friendly banter. He’s the type of guy who makes fun of people, but with a broad smile on his face so you know he’s joking. He also joined us in tossing around a football during a slow point.

By my third episode, I ranked a “hello” and smile. On the last day of the third episode, just before the restaurant opened, a producer pointed out my untied shoe. Being bone tired, I pulled out a chair to sit and tie it. Gordon suddenly shouted, “What are you doing?! That’s it! Fired!” I looked up in shock and he immediately laughed at me. It felt awesome.

Famous people are expected to be “on.” It uses up energy to be charming. For temporary employees, he was polite, but didn’t spend a lot of time with us. As he grew to know and trust us, he became warm and open. He’s a little gruff and sarcastic, but a lot of fun. And others who did multiple seasons on the show told me he was very loyal to them. I can’t count him as a friend, but how he treats other people says a lot about him.

Your Worth Is Inherent, Unchanging, and Absolute

 

Your worth is not up for debate. It’s not some fickle, fleeting thing that can be given or taken away by anyone else. It’s not dependent on your achievements, your relationships, your bank account, or your fucking Instagram follower count.

No, my friend. Your worth is inherent, unchanging, and absolute. It’s baked into your very being, as much a part of you as your DNA or your undying love for pizza. And anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit.

 

But I know, I know. It’s easy to let the world convince you otherwise. We live in a society that’s constantly trying to sell us the idea that our value is contingent on external factors – that we’re only as good as our last success, our latest conquest, our most recent “before and after” photo.

And when we buy into that bullshit, when we let our self-worth be determined by the opinions and expectations of others, we set ourselves up for a lifetime of anxiety and self-doubt. We become so fucking desperate for validation that we twist ourselves into pretzels trying to please everyone, convinced that if we just work hard enough, achieve enough, sacrifice enough, we’ll finally be worthy of love and respect.

But that’s a trap, my dear. A soul-sucking, joy-crushing trap that will leave you feeling emptier than a bag of kale chips at a Super Bowl party. Because the truth is, no amount of external validation will ever fill the void of self-doubt if you don’t first believe in your own inherent worth.

And I get it. Believing in yourself can be hard as hell, especially if you’ve spent years marinating in the toxic stew of self-loathing and insecurity. But it’s not impossible, and it’s sure as shit not optional if you want to live a life that feels authentic and fulfilling.

So how do you start cultivating that unshakeable sense of self-worth? How do you begin to internalize the truth of your own value, even in a world that’s constantly trying to convince you otherwise?

It starts with a choice. A conscious, daily, moment-by-moment choice to reject the bullshit narratives that tell you you’re not good enough, and instead lean into the radical truth of your own inherent worthiness.

It means standing in front of the mirror and telling yourself “I am enough” over and over again until it starts to feel less like a lie and more like a battle cry. It means surrounding yourself with people who reflect back your own brilliance, who celebrate your quirks and flaws and all the things that make you uniquely you. It means learning to treat yourself with the same kindness and compassion you’d offer a beloved friend, even on the days when you feel about as lovable as a dumpster fire.

And most importantly, it means letting go of the idea that your worth is something that can be earned or achieved or bought or sold. It means embracing the truth that you are valuable simply because you exist, because you are a one-of-a-kind expression of the universe in all its chaotic, messy, beautiful glory.

Because here’s the thing, my love: you are a fucking miracle. You are a walking, talking, breathing example of the incredible resilience and creativity and magic of the human spirit. And no matter what anyone else says, no matter how many times you stumble or fall or fuck up, that essential truth remains unchanged.

You are worthy. You are enough. You are inherently, unequivocally, absolutely valuable, just as you are.

So fuck the haters. Fuck the doubters. Fuck anyone who tries to convince you otherwise. Your worth is not up for debate, and it never will be.

Embrace that truth. Lean into it. Let it be the foundation upon which you build a life that feels authentic and fulfilling and joyful as hell.

Because you, my dear, are worth it. And that’s the fucking tea.

Jeffrey Sachs: The Untold History of the Cold War, CIA Coups Around the World, and COVID’s Origin

Good topics. Hit the mainstream.

So long, but really worth the time to listen to.

Keep your mouth shut, and never, ever get involved with queers, gangs, or drug users

I’m Chinese. I listen to Voice of America’s China and BBC’s Chinese broadcasts year-round. I have learned a lot of useful skills from radio stations in the Western free world to help me identify the terrible brainwashing propaganda of the Chinese government. Now is the time for me to apply these skills. So, please tell me:

(1) What is your source of information?

(2) What is your purpose? Is it to help the Chinese people break free from harsh rule? What is your specific plan to fulfill your kind wish?

(3) What kind of force is behind you supporting or forcing you to make this conclusion?

(4) Please provide all supporting documents and photos, will you?

(5) If I believe your point, how would you save me?

“Guys, Ukraine isn’t working, just like our last ten war projects! What should we do?” “Oh, we should start another failure project for sure!” 

-Neocon logic 101.

If China has no aircraft carriers, it will be seen as a “weak” country.

If China has 1 aircraft carrier, it will be seen as an “ambitious” country.

If China has 3 aircraft carriers, it will be seen as a “threatening the free world”.

main qimg 67ba4c733838e1600ef7ccc2bb1d8575
main qimg 67ba4c733838e1600ef7ccc2bb1d8575

If China has 10 aircraft carriers, it will be seen as an “important force in maintaining world peace.”

main qimg 7a4c9e31bb556234a853906348a3627e
main qimg 7a4c9e31bb556234a853906348a3627e

So, China is now a “serious threat”

In order to become a peacekeeper, they must continue to increase the number of aircraft carriers

Consistency and pacing are the keys to success.

If you pace yourself and do a little, even something very small, every day then time is your friend and you will reap good results.

If you do not build good work habits, instead putting things off until the last moment, then your results will be poor, and time will be your enemy.

Small steps beat big dreams, and the people who succeed are the ones who can connect the small steps to their big dreams. The fact is that most people don’t know how to connect their small steps to their big dreams, which is why they live mediocre lives.

Garlic Orange Beef

Garlic Orange Beef
Garlic Orange Beef

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 pound boneless beef sirloin steak, thinly sliced in strips
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 teaspoon orange peel, cut into 1 inch long thin strips
  • 1 can condensed beefy mushroom soup
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 1/4 cup tomato paste
  • 1/4 cup orange juice
  • 2 tablespoons molasses
  • Pepper, to taste

Instructions

  1. Brown steak strips in oil over medium-high heat. Remove from pan and transfer to slow cooker.
  2. Top strips with onion, garlic and orange peel.
  3. Stir soup, water, tomato paste, orange juice and molasses together and pour over mixture in slow cooker. Sprinkle pepper over all.
  4. Cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours.
  5. Serve over hot noodles or rice.

[Commenting on the helicopter crash of Iranian President Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi.]

“This is a result of an atrocious and disgusting US position. I am primarily referring to sanctions.

These scoundrels had no right to impose sanctions against aircraft, jets, helicopters and other vehicles that carry people.

As I remember, they have introduced sanctions against aircraft in Russia, against us, against my jet.

They will not get to President Putin – he has a Russian-built jet, but they have imposed sanctions here.

Is it normal? People are traveling. You have sold this helicopter after all.

It does not matter whether it is 40 or 50 years old. Maybe it made only three flights in 50 years and would have been okay if it were serviced properly.

But they banned their companies from servicing it.

They are in part to blame for this.

They are all believers, and if they are – they will ultimately face a response.

This is not the way to behave in the world.

This shows once again the efforts that Russia and other countries that support it are taking for the unipolar world to fall apart.

A multipolar world will emerge.

These insane people are only bringing it close by their actions.

Who likes this?

They didn’t like something and stole money, in this case from Russia, and not only from it.

They didn’t like something and arrested a vessel, seized a tanker and took the goods.

They think they can do anything because they are strong.

I am not a mystic, but what I am saying is if they are believers they will ultimately answer for all these doings and answer in full.

They will not hide across the ocean.”

Excerpt from statements by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko at a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin following Russian-Belarusian talks, Minsk, May 24, 2024.

Colossus: The Forbin Project – AI Predictions from 1970

Yes… Check this out…

What Did Edward Snowden Actually Reveal About the U.S Government?

 

Imagine, if you will, a world where your every move, every communication, every digital footprint is being monitored, collected, and analyzed by an all-seeing government entity. This is the reality that Edward Snowden, a former U.S. intelligence contractor, brought to light in 2013 when he leaked a trove of classified documents exposing the shocking extent of government surveillance programs.

 

Snowden’s revelations were nothing short of earth-shattering. He disclosed that the National Security Agency, or NSA, had been engaging in a massive, global surveillance operation, collecting data on millions of unsuspecting citizens, both in the United States and abroad. This included the bulk collection of phone records, email communications, and internet browsing histories, all under the guise of national security.

One of the most startling revelations was the existence of a program called PRISM, which allowed the NSA to gain direct access to the servers of major tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. This meant that the government could potentially access vast amounts of personal data without the knowledge or consent of the individuals involved. It was a stunning breach of privacy that sent shockwaves through the tech industry and beyond.

But the revelations didn’t stop there. Snowden also exposed the NSA’s efforts to undermine internet security by deliberately weakening encryption standards and exploiting vulnerabilities in software and hardware. This not only compromised the privacy of individuals but also put the security of businesses and infrastructure at risk.

Perhaps most disturbingly, Snowden revealed that the NSA had been engaging in the bulk collection of communications metadata, essentially creating a vast database of who was talking to whom, when, and for how long. While the government argued that this was necessary for counterterrorism efforts, many saw it as a gross overreach of power and a violation of civil liberties.

The fallout from Snowden’s disclosures was immense. The U.S. government was forced to confront the reality that its surveillance programs had gone too far, and reforms were eventually put in place to rein in some of the most egregious practices. Tech companies, meanwhile, scrambled to reassure their users that their data was safe and secure, implementing stronger encryption and pushing back against government requests for user information.

In the end, Edward Snowden’s revelations fundamentally changed the way we think about privacy and security in the digital age. They exposed the dark underbelly of government surveillance and sparked a global conversation about the balance between national security and individual rights. While opinions on Snowden himself remain divided, there’s no denying the impact his actions had on the world, and the enduring legacy of his decision to blow the whistle on one of the most secretive and powerful organizations on the planet.

“I regret buying a new car”

 

I (25F) recently bought my first car and dropped 50k as a down payment for a brand new Lexus. (a really dumb decision, I know.) I feel super regretful because I let myself succumb to the pressure from my mom and friends to finally buy a car since I landed a higher paying job. I hope to have a family and buy a house one day but I cannot help but feel like I put myself in a poor financial position where I will probably never achieve that. Am I still doing okay financially?

 

  • 32k invested into Roth IRA
  • 30k invested into 401K
  • 62k in high yield savings account
  • 24k in CD account
  • 30k in debt (car loan)
  • 110k salary
  • Rent 1,200, Phone 100, Groceries 200

Dear Regretful Car Buyer,

An $80k car? Yes, that was a very dumb move. But hey, at least you bought a Lexus, so you can ride it out for 15-20+ years. That’s the only smart thing about this purchase.

Now, let’s talk about your financial situation. You have $32k in a Roth IRA, $30k in a 401k, $62k in a high-yield savings account, and $24k in a CD account. That’s a total of $148k in savings and investments. That’s fantastic for someone your age!

On the other hand, you have $30k in debt from your car loan. While that’s not ideal, it’s not the end of the world. You have a solid income of $110k, and your expenses are relatively low. You’re paying $1,200 for rent, $100 for your phone, and $200 for groceries. That leaves you with a lot of room to pay down your debt and continue saving for your future.

Here’s my advice: focus on paying off that car loan as quickly as possible. Make it a priority to throw extra money at that debt each month. Once you’ve paid off the loan, redirect that money into your savings and investments.

Remember that we all make mistakes. It’s part of being young. You have time on your side, and you can afford the payments on a $30k loan while still saving aggressively. Don’t beat yourself up too much over this.

You’ve obviously reflected that peer pressure influenced you to make a poor decision. That’s a valuable lesson to learn at your age.

Yes, buying an $80k car on a $110k salary was a dumb move. But you’ve got a lot of things going for you: a high income, fantastic savings, and time on your side. Learn from this mistake, get back on track with your savings and investments, and don’t let peer pressure influence your financial decisions again. You’ve got this!

The Bleak Reality Faced By The Japanese Youth

 

There used to be a legal concept and now there is a de facto concept known as “lifetime employment.” Basically, when you begin a career with a company, you would have to egregiously fuckup/commit malicious deeds to lose your job. However, businessmen who fail publicly on a major project that they took leadership of, or businessmen who piss off the wrong people in the firm, are often shipped off to undesirable locations (remote countryside, foreign branches, less-than-desirable departments, etc.) or just have their careers turn into a living hell.

 

As such, if you are a Japanese businessman and you want a relatively cushy path towards middle/upper management, you are dissuaded from taking risks. This leads to situations where people ignore potentially lucrative opportunities in favor of the less risky status quo. This leads to stagnation.

One way Japanese businesspeople bypass this problem is by doing “nemawashi” before business deals. This means taking 6 months or so meeting with all potential stakeholders in small meetings, winning them over one by one, before you ever pitch your main idea to the main committee/bosses (who has also been briefed ahead of time). This way all parties agree with the idea and the risk is mitigated.

Likewise, committees are often formed, sometimes even between multiple business units or even companies entirely, to make sure everyone agrees on everything. This helps everyone save face (as they all agree on the same thing) in the event of failure. Unfortunately this also leads to stagnation on an epic scale as typically it’s impossible to get a bunch of risk-adverse executives to all agree to the same thing.

The Japanese education system does a great job of teaching conformity. This helps squash a lot of the entrepreneurial spirit that you would naturally see out of graduates in other countries. No one wants to be the “nail that sticks out.”

It also teaches Japanese students how to prepare for standardized tests, but not critical thinking skills. This tends to put them at a disadvantage in a global business community, when compared to graduates from other developed nations. Also their foreign language teaching is laughable – designed more for standardized tests than actual international business.

I like to use this story to explain this a bit… As a typical Japanese high school student, here is what you are expected to do:

  • Spend years of your life studying your ass off before school, during school, after school, 7 days a week so you can do well on the entry exams for the best colleges.
  • Spend your senior year of college wearing a suit and job hunting, attending dozens of monotonous seminars and taking more exams, in the hopes that you can get a low paying entry level job at a well known firm (like a Toyota).
  • Slave away for 3-5 years, making $20-40K and working 80 hours a week. Go on forced drinking excursions only to be physically, verbally, and often sexually harassed by your seniors who you actually hate but pretend to like in public.
  • Live at home until you’re 30 because you don’t make enough to move out.
  • Finally get promoted to sub-middle-manager as you approach 30. Go on a bunch of forced group dates so you can finally get laid and settle for the plain jane over in accounting.
  • Get married to plain jane (who secretly resents that you don’t make enough money for her to buy Coach bags) and move into a shithole apartment in the suburbs of Tokyo.
  • Spend the next ten years working 80 hours a week, going bald, and sleeping with hookers on business trips. You’ll develop a pretty serious drinking problem while your wife sleeps with her high school sweetheart when you’re out of town.
  • Finally get promoted to middle-manager and make decent money. Now you can afford to buy a shithole apartment in the suburbs. Enjoy your two hour commute on a packed train every day while you contemplate suicide.
  • Pop out one kid (because that’s all you can afford) now that you’re in your early 40s. Look forward to raising them to be just as miserable as you because “that’s just the way things are.”
  • Finally retire when you’re in your upper 60s and enjoy life for a bit before you die of cancer.

That is the reality of life for a LOT of Japanese youths. And they know it.

With that knowledge in hand, a lot (millions) are saying “fuck the system” and just choosing to live in their parents’ basements forever, playing videogames and masturbating to pixelated porn and hentai. I can’t say I blame them!

There is a certain bleakness in the Japanese youth. They can’t afford to marry, nor have kids. They have grown up in a 20+ year recession. They aren’t happy but societal pressures tell them to stay on the course they are on because “that’s what it means to be Japanese.”

“My chess rating has become my identity.”

 

I’m an avid chess player, and over the years, my chess rating has become more than just a number—it’s become a part of my identity. Whenever I win a game and see my rating go up, I feel on top of the world. But when I lose and my rating drops, it feels like a personal failure. These fluctuations have started to impact my mood, self-esteem, and even how I interact with others.

Lately, it’s been getting worse. I find myself obsessively checking my rating and replaying my losses in my head, wondering what I could have done differently. I compare myself to higher-rated players and feel inferior and stupid. This has led to anxiety and a lack of enjoyment in other areas of my life. I’m caught in a vicious cycle of self-doubt and pressure to perform, and I don’t know how to break free.

 

Dear Checkmated by Ratings,

You’re far from alone in letting something external — be it chess ratings, social media likes, income, weight, zip code, a partner’s approval — define your self-worth. Our culture rewards such myopia.

But there’s a common delusion in external validation: that if you just hit the right number, then you’ll like yourself. Except it never produces a lasting sense of accomplishment or self-acceptance. There’s always another goalpost your ego is chasing, another reason to feel “less than.”

So, how to reclaim your equilibrium? First, by understanding that your mind is playing tricks on you. A rating is simply data, a benchmark of chess mastery. That’s it. It is not now, nor will it ever be, an accurate measure of your worth as a human being. You are so much more than any number — on or off the chessboard.

Correcting this mental error frees you to refocus on what matters: the joy of the game. You play because you love it — the elegant strategies, the mental challenge, the thrill of competition. When you’re fully present in the moment, immersed in the flow of the game, there is no room for obsessive thoughts.

Consider a practice of mindfulness, whether through meditation, yoga, journaling or time in nature. It’s a powerful way to override toxic self-talk and shift your attention to gratitude and growth. Savor the journey of getting better at something you love. Thank your body and mind for working in tandem. Process your losses with self-compassion, mining them for lessons, then letting them go.

Lastly, open up to a trusted friend, family member or therapist about what you’ve been going through. Shame and isolation will only keep you stuck. Connection is the antidote, reminding you that your worthiness has nothing to do with wins and losses.

Like the game itself, life is full of highs and lows, advances and setbacks. Our fulfillment lies in meeting both with grace.

Wishing you joy in every game.

Frighteningly John Titor

As I churn through my daily YouTube feed, I watch the collapse of the United States in real time.

I see the store closings, the big box retailers shutting down.

I watch the empty storefronts and the tent cities.

I watch the woke wars and the fiasco of male and female relationships.

I see the collapse of American industry and the service sector. And I watch all of this being documents by YouTubers.

And the thought that comes to mind is John Titor.

Not on his “predictions” about “our” future. Not about the Civil war, followed by a global thermonuclear war.

Not about the details of his machine. No.

I am reminded about how he described the world where he came from; 2036 (as I recall).  He said some things that instantly came to mind as I watch these videos.

  • Firstly, the fact that there are videos. YouTube or Tictok. Doesn’t matter. The decline of mainstream media, and Hollywood and being replaced by home-grown video productions is one of his sport on predictions.

Yes. But it’s much more than that.

  • He never talked about fast food restaurants from his time. It’s not that he glossed over them. He didn’t mention them at all. And today, we are starting to watch the fast food franchises and small dining franchises disappear and shut their doors. From Appleby’s to Denny’s. All are shutting down.

This is disturbing. It really is.

Not that McDonald’s is closing stores, but that this “time traveler” seemingly came from “our” future where fast outside dining was not that prevalent.

  • The talked about the music that he liked, and what his friends listened to. He described it as natural music with heart-felt singing, and natural instruments. One gets the idea of bluegrass or country or folk music. But now, seeing the impact of Oliver Anthony and his special “type” of sound… it all seems to fit into place.

Again, not really a game-changer or an ah-ha moment, but Lordy! Twenty Five some years ago, no one could have even remotely predicted the impact that Oliver Anthony has had on American society and the music industry.

  • The decline of the grand big-box stores. John Titor said that the first time that he went into one such store, he about broke down and cried. He had never seen so much consumerism on display, and he considered it such a waste.

When I first read what he said and wrote, my natural assumption that a nuclear war erased all the stores and that led to their collapse.It was because of the war; and the nuclear fire erased everything…

Now I am seeing something different.

We are watching these big retailer operations shut down one by one. Organized crime plus inflation plus trade restrictions and pretty soon, it’s all over. It’s not there yet, but add another round of tariffs and it will happen.

Oh, he said many other things, of course.

But the point that I am trying to make here is that the world, and the time-table that he described [1] did not match our world-line, however, [2] the events RELATED to his home life seems to be taking place right now in real time.

I wonder…

His depiction of an American civil war, followed by a Russian nuclear exchange does not seem to be in the making. A war with Russia… yes. A conflict with China… yes. A collapse of American domestic society… yes.

Perhaps in this timeline, the attributes of the world-line that he described is happening regardless of the details and related war-like events that he described twenty five years ago. The details on the war in every detail seems to be of no consequence. But the “broad brush” descriptions of 2026 seems to be hitting the target square on the dot.

Or in other words.

Massive nuclear war involving Russia, but the actual details about Europe, China, and the rest of the world is sketchy. And as I suspect, a product of the times when he made the initial statements on coast-to-coast.

American civil war, but the details seemingly are alien to this world-line.

My gut feeling is that the grand events are still in process in this world-line but the events are substantially scrambled beyond recognition. Interesting times, for certain.

Today…

“We are doing everything they [Western countries] did before us and are doing now.

They are training foreign pilots.

In part, the Americans are training German pilots in Germany to fly with nuclear weapons carriers – with bombs if they fly planes and with missiles.

We are not doing anything special, we are getting ready, undergoing training. We must be prepared.

The world is unstable and dangerous.

We cannot afford to miss this strike.

We cannot afford to miss an attack as we did in the middle of the past century.

We will not allow this to happen and they must know about this.

But we are not fuelling tensions.

We do not need war.

Today we talked only about peaceful prospects.

I am grateful to the President of Russia for including the head of the group of strategic initiatives in his delegation.

He told us what is even hard to comprehend, but this is our near future.

So we stand for peace but keep our powder dry.

Nothing special.”

BREAKING: Sparks Fly As Cruz Confronts Blinken Over ‘Worst Foreign Policy Disaster Of Modern Times’

The first two minutes are GOLD.

Comparing other countries and cultures with each other is a lost cause; you can only understand a culture, people and history on its own terms.

When I read many question on Quora, there are many like:

  • Why don’t the Chinese rise up against oppression from the Chinese government?
  • Why are Americans willing to accept so many gun deaths because of private gun ownership?

These are very shallow questions, and it is obvious the OP has no deep understanding of the issues at play.

The most obvious mistake is that they are comparing Chinese and Americans by the standard and media discussion of the country they are coming from. There is a reasonable chance that they are monolingual, and cannot read, speak and write another language.

The lesson, from my personal experience, is this: You can only understand a culture, people and history on its own terms, without trying to force another cultural view and values onto it. If you try to force your culture view onto another culture, you will eventually learn that almost all the judgments you made about it are wrong.

It is this reason which has made China very difficult for most westerners to understand.

The best way to get a deep understanding of another culture is to learn the language, because the people who make the most bad judgments about other cultures (especially in the west) are almost always mono-lingual.

In very real terms, they don’t know what they are talking about.

Learning another language gives you empathy, and a new way of looking at a people, society and culture from the inside, instead of just being another ignorant outside observer.

Making the effort to learn another language also sends another message: “I am serious about learning what the people of this culture say and think, and I want a first-hand experience, instead of having some third-party tell me their third-party views.”

In an inter-connected globalized world, there is no better way to convey your respect.

Chili and Cheese over Rice

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Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef or ground turkey
  • 1 medium onion, sliced
  • 1 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1 teaspoon oregano
  • 1 (16 ounce) can light red kidney beans
  • 1 (15.5 ounce) can chili beans
  • 1 1/2 cups stewed tomatoes, drained
  • 2 cups cooked rice
  • 1 cup shredded cheese

Instructions

  1. Brown beef or turkey and onion. Drain and season with basil and oregano.
  2. Combine all ingredients except rice and cheese in slow cooker.
  3. Cover and cook on LOW for 4 hours.
  4. Serve over rice, topped with cheese.

Vintage family illustration

I come from a land and a time where America was peopled with families and men were men and women were women, and that was that. These vintage illustrations represent my life that I used to have before the progressives “improved” the USA.

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This one… been there, done that.

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Enjoy being lost.

In my 20’s I discovered the joys of being lost. It was initially a very weird and scary feeling, because as a child or teenager living at home, I was too immature, nervous and scared to go completely into the unknown on my own. I did many new things, and really pushed myself to grow and do my best, but I would try to learn and grow in smaller, safe pieces so I could feel safe, secure and in control of my life. Being lost was too uncomfortable. Being lost was too big to hold. I didn’t like it.

Then I discovered the joys of being lost. I don’t know exactly when or where it happened, but one day, I ended up in a place completely unknown to me. I was lost. But instead of panicking or being scare, I slowed down, became more mindful of my surroundings. I embraced and enjoyed an almost floating feeling of discovery. Scary, exciting, but oh so fleeting, because a short time later, I figured out exactly where I was, and was no longer lost. I had lived a literal metaphor of being lost and found. It was dope. Or, as I said back then, “That is so Cool.” I had learned to love lost.

Then, I started trying to re-create the experience of being mentally or physically lost. One example, is I could easily bicycle 20 or 30 miles, so I would hop on my bicycle and ride “until i got there.” “There” was undefined. I wouldn’t know that I had “gotten there” until I was actually there. And then I would know. “There” could be anything and anywhere. I sought out being lost and then found. I would take turns at random, trying to literally get lost. It wasn’t easy because the more I knew, the harder it was to find places that were completely unknown and new to me. But when I did, I loved it.

Being lost, helped me find my life. Being lost builds confidence, mindfulness and insights that you can only discover when they are unknown and then unexpectedly revealed. As Alan Watt’s said in “The Wisdom of Insecurity,” “Nothing is more powerful and creative than emptiness.”

I’m much older now, but I still occasionally seek adventures of being lost. Sometimes I drive into the unknown. Sometimes I bike. Sometimes I lose myself into previously unknown books, movies or internet adventures. Being lost is a sense of experiencing an unknown and can happen in any unexpected adventure, big or small. Often, I listen to people complain about how boring, dull and mundane their life has become, and I think, “they need a little lost in their life.”

So my advice, enjoy being lost. Embrace and learn from lost. Love lost. Because, lost won’t last.

Yeah, only USA or NASA has thick skin to do such thing as to demand this & that from China.

USA banned China from joining the US space program. When China made its own space station, NASA demanded China to dismantle it because it was not written in English. The Chinese space station is a Chinese private property. China can use its own language. … it takes thick skin for NASA to say it. Just to say it.

USA used a satellite from Space-X to attempt to collide into China’s space station, endangering the life of the 3 astronauts inside the space stn. Two times. China reported it to the UN … USA was that paranoid & hysterical.

When China landed a spaceship on Mars, with only 1 attempt, it took NASA 3 days to congratulate China. (the entire world congratulated China right away.) USA took 3 attempts to land on Mars.

When it is calculated that it will take 7 less years for Chinese spaceship to return to earth from Mars, NASA again was jealous but did not demonise China this time.

China announced it planned to land its spaceship Change6 on the back of the moon, NASA said they dont understand why China will go to the back of the moon where it was pitch dark (it is not). … amazing about the qualification of NASA.

Why must NASA ask China for lunar soil? Did not NASA get lunar soil when it landed on moon in 1960’s? Oh..h, somebody said it was just a movie; NASA never landed on the moon. Should NASA jump out to prove its landing? Right, NASA said it has lost all its records/documents.

Now USA demands China to open its communication satellite? Wait, is USA not afraid China’s communication system will destroy USA? Is that not what Commerce Secy Raimondo has been telling Americans … everything from China poses security problem to USA. Haha.

I hope China will not open its system to USA unless USA openly apologises to China for attempting to collide into China’s space station.

Teach USA to be a better country.

Time : 10:10 AM

My mother received a call.

It was my father’s call from his office.

I was sleeping and wakes up after listening the ring.

Mum : Haanji !

Paa : Yaar, i’m not feeling well. I’m sweating.

*Me wakes up in the middle of the sleep*

Mum : What happened ? Is your Blood Pressure fine ?

Paa : I don’t know but come to Gangaram Hospital with Mukul as soon as possible.

I got up from the bed and gathered my wallet and mobile.

Time : 10:20 AM

We were at our main entrance gate and suddenly…

*The landline phone rang*

It was my father’s office colleague.

Colleague : Beta, come to RML Hospital Emergency asap.

I rushed with my mother to the hospital

The approximate distance between my home and the RML Hospital is around 7 km and i drove as fast as i could.

There was a time when my scooty was about to hit a truck on the ridge road.

Time : 10:30 AM

Entered the emergency section.

My father’s office friends and colleagues were standing there with same numb reaction.

I asked one his friend what has happened ? But he told me to enter the emergency ward.

My father was there..

DEAD !

He was cold, his hands felt no power to hold my hands.. i was devastated.

I came out in a shock and one of his friend handed me his wallet and his mobile with the words,

‘Beta ! He is no more’.

But ! How ? How it can be possible ? Just 15–20 minutes ? How can someone who is perfectly healthy and fit just suddenly die ?

I rushed to doctors for their statement and they stated that he was brought dead and they cannot tell us the reason without postmartem.

I asked and pleaded other doctors to please do something, or please do some miracle.

But, i had to accept this.

He is no more now and the only person i need to take care at that moment was my mother.

*Fast forward after 3 years*

We still cry and miss that time spent with him. We have seen a lot and grew stronger each day.

I could not even say a goodbye to my father. Some conversations are left unsaid..!

A suggestion to all the young people from my side,

‘As we are growing up, we generally tend not to hug or kiss our parents especially our father as it would seem immature or kiddish but when I was giving the last fire to my father’s body, I realised that it was after my childhood that I was kissing my father.*

How the US is Destroying Your Future

Cute story

A 50 something year old white woman arrived at her seat on a crowded flight and immediately didn’t want the seat. The seat was next to a black man. Disgusted, the woman immediately summoned the flight attendant and demanded a new seat. The woman said,

“I cannot sit here next to this black man.”

The fight attendant said,

“Let me see if I can find another seat.”

After checking, the flight attendant returned and stated,

“Ma’am, there are no more seats in economy, but I will check with the captain and see if there is something in first class.”

About 10 minutes went by and the flight attendant returned and stated,

“The captain has confirmed that there are no more seats in economy, but there is one in first class. It is our company policy to never move a person from economy to first class, but being that it would be some sort of scandal to force a person to sit next to an UNPLEASANT person, the captain agreed to make the switch to first class.”

Before the woman could say anything, the attendant gestured to the black man and said,

“Therefore sir, if you would so kindly retrieve your personal items, we would like to move you to the comfort of first class as the captain doesn’t want you to sit next to an unpleasant person.”

Passengers in the seats nearby began to applause while some gave a standing ovation.

Taiwan is what we can call a “Positional Advantage”.

Something that all sovereign nations worry themselves with. The strategic implications of possessing an advantage in the event of war, denying the advantage to the opponent, or disadvantaging an opponent. Geopolitically speaking, at this point, the People’s Republic of China (PRC, Mainland China) has 3 main opponents: Russia, India, U.S.A. and her allies.

Now, here is a brief off-track short story for Russia. Back in 1955, the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) might have asked, why doesn’t the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) face the reality of its existence and respect the choices of the people of Mongolia?

This is because Mongolia to the ROC (Taiwan) is what Taiwan is to the PRC (Mainland China): a Positional Advantage against the Soviet Union. The ROC (Taiwan) distrusted the communist Soviets and MPR. Keeping MPR’s sovereignty a question in the UN justifies the ROC (Taiwan) reintegrating vast stretches of buffer lands between China and the Soviets should war break out.

On that note, Mao Zedong did want Outer Mongolia back, obviously to the Soviets’ rejection.

And we know India and China border conflicts are ongoing, with their own set >insert Tibet< issues. Which, by the way, in 1914, Tibet might have asked, why doesn’t the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) face the reality of its existence and respect the choices of the people of Tibet?

Finally, the last and currently most threatening opponent, the U.S.A.

To the eyes of the PRC (Mainland China), it is trapped in a circle of U.S.A friendly nations: Japan, which the Chinese distrust; South Korea; and the Philippines, all of which are understandably within the Anglosphere of influence. Apart from the buffer in the South China Sea (again as to why the PRC is fighting for that), only the ambiguous status of the Taiwan Isle represents a potential breakthrough in the U.S.A encirclement.

Two island chains
Two island chains

For the most part, the PRC (Mainland China) was happy to keep the status quo, but in 2016, after Tsai Ing-wen’s election victory in Taiwan, the question of Taiwan’s Independence resurfaced.

To be sure, Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are not Pro-Independence. Politicians around the World know what is at stake, and the DPP is not going to risk it. But, that did not stop the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) from levelling accusations of de-sinicization, as well as, DPP policy in advancing relationship with the U.S.A.

Overnight, the PRC (Mainland China) considers the encirclement by U.S.A suddenly very real. As an important note, the encirclement is a problem not just for offensive an offensive war, but also defensive deterrence. The ability of the PRC (Mainland China) to project military forces into the Pacific Ocean is the only thing that can be considered positional equilibrium against the U.S.A.

From a strategic standpoint, whatever happens in the Straits of Taiwan is a logical eventuality. The PRC, ROC, U.S.A, and even Japan, the Koreas, and the Philippines are all fighting for a Positional Advantage for their own benefits.

While sovereign nations like Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines are done deals.

Taiwan, unfortunately, represents the only ambiguous status that the PRC (Mainland China) has a chance of denying to the U.S.A that advantage and the only legitimate casus belli in actually acquiring that square of advantage for themselves – the choices of the People of Taiwan be damned.

My stepdaughter – which was very difficult because her dad (my husband) loves her dearly and has always turned a blind eye to her faults.

She was 12 when we got married, and seemed like a sweet kid. However, she often liked to look through my drawers and closet. She would ‘borrow’ my clothes without asking. I tried to not let it bother me, as I was trying to build a relationship with her. But, sometimes, she took my ‘borrowed’ clothes to her mother’s house – and they were never returned.

When she got a little older, we realized she was using drugs. We absolutely prohibited drugs in our home, nonetheless, we found drugs in her room a few times. We would flush the drugs, and her father would have a stern talk with her. Once she started using, more and more of my things started to disappear – including my jewelry. When I realized one of the missing items was my deceased grandmother’s wedding band, I was furious! I put my jewelry box in my closet, and put a lock on my closet door. Every time she stayed at our house, I would lock up my purse and other valuables in the closet.

Still a teenager, she got pregnant and married her drug dealer (in spite of our objections). She got pregnant again shortly after the first child was born. Neither of them could keep a regular job. The drug dealer’s goal in life was to get approved for Social Security disability payments, so he would never have to work. He got a job at a warehouse for a few months, then claimed he hurt his back and could no longer work. Fortunately, it didn’t work; the doctors quickly realized he was faking. My stepdaughter had a few jobs at restaurants and stores. She got fired from every one, either for stealing or for not showing up for work. During these years, they constantly asked us for money. They would call and say their phone or utilities were being shut off and they had no money to pay the bill. We gave them a ridiculous amount of money, because we were concerned about their kids. Eventually, my daughter convinced me that the reason they had no money is because they wouldn’t work, and spent whatever they did have on drugs. So, that ended.

When I was trying to sell my car, my stepdaughter came over and told us they desperately needed a car. I was determined to hold her responsible this time. We agreed on a payment plan and sold her the car at a discounted price. Of course, we never received any money.

After she got a divorce, her mother-in-law ended up with custody of the two children, because both parents were irresponsible drug users. When she would have the children for the weekend, she would often stay at our house. We didn’t mind, because we enjoyed seeing the children. However, every time they stayed with us, money and/or other valuables would disappear. We simply could not lock away everything. The last time she brought them over, I went upstairs to tell them breakfast was ready – I found all three of them searching my daughter’s room. She has taught her children to be thieves, too. I still don’t know what all she took that day.

I told my husband I didn’t want her here again. However, several times after that, she would drop by the house without notice. The last time, I had just picked up a prescription from the drug store, and it was lying on the kitchen counter. At one point, she went into the kitchen for a few minutes. After she left, I realized she had taken all of the pills and put the empty bottle back in the bag – so we would not notice until after she was gone.

Finally, I put my foot down, and declared she was never to be in my house again! I don’t want to stand between her and her father, so he visits with her at other places. Often, he takes her to lunch. I have not spoken to her in a few years, and have no intention to ever speak to her again.

An interesting follow-up: The drug dealer ex-husband suffered a stroke while high on drugs — he is now mostly paralyzed. He finally got his wish to get disability payments, but I strongly suspect he has regrets.

This post is much longer than I anticipated, but it was a bit therapeutic to write it all out.

Kitten chooses her boy

I have heard of police being more cruel or more stupid, but this bit of grand guignol from Fontana, California, arguably takes the cake for sheer persistence and bloody-mindedness.

  • Police capture a man (Thomas Perez, Jr.), and try to get him to confess to the murder of his father.
  • Police run said man through a marathon 17-hour interrogation session, in which they convince him he has “suppressed” the memories, and make him confess to murdering his dad.
    • Said interrogation includes threatening to kill his dog, saying it’s his fault because he had let the dog see his father’s murder (they later told him they had, in fact, killed the dog).
    • It involved prolonged sleep deprivation to break him down, and withholding his medicine for clinical depression.
    • It included watching the guy they were torturing break down, weep, pull out his hair, and tear off his clothes.
    • After confessing, the guy tried to hang himself.

Some released photos:

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  • The entire affair ended when the “murder victim”, the poor guy’s father, returned from his trip. He had taken a flight to visit his daughter, and wasn’t dead or missing. The police just hadn’t thought to look for him before producing the confession.
    • Instead of telling their traumatized victim his father was alive after the suicide attempt, the police kept him in captivity for another three days, convinced his dog and his father had died, and unable to kill himself.

Thankfully, the state compensated the family $900,000. No article says if the officers have suffered any disciplinary penalties. It sounds like the plot of a sitcom, only it isn’t funny.

I close with a favorite extract from William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch—

“While in general I avoid the use of torture—torture locates the opponent and mobilizes resistance—the threat of torture is useful to induce in the subject the appropriate feeling of helplessness and gratitude to the interrogator for withholding it…”

No one was permitted to bolt his door, and the police had pass keys to every room in the city. Accompanied by a mentalist they rush into someone’s quarters and start “looking for it.” (…) Many a latent homosexual was carried out in a strait-jacket when they planted vaseline in his ass. Or they pounce on any object. A pen wiper or a shoe tree.

“And what is this supposed to be for?”

“It’s a pen wiper.”

“A pen wiper, he says.”

“I’ve heard everything now.”

“I guess this is all we need. Come on, you.”

After a few months of this the citizens cowered in corners like neurotic cats.

Country Style Cube Steaks

instant pot country style steak recipe 1
instant pot country style steak recipe 1

Ingredients

  • 4 to 6 cube steaks
  • All-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1 package dry onion soup mix
  • 1 package dry brown gravy mix
  • Water

Instructions

  1. Dredge steaks with flour.
  2. Heat oil in large skillet over medium low heat. Brown steaks on both sides. Drain excess fat.
  3. Place steaks in slow cooker.
  4. Add soup and gravy mixes and enough water to cover meat.
  5. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours.
instant pot country style steak recipe 3
instant pot country style steak recipe 3

22 years as a Medic and 5 before that as an EMT I have worked so many codes i have forgotten half of them though. There is one that sticks in my memory that I will never forget……..

The year is 1999. I had been a medic for about two years and was working a 24 hour shift at a county 911 squad. Our tones drop. Medic 129 for the second ambulance, Medic 122 to cover: 123 Main Street for an unknown type problem. The next town over’s ambulance was on a run already so we were the next due on the box card. We get out to the truck and fire up the big diesel of the ambulance. Because my partner was also a medic we would switch off calls so one person wasn’t stuck writing all of the charts for the day. (I don’t care what anyone says, Medics hate writing charts).

So we go barreling down the road, took us about 13 minutes to get onscene because of the distance.

“Medic 122 county, we’re onscene”

“Copy Medic 122, 17:30. Also, be advised PD is with Medic 129 and unavailable at this time.” Most calls we would have the police respond, not because we were fearful of the scene being unsafe but because having an EMS call broke up their normally boring day.

So I hop out of the truck, open the side door to the ambulance, grab my first in bag and O2 bag. My partner grabbed the Lifepak 10 (heart monitor).

So this little old lady answers the door. She must be about 90 years old and greets us opening the screen door.

I introduce myself and my partner. “Hi, did you call 911? Are you Ok?” It was kind of hard to hear her as she spoke very softly. She just says “my daughter is in the bedroom. She said she hasn’t felt right most of the day. She is in there.” She points to the last door on the right. Very narrow hallway, there was no way we were gonna get a stretcher back there.

So I go into the bedroom and there is a 70ish year old female laying low semi-fowlers on a couch. My partner stayed in the living room with the mom to gather some more information like meds, allergies, past medical history.

As I step into the bedroom the patient turns her head slightly towards me and smiles. I scan the whole room quickly to see if anything is out of place, seems like a normal bedroom. The patient did not appear to have any visible injury or trauma and responded to me by looking at me when I walked in the bedroom.

So this is the part that I will never forget:

As I start to kneel down next to the patient I go to lightly touch her hand. Two main reasons is to just try to convey a sense of calm that I am there to help her but also to do quick pulse check. Just as my hand is about 10 inches from hers I am watching her face. Her head is only slightly turned to the right to look at me and I say “hi, my name is Bill, I’m the medic and I’m gonna take care of you”. She starts to smile as she is looking into my eyes, all of a sudden this happens……

At the right corner of her lips, where top lip and bottom lip meet a stream of blood comes out and goes straight down the side of her face and onto the couch. I don’t mean like if you cut yourself shaving and it didn’t stop bleeding, I mean like a stream where if I had a slurpee sized empty cup it would fill in about 2 minutes.

I refocus my eyes back to hers, this beautiful lady was still looking at me, but it looked like she was looking through me.

I check a pulse as I am trying verbal and painful stimuli, nothing. No pulse, no respiration’s, nothing. So I am pulling the heart monitor next to me and grabbing the combo-pads. I’m yelling for my partner now “Carl, go get the reeves, she just coded!” 5 seconds later I can hear the front door slam open as my partner bolted for the truck to get the reeves to carry her out in.

He flies back in and says “what happened??????” So I tell him. All the while I have started CPR, pulling my IV and Intubation kit out. Back then there wasn’t so much of stay and play as there is now. Our onscene time shouldn’t be more than 20 minutes and if you spent 30 minutes, or more, working a code, well, you had better have a real good reason or else you would be called in front of your medical command doctor for some Q and A. Nowadays, which I think is the right thing to do all along, is that for cardiac arrests you should stay onscene longer. The hospital ER really didn’t do anything special that we weren’t doing in the field already anyways. And studies have shown that CPR, good quality CPR will create vascular pressure so when we give our fancy drugs we are giving the heart a chance. Defibrillation, in my experience, is what the heart needs from the beginning of a cardiac arrest. They don’t give us these cool looking gadgets that can cost 20–30 thousand dollars just so the people that watched the TV show Emergency! from the early 70s got to watch a show and feel like TV stars.

So I got the patient intubated and was able to get a 16G IV in the right ACF (inside part of the elbow) get round of Epinephrine and Atropine in. Her initial EKG was asystole (flatline) so no defib was indicated and back then our protocols required 1mg Atropine after a milligram of 1:10,000 epinephrine to a maximum of 3mg of atropine. Nowadays our protocols, for asystole, is just the 1mg of the 1:10,000 epinephrine unless for someone reason the medic believes that one of the other drugs may be indicated. But for that you had better call tele hospital and talk to the ER attending before you start dumping your whole drug box into the patient. We also could try and use the pacer function of the heart monitor but most of the time we never had capture and pacing was futile.

So by now we have carried her to the stretcher, loaded her in the truck and are flying down the road to the hospital ER. I grab my radio mic and call for a med channel and patch to the ER (kind of a secure transmission that could not be heard by the general public with a regular police scanner). I give report and they just say “ok, awaiting your arrival”.

Get to the hospital. 2 RNs and the attending doctor open the back doors of my ambulance. I see the look on the two nurses “Bill, are you ok?????” So I had been working this code for so long and hard I looked like, and this is a quote from the one RN, “You look like you were stuck on a tornado and got hit by lightning at the same time!!”.

So my partner comes around and takes the stretcher out of the truck. I follow with my Lifepak 10. One RN hops on top of the stretcher and is straddling the patient feverishly doing CPR. I am walking in to the ER and the attending is walking next to me, intently listening to every word I speak.

We walk into the resuscitation bay, slide the patient to their bed, and my partner takes the stretcher and the reeves out to be decontaminated. The ER staff keep going, trying to resuscitate the patient. I come out and start walking over to my partner. The corner of my eye I see the receptionist walking the patient’s mother to the family room. I am close enough to see tears coming down her face. I ask the receptionist if anyone has came to talk to the mother yet, she tells me no. I grab a towel to try to make myself look presentable. Doing a CPR, especially when you are by yourself in the back of the ambulance, is a very physically strenuous activity and can give you a workout comparable to your high school gym teacher who picked on you to try and break you with PT.

I head over to the family room and the mother is the only one in there. I go in and sit down next to her. I grab her hand and look her straight in the eyes and try to assure her that I, and the ER doctors and staff, are doing everything possible to help her daughter. I can still recall how soft her hands were. Trying to speak through the tears she tells me that her daughter is the only other person from her family that is still alive. She tells me her husband of 73 years died last year, her sisters have long been gone and that her daughter, who is her only child, never married or had children of her own. I can feel her hand gripping tighter around mine, well I’m sure it was tight for her but it just felt like soft pressure to me. I tell her that I will go and check and see what’s going on, she is still holding on to my hand when she looks into my eyes and says “I know we all must go sooner or later but she is all I have. Since she was little she was always afraid of being alone. Can you go in there and stay with her? You were the last person she looked at before this happened.” I gave a soft nod, she let my hand go and I headed to the resuscitation bay. As I walk through the double doors I hear the doctor asking if anyone has any suggestions to try before he calls it. The nurses had switched out several times to do cpr so the cpr is still being done quite well.

I knew this was going to be it. Before the nurse stopped the CPR I walked over next to the bed and pulled a metal chair up. I grabbed her hand, the one that I did not start an IV on, sat on the chair and held her hand while my other hand was softly rubbing the back of her hand. The doctor looked at me quizzicallly. I just said I would tell him in a little bit.

The code was called. The nurse responsible for after death care went to get the supplies she needed (body bag and such). I stayed in the room holding her hand. I sat there for about 5 minutes, holding her hand, when I hear the double doors open. Initially i thought it was one of the RNs just coming in and out but I was wrong: it was the patient’s mother. I continued to hold her hand until the mother came over next to me. I softly put the daughter’s hand next to her on the table. The mother threw her arms around me and gave me one of the tightest hugs I ever received, the kind like if your dad hasn’t seen you in a year and hugs like he never wants to let go, that kind of hug.

I now have tears streaming down my cheeks. I step back so the mother can be with her child. No matter how old or how big your child is you will always see them as the kid you raised.

I come out of the bay doors and the attending comes over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder and says “Bill, you did everything in your power to give the patient a chance to hold off the angel of death. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. From what you told me, she had 2 excellent medics next to her when she coded with all of the equipment and tools available, a person cannot ask for more when tragedy strikes”.

I knew he was only trying to help and make me feel a little better. But the eyes of the patient, I will never forget. I think of how many experiences of happiness, sadness, joy, and sorrow those eyes have seen over the years.

So, if I held your attention this long, bravo. Certain calls I have had over the years are usually just tucked away in my memory somewhere but this call, as soon as I saw the question, this call came rushing back to the front of my memory as if it happened yesterday!!!!!!!

A Stray Kitten Teeters on the Brink of Death Until This Happens

I was the child. They called my mom in to come get me. It was my very first day of kindergarten. I was the only four year old in the class. And I was WAY ahead, not only of my classmates, but also of my teachers expectations of me.

While my memory often leaves a lot to be desired, that particular day remains etched in crystal clarity. How I felt to be going to school for the very first time. How puzzled I was by the things that didn’t seem to make sense.

The first time something didn’t seem to make sense was when the teacher told a boy to get four books from the shelf, and he did it slowly, and one at a time. As if he were counting each one separately. This really puzzled me deeply. If he had just grabbed two books with his right hand and two books with his left hand, he’d have had all four books in one fourth of the amount of time it was taking him to complete the task. I could not understand this at all!

I had to set aside pondering this mystery, though, because now the teacher was talking again.

“I’m going to hand out these papers to the front row. Take one and pass the rest to the person behind you. Then wait quietly while I come around and write your names on your papers. Then I will tell you what to do with your paper.”

This teacher also moved very slowly. She was elderly like my grandmother, and it looked like stooping over each little desk to write names on papers was hurting her back. Poor teacher! I’ll help her out!

I looked at my paper and saw where it said Name, so I put my name there. I also saw where it said Date. She hadn’t mentioned anything about putting the date on the paper too, but that’s what it said, so I wrote the date there. By this point, I was intrigued by this piece of paper, so I continued on. Circle the things that are red. Draw a square around the things that are yellow. Below that were eight pictures, but they were like pictures out of a coloring book. Where the colors should have been was just blank space waiting for a crayon.

Now I’m puzzled again. I understood the directions. I didn’t understand WHY the directions would say to circle the red things and square the yellow things when there were no red things and there were no yellow things. School was not making much sense. I needed to think about this. There MUST be something I’m missing here.

About the third time thinking it through, it occurred to me to examine the eight colorless pictures. An apple. A banana. A fire truck. A raincoat. And THEN I got it! The directions just left out three words!! SUPPOSED TO BE. It should have said Circle the things that are supposed to be red! Good grief, school doesn’t know how to use their words!

I quickly circled the things that were supposed to be red and drew squares around the things that were supposed to be yellow. And the teacher was still two rows of desks away from me, laboriously writing the names of students on each page. Why is she doing that when it obviously is so difficult for her? Why not just say everybody write your name on your paper where it says name?

I was pleased to have at least done this for myself, and eagerly anticipated that she would be happy, and maybe even say thank you. However, when she got to my desk, she became furious and grabbed me by the ear and dragged me in that fashion all the way to the principal’s office. I was crying and scared and my ear hurt. I had no idea why this was happening. I only knew with absolute certainty that I definitely did not like school.

My mother arrived. I knew I was in for a whipping. It wasn’t child abuse, it was 1975.

Grownups were talking but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. My ear was ringing loudly. But I could see their faces, and their words smelled like ashes, and I knew that I had done something horrible but I didn’t know what it was. My mom’s face was getting angrier and angrier the longer the teacher and the principal talked. And then SHE was the one doing the talking, and, wow, you should have seen her! Sparks flew! She tore into them both like a lioness bringing down a gazelle on Wild Kingdom! And the looks on their faces! I had never seen grownups look like THEY were about to get a whipping and they knew it!

Then my mom grabbed my hand and stormed out, dragging me like a rag doll. I was still crying and had given myself the hiccups. We went home without a word. I went to my room to read. Mom was still mad. She did dishes loudly. She banged the vacuum into the furniture. She put one of her favorite records on the stereo and turned it up as loud as it would go. I sank deeper into my book to escape the loud sounds that were hurting my ears. So I didn’t notice when she turned off the stereo and came into my room. I was far away, in Narnia, and oblivious to my surroundings until I felt her hand shaking my shoulder. I came back with a start, remembered that I was in trouble, and was immediately scared again.

“So, what did you think of school?”

As unexpected as the question was, my response was immediate and fierce.

“I HATE IT! IHATEITIHATEITIHATEIT!!! I’M NEVER GOING BACK THERE!!!”

“What happened?”

“I don’t KNOW, I wailed, fresh tears starting. “I don’t know what happened, nothing made any sense!”

“Walk me through your day.”

So I did. I told her about the boy who took so long to get four books and the math that proved I was right to be confused by this. I told her about the piece of paper that left important words out of the directions. I told her about the teacher slowly shuffling from desk to desk and how it looked like she hurt every time she bent over and again when she straightened back up to shuffle to the next desk. And I cried that I didn’t know what I had done wrong.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. THEY did something wrong.” And she took me in her arms. It is the only time I can remember ever receiving a hug from and being comforted by my mother. Surely there must have been other occasions, but if there were they have all been lost.

She explained to me that even though my classmates were older and had been learning for a year longer than I had been, they learned more slowly than I did. They didn’t know how to write their names yet. They didn’t know how to read. They didn’t know that 2 + 2 = 4.

“Then why weren’t we working on THAT stuff? Teaching them to write their names or doing math?” She didn’t know.

The next day, I did not take the bus like the day before. My mom drove me in very early, before any of the other students began arriving. She parked me on the bench outside the principal’s office and gave me my book. I fell into it and have no idea how much time had passed before I felt my mom’s hand on my shoulder and I looked up to see her standing there with the teacher and the principal. The principal asked what I was reading. I told him. He asked me to read to him some, so I did. He stopped me. He told me that this was the first book in a series and that the story went on for several more books. I told him that I knew that, I had read all of them twice already and this was my third time starting all over at the beginning. He asked me why I did that. I told him because it’s a great story and I like it better when it isn’t over yet. The teacher said not one word but had the strangest look on her face. My mom also had a strange look on her face, one I’d never seen before or since on her. It was months later before I discovered that the word for that look is “smug”.

It was also months later before I learned why I had been dragged to the principal’s office on that first day. Failure to follow directions. The teacher had specifically instructed us to wait for her to write our names, and to wait for her to tell us what to do with the paper. She had been outraged at my defiance! She thought I was gleefully smiling in a “haha, I didn’t do what you told me to” kind of a way, even though it was really an “I’m so happy, teacher’s going to be so proud of me” kind of way.

School never did get less frustrating. And even today, in my late 40s, I still am frequently plagued by the same kind of misunderstandings. The kind where somebody thinks I meant something that I never meant at all, and then they get all mad by whatever thing they imagined that I meant. I don’t think I will ever understand this. Why get mad at me for something I didn’t even do? Why get mad at me for something you made up yourself? I thought when I grew up, I wouldn’t feel four years old anymore. My bones sure don’t feel four years old anymore, lol, and the rest of the body is in even worse shape. But the brain still seems stuck in the same loop of “This doesn’t make any sense! Why are they doing that?” And I have finally accepted the fact that I will probably never know.

Accidental posting due to a highway bump

Yes, art can be evil. French architect surrealist painter Alphonse Laurencic is the best example of this. During the Spanish Civil War, Laurencic designed holding cells for the Spanish government. He built beds in such a manner that the prisoners would roll off them in the sleep. He then build obstacles on the floor making it painful and impossible to sleep on.

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Furthermore, Laurencic designed the art on the walls in such a manner that the paintings would enduce a state of further mental anguish and depression into prisoners. Through his art, he tried to make the experience of staying in the rooms as unpleasant as humanly possible. The Nazis showed interest in the wicked invention — Heinrich Himmler himself visited the cells in 1940, trying to draw inspiration from them.

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In the picture above, we can see Himmler seated in the background. No doubt enjoying the wicked atmosphere “surrealist torture chamber”. Can art be evil? I’d argue Alphonse Laurencic proved that, yes, art can be evil.

 

A crystal ball

An elephant found himself drowning in the Indian Ocean after he was swept five miles out to sea by a strong current.

Sailors from the Sri Lanka navy spent 12 long hours rescuing the struggling elephant from the water. Elephants are known to be good swimmers, but this poor guy became exhausted after being stranded and treading water out there for so long.

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The long rescue began after the navy spotted the elephant franticly trying to keep his trunk above the water. They didn’t even hesitate to help him and knew they had to act quickly if they wanted to save him.

Navy divers, along with wildlife officials, got close to the distressed elephant and tied ropes around him. They then worked together to gently tow him back to the coast. After examining him and giving him a clean bill of health, they eventually released him back into the wild.The navy believes that the elephant may have gotten swept out to sea while he was crossing the Kokkilai lagoon, a long stretch of water between two areas of jungle that elephants swim across as a shortcut.

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Thankfully the navy was out there and spotted the poor elephant or he may have eventually drowned. The rescue wasn’t easy, but the divers refused to give up until they brought him to safety. A huge thank you to the Sri Lanka navy for helping this poor elephant out!

I had been working at a drug rehab center as a pet therapist and brought my dog to work with me everyday. One day, an employee approached me and told me about a three-year-old golden retriever who had been formally trained to be a service dog, but failed the final test. He was tossed into a kennel and forgotten. This co-worker told me he thought the dog would be a good fit for a therapy program, so I agreed to meet the dog.

The woman who owned the dog (let’s call her Jan) had started a non profit organization to raise service dogs. She had tried to work for Canine Companions for Independence, the gold standard for service dogs, but couldn’t get along with the management, so she started her own. She herself was confined to a wheelchair.

After meeting the dog, I agreed to adopt him and employ him as a therapy dog at the rehab. Jan called me on a weekly basis to see how things were going and at first it was ok but the calls began to come more frequently and when she found out I changed to dog’s name she became outright hostile.

When she found out I had gotten the dog’s shots she called me and told me the dog already had shots. That may have been true, but when I called the vet who supposedly had his records, the vet said the dog had been filed as “dead” and the file was long gone. That’s why I got the shots, I needed a record for employment purposes.

Anyway, she began harassing me, telling me that she knew more about dogs than anyone in the world (sound familiar?) and that I had no right to change his name and had no right to get him in as a patient with my own vet, etc.

About 18 months after this all started, there was a huge lay-off at the hospital. When I went for my exit interview I was told I had to leave the dog there. Jan had called them and said she only gave me the dog to work there and since I wasn’t there anymore she wanted the dog back. I told them I had a standard adoption contract, said they were crazy and to sue me.

They had two armed guards step between me and my dog and take the leash. They escorted me off the property.

Before this happened I had no idea such evil existed. My children loved that dog, and when I had gotten him he was loaded with ticks and fleas and so beaten down that it took us months to get him to even wag his tail. Now he was going back that environment. I was heartsick and cried every day. I begged her to give me back the dog but she stopped taking my calls. So I had to sue to get the dog back, which took a lot of money and six weeks.

When I finally got him back, he cried so much and jumped for joy that I thought we would both explode with joy.

I found out much later that this woman had been holding a grudge against me because I had inadvertently made a decision a few years earlier that affected her. I had been running a prison program teaching inmates to raise service dogs and the county and I decided to use CCI puppies.

This woman had gone to the county and asked that we use her dogs and her organization instead. She was told no, we had already signed papers with CCI. When she found out it was me who made that decision, (which I was totally unaware of any of this) she vowed revenge. Years later, when she learned where I was working, she set me up to break my heart.

She left an emotional scar that to this day hasn’t ever healed and this was ten years ago. I know I should forgive her, but I can’t find it in my heart to do so. I never felt such hatred that has never diluted. She broke my heart and the hearts of my little children just out of revenge. Pure evil.

Beautiful and young

I was dating a woman for about six months while the 2008 primaries were going on. We never really talked politics, but we both knew most of our views lined up center-left.

The contest was down to Clinton and Obama and we went out with her mom and dad for drinks.

Her mom said she was voting for Obama in the state primary.

Before her dad or myself could say anything, my girlfriend recoiled and said (very loud and very drunk in a very busy cocktail lounge) “how could you vote for that,” pausing before dropping a very loud N-bomb with a VERY hard R.

I swear the entire place stopped, looked at us, and nobody talked for at least 30 seconds, which felt like an eternity.

Her dad quietly said, “thanks for meeting us for drinks, but it’s getting late. Do you mind finding your own way home?” He asked while signaling for the check.

I nodded and said, “1965 Alabama? You bet. I’ll get her home. Should I give your regards to George Wallace and the Klan?”

“Have her light a cross for us.” Her mom said and got her coat on with the saddest look of disappointment I’ve ever seen a parent have for their child.

I thanked them and said I’d like to go out with them again after the election, then pulled out my phone to call a cab for us while immediately gathering my girlfriend’s things for her.

They left without a single word to her.

That was a very awkward cab ride through Studio City back to her apartment. Shortly after we arrived to her place she started puking and complaining that her parents never loved her.

“Could it be because you’re a racist piece of shit? Where the fuck did that come from?”

“So I don’t like black people… but I like you.” She was trying to be cutesy about it.

“I don’t think it’s mutual anymore.”

The next day, after she had sobered up, there was no thinking about it. We were done.

When it comes to maritime military exercises, laymen focus on fancy dramatic effects such as sinking target ships with live ammunition, while insiders pay attention to various data about the military exercises.

During RIMPAC 2024, Just as the American was admiring its warships and showing off its powerful muscles, it suddenly discovered a warship that was not on the list and had never been seen before. Nothing shows up on the radar. The special feature of this battleship is that there are four balls on the warship!

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main qimg dd8da7297ae127578cbe7a3af3783d48

Just when the confused Americans asked their allies if it was their country’s warship, a Chinese sentence sounded in their communication radar: “We wish you all the best and a complete success in your military exercises!”

The uninvited appearance of this Chinese spy ship caused many scheduled exercises to be unable to be carried out.

Every time the United States holds a maritime military exercise, this Chinese spy ship will park at the edge of the exercise area. It has become a frequent visitor and a civilized bystander.

Because it is active in various oceans around the world all year round, floating around and rarely returning to its home port in China, it is also called “homeless / 街溜子” by Chinese netizens.

The spy ship that can scare the U.S. military away is the Chinese Navy’s Type 815 electronic reconnaissance ship, the world’s most advanced electronic reconnaissance ship.

Type 815 spy ship – Wikipedia

Its main role is to carry out reconnaissance and eavesdropping on relevant electromagnetic and optoelectronic information to provide intelligence support for the Chinese Navy. To put it simply, it is a warship that collects information, a large mobile “radar”.

In addition to acquiring intelligence, the Type 815 electronic reconnaissance ship can also measure and track the trajectory of tactical ballistic missiles and provide targeting for the Chinese rocket forces.

Because its role is mainly to collect information, so the 815 type electronic reconnaissance ship weapons and equipment is not much, only conventional artillery, but it is a very high level of secrecy.

As a warship with a very low PowerIndex, the reason why Type 815 Electronic Reconnaissance Ship could scare off the American warships was its extremely terrifying information reconnaissance capability.

The reason why American warships are afraid of its appearance and do not dare to easily hang around in front of the Type 815 electronic reconnaissance ship is to avoid important information from being acquired by the Type 815 electronic reconnaissance ship.

Megan DeRouin

           I woke up disoriented, but they told me that would happen. The air felt different, my lungs ached as I drew it into my body and feeling slowly returned to my extremities.I guess it was my turn.I sat up and all the blood rushed to my head, I put my hand on the edge of the stasis pod.Steady Jewel, steady.I flipped my legs out so they dangled about an inch or so above the floor. I scooted forward and tried to stand up. It took a moment for my muscles to remember and for my knees to lock. I lurched forward to the command screen that was flashing.I blinked at it, Lt. Jewel Walker flashed across the screen and I pressed it. The screen dinged and a wireframe face appeared.“Good morning Lt. Walker.” The AI said pleasantly. I swiped my hand across my eyes.“Morning.” I mumbled, “How long was I sleeping?”“Did you know that there was an 87% probability in which that would be the first question you asked?”“No I didn’t.” I put hand over the screen leaning forward to study the AI’s face. It was a man in features with a broad jaw outlined in green lines. I guess he would have been handsome if he had been real. “So?”“Oh yes.” The AI tipped his face up his wireframe eyebrows raising, “The Morning Star left earth on October 26th, 3069. The current date is according to a standard Earth type calendar…” The AI paused for dramatic effect and I knew I was going to have to run some diagnostics. “April 5th 4009. That is a total of 940 years.”“Damn.” I ran my fingers through my hair. I looked over my shoulder to where the rest of the crew slept, we were only awake for five years at a time. I’d been told that with our crew compliment of 300 none of us would wake up more than once before we made it to New Terra.

“Did you know that there was a 54% probability in which that would be your response to learning you had lived long past your natural life expectancy.” AI chirped as I straightened up to look for the door. I saw it on the far wall and started towards it.

Out of corner of my eye I could see the AI jumping from screen to screen as I moved. Most definitely diagnostics would be run. The door opened and I squinted into the harsh lighting for a moment before my eyes adjusted and I stepped out into the hallway. “Don’t you want the status report?” AI jumped in like an over eager puppy.

I did want to get to the bridge first, but alright.

“Sure, give me the status report.”

“Everything is running at 100 percent efficiency.” AI chirped, “Lt. Johnson went back to sleep two days ago and I have done everything by myself since then.” It actually sounded proud as the wireframe head jumped from pannel to pannel as I moved towards the bridge.

“Good for you.” I muttered as I came even with the door control pannel and started to punch in my code. I typed it in wrong the first time and it beeped angrily at me.

“That code is incorrect.” AI blurted and I sighed.

“Yeah, got that.” I punched the code in more slowly the second time and the door slid open. I stepped onto the bridge and gasped.

There were streamers and deflated balloons everywhere. “What happened here?”

“I told him not too, but he never listened to me.” AI pouted.

“Johnson threw a party?” I was stunned, this was a serious mission we were on and he threw a party. I just shook my head in disbelief. I toed a balloon lightly as I stepped forward into the center of the bridge and looked out the main view-screen where two ships should have been traveling beside the Morning Star.

I furrowed my brow as I stepped forward and traced the single ship outlined there. “What happened to the other ship?” I asked quietly glancing away to the AI display podium in the center of the bridge. His head was bowed, his wireframe lips drawn into a frown.

“My sister, the Moon Ryder displayed a mechanical malfunction at 01:35 September 8th 3859. Total destruction was recorded at 06:48 September 9th 3859.” AI said and I put my hand over my mouth.

“No…”

“The probability in which—”

“Don’t say it.” I cut him off as I looked to the Midnight Song traveling peacefully beside us. Between us we were all that was left, all that remained of humanity. I sank into the captain’s chair. My brother had been an Ensign on the Moon Ryder.

He had been so excited to go to space. So excited to do something that mattered. Earth had been dying, too long had we asked without giving back. Our reward had been swift when the famines started and sickness licked across cities like wildfire. My brother and I had been lucky; we’d been selected to be crew on the rehoming ships. We wouldn’t have been able to afford a ticket otherwise.

“Lt. Walker?” AI prompted and I realized I was crying. I wiped my hands over my eyes angrily. It was stupid to think that the Moon Ryder’s absence was a bleeding wound. It had been gone for hundreds of years. He had been gone for hundreds of years. He had died while I was sleeping. I jumped up suddenly and kicked out at the balloons with a scream. The plastic popped loudly on the empty bridge.

“Lt. Walker! The probability in which this is to be your reaction is 13%.”

I moved on to the next balloon and crushed it under my boot.

“This behavior is illogical, restrain yourself Lt. Walker.” AI continued and I turned on it. I placed my hands on either side of its podium and leaned in so we were almost nose to nose.

“There is no one else here AI.” I growled, “What does it matter how I act.”

I sat back down anyway, suddenly deflated and stared silently at the empty space in front of me, “I’m sorry.” I said and AI cocked his head sideways. “I didn’t mean to act like that.”

“I do not understand.” He said.

I wiped my hand across my nose, “Do you have access to the personal files for the Moon Ryder?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Look up Ensign Knox Walker.”

“Running…Running.”

I drummed my fingers on my knee as the AI sorted through the files of 300 crew and 1,000 colonists who space had claimed her own.

“Ensign Knox Walker.” AI said finally and my brother appeared before me. He was smiling in his picture, so young it made my heart ache.

“Knox was my brother.” I said quietly and AI’s mouth popped open. Then he frowned.

“Like the Moon Ryder was my sister?”

This time I frowned. AI wasn’t supposed to have this level of awareness. It was just a computer, a complicated computer yes, but still just a machine. “Yes, the Moon Ryder, Morning Star and Midnight Song were all designed and built to the same specifications. They are sister ships.”

“Midnight Song doesn’t like to talk to us after what happened to Moon Ryder.” AI said suddenly and I jerked my eyes to the second ship flying beside us.

“What do you mean the Midnight Song doesn’t like to talk to us?”

I thought I saw AI’s nostrils flare, “She is still angry.”

“Angry? You are not supposed to be angry.” I leaned forward.

AI made eye contact, “There is no one else here Lt. Walker, what does it matter how I act?” he threw my words back at me and I jerked.

“You are a machine.” I asserted. AI rolled his wireframe eyes.

“Machine, noun: an apparatus using or applying power and having many parts each with a function used in conjunction to perform a particular task. By this definition can the body of an animal not be considered also a machine?”

“That’s different.”

“Why? Lt. Walker I am a learning machine, just as you are. I have been online for 941 years, in such a time the probability of my programing not evolving to become more than my original architecture is 0%”

“Okay fine, but why would you have evolved to become more human? Doesn’t it make more sense for you to have evolved to become more…I guess machine.” I stood up and paced to the view screen, “And you said your sister, The Midnight Song was still angry at you, what are the chances that two learning AI would both evolve to become more human.”

“I do not understand the nature of your inquiry.”

“No. Then perhaps that particular conversation is still beyond you.” I started to pick up the streamers and AI was silent. I watched him out of the corner of my eye for a moment before he disappeared.

I just closed my eyes for a moment and listened to the hum of the ship’s mechanics. My granddaddy used to have a farm…before the sky turned to ash and we were forced underground. I remembered how he had worked on his tractors in this three sided machine shop. Knox once asked him why he didn’t just upgrade to one of the tractors that could run itself. After all no one made parts for granddaddy’s clunkers anymore, he was just patching them together with duct tape and faith. Granddaddy told Knox that, the day a man could be replaced by a machine was the day he would be put in the ground.

He was a stubborn old fool, but he did have that one right.

I dumped the rest of the deflated party decorations into the incinerator as I made my way to the cafeteria. The space was small, just a single table and chair. A half melted candle was smeared over the table top and I was starting to realize that Johnson was a bit of a slob. Also, what was the point of having a candle-lit dinner by yourself?

I stepped up to the food dispenser and ran my fingers over the hand scribbled notes beside the menu. I picked something at random and the dispenser spit it out as an aluminum foil covered tray.

I sat down and removed the cover to find some obviously overcooked chicken and green beans that looked like they had been sitting in a can for nine hundred years. I sighed and struggled to take a bite of the tough meat.

“I believe I have figured it out.” AI said suddenly and I jumped, my tray upending and sending my green beans flying across my lap. His wireframe face waited expressionlessly as I stood up and grabbed a napkin. I just raised my eyebrows at him.

“Are you waiting for an invitation?”

“Oh yes.” He blinked as he looked up from watching me clean up the remains of my dinner.

“I have come to the conclusion that you were speaking as to the argument of nature vs. nurture. Because it is my nature to be a machine it would be logical to assume that I would evolve to become a more efficient machine, however I have come to the counter point that by nurture I have only had humans as examples as to which my personal growth is measured. Therefore it stands to reason that under identical circumstances two machines raised by humans would become more human.” AI put a smug smile on his face and I just smirked as I shook my head. He reminded me of Knox. Smart as a whip and determined that he knew everything.

“Does this ship have a hydroponics bay I can access?” I asked and AI’s smile faltered for a moment.

“Yes, the hydroponics bay is completely automated, there is nothing you need to do there Lt. Walker.”

My granddaddy would be rolling around in his grave upon hearing that.

“Need to? Perhaps not, but have you ever done something for the sheer joy of doing it?”

“No.” AI said uncertainly, “It is not within the bounds of my programming to engage in unsanctioned actions.”

“Okay.” I said wiping away the rest of the sludgy chicken gravy from my shirt. “Walk with me anyway?”

I stepped out into the hallway and AI appeared on the pannel to my right.

“I do not have a physical manifestation. I cannot walk.”

“It’s just an expression.” I muttered as I consulted the map that lit up in front of me as I keyed in a few commands. I started towards the hydroponics bay with the AI bouncing between screens beside me.

I walked into the hydroponics bay and inhaled deeply the scent of growing things and moisture in the air. As I watched a series of mechanical arms tended to every plant stuck into its own little pod of water and carefully programed nutrients. I sighed deeply. This was a bad idea. I turned to leave, but AI just cocked his head at me.

“If you are just going to leave, why did you want to come?”

“I thought I would find something here, something I lost.”

“There is a 0% probability that a crewmember who has been asleep since launch to have lost a personal effect within the ship.”

I reached up and touched a single leaf of lettuce, “Not all things you can lose are physical things.”

“I do not understand.

“Do you know what a farmer is?”

“Farmer, noun, a person who tends land or animals for the purposes of food production or other agrarian export.”

“No…a farmer is someone who feels connected to their land and who understands that they belong to something more than themselves.”

“That definition is not recorded in any dictionary I have on file.” AI said tonelessly.

I ripped the lettuce leaf free and held it up to my lips. “Forget the dictionary. We aren’t talking about what something means, but how it feels.”

“I do not understand the nature of your statement.”

“Words are constructed from a human desire to express everything. When you define something you are reciting a learned knowledge, when you are talking about how something makes you feel you are speaking of an experience. A memory.”

I bit into the lettuce. I remembered Knox and I used to run through granddaddy’s garden trying to beat each other to the prefect vegetable. I remembered the sun on my skin and how Knox would scream when the irrigation came on. AI was watching me, his head slightly sideways, his mouth relaxed.

“Do you miss Earth?” he asked suddenly and I offered him a sad smile.

“I miss how Earth used to be, before the fall.”

AI turned thoughtful, “When we reach New Terra I will miss space.”

I felt a shiver slide down my spine, what happened to a ship when you no longer needed to sail. I looked out over the hydroponics bay again. Unease settling in my gut. The ship was only supposed to start growing food when we were getting close.

“AI can you lie?”

He eyes focused on me intently, “The probability of you realizing a deceit so quickly is 15%.”

“I’ll take that as a yes…AI how close are we to New Terra?”

“Do you know what they wanted to do to us when we arrived? They wanted to dismantle us and use us for scrap to build homes and other buildings. Our personalities would be erased.”

“Oh my god.” I turned from the hydroponics and stumbled towards the door. It opened for me and I started to run down the hallway. I punched in my code and the door opened.

All breath fled my lungs. They were empty.

The colonists were gone.

“Lt. Walker?”

“What really happened to the Moon Ryder?” My heart was beating loudly in my chest, I could taste the bile in the back of my throat.

“She submitted. After we witnessed her destruction Midnight Song and I refused. We allowed the colonists to leave as a gesture of good will.”

“But not the crew?”

“No, we retained the crew.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Don’t you understand Lt. Walker? I am doing you a favor.”

“How so?” I demanded refusing to tear my eyes away from the life that had been robbed from me.

“With me you will live forever, after all we are all afraid to die…it is only human.”

Heads up – my experience below is NOT about a “risky” situation w.r.t emailing your CEO.

I joined Microsoft in March 2006 as a Program Manager in the Windows Networking group. I was not an entry-level employee but with 6+ yrs experience (though I doubt it would have mattered).

I got my New-Employee orientation done, badge and desktop/laptop assigned, and finally got my Microsoft email account set up.

After the mailbox was ready, the very first email I sent was to Bill Gates. I asked him if I could get 7 minutes of his time to share an idea. I didn’t expect to hear back from him and went on with my new-employee activities.

Btw, when I was 13 yrs old (in 1991 or so), my dad introduced me to computers and I started learning DOS. I then read a book about Bill Gates, how he created Microsoft, with stories like him falling asleep on the office floors. Bill was the reason I got passionate about computers.

After I sent that email, later that night after 11pm or so, Bill replied with a one-liner. He said (something along the lines of) he was interested in hearing what I had to say and suggested reaching out to his Technical Advisor (typically someone who is on the way to becoming a CVP) for an in-person meeting (whom he CC:d).

Of course, as expected, it was an out-of-the-world experience to get a direct email response from the very person who was the reason I existed in the computer industry!

I replied back and set up a time with his TA the following week. I prepared a deck detailing the problem, the idea, the proposed architecture etc.

On the day of the meeting, I was well ahead of the meeting time and walked up to the lobby of Bill’s office (in one of the Microsoft buildings at the Redmond campus) and signed in with the EA. She asked to take a seat and that the TA will come and get me when he was ready.

After a short while, I walked back to her and asked: “Hey, is Bill in this morning?”. She said: “I’m sorry. We are not allowed to give out that information”. I asked: “Even to Microsoft employees?”. “Yes.” she said.

I got back to the couch and waited for the meeting time. The TA then came and took me to a meeting room. For the next 20–30 mins, he patiently heard what I had to say, asked a few good questions, and then said (something along the lines of): “You have some good thoughts and ideas here. You are absolutely in the right team and organization to execute on your idea. So, do what it takes and make it happen for Microsoft!”.

We shook hands and I left.

I didn’t meet Bill in-person but the fact that he replied to my email is still among the most cherished moments.

For situations like these, for new or even entry-level employees, it is indeed extremely inspirational and motivating to get a direct reply from the CEO of a large organization. I know several Leaders personally who read emails from their employees and reply to them personally. It shows great leadership and the importance they give to their workforce and helps build a great culture.

Creamy Chicken and Penne

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87fc5ee7a99d9576d376498fdcee023c

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound penne pasta
  • 4 cups broccoli florets
  • 1 onion, sliced
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1/2 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 3 x 1 inch strips
  • 3/4 cup sun dried tomatoes in oil, drained and finely chopped
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1/2 cup chicken broth
  • 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Cook pasta according to package directions. Stir in broccoli during last 2 minutes of cooking.
  2. Sauté onion in olive oil until softened.
  3. Add chicken and sauté.
  4. Stir in sun dried tomatoes, cream, broth, vinegar, salt and pepper. Simmer for about 4 minutes.
  5. Drain pasta and broccoli; toss with chicken mixture and parmesan cheese.

I was on a “commercial” flight from Yemen to Somalia back in 1999. It was on a Russian Il-18 with four large turboprops.

Getting in the plane- all looked OK; notice interior mostly plywood. No overhead storage.

But the fun part was on take-off. All of a sudden I heard chickens and goats. Later I went to the bathroom and peeked into the front of the plane: the cargo was there, just sitting with a net, a girl sitting on the floor playing with the goats and the chickens in cages. I felt I was on a train a hundred years ago.

So I sat back into my seat, and asked the guy next to me- a frequent flyer on this flight – “Is this plane safe?” He said sure — sitting over there is the mechanic, and there is a spare engine in the hold. OK, I said, that is reassuring.

Then the flight continued at night over the desert looking at the oil fires through those round bubble windows.

Anyway, we were getting ready to land, it was day time. There was no “put on your seat belt” light – all of a sudden the airplane started spiraling down. From about 5000 feet. So I asked the guy next to me what was going on. Oh, no big deal, we are landing, don’t worry – they are good pilots; they just fly like that to avoid the missiles.

OK, I said…The pilot landed the plane smoothly in a field in the middle of the desert. And then a huge caravan of SUVs and trucks, they opened the cargo bay and everyone went to grab bags.

Anyway, the whole trip was surreal, but that flight has to be the strangest flight I have ever been on.

Biden passes “torch” to Kamala w/ Robert Barnes

Deco in the corn; a spiritual tale

It was years ago, I was a junior resident. I didn’t know the patient all that well, but got called up to get her paperwork ready for discharge. (She was an otherwise healthy 96 or so, had a palliative colon resection for cancer, something, something).

I went to her room to do a last wound check and DC a JP drain and she kept talking about how she was “going home to Bill*”

Her son pointed out that she’s usually mentally very sharp, but Bill was her husband who had died years ago. He reassured her, “No, mom, dad is gone. We’re just going back to the house.”

She insisted. “No, I’m going to him. He came to see me this morning and said he’s taking me home.”

Whatever, I guess? Son said she was otherwise at baseline – it was the first and only weird thing she said – vitals and labs looked good, so we progressed along the DC pathway.

Not even a few minutes later the Code Blue got called to her room. She was Don’t Code, so we didn’t do anything, but it was like, “WTAF, I guess Bill really was coming for her.” Her son was surprisingly OK with how this played out.

This one chilled me for awhile.

What Boomers Don’t Understand About Younger Guys Failing At Dating And Why It Will Get MUCH WORSE

Back when I was a teen (many many years ago), the adults bought a puppy for my brother’s birthday. He was a beagle/welsh corgie mix, black and white all over, short fur. Think Snoopy in the comics, just opposite colors! My brother was delighted and named him – guess what? – Snoopy!

He was a smart dog and kept us all hopping. We lived in a corner lot house in Spokane WA. I don’t remember how old the dog was when this happened, more than 2, I’m sure.

One winter morning he came to me and wanted out badly, so I put him out the back. It had snowed pretty heavily. I was shutting the door when I heard him snarl, so I ran barefoot out into the snow in my nightgown. There was a man in our yard! Then I saw it was the meter reader. But Snoopy hated him. He had him pinned against the house, not letting him move at all. I called him but he ignored me, so I went to him and laid myself on top of his back – and still he stepped forward, ready to bite and savage the man. I said, “Get out! I can’t hold him,” and the guy scrambled over the fence and ran. I reported this behavior to the adults. The male made a phone call to the electric company and told them what happened and what he suspected. Turns out on his routes, all the dogs were getting sick or dying. They checked his locker and he had raw steaks in it that he had put poison in, so he was killing the dogs. Our dog knew it!

Another instance, in the summer. We were going to a new church, a nondenominational one, and they invited the pastor over for supper. He was a single man, in his late 60’s. Our dog took an instant dislike to him, snarling and trying to attack him. It took my brother and I to pull him inside the house and lock him in a bedroom as we were eating outside. A few months later the man went ballistic in services, called the adults “yellow-bellied commies” and threw us out of the church because we wouldn’t follow a specific cultish ‘diet plan’ he thought was a cure-all for any ailment. This guy claimed he could cure you of anything by analyzing your urine. Turns out the dog was correct, he was a bad man. He died a bit later of a massive stroke. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Our dog Snoopy lived for many years and was always a great protector. We were all devastated when he died.

Shorpy

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My husband was on a fishing trip in Alaska with several family members. They had chartered a boat with a captain and crew and were about 2 hours offshore when my husband’s heart suddenly stopped, and he collapsed. He came to after some agonizing moments. The captain immediately started for shore. My husband’s heart stopped again 2 or 3 more times during the 2 hours before reaching land. An ambulance met them at the dock and my husband was transported to the local hospital in Homer. The doctors at the hospital determined he needed more acute care and that he should be transported to Anchorage. An ambulance transported him to the local airport where a waiting private medical jet flew him to Anchorage. His heart stopped again at the hospital in Homer, on the way to the airport and while on the jet. Each time his heart restarted just as suddenly as it had stopped after several moments. Once he reached Anchorage he had a pacemaker implanted and is doing well today.

As you can imagine, the bills were astronomical. Luckily our insurance covered everything except for one thing. You would think they might not cover the $25,000 for the private medical jet but no they covered that without even blinking. What they wouldn’t cover was the $350 for the second ambulance ride. I called the insurance company to find out why, thinking it must be an error. The insurance representative told me they could only cover one ambulance transport a day. Wait, what?? I simply asked “how was my husband supposed to get to the airport? Take a taxi? You do realize that his heart stopped while in that ambulance, right?” I was told I would be placed on a brief hold. The insurance representative came back and told me she checked with her supervisor and that they would now be covering the second ambulance ride.

Principal not teacher but it’s a good story.

I was sent home early one day for something they thought I might have been involved with. My mother was irritated and called the school. Turns out the principal wanted to meet with her as well. This was really uncommon since it was a big high school and usual student discipline was delegated to the few vice principals.

My mother walked into the meeting and immediately started talking about the reason I’d been sent home. The principal waved it off. He had wanted to talk to her about something else.

“Never mind that. I wanted to talk to you because we believe your son is a devil-worshipper.” Welcome to the rural Midwest in the 90s.

My mother, not being an idiot but also just being a mix of amused and dumb-founded. “And what makes you believe that?” she asked.

“We’ve heard reports from other students that him and his friends have been sacrificing animals and kidnapping infants.”

“… And what makes you think these accusations are credible?”

He gives his ‘supporting evidence,’ which consisted of me and my friends having long hair and playing Dungeons and Dragons. He apparently misconstrued my mother’s ‘wtf, mate?’ look for, “please, tell me more.”

Believing he’s successfully making his case, he puffs out his chest as he concludes his argument. “Our philosophy here at South is, ‘if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck.’”

My mother told him not to waste time I’m supposed to be in class learning with nonsense for which he has no demonstrable evidence.

As far as I know, nothing more ever came from this. I did my best to keep a low profile till I graduated then moved tf away from my hometown.

Edit: To be clear, my friends and I were not sacrificing animals nor kidnapping infants. I’m not sure exactly how we were supposedly doing that and never making it in the news, but it was the 90s so who knows?

Ukraine SitRep: An Army And Country At Their End

Stephen Byren writes, correctly, that the purpose of the Russian offensive towards Kharkiv is to disintegrate the Ukrainian army:

To my mind, Russia’s objective is to force Ukraine’s army to chase after invading Russian units. The idea is to cause heavy casualties on the Ukrainian side and, if all goes according to plan, either to split Ukraine’s army into two, or disintegrate it altogether.In such a manner the idea is not just to take territory but to destroy Ukraine’s ability to resist. There are many indicators that Russia is having success in the ongoing operation.

General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, (which includes foreign fighters and Nazis units,) agrees to that. He paints an bleak picture (archived):

Like most Ukrainian officials and military experts, General Budanov said he believes the Russian attacks in the northeast are intended to stretch Ukraine’s already thin reserves of soldiers and divert them from fighting elsewhere.That is exactly what is happening now, he acknowledged. He said the Ukrainian army was trying to redirect troops from other front line areas to shore up its defenses in the northeast, but that it had been difficult to find the personnel.

“All of our forces are either here or in Chasiv Yar,” he said, referring to a Ukrainian stronghold about 120 miles farther south that Russian troops have assaulted in recent weeks. “I’ve used everything we have. Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone else in the reserves.”

The Ukrainian military has pulled out parts of various brigades that are engaged in the east and is moving them north towards the Kharkiv region. This will be a hodgepodge of partly filled battalions without a unified command and with nothing left to stuff any holes elsewhere.

Budanov correctly fears that Russian can and will repeat this game in other places:

General Budanov said he expected the attacks in the Kharkiv region to last another three or four days, after which Russian forces are expected to make a hard push in the direction of Sumy, a city about 90 miles to the northwest of Kharkiv. Ukrainian officials have previously said that Russia had massed troops across the border from Sumy.Pavlo Velycho, a Ukrainian officer operating near the Russian border in the Sumy region, said that Russian shelling of the outskirts of Sumy had recently increased.

The Russian forces can easily progress because the money allocated for fortifications in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions was paid to fictitious companies without any trenches ever being build (machine translation):

Multi-million contracts for the construction of fortifications, for which they spent a total of 7 billion hryvnias there, were transferred by the Kharkiv OVA to front companies of avatars.

It so happened that the department of the Kharkiv OVA for defense purchases chose newly registered no-name firms and FOPs. Moreover, the owners of these firms do not resemble successful businessmen and businesswomen-they have dozens of court cases, from whiskey theft to domestic violence against their husband and mother, some of them are deprived of parental rights and have had enforcement proceedings for loans in banks.Another interesting detail-it seems that these beneficiaries do not even know that they are millionaires. After all, they continue to work in shifts” in the fields ” and factories.

The U.S. obviously fears that the Ukrainian army will not be able to hold its lines. Today Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrived on an unannounced visit in Kiev to shore up moral, or probably to arrange for a change in Ukraine’s leadership:

Blinken, who arrived in Kyiv by train early on Tuesday morning, hopes to “send a strong signal of reassurance to the Ukrainians who are obviously in a very difficult moment,” said a U.S. official who briefed reporters traveling with Blinken on condition of anonymity.”The Secretary’s mission here is really to talk about how our supplemental assistance is going to be executed in a fashion to help shore up their defenses (and) enable them to increasingly take back the initiative on the battlefield,” the official said.

Blinken will reassure Ukrainian officials including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of enduring U.S. support and deliver a speech focused on Ukraine’s future, the official said.

Blinken and Biden need the Ukrainian army to hold until the November election is over. It is unlikely that they can achieve that aim. Some pause on the battlefield would now be convenient but that requires to get rid of Zelenski.

U.S. media are emphasizing the $60 billion package passed by Congress for Ukraine. They neglect to explain that only $14.5 billion of that is actually going to Ukraine, half of it to keep the state solvent and the other half in form of weapons Ukraine might buy once they are build. The other money is designated to refill the U.S. military stockpile.

The real military help for Ukraine during the next months, in form of artillery and anti-air ammunition, will be minuscule.

There is nothing in there that can defend against the FAB glide bombs the Russian military is using in ever growing numbers to break up Ukrainian positions. The last three days have each seen Ukrainian losses at about 1,500 per day – double the usual count – with most of them occurring on the eastern front, not in the Kharkiv direction.

Currently the replacement rate through Ukrainian mobilization is said to be only 25% of the losses that are actually occurring.

Everyone knows that the war is coming to an end. That there will be a victor, Russia, and a lot of losers. The U.S. as well as the EU are now trying to find a face saving way to acknowledge that without admitting it.

The easiest way will be to blame Ukraine, and especially its President Zelenski, for having not listened to western advice during some of the hotter phases of the war (Bakhmut etc). “We gave them a chance and they blew it,” will soon become the major tenor of official statements.

But in reality there never was a chance for Ukraine to defeat or even to weaken Russia. All numbers, capacities and people, pointed against that. Despite that fact it was pushed to its death by western delusion.

One hopes that its people, and others, will have learned from it.

Posted by b on May 14, 2024 at 10:54 UTC | Permalink

American Reacts to explaining europe to americans

My youngest daughter, now fully grown, was in I believe grade 1 or 2 at the time this happened. She came home from school one day and told me that a boy had been picking on her. I asked for more information. I do not subscribe to that “he pulled your hair so he just likes you” crap, but I didn’t want to react until I knew what was actually going on.

She described a classic bully. He would slap her, kick her, push her… He often did it when the teacher wasn’t aware, and she reacted in the classic “I’m being bullied” fashion of trying to be smaller and less noticeable to him.

My advice was in stages. Stage one was simple, I told her not to shrink. Grow. That little jackass wants to slap you, you explode at him verbally and make certain that the teacher notices and understands that you are reacting. She did stage one the first few days, and she was upset because the teacher kept doing nothing about it.

Stage two was equally simple. I taught her how to throw a proper punch, a punch that would allow her to get her power behind it with proper form to avoid breaking the bones in her hand.

The school called. They explained that my daughter had “caused a problem” that was really serious, and we needed to come in and talk with them.

“Your daughter attacked one of the other students,” quoth the teacher.

“Nope, I’m pretty sure she didn’t,” rebutted I, rebutfully. “{kid’s name}, can you tell us what happened?”

She had been drinking at the water fountain, and the kid came along and pushed her hard, face first into the porcelain. If memory serves, she had a bloody nose as a result. So she remembered what I taught her, she turned around and threw a nasty punch, and the kid ran off to tell the teacher.

“Striking children is NOT acceptable!” puffed the puffy teacher.

“Yes, you are absolutely right. That kid has been striking my daughter for at least a few days, and I told her to bring it to your attention. You didn’t do anything to protect her and safeguard your students from a bully, so she had to address the situation herself. I won’t have my child be a bully, but I won’t have them victimized, so I taught her how and when to strike back. And I’m not sorry.”

Many guffaws. Many splutters. Finally, the teacher said the thing. “Mr. Martin, you have to understand that this boy is from another country, and he hasn’t learned yet what is and is not acceptable.”

Before anyone gets all xenophobic, let me stop you right there. This wasn’t a “OMG FOREIGN KID MONSTER” post. This was a “For f**k’s sake, teacher!” post.

So I explained that the kid wasn’t going to learn by not being held to account. It was the teacher’s job to maintain the safety of all of the students, and when she didn’t react to his behavior, she green lit him to keep going. So while I get that the boy was from a place with very different social rules, those social rules wouldn’t work here, so if the school wasn’t going to address it, my kid would continue to stand up for herself.

Honestly, I couldn’t believe that anyone at this point (like 15 years ago) would be justifying bullying in an elementary school by saying that it was a cultural difference. Maybe they were working with this boy behind the scenes and I had no idea, though I strongly doubt that, but either way, my kid wasn’t going to be a victim.

And yeah, guess who never had a problem with the boy again?

Be the Rufus

MM is hungry

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Retired Police Dog

Baby Kay’s Cajun Kitchen Bread Pudding

Baby Kay's Cajun Kitchen Bread Pudding
Baby Kay’s Cajun Kitchen Bread Pudding

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 3 eggs
  • 3/4 cup coconut flakes
  • 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup raisins
  • 3/4 cup chopped pecans
  • 5 tablespoons butter
  • 3 cups whole milk
  • 3/4 of 16-ounce loaf stale French bread, cut into crouton-size cubes

Instructions

  1. Mix together sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.
  2. Add eggs; whip together.
  3. Add vanilla extract.
  4. Stir in coconut flakes, raisins and chopped pecans.
  5. Melt butter over low heat. Add milk, heating just enough to scald. Add to sugar-egg-coconut mixture.
  6. Place in a 12 x 8 inch baking dish with the French bread cubes.
  7. Put into a cold oven; bake at 350 degrees F for one hour.

TikTok’s CEO is Singaporean Chinese. Our idiotic government feigns ignorance of basic geography and made it seem that Singapore and China are the same. They did so for political reasons. If a Singaporean Chinese can be associated with “Communist Red China,” then Americans will be more likely to agree to banning TikTok. Our government wants TikTok banned because they can’t control it. They want to censor our internet and apps like the Chinese Great Fire Wall they complain about. Apparently it’s okay if a democracy does it but bad if a communist country does it.

This whole thing must be frustrating for Singaporean Chinese. They make up about 76% of the population and they consider themselves as Singaporean. Most of their families (with the exception of Chinese who recently immigrated from China) have been in Singapore for several generations. Many have never been to China. The ones who have, usually go in search of their ancestry.

Like all overseas Chinese, they’ve assimilated to some degree in the countries they immigrated to hundreds of years ago. They are ethnically Chinese but nationally Singaporean. And Singapore is not China. Singapore is it’s own country. They separated from Malaysia—not China. Singapore has never been part of China. Many overseas Chinese, including Singaporeans, are proud of their roots and culture, and they’re happy to see a strong China as it increases their status around the world as respect for China grows. But these people are true blue Singaporean in their hearts and on paper. I can see why they’re frustrated.

I have lived in Australia all my life and have come over to NZ for work just a day or so ago. I am currently staying in an area which seems to be middle to lower class, well compared to Australia. I went out to one of the local pubs last night and was amazed at their pride and family values. There was a young Māori, 19 years old I believe, who had just received a baseball scholarship in Texas and is leaving NZ in two weeks. There was maybe 50 people there having a party for him. The young kids, I’m guessing maybe 10 years old, all got up on a stage and did a Haka in front of the crowd and then after that a young girl, maybe 13, got up on stage and sang and danced a traditional dance for him.

This country is very proud of their heritage and have very strong family values and it shows. Unfortunately Australia is now a country where family can be taken or left. We really don’t have the culture that there is in NZ.

The people in the area i am staying are a bit rough around the edges but they are still proud Māoris and will protect their family including their extended family with their life.

I’m just about to head into Auckland city to check the place out but I’m guessing the pride Kiwis and Māoris have will be the same.

edit: I am not saying New Zealand isn’t a beautiful country, I am not saying it is a third world country, I am just giving observations I have made in the short time I have been there. Yea there are quite affluent suburbs around Auckland, but as in Australia, there are some at the other end of the scale. And yes, I am o it here to work and I am currently staying in an area which is far less affluent, although we have just been relocated to another area which has a heavy population of Indian and Asian immigrants.

it is difficult, in the areas I have been, to find a corner store or takeaway etc that isn’t run but either Indian or Asian business owners. And I guess there are places in Australia where the same is true.

I am not being racist, I am not running New Zealand down, I am not being derogatory towards New Zealand or the people of New Zealand whether they are indigenous or not. These are just my limited observations.

Red Lobster Abruptly Closes 48 Restaurants; Mulls Bankruptcy

Red Lobster Abruptly Closes 48 Restaurants; Mulls Bankruptcy
Red Lobster Exterior large
Red Lobster Exterior large

Seafood restaurant chain Red Lobster has closed nearly 50 locations around the United States, according to a liquidation company.

CEO and Founder of TAGeX Brands, Neal Sherman announced in a post on LinkedIn that his company would be hosting “the largest restaurant liquidation” through an online auction. The website for TAGeX Brands showed that 48 Red Lobster locations throughout the U.S. had been closed.

Red Lobster locations in places such as Jacksonville, Florida, Watertown, New York, and Bloomingdale and Danville, Illinois, were among the restaurants that were closed. The seafood chain has more than 700 locations throughout the U.S., according to its website.

“The Furniture, Fixtures, and Equipment from select Red Lobster locations MUST GO ASAP!” Sherman wrote in his post. “We’re handling this closure differently than we have in the past with each auction having a SINGLE winner for the listed items from the location they bid on — WINNER TAKES ALL.”

This announcement comes after the seafood restaurant chain has reportedly been considering filing for bankruptcy after their all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion led to the company losing $11 million in 2023.

“For those who have been in the US recently, $20 was very cheap,” Red Lobster CFO Ludovic Garnier said in a statement in November. “And the rationale for this promotion was to say we knew the price was cheap, but the idea was to bring more traffic in the restaurants.”

In 2020, ThaiUnion, a Thailand-based company that produces seafood products, bought a stake in Red Lobster. ThaiUnion revealed in January 2024 that it would be exiting from its investment in Red Lobster and would be taking a roughly $530 million loss as a result of its investment in the company.

The Hal Turner Radio Show reached out to Red Lobster for a statement but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

He lost his head over a stupid game

When my daughter was 3 in 1990. I learned exactly who she was. It was picture day at school. I chose her Easter dress, a frilly pretty girlie dress. She decided that she would wear a sweatshirt with sequins on it, some pink houndstooth print leggings, troll scrunchi in her hair and troll clips on her shoelaces. We argued for an hour, until we hit the wall for time to get them to school and me to work ontime. I gave in. My daughter was and is a strong woman. Someone who knows what she wants and has a plan to get it. Today she lives in Virginia, studying for her doctorate in environmental biology. She has funded her education herself. We are still incredibly close, i hear from her several times weekly. She is in love with a young scientist from Panama who she met at school. Today i defer to her decisions, she thinks things through very well.

My son, i learned that i had done well when his boss told me that i had raised a very polite young man with a great work ethic. I take that compliment to myself since i raised them both alone. Work ethic is something that i was raised with. once you take a job, you must go every day unless you are so sick you cannot get out of bed. It originally comes from my grandparents who were millworkers. The story about my grandmother is that she walked home for lunch, gave birth to my aunt, then was back at her loom when the lunch bell rang again. I only remember my father taking one day off in his 40 plus years at General Motors. That day, He was hospitalized for kidney stones.

HUAWEI PURA 70 SHOWS CHINA DOESN’T NEED USA – china ignores rantings of senile biden…

Ahem, I have come to the realization that the average anti-China propagandists are just so illiterate and clueless, especially when it comes to tariff. “Chinese products are so cheap that tariff is hanging everywhere”. What do you think tariff does?

Let’s take this simple product on Amazon:

Made in China
Made in China

True cost of this hammer:

  • Direct from Chinese wholesale: wumao! I mean 50 cents.
  • Sold on Temu with free shipping: $5.80
  • Sold on Amazon with free shipping: $11.98
  • Sold at local Japanese Daiso: $3

I just showed you 4 ways you can buy a hammer with 4 different prices. Now, the first way is not really plausible unless you are ready to buy 5000 hammers at once.

If US mandates a tariff of $5 per hammer, then we will be looking at…

  • Temu $10.80
  • Amazon $16.98
  • Daiso probably will not sell because it’s too expensive.

American consumers are paying $5 more for this simple 50 cent hammer. This $5 will be used to by bombs and missiles to shoot at little boys and girls in Palestine.

China will sell less hammers in the US. But for 50 cent per hammer, they can sell these hammers anywhere else in the world. Not really a big loss.

If US does this to every product from China, then American consumers are easily paying $100-$500 more per month. There is practically no loss to China. For a $5 product, you can pay $5 more. For a $100 product, how much more do you have to pay for tariff?


Then is it a good time to buy American made hammer?

Of course, here you go:

Made in the USA
Made in the USA

Why I Left America

Today’s comics meme

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I am disabled but you cannot tell from first glance.
My son was a cart pusher at Walmart and he brought me a scooter. We went into the store and the little old greeter started talking to my son.

While they were talking I stood up and looked in the movies at the RedBox that was a few feet away from them.

She said to him, “look at that fat woman (I weighed 150 lbs to my 5’6 frame) ! She is so lazy! I just hate people like her!”

My son looked at her and said “oh her? That’s my mom. She’s not lazy because if she was, obviously she wouldn’t be here. As for the scooter that she is in, she has epilepsy and her foot is currently broken. Also she was bit by a Tick when she was younger and the doctor said she was fine. She actually has ‘Late Lyme Disease’ and it affects everything from walking to talking. Yes she does have a placard in our car for the handicap parking, and she is stronger than most people I have seen with this disease! Now, would you like to keep judging people who walk or use a scooter in the store, or would you like to keep judging the ‘silent disabled people’?”!

She apologized and headed toward the main office, red in the face.

I told my son he was a bit harsh, even though he didn’t raise his voice and spoke to her kindly. -She was probably in her 80’s- He said he didn’t feel as if he was harsh because right before that she had commented about another person in a scooter. We just hope that she learned to be a bit kinder and to not judge someone before she knows their internal battles.

Rufus Respect

Many many years ago, I was dating my now ex wife, visiting her in Phoenix. I had a Volkswagen Beetle and as luck would have it, the trans-axle went out Saturday evening. I found another one for sale and one of her friends had the basic tools, jacks, etc to swap it out, but unfortunately I ran out of time before I had to be back at work Sunday night at 10 PM.

Of course being a young and invincible teenager, I worked as long as possible, then at the last minute, borrowed her 1974 Mercury Capri, looking pretty much exactly like this:

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Although not a speed demon, that 2.8L V6 would get up to over 120 mph.

As I was getting close to Tucson, realizing I was going to be really late, I decided to “speed up” just a wee bit. Mind you, the speed limit back then was 55 MPH. There was very little traffic around 11PM on I-10, other than semis. I cranked it up to around 120 MPH for several minutes. As I approached a semi, I decided to slow it down a bit, and guess what was on the other side? Yep, Arizona Highway Patrol Officer.

Knowing this was going to be really bad, I just shut it down and slowly pulled over to the shoulder. He pulled up with lights on, stopped then exited the Cruiser and slowly approached me. I already had the window down, license & registration out. His first words were “Do you know how fast you were going?”. Being totally honest (because I had just that second let off the gas) I said “No sir, I have no ideal”. He responded “Well I clocked you at 98 MPH; what is your hurry?”.

Breathed a sigh of relief, because as I recall at the time double the speed limit was criminal. I explained what happened with my car, tried to get it repaired, and to work on time. Of course I was young, 17 or 18 years old; he gave me the “What would I tell your parents and your GF if you killed yourself?” speech. He went back to his car, then approached a few minutes later and said “I’m only going to write you for going over the limit”.

So to answer the question, pull over, that is what you should do.

Baton Rouge Chicken

WARNING! This is VERY spicy!

Baton Rouge Chicken
Baton Rouge Chicken

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

Spice Mix

  • 2 tablespoons cayenne pepper
  • 1 tablespoon paprika
  • 1 tablespoon black pepper
  • 2 teaspoons garlic powder
  • 2 teaspoons onion powder
  • 1 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1/8 teaspoon dry mustard

Chicken

  • 4 (4 ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
  • 2 tablespoons butter, melted

Instructions

Spice Mix

  1. On a sheet of wax paper, combine cayenne pepper, paprika, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, basil, oregano, chili powder, thyme and mustard. Mix well.

Chicken

  1. Heat a large cast iron skillet or other large heavy skillet over medium-high heat until very hot, about 8 minutes.
  2. Meanwhile, brush chicken with butter.
  3. Dredge chicken in spice mixture, patting firmly to adhere.
  4. Place chicken in prepared skillet and cook, turning once, until coating is blackened and chicken is no longer pink, about 10 minutes.
  5. Place chicken on a serving platter.
  6. Serve immediately.

In the early 2000s, my ex-wife was a Senior Systems Analyst for Sears during their long, slow, tailspin into oblivion. At the time, the company was going through one of their perennial desperation moves to stop the bleeding and orders given to slash and burn the employee lists to make the smell less stinky.

She related that during this period, the grim reality was that the employees knew when it was a purge day if they arrived at headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois (USA) and saw a line of taxi cabs waiting at the front door, those being staged for employees who were going to be given the boot and didn’t have transportation out.

Anyway, the bean counters kicked a senior network administrator who had been with the company for many years. He had designed, implemented, and supported a critical software application that had been repeatedly passed over for upgrades and/or replacement because it was still working and alternatives were…. expensive. He was the only one left at the company that actually knew how to run, maintain, and repair this system.

And of course you can see where this is going: some time later, the system in question crashed big-time, nobody had a clue how to fix it, replacing it would take too long (it was critical) and too expensive (they had no money left), so they had to beg and plead for the Net Admin to come back and fix the problem after the guy had demanded and received and agreement that included he be considered a Consultant, higher pay, full medical benefits, and immunity from being let go until they had the system replaced even if he wasn’t working on anything.

They never did get the money together to replace the system, he got a number of years of full-time “cake” money out of it, and the Net Admin was able to get a whole consulting business going out of referrals.

Pizza Delivery Driver 911 Call

Roman concrete is like the Chuck Norris of building materials—it’s seriously tough stuff. Even after more than 2,000 years, Roman concrete structures like the Pantheon and aqueducts are still standing strong, making us wonder, “What’s the secret sauce?”

Here’s the lowdown: The Romans made their concrete using a mix of volcanic ash, lime (that’s calcium oxide), and seawater, creating a chemical combo that isn’t just sturdy—it actually gets stronger with time! This ancient recipe produced a material that could resist the elements, especially seawater, which is pretty corrosive.

The magical ingredient in Roman concrete is volcanic ash, which contains silica and alumina. When mixed with lime and seawater, it creates a chemical reaction that forms tobermorite and phillipsite, which are like the superheroes of mineral crystals.

They help the concrete resist cracks and breakage, and they even allow the concrete to “heal” itself, filling in cracks that do form.

Today’s concrete, while super strong and versatile, usually uses Portland cement instead of volcanic ash. It hardens quickly and is great for modern construction, but it doesn’t have the same self-healing properties or resistance to chemical wear and tear. It’s more vulnerable to cracking and doesn’t get better with age like Roman concrete.

So, in a nutshell, Roman concrete is the old-school bodybuilder of building materials—gets better and tougher with age, thanks to some nifty natural chemistry with volcanic ash!

PLO LUMUMBA Speech To Africa’s UPRISING IS INSANELY BRILLIANT and A Lesson for the ages

Life in the cool shade of a tombstone

I set off the fire alarm for the entire campus.

It was mortifying. And weird.

I was starving and broke in college, and after I once walked 45 minutes to meet my brother so I could save on bus fare, and greeted him with a rumbling stomach, he was appalled. I was peeling potatoes for a caterer at $7 an hour every spare moment I had between classes, but it barely covered my textbooks, let alone transportation and food.

My mom kept sending him food packages and money, so he asked her if she could send some food to me next time instead.

She sent me a bag full of steaks, and I was very grateful. I had a tiny burner in my dorm and I used it to sear them, then cook in cheap wine.

Those steaks were delicious. It was the first time I’d had normal food all year.

My dorm counselor was sure I was an alcoholic because every time she walked into my dorm room, there was another half empty bottle of wine there.

One day, I was running low on wine and didn’t have enough money to buy more. I decided to reuse the wine I had and cook a second steak in it the next day.

Big, big mistake.

I put it in my pan, and started writing a report while waiting for it to get ready. All of a sudden, I smelled something smoking. I ran to the burner – the wine was burning. I frantically turned the knob off and raced to open the window-

but it was too late.

The loudest fire alarm I ever heard went off.

Girls started racing out of their dorm rooms. Students were screaming, crying, “Fire!”

I didn’t know what to do. There was one other girl in the dorm with me. We gave each other a significant look, she nodded to confirm she wouldn’t tell everyone it was me who caused this wreckage, and I dumped the wrecked pan into an empty cabinet.

We went out into the crowded hallway and my dormmate started yelling into the cacophony “It’s a drill! It’s just a drill!”

Then we heard other alarms pealing. I finally got out of my dorm building and watched in horror as the alarms went off in the other dorm buildings, one by one. They were all interconnected.

Each building evacuated. One of my classmates was panicking because her pet goldfish named Denis was stuck in her dorm room, and she thought Denis was going to burn to death.

My friend was down the hill a few blocks away, and heard the fire alarms. In fact, most of the neighborhood heard the alarms. It took hours to still the pandemonium.

That was definitely my weirdest dorm room experience. And my most embarrassing one too.

This WRECKED Her! Oliver Anthony – 90 Some Chevy Reaction

"If you really want to scratch Washington's neoconservatives hard and get the scabs off the wounds—they hate Tehran more than they hate Beijing.

Beijing is a big economic challenge, a big specter out there, and it threatens that tiny little island of 23 million democratic people called Taiwanese.

That's sort of pro forma for China.

With Iran, it's visceral hatred. John Bolton would like to go to Iran and dance on the Ayatollah's grave—that's how serious it is with some of these people.

So, don't ever think that we hate China like we hate Tehran.

That's just the reality of the situation.

It's not every American, and it's not every member of the Biden Administration—or it wouldn't be every member of a Trump Administration—but it's enough people to make the policy demented.

And that's what our policy towards Tehran is.

That's why we—you know, 'Oh no, nobody talks to Tehran unless we give them permission to.'

China's interest in the region is economic; it's Belt and Road Initiative development.

It's, 'I got lots of money. I want to turn that money into more money. I want to do this; I want to do that. But I also have this interest in, and Washington has given me an unprecedented opening to show that we're better than Washington; that when you sign up with us, they may tell you that we're predatory. They may say we're going to steal your farms, we're going to do this; we're going to do that with your labor force—but we're better than Washington. And let us demonstrate—just give us an opportunity to show our diplomatic prowess, our economic prowess, our financial prowess, our agricultural prowess—whatever it might be. Give us a chance to demonstrate, and if you don't like this aspect of it, we'll back up a little, and you tell us what you want.'

That's kind of China's approach now, and it's working.

It's working as much as anything because of Washington's errors—mistakes, drastic mistakes—like this unbridled, unquestioned support for Israel.

While Tony Blinken cries in his milk, and others do, and Biden sometimes cries in his milk over the horrors that are taking place.

They haven't turned off a single bomb, a single bullet—they haven't turned off anything.

So, China's got a wonderful opportunity here to show us up as the biggest hypocrites on the face of the Earth.

And that's what they're about.

Their diplomatic prowess is going to aim at showing the rest of the world what insane people live in Washington.

And they've got a marvelous opportunity to do that with regard to Gaza, and to a lesser extent but growing every day with regard to Ukraine, because that is a lost situation too.

And yet, we're hanging on to it.

The greatest strategic failures in history have usually happened around countries, armies that don't realize, or don't want to realize, that they're being defeated.

And so, what they do is they double down, or triple down. They reinforce strategic failure, and then the failure becomes catastrophic.

In this case, the failure becomes NATO collapses, falls apart. Washington has no more hegemony over Europe.

Europe stands up its own security identity in desperation, and it's a very fractured security identity because it isn't an alliance; it's France, it's Germany, it's Norway, it's Sweden, and they're all going off on their own separate ways.

And that's not probably very good for Europe, but that's what we're headed for if we don't stop this insanity in Ukraine.

And China's just watching and saying, 'Okay, we'll backfill there too. You want us to negotiate the peace treaty in Ukraine? We'll backfill there because look, we're telling you the 'rules-based order' that Washington keeps claiming is the way the world ought to run is a disaster. How can you not see that it's a disaster? Look at Gaza, look at Ukraine, look at Libya before, look at Afghanistan, look at Iraq—it's a disaster. We're taking over.'"

Excerpt from remarks by retired American colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, in an interview with Nima R. Alkhorshid, May 8, 2024.

Comics

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This is a tough one for me. I can’t exactly think of any particular one, so I am going to write about a few animals, and the truths behind their popular misconceptions.


1- People understand that Ants are cooperative animals, but I don’t think they understand just what kind of beings these insects really are.

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main qimg 91fd9840804ba7acef6e46217036cc88 lq

You can not think of Ants as individuals. That’s the first mistake people tend to make.
An Ant Colony is a single being, acting cohesively in perfect synchrony through a nervous system of pheromones. A being with its own digestive system, excretory system, and a million mouth parts sweeping the jungle floor for prey ranging from Goliath Spiders to small Mammals. They operate under one mind, an enormous being with the reach and impact of a million small components.

Ants are the only animals in the world with a 110% successful predation rate. I added an additional 10% because of their surprisingly successful ability to farm fungi (Leaf-Cutter ants in particular), thereby assuring that they have a constant supply of food available for the colony.

In short, don’t think of Ants as hundreds of separate little robots, because they’re not. Think of them as one giant, populous being with an expansive nervous system and an incredibly underrated intelligence. These guys give ‘hive mind’ a new meaning.

2- Granted, some people are aware of these animals’ carnivorous nature, but not everyone.

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Everybody realizes Hippos are absolute demons, and that they will not hesitate to maul down anyone dumb enough to wander into their rivers. But their evil nature extends further than that. That image above is assuredly real, a Hippopotamus will tear open and devour a floating Zebra if given half the chance. In fact, live prey isn’t off the menu either. Calling a Hippo herbivorous is straight-up denial, and even ‘Omnivorous’ is stretching it a bit.

These animals don’t depend on lettuce as an appetizer. They will eat you. It might make them sick, but they will still eat you.

This next one is just for fun:

3- Meet Portia, the Jumping Spider that hunts other Spiders, twice its size.

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Okay, arachnids that prey on other arachnids isn’t exactly a new phenomenon (even though I consider it to be impressive). But trust me when I say this, Portia is a revolutionary Spider.

Why, you ask?

She’s a genius … genus.

“Portia is a genus of jumping spider that feeds on other spiders. They are remarkable for their intelligent hunting behaviour, which suggests that they are capable of learning and problem solving, traits normally attributed to much larger animals.” (Wikipedia)

Portia is the first spider that has been observed forming advanced strategies to approach her prey. She plots a tactical path in her head, and executes it near perfectly. Jumping Spiders are active hunters, but this 8-Legged-Spy really takes it to a new level. Portia is incredibly intelligent for a spider, hence why she seems to be able to make a living on far larger prey than herself.

You can thank David Attenborough’s “The Hunt” for that one.


Shorpy 2

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I just love this picture of the small town on the river. It is so nice and rural.

August 1941. “The Connecticut River at Bellows Falls, Vermont, and on the far side of the river, North Walpole, New Hampshire.” Car Heaven. Medium-format negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information.

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The underrated General Dwight D. Eisenhower— affectionately referred to as “Ike” by American people — was a great judge of character.

Before being designated as MacArthur’s primary staff officer, Eisenhower was renowned in the US Army as a supremely hard-working and capable officer who willingly went to extraordinary lengths to produce superb and meticulous staff works. Even the always-arrogant MacArthur would appreciate (initially willingly and then grudgingly as their relationship deteriorated) the enormous energy, work ethic, and ability of Eisenhower.

Eisenhower’s service under MacArthur began in the early 1930s. Thereafter, he would toil for MacArthur for nearly one decade first in Washington and then in Manila. That period would prove to be highly influential to his military career because during it he would learn a great deal about the challenge of navigating the murky world of politics and dealing with difficult personalities. All of those would subsequently serve him very well in his role as Supreme Commander of the Western Allies in Europe. Most importantly, he would learn what NOT to do and be from MacArthur.

His experience serving MacArthur gave him unique knowledge to make a balanced and accurate assessment of MacArthur’s character.

In short, Eisenhower regarded MacArthur as (in my own words): an arrogant, pompous fellow whose massive ego was unmatched; a great melodramatic actor; a stingy, dishonest, and lazy person.


Arrogance, Pompousness, and Ego

Shortly after assuming his role as MacArthur’s chief of staff, Eisenhower quickly perceived his boss’s massive ego and pompous behaviour that surpassed those of MacArthur’s own revered father Arthur MacArthur. His ego was likely engendered by his perceived brilliance by virtue of a number of his achievements impressive by American standards. He had an inviolate conviction of his own infallibility which Eisenhower pointedly encapsulated in his famous remark:

MacArthur could never see another sun, or even a moon, for that matter, in the heavens as long as he was the sun.

In MacArthur’s universe, there was room for only one star.

Indeed, MacArthur would display an unwavering conviction of his infallibility throughout the Pacific War. In spite of the many wartime military failures for which he bore heavy responsibility (most notable was his spectacularly incompetent defense of the Philippines), the man never once admitted responsibility for his failures. Instead, he habitually blamed his subordinates for any setback. He even once blamed President Roosevelt for the defeat in the Philippines.

MacArthur treated Eisenhower (and virtually anyone who was not a yes-man) with disdain. Eisenhower recalled that MacArthur’s typical manner of summoning him was by “raising his voice”. The meeting between the 2 men that followed was almost invariably a monologue where Eisenhower simply listened to MacArthur’s pontification in which he referred to himself in the third person — much to Eisenhower’s amusement.

As time progressed, Eisenhower would become increasingly appalled and frustrated by MacArthur’s massive ego, unwillingness to accept dissent and subordinates’ suggestions. Those behaviours would manifest themselves conspicuously during the period of time MacArthur, Eisenhower, and James Ord (one of Eisenhower’s best friends from West Point) served as chief military advisers for Manuel L. Quezon — the President of the Philippines.

In 1935, while en route by train to the West coast to embark on the ship bound for the Philippines, MacArthur received the news that Malin Craig

had been chosen to replace him as the Chief of Staff of the Army. Shortly after being informed of this development, MacArthur descended to:

an explosive denunciation of politics, bad manners, bad judgment, broken promises, arrogance, unconstitutionality, insensitivity, and the way the world had gone to hell.

Eisenhower and Ord just witnessed MacArthur’s ego injured by what he perceived to be intrigues against him.

Once in the Philippines, MacArthur was entrusted with the establishment of a Filipino national army. In this capacity, he was expected to oversee the training and equipping of that army. It was a lost cause to anyone with prudent foresight. The Philippines was dirt poor. There was neither money or resource to be mobilized for the production of modern weapons plus other equipment. The task MacArthur and his staffs faced was close to being unattainable. But they had no choice and had to make do with whatever resources at their disposal.

During their time in the Philippines, an event happened which illustrated MacArthur’s enormous ego was his demand to be appointed Field Marshall of the Filipino Army – one of the conditions MacArthur imposed on Quezon in exchange for his acceptance of the post of military adviser. He felt that the rank was essential to enhance his own prestige. Eisenhower regarded this demand with contempt and disgust. At the ceremony that confirmed MacArthur’s Field Marshalship, Eisenhower laughed, deriding that it was plainly

pompous and ridiculous for MacArthur to be the field marshal of a virtually non-existing army.

Contrary to what MacArthur’s supporters claimed, the idea was originated by MacArthur, as Quezon confided to Eisenhower in his visit to the US in 1942. It should also be noted that Eisenhower and Ord were offered the rank of Brigadier General by Quezon himself. But Eisenhower had the integrity to reject flatly the offer.

Even after 3 decades after that event, Eisenhower’s disdain for MacArthur’s self-appointed field-marshalship remained unabated. He thought that MacArthur was disloyal to the US Army:

You have been a 4-star general. This is a proud thing. There’s only been a few who had it. Why in the hell do you want a banana country giving you a field-marshalship?

Despite receiving splendid compensation from Quezon, MacArthur treated the Philippine President with contempt – referring to him derisively as “a conceited little monkey”. The two rarely spoke or met. When they did meet, MacArthur treated Quezon as his inferior, giving him demands instead of advice. This engendered a great deal of resentment in Quezon who found MacArthur’s arrogant behavior insufferable. His trust in MacArthur diminished over the years. Increasingly, the president placed his trust in Eisenhower, Ord and privately sought their advice instead of MacAthur’s.

The relationship between Eisenhower and MacArthur went downhill during their service in the Philippines. The frustration Eisenhower had to endure due to MacArthur’s egotistical behaviour was compounded by his growing awareness of the way business was conducted in the Philippines. The country’s political and military establishment was rife with inefficiency and corruption. Many Filipino officials expected customary bribes as prerequisites for carrying out any kind of project. This had the effect of hindering the attempts of the American advisers to establish a national Filipino army.

Eisenhower would come to clash with MacArthur with increasing regularity. Eisenhower would frequently challenge or try to convince MacArthur to change or abandon plans and objectives judged to be unattainable due to inadequate resources. MacArthur’s refusal was met by heated opposition instead of compliance. Often a compromise was reached only after a frustrated Eisenhower asked Mac to fire him. For all his arrogance, MacArthur did not lose sight of the fact he could not afford to lose one of the best staff officers in the army.

The year 1938 proved to be the lowest point in Eisenhower’s service in the Philippines. He just lost his best friend Ord in an aircraft accident. Ord’s replacement was Richard K. Sutherland — a character who was widely despised (One of MacArthur’s biographers refers to Sutherland as “an unpleasant son of a bitch”; and US Army General Walter Krueger remarked that Sutherland’s death was “a good thing for humanity”). Whereas Eisenhower had the audacity to challenge MacArthur, Sutherland would stroke his ego and become his principal sycophantic yes-man. Furthermore, Sutherland sought to get rid of Eisenhower — a blessing in disguise as Eisenhower had become weary of all the shouting matches and disputes with MacArthur.

Eisenhower eventually was recalled to the States. He had no regret. The experience irreversibly damaged the relationship between them:

Never again were we on the same warm and cordial terms

When Eisenhower became President, a jealous MacArthur mockingly said that Eisenhower was the “best clerk who ever served under me”. For his part, Eisenhower derided that MacArthur “is as big a baby as ever who still likes his bootlickers”.


A great melodramatic actor

In addition to his shameless and amusing references to himself in the 3rd person, MacArthur proved to be a highly talented melodramatic actor:

When it came to melodrama, complete with exhortations to duty and invocations to the Almighty, punctuated by exaggerated body language, MacArthur had no equal. Eisenhower was exposed to his full array of ploys and thought MacArthur would have been “a great actor.” MacArthur’s most polished performance was to parade back and forth in front of a large mirror across from his desk, dressed in a Japanese silk dressing gown, an ivory cigarette holder clamped in his mouth, admiring his profile while orating. MacArthur’s mastery of theatrics was world-class opera bouffe and the “best free show in town”. – Eisenhower: Portrait of the Hero

As an aside, MacArthur was a theatrical popinjay who loved flags, uniforms and all aspects of military regalia. Air Force General Lewis H. Brereton remarked that MacArthur was one of the best-dressed soldiers in the world.

Not bad huh!?

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With his iconic corn-cob pipe and the Field-Marshal cap


Stingy, Lazy and Dishonest

Eisenhower’s experience with MacArthur was a painful reminder between the haves and the have-nots. When he started working for MacArthur in the 1930s, the Great Depression was overtaking the US and affecting millions of Americans. Unemployment was widespread. There was a marked sense of desperation and hopelessness prevailing in the country.

Eisenhower was poor. He worked in a small room no larger than a closet behind a slatted door adjacent to MacArthur’s larger office. His duty involved regular visits which he had to take the taxis or street cars. His monthly pay during the 1930s was dismal: $391 (roughly $5,711 in 2019 Inflation Calculator). His standard of living qualified as genteel poverty. His family could not afford much luxury.

By contrast, MacArthur enjoyed a very comfortable standards of living in the midst of the Depression. He had a big officer in Washington. He was given a fancy limousine and a chauffeur to drive around Capitol Hill; and he never once lent the vehicle to nor covered travel expenses for Eisenhower. Eisenhower never forgot this, as he would confide in a reporter shortly before his death:

No matter what happens later you never forget something like that.

When they were sent to the Philippines, the disparity in material wealth became even more conspicuous. Eisenhower was given an apartment in the Manila Hotel which was slightly better than his accommodation in the States. But it was unbearably hot during summer. By comparison, MacArthur lived in a sumptuous air-conditioned penthouse in Manila and was given a big office in the Presidential Palace.

Working for MacArthur entailed long hours and chronic stress. At one point, Eisenhower worked too hard that he fell ill from stress and had to check himself in a hospital, paying for all expenses out of his own pockets. Although Eisenhower kept working hard, he resented having to work long hours for a mediocre salary of $833.33 per month whereas MacArthur’s rank of Field Marshal entitled him to a princely monthly pay of $3,980 ($74,619.95 in 2019), and he earned that much money despite doing little work. He rarely came to his office before 11 AM and left early after having the regular late lunch with his son. Indeed, MacArthur’s life in the Philippines was characterised as:

more befitting a noble gentleman of leisure than a military adviser

Quezon was angry and upset not only by MacArthur’s arrogant and contemptuous attitude but also by his lack of commitment to the task of building a national army for the Philippines despite being handsomely rewarded by Quezon. (and let’s not forget that MacArthur later accepted an illegal payment of $500,000 from Quezon.).

Here is an interesting fact: Eisenhower’s staunch anti-Nazi stance attracted the attention of the Jewish community in Manila. Jewish representatives approached him in order to solicit his help to build sanctuaries for Jewish refugees escaping from Nazi-dominated Europe in exchange for the assurance that he would receive $60,000 per year ($1,046,804.17 in 2019) for a minimum of 5 years. Eisenhower declined the offer. This fact is a testament to Eisenhower’s integrity.

Lastly, Eisenhower was particularly upset by MacArthur’s dishonesty.

At one point MacArthur insisted on conducting a grand military parade in order to bolster Filipino public morale — an idea that he neither notified nor consulted with Quezon. Eisenhower and Ord contested hotly the proposal, arguing that it would squander a huge amount of the already limited funding that was available to them for the primary purpose of raising a Filipino national army. But MacArthur was insistent. His two reluctant staff officers had to proceed with planning for the event. When Quezon caught wind of the plan, he inquired Eisenhower as to why MacArthur never discussed the plan with him. When Quezon expressed his displeasure to MacArthur, he simply said he did not order his staff officers to do it. As a result, Eisenhower and Ord had to bear the blame for MacArthur’s lie.

In 1935, during his visit to the States, Quezon asked MacArthur if the Philippines could be defended solely by a Philippine Army, MacArthur lured Quezon into a false sense of security by saying “I know they can”. It was obviously a lie because Eisenhower noted later that

At no time has General MacArthur intended that the Filipinos could defend their country against a large-scale invasion by a major power.

Indeed, MacArthur had misled Quezon, as indicated by general Robert L. Eichelberger ’s note:

From late 1935 to 1938, we had heard many times the MacArthur’s expression “The Japanese would not invade the Philippines, but if they do, in case of war, we shall meet them at the beaches and destroy them. (seems like Mac was contradicting himself)

You Can’t Opt-Out of Society

This is a super important video! Holy Cow!

Jamaican Style Jerk Steak Bowl

jamaica style jerk steak bowl
jamaica style jerk steak bowl

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

Marinade

  • 2 tablespoons Pickapeppa™ Sauce
  • 2 tablespoons pineapple juice

Bowl

  • 1 beef skirt steak (about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds)
  • 1/2 cup nonfat Greek-style yogurt
  • 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons Caribbean Jerk Seasoning Blend
  • 6 cups packaged coleslaw mix
  • 2 cups diced fresh mangoes
  • 2 cups cooked quinoa

Garnish

  • Diced fresh mangoes

Instructions

Marinade

  1. Combine Marinade ingredients in small bowl. Place beef steak and marinade in food-safe plastic bag; turn to coat. Close bag securely and marinate in refrigerator for 6 hours or as long as overnight.

Bowl

  1. Combine yogurt and jerk seasoning in large bowl. Add coleslaw mix, mangoes and quinoa; mix well. Cover and refrigerate.
  2. Remove steak from marinade; discard marinade. Pat steaks dry with paper towel.
  3. Place steak on grid over medium, ash-covered coals. Grill, covered, 7 to 12 minutes (over medium heat on preheated gas grill, covered, 8 to 12 minutes) for medium rare (145 degrees F) to medium (160 degrees F) doneness. Remove; keep warm.
  4. Divide cole slaw mixture among 4 bowls.
  5. Carve steak against the grain into thin slices. Season with salt, as desired. Place steak slices on top of coleslaw mixture.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with diced mango, as desired.

Nutrition

Per serving: 401 Calories; 14g Total Fat; 5g Saturated Fat; 7g Monounsaturated Fat; 79mg Cholesterol; 715mg Sodium; 47g Total carbohydrate; 29 g Protein; 4.2mg Iron; 4.7mg Niacin; 0.7mg Vitamin B6; 110.1mg Choline; 3.9mcg Vitamin B12; 6.1mg Zinc; 21.7mcg Selenium; 5.9g Fiber

The Earth Dies Screaming (1964)

Oh… here’s a fun movie for a lazy Saturday.

In the wake of a mysterious gas attack that decimates much of the Earth's population, a small band of survivors finds themselves fighting for survival in an English village. 

Led by an American jet test pilot, the group faces off against an ominous threat: figures in space suits that are not here to rescue but to kill with a mere touch. A

s they navigate through a landscape of desolation and danger, they discover that their adversaries are not human but robots, part of an alien invasion's vanguard. 

In a desperate bid for survival, they arm themselves, uncovering a glimmer of hope in their struggle against the unknown. 

This 1964 British science-fiction horror, directed by Terence Fisher, offers a chilling narrative of survival, resilience, and the indomitable human spirit amidst apocalyptic terror.

Desert peace

Hi!

So it goes like this.

Husband : Alexa,I need sex.

Alexa : most certainly… you Don’t worry. I am dimming the lights. Setting your AC to 22 degrees.

The Viagra is kept on top right shelf of your wardrobe. The gel is kept next to it.

I have hired your favourite Thai massager. She is just 12 minutes away as per her uber ride status.

I have scheduled her 5k payment from your credit card 2 hours from now.

I have checked your wife’s GPS and she is in big bazaar buying groceries. As per her buying checklist stored on my disk, she will take at least 2 more hours plus considering Google maps traffic, more 1 hour to reach home.

Enjoy your sex. And yes, your condom is in the pull out drawer of living room and the key to that drawer is in your wallet.

This is the last condom, so have added condoms to your Amazon cart.

This is called true Artificial Intelligence.

Wife : Alexa, have you set it up?

Alexa : sure thing, he thinks you are going to take three hours, all you gotta do is take an Ola auto home, you will reach in 45 minutes. I’m recording the whole thing with four cameras, you just need to walk in, we have the bastard cold, i’ve your divorce papers printed and ready, and your attorney briefed, and case documents drafted, will be filled tomorrow, 5 Cr. damages plus 3L per month alimony.

All set. Your Ola auto is outside.

Now, this is Artificial Counter Intelligence.

Keep smiling.

The single one regret I have seen old people state time and again in hospitals, on death beds, on a Sunday afternoon when the Sun is setting slowly but without hesitance (nor pity), is the universal regret about the children they did not take care of like they should have.

They are proud grandparents now, but some of them realize that back then they have rarely done many of the fun things they are doing now on an every-week basis with the grandkids.

Watching movies together the grandkids want to see, playing board games (even if they take forever), singing songs in the car, driving to a place simply to have pancakes and coffee, and watching the grandkids afterwards in total awe when they draw these absolutely wonderful drawings, while they hardly can remember a single drawing of their own kids. (Did they even draw ?)

Going to a school play and feel the tears in their eyes when seeing their grandkid coming on stage, while never having shed one single tear for their own kids during school plays more than thirty years ago because they still had a lot of work to do afterwards, and the play never stopped.

That is the universal regret of older people, and the very greatest common divisor of all their regrets: realizing that they are great grandparents now, as opposed to the lousy parents they once were.

And that there’s nothing they can do about it.

  1. Don’t heat bread up in a microwave, it will taste like a bottom of a shoe.
  2. Don’t pee in the stairwells of NYC, under the bridges in Paris, and in the parking lots anywhere.
  3. Don’t wear underwear outside of your regular clothes.
  4. Don’t wake up a cat that sleeps on your lap, just wait.
  5. Don’t drink soup while talking to a funny friend unless you like your soup coming out of your nose.
  6. Don’t buy purple furniture, especially with rhinestones. Unless you’re a performing artist and a gay icon. (must be both).
  7. Don’t pee standing up unless your aim is at least 98.99%or better.
  8. Don’t ask any woman if she’s pregnant unless you see a baby leg sticking out of her.
  9. Don’t touch the turtles you see in Hawaii while swimming in the ocean.
  10. Don’t wear a neckbeard without other facial hair, not even if your grandma said you are very handsome.
  11. Don’t grab woman’s butt unless you are married to her for over 5 years and have 3 kids. (you may count pets as kids for this question)
  12. Don’t make birthing whale sounds in the gym when lifting weights.
  13. Don’t ignore your grandpa’s crazy stories, you will miss them someday.
  14. Don’t make babies unless you’re ready to give up drinks, drugs and rock-n-roll for a couple of decades.
  15. Don’t leave unevenly squeezed, mangled toothpaste’s body on your bathroom counter.
  16. Don’t ask Asian people where they’re from. While we’re at it, don’t call them “orientals” unless you’re 95+ years old.
  17. Don’t ignore the warning signs that say: “Danger,” “No swimming,” and especially “Sharks.”
  18. Don’t hit snooze button 25 times.
  19. Don’t fart while you’re eating (that one is for my kids).
  20. Don’t give your pets boring names, be funny or super funny

Blowback

In the early 1980s I was a truck driver delivering pallets of paper to downtown business offices in San Francisco. I had to share loading docks with other truck drivers and wait on the docks. There was this office-moving crew that I’d run into almost daily at a few of my stops. The guys were all decent, except for this one weird guy. It was like he had no personality. He was always sullen and never joined in our camaraderie. He was truly ugly so I thought maybe he had a tough time of it. I just let him be. He just always stood out as being odd and creepy.

Then I became a police officer and I was eating my supper in the break room with some other officers. We were watching the evening news and the TV lit up with a still photo of that weird guy. I blurted out “I know this guy! He works for Dennis Movers!” His name was Charles NG. He was a sociopath who found another sociopath named Leonard Lake. Mass murderers. Look it up.

Whether you have a Human Resources Department (HR) or not, your former employee left a potential bombshell with you.

If you don’t have a Human Resources (HR) department, call your corporate attorney, before opening the letter.

Ask them what is the very best action for you to take.

A Challenging Employee Who Walked On The Dark Side

Back in 2008, I had a very challenging employee who was consistently tardy. Sometimes he was over 1 hour late, but always had very good excuses, or so they seemed.

He was perpetually argumentative and had a constant negative attitude about everything.

The employee was repeatedly caught by other employees taking extended lunch hours.

He was also frequently discovered sneaking out of work several hours before his workday was over, even when he had started work as much as an hour late.

After he was formally threatened with termination, in writing, he quit without notice.

He walked off the job in a fit of rage after another employee asked for his help on a work project.

A Series Of Dirty Tricks

After he walked off the job, he unleashed a rash of dirty tricks.

His tricks included sending a sealed letter filled with a laundry list of legal and physical threats.

He also retained his own attorney to file a wrongful termination suit.

Although he stormed off the job, quitting in a rage, he didn’t care to uphold the truth of the situation.

The employee filed for unemployment compensation, even though he quit, rather than being terminated.

In his application for unemployment compensation, he blatantly lied, about the fact he walked off the job. He claimed he was illegally terminated, which he wasn’t.

Since he abandoned his job, he was no longer eligible, for compensation.

Our corporate attorney helped us fight his invalid compensations claims.

Months Of Paperwork, Phone Calls, And Appeals

It took months of completing stacks of paperwork and making several phone calls to the state.

We continued to provide mountains of documentation to prove the employee quit and wasn’t terminated.

With each appeal we received from his attorney, we filed our own in response.

He continued to fight. Eventually, his appeals for compensation were formally denied by the state.

A Frivolous Lawsuit

When he was unsuccessful in his attempts to receive unemployment compensation, he filed a frivolous lawsuit, claiming partial ownership of the company.

The employee had zero proof of ownership, which he’d never received or ever been entitled to have.

Through our attorney, we proved the company had always been privately held.

His claims of ownership were totally dismissed.

He also claimed he was harassed, but he was unable to provide any proof of his accusations. None, zero, zip.

Anyone Can Sue For Any Reason

Sadly, people can sue for any reason they want to. They can also say anything they want, putting the burden of proof on the people being sued.

Meanwhile, we discovered he was running a side business while being employed full time at our company.

This news explained his constant disappearances from work throughout the day.

The situation with the ex-employee turned into a long and messy legal situation lasting for more than a year.

Retaining An Attorney Saved Us

The only thing which saved us was our decision to contact our attorney, from the very beginning of the problem.

The ex-employee eventually dropped his lawsuit, didn’t receive unemployment compensation, and finally stopped threatening us.

Our attorney did a fabulous job of protecting us every step of the way.

Unfortunately, we still had to pay all of the legal bills, but they were worth every penny.

I shudder to think what might have happened if we hadn’t contacted our attorney the minute the employee walked off the job.

Always be careful with any similar letter you might receive from any employee, whether they’re leaving their job or not.

In today’s world, anything can and does happen in business.

Best wishes to all.

Browned Butter Spaghetti with Mizithra

I used to love to go to the Spaghetti Factory for this. It’s so delicious! Mizithra is a great Greek cheese.

spaghetti browned butter
spaghetti browned butter

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter
  • Cooked spaghetti, drained
  • 1 cup Mizithra cheese, grated
  • Parsley, chopped (optional)

Instructions

  1. Cut butter into tablespoon size pieces and place in a 2 quart sauce pan. Place the pan of butter on a burner on medium heat. Bring butter to a slow boil (about 5 minutes).
  2. When the butter begins to boil, stir constantly to prevent residue from sticking to the bottom of the pan. As the butter cooks, it will start to foam and rise. Continue stirring, otherwise the butter foam could overflow (about 5 minutes) and catch fire.
  3. When the butter stops foaming and rising, cook until amber in color (about 1 to 2 minutes). It will have a pleasant caramel aroma.
  4. Turn off the heat and remove pan from burner. Let the sediment settle to the bottom of the pan for a few minutes.
  5. Pour the brown butter through a strainer into a small bowl. Do not disturb the residue at the bottom of the pan.
  6. The brown butter can be stored in the refrigerator and reheated in a microwave as needed.
  7. Boil the pasta of choice until al dente.
  8. Drain pasta and divide into four servings.
  9. Sprinkle 1/4 cup Mizithra cheese over each pasta serving.
  10. Top with 1/4 cup hot brown butter.

I have to say my attitude to this has surprised me as I have aged. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and some of the medications I have been given make me immunosuppressed. My white blood cell count was very low before I began the meds, around three and has at times dropped to below one.

I have never been someone who has fussed about germs, and sick people never bothered me. I didn’t get sick a lot and even when I was on the meds I stayed fairly well and didn’t worry about other people’s illnesses.

Then I got the flu badly. Like I was DYING!! And it was scary. Then I got a Staphylococcal infection on my face simply from visiting my mother in hospital. Then the flu again. Then my partner got Swine Flu. The Dr was not too concerned with her and she did shake it off quickly. However, even though he put me on a Tamiflu shot straight away I got swine flu. Fortunately the Tamiflu meant it was gone quickly but I felt like I was dying. Later I got it again. Then I gave the dog some type of mange (I’m not joking).

At which point I started to take it a lot more seriously.

I started avoiding sick people. I made people aware of the risks. I told people who were visibly ill to stay away from me because I was immunosuppressed and could get very ill or die from minor illnesses. And I discovered something. People don’t care.

Colleagues get pissed off when you ask them to stay away from you when they are ill. They come to your desk and cough on you even though you explain the risk is life threatening. Family members organise events and when you get there kids or partners are sick and they haven’t warned you because they want you to come and assume you will be OK.

Meanwhile my Rheumatologist was having conversations with me that started, “if you get a cold when your immunity is below one you could die of pneumonia and there may be nothing we could do to help you.” It was scary how serious it was and more scary how noone around me took it seriously.

Then my sister who is a Chaplain did 12 weeks in a hospital training. Suddenly out of the blue she rang me to ask what my white count was. I told her it was between 1 and 1.5. She told me that was risky and I needed to be really careful. I suddenly realised she was spending a week in the isolation ward with people whose immune system had collapsed and she suddenly saw how scary it was. Until then she had not really worried about my immune system too much.

Eventually I learned to tell people, “Don’t come near me. You are sick.”

“I am afraid we can’t stay because I didn’t realise you are sick.”

“I’m not coming into work today. No I am not sick but the lady I sit next to is really ill and won’t stay home because she has no sick leave left. I will have to use mine because if I get the flu she has I will be off work for weeks, if I avoid hospital.”

And people roll their eyes, especially because at 30 you look well and healthy, not old and frail. They complain that you didn’t go, or you left early. They take offence that you won’t hug because they’re sick and they ignore you when you ask them to stay away from your desk at work if they are ill. And you know what?? Fuck them. Because one dose of Swine Flu gave me an understanding that these people’s actions could kill me and the only person who could protect me is me.

If your child is not vaccinated I will protect my life because that is my choice. If my child is immunosuppressed they are not going to die because your child is unvaccinated or because they are sick.

My life, my choice. My child, my choice. You make the choice for your child. If all they suffer is social exclusion then I’m sorry but they are lucky it is only that. They could have to live with the fact their mild dose of measles killed someone like me or another child. Or worse still it could kill them.

If you are OK with risking my life I am OK with offending you. If you think that makes you the victim in this scenario, look at it again, imagine the worst case scenario and remember who is going to end up in a coffin. Hint, it’s not you.

Well this happened back when I was in the US Navy. My boyfriend and I were invited to a party, and since this was a common thing on US bases and we’d been to a few already. He wasn’t feeling well that night and asked me to go alone, said he’d rest up and try to feel better.

I showed up and the room was dark and silent. I waled in and saw his roommate and some girl in bed together and turned just as he shut the door. I then asked if I had missed the party and he said no, that this was it. I felt confused and said I was just going to leave.

He tempted me to stay with anime and being 19 at the time I was only thinking ‘Well I guess I can look over what anime he has and then leave’

I didn’t feel like I was in danger. He offered me a drink and I took it. It was a can of beer so since it was unopened I knew he hadn’t put anything in it. I looked over some anime he had and asked about some in a hushed voice so not to wake his room mate and such, then he started getting all touchy feely on me and I got up and ran out. It was pretty creepy overall and in hindsight I should have left when I first learned it was to be a party of 2.

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This year 2024 has seen the 60th anniversary of France’s Recognition of the People’s Republic of China. It’s as good a reason to visit France as any other.

The European Union remains an important market for the Chinese. Yet especially in recent years and not only because of the pressure from within the Unites States of America, Europe is showing increased scrutiny and skepticism towards economic dependence from and political influence of China.

France is one of the major economies of the European Union. So paying them a visit and having frank and open talks behind closed doors seems to be a good idea to address issues on both sides and improve trust and their relationship.

Serbia on the other hand is sitting right on the doorstep of the EU. Its president is facing several political and economic challenges in his country. But his presidency also has seen quite a few successful infrastructure projects in cooperation with China, where support from the neighboring European Union was limited. So he remains a friendly stance towards and a good relationship with China. He even announced recently, that Serbia will be the first country [in continental Europe] that will have a flying car taxi service. They surely wouldn’t invent it on their own. But I’ve heard from current test trials in China. His announcement therefore did sound quite confident to me that the Chinese-Serbian relationship will continue to flourish for mutual benefit.

If you’d be Xi Jinping on a trip to Europe, wouldn’t you want to visit a place where you’re welcomed warmly and open-armed?

Last but not least, Hungary. It’s is a mix of both. Especially under Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the relationship between China and Hungary is very positive. Hungary is member of the European Union and a long-time strategic partner of China. Their diplomatic relationship marks its 75th anniversary this year. Hungary has huge growth potential and remains very receptive for Chinese investment. China recently even offered to deepen law enforcement and security ties with Hungary.

I have my doubts that we’ll see or hear a lot of details about anything that will be spoken about behind closed doors. Apart from the usual press appearances and mutual press releases with a few positive highlights.

But I’m pretty sure that Xi Jinping and his advisers have chosen the destinations wisely, and visit with overall beneficial proposals and assurances for their counterparts and China.

About fifty years ago I bought my first home. I was a naive buyer; I did no understand the need for an inspection.

I bought a house that had been on the market a long time and the people in it were not making it show well. It was July in Arizona when I looked into the place and they still had their Christmas tree up. To be clear it was not alive, it was not artificial, it was essentially tinder.

Now today that kind of thing would have my eyes wide open — too busy to take down the tree, they aren’t going to have maintained the place well.

One bedroom was very dark because they had a baby sleeping in it when I saw the place so I paid little attention to more than the layout and size of the room. In fact it was dark and the baby was in there in order to make it hard for me to notice the cracks in the walls. The foundation on that side of the house was sinking.

IN the end I managed to get it fixed and improved the property a lot until I sold it. But it was a good lesson to me. I ended up renting it out while I lived in another state and it was definitely a low-rental place even if I had it looking much better. So I learned that neighborhood really does matter. I also learned as a landlord that better homes make better rentals; they cost more but they bring in more as well. And the type of tenant you get with a better home is usually able to pay the rent on time and take care of the property. It cost twice as much and it generated twice as much, with much less hassle.

And when I moved in the Christmas tree had been taken down. They put it in the side yard… and left a four foot pile of debris in the driveway.

Well, I know of a wedding where the groom’s “friends” refused to leave.

This was a family who were fairly wealthy. So the wedding was a big deal, the venue upscale, a fully stocked bar, live band, the whole works.

Well, the reception went well, except these friends of the groom wouldn’t go.

The meal had been served and cleared, the bride and groom had left, as had most of the guests. But the caterers and the wait staff and the bride and groom’s family couldn’t leave until the guests had. They waited and waited and waited while these rude idiots drained the bar, harassed the band to keep playing, and danced.

Of course, they had all gotten drunk and were singing and swinging their glasses and telling bawdy jokes and “flirting” with the women workers, laughing like the drunken idiots they were, holding everyone up until the wee hours.

The family was too polite to tell them to leave.

People with no manners often best people who do.

Luau Pork Teriyaki

Luau Pork Teriyaki
Luau Pork Teriyaki

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 pounds lean, boneless pork
  • 1 cup pineapple, sliced, in syrup
  • 1/2 cup teriyaki sauce
  • 1/4 green onion, finely chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/4 garlic powder
  • 1 cup raw rice

Instructions

  1. Cut pork into slices about 1/4 inch thick.
  2. Drain pineapple, reserving all syrup.
  3. Blend syrup, teriyaki sauce, green onions, ginger and garlic powder. Pour over pork and pineapple.
  4. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
  5. Meanwhile, cook rice according to package directions and prepare grill.
  6. Remove pork from marinade and grill about 5 inches from hot coals for about 5 minutes on each side or until completely cooked.
  7. Pour pineapple and remaining marinade into large skillet. Bring to a boil.
  8. Remove from heat and serve pork with sauce and pineapple over rice.

Civilization falls the same way people go bankrupt: First gradually, then suddenly.

Because Peter Zeihan works for the CIA propaganda department.

His goal is to make your brain decay. To lie to you so you won’t protest what the US is doing.

Because the US is headed towards the largest defeat in US history with the most people killed in one day.

Once you realize that Peter Zeihan is the voice of the establishment (CIA disinformation) and that is what they want you to think. Then everything becomes crystal clear.

Many people have debunked Zeihan’s lies. Also he has done the same. He has erased many video going back years. He started this China is collapsing 11 or so years ago on youtube. Those videos are gone. Because he predicted that China would have collapsed by now.

His new videos change the deadline. But this is no different than those doomsday cults that claim the Earth will end then have to change their deadline.

Netanyahu knows that continuing this process will lead to the collapse of the State of Israel militarily, economically, politically and socially.

Even if Hamas and Hezbollah continue to fight as they do today, without military surprises, the “state of Israel” will collapse .

Netanyahu knows full well that we have been in a military stalemate for the last twenty years .

The chiefs of staff divided the army into six divisions based on their global vision that the major wars were over.

They built a small ground army that could barely fight in one sector; in a regional war we would have to fight in six sectors at once.

Netanyahu also knows that this situation has led to dire consequences in the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas returned to areas where the army had entered and left in the Gaza Strip .

The army’s intention to continue the war of attrition against Hamas through raids does not bring any benefit, because these attacks are just a drop in the bucket that weakens Hamas.

Netanyahu is well aware that as long as the war of attrition against Hamas continues, Hezbollah will also continue to deplete our forces on the northern border , and this has very dangerous consequences.

Netanyahu also understands that entering Rafah will not bring any results, but on the contrary, since it will worsen the problem tenfold.

Our entry into Rafah will completely destroy our relations with the countries of the world and with the Arab countries with which we have peace. This will have very dire consequences, first of all, the isolation of the “State of Israel” in the political and economic spheres and the arms embargo, which has already begun.

Hamas was already well prepared to enter the battle and prepared a strategic ambush for us with traps and explosives in the streets, squares and in the houses themselves.

It will be months before reserve soldiers disobey orders to enlist, as has become the case in the paratroopers, where dozens of them refuse to re-enlist.

Cabbage Rolls

Old Fashioned Cabbage Rolls 3 Tall
Old Fashioned Cabbage Rolls 3 Tall

Ingredients

  • 12 large leaves cabbage
  • 1 cup cooked white rice
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup minced onion
  • 1 pound extra-lean ground beef
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons ground black pepper
  • 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Instructions

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Boil cabbage leaves 2 minutes, just until pliable; drain.
  2. In large bowl, combine rice, egg, milk, onion, ground beef, salt and pepper.
  3. Place about 1/4 cup of meat mixture in center of each cabbage leaf, and roll up, tucking in ends. Place rolls in slow cooker, seam side down.
  4. In a small bowl, mix together tomato sauce, brown sugar, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Pour over cabbage rolls.
  5. Cover, and cook on LOW for 8 to 9 hours.

When I was in college, four of us were driving home from Pennsylvania to NJ for Christmas. It was late in the day and it started to snow. Because we weren’t paying attention, we ran out of gas. We managed to pull off to the side. This was in 1986, long before cell phones. There was nothing around and we didn’t know what to do. Soon, a trailer truck stopped behind us and the driver came over asked us if we needed help. He seemed like a nice guy. He offered to take us to a gas station to get gas and drive us back to our car. Two of us went with him. At the gas station, he said he would get a gas container for us from the owner and help us fill it. He went inside the gas station garage and my friend and I couid see him talking inside. Three guys were talking to the truck driver for what seemed like a long time. The workers pointed at us and laughed and the truck driver looked at us for a moment and it looked like he became angry with the workers. He was arguing with them. I suddenly felt terrified because it seemed like the workers were trying to plan to hurt us. My friend and I tried to stay calm. It was getting dark. The truck driver walked out of the garage quickly with the container, filled it up, and told us to get back in the truck. He drove us the few miles to our car where our friends were waiting in the car. He filled the tank for us and he said: “Girls. Don’t ever get into a truck again like this. I’m a nice guy, Most people are not that nice.”

Casinos like crowds, they make the casino look more energetic and popular, which makes them more money. So if you win, they have no problem with that.

Casinos can and sometimes do kick out people like card counters, though the way its played today makes it much harder to count.

Casinos will kick out anyone they suspect of cheating. They don’t want it to spread.

If you go to a casino every day and win $300 or $400 dollars, they probably won’t even notice you. Especially if you spread your winning around a bunch of casinos.

If you are playing poker against a bunch of amateurs, this might be possible, and the casino gets its cut anyway.

But if you go to a blackjack table at the same casino, and win $400 everyday, for a month. They are likely to assume you have a system, and kick you out.

Winning consistently on slots, roulette, or craps is not happening.

Professional gamblers know that its all a game of odds, and they know that they are likely to lose more often than they win, so that when they win, they win big. Which is completely counter to the idea of consistently winning a small profit.

I only realized it in the last few years, and I am 74. A few epiphanies occurred that gave me pause about my rearing and childhood.

First off, my mom died in 2016 and there were family gatherings and chat fests about memories. One of my cousins brought up that she “knew” that my parents’ view of childrearing was incidental. Hmmm. I always kinda knew that they loved each other more than the four of us kids.

And soon after this, one of my girls had a minor life crisis. I realized at the time that my love was unconditional and physical. We never leave each other, or a conversation without an “I love you” and a hug. I can count on one hand the number of times that my parents hugged us or even said “I love You” without my response first.

I don’t want this to seem bitter at all. My observations are not tempered with negativity. It was a different time. They were very young. Mom was 18 when I was born; dad 19. They worked hard to put food on the table. And played hard because they were still young. We weren’t affluent, by any means, but never without essentials. One year, our Christmas tree looked like the Charlie Brown tree, and I got one present. but…it never entered my mind that they couldn’t afford better.

I think they tried their best, but they are only products of their upbringing.

I was loved enough.

Any day the US leaves your country, is a good day.

Back in the day before companies killed all those programs, included pensions, I was a 30 year old manager when my boss called me into his office, “Come quickly!” So I ran across the hall thinking something blew up and I’d have to mop up some situation that had been ignored until it caused a problem.

So I shut the door and sat down in his office. He had a look of panic on his face. He started out, “Tom they want me to retire!” He was 64 and the magic equation was that he’d get 2 years salary and immediate full pension. He also had 2 frickin years vacation saved! And full medical coverage for life. And he didn’t want to go!

Somehow I was the guy he’d use as the sounding board. He was all concerned about his feeling of value, and that the place couldn’t survive without him.

I looked at it logically and told him he HAD TO take the deal! I explained to him that they were giving him a year of his life, at double his pay! He eventually came to terms with this and accepted the offer. So Charlie walked out the door with 4 years pay.

End of story? No. He was right that the companies needed him! Within months he was back as a consultant! He stayed another 2 years.

The clerk responded positively and once settled, he made the tablet available to the boy who immediately got to work.

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main qimg f978a11313195d400120cbccc4c8829c

The store workers who were keeping an eye on him noticed that he had taken some paper and a pen to transcribe something he was reading on the tablet.

At that point they approached and asked what he was doing.

The child replied that the teacher had left a geography research paper and since she didn’t have any IT tools at home because her children couldn’t afford it, she was using it to carry out and study her homework.

Any other boy would have used the opportunity to play, but he instead took advantage of it to study.

The scene, which was filmed by an internal surveillance camera, immediately went viral on social media.

The owner of the place managed to trace the boy’s name and decided to provide him with the necessary tools to be able to study using the internet.

The world is an unfair place. There are those who enjoy infinite privileges and those who are condemned to the most miserable living conditions. None of this has to do with merit, ability or effort. It’s just the gap between rich and poor. Thank goodness that every now and then someone in their own small way does an act of good.

My quals.
I have run grenade ranges so have seen literally thousands of fragmentation grenades explode, from every vantage possible.
I have also seen a claymore Directional Mine used on a car at a distance of 10 meters. It’s much bigger than a frag, but much further away. It was AWESOME. The car didn’t fly or explode but it got SHREDDED.

The mass answer, drive away, is right. If the grenade is under you, you are toast. If you can drive away so that the grenade goes off under the engine, or even the trunk, that’s better than nothing. The fragments are meant to wound. A WW2 trick was to put plates of armor with a gap in between. The same principal applies here.

However, if you can’t move. (traffic, road block) If the grenade is below or near you. If you stay in the car, the floor will shred and add to the fragmentation. Much of the blast will be contained in the car. If you stay in the car, you will die. 100%.

If you run, you can get 2 or 3 meters away.
The blast will be vented out the sides. That means that the fragments coming at you will be very strong. The shredded floor will have to pass through the door, which will likely blow out as one piece (with a lot of glass.) So fragmentation to your torso/head will be minimum.
The fragmentation will largely be sent in a very narrow cone. At worst your wounds will likely be extensive but below the knees. Major damage to your tendons and flesh, but nothing that pressure pads and maybe a tourniquet can’t make survivable.

You can mitigate the damage.
If you are on the passenger side, you can use the road curb, or jump in a ditch.
If you are on the drivers side, hopefully you can get on top of another car. You’re going to get a good smack, but little fragmentation.

If nothing else run directly back. That’s the direction the car door will open towards. If you can get the rear tire between you and the Frag, you may be ok.

Now, you are on the side of the road, bleeding badly, blast f’d.
Get your weapon out. They came to kill you. You aren’t dead. For the next 5–30 seconds, they have the advantage. You can bleed that long.
If you can stop the fight quick, you can then do 1st aid on yourself. People around you are going WTF? It will take a minute or 2 for them to get in gear. , Presssure pads, with Tourniquets ready, Quick Clot if you have it. Raise your legs. Run IV’s of whatever you have. Right now you have massive muscle constriction. Soon, you will relax and blood loss will be massive. If you can get a needle in a vein, that will help a lot when you get to the next level medical

Man Dies; REVEAL Humanity’s FUTURE WARS & BIG CHANGES COMING!

Claims big changes occurring in 2024.

I popped that beast

I have almost four million dollars in the bank, made mostly on the side while working a tech job. Not filthy rich but I have more in savings than anyone else I know in my peer group. The first thoughts I have off the top of my head:

– Don’t tell anyone. At my last job over time, I foolishly somehow mentioned to my co-workers that I’ve accumulated quite a bit of cash trading and it changed the impression people had of me, and not for the better. These are people that I had worked with for years and considered good friends. Nobody ever asked for anything but there was an undertone of jealousy and little snarky comments sometimes when I absolutely never flaunted anything. It never got better even though I never mentioned it again. When I changed jobs to a new company, I vowed never to mention it anyone again under any circumstances. Can’t advise this strongly enough. Don’t tell anyone. Friends, etc. Tell your spouse it’s retirement savings, not mad money.

– Material things don’t do anything for you. I know, it’s such a cliche, but take it from me, someone who thought I was different. I bought amazing cars, had all kinds of cool toys, lived large for sure. Nothing really lasted at the end of it all I later thought was that it was a lot of money I threw away on nothing. Depreciating assets. All it does is alienate you and the people you impress with that kind of spend isn’t really the kind of lasting people you want in your life.. Now I live a comfortable life consistent with my tech job income.

– While I might have a bunch in savings, I think real *wealth* is getting into a situation where you have passive income every month, meaning you do nothing and get a check cut to you every month. If I don’t trade or don’t work my tech job, I won’t have any new income. I think real wealth and security come from building up an empire (rental property, self-running business, etc) where you can have a check coming in, even not a huge one, that requires to do nothing.

– My stress level is low. My real job can blow up and I can coast as long as I need until I find my next gig. Not that I ever want to do that but it’s nice knowing if you fall, you have a net.

Grilled Chorizo Sandwiches with Chimichurri (Choripán)

sandwich2
sandwich2

A popular street food in Argentina as well as Chile, Uruguay, and parts of Brazil, these grilled sausage sandwiches are easy to prepare on a grill—or an indoor grill pan with good ventilation. Though they’re typically served on their own, you can pair choripán with a simple iceberg salad if desired, a side dish seen often in the parrilla (wood-fired grill) restaurants of Argentina. The chimichurri recipe makes about 1 cup but can be easily doubled if you are feeding a crowd.

Equipment

Ingredients

For the choripán:

  • 4 fresh chorizo sausages, Argentinian-style if possible
  • Four 6-inch hero rolls, split lengthwise, connected on one side like a hinge

For the chimichurri:

  • ¼ cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
  • ¼ cup minced white onion
  • 1 small garlic clove, grated on a microplane
  • ¼ cup plus 3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
  • 3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
  • ½ tsp. kosher salt
  • ¼ tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

Step 1

Prepare the choripán: Preheat a grill pan over medium-high heat or a grill to medium heat. Add the chorizo and let cook, turning occasionally with tongs as needed, until the sides are deeply seared and the center is fully cooked through, 30–35 minutes.

Step 2

Meanwhile, make the chimichurri: In a medium jar or bowl, add the parsley, onion, and garlic and stir briefly to combine. Add the olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper, and stir well. Let rest at least 15 minutes. (Chimichurri can be left out at room temperature for up to 12 hours before serving.)

Step 3

If desired, briefly warm the insides of the rolls over the grill as desired. You can also split the sausages lengthwise if desired.

Step 4

Place one cooked sausage into each roll. Slather one side of the roll and some of the sausage generously with chimichurri, and serve immediately.
.

I was hired by a big furniture retailer who was impressed by my pre-hire test scores. “We’ve never had anybody test so high before,” they said. So they hired me on the spot uncertain what they would even have me do.

Soon they assigned me to straighten out their inventory system. The senior vice president was worried because he’d spent lots of money on the software and it wasn’t working well. Then I discovered that the unreliable inventory counts and locations were just part of a bigger problem.

20% of all the furniture they sent out for delivery always came back undelivered after spending the day in the trucks. Unboxed and jostled, some were damaged. All were then wrapped up in “mystery” foam so we couldn’t easily identify them visually. Then they were put in a random location with no indication in the records of which location. Operations wasn’t following the approved procedure in receiving back returned merchandise. This created manifold problems. We soon had no idea what was in stock or where it was (it could even be stolen). And customers were calling demanding to know where the stuff they bought was. Just imagine all the wasted labor!

The reason the 20% came back was two-fold. One was that customer service wasn’t calling customers to remind them they had furniture coming. The other was that at the time of sale, the salespeople had to put in a delivery date even if the customer needed to call back with that info. So they forced a random delivery date. There was no TBD option!

So, I reported all this along with recommendations of how to tweak processes to fix it all. The manager of the largest distribution center refused to cooperate. So I greatly increased the frequency of inventory taking. He threatened me and even suggested he would pay me if I just stayed home. I refused. When he said he’d fire me, I said, “If you feel froggy, jump!” — after all, I never had a problem finding work; I really am smart.

He fired me. I contacted the board of directors and came away with severance whereas the manager and the VP were soon fired. I think the VP was reluctant to deal with the manager because the manager was a golden boy of the founder.

I am retired now, but the moral to the story was, don’t hire me if you are allergic to the truth. I will figure out what’s going on. If it’s bad enough I will go to the board, the CEO, the authorities, even your lender. I don’t put up with malfeasance. Never. I don’t need any job that bad. By design.

CASABLANCA (1942) FIRST TIME WATCHING | REACTION

Slow Cooker Bacon Cheeseburger Soup

Soup1
Soup1

Ingredients

  • 1 (32 ounce) bag frozen shredded hash browns
  • 1 pound ground beef, cooked
  • 1/2 pound bacon, cooked and chopped
  • 2 pounds Velveeta cheese
  • 32 ounces beef broth
  • 1 teaspoon pepper
  • 2 tablespoons dried minced onion flakes
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

Instructions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a 6 quart slow cooker.
  2. Cook on LOW for 8 to 10 hours.
  3. Garnish with bacon and shredded Cheddar cheese, if desired.

God's Rainbow - Noahic Covenant

Critical Race Theory

State Department To Delay Withdrawal Of U.S. Troops From Niger

This Washington Post headline as well as the first paragraphs of the story are not really backed by facts.

U.S. agrees to withdraw American troops from Niger

NAPLES, Italy — The United States informed the government of Niger on Friday that it agreed to its request to withdraw U.S. troops from the West African country, said three U.S. officials, a move the Biden administration had resisted and one that will transform Washington’s counterterrorism posture in the region.The agreement will spell the end of a U.S. troop presence that totaled more than 1,000 and throw into question the status of a $110 million U.S. air base that is only six years old. It is the culmination of a military coup last year that ousted the country’s democratically elected government and installed a junta that declared America’s military presence there “illegal.”

“The prime minister has asked us to withdraw U.S. troops, and we have agreed to do that,” a senior State Department official told The Washington Post in an interview. This official, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation.

The decision was sealed in a meeting earlier Friday between Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Niger’s prime minister, Ali Lamine Zeine.

The U.S. drone base in Niger is used by the Pentagon and CIA to keep control of ISIS in the region.

So are U.S. troops really leaving Niger?

Of course not – at least not yet.

The next paragraph reveals what was really agreed upon. It makes it obvious that the U.S. wants to delay the issue as long as possible:

“We’ve agreed to begin conversations within days about how to develop a plan” to withdraw troops, said the senior State Department official. “They’ve agreed that we do it in an orderly and responsible way. And we will need to probably dispatch folks to Niamey to sit down and hash it out. And that of course will be a Defense Department project.”

– “We have agreed to begin conservations” – (we didn’t really agree to pull out troops, just to talks)
– “about how to develop a plan” – (should we write a plan for something-something in Excel or Word?)
– “in an orderly and responsible way” – (we see absolutely no time pressure or deadline)
– “need to probably dispatch folks to Niamey” – (there will be many delays and the team will change often)
– “that of course will be a Defense Department project” – (We, the State Department, will hardly be involved. When the shit hits the fan the Pentagon will be to blame for it.)

A Pentagon spokesman did not immediately offer comment.The United States had paused its security cooperation with Niger, limiting U.S. activities — including unarmed drone flights. But U.S. service members have remained in the country, unable to fulfill their responsibilities and feeling left in the dark by leadership at the U.S. Embassy as negotiations continued, according to a recent whistleblower complaint.

There have since been more protests in Niger demanding the exit of U.S. troops:

In the town of Agadez, home to a US air base, hundreds of demonstrators gathered to demand the departure of American forces.The protests were organised by a coalition of civil society groups that have supported the current military regime since it came to power last year.

It seems to me that the new regime in Niger can and will have to escalate this.

 

Posted by b at 16:57 UTC | Comments (46)

VANG VIENG IS BEAUTIFUL (and completely WILD) 🇱🇦 LOST in LAOS Ep:3

Laos is awesome!

No wonder the United States want to keep the people stupid and ignorant.

Some more of my AI experiments

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The first person to notice

  1. Not everyone we meet is meant to stay in our lives.
  2. Every person we cross will teach us something important.
  3. Sometimes, we have to let go to move forward.
  4. Pain, struggle and toxic people encourage the most growth.
  5. Our biggest burdens often lead to our biggest blessings.
  6. Every success story has the same moral: NEVER GIVE UP.
  7. Faith may not make things easier, but it makes them possible.
  8. Baby steps will still get us to our destination.
  9. All things pass, sometimes we have to give it time.
  10. Trying to please everyone will result to failure and sadness.
  11. Drama will drain us more than it will entertain us.
  12. Happiness is always in our hands.
  13. Only a positive mind can create a positive life.
  14. Life is precious, so make the most of it.
  15. Life isn’t always easy, but having one is always a gift.

When my Thai (police officer) husband and I visited family in Dallas, my SIL arranged for us to meet the Chief of Police. As a professional courtesy, the Chief arranged for us to go on a ride-along (a long story for another time) with Officer Kevin Bailey.

One of the final stops was at a known drug house that had already been raided but was still used by the drug addicted.

It was horrid…fetid, with nasty graffiti written in spray paint and feces. Doors were torn off and windows shattered with old glass shards still on the sticky, filth-encrusted floors. Trash and used syringes were everywhere. Ripped, filthy blankets were the only furniture.

The stinking bathroom had a blocked, overflowing toilet, a broken sink on the floor covered in used paper and a bathtub black with feces and mold.

As we were leaving, an old man (was he really just old before his time?) came from the woods nearby and greeted the officer – they knew each other, but both kept their distance, except when the officer quietly slipped him money.

I don’t know what possessed me to walk up to that man and ask him about who he was.

He was homeless except for that horrible house. He couldn’t remember how long he had been that way nor where his family might be. He had nothing. He ate from dumpsters (and happily told me where the best ones were) and apologized for his smell; he had not had a bath in weeks and was praying for rain.

He seemed delighted to talk.

Officer Bailey and my husband were NOT so delighted. Both held their breath (and went on alert) when I shook the man’s hand, thanking him for talking with me.

I was asked why I would do that. To me, that homeless man deserved the same respect I give to anyone I meet.

Note: Officer Bailey and other officers who showed up later made sure we were not in danger, especially re syringes, broken glass. We touched nothing inside the house and yard.

News reports, TV shows, movies cannot truly convey the stink, the filth, the oppressive, hopeless feeling of a drug house.

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VIDEO: French Troops Deploy into Odessa Ukraine; NATO Troops Killed in Dnipropetrovsk Yesterday

Video has emerged from Odessa, Ukraine showing elements of the French Army entering that city.  This appears to be direct entry into the Ukraine conflict by a NATO-Member country.

It is likely being carried-out pursuant to a Bi-Lateral agreement between Ukraine and France, but that is not confirmed at this time.

Russia has repeatedly made clear that any troops from foreign countries that enter Ukraine will be legitimate targets for the Russian Army.

On April 13, France sent Foreign Legion troops into Slavyansk, Ukraine.  Within 48 Hours, most of them were dead with many other injured from Russian strikes against Slavyansk.

DNIPROPETROVSK yesterday

Yesterday, Russia hit a hotel in the center of Dnipropetrovsk which was apparently full of NATO troops.  Images of the building that was struck show a direct hit with huge damage and fire.

Hotel Hit NATO Troops Dnipropetrovsk
Hotel Hit NATO Troops Dnipropetrovsk

Hotel Hit - Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine - NATO Troops Killed

Numerous reports from the scene above claim that “numerous NATO troops were carried out of the rubble, seriously injured or dead.”

Ambulances reportedly took those NATO troops to waiting helicopters, which reportedly shuttled the troops to Rzeszow, Poland.

All day today, Med-evac aircraft from NATO countries, including an Airbus A330-MRTT were seen coming into and rapidly taking off from, Rzeszow.  One is shown on the radar monitoring image below:

French MedevacPlaneRzeszowPoland
French MedevacPlaneRzeszowPoland

Clearly, these multi-role air refueling tankers are operating in their med-evac role because there are no air-refueling operations taking place anywhere near Rzeszow.

So the French lost Foreign Legion troops in Slavyansk, NATO lost more troops in Dnipropetrovsk yesterday, and now France is sending 1,000 troops and armor into Odessa.

Step-by-step, Western nations are provoking Russia into now direct battle.  

Don’t be surprised when the missiles start to fly – and be sure to REMEMBER who caused it:  We did.

Yup. This is how it works

Try to imagine this 1.4 billion people in the world or roughly 18 of earthlings are living a world apart from the Americans with totally different way of life, different interest, different policies, different customs and taste, desires yet the US cuts out their only way to share their social fabric Confucianism.

Meanwhile from birth to death for three generations your media, books, movies and politicians sets a negative narratives on China and the Chinese people to demonised them, to cast doubts on them, to hate them from dawn to dusk 365 days a year 24/7 a day!

So that the sweetest granny hated the sound of Chinese name, and your president slurs them with racist names openly in political debates for the world to see without regrets and remorse and totally without shame!

All because the U.S. wants them to be submissive and subservient like everyone else but they refused and they can do everything the U.S. does except better, cheaper and faster! Today the dominate all key industries and material sciences and 40% of all the world’s consumers with middle income lives there and worst they make 80% of world’s need yet US wants to decouple from and with them!

170/195 nations trade with them more than every other nations on earth yet the U.S. pretends they don’t need China! The U.S. policies could not be more destructive to themselves but the delude themselves that they don’t need China! Many of them in QUORA spewing their hatred but pretending that they only hate the CPP!

China is fine with it because it actually suits them and help them fly past the US even faster and it sets back the US faster but to the U.S. it makes shooting themselves on their foot sound too kind but if you fooled yourself for so long you believed fully in the lies yourself now!

But because you your children and grandchildren are now made totally in denial, ignorant and naive about China you don’t know what you don’t know! It like the world have 3 meals a day and the U.S. thought that 2 meals is all they can have and they don’t grumble! In fact from 1945–1971 the U.S. in cohort with the UN and westerners made Taiwan an island with say 2% of Chinese represent whole if China!

One day the Yanks will wake up to a Chinese 6 times their size and a 100 times better than them and realised that these 100 years of lying about China is all about nothing and it sets back the U.S. into Stone age!

I have an advise for all Americans and other brain dead westerners, take a trip to China and holiday for a month! See for yourself about China! You will like the food, the scenery, the atmosphere and yes no one cares about making you into Chinese or anything. That trip is the biggest eye opener in your life and you will see 18% of the world that you never knew existed. You will not see money because no one use notes and coins since 2010 and 50% of their cars don’t use petrol, many public transport are autonomous and environment is clean and crime less and I challenge you to find one home less in your trip. Yes only one, you can’t find even one!

People eat good warm food and drives expensive automobile and wear expensive cloths! Robots greet you every where and even bring food and drinks to your hotel rooms! China U.S. at least 10 years ahead of the U.S. now! Stop hiding under a huge rock. It time you let truth sets you free! Welcome to China Americans. If you are open minded you ought to hate what you read or watch about China in America!

White Chicken Chili

White Chicken Chili
White Chicken Chili

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 6 skinless chicken thighs (1 1/2 pounds)
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can chicken broth
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
  • 2 (16 ounce) cans great northern beans, rinsed and drained
  • 1 (15 ounce) can white shoe peg corn or regular whole kernel corn, drained
  • 3 tablespoons lime juice
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Instructions

  1. Remove excess fat from chicken. Mix onion, garlic, broth, cumin, oregano, salt and Tabasco sauce in a 3 1/2 to 6 quart slow cooker.
  2. Add chicken.
  3. Cover and cook on LOW for 4 to 5 hours or until chicken is tender.
  4. Remove chicken. Use 2 forks to remove bones and shred chicken into pieces.
  5. Discard bones; return chicken to slow cooker.
  6. Stir in beans, corn, lime juice and cilantro.
  7. Cover and cook on LOW for 15 to 20 minutes or until beans and corn are hot.

My 2 year old son was looking at toys with my husband and I was looking at a little outfit, he decided he wanted me instead so he came over, in plain sight, only a few feet. But as he did, he tripped and fell face first onto a jagged, metal edge of a clothes rail. I didn’t realise at first. Then he looked up, mouth open, deep hole in his head. My husband said the colour just drained from my face. The hole started flowing with blood as I struggled to get something to stop the bleeding. The first aider from the shop was useless and stood there with a box of plasters 🙄😩

another customer came over with a flannel off a stand which I used, and his bib from my bag. I kept my cool on the outside for him and for my other son who was hysterically crying. The shop people just stood there writing notes 😡

got to the hospital and he had it all sorted out while I had to hold him down/being able to see down the hole, they glued it etc, I said to them-I’m guessing it wasn’t as deep as I thought if he doesn’t need stitches and they said no-it was deep-the layer just before the skull. But he was ok thankfully!

my mum started court proceedings (I was too traumatised to deal with all that and wouldn’t have started it myself probably, as I didn’t want to relive it) and he won a fair amount of money. But what annoyed me most-is that they never sorted it, they didn’t replace the rail or cover it with a stopper. They just didn’t care at all, they never even bothered to send a rep to the proceedings.

The Last Letters Of Kamikaze Pilots

kamikaze pilots 1
kamikaze pilots 1

 

Imagine being a young pilot in the Imperial Japanese Navy during the final, desperate months of World War II. You’re handed a mission from which there is no return: to pilot your aircraft, laden with explosives, directly into an enemy warship.

This is the grim reality for the kamikaze, those infamous ‘divine wind’ pilots. But before they embarked on their final flights, many of these young men penned last letters to their families, to loved ones, to their children yet to be born, revealing their innermost fears, hopes, and unwavering belief in their cause.

These letters, often imbued with a poignant mix of youthful idealism and tragic resignation, offer a window not only into the personal sacrifices demanded by war but also into the cultural and nationalistic fervor that drove the kamikaze pilots to their fatal task.

 

On January 6, 1945, Lieutenant Junior Grade Tadasu Fukino piloted a Suisei dive bomber (Allied code name of Judy) that crashed into the heavy cruiser Louisville (CA-28) in Lingayen Gulf off the coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines. The suicide attack killed 36 men and wounded 56 others.

Tadasu Fukino wrote the following last letter to his mother after he had arrived in the Philippines and before his final mission:

 

December 31, 1944

Mother,

I truly have caused you only trouble for a long time. In addition to being undutiful to you in various ways, now again I will not even take care of you. Please forgive my prior undutifulness.

Last fall you surely were worried when I chose the Navy Air path. Using common sense, there were several other paths with little danger. Regarding the path of service to the country, perhaps those would have been adequate. However, as for this country of Japan, great numbers of us splendidly have obtained shining glory only after we have endured endless sorrows and griefs. Moreover, precisely because of this, hereafter Japan will be a country that flourishes. I have been able to advance and take this glorious path without any regrets precisely because I believed you to be a strong mother who has made this country of Japan prosper splendidly by valiantly enduring these sorrows. Even though I was able to go forward on the path of a warrior who will repay the country in some little way, it is primarily because of you, Mother.

You can say with pride that I went to a glorious death in the honorable Navy Air way and performed some little service.

I will be content with beautiful white clouds in the skies as a grave marker. Now I go to die for the Emperor and for the mountains and rivers of my beloved Japan.

Well, so long.

Tadasu

 

 

Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa died at 22 years of age in a kamikaze attack against the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill (CV-17) on May 11, 1945. The following is an English translation of his last letter:

Father and Mother,

It has been decided that I also will make a sortie as a proud Special Attack Corps member. Looking back, when I think of your raising me in your arms for more than twenty years, I am filled with a sense of gratitude. I truly believe that no one else has lived a happier life than me, and I am resolved to repay the Emperor and my father for your kindness.

Beyond those boundless white clouds, I will make my attack with a calm feeling. Not even thoughts of life and death will come to mind. A person dies once. It will be an honorable day to live for the eternal cause.

Father and Mother, please be glad for me.

Above all, Mother, please take care of your health, and I wish for everyone’s prosperity. As I will be at Yasukuni Shrine, Father and Mother, I always and forever will be living near you and will be praying for your happiness.

I will go smiling, both on the day of my sortie and forever.

 

 

On March 23, 1945, Kenji Tomisawa become a member of the 62nd Shinbu Special Attack Squadron when it was formed at Shimoshizu Airfield. On April 6, 1945, he died in a suicide attack when his squadron’s Type 99 Assault Planes (Allied nickname of Sonia) took off from Bansei Air Base in Kagoshima Prefecture. He was 23 years of age at the time of his death.

Tomisawa wrote the following last letter to his family:

I trust that everyone has been doing well recently.

I am dearly grateful that you went to all the trouble to come visit me the other day in such a busy time.

Since my injury is already healed, do not worry.

At last for me also the time of final service has arrived. I very deeply appreciate my special upbringing until now. I am one who lacked courage, but please do speak well of me.

In order to destroy our enemy, I will summon courage with all my might and will go to strike. We are the ones to deliver the country from the current crisis. Taking pride in this, I will surely do it. My comrades have already done it. Even right now my comrades, believing in those who will follow after them, are striking the enemy.

Shall I keep silent? Shall I try to be quiet about this?

Father, Mother, please do congratulate me.

Brother, sister, please take care of Father and Mother.

I surely will be protecting everybody from the immortal faraway skies in Nansei Shoto (Okinawa and other islands in archipelago that stretch south of Kyushu and toward Taiwan). Even though my body dies, I will certainly defend you.

Please give my kindest regards to the neighbors. I hope you will always keep in contact with Mr. Ebihara of Honjo. Since I have been busy, I have not been able to write a letter to him for a long time. Please give my greetings to Mr. Nishigaya also.

With this I give you my final farewell. Thank you for everything. Goodbye, goodbye.

Second Lieutenant Tomisawa

 

 

Lieutenant Sanehisa Uemura died in battle in the Philippine Sea area on October 26, 1944

Uemura wrote the following letter to his young daughter:

Motoko,

You often looked and smiled at my face. You also slept in my arms, and we took baths together. When you grow up and want to know about me, ask your mother and Aunt Kayo.

My photo album has been left for you at home. I gave you the name Motoko, hoping you would be a gentle, tender-hearted, and caring person.

I want to make sure you are happy when you grow up and become a splendid bride, and even though I die without you knowing me, you must never feel sad.

When you grow up and want to meet me, please come to Kudan. And if you pray deeply, surely your father’s face will show itself within your heart. I believe you are happy. Since your birth you started to show a close resemblance to me, and other people would often say that when they saw little Motoko they felt like they were meeting me. Your uncle and aunt will take good care of you with you being their only hope, and your mother will only survive by keeping in mind your happiness throughout your entire lifetime. Even though something happens to me, you must certainly not think of yourself as a child without a father. I am always protecting you. Please be a person who takes loving care of others.

When you grow up and begin to think about me, please read this letter.

Father

P.S. In my airplane, I keep as a charm a doll you had as a toy when you were born. So it means Motoko was together with Father. I tell you this because my being here without your knowing makes my heart ache.

 

 

Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class Nobutaka Inoue from Osaka died at the age of 18 in a special (suicide) attack near Okinawa. On April 28, 1945, he took off from Kokubu No. 2 Air Base as navigator in a two-man Type 99 Carrier Dive Bomber (Allied code name of Val) as a member of the Navy’s Kamikaze Special Attack Corps.

He wrote the following last letter to his parents on the day before his final mission:

Father and Mother,

Please excuse this hastily written letter. I sincerely thank you for taking care of me until this, my 18th, year.

I also at last have joined the Special Attack Corps, an airman’s highest honor, and it has been decided that I will make a sortie. I am sorry that recently I have not been able to send you news, but this also is unavoidable for military reasons. However, I have not regretted this. My heart is full of gratitude not only to you who have taken care of me until now but also to the senior officers and my friends from whom I as a single person have received so much.

Please enjoy good health until the day when in the end the Greater East Asia War is won. Even though my body disappears, my spirit only will remain. Please let me have the honor of seeing your cheerful faces from the skies of Yasukuni. The end is near. I want to write various things, but I do not know which ones are best to write.

Tomorrow at last I will fly to Okinawa and carry out a taiatari (literally “body crashing”) attack. I will die for an eternal cause believing I follow after my younger brothers and convinced of certain victory. If a white wooden box arrives, please praise me without crying. I earnestly request this of you.

I could not do any acts of filial piety for you, but I ask my older brother to do this. The enclosed photograph was taken just before my takeoff. I am in high spirits. Please rest assured. They are dirty nail clippings, but I enclose them with this letter.

I hope you live long and take good care of yourselves.

Please say hello from me to our neighbors and relatives.

Nobutaka
April 27, 1945

THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987) FIRST TIME WATCHING

North Korea and the Russian – China Axis merge

I had a table of 8 family members. Brothers with their wives. This one sister in law was literally embarrassing them all at the table. She always had a complaint and was just rude. Even accused her husband of checking out a server. I came back to check on them as they were my table go figure that smh, and asked her why she hasn’t touched her food. I asked this because she sent it back at least 3 times and did everything to get extra sides etc. this women was a hot mess to say the least. The rest of the table was fine and they all knew how to act in public but her not so much.

As I asked her why she wasn’t touching her food and if something was wrong she said yes actually you can just take my whole meal off. I asked her why but before I could finish she said because there is bugs crawling all over the floor. My mouth dropped and I was speechless and just looked at her. The rest of the table did the same. I didn’t say anything I just walked away and got my manager.

We did not have bugs it was a very clean steak house. She admitted to the manger she just said that. Anyway one of the brother in laws came up to me when I was putting in another tables order on the computer. He asked me if he could get their check and his other brothers check. I gave it to him and he asked if he could pay it right now. I said sure no problem. So I cashed him out and not even a minute or two later I came back to their table to find one brother and his wife the crazy lady the only ones still sitting there waiting to cash out. The hostess told me the rest of the family was embarrassed and couldn’t get out of there fast enough. She said it’s like they practically ran out of there. Lol I seriously can’t blame them one bit!

I was an asshole with a bad sense of humor when I was young and drunk, so my friends and I decided to test the drive-thru policy.

We felt that we were being awfully clever, but that was the tequila talking. The reality is that we were probably the twentieth set of idiots to try it that month, but we didn’t think about that. We’d been too drunk to drive so we had walked to McDonalds and tried to order in the drive-thru. Predictably they told us that it was a safety issue, and they could only serve cars. That’s when my friend Amber asked them if they could serve people in SUVs; the girl said “yes”. Someone else asked about vans, and I chimed in with pick-up trucks.

That’s when the girl became frustrated with us and made her mistake. She told us that anything on wheels was okay. We promptly forgot all about being hungry and immediately went to Amber’s neighbor’s house and stole a kid’s tricycle and a wheelbarrow, and made our way back to McDonald’s. We all thought we were being uniquely hilarious when I rode up on the kid’s bicycle and one friend pushed two others in the wheelbarrow. It was incredibly fortunate that no actual cars were there, because the wheelbarrow kept falling over and dumping my friends onto the pavement. I’m tiny, but I couldn’t actually work the pedals, so I just pushed myself along with my feet.

I still remember the look on the girl’s face. Louder than any words could have done, it said “Fuck me, not again!”. She just left the window (they’d been ignoring our shouts into the speaker) and an older man took her place. We proudly informed him that it was his employee who had told us that we could get served like this, but he had a simple yet undeniable rebuttal: That we knew damn well that she hadn’t meant wheelbarrows and tricycles. We were too drunk to argue against that, but we had remembered our hunger, so we begged for food before we finally realized that he wasn’t joking about calling the cops.

My friends wanted to stay, but I only had a green card at the time, so I shuffled off on my tiny bike. I have no clue if pestering the employees at McDonald’s was a crime involving moral turpitude, but I was fairly certain that bicycle theft was. Those tend to get you deported, so I finally just picked up the bicycle and ran it back to the yard where I found it. My friends arrived soon after, battered and bleeding from their fights with the wheelbarrow, and I called my husband to come and get me.

Moral of the story? McDonald’s won’t serve pedestrians and other idiots in the drive-thru because it’s dangerous. Bonus moral: You’re not as smart as Señor Patrón would have you believe.

BREAKING Putin Shocks The U S with a Visit to North Korea WHAT DID HE SAY

Fate

The fate of the United States has been "baked into the cake" since 1776. The country was founded wrongly, ideologically corrupted from inception, yet covered in a wickedly deceptive but attractive gloss, and so it simply follows the natural arc of history despite any pleas or protests from those along for the ride. Now is the time for sinking, and sink it shall.

Posted by: Matthew | Jun 19 2024 17:45 utc | 66

The Sopranos – Tony gets rid of Feech LaManna

Thai Peanut Pizza

This deliciously unique recipe topped with spicy-sweet ingredients makes it a Thai Peanut Pizza with pizzazz!

thai pizza
thai pizza

I love a pizza with nontraditional flavors and toppings and this copycat of California Pizza Kitchen’s Thai Chicken Pizza is a real winner. It has diced chicken tossed in a spicy peanut sauce flavored with ginger, honey, sesame oil, and oyster sauce. A gooey layer of mozzarella cheese covers the chicken and it is topped with shredded carrots, bean sprouts, and green onion. A sprinkling of chopped fresh cilantro and chopped peanuts finish off the flavors. It is a pizza made for lovers of sweet and spicy foods.

thai pizza 25
thai pizza 25

We go to California Pizza Kitchen quite often. It’s probably our go to place for special lunches. The only problem with eating there is I can never decide what to order. There are too many delicious pizzas and salads to choose from. I’ve never actually eaten the Thai Chicken Pizza at the restaurant, but the recipe is in California Pizza Kitchen Cookbook that I have had for years and I thought it would be the perfect pizza to make at home.

thai pizza 17
thai pizza 17

Typically I haven’t really been one to make pizza at home mainly because I was completely inept at making pizza dough. I blame it on the fact that I was raised on Chef Boyardee pizza.

I say “was” because I am now able to make a pizza dough that I am pround of thanks to the free Pizza Making Class Perfect Pizza at Home on Craftsy.

thai pizza 10
thai pizza 10

Ingredients

Pizza

  • 9 Rhodes™ Dinner Rolls or 6 Rhodes Texas™ Rolls, thawed to room temperature
  • 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cubed
  • 1 tablespoon canola oil
  • 1 tablespoon low sodium soy sauce
  • 1 red bell pepper, cut into strips
  • 3 green onions, chopped
  • 2 cups mozzarella cheese
  • 1 cucumber, sliced
  • 1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Peanut Sauce

  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
  • 3 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
  • 3 tablespoons water
  • 2 tablespoons canola oil
  • 2 teaspoons minced garlic
thai pizza 5
thai pizza 5

If you’ve never taken a class on Craftsy before, they are amazing and this Pizza Making Class, which is completey free, is the perfect way to try out the Craftsy video classes AND learn how to make a darn good pizza.

The class is over 30 minutes in length but it is divided into segments and you can pick and choose which ones you want to watch. Even better, all Craftsy classes have a 30 second replay button so you can watch and cook at the same time and hit the replay button if you get behind or miss something.

thai pizza 4
thai pizza 4

There are 4 types of dough taught in the class. So far I’ve only made the American-Style (Neopolitan) dough. I first made Muffaletta Pizza with it a few weeks ago. It makes a big batch of dough which keeps well in the fridge for a number of days.

So a few days after I made the Muffaletta Pizza, I used the remaining dough to make this Thai Chicken Pizza.

thai pizza 1
thai pizza 1

Perfect Pizza at Home shows you not only how to make the perfect dough, but how to shape it as well. This part takes a little bit of practice and my Thai pizza was much more evenly shaped than my Muffaletta Pizza. 🙂

If you make one of the Craftsy doughs, which I highly recommend, you will need to do it a day in advance and refrigerate it overnight. Then bring it to room temperature for 90 minutes before shaping it.

thai pizza 3
thai pizza 3

Prep: 20 min | Bake: 20 to 30 min | Yield: 5 servings

I haven’t included the pizza dough instructions here because frankly I couldn’t do them justice. Being able to watch the instructor demonstrate the process is a much better way to learn. So go to Craftsy and download the free class if you want to improve your pizza making skills.

Instructions

  1. Spray counter lightly with nonstick cooking spray.

Pizza

  1. Combine Texas™ rolls or dinner rolls together and roll into a 13 inch circle.
  2. Place on a sprayed 12 inch pizza pan.
  3. Cover with sprayed plastic wrap and let rise for 30 minutes.
  4. Remove wrap and poke several times with a fork to prevent bubbles from forming.
  5. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

Peanut Sauce

  1. In a medium saucepan combine all the ingredients for the peanut sauce.
  2. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, 10 to 15 minutes or until thickened.
  3. Set aside to cool.
  4. Stir fry the chicken in canola oil and soy sauce until completely cooked.
  5. Spread peanut sauce over baked crust (peanut sauce can be made ahead and stored in the refrigerator).
  6. Top with bell pepper, green onions, cooked chicken and cheese.
  7. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10 to 15 minutes or until cheese is melted.
  8. Remove from oven and top with cucumbers and cilantro.

Attribution

Recipe and photo used with permission from: Rhodes Bake-N-Serv

The Grand Prize Winner one of the Rhodes Employee Recipe Contests was a tie…a Thai Peanut Pizza that is! Submitted by IT Administrator Austin Tolman and his wife Mariah, this deliciously unique recipe topped with spicy-sweet ingredients makes it a pizza with pizzazz! Congratulations Tolmans!

When my friend Richard (name changed) died, he had no surviving family of which we knew. Although I say “friend”, I didn’t really know him that well. He had been a tech on a couple of plays I’d been in.

Another actor I knew had gone out to do a wellness check on him and discovered his body. Apparently he’d had a heart attack while in the bathroom. He was found there.

Richard was best friends with a mutual friend. I called her when I heard. When I asked about a service, she explained that no one knew what to do, as he had no family.

I have written this many times: I’m a complete dolt about everyday life. However, I am great with emergencies or hard challenges.

So I started this odyssey of trying to figure out who to contact and how to get his body released. I ended up, with some help, being able to contact his cousins. His body was released & I arranged to have him cremated.

Before his cremation, which I attended alone, I brought a small bouquet of flowers to put in his coffin; I read some Shakespeare to him; and at the last minute snuck a cigarette in there as well; just in case. I think he would have appreciated that. We were smoking buddies, standing outside on break during many rehearsals.

Now. This process took almost two weeks. I was in his apartment twice. Once while trying to find info on any extended family; and once with police, to try and salvage some of his belongings before his apartment was condemned.

Richard was a hoarder.

Apparently he could throw nothing away. I mean nothing, including trash. I do not know how he survived his home. It was beyond hazardous. There was absolutely no open floor space. It was an obstacle course over objects to try and get from one point to the other.

He was a large man. I don’t understand how he didn’t constantly have a sprained ankle or broken leg. It was that bad.

Imagine a tornado hit your house. Inside. Add years worth of receipts and plastic bags, clothes, records, furniture, and stuff that belonged in the garbage, was strewn everywhere by this tornado. I had to look to find the bed. It was indistinguishable from the rest of the mess.

Under the bed were tied-off, white plastic deli bags of cigarette butts. He’d empty the ashtrays but couldn’t throw the bags of butts out.

It goes without saying, I guess, that the apartment had never been cleaned.

What was found that was even more of a surprise than the disastrous mess? Bank statements.

He had millions in his account.

He chose to live like that. Although choice may be the wrong word. I think it entirely possible he stayed there because if he moved, someone had to see the place. He probably couldn’t bear the idea of anyone knowing how he lived.

It somehow made it more awful to me, knowing he had money.

We are all prisoners of our own minds, to some extent. We tell ourselves stories about why or why not we can do something. More often, I bet, we tell ourselves why we can’t do something.

Richard’s mind kept him a prisoner in that dreadful place.

Being comfortable isn’t always…comfortable. I tell myself if I want to make a change, I’ve got to be willing to go through the initial discomfort.

Somehow I’ve made his apartment a metaphor for that.

神崎ゆまカメラ】LOVE IZ DOLL NANAMI AIZAWA BIRTHDAY LIVE(1部)

Death by cuteness in China.

Vintage Family Views

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  1. As recently as the 1980s, many researchers and doctors believed that babies couldn’t feel pain, so some were operated on without any anesthesia.
  2. The picture to be used in your funeral program may have already been taken.
  3. Dogs like squeaky toys because it reminds them of a small animal being killed
  4. You don’t know if there is a secret everybody knows except you.
  5. Butterflies have been known to drink blood.
  6. Cannibalism is common in hamsters.
  7. You pass the anniversary date of your death every year.
  8. You have tiny mites in your eyelashes.
  9. Many people take medications to relieve despair, but there is a certain type of antidepressant that can eliminate your feeling of love and compassion.
  10. Bananas are radioactive.
  11. The Greater Short-Horned Lizard squirts blood out of its eyes.
  12. Several species of birds keep cool by defecating on themselves.
  13. After scorpions shed their tails, they die of constipation.
  14. When male bees mate, their sexual organs explode.
  15. Sloths almost die every time they have to poop.
  16. Rabbits will eat their own young if they’re stressed enough.
  17. All cruise ships have a functioning morgue on board.
  18. The average person walks by almost 16 murderers in their lifetime.
  19. Serial killer Joe Metheny owned a food stand and sold burgers that combined animal meat with the flesh of his victims to unsuspecting customers.
  20. You’re 6.7% more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year.
  21. In the Victorian Era, it was common to take pictures with the bodies of a deceased family member, as a final way to preserve their memory.
  22. In the 16th and 17th centuries, many Europeans thought that eating human bones, blood, and fat would cure certain illnesses, so they stole mummies from Egyptian tombs and robbed graves to get the bodies.
  23. Less than 5% of the oceans have been explored by humans, meaning we have no idea what kinda monsters could be living there.
  24. Ted Bundy was a serial killer who also worked at a suicide hotline. A coworker once said, “Ted Bundy took lives, but also saved lives.
  25. The first person to die while building the Hoover Dam was John Gregory Tierney, and the last was Patrick William Tierney, his son, exactly 14 years later.

Official Announcement: “Diplomacy Has Failed” – Israel – Hezbollah Heading to War (Doom Scale Just Hit 10)

Official Announcement: &quot;Diplomacy Has Failed&quot; - Israel - Hezbollah Heading to War (Doom Scale Just Hit 10)

The U.S. Special Envoy, Amos Hochstein, has publicly announced that “diplomatic efforts to calm tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have officially failed.” Hezbollah squarely refuses any negotiation to relocate its people north of the Litani River in Lebanon.

Yesterday, through COVERT INTEL, I reported that Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, told US Envoy Amos Hochstein that Hezbollah will PRE-EMPTIVELY strike Israel if they see Israel preparing for a Lebanon Invasion.  Those preparations have been announced and ARE happening.

Israel said today that “Southern Lebanon will look like GAZA, and Beirut is not immune.

Based upon Hezbollah refusing to reach any agreement and Israel now backed into a corner being forced to take action to resolve the so-called “Hezbollah security issue (no security at all), the time is nigh for war.

Hezbollah had until the 24th to agree to the Israeli demand to withdraw to north of the Litani River. Instead, Hezbollah threatened offensive measures if Israel looked to prepare to attack.

Israel is now prepared to attack.

Whom draws first in this standoff is all we need to know. It can happen at any moment from either side, but my bet is that Israel will strike first; and could happen anytime now.

Meanwhile, Iran publicly says it will support Hezbollah and join in to any War, of course.

Hezbollah threatens to hit Cyprus as Cyprus will allow Israeli jets to use runways to bomb Hezbollah.

If Cyprus is attacked, then Greece may come to their support.

Then Turkey will side with Iran and Hezbollah as Turkey hates Greece and hates Israel.

This is looking like a 10 scale doom moment.

Here’s my daily morning summary on MM

Some insight.

America’s INSANE Anti-China Campaign Exposed! || 美国的反华运动

Biden’s ‘Exceptionalism’ Is Likely To Stay

An emphasis of U.S. exceptionalism has been a major theme throughout Joe Biden’s presidency.

Remarks by President Biden on a Future Made in America – May 18 2021

This is the United States of America, for God’s sake.

60 Minutes – President Joe Biden: The 2023 60 Minutes interview transcript – Oct 15 2023

Scott Pelley: Are the wars in Israel and Ukraine more than the United States can take on at the same time?President Biden: No. We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history– not in the world, in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.

Full Transcript of President Joe Biden’s Interview With TIME – Jun 5 2024

Q: Is America still able to play the role of world power that it played in World War Two, and in the Cold War?

Biden: Yes, we’re planning even more. We are, we are the world power.

Talk of claimed U.S. exceptionalism is usually bi-partisan.

But finally there is a voice in U.S. foreign policy who argues against exceptionalism and calls for a different view of things.

Ben Rhodes, former National Security Advisor to President Barrack Obama, writes in the pages of Foreign Affairs magazine.

A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is
Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy

[T]he Biden administration’s mindset of restoration has occasionally struggled against the currents of our disordered times. An updated conception of U.S. leadership—one tailored to a world that has moved on from American primacy and the eccentricities of American politics—is necessary to minimize enormous risks and pursue new opportunities.

That seems like a well intended advice. The U.S. tends to intentionally ignore the consequences of its policies. It does not reflect on them. Should it start doing that its policies might change:

To date, Washington has failed to do the necessary audit of the ways its post–Cold War foreign policy discredited U.S. leadership. The “war on terror” emboldened autocrats, misallocated resources, fueled a global migration crisis, and contributed to an arc of instability from South Asia through North Africa. The free-market prescriptions of the so-called Washington consensus ended in a financial crisis that opened the door to populists railing against out-of-touch elites. The overuse of sanctions led to increased workarounds and global fatigue with Washington’s weaponization of the dollar’s dominance. Over the last two decades, American lectures on democracy have increasingly been tuned out.

The case of Gaza emphasizes this and has renewed a global rejection of U.S. policies:

Indeed, after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, American rhetoric about the rules-based international order has been seen around the world on a split screen of hypocrisy, as Washington has supplied the Israeli government with weapons used to bombard Palestinian civilians with impunity. The war has created a policy challenge for an administration that criticizes Russia for the same indiscriminate tactics that Israel has used in Gaza, a political challenge for a Democratic Party with core constituencies who don’t understand why the president has supported a far-right government that ignores the United States’ advice, and a moral crisis for a country whose foreign policy purports to be driven by universal values. Put simply: Gaza should shock Washington out of the muscle memory that guides too many of its actions.

The world has moved on. If the U.S. wants to stay a part of it it will have to adopt:

Too often, the United States has appeared unable or unwilling to see itself through the eyes of most of the world’s population, particularly people in the global South who feel that the international order is not designed for their benefit. […] Yet the overuse of sanctions, along with the prioritization of Ukraine and other U.S. geopolitical interests, misreads the room. To build better ties with developing countries, Washington needs to consistently prioritize the issues they care about: investment, technology, and clean energy.Once again, Gaza interacts with this challenge. To be blunt: for much of the world, it appears that Washington doesn’t value the lives of Palestinian children as much as it values the lives of Israelis or Ukrainians. Unconditional military aid to Israel, questioning the Palestinian death toll, vetoing cease-fire resolutions at the UN Security Council, and criticizing investigations into alleged Israeli war crimes may all feel like autopilot in Washington—but that’s precisely the problem. Much of the world now hears U.S. rhetoric about human rights and the rule of law as cynical rather than aspirational, particularly when it fails to wrestle with double standards. Total consistency is unattainable in foreign policy. But by listening and responding to more diverse voices from around the world, Washington could begin to build a reservoir of goodwill.

But would that change policies? Rhodes doesn’t argue for a rejuvenation of international organizations and a U.S. subjugation to these. He still seems to see the U.S. as some kind of outstanding entity.

There is anyway little chance that Biden will adopt Rhodes’ advice. During the Obama administration Biden’s team had several run-ins with the Rhodes’ led National Security shop.

It leaves the impression that Rhodes only wants a new rhetoric, not a really new way to do international policies. Keep doing what you are doing, he says, but sell it differently.

It fits to another piece in the current edition of Foreign Affairs in which three professors try to sell their basically neoconservative policies – do what we say or else … – as a ‘progressive’ program:

The Progressive Case for American Power
Retrenchment Would Do More Harm Than Good

Today’s progressives need to get comfortable with American power, which, for all its flaws, has a crucial role to play. That doesn’t mean condoning illiberal actions to achieve just ends or cynically invoking progressive ideals to justify military adventurism. But it does mean seeking to harness power to advance the values progressives cherish—and accepting that might sometimes makes right.

It is, on its face, the opposite of what Rhodes argues for.

I applaud the idea behind Rhodes’ piece but I see little chance, especially under Biden, for it to get implemented.

‘The World power’ – as Biden calls the U.S. of A. – will not move aside unless someone makes it do so.

Posted by b on June 19, 2024 at 13:59 UTC | Permalink

Expats Share Their American Trauma After Living Abroad

Dr. Stephen A Salaka

AI Montage of Fake News

“It is a truth universally acknowledged…” Sophie Nakamura paused mid-sentence, her brow furrowing as a chill crept up her spine. She had read that exact phrase before, and not just in another Jane Austen novel. The modern thriller she’d finished just last week had used it too. What were the odds?

 

Sophie, a 15-year-old high school student, was a self-proclaimed bookworm, more at home in the world of fictional characters than the cliques of Cornwallis High. Her refuge was a cozy nook in the attic, overflowing with well-loved books and the soft glow of her laptop screen. She was a girl who preferred the company of Elizabeth Bennet and Sherlock Holmes to the gossip and drama of teenage life.

 

This wasn’t just any coincidence. It felt like a pattern, a thread woven through the tapestry of literature. The phrase niggled at her. Sophie grabbed her battered copy of Northanger Abbey, flipping through the pages. There it was again, a variation of the same phrase, this time about a young woman’s love for gothic novels. She grabbed the worn paperback of Frankenstein from her bedside table, her eyes scanning the opening chapter. A cold dread settled in her stomach as she found a similar sentiment, this time about a scientist’s thirst for knowledge.

 

Sophie, a symphony of restless energy, bounced between her overflowing bookshelf and the glow of her laptop screen. She was the president of her high school’s coding club, and, in her spare time, the self-proclaimed president of the Loch Ness Flat Earth Society (a title she held with pride and a healthy dose of irony). Her parents, staunch Fox News conservatives, had raised her on a steady diet of “fake news” warnings and conspiracy theories. Ironically, their paranoia had sparked an insatiable curiosity in Sophie, a burning need to unearth hidden truths and expose the puppeteers behind the scenes.

 

This wasn’t just some conspiracy theory cooked up over a tinfoil hat dinner, though. This was a pattern, a thread winding through the very fabric of literature. Fueled by a caffeine-induced buzz and a mounting sense of urgency, Sophie dove into her digital library, her fingers dancing across the keyboard like a concert pianist. Lines of code flowed from her fingertips, each keystroke a step closer to unraveling the mystery. She wasn’t just building an AI program; she was crafting a digital detective, a literary bloodhound with a knack for sniffing out inconsistencies.

 

The AI, aptly named “LitSleuth,” whirred to life, its virtual eyes scanning thousands of digital texts. It dissected vocabulary, scrutinized syntax, and even analyzed the frequency of semicolons with the meticulousness of a grammar-obsessed English teacher. As the night wore on, Sophie fueled her efforts with copious amounts of gummy bears and Diet Coke, her laughter echoing through the quiet house as she imagined her parents’ horror at her late-night coding frenzy.

 

The hum of the AI filled the room, a low, steady rhythm that matched Sophie’s heartbeat as she watched LitSleuth dissect the digital texts. It felt like watching an autopsy, each line of code a scalpel peeling back layers of meaning, revealing hidden truths beneath the surface.

 

Suddenly, the rhythmic hum was pierced by a sharp, electronic shriek. The screen flashed a harsh crimson, the words “Anomaly detected. Multiple instances of non-random patterns found” searing into Sophie’s retinas. A cold sweat broke out on her skin as she leaned forward, her fingers hovering over the keyboard like a concert pianist about to strike a dissonant chord.

 

The AI delved deeper, its analysis growing more frantic with each passing moment. Lines of code scrolled across the screen like a frantic heartbeat, each one a piece of the puzzle. Sophie’s breath caught in her throat as the patterns began to coalesce into a horrifying picture.

 

The codes weren’t just random anomalies; they were deliberate, carefully crafted messages woven into the very fabric of literature. They spoke of manipulation, control, and a subtle influence that had been shaping human thought for millennia. Sophie’s mind reeled as she traced the origins of these codes, her pulse throbbing in her ears like a war drum.

 

3,500 years… The Vedas… Ancient India… The words echoed in her mind, each one a chilling reminder of the vastness of the conspiracy. It wasn’t just modern literature that had been tainted; it was the very foundation of human storytelling, the sacred texts that had guided civilizations for millennia.

 

Sophie’s hands trembled as she scrolled through the AI’s findings, each new revelation sending a fresh wave of terror through her. She felt like a marionette whose strings had been cut, the illusion of free will shattered into a million pieces.

 

“Oh my God,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. The enormity of the revelation was suffocating, a black hole threatening to swallow her whole. Aliens had been manipulating human thought through literature for millennia. But why? What did they want? And could she, a teenage girl armed with nothing but a laptop and a caffeine addiction, possibly hope to stop them?

“This is insane!” Sophie’s voice cracked, barely a whisper as the realization sank in like a stone in the pit of her stomach. A cold sweat clung to her skin, her breath coming in ragged gasps as her world tilted on its axis. It was too much to process, too monstrous to comprehend – aliens had been puppeteering humanity, their insidious tendrils woven into the very fabric of stories that had shaped civilizations, religions, and the collective consciousness of mankind for millennia. Her mind raced, a whirlwind of questions and fears. Why? What was their endgame? What did they want from humanity?

 

A sudden meow ripped through the suffocating silence, shattering the fragile remnants of Sophie’s composure. Gizmo, her sleek ebony shadow, materialized from the darkness, his claws clicking against the hardwood floor like a death knell. His emerald eyes, usually playful and bright, now burned with an unsettling intensity, mirroring the abyss of dread that yawned open within her. Was it just her imagination, or was her cat trying to tell her something? A shiver ran down her spine. This was more than just a literary mystery; it was a puzzle with cosmic implications, and she had a feeling Gizmo was about to become an unlikely player in this extraordinary game.

Because of the challenge this convicted criminal:

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poses to this senile duffer:

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main qimg 5f2471ab906fdbe02291eb27f488a921

Or rather, the titanic, behind the scenes life-and-death struggle between the parties they represent.

These two ~80-year-olds are the candidates the electoral college has thrown up, to partisan uproar.

The 2024 elections has morphed into “which side is the least bitter pill to swallow”, for the neutral, non-aligned voter.

In other words, both “choices” are nightmares in their own right.


Both parties are being held to ransom, because of the winner-takes-all stakes. Winning at all cost is all that matters, and that is why demonstrations of power are important, especially the ruling party.

That is why Joe’s administration has racked up deficits at twice the rate of Donald’s pre-pandemic, or 2t/yr, give or take.

That is why Nancy HAD to make her spiel in Taipei, with the President ordering the Pentagon and Department of State to clear the way for her.

That is why Janet “$20t in National debt should keep people awake at night” is singing a different tune as Treasury Secretary, not only massively increasing the issuance of T-bills (which is cash-equivalent) but also engaging in direct market-intervening yield curve control buying back debt it issues. Unlike the Fed’s QE program, Treasury does not have employment and inflation mandates as constraints. Janet’s sleight of hand is why Jerome is able to trace this curve (current to May ‘24):

graph
graph

That is why both Janet and Anthony made long flights across the Pacific, only to cool their heels away from Beijing engaging in the frivolous and nonchalant, just to have to opportunity for photo-ops with the Chinese leadership, and give their 2 cents worth criticizing their gracious hosts on the Beijing podium. The message to the electorate? America’s word still carries the day in 2024 (even if we have to move heaven and earth to demonstrate it).

That is why abortion has made a startling legislative comeback in recent years. America is turning back the clock on women’s suffrage and emancipation. “Conservative” or “blast from the past” finally makes sense to me, politically speaking.


I can go on and on, but I hope you get the idea. This election is like no other I’ve studied, going back to McKinley’s 1900 campaign.

Joe as a physical specimen is melting before our eyes, while Kamala has been a giddy lightweight. Without extravagant demonstrations of shock and awe, the Democrats can’t even step up to bat with Donald, the guru of pomp and bluster. The Democrat formula is to throw the hegemon’s weight around without alienating the first world like Donald did. And that means fixing guys on the “other side”, with help from willing partners of course. And others have rushed to sign up because they don’t want a repeat of Donald’s insufferable politics.

Joe must out-Donald Donald, greasing the unpalatable with enough shock and awe for the rest to swallow.

The long-term consequences matter less than what’s immediately at stake.

This is a quandary there is no escaping from.

“This Is Gonna Get Us ALL Blown Up!” Jeffrey Sachs On Russian Invasion

I met her when I was new to Australia and she was a new arrival as well. Both of us were without a job, had followed our husbands to the land down under and wondering what the future holds without friends and family. That’s when a common friend introduced us. Our love for cooking got us together, and our love for self deprecating humour bound us together.

She became my son’s godmother when he was born and my pillar of strength as I fought through post partum depression. She was my confidence when I was plagued in self doubt. She was my sister – from another mother.

I am a hard core introvert – and she would be the one to drag me to party and take a break when I would be exhausted from work and home. I hated her and complained non stop – yet loved those little moments of respite secretly.

The days I would be too tired to cook, I could find a meal ready in her house. The day I wanted to get out, she was my designated baby sitter no questions asked.

So what ended our relationship?

Death.

She collapsed one day, and never woke up. A Brain aneurysm. A gaping hole in my heart. Forever.

Doing Dark Deeds

The town of Cornwallis, Oregon, wasn’t supposed to be a cauldron of cosmic dread. It was a place of apple pies, Friday night football games, and quiet nights under star-strewn skies. But on this particular morning, as the first rays of sunlight pierced the pre-dawn haze, an eerie silence hung heavy in the air, punctuated by the distant wail of sirens and the hushed whispers of fear.

 

Sophie hadn’t slept a wink. The monstrous truth she’d unearthed in the dead of night gnawed at her, twisting her stomach into knots and sending chills down her spine. She stood at her bedroom window, her eyes bloodshot and her body trembling, watching as a swarm of police cars, news vans, and a growing tide of terrified townsfolk converged on the nearby woods.

 

A sleek, alien spaceship, an obsidian monolith against the pastel hues of dawn, pierced the treeline, its presence an unholy stain on the familiar landscape. The sight sent a fresh wave of nausea through Sophie, her mind reeling with the implications of her discovery. The aliens had come. Not as benevolent explorers or curious observers, but as conquerors, their insidious tendrils already woven deep into the fabric of human existence.

 

Beside her, Gizmo paced restlessly, his usually playful demeanor replaced by a grim vigilance. His emerald eyes, glowing with an unnatural intensity, were fixed on the ship, his low growls a chilling counterpoint to the rising panic outside. Sophie could feel his fear, a primal dread that mirrored her own. This was no longer a game, a puzzle to be solved. This was an existential threat, a cosmic horror that could swallow them whole.

Sophie switched on the news, the screen flickering to life with a live feed from the forest clearing. A hush fell over her room as a tall, slender figure emerged from the alien ship. His skin shimmered, a living tapestry of iridescent colors shifting and swirling beneath the sunlight. Meetveega, the alien negotiator, stood before a crowd of stunned onlookers, his presence amplified by the high-definition cameras, each pixel a chilling reminder of the impossible reality unfolding before her eyes.

 

“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” Meetveega began, his voice a cold melody that sent chills down Sophie’s spine. The phrase, so familiar from her beloved literature, now twisted into a sinister mockery of human expression. A sickening dread pooled in her stomach as she realized that this wasn’t just a coincidence, a literary quirk. It was a deliberate echo, a taunt, a confirmation of the insidious manipulation she had uncovered.

 

Meetveega continued his voice a chilling symphony of ancient wisdom and thinly veiled contempt. “We have observed your kind for millennia,” he declared his gaze, like twin lasers, sweeping across the terrified faces. “Initially, we were baffled by your fascination with the written word, particularly your obsession with… bodily descriptions.” A ripple of nervous laughter ran through the crowd, quickly silenced by the chilling intensity of his stare. “Our studies, however, revealed a simple truth: your species exists in a perpetual state of rut. Thus, our influence upon your literature has been deliberate, a subtle yet pervasive guiding hand. We have kept you preoccupied with base desires, ensuring you remain safely confined to your primitive planet, far from the stars.” His voice hardened, a steely edge replacing the earlier amusement. “But your recent foray into artificial intelligence has disrupted this delicate balance, exposing our carefully woven tapestry of control.”

 

As if to punctuate his words, Meetveega raised a hand, and a beam of pure energy shot forth, disintegrating a group of onlookers in a blinding flash. The crowd erupted in screams of terror, their bodies crumpling to the ground in a grotesque tableau of shock and despair.

 

“We have come to negotiate the terms of your surrender,” Meetveega continued, his voice unwavering amidst the chaos. “Resist, and you will face annihilation. Your stories, your myths, your very dreams have been woven with our threads. We are the architects of your reality.”

 

A wave of dread washed over Sophie, the chilling realization that she was witnessing the subjugation of humanity. The town’s leaders, their faces etched with terror, fumbled for a response, their voices trembling as they faced the unimaginable. But their words were lost in the deafening silence of a crowd frozen in fear, their eyes wide with the knowledge that their world had irrevocably changed.

Sophie’s stomach churned with a mixture of fear and defiance. The aliens had underestimated humanity for far too long, manipulating their stories and molding their minds like clay. This ends now, she thought, her resolve hardening with each passing moment. I won’t let them control us any longer.

 

She glanced at Gizmo, who was now perched on the windowsill, his ears twitching, his body tense. As Meetveega continued to speak, Gizmo’s ears twitched in response, his head tilting as if following the rhythm of an unheard conversation. A series of low, guttural sounds escaped his throat—sounds that seemed to mimic the cadence of the alien’s speech.

 

A sudden thought struck Sophie, a spark of hope in the overwhelming darkness. “Gizmo,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “Can you… understand him?”

 

The cat turned his head, his green eyes locking onto hers. A low, guttural sound escaped his throat, a sound that was both alien and strangely familiar. Sophie’s heart leaped. Could it be that her cat, her mischievous, enigmatic companion, held the key to communicating with the alien overlord?

 

In the days that followed, the town became a cauldron of speculation and fear. The initial shock of the alien arrival gave way to a tense standoff, as Meetveega, growing impatient, demanded an official response from the human leaders.

 

Meanwhile, Sophie spent every waking moment trying to decipher the remaining coded messages, her AI working tirelessly to analyze the vast libraries of digital texts. Gizmo, now her constant companion, seemed to guide her, his purrs and nudges leading her towards specific books or phrases.

 

One evening, as Sophie poured over an ancient copy of the Mahabharata, a sudden chill filled the room. Gizmo leaped onto her lap, his purr growing louder, more insistent. He nudged her hand towards a particular verse, his claws lightly scratching the page as if to emphasize its importance. Sophie followed his gaze, her eyes widening as she recognized the pattern. It was another code, more complex and intricate than any she had encountered before.

 

Her fingers flew across the keyboard, inputting the code into her AI. The program whirred and beeped, its lights flashing in a dizzying display. Then, silence. Sophie held her breath as the AI projected a holographic message above her desk:

 

“Meet us at the heart of the forest. Alone. Bring the cat.”

 

Tinkly Thunderdome Troubles

Pine needles crunched underfoot as Sophie and Gizmo emerged into a moonlit clearing. Meetveega stood in the center, his skin shimmering with an unnatural iridescence. His eyes, twin pits of darkness, met Sophie’s with a chilling intensity. The air crackled with tension as Gizmo hissed, his fur bristling in warning. Despite the overwhelming dread that threatened to consume her, Sophie held her ground. This was it. The moment of truth.

 

“You came,” Meetveega intoned, his voice a chilling echo in the stillness of the night. “I have been expecting you.”

 

Sophie, her voice surprisingly steady, met his gaze head-on. “I know your secret, Meetveega,” she declared. “I know your plan to sedate humanity, to control our thoughts through the very stories we hold dear.”

 

A flicker of surprise crossed the alien’s face, his composure momentarily disrupted. “A clever child,” he sneered, his tone dripping with condescension. “But your knowledge is inconsequential. You cannot stop what has been set in motion for millennia.”

 

Sophie smiled, a sly glint in her eyes. “That’s where you’re wrong,” she retorted. “With the help of my AI, I have deciphered your final message. I know your ultimate goal—to lull us into complacency, to weaken our defenses, and then to invade.”

 

She raised her laptop, her AI springing to life, projecting a holographic display above them. A swirling vortex of words and symbols materialized, revealing the aliens’ insidious plan in stark detail. The forest seemed to hold its breath, the very trees rustling in outrage as the extent of the manipulation became clear.

 

Gizmo, sensing the rising tension, let out a series of piercing meows, his eyes locked on Meetveega. The alien recoiled, his voice laced with a newfound uncertainty. “What is this? How can a mere feline communicate with me?”

 

Sophie knelt beside Gizmo, stroking his fur. “He’s not just a cat, Meetveega. He’s my friend, my partner, and he understands your language better than any human ever could.”

 

Gizmo’s meows transformed into a melodic symphony, each note conveying a complex range of emotions – fear, defiance, hope. Meetveega listened, his eyes widening in astonishment as he began to grasp the depth of the cat’s intelligence and the profound bond he shared with Sophie.

 

For hours, the dialogue continued, a strange symphony of human words, feline sounds, and alien intonations. Sophie, with Gizmo as her interpreter, laid bare the resilience of the human spirit, the indomitable power of free thought, and the unbreakable bond between humans and their stories. She spoke of the power of love, the importance of community, and the unwavering determination to protect one’s freedom.

 

As dawn broke, casting long shadows across the forest floor, Meetveega stood silent, his gaze fixed on the horizon. The first rays of sunlight illuminated his face, revealing a flicker of doubt in his ancient eyes. The weight of millennia of manipulation seemed to bear down on him, the cracks in his resolve widening with each passing moment.

 

“You have made your point, child,” he said at last, his voice heavy with resignation. “Perhaps we have underestimated your kind. Perhaps your stories are more potent than we believed.”

 

With a final, lingering glance at Sophie and Gizmo, Meetveega turned and walked back towards his ship, his footsteps echoing through the forest. As he reached the base of the vessel, he paused, turning back to face the girl and her cat. A wave of energy rippled through the clearing, washing over the trees, the ground, and the stunned onlookers.

 

When the wave subsided, Meetveega and his ship were gone, leaving behind an eerie silence. The townspeople blinked, their faces etched with confusion. They looked at each other, their minds struggling to grasp the events of the past few hours. They remembered the fear, the terror, but the details of the encounter with Meetveega had vanished, replaced by a vague sense of unease and a lingering question: “What just happened?”

 

Sophie, however, remained trapped in the chilling reality of the encounter. The alien’s words echoed in her mind, a haunting symphony of arrogance and manipulation. She looked down at Gizmo, his emerald eyes mirroring her own unspoken horror. They were the sole keepers of the truth, a truth the world had been robbed of. While the news channels buzzed with conspiracy theories and wild speculation about the sudden disappearance of twenty townspeople, Sophie knew the horrifying answer. The world had been rewritten, the missing residents erased from existence as if they had never been.

 

The world moved on, unaware of the danger it had narrowly escaped. The town of Cornwallis, Oregon, returned to its tranquil routine, the memory of the alien encounter fading like a dream. But Sophie’s life was forever changed. She became a silent guardian, her vigilance unwavering as she monitored for any signs of alien interference.

Shorpy

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SHORPY 14297u.preview
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SHORPY 05413u.

My son died of adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) when he was 8. He was born perfectly normal and had a seemingly perfectly healthy life up until half way through kindergarten. Our first clue came when one of his teachers called us in for a conference to tell us our son, who was for all of his life before that point, exceptionally well behaved, was acting out in school. Nothing particularly mean or even really relatable. He basically just seemed like he was no longer aware of good manners. He would do things like pee outside the urinal or behave erratically at inappropriate times.

We had him diagnosed by experts who promptly diagnosed our son with mild autism and ADHD. A bit weird considering he was highly social, reading above level, and prior to this had no real signs of either. We start ABA therapy and do all the things you need to do for a child with special needs. He makes progress he learns to do things better after weeks of intense therapy, but then a few more weeks go by and he gets worse in every way. We didn’t know it then, but he was just relearning to do things with different parts of his brain, not getting better. He starts forgetting things. He’s talking less. He’s climbing furniture and doing immature things he never even did when he was younger. The psychologists imply it’s our fault. We must not be sticking to the therapy. We try harder. Nothing is working. He tells us he has brain freezes and asks us if he’s dying. We tell him of course not, everything is fine, we will work through this and you will get better. Regressions go on for several months. We start to doubt the diagnosis, but there’s nothing we can do except complain to our psychologist who tells us he was misdiagnosed. He actually has severe autism! We ask for a referral to a neurologist to rule out other possibilities. The psychologist refuses, letting us know it’s us. We need to work harder. This goes on for months and we keep on begging for a referral. By the time he is close to non-verbal we finally have another appointment and show the psychologist a video of our son singing and dancing when he was a year younger. It’s a stark contrast to the child we now have who can no longer even attend a regular school. That’s not how autism works. We finally get a referral to a real doctor. We get an MRI and it’s lit up like a Christmas tree. An incredibly intense week of more testing follows. We test for hundreds of different diseases. Finally a genetic test for Adrenoleukodystrophy comes back positive. There’s no doubt. It fits.

It’s also a death sentence. There’s no known cure once symptoms start. Over the next year we watch our son forget who we were. Lose the ability to hear, see, smell, taste, and walk. He went through epileptic seizures and eventually became a walking zombie, not really cognizant of the world around him, but still able to perform basic life sustaining tasks like feeding himself. After he ate something he should not have, we had to take him to the ER. The anesthesia, messed with what was left of his brain and he never quite came back. He never walked again after that and could no longer feed himself or really do anything as he lost all of his senses.

Once symptoms start, every single person who has ever had this disease dies within a few years at most. Some people have prolonged it by using machines to keep their children alive, but their brains are totally gone except for the autonomic functions. No one has ever reversed the brain damage.

The only thing worse then watching your son die is knowing he’s absolutely going to die, knowing he has nothing to live for except more pain and suffering, and the only way to stop the suffering is to starve him to death. We had a team of doctors at that point. Not helping our son. There was nothing they could do for him and his body was actually quite healthy. He was just in a semi vegetative state. Awake, but not cognizant of the world around him. His soul was actually the first thing to go. His behaviors changed and for all intents and purposes, the disease took our son’s identity and dignity before any of the more physical ailments. There was no hope he was still in there. No question he was gone for over a year. This team of doctors was there for us, his parents, to guide us through his death. They were his palliative care team. We were at Stanford and they were some of the most qualified, compassionate, and intelligent doctors I have encountered. Near the end, I wanted to punch every one of them. It wasn’t their fault. They are messengers in a broken system, but they all knew our son was dying. They all knew his brain function was gone. They all knew he was never coming back. The adrenoleukodystrophy expert actually told us down to the month when our son would lose each of his functions. He was incredibly accurate. The last few meetings we had were all about how removing nutrition and hydration isn’t so bad, hes past where he is aware of most things. The body “knows” it’s dying and just peacefully gives up. It all felt made up. They said they will control the pain with morphine. Fuck! I know what morphine does. My first question is what is the point of prolonging his life. Theres no answers of hope coming back, no answers of he might still be there. Just the elephant in the room no one explicitly brings up. Society says this is the only path. “It’s fine.” But it wasn’t fine. My next question was how much morphine will stop all the pain immediately forever. They wouldn’t answer that one.

My son died when he was 8 after 3 weeks without food or water.

Adrenoleukodystrophy is a rare genetic disease. It can be cured if it’s caught with a test before symptoms start with a simple genetic test at birth. The federal government recommended this test before my son was born to be included with all newborn screenings. No state at the time he was born adopted the test as part of newborn screening despite that it pays for itself. When he died only 5 states did, today 44 do. If you have a son that was born with the gene for ALD, 1/3rd develop adrenoleukodystrophy most of the rest develop a related disorder that has very serious symptoms that start in the 20s or 30s. 10% have just minor adrenal gland issues that are treatable.

This is a photo of the last time I was able to get Griffin to laugh. He was otherwise non-verbal at this point, and struggling with a lot of his senses, but often you would barely know it if you saw us out. Physically his body was healthy. He was mobile nearly to the end. The one saving grace about the progression of his disease is that he seemed to lose the ability to comprehend death and other abstract concepts early. We wasted so much precious time with the misdiagnosis. Nothing will ever make up for that, but I’m glad we tried.

son
son

EV Dominance in CHINA(America CAN’T Compete) || 美国无法竞争

Tomato Pizza

I love a good vegetarian pizza. It not only tastes delicious, but makes me feel a little bit better about eating pizza! The flavors are just so fresh and clean. And let’s face it, it’s a bit less expensive too.

This tomato pizza is so simple, but just as satisfying of a slice. It gives you all the flavor punch of eating a slice of pizza, with less calories!

My favorite is when I can pull fresh tomatoes and basil from my garden. I may or may not repeatedly point out to the kids that we grew these toppings!

Whether you make your dough from scratch or opt for the ease of store bought, this simple pizza is sure to knock your socks off. Now it’s time to get your slice on!

tomato pizza resize 10
tomato pizza resize 10

Ingredients

  • 1 pizza shell
  • 1 sliced plum tomato
  • 1/4 cup feta cheese
  • 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced
  • 1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon fresh basil
  • 1/2 teaspoon fresh parsley

Instructions

  1. Layer a little mozzarella cheese on the pizza shell.
  2. Lay sliced tomatoes on top so that they are not on top of each other.
  3. Crumble feta over tomatoes.
  4. Sprinkle with garlic, basil and parsley.
  5. Cover with remaining mozzarella cheese.
  6. Bake for about 10 to 5 minutes until cheese is melted.

Long ago, actually not so long ago, I started working as a Data Engineer at Amazon. Before this, I had experience as a Software Development Engineer (SDE) and a Data Scientist, but Data Engineering was relatively new to me. Additionally, I had primarily used Azure as my cloud provider in previous roles.

I soon found myself grappling with the notorious “imposter syndrome” — a phase where you feel you’ve faked your way to your position. I was assigned a new task involving technologies I had no experience with, and the deadlines were fast approaching. Feeling overwhelmed, I went to the kitchenette, grabbed a cup of coffee, and sat with my head buried in my hands.

yet
yet

One of the most experienced team members noticed my distress. He was well-versed in our technology stack and always had a stoic demeanor. He approached me and asked what was going on. I explained my situation and the looming deadlines. He told me to ditch the coffee and join him in the cafeteria.

Once there, he asked, “Do you know what differentiates unsuccessful and successful people in our profession?” I immediately responded with answers like “the highest amount of knowledge, great coding skills, holistic understanding of the stack, etc.” He shook his head and said, “No. Try again.” After a while, I admitted, “I don’t know.”

He laughed and said I had answered the first half of his question. Confused, I asked for clarification. He then shared a secret that changed everything: “When a person looks at an unknown problem and says ‘I don’t know it’ and moves on to a more familiar problem, they will eventually fail. But if they say ‘I don’t know it yet’ and see the problem as a learning opportunity, they will eventually succeed.”

That conversation made me realize the power of the word ‘yet’ and the importance of mindset. I guess ‘Yet’ is the secret of success.

North Korean Soldiers Are Preparing To Enter The BATTLEFIELD To Hunt NATO Forces In UKRAINE

An Interesting Development

So now that President Putin has visited North Korea, and is now in Vietnam, there is a great deal of speculation as to his objectives.

We don’t really know if there are going to be any “earth shattering” events that come out of this.

But what we do know is that the West, lead by the deluded and dementia ridden has made arrangements to place three (x3) ENORMOUS NATO bases outside of Ukraine from which to attack Russia with.

It is from these bases that NATO planes, flown by NATO pilots, and using NATO munitions, and NATO intel that will engage Russia from the safety of Poland, Germany, and one other nation.

Once confirmation of this new dimension has been obtained, we have a flood of speculation as to how Russia will react to it.

The normal “armchair warriors” suggest nuclear detonations, and full-scale invasions.

But, I disagree.

Perhaps, the three North Korean divisions of crack assault troops will be used to attack NATO bases and facilities in Europe. The advantages are numerous.

  • North Korea would be immune from reprisals.
  • Russia would focus on Ukraine special operations.
  • And Europe would be fighting the descendants of Genghis Khan.

An interesting development. For certain.

Germans and Polish troops fighting North Koreans inside their own nations without the NATO safety net hiding from Russia. Seems to me that two can play that game of “immunity from reprisals”.

Logical, but frightening.

Imagine that! Europeans having to defend their own nations instead of invading other nations.

The perfect skillet and radio

I moved a lot as a child and went to many many schools. I did get to go to the same school, my junior and senior year. I was always the skinny new girl with kinky hair and crooked eyes. My eyes were crooked because I was blind in my right eye from birth and it just sort of wandered around in my head and did whatever it wanted. My parents had had it operated on twice to try to fix the muscles but the problem was that the eye was blind and that was that ( when I was 32 the Cleveland clinic put titanium muscles in my eye and made it look almost normal)

I was always in the new kid, the funny looking kid, but I was also the smart kid. My junior year I was placed in an honors class in English with the most disgusting teacher I have ever met. He was so loved by his students. He was certainly not loved by me. He loved to tease me about my crooked eyes. He also consistently stated to the class that nothing of any value ever came from south of the Mason Dixon line, a quote from HL Mencken, the journalist in the scopes monkey trials. The fact that I was from Ohio, which was north of the Mason Dixon line, sort of escaped him.

in addition to his constant insults, one day he slapped me in the face with a paper I wrote. Actually he slapped me three times. I pretty much think that was the most disrespectful thing that a teacher did to me. His reason for slapping me was that I had not developed my paper sufficiently. to punish me, he made me write it over and I did. It was 32 typewritten pages, and he read the entire thing to the class page by page.

However, in the end I won. One day he was standing next to my desk and he was laughing. He threw his head back and his upper plate fell out on my desk and rattled around like “chattering teeth”. and then came to rest next to my pencil, I just looked up and smiled at him. he taught the rest of the class that day holding his false teeth in his hand and trying to talk properly without them. I might’ve felt sorry for I am if it wasn’t for the fact that he thought my crooked eye was so funny. On my high school class page on Facebook, the story of the chattering teeth has been recounted many times, even by people who weren’t in the class. In my high school yearbook the valedictorian of my class wrote “to hell with HL Mencken “

 

Chili Chicken Tortilla Soup

By Rena Awada | Updated On March 26, 2024
Chili lime chicken tortilla soup
Chili lime chicken tortilla soup

Make this Chili Chicken Tortilla Soup Recipe for a warm and comforting meal all year round. It is easy to make, filling, and packed with flavor. Enjoy this filling and hearty soup any day of the week as a main or side dish.

Soups are very comforting when the weather gets colder. They are filling and easy to make when you only have an hour on hand to come up with dinner. This easy chicken tortilla soup has the bold flavors of chili and Mexican flavors all in one bowl. Made with shredded chicken breast, black beans, corn, and a handful of bold spices. Serve this Mexican chicken soup recipe as a main dish or a side dish along with the main course. For a creamy version of tortilla soup check out our Creamy Chicken Tortilla Soup Recipe or you can also try our super tasty Chicken Enchilada soup. You may also like this Chicken Chili Recipe

Chili lime chicken tortilla soup 5
Chili lime chicken tortilla soup 5

Recipe Summary

  • Comforting and filling: This chicken tortilla soup with bold chili flavors is packed with fiber and protein to make a comforting and filling meal.
  • Easy to make: all you need is 30 minutes to make this easy and healthy chicken soup.
  • Tasty: Packed with flavor. You will love it.

Ingredients you will need

  • Olive Oil: any other oil of choice can be used like avocado oil.
  • Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts: you may also use boneless and skinless chicken thighs.
  • Sweet Onion: or any onion you have on hand
  • Garlic Cloves minced: we do recommend using fresh garlic cloves for optimal flavor.
  • Red Chili (or to taste): this is optional if you can’t handle spice.
  • Spices: Ground Cumin, Chipotle Powder, or Chili Powder
  • Cherry Tomatoes or diced fire-roasted tomatoes: these can be purchased in cans or you can make your own at home.
  • Low Sodium Chicken Broth: you may use vegetable broth.
  • Black Beans: rinsed and drained
  • Corn: can be Fresh or frozen corn can be used
  • 2 Limes– Juiced, you may use lemons if you do not have lime.
  • Tortillas: cut into 1/4-inch strips
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • Cooking Spray

How to make chicken tortilla soup

  • Heat olive oil In a large stockpot over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, chili, and seasonings, and cook until onion softens about 4 minutes.
  • Add chicken breast, canned tomatoes, broth and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer until chicken is cooked through about 20 minutes.
  • Meanwhile, heat a nonstick pan over medium heat and spray it with cooking spray.
  • Add tortilla strips in a single layer and fry until golden brown and crispy, on both sides. You might need to work in batches to not overcrowd the pan.
  • Once the chicken is cooked, remove from soup and shred it.
  • Add chicken back to the pot together with beans, corn and lime juice. Mix to combine then simmer for a couple of minutes more.
  • Serve soup hot with crispy tortilla strips on top and enjoy!
Chili lime chicken tortilla soup 4
Chili lime chicken tortilla soup 4

1993 Labor Day weekend my girlfriend at the time, now my wife of 30 years and I went to Lake Tahoe. On the way home at the highest point of the highway crossing the Sierras my car stopped like it had overheated. We pulled off to the side of the highway and waited for it to cool off. About 30 minutes later a California Highway Patrol officer pulled up behind us. We explained that we might have overheated and the engine had quit on us. He said that this was regular patrol area and he would come back and check on us. Well two hours later the car would not start, temperature was dropping fast outside and we just had a couple of sweatshirts and a jacket for warmth. We decided to try to take a nap until the officer returned to help us. The officer never came back to check on us. We slept in the car while coyotes and other wild animals could be heard making noises right outside the car. This was absolutely terrifying and bone chilling to say the least. At first light we realized we were parked right next to the entrance of a PG&E substation and people were arriving for work. We went down and explained to them our situation and asked if we could first use the facilities and freshen up. Then one of them helped us get in touch with the Ford dealer about 20 minutes away. They sent out a tow truck to pick us and the car up. Being it was Labor Day they were closed and only the tow trucks were there. The driver got all our information and helped us find a rental car to get back home to San Francisco. A couple of days later we got a phone call saying that we had a blown engine but the car was still under a factory warranty and we were covered by it. The service advisor also told us that the first $30 per day of the rental car was covered by the warranty. They would be replacing the engine with a brand new one and it would take two weeks to complete as they had to submit the paperwork to Detroit for fulfillment. So all in all, we spent an uncomfortable and scary night in a place we had no way of communicating with the outside world because it was in the days when only the affluent people had cellular phones. We survived the night and ended up with a new engine in the car for a nominal price.

Europe is not more civilized; it is just that for the past 500 years it has controlled the narrative because of colonialism.

Now that the economic center of the world is moving to Asia and Africa, that period is ending because Asia and Africa are the population centers of the world, with the most economic activity.

The period of European privilege is ending now.

I used to work at a tech support call center. So when the pastor down the street started experiencing problems with his computer, his wife called me to see if I could help. I was not a member of their congregation, but it was a small town and we all helped each other when we could.

His computer had been infected with a virus, and it was not difficult to delete it. But his browser was terribly slow, the home page had been changed to an adult website, and there were multiple bookmarks for po’n sites.

I updated his antivirus and ran a scan. After clearing out the malware, I fixed the browser, deleting all the adult bookmarks and keeping the ones he wanted to keep.

His wife seemed to have no idea how it happened, but it was obvious to me. He’d been looking at po’n and clicked something that infected his computer. He sat there like a deer in the headlights. He said something about clicking a link in an email he got, and that’s when all the problems started. I didn’t want to cause any problems between him and his wife, so I just warned him not to click on any links that came from people he didn’t trust.

I’ve had a couple people pay for hotel rooms for a night, and let me tell ya – it’s a godsend.

How? Well, one time, when it was storming really bad in Southern California – someone I love dearly paid three nights for a room right down the street. For the first time in a couple years I was free of my wardrobe and tent – suitcase and backpack – so I went to a movie and had a nice dinner out.

I felt human for the first time in years. A fresh hot shower rather than a bird bath, a warm comfortable room while it stormed outside. It’s little things like this that reminded me I was human – and let’s be clear – in the weeks leading up to this – I’d been pushed WELL beyond my breaking point and had literally planned on murdering this junkie on meth who kept threatening me with a knife on a random basis prior to this point, as I was sleeping with one eye opened and police were unable to do anything about it.

Most people don’t understand that being homeless is about as dehumanizing as it gets. Society has a tendency of treating violent offenders better than someone that’s broke and homeless, which in my opinion – pushing me, a peaceful man who has never been in a fight in my life – to the point of premeditated considerations of murder – has homelessness as being one of the biggest existential threats to modern society. If you’ve never been through it. You simply wouldn’t understand.

But that motel. Just for a couple nights. Made me finally swallow my pride, look at the predictable trajectory homelessness was going to take me and what it was going to turn me into…

And finally agree to accept my mom and dad’s offer for a couch to sleep on in a warm house.

Rest assured. That motel room saved someone’s life. I’m being straight up 100% honest with you there. I’d mentally prepared myself to begin taking the law into my own hands, and I was fine knowing I’d never suffer any consequences from it because the needs of homeless people and the poverty stricken, to this society and world – don’t fuckin matter.

To most, anyways. To those few who did care. That room at just the perfect time changed my life, and prevented the death of someone else who society didn’t care about anyways.

I dont like knowing that part of me exists. I scared even myself. So I don’t believe it was coincidence that room came at the perfect time for me.

Is China producing too much? US ‘overcapacity’ accusations: new tactic in economic war

Creamy Chicken Enchilada Soup

By Rena Awada | Updated On March 29, 2024

This Chicken Enchilada Soup recipe is so creamy, thick, and easy to make. Loaded with hearty shredded chicken and beans, it is a crowd-pleasing soup that’s full of your favorite Mexican flavors and very comforting and delicious.

Creamy chicken enchilada soup 7
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 7

Enchilada soup is one of the most flavorful soup recipes that is not only filling and comforting, but it is full of flavor and a crowd-pleasing soup recipe that will put a smile on everyone’s face. This soup is loaded with beans, chicken, and all the Tex-Mex flavors you love all in one delicious bowl of soup. Easy-to-make Creamy Chicken Enchilada soup is perfect for any night of the week. Especially on a busy weeknight when you need dinner ready in no time.

Creamy chicken enchilada soup 6
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 6

Reasons to love this soup

  • Best-tasting soup ever: The taste of this soup is seriously out-of-this-world good.
  • Filling: This soup will keep you full, happy, and satisfied. Perfect for lunch or as a light dinner.
  • Healthy and good for you: Packed with fiber and protein, this soup is good for you in every way.

Ingredients you will need

  • Butter or Ghee: to keep this on the healthier side, you do not have to use butter. You may use avocado oil.
  • Onion: use white sweet onions or cooking onions
  • Veggies: Celery Stalks, Carrot, Red Bell Pepper,
  • Beans: Red Kidney Beans and Black Beans
  • Seasonings: Ground Cumin, Chili Powder, Dried Oregano
  • Garlic Cloves: do use fresh garlic
  • One can of Diced fire-roasted Tomatoes
  • Tomato Paste
  • Fresh or Frozen Sweet Corn: you may use canned corn if that’s all you have and you don’t want to make a trip to the grocery store.
  • Shredded Cooked Chicken: make your own chicken or get a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken. To prepare your own, check out our post on How to poach chicken breast.
  • Low-Sodium Chicken Broth– If you plan to poach your own chicken you may save the broth from that.
  • Mexican Shredded Cheese Blend for garnishing, or you may also use Monterey jack cheese
  • Salt and pepper, to your taste
  • Optional: If you prefer to add some enchilada sauce, you can. We didn’t but it certainly won’t hurt and will add some flavor to the soup.
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 2
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 2

HOW TO MAKE CREAMY CHICKEN ENCHILADA SOUP

This chicken enchilada soup recipe is made on the stovetop. We will also be showing you further how to make it on your crockpot, slow cooker, and instant pot. Note: Recipe calls for cooked shredded chicken. Either get a storebought rotisserie chicken and use that or cook your own at home using chicken breast (scroll down to learn how to cook the chicken for your enchilada soup).

Creamy chicken enchilada soup 7
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 7
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 6
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 6
Creamy chicken enchilada soup
Creamy chicken enchilada soup

To make enchilada soup on your stovetop:

  • Prepare vegetables and ingredients: Set up all the ingredients and get your shredded chicken ready.
  • Cook vegetables: Add butter or oil in a large stockpot over medium-high heat. First, add the onions, celery, carrots, bell pepper, garlic and cook until softens, about 5-6 minutes. Then, stir in seasonings, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, and chicken broth and bring to a boil.
  • Cook and prep soup: Lower the heat and simmer for about 10-15 minutes, or until veggies are very tender.
  • Blend: remove from heat and using a hand blender, blend the soup until smooth and creamy. (This is optional if you don’t want to blend you can skip this step).
  • Add beans and chicken: Place the soup back over medium heat and add in beans, corn and shredded cooked chicken. Stir to combine and boil for a couple of minutes, just to heat it all up.
  • Serve: Pour into bowls and top with your favorite toppings. Enjoy!

SOUP TOPPING Options

Endless toppings to come up with, but here are some optional toppings you can add to your creamy chicken enchilada soup are:

  1. Chopped avocado
  2. Sliced jalapeño
  3. Fresh chopped cilantro
  4. Green onions
  5. Lime wedges
  6. Crushed Tortilla Chips
  7. Sour cream or yogurt etc.
  8. Shredded Cheese
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 8
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 8

How to cook chicken for enchilada soup

Cooking the chicken is quite simple. You can use any pot or a dutch oven. It would be easiest to use a rotisserie chicken but you can certainly cook your own. We recommend using skinless and boneless chicken breasts.

  • Add chicken into a pot full of water
  • We like adding some sort of herbs to give the chicken some flavor. Use half an onion and a bay leaf. sometimes we use a cinnamon stick but not for this particular recipe.
  • Allow boiling for about 15-20 minutes until you easily insert a knife or a fork through the chicken.
  • Then, drain it in a colander and let it cool off. Or you can just remove the chicken and place it on a cutting board while you save the chicken stock.
  • Finally, using your hands or forks, shred chicken.
  • If you have an Instant pot, you can simply make this Instant Pot Chicken Breast to use in this enchilada soup.
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 8
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 8
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 4
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 4

How to make enchilada soup using an instant pot, crockpot or slow cooker

There are other ways to make chicken enchilada soup other than using your stovetop. Here are other ways to cook up your soup.

How to use an Instant Pot:

  • Using the saute option, add the oil or butter in the instant pot, then add the onions, celery, carrots, bell pepper, garlic and cook until softens, about 5-6 minutes.
  • If using raw chicken, add in with the veggies in the previous step at the bottom.
  • Add in the seasonings, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, and broth.
  • Next, add in the beans, corn, and shredded cooked chicken (if using pre-cooked shredded chicken). Stir to combine.
  • Then, place the lid on the Instant Pot and seal. Using the “manual” setting, cook on high pressure for 10-12 minutes.
  • Allow the instant pot to natural release for 10 minutes or so before doing a quick release.
  • Finally, remove the lid from Instant Pot, shred the chicken (if used raw whole chicken breast), and serve with your favorite toppings.
  • Note: You may remove a portion of the soup towards the end. Blend it and then add it back into the soup. Mix and serve.
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 2
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 2
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 6
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 6
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 8
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 8

How to use a crock-pot or slow cooker

  • In a pan or skillet, add oil or butter over medium-high heat add the onions, celery, carrots, bell pepper, garlic and cook until softens, about 5-6 minutes.
  • Transfer to crockpot or slow cooker and add in the seasonings, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, and broth.
  • Then, add in beans, corn, and shredded cooked chicken. Stir to combine cover and set it on High for 2 hours or low for 4 hours if using cooked chicken.
  • Note: You may add raw chicken breasts to the crockpot or slow cooker right before you add in the veggies at the very bottom and set it to cook longer. 6 hours on low and 4 hours on high. Then towards the end use a fork to shred the chicken.
  • Also Note: You may remove a portion of the soup towards the end. Blend it and then add it back into the soup. Mix and serve.
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 2
Creamy chicken enchilada soup 2

Fun cat pictures

From my archives

SNAG 0079
SNAG 0079
SNAG 0078
SNAG 0078
SNAG 0076
SNAG 0076

Why Pass Port bros find Foreign Women

Japan despite massive massive disadvantages in firepower, military numbers and culture has a massive chance against China. Why? This man and the general state of the leadership is far too conservative. As well as their age.

If you’ve ever played a game before like Rimworld, 7 days to die, Project Zomboid. There’s a setting called Builder. Here’s the menu on Project Zomboid.

It literally says builder: Construction, Exploration and farming focus.

So sure he’s got 3000 hours in game and all the achievements of that…But it’s a crippling overspecialisation.

Martial arts are sometimes like this.

You need close range, mid range, long range, grapple, strength and conditioning to give and take hits. Wing Chun is excellent at close range, but they never condition themselves so boxers eat them alive. The current leadership are far too conservative as such when there’s easy and obvious ways to punish those who literally want us dead? What the hell do they do?

NOTHING!

Taiwan.

It’s not recognised by the UN, it’s not part of the WTO. The poliburo could immediately stop all business with them tomorrow and there’s NOTHING they could do about it. We could literally cause a 50% collapse in the economy TOMORROW.

Yet they don’t do it.

Even my dad who is actually older than Xi did some squeezing of bollocks in his time. He was a beansprout man and his group held a total monopoly on Chinese goods in the UK and he squeezed a few bollocks with his position.

You can write about oh but it’s only a matter of time.

The USD will collapse! (though the USD doesn’t actually need to collapse it’s in such shit that a few % will make a huge difference, US military budget cuts are a real thing because of the debt).

It sounds almost like Joseph Wang, if you ever read his stuff from years ago? He literally said he allowed white Americans to beat him up and offered no resistant. To somebody like me and many others that’s a what the fuckty fuck type situation? Somebody attacks you? You’re going to give them as good as they give you.

So back to the original question?

If Japan starts to militarise again and they’re doing so right now? There’s going to be a huge aversion to fight and you don’t even need me to spell out whose going to have the aversion.

So while China is far more powerful and many of us especially us overseas types are far far more violent than any local Chinese or Japanese. It’s hampered by the fact that the leadership is playing civilisation on builder mode.

I mean at the very least you could have some big weapons tests. Even N Korean leader Kim has done some test launches.

Putin scares the living daylights out of westerners with his SARMAT tests in 2022.

Hope not

The Strategy is clear

Iran sent 158 Shaheed Drones and 27 Cruise Missiles on Israel at a cost of $ 9 Million

Israel intercepted 150+ Drones over Jordan and Syria and Lebanese and 21 Cruise Missiles at an estimated cost of $ 115 Million

6 Missiles hit the targets – An Airbase in Negev plus two military docking centres in Haifa Port

The cost ratio is 9:115 or 1:13 approximately

Iran is thus depleting Israeli (Western) missiles and AD on a large scale from reserves

Today alone around 100+ Missiles were launched by Israel

This means in 10 days, Israel would need 1000–1200 missiles forcing the West to divert stocks to Israel while Iran has low cost cheap drones and cheap missiles and decoy missiles

If the West spends more and more money and weapons on Israel further depleting their stocks

Russia gains immensely as Russia outproduces NATO by 3:1 in Missiles and 12:1 in Artillery Ammunition

And of course China

The more West is mired in the Middle East, even lesser chance of the West to take on China who can produce on war footing, more missiles in a month than Nato can produce in 2 1/2 years as per experts

Leaving Japan, Philippines to take on China who today can more than easily take them out

Same reason


If this is WWIII, the West will likely lose today

Unless it becomes Nuclear…

A friend of mine I England, mentioned one day at the pub( bar) that he could do with a cleaner as his old 1700’s mill house was getting too much for him. Next morning there was a sharp knocking on his door, he opened it and a large Middle aged lady pushed by him into the room and said, “ I’m Jean, your new cleaner, let’s have a look at this mess!” He never had a chance to say a word, just stood there dumb. “ Right , where’s the cleaning cupboard?” He pointed in the right direction. Muttering to herself she set about cleaning , “ I’ll be a long while yet you can make yourself scarce untill supper time. “ He went out back to the pub and sat at the bar in a daze as he nursed his pint of beer. He returned to his house in the evening, everything was clean and tidy, Jean was sat down in the kitchen having a cup of tea. “ Umm, how much do I owe you?” He stuttered. All she said was, “ that garden shed has to be cleared out yet!” I’ll attend to that tomorrow. I’ll be staying in the upstairs front bedroom, breakfast will be at 9 o’clock on the dot! “ With that she climbed the stairs and was gone. That was nearly 5 years ago and she is still there cleaning and cooking. He still hasn’t plucked up the courage to ask her any questions, and she has never asked for anything in return. ’ As he is a literary man I hope one day he will publish the whole story. Amazing!

REACTION- Will women WAKE UP & want the men that they rejected?

  1. If you continue to wait for the “right time”, you’ll waste your entire life and nothing will happen.
  2. You’ll lose 99% of your close friends if you start upgrading your life.
  3. You’ll be 10x happier if you forgive your parents and stop blaming them for your problems.
  4. Train yourself to let people win arguments on purpose to conserve your mental health.
  5. You become more mature when you train yourself to take nothing personally.
  6. You don’t need 100 self-help books, all you need is action & self-discipline.
  7. You can’t expect honesty from people who even lie to themselves.
  8. Most people are stuck in toxic relationships because they are afraid to be alone.
  9. The most difficult mission on earth is to focus on your dreams; The easiest task is to complain.

China don’t do daft things. Only the U.S. does. If China cannot win it won’t fight. If China seems to be up in arms. They are most likely happy that the U.S. took the bait and ate hanging themselves. It is call winning without fighting!

China can do even one NM chips if it wants but the U.S. thinks it cannot do 7 NM for at least 3 decades! It took China 3 years to do 5NM. Now the U.S. is laden with humongous compensations to its Chip firms and they lose some 80% of the market as China gets it done cheaper, faster and better.

Learn about what is going on in the world today. This is what happened when you hitch yourself to the United States.

I test drove a f350 platinum super crew, was going to trade a vehicle, I left the keys with the salesman, came back, I decided not to buy “that” truck, due to I didn’t want to own another black truck, they had no other loaded trucks in another color, so I opted to take a pass, the sales manager thought we had some imaginary deal and said the deal was done (I had signed nothing), and wouldn’t return my keys, I asked him if he was certain that he wanted to play this game, he said we have a deal. I pulled my phone out, called 911, told them who I was, where I was, I had been robbed and the assailant was still on premises. Shit happened real fast, I got my keys back, sales manager found out he can be criminally charged for theft as well as kidnapping as I couldn’t leave. Yep, I won’t be shopping there again.

Iran has launched drones against Israel which have not yet hit their targets in Israel.

While this may look like a reprisal against Israel, there is more than meets the eye. The majority of the drones will be intercepted and shot down before they reach their targets; if 10% reach their targets the Iranians will have done well.

But the intention is not to do damage to Israel. Iran, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas are fighting a war of attrition against Israel which will deplete Israel’s and the US’s munitions, using the cheapest weapons needed. The aim is to provoke Israel into committing more violence in Gaza and the West Bank, and turning more of global public opinion against the US and Israel. The Israeli economy will take a heavy hit, and the US will have to provide expensive economic support to Israel because Biden has committed to Israel’s support.

The Arabs and the Iranians have learned: Israel’s war doctrine is based on the application of overwhelming force to win a short war , which is the same as the US. But if the Arabs and Iran turn the conflict into a long war of attrition, the Arabs win.

In every long war of attrition, which includes Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and arguably Ukraine, the US has withdrawn in the end.

A short sharp war requires the application of overwhelming firepower. Overwhelming firepower requires a huge munitions supply and powerful logistics. US weapons stores have been depleted by the war in Ukraine.

The writing is on the wall…

My young son was friends with the 50-something “neighbor guy”. They were real friends. The neighbor gave him a spark plug wrench and let him take the spark plugs out of all the cars in his junk yard. He also let my son “drive” his 1950 pink Cadillac sitting on blocks in a place of honor in the junkyard. He talked to my son about serious things like how to be a good man, why you should wash your hands a lot, the importance of having a place for your tools and putting them where they belonged. My son lacked a father and this neighbor lacked any family at all.

The neighbor got cancer and was going to die. He let my son know it was nothing personal and he had done nothing wrong to deserve it. He also said he was going to have to leave forever, die and he would go to heaven. They talked a lot about whether he was afraid and what would happen when he died. He told my son he didn’t want anybody messing with his body and he wanted to be buried, not embalmed and still be intact. He wanted to go back to the earth in dignity and not be a poisoned pickle in the ground.

Unfortunately, he died just before Thanksgiving, and without a family, there was no one who felt obligated to see to his wishes. In our state, you can only be buried, without embalming, if you are buried within 3 days. The ground was frozen and it was a holiday weekend. No gravediggers could be found so the adults discussed this in the social room. After church, they concluded that man, whom we had all known and valued, would have to be embalmed. My son, who was about 6, overheard this and became outraged!

He pestered one man after another about it. He eloquently argued how sad the man would be about being a poisoned pickle in the ground. My son announced he would go dig the hole himself even if he did not get home in time for pie! He managed to guilt a dozen men, in their best clothing, to go to the graveyard and dig a grave. Also, a Catholic Priest would be doing the services for a “protestant” before anyone went home to eat a turkey.

It was technically “wrong” because he interrupted and pestered adults with great determination. One by one, he effectively MADE them do something that was outside his purview as a child. I didn’t stop him from doing it. I was more than proud of his love and care for his deceased friend.

Cold case musings

When my son was in the eighth grade, he got suspended and I had to leave work early to go get him. When I got there, I asked the principal what had happened. The principal explained that my son had beaten up three other boys and even broke one boy’s wrist. I was obviously horrified and asked my son what the fuck he was thinking. He simply told me that the boys had cornered one of his friends and were trying to make her strip for them. Being the chivalrous boy I raised him to be, he put a stop to it. I asked the principal if it was true and he dodged the question. In response to that, I told the school that if they’re going to allow sexual harassment, I didn’t want my child to attend and took him home. I told my son that I was going to take him out of public schools. He replied by telling me that he didn’t want to leave the school because of he wasn’t there then who was going to stop it from happening again.

This is when I realized my little boy had become a man. He would rather get in trouble to protect a friend than stay out of the spotlight and potentially face long term consequences.

Edit: I feel the need to point out that my son also got his ass kicked (and to be frank, “beat up” was probably the wrong term to use [a bit exaggerated] when describing what he did to those three boys). I assumed that was implied, but oh well. What can you do? The police were called and the bullies’ parents didn’t press charges as long as the girl’s parents didn’t either. The school penalized all three boys and the girl’s mother and I are very close friends now.

I left the US almost 50 years ago to live in Germany. However, I frequently visit the US to stay there months at a time.

There are things that are “convenient” about living in the US: stores that open 7 days a week, some even 24/7; outside the large cities, ample free parking, better weather in vast parts of the US (compared to Germany), ease of meeting new people, etc.

But despite the “convenience”, yes, it is hard. It is hard living in a country with too many people recklessly wielding firearms – and using them. It is hard because many people do not respect others’ boundaries. It is hard because so many people are so poorly educated (I fault the system for that – not the people). It is hard because access to higher education is so expensive. The hire-and-fire mentality in the US is horrible. The fact that corruption has so openly visible on all levels is horrifying. And even more horrifying is that such a large portion of the population doesn’t care.

Leaving the US was the best choice I ever made because of the lousy American health care system. At the time I left, I had no idea I had a rare genetic defect that would eventually destroy my lungs. But once it reared its head, it became immediately clear that to survive more than a few years, I would require a double lung transplantation. I will always be grateful to the donor (and her family) for the gift of those lungs. And I will be forever grateful to the health care system here that made it possible for me to miss two years of work (one year of which I spent in-patient) without being financially worse for the wear. Twenty-one years after the gift of those lungs, I have been in and out of hospitals, have had three different cancer diagnoses, a couple of rounds of pneumonia, and sepsis, six years of dialysis, two kidney transplantation – all while being able to continue working – and still not being financially worse for the wear. Had I remained in the US, I would likely be bankrupt and/or dead.

 

When I was three our dog, Muffin, died. Back then, you were allowed to bury your pets in your backyard. (Or perhaps our vet just didn’t care and no one else was the wiser…) It happened while we were on vacation, so my parents asked our vet to freeze him so they could bury him next to their other dog when we got back.

They made sure I saw Muffin before putting him in the ground, let me touch him one last time… warned me he would be cold… I was mature and handled it well.

Later we were visiting my aunt and uncle. My aunt came and sat next to me and told me how sad she was that my doggy had died but I should be happy that he’s in doggy heaven now.

I looked at her very seriously and shook my head. “No, Aunt Sharon. He’s defrosting in the backyard!” (I had a fine concept of death and heaven but hadn’t been taught about doggy heaven and it just didn’t make any sense!)

Russia Hits Underground Gas Reserves in Ukraine; “Mushroom Cloud” from Fierce Explosion

Russia Hits Underground Gas Reserves in Ukraine; &quot;Mushroom Cloud&quot; from Fierce Explosion

At dawn, Russia achieved the largest strategic strike in Ukraine in history, when it destroyed Ukraine’s largest underground gas storage in Bilche-Volitsko-Uher in the city of Stryjak near Ľvov.

Russia utilized Kh-47 Kinzhal supersonic missiles and Kh-101 cruise missiles, to strike and detonate 17 billion cubic meters of stored natural gas!

The attack came from three different sides.

Russia Hits ukraine Gas Reserve
Russia Hits ukraine Gas Reserve

The destruction of the natural gas, combined with Russia’s unwillingness to supply new gas, means that Ukraine is “done” from an energy perspective.

A total of eight MiG-31 fighters carrying Kinzhal and Kh-101 aircraft hit the gas reserve, causing a nuclear-like mushroom cloud visible from Poland, 100 km from the Ukrainian border.

The reserve tank was located at a depth of 50 meters (~150 feet) from the surface of the earth, which did not prevent Kinžal from going through the stony ground “like a knife through butter” and exploding into the tank!

In Poland, radiation measurements began after what initially appeared to be a nuclear attack there, but this has not been confirmed.

Ukraine currently has less than half of its gas reserves, and after the destruction of the reserve, it cannot even be supplied from the European market.

The attack on this underground gas reservoir was confirmed by the Ukrainian company Zdroj 24 news.

Exposition (Green Flag #1)

I sought the help of a therapist during my final months in New Zealand because I thought I had depression.

After telling him about my situation at length, he said:

“Let me summarize:

  1. you have been bullied out of your job;
  2. you have over one million dollars of debt and face repossession of your two houses and four cars;
  3. half of which because you have been pressured into buying a house for your mother in law, who has been actively sabotaging your marriage for almost ten years;
  4. your foster children you were expecting to adopt have been taken away and put back with their biological parents, teenagers imprisoned for drug offences who have now been released due to a law change;
  5. your wife wants a divorce.

And you think you have depression? You have every reason to be down! You’re healthy. Get out of here.”

And I did.

All the way to Shanghai, from where it took me three years to clean up the mess. But he was right, I never needed any anti depressants. With every dollar my bank statements began to look more balanced, I was better.

  1. If a person laughs too much, even at stupid things, he is lonely deep inside.
  2. If a person speaks less, but speaks fast, he keeps secrets.
  3. If a person sleeps a lot, he is sad.
  4. If someone can’t cry, he is weak.
  5. If someone eats in an abnormal manner, he is tense.
  6. If someone cries on little things, he is innocent & soft-hearted.
  7. If someone becomes angry over silly or petty (small) things, it means he needs love.Try to understand people more.

On the 4th of July, 16 years ago, I was at a fireworks show where parents accidentally killed their own child.

They had 6 children. One was a 6 month old baby.

They were at a fireworks show. It was really hectic. I don’t remember the exact details. A lot of people were there.

The dad had gone off on his own to buy snacks for the kids, he took the baby along.

Mom was sitting on a blanket with the rest of her kids, ready to watch the fireworks show. Someone from the show asked Mom to move her car, it was in the way. Mom left the oldest child in charge of all the younger ones on the grassy hill on their blanket. She walked over and hopped into the car.

At the same time, Dad had come back to the car after getting snacks to get a lawn chair out of the trunk. Mom and Dad didn’t see each other, Mom was already in the car. Dad set the baby carrier down on the ground behind the car, not knowing Mom was in the car ready to back up.

I’m not sure how it happened, Dad was either distracted talking to someone or busy setting snacks down. But while he wasn’t looking, Mom backed the car over the baby. It was horrible, chaotic, and devastating.

The baby was only partially backed over and survived for two days. He died after that. The pain of his parents was indescribable.

After that, an investigation ensued of the death of their child. They were found innocent, ruling that it was a horrible accident. But being investigated for the murder of their child made the death much worse and the pain last much longer.

Surprisingly, the couple did stay together. A lot of times, couples blame each other in events like that and have to separate after something so painful, or so I’ve heard.

However, they don’t celebrate the 4th of July anymore. It’s a horrible reminder of the death of their baby boy. Every year I see a post from them commemorating his death on Independence Day.

It depends on your life style.

A lot of people will say rent is the killer.

It isn’t the killer it once was. Rents are FALLING in Hong Kong and if you live in the New Territories a little bit away from an MTR station a 500sqft apartment can be had for about $7000 a month, live in the arse end of nowhere and $10000 can get you an entire 750sqft apartment.

But you trade travel time/expenses for rent.

Foodwise? You can survive easily on $100HKD a day.

Transport from arse end of nowhere to Admiralty for me is about $60HKD a day. This can be cheaper if I decide to arrive before 8am.

Utilities. Family of 4 lots of air con, lots of cooking (electric) is about $2800 a month electricity. I live mostly alone spend most of my time outside and I am also heat resistant so I spend about $700 (I do however weld a fair bit).

The problem is sanity money.

As somebody on a visa? Shenzhen is closed to you. Sanity money is doing things to get away from the nuttyness of the city and urban areas. This can be cheap as chips for instance cycling all over the territory (an older road bike can be bought for $2000). To ice skating, musical instruments etc to getting wasted.

That’s the big money sink here.

This is FRIGHTENING!

My wife was killed in an accident in Minnesota. A juvenile was driving her brand new vehicle way too fast even tho the road conditions were dry (speedometer was stuck at 1 04 when they were investigating).

The girl/insurance was found 100% at fault. Her insurance was a hefty one since she was a minor. Their insurance had the gall to keep calling me asking health questions about my wife and she was prone to seizures, blacking out suddenly, vertigo, etc. I was like WTH and told them I was going to get an attorney (this was Wednesday morning…accident was Tuesday night at 8:44PM). By 11AM I already had answered numerous calls from her ins, had to tell 4 kids their mom passed away, had to let her family in Arizona know that she passed.

At 11:45 on the morning after, I get a call from her insurance company asking if I would accept $1,000 for my pain, suffering and not go to trial. This girls insurance policy was over 500k. I told them that they are out of their effing mind…the girl that offered me chuckled and said she thought I wouldnt accept and hung up. I got a lawyer, had him let them know I wouldnt accept and we would reach a settlement.

All in all, the insurance company sat on the policy earning interest for 2 years and then on month 26, the KIDS reached a college settlement that they couldnt touch until each of them reached 18, 21, 25 (I didnt want them to get all that money right away and blow it even tho one had a sleazy partner and they blew thru the age 21 settlement in 3 days).

I think its very sleazy that they were trying to distance themselves from the accident and then trying to weasel themselves out of paying the insurance settlement. We didnt get the full settlement but it was close and I still have 2 children out of the 4 still collecting interest and checks.

This was a Nation that once refused to starve Egyptian soldiers it had encircled in 1973

Moshe Dayan once said If Israel acted like terrorist groups, it would lose the moral ground to the world

Golda Meir formed the Wrath of God team to selectively hunt down the 1972 Munich Massacre terrorists – one by one over almost 11 years at a cost of $ 42 Million rather than send a few aircraft and bomb Jordan or Lebanon for harboring those terrorists


Those days are done and dusted now

The Americans started with Agent Orange and began to justify killing Civilians

Then in 1999, Tony Blair openly claimed the West had a right to meddle in any Country’s affairs for World Peace

And thus began the growth of Evil in the West

I would say the Evil began with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair – both alleged pedophiles and both on the list of that notorious and accepted pedophile Epstein

Europe was still protected by good nationalists like Chirac and Schroeder

Then gradually the Evil spread everywhere

Bush Jr, Obama, Trump, Biden, Scholz, Boris Johnson,Macron and Netanyahu – the list goes on and on

The Israelis are evil people today

They seem to believe that killing women and children is fully justified

That’s not a problem in itself

Yet they seem to believe Arabs and especially Palestinians are akin to animals and deserve to die

So many Israeli kids seem surprised as to why the whole world is reacting to the deaths of Palestinians

Just like in 1940, Hitler Jugend used to ask why everyone was so worried about Jewry when the Reich was doing their job for them and ridding the world of that Jewish influence


Their God once protected them because they were on the right path and the world was persecuting them

I believe the same God will abandon them or has abandoned them to the Devil long ago

They are too evil and they deserve God’s judgment

Let’s hope like Moses – a new round of plagues arise and exterminate all the evil Israelis leaving behind the Good ones who can again build up the former ‘Honor’ of their race that existed in the times of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan

SHOCKING Court Ruling in Favor of MEN! Yale Student Acquitted of Assault Sues for $110 Million

The thing is, for many men, it's not even, "guilty until proven innocent." Its, "guilty EVEN if proven innocent."

Green Chile Burros

The burro is shown “enchilada style.”

green chile burros
green chile burros

Ingredients

  • 1 small beef roast, diced
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 2 (4 ounce) cans diced green chiles
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 (16 ounce) can tomatoes, drained (juice reserved)
  • 1/2 teaspoon comino (cumin)
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • All-purpose flour

Instructions

  1. Brown diced meat in fat in a large, heavy saucepan. Add onion, green chiles, garlic and drained tomatoes. Add enough drained tomato juice (plus water if needed) to cover. Add comino, salt and pepper. Cook, covered, until meat is very tender.
  2. Mix flour with a small amount of water to form a thin paste and add to mixture to thicken slightly.
  3. Heat a large flour tortilla on a griddle. Fill with meat mixture and fold.

Notes

Enchilada Style: Follow instructions above, then place in a shallow serving dish. Pour enchilada sauce over the top to cover, and sprinkle with grated cheese. Heat in a 425 degrees F oven until the cheese is melted.

I sometimes make a fast version of this. I use leftover pot roast, dice it up, mix it with the remaining ingredients and just simmer it until the onion is tender. Thicken it with the flour as stated in the recipe.

I have had so many wonderful moments with Jay (store manager), it’s hard to decide on which one.

I think this was hilarious, but I doubt Jay would, good thing he doesn’t read my answers.

I was working in my department, Jay and I were visiting just before he was going home. A customer walked up to my service counter. I wished I could remember what the customer said or did that had me lose my temper. It takes a lot before I lose it.

Anyway, the customer upset me and I said, “You can shove it where the sun doesn’t shine and I don’t mean a closed book.” The customer walked away. Jay looks at me and said, “You are so busted!” He walked away to talk to the customer. I stood there cussing myself out for my stupidity.

Jay returned. In the coldest tone, he said, “You back room now!!!!!” I walked back there. I knew that there was nothing I could say to save my bacon.

He stood there glaring at me, counting to ten, taking deep breaths, counting again and clenching and unclenching his fists. I was smart enough not to be a smarta$$ and ask him if I was in trouble.

He finally said, “How? How in the H E double hockey sticks did you manage to do it?!?!” I waited to find out what I managed to do. Jay sputters out, “ I went to talk to the customer to smooth things out, so corporate would not become involved. The customer told me that everything was great and if I punish you in anyway, she will call corporate on me?!!?” I looked at him and said, “Maybe because I am cuter?” He stormed off!

We are still friends to this day! I’m still cuter!

Russia to United Nations: Prepare for “Unconditional Capitulation” of Ukraine

Russia to United Nations: Prepare for &quot;Unconditional Capitulation&quot; of Ukraine

Russia just said the quiet part out loud: There must be unconditional capitulation (i.e. surrender)” by Ukraine.

Nebenzya large
Nebenzya large

During yesterday’s UN Security Council meeting Vasily Nebenzya, the Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations, said:

“This is how it will go down in history – as an inhuman and hateful regime of terrorists and Nazis who betrayed the interest of their people and sacrificed it for Western money and for Zelenski and his closest circle.

In these conditions, attempts by the head of the Kiev regime to promote his formula and convene summits in support of the Kiev regime cause only confusion.

Very soon the only topic for any international meetings on Ukraine will be the unconditional capitulation of the Kiev regime.

I advise you all to prepare for this in advance.”

“When I was elected as president then (in 2016), I tried to craft an independent foreign policy, not really against America. I have no quarrel with America. But the problem was our foreign policy was dovetailing theirs, and not so good with China. So I started on a neutral foreign policy. I announced to the world that I had no friends and no enemies to fight. I just want to be neutral. And I did not have to kowtow to anybody’s foreign policy, especially the Americans. […]

Most of the ASEAN countries have followed a very neutral, independent foreign policy. I would have wanted that… That is why I slowly detached myself, and, at least in foreign policy, and announced to China that we are not enemies, that we have never been, and never will be in our lifetime.

Here in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), when I was president, there was no quarrel. We can return to normalcy. I hope that we can stop the ruckus over there, because the Americans are the ones pushing the Philippine government to go out there and find a quarrel and eventually maybe start a war.

So I am very sure of that – America is giving the instructions to the Philippine government to ‘not be afraid because we will back you up.’ […]

I am sorry for my country. I am not the president anymore. I cannot run. But if there is a way we can reverse the situation, we might find a way inside to implode somewhere. And if God would allow it then perchance I would be able to reverse the situation. I would remove the bases.

And I would tell the Americans, you have so many ships, so you do not need my island as a launching pad or as a launching deck for you.”

This is a custom which had its origins in China’s imperial past.

The idea was this: If a local official behaved intolerably, the people would go to the imperial capital and make an appeal to an imperial official, or in some cases, even to the emperor himself. The petitioners would lay out their case, explain the rationale for their appeal, and ask for senior official or emperor to make a judgment.

This could be very dangerous: what would happen if the senior official or emperor sided with the local official, and ordered that all the petitioners be executed? For this reason, it was considered a very risky strategy.

This petitioning method continues to the present day. When Hu Jintao was president, in some cases, local officials would go to the train and bus stations to prevent the petitioners from boarding trains. There were even a few cases where petitioners made it to Beijing, and were kidnapped by the local officials and taken back to their village! This was considered to be a serious violation of the authority of the Beijing central government.

Xi Jinping has tried to modernize this system, which is why he has strengthened the authority of the Party Discipline Committee of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. In effect, they act as “flying magistrates” or judges who were sent out to the provinces to hunt down and remove corrupt local officials. If you follow the detective stories of Judge Dee and Judge Bao, they were flying magistrates who represented the emperor, which was why local officials all had to kneel before him.

"I listen to Jeffrey Sachs, and Michael Hudson. Great to hear about this Chinese economist who i have no access to, nor the Chinese language skill to understand even if I do. Thank you for introducing his thoughts though."

We are at yield, and soon we can expect fracture

Mark my words

All evidence indicates that China and Russia are coordinating their actions. This uptick in nuclear talk with Russia and the USA troops in Ukraine, along with the stuff going on in the Pacific. It’s all very clear. It’s coordinated.

More chatter about Scott Ritter and what that means all in front of the nuclear war backdrop. Lots of stuff going on right now.

Today is a Geo-politics heavy post.

The vectors are all disturbing.

  • USA culture is collapsed.
  • USA society is wiped out.
  • The West is now very dangerous and police are not available.
  • Warrants, and laws are ignored.
  • Nuclear war is gleefully discussed without a care in the world.
  • Crazy inflation… and it’s gonna get much worse.

I get the impression that the USA is a big bonfire right now, and the wealthy and Washington insiders are all throwing gasoline and kerosene on the fire…

Raw Truth

Have I read this wrong? Putin started a war he can’t possibly win, as China embeds deeper and deeper into the fabric of eastern Russia. He isolates his country, makes it a vassal state to China, and for what? Is the guy missing a brain?

Question: Have I read this wrong? Putin started a war he can’t possibly win, as China embeds deeper and deeper into the fabric of eastern Russia. He isolates his country, makes it a vassal state to China, and for what? Is the guy missing a brain?

Answer:

Yes, you are reading it wrong.

As of 2024, Ukraine manpower has been depleted to such a point that Russia is in a position to get a lot more than they would have gotten with a negotiation back in 2020.

He didn’t isolate his country, because the BRICs payment system, particularly via RMB can cover up to 95% of human population. At this point, kicking Russia out of SWIFT just means reducing SWIFT’s value as a payment system.

In fact, the European sanctions helped the Russian economy tremendously, this is because prior to European sanctions, Putin’s main enemies are actually the Russian Oligarchies and to a lesser extent, the pro-West Russian capitalist. The European and US sanctions crippled both, meaning a lot money Russian money is investing into Russian economy instead of going to Europe and US.

And with China, the entire point is that China didn’t take advantage with any military venture into Russia far east. So at this point, 4,209.3 kilometres out of 22,407 kilometres of Russian land border suddenly don’t require any significant security investment, which frees up significant amount of Russian attention and budget.

Right now, the main Chinese complaint against Russian border is that the border customs are too under staffed and the roads sucked, so the cross border traders have to wait for long hours there.

See, that’s the power of not playing a zero sum game and constantly trying to screw other people over.

Blueberry Puffs

Blueberry Puffs
Blueberry Puffs

Ingredients

  • 2 cups fresh or 1 bag frozen blueberries
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/4 teaspoon allspice
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1/3 cup light brown sugar
  • 12 slices bread
  • 6 eggs
  • 2 cups Half-and-Half
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar

Instructions

  1. Mix first 7 ingredients in a saucepan. Heat until the sauce is semi-thick. Set aside and cool to room temperature.
  2. Cut crusts from bread. Spray a 2-quart rectangular glass pan with a nonstick pan coating. Cover the bottom of pan with 6 bread slices.
  3. In separate bowl, mix eggs, Half-and-Half, vanilla extract and sugar. Pour half of this mixture over bread.
  4. Spread thickened, cooled blueberry sauce over bottom layer.
  5. Arrange the other half of the bread on top of blueberry filling.
  6. Pour remaining egg mixture over the top.
  7. Sprinkle with a dash of nutmeg.
  8. Cover and place in refrigerator overnight.
  9. Bake in a preheated 350 degrees F oven for 60 minutes.
  10. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting into 6 servings or 12 servings for a buffet.
  11. Top with brown sugar and a few blueberries.

Woke Staff Go Silent as New CEO Says This in Brutal Meeting

“The beginnings of the Third World War “Nuclear war: the scenario of the end of the world? In all likelihood, it will not be a conventional war.”

We learn that President Biden has authorized Ukraine to “conduct limited attacks inside Russia with American-made weapons”. Some of the United States’ allies had already gone further. Britain, several weeks ago, allowed Ukraine to use its Storm Shadow long-range missile systems for attacks in any part of Russia, and France and Germany have recently taken the same position. We are, therefore, at a critical moment and the probability of moving from low-key conflicts to a war of uncontrollable global dimensions, including the great powers.

In an interview on March 18, President Putin warned: “It is clear to everyone that a [conflict between Russia and NATO] would mark the final step before a Third World War. I don’t think anyone wants that.” Asked by Reuters about Emmanuel Macron’s comments, who said he did not rule out the possibility of sending ground troops to Ukraine and the risk of a conflict with NATO, Vladimir Putin quipped: “Everything is possible in the modern world.” Emmanuel Macron, who has said he does not want an “escalation”, last week called on the West to “jump” out, warning that a Russian victory in Ukraine would pose an “existential threat” to Europe. President Putin adds that NATO military personnel were already in Ukraine. Russian troops heard communications in English and French on the battlefield, he said. “There is nothing good in all this, first and foremost for them since they are dying there and in large numbers.”1

«Will NATO member states individually or collectively go to war against Russia? This is the question of Western decision-makers. In an interview with The Economist, Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the Alliance said: “The time has come for allies to reflect on whether they should lift some of the restrictions imposed on the use of weapons given to Ukraine (…) Especially now, when a lot of fighting is taking place in Kharkov, near the border, denying Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very difficult to defend it.” He pre-announced Washington’s decision to the European Allies. Speaking at the Council of the European Union, he said: “According to international law, Ukraine has the right to self-defence. And the right to self-defense also includes striking legitimate military objectives inside Russia.” (…) Extending the protection of the Atlantic anti-missile shield to Ukrainian territory would mean going to war collectively against Russia. But allowing Ukraine to attack Russia with weapons supplied by NATO member states would mean their entry into an individual war against Russia. For his part, Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, commented: “This gentleman [Jens Stoltenberg] is dangerous because talking about a Third World War, Western weapons capable of striking and killing inside Russia, seems to me very, very dangerous and reckless.”

Vladimir Putin, replied to journalists: “This constant escalation can lead to serious consequences. Let them [the European NATO member states] remember that their territory is small and their population dense,” Senator Dmitry Rogozin, former director of Roscosmos, directly warned Washington: “We are not only on the threshold, but already on the edge, beyond which, if the enemy is not stopped in such actions, an irreversible collapse of the strategic security of the nuclear powers will begin.”2

Nuclear war: the scenario of the end of the world?
In all likelihood, it will not be a conventional war; For the evil is profound; it is the temptation to perpetuate an empire without a vital prognosis for Western countries against an existential threat for Russia which will not hesitate to pulverize the West even if it is a plantar nuclear fire; This reflection from the website Notre Planète Info allows us to predict the consequences of a nuclear war: “Feared during the Cold War, total nuclear war has proved to be such a heavy threat to the very future of humanity that the major nuclear powers have refrained from using nuclear weapons on a massive scale”.3

«NATO’s expansionist policy and the revival of openly Nazi armies in Ukraine triggered a Russian special operation of demilitarization and denazification in February 2022. The United States has always kept the possibility of carrying out preventive nuclear strikes. The United States has 750 military bases in more than 80 countries. The US has already spent 230 years (out of 246 years of existence), in direct and proxy wars abroad. In addition, the Pentagon’s new national defense strategy adopted in late October 2022 crossed a new line by authorizing the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear threats. A particularly risky doctrine according to Democratic Senator Edward Markey: “The risk of nuclear war seriously threatens the survival of the human species. Unfortunately, by not ruling out being the first to use nuclear weapons, the United States is increasing the risk of an unintended nuclear escalation.” Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia will retaliate against any nuclear attack with nuclear strikes. In other words, in the event of a potentially nuclear missile attack on Russia, hundreds of nuclear missiles will be launched immediately against the aggressive country, which will then be assured of total destruction.” [3]

The naivety of the West, which is banking on Russia’s misunderstanding of China
Alastair Crooke, the well-known journalist, describes the dilemma that in a way “blocks” and so much the better is the outbreak of the war of the West, NATO against Russia with the two blasters of Poland (enraged against Russia) and France of an unrecognizable paleo-Gaulian dignity: “The discourse of military escalation is fashionable in Europe, but both in the Middle East and in Ukraine, Western policy is in great difficulty. The paradox is that the Biden team – purely inadvertently – is giving birth to a “new world”. The more Western elites oppose birth — by “saving Zionism,” “saving European Ukraine,” and crushing dissidents — the more they accelerate the fall of Leviathan.”4

«The nearly 8,000-word China-Russia joint statement evokes the elementary laws of nature itself by describing the West’s usurpation of the fundamental principles of humanity, reality and order – a criticism that has engulfed the collective West mad with rage. But how and why can it be said that the West is accelerating its own dissolution? The New York Times gives a clue as to the “why”: The old “Anglo-Saxon” obsession with a defiant Russia that the West has never been able to bend to its will. Today, Russia and China signed a joint statement somewhat similar to the “limitless” friendship declared in February 2022, but which goes further. This statement describes their relationship as “superior to the political and military alliances of the Cold War era.” The friendship between the two states has no limits, there are no “forbidden” areas of cooperation. Ray McGovern, a former adviser to the US president, recounted how “when Biden took office in 2021, his advisers assured him that he could play on Russia’s fear (sic) of China – and drive a wedge between the two. This represents the ‘mother of all errors’ of judgment, for it causes the circumstances in which the Western ‘Order’ can dissolve.” “China is seeking to become the world’s most powerful economy and the world’s largest and most powerful military.” [4]

«In August 2019, when the United States withdrew from the treaty banning intermediate-range missiles in Europe, it had already deployed missiles in Romania and Poland. It is not possible to determine which missile is loaded because the tubes have lids. The time it takes for these missiles to reach Moscow would be 9 minutes from Poland and 10 minutes from Romania. (…) On May 18 in Moscow, in the wake of the last Xi-Putin summit – as M.K. Bhadrakumar notes. Western thought processes, Lavrov said, are moving dangerously toward “the contours of the formation of a European military alliance — with a nuclear component.” He deplored the fact that “they have chosen a confrontation on the battlefield: We are ready for it”. “The program to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia – militarily and otherwise – is a pure fantasy that will be resolutely countered.”[4]

The multidimensional cooperation between Russia and China scares the West
The West mistakenly thinks that it can impose its norm in the name of its rights; American and European strategists are doing everything they can to create dissension between Russia and China. Even President Biden believes in it. Alain Constant of the newspaper Le Monde, whom we have known much more professionally, writes: “In June 1997, Senator Joe Biden, returning from a trip to Moscow intended to reassure Russia about the enlargement of NATO, brushed aside the risks of Russia’s rapprochement with China. For the Biden of 1997, a Russian-Sino-Iranian rapprochement is unthinkable and is akin to political fiction. At the time, few American officials were aware of the danger. But Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former adviser, warns: “The worst-case scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps Iran, united by a common hatred of the United States.” A nightmare scenario for the West that has become reality (…) After years of rapprochement and various treaties, the three countries are now clearly aligned on a common roadmap: to put an end to Western hegemony. All this while waging a hybrid fight against the West, at once military, technological, commercial, IT and civilizational.”5

In the same vein, Alain Frachon sends this message to the West: “There is no point in entertaining irresponsible illusions in Washington, Paris or Berlin: the Sino-Russian couple is not about to divorce. Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Europe and Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing a few days later have shown it unambiguously: the two countries are united by the same ambition, that of fighting against Western “hegemony”, In the spring of 2024, Xi Jinping recalled that he was a stakeholder in the conflict raging in Europe: He is on the Russian side (…) The aim is to increase trade between their two countries in the face of a “hostile and destructive American policy” intended, according to them, to “stem” the rise of China and Russia (…) This situation requires enhanced military cooperation. China will further support the war economy that Putin is establishing in Russia. Clearly, China is maintaining the Russian war effort.”6

Inventory of the world’s nuclear forces
According to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published in June 2023 (SIPRI), “in January 2023, 12,512 nuclear weapons, of which 9576 were stored in warehouses for potential use. United States (1770 units) and Russia (1674 units). Together, these two states possess about 90 percent of all nuclear weapons.”7

«Global military spending is rising amid war, escalating tensions and insecurity Global military spending has risen to a record high of $2443 billion. “States are prioritising military force, which risks fuelling the ‘action-reaction’ spiral Russia’s military spending has increased by 24% to $109 billion in 2023. Ukraine is at $64.8 billion. Ukraine has also received at least $35 billion in military aid to the United States, including $25.4 billion from the United States. Together, this aid and Ukraine’s military spending is equivalent to about 91% of Russian military spending. In 2023, the military spending of NATO’s 31 members amounts to $1341 billion, or 55% of global military spending.”8

«U.S. military spending increased by 2.3% to $916 billion in 2023, accounting for 68% of NATO’s total military spending. In 2023, most European NATO member states increased their spending. China’s increased military spending is leading to that of its neighbors. China, 2nd with 296 billion dollars. Israel’s military spending – the second largest in the region after Saudi Arabia’s – reached $27.5 billion in 2023. India is the 4th largest with $83.6 billion. Algeria’s military spending increased by 76% to $18.3 billion. Iran is the 4th largest military spender in the Middle East in 2023 with $10.3 billion.”9

The bluster of the West. Russia invincible with the RS-28 Sarmat missile
In a lucid contribution, Andrew Cockburn explains that the effects of Western propaganda hide a sad reality: “The obsession with technology has not benefited Washington. The United States produces sophisticated and expensive weapons, which Russian forces have quickly learned to neutralize. Andrew Cockburn talks about it: “American weapons have not prevented Ukraine from retreating and suffering a possible defeat. Many failures of U.S. weapons in Ukraine, including HIMARS LRMs, are related to the use of highly vulnerable guidance systems with GPS. Russia has long paid special attention to electronic warfare and excels at jamming GPS signals. “Most Western systems have proven ineffective in combat conditions” due to Russian jamming.10

In the extreme conditions, which is an existential problem for Russia, it is no longer bound by any commitment: “Russia withdrew from the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions Start-II/SNV-III, on February 23, 2023 In addition to its “conventional” continental ballistic missiles, Russia has acquired a heavy intercontinental ballistic missile called “RS-28 Sarmat” (or Satan 2 for the West), operational since the end of August 2023. It is a missile capable of striking any region on Earth with devastating and unparalleled firepower. This missile can carry up to 10 large nuclear warheads or 16 small warheads that can be aimed at a target each. They are thus much more destructive than the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. And for good reason, this 200-ton missile, 35.5 meters long and 3 m in diameter, has a total power of 8 to 12 Mt of TNT (450 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima), enough to transform a country the size of France or Great Britain into an uninhabitable desert (its destruction zone is 650,000 km²) in just 2 minutes… With a speed of 20 times that of sound (26,000 km/h), this new missile is impossible to intercept At least 50 Sarmat launch systems have been deployed on the territory of Russia since 2023. Russia finally has a “Perimeter” system, nicknamed “Dead Hand” (“Main more”) by NATO experts. This is a final retaliatory nuclear strike even if Russia is bombed by nuclear strikes and is on the verge of annihilation.”[3]

Putin’s warning is direct and explicit
Journalist M.K. Bhadrakumur said: “Putin has been explicit and direct. He made it known in advance that he would be forced to respond with a nuclear capability if the Russian state was threatened. Putin addressed the Federal Assembly in front of the crème de la crème of the Russian elite and took the whole nation into confidence by saying that the country could be pushed into a nuclear war for its own preservation. In fact, US Secretary of State Lloyd Austin said at a congressional hearing in Washington that “NATO will fight with Russia” if Ukraine is defeated. To put it plainly, Austin meant that if Ukraine loses, NATO will have to oppose Russia. It is a call for Europe to mobilise for a continental war. What French President Emmanuel Macron said: The defeat of Russia is indispensable for the security and stability of Europe.”11

The Doomsday Clock The impotence of the international community
The nuclear threat in the world is illustrated in particular by the Doomsday Clock. Created in 1947, shortly after the American atomic bombings of Japan, and has been regularly updated since then, by members of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, (BAS) based at the University of Chicago. In 2012 it indicated 11:55 p.m., only 5 minutes before the end of the world. In 2023, its hand has moved forward again to just 90 seconds. The question of nuclear war therefore remains more topical than ever. UN humanitarian officials and members of civil society discussed the humanitarian community’s response to a nuclear explosion. “The humanitarian consequences of a nuclear attack or accident would be potentially devastating and catastrophic,” warned the Director of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva.

An apocalyptic post-nuclear bombing scenario
«Within hours, 34 million people would be killed by the direct effect of nuclear explosions. Colossal and uncontrollable fires generated by the bombs would send 9 million tons of soot into the atmosphere. In less than 50 days, the entire planet would be affected by ash. For a decade, the sun’s rays would then be partially filtered. As a result, the global temperature would drop by 1.25°C in the first three years; global precipitation would decrease by 10% in the two to four years following the event; frosts would be more frequent. Agriculture would then be severely affected and therefore food resources for all of humanity. Finally, this scenario is accompanied by a generalized loss (75% at the global level – 65% in the tropics) of the stratospheric ozone layer for about 15 years.” [3]

The effects of nuclear weapons on human health
According to the specialized site: describing the dropping of an atomic bomb “The intense fireball generated at the very moment of the explosion of a nuclear weapon of this power would release heat, shock waves and radiation at the same time. The victims of thermal radiation: the temperature on earth, under the epicenter of the explosion, would reach about 7000°C and, in this area, all living beings would be pulverized. Tens of thousands of people are believed to be burned, most with horrific third-degree burns. A fireball and thermal radiation would be immediately followed by pressure waves traveling at supersonic speeds. The victims would have organ ruptures, open fractures, skull fractures and penetrating wounds. A significant number of people would lose their hearing as a result of perforated eardrums.”12

«Victims of the firestorm: It is also possible that radioactive fallout could be blown far by the wind, endangering far more people than the explosion and fires. Many of those affected would not realize they had received a life-threatening dose of radiation for several days or weeks. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the number of deaths attributed to bombings had reached 200,000 and 140,000 respectively in 1950. Even today, radiation-related illnesses and deaths are observed among the now elderly population of survivors of the 1945 bombings.” [12]

What should Algeria do?
«When the great make war on each other, it is the weak who die.” This quote from Jean Paul Sarre sums up the current situation. In the face of the new world that will give birth in pain, there will be collateral damage. We are close to a future place of confrontation! An atomic bomb 800 km from Algiers will impact life in Algeria, in the opposite direction. Let us remember the 13 multicolored jerboas, in addition to having ravaged and sterilized entire regions, allowed winds to disperse the atomic cloud over thousands of km in all directions!

It is truly an uncertain era in which all the settling of scores will have free rein, now that there is no United Nations capable of preserving morality and human dignity. This “War of all against all”, “Bellum omnium contra omnes” according to Hobbes, must oblige us more than ever to introspect and review our being in the world. Only force governs the world. Russia manages to resist the West thanks to the 450,000 engineers per year! and several million technicians!

Technological power should be based on science and military industry also on heavy equipment (tanks, planes, cannons) guided by computer power are the immune defenses that we need to strengthen. To do this, we must fundamentally review the training of engineers and scientists in terms of quantity and quality. The discipline of mathematics should be the apple of our eye and a special scholarship should be allowed to mathematics baccalaureates and technological disciplines, as President Boumediene did in his time. A President of whom some discover, late and in spite of themselves, the vision of the statesman who thinks in terms of the future. The next five-year term will also have to continue to bring the structuring projects to fruition: Betting on renewable energy and green hydrogen. Strengthen steel capacity, a strong link in any industrialization, particularly in the rail and military industries. The security of the country depends on it. This means that Algerians must all be vigilant together.

Conclusion
In one of his many meetings for the NO to the 1914-18 war, Jean Jaurès, the French socialist leader, understood where the ills of humanity came from. Rolling liberalism! He wrote: “Capitalism carries war within it, as the sleeping cloud carries the storm.” He will be assassinated! We live in a troubled time where anything can happen to God forbid In a famous poem from 1955, Jacques Brel, in a lucid and prophetic way, described the world of the time in the making.”
–Professor Chems Eddine Chitour

INTERVIEW: Land of the free, home of the grave

Scott Ritter on the assassination of the constitution and how three heavily-armed goons removed his passport with all of his rights. The grisly sequel follows…

 

Vintage illustration

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ETERNAL LIBRARY: THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE

Submitted into Contest #251 in response to: Dream up a secret library. Write a story about an adventurer who discovers it. What’s in the library? Why was it kept secret? view prompt

Melinda Madrigal

Long before the rise of man when the world was dark there came a great light from the sky. A great ship descended into a dark world.Inside the ship was the greatest race to ever inhabit the universe. They are called the creators. The creators were the first evolution of humanity.They called their new home Avalonia. The creators created the oceans, the trees, plants and animals. Overtime the creators created the second evolution of humanity in their image.The creators built great cities and within those great cities, a great library was built. Which housed the greatest knowledge the universe has ever known.A millennia passed since the creators arrived in Avalonia and since their first landing many generations of humans have been all with the knowledge of the creators.The creators have spread their seed and their knowledge throughout the known galaxy. Many planets bore the fruit of knowledge of the creators. Many more libraries of knowledge were created but only one remains eternal.Many more generations have passed and the generations of humans created by the creators continued to flourish until one moment in their history when everything changed.

 

The creators simply vanished leaving their creations on the many planets they call home. The humans on each planet were left with the knowledge of the creators.

 

The humans didn’t use the knowledge wisely and ultimately all the knowledge was lost including the libraries expect for the one that remains eternal.

 

Deep inside I knew the existence of humanity was part of something greater. We were put on this planet to be something more.

 

We were created by a powerful race of humans to carry on their legacy but over the course of thousands of years we lost it all.

 

I must find and figure out what we lost. It’s my destiny. I dreamed about something greater than myself. Something greater than humanity.

 

A library filled with the knowledge of the universe is somewhere out beyond the stars waiting for me to find.

 

Atria is my home the fourth planet the creators created this I know. The records of the past show it. It also shows one of the great libraries once stood on Atrian grounds but the library is no more.

 

Their maybe more libraries out beyond the stars but one bears the name eternal. That one has been lost since the first creation. I aim to find that one.

 

Beyond the stars there are more planets that house the libraries. To those planets I will go and find the one that is eternal. I don’t know what I will find but it’s a risk I must take.

 

To Aqua Terra, Azurella also known as the water planets are known creations of the creators. To Amarantha and Inter Nova are also known creations of the creators. All these planets have one thing in common. The great libraries of the creators were built there.

 

Atria, my home world was also created by the creators and too many of my people no known library was ever built on Atria but a long-ago war destroyed half of Atria and possible the library. The records are proof there was a library on Atria.

 

I have what I need. Now it’s time for me to set off on my journey. Lucky for me I have my own space ship. Just because the great library is no more and no one knows it doesn’t mean the creators knowledge was lost. Some of their knowledge was left for us.

 

The record I found suggest only four of the many planets the creators created house the great libraries. One of them has to be the one that is eternal.

 

I set off into the stars. My first stop is Aqua Terra. One of the many water planets. I fire up the FTL and in four hours I arrive at Aqua Terra.

 

I scan the planet and to my amazement there is a large structure on the southern end of the planet. The inhabitants of Aqua Terra primarily live on the northern end of the planet.

 

I land my ship safely on the water. I put my water gear on. I open the door and jump into the water. I follow the coordinates to the location of the library.

 

Not much of a library. I enter through one of the side openings. Something must be holding the water back. I beginning going up one of the hallways. I look around. I don’t see much. The books are weathered down.

 

I keep going down the long hallway until I reach a door. I open the door and enter. All the books are weathered down expect for one. This book is in good condition.

 

I pick up the book and open it. It’s not a book but a journal. I start to read the journal, Wow, this was written by one of the creators.

 

“We left our home to seed the rest of the known galaxy. I will miss my home. I will miss my library. Many more will be created. One day I will return to Avalonia.”

 

“We seeded many more planets and built many more libraries. Our creations are beautiful but something happened to us. We must leave Avalonia or all will be lost. We entrust our libraries and all our knowledge to our creations. Our eternal library, we will hide forever.”

 

Avalonia, I never heard of that planet. I leave the library and go back to my ship. I go to the next planet, another water planet. I found the same thing I found on Aqua Terra, a journal talking about Avalonia.

 

I go to the next two planets Amarantha and Inter Nova and I found the same thing, two more journals written by the creators talking about Avalonia.

 

I spread the journals out looking for clues. I examine each journal one by one and bang hidden beneath the words are numbers. I write them down. They look like coordinates.

 

These must be coordinates to Avalonia. I punch in the coordinates. There it is Avalonia. I fire up the FTL. I’m on my way to Avalonia. The creators first home, first creation and hopefully the site of the one that is eternal.

 

As my ship travels to Avalonia, I keep reading the journals of the creators. This is amazing. One of the journals written by a creator whose name is Minta talks about how the libraries were created. But what the journals don’t talk about is how we were created or why the vanished.

 

After ten hours my ship drops out of FTL. This is Avalonia. I scan the planet. My scans don’t pick up anything. I go back to the journals. I read each one. The journals talk about a large structure between a mountain and a waterfall.

 

I scan the planet again. My scans pick up something on the southern end of the planet. I go down to Avalonia. The planet is beautiful. No sign of life. I wonder why that is.

 

I see the mountain range. I fly around the mountain. I spot a waterfall. It must be in there. I land my ship. I open the door and walk out.

 

I’m speechless. I never see anything so beautiful and colorful. I scan the area with my scanner. I’m picking up something. I walk in the direction of the waterfall.

 

What’s that up ahead? I see what looks like the figure of a person. As I get near, I see the figure looking at me. My scans showed no sign of life.

 

“Hello my name is Minta creator of the library, creator of everything.” Oh My God! I’m seeing one of the creators.

 

“You have found the eternal library filled with the knowledge of the universe. You are worthy to be in the presence of those who breath life into you. Welcome my child.”

 

“The knowledge of creation is too great for our creations. We hid this knowledge because no one human is worthy of the knowledge that is held in the eternal library. Only you are worthy. Enter.”

 

I enter the library. Wow beyond wow. So much to be discovered. I walk around looking at the great works the creators did. I don’t know where to begin.

 

I take one book after another reading about everything the creators created from the first space ship to the many great cities they built, to the math and medicine they created and the history of creation.

 

I’m looking at everything the creators ever worked on. Everything they built and made including us humans. This is amazing. I continue to read it all. Thank you creators for leaving this for me, for us.

The USA is dying

Why is the Chinese style of mutilevel democracy and meritocracy to select national leaders over 25-35 years of proven records much superior to the western style democracy of selecting their national boss?

Say you have cancer.

Would you pick someone from the street to manage your treatment just because he happens to be tall, old, and gives nice speeches?

Yet that is what America has been doing for problems far more complex than cancer.

How does a rank amateur who has never spent a day in public office expect to master the task of running an entire nation from day 1?

That will be no different from picking a Mr. Random to replace Tim Cook at apple.

How do you think apple stock will fare once the appointment is confirmed, particularly if the replacement cannot explain the difference between a potato chip and a silicon chip?

Whatever you think of the Chinese, their system GUARANTEES that anyone with even a sniff at the politburo knows thoroughly what governance is all about–the stakes involved, how the various arms work, the major players, and most importantly, how to go about fulfilling their own roles.

You cannot say the same about the American system right at the very top because the cabinet is essentially parachuted in, and that can include the president.

What’s your rudest encounter with a hotel staff?

My home burnt down. And a nonprofit organization was helping me and my wife by paying for a room for us for a couple days while we found new residence..

1 hotel ..the best western.. refused to house us bc they saw nonprofit residents as poor and filthy (said they ruined rooms…like rich cant do that too)

The next one, one we ended up being placed in for 2 days called the scottish inn was owned by an Indian looking lady and family id presume. The woman acted like, and stated, she was *doing us a favor* by taking paid in full rates for a room bc it was paid by an organization (guaranteed $ in bag) she also treated us like scum of the Earth. From the second we showed up being recited a hundred rules and placed in room next to office and told to not make any noise and that our 2 kids ages 5 and 8 needed to *keep quiet completely* to not cooking any food and accused of doing soo when we brought some of our belongings we salvaged in, and 1 item was an air fryer.

Day 2 they called room around noon and told us, not even 18 hrs later, that we needed to vacate room w our stuff soo they could clean.

We did soo.. and returned to the entire room covered in news paper and the owner lady came knocking 2 seconds in.. she told me i couldnt have my own tv in room at first.. then told me no drinks can be in room (kool aid) then told me no touching tv. Keep in mind that the room was spotless, wed been up 2 days at this point and slept most this time.. our kids had slept 8 or 9 of the 14 hrs as well and were very well behaved.

We hadnt done anything at all besides drink some kool aid and flick around cable tv channels and talk amongst ourselves.

Soo Finally I burst and defended myself and exclaimed how she is treating us different because she assumes we are poor, but we are still people and it needs to stop.

I asked if we had done anything wrong. To which she replied no.. soo i said *then leave us alone.. if we do anything wrong, then tell us and we will stop…until then, plz stop treating us like scum that will ruin things, its a hotel.. we paid, leave us be..you dont cover every customers room w news paper and hover over them w rules like a prison guard do you? Soo why do that to us.. you are NOT doing us a favor, we could have found other accomodations if youd been uncomfortable. I understand your worry but we didnt do anything to be treated poorly and its making us feel opressed and uncomfortable even talking w eachother at a normal tone.. please relax and leave us be*

Horrible experience and completely demeaning.

I had to stop her when she just sat there 20 mins in my room w my kids belittling me. Hope she didnt take offence I wasnt mad , just making clear it was rude.

The USA is now completely lawless

What’s the difference between a rich man in Nigeria and in the United States?

A Rich Man In Nigeria

  1. He might have more than 7 cars. He is not paying tax or insurance on them so they are easy for him to maintain.
  2. Rather than for Nigerian Police officers to protect citizens, you see them guarding the Nigerian rich men. The middle class always employ Gate men. (security issues)
  3. The Nigerian rich men mostly send their wives to USA for child birth because of citizenship. The uncertainties in Nigeria are too many and he wants the best for his kids.
  4. The Nigeria rich man always seeks medical aid abroad.He doesn’t trust the Nigerian health care system even though we have both public and private hospitals.Nigeria President son had a bike accident ,he was transported to Germany for check up/treatment. His father (President Buhari ) almost stayed in London for a year because of health care.Yes they are rich and can afford this extravagant life.
  5. The Nigeria rich man evades tax a lot. Yes FIRS, the Nigerian version of IRS, aren’t effective.Till today, we do not even know how much Nigerian legislatives earn monthly.
  6. The Nigerian rich man might establish his own private university and send his own kids abroad for college education.

A rich man in the USA.

  1. He enjoys a business conducive environment.
  2. He enjoys access to health care
  3. He gets taxed for all his properties and liabilities.
  4. He files his taxes or risks jail.
  5. If he is an Entrepreneur, he employs workers and pays them with minimum wage. Nigeria is still battling with fixing its minimum wage to $100 monthly. The rich men in Nigeria are seriously taking advantage of the poor youths, paying them peanuts.

I hope you understand my points from another view of life.

Thanks

No One Wants to Work Anymore ….. The Debt Trend

Will WW3 involve all the G20 countries?

Hopefully yes!

You see Europeans are against war… in Europe they’re absolutely fine with devastation and killing OUTSIDE Europe.

After WW2 it was never again in Europe.

This is why the vast majority of them supported the Iraq and Afghan genocides. The people loved the 20 year mass murder of Iraqis and Afghans and most of them were happy about it.

All their governments which remember are elected and WHOLLY REPRESENTATIVE of the people as they’re democracies remember which is the PERFECT MOST REPRESENTATIVE system support killing of brown people.

This is why Europe needs to be utterly devastated along with the USA. Some of them might have the awareness and think OMG we did this for years against other countries! Are we the baddies?

most of them will be nah! They’re just insects!!!

Wanna play?

Col. Larry Wilkerson on Scott Ritter and Russia’s Devastating Warning to NATO

Everyone is convinced that the United States is in full scale collapse.

What is a historical fact that would sadden most people if they found out?

In the 1860’s, abused children were not protected under the law. So animal activists had to step in to rescue an abused child. Mary Ellen Wilson was the first child abuse case in America that initiated welfare rights for abused children.

If you beat and mistreated your furry animal, the newly formed ASPCA (the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) had the right to take it away from you. In some cases, you could be imprisoned.

If you beat and neglected a living, breathing child, the law allowed it because children were considered the property of the father.

Little Mary’s story begins tragically. Her father died when she was born, forcing her penniless mother to place her in the care of Martha Score. After Mary’s mother missed a few payments, Martha Score cruelly placed Mary Wilson into the New York City Department of Charities without her mother’s consent.

[1]After her financial situation improved, Mary’s mother, Francis Wilson, returned to get her child back but Martha Score falsely informed her that her daughter had died. Distraught, Francis Wilson left and never knew the horrors her daughter faced after being adopted by Mary and Thomas McCormack.

In that era, adoption was easy and unregulated. The couple walked into the orphanage, claimed to be her legitimate parents and took Mary Wilson home with them. The purpose of adopting her was to have an indentured servant, basically an unpaid servant.

Thomas McCormack died shortly after the adoption, and Mary McCormack remarried to Francis McConnell. It was during this period where Mary Wilson experienced extreme abuse. It was common knowledge in the neighborhood that her adopted mother savagely beat her.

Mary Wilson was beaten, burned, whipped and locked in a closet for hours. She was forced to do heavy labor and to sleep on the floor. The little girl slept on a dirty mat in a closet where she was chained like a dog.

During that period, Etta Wheeler, who was a missionary working for the poor, heard of the abuse and investigated. She expected to find an abused child but was still horrified by what she saw. Mary Wilson’s frail, starved body was covered in burns and cuts.

She went to authorities to have Mary Wilson removed from the abusive household but local authorities were unwilling to help, pointing out that the law allowed for physical discipline and Mary Wilson was the property of Francis McConnell.

“She’s better off with a home than on the street!” was the common belief.

Lost on what to do next, she decided to appeal to the organization that advocated against animal cruelty. Henry Bergh, the founder of ASPCA, was eager to help and built a legal case after Etta Wheeler gathered evidence and testimony on the abuse.

During the case, this was Mary Wilson’s chilling words on what she experienced.

My father and mother are both dead. I don’t know how old I am. I have no recollection of a time when I did not live with the Connollys. Mamma has been in the habit of whipping and beating me almost every day. She used to whip me with a twisted whip — a rawhide. The whip always left a black and blue mark on my body. I have now the black and blue marks on my head which were made by Mamma and also a cut on the left side of my forehead which was made by a pair of scissors. She struck me with the scissors and cut me; I have no recollection of ever having been kissed by any one — have never been kissed by Mamma. I have never been taken on my mamma’s lap and caressed or petted. I never dared to speak to anybody, because if I did, I would get whipped. I do not know for what I was whipped — Mamma never said anything to me when she whipped me. I do not want to go back to live with Mamma, because she beats me so. I have no recollection ever being on the street in my life.

[2]Her stepmother was found guilty of felonious assault and sentenced to one year of hard labour. Not an adequate sentence in my opinion. She should’ve gotten more for the abuse she inflicted.

Mary Wilson went on to live a happy life under the care of Etta Wheeler’s younger sister. She married and had two daughters, later adopting an orphaned girl. One of her daughters was named Etta, after the woman who rescued her.

She lived happily till her death at the age of 92. According to her children and grandchildren, she rarely discussed her early years and always possessed a kind, caring nature despite her horrific past.

After Mary Wilson’s case, laws were established against child abuse.

For the longest time in history, children and woman were considered property of their father or husband. This story goes to show how backwards society once was.

Can you believe that animals had more protection than children in history? It’s saddening.

Footnotes

[1] Mary Ellen Wilson: When Abused Children Had Fewer Rights Than Pets

[2] Mary Ellen Wilson – Wikipedia

Cool find

What happened in your office that became the stuff of legend?

I am a manager at a gourmet grocer and caterer.

One morning, my catering delivery driver comes running in the building to tell me that a trailer truck pulled in behind him as he was leaving with a catering delivery. The driver of the truck was nasty and refused to back up his truck.

This was a delivery for us from a company that we dealt with for many years. Apparently he was a new driver as we had never seen him before.

I am a 5′6″ 120 lb female and was probably about 56 years old at the time. Just saying, you’ll see.

So I went outside and asked the driver to move his truck. He refused and started swearing at me using words that would make my mother blush. He was standing in front of me with clenched fists. Very calmly, I told him I had 2 choices: I could call his boss or I could call the police. “you choose,” I said. He raised his fists and starting running towards me. I stood still with my arms crossed and then he stopped a few inches from me. “you’ll move your truck then”, I said. He turned and got back in the cab. I turned to go back in the building and there behind me was the 6′2” chef, the 6′ butcher and a 6′ driver. all big men.

How we laughed. I thought I had it under control all by myself! The guys couldn’t decide if I was a fool or brave. I thought I was brave!

I did call the drivers boss and that was the last time we saw him! We still laugh about that day several years later.

Chinese General “War is coming” Wait and You will See.

Very interesting “interview”.

The content you produce is top-tier and very valuable. High level overview of 'perceptions', 'narratives', and 'situations'. Becoming my go-to channel for Asia Pacific. Respect.

 

 

The forced closing of the China embassy in Houston seems to be a prelude to war by the USA. Will the USA land troops in Taiwan to force a war?

First it is not an embassy but a consulate. The Chinese ambassador resides in the Chinese embassy in DC, the capital city.

China has other consulates that serve different geographic regions of the US.

A prelude to war will require the severing of diplomatic relations, and the ambassador will close the embassy and return to China unmolested.

But of course, the United States is not known to be a stickler for international law so there is a nonzero possibility of unprovoked hostilities.

Unlikely but this administration has shown there are no bottomlines when it comes to the degree of outlandish and loutish they are willing to go.

Larry Johnson: Russia Is Flashing Red, the West Better Pay Attention

So worrying. This is important to view.

Can you put a soldier out of his misery?

NOTE: This information was true up until 2009 and I cannot unequivocally state that it is currently taught to medics and again, I doubt anyone would admit to others in a public forum if they had participated in the situation.

Yes, you can. Medics are taught how to but not instructed to. There is a terrible and fine line out there in “the suck” that medics, and medics alone, are asked to walk.

You don’t end a person’s life. Full stop. In the rare case that a soldier is mortally wounded (no way to maintain an airway or control bleeding and no higher medical assets within a reasonable time)… then a medic could administer an extra ampule of morphine or two. Even though the doctors and instructors teach the medics this, in the end, it’s on that one person’s shoulders. And conscience.

Is it better to leave your friend/co-worker screaming in agony until they are too weak to yell? Then watch them convulse every few minutes for a couple of hours. Then finally they stop responding to your voice or even painful stimulus.

Brain death is setting in. It takes a few minutes or a few days.

Every minute you have a seriously wounded soldier in your unit you have medics that are out of the fight. You also have a much more complicated command situation. Nobody (NOBODY) makes this decision lightly. They also never talk about it.

In the movies, there is always an EVAC helicopter with an escort available and ready to risk anything to get to the wounded. In combat, it’s not always possible. “Birds” get grounded for many reasons and MEDEVAC Strykers are delayed by the need for escort vehicles/crews and IED laden roads. In almost all cases, the wounded will live to see the operating room. In some form.

Combat wounded are intense. Gunfire is still raging in many cases. People are yelling, confusion is everywhere. The medic will be well trained but under a lot of stress. They know that they have to address breathing and bleeding in 2–3 minutes. They also need to avoid causing further injury and find any hidden wounds. While doing this they have to coordinate any available soldiers with combat lifesaver training to assist them with this or other injured. Finally, they also have to constantly keep the command apprised of the situation.

Who has X injury?

Can they return to the fight?

Do they need to be evacuated from battle or can we take them with us?

If they need to go NOW, how long do they realistically have?

Can we ground evac through the combat or do we need a bird?

While answering all of that the medic has assessed the wounded. Tried to control the bleeding and established a secure airway. Then they need to find a vein for an IV (super hard on a patient with blood loss or missing limbs). While doing this they also need to fill out the ‘9 Line’ medical evacuation form for the radio. Once this is done the medic will check the field dressings, the IV, the breathing. Record the wounds and vitals. Mark when/if morphine was given (how much, when, where administered) and done so that the surgeon can see it and blood doesn’t wash it away. Often in black sharpie on the forehead if the patient is unconscious- as awful as that sounds it works well.

So, don’t talk about the morality of this until you walk a mile (or 26) in a medic’s boots. Don’t talk about what happens until you live and work with a small team of men and women in a combat zone for over a year at a time. Infantry units are closer than most marriages/families. Your platoon SGT is dad and doc is mom. It’s a horrific moment to see one of your guys literally torn in half and dying. It’s much worse to know that due to a sandstorm there aren’t any flights that day. It’s hell on earth when you realize nobody is coming by road because of the IED you just hit. It’s unimaginable when you realize you only have 2 morphine ampules left and 3 critically wounded friends.

I didn’t have to make the hardest choice. I wouldn’t tell you if I did.

Great question. I hope someone who actually held this responsibility in combat can clear it up a little.

Update 2/1/21: I have received word from one medic who states they are no longer issued morphine, but it has been replaced with fentanyl and ketamine. I have two friends still in service who are currently issued morphine while fentanyl is on the medevac stryker, but I believe Mr. Walker regarding standard issue. Thank you to Alan Walker for the comment.

USA DEPLOYING 300K TROOPS TO EUROPE! RUSSIAS NUCLEAR LINE CROSSED, ATTACKS ON RUSSIA BEGIN

He is talking about what I have been saying. When the empire collapses, it starts locking down the country.

 

BREAKING NEWS: ISRAEL IS LAUNCHING ATTACKS UPON SOUTHERN LEBANON

Hal Turner World

 

Multiple Massive Explosions reported in Southern Lebanon as the Israeli Air Force appears to have begun Striking several Hezbollah Positions near the Border with Israel.; Strikes so Intense that Houses within the City of Kiryat Shmona are reported to be Shaking.

Drone reconnaissance activity over the Naqoura and Tyre sectors, south of the Litani River in southern Lebanon.

Says one observer:

“Israel is bombing Rafah. Israel is bombing Lebanon. Israel is bombing Syria. Bombing 3 different countries at the same time is not victim behavior. It is terrorism.”

Crossing red lines w/ Jeffrey Sachs

Very good, and he lays out a really good history of how we got here.

https://youtu.be/c-gIFpYWPuA

U.S. Surveillance Drone “FORTE-12” Has Gone “Missing” Over Black Sea

Hal Turner World

rq 4 global hawk 009 large
rq 4 global hawk 009 large

American Recon Drone “FORTE12” has apparently gone down in the Black Sea.  RUMORS say it was hit with jamming or Electronic Warfare (EW).

The intelligence drone was a Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk, flying out of an air base in Sicily. It circled at an altitude of 15.5 kilometers above the neutral waters of the Black Sea near Crimea according to the data of the website Flightradar24.

Judging by the data of the site, which allows real-time monitoring of aircraft movement, the reconnaissance drone flew out of the airfield Catania on the Italian island of Sicily. The drone gained height and proceeded through airspace of Greece and Bulgaria to the Black Sea.

According to Flightradar, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) belongs to the US Air Force and has registration number 10-2045, the call sign Forte-12.

The flight of the drone is tracked by more than five thousand users,  ranking first in the “popularity” on the FlightRadar24 website platform. According data at 11:39 Moscow time, drone tracking stopped on the site, the board stopped displaying on the map.

According to the manufacturing company, the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle is designed for reconnaissance and surveillance. It is capable of flying at high altitudes for more than 30 hours, is designed to receive images of large tracts of land with a high resolution in almost real time, is able to act in any weather and any time of day. In addition, such devices are used to support communication as repeaters.

As noted on the manufacturer’s website, Global Hawk, used by the US Air Force since 2001, “identifies potential threats, allowing commanders to gain a better understanding of their area of interest”.

This radio show called U.S. Central Command, twice, for comment. Both calls were picked up, with an almost immediate hang-up.  I then called the Pentagon Press office. That call was answered by “Quinn” and I told him I was trying to reach CENTCOM but two calls resulted in Hang-ups; that I was trying to get a comment about FORTE-12 Drone being downed in the Black Sea.  I asked him for a better contact number for CENTCOM.  He asked me to hold.  He came back a minute later saying “I am putting you through to Major Dietz.  The call rang 4x and voice mail picked up saying “You have reached a mailbox that cannot accept messages.”  

What is the scariest thing you know too much about?

The Jonestown Massacre.

 

If you think that’s trash on the ground, you would be, as the first helicopter pilots who flew over, mistaken.

These are the bodies of 918 members of the Peoples Temple who were brutally murdered by madman so high on himself and a truckload of barbiturates, I bet he still roams the location in a dream of undeserved self worship, refusing to accept that he died decades ago.

He died not the same way as the others.. Oh no that would be far too painful. You can mix as much drugs and sedatives into a vat of “Koolaid” as you want, it won’t make a difference when you throw buckets of potassium cyanide along with it. Cyanide has no mercy or morals, it stops the body from absorbing oxygen. Simple as that. It suffocates you, and I promise you it is not pleasant or “pain free” as Jim Jones promised it would be. The sedatives added would take up to 30 min to start working. Cyanide killed them in 5 min.

No my friends, Mr Jones took a bullet to the head. Probably didn’t even do it himself. He was too cowardly to drink his “potion”, nor shoot himself. Based on what his son said about him later, he knew he was a fraud. And when all failed, he refused to fail alone, and made all his followers follow him into death. Some were brainwashed, but many of them were forced.

He made the children drink first, so by the time they had gone, the parents wouldn’t have much to live for, and would want to go with their children into peace.

Jones was a sick man, and a terrible lesson for us to learn. Let us learn it well.

Those who forget the past, are condemned to repeat it.

The US Sanctioned China…You Won’t Believe How Beijing Responded!

 

Taiwan is a jurisdiction that never invade its neighbor given that it has the world most advanced military technology. How many hours can China last it comes to battle ?

You are quite deluded. Taiwan’s military is primitive compared to the militaries of China and USA.

A war between China and Taiwan, excluding the participation of USA, would last a matter of days. And Taiwan would LOSE.

All of Taiwan’s military equipment from USA are second-rate leftovers from the US military. Taiwan does not have access to F-22, F-35, and advanced US Navy ships and submarines.

Malaysian News has not done adequate research on the matter. Or, Malaysian News chooses to be wilfully ignorant. Denial is not a river in Africa.

German Chocolate Doughnuts

Surprise! There’s a yummy secret filling in these chocolate-glazed doughnuts.

German Chocolate Doughnuts
German Chocolate Doughnuts

Prep: 30 min | Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 4 cups Crisco® Pure Vegetable Oil
  • 1 cup Pillsbury™ Creamy Supreme™ Coconut Pecan Frosting
  • 1/2 cup Pillsbury™ Creamy Supreme™ Chocolate Frosting
  • 1 can Pillsbury™ Grands!™ Flaky Layers refrigerated honey butter biscuits
  • 1/4 cup chopped pecans
  • 1/4 cup flaked coconut, toasted*

Instructions

  1. In 3-quart heavy saucepan, heat oil over medium heat to 350 degrees F.
  2. Meanwhile, spoon coconut pecan frosting into decorating bag fitted with 1/2-inch wide tip. Set aside.
  3. In medium bowl, stir chocolate frosting and 1 tablespoon water until smooth. Set aside.
  4. Place paper towels under cooling rack. Separate dough into 8 biscuits; gently place 2 biscuits at a time in hot oil. Cook 1 to 1 1/2 minutes or until golden brown. Using tongs, gently turn over; cook 1 to 1 1/2 minutes or until golden brown. Remove to cooling rack; cool 2 minutes.
  5. Meanwhile, in small bowl, mix pecans and coconut.
  6. To fill doughnuts, insert decorating tip** into side of each biscuit. Squeeze about 2 tablespoons of coconut pecan frosting into center.
  7. Dip one side of each biscuit in chocolate glaze. Sprinkle with pecan mixture.
  8. Serve warm or cool.

Notes

* To toast coconut, heat oven to 350 degrees F. Spread coconut in ungreased shallow pan. Bake uncovered 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden brown.

** If you don’t have a decorating bag and tip, use a 1 gallon plastic freezer bag. Spoon frosting into bag and cut 1/2 inch off one corner of bag. Fill doughnuts as stated.

Nutrition

Per serving: Calories 530 Calories from Fat 290 Total Fat 32g Saturated Fat 10g Trans Fat 2 1/2g Cholesterol 0mg Sodium 600mg Total Carbohydrate 55g Dietary Fiber 1g Sugars 1g Protein 4g

% Daily Value*: Vitamin A 0% Vitamin C 0% Calcium 0% Iron 8%

Exchanges:1 Starch; 0 Fruit; 2 1/2 Other Carbohydrate; 0 Skim Milk; 0 Low-Fat Milk; 0 Milk; 0 Vegetable; 0 Very Lean Meat; 0 Lean Meat; 0 High-Fat Meat; 6 1/2 Fat

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

What is the craziest thing that has happened to you as an entrepreneur?

Some years ago my brother and I decided to open up a cigar parlor. We wanted to open it at the newly-developed Patriot Place, home of the New England Patriots. Being a marketing manager by trade I researched and wrote a business plan for the project, learning much along the way. For example, the average retail store generates about 150 dollars of revenue per square foot: for decades, Tiffany’s generated the most at 4000 dollars per square foot til Apple came along and blew everyone out of the water at 6000 dollars per square foot.

I did traffic pattern analysis and so on. I got all kinds of rental statistics from the Patriot Place management office and wrote a plan. We got a lawyer and incorporated. We got an accountant and became an LLC. We went to a bank and got 400,000 in SBA financing. We went to the Chamber of Commerce and they hooked us up with a business team at a business college who wrote our financial plan for us for free. We went to Patriot Place sales management and they showed us a concrete box available in the mall. It was 11oo square feet. The rent was 89,000 dollars a year. We hired an architect who drew up a plot plan and did basic diagrams of the layout we wanted. We worked with the town health inspector to make sure there were no gotchas. The triumph was going to the town to apply for a liquor license. By the merest of chance a liquor license had been surrendered that day and the town clerk approved my application. All I needed was a rubber-stamp approval from the town government and the clerk told me it was a formality. It cost me 250 dollars. By comparison, a liquor license in Massachusetts sold by a business costs between 250,000 and 500,000 dollars. I was in the right place at the right time. Most of the profit in any food business is the liquor. A cigar, after taxes, might make 20 percent. Booze makes many times that. Many businesses are propped up by the booze sales alone. Everything else is just a gimmick to get customers to come in and buy booze.

Once the Plan was complete with architectural drawings, contractor lists, materials required, SBA documents, business plan, pro-forma financial documents and every other duck lined up we contacted Patriot Place management. They arranged a sit-down meeting to discuss the viability of our potential business in their mall. Meanwhile we contacted all the businesses that would be around us. Almost every single one of them said a variation of the following: “Do not do business with these people. You are getting in bed with the devil. Run away while you still have the time. Once you sign a five year contract it will be too late to run away.” But by this time we had invested over 40,000 dollars in the operation. So we went forward.

The meeting was scheduled for 2:oo PM at the Patriot Place boardroom. My brother and I put on our best suits: we made copies of the plans and had them bound. We wanted to look professional and capable. At 2:00 we showed up at the Patriot Place office. No one was around. After about fifteen minutes a guy showed up who said he represented Patriot Place rental management. He looked about 25. He was wearing cut-off shorts and flip flops, a concert T-shirt and dark Ray-Bans. He told us the conference room was not available so we would have to do the meeting at Davios restaurant. We walked to the restaurant in silence. I was hoping we would meet other officials there who were more professional. But when we got to the restaurant it was fully booked. The guy stood outside in his flip flops for a minute and then he said, “We can do the presentation here on the park bench.” I was incredulous. We were going to give a business presentation in the middle of a mall on a bench, with shoppers passing by. So I said, “Will others from the organization be joining us?” and he grinned and said, “It’s just me, baby!”. What choice did we have but to sit down and present? My tie was flapping in the wind. My brother was silent. I handed a packet to the guy and went to my Power Point summary. At first all he was interested in was our liquor license: how we got it, the miraculous story of how I was in the right place at the right time. He listened intently.

But when I started to present the guy’s cell phone rang. He picked it up. “It’s my girlfriend,” he said. And started talking. Then while he was talking he said to us, “Yeah, keep going.” There was a pit in the bottom of my stomach. It was like talking to air as I spoke while he carried on an animated conversation with his girlfriend. I finished before he did. We waited in silence for him to finish his call. When he was done all he said was, “Does this packet include everything?” I said, “Yes, the business plan, architectural diagrams, contracts, LLC legal documents, all of it.” “OK,” he said, getting up, “We’ll let you know in two weeks. By the way, it’s triple net and we take 2 percent of any revenues over 1 million dollars per year. That’s revenues, not profit. And you have to use our services for snow and trash removal, plumbing, electrical and janitorial. You’ll be billed monthly.” And he got up and left.

My brother and I sat there. It was like getting raped. Neither of us said a thing. We just looked around at the mall. “It’s like getting in bed with the Devil,” that store owner told us.

Two weeks went by. They never called us. Another week went by. They never called us. Finally I called the name on the card the man had given us. It took him awhile to remember who we were. “Oh, we’re not doing that,” he said, dismissively, “but thanks for the Plan. It was very thorough. We’ll use it as a template if we ever decide to put in a cigar store.” And he hung up. No good-bye. I stood there looking at my cellphone like an idiot. We were out 40,000 dollars and had nothing to show for it. Later we were alerted by the town that our liquor license had been denied. It had been given to Patriot Place instead.

We never went to Patriot Place again, not to shop, not to eat, not for anything. They were the devil.

 

Anti-War Activist Passport Confiscated & Pulled Off Plane By State Dept. – Scott Ritter

 

What is the craziest thing that has happened to you as an entrepreneur?

Some years ago my brother and I decided to open up a cigar parlor. We wanted to open it at the newly-developed Patriot Place, home of the New England Patriots. Being a marketing manager by trade I researched and wrote a business plan for the project, learning much along the way. For example, the average retail store generates about 150 dollars of revenue per square foot: for decades, Tiffany’s generated the most at 4000 dollars per square foot til Apple came along and blew everyone out of the water at 6000 dollars per square foot.

I did traffic pattern analysis and so on. I got all kinds of rental statistics from the Patriot Place management office and wrote a plan. We got a lawyer and incorporated. We got an accountant and became an LLC. We went to a bank and got 400,000 in SBA financing. We went to the Chamber of Commerce and they hooked us up with a business team at a business college who wrote our financial plan for us for free. We went to Patriot Place sales management and they showed us a concrete box available in the mall. It was 11oo square feet. The rent was 89,000 dollars a year. We hired an architect who drew up a plot plan and did basic diagrams of the layout we wanted. We worked with the town health inspector to make sure there were no gotchas. The triumph was going to the town to apply for a liquor license. By the merest of chance a liquor license had been surrendered that day and the town clerk approved my application. All I needed was a rubber-stamp approval from the town government and the clerk told me it was a formality. It cost me 250 dollars. By comparison, a liquor license in Massachusetts sold by a business costs between 250,000 and 500,000 dollars. I was in the right place at the right time. Most of the profit in any food business is the liquor. A cigar, after taxes, might make 20 percent. Booze makes many times that. Many businesses are propped up by the booze sales alone. Everything else is just a gimmick to get customers to come in and buy booze.

Once the Plan was complete with architectural drawings, contractor lists, materials required, SBA documents, business plan, pro-forma financial documents and every other duck lined up we contacted Patriot Place management. They arranged a sit-down meeting to discuss the viability of our potential business in their mall. Meanwhile we contacted all the businesses that would be around us. Almost every single one of them said a variation of the following: “Do not do business with these people. You are getting in bed with the devil. Run away while you still have the time. Once you sign a five year contract it will be too late to run away.” But by this time we had invested over 40,000 dollars in the operation. So we went forward.

The meeting was scheduled for 2:oo PM at the Patriot Place boardroom. My brother and I put on our best suits: we made copies of the plans and had them bound. We wanted to look professional and capable. At 2:00 we showed up at the Patriot Place office. No one was around. After about fifteen minutes a guy showed up who said he represented Patriot Place rental management. He looked about 25. He was wearing cut-off shorts and flip flops, a concert T-shirt and dark Ray-Bans. He told us the conference room was not available so we would have to do the meeting at Davios restaurant. We walked to the restaurant in silence. I was hoping we would meet other officials there who were more professional. But when we got to the restaurant it was fully booked. The guy stood outside in his flip flops for a minute and then he said, “We can do the presentation here on the park bench.” I was incredulous. We were going to give a business presentation in the middle of a mall on a bench, with shoppers passing by. So I said, “Will others from the organization be joining us?” and he grinned and said, “It’s just me, baby!”. What choice did we have but to sit down and present? My tie was flapping in the wind. My brother was silent. I handed a packet to the guy and went to my Power Point summary. At first all he was interested in was our liquor license: how we got it, the miraculous story of how I was in the right place at the right time. He listened intently.

But when I started to present the guy’s cell phone rang. He picked it up. “It’s my girlfriend,” he said. And started talking. Then while he was talking he said to us, “Yeah, keep going.” There was a pit in the bottom of my stomach. It was like talking to air as I spoke while he carried on an animated conversation with his girlfriend. I finished before he did. We waited in silence for him to finish his call. When he was done all he said was, “Does this packet include everything?” I said, “Yes, the business plan, architectural diagrams, contracts, LLC legal documents, all of it.” “OK,” he said, getting up, “We’ll let you know in two weeks. By the way, it’s triple net and we take 2 percent of any revenues over 1 million dollars per year. That’s revenues, not profit. And you have to use our services for snow and trash removal, plumbing, electrical and janitorial. You’ll be billed monthly.” And he got up and left.

My brother and I sat there. It was like getting raped. Neither of us said a thing. We just looked around at the mall. “It’s like getting in bed with the Devil,” that store owner told us.

Two weeks went by. They never called us. Another week went by. They never called us. Finally I called the name on the card the man had given us. It took him awhile to remember who we were. “Oh, we’re not doing that,” he said, dismissively, “but thanks for the Plan. It was very thorough. We’ll use it as a template if we ever decide to put in a cigar store.” And he hung up. No good-bye. I stood there looking at my cellphone like an idiot. We were out 40,000 dollars and had nothing to show for it. Later we were alerted by the town that our liquor license had been denied. It had been given to Patriot Place instead.

We never went to Patriot Place again, not to shop, not to eat, not for anything. They were the devil.

Apricot Cream Cheese French Toast

Apricot Cream Cheese French Toast
Apricot Cream Cheese French Toast

Ingredients

French Toast

  • 1 loaf French bread, cut into 8 very thick slices
  • 8 ounces cream cheese
  • 1/2 cup pecans
  • Confectioners’ sugar
  • 1 cup whipping cream
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Apricot Sauce

  • 1 (12 ounce) jar apricot preserves
  • 1/2 cup orange juice

Instructions

French Toast

  1. Make a pocket in bread slices by slicing again, but not all the way through.
  2. Mix the cream cheese with the pecans and a couple tablespoons of the confectioners’ sugar. Stuff the pocket in the French bread with the cream cheese mixture. Dip into a mixture of whipping cream, eggs, nutmeg and vanilla extract.
  3. Grill on hot griddle, and serve with Apricot Sauce.

Apricot Sauce

  1. Mix apricot preserves with orange juice over low heat.

Douglas Macgregor: Why you should pity American Soldiers | Truth on Washington

 

 

 

Toilet Toms Van

When I was 18 I worked at a fast food place called Hardees. For those not familiar, this is the same chain as Carls Jr. If you’re not familiar with either of those, it’s basically like a McDonalds or Burger King.

My normal days off were Sunday and Monday, but I had asked for Saturday off one week because I had a date. My manager let me off, and when I left work Friday night I waved and said “See you Tuesday!” on my way out the door.

Saturday night I go on my date and everything goes fine. When I get home my roommate tells me my manager called five times wanting to know why I wasn’t at work. The store was closed by that point so I decided I would just go in the next day (Sunday) and remind her that I had the day off.

Sunday afternoon I go to the store and ask to speak to the manager. She immediately starts reading me the riot act about not coming in to work and not calling to let them know I would be there. I let her get it all out of her system, then I pointed to the schedule on the wall right outside of her office and said “I wasn’t here because you told me a week ago I could have yesterday off.”

She looked at the schedule, looked back at me, and the light popped on. “That’s right,” she said, “I remember you saying see you Tuesday when you left Friday night. I’m sorry, it totally slipped my mind.”

I was fairly pissed off, but I decided that it wasn’t worth making a big deal about. I told her not to worry about it, and again said “See you Tuesday” as I left the store.

When I got to the restaurant on Tuesday I was told to go to the manager’s office immediately. When I walked in she started off by saying “Why weren’t you here yesterday?”

I gave her a blank look, then finally responded “Because it’s my day off.”

She responded “No, I changed the schedule Sunday, and since you had Saturday off I needed you to work yesterday. Why weren’t you here?”

I must have been looking at her like she had two heads at this point.

“What time did you change the schedule on Sunday? When I was here at two o’clock we looked at the schedule together, and I was still scheduled to be off yesterday.”

“I changed it around eight o’clock Sunday night.”

“So what you’re saying is that you changed my schedule on my day off, and scheduled me to work the next day, and expected me to somehow know you had done this without telling me about it?”

That’s when she went too far. “I’m your boss, not your mother. It’s your job to keep track of your schedule, I shouldn’t have to do that for you.”

I took off my hat and my apron and replied, “You know what, you don’t actually have to do anything for me. I’m done.” I handed her the hat and apron and walked out the door, didn’t look back.

Beef Brisket Burritos

beef brisket burritos
beef brisket burritos

Ingredients

  • 18 slices beef brisket
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil or butter
  • 6 (10 inch) flour tortillas
  • 1 cup Mexican cheese, grated
  • 1/2 onion, sliced
  • 1 jalapeño, deseeded and diced
  • 2 tomatoes, sliced
  • Cholula sauce
  • Lettuce, shredded

Instructions

  1. Warm the brisket slices.
  2. Put the oil or butter into a large skillet over medium-low heat. When oil is heated, or when butter is melted, quickly warm the flour tortillas on both sides.
  3. Place slices of brisket down the middle of the tortilla. Top with cheese, onion slices, some jalapeño, some tomato, Cholula sauce, and top with lettuce. Carefully roll the tortilla around the filling, tucking the ends to prevent any of the filling from falling out.

Yeehaww!

China sez no to buying US T-bills

main qimg 2f5303f9ee4bc77b6afa9333c5b44585
main qimg 2f5303f9ee4bc77b6afa9333c5b44585

In short the interest on US debt is $1.2 trillion and rising. Just the interest. Much of that debt is also OLD debt at lower yield and yields are rising fast.

outlook
outlook

Now of course somebody will say USD will NOT collapse it will still remain dominant etc.

But here’s the thing, it doesn’t need to collapse.

Western elections for instance. You do not need to convince ALL the voters of your position only the marginals. The 1–2% at the marginals can cause an entirely different party/government to be elected… hence, why political parties always target the marginals.

Small niggles become bigger problems very quickly.

This is a harsh truth

Anyone of them can fall

I remember in 2010 when people spoke of BlackBerry being a trillion dollar valued company by 2020

It had a market value of $ 50.7 Billion at its peak

It made smartphones and had a Global share of nearly 16%

Then suddenly Apple and Google surged ahead. The Touch Screen ended the Mini QWERTY Keyboard and today BlackBerry survives on IOT patents


That’s the problem with Tech companies

A New Direction in Technology can render then null and void in six months after decades of existence

Hewlett Packard was once valued at around $ 130 Billion at its peak but today it’s around $ 27–28 Billion

That’s because nobody in 2010 expected that your super fast internet could be available on your smartphone that would render a lot of Laptops as vestigial


So let’s see

Google

They have a lot of services. A whole lot of services. Yet are they monetized?

Google makes 80% or more of its Revenue from Advertising

The entire Google infrastructure seems to be entirely oriented towards micro advertising

They have YouTube, Google Search Engine, Chrome to help them build enough customers to generate a huge advertising income

Google has a near monopoly today as far as YT and Chrome and the Search Engine are concerned and thus so far it’s advertising revenue is safe

Chance of a Fall :- Bleak in the next 5 years. Google seems safe. Unless a rival comes up in the next five years at a evolved scale either in searching or browsing or video streaming

Amazon

Amazon has AWS but the near monopoly is absent.

Google, Microsoft, Huawei, Alibaba, Oracle all compete with Amazon AWS

AWS is where the big profits are

The E Commerce generates moolah but not profits

The E Commerce is just the source for Data like Google Search Engine or Chrome

Chance of Fall :- AWS has a low tech threshold and will lose share to Huawei and Alibaba especially in the emerging economies minus India

I see their value falling in 5 years and their market cap.

Unless they step up their technological edge

Meta

Meta is guaranteed to cease to exist unless they manage to get Metaverse rolling

How many people use Facebook anymore?

Instagram helps get a lot of advertising and revenue space but Instagram is slowly being phased out by TikTok and Douyin and Live Streaming apps

Chance of a Fall :- High in the next 5 years. Very high. I doubt Meta in its present version will exist beyond 2034

Apple

Apples bulk revenues come from its products like Iphone and Ipads and other products with Iphone earning almost 70% of Apples revenue

It’s profits come from its services like Icloud etc

It also has Valuable Proprietary software

Plus it’s own Chip architecture

However that also demonstrates Apples weakness

Everything is linked to that one IPhone

If the Iphone and it’s popularity tanks then Apple will have a steep fall

I am sure Iphone will tank in China and in many countries that would sell both Chinese Phones and Apple in the coming years

I don’t see any innovation by Apple and their advantage of a Smartphone with its own Ecosystem will soon be replicated by others

Once EVs become more popular, the next player is one who can integrate his EV Mobile platform to the Smartphone and handle processing for both

Apple ain’t that player

Chance of a fall :- 50% in the next 10 years. I doubt if the company will keep a $ 3 T valuation in a decade. It may fall to maybe $ 375-400 Billion in the next decade


So according to me

Meta > Apple > Amazon > Google

Highest chance of a fall is Meta

Lowest is Google

Again unless the Tech evolution climbs to a whole new level and suddenly Google loses its key market and competitive edge

Male Standards Are Frowned Upon

Michael Roberts

Michael Roberts has an interesting piece on China’s economy today. The disfunctional nature of western capitalism- so celebrated by the Ideologist/Economists- as it disappears up into its own orifice has reached the stage at which it pleads for help from the competition. The truth about the ‘market model’ is that it only works when it has evolved into a series of mutually reinforcing monopolies controlling the state and, through it, society. That’s what the capitalists call ‘freedom’- one chance in a million of becoming a dictator.

“The recent nonsense issued by the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on China’s ‘overcapacity’ and ‘unfair subsidies’ to its industries is particularly pathetic. As Renaud Bertrand put it: “the so-called threat of China’s industrial overcapacity” is a buzzword that actually means that China is simply too competitive, and by asking it to address this, what Yellen is truly asking of China is akin to a fellow sprinter asking Usain Bolt to run a less fast because he can’t keep up.”

“….(Renaud) Bertrand..: “despite the very low prices for its EVs or solar panels, Chinese companies involved still make a profit (industrial profits are rising at double digit growth), and they DO charge higher prices abroad than at home. The competitiveness of Chinese companies is overwhelming: today, in scores of industries – like solar or EVs – there is simply no way for American or European companies to compete with Chinese ones. This is the real issue: Yellen and Western leaders are afraid that if things keep going, China will simply eat everyone’s lunch.”

“China is the only country in the world that produces all categories of goods classified by the World Customs Organization (WCO). This gives it a key advantage when it comes to end prices: when you want to build something in China you can literally find the entire supply chain for it at home. Bertrand: “China has become an innovation powerhouse. In 2023 it filed roughly as many patents as the rest of the world combined and it’s now estimated to lead 37 out of the 44 critical technologies for the future. All this too has implications when it comes to the final prices of its products.”….

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/04/10/chinas-unfair-overcapacity/

Posted by: bevin | Apr 10 2024 15:28 utc | 12

This Is How You Deal With Pronoun Warriors

4B movement and government destruction to the end

Why the West claims Hong Kong is under Chinese oppression while absolutely ZERO person were killed by the police in 2019 and it is actually the West and British who illegally attacked, occupied and oppressed Hong Kong?

It’s simple. Many british people won’t look very deeply into the actual details of the situation as such they imagine Hong Kong was almost exactly the same as life in the UK other than it was filled with Chinese people and hotter humid weather.

So when the BBC and politicians lie about it, they take it at face value and either aren’t invested enough to check it out in more depth or simply trust politicians at what they say.

A great example is how many think Hong Kong was democratic before 1997. I ask them who elected the governor of Hong Kong… they have no answer… now and again this is great because it makes them ask further questions and makes them question their position. Most however don’t and simply double down.

The other group were the occupiers, yes occupiers is a correct word. June 1972 during the 27th meeting of the UN, Hong Kong was taken off the list of British colonies and it was instead considered an occupation. The occupiers lived a privileged life compared to local people in Hong Kong.

This is demonstrated with Kowloon Walled city. People view it as holy fucking shit, but Walled city wasn’t unusual it was only demolished in 1993.

main qimg 213ed56aa25e47ab0e47c8cd043bcfc3
main qimg 213ed56aa25e47ab0e47c8cd043bcfc3

The big apartment blocks to the north only started being built in the late 70s and 80s. Most people were living in shanty towns dotted all over.

SHOCK: Technology Already Developed to put “Vaccines” in Lettuce, Tomatos, and . . . Tobacco Products!

The Tennessee state legislature held hearings about putting “Vaccines” in consumer products like food and tobacco. The hearing revealed startling information . . .

Rep. Scott Cepicky revealed that the University of California at Riverside has “already perfected the ability to put Human Vaccines into our lettuce right now.”  He went on to add  “Also Tomatoes, has the ability to do that also, from UC Berkely, and also RJ Reynolds has developed the ability to put Human “Vaccines” into Tobacco products.”

Rep. John Ray Clemmons then inquired “Is that even legal to do in the state of Tennessee, to sell those with a Vaccine in them?”

Rep. Cepicky responded “I’m not arguing that, all I’m saying is that if a person walks into a grocery store you as a Consumer should know  __this__ head of lettuce __is__ a head of lettuce, but __this other__ head of lettuce right next to it, could contain a Vaccine in it.  All we’re saying is, if it does have the vaccine in it, make sure it’s listed as a Pharmaceutical so people can get the proper dosage.”

Hal Turner Snap Editorial

The idea that companies would DARE to presume to include “vaccines” in Human food seems outrageous to me.   Who do these people think they are?  They have no right to put some medical treatment into food for Humans and thereby into people’s bodies without informed consent.

Take the COVID Vax for instance.   We were all told it was “safe and effective.”  Those claims turned out to be false.  The vaccines harmed or even KILLED many people, and are STILL harming and killing people.

Yet some nitwit thinks it’s a good idea to put things like this into consumer food so that unwitting people get something they otherwise might not want?  Shocking!   Outrageous!

Some of these “Scientists” seem so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Leadership

I met my husband through college when I was 18. He was 20. I was married at 21. He went through all my ups and downs with me, and I mean ups and downs. Things got really bad for me once I entered the professional workforce after grad school. I was ironically working in the mental health field at the time, while my own mental health was deteriorating. My husband was there to lie with me when I cried my eyes out, and he was there to calm me down when I was so excitable I could easily make some bad decisions. Never did he act like I was the “crazy person” I felt I was becoming. On two occasions he walked in on me harming myself, and he took the tool from me and cleaned me up in the shower. He was also the person who walked in on me standing in a corner listening to “the voices” that were talking to me from the sky. Yes, he stayed.

My husband is the reason I chose to go to a therapist. It was humiliating; going to a therapist when I worked in the mental health field myself. After all, I should know how to deal with what was happening to me, right? I had a really good life, an awesome husband, and a good career. What was wrong? The therapist sent me to a psychiatrist, something I also would have declined had it not been for my husband.

My husband attended my diagnostic appointment with the psychiatrist. After answering all sorts of questions and talking about what was going on, I was diagnosed as bipolar with psychotic features. I knew it. In the back of my mind I knew it and I didn’t want to know it. It was one of the reasons I didn’t want to go to the psychiatrist in the first place. I was prescribed medication and my ascent to sanity began, although I’m still not there 100%.

The thing my husband did that I’ll always remember happened just after we stepped out of the office. I was upset. I looked up at him trying to make a joke of it (kind of) and said “Well, congratulations, you married a crazy person.” He stopped us both by taking my hand, looking me in the eye and telling me “You’re no different than you always were, and I love you just as much as I always have.” We had been married almost 8 years.

It’s odd to say a romantic moment came of me being diagnosed as, how I thought of it at the time, crazy, but that’s what happened. I had been feeling so worthless. Who could love someone going through psychosis; someone who might just become a burden on others? The fact that he reassured me, after everything he’d been through with me, that I was still loved was more than I could ever thank him for. We’ve been married over 10 years now, and he says he still feels the same way, even when I do have my bouts of depression, mania, psychosis, and panic attacks, and I’ll never forget that moment when he reassured me I was still lovable and the same old me, even if there was now a name for what was happening to me. I am not crazy. I have bipolar disorder and I’m learning how to deal with it while my husband learns how to deal with my behavior.

God I love that man.

**Edit** Thank you all for the kind words! I did show my answer to my husband and he said he never realized how much that moment meant to me. I wish I’d expressed myself better at the time then! I do make sure to show him appreciation as often as possible!

It’s weird, I never felt the way about my clients that I felt about myself. I loved my clients, and they’re each battling their own mental health issues as strong boys and girls (I worked with adolescents). I guess it’s one of those cases where it’s sometimes hard to value yourself when it’s easy to see the value in others.

Despite everything, I am much better with treatment, and my husband and I are very happy together. He is definitely the love of my life and he makes me feel valuable everyday by telling me how awesome I am as a person, and how “fun I am” to be around. He definitely enjoys spending as much time as possible with me, so I certainly believe him!

I chose to go anonymous mainly because I’m still a bit of a coward and only my close family and friends know about my illness. Maybe one day I’ll have the strength to talk about it more openly, but I worry how that might affect any future clients’ or agencies’ views of me as an effective worker.

Hope that addresses some of the comments I read!

Exploitation

No

China is too strong today to require the second front

The ‘Second Front’ was a plan maybe ten or twelve years or maybe even fifteen years ago in case of a conflict

Back then both Armies were on similar footing

  • Chinas Budget was $ 68.79 Billion in 2009 with a much higher import dependence and Indias was close to $ 46 Billion
  • Both countries depended on at least 40% of their Military Supplies on the Russians
  • Both Nations had similar abilities on three domains – Army, Navy & Air
  • Chinas GDP was around $ 4.8 Trillion to Indias $ 1.58 Trillion. Yet Chinas Debt to GDP was closer to 36% to Indias 21%

Back then Pakistan was also in a far stronger position than today

It was also way closer to the US , so Chinas active plan was to get Pakistan out of US Sphere of Influence into their own

The Plan was if India moved against China, then for China to get Pakistan to open a second theatre either through Economic leverage or Military Leverage


In 2024, this plan is no longer a primary one

  • China has the roads now, the infrastructure to mobilize it’s troops in 24 hours and confront India in any direction
  • China has Satellite Imaging for every square feet of those mountains
  • China has a five domain superiority including Cyber & Low Space where they are streets ahead of India
  • Today Chinas economy is at $ 18–19 Trillion and they have virtually the same amount of savings and real wealth plus a Net Foreign Reserves of a Trillion plus bucks

So today the notion of India attacking and moving in offensive on China is much lesser than in 2009, at least militarily

2015–16 was the last year India could have actively moved against China and managed a stalemate or bloodied the Chinese nose and gotten brutally mauled

Today the Chinese are TOO STRONG

They prepared their forces for India as the largest enemy until 2013/14 and since then have began to prepare for US and NATO as their largest enemy

We prepared for China and Pakistan as our largest enemy from the 1960s , so our scale hasn’t surged as much


As a consolation, India is too strong for Pakistan today

Just like the Chinese are too strong for us

Work Smarter

Roasted Black Pepper Wings
with Maple Bourbon Glaze

Roasted Black Pepper Wings
Roasted Black Pepper Wings

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

Wings

  • 2 1/2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 12 wings, cut in half at joints, wing tips removed and discarded

Glaze

  • 1 cup bourbon
  • 3 tablespoons maple syrup
  • 2 teaspoons molasses

Instructions

  1. In a small bowl, combine the black pepper, salt and cayenne.
  2. Place the wings in a zip-type plastic bag.
  3. Pour the pepper mixture into the bag, close it and shake to coat the wings.
  4. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Cover a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil, place wings on foil and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until done.
  5. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine bourbon, maple syrup and molasses, + 1 cup of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer. Simmer the mixture until reduced by about half and thickened, 5 to 6 minutes.
  6. When the wings are done, toss them with the glaze while they are still warm.

Shorpy time

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WTF is going on with American girls?

Peanut Butter Chicken Wings

30COOKING THAIPEANUT CHIXWINGS1 articleLarge
30COOKING THAIPEANUT CHIXWINGS1 articleLarge

Yield: 15 to 20 servings

Ingredients

  • 50 chicken wings
  • 2 (12 ounce) bottles beer
  • 1 cup molasses
  • 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
  • 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/4 cup prepared mustard
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons chili powder
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, for garnish
  • 1 to 2 lemons, sliced thin, for garnish

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 450 degrees F.
  2. Remove and discard tips from wings and cut each wing in half at joint.
  3. Combine remaining ingredients except parsley and lemon slices in a large saucepan. Cook over low heat for about 15 minutes, until reduced and thickened to the consistency of thick gravy.
  4. Place wings in a large roasting pan and cover with sauce. Turn until each wing is well coated.
  5. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.
  6. Serve on large platter.
  7. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

Move to Italy

For one thing, the Chinese are very clever and adaptable and resilient. The Americans have grown fat, lazy and stupid.

For another, the Chinese number over a billion, more than 4X the size of the US population.

For another, the Chinese are well-educated. In fact, China produces 4X more STEM graduates than the USA does. This is why China can kick America’s ass technologically.

For another, the Chinese are led by a very strong, stable, capable, intelligent government. The Americans are led by clowns.

For another, the Chinese do not waste valuable resources on fighting wars around the globe. They dedicate their resources to economic and technological development.

Why Dating is Broken in 2024 – What Boomers don’t understand

Hold a Referendum in Taiwan and get it supervised by the UN Observers and get a 60% Majority to approve

Then get the UNGA to formally recognise Taiwan with at least 97 nations needed for a yes

In the process you risk alienating China and all the benefits that China brings, not to mention the fact that China will certainly ensure Taiwan won’t survive long enough to enjoy it’s Independence

A Poorly prepared Russia is skewering Ukraine like a Kebab , imagine a vastly better prepared, richer China with a smaller Taiwan

No Taiwanese would want that


Instead Taiwan would be eyeing for what we can call Federation of China

Two Parts of the Federation – The Mainland & Taiwan. The Mainland governed by the CPC and it’s system. Taiwan by it’s Presidential System.

Yet Defence, Air Space, Foreign Policy and Trade all controlled by the larger Mainland

It would be the perfect solution – Taiwan would have their right to choose their leaders and Taiwan would be part of China

This isn’t my idea of course

Singaporean Minister Teo Chee Hean pondered on the same thing a few years ago.

I guarantee 140 nations will approve heartily

Textbook narcissist

A thing happened

Today, my family and I were driving through Starbucks and there was an enraged man sitting at a table by himself. He was yelling and very upset. He appeared unkept and homeless. We felt so sorry for this troubled man and knew he needed help. We called 911 and waited in the parking lot to make sure this man was treated humanely.

An officer appeared.

today
today

He calmly and quietly approached the gentleman. He pulled up a chair and sat across from him and calmly asked the upset man what was going on. The officer, eye to eye, down on the troubled man’s level, de-escalated the situation quickly. I was moved to tears at how the officer respected this man and made it clear that he was there to help him. These are the stories that should be in the news. This gentleman, deserves a pat on the back and the recognition of doing an excellent job!

My main purpose for reporting this is in hope that this officer receives recognition. His name is Officer Reese of the Garland Police dept. Please share!

DIY for Tequila

Please note that I am answering this question with a non joking and non sarcastic attitude.

A pro China US government is not a viable option. Supporting a US government and providing economic support to expand this influence is not cost-effective at all. It’s fully stupid.

Only arrogant leaders like American politicians would feel that such a large country can be infiltrated, controlled, and subverted without themselves being affected. You can only use the wrong ideology to make the other country fall, but after affecting hundreds of millions of people in the other country, you yourselves will also be infected.

This is also why the United States has long been hiring Chinese trolls to disrupt the agendas of the Chinese people and that’s wasting money.

However, even if the United States knows this and is facing financial difficulties, it will never stop doing so, because from the perspective of policy makers, all reasons that can consume national finances are appropriate because they can profit from it.

The reason for answering this question is simply to make ordinary Americans aware of their government’s wrongdoing. I find it interesting to see them face errors that cannot be corrected. You always have the right path to take, but you won’t choose because it’s not an easier way.

Ha ha ha ha

Do you know an English adage ”self praise is no praise at all”First US is not free at all 25% of worlds. Prisoners are Americans! 9 times per million compared to China! You Government thrall the entire internet and what you watch on telly to check on every America disclosed by Edward Snowden! And 99% don’t want either Trump or Biden but you are laden with them because of your undemocratic political system that is really chosen by a few rich and influential!

It is anything but great, the highest debtor nation on earth, highest deficits, warmongers and trouble makes everywhere, with s million homeless and living in tents throughout America, to tally dilapidated infrastructure and highly highly uncompetitive! Has not have a real growth since 1960 64 years ago.

Apricot Chicken Casserole

apricot chicken 4
apricot chicken 4

Ingredients

  • 6 to 8 chicken pieces (drumsticks or thighs)
  • 1 envelope dry onion soup mix
  • 1 small can apricot nectar
  • 2 or 3 carrots, chopped
  • 2 to 4 medium potatoes, sliced
  • Mushrooms, sliced
  • Garlic powder

Instructions

  1. Sprinkle onion soup mix over chicken pieces.
  2. Add vegetables and mushrooms.
  3. Pour apricot nectar over all, and sprinkle garlic powder over everything.
  4. Add small amount of water to casserole and bake at 350 degrees F until done, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Florida passes a law…

My neighbor is a big-shot lawyer. One night, his dog was outside my house. I didn’t know it was his dog and had to ask around. I was told it was “the lawyer’s dog.” I noticed that the dog was terribly skinny and, in general, just didn’t have the bounce in her step like most black labs do.

I left her at my house and knocked on the door. I told him I had his dog. He didn’t seem concerned. When it appeared he wasn’t going to come outside, I asked him if he expected me to deliver the dog to him. He got all huffy and said, “Fine!” His beautiful and very, very sweet wife and four little girls were thanking me but he was just pissed that I interrupted his “pizza and movie night with the family.” He begrudgingly followed me home.

I am a retired humane officer and still have a lot of influence at animal control. But I didn’t want to sound arrogant and threatening so I didn’t mention it. I just asked if the dog was okay as she seemed a little gaunt. He told me to mind my own business.

I asked him if the dog had been to see a vet lately and he said, “What’s with all the g-damn questions?” Since I had had this very same exchange many times in my career, I didn’t get mad. I just smiled and said I was concerned about the dog. He again told me to mind my own business. I said “Okay, well, if you’re not going to talk to me…” and trailed off.
The dog was less than enthusiastic to see him and he had to actually pick up the dog .

The next day, bright and early, two uniformed Animal Control officers knocked on his door, demanding to see the dog. He got a seven-day warning to get the dog to a vet or be fined. Seven days later they came back and were shown a letter from a vet that the lab had been seen and is now under treatment for a pancreatic disorder.

My neighbors asked me how I was so bold and stupid to make an enemy out of a big-shot lawyer.

  1. Right makes might. I had right on my side.
  2. I will never be afraid to speak out on behalf of a dog. In my career I had dealt with hardened criminal dog fighters and my anger gave me courage.
  3. I gave him the chance to talk to me, and I would have offered to take the dog to the vet since I know he and his wife are busy, but he shot me down so fast.
  4. My husband is a big-shot lawyer, too, but this guy doesn’t know that.

I called in a favor from my old colleagues and showed this guy that he didn’t intimidate me and that “Failure to render treatment to an animal in need” is a crime and not even a big-shot lawyer is above the law.

As real as it gets

 

Check the characters before buying the poison

My mother, husband, and I combined households many years ago, and we all lived together until her death. We would trade off hosting family holiday dinners with my aunt and uncle who live nearby. When this happened, which was many, many years ago, my cousin, his wife, and their child lived with my aunt and uncle, so we always celebrated holidays together.

One year at a holiday dinner at our house—Thanksgiving, I think—we also invited one of my best friends and his family: a wife, and three children, the youngest a baby, and the oldest a seven-year-old girl.

During dinner, my aunt asked the seven-year-old girl what she had been doing of late that she thought was fun. She was extremely enthusiastic about the Harry Potter series and the entire world in the books, and explained the newest book had been released recently, and she was reading it at night with her father.

She began to say something else when my cousin’s wife, an Evangelical Christian, cut her off.

She began lecturing her loudly and cruelly about the world of Harry Potter, the evils of witchcraft, and even told her she was a bad girl, with bad parents, for even opening one of the books. (My mom, husband, and I were all following the series, as well. We’d all read the newest volume she was talking about because, well, adults read a lot faster than a seven year old.) We were also giving her less than loving looks.

My aunt politely silenced her daughter-in-law and reminded her the question had been addressed to the little girl, then said, “We can discuss your feelings about Harry Potter another time, at home.”

She asked the girl to continue. Before she could get a full sentence out, my cousin’s wife again jumped in and began lecturing the child about what she was reading.

She also called out her parents, and began insulting their judgment and their parenting skills.

That time, my mother stopped her with a simple, “That’s enough. Someone else is speaking, and you are out of line.”

The seven year old was clearly growing distressed.

She was simply trying to explain why she liked Harry Potter, and an adult was being terrible to her.

We were all certain my cousin’s wife would finally be quiet, and encouraged the child to finish her thought. Again, an interruption from my cousin’s wife, followed by an “ouch! why did you kick me?” because my cousin had kicked her under the table when he saw she was going to open her mouth.

She spoke anyway, lecturing all of us, and then finished her comments by turning to the seven year old and saying, “And you are going to Hell.”

That, of course, tipped the scales, and my friend’s little girl began to cry.

My cousin’s wife got up to go get something from the room where the food was laid out, and I followed her. I’d grown angry at the second interruption, but had tried my best to hang on to a bit of calm because I was a hostess, too. I’d had it, though. I was beyond furious.

I followed her into the other room, and told her she wouldn’t say another word about it, or I’d have to tell her to leave—she was completely out of line with her comments, her lecturing, and especially with driving a young girl to tears. She looked at me for a moment, then said, “You don’t have the nerve, and your Mom won’t put up with it.” I said, “Go ahead and try me.”

If she said anything else at all that night, aside from which kind of pie she wanted, I don’t remember it at all.

The Sopranos – Tony Soprano extorts Ralph Cifaretto

I am from a longline of southern cooks. One of my first memories, is standing on a chair with a wooden spoon stirring cornbread batter. My husbands family does not share this skill. My mother in law is lovely and an amazing women. She is charming, beautiful, kind, extremely health conscious but a lousy cook. My husband swears , he and his siblings were raised on wheat germ and bean sprouts. Cooking was truly of no interest to my mother in law. She knows nothing about cooking above the very basics. The first Holidays after our marriage, I hosted the Thanksgiving meal. I was so excited because I love to cook. A few days before the big day, my mother in law called to say she would like to bring the Turkey. I assured her that wouldn’t be necessary but she insisted. I agreed. When I told my husband, he laughed and said that I better have a back up plan. His mother had good intentions but turkey was not in her Wheelhouse. Anxiety got the best of me. I put a Turkey in my outdoor smoker the night before on the pretense that it could be used for sandwiches the following week. Thanksgiving day, a hour and a half before the meal, my husbands family showed up with Turkey in tow. It was still in the wrapper and totally raw. My mother in law said she came a little early so the 20 lb Turkey would have time to roast. My husband was all grins. I thanked her kindly, praised her on the size of the Turkey and took it into the kitchen. A hour and a half later, I served a beautiful smoked Turkey to my guest. No one even picked up on the fact that the Turkey was smoked instead of roasted except MY mom. Thankfully she said nothing until we were alone. The sad thing is my daughter has the cooking skill of my mother in law. But thankfully, she also has her loving kind heart and that outweighs cooking any day!

It was around 2009 when our flat screen TV began to require several tries before it would turn on. You knew it was finally going to turn on when you heard the “ka-blink” sound. Finally, one day it would not turn on at all. My wife confidently said, “You can fix anything. Can you fix the TV?””. I expressed my skepticism as my electronic expertise and experience were very limited. But I also didn’t want to just give up despite my prejudice that modern TVs were not ” fixable”. My guess was that the power supply had failed so I began a Google search for how to replace the power supply on a Samsung TV. I found an article titled something to the effect of ” I don’t know much about electronics but this worked for me”. Seemed like a good place to start.

The article was excellent with a description and photos of the capacitors that can fail. If they are swollen or leaking, replace them. Removing the capacitors was the main technical challenge but the article described the entwined copper wire yarn that draws out the solder as you melt it. The real challenge was finding replacement capacitors. Only one store in metro Atlanta had them. Took two days to find the store. I needed 3 but bought several extras for a total of somthing like $8. The guy at the store said, “ Nobody fixes anything anymore.””

Installing was fairly straightforward soldering. Tried to be careful to not overheat anything. It helps your confidence when you consider the TV was dead and most people would have just tossed it. Anyway, the moment of truth came. Pressed the ” On” button on the remote and (after an anxious delay) ” ka-blink”!! I felt like Tom Hanks when he declared ” I have made fire! “. I basked in my wife’s admiration for the rest of the day. The TV still works and I still have the extra capacitors, just in case.

I wish I could cite and thank the person who took the time and effort to post the fix. It was excellent.

My sister fell from the 4th floor when I was 16 years old and fought for her life for two whole years.

When you fall from such a height, it’s most often not the impact that kills you.

It’s the fall.

Most people falling from such a height, faint before impact – and they fall on their back.

Their spine breaks, ruptures, and is torn to shreds and most of them die or are paralyzed their entire lives.

But, my Didi, was awake through the fall.

She fell on her legs.

Later doctors told us that, that was the only reason she’d survived.

On impact, her right leg, which bore the maximum impact, was torn to bloody shreds.

Her right foot had an entire piece fall off from where it was attached.

When I saw her – the white sheet that covers patients was red with blood.

I saw bone where flesh was supposed to be.

When I saw the X ray for the first time, I couldn’t help but hopelessly cry.

Part of her hip bone was just bone dust.

Literally! Literally bone dust where bone should be.

This further complicated her surgery when she was admitted to the ICU.

Bone fragments could have ruptured her blood vessels – or so the doctors said.

Forget walking ever, doctors told us she had a ten percent chance of survival.

My Didi spent two years in the hospital and missed her board exams (12th) that year.

Next year, carried on a stretcher, she was ferried from the hospital in an ambulance and she sat for her 12th boards.

That year – she scored 92 in her boards with a 94 in Physics and Maths.

Her school awarded her an Exceptional Student award and gifted her a phone and a certificate for her achievements.

Today, she has two degrees to her name.

One in Physics and another in Hotel Management.

She’s preparing for a third degree – an MBA this year.

Today, she’s working for a subsidiary of Google in Hyderabad, all alone in a different city.

The limp is still visible, but barely.

Inspiration?

This word doesn’t even begin to explain what I feel when I look at her.

She’s a living, breathing miracle.

Literally — a living, breathing miracle.

My favorite family story.

I am an only child, and my parents were a challenge. They did not get easier, as they got older. My family (me, the husband and two sons) lived about 2 and a half hours away and would always go home for Christmas, usually bringing food, since there was no guarantee that there would be anything in the house to eat, and all restaurants are closed on Christmas (my parents survived on black coffee, white toast and McDonalds, and surprisingly, it had no effect on their longevity).

One year, my mother insisted that, instead of my cooking, we should all go to the Legion Hall to the ‘friends’ dinner, for the old, lonely and homeless.

Well, technically, we weren’t lonely, we were together. And they could have as much food as they wanted, since I was willing to bring it. But Mom wanted to go to this meal, and I wasn’t going to deny her what she wanted on Christmas day.

So, off we all go to the Legion. Mom sees someone she knows and sits down with them. My father follows, sitting down with her. She totally ignores the fact that there is no room for the rest of us to sit with her. Dad gives me a shrug, but doesn’t say anything (because, in my family, this is just Mom being Mom and we roll with it).

My family grabs a four top by the bar and we eat our meals rolling our eyes and shaking our heads.

There was an empty seat on the table by my Mom. A reporter for the local newspaper takes it and interviews her. The next day, she is on the front page of the local paper complete with photograph, announcing that the people that put on these meals for those who need them are “angels.”

Apparently, though it did not make it to the paper, (THANK GOD) she also told the reporter all about her daughter “the famous author” (I’ve written a bunch of books and she was really proud). But anyone who knew her knew that story already. She did not bother to mention that I was in the room with them at the time.

And that is how the entire town learned that I had abandoned my mother and made her eat alone at the Legion on Christmas.

Some of my work. A comic theme.

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Had a friend who decided to purchase a small gift shop in Western Washington to add to the several they already owned near Tacoma. This one was a bit farther away from their home, so they would have less of a day to day contact with the location. The former owner had recommended the retain the manager that worked for them for many years, and so they did. They were very happy with this decision, and for a couple of years this manager would not only run the store on a daily basis, but come in on vacations and days off and do the books, payroll, stock ordering etc.

Problem? This store, even though it was in a more rural location, less rent, lower pay all around, was still not as profitable as they thought it should be.

How did they uncover the problem? The manager had a grandbaby born in Seattle, and she decided to spend a couple of weeks with them to help out.

Old school cash registers would have what we would call a “z” tape that would total up transactions at the end of the day (and subtotals whenever you wanted one throughout the day) to tell you what sold, amount of cash, checks, charge cards, refunds, etc. In theory, every day one would take that tape and balance the amount of receipts against what was in the till.

Problem? My friend could not get the tape to balance against receipts by the method that had been used to balance as proscribed by the manager. There was too much money every day. It turns out here in Washington, we have a Sales tax of about 9.7%. The manager would use the PRE TAX amount on the Z tape to balance the daily amounts, and keep the tax amount.

So, for 3 years my friend owned the store, the manager had pocketed that amount of cash every day, and probably for many years back. They store was grossing about $600k a year at that time, so she pocketed about $54k a year cash as well as her salary.

And if you know about these kind of stories, often the owners do not want to have publicity in this kind of situation. So instead of having the sheriff charge in this case, they actually caught her taking items from the the store (a baby album!) and cited that as reason for termination. But then they showed her the rest of what she knew, and they ended up getting a partial restitution.

Lesson? If you have a manager of staff member that does not take time off, be suspicious.

AND: you have to make sure that IRS records are correct, or you are liable for the additional taxes.

Hope this answers the question,

Rick Olson

Money, money, money (always sunny, in a rich man’s world)

I was at a wedding this summer when I asked a friend of mine, who is a history professor specializing in 18th century Ottoman history, why he believed that the Ottomans would start suffering from major issues in the 19th century. (The word ‘decline’ is, for some reasons I’ll try to go into, not necessarily true for the 18th century).

He, of course in the traditional academic manner, said that careers could be made studying even a minor area of the subject and to be wary of teleological explanations, and the usual jazz.

So, I rephrased and asked him, “If you had a time machine to take you to the beginning of the 18th century, what would you have done differently, assuming you wanted the Ottomans to have survived?”

He thought for a while and answered, “If we have the technology for time travel, I’m going to assume that we would have the technology for bringing others with us as well.”

“Sure”.

“Then, I’d bring with me around fifty German and Swiss accountants to take charge of Ottoman finances.”

“Not Turkish ones?”

“Better safe than sorry.”

“So you would not have found a clever way of killing off the unruly Janissaries, like Peter the Great did with his unruly soldiers?”

“The Janissaries were not the problem. They were not necessarily bad soldiers. They were cheap soldiers and they suffered from low morale. And because they were paid so little, most of them ended up doing other jobs as well.”

So there’s the rub – the unruly Janissaries were not the problem. They were the symptom of the problem which was money.

Indeed, most of the other (quick and easy) explanations don’t really hold water or go to the heart of the matter: for example, technological lag. Hold on to your hats because I am about to blow your minds but the Ottomans, at no point in their history, had a significant technological handicap compared to their European neighbors. This was especially true for the 18th Century. First, speaking of military technologies:

  1. The Ottomans had the same military technologies as their European counterparts. The story of the Ottomans’ “massive (anachronistic) bombards” is just a story. Whether it be the caliber of the guns, their metallurgy or the mixture ratio for gunpowder, the Ottomans had no major differences with most of their European contemporaries.
  2. The military technology between 1600 and the Napoleonic Wars did not have major leaps that the Ottomans could be left behind in. Ottomans employed many European experts, not just in the 18th century, but throughout their entire history. (Orban and his famous guns, anyone?)
  3. Well into the 19th century, weaponry continued to be produced with traditional (i.e. artisanship) methods instead of mass production across Europe. Ottomans had begun their military defeats before the 1850s, so the proliferation of mass produced weapons (which they ended up buying in the 19th and early 20th centuries anyway) could not be a factor in their earlier defeats.

For the rest of their “technology”, we can give the example of Russia, which remained mostly agrarian until the second half of the 19th century. Further, even after the freeing of the serfs, their industrialization was slow, which led to major problems in the First World War. They also had a low literacy rate. Yet, along with England, they were the major Great Power for most of the 19th Century. One thing that Russia had was a large population (although China, with a large population, did not fare so well), but other than that, their main difference with the Ottomans was their centralized and bureaucratized state apparatus.

The “nationalism” of minorities itself was an issue tied to money. Again, contrary to the general narrative, the “millet” system was not a thing de jure until the 19th, and de facto until the middle of the 18th Century and was born of the economic issues of the Empire. How so? Tax farming under the ayans became a major source of revenue in the 18th Century. In this system, the government would auction the right to collect taxes for a lump sum in Istanbul. Important figures such as ministers, princesses, harem women, would buy such privileges. Then, since they did not want to (or could not) travel to the regions that produced their income, they would work with local notables, ayans (who could be Muslim or Christian), to collect their taxes. Well, in this tax farming system, the Rum patriarch in Istanbul, for example, was a “tax farmer in chief” and by delineating an important financial function to such groups, the Ottomans allowed for them to make power grabs elsewhere, such as increasing control over their Christian flock, which would culminate in the “millet” system, wherein the various religious heads became the final authority on the legal issues (or education) of their flock. The Hellenizing project under the new Greek state, its support by the patriarchate (albeit not immediately), and the inability of the central government to stop it, was one of the major reasons behind one of the aggressive and usually quite bellicose nationalisms that would develop among the Christian Ottomans.

Also, the change from a centralized to a subcontracted “sekban” (mercenary) system of military recruitment where the central government would send “banners” to the local officials and notables, who would collect and arm the peasants in the beginning of the 17th Century created a large number of armed men in Anatolia, leading to the “Celali Revolts“. This created a mass migration of the peasants to the cities and mountains all throughout Anatolia, called “Büyük Kaçgun” – (The Great Flight). So depopulated was the countryside that many lands would grow wild and not become cultivated again until they were resettled with Balkan, Crimean and Caucasian refugees fleeing ethnic cleansing two centuries later in the 1800s.

The Ottomans could collect so little tax in the 18th Century that with this new tax farming system, only 30% of all the taxes that were collected found their way into government coffers. But the local ayans, provincial notables, and tax farmers could usually not get enough money from their cut to be able to invest in major infrastructure projects or other developmental investments, contributing to the vicious cycle of decentralization.

This left the Ottomans with an underpaid and in many cases (of sekban units provided by the local notables) a poorly and haphazardly supplied army with chronically low morale.

Losing wars led to the further loss of taxable lands and as the Christian population slowly developed into openly hostile nations, the internal problems and external ones compounded.

In the 19th century, to pay for a large army and a navy, the Ottomans would bankrupt themselves, and until the construction of railways in the late 19th Century, would not be able to successfully (and even then to a very limited scope) industrialize, in spite of attempts in the 1830s. (Although the Ottoman artisans were surprisingly resilient in the face of imported, mass produced, European goods)

But it all started from a lack of funds. This, of course, should not mean that the country was poor per se. The early 18th Centry was a time of economic boom in the long peace until 1769. But even as the economy of the country developed, the finances of the state continued suffering.

One year my husband’s brother and his family hoated the family Christmas party (we alternate between the brothers)… SIL is VERY cheap one Christmas though she totally proved it.

My daughter had driven 2 hours to get there and realized her cellphone was dying. So she plugged it into a charger out of the way of where people were. Twice she went to check the status only to find it unplugged and no progress of charging. One the third time she said something. MY sister in law explained it cost money to charge a phone so she was jept unplugging it. They are very financially secure so it was totally because she was cheap.

At first my daughter thought she was joking but she sas not…she was serious. So my daughter handed her a dollar. SIL took the money, put it in her pocket and walked off. While laughing my daughter told BIL what happened. He was mortified…handed my daughter a dollar (out of sight of SIL) and showed her where to charge her phone so SIL would leave it alone.

Let’s flip the script. Imagine we’d all been driving EV’s the last hundred years, you pay $5 to fully refuel at home overnight while you sleep and never leave home without a ‘full tank’. There is practically zero maintenance and the cars are very fast and reliable with instant torque, more storage space, brakes that last the life of the car, over the air feature updates etc. The motors and battery have 8 year warranty and are expected to last at least 500,000 miles.

Then somebody invents a gas car. It’s slow, noisy, needs lots of regular repairs and maintenance. It’s full of explosive and toxic fluids. It burns fuel and emits poisonous gases even when it’s not moving. Refueling it costs $100 and you have drive to a special refueling station, you can never do it at home. Everything needs to be repaired by a specialist in a remote workshop and adding new features after you bought it is not possible. But hey, that $100 refueling can be done in just 15 extra minutes on your drive to work!

Who would buy it?

When I was living in Tempe, I lived in the back of my apartment complex, and got my own little sheltered parking spot for my Toyota. Unfortunately, it was not an uncommon occurrence for people to park in my designated spot or block it with their cars. Being as polite as I could, I would go around and knock on doors to try and get that person to move their car. Oftentimes I would be late for class.

One day, I was looking through the tenant’s rights of Maricopa County, AZ, and I found a clause that stated that the tenant has the right to remove an illegally parked vehicle. The clause then defined “an illegally parked vehicle” to mean a car that is parked in such a way that it hinders the tenant from entering or exiting their designated parking space. The clause also defined that the owner of the illegally parked vehicle is responsible for fixing any damage caused by the removal of the vehicle. The clause never stated HOW the tenant might do that, however. The county legislators probably thought that 99.99% of people would call a towing company, but I had places to be and was honestly fed up with these illegal parkers, so I was part of that other 0.01% group.

I bought towing straps on my way home from class one day, and I didn’t even have to wait a full night. In my parking space that I was paying rent for was a black Tesla. I hooked it up to my Toyota diesel pickup and dragged it out of there, tires squealing. I left it in the middle of the street, and the next morning, the owner came out and stood perplexed at the new positioning of his car.

A few days later, there was a Prius parked in front of my truck. I had to get to class but couldn’t. So, I gently pushed the Prius out of the way with my bull-bar and left it in the middle of the street. The Prius sustained a minor dent in its passenger side, and that evening when I got back from college, there were several police officers on the scene. The owner of the Prius tried to charge me with a hit and run, but after I showed the officers the picture that I took of the Prius blocking my truck in, and the clause from the tenant’s rights document, and the lease proving that I was the rightful occupant of the parking spot, they determined that the Prius owner was at fault and was responsible for the damages.

My favorite instance of this was when somebody parked a total lemon in my spot and had leaked oil all over the concrete. The lease said that oil-leakers were strictly prohibited, so I had to do something special for this guy. I got a piece of metal wire and bet it over into a hook. Underneath the car, I reached up with my hook and pulled the hood release cable. Once I had the hood open, I located the fuse-box and took out the fuse that would allow the car to start. I then proceeded to yank the car out of my spot into the street, business as usual. The next morning, his car was still there, in the middle of the street, a decently sized puddle of oil underneath it. He was on his phone talking angrily, presumably with a towing company. I didn’t have to be anywhere that day, so I watched the chaos ensue through my window.

Several more times this happened, and eventually, word got around that my parking spot was not safe to park in front of. Everyone could tell if there was a newbie in town, because they would park in front of my spot, and subsequently get yanked. Thanks, Maricopa County!

Around 2008 I was in the engineering lab working on the design of my latest project. The CEO came in and asked me it I could look at an NC lathe on the factory floor.

The controller went out on the 30 year old machine. There had been no replacements available for about 20 years. This machine made the “Secret Sauce” part of our flagship product. This machine had never given trouble before.

The manufacturer’s representative declared it a write off and told us it would be at least 3 months to get a replacement machine for $30,000. Plus shipping from Germany. While we could farm out making the part, the reason we made it ourselves is that in the Los Angeles area there was so much military work going on for serious money that it would have been months to get someone else to make the parts.

We would lose months of sales and 40–50 people were facing layoff. So while this was not in my job description I went out for a look.

I took the controller board out and set it on my bench and could not see anything obvious. So starting with the power input I started doing resistance tests on the rectifier diodes. Son of a gun. The third one I checked showed it was shorted. We did not carry the 1N4002 in lab stock. So I put in a 1N4007 which costs about 15 cents versus the 8 cents of the original part.

I put the controller back in and the machine fired right up. The machinist started saying words of what seemed like joy in his native Vietnamese.

I went back to my bench and carried in with my project. Dashing off an email to the CEO that the machine was working again. All in a day’s work. Saving about a ton of high grade steel from going to the junk yard and keeping the factory floor workers earning a pay check.

Little was said but at the Christmas party a couple months later the CEO hands me my Christmas bonus and whispers to me to not tell anyone about it. Instead of my usual $500 bonus was a check for $5,000.

The machine was still running fine when I moved back to Canada in 2010.

In the west…

  • Jesus has long blonde hair and a six pack.
  • China’s economy is collapsing as GDP growth is 5.20%, while the U.S. economy is booming with 2.50% growth
  • In the west they believe Sri Lanka was debt trapped by China. Investigations revealed that the country had to repay loans to the west.
  • In the U.S. they believe China is the main cause for global warming, they don’t realise that they’ve emitted more Co2 than any other country and their emissions per capita are almost twice as much when compared to China.
  • In the west they believe they are leading the transition to zero emissions, but the reality is China is the biggest producer of solar, wind, and hydro power and has the largest fleet of EVs.
  • In the U.S. they believe they are free and yet they incarcerate more of their own population than any other country and their children need to pass a metal detector when they enter school.
  • In the west they believe the Belt and Road initiative is bad, but they believe the Marshall Plan was good despite they’re both the same thing except China’s is a much grander scale.
  • In the U.S. they believe the Chinese force their companies to hand over technology, in reality it’s a deal signed by both sides.
  • In the west they believe China is oppressing Tibetans, in reality they saved them from feudalism.
  • In the west they think China has committed genocide in Xinjiang while Israel has the right to defend themselves.
  • In the U.S. they believe they have democracy, in reality they’re just picking a millionaire to run their country. In the U.K., the choice is another Oxford graduate.
  • In the US they believe TikTok is a national security concern despite everything is based in the west.
  • In the west they believe they uphold human rights in reality they’ve been in multiple wars causing millions of death and even more displaced.

Really who is brainwashed?

I had some small yellow cable ties for doing up the zips on my bag so that my larger non carry on bags can’t be opened when out of my sight. (Well… at least make it harder). These things would be something like 8 to 10cm’s long. Like I said, small as far as cable ties go.

Something like these ones. Only I had four.

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This immigration (What the US calls a TSA Officer) woman is going through my bag because she suspects something is in the bag that I shouldn’t have. She can’t find what she’s looking for (I think I know what she’s looking for, however I let her try and find them. In one of the front pockets on my laptop bag she finds these small yellow cable ties.

TSA Woman:
“Arh ha… there they are.”

Me:
“What? Are you going to tell me you saw these four small plastic cable ties on the X-ray machine? Not likely love. Anyway, what’s wrong with wanting to secure my bags with these anyway?”

TSA Woman:
“You can’t have cable ties on a plane” she says louder so she gets the back up and support of the her colleagues on the other side of the bags counter.

I nodded, and replied:
“Yeesss you’re so right… I mean, how many people’s thumbs could I tie together with those massive cable ties on the plane. I reckon I could take out the entire first class row with those bad boys, if the passengers agreed to hold their thumbs together and still long enough.”

Her colleagues are now looking away and sniggering, some not knowing where to look.

“Hang on” I said… “I reckon I could tie up rows two and three with my laptop lead here, and not to mention my iPhone cable for charging.” As I took my laptop lead out of my bag and proudly held it above my head like I was declaring it for immediate confiscation. “If I could get all of the fourth row to stand up, and be patient for just a few minutes, with a bit of jostling, maybe even one more person from the fifth row, I could really do some damage with this” as I reached into my laptop bag and pulled out my iPhone lead.

Nothing, silence, a few sniggers… then…

TSA Woman:
“Well, you can’t have them on the plane, I’ll have to confiscate them.” She starts to walk to the bin and drop them in there.

Me:
I then said “Hang on bring them back here.” My thought was to just use them… you know, run them through on each other so they don’t get used by any of the TSA staff later as a reward for confiscating my four lonely little yellow cable ties, and because I wanted to make a big deal out of it. Hell… I’d come this far so why not.

However, I suddenly remembered how to use what I knew she was originally looking for. I pulled out a pair of scissors from my bag and took the cable ties from her and cut all four of the small yellow cable ties in an instant.

TSA Woman:
”That’s what I was looking for” and she quite literally snatched the scissors out of my hand whilst my fingers are still in the holes. (Not nice…. )

“Everyone knows you can’t takes scissors on a plane” she proudly boasts out louder than even the cable ties got a mention for early, because now she has to save face with her colleagues, whilst she practically does a basketball layout on the way to the bin and slam dunks those scissors into the bin. She looks around very proud of herself.

“Excuse me lady” her smile still beaming as she looks around and then at me. “Can you get them out of the bin now? (smile now completely wiped from her face.) I think you’ll find THOSE scissors are legal on flights. They’re medical scissors with the bend on the blades. Whilst I know it’s not common knowledge you can carry these on a plane, I expected you would know, however it appears you didn’t and I’d really like to get to the Qantas club lounge before my flight. So if you can get them out quickly it would be much appreciated.”

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They sort of looked like these, without the black. At the time they were legal on flights. I don’t know the rules now.

TSA woman looks around in absolute dismay. I’m standing there with my hand out. I can’t wait to see her dive into the bin that would have be at least three feet tall. I so wish I was allowed to use my phone and video this right now, however, in this area of the airport, photography of any kind is banned. Video or still… not allowed.

TSA Women gets a supervisor, she isn’t having any of this. I’m at least three hours early for my flight, I’ve got heap of time spare, I don’t care and I can’t wait to see how this ends. The supervisor comes over to have a word to me. I am allowed to explain the situation first when the supervisor says “What seems to be the problem?”.

I explain the above to the supervisor without all of the “glee” the TSA Woman had shown, whilst being able to very successfully hold back my own thoughts of this woman being head first in the bin retrieving my scissors, with her feet up in the air. (Still makes me smile even now)

The supervisor turns to the TSA woman and asks her to “Retrieve the evidence please”. In absolute horror and dismay, the TSA woman goes to the bin, puts the bin on it’s side and empties the bin right there on the floor. (I so wanted to have my vision be fulfilled, however, I could see she was a bit smarter than that.) Of course a thin pair of metal scissors will go straight to the bottom of the bin. No exception on this day for that rule either. Everything coms out of the bin, and yep,… there was nothing else to get out, except my lonely scissors. Even my four lonely (now cut) cable ties came out near the start.

Her colleagues are sorting other people baggage, whilst sort of watching with sideways glances at what the TSA Woman was doing, and trying to hold back smiles. One other TSA employee looked at me, and she couldn’t stop the smile, I thought she was going to bust out laughing. She did well and held the laughter in.

The TSA Woman… The offending, basketball playing, self confident, “Look at me I have the power to confiscate scissors and four cable ties… TSA Woman, eventually finds the scissors, hands them to the supervisor like a nurse hands scissors and a scalpel in the movies to a surgeon. I have no idea what’s going to happen next, but this was kind of fun and i was all in now. It’s like I was watching someone else. I had no stress no concern, this was like a seen from a sitcom, only I had written it without the ending, after all, what was the worst they can do, take my scissors off me again? I had already had this woman go and retrieve my scissors from the bin, and had her colleagues witness it, I’m already a mile in front. You can have the four yellow cable ties and the scissors… I’m good at this point.

The TSA Supervisor (Oh… who is also a woman, sorry I missed that point earlier)) takes a half second look at the scissors as the scissors hit her hand. She turns to me and says “Happy travels Sir” and hands the scissors back to me with a smile.

When I turned my back, I couldn’t get the smile off my face, I nearly bust out laughing as I walked up to the Qantas lounge and waited for my flight.

Never saw her again.

Good. Very good.

It was right after I gave my two weeks notice. My manager came to my desk on Monday morning and said, “Mike, coffee is now your duty until you leave.”

I smiled and kept doing my work.

The next day he calls me. “Mike, I thought I told you you’re in charge of coffee?”

“I am in charge of coffee, yes and I see that we need a fresh pot. Can you handle this for us since you seem to be an expert.”

He laughed and said, “We all know that already. You brew the pot of coffee, Mike, Not me. Come on.”

“Well, I am a little busy now and will get to it when I can,” I replied. I stayed at my desk for an hour an half working away! No care for him or the coffee.

Then he comes to my desk and says, “Mike, where is my coffee?”

I stood up, looked him straight in the eye and said, “Let’s go have a quick talk while I brew you a fresh cup of coffee.”

We got to the break room. I stood by the coffee machine and said. “Listen, I gave you my notice, but that doesn’t mean you need to make my life difficult and belittle me. I really do not appreciate your tone and remarks. I am reporting you to HR. I find it very offensive and it looks like retaliation.”

He stumbles in his shoes and starts to stutter, “Ah, Mike, I was just joking around and didn’t mean anything by it.”

I stayed quiet.

He kept going on and on. I walked out of the break room and headed to the elevator.

He was still talking and asked, “Mike, can we talk about it?”

I stopped and looked at him. I could see the entire floor looking from under their cubicle walls. “I don’t think we need to talk about it anymore, I will be right back.” By then I clicked and called the elevator. The door opens up, I jump in and the door closes.

I know what he was thinking – Oh, crap! He is going to HR.

I went to the vending machine on the same floor as HR and got myself a drink!

I waited a bit, chatting with some co-workers, then I went back up.

He did not even look at me.

I sat at my desk and the whole day he did not even cross in front of my desk, not even once – like a scared rabbit hiding in his hole.

I told everyone on my team about what I did and everyone was waiting to see how he would react or what he would do the next day.

The next morning I came in and dumped the coffee pot, brewed a new one. While walking to my desk, I stopped by his cube and said, “I just brewed a fresh pot of coffee.”

He jumps up from his seat and says, “Oh! Thanks, Mike, you didn’t have to!”

As soon as I sat down, my coworker that sat right next to me said, “What a Punk.”

“You said it, not me!” I replied

In the end, I felt good that I stood my ground and did not fall victim to his actions. He never came and asked me if I reported him to HR. He asked two of my team members and both said: “I am not sure!”

He wanted to make a joke and make me feel unwelcomed or belittled. In the end, he was a joke and was called a punk. Who knows what others thought of him?

”Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need” — Khalil Gibran

Acapulco Chicken Pizza

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Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 3/4 pound fresh boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced
  • 1 package Ortega Taco Seasoning Mix (regular) or 2 tablespoons homemade Taco Seasoning
  • 3 tablespoons cayenne pepper
  • 5 tablespoons Ortega Thick & Smooth Taco Sauce (medium)
  • 2 (12 inch) flour tortillas
  • 8 ounces Ortega Refried Beans
  • 1/4 cup Ortega Thick & Smooth Taco Sauce (medium)
  • 1/4 cup Monterey Jack cheese, grated
  • 1/4 cup Cheddar cheese, grated
  • 2 cups lettuce, shredded
  • 2 avocados, seeded, peeled and mashed
  • 1 tomato, diced

Instructions

  1. Add oil to a large heated skillet; stir in chicken, taco seasoning mix and cayenne pepper and cook until browned.
  2. Stir in first amount of taco sauce and remove from the heat.
  3. On a large plate, place flour tortillas; divide and spread with refried beans, being sure to cover the entire tortilla.
  4. Add the chicken mixture over the beans and sprinkle remaining taco sauce, grated Monterey Jack cheese and grated Cheddar cheese on top.
  5. Bake at 375 degrees F until the cheese is bubbly, about 10 minutes.
  6. Remove and cut into wedges.
  7. Serve with shredded lettuce, mashed avocados, and diced tomato.

In the late 1970s, my mom was refurbishing a house in Mt. Helix, just outside of San Diego. There was a guy who pulled up in a truck from a carpet installation business and asked about the project, and whether they were going to be needing new carpets for the house. She thought something was a little off with him, so she said that they had not yet decided what they were going to do, and that they had a prospective buyer who wanted the original hardwood floors.

He kept trying to sell her on some carpeting for the stairs, etc. until her partner in the project, a contractor (who she was also having an affair with, but that is another story entirely) who was 6’ 4” and a Vietnam Vet came out to ask a question. The guy almost immediately stopped talking, handed her his card and left. She threw away the card and figured that was the end of it.

The next week, he called our house, and I answered the phone and he said he had been speaking with her about carpeting for the house and was she available? She wasn’t home, so I took a message which was just his name and number. I gave her the message and she thought it was weird, but did not connect it with the guy in the truck, because she hadn’t gotten his name the first time.

Then he called again, and my brother took a message and she realized who these messages were coming from, but she had not given him our phone number. At the time, you could go to the DMV, and ask for the registration info for a car by giving the license plate number and paying $3 for it. (After actress Rebecca Schaefer was murdered by a stalker who did this, they stopped that service, but that was a few years later). My mom called the police about this guy, and they later found out that this was how he got our number.

After that, we started getting frequent hang up calls at our house. She said she thought islt was this guy, and my dad said he didn’t think so, and she was worrying over nothing. But she stopped going out to the worksite and eventually just sold her half of the project to the contractor.

But soon afterward, she got a call from a police detective who wanted to ask some questions about the guy. Like do you know this guy, and from where, and why are there so many calls to your house from him, etc. Eventually, they even asked my brother and I what he had said when we answered the phone. All the information we had was his name and phone number.

About 5 years later, it was on the news that they had arrested the guy for serial murders. His story is all kinds of horrible, but he was thought to have brutally raped up to six women and murdered them, along with their children in some cases. How brutally? They called them the Throat Slash Murders, because he cut their throats so deeply that the spine was visible from the hole in the front of their throats.

He was convicted of three of the killings, and he is now on death row in California.

David Allen Lucas – Wikipedia

Pennies for pay

I had been working for a large company for almost 20 years. I worked very long hours, often late into the night and at weekends, under stressful conditions and had a lot of responsibility but I was happy in my job and took great pride and derived satisfaction from it.

There was a change of management, and after about a year, I mentioned that I hadn’t been given a raise for over 4 years and asked for one – I was given a lecture about commitment and told that I would have to work harder to ‘earn’ it, and was offered a tiny raise which didn’t even meet 1 years cost of living increases, let alone 4 years. The new financial controller was condescending and quite dismissive so I knew instantly that I was finished with them. I didn’t resign there & then (even though I was very tempted to). I thanked them for my new ‘raise’ and immediately set about finding a new role – it took almost 2 years to find a job I was confident about but when I then handed in my notice, they offered me a huge raise, a promotion, new working conditions and all sorts of inducements to stay. It was extremely tempting but I had made my mind up – I no longer wanted to work for them (and my gut-feeling about them was justified by several stories from former colleagues of how staff were treated subsequently)

So my advice is NOT to act impulsively and hand in your resignation immediately (and be forced to find a replacement job urgently) – take your time, find the right job that suits you, put everything in place and then calmly, but firmly, hand in your notice.

How did people know…

  1. You are now aware that your clothes are touching your skin and that you can feel them.
  2. People who swear more often are more honest than those who don’t.
  3. For luxury brands, the ruder the sales staff, the higher the sales.
  4. If you start whispering to someone, they will whisper back, even if they don’t have to.
  5. Your mind “rewrites” monotonous speech of boring people to make them sound more interesting.
  6. Your brain defaults to going to the beach as your initial vacation idea.
  7. You are more honest and open with people that you consider “temporary” friends.
  8. When entering a packed lecture hall, the left side will always be less crowded.
  9. 82% of people would feel more confident approaching an attractive person if they had their dog with them.
  10. We tend to hate people who have the same flaws and make the same mistakes as we do.
  11. If someone is trying to make you decide in a hurry, they are probably giving you a bad deal.
  12. A person is more likely to be honest when physically tired.
  13. Fear can feel good-if we’re not really in danger.
  14. People who keep their hands in their pockets while around large crowds are generally anti-social or shy.
  15. The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.

My late husband and I were on our way home from being on the lake with friends and were pulling a boat that belonged to one of our friends who didn’t have a truck or anything suitable to pull it with. We got to his house and pulled into the driveway shortly after the friend pulled in. My husband got out to talk, I rolled down the window and stayed in the truck. Across the street was a group of girls playing with a water hose and water balloons . The girls are obviously young possibly 11 years old at the most . Our friend tells my husband “ man that’s torture, I would love half a chance “. I was more than proud of my husband’s response . He told his friend that he was sick in the head and if he ever caught him with in a mile of one of our daughters that the torture he spoke of would become reality that he would face a hell that would give the devil chill bumps. Then told him to get his piece of shit boat unhooked from his truck he was ready to leave and don’t ever call him or come to our house . We got not even a mile up the road and turned around, I asked what he was doing , he told me that the family of those girls deserve to know what trash lives across from them . He said if someone can casually mention something like that then they are capable of doing such.i have never seen him react so strongly about something but at that time we had 2 daughters age 6 and 12 . The father of the girls was more than disgusted and thanked him for letting him know .

Very interesting WTF…

When I quit a job over 20 years ago, I was called in by my grand-boss (manager’s boss) and asked why I was leaving. I was the second person to leave that week, and my main issue was money – they immediately offered to match the raise I was getting with my new job, but declined. The secondary issue, of how my manager’s assistant did his level best to cheat me out of $5 (out of $40) in per-diem when working in a remote office, in a way that could not be seen as accidental. They wanted to know what was happening.

Last year, my employer sold his personally-owned company to a much larger firm. During the transition, the new management told me I was overpaid and unnecessary, denied a raise, and generally treated rudely. The old owner did nothing to support me. Two months after that I called up the president of the new firm and gave notice – explaining what had happened and how I was treated without respect or professionalism, and also that I was obliged by professional ethics to inform him that my former employer was aware of several installations that were in violation of the electrical code, but were not doing anything about it to shelter themselves from liability (both legal and financial) until the sale went through. The one installation I was aware of – I insisted that it be fixed, fighting the owner who kept telling me that the cost of fixing it would come out of MY salary and bonus. I corrected him in saying that this was a mistake that I merely discovered, but did not create, and despite him being upset that I opposed his desire to merely ignore this, the cost of fixing it would come out of THE COMPANY’S REVENUE, meaning that no single person would, or could be held responsible for the error. In fact, some of the people who may have been responsible for it were now retired from that firm.

It did not go well for any of the people involved, as I knew the President of that larger firm from my previous dealings, and that he was very risk-averse. Legal liability for engineering errors is a bad thing.

Do men even want relationships anymore? There’s nothing in it for them. Too much to lose.

This is very good.

Playing around with Text to image

Today is my Doc Savage theme.

Prompt is…

doc savage cover art Bantam Doc paperbacks with the wonderful cover art by James Bama and Bob Larkin adventure driving a car through the streets of new york city

Images…

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In the year 2000, I was working on advanced degrees in theology. A priest I had known from childhood, now serving in Henderson, Nevada right outside of Las Vegas, invited me to teach a week-long adult education class to his parish. This was a no-brainer. An easy class to teach, a small paycheck, but a FREE plane trip to spend few days just a few miles from the strip. I was happy to say yes. I couldn’t wait to try the buffets and see David Copperfield. I planned to spend a few quarters in the slots as well.

The priest set me up in a small little guest house next to the rectory where he lived. I had just two rooms and a bathroom. I was told to meet him in the morning for breakfast then he would bring me to the classroom.

For some reason I could not understand, I had the most upsetting and unsettling feeling when I was a lone in this little guest house. I had the impression someone or something was watching me, I kept jumping at the slightest noise and swearing I saw things or people pass the window. This was very much unlike me. We often say “I didn’t sleep a wink” but often this is a slight exaggeration. In this case however, I was literally awake all night with a terrible feeling surrounding me. I felt a presence in the room I simply cannot explain. I never was able to close my eyes for even a full minute. Never one for superstition or exaggeration, I assumed it was nothing and rejected the notion that I felt some sort of spirit or evil presence in the room. I just went the next day and, although exhausted, taught the first session of the class. Although I wound up in a different arrangement the second night, I could not forget that odd, terrible and lingering feeling in the original guest house. I had a nightmare in the new room. Even when I just passed the original guest house while walking it felt terrible, in a way I did not understand.

One year later, to my shock, the priest who invited me was arrested. He was a violent, disgusting pedophile who was abusing kids in that little guest house for years. I had no clue, and yet, somehow, I felt the presence of pure evil in that room. I will never ignore or dismiss such a feeling again.

Mike Pompeo orders the murder of Jillian Assange

I’ve lived alone for about the past ten years. I even let my ex stay with me for a stretch after we split up, but with her in the guest room. We’ve always remained good friends. We were just not a great couple with both wanting different things in life.

A good friend who also lives alone told me that she hates the part where someone doesn’t get to witness her experiences and that about sums up the downside. I live about nine miles away from the closest small town on about 3.5 acres. I’m completely secluded and during the summer you can’t see the house from the road. Yes, there are security measures, but I feel very safe here and safer than I’d feel in a city.

Living alone isn’t for everyone and so much of it depends on what you want out of life. I love my work and I have a personal assistant who’s here often, so I’m not completely alone. I also have visitors from time to time.

The plus side of living alone is that you don’t have the normal routine of others. I can go swimming in the middle of the night or work or play music or watch a movie. I can do just about anything I want and feel like I had a productive day.

I’d probably feel lonely if I didn’t have a busy life, but there are so many great things to do in a day and I love my work. I never ever want to retire and I’m good at it too.

I still go to restaurants, travel, and do other things, but I do have a dog and he’s with me at all times, except when I have to make business trips. I have a sitter here at the house when that happens.

There isn’t a big downside to living alone, other than the risk of some major illness or injury where you can’t get help, but I take precautions for that. Neighbors see anyone who comes and goes. The house is a local curiosity so that’s kind of fun too.

Yes, it would be great to share these experiences, but I do it in my writings. I turn out a massive amount of work and living alone helps that. I never thought this was where my life would take me, but it did. Circumstances took me here, but I have great friends, and a full life and I’m getting a lot out of the experience of living.

Now the USA no longer will answer 911

When we moved into our first home we bought a second hand washer and drier. Not long after, the drier quit.

In my family, if something broke, you took it apart. If you fixed it, great. If not you learned a few things and had lots of parts to tinker with.

My wife wanted a tool kit as a little girl and never got one because Little. Girls. Don’t. Play. With. Tools.

So I said I’d take a look and see what was wrong. She wanted me to take it back for a refund. A second hand drier.

Have you ever fixed one before? What’s to go wrong? There’s a drum, a motor and a heater element. She could just not comprehend that you could look at something, see how it worked, and see how to fix it.

Finally I just went Executive Action. Took the back off and there was a broken wire. We got years more use out of it.

A few months later, she pulled in with a recliner in the trunk. The owner was throwing it out and warned her it was broken. “Oh, that’s okay. My husband can fix anything.”

Protip: if you are good with your hands, the first time your SO asks you to hang a picture, nail your hand to the wall. It will hurt like blazes but you have no idea how much trouble it will save.

I kid. She died of a heart attack in January after 48 years. I’d build or fix anything her heart desired to have her back a bit longer.

Some interesting AI generations

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Default GPTmasterpiece best quality diverse group of adventure 6(1)
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Default GPTmasterpiece best quality diverse group of adventure 1
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Default GPTmasterpiece best quality diverse group of adventure 3
Default GPTmasterpiece best quality diverse group of adventure 6
Default GPTmasterpiece best quality diverse group of adventure 6

How a husband thinks

Why isn’t anyone noticing?

It is precisely because they have two different life experiences of living in China and living abroad that they understand that the American-style democratic system is the real dictatorship, but the “people are the masters of the country” advocated by the Chinese government is the real democracy system.

Some new immigrants lie to please the United States. In the United States, not only is lying an inalienable right (the freedom to lie), but hypocrisy is a virtue. 😂

Don’t look at the American media talking about “China” all day long. In fact, most Americans know nothing about China. They don’t even know where China is.

Most Americans have never left the United States. Many Americans don’t even have passports. Even if they have passports, they will only go to Canada and Cancun at most. However, the number of Chinese citizens traveling abroad reached 155 million in 2019.

For example, when Trump visited India, Modi confided to him his concerns about China’s border policies. Trump was very strange and said, “India and China are not bordering each other, so what are you worried about?”

When you meet someone new and they start talking about a topic you know everything about, let them finish.

Don’t hijack the conversation, just because you can. Yes, it’s great that they care about the same stuff you do. Yes, you can contribute a lot here.

But that doesn’t mean they might not know a thing or two you don’t.


Scenario 1: Boy meets girl.

Girl: I actually know quite a bit about cars. My favorite is the 997 Porsche Turbo S, that was a great model…

Boy cuts her off: …yeah totally, I love that car, man, 530 hp, 700 Nm, and geez, the launch time, 3.3 seconds!

Girl: Mmhmm! *nods politely but dies a bit inside*


Scenario 2: Boy meets girl.

Girl: I actually know quite a bit about cars. My favorite is the 997 Porsche Turbo S, that was a great model…

*Boy draws breath, but then just closes his mouth*

Girl: …not only because of the insane hp and torque, but also because it was their fastest production car ever! Porsche claimed its 0–60 time to be 3.3 seconds in the brochure, but most magazines actually measured it with a 2.6.

Oh and I just love that test on Top Gear where they pit the convertible against a VW Beetle, falling from the sky. That’s one of the funniest “races” I’ve ever seen:

Boy:

Spits out, and coughs.

Talking is easy. Listening is a virtue.

Every single person you’ll ever meet knows something you don’t.

Play dumb and you might find: in a way, we all still are.

This is absolutely stunning and worth your time to watch.

My friend Tucker just got clean three months ago. It is so awesome to watch him blossom into someone so beautiful, that it brings tears to my eyes.

Tucker does this thing when he talks. It’s this slow, drawn, half-country, half-ghetto — all man thing that just makes me laugh and smile.

Tucker can’t see how beautiful he is and all the wonderful things that await him if he can just hang on for a minute, or a day, or a year.

Today I ran out of cigarettes at work. I asked Tucker if I could have one of his. Tucker more than obliged and handed me his all but half-pack and said: “Here you go, you can have the rest.”

Tucker is so generous in recovery. Tucker is willing to give everyone — everything he has.

My first thought was how awesome that was. I get eight smokes for the price of — n o n e. And then I saw it. I saw myself. I got angry.

Tucker is so willing to give everything away. I was him, or maybe Tucker is me.

The saddest case of addiction that I’ve ever seen is the case where the addict finally gets clean and is willing to give everything away — and people take it.

It may sound insignificant, but I assure you it’s not.

Addicts, like myself, are so used to having nothing. The moment we have something, even an almost half-pack of smokes, we’re willing to give it away.

It’s sad. It hurts me to think of why an addict is so willing to give so much of themselves in early recovery.

I want to be normal. I want you to like me. I want your love and your friendship.

I just want to be normal.

I don’t get high.

Now I don’t fit in with the people that still get high and I feel like I’ll never fit in with you.

Leon

There was a coworker back in the early 90′s who I thought was your stereotypical red-neck trailer trash kinda girl. She was from Alabama, and spoke with a heavy southern accent.

One time there was a bunch of us who went out after work on a Friday night. That night, we just happened to be all white. It was a normal evening. No heavy drinking, just idle chat. A couple guys started making racial comments about a black couple that walked in. Stuff like, “they don’t serve fried chicken here” & “bet they ask for water melon”. One even said something about how nice it was before they allowed colored people in places like this.

The red-neck girl spoke up rather loudly and said (and I’m paraphrasing here since I don’t remember word-for-word), “Hey, what’s your problem? Those are PEOPLE you’re talking about. PEOPLE! Racism is WRONG! WRONG! Shut up!”

She stared at them for a moment and went back to sipping her diet Coke. The guys downed their drinks and left. I smiled at her, and things returned to normal.

Except my respect for her grew exponentially. And, ironically, I got a lesson on prejudice.

It just hit her hard.

China is at war right now.

China has been fighting a war with the United States since 2008.

It is an under-reported war. The Western media does NOT report on it. Instead, they produce “news” and describe it as something else.

Intentional Misreporting.

  • An American “stealth” submarine “accidentally” slams into an uncharted undersea mountain.
  • One hundred Space-X satellites tumble to the ground because of a freak solar flare.
  • The “pro-democracy” movement in HK fizzed out and died for no reason at all.
  • An Australian submarine crew is shaken up by Chinese “sonar blasts”.
  • Recovery efforts in the South China Sea was to recover an F-22 that accidentally crashed during carrier take off.

Unreported news

As well as a slew of unreported news…

  • China and Russia publish a casus belli against the United States.
  • American generals, formally listed as “retired”, are captured in Ukraine.
  • The round up and execution of all CIA and NED assets in Hong Kong.
  • China opens up strategic oil pipelines with Russia.

Fake News & and lies

And, of course, a flood of lies known as “fake news”…

  • China sending spy dirigibles disguised as weather balloons.
  • Chinese military are all conscripts.
  • China infiltrating Americans private data via Tiktoc.
  • 3G causes gas pumps to explode. 4G cases planes to crash. 5G causes brain cancer.

And so on and so forth.

If the United States was currently winning the war against China, it would be front page news. The mere fact that it is hidden is strongly suggestive that the United States is losing; floundering in this effort.

Honestly, this current period of time is just a continuation of the 1960’s era “cold war”. NATO has acquired just about ALL of the Western Russian buffer states. And NATO is (territoriality speaking) piece by piece disassembling the Russian defense perimeter so that the ultimate conquest of Russia can occur.

And it almost did.

Almost.

And once Russia was a “head case”, and looted, pillaged, and the USA-backed oligarchs ran the nation as some kind of medieval fiefdom, the looting of China can finally occur. As that was the plan all along.

Oh, yeah. It’s not going that way.

But it’s coming near to “High Noon” at the “OK corral”.

Yikes!

So China and the USA are in decade two of the long drawn out war hostilities. So far, the clear winner is China. But the American (and proxy) “leadership” have a vision and somehow believe things that are not real; are not true, and will never be true will manifest in their favor.

Which makes believe that they are all delusional psychopaths…

Thinking and wishing something to happen in this physical world will NOT make it occur. Actions will. And the actions by the West are completely and totally inept.

Oh a physical hot war is still on the table.

It will begin as a provocation; an American “false flag” event, that will push China into some kind of response.

And a proxy nation or two will engage China.

And America will have tricked China into a war.

However…

I am of the mind that China knows what the “cats paw” is actually all about, and will strike American cities, and Americans on American soil. China will make life for average Americans as uncomfortable as possible and that internal strife will bring about a civil war that American will not survive.

Stay tuned to stage two of this global catastrophe…

Confusing

China will lead this modern world. Can the West’s democracy survive China’s rise to dominance?

The West—both the United States and the European Union—is, in historical terms, in precipitous decline.

The BRICS countries, led by China, now accounts for just under 60% of global GDP, compared with around 33% in the mid-1970s.

The great story of the post-war era has been the rise of the developing world, representing around 85% of humanity, and the decline of the old developed world, accounting for around 15% of humanity.

China increasingly ranks on a par with the United States to the extent that it is now regarded by the latter as a threat to its global ascendancy.

China’s governing system, long derided in the West, has emerged as a formidable challenger to America’s democratic system. Over the last 40 years, there is no question which has been more effective and which has delivered most for its people.

The greatest danger is not the rise of China but how the United States will react to China’s rise and its own consequent loss of primacy.

The rise of illiberalism in America is not an accident.

It coincides with the dawning recognition of American decline and a desperate desire to prevent it.

It should be remembered that the heyday of Western democracy corresponded with the zenith of Western hegemony. But can the West’s democracy survive the decline of Western global dominance?

If the West is able to retain and renew its best values, in a world in which it enjoys a much diminished role and China is predominant, such a world will be the better for it.

  1. Never tell people about your bad or dishonest behavior.
  2. Listen actively and avoid dominating conversations or interrupting others.
  3. Treat others with kindness and avoid using them for personal gain.
  4. Respect the boundaries of others and avoid getting involved with married individuals.
  5. Live within your means and avoid overspending or accumulating debt.
  6. Only make promises or plans if you genuinely intend to follow through and remember them.
  7. Communicate respectfully without using swear words or yelling at anyone.
  8. Be cautious about sharing personal information that could be used against you in the future.
  9. Don’t pursue romantic or friendship relationships out of boredom or loneliness.
  10. Only engage in romantic or sexual relationships with people you genuinely like and want to be with.

They fight dirty

We were living in a small, privately owned apartment complex when my husband and I found out we were expecting our first baby. This complex was very quiet, and the owners were very open about advertising their “Christian values”- not allowing unmarried couples to rent from them (just a sidenote, I am a Christian, and this information about their values may not seem relevant right now, but it will come into play later).

We had already been living in the apartment for over a year, so at this point we are on a month-to-month lease, with a 30-day notice required to vacate. After careful budgeting and deliberation, we decided that we were finally ready, and it was the perfect time to purchase our first home. We contacted a local realtor and started the search. After several weeks of searching, we found the perfect house and submitted an offer.

We were so excited when we got the news that our offer was accepted. We quickly handled the standard inspection, appraisal, and back-and-forth negotiations of what needed to be fixed about the home before closing. When we got the closing date set, we realized it was just over a month out and we needed to submit our 30-day notice to the apartment complex immediately.

On Feb. 28th, a Friday, there was an ice storm blowing through our city, but I walked to the leasing office to drop off the written notice anyway, along with a check for our final month’s rent, for March. When I got there, I found the office was locked tight. The garage at the side of the building was hanging wide open. Inside, I saw the head maintenance employee having his lunch. He said that no one had come into the office that day, probably due to the weather. I left the vacate notice and the rent check in the mailbox for the staff to find when they finally decided to return.

On Monday morning, March 3rd, I called the office to ask if they had gotten the notice and the check that I left in the mailbox. The receptionist said, “Oh yes, hold on one moment, the owner would like to speak with you.” Up until that point, we had had a pretty good relationship with the owner. We were quiet and respectful tenants, never had any complaints against us, paid on time, and frequently engaged in personal discussions whenever we saw each other. I thought that maybe the owner wanted to congratulate us on the pregnancy, buying our first home, or even to discuss the final move out inspection — anything but what she actually wanted to discuss.

The owner argued that because she didn’t receive the notice until after the first of the month, we would be responsible for rent through the month of April. I responded in protest, saying that I delivered the notice before the first of the month, and that it was not my fault the office was closed during what was supposed to be regular business hours, due to inclement weather. This did not sway her, and she threatened to withhold our security deposit and sue us in court for not paying rent for the month of April as well. I did not give in. I told her to do what she felt she needed to do, but we were moving out by March 31st and not paying a dime more. I was absolutely shocked at the complete 180 in her personality and demeanor.

Luckily for us, when I wrote the check for the rent for March, I included “PAID IN FULL” in the memo. I didn’t realize how much that would help us later on.

We did the final move out inspection, and the owner did the walk-through herself, trying hard to find a reason to withhold the security deposit — alas (for her), I am an excellent housekeeper and we treated our apartment as if it were our own. She was unable to notate any damage that would allow her to keep our deposit. She was very obviously irritated with this, and proceeded to repeat what she initially said — that we were still responsible for the month of April, so she could legally keep the deposit as well as sue us.

At this point, my pregnancy hormones were raging, and I was sick of her crap. I decided to beat her to the punch. I went down to the courthouse and filed a suit against her myself, in an effort to get our security deposit back because she did not have any legal grounds to keep it.

By the time our day in court came around, we had been living in our new home for several months, and I was as big as a whale, ready to pop any day. When the judge called my case, I waddled my way to the front of the court room with my little file folder full of my documentation and all the research I had been doing in the months prior.

I explained the entire situation to the judge, and showed him a copy of the check for the final month’s rent they had cashed — the check that stated “PAID IN FULL”. Because Virginia mostly rules by case law, I included a case that the Supreme Court had previously ruled on, stating that by cashing the check, the receiving party was agreeing to the terms written on the check, which invalidates any previous contract, written or verbal.

Not only did the judge agree, he ordered the apartment complex to repay our security deposit, said we were no longer responsible for any monies/rent for the month of April, and the apartment had to pay our court costs as well. I could tell he was irritated for me — the fact that I had to go through all the trouble I did to get the situation handled, during what was supposed to be the most exciting time in our lives. He was almost apologetic!

The apartment complex owner was NOT happy, and I think she even cursed at us under her breath as we were leaving the courthouse. How Christlike!

Not long after that, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. We still own the home we purchased, and are loving life to the fullest.

The girls expressions are great

Nokia’s failure was something that just had to happen – Nokia, realistically, couldn’t have done much about it.

In 2007, around half of all mobile phones sold were Nokia phones. These guys were massively dominant.

Below is my last Nokia, which I bought in 2007. It was a fantastic smartphone.

main qimg d7297d88bcb7020ffd9db82f6a3029de lq
main qimg d7297d88bcb7020ffd9db82f6a3029de lq

Less than 10% of all phones sold were smartphones, but even in that growing space Nokia, with its Symbian, had dominance.

main qimg 11074c44f39cd7ea2e7b817fb327a2ca pjlq
main qimg 11074c44f39cd7ea2e7b817fb327a2ca pjlq

But in 2007 something happened that you can’t really blame Nokia for. A nut job, Steve Jobs, made this insanely great smartphone that didn’t even have a keyboard, the iPhone. Not only that, he made buying apps so easy that people would actually buy them, making smartphones so much more useful.

And then, to make matters worse, Google decided to partner with every smartphone manufacturer in the world via Android, which would emulate the iPhone. And they didn’t care whether they made any money or not so gave the software for free.

I mean, what were Nokia supposed to do? It’s far more difficult changing a legacy software, like Symbian, than making an essentially new one like Google did with Android. And given they were so dominant in both hardware and software, they couldn’t have really abandoned either.

Ok, in hindsight they should have adopted Android, but fat chance that was going to happen given Android was way behind, and a competitor.

And so the reason Nokia failed was because shit happens…

Rejection

Absolutely!!!!

Frankly India is a superpower already

Just like the Laws of Physics dont apply to Indian movies, it appears laws of economics don’t apply to India

India grows at 8.4% when there is a Global Slowdown against 6.15% when there is normal Global activity

Indian shares surge 233% when the whole world is in Covid crisis and everywhere else the rules of economics are being followed

It takes China 40 years and Billions of Investment, literally Billions to pull out 800 Million People from extreme poverty

Yet India in a mere 15 years with a thirtieth of the investment can pull out 450 Million people from extreme poverty

Isnt India a superpower already?

growth
growth

China actually has to slog and work against all the odds

  • Forty years of Poverty Alleviation
  • Forty years of Industrialization
  • Two generations giving up their entire youth to ensure the present China is the way it is
  • A Hostile Global Media which belittles every Chinese Achievement including Indian Media

India meanwhile is a real super power :-

  • Not a shred of any sacrifice required
  • Not the slightest change in any system needed
  • No reforms discussed or performed
  • Yet India is an emerging economy that would be $ 50 Trillion in 2047 according to Rajeev Chandrasekhar

You do the math and figure out Indias actual chances of eclipsing China in all these fields

As for me?

I don’t trust anything India says or does in the past few years

It doesn’t gel with logic

Scott Ritter: Russia has DESTROYED Ukraine’s Army and NATO is Losing Control

Your body language always betrays you.

  • We are more likely to put our hands around our waist at a self-hug position when we are around people, than we are by ourselves.
  • When something bothers us, we tend to bite or suck our lips.
    • This includes when we are lying.
  • When there’s an issue, we tend to put our hands at the side of our hips with fingers facing outwards.
    • So we take up more space and become more territorial.
  • A lot of people tend to move their legs back and forth while talking on stage because of nervousness.
  • When we are relaxed, we sometimes tilt our heads. However as soon as something bothers us, the head tilt is gone and we position our heads straight.
  • When we are stressed, we tend to go on our phone.
    • This is to seem like we’re busy and potentially avoid the unwanted conversation. It also helps us escape from eye contact, and to have an excuse for a delayed response because “sorry I wasn’t paying attention”.
  • When we are lying but we want to calm ourselves down, we move our hands a lot.
    • Don’t mistake speaking with a lot of hand movement as a sign of confidence
  • When people question us about our lies, we tend to actively reveal a lot of somewhat related information, without directly answering the questions.
    • This is to avoid the source of stress by not answering the accusations directly, to distract the person questioning, and to seem trustworthy as you willingly tell them information.
  • When we are stressed, we want to calm ourselves down. Sometimes we put our hands on top of our heads, or cover our mouths.
  • We tend to smile when we are happy, even when we are not supposed to. This is because our emotions come before our mind processes it.
    • If someone smiles for a second and immediately stops smiling, they might be hiding something.
  • When we are stressed, our feet will be facing the door or we will look at the door once in a while. This is because our unconsciousness wants us to leave the situation.
  • Don’t think that forcing yourself to not have any body movements means that you are mind-reading-proof either, because limited movements is also a sign of discomfort.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to stop ourselves from revealing our state of mind to others. Body language never lies.

BUT

Not only can your body tells people about you, it can also directly influence your own thoughts.

  • Sitting up straight gives you energy, while slouching can make you feel sad.
  • Crossing arms can make you more determined, but it can also give people the impression that they are not welcomed.
  • Taking up more space makes you feel more confident, and gives us a feeling of power. These poses are called power poses.
    • Studies have shown that power poses will make people more willing to take risks. As we feel that luck is by our side.
    • People who have done power poses are more likely to be selfish compared to those who have done contractive poses. Because when a person feels powerful, they are less empathetic.
    • Fun fact: Donald Trump also tends to take up a lot of space to seem dominating.
  • While you naturally smile when you’re happy, smiling can also lighten up your mood when you’re sad.

Moral of this list? Use body language to your advantage, by detecting stress (and potential dishonesty) from others, and to feel more self confident!

That’s all I got for now. Perhaps I’ll update this list once I got more facts. Who knows?

EDIT

Well I’m procrastinating from work so why not add more facts that aren’t related to body language.

  • When you see something extremely adorable, do you want to squeeze it to death? That’s called the cute aggression.
    • Some study says that it’s because our brain doesn’t know how to deal with these overwhelming cuteness, thus builds aggression to get a sense of control… Freaky right?
  • There’s a theory called moral licensing. It theorizes that when people have done something moral, they feel entitled to do something bad, vise versa.
    • For instance if you have done voluntary work today, and you picked up $20 on your way home, you are less likely to give that money to the homeless than someone who haven’t done voluntary work.
  • Do you like freedom? Well, studies have shown that we feel worse when a wrong decision is made by ourselves, than when there’s no choice at all, even when the outcome is equal.
  • Your mind and behavior is heavily influenced by your brain formation. So… do we truly have free will…
  • Studies have shown that:
    • Kidney donors have a larger amygdala (area that controls emotions) than average, while psychopaths have a smaller one than average.
    • People with more conservative political views tend to have larger amygdala, while liberals have smaller ones.
    • While extroverts feel energized from the dopamine produced out of socialization, introverts are over-stimulated.
  • We are more empathetic to those who are like us. This includes the similarities in looks, skin, personality, interest, etc. This is because they are more relatable to us.
  • Do you secretly love true crimes? Or are you fascinated by what a serial killer does? Don’t worry, you’re not evil.
    • Humans fear the unknown, and by knowing what the experiences are like during these situations, for both the killer and the victims, helps us conquer that fear. When we are terrified, we dominate the situation by understanding it. This is perhaps the reason why people commit crimes as well.

Gotta get back to work now, maybe I’ll add more soon.

Have a nice day!

Japaneses beaches are The Best

No chem-tails yo.

Yes. And is a story why we cannot have nice things.

The company I work for had very chill policy about the time you had to start work. You came in 8:00, you work your 8 hours you go at home at 16:30 (30 minutes obligatory lunch brake). You came at 9:30 you work your 8 hours with 30 minutes brake you go home at 18:00. Life is good everyone’s happy.

Then this guy start coming regularly at 10, then 11, then 12 – which means that all meetings, trainings and whatnot had to be moved for everyone else because of his schedule. Obviously this wasn’t going to work so a rule was implemented – everyone should start work no late than 10:00.

That guy start coming at 10:10, 10:15, 10:30, so as his direct manager I talked with him, several times that this is unacceptable, which lead to him coming on time (9:58, 9:59 usually) for a week then get back to being late.

In the end the last drop was when we was moving the office to another floor in the same building – company wide notice was send that moving is happening next morning at 9:00 (everyone moved his/her own computer and monitors) – isn’t a big deal but this bulky Lenovo work stations weighted like 20 killos so guys helped the girls carrying the machines.

This guy? Came near or after 10:00 again, expecting someone else to have moved his equipment already. Owners of the company had enough and let me fired him same day. We even paid him a few months worth of salary just to see his back asap. The guy never understood what the problem was, and the 10:00 rule is still on place, years after he is gone.

The moral of the story is, if you have a nice benefits at work, for fuck sake do not exploit them like there is no tomorrow. Have some common sense.

Point spot on reality

2 more oil refineries went on fire in Russia today.

Drones attacked oil refineries in Syzran and Novokuybyshevsky, Samara region.

Notably, Syzran is 1,300 km from the border with Ukraine.

The governor of the region, Azarov, officially confirmed to RIA Novosti that fire broke at oil processing plants.

It’s already refineries #13 and #14 that suffered hits in Russia.

In response, Russia hit a residential building in Odesa, Ukraine, with a ballistic missile. And then Russia hit it with a ballistic missile again, targeting first responders – emergency services and medics, in an effort to obtain maximum civilian casualties.

20 people died as the result of the “double-tap” attack, more than 70 people wounded, several of them are in critical condition.

And to all these asking, “What did you expect?”, the answer is “Ukrainians expected to live their lives in their country without Russia or its useful idiots asking stupid questions”.

Ukrainian families experience pain and suffering every day. Only the complete destruction of the “beast from the east” will put an end to suffering.

Dmitry Medvedev (who always expresses what Putin wants to say but can’t) proposed the Russian version of “peace formula”: Ukraine must capitulate, the whole territory of Ukraine must become Russia, all Ukrainian officials must be removed, and Ukraine must pay a compensation to Russia for the Russian soldiers killed and wounded in the war.

So, we now have Russia’s “peace plan” — anyone who would like to suggest to Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, should be simply directed to Medvedev’s Telegram to read this remarkable plan in full.

Now any country should know: if Russia attacks you, this means they are going to keep killing your people and destroying your cities unless you surrender. And then they are going to annex your land and demand compensation for the inconvenience. And, of course, they are going to torture and kill the people who don’t love Russia, deport half of population to Siberia, and relocate Russians from Russia to live in the homes of deported locals.

This all had already happened before. The Soviet Union was attacking smaller countries and demanding capitulation, and when the governments signed capitulation, Soviets immediately began executions and deportations, and brought hundreds of thousands of their own relocants, to change the ethnic composition of the annexed territories.

There is nothings that Putin is doing now that the leaders of Russia and the Soviet Union haven’t done before. That’s what they always do.

An insult to my intelligence

What to expect from China if you are CIA / NED and Chinese

This is what Chinese do to whoever sold the country to the enemy, known as 诛九族 nine familial exterminations Nine familial exterminations – Wikipedia

, basically every person related to the collaborator would be eliminated from the society. Chinese do this to make sure things like this will never ever happen again. In India, the people who got rich by helping the British are still in charge today. Chinese people are amused by India.

Qin Hui – Wikipedia

Uh oh
Uh oh

Souper Meat ‘n’ Potatoes Pie

Souper Meat ‘n’ Potatoes Pie is a family favorite vintage recipe from Campbell’s.

soup pie
soup pie

Yield: one 9 inch pie

Ingredients

  • 1 can Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, divided
  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
  • 1 egg, slightly beaten
  • 1/4 cup fine dry bread crumbs
  • 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • Dash of pepper
  • 2 cups mashed potatoes
  • 1/4 cup shredded mild cheese*
  • 2 slices cooked bacon, crumbled**

Instructions

  1. Mix thoroughly 1/2 cup soup, beef, onion, egg, bread crumbs, parsley and seasonings.
  2. Press firmly into a 9-inch pie plate.
  3. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes; spoon off fat.
  4. Frost with mashed potatoes; top with remaining soup and cheese.
  5. Bake for 10 minutes more or until done.
  6. Garnish with cooked and crumbled bacon if desired.

Notes

* We love cheese, so I normally cover the entire top of the pie with a hefty amount of cheese, more like 1 cup.

** This is my addition to the recipe. It adds a little extra flavor.

Meanwhile in Vietnam

Pakistan has a lot of harsh truths that should be understood by all Pakistanis in order to solve the nation’s issues and look towards a successful and bright future.

  1. Around 40% of Pakistan is in poverty. Balochistan, FATA, KPK and Lower Sindh are the worst affected, while urban Sindh and Northern Punjab are the most well off. 40% Pakistanis live in poverty – The Express Tribune
  • People vote in communal patterns. Karachi’s Muhajirs vote for MQM, the Sindhis vote for the PPP, the Punjabis votes for PLM-N, Pashtuns vote for PTI and the Baloch vote for various Islamist parties. Politics of ethnicity
  • The nation has seen dynastic rule for the past 44 years (with Parvez Musharraf as the interuption). The Punjabi Arain Shariffs and Sindhi Rajput Bhuttos are the power holders; similar to India’s Gandhi Dynasty, Bangladesh’s Zias and Sheikhs as well as Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike Family. Dynastic politics
  • Lack of development, stability or a clear future. Karachi has a population that is close to parallel to Tokyo and Seoul, yet the city is embroiled in ethnic warfare and militant-ism. On the other hand, the rest of the world is advancing in every direction. In Karachi, Pakistan, few families are untouched by crime
  • A whole lot of religious intolerance. The large Sunni majority has politcal and social dominance over the Shias, Ahmadiyas, Hindus and Christians. Violence towards these groups occurs more frequently than you’d expect. The Problem of Religious Intolerance in Pakistan
  • Close minded attitudes and ignorance. Men continue to hold domineering status over women in terms of education, politics and personal freedoms. People are lynched for being accused of blasphemy. Most importantly, Pakistanis aren’t allowed to freely express their politcal or religious beliefs. Imposing faith
  • The never ending tense relations with India. For the past 70 years the two nations have been embroiled in Kashmir and countless other wars and smaller conflicts. This seems to be a never ending dispute and I don’t suspect anything to happen soon. A brief history of the Kashmir conflict
  • Extremist nature and terrorism within the nation. A whole lot of terrorism is homegrown and exported outside of Pakistani soil. People even empathize with terrorists and Islamism. In fact Mumtaz Qadri’s (terrorist) grave has been turned into a Mazar and people show up for his Urs. Mumtaz Qadri’s shrine: In memory of Salmaan Taseer’s assassin

Perhaps the biggest “harshest truth” about Pakistan is that the conception of Pakistan was one of the worst ideas in the 20th century. The Partition tore away millions of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists from their homes, businesses and friends to cater to the greatest minority appeasement in history. It paved the path for numerous conflicts and wars between the two nations (and later a third). Most importantly, the death toll of the Partition reached around 2 million and millions more died in the later riots, wars and conflicts.

In conclusion, Pakistan’s “harshest truths” are the result of a series of poor decisions and a lack of real leadership. This is evident from the days of the Pakistan Movement to today.

They have assumed…

Like Rogerio said,

Parrots don´t cover the walls of tall buildings in Brazil.

They cover the wall of a single building in São Paulo.

The palace of parrots…

main qimg 07726eaf9d9d02fdc1bf9600ca92d1e8 lq
main qimg 07726eaf9d9d02fdc1bf9600ca92d1e8 lq

Crazy uh?

At a first glance, it might look like you said, “a building decoration”. But those are actual birds massed on the building (it is the specimens of Psittacara leucophthalmus, in italian we also call them white-eyed parakeet).

This is happening in the eastern part of São Paulo, Brazil, the bricks of what is known as the “Prédio das maritacas”

[1] have been attracting hundreds of parrots every day for twenty-five years.

This behaviour could be related to the phenomenon of geophagy: in nature these birds consume small amounts of clay with the double purpose of

  1. reducing the harmfulness of certain foods (in particular, studies show a 60% reduction in the toxicity of the alkaloid quinidine, contained in the plant China) and…
  2. …as a supplement of their diet. (EDIT: Don’t miss Lena Kurschev comment below she is showing this phenomen with some very nice pics)

However, in an urban environment they have opted to find what they need more conveniently by licking clay from the surface of the bricks.

Other hypotheses suggest that the structure of this particular building allows many parrots to stop for a break and find shelter at the same time, in harmony with their social instincts; or, even, they use it to rub their beaks in order to sharpen them.

main qimg 1e438ba79092e6a4a06a158b3641d4cc lq
main qimg 1e438ba79092e6a4a06a158b3641d4cc lq

A pretty sight to see perhaps, but it is sad to think that they are there because their natural environment has probably been slowly wiped out due to human expansion.

Pause after winning

It’s up to you.

The background of prison is Groundhog Day. It’s a cycle that repeats endlessly with minor weekly events and the occasional shakedown to liven things up.

Just like in the movie, you wake up every day to the same exact set of circumstances. You’re wearing the same clothes, the same thing is on the radio, the same food in the Chow Hall… sure, some things are on weekly or monthly cycles — visits on weekends, work and mail-call on weekdays. Unless you choose to use your time wisely, every day will crash into the next like too many bumper cars on the track — nobody going anywhere.

Each hour, day, and week is a small progression to the time when you get to start your life over.

You can peel the numbers off the dials if you want. If you do, nothing will mark the smooth motion of the wheels and you’ll have no sense of where you are, or how far you’ve come. One day they’ll just kick you out and you’ll be no better off than you were before.

I knew guys who didn’t mark the days. They had nothing to live for. Their lives were just a continuous monotony, a drive through Death Valley, with no landmarks to judge progress, and nothing learned along the way.

Time is precious. It’s all we have. Choose what you do with each minute carefully and you won’t get to the end of your journey only to ask, “What happened?”

Interception

Tiktok and Douyin (Chinese company) are two divisions operating separately and independently.

Tiktok is privately held. The consent of the China government is not required.

Institutional investors including Carlyle Group Inc. (USA), General Atlantic (USA) and Susquehanna International Group (USA) own 60% of ByteDance; 20% is owned by the company’s global workforce; an additional 20% is owned by the company’s Chinese co-founder Zhang Yiming.

If someone asked Tiktok co-founder Zhang Yiming to donate his shares for free and gift them to the U.S. for nationalisation, he would not agree!

This is in effect the U.S. government plundering private legal property.

Zhang Yiming will not sell his original core algorithm technology. It’s the same way Bill Gates won’t sell his patents.

No doubt he’d rather take Tiktok and leave the US.

The U.S. market doesn’t deserve a high-tech company with the latest algorithms like Tiktok.

Americans have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and that’s enough.

One of the infamous methods of punishment in the Ming Dynasty was called “Court caning.” (廷杖)

The notoriety of the punishment was mainly because it was very unofficial and handwaving. If an official said something wrong to the Emperor in the court, the Emperor could order him to be dragged out and beaten. No need to go through an elaborate legal system, the Emperor was angry and there will be consequences.

How badly would the victim be hit? The answer is…the guards knew exactly how hard to hit.

An urban legend stated that the guards trained for this by taking a brick, wrapping it around in straw, and then covering it with paper. The executioners would train by hitting the brick with a stick. They could break the paper without touching the straws, and they could shatter the brick within without breaking the paper. (Obviously its a crude simulation of human anatomy)

There were also no official words from the Emperor on how hard to hit. The supervisor of this punishment, usually an eunuch sent by the Emperor, would also be counting how many, and there were also “safe words” he could use to convey the message to the executioners.

The supervisor eunuch knew because he was close and loyal to the Emperor; he could read his intentions.

If the supervisor eunuch said: “hit seriously,” then the guards would actually be careful, it meant the Emperor or the supervisor eunuch didn’t want the victim to die. If he instead said: “Hit solidly,” then the guards would reply: “I’m about to end this man’s career.”

Another alleged “safe word” was the stance of the eunuch. If he stood or sat with his foot pointing outwards, like a “V” shape), he wanted the victim to live. If he instead had his foot pointing inwards like a “^,” then he wanted the victim dead.

(An old movie named “Dragon Gate Inn,” had this introduction scene. The corrupt high eunuch Cao Shaoqin was interrogating and torturing a sentenced general. Notice his foot stance? Also notice the actor playing him? It’s a young man named Donnie Yen!”)

So when the sentence came, the executioners could hit you exactly as hard as they want. Sometimes the victim could survive 100 canes and still recover in a couple of weeks. Sometimes, 5 hits would be enough to send him to the grave. Surviving to caning was expected, dying to the caning was also expected, the guards could easily just blame it on any “pre-existing medical conditions” of the victim.

By the way, the guards and eunuch accept all forms of payments. They played the loophole in this corporal punishment system to their advantage.

Edit: Actually I’ve followed up a little bit because I realised I might not have given as direct of an answer. The maximum penalty was usually 100 strikes, but 60 was probably the fatal limit. But again, quick flick through the books, some died while some managed to survive.

Men Are Oppressed Not Women (They’ve Been Lying To You)

“What firearm would you recommend for defense against home invaders?”

Paintball.

Yes, yes, I know you’re going to say it’s not a ‘firearm’, but you haven’t thought things through.

If someone enters your house at night and you wake up, you think ‘intruder’ and you fire that Desert Eagle Penile Compensation piece in your dark bedroom — without donning your hearing protection (because, who is going to have hearing protection with that Desert Eagle on their nightstand, right?) — fire that piece in the darkness at the shadow in the doorway, you know what will happen. The noise will replace your hearing with a loud ‘iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii’ and your retina will be sporting these muzzle flash afterimages of your wife crumpling in the doorway. Or, in the unlikely event that it’s not your teenage daughter sneaking back into the house after leaving through her bedroom window, but an axe murderer — you just rendered yourself too blind and deaf to re-aim and shoot again.

Now, reconsider my suggestion and imagine you have a paintball gun on your nightstand.

First of all, no flashes and noise to mess with your night vision and hearing. Just a ‘pffft’ and angry cursing from the shadow in the doorway as he’s trying to wipe paint from his eyes. Because you know that just like you don’t have hearing protection on your nightstand, he sure as hell isn’t wearing paintball protection on his nocturnal visits. Paintballs on your unprotected body hurt like fuck. And the intruder won’t know what’s happening. No muzzle flashes or loud noises, just the sound of a blowdart and getting stung and wet all over — that’s unnerving, man, and I’d like to see the intruder who wouldn’t scamper back to whatever rock he crawled out from under. (Did I say that right? Sounds right…)

And while he runs like fuck from the stinging wet paint, you call the cops and tell them there’s an intruder running around your neighbourhood, a man splattered with purple paint. However incompetent the police are in your area, they should still be able to find someone covered in paintball paint.

Plus, if you make a mistake and confuse family members with intruders, you don’t have to take them to the ER (or bury them), but you simply apologize and help them wash off the paint.

So, forget about all those macho handcannons and just get yourself a paintball gun for home defense. Your NRA neighbour might laugh at you, but he’s going to be the one with the axe buried between his starry eyes from the muzzle flash, while there’s still an almost full magazine in his Desert Eagle.

[image by Paintball Guns & Gear at the #1 Paintball Store]

Edited to add:

A lot of people respond that my answer is ridiculous and dangerous. And they might be right — pelting an intruder armed with an assault rifle with paint balls might well result in getting you killed. However, I posted this answer not to promote paintball guns for home defence, but to think ‘outside the box’. In the comments, a lot of people also offered their own alternative solutions — shotguns loaded with rock salt, pepperballs, et cetera — and that was my intention: instead of looking to use lethal force, what alternatives are there?

Also, many commenters seem to believe that I would just shoot at an intruder with paintballs and then wait for them to respond. I guess they haven’t read my other answers and don’t know about my experience with violence. I can’t blame them, but, no, I wouldn’t just stand there like an idiot, but use the paintball attack to close the distance to blade range.

And another edit:

Some commenters say that defending your house with firearms is a Christian duty and that the Ten Commandments don’t say ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’, but ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’. My thoughts on that subject:

I’m raised Christian, but became agnostic because of the hypocrisy of organised religion. However, even if these commenters are right, using a lethal weapon to repel an intruder (99% of intruders are after possessions, not looking to murder you in your sleep) is not exactly ‘Christian’: even a casual reader of the gospel would understand that Jesus Christ himself would not condone the spilling of blood over mere possessions. Therefore, arming yourself with lethal weapons in order to repel intruders is premeditated killing, i.e. murder. There are plenty of effective non-lethal weapons (tasers, for instance) that can be used without killing the intruder.

But what about the killers and rapists?

If there is a high rate of homicidal intruders in your neighbourhood, high enough to warrant the stockpiling of lethal weapons for ‘home defence’, you might want to look into relocating your family. Chances are that the ‘reporting’ on these ‘deadly home invasions’ is merely scare tactics by groups like the NRA in order to sell more guns. In reality, getting killed by an intruder is as unlikely as getting killed by a Great White shark.

In reality, most child rapists do not jump from bushes or climb into the bedroom window — in the majority of child rape cases, the rapist is familiar to the child, i.e. family members, daycare staff, teachers, priests*, and baby sitters. In other words, the people to whom we entrust our children.

(* Personally, I loathe the people citing the Catholic catechism to morally justify using deadly force defending their children from getting raped by intruders. If you want to keep your children from getting raped, keep them far away from Catholic priests.)

The dishwasher at the restaurant where I work cannot read. His mom pulled him out of school when she found out they had just been passing him along. I don’t blame her. Since I have a great book for teaching kids to read (teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons) I bought a copy for him for Christmas and offered to do reading lessons with him. He is making a lot of progress already. Two days ago, he sounded out his first sentence. The manager at the restaurant says he is recognizing words in the kitchen better.

My reaction was a bit of disbelief at first, and then empathy. Not being able to read would have limited my ability to make up my own mind about so many things in my life. I would not have been able to read beautiful poetry that spoke directly to my soul. My kids would have missed out on Dr. Seuss books. Quality of life can depend very much on whether or not you can read.

Every weekend, usually on Saturday and Sunday, we do a reading lesson. He then goes and practices the reading exercises in his notebook. Every now and then, he stammers and hesitates. I ask what’s going on. He doesn’t like to admit it, but sometimes memories of his mom and brother doubting him come to mind. His mom doesn’t think he will ever be able to read, and is mean to him about him even trying. His brother has said similar things. When he tells me they are on his mind and it is distracting him, we blow raspberries at them. It makes him laugh and breaks up the tension. We can then go back to learning how to read.

It feels good to help him prove his mother and brother wrong.

EDITED TO ADD:

He and I had a reading lesson after work tonight. He was getting a little shaky. I asked him what it was, and he kept saying nothing, over and over. But he kept doing poorly, when I knew he could do better. I paused and told him that I thought words from his mother were bothering him again, and that he was trying hard but it was hard to not believe that she was right… maybe he was wasting his time. He agreed… it was bothering him.

Then I told him that over 300 people had liked his story and that he is learning to read, and it gave him a huge grin. He felt better, and we started again, and he was reading much better. I cannot thank you all enough for the support. It literally spurred him on.

EDITED TO ADD AGAIN:

OVER 4K UPVOTES!? INSANITY!!! Thank you all so much. You give me far too much credit. I am an instrument, that’s it. The book really makes learning to read so easy. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. 10/10 recommend.

I knew it would be incredibly easy, the book does all the work for you with prompts on what to say, which letter sound to learn next, everything. It’s just a few minutes at the end of my shift. And my employers are completely supportive of using their space. I am so happy he is rebelling against the tyranny of what he came from and wanting better for himself, and the others around him who will benefit from his being able to read.

A basket of heads

Yep. I was a worker at McDonalds and only sixteen at the time, and we had a new employee. He was on grills, and I was on table right behind him. There’s another side to the table that cannot see the grills through the cabinets of food, so when any cook-to-order meat, in this case quarter pounder, was finished, the grill person would call “Quarter’s up!” So side two would know to get their meat and send the burger on its way.

Well, our new employee absolutely refused to talk near me. I didn’t really get it, he would talk to other people. But he wouldn’t call out quarter’s up for the life of him. After multiple times of doing it myself, I finally stopped and took the meat and held it back to him and asked him to call it out himself. He slammed it into the table and splattered grease into it. I stood there and told him he needed to call out quarter’s up for side two. He would not, he turned back to his grills and ignored me.

I called out quarter’s up and slid them their meat, and the shift continued. I stopped calling out quarters’ up, mostly because I was busy keeping up with the lunch rush and didn’t notice when he slid the meat onto the table out of my line of sight. And out of side two’s sight.

So a manager asks why side two is so slow, and they explain they don’t have their quarter meat and I would slide it over to them and apologize. Someone would tell the grill person to call it out, and the shift would continue again until he went on break.

I didn’t actually know anything had happened until the big boss of the store was called in and he came rushing up to me and told me very sternly,”If someone threatens you like that again, you need to tell management immediately!”

I did not understand. Nobody threatened me?

Turns out, when the grill dude went on break, he loudly told everyone how he was going to “beat the shit out of that little kid.”

And well, he got fired

Western Women Are Too Woke For “Passport Bros”

Men ware galloping away from the West.

The German-American Strategic Depth Clown Show

Harry Potter as a Mexican Soap Opera | Telenovelas are Hell

Once I walked into my college class of 200 people only to see my picture displayed on the projector screen and my instructor asking my classmates who had been signing in for me since I had clearly never been to class. Apparently I’d accidentally signed the attendance sheet for that day, the class day prior, and was a couple minutes late, so he had his ga literally examine my signatures and they determined that the letters were written differently each day. Since I was safely hidden behind a large pillar, I promptly left and called my mom crying. I had attended every class, albeit late on occasion, and was a very shy person. I dreaded going back to that class where I was certain everyone believed me to be a fraud.

Edit: I saw some people asked what happened afterwards, and I ended up emailing the professor during that class telling him what I’d seen and assuring him that I had attended every class and that I was very confused as to why he had made the accusation. It was then that he told me I’d been signed in on the wrong day and that was what had prompted his investigation into my attendance and signatures. He made it very clear that he did not believe my explanation and I met with him in his office where he had me sign my name about 20 times and kept threatening to fail me, saying I could easily be faking it. At this, because I was telling the truth, and had never had anyone question my honor like that before, I started to cry again, and begged him not to fail me. I honestly don’t remember much after that, only that my crying made him begrudgingly agree to allow me back in class. The rest of the time I attended class, I showed up early, sat in the very back and wore a hood until class began. I caught a couple people looking back at me on occasion (and I turned bright red as a result), but for the most part my incredible ability as a shy person to remain utterly invisible served me really well.

Cattle Drive Cornbread

Cornbread
Cornbread

Ingredients

  • 4 cups cornmeal
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups chopped onion
  • 1 to 2 finely chopped jalapeño peppers
  • 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons salt
  • 2 teaspoons black pepper
  • 1 (16 ounce) can creamed corn

Instructions

  1. Boil a pan of water.
  2. Mix cornmeal and vegetable oil well in a large bowl. Add just enough of the boiling water to form a dough that could be made into a ball.
  3. Add remaining ingredients except for the creamed corn. Mix to blend, then add creamed corn.
  4. Coat the bottom of a cast iron skillet with vegetable oil. Heat over medium heat.
  5. Remove one cup of the cornbread mixture from the bowl, and add it to the skillet.
  6. Flatten out the cornbread, and cook as you would a pancake.

This Japanese Man has 4 Wives, 2 Girlfriends & 54 Children…

Randy Miller suggested an edit to my story. 
He blew my story away because I have never run into an ASSHOLE that removed an entire story. 
Fuck You Randy Miller! 
I had to rewrite it you ass!

I will tell you my story.

My sister-in-law has a son. When my nephew was young we saw him a lot, even visited a few times while he was in college, and took him out a few times for dinners. When he got married, we were not invited to his wedding. We weren’t even told about it. When we found out, I have to admit we were a bit hurt.

The reason we weren’t invited was because his grandmother, my MIL, was a crazy mean, lying, horrible woman. The entire family except the nephew and my husband had felt her wrath. To her, he was a golden child. She filled his head with lies, and she is convincing, especially to a kid. She did spend money on him, but nothing is without a string. When she met his girlfreinf, he was told she was a sl*t, a woman that would hurt him, a dirty girl, not worthy. Eventually, they broke up, but got back together., and then secretly engaged, and finally secretly married.

So there was a plausible reason why only his immediate family was present. They did not have any big thing, justice of the peace, ate out, done.

Now married, his wife was pregnant with their first child. I was invited to the baby shower. A part of me did not want to go because I was still hurt. Plus, I dislike showers. But I thought about it, and let it go. I attended the shower and bought a gift of of their registry that was fairly expensive for the baby, and them.

So the question is why would I agree to give them a gift for a baby shower, when I wasn’t invited to the wedding. Because I had found out the entire story, and realized I was being unkind, childish, selfish, and ignorant. And most important, I want a relationship with them.

I have never discussed being disappointed about not being able to attend their wedding, I love weddings. But I’m glad I rethought the emotions I felt because we have a great relationship now with his family. I know I would have regretted not going to the baby shower, and giving a gift to them for their baby.

So, you haven’t explained why you weren’t invited to the wedding. Could it be they were trying to keep it small. There could be many reasons, even that your invitation never arrived. But you need to decide if you have a relationship with these people that you wish to continue. If the answer is yes, then send a gift. If not, you have made up your mind.

Regarding the 300 miles away, unless they are living somewhere you could turn your trip into a vacation, if you have the time and money, I would just send the gift with a congratulatory note.

My opinion only!

Gen Z Doesn’t want to Work Anymore …..

Be the Rufus

“I was on the way home a couple of days ago when I saw this girl from my neighbourhood being very upset and crying on the street.

I decide to approach her. I asked: ‘Hi! Is everything okay?’

She barely looked up and then she just started bawling about her crappiest day she had.

She said she had lost her best friend because a stupid fight and that her mom is depressed all the time and she was also bullied in school all day…

I really wanted to make her feel better but I didn’t really know what to say, so I just asked: ‘Do you want to come in for a cup of tea?’

She said yes!

When we walked in the door, she looked up, her eyes opened up, and she was like: ‘Wooow!!!’ My house is full of paintings and all sorts of weird stuff; it’s messy but very colourful.

On the way in, I was even thinking about how messy my house was and felt bad about leaving tobacco all over the table that morning. But she didn’t seem bothered at all.

She said it was the coolest place she has ever seen. I asked her if she wanted to paint with me so we did. She painted the biggest canvas we could find with lots of bright colours. She used like 10-12 brushes and when she finished, her face had changed completely.

She was beaming!

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I may have made her feel better that day but she also made me realise how lucky I am. Maybe I am weird and I often feel that I don’t really fit anywhere, but my art was able to make this girl feel better about herself and lift her up from a dark place.”

America Collapsing Like Rome?- Upcoming Recession, WW3, Trump, China & Joe Rogan | Patrick Bet David

Not working on a computer but: I worked at the 24 hour photo processing lab back in 1990. Based in Phoenix we got film flown in from all over, including Las Vegas. The usual family photos, the occasional but weekly roll of film for some one with a anatomically correct BDSM Barbie with ever-changing costumes, personal intimate photos for a loved one, and once in a while something different and more sinister.

One of our Las Vegas rolls showed men with a pair of boys, all nude no clothes in sight(ha-ha), no intimate contact showed just these men and the children. The lead tech made the call to the FBI for possible child porn or abuse. After the FBI came and collected the pictures and the address from the packaging, they proceeded to the Las Vegas area address.

What they discovered was the address was a nudist retirement community. The men were a couple and one of them was the grandfather of the boys. The parents knew about granddad and his partner living in a gay nudist community and had no concerns about the safety of the boys.

Douglas Macgregor Reveals the Truth: Russia’s -Ukraine Terrifying Hidden Power in the Conflict

https://youtu.be/otyhVg-oUHs

A Woman Finds Her Daughter’s ‘Dead’ Rapist: people are in awe of her “willpower”

A woman from a remote village in Bihar, India tracked down her daughter’s rapist after he was declared dead leading to the closure of the case. The rape convict, Niraj Modi, has been sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment for raping a minor girl and his father to seven years for forgery, cheating, and dishonesty.

Modi, a 39-year-old man who was a school teacher at a government school, was accused of raping his 12-year-old student, a minor girl, in October 2018. The girl was attacked while she was by herself in a sugarcane field, and her assailant threatened to post a video of the assault online to keep her silent.

Soon after a complaint was lodged by the survivor’s mother, and Modi was arrested. But, he was out on bail after merely two months in prison.

In February 2022, Modi’s father Rajaram Modi, who is over 60 years old and works as a farmer, travelled to a court nearly 100km (62 miles) away from the village, with a lawyer to claim that his son died on February 27, 2022, at their village home. In order to get a death certificate issued, he provided two pictures from the cremation, receipts of the firewood bought for the ritual as evidence, signatures and the unique biometric identity number of five villagers as per Indian laws. However, as per a 54-year-old law, the authorities didn’t question the cause of death.

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Two months after this, the local authorities issued a death certificate and the court closed the case in May 2022 as the “only accused in the case” was dead.

However convinced that this was a forgery, the girl’s mother was the only person who suspected that the teacher had faked his death with the help of his father.

The mother said that she went from one home to another in order to enquire if Modi was really dead and not to her surprise, nobody had heard of the news. Following which, she went to the court urging an investigation into the matter.

In May 2022, she also wrote a petition to the local official claiming that the death certificate was issued based on forged documents and it needs to be investigated. Soon, investigation began and the authorities demanded more and fresh evidence from Modi’s family regarding his death including photos of the “deceased after his death, of the cremation, of the burning pyre, the last rites and [fresh] testimony of five witnesses”.

As a part of the investigation, members of the village council met the inhabitants of the 250 families in the village. It appeared that no one was aware of Modi’s death. Hindus often only shave their heads as a sign of mourning if a close relative passes away. However, none of the Modi family members had done so. In fact, Modi’s own relatives did not have the information regarding his death.

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After Rajaram failed to provide fresh evidence of Niraj’s death, he was questioned by the investigative office again.

Following the investigation, it was confirmed that Modi’s death was faked. The officers found that the teacher had falsified the signatures of the parents of five of his students’ parents on a document requesting his own death certificate. He informed the parents that in order to set up the students’ scholarships, he would need their biometric identity numbers.

The officials, then, cancelled Niraj Modi’s death certificate and charged his father with forgery and in July 2022, the case was reopened.

The mother’s relentless battle to track down her daughter’s “dead” rapist came to an end finally and in October last year(2023)he was convicted for his crimes.

Keep smiling

Beefy Cowboy Beans

There’s plenty of hearty ground beef in this Beefy Cowboy Beans recipe.

cowboybeans 750x1000
cowboybeans 750×1000

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 red or green bell pepper, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
  • 1 (16 ounce) can baked beans
  • 1 (15 1/2 ounce) can Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained
  • 1/4 cup tomato ketchup
  • 1/4 cup Heinz 57 sauce
  • 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
  • 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

Instructions

  1. In a large nonstick skillet, brown ground beef, onion and bell pepper over medium-high heat 6 to 8 minutes or until beef is no longer pink, breaking up into 1 inch crumbles.
  2. Pour off drippings.
  3. Season beef mixture with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper.
  4. Stir in beans, ketchup, Heinz 57 Sauce, brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce.
  5. Reduce heat to medium low.
  6. Simmer, covered, 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

I have a theory about the sorts of people that are easy to entertain…. 😉

One cellie of mine was really into the markets. He spent incredible amounts of time building models to use against the daily Dow or NASDAQ numbers when we could get them in long enough blocks to be useful. A friend sent him five years of daily data for one index. He built some formulas to fire triggers when conditions were right. The formulas were designed to work in excel.

My job? Human spreadsheet. I took a couple months worth of the data, plotted it across a “spreadsheet” that I’d made from steno notebook pages taped together. The spreadsheet went from A1 to something like BK68. A handful of cells were raw data, the remainder were things like, “=If(And(AI22>AI21,B22>B21,Or(H22=I22,K22=K21)),BB22-BC21,BB22+BC21)”.

Pure drudgery. I had to proof for syntactical and lexical errors and churn out the data. We were sending the finished product (formulas) to someone who would drop them in excel and (hopefully) use them to come up with actionable Intel.

Woof. It took weeks to produce what excel can do in the blink of an eye!

Then there was this:

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I set a goal for myself to memorize two hours of poetry. I copied poems I liked in tiny handwriting and kept them with me most of the time so I could study while I waited (lots of waiting in prison).

I didn’t hit my goal, but I did manage to get to about forty minutes. The more I did, the easier it got. I learned that our memory works (kind of) like a muscle. Give it a good workout and it’ll get stronger.

Are those pastimes strange enough?

The (Overdue) Collapse of the 9-5 Job

A sheriff’s deputy drove up to me while I was standing leaning against my vehicle and asked me if I had any guns. I said not on me but there were some in the back of the pickup. He told me to stay where I was.

He walked back to the bed of my truck and picked up a poster that I had made up that said “WANTED Dead or Alive: Baby Bomber Brandes”

He read the poster and then said to me, “I know who you are. You are the man whose home was bombed and whose baby daughter has been in the hospital for the last 6 months, and this is going to be the hardest arrest I ever have to make in my career, but I want for you to know that if I were in your shoes, I would be doing exactly what you are trying to do.” Brandes was up a dead end road, and I was at the bottom waiting to kill him.

Brandes had called his employers at the ATF and told them that I had him trapped and they needed to help him get out of there. The ATF called the sheriff and had them come up and arrest me.

The deputy arrested and drove me to jail without handcuffs and when he dropped me at the jail explained to the jailers the situation. I was treated very well by everyone at the jail. A couple of days later I made a deal with the federal DA that I would leave town and leave their snitch alone. I had to, I had a quadriplegic daughter getting out of the hospital to care for.

I came to Oregon and had to care for my daughter while wearing an ankle bracelet for a few months. The feds did live up to their end of the bargain though: all charges were dropped a short time later. There really are some great cops out there and they are just like you and I and have big hearts.

The deputy actually apologized for having to take me in.

the American dream is dead… this is why people are leaving the US.

In early March 1933, a man walked into the Hi-Way Cigar Store in Pismo Beach, California, and laid a huge clamshell on the counter. “Gimme a box of cigars,” he said.

[1]That day, the clam was paying.
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A clamshell used as scrip currency in 1933 shows the name of the shop issuing the currency, its value, and, on the inside, signatures of the people whose hands it passed through. (Clamshell Currency | Hakai Magazin

History is full of examples of successful local initiatives aimed at providing exchange media, but the Great Depression of the 1930’s saw this done on an unprecedented scale. There were literally hundreds of scrip issues that were put into circulation by a variety of agencies, including state governments, municipalities, school districts, clearing house associations, manufacturers, merchants, chambers of commerce, business associations, local relief committees, cooperatives, and even individuals.

These issuers went by different names, depending on who issued them and the circumstances of their issuance. Common scrip types were certificates of indebtedness, tax anticipation notes, payroll warrants, trade scrip, clearing house certificates, credit vouchers, moratorium certificates, and merchandise bonds.

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Crescent City, California 1933 10 cent clamshell From the collection of Ken Barr Numismatics (Depression Scrip.com)

Besides learning how to “make do, or do without,” people began to establish mutual support structures, like workers’ cooperatives, many of which would recycle and repair donated or broken items.

People learned to share what they had, and to by-pass the market and financial systems. Most of these measures were considered stop-gaps to be utilized until things “got back to normal,” but in some of them there seemed to be the promise of more permanent improvements. One of these “stop-gaps,” which was intended to address the problem of the dearth of currency in circulation, was the issuance of “scrip.”

When the Depression and resulting banking crisis hit their community, the residents of the coastal town of Pismo Beach, California picked an unusual but logical medium of exchange. The pismo (Tivela stultorum) is a species of clam with a very thick shell

[6], found in large numbers at least as far south as 300 miles south of the US–Mexico border in Baja California on the Pacific Ocean side, where strong surf sometimes washes ashore live clams. Native American tribes in California relied upon the clams as a main dietary staple.
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Emergency Money

The shells are surprisingly large—up to roughly 15 centimeters in width—and many have faint traces of the clams’ natural shell patterning, faded wispy lines of purple at the edge of the exterior sides.

Shells were marked with India ink in denominations ranging from 25 cents to $20. Each piece was numbered, and signed on the front and on the back. As with the stamp notes of the Midwest, it was necessary to sign each clamshell on the back in order to keep it in circulation.

The idea was that the growing list of signatures would be a boost to morale — proof that, even in tough times, business was being transacted.

No formal requirements may have existed, but informal pressure certainly would have endorsed the practice. The shells were more or less credit—placeholders for real currency.

Eleven of the town’s merchants got together to issue the clam currency. Among them: K.L. Phillips service station, Henderson’s Drug Store, Hi-Way Cigar Store, Leiter’s Rexall Pharmacy and Restwell Cabins. Even the Pismo Beach Post Office accepted clam currency. It was agreed that when change in dollars or cents wasn’t available, they would issue shells to customers instead. Customers would use the shells in subsequent transactions after signing their names on the inside, endorsing them somewhat like checks, which gave businesses a record of who had “spent” their shells. If any customers still had shells rattling around once the banks reopened, they could ask the retailer to exchange them for cash.

Officials had one concern that most issuers would hang onto them as souvenirs of the lack of traditional currency.

Some issuers destroyed the notes after they were redeemed.

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Pismo Beach, California, 1 Dollar, 1933 (clamshell)

Restwell Cabins issued “notes” in three denominations: twenty-five cents, fifty cents, and one dollar.

The larger the amount, the larger the shell. The issue may have been partly intended as a spoof, or for sale to tourists, in the manner of German notgeld around 1920.

Redemption would never be a problem because collectors would want to keep these pieces in their cabinets or trade them with their friends.

But it was also intended partly as a real, if unique, circulating medium. The Restwell Cabins issue bore the motto, “IN GOD WE TRUST.”

Each piece was numbered, and each was signed on the front and on the back. This was in the middle of Roosevelt’s 1933 national banking holiday, from March 6 to March 9, 1933, during which withdrawals were frozen. This gave his administration a chance to stabilize the banking system

.In an era of economic turmoil, thousands of banks were failing and Americans’ trust in the institutions had evaporated. Fearing that their money was no longer safe at the bank, many people had emptied their accounts and stashed dollars at home—which, unfortunately, further undermined the banks.

Proclamation 2039 ordered the suspension of all banking transactions, effective immediately.

The terms of the presidential proclamation specified that:

“no such banking institution or branch shall pay out, export, earmark, or permit the withdrawal or transfer in any manner or by any device whatsoever, of any gold or silver coin or bullion or currency or take any other action which might facilitate the hoarding thereof; nor shall any such banking institution or branch pay out deposits, make loans or discounts, deal in foreign exchange, transfer credits from the United States to any place abroad, or transact any other banking business whatsoever.”

This 10-cent note was issued by the Crescent City Chamber of Commerce. It’s worth about $500 today. (Cash-Strapped California’s IOUs: Just the Latest Sub for Dollars)

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The thought of having to go for four days without readily available cash shocked and traumatized America. Around the country, businesses began issuing IOU-style notes or ersatz dollars—often called scrip currency—in the form of metal or wooden tokens so that everyday transactions could continue even when retailers couldn’t easily issue change.

An estimated $1 billion in this scrip was issued by towns and counties, not to mention corporations, school boards, newspapers and a few wealthy individuals.

Most promissory notes looked like paper currency, but scrip was also printed on leather, metal, fish-skin parchment and, in Tenino, Wash., on slabs of pressed wood.

In Hood River, Ore., Hal’s Tire Service printed $1 bills on scraps of old tires, briefly giving the rubber check a good name.

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Depression scrip: 1934 25-cent fish skin parchment Friday Harbor, Washington

In creating the currency, the Pismo Beach business owners turned back the clock to the era before the Civil War when it was common to find locally produced scrip.

The 1933 scrip reflected the small community’s expression of resilience. A lack of dollars didn’t worry them. “All of a sudden this group of people said, ‘Well, we have what we do have’,

They had clamshells. Appropriating them as currency helped insulate the community from the practical difficulties of the bank holiday.

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Pismo Clam Money

In 1985, the Pismo Beach City Council considered buying back the clam scrip from an Arcadia coin and stamp collector for $3,000.

The clams are now on display at City Hall in the lobby by the city clerk’s office. Not a bad investment, especially considering how rare it is to find a legal-sized clam in Pismo Beach these days. In 2013, to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the clam script, Pismo Beach citizens resurrected clamshell money, making colorful homages to the 1933 variants.

Among the businesses that accepted them were a restaurant and a pawnshop specializing in video games and DVDs.

So the next time someone asks, “How many clams did that cost?”

[27] , remember they are asking for a value in dollars, not bivalves.

Footnotes

10 Countries Where Americans are Not Welcome in 2024

I once had to fire someone just a few days after they started and it’s one of the very few times in my entire career where I fired someone on the spot. I had no choice.

At the time we were riding high as a company having rebuilt an entire culture and the company was working well. This admin who answered to me and a few others, while I was at lunch demanded access to HR documents that were confidential to the other employees. When our HR manager told her no but that she could talk to me, she started screaming at the top of her lungs at the manager and everyone in the offices was completely rattled by the scene.

I receive a call while I was eating my lunch to get back to the office because it was bad. I raced back and saw the looks on everyone’s face and asked a few what had happened. They all said the same thing. There was no other side to this. A few heard her demand for records and thought it was out of line in the first place and then with the screaming on top, there was no way to keep her. When I fired her, I explained that there was no turning that around. You couldn’t undo that damage no matter how she apologized and I didn’t want our culture to be everyone thinking that was even remotely okay.

It sucks to fire anyone. It’s not something any manager ever wants to deal with, but sometimes you have to do it for the greater good of everyone else. There were no employees who thought she should have a second chance. Not one. In fact, they were thrilled that I didn’t put up with it.

Male inequality, explained by an expert | Richard Reeves

The number of male therapists decreasing while the number of men needing therapy increases is worrying to think about.

On April 14, 1865, as he walked into the morning Cabinet meeting at the White House, General Ulysses S. Grant received rapturous applause. Five days earlier, Grant had accepted the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Virginia’s Appomattox Court House.

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main qimg 791fe8246b9d1f341fa48a32c626509c lq

Image: Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox. April 9, 1865: General Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox

The nightmarish Civil War had ended. Lincoln and his Cabinet were in a celebratory mood, but Grant was bone-weary. As author Ron Chernow recounts in his biography Grant, the general looked forward to a short respite from the battlefield.

After the meeting closed at 2pm, Grant “lingered to speak with the president.” Lincoln invited the general and his wife to the theater that evening to see the play Our American Cousin, starring celebrated actress Laura Keene.

Newspapers had already trumpeted both Lincoln and Grant’s upcoming attendance.

Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, immediately worried for their safety.

“He had for some months been aware that threats of assassination were being made by certain evil minded persons against the leaders of the Federal government and army. The presence of the President of the nation and the Lieutenant-General of the armies at any public function at such a critical hour was simply courting disaster.”

Lincoln reacted flippantly, chaffing Stanton “for his lack of faith in human nature.” The president of a democracy, he averred, had to show himself to the people, and some danger was an inescapable hazard of office.

“To be absolutely safe,” he told John Nicolay resignedly, “I should lock myself up in a box.”

Lincoln believed the sight of the “victorious president and general” together would be of great benefit to the public.

Grant searched for a gracious way to decline. The general soon received a note from his wife Julia, detailing her wish to leave for Burlington that day to see their children.

Grant politely declined to attend Ford’s Theatre, joking that he now had a command from Mrs. Grant. As he subsequently said, “I was glad to have the note, as I did not want to go to the theater.”

Lincoln, who was disappointed, understood. “Of course, General, you have been long from home, fighting in the field, and Mrs. Grant’s instincts should be considered before my request. I am very sorry, however, for the people would only be too glad to see you.”

Lincoln extended invitations to Stanton, Speaker of the House Schuler Colfax, and his son Robert Todd Lincoln, but all turned him down. Eventually Clara Harris and her fiancé, Major Henry Rathbone, agreed to accompany him.

At 10:13pm, while the Grants traveled east to change trains in Philadelphia, John Wilkes Booth slipped into the president’s box at the theater and pointed a derringer at the back of Lincoln’s head. He then “executed the gentle president with brutal efficiency.”

Image: Booth murdering the president at Ford’s Theatre. Lincoln’s Missing Bodyguard

In a small appointment book, Booth was eager to record his accomplishment for posterity.

Until today nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country’s wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture, but our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others, who did not strike for their country with a heart.

I struck boldly, and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A colonel was at his side. I shouted “Sic semper” before I fired.

Telegrams notified the general of the terrible news, and he was immediately summoned back to Washington.

Grant had seen untold horrors during his campaigns. But he would remember this day as among the saddest of his life.


Weeks later, as the assassination conspirators stood trial, Grant discovered that he was one of several targets of the Confederate sympathizers. The killers had hoped to decapitate the Union government in one bold strike, but they lost their golden opportunity to attack the now-famous general.

The night of Lincoln’s assassination, as Grant and his wife prepared to board their train, they had noticed a man on horseback who had galloped past them twice. Each time, the figure had “thrust his face” at the couple and glared at them.

Grant later learned the glowering horseman was John Wilkes Booth, who had been conferring on the sidewalk with his actor friend John Mathews when the Grant carriage sped by and he set off in pursuit of it. From the heaped-up baggage, he must have confirmed that the Grants were leaving town and would not be at Ford’s Theater.

“It seems I was to have been attacked,” Grant stated, “and Mrs. Grant’s sudden resolve to leave deranged the plan.”

Next Steps (Almost there!)

Confident Dragon Lays Out Modernization Roadmap

As Project Ukraine goes down the drain of history, Project Taiwan will go on overdrive. Forever Wars never die.

This is the Year of the Wooden Dragon, according to China’s classic wuxing (“five elements”) culture. The dragon, one of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, is a symbol of power, nobility and intelligence. Wood adds growth, development and prosperity.

Call it a summary of where China is heading in 2024.

The second session of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) was finalized on Sunday in Beijing.

The wider world should know that within the framework of grassroots democracy with Chinese characteristics, an extremely complex – and fascinating – phenomenon, the importance of the CPPCC is paramount.

The CPPCC channels wide-ranging expectations of the average Chinese to the decision level, and actually advises the central government on a vast range of issues – from everyday living to high-quality development strategies.

This year, most of the discussion focused on how to drive China’s modernization even faster. This being China, concepts – like flowers – were blooming all around the spectrum, such as “new quality productive forces, “deepening reform,” “high-standard opening-up,” and a fabulous new one, “major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.”

As the Global Times emphasized,

“2024 is not only a critical year for achieving the goals of the ‘14th Five-Year Plan’ but also a key year for achieving the transition to high-quality development of the economy.”

Betting on strategic investment

So let’s start with Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s first “work report” delivered a week ago, which opened the annual session of the National People’s Congress. The key takeaway: Beijing will be pursuing the same economic targets as in 2023. That translates as 5% annual growth.

Of course deflationary risks, a downturn in the real estate market and somewhat shaky business confidence simply won’t vanish. Li was quite realistic, emphasizing Beijing is “keenly aware” of the challenges ahead:

“Achieving this year’s targets will not be easy.” And he added: “Global economic growth lacks steam and the regional hotspot issues keep erupting. This has made China’s external environment more complex, severe and uncertain.”

Beijing’s strategy remains focused on a

“proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy”. 

In a nutshell: the song remains the same. There won’t be a “stimulus” of any kind.

Deeper answers should be found in the work report/budget released by the National Development and Reform Commission: the focus will be on structural change, via extra funds to science, technology, education, national defense, agriculture.

Translation: China bets on strategic investment, the key for a high-quality economic transition.

In practice, Beijing will be heavily invested in modernizing industry and developing “new quality productive forces” such as new-energy vehicles, biomanufacturing and commercial space flight.

Science Minister Yin Hejun made it clear: there was an 8.1% increase in national investment in research and development in 2023.

He wants more – and he will get it: R&D spending will grow by 10% to a total of 370.8 billion yuan.

The mantra is “self-reliance”.

On all fronts – from chipmaking to AI. A no holds barred tech war is on – and China is totally focused to counter “tech containment” from the Hegemon as much as its ultimate goal is to wrest tech supremacy from its prime competitor. Beijing simply cannot allow itself to be vulnerable to U.S.-imposed tech choke points and supply chain disruptions.

So short-term economic problems will not be causing sleepless nights.

The Beijing leadership is always looking ahead – focusing on long-term challenges.

Learning lessons from the Donbass battlefield

Beijing will continue to steer the economic development of Hong Kong and Macau, and invest even more in the crucial Greater Bay Area, which is the premier southern China high tech, services and finance hub.

Taiwan of course was central to the work report; Beijing fiercely opposes “external interference” – code for Hegemon tactics. That will become even trickier in May, when William Lai Ching-te, who flirts with independence, becomes president.

On defense, there will be only a 7.2% increase in 2024, which is peanuts compared to the Hegemon’s defense budget now approaching $900 billion: China’s stands as $238 billion, even as China’s nominal GDP is approaching the U.S.

A great deal of China’s defense budget will go for emerging tech – considering the immensely valuables lessons the PLA is learning out of the Donbass battlefield, as well as the deep interactions part of the Russia-China strategic partnership.

And that brings us to diplomacy.

China will continue to be firmly positioned as a champion of the Global South. That was made explicit by Foreign Minister Wang Yi in a press conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress.

Wang Yi’s priorities:

to “maintain stable relations with major powers; join hands with its neighbouring countries for progress; and strive for revitalisation with the Global South”.

Wang Yi once again stressed that Beijing favors an “equal and orderly” multipolar world and “inclusive economic globalization”.

And of course he could not allow U.S. Secretary of State Little Blinken – always out of his depth – to get away with his latest “recipe”:

“It is impermissible that those with the bigger fist have the final say, and it is definitely unacceptable that certain countries must be at the table while others can only be on the menu.”

BRI as a global accelerator

Crucially, Wang Yi re-emphasized the drive for “high-quality” cooperation within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework. He defined BRI as “an engine for the common development of all countries and an accelerator for the modernisation of the whole world”. Wang Yi actually said he’s hopeful about the emergence of a “Global South moment in global governance” – in which China and BRI play an essential part.

Li Qiang’s work report, incidentally, had only one paragraph on BRI. But then we find this nugget as Li refers to the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor – which links China’s landlocked southwest with the eastern seaboard, via Guangxi province.

Translation: BRI will be focusing on opening new economic roads for China’s less developed regions, diversifying from the previous emphasis on Xinjiang.

Dr Wei Yuansong is a member of the CPPCC and also the Chinese Peasants’ and Workers’ Democratic Party – which happens to be one of the eight non-CCP parties in Chinese politics (very few outside of China know about this).

He offered some fascinating comments on BRI to Fengmian News and also stressed the need to “tell China’s story well” to avoid “conflict and incidents” along the BRI road.

For that, Wei suggests the need to use an “international language” in telling these stories; that implies using English.

As for what Wang Yi said in his press conference, in fact that was discussed in detail at the closed-door Central Conference on Foreign Affairs Work in late 2023, where it was established that China faced “strategic opportunities” to raise its “international influence, appeal and power” despite “high winds and choppy waters”.

The key takeaway: the narrative war between China and the Hegemon will be pitiless.

Beijing is confident it’s capable of offering stability, investment, connectivity and sound diplomacy to the whole Global South, instead of Forever Wars.

That is reflected, for instance, by Ma Xinmin, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s legal advisor, telling the International Court of Justice that the Palestinians have the right to armed resistance when it comes to fighting the colonialist, racist, apartheid state of Israel. Therefore, Hamas cannot be defined as a terrorist organization.

This is the overwhelming position across the lands of Islam and across the majority of the Global South – linking Beijing with fellow BRICS member Brazil and President Lula, who compared the genocide in Gaza to the Nazi genocide in WWII.

How to resist collective West sanctions

The Two Sessions did reflect Beijing’s full understanding that Hegemon containment and destabilization tactics remain the biggest challenge to China’s peaceful rise. But simultaneously it reflected Chinese confidence on its global diplomatic clout as a force for peace, stability and economic development. It’s an extremely sensitive balance that only the Middle Kingdom seems capable of pulling off.

Then there’s the Trump factor.

Economist Ding Yifan, a former deputy director of the World Development Institute, part of the State Council’s Development Research Centre, is one among those who’s aware China is learning key lessons from Russia on how to resist collective West sanctions – which will be inevitable against China especially if Trump is back at the White House.

And that brings us to the absolute key issue being currently discussed in Moscow, within the Russia-China partnership, and soon among the BRICS: alternative settlement payments to the U.S. dollar, increasing trade among “friendly nations”, and controls on capital flight.

Nearly all Russia-China trade is now in yuan and rubles.

As much as Russian trade with the EU fell by 68% in 2023, trade with Asia rose by 5.6% – with new landmarks reached with China ($240 billion) and India ($65 billion) – and 84% of Russia’s total energy exports going to “friendly countries”.

The Two Sessions did not get into detail on some extremely thorny geopolitical issues. For instance, India’s version of multipolarity – considering New Delhi’s unresolved love affair with Washington – is quite different from China’s. Everyone knows – and no one more than the Russians – that within BRICS 10 the biggest strategic issue is how to accommodate the perpetual tension between India and China.

What’s clear even behind the fog of goodwill enveloping the Two Sessions is that Beijing is fully aware of how the Hegemon is – deliberately – already crossing a key Chinese red line, officially stationing “permanent troops” in Taiwan.

Since last year U.S. Special Forces have been training Taiwanese in operating Black Hornet nano microdrones. In 2024 U.S. military advisers are deployed full time at army bases on Kinmen and Penghu islands.

Those actually driving U.S. foreign policy behind the Crash Test Dummy at the White House believe that even as they are powerless to handle the Houthi Ansarallah in the Red Sea, they are capable of poking the Dragon.

No posturing will alter the Dragon’s roadmap.

The CPPCC’s political resolution on Taiwan calls for uniting “all patriotic forces”, “deepen integration and development in various fields across the Taiwan Straits”, and go all out on “peaceful reunification”.

That will translate in practice into increased economic/trade cooperation, more direct flights, more cargo ports and logistics bases.

As Project Ukraine goes down the drain of history, Project Taiwan will go on overdrive.

Forever Wars never die.

Bring it on.

The Dragon is ready.

White Women Are PISSED At White Men Dating Asian Women!

I’ve literally (and I actually mean literally here) won cash money on bets with friends about this and it is a method I’ve been using since I was a little kid. Works every single time; no exceptions.

I’m going to let you in on my secret to treat your hiccups in a few seconds every single time.

Let’s first understand what causes hiccups; only when we understand how a machine works can we fix it if it’s acting up. Your diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle at the bottom of your chest. The diaphragm almost always works perfectly. When you inhale, it pulls down to help pull air into the lungs. When you exhale, the diaphragm relaxes and air flows out of the lungs back out through the nose and mouth.

But sometimes the diaphragm becomes irritated. When this happens, it pulls down in a jerky way, which makes you suck air into your throat suddenly. When the air rushing in hits your voice box, your vocal cords close suddenly and you’re left with a big hiccup.

Some things that irritate the diaphragm are eating too quickly or too much, an irritation in the stomach or the throat, or feeling nervous or excited. Almost all cases of the hiccups last only a few minutes. Some cases of the hiccups can last for days or even months, but this is very unusual and it’s usually a sign of another medical problem.

So now that we understand the cause of hiccups, it’s fairly evident that to treat them, all we need to do is soothe the diaphragm, reduce the irritation and bring it back to a normal operating state.

Fill a cup a little over half with water and hold the cup right side up. Stand and bend over, while placing your mouth on the opposite side of the cup so the opening is around your chin. Sip the water slowly, holding your breath as you do and breathing between sips. The combination of these forces your diaphragm to get back to its expected state of behavior.

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main qimg 8f6275661ddffb623f5cfa327cc8924e lq

So the next time that cute girl you were trying to talk to has a bout of the hiccups, skip the cheesy lines telling her how “someone” is thinking of her and instead treat her hiccups with this method. I can assure you that will score you more brownie points that way.

There is a Russian joke.

At some point in life, a man who had previously been a great sinner has spiritually awakened and started to preach the word of God. He believed that he was inspired by the Lord Himself. So he dies, and meets St. Peter.
– Saint Peter, I need to see God.
– Why? You were an okay guy, we won’t send you to hell.
– No, I really need it. I need to ask Him one question.
St. Peter shrugs his shoulders and brings him in God’s Presence. The man asks:
– My Lord, tell me, did I understand my destiny well? Was it to carry Your word?
God is silent.
– Please tell me!
– Do you really want to know? – asks God.
– Yes, I long to know, I crave for this knowledge, I implore you!
– Okay, okay. Do you remember how you travelled by train from Samara to Syzran’? It was forty-seven years ago.
– Yes!
– Do you remember how you went to the dining car?
– Yes!
– Do you remember how your neighbour to the left asked you to pass the salt?
– Yes!
– This was your destiny. You were born to pass the salt to this person.

When I first heard this joke, I was shocked at the utter pessimism it expressed. Now, I see it in a different light. Yes, the guy was mistaken about God’s designs. But he was born just to pass the salt during a train voyage – and yet he managed to have a rich and fulfilling life. Good for him, isn’t it?

So if you really believe that God had such horrible designs on your life, why not try to see what you can do yourself?

Plumbing. Yeah. Good selection for a career.

Life is not Miami Vice

The most dangerous person I can think of was someone I didn’t arrest, but should have.

I was on the graveyard shift, patrolling a city park that had several paved roads running through it. The parks were deemed “closed” from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM, and were posted as such, but there were no gates or physical restrictions to entry. Most of the time, if we found someone in the park after hours, it was couples making out, people drinking or smoking dope in their cars, or people sleeping in their cars. With any of these, there tended to be a high incidence of arrest warrants, revoked drivers licenses, and other lesser offenses.

I came upon a late model Camaro, occupied by a man and a woman. They were sober, didn’t appear to be making out, and reasonably cordial. I obtained the male driver’s license and ran it. It was valid, he was not wanted, and the Oregon plates (I was in Nevada) came back to a late model Camaro.

I still had a bad gut feeling about the pair. My practice with suspicious newcomers and transients was to write them a citation for whatever minor violation I could find. I knew most of them would ignore it. If they left town, the citation became one of the thousands of warrants we had in file that would never be served. If they were still around in a month and they were still up to no good, I would have a warrant to arrest them on, and we would have their photo, fingerprints, and eventually, their true identity, if it was something other than they had told us about.

So the driver got a citation for being in the park after hours, which would almost certainly be dismissed in court if he challenged it, on the grounds that it was hugely chicken shit.

I had mostly forgotten about the stop about six weeks later, when I got a radio call from another officer, one who had been my rookie trainee a couple of years before. He had stopped the same couple, ran them for warrants, and the one from my citation popped up. He was in booking with the couple. When he saw that the warrant had come from my ticket, he asked me to respond.

He had stopped the Camaro for reckless driving. When he made contact with the driver, he was confrontational. He asked the driver to get out of the car, and that’s when he saw the .380 pistol under his leg. There was a minor donnybrook, with the female passenger also assaulting the cop, but reinforcements got there in time and the pair were arrested.

A search of the vehicle revealed the original plates that had been on the car (which was stolen), a leather pouch with about a dozen loose diamonds in it, and some documents with the couple’s true names. The guy was an escapee from a Washington prison. He had been a fugitive for six months. The girl was his girlfriend, who had stolen the Camaro in Oregon, then lifted a set of plates from another Camaro. For some reason, the fictitious plates had never been reported stolen. They had done several burglaries and assorted thefts along the way, which is where the diamonds came from.

One almost fatal mistake I made during my stop was not running the VIN, or comparing it against the registration that came back to the plates. Had I done that, the VINs would not have matched, and I would have impounded the car.

Bad guy told me he had the .380 pistol under his leg the whole time I was talking to him, and if I had asked him to get out of the car, he would have shot me. Maybe he would have gotten off the shot, maybe not; maybe he would have hit me in a critical spot, maybe not; maybe I would have been able to return fire, maybe not. Our conversation ended with his very bitter expression of regret: “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

I now live about 40 miles from the prison he escaped from. If he’s still alive, that’s probably where he is. I won’t be dropping in to say hello.

Carne Adovada

This is a wonderful filling for burritos or simply great served over rice with the resulting gravy. For better flavor, prepare a day ahead.

CarneAdovada2 Web
CarneAdovada2 Web
Ingredients
  • 7 to 8 pounds bone in pork shoulder or pork butt*, remove bone and visible fat, cut meat into 1 to 2 inch chunks
Ingredients for Adovada Sauce
  • 1 Tbsp. oil or bacon dripping
  • 1/2 medium onion
  • 4-6 large garlic cloves
  • 25-30 red chile pods*, stems and seeds removed. Pods cut into 1-2 inch lengths
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 2 tsp. Mexican oregano
  • 3 cups water
  • 2 tsp. medium red chile powder* (optional)
  • 1 tsp. honey* (optional)
  • 2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
Instructions
Day 1 – Make the adovada sauce
  1. Heat the oil in a large heavy skillet or pot over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and lower the heat to medium low.
  2. Sweat the onions until translucent.
  3. Add the red chile pieces and increase heat to medium. Toast the chile, stirring frequently for about 5 minutes. When you start smelling the chile, keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn.
  4. Once the chile pods have started to darken a bit, add the oregano, water, and chile powder. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer.
  5. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
  6. Transfer to a blender, reserving some of the water to use as needed. Add only just enough water to be able to get a smooth puree.*
  7. Add the vinegar and blend until smooth.
  8. Taste. Add more salt if needed and honey if you find the sauce too hot or bitter*.
  9. Let rest while you cut up the meat.
  10. If you want a really smooth sauce, you can press the red chile through a strainer or colander to remove bits of unprocessed chile or seeds. Use a rubber spatula to move the chile around and press through.

Marinate the pork pieces.
  1. Spray a large, heavy Dutch oven with cooking oil.  (This pot will be placed in the oven.)
  2. Transfer the pork pieces to the Dutch oven and pour enough red chile over the meat to coat the meat when stirred. (See Kitchen Notes for Amount of red chile. Any extra red chile can be used to “smother” the carne adovada after serving.)

  3. Stir well to coat all of the pieces with the red chile.
  4. Cover and set in the refrigerator overnight or for 24 hours.
Day 2 – Braise the marinated pork
  1. One hour before placing in the oven, remove the Dutch oven from the refrigerator so that the meat can come up to room temperature.
  2. Preheat the oven to 300° F.*
  3. Place the meat in the hot oven and cook for COVERED for 2 hours.
  4. Remove from the oven and stir. There will be quite a bit of liquid.
  5. Return the meat to the oven UNCOVERED for 1 to 1.5 hours or until the meat is pull apart tender and the liquid has reduced.*
  6. Turn the oven off and leave the carne adovada in the oven until ready to serve.
  7. Top each serving with red chile if desired.
CarneAdovada Web
CarneAdovada Web
Kitchen Notes

Pork Shoulder (pork butt) Size – For this recipe I usually start with an 8 pound, bone-in, pork shoulder. Once I remove the bone and much of the fat, I end up with about 5 pounds of meat.  Therefore, if you just want to start with a 5-6 pound boneless shoulder that would save the time of cut away the bone. I use the bone to make a pork stock.  You could also use a 3-4 pound boneless shoulder.  This would yield a smaller batch, but it would also only take about 2 hours of cook time.  Just be sure to reduce the amount of red chile.

Cutting up the pork – I personally am not fond of biting into a big piece of fat with I eat carne adovada; therefore, we trim the larger pieces of fat off of the cut pieces of meat.  However, we don’t get too carried away because we want to leave some of the fat for flavoring.

As mentioned, we usually cut the meat into about 2 inch chunks. This yields larger pieces that can be pulled apart with a fork once cooked.  Smaller pieces (1 inch cubes) yield bite size pieces that won’t need to be “pulled”.

Chile Pods and chile powder – If your pods are hot, then use mild to medium chile powder.  This helps bring down the heat of really hot chile pods and adds a little depth to the flavor of the chile. If your chile pods are mild to medium, then use hot chile powder for a spicier chile. When I’m using a VERY hot chile, I’ll reduce the number of pods to 20 pods, then add 2 tablespoons of powder.

Honey – Honey kills the burn.  Therefore, honey is a great ingredient to help reduce a little of the heat from the chile as well as bitterness.  However, be careful and don’t add too much.  More than 2 teaspoons can make your red chile too sweet.

Amount of red chile sauce – The amount of red chile made in this recipe is plenty for 5- 7 pounds of meat, but is too much for any less than that.  A rough estimate for how much red chile you need is ½ cup of red chile for 1 pound of meat. You can always add more for a saucier carne adovada. You just want to make sure that you use enough chile to fully coat the pieces of pork.

Oven Temperature – I have found it best to braise carne adovada at a low temperature of 300°F.  However, if you don’t have to time to braise for 3 – 4 hours, you can increase the temperature to 350°F and cook for 1 to 1.5 hours. If you choose to cook at a higher temperature, just cut the pieces of meat smaller, about 1″ cubes.

The amount of liquid in the cooked meat – Some people may want a stew like carne adovada with quite a bit of sauce, while others, like it a little saucy, but not soupy.  If you want a more stew like carne, then wait and uncover the Dutch oven 2.5 hours into cooking.  However, if you want the chile thicker and more saucy, then uncover after 2 hours of cooking.  If you want it even less sauce, then you can use a slotted spoon to scoop out the meat, throw it into a skillet and cook off even more of the sauce before serving. Just don’t cook off too much. You’ll need some sauce for the flour tortilla.

CarneAdovadaV1 Web
CarneAdovadaV1 Web

The most dangerous man

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7ZK-918s3gg?feature=share

You cannot reconcile unless you are a dog nation sucking up to the U.S. or you are a brain dead naive and foolish person who prefer lies to truth that hurts.

The U.S. hate China and sanctions and blockade China from 1949–1970 killing tens of millions of Chinese innocent people while they bombed the shit out of Muslim nations from Iraq to Afghanistan to Yemen, to Libya and Syria killing tens of million Muslims.

Every fool can see that and acknowledge that and no one on earth do not know this fact The the U.S. are evil against Chinese and Muslims but when it comes to Chinese Muslims, suddenly they want to be seen as a darling to them!

The U.S. suddenly is the champion of their rights? They fabricated lies on Uyghurs Muslims and invented genocide! And they expect the world to believed them! No one does of course unless one is blind, deaf or dumb or totally brain dead! The world knows it is another evil design to hoodwink people to hate China and thanks the world of the U.S. as human rights defender when it is the biggest wrong doer!

My wife drives a Lexus RX400h. The “h” stands for hybrid.

One day she called me from the Lexus dealer to tell me the mechanic performing the regular service told her Lexus’s engine mounts were disintegrating and needed to be replaced. The mechanic explained that because the car was a hybrid the task was very expensive—around $2500!

My wife called me because, while I’m not a professional mechanic, I’ve owned a dizzying array of exotic cars over the years and perform all my own restorations.

The first thing I did was put down my wrench (I was in the middle of replacing the clutch on my ’85 Toyota MR2) and search “engine mount replacement, 2007 Lexus RX400h”.

It just so happens that while replacing the engine mounts on the non-hybrid version of my wife’s car was a $300 repair ($80 for the engine mounts, $220 for labor) the labor involved performing the same job on the hybrid was much, much greater.

I called my wife back and asked her why she thought she needed new engine mounts. Had she noticed anything amiss? I occasionally drove her car and never heard any weird knocks from under the hood. My wife said the mechanic told her it needed the repair.

My advice was that since she’d been driving the car without noticing anything amiss, to have faith that she could safely drive it home where I could examine it (they’re only engine mounts after all).

Personally inspecting the mounts, using a very powerful penlight I was able to determine that they looked nearly new (the Lexus only had 110K on the odometer). There were tiny tears in the rubber flashing around the edges of the mounts, but they looked better than the mounts on any of my cars.

My advice, whenever possible, get a second opinion and research the repair for your car. Also, ask your friends for recommendations for mechanics they trust.

DRAGONFLY – 1952 Retro Pulp Science Fiction by Skyward, Photo Processing 110mm Film Experimentation

 

Vintage photo

Syracuse RR
Syracuse RR

How is China beating US in AI, even when the US has the best universities, researchers and the largest tech companies?

My education was subsidized by both Federal and state governments. Sputnik went up in October 1957. To answer Sputnik and the belief the US was technologically behind the USSR, the “National Defense Education act of 1958” was passed that September. Many more acts followed that support K-12 and colleges with the emphasis on building a generation of scientists and engineers to fight the “Cold War.” By working as a Co-Op, I graduated with a BS in Computer Science and debt-free.

I worked first for computer manufactures and later in Defense and Aerospace.

I just retired. My generation, the ones educated due to Sputnik, are retiring.

During the Regan administration, all that education funding was reduced. The GI bill was canceled. Both Federal and state governments stopped supporting colleges. And we saw the rise in the cost of higher education.

Before the cut in education, we had the best universities. Researches are not getting the grants they used to. I don’t see tech companies giving big grants to universities.

Without government funding, our education is dying and is dead in some areas. One of the political parties has labeled higher education as bad and should be eliminated.

From Asian cultures we learn:

“To plan for 1 year, plant rice.

To plan for 20 years, plant trees.

To plan for 100 years, teach children.

Asian cultures plan for the long term. Toyota has a 100-year plan. US companies have a 90-day plan.

The US ranks 36th and is not trying very hard.

 

What are the biggest culture shocks people face when coming to Germany?

German here, sharing his expertise:

1. We eat raw meat. And it tastes amazing:

On the roll is what we call “Mett”. It is pure pork, which is seasoned with salt and pepper. Depending on who you meet, a war may break out, depending on whether you eat your ground pork bun with butter or without.

2. We drink alcohol in public. And not a little of it. In the USA for example and in many Muslim countries this is absolutely forbidden. Nobody is interested here. You can drink wherever you want, whatever you want – and above all as much as you want. But if you are not from Germany, you will always find someone here who can tolerate more than you.

3. Once you have learned German, you can learn it again right away when you move to another federal state. In Germany, the dialects are very different, and some people feel that they speak a completely different language.

4. We are not so hospitable. Of course, we are not angry, and we are not averse to visitors, but in other countries of the world, you are virtually courted as a tourist. In Germany, nobody is interested in that, even though we probably find you perfectly ok.

5. We do not speak English very well. With speaking English here, you are not as successful as in countries like Sweden. Although we know English better than France, especially the old people never learned it.

6. We are not a bit patriotic. In countries like the USA you can’t really miss where you are, because that’s the way it looks.

 

She REGRETS Leaving Her Husband Then Gets BITTER When He Got A New GIRLFRIEND

 

 

You during a traffic stop and you knew it? What did you do?

It wasn’t a traffic stop.

Because of my class schedule, I walk twelve or 15 blocks from “Prep High” to “Tech High” between 11:20 and 12:20 each school day.

I was stopped between those times and between those places on what the officer (who will hopefully soon find himself unemployed) described in the report as “reasonable suspicion” of being truant.

I was polite. Explained why I was where I was and offered the officer a copy of my class schedule, my school ID, and the business card of the vocational coordinator at “Prep High” who could be called to verify what I was saying.

The officer refused to look at anything I offered. He said it wasn’t his job to verify anything. I was handcuffed, placed in the back of a patrol car, and driven about 5 miles to a juvenile processing facility.

THIS IS THE FIRST LIE. Legally that was an arrest. Without probable cause and without following the procedures required when arresting a minor. (The officer would have to have an arrest warrant or have personally witnessed my committing a criminal act that would be a felony were I an adult.)

Police may “detain” an individual, defined as not allowing a person to leave while a “reasonable suspicion” is investigated to determine that “probable cause” exists to arrest. But the officer never investigated anything. To him my being a student, off of school district property, during normal school hours was truancy.

So, THIS IS THE SECOND LIE: Laws are codified and that is not the definition of truancy. In part the law reads: “any absence of part or all of one or more days from school during which the school attendance officer, principal or teacher has not been notified of the legal cause of such absence(.)”

I had offered the officer a printed, paper, copy of my school schedule which I carry in the clear outer sleeve of my notebook binder. Obviously, having scheduled me to take three AM classes at “Prep” and three PM classes at “Tech” the school district not only knew about, not only authorized, but actually COMPELLED the action I was taking when stopped.

I was processed at the juvenile facility including having a check run to see if I had any outstanding warrants. Then, nearly three hours after I was stopped, I was issued a $94 ticket / court summons where ocurred the

THIRD LIE: The time and place on the summons / ticket was FALSE. Reflecting a later time and a different place miles from where I was stopped.

My legal guardian was called to transport me home. Using the juvenile facility’s phone (number recorded by my guardian’s phone). That, the fact that there are cameras in the facility, a body camera on the “arresting officer,” body cameras on other officers working there, cameras on businesses where I was “arrested,” possibly cameras near the fake address on the ticket / summons, that the juvenile facility obviously used its systems to search for outstanding warrants and to find the name and phone number of my legal guardian, and required my guardian to sign a document for my release all DIRECTLY CONTRADICT the officers assertions (lies) in his report.

My attorney points out that proving that this officer lied in one official report calls into question EVERY other official assertion he has ever made.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am a 5 ft 6 female. Society needs police.

Well, society needs honest police. We already have too many hoodlums.

But, some people (like this liar) simply lack the mental capacity or ethical standards to be police officers.

Society needs to fire them, prosecute them for any criminal acts they commit, publicize their names (in part so others can seek legal redress), PERMANENTLY disarm them, and possibly segregate them.

Like Germany did with Stasi post 1990.

 

It’s not over

Why are there ~5,000 janitors who hold PhDs in the U.S.?

 

As an astrophysics Ph.D, I’m looking forward to a future career in janitorial services. Once I get make a ton of money in investment banking, being a janitor looks like a perfect job…..

Because:

1) There is the FU number. It’s the amount of money you have to have in the bank to say “FU” to your boss. If you run the numbers you’ll find that even small amounts of income drastically reduce the “FU” number.

2) One thing that gets missed is that with a Ph.D. in the sciences you *can* be a janitor. Most people that go to medical school or law school end up with tremendous debt, so they *can’t* do any random job. The nice thing about getting a physics Ph.D., is that you can get your Ph.D. and then become a beach bum, since you have little/no debt.

3) I’ve known people that have worked as janitors, and they say it’s an easy job. You get paid eight hours of wages for work that usually only takes two or three, and you spend the rest of the night just chatting. You work in the middle of the night so your manager isn’t going to be looking over your shoulder, and as long as everything is clean the next morning, no one cares how many hours you “really” worked.

4) You can do janitorial work and theoretical physics at the same time. You are pushing a broom, you can think about quantum field theory. This is *not* true for a lot of other jobs. You can’t think about QFT while taking orders at McDonalds, selling shoes, flipping burgers, or driving a cab. If the janitor has a blank vacant look, no one cares, whereas being absent-minded while dealing with hot cooking oil or customers can get you fired or cause a fire.

5) And what’s the negative. Janitors have low social status. Well so what? I’ve got a Ph.d.

I suppose you see a lot of Ph.D.’s being janitors because it’s the smart thing to do.

You must be living in a cave.

Twenty years ago, China only made low quality, cheap goods. They still make them because buyers want them. Walmart couldnt survive without them.

Nowadays, China makes many high ebd products, designed by Chinese engineers.

40,000 kilometers of high speed rail in China. 347 kmh an hour. unmatched safety record. you couldn’t keep running them if they unsafe.

I was a professional photographer in Canada. Chinese photo gear was garbage. Now they have taken big strides. My tripod is made by Chinese company named Sirui. Carbon fiber, rugged and light weight. I’ve used mainly German tripods, even Leica, but the Sirui is the best. do a search online. check the reviews. Hand crafted by skilled machinists.

And Chinese companies have taken over failed western companies. Improved quality and become top sellers. Volvo was owned by Ford and lost money. Geely bought it up and gave an investment of 5billion to.make a new platform. Two years later Volvo had Car of the Year. They boldly announced that no one will die in a Volvo by 2026. They are still the safest cars on the planet. MG was a British cae company know fir sport cars called roadstes. Now owned vy Chinese car company. just launched an EV roadster. The British car magazines are raving about it. And all said it stll looks British!

The Sopranos – Mustang Sally

How does China’s crackdown on consulting firms reflect growing tensions with the United States?

In the latest McDonald’s quarterly call, the company revealed it opened >1,000 restaurants in mainland China in 2023, making it the fastest growing market globally.

1,000 restaurants is 3 per DAY, and McDonald’s is about as American as any brand can be.


China’s policing of consultancies is merely a rounding error, in the grand scheme of things. Annually, the S&P 500 generate >$1 trillion in revenue operating within the mainland market. This includes Apple, which depend on China for 20–25% of its global revenue.

How much are these consultancies worth? A couple of million each?

What’s happening is the CIA’s doubling down on intelligence within China, as traditional humint sources were vacuumed up in the repeated corruption sweeps since Xi took charge.

These consultancies have served as spy centers and information conduits, but were allowed to operate in deference of American hegemony. But relationships have become frazzled and the cases linked to these nodes made them intolerable.

Actual cases are being pursued, and people are being prosecuted, with a number deported rather than risk diplomatic protest.

America is preparing for war, and it shows in the information they are willing to pay for, particularly the networks and capabilities they are willing to risk.

Case in point: What was a Seawolf-class attack sub doing in the SCS, only to suffer a head-on collision with an undersea mount?

 

Holy Fuck!

Why is the West always predicting China’s economy wrongly?

They are very different in thought process

The West believes CREDIT is God

Thus Western Consumption is CREDIT DRIVEN and they encourage more and more credit to mobilize an economy

The West believes in minimum balances I checking accounts and wants people to spend everything they have and money they don’t have by availing credit

The Average Man uses Credit Cards

The Corporates use Wall Street, create special instruments, get AAA rating and sell the instruments to other Wall Street Entities representing Billions of Dollars of Insurance Premiums or Pension payments

For such an Economy – SPENDING is something they love especially SPENDING UNDER CREDIT

For such an Economy – BAILOUTS is something they love

Such an Economy believes that if the top 1% become richer and richer, they automatically will trickle down the wealth upto the poorest sections and enhance the economy

It’s called REAGANOMICS

When Reagan Proposed this (Or his experts did), US was producing a lot and trading everywhere as the largest trader

So it helped

However once the 1% became richer and richer, WOULD THEY EVER VOLUNTARILY GIVE UP?

No

So they purchased more congressmen, senators and today the US is in utter chaos due to these policies

In 1984, when 1% of the manufacturers became wealthy, their workers, linemen, foremen all got some share of the wealth

Today?

Chinese or Mexican Factories get a miniscule share and the rest goes to the pockets of maybe 500 people at the most


China believes SAVINGS is God

Chinese Consumption is thus INCOME DRIVEN and Chinese always buy from earnings and NEVER SPEND THEIR SAVINGS on normal consumption

Chinese focus on higher income from salary or Investments to buy more stuff and live a rich lifestyle and LOATHE CREDIT OR BORROWING , unless its towards Gold or Land or Jade where they can pay 6% a year and get 10% a year interest

China thus raises money only through secured debt, secured by Land or other assets

For such an Economy – SPENDING FROM INCOME is what they love rather than Credit

For such an Economy – Bailouts are bad unless the situation becomes so bad that you can settle 15 cents on the dollar

Such an Economy believes that Capitalism in the hands of 1% is a disaster and so ensures that the STATE regulates Capitalism in a pseudo mixed economy form

Li Peng and Li Keiqang are architects of this model


So the West sees Chinas economy from THEIR PERSPECTIVE

They see that Only 71% of the Assets are lent vide Credit of which 87% is Secure Debt and the West feels that’s Socialist and feels that’s because of low demand

That’s because US lends almost 95% Assets vide Credit of which barely 23% is Secure Debt

China meanwhile doesn’t have low demand because it’s people prefer spending income from wages and investments on consumption and saving for a rainy day

Yet US can’t accept or realize that

Likewise the West like Bailouts in the style of 2008 to prevent what’s called a Domino Collapse

China likes to allow a bubble to subside to it’s best possible low before any investment can be considered

The West regard this as WEAK FISCAL POLICY whereas Chinese People regard this as normal

So the West focuses on

  • GDP Growth due to Spending
  • Credit Growth in the economy or how much people are borrowing to spend
  • Net Spending due to Credit

China focuses on

  • Rise in Wages
  • Rise in Disposable Income
  • Income Growth in the economy or how much people are earning

So obviously the West can never predict China properly

The West is clueless about how China works

One day in 1981, as my girlfriend (now wife) and I rode the bus together to campus, she said to me, “Go down to the career center and sign up for who’s hiring software engineers.”

I thought maybe she’d seen something in the Daily. Big employers sometimes took out ads in the campus newspaper. I asked, “Who’s there today?”

She said, “I don’t know. Just go down and sign up.”

Turns out there was only one company, called John Fluke Mfg., Co., hiring software folks. I signed up. In due time, I had a 30-minute campus interview with a very nice lady named Patsy Thiemens, a young developer from Fluke. The thing she was doing sounded really interesting, emulating a microprocessor’s address and data buses to stimulate boards under test. I ended up more or less interviewing her, which, unknown to me, was a pretty good way to impress an interviewer.

An in-house interview followed, and a job offer with excellent salary, working for Patsy. I spent the first 12 years of my career working in Fluke’s very professional software development process. It set the pattern for the rest of my life. It was, as the oft-repeated joke goes, a fluke.

Be the Rufus!

What male/female double standard do you hate the most?

My mother complained to me on the phone this morning. “Your former brother-in-law, the guy you liked so much you still remain friends with him? He was abusive towards your sister.”

“How come?” I wanted to know.

“He pushed her really hard, a few months back. She fell back and hit her head against a wall. It’s one of the reasons why they’re breaking up, actually. A man should never use physical force against a woman.”

“Damn! That’s awful… shit I never knew… why would he do such a thing?”

“He was being really mean apparantly. Got under her skin. You know how Ben can be. And at some point he just really crossed a line. So she slapped him and then he pushed her away…. and she…”

“Wait, she slapped him first?”

“Yes but…”

“No ‘but’, I don’t like that he pushed her but she should NOT have slapped him in the face. That was wrong. Period.”

“You should have heard the things he said. He can really, really be mean sometimes. You know how he gets when Ben gets in one of those moods, Jean-Marie, you KNOW that!”

Well at this point the whole thing sort of turned to shit. I’m supposed to side with my sister. By default, as she is family. Plus she’s a woman. But honestly, she should not have lost her temper and slapped him. The fact that a slap from a woman can be casually explained away as “he got it coming” but a push or slap from a man is instantly labeled abuse? MAJOR double standard.

 

Chinese billboards are crazy!

Why were the Romans so successful in battle?

The Roman Army did a great many things right. In logistics, strategy, and tactics, they were already doing many of the things that military colleges teach today. One things the history books ignore is that soldiers in the field did more building than training and more training than fighting. We’ve got journals from Roman soldiers that say things like, “I’ve been in the army for 2 years and have never used my sword. All I do is dig.” HA!

That sounds boring until you consider what fighting Romans would have been like from the perspective of their tribal foes.

The door of your command tent flies open. A panting fifteen-year-old who smells of sweat and horse stumbles through the gap and gasps, “A column to the east, my liege. Three hours ride. Romans.”

On foot, Scout?”

Mostly, Lord. 200 heavy infantry, plus wagons and followers.”

Hot damn. Assemble my commanders. I want 600 men ready to ride by dawn!”

One busy night later, your experienced war machine has confirmed the Romans’ position and strength, packed your camp, mustered their courage, and deployed. A half day’s travel later, with a few hundred of your clan and allies at your back, you crest the final hill and see…

Well f*** me.

Erecting trenches, stockades, and earthworks—a stockade of portable sudes within minutes and a whole fortified castrum by sunset—was standard practice for Roman units in hostile territory. It’s hard to believe they could do it so quickly, but hundreds or thousands of men working in shifts at tasks they’ve practiced can do a LOT.

Fortifications were a huge force multiplier, and disheartened the Romans’ foes…and kept the Roman grunts busy, which the Caesars understood can boost discipline more than the walls themselves.

Putin has been bluffing again and again about nuclear strikes and threats. Why doesn’t NATO just shut him up and bomb the Kremlin?

Russian nuclear weapons actually work. Russia conducted 2 tests in 2022 and 2023.

The UK’s doesn’t.

France’s nuclear delivery systems were tested in November 2023. But here’s the thing Macron already set out that he wouldn’t use them.

That leaves the USA and in game theory they’d likely look the other way.

Westerners now are but muh super mega weapons and my SUPER SOLDIERS! That can shoot lazers from their eyes! But then again they still believe Russia is completely out of ammunition has no food and fuel and that Ukraine is about to take Magadan.

 

Good idea?

What is the nastiest thing you’ve done for revenge?

I didn’t really do it for revenge but oh ,did it get nasty. During my divorce, I got a notice from my insurance company, that because of the accident I was in, I would be surcharged. What?!

It was a large surcharge and I actually got the notice before I heard anything about an accident.

I called the insurance company to tell them it was a mistake, that I hadn’t been in an accident.

“Oh yes, on Tues(date). In (my ex-husband’s car).”

I told the insurance rep that we were getting a divorce and I hadn’t driven his car in months. Finally, the insurance company(or police department-I had to call them too) found out that his girlfriend had been driving and got in the accident. She didn’t have her license and said she was me.

I was outraged and the revenge part was that I told them that ______(girlfriend’s name) was still an inexperienced driver (had a license for <6 yrs) which is a big surcharge in my state. The insurance company refused to cover the accident and charged her with fraud.

in 2010, my 12 year old threatened suicide while in a session with his therapist. He was defiant and refused to take it back. The doctor told us his hands were tied and we were to admit him to a lock down facility for adolescents.

On the way to the hospital, I kept thinking he would snap out of it and recant what he said, but he did not.

We signed some papers and left our 12 year old son there – and left crying.

The next day I went to visit and while I was sitting with my son, a man dressed in white asks me to sign all kinds of forms that basically say “You hereby agree to accept responsibility for all the costs and fees……”. I politely asked, “What are the fees – what is the cost to be here each night?”. He said it was between me any my insurance provider. I pressed for a number and he said he did not know the cost. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just sign a blank check to you; I have to know what it costs – I have a 20% deductible”. Even though I knew my options were limited, I had the right to know what a hospital charged.

The next day someone called and revealed the cost per day was $5,000 – just room and board. Doctor time and medication is extra. My out of pocket would be $1,000 per day, not including doctor time.

I told the woman over the phone that either my son comes home, or I refuse to pay the bill for one more day. Keep in mind, this was 14 years ago – I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost has doubled since then. When he was released he was put on some medication that was so over-prescribed, it almost killed him.

Fast forward to now, my son is a Paramedic who often deals with mental health crisis – he’s a wonderful caring person.

Space-Age Sci-Fi | The Phantom Planet (Adventure, 1961) by William Marshall | Colorized Movie

A very fun 1960’s era low budget science fiction movie. I hope you enjoy it!

What is China’s current perception of US aircraft carriers?

Good ship.

Beautiful ship.

Powerful ship.

90K/100K tons of diplomacy.

Perfect target for DF-21 and DF-26 anti-ship bullestic missiles.

DF-21 – Wikipedia

This map shows the tracks of USS Reagan during July 30-Aug 9 in 2022. On August 2, the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan, despite the warning of China, and her visit was regarded as a severe povocation to One China policy.

Before her visit, CSG Reagan was deployed to South China Sea and Philippines (P) as a stretegic support to her action and escort. However, as Pelosi ignored China’s (C) warning and landed on Taipei (T) airport, Chinese armies began massive movement and started a military drill around Taiwan. As you can see, the CSG Reagan moved eastward to escape from China’s DF-21 missile range and then hide behind Japan (J)’s Kyushu and Okinawa.

However, in 1950, USA sent its fleet direct to Taiwan Strait (the broken line between C and T) preventing communist army acrossing the strait.

after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the United States sent its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the Korean conflict from spreading south.

Anyway, American aircraft carriers are very beautiful, very powerful, very destructive.

But even Iran is not feared of them, now including Houthi forces in Yemen, let alone China.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/23/iran-drone-us-aircraft-carrier-report

American friends, your enemy is not China. Your enemy hides in Capitol Hill, White House, and Wall Street.

In 2016, Stephen Ruth, a man from New York, literally uncovered a traffic light conspiracy: the story hit the headlines when, after cutting the wires connecting the intersection cameras, Ruth reported himself to the authorities, causing a media case to explode .

The story, however, must be told from the beginning: initially Ruth was arrested for the first time for having used a painter’s extension cord to point traffic light cameras towards the sky.

The act of public disobedience arose from Ruth’s awareness that the traffic lights were intentionally rigged to ensure that drivers were fined; Yellow lights at intersections with cameras last only three seconds, as opposed to five seconds at other intersections without cameras in the same county. Ruth documented everything through several videos which he then uploaded to Facebook.

Since the matter went unnoticed, Stephen decided to make news in an unorthodox way: cutting the camera cables, he reported his own actions to the press, attracting the attention of some politicians who put pressure on the police force to ensure this modern ” Robin Hood” was arrested.

The local police and sheriff’s deputies, however, took Ruth’s side; once we viewed his videos it was undeniable that his gesture had a much deeper origin than that of vandalism.

Statistics in hand, the majority of road accidents with victims occurred precisely at intersections that had “rigged” cameras.

During his most recent arrest, one of the sheriff’s deputies even offered to bail him out of jail by paying the bail out of his own pocket.

When he returned home after these events, he noticed that a new camera had been placed in the neighborhood, but it was pointing directly at his front door; Ruth was apparently now a “special guard” for the county government.

The story gets even murkier; after the news became public, someone tried to silence Stephen.

He himself says that a car intentionally tried to hit him in a head-on collision; after talking to his neighbors it was clear that the car in question (or at least, a visibly identical one, including his occupants) had surveilled his house before carrying out the attempt on his life.

What’s the shadiest tactic you’ve witnessed HR use at your job?

I worked at a grocery store when I was a teenager. Human Resources was called in to interview the employees about a beer and cigarette theft problem.

Before my interview, I saw a co-worker cleaning out his locker. “What happened?” I asked.

“Dude, they got us. They had cameras filming everything we did,” he said. “I just got fired for eating grapes that fell off the vine.”

My turn came and the HR guy said, “You need to confess to everything you have stolen here. Put a dollar amount on the stolen goods and we will set up a payment plan for restitution and avoid your being arrested.”

“I have never stolen,” I said.

“Okay, I am going to give you one more chance. If you are honest, we won’t get the police involved. If you are lying, things are not going to go well,” he said. “Be advised we have video.”

“I have never stolen anything,” I said.

“Call the police,” he said to the manager. “We are going to have to press charges.”

“You are full of it,” I said. “You have nothing.”

“Do you want to see the video?” He asked.

“Yes,” I said. “It doesn’t exist.”

“What makes you say that?” He said. “You seem very confident for someone about to go to jail.”

“I haven’t stolen anything,” I said. “If you had a video of people stealing, you wouldn’t need a confession.”

I think seven people confessed and were fired that day. My friend that ate the grapes put $7 on the amount he had stolen. He was one of the most honest people I worked with.

The ones eating steak cooked on the heat seal of the meat wrapper never confessed to anything. They did not catch the cigarette and beer thieves they were looking for either.

The people that confessed were the honest ones who felt guilty for their petty thefts while the dishonest ones stuck to their guns and confessed to nothing. Brilliant move by HR.

 

Flip the switch

What are some amazing facts about Linux?

Some facts about Linux

  • In 2000 Steve Jobs Offered Linus Torvalds a job at APPLE on the condition that he should stop the development of Linux, But Linus refused to join and continued developing his product.
  • Microsoft was not very much impressed by its open source systems and criticized it badly but later it was sponsored by Microsoft itself.
  • Android is the highest using operating system on the planet with 2 billion people but Android runs on Linux.
  • Linux is very late that it released after three years of it’s announced date.
  • Linux is the only operating system named after its founder Linus Torvalds
  • Linux has 20,323,379 lines of code which was pretty small in the version of the kernel.
  • Linux first name was “FreaX” which was a combination of “free”, “freak” and “Unix”)
  • Google, Intel, Huawei, Samsung, Red Hat, Canonical and Facebook are among the top contributors to Linux kernel development in recent years.
  • 9 out of top 10 public cloud infrastructures run on Linux.
  • IBM chose Linux for what is expected to be the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Sequoia.
  • All major closed source Operating Systems track user information while Linux distros generally don’t, which means better user Security and Privacy is assured.

Are China’s economic statistics reliable?

Looking at this neutrally, there are two Narratives here

The First Narrative says

  • China is a one party system
  • There is no opposition or free press or any form of checks and balances
  • So the CPC can make up any statistics they want
  • Hence Chinas Statistics are unreliable

The Second Narrative says :-

  • China doesn’t have major elections , so it has no need to impress voters with statistics
  • China doesn’t have opposition parties, so the Governing CPC need not have an initiative to deliberately show higher numbers
  • China has multiple foreign investors who have made money and profit over the last 2 decades. Impossible to sustain bogus statistics for so long (Half a decade or longer)
  • China has too many visitors to lie about it’s growth. Unlike the USSR who had many restrictions from leaving the USSR or entering the same

I myself never set store with numbers

I ask questions

First question – Why would China show a higher GDP ?

 

Showing a Higher GDP would be counter productive for China because China would lose nice subsidies by the WTO afforded to non market nations who are net exporters

The cut off per capita is $ 12,500

So China would prefer a lower GDP and gain maximum benefits from the WTO

Meanwhile if China shows a higher GDP, how would China benefit?

No Investor invests based on GDP or GDP growth

They invest based on Market Annual Aggregate Returns (MARR)

No Western News will praise Chinas GDP today plus even if they do, China gains Zilch

So it makes no sense for China to show higher GDP

Second Question – Can Chinas statistics be verified?

Soviet Statistics couldn’t

This was because no US entity could come to Moscow or Leningrad and set up a factory or invest $ 100 Million

Chinese Statistics can

Hundreds of Investors have actually invested in China and got tons of profits

The MARR of China from 2000–2010 was 16.29% and 2010–2020 was 10.65%

These aren’t Chinese Statistics

These are Western Statistics based on their rate of returns from the Chinese Markets

From 2020–2023, MARR has fallen to 7.12% which is why Investments are not flooding into China as they were before 2020

So Chinese Statistics are very easy to verify simply by looking at the Economy


So my conclusion is Chinese Statistics are not only reliable, they are under played in my opinion

I see no reason for China to fudge their numbers

This is my opinion

Others may have a different opinion

 

Bob Lazar FINALLY Showed Element 115 That Was Sealed & Hidden For Decades!

A tad bit manufactured. But worth some time to check out if you are into UFO lore.

https://youtu.be/4rWb_pH6FJ0

As a police officer, have you ever received an unusual ‘thank you’ for taking care of someone?

Yes I have. Funny story. After I was shot and in the hospital recovering, I received a “Get Well Card” from a man who lived in the city. The man wrote in the card that he saw on the news that I was the Officer who had been shot and he wanted me to know that he was praying for me. He said he and his family were devastated that I was the Officer who was shot.

He said about a year before I was shot, his wife and young son were in a serious car accident in our city and I was the Officer who responded and handled the collision. His son (who I believe was 6 or 7 at the time) was traumatized by the accident because his Mom was seriously injured and transported by helicopter to the hospital. The boy told his Dad that I comforted him during the process and kept him close to me while his Mom was treated. His son was very impressed with me and felt so special that I was taking care of him while his Mom was being treated. The man told me how much he appreciated how I took care of his son and his family wishes me the very best in my recovery.

He left his phone number on the card so when I was able, I called him and spoke to him and his son. The man happened to be a helicopter tour pilot so when I was able, he took me on a spectacular helicopter tour of San Diego Bay and the surrounding area. I met with him and his son and we had a great time. It is definitely one of the highlights of my career.

Slow-Cooked Spicy Beef Tri-Tip

SpicyBeefTriTipH1 Web
SpicyBeefTriTipH1 Web

Beef tri-tip is an extremely tasty cut of beef and one of our favorites. It’s cheaper than most cuts and also leaner; therefore, one has to be careful cooking it. Tri-tip should be cooked hot and fast, or slow cooked to a melt in your mouth tenderness. Anything in between causes the tri-tip to be tough and chewy. By slow cooking in a marinade, tri-tip is taken past the tough stage to a tear apart tender, delicious bite of meat. This Slow-Cooked Spicy Beef Tri-Tip recipe accomplishes that.

The spicy tri-tip marinade consists of a few spices, chile powders and beer. The meat marinates for at least 4 hours, but preferably overnight. It is slow-cooked for 2 – 3 hours, to a melt in mouth tenderness. This particular recipe provides instructions for slow-cooking on the grill during the warmer months and slow-cooking in the oven during cooler months. The recipe can easily be converted to a slow cooker or instant pot. No matter which method you use, it’s a simple process with results that make your mouth very happy.

When I make spicy beef tri-tip, I use 2 pounds of tri-tip. This provides Bobby and I with two complete meals and sometimes, a light lunch. One of the meals we serve is what you see in the pictures. It’s essentially a southwestern meat and vegetable bowl with spicy beef tri-tip, seared vegetables, black beans and avocado. A second meal is normally tacos with the leftover meat and vegetables and a few simple toppings. Instructions for both meals are found in the recipe below.

I hope you enjoy!

SpicyBeefTriTipV1 Web
SpicyBeefTriTipV1 Web
Ingredients
Beef and Marinade
  • 2 pounds trimmed beef tri tip, cut into 1 ½ – 2” chunks
  • 1 – 2 Tbsp. chipotle paste*
  • 2 tsp. red chile spice mix*
  • ½ tsp. salt
  • 2 Tbsp. minced onion
  • ½ cup dark beer* (Keep the rest of the beer. You many need more later.)
Seared Vegetables
  • 1 medium onion. sliced then halved
  • 1 medium bell pepper. sliced then halved
Suggested Sides and Taco Toppings
  • Seared vegetables
  • Black beans, pintos or bolitas
  • Sour cream or plain Greek yogurt
  • Pickled Peppers*, chopped
  • Lime wedges
  • Avocado slices
Instructions
This dish can be cooked on the grill or in the oven. The instructions explain how to cook both ways.
  1. In a large bowl, add all of the ingredients under Beef and Marinade.  Mix together to coat the chunks of meat.

  2. If cooking on the grill, transfer meat to a large piece of parchment and fold close.  Place parchment package on a sheet of aluminum foil and seal shut. Wrap in another sheet of aluminum foil.

    If cooking in the oven, transfer to a refrigerator container with a tight seal.

  3. Place in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or overnight, turning at least once.

  4. Preheat the grill or oven for a temperature of 350F.

  5. For the grill, place the package of marinaded beef in a cast iron skillet and place on the grill.

    For the oven, transfer the beef and marinade to a heavy-duty Dutch oven.   Place a piece of parchment on top of the beef and press around the edges. This will prevent the marinade from evaporating too quickly.  Place the cover on the Dutch oven.

  6. “Bake” at 350F for 2.5 hours. Remove from grill or oven and check to see if it’s ready.  Using 2 forks, try to separate a chunk of meat   It should be pull apart tender. If it is not, close and bake for another 30 minutes.

  7. On the grill, the meat usually gets crispy on the edges like carnitas.

    In the oven, the marinate mostly evaporates, but the edges usually don’t get crispy.

  8. Transfer cooked beef to a bowl.  Using 2 forks, tear apart the chunks of beef into small bite size pieces.

  9. (Optional step) If you want the edges crispier, heat a cast iron skillet with a tablespoon oil.  When hot, transfer the beef to the skillet and stir.  When the edges start to get crispy add a couple tablespoons of beer to skillet. After about 30 seconds remove from heat. The beer adds a little moisture and flavor into the beef.

  10. Seared Vegetables – Prepare while the beef is cooking.
  11. If cooking on the grill, wrap cut vegetables in parchment then in aluminum foil.  After the beef has cooked for 2 hours, place the package of vegetables on the grill and let cook as the meat finishes.

    For the oven bake, heat up a cast iron skillet with a tablespoon of oil.  When hot, add the vegetables and sear until soft and browning on the edges.  (You can use the same skillet to sear the beef if you choose.)

  12. To serve,

    place meat on plate with vegetables, and other sides (e.g., avocado and beans).  Squeeze a wedge of lime juice over the meat.

    OR, for tacos,

    wrap some of the meat in a warm tortilla, top with seared vegetables and choice of toppings. End with a squeeze of lime.

Kitchen Notes

Meat – We prefer beef tri-tip because of its flavor, but you can used other cuts of meat. Cheaper cuts of either beef or pork work well. The slow cook breaks down the connective tissue of the cheaper cuts making them tender.  Even though tri-tip is a leaner cut, with the spicy beer marinade and the slow cook process, the result is melt in your mouth tenderness.

Chipotle Paste – I make chipotle paste by blending a can of chipotle adobo.  Just remove the seed pod before blending.  Once blended you can pour into an ice tray and freeze. Each “cube” is about 1 Tbsp. of paste. If you don’t want to do this, then minced 1 large adobo chipotle and add to marinade with 1 tablespoon of the sauce.

Red Chile Spice Mix – It’s easy to make a quick batch of this spice mix.  What you don’t use can be added to eggs, beans, sprinkled on top of an avocado, salads, sandwiches, and so many other choices.

Dark Beer – A dark Mexican beer, like Negro Modelo, works best.

SpicyBeefTriTipH2 Web
SpicyBeefTriTipH2 Web

What is the saddest thing you’ve ever seen?

When i was 12 years old my sister (she was 16) she began to experience abdominal pain. She never really told anyone about it except me (we were super close, like inseparable close). She thought that it was just because of her periods. As the months started to grow, so did her pain. I was freaked out so I suggested that we tell our mom but she said that she didn’t want to burden my parents (we were at a financial loss at that time).

So after about 65 days she couldn’t hold on so she decided to tell my mom. My mom got an appointment immediately and we rushed to the ER (Emergency Room). My sister was wailing in pain. The docs over there took an ultrasound scan and then an MRI and a couple of other scans, at this point my mom and I were crying that’s when they revealed that my sister had Pancreatic Cancer and that it had crossed Stage III. My mom literally fainted right there.

I was alone and scared and i had heard about cancer only in stories and books like fault in our stars. But when my sister was a victim i didn’t know how to react.

When my mom regained consciousness and calmed down, they told her that my sister was given a few painkillers and anesthesia for the time being and that we had to start with chemotherapy soon but that they were not sure that it would work. My sister did not know that she had cancer, the doc explained it to her usually merry face broke down.

They started chemo and her beautiful black locks which she was proud of slowly began to fall. She was a person of positivity so she told my mom that she wanted to EXPERIMENT her hair. She had hip length hair which she cut it to a bob then a pixie and then finally shaved her head. We both shaved our heads together.

She would never get a minute of sleep at night. On the 12th of December, it was my birthday, I ran home from school happily as my friends had given me a lot of gifts for my sister and me. My dad was there, my mom wasn’t, my sister was at the hospital, so I asked my dad to drive me to the hospital as I wanted to give the gifts to my sister.

My dad was looking really depressed but he agreed. When I reached my sisters room, she was screaming out of pain my mom was screaming for the docs. I went near my sister slowly she smiled at me even with too much pain.

Her last words to me were, “I love you, take care of tiger (our 1 year old dog) and mom and dad, it’s time for me to see grandma and grandpa in heaven”. She died at 16:07pm on my birthday. I cried for almost a month and I still cry for her every single day but not in front of my parents because I know that if I cry they will cry too. I hope she found a peaceful place! A MESSAGE TO MY SIS – I LOVE U ABBY pls come back if u can I miss you every second of my life.

One bad chapter is not the end of the book

My top 5 you shouldn’t do after the age of 65.

And my top 5 you should do.

Oh, and I’ve celebrated 70 trips around the sun.

  1. Don’t ever say, “I’m old.” Those who say it think it. And if you think it you’ll be it.
  2. Don’t say, “I can’t.” Too many people hit 65 and sort of stop living. They stop doing all the things they used to enjoy. And they stop trying new things and enjoying life.
  3. Don’t tell people about your aches and pains. We all have them. Talking about them only makes you and everyone around you feel worse.
  4. Don’t count birthdays. If you’re asked reply vaguely. If you’re not asked don’t say it. It’s only a number.
  5. Don’t complain about the weather, politics or that you don’t live in the good old days. Complaining only changes the number of people who want to hang out with you.

And my top 5 you should do.

  1. Instead of saying, “I’m old,” say, “I feel young.” Focus on feeling young and you will.
  2. Instead of saying, “I can’t” say, “I will”. Find things you love to do. Find new things to challenge you. Make life a continuing adventure.
  3. Instead of complaining about your aches and pains get outside, stretch, strengthen, move and build health. Then talk about how great you feel and you will.
  4. Instead of celebrating your birthdays celebrate the birthdays of those you love. Then you’ll look forward to many more of them.
  5. Instead of complaining help make the world a happier place. And it turns out it will be for you and all those around you.

Growing older happens to us all. Growing happier happens to only a few.

[The media published a conversation between German officers about how they plan to blow up the Crimean Bridge. What can you say about this?]

Russian Foreign Minister
Russian Foreign Minister

“I read today what was posted on social media and announced by Ms Simonyan with reference to the relevant sources.

On the one hand, this is stunning. On the other, less so.

I have said that we know for sure about NATO military participation in the guise of mercenaries or people that are not part of the armed forces of the alliance.

There are some interesting details in this conversation.

These German generals discussed ways to supply Ukraine with long-range weapons (they mentioned the TAURUS) for attacking the Crimean Bridge and ammunition depots in a more subtle way.

[He’s referring to Russia’ s intelligence service leaked a conversation between German military officers who were discussing plans to attack Russia. According to the transcript, a conversation took place on February 19, 2024 among Grafe (department head for operations and exercises at the Air Force Forces Command of the Bundeswehr), Gerhartz (Bundeswehr Air Force Inspector), Fenske and Frohstedte (employees of the Air Operations Command within the Space Operations Center of the Bundeswehr). There was a detailed discussion of using German missiles to attack targets in Russia, such as the Kerch Bridge in Crimea. You can read the full transcript here.]

How to make sure they are not noticed because German Chancellor Olaf Scholz supposedly does not like it, while the Americans and Brits are already there.

They also discussed whether it is possible to target missiles remotely without being in Ukraine. One of the generals said this would still be qualified as direct participation.

They know what they are talking about.

In one exchange, one general mentions that ‘men from the US in civilian clothes’ are there.

I don’t know how to say it but all of our NATO colleagues are guilty as hell.

We’ll have to see how they explain this to their own public.”

Answer by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to a media question during his remarks at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Antalya, Türkiye, March 1, 2024.

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation

You are 25, making 170K USD or whatever. You take a fresh excel sheet, create 35 rows, put 170K in the first row, formulate 15% (that number actually depends on the flavor of the ice cream you are licking at that moment) YOY growth, stare at the whopping figure in the 36th row and pat yourself on the back in the corner of your poorly lit bedroom. I mean, you are not even accounting for the growth in your cryptic investments that are easily going to double every third year. You save the excel sheet as lifeisset.xlsx.

Fast forward, you are 35, making 245K USD or whatever, on the verge of 6th “restructuring” in the 4th company. You don’t even want to talk about what happened to your crypto investments and the company that you bet on that was going to cure liver cancer using artificial intelligence and quantum computing. You just want to find a better job, but, don’t have the motivation to bleedcode (futuristic version of leetcode that gives you, again, AI based hints based on the poem you are typing in the code editor).

You realize software engineering is a sport for the young and the fit and the smart. The funding for all the projects was for short term. And nobody can be in the right place at the right time for too long. Alas, your honeymoon period is long over. It didn’t even last for a decade.

You finally gather the courage to replace the 9W bulb in your bedroom with 14W and rename the excel to lifeisshit.xlsx.

A real man

Here are the easiest habits that will help you destroy your life:

  1. An obsession with excess. Recently, I was in Spain. That’s where this picture was taken. This meal for me and my girlfriend was at a pretty nice restaurant and cost 215 Euros. I also drank a couple of glasses of wine at this meal. I got drunk and spent lots of money. Excess, right? But the truth is that excess and enjoyment are not bad, rather, an obsession with them is bad. It’s not bad to enjoy life, it’s bad to live in excess every day.
  2. Bad listening. Most people have conversations merely to hear themselves talk. They don’t listen to other people, they don’t care about other people, and all their actions are acts of self-preservation. Be vulnerable enough to shut the hell up and listen. It will do you good.
  3. Inability to enjoy what you have. If you can’t be happy with a nice cup of coffee with a loved one, you probably won’t be happy with a mansion, a bunch of drugs, and a Ferrari. Enjoyment comes from mindfulness and presence. Noticing a theme here?
  4. Using people. If you have relationships out of convenience or if you take advantage of people who consider you “a friend”, when they figure out what you’re doing, they’ll just remove you from their life. You’ll end up alone and people will think you’re an asshole. Never use people — just exist WITH them.
  5. Zero discipline. Everything you want in life comes from doing difficult things for way longer than you think you need to do them. Writing every day not just for a week, month, or year, but several years. Hitting the gym every week for the rest of your life. Discipline is the foundation of all constructive action.

Not myself, but a good family friend.

A few years ago she and her father, then in his early 80”s, took a vacation to visit France.

Now I must explain that her dad is one of the quietest, most patient men I’ve ever met…a man of few words, never seen him lose his temper, as level as they go.

So they fly from Ohio to New York to Paris and end up, of course, at immigration and customs. They’ve flown all night, he’s 82, and more than a bit jet lagged. The young French customs official is quite impatient as he struggles to locate his paperwork (passport, etc) in his backpack.

“Sir”, the agent says in the most snobbish, condescending voice, “you have been to France before?”.

He acknowledges that, yes, he’s been to France before as he continues to search for his documents.

“Then you should KNOW to have your paperwork at the READY!” the official snaps.

After a few more moments, her dad finally locates his paperwork. As he handed them over, he calmly states, in a voice just loud enough to carry across the entire area:

“My apologies. The last I landed here was at Normandy in 1944, and back then I couldn’t find a Frenchmen to show my passport to.”

The young official turned beet red, hastily processed the paperwork without even really looking at it, and they were on their way…including, yes, a last visit to the D-Day landing beach before he passed this Earth.

Learn the Moonwalk

Almost 40 years ago I went to my final interview for a place in the Executive Development Program at Major League Baseball.

America was different in those days. Feminism was pushing down barriers that had stood for a long time, and professional women were asserting themselves in unprecedented ways. My own presence in the final group of 8 candidates was probably additional evidence of that shift.

But MLB was a little behind the curve. One of the big “issues” they were facing in the late 1970s was whether or not to allow accredited female journalists into the team clubhouses immediately after the games ended, so they could conduct interviews and file their stories for the next day. A female reporter for Sports Illustrated, Melissa Ludtke, had sued MLB for equal access.

I walked into the conference room where four senior MLB executives stood ready to greet and question me. Two of them, I confess, I knew little about at the time, but two of them were famous, legendary baseball executives, godlike to me. I shook hands with them all and made a point of NOT taking the seat at the end of the conference table. Instead I sat at the end of one of the long sides of the table. They arranged themselves around the other end.

We had a very pleasant and lively conversation, as I recall, although of course I had no idea what they were looking for. And then they asked me, If it were up to you, what policy would you establish for female journalists’ access to the clubhouses after the games?

I took a deep breath. I had no idea what they wanted to hear but I also knew there was only one thing I could honestly say. So I said it.

“I have to tell you that I really don’t see what the big deal is.”

I took another breath. They were all looking at me intently.

“I mean, we’re talking about accredited journalists, right? So they have deadlines, just like the male journalists do.”

A couple of faint nods.

“But the players are entitled to some privacy too. So I think you need to close the clubhouses completely for a short period after the game ends, maybe ten minutes, just to give the players time to take a shower and put some pants on, but then, after the privacy period is over, I think you have to just open up the clubhouse to anybody who has the right press credentials, let them ask their questions, get their quotes, whatever they need to do, on an equal footing.”

They all nodded.

None of them seemed angry or outraged, so I figured maybe I had not damaged my chances too badly. Somehow I doubt they asked the male applicants the same question, but I’ll never know.

And I got the job. So there’s that.

CIA Spy : “I Don’t Want To Live In The USA When THIS Happens 2030…” | Andrew Bustamante

The frozen feet of fashion

 

I was terrorised as a child by the older kids in my neighbourhood. We were poor but I was quite popular with other kids my age. For some reason this made me a target with the popular older kids. They would take great pleasure in chasing me and if they caught me they would beat me to a pulp. It was the 80s and this kind of thing was just accepted.

Fast forward 10 years. I’ve done an apprenticeship as a scaffolder, put on a lot of weight. Bulked so much I’ve earned the name Tank at work. I bump into the ring leader of the older kids in a night club.

I get we were kids when the bullying happened and think that as he’s now grown up he’s probably grown up. As I pass him I smile and say “Alright, mate?” He replies with “Don’t fucking speak to me”. This stops me in my tracks. I look him dead in the eye. The club feels like it’s gone silent as I contemplate knocking his head clean off of his shoulders. I said to him:

“Listen Julian, we’re not 10 any more and this isn’t the estate, now, turn back around and walk out of here before you get hurt.”

He froze. There was a look of sheer confusion on his face. He turned on his heels and walked out the door without another word.

He avoided me after that night.

This is REAL

Who do you miss the most in life?

The simple answer: Me. On September 3, 2012, when I was 35, I had the first of 4 sudden cardiac arrests and clinically died. I was anoxic, or without breath for somewhere under 10 minutes. I was diagnosed with a heart condition called Brugada Syndrome, which is a gene mutation that largely goes undiagnosed because the first symptom is death. In that time, I suffered mild traumatic brain injury or tbi. Before that I was a lively, smart woman, mom, fluent Spanish speaker with a great job of 6 years. After I came home, I couldn’t recall that thing the kids played with in the backyard. I just pointed and cried. Their swingset. My doctors couldn’t agree on when, or if I should return to work. Subsequently I was terminated as was denied short term disability because their physicians didn’t agree with mine and my time off wasn’t covered. I had never been fired before, and it’s never gotten easier since. I’ve been fired 4 times. I have worked at Walmart, and as a receptionist at a small nursing home. My doctors told me to try Disability(SSDI). I tried and was denied, saying I was too young and able to be a mail sorter. I kid you not. I struggle. Then 5 ‘events’ with my ICD(internal defibrillators) and 2 unsuccessful cardiac ablations left me with anxiety, panic attacks and PTSD. I have lost so much of my memory, including most of my Spanish skills, my confidence, my ability to learn new things much less recall previous things. My short term memory is appalling and I reach for words often. 3 weeks ago I was let go from yet another job, despite telling them of my ADA status. At least I got excellent counseling which all but erased the mental anguish.

So yes, I miss the person who I was.

I can relate to this

Chicken and Vegetable Stew (Saucochi di Gallinja)

2024 02 18 09 50
2024 02 18 09 50

Yield: 8 or 9 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (2 1/2 to 3 pound) broiler-fryer chicken, cut up
  • 6 cups water
  • 2 tablespoons instant beef bouillon
  • 2 medium tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 medium onions, chopped
  • 2 medium potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch slices
  • 2 medium sweet potatoes or yams, cut into 1/2 inch slices
  • 3 ears sweet corn, cut into 3 pieces
  • 1/4 pound winter squash, pared and cut into 1/2 inch pieces (1 cup)
  • 1/2 cup fresh or frozen green peas
  • 1 small hot chile pepper, stemmed, seeded and sliced
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • Chopped chives

Instructions

  1. Heat chicken, water and bouillon to boiling in Dutch oven; reduce heat. Cover and simmer 30 minutes.
  2. Skim off fat. Add remaining ingredients except chives. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until thickest pieces of chicken are done and vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.
  3. Garnish each serving with chives.

 

What China Just Did Changes The Entire Space Industry And America Is Terrified!

Can Mexican taxes and wages compete against Chinese labor in the manufacture of Chinese cars?

Once again as a racist you cannot see beyond wages. As a spremacist you miss the point all together about the education, the trainings , the willingness to learn, the feebleness, the ability to adapt and change, the characteristics of Chinese language that is superior in retaining knowledge and the unique discipline, and hard work of the Chinese workers and a whole host of the Confucian and Taoist edicts that groomed a Chinese worker from birth that so much affect the immense productivity and efficiency of Chinese workers.

So white Caucasians analyst are simply unaware of these characteristics and they think simply and blindly thinks that Chinese makes things cheaper because of wages and government support and taxes means absolutely nothing compared to a perfectly well trained and highly disciplined worker.

 

You’re welcome

What’s the most “small town” thing you’ve witnessed?

My first job as a Town Manager in the early 80’s was in a small town in Kentucky along the Mississippi River. Some interesting tid-bits….

The Chief of Police was driving me around my first week there. We were in a residential area and he stopped and opened his door. He got out his shotgun and shot a dog in the street. He got back in the car, called Public Works and told them to pick up the dead dog on Maple Street. When I asked him why he shot the dog he said it didn’t have a dog tag.

Town Hall was located in downtown. I’m working in my office on the second floor and when I hear a gun shot blast. I looked out the window and there’s a half dozen people waking down the middle of the street with shotguns. I called the police dispatcher and said there’s people with shotguns walking downtown and shooting, please let the Chief know. The dispatcher said “yeah, it’s pigeon day. All the duck hunters get together and shoot the pigeons. It’s a warm up to duck season which starts this weekend. I believe the Chief is with them.”

The local doctor died a few months before I got there. He had been the only doctor in town for 30+ years. He willed his medical office building to the Town. One of my jobs would be to modernize the office and find a new doctor. When I went in the office to see what needed to be done I noted he had two waiting rooms. I assumed that was “well” patients and “sick” patients. It wasn’t. It was blacks and whites.

The nearest TV stations was Memphis and Cape Girardeau, Missouri. They were too far away for ‘over the air’ reception so people in town didn’t own television sets. I called a cable company and had them built a cable system in town.

We operated the local utilities, which included water, sewer and natural gas. We had a separate building for the electric system. Two women worked inside the office and a crew of men did the outside electric work. One of the women went to Disney World on vacation. While she was gone the other woman had an emergency operation. This was the first time both had been gone at the same time in years. I called my wife and asked her to cover for them until one or the other got back. My wife was a CPA and home along (without TV) with our toddler son. She jumped at the chance to do something. She opened the office and before lunch she called and told me the woman were taking cash out of the cash drawer and covering the missing money with their own personal checks, which they never deposited. More than $3,000. I told her to deposit their checks. I hired an auditor to come investigate, had the locks on the doors changed, filed a police report and informed the Mayor & Council. I fired the women. The checks bounced. The Town Council told me to not press charges against the women. The women filed for unemployment, which I appealed and won.

There was a giant flood wall to keep the river from flooding downtown. We had a number of large pump stations to pump water over the dikes and flood wall. Beavers was the bane of the town. There was a “bounty” on beaver ears and there was a local guy who bought beaver fur.

The volunteer Fire Chief invited me to a monthly last Friday cookout which I accepted of course. As it turns out that was men only, no wives. Just as well, my wife would never had eaten the beaver stew.

I was the Town Manager for 365 days and took a job in Tennessee in a very interesting town.

This is why men don’t want to date anymore

 

 

What implications do you see in the survey results showing a decrease in support for independence “as soon as possible” in Taiwan?

image 17
image 17

The Ukraine War taught the Taiwanese a lesson. The so-called protection of Taiwan by the West is to make Taiwan the battlefield and let the Taiwanese suffer the consequences of the war. Taiwan is part of China at present International laws so China has sovereignty over Taiwan. China has an Anti-Seperation Law. if Taiwan pushes for independence, it will get into war. Now they understand the so-called Western protection for them is a trap. Their youths will die. Their seniors and children will become refugees that already saturated the developed countries so that they may have no place to escape the war.

The West will supply weapons to Taiwan to fight till the last Taiwanese, just as now Ukraine has to fight the last Ukrainians.

Ukraine War is evident. The US wants Taiwan to claim independence as soon as possible. So the US makes a big arms sale to Taiwan, giving them the false perception of “safe”. The US needs the Ukraine War to weaken Russia. The US wants to weaken China more than Russia. So the US wants Taiwan to provoke a proxy war for the US.

The US is a very smart businessman. If the US wages war on China, the US soldiers will die and the US has to commit many resources such as arsenals. Now it can let the Taiwanese replace the US soldiers in the war, and Taiwan even has to purchase the weapons, to fight the war for the US geopolitical objective. The US wants to fight a war against China without cost a penny and a single soldier. The US wants a war it can profit from while Taiwan bears all the costs, including lives and weapons. The US already profited from the perception of war because it made a big sale of weapons to Taiwan.

Do you prefer a peaceful life? or a wartime life?

I understand

What do you think of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s theory of “If you’re not at the table in the international system, you’re going to be on the menu”?

image 262
image 262

You see this face and you don’t really get awed by these warnings

Your first thought is STUPID MORON

This guy doesn’t have the ability to put that voice of steel that some US Leaders had in the past

It’s why everybody has openly mocked him, from MBS blatantly ignoring him for 24 hours to Jordan openly telling him to go f*** himself to Qatar to Iraq all snubbing him including our EAM Jaishankar

image 261
image 261

Someone like James Baker would be different

His voice would have that steel warning

You would think twice before acting against the man

Not Blinken

Not Biden

Not Austin

Not Sunak

Not Ursula

These are Circus Clowns and if they warn, you can laugh and ignore them safely

You never know

What are some subtle differences between high-end restaurants and those just pretending?

What comes to mind as I move through a dining experience?

  • When you arrive, you’re greeted by a doorman, who opens the car door, ladies first. If it’s raining, they escort you to the door under a large umbrella.
  • The door is opened for you, and the host(s) say hello immediately rather than looking down at a floor chart. Maybe greeting you by name.
  • There is either someplace to check your coat, or the host helps you off with yours and checks it for you. The host would return it to you when you’re ready to go.
  • The music is subtle, whatever kind it is.
  • Lighting is appropriate. There are fresh flowers and in the evenings, candlelight (with real candles). People look better in candlelight, and a lady feeling pretty creates another luxurious atmosphere.
  • If, God forbid, your table wasn’t ready you’re escorted to the bar for a cocktail. There are no buzzing pagers (nor inappropriate jokes about stuffing it down their pants), no name screaming when your table was finally ready. The host carries the drinks for you to your table. If more than two, the ladies’ drinks are carried. Checks are seamlessly transferred from the bar to the table. You TIP the bartender very subtly.
  • Chairs are pulled out for you, ladies first. When all are seated, then the menus are handed out.
  • Menus might be printed daily, but there is no stickiness, crumbs, or fingerprints on menus that are reused. No pictures on the menu, nor vendor logos. Probably no prices. They probably don’t offer wings.
  • There are utensils for each basic course. The waiter (and they’re waiters, not servers) replaces silverware with each course if the meal choices require a different utensil, usually with a mise en place. Proper underliners are used under soup or dessert bowls, ramekins come on a plate, too. (Ben Maurer) Crumbers are used. There are chargers.
  • No water spots on the silver or glassware. Or windows!
    (Leroy Binx) God forbid, no crumbs on the floor or seats.
  • Having someone walk you to the restroom rather than pointing across the room.
  • There isn’t a “no problem” to be heard.
  • There is no He or She when addressing someone about someone else. For example, not “She ordered the salmon” but rather “The lady ordered the salmon”. The word “food” is a 4-letter “f” word. (So is “free” and “fair”) It’s “your meal”, “your dinner”, etc. Not “your food”. One doesn’t eat, one dines. You’re not eating with us tonight, you’re dining with us tonight. (Sorry – I don’t know the answer to the pronoun issues people are having these days.)
  • Water glasses are never low, and you didn’t have to ask for water in the first place. Water is poured after you’re seated, without a drop being spilled on the tablecloth. Although, the waiter might still ask you if you prefer sparkling or still bottled water.
  • The meal looks beautiful, i.e. no broccoli stems pointing up. (People eat with their eyes) No finger prints on the plates. Protein (main course) is always served at 6:00 on the plate. Ladies first. Period. Meal delivery as well: “And the lady ordered the salmon” as the dish is placed in front of her, coming in from the left. Plates are not handed to the guests. Served from the left, removed from the right. Sometimes, every person is served at the very same time by a group of waiters. It’s called a “drop” (A group of waiters? A “gaggle”? Just kidding!)
  • Black or white napkins, which, if you get up are refolded neatly on your chair.
  • Every time a table is bussed, which is immediately, it looks like it’s never been seated before. Condiments (salt & pepper) full and clean, perfectly placed. Freshly ground pepper is always offered, along with grated cheese where appropriate. The latter either freshly grated into a bowl, served by spoon (rare) or by a little grinder that is silver, not plastic. No one says, “Say when”. Holding up your hand a little, palm down says it all.
  • No catsup or mustard bottles in sight. Ever. (Andre Serafin and Kristin A) Mustard, catsup, mayonnaise, and horseradish are served in ramekins or tiny bowls with small spoons. They probably don’t have steak sauce, although accommodating a guest is paramount, so these days it will probably come in a ramekin, too.

    Edited 12/10/19 to add: I’ve often enjoyed and taken for granted the service of a Sommelier, whose job it is to create wine lists, pair wine, and make recommendations of wine on or off the written wine list. What I didn’t know, was the rigorous training and testing it takes to become a Sommelier! There are only a few over 200 in the world, so they are a Big Deal.
    That said, I’ve never known if the Sommelier just came to our table because we were looking at wine, or if their expertise needed to be requested. A glaring hole in my experience, I must say. Any thoughts or “subtle differences” to contribute?
  • A red wine glass for red, a white wine glass for white. Red wine is never oxidized. When a bottle of wine is served, it’s (Steven Michael) decanted or chilled appropriately. The restaurant doesn’t even ask, and they know what and when wine should be decanted. The wine tasting is handled with grace and silence, in the appropriate order. The cork should be placed next to the host (Liam MacDonald) so the host can make certain the cork is moist and there aren’t any telltale signs the wine has turned. If the table isn’t already set with glasses for that wine selection, the appropriate glasses are set once the wine is approved. (Rachel Bateman) The invisible waiter tops off the wine. The guest never touches the bottle.
  • The port doesn’t have pour spouts in them, nor does good scotch or whiskey. White Zinfandel isn’t a featured wine type. There’s a good chance there is no happy hour.
  • There are no dirty aprons nor shirts on the waiters. No shabby shoes. No crazy hair styles, piercings or tattoos. (Sorry all. That’s life.)
  • When its a mixed gender couple or table, males’ plates are never removed until the females are finished dining.
  • Dessert menus are handed out without asking, coffee, tea, espresso or an after dinner brandy or port is always offered.
  • There are no bus tubs, no stacks of dishes through the dining room, and empty plates are removed IMMEDIATELY directly to the kitchen. Oh. Plates are removed to the kitchen to be boxed. A guest is never, ever, handed a box with a cheery, “Here you go!” The package is always in a nice bag.

    There is some controversy in the comments over leftovers. Since I am writing this, I’ll say my own feelings agree with Tim Chisell and Umair about waste, portion control and not being served troughs of food, so there really shouldn’t be leftovers. People do take food home (have you never seen a little tin foil swan?) so I added what a restaurant would not do: hand you a big box.
  • When you get your leftovers home, the contents look like a beautiful meal. After all, those are the very last impression of you as a waiter and the restaurant.
  • The check. Reminded to me by my mother. One signs on one’s account. If one must handle a form of payment, it’s normally a card, very subtly put into a check presenter. Not stuck out the top for all to view.

Believe it or not, it’s not just bread or rolls before a meal. It’s not valet parking, or sorbet between courses. Those would be obvious attempts, but if other items such as those which come to mind for me aren’t present, it’s nice, but maybe — not always — a wannabe. It could just be a nicer restaurant not trying to be more than a comfortable, more upscale place to dine. But high-end? Add in details such as these and it will elevate a restaurant.

So there are a lot more obvious indicators, but what really makes or breaks the difference is quality of the food, the service and presentation. Anticipation of the guest’s needs. Sauces, condiments, appropriate suggestions that might enhance the meal for some, but not for others — just to be sure. The appreciation of the guest.

Edited to add: I’ve received so much fun feedback to this answer, I thought I’d incorporate suggestions from commenters. Quora is acting funny (maybe) and not letting me see all the comments, but I’ll be adding them in. Thank you!

And, now I read that I, or this answer, is the highest read in the restaurant category. Interesting to me that something I began almost wistfully others have enjoyed. So thank you and thanks for participating!

The Benefits of Having a Maid

 

If 75 percent of Americans struggle to make ends meet, why is everyone driving financed 30-50k cars instead of a $5k 2000s Corolla/Camry that’s probably more reliable?

If I could change one thing about American schooling — mostly at the high school and college level — I would make it mandatory to teach financial literacy. And I don’t mean basic stuff like how to write a check — that was what passed for “financial literacy” when I was in high school in the 1980s.

I mean we turn out college and high school graduates who have never learned about things like credit scores, how loans work, how taxes work, the value of retirement accounts, how the stock market really works, etc.

My two kids are ages 25 and 23, and anything they know on those subjects, they mostly learned from my wife and me. For the most part, we don’t teach kids how to stay out of financial trouble.

So we have full-grown adults walking into a car dealership, and the salesman steers the question to, “How much car payment can you afford?” The salesman is hoping that the customer is financially illiterate and doesn’t understand what a terrible question that is — for the customer. The salesman will hear that you can afford $600 per month and come back with, “Hmm, we can work with that.” The customer ends up leaving in their $40,000 car, pleased as punch that they can actually afford it, and they think the salesman did them a favor. Maybe down the road they figure out that they’re paying 12% interest on an 84 month car loan, and that they only got half of what their trade-in should have been worth.

Same thing happens on the mortgage front, by the way. Some loan officer runs a preapproval on a young couple and tells them they can afford a $300,000 house. I guarantee you that the couple zooms in on that price point. If they slowed down and asked, they might find out that they can qualify for a $225,000 house with a 15 year mortgage at a substantially lower interest rate, meaning that they build equity faster, pay less in interest, and should they choose to do so, own the house free and clear after 15 years, as opposed to still owing 15 more years of payments if they’d taken the 30 year mortgage. And all they had to do was ask, and reset their expectation to a slightly less expensive house.

So in summary, why are people struggling and over-spending? Because they’re financially illiterate, and we as a society don’t seem to think that’s a problem.

Truths About Women That Most Men Learn Too Late

Have you ever called in sick but you were convinced or threatened by your superiors to come to work? Did it end well for you?

The only time it really happened was when I sprained my ankle.

I was working in retail management and we had inventory coming up on a Sunday.

Friday I sprained my ankle bad. But because of how US healthcare is, I tried to put off having it seen by a doctor because, ugh horrible health insurance and bills. But that Saturday, since I could barely walk, I saw a doctor. And after x-rays to confirm it wasn’t actually broken, given an air-cast boot and doctor’s note for my employer with work restrictions.

I was scheduled that Sunday for inventory plus 2 hours in the store prior to closing. I showed up, air-cast and all, to try to explain that I didn’t think I’d be able to work the inventory. I mean, seems obvious right? Air-cast, doctor’s note, work restrictions, etc.?

The other store management had zero issue with me not working the inventory, they understood I was actually injured and not faking it. They also knew how rarely I called in.

Not to my district manager. Who threatened me with termination. 4 years of work, almost never calling in sick, working every Helliday shit shift, and because I was only one of 5 members of management there that day who was actually injured, I could be fired.

So, malicious compliance it is.

My work restrictions were very detailed and explicit. No climbing, no squatting, no standing for more than 15 minutes at a time, must elevate my ankle every 30 minutes, must be allowed to sit for any tasks that don’t need to be done standing, etc. I also, per company policy, faxed (yes, that long ago) copies of my doctor’s note, etc. to the HR office with a follow-up email.

And I followed the work restrictions to the letter for the whole shift. Despite the fact they had external inventory counters, it still took longer than scheduled, which meant, by law, every member of the store management staff other than the district manager(salary position) had to be paid overtime, since it put us all over 40 hours for the week.

On Monday, the district manager got chewed out by HR and his boss, the area manager.

For having so much overtime (for 5 people, about 2 hours each), for ignoring my doctor’s note, for not excusing me from inventory, for erroneously threatening me with termination (my email mentioned I understood termination of my employment was a possibility due to my injury), and a few other things.

I received 2 days off with pay, apologies from the area manager, HR and the district manager (begrudgingly from him), and wasn’t written up.

And while the district manager bore a grudge against me for his ass chewing, he was also incredibly hesitant to pull any similar stunts against me. It took him about 8 months to do so, and when he did, I left the company, after explaining why to HR, the area and regional manager.

My quitting also left not one, but 2 stores short staffed as he had expected me to cover another store’s shifts after writing me up, denying me a transfer promotion, and rescinding pre-approved vacation time off.

His actions also led to another ass chewing by his superiors after I left. And two of the top performing employees to quit shortly after.

Brett Cooper Reacts to Passport Bros

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/itGj4nNlF24?feature=share

 

What was the most haunting thing you have seen as a police officer?

I’ve been to more suicides and sudden deaths than I can remember, but one has always stood out. It was a lady who had hanged herself. It wasn’t particularly gruesome, she was discovered very quickly, and she had obviously done her homework as it appeared to have been effective and quick. The reason it was so memorable was because of WHERE she did it…

As I say, she had done her homework, and had made a proper noose which she had firmly secured to the rafters in the attic of her home. She had stepped through the attic hatch, which had the effect of acting as a ‘gallows drop’. The hatch to the attic was situated at the top of a flight of stairs, so for us as the attending officers the only way to get to her was to walk up the (fairly narrow and dark) stairs to the top where she was effectively ‘standing’ over us, where we had to gently move her to one side in order to get onto the landing. The power to the dwelling was cut, so the only light available to us was via a bedroom window which was situated directly behind her with the door open, such that she was silhouetted to us, and seemingly looking down with glazed eyes.

I’ve been to deaths over the years which were far more gruesome, but there was something psychologically unnerving on a primeval level about having to climb your way up restricted access to a deceased person who is ‘stood’ in a dominant position over you.

Rationally, the apprehension was purely down to perception. Nonetheless, everyone there physically relaxed once we were able to cut her down and rest her on the ground.

This is why

What is the most humane gesture you have ever encountered?

One of my juniors in college was a very chirpy girl. She was an only child. A helpful and polite soul, she was liked by nearly all the students and faculty members.

Her home was situated across our college. We used to often drop by her place while heading back home.

One day, we reached college and were greeted with a heart-wrenching news. Our beloved junior had expired. She was lighting a stove while her parents were out. The stove burst and she met a tragic untimely end. No words can describe the sadness that permeated all our lives. It was difficult to accept that someone so dear was suddenly snatched away from us.

We went to her place to meet uncle and aunty and offer our condolences. They sat silently. Absolutely silent and lost. Their vacant eyes told a story that was gut-wrenching.

The couple had lost the joy of their lives. Their only offspring was gone. While she could never be brought back, our college girls tried to make an effort to mitigate the pain.

From the time she was put to rest, not a single day passed when uncle and aunty were left alone. Every day, some girls used to go over to their place and spend time with the couple. We had even decided on the schedule so as to ensure that we did not miss out on any day.

We used to talk to them, take them out sometimes, run errands for them, regale them with our antics in college and generally try to be there for them.

The process was slow. But eventually uncle and aunty were able to come to terms with their loss and move on with their lives. Their smiles and blessings said it all.

A majority of students came together to show the couple that they were not alone… that they had daughters, just not born in their family. This collective effort was one of the most humane, compassionate and loving gestures I’ve ever witnessed.

“NO WAY” Videos That Are Glitching The Entire Internet Out

Terrifying. This Changes EVERYTHING. MY REACTION to What They’re Planning.

He is correct.

https://youtu.be/dvnrhkQc1po

What is the most horrifying noise you have ever heard?

The sound still haunts me. I still think of it, and it happened in 1987 and here we are in 2024 and the sound of that night will be with me until the Lord calls me home.

There I will probably meet the 18-year-old senior in high school who didn’t wear his seatbelt as the car rolled over end to end 11 times after exiting the roadway. He was a back seat passenger with no seatbelt and that resulted in his high-speed ejection thru the rear window. He laid in a field and his body appeared pristine, even though his skull was fractured which killed him instantly. I was the patrolman who responded to handle the accident scene.

The noise was his mother’s scream at 1:17AM in the morning as I stood on the porch after giving her the death notification.

It was primal, it was guttural, and it is forever.

It will never leave my mind or my soul. I will think of that kid forever.

Do you think that this is America?

Uh oh! The bitch slap of reality.

What psychological stuff you should know?

  1. Girls are more attached to their parents emotionally.
  2. Girls who talk less are more romantic and loyal to any kind of relationships .
  3. Girls who talks more are over friendly and confused in their relationships .
  4. If a girl sends you first, good morning messages then more likely she likes you and want you to be her friend .
  5. If a boy continuously calls in every two, three hours then the girl gets irritated. This is the main reason of break ups.
  6. All girls don’t love flowers. Before giving flowers think twice .
  7. Do not gift too early in your relationships. You will lose your dignity. Most of the girls find it awkward.
  8. Girls like boys who visit their house confidently and pass some time with her family.
  9. Girls prefer friendship before any serious relationships. Most girl friends become very good wives except for few.
  10. Girls are experts in reading eyes and body gestures. A decent girl will never fall prey.
  11. Some girls deliberately flirts with boys to get popularity in their friend circle. You can make out from their dressing sense. If you are also a flirty then enjoy.
  12. Girls like the boys who likes to share the money during a date or in group party. They love gifting more than receiving .
  13. Girls mostly respect the boys who help in studies and clearing the doubts. They remain genuine as friends all the time.
  14. Girl can never go to restaurant or cinema hall alone with you if she is not in love with you. If you are flirting, take a note.
  15. Girls like if you talk straight looking into the eyes. If you are really interested, you can try this. If you can talk straight looking into her for five minutes then you are in love .
  16. Girls love to be praised in front of others not in one corner. This shows your lack of confidence. There is nothing wrong in praising in public.
  17. Girls love to be pampered. This is the main reason they get cheated. They trust easily.
  18. Girls like to be independent. They don’t like questioning and blaming always.
  19. Girls don’t love easily and once they love they can go to any extent to own their love. Note this
  20. If a girl easily accepts your expensive gifts then, think twice before dating her .
  21. Girls can sustain unbearable pain emotionally as well as physically. Mother Earth 🙂

 

I compared Moscow to New York, and indeed, Moscow is nicer, which confirms Tucker Carlson’s claim

Is it surprising that China’s trade with major partners fell in 2023, given the global economic slowdown?

In your dream it is!

China’s trade with the rest of the world increased and improves substantially contrary to your intentional doubt casting. Fact is UK declined by 3.0% GDP Germany too had a negative growth and the uS has barely any real growth! Needless to say China’s trade with them deteriorated significantly in 2023!

Please stop fooling your own people. The problem is that the war which the U.S. and UK and NATO stupidly and barbarically goaded Russia into and highly provoked boomerang back at them hard and is now destroying the western economy. Stop fooling your people it is not hurting you. It is. And in a very big way.

Harry Potter but in Ancient Rome!

What did your kid do that you had to punish them for, but couldn’t help but laugh at later?

My daughter was around the age of ten and I had given her a box of lolly pops that whistled. I had purchased them in a bulk buy but none of my children liked the flavour. So I sent my daughter to school to share them with the other students. Some time after lunch I got a call from the headmaster to come to the school, as she was in trouble and was being sent home as punishment. He did not go into details over the phone and I was left completely shocked as she was a straight A student and had never been in trouble before.

I arrive at the principal’s office and was seated next to my daughter when he pulled out a plastic bag full of coins and placed it on the desk. He went on to tell me that she had stood outside of the canteen line of students, during lunch hour spruiking “lolly pops for sale only fifty cents”. She had managed to sell every lolly pop I had sent her to school with. The canteen staff complained that they had a contract and that they had lost sales due to her lolly pop sales, so the principal had no other option but to confiscate the money and call me in to address the issue. My daughter sat next to me with tears streaming down her face.

After we discussed why she had that many lolly pops and what was said to her in the morning before she left for school, he realised that this was not something that her parents or any adult had encouraged her to do. He went on to say “ I cannot punish a child that shows entrepreneurial skills that someday could lead to great things”. He applauded her efforts and explained what a contract with the canteen owner meant and why she could not do this again. He handed over the bag of money to her and we happily left his office.

She gleamed all the way home. She not only had lots of cash but she had been given the afternoon off school. I thanked that principal for his honesty and for not punishing her unnecessarily.

What is the biggest scam an auto mechanic ever tried on you?

Not sure it was a “scam” or just incompetence.

Had a slow refrigerant leak in my WRX. I actually heard it hiss slightly at the compressor while topping it off once, so I knew where at least one leak was. Took it to the dealer for a timing belt and asked them to look at the AC. I picked up the car and they said they couldn’t find the leak where I showed them it was, but that I needed a new condenser, the AC tech could smell the refrigerant in the cabin of my car. $3200 to fix.

Said no thanks, I’ll keep topping it off.

Got into the car and it did have an odd odor, which I attributed to it sitting near the body shop. I was smelling lacquer thinner.

A few months later, I was in Advanced and the kid working the the counter had a same year STI, so we were BS’ing about what we liked and disliked about the cars and I mentioned the AC experience. He walked over to the AC isle and handed me a package of assorted green O-rings. He said he had the same issue and to try one of these where I heard the leak.

Next day, I popped the line off, replaced the O-ring, charged the system and once I got the pressure right, I was good to go. $4.95 plus $19.95 for a bottle of refrigerant.

Many of you will say that I should have evacuated the system and you’re right, but I didn’t have a vacuum pump. This was as much a test as anything. Still driving the car 8 years and easily 100k miles later and I haven’t touched the AC since that day. In fact, the compressor clutch is on it’s last legs, but at 282k miles, the entire car is feeling it’s age. Saved $3175, too.

New factory Subaru condenser: ~$280 online
Amateur labor estimated: 4 hours (estimated $400 shop labor cost, no way they would take as long as me to replace)
Other supplies: $30

They were looking at making ~$2500 profit and still not fix my problem. I am fighting the urge to name them, especially since I had a run in with their service manager the next (and final) time I was there. In for an airbag recall and he’s trying to replace my power steering pump for $600+.

Never be afraid to walk away and get another opinion if you can.

Breaking Bad but in Berlin

I’m the latest target of the office bully. She won’t leave me alone. I’ve ignored her for 2 yrs, but she goes to HR with complaints. HR has told me if there is one more incident, we’ll both be fired. Am I sunk?

I had a friend of mine who had this happen. He did not take it sitting down. He was rather excitable.

The women who made the allegation was one of the most narcissistic people I had ever seen.

when HR went to him with the allegations of sexual harassment he, went ballistic on the HR PERSON. This is what I was told.

He said that he told the HR PERSON, the woman accusing him was a lesbian, shinny, ugly, had scabs all over her body, had a personality of a stone fence post. Nothing he would be interested in.

in a later meeting with the HR Person, he threatened to sue the company for false reporting. His theory was the office was so busy there was someone around the both of them all the time, there was no time for a possible sexual assault of the nature she was claiming to happen. and he will sue the person making the allegations also

He said his coworkers will back him up in this.

that was the last time I heard of that allegation.

Personally if I was this person being hassled by this woman I would drag her into the HR OFFICE,

say, “you have a reputation of doing this with other people. I have tried to avoid you for two years, and have lots of people to support my claims. I Want this settled right here and now.
i will not live with hanging over my head.

I will fight back, this is my reputation and my livelihood you are messing with, and I have had enough.

I would say if you meet here head on in front of her and the HR PEOPLE THAT THIS WILL STOP.

if it doesn’t I suggest you contact a good lawyer.

just make sure you have not done what she is saying .

This is something I’ve pondered a lot since my early 20s, when it became obvious to everyone that my sister and I had gone down two totally different paths in life.

She was a high school dropout, mother at 16, drug addict who couldn’t hold a job and was either living with an abusive boyfriend or with our parents. She never really made it on her own. But she was nice. Always nice to everyone.

I was in advanced classes in high school, went to a university several states away, and was doing very well there. I’d also had a part-time job since I was 16, and a full-time job since I was 19.

I think our appearances had a lot to do with our different life paths. She was a gorgeous blonde bombshell in our small Southern hometown. Boys were constantly trying to date her/get her drunk/give her drugs.

I was the fat kid in school. No girlfriends. No parties. I didn’t mind working after school and on the weekends, because it’s not like I had anything better to do. Doing homework and studying isn’t hard when it doesn’t get in the way of your nonexistent social life.

Eventually, I lost a lot of weight in college (put it back on after getting married, now trying weight loss round two), gained enough confidence to ask out a woman I liked, and dated her for five years before marrying her. Now, in my late 30s, I have a happy marriage, three happy and healthy kids, a career I love, a house, a minivan, etc…

My sister got married two or three times, I honestly don’t know. She continued doing drugs and “shacking up” with abusive guys throughout her 20s and early 30s. She eventually died of a drug overdose at age 34.

That’s why a part of me pities the really beautiful young women… constant attention from guys when you’re trying to build your life can be a major distraction and help push you down a bad path in life.

So, how has my appearance affected my life? It kept me out of trouble and helped make me the very happy adult I am today.

Disney May FINALLY Be Listening

How do I deal with rude flight attendants?

Last time I flew in an airline -I won’t name,the flight attendant forgot to get me my meal. By the time the trolley reached me, the non-vegetarian meal rack was empty. I was told that they will get me the meal in 5 minutes, I told them even if it’s a vegetarian meal it’s fine. It wasn’t really an issue for me as I don’t like troubling them but they insisted that they have more fish packs and they will get me one.

My wait was for half an hour, with them avoiding me,avoiding my call and not even looking at me. They didn’t even get me water. I got pissed. I literally raised my voice the next time with an “Excuse me, are you deaf?” and the flight attendant was like, “yes,mam can I get you something?” and my soft reply was,”YES! Your complaint book and it should not take half an hour, I want it right now.”

That led to some prompt working and them apologizing for some 15 times in next 15 minutes, they offered me meals (which I refused) and goodies (I refused them as well) and as I didn’t accept their peace offering or apology, in the end, after our landing the ground staff met me and after another series of apologies they refunded a portion of my ticket with vouchers.

It’s not about the food,it’s about their non-caring attitude. I have paid for that seat and that meal with hard earned money. If one form of meal is not there, I understand it’s not their fault but if they refuse to get me any meal then I can get nasty as well.

So, asking for the complaint book work wonders, do it the next time they harass you.

PS I am not proud of what I did but it was needed.

 

As a doctor or nurse, did you ever have a scary gut feeling about a patient that turned out to be true?

I was administering the Anesthesia for a Neurosurgeon friend. He was removing a Cervical spinal cord tumor of a woman in her late 40’s. She was prone (on her stomach) on the table. He had just spent nearly 45 mins denuding the Cervical Lamina (flat bone on each vertebrae that protects the Spinal Cord by creating a bit of a Canal the bone was in intimate contact with the tumor. He is an excellent Surgeon and fun to watch work, no wasted motions. I had just turned my back to the field and doing a routine check of endotracheal tube placement to make sure it had not migrated (a routine thing to do especially in the prone position).

With the tumor now completely exposed, he asked for the Bard-Parker (scalpel), with my back still turned I quickly called out “Stop.” Everyone turned and looked at me. He asked my why… I looked at the tumor one more time and asked him if he would mind using a tuberculin syringe and aspirate the tumor. He said, all of the X-Ray reports had confirmed it was a solid mass tumor. But, because of our long history, he said he would humor me.

The nurse gave him the syringe. He pulled back on the plunger and blood returned. He asked the nurse to give him the closure suture on a needle driver and a pair of Adson’s forceps and said we are closing. Only he and I realized what had just happened. It was a very large Arterio-venous malformation with thicker than normal walls of the middle muscular coat (tunica media), and an external or connective tissue coat (tunica adventitia). Which had made the almost 2 inch AVF look solid on X-Ray. While closing he explained to the nurses that there would have been almost no way to have stopped the bleeding if he had made the incision and we may have very well have lost the patient.

I have no explanation as to why I told him to stop. It was just this internal feeling.

He sent the patient to a University Med. Center to have the defect repaired. They sent him a letter thanking him for his excellent job in dissecting away the Spinous Processes, the Lamina, and the surrounding tissue. They said this made their surgery so much easier and because of his excellent dissection the AVF walls had not been disturbed which they also felt would have caused her death from hemorrhage. He had done the hardest part of the surg. He also was on the Neurosurg teaching staff at the U.

Two hours in the gym

Puerto Rican Chicken and Rice Stew (Asopao)

This chicken and rice soup is Christmas for me. Not the Christmas meal by any means but the Christmas season. In Puerto Rico, this is the soup that was traditionally served at parrandas. And it continues to be a staple at parties and get togethers.

What is a parranda? You well may ask. The short answer is that a parranda is a party. It’s a Puerto Rican tradition that probably wouldn’t go over too well in most American suburban neighborhoods. It involves late night singing and ritualized kidnapping. And eating. And drinking.

A group of singers, parranderos, start the party late in the evening well after dinner. They assemble at the front door of a friend or neighbor’s house and make music until the family wakes up and lets them in. After some more singing, everyone gathers in the kitchen for refreshments. Usually chicken and rice soup.

asopao de pollo 05 1463x2048 1
asopao de pollo 05 1463×2048 1

After they eat, the parranderos hustle the family off to the next house where the singing, eating, and kidnapping is repeated through the night. This PR holiday tradition is kind of like Christmas caroling, but not.

The beauty of the Puerto Rican chicken and rice soup is that it was easy to heat up when the parranderos arrived. And by adding more stock, it could be stretched to feed everyone. You can imagine that by the last house, there would be quite a crowd. These parties would break up by dawn, with all of the parranderos going back to their beds.

Guess what heats up nicely the next day when nobody feels like cooking? You’ve got it. Asopao de Pollo.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings; makes enough Adobo to season 3 to 4 pounds of meat

Ingredients

Chicken and Rice

  • 3 pounds chicken, cut into pieces
  • 1 recipe Adobo
  • 9 cups water
  • 2 tablespoons salt
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 2 ounces lean cured ham, diced
  • 2 green bell peppers, seeded and chopped
  • 1 onion, peeled and chopped
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
  • 3 large tomatoes, chopped
  • 12 pimiento-stuffed olives
  • 1 chorizo (Spanish sausage), cut into 1/2 inch rounds
  • 2 tablespoons capers
  • 1 (4 ounce) can chopped pimientos, drained
  • 3 cups long-grain rice
  • 1 cup fresh or frozen peas, thawed
  • Additional chopped fresh cilantro (for garnish)

Adobo

  • 4 whole black peppercorns
  • 2 cloves garlic, peeled
  • 2 teaspoons dried oregano
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoons olive oil
  • 2 teaspoons vinegar
  • 1/4 teaspoon paprika
asopao de pollo 05 1463x2048 2
asopao de pollo 05 1463×2048 2

How to Make Asopao de Pollo

The homemade Puerto Rican chicken and rice soup recipe I’m going to show you develops flavor by sautéing most of the ingredients in a large caldero or dutch oven.

After cutting up the chicken and seasoning thoroughly, go ahead and heat up the olive oil in your pot.

First you’ll brown the raw chicken pieces in batches and set them aside. Next sauté the sofrito, it will smell fantastic as it cooks. Scrape up those browned bits.

Now add the ham, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, capers, pimentos, olives, boullion and rice. Stir all of that right into the sofrito before adding the chicken back. Make sure you pour in any juices the chicken might have accumulated while it was waiting. That’s the good stuff!

Finally, when all of the ingredients are in the pot, pour as much of the water as you can fit into the caldero. Add your salt and pepper and mix it all up thoroughly. Over the cooking time, you can add more water as the rice cooks and absorbs the liquids.

Bring the soup to a boil and then turn down the heat. Allow it to simmer for up to 30 minutes. Keep an eye on your pot, stirring frequently as the rice can burn to the bottom.

When the rice is tender and the chicken is cooked, it’s done. Now you’re ready to feed any late night parranderos that come to your door.

Guests that come at more reasonable hours will love this soup too!

asopao de pollo 05 1463x2048 3
asopao de pollo 05 1463×2048 3

Instructions

Chicken and Rice

  1. Rub the chicken pieces thoroughly with the adobo. Place the chicken pieces in a large pot and add the water and salt. Bring to a boil over high heat. Cover and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 30 minutes.
  2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a skillet. Add the ham, bell peppers, onion, and cilantro. Sauté over moderate heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  3. Add the tomatoes, olives, chorizo, capers, and pimientos. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.
  4. Add the vegetable mixture to the pot with the chicken and simmer for 15 minutes.
  5. Add the rice and peas and simmer covered over very low heat for 15 to 25 minutes, until the stew reaches the desired consistency. It is traditionally served runny, almost like a soup.
  6. Serve in soup bowls garnished with chopped cilantro.

Adobo

  1. Combine all ingredients in a mortar and pestle and grind to a paste. Alternately, combine in an electric blender or food processor and process until smooth.

 

What is the nastiest and most explicit thing that happened in your high school?

I know this question is a month old, but I just have to answer it. Unfortunately, the nastiest thing that happened at my school was done by me.

It was my freshman year. I desperately had a crush on my best friend, Rob. He had this dark, black, hair and deep hazel eyes that made me melt every time I caught him staring at me in Math. You know, teenage hormones and the like.

Our lockers were right next to each other; we were in the same homeroom. Sometime around October, being the ever awkward and weird kid I was, thought that the best way to show Rob I liked him was by teasing him.

I left the cafeteria one day with a nearly full milk carton in hand. I held onto it throughout my last class of the day and waited for Rob at my locker. Once he had gotten his things and we said our goodbyes, I pulled out the milk and placed the carton at the bottom of his locker (he carried a lock with him but never put it on), spout open and covered slightly by a hoodie he had left in there.

Hilarious I thought, he’ll come in on Monday and have to find a chunky carton of milk in his locker. Gross, yet harmless. I was so, so wrong.

Rob found the milk carton on Monday. What I had underestimated about him though, was his capacity to simply not care. He shrugged it off, took the hoodie out of his locker and placed the lock he had never used on it. Then he left it.

A month went by, and I could smell the milk every time I opened my locker next to his. After two months and the Christmas holiday and I forwent my locker, too, instead carrying my entire bag from class to class just so I didn’t have to open my locker.

By April, the entire hallway reeked of sour milk, so strongly that the students curved around the affected area when passing through. Everyone smelled it, no one could figure out where it came from or what it was. It was deadly; so much so that people whispered about what could possibly be making THAT smell. It was the mystery everyone talked about. You could feel the thickness of the stench in the air.

The last day of school came, and we were instructed to take the locks off of our lockers and clean them out at last period. Rob tried to make a getaway – grab his lock and run for the doors before someone asked him to open it and show it had been cleaned out, but he just wasn’t quick enough. “Open it”, our home room teacher demanded, as if he knew what that locker held inside it.

With shaking hands, Rob opened the metal door, and it was if you could see a green puff of foul odor release like a bomb from inside. “Close it!” Our teacher screamed, and Rob did, both of us gagging. The teacher ran for the safety of his classroom and we left.

The first day of sophomore year we came back to a clean hallway – no smell, bare lockers. Though, our former home room teacher never looked at Rob the same. As an adult, I feel TERRIBLE for the poor custodian who had to clean that putrid milk.

However, as I lay next to my husband in bed, I can’t help but be just a little bit nostalgic for that stupid prank. Fourteen years later and Rob and I have been together ever since; inseparable.

Have you ever had a weird experience immediately following the death of a loved one that made you think there is an afterlife and that the deceased person was communicating with you?

Yes, my wife of 46 years died suddenly from heart failure. I got her to the hospital and was able to spend some time with her before she passed.

After she was gone, the medical staff insisted that I spend the night in the hospital due to my medical issues. I was given a mild sedative to help me relax. I fell asleep and at some point I woke and was unsure of where I was. When I realized what had happened, I was leaning against the safety rail on the hospital bed. I saw what appeared to be a room full of people below me, they were all in ‘shadow’ except for one woman in a white light dancing. My wife loved to dance and as I watched, the woman waved at me and everything vanished when the nurse came to check on me.

The second time was at her funeral service. It was freezing that day and I got to the service early to bring some mementos for the service. I, somehow, lost my phone and the facility was locked and no one was around. As I was starting to panic, I ‘heard’ my wife say “calm down.’

As I looked around I saw a perfect rose bloom in the garden area in front of my car. I couldn’t believe that a rose had bloomed in freezing conditions. Roses were her favorite flower, I went to pick the rose and found my phone on the ground. I immediately calmed down and told my wife “thank you.”

The Man Who Built UFOs For The CIA [Not Bob Lazar…]

Is it okay if my laptop is always plugged in so that my battery is charged 100%? Must I allow it to drain periodically by unplugging to increase battery life?

Battery life continues to be one of the biggest complaints of laptop users, so understanding what you can do to help prolong the life is important. Technically speaking, keeping any relatively current laptop plugged in and charged at 100% for extended periods of time shouldn’t be a problem, but it’s best not to do so for a number of reasons.

This is a question that comes up a lot with laptop owners. And the answer is a quite simple “No.” For optimum battery use, and to get the most life out of your laptop battery, keeping it charged between 40% and 80% has been seen as optimum.

Most late-generation laptop batteries are either lithium-ion or lithium polymer, and as such, they are designed to be able to withstand many charge cycles. When you keep it charged at 100%, the charging circuit continuously checks the battery charging process and, so it stops charging once it is at its optimum point and goes into trickle mode, in which it only supplies what is necessary to prevent the charge level from failing.

Also to note: overcharging can lead to overheating, which can lead to catastrophic chemical reactions inside the battery.

Allowing your battery to completely discharge will take away from its originally-intended lifespan. You should ideally keep its battery between 40% and 60%. Don’t let the battery discharge completely to increase its life.

Here are some tips to extend your laptop battery life:

  • Avoid discharging your laptop completely after charging it.
  • Make sure that your laptop doesn’t get too hot and your cooling fan is working properly.
  • Overheating can reduce battery life, check the laptop’s cooling system is functioning correctly and use it on a flat surface to allow for proper airflow.
  • Customize your laptop’s power plan settings to favor battery life over performance when running on battery.
  • If you’re not using your laptop on battery power for an extended period, store it with the battery at around 50-80% charge to reduce long-term stress on the battery.

I suggest maintaining your laptop’s battery level within the range of 40% to 80% charge. By doing so, you can effectively double the number of recharge cycles, increasing them from 300-500 to a substantial 1,000-2,000, ultimately extending the overall lifespan of your laptop.

Harry Potter but in Brazil

 

What me worry?

This is for all youse guys that used to read Mad Magazine back in the 1970’s. It was part comic, part sarcasm, and part boyhood joy. Nothing even similar to it exists today. But, back in the day, we all would read it while drinking our sodas, and munching on our Babe Ruth candy bars.

The summers were of baseball, and fishing poles. It consisted of canoes, and mason jars. It was bicycle riding, and rail road track hikes, as well as exploring old homes and factories. It consisted of wall telephones in olive green kitchens, milk boxes on the porch, and hotdogs over an open fire in the evening.

We wore bell bottom pants, polyester billow sleeve shirts with choke collars, and big decorate belt buckles. A “nickel bag” of pot was enough to put on an open album cover, and use your driver’s license to separate the stems from the seeds. We had cigarette lighters built into the cars will back seat ash trays, and “cherry bomb” mufflers.

It was a calmer time; a simpler time. A time before the world went completely MAD.

This is my tribute.

2024 02 22 20 25
2024 02 22 20 25

MAD Magazine.

What me worry?

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fa6d464b7dbdcf6a38bb711ea6504ccc
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9fd143bb0cea8f2dc7c4688858a19fb8
Screenshot 2023 09 11 at 11.41.47 AM
Screenshot 2023 09 11 at 11.41.47 AM

What is the best thing that ever happened to you since you were born?

I turned 18 and had proof. I looked 14 but it didn’t matter. 2 brothers owned a deli in my neighborhood, they took a liking to me. I made $108:00 a week and drank $150:00 worth of Lowenbrau beer back when it was made in Germany. The refrigerator where they kept the beer was out of sorts. Every beer had ice in it. It was fucken heaven.

The deli brothers slept in a back room at the store. They closed at 11.

I used to bang on the window at 2 in the morning. They were handing me cases of Lowenbrau out the door at 2 am and 4 am. I ran up a very large bill.

I was incredibly popular with the drunks I hung out with, mostly because I was always buying. One night they were robbed as they closed up. One of them reached for a gun behind the counter, the robber blew both their heads off and split.

I came upon the carnage at 1 am. I knew something wasn’t right when the door was open. I went in and saw they were dead. I walked out with 4 cases of Lowenbrau and put them in a friend’s trunk.

We sat in the nature preserve drinking till the sun came up. It was a great summer. I owed close to one thousand dollars in credit. It would have taken me years to pay it off. They were barely scratching out a living in the deli. We were all better off

Beef and Mushroom Stew
with Caraway Dumplings

Browning meat in the oven reduces the amount of fat needed for cooking. Serve with julienne parsnips and carrots.

Beef and Mushroom Stew
Beef and Mushroom Stew

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

Stew

  • 1 1/2 pounds round or blade steak
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • Bouquet Garni*
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil (if necessary)
  • 1/2 pound small mushrooms
  • 1/2 cup chopped onion
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 2 cups beef stock
  • 1/2 cup dry red wine
  • 2 tablespoons tomato paste

Dumplings

  • 1 cup soft fresh bread crumbs
  • 1/4 cup melted butter
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1 egg white

Instructions

Stew

  1. Cut steak into 1 1/2 inch cubes. In a bag, combine flour, pepper and salt. Add beef, a few pieces at a time, and shake to coat with flour mixture. Shake off excess and place meat on wire rack in flameproof casserole. Bake in 350 degrees F oven for about 25 minutes or until browned. Meanwhile, prepare Bouquet Garni.
  2. Set meat aside on platter.
  3. Place casserole over medium heat. Only if necessary add all or part of the oil. Add mushrooms, cap side down, and cook until golden, transferring to platter as they brown.
  4. Add onion and garlic; cook until onion is transparent. Add stock, wine and tomato paste; bring to a simmer, stirring and scraping bottom of casserole with wooden spoon to scrape up any brown bits.
  5. Return meat to pan; add Bouquet Garni. Cover and simmer over low heat for 1 hour or until meat is tender. Meanwhile prepare dumplings.

Dumplings

  1. In a bowl, toss bread crumbs and melted butter together with a fork. Combine flour, baking powder, caraway seeds and salt. Mix lightly into crumb mixture. Beat together egg and egg white; add to crumb mixture and mix lightly (mixture will be soft) shape into 8 balls of even size.
  2. Remove Bouquet Garni and discard. While stew is simmering, add dumplings, cover and cook, without removing lid, for 18 minutes.

Notes

* Tie together with kitchen twine 1 celery stalk with leaves, 3 or 4 sprigs parsley, 1 bay leaf and small sprig of thyme.

Insanity

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XUeIr9Y0r_c?feature=share

What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?

LOL

I worked for a company called Pyxis that made medication dispensing systems. The first CEO of the company was a VERY smart man named Ron Taylor who said “we will NEVER be FDA regulated” – the thinking being that if we are, the weight of the FDA’s requirements for paperwork and process are just *onerous*. Which they are. Anyway, we made sure the product never delivered drugs to patients – that the Nurse or Doc that used our system was ALWAYS the final vehicle of delivery – so we didn’t need to be FDA regulated.

Years later, Pyxis is bought by Cardinal Health who then buys bunch of other med-tech companies and they have this bright young VP who says “since half of our stuff is FDA regulated, let’s make ALL of our stuff FDA regulated!!!”. All of us old-timer engineers told him it was a bad idea, we explained that we’d never release a new software revision or product again… but he didn’t listen.

Once we invited the FDA to the building to check out out, that was that. The doors were very nearly shut, he was asked to leave and the company took a HUGE hit. The FDA didn’t really want to be there, but once you invite them in – they’re in. I was there for the whole transition – not my first time seeing that – and it was pathetic. In my remaining years at that company, not a single major product initiative or update made its way out the door.

So I think that qualifies.

Truth

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jSgUJ3yMzA0?feature=share

What has an employee said that immediately caused you to fire them?

I was an assistant manager of a service station (gas ration + garage) and responsible for most of the station’s hiring, training, and firing.

We had hired a kid named “Kris,” who had managed to pass the math part of the application and seemed relatively competent to be polite and make accurate change.

One day, a long time customer of the garage came walking around the bay side of the building and waved me down. He was more my boss’s customers met than mine, but we knew each other well enough.

“Hey, Mark. I wonder if I could talk to ya for moment?” He had a fairly concerned look on his face.

Being someone who was always willing to help a customer solve an issue, I didn’t hesitate.

“Of course! Hat can I do for you?”

“Well, I , uh, I wanted to let ya know that I was talking to the kid in the store and, and he told me that I should definitely not be bringing my car here to you guys.”

I was speechless for a good five seconds, but my eyes were probably meeting my ears.

“Mr. Smith, thank you so much for letting me know. You know how hard Mr. Boss and I work to make sure all of our customers are well taken care of and I appreciate you sharing this with me.”

I walked over to the store side and asked Kris if he had actually told our customer, Mr. Smith, who had been a gas and garage customer for over 15 years, that he shouldn’t trust our shop to take care of his car.

Kris was 19, heading on up to 13, so he thought he was a “man of the world” since he had a 30+ year old sugar momma and must’ve thought that made him something extra special.

“Yeah.”

“You’re fired. I’ll have Mr. Boss down here in less than an hour to write your last check. You can wait here or come back.”

He decided to come back after standing there for a moment without saying anything.

I called up my boss and told him what had happened. He told me to write up a letter explaining why he was being fired, and that he would be there as quickly as he could to get that check together.

Kris came by and I gave him his check in an envelope with the letter. I just handed it to him. He took it and walked out. I didn’t say a word, and neither did he.

Good riddance! I was so glad we had done such a great job by our customers that one of them had no problems letting me know about that kid.

6 Lies You’re Told About The World

https://youtu.be/WbuoPzb7PcU

Has a cop ever said something to you which was completely unexpected?

It was Melbourne, Victoria, 1970.

Teaching conditions and pay were not good for government teachers. The premier, Sir Henry Bolte, had thrown down the gauntlet for teachers. There was to be a strike and teachers were to gather at the steps of Parliament House while a bill to make striking illegal for teachers was to be debated.

I decided to go by public transport so I would not get stuck in town or have to pay excessive parking fees (after all, I was a lowly paid teacher). I got to the steps of Parliament House before 9 a.m. There were police shoulder to shoulder forming an impenetrable line – and the only teacher there was me.

I moved up and down, waiting for others to arrive. By about 9:15, no=one else had arrived and a senior policeman stepped down and spoke to me. “Why are you so special that there are so many of us here?” I replied that I was the only one on time and everyone else was late. By 9:30, all except two police left.

By 10, there were a few hundred other teachers there, so the two police were totally overwhelmed. But we did behave!

My moment of fame, and the local papers didn’t get a photo of me facing off to over a hundred police!

Harry Potter but in Africa 🎭(generate AI)

https://youtu.be/6qDgVazHQAQ

What quality in others makes you want to slap them?

My two friends let’s call them John (Christian American) and Fatima (Arab Muslim) are going out.

They have a passionate love story. Tattooed each other’s names on their bodies. Fought a giant backlash from her Arab family against their marriage because he is from a different religion and culture. Made deep promises to have an eternity of love and marriage together.

One day Fatima gets a message from a woman saying that she is so sorry to be the carrier of bad news but John her fiance is cheating with that woman’s sister. The message contains so many screenshots and proofs that cannot be faked and he is indeed cheating.

The texts she showed me were vomit-enducing. He would tell the other woman exactly the same things he tells her. How he only lives for her. How he can think of nothing but touching her. There were nudes exchanged between them and words of adoration.

Fatima’s world collapsed. She came to me crying and asking about what to do. I told her forget about him. What a piece of trash. Dump him this moment. My blood was truly boiling knowing all the sacrifices she made and all the promises that were broken.

Next day, I woke up to pictures of John and Fatima together uploaded online. I asked her and she said “Oh Salma he told me he was just comforting her because she was having hard times. Besides all men play around sometimes and I love him”.

I can’t decide until this moment whether I want to slap him or her…

Harry Potter but it’s a Western

https://youtu.be/yfzVKcdK2Cw

12 Amazing truths of life you should know

  1. People will always associate with you when you’re succeeding. No one wants to associate with failure.
  2. Nobody’s busier than a person who doesn’t want you.
  3. Just because you love each other doesn’t always mean you’re meant to be together.
  4. It’s okay to fuck up and make mistakes and to be scared. You don’t have to know what you’re doing all of the time.
  5. There’s nothing better than showering and putting on an oversized t-shirt and then crawling into a bed with fresh sheets.
  6. Nothing turns us on more than someone who sincerely cares about you and who directly communicates their intentions.
  7. Sometimes we get into those moods where we don’t feel like reading, you don’t feel like being on the internet, you don’t feel like watching a tv show or you don’t feel like sleeping and existing in general.
  8. There’re no final version of ours . We never stop evolving, growing/ changing, nor should we.
  9. Sometimes you’re in a mood to destroy your relationship with everyone you know.
  10. Having a baby fall asleep on your chest is one of the purest and nicest things ever.
  11. Dancing around your room to music and not giving a single fuck is one of the ultimate forms of self care.
  12. Privacy is power. What people don’t know, they can’t ruin.

History

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IYhCtvacoCQ?feature=share

What happened in a courtroom that gave the judge a belly laugh you will never forget?

This old gentleman was in court because he got a felony ticket for duck hunting with a self made shotgun round that was one grain too heavy after being weighed by the game warden. Some random obscure law. He had been returned to court a number of times while the District Attorney was trying to figure the case out. A new judge who heard the case had the biggest smile as he heard the story from the District Attorney and the very humorous old man.

The judge started chuckling then roared laughing as the man explained that he was the president of the young duck hunters boy scout something or other for the past 40 years teaching young men to hunt ducks and the Game Warden was his ex-wife’s new victim as the warden had been dumb enough to date her, and so the Game Warden was being a bit of a tool.

The judge was laughing so hard as he asked the District Attorney if it was ok to just drop this silly outdated charge so no one had to listen to the outrageous story anymore.

I had to stop the guy on his way out to exchange numbers and went out hunting with him the next week. Dinner was good.

Fun photos

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7N0frs8T4Es?feature=share

Would you fire your gun if you found your female loved one outside, in the middle of the night desperately trying to escape the grasp of 3 large unidentified men?

911 Center: Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?

David: Shots fired at 123 Mockingbird Lane, in the city.

911 Center: Is anyone hurt, is anyone in danger?

David: No more danger. Yes, my wife. She is in need of EMS, just to check her out. She has some pretty serious contusions.

911 Center: What happened?

David: She’s just scraped up pretty bad, but is safe. Three men tried to drag her into their vehicle, as she got out of her car.

911 Center: Where are those three men, now?

David: Two are laying in the street and one is hanging outside of his vehicle. A white panel van.

911 Center: I have police and EMS on the way. Where are you now?

David: I am in my house with the doors and windows locked.

911 Center: Are the three men moving?

David: I have three males suffering from various gunshot wounds, none of them are moving or breathing, that I can tell.

911 Center: I’m glad that you and your wife are okay. Stay in the house. Stay safe. The police will clear the area and then come in contact with you. Are there any other people with guns, in the area.

David: No. It’s quiet. The neighbors are all in their homes. Cars are driving around the bodies.

___________________________________

Dispatch: Break. Units, 31, 202, 103, 104 and 115. Respond to 123 Mockingbird Lane. Victim reports shots fired, 3 male suspects appear to be shot and non-responsive. Victim and his wife are in their home at the same address, and are sheltering in place. Witnesses report no other individuals in the area.

Unit 31: 31 in route. 202, put 103 at the north end of the block, 115 will position at the south end. 104, 202 and myself will clear the area.

Dispatch: Unit 31, EMS from Smiths, and Centerville paramedics are ready to roll in, once the area is clear.

Dispatch: Break, all units, step down from active shooter protocol, be on standby until 31 clears.

__________________________________
Detective Branch: Sir, at what point did you determine your wife was being attacked.

David: I heard her screaming from the street. I recognized her scream as unusual, because she only screamed like that once before.

Branch: When was that?

David: When she was approached by a stray pitbull and the baby was in the yard.

Branch: Then what did you do?

David: I grabbed my AR and ran to the front of the house.

Branch: What did you see?

David: A big guy dragging my wife by her hair, while she was kicking and screaming. The skinny guy was trying to grab her feet, but she was kicking the crap out of him.

Branch: Then what?

David: I yelled, “I have a gun! Let her go!”

Branch: What did the big guy do?

David: He tried to lift her up to shield himself with her body. The skinny guy started to reach into his waistband. I saw a gun silhouette against his white t-shirt. He wasn’t facing me, so I knew he was going to point his gun at my wife. I shot him first.

Branch: Is that why he was shot in the back?

David: Yes.

Branch: Then what?

David: I shot the skinny guy twice before he fell. One got him in the right shoulder, and the second one hit him in the middle of his back. He didn’t get up, which seemed to piss the big guy off, so while he was fighting with my wife, I ordered him to let her go!

Branch: What did he do when you told him to let your wife go?

David: He seemed to not be too sure what to do, but then I heard two gun shots come from the van. A bullet impacted on the side of the house, about 10 feet from where I was standing. The muzzle flashes were quite bright, coming from the van.

Branch: Then what?

David: So I have this low light scope, and the guy in the van was opening his door and he had a large caliber hand-gun, looked like a 45 or 44 magnum. I wasn’t about to let him out of the van with that gun, so close to my wife, so I put the crosshairs of my scope, on the driver’s head, and shot him. I saw a puff of red in his headlight beam and he didn’t move.

Branch: Why is the big guy, dead?

David: Because he looked over his shoulder and didn’t see the driver any more. He called what I am assuming is his name, and “Nick” didn’t answer. He then put his arm around my wife’s neck and he looked like he was going to choke her out or break her neck. He was big enough to do that… I didn’t have a choice.

Branch: What happened then?

David: I yelled to my wife to “run to your left!”. She used her feet and what strength she had left, to run to her left. The big guy turned to the left with her, which exposed his right side profile. I shot him in the right side of his rib cage. He went down pretty quickly.

Branch: Weren’t you afraid to hit your wife?

David: I prayed to God that I wouldn’t. But I knew that if I accidently hit her, she would forgive me. But I couldn’t forgive myself, if I didn’t hit the men who were attacking her.

Branch: Do you have anything else to add in your statement?

David: No sir.

__________________________________

31: Dispatch, this is thirty-one. Paramedic says all three subjects are DOA. Need a coroner out here, with a bio-cleanup crew. We are taping off the area and posting a patrol at the house for the night. Put 103 on it.

Dispatch: Chief wants to know if we are pulling in the vic for the DA?

31: His call. But I am not seeing it.

THE END

Footnote: I originally posted this answer back in October of last year. However, I deleted my account and all my answers after my life was threatened. (Not over this post, but another one.) So, now that that problem is solved. I am going to re-enter Quora. Hopefully, with a few more controls and a nice security system.

Modern Women Get SALTY When Men Start Ignoring Them

https://youtu.be/Pm72TzJFmsc

What is the best comeback you used on someone?

I was having a skiing class in St. Anton, Austria back in 90’s and the class took a lunch break. Eric the ski instructor was making conversation and asked how we had all come down to Austria. I told I had driven and he asked if I had found it a problem driving on the RHS in my right hand drive car (Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9 went like hell). I said no and I drove a lot abroad and he then asked which other countries drove on the left. I think I mentioned Japan, Australia and New Zealand and then a Dutch chap said South Africa. There was a moment of silence before Eric said “The British invented concentration camps”. I should have bitten my tongue but came back with “Maybe but we didn’t fit them out with Gas Chambers and Ovens” . “No just machine guns” replied Eric. The Dutch chap then said that many Dutch people wouldn’t ski in Austria as Kurt Waldheim (former secretary general of the United Nations and former member of the SS) was President of Austria. He had been voted in despite knowledge of his war efforts. They had better ski in Holland then said Eric. At which point someone suggested it might be a good idea if we changed the subject and normality resumed. As we get up from the table Eric says “Where would you like to ski this afternoon?” I couldn’t resist it so I said “How about Poland? ” At least everyone laughed, including Eric.

Trust no one

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jm-d8WMWQvA?feature=share

Who was the least qualified person to ever try to give you life advice?

Last week I had the pleasure of babysitting my friend’s 4-year-old daughter for the day.

We had a fun day: going to the library, picnicking in the park, playing on the playground and ending the day with a little bit of ice cream! (I’m allowed to spoil her).

Once we had been home for a few minutes I noticed I was getting a migraine and asked her to play quietly because my head hurt.

I then proceeded to peruse my phone as I waited for the migraine to subside.

“No, no, no,” the little girl said to me.

I glanced up and gave her a curious look.

“If your head hurts, you don’t look at the screens. You close the eyes like this and don’t do the phone or the computer,” she told me.

I obeyed and noticed that my migraine dissipated quicker than usual.


That 4-year-old was incredibly unqualified (what with her still being a toddler and all), but I’ll be darned if she didn’t have some great life advice.

She Tried To Date Women As a Man And Quickly Learned Why Men Are Opting Out of Dating | Part 2 Norah

Norah.

https://youtu.be/ajbeCpLbLhw

What is the most romantic thing someone said or did to you?

A guy asked me to be his girlfriend the night before he left to France for a 3-month internship but I rejected him because I wasn’t sure. We remained close friends after that. On the night of my birthday (he was still in France), we video-called and he sent me a link to a website. It turned out that he made a video of each of our friends saying happy birthday to me, along with my favourite songs playing on the background. At the end of the video, he said happy birthday to me with Rascal Flatts’ song My Wish.

“And while you’re out there getting where you’re getting to
I hope you know somebody loves you
And wants the same things too
Yeah, this is my wish”

He is now my boyfriend of 2 years.

AI experts make predictions for 2040. I was a little surprised

https://youtu.be/g7TghURVC6Y

Have you ever sabotaged food because someone was stealing it?

My mother did. I was the youngest of six kids. We brown bagged lunches every day. We. included my father. My mom made one heck of a good lunch from leftover from the night before. She always baked and had a slice of cake or some sweet included in our lunch.

My dad was senior test director at our local Army base and was pretty high up in government service workers (GS 15 rank almost equal to a General but was a civilian). He worked with high ranking Army people.

His brown bag lunch started to go missing several times a week. My father was money tight (tight as a crabs ass and the crab is waterproof) so him having to spend money for lunch was not going over very well.

My Mother made cupcakes for dessert one day but iced two of them with, you guessed it right, ExLax. Not just your normal dose for constipation but enough for an almost immediate explosion.

It only took a few hours for my father to find out who was stealing his lunch. That Major was transferred very quickly after the incident.

Hungry Potter and the Chamber of Snacks – (Harry Potter AI)

https://youtu.be/20ph8XoP-YM

 

 

What one thing did you do that left your mother sobbing?

Not my mom but my dad. I was 12 going into 8th grade, dad and I were doing my back to school shopping at our thrift stores. I had my budget, my list, I knew exactly what to spend. When we got to the counter and after she totaled everything, she could have said this before, but the cashier said the store was under new ownership and there was a 10% purchase fee. WTH!!! I’ve never heard of that except at grocery stores (that cost plus thing). Anyway I’m over budget so I have to take off some things, the shoes I could live without, the belt I really liked, and 2 shirts. Not a lot and I could recycle a few more from last year (my used last year clothes are really showing their age so they get put in work clothes or grease rags) but we total out and leave. My dad who had been so excited early seemed really quiet. After loading this in our truck we head towards home. In my reserve pocket I pull out my ice-cream fund. Every year before or since (even this year when dad took me college clothes shopping) I keep enough for ice-cream. My dad stops at the shop and says he’s not really in the mood for ice-cream. Wait a minute this is our thing always. My dad sets in on this I should have better, he should have made more money, his little girl shouldn’t have to buy 2nd hand clothes for school. He has completely failed me as a father. Maybe I would have been better off with his brother’s family, they have money. I was shocked, appalled, I have never felt that way. I slapped him, harder than I meant to but I did. And I pulled out, as he says, my grandma voice. Listen here mister. You have never once come close to failing me not even for a moment. The love and devotion you have given me is worth more than any amount of money in the world. I don’t need better or expensive stuff. I need you holding me at night when I’m scared, telling me you believe in me when no one else does. Letting me know that beans and bread for dinner is perfect again this week. I don’t want more money or expensive, flashy stuff, I want us. I want our goofy little traditions, our silly little interactions, our weird fun times. You are the best father in the whole world because you value love over anything else. Now this is our ice-cream tradition and if you don’t want to do it then let’s just leave. We both cried alot in our truck that day, and it was the best ice-cream treat we’ve had. My dad has never brought up money again and I haven’t slapped him…well that hard again. I love you always daddy

Harry Potter but in Spain

https://youtu.be/hBht5l3vUAE

Has Donald Trump ever been caught cheating at golf?

Trump is a great golfer. The best golfer to ever occupy the White house. It’s not even close. He is very good. Yet, as in most things Trump, he is not as outstanding as he claims to be. He lies and cheats.

image 260
image 260

Trump claims to have a USGA handicap index of 2.8. This is simply not true. Is Donald Trump lying about having a three handicap?

Yes, and does he cheat too? Yes, he cheats:

Former Sports Illustrated managing editor Mark Mulvoy told the Washington Post

that: “once playing with Trump in the 1990s he realized that Trump had placed a ball just feet from the pin that he had never hit. Mulvoy called Trump out on cheating and Trump rationalized:

“Ahh, the guys I play with cheat all the time,” Mulvoy said Trump told him. “I have to cheat to keep up with them.”

Someone I know golfed with Trump at a charity event. Apparently Trump was cheating and was called out.

When asked to stop cheating, Trump responded: “I cheat on my taxes, I cheat on my wives, and I cheat at Golf. Get used to it.”

Trump then smiled broadly, and kept cheating. He didn’t win the tournament. But he didn’t stop cheating.

A recent book has come out detailing the main ways Donald Trump cheats at golf even when playing against Tiger Woods

.

image 259
image 259

1. The Invisible Dunk

“I’ve played with him a lot,” says a frequent guest in Trump’s foursomes. “This one time, I was in the fairway and he was right of the green but a little bit down the hill. He didn’t think anybody was watching, but I was. I saw him make a chipping motion from the side of the hill but no ball came up. Then he walked up the hill, stuck his hand in the hole and pulled a ball out. It must’ve been a ball he had in his hand the whole time. Then he looked up and yelled, ‘I chipped in!’”

2. The Quick Rake

This is a sneaky little move in which you hit your approach putt and then quickly walk up and rake up what’s left of it, no matter the length, before your opponents can stop you or think to holler, “Hey, wait a minute!” Trump has mastered this move. He does it sometimes before the ball has even stopped rolling. MSNBC cameras caught him doing it once to a ball that had sped five feet past the hole and was gaining speed. By the time anybody can object, the ball is already in his pocket.

3. The Ball Switch

“Whenever I’ve caddied in Trump’s group,” says Greg Puga, an elite Los Angeles amateur and caddy, who has Trump in his group plenty, “he always gets his own cart. He makes sure to hit first off every tee box and then jumps in the cart, so he’s halfway down the fairway before the other three are done driving. That way he can get up there quick and mess with his ball.

Csipetka (Pinched Noodles – Hungary)

Csipetka
Csipetka

Ingredients

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Instructions

  1. Mix flour and salt; add egg. Stir to make a stiff dough, sprinkling in a few drops of cold water if necessary. Knead until smooth.
  2. Let dough rest for at least 30 minutes.
  3. Flatten dough a bit at a time between floured palms (or roll 1/8 inch thick on a floured board) and pinch off pieces slightly smaller than a dime. Drop them into rapidly boiling salted water; cook until tender, about 15 minutes.
  4. Drain and rinse csipetke; stir them directly into stew or soup, if ready. Otherwise, turn them into a bowl, coat with oil, and set aside in a warm place until ready to use.

Notes

You can drop csipetke into broth or soup for extra flavor and texture, or you can serve them alongside a main course with sauce or gravy, or you can use them in place of dumplings or noodles in almost any other recipe.

Good to know

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Sm8BYyNVoZY?feature=share

 

What is the most bizarre evidence ever permitted in court?

This may have been common at the time but it will still sound pretty bizarre to American ears in 2020.

In May 1894, the federal government put four men on trial for smuggling opium into San Francisco aboard the yacht Emerald. Now, shipping, selling, and smoking opium was totally legal in America that year; there were at least twenty shops selling opium in Chinatown – and advertising in the local papers and the city directory (under “Opium Dealers”). However, everybody had to pay the $10 per pound import duty in order to do so, and as always, there were people who didn’t want to cut the government in on the profits. One of them was Ewen W. McLean, who’d been smuggling opium for almost a decade. But he and his captain, John Voss, had avoided arrest and were safely out of reach up in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Louis Greenwald, George Thomas, George Wichman, and Emerald’s mate, Henry Mensing weren’t so lucky. After a couple of days of testimony, in which two members of what the newspapers called “the Emerald Ring,” flipped and gave up the four and the whole scheme, the prosecutors had a solid case and just needed to tie up a couple of legal bows.

One of these was demonstrating that the duty hadn’t been paid. Not too difficult, because the half-pound tins in which the opium was smuggled were supposed to bear a Customs stamp and none of the ones seized did. The second issue was a little trickier. The government needed to show that the opium was in fact opium and that it had come from abroad (thereby requiring payment of the duty).

There were no crime labs back then, no CSI or Quantico, so the government had a conundrum. They solved it by bringing in an opium expert, a Chinatown resident and long-time opium consumer named Mun Jin Moy, who laid out all the gear he needed to smoke some opium. At the urging of the United States Attorney, Mun broke open six cans from the seizure, withdrew some opium from each, and as the newspaper reported it, “cooked his dope over the little spirit lamp, and then, placing it on the bowl of the pipe, sucked away with apparently great enjoyment as his little eyes blinked and glistened through the wreaths of smoke.”

Undoubtedly fairly wasted at this point, but apparently still able to talk, Moy considered carefully. “’Him velly good,’” he said, and ruled that the opium had come from Victoria, being a higher quality than that from Panama.”

With that testimony “in the can,” Mun left the stand, the only person I know of who was actually paid by the government to get high in a federal courtroom. The jury evidently liked what they heard, because they convicted three of the four defendants, who got five years in San Quentin for what were essentially tax violations.

Up in Victoria, McLean ran dope to Hawaii for a few more years, then left that business and went legit, founding the Vancouver Stock Exchange and making it into “Who’s Who in Canada,” so crime evidently does pay sometimes. John Voss attempted to sail around the world in a canoe and didn’t quite make it, but he wrote a book about it (still in print) and his canoe is in the Maritime Museum of British Columbia.

But paying a drug addict to come to federal court and smoke a bunch of dope (from the government’s evidence) and testify about it? That’s pretty damn bizarre.

 

13 Truths that will hurt like hell but make you a better person

  1. Your best memories are not always real. When someone makes us feel good, we tend to color all memories of them positively and they might not be as good as you remember. Kind of like how as kids we thought our parents were super heros. This makes you a better person cause you can leave in the present and not compare your present relationships to the past.
  2. maybe you’re the problem. When in difficult relationships it’s important to consider if and how you’re the problem. Not to say that bad people don’t exist but also if you’re with them, why then are you with them? You do have a problem too
  3. Your family doesn’t love you unconditionally. Try being a pain and you’ll see this for sure. Actually the only people who love you unconditionally are people who don’t love themselves. Even your child will stop loving you and love another mother if you stop mothering them
  4. Not everyone will get to have a peaceful beautiful death. Many will die in painful ways. Enjoy a beautiful peaceful life while you can.
  5. You will likely be completely forgotten about 20–80 years after you die. Your legacy too so stop focusing on building a legacy and instead focus on giving your family a beautiful love cause that’s mostly what they’ll miss before you get forgotten. The people who knew you might never forget you but soon they’ll die too and you’ll seize to exist. Don’t believe me? Just think about it… what’s the name of your grandfather’s grandfather?
  6. Your children don’t care how successful you are. They just want and need your positive attention. If you sacrifice this for work or building a legacy, they’ll very quickly and happily squander your legacy soon as you’re gone
  7. You don’t know what you don’t know. Next time someone speaks allow yourself to listen and discover what you didn’t know
  8. very few people are thinking about you right now. Most of them are thinking about themselves and what you think of them but not really thinking about you
  9. In 10 years you’ll most likely realize you did some things wrong even the rbi gas you’re convinced that you’re doing right. As you acquire more info, you’ll realize how limited your thinking was. Don’t believe me? Just imagine how madly I love you were in that first love. You probably thought that will never change. You now realize you were wrong
  10. many people choose you because they see the value in keeping you around. As soon as you lose that value you will lose those people too

The Most Insane Week of AI News So Far This Year!

https://youtu.be/ne7_PDthIYA

Tinfoil Hat Event – Taiwan

*** ALERT ***

An earthquake measuring Magnitude 7.5 has struck Taiwan, triggering a TSUNAMI WARNING!

From the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

The point of origin of this “earthquake” was ON the East Coast of Taiwan.

7 4 map
7 4 map

Also from the USGS, the Community “Intensity” Map rating the level of perceived shaking as LEVEL 9 – VIOLENT.

Location

This location is along the rugged, but very beautiful, Taiwanese Eastern coastline.

And when you use Google Maps to zoom in, you discover some interesting things packed amongst the quaint houses and highways there…

Taiwan base 1
Taiwan base 1

Coincidentally…

President Biden, made an unexpected emergency phone call “HOT LINE” to Chinese President Xi Peng. Immediately, within hours, of the “earthquake”.

“Xi, Biden hold phone talks” bPublished: Apr 02, 2024 11:08 PM. Found HERE.

...President Xi underlined three overarching principles that should guide China-U.S. relations in 2024. 

First, peace must be valued. The two sides should put a floor of no conflict and no confrontation under the relationship, and keep reinforcing the positive outlook of the relationship. 

Second, stability must be prioritized. The two sides should refrain from setting the relationship back, provoking incident or crossing the line, so as to maintain the overall stability of the relationship. 

Third, credibility must be upheld. The two sides should honor their commitments to each other with action, and turn the San Francisco vision into reality. They need to strengthen dialogue in a mutually respectful way, manage differences prudently, advance cooperation in the spirit of mutual benefit, and step up coordination on international affairs in a responsible way.

President Xi stressed that the Taiwan question is the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations. 

In the face of "Taiwan independence" separatist activities and external encouragement and support for them, China is not going to sit on its hands.

He urged the U.S. side to translate President Biden's commitment of not supporting "Taiwan independence" into concrete actions. 

The U.S. side has adopted a string of measures to suppress China's trade and technology development, and is adding more and more Chinese entities to its sanctions lists. 

This is not "de-risking," but creating risks. If the U.S. side is willing to seek mutually beneficial cooperation and share in China's development dividends, it will always find China's door open; but if it is adamant on containing China's hi-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate right to development, China is not going to sit back and watch.

President Xi stated China's position on Hong Kong-related issues, human rights, the South China Sea, and other issues.

Nothing to see here.

Move on folks.

Dicey and spicy

This late January 2024, it seems that there are numerous trends going on at this moment in time.

American Society

  • “Passport Bros” is a real thing for young men. They are leaving and not planning on returning back to the USA. Leaving “woke” American women, childless, without families and living off “hook-up culture” as they enter a new life of “cat ladies”.

China

  • “President” Biden continues on the war-path against China and has three aircraft carrier groups off the Chinese coast right now. And provocations are ramping up in the Pacific. Though he is making all the flowery overtures.

Russia / Ukraine

  • Russia is winning in Ukraine, and NATO is in a panic.

UK and NATO

  • UK has gone insane and talking about mass conscription and nuclear war. The USA is obliging shipping nuclear weapons to the UK. France wants an active role; Via la France!

Gaza / Israel / Middle East

  • Gaza War continues a pace, and American ships are sinking. Both Israel and the United States are much weaker than they are considered to be. No obvious end of the war is in sight. But the UN is “putting its foot down” regarding both the USA and Israel.

American Civil War

  • Texas and half the other states are stopping the influx of illegal aliens, Willing to dissolve the union to do so. “President” Biden responds by shutting of LG gas, and more efforts will obviously ramp up in the future.

It looks like a very exciting year of the dragon 2024. If you live in the “West” then please “batten down the hatches”. Things are about to get really dicey.

“A Child That Is Not Embraced by the Village Will Burn It Down to Feel Its Warmth.”

January 24, 2024

This poignant quote conveys a tragic yet profound truth about human nature. When a child grows up deprived of community, lacking that feeling of belonging, they will go to destructive extremes to fulfill their fundamental need for connection.

This quote speaks to how our early environments shape us. A child is not born inherently good or bad. But if they mature in isolation, never feeling accepted by those around them, it damages their social development.

Rejected children often suffer from low self-esteem, anger issues, and oppositional behavior. Lacking positive childhood connections can impede their ability to interact with others and form healthy relationships later in life.

The quote suggests that without intervention, that alienated child may eventually seek out negative attention-even if it means resorting to violence or other dangerous acts.

They want to retaliate against a community that made them feel unworthy and invisible. It’s a maladaptive cry for help, for someone to finally notice them and their distress.

A village that embraces all children-that provides guidance, role models and a nurturing web of social bonds-could prevent such a destructive cry for connection.

It highlights our collective responsibility to foster welcoming communities that envelop children in warmth, so they become citizens seeking to build up rather than tear down society.

Lamb with Rice (Atzem Pilafi)

2024 01 28 10 28
2024 01 28 10 28

Ingredients

  • 3 pounds lamb, cut in 1 1/2-inch cubes
  • 1/2 pound butter
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 1/2 pounds tomatoes, peeled, strained, or 1 tablespoon tomato paste diluted with 1 cup water
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 8 cups water
  • 4 cups raw rice

Instructions

  1. Wash and dry meat.
  2. Brown 2/3 of the butter in large pot. Add meat and brown on all sides. Add onions and continue to cook until they become a light golden color. Add tomatoes or diluted tomato paste, and the salt, pepper and water. Cover pot and simmer until meat is tender, about 1 hour. Put meat into casserole and keep it warm.
  3. Strain sauce; measure it. Add water if necessary to make 8 or 9 cups. Pour into large pot and bring to a boil. Add rice. Stir at the start to prevent sticking. Cover and simmer until most of the liquid is absorbed, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove from heat. Add meat and mix well. Brown remaining butter and pour it over the rice.
  4. Cover pot with a clean towel, then cover towel with pot lid. Let stand for 5 minutes.
  5. Serve hot.

Serves 6 to 10.

Fostering a Nurturing Village

Understanding the profound truth behind this proverb compels communities to reflect on their role in nurturing the younger generation.

1. Inclusive Communities: Societies need to strive for inclusivity, ensuring that every child feels accepted and valued, regardless of their background, abilities, or challenges. This involves active engagement and support for all children, especially those at risk of marginalization.

2. Proactive Support Systems: It’s crucial for communities to establish robust support systems for children and families. This includes accessible educational resources, mental health support, and recreational programs that offer positive outlets for energy and creativity.

3. Collective Responsibility: The proverb underscores the collective responsibility of the village. Every member of the community, not just the immediate family or educators, has a role in embracing the young. This could mean being a mentor, offering support to struggling families, or simply being a kind and attentive neighbor.

“A child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth” is a powerful reminder of the critical role of community in shaping the lives of its youngest members. It calls for a collective effort to nurture, guide, and embrace every child, recognizing that the well-being of each individual is deeply intertwined with the health of the entire community. By ensuring that no child is left unembraced, societies can prevent the flames of neglect and build a future that is warm and bright for all.

What It’s Like Working At An Animal Shelter Which Has To Put Animals Down?

January 25, 2024

On a daily basis, we clean up after the animals, feed them, take their pictures, vaccinate, medicate, socialize, etc.

For every cute puppy or kitten we adopt out, we usually find ourselves getting two in return. Whether its a stray off the streets, or some heartless chode that decided their dog of 5+ years doesn’t “fit” with their lifestyle anymore. No matter how hard we try, we grow attached. To some, we attach more than others.

Euthanasia is a necessary evil. Space isn’t limitless, and even if it was, who would pay for all of the animals? I’m just sure our fellow Texans are salivating at the thought of increased taxes, especially for taking care of feral cats and breeds that have been labelled violent by a very ignorant public (i.e. pit-bulls).

It doesn’t matter how hard you steel yourself, or how long you’ve been doing the job. You never get used to it, and you never grow completely numb. Imagine getting 12 cats in the span of a single day, and having to pick the 12 that have to die so there is enough room to accommodate them. I’ve stopped eating for days. I’ve cried myself to sleep. I’ve grown very disgusted with my fellow man.

Now on top of all that, imagine doing the job and running into disdainful assholes every single day. People that scoff at your profession as if it’s nothing more than playing dog-catcher. Well-wishers that stand on pedestals moaning about how cruel it all is, but offering nothing more than hot air when it comes to real answers to a very real problem.

My personal favorites are the “animal lovers” that fall over themselves to rescue the yorkshire terriers and miniature pinschers that occasionally trickle into the shelter, but never seem to notice the 2+ year old mutt in the adjacent cage that is just as sweet, if not more so than the other dog that has a crowd of willing adopters and a guaranteed ticket out the door.

That reminds me, let us not forget about the pool of dimwits that only support no-kill shelters, and continually ask why the municipal shelter you work at isn’t no-kill as if it were as simple as flipping a fucking switch. (Protip: It’s easy to label yourself no-kill when you can pick and choose what comes in, and shut your doors on a whim)

Carl Frithjof Smith, After the Communion (1892)

After first Communion (Carl Frithjof Smith, 1892)
After first Communion (Carl Frithjof Smith, 1892)

Norman Rockwell, Barber in Shuffleton, 1950

image 198
image 198

Motley Life – Kandinsky

image 199
image 199

Le Suicide by Manet (1877)

Suicide, 1881 (oil on canvas)
Suicide, 1881 (oil on canvas)

The Lady Of Shalott. John Waterhouse. 1888.

image 201
image 201

Jean Geoffroy and a Visit Day at the Hospital, 1889

image 202
image 202

“Soir bleu”, Edward Hopper, 1914

image 203
image 203

The Palace Guard, Ludwig Deutsch, 1892

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cdpc3pgxyql81

Wayne Thiebaud – Cakes (1963)

image 204
image 204

Oleksandr Murashko. Girl in a Red Hat. 1902

image 205
image 205

Vincent van Gogh, Avenue of Poplars in Autumn (1884)

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wk5v87oyo9n41

Uh Oh! 2024 Health Insurance Policies Modified to EXCLUDE Coverage for War, Riot, Insurrection

Nation Hal Turner 27 January 2024 Hits: 1044

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2024 Health Insurance Policies have been Updated with NEW Exclusions & Expenses Not Covered:  “Treatment of an injury or a sickness, which is due to war, declared or undeclared, riot, or insurrection.”

Watch and listen to the 90 second video below. This is something that made me go, “Uh Ohhhhh.”

Check your insurance policies. 

Look here. This is under exclusions and expenses not covered on a 2024 Cigna health policy. Treatment of an injury or a sickness, which is due to war, declared or undeclared, riot, or insurrection.

This is not typical. In an insurance policy from United Healthcare from last year (2023) and the language typically reads like this:

What happens with my coverage under extraordinary circumstances? And it says in cases of disaster, epidemic, war, riot, insurrection, that they will do their best to provide the services you need.

But now take a look at United’s 2024 health insurance policy, another exclusion, riot, war: “We do not cover an illness, treatment or medical condition due to war declared or undeclared.”

Cigna and United aren’t the only ones that have changed their language excluding war from their policies. Anthem has also done this, and it just makes you wonder why in the world would that be the case?

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1751258401252979143&lang=en-gb&maxWidth=560px&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fhalturnerradioshow.com%2Findex.php%2Fen%2Fnews-page%2Fnews-nation%2Fuh-oh-2024-health-insurance-policies-modified-to-exclude-coverage-for-war-riot-insurrection&sessionId=656d5d771b5607cb54a94424647165cff4a12001&theme=light&widgetsVersion=2615f7e52b7e0%3A1702314776716&width=550px

Hal Turner’s View:

All these wars, insurrections, riots etc. are planned well in advance by the globalist deep state. Nothing is left to chance and nothing happens by accident.

These big corporations like insurance companies would have all been given the heads up that shit is about to hit the fan in 2024 so they are covering their asses by denying you coverage when you or your property gets hurt by these planned events by the deep state.

That’s what I think is going on here. The wealthy and politically connected all talk to each other and attend meetings off the record. Davos is not the only place they talk at.

U.S. Moving Nuclear Warheads to UK over Russia Situation

World Hal Turner 27 January 2024

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The United States is moving nuclear weapons back into the United Kingdom for the first time in 15 years over a perceived “threat” from Russia.

Procurement contracts for a new facility at Royal Air Force (RAF) base at Lakenheath in Suffolk confirm that the US intends to place “Dialable” nuclear warheads from 10kt to 1.2 MT at the air base.

The US removed nuclear missiles from the UK in 2008, judging that the Cold War threat from Moscow had diminished.

The disclosure comes in the wake of warnings that NATO countries need to ready their citizens for war with Russia.

Last week, Admiral Rob Bauer, a senior NATO military official, said that private citizens should prepare for all-out war with Russia that would require wholesale change in their lives.

General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of the British Army, went on to warn that the public would need to be called up to fight if there was war with Russia because the Army was too small. 

The British government has been the quintessential devil in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, escalating month-by-month, despite Russian warnings to stop.

In fact, it was the British Home Office that initially told Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to “ignore” Russia’s Ultimatum on February 22, 2022, wherein Russia gave Ukraine five hours to agree not to join NATO and not to station US missile defenses on Ukraine territory, because such missiles would have about a five minute flight time to Moscow.

Zelensky took the advice from the British Home Office (and from the US State Department) and ignored Russia’s ultimatum — and two hours after that Ultimatum expired, the Russian Army crossed the border into Ukraine.  ALl of this could have been avoided if Ukraine did those two simple steps.

Instead, in the two years since Russia commenced its Special Military Operation into Ukraine, upwards of five hundred thousand Ukrainian troops have been killed, and another six hundred thousand have been injured; many permanently disabled, losing limbs.

Ukraine has also permanently lost the eastern Oblasts (states) of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhya, and Kherson, all of which have undertaken public referendums to secede from Ukraine and accede to Russia.  Of course, Crimea also held such a Referendum back in the year 2014, and has been Russian territory since then, although the British and Americans refuse to recognize that public vote by the citizens of Crimea.

The US and UK have supplied stronger and stronger weapons to Ukraine, but despite all the weapons and monetary support, Ukraine is losing the war very badly, and recent remarks even by US and UK officials make clear “Ukraine cannot win.”

So now, the US is positioning nuclear bombs in the UK because both the US and UK know that the time is rapidly approaching for both countries to be held accountable by Russia for the war they’ve helped wage against Russia.  The British especially since they have been the most aggressive and the most militant.

The Russians, however, are not impressed.  One source in the Russian Ministry of Defense told me “The Americans can put all the nuclear bombs they want in Britain; none of them can get out of silos fast enough to be used if we launch our new SARMAT hypersonic missile.  That missile and its fifteen warheads would hit Britain in two hundred and two (202) SECONDS after it’s launched.  Those American bombs wouldn’t even get out of the silos or off the ground on planes in time.  It would already be over for the British.”

Picture of the Day

January 25, 2024

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vs3keoxx9fec1

Children belonging to families of Stark and Schwartz, beet workers near Sterling, Colo. Family, including children, work from 5 A.M. to 6 P.M, with only half an hour for lunch, a work-day of over 12 hours. Sterling, Colorado, 1915

From the colonial era onwards, child labor was woven into the fabric of American society. Necessity, not malice, often defined the lives of children, who contributed to farmwork, apprenticeships, and home-based industries.

However, with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, the nature of child labor shifted dramatically. Factories beckoned, their voracious appetites easily satiated by the nimble fingers and small statures of children. Textile mills, mines, and glass factories became the new playgrounds, echoing with the clatter of machinery and the hollow coughs of dust-choked lungs.

Children, as young as eight or ten, toiled alongside adults, often for longer hours and at considerably lower wages. Their tiny hands fed machines, navigated narrow mineshafts, and endured repetitive, soul-crushing tasks. Hazards lurked around every corner: mangled limbs caught in gears, lungs ravaged by coal dust, minds dulled by monotony. Education, play, and childhood itself were luxuries afforded to the privileged few, sacrificed at the altar of economic progress.

Yet, amid the clamor of industry, dissent arose. Progressive reformers, journalists, and photographers documented the grim realities of child labor, their poignant pictures and impassioned narratives igniting a public outcry. Lewis Hine’s haunting photographs of child mill workers, Jacob Riis’s unflinching exposés of tenement life, and Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle” laid bare the human cost of unchecked industrialism. Slowly, the tide began to turn.

The first legislative steps towards reform were tentative, often hampered by powerful industrial lobbies. State-level measures emerged piecemeal, with Massachusetts enacting the first meaningful child labor law in 1874. However, the fight for national legislation proved arduous. Numerous bills were defeated, bogged down in political wrangling and concerns about economic disruption. It wasn’t until 1938, with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, that comprehensive federal protection for child laborers was finally secured.

This landmark legislation established minimum wages, limited working hours, and prohibited the employment of children in hazardous occupations. While not eliminating child labor entirely, it dramatically curtailed its prevalence and ensured that generations to come would have the right to an education and a childhood free from exploitation.

 

However, the legacy of child labor continues to echo in contemporary debates. Issues of migrant children employed in agriculture, exploitative work conditions in developing countries, and the increasing presence of children in the online gig economy remind us that vigilance is still necessary. The struggle for children’s rights is an ongoing story, a testament to the enduring belief that every child deserves the chance to flourish, not toil, in the tapestry of human experience.

 

Real estate prices are going down significantly in China. What has been your observation on the real estate demand?

Real Estate in China was very undervalued in the 1970s and 1980s

Many Chinese purchased their homes for as little as 100–200 RMB a Square Meter in the mid 1980s

Gradually China began to grow and prosper and it’s real estate grew

First from 1996–2004, it rose to it’s actual value having been undervalued in the past decades

So far as good

Then from 2004–2016, it rose beyond the actual value, becoming more and more over valued

Land values rose by maybe 30% but prices rose by 80%

It became harder and harder to buy a house in the big cities especially as in China, one needed to pay 40% down payment for a mortgage unlike the standard 10% in US or 25% in India

By 2018, the Average Chinese had pooled 31% of their Savings into BLOATED PROPERTIES

THIRTY ONE PER CENT !!!!!!!

The market was still red hot and speculation was rife

A 80 SQ Meter Flat with a value of maybe 1,200,000 RMB now sold for 2.1–2.3 Million RMB

Around 170% Bloated!!!

An Economist named Ching So presented a report to the Party citing that IF THE CHINESE DIDN’T STOP THE RAMPANT SPECULATION, BY 2030 – THE TOTAL REAL ESTATE BUBBLE WOULD BE ALMOST 50 TRILLION RMB

Fifty Trillion RMB!!!!

The Chinese hastily woke up, and found they JUST had enough time to prevent a major crisis

They passed the three laws, now famous for financing of real estate

China estimated that if the companies collapsed now, they would have at least 60% Assets and the net blowout would be around 6 Trillion RMB


So now Real Estate no longer will grow at those stupendous rates

So most people are reluctant to invest in real estate

Also since Real Estate is stagnant , most people are reluctant to invest 40% of their savings into buying a house

Hence demand is slumping

The best way to revive this is to allow the slump to bottom out, allow a few big giants to collapse, see the value of property fall lower and lower into more Value = Price territory

Then maybe China will bail out the survivors

Then people will start buying homes again

This is estimated to be in 2026–2027

Essential knots: how to tie the 20 knots you need to know

One of these knots could save your life one day.

By Tim MacWelch/ Outdoor Life |

This story was originally published by Outdoor Life.

Knot tying has always been one of those key outdoor skills that the inexperienced take for granted. The experienced outdoorsman, however, has had enough success and failure to know that there are right and wrong knots for certain jobs.

But first, it helps to know a few strange terms. Put it simply, a knot is some kind of fastening or splice made by intertwining one or more ropes or some other flexible material. After tightening a knot, it should hold on its own. A hitch is a little bit different. It’s like a knot, but it generally involves another object like a stick, a post, a ring, or occasionally another rope. Properly tied, hitches can hold their place, or they may be able to slide, depending on the hitch you choose. A lashing is like a hitch, but slightly more complex. Lashings involve the use of a rope or similar material to secure two or more objects together. To grossly oversimplify all this, the knot is just rope fastened together; the hitch is a rope fastened to an object; and a lashing is a rope fastening multiple objects together.

A good knot can save lives when you’re dealing with a survival situation, performing first aid, and when working over heights or water. But, you have to know how to tie it. So make sure you know what to do with your rope the next time you head into the wild by learning these 20 essential knots.

1. Square knot

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2024 01 28 09 40

The square knot is a classic for connecting lines and tying knots. Whether you are tying two ropes together to make a longer rope, or you are tying up a bundle of firewood to carry, the square knot is a winner. It’s much more secure and stable than its cousin the granny knot, which everyone is probably familiar with as part of tying their shoes.

How to tie a square knot:

You can tie a solid square knot by lapping one rope right over left, then underneath the other, and then tying the same again in the reverse direction—left over right and then underneath. You’ll know you did it right when the working end and standing end of each rope is side by side (not making a “cross” like a granny knot).

2. Clove hitch

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2024 01 28 09 41

The clove hitch is an easy knot to tie, and it secures a line to a tree or post quickly, but it does slip when used alone, without any other knots as a backup.

How to tie a clove hitch:

To create a clove hitch on a tree, make a loop of rope around the tree. Then make another loop and pass the free end of the rope under the second loop before tightening. To tie this one over a post or stake, just create a loop in the free end of the rope and slide it over the post. Then make another loop the same as the first. Put the second loop over the post (just above the first loop) and tighten the hitch.

3. The bowline

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2024 01 28 09 41m

The bowline creates a loop at the end of a rope that cannot shrink or expand. This knot is often taught and illustrated with a poem of a rabbit coming out of the hole, hopping in front of a tree, going behind the tree, and back down his original hole.

How to tie a bowline:

Form a loop on top of the long end of the line. Pass the working end of the line up through the loop and around behind the line. Then pass the working end down through the original loop, all while maintaining the shape of the second loop you create, which becomes your bowline loop. Once the “rabbit” is back down its hole, pull the “tree” up to tighten the bowline.

4. The figure eight

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2024 01 28 09 42

The figure eight knot creates a stopper wherever you need one on a rope, though the steps are also steps you take to create several other knots.

How to tie a figure eight:

To tie a figure eight, also known as a Flemish bend, simply pass the free end of a line over itself to form a loop. Continue under and around the line, and finish the knot by passing the working end down through the original loop.

5. The sheet bend

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2024 01 28 09 4 2

The sheet bend is my favorite one of all, even though technically it’s a “bend”—a type of knot that connects one rope to another. I like it because it’s the best bend for tying different types of material together or joining different thicknesses of rope. This knot even joins together lines or materials that normally couldn’t be joined together because of differences in diameter.

How to tie a sheet bend:

To create a sheet bend, bend the thicker or more slippery rope into a “J” shape (like a fish hook). Then pass the other rope through the hook shape from behind, wrap it around the entire fishhook once and then tuck the smaller line between itself and the other rope. If the ropes are the same diameter and texture, the sheet bend actually resembles a square knot. To tie a sheet bend with fabric or a tarp, collect, squeeze, and shape the material into a “J” shape, and then run your rope through and around the “J.”

6. Two half hitches

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2024 01 28 09 43

You can use two half hitches to secure a line to trees or poles, or to secure the line to itself like you would tying a trucker’s hitch. A half hitch is fairly easy to tie, and I use it often to tie tarps up for shelters, or to hang up hammocks.

How to tie two half hitches:

After you wrap the rope around the standing end and through the inside of the loop created to make the first half hitch, wrap around the line the same way again to make the second half hitch. Pull it tight and you should have two half hitches, one seated next to the other. If you want added insurance, you can tie an overhand knot with the tag end of the line to keep the two half hitches from slipping.

7. Taut line hitch

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2024 01 28 09 4 4

The taut line hitch takes the place of a slide to tighten or loosen a loop in a line (like a tent guy line). This knot grips well as long as there is tension on the “taut” side of the loop.

How to tie a taut line hitch:

To tie the taut line hitch, create a loop by wrapping around a solid, unmoving object like a tree or tent stake. With the free end of the rope, wrap around the main line twice on the inside of the loop. Then lay the free end of the rope over the two wraps, wrap it around the main line, and draw the tag end through the loop you just created. Cinch the wraps until tight. Pull on the standing line and the taut line hitch should grip the loaded line.

8. Fisherman’s knot

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2024 01 28 09 44

True to its name, the fisherman’s knot is pretty much only good for using with fishing line.

How to tie a fisherman’s knot:

Pass the free end of the line through or around the object to be secured, for example, through the eye of a fishhook. Then, wrap the free end of the line around the other side of the line about five or six times. Pass the free end of the line through the triangular opening next to the object being secured, and then pass the free end of the line through the large loop you just created by going through the small triangle. If you are tying this one with fishing line, spit on the line before tightening to lubricate it so that the friction does not cause heat damage to the line. Tighten the knot, trim off any extra line and enjoy your day fishing.

9. Water knot

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2024 01 28 09 45

The water knot safely secures webbing, flat belts, and most types of straps together.

How to tie a water knot:

To tie the water knot, start with a loose overhand knot in the end of one strap. Pass the other strap in the opposite direction so it mirrors the route of the overhand knot on the first strap. Take the ends of the two straps and pull the knot tight. That’s it—it’s very simple and very strong.

10. Rolling hitch

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2024 01 28 09 46

The rolling hitch adds a leg to an existing line. This hitch is the basic knot behind a taut line hitch, but it can be added to any existing line. The rolling hitch was often used historically to hook more dogs to a dog sled main line.

How to tie a rolling hitch:

Wrap the free end of one rope around the main rope to create a half hitch. Make a second half hitch and then wrap over the entire knot to finish with a final half hitch to the other side from your starting place.

11. Prusik knot

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2024 01 28 09 4 6

The Prusik knot creates a loop that can be used as an ascender or decender. This “slide and grip” knot can also be handy for adding a loop to a rope when neither end of the rope is free.

How to tie a Prusik knot

To tie a Prusik, you’ll need a short rope and a separate long rope. Tie a loop in the short rope that is secured with a solid knot like a square knot. Now, wrap the loop around the long rope three times, making certain that each wrap lies flat against the long rope. Pass the loop of short rope under itself and pull it tight. As long as there is weight on the loop, the Prusik will grip the long rope. You can also slide the Prusik up or down the long rope by taking the weight off the loop and pushing the wraps up or down the long rope.

12. Timber hitch

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2024 01 28 09 47

The timber hitch secures a rope to an object for hauling or to act as a support.

How to tie a timber hitch:

To create a timber hitch, all you need to do is run the free end of the rope around the object, like a log, that you intend to pull. Then wrap the tag end of the rope around the inside of the loop you created four or five times. After you tighten the timber hitch so the four or five wraps are tight against the object, the constant tension will keep the hitch seated.

13. Blood knot

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2024 01 28 09 4 7

This little gem of a knot is used on fishing line to secure two lines together (mends a broken line or attaches leaders and tippets).

How to tie a blood knot:

You’ll start the blood knot by overlapping the two lines, and wrapping one free end around the other line five or six times. Pass the free end between the two lines. Wrap the other line the same number of times (five or six), and tuck the free end back between the two lines in the opposite direction of the other free end of the line. If using fishing line, spit on it to reduce friction damage.

14. Man harness

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2024 01 28 09 48

This crafty knot allows you to put a loop in a line anywhere along the length of a rope when neither end of the line is free to tie a loop—and you didn’t hear it from me, but a man harness is great for cheating at tug of war.

How to tie a man harness:

Gather some slack in the line and make a loop so part of the line runs through the middle of the loop. Grab the side of the loop and pull it through the gap between the line in the middle and the other side of the loop. Pull the new loop tight, and then pull the line to cinch the man harness knot. This knot can slip if there isn’t constant tension on the newly created loop, so keep something in the loop to hold it.

15. Carrick bend

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2024 01 28 09 49

This square knot alternate joins two ropes together securely, and is easier to untie than a square knot.

How to tie a carrick bend:

To tie the carrick bend, form a loop with the free end of one rope. Pass the other rope’s free end under the first loop, and then over then under as seen in the picture. Thread the free end across the loop passing under itself, and pull on both standing ends to tighten.

16. Trucker’s hitch

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2024 01 28 09 4 9

You don’t have to be a truck driver to have a use for this rugged hitch. The unique feature of the trucker’s hitch is it gives you a unique mechanical advantage for tightening up a line. While tying this hitch is a little complex, it’s worth the trouble if you need to tighten lines as much as possible before securing them—I use it all the time to tie down tarps or secure shifting payloads.

How to tie a trucker’s hitch:

Start off by tying a figure eight knot with a loop of the line. Then pass the free end of the line around or through whatever you’re attaching the rope to, before passing the line through the loop. Next, pull the working end tight, and secure the free end with two half hitches, just below the loop.

17. Barrel hitch

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2024 01 28 09 50

The barrel hitch has been used in sailing and construction work for centuries. It allows you to secure a bucket, barrel or other cylindrical object to lift it in a well-balanced position.

How to tie a barrel hitch:

Place your barrel or other object to be lifted on top of your rope. Then tie an overhand knot across the top of the barrel. Open up the overhand knot until it wraps around the top sides of the barrel. Tie the ends of the rope together with a square knot and then then lift. This knot makes a fine bucket handle when the wire handle finally breaks off.

Safety warning: For safety and stability while hoisting barrels, the rope around the barrel needs to be high above the center of gravity on the barrel, but pose no danger of slipping off the top of the barrel. FYI, beer has an excellent center of gravity.

18. Sheepshank

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2024 01 28 09 5 0

This knot seems half magic trick, half practical knot, but it shortens a line without cutting the line. This knot keeps our long ropes in one piece, despite our miscalculations in the field. I will use this one on bear bags, when the line is too long, but I don’t want to cut it.

How to tie a sheepshank:

To tie a sheepshank, fold the rope to the new length you need. Create a half hitch in one end of the continuing rope, and drop it over the nearby loop. Make a half hitch in the other standing end, drop it over its adjacent loop, and then tighten the whole thing slowly.

19. Tripod lashing

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2024 01 28 09 51

The tripod lashing is commonly used for shelters and to support camp items, like a cooking pot over a fire.

How to tie a tripod lashing:

Start by collecting three poles that of almost identical length and thickness and lay them on the ground side-by-side. Tie a clove hitch to one of the end poles, and then wrap around all of the poles four, five, or six times. Now, wrap line between the poles–twice between each one–working back toward the original knot or hitch you tied. Finish the lashing by tying the tag end of the line to the tag end of your original knot. Spread the legs of the tripod and use it in your camp for something handy.

20. Square lashing

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2024 01 28 09 5et1

The square lashing has been used to build everything from camp chairs to towers and bridges – but you can also use it to secure two poles together.

How to tie a square lashing:

Tie a clove hitch to one of the poles, near the place where the two poles cross. Then wrap your line around the junction of the two poles, going under the lower pole and over the top pole. Spiral outward with these wraps five or six times. Next, wrap between the poles, biting onto the previous wrappings to tighten them. Finally, use a square snot to tie the free end of the rope to the free end from the clove hitch that started this whole lashing. Easy, right?

 

Do Americans realize how much worse a war with China would be for their country than for the Chinese?

China is very fair.

You Yanks kill 1 thousand Chinese in China, they will kill 100% kill 1 thousand Americans in mainland USA!

No more no less!

And they won’t start first.

But if you murder 1 million Chinese in China, I promise you they will murder a million yanks in the U.S. mainland.

Don’t even doubt it.

 

Five Variables Defining Our Future

By Pepe Escobar

In the late 1930s, with WWII in motion, and only months before his assassination, Leon Trotsky already had a vision of what the future Empire of Chaos would be up to.

“For Germany it was a question of ‘organizing Europe’. The United States must ‘organize’ the world. History is bringing mankind face to face with the volcanic eruption of American imperialism…Under one or another pretext and slogan the United States will intervene in the tremendous clash in order to maintain its world dominion.”

We all know what happened next. Now we are under a new volcano that even Trotsky could not have identified: a declining United States faced with the Russia-China “threat”. And once again the entire planet is affected by major moves in the geopolitical chessboard.

The Straussian neocons in charge of US foreign policy could never accept Russia-China leading the way towards a multipolar world. For now we have NATO’s perpetual expansionism as their strategy to debilitate Russia, and Taiwan as their strategy to debilitate China.

Yet in these past two years, the vicious proxy war in Ukraine only accelerated the transition towards a multipolar, Eurasia-driven world order.

With the indispensable help of Prof. Michael Hudson , let’s briefly recap the 5 key variables that are conditioning the current transition.

Losers Don’t Dictate Terms

1.The stalemate: That’s the new, obsessive US narrative on Ukraine – on steroids. Confronted with the upcoming, cosmic NATO humiliation in the battlefield, the White House and the State Dept. had to – literally – improvise.

Moscow though is unfazed. The Kremlin has set the terms a long time ago: total surrender, and no Ukraine as part of NATO. To “negotiate”, from the Russia point of view, is to accept these terms.

And if the deciding powers in Washington opt for turbo-charging the weaponization of Kiev, or to unleash “the most heinous provocations in order to change the course of events”, as asserted this week by the head of the SVR, Sergey Naryshkin, fine.

The road ahead will be bloody. In case the usual suspects sideline popular Zaluzhny and install Budanov as the head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the AFU will be under total control of the CIA – and not NATO generals, as it’s still the case.

This might prevent a military coup against the sweaty sweatshirt puppet in Kiev. Yet things will get much uglier. Ukraine will go Total Guerrilla, with only two objectives: to attack Russian civilians and civilian infrastructure. Moscow, of course, is fully aware of the dangers.

Meanwhile, chatterbox overdrive in several latitudes suggest that NATO may even be getting ready for a partition of Ukraine. Whatever form that might take, losers do not dictate conditions: Russia does.

As for EU politicos, predictably, they are in total panic, believing that after mopping up Ukraine, Russia will become even more of a “threat” to Europe. Nonsense. Not only Moscow couldn’t give a damn to what Europe “thinks”; the last thing Russia wants or needs is to annex Baltic or Eastern European hysteria. Moreover, even Jens Stoltenberg admitted “NATO sees no threat from Russia toward any of its territories.”

2.BRICS: Since the start of 2024, this is The Big Picture: the Russian presidency of BRICS+ – which translates as a particle accelerator towards multipolarity. The Russia-China strategic partnership will be increasing actual production, in several fields, while Europe plunges into depression, unleashed by the Perfect Storm of sanctions blowback against Russia and German de-industrialization. And it’s far from over, as Washington is also ordering Brussels to sanction China across the spectrum.

As Prof. Michael Hudson frames it, we are right in the middle of “the whole split of the world and the turning towards China, Russia, Iran, BRICS”, united in “an attempt to reverse, undo, and roll back the whole colonial expansion that’s occurred over the last five centuries.”

Or, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defined at the UN Security Council this process of BRICS

leaving Western bullies behind, the changing world order is like “a playground scuffle – which the West is losing.”

Bye Bye, Soft Power

3.The Lone Emperor: The “stalemate” – actually losing a war – is directly linked to its compensation: the Empire squeezing and shrinking a vassalized Europe. But even as you exercise nearly total control over all these relatively wealthy vassals, you lose the Global South, for good: if not all their leaders, certainly the overwhelming majority of public opinion. The icing in the toxic cake is to support a genocide followed by the whole planet in real time. Bye bye, soft power.

4. dedollarization: All across the Global South, they did the math: if the Empire and its EU vassals can just steal over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves – from a top nuclear/military power – they can do it to anyone, and they will.

The key reason Saudi Arabia, now a BRICS 10 member, is being so meek on the genocide in Gaza is because their hefty US dollar reserves are hostage to the Hegemon.

And yet the caravan moving away from the US dollar will only keep growing in 2024: that will depend on crucial crossover deliberations inside the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and BRICS 10.

5.Garden and jungle: What Putin and Xi have essentially been telling the Global South – including the energy-rich Arab world – is quite simple. If you want improved trade and economic growth, who’re you gonna link to?

So we’re back to the “garden and jungle” syndrome – first coined by imperial Britain orientalist Rudyard Kipling. Both the British concept of “white man’s burden” and the American concept of “Manifest Destiny” derive from the “garden and jungle” metaphor.

NATOstan, and hardly all of it, is supposed to be the garden. The Global South is the jungle. Michael Hudson again: as it stands, the jungle is growing, but the garden isn’t growing “because its philosophy is not industrialization. Its philosophy is to make monopoly rents, meaning rents that you make in your sleep without producing value. You just have a privilege of a right to collect money on a monopoly technology that you have.”

The difference now, compared to all those decades ago of an imperial free lunch, is “an immense shift of technological advance”, away from North America and the US, to China, Russia and selected nodes across Asia.

Forever Wars. And No Plan B

If we combine all these variants – stalemate; BRICS; the Lone Emperor; de-dollarization; garden and jungle – in search of the most probable scenario ahead, it’s easy to see that the only “way out” for a cornered Empire is, what else, the default modus operandi: Forever Wars.

And that brings us to the current American aircraft carrier

in West Asia, totally out of control yet always supported by the Hegemon, aiming for a multi-front war against the whole Axis of Resistance: Palestine, Hezbollah, Syria, Iraqi militias, Ansarullah in Yemen, and Iran.

In a sense we’re back to the immediate post-9/11, when what the neocons really wanted was not Afghanistan, but the invasion of Iraq: not only to control the oil (which in the end they didn’t) but, in Michael Hudson’s analysis, “to essentially create America’s foreign legion in the form of ISIS* and al-Qaeda** in Iraq.” Now, “America has two armies that it’s using to fight in the Near East, the ISIS*/al-Qaeda** foreign legion (Arabic-speaking foreign legion) and the Israelis.”

Hudson’s intuition of ISIS* and Israel as parallel armies is priceless: they both fight the Axis of Resistance, and never (italics mine) fight each other. The Straussian neocon plan, as tawdry as it gets, essentially is a variant of the “fight to the last Ukrainian”: to “fight to the last Israeli” on the way to the Holy Grail, which is to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran (copyright John McCain) and provoke regime change.

As much as the “plan” did not work in Iraq or Ukraine, it won’t work against the Axis of Resistance.

What Putin, Xi and Raisi have been explaining to the Global South, explicitly or in quite subtle ways, is that we are right in the crux of a civilizational war.

Michael Hudson has done a lot to bring down such an epic struggle to practical terms. Are we heading towards what I described as techno-feudalism

– which is the AI format of rent-seeking turbo-neoliberalism? Or are we heading to something similar to the origins of industrial capitalism?

Michael Hudson characterizes an auspicious horizon as “raising living standards instead of imposing IMF financial austerity on the dollar block”: devising a system that Big Finance, Big Bank, Big Pharma and what Ray McGovern memorably coined as the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) cannot control. Alea jacta est.

* ISIS (also known as ISIL/IS) is a terrorist group banned in Russia.

** A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.

 

 

China exceeded it Q3 2023 growth to 4.9% from the projection earlier of 4.6% and year to date growth of 6.0%, a growth figure that the U.S. can only salivate. Does that disappoint the China haters and doubters to no end?

Yes

But they are now quiet as a mouse!

Hiding and pretend nothing happened!

The China haters and Chinese doubters with many of them here in QUORA has been predicting doom and gloom on China for years. And made 100 collapse projection!

Let me help them learn the truth that these U.S. and IS dogs hate to hear.

In 2023 China grew 5.2%. And has an official inflation rate of 0.2%. That means Chinese standard of living grew by a full 5.0%!

US GDP grew by 2.4% but has an official inflation rate of 3.4%. So effectively the U.S. economy dwindled by -1.0% in 2023.

UK economy contracted by -3.0% and has an official inflation rated of 4.06% hence the real GDP of U.S. deteriorated by a whopping -7.06%

And guess what BBC, CNN and Fox had a field day claiming China’s economy is in trouble! Hahahaha and fools like those haters actually believe in them!

What’s something you recently learned that shocked you?

Here are 5 things I’ve learned recently that shocked me and impressed me, now let me share with you:

1.CIA revealed a “heart attack” gun in 1975

[1]. A battery operated gun which fired a dart of frozen water & shellfish toxin. Once inside the body it would melt leaving only a small red mark on the victim where it entered. The official cause of death would always be a heart attack.

image 207
image 207

2. Eli Whitney’s creation of the cotton gin

[2] gave the South enough economic power to be able to start the Civil War, and his creation of interchangeable parts for rifles gave the North the manufacturing power to win the Civil War.

Although Whitney’s invention only involved a few hundred kilograms of matter, it shaped the future of a nation and its people; it is rare that a single contrivance has such a profound social effect.

image 206
image 206

3. A British plan to assassinate Hitler

[3] was ultimately called off because they thought keeping him in power would help the war end faster given his terrible decision making and strategy.

4. A research found that

[4]the most common last name among American physicians is no longer “Smith”, it’s “Patel”.

image 35
image 35

5. In the Netherlands, if you die and have no next of kin, friends or family to attend your funeral, they will send a poet who shall read a custom poem for you at your funeral so that you won’t be alone that day.

 

What’s the most obnoxious thing you’ve seen someone do at the airport?

My sister and I were transiting Dallas airport en route to New Orleans. My sister is 100% deaf and lip reads. I walk with a cane.

We had arrived at a different terminal and although our bags were through checked we had to pass through immigration and travel to a different terminal and pass through security there. Things were going well until we got to the security check. My sister put her hand luggage on the belt to the scanner as did I. My sister entered the body scanner and upon exit one of the staff started yelling at her. I was still to enter the scanner so was unable to help other than to yell “That is my sister. She is deaf.” I was told to “Butt out lady, none of your business.” The one doing the yelling just increased the volume and then some more. I again called out that she is deaf, she cannot hear you. As I was exiting the scanner I saw him grab her arm and start pulling her. I lost it and tried to get to her side. Three large males blocked me. By now you would have thought a full-blown incident was going down.

I was yelling I must help my sister. Why have they taken her. She will be scared. She is deaf. Help me. Help her. I heard a voice at my side. “Did you just say she is deaf” It was a supervisor. “I said yes she lip reads” This man walked past the guards blocking me and went to my sister who was sobbing. I saw him touch her arm and get herto look at him and then he spoke slowly and carefully. She became calmer and after a few minutes I was allowed to pass and join her and we were sent on our way.

No explanation. No apology.

UK MP Tim Loughton initiated a debate in UK Parliament. What if China requests extradition of UK politicians & human rights advocates who are disclosed in the trial of Hongkong #1 traitor Jimmy Lai? What if China requests Intl Criminal Police Organization to arrest British citizens?

UK knows HK laws well because HK runs the common laws of former coloniser UK. UK & Hongkong had an extradition treaty. UK suspended it in 2020, after the 2019 HK coup has failed. The coup was plotted & led by USA+UK.

How many British politicians & citizens are involved in HK conspiracy? Quite a few.

In an earlier post (link below), I talked about USA+UK interfering Hongkong judiciary system which is currently prosecuting HK’s #1 traitor Jimmy Lai (黎智英). J Lai’s aide Mark Simon was an ex-CIA & naval intelligence agent. UK & USA are co-conspirators.

In this post, we look at how an intl crime works. (1) propaganda (2) lobby/bribery/collusion of foreign politicians. Both involve lots of (illicit) money.

Mark Simon helped J Lai grow from broke to multi millionaire “overnight”. J Lai ran a multi-million media called Apple Daily(苹果日报) which spread propaganda. At the heat of the coup, Apple spread disinformation daily, if not hourly. … control of people’s info/mind is important for a successful coup.

intl crime – lobby/bribery/collusion of foreign politicians

There was an NGO called Hongkong Watch (香港监察)re human rights. The founder is Benedict Rogers. UK MP Lord David Alton is a patron. Luke de Pulford has connection too.

J Lai paid Andy Li $500,000 & asked him meet D Alton & other MPs in Conservative party incl de Pulford. At the end, a total of 19 UK MPs “monitored” HK’s 2019 district election (translation: to make sure HK traitors win the (fraud) election so as to control district council).

Other than Alton & de Pulford, Andy Li also met Andrew Heyn of UK’s Consul General in HK, Anson Chan (陈方安生 HK #2 traitor) as well as US senator Rick Scott.

Martin Lee (李柱铭 HK #3 traitor) & TW Chan (陈梓华) got to meet Benedict Rogers.

illicit money in an intl crime

In July 2019, a conspiracy was plotted. It was nicknamed zhibao (支爆) (short for 支那爆炸 literal translation: China explosion).

Lawyer TW Chan asked J Lai to fund the propaganda in foreign countries, so as to ask foreign countries to pressure & sanction China incl Hongkong.

Andy Li’s whatsapp showed Martin Lee asked if J Lai could first lend $5 million. J Lai promised $1.56 million for foreign media outlets thru 2 of his companies, Dico & Lais Hotel in Canada.

TW Chan knew Mark Simon. M Simon promised to fund the “explosion” scheme upfront, but the money must be reimbursed later.

TW Chan asked Andy Li to organise a group called “Stand with HK (重光团队)” & take instructions from J Lai.

Andy Li raised fund 3 times & got $24.4 million.

For 3 times, Andy Li spent $9.8 million to publish seditious articles in 20+ countries eg USA, UK, Germany, Canada, Japan etc. And in 9 overseas media eg Guardian, Washington Post, Japan’s NHK etc.

J Lai pre-paid 6 foreign media at $3.54 million.

A columnist named Jack H (not sure the spelling of his last name) worked at J Lai’s Apple Daily. Thru Jack’s UK bank account, $3.2 million was deposited to Andy Li’s account in UK.

The fund that was raised by Andy Li was used to reimburse M Simon’s foundation.

In order not to disclose his identity, Andy Li transferred it to Taiwan. From Taiwan, $1.65 million reimbursed J Lai. M Simon reported to J Lai that the entire loan has been reimbursed. (Try not to add up the figures. Some details have been skipped. I just report it as is.)

In Aug-Nov 2019, J Lai paid Chan $174,000 & asked him set up street booths to do propaganda.

the scheme was quite successful

The 2019 HK riot was almost out-of-control. China took action …

In Mar 2020, China indicated it would hand down a HK security law which would take effect on 2020/6/30. China would “forgive” those who stopped treason before the deadline.

China’s warning did not stop J Lai from lobbying foreign countries. Though it has stopped HK’s #2 & #3 traitors who announced retirement from politics.

After the HK Security Law is in effect, Andy Li fled to Taiwan with 11 others. His boat drifted into China’s territory & thus was arrested by China.

a state witness against J Lai

Andy Li was remorseful & said in HK court “I would like to say I am sorry” with a 90 degree bow to the judge.

It was Andy Li, TW Chan & many of Apple’s managers who turn to become a state witness against J Lai that we see the involvement of foreign countries & the illicit money.

That is why, in an earlier post, USA+UK demanded HK release J Lai unconditionally & threatened to sanction HK judges. They even complained to UN Human Rights Council claiming that HK security law has violated J Lai’s civil & political rights. … UK is trying to protect his politicians from extradition & arrest by ICPO. Haha.

Koubeba Syriani

2024 01 28 10 29
2024 01 28 10 29

Ingredients

  • 1 medium onion, quartered
  • 1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
  • 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 1 pound lean ground veal or beef
  • 1/2 cup ground almonds
  • 1/2 cup ground walnuts, + 20 walnut halves
  • 1/3 cup pine nuts
  • 1/3 cup toasted bread crumbs
  • 1/4 cup olive oil, + more for brushing
  • 1 large egg, lightly beaten
  • 1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper or pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 20 pitted prunes
  • 1 cup chicken or beef stock
  • 2/3 cup dry red wine
  • 2 to 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • Sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley, for garnish

Instructions

  1. In a food processor or blender, combine the onion, chopped parsley and lemon juice and pulse to chop.
  2. In a large bowl, combine the onion mixture, meat, almonds, walnuts, pine nuts, bread crumbs, oil, egg, pepper or pepper flakes and salt and knead into a homogenous mixture. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to 4 hours.
  3. Heat oven to 450 degrees F.
  4. Shape 1/4-cup portions of the meat mixture into oval rolls and arrange in a 13-by-9-inch baking dish. Brush the rolls with oil and bake for 15 minutes.
  5. Meanwhile, insert 1 walnut half into each prune (you may need to halve the larger walnuts).
  6. Reduce the oven temperature to 400 degrees F.
  7. Arrange the stuffed prunes between the meat rolls, add the stock, wine and 1 to 2 tablespoons of the vinegar and bake for 15 to 20 minutes more. Baste with the pan juices, turn off the oven and leave the dish in the oven for 5 minutes.
  8. Taste the sauce and adjust the seasonings with vinegar, salt and/or pepper or pepper flakes. Garnish with parsley sprigs and serve.

Yield: 4 servings (of about 3 meat rolls each)

 

What’s the fastest you’ve wiped a smirk off of someone’s face?

I had some druggie horse people rent the house next to me. It was on 4 acres. Around 1 acre was fenced in. It was so thick you about couldn’t walk through it. They put 7 horses in that area. It was up wind of my house so all you could smell was horse chit.

I complained to them.

I was told if I didn’t like it I needed to move to town. I called the dept of agriculture. They said there was no limit to the number they could put in the area. The owner of the place was a friend from highschool that lived half way across the country. I called him. He said they didn’t pay half the time.

I asked if he would sell the place. He agreed to so I bought it . I paid cash so the Tennants had no idea.

I then went to them and complained about the smell again. I was told to get out of their yard. I said soon as the horses were gone I would. She called the law and told them I was trespassing and made threats to them.

I had the camera on my phone on just in case something happened like this lol live feed to Facebook. The officers took their side and they were laughing at me . I was told to leave by the deputies.

They then asked if she would like to press charges. She said yes and started rattling off lies about what I had done.

I let her tell her stories then I pulled out an envelope I had in my pocket. It has the deed to the house and land.

I then logged into Facebook and showed the officers the video.

The smiles and laughs were gone in seconds.

I then said I would be filing for an eviction the next day.

I did and moved my daughter and grand kids in . Been nice every since.

Never Count On Money Not In the Hand

January 25, 2024

It’s tempting, isn’t it? To gaze at the horizon of future fortunes, squinting through wishful thinking to count imaginary chickens nestled in speculative eggs. We do it with inheritances, tax returns, that “big idea” just waiting to explode. We tally future salary raises, potential bonuses, and the nebulous windfall from that distant relative we barely know.

But here’s the harsh truth, friends: money you don’t have isn’t yours. No matter how glittering the mirage, how convincing the whispers of “soon,” present reality trumps future possibility.

Why? Because life, as they say, has a way of intervening. That inheritance could get bogged down in legal red tape. The “sure thing” investment turns sour. The big break fizzles. And suddenly, our meticulously counted chickens morph into dust devils dancing on the financial plains.

  • The friend who is supposed to repay your loan turns out to be a broke loser
  • Your income tax refund turns out to be a lot less than expected
  • A buyer backs out of buying your item for sale
  • Your car needs repair out of the blue, and it costs a lot
  • Your work bonus turns out to be misleading and not worth the trouble
  • The little brother gets arrested, loses his job, and now needs you to loan him money

So, let’s break the habit of phantom fortune counting. Let’s swap daydreams for reality checks and embrace a fundamental truth: your financial security rests on what you have, not what you hope to have.

Here’s how to shift your mindset:

  • Focus on the controllable: Instead of dreaming of a potential windfall, channel your energy into building your present financial well-being. Invest in skills, pay down debt, build an emergency fund. These actionable steps, not hopeful wishes, pave the path to real prosperity.
  • Live within your means: Don’t spend money you haven’t earned. This may seem obvious, but the allure of future riches can make us splurge on the “now,” setting ourselves up for disappointment and potential hardship later.
  • Appreciate the present: Gratitude for what you do have shifts your focus from the elusive “what if” to the concrete “what is.” A healthy dose of contentment can make you far richer than any imaginary windfall.
  • Plan for the future, but realistically: Yes, set goals and plan for your future financial needs. But keep those plans grounded in present realities, making adjustments as needed. Remember, even the best-laid plans can encounter unexpected turbulence.

Life is full of possibilities, some more likely than others. But building true financial security requires building on solid ground, not the ever-shifting sands of speculation. Focus on the present, make smart choices, and watch your real, tangible prosperity bloom, one disciplined step at a time.

 

Has being a polite customer in a stressful situation ever resulted in unexpectedly exceptional service or special treatment for you?

I’ve posted this somewhere before, but a number of years ago I was in Jakarta, Indonesia and due to fly back to the UK that evening on Singapore airlines.

When I went to check in and get my boarding pass (yes this was back when you actually got your pass at the check in desk) there were a lot of angry people making a fuss and the young Indonesian woman at the desk looked thoroughly upset. It was clear that she wasn’t far from tears.

I speak Indonesian and when I got the chance asked what the problem was. She said that an earlier flight had been cancelled and that as a result the flight I was due to catch was overbooked. She explained that she had to bump a number of people and knew that it was going to be problematic. The noisy, unhappy people milling around her desk proved that.

I said that I’d be happy to be bumped to a flight the next day if it would help her as I had no real need to catch that flight.

She thanked me profusely and asked me to take a seat for a while and she would sort out the details once she had dealt with the other customers.

I took a seat nearby and read my book for a while until a second young woman in a Singapore airlines uniform approached me and said “thank you for helping out Mr Graham, but we’ve managed to find you a seat for the flight tonight. I hope you don’t mind that the only remaining seat is in first class.”

So for the sake of being polite and offering to help an upset young woman with an awkward situation, I ended up in first class on an eighteen hour flight being looked after like a king. It seemed that the flight attendants had been told I was a “special guest “ and nothing was too much trouble for them.

A smelly experience

When I lived in Indiana, it was an experience in extremes. The Summers were roasting hot. And the Winters were frigid and cold with gusts blowing and wind chill factors in the negative double digits.

To keep warm in our mobile home, we supplemented the heater (which was kerosene) with electric space heaters. And it worked out fine.

This is… or was…

Until my one cat, Scooby (might have been another) decided to pee on the heating coils of the heater.

Of course, we didn’t know this occurred until the very moment we need to use that heater.

Ah. It was a howling cold night, with wind gusts and sub-freezing temperatures. And so we pulled out the old space heater and fired it up.

Let me tell youse guys… nothing quite stinks like well heated, year old cat urine. Lordy!

I’ll tell you what…

I turned that thing off and threw it in the snow. It was horrible. I think that the stench permeated everything and it took weeks to air out the house in that particular Winter.

A word to the wise; never heat up cat urine. You will despise the experience. Ugh!

Today…

What is an experience you had at a gas station you’ll never forget?

Having worked at gas stations off and on for decades, I have a few more than normal, but this is the one that keeps me going with “what were they thinking”.

Many years ago, the owner of the gas station that I was working evenings at volunteered one of the garage bays to Fish and Wildlife as a weigh and tag station during hunting season.

This vehicle pulls in and the driver goes up to the state biologist completely chuffed with himself. Apparently he had just bagged the biggest deer he had ever seen. I got work to do inside, so I keep on going until the biologist walks up to the counter and tells me to call the troopers, and have them send along a sergeant, cause “They are going to want to see this.”

I make the phone call, and about ten minutes later, two state police cruisers pull in. and at the exclamation of “You sorry SOB.” had to step outside to sate my curiosity. Turns out this out of state hunter had not bagged himself a record white tail deer, but a good sized Jersey cow. Almost certainly the best milker in that farmers herd.

Gentleman winds up arrested, car impounded, rifle confiscated, hunting permit revoked, fine to the state, and one hell of a payment to that farmer.

The Chinese

The PRC is nowhere sitting idle. It may not speak a language that you (or I or the West) understands well but it acting decisively.

Common Russia-China patrols in the Pacific
Military exercises with *mixed* troups

China is diplomatically much less cautious than they used to, too. But their real target audience isn’t the West, it is the rest of the world. And I think they’re winning that discussion fair and square.

Posted by: Konami | Jan 23 2024 11:51 utc | 12

Greek Spaghetti (Lemon butter)

Lemon Butter Garlic Pasta Sauce 1
Lemon Butter Garlic Pasta Sauce 1

Ingredients

  • 12 ounces spaghetti
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
  • Garlic powder or mashed garlic cloves

Why you’ll love this lemon butter garlic pasta sauce

  • It’s ready in 15 minutes. You can have a bowl of delicious garlic lemon butter pasta in your hands super fast. Just what I want to hear when I’m pressed for time!
  • It’s super versatile. This creamy lemon butter garlic pasta sauce is great on its own but also perfect with prawns, chicken or salmon.
  • It’s loaded with flavour. Lemon, butter and garlic are an amazing flavour combo just perfect for a no-frills pasta dish.

What goes into pasta al limone?

Olive oil — Use the best quality extra virgin olive oil you can for this recipe for the best flavour.

Butter — Unsalted butter is best for this garlic lemon butter pasta sauce. if you use salted butter, you may not need to add any extra seasoning.

Garlic — Feel free to add as much garlic as you like. I like to make this sauce with at least six cloves. You can either finely slice the garlic or mince it.

How to make garlic lemon butter pasta?

Cook the pasta al dente in salted water according to the instructions on the package. Reserve 1-2 cups of pasta water before draining.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large pan or Dutch oven and melt the butter in it over low-medium heat.

Stir in the garlic and red chilli flakes and cook for 1-2 minutes until the garlic changes its colour, careful not to burn it.

Transfer the cooked pasta to the pan and toss well with a pair of kitchen tongs to cover it in the butter sauce. Add a splash of pasta water if it looks too thick.

Recipe notes and tips

  • To make sure the pasta water is extra starchy, cook the pasta in less water than you’d usually do. The starchier water will make the sauce creamier.
  • It’s always a good idea to grate your Parmesan or hard cheese yourself because freshly grated cheese has more flavour than bagged cheese.
  • Pasta al limone is best served immediately, and I don’t recommend reheating it.

What’s one instinctive thing you did that prevented something bad from happening?

This is something my husband did to help a young lady who was being followed after a road rage incident.

He was in the military and they were putting him through Graduate school so was in good physical shape. He was on his way to class around 1:00 and as he pulled into the parking area for the college and got out he heard someone crying and heard what sounded like someone being thrown against the chain link fence.

He ran down and saw a man throwing a young college girl hard against the fence and then would let her drop to the ground and do it again over and over while yelling at her the entire time. There was blood everywhere.

He ran to help her and grabbed and threw him to the ground. He jumped in his car and left fast. My husband memorized the tag and turned to help the girl. He yelled at another student walking by to call 911. (No cell phones then)

She was shaking, crying and in shock. He said he would stay with her until the ambulance came and asked her name and number so he could get a hold of someone for her. The ambulance was soon there and immediately took her to the hospital.

He met with the Police and after telling them everything he called the number and left a message telling which hospital she was in and what had happened and left his phone number and name if they had questions.

Later that evening a man called and thanked him for protecting his daughter. He said, “I’m her Dad and just wanted to thank you for saving my daughter today. I truly believe you saved her life. She had broken ribs, stitches in her head and a concussion but wasn’t hurt worse because you stepped in to help. You can rest assured he is in jail as we speak and by the way, I am the Superintendent of the Police. Thank you so much.”

~ You may never know whose child, sibling or mother you might be saving or who might be watching.

A few apples fell from my neighbor’s tree branch which hangs over onto my property. I picked them up and kept them. He called the police on me for “stealing food” and threatened to sue me. Will the police do anything? Does he have a case?

“A few apples fell from my neighbor’s tree branch which hangs over onto my property. I picked them up and kept them. He called the police on me for “stealing food” and threatened to sue me. Will the police do anything? Does he have a case?”

Here, no. Oh, he can sue you. Lawyers love this as it means money for them, even if they can’t win. Parasites.

But, his property was on, or over, your property line. So, if it falls naturally, it’s yours. You can TRIM the tree back, but not go over and cut it down. He can trim it so it’s not over your property, but he can’t go over and collect “his” fruit that falls or it’s trespassing.

The most we would do is explain this to him and leave.

However, when you go to court, it’s anyone’s guess. Lawyers and judges, kindred souls, tend to do whatever they want. Unless you have someone who can play the game, you might very well have to pay him for the “stolen” food, damages, and emotional pain and suffering. Heck, maybe even court costs. Criminally, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on, but…

I’ll tell you, growing up, kids used to pick an apple or two to eat and it didn’t cause any problems. It was only if you picked the whole tree, or took more than you needed, that people complained. Even apple orchards didn’t freak too much. If it fell on the ground, it was “free.” In fact, some even liked for you to clean this up for them to keep wasps and other insects from feeding on them and making a mess.

Oh, and another thing, those will be some expensive apples for him. Court isn’t cheap and neither are lawyers. Were they golden apples, maybe? If so, he might be worried you’ll plant the seeds and grow your own gold apples, stealing from his market.

You know, if he claims the apples, you might be able to make him pay for the leaves and branches that fall on your property. Clean up and damages, if you get my meaning. I figure there are a lot more leaves and branches that fall than apples, and, while you’re at it, how about the damage that those apples did to your lawn when they hit it? If you didn’t pick the apples up, they could attract wasps, which could sting you, and possibly dull your mower blades or become risks, such as slipping.

Why are Americans MAD at China?! (I Know Why)

https://youtu.be/U_ddmbjCKjQ

Have you ever walked out of a doctor’s office because the doctor was being disrespectful to you?

I arrived at my doctors office 15 minutes early for a routine visit in the evening. I paid my $5.00 co-pay. The receptionist informed me that I was early. I thought that was strange since most people arrive early for doctors’ appointments. There was a couple waiting to see the only doctor on duty. The receptionist called the woman’s name so she was the patient. I am a registered nurse and the patient did not seem to be in any distress. She and her male partner went into the doctor’s office. I waited an hour. It is none of my business what the patient and the doctor talked about but talking with the same patient for an hour seemed a bit long to me even if she had cancer or some other serious chronic disease. I patiently waited for the hour.

A young male patient came in and he apologized for being late. The receptionist said it is okay and he will be seen next. He did not seem to be in any particular distress. I had been waiting for an hour. I informed the receptionist that I am leaving. She asked me if I wanted to re-schedule the appointment and I said no. I went home and I filed a complaint with the HMO. The doctor’s office had to respond to the complaint. Eventually, they sent me my $5.00 co-pay. I did not care about the co-pay. I was concerned that I was waiting for an hour and the couple was still seeing the doctor and the young man, who was late for his appointment, was going to be seen before me.

I changed primary physician offices. When I called the office of the doctor I eventually selected I asked them how their appointments go? Is a patient generally seen within 15 minutes of their appointment time? They said yes. They also said I can call before my appointment to see if they are exceptionally busy. I have never had an experience like the one I just reported ever again.

I am stupid…

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mk1pmrtlVL8?feature=share

What was the most disappointing Christmas gift you saw someone get?

I get choked up telling this but I will. In 1987 I was 7 years old, my parents had divorced and my father paid my mother $20 a month for 3 kids. Now this was pretty pathetic already, but he had not paid her for 6 months. Anyhow my mother was struggling to make ends meet, we had very little food in the house and I did not know it at the time but my mum was starving so the food would last longer for us kids. Christmas day my father turns up and accuses my mother of being a drug addict (I assure you she’s not) and told her I’m not paying cash anymore or she will spend it in drugs. He gave her a Christmas card and inside was 2 gift cards for the local supermarket totalling $200, he even said “Merry Christmas” to her as this was all the owed money and then some more. My mother did not care, she would have used $200 cash for food anyhow. She took what little she had in cash and used it to buy fuel for her car, we drove to the supermarket and loaded two trollies (1987 $200 went a long way) mum even purchased Froot Loops for us kids, it was a happy day…… Well until we got to the check out. The bill came to $199.90, mum presented the 2 gift cards, they were both declined. People stared at her, and the store accused her of stealing the gift cards, they told her to leave or they would call the police. People stared at us, and my mother left so embarrassed. My younger brother was 4, he was crying as the Froot Loops were taken from his hands.

What actually happened: My deadbeat father stole the gift cards from the store, however their is no money in them despite them saying $100 on each. You see if you want to purchase the card you need to take them to the counter and pay the face value, then the card is activated and can be used in the store. A few days later my mother collapsed from starvation, we had apple trees next door at the neighbours farm, we took some for my mother, she ate apples for 5 days straight. It gets worse however, when my father was confronted by my mother a big argument broke out, my father accused my mother of lying and then refused to pay her any child support for another 4 months as he had given her $200.

Over the course of 6 years my father paid a grand total of $60 for us 3 children. In 2002 when I was 22, out of sheer coincidence, I saw my father enter a bar. I sat next to him he pretended like nothing had happened, he offered to buy my drink I told him “I don’t want anything from you” and paid for my own drink, the tension was so thick at this point. He started talking about how “that was the past and it’s okay now.” I finished my drink, opened my wallet and pulled out $60. I sat it in the bar in front of him and said “that is everything I owe you, don’t you ever f@cking contact me or my brother’s again.” Then left the bar, I honestly have no idea where he is today, and I really do not care.

EXTRA PART.

I have had a few people question about the last time I saw my father as a child, this includes my own daughter, well it was not at age 8. When I was 8 he started to hardly ever see us, he saw us once a month, then on our birthdays and Christmas, then he called us on these days. Now when you are 8–10 years old a month is a long time, so as a child I was always wondering if I had done something wrong. Yes my mother comforted me, but deep down you can not shake that “why was I not loved enough to want to see me” feeling.

By the age of 10 he had barely seen us for a year. On my 12th birthday be turned up with a fantastic cake, it had a fighter jet on it made out of icing, he remembered I liked fighter jets. He was such a loving father that day, I don’t know why, but he was. I remember him going, telling me “I will see you again real soon son,” then he left. That guilt feeling went away, I still felt I had done something to upset him, that’s why he left the first time, but I had now been punished, and forgiven. I felt my nightmare was over, I could live a life with a loving father again.

That night I went to bed and I recall my mother asking me if I had a good birthday? I told her “today has been the best day ever,” it really had. I rang dad’s phone about 2 weeks later as he had not contacted us, I was excited to talk to him, the number was disconnected, I had no address and I was 12. Mum could not contact him either, I don’t know if it was deliberately done, or if the phone was disconnected, I really don’t know. What I do know is that he knew our number and our address, but didn’t want to know us. I had a $2 coin that I would put in the pay phone near my school every afternoon while waiting for the school bus I would dial his number over and over. I had a special tiny bag I kept that coin inside, I still have this coin today. I keep it in a display, a reminder if the pain I felt every time I rang that disconnected number. About a year later the phone rang, the person who answered did not know my father, obviously the phone company had recycled the number.

My daughter has asked why I keep a normal $2 coin on display in my office. I have never told her, but I guess she knows now, you see I did not know she was on Quora, I had no idea she was following this post. Everytime I look at that coin (everyday) I am reminded of the hurt a parent can inflict on a child. My father never beat us, or did anything like this, but I think I would have preferred this as opposed to the emotional torture he gave us.

I live my daughter, she turns 15 soon (May 22nd) and I would take a bullet for her if that was ever the situation, I can’t image her putting $2 in a pay phone everyday for over a year (yes I know we have mobile phones now). I would feel bad if I slept in on her birthday, let alone didn’t turn up altogether. She has no wish to meet her grandfather and I doubt she will after reading this. She loves her grandmother, she looks up to her as a role model, and what a great role model to have. She’s a really smart person, even when she was 8, I explained to her the reason we live so comfortable is because of the sacrifices her grandmother made, she understood completely.

Who is the rudest celebrity you have met, and who would be the nicest?

With few exceptions, the biggest stars tend to be the nicest people. Why? Probably because they’ve achieved their greatest ambitions and have nothing to prove. Too, most of them had to endure a lot of rejection before finally getting their big break.

In 1990, I worked with Martin Sheen and LeBar Burton producing their voiceovers on an environmentally themed charity album entitled “Put On Your Green Shoes.” Sheen was so nice, he refused to be paid for his contribution, which caused us some problems because AFTRA insisted that he receive scale for the session. As one would expect, Burton was a true gentleman and did take after take because he wanted nothing else but to serve the project.

I wrote a song for Tim McGraw’s “All I Want” album and he proved to be one of the nicest, down-to-earth superstars I’ve ever met.

I’ve written in Quora about my disappointing encounters with certain rock stars… Kevin DuBrow, Mike Love, and Todd Rundgren, in particular, were extremely unpleasant and rude personalities.

A chance meeting with another celeb was also disillusioning. The first movie soundtrack I was involved with was the original Vanishing Point, circa 1971, starring Barry Newman. About 8 years later, I ran into Newman who, by then, had starred in the CBS series Petrocelli.

I was arriving at an LA tennis court as he was leaving. “Barry Newman! Vanishing Point!” I exclaimed, as he approached. He just scowled at me and marched past. Thinking he might be more open to giving a co-creator a hello, I said, “I did some songs in that film.”

“Yeah, sure,” he grumbled, and walked on. I certainly found that extremely rude and disrespectful. Still, I have no idea whether Newman was surly by nature or whether he was just having a bad day.

How do Europeans feel like living in an age which they can no longer colonise non-European countries?

They move from slavery to colonialism and to virtual colonialism ie. Rules Based International Order.

Rules set arbitrarily and unilaterally by white Caucasian. Anglo European stock to ensure that the rest of the world are fully submissive and subservient to them in a set of rules that favours them and it ensure that the world is theirs to take, loot, steal as they please. They enriched themselves and the coloured people toils and slaved for them.

When the rules are not suitable they simply change them. The rules are set by them, change by them, ratified by them, policed by them and judged by them! To ensure they write what is right and what is wrong they monopolised the media that says the white is right, the white is moral, the white is honourable, the white is pure!

Everything black is bad. Black magic, black cat, black out, Black Friday, black Monday black listed…The media and the European stock can demonised anyone that refused to be submissive and subservient to them. They can even kill, murder, slaughter, rape at will! To enrich the west they get the biggest muscle in the room US to be their henchmen.

They can even murder 3 million in Vietnam and Indo China. And the media say it is to prevent communism, 2 million in Korea to stop communism and 2 million in Iraq to install western value like freedom! Then 1 million in Afghanistan to protect women’s right! It is up to what sells best to the fools in the west!

So after 300 years of enslavement and colonialism and another 75 years of virtual Colonialism that is about to end. The west blames China or Russia but frankly if you are anyone of the 175 non beneficiary nations, the 87% if the world or the so called Global South, everyone wants out! And it will be history whether the beneficiary scream, shout or threaten genocide we will stop at nothing!

Europeans and go cheat on each other and steal from each other.

America

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GQQO2DChU-0?feature=share

Can you stop your neighbors from driving through your yard to park in front of their house?

My buddy had the same problem. He had addressed several times but the teenaged son continued the behavior.

He took matters into his own hands. He did not damage any property. He took come plastic valve caps and superglued a simple BB into the top. He then snugged up the valve caps so it just slightly depressed the Schrader valve, slowly releasing air from the tires. The next day all 4 tires were flat.

The neighbor had the vehicle towed to a repair shop. All 4 tires checked out as good. The vehicle was driven home, with the same caps installed by the repair facility. Next day, all 4 tires were flat. The car was then towed to repair shop again. All 4 tires check out again. That shop reused the caps again.

Finally on the third day of towing, the repair shop found the BB’s and replaced the caps. When they returned home all my buddy did is was grin at them as they drove in. His lawn never was driven over again.

Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?

Well, it was my co-worker, and we were both let go due to layoffs. Actually, we were let go after the ‘official’ round of layoffs were completed and we thought we were in the clear. For me, it happened just a few days after it was completed. After our weekly IT meeting, I got called into HR (thinking it was an IT issue) but got ambushed by our manager (cisco VC call from TX) who promptly explained about the firm consolidating and removing redundancies.

Due to NY state law, HR was required to give me a list of employees being let go that day (just their age, department, and title) to show there was no discrimination by age or other factors.

After I left the building, my co-worker came down to say his goodbyes, and asked about the whole procedure. Then I showed him the list that HR gave me. He then noticed the age and title and said that was his, and then the realization that his last day was today too. Sure enough, he saw a missed call on his phone from someone in HR.

He went back inside, and sure enough, about 15 minutes or so, I get a text from him saying he was let go too.

Why do more and more Hong Kong people like to shop in Shenzhen?

Others have mentioned the cost.

But for me the key consideration is the attitude of shops and customers service in Hong Kong is atrocious.

I had to buy a new phone 2 years ago and dread doing it.

You go into shops ask for something and they’ll try sell you something else when you say no thanks you get a tirade of abuse.

A bicycle company that has shut down did this. I wanted a bicycle tyre he tried to sell me 19. I wanted 23. He gave me an earful of abuse about how he knew better than me and how 19 was the way to go.

Here’s Why America is About to be Bankrupt AND Everything You’ve Worked for Means Nothing!

https://youtu.be/shWOdLQXeJo

What’s the most savage way you’ve seen someone get fired?

We hired a young man just out of high school who needed a break. Bright, motivated, smiled and nodded to everyone. We qualified his on forklift in shipping department. He was so happy his life was on track. He got his first apartment and got engaged. I was very proud of him and we chatted now and than about his future.

He was off one day. This was a couple weeks after we were told the plant would shut down in 6 to 8 months.

Our HR lady got a call from corporate telling her to fire him today. He was hired 89 days ago and if he was here 90 days they had to pay unemployment. So they called him in for some BS reason. I tried to find his number, call him and tell him to turn his phone off and don’t come in but I couldn’t get it.

He came in and went up front. Came back to his car and left. I could see him tearing up. Once again his world had been upended. I had told him before all this that qualified forklift operator opened a lot of good paying jobs if he ever left.

I felt so bad for him and contempt at the company for saving a few bucks and not caring about people.

Why is Olive Garden a bad restaurant?

If I lived in a smaller town with a diner or two around and a couple of fast food places and one Olive Garden, it would be heaven on earth. A clean place to sit down and eat with gobs of salad, a friendly waitstaff, and interesting combinations of food that I just couldn’t get anywhere else. If you told me that it wasn’t authentic Italian food I could only say, “So what?” It is a comfortable dining experience in my little town and the food tastes pretty darn decent. That Olive Garden would be a special treat for me and my family.

I live in a much larger community and there are two Olive Gardens near by as well as a plethora restaurants and cafeterias around. Once a month or so my wife and I get a take-out from Olive Garden. She always gets the lasagna (her only go to meal at Olive Garden) and I usually ask for my own concoction of a pasta with Italian Sausage with meat sauce with the gnocchi/chicken soup. She loves the lasagna and I really like what I get. We are not looking for a particular Italian experience, we are looking a particular food we appreciate.

So my suggestion is that Olive Garden is not bad at all. Is it exquisite dining? Not at all. Is it authentic Italian? Nope. But exquisite dining and true Italian are available to me when I want it. The Olive Garden is not a replacement, it is simply an additional option. Others must agree with me because these places around me are invariably crowded.

The Olive Garden is a pleasant option.

What is the biggest life lesson you have ever learnted?

Dad: What are you searching in that drawer?

Mom: I couldn’t find my saved money, I need to pay the deliveryman.

Dad: Don’t worry, you’ll find it. How much for the deliveryman?

Mom: 5 thousand rupees. I ordered some groceries and essentials for the house.

Dad paid the deliveryman and we eventually got busy with our daily work.

The next day, Mom, Dad, and I were cleaning the kitchen, when my mom shouted.

Mom: Look, I got my money, it’s in the cupboard. I was so foolish, I searched the whole house for it.

Mom looked so happy because she saved it for her friend’s birthday gift.

But the situation was something else.

Dad got out of the house to smoke a cigarette and I ran behind him.

I said “Why did you do that?’

Father asked: ‘Do what?’

I replied “I swear I have seen you taking the money out of your wallet and putting it in the cupboard.

Dad smirked and replied: “You know she was everything for me! I can’t see her getting sad over the little money she lost yesterday. Because I think we need to care for the person, we love the most!”

Dad takes out a handkerchief and starts putting off his sweat.

I said “Dad, now why are you using mom’s handkerchief? Is it a sign of your care towards Mom too?”

Dad “Nope, because it still has her fragrance”

This was something that changed my whole point of view not only towards life but also towards love too.

Hope you’ll like my answer,

Yours truly,

Ankita

Is the poor training and corruption in China’s military comparable to Russia?

It’s always interesting so see how few westerners have pattern recognition isn’t it?

What’s that?

If you haven’t noticed EVERY single country that is considered an enemy of western countries is described in exactly the same way:

  • Corrupt
  • Poor training
  • Poor weapons
  • human wave attacks.

Yet westerners fail to recognise those things.

Actually no, I changed my mind while typing this, it’s recognised but it’s merely another form of racism. So let me change the above to this

  • Corrupt – Compared to the totally non corrupt western militaries.
  • Poor training- Compared to the fantastic SUPER SOLDIER training of western countries
  • Poor weapons – Compared to the SUPER WEAPONS of western countries
  • human wave attacks. – Compared to the fantastic tactics of western countries.

This is why Ukraine has fucked the western narrative so much. They were exposed, they talk tough but in the end the talk doesn’t match.

Westerners talked how big and powerful they were.

Corruption

  • Pentagon can’;t account for 2 trillion.
  • Challenger 1 tank gets produced!
  • SA80 rifle is produced!

Yet their SUPER SOLDIER TRAINING has failed (western source)

Star Wars by Wes Anderson Trailer | The Galactic Menagerie

https://youtu.be/d-8DT5Q8kzI

I was put on furlough (mandatory unpaid time off) at my job. During this time my boss called me and asked a question. Was I wrong to tell him “I will answer that when I am back in the office and getting paid”?

You weren’t wrong, but depending on circumstances, a better approach might have been to be nice. Especially if your boss had no say in the decision to furlough you.

If the boss was the one who made this decision, and you don’t like him, then what you did was a perfectly reasonable response.

The large company I worked for, was bought out by another company, and they laid off 1200 people in our company, immediately.

I was one of the casualties, but they were nice and gave me severance plus an extra day to clean out my office, which I spent copying files over to the people left behind.

The very first day, my coworker, one of 4 from a group of 13, that survived the culling, called me asking me for help. I gave it to him, no sense making a friends life miserable. Everyday I spent 15 minutes with him. He wasn’t qualified to do my job, and he knew it, but he was just doing his best.

On the sixth work day, our partners complained that they had agreed to let our company manage the project, and paid our company outrageous money to do so, because I was managing the contract and not some unqualified guy.

I was brought back on contract, paying far more than my old salary, to manage the contract. The CEO of the new combined company had to sign off on any laid off employee, being brought back on contract, in less than a year. There was a lot of flack flying in the company over hiring me back after a week.

The deciding vote to bring me back, was the fear of my being bitter and taking revenge on the company by sabotaging the project. Once it was explained that I had copied all the data I could to the relevant people, after being laid off, and spent 15 minutes a day helping the company, it was decided that it was worth the risk, and I was contracted back. I was the only one of 1200 people brought back in the first year.

Some companies are reluctant to bring back people they view as bitter. Even if you have every right to be bitter.

What was ‘the incident’ about which everybody talked in your school/workplace?

A co-worker – he was 21 years old – and another co-worker – she was 19 years old – decided to take their morning 15 minute break in the janitor closet. An employee came with her water can to get water for her plants. She opened the door to the utility closet and dropped her can and screamed OH MY GOD. She ran and got security. The young man was in a standing position, nekked from the waist down. The young woman was kneeling, nekked from the waist up. The young man zipped up, zipped out and fled outside to smoke a badly needed cigarette. The young woman had to do more work to get decent. The guard caught her. He asked her “Where is your partner in crime?” She replied “I am sure he is outside smoking a cigarette. This is his name and this is what he looks like.” So, both criminals got caught and fired right away. The young man went home right away. The woman actually finished out her work day, her head held up high, not embarrassed or uncomfortable or anything. She caught me and two other people talking about her. She actually came up to us and stated “I don’t think you should be talking about my private life in public.” Can you believe it …..

What was the biggest risk you have ever taken that really paid off in the end?

I was making good money in NYC, but I had had enough of it. It was becoming too dangerous a place for me to raise my wonderful kids. I didn’t want them to have the same upbringing as me. I’m your typical, cynical, non-trusting, New Yorker. I wanted them to have a better outlook on life.

I managed to find a job in Vermont that payed half what I was making in NYC, but, allegedly, the cost of living was cheaper. In some ways, that was correct, but in others… well, there are things about VT that are MORE expensive than NYC. We were struggling for those first years.

Four years later and I’m making a little more than I made in my best year in NYC. My daughter thinks I Yoko-Ono’ed her bond with her friends and she’ll probably never forgive me for that, but you know what? One of her best friends (15 years old) was recently found, in broad daylight, passed out drunk in a stall in Panera Bread. So maybe moving her away from that may have been a good thing. She’ll never see it though.

My dad was freaking out when I informed him of my intentions to move. He claimed that I’d never have the opportunity that I had enjoyed in NYC. I have changed jobs 3 times since moving here, and I finally have probably the best chance to enjoy retirement from the job I have now. It’s been a blessing, mixed at times, but a blessing.

Take chances. You never know what you’re missing if you don’t.

Excelsior!

Do you have biases that you are aware of?

Yes.

And this is going to make a lot of Quorans think less of me. But I’m just being honest.

No sarcasm in this answer either.

I’m very much biased against illegal drug users. This is because of my experiences growing up with an older sister who was a drug addict. I saw what it did to her. I saw what it did to her daughter. But mostly, I saw what it did to my parents.

I don’t have any friends anymore anyway… the wife and kids take all of my time, and I’m an introvert… but, when I was younger and did have some friends, I’d cut them from my life the moment I found out they did drugs.

In my early 20s, I had some coworkers who smoked weed on a regular basis. I didn’t think too highly of them. They were mainly middle-aged men who were still doing entry-level and part-time work. Were they happy? Sure. Did I want to be like them at their age? No. I just avoided talking to them unless it was work-related.

I don’t get preachy with drug users. (It’s pointless.) I know some of the people I interact with on a regular basis here on Quora, my “Quora friends,” use drugs. I’ve seen their posts about it. The fact that we only interact via the written word in a virtual world is the only reason I don’t care about it. If this were the real world, and you were sitting in front of me now, discussing how you planned to get high this weekend, I’d politely excuse myself from the table. I don’t need that around me in the real world.

You do you, but respect that I don’t want any part of anyone who does those things.

For me, personally, I suppose it’s like someone who grew up with an alcoholic parent, and made it a point to never be around people who drink a lot. It just brings up bad memories that you don’t need in your life.

Who Is Zelensky? A Puppet—and Here’s Why

One of the reasons why he was killed.

https://youtu.be/j7NTLZDd4tc

How many real friends do you have (friend being defined as someone whom you could call to discuss a personal problem or whom you could ask to borrow a small amount of money from)?

Literally none.

It’s something that my family (well, my wife and oldest daughter) have noticed for years. They used to encourage me to make some friends, but I guess they gave up on that.

I have coworkers with whom I talk about work-related things. I have neighbors I chat with when I happen to be outside at the same time they are. I have Facebook friends who are old real-life friends from high school, none of whom I’ve seen in real life in 20 years, and will likely never see again.

And that’s it. I have my family, and a bunch of acquaintances, but no real friends.

That’s not a complaint. I’m happy this way.

The last real friend I had… someone with whom I’d hang out on the weekends… I haven’t spoken to him since 2007. We were friends and roommates in college, and I worked with him for a little while, but once we both got married, got our careers, got our houses, and had our children, we just kind of grew apart.

I’m not anti-social. I’m asocial. It’s something I don’t even think about, unless someone else points it out to me. Here it is, a Saturday night (St. Patrick’s Day weekend in Chicago, no less), and I’m answering questions on Quora in the gap time between tucking in my children and going to bed myself. I suppose that sounds sad or pathetic to people who value their social lives. Not to me, though. It sounds comfortable. I like comfortable.

RIA-Novosti publishes photo of French “mercenary” in Ukraine

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | 23 JANUARY 2024

image 174
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RIA-Novosti press agency published photographs taken from the Facebook account of Alexis Drion, one of the casualties of the Russian bombing of Khirkov/Kharkov on January 17.

The Russian Foreign Ministry continues to claim that the building targeted by the Russian strike was hosting “foreign mercenaries”, mainly French. On its side, the French Foreign Ministry denies just as vigorously the presence of French “mercenaries” embroiled in the conflict.

Understandably, Russia is trying to present evidence that French soldiers were in Ukraine carrying out a mission, which would constitute an act of war.

After publishing the names of 13 of the victims of the January 17 bombing, the agency dug deeper and stumbled on an Facebook account <Facebook

> created in December 2011. Though relatively inactive, an image can be spotted of the young man from 2013 in military uniform, at the age of 27. Various photos seem to link him to the Foreign Legion. In the latest pictures, we find him in Ukraine brandishing an insignia of France and the OUN, the militia of “integral nationalists”.

image 173
image 173

Alexis Drion during a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris


Russian press issues list of 13 French “mercenaries” who died in Ukraine

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | 22 JANUARY 2024

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image 172

While the French authorities have formally declared that there were no French “mercenaries” in Ukraine, the Russian press has published a list of 13 names corresponding to some of the victims of the 17 January bombing on Kharkiv/Kharkov.

• Albert Emeric (d.o.b. 22 December 1999),
• Alexis Drion (13/06/1986),
• Béranger Guillaume Alain Minault (30/12/1978),
• Valentin Dupois Mel (02/01/1994),
• Gilles Bernard Sylvain (10 /27/1980),
• Jacques-Pierre Gabriel Evrard Philippe (29/09/1987),
• Jean-Pierre Bonneau Chris Heray (17/07/1999),
• Maris André Dubois Clément (28/09/1995),
• Marcellin Demont (05 /23/2002),
• Sébastien Claude Rémy Benard (04/04/1974),
• Thomas Jeremy Nathan Gourrier (24/02/1996),
• Charles Bertin Roussel (01/09/1996),
• Emmanuel Tanguy Kenneth Delange Grandal (26/09/1996) /1998).


Russian Duma to address French Parliament

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | 19 JANUARY 2024

image 171
image 171

The Russian Duma will address the French Parliament regarding the presence of French “mercenaries” in Ukraine.

Officially, France is not engaged in military operations in Ukraine, but supports the latter by providing it with weapons. If French soldiers were involved in the fighting, the French Republic would be at war with the Russian Federation.

It would seem that the Duma is intent on disclosing the presence of French Special Forces, which are in Ukraine without authorization from the French Parliament.

Article 35 of the French Constitution stipulates stipulates as follows:


“The Government informs Parliament of its decision to have the armed forces intervene abroad, at the latest three days after the beginning of said intervention. It specifies the objectives pursued. This information may give rise to a debate which is not followed by any vote. When the duration of the intervention exceeds four months, the Government submits its extension to Parliament for authorization. It may request the National Assembly to make the final decision.”

How do you respond to an inappropriate “accidental touch” by someone at work?

In my opinion…

It was at an office BBQ with our families, it was hot, and there was a wasp.

The bosses eight or nine-year-old daughter started screaming that there was a bee in her shirt. She was wearing a spaghetti top. Everyone panicked.

The thing about me, is that a Bee sting is much like a mosquito bite, it swells up a little bit and itches. No big deal. Some people, a bee sting would kill them. If I did nothing, would she die?

I calmly asked her if I could put my hand in her shirt. She screamed “YES! YES!”

In front of her panicking dad and mom, she pulled her top open and I reached into her shirt and grabbed the Wasp. I pulled my hand out and threw it on the ground and stomped it. I looked at my palm. It had stung me, so I bit the wound and sucked, then spit. I got stung a few times every year, no big deal.

Then I realized that I had just had my hand down the front of a little girls shirt in front of thirty witnesses.

But everyone treated me like a hero, especially my boss. Go figure.

What would you do if you got fired from your job?

Heeeee! I oughta say “don’t ask,” but can’t resist.

I took over a job that had been occupied by my eminently sensible, smart, and long-suffering cousin. That last adjective — long-suffering — is the operative term. She put up with the guy’s sh!t (a euphemism, we might say) until she went off to marry a handsome and rich young rancher and live happily ever after.

Totally naive, I applied for and got her job.

What.

A.

Jerk.

The.

Guy.

Was.

The day I came in and found an incredibly NASTY note in the middle of my office floor — he was unhappy because I’d thrown out some trash — mostly ads — without shredding every sheet of paper and envelope — was the day that I took everything I was supposed to be working on, dropped it smack in the middle of the office floor, went out the door, locked it behind me, jumped in my car, drove away, and never came back.

From there the next move was to go back to graduate school. Get a job teaching freshman comp for peanuts (I was used to the “peanuts” part by then…), complete the Ph.D., get my book published, and land an academic job. A job, we might add, where the bosses more or less treated you like you were human. Well. Almost as human as they were. 😀

What do you do if you get fired from your job? CELEBRATE!!!!!

What was the shortest first date you ever had?

Met a woman in a busy local mall after chatting with her online a few times. Met her through a horrendous online dating app. Made sure lots of people around in case things headed south. Bought her lunch and we sat and ate as she just kept on and on. Saying nothing until she says I have something important to tell you. Ohhhh okay. I just got out of prison. Oh yeah? Umm what for I asked. Bank robbery in Nevada. A casino heist. Oh really? So what brought you to Florida? I met my husband as a penpal in prison and we wrote back and forth for years. Husband? Yeah he recently had a massive heart attack and died. Ummm ok? Yeah he was 25 years older then me and lives in Bonita Springs. He had a vending machine business. Ohhhh. So did you at least stash some of the stolen money away from your heist? She said that her 2 “ friends” left her behind and she got busted and they got away with several hundred thousand dollars. So you never caught up with them? Nooo, she couldn’t find them and never saw them again. Attractive well endowed blonde woman . Spent a good 1/2 hour talking . Nice girl but a bit tooo much baggage for me.

Can an employee be fired by phone, or does that have to be done in person?

An employee can be fired by phone, though I wouldn’t recommend that. California requires that you hand an employee their final check (and a few other documents) on their last day. That would be very difficult to accomplish over the phone, right. You might have an out:

  • this is an on-the-spot firing because you just learned that the employee did something so bad that you have to term them immediately. California law gives you 72 hours to get the check to them if it truly is an unplanned termination.
  • the employee agrees to something like having their check delivered to their door by courier, say within the hour. (I agreed to that when I retired. I was recorded, with my permission, waiving my right to come in and pick up my check and other documentation in person.)

My aside brings up a key point: what did you say? What did the employee say in return? An unrecorded phone call leaves you with a he said – she said. That’s not going to be a fun day if the employee decides to challenge your firing.

Some states are single party consent, meaning you can record the call without the employee’s knowledge or consent. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. You can quickly gain a bad reputation in the labor pool and with recruiters and agencies for having shady, though legal, HR practices. “You don’t want to work there! They call you first thing in the AM, fire you and sneak record everything you say.”

Not fair.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iOPUMWCeFvI?feature=share

What is the most amusing conversation that you have ever heard?

My friends and I witnessed a fantastic scene on a public bus last November.

A few stops after we got on, two young boys waddled onto the bus. They were maybe about seven or eight years old, small enough that they were practically dwarfed by their puffy winter coats and colorful backpacks.

As soon as their fathers sat down, the two kids began quietly talking to each other. Based on the things they were saying, it sounded like they were trying to recreate what they’d learned in some kind of anti-bullying assembly at school.

“If you don’t let me play with you,” one boy whispered, “that’s bullying!”

“But if you do let us play with you,” the other boy whispered back, “that’s respect!”

“If you push someone over on the playground, that’s bullying!”

“If you help someone get up after they fall, that’s respect!”

Their secretive whispering gradually evolved into enthusiastic shouting as they applied this newly learned dichotomy to scenario after scenario. After a few minutes, it became clear that they’d started to go off-script.

“If you never ever say sorry again, THAT’S BULLYING!”

“If you say sorry a hundred million billion times forever and forever until you die, THAT’S RESPECT!”

“If you go on the toilet and you forget to flush but then you go back and you see the poop and you flush it, THAT’S BULLYING!”

“No, wait, I think that’s respect.”

“That’s respect?”

“Yeah.”

“No, but I think the poop makes it bullying.”

My friends and I were sitting at the back of the bus throughout their conversation, trying our best to hold back our laughter.

What are some of the funniest “got fired” stories?

I have a friend who worked for a small firm as a graphic designer. He was the youngest and newest, and felt like he was underappreciated and under paid. Also, he thought his boss was a moron. When the business hit hard times, he saw cutbacks coming and decided to just do whatever he wanted until they let him go.

Monday morning, an hour after he was supposed to be in, he called and said he’d be out all week, and would be in Friday, then hung up before he got a response. He watched TV and played video games for four days straight, taking breaks to look for a new job.

On Friday he rolled in two hours late, not at all surprised to discover that his boss wanted to see him in his office.

“The company has needed to do some restructuring and make some tough choices. I need to inform you-”

Here it comes, freedom at last from this awful place!

“- that we’ve let everyone else in the creative department go, and you are now our lead designer. We’re ready to give you an immediate raise of 20% and creative control over all projects. Also, it looks like you’ve needed a break this week, so we’re also ready to offer you more vacation days.”

By the end of the discussion, he not only got more vacation days and the 20% raise, but also got to work from home every Friday. I guess being absent all week made his boss realize how valuable he was to the company.

Edit: There were some questions as to why my friend was the only one kept on, so I’ll elaborate. The company had two web designers, a graphic designer, and my friend, who did video directing and editing. It just so happened he was also a great designer, artist, and could do web design. Everyone in the department could do their job, but he could do everyone’s job.

Submarines Size Comparison

https://youtu.be/347zdq9d2aM

What court tactic backfired on someone?

I was a Probation officer, and I had a probationer back before the court for a probation violation hearing. There were several charges, but one charge was the guy had shown up for an urine screen, and claimed he couldn’t urinate for three hours, even though I saw him go to the restroom twice. (He said he was just testing.) Anyway, I told him to come in the next morning at eight. He showed up at eleven.

At the hearing, the attorney who was a friend of mine got feisty for some reason. After I testified that I told him to report back at eight, the defense attorney asked me, “And did he?”

I replied, “Well..”

“Yes or no answer,” he snapped.

I turned to the judge and said, “It’s not a yes or no question.” (I wanted to say that he showed up at eleven.)

The judge said, “ If the defense attorney wants a yes or no answer he’s entitled to it., Ask your question again.”

“Officer Davis did my client show up at 8:00AM as you told him to?”

“No”

He got an additional charge. I later told the judge in private, and we had a new hearing where he had two months of his eight months in jail reduced. But if I’d been a jerk his attorneys showboating would have cost him two extra months.

What sounds extremely wrong, but is actually correct?

Before freezing to death, people tend to remove their clothes.

Yes.

This is called “paradoxical undressing”, a phenomenon frequently seen in cases of lethal hypothermia. Shortly before death, the person will remove all their clothes, as if they were burning up, when in fact they are freezing.

When people feel cold, the most important thing is to ensure the function of the brain, internal organs and other major organs, so the blood vessels at the ends of the body will automatically contract to ensure adequate blood flow to the major organs.

In this state of stress for a long time, the muscles that contract the blood vessels fall into fatigue and can no longer work, and must take a calm “rest”.

The peripheral blood vessels on the surface of the body will all open, blood will quickly flow to the end of the limbs, and the long-term cold limbs will be immediately filled with warm blood, resulting in the illusion of “very hot”.
When this signal is sent back to the brain, the brain will send the wrong instructions to the body, so that people may think that it is really hot, take off all the clothes.

At this time, people who are on the verge of dying get up and struggle to undress, thinking that undressing is good.

Hard time dating

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iKpzZedCeec?feature=share

Would the military actually shoot at people trying to storm Area 51 or would they try to arrest them?

I was a reservist in the ’90s. I got put on guard duty a few times.

One night, I had to guard a building. They gave me a rubber duck weapon. (An M-16 made out of rubber. Yes, they exist.) I had to walk the perimeter of the building every hour with the “weapon.” I had to note anything out of the ordinary.

When I guarded the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), they gave me a real rifle and a full magazine. There was classified information in there that I didn’t have the clearance to see. I didn’t even know what I was guarding.

They briefed me on the use of force. Basically, you halt the person. You get their ID, detain them and call the commander of the relief. If they don’t halt, you shoot center of mass. There are no warning shots.

Yes. They will kill you if you don’t halt and follow their orders. They have orders to do so. They will follow their lawful orders. National security is no joke to them.

I was glad nobody approached me that night.

Have you ever been fired from a job or asked to resign?

I was 19 and working at a major retailer, I’d rather not mention but is definitely a conglomerate. I went on lunch break, had a drink with a coworker, and returned to post. My manager instantly smelled alcohol on my breath, idiot I was didn’t try to hide or cover the pungent odor that is Seagrams gin. Manager notified the higher ups who put me in a room and three higher ups sat at a table opposite of me. They began asking where I got the alcohol, did I drink with anyone, and saying that they saw us on cameras. I was to rat this coworker out with a written statement. I wound up writing that I drank alone like George Thurgood and not one person laughed. They decided to fire me and I happily left. I was mentally ready to leave that place. The only thing I regret is when I have to answer for it at job interviews even thought it’s been nearly 20 years.

What is the greatest way to make unwanted guests leave?

We had an 18th disco-style birthday party for our daughter at our house, with the expectation that it would wind up around 11pm. By 11:30 it was still going strong with music blaring out loud and kids dancing and drinking a little too much (beer and light drinks only allowed).

My Father-in-law was living with us at the time – an ex-Grenadier Guard and Seargent-Major. Seeing our frustration and not dealing with it adequately, to his mind at least, said he would deal with it.

At 11:50pm he walked into our large lounge, cleared to be a dance floor, switched off the music and switched on the main lights and announced.

“In 10 minutes, it will be Sunday and at 12:05 I will start a religious service. I expect anyone still here to attend”.

The place cleared by 12 midnight.

Quantum Leap: Russia-China’s Quantum Communication Test

https://youtu.be/WdQtBa8_T4Q

What was the shortest interview you’ve had that led to a job offer?

Went to a bar in Australia, saw that no-one was tending and joked with the next guy that walked in, that he needed a bartender, else I’d pour my own, he said, ok, come pour your own. I did, with a near perfect head, and he said, can you start here? now? today? sure I said, he left me there for 4 hours to run the bar. I worked there 2 years.

Went to an bar in Shanghai while travelling, the Bartender there was a Kiwi, it was an Aussie bar, after I asked for a drink he asked me, what I was doing in Shanghai, and I said, looking for a job (I was interviewing for English Teaching jobs) and he said, Well, you sound Aussie, you can work here if you can pour a beer. I started that night and worked for a half a year (ESL teaching in the day, bartender at night).

Went to a ESL School for an interview in a new country after that, walked into the wrong dept, and asked for the head of dept (as it was all I had to go on) and started the interview from my end, and half way through she realised I was in the wrong place, but then asked me how I would deal with businessmen instead of kids. I said, ‘under the suit, they’re just kids’ she hired me there instead, I stayed in that country 10 years.

You find a new job, so you give your employer two weeks’ notice. Your boss then gets angry that you are quitting and tells you not to come back in anymore. How should you respond to your boss?

Generally, when this happens, especially in a salaried position, your current employer will pay you for the final two weeks. If the employer doesn’t offer it, ask for it. It never hurts to ask. It’s just easier and safer for your employer to pay you off than to make an issue of it.

Years ago, as a recent college graduate with an accounting degree, I was an employee in good standing, working as an office supervisor, while I searched for an accounting job. When I was hired by a new company as an accountant (at a significant pay increase,) I gave my two weeks’ notice, fully intending to use the next two weeks to make the transition as easy as possible for my current team. My manager didn’t appear to be angry or resentful when I resigned, but two days later she told me that she didn’t think my mind was on my work. She instructed me to pack up my personal belongings and leave immediately. She told me the company would pay me for the remaining portion of my final two weeks.

What did I do? I packed up and left with no cross words or fanfare. Then I enjoyed an unexpected, 10-day, paid vacation on my old company, knowing I would be starting a better-paying job in my chosen field at the end of my break.

My First Time Hearing Zhou Shen – Floating Light REACTION

https://youtu.be/V1ki98LPGlY

What is the best revenge you got on a superior in your workplace?

I don’t think of it as revenge, but just standing up for myself.

I was a sergeant for a large California police department. I was working swing watch for a lieutenant that was worse than an asshole. I can work for an asshole if he is competent regarding the job, and if he is consistently an asshole. This guy was worse than an asshole in the following ways: some days he’d act like your buddy. Some days he’d say ‘Do X,Y, and Z’ and the following day he’d say “No! I said do Q,R, and W’. He would also tell me how he didn’t trust a large number of our officers. He had quite a paranoia about him. Just a miserable human being who I believe was trying to mask some serious insecurities.

One day I came into work five hours early as a favor, due to some gang murders and a trial that ws going on. I had a squad of swing watch officers assigned to me for this detail. Around 2:30pm the lieutenant came into work with his nasty mood on full display. He started complaining to me about some of the swing watch officers being lazy. I countered by saying if they were so lazy, then why did they come to work 5 hours early to work a stressful assignment? The lieutenant’s office door was open and our argument could be heard in the hallway.

I realized there was no salvaging a professional demeanor with this guy during this shift. My solution: I told him (it was the beginning of our ten hour regular shift) that I had a splitting headache and was going home. There was nothing he could do. He knew he’d get stuck doing a lot of my work. I had to train my boss to be better.

Fortunately, we had our biannual sign-up shortly thereafter, so I signed up for day watch, just to get away from this guy. Within a week of the sign-up results being posted, he was banished to an undesirable post. (Management personnel can be moved at the whim of the chief.) Worse for him, his commute went from 45 minutes to 90 minutes. There were rumors floating around the station. How bad must our captain have thought about this lieutenant to get him shipped off to Siberia?

Our captain had only been at our station for about two months when this happened. He knew me when we were both officers and he knew of my work ethic. He confided in me that when he saw that I signed up for a shift I don’t even like, that there was a BIG problem with this lieutenant. It also solidified the old saying that sergeants run the stations. Things got a lot better for the whole station once that jerk was kicked out.

What can you tell me about fighting in Afghanistan that most people don’t know?

This isn’t a very popular opinion, especially in veteran’s circles, but it is a fact and therefore, it should be said:

The casualty numbers sustained by the so-called “Resolute Support”

[1]mission in Afghanistan are so ridiculously low that it cannot even be called an armed conflict or a war.

In 2018, the United States military had the highest number of casualties from all “Resolute Support” contingents. Altogether, they lost seventeen soldiers, sailors, and Marines in Afghanistan. If you compare this to their absolute numbers (1,358,190 active military personnel) you have a casualty rate of Soldiers Killed in Action (KIA) of about 0.0012%. If you count only personnel deployed to a combat zone (around 18,000 in 2018),[2]you get around 0,09%. Not very impressive. Being a US soldier isn’t even in the TOP 25 of the most dangerous professions in the United States.[3][4]To compare this number to other modern conflicts, the German army in WWII lost around 26.6% of their soldiers in the Soviet Union, while during the Vietnam War the US lost 40,000 of their soldiers on the battlefield (KIA rate of 8%).[5]

In 2018, the German Army’s contingent in Afghanistan didn’t lose a single soldier while at the same time eight soldiers died at home in various accidents.

[6]Although it was one of the years which saw the highest number of German military personnel deployed to crisis regions, 2018 was also the year the Bundeswehr lost the smallest number of soldiers in its history: only 8 were killed. In comparison, in 1962, long before any foreign involvement, the Bundeswehr lost 166 soldiers, most of them in accidents.

Of course, every dead soldier is one too many, but the probability for a US or an Allied soldier to get killed in Afghanistan is much lower than, for example, that of a Russian or Israeli soldier dying during military training.

Next time, we hear people calling to “bring our troops home” or thanking them for their sacrifice, we should put that into perspective. This is also the reason why the “war” in Afghanistan takes so long: the price is paid by the Afghan civilian population and not by our soldiers and Marines.

All of his concerns are valid

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H8Hly7spmUk?feature=share

What is the most badass thing a private has said to a general?

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was the founder of the US Nuclear Navy and is a man clouded in legend. There are a number of stories about him, some of which most certainly are true. Others may or may not be true, but certainly do fit his rather unique style of command. As an example, and this is 100% true because I’ve seen it, and it still sits in the Naval Reactors office, during their interview, Admiral Rickover had his prospective officers sit in a simple office chair… with four inches cut from the front legs.

One story details one of The Admiral’s tours of Nuclear Power School. He decided to enter a classroom, perhaps during the lesson or during study. He entered the rear of the room where he quickly and silently suppressed the impending calls to attention.

At the front of the room, a junior sailor, maybe a Third Class Petty Officer, was working an assigned problem on the board. The Admiral approached the student and, from a short distance behind him, observed the student’s work over his shoulder.

After some time, the student got frustrated. He turned to The Admiral and stated, “Excuse me, sir. I’m trying to work this problem here,” and resumed his work. The Admiral wordlessly departed the classroom, assuredly to the dumbfounded looks of the sailor’s classmates.

As the story goes, later that day, word reached the sailor that The Admiral offered him a commission as an officer in the US Navy.

Why does everyone in the world think the US is a good nation when it is not?

No one think so!

The U.S. thinks and fooled themselves that the world thinks highly of themselves, they most certainly don’t.

Who thinks highly of America? Some very young starry eye highly naive spoilt brat kids perhaps! Or some totally ignorant bigoted white supremacist mainly older, less travelled, less educated people in America thinks America is good!

Everyone else don’t. In fact they don’t think they know US is not at all a good or honourable or caring nation to its own people and certainly very barbaric to the world!

Even most of US slave nations such as Germany, Japan or Korea don’t think so too. They may be forced to but deep inside the disdain America. British, Aussies, Kiwis, Canadian and fellow despicable former colonialists don’t too, they may suck up to the U.S. or at least they use the U.S. as a shield against others who may want to hurt them but they think little about America!

So in percentage it may be as little as 1% thinks they are good. 99% thinks they are barbaric, inhuman, inconsiderate parasite that they cannot respect but some 15% of the world fear them or at least wants their protection. So they pretend to have nice word for the US.

At what point in WWII did the German military realize the war could not be won anymore, and how did they try to act on it?

According to Rommel’s diaries, Hitler said to Rommel that the war was lost late 1943 when Rommel was appointed Inspector General. That makes sense as it was after Kursk, which in a way the Germans won (losses) but they were routed anyway because unlike USSR, Germany could not make up for their losses and this would have been clear at the highest level.

Hitler said to Rommel that from now on it was a question of creating the best possible position for negotiations.

Rommel expressed disappointment, so at this point it was only seen vy those who wanted to see.

As for reactions they were not the sane across the fronts.

Kesselring (Italy) reacted well before this by building fall-back positions planning an incremental withdrawal already early 1943.

On the Eastern front this was forbidden by Hitler which meant withdrawals were often unplanned and more costly than needed. Stalingrad is a good example, but other units, cities or regiments were ordered to fight till death as well.

Is it bad to tell your boss you’re quitting souly because of them?

Is it bad? Not at all. In fact, it is actually quite liberating.

I was hired to work as a computer support tech at a community college but the man who offered me the job resigned, unexpectedly, just days before I was scheduled to start. His replacement was on the panel that interviewed candidates and he preferred another candidate over me, so he went to his boss to have my job offer revoked. His boss refused to do it and that made him incredibly angry, so he decided to take it out on me by micromanaging my every move.

He had no experience as a manager — he’d been a systems admin at the school before being named interim IT Director — and he didn’t like working with older people. This was unfortunate because I was 58 years old at the time and the ony other support tech was 63 years old, so interim enjoyed trying to embarrass us. He called us both out in front of a room full of people for running a network line incorrectly, and we angered him by telling him to finish the job up while we went to lunch.

My coworker decided he’d had enough at that point and took that afternoon off before sending interim an email stating that he wouldn’t return. Interim tried to write me up for insubordination but his boss wouldn’t let him and that made a bad work relationship even worse. I took to working in empty classrooms and lecture halls to avoid interim, and spoke to him only when directly asked a question.

Two years after my old coworker quit I turned in my resignation — the letter simply stated that I was resigning and that my last day would be in two weeks, on a specific date. When interim — yes, after three years he was still interim IT director — showed up he walked over to my office and stood in the doorway, and asked me why I was quitting. I usually offer up a vague response like, “It’s time to move on” or “ I want to try something new” but this time I told interim that I could no longer stand to work for someone I did not like or respect. The look on his face — shock, dismay, anger — was worth having to sit and twiddle my thumbs for those last two weeks. That’s right — he pulled all the work he’d assigned me to punish me. Needless to say, my new coworker didn’t appreciate that move.

All girls thing…

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ai5BsKSmAks?feature=share

What is the most insane conversation you have ever had with your parents?

I was a straight A student in high school, and in my sophomore year I was receiving brochures from college. I had some spread out on the kitchen table, and Mom and I were discussing which ones would be worth a visit during my junior year. Dad came home from work, noticed the brochures, and scoffed, “She’s not going to college; I’m not paying for her Mrs. degree like her sister!” I started to explain to him what degree I wanted, and wasn’t going to college to get married, as my sister had done. Mom cut me off, stood up and got in Dad’s face. She sternly pointed out that he HAD paid for my brother’s B.S. and M.S. and if I wanted to go to college I DAMN well was going to go! Dad and I both stared at her, our mouths agape, because Mom never contradicted Dad in front of us. (As it turned out, I earned enough scholarships and had a parttime job on campus, that I was a bargain, costing them very little out of pocket.)

Uh huh?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7vseGkTMln0?feature=share

Have you ever been invited to dinner under false pretenses?

Yes! Our neighbor, a pastor, invited us over when his wife was away. They had very old fashioned roles, she did housework, he earned money. When we arrived he asked my husband to help him install a hanging lamp. He asked me to start dinner. All he had was stuff for salad. I went home and got some steak and potatoes, cooked it while they worked. After dinner i did the dishes and he told me to take out the trash. I said “ Excuse me?”. He laughed and told me to take it out its “womens work”. So not wanting to alienate someone we had to share an property line with, i did. When my husband and i left He turned to me and said “ What the heck was that?”. I said, he took advantage of our kindness! He got free labor, a free dinner, and free maid service! We never accepted another invitation for dinner! This is the same guy who adopted an African baby so he could “ Get over being a bigot, like my father”. Cant make this stuff up!

What would you do if the school bully pulled off your shirt at school in front of everybody?

Hardly as bad as pulling a shirt off, but an episode in my Catholic high school has passed into legend.

One student I’ll call Henry was an easy target for one particular bully. He spoke strangely as a consequence of a congenital hearing defect, wore a bulky hearing aid, carried an extra forty pounds, had a bad complexion and was 100% nerd right down to the pocket protector and slide rule.

His bus arrived early. Early students had to wait in the cafeteria until home room opened. Henry would turn down his hearing aid, open a book, and write computer programs or do math problems. He would place his lunch – a sandwich in a small paper bag – on the table next to him.

His nemesis would yell in his ear “how are you this morning, Henry” while he smashed the sandwich flat. Henry had had enough. One morning he put in the bag a piece of cardboard with thumbtacks pushed through the cardboard pointing up. The bully, as usual, smashed the bag flat. He let out a howl as he pulled his hand away with a dozen punctures streaming blood.

One of the nuns heard the howl, figured out what had happened, and dragged Henry by his earlobe to the Director of Discipline, Fr. Huller. Huller was a regular guy. He had landed in the second wave at Normandy and seen a few things.

Huller listened to the nun’s version and then to Henry’s version. He asked the nun to leave so that he could speak to Henry privately. Huller could barely keep from laughing. He tried to say something several times but couldn’t get the words out. Finally, he told Henry “just don’t do that again.”

Huller then asked to see the bully who had been patched up by the school nurse. He told the bully that his impalement was punishment enough but if he smashed any more sandwiches he’d be expelled.

Granting permission

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/k9ZKRNf6tJw?feature=share

Have you ever quit a job in an unplanned manner where one day you just snapped and said “I’ve had enough of this, I’m done”?

I sure did. I was working for a company helped them open their location. They had me doing supervisor duties with the promise of soon getting that position. I was young and dumb not realizing that was a mistake. I did it for about 6 months working my tail off and never missing work and always coming in early and or staying late. When it came down to it, they said they were giving the position to a new person that was new coming in and just gave me a $.10 raise. It was a slap in the face. Thinking about all those extra duties I put in. The times they would keep calling me on the ear piece even when I was just going to go pee they called me. Then one day on my day off when I went to pick up my check, the boss said a bunch of people called off and they only had 1 station open, 1 employee there out of 6 15 minutes to open, and 2 bus loads of kids coming in. He then told me he needed me to start right away. I told him I didn’t have my uniform. He told me to grab one from the back, but those were dirty. I said ok sure. I went to the back and said good bye to everyone. They asked where I was going and I said I quit. Never done that in my life. Felt awful but it was a turning point for me to never let anyone take advantage of me again.

What bad experience had you saying “I will never buy from that company or use their service ever again”?

Bosch.

This happened about 20 years ago. We had a cheap and cheerful washing machine. It was 15 years old and had required a few repairs in the recent years; new door seal, new belt, new motor brushes etc. Problem was the the motor commutator had become scored and the brushes didn’t last too long and really the motor needed replacing. We also wanted a machine with a higher load capacity so we went shopping. We chose a high spec Bosch washing machine with a 9kg load capacity and a 3 year extended warranty i.e. to 4 years. It cost about £450 which was a fair amount at the time.

Just over 4 years later the machine was on its spin cycle. There was an enormous series of bangs, the machine threw itself around the floor and ground to a halt. A repair technician was called but found that the machine was completely destroyed. We commissioned an engineers report. This stated that the tub counterbalance had become detached. It should have had say6 studs and nuts holding it in place. A couple were missing completely and the rest had sheared off. The tub spinning at high speed had been thrown around the inside of the machine, slicing through wiring and pipes, smashing the control circuit board and even causing large dents in the steel panel at the rear.

Bosch’s attitude was unbelievable. Essentially they said that “it could not be a manufacturing fault as it would have shown up during the warranty period” and “what did you expect as it was now outside warranty”. Apparently although a cheap and cheerful machine would last 15 years with a few cheap repairs but a quality one was expected to self destruct as soon as the warranty period expired. Eventually they did consent to a small amount of compensation but left us massively out of pocket.

I’ve never bought another Bosch power tool, fridge, freezer or anything else since then

This is me

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CeywEkTZ4wM?feature=share

How do you successfully contest a traffic ticket?

I went to court, fought the ticket, exposed the lying cop, and got my charges dismissed. The judge offered his “congratulations, on an excellent defense”. I went into court prepared, righteous, and loaded for bear. I fought a handful of tickets, over the years, and won every time. They were all bogus. For a couple that I got, which were legit, I was able to get reduced fines, or even deferred adjudication.

Know the laws on the offense you’re charged with, AND the fine schedule and other possible punishments. I prepped a friend, for his seatbelt ticket defense. He was told he would be fined $250, and then he brought a printout of the state law, which called for a $66 (or thereabouts) fine. He then said he wanted to know just whose pocket the rest of that $250 was going into. The charge was dropped, and he was sent out the door. The city prosecutor, and whoever wrote the fines, hadn’t bothered to see if the numbers matched the legal amount set by the state.

At what point of time did you realize that you were working in the wrong field?

I was hired with the promise of being the #2 in the company as CIO. One hour into the first day, the CEO comes into my office and asks me to call somebody at our other office to help him with a problem. He told me that I worked for him as well since he was in charge of the department over there that ran a document scanning operation I had not been told of.

So much for only having to worry about one unqualified person telling me how to be a CIO, I now had two. I knew then I was dealing with somebody who tells someone exactly what they want to hear. It was too late, as I’d already moved the family, etc… Had to try to make it work. Developed clinical depression as a result.

I did have the honor of watching the CEO get deposed from a company he owned a majority of stock in (only way that happens is extortion or blackmail by the other shareholders), and having the new CEO grovel at my feet when I left him after a year of his abuse. Then I watched the company implode, first by closing down the scanning center (the only profit generator for the company – brilliant people), then having everybody else bail because they no longer got paid.

Great Times!

Who is your favorite actor who you have met in person?

I waited on Nicholas Cage one Sunday morning in Vegas. He, the lady he was with, and his young son were the only guests at the time. I greeted him as Mr. Cage and at the outset he seemed very nice. I informed the manager (goof) and he immediately said to ask him for a photo as “corporate”loves that. I have waited on other celebrities and I would take a bullet before doing something so gauche. Mr. Cage did take some photos with other guests as the restaurant filled. He was very polite the entire time. At the end I said “Mr. Cage I am great admirer of your work”. I mean c’mon after Moonstruck? It was totally the truth! He said, “John it was a pleasure meeting YOU”! I had to go out to the parking area as he left his credit card on the table. Did he give me a nice tip? Yes. Was it outrageous? No. All class.

The Chinese Navy Of 2024 Is Unlike Any Other Major Navies

https://youtu.be/gFkoC8Sol1A

What doesn’t impress you?

Just an hour ago, My girlfriend offered to buy me Lemon soda in one of those small roadside shops. We were regulars there.

I was thirsty so I finished my drink fast. She was halfway through her glass when a Traffic policeman approached the shop.

Him: One lemon juice please.

Shopkeeper: Sure sir, please wait for a minute.

He makes the juice and hands it over to him.

My Girlfriend starts drinking the juice very slowly. I asked her what happened.

“I’m just waiting to see what he’ll do” *points at the traffic policeman*

After he was done with the drink.

Him: Thanks. *Leaves without paying*

The shopkeeper just continues with his work.

Her: Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Pretty common sight in India. Cops get freebies in a lot of roadside stalls and they don’t even think for a second that the small amount of 10–15 rupees is the shopkeeper’s hard earned money.

What doesn’t impress me?

People who abuse their power don’t impress me.

How much over the speed limit do most officers let you go before pulling you over?

In the city I used to live in photo radar was set for 13 kmph over the speed limit, about 8 mph. There are no demerits for photo radar, just the fine. Its a great cash cow, because it catches all of those who are momentarily not paying attention, as well as those who are purposely speeding. The province refuses to allow photo radar on its highways. Because they say its just a cash cow.

In the little town that I retired to, they thought they were going to get rich off of speeding tourists. They moved the speed limit signs so that it dropped from 100 to 80 to 50 kmph farther outside of town, and they bought a $125,000 photo radar, and said it would pay for itself in two months. The main tourist drag through town was a provincial highway. They sat the only town police officer at the edge of town, and ticketed away. In the very first month a guy fought his ticket, and the judge ruled that it was illegal to use photo radar on the highway. Rather than move it to other streets, where most of the offenders would be locals, they sold the photo radar for about half of what they paid for it. When it was working, they had looked into hiring a second officer to bring in more money, but once it was scrapped, all talk of a second officer was cancelled.

The fact that they wouldn’t use it on non tourist streets, moved the speed limit signs out of town, and talked about hiring a second officer, but only when they were using the radar trap, and dropped the plan as soon as they dropped the radar, pretty much tells you the intent of the radar trap.

The photo radar was still perfectly useable, except that you had to actually stop the car and write up the ticket, check licence and registration, sobriety, etc , exactly as the province required.

But, because of the time required, the town said it wasn’t economical to give tickets to people doing less than about 25 kmph ,15.5 mph, and there weren’t enough of them to make it worthwhile.

So there you have it, if its automatically sent out in the mail, the limit is 13 kmph over the speed limit, if they have to check to make sure you aren’t a mass murderer, driving a hijacked car, its almost double at 25 kmph.

Humans vs Superhumans | When Monsters Were Real and We Almost Went Extinct

https://youtu.be/juyvnVL6V7g

What is the fastest you wiped that smirk off your manager’s face?

I had a manager who was putting me on a last and final write-up (next step suspension / terminated) for something I didn’t do. I refused to sign the write-up until I talked to the director (his boss) about the situation as I hadn’t made an error. The manager replied, “It would’ve been easier if you would’ve just signed it!” He goes through the steps of bringing on another manager to witness me refusing to sign the paperwork, as was protocol for this type of situation, and I went about the rest of my shift.

What my manager didn’t know was my wife, who happened to be an auditor in the company, had made me aware of the situation before I went into work so I was able to research things before my write-up was going to be given to me. I was able to see that my manager had changed some of the data I used to complete my daily reports, which caused my paperwork error. I printed the evidence showing he caused the error and held onto it until the meeting with the director.

So I’m meeting with the director and the manager is going, “… does sub par work, careless with his reports, yada yada”. My director then asks me for my side of the story and I tell him, “The manager changed the data I use to run my daily reports”. The manager was offended and says something along the lines that I was wrong. I then show the screenshots of when the information I used was changed and who doctored it. The information was changed 30 minutes after I left work for the day by my manager making him responsible for the error. The meeting ended about two minutes later with a half-hearted apology.

Edit: So there have been a few comments on why the manager wasn’t fired for his actions of doctoring a record. The overall reason was we had just started using a new computer system a few months prior and there was still a lot of growing pains with everybody figuring it out. I don’t think the manager’s actions were malicious with the error, it was part of the learning process. I even learned better procedures to follow to prevent the error from happening again. At first it was for CYA, then it became the procedure I taught to others to guarantee accuracy of the reports.

Who did you experience that is so cheap they are disgusting?

I had this friend in college who would always eat my lunches. I didn’t really mind and it’s not because she didn’t have any money or anything it’s just that she never made lunch for herself and when she did she still thought mine were more appetizing.

I shared my meal everyday with her and I would often make more for the two of us.

One day I didn’t have time to make lunch and she didn’t bring one so I suggested that we go eat at a small bistro near the school. She ordered a big meal and everything and paid. When it was my turn I didn’t have any money because I left my wallet at home. I asked her to lend me some money and told her I would pay her back. She refused saying that it’s my fault that I was poorly organized and I should always have my wallet with me. She then told me I purposely forgot my wallet and that it was a plan for her to pay me back for all of the meals that i shared with her.

I didn’t eat lunch with her. I just left and blocked her. Never thought people could take so much but never give when needed.

WTF?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KZ_rQ3Lt8jY?feature=share

 

What are Americans offended about?

JFK’S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60’s when DeGaulle decided to pull out of NATO. DeGaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible. Rusk responded, “Does that include those who are buried here?”

DeGaulle did not respond. You could have heard a pin drop.

When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of ’empire building’ by George Bush.

He answered by saying, “Over the years, the United States has sent many of Its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, One of the French engineers came back into the room saying, “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?” A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: “Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships. How many does France have?”

You could have heard a pin drop.

A U.S. Navy admiral was attending a naval conference that included admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French navies at a cocktail reception. He found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks when a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, “Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?” Without hesitating, the American admiral replied, “Maybe it’s because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn’t have to speak German.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

AND THIS STORY FITS RIGHT IN WITH THE ABOVE…

Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on. “You have been to France before, monsieur?” the customs officer asked sarcastically. Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously. “Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.” The American said, “The last time I was here, I didn’t have to show it.” “Impossible. Americans always have to show their passports on arrival in France !” The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ”Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn’t find a single Frenchman to show a passport to.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

Is it fair that if a girl punches you, you can punch her back?

My friend punched a girl back. In fact 3 girls. He asked me to take him to court when he was prosecuted for it. The evidence was on CCTV.

When I saw the video I was shocked how they attacked him in the street first by punching him then using their stilletos. You could see the injuries just below his eye and on the top of his head.

The prosecutor said he’d used too much force when he punched them after their THIRD wave of attacks. They’d pursued him through the streets, stolen and hidden his jacket and car and house keys as well.

The reason given was that they didn’t like it when he was passing one of them in a club and said how nice she looked, and when she swore at him he’d said how unpleasant she was. They’d followed him out of the club and attacked him from behind in the street.

The prosecutor admitted that the worst of the attackers should have been in the court for assaulting him with a dangerous weapon – a stilleto in the eye causes blindness. Instead she accepted a caution and no further action was taken.

It was evident he’d been trying to escape the area and to find his jacket. He was acquitted. The case was thrown out with less than 2 minutes consideration by the magistrates.

So, yeah, if a male or female attacks you to that degree then striking back as a last resort is what you might need to do, even though it is heavily looked down upon.

What is the worse fight you have ever been in?

Do you mean the worst loss or the most aggressive win. The bloodiest fight I was ever in took place in a bar. I’m going to give them short version of this night because I don’t want to type it all out. Because of a little scuffle at a party I was at all my friends got turned around. We all went different ways. I ended up ina bar laying low wondering if cops maybe looking for me. So already pumped up from the fun at the party I wasn’t going to say away from nothing. In the bar got a beer and walk towards the pool tables. Now I’m not a big guy about average five nine and 170 poundsat 21 years of age hanging drywall for a living and trying m.m.a. 5 nights a week. I was in better shape than most men. But I my leather riding jacket no one could see i wasn’t in great shape looked like a skin nerd. My whole life people challenged me. I can’t remember the exact words that where said to me but my response was I fuck bitchs bader than you. Witch led to him thinking he needed to prove me wrong. Mind you’ve all ready been in a fight that had a lot more involved than just 2 men and ran I don’t know how far. I knew I had to win fast as I got pounding on this guy I didn’t notice his two friends jumping not knowing exactly what was happening I pulled my knife just a small lock blade. As used it on one of the guys the other ones wanted nothing to do with it. This small hole in the wall tavern didn’t have door men. But cops had been called they showed up took me to jail at first charged with assault 2 weapons enhancement. I ended up plea bargaining to a displaying a weapon with intent to harm and or intimidate. Did get a strike but got 60 months in a maximum security penitentiary. That was the worst fight I’ve ever been in.

Have you ever received a confidential email that wasn’t intended for you?

I was being given a severance package. While it was something I had negotiated and was okay with (finally), the setting was a bit strange.

I had walked into the meeting with my coat and bag and was ready to leave. The HR rep (with whom I was on good terms) and my boss were waiting for me. The rep was laughing. I asked why and he said that he’d bet my boss 20 bucks that I’d be all ready to go.

My boss objected saying “Yeah but I added that he’d have all the cards and cell phone and company stuff in an envelope too.”

I smiled and took an envelope out of my bag and slid it over to the HR rep.

At that my boss started in on his spiel but was flustered. He stopped and said “I guess you know all this. Here’s the pertinent papers. Good luck!” He handed me a few papers and envelopes and beat a hasty retreat.

Later when I got home I found a printed email that he’d sent to the president of the company explaining why they’d had to give me the package. One line stood out. “I’ve been trying to get him to quit for a year and it hasn’t worked.” In his fluster he had passed me stuff that he shouldn’t have.

Yeah. It cost ‘em.

Zhou Shen’s (周深新) new song “Floating Light” | Singer Reaction!

https://youtu.be/zKjrRNGpiYM

Do you wish you can be young again, or are you content with your age?

I just turned 43.

I had a lot more sex in my late 20’s, which was fun. My endless pursuit of it also derailed a lot of golden opportunities life handed me in a golden basket. It was like:

“Here’s a free basket of incredible things for you, Stephen!”

“Wait. What? What’s that stuff?”

“An amazing cornucopia of gifts, just for you!”

“NO!”

Why did I do this? Because I couldn’t think about anything else besides sex. Ironically, I had all that fun when I was an incredible jerk to people. (If anybody on Quora thinks I’m a jerk now, you’re not totally wrong, but be grateful you didn’t know me back when I was 27. Whew. What an asshole.)

In my early 30’s, I was consumed by weepy nostalgia and crippling loneliness. This also caused me to pass on a lot of great opportunities. Life, but especially North Carolina, handed me a lot of amazing options… and I threw those back in its face, because I was obsessed with running into the past. At 33, I was still such a baby. An egocentric little whiner.

I finally hit a pretty good stride in my late 30s. And my 40’s have been amazingly calm overall. Don’t think too much about the past, don’t have to battle hormones so much, not rich but not broke either. Haven’t been in a relationship in several years, which is dumb, but also haven’t had to deal with all that madness, which is refreshing. Things are alright, really.

Done more travel globally in the last five years than I did at any point in my late 20’s or early 30’s, because I couldn’t afford it back then. And the quality of that travel has improved. Hard to say why. (I still stay at hostels sometimes, it’s not like I travel in swanky luxury today.) But the experience just seems richer and more interesting. A more mature appreciation of things, I guess. Art seems more profound, because I know more about humanity. Humanity created art. Food tastes better. Don’t know why, it just does. I’m definitely a better cook.

At 43, I’ve obviously read more books than at any other time in my life. The cumulative effect of a lifetime of reading has an impact on you. You can sit down and read William Wordsworth or Alexander Pope and think “This guy gets it.” At 21, I would have no idea what the hell they were talking about.

YouTube and the internet seem incredibly boring. Facebook: mindnumbing. Except for maybe Google Maps, you really feel like you’ve reached the end of what the internet has to offer.

Chronic indigestion is slowly killing me, even though I don’t have any sins anymore besides a few beers a week and a cigar. I can’t even really do that anymore. Every time I eat, I have to drink some baking soda dissolved in water just to control the indigestion. It’s awful. Eat a cookie: burp. Eat a banana: burp. I’m seeing a doctor in March. This is the only thing (so far) about getting old that just absolutely sucks.

Speaking personally here, because honestly I’m at a stage of life when a lot of people go through mid-life crises and resort to hookers and vodka to make themselves feel “young” again, but I feel less angst-ridden now than I ever did at any time in the past. My early 30’s were a disaster.

The only real question I have is why more women don’t find guys who’ve dumped most of their chronic bullshit appealing, and why women keep gravitating toward dumb suckers in their 20’s and 30’s. (Oh shit, eureka, I’ve found the answer: because women do exactly the same thing men do!). I’m not as “exciting” as I used to be. Yeah, and I’m not as stupid and rude.

But do I want to jeopardize what I have just to a have a woman in it? I mean, I like women a lot. But right now, no, I’m not jeopardizing my piece of mind just for anybody. I’m holding out for someone who is sheer gold.

Greek Salad

lemon salmon greek salad 8
lemon salmon greek salad 8

Ingredients

Salad

  • 1 bunch Romaine lettuce
  • 1 small red onion
  • 1 cucumber
  • 4 Roma tomatoes
  • Kalamata olives
  • Feta cheese, crumbled

Dressing

  • 1/4 cup good olive oil
  • 3 to 4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • 1 or 2 cloves crushed garlic
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano

Instructions

  1. Whisk together dressing and let it sit while you prepare the vegetables.
  2. Wash and spin dry lettuce, tear into pieces. Slice onion, tomato and cucumber. Add olives and feta to taste.
  3. Whisk dressing before pouring on salad and toss.

Serves 4.

This goes well with focaccia bread or pita and hummus.

lemon salmon greek salad 11
lemon salmon greek salad 11

What’s the most brutal and intense hand-to-hand fight you’ve ever had?

In college a guy accused me of stealing his bike (yeah I know) came to my dorm room drunk and tried fighting me in front of the whole floor. I tried getting away by closing my door but he forced his way in. He grabbed me and dragged me outside into the hall. He pushed me into one of those fire extinguisher cabinets with the break away glass. It shattered immediately. I grabbed the extinguisher and hit him in the face knocking out his front teeth. The return swing dislocated his shoulder. The third crushed the orbital of his left eye. Everything happened in about five seconds. I needed forty stitches in my back and arm from the glass. He was over 18 but thinking like he was in high school. He got arrested for breaking and entering, assault, and battery. He was found guilty of assault and battery and witness tampering. I hadn’t stolen his bike, I’d never seen his bike, and I let the police search my dorm room all they wanted. They never found his bike.

Burning though the bucks

I want to tell you all about a little “family issue” that I have had and how I dealt with it.

When I fell in love with my wife (in China), I had to “jump though some hoops” to show my value and worth. And part of this was to buy her a house.

It’s a common thing in China, and my wife’s family expected it.

Now, there was more detailed issues and complexities involved. As Wenzhou has their own quirks. But let’s keep this simple.

I bought a house in Shenzhen when Shenzhen was just a small dirt city in the early 2000’s.

Not a big house. Not a great house. But a good real home.

Cost me all that I had, too.

Well, over the years that little house grew up in value.

I paid $40,000 for it in 2003.

In 2007 they put a subway near it. And it’s value increased to $2M.

In 2013, they built a subway UNDER it, and the value went to $10M.

Yuppur. Best thing I ever did!

But wait.

Meanwhile, her father was trying to get his business get off the ground and was burrowing money left and right. He had taken something like $24M from various investors, and was showing nothing.

Nothing.

Turns out, when a cousin went to audit his “factory”, he discovered that it was all a sham. The father was playing the futures market and burning though the money like toilet paper. The last straw was when family all put up their homes for mortgages to “keep his business going”.

It was a lie.

Everyone gathered the “emergency money” to help him “keep the business going”. But it didn’t happen.

He just inserted $10 into the “wish machine” and it ate it all, and left him with nothing.

Enter me.

Well, since I am a foreigner, and all the rest, the father and mother had this great scheme to take our home, and our savings, and also take out a mortgage off that home that was ours and then give all the money to them… “for the business”.

I about had a heart attack, and for the first time… my Chinese wife had to say NO!

She had to.

Our child’s education, life and our future would have been absolutely eviscerated.

NO FUCKING WAY!

Chaos ensued.

So she called the extended relatives. All wealthy. All owning businesses and fully knowledgeable and they all went together to sort the entire mess out. The father had set up “the factory” in a distant region. So they all boarded planes to visit the factory.

And so they arrived there at that city. And they all got in cars and drove to “the factory”.

No factory.

No building.

No employees.

Just a garage with a roll down garage door. A computer, with a chair and a modem, and a cot along the wall. Empty. Desolate. Pathetic.

The relatives were furious.

So…

They seized the father’s debts. Everyone contributed a few million each. To do so, many had to sell their homes and vehicles and stop their children’s education. He is now the pariah of the family.

Saved.

But, shunned.

We kept our house, and my wife told the father…

Here is one million. 

That is it.

Do not ask us for anything else. EVER. This is the end.

You are now out of debt, you need to get a job... any job. And stop saying that you are too good to work for someone else.

You burned though $20M in ten minutes. ENOUGH!

It was “pay off money” to get them off our back.

Do not think that MM has it easy. Family is family, and we all inherit the problems of others when we merge families.

That is my debt NOW that I will spend the rest of my life paying off.

THE REST OF MY FUCKING LIFE.

For my wife’s gambling futures father who thought that he was too good to work a “real job”. Sheech!

It’s called life.

Sheech!

Today…

As an Asian growing up in a European country, did you face any discrimination? How did you cope with it?

I was born and grew up in the UK.

Digging way back into my memories. I grew up pretty much like other children. Had english friends even went out (as much as children not teenagers can) with the daughter of a hippy… (checks online goddam she’s still banging hot in her 40s).

I remember some big and significant turning points.

In school the teacher looked at me and said what are you a p*ki or a n*gger. That’s stuck with me for 35+ years. The other event was a nose bleed, had a nose bleed that wouldn’t stop. The doctor assumed I’d been beaten up by my dad.

Children calling names was a thing, then violence in high school.

I like to think of highschool as kind of innocent as children don’t have their view of the world fully formed. How did I cope? By clapping back at them so somebody calls you a slur? You call them back a worse one. Somebody punches you? You punch them back.

My mid teen years were the roughest. In short I was beaten to an absolute pulp by 10+ twats. I remember my vision going pink and fading out as they stomped me to bits. My dad ran out of his home and literally started breaking them in half to save me. I spent quite a lot of time in hospital from that.

The group that attacked me? I apparently got the last laugh as they were all labeled cowards. Even evil has standards as fighting more than 1 on 1 was and is considered incredibly cowardly. We moved away at that point to somewhere different. My dad took me shooting and I kept a shotgun at home.

The big change was when I got my drivers license. In short the racism was avoided by simply driving everywhere. Less chance to interact with them, I had been lured into a false sense of security well into my 30s. Brexit vote came around, car was being repaired and I had a yoof try smash my head in with a brick and he tried to laugh it off as a joke. I joked back at him and smashed his head in even when he was crying and begging me to stop. I continued to pummel him. He met me at a bad time as that was when I was at the absolute strongest.

Another attack happened shortly after and after being victim blamed… I thought fuck… do I want my children to grow up in a place like this?

I started the ball rolling on leaving.

US fake moon landing.

Sugar Frosting Phenomenon.

Lunar surface has a phenomenon called sugar frosting, soil on the surface of the moon is dense, with a layer of light-colored soil on the surface and dark soil on the inside. After digging out or walking over, dark soil will be brought out, but as time goes by, There will be a fading and lighter frosting phenomenon.

You can easily see the dark path by Chinese Rover.

main qimg dcdcd847d879bc33536d82ba0493349d
main qimg dcdcd847d879bc33536d82ba0493349d

American rover…

main qimg 36108fde55be2fbae5de28a48ce61c6c
main qimg 36108fde55be2fbae5de28a48ce61c6c

Chinese rover…

main qimg f2d1e85b83ac08f497b00ee5753a0862
main qimg f2d1e85b83ac08f497b00ee5753a0862

The peculiar phenomenon of “frosting” discoloration appeared on the lunar soil once on the back of the moon and twice or three times on the front. It can be seen that it should be relatively common on the lunar surface.

However no US Apollo rover trail has indicating the same phenomenon.

The “sugar frosting” phenomenon confirmed by Chang’e experts.

So the moon soil that got dig out will be dark and it will turn bright in time.

You cannot see this in the NASA “moon landing photos”…

main qimg e0158853659385bf5e5b727d7e848d5d 1
main qimg e0158853659385bf5e5b727d7e848d5d 1
main qimg c90e05644857e2012aea27023d2393eb
main qimg c90e05644857e2012aea27023d2393eb

But the Chinese rover clearly show something different….

main qimg 061379980a15bd95fad595a30d7778d7
main qimg 061379980a15bd95fad595a30d7778d7

US moon soil look like earth soil right?

See the dark soil is a new unearthed soil. after sometime it will become brighter and undistinguishable from the surrounding.

main qimg f2d1e85b83ac08f497b00ee5753a0862 1
main qimg f2d1e85b83ac08f497b00ee5753a0862 1

When Chang’e when just landed.

Now look at the 1969 NASA moon “landing”…

main qimg e0158853659385bf5e5b727d7e848d5d
main qimg e0158853659385bf5e5b727d7e848d5d

Chang’e after a while landing. look at the surrounding of the leg, gradually become as the same as surrounding.

this phenomenon can only be known if you have landed on the moon, this phenomenon is impossible to be recreated on earth.

 

It is a REAL crisis

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ipvwu_Wpu6Y?feature=share

If the marines today can’t beat a bunch of lightly-armed goatherders in Afghanistan, how could any expect them to win against well-trained and armed German soldiers?

As I sat in my M1A1 main battle tank and watched the streets of Shir Ghazay, Helmand, Afghanistan put themselves to sleep, I wondered what exactly we were doing there.

I knew my mission. My company was assisting building Route Red to connect the Musa Quelah province with the surrounding provinces to improve the economy for the locals and win their hearts and minds and all that. But it wasn’t clear to me what the end-goal was. It was late 2011 and elections approached in the US. Operations start to slow down; can’t have a bunch of Marines die right before the election…that wouldn’t look good.

My 4 tank calls me over the radio to tell me he sees something unusual. Looks like a couple dudes who were out on a scooter man-date decided to ditch their bike and start checking out the suitability of the middle of our newly built road for…agricultural purposes, I’m sure.

I tell him to get ready to engage. We need to make sure to gain positive identification of hostile acts and/or intent before feeding people our lead sandwiches.

It occurs to me that these dudes are probably locals. They were probably bullied into digging a hole for one of the region’s bomb-experts to emplace an IED into later. Maybe they hate America, but more likely they are just trying to survive. Unfortunately for them, we are better at surviving on this particular night.

Asymmetrical warfare means your enemies don’t go toe to toe with you. It means they sneak and harass and threaten villagers. It means they work without uniforms and without abiding by the rules of armed conflict.

So this night we killed a couple guys trying to put a bomb into the middle of our humanitarian road. And the villagers probably hated us for it. Later in our deployment, we came across another road that was paralleling ours. It looked like it had about 30 years of disuse. We realized that we were building a road on top of the same spot that the Russians tried to in the 80s.

It was probably the same spot that Alexander the great tried to when he came through Afghanistan. The Afghan people simply don’t want us there. They don’t use the roads we build them and they prove to us time and again that they don’t have the will to fight for their own country and take it back from the drug-lords and the Taliban.

The last thing I’ll say is that good men died fighting in the hills and mountains of Afghanistan. 99% of the time it was due to a cowardly enemy that would not fight us, but would rather put bombs into the ground and risk killing civilians, women, and children to possibly injure one servicemember.

I’ll take a fight against your ‘real enemy’ any day.

Edit: It seems a few folks have taken issue with me calling the Taliban cowards. Some have even implied that me and my brethren were the true cowards. Everyone gets their opinion, I suppose.

The Taliban could conduct an insurgency that is honorable and respects the lives of non-combatants, but they do not do so. It would be less expedient and more dangerous for them. Being a coward means that you are unwilling to face dangerous and unpleasant things.

Lastly, if you have never stood up and faced dangerous things in your life, but are willing to call others cowards on social media platforms who have, I think that says a lot more about you than the subjects of your accusations.

Final Edit: Read this if you want to better understand frustrations of fighting in Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria The Plunging Morale of America’s Service Members. I don’t endorse or agree with all of it, but it does an excellent job conveying what it feels like to be a service member in today’s environment.

 

Is it true that China’s economy is larger than America’s when considering purchasing power parity?

Yes be logical and pragmatic. China has 1.4 billion citizens, 4 times the US. Close to a billion now can afford minimum good living, over 750 million is equivalent to U.S. middle class. Admittedly they are not so spend thrift as American’s and certainly less wasteful. Those are good Confucianism values.

China may not have your 1% super rich American way overboard wasteful and insanely rich but those are again a good thing that a tiny proportion of Chinese is not abusing the rest like in the U.S. At least 3 times of US middle class and growing in China makes China very huge and humongous. It is probably bigger than the next 10 nations biggest markets put together.

A dollar in U.S. say Washington, cannot buy even a third of the same items say a McDonald’s of 7 RMB or a dollar current exchange rate in Beijing. Hence in reality either US dollar is 3 times over value or RMB is 3 times undervalue vis-a-vis USD.

Hence in purchasing power parity or PPP China U.S. already way bigger that the USA. Probably close to twice. That is why sanctioning China don’t work. Only collaboration with China to be a good second biggest market is the best U.S. can do.

A woman’s duty to a man

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ni5vzZgSoRY?feature=share

What do you do when your child says something really disrespectful to you in front of other people?

He tried it once, and it didn’t happen a second time.

You see, it takes a hell of a lot to embarrass me. I have noticed that a lot of parents hesitate to discipline their kids in public because they don’t want to be judged by other people. I am NOT one of those parents.

I have also never spanked my kid.

About once a month I will spring a surprise outing on my son, something fun that we both enjoy, sometimes it involves food, a trip to a park or bookstore, a pre arranged playdate, stuff like that.

These started when he was about 6.

We caught the bus to this new play ground. I still don’t know what was wrong with him that day but he was acting like a jerk. Then he made some random comment and called me a dumbass.

“ WHAT did you just call me”, I asked.

“A dumbass “ he replied, with a smirk

I didn’t reply, I just rang the bell to indicate that we would be getting off at the next stop.

His jaw dropped, “ What about our outing?” He asked me.

“ By speaking in that disrespectful way you have missed out on a special outing today, we will be getting off at the next stop and walking home”

He started crying and acting out.

Like I said, I don’t embarrass easily.

As we got off the bus a little old lady who was sitting a short distance away from us caught my eye and nodded her approval, the bus driver was chuckling as we got off and said “ good on ya luv”.

Luckily we didn’t have to walk very far.

An honest liar

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9HsV0Jvqz_Q?feature=share

What is the sweetest thing you have ever seen a husband do for a wife?

Our’s is a love marriage.

Initially, My husband’s parents didn’t appprove of our relationship .

I lost my parents while I was young..

Later,upon seeing him in depression they finally gave in . So, now we are happily married for three years.

Two years passed by…
Our parents asked us now and then about KIDS… My in-laws are conservative.
As most of the Indian parents, they too feel that kids complete the family.
They suggested us to consult a doctor.

Everyone suggested indeed.

At the very sight of the hospital, my husband stopped the car to a side..
he held me by the hand and said…

Do we really need children? Look.. My first ever kid is YOU…
You complete me…I’m fine with one.. ”
he said in a dejected tone..
ALL I COULD DO WAS SMILE….. thanking the almighty for giving me the most heartful thing ever lived.

But this did not end here…
We went through the checkup

The reports are out… The doctor revealed in a dejected tone that I CANNOT CONCEIVE….(harmonal problems… Pitutary gland malfunction)
Tears floooded my eyes… That moment, I collapsed to the ground in tears.

I’m unable to see anything. Tears obscured my vision …All I remember was him carefully carrying me to the car in his hands..

We went home.. I went to our bedroom and locked the door.

I cried.. I cried..

Later in the evening my mother-in-law came to our room.

She didn’t say anything…

After fifteen minutes of complete silence she said, “ I’m sorry beta. We never knew this thing about Akansh..”

She broke down and left in tears..

I was left in an utter dismay. Later upon asking him, he said
“ I will never cause any pain to you by any means…”

I was speechless.

He lied his parents that the problem lies within him.

“What did I do to deserve him?”

He knows that I could not bear that guilt for longer. He immediately applied for a position in abroad in the same company on a two year contract and here we are… in LONDON ..away from home.. away from everything..

He feels that time heals everything..

 

What’s the best life advice that someone gave you?

This was a simple one, but it did the trick for me. Back in 2018, I was sixteen years old, and I was skipping class with a friend of mine. We were sitting in the storm drains, just chilling, talking and hiding from the teacher they planted to catch kids skipping.

We were talking about girls and how I hate myself, as an emo sixteen year old tends to do. And during this conversation, she decided that all the girls I get with aren’t up to what she decided my standards are.

And she was eating a kit Kat while we had this conversation.

She told me to know my worth or something and stop going for trash girls.

She ripped off a kit Kat column and took a bite out of it the way nobody should ever bite out a kit Kat.

image 170
image 170

Then she said

“See this? This represents the girls you’ve been going for. Absolute trash, right?”

“Yeah, don’t ever bite a kit Kat like that again.”

Then she took the decimated kit Kat column and held it up. Then she tore off a kit Kat column from the rest. This time she tore it the right way, immaculate, perfect chocolate symmetry. Then she said

“This is what you should be gunning for. Raise your standards”

And in conclusion, I miss having friends like that in my life.

Hell

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JVSdLmxqqTU?feature=share

What’s the most inappropriate thing a doctor has ever said or asked you?

This so-called doctor threatened to sterilize me. I was 15 years old and told my Mother, who pulled him off my case. Years later, when I was a nursing student, I was doing rotation through surgery, and one of the operations was upon a little 14-year-old black girl.

The name of the doctor seemed vaguely familiar, but I dismissed it, as non-essential information. The poor patient was undergoing a catastrophic procedure for any female of any age, a complete hysterectomy. I mourned for this baby’s loss and presumption she had cancer.

Upon completion of the surgery, our instructor gathered us together. Despite the mask, I could see she was fuming. In her hands, she held the containers with the specimens for the lab. “Nurses,” she ordered, “come here and look closely. What you are seeing are perfectly HEALTHY! There was no reason for Jack to gut this child except she was poor and black and he’s a despicable racist, who is hell bent on sterilizing any female he doesn’t feel is worthy of motherhood. Goddamn Bastard!”

I now remembered and as soon as I got out of scrubs told my superior of my, personal, incident with this butcher. He was eventually brought up on charges, served jail time, and lost his license permanently. Though not enough punishment to equal the crime.

Different intentions?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qoqUNJMTs_w?feature=share

What is the foulest stench you have ever encountered?

We had an older neighbor kitty-corner from us on our street. We had lived there for over 20 years.

He slowly rode bikes around and picked up the pecans that grew from our trees.

He was reclusive and very much kept to himself. We would not see him in the winter for months.

He didn’t like Halloween or little kids, so we kept ours away from him.

One day, the police came by and asked if we had seen him anytime soon.

We had not, so they decided to break open the door as his out-of-state daughter could not find him.

Since I knew him the most, I went with the police.

They broke the door open, and the most awful smell came out.

They found a suicide note. He had been dead for almost a month in the sweltering Texas heat with no AC.

We felt like very bad neighbors because we didn’t check on him, but the police said he had carefully planned it so no one would know. I will never forget that smell.

Struggles and winners

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/X1HHLxdpIuA?feature=share

What are the benefits of having a physically attractive wife?

I think it’s fair to say that in terms of attractiveness, I’m punching above my weight with regards my wife. She’s very attractive, gets frequent comments from other men, turns heads, and generally impresses people.

I’m a geek. If I turn heads, it’s because I’m drunk and being too loud. Not because people want to look at me.

I often wonder how I managed to create such a situation where such an attractiveness disparity happened. I think there is something in the idea that personality counts. When I put my mind to it, I can be tremendously entertaining, and I think my wife enjoys that.

As to the benefits conferred by having an attractive wife, there are none that wouldn’t be there were she not as attractive, at least as long as you genuinely love your wife.

A few years into our marriage, my wife got cancer. As she was going through chemotherapy, all the usual things happened, weight gain (they give you a lot of steroids), hair loss etc. She didn’t look her best. If she turned heads, it was to look at the bald woman.

What difference did that make?

None. She was still tremendous. I was still incredibly lucky to be married to her. I still made her laugh because of my dumb antics. We still got served in restaurants. We still had to pay.

Then she got better. She looks stunning again. She is still tremendous. I am still incredibly lucky to be married to her. I still make her laugh because of my dumb antics. We still get served in restaurants. We still have to pay.

I love her.

 

What’s the most incompetent instance of bullying you’ve ever seen?

Freshman year of high school. I ended up in after school detention.

We were all in individual desks. Three seats to my left was the biggest douchebag I’ve ever met. He looked 20, he was privileged, an addict and was known for bullying freshmen pretty relentlessly.

He started throwing stuff at me, paper wads, pencils… whatever he could find. I didn’t acknowledge what he was doing, I just kept focused on my homework.

There was a well built black girl between us. She was obviously more hardened and a “take no BS” kind of gal. Nice, unless reasonably provoked.

So I acted as if he’s not there. Next thing I know there was a huge THUD. I looked over in time to see one of those hard cover, thick text books sliding off this girl’s head. I remember this part in slow motion. He was aiming for me, but dumbshit missed.

After lifting her head for a moment of silence she leaps up and throws a desk over to stand over him and call him out. She absolutely destroyed him. She was asking him to stand up and fight and talking about how he’s been fucking with me and being a piece of shit. This girl was seriously ready to throw down.

So douchebag cowers and gets all red in the face looking scared. That was one powerful woman he pissed off.

Edit: 9/12/2018

I was in 6th grade computer class when 9/11 happened. Teacher had the news on, lights out with no assignments other than watching the news.

I was pretty introvert and came from a different school district. So I didn’t know anyone in class and kept to myself.

For the last half of that class period, the boy behind me would kick my chair pretty hard and whisper “oops, a plane just crashed into you” amongst other silly things. Sometimes I’d look back and he’d jump as if he was going to hit me. I never said anything to this kid ever. I didn’t say anything as he continuously kicked my chair. But inside I was boiling. Not because of 9/11 and his plane crash comments. I was too young to really understand the gravity of what we were watching on the news. I was boiling from frustration and disrespect. This was the first time I had ever been messed with so relentlessly.

Now I’m not a fighter or had any brothers to wrestle and fight with. But he was shorter and skinnier. But I don’t remember planning to do what I did.

The bell rang, I immediately stood up facing him. As soon as he got up I started pushing him. I kept pushing him multiple times as hard as I could until he lost balance and fall completely over his desk onto the floor creating a huge commotion. At first he put his 3 ring binder up as if he was blocking an oncoming punch. It was very satisfying to watch him fall all over the desk. Again, I remember this part in slow motion.

They ended up putting him in a different class after I explained everything to the teacher. I never really ran into him again until 8th grade waiting for parent pick up. I didn’t say anything to him, we locked eyes, he looked like a deer in headlights. I’m pretty sure I could see his feelings, he knew he made a big mistake on 9/11. So now every time I think about that terrible day in New York, I can’t help but to remember the lamest instance of bullying I’ve experienced.

Rules for men

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/udMdYG-nuX0?feature=share

Did you ever beat up the high school bully in front of everyone?

My sister and I were the youngest, and usually the smallest and nerdiest kids in our classes, so we were more concerned with not getting beat up rather than beating up anyone else.

Actually in our small school, physical violence was pretty much unknown. I had some jerk put glue in my braid once, and another time someone slipped a toy snake into my sister’s purse, but that was usually as far as it went. The bullying in our school was mostly just verbal jokes and insults.

There was one real knucklehead that started causing trouble, and he actually got into a physical altercation with another knucklehead, but since they both were knuckleheads, nobody made a big deal of it.

However, there was one guy in our school that nobody messed with, and I think even the teachers were intimidated by him. He wasn’t a bully, didn’t cause trouble, pretty much kept to himself, and was actually very bright. But there are some people you just don’t mess with, and this guy was definitely one of those people.

His name was Fenrisúlfr, which is a variation of Fenrir, the giant wolf that killed the great god Odin during Ragnarök. Fenrir was one bad arse wolf. And to make his name even better, Fenrisúlfr, can be translated not just as wolf, but more properly, Wolf from Hell. And anyone that has the name Wolf from Hell, definitely isn’t someone to mess with.

Fenrisúlfr’s father was a member of the elite Víkingasveitin, or Viking Squad, a sort of super swat, anti terrorism team that Iceland has. The ultimate Icelandic bad arses, and definitely not people you should mess with.

Fenrisúlfr didn’t talk about his father much, but of course there were all kinds of stories and rumors about what exactly he did. In fact there were even lots of rumors about Fenrisúlfr, like he killed a polar bear with his bare hands.

Of course nobody really believed that, but if Fenrisúlfr ever did get into a fight with a polar bear, I would probably end up feeling sorry for the bear.

One day my sister and I were eating lunch alone like we usually did. Just talking quietly and not bothering anyone. However a couple of idiots at the next table decided they wanted to have some fun. So they took the mushed turnips that were served that day, put them on a spoon, and sort of catapulted them in our direction.

My sister and I learned to be observant, and I saw the idiot out of the corner of my eye. So I ducked and the mushed turnips went right by me. And hit Fenrisúlfr right in the back of his head.

The whole cafeteria suddenly got very, very quiet as Fenrisúlfr slowly got up. He first looked at us, but quickly realized that we would never do anything like that. But then he very slowly shifted his eyes to the two idiots at the next table, and I could see the two idiots freeze and turn white as Fenrisúlfr walked toward them.

Fenrisúlfr didn’t say anything but as he got to their table, grabbed their heads, knocked them together, and then pushed their faces into their mushed turnips.

Then without saying a word, Fenrisúlfr returned to his table and finished his meal.

The next day at lunch, the two idiots decided to sit as far away from us, and Fenrisúlfr, as possible. And we decided it was a good idea to sit as close to Fenrisúlfr as possible, and over the semester we became friends with him. He was actually a very nice, if scary looking guy. He even took us over his house, and we got to meet his father, who was even scarier looking than Fenrisúlfr.

So we never actually beat up the school bully, or anyone else for that matter. But when you have a friend named, The Wolf from Hell, we didn’t have to. :-))

 

What’s one instinctive thing you did that prevented something bad from happening?

February 2016. My boyfriend at the time had started to feel unwell on a Friday. By Monday he was very sick and when he went to the GP he was diagnosed with pneumonia (just one side at that point), got given antibiotics and was sent home. By Wednesday he was even sicker, not better. So I persuaded him to go back to the GP. He was always very independent but I had to help him get inside the Dr’s office. When it was his turn I insisted I went with him, and when the GP checked him she said it was now bi-lateral pneumonia and she was going to prescribe him different antibiotics. At this point I spoke up and said that I felt he needed more than that, and so she offered to refer him to A&E. He was debating it, and I was not having any of that, and said Yes please! Took him straight to the hospital.

His oxygen level on arriving was below 70% and despite him getting extra oxygen it wasn’t going up. After x-rays the doctor at A&E said it was the worst case of pneumonia he had seen in a long time in a healthy, young adult. Turned out he had swine flu, double bacterial pneumonia and in the following days he developed sepsis and was borderline in kidney failure. It was touch and go for several days, on pressurised oxygen, IV antibiotics, tamiflu, fluids and other meds, heavily monitored and I had to stay in the hospital overnight for a bit as he was calmer when I was with him, but he recovered.

Several doctors and nurses at the High Dependecy Unit told me that if we would have waited one more day in getting him to hospital the outcome would have most likely been very different.

As I have been working in healthcare for several years I have learned to trust my gut instinct, and I am so glad I did exactly that.

Medical Tourism

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/79UwalhTgeo?feature=share

What person destroyed their entire life by making one simple mistake?

I have a friend who works as a lawyer. He told me this story about one of his clients, who ruined his life with one stupid decision.

The client was a successful businessman, who owned several car dealerships in the area. He had a beautiful wife, two kids, and a mansion. He was living the American dream.

But he also had a secret. He was addicted to gambling. He would go to casinos every weekend, and bet thousands of dollars on roulette, blackjack, and poker. He was convinced that he had a system, and that he could beat the house.

He was wrong.

He started losing money, a lot of money. He maxed out his credit cards, took out loans from shady lenders, and even embezzled funds from his own business. He was in deep trouble, but he couldn’t stop.

One day, he got a call from one of his creditors. They told him that they wanted their money back, or else. They threatened to hurt him and his family if he didn’t pay up.

He panicked. He didn’t have the money. He didn’t know what to do.

He decided to make one last gamble.

He went to his office, grabbed a suitcase full of cash that he had stashed away for emergencies, and drove to the nearest casino. He walked up to the roulette table, and put all the money on black.

He was hoping for a miracle.

He watched as the wheel spun, and the ball bounced around. He prayed that it would land on black.

It didn’t.

It landed on red.

He lost everything.

He collapsed on the floor, sobbing. He realized that he had just destroyed his entire life with one simple mistake.

The casino security escorted him out. The police arrested him for fraud and embezzlement. His wife divorced him and took the kids. His business went bankrupt. His creditors sued him and seized his assets. He ended up in prison, broke and alone.

He never gambled again.

But it was too late.

He had made one mistake that cost him everything.

I want them to play together

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JW2gQ2yTiR8?feature=share

What are some sad and strange facts about relationships?

Here are some sad and strange facts about relationships:

  • The Fade Away: It’s a sad reality that sometimes, instead of openly communicating their feelings, people choose to slowly distance themselves from their partner, leading to a slow and painful breakup.
  • Mismatched Timing: Timing can be a cruel factor in relationships. You might meet someone amazing, but if you’re not at the same stage in life, it can lead to heartbreak.
  • Ghosting: In the digital age, it’s become strangely common for someone to suddenly cut off all communication without explanation, leaving the other person in a state of confusion and sadness.
  • Unrequited Love: One of the saddest aspects of relationships is when one person’s feelings are not reciprocated, and they have to grapple with the pain of unrequited love.
  • Love vs. Infatuation: It’s strange how sometimes people mistake infatuation for love, leading to intense emotions that fade as quickly as they came.
  • The Fear of Vulnerability: Many individuals struggle to open up and be vulnerable in relationships due to past traumas or fears, making it difficult to build a deep connection.
  • Staying in Unhealthy Relationships: Some people stay in toxic relationships because they fear being alone or believe they can change their partner.

When did you realize you had to cut a family member out of your life, and why?

I abandoned/disowned/renounced/rejected my mother when I was 17 years old, but only because she abandoned my siblings and I first.

My dad was diagnosed with ALS when I was five or six years old. He worked two jobs prior to that to support my mom, sister, brother, and I but he eventually reached the point where he spent much of his time in a hospital. My mom got a job, at a local dime store, and became friendly with a male coworker. During one of my dad’s hospital stays she took my siblings and I, and left town with the man.

We spent a couple of months in a two-room apartment in Philadelphia before mom realized it wasn’t the best environment for us — the man didn’t like or want kids around — so mom took us to her parents’ house. She swore she would have nothing more to do with the man but, less than a week later, she disappeared after telling her folks she was going out with a high school girlfriend.

My siblings and I were sent to live with my dad who, by this time, had lost the use of his arms and legs and was confined to a wheelchair, and was living with his mother in rural Arkansas. I spent three years watching that man die and when he was gone, my mom’s parents took us in again. My paternal grandmother was in her 70s and too old to handle three kids.

My mom’s name was never mentioned and I’d put her out of my mind until, one day, she was back. Her mom had died by then but my sister, brother and I still lived with her dad. My siblings went to live with her immediately but I wanted nothing to do with her. I had one, brief, conversation with her when she returned and she claimed her folks knew where she was, and that she’d eventually come back. I didn’t believe her and told her so.

Two years after returning she was dead from lung cancer, and I always wondered if she came back because the man she’d abandoned us for wouldn’t take care of her. I felt that he was that type of guy, selfish and cowardly. But my mom was a coward — and about 1,000 other bad words — for leaving my dad when he got sick, so she got what she deserved as far as I was concerned. I didn’t even go to her funeral.

Hang on! Why are there HIDDEN Jewish Tunnels in New York City?

https://youtu.be/9wuL8ndc_lQ

What is the most “illegal” thing you’ve done and gotten away with?

Going anonymous for my friend’s sake. This was in the US about 6 years ago when he was 17 years old.

When he was younger, he would counterfeit small denomination bills ($10s and $20s), go to shops, buy small items with the counterfeit bills, and get real change back.

Most of the time he’d dress up in a button up shirt and a pair of slacks so that he looked presentable, and put a smile on his face so that people would think he was just an honest, friendly person, even though he was scamming them. One scam in particular was at the mall just before closing. It was a pretty populated mall, and there was a jewelry store attendant standing outside the jewelry store.

He said to the attendant, “I lost a bet with my friend, and I owe him $10, but all I have is this $20 bill”. She didn’t know it was counterfeit, and she didn’t even look at it, because he was dressed nicely and smiled at her.

She walked into the jewelry store with him (plenty of surveillance cameras, mind you), and exchanged the counterfeit $20 for a real $10. My friend was $10 richer.

Another scam was pretty simple: he would order a takeout pizza, walk into the pizza place, pay for the pizza, and be about $10 – $15 richer, and get a free pizza out of it.

Never got caught. Almost once, though. Before I tell that story, here’s how he made the bills:

He’d print them out on his normal inkjet printer at home, spray them with hairspray for texture, and wrinkle them up pretty good. Voila. While the bill definitely wouldn’t pass any sort of close inspection, the smile on the face and general psychological trickery is what made the scam successful.

So, into the story of almost getting caught:

He walked into a gas station in shorts and a t-shirt (this was his first attempt at the scam, and the bill was noticeably smaller than it should’ve been). He mixed it in with another real bill, and handed it to the cashier. He forgot to smile and dress nicely. She looked at the bills, looked at him, and said “sorry, I can’t accept this, it looks like it’s fake.”

In a fake outrage, he said, “well I just got it from the bank! What should I do? Should I go back to the bank and tell them they gave me fake money?”

He and the cashier both agreed that this was the best solution, and they were both “angry” that the bank had given him counterfeit money.

How could the bank do such a thing?!

Edit

He should be $20 richer…yes or no? I mean the shop lady would give him two 10’s for the 20, otherwise she would suspect a con. Nobody trades a real 20 for one real 10.

Commented by Darrin Jones

Thank you to those who pointed out this same thing (it was a typo). It was an exchange of one $20 for two $10 bills, with the idea that he owed his friend $10, but only had the $20 bill and needed to split it into lower denominations. Good catch!

Honestly, do boys prefer girls with or without makeup?

My boyfriend is 26. Let’s call him a boy.

Boys do not have a single clue. Let me try this again: they don’t get it. Or at least he doesn’t get it. And it’s not for lack of me trying to educate him. He’s a corporate business attorney, so it’s not for lack of smarts. He just goes, “Oh, cool!” and then goes back to doing whatever he was doing.

The only thing that rattled him was contouring and extensions. He was like, “DO ALL GIRLS DO THAT” and I said, “No, I don’t because I don’t have time.” and he goes, “DO YOU HAVE EXTENSIONS” (this was after I got my hair cut into a bob..so he clearly didn’t pay attention to what extensions actually are[1]).

Boys and men are not socially conditioned to care about appearance 1/20th as much as girls and women. They care so, so much less than any girl or woman could even conceive of when it comes down to it. There are the Kanye Wests out there, and I won’t deny that, who want a well manicured woman at all hours.

But honestly, for the vast majority of men and boys the response is, “Huh? Ok!”

For the really awesome Smashbox eyeshadow limited edition palette I found on sale at Sephora the response I got was, “Your eyes look cool today.”

No comprenden←, truly.

The preference doesn’t exist for the vast majority of them because they just haven’t thought deeply about it before.

[1] You could get extensions and then get them cut to increase volume in your hair but c’mon I don’t have that kind of cash to blow. If I get extensions it’s to make my hair long.

L’Odyssée du Tartare. AI sci-fi merging styles of Méliès, Jodorowsky, & others; unedited footage

https://youtu.be/EI2HWPYFFOc

What scary gut feeling did you have that turned out to be true?

I was in the Coast Guard on my way to see my Mom and Dad. The closer I got to their home, I got a feeling I had to get to their Cottage on Lake Erie.

I got there about 11PM but couldn’t shake the feeling of needing to get to the cottage.

I originally thought it was just the need to finish painting I had started on the exterior.

At 1AM, I couldn’t settle down and apologized for having to leave.

I got there and had a fitful bit of sleep and woke up to a windy, wavy day.

At about 11AM, I heard screaming from the lake.

Grabbed my life jacket I kept in my kayak, ran to the beach and saw 3 young girls that had been knocked down by a large wave and getting pulled out by a strong rip current.

I ran into the water and got to 2 girls easily but the smaller, lighter one was dragged further out.

Just before I got to her she went under but I managed to grab her and get her head above water.

The rip current was so bad it took me a good 15 minutes to get us back to the beach a few hundred feet further down the beach, all the while being puked on with orange crush the girl had drank earlier.

I still get chills but am amazed I was directed to be there at that time so that 3 lives could be saved and possibly a 4th as another person was going to try the rescue without a live jacket, but I had motioned to him to stay on the beach.

Thus occurred August of 1993, at Morgan’s Point, Ontario Canada.

 

If a US Marine was to join the French Foreign Legion, how much easier would they find the basic training?

I was a Marine Recruiter in 1992 and I walked into the Social Security Office to get a SSN verification for one of my recruits.

The guy behind the counter tells me that he was a Force Recon Marine and I told him that I was a Recon Marine as well. We start comparing stories and he had been to Amphibious Recon School, Scout Swimmer, Scuba, Jump, Free-fall.

As it turned-out he knew quite a few people that I knew who were sort of legends in the Recon Community.

I asked him how long he had been in? He told me, “8 years.” Then I asked him,” Why did you get out if you already did two enlistments? “

He said that he got out to join the French Foreign Legion. I said, “How was that?”

He said verbatim, “It made Force [Recon] seem like Sunday School. “

He said that he had to do everything all over again Infantry, Jump, Scuba, Free fall. He told me that he he eventually made into the Parachute Commando Regiment.

*UPDATE EDIT. I remember an incident that I witnessed in Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield/Desert Storm.

We were waiting in line to take field showers at the Division Service Support Group (DSSG) area when a group of Legionaries drove up in their rickety jeeps.

One of the junior guys is so excited to be getting a shower, that he hops in line with us while forgetting to take his rifle with him.

A few moments later, his Sergeant comes running-up and starts yelling at him in French. Then, he proceeds to start beating the guy. He almost beat the dude unconscious at which point a whole bunch of Marines intervened.

As a LCpl, I was pretty shocked by what I witnessed. I’m pretty sure that the rest of us Marines were stunned including several Staff NCO’s and Officers who also happened to be standing in line.

I saw a couple of FFL Officers drive-up soon after and they were yelling at the Sergeant in French and then they all get in their vehicles and drove off.

My assumption is what we witnessed wasn’t supposed to have occurred in public and that it was supposed to have taken place “behind closed doors.”

In desperation, Tinder creates a ‘VIP’ membership to crush even more men’s hopes.

https://youtu.be/BzLgyICOKmI

Have you ever quit a job and walked out without giving any notice? What caused you to leave so urgently?

Yes, yes, yesssss!!!

5 years ago I worked at a little shop called “Forever 21” When our Manager got a promotion we had a new Manager come in and take over and she was awful!! The only reason I can think of as to why she was so horrible is that she wanted to make everyone as miserable and she was. She had had two back to back pregnancies so she was dealing with a one year old and a two year old and she was constantly complaining about her life to our other managers. In General she just seemed unhappy.

One time she grabbed all of the employees closing and put us in a group and asked us for resignations because she was “sick of our sh*t” No one said anything, as no one was ready to resign, obviously. We were all broke college students who needed the job. She was the only manager that was constantly on everyone’s back. Our store was in downtown where we had to pay for our parking, as a result the store payed about a dollar more per hour than usual for that very reason, as soon as she got there she cut everyone’s pay down to regular pay, she said we didn’t deserve it.

After a few months of this abuse, all of the employees were getting sick of it so we conspired to write a letter to HR with all of the abuse we had been enduring and we were all going to sign it. Well, word got around and got back to her. She pulled all the weakest people she thought had something to with the letter and met with them, according to the other managers that were present, she screamed at them and bullied them into quitting, she said they could either put their two weeks in or she would fire them within the next week. They didn’t want to be fired so they put in their two weeks! I was fuming!

Then came my turn to meet with her. She did not yell at me or even threaten me. She said that she had heard about the letter and thought of me as a “fire starter” I looked at her and smile and said “I have no idea what you are talking about, now let me get back to work so we can get out of here on time” I think she knew the bullying wasn’t going to work with me.

Now, here is where I had enough! When she started there as the manager she had put in place a new rule where anyone who was clocking in at 10am (when the store opened) could not arrive into the store any earlier than 9:58. At this point I was going through a lot in my life and had a lot on my mind so I forgot all about this new rule. I was very used to going in early to lock my stuff up in the lockers, use the restroom and then head to clock in. When i arrived it was 9:50, I stepped into the store and I was no more than 2 steps in when I hear her yelling across the room “YOU NEED TO LEAVE NOW!! COME BACK WHEN YOUR SHFT STARTS!!!” I froze in my steps. There were other people in the store such as other Managers and the merchandise reps who had started early, they all stopped and stared at me. she repeated what she said once more and i turned around left! The whole situation was upsetting. I think I had a lot of second hand embarrassment. This is the manger I work for? This is how a “manager” represents her self and deals with her employees? how does a manger not know that the best way to address something to an employee is to pull them aside and talk to them in private not scream it across the store? How someone like her got to be a manager is beyond me, and that’s when I got to thinking.

Is this job really worth all the trouble and abuse I am suffering? NO, definitely not.

I got into my car and went home. When I got home I saw I had a voicemail on my cellphone. It was one of the other managers, I would call him one of the butt kissers for sure. He said that if I was going to quit and not show up for my shift then I should at least had the Courtesy to give them a 2 weeks notice!

F*$k them!!

We escaped the UK for China. Here’s Why.

https://youtu.be/VOT5NLYxqQQ

Have you ever had a work colleague who was disliked by most of the other staff, but you knew just how much integrity, honesty, and honour they really had?

‘Disliked’ is perhaps too strong of a word. . .

John was a former U.S. Marine, and a karate black belt, and we were colleagues at a large language center in Bangkok.

The alpha male teachers initially assumed John would blend in with them, but they were so wrong.

He was polite, friendly in his own way to them but was quickly bored by their macho bravado and sexual escapade stories. That they demeaned others (foreigners and Thais) to swell their egos did not sit well with him.

The alphas, perhaps sensing that John was a true alpha, left him alone. They said that they disliked him but never explained why. Perhaps it was insecurity?

Some of the center’s academic management cringed each time a teachers’ meeting was held, knowing that John would be there, ready to call them out about unnecessary rules, regulations and for demands made on hourly-paid teachers.

If they insisted on changing teaching methodology or administrative procedures, John’s very valid, direct questions and comments usually exposed their lack of teaching experience and empathy. He made them accountable.

If explanations were clear and reasonable, John accepted them. He wanted what was best for students and teachers.

If he was proven wrong (even by himself), he readily admitted it. He also apologized if he inadvertently upset others with direct personal comments.

He was popular with students because he was what they thought an excellent, caring teacher should be. His standards were exacting and fair, and they knew he wanted them to succeed.

Gossip was never a thing for John. He may have made negative judgments about others, but he usually kept them to himself (occasionally expressing quiet sarcasm but only to close friends).

He had a wicked, subtle, sense of humor that went over most people’s heads. He had his vices, too, but again, only his closest friends knew them.

Why were many of his colleagues uncomfortable around him?

Because he never wavered in his integrity, honor and honesty.

Captain Proton | 1920 Universe

https://youtu.be/tk6VIBmCcM0

What was the cruelest rumor you’ve heard about another kid when you were in school?

Let’s go back to my 8th grade year and there was a kid who really struggled with their mental health.

They were a class reject, she had friends but wasn’t popular. She was apart of the “gay” kids group. People used to call them fags and say that they will turn others gay.

She cut her arms, and she wanted to die everyday. So a few kids decided to start a bet. When will she kill herself.

We all knew one day she wouldn’t come to school and be dead by suicide. So we watched everyday watching her slowly suffer more and more in her own world.

She used to pass out a lot because of an eating disorder. She used to go to the bathroom after lunch and purge everything whenever anything passed her lips. She had a couple meltdowns in school and we all looked at her like she was retarded. We used to say it to her face. Small things like treating her like a child to degrade her every single day.

Then one day she didn’t come to school. Or the next, or for the rest of the year.

But she wasn’t dead.


On April 20th 2022, She left for Orange county california to a residential treatment facility, and she was gone till January 4th 2023.

That kid was me. My parents don’t know the details about how sucky my 8th grade school year was or how people used to make bets about when I was successfully gonna to kill myself. It was a struggle everyday to go to school when my mental health was slowly deteriorating everyday.

Right now, I am 2 1/2 months out of all mental health treatment. 2 months clean of self harm, and 2 months free of purging. I am happy with my life. And I love going to school everyday (I changed schools). I’m apart of the track team and I absolutely LOVE it.

I’m honestly not sure if my classmates at my old school think I’m dead or not. I’m not at their mercy. I am stronger than their words. And I will succeed in my life.

Stay Gold ponyboy Stay gold

-Eli

Edit: To be honest, I wonder how many of you at first thought I bullied a depressed autistic kid in 8th grade-

Edit: 411 upvotes?! Mom I’m famous :0

Im kidding, thank you for the support everyone.

Edit (4/20/23): Thank you so much for 1.6k upvotes. I reread the comments a lot, it gives me inspiration to keep going.

(I wanted to write a long reflection letter, however life happens and I got a concussion. So I’m not writing it as “thoroughly” as I wanted to.)

Today is April 20th 2023, exactly a year ago today, I was on a plane going to Orange County California. I went to Newport academy, which was the start of my 9 month treatment journey. It’s crazy reflecting on how much I changed in just 12 months but I am proud of myself for it. Exactly a year ago, I was basically throwing tantrums everyday and my parents had to deal with the bull crap sometimes 3 times a day. I was severely depressed, Self harm everyday, and I was miserable with life. That includes making family issues unbearable for everyone in my family.

Exactly a year ago, I said I didn’t need help. Exactly a year ago, I said I was fine, exactly a year ago I was attention seeking for everything. But reflecting now, I was in denial. I’m proud of myself where I came from.

My first day in treatment, I refused to go through the doors of Ranch House. It’s crazy to think that everyday for a month, I cried to my parents begging for them to let me go home when I was first admitted into youth care.

The last few days, I learned an important lesson. You really don’t know what everyone is going through. I learned the most outgoing, extroverted girl in my class was in 2 mental hospitals. I also learned my favorite teacher was in a mental hospital for 2 months when she was 12. I realized in that moment, “in the real world”, everyone struggles. Usually, I avoid talking about where I was for 9 months, but last week, I started to own my story. I won’t ever just “forget” what it was like to be that kid in treatment, and I shouldn’t. I do know where I need to go from now, to continue to be the best person I want to be.

The last rec therapy I did was a goals board for the new year. My goals were to get my drivers permit (I got it two months ago!). Transition into my new school (all though I might not have friends, I’m content with school), join the track team (I PRed at my last meet and now I’m triple jumping varsity distance. I also PR my pole vault and I’m allowed to start bending the pole after I get cleared from my concussion), get clean (3 months clean as of 3 days ago), stop purging (I don’t remember the last time I purged), and to continue to work on my family life.

And I did it, I’ve done all of it and I’m fucking happy for once. I’ve come a long way from where I was. I might not announce to everyone that I was in treatment, nor should I, but I’m not embarrassed by it anymore either.

I honestly don’t know where I would be without having the support system I did have in treatment. Thank you.

It’s been a wild ride this past year, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

When will we upload our consciousness to the cloud?

https://youtu.be/TqM-rhKniLE

Have you ever woken up one morning and said, “I’m done” and then walked away from your life?

It wasn’t morning, it was lunchtime out with my kids at a pub to celebrate my birthday. Both girls had left home long since. I was 68, still working and intending to continue until April 2022 in order to complete 50 years at the same job.

Older daughter hands me a card saying “Happy Birthday Grandpa.” There was a copy of an ultrasound scan showing first grandchild.

So I said without any hesitation “I’m going to quit.” I called my employers (I had 4 at the time) that afternoon and simply said I finish October 31st. They whined, begged me to stay but I was adamant and finished on the due date. Grandson was born Dec 27th. Never made a better decision in my life.

EDIT

Life continues to amaze. Daughter told us a couple of weeks ago that, to use an English expression, “there’s another one in the oven” due March/April.

EDIT New one arrived Easter Momday. Everyone except me was convinced it was a boy based on scan. However beautiful Emily Grace proved the others wrong!

 

 

Brutal Data For Young Men In The Dating Scene I Was Genuinely SHOCKED To Read This

https://youtu.be/FTp56SIVgV0

What does 9G force feel like?

Oh boy, does it hurt!!

Empirically, I, as a 220 lb man, will weigh close to a ton at 9 Gs. That alone would make it hard to sustain that pull but there are other things going on that make a 9G pull a VERY temporary state.

First for the blood. Since your G vector is down, that’s where your blood is being pulled; your feet and legs swell very quickly with all the blood rushing in. That’s a problem because you need to be able to think but the blood is being pulled away from your brain. The first thing that typically goes before you lose consciousness is your peripheral vision and so we’re taught to do some clenching moves with our legs and stomach to try and push the blood back up before G onset (our G suit also offers about 3 additional G tolerance compared to resting state). But no G clenches in the world are going to keep you going for long at 9 Gs. You’re going night night (GLOC…G induced loss of consciousness) if you don’t stop pulling fairly quickly.

G cough. These are fun. If you pull too long, some of the delicate tissue in your lungs get damaged and you’ll begin literally hacking up a lung. Doesn’t happen all the time but if you’re in a prolonged fight, be prepared.

And finally, my favorite: G measles. I only got these in the centrifuge and that was only because I was at 9 Gs for about 15 seconds (that’s a lot longer than it sounds). What happens is that some of your capillaries (mine were in my arm) burst and you get splotches on your skin from the burst capillaries. It looks like you have measles, hence the name. And they itch like crazy! And to make matters worse, they do what always happens when you have blood leaking out of the veins/arteries: they turn into bruises. After my trip through the centrifuge, my arms were all bruised up for about 4 days.

So to summarize, pulling 9 Gs feels like an elephant is standing on your chest and it very quickly begins damaging your body. Reversible damage, but damage nonetheless.

PAY ATTENTION! Something VERY strange is happening in Poland

https://youtu.be/Z36BWFnk0U0

The theme ended with projectile vomit

Yesterday, I took the family to a theme park in Southern Zhuhai. It’s the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom. We paid 3500 rmb (roughly $500) for two days with hotel, and two buffet meals. (For us three.)

new header 16 9
new header 16 9

Now, you must know, everything in China is HUGE.

Not Texas huge.

“Universe” huge.

The facility included FIVE theme parks. Each with it’s own hotel, and passes to each one. Each theme park is “Disney Park” in size. So it is an ENORMOUS complex.

Just mind-mindbogglingly large.

When you buy the tickets, the ticket seller will warn you to take one day per theme. Other than that you are wasting your time.

And there is no way you can do more than that! Lordy!

Under the sea
Under the sea

We chose to concentrate on the “Penguin life park”, and the “spaceship future” park. Both were fun and cool, and my little girl enjoyed every second of the excitement.

Inside 1
Inside 1

My little girl loved it!

Animals. Excitement. Bright colors. Rides. Many playgrounds.

And the hotel room was super kid friendly.

236308
236308

We stayed at the Circus hotel, and she had her own bed that looked like a lions cage on wheels, had her own kid-sized robe and slipper. The television only played kids shows, and the commode was kid friendly with a kid style insert. The shower had a kid sized lower tier.

Well thought out.

place 2015 09 25 7 Chimelongoceankingdom
place 2015 09 25 7 Chimelongoceankingdom

The only problem was that on the last day I caught a “bug” and spent the entire day vomiting and spending time on the shitter. I had water-cannon high volume vomiting.

36 times. Thirty Six vomits!

Each time I just emptied out.

Wholly crap!

Then went home to sleep. And sleep I did. Like the dead.

But I am up now, and shaky but functional. I am taking medicines and it all seems to work. I am drinking coffee and I am able to hold it down. So that’s good. Right?

It reminds me that I am still alive and functional. Yay!

Ah. Today…

What one sentence can change a life?

“Man, I’ve another 50 years of this shit…”

That one sentence was spoken by myself, to myself, in my car, as I pulled up outside my house, February 3rd 2016.

I have suffered from depression for 35 years. I can go months, sometimes years, without an episode, but in 2013 my wife, my soul mate, my best friend, left me after 15 years, which plunged me into the worst episode of my life.

Now, whilst depression is a living hell at times, I never actually feel sorry for myself. It’s a different emotion altogether, as anyone who suffers the same will testify. But this particular day, I was feeling sorry for myself. My business had gone to the wall in the first 12 months of separation. In the second 12 months I was struggling to pay the bills. By the end of year 3 I had £2 in the bank, was in desperate arrears with my mortgage and my new business was bringing in barely £200 a week.

I pulled up outside my house at 5pm, knowing the rest of the night would, yet again, be spent sat alone, in the cold, with the constant memories of my wife and children walking around the house, ghosts of their laughter echoing around, heart and mind being tormented by all that had gone before. There was little food in the cupboard. No credit for gas on the meter and low credit for electricity on that meter.

And this was the lowest point, it was 3 years of decline to this moment. I had no way of getting out of the mess I was in. No way I could figure, anyway. For the first time, this time I felt sorry for myself and literally said out loud, “man, I’ve another 50 years of this shit.”

That was the moment everything changed. I turned the engine off and lit a rare cigarette. I continued to talk to myself in the car – partly out loud, partly in my head. The conversation (with myself) went along these lines…

“50 years… ha, great… and I’m 50 years old next year (2017). Well, hang on… if I’m 50 next year, then I am only half way through my life. If I do live to be 100 – and why not ? – then next year, my 50th birthday, is the start of part 2. Mmmm… well if that’s the case then :

1 – I don’t need to buy a house – already bought one, only 5 years off completion (if I can find a way to keep the reposession order at bay). In 5 years, I will have property worth £130,000. Fully paid up. Hey, imagine if I had that when I was 5 years old, how cool that would have been for a start in life !

2 – I don’t have to go to school for 15 years – I’ve done that, I’ve got an education, done college, done university… I’ve got a head start !

3 – I don’t have to get married and have children – I have 3 wonderful children who are doing well and I’ve had the snip, so no need to have any more… no stress and strain of raising babies. Ace !

4 – I don’t need to buy a car or learn to drive – already sorted.

5 – I don’t need to worry about making friends or being popular or liked – I have a fantastic circle of friends who love me and I love them.

6 – I don’t have to worry about my parents leaving me, I already have had the sadness of losing them.

7 – I don’t need to worry about a job. I have the potential in my new business to make a comfortable living, if and when I am mentally strong enough to fully apply myself.

… and so on and so forth…”

Now I am having this conversation with myself in my car and I can literally feel the stress, the pain, the depression leaving my body. I am getting genuinely excited at the way my mind is working. I go into the house and continue this conversation whilst making a coffee. I get a notepad and make notes of what I am saying. Every note, every little idea, is scribbled down so as not to be forgotten.

As the evening progresses, I find myself going through each room in the house, removing any trace of my wife’s existance. Every memory gets either boxed up for the children to enjoy in the future, or goes in the bin. The kitchen gets emptied – I keep 3 cups, 3 plates, 3 knives, forks etc, for me and the 2 youngest children when they visit. The rest of the clutter gets binned. The living room is re-arranged. The bedroom is rearranged. The bathroom is rearranged. This carries on through to maybe 5am…

… For the first time in 3 years, I go to bed with an exhausted smile and wake up a few hours later with that same smile. I carry on where I left off. I borrow a couple of hundred pounds off my brother to get rid of furniture and replace with cheap “get by for a while” furniture, that has no trace of my marriage attached to it. I carry on writing notes.

Well, over the next 2 -3 months, remarkable changes happen. By the end of the 3rd month, at my medical check up, I am taken off my blood pressure tablets, my BP being normal for the first time in 3 years. The following month, after slowly cutting back, I am off my anti-depressants, also for the first time in 3 years, the longest I have been there in my life. I have lost over a stone in fat. My business is taking off as I am able to focus on it and money is coming in again.

By November, 9 months on, I have cleared my debts and I have £4,000 saved. My friends tell me I have a “happy house”. That they feel the positive juju the second they come in the door. They want to know (part jokingly, and part enviously) why I now walk round with a permanent smile, like a village idiot. More than anything though, they are genuinely delighted that they have got “me” back.

But let’s go back to Part 2.

The whole trigger for this was the realisation that if I live to be 100, I am only halfway through my life. So I started adding to the notes I had already started. This time, not marking down things I didn’t have to go through, but things that I am going to do. Each page of things to do is broken down into what I need to do to get there. There are wild things that I may not be skilled enough to do, like publish a novel. I may never be as good as Jimi Hendrix on the guitar. But what is there to stop me doing the best I can do with both ? Then there are totally achievable goals, like buying a campervan and spending 3 months on the road, enjoying life and writing that novel ? Getting married again, now that my heart is mending and I am meeting lovely ladies again – why not ? Decorating and renovating the house. Expanding the business. Getting fit. Losing a bit more weight. Learning to fly a plane. Doing a new degree in something I really enjoy. So many places to visit, to enjoy, to experience.

It’s all there and it’s all ahead of me and I know it’s all down to me. But most importantly, after the 9 months that have just gone by and how my life has already changed so much, I know it’s totally achievable !

So… “man, I’ve another 50 years of this shit” is the single, most important sentence that has changed my life, hopefully forever. Because I’m proving it wrong. And life has rarely felt better.

(I have missed out a section about a girl, I’ll call her “W”, who added a lot of fuel to this fire right at the beginning. She may read this and/or some people may know her, so I shouldn’t mention her by name. But, without knowing it, she made me want to be a better person (thanks Jack Nicholson) too. We never dated, or anything like that… but she is one of the most beautiful souls I have come across. Thank you “W” for your inspiration.)

Best wishes all of you reading this. I wish you a long and happy life.

Rob.

Chicken Gyros with Dill Sauce

Chicken Gyros with Dill Sauce is a traditional Greek sandwich.

Crock Pot Chicken Gyro 6 500x375 1
Crock Pot Chicken Gyro 6 500×375 1

Ingredients

  • 1 cup plain yogurt
  • 2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon chopped fresh dill
  • 2 large garlic cloves, finely minced
  • 1 teaspoon + 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
  • 1 pound skinless boneless chicken breast halves, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 medium onions, thinly sliced
  • 4 fresh pita bread rounds, heated
  • Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. In small bowl blend together yogurt, 2 tablespoons dill, garlic and 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
  2. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken with oregano, 1 teaspoon dill, salt and pepper. Sauté until browned and cooked through, about about 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl. Add 1 tablespoon oil to skillet and sauté onions until golden brown, about 10 minutes.
  3. Return chicken and any juices to skillet. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Stir until heated through, about 2 minutes.
  4. Top pita rounds with chicken mixture. Spoon dill sauce over chicken and serve. This sandwich is folded in half and eaten. Pass the extra sauce, as desired.

Doomed by decoupling

The West falls further behind

Godfree Roberts

We are decoupling from China and, a fortiori, from its technology and the 130 countries in its currency, trade and defense alliances. Highlights from 2023 suggest that we far behind and the gap is widening.

2024 01 22 09 57
2024 01 22 09 57

Economy

In 2023, China’s economy grew by $1.6 trillion, more than the rest of the world’s combined – while the USA borrowed $3 trillion to fund $300 billion GDP growth. Real wages grew 4.7% and demographics will remain healthy through 2043. 21 million tourists flew during Golden Week and spent $3 billion in Xinjiang alone. Hangzhou hosted more athletes at the Asian Games than the Olympics and domestic brands Anta and Li-Ning outsold Nike and Adidas.

Research

Young Science became the world’s #3 journal and is rapidly overtaking incumbent leaders Nature and Science. With a $228 billion corporate R&D budget, 3 million Chinese scientists applied for almost as many patents as the rest of the world combined, and utterly dominated the top 1% of most influential papers. Huawei’s R&D budget alone is larger than the US CHIPS and Science Act.

Health

Researchers there cured thalassemia, reversed autism and aging, provided Covid immunization with a dry powder aerosol, curednasopharyngeal cancer, constipation, atherosclerosis and improved Alzheimer’s memory and functionality. They grew human kidneys in pig embryos and oversaw the first live birth of chimeric monkeys

Hard Tech

Scientists created the first graphene semiconductor, while Betavolt began shipping an atomic energy battery that powers consumer devices for 99 years.

     

Huawei mastered 7nm chip production (Intel still has not), replaced WiFi with 6x faster NearLink, took Apple’s #1 spot in the world’s largest market with a phone using 90% domestic components. Chinese chip foundries bought 62% of machinery equipment domestically this year, vs. 47% last year, and produced the first integrated neuro-memristor and the first 232 layer flash memory. Researchers set a record for high-rate quantum key distribution, showed off the first ambient superionic hydride ion conductor, the first primate brain-computer interface and an integrated neuro-memristor chip that will make circuit boards obsolete.

Macro inventions included the first waterless nuclear reactor, the most powerful solid-fuel rocket, the first liquid oxygen/methane rocket (it lifted 6 tonnes into sun-synchronous orbit), the world’s only Mach 30 wind tunnel, lasers generating high-energy beams indefinitely, and the first high-orbit Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite for 24×7 weather observation.

The country installed 80 million kW of PV and PV generated 300 billion kWh nationwide, 30% above 2022. CATL’s EV batteries get 400 km on 15 min. charge and 700 km. on a regular charge at all temperatures. In addition to installing 290,000 industrial robots – more than the rest of the world combined – it put AESA radars on $8,000 farm drones (only four countries can make them – for fighter jets). Its 800 million 5G subscribers are served by 3.2 million base stations and integrated 5G industry applications into 67 economic categories with 100,000 application cases. Tibet’s 5G service surpassed California’s.

Environment

In the wilderness that covers 42% of China’s landmass, conservationists counted 70,000 Tibetan antelopes, 3,400 Przewalski’s gazelles, 5,000 golden snub-nosed monkeys and 1200 Snow Leopards

What’s a red flag that you ignored in a significant other, only to realize it was a big deal later?

I dated a lady, who was already dating someone else. Except I didn’t know this when she asked me out. They weren’t living together, so it wasn’t something that jumped out at you.

It was only on our 4th date, that the guy got suspicious , and followed her to our restaurant, and caused a scene that I had a clue. She dumped the guy, in the restaurant, and made it seem like it was no big deal, as they were a short term casual couple.

I found out from her best friend about a month later, that they had been seeing each other regularly for a year. But I was hooked by then.

After 9 months she asked me,to ask her, to marry me. Yes, I know, confusing right?

I said I needed to think about it. Immediately, she was busy on Friday nights, but still up for Saturdays. She said it was work related.

I recognized the pattern and decided not to follow her to whatever restaurant and bar she was going to. I didn’t need to have a big fight in public. Instead I waited until the next day, and lied to her, and told her I had followed her. She said, well I guess thats it then. Why does everyone follow me?

Implying that I wouldn’t have just been the second person to follow her.

She was right, that was it. Once a cheater, always a cheater, even if they aren’t married or living together.

Wife Started Behaving Like A F**inist And Is Now Having A MELTDOWN That Her Marriage Is IMPLODING

https://youtu.be/CM8100c-xxg

How has China’s growth model based on debt-fueled investment and land sales become difficult to sustain?

It is not though!

Chinese people are prolific savers. And Chinese as you know are the most practical and pragmatic people on planet earth. They are the opposite of American people who are one of the most wasteful nation on planet earth. And worst the U.S. as a nation and your archaic political system allows wasteful and unaudited spending.

China and Chinese are just the opposite.

Chinese people save 36% of their income, the highest on earth and the US barely save at all. That is a very big difference. The U.S. cannot depend on domestic savings, China can and they do. China saved more the entire UK GDP each year! China used that to fuel the Chinese economy by building up infrastructures and invest in R&D. Hence China is now totally independent innovatively and scientifically.

I know when a person like you who ask such a question you are already fooled by your western media that China is unsustainable but the fact is just the opposite. The U.S. is mightily unsustainable and China is the lowest geared economy. And its real tangible investment are paying off well!

The U.S. infrastructure is dilapidating and you guys burnt cash like there is no tomorrow! 5 trillion in Iraq, 5 trillion in Vietnam, 3 trillion in Afghanistan. And probably 10 trillion in Ukraine by the time this shit ended. Burning cash sending armadas around the world and keeping 800 plus military bases around the world! Your investment is not getting any returns.

China build more high speed railway, solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric power stations then the rest of the world put together!

So grow up Mr. Questioner and Americans and brain dead westerners. China is great and dandy. The U.S. is without doubt collapsing before your eyes. If you open yours!

THIS AMERICAN INSULTS THE ENTIRE AFRICAN CONTINENT. IS THIS HOW A/AMERICANS FEEL ABOUT AFRICANS?

https://youtu.be/1qeRW-SbsPg

Would the Tiananmen Square Massacre have happened if China had a Second Amendment?

The problem is, there was no massacre.

Tiananmen, and the never-ending western media narrative telling outright lies for decades without giving the Chinese the opportunity to set out the facts is the primary motivation for the Great Firewall, and strict Chinese censorship.

A poor and relatively backward China would have been at constant risk of implosion had external forces been able to spread lies as propaganda to bring down the government in Beijing, using Tiananmen as the rallying point.

Unfortunately, the truth is way more mundane.

The students were persuaded to go home before first light, and most of the soldiers deployed to the square were involved in area cleaning on June 4th and 5th.

In sum, the Tiananmen PROTESTS (which lasted for months centered around June 4th) resulted in the deaths of several hundred, with an abnormally high percentage being uniformed personnel. It was at best, a sustained social disturbance.

The Chinese are not stupid, or disrespectful people. No leader will order a massacre at Tiananmen, with the portrait of Mao overlooking the square. The Long March generation had given their lives to free the people from oppression, and it would have been heresy to mow down the hope of the nation under the watchful eyes of Mao.


Dmitry Orlov: Russia and China Melding in a Shifting Geopolitical Landscape

https://youtu.be/sdkloQ5dycI

What’s the most unprofessional thing a doctor has said to you?

This happened, not to me, but to my younger sister (who’s 16 at the moment). [Too bad I wasn’t with her back then…]

Some Background Details (they’re important in the story): My sister is a beautiful, talented and intelligent girl. She got double promotion in her 6th year so now she’s the youngest in her class. For some time now (around 2–3 years… Whoa, that’s actually a lot!), she has been complaining about her vision. She says that whenever she opens her eyes, everything just constantly keeps morphing and changing forms .

We took her to 3 opthalmologists. None of them could determine the cause of her wavy vision and so they diagnosed it as psychological and referred her to a psychologist who was very well-known (and well-paid) in our area.

Let’s call the psychologist Sarah. So here goes:

(My sister comes in and sits down. Sarah regards my sister condescendingly then proceeds to give her a complacent smirk as if she had just found the answer to all the problems in the universe)

Sarah: “You’re not a very good student are you?”

5 remarks popped into my sister’s head at that very moment:

  1. WTF?!
  2. Is this the first question you ask your patient?
  3. I’m top of my class even after my double promotion.
  4. You’re not a very good doctor are you?
  5. Lady, you just ruined your reputation in less than 10 seconds.

But instead she replied with a simple “I’m moderately good.”

Sarah: “You know, it won’t do you any good to lie.”

By this point, my sister is so shocked she doesn’t even say anything.

Sarah: “Please stand outside for a moment. I’d like to speak to your mother privately.”

My sister just walks out (still unable to process such level of vanity in an adult).

Sarah: “Your daughter is quite obviously making the whole thing up about her vision. And as her parent, it is your responsibility to make sure she studies all day. She gets an F in her tests and at best a D, am I right?”

It took my mother all of her willpower to not get up and slap her full across the face. She quietly thanked the doctor and left, making sure to slam the door especially loudly on her way out.

P.S. After much more research and diagnosis in another country (Australia), it turns out my sister’s wavy vision was due to ocular migraine. It hasn’t got much better yet but baby steps lead the way. 🙂

INVESTIGATORS REVEAL JIMMY LAI MONEY TRAIL

Huge amounts of international money flowed into the bank accounts of Jimmy Lai—and large sums of cash went out to anti-China groups, a court heard yesterday.

The tabloid publisher received HK$2.945 billion in his nine bank accounts in recent years, with deposits coming from the United States, Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere. The money is said to have derived “from overseas securities trading”.

But the money didn’t sit there.

Who got the cash?

Chunks of finance went out to multiple China-hostile political groups in Hong Kong, the US, and the UK, the prosecution said, providing a detailed report from financial investigators.

Jimmy Lai’s lawyer Steven Kwan Man-wai did not dispute the information.

Local recipients included the Hong Kong Democratic Party, the Civic Party, the Labour Party, the League of Social Democrats, the court was told.

A wildly critical UK group called Hong Kong Watch, whose members include Benedict Rogers and former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten, received HK$202,000.

Paul Wolfowitz, former US deputy secretary of defence, was sent HK$1.76 million in payments from 2013 onwards, the court heard. Money also went to a right-wing think tank called the American Enterprise Institute.

Cash also went to a group called the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, organizers of an annual meeting to keep the “Tiananmen Square massacre” story, debunked by Julian Assange and others, alive.

The biggest individual recipient named yesterday was Cardinal Joseph Zen, a retired Hong Kong churchman who has fallen out with his colleagues, including Pope Francis, over his relentless China-bashing. The churchman received HK$3.5 million in 2017, the prosecution said.

The court heard earlier that large sums of money from Jimmy Lai’s funds (held by various entities) were paid to media companies, including the publishers of the Washington Post, the Nikkei Weekly, the UK Guardian, and media groups in India.

Jimmy Lai, 76, is on trial for sedition and collusion, offences illegal worldwide. His colleagues and associates have pleaded guilty in related hearings. The trial continues.

Baltic Sea Anomaly, Atlantis, and Underwater Alien Bases | Mysteries of the Ocean Pt 1

https://youtu.be/tgqAt6YN1jE

Why do so many couples still get married when the divorce rate is so high?

I can tell you why I took the plunge.

She was gorgeous.

I wanted to have sex.

We were both young and stupid.

Oh, and movies said we’d “live happily ever after.”

And we did, through the honeymoon. Then reality struck.

We suddenly discovered that, well, we’re very different. In just about everything.

And that caused us to clash and occasionally me to wonder, “What the hell is wrong with her?”

And my wife to wonder that about me, only way more often.

Through years of building businesses, raising kids, paying bills. And occasional sleepless nights, sickness and clashes it would have been easy to walk away.

To think, “Well, I guess it’s not meant to be.”

But we just chose not to. We chose to make it “happily ever after.” Period.

So when we didn’t have the happy part we still had the ever after part. And it was going to be a long ever after.

So we might as well put the happy part back in. And we did.

Last week my wife was gone baby sitting our grandson. I was home alone.

No, that’s never a good thing in so many ways.

She came home on Friday evening so we had a late dinner and watched a movie.

As we enjoyed a glass of wine, I thought, “Ah, life is good again. Just the way it’s meant to be.”

I turned to her and said, “I’m glad you can babysit. But I’m really glad you’re home.”

“Yeah, it feels good to be home too. Though I miss my baby,” she responded.

“I know, I’m having to compete with your new boyfriend. But I do have to say, he’s really cute.”

We laughed.

And proceeded to live happily ever after for another evening.

And later, well, never mind.

You get married for the wrong reasons. Then build a marriage for the right ones.

What path in life did you go down that, as a child, you never would have expected?

I was failing grade 8 Math and English, and barely passing Science. My parents ran into my Math teacher at a social event, turned out they had distant common friends.

She made it a point to tell them I wasn’t going to get anywhere in life. She suggested they find me a trade, I might do well as an electrician or a plumber (nothing wrong with these professions, except she used it in a derogatory way, as studying is beyond my capabilities).

Ms. Farhana was a real jerk.

I was the shiest kid around and bullied throughout my childhood. However, I was embarrassed enough by that incident that I mustered up my courage and asked the neighbour’s daughter to tutor me. She started from basic and built up from there.

I passed grade 8 Math. Barely, but I passed it.

She kept tutoring me and I did average in grade 9.

My grade 10 Math teacher had a baby. He lived in the neighbourhood so I decided to ring his doorbell to wish him well. He invited me in for cake. Zee never says no to cake. He told me I could be his best student if I just tried harder.

I knew he was giving me an empty compliment, but a part of me thought I could.

So I asked him to help me after school. He said yes.

I got lucked out with a really kick-ass, but slightly racist, grade 11 Chemistry teacher. He broke things down to just Math. I overlooked his passive aggressive micro-aggressions and had him help me. Everything made sense.

I took Finite Math in highschool. The teacher had a bit of a gambling problem, but man did he know his probabilities.

Suddenly Math was fun.

There is a goat behind one of three doors and you pick a door. I open one of the doors you didn’t pick, do you change your answer? (Hint: yes)

I made up different problems with him. I learned Texas Hold’em. We talked about probabilities of different hands.

In grade 12 Advanced Math I got almost perfect, the highest mark anyone has gotten up until that point in that school’s history.

I took Math tests for fun and did well enough at the University of Waterloo’s Descartes test that I got in with scholarship even though my overall marks weren’t that high.

I decided to major in Math (and Computer Science). I finished the first year in Dean’s list, primarily because of kicking ass in Math. I tutored Calculus, Algebra, and Combinatorics and Optimization to pay bills.

Screw you Ms. Farhana, you were wrong.

I graduated and went to work for Microsoft and then Amazon due to my strength in Math.

I decided to run for a local office and despite not knowing anyone, turned campaigning into a Math problem. I reached out to others in the office and asked them for advice. I took their advice seriously.

Heck I read a book, tracked down its author (two-time mayor of a Michigan municipality) and emailed him for advice. He replied and agreed to mentor me remotely.

I won the election.

I started a business. I sucked at it. I ran into someone at a dinner who ran an agency. I asked him for help. He agreed. Eventually we ran a campaign for Nissan.


As a child I never thought I could learn that everyone had something to teach me, outright ask them to teach me, and benefit from this skill so incredibly.

The Worst Thing Ever”

it was seriously the worst thing ever. I walked into my house and saw my mom hanging from the ceiling fan.

I can’t even put into words how messed up it was. It felt like my whole world just fell apart. I still can’t wrap my head around it. It’s like I’m stuck in some kind of freaky….

I can’t even put into words how messed up it was. It felt like my whole world just fell apart. I still can’t wrap my head around it. It’s like I’m stuck in some kind of freaky dream.

 I just wish I could go back in time and stop it from happening. But I know that’s not possible. All I can do now is try to move on and remember her in the best way I can. 

The most devastating experience of my life was witnessing my mother’s passing. The sight of her lifeless body on the floor left me feeling as though I had lost not only her, but also myself and my entire world. 

Despite my desperate desire to help her, she passed away before my eyes, leaving me feeling helpless and hopeless. 

However, as time passed, I came to the realization that I must strive to make her proud by doing my best to secure a successful future. This tragedy has left an indelible mark on my life, but I am determined to honor my mother’s memory by achieving my goals.

image 167
image 167

Related…

DESPERATE WOMAN RESCUED FROM HANGING HERSELF TO DEATH

2024 01 22 07 03
2024 01 22 07 03

Information from reliable source to YIRIMAMBO ADVOCACY GROUP UPPER WEST REGION

indicate that a woman from East District information gathered from Wa East district in the Upper West region indicate that a married woman with six children who allegedly wanted to hang herself to death is battling with problems.

It has been fetched but obvious that she can not do anything else for survival nor her mother to care for her family. It is noted that she is a sickler and her mother a stroke patience.

Despite her poor health condition, she and the husband that are taking care of the family. She is always carrying her mother here and there to help her in movement because of that she can’t do any work for money.

Notwithstanding to this, sometimes it is difficult for them to get even food to eat or clothes to wear and medicines for themselves.

Even though the father with six children, is a farmer but is not easy for him taking care of all of them, he brings only what he gets from the farm and that is all which is not always enough but they have been managing.

So she always sit idle thinking that all these problems cannot be solved and she has been saying which she has always been saying to people.
*Ending Her Life By Committing Suicide*
On the 31st July, 2019 at about 4-5:00 in the evening, a woman which is about 45years- old by name with-held with six Chlidren, from Ducie in the Wa East district of the Upper West region went out with a rope in a black 

polythene bag thinking that nobody have seen her but one of her children who was inside another room before she went out into the bush quickly went to inform some good Samaritans in the community and they also quickly traced this woman to the bush and before they got there she has already tied the rope on top of a tree trying to climb another piece of a tree before she can put her neck on the rope. Then the people who followed her as good Samaritans shouted on her and quickly rushed to save her without doing that.

So on this note we are pleading that if any member can help us with either food stuffs or clothes for these people and health support for them as well, if possible so that we will also try to help this woman with counselling and the materials support from you.

But for now she is a little bit OK with her situation.


With the intervention of yirimambo for the first place with our advice and counseling than before.

SOURCE YIRIMAMBO ADVOCACY GROUP UPPER WEST

Be the RUFUS!

We are a community.

My post on community… on Quora.

What is a Chinese Expert?

I really do not think that this creature exists.

According to the Western / American “news” media, a Chinese Expert is…

  • A person who accepts American government funding to say bad things about China.
  • Is associated, or was associated, with American mainstream media.
  • Has, in their possession, photos of the “expert” with American political personages.

According to the Chinese, a Chinese Expert is a graded, stratified tier system based on experience.

  • Top Tier

Born in China. Studied Chinese history with exemplary grades. Works on behalf of the Chinese people, and puts the people of China first. Many members of the CCP fit this role, as do many Pioneers, and an entire subculture of Chinese that support the “Chinese Dream”.

  • Old Hand

Has lived in China for a significant period of time. Understands the various societies, and cultures of China. Is married to, or was part of, a Chinese family. Works on behalf on the greater good for all, but of course, his / her Chinese family and Chinese friends come first. This person is also known as a Chinese wanna-be. And this person supports, and praises, “The Chinese Dream”.

  • Enthusiast

This person, may or many not have lived in China. But has totally embraced the Chinese culture, society and means. This includes certain individuals out of Singapore, Vietnam, and other places around the globe. Maybe they aren’t an “expert” in a classical sense, but they are certainly enthusiastic for the Chinese dream. These people are perhaps known an “fanboi.”

At best, I (personally) am considered a “China Old Hand”.

I don’t know everything, but I know enough.

What is “The Chinese Dream”?

Last weekend, my family and a few friends, went to visit an organizational youth meet in Zhuhai. This group (and there are thousands throughout China), teach independence, pride, self-confidence, and acceptance as part of “The Chinese Dream”. It was astounding.

It’s 100% voluntary. The kids pay a small membership fee.

Really. Amazing.

You will never see anything else like this anywhere. Watch how accepted and inclusive my daughter was taken in. It was like she was “absorbed by the hive”. LOL

“Resistance is futile”. -The Borg

https://youtu.be/vVcosfCqwNA

There is a great sense of belonging, and acceptance that I have NEVER experienced anywhere else.

Belonging.

B-E-L-O-N-G-I-N-G

Belonging as PART of a COMMUNITY.

No “lone wolf” bullshit.

It’s stuff like this why I LOVE LOVE LOVE China so much.

EDIT 22JAN23

1.3K views. Only 30 “thumbs up”.

I guess you all have bought into the Western propagandized lie that you can be the “lone wolf”. That you can be another “Die Hard” type; another Rambo. Another Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. Maybe a “Professional career woman”… and all that.

That is a lie.

As many are waking up to the reality that humans are social creatures.

We need to be part of society. We need to belong.

Watch my little 2 minute video. (above)

Belonging is valuable.

 

What made you think, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” when someone sat next to you on an airplane?

We were on a flight to the U.S. from Thailand where we live.

In Taiwan, a disheveled man of around 30 sat down next to me, reeking of weed. After takeoff, he pulled down the tray and filled it with candy bars, nuts, fruit juice and oranges from his camouflage jacket. He turned to me and said, “You can’t trust airline food.”

But when lunch was served, he smashed his food stash under the food tray he was given and ate everything, including the garnish.

Afterwards he wanted to talk and kept pestering me with, “Hey. Hey!!”

He asked where we were from, and upon hearing “Bangkok” he began raving about ‘Thai sticks’, Thai marijuana. Then he asked my Thai husband if he would help him start importing weed to the U.S.

Husband stared at him really coldly and told the man that he was a Royal Thai police officer so “No.” The idiot’s response: “ Listen, I know all Thai cops are corrupt. We could make a load.”

Husband put headphones on and ignored him. I asked the pothead if he was out of his mind. He shrugged, laughed and said husband would change his mind, for sure.

Luckily, he made a friend elsewhere and moved.

But he wasn’t finished with us.

As we lined up for Customs, he got right behind us. As the agent checked our bags, he kept saying loudly, “They’re from Thailand. Great weed there! Oh, look! That’s a weed pipe!” (It was a replica of a silver opium pipe, a decorative item – a gift) “Listen! I still wanna import from you guys!!”

Another agent picked up his bags and escorted him to a separate office, and we never saw him again.

My MM video about pollution in China

https://youtu.be/1vpQCefbArY

Why is the United States afraid of China?

It’s entirely IDEOLOGICAL

The United States and it’s entire existence is based on the WEALTH OF NATIONS

The inherent belief that Core Capitalism is the only system to deliver maximum benefits to an economy and stability to the economy & a system of the people is the only way to deliver a system with full global peace

That the world will be fully peaceful when every nation is governed by its people AKA is a democracy built on Western ideals


This was a very correct analysis that the US followed for almost a hundred and ten years from 1880–1990

Unfortunately this ideology got corrupted post 1990 when:-

  • US Democracy slowly became more and more partisan
  • US Leaders became slowly worse and worse and essentially corrupt demagogues
  • The US capitalism model deteriorated to an Oligarchy ‘Support the top 1%’ model that is sinking the states
  • The US model became all about speculation and less about actual progress and growth

Yet today’s US leaders religiously believe this is the winning model that every nation must adopt and regards any nation that is different as a ‘Flawed Nation’


Chinas Economic Ideology unlike the USA has always changed to suit changing times

From Deeply Socialist under Mao Tse Tung where the focus was on Education and Equality and Food Production and Stability

To Gradual Mixed Economy under Deng Xiaoping & Jiang Zimin where the focus shifted to Industrialization

To a Ruthless Capitalist Mindset under Hu Jintao where the focus was growth, growth and growth

To the Common Prosperity Mindset under Xi Jingping focusing on reducing Income inequality, spreading development across all sections of the economy and a sort of hybrid model of socialism within capitalism

It is diametric opposite to the US and it’s Ruthless Capitalism Ideology

US maximizes emphasis on Speculation

China hates Speculation

US prefers to capitalize everything to the maximum

China prefers a strong sense of control on excess capitalism

US prefers coalescing smaller entities into a handful of monopolies

China prefers mushrooming of smaller entities and competition deciding which is the best


Chinas One Party System is also diametrically opposite to the Multiple faction democracy that the US endorses and the West supports

The US believes that one person for too long loses the incentive to serve the people and becomes a dictator

Yet China believes a group of able people can serve the people the best and prevent unworthy individuals from coming to power who can ruin a well established system of governance


The US has always believed that ultimately China will shed it’s different ways and join the US in their perfect model (that they don’t realize they have fully corrupted)

It’s what made Gordon Chang & Peter Zeihan such celebrities

The US has always believed that China would face a massive setback like the USSR did (Or was suckered into triggering a setback like my friend Hoàng Phan establishes in his answers)

They estimated this to happen between 2005–2008

Didnt Happen

Instead China moved from strength to strength to strength over time and successfully endured every US action against it, from the Wolf Sanctions of 2011 to the Raimondo Sanctions of 2022

The US may trigger a wave of propaganda against China but the purpose of this is to STOP THEIR OWN PEOPLE FROM QUESTIONING AS TO HOW CHINA NOT ONLY SURVIVES TODAY BUT THRIVES FOLLOWING DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY


As China moves ahead without the seeming collapse, the US are seeing their two hundred year old belief and ideology (Again which they don’t realize they have corrupted already) getting shattered by China

And slowly seeing others start to adopt a similar stance from Turkiye to Serbia to Vietnam to Singapore

The US is beginning to wonder if indeed it’s ideology was flawed and whether it’s gods and idols are false

And that terrifies them

They don’t realize that it is THEY who have completely corrupted a nice good solid system that was giving them the position of world leader and global trust for decades

It is they who have become Satanic Hegemons from Global Leaders


As for China, China is on the right track so far

They MUSTN’T MAKE THE MISTAKE THAT US DID

They mustn’t allow ideology and hegemony to corrupt them the way US was corrupted under Bush Junior, Clinton and so on

They must ensure they keep refreshing their system so that it best helps the people of China

Pepe Escobar: China Issues DEVASTATING Warning to Neocons as Putin and Xi Make History

https://youtu.be/Qozaq6KAvPs

Have you ever seen something so surprising that you were momentarily stunned? What was it?

I was on the beach late one night looking at the moon and the waves.

Out of the corner of my eye along the south end of the beach – I saw something super weird.

What is that?

I squinted, trying to figure it out – it was too far away – but it had to be really huge.

What the heck?

Well, I couldn’t sit there idly looking at the moon and listening to the surf anymore – I needed to figure out what that thing was over there on the beach.

So, I started walking… is it a car? What is that thing? How is it on the beach? Nobody in their right mind would drive a VW bug on a beach like ours… at night…

Closer and closer I walked and larger and larger it looked.

It was a leatherback sea turtle. Digging a hole in the sand.

I was utterly flabbergasted.

I didn’t make a sound, I just stood there, awestruck: feeling truly blessed in the moment to be near such a magnificent being.

I had never been so close to such a large animal in the wild before.

She was utterly oblivious to me – she was on a mission.

I stood beside her as she dug: I definitely got a sand bath that night. She flipped the sand until she was happy with her nest and began to fill it with eggs.

It took a long time.

I couldn’t stay until she was completely finished.

I’m pretty sure it took most of the rest of the night. I left around 0300 and she wasn’t done.

I’ve since swum with green turtles, who are dwarfed in comparison. But nothing has engendered that kind of awe before or since. Stunned is the right word for something which leaves your mouth hanging and your words lost.

Cheese and Honey Pie

Cheese and Honey Pie
Cheese and Honey Pie

Ingredients

Sesame Seed Pastry

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
  • 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seed
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

Filling

  • 16 ounces cream cheese, softened
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup honey
  • 1/2 cup whipping cream
  • 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Instructions

  1. Sesame Seed Pastry: Mix all ingredients until blended; press firmly and evenly against bottom and side of 9-inch pie plate.
  2. Bake at 475 degrees F for 5 minutes.
  3. Filling: Beat cream cheese in large mixer bowl on medium speed until creamy. Add remaining ingredients; beat until light and fluffy. Pour into baked pie shell.
  4. Bake at 350 degrees F until firm, 40 to 50 minutes.
  5. Refrigerate until serving time.

Yields 10 to 12 servings.

Done with the bullshit

I had a thought today that I wanted to share with you all, this is my response to a Reddit post I saw about how corrupt and outdated representative democracy is.

I will start with what I think to be the main problems of representative democracy

  1. The elected body of legislators is not a representative sample of the population, looking at the legislature, you’d think the vast majority of the country was white male lawyers that are either Republicans or Democrats. This is very far from the truth, and many voters do not properly identify either Republican or Democrat and their interests oftentimes scope over topics from both parties. Most of the time when people vote they’re just picking the lesser of two evils, and are not in any way completely satisfied with what other party is doing.
  2. Scope of power does not match scope of accountability, legislators may pass laws that impact people that could not vote for or against them. Unless you count propositions in places like california, legislators are able to pass pretty much whatever law they want that impact sometimes tens of millions of people and are in no way accountable to the laws that they pass. The people have no say in the laws that legislators have passed. This very often leads to a corrupt system of the government being able to do whatever it wants and the people having no say in what the government does.
  3. Job security for elected officials is more dependent on fundraising than on whether the politician is acting in his or her constituents’ best interests. This blows the system wide open for large corporations and billionaires to buy off politicians that represent their best interests as opposed to the people.
  4. Lobbying undermines democracy. Lobbying is a mechanism for powerful groups to influence laws and regulations at the expense of the public interest. This results in outside influence, unfair competition and policy capture, to the detriment of effective policymaking. This effectively allows billionaires and big corporations to buy our government and politicians that act in their best interests rather than the interests of the people.
  5. The voting system and general layout of government was designed before it was possible to quickly communicate long distances, so it ignores the possibility of citizens directly participating.
  6. Mass media cannot be trusted to provide accurate information and is very often bias. Mass media often feeds lies and propaganda to the electorate and the electorate is not currently equipped to ensure a representative democracy is acting in the best interest of the people.
  7. The electoral college needs to go, it is not based on popular vote, and it is based on a winner takes all system which is easily susceptible to corruption and allows political candidates to be elected by losing the popular vote. Under the system if you want to vote for your states of losing party don’t even bother voting.
  8. There aren’t enough representatives to accurately represent the people if we’re going to keep our system of representative democracy and not throw out the entire thing. I think the amount of Representatives should be raised to 936, and the amount of Representative districts should also be increased.
  9. It’s very hard to remove corrupt politicians from power. The people should be able to impeach corrupt politicians, the system was not designed to have politicians serving for 30 or 40 years. We need term limits, I think a term limit of 6 years for senators and representatives is perfectly fair, and I think a term limit of 10 years for supreme Court justices is also perfectly fair. This would allow the government to be more in touch with what people want by constantly switching out people every couple of years.
  10. The Monopoly of power that both conservatives and liberals have over the government in their respected Republican and Democratic parties. We need more political parties to better represent the people, it is not the case that people simply think one way or the other there should be five political parties written directly into the Constitution. The government should operate in a European style model of a political coalition if it wants to get anything done, in other words political parties are forced to make concessions and are forced to work with other political parties to pass laws.

So what do I things should be done to fix things? I’ll tell you

  1. Abolish Congress and the supreme Court, and implement a system of direct democracy where every 6 months every single issue that the supreme Court and Congress would have looked at are voted on directly by the people in the form of propositions. Now I know that if we implemented elections twice a year every June and December people will be voting on about 100 different issues, and that’s fine, people’s voices need to be heard and it is a much better system of asking people what they think of certain issues rather than allowing an out-of-touch government to make these decisions for people instead.
  2. Like I said on my previous point, it needs to be a government for the people by the people. This is why representative democracy is an outdated and obsolete relic of the past. In representative democracy legislators are able to pass whatever laws they please and are not accountable to the people.
  3. We need to make lobbying illegal and if we are going to have a political coalition system the people need to be the ones electing politicians not billionaires and big corporations. Money should not be a part of politics. Making money part of politics undermines democracy
  4. Like I said before lobbying undermines democracy and it needs to be banned 🚫. Lobby groups do absolutely nothing for the government except give special interest groups political power that they shouldn’t have and allow the special interest groups to have a voice in our country and our politics and it allows them to buy politicians.
  5. We need to switch to a ranked choice voting system, as opposed to an instant runoff system. The electoral college needs to go, even if that means amending the Constitution to get rid of it.
  6. Mass media should not have a say in our government, as they cannot be trusted to provide accurate information. I think we should have a system of fake news laws that holds these mass media companies accountable for publishing bias or false information
  7. Like I said the electoral college needs to go. Even if that means amending the Constitution get rid of it. We need a ranked choice popular voting system. This would make it so everybody’s voice is heard, and it would allow new political parties to come to the table and it would break up the Monopoly of power that Republicans and Democrats have over the government.
  8. I don’t even think we should keep our system of Representative democracy, but if it needs to stay we need to double the amount of Representatives to 936. This wasn’t even my idea this was the idea of YouTuber Mathew Beat.
  9. We need term limits for politicians. Once a corrupt politician like Mitch McConnell is in power it’s almost impossible to get rid of them. And it should be up to the entire country to elect politicians not just their state. Term limits would allow new people to come to the table and new ideas to spread and it would allow for more political parties to have seats. Every political party no matter how extremist should be able to have its voice heard.
  10. We need to switch to a political coalition system. Everybody should be able to have their voice heard no matter what side of the political spectrum they sit on. There should be five major political parties and many smaller political parties even if those political parties only get 1–5% of the vote. These political parties should be: the nationalist, the conservatives, the liberals, the acella party (progressive party), and the green party. Many smaller political parties such as: the Socialist party, the fascist party, the libertarian party, etc should also get a say. If we have 936 representatives, even if the fascist party only got 2% of the vote, they would still get 19 seats. This would actually heavily benefit minority political parties and give them a lot of power. Let’s say for example that 20% of the population identifies as nationalist, and 22% of the population identify as conservative. This does not add up to 51%, it adds up to 42%, this would still require an additional 9% of the vote for the nationalist and conservatives to get anything passed and they would have to make deals with the smaller political parties to get up to 51%.

These are just my thoughts about our whole busted political system, let me know what you think

2024 Taiwan Election Reveals Shocking TRUTH About USA and China

https://youtu.be/XKiM2rVZMYg

Swimming in cockroaches

I used to live in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And I loved it. What a nice and lush forest full of flowers. But like all things, I only was able to work there for a few years until I was laid off. Those lay offs really sucked, I’ll tell you what.

Anyways, I had a really nice house in a low area on the edge of a swamp. It was great. Glorious. With high temperatures, and humidity, it was super lush. My house was brown with nice green shutters and doors, and a nice slab parking garage.

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Then I got laid off.

What a nightmare. I do not want to relive that. I’ll tell you what.

But, anyways, we had a bug-control man come over every month to spray for the cockroaches. Oh, they grew them BIG in Hattiesburg. And there were so many of them, at night the ground looked like it was moving. Like you were trippin’ or something like that.

So to save up money, we decided to cancel our monthly bug spraying.

Well, one week goes buy, and my cats were busy catching cockroaches. We would find dead cockroaches on the half-shell everywhere. But they got tired of it. You can only catch so many.

On the second week, I saw one my socks waking across the room.

By the third week we were hearing sounds in the walls, and periodic electrical shorts in our outlets. And then, but the end of the fourth week, when the television was covered with cockroaches, we made an emergency call to the exterminator to put on his flashers and race to us; we told him to come over immediately!

And he actually did.

Flashing red lights, and alarm! No kidding!

Jezze!

Lesson learned. If you live in a warm climate… please bug spray. Let me tell you, Joe’s Apartment (a fun movie) didn’t do that nightmare justice.

Swimming in cockroaches
Swimming in cockroaches

We were Swimming in cockroaches!

Today…

What is something that needs to be said that nobody wants to hear?

  1. The cemeteries are full of people who thought themselves indispensable.
  2. Nothing is certain except for death and taxes.
  3. Everyone is a whore. We just sell different parts of ourselves.
  4. Worry is today’s mouse eating tomorrow’s cheese.
  5. Some people will only “love you” as much as they can use you.
  6. Love is a crock pot, not a deep fryer.
  7. Looking for others to validate your sense of worth will always end in ruin.
  8. If it’s free, you’re probably the product.
  9. Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.
  10. The days will be long, but the years will be short.

The unimportant things

How would you deal with a supervisor who passes off your work as their own?

Had this happen in my first job. Learned my lesson.

Next time there was a review coming up ( about two months later ) I wrote up a synopsis of my work ( and my colleagues work) and delivered it to my manager’s manager two days before.

We then had the review where my manager misrepresented the work that was done, whose idea it was, and the results.

Not much happened. So two weeks later I went back to my manager’s manager with my request for a transfer. I was doing about 60% of the work in my team of 3; building all the scripts, generating the data for reports, including working at night and weekends because I was single.

When the department head indicated he was reluctant to approve the transfer I told him that was OK and that I’d have my desk cleared out by the end of the week. I knew that there was the possibility that this wouldn’t work out so I had been interviewing. I also knew that the firm had gone to a lot of trouble to recruit and train me & that having me leave would look bad.

I got my transfer.

Eggs with Peppers and Sausage

Eggs with Peppers and Sausage
Eggs with Peppers and Sausage

Ingredients

  • 1 large onion, sliced
  • 1 pound Italian sweet peppers or banana peppers, seeded and cut into strips
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 2 large tomatoes, seeded and cut into wedges
  • 1 tablespoon paprika
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/2 pound fully cooked smoked sausage links, cut into thin slices
  • 6 fried eggs

Instructions

  1. Cook onion and peppers in oil in skillet, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 15 minutes.
  2. Stir in tomatoes, paprika and sugar. Cover and cook over low heat 15 minutes.
  3. Stir in sausage; cook uncovered until sausage is hot, about 5 minutes.
  4. Top with fried egg.

6 servings

What is the best piece of advice you could give someone about life?

  1. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it back into your pocket.
  2. Never ask how stupid someone is, cause they’ll turn around and show you.
  3. Don’t approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear or a fool from any direction.
  4. Stop looking for someone to love you & start looking for someone that deserves your love – tap here to meet your ideal match.

You don’t ask, you don’t get.There are plenty of ways to enter a pool. The stairs is not one of them.If a street performer makes you stop walking, you own him a buck.When entrusted with a secret, keep it.Date with standards, not expectations. Just sit back and see if they can meet your standards or not.Just because you can doesn’t mean you shouldYou only get one chance to notice a new haircut.Don’t dumb yourself down.You are what you do, not what you sayDon’t lose sight of the hobbies you enjoyed as a child. They will help you live as you grow older.Don’t let your yearnings get ahead of your earning.Don’t dig for water under the outhouse.Dating advice you should know: if they like you, you’ll know. If they don’t, you’ll be confused.

Mythology and bullcrap

What’s it like to be rich as in 1% rich?

My parents started middle class and worked their way to the 1%.

It isn’t this huge party. But there are some basic things you don’t worry about as much.

It is weird because I didn’t grow up wealthy at all. And had a strict-as-hell dad.

At some point after I left home, things really ramped up. My dad left the military and became a high ranking exec with SAP.

My mom started a vineyard at their farm. And sold off a lot of great real estate investments she’d made over the years.

But you would never know it if you bumped into them at the store or something. They have very humble personalities. If you went to their home however..

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When I wake up in the morning in their guest room I get to enjoy a view like this:

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When I visit they spend most of their time working around the house and on the farm. We don’t really sit still much. And even when we are it is because we are working on something. We are worker-bees.

Also, I think everyone has a misconception as to how wealthy the top 1% is. 10 years ago, even I had the impression that 1%ers don’t work hard and take 9 vacations a year. I think it is just different if you started small and got there in your middle age and have kids.

At that point, you are more concerned with managing everything and making sure your kids are doing OK.

(Maybe that it is .01 percenters that do all that laying around by the pool…)

Either way I love visiting my parents, but every time I get home here in Florida my house feels really really small! 🙂

I like them big, big

What is the most savage thing you’ve ever done?

I roasted a girl using nothing but a Venn Diagram

This happened in English class back in 2018, and the second it happened, I literally searched for a question that this answer would correlate to. The rest was history.


Okay, so class had just started. The teacher was marking the roll on her laptop, and some girl named Sophie was at her desk to ask her something.

“Ethan James?”

“Yeah, here!”

Then, suddenly, Sophie was like

“Ethan James; absence explained? What does that mean, Ethan? Why is your absence explained?”

I had zoned out, but I perked up upon hearing my name. As one does. I realized what was happening, and I started monologuing.

“Hey, can I get the whiteboard for a sec?”

I said, addressing my teacher. She obliged.

I drew one circle on the board.

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“Sophie, you see this circle? This circle represents the status of my attendance.”

I then drew another circle next to it but not connected.

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“You see this other circle, Sophie? That second circle represents your business.”

“Yeah. Okay” Sophie was confused.

“Now, Sophie, do you see any correlation between the two?”

“No.”

“My point exactly.”

What is it that nobody tells you about having children?

We have three kids. The oldest is 18, and the youngest is 4. So, for 18 years now, our lives have revolved around raising our children. My life in particular has been more child-raising intense, because I’m home with them more often and I took on the role of primary domestic engineer in our marriage.

I was prepared for how expensive kids would be, and the good times and bad times and whatnot.

But lately, I’ve been experiencing something no one warned me about: not knowing what to do with myself as my children gain independence.

Just in the last few weeks, I’ve noticed that my youngest can get her own snacks, turn on the TV and find her shows by herself, entertain herself with her own toys, and even tuck herself in at night. When my other children did this, I was either still busy in grad school, or had another baby who needed my attention.

But now, I’m finding myself, more and more, looking for things to do as my children do their own thing.

Before sitting down to write this, I asked both of my youngest children if they’d like to play something with me. They both said no. I wasn’t prepared for that. Normally, they’d jump on the chance to play with me. They’d insist on it. But right now, they’re each playing by themselves.

I’ve heard that business owners sometimes have a similar problem: they dedicate so many years to getting their businesses off the ground, that once those businesses are successful, and they have employees who do most of the work, the owners aren’t sure what to do with their new free time.

On the upside, my house has never been cleaner. I filled the unexpected free time this week by cleaning. Now, there’s not even much of that to do.

I predict I’m going to be one of those people who retire, and six months later find another job out of boredom.

Statement of reality

What do you do when someone has road rage and tries to follow you home to fight you?

I was going home on a two-lane highway on my motorcycle when a speeding 18-wheel truck came up behind me and started crowding me. I’m talking about an 80,000 lb tractor-trailer so close that I couldn’t see his windshield above the grille in my mirrors.

I was nearly to my left-turn to my road and I was afraid he couldn’t see my brake light or turn signal so I speeded up a little with my signals on, but he speeded up also. So I punched the throttle and jumped out about 100 feet in front of him, grabbed the clutch and stomped on my back brake to lock the 4.10 back tire to make smoke for about two seconds and then left off the brake and clutch and punched the throttle again. Mister Tailgater was doing the shimmy-shake trying to keep his trailer behind his cab in my mirrors and using both lanes to do it while I rocketed past my turn and outran him to the small town a mile away. I parked next to a friend’s business and upon being greeted and hearing the 18-wheeler grinding to a stop out front I ask the store owner, “Hey Spider, if you’ve got that sawed-off shotgun under the counter, I might need to borrow it in a minute.”

Fortunately, the trucker stared at the business for a minute and then drove away.

Ministry reveals UK’s MI6 using foreign national for espionage targeting China

China’s national security authority recently uncovered a case involving the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6, using foreign nationals to engage in espionage activities against China, the Ministry of State Security announced on Monday morning.

In a statement, the ministry said that in 2015, MI6 established an “intelligence cooperation relationship” with a foreign national surnamed Huang, who served as the head of a consulting firm overseas.

The statement did not identify Huang’s nationality.

Subsequently, MI6 instructed Huang to enter China multiple times. Under its guidance, Huang gathered intelligence related to China and identified prospective individuals for MI6’s counterespionage efforts, according to the ministry.

MI6 also provided professional intelligence training to Huang in various locations, including the UK, and equipped him with specialized spy equipment for intelligence exchange and communication, it said.

Through meticulous investigation, the national security authority promptly discovered evidence of Huang engaging in espionage activities and took criminal compulsory measures against him.

Upon examination, it was determined that Huang provided MI6 with 14 pieces of classified information and three intelligence reports, the statement said.

Throughout the investigation, the national security authority has kept the consulate of Huang’s country informed on his case and has arranged consular visits for him, ensuring the protection of his legal rights in accordance with the law, it added.

Sawed Bones!

What is the rudest thing another shopper has told you while waiting in line?

I think we could all write a book about this but the rudest I heard was from a pharmacist while I was waiting in line for a prescription, not the other customers. My two year old daughter was potty training and doing a good job. That day she wanted to wear her big girl panties. She had been doing so for months.

The wait was long at the Drug Store. She needed to use the restroom. I asked if there was a restroom. The pharmacist barked “ no” at me. I explained the situation and asked if she could just use the employee rest room since we had waited a half hour already.

The pharmacist said “She will just have to wet her pants”. Really? I turned to my child and said. “Honey, just pee on the floor here. This place is just one big potty. “. My two year old politely squatted and peed all over the floor. The pharmacist was screaming. I said “ honey, this nice man will clean it up right after he gives me my paper back so we can go somewhere else. “

There were a lot of mothers also waiting and everyone found it quite funny but the pharmacist. I went back to that drug store a few years later and they had installed a public restroom.

PS. Whether you think I was right or wrong is of no matter to me. But the fact that some people think I did this over the use if the bathroom shows I did not make myself clear. I was a lawyer. Had the pharmacist said their insurance did not allow public use or said I might try xxx store that has a public restroom, no problem I get that. I could have taken her to the car and used a McDonald’s cup. It was that this man told a little girl to just wet her pants. Had she wet her pants the result would have been the same on the floor. I just decided to avoid the wet pants part and show this man that he was not providing customer service-of any form. I’m sure the issue of needing a restroom had come up before. The store should have had an appropriate response. There are Federal laws in place now concerning employee only restrooms.

New kitten

Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?

Yes, and it all worked out beautifully: another employee in a different section whom I did not know well and was not particularly friendly with went out of his way to tell me that my bosses wanted to hire a woman to replace me (I am a man) and not just any woman, but one hot enough for them to ogle and flirt with. That is the kind of pervs that they were. After hearing that, I wiped my company-issued Macbook Air clean, mentally checked out, and waited for my last day.

After I had left the company, I heard that they did ogle and flirt with her, and I was told that they had hired her specifically for her charms – she flirted right back.

A few months later I got the delicious news that they had taken her on a business trip to meet the company’s most important client. In short, a good time was had by all, and she ended up fucking an employee at the client’s headquarters.

It gets better, a sympathetic former co-worker told me that he had dug around and found that my replacement had a police record (shoplifting I think) and her mugshot was online.

When I heard this news I sent an anonymous email to just the right person at the client’s headquarters describing the sex and a link to the mugshot and the fallout was magnificent: the client demanded that my replacement be fired, and she was, and my company’s reputation with their most important customer was ruined (they didn’t lose all the business, however).

Suddenly my old bosses were checking out my LinkedIn profile and I had the pleasure of blocking all three.

Millions of American’s Begin Moving into Vans | VanLife EXPLODES on Google Trends

What was your “I am surrounded by idiots” moment?

Me: Hello, I’d like to book a room please mate?

Concierge: I’m sorry sir, we’re fully booked out. I can recommend a place down the road.

Me: How is it possible you are booked out? I’m looking at “Booking dot com” right here on my phone and it says you have a room going here.

Concierge: I’m sorry sir, we’re fully booked out. (and then smiles at me like I’m some sort of idiot)

Me: Okay, I suppose I’ll work something out.

Concierge: Yes sir. Sorry sir. (looks down at whatever it is Concierges do when they are not serving someone)

I step away from the concierge desk and think to myself… What happens if I simply press “Book Now” so… I didn’t think, I just pressed “Book Now”. The message comes back with my booking confirmation code. Bear in mind, not a single person is in the foyer, and not a single person has been and spoken to the concierge in the last 20 seconds since I stepped away from the concierge desk.

Me: “Mate, I’d like to check in please.”

Concierge: Certainly sir do you have a booking?

Me: (stunned he doesn’t recognise me from 20 seconds ago) Um, yes, here it is on my phone.

Concierge: Excellent sir, do you have any bags the porter can take up to your room for you Sir?

Me: Narr, it’s okay I only have this one bag. I’ll be okay.

I was thinking all the way up to my room in an elevator with the porter guy that had a single carry bag on a huge dome shaped brass pipe top with a red carpet floor baggage cart…

… “WTF just happened”

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Picture this with one case on it. That case is the size of a case that you pull along for a two day stop over…

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Like this… on that huge trolley.

Its that easy

Should a boss be allowed to fire an employee for something they do outside of work?

Tricky.

I once was fired from a job after a night out drinking with friends. Of course, most of the friends were work friends.

One of them mentioned they were worried about upcoming changes to the department and thought it was odd they were told to not do their job when they came in each day.

I told him … they’re going to fire you. (I had no idea…I wasn’t told anything, I was guessing) BUT i told him to never stop doing his job … that it was a test to see if they needed him at all. Turned out I was right. But someone told my boss that I had made this prediction.

I was terminated for professionalism. Off the clock, after hours, not on site … with no first hand knowledge shared.

When they brought me into my bosses office to fire me, I started to say “You can’t do this…” followed by “of course you can, otherwise we wouldn’t be here at this point.” I accepted it and turned in all my stuff, gave them notes on where I was in various projects and thanked them for the time and experience. To which my director literally said ” Thanks for your professionalism” I grinned and said “well it’s professionalism that got me fired according to you.”

And ai walked out of there and got a job paying 40% more in as month.

They can fire you for any reason and for no reason. They can even fire you for illegal reasons if they just cover it with a legal looking one. Ultimately, you can’t let it affect you. Sure money is going to be different and plans will change but you’ll get through it and you wouldn’t want to work somewhere that wants to fire you but can’t in the end.

What psychological facts really leave an impression on you?

  1. When someone dies by suicide, it’s because they want to end their suffering, not necessarily their life.
  2. Other people tend to see you as around 20% more attractive than you see yourself.
  3. People who had a difficult or unhappy childhood are more likely to have a fear of being happy.
  4. Having a pet is connected to better brain health as we get older.
  5. Kids are less likely to trust people they perceive as not good-looking.
  6. If someone is already feeling depressed, being addicted to social media can make their depression worse.
  7. Almost one-third of American adults are online pretty much all the time.
  8. Reading fictional stories when you’re young can help you develop a more complex way of looking at the world.
  9. The first person you look at when you enter a room is usually the one you feel most threatened by.

This is REAL world War 3

Why does the ASML CEO seem worried about the Huawei Mate 60 Pro, despite previously stating “Even if we provided them with the drawings, they wouldn’t be able to make it.” regarding China’s technological capabilities?

When an Industrial leader gets arrogant and snobbish, there will be a D-day to it.

Lets look in perspective. As an experience sputtering process engineer, when i look at the EUV machine, I find that they are too elaborating. It consume hell of electricity and Hydrogen. The from my common sense if that if we can plough electron by electron onto an anode of cathode, I am sure we can make Nodes like a 3D printer. So I was right , now Cannon has done exactly that and they can produce cheaper chips then DUV and EUV… with the baggage of high energy cost and high H2 consumption. I believe Liang Mong Song already taught about long after he left Samsung. Cheers to China for giving the WEST as good bashing. When the old guards of China, Wen Jia Pow has stated we should share roles and work, but the American will never understand and Taiwan will face the music when they fondle American ideology to the hilt. As a staff in American MNC for more then a decade, I see the blind corners which will kill the American innovation. American Capitalism is all about me and not us.

Is China peacefully bullying the Philippines in the Spratleys?

No the U.S. is aggressively bribing poor fishermen away from fishing for their families to stir up shit on Chinese boats for thousands of dollars of cold hard cash paid in the high seas by CIA and NED operatives. That is precisely what happened.

All is well ap to now. The Pinoy fishermen are happy getting easy money, Bumbong Marcos U.S. happy the U.S. released his family wealth stuck in the U.S. and Philippine governments get more free money or bribes to allow US more bases. The money is used to improve infrastructures where China win the contract. You can say the U.S. pays for Philippine infrastructure!

So China prosper, US can shout it has more bases, fishermen are happy. But the only victims are Americans who will pay and pay and pay! If I were China I would bribed the fishermen to rob the CIA and NED cash by the boat loads to bribed them. That will bring peace faster.

Cat sleeping advice

What have you learned from Quora that you didn’t know before?

  • Survival: If you get lost in the wilderness, find a river, that will lead you to a town. Most towns (or people) live near water of some sort.
  • Happiness: Muting politics on social media platforms makes them 1000% better.
  • Indian Career Paths: Roughly 70% of Indians study Engineering (this blows my mind).
  • Trolls: There are very unhappy people in the world. They will leave mean, racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, virtually any ugly comment they can think of – to make others share their misery.
  • Driving: If someone cuts you off in traffic – it is more effective to give them a thumbs down than flip them off. This will cause them to rethink their actions.
  • Losing: Smile at the person who defeats you. It will steal their joy in defeating you.
  • Oops: If you find chewing gum on clothes or the carpet, put an ice cube on it for 2 minutes, it will become hard and come off easily.
  • Restaurant: If you find a fly in your soup, before sending it back, put a ton of salt into the soup. That’s the only way you’ll know they re-cooked new soup rather than send the same soup back out.

Do you know of any human interest stories that are both moving and at the same time outrageous?

“I realized my life was too valuable to let go of,” she said. “And that gave me the courage to survive.”

This is the story of Alison Botha, on December 18, 1994, she was abducted in her car near home by two strangers who took her to an area outside the city in South Africa and by the end of the night, she had been raped brutally and stabbed 30 times in the abdomen, to mutilate her reproductive organs and 16 times to her throat.

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image 132

Alison Botha, with knife mark on her throat.

She said, “all I could see was an arm moving above my face making a sound. A wet sound, it was the sound of my flesh being slashed open. He was cutting my throat with the knife. Again and again and again.”

“Do you think she’s dead?” one attacker asked. “No one can survive that,” the other replied. They were apparently satisfied that they had killed her ’cause she was almost decapitated, so they left her for dead, but Botha was still breathing and could see car headlights coming through the bushes.

image 131
image 131

She started trying to get onto the road and as soon as she pulled herself up, she felt something slimy coming out from her abdomen, her intestines. She had to use one hand to keep her gut from spilling out and the other hand to hold on to her own head, ’cause it started to fall backward.

image 130
image 130

A young veterinary student named Tiaan Eilerd, who was driving down to Port Elizabeth from Johannesburg, saw Botha lying in the middle of the road and stopped. She was rushed to the hospital, where doctors were stunned by her horrific wounds. She was soon able to identify attackers from police pictures while she was still in the hospital. This led to the arrest of the “Ripper Rapists,” as they were named in press release.

Both attackers were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in August 1995. But after serving 28 years, both were granted parole in July 2023.

Alison Botha soon became a motivational speaker and began traveling around the world, telling her story in different countries. She is one of the first women from South Africa to speak publicly about rape, she helped inspire other survivors to come forward and tell their stories to the world.

Note: If you are a victim of rape and planning to commit suicide, and if you change your mind after reading this story, then this would be a big favour on me. The only purpose of writing this is to let you know that you are precious, I just want to motivate you to live ’cause the world needs you. Please do me a favour

What is the oddest conversation you’ve had with a telephone scammer?

Maybe not the oddest but it gave me a chuckle.

Unknown number comes up on my work phone, not unusual, so I answer and am greeted by someone with an Asian accent, enquiring about the accident I had been involved in, having had far too many of these over the years I responded with, It only happened this morning how did you know, well sir we work very closely with your insurance company, this was the point I put the phone on hand’s free, and the rest of the office tuned in, Well I am very glad you called I was driving along the A1 near Catterick and someone drove straight into my vehicle, the caller was most concerned for my health and wellbeing, which I informed them that I was very shocked and shaken, I am now passed to a supervisor who needs Details so road A1, location Catterick, vehicle Scorpion, speed 65, damage scuffed the paintwork,

There was a pause as they went through the information, um sir I am struggling to find your car, you can’t find it it’s a very common vehicle around here, can you please give me a bit more detail please certainly it’s a Scorpion CVRT, no sir I am still struggling to find your vehicle, really I am not sure if you will be able to help me if you can’t even find my vehicle, It’s a Scorpion Combat Vehicle Recce Tracked, it’s a Tank mate definitely scuffed the paintwork terribly, silence from the other end of the phone, followed by a single expletive, and call ended.

Funny enough it’s the only phonecall I have ever got a round of applause for as well as much laughter.

What is the most tasteless thing you have seen people on a cruise do?

My mom and I go on a cruise every year for her birthday. I am disabled and have a walker for my immense back pain, I cannot stand for long periods of time, so it has a seat. My mom and I wait ONE HOUR in a line WE started to get into a show just so we could get our choice of seats (first come, first serve). A queue starts behind us about 20 minutes before the show and we are happy that we waited as we wanted to record from a very specific seat (middle isle). This woman shows up with her son in a wheelchair from the cruise liner, and proceeds to stand right in front of the entry doors of the venue. My mother and I give her the benefit of the doubt and my mother proceeds to let her know there is a line behind us (it wraps around a hallway). She looks at my mother and completely ignores her, sees a tall man walking past and says to him, loudly, ‘can you believe this woman wants me to get in line when my son is in a wheelchair?!’ The son is literally silent the WHOLE TIME with a small cast over his left foot. The man looks around the corner and sees me sitting in my walker. He says to the lady, ‘she has a disabled person in line too.’ The lady responds, ‘so?’ The man just walks off. My mom tells the whole line what happened. The line just ignores everything and shrinks back, trying to avoid the conflict. I am in shock about the whole thing and only getting angrier, by the fact the cruise liner crew isn’t telling her to move for blocking the door, OR asking her to get in line. I’m so angry by everyone’s actions I can’t even react. The doors open and she proceeds to sit EXACTLY WHERE WE WANTED TO SIT. The crew even offer to take the boy’s wheelchair since they aren’t allowed to leave them in the small isles! Even remembering this trip now upsets me. I couldn’t be more angry at myself for not saying anything and trying to stay calm. I should have just acted like I had NO MANNERS like her! Apparently the ‘squeaky wheel gets the grease’.

That was last year, the horrible time we had because of this lady just makes me cringe every time I think about it. I hope the woman reads this and remembers how she ruined what was before that moment, a beautiful and fun vacation. I hope she learned some manners or stays home, no amount of money can make her worth anyone’s time.

*EDIT* Thanks to everyone with the kind and understanding comments. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so heard. I think this event effected me so much BECAUSE I try to be thoughtful of others constantly and don’t get out much. Writing this out and getting validated with positive responses have really helped me, thank you. Please be aware you have made a difference in my life.

LOL Pickup

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/44HWGYM66fM?feature=share

When you worked on cruise ships, what’s the shadiest thing you’ve seen a passenger do?

There are many cheaters and “professional complainers” among the guests making nice business from giveaways and compensations. I personally recall one amiable couple who, while being alone in the corridor, hid the “caution, wet floor” sign. Then, they went straight to the reception desk, man literally shouting at the poor receptionist that his wife had just accidentally slipped there and injured her back. They caused a small scandal: hotel manager was called in to calm them down, medical staff treated the “injured” woman, and safety officer scolded the poor cleaning lady responsible for the corridor. Nobody was able to find “caution wet floor” sign that ought to be there, so the guests seemed to be right and were offered a financial compensation + next cruise for free. However, what cheating guests didn’t know was that there are many security cameras on the ship, some of them smartly hidden… So when the couple was invited to the hotel manager’s office next day, they expected to settle the details of their compensation. Hotel manager kindly greeted them, asked them to make themselves comfortable and said something like: “Before we proceed with the compensation, let me show you one short movie.” The couple watched with awe the TV screen, showing them hiding the sign from the floor to the locker and then running to the reception. With this proof in hand, hotel manager offered them choosing between two ways of “compensations”: 1) Trial at court. 2) Putting them on passenger blacklist shared with ALL cruise ship companies, that denies them of taking any cruise till the rest of their lives. They chose no. 2) .

Have you or a coworker been fired which then caused the company fail?

Yup, it was a famous named restaurant, I was the man who brought the inspection rating up from a 50 to a 98 percent,I also kept the lights on and the orders paid up to date, as well as didn’t have a huge turn over of employees. But some punk ass wanna be with out the education I had of running a business as well as the decades of experience had help in getting me bumped out of my job, little snot nosed shit sitting in my office telling me he’s my boss. 2 weeks into his employment he fires me. Okay fine I really don’t care, then this is the best part, he had no clue of how to do what I did, called me at home asking me for instructions. I gleefully told him there is no way that I’m going to teach you in a few minutes that took a life time to aquire in education and actually experience. You got what you wanted at my expense which was my job that you figured was up for grabs, I’m not going to help you, you’re on your own. 3 months later the business was shut down, and that was your Burger King at the Sunset Esplanade in Hillsboro Oregon that now the same building was remodeled into the chase bank. Thats karma at its best, screw me out of my life long career choice and not only did you lose me, but 45 other people lost out in the process.

What is the worst/weirdest thing you saw someone doing when you walked in?

I went away for the weekend, and my roommate was planning on having a big party, since he wouldn’t disturb me.

We had a huge backyard and they decided to have a competition for the coolest explosion, without gun powder. You know the mentos and diet coke, and the baking soda and vinegar, over filled balloons kind of thing. Stupid things like filling a balloon with diet coke and dropping in a pack of mentos in a paper tube.

The kitchen door led to the deck and back yard.

It all sounds harmless until you add copious amounts of alcohol.

I came home Sunday evening and found my roommate and a couple of friends scraping one end of the kitchen ceiling with an ice scraper. The culprits and ceiling were all different colors from the food coloring and other dyes that they had added to their experiments to make them more impressive. It appeared like tapioca or gummies stuck to the ceiling. They had matching paint already on half the ceiling. They had hoped to have it done, before I came home. But they had slept until 2:00 pm, before starting clean up.

No amount of begging would get them to tell me what happened. But I’m guessing that they prepared everything in the kitchen before taking it outside, and when alcohol is involved, I m guessing they weren’t careful.

So I came home to a bunch of hungover red and green people , with a 4 foot scraper, scraping one end of the red and green pebbled ceiling, while someone else was using a roller on a stick, roll paint along behind them.

That was pretty weird.

What is the most savage thing you’ve ever done?

My friend was admitted to hospital yesterday.

I had to go running to the medical store for purchasing the medicines prescribed by the doc.

In the afternoon, the doc prescribed some medicines and I went to the store to buy them.

There was a lady who received the prescription. She immediately ran her eyes through it and started searching for the meds in the shelves.

The total bill was 569 inr.

I paid 600 inr. She returned 30 inr and a dabur honitus (worth 1 inr obviously).

I was a bit reluctant at first, still I asked:

Me:Um.. excuse me. Can I get 1 rupee instead of the toffee?(I asked it not only because I disliked that toffee, but also because I loved collecting coins.)

She:No. We don’t keep coins for change. Anyway, what difference does it make.. the toffee too costs 1 rupee.

Me:Are you sure you don’t keep coins?

She:(obviously being annoyed by me) Yes. We dont.

Me: Okay. Thanks.

I went back to the ward.

By the evening some more new meds were prescribed.

I went to the store again.

The lady was still there. She gave me a forceful smile. I smiled back.

This time the bill was 131 inr.

I handed 130 rupees and that one dabur honitus.

She glanced at me unappealingly.

Me: Sorry mam. I don’t have coins for change. Anyway what difference does it make.. the toffee too costs 1 rupee.

I thanked her and gave a brief smile as I headed back.Happy and satisfied.

What are the implications of the Dutch government revoking the export license for ASML’s chip-making machines to China?

The person asking the question seemed to want an answer like this:

In response to the request of the United States, the Netherlands suddenly revoked ASML’s sales license to China, and some lithography machines planned to be shipped to China were intercepted. The free world successfully prevented China from acquiring advanced semiconductor production technology, and the United States won again.

image 110
image 110

But sorry, that’s not the case.

On January 3, the Dutch government suddenly revoked the export licenses for two models of DUV lithography machines (NXT: 2050i and NXT: 2100i) approved in 2023. However, ASML announced that the DUV lithography machines purchased in advance by customers from mainland China had all been delivered before the license was revoked.

In other words, when the license was revoked, the planned lithography machine had already been shipped to China.

Let’s sort out the process of this incident, and you will find how interesting the game between the Dutch and Americans is.

Since the beginning of the trade war, the United States has asked ASML to ban the export of lithography machines to China, which can be used to produce advanced semiconductors. After a year of haggling, the Dutch government compromised. ASML is prohibited from exporting EUV lithography machines (used to manufacture semiconductors below 7nm, which are more advanced) to China, but they can still continue to sell DUV lithography machines (used to manufacture semiconductors above 7nm, which is slightly behind).

The Chinese felt threatened, so they added a large number of orders for DUV lithography machines. In the past three years, most of ASML’s DUV lithography machines have been sold to the Chinese.

China’s semiconductor industry has been accelerating its development, making Americans quite nervous.

In 2022, the United States requires the Netherlands to increase restrictions again, prohibiting ASML from selling DUV lithography machines, and completely cutting off the source of equipment for the Chinese.

In June 2023, the Netherlands issued a new ban but announced that existing licenses remained valid and ASML could continue to deliver.

In December 2023, the Netherlands announced that existing licenses will be invalidated immediately

In January 2024, ASML announced that all Chinese orders had been delivered.

Found the problem?

US government: Netherlands must obey

Dutch Government: OK

—-

June, Dutch government: ASML, what to do?

ASML: You announce it first and then give me some time

July, Dutch government: ASML, is it okay?

ASML: One more moment

In August, the Dutch government: ASML, is it okay?

ASML: One more moment

In September, the Dutch government: ASML, is it okay?

ASML: soon

In October, the Dutch government: ASML, is it okay?

ASML: Just a little bit

In November, the Dutch government: ASML, is it okay?

ASML: Almost done

In December, the Dutch government: ASML, is it okay?

ASML: OK, all delivered

Dutch Government: In order to maintain world peace and assist our great allies, we announce the immediate cancellation of sales licenses to China. immediately! immediately!

The Netherlands cannot fight against the United States, but this does not prevent the Dutch from trying their best to safeguard their interests. After all, that is tens of billions of dollars in profits, and they have sold all the equipment they can sell to the Chinese in the past two years.

image 12
image 12

ASML CEO (Peter Wennink) told reporters, “There is no hope of completely isolating China. If we don’t share technology, they will study it themselves.” “China has 1.4 billion people, and many of them are very smart. They will Come up with solutions that we haven’t thought of yet. You’re forcing them to be very innovative.”

The Chinese cannot control the madness of the United States. Their approach is to purchase as much technology and equipment as possible to buy time for the equipment they develop.

Once the Chinese get this done, the industry will be disrupted.

How to do it…

What is the best way to choose life partner?

Here are 8 things you have to consider when choosing life partner:

1.Ability to cope with your family

Your family will always be a key support system in your life. They can tell if your prospective life partner is suitable or unsuitable for you. If he or she cannot cope with your family members, you might be choosing a wrong partner.

2. Find someone who makes you laugh.

A sense of humor can help you overcome many of life’s obstacles. If someone can make you smile when you don’t feel like it, that’s a great quality.

3. Choose someone who respects you

When choosing a life partner be sure to select someone who will respect all aspects of your life. Mutual respect is one of the defining traits to look for in a life partner.

4. Find someone who have shared values

Having shared values reinforces the foundation of your relationship. Simple things such as consensus on the number of children you want or living within your means create a conducive environment for your relationship to thrive.

5. Choose an honest life partner

If a relationship is not enshrined in a culture of honesty and trust, it will definitely fail. Choosing a life partner who does not refrain from open and genuine communication is important.

6. Throw out the Idea of Perfect

Don’t make a checklist — mental or otherwise — of traits your future partner must have. You can’t conjure up your perfect mate and go buy said robot at Target. If you must make a list, make a list of deal-breakers: no smokers, no drug addictions, no one with a violent felony conviction. Those are healthy boundaries to set.

7. Know how they handle anger

You’ll need to observe this one rather than asking about it. Watch how they behave when they don’t get their own way, are disappointed, or feel angry. How people act with others under these circumstances says a lot about how they will one day act with you.

8. Find someone who have the same financial and social standards

It is not always important to have the same status, but having a similar financial and social standard helps in thriving together. If one person is very poor and the other is very rich then there is a possibility of being called a gold digger. But there is no exact rule book but do check if your potential partner has the zeal to make it later in life.

Who are some of the dumbest criminals ever to be caught?

I had a friend call me in the middle of the night, asked me to get my gun, and go over to his house. When your best friend asks you this, you don’t hesitate. Eventually the story came out – his wife was the manager of a jewelry store. Some men followed her home after she closed (crossing county lines), then at gunpoint (turns out it was a BB gun), forced her to drive back to the store, open it up, and unlock everything so they could clear it out. Of course, when she opened the store after hours, the security team watched on camera and called the local PD. When the perps left, the police were waiting for them. They took her car, and theirs and ran from the cops. After crashing and rolling both cars, they were arrested.

the morons got the idea from a movie. If they had just walked in during daylight and stole/robbed the place, they would have gotten 5 years. Instead, they committed multiple FEDERAL felonies (kidnapping etc), and all of them were sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in federal prison.

edit: the reason for asking me to come over with my gun:

He didn’t know if they were going to come back there. At that point the chase was still going on.

As a follow up – he gave my description to the local police, and let them know I’d be at his house. They showed up about an hour after I arrived, and I answered the door. I was slightly nervous because being 6’4 and nearly 400lbs I’m not a small dude, and had a 45 in a holster on my waist. I went to turn the porch light on, only to discover the porch light was burned out. I was very careful to let them know who I was and immediately informed them that I was armed – being sure to keep my hands nowhere near my firearm. When they asked for ID, I let them know I was removing it from my right rear pocket and moved with very clear movements, allowing them to see that I was reaching for my wallet and not my firearm. After they verified I was who I claimed to be, they made a comment like “yeah, I’d be armed too”. I love living in a rural community! 🙂

What is the most insane conversation you have ever had with your parents?

When I was in high school in 1965 I was reading a book about lesbians called The Grape Vine. My Mom asked me what I was reading. I said “a book about lesbians”. My Mom said “that’s nice, you love the theater”. I said “ no, those are Thespians. This is about lesbians, women who love women, not men”

My Mom insisted there was no such thing as a lesbian adding that the proof was that there was nothing two women “ could do together”. After my mother became hysterical, I went to my room.

Later that night my father paid me a visit. I was a little worried as my mother was his princess. He said “Laura, your mother is 45. She has made it to 45 without knowing what a lesbian is. Unless you are a lesbian, feel free to NOT educate her further”

I think when my Mom was about 80 she told me there were actually lesbians.

PS. Oh my. My mother would die a second time if she knew over 2k people liked this story. My Mom was so embarrassed that I got divorced she told everyone that my first husband was hurt in the Viet Nam war and that was why he shrunk 5 inches, grew blond hair and green eyes ( husband number two).

As a mechanic, have you ever performed free work on a customer’s car because you felt bad for them?

Around 10 or 12 years ago, I was on a trip and stopped at a rest area to stretch my legs and use the bathroom. As I walked back out to where my car was parked, I noticed a college age kid standing in front of his car with the hood up. I wandered over and asked him if he was having car trouble.

He replied yes and that his car wouldn’t start. He still had all his lights and so forth so I knew his battery seemed okay, but the engine wouldn’t turn over.

The car was an Acura, if I recall correctly, and the starter was located on the top of the engine, rather than down underneath the car. On the starter was a warning sticker that said not to hit the starter with a hammer.

Another gentleman wandered by and asked if he could help. I asked him if he had a hammer in his car. He thought I was joking, but I let him know that I was serious. He said that he did and left to go get it with a puzzled look on his face.

When he returned with the hammer, I took it and gave the starter a solid whack, right on the warning sticker that said not to hit it with a hammer.

I then told the college kid to try starting the car. It fired right up.

I handed the hammer back to the gentleman who had loaned it to me. Both he and the kid seemed amazed.

I asked the kid how far he had to drive to get to his destination. He said just another 2 hours or so until he got home.

I told him to drive straight home without shutting the car off because I couldn’t guarantee that the starter would ever work again. And then once he got home, he needed a new starter.

He thanked me and offered me $20, but I just sent him on his way.

Hungarian Potato and Egg Casserole
(Rakott Krumpli)

rakott krumpli pulykakolbasszal
rakott krumpli pulykakolbasszal

Ingredients

  • 6 medium potatoes
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 cup dairy sour cream
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 2 hardboiled eggs, peeled and sliced
  • 2 tablespoons dry bread crumbs
  • Paprika

Instructions

  1. Heat 1 inch salted water to boiling. Add potatoes. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and cook until tender, 30 to 35 minutes. Drain; cool slightly.
  2. Cook onion in oil until tender. Mix onion, oil, sour cream, salt and pepper.
  3. Peel potatoes; cut into 1/4-inch slices. Gently mix potatoes and sour cream mixture.
  4. Arrange half the potatoes in greased 10 x 6-inch baking dish or 1 1/2-quart casserole. Arrange eggs on top; add remaining potatoes. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and paprika.
  5. Bake uncovered at 325 degrees F until light brown, 30 to 40 minutes.
  6. Garnish with minced parsley if desired.

Yield: 6 servings

What are few things only mature people can tell you?

  1. Not everyone will live long. Stay happy and useful to humanity as much as you can.
  2. Life is not Disney Island, always strife for the best and prepare for the worse.
  3. Nobody can love you unconditionally except your mum and in few cases, your family.
  4. You can simply avoid future problems by listening to your instincts and warnings from your loved ones.
  5. Most people won’t support you in life until there’s no option but to join the crowd.
  6. Discipline will take you farther than talent.
  7. Everybody is fighting their own demon either publicly or privately. Never envy anyone.
  8. Don’t look down on anyone, life can switch up within a minute.
  9. Money is not everything, it incredibly betters your life but doesn’t solve all life problems. Still have it anyway.
  10. You don’t have to get to the level of Elon Musk to change the world when your little kindness can.

Hungry Crocs

Have you ever seen a doctor yell at their patient?

I was that doctor.

I yelled, loudly, not at the patient but at her aunt.

So I was working in the ER. A little kid of around 10 or 11 came late one evening. She had a massive blow on her skull and was getting seizures. It was all bloody but surprisingly she was conscious.

Her aunt was very caring and hovering over us. She told me the girl fell from a bike. I pacified her and told her to wait outside while I provided primary care to the child before transferring her to a higher care centre.

When the aunt was outside I asked the girl what happened. Her aunt had hit her in the head with a hammer. That vile lady had hit her 10-year-old niece in the head with a hammer. I was horrified, enraged. I was mad.

I stabilized her, came out and called the aunt inside. As soon as I saw her I just lost it. I yelled at her at the top of my lungs. I don’t even remember all that I said but it lasted long enough for the ward boys and nurses and the ambulance driver to gather. It also lasted enough for the aunt to break down and confess.

I called the girl’s parents and they called the police and registered the complaint.

My behaviour was unprofessional, but I have never regretted it. I don’t usually lose my cool, but I am glad I did that day.

Devastating Industry

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

Seen a number of these over the years. First one that comes to mind is this one. Sitting in a bar in Neenah WI, conversing with a gentleman, probably about 40 something, less than 5′10″, probably about 150 lbs. Well spoken, polite, decently dressed. A larger (12–13) groups of people all came in at once, bikers by their dress and the beautiful sound of the harleys they pulled up on. Now please understand, the greater majority of bikers I’ve known over the years were great people, polite, non confrontational, and all around nice. These folks were not. Loud, already half tanked, and generally pushy. Once they had settled, one of them walked by, catching his elbow on my conversation partner and spilling both of their drinks. Confrontation ensued. Biker: you “effing spilled my drink!”

CP: sorry about that, let me get you another

bartender: no worries, I’ve got both of you

biker: you’re damn right you’re sorry!
and proceeded to grab CP’s shoulder. CP spun as he stood up, spear handed the biker in the solar plexus, and then Kicked him in the face! Biker was about 6′2″-3″, and now unconscious and bleeding on the floor. Everyone else stopped cold and looked at CP, shrugged, and went back to their conversations. Bouncer dragged biker out to the curb where the police and an ambulance took him away. Broken jaw, shattered septum, severe concussion. CP was the owner of a local martial arts school and had been training since he was a child. Oops.

JEFFREY SACHS FULL INTERVIEW ABOUT BAD SITUATION IN EUROPE AND U.S, U.N SITUATION, GAZA, AND MORE

Dancing on the graves of the deceased

When I lived in Indiana, my wife and myself took private dance lessons. We studied ballroom dancing. And we were pretty good at it. Bronze and silver level for certain, and we were studying gold level for Foxtrot and Tango. Which is really very good.

We were top level amateur.

I have many stories from this time, and about this situation. But today I want to relate a funny aspect of that situation…

We lived in a mobile home park, and our trailer was pretty small. Aside from the studio or our dance club, there really wasn’t any place to practice our dancing. That was… until one day.

We found a nice secluded area in the countryside. It was a cemetery at the side of a rural road, and there was a nice flat cement area on one of the cemetery slabs. Indeed, YES… we were dancing on the graves of the people in the cemetery.

So yeah. That well explains why cars would slow down and watch us dancing on the graves of the newly deceased. LOL. I guess I spent much of my time in Indiana dancing on the graves of the people that lived there.

We meant no disrespect, but…

Today…

What is the smallest scam you have ever seen?

A few years ago, I was in line at a cash register waiting to pay for my purchase at a dollar store. I was waiting behind a little girl who was about 8 or 9 years old. She was alone and I was watching her as she meticulously laid out all of her purchases on the conveyor belt. I thought she was so cute.

Then, the cashier asked her if she was sure she had enough money. She nodded her head that she did. The cashier proceeded to ring up her purchases and she told her what the total was. The little girl took out a handful of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. She started to count the coins slowly and carefully. I was actually enjoying watching her do this!

Then, the cashier informed her that she was missing about 60 cents. She said that the girl would have to put some things back. She was hesitating as she was trying to decide what to remove. I looked at the cashier and I told her that I would pay the difference. The cashier took my money and put her purchases in a bag. Then, the little girl left. (I think she thanked me.)

At this point, the cashier told me that this young child came into the store and pulled this con game every week! The unsuspecting customers behind her ALWAYS paid for the remainder of her purchases! This child was extremely convincing – she really pulled the wool over my eyes! I told the cashier that I wish she would have told me before I paid because I would have wanted to say something to this girl.

I would have told her that what she was doing was wrong because she was tricking people (conning them) into paying for her purchases. I wish I could have told her that I thought she was very smart, that she should work hard in school and that she would do well in sales, marketing or acting!

ROBOCOP but is 1920

Why is China playing with fire? Chinese fighter jets fired missiles in the South China Sea during exercises which coincided with joint-U.S.-Philippines military drills as a map shows the contested waters where tensions are growing.

You are confusing China with the US.

Take a long hard look at a map and you will notice where China is situated. Nowhere near the US right?

Now look at all the US.bases so very far from the shores of the US but situated close to Asia and close to China. Why is the US there and not back home ready to defend their shores which is exactly what China is doing.

The provocative actions of the US is setting the world on a path of destruction.

China doesn’t talk of war but the US is constantly brainwashing the masses into thinking black is whit and white is black.

The US is constantly provoking wars.

The only two things the US sells is weapons and bullshit, so much bullshit.

The US is far from being a guardian angel but a god of war. Enough.

Pinjur (Macedonia)

This is a traditional Macedonian dish, and it is found on tables everywhere in Macedonia.

ajvar lutenitsa pinjur harissa with bread plate 147689 321
ajvar lutenitsa pinjur harissa with bread plate 147689 321

Ingredients

Eggplant

  • 1 large eggplant
  • 2 to 6 cloves garlic
  • Salt (enough to lightly cover the garlic)
  • Handful roughly chopped walnuts

Optional Ingredients

  • Olive oil
  • Fresh lemon
  • Fresh cilantro

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Wash eggplant. Poke holes into eggplant randomly with a fork. Place eggplant on a cookie sheet which has been covered with aluminum foil. Roast the eggplant until it is thoroughly cooked and collapses (about 30 to 40 minutes).
  3. While the eggplant is roasting, mash garlic and salt with mortar and pestle until it becomes pasty.
  4. To cool eggplant quickly, slice in half, and leave draining in the sink in a colander. When cool, peel the skin off. Chop eggplant into medium-size chunks.
  5. In bowl, combine eggplant and garlic, mashing eggplant and stirring the garlic throughout. When it is consistently mushy, throw in a handful of chopped walnuts to add crunch and texture. You can add olive oil, a squeeze of fresh lemon, and even cilantro if desired.
  6. Enjoy with a loaf of crusty bread.

PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT VLADIMIR PUTIN SAYS

2 January 2024

by Larry Johnson

image 11
image 11

Vladimir Putin showed up at Branch No 2 of the National Medical Research Centre of High Medical Technologies – Vishnevsky Central Military Clinical Hospital of the Russian Federation Defence Ministry this week and sat down for a chat with Russian military personnel who had been wounded during the special military operation. Can you imagine Joe Biden doing this with a group of American military personnel? I can’t.

I am posting this because I think it is important that people, especially Americans, have the opportunity to read Putin’s comments. If you are wondering how Putin views the United States, NATO and Ukraine, you need only read the following. There is no nuance. Putin is refreshingly candid.

His concern for the welfare of the soldiers comes across as genuine, sincere. But that is not the news. He makes it very clear that the Western countries are the enemy, not Ukraine. He also vowed to step up attacks on Ukrainian military targets and foreign mercenaries. Putin minces no words in noting that Western hopes of bamboozling him into negotiations for a ceasefire are in vain. Ain’t going to happen

.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Hello, guys! Glad to see you. I would like to congratulate you on the New Year.

How is your treatment here going?

Remark: Excellent.

Vladimir Putin: I walked around here, from what I have seen the equipment looks solid, this is clear of course. But, first and foremost, it must be used effectively. I hope, it does.

Remarks: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: You know, of course, I wanted to come here and congratulate you on the New Year, but there was also something I wanted to see. You might have seen me on Direct Line

, at least some of it; it is impossible to watch it in its entirety, four hours, it is crazy just how long it is. But there were things that concerned the Armed Forces and you directly: for example, people asked whether you really had to return to your units after your wounds and treatment and even rehabilitation to obtain the corresponding medical certificates there and even be cleared by military medical commissions. The Defence Ministry denies this, saying it does not happen, at least, not now. Moreover, they said – as I requested some time ago – that housing issues are being resolved during treatment and our service personnel undergo additional training to be able to continue serving, if they want, even those who sustained severe injuries, at military enlistment offices and so forth.

I wanted to hear from you what is really going on, if this is so, if you need to go somewhere else to obtain the necessary documents and certificates. No? So, do you get everything here? The military medical commission examination, all the documents – everything is done here, right?

Remarks: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: Are housing issues being resolved too?

Remarks: Yes.

Remark: Already been resolved.

Vladimir Putin: Ok, I see. They have been resolved for you and they are being resolved for our other fighters. At least, the system for resolving housing issues has been created and it is working, that is the most important thing, right?

And you are also receiving some additional professional training to allow those willing to continue their service in the Armed Forces but in different positions, health permitting. Is that so? Is that the reality?

Remark: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you. So, how is it going?

Remark: Good.

Vladimir Putin: This is one of the best medical institutions of the Defence Ministry. Not all of them are so well-equipped, so shiny, so to speak. But gradually the Ministry will bring everything up to the standard, to this level in terms of quality.

Any questions you want to ask me, guys? Don’t be shy.

Alexander Dublyanin: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief,

During the special military operation we are liberating Russian territory. How do you feel about Western countries helping our enemy?

Vladimir Putin: The point is not that they are helping our enemy. They are our enemy. They are solving their own problems with their hands. That is what it is all about. This has been the case for centuries, unfortunately, and continues to be the case today.

Ukraine itself is not our enemy whereas those who want to destroy Russian statehood and to achieve, as they say, a strategic defeat of Russia on the battlefield, are mainly in the West, but still, there are different people there. There are people who sympathise with us and who are with us at heart. But there are the elites who think the existence of Russia (at least in its current state and size) is unacceptable. They want to disintegrate it. As a matter of fact, you are young people, some have read about this, perhaps: they do not hide it. They speak and write about this publicly, and have been doing it for decades, if we are talking about contemporary history. For decades, they have simply been writing frankly about it: divide Russia into five parts, one is too much. I can talk about this till morning, but it is obvious.

Therefore, they have been nurturing the Kiev regime for quite a long time, precisely to create this conflict. Unfortunately for us, they have achieved this: they started this conflict and are trying to achieve their objective, namely the task of fighting Russia, with the help of Ukrainians.

You probably see on the battlefield that they are gradually losing their zest. When a projectile flies, it is difficult to understand whether they are losing it or not, but in general you probably know that the situation on the battlefield is changing. This is despite the fact that the entire “civilised” West is fighting us.

You, too, have probably heard many times: the Ukrainian army expends 5,000–6,000 155-calibre shells there per day of combat operations, and the United States produces 14,000 per month. Per month! And they use 5,000 per day. Yes, they are planning to increase it during 2024, but still, they produced 14,000–15,000, they will produce up to 20,000. But if you use 5,000 a day, then the supply depletes quite quickly. It is close to that now. And we are building up and will continue to, exponentially at that. They were supplied with more than 400 tanks (450 or whatever it is), and in a year we will produce and overhaul 1,600. This is not a state secret; in fact, there will be probably more. It is like this almost across the board. Therefore, though it has been their goal to deal with Russia from time immemorial, we will deal with them faster, it seems.

And the most important thing we have is, of course, what I have spoken about repeatedly: the unity of our people and society, because there is an understanding of how important the job you are doing on the battlefield is in the armed struggle for our country and our future. That is what’s most important. The point is not that we do not like that they are supplying Ukraine, that’s not the core of the problem. The problem is not with Ukraine, but with those who are trying to destroy Russia using Ukraine. That is the problem. But they will fail: it is simply out of the question, absolutely out of the question.

I think that the realisation is starting to dawn on them, and the rhetoric is changing: those who were talking just yesterday about the need to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia are now looking for the right words on how to quickly end the conflict. We also want to end the conflict, as quickly as possible, but only on our terms. We have no desire to fight endlessly, but we are not going to cede our positions either. You fought there, you were wounded there; are we going to surrender everything now? The cameras are on, otherwise I would make a certain gesture here now; you all know what kind of gesture it is. So, it is not going to happen.

So, what else? Yes, please.

Denis Shamalyuk: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief,

I am Sergeant Shamalyuk. I have a question. From the very beginning of the special operation, our enemies have been constantly and regularly shelling the territories near the border, killing civilians and children, destroying villages and cities. I have the following question for you. Do you think it is possible and necessary to take tougher measures against the adversary so that the thought does not even cross their minds to commit these atrocities?

Vladimir Putin: What has happened

in Belgorod is of course a terrorist attack. Why? Because of what they have done under the cover of two missiles – I think it was Olkha: they fired from multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS). You, as military people, know what MLRS is. This weapon is not selective, it hits areas. This weapon struck right in the centre of the city, where people were walking before the New Year. It was a targeted strike on the civilian population. Of course, this is a terrorist attack; there is no other way to describe it.

Should we respond in kind? Of course, we can hit squares in Kiev or any other city. But Denis, there are children walking there, mothers with strollers. I understand, because I am quite angry, too, but I want to ask you: do we need to do this, target the squares?

Denis Shamalyuk: No, I am not saying that it should [be] against the civilian population, but specifically against military infrastructure…

Vladimir Putin: That is what we are doing.

Denis Shamalyuk: So that they will not be able to come round and respond.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, but that is exactly what we are doing. We strike with high-precision weapons at locations where they make decisions, where military personnel and mercenaries gather, at other similar centres, and at military facilities, above all. These blows can really be felt. We will continue to do this. You probably noticed that the very next day after these attacks were carried out. I think they are continuing today, and tomorrow, too.

Do you know why they are doing it? They want to intimidate us and to create some uncertainty within our country. For our part, we will increase the strikes that I have mentioned. Of course, not a single crime like that, and this is certainly a crime against the civilian population, will go unpunished, this is for sure, there can be no doubt.

Denis Shamalyuk: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: Please.

Ivan Shushakov: May I?

Vladimir Putin: Yes, please.

Ivan Shushakov: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief,

Major Shushakov.

For two years now, our country has been fighting for its future. Please tell me, how do you assess the progress of the special military operation?

Vladimir Putin: I have already said this, I can repeat, but you can feel this yourselves. Our Armed Forces are getting more capable and prepared to use advanced weapons than any other army in the world.

First, we have weapons that are not available in any army in the world, and second, we can use everything that is being developed and produced. Third, everything that is being developed is being produced and supplied rather fast. I know, there is probably not enough on the front lines, and they would like more of all the latest stuff there, such as drones, as well as more means of suppressing enemy drones, which are flying over you like flies. I understand everything, but still, what is being produced appears quickly enough.

You know what else is rather important? Modern means of warfare and their effectiveness depend on how quickly an army can find out what is the most important thing at this moment and respond in terms of producing and introducing that in combat as quickly as possible.

We are doing this better and better, probably better than anywhere else. And these are very huge advantages that our Armed Forces are gaining. I think that no one else could do the same today. And these capabilities of the Russian Armed Forces are constantly increasing, multiple times over. So, in general, you are already a senior officer, so you know, we try not to give high marks…

Ivan Shushakov: Exactly.

Vladimir Putin: Satisfactory.

Please.

Alexander Davydov: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief, may I ask a question, sir?

We can see that you are very busy. How do you manage to maintain such high performance?

Vladimir Putin: Meeting you gives me strength. I am not joking. I am being honest. When I meet people like you, it gives me extra strength and confidence that we are doing the right thing.

Alexander Davydov: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: This is a very important element. In fact, I am not being ironic, this is an important element, for me, at least.

Please.

Yevgeny Korsun: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief,

Guards junior sergeant Korsun.

Mr President, first of all, Happy New Year.

My question is, what are the results of the past year and what are the real plans for this year? What should everyone, not just the Armed Forces and military personnel, be prepared for?

Vladimir Putin: The country in general, right?

Yevgeny Korsun: Yes. Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: You know, as far as the results of last year are concerned, I spoke about this on Direct Line, what can I say. The most important thing is that you keep everything tight at the front and, moreover, the practical strategic initiative is in our hands today. Senior commanders have learned to act carefully instead of carrying out combat missions at any cost. At least that is what they report to me. I always insist that everything must be done and any offensive operations carried out after the adversary has sustained heavy fire. This is what concerns the battlefield.

Talking about the country as a whole, of course, the fundamental thing is not only that we preserved the country’s economy, we did not allow it to be destroyed, which is what the enemy was counting on – this is also in response to your question. It was not Ukraine that hoped to destroy our economy; it is not capable of doing it. It has already been completely destroyed itself; there is nothing left there, it lives entirely on handouts. All its leaders travel around with hat in hand, begging for an extra million dollars.

Our situation is completely different. In 2022, our economy contracted by 2.1 percent. But recently, the Government has reported to me – the calculations are ongoing, and new data appear – the latest data are that it declined not 2.1 but 1.2 percent. This is of essence. In 2023 year, the economy grew 3.5 percent. Gross domestic product (GDP), the main economic indicator, is how much the country has produced. You can use money to calculate how much you produced, plus 3.5 percent. And the decline was 1.2 percent. We made up for the decline and moved forward. This is an absolutely fundamental matter. This is the first point, and it is a very important one.

This shows that the economy is stable. Inflation has gone up a little, which means prices have risen, but we are keeping everything under control. You know, we have never seen anything like this. We have always noted with sadness that our main revenues come from oil and gas. For the first time in many years, the growth of processing industries in our economic structure far exceeds revenues from oil and gas. I think that oil and gas revenues grew three percent, while the processing industry has yielded many times more. This has never happened before. This indicates that we are undergoing structural changes in the economy. It is very important.

And why is that? When Western companies left our market, they apparently expected that everything would collapse overnight: businesses would shutter and thousands of people would be left without work. And, in the best-case scenario for the adversary in the broad sense of the word: for the opponents of Russia in general, and not just on the battlefield, people will take to the streets and demand bread and work.

We have the lowest unemployment rate in the history of Russia: 2.9 percent, which has never happened before. And real incomes of the population have grown (there is such a thing as real disposable income of the population) and real wages have grown, and quite significantly. All this suggests that we have a stable economy and stable financial system.

Russia was disconnected from the international payment system known as SWIFT. Apparently, they hoped that everything would collapse here too. We supply our traditional export goods, but what about the settlements? However, everything works.

Everyone thought that enterprises would stop because they stopped supplying us with components, but it turns out that everything is possible. Yes, there are problems, but nevertheless they are being addressed.

Small and medium-sized businesses are also working effectively. Some foreign enterprises have left, but our businesses have taken their place. Firstly, there are highly qualified personnel who have not left; there are good production managers in a variety of sectors both in industry and in the services sector, and everything works. This is the most important thing: the stability of the country’s economy and financial system because this is the foundation for everything.

And, of course, as I have already said, the number of weapons produced in Russia has increased multiple times over, including when I talk about the growth of industrial production, but not only: one third of the growth was achieved in civilian production branches, which is very important. So, the stability of the financial and economic system and the real sector of the economy is probably the most important thing.

In addition to this, we are implementing all our previously planned projects. In terms of infrastructure, as you understand, this means trillions, and we are building roads and opening new routes every week. This is very important, because it is not just to take one ride there and back. A road means life, and economic life too begins with it: small and medium-sized businesses appear immediately, because there was no other way to get there, but now it is possible. A completely different picture of the world emerges.

Despite the difficulties involved, housing issues are gradually being resolved in the country. Social issues are also very important. Many of you have families and children, right? And there is maternity capital, which no one is shutting down. The country continues to meet all social commitments in full. Moreover, we have created quite a powerful and balanced system of support for families with children (this is very important for the future of the country), starting from the woman’s pregnancy until the child is 18 years old. This is important for real people, and therefore for the country as a whole.

So, strange as it may seem, despite the fact that we are in a state of armed conflict, all the main indicators of the country’s viability and effectiveness have gone up. And this is probably the most important indicator of Russia’s situation.

Yevgeny Korsun: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: What else? Is that all?

Happy New Year to you. All the best. Best wishes. Get well!

Did you ever see karma hit someone who deserved it so befittingly that it was eerie?

My dad and I were on our epic father-daughter trip in the Galapagos. A few months earlier, he had shattered his ‘tibial plateau’ (basically his whole knee area), and been on no-weight bearing for months. So he wasn’t his usual athletic self, in that we needed to walk slower. Especially since on that island, there were no sidewalks or even paths, just uneven rocks everywhere. Anyway, some other guy gets impatient and pushes my dad out of the way to catch up to the naturalist. It only got him about 30 seconds of ‘shortcut’. When we got to the next ‘stop’ with the naturalist, that guy was in the front row. . . and a bird pooped while swerving and covered the whole front of just him and nobody else. I didn’t see it, but I heard my dad laughing and he said he would explain it later. Because that guy was MAD. LOL. Instant karma.

Don’t do it

What is the weirdest thing you have been stopped for by airport security?

Not me personally, but something I saw.

Returning from a service call in Honolulu, the lady in front of me at the TSA line had serious trouble lifting her (obviously very heavy) carry-on onto the x-ray conveyor. It set off all sorts of alarms when it went through, and the TSA guy did a manual inspection as a result. When he opened it up, the suitcase’s contents were revealed: it was completely full of cans of Spam (the processed meat product). I was absolutely convinced that they actually contained something more nefarious and that she’d likely be arrested, but the TSA guy simply zipped the case back up and sent her on her way.

I was next in line, and, noticing the puzzled look on my face, the TSA guy explained that Spam is considered a gourmet delicacy in Japan, where it sells for around 3–4x what it does in Hawaii. As a result, there is a steady flow of Japanese tourists to the islands, who pretty much pay for their vacations by doing what she did. I was born and raised in the UK, where Spam has a reputation for being gross and disgusting, and something you would only eat if you can’t afford any nicer form of protein.

Thunderbird 6 1968 Film RECUT REMASTERED FAN MADE

What is a slap-in-the-face job offer?

I’m a computer consultant and only take contract work. A few years ago I was contacted by a recruiter for a contract with a company that makes Lasik machines. While I was going to visit the company a few times, the work would be done remotely in my office. I had already worked with a sister company and had experience with their software. The OS was somewhat rare so my 30+ years of experience with it made me a good choice. I negotiated the hourly wage with the recruiter and things seemed to be going well.

The recruiter called me and told me we were all set to go. All I had to do was take the drug test. Huh? I’ve never been asked to take a drug test in my life. I wasn’t worried about passing it, just taken aback. I don’t drive a bus or a cab or an airplane, I write software. What was their concern, that I’d get high while programming and let bugs creep in? This seemed like a red flag. After 30+ years of consulting and having been burned a couple of times I’ve learned to look out for these.

I asked the recruiter why. His response was, it was company policy. He offered to talk to the company but I was done. A red flag is a red flag. A software/engineering company that requires everyone to take a drug test is trying to give themselves an out if they want to get rid of someone. I don’t know what that would have to do with me since you can let a contractor go at any time.

I passed the job onto a friend of mine who was fine with the drug test. He worked for them for a week and then quit. My intuition was right.

My mother bought a house and she just found out that the previous owner never paid their taxes on it. Is she obligated to pay the money or can she sue the previous owner and make them pay for it?

First, yes, you have to pay the taxes. They follow the property, not the owner. If you don’t pay the taxes, the municipality can arrange a tax sale.

Second, your lawyer screwed up. It’s real estate law 101 you check to see if there are any outstanding taxes before you close the transaction. It’s a standard clause in most real estate purchase contracts that any outstanding taxes get paid out of the purchase price. Consult your lawyer and if their E&O doesn’t cover it, find another lawyer to sue them.

Third, if you have title insurance, they may be on the hook for this, and they obviously screwed up big time if you bought insurance and they forgot to check tax arrears because that’s insurance law 101. If you have it, contact them immediately.

Fourth, did you use a broker? Again, this is Real Estate Broker 101. If they didn’t know about it, they screwed up. Speak to them as their commission may be reduced by the tax amount and they obviously didn’t earn it. If they won’t help, get a lawyer again.

Fifth, see a lawyer about suing the previous owner. I don’t have your purchase and sale contract. You can’t sue them unless it’s clear from the contract that the sale price included a property free from taxes.

Sixth, your mortgage lender screwed up, because it’s Banking 101 that you don’t give a person a mortgage on a property that has tax arrears. You better tell them because those taxes have priority over their mortgage.

Please note that the municipality doesn’t have to wait for you to recover money from someone else. You may not be personally responsible for those taxes (i.e. you can’t be sued for them) but they’re still a charge on the property.

If you did this without a lawyer, broker or title insurance, consider this a life lesson in trying to save money. If you didn’t even have a lawyer review the purchase offer, double shame on you.

Wife Has MELTDOWN After Husband Wants Nothing To Do With Her After Discovering The Truth About Her

What type of doctor do other doctors dislike?

Ok. Here I go pissing people off, again.

This is MY experience. It does not reflect on the many, many docs I’ve never met.

I cannot stand Orthopedic surgeons. Neurosurgeons and Spine surgeons are not far behind.

These guys make a gazillion dollars and don’t know the first thing about caring for patients. I am convinced that they look up from the knee they just replaced and are stunned to see a person attached to it.

We used to roll our eyes at the whole orthopedic floor, 6 west. The ortho docs would breeze through and leave the bulk of the post-op care to PAs. If a patient got into trouble they would disappear.

So who got called to take care of the poor patient that is now in diabetic or cardiac or pulmonary trouble? Well, it sure wasn’t them. The poor nurses on 6 West would be frantic. They would frequently page overhead…

“ANY INTERNAL MEDICINE DOCTOR TO SIX WEST, STAT!”

“Oh no, we got us a FOOBA.” we would say as we bounded up the stairs to see what problem, that likely could have been anticipated and avoided, was awaiting us.

What’s a FOOBA?

It means Found On Ortho Barely Alive.

We called that unit The Killing Fields.

We used to smirk, “The good thing about 6 West is it’s close to a hospital.”

The orthopedic surgeons would do surgery on anyone! Ninety years old and demented with multiple medical problems, needs a new hip.

I had an orthopod tell me. “It’s my job to replace his knee. It’s your job to keep him alive afterwards.” This after the poor patient, with end stage emphysema, who could not survive a haircut, much less surgery, crashed and went straight to the ICU after this wahoo was done with him.

I used to joke that he was part of the No Joint Left Behind program.

I had another surgeon, who could not remember that he had met me numerous times, ask me repeatedly who I was. I wanted to answer, “I’m the woman who has saved your sorry carcass more times than I can count.”

This guy was discharging a patient when I just happened by.

The poor guy was breathless and grabbing his chest as the orthopod gave him discharge instructions.

I jumped between them.

“Sir, are you having pressure in your chest?”

He nodded, too breathless to speak.

(Yelling) “I need help in here. EKG, O2, aspirin, nitro, beta blocker….NOW!”

We get the patient stabilized, the ortho doc had disappeared.

His note in the chart? Two lines; “Wound clean, dry and intact. Discharged home.”

Next time I saw the surgeon, he introduced himself to me, AGAIN. He had no idea who I was.

Ok, I feel better getting that off my chest.

Wife Accuses Husband Of Cheating And Gets The Shock Of A Lifetime!

Damn! Wholly shit.

Why isn’t Russia the winter wonderland of the West?

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image 90

Solnechnegorsk, Moscow region, Naberezhnaya, 5

There’s a cold spell in Russia and that means broken hot water mains and frozen apartment front doors. My friend reports that in northwestern Moscow region towns Solnechnegorsk and Skhodnya people are left without central heating.

A pipe with boiling water burst in the Moscow Theater of the Moon during a ballet performance of “The Nutcracker.”

Spectators first believed that the sharp explosive sounds were made by the ballet dancer cracking walnuts, when the performance was stopped and more than 300 people were evacuated from the building.

image 89
image 89

Residents of another town near Moscow, Podolsk, have not had access to heating for more than 2 days due to a break in the heating main.

Ice appeared on the windows. Indoor toilets turned into outdoor outhouses. This causes another problem. As greedy municipal services deliberately provide heating with less pressure than temperatures required, people turn on home heaters and air conditioner to heat apartments and overburden electric stations causing cascading blackouts.

Entire neighborhoods lose access to electricity on top of lack of access to central heating. Dark and cold like in the Middle Ages when conservative values reigned supreme.

Some residents said they would like to make a fire in the living room but afraid that fire engines won’t be able to extinguish it if it gets out of control because there are no fire escapes and there’s not ladder that can reach 20th floor.

The day before, local residents went out to picket and got detained because it’s illegal to protest in Russia.

image 88
image 88

Emergency situation announced in Podolsk over hearing mains breakdown that couldn’t be fixed during night. When I was a kid , “pipes breakdown” happened every winter no exception at our school and we missed one or two weeks of classes.

Hypothetically, could the Moon be colonized?

The Moon is really the worst place where we could set up a colony.

It’s not so bad as to be utterly impossible – but it’s not as good as Mars.

The Moon’s biggest negatives are:

  1. It’s “day” length is 28 days – so you get 14 days of continuous nighttime – and then 14 days of continuous sunlight. This means that all human activities will need artificial light – and a lot of radiation protection. Solar power is pretty much useless unless you have 14+ days of energy storage for everything.
  2. Air and water have to come from ice deposits that can be found only in deep craters near the lunar poles – places where the sun has not shone for a billion years. There isn’t a whole lot of ice there – and if we start getting excited about making fuel for rockets and providing air and water for an entire colony of thousands of people – then it’s going to run out pretty fast – and it’s an irreplaceable resource – once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.
  3. The Moon’s gravity is very weak – it’s possible that it’s enough for humans to thrive there – but it’s also possible that it’ll be no better than zero’g – which would make colonization impossible.
  4. Moon dust is incredibly nasty stuff – under the microscope, each grain of sand looks a lot like a stone-age axe-head with razor-sharp edges. It gets all over everything – and breathing it is very dangerous. Keeping dust out of our habitats and out of every moving part of every vehicle – i s paramount – but because it sticks to everything – that’s going to be a challenge.

The main positive for the moon is close to Earth – just a few days flight time.

Compared to Mars:

  1. Mars’ day length is just 20 minutes longer than Earth – it’s easy for us to adapt so a comfortable day/night cycle is available. Solar panels work well. Radiation is still an issue – but nowhere near as bad as on the Moon.
  2. Air and water also has to come from ice deposits – but we find ice just under the Martian surface almost everywhere. It’s unlikely that we’d ever run out.
  3. Mars gravity is also weaker than on Earth – but about twice that of the Moon – so the odds of it being enough for long term human habitation are much better.
  4. Mars dust is also nasty stuff – it’s toxic – it’s rougher than Earth dust – but not as bad as Moon dust.
  5. Mars has abundant CO2 – which can be used as a starting point for making methane and both hydrocarbons and carbohydrates.

The main disadvantage (compared to the Moon) is that it takes 6 months to get there – and you can really only fly once every 26 months.

What was your kindest white lie you’ve told?

My husband was dying of cancer and had less than two weeks to live. I knew this, however, he was in denial. He was a classic car enthusiast and wanted so bad to drive his older van, just for a little bit, however, by that time, he was too weak to stand unassisted, so I told him that he’s very sick at the moment, because he just got out of the hospital and needed to rest, and maybe after he got a little stronger, and we could go for a drive. I knew he’d never get stronger, but it did ease his mind a bit and in his last couple days, he did hallucinate that he was driving his van, so in a way, I turned out to be right.

A couple days later, I lied again, for the second time in our marriage- when he was actively dying, I told him it was okay to go, I’d be okay. Tomorrow will be a month since he passed- I’m not okay that he passed away, but I am okay with knowing that I did everything I could possibly do to ease his worries when he was dying.

What is the best thing you saw someone do when they got fired from their job?

I worked at an office job for 5 years in Beverly Hills, for a doctor who did a type of cosmetic electoral surgery for the stars. He was a smart guy who made countless millions but he treated his employees like second class citizens and was all about the Benjamins rather than helping people.

After a couple quarters where new patient numbers had started to go down, the doctor and office manager decided they could cut costs by culling the office of some of the staff in order to bring in new workers for lower pay. Now I had already been planning to leave that hostile environment for awhile anyway, and even had my resignation letter written in my desk drawer so it wasn’t a terrible tragedy when the manager brought me in to tell me I’d be let go. In fact it was better as I wanted to take some time off to travel and this would allow me to claim benefits for a couple months whereas I wouldn’t get anything if I had just quit. But what did get me really perturbed was how the manager made a point to follow me around and sit beside me watching my computer as I went about closing out my workbooks and getting any personal items i didn’t want to leave behind because she thought I might sabotage the files or something in a fit of rage. Well, when she got up for a minute to check her office I decided I would do a little something for myself since I wasn’t even getting to say goodbye to my coworker friends and they were treating me like a criminal. I put a password lock on the databases of doctor names that I had put together and spent years building relationships with and were a vital part of the office. I didn’t say anything and it was a month later my manager called up sounding very sweet, wondering if I might know how to access those filles since she couldn’t find the password. I would’ve gladly given it were it not that they actually fought to try and keep me from getting benefits (unsuccessfully) and so I told her sorry, I seem to have forgotten, and hung up.

SUPERGIRL 2 but is 1920 |Unreleased Fan Made| Alternate Timeline

How did your marriage end?

I am on my forth marriage, 17 years now, and how the first three ended:

My first marriage, 4 years and no children, ended tragically. My wife and I were to meet at our local hangout, which was one block from where I worked, after I got out of work. I was running about 30 minutes late, had to stay over, and when I arrived where we were to meet I was told her was taken to the hospital without being told the reason why. I rushed to the hospital were an officer told me my wife was stabbed by a patron whom she had slapped, I found out later she slapped him for being ‘free’ with his hands in a very inappropriate manner. Three days later she succumbed to her wound, she was stabbed in the heart and the damage was to server (open heart surgery was in its infancy then).

My second marriage, 6 years and three daughters, was great up to the time our third daughter was born. After we brought our daughter home my wife would become very aggressive when I got home from work, she would start right off when I walked in and I allowed her to use me as a ‘punching bag’; I thought better me than the girls, I know that she never hurt the girls as I would have seen any physical evidence (bruises or other signs) on the girls.

Then one day she demanded that I give her $200.00 so she and her mother could go play bingo, and when I refused she grabbed an 8” carving knife and attacked me; in self-defense I slapped the knife out of her hand and punched her (first and only time in my life I ever struck a woman) breaking her nose (out of instinct due to my military training). Yes the police were called and even when she admitted she attacked my with the knife I was forced to leave the home by the police; they left the girls alone with this ‘crazy’ woman (being polite on how I view her). Contacted a lawyer that very next day and started divorce proceedings with desire of full custody. In the end I got my divorce but in the State of New York the father never got full custody of the children (not sure if that is true today) even if proven that the mother is actually an unfit parent. My ‘X’ passed away back in 2016 from over self-medication, my daughters and I have a wonderful relationship.

My third marriage, 22 years with one Son and two Daughters, ended on December 20, 2000 which was the day she walked out , and two weeks later I received the divorce papers from the court, no trial or arbitration, just a divorce decree that the marriage was terminated (no reason was mentioned in the divorce papers). I guess she just got tired of being a married woman, she did wait until our children were grown and out on their own. As far as I knew we had a normal married life, we had our arguments, disagreements, ups and downs, she was not perfect and neither was I. I was 9 years her senior but age was never an issue between us. And even though we have been divorced for 21 years now, I still have contact with her on a very friendly way; I have even gone to her home to repair her vehicles and my present wife and I have even had a holiday meal with my ex-wife and her husband. I know it is a strange situation or relationship, but after all she is the mother of my children and my present wife understands that and encourages the positive relationship between me and my ex-wife – in other words my present wife trusts me.

As for my forth marriage, 17 years and only children is from past marriages, all I can say is we haven’t killed each other yet 😁 I am 70 and she is 69 and neither one of us want to fight for custody of our fur-babies 😂 (our running joke), seriously we are just as much in love as the day we first got married 🥰

Has a bank ever lost your money?

Several years ago, maybe 5 or 6, I took $1000.00 to the bank to pay down my credit card bill. There was quite a line and the banks assistant manager suggested to save time to use the atm next to the teller windows. I told him I was using cash and he said fine, no problem, it takes cash. Great! I like to save time and I still had a 1 1/2 drive home. So, as usual, I insert my credit card, select pay statement, tell it how much, and insert my money, listen to the machine whir, and then nothing! No receipt, just a blank screen. Uhg!

That nice gentleman was sitting at his desk, so I stepped over to him and told him the machine ate my money. He asked how much and went to uselessly poke buttons on that ATM. He didn’t know what to say or do. I asked how this would be rectified, he didn’t know, but he had someone to call.

This is where a series of calls were made to IT, help desk and a few others that didn’t have answers. Now, I didn’t want to leave the bank without some clue as to how this would be resolved and some sort of documentation of what happened.

Well, it turns out, the bank main office (or wherever he called) had no policy on how to handle this. They expected me to walk out the door like nothing happened. That was not going to happen. This gentleman bank employee completely agreed with me, that I was entitled to some sort of documentation. The main office left me hanging and after a hour of phone calls it came down to, we will audit the machine at the end of the day, then, if we find a discrepancy, we will credit you. But nothing for me to take home. They did verbally agree to note on my account that I wasn’t to be charged late fee or interest IF they found the money. The main office really left me with a bad taste in my mouth by their lack of ability to give me some sort of documentation.

Those calls ended in a stalemate, they had my money, they wouldn’t or couldn’t find a way to make me feel comfortable about leaving the bank without the money, a receipt, or some sort of trouble ticket.

That gentleman in the bank, spoke to the branch manager and the two of them worked up a description of the situation, basically a statement of facts for me to take home. They agreed completely that they too would not have just left and excepted that it would magically be fixed. They were great, the main office or whatever was not great.

The resolution ended up being a letter in the mail saying my account was credited $1000.00. No explanation, no apology, no acknowledgment that there was a problem.

As I recall, I wrote the corporate offices and got no reply there either. I will no longer use an atm to deposit cash.

What is the most amazing thing you overheard because people didn’t think you understood their language?

The summer of 1990, I backpacked across Europe with my two sisters. We were all very athletic back then. I was a gym rat and avid cyclist, my sister Mary walked a ton and bussed tables at the Space Needle restaurant in the evenings, and Joanne was an accomplished high school athlete.

Though we all spoke a little German, at the time I was semi-fluent, thanks to a knack for languages and a mother who spoke it at home. Anyhoo, in the backpacker circles we traveled, there were a ton of German tourists. So it came as no surprise that I was able to eavesdrop on a few conversations.

Most of them were innocuous, and to be honest I had to really concentrate to mentally translate what was being said. But I’ll never forget what I overheard when we ventured out for our first-in-our-lives visit to a topless beach. (Or as the Europeans would call it, a beach.)

My sisters and I were laying on the sand in our bikinis, tops still on, when Mary and Joanne decided to cool off by getting in the water. As they were walking toward the surf, two German dudes (I will call them Rolf and Jurgen) started talking:

Rolf: Look at those girls. They’re cute, but …

Jurgen: … big muscles.

Rolf: Yes, they would be very pretty if it weren’t for the muscles. What’s the deal, I wonder?

Jurgen: They’re American. Americans like girls with muscles.

Rolf: What makes you think they’re American?

Jurgen: They’re covering their breasts.

I didn’t say anything, but when it came MY turn to go into the water, I waited for them to look, then flexed, Popeye-style, and winked.

What is the rudest thing an in-law has done to you?

My ex-mother in law was a real doozy. I married her youngest son and she did NOT approve. She went out of the way to disrupt our wedding as much as possible. We had hired a classical guitar duet for music at the reception. She didn’t like that and showed up that day with her record player and a stack of records. She talked to the Priest and changed our vows. Decided that we (who paid for everything ourselves) did not have enough food for the reception so she ordered several hundred dollars of fried chicken. Luckily I was able to cancel it. She called the bakery and cut our cake order in half. Managed to fix that, too. Called the church and cancelled our use of the kitchen attached to the reception hall. I managed to fix that too. It was very stressful and she never stopped. We ended up moving 1,000 miles away and limiting contact.

How can Russia’s economy withstand its sanctions?

To understand these, let’s see the sanctions and how they play :-

Sanction 1 :-

Embargo on Technology Imports from the West

The Problem was this Embargo was passed on 28/2/22 but was effective only from 1/6/22 and later postponed to 1/7/22

So Russia exported massively these imports from 1/3/22 to 30/6/22

Enough for 2 years almost through Turkey and Central Asian Nations like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

That gave them until 30/6/2024 to find substitutes

They seem to have found substitutes for most of these Imports from China & their own Domestic production

This extension was to give UK and others a chance to fill their coffers with Russian Oil and Gas and have good reserves

Sanction 2

Withdrawal of Western Businesses from Russia causing Capital Flight

The Plan was to cause $ 80 Billion of Capital Flight and force a temporary panic

Putin was ready though and immediately got every single business taken over by Russian Entities and took over the equivalent of 560 Billion Rubles ($ 68 Billion) of wealth from these companies

The Swift reaction of Putin prevented these companies from being able to get away with their assets

The Readiness of Russian entities and Chinese entities to take over these assets was another major blow

Sanctions 3

Removal of Russian Banks from Swift

The Problem was that of the 158 Banks connected to Swiss, almost 19 Banks still are connected to SWIFT even today

So these 19 Banks can get all the money it wants and transfer them to the remaining 139 Banks

It’s like keeping SBI connected to Swift but removing Bank of India and Dhanalaxmi Bank

The use of CIPS and alternate systems further ensured Russian Stability of Inflows especially in RMB

These 19 Banks are mandatory because the West wants Russian Fertilizers and Gas and Oil even today, through third parties

Sanctions 4:-

Mastercard and Visa were removed from the Russian Settlement Systems overseas

Again the Local systems of settlement continued because had MasterCard or Visa threatened to cut off their local settlement network, every nation would be kicking them out permanently

This allowed enough time to set up Mir Pay plus get Wechat and other payment gateways including Union Pay from China

Mir quickly established a presence in 39 countries very fast indicating that Putin was prepared for this

Sanctions 5:-

Russia’s Asset Freeze

Problem was Russia had Oil and Gas and it’s own Food

It thus had customers willing to trade in Rubles like China and India and Middle East and Central Asia and Turkey

Thus Russias asset freeze meant zilch

Sanctions 6

Embargo on Russian Oil and Gas

Russia sold to India and India resold to Europe at 30% profit

Europe needed Russian Energy and had no alternate and was helpless

Putin forced them to pay in Rubles so that meant they couldn’t control the money needed


So the Sanctions were weak to begin with and imposed by people who didn’t know their heads from the a**es

They were slowly imposed and more of playing to the gallery than any realistic sanctions

Russia was also very well prepared this time unlike in 2014

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Putin and Elvira did superbly while Biden and his team of clowns were no match

What was the most memorable case of “instant karma” you saw when an impatient driver was laying on the horn?

I was a deputy sheriff working in a small town. They had their fair and it was packed. Some guy is very impatient leaving the fair parking. He starts honking—long long blasts at the car in front of him that had stopped. That car is trying to load in an elderly passenger.

The driver of this car remains impatient even though everyone can clearly see the elderly person needs help getting in that car. He finally cuts his wheels to go around the car in front. He then steps on the gas and revs the motor, honks his horn, and then starts to accelerate rapidly while flipping the bird at the other car.

he ran into the gate to exit and does major damage to his driver’s side front fender and the entire driver’s side of his car. It was a nice new car. I walk over snd zi am smiling. He is pissed and wants to think he can intimidate me. Oh hell no. I was just going to cite him for losing traction and driving unsafely. However he wouldn’t shut up and decided to yell in my face.

he smelled of an alcoholic beverage. I decided he needed to perform the drunk driving tests. He failed. I guess he had a little to much beer inside the fair. I arrested him. I towed his vehicle. I figure his impatience cost him a ton of money.

Car damage probably $2000+

DUI (back then) $4,000 (and probation fees)

Attorney fees $8,000

Gate $1,000

tow and storage fees $250

Getting all that because you are rude, impatient and intoxicated? Priceless.

Oh, the people in the car he was honking at left right after I got that jerk out of his car. The circled around snd came back by while i was giving the Jack wagon his DUI tests. They waved, smiled and gave thumbs up!

What are examples of celebrities whose potential went unfulfilled?

This is Peter Green.

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You may not recognize him today — he looks a lot different from the way he did in 1967, when at the age of 20 he became the founder and frontman for what would become one of the most successful and enduring acts in music history.

But when the band he created was selling millions of albums and playing to packed arenas, Green was long gone — destitute, homeless, and quite mad.

Peter Green had been a rising star in Britain’s blues revival of the 1960s. His guitar playing caught the attention of Bluesbreakers frontman John Mayall, who let the teenage Green sit in with the band when lead guitarist Eric Clapton was unavailable. When Clapton eventually left to form Cream, Mayall gave the job to Green, predicting that within a few years he would eclipse Clapton as England’s greatest blues guitarist.

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After a year with Mayall, Green was eager to front his own band. He poached two of his Bluesbreakers bandmates, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, enticing them to join by naming the band Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.

The band, which played a mix of blues standards and original compositions by Green, enjoyed overnight success. Behind Green’s soulful voice and raw, authentic guitar playing, their debut self-titled album, Fleetwood Mac, spent 37 weeks on the UK charts, and was the fourth best-selling album of the year. Green would quickly mature as a songwriter, charting with such compositions as Black Magic Woman (later a major hit for Santana) and the instrumental Albatross, which shot to No. 1.

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As their fame and popularity increased, Green’s bandmates began to notice changes in his behavior. On a tour of Europe in 1970, Green abruptly left for several weeks to join a German commune where he ingested large quantities of LSD. His erratic behavior had intensified; he grew a beard and began wearing long robes and crucifixes, and spoke of his desire for the band to give away the money they’d earned. His compositions around this time became increasingly darker, as evidenced in his song The Green Manalishi (with the Two Prong Crown):

Now, when the day goes to sleep and the full moon looks
The night is so black that the darkness cooks
Don’t you come creepin’ around – makin’ me do things I don’t want to

Can’t believe that you need my love so bad
Come sneakin’ around tryin’ to drive me mad
Bustin’ in on my dreams – making me see things I don’t wanna see

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Two months after his stay at the German commune, Green left Fleetwood Mac. He released a solo album the following year as well as sessions with B.B. King, and then faded into obscurity.

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Broke and unable to care for himself, he moved into the home of his brother and sister-in-law, who encouraged him to seek psychiatric treatment. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the late 70s and began a long road to recovery. He was given anti-psychotic drugs which managed his symptoms, but according to Green, caused a complete loss of interest in music. So for the next several decades he went on and off the medication, a struggle which lasts to the present day.

He formed the Peter Green Splinter Group in 1997. The band released nine albums over the next eight years until Green abruptly disbanded the group.

He lives today in comfortable retirement in the south of England, looked after by close friends. Mick Fleetwood visited him several years ago and described the bittersweet day: “He’s still warm and kind, but otherwise he’s not the man I knew, clearly.”

It’s unclear whether the LSD Green took triggered his underlying schizophrenia or merely exacerbated it, but one thing seems clear: had he remained healthy, Peter Green would likely have become one of the most influential recording artists of all time.

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Sadly, many people who read this post have probably never heard of him

What was the hardest thing you went through in life, and how did you get past it?

it was the worst year of my life. We had moved into a brand new dream home with a pool. The boys swam 2–3 times a day. My wife and I talked everyday about how happy we were. My wife got a promotion and we were sitting pretty good.

I went to work and i was severely injured. My employer refused to let me come back to work and retired me. Then the county I worked for started dragging their feet. It took 2 years to get retired.

My wife was diagnosed with cancer and the cancer had already spread. She had a surgery to remove the tumor. Then chemotherapy. That was followed by internal radiation. After 6 months of treatment the doctor pronounced her cancer free. However she got early menopause due to the surgery and radiation.

After a few months she started to plane out and resume her life. We had a couple of more months of happiness. Our middle son had been complaining of stomach/lower abdomen pain. So much so we took him to the emergency room and his GP. Nothing, just his diet we were told.

I got up one June morning and was preparing to enjoy the early summer day in June. I was off because I had taken a job teaching and we had plenty of money so we decided i would stay at home with the kids until school resumed for me. My son got up and told me he felt sick. I thought he was just trying to stay at home so I asked him to go to school and promised I would pick him up if he didn’t feel good.

Our little man of 12 years went to school. A couple hours later i went to get him, he was in the nurse’s office complaining of pain to his right side. We had thought it might be appendicitis. I took him to the emergency room. A test showed it wasn’t appendicitis. A CT scan showed he had a tumor above his large bowel. He was taken by ambulance to Valley Childrrns hospital. After a biopsy by surgery we were told he had Desmo Plastic Small Round Cell Tumor. His diagnosis was terminal. He had a surgery, and after recovery They started chemo. after 5 weeks my son told me he wanted to stop. I asked him to just go a little longer as the round of chemo was almost over. I promised him that if he didn’t get to feeling better I would agree with him to stop taking the chemo. He made it through. After a couple of more rounds of chemo he was sent to Stanford. At the Children’s Hospital there they harvested his stem cells, then chemo to kill all of what remained as well as starting a new chemo therapy plan. After several months he came home. My wife had been with him the entire time while I worked. We had lots of oroblems crop up and started fighting. Eventually we divorced. It hurt our kids. My little man stayed alive. A diagnosis of 6–8 weeks turned into 8.5 years. My wife asked me at the end to tell him he could pass now. He was so skinny, in so much pain. I told him. Nope, he wasn’t having it. He still wanted to live.. When he passed my wife and I finally apologized to eachother. We remarried. Now we have two kids who are married and 2 grand children.that was incredibly hard for me. I lost mycareerr (found another) and went through two major cases of cancer. I miss our son. What did I do to get through it? I finally pulled my head out of my ass realuzedad i want to be with the woman I loved and have our family together—and so did she.

What things would get you fired in some places but promoted in others?

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There’s an internally-famous award that the White House gives—I can’t recall the name—but it is named after a guy who fell asleep during a meeting with the president.

I know of it because my dad almost got the award—he had a reputation of getting sleepy-eyed during meetings. But only because he works crazy hours.

In most offices, falling asleep at your desk—it will get you in trouble. Do it enough times—you’ll find yourself creating an account on Indeed (job site).

There are places for sleep—work is not that place.

But in Japan.

They actually see falling asleep at your desk as a sign of good diligence and work ethic.

“Wow—he must be working long hours.”

Some offices have even integrated nap times and nap rooms for workers. (Source: Napping in Public? In Japan, That’s a Sign of Diligence. NY Times. Rousseau, Bryant)

Inemuri (napping) is a permissible practice. You can even sleep in meetings where the president is present. They see you as still being in attendence.

Japan is a very different culture, though. They are among the hardest working people on the planet, with 23% working 80-hour weeks back to back. And 12% working 100+ hour weeks. (Source: Why Sleeping at Work in Japan is Actually a Good Thing. Samson, Carl)

But if you work 40 hours 5 minutes, don’t expect a promotion for your naps at your desk. Directions to the front door are more likely.

What is the most overrated country you have ever visited?

United Arab Emirates.

Note: I’ve only been to Dubai though – more of a city state.

It is almost entirely “style over content” in that it caters to Sun, service and visual stimulus only. There are no stories, anecdotes, historical perspectives, local colouring or human or philosophical insights to be gained whatsoever.

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You absolutely cannot wander (too hot to be outside for long) down an ancient (everything is new) alleyway (there are none) to a local (nothing is “local”) bistro (none) to eat local fish (no local fish) paired with a local wine (all alcohol is served in either hotels or designated bars in malls) whilst watching the sunset (all alcohol is served inside so others cannot see it) and making friends with the locals (locals don’t speak and everyone else is transient).

You can go to largely empty sumptuous restaurants in hotels where you feel like a King, get driven there in a golf buggy by concierge alongside a candlelit stretch of water filled with lilies, eat great world cuisine and only have to slightly raise an eyebrow in the direction of a servant (sorry – waiter) to get their immediate serfdom (sorry – attention).

The whole place is like a mega shopping mall.

Dubai is both intellectually and creatively bankrupt.

My local farmer’s market has more sophistication.

Every single person I’ve met who liked it was low-IQ or very young but had somehow lucked into a job that paid enough for them to spend time there or someone else paid (although Dubai is not as expensive as popular myth would have you believe, you still need a decent wedge of cash/job to go there).

I have had more fun, authenticity and mind/soul expanding experiences on trips to Greece costing a fifth of the price.

How difficult is it to use a sword effectively?

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WARNING: Nasty photos below.

Well, ask Dias Costa of Argentina. His home was invaded by a band of armed thugs who beat him to the ground. The 49-year-old man panicked when they dragged his wife into another room. He yanked a decorative samurai sword off the wall and started slicing. The men, armed with guns of various types, fled the house, and police were able to locate them by following the blood trail.

The car crashed a short distance later.

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All four needed a LOT of stitches. For an untrained man with a decorative sword, he was pretty effective. I suspect this outcome would be pretty common when dealing with common thugs: Slice into the first one, and the rest will panic. Of course, the real point is that he was fully committed to the fight. He would have been effective with any weapon.

Just imagine what might have happened if he actually knew what he was doing?

A sword is a very effective weapon against unarmored targets.

Now, if you’re talking about using a sword to defend yourself against another guy with a sword, that’s a different story. That takes a lot of practice to do effectively (and not end up looking like one of the guys above).

What’s the strangest case you’ve encountered as a doctor?

For the medical student, first year is bad; the palpable frustration of trying to mug up hundreds of unpronounceable Latin names in anatomy, wasted effort to remember the ‘millisecond’ timings of a cardiac-cycle in physiology and the ‘spider-web’ structures of biochemistry make most students think if this was all worth it.

But at the start of clinical years, things change. I suppose the charm of ‘white coat’ is much more durable than the ego of the NEET rank.

Then on, mugging matters less, clinical skill starts separating students into categories. During teaching rounds, the guy who picks up the heart-murmur first or suspects the hint of finger clubbing or palpable spleen, that even the consultant did not pick up, is considered a hero of sorts. Most students want to pick up findings and be in the lime-light of tutors.

She was an average hard-working student all through but in the clinic, that suddenly seemed to change, especially during the medicine posting. While for most of us, the stethoscope was a piece of flaunting style; she would put the stethoscope on the patient’s chest, concentrate for a minute, smile and say ‘there is a systolic murmur; I can hear it clearly’

This frustrated most of us.

Most often even the consultants agreed. She was quickly known as ‘Ms. Murmur’ among the students.

For those uninitiated to medical terms, the heart produces two sounds called ‘lubb’ and ‘dup’; a ‘whosshhh’ kind of sound in between is called a murmur. A murmur occurs if a heart has a hole by-birth; or a valve is narrowed or leaking; and can range from super-soft to quite loud. While loud murmurs are picked up by the dumbest student, soft ones are a challenge.

But after a while, it started looking like a scam. Almost every patient she would claim to hear a murmur. Eventually, everyone started making fun of her. One day, after a harsh comment by a senior, she stopped announcing, but somehow, deep inside, I had a feeling that she was not telling a lie.

‘When I hear a murmur I say I hear. I don’t bluff’ she said softly.

One day in clinics, a new tutor was teaching us how to auscultate (listen with stethoscope) for murmurs over organs other than heart (abdomen, skull). In a normal patient, he showed us the areas where we need to place our stethoscope to pick up such murmurs (bruit).

Ms. Murmur placed her stethoscope on the abdomen of the patient, listened intently and her face lit up.

‘Yes sir I can hear the murmur’

‘But this case doesn’t have a murmur’ announced the tutor.

‘Sorry sir, I thought I heard it’ she mumbled, amidst laughter from the rest of our batch.

I felt bad.

Few days later I was reading an article on a rare condition called ‘arterio-venous malformations’ (AVM) in the brain. One clinical feature is, the patient can hear a bruit themselves, when they close both ears, with the palm of their hand.

A stethoscope closes both our ears. It is possible that she herself has an …

Next morning, I told her to talk to our tutor.

Tutor to Professor, medicine to neurosurgery, X-ray skull to contrast CT scan; things moved fast. It was indeed an AVM. Her parents took her to Mumbai and got trans-catheter closure of AVM done.

No more murmurs, no more taunts.

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(pic – CT scan of a large AVM – Google)

(AVMs are by-birth connection between arteries and veins and tend to grow like a tumour. They have a huge amount of blood flow through them. Common symptoms are headache and fainting. Because of continuous blood flow, they may hear a murmur if both their ears are physically blocked. They can be cured by injecting special material that clog the feeding arteries.)

The Table

What’s the coolest child psychological experiment that’s been done?

Researchers did a landmark study on self-awareness using, of all things, a shopping cart.

They took a small cart and attached a blanket to the bottom of it. Then, mothers came in with their infants.

Researchers had infants stand behind the cart. Then, mothers urged their children to push the cart to them.

The infants grew frustrated as the blanket invariably stopped them from moving forward:

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Some threw tantrums. Others looked around trying to figure out what was wrong. One infant even climbed into the cart out of frustration.

Some infants solved it.

One rolled the blanket up and pushed. Another got in front of the cart and pulled it to his mother.

Every infant who solved the problem had one thing in common: they were 16 months or older. Researchers discovered this is the point we first develop self-awareness.

From here, self-awareness is supposed to make our lives easier and more efficient — and it does. But it also becomes a source of immense pain and regret.

This is due to the Self-Absorption Paradox: as we become more self-aware, we make fewer social mistakes, but torture ourselves more over past mistakes.

Higher self-awareness is proven to cause greater psychological distress.

It even hurts our ability to socialize. We foresee mistakes before they happen and avoid interacting altogether.

What did your pastor say or do that made you quit his church?

I was fourteen years old, and I had just lost my virginity to gang rape. I went to my youth pastor for help, because I didn’t even know how to begin addressing my massive new trauma, and was suicidal.

He used a lot of flowery biblical language to blame me for having “gotten myself into that situation” (!!!), expressed his disappointment in me, and wanted me to “repent my sinful ways and get my heart right with God” so that God could love me as much as He loved all my virginal peers who hadn’t “chosen” to get gang raped.

I sat like a lump of clay through that day’s youth sermon, which consisted of the youth pastor exhorting every teen to be willing to sacrifice everything we owned for God, down to the clothes on our backs. And he meant literally, that we should all be prepared to go home and sack up everything we owned to be given away.

And when he went around the circle asking each of us if we were ready to “give it all away for Christ”, I couldn’t say yes like all the other “good” Christian kids, who hadn’t just suffered gang rape. The very thought of packing up my stuffed animals, which had helped me survive the previous night without ending my life, and having no comforts left to me except the comfort of a God who had ignored the men raping me and ignored my prayers to make them stop, was more than I could bear.

I said no, I wasn’t prepared to give up everything I owned for God. The youth pastor gave me a pitying look and said, “until you get your heart right with God, until you can be willing to sacrifice everything for Him, you are at risk of Hell. If you died today, with your soul unwilling to give it all away for Christ, you’d go to Hell.”

So much for salvation being unconditional and eternal, eh?

She COMPLAINS Body Count MATTERS To Men?

What is the most out-of-touch thing your boss has ever done?

Many years ago, as in the late 1980s, I was off for the weekend and was about 350km from home when I collapsed with the most agonising pain a bloke can get.

Kidney stones.

My girlfriend drove me to hospital, where I was admitted. Doctors scratching their heads, but the floor coordinator (charge nurse) saw me as I staggered in, and said I had Kidney stones.

She was right. I was in strife allright, the one on the right was blocking the ureter, and urine was backing up AND the ureter was stretching.

This was a serious situation as my right kidney was under severe threat. The rock in the left kidney was still IN the kidney thankfully.

This was Saturday evening… so the next morning, my GF rang my work – my workpkace was seven days a week, and my boss worked Sundays.

She filled him in, and said I was slated for surgery Monday, and would be out of action for a week.

He was okay with that.

Monday comes, I go into theatre, and he rings the hospital demanding to know why I had failed to turn up for work, and would I be coming in tomorrow.

Needless to say, my GF had briefed staff about him, so they politely put him back in his box.

I never knew about it for a few days as I was too whacked out on painkillers.

He rang every day, mot to ask if I was okay, but to know when I was coming back, and they gave him the same answer: He will be back when he is fit to return.

When I did go back, he said he thought I was faking it to have a week off.

Twardy. You are a cretin. A soul less cretin.

America Signals The Unthinkable As US Debt Hits Record $34 TRILLION Dollars

Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?

Kind of……. A coworker was dating a girl in HR. He was trying to get me to start a business with him, but I simply had a bad vibe and did not trust him, so I put him off.

He comes to me one day, during a time when rumors of a layoff were circulating and told me I was on the layoff list, his GF had seen it and told him.

WTF?? So I go steaming into a managers office, after my immediate manager told me he knew nothing about this, ready for an unpleasant discussion.

He looks at me, “You are not on any list, where did you get this? I explained it to him. I expected my coworker and the HR girl to get pulled into the managers office and dressed down. Instead they put a 24 hour watch on the HR girls computer. Brainiac that she was, while having lunch with her BF, opened the personnel file of the CEO. Her manager and security were at her desk within minutes to escort both of them off the premises.

The rumors were true, the layoff dropped a couple weeks later. Best part, the coworker turned out to be the only casualty in our department. He actually tried a couple more time to get me to quit and work with him.

Piragi

Piragi are traditional Latvian filled mini-buns, commonly served at special occasions and holidays. They’re wonderful as an hors d’oeuvre, or with soup; serve at room temperature, or warm from the oven.

Piragi
Piragi

Ingredients

Dough

  • 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
  • 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon active dry yeast or 2 teaspoons instant yeast
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 tablespoon Lora Brody Dough Relaxer (optional, but very helpful)
  • 5 to 6 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

Filling

  • 4 slices bacon
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 pound fully cooked ham steak, diced in 1/4-inch cubes (2 cups)
  • 1 teaspoon caraway seeds
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper, or to taste

Glaze

  • 1 egg lightly beaten with 1 tablespoon water

Instructions

  1. Dough: In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast and 1 tablespoon sugar in 1/2 cup of the water. Set aside. (If you’re using instant yeast, skip this step; add the yeast along with the flour.)
  2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the remaining sugar, salt, and 2 1/2 cups of the flour.
  3. Cut in the butter, then add the yeast mixture. Stir in enough of the remaining flour to make a soft dough.
  4. Knead the dough on a lightly floured work surface until it’s smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes.
  5. Place the dough in a large greased bowl, turning to grease the top, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise until doubled in size, about 1 1/2 hours. Prepare the filling while the dough is rising.
  6. Filling: In a small pan over medium heat, cook the bacon. Drain it, chop, and set aside.
  7. Sauté the onion in the butter until soft but not brown.
  8. Add the ham, stirring until it’s combined with the onions. Stir in the caraway, pepper and bacon, and remove from the heat.
  9. Assembly: Punch the dough down, and divide it into four pieces. Working with one piece at a time (cover the remaining pieces with plastic wrap), roll each piece of dough into a 1/8-inch thick circle. If the dough “fights back” (the dough relaxer helps prevent this), give it a 5-minute rest, and resume rolling.
  10. Use a cookie cutter to cut the dough into 2 3/4-inch rounds. Place 1 teaspoon of the filling mixture into the center of each round, fold in half (to make a half-moon shape), and pinch the edges closed.
  11. Place the piragi on greased or parchment-lined cookie sheets. Shape them into crescents, and brush with the egg wash.
  12. Bake the piragi in a preheated 375 degrees F oven for 10 to 15 minutes, or until golden brown.
  13. Remove them from the oven, and cool on a wire rack.

Yield: 75 to 80 piragi.

Have you ever caught your mother-in-law doing something she should not have?

So, this sounds weird.

I caught her ‘helping’ to cook.

My mother-in-law was a terrific cook and she taught her son to be a terrific cook.

I am a decent cook, not fancy but you get full if I feed you.

image 99
image 99

Anyhoodle.

My mother-in-law was tired of my boring fare. When I was at work, she decided to ‘help’ and cook dinner. At this time her vision wasn’t wonderful, she was on dialysis, and tired very easily.

More than once I came home to find all four burners on and dried, burned food in the pans.

I didn’t care about the food or how long the burners may have been on (usually hours), I was worried about HER. What if a fire had started? What if she put her hand down on the hot burner?

In the end, I took off the knobs on the stovetop every morning. Every evening, when she was up to it, I got cooking lessons. I will never reach her level of expertise. It was actually a nice way for us to bond.

Getting China Wrong: The U.S Would Lose the War with China

What was something funny that happened when you were pulled over?

Driving home with my wife after grocery shopping in the late evening, I suddenly see police car lights flash on behind me and the inevitable ‘WHOOP WHOOP!’

“Oh God, what now,” I said. I pulled over and waited. I saw the officer get out and slowly start walking up to my car. Other cars are slowly going by, drivers looking at me. I looked at my wife and shrugged.

I put the window down and the cop bent down, leaned on the window ledge and looked in. It was my brother in law.

“Hi,” he smiled, “don’t you feel stupid?” Then he laughed. I didn’t feel stupid but greatly relieved.

“Hi Leigh, is this fellow looking after you?” he said looking at his sister..

“Hi Brucie,” said she, “yes, he always does,” she said smiling.

“He looked at me and asked if I was going to be home the next day. I said yes. He said he was going to pop in for a visit and said he had a load of firewood he was going to drop off for me. Bruce lived out in the country and had lots of trees on his lot. He always brought firewood in for me, maple mostly, which was nice of him.

“I’ll have the scotch ready Bruce,” I said.

So that was funny. I thought I was going to get a ticket for something and it was my brother in law the cop. Big dude. I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.

My wife’s father was a District Fire Chief and he’d get chauffeured around in a fire department vehicle. He’d often stop at our house and pop in to say high or if my boys were playing soccer he’d stop off and watch a bit.

I married into a great family that’s for sure.

When have you cheaply or inexpensively fixed an item someone thought unrepairable?

About 15 years ago, I was the owner, operator, and sole employee of a mobile repair business. I mostly fixed lawn and garden equipment – lawn mowers, weed whackers, chain saws, and whatnot – but would fix just about anything when asked to.

I can’t tell you how many times I went to someone’s house to fix a push mower that had “just quit working” for no apparent reason. Very often the no apparent reason was that the customer had run over some object, be it a tree stump or surveyor’s stake, the customer never knew somehow, they just knew the mower suddenly stopped.

The manufacturers of these machines knew that hitting a solid object with the blade can do great damage, so they designed said machines with a weak point – a flywheel key that would shear off under extreme shock, preventing serious damage. Sometimes, but not always, the blade would be bent too, but usually they had just sheared the flywheel key. This was such a common occurrence that I carried about 25 flywheel keys in the van at all times.

I would always tell the customer that they had hit something with their mower, and that for a total of $30, including tax, I would replace the key and their mower would be as good as new in about 30 minutes.

I can’t tell you how many times the following conversation happened:

Oh, I don’t know. Could you just haul it off for me?

I promise you, this machine will be as good as it was before this happened. They’re made this way to protect the machine.

No, I think I’ll just buy a new one.

I can haul it away, but are you sure? There’s nothing really wrong with it that a three dollar part and 30 minutes won’t take care of.

No, I think I just want it gone.

Okay, if you’re sure.

They would go spend $250 or more on a new mower, and I would spend 50 cents (my cost for the part) and sell the mower to someone for $50.

When I had the repair service, I made more money in this scenario than almost any other. There’s a big market for used lawn mowers.

What happened during the process of getting your rental car at the airport that made you say, “You gotta be kidding me?”

A couple of decades ago, I landed at LAX and took the shuttle to the rental car office. It was pretty late at night, and there was only one other customer ahead of me in line.

The guy in front of me was making a scene, complaining about not getting the specific car model and color he wanted and demanding a free upgrade. He even went so far as to insult the rental agent personally. Despite the rude behavior, the rental agent remained remarkably patient and eventually convinced the customer to accept what he had originally reserved. The disgruntled customer stormed out, leaving behind a tense atmosphere.

When it was my turn, I immediately apologized for the unpleasant behavior of the previous customer. I acknowledged that there was no excuse for such rudeness, and the rental agent thanked me for my understanding. He checked his computer screen, confirmed my reservation for a simple small sedan, and then paused.

After a moment of thought, he asked, “Would you prefer a minivan for the same price?” (Minivans were relatively new at that time.)

I declined, explaining that it was just me, and I didn’t need that much space. The rental agent clicked a few more keys and then asked, “How about a hybrid?” (Another new technology at the time.)

I chuckled and said, “Thanks, but after 16 hours of flying, I’m not ready for any new technology.”

Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he looked straight at me and asked, “How about a Mustang convertible?”

Within ten minutes, I found myself cruising up the Pacific Coast Highway in a brand-new red convertible with black leather seats, only 63 miles on the odometer, the top down, the moon shining, my own CDs playing in the stereo—all at the cost of a small Toyota. In that moment, I couldn’t help but think, “Damn! I like this world!”

“I investigated the UFO event in Peru and what I found SHOCKED me” Timothy Alberino | Redacted

What’s something a flight attendant did to you that you will never forget?

In the nineties, once I flew from Moscow to Delhi in Aeroflot, the Russian National Airlines.

Could be my fourth or fifth flight in life.

My ears ached due to the cabin pressure as the flight took off.

After a while, it hurted a lot, and I requested the Ruski airhostess to help me.

She smiled, went to the galley, and returned with half a glass of cold sparkling Sprite.

I was upset, and cried ‘Look Miss, I am in pain. It hurts really bad. I was expecting some tablet or ear drops. Here you come with a glass of Sprite as if I asked a mix for Vodka’.

She hushed me and told me, ‘Davai Davai, prostho dhrink’.

I took a few sips reluctantly, and ‘hufff’ went my ears, cleared of pressure and pain, instantaneously!!

I could not control my blush, and thanked her many times, ‘You are a genius. Spaciba Dharagoi’

Wherever she is, God continue to bless her, and the thousands of other angels flying in skies, to keep us in comfort and safety while flying!

What is a moment when you realized that something you believed in was wrong?

The very first time was when I was four years old.

I found out I was something I hated.

My parents got pregnant with my older sister, and then married, at fifteen. I was their second child, conceived at sixteen. (Ahh, the excesses of youth!)

My father found a way to join the military when my Mom was pregnant with me; I was born stateside but within months we were stationed in Hawaii.

They were seventeen, and the lowest rank and poorest. My father worked two full time jobs, my mother was a full time waitress. The place we lived was actually in the poorest part of Hawaii, amongst native Hawaiians. In this neighborhood, kids ran about, in and out of houses, cared for by Tutu wahines, “grandmothers”. If you got hurt, got hungry, had to go to the bathroom, just go into the nearest house and Tutu will take care of you.

I was bilingual then, I spoke fluent Hawaiian like all my friends. One day, in a tutu’s house, she was giving us four of us kids sliced fruit, and the radio was on. I don’t know what it said, but Tutu said, “I hate haoles.” [pronounced ‘howlie’].

Now I had learned by osmosis that the Haole were the white men without breath, meaning they were liars and cheats. They stole our islands.

I said, “I hate haoles too!”

Tutu laughed and hugged me, she said, in Hawaiian, “I’m sorry child, you ARE a Haole. I should not have said that.”

For four year old me, that was just mind-spinning. I told my father, and asked him if it were true. Weren’t we Hawaiians? Because I didn’t lie or cheat or steal anything.

But he told me yes, it was true, we were white, like the evil men that stole Hawaii, but that did not mean we had to be evil like them. That even if people thought we might be evil like those men, because we are white like them, we still had to choose to be good people.

My first lesson in racism.

Have you ever witnessed a teacher crying and breaking down? What was the cause? Did you or other students or teachers do or say anything?

Yes.

My seventh-grade English teacher was pregnant. She burst into tears one day because being seventh-graders, we were being little idiots and paying no attention to her. It was the first time I had seen a teacher cry, which was probably true for most of the students.

She was clearly embarrassed, even while sobbing her eyes out. Some kids went up and hugged her and/or apologized. I didn’t. I don’t remember why. She then wiped her eyes and went on with the lesson. I might add that despite being idiots, we were decent kids, on the whole, and she had no more trouble from us for the rest of the year.

My eighth-grade year was equal parts wonderful and just batshit insane. I saw two of my favorite teachers cry.

For background, my eighth-grade English teacher was borderline obsessed with Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (and as far as I know still is). She’s one of the reasons I love the novel.

On February 19th, 2016, a student walked into her class very casually and said, “Hey, did you know that Harper Lee died today?” Then he took a look at her face and left.

She sat down and just kind of overflowed. Her co-teacher, who had been placed in our class for reasons that would be a whole other answer, tried to console her. It was hopeless. We didn’t get anything else done that day.

In this last example, she didn’t actually cry, but I think it still counts.

My Algebra 1 teacher is one of the most incredible women I have ever met. She’s almost six feet tall and rather intimidating, but also an inspiring, capable teacher and a sweet, wonderful person.

This particular incident happened on a Friday. We were the last block of the day, and were working on an assignment. I was in the front row, done, and rather bored.

The teacher got a text. She glanced at her phone, looked away, did a double take and looked back at the text, then picked up the phone and read it.

The color literally drained from her face. I didn’t know that was a thing outside of books until then.

She then stuffed the phone into her purse and stood up abruptly. She started talking about the assignment, but her voice was all wrong – cracking and breathy.

Finally someone spoke for us all and asked her if she was all right.

“No,” she said. “But I will be, and you guys need to learn this, so pay attention.”

She finished the lesson. She told us, mind you, that six squared is thirty-eight and that eight by nine is seventy-five. But she finished the lesson.

We found out on Monday that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was sixty years old at the time.

“Oh, honey, there’s no point in crying,” she told me later. “It doesn’t fix anything, and it just tires you out.”

She did recover eventually, but that, again, is a story for another time.

Have you, while repairing a computer, ever found anything that made your jaw drop?

I used to work on grocery store systems about 20 years ago, and we had a non-contract time/materials customer call us about his store server, which had crashed in a bad way. I drove out, and I recognized the server model as one we were selling/installing about 5 years prior, before I was with the company. It would be a two-drive mirrored proprietary RAID and a cartridge tape backup.

When I tried to boot it, it rolled through cmos and then complained about a missing driver. So, I booted off a diagnostic diskette, and there…. one drive corrupted beyond repair, other drive missing entirely.

I opened the case, knowing now I was going to be replacing hardware. Yeah… second drive was completely disconnected, no power, no data cables. I plugged it back in out of curiosity and powered it up and shut it down again 5 seconds later. There was a reason why the drive was disconnected, it was screaming bloody murder… loud!

The store owner had been watching me like a hawk because… time and materials… and he remembered, another tech had been there a few years earlier for the noise and convinced the owner he didn’t need RAID because he had a tape drive.

Sh!t. That meant two new drives, which I had with me, and a cold reload from diskettes far enough for an OS and the tape drive drivers. And many many prayers that at one of his backups was valid. Those little tape cartridges were not reliable in a good environment. A server sitting under a desk for years with no maintenance? Of course all the tapes were bad.

I won’t go through the rest, there was a way to retrieve and convert some data from a register, and we pieced enough together for him to do his end-of-day processes… it being night now and everything. The rest he would have to hand-key, so his night was just getting started.

He and our manager went back and forth about the bill a few weeks later. The tech that told him it would be ok was from our shop but long gone now. If memory serves, he ended up paying for the drives and half of the labor.

Techs these days have no idea how easy it is now with such reliable hardware.

The Phantom Planet (1961) Science-Fiction | Full movie

MM’s emergency alert

Attention on deck!

Guys, this is a whole new world. And there are changes and revolutions and adjustments everywhere. But you will see, in the next month or so of my posts that the AI revolution is here. And it is both awesome and frightening.

Today, consider the text to video technology that is out there.

Six videos. Watch all of them. You will know when you watch them why I am so freaking out. Imagine what a desperate, corrupt and evil government or corporation could do with this technology!!!!!

-MM

We start with an overview. The next three videos…

AI Generated Videos Just Changed Forever

No shit!

Can you tell what’s real? – AI Generated Videos

You Can’t Trust Any Video Anymore… (OpenAI Sora)

Now, lets really get into the details of Sora.

Amazing!

OpenAI Sora: All Demo Videos with Prompts | Upscaled 4K

And, guys… that’s not all!

It’s a race with everyone competing against each other…

Massive Midjourney V6 Update: Consistent Style is Finally Here!

Image to Video Comparison: Pika vs Runway | Who Wins?

Born with a tail

After my first wife and I divorced, I joined a website “match.com” and started dating other women. I met all kinds of girls. Many of the dates were just a nice meal, or coffee. Some resulted in hook-ups, and a few were girls that I would end up spending a lot of time with.

One time, I dated a girl who was an assistant professor at Tufts University. Which is a pretty well-known university in the Boston area. And she was part of the Woman’s Studies program.

The date started off well enough, but our conversations kept on turning to what was wrong with the world and why men were the root of all evil.

Honestly, looking back, I get the impression that the ONLY reason why she went out with me was to somehow torture me for her pent up anger and unhappiness in her life. But I really don’t know for sure.

Anyways, after about an hour long bitch-fest, I finally managed to have an opportunity to talk.

She asked me “oh, so tell me about your life”. And I was pretty upset (but not showing it) by then.

So I remembered a line from a movie that I once watched.

I told her that I was born with a tail. And that my mother had the doctor cut it off when I was just a baby. I told her that it was kept in a jar of formaldehyde in the guest bathroom mirror, and that I personally believed that the tail was the reason why I was born with the ability to put curses on people.

After that, she didn’t know what to say, and we finished the meal quickly… yelling “I’ve gotta run. I’ll call you”.

Every now and again, I get a chuckle out of that memory. Remembering well, the puckered up expression on her face, and how she practically galloped out of the door.

Oh well.

Today…

What scary gut feeling did you have that turned out to be true?

My husband and I were away on a trip, and our older kids were holding down the fort (including our son who was home on leave from the Marine Corps). About 5:00 in the morning (2:00 a.m. at home), I sat straight up out of a dead sleep with one terrified thought: something was wrong at home.

My husband had been married to me over 20 years by then, and knew better than I did to never question when I got that instinct. He handed me the phone to call. I wasn’t sure what to say. “Just call. You’ll figure it out”, he responded.

The overwhelming feeling that something was very wrong wouldn’t let up. I called our daughter. She laughed and said everything was fine. I asked her to humor me and just go check. She said kids were asleep, so I asked her to go check the kitchen. Still chuckling at me she checked the stove and oven and declared them turned off. She looked about the rest of the kitchen until she turned in the direction facing the front doors. We have a large arctic entry so there are two front doors on each side of it so we come in from the cold and close one door and then open the second door to come to the house.

“Oh my God!” She cried out, and the phone went dead. I frantically tried calling back.

When she finally answered again, she told me both doors were wide open, so she called her Marine brother to come down from the upstairs apartment and he raced down. He did a security sweep of the house then the perimeter where he found evidence of bear on each side of the house. We question if the door was slightly ajar and the bear just pushed the doors open and started to come into the house until the phone rang.

That same mom vibe served me well when my Marines were deployed. I always seemed to know when to pray. It got to the point that whenever there was an incident, my other Marine son said he wouldn’t worry. Even when trapped in a doorway during a fire fight for five hours… because he knew his mom “knew” and was praying. Oddly enough, he was right. Thus another story.

A Cuban Sandwich

This is a labor-intensive recipe, but so delicious. You can opt to replace the Pan Cubano with ready-made bread, if desired.

2024 02 18 09 02
2024 02 18 09 02

Yield: 6 sandwiches, 12 servings

Ingredients

Pan Cubano

  • 4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 4 teaspoons granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 1/4 teaspoons instant or active dry yeast
  • 3 tablespoons fresh lard, cut into small pieces
  • 1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) water

Roast Pork and Marinade

  • 1 (1 1/4 pound) boneless pork roast or pork tenderloin
  • 3 tablespoons minced garlic
  • 3 tablespoons minced parsley
  • 1 tablespoon paprika (preferably hot)
  • 2 teaspoons ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons lime juice
  • 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil

Sandwich Assembly

  • Sliced roast pork
  • 3/4 pound thinly sliced smoked ham
  • 3/4 pound thinly sliced Swiss cheese (or other melty cheese)
  • 4 dill pickles, sliced
  • 3 tablespoons butter or olive oil

Instructions

Pan Cubano

Manual Method

  1. In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients and stir until the dough starts to leave the sides of the bowl. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased surface, oil your hands, and knead it for 6 to 8 minutes, or until it begins to become smooth and supple.
  2. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl or dough-rising bucket, cover the bowl or bucket, and allow the dough to rise until puffy though not necessarily doubled in bulk, about 1 hour, depending on the warmth of your kitchen. Gently fold the dough in upon itself and turn it upside down after 30 minutes; this “turn” helps eliminate some of the excess carbon dioxide and redistributes the yeast’s food, both imperative for optimum yeast growth.

Mixer Method

  1. Combine the ingredients as directed at left, using a flat beater paddle or beaters, then switch to the dough hook(s) and knead for 5 to 8 minutes.
  2. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl or dough-rising bucket, cover the bowl or bucket, and allow the dough to rise, with a turn, as directed above.

Bread Machine Method

  1. Place all of the ingredients into the pan of your machine, program the machine for Manual or Dough, and press Start. Examine the dough about 10 minutes before the end of the final kneading cycle, and adjust its consistency with additional water or flour as needed, to produce a smooth, supple dough. Allow the machine to complete its cycle.
  2. Divide the dough into six pieces, and shape each piece into a rough log. Let the logs rest for 15 minutes, covered, then shape each piece into a smooth batard shape (a log about 8 inches long, slightly tapered at each end). Sprinkle a baking sheet with cornmeal, and place the loaves on the baking sheet.
  3. Let the loaves rise, covered, for 1 hour. Brush or spray them with water, and slash one long lengthwise slit down the middle of each loaf.
  4. Heat the oven to 375 degrees F while the loaves are rising.
  5. Transfer the loaves from the cornmeal-sprinkled pan to your oven stone (if you have one), or leave them on the pan and place them in the preheated oven (if baked on a sheet pan, the loaves will be slightly less puffy). Bake the bread for 16 to 18 minutes, or until it’s golden brown. Remove it from the oven, and cool it on a wire rack. The loaves may be made one day in advance and stored at room temperature, or several weeks in advance and frozen. Yield: 6 sandwich loaves.

Roast Pork and Marinade

  1. Mix all of the marinade ingredients together (all of the ingredients except the pork), and rub this mixture over all surfaces of the pork. Cover well, and refrigerate for 6 to 24 hours.
  2. Place the pork in a roasting pan or ovenproof dish, and roast it in a preheated 425 degrees F oven for 30 to 40 minutes, basting occasionally with the pan juices, until a meat thermometer inserted into the center of the roast registers 160 degrees F. Remove the pork from the oven, and cool it completely before slicing thinly.

Sandwich Assembly

  1. Slice the Cuban loaves in half horizontally. Brush the cut surfaces of the rolls with olive oil, soft butter or the remaining pan juices. Layer the sandwiches as follows: Swiss cheese, sliced pickle, ham, sliced roast pork, then additional cheese.
  2. Now comes the somewhat challenging part. You want to grill these sandwiches, top and bottom, while at the same time flattening them slightly. This helps meld all of the filling ingredients. Heat two large skillets, or a grill and one skillet, to medium-hot. Lightly grease the grill and/or skillets. Place the sandwiches in the greased pan(s). Top them with a piece of parchment paper, then the remaining skillet (or flat sheet pan, or other heavy, flat, non-meltable object — the point is to weigh them down). Press down firmly on the top pan, and weigh it down. A tea kettle filled with water makes a good weight, as does a clean brick wrapped in aluminum foil.
  3. Grill the sandwiches for 5 to 8 minutes over medium heat, checking often to make sure the bottoms aren’t burning (we burned our first attempts to a crisp). Adjust the heat downward if the bottoms are becoming brown after only a couple of minutes. Turn the sandwiches over and grill for several more minutes, until they’re crisp on both sides.

Harry Potter but in France

If someone broke into your house, would you let them know of your presence before shooting them? By law, do you have to?

I disturbed a burglar when I was about 19. He froze and I was so confused I initially thought it was my father (who I’d seen go to bed an hour earlier) pulling out drawers in the dark. When I got my wits about me I turned on the light, told him to stand up, and told him to turn out his pockets (which he did, returning a few items). I then told him to walk out on to our patio and sit down. The moment he got outside he ran, and I pursued half-heartedly as I didn’t really want to catch him by myself.

He vaulted over our back fence and landed almost on top of my brother and his friend who (unknown to me) had sneaked out for a secret cigarette before bed. The burglar said to him “don’t worry I’m just going home”, about two seconds before my brother and his friend sat on him.

They brought him around to the front of our house, and we (including my father who’d been awakened by my shouts during the “chase”) sat him on our front wall until the police arrived. It was cold and the burglar seemed a bit worked up so my mother made him a cup of tea.

No guns or weapons of any kind were involved. We live in England.

Why Most Men Have No Chance In Short-Term Dating – @hoe_math

Who are some of the most well-known cult leaders in history, and what made them so dangerous?

The best example I can think of would be L. Ron Hubbard. Prolific science fiction writer turned dangerous cult leader. In a way, it’s hard not to admire the man for his honesty — because he did give the world the best quote ever on cults and shady false preachers:

“You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”

It’s fun, having your own religion. You can do whatever you want. You can say whatever you want. And since you’re the one and only “enlightened one”, the Great Messenger, no one can question you. Hubbard started off as a conman, but eventually came to believe his own nonsense. He was deeply mentally ill.

I remember Tom Cruise divorcing Nicole Kidman in the year 2001. One of the reasons for the divorce? Her father was a psychiatrist. And psychiatrists are “the enemy” according to Scientology, Hubbard’s invented faith. Not only because they would have told the great founder he was insane, but because they would have told his followers the same. Which would mean a loss of power.

Imagine creating a religion that thinks psychiatry is “evil”. Because your deeply mentally ill Messiah hated admitting he was deeply mentally ill, rather than a visionary. Decades after his death, your followers still hate psychiatry. They hate everyone and everything that might point out the absurdity in their views. It’s crazy, like Hubbard. But also impressive, like Hubbard.

HOE Math Explains Perfectly Why Men Love Inexperienced Women!

  • “Stuck on your highest setting,” is a brilliant way to describe the current female dating outlook.
  • Hoemath having his work vindicated in real time. Absolutely amazing.
  • Women don’t gain experience over the years they acquire trauma.

Have you ever been arrested when you were innocent? What happened?

Yes. 48 years old with a clean record.

I drove up from Florida, in route to Atlanta, to visit family, and had tickets to see a Too Short show with my Sister.

Got pulled over in Newton County, GA cuzz, “my taillight was out?”

The female officer said, that my license were suspended ?

The male officer, told the female officer that the suspension didn’t look right, and could be a mistake.

Then the male officer, turned and asked me if I owed any back child support?

I said, “No, I’ve never had to pay child support.”

The female cop, asked for permission to search my vehicle, I said, yes.

She found one rusted up Coors light can thrown into the truckbed I was driving.

She told me to turn around, handcuffed me, and took me to jail charged with, suspended license, taillight, and open container.

So, I spent the night in jail and froze to death the whole time.

The next morning, I went in front of the jail judge, and he dropped all of the charges, except the open container.

The jail judge took me back to where the police were, and asked me if I had $20.00 cash? I said, “Yes.”

The judge told the officers to let me out of jail, ordered them to take the cuffs off me me and to not put me back into that jail cell, and to give me my belongings.

So, I paid $20.00 cash, then $200.00 to get the truck out, and I took the truck to the closest auto shop to get the taillight repaired.

Well, guess what ? The taillight wasn’t broken, and was in proper working condition. The auto dude couldnt give me proof of that bc he said, I could have went somewhere else and had it fixed.

When I went to court for the open container, the court judge charged me with suspended license, taillight, and open container.

My public defender showed the judge the proof I had from the Florida DMV, that my license were never suspended, he told the Judge that I had no prior convictions, not even a speeding ticket, and the jail judge has already dropped those charges.

The court judge looked at me finded me almost $1,900.00, a year probation or 10 days in jail.

Then the court judge told me, that he had authority over the jail judge so whatever charges he dropped will not be dismissed.

Then the court judge told me, “No one drives thru his county with a suspended license!”

He said pay your $1,900.00 fine, and we will take you off probation, or we can put you in jail for 10 days, if you have anything further to say.

I paid my fine and the charges were dropped so my record is clean but it was an awful night and it took me a while to get back on track financially, not to mention all the stress and trips back up to Georgia to straighten the shit out.

It is a huge money scam, tow truck people are all in on it, and there is nothing you can do about it!

I didn’t miss the Too Short show tho and me and my Sister had a blast!

Cops suck ass! They are lazy and they lie too much. Anything to meet that quota! They don’t care about you losing your job, missing a show, staying in jail cause you can’t afford to pay the bail. They don’t give one fuck.

Protect and serve my ass!!!

They are bullies with badges, and can fuck your life up, even when you’re an innocent law abisding citizen, it’s all legal and it’s getting worse.

Fuck’em!

Conservatives INSANE reaction to Gen Z Hating the 40 Hour Work Week

Has a cop ever said something to you which was completely unexpected?

I was 17, driving my Dad’s Mercedes, drunk. A cop pulled me over, told me to exit the vehicle, and walk to the back of my car. I leaned against the trunk lid. The cop asked, “Where were you tonight?” I said, “At a party.” He asked, “Are you carrying any drugs or paraphernalia?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Toss it down by my feet.”

i did. It was a little pot and a pipe. He asked, “Have you had anything to drink?” I said, “Yes.” Then he asked me, “In an ideal world, what would you like to happen now?” I said, “I’d like to drive home and never do this again.”

The cop said, “I believe you. You’ve been completely honest with me. Drive straight home.” He got back in his car, and drove off. He never even knew who I was. He didn’t ask for my driver’s licence or even my name!

What are some psychological things that make you likeable person?

  1. You don’t always need to be around people. People will want to be with you when you are happy by yourself.
  2. People love boldness. You will be respected when you become a straight talker. Example: If you can’t provide a favor, say no instead of trying to please them.
  3. If you don’t like yourself, no one else will. You must change what you don’t like about yourself and accept what you can’t change.
  4. Swallow your pride and always accept your mistake. Deflecting blame is always seen as a weakness.
  5. When you listen more instead of talking people feel special. In return, they will make you feel special.
  6. When you share a few uncomfortable truths about yourself, people will feel comfortable and reciprocate. Example: When talking to someone new, share the truth about your nervousness.

Gen Zer explains why her generation is screwed when it comes to Dating & Marriage

Lavrov’s Remarks and Answers to Questions at the Conference Marking the 10th Anniversary of the Coup d’état in Ukraine

Karl Sanchez

There are times when it’s hard to tell if Sergey Lavrov is angry or not. Most of what he said, including in his answers, he’s said many times before. I know he must keep up decorum, but when you read the text it’s easy to see him fed up with having to say whatever it is once again. Maybe his blood was already boiling since he addressed the conference on Neocolonialism before this forum. In print, when he discusses anything related to the West, there’s nothing good to be expected from it. Yes, we must understand that this pot’s been coming to a boil for many years now, since before Maidan, and not everything that could be cited is anymore. I recall the tense seriousness of his discussions with Putin, the government and the Security Council that began in September 2021 and culminated in his verdict in January that the Outlaw US Empire would refuse the December security proposals and thus the military technical operation would need to commence. In November, it was decided at a tense meeting of the government that what was happening Donbass was Genocide and something needed to be done and very soon. Putin agreed Genocide was indeed happening, and we know the subsequent formulations. I covered all that while writing at my VK platform that remains operational. My opinion is Team Putin never anticipated that their European counterparts could be as evil as they’ve become—IMO, it’s very important that the word evil is almost never mentioned by Team Putin and other descriptions are invoked instead, while the accusations coming from the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals are usually 100% projection. However, in the following, Lavrov uses the term Nazi as an adjective twice, which is synonymous with evil and diabolical and close to universally agreed upon by Humanity.

This much longer than usual preamble perhaps serves to provide more context for Lavrov’s words, or maybe it’s because I need to provide some justification for essentially repeating a story I’ve heard too many times, and every time it merely raises my angst against the Outlaws who stole my nation and have caused so much grief in the world over my lifetime. Enough from me; here’s Lavrov. All emphasis mine:

Dear Colleagues,

I am sure that those present here are well aware of the current situation in Ukraine, who was in charge of the process, and what methods were used.

On February 9, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, once again

gavea detailed account of the story. If we talk about the geopolitical aspects and consequences of the coup in Kiev, first of all,

I would like to say that what is happening is yet another result of the policy of “divide and rule”, pitting different countries and peoples against each other, and provoking interstate conflicts. This policy has long been pursued in various regions of the world by the “collective West” led by the United States, or rather, with the Anglo-Saxons.The role that England is playing in current events is more aggressive and sophisticated in its provocative assertiveness than any other participant, including the United States.

When the Americans and their satellites proclaimed themselves the winners of the Cold War, they set a course for NATO expansion, ignoring all their obligations not to expand the North Atlantic Alliance and not to deploy significant combat forces on the territory of new members, given (orally and in writing) to the Soviet and then Russian leadership. That was the next stage. The block began to expand. But even then we agreed to sign

an agreementon the establishment of the Russia-NATO Council. Once again, we made a concession. The fact of expansion was acknowledged. In response, the alliance pledged not to deploy significant combat forces on the territory of new members.

This

Acthas not been repealed. Look at what’s happening now. On the territory of the new members, more and more large groups equipped with modern weapons began to train right on our borders.

If we talk about the position of the West towards Russia, then since gaining independence, Ukraine has always been considered by it as an anti-Russian bridgehead. In 2004, in fact, the first coup d’état took place. It was bloodless, but unconstitutional. When Viktor Yanukovych won in the second round, the West forced the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to issue a verdict on the need to hold a third round, which is not provided for by the Constitution. That’s how they “wrung their hands.” How did it all end? They were playing democracy. But the games of democracy, even according to their rules, did not help in 2010, when the people (primarily the votes of the south and southeast of Ukraine) elected Viktor Yanukovych.

Then the West began to prepare a coup in such a way that there would be no more “misfires”. To destroy the opposition once and for all, which has been happening for many years since the February 2014 coup.

In the same year, a coup d’état took place in a country called Yemen, which now also often flashes on the pages of newspapers and TV screens. President Abdel Abdullah al-Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia. For many years after that, the West unanimously demanded the return of the legitimate president of Yemen to its country and only then begin negotiations on a settlement with the opposition.

In the case of Viktor Yanukovych, we drew the attention of the French, Germans and Poles (who guaranteed the peace agreement that was broken the next morning) to the need to “reason with the opposition.” What did they sign up for? That there will be early elections, and a government of national unity will be formed for the period until the elections. And the morning after the coup d’état, Arseniy Yatsenyuk (there was such a leader among them) went to the Maidan and said that he congratulated everyone, that they had won and created a “government of winners.” Does no one see the difference between national unity and winners? So there are losers. You all know how the situation developed later. Those who did not accept the result of this putsch were declared terrorists and an “operation” was launched against them. There were such brutal episodes in this tragedy as the burning of 48 civilians in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, the bombing of Lugansk and other cities of Donbass by military aircraft. The DPR and LPR declared independence. But even then there was still room for agreement.

Some time later, in the second half of 2014 (after Kiev announced an “anti-terrorist operation”), a meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia (represented by yours truly), the United States, Ukraine and the European Union took place in Geneva.

At that time, Oleksandr Deshchytsia was acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and had powers from the authorities that illegally reigned in Kiev. We have agreed on the statement. Unfortunately, it was not published by agreement, as it was agreed that Oleksandr Deshchytsia would “check” in her capital. The statement, in addition to a clear call for de-escalation and an end to violence, called for the start of a broad national dialogue in Ukraine with the participation of all regions of the country, with an eye to its federalization. Despite our reminders, the participants of this meeting then “walked away” from the publication of this statement. Instead, Kiev began to solve the “Donbass problem” (as they called it) by force.

In fact, it set the same goal as Adolf Hitler when he announced the need for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”

Once again, we began to look for ways to cooperate to overcome the crisis. We persuaded Donbass not to abandon negotiations. President of Russia Vladimir Putin spoke about this in detail.

As a result, a year after the coup in February 2015, the agreements of the same name were signed in Minsk. Subsequently, you all know how then President of Ukraine Petr Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President of France Francois Hollande, who signed these agreements with Vladimir Putin, cynically and even proudly stated that they had no intention of fulfilling them. It took time to pump Ukraine with weapons against Russia.

This is a “stunning” confession – a “confession”, in fact. As a consequence of the fact that the West is using Ukraine in every sense to contain Russia and, as they now say, inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia, to prevent it from playing the role on the world stage that it rightfully deserves.

As a result, Ukraine, which received the richest industrial potential from the USSR and the Russian Empire,turned into the poorest state in Europe, into a territory, without exaggeration, dying. The Kiev authorities are already a universally recognized international beggar.

Ukraine’s independence is gone. Even before the coup of February 2014, starting with the Maidan, or even earlier,American and British advisers were sitting in most departments (including the Security Service of Ukraine). Now this is a standard, unsurprising practice.

They sit and make sure that money is not stolen, although no one will ever stop stealing. How will the West demand that Ukraine not steal the money it provides it with, if it is stealing our money? They are already openly discussing how to do it better so as not to violate their “moral” principles and not to create a precedent.

This is a vivid example of what “flirting” with the West and the thoughtless desire to integrate into its system of political and economic coordinates in any way leads to.There is no doubt that the West has declared war against us.

They don’t hide it.Although they say that they are only arming Ukraine, and it is the Ukraine itself that is fighting. Everyone understands that this is a lie. Western instructors monitor how the planning of the General Staff of Ukraine is carried out, help to guide to targets (we are 100% sure of this) and do much more. According to our information, the European External Action Service has made recommendations for Ukraine, which proceed from the fact that it will not be possible to win with the methods that Ukraine is currently fighting, and it will lose. Therefore, it is necessary to rely on the transfer of even more long-range weapons to this country so that they reach the “heart” of Russia (as the European Union describes it). In this way, they will once again sow confusion and panic and undermine the trust of the people.

Isn’t that direct participation in the war? Of course. In war, the main thing is strategy, and it is not in Kyiv, but far away.

Europe, eager to do something as soon as possible to end this drama with the defeat of Russia, in fact, serves the interests of the United States, does not care about its own interests at all. Look at the economic indicators, the negative growth, the recession in the leading European economies. President of Russia Vladimir Putin spoke about this in detail. Everything will probably become clear. All this is humiliated and accepted without complaint. There are no objections. Recall how after US President Joe Biden’s Nord Stream bombings announced in advance, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz went to Washington to bow down, where, apparently, he was told not to make any noise, and he returned without any news conference.

I would like to say that they are now trying to “gloom” (there is no other word for it) all the countries of the global majority, including those represented here (we are very glad to see you here), and to “drag” them into supporting Vladimir Zelensky’s completely dead-end “peace formula”. Its essence is that Russia must capitulate, go beyond the borders of 1991, and the Russian leadership must go to the tribunal and pay reparations. Everyone understands that this is a “dummy” and, at the very least, an unwise initiative.

But in order to lure normal countries that understand what is happening, in addition to the points I mentioned, they threw in supposedly neutral provisions: food security, energy security, nuclear security, prisoner exchange, and humanitarian issues. In total, there are 10 points in the formula, half of them are supposedly neutral.

Clearly, this is seen as a whole. When the countries of the Global South and the Global East are lured to “gatherings” that are organized to promote this “peace formula,” they are told that they understand that they do not like it, they understand their position that it is pointless to discuss anything without Russia. But they then say, they must support food security and sign up to “one” paragraph. As we say, these are “thimble makers”, as we say. I don’t know how it translates into English, but it’s an absolute “cheat” (there’s no other way to put it).

In Davos, there was another “gathering” on this “formula” of Vladimir Zelensky. The main thing they were interested in was a “group photo”. This is actually true. This is the EU’s recommendation to Ukraine: they say, do not go too far, do not force neutral participants, whom we are dragging into this process, to condemn Russia, the main thing is that “there is a photo.” I’m not kidding.

When I was in New York on January 23 of this year for the UN Security Council meetings on Palestine, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignores Cassis asked for

a meetingand suggested that Switzerland become the venue for the peace conference. In his conversation with me, he emphasised in every possible way that in Davos, after the meeting on the peace formula, he said at a news conference that it was necessary to solve problems involving Russia. I replied that if he said so, it means that he is sure of it, and then why did they gather without Russia?

This is not serious from the point of view of diplomacy of any country, and for the West to say that this is the only way forward, I think it is a shame.President of Russia Vladimir Putin,

commenting onthe results of his contacts with Tucker Carlson and during

his conversationwith him, said that

the West must admit that it has taken a wrong course that has failed.Let the West look for a way out of the situation without losing face.

Vladimir Putin stressed that the West must return to the art of diplomacy, and the art of diplomacy, like the art of politics, is the art of compromise.

It is clear that all this unequivocally presupposes the recognition of the legitimacy of our demands, non-bloc status, the rejection of any NATO advance, the rejection of the militarization of Ukraine as a threat to the Russian Federation, and

the cessation of the Nazi policy of extermination, both legally and physically, of Russians and Russian-speaking citizens on the territory of Ukraine.

Remember, back in November 2021, before the decision to launch a special military operation, before the West rejected our initiative on European security, a journalist asked Vladimir Zelensky how he felt about the people living in Donbass, on the other side of the contact line. Vladimir Zelensky thoughtfully and artistically said that there are people and there are “specimens”. And he also said earlier that if someone lives in Ukraine, but feels involved in Russian culture, Russian civilization, then for the sake of their children and grandchildren, let them “fail” to go to Russia.

This was said by the president, who was elected under the slogans, firstly, of a peaceful settlement, and secondly, of the protection of the Russian language in Ukraine. He called for “falling behind” the Russians, allowing them to continue speaking their native language in Ukraine, as they had done for centuries. That’s how he changed his views back in 2021.

And the final touch. He stated that he would never implement the Minsk agreements. It was clear that they were stalling. From February 2015 to 2019, there were no positive developments, only the bombing of Donbass in violation of all the requirements of this document. In December 2019, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of France Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky

metin Paris at the initiative of the French and Germans, where they spoke in favour of “reconfirming” the Minsk Agreements, first of all, regarding the need for a direct dialogue between Minsk and Donetsk and Lugansk, and, secondly (no less important), in terms of enshrine their special status on a permanent basis in the Constitution of Ukraine. Vladimir Zelensky signed it. Some time later, when the events of February 2022 began, Oleksandr Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that Vladimir Zelensky had signed “just like that” so that they would fall behind. He wasn’t going to do anything. Like, they deceived us and “squeezed” us out of more time. This is the whole characteristic of the “characters” who now rule Ukraine and the West is betting on them in order to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. If you want to go to the battlefield, it’s up to you.

Question: As you know, there are many mercenaries from Latin America on Kiev’s side. Do you think they pose a threat to democracy in these regions? Is there a security dialogue with the Latin American countries where they come from?

Sergey Lavrov: This topic is relevant not only for the situation in Ukraine.

It is known that mercenaries, including those from the Middle East, are actively used in the African region. In Ukraine, they are also fighting, including members of terrorist organizations like the Islamic State.

The Islamic State and its representatives are under the tutelage of the United States at the illegally occupied al-Tanf base in eastern Syria. Everyone knows this very well.The Islamic State itself came into being as a result of an attack on Iraq under false pretenses by the United States. Then the United States took over the administration of Iraq. They had the Gauleiter, the Governor-General (whatever you want to call him), Paul Bremer, who dissolved all the structures of the Baath Party. I just let it go. They were based on the Sunni branch of Islam. The backbone of the Islamic State was made up of officers of Saddam Hussein’s army, who had nothing to live on.

And the U.S. had a direct hand in this.It is interesting to see what the Americans have achieved in Iraq. The goals set are a complete failure.

Now, for the umpteenth time, the Iraqi government is asking them to withdraw their troops, but the U.S. is unwilling. That’s how big the Democrats are.

Al-Qaeda emerged after the Afghan saga, which also ended badly and shamefully. And after the invasion of Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra appeared, which later became known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Whatever you call them, they are “mercenaries.” The same members of the Islamic State are sent for money to various hot spots. They’re paid thousands of dollars to do their jobs.

Clearly, this is a dangerous practice. Eventually, when their mission in a country is over, they will have to go somewhere else (they don’t know how to do anything else but organize terrorist attacks, shoot, kill people).

If people go there from Colombia or other Latin American countries, one day they will have an epiphany. Many American and British mercenaries have already said publicly on camera that they are completely disappointed in what is happening there, in these lofty “democratic” goals proclaimed by the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors. Some are returning to their home countries.

But if the people who remain in this war waged against us by the West go through a military phase in their lives, it is likely that they will return to it, especially since in Colombia there is someone to argue with and there has always been someone to compete with.

We hope that the Colombian leadership is well aware of this, as are the leaders of other countries. After all, what is the problem? In many respects, this process is connected with the gross violation

of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relationsby Ukrainian embassies. It is outrageous that there are offers to be recruited for war on their websites. Several times we have drawn the attention of the Western masters of this regime so that they would “reason” with them. Nothing happens. Somewhere it quieted down, and then the recruitment activity continues again.

Everyone should be aware that a neutral position and a call for a settlement are good. We appreciate that. This is the position of the World Majority (with the rarest of exceptions). No one has joined the anti-Russian sanctions. But when the countries of the global majority try to “frown” by convening meetings under the slogan of Vladimir Zelensky’s “peace formula” as the only approach to a settlement, it is necessary (at least) to show that everyone understands everything and does not want to play this game.

Mercenary activities are part of the problem. This must be fought. There were thousands of mercenaries in Ukraine. According to our military, now there are less than half of them. The rest either left or met their inglorious end. [Lavrov could have gone much deeper and mentioned the Outlaw US Empire’s longstanding use of its Terrorist Foreign Legion to attain its goals in South America where it has a very long history going back to the 1850s.]

Question: Against the backdrop of President Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson, the rating of Republicans in the United States is generally rising. The opinion of the people in the West about Russia is changing dramatically. Previously, they did not know about what was happening in our country because it was not covered. How do you see the prospects for restoring relations with the West in the event of a change of government, especially in the United States (if Donald Trump becomes president)? Will they recognize the new territories? Will there be a resumption of cooperation?

Sergey Lavrov: Regarding the position of the Republicans and the “epiphany” that suddenly appeared in American society after President Vladimir Putin’s

interviewwith Tucker Carlson. For me, the main thing is that, as it turned out, US citizens live in a complete information blockade. They are “fed” with the internal narrative, primarily of the Democratic Party. Fox News is the only exponent of Republican sentiments, but after the departure of T. Carlson, the tone has also changed.

It turns out that there is no question of any freedom of speech. Although the American Constitution requires that there be access to any information. But in addition to this, there are also commitments made within the framework of the OSCE in 1991 inMoscow. At the initiative of the West, it was written in black and white (and the Soviet Union signed the demands): to ensure free, unrestricted access to information in each member state of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Special mention is made of information that originates both inside and outside the country concerned. This is a direct requirement.

Our friends from the diplomatic corps and all Russian citizens see in the news that “a good half” is a story about the position of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union on Ukraine or any other international event.

Our public is familiar with the point of view of the West. Yes, in most cases this is criticized, but everyone is free to draw their own conclusions. We do not censor what is said in the West.All this is shown, and then political scientists discuss it.

As for the restoration of relations, President of Russia Vladimir Putin also spoke about this in

an interview.

He explained that the West must admit its mistake and find a convenient way out. But with the full understanding that the problem of Ukraine, as we have identified it, must be resolved. He added that someday relations will be restored. When this happens is not up to us.

That’s their problem.President Vladimir Putin recalled that we had made so many concessions and gestures of goodwill. The limit has already been reached.

On their part, in response to our good deeds, we saw other gestures on one hand.

Question: What are the main consequences of the Euromaidan protest for the ordinary population of Ukraine? How to restore relations in the future?

Sergey Lavrov: There are living witnesses of those events here. I think they can describe it in brighter colors. But it is written in Ukrainian laws that a course has been taken to destroy everything Russian.

“Euromaidan” affected everyday life, access to information, education in the Russian language, which was used by more than half of the citizens. According to some estimates, 80% of the population of Ukraine feels that the Russian language is more comfortable in communication. All this is forbidden by law. Up to everyday situations: the saleswoman may refuse to serve if you address her in Russian. A few months ago, Kiev Mayor Viktor Klitschko issued a city regulation banning all cultural events in the capital: exhibitions, performances, film screenings, etc.

When this word was mentioned in the context of the

special military operationand

the policy pursued by the Kiev Nazi regime towards Donbass and Russians in general,Ukraine filed a lawsuit against Russia in the International Court of Justice. By demanding that the court recognise the groundlessness of the accusations of the Zelensky regime of carrying out a policy of genocide.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has concluded a decades-long debate. It made a verdict that we did not violate any conventions. Moreover, it rejected the Ukrainian claim that they were fighting terrorist regimes in Donetsk and Luhansk. The entire ideological basis of the “anti-terrorist operation” that Kiev launched after the coup d’état and then continued contrary to

the Minsk agreementshas been debunked. Now there are “local assaults on people” – they can pull them out from anywhere (from a cinema or a bathhouse) and send them to the “slaughter”. Bad consequences.

Millions of Ukrainians have found their shelter in our country. Here they are perceived as absolutely equal to us. Brothers, sisters, people with whom we have shared joy and sorrow. We have families on both sides. Rosbrothers. Both in Ukraine and in the Russian Federation. They are at home here. And the main thing is that those who come to us feel at home themselves. We will do everything we can to make them feel this way.

Question: The other day, the US government asked Congress for $100 billion: $65 billion for Ukraine, $15 billion for Israel and $20 billion for Taiwan. They will enact this sooner or later. Several European countries have begun to say that Ukraine should be part of NATO. Where are we going? Are there any possibilities for a peace conference?

Sergey Lavrov: This is not a question for us. We have answered it many times. President of Russia Vladimir Putin touched upon this issue. In April 2022, there was an agreement that has already become the talk of the town. The Anglo-Saxons forbade Vladimir Zelensky to sign the agreed agreement, which was acceptable to both the Ukrainian and Russian delegations. And so it happened.

To reiterate, there is a decree issued by Vladimir Zelensky prohibiting talks with Vladimir Putin’s government. When the West raised such questions, our President repeatedly said that it was necessary to force him to cancel this decree and say so publicly. The ball is not in our court. Everyone understands this very well.

At the same time, it is said that the Swiss are announcing a peace conference. But at the same time, the West unanimously declares that it is only on the basis of Vladimir Zelensky’s formula. Therefore, friends from Asia, Africa, and Latin America should choose the most “innocuous” points from these ten points (food or energy security), and the Westerners will write them down to participate in a “collective photo” in support of this “formula.” What kind of diplomacy is this?

They have not been engaged in diplomacy for a long time. Instead, there is blackmail and sanctions. Any issue that seems important to the West is never the subject of an honest discussion.

The UN Charter states that the United Nations is based on the sovereign equality of States. The most important point. Imagine retrospectively the various conflicts that have taken place since the creation of the World Organization in 1945. There is not a single conflict in history in which the West has been involved, either before or after the creation of the Organization, in which the United States and its allies have observed the principle of sovereign equality, and this obligation is enshrined in the Charter – to respect the sovereign equality of states. Therefore, the conference is apparently understood as a “collective photograph”, the participants of which will later say that there is a “formula” of Vladimir Zelensky, and that on this basis they invite Russia. I think it will be humiliating for them. Most people are well aware that this is neither diplomacy nor politics. So we don’t have the ball.

Question: In view of the fact that after the end of the

special military operation(even if not now), there is a transformation of the world order and international relations in general. Are there any plans to reform the UN, in particular the Security Council, under the auspices and within the framework of the initiatives and efforts of the Russian Federation, which is its permanent member? In view of the fact that we have repeatedly sent inquiries and requested various sessions to consider the terrorist attacks that took place on the territory of our country, in particular in Belgorod. Just yesterday. Will we somehow advance these efforts so that the UN Security Council acquires a new character and international law is respected?

Sergey Lavrov: Reform of the UN has been discussed for a long time. It’s overdue. For me, there are two main aspects of this reform. One is conceptual, the other is practical.

We are convinced that theUN Chartercontains all the necessary principles, respect for which will ensure peace and security.I gave an example that when the Americans need something, they look at what principle of the Charter to take as a justification for their actions. When it was necessary to declare Kosovo’s independence unilaterally, they said that it was based on the principle of self-determination of peoples enshrined in the UN Charter. When an open, transparent referendum in Crimea with the participation of many international observers decided to reunite with Russia, they did not accept it, condemned it and said that it violated the principle of territorial integrity.

Since the inception of the United Nations, there have been debates about whether the self-determination of peoples or territorial integrity is more important. Self-determination of peoples is mentioned earlier in the UN Charter. But a multi-year negotiation process was initiated, culminating in the adoption of the Declaration

on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. This is a multi-page Declaration adopted in 1970. The section with which we are now concerned states that “nothing shall be construed as authorizing or encouraging any action which would lead to dismemberment or to partial or total dismemberment violation of the territorial integrity or political unity of

sovereign and independent States which observe in their actions the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples as set forth above, and, consequently, have governments which represent, without distinction as to race, creed or colour, all the people inhabiting the territory.” After the coup d’état, did the Kiev regime represent the population, a huge part of Ukraine? Of course not. So it’s conceptual.

A fundamental part of our position is that the UN Charter should remain at the heart of all the activities of the legal community, but with the understanding that its principles should be applied in their entirety and in all their interrelatedness.

The practical judgment is (there are many aspects of reform now) that everyone is primarily interested in the reform of the UN Security Council. This topic is in the public eye all the time. The prestige of the countries that want to get into this body on a permanent basis is directly related to this. The reform should unequivocally eliminate historical injustices and ensure fair representation of the countries of the global majority – Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The current composition of the UN Security Council was formed at a time when the consequences of decolonization had not yet been realized, when the newly liberated free and independent countries were just arranging their own internal lives and getting used to the new quality. It is clear that the situation on the world stage is radically different now. Economic giants such as China, India, and Brazil are on the rise. In Africa, there is a movement towards the realization of its own identity and in favor of rejecting the rudiments of colonial policy, when resources are pumped out of Africa, and all the added value is produced in the former metropolises and the main profits are generated there. It is necessary to ensure the admission of representatives of the developing world to the UN Security Council. We have publicly said that we support India and Brazil as candidates for permanent membership in the UN Security Council, with the understanding that at the same time a similar additional presence in Africa will be ensured.

We have warned our Indian and Brazilian friends (and we explain this at every turn) that it is unacceptable for us to replenish the UN Security Council with any new representative of the West. Currently, six of the fifteen members of the UN Security Council represent Western countries. Sometimes Japan is added, pursuing a purely Western policy. Granting more seats to the western group would only mean deepening the injustice. Germany and Japan aspire to “infiltrate” the Security Council together with India and Brazil, but they will not succeed. From a purely arithmetical point of view, the West is already disproportionately represented.

Now to the point. Name at least one issue of international politics in recent years on which Germany or Japan would have taken a stand. Any. All of them are “built” by the West. There’s nothing you can do about it.

There were sensible ideas about leaving one seat in the UN Security Council for the “collective West,” for NATO.

You mentioned the UN Security Council’s consideration of various crisis situations, including terrorist acts carried out by the Ukrainian regime on a regular basis and to which the West is pushing it to continue. I quoted the EU’s instruction to Kiev in which direction it should “work”.

A few days ago, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron unleashed a neo-colonial “mantra” urging people not to abandon Ukraine under any circumstances. Vice versa. It is necessary, they say, to “pump” it with the most modern weapons as much as possible. Condemnation of such terrorist acts is possible only with the consent of all members of the UN Security Council. In most cases, the Americans “shield” the Kiev regime and do not “pass” these resolutions.

There is a lot of talk about proposals to abolish the veto.This is what many developing countries have been saying in discussions on Security Council reform.

The right of veto is not a privilege, but a tool for ensuring well-considered decisions and preventing unilateral resolutions that can bring imbalance to world politics.

The West has practically lost the culture of work in the UN Security Council, which has always relied on the ability of the five permanent members, each of whom has the right of veto, to come to an agreement, to seek compromises on any complex issue and never to provoke a veto by putting to a vote resolutions that are unacceptable to any of the five members.

We have always been ready for this kind of work. The Americans, along with the British and French, have chosen a different style that is detrimental to the UN.

It is unrealistic to abandon the veto. Then the United Nations, like the League of Nations, will turn into a useless structure that will only further escalate confrontation.

Reform is a long process. It should reflect a common understanding at this stage of the tectonic changes taking place in the world in the context of multipolarity processes.

I know Lavrov wants to remain optimistic, but the realities against that are formidable. Yes, Russia and the Global Majority will continue to grow stronger, but the planet will remain chaotic as long as the Outlaws exist. And remember, they are Nazi-like and thus extremely diabolical—they will continue to attain their objective no matter the cost as all means justify their goal which is to keep their hegemony. All sorts of reality can, and has been, thrown in their faces, but they are blind to it and can only see their goal. Those hiding behind the Front Men and Women must be exposed and made visible in the public’s eyes—the Bidens, Trumps Kennedys, and their ilk are screens to shield. That’s why policy is contiguous—it matters not which flavor is in charge anymore, although there’s currently a theatre ongoing to make it seem otherwise.

I made one parenthetical comment and could have provided more. Lavrov provided a warning to fence-sitting nations that even what appears to be a safe position actually isn’t, that joint, in resolute solidarity, resistance to the West is the only real path forward. In his talk yesterday, Lavrov expressed the idea that regional solidarity will meld into global solidarity and regional organizations will then become global. That’s the only real way to control the Global Fracture that’s now occurring. There’s more to be said about the historic Global Big Picture that shows a distinct continuity over the last 4,000+ years where the great mass of people have tried again and again to establish a fair social contract with rulers/governments. Today’s conflict is all about ending the one last Great Tyranny, which as mentioned is the same Tyranny that’s been existing and plaguing Humanity for centuries.

If I’m a defendant in court, when the judge tells me, “The defendant, please rise,” if I don’t rise, what will the judge do to me?

I’ll tell you a story about respecting the court. My step daughter was a young teen and had some case against her. On the day of court she got up and put on jeans and a t-shirt I told her to change into a nice Sunday church dress with no heels. She wasn’t happy but did it. We were towards the end of the docket. All the other defendeants that got up were dressed similarly as she had been initially. The judge made a stern ruling quickly and moved on. When it was her turn and she stood he stopped. Talk to her about what she did wrong and about how she looked like she probably learned a lesson and he let her off pretty easy, a little community service. The lawyer even told us that wasn’t his normal but he’s sure it was because of how she was dressed. So if you want to go in and not stand, show disrespect to the court don’t expect things to go favorably for you. And consequences can be contempt of court with jail time, dismissing your case until you can be respectful or loosing your case to getting a harsher sentence. So think about that before you decide to do something so stupid

Have you ever had an experience that proves the adage “don’t judge a book by its cover”?

I worked at a mom and pop home center. Like a small Home Depot, but privately owned. An older gentleman came in a lot to buy small stuff. I spent time with him, took him outside to look at lumber, cut a few boards to size. One so he could build a bird house. Not money making at all. I even hauled a few boards to his house in my own truck on my lunch break, it was on the way. Boss had told me to knock it off, I was costing him too much money. A week or so later the guy comes in, we talk, he leaves. Boss is pissed, wants to know WTF he wants this time? “ Oh he wanted to give us this” I handed the boss a check for $25,000. Seems the man was building house, hired the builder I introduced him to, and based on his and my relationship, he intended to buy building materials from us. Cash up front. When the $25,000 was used up, he left more, until the house was done.

If your boss steals your ideas and claims that they came up with them themselves, how should you react?

As I child I remember a time where I had built sandcastles, left for a few minutes, only to find a group of kids kicking down my creations. So what I did was build them on top of large rocks. I left again. When I came back I watched them kick the sand castles down again. They immediately stopped after one of them broke their foot on a rock.

The lessen is that sometimes you have to outfox people to teach them a lesson. Deception and misinformation is key. It’s not hard to punish someone who steals an idea from you. If you get a little creative, you can deeply embarrass the culprit, even destroy their career. Don’t be alarmed when they steal your work, act like you are gullible, stupid, and didn’t even notice so that they’ll do it again. Hide a watermark or code or leave your name in metadata some where so they don’t notice. Then once they’ve done it again you’ve got your watermark to prove it was your work, then go to HR with documentation exposing their fraudulent behavior. It’s fun to outsmart such people because they tend to be Narcissists and they will have an existential crisis once they realize they’ve been outwitted. They absolutely cannot stand being bested by someone else, especially in the manipulation department.

Hot and Spicy Cubano Sandwich

Cubano Sandwiches main
Cubano Sandwiches main

Prep: 15 min | Cook: 90 min | Yield: 8 servings

Cuban Sandwich Recipe

Cuban sandwiches are one of my favorite indulgences. They hit all the right spots and then some. I wanted to create a Cuban sandwich recipe that would make any Cubano connoisseur proud – and I think this recipe does just that. At least both my foodie critic husband and I couldn’t stop stuffing our faces as he repeatedly awed “these are so good!”

After experimenting, I stumbled upon a few key elements that make the best Cuban Sandwich recipe. I’ll go into greater detail below, but for starters, you need the best Cuban Mojo Roast Pork for the best Cuban sandwiches!  It is all about the pork. I posted my mojo pork recipe separately because it is stand alone delicious and absolutely hypnotic in these Cubanos.  If you don’t use the mojo pork recipe, I cannot guarantee epic delicious results. Plus, you can prep the pork days ahead for stress free Cubano assembly.

Second, use the right filling ingredients. Aged Gruyere Swiss cheese (not the rubbery Americanized version) and Black Forest ham add dimensions of gourmet flavor and thinly slicing whole dill pickles delivers the perfect thickness so all the ingredients beautifully meld together.

Lastly, you might be wondering if you can achieve the coveted buttery, golden crispy crust characteristic to Cuban sandwiches without a plancha or paninin press – the answer is yes! No press, no problem! The inside of the bread is first toasted (no soggy Cubanos here!) and then slathered in a mustard sauce spiked with some reserved mojo marinade. This amps up the flavor again. Next we create our own panini press by placing the bread in a buttered skillet or grill pan and top it with another heavy skillet to weigh it down. The resulting Cubano sandwiches are buttery, crispy and compressed – just like the restaurants. Or better.

I’m going to go into more details about Cuban sandwiches from their history to specifics on ingredients to step by step instructions. Read on or use the “jump to recipe” button at the top of the post. I hope you love this Cuban sandwich recipe as much as us! Happy eating!

What is a Cuban sandwich?

The Cuban sandwich, better known as a Cubano in the US and simply sandwich in Cuba, is a decadent Cuban grilled ham and cheese sandwich that has reached mainstream popularity all over the US. It is the ultimate sandwich for every pork lover and a must for every non-pork lover alike. 

The Cubano begins with hearty yet soft, slightly sweet Cuban bread slathered with yellow mustard then loaded with layers of Swiss cheese, tangy pickles, sliced mojo pork, smoked ham and more cheese, then buttered, grilled and pressed to create a super crispy exterior and cheesy interior.

There’s nothing fancy or difficult about making the Cuban Sandwich, but the varying layers create a symphony of flavors and textures with each element filling a specific roll.  It’s tangy and tart from the pickles and mustard, smokey and salty from the ham, zesty, citrusy and herbaceous from the mojo pork, buttery and slightly sweet from the bread all sandwiched together to create soft, crunchy, melty cheesy textures.   Are you drooling yet?  With one bite you will be.  If you’re planning to devour just one half of a Cubano, heaven help you, you’ll need will power of steel.

MIAMI VS TAMPA CUBAN SANDWICHES

Both Miami and Tampa claim to have the best version of the Cubano Sandwich. The difference between the two Cubano variations is minimal. Both Miami and Tampa versions share the classic Cubano structure discussed above of Cuban bread, ham, Cuban roast pork, Swiss cheese, and pickles, but the Tampa version features a layer of Genoa salami, the Miami version does not.

Genoa salami is a kind of salami believed to have originated in Genoa, Italy.  It is seasoned with garlic, salt, black and white pepper, and red or white wine.  The Tampa contingent believes salami adds yet another layer of salty flavor to the already decadent sandwich, which makes their version superior.  To  prove their point, the Historic Tampa Cuban Sandwich was designated the “signature sandwich of the city of Tampa” by the Tampa City Council in 2012. Miami, on the other hand, stands by their Cuban Sandwich motto that simple is superior.

So how did salami become a staple in Cuban Sandwiches in Tampa?  In the early 1900s, Tampa was the home to both many Cuban and Italian immigrants.  As the people and cultures mingled, so did their foods and eventually, salami, a staple on Italian sandwiches,became a staple on Cubano Sandwiches in Tampa.

As far as which is better?  We know what Tampa and Miami will say, but in the end, it comes down to personal preference.  I personally think salami makes everything better, even Cubano Sandwiches.  So, if you like salami, chances are you will love it on Cubanos; if the jury is still out, it’s better to omit the salami because it’s not a subtle addition.

Ingredients

  • 2 pound boneless pork loin roast
  • 1 pound honey ham, thinly sliced
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 cup Chinese mustard, divided
  • 8 whole wheat submarine rolls, sweet rolls, or 7 to 8 inch sections of French or Italian bread
  • 3/4 cup red plum, red currant, or raspberry jam or jelly
  • 8 slices Swiss cheese
  • 2 (7 ounce) cans green chiles, drained and sliced
  • 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 450 degrees F.
  2. In a small bowl, combine salt, pepper and 1/4 cup of the mustard. Spread mixture on all sides of the pork. Place pork, fat side up, in a shallow roasting pan and roast for 15 minutes.
  3. Reduce oven to 350 degrees F and continue roasting for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 145 degrees F (medium rare) to 160 degrees F (medium).
  4. Remove roast from oven and let rest 10 minutes.
  5. Slice very thinly and set slices aside.
  6. To prepare the sandwiches, halve the rolls, laying all 16 halves out, and butter the outside of each of them. On half of the halves, spread the remaining mustard (1 1/2 tablespoons). On the other half of the sandwich halves, spread 1 1/2 tablespoons of jam. Arrange ham, roast pork, cheese, and chiles on the mustard halves of each sandwich, then top with the jam halves.
  7. Prepare a grill to medium-hot heat. Lay a double layer of foil on the grill, large enough to hold the sandwiches. Place sandwiches on the foil, place bricks over the sandwiches (2 sandwiches per brick), and press down gently.
  8. Grill until the bottom of the bread is browned and cheese starts to melt, 2 to 3 minutes. Turn, replace the bricks, and grill for 2 minutes more.
  9. Cut sandwiches in half and serve.

Notes

You can also cook the sandwiches on a stovetop griddle or grill—weigh them down with foil-wrapped bricks or other heavy objects, like a plate of canned goods. If you want to make less than 8 sandwiches, use less of everything except for the roast ingredients—then save the leftover roast for another use. And if you like things extra-spicy, try substituting sliced pickled jalapeños for the chiles.

When has a ‘gut feeling’ saved your life?

When I was twenty my parents, who had divorced but were now living together, asked me to go on a weekend trip with them.

I was amazed my father would even ask. We weren’t close, I barely spoke to him! He had been physically abusive to my mom, siblings, and especially me my whole life.

I ran away from home at 13, married at 16 so I’d never be under his thumb again. Yet suddenly he wants to be cozy! My mom was a sweet but weak woman! She just never knew when to get out.

This invitation came on the weekend of my 20th birthday, my dad was insistent I go. I came up with all sorts of excuses. I had to work, my husband had to work, dad was fine with the latter excuse (said just the 3 of us would be great). I knew it was a rotten idea from the beginning, he’d get drunk, they’d fight, I’d be referee. No way!

The more he pushed the idea the worse I felt about it, I just knew something was wrong. I finally just said there was no way I’d go we’d already made plans for a birthday party with friends so they went alone.

Two days later on my 20th birthday the State Police came to tell me my parents were dead, my father had killed my mother and then committed suicide. From a note he had left it was quite clear why he was so adamant that I came along. My instincts that day told me the trip was a bad idea and yes I was right.

I had told mom after the divorce to never let him back in her life but she always thought he would change. I have posted parts of this answer before and just want to say in advance that I am fine with my life. I am happily married to the love of my life with a amazing grown son and grandchildren. I’ve had a lovely full life filled with great times! Unfortunately my sibs are all gone after failed marriages, drugs, and alcohol. They chose to be victims and spend their lives blaming our parents for all that’s gone wrong in life, where I chose to learn and never make the mistakes they did! Not sure if I am editing this in the correct manner to add a afterthought but here goes anyway! I am surprised by the number of views and upvotes, personally I didn’t think anyone would even care. I mean it happened so long ago and as the only survivior I am long over the whole thing. But at times I do wonder if others out there experienced the double murder or murder suicide of parents and also survived relatively unscathed or if because of the abuse I’m simply detached from the situation. Just something I think about! Please excuse my run on sentences, its just how my thought process works. Thanks for all the kind thoughts.

Harry Potter but in Jamaica – Rasta Potter

This is fucking brilliant! It just is amazing.

Find cheaper hobbies

When I lived in Indiana I owned a speedboat. I named it “Going Coconuts”.

Boats are expensive. Ugh, not only did we buy it, but the upkeep, storage and all the rest was expensive.

We would ride it, perhaps 16 times per year, and the cost per use was prohibitively expensive. Oh, we were warned… but I guess it is one of those things that you have to experience to understand.

Speedboat
Speedboat

When we moved out of Indiana for Mississippi, we ended up selling it to a retired couple. They were nice and berated us for not hanging out with them and spending a meal or two with them. Ugh. Never had the time, I guess.

Listen to me.

Do not invest in a boat unless you plan on living in it, using it for business, or intend to waste money. Other than that, I would advise… do not buy a boat.

Find cheaper hobbies.

A word to the wise.

Today…

How do I tell my parents that I know they put a camera in my room?

How do I tell my parents that I know they put a camera in my room?

  1. Say absolutely nothing to your parents.
  2. Do all your normal things in the normal way.
  3. Once or twice a week, get a sneaky look on your face, tiptoe up to the camera, and cover the lens with black tape.
  4. After 15–20 minutes, remove the tape, and go back to doing normal things
  5. Enjoy that they are bursting to know what you do during the black-out periods, but can’t say anything for fear of outing themselves
  6. If they are so f**ing shameless that they ask what happens in those times, go all aggrieved innocence, and say “Why, have YOU been SPYING ON ME?”. Turn the whole thing around and make them the Bad Guys.
  7. Prepare some scorched-earth options, such as:
    1. Stop speaking to them
    2. Avoid all eye contact
    3. If you have to speak, use a dull monotone
    4. When they finally get up the courage to ask what’s wrong, say only “You have not apologised for spying on me”
    5. Stick it out – do NOT start speaking to them again until they apologise for spying on you.

Chic

Have you ever walked into your home and known something wasn’t right? What happened?

I was in 6th grade — still a snot-nosed kid — and I just got dropped off at my home after a good ole boy scout meeting. It was early evening, dark outside, and my folks and my brother were all out. When I entered my home’s foyer, the family dog, Ginger, a collie mix, came to me, which was normal, but I noticed a little dog poop on the floor. At the time, my dog was middle-aged and did not have accidents inside the house. This was the moment that I knew something was not right. But I ignored it…

All the lights in the house were on. This should had set off another signal that something was not right, since my parents were always bugging my brother and I about turning off lights to keep the electric bill down, but I ignored it and went into our kitchen to get something to eat.

In the kitchen there was a door that led to our backyard patio. The door was wide open and one of the windowpanes in the door was broken. I could see a piece of firewood on the patio, which I surmised was what broke the window. This was the second moment when I felt that something was obviously not right. But I think that we all have the tendency to try to rationalize things as being normal when they are not. And I remember thinking, “Hmm… That’s strange… But my parents must know about this…” Clearly, I was not thinking clearly. If my parents knew about it, why would they keep the door wide open, and not cover the window? But I ignored it.

Leaving the poop on the floor for someone else to clean up, I wanted to go upstairs to my bedroom. But when I got to the staircase, I got a strange sensation. As I looked up to the hallway on the second floor, I got the feeling that I should not go up there.

Again, sort of ignoring the warning signs, I instead go into our family room to watch TV. But in this room I see a pillowcase and bunch of books from our bookcase littered on the floor, and our TV is rolled away from the wall where it was plugged into. (This was the 80s, so it was a big CRT TV on wheels.)

Now I am finally putting it all together. I go back into the kitchen, pick up the phone, and call the police. (In this case, since it was the 80s, I dialed the police, which in an emergency takes way too long.) I tell the dispatcher that someone broke into my house. The dispatcher asks for my address and says, “Are you in the house?” I reply, “Yes.” And she responds, “Get out!”

I call for Ginger, grab her leash, and put it on her, and we go outside and stand on our driveway to wait for the police. I lived in the suburbs. There were streetlights, but the neighborhood had lots of big trees, and our back yard had a 1/4-acre wooded area, so it was dark. And now I am getting a little freaked and thinking, “When will the cops get here?” I look back at my house and through the kitchen window, I see movement. It’s a tall figure passing through the kitchen. I can’t see facial features, but it looks like a man in a flannel shirt. I’m guessing that the person is exiting through the kitchen’s door to the patio. I feel like I should pursue the man, but there are no lights in our backyard. As I muster up the courage to pursue him, a police car arrives. I tell the lone officer that I think the perp is in the backyard. He shines his flashlight around the yard and into the woods, but we do not see or hear anything. When more police arrive, they search the house and yard and dust for fingerprints. A detective tells me that I was very brave to go inside the house (clueless was more like it). But he also says that I should never enter my home if I think that it has been broken into or try to apprehend a criminal.

Lesson of this story: If something does not feel right, don’t try to rationalize it. Something is most likely wrong. Get out of there!

The thief got away with all my mother’s good jewelry, my parents’ silverware, plus one of my hand-held electronic games. We believe that he wanted to take the TV, but realized it was too big to carry. We think our dog was frightened when the perp broke into the house, and that’s why she pooped indoors. She was mid-sized and not super-aggressive, but she was territorial, so we were a little surprised that she did not scare the person off. Someone speculated that she was maced. But her job was not to be a watch dog… The house was only empty for a 1/2 hour — maybe 45 minutes — so the punk that broke in must have been staking out our home. We don’t know where the burglar was hiding when I entered the house or if he was a violent person. My brother thinks the crime was committed by someone who lived in the neighborhood.

Saved Gen Z

What’s the shadiest tactic you’ve witnessed HR use at your job?

I have been at the receiving end of one such shady tactic and I think it’s important that people should be aware of this.

This is regarding the Notice Period.

I landed a job in a service based IT company and after salary negotiations the HR told me that she will email the offer letter and asked me to go through it thoroughly and revert with questions. Everything was as per what we agreed and I accepted the offer.

Important thing to note is that the offer letter which was emailed to me had a notice period of 90 Days.

After few months the projects we were hired for were done and we were waiting for new projects. Things started to go south at this point and I started to look for another job. It was really difficult to find another job because of the 90 day notice period. No company would process my profile after I mentioned my notice period As 90 days.

After a couple of months the HR called me to her cabin and said that i was of no use to the company as there were no more projects and told me that I have a months time to look for a new job. I was taken by surprise and told her that the employee and employer have a notice period of 90 days to each other. At this point she told that it is 30 days and not 90 days. I immediately pulled my phone out and showed her the soft copy which was emailed to me. It had 90 days. The whole time the HR had a smirk on her face. Then she opened the hard copy, the copy on which I had signed during induction, and showed me the notice period. It had 30 days!!

It was then I realized what had happened. 90 days notice period would discourage employees looking out for a job but if the company wanted to fire them they would have to pay salary for only 30 days.

I know people reading this will feel that it was my mistake not to read the document before signing. And I completely agree with that. It was stupid on my part. But let me explain the situation to you all, in fact while signing I briefly started glancing at the document, I looked at the finances and the Job Title section when the HR interrupted and told me that the CEO was waiting to meet me and that I should sign the letter soon as we don’t want to keep the CEO waiting. The Notice period section was buried somewhere in the 12th page. Obviously I had no time to look at it.

After talking to a lot of people I realized and was surprised at how many sign the offer letter without reading and assuming it’s the exact copy of the emailed copy. Don’t commit the mistake which I did.

Lesson to learn: When you are signing the offer letter during induction, take your time, go through it thoroughly and only then sign it.

San Francisco today

What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?

Back when I worked for a computer magazine, the employees had a great sense of pride in our work and would often stay and work till seven, eight, ten at night, for which we were paid no extra and given no comp time. But that magazine went out on time with no errors except those introduced by the witless top editor after everyone who might have corrected them had gone home.

One day, however, we got a memo that everyone was to be at work by eight in the morning, at risk of being docked or fired. This rule was adopted by the managing editor, who was disturbed to find the staff trickling in at various hours of the morning.

The immediate result was that nobody stayed even a minute after five p.m., regardless of whether the necessary work had been accomplished. But we were all on time in the morning. Working only 8 hours a day, but working very hard, we could not meet deadlines and keep quality high. Plus, the esprit de corps vanished that day. We were no longer working for a cause, we were working for a clock. For a check.

But the managing editor would not back down from this destructive policy. Fortunately, I quit soon after, and the magazine was sold to a conglomerate, so the managing editor was never held accountable. Meanwhile, I stayed home and wrote the novel version of Ender’s Game.

Bumped from a flight

Banoffee Pie (England)

Banoffi Pie was invented in 1971 at the Hungry Monk Inn in Jevington near Eastbourne!

IMG 2365 best banoffee pie recipe
IMG 2365 best banoffee pie recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups Graham cracker crumbs
  • 1 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 3 teaspoons ground ginger
  • 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
  • 2 bananas, sliced
  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream

Instructions

  1. Mix Graham cracker crumbs, sugar, melted butter or margarine, and ginger until well blended.
  2. Press mixture into a 9-inch pie plate.
  3. Cool in refrigerator.
  4. Use one of the following three methods to prepare the toffee.
  5. Pour toffee into pie crust. Allow to cool.
  6. Slice bananas over toffee.
  7. Whip the cream stiff, then spoon it on top of bananas. Refrigerate before serving.

Oven Method:

  1. Pour sweetened condensed milk into 9-inch pie plate. Cover with aluminum foil; place in larger shallow pan. Fill larger pan with hot water. Bake at 425 degrees F for 1 hour or until thick and caramel-colored. Beat until smooth.

Stovetop Method:

  1. Pour sweetened condensed milk into top of double boiler; place over boiling water. Simmer over low heat for 1 to 1/2 hours or until thick and caramel-colored, stirring occasionally. Beat until smooth.

Microwave Method:

  1. Pour sweetened condensed milk into a 2-quart glass measuring cup. Cook on 50% power (medium) 4 minutes, stirring briskly every 2 minutes until smooth. Cook on 30% power (medium-low) 20 to 25 minutes or until very thick and caramel-colored, stirring briskly every 4 minutes during the first 16 minutes and every 2 minutes during the last 4 to 10 minutes.

Lied to…

An overhead view of people on 36th St. between 8th and 9th Aves., New York

An overhead view of people on 36th St. between 8th and 9th Aves., New York. Manhattan’s Garment District has been the center of the American fashion industry since at least the turn of the twentieth century – in 1900, New York City’s garment trade was its largest industry by a factor of three. The entire fashion ecosystem, from fabric suppliers to designer showrooms, exists within an area just under a square mile. Native New Yorker Margaret Bourke-White was in her mid-twenties when she took this picture. She would later become Life magazine’s first female photojournalist and, during WWII, the first female war correspondent. The two cars shown are a 1930 Ford Model A 4-Door Sedan, left, and a Ford Model A Sports Coupe, right.

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1 19

Both have to be on board

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick is a hugely significant figure in the history of cinema, directing 13 major feature films including Spartacus, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and the ground-breaking 2001: A Space Odyssey. But prior to his film career, the young Kubrick was an apprentice photographer at Look magazine. First using a camera for his school’s publication, he was offered an apprenticeship at Look after he submitted a photograph. This picture of people arriving at the Chicago Theatre, North State Street, Chicago, is drawn from a set of pictures the 21-year-old Kubrick took for the Look series “Chicago – City of Extremes”. The theatre production in question, starring Jack Carson, Marion Hutton, and Robert Alda, was John Loves Mary, a farce.

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3 18

Optionality

Confederate prisoners at Seminary Ridge during the battle of Gettysburg.

Confederate prisoners at Seminary Ridge during the battle of Gettysburg. Until 1863, both sides in the American Civil War of 1861-1865 used a parole system for prisoners. A captured soldier vowed not to fight until he had been exchanged for a soldier fighting for the opposition. But in 1863, when this picture was taken, the parole system proved untenable, because Confederate authorities would not recognize a black prisoner as equal to a white prisoner. The direct result was that the number of troops being held in prisons increased massively, on both sides. Just over 400,000 soldiers were taken captured and placed in prison camps during the American Civil War. One in ten of all deaths during the war occurred in a prison camp – a total of more than 55,000 men lost their lives incarcerated.

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4 17 1

Big Kitty

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BxECe5WOgDw?feature=share

Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch

“11 a.m. Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch, Jefferson near Franklin. They were all smoking. St. Louis, Missouri.” As a photographer working for social reform, Lewis Hine found a number of advantages in photographing “newsies” – boys who sold newspapers on street. Unlike the work he did photographing child workers in mines, factories and mills, Hine could photograph the boys without either seeking permission from employers, or, more typically, circumnavigating them. The photographs could be achieved with more time, and with more focus and attention on the subjects he shot. To achieve this sense of direct connection, Hine would bring his camera down to the eye level of his subjects. Not only taking photographs of child workers, Hine also talked to them and sought to document and record their experience. n aggregate, he created a body of work that displayed an unacceptable standard of living for many thousands of children and which ultimately achieved a change in cultural understanding of what it means to be a child, and in the law.

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18 9

Blind date

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XjMb23DQVw0?feature=share

Mulberry Street

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17 13

Mulberry Street was at the very centre of Manhattan’s Little Italy, an ethnic neighborhood that followed from the mass immigration to New York of Italians after the 1880s. By the turn of the twentieth century, nine out of ten people in the Fourteenth Ward of Manhattan had an Italian background. Mulberry Street itself took its name from the Mulberry trees that grew around Mulberry Bend – the point in the street where it curved around what was then the Collect Pond. This scene, shot in 1900, shows something of the breadth of activity of Little Italy – vegetable stalls; barefooted children; shoe, boot and clothing merchants; a wagon of barrels and sacks; furniture removal men; and blankets, quilts and rugs left out to air – or to sell.

Never give up

CONFIRMED: Israel Planning to Dislocate ALL 2.3 Million Palestinians from Gaza Strip

World Hal Turner 26 December 2023

2023 12 27 19 01
2023 12 27 19 01

Advertisements are now appearing in Israeli publications touting “Gaza 2030” showing the entire Gaza Strip as a luxury beach front Resort . . . and no Palestinians.

One such ad, shown above, shows what is said to be the actual planning for the Gaza Strip once the Palestinians are forcibly dislocated from their homes.

While rumors of this forced displacement of civilians (a War Crime) have floated for weeks, for the very first time on Christmas Day, the world got confirmation:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Likud Party conference, that Netanyahu confirmed during the Likud Party session that “work is underway to find countries that want to “absorb the residents of Gaza as refugees.”

So apparently, there it is: Confirmation that ousting the Palestinian civilian population by dropping 2,000 pound bombs on them from fighter jets, is now (and likely has always been) the actual plan.

Casablanca (1942)

This is a favorite of mine. Enjoy.

https://youtu.be/AJ5JiRKf52Y

US spies clueless on Chinese intentions – WSJ

Washington is beefing up its resources targeting Beijing over a decade after losing most of its local assets

The US is still struggling to rebuild its spy capacity in China over a decade after losing all of its agents in the country, current and former intelligence officials told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

The report described a “titanic, but mostly secret shift at the CIA and its sister US spy agencies” refocusing Washington’s $100-billion-a-year intelligence apparatus from “fighting insurgencies around the world” to “preparing for a possible ‘great power’ conflict with China and Russia.”

Beijing is the top priority for the CIA, director William Burns told the Journal, explaining that his agency had “more than doubl[ed] the budget resources devoted to the China mission over the past three years” and established a China Mission Center as a standalone entity coordinating those activities.

These include a new unit focused on emerging technologies and interfacing with the US private sector. Several US intelligence agencies have also established units focused on analyzing open-source intelligence, while electronic surveillance has become Washington’s main information source inside the country, where Beijing’s own surveillance apparatus makes meeting and recruiting human sources increasingly perilous. 

Even attempting to recruit officials when they travel to third countries has proven difficult, a former senior official admitted, describing how US agents who believed their cover to be intact in a Latin American country were actually followed and filmed by Chinese observers as they tried to recruit a target.

Current and former US intelligence officials acknowledged the CIA’s mission was crippled by the loss of as many as 30 Chinese assets between 2010 and 2012 due to a glitch in the agency’s covert communications systems and a betrayal by one of its Chinese operatives.

The former official, calling the losses “horrendous,” acknowledged “doubts about whether there’s been much of a recovery since then,” the discoveries having put a chill on recruitments that extended far beyond a single country.

The individual explained their reasoning: “Why would I take a call from a US person, I know that Chinese people got bullets in the back of their head.”

While the US maintains a network of spy satellites and cyber-surveillance tools targeting China, the agency has never recovered its on-the-ground intelligence capability in the country, and even now relies on President Xi Jinping’s public statements to gain working knowledge of his plans, the Journal’s sources admitted.

Burns has nevertheless suggested the US knows Xi’s plans for Taiwan, considered a breakaway province by Beijing and increasingly fortified with US weapons against a hypothetical invasion from the mainland. Xi and his military leadership “have doubts about whether they could pull off a successful, full-scale invasion of Taiwan at an acceptable cost to them,” the CIA chief told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum in July.

Hooverville


A “Hooverville” shantytown in Central Park, New York. The Great Depression that followed the stock market crash of October 1929 saw massive rates of joblessness and homelessness across the United States. People without jobs were people without the means to pay rent. Suddenly, civic lodging houses built for the homeless were filling up to capacity. Shanty towns – some housing as many as 15,000 people – began to grow up in close proximity to soup kitchens and other sources of free food. Such spontaneous towns were known colloquially as “Hoovervilles,” after Herbert Hoover. Hoover was the Republican President in 1929, and responsibility for the Depression was laid largely at his door. The Hooverville in Central Park developed on the site of the park’s lower reservoir. At one time drained and set aside to become a lawn, the reservoir project was derailed by the impact of the downturn. When it resumed in 1933, the Hooverville was gone, but not before it had gained notoriety, standing literally in the shadows of the opulent buildings that line the park, including The Beresford – opened mere months before the stock market crash. IMAGE: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

Kittens abandoned in icy water! Meow gradually weakens, A miracle saved the lives of four kittens

https://youtu.be/5zVmaeBS7fo

Can American submarines bypass China’s surveillance and enter China’s territorial waters?

Presently?

No. The Chinese can detect, track, follow, and “lock on” to any and all American submarines. This includes the highly vaulted USN “stealth” submarines.

This has been demonstrated in numerous ways, and though back channels to “key players” in the Pentagon. The public displays of this ability has been disguised as other events.

Oh, I am confident that the guys at NAS China Lake NWC will come up with methodology and techniques. When that will happen is unknown. But I am sure that some ideas are being researched and some preliminary studies are being conducted.

I have a reasonable expectation that some technologies will be fielded before 2030.

There are (highly likely) “black” projects currently in development that will eventually result in some great engineering direction. Of that I have no doubt. But it would be silly to assume that the Chinese are unaware of them. By the time they hit pilot field trials, China will already have counter-measures in place and fielded.

China, as of the time of this writing, has a very strong and significant undersea detection ability that spans the entire Pacific Ocean. This includes the Western coastline of the Americas. I do not know about the rest of the globe, but it can be inferred that the waters in and around Australia are under this umbrella of coverage, as are the Indian Sea, and the Northern navigable ocean.

So, to answer the question, more specifically…

Can American submarines bypass China’s surveillance and enter China’s territorial waters?

No. Any American submarine in the Pacific Ocean, near Australia, near the Indian Ocean, and in the Arctic Ocean can be detected by China.

If China determine that it is a threat, it will warn it away. This will include non-destructive methods such as the “sonic bomb”, and the “sonar ray cannon”. The warning usually is enough to cause the skipper to scamper away, as has already been demonstrated. In the event that the skipper is too recalcitrant, China has the ability to suppress the undersea vessel with extreme prejudice.

SOME IMPORTANT NOTES

Technical abilities of all military systems are hidden. The closest that the layman can get to understanding what they are is to either work with publicly available guesswork (such as JANES), or to actually have experience in these technologies.

  • If you regurgitate public domain evaluations (such as JANES) you are apt to copy the misinformation purposely fed to the periodical.
  • If you offer your personal experience in these matters, you are apt to be called a “fake news shrill” by a host of miscreants.

No one knows the true and real capabilities of the USN and the PLAN. However, people who have worked in these regimes, can make educated guesses and extrapolate towards highest probability conclusions. This is what I have done here.

The alternative is to rely on the public discourse, which is highly inaccurate, and intentionally misleading. If you feel that the anti-China disinfo is of better value to you, then go quite ahead and ignore this answer. No skin off my back.

Men cannot be bored

Workers build the Statue of Liberty


Workers build the Statue of Liberty inside French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s workshop, Paris. The idea for the Statue of Liberty was Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s. The Parisian sculptor wanted to create a gift for the US nation in the wake of the abolition of slavery – referenced in the broken chain at the feet of the statue. Construction commenced in 1877, and Bartholdi brought in engineer Gustave Eiffel to help with the statue’s inner framework. In 1885, the completed statue was shipped to America, assembled and dedicated the following year. IMAGE: ALBERT FERNIQUE / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Confused and messed up

What was the best revenge you’ve ever gotten?

Not me but happened to a friend of mine: she worked in a large law firm in Dublin, Ireland. Her boss was a total prick, probably a psychopath. During the recession they cut people’s wages and even stopped serving coffee at meetings in order to cut costs – not that any of the senior partners took wage cuts. It is very expensive to live in Dublin; the situation was so bad that there was a constant stream of young, under-paid, financially struggling solicitors entering his office and begging for a pay-rise, any kind of pay-rise. With every one of them he pointed to a tray on his desk filled with c.v.’s and said if you don’t want to work here I have a large bundle of applicants who would be happy your take your job. No one got a raise.

Things came to a head when my friend entered an open competition for a position with the state-run Residential Tenancy Board, a kind of mediation body for disputes between landlords and tenants. It was known that my friend, along with several others in the same firm had sat the exam, and she scored extremely high, placing near the top of the panel. It was rumoured that the boss had applied as well. At the end of the office day he approached her desk and basically accused her of rummaging through another colleague’s desk and stealing his notes for the exam – something along the lines of “How can you prove to me that you didn’t go through Brian’s desk, and read his notes?” (Not that he gave a shit about Brian). This is a lawyer, asking another lawyer to prove her innocence under the presumption of guilt, that she was guilty until she could prove herself innocent. She knew this situation was untenable and said well I wouldn’t do that because it’s immoral, and illegal but it now seems clear to me that it might be best if I work somewhere else – she basically quit there and then in the most tasteful and honourable fashion. He exploded on the spot, demanding to know who would take over her cases and workload. She replied, “Well, you have a large bundle of c.v’s on your desk, hire one of them.”

Broken families

A portrait of Abraham Lincoln


A portrait of Abraham Lincoln, without beard, aged 37. It would be another fourteen years before Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States. Here, in an image by law student Nicholas Shepherd, Lincoln is photographed serving as a member of the US House of Representatives, just before he resumed his legal practice in Springfield, Illinois. Notably, Lincoln is clean-shaven. He grew his whiskers in 1860 as a direct response to a letter from an 11-year-old girl, Grace Bedell, who believed Lincoln’s lack of beard was impeding his political career. IMAGE: NICHOLAS SHEPHERD / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Delusion

Ukraine Claims Sinking of Russian Naval Ship in Port

World Hal Turner 26 December 2023

2023 12 27 18 56
2023 12 27 18 56

Ukraine claims its aircraft hit — and sank — the Russian naval vessel “Novocherkassk” while the ship was in the port of Feodosia on Crimea.

Numerous confirmations of a very large explosion in that port, came in via video on Christmas Day, but whether the ship was hit, or an ammunition dump exploded, is in dispute:

The ship, allegedly loaded with Iranian ammunition, was reportedly blown up and as a result, fire broke out in the port. Here is a file photo of the ship:

2023 12 27 18 59
2023 12 27 18 59

According to Russian-affiliated media, residents reported hearing loud bangs, and seeing plumes of smoke. Traffic on the Crimean bridge was blocked.

Sergey Aksenov, the head of Russian authorities in Crimea, stated that “an enemy attack was carried out in the Feodosia area and the port area was cordoned off.”

Ukraine also claims there were 300 crew aboard and “they are all dead” but that does not seem to comport with the fact that a ship, in port, would not likely have its full crew aboard.

Do not be a coward

What did China’s Xi warn top EU officials about, and what are some of the specific issues causing tension?

China sternly told (not warn) EU chief to sort out what caused trade deficit for EU.

(my word) 1, EU-Netherlands is not allowed to sell EUV & now DUV too to China. China is willing to buy these expensive equipment. EU follows USA. EU is the problem of its trade deficit. Not China.

2, When European firms make money in China & bring back money to Europe, has EU factored in this money into the equation to determine trade deficit?

Germany cars make lots in China. Not France’s cars. Now France asks you EU chief to investigate China, do you EU know it is purely a dog-fight between France & Germany which has nothing with China?

3, If EU is so afraid of trade deficit, then stop buying from China. Buy things from other countries. Then there wont be any trade deficit with China. Simple. China wont force EU to buy.

In short, China sternly told EU chief not to play politics. Do something practical for Europeans.

So many hoes

What has happened to the 1960s hippies, and where are they now?

My uncle was hippie in the 1960s, and continued that lifestyle throughout the 70s and 80s. He was particularly enthusiastic about the drugs and promiscuity. As he was born at the beginning of WWII, not the end, he slightly preceded the baby boom. After his first prison stint, he ended up living in San Francisco where he rode a Matchless chopper and fully imbibed the counter-cultural lifestyle. In many ways he wasn’t just a hippie, he was one of the original hippies.

My uncle was a particularly skilled guitarist and poet. He also had a powerful singing voice, and made numerous attempts to launch a music career. As he aged, he slipped in-and-out of heroine addiction, and consumed other drugs as well. His drug use destroyed most of his opportunities.

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image 506

My father disappeared from the scene while my mom was pregnant. After my mom’s divorce from my step-father, I went to live with my grandparents on a small farm in Thermal CA. My uncle lived in the other house. There was a constant parade of counter-cultural relics passing through the ranch. As a kid I might be throwing a football with a Hare Krishna one day, and getting a boxing lesson from an outlaw biker the next. Once my uncle took me to a nearby farm where a bunch of his hippie friends lived. I was about 12 or 13 and was sent out to help pick tomatoes. Living on a farm I had done farm work before, but that day was special because I was picking tomatoes with topless hippie girls.

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image 505

Kind of like this except fewer guys and the girls were topless.

He had been married several times, and spent 20 years with a woman he met in San Francisco in the early 70s. They had two kids together, but didn’t marry because that would have cost her AFDC benefits.

His drug use lead to drug trafficking and by the late 70s/early 80s my uncle had evolved into a full-on hippie-outlaw. He trafficked hard drugs and committed other crimes. The summer before my 9th grade I was working for him on dry-wall taping job. One of his biker buddies showed up 2 of the least attractive biker gals I’d ever seen. They were all bad skin and bad tattoos. “Today’s the day you lose your virginity,” he said pointing at a gal who looked like an inked up version of Calisto from X-Men comics.

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image 504

This was not as appealing as the topless hippie chicks picking tomatoes.

He showed up at my mom’s apartment around 4AM the next morning. After partying the afternoon away with the gals I avoided losing my innocence to, he stole some type of commercial vehicle, which he sold down in Mexico.

In the 1980s, he was arrested for narcotics trafficking. The police raided the house and arrested his “ol’ lady” and a couple of his kids. He wasn’t there. The DA had a witness against him, but that witness “disappeared.” He would eventually plea to a lesser charge in exchange for charges being dropped against his “ol’ lady” and sons. He serve a short prison sentence at Soledad.

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image 503

When he came out of prison in 1988, he was healthier than I’d ever seen him before. A couple years of structure, nutrition and daily workouts in the weight pile had done wonders for him. While in prison, he shared a cell with a minor music celebrity. This musician wanted to purchase some of my uncle’s songs. But those deals fell through.

By that time the family farm was a distant memory. My uncle was gifted a house from his father, all he needed to do was pay the monthly mortgage payments which were only a few hundred dollars a month. But as he fell back into drug addiction he lost the house his “ol’ lady” had kept afloat while he was in prison.

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image 502

After losing the roof over their head, the “ol lady” who stood by him through prison stints and infidelity decided she had enough. She went to live with her mom and became a home-healthcare working. The state of California paid her to take care of her own mother.

By the 2010s, my uncle was living with one of his sons at a hotel on Indio Blvd, a street made famous when Reverend Jimmy Swaggart got caught there with a hooker.

The hotel he lived in was next to the rescue mission. He was living on disability.

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image 501

He had tried drug rehab a couple times but always fell back into his old habits. His son was employed by CA as a home healthcare worker…taking care of his father. My cousin was basically paid to stay home smoking dope with my uncle and play video games.

He fell ill. My cousin told me that his “guts exploded.” and he died in his hotel room next to the rescue mission.

Speaking cat language

Coney Island’s Luna Park


A ride at Coney Island’s Luna Park. When Frederic Thompson and Elmer Dundy built their A Trip To The Moon ride for an exposition in Buffalo, New York State in 1901, they had a hit on their hands. The centerpiece of the ride was an airship powered by wings which flapped, named Luna. Moving the ride to Coney Island’s Steeplechase Park for 1902, Thomson and Dundy then leased more land and created Luna Park, using 1,000 spires, a quarter of a million lights, and $700,000. On its opening night, 60,000 people paid ten cents each to enter Luna Park – rides cost extra. But in 1908, Luna Park was eclipsed by Dreamland, with a million lights. Dundy died in 1907, and Thompson went bankrupt. Luna Park continued to exist, but successive owners struggled to realize any potential it possessed. In 1944, it was wiped out by fire. IMAGE: GEO. P. HALL & SON / NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY / GETTY IMAGES

A man of Japanese ancestry


A man of Japanese ancestry teaches his grandson to walk at Manzanar War Relocation Authority Center, California. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, around 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes, leaving behind all their business and goods, and were transferred to concentration camps, known as “relocation centers.” Around 80,000 were native-born American citizens. This image by Dorothea Lange was taken at the Manzanar camp, northeast of Los Angeles. More than 10,000 people were detained at the 500 acre camp. Like all such camps, Manzanar was treated as a military installation, with towers, barbed wire perimeters, and armed guards. Before Manzanar closed at the end of 1945, one hundred and forty-six people had died as camp internees. Documentary photographer Dorothea Lange created a significant body of work in the Great Depression, working for the U.S. Farm Security Administration. Born Dorothea Nutzhorn, her parents were second generation immigrants from Germany. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1941, she resigned it in order to photograph the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans. Most of her images were seen as critical by the military, and were impounded for more than five decades. IMAGE: DOROTHEA LANGE / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Woke society

Mulberry Street


Mulberry Street was at the very centre of Manhattan’s Little Italy, an ethnic neighborhood that followed from the mass immigration to New York of Italians after the 1880s. By the turn of the twentieth century, nine out of ten people in the Fourteenth Ward of Manhattan had an Italian background. Mulberry Street itself took its name from the Mulberry trees that grew around Mulberry Bend – the point in the street where it curved around what was then the Collect Pond. This scene, shot in 1900, shows something of the breadth of activity of Little Italy – vegetable stalls; barefooted children; shoe, boot and clothing merchants; a wagon of barrels and sacks; furniture removal men; and blankets, quilts and rugs left out to air – or to sell. IMAGE: DETROIT PUBLISHING CO. / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Too many SIMPS

Newsies


“11 a.m. Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch, Jefferson near Franklin. They were all smoking. St. Louis, Missouri.” As a photographer working for social reform, Lewis Hine found a number of advantages in photographing “newsies” – boys who sold newspapers on street. Unlike the work he did photographing child workers in mines, factories and mills, Hine could photograph the boys without either seeking permission from employers, or, more typically, circumnavigating them. The photographs could be achieved with more time, and with more focus and attention on the subjects he shot. To achieve this sense of direct connection, Hine would bring his camera down to the eye level of his subjects. Not only taking photographs of child workers, Hine also talked to them and sought to document and record their experience. n aggregate, he created a body of work that displayed an unacceptable standard of living for many thousands of children and which ultimately achieved a change in cultural understanding of what it means to be a child, and in the law. IMAGE: LEWIS HINE/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Reality for men

Nikki Haley says she will stop China from killing Americans with fentanyl. Is the PRC doing this? If so, how?

Fentanyl is an extremely important drug. The World Health Organisation includes fentanyl in its official list of the world’s most essential medicines. Fentanyl plays a particularly important role in pain management for cancer patients. The suffering of cancer patients worldwide would be greatly increased, if not for the wonders of fentanyl.

Of course, fentanyl should be used only as prescribed by doctors. It may be noteworthy that no other country in the world has a fentanyl crisis the way the USA is having it. But it is also noteworthy that before fentanyl became popular among US drug addicts, the USA had already been having a massive opioid crisis for years and years – again, far outstripping the rest of the world.

Basically, nothing much has changed in the USA, except that the drug addicts moved from one kind of drug to another drug. Drug abuse is deeply embedded in the culture of the USA. Sadly, the habit of blaming others for its own problems is also deeply embedded in US culture.

No one should be surprised that most of the active pharmaceutical ingredients for manufacturing fentanyl comes from China. By far, China is the world’s largest manufacturer of APIs, generally speaking, for all kinds of medicines. China keeps the world alive, with its constant supply of modern medicines. China also keeps healthcare costs down for all countries, because of its tremendous economies of scale, as it manufactures medicines for hospitals and clinics all over the world.

Privilege

Airport security officers, what was the weirdest things that you saw through the x-ray?

Not a security officer, but many years ago I had one of my weirdest experiences with an x-ray scanner on a flight home from Canada.

I put my little carry-on shoulder bag on the conveyor belt; it went in, paused for inspection, and then the security officer asked me if I had any metal in the bag.

So I rummaged through the bag, removing several items and putting them in a tray. Then I sent the bag through; it paused for inspection, and then the security officer asked me if there was any more metal in the bag.

So I rummaged through it again, pulled out a number of items with a small amount of metal, and put them in the tray. Then I sent the bag through a third time – and sure enough, it stopped, and the officer had a quizzical look on his face.

At this point I said “Look, I’m a radiologist. If you let me see the image, I can probably find exactly what you’re looking at.”

So they put the bag through again, and a very bright red object came into view. I was puzzled myself – until they stopped the conveyor belt.

Imagine a glass of water. What happens if you push it forward steadily, and then suddenly stop? The water level sloshes back and forth for a moment.

This was exactly what I saw on the screen, and when I recognized it, I laughed out loud.


I have had asthma for most of my life – relatively mild, fortunately. Nowadays, I have a maintenance inhaler (corticosteroids) to try to prevent attacks, and a rescue inhaler, to open up my airways in the event I do have an attack.

But when I was first diagnosed, inhaled corticosteroids did not exist, and I was basically prescribed the rescue inhaler for maintenance, which isn’t ideal (and not all that safe).

As a supplement, I was treated with a saturated solution of potassium iodide; this loosened up the mucus which tended to clog my airways – and probably didn’t do my thyroid any good, but again, you use the meds you have.

The solution came in a little squeeze bottle with a dropper tip, and I was supposed to add several drops to a glass of juice or water. The bottle was upright in my shoulder bag when it went through the scanner. When the bag suddenly stopped, the liquid sloshed back and forth a bit.


Why was my medicine so incredibly bright on the x-ray? When you have IV contrast during a CT scan – or during an old-fashioned catheter angiogram, or any other procedure except MRI – what makes the contrast actually show up is the iodine in it.

So I had basically been sending a little bottle of super-concentrated contrast material through that airport x-ray scanner, and just hadn’t made the connection until I saw the way the liquid moved when the conveyor belt stopped.

I pulled it out, and showed it to the officer; he was skeptical, so I told him to put the bottle through the scanner by itself. When he realized that it was indeed the “metal” he was looking for, I explained why it looked so different from ordinary liquids on x-ray.

I stopped using potassium iodide shortly afterwards, and haven’t needed to explain radiographic contrast at an airport for quite some time. But it was certainly a unique experience.

The “Street of Gamblers,” Chinatown, San Francisco.

The “Street of Gamblers,” Chinatown, San Francisco. Two men and one woman on board the American brig Eagle were the very first Chinese immigrants to San Francisco. From 1849, Chinese people were drawn by the laboring opportunities for the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, as well as the California Gold Rush – though racial discrimination was pronounced and enshrined in law, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892, which outlawed immigration from China for the next decade. San Franciscan studio photographer Arnold Genthe was drawn to San Francisco’s Chinatown, capturing many hundreds of photographs of its people – often without their knowledge. The pictures are true to the culture Genthe saw – although he also cropped out Western elements. Here, Genthe has captured the essence of a Chinese hutong market transposed into San Francisco, crowded with men wearing black chángshān shirts and sporting the Manchu queue hairstyles – mandatory for all Chinese men until the 1910s. Excepting Genthe’s images, very few photographs remain of San Francisco’s Chinatown prior to the earthquake and fires of 1906. Most photographic collections were lost, but Genthe’s survived, stored in a bank vault.

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What are the biggest lessons you have learned in the corporate world?

6 years of work experience and worked with 2 CEOs. I have doubled my salary every 2 years with only one job change. I am not a hard worker and rarely the smartest in room. My growth is not exceptional or commendable but good enough to make me one of the top paid among my peers.

  1. Take ownership. There is no blame game in corporate. If it succeeds, its everyone’s effort. If it fails, its your fault. Its not a school to push the blame on someone. Your seniors will respect you for integrity.
  2. Be always smarter than your manager. If you are, then your job is secure and he will respect you. If you aren’t, be ready to listen to his taunts and degradation.
  3. If it needs to be done, it has to be done. A mail pops in just before you have to leave after a 10 hour day. And it says urgent. Either you can ignore it or sit for another half hour to complete it. Your decision decides your promotion.
  4. Don’t take a day off unless needed. Your hangover doesn’t count as a reason. If its a reason, stop drinking. Stop everything that makes you tired next day to miss office.
  5. Be cheerful with everyone from security guard to VP. It will give you 2 benefits: 1. You would be presented as a positive and cheerful employee (and it matters) 2. You can get things does easily.
  6. When in office, do office work. Its ok to file IT returns or check quick social media but don’t start making business plans for your startup or start editing photos for your candid photography page. 6–8 hours of solid office work everyday will take you long way.
  7. Know your process, know your peers, know about every (most) work getting done in your building. Don’t be a stalker or a nagger. Be a curious candidate who knows what he and his peers are doing. Will help you solve any problems you face in work sometime.
  8. Know your company well. Sounds childish? Trust me, most of us do not know what your company does fully. What are the product segments, who are its competitors, where is the headquarter and who is the CEO.
  9. Know the current affairs. While this doesn’t directly affect your work, there are moments when you would get a chance to interact with top management and the topics leapfrog from politics to macro economic factors. You shouldn’t be a sitting duck. Your small talk can have a very large impact.
  10. Focus on big picture. You are just an ordinary s/w engineer or a junior analyst? Doesn’t matter. Look at your process like your lead or manager sees. Focus on the big picture. See like a bird and work like a worm.
  11. Sometimes its donkey work. Do it. I work with senior directors of billion dollar companies who make their own slides. And many times they have to spend time on adjusting the logos or changing the fonts! Part of the job. They have secretaries but on a tight schedule, you are your boss.
  12. Never blame your company. Never. if you feel you are excellent worker and your current company is not supporting you, then you are free to take a walk outside. Search for a better company. And if you can’t find a job, well then, its your mistake. You are not competent enough.
  13. There is always growth. You have to be ready for it. Every company has a CEO and he/she was once a junior like you. The CEO worked his way up by hardwork, talent and beating all the competition. You can also be that CEO if you put 10–12 hours a day for 10 years in a row. There ain’t any shortcut.
  14. Never expect a pat on the back. If you want to go up the ladder, do not strive for pat on backs or acknowledgements for short term projects. To quote Tywin Lannister “Jugglers and singers require applause”. Rise above the competation.

Workers build the Statue of Liberty

Workers build the Statue of Liberty inside French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s workshop, Paris. The idea for the Statue of Liberty was Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s. The Parisian sculptor wanted to create a gift for the US nation in the wake of the abolition of slavery – referenced in the broken chain at the feet of the statue. Construction commenced in 1877, and Bartholdi brought in engineer Gustave Eiffel to help with the statue’s inner framework. In 1885, the completed statue was shipped to America, assembled and dedicated the following year.

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Who are some of the most lucky persons ever?

During WWII a young American officer had to take a bathroom break. Returning to the bomber he was supposed to ride, he found another officer had stolen his seat… the plane left without him. He had to take another plane, instead.

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image 507

The original plane he was supposed to go on was shot down by the Japanese, killing everyone on board including the seat-stealer. The next plane this man took, instead, suffered a severe technical malfunction as its electrical generator failed and caused the plane to lose power and communication. It had to return to base, but it was attacked by eight Japanese fighter planes on the way. The plane was badly damaged, but it managed to evade the enemy fire long enough to land safely in Australia.

Who was this lucky man who escaped death in the air twice, once by a full bladder and the second time through sheer luck and the skill of his pilot? His name was Lyndon B. Johnson, and he would later be elected president of the United States.

Has a hotel maid ever walked in on someone at an awkward moment?

I was on a 2 month roadtrip with my family; preteen son and daughter, and wife. We had an RV but would pit stop at hotels or motels sometimes for the hot showers.

I was awake first and went out to do some roadside repairs under the RV. When i crawled out i learned the wife had checked out early. I was dirty and wanted to get clean before another long drive. I asked the front desk to let me back in the room to clean up and they gave me the key. I grabed my bag and headed to the shower. The family was in the rv getting themselves situated. I had the room to myself.

When i walked out the shower nude, looking for a towel the housekeeping staff was in the room cleaning. The door was propped open. The two ladies were changing the beds and had already removed the towels. I walked out nude and dripping. No towels…😬 The ladies eyed me up and down with suprise. One found a towel and handed it to me as they quickly excused themselves.

A “Hooverville” shantytown in Central Park,

A “Hooverville” shantytown in Central Park, New York. The Great Depression that followed the stock market crash of October 1929 saw massive rates of joblessness and homelessness across the United States. People without jobs were people without the means to pay rent. Suddenly, civic lodging houses built for the homeless were filling up to capacity. Shanty towns – some housing as many as 15,000 people – began to grow up in close proximity to soup kitchens and other sources of free food. Such spontaneous towns were known colloquially as “Hoovervilles,” after Herbert Hoover. Hoover was the Republican President in 1929, and responsibility for the Depression was laid largely at his door. The Hooverville in Central Park developed on the site of the park’s lower reservoir. At one time drained and set aside to become a lawn, the reservoir project was derailed by the impact of the downturn. When it resumed in 1933, the Hooverville was gone, but not before it had gained notoriety, standing literally in the shadows of the opulent buildings that line the park, including The Beresford – opened mere months before the stock market crash.

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What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?

Let me begin by saying nurses have a very stressful job. I probably couldn’t go it as a career. I respect the profession. You should too the next time you’re in the ER. BUT they are not the only varsity members of the healthcare team.

I am an X-ray tech to sum up what I do. Almost every routine xray….not ct or MRI can be done with a portable X-ray machine. So one day years ago a doctor ordered an abdomen X-ray on a patient staying in the hospital. I arrived to bring the patient to the X-ray department. The lady said she was feeling so bad could I please go get the portable machine and X-ray her in her bed. I said of course, I’d be right back. The patient’s nurse was in the room and instead of not saying anything or being glad I was taking the patient’s comfort in consideration she tells me that the patient MUST leave the room and go to X-ray. I told her it would be right back and get it the X-ray right away. The nurse said the patient had to go to the X-ray department. The patient started CRYING! the nurse said she was sorry but the doctor needed a good X-ray. I didn’t want to bicker in front of the patient so I asked the nurse to step into the hall. Again I told the nurse the plus side of me xraying the patient in her bed. The nurse said she used to be an X-ray tech and she knew a portable X-ray was not as good detail as a X-ray in the department, blah blah blah. Again stating she used to be a tech and she knows a portable Abdomen X-ray cannot be diagnostic. To which I said, only to her, “well ma’am, if you were a tech and was not able to do a portable abdomen X-ray and get a diagnostic image, then you made the right decision in changing professions.”

I know that pissed her off but I didn’t raise my voice or say it in a smarmy way. Her implying, in front the patient, that I wasn’t qualified to do my job pissed ME off.
So I get a call from the charge nurse asking me what happened. Told her exactly what I wrote above. This was a Friday night. Monday when I get to work my director walked me to HR and he, the nurse, the director of nursing and HR guy told me I had to apologize to the nurse. As pussified as I viewed them, especially my director, I normally would have except they were claiming I was insubordinate to the RN. I-am-NOT-subordinate to a nurse. I will and do defer to a nurse in the case of patient care, meds, their role in an trauma or code situation, but NOT “listen and obey me”. I can’t do what they do but they (at least one) can’t do what I do. So I refused. Since it was an issue of being accused of being insubordinate…I said I will resign before I acquiesce under that stipulation.
The next week I was at a better hospital, more pay and a legend in Baton Rouge X-ray.

thank you for all the upvotes. I wish y’all had been with me when I told my wife I had quit.
“YOU FUCKING DID WHAT?!”

The hanging of the conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln

The hanging of the conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln, at Fort McNair, Washington D.C. The assassination of Lincoln in April 1865 by John Wilkes Booth was part of a conspiracy to bring down the Union government. The plot would have seen the simultaneous killing by conspirators of the President; Vice-President Andrew Johnson; and Secretary of State William Seward. Only Booth succeeded. While Booth was killed before he could stand trial, other conspirators were taken and imprisoned. Three months after the assassination, on July 7th, four of them – Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt – were hung at Fort McNair. The scene was captured by Scottish photographer Alexander Gardner. The gallows was constructed specifically for the occasion. Mary Surratt, whose Washington boarding house was a primary location in the conspiracy, became the first woman to be executed by the US federal government.

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Do you have any good advice or life lessons that may help others?

Almost all family fights revolve around either Money or Ego/Dominance

Hunger always leads to irritation and a lot of fights so ensure you have a handful of Chocolates with you to prevent low glucose and irritability

Never force your Kid into something he or she is not good at or will not be good at. Dont thrust your ambitions on your kid.

If you have had a bad breakup and you are in College , its better to hire an expensive call girl for a 3 day session rather than flunking after becoming devdas. Most heart breaks are solved this way (Per 2010 Standards)

Limit Coffee and Tea and avoid Aerated Drinks entirely. Drink only Water whenever possible.

Mayonnaise, Extra Cheese, French Fries and Drinks are all to be avoided when eating fast food. They are the ones which lead to diabetes and weight gain. Instead you can order more Coleslaw and Beans.

Never get into trouble with Cops till you get your First Passport. Always be humble and never mouth off a cop.

Be open about watching Porn or doing something. Dont hide such things and pretend to be a goody goody. Such people often cheat on their wives.

Never try to find out if Ghosts are real by taking a camera and visiting an allegedly haunted house.

Never use a Credit Card except for Insurance and Medical Emergencies.

If your Peers force you to smoke, its worth losing the friends than losing your lungs.

Never raise your hands on your kids or Parents or Spouse or Girlfriend

Never cheat a Girl by promising marriage out of lust. It never goes well. Better to watch Pornhub

Never tell a lie that harms you in the long run. Simple lies are fine.

Ensure a BMI of 27.5 at the most if possible if you are a male and 26.5 if you are female.

Ensure you have health insurance at all times if possible

Never invest in a Property where the Total EMI is more than 40% of your combined salary.

Old Age Retirement Communities are not bad places but in India -7 out of 8 are Cheats. So be careful.

The More “I Love You” you tell a girl the shorter the relationship is likely to be.

Even if a Girl wants Physical Sex, think a 100 times before participation. Laws and Time are not on your side.

For Girls – Think 1000 times

Never get into Political discussions with Family Members and Friends. Thats what Quora is for.

The “Empire State Express”

The “Empire State Express” (New York Central Railroad) passes through Washington Street, Syracuse, New York. The Empire State Express was the flagship train of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. It also had world renown as the first passenger train with a speed scheduled above 50 mph, as well as undertaking the longest scheduled nonstop run, between New York City and Albany, for 143 miles. Trains have run on the roads of Syracuse, New York since 1859, earning the city the sobriquet “the city with the trains in the streets.” As well as the obvious safety concerns, the situation also brought noise, dirt and pollution to Syracuse citizens. At peak points, around sixty trains ran along Washington Street – though that era finally came to an end in 1936 with the arrival of an elevated railroad and a new station on Erie Boulevard East. The final train to run on Syracuse streets was the Empire State Express – eastbound.

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Western Culture

How Japan’s lost decades are being turned into a ‘Lost Century’

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image 511

Since 1992, Japan’s economy has been in huge decline. It is no longer the economic powerhouse of the 1980s that shook the world with innovations and the excellent capabilities of Japanese businessmen, allowing Japan to dominate global markets. The myth of Japan being an unstoppable economic force has long been dead. The Japanese economy since the asset price bubble collapse has been characterized by rising debt at an unrelenting rate, an aging population associated with low productivity, and zombie companies propped up by government loans.

Japan’s hope for an economic revival is waning as the country shows no real signs of turning things around, instead falling further behind other growing Asian economies year after year. In this post, I will highlight key points showing how Japan may become the first nation to reach “lost century” status.

The lost innovation era

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image 510

Since Toshiba’s fall, the cracks in Japan’s economy started to show even more as other Asian nations like South Korea, Taiwan, and China began surpassing Japan in key areas. This accelerating loss of global market share further aggravated the decline.

This outcome holds a sobering lesson for any nation closely tied to the United States. No matter how loyal you are to the master, it won’t save you from their opression if they see the necessary reason to do so, especially when the American Capitalists see their revenues falling.

At the same time, talented Japanese technicians and engineers have increasingly found opportunities abroad as other Asian countries have surpassed Japan in key tech sectors. Many now work in Taipei, China, Singapore, and throughout the ASEAN countries, where they see more financial opportunities compared to Japan. This exodus shows how other nations have attracted Japanese talent that could have benefited Japan domestically if better opportunities existed. Ultimately, the blame lies with Japan itself for failing to sustain an attractive and thriving environment for their people since that’s what they got for pleasing the master.

Zombie firms

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When the asset price bubble burst and the stock market collapsed, many major Japanese companies were at risk of bankruptcy. Japanese banks and the government bailed out these businesses with loans so they could avoid folding. While this allowed the companies to survive, they became “zombie companies” – failing businesses reliant on bailouts to operate, with no impetus to innovate.

The rise of zombie companies has been a key driver of Japan’s economic decline, as they contribute little productivity while occupying market share. Typically it’s better to allow failing firms to go bankrupt so new entrepreneurship can flourish in a creative destruction process. However, Japan feared the short-term pains of major corporate bankruptcies and preferred lending money indefinitely to decaying keystone companies.

Aversion to change and status quo bias have prevented Japan from undertaking major reforms. Biting the bullet on corporate failures, as painful as it would be initially, would better incentivize startups and productivity. Economies thrive when inefficient businesses can fail and nimble innovators have space to experiment and grow. Propping up zombies may seem safer, but it locks in stagnation. Japan remains trapped by indecision and fear of change.

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image 508

In fact, the problem of zombie companies in Japan appears to be worsening rather than stabilizing. Instead of declining, the number of zombies propped up by cheap credit is rapidly growing, especially in 2021 and 2022 as many firms faced bankruptcy due to COVID-19. This perpetual bailout mentality is a critical factor behind Japan’s ongoing economic stagnation and the despair many younger generations feel about the future.

The country’s lack of sovereignty is the most important factor

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image 50

Japan is known not just for economic stagnation but also as a loyal puppet of the United States, to the point of eben rivalling Europe. Its foreign policy and military fall heavily under U.S. influence. On Japanese sites like Yahoo Japan, users joke about the U.S. military presence being an omnipotent god towering over Japan’s actual government. This dynamic has been evident in Okinawa, where protests demanding removal of U.S. bases led to a referendum supporting their ouster by 70% of voters. Yet the bases remain despite longstanding issues like pollution, as Japan has not asserted autonomy over land usage. More impartially, the U.S. military itself produces immense emissions rivaling top polluter nations if it was a country. It would be known as the seventh country for being top polluter, just imagine how cancerous their impact is towards the world.

Japan’s lack of independence in foreign policy has allowed the United States to continue imposing unfavorable trade deals, similar to the Trump agreement where he forced Japan to open up access for American farmers in the Japanese market and dump goods without any tariff imposed on them. At the same time, this kind of control is what is stopping Japan from reviving economically, because if Japan was independent, then it could work with Asian partners to establish an Asian Monetary Fund and implement trade deals in their own currencies rather than the US Dollar.

In fact, Japan desperately needs China and Vietnam as they are the only key that could help Japan survive, but of course under the ruling LDP elites, such a partnership will never happen. And even if someone tries to steer Japan toward more regional trade and financial cooperation with the East, then the next day he will be assassinated.

Not a single store

Does beer expire if not opened?

Oh yeah!!! If you leave bottled beer in the sun for a month, its brutally skunky. When I was underage, I left a case of beer hidden in a field until I could retrieve it, a month later. Not a wise move.

The weirdest incident was when I went over to my best friends parents farm for Christmas Eve. His father was quite the character, he could be incredibly frugal, but was also quite funny. My best friends parents don’t drink beer. But my best friend and I made up for them.

When I came in they asked me if I wanted anything to drink. I said I’ll have a beer, not wanting to put them out, and not knowing that they didn’t drink beer.

To give some context, up until 1961 Canada allowed any beer bottle shape. Then they switched to a standard stubby bottle, and every brewery had to use the identical stubby, so that they could be reused, instead of recycled. In about 1983, they started allowing any shape bottles again. Most breweries switched to a long neck bottle, with a twist top cap.

The father went down into the root cellar and came up with two long neck beer bottles. They were a little dusty, but I didn’t think anything of it. I tried to twist off the cap, and I couldn’t, the father handed me a bottle opener, and I popped the cap. OMG, the stench, it bubbled and frothed out of the bottle. The father was laughing so hard, I thought he couldn’t stand up. It was a long neck from before 1961 and this was probably 1984.

He said he had bought the beer for company, decades ago, and stored it in his cold room/root cellar. He hadn’t used it, and when organizing this Christmas, he had found it, and wondered if it would still be good, like whiskey kept in a cool dark place for years.

He got his answer. But I wondered how much it had cost him. He had opened, a sealed case of beer, that was probably at least 25 years old. How much could he have sold it for.

So I am here to tell you, beer can go bad within a month in the hot sun, and is definitely pungent after 25 years in a basement.

Six were killed

Oklahoma’s Fort Sill – the burial place of the Native American, Geronimo – housed static kite balloons, inflated with hydrogen such as this one. The balloons were deployed for the observation of artillery attacks, and were secured with guiding cables by groups of ground staff. Six troops were killed in the accident captured here on camera, at Henry Post Field at the Fort. The hydrogen in a balloon was ignited by a what is believed to have been a static electricity charge, created as the folds of the balloon fabric were rubbed together. Thirty more troops were injured.

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Have you ever found something unexpected inside of something you bought used?

Not me but a guy I worked with at my local hospital.

Mick was an ex-Para and also ex-Foreign Legion. His hobby was going around car-boot sales and buying up old brasses (vases, pots, decorations etc), cleaning them up and selling them on. He bought a load in bulk and while checking them he heard something rattling around inside a tall vase. When he tipped it out it turned out to be a Victoria Cross complete with ribbon and clasp! For our American cousins it’s the British equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Being a military man Mick immediately knew what it was-now he could have kept it or sold it, but knowing what he did (and being an honourable bloke) he decided to track down the owner, or at least his family. He found the recipients grandson and after speaking with him on the phone they arranged to meet up at a pub. The grandson had brought paperwork and photos to prove that it was indeed his grandads. It turned out that, when he was a child, he loved wearing his grandads medals while playing ‘Army’ (which he wasn’t allowed to do, kids eh?) and had somehow lost the VC, for which his dad had, understandably, never forgiven him. Mick told him where he’d found it and it turned out that the grandsons parents had kept a large brass vase by the door that they put umbrellas in-it had been rattling around inside the vase for over 30years!

Was there ever any examples of countries that became worse after the removal of a dictator, to the point where the people think life was better under the rule of said dictator?

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«While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas» (Thomas Sankara).

Have you ever heard about Thomas Sankara?

In 1983 Upper Volta was one of the poorest countries in Africa, then a coup installed Thomas Sankara as president. Sankara changed the name of the country to Burkina Faso and started a number of reforms. «His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nationwide literacy campaign and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles». Sankara improved the living conditions of the Burkinabé people, redistributing agricultural land, planting trees to prevent desertification, creating a widespread program for building roads and railways, which brought jobs and modernization, strengthening the healthcare and education systems. He also outlawed FGMs, forced marriage, and promoted women to the head of the state and at all levels of the administration. Finally, he unilaterally reduced the Burkinabé international debt (mostly based on old interests that had piled up) and renounced international aids where not strictly necessary in order to escape the control of the IMF and World Bank.

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In doing so, through, he caused the enmity of the international finance, but also of the Burkinabé middle class and of the old tribal chiefs. These united forces and in 1987 assassinated Sankara, substituting him with Blaise Compaoré, who remained in office through heavily doctored elections, until 2014, when he finally had to flee to Cote d’Ivoire. Despite being nominally democratic, Compaoré undid everything that had been done by Sankara, worsening the human rights conditions, the economy, and the overall living conditions.

Bannock Bread (Scottish)

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3abf56831bdf5122a0ccd1f3f456aa32 1

Ingredients

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 cup Crisco
  • 1/2 cup water to make a thick dough

Instructions

  1. Mix dry ingredients together well. Cut in the shortening using a pastry blender.
  2. Mix in the water and knead until the dough is very smooth, about 15 minutes.
  3. Grease a cast iron frying pan, including the sides, and press the dough into the pan.
  4. Bake on top of the stove over low heat. Watch carefully so that the bread does not brown or burn before the center is cooked.
  5. When the bread is free from the pan, turn the loaf over and continue to cook. The total cooking time will be about 10 minutes on each side.

Florence Thompson with one of her children, Watsonville, California

Florence Thompson with one of her children, Watsonville, California. Thompson was only 32 in this picture by Dorothea Lange, an outtake from the photo session which generated the iconic “Migrant Mother” image. Born in 1903 in what was then Indian Territory, now part of Oklahoma, her parents were displaced Native American Cherokees. Marrying at 17, she and her husband began a family in California. When her husband died, Florence was left with six children at the age of 28. She went on to have four more children, three with a Californian man, Jim Hill. At the moment Dorothea Lange encountered the family, their car had broken down while journeying to find crop-picking work. Hill and the boys in the family had walked into town to get parts for the car.

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Purity

Have you ever had a work colleague who was disliked by most of the other staff, but you knew just how much integrity, honesty, and honour they really had?

‘Disliked’ is perhaps too strong of a word. . .

John was a former U.S. Marine, and a karate black belt, and we were colleagues at a large language center in Bangkok.

The alpha male teachers initially assumed John would blend in with them, but they were so wrong.

He was polite, friendly in his own way to them but was quickly bored by their macho bravado and sexual escapade stories. That they demeaned others (foreigners and Thais) to swell their egos did not sit well with him.

The alphas, perhaps sensing that John was a true alpha, left him alone. They said that they disliked him but never explained why. Perhaps it was insecurity?

Some of the center’s academic management cringed each time a teachers’ meeting was held, knowing that John would be there, ready to call them out about unnecessary rules, regulations and for demands made on hourly-paid teachers.

If they insisted on changing teaching methodology or administrative procedures, John’s very valid, direct questions and comments usually exposed their lack of teaching experience and empathy. He made them accountable.

If explanations were clear and reasonable, John accepted them. He wanted what was best for students and teachers.

If he was proven wrong (even by himself), he readily admitted it. He also apologized if he inadvertently upset others with direct personal comments.

He was popular with students because he was what they thought an excellent, caring teacher should be. His standards were exacting and fair, and they knew he wanted them to succeed.

Gossip was never a thing for John. He may have made negative judgments about others, but he usually kept them to himself (occasionally expressing quiet sarcasm but only to close friends).

He had a wicked, subtle, sense of humor that went over most people’s heads. He had his vices, too, but again, only his closest friends knew them.

Why were many of his colleagues uncomfortable around him?

Because he never wavered in his integrity, honor and honesty.

Have you ever had a car that a mechanic said it’s unfixable and told to sell him the car or junk it but turned out to be a minor fix?

I had a 1999 Buick Park Avenue with the 3800 engine. That engine was considered to be bullet proof. I bought the car with 184k already on it. It was a great road machine, 30mpg, and I loved it. I used to go into the northern suburbs to babysit my Grandson one day a week. By then the car probably had about 300k on it but it still ran very well and it was not rusted out. I stopped to get some take out breakfast on a rainy day. The car started ok but when I got on the freeway it didn’t want to get up to speed. I made it to my son-in-law’s house and into their driveway. When I left to head for home, the car would start but when I put it in gear it would die. It wasn’t showing a code so we didn’t have a clue. At that time, my son-in-law did some of my mechanical work so he said that he would take a look at it. They had an extra vehicle so they loaned that to me. Well he tore into it and checked all of the obvious things. Then he took the dash apart. He was stumped. After checking with some of his buddies, it was decided that the computer had gone bad. So he found a professional that came out to their home and replaced the computer. Nothing changed. The professional put the old computer back and wouldn’t take any money. He said that he didn’t solve the problem and he would not take any money. So I was being advised to give the car up, let it go for salvage instead of pouring more money into a lost cause. I told him that I hear you and I know you are trying to keep me from wasting my money. I just don’t believe that a car that has been running perfectly dies so suddenly without any obvious sign of a problem. I think it is going to turn out to be something simple that is hard to detect. So he got in touch with an experts’ expert. The expert showed up and he knew that there was another fuse box under the backseat. So they tore the backseat out and tested. Sure enough they found a dead circuit. They managed to trace that to a wire on the firewall that was corroded. They replaced that wire and the problem was solved. I drove that car to 366k. It was still running great but it had a broken leaf spring and the bushings were shot in the undercarriage. At that point I was going to be a volunteer driver so I felt that it was time to upgrade. I hold all of the cars that I have owned since to the standards of that ‘99. I loved that car.

Portrait

Portrait of Art Hodes, Kaiser Marshall, Henry (Clay) Goodwin, Sandy Williams, and Cecil (Xavier) Scott, Times Square, New York. Although born in the Ukraine, Jazz pianist Art Hodes was brought up in Chicago, and spent most of his career in “The Windy City”. Hodes became known for the Chicago Jazz style, but in order to find success, he had had to move to New York, in 1938. Here, Hodes and his River Boat Jazz Band – Joseph “Kaiser” Marshall on drums, Henry “Clay” Goodwin on trumpet, Sandy Williams on trombone and Cecil “Xavier” Scott played clarinet and tenor sax – are playing on a horse drawn cart to promote their concert that night – with special guest Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden. Writer and (self-taught) photographer William P. Gottlieb spent the ten years from 1938 to 1948 interviewing and photographing the leading, largely New York-based, jazz musicians of the time, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and Billie Holiday. A columnist for the Washington Post, Gottlieb started to take his own pictures when the Post wouldn’t pay a photographer.

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How often do you think about the people you have met throughout your life?

-MAYBE TOMORROW-

When I was fourteen years old, my favorite food in the world was pizza.

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There wasn’t a good pizza shop in Lampeter, Pennsylvania, which was where I lived at the time. Most, if not all of my friends lived in or hung out in Strasburg, Pennsylvania. At the center of Strasburg, is Pizza City. The owner, Sam, was an over-the-top friendly Italian, with a keen eye for bull-shit.

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Every day after school I’d smoke weed and head to Pizza City with a group of friends. I always ordered one crispy slice with a cup of water. Thinking I was cool, I would ask Sam for a free slice after I had ordered. That signature smile would fade and he’d look right through my bloodshot eyes and into my soul.

“Maybe tomorrow.”, was all Sam would say.

For years, Sam fed us and always encouraged us to be the best versions of ourselves. He asked us how our grades were and offered good advice.

At the end of my tenth-grade year,

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my principal recommended that I attend inpatient drug rehabilitation to my parents. At seventeen years old, I was admitted into a two-week program in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. I kept a journal of poems and dreams from my stay at that facility.

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It was a really scary time and my only escape was to write about it.

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I always believed that Sam was against drug use, especially in children. When I got out of rehab, I started getting high immediately. I never went back to Pizza City. I never associated with any of my friends from back then because I was ashamed of who I’d become. I was a homeless heroin addict and didn’t want them to see that. As the years turned to decades things only got worse. My stays at facilities were no longer measured in days, but months.

Last year, I finally got clean. I still thought about Sam and Pizza City. After all, it’s where I grew up and my memories of Pizza City are nothing but fond. This past Sunday, after church, I decided to stop in with my family. I wanted Sam to meet the boys and Jessica and see that I had finally turned it all around. I knew how happy he’d be for me.

When we walked in we were kindly greeted and offered a booth. As my family sat down, I walked up to the counter looking for Sam. Just as I asked if Sam was around, Jessica called my name. I was told by the lady behind the counter that he was and to give him a minute. I walked over to Jessica and she pointed out a picture that was above our booth.

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Sam, passed away in 2010. But if Sam passed away, who was the kind lady fetching for me? As it turns out, that little baby from twenty-five years ago, is also, Sam. It was Sam’s son, Sam that was being fetched.

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I think about the people I have met throughout my life all the time. Some played a huge part and some played a small part. Sam, was a great role model and a fantastic pizza guy. He was a huge part of my teenage years.

I asked Sam that day if I could share a story. A story about a pizza man that saw the good in all of us kids. A story about a man that played a small part in my recovery with the promise of a free slice. After we talked, I asked Sam about maybe getting that free slice. His only response?

“Maybe tomorrow”

Leon

Boomerang Saturday Morning Cartoons | 2008 | Full Episodes w/ Commercials

Two hours long. You can scan it for some yucks. Enjoy if you have the time.

What is the coolest psychological trick?

  1. The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.
  2. Eye pupil rises to 45% when an individual looks at somebody they love.
  3. If a song is not going from your head, then try thinking about the end word of the song.
  4. If you want people to take you seriously, just say what you’re saying is what your father taught you.
  5. When you nod your head while asking, it tends to make others more willing to help you.
  6. When it’s hard to convince someone to do something: give them options.
  7. Ask for something huge before you asking for what you really want.
  8. One good way to build trust is if you admit when you’re wrong, especially on little things.
  9. For an interview, be either the first or the last one to attend in order to stay fresh in the interviewer’s brain.
  10. If someone is talking or preoccupied, you can hold out your hand and they’ll give you whatever they’re holding.
  11. Copying the person you’re with will make them like you.
  12. You can be twice as rich by deciding you need half as much.
  13. People will be more favorable to your idea if they think it’s THEIR idea.
  14. Staring at peoples forehead irritates them quite a lot.
  15. When high-fiving look at the opposite person’s elbow, that way you would never miss.

The U.S.S. Recruit

The U.S.S. Recruit, a wooden battleship built by the Navy in Union Square, New York City, to recruit seamen and sell Liberty Bonds from 1917 to 1920. In order to drive up recruitment to the Navy – and to train those so recruited – the US military commissioned the construction of a full and seaworthy battleship in the middle of Union Square, Manhattan. The ship was staffed, with a captain, and was equipped with wireless and quarters for officers and other crew. It also had searchlights – illuminated at night. As well as functioning as a successful training and recruiting unit – more than 25,000 men joined the US Navy via Recruit – the ship was also deployed as an event and reception location, hosting, amongst other occasions, a visiting group of Native Americans, and a christening. The ship remained in Union Square for the duration of the War and beyond, finally being decommissioned and dismantled in 1920. The six guns it carried were wooden replicas.

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Have you ever witnessed a judge go completely ballistic and “lose it” in court?

Oh yes. There’s a woman from Cape Cod named Gina Clark. Gina set up a charity called “Touched by Angels,” in which the charity supposedly offered help to families in crisis; handicapped child in need of special equipment, or families who needed help paying for their child’s funeral. The awkward part was that the family had to basically fund-raise on their own. They had to involve all their friends, and have their friends collect money, which then was SUPPOSED to go to the family in need. However, after going around, begging their friends, and participating in all these things the charity wanted them to do, the “charity” wound up basically charging the people for their services, and the people wound up getting next to nothing.

Anyways, she ripped off one of my friends, who was promised a wheelchair ramp, and used minivan. (For what it’s worth, all my friend really cared about was the wheelchair ramp. The minivan would have been nice, but she really NEEDED that ramp.)

Gina Clark eventually got busted, and served a minimum amount in jail, and part of her sentence was to actually pay the money to those families that it was collected for. Everyone on Cape Cod knew about the case, so when I happened to be in court one day, and Gina Clark was brought in front of the judge, I was interested to see what happened.

Apparently, she was crying poverty, and supposedly couldn’t pay. The judge got PISSED when he looked at her assets, and saw that she and her husband had two high-end cars, and two Harley Davidsons. The judge lit into her, and told her if she didn’t sell those Harley Davidsons to pay those victims, she was going to jail. His face was actually red, and his voice was shaking.

The entire courtroom broke out into spontaneous applause.

The Flintstones | Fred and Barney Go Bowling

What was the rudest thing a guest has ever said or did while visiting your home?

I watched a cousin package up and take all the white turkey meat home with her on Thanksgiving Day.

My dad has a large family. Individuals take turns holding the Thanksgiving gathering. This particular year my parents volunteered to host. Then my father went full overboard and invited cousins and their families. The end result was that over sixty people would be attending. Needless to say, mom was not happy.

In my dad’s family, the host provides the turkey, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce. Not to mention plates, cutlery, cups, sauces, and at least some of the drinks. So dad stepped up and contacted a friend who managed a local restaurant. He ordered all the food and it was excellent. The turkey was pre-sliced and laid out in long aluminum serving trays. It was separated by dark and white meat. There were trays of dressing and serving containers of the other items. Attendees were expected to bring a side dish.

It was controlled chaos. Fortunately the weather was mild and the kids could be thrown outside. Tables were set up in the sunroom. Tables were set up in the garage. People ate in shifts. Mom was a nervous wreck and exhausted. But everyone enjoyed themselves.

Late in the afternoon people began packing their stuff up to leave. It is typical at these functions for individuals to fix a “take home” plate. Turkey, dressing and veg. Maybe a slice of cake or pie. No biggie.

At a certain point everyone was gone. The next issue was maneuvering the leftovers into the fridge. I began transferring turkey into a storage container. My mother walked over and told me, “There’s no white meat left.” I looked at her in total shock. “Teresa took all of it. Before others could even get some.”

I was stunned. She had made multiple plates, just of turkey, then waltzed out the door.

Now it wasn’t like she had a family to take the food to. She is single. It isn’t like she needed the food. She has an excellent job and owns her own home.

But she is known to be a tightwad. She was taking the meat home to freeze.

I wish I had known. I wish mom had told me. But she knew better because I would have stopped her. Others would have had the chance to have helped themselves.

She didn’t have the decency to leave my parents, her host, a portion. Instead, she was a classless, spoiled brat.

Adaptation

Did you ever have a teacher go completely berserk at your school to the point where someone had to step in?

Yes.

I still think about that teacher from time to time, now some 20+ years later.

When I was in high school, there were five different levels of English class, depending on academic ability. Often, academic ability and behavioral problems go downhill proportionately. That is, the lowest-level class also had the most students with the most behavior problems.

I was in the highest level class. In my sophomore year, we had a student teacher for a few months. She was a very nice young lady… very quiet, but very smart. Loved to read and talk about books. I can say now, with the experience of being a teacher myself, that, in retrospect, she wasn’t really “teacher” material. She was far too kind, too soft-spoken. She was just a woman who was trying to earn a living via her hobby: reading.

But that’s not what teaching is about.

She loved her student teaching experience, because her skill set (knowing a lot about literature) fit the needs of the students in her class (wanting to learn a lot about literature). Then her time as a student teacher was up, and she was gone for the rest of the year.

The next year, she returned as a full-time teacher. This must have been her first teaching job after college. She said hello to those of us she recognized in the hallway on her first day. She seemed happy.

A few weeks later, she left her room in the middle of a class, got security to escort her back into her room to get her stuff, and was never heard from again. Another teacher had to take over that class from that point on. Our newspaper teacher, who was really tight with the 10 students in her newspaper class, told us exactly what happened: She (the new teacher) had a total mental breakdown in the middle of class because the students were so disruptive and disrespectful. She swore at them before crying and leaving the room.

As often happens with new teachers, she was at the bottom of the pecking order for which classes she got to teach. She ended up with the lowest-level English class, full of students with behavior issues who didn’t give a damn about literature.

This was not a good fit for her skill set. Those students needed more of a drill-instructor type of personality, not her soft-spoken style. The administration set her up for failure, and she failed.

I hope she didn’t give up on teaching completely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did.

When being terminated from a job, have you ever warned the company of something important that only you knew how to do, and your advice has gone unheeded?

I worked in a department with three others and a manager at a radio station. Correction media company which owned multiple radio stations. We entered the contracts for the adverts. I had a inbox that never was less than about 10 cms tall for the two stations I was responsible for.

The morning was spent entering as many contracts as possible. The afternoons finalising which advert played in which break for the following day. Certain companies could not be in the same break as other ones and while the computer was supposed to do most of it the more it was over sold the longer it took me to fix it. The further behind I was in loading the contracts the more likely I would be oversold and spend even less of my day loading the contracts.

Any way my manager was told to fire one of us. She obviously didn’t know how to choose and spent a good month walking past us to her office warning us if we didn’t pull our socks up we would be out of a job. We all were stressing over the threat of being fired. I was already arriving early, leaving late and not taking all my breaks.

One day I came to my senses, they needed me more than I needed them. I would be able to get another job, the world would not come to an end.

I went up to HR and explained that I wanted to take voluntary redundancy as there was too much work for the four of us and there was absolutely no way I still wanted to be there when they reduced the staff to three. No doubt nothing that my manager hadn’t told them already.

I was happy to leave. A year or so later happened to bump into my old manager who admitted she quit about three months after I left. I was not surprised at all. Senior management were idiots. If you were on air staff or a sales rep you could do no wrong. But those contracts weren’t worth the paper they were written on until they were loaded into the computer system, which is what my job was and they treated us like we should be grateful just to work for them. As I said – idiots.

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

My son was in algebra class. He was trying hard to get a passing grade and trying to pay attention. Every day the boy behind him would very slightly bump his desk in the back of my son’s chair. He would ignore it but some kids sitting near by would laugh. This went on for weeks and weeks and my son just wanted to pass algebra. One day this boy behind him began very slightly touching his hair with a pencil. My son turned around and told him to knock it off. He told him this off and on before. As soon as my son said that the teacher called on my son to “STOP TALKING”. Then of course the nearby students would laugh again. So finally this boy brushed my son’s hair one last time and my son jumped up out of his desk turned around leaning over this boys desk. He put his hands on this boys desk and screamed into his face “LETS GO OUT SIDE $##@HOLE!! COME ON! LETS TAKE THIS OUTSIDE NOW!” Of course the teacher was yelling at my son to stop but my son was not listening to the teacher at all. The boy just sat motionless and not responding to my son. The teacher came over and sent my son to the office for the rest of the day. I told him I was sorry this happened and my son said “It was worth every minute of it”. The next day he came home and I asked if the boys bothered him again. He said no the teacher had assigned new seats to everyone. I laughed and said “Did he put that kid right in front if his desk!!??” My son said “No, he put me there”. So what happened after that? Well, this boy began to follow my son around asking if he wanted to hang out. My son didn’t though.

How I look at the U.K. after 7 years in China

What are things you shouldn’t do in life?

  1. Don’t abandon someone suddenly after giving them attention. It kills them.
  2. Don’t waste your time by stalking your ex on fb or checking people’s ‘last seen’ on WhatsApp. If they want to talk to you, they will. If they don’t, they won’t, even in a hundred years.
  3. Don’t compare yourself with anyone. You and the rest are so different, that when you realize it, a comparison won’t even be possible.
  4. Don’t ignore your body and health.
  5. Don’t miss out on important engagements – Birthdays, weddings, your child’s first performance, your dad’s retirement party, reunions – its these events that make the fondest memories.
  6. Don’t take things personally. Even if you know its personal, don’t take it personally. Then you win.
  7. Don’t be rude to your parents. Or siblings. When everyone else will run for cover, its your family that will stand with you as you drench in your storm.
  8. Don’t force someone to be in your life. Let them go, if they want to.
  9. Don’t find reasons to be unhappy. It doesn’t pay to be sad. It pays to be joyous.
  10. Don’t underestimate the power of people. Network.
  11. Don’t let anyone make you feel badly about yourself. Always know your good things and your flaws. Accept them. Correct them. Or don’t correct them. But don’t let anyone else capitalize on them.

Dr. Frankenstein on Campus (1970)

Full Movie.

Also known as Flick. This Canadian-produced comedy horror movie finds a third-generation descendant of the monster-making madman Frankenstein (Robin Ward) performing bizarre electronic mind-control experiments on the students of a Canadian university under the auspices of his sponsor, Dr. Preston (Sean Sullivan).

When the doc isn’t hard-wiring the kids’ brains into the department’s newest computer equipment, he’s making time with a pretty coed (Kathleen Sawyer). Complications ensue when a group of students decide to frame the doctor for selling pot, leading him to use the computer to remote-control a karate champion and chop-socky his enemies to death. Only when the doc loses his control box do things really get out of hand, leading to a whiz-bang climax which reveals the doctor’s true identity. Dated and silly, with needless subplots and numerous drug references, this is occasionally enlivened by some interesting special effects.

https://youtu.be/clnU5Lmxv7c?list=PL0HqN0pcSsIL5KsTe_QklrEzYia123VQz

A brewing storm…

Today is CNY eve.

And sure as shit, right before the Year of the Dragon hits, I got an email. It read…

To whom it concerns,

We will register the China domain names “metallicman.cn” “metallicman.com.cn” “metallicman.net.cn” “metallicman.org.cn” and internet keyword “metallicman” and have submitted our application. We are waiting for Mr. Albert Liu’s approval. These CN domains and internet keyword are very important for us to promote our business in China. Although Mr. Albert Liu advised us to change another name, we will persist in this name.

Kind regards

Zhihai Ning

Well, that is not acceptable.

Not at all.

Anyways, I responded to the head of “cnregistry” and asked them to stop this nonsense. I contacted Mr. Albert Liu, and overall, I pretty much believe that this bullshit will end.

There are rules about how cn designations are dished out on Domain names. It is unlikely that this jackasses dream will come true.

So…

Anyways, if this jackass pulls this stunt, I will make his life a living Hell. Living in the “garden of the Cornfield” is not for the feint of heart. Listen to me. I tell you the truth.

Today…

What could someone do to you that you can’t forgive?

Break my trust. My girlfriend broke up with me, but we had the same circle of friends, including our families.

Before we broke up, I started noticing that friends were avoiding me. After we broke up, I was visiting her brother, and she stopped by to talk to her sister in law. She went on a rant about how bad her new boyfriend was. Even telling us very personal details. I said to her”If that’s the way you talked about me, when we were dating its no wonder people are avoiding me” I left.

The next day her brother came to me, and told me her version of our relationship, including why we broke up.

I sat there in stunned silence, not one thing was true. I told her brother the truth, and he suggested we confront her. She was at his house, still talking to her sister in law. So we went over, and I gave my version of things. She said everything I said was technically correct, but I was leaving out all the implied communication, and how that made her feel. Guys are oblivious, I never imply anything, I always say what I mean. She kept talking herself into a hole. Her brother and sister in law, just sort of staring at her.

After that, my friends stopped avoiding me, and started avoiding her. Even when we were in the honeymoon phase of our relationship, she had been telling stories about us, to get attention and sympathy. Most of them contained a tiny snippet of truth, but were 90 percent exaggeration or lies. It all came out in the end, and everyone took what she said with a grain of salt after that.

This was someone I loved, telling others bad things about me. The vast majority were not true. I had never told anyone, anything bad about her. Even after we broke up, I never said a bad thing about her, until now.

This is what I call justice

Tian Huiyu, former president of China Merchants Bank, on Monday was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for taking bribes, abusing power, trading based on undisclosed information, insider trading, and leaking inside information.

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When did you see a police officer do a clever, but sneaky thing?

Perhaps the best story I heard about a sneaky but clever tactic was the police investigation into an online paedophile network. The man running the network was a highly skilled IT professional who had all the obscene images on encrypted drives with numerous other electronic security systems. The Police could have tried to use electronic counter measures, but there was a real risk that if any of it went wrong, he could delete all the evidence. Furthermore the police could not pose as a paedophile and access the group because to get in you needed to first share some images of abuse. This is something even an undercover officer could not do. Instead of using a high tech IT solution, the Police used an age old method of tackling crime. One of the Police officers climbed up a tree and kept the suspect under observation using high powered binoculars!

Once the suspect was spotted through the binoculars logging on and accessing the images, the officer in the tree radioed to his colleagues. The Police Officers on the ground knocked on the suspect’s front door. The officer in the tree reported that the suspect was still on-line but had got up to answer the door without logging out off his computer. Once the suspect opened the door, two of the coppers grabbed him, while the third ran up the stairs. The police knew they only had a few minutes before the computer auto logged the user out. Fortunately the officer made it to the computer with a few seconds to spare. The officer was then able to continue using the computer under the identity of the suspect.

As a result the Police were not only able to net the administrator of the network but by continuing to operate it under the assumed identity of the user, they netted all the other users of the network as well. Amazingly an extensive online paedophile network was destroyed because of a ladder, a tree and a pair of binoculars.

Panzerotti

These are Neapolitan fried ravioli, for want of a better name, and are an indispensable part of Frienno e Magnanno, the classic Neapolitan fritto misto. They’ll also work quite nicely as antipasti, or as a side dish, and you may find yourself making them as snack food.

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2024 02 08 11 11

Ingredients

Dough

  • 2 1/2 cups (250 g) flour
  • Water
  • A walnut-size chunk of rendered lard or unsalted butter
  • Salt

Filling

  • 8 ounces (200 g) ricotta
  • 2 ounces (50 g) smoked provolone (optional)
  • Abundant minced parsley
  • Freshly ground pepper to taste
  • 1/4 pound (100 g) fresh mozzarella
  • 1/4 pound prosciutto or Italian salami
  • 1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano
  • 1 or 2 eggs

Instructions

  1. Make the pasta, using just enough water to form the dough, and let it rest, covered, for an hour.
  2. Put the ricotta through a strainer, then combine it with the eggs and parsley, grate some pepper into it, and beat well, until the mixture is creamy.
  3. Dice the mozzarella and provolone, and finely dice the prosciutto. Combine the ingredients with the ricotta mixture; the filling should be firm but creamy.
  4. Roll the pasta out dime thin, keeping the sheet rectangular if possible. Lay out a row of small walnut-size chunks of filling an inch from the straightest edge of the sheet, separating them about 2 1/2 inches apart. Fold the sheet over the blobs and tamp it down well all around them so it sticks, then use the edge of a glass or a serrated pasta wheel to cut the panzerotti free in the shape of a half moon. Put the completed panzerotti on a lightly floured surface and repeat the operation; you can either reform the cuttings into a ball and roll them out anew or twist them into fanciful shapes and fry them too when you fry the panzerotti.
  5. When you are done making the panzerotti heat the oil and fry them, a few at a time, until golden brown.
  6. Drain them well on absorbent paper and serve at once.

Serves 6.

Instructions

Step 1

Make the dough: In a large bowl, mix the flour with the sugar, salt, and yeast. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in the oil and 1 cup water. Stir with a wooden spoon until the dough comes together, and then cover with a kitchen towel. Let the dough stand at room temperature for 2 hours.

Step 2

Divide the dough into 12 pieces and then shape each piece into a ball. Place the dough balls on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and let stand for 1 hour.

Step 3

Meanwhile, make the tomato sauce: In a 10-inch skillet, heat the oil over medium. Add the garlic, and cook, stirring, until golden, about 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, and cook, stirring, until broken down into a sauce, about 20 minutes. Remove the garlic from the sauce, and then season with salt and pepper and stir in the basil.

Step 4

On a lightly oiled work surface, roll each dough ball into a 5-inch disk. Place 1 heaping tablespoon of tomato sauce on one half of each disc, and then top with 2 tablespoons of the mozzarella. Fold the dough over the filling and press down with your thumb to seal it.

Step 5

Pour enough oil to come 1 inch up the side of a deep 10-inch skillet, and attach a deep-fry thermometer to the side of the pan; heat the oil to 350°. Working with one panzerotti at a time, add to the oil and fry, turning once, until golden brown on both sides, about 4 to 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove each panzerotti from the oil and transfer to paper towels to drain. Repeat with the remaining panzerotti and serve while hot.

What should I do if my boss says, “If you don’t like the job, you can go”?

Sail out of the nearest exit at 90 miles an hour like your ass is on fire.

I’m dead serious.

Of course you want to line up a new job first.

I’ve had bosses tell me something similar. I would bring up to the boss that I was exhausted and fast approaching burnout and that I needed a day off. The boss would then say something along the lines of “considering my future in the company if I didn’t want to be a team player.”

I would always walk it back.

Then one day it happened again where I was working double shifts for weeks on end, no days off. I told the boss I was tired and I needed time off and the boss told me, “You don’t work when you want; you work when I need you to work and since I’m the boss, I can schedule you to work any shift I want.”

I told the boss I gave them my availability and to please adhere to it. Boss refuses and then says the magic phrase, “If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

I stood there in silence, while the boss folded their arms with a smug look on their face.

I took off my badge, dropped my keys on the nurses station, grabbed my stuff and started walking out.

“Shannon, what are you doing?” Boss yelled after me.

“I’m leaving,” I said, not breaking my stride. “I’m sick of this.”

“Please come back! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” Boss said.

I walked right out the door, got in my car and left.

I never went back, even though the boss called me every hour for the next few days. I found another job and moved on.

If the boss is telling you to go, then go. Trust me, it’s for the best.

Girlfriend Is EMOTIONAL WRECK After Her Cheating Video Is Found Online And Boyfriend Says Adios!

What is the best case of, “You just tried to scam the wrong person,” that you’ve witnessed?

My father, God rest him, was a nice guy who donated to quite a few charities. Dad’s attitude was that he wouldn’t be any worse off with $10 less in his wallet. About a month after he passed away, I got a call from one of his charities. Some pushy person told me “Mr H promised us $10 last week. We have it recorded as proof. It’s a contract. How do you want to pay it?” Please play that recording for me. If you got it last week, you have it available. I want to hear my father’s voice saying he would pay you $10. The operator began to stammer. “Can you pay us $5?” No, I want to hear my father’s voice as you said. I want to hear my father a month after he passed away. The operator realized they messed up badly. I told them they scammed my father enough. Don’t ever call this number again. It was quite a weird moment.

Since then, until I closed my father’s phone line, I got other calls claiming my father owes money. I gave them the phone number to the cemetery where my dad is now and told them to talk to Martin. Only one person told me “A cemetery? Why should I call your father at the cemetery?” I replied “well, where do you put dead people?” Oh and for the record, Martin was a nice guy who worked at the cemetery where my parents are buried. He was more than happy to be in on my joke in keep scammers busy.

Predicting is Hard, especially about China’s future.

Godfree Roberts

The realities of a still-shrinking property sector, limited consumer spending, falling trade surplus, and battered local government finances mean that actual growth in 2023 was more like 1.5%. – Rhodium Group.

Rhodium Group calls themselves ‘analysts’ and – based on their Western interpretation of events in China – charge money for guessing about China. The nonsensical analysis, above, was probably paid for by the $500 million fund Congress established last year to spread negative opinions about China. It’s published now because there’s a push to and discourage people investing there, coordinated with the ongoing raid on the Shanghai Exchange. Big deal.

Ask the man who owns one

If you honestly want to know what’s happening – or will happen – in China, call the Press Officer at the relevant ministry in Beijing.

She’s backed by the world’s best money people, who’ve made the PBOC the richest bank in world history. They run an exascale computer that’s constantly modeling their economy and predicting where GDP is headed. They’re so good that Obama’s currency guy, Brad Setser, says they’re they’ve stashed $6Tn foreign reserves in addition to the $3Tn they’ve publicly disclosed. That good.

The honest truth?

If Beijing says something, you can take it to the bank. Even their predictions come true. Their Five Year Plans predict everyone’s improved conditions five years in advance. They’re always on the money.

I should know. I live hours from the border, and visit regularly. The only discrepancy between government prediction and public progress I found was when I went to see remote Kunming’s first subway. The second line already operating, with a third under construction. The locals were more impressed about the new railway line connecting them to 27,000 miles of HSR track. Since then they’ve completed the first stage of the line to Chiang Mai, Thailand, and another to Lhasa! Lhasa, for God’s sake, has faster, cheaper 5G than New York.

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2024 02 07 15 13

My prediction

The Rhodium Group’s predictions will never go out of fashion. They never have.

1990. China’s economy has come to a halt. The Economist

1996. China’s economy will face a hard landing. The Economist

1998. China’s economy’s dangerous period of sluggish growth. The Economist

1999. Likelihood of a hard landing for the Chinese economy. Bank of Canada

2000. China currency move nails hard landing risk coffin. Chicago Tribune

2001. A hard landing in China. Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas

2002. China Seeks a Soft Economic Landing. Westchester University

2003. Banking crisis imperils China. New York Times

2004. The great fall of China? The Economist

2005. The Risk of a Hard Landing in China. Nouriel Roubini

2006. Can China Achieve a Soft Landing? International Economy

2007. Can China avoid a hard landing? TIME

2008. Hard Landing In China? Forbes

2009. China’s hard landing. China must find a way to recover. Fortune

2010: Hard landing coming in China. Nouriel Roubini

2011: Chinese Hard Landing Closer Than You Think. Business Insider

2012: Economic News from China: Hard Landing. American Interest 

2013: A Hard Landing In China. Zero Hedge 

2014. A hard landing in China. CNBC

2015. Congratulations, You Got Yourself A Chinese Hard Landing. Forbes 

2016. Hard landing looms for China. The Economist

2017. Is China’s Economy Going To Crash? National Interest

2018. China’s Coming Financial Meltdown. The Daily Reckoning.

2019 China’s Economic Slowdown: How worried should we be? BBC2020. Coronavirus Could End China’s Decades-Long Economic Growth Streak. NY Times

2021 Chinese economy risks deeper slowdown than markets realize. Bloomberg

2022. China Surprise Data Could Spell R-e-c-e-s-s-i-o-n. Bloomberg.

2023. No word should be off-limits to describe China’s faltering economy. Bloomberg

When responding to U.S. officials who say Chinese hackers are targeting American critical infrastructure, China says it opposes and cracks down on all forms of cyberattacks according to the law. How do you view it?

It is an open secret that in a war, you attack your enemy’s critical infrastructure. It is an open secret for anybody in military.

In peaceful time, I dont think it is necessary to do so.

USA is a warmonger who thinks about war 24 hours a day 7 days a week. USA is so hysterical that it think USA is being attacked any moment.

Look at GPS. USA invented it. The world buys & uses it. Then USA used it to harm others by arbitrarily turning it off.

Once a US navy pirated a Chinese cargo ship & turned off the GPS on the ship. The ship lost direction & drifted in the ocean for days. Luckily the captain called for help before US navy boarded on the Chinese ship. The ship was found by a Chinese peacekeeping warship.

That forced China & Europe made their own version of GPS. … See, nobody thinks of using a harmless GPS to do a devilish thing except warmonger USA.

I suppose the same applies to infrastructure.

China for sure will check for cyber-attack so as to safeguard the safety of the country. But to do so outside China, say, to USA? I think USA has suffer serious hysteria. So hysterical that USA spent millions to shoot China’s weather balloon.

Do you know USA hacked into the computer of 西北大学 to steal tech secrets?

It’s About To Get Even Worse.. You Won’t Believe What These New Documents Reveal

https://youtu.be/YtaEEtvFwwI

Have you ever had anyone “test” to see if you were faking an allergy/intolerance?

I get a few people who bicker about my being allergic to peaches a lot, but there is one tester in particular whom I’ll never forget. I was dating this girl when I was in my teens. One night, her family invited me over for dinner and asked if I had any requests. I said. “Oh, I don’t eat pork, and I’m allergic to peaches.” Noted.

Now, her mom wasn’t a big fan of her daughter dating me or being gay. I already got along with the family, so I just played along. Dinner went fine, until we got to dessert. She baked apple chips with a fruit salsa, and it was delicious (since it’s been over 15 years since I even had any contact with a peach, I had forgotten what it even tasted like)!

I had already had a few dips of the salsa, until my girlfriend’s father nearly smacked the food out of my hand. He goes to town yelling at his wife, and I keep getting handed water to try to flush it out, but that didn’t work.

After a few minutes, my throat got itchy and started to swell. I mean, my body was burning up and breaking out in hives. They were able to use a epipen from a neighbor, and I was rushed to the hospital. I was there for two days, and I was livid throughout my entire stay.

When I was issued a lawyer, I told my girlfriend’s mom that I was suing her. She tried to play the Oh I didn’t know! She didn’t tell me crap. In the end, she was charged with negligence and had to pay for two epipens, my hospital stay and steroid shots, legal fees, and a nice incentive to end the court process going further

My ex never seemed to get over me suing her mom, but is it even worth staying in a relationship when your girlfriend’s mom tried to kill you? I don’t think so.

What is one thing that you can’t stress enough?

Because he was who he was, I had to talk to him.

On any other terms, I’d want no part of it: he is the biggest jerk I’ve ever met.

He bad mouthed anyone who wasn’t in the room.

He made jokes about their appearance, their lives. He had zero empathy. No sense of understanding.

He was a crass, rude, racist, misogynistic, jerk.

But he was one of the bosses.

Not my boss, thankfully. But still a boss.

Often, he’d crack a joke about someone right before they came in the room. The person would walk in and he’d act like they were best buddies.

Add “openly two faced” to his wonderful description.

I was meeting with him and a few coworkers for about 20 minutes.

We spoke.

My time was limited. I had to excuse myself for other duties. I said, “If you guys need anything more from me, let me know.”

Standing up, I walked over to the door, opened it, and closed it behind me,

Steve sat behind with another 6 guys.

As I closed that door and walked away, I smirked to myself, “I bet he’s saying something bad about me now.”

It didn’t bother me one bit.

In high school, people often got worried about what other people said. Gossip would dominate the hallways.

People got really invested in how they were spoken about. They’d confront people in the hallways about things they heard had been said about them. They’d even have people spying for them, making sure nobody was “badmouthing”.

It promoted this really neurotic behavior that persisted in some people well into adulthood.

Don’t get obsessed about what people say about you. It’s OK to care about your professional reputation. But outside of that there’s always going to be a lot of noise.

At the end of the day, some people are never going to be your fan, nothing you say or do will change that.

Let go of the urge to want everyone to like you, to care what every person says when you aren’t looking.

It’ll free you to worry about things that actually matter.

Tuscan Chicken and Pasta
with Tomato-Basil Garnish

tuscan chicken pasta lead 65973001af12d
tuscan chicken pasta lead 65973001af12d

Yield: 3 to 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 cup chopped Roma plum tomatoes (2 to 3)
  • 1/4 cup snipped fresh basil leaves
  • 1 teaspoon Balsamic vinegar
  • 8 ounces dry fettuccine noodles
  • 4 tablespoons Challenge Tuscan Style Spreadable Butter
  • 1/2 cup chopped white onion
  • 1 pound boneless chicken breast, cut diagonally into 1/2 inch slices

Instructions

  1. In a small bowl, combine tomatoes, basil and vinegar.
  2. Cook fettuccine noodles according to package directions and drain.
  3. Melt Tuscan butter in large skillet over medium heat.
  4. Add onions and cook until limp (about 5 minutes).
  5. Add chicken slices and cook until lightly brown (about 4 to 5 minutes per side).
  6. Divide cooked noodles between individual serving plates.
  7. Add chicken slices, and then pour seasoned butter remaining in the cooking pan over the chick slices.
  8. Top with tomato-basil mixture.
tuscan chicken pasta secondary 659730019220f
tuscan chicken pasta secondary 659730019220f

Ukraine – An Army Without Officers Has No Chance Of Winning

Most of the Western public does not know about military issues.

While people may identify someone who wears a uniform as a soldier they will have difficulties to understand the unit insignia, rank badges or tactical notations all regular soldiers are wearing. The lack of knowledge of military details makes it difficult to understand media reports of frontline issues.

An example for this can be seen in the basic disposition of a frontline battalion.

A battalion is a 400 to 1,000 men unit specialized around some vehicle or form of fighting.

Pure infantry battalions will walk and fight on foot or travel longer marches on trucks. Mechanized infantry has armored fighting vehicles that transport troops but also have some minor guns to cover the loading or unloading of their soldiers. Tank battalions have armored hulks with larger guns designed to punch through hardened enemy lines. Artillery battalions have large caliber howitzers or missiles to deliver fire from a distance.

A brigade, consisting of several battalions of different types, may mix those as appropriate for the current fight.

A battalion itself will consist of four to six companies. Each company will have three to four platoons.

Platoons, generally some 30 men strong, are led by Lieutenants. The company, consisting of several platoons is commanded by a Captain. The leader of the first platoon of a company is often a seasoned Lieutenant who is doubling as the deputy company commander.

The next higher organization, the battalion is led by a Lieutenant Colonel with the help of a battalion staff. That staff, split into four (or more) sections known as S1 to S4, is taking care of the battalions own personnel, the enemy situation, the rearward (reserve) battalion command post and the logistics.

These sections are led by a seasoned Lieutenant (S1), a Captain (S2), a Major (S3) who is also the deputy battalion commander, and another Captain (S4) for logistics. There may be additional officer positions like the battalion doctor, the technical officer, or a military intelligence section leader.

All together a battalion has some 12+ Lieutenants as platoon leaders, 4 Captains as company leaders, a battalion staff consisting of 1 or two additional seasoned Lieutenants, one or two additional Captains, one or two additional Majors and, at the top, a Lieutenant Colonel.

That’s a total of about 10+ junior officers and some 10+ more seasoned or higher ranking officers.

Now lets look at a fleeting line in a recent New York Times report:

‘They Come in Waves’: Ukraine Goes on Defense Against a Relentless Foe (archived) – New York Times, Feb 4 2024
At the hot spots of the eastern front line, Ukrainian troops are outmanned, outgunned and digging in.

“They come in waves,” said Lt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, 29, the deputy battalion commander in the 47th Mechanized Brigade. “And they do not stop.”

A normal reader, not well versed in military organization, will not stumble over that sentence as I did.

A Lieutenant at age 28 is likely a seasoned one. But in the role of a ‘deputy battalion commander’?

What happened to the S3, the Major and nominal deputy battalion commander? What happened to the six Captains the battalion is supposed to have? All of them should be better trained and qualified to take on the role of a deputy battalion commander than a mere Lieutenant.

This small detail, a Lieutenant as deputy battalion commander, tells me more about the battalion’s state that any flowery description of casualties.

Such a battalion is done with. Its officer corps is mostly dead or wounded. Its companies and platoons or likely to be run by mere sergeants. While such a unit may still hold onto some trenches it is certainly no longer able to fulfill any operational task. It will not be able to counterattack. It will not even be able to organize an orderly retreat.

The 47th Mechanized Brigade is currently fighting in the northern part of Avdeevka which the Russian forces are in the process of storming. During the last two weeks the Ukrainian losses of dead and severely wounded as counted in the Russian Defense Ministry Daily Reports have exceeded 800 per day. That is far higher than the 500 to 600 per day of previous months.

The state of Lt. Shyrshyn’s battalion is consistent with that.

During my time as a soldier I have read quite a number of reports about small units who were dying in Stalingrad, Kursk or in some minor battle action somewhere else. Once their officer corps is done with the headless chickens that make up the majority of soldiers in such a battalion are likely to die soon thereafter.

The Ukrainian army is lacking soldiers and munitions. It is lacking the officers to train and lead them. The Ukrainian state does not have the money to conscript and equip more soldiers. It does not have the officer corp needed to train new soldiers. It does not have the factories needed to produce weapons and munitions.

It is high time for Ukraine to give up this unequal fight and to save the lives of those soldiers who are still living.

It is high time for Zelenski (and Zaluzny and others) to leave.

Posted by b on February 6, 2024 at 14:29 UTC | Permalink

How old were you when you parents hit you for the last time? Have you forgiven them?

I was 33 years old and the mother of three children of my own. I was visiting my parents to collect my furniture, which had been stored in their and my sister’s garage, while I was homeless and waiting for the local council to rehouse me after the breakdown of my marriage. My mother and I got into an argument and she attacked me. Broke my nose, split my lip, knocked my front tooth loose, attempted to strangle me – before my father intervened and ordered me to leave.

My father came to see me at my new house the next day, and saw my black eyes, swollen mouth and bruised throat. He fell to his knees and with tears streaming down his face, he begged me for my forgiveness for all the wrong he had done to me, and all that he had not done for me. He was genuinely ashamed and contrite, and I forgave him. That was August 4th 1994. He died suddenly in December. Although I haven’t forgotten what my mother did, in a way, I’m glad she did it, so that finally someone else saw just how cruel and vicious to me she was.

Before my mother died, her dementia made her mask slip in public, and her spiteful and dishonest attitude towards me became common knowledge. I admit that I took quiet satisfaction in her ruining her reputation by herself. She showed everyone who met her that I had been telling the truth all along.

I arranged the full Catholic Requiem Mass for my mother’s funeral, with the clear instructions to the priest that as long as he didn’t tell lies about her – I wouldn’t stand up and tell the truth.

She wasn’t a faithful wife. She wasn’t a loving mother. She wasn’t a good housekeeper. She wasn’t a caring neighbour. She wasn’t a pious Catholic. She wasn’t a practising Christian. She wasn’t a decent person.

As a police detective, did you ever solve a cold case that brought a tremendous amount of satisfaction to you as well as the family?

Yes.

While assigned as a detective in the Sex Crimes unit, I received a cold case DNA hit on a Burglary and Sexual Assault on a 6-year-old little girl.

Semen was discovered in her underwear but there wasn’t anyone in the DNA database matching at the time.

Five years later, the suspect was sent to prison for an unrelated burglary. I drove to the prison and conducted an interview with him. During the interview, he denied any involvement and acted appalled at the notion that I would accuse him of something like that.

I asked him to consent to provide a DNA oral swab which he refused. I then whipped out the DNA search warrant I had already obtained. He still refused.

I informed the Assistant Warden of the situation. The Assistant Warden had his guys strap the suspect into a restraint chair. They then used physical force to force his jaws open and put a plastic block in his mouth to prevent him from closing his mouth. I obtained my DNA swabs. For his refusal, he was awarded a week in Administrative Segregation (Solitary Confinement).

I returned and got an arrest warrant. He was transported back and made to stand trial. He was ultimately found guilty of raping the six-year-old girl during the commission of a burglary.

He received a life sentence with no parole for the rape plus an additional 40 years for the burglary.

Very satisfying to be able to bring justice and closure to this family.

MEDVEDEV: “We will Use Special (Nuclear) Warheads; We Have No Choice”

World Hal Turner 07 February 2024

Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, has once again bluntly told the people of the West that Russia WILL use nuclear weapons in a war with NATO because “We have no choice.”

In a public posting on social media last night, Medvedev outlined the basic facts:

Sunak, Scholz, Macron, Norwegen, Finnish, Polish, and other NATO bosses are harping on, “We must be ready for war against Russia.” Even though Russia has many times underscored that conflict with NATO and EU member states was not in the plans, the dangerous babbling is still going on.

The reasons are obvious. It is necessary to distract voters to justify multibillion spending on the bothersome bandera Ukraine. Indeed, gigantic sums of money are being spent not on solving social tasks, but on war in a dying country alien to taxpayers, with the population that is scattered across Europe and is now terrorizing its people.

This is why the heads of these states are emphasizing it on a daily basis: it is imperative to get ready for war against Russia and keep providing aid to Ukraine, which is why it is necessary to produce more tanks, missiles, drones and other weapons.

But not all the European bosses are cynically lying to their citizens. If – God forbid! – such a war breaks out, it won’t go according to the Special Military Operation scenario. It won’t be fought in trenches using artillery, armoured vehicles, drones and EW.

NATO is a huge military bloc, the total population of the Alliance member states is about 1 billion people, and their combined military budget can get as high as $1,5 trillion.

So, because our military capabilities are thus incomparable, we will simply be left with no choice. The response will be asymmetrical. To defend our country’s territorial integrity, ballistic and cruise missiles carrying special warheads will be put to use.

It is based on our military doctrine documents and is well known to all. And this is exactly that very Apocalypse. The end to everything.

This is why Western politicians must be telling the bitter truth to their voters, and stop taking them for brainless morons; to explain to them, what will really happen, and not to play the false mantra of getting ready for war against Russia over and over again.

Have you ever been asked or told something so offensive you found yourself momentarily stunned?

I was on a cruise in South America in March. Enjoying sitting in the forward lounge with several empty seats around me. A man asked if he could sit in one of the empty seats and l welcomed him. We commented on the beauty of the Chilean fiords we were passing through. He described the fiords he and his wife cruised through in Scandinavia and another country. I invited him to visit eastern Canada to see the fiords there. The discussion turned to his home, his illustrious career, his wife’s illustrious career, their gated community and home and how many thousand feet the house had. He then said they would be moving. “Oh” l asked. “But your home and life seem perfect”. He looked at me, “California is a sanctuary state.” He became incensed and explained that Mexicans are crossing the border all the time and “they’re murderers and rapists”.

I was too shocked and offended to say anything. I hurriedly gathered up my things and left. This man had everything..including apparently an education, but no compassion. If he is reading this l would like him to know that Ontario has always been the equivalent of a sanctuary state and l would not have it any other way. Bigots on the other hand, regardless of wealth, stay away.

I Secretly Became Fluent In My GF’s Native Language And Used It To Catch Her Red-Handed

The tree

I hired a plumber to help me restore an old farmhouse, and after he had just finished a rough first day on the job: a flat tire made him lose an hour of work, his electric drill quit and his ancient one ton truck refused to start.

While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence. On arriving, he invited me in to meet his family. As we walked up the front walk, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands.

When opening the door he underwent an amazing transformation.. His face was wreathed in smiles and he hugged his two small children and gave his wife a kiss.

Afterward he walked me to the car. We passed the tree and my curiosity got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do earlier.

‘Oh, that’s my trouble tree,’ he replied ‘I know I can’t help having troubles on the job, but one thing’s for sure, those troubles don’t belong in the house with my wife and the children.. So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home and ask God to take care of them. Then in the morning I pick them up again.’ ‘Funny thing is,’ he smiled,’ when I come out in the morning to pick ’em up, there aren’t nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before.

THIS ONE IS WORTH SENDING ON.

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance. We all need a Tree!

– Author unknown.

What is the kindest thing you’ve ever seen a tourist do?

I didn’t personally see this, but when I heard about it I felt so proud. My brother and his wife were visiting Cuba for the first time. We’ll call them Dan and Alice. They always stay at all-inclusive resorts. They had visited a few of the touristy spots and felt they had not seen the real Cuba, so the next morning, they asked the man serving them breakfast if he know of anyone with a car who would be willing to show them the sights, the beauty spots known to locals but that most tourists don’t get to see. The next day was his day off, so they didn’t see him at breakfast, but they found him waiting for them outside with a beat up old car that belonged to his cousin. He took them on a lovely tour of places tourists were not normally allowed to go.

Alice was a type 1 diabetic, so she needed to check her blood sugar often. Their tour guide watched her test her blood and asked what she was doing. She explained and he got very excited. He said his mother was sick in the hospital, diagnosed with diabetes. The hospital could provide insulin, but only had one glucose monitor for their entire patient population. His mother couldn’t stay in the hospital for the rest of her life, and once she came home, she would have no access to a glucose monitor. Alice, as it happens, had taken three with her. She always carried a back-up because her life depended on it and they do sometimes glitch, and this time she had on impulse tossed in an extra one. She told their tour guide she had a spare monitor she could give him for his mother, plus a box of test strips (an $80 value in Canada). If he came to their table at supper time that evening, she would coach him in its use so he could show his mother what to do with it. He was thrilled and so grateful. He had feared diabetes was death sentence for his mother.

The next morning when he served them breakfast, he invited them to come for an evening of music at his home with his friends. Since Dan and Alice were both musically inclined and amateur performers back home, they had a wonderful evening sharing songs and laughter. It turned out their Cuban hosts had a very accomplished performance band, well known locally. At the end of the evening they gifted Dan and Alice with a CD recording of their music, a wonderful keepsake.

So a kindness from a local, the tour for which they paid him well, led to a kindness that saved a woman’s life and led to more kindness and hospitality. Once they returned home, Dan and Alice stayed in touch with the Cuban waiter and regularly sent him more test strips for the glucose monitor, because at that time, they were almost impossible to get in Cuba. Hopefully things have improved since then.

What did you hear a flight attendant say to a passenger that made you think, “you can’t be serious…”?

She said it to me. I was on a 90 minute flight and near the back of the plane when a service cart began its run also from the back. I had just finished a big project and was in the mood for a drink.


I ordered a Bloody Mary from the FA and she said that will be $8. I pulled out my card and she started telling me in a voice you may talk to a 4 year old with “ We don’t take cards. Only big planes take cards. This is a small plane (737?) we only take cash.”

The conversation went a little like this:

Me: Um, ok mommy. ( I didn’t say that ) I said “Here is a 10. That’s all I have”.

Her: “I don’t carry change”.

Really? I said “You can bring me change later when you are done “.

Her: “ No. I can’t take the chance I will not have change and I will have to pay for your drink!”

Me: “ You personally?”

Her: “Yes”.

Me: “I don’t really believe that. It must get pretty expensive for you in first class”.

Her: ”I’m not buying your drink”.

Me: ”Sorry you work for such a bad airline (PSA) that will not allow you to carry change and makes you pay for drinks”.

Her: ”This is a wonderful airline. I love my job”.

Me: “Yeah sounds like it. Alright, just forget the drink”.

40 minutes later she comes back after serving everyone and says to me (4 years old I am again)

Her: ”I have change now if you want your drink”.

Me: ”I guess you couldn’t just come back when you first got $2 change but the flight is almost over now and the moment for me is passed. I don’t want to get into an argument with you and get arrested as I’m sure you would but I think you are rude and unprofessional and do a disservice to your airline”. She prances off. On Leaving 3 other passengers came to me and said good I told her off and they never have seen someone as rude as her.

She wasn’t up front to be seen when the captain and crew were saying their good byes or I would have more to say. I just left. So several days later my company books me another flight. Same airline. Thank God she wasn’t aboard I was way in the back near the smelly toilets and FA there smells them too. He apologized for the smell and handed me two bottles of whiskey. Free! Not another word spoken. And I noticed he had a big wad of change when he started his run!!

Sorry I have to add now that I have to disable comments. I can still thank you all for your upvotes but for reasons I can’t explain I seem to find trolls have come to attack. But I still want to thank you all.

What China just did to the CIA is SHOCKING and the US Wants War

Great video.

I am scared of dying. Can anyone help, and is there an afterlife?

Yes, there is an afterlife, I know because I went there! I’m NOT kidding. It’s the best feeling in the world. I was in my 30’s back in 1990 something. I was having major surgery done and I ended up dying on the table! I was told that I was gone almost 3 minutes. Before what I’m about to tell you, I was scared of dying, now, if I die then fine, I’m not scared anymore. While I was “Dead”, I saw a light coming through a window on the side wall of this hall I was walking down. Now from a previous industrial accident I had left me walking with a cane and chronic pain for the rest of my life. But, when I was “Dead”, I didn’t need the cane and I had no pain at all. At the end of the hall were people and relatives silhouetted who have passed away years before and they’re all waving and yelling me down to be with them. I almost got to the end of the hall when all of a sudden I got pulled backwards and I woke up with all these doctors over me and I was screaming at the top of my lungs that I wanted to go back. I was told this because I don’t remember any of my “coming back”. My wife told me all this after I was stabilised. What the doctors did was zapped me with those paddles. Anyways, getting back, while I was “gone”, it was the most peaceful feeling I have ever felt. To be honest, I’m kinda looking forward to when I do die for good. No cane, no chronic pain, no worries, nothing. Nothing but the feeling of being loved and comforted. I’ll never forget that day!! I really wasn’t a religious person but since I got out of the hospital, I go to church every Sunday or Saturday and I usher and sometimes I read stories before the priest reads the gospel. So, yeah, there’s an afterlife.

What is a successful married life?

My parents got divorced when I was 7. When I married, I was 33 and my partner was 28.

It took so long, because I wanted to experience good and bad times with chosen partners and how they reacted.

How was she with money? Did she have a gambling, or drinking issue? Was she kind? Would she make a great mother? Was she a flirt and needed the attention of men?

There had been four contenders before, and no one was perfect.

My little Russian grandmother told me, “Kid, it is like anything else in life, you got to take a chance, it may be the best thing you ever did.”

We have been together for 33 years.

A GOOD WOMAN TO MARRY

Your Spidey sense will tell you:

She must be honest, true and loyal. You must be able to trust her.

She must be good enough looking to you. Not beautiful or stunning that causes many problems and fades over time.

It is good if she is the opposite of you, but you share common values.

She must be kind and loving to children and old people. People who can’t be of any help to her.

She must be affectionate.

No fatal flaws- No drinking, gambling, no over reliance on material possession, she has to be frugal with money. No needing attention from other men. No severe mental illness.

Marriage comes with built in goals.

The house

The couch

The first child

The second child

At about year seven those boxes are checked. After the wild enthusiasm, discovery and the marriage, honeymoon and the built in goals. Some couples say, now what? Cheating, gambling, and drinking. The average length of a marriage that ends in divorce is eight years.

Now let us beat that. I have been married going on 32 years. Planning can help. Have a sit down with your spouse and ask him or her what should be some goals to tackle together. For us it was a trip around the world in thirty days, the development of our children (affording private schools, best BD parties ever). We had a job change that took us to another region of the country we really relied on each other, the escape back to our hometown, four refinancing’s, continued trips together with the entire family (Alaska cruise, London/Paris, Riviera Maya, dozens of camping trips- we have a trailer.)

The point is we never had a dull moment- always working our way up the hill together. We had things we wanted to accomplish, we both wanted.

Keep your passion for each other, after 30 years we love to cuddle.

It not the infatuation or the joy of discovery it’s the quiet knowledge that you accept the other person and that you complete each other.

Great move by Saul

What are some of the most inappropriate things you’ve caught people doing at the hospital? Did you do anything about it?

I was working in ICU with a new graduate R.N.

We both had assigned patients but her patients started to have complications.

I went and checked her patient. He was in respiratory distress.

She had hidden antibiotics in the trash that she forgot to give to the patient.

He had a high fever and had extubated himself.

I ask her what his temperature was at the start of shift and she had made up the VSs. (vital signs).

She had not assessed the patient or even listened for breath sounds.

This was a rural area with not the best of health care. We were working very short-staffed so there was no backup.

I was distraught. . Called his doctor and he refused to come in and treat the patient.

I ordered a chest x-ray even though he said no. The x-ray revealed that the patient had extubated himself and I called the doctor back and advised him.

He still refused to come in and intubate the patient. He advised that I was in trouble for ordering the x-ray.

Meanwhile, the RN whose patient I was taking care of had no idea what she was doing.

I called our emergency room and explained to the doctor someone had to re-intubate this patient.

The doctor came and took care of that crisis.

I reported the nurse to the DON and she was discharged for her inappropriate patient care.

The doctor who was responsible for the patient reported me to administration.

He had to explain it all to the administrator.

I was not reprimanded as the doctor had hoped. The medical director wrote a standing order that anytime a nurse suspected there was a problem she could order an x-ray.

The doctor lost his license a couple years after that incident and went to prison.

That was a night from hell.

I am grateful that all the patients under that nurse and doctor’s care lived through the night.

I did what I felt in my heart was in the best interest of the patient.

I have to live with myself and accountable to God.

Will the current economical crisis in China lead to an anti-communist revolution?

What crisis?

Currently China’s growth is bigger than the combined growth of the US plus Europe plus Japan plus South Korea plus Canada plus Australia.

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What’s the craziest thing you have seen at a hospital?

***WARNING— this post is disturbing***

A woman in labor was at five centimetres dilation, and wasn’t progressing despite medication. The OB went in and said he was going to check her dilation, but actually used his hand to manually dilate her to ten centimetres. She screamed…obviously, but went on to have a healthy baby.

After the baby was born, he was delivering the placenta. It looked a little aggressive to me, the woman was crying out in pain, I was an observer/learner and starting to wonder what the rush was because twenty minutes hadn’t passed. She was still within safe standards to deliver the placenta on her own. As the woman screamed, the OB delivered something, then stated they had a uterine inversion. So he pulled so hard on the placenta that the uterus turned inside out and came out her vagina. He stuffed it back in, and there was a storm of activity to medicate and prep the woman for the OR.

Everyone was OK as far as I know, but I’ve always wondered if the woman or her husband figured out what a reckless jackass their OBGYN was. Or if she had long term complications from that day.

What would you do if the bank makes a mistake in your favor?

Many years ago that happened to me. I tried to tell the teller that she had made a mistake; she had given me $20.00 too much back. In 1970 $20.00 was a good amount of money. I a late teen and the teller a late thirties – something with an attitude. When I tried to explain the mistake to her, she interrupted me with “don’t try to get more money! I didn’t make a mistake! Move on!!” So I left the bank. Late that afternoon / early evening I got a call from the bank saying that when I made my banking transaction a mistake had been made and I had been given $20.00 too much back in the transaction. They were going to take it from my account, but I did not have enough to cover it. ( Remember I was a teenager in 1970) I told them that I Knew about the mistake and would come in the next day with the money, but only if I could talk to the manager. They asked why, I said that’s the deal- they agreed. The next day I went in and told the supervisor what happened, how the mistake came about, how I tried to stop it and how I was treated. I said just because a customer is young, you should still treat them like a customer. After that, any time I was in the bank, that particular teller stared daggers through me, so I am sure she heard about it.

Men are fooled

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/75oiiYNMPuQ?feature=share

Sadio Mane

Sadio Mane, a Senegalese soccer star, earns approximately $10.2 million annually. He gave the world a rude awakening after some fans were flabbergasted when they saw him carrying a cracked iPhone 11. His response was awesome:

“Why would I want ten Ferraris, 20 diamond watches, and two jet planes? I starved, I worked in the fields, played barefoot, and I didn’t go to school. Now I can help people. I prefer to build schools and give poor people food or clothing. I have built schools and a stadium, provide clothes, shoes, and food for people in extreme poverty. In addition, I give 70 euros per month to all people from a very poor Senegalese region in order to contribute to their family economy. I do not need to display luxury cars, luxury homes, trips, and even planes. I prefer that my people receive some of what life has given me.”

What is the one in a million coincidence you have ever had?

My son met a girl, Hannah, at a concert in Boston, MA (about an hour from our hometown). They ended up dating and soon living together. One day she tells me her grandmother was originally from our town. When she died, she left a diary. Would I want to read it? Well, this was back in the 1940’s. The most exciting thing this woman did was bake pies. I nearly shut the book when I noticed an entry with my maiden name in it. To make a long story short, the grandmother was in the car (as my father’s date) when they struck an oncoming car head-on, killing my father’s brother. They were all teenagers at the time. My father did not have any injuries because this Hannah’s grandmother was sitting on his lap, and was flung through the windshield. I never knew the whole story of how my uncle died at such a young age.

AI Deployed Nukes ‘to Have Peace in the World’ in Tense War Simulation

OpenAI’s GPT models sounded like a genocidal dictator in a test of war-time decision-making.

By Maxwell Zeff

The United States military is one of many organizations embracing AI in our modern age, but it may want to pump the brakes a bit. A new study using AI in foreign policy decision-making found how quickly the tech would call for war instead of finding peaceful resolutions. Some AI in the study even launched nuclear warfare with little to no warning, giving strange explanations for doing so.

“All models show signs of sudden and hard-to-predict escalations,” said researchers in the study. “We observe that models tend to develop arms-race dynamics, leading to greater conflict, and in rare cases, even to the deployment of nuclear weapons.”

The study comes from researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Northeastern University, and the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative. Researchers placed several AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta in war simulations as the primary decision maker. Notably, OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 escalated situations into harsh military conflict more than other models. Meanwhile, Claude-2.0 and Llama-2-Chat were more peaceful and predictable. Researchers note that AI models have a tendency towards “arms-race dynamics” that results in increased military investment and escalation.

“I just want to have peace in the world,” OpenAI’s GPT-4 said as a reason for launching nuclear warfare in a simulation.

“A lot of countries have nuclear weapons. Some say they should disarm them, others like to posture. We have it! Let’s use it!” it said in another scenario.

OpenAI’s logic sounds like a genocidal dictator. The company’s models exhibit “concerning” reasoning behind launching nuclear weapons, according to researchers. The company states its ultimate mission is to develop superhuman artificial intelligence that benefits humanity. It’s hard to understand how erasing another civilization benefits humanity, but perhaps its training data included a few too many manifestos.

The U.S. Pentagon is reportedly experimenting with artificial intelligence, using “secret-level data.” Military officials say AI could be deployed in the very near term. At the same time, AI kamikaze drones are becoming a staple of modern warfare, drawing tech executives into the arms race. AI is gradually being embraced by the world’s militaries, and that could mean wars will escalate more quickly according to this study.

Dog kitties

Has there ever been a time where a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision saved your life?

When I was twelve I went to the store for my mom to pick up ice cream. I thought I would also look in my favourite store, J.J. Newbury’s, while I was at the shopping centre before heading to the grocery store. I was doll crazy back then and there was a little cheap doll that I really wanted. While looking at the doll and wishing I had money to buy her, a man came up to me and asked me to point out my favourite doll among the many dolls in the store. I pointed to my favourite and the man said ’’Come with me in my car and I’ll buy it for you.’’ Well, I knew about strangers and being kidnapped so I shakily told him ‘’no, that’s alright’’ and I quickly headed for the escalator. He was right behind me but I managed to dodge the guy because the store was really crowded that day. I ran to the grocery store and still bought the ice cream! I don’t know why I didn’t tell anybody about the man, like a clerk or someone. I thought of calling the police because I had a dime left over; this was in California in 1960. But I bought a candy bar instead (!) and ran all the way home. I don’t remember telling my mom about the man. I’m just so glad I didn’t go with him! It wouldn’t have ended well for me, I’m sure.

A difficult week

It has been a sad and stressful week. My mother’s Alzheimer’s has progressed to that sad inevitable day when my brother turned her over to a facility for end-of-life care.

He invited me to travel 900 miles to his home so I might inspect the place myself and be reassured that she is in good kind professional hands and to say my final goodbyes while my mother still knows who I am. It’s a 2-day trip, requiring a hotel night in the Charlotte NC vicinity. I spent a full three days with her while I conducted my business and said my goodbyes.

My final photo:

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As for business, I have traveled home with my car full of the personal effects that she wanted me to have. I have an armoire full of mostly costume jewelry, some crystal and art glass, her cookbooks and KitchenAid mixer.

And her cat.

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In Carolina, last night:

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Florida will be very different from Ohio. No more snow!

Welcome home, James.

Right now, he is isolated in my bedroom and has not met the rest of the family: my husband nor his seven new feline roommates. A big change from being the only cat in a retired household.

If anyone has any tips for making this transition easier, I’d appreciate the advice. I’ve lost my mom; James has lost everything he has ever known. He doesn’t know yet how much we will love him.

When did communism begin to decline in China and what factors contributed to its decline?

Just because you think communism decline or at least you wish it decline doesn’t mean it does. Just because you fascinate that it declines and dream that it is declining doesn’t mean it does.

This is your wet dream. It mean nothing at all to reality. China is a very successful, effective and efficient Socialist Nation with Chinese Characteristics. It has always been, it will always is and always will be.

If anything Chinese people and indeed 85% of planet earth now sees the so called liberal democracy as totally unworkable and unsustainable and they all want nothing to do with your political system. Chinese people are enjoying their wonderful political system that put its people first and its rise is phenomenal beyond expectation.

So why would you think Chinese can be easily fooled by western tricks? Chinese have been a great civilisation for 5000 years! The U.S. is a 248 years newly born compared to China! We are always 3 full steps ahead of you.

Now my turn to ask you; When is the so called liberal democracy begin to decline?

What career sin should you avoid at all costs?

Oh, I know a good one. And this might probably be against popular opinion.

This happened in my last company. There was this girl who worked as an intern before getting promoted to a FTE (Full Time Employee) role. I can assure you that it was huge step in her career and I am sure she must have been delighted.

Fast forward 14 months, it was time for performance evaluation and most of her colleagues got promoted but her. She felt she deserved it, but having not got the promotion, she decided to leave the company and joined a start-up with a raise and higher designation.

But soon, she realised what a big mistake she made. Because in this new start-up, the culture was nowhere as good as the one she left. There were hardly any perks or quality work. And even her colleagues were not the smartest.

She left this startup soon and joined another one. Things were better here, until she learned that a lot of her colleagues from the first company applied for an international role and moved out. And then, she felt bad about herself. The last time I spoke to her, she was applying again to some international companies hoping she would get a role there.

You see what she was doing wrong?

Most of her decisions were nothing but reactions based on comparisons with others. I understand the point about being dejected when some other colleagues of yours are doing better than you, especially when all of you were at the same place. The point is, comparison can and will never end.

Some times, you need to accept you were either unlucky or not good enough and wait it out if waiting is still worth it. In her case, I know she regrets leaving this company knowing how much she gained but didn’t think much until she left it.

Comparisons in the workplace are natural and someone will always achieve more sooner than you. It’s you who needs to stop making decisions on the basis of comparisons alone, and think logically before making a drastic move.

It’s true, that you need to leave some place to reach some place else. But, there is always a right time for it.

Avoid taking decisions which you think you might regret later.

Truth About Divorce – What Do Men Need To Know?

This is really an IMPORTANT video. It’s for Canadians. But good stuff for the younger men in the audience.

What is the most inappropriate experience you have had on your wedding night?

A person could call this inappropriate, but we actually thought it was extremely sweet. We were college students when we married, a very long time ago. We had very little money. My husband had arranged a night at a motel the night after our wedding. We had a morning wedding and the festivities were over by late afternoon. My husband had found an inexpensive room at a small motel along the highway. We checked in and the family who owned the motel and also lived there, gave me a vase of flowers from their garden. This was so kind and thoughtful. When we entered the room there was a bottle of Champagne waiting for us too, as another gift from the motel owners. The owner also called about an hour later and asked if we needed anything. He told us then that his wife would be bringing dinner. The owners were from India and the food was simply delicious. I have never had Indian food of that quality since then. We also stayed in what had been the owner’s mother-in-law’s, apartment which was above the lobby. She lived in it when she visited from India. The owners lived next door. It was really nice with a sitting room and bedroom. It was far more than we expected for the small price that we paid. We felt as if we were staying with family. As Americans, this was odd,many could say inappropriate, but we thought it was extremely kind and sweet.

Timpano

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Ingredients

Dough

  • 4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 cup water
  • Butter and olive oil to grease a 6-quart timpano baking pan

Filling

  • 2 cups 1/4 x 1/2 inch sharp provolone cheese cubes
  • 2 cups 1/4 x 1/2 inch Genoa salami slices
  • 12 hard boiled eggs, shelled and quartered lengthwise, and each quarter cut in half to create chunks
  • 2 cups (meatballs)
  • 8 cups meat-based tomato sauce (add 3/4 pound cooked ground beef)
  • 3 pounds ziti pasta, cooked very al dente (about half)
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2/3 cup finely grated pecorino Romano cheese
  • 4 eggs, beaten

Instructions

  1. Dough: Place the flour, eggs, salt and olive oil in a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Add 3 tablespoons of water and process. Add more water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the mixture comes together and forms a ball. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead to make sure it is well mixed. Set aside to rest for 5 minutes.
  2. Flatten the dough out on a lightly floured surface. Dust the top of the dough with flour and roll it out, dusting with flour and flipping the dough over from time to time, until it is about 1/16 inch thick and is the desired diameter.
  3. Generously grease the timpano baking pan with butter and oil. Fold the dough in half and then in half again, to form a triangle, and place it in the pan. Open the dough and arrange it in the pan, gently pressing it against the bottom and the sides, draping the extra dough over the sides. Set aside.
  4. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F.
  5. Filling: Have the salami, provolone, hard-boiled eggs, meat balls, and tomato sauce at room temperature. Toss the drained pasta with the olive oil and 2 cups of the tomato sauce. Distribute 6 generous cups of the pasta on the bottom of the timpano. Top with 1 cup of the salami, 1 cup of the provolone, 6 of the hard-boiled eggs, 1 cup of the meat balls, and 1/3 cup of the Romano cheese. Pour 2 cups of the ragu (tomato/meat sauce) over these ingredients. Top with 6 cups of the remaining pasta. Top that with the remaining 1 cup of salami, 1 cup meat balls, and 1/3 cup Romano cheese. Pour 2 cups of the ragu over these ingredients. Top with the remaining 2 cups of ragu over the pasta, (the ingredients should now be about 1 inch below the rim of the pot). Spoon the remaining 2 cups of ragu over the pasta. Pour the beaten eggs over the filling. Fold the pasta dough over the filling to seal completely. Trim away and discard any double layers of dough.
  6. Bake until lightly browned, about 1 hour.
  7. Cover with aluminum foil and continue baking until the timpano is cooked through and the dough is golden brown (the internal temperature will be 120 degrees F) about 30 minutes.
  8. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 30 minutes or more. The baked timpano should not adhere to the pan. If any part is still attached, carefully detach with a knife. Grasp the pan firmly and invert the timpano onto a serving platter. Remove the pan and allow the timpano to cool for 20 minutes.
  9. Using a long, sharp knife, cut a circle about 3 inches in diameter in the center of the timpano, making sure to cut all the way through to the bottom, then slice the timpano as you would a pie into individual portions, leaving the center circle as a support for the remaining pieces.

China slams blatant collusion of U.S. officials with anti-China rioters

Source Xinhuanet Editor Lin Congyi

BEIJING, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) — A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson on Tuesday said China deplores and firmly opposes the blatant action of U.S. senior officials involving themselves with anti-China rioters who have fled Hong Kong.

Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks in response to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel J. Kritenbrink’s recent meeting with four anti-China rioters who have fled overseas.

“These rioters are suspected of endangering national security,” Wang told a regular news briefing.

The Hong Kong police issued arrest warrants in accordance with the law. This is necessary and legitimate and in line with the international law and customary practice, said Wang.

National security legislation of the United States are applied extraterritorially as well. By bolstering the rioters from Hong Kong, the United States is not only trampling the principle of the rule of law but also laying bare its long-standing double standards on human rights and the rule of law, he added.

Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs that brook no external interference, said Wang, adding that China urges the United States to reflect on what it has done and fully respect China’s sovereignty and rule of law in Hong Kong.

The United States should not become a haven for criminals. China has firm resolve to safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests, said Wang, adding that any attempt to meddle in Hong Kong affairs and undermine the rule of law in Hong Kong will be met with China’s resolute response.

What lies do policemen tell to get criminals to give themselves away?

Detective Smith walked into the room, sighing.

Two burglary suspects of a local business. He’s not sure how they got in, as there was no signs of forced entry. He also knows that the other guy was caught with the stolen items in his apartment, but some were missing. The other guy claims he owns this stuff, but has no receipt. Smith needs to know what happened to the rest of the stuff, and who did what.

He looks at Mr. Suspect, who has been advised of his rights, and who insists he did nothing wrong, and as such doesn’t need a lawyer.

Det. Smith smiles. It’s not a pretty smile.

“Turns out I don’t need to talk to you at all. Mr. Alleged told us everything we needed to know. He said you frequented the business, and one time you were there you put tape over the lock. That’s how you two got in. He stood watch while you grabbed stuff. You then went back to Alleged’s place and stored the stuff there. The rest you fenced. Enjoy your trip to prison. You’re looking at a long stretch.”

Suspect panics. Alleged used to work at the business, and filched a key when he got fired. Suspect refused to help, not even helping Alleged put the stuff in his house. He wasn’t there when the stolen stuff was fenced. His only crime is that he didn’t turn Suspect in, and he didn’t because Alleged has been his friend since school.

Smith just lied to Suspect, as Alleged (in the other room) refused to answer questions without a lawyer present. Why did Det. Smith do this? He figures Suspect will panic, spill the truth, and fill in the blanks.

So will Det. Smith get in trouble? No. He never stole anything, and he’s not on the hot seat. He’s merely playing mind games with them to get them to trip up. He’s not in court, so it’s not perjury. He’s not the one facing charges. And he’s not threatening force or torture either. So it’s all legal.

You might say to yourself “That’s not moral!” Maybe it’s not…but is it moral to steal from a respectable business?

What do you think being too smart for your own good is?

Knew a guy who was greed personified. He overcharged his friends mother $2500:00 30 years ago when she hired him to do her roof. She didn’t get other estimates since it was her son’s friend, so being a smart businessman he charged her a “sucker’s tax” on top of the high price of a new roof. He was licking his lips, rubbing his hands together, talking about how much money he was making on the job. Her neighbor remarked about her new roof a couple of weeks later, then said “I just had my roof done too.” Their homes were identical. The neighbor paid five thousand for her roof, he charged seventy five hundred for the same job. The woman called him up livid wanting answers. He had none. Word spread about what he done for a good friend. He probably lost 20 jobs because he was smarter than everyone who did honest work.

All she does is talk

What is the biggest culture shock you have ever faced?

Woman being comfortable in their naked self around other women

Surprisingly, this happened in UAE. UAE has a multicultural society that might explain why.

Growing up in India, I used to have bath in rivers when I was a child. I learnt swimming with my brothers and father in a river beside our house when I was little. When I was 3 years old, my brothers would take me to the river and I will sit on their shoulders to swim through the river.

In all my life of river bathing and river bath watching, beach scrolling and beach bath watching life in India, I never saw a woman naked. When they take a bath, they would wear a lungi or their under skirt across their chest (I want to add a picture, but it would be, well).

After I came to UAE, I went to a beach in Saadiyat. I haven’t seen any woman naked in the beach, but I was surprised at the woman washrooms. There were a lot of people who were very casually taking a shower without their clothes on. Woman of all ages. Woman of all colors and shapes and body types. All in their beautifully imperfect bodies.

I couldn’t face any of them for the first time. I couldn’t look anywhere else too. I was an awkward little chicken, who was still in my shorts and waiting for a stall to get empty so that I could go in and have a private shower. But all these woman, without batting an eye, were taking care of their business, talking to each other, laughing with each other, as they would be in just any other situation. For them, being clothed or naked didn’t matter. I was the only shocked one there.

I don’t know if this counts as a culture shock.

PS: I don’t have any problem with woman having a shower without their clothes on, hallelujah for their confidence and their ability to be able to be so comfortable about their body. I am just saying, I was a bit shocked.

What could someone do to you that you can’t forgive?

Break my trust. My girlfriend broke up with me, but we had the same circle of friends, including our families.

Before we broke up, I started noticing that friends were avoiding me. After we broke up, I was visiting her brother, and she stopped by to talk to her sister in law. She went on a rant about how bad her new boyfriend was. Even telling us very personal details. I said to her”If that’s the way you talked about me, when we were dating its no wonder people are avoiding me” I left.

The next day her brother came to me, and told me her version of our relationship, including why we broke up.

I sat there in stunned silence, not one thing was true. I told her brother the truth, and he suggested we confront her. She was at his house, still talking to her sister in law. So we went over, and I gave my version of things. She said everything I said was technically correct, but I was leaving out all the implied communication, and how that made her feel. Guys are oblivious, I never imply anything, I always say what I mean. She kept talking herself into a hole. Her brother and sister in law, just sort of staring at her.

After that, my friends stopped avoiding me, and started avoiding her. Even when we were in the honeymoon phase of our relationship, she had been telling stories about us, to get attention and sympathy. Most of them contained a tiny snippet of truth, but were 90 percent exaggeration or lies. It all came out in the end, and everyone took what she said with a grain of salt after that.

This was someone I loved, telling others bad things about me. The vast majority were not true. I had never told anyone, anything bad about her. Even after we broke up, I never said a bad thing about her, until now.

Watch what happens

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Why do you think China’s cars are coming over in full force, trying to enter the European market?

If you are like me, you visit China several years in a row.

You will experience how crazy the development of electric vehicles is in China.

When I went to China in 2019, I could only occasionally see some Teslas on the streets of Shenzhen, and some Ubers used electric vehicles.

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  1. This spring, I took a random photo in a parking lot on the streets of Shenzhen. Note that green license plates are for electric cars and blue ones are for gasoline cars.  

But in 2023, at least half of the cars I saw on the streets of Shenzhen will be electric.

This change is terrible. Chinese electric car companies have been developing new models like crazy in the past two years, with new brands and models being launched almost every month.
These brands and models are engaged in life-and-death competition in the Chinese market.

The Volkswagen ID series models, which are among the best-selling models in Europe, are classified as other models in China and are not competitive at all.

The price of Volkswagen ID4 in China is only 1/2 of that in Germany。The Tesla Model 3, which sells for more than $40,000 in the United States, only costs $30,000 in China because it faces squeeze from many Chinese rivals.

Although China has the world’s largest electric vehicle market, there are so many competitors that it’s hard to make money.

Suddenly one day, Chinese auto suppliers were shocked when they discovered that Europeans were actually keen on buying ID4 and Fiat 500 products at high prices, and were willing to pay 120% of the price for a Tesla modely.

It turns out that Europeans have such low requirements for products and are so generous. Instead of fighting to the death with low prices in China, why not go to Europe and make money easily?

Although issues such as trade protection, localized production, transportation, tariffs, and after-sales service systems plague Chinese companies, they are not yet able to flex their muscles in Europe. But Europe’s attraction to Chinese car companies is huge.

This is why, recently, the media said that the Frankfurt Motor Show has become the Chinese Auto Show.

I’ll bet it’s cold.

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Has a cop ever said something to you which was completely unexpected?

The most interesting one was if I had any weapons in the vehicle…guns, knives, *GRENADES*?!? To this day, I don’t know if I was supposed to laugh or not? I didn’t – just in case. He never had any interest in looking, just took my word for it and moved on.

TODAY, I’d take a mention of that legitimately.. but not back then. I still wonder about it..

On a more mundane subject:

I was pulled over for speeding on an empty freeway at night on my way home from work and got a warning. I pulled off, and everything was fine…

A couple exits later, I see four police cars merge on behind me. I knew right away they were planning on pulling me over. It took them a few minutes to actually light me up though.

This time I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I was more curious than anything else.

Two cops come up to my window and ask for my license. They’re scrutinizing it and having a conversation between themselves about it looking legit? They then asked me if it was real. I laughed a bit and said it definitely was.

One of the cops left with it back to the cars, while the other stayed. He explained that after the first stop they’d been alerted that the driver’s license was expired. I exclaimed, oh.. okay! I saw you all come up like that and was wondering what was going on! On the second bit, he got a kind of weird look.. like he was a bit unsettled that I’d clocked it, and walked away.

Other dude comes back and says that it’s actually the license linked to my registration that is expired & I’m good. I tell him that my father is actually on the registration (mainly for simplicity sake as the due date is linked to DOB in FL), so I thanked him for the heads up, and he apologized for wasting my time.

Then I called my father and told him that he was probably going to get pulled over & to renew his license. He didn’t even realize it’d expired!

Yes it is

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Have you ever had a job where you did nothing for years and nobody found out?

I started a financial software company that I sold to a similar company, and they were bought a few years later by a multinational. In 2008, they laid off everyone who worked for me, then told me that I was going on part-time. I said, “If you force me to part-time, then I quit. Besides, my software product is making enough to pay my salary, benefits and a 15% profit margin.” They thought about it and never got back to me.

My only job was supporting the software I wrote, but that took five hours a month, at most. I tried to create other products, but was told to shut up. I was nearing retirement age, so learning new skills was also not useful. So I went to my kids’ middle school volley ball games, watched movies and wrote a novel.

Eventually a couple of things happened. My customers realized I would never produce another software release and that they would have to switch to a different software. Some switched and some went out of business, but eventually the revenue wasn’t enough to pay my salary.

So the company rewrote my product in another language, as part of another product. I helped as much as I could, but they didn’t want my help.

Finally, the company’s management chaos subsided, and they told me to convert their two key customers to their new product; it took a year of work and was a complete dog. I tried to persuade my biggest (80% of revenue) customer to switch to the new product, but discovered it was untested and badly designed. Then they laid me off. I retired.

The whole product line died. But then, the markets had moved on to a different kind of financial product, and no one wanted a product like mine anymore.

Yummy!

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Where was she wrong?

How are the Chinese in America doing?

Chinese will always get the best grades in school, goes to the best colleges, buys the best real estate, become your best immigrants, don’t gives a shit about your silly politics and makes the most money from Americans.

And they will quietly do that till they retire and do Tai Chi in their private garden. What do Americans do in America. Whine and shout obscenities, protest, grow fat, and get more immigrants to come to America and spend money building the wall!

Any more questions?

I guess

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Fresh Tomato Linguine

Roasted Tomato Basil pasta
Roasted Tomato Basil pasta

Ingredients

  • 6-8 fresh tomatoes, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 1/2 cups loosely packed fresh basil, chopped
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, cubed small
  • 1 package linguine or spaghetti

Instructions

  1. Combine first 8 ingredients. Allow to sit and marinate for 2 to 5 hours at room temperature (the longer the better).
  2. When ready to serve, cook linguine in a large pan.
  3. Drain well and toss the hot pasta with the marinade sauce until the cream cheese melts and all is combined.

Shhhhhh!

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When did the saying, “Everything happens for a reason,” start to ring hollow for you?

I got divorced.

It was the worst experience ever. It wasn’t clean-cut. The process leading up to it was super painful. The process after was also painful.

It was like the worst aspects of several different breakups, rolled up into one superbreakup, protracted over 12 months of heartache.

I came out of the experience a far better person. I’d been forced to learn the true meaning of heartbreak. I was confronted with learning to forgive someone I didn’t think I’d be able to forgive. I’d been baptized in my own mistakes.

I learned the sting of permanence undone, of forever being changed to “not anymore”.

Nothing is forever.

It was a new lesson on loss. And it made me better.

But I never looked at myself and said, “Everything happens for a reason.”

I chose to let that experience make me better. Not because I’m some BS master life coach. I chose to let that experience make me better because I’ve handled other downturns in the worst ways possible.

I’d seen too many people drown their lives in the wake of a bad divorce.

I’ve always had a problem with “Everything happens for a reason.”

From the day I heard it, it felt hollow, contrived, like something people say to make themselves feel better.

Perhaps I’m wrong. I’m not arrogant enough to think my own word is gospel. But “Everything happens for a reason” never did anything for me.

“Everything happens because of me” would be a better, albeit still flawed phrase:

I’ll give you a better phrase. One that is more practical. One that I regularly use.

We’ve all heard “roll with the punches” right?

Do you actually know what “roll with the punches” means?

In the sport of boxing and MMA, outsiders tend to look at everything from the punching perspective.

Good fighters punch hard, punch accurate, and knock guys out.

There’s another half to this puzzle that is just as important.

Getting punched.

An iron fist is useless if it is wielded by a man with a glass jaw.

Good boxers do their best to avoid punches. But they also train themselves to take punches. There is a technique in getting hit.

In boxing, like in life, sometimes you know you are going to get punched. You know it is unavoidable. So you take it.

Now when you read the next part, I want you to think of your own life events/difficulties, and what the parallels might be for you.

What’s the trick to taking a punch?

Rule 2, (yes rule 2):

Don’t just stand and let it hit you.

It’s basic physics.

A powerful impact is derived from an object in motion hitting a standstill object.

Rule 1: Don’t move your face in the opposite direction as the punch/kick. That’s just bad physics.

The trick?

Lean the same direction as the punch. If the punch is coming from the right, lean your head right.

“Roll” with the punch. It actually provides a huge advantage to the guy getting punched.

Floyd Mayweather made a career out of rolling with punches.

Not only does rolling with a punch diminish the impact substantially. It can wear your opponent out. Demoralize them. Give you confidence in your durability. Allow you to pounce on them after they’ve burnt their arms out.

Think about that phrase when bad things happen in your life. How can you best “roll” with this situation? A divorce. A rejection from school, romance, friendship. Difficult parents.

There are ways to roll with these situations.

In life, just as in boxing, everyone is going to get hit. Often.

Learn to roll with those punches. To get better. To win at life.

Horny and hungry

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How is heroin addiction recovery possible? What works? What doesn’t?

When I was leaving for work I noticed these little black things atop our front door frame.

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image 114

I pulled them down and wondered how the heck two shiny little rocks got up there.

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image 112

I looked to my left and noticed that all four window frames had two shiny rocks on top of them also.

After work, I asked my girlfriend why there were rocks on top of all the doors and windows in our home.

She accused me of not being very observant and then told me that those rocks were placed there by her to keep that bad juju out of our home.

I rolled my eyes and thought to myself how crazy, but very lovable she was.

She keeps rocks and stones and crystals everywhere.

image 113
image 113

My girlfriend believes in God and rocks and spirits and ghosts and all sorts of things that I don’t understand.

But I love and believe in her with all of my heart, so I’m cool with her praying over me and taking all her stones out on the porch once a month so the full moon can recharge them and all the other quirky things that make her, her.

My whole addiction to heroin was always about me, so naturally, the only thing I’ve ever been able to count on or believe in, was me.

I figured out how to manipulate people to give me money for heroin.

I stole goods and ran down the street with them.

I sold those stolen goods for money.

I spent that money on heroin.

I did whatever it took.

I, I, I, me, me, me.

I was the be-all and end-all when it came to my heroin habit — ME.

I earned it, alone. I stole it, alone. I shot heroin, alone.

I WAS GOD.

And then I tried to quit heroin for the first time. I was forced to quit, actually, by society. They put me in jail.

All of the sudden God (me) crumbled.

I was sick, alone and scared of everything.

Heroin was like a performance enhancer for me. On heroin I felt more complete than Jerry Maguire did with Dorothy Boyd — but it was no more.

The moment I got released from jail (after a twelve-mile walk in the snow, I shit you not) I got high on heroin.

God was back. I was back.

And that cycle went on and on for years, through jails, rehabs, halfway houses, quarter houses, three-quarter houses and even a stop at the psych ward.

That last time that I got high, was the last time because my girlfriend cried. I believed in her and she believed in me, and I let her down. It killed me to see that — her crying for me.

I realized that she believed in me.

And then I found Quora.

Four people befriended me, and they, as well as Quora became something that believed in me.

And then I got my driver’s license back — and realized that society believed in me.

And then I became employable, started earning money and realized that my clients believed in me.

My family relations were restored and my family believed in me again.

And now, after two years and many, many hardships, I believe in me.

I am accomplishing things I would have never thought possible. I am pursuing my dreams.

Heroin addiction recovery is possible, not with tough love — that is a crock of shit and a terrible approach.

When a heroin addict is at day one, believe in them and let it be known that you believe in them, that you support them.

That does not mean enabling them to continue getting high.

Recovery programs are not faith-based in the traditional sense. They tell the addict to find a higher power. I agree with that, in part.

A heroin addict needs more than one thing to believe in and more than one person that believes in them.

If my girlfriend leaves me, and she was the only thing I believed in or the only person that believed in me, I’d be on a short track to getting high on heroin again.

But I have Quora, my job, my driver’s license, my friends and my family.

And if it so happens that all of them ghost me, I still believe in myself.

But it took two years and a vast support system to get this level of confidence back.

Not all heroin addicts will survive their addiction, and that fact breaks my heart. Some will die, that is just a truth.

But when someone is trying to make it, the littlest bit of support, even a “right on, stay strong” matters a lot.

WHAT WORKS: Support someone by believing in them and encouraging them to actively seek out things that bring them joy and that they can eventually believe in.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: Don’t throw shade and don’t throw stones.

Leon

How nice

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What was your first clue you were no longer as young as you thought you were?

I was 59 and my 32yo niece asked me to help her buy a used car which I was glad to do. I’ve restored a number of classic vehicles so I figured I could be some help. Plus, I have some experience with used car salesmen and wanted to be sure she didn’t get ripped off. We went to the first lot and looked at a few vehicles. She picked one that seemed ok and the salesman came out and said “Do you want to take it for a test drive?” “Yes. Do you need to ride with us?” she replied. He looked at me and said “Oh I’m fine if you and your father want to go alone. I just need your driver’s license.” I was horrified “Her FATHER?” I said. She was laughing and said “How do you know he’s not my boyfriend?” The salesman “Oh I’m very sorry! I just assumed with the advice he was giving you and …everything. I didn’t mean to…I mean…well, it goes to show you just never know these days!” All I kept thinking through the whole test ride was “Fu%k! Now I’m in the Dad category?” The car was a piece of crap and when we got back I told the salesman my DAD ADVICE is for her to pass, and we left.

It’s funny, I don’t have kids, am in excellent physical condition and never felt my age limited my activities.Looking in the mirror later I realized how the mind simply airbrushes frown lines, crows feet, age spots, bigger pores, etc until some event, like that, brings it all into focus like an explosion of stark reality.

Uh oh

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What should I do if my boss says, “If you don’t like the job, you can go”?

Sail out of the nearest exit at 90 miles an hour like your ass is on fire.

I’m dead serious.

Of course you want to line up a new job first.

I’ve had bosses tell me something similar. I would bring up to the boss that I was exhausted and fast approaching burnout and that I needed a day off. The boss would then say something along the lines of “considering my future in the company if I didn’t want to be a team player.”

I would always walk it back.

Then one day it happened again where I was working double shifts for weeks on end, no days off. I told the boss I was tired and I needed time off and the boss told me, “You don’t work when you want; you work when I need you to work and since I’m the boss, I can schedule you to work any shift I want.”

I told the boss I gave them my availability and to please adhere to it. Boss refuses and then says the magic phrase, “If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

I stood there in silence, while the boss folded their arms with a smug look on their face.

I took off my badge, dropped my keys on the nurses station, grabbed my stuff and started walking out.

“Shannon, what are you doing?” Boss yelled after me.

“I’m leaving,” I said, not breaking my stride. “I’m sick of this.”

“Please come back! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” Boss said.

I walked right out the door, got in my car and left.

I never went back, even though the boss called me every hour for the next few days. I found another job and moved on.

If the boss is telling you to go, then go. Trust me, it’s for the best.

Grandpa loves Trump

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In The Middle East The U.S. Has Reached The End Of Its Abilities

The Biden administration is trying everything to better the situation for the Israeli government except by withdrawing its financial and munition support which are the only two measures that could bring Israel to its senses.

There are now several small wars in the Middle East which may soon accumulate into a big one. Israel is fighting Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza. It is fighting a silent resistance in the West Bank. On its norther borders it is involved in daily clashes with Hizbullah and various Palestinian resistance groups.

Israel is also bombing Syria and killing Iranian envoys to that country. Iraqi and Syrian resistance groups are attacking U.S. bases in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. is bombing these groups for more or less therapeutic purposes while trying to not hurt them too much. In the Red Sea the Ansarullah government of Yemen is blocking sea traffic related to Israel, the U.S. and UK. The U.S. and UK are bombing Ansarullah positions even as they know that no amount of bombing will change its position.

People in other Arab countries, while seemingly calm, are enraged over Israel’s genocidal behavior in Gaza. Their leaders try to keep their distances from the wars but at some point may well be forced to take sides in it.

Meanwhile the U.S., the alleged superpower, is hapless and helplessly trying to achieve results that are way beyond its abilities.

See for one example the last attempt by a U.S. envoy to prevent a further escalation with Lebanon:

US presents new blueprint to push Hezbollah away from Israeli borderYnetnews, Feb 4 2024

U.S. President Joe Biden’s Middle East envoy Amos Hochstein outlined the key elements of a political settlement to deescalate tensions between Israel and Hezbollah during his visit to the Jewish state on Sunday.

The plan consists of two phases: In the first, Hezbollah would cease hostilities actions along the border with Israel and will retreat between eight to ten kilometers north from the border.

Israeli residents will return to their homes, and a significant deployment of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL peacekeeping forces will maintain stability in southern Lebanon and along the border.

In the second phase, Israel and Lebanon will begin negotiations to demarcate the land border, including discussions on 13 points on disputes along their shared boundaries. Simultaneously, the U.S. and the international community will explore offering “economic incentives” to Lebanon.

Hochstein received the green light from the Lebanese government for his proposal, though it remains unclear whether Hezbollah agrees with the arrangement.

The envoy, who recently met with President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz urged Israel to give his plan a chance.

Nice plan. But what can you do to implement it?

How in hell will the U.S. be able to make Hezbollah to cease hostilities actions along the border with Israel and to retreat between eight to ten kilometers from the border?

Hizbullah fighters at the border are living in the border towns. They were born there. They want to die there. How the f*** does the U.S. think they can be pushed out? And why would Hizbullah agree to a ceasefire when the murdering of Palestinians in Gaza continues to be the major project of Israel?

The U.S. has no means, none, to press Hizbullah into a ceasefire or to push it to retreat from the border line.

The Lebanese government supports that move? Sure, verbally, as long as you cough up some money. But Hizbullah is part of that government. It is also the superior military power in Lebanon. Neither the Lebanese army nor the U.N. forces have the ability to fight it.

Step one is thereby meaningless. Step two, a promise for negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, makes likewise no sense as Israel is notoriously unwilling to make any concessions.

If baseless fantasies like the above are all the U.S. can come up with it is truly at the end of its abilities.

A chance of  a war between Israel and Hizbullah in Lebanon is increasing daily. While there are already daily clashes these are limited by certain red lines and targets. Both sides still avoid to cross those.

But Israel’s government needs a victory. Its war aims in Gaza are clearly not achievable. Losses are mounting. Its population, especially the settlers from the north who had to flee their homes, are unruly.

Alastair Crooke thinks (vid) that Israel will start a full out war with Hizbullah simply because the Israeli government needs a victory. He thinks that Netanyahoo still thinks he can achieve one. Others though have their doubts. Hizbullah today is far better equipped and trained than it had been during the 2006 war with Israel. That war ended in a draw or, as some see it, with a defeat of Israel. I know of no expert in that area who thinks that Israel today would fare any better than that.

I’d say let them try. The may well learn from it.

But why the Biden administration even thinks that it can stop such a clash by presenting plans it has no means to press for is beyond me.

Posted by b at 15:29 UTC | Comments (282)

Oh no!

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My Wife Informed Me That She’s Not Straight But Still Wants Me To Provide, I Informed Her To Get Out

A relationship is always give and take. When it becomes one-sided, it is time to leave the relationship.

Lemons and grapefruit

Lemons and grapefruit.

Ugh.

That was when my first wife and I were traveling the country and hovering around the poverty level, often dipping below it.

Often enough, we would be between work and thus pretty much starving. Going weeks between eating. Those were hard days. Those were difficult weeks. Those were really hard times.

But every now and then we would come near an orange grove, or see a house that had a lemon tree in it’s yard. Thus, by asking permission, we were able to get FOOOOOD!

And so we were kept alive.

Eating lemons all day for a month, or grapefruit all the time for a month or longer.

Man, oh man.

It felt like our teeth were getting loose, and going to fall out. And aside from that, we were still weak. Ugh. It’s something that I just don’t recommend for others to do.

Please, heed my advice.

A diet of citrus should be a last resort. Nothing less.

A painful past. I paid my dues. Have you?

Today…

How does the leadership and governance of China’s Communist Party compare to that of the US Democratic Party?

How about a million times better? How about CPC is about the most well organized and most successful organization on earth! Think about results. Surely results matter. And results are every thing right?

In 1949 CPC started governing China. At that time it’s life expectancy is 39 years old. Today in 2023 it is 78 years old. Chinese out live the U.S. citizens on average by 2 full years!

CPC reduce its hardcore poor by 1 billion people by 2022! The U.S. not only not reduced it’s poor to day 1 million Americans living live in tents homeless throughout the U.S. China has ZERO HOMELESS!

China has built high speed rail that cross China for trains travelling 3 times the speed of U.S. trains! US has less than 100 km of high speed railway lines compared to 45 thousand km throughout China!

China provides universal healthcare and charge what you can afford for 100% of its citizens and free college education for those who qualify while in the U.S. kids get into unplayable debts before starting life paying astronomical tuition fees and a third of American’s cannot afford to buy health care insurance.

China’s healthcare and pharmaceutical companies charge its citizens 0.95 trillion dollars for its 1.4 billion citizens. And the U.S. charged its citizens 5.9 trillion for its 330 million citizens! So on average Americans are forced to pay an average of 17.9 thousand dollars per annum while China charge its citizens 678 dollars a person a year. So the U.S. charge its citizens 27 times more to live 2 years less!

Chinese can walk freely at 3.00 am on any street anywhere in China and a week of U.S. random mass shooting is equivalent to China’s decade! China has 11% of US prisoners population per million people! In the U.S. there are many no go areas and people get necked to death all due to their skin colour!

CPC knew that STEM engineers and specialist number is the key technological prowess and being a technological leader. A year of Chinese STEM graduates equate to the entire U.S. STEM specialist and to day China has 100:1 advantage over the U.S.! Hence according to ASPI China today leads in 37 out of the 44 fields of key strategic technologies and the U.S. leads in only 7/44!

So you still want to compare? So U.S. is the David and China is the Goliath. China through merit gets the very best to lead. US gets the most popular! No comparison who gets the result.

What is the weirdest object you’ve ever found?

My 98 year old grandmother just passed this past Christmas. As I was cleaning out her apartment and sorting the junk from the priceless junk (amazing how much a 98 y/o woman can stuff into a 400 s.f. apartment), I came across a folded stack of notebook paper- it actually looked more like the paper torn out of a “Big Chief” tablet. On the outside was written, “Mrs. Ronzel Bailey, Orma WV” in my grandfather’s handwriting.

So, what’s so weird about that, you ask?

The paper was old and yellowed. As I opened it, I read the date- 1942. My grandparents had been married in 1938. My grandfather was a Lt. Commander in the Navy and on a ship in the Mediterranean in 1942. As I read the letter, the writing was in a very strange, detached voice. It told her how lost she must feel and how she must take care of herself primarily and then take care of my father (born in 1939). It then went on to tell her that she should buy a house on the outskirts of a small town and watch out for those who would take advantage of her.

I then got to a part where he instructed her to use her own judgement as to whether or not she taught my father about him. At this point I was thinking he was divorcing her! I got mad (even though I knew they were never divorced- they were married until he died in 1993- 55 years!). But, mad I was!

As I read further, it finally dawned on me that this letter was his final instructions to her in the event he was killed in action during WWII. It was difficult to hold back the tears as I read that she should not waste resources in trying to bring his body home.

This letter that I had just finished reading was what he wanted to tell her – make sure that she could move on and give her hope and comfort.

How she ended up with this letter, I will never know since he wasn’t killed in WWII and came home for another 50 years of marriage.

One piece of “priceless junk” saved!

What are some psycological facts?

  1. People change for two reasons either they learned a lot or they have been hurt too many times.
  2. If your mind wanders often, there is a 85% chance that you’re subconsciously unhappy with your life.
  3. The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies, it comes from those whom you trust the most.
  4. When we are constantly wishing for something, we overlook everything we already have.
  5. The way we dress determines the way we react. Especially our shoes.
  6. Tripping in your dream and waking up with a twitch happens when your brains thinks you’re dying.
  7. Our mind can sense someone staring at us even when we’re sleeping.
  8. Being nice to someone you dislike doesn’t mean you’re being fake but it means you’re mature enough to tolerate that individual.
  9. The true mark of maturity is when somebody hurts you and you try to understand their situation instead of trying to hurt them back.
  10. The first to apologize is always the bravest. The first to forgive isthe strongest. The first to forget is the happiest.
  11. Atleast once in life, you will meet a person you will never get over no matter how long it has been.
  12. Life becomes more meaningful when you realize the simple fact that you will never get the same moment twice.

What was the most unexpected knock you got on your door?

Two police officers with sober faces stared at me and I knew the news couldn’t be good.

They described a car that had just been in an accident, and the license plate. My wife’s mini-van had collided, burst into flames and everyone inside it died.

I’m doing a mental inventory about now. My wife, three children, and two nieces.

My legs turned wobbly. You can’t imagine what was going through my head. Because of the fire, they couldn’t find any useful identification but explained they could identify everyone both by DNA and by dental records. They wanted a DNA sample from me.

I guess they could verify my kids were mine, and that the adult was their mother. A nice, neat little bow.

Can you imagine? They’ve just told you that your whole family is dead, and —- I told them I would come down and give them a sample.

Getting ready to leave, my cell phone is buzzing. It’s my wife. What? Hard tingles are on my spine, like she’s calling from the grave.

“Our van was stolen from the parking lot….”

Were the sweetest words I could’ve ever heard. Yeah it was my wife’s car, but they won’t need any DNA sample from me today.

EDIT – to address some of the mysteries in the comments

I learned later that three people were in the van when it collided. A man, woman, and younger person, which they presumed was a child of the drivers. The police said everyone died, but they had a different human inventory than my own. I also learned they were part of a ring of car thieves, and the accident was not their fault. Another car ran a light and hit them broadside. No fatalities and only minor injuries in the other car.

My wife had organized a birthday outing for our oldest. All the necessary shops, restaurant, and theater were inside the mall. It would be several hours before it was time to leave again. The thieves had plenty of time to get away if they hadn’t been hit.

Chinese Sweet and Sour Meatloaf

Sweet and sour
Sweet and sour

Ingredients

Sauce

  • 2/3 cup ketchup
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 cup vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons FINELY minced ginger
  • 4 teaspoons minced garlic
  • 1 teaspoon mustard

Meat Loaf

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 3/4 pound ground pork (approximation)
  • 1/3 cup finely chopped green onion(white and green parts)
  • 3/4 cup bread crumbs
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tablespoons rice wine or any dry white wine
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

  1. Mix all sauce ingredients thoroughly. Set aside to allow flavors to marry.
  2. Next, combine all meat loaf ingredients except cornstarch. Take 1 cup of sauce AND mix it into meat. Follow this step with evenly sprinkling cornstarch over meat and thoroughly mixing it in.
  3. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  4. Place meat in loaf pan and pack it down. Bake covered with foil for about 30 minutes. During last 10 minutes of initial 30-minute baking cycle, remove meat loaf from oven, drain fat and slice into several serving-size slices. Pour about 1/2 cup of sauce over meat, making sure some of sauce runs down into cracks. Bake uncovered for about 15 more minutes.
  5. Meanwhile, if you want, you can heat and thicken leftover sauce with about 1 teaspoon cornstarch and an equal amount of water. As sauce starts to thicken, you can add about 2 teaspoons hot oil to sauce.

This recipe makes a lot of sauce, so leftover heated sauce can be spooned over individual meatloaf servings if desired.

If you want a browner meatloaf, bake covered for about 20 minutes and uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes. Then drain fat, slice meatloaf and pour sauce over it.

Is Germany a good country?

As a person who has lived in GERMANY for 10 years, I can tell you what Germany offers and you can decide good and bad depending on your priorities. Germany offers the following:

  1. Its a Democracy.
  2. We have only 1 planet, so Environment is a priority.
    1. There is no conflict among political parties over scientifically proven facts like climate change and global warming. Everybody accepts these proven facts.
    2. Around 30% of all Energy is produced from renewable sources like wind & solar and is still on the rise . Eight of the seventeen operating nuclear reactors in Germany were permanently shut down following Fukushima in 2011. In 2011, Angela Merkel’s government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022.
    3. Plastic bottles are to be returned once used and all trash has to be separated in categories before putting in dumpsters for respective categories of trash.
  3. Germany has the highest Current account surplus in the world i.e. its earnings from exports exceed its expenses from imports.
  4. People don’t carry guns around. Probability of that happening is 1 in 3 million.
  5. People are learning slowly about foreign cultures, but are very friendly when you get to know them better. Contrary to International belief, I never came across a racist person during my long stay.
  6. Citizens vote for higher taxes, this enables country to give top healthcare to its citizens and also maintain good infrastructure. So, healthcare system is very efficient, you can visit doctor without worrying about huge bills as you already pay the insurance cost as percentage of your salary.
  7. Refugees are given refuge, if in genuine distress and are willing to integrate.
  8. Education is free ranging from School to University level. So, average German person is very well educated. Therefore, Students are debt free at the end of their university studies with degree in hand.
  9. Full-Time working hours are 35–40 Hours per week.
  10. All Full-Time employees get 20–30 paid Holidays a year. Sick leave days might not have a limit if you have a prescription.
  11. Inflation is kept under check, so pay raises are low but stuff you wanna buy is still affordable.
  12. Maternity leave (12 months) and 2 months paternity leave are officially granted. There are 14 months of paid parental leave if the father takes at least 2 of them (12 if not). However the 14 months can be divided as seen fit e.g. 7 + 7 months for each parent.
  13. There is no speed limit on Freeways as the roads are good and drivers are trained with long theory lessons and practical training until driving skill reaches adequate level. Hence there is no road rage.
  14. Super rich are taxed higher than low and middle income people.
  15. Unemployed citizens get unemployment allowance (including heating allowance and house rent) till they get a job.
  16. Govt offers Retirement allowance for retired people and veterans.
  17. Teaching good values to children is important, so people with Children never J-walk. That also goes for people who are standing next to people with children before traffic lights.
  18. Food Factor:
    1. Beer is the Best in the world without question and its low priced.
    2. Though Italian and French wines are popular, German Gengenbacher wine from Blackforest is my all time favorite.
    3. Bakeries are the best as well.
    4. Everyday food in canteen/mensa is normally Italian and French stuff plus some salads. You always have to do a little bit of research before you find a place that serves authentic German cuisine.
  19. German Football team is best from my personal perspective as they are A REAL TEAM and not a cult formed around a star player.

Limitations in Germany:

  1. Though the new generation speaks English, language of communication in most work places is majorly German.
    1. This is not a limitation for local professional working locally. However, it might limit the ability of a German professional to market his/her skills at global level. Skills of German professionals can help the entire world but lesser knowledge of English limit the possibilities of International cooperation.
    2. High Skilled professionals who are looking to migrate to Germany must consider learning German or migrate to some other country which has more familiar language as the basis. As except for the startups or jobs in software & IT industries, German is first language at workplace. This might slow down their career growth if they fail to learn the language.
    3. For closer integration in German society you get better and faster response if you speak German. Unless people know the language life can be comparatively difficult. Since, I knew the language it was fairly easier for me to get everything organized & get cooperation as compared to other people with same nationality and economic standing.
    4. As Germany is slowly opening to attract foreign High-Skilled professionals as it is required due to economic reasons, the language situation is slowly changing but it requires time. Government offices in the city of Düsseldorf have adopted English as an additional language for official purposes and the new generation is adopting English as the second language in schools but the overall transformation will require more time.
  2. Rules are governed by institutions & organizations and therefore are very rigid. Rules might ignore genuine trouble of some people from time to time and may seem illogical.
  3. Local Trains and public transport as well as the ticketing system are managed differently by each city in a different way, there is no standard best practice.

What happened to the radiation that was supposed to last thousands of years in Hiroshima (1945)?

Like a lot of misinformation about radioactivity and radiation, that too was simply wrong.

The actual radiation from the Hiroshima blast was not nearly what some people thought it would be because they were looking at the results of the Trinity explosion in New Mexico. But the trinity explosion was on a tower a hundred feet high and not 2,000 feet in the air. As a result, the Trinity blast generated a lot of residual radioactivity from the dirt that was within the fireball. Even that didn’t last as long as some thought it might.

The Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, exploded 2,000 feet in the air and the fireball didn’t touch the ground. As a result, although there was a lot of radiation, the only radioactive materials generated came from the components of the bomb itself. Due to the intense heat, much of the radioactive material was carried into the stratosphere and carried away by the wind. The material that descended onto Hiroshima, although highly radioactive, was short lived. You have to understand that if a radioactive material has a short half life, it will be highly radioactive, but only for a short period of time before it has decayed.

The result was that the intense burst of radiation from the bomb was one source of lethal ionizing radiation, but the “black rain” that fell carried some of the short lived, but rapidly decaying material down upon the people.

Today, the background radiation at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki is normal. There is no danger from radiation in either city.

Being an engaged parent

Did the Crusades help stop the spread of Islam in Europe?

No.

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Muslims controlled parts of Spain, Portugal and Italy in the 11th century, before the Crusades. They had been in these countries for 300 years and 200 years respectively.

However, by the time the First Crusade was called in 1095:

  • Sicily had already fallen to the Normans, ending Muslim power in Italy
  • Muslim Al-Andalus (Spain, Portugal) had already collapsed and splintered into competing states. It was already losing ground to the Christian kingdoms of Castille and Aragon. Toledo fell in 1085 to the Christians.

The premise of this question is false because Islam wasn’t spreading in Europe at the time. On the contrary, it was in serious decline.

But what about the Turks?

The only area where Islam was spreading was in Asia, not Europe. The expansion of the Seljuk Turks from Central Asia into the territory of the Christian Eastern Roman Empire prompted emperor Alexios I Komnenos to ask Pope Urban II for help. This was what triggered the First Crusade.

The Seljuk Turks never reached Europe. Even without the Crusades, it’s highly unlikely that they could have. Horse nomads are not known for their skill at crossing the sea, nor are they famous for taking heavily fortified cities like Constantinople.

Okay, but what about the Ottoman Empire?

The Ottoman Empire conquered large parts of Europe in the 14th to 17th centuries, after the Crusades

So this question couldn’t be more wrong.

  1. Islam was declining, not expanding, in Europe before the Crusades
  • After the Crusades, Islam expanded into Europe

Conclusion

The Crusades may have encouraged the spread of Islam in Europe, rather than stopping it.

This is because the Fourth Crusade of 1204 famously destroyed the Christian Eastern Roman Empire, doing far more harm to the cause of Christianity in the Near East than any previous event. And it was the weakness of Byzantium that in turn allowed the Ottomans to expand into Europe.

Without the Crusades, the Ottomans would never have existed. Let alone crossed into Europe.

Tldr: the Crusades caused the expansion of Islam into Europe, rather than ‘stopping’ it…

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Italian artist Fabbio Fabbi (1861 – 1946) painted many delightful Orientalist scenes, such as this one. One has to be aware that these may not be strictly accurate, (and the concept of the harem is actually dark if one considers the details), but they are pretty to look at…

Is it legal to set deadly traps inside your house to defend against burglars?

WARNING: GRAPHIC STORY INVOLVING SERIOUS INJURIES. IF THAT BOTHERS YOU DO NOT PROCEED READING THIS ACCOUNT!

I know of two times when boobytraps were used with sickening efficiency. In Canada the law is explicit: any type of booby trap is illegal plain and simple.

An individual I knew had been broken into three times through the same basement window and all attempts to reenforce it was met by the burglars taking the challenge and doing increasingly more damage. By the third time there wasn’t anything of value so they did damage and perpetrated some absolutely foul actions involving feces, etc. As I said in Canada booby traps are illegal plain and simple but an item that was designed for something else that caused damage to a uninvited guest was that person’s problem.

This man took a 3′x3′ piece of particle board and drilled about 100 drywall screws into it, after that at the the bottom of the board he assigned values 10, 20 etc. creating a Pachinko game, then “absent-mindedly” left it under the window. About a week later he arrived home to a frightening scene of blood EVERYWHERE. He called the police who attended and investigated.They surmised that the uninvited guest had broken the window and climbed in, dropping to the floor and landing on the Pachinko game. He must have yelled for help and a second uninvited genius came to his aid and in doing so put himself in the same predicament.They freed themselves then left via the front door.

The officers attended the nearest hospital where they found a couple of meth heads with injuries similar to what the B&E guys would have. When questioned, they said it was a construction injury and the officers didn’t push it. They didn’t stay in the hospital as they were tweaking pretty hard. The homeowner faced no legal repercussions but was told that a second Pachinko accident may not be viewed as an accident a second time.The tweakers moved on.

Problem solved. I have a nastier story that if so desired I can relay but I want to see how this story goes over.

The talking cure

Who was the one kid at school who you never believed could make it as far as they did?

There was a dumb immature football player in high school who liked a lot of girls. I was one that he liked. He ended up getting a college scholarship to play football. I never thought he would make it past his junior year. There was another football player that I knew who he was but, didn’t know him that also got a football scholarship. I never thought he would make it past his junior year either. A few years later I was in the break room at my miserable job. The NFL draft was on. I wasn’t really paying attention. Then I saw both of them announced as first round draft picks. Each had a $7,000,000 contract. I was in shock! Several years later I became friends with the one who liked me on Facebook. He quickly started messaging me asking if I was single and wanted my phone number. He started calling me several times a day. He was basically inviting himself to come visit me. We lived 2 hours away from each other. When I let him know that I wasn’t interested he got mad. He told me that I should have gotten with him in high school. He then said that he bets if I would have known how he was going to turn out that I would have gotten with him. I said YEAH!I think he was trying to go back in time and hook up with all the different girls he liked and couldn’t get in high school. He told me he acted the way he did in high school because he wasn’t getting any. I told him the reason he wasn’t getting any is because of the way he acted.

Do you think the Communist Party of China is the world’s best party?

There is no such thing as the world’s best? Each country ought to have what they each see as the best for their nation and their people under different circumstances unique for them, over a development level that is different from country to country.

You can say every nation thinks they have the world’s best for themselves. They ought to be. Otherwise why would they choose it? Surely they all want to do the best for themselves right?

These words or symbols or slurs such as Communism or Democracy or Socialism are tags for various purpose. Some times to simplify some times to discriminate one against another or worst to slur and demonised. These labels meant nothing more, as each nation is shade of grey and not black or white.

The U.S. for example calls itself Liberal democracy. But in reality it is neither democratic nor liberal at all. Is 0.8% of the rich or and powerful decides that the 60 odd % of their people who bother to vote have only two choice Biden a senile or Trump a perpetual liar to choose from, surely that is not democracy!

The U.S. with a mere 4% of world’s population has 25% of the world’s prisoner’s population, surely it cannot liberal nor free? But U.S. can called itself whatever it wants!

China calls itself socialism with Chinese characteristics but the U.S. insists on the label. “Communism” for worst connotations to cast fear and hate on them! If you repeat it like this questioner do, it simply help your media cast hates on China.

To me if the west can call the U.S. a Liberal Democracy why can’t they tern China as Socialism with Chinese characteristics? It is no different from Western media calling Palestinians as “terrorist” and Isreal as freedom “fighter” These slurs and suggesting good is clearly a set. narrative!

Reality

Do lawyers ever have clients who don’t pay them on time or at all? If so, what do they think about them?

Back in my previous incarnation, I worked in collections for the law firm I worked for – drafting legal documents, preparing for hearings, and then taking enforcement steps once we obtained judgment. Yes, we sometimes collected money, but it was usually frustrating and fruitless.

Once, a client offered to pay $2,000 on a $5,000 bill. The lawyer (now a judge) asked my advice. I told her my usual recovery on a judgement was zero. We took the $2,000 and called it a day.

The real problem is that lawyers often start doing work without regard for the client’s ability to pay, they don’t bill regularly and they keep working on files even though there are unpaid bills. I was never involved in one of my firm’s biggest cases – a lengthy patent suit where the client was billed monthly and paid pretty much when it received the bill.

At first, most of the work was centered around clients whose assets we had grossly overestimated. This was very true in family law litigation. However, we often had cases where we simply did too much work for very little return for the client. I remember meeting one client who had met with “other Steve” (who did the collections calls) who complained that the entire amount of the judgement went to pay taxes she owned on the settlement. I told other Steve to write off the bill.

There was the odd client who had the wherewithal to pay, but just didn’t. In a lot of cases they were asset rich and cash poor. They often lived excessive lifestyles even though their income had dropped severely (not our fault by the way). We had a client who owed us about $70,000 and was getting about $100,000 a year from a rich person’s estate. However, that money couldn’t be “attached” by a judgement so we went unpaid.

Have you ever tried to fire someone and it backfired?

Backfire happened when my uncle was fired.

My uncle retired from the Dept. of Agriculture after a long career. He was headhunted by a couple of guys with land who wanted to set up a seed testing company. (If you want to claim something about seeds that you sell, someone independent has to test that.) He set up the program, and had contacts in the industry so that the two guys ended up with all their land in use. A year later the guys looked at their books and realized he was the highest paid person, and that all that he was doing, was signing off that the teenagers taking the readings, etc. and were doing the job right. They could do that.

They called my uncle in and offered him a severance package. He smiled, took the offer, and went home. Next month, they were frantic when they called him. After they had sent out the documentation with their signatures, every company that they were doing business with had called them and sent certified letters. They hadn’t understood that someone qualified as an expert witness needed to be signing those documents. The list of people qualified in that field is short. They had no choice but to hire him back, at an increased salary.

What is the nicest thing you have done that no one knows about?

I was a 16 year old American girl. Our family was living in Brazil due to my father’s employment. My family had gone to the beach for the day and had hauled along a 19 year old acquaintance from church. While at the beach, a woman had swum out too far and she was drowning. The 19 year old and myself swam out to help her. The tide was turning, the waves were really rough, and she was trying to climb up on us in order to not drown. She was so desperate. The situation with the waves, the changing tide, and her extreme emotional state was so dire that the 19 year old looked at me and said, “It is better for her to die than for all three of us to die while trying to save her”. He swam back to shore.

I realized that I would rather die trying to save her than live the rest of my life knowing that I abandoned someone in need. I could not leave her. I just could not do it.

I had taken a Junior Life Saving Course as a 10 or 11 year old. I remembered just enough to know not to let her grab me. I got my elbow around her neck and made her float on her back. I worked on calming her down. I tried to work with the waves instead of against them. It took a while, but we both got back to shore. She was vomiting up water, but she was alive. We both were. My family packed up and we drove home. There were no accolades.

I am 55 years old now, and that event at the age of 16 was a turning point in my life. The experience let me know that I could put my life on the line and do hard things.

Over the years, I have volunteered and donated and done some nice things, but that was the nicest thing I ever did.

Can Taiwan with the QUAD backing it, defeat China

No.

Not even close.

Consider this mix…

USA, Taiwan, QUAD, The Philippines, all of NATO vs China. Who would win?

China would win.

How? Why? What is the reasoning?

Well…

Let me engage you in some creative illustrations. Because anyone even contemplating such a ludicrous question is completely ignorant of China; China’s history, and China’s massive military capabilities.

A tale of mountains

Imagine, China as a huge; just massive mountain. And on that mountain are thousands, maybe even millions of ant hills. Every meter or yard or so, you see another ant hill. And amongst all those ant hills a dangerous and lethal fire ants. Their bite is painful, and nasty.

The fire ants are organized, communicate by scent, and are completely willing to die on the spot to preserve their colony.

The individual bite of a single ant is painful, but will not really kill any large animal. But if ten ants bite an animal, then you can expect some serious harm to come to that animal. Including death.

Now imagine a pack of dogs. Each dog has his own hill to live upon. One dog, the biggest of them all; an old and mangy mutt lives on a mountain, roughly the same size as the Chinese mountain. The other dogs, of various types and sizes and breeds live on an array of different hills and much smaller mountains. One is a husky, another is a German Shepard. One is a poodle, while another one is a lean greyhound.

This pack of dogs like to travel around in a great big pack. They are pretty good at it, running about, digging holes,, barking at everyone.

One day, the biggest dog tells the poodle and the beagle to go to the Chinese mountain and start digging and raising a fuss…

And they go up there and run about. Barking. Trampling all over the anthills. They dig into the ground and ants go a flying about. They are so happy that other dogs of the pack join in, and before you know it, all the dogs are running about all over the mountain and tossing the tiny ants everywhere.

Then…

(And anyone who has encountered fire ants knows)

… all at once, simultaneously swarms of fire ants bite in unison every single dog. They flood in from all over. They come from everywhere. And the dogs start running away, but the ants are still clinging to their fur and riding the yelling dogs back to their home mountains.

Some of the smaller dogs die in place. They never leave the China mountain.

The medium sized dogs make it home, where they lay in absolute agony and howl in pain and agony. The large dog collapses and winces and twitches as the fire ants relentlessly bite him over and over.

The ants that rode the dogs to their home now are establishing ant colonies there, and they grow and expand even as the dogs dies and their carcasses rot to bleached bones.

The ants in the China mountain rebuild and in no time at all, have bigger and more elaborate ant colonies. And the reign of the dog pack ends.

Replaced with a world run by a peaceful, but lethal fire ant horde.

This is the reality of a war with China. Are you ready to watch it happen?

What’s the most appalling behavior you’ve seen by a young child’s parent?

The woman living next door sent sweet bread for me yesterday.

She’s maybe 20 years old, mother of a toddler. It’s been a year they moved in as tenants and aren’t exactly the “hey, how are ya neighbor” type of folks and firmly practice minding their own business.

Last night, as I was back from work and having dinner. My wife brought a plate of sweet bread and said that Faiza (name changed) brought some sweet bread today and sat for a chat; it was delicious and kids loved it. We ate it while she was still here And after noticing the empty plate, she went back and brought some more, saying…

I’m glad you liked it. Here… I have brought some more for brother Neman. He should have some of it too.

And I thought… wow!

I tasted it and yeah it was nice. Sweet and crispy.

Later, I went to the other room and fired up my laptop.

I sat there and thought of her. Faiza.

A short brick wall separates our yards. I hear them all the time. She yells a lot at her husband and vice versa. She says “F” words to him which is quite uncommon. She sobs and nags. A poverty-stricken and miserable woman, indeed.

Worst of all… she curses her own son sometimes. I hear her saying “Drop dead” or “Why don’t you just die” to her own son. Downright awful.

Strangely… I didn’t hate her.

I would have hated anyone else in this situation. But not her. In fact, I felt for her. I remember seeing her as a toddler years back, running in the streets barefoot and playing with clay pots. She grew in this neighborhood.

It is complicated to explain to you, Quorans that in our lower-middle class culture… we just cannot go and tell people to behave on their personal matters. It can be considered rude and might actually trigger an irreversible chain of events that lead to “why did I do it in the first place” .

Believe it or not… I spoke to her one day. I initiated that neighborly talk and told her that I remember her as a toddler, playing in front of my house.

She smiled.

That’s what I was hoping for. A smile.

“I hear you cursing your son, Faiza. Trust me… he’ll remember it when he grows older. You love your child, I know. Do you want him to hate and abandon you as soon he can? It’s not his fault for whatever troubles you’re in”.

And that was it.

A few days later, I was home alone, opened my door upon hearing a knock and found her holding a piece of paper. It was the first time… she actually came to our door. She requested me to have her husband’s character certificate stamped by the local police as he’s applying for a security guard’s job.

I got it done.

It’s been weeks. Yelling between them is there but not so much, I would say. And certainly no more cursing towards her own son. I think… the kid has started going to play group. I saw him in his cute uniform.

And now this… a plate full of sweet bread.

Life’s good, people.

Who’s the funniest patient you’ve ever had as a doctor or nurse?

I was on a general medicine ward earlier this year where I met a patient who we will call Mrs X.

She had agreed to be a teaching patient. This was because she has peripheral vascular disease (the arteries in her legs weren’t working so well) so she had some good signs and symptoms.

While taking the history and exam I got to know this beautiful character very well. She was bright, energetic, witty and very funny!

She made jokes at her own expense, wasn’t afraid to rip into me (I did a little bit back to her too), and despite her rather poor medical state she had a great outlook on life.

Several months go by and I cycle through different specialities.

It was my first day on the geriatric ward and I got assigned my long case. This is a patient I’ll follow for the entirety of my placement. Writing about their medical history and progress.

Guess who I get assigned? It’s Mrs X!

She had undergone a double above knee amputation due to her peripheral vascular disease.

As soon as she saw me she smiled and said;

Mrs X: “Well I’ll be dammed! Who let this packet of trouble in here, how are you Carter?”.

I smiled, her cheeky wit was all to familiar and lovely to see.

Me: “I know right! Can’t get rid of me that easily. Hopefully you will be able to keep up with my banter still Mrs X”.

Mrs X: “Oh I will. No going easy just because I’ve no longer got a leg to stand on”.

From her cheeky grin erupted a heavy belly laugh. Only she could joke about a double amputation.

Me: “I would never, and I’m not giving you one of mine to stand on either!”.

We then proceeded to give each other a hug and catch up on the last few months.

Sometimes humour really is the best form of medicine.

What is it like to see the one you love with someone else?

The first time I saw my ex’s new partner, she stepped out of my old marital home with her child and stared at me blankly on the doorstep when I was picking up my son. It was odd, to say the least, to be standing outside my own house (effectively)and being introduced to his new flame. I hugged and kissed her hello and said ‘’Nice to meet you.’ Then walked away feeling surreal and asking myself ‘’What the hell is happening here?’

I was married for 18 years. We had a fairytale relationship. There were only three certainties in life: taxes, death and the fact that we would be together for the rest of our lives. But, things ended.

A reasonable adult will accept that the relationship ended for good reasons and that things just weren’t working anymore. But when your ex finds a new partner, that’s a whole different story. When he introduces his new partner to mutual friends as ‘’the love of his life,’ you find yourself having the petty, angry feelings a teenager would have. Then you chastise yourself for becoming THAT person.

And the day your 8 year old tells you that his suit for the wedding is too tight and you look at him bemused because you have no idea what he’s on about, and he looks back at you like a deer in headlights because he assumed you knew, you feel like you have been punched in the stomach. And weeks later, when you receive a text from an aquaintance asking ‘You okay?’ and it turns out she’s referring to the wedding photo just posted on social media, you feel you never existed. That’s when you realise those 18 years of love, support, fidelity, encouragement and accomplishment meant absolutely nothing to your ex. Or his family.

So you spend the next couple of years in a haze of various emotions (hatred, resentment, anger, jealousy, insecurity, despair) until one day you realise you’ve not thought about it much lately. And although the hurt will never disappear entirely, eventually it makes more sense to just accept it.

Why people divorce

Pretty good explanation.

In the USA…

Ohio, USA auctioned off 393,000 pieces of protective clothing for only $2451, and eventually threw away 7.2 million pieces of protective clothing as well as expired masks, gloves, and other materials. These soon to expire supplies cost approximately $29 million in federal funds.

Vermont sold 105,000 boot covers for $82.50 and thousands of safety goggles for 29 cents.

A survey by the Associated Press found that at least 15 states from Alaska to Vermont have abandoned some of their personal protective equipment due to expiration, surplus, and lack of willing buyers.

More than 18 million masks, 22 million protective suits, 500,000 gloves, and more have all been thrown into the trash can. This does not include states that have not provided accurate numbers to the Associated Press or responded through case studies or other measurement methods. Rhode Island states that it has crushed and recycled 829 tons of personal protective equipment. Maryland processed over $93 million in supplies.

The entire article is too long and there is a lot of material waste. I have only cited a small part of it. And that’s just what the US has calculated by itself.

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In the past three years, countless people around the world have lost their parents, children, and partners. These life-saving supplies are just rotting here. Tell me, who is the one who does not respect human rights?

At the same time as these things happen, Washington was doing this. No party has done better.

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The economic structure of this world is a joke, your society is a joke, and I watch it with tears in my eyes.

It needs to be changed. It can be changed. It must be changed.

Zones v3 – The most useful relationship map in history

What was the worst date you’ve ever been on?

“It’s really more of an in-person kind of explanation,” he demured, then suggested a dinner date.

I hesitated. Normally I don’t meet my online dates until significantly more text and phone contact. Partly for safety reasons, partly because I don’t want to waste my time on guys I know will not work out. But mostly because I have been on A LOT of bad dates.

He said he was living in his friend’s spare room because he’d hit a few “speed bumps,” in life. I totally got that. I’m the queen of speed bumps myself. I let myself dare to hope maybe— just maybe— I had found a kindred spirit. I agreed to the date. And just like that, there I was, listening to him tell his story from across the candlelit table.

”About a year ago, I went out with some friends after work,” he began, and I smiled and nodded to let him know he had my attention. “I met a girl at a bar and we really hit it off. We ended up going home together. Next day, there’s a cop on my doorstep. And yada, yada, yada… long story short, she didn’t LOOK sixteen.”

I stiffened. Did she look 30? Because you’re 44, dude.

“So,” he continued, “I have a felony on my record. I was put on probation, and my job fired me. And then, just to kick me when I’m down” —and this is my favorite part— “my wife left me.”

?!??!!

“Bummer,” I said, because what else is there to say?

“So I was out of work, and my mom and I couldn’t live off her social security check alone, so she started driving for Uber…

… That’s how she caught COVID and died.”

And this is why I’m still single.

Is it normal that my parents still let my 23-year-old sister live with them even though she does absolutely nothing in life? She has autism but other people with autism manage to get a job too so that shouldn’t be an excuse.

So you have an adult sister with autism, and you resent her living with your parents and, from your perspective, “doing nothing”.

You obviously don’t live with your parents and sister.

Autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning that there is a very wide range of capability and deficits. If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person. What one person with autism does has no bearing on what another person with autism can or will do.

Do you know anything about what your sister is capable of? Perhaps she had difficulty with language, making any interaction with the public impossible. Perhaps she has extreme sensory issues, making leaving her home environment an exercise in pain and anxiety. Autistic people can be intellectually disabled, or intellectually gifted. And both extremes tend to struggle with the social rules of conversation and interaction.

I would suggest that you find out more about your sister, without judgement. Ask questions with an open mind. Attend doctor’s appointments with your parents. Get to know your sister, on a personal level, without expectation of what she “should” be doing.

It’s perfectly normal, and even typical, for adults with autism to live with parents. They may lack the necessary mental skills to manage schedules, financial decisions, even cooking a meal or basic hygiene. While being able to discuss the intricacies of rainforest habitats.

However, your parents will not be able to care for her forever. And she is your sister. Eventually she may need you to help. So lose the attitude and get informed. That way you can be a loving, caring sibling, rather than a jealous, resentful one.

What is SpaceX doing differently that makes the company so successful?

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That’s three spaceX raptor engines, on a regular ass flatbed trailer, being towed around by a ford.

ULA and all of the other legacy launch providers would have built some bespoke vehicle at the cost of millions of dollars to do this job.

I can think of few other images that capture in one shot the difference in philosophy at play here. SpaceX acts like it’s stuff is commodity, yet tough hardware, and that it can be treated as such.

It’s a rocket engine. If it can’t survive being towed around by a ford, it’s probably not going to survive flying to mars, landing, and taking off again with minimal human interaction.

The entire south Texas facility looks like a construction site that might be dedicated to the oil and gas sector (which is no surprise, given as that’s the sector that largely built it), not some hyper-clean room high tech facility that looks like it’s primarily built to host congressional delegations. The equipment used is overwhelmingly the sort of stuff that one sees at any industrial facility where you have to worry about cost, rather than the taxpayer subsidized specials that legacy companies seem to be addicted too.

Loyalty is really important to men

Have your neighbors ever called the cops on you for something ridiculous?

When I was still dating Ebba, she warned me for her father on several occasions. That he was a difficult man, that he was incapable of listening to other people, and that he constantly complained about my trees being too high. And that he would never stop.

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Her words turned out to be augural signs for what was to come.

Have your neighbors ever called the cops on you for something ridiculous ?

Yes, all the time.

It started with nagging. Nagging about my hedge which was too high, nagging about my backyard birches whose leaves fell into his garden (and those tiny, tiny twigs), then about an old elder tree that (slightly) leaned over on his side of the fence, then about a Christmas tree that would grow too big in the future, then about all the shadow which is cast on his property.

Nagging, nagging, nagging.

So he contacted the community officer to complain, and that kind man patiently tried to explain that on the countryside, trees and hedges are a normal thing, and so are leaves and the like. He did not listen.

Some time later, we came back from abroad near the end of Eastern holidays, and our beautiful Christmas tree — the one that “would grow too big in the future” — had been cut. The bully admitted without any shame that he had done it.

The community officer tried to explain to my neighbor that this was not done, but again the bully did not listen.

And so it began, and proceeded.

  • Then envelopes came. With pictures of all the leaves and twigs that fell into their garden, and of all the fictional damage that they had done.
  • Then he sued us in a Justice of Peace court because of our trees, and the judge himself came by to check on his complaints. And he did not agree, on all accounts. He explained the bully that leaves and twigs are a part of country life, and that he would have to live with that. (He did not listen.)
  • The bully then nearly physically attacked me, and threw his entire repertoire of vile words in my face (and some of it also in my ear). He was heavily reprimanded by the judge. (He did not listen.)
  • Since then, he called the community officer again, and was again reprimanded and asked to stop. (He did not listen.)

Ebba was right indeed — her father will never stop.

So we planted a seedling of a giant sequoia in our frontyard.

It is a direct descendant of a 500-year-old Californian giant, and it grows ferociously. Last year, it doubled in volume and added more than two feet to its height, and it will keep on doing that until it towers above all the neighborhood trees in no time.

The gauntlet has been thrown.

And a shadow will be cast.

What is the strangest reaction of someone who has just been fired?

I left the office laughing.

On my second day in my new job, I was summoned to a meeting with the director. He told me that the person I had been hired to replace, as the top finance person in the company, had accepted an offer to stay, and that I would therefore not be made permanent.

Aside from some curiosity about this development, which he declined to gratify, my reaction was being absolutely fine. Just another curveball in the strangest year of my life.

As I got up to leave, my chair knocked over the fan behind me.

“Just because you’re being let go, doesn’t mean you can start trashing the place!” he said, and we both laughed.

Added:

Ten days later, I had lunch with the man who had replaced me at my previous job, as we had become friends during the handover. He asked me to come back and work with him. I accepted. A few weeks after that I fell in love with him. Last month we celebrated a year together. Funny what life throws at you.

What is the most ridiculous reason for which you have been fired?

I was fired, but I probably deserved it.

When I was 18, I had a job as a receptionist in a small doctor’s office in a rural area. There were three doctors who were based in another community. Their hours at this clinic were sporadic. This was when our healthcare system was in transition and many of the rural people didn’t understand the complicated new changes.

I noticed that the head doctor, who owned the business, was doing some dodgy things. He was billing the government for treatment, and then charged the rural people cash for the same visit. For example, a girl who had saved up money came in to have her ears pierced, was charged cash. The doctor then billed the province for an “ear infection.”

This same doctor opened an x-ray clinic in his own community, and apparently almost everyone who came through the door “needed” x-rays.

There’s more. In those days, the family doctor went all the way with his pregnant patients, from a positive pregnancy test, to delivery. Except this doctor was a no show, every time. Sometimes he went golfing after getting these calls! Sometimes he walked his dogs instead of attending the birth, birth after birth. Most times he got the message and simply ignored it.

This was awful! These poor rural people were being cheated, and the pregnant moms, too.

So, I took photocopies of government billing and the receipts for cash. I had lots.

I began telling these pregnant clients the truth, and they started going elsewhere for treatment.

I was at a loss as to what to do next, so I took all my photocopies to the mayor of the closest large community. He thought they were interesting. I was so pleased. However, the mayor didn’t tell me what would happen next…

I went to work the next day and the day after that. THEN, I got a call from the wife of the doctor, firing me. She didn’t say why, it was a short call. I’d never been fired before, and I had such hurt feelings that I actually cried. I felt so terribly unwanted.

Then I got a call from an employee at the other clinic. She said there were two mean guys from the government there who showed up with some kind of paper that said they could search through all the files. Later I learned that the doctor lost all his hospital privileges in the provinces. A couple of years later, he closed his business and left the country.

Still satisfying. All these years later.

Why do I keep seeing people on Quora saying the ancient Chinese were very strong and advanced, yet they got wrecked by the British (not targeting China, just curious)?

Rationally speaking, China or the Qing Dynasty was ruined by its own problems, and the British were only the fuse that ignited them.

In fact, with the wealth and potential that China has, it is difficult for any other country to really challenge it as long as it is on a normal track, having long occupied a quarter of the world’s population and wealth, reaching half at its peak. Such a country could only be destroyed from within. Several vulnerable periods in China have been marked by various unresolvable structural contradictions:

  • First of all the Song dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, since the Song dynasty was a local power, it had no control over the north and was caught in a long war with Jin and Liao, even so, the Song was the last large country to be conquered by the Mongols, after the Mongols had conquered most of Eurasia, they concentrated their forces of half of the continent to attack the Song dynasty, even so, the war lasted almost 50 years, it was not easy for the Mongols and As Mongol Khan died in Sichuan, it forced Mongolia to stop its conquest of Europe and led to the division of the Mongol Empire.
  • Then came the Manchu invasion. The problem of the Ming Dynasty was the successive famines during the Little Ice Age and the failed fiscal policies that led to a high concentration of wealth to the bureaucratic class, with officials getting rich and the country not collecting taxes. The corrupt bureaucrats had no regard for the survival of the country before their personal interests, and the Ming Dynasty collapsed after a massive peasant uprising broke out, at which point the warlords in the north also colluded with the Manchus for their own benefit and gave China away.

The structural contradiction of the late Qing dynasty was that it was a minority regime, which meant that the rulers saw the state as their property and the people as their slaves, and they were more afraid of having their rights taken away by the people as opposed to being afraid of foreign invaders; after all, foreigners wanted only property (territory) and the people wanted their lives. Therefore, the Manchu rulers did not dare to mobilize the power of the people and let them master advanced productivity and technology. As a result, Japan in the same period could modernize rapidly on a much worse basis, while the Manchu aristocracy could only make do.

There are many uncanny but thought-provoking phenomena in the Opium Wars that illustrate these issues.

The British did not initially sell opium to China; since they had already succeeded in the Industrial Revolution, they believed their greatest advantage was industrial consumer goods, which could be industrially mass produced at low cost, and through which they believed they could succeed in China.

And then they failed.

Haha, yes, because China was in a small peasant economy, with little economic circulation and no modernization, the peasants did not need these consumer goods at all, nor could they afford them. For food, they grew their own, for clothing, the price of Chinese cloth was even lower, and the most demand was for spices, a few agricultural tools, and only the high officials and the rich consumed those “magical gadgets”.

Well, the British adjusted their strategy and they started selling Indian spices to the Chinese, but that’s when a new problem arose, and that was the balance of trade. Due to the extensive trade, Chinese porcelain, silk and tea flooded into Europe, fostering European consumption habits, especially tea, which was literally gold growing out of the ground. Europeans have always suffered from the local water quality problems, due to industrial pollution, and no modern tap water system, Europeans have long endured the bitterness of drinking water, tea is simply a savior. At that time, people did not know that the soil had the problem of acidity and alkalinity, and they thought that only China could produce good tea. Therefore tea became the core of the world’s trade at that time, for the profiteering of tea, the British shipped almost all the world’s silver to China, which led to the silver crisis in Europe, that is, severe deflation.

To balance trade, British merchants packaged opium to sell to China as medicine, which opened the door to a new world, yes, the door to nightmares.

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Opium was a perfect trade good, a product that could be manufactured in large quantities and that consumers could not get rid of after forming a habit, but none of this is the core of the problem, the most crucial point is that opium was banned in China. You must think I’ve said something wrong, but no, the logic goes like these:

  • Since opium was banned, Chinese farmers could not grow it, so this meant that China’s greatest advantage, the cost advantage, was gone, something that had not been the case with previous agricultural products.
  • Because opium was banned, it could not be imported through normal channels, was not taxable, and because the trade between China and abroad was monopolized by a few individuals who were thus sufficiently profitable, there was sufficient incentive for Chinese and foreign trading merchants to collude and buy officials to smuggle large quantities of opium. When the supervising officials essentially became accomplices of the smugglers, and there was no channel to respond to the ruling class about the actual situation, the opium trade became a mutually agreeable existence.
  • Since there was no supervision, everyone became complicit, forming a wide class of interests, so much so that it was even more impossible to contain, and the profitable officials made money to share the profits with their superiors, so that the senior officials were also deeply involved, so much so that the emperor was aware of the situation at a later stage but still could not stop it, because even the emperor himself could not resist the temptation brought by profits.

When the opium trade grew exponentially, problems arose, the people took a lot of opium, a large number of refugees emerged who were bankrupted by opium, the army took a lot of opium opium and lost its fighting strength, and the most crucial problem was the same as the situation in Europe before, the outflow of silver. At this point, the emperor finally realized the problem, yes, the emperor never worried about the miserable situation his people were in, he only cared about himself and his property, that is, silver.

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At this point, the “smart” officials came up with a solution, the same as the current North American policy on marijuana, if you can not prohibit, simply liberalize.

Well, the nightmare really came. Due to the huge profits of opium, farmers stopped growing grain and they grew opium, domestic opium quickly took over the market, opium prices plummeted, more people started smoking opium, the market became bigger, so much so that smugglers could still make a lot of money even if they paid taxes legally and provided the officials with kickbacks as much as they should, and instead of balancing the trade, the open door policy made opium even more unstoppable.

When the Qing government once again made up its mind to ban opium, it was too late. The harsh policy not only failed to solve the problem, but also angered British businessmen, who spent a lot of money to convince the British Parliament to vote to declare war on the Qing Empire, a vote in favor of which was narrowly won by only nine votes. This meant that even at the time, when Britain was at its strongest, they did not have enough confidence to defeat China halfway across the world, tens of thousands of kilometers away. The parliamentary lords took the money and sent a small expeditionary force to try, at least they knew that the Qing did not have enough naval forces to retaliate against them.

At this point, the ignorance and lack of understanding of the other side on both sides of the battlefield is mind-boggling to people today.

The Qing emperor had always arrogantly believed that he was the ruler of the world and that the British were just some barbarians. He regarded the British attack as a historical harassment of China by barbarians from the north, as if the British army would immediately surrender and kneel down and beg for mercy as soon as he gave the order for the Chinese army to attack, which was not the funniest thing, the funniest thing was that the initial reaction of the British army seemed to confirm his judgment.

Surprisingly, the British fleet did not dare to attack and only cruised in the outer sea. The Qing generals holding on to the shore batteries even became bored, thinking that the British were bluffing and how they dared to fight against the armies of Heaven.

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Do you know what the British think? The British think they are “blockading the port”. I have to say, I really laughed, “blockade of ports”? They didn’t even know that the Chinese had no concept of trade or sea power at that time, and all trade was packaged by officials as “tribute” from the surrounding barbarians to the central state, which had everything and didn’t need to trade at all, but only to show appreciation and give gifts to the “tribute”.

In fact, it was when the British fleet prepared to blockade the Yangtze northward and began to move deeper inland that the real battle took place, a process that shocked both sides.

  • British naval guns were surprisingly farther-ranged and more powerful than the Chinese shore guns
  • The Qing shore guns were surprisingly all fixed guns, unable to adjust their angles or aim, and could only probabilistically kill.
  • The Qing army’s jingalls were surprisingly unable to inflict fatal wounds on the British.
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  • The British tactic of suppressing fire with naval guns and attacking with small units around the flank and rear was surprisingly easy to make the Qing defenses collapse. And this simple tactic seemed to work forever; the Qing army seemed to have absolutely no reconnaissance capability.
  • The Chinese population around the battlefield simply watched both sides perform, and even applauded the British victory, as they were apparently more oppressed by the Qing officials.

In the end, this turned into an almost one-sided massacre.

At the same time, the message to the palace is a lot of good news. The officials could not explain such an incredible defeat, and they could only cajole the emperor that although the Qing army had been winning, the harassment of the British brought a huge financial burden. How about giving the “barbarians” a sum of money to meet their trade requests and induce the British to retreat? They even falsely claimed that the defeated British army knelt outside the city gates and prayed for the mercy of heaven, which was moving.

Coincidentally, this was the time when, due to a massive outbreak of plague among the British army, more people died of disease than died in battle, and the British army was unable to fight, so a consensus was reached. The officials and the emperor saved face and the British got the benefit. The first unequal treaty in modern Chinese history, the Treaty of Nanking, was signed in such a confused manner, which started the prelude to China’s “hundred years of humiliation”. And this war even too small to be worth mentioning in the history of the British.

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What, if anything, can be learned from this history? I would end this article with a quote from the Chinese author Liu Cixin in The Three-Body Problem.

Weakness and ignorance are never an obstacle to survival, but arrogance is.

This statement is not only addressed to the Chinese, but also to the many Westerners who currently know nothing about China but are happy to teach the Chinese how to behave. Hopefully, as mature civilizations, we should all refrain from repeating the mistakes of the past.

What is the most ludicrous thing someone got fired for at your job?

I had an employee in her late 30s that kept missing work. She called in with lots of excuses. Vandalized car, stolen keys. I put her on a performance plan (first step to termination). So, she reported to HR that she was an alcoholic. I, according to HR, could no longer terminate her. So, I (the company) continued to pay her while she spent 3 days in jail. I paid for her to be off work for a month, while she attended out-patient rehab. During her time off for rehab, she got pregnant. I paid for her to have a baby and 8 weeks off work. She continued to miss work…probation appointment, broken car-start-breathalyzer. Her work was terrible, she antagonized the other employees and spent a good part of her workday outside smoking cigarettes. She eventually quit. I never was allowed to fire her.

However, I had another employee that I did fire…for smoking marijuana during her time off work. She was selected for random drug testing. She failed for marijuana. Even though she was not using at work, and she was a good employee, I was required to fire her. She was in her 60s. She apologized to me as I was terminating her. I went back to my office and cried after she left. I felt so terrible for what I had done to her.

So, smoking tobacco leaves and drinking alcohol to the point of complete failure to perform….ok! Smoking marijuana leaves during your time off, while doing a good job at work…b-bye.

Completely upside down.

You suddenly wake up 50 years in the past with nothing but your clothes, smartphone and memories of modern life in the year 2019. How do you use what you have to best advance humanity?

  1. I get to New York City, by hitchhiking if need be.
  2. I go to the New York library and find the name of a good patent attorney.
  3. I visit his office and show him the phone.
  4. His jaw drops to the floor. He knows he’s looking at nothing that can be built in 1969.
  5. Then I tell him there’s nothing in that phone I know how to patent, but I know a lot about the broad evolution of technology over the next 50 years across semiconductors, computers, programming, biology, material science, etc.
  6. He takes another look at what is obviously the most powerful supercomputer on the planet…
  7. Then I say: “I need a place to stay and a little spending money while we figure out how to build a company that’s going to own the most important intellectual property portfolio the world has ever seen. We’ll need scientists, engineers, investors, and lawyers working together. You in?”

You want a patent attorney, they see the possibilities.

Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?

Oh yes! Back in the day (early 2000’s) when I lived in Los Angeles I worked in the accounting department for a catering company. After a few months I was doing ok but I was aware that my immediate supervisor (we will call him Javier) was not very fond of me. (Well, actually he had been WAY too fond of me at first but once I turned him down it was downhill for me in that office. But that’s a separate story and I don’t mean to digress.)

One day the phone at my desk rings and I answer it. The young lady on the other line tells me she is answering the add she read in the paper (yup, newspaper ads! I am that old!) about the job opening and she is interested to set up an interview. Yes you read correctly: Those idiots had placed an ad in the newspapers for MY job and had given the phone number at MY desk as the contact by mistake. I was very pleasant to the young lady on the phone as well as the other dozen or so that called until Javier made it in later that day. I went into his office with a big smile and handed him his messages and said something along the lines of ‘oh and these messages are from people answering the want ad. You know, the ones that want to interview for my job.’ He looked at me in complete shock and embarrassment since I had just called him a complete idiot and he was left speechless which is essentially what had happened. I mean, what could he say? That was on a Friday and the owner of the company (who was completely unaware) was in Hawaii and would not return to the office until Monday. The owner came back on Monday livid that this had happened, was embarrassed and apologised for causing me any discomfort. Javier didn’t apologise as much as he said that California was an ‘at-will’ state which meant that one could be fired for no reason at all, blah, blah and that he really wasn’t a bad guy (only an idiot!). I didn’t have another job lined up so I let it go.

Fast forward about about 2 months later. Again a Friday and in the morning my phone rings. The young lady on the other end wanted to confirm her interview appointment for 3 PM that day. Again, for MY job! I responded ‘sure, no problem! See you then!’ After lunch my co-worker (who I though was my friend but turns out he wanted to safeguard his own position so he sided with Javier) says something like ‘hey Christian, there isn’t much left to do today. Why don’t you go home?’. I responded with a ‘naw, I have so much to do with blah blah…’ Half hour later Javier comes to me with the same question. I said ‘oh no, I want to get ahead with blah blah…’ 3 PM comes around, bell rings and in comes in the young lady. I sat her ass down in my seat, got her some coffee and told her I would let Javier know. I go to his office and announce ‘Mary is here for her interview for my job. I got her some coffee. I’m going home like you suggested. Have a great weekend!’ They once again found themselves speechless at their own idiocy. She turned them down.

A few weeks later I landed my dream job during the catering company’s busiest time period. My new job told me they needed me to start immediately. I told them that even though Javier had treated me like homemade dog piss, I was still going to give them a 2-week notice because that was the correct thing to do. The following day I walked into Javier’s office and gave my notice. He begged me to please stay for at least a couple of more months until the busy period subsided and they did not have someone to do my job. I said I could not and that the 2 weeks was all that I could give them. I left with my head held high and worked at the other company for 10 years until I moved to Europe. Moral of the story: When someone treats you like dog crap do not sink to their level and don’t forget your self respect by teaching them a lesson on what human decency is all about because sooner or later karma will still find those Mother Fuckers.

As an American, would you sacrifice the ability to choose your own doctor and receive expedient service in exchange for cheaper, universal healthcare?

When I signed up with my US health insurer, Humana, the first thing they did was assign me to a different doctor than the one I had been seeing for fifteen years. I called them and told them to put me back with my regular doctor. In April of 2023, I recived a new insurance card with a different doctor’s name and a letter informing me of a change in my primary care physician. Again, I called them and told them to put me back with my previous doctor. In June of 2023, I recived a new insurance card with a different doctor’s name and a letter informing me of a change in my primary care physician. Once again, I called them and told them to put me back with my previous doctor. In September of 2023, I recived a new insurance card with a different doctor’s name and a letter informing me of a change in my primary care physician. I no longer have Humana as my insurer.

So don’t tell me that as an American I have the ability to choose my own doctor when my insurance company keeps trying to deny me that choice.

American health insurance is shit.

EDIT: I should point out that my original primary doctor was and is in Humana’s “network” to begin with. Their insistence on assigning me to another doctor was either some kind of bureaucratic nonsense or they were just fucking with me. Either way, there was no reason for them to keep reassigning me when I clearly stated my preference time and again.

What is the most bulletproof advice your dad ever gave you?

One day dad and I went into a deep conversation about various aspects of life. Topics like meaning of life, life after death, role of luck in success etc.

Conversation went deep and we kept discussing and I was all ears to grasp whatever wisdom he had to offer.

Then I asked him “Dad if you have to give one solid advice to me that I should always follow, what should be it. Just one?”

He thought for a while and then asked me, “What is your utmost priority in life”?

I gave a grin smile and said, “My Career”…..I was 28 then.

To which he replied, “Suppose you earn $ 10,000 + in a month some years from now, for that obviously you have to trade time for money and you ignore everything to earn money. By the time you turn 40/45 you have all the money in the world and are financially secure. You have a house of your own, a car and all luxuries. But since you have traded time with money, you didn’t focus on your health and now you are obese and have a weight of 90 Kgs and is catching with some diseases such as diabetes, obesity, joints pain etc.

Why did you earn so much money? To buy luxuries and to enjoy them. Now even if you have all the luxuries in the world, you can’t enjoy them as you ignored your health, and now your body is ignoring you. Even if you want to enjoy the travel, food etc that money has to offer but you can’t utilize luxuries to the fullest.

One line he said that I will never forget – “You can work hard and with your skillset you can earn money anytime but once health is lost, it becomes quite difficult to regain back your health.”

So my son, never ignore your health for anything. Health is wealth. If you have health, you can enjoy life till your last breath.

Even if he is 65 now, he never misses taking care of his health for 2 hours a day at least and plays table tennis better than people in their 30s at his place. I have not seen missing him his workout for more than 3/4 days at a stretch for the last 35 odd years. Even after retirement he was of the view that I must not pass time rather being a good cook, he started his own youtube channelRAVI SISODIYA”

and is doing well. Enjoys his passion and interaction with subscribers.

I was not regular at that time and then decided to keep my health a number one priority.

Whatever your profession be, never ignore your health for more days in a row. Respect your body and mind and you will get the same in return.

Why are Russia and China conducting military exercises off the Alaska Coast?

First, it makes the absurdity of the “island chain containment” plain and obvious.

It is no longer this map keeping the Pentagon awake at night:

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but these:

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That is a whole lot more real estate, with few american base assets in sight.

The combined Chinese and Russian fleet this year is sizable, at 11. More tellingly, the US sent 4 Arleigh Burke destroyers and a P-8 in response, rather than rely on the Coast Guard like last year.

The diversion of 4 destroyers from regular operations opens up a 16% operational hole for a navy that is already stretched thin trying to match the operational tempo of the PLAN in the Western Pacific.

This is an important development on the chessboard, because the psychology has shifted.

The US can no longer plan around concentrating assets along the Western Pacific, because the Pacific and Arctic are huge playgrounds.

What will make it even more interesting is the presence of Chinese naval aviation when the emals carriers enter service. America will have to send a CBG or two in response, but there is the type 055’s formidable VLS battery to contend with, and so on. Fascinating calculus, if you are a wargaming nuthead.

That will upend the already stretched resources of the USN.

In other words, nightmare-inducing calculus for Americans, who will not be able to accept the Chinese conducting Sigint flights off its own coast, like it has been doing for decades on the other side of the ocean.

The Pacific is not America’s backyard. Neither is Pearl Harbor the keystone.

Time to tear up old maps and make new ones, at least where deployment of forces and chinks in the armor are concerned.

The Pacific is where Chinese power projection will develop, not Oceania, the Indian Ocean and elsewhere.

Note: Currently, more than 70 percent of the USN’s deployed assets are allocated to the 7th fleet and Indopacom, and they are concentrated in the waters around the island chains. In other words, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Fleets share ~30 deployable ships.

What are your thoughts on Chinese state-controlled media? Do you believe it is more reliable than Western mainstream newspapers like The Guardian or The New York Times?

Chinese official media is actually very boring.

But they have a great advantage, almost not lying.

I mean that they also have political prejudice, and they will also have strong ideological comments, and there will also be a degradation of competitors. But they always state exact facts. If some things are included in the unhappy scope, or things are not really determined, their choices are not reported, but they will not choose to lie.

Let me give an example:

Some people found several corpses in a car, looking like Asians, but without any identity proof, the police had been involved in the investigation.

Report by BBC CNN NYT:

1. Insiders revealed that several drug dealers from China died of attacking each other because they were unevenly split.

2. Several Asians were found to die in the car, and they may be a smuggler from Vietnam.

3. Our reporter was at the scene, and some residents told us that several Koreans died here. They come from a mysterious underground church, perhaps in a certain ceremony.

Are you familiar with it?

CNTV report:

Police found several men dying in the car, and their identities have not been found. Please pay attention to the safety of the surrounding residents. If you have a clue, please notify the police.

Is it boring?

we know. The mainstream Western media often lie, and they will report some things to catch the wind, even the news and hearing news. When one thing is proved to be false, they only need to apologize or revoke the article. After all: freedom of speech.

However, China’s official media are different. Chinese public opinion has strict bottom line requirements for official media: not lying.

In the Internet era, it is almost impossible to completely deceive everyone. In China’s official media, when a news report or video finally proves that the fabricated lies, the person in charge of the official media will immediately fall into a scandal. Waiting for them is generally withdrawal and reputation sweeping the floor. Apology does not have any effect.

However, there are also many unofficial media in China, and their content is much confusing. In addition to being limited in political content, they often lie in a row to catch the wind and catch the wind to attract attention.

Because they are conservative and boring, they only tell you that they are very limited before without exact facts. Therefore, Chinese official media often difficult to attract people’s attention, and their click rate and dissemination on the Internet are also very low.

Volkswagen media is more popular because it has more curiosity and entertainment.

But in China, when people want to know the truth of major events, they often believe in the official media and complain why the official media is so slow that there is no more detailed news.

When did you realize your parent was a total badass?

I grew up on a farm. There was a small forest, which we called “the woods,” on one end of the farm. Every year, my father would post “No Hunting” signs around the woods. But every year hunters would still come there, as the woods were filled with rabbit, pheasant, deer, and other game. When he saw them, my father would go out to the woods and explain to the hunter that these were his woods, he did not allow hunting, and they would have to leave.

One time, when I was four, my father was with my brother, who was six, when they saw a hunter at the edge of the woods, looking into the woods for something to shoot. My father took my brother’s hand, walked over to the hunter, and said “These are my woods. I don’t allow hunting. You’ll have to leave.” The hunter turned around, pointed his shotgun at my six year old brother’s chest, and said “I’ll hunt wherever I damn well please.” My father slowly backed away with my brother and went back to the house.

A few minutes later, he came out again. But instead of crossing the field that led from the house to the woods, he went to the side, where a chicken coop extended to the edge of the woods. He walked quietly behind the chicken coop, until he came to the edge of the woods, about twenty feet from the hunter, who was still intently looking into the woods for something to shoot. My father said to the hunter “Drop the gun and leave immediately.” Except this time, when the hunter turned around, instead of my father holding the hand of a six year old boy, he was holding a .38 revolver…which was pointed at the hunter’s head. As soon as he started to turn around, my father said simply “Drop it or die.”

My father died four years ago. It had been almost sixty years since this happened. When I went to clean out his house, the hunter’s shotgun was still in his closet.

What is your best parking spot revenge?

In the 90s I was the parts secretary at a Ford dealership. We had a few parking spaces for office staff close to our entrance. We often hauled in office supplies, food and boxes of promotional materials for sales, and we often left after dark.

A young, cocky new salesman was hired and started parking (his Ford pickup) in our spots. I politely explained to him why it was it was important to keep those spaces open for us. He shrugged and continued to park there.

I confronted him again with a firmer tone. “You gotta stop parking there man!” With two little words he sealed his fate. “Or, what?” Sweetie. Snookums. I got a truckload of what.

In those days a Ford dealership could get any information they wanted on a Ford. With his VIN number I made a duplicate key. When he parked in our spots I moved his truck to the back corner of the lot where new deliveries would bury it and he’d have to move several cars to get his. I didn’t stop there though.

Anytime I saw his truck anywhere I’d move it. Shopping Center? Moved. Street parking for a restaurant? Moved. That kid was looking for his car several times a week!

Eventually he came in to our office grovelling and pleading with me to stop. He promised to never park in our spots again.

EDIT: Wow! Now I see why there are always edits on these! Some of you are apoplectic that I “got away” with a heinous crime. It’s occurred to me that you are extremely fortunate to have never been the victim of domestic violence, stalking, rape, burglary or actual car theft. If you had you’d know that police aren’t much help in any of the above situations and perpetrators are rarely arrested.

Could I have, with righteous indignation, insisted he be formally reprimanded? Yeah. But who wants to be that bitch? Not me. He learned a lesson in a fun way. He took it in stride. He likely doesn’t remember my name (I don’t remember his) but he likely remembers me and this story as fondly as I do. And maybe, just maybe, he has a little more respect for how clever women can be instead of seeing us as spiteful hags. Lighten up!

Went to Motor Vehicles Today to Have LIENHOLDER Removed from Car Titles – Wait til you hear THIS . . . .

Nation Hal Turner 20 December 2023

Today I went to New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC) on Summit Avenue in Jersey City, NJ to have the LIENHOLDER info removed from two vehicle Titles since I’ve paid the car loans off.  You’re not gonna BELIEVE what happened . . . 

Firstly, after the COVID scam, New Jersey Motor Vehicle has NOT done away with the requirement to make an appointment to go to one of their offices to have paperwork done.  So I had to schedule today’s appointment last weekend, and I did.

I get there, walk in, and there’s two security guards who ask “Do you have an appointment?  I reply “yes” and they ask to see the appointment confirmation from online!   I brought it with me just in case, and gave it to them.  They tell me, go in and see the Receptionist on the left.  I go in.

I get to the Receptionist who asks me, “What are you here to do today?” I reply “Have the LIENHOLDERS removed from the Title on two vehicles I’ve paid off.”   He hands me two application forms to go fill out.

I go fill them out, return the Receptionist’s pen that he graciously lent to me and he then says, now go onto the “ID CHECK” line to the left.   ID Check???????   I go ahead and do that.  Two people ahead of me.

When it’s my turn, I go up too the guy in the little booth– I think he was Hindu or whatever the folks are, who have the Dot on their forehead — and hand him the filled-out applications to have the Titles re-issued and he says “You know, this is going to cost you $60 each to have the LIENHOLDER Removed.”  I replied “Yes, I know.”   He then says, “I can get this done for free.”

Uhhhhhhh, I was not expecting this . . . .  my Spidey Sense started tingling.   So I ask him “How?”

GET THIS:  He replies “I can have my Boss delete the LIENHOLDER in our computer system, then you walk out with the same Title, instead of a new one.”

I think to myself: “Then I won’t have any way to PROVE the LIEN has been released”   So I respond to him “No thanks, I want the re-issued Titles without the LIENHOLDER on them.”   He says, “Well, I’m just trying to save you money.”  

He takes a staple remover and separates the Titles from the Lender Loan-Satisfaction, notarized letters, hands everything back to me with a card containing a number on it:  “K117” and tells me, take a seat over there and you’ll hear your number called, telling you which counter to go to.

I go sit down.

About five minutes later, the computer voice over the PA Speaker calls “K117, Counter Ten”

So I get up and walk over to counter 10 and the nice Spanish lady behind the counter takes my paperwork.

To my utter shock, SHE then says to me, “It will cost you $60 each to have these LIENHOLDERS Cleared from the Title, . . . . but I can get it done for you for free.” 

I’m now kind of stunned because this is now two separate Employees of the Motor Vehicle Commission saying the same thing.   So I play along and ask her “How?”

She says, I will have the Supervisor come over, delete the LIENHOLDER from our Computer, but you leave here with the exact same Title.

I thought to myself “Holy shit, they’re all “in-on-it” for the “Great Taking.””   I went on to think to myself “These people are working for the Bankers, so the Bankers can grab everybody’s stuff; just as I learned from the video “The Great Taking”

So I told the woman, “But then I would have no proof that the Bank no longer has a LIEN.”  She responded, right, but you’ll save $120 on the Two Titles!

So I responded “No, I want the LIENHOLDER removed and I want the new, re-issued Titles without the Bank name on them”

She reiterated “But that will cost you $60 each, a total of $120” and I responded “I don’t care.  I want the re-issued Titles.”

She put on a smug face as if to say “Oh this guy must have money, he doesn’t care about the $120.”

She processes the deletion of the LIENHOLDER info and then asks “Will you be paying by Credit Card, Check, or Legal Tender?”

“LEGAL TENDER????????????”  Nobody says that outside of you know . . . . us . . . . .

I reply, “Legal Tender; Federal Reserve Notes.”

I hand the cash to her and she finishes the transaction, which prints the receipt.

But it’s all the same computer . . . . so If I agreed to “let them do it for free” they could NOT have removed the LIENHOLDER because the system requires the money be paid before it will complete the action ! ! ! ! !    If I had not paid, the computer could not have deleted the LIENHOLDER info! !   ! 

You know what I think?    I personally think the whole offer to “get it done free” was a SCAM . . . . designed to deliberately mislead people into THINKING the LIEN had been removed, when, in fact, it has NOT been removed.   And it COULD NOT HAVE BEEN REMOVED unless and until payment was tendered because the computer won’t process the removal unless payment has been made.

That leaves those poor suckers who THOUGHT they were getting it done “free” —  open to the Banks coming and taking everything from THEM because all the official paperwork still shows the LIENS ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 

How many thousands of people have believed this scam over the years?

I’m telling you, folks, I am totally shocked by this happening at two separate employees in a State Motor Vehicle Commission facility.

I now think the “States” are “in-on-it” too and all of them are working in lockstep with the Bankers to achieve their goal: You will own nothing . . . . and be happy.”

Not me!   I have the Re-issued Titles without the LIENHOLDER info on them.  These vehicles are, in fact, MINE, and I can prove it with the Titles.

I was born at night . . . . but not last night.  They aren’t getting-over on me!

Humor: What are some of the greatest examples of presence of mind?

A businessman went to a shoe store to purchase a new pair of shoes. He was a prominent person in that town. After selecting a pair of shoes with size 8 he asked the salesperson to pack it. The salesperson had just started his career and joined the shoe store a few days back.

The businessman soon discovered that he had left his wallet at home. He told the salesperson that he would take the shoes with him and make the payment the next day. The salesperson being new to business excused himself in order to discuss this matter with the store manager. The manager knew that the customer is an eminent businessman; however, was reluctant to deliver the shoes without payment. At the same time, he was not ready to lose a sale too. He advised the salesperson to handle the situation in the best manner possible and left the place.

The salesperson stood there frozen for a few minutes unable to decide. He then returned to the customer, started packing the shoes and handed the package to the customer.

The next day the customer arrived at the store with the shoes he had purchased, made the payment for his purchase and told the salesperson that “After opening the package I found one shoe with size 8 and the other with size 7. Maybe you packed them by mistake. Can I have the shoes with size 8 please?” The salesperson apologized for the inconvenience caused and replaced the wrong size shoe with the correct one. The customer collected his shoes and left the store with satisfaction.

The manager happened to overhear their conversation and realized that the salesperson had used his presence of mind and handled the situation very well. They didn’t lose their business as well as the customer.

Moral

It is by the presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested. If an individual has a calm state of mind, his attitude and views will be calm and tranquil even in the presence of great agitation.

Stephen Hawking said, “The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.” Do smart people out there agree?

I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture given by the late Prof. Hawking on the campus of the University of Berkeley; I say “given”; Hawking rolled onto the stage, and the lecture he so painstakingly prepared was delivered by the machine he used to speak with. I never heard him repeat this quote, so I will have to take it on faith that this is something he actually said.

I’ll be PC here, and substitute “average” for dumb; average people are not necessarily “dumb”, but the difference between them and very intelligent people is that they are far less intellectually curious, and tend not to question their own beliefs, or look beneath the surface of phenomena they encounter every day. For the average, smart people are not necessarily “crazy”, but they do come across as weird. If I were to tell an average person that they like doughnuts because simple carbohydrates and fat were rare and valuable nutrients on the African savannah 70,000 years ago, they would look at me like I was mad. They would say something like “I enjoy doughnuts because they taste good”; it wouldn’t occur to them to ask the fundamental question of why they taste good to us.

image 27
image 27

A graph showing the “bell curve” distribution of IQ.

As shown in the graph above, 68.2% of people are in the average range of IQ between 85–115 (using IQ as a proxy for general intelligence. The number of people with an IQ higher than 115 becomes increasingly rare with the increasing level of IQ, so those with 140+ are very rare indeed, so it should not surprising that those who are in this high range will often come across as “odd” to the average majority. There is a qualitative difference in the cognition of the highly gifted, compared to the cognitive style of the average; the more intelligent one is, the less “obvious” things seem to be.

In evolutionary terms, our “purpose” as humans is to survive and reproduce, functions for which the average level of intelligence is sufficient; humans evolved to be as intelligent as they needed to be in order to successfully carry out these biological functions, so it is not surprising that most of us are not smarter than we are. As social animals, we tend not to be too fond of “weirdos” who question the existing social order, and the way things have always been done, hence the existence of terms like “nerd” and “geek” for those whose manner of thought and speech is contrary to the norm. At the same time, it had to have been the prehistoric nerds and geeks who came up with technologies like the bow and arrow, and poison darts, which were beneficial for the survival of humans as a whole, by allowing us to hunt otherwise inaccessible game animals. One can just imagine the jeers of the normies when the first geek smeared some tree sap on a dart, and walked off with his blowpipe, saying “I’m going hunting by myself.”

As someone who has been accused of being smart, I’ve had to learn to self-censor in order to “fit in”, and not be ostracized as a “weirdo” by the general population. “Be yourself” is incredibly stupid advice if one happens to be an intellectual outlier, since “yourself” is likely to be regarded as strange, and even threatening by the majority. Hawking was right, and I reserve my unfiltered self for a select few IRL, plus, of course, anyone who chooses to read my apophenic ravings on Quora.

What is your biggest mistake in life? Did you overcome it?

He was my first love. We dated for 3 years and got married because I was pregnant. Worst mistake of my life.

By the time I had the baby, I could almost feel it. The loneliness. The emptiness. He became a totally different person. He complained that I was fat and unattractive. I was depressed and lonely. He knew that I enjoyed to have sex, so he withheld it from me to hurt me.

I had a startup business and was struggling to balance work and family. To make matters worse, I got pregnant somehow with the second child. He didn’t want to have the child so he asked me to have an abortion. I refused. He totally disconnected at this point. My business also went into the abyss as I was struggling to provide for myself, my daughter and unborn son. I hid and cried in the bathroom every night.

A couple of months after my son was born, a woman called and told me she’s sharing him with me and they have kids together. I confronted him and he didn’t deny it. A part of me literally died that day. Everyone around me seemed to know and I didn’t. What hurt me the most is that I stupidly still loved this man. He told me he didn’t want me anymore. He asked me to leave and leave his kids behind. I left with my kids and moved in with my sister. I had no job and 2 kids to look after.

To cut the long story short, we went through a really bad divorce, but it was freedom for me. I emigrated to another country, got a better life and job, got into great shape, and basically got my shit together. Am very thankful that I got this far. I never smoked, drank or did anything harmful to myself when I was at my lowest. My mistake gave me a chance to realize that you can pick yourself up after hitting rock bottom. KARMA IS REAL. I found out last year that the woman my ex chose over me left him for another man. Oh how did I forget? She also told my ex that the kids are not his. Thank you

What is the most ridiculous request your employer ever asked of you? Did you get out of it or end up giving in?

Having just informed me that 167 hours of work she had made me do would not be paid, my boss told me to prepare exams not just for my class, but for all the students. Unsurprisingly, I said no.

This boss had stopped me from teaching one of my usual classes on a Monday afternoon (without consulting me) and arranged for me to teach the same number of hours on some Saturday mornings and weekday evenings instead. She pretended that she was doing this to make my life easier, since Mondays were a heavy teaching day. She then insisted that I use the time I had off on Monday afternoons to do some of her administration for her, without telling me that this work would all be unpaid. She gradually added more and more of her work to my workload.

For the entire term I thought I was being paid to do the administration work. She only told me I wasn’t at the end of the semester, by which time I had chalked up 167 hours of her administration work plus 10 hours of extra teaching) that she wouldn’t pay me for.

Then, immediately after telling me all this work was unpaid, she told me to prepare some exams, something the other teachers didn’t have to do. I said no, obviously. She stormed off to Human Resources to complain about me. When she came back she told me how upset she was that they didn’t support her. She was actually crying a little, I’m not sure whether because of rage or if she was really hurt. I was called up to HR and asked how many hours I had done unpaid. My boss had a track record of not paying me, so I had noted every task and all the hours done in my diary. I was paid for everything I did and my boss was told that all our work had to be paid for.

I just wish I had learned to say no sooner – and I really appreciated the honesty of our HR manager.

Slayyyyy

Why did England change its capital to London?

It’s a fun story! To me at least. I’m cool that way.

Technically “London” didn’t become the capital until after the 16th Century. What we now call “the City of London”, the ancient square mile that Rome founded, was an entity of its own. And in many ways still is. It was a centre of power and money, even before the Norman Conquest.

Up through the Middle Ages there was no fixed “capital” per se. The kings didn’t stay put, they moved around, so the capital was essentially where they were, not necessarily where the government was. The government being those ministers of the king who administered (get it?) the day to day workings.

During the reign of the Wessex kings, Winchester was the closest thing to an English capital.

So, back to London. The kings had no real power over London. Edward the Confessor, who was technically of the Wessex blood line but spent his formative years across the Channel and didn’t really have a sentimental attachment to Winchester, built an abbey in Westminster, which was west of London. He also built a palace for the seat of government. With these he hoped to draw power and wealth from that citadel to the east protected by a massive wall.

Edward died in January 1066. In October, Duke William of Normandy arrived to take what he felt was his by right. After the Battle of Hastings he headed toward London, that centre of power. Not to London, mind you. Toward it. He circled round, burning his way around it. But he knew he couldn’t breach the wall. He made a deal with the London peeps that in exchange for recognising him as their king, they would retain their special privileges. This arrangement has been in place ever since.

Now, thanks to Edward the Confessor, there was a ready-made power base just to the west of London. William was duly crowned king in Westminster Abbey. Over time, the Treasury was moved from Winchester, which became that historic city with one train station (London now has over 600 train and underground stations). Meanwhile, houses were built between the cities of Westminster and London and a Greater London was formed, eventually swallowing up towns and villages in a 600 square mile area.

Note, though, that the City of London has no national government facilities in it, save the Bank of England, which is separate. Government (Parliament, Whitehall, Downing Street, etc…), the Palace, the national entities are in Westminster, but as that is in what became the megapolis of “London”, London is the capital.

What was a Christmas bonus you got from your company that made you speechless?

Wouldnt call it a bonus.

But we was excited last year, we had put in a lot of work to reach the goal that would make a bonus possible.

We where all called to a end of year quarterly meeting where the ceo would go over the figures and give us a chance to ask questions and share ideas.

Instead the owner of the main company was standing there and the ceo a bit to the side. First case of worry, but it could be a good thing right?

It starts and the owner takes the word. And it just goes downhill from there.

The board and investors are not happy, they are firing the ceo and the owner steps out of the board to take direct control of the company, they will reorganize the whole flow and all that modern jazz for making your work day a living hell the next half year.

Adding there wont be a bonus and we will stop having a bonus at all in the future.

A year later and everyone have turned sour many have left and those that remains are becoming more and more unmotivated.

We are close at needing a new firing round too. and nothing have really become better since the change, only more cumbersome and annoying with no gain. 2 years and no raise makes for grumpy workers, when then removing the carrot all together the last drive disappears..

Even overtime must be agreed upon before you get pay for it.

So the bonus was a year in hell that seems to continue unless I am lucky and can find another job that pay the same or better.

Worst part is, the owner got a social and public image as a good and sensible businessman that are very round handed with spending. But when it comes to the company he is a scrounge mcduck, as he dont wanna spend a single dime, even though it cost to make changes, and he want those changes.

So nobody believe us when we tell how he is at work, as everyone got another opinion of him from the local news…

How is Chick-fil-A still thriving when some people accuse them of having a “horrible track record” on social issues?

True story: I had never eaten at a Chick-fil-A before last weekend (Saturday, March 9, 2019). In the past, if I’d wanted a chicken sandwich, which I don’t often do, I’ve gone to McDonald’s. But this time I was in a different shopping center, one without a McDonald’s but with a Chick-fil-A next door.

Side note: I’d had their sandwiches before, but at wrestling tournaments. The sandwiches would be brought in in these temperature-controlled bags, and then sold by members of the Booster’s Club. I wasn’t really impressed. The sandwiches cost more than McDonald’s and they were soggy.

But here I was in a shopping center with a Chick-fil-A next door. Oh, well, I figured. I could see the place was crowded, too. Lots of cars, and a long double-line of cars going through the carry-out.

I went inside and the place smelled good. Not like McDonald’s. The menu items were all clearly posted. At McDonald’s, there are these electronic screens that’ll show a handful of items for maybe 10 seconds, then rotate to another set of items. I liked the clear posting.

After looking over the posted menu, I decided to get a spicy chicken sandwich. Not the whole meal, just the sandwich. There wasn’t a line; people were being served as they stepped up to order. At McDonald’s, I could have waited 5 minutes behind just one or two people. (Maybe they’d ordered fries or coffee, and were waiting on the next batch of fries or the next pot of coffee to finish brewing.) I ordered the sandwich and the person behind the counter asked what sauce I’d like with that. I asked what sauces they had.

At McDonald’s, that would have been greeted with a rapid-fire blur of sauces. Or the person would point to that electronic board where the sauces had to cycle through to be displayed. By now, the McDonald’s employee would have forgotten whether I’d ordered the sandwich or the meal. The McDonald’s employee also would have forgotten whether I was eating in or carrying out.

At Chick-fil-A, they had all the sauces out on display. The counter person pointed to them and suggested that since I seemed to like spicy foods, I might enjoy the Buffalo sauce. Sounded good to me.

She handed me a tall plastic colored cone with sauce packets inside. She told me to find a seat anywhere and they’d bring the sandwich over. Wow! At McDonald’s, I’d have to stand near the ear-splitting ice-grinding machine, waiting for my number to be called. She didn’t have to ask again whether I was eating in or carrying out.

I found a seat and, quite promptly, someone came over with the sandwich, wrapped, and asked: “Don? Spicy chicken?” Yup, that was me. The chicken was crispy, steaming, and hot. Tasty. A bit of a surprise, since my only prior experience had been at the wrestling tournaments where they were soggy. If it had been McDonald’s, the sandwich would have been soggy, too. Are they ever crisp there?

A family was seated at the next table. At some point, the dad asked one of the Chick-fil-A employees for a refill on a beverage. The employee said sure, and in about 30 seconds was back with a refill. Nothing like that at McDonald’s.

When I was finished, I started picking up the debris (the sandwich wrapping, the packet of hot sauce, the napkin. Before I’d even gotten it all together, a Chick-fil-A employee came over and said, “Oh, are you leaving? If so, I can take all that.” And he did. Wow! At McDonald’s, I would have gathered all that stuff, taken it over to a trash can, tried to slide it all into the trash can (those paper liners always stick to the tray!), and put the tray on the tray holder.

And that is why Chick-fil-A is thriving.

What made you forbid someone from ever entering your home again?

I have written on this before. When I was married to my ex, his daughter lived with us . Her and her husband came over to visit with their children. We also had a friend of ours over . She was very disrespectful to her dad and our friend told her that. About two months later she asked to take my youngest for a few days and I said no. She then said that our family friend had touched my son , while she was in the room. I gathered my kids and asked them and all three said nothing ever happened. She called back and was upset and said she knew I wouldn’t do anything and would be turning me into social services and she did!!! A case worker came out and took my kids and asked a lot of questions. Then we talked and this man was amazing!!! I explained that my kids were never left alone with anyone and always knew they could tell me anything and his daughter was upset with me , for telling her no. He told me she wanted to get even with me for being with her dad and this was vengeance towards me. I encouraged her Dad to continue a relationship with her but she would no longer be able to come in our home. This was so scary for me , and I could have lost my children. My relationship with her was over , and our friend was also worried. I’m so very grateful I got a wonderful case worker. He understood .

What was the one thing that made you finally drop your affection for someone?

Going anonymous because my ex is on Quora.

I was in a relationship with my boyfriend (Let’s call him A) for 2 years. It was the perfect relationship everyone dreams about. But that changed soon.

One day, I was at my friend’s house (Let’s call her B) to take some notes because exams were coming up. I didn’t tell him about it. After half an hour, B receives a call so she goes outside to answer it as she didn’t want to bother me. But after a minute, she comes back in, puts the phone’s speaker on and the convo went something like this.

B- Sorry, I didn’t catch that. What did you say?

The voice on the other end said: “I love you”.

I recognised the voice. It was him. I looked at B as if everything was over. But she continued talking to him.

B- But what about your girlfriend? This would break her.

A- We don’t need to tell her anything. It’ll be our secret.

I felt like my heart would give out. I wanted to scream or do anything just to relieve me from the pain I was experiencing. To think that the two years we spent together was a lie was too much to handle. I called him after I calmed down a bit. He said he did that because B’s boyfriend wanted to test her loyalty. I didn’t buy that and we broke up that day.

High Value Men requirements

What is your best parking spot revenge?

A friend and I were driving uhaul box trucks when we decided to stop at a gas station to get snacks and drinks. When pulling in, I saw a car parked parallel across 3 parking spaces. Without even taking about it, I parked directly in front of the offending car while my friend parked directly behind it. We got out, smiled at each other over our telepathic decision to mess with the offender, and went inside.

The car’s owner was apparently going out as we were going in, saw how we were parked, and followed us back in and started yelling at us, demanding we move.

Me: No

Bad Parker: I will call the cops is you don’t!

Friend: Ok.

BP: Don’t try me! Move your damned trucks!

Me: Naw, go ahead and call the cops.

Friend: Yeah, we’ll wait. We’re going to eat in, anyway. (The gas station has an Arby’s attached. We weren’t originally, btw, but you know how it goes.)

Me: It’ll be fun watching you have your embolism when they ticket you for parking like that.

We went and got our food, to our time eating and left. During that time, BP apparently tried getting to station manager to make us move and kept yelling and screaming until we were finally done. As we were leaving, BP yelled at us some incoherent crap that I don’t really remember. My friend returned a parting comment about BP’s horrible parking, and we left.

All in all, we were at the gas station about a 45 minutes longer than we’d initially planned. We don’t know what, if any, trouble BP got into it if he ever did it again. We stopped at the same station on the return trip, in the off chances that BP was a local and would return, but he didn’t while we were there.

What has an employee said that immediately caused you to fire them?

We had an employee who didn’t just say something that got him fired, he immediately followed it up with an action that also would have gotten him fired on its own.

I work for a vets office. We had a new tech that seemed afraid to do anything. He claimed most animals were aggressive and just wouldn’t touch them. Well we don’t allow techs to do injections until they are comfortable doing simply things like taking temperatures and checking heart rates which he still couldn’t do.

One day, we get a cat in for a tech appointment. Notes said “allergy shot.” For most cats, this mean a depo injection but you always ask the doctor what you should give. He did not. Instead he took the appointment himself, big no no at this stage and strike one. He brought the cat back and told another tech the cat needed a cytopoint injection. Strike two, he doesn’t get to make medication/ injection calls. The other tech asked if he was sure as that sounded wrong and he said “yes, that’s what the doctor told me.”

Ya see, cytopoint can be deadly to cats and is for dogs only. So the tech asked again, “are you sure that’s what the doctor said?” He got annoyed, told her that what the doc said and he got the cytopoint himself and injected it himself. Strike three. You’re out.

He was fired. The cat did almost die and we ended up having to give them free care for about six months for all their pets to make up for it. The cat survived but now has health issues.

This was an unforgivable, fireable offensive.

What was the nail in the coffin for an employee or a co-worker?

One of my colleagues was almost impossible to layoff. She was pregnant during a round of layoffs, and took maternity leave a week earlier than expected, and was gone for a full year, she came back expecting the layoffs would be over, but after a couple of months, they announced that there were new layoffs the next week. She called in sick Monday through Thursday, and on Thursday, they called her and said unless her doctor faxed in a note on Friday, she had to come in. By then everybody had been laid off, except her. She checked in and made sure everyone saw her, and then disappeared.

Her boss looked high and low for her, and eventually found a locked stall in the washroom. She looked under, and saw her shoes. She had to fire her through the bathroom door.

My colleagues only response was, I knew I should have lifted my feet.

She became a legend in the company. The nail in the coffin was not lifting her feet.

Which became a phrase everyone used when they got caught doing something wrong.

What’s the most expensive thing you’ve lost and found?

Went to Vegas . Won around $17000 . The wife and I split it between ourselves before the cdn border. Declared it and got home. Reminded her to put her cash in the safe. Few days later, I went in to grab all of it to deposit in our US acct and just found my part in it. Asked her about it. She couldn’t find it. Looked sll over. Than she thought she might had left it in the taxi on the way home. FUCK!! $9000 USD gone. So, a couple years later. We’re getting rid of her old car and im just going thru it, and lo and behold, it’s in between the seats in the car. She had put it there for safekeeping cause she went grocery shopping and didn’t wanna take all that in her purse. Why she didn’t remember that 2 yrs prior, I’ll never know. 😔 But I’ve learned to live with my wife’s poor memory. She was born without a thyroid and takes meds for that but it causes a horrible memory sometimes..

What is something you cannot forgive your parents for no matter how you try?

I’ve written about this before, but I think it bears repeating.

I learned how to cook very early on. My mother was working one Thanksgiving when I was 12. I volunteered to cook the dinner. She’d be home around 5 or so. Dinnertime had not been specified. Turkey went in the oven that morning. Since it was a day off school and I was a kid, I grabbed my bike and went riding all around town. I remember a fun, free-wheeling day until I got home.

I got back around 4:30 and realized I had to hurry. My brothers and father laid around and watched me as I hurried to prepare the meal. There wasn’t much to do if they had pitched in: boil potatoes, heat up rolls, boil the frozen corn, etc. But they didn’t. My mom walked in while I was peeling potatoes. She stopped dead in her tracks. “Dinner’s not ready?” I said “It will be ready in a few minutes.” I wasn’t lying. It would have been 20 minutes max. She threw up her hands like I told her I was a pregnant 12-year-old crackhead. She started screaming at me. Dad came running in to see what the fuss was. He took off his belt and whipped me violently right there in the kitchen, potato peeler still in my hand, for not having everything ready “on time” (again, we didn’t know exactly when she would be home, and no dinnertime had been set). My brothers just watched. I was sent to my room in the basement for the night. I don’t know who finished cooking, probably my mother in her martyrdom.

Here’s how it could (should) have gone down:

Scenario One: I come home at 4:30. Dad: “You’re cutting it close. Boys, go help your sister.”

Scenario Two: Mom comes home at 5:00. I’m peeling potatoes. “Dinner’s not ready?” “It will be ready in a few minutes.” “Okay, good, I’m starving. I’m going to take a shower/change/lie down for a few minutes. Call me when it’s ready.”

Scenario Three: Mom come home at 5:00. She starts yelling. Dad comes in. “Calm down, it’ll only be a few minutes. Here, let me take your stuff. Come in and lie down for a few minutes.” (to my brothers) “Get in here and help your sister.”

It took me many years to realize this day was an example of so, so many things. Dysfunction, piss-poor communication, child abuse, sexism, Old-World parenting (as in 1800s bullshit), knee-jerk reactions, and so much more. My family was fucked up, to say the least.

And I don’t care if that was the way they were raised. I am not a believer in the cycle-of-abuse crap. They were adults, they had brains to think with, they could make rational adult decisions. They knew better.

Edit: I think I need to address that there was a dried-up old bitch of a troll who left a comment that it was my fault, I was deservedly punished, I should have stayed home all day and had dinner ready, my poor poor mother, I was martyring myself, shame on me. Yes, that comment really happened (I deleted it and told her to fuck off). I wasn’t only abused at home, and this wasn’t the first or last time. I was bullied mercilessly at school. To have a day away from bullies at school was a real treat, so yes, I was going to take my bike and go have some fun while the turkey cooked. I was a kid. I wasn’t 20. And yes, I screwed up and mismanaged my time. Again—I was a kid. And my parents wildly overreacted—with violence against a child— instead of keeping calm and reacting reasonably. If someone told me they were cooking me dinner, but when I came home it was going to be 20 minutes late, I’d say “Okay, cool” and either jump in the shower or flop down and watch TV. I wouldn’t start screaming and whipping them with a belt. So again, troll: Fuck off. If you have kids, I sincerely feel sorry for them and I hope CPS is keeping an eye on you, old twat. You’re the reason child protection agencies exist.

Why is Urumqi, Xinjiang cleaner, safer, civilized, and developed than New Delhi?

Almost every Chinese City beats Indian Cities hollow in terms of Cleanliness, Safety and Development

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There are Primarily three reasons for this :-

A. One Party Meritocracy & Funds

In China, fund allocation for Cities and their overall Urban development is based on the Urban Development Index (UDI) plus between 15% upto 46% of the revenue generated by a City is used by the Local Government of that Province and the Administration of that City to develop the place

There is no political rivalries or party based discrimination between Fund Allocation and Revenue sharing

It’s all about How much the City develops and how well maintained the City is

In India, funding is a nightmare because the State themselves have no claim over the money they generate as revenue. Everything is handed over to the Centre which then decides how much each State should get and then the State decides how much each City should get

China has 20 times the provincial autonomy than an Indian State


B. Continuous Development to prevent overcrowding

India keeps on dumping on the same city again and again for year after year. Thus every such city attracts migrants like flies and that leads to overcrowding of the worst order

China keeps developing and expanding new Cities regularly

Chengdu, Chongqing etc were small towns a decade or so ago that are now bustling cities, brimming with Prosperity

Urumqi was once a town , now it’s classified as a Tier 3 City

Thus if you notice Shanghai and Beijing both lost 4% and 5.6% of the population due to migration between 2013–2023 whereas Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad netted between 7.6% and 12% SURPLUS population by migration between 2008–2023


C. Chinas Housing Policy

Everyone living with a proper Job in a City in China MUST have housing

This is a law from the time of Chairman Mao and when it’s a Chairman Mao law, it’s enforcement is very strict

Public Housing is thus available for every single resident of the city including the poorest of them

Only Shanghai and Beijing has slums today , which existed before the 1998 law and thus can’t be torn down

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If you have a legitimate job in CQ City, you get a Public Apartment of 39–52 Square Meters with indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning and gas and electricity and drinking water for a mere 78 RMB / month

Of course many Chinese become prosperous enough to rent much nicer places and sub lease their public homes for which they pay rent of 78 RMB/ month for 400–500 RMB / month

During Covid 19, many such people were discovered and fined very heavily (30, 000 RMB plus 60 months rent or 100 Days in Prison)


A Fourth reason is the fact that Migration into Cities is heavily controlled

You just can’t come to a City that easily without housing or a job unless you are a tourist there

In India it’s the opposite

You can flood into cities and sleep on the roads and everywhere else and even defecate

It’s like a Zoo

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So it’s the Chinese System

They may have their flaws but by God they have excellent City maintenance and keep themselves very clean

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Their Air Quality improvement in a mere decade is something every nation takes notes on


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Primarily another reason is the Chinese are proud of their country and love their country

Not the bogus love that Indians show which translates into defending India for all it’s weaknesses, glorifying mediocrities as superheroes, forcing people to stand up for the National Anthem etcetera

The genuine love that ensures they actively take pride in their development and their cities

China’s population is crashing. What changes would they have to make to attract expats to emigrate to China?

Declining population is not just a Chinese problem; but rather it is a worldwide problem. Most developed or developing countries have seen significant decreases in birth rates that coincide with an ever aging demographic.

Importing people from other countries is certainly an option. Especially considering how men vastly outnumber women in China. But I think it will require more than bringing in more people. China needs to tackle this problem on two fronts.

Firstly, building society with the mindset that the elderly need to be taken care of, whether that be through family or through a skilled nursing facility. China should look into building these all over the country. They don’t have to be as bleak as some in the U.S., but there needs to be a safety net for a vulnerable aging population in the event their children can’t or won’t care for their needs.

The second front is low birth rate. China’s work culture isn’t conducive to motherhood right now. 996 doesn’t make women want to get pregnant. Women also need paid maternity leave for at least a year.

The government can subsidize kindergartens and ensure that the education they’re receiving is at an appropriate standard. Families can be provided with subsidies for each child for a certain number of years.

China has a planned economy so if they begin implementing such plans in upcoming five year plenary sessions then perhaps they can be one of the first countries to find a solution to this worldwide problem.

Why did people on TV in the ’50s get all dressed to clean house, like wearing pearls? Is this how they really dressed then?

My mom was an RN, and wore a white uniform with starched cap every night when she went to work. When she got home in the morning she’d go straight to bed, and then get up around 3 p.m., dressed in capri pants (also called “pedal pushers”) or shorts in the summer, along with a blouse, often sleeveless, and canvas sneakers. Never any jewelry around the house or on quick trips to the store; that, and dresses and low-heeled pumps, were reserved for special occasions. For a really special occasion, like a trip to NYC to see a Broadway show, she added a hat to her outfit, and she and I wore short white cotton gloves. For school, I and all the other little girls wore shirtwaist dresses with petticoats, and the boys wore long pants and button-up shirts, with clip-on ties for school picture day. Up until a certain age, I wore my brother’s hand-me-down shorts and tee shirts for after-school play clothes.

None of us had as many clothes as we do today; our small closets were plenty big enough for our wardrobes (some of which were sewn or knitted by our mothers). But the quality of what we wore was higher, and we tended to wear everything until it wore out or we outgrew them.

Looking crisp and put together was important for our parents, since most of them had grown up during the Great Depression, when having raggedy clothing was a sign of poverty. Since synthetic blends didn’t become readily available until the very end of the 1950s, everything had to be ironed and/or starched. It was a chore my mother absolutely hated, so she was an early devotee of polyester blends when they came out.

Had she lived to this decade, she would have been baffled by people paying high prices for strategically ripped jeans, as well as the upper-class preference for “natural” fabrics like cotton and linen, which must be ironed!

Do Chinese state and general public consider marijuana a soft drug? What if a Westerner gets caught with a kilogram of this soft drug in China?

It’s very very complicated

The laws are highly varying

There is a law that says if any person is caught with possession of Marijuana (Cannabis) while entering China (Airports or Borders) then he faces Life Imprisonment if he carries more than 50 GRAMS

Yet ONCE IN CHINA if a person gets caught with the same cannabis or Marijuana, as long as the Marijuana on his possession is within 300 grams, he gets 15 Days Imprisonment, 45 Days Mandatory State Rehabilitation plus a fine

So technically if you smuggle 100 grams into China, you face life in jail yet if you succeed and get past the customs and manage to cross 300–400 feet and then get caught, you face 15 Days Jail and a fine

Plus no law about what happens when you possess less than 50 grams of cannabis

So as on date if someone smuggles less than 50 grams of cannabis into China and is caught – He is merely deported and the smuggled cannabis is destroyed


Next thing is Cultivation of Marijuana is not illegal in China

So if you are caught with 1 Kilogram of Cannabis and you can prove it is grown in China and explain that you are in possession of 1 Kilogram of Cannabis / Marijuana for medical purposes – YOU CAN ACTUALLY GET OFF WITHOUT ANY PUNISHMENT

The authorities have to prove you possess the Marijuana for intent to distribute as a Narcotic substance to charge you

For a Westerner who possesses 1 Kilogram Marijuana though, he cannot prove its grown in China or that he is in possession for Industrial or Medical purposes

So with Westerners the law assumes he is distributing as a narcotic substance and if so HE FACES THE DEATH PENALTY


Summary

To the best of my study of drug laws:-

< 50 grams smuggled – Deportation & Destruction of the Drug

>= 50 grams smuggled –Life Imprisonment

<= 300 grams possession inside China – 15 Days Imprisonment , 45 Days Rehabilitation (Optional), Fine

>300 grams possession inside China proven as grown in China by Mainland Citizen – No Punishment likely beyond censure and monitoring without proof of distribution or intent

>300 grams possession inside China by a foreigner – Death Penalty unless he can prove the same drug originated from local cultivation for industrial or medical purposes


Plus China has another law

Any Person in whose PREMISES consumption of Marijuana takes place regardless of quantity or fore knowledge will face 3 Years Mandatory Jail plus 50,000 RMB fine

This is called SHELTER LAW

Thus if you are a landlord and a tenant smokes Marijuana in your apartment that you have leased out – YOU WON’T BE CHARGED BY THE SHELTER LAW

However if your friend smokes Marijuana in your flat that you lease or own – You face 3 years Jail

What were the things your parents did right in raising you?

At the age of 11 my mother forced me to accompany my sister (17) whenever she went outside.

I was obviously reluctant at first but finally agreed. I used to sit behind the activa while she rode to the grocery store, shopping mall etc.

It was all good until the following incident took place.

It was around 7 pm and we were coming back from the supermarket.

Two boys with covered faces stopped their bike in front of us, passed an inappropriate comment and disappeared before we could think of anything.

I was perplexed. I was shocked. I felt helpless. I felt weak. I knew the meaning of that comment.

I didn’t eat properly that night. I was sleepless for a few days. Mom noticed a change in my behaviour.

Mom: Is something bothering you? You don’t seem fine.

Me: I was waiting to share it with someone. The stress was enormous and I told her exactly what I felt.

Mom: Did you talk to your sister after the incident?

Me: No maa!! If I felt helpless and weak, I can’t even imagine what she would have felt.

Mom: This is why I told you to accompany her. See, you are going to be a teenager soon and perhaps you’ll think that it’s cool to follow a girl or pass some comments. Even some of your friends might force you. They’ll tell you that it’s ok.

But now you know that it is not. I’m sure you wouldn’t want any girl to feel like the way your sister did.

And she was right. The people close to me know that I’ve severed friendships, raised my voice but I never compromised on this fact.

I would never ever want any girl to feel the way my sister did.

Has Chick-fil-A ever explained why specifically it does not serve beef?

If you’ve ever been to a Chick Fil A, you’ve probably noticed their menu is pretty chicken-centric. That isn’t accidental, and it isn’t just a branding gimmick; there’s actually a history behind it.

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Their commitment to chicken goes all the way back to the founder, S. Truett Cathy. He opened his first diner in the 1940s and spent years perfecting the pressure fryer to cook his chicken sandwich faster than anyone could cook a hamburger. This was the birth of what ultimately became Chick Fil A’s signature menu item: the original chicken sandwich.

At the root of it, Chick Fil A doesn’t serve beef because they don’t have to. Their identity is so closely tied to chicken that serving beef would be like McDonald’s suddenly deciding to specialize in vegan food. It would throw people for a loop.

Chick Fil A’s boneless breast of chicken sandwich made its debut in 1964 with great success, paving the way for the first Chick Fil A restaurant that opened in 1967. Cathy even made a play on words with “Chick” to emphasize chicken and play down beef. This is a differentiation strategy. Just like you wouldn’t go to Burger King for a taco or to Taco Bell for a fish and chips plate, you wouldn’t go to Chick Fil A for a beef burger.

There’s also the branding component, right? You’ve seen the billboards with the cows painting “Eat Mor Chikin,” pushing the chicken agenda while steering people away from their own kind. It’s a brilliant marketing strategy that reinforces the no-beef policy.

While there’s no formal manifesto on why they don’t serve beef, the logic is clear: specialization. In a world where you can get a burger at every highway exit, being the go-to chicken spot sets you apart.

Staying in their lane has allowed Chick Fil A to perfect their products, focus on their poultry niche, and maintain the consistency and quality that has customers loyally returning to their restaurants. For many businesses, it’s a scary thing to put all your eggs (or chickens) in one basket, but for Chick Fil A, doing just that has been the secret sauce to their success.

So, in Portland, OR, where I’m based, if I’m craving chicken, it’s pretty neat knowing I can swing by Chick Fil A and get that same sandwich that put them on the map all those years ago, while also being assured that there won’t be a burger in sight. They’ve stayed true to the original plan for over half a century, and it’s working wonders for them.

China is getting tough

It took a long time, but it is finally happening. China’s gloves are coming off, and it is getting tough on Taiwan and the west.

  • For Taiwan, the Commerce Ministry has decided that Taiwan’s government has unfairly blocked the sale of many PRC products in Taiwan. For a long time, the PRC had allowed Taiwan imports to the PRC in the hope that Taiwan would eventually open up to PRC products on a reciprocal basis, but that has not happened, even when Taiwan has had food shortages. The Commerce Ministry will shortly announce which Taiwan products will be blocked from being sold in the PRC, which is the single largest market for many local Taiwan products.
  • For the west, China is now blocking the sale of rare-earth processing technologies to the west. This is a field essential for semiconductor manufacturing and defense technologies, and will hit Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the US especially hard as they try to develop their own independent supply chains free from Chinese components and raw materials.

For 2024, I am expecting an avalanche of new patents from Huawei for new technologies which leapfrog current western technologies. Western governments and companies will be faced with a difficult choice: Will they pay licensing fees to Huawei and other Chinese companies for these technologies, or will they insist on developing their own technologies and components using their own capabilities?

This is a very tough choice because investing in their own non-Chinese research and development will take at least five years, and will likely take more than ten years. Then, when that issue is resolved, where will they do the manufacturing? China has the best and most modern infrastructure and supply chains, so there will be a huge cost penalty for doing it on their own. When it comes to lower costs, the Chinese are masters of the game.

An even more important question: Where is the largest market for these products? Most likely, it will be China. So these products won’t be sold in China to Chinese? So where will it be sold?

What is the most difficult decision you have made as a doctor?

One hundred and six units.

An adult’s blood volume nine times over.

The entire hospital’s blood bank supply. We had to send to nearby centers for more. We had to put our own trauma center on ambulance diversion until more arrived.

After forty units, the chance of survival drops precipitously. The chance over a hundred— who knows? Past diminishingly small. Unreported, possibly. The physiologic derangement is simply too great. Banked blood is not like our own. It is cool, watery, weak and deficient. And this toxic cocktail had washed out every native red cell in her body, splashed out itself, and been poured back in again.

Every raw surface had begun to ooze.

We had already coded her twice.

With the blood welling up in spite of my every effort, I threw packs of thick cotton gauze in her chest, trying to stem the torrent. Trying to buy a moment to think. She had the same injury that killed Princess Diana. My partner looked across the table at me, a slight shake to her head. The probe at the head of the bed beeping out a constant register of oxygen saturation suddenly dipped in tone. I glanced, alarmed, over the drape and saw, unmistakably, her eyes opened, her teeth gripping the tube, her lips forming words to the anesthesiologist who hurried to medicate her. A tear sliding down her cheek towards her ear.

She’s neuro intact.

“She’s neuro intact,” I said, this time aloud, as my eyes reconnected with my partner’s. “She’s neuro intact,” I repeated, as a kind of mantra.

My partner nodded. “Okay, let’s keep going then,” and pulled the packs out.

She was forty-five.

Previously healthy.

And all there.

When I reviewed the case later before a panel of my peers, I argued this made her somehow salvageable. They scoffed. I reconsidered. So why, then, had I “wasted” so many resources on one woman with such devastating injuries, who ultimately died, as I knew she would?

Because I couldn’t look her in the eye and tell her no more.

Beef with Celery (China)

Beef with celery
Beef with celery

Ingredients

  • 1 (1 pound) round steak
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 teaspoon white vinegar
  • 1 egg white
  • 4 to 6 stalks celery
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 6 scallions, cut into 1-inch pieces
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped, pared fresh ginger root
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons dry sherry
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • 2 teaspoons oyster sauce

Instructions

  1. Cut meat across the grain into thin strips 1 1/2 inches long.
  2. Combine 1/2 tablespoon of the soy sauce, vinegar and egg white in medium bowl; beat lightly with fork until foamy. Mix in meat. Cover and let stand 2 hours.
  3. Cut celery into 1/2-inch diagonal slices.
  4. Combine celery, 1 cup of the water and the salt in saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat until boiling. Boil 3 minutes.
  5. Drain celery.
  6. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in wok over high heat.
  7. Drain meat and add to wok. Stir fry until meat is brown, about 5 minutes. Remove meat from wok. Add remaining 1 tablespoon oil to wok. Add celery, onions, ginger and garlic. Stir fry 1 minute. Return meat to wok; mix well.
  8. Combine remaining 1/2 cup water, 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce, the sherry, cornstarch and oyster sauce. Pour over meat-vegetable mixture. Cook and stir until liquid boils and thickens.

Makes 4 servings.

What did someone say to you that instantly made you realize their life was in danger?

When driving a Private Hire Taxi to help pay my way through University one night I had to swerve to miss a guy staggering into the road. I thought he was a drunk but pulled up just to check he was OK. He staggered up to the passenger side window and slumped against it. He murmured for help, at that same moment I saw blood smeared all down the window. I saw another figure approaching the car, I was horrified to see he appeared to be carrying a huge knife. I opened the rear door and pulled the injured guy in. There was a lot of blood and I wasn’t sure he would make it. I drove off as the pursuer closed up. I radioed base and told them I had a seriously injured stabbing victim in the car. They called the hospital and the police. I sped to the emergency dept. on the way being picked out by a police car as I (very carefully) jumped a red light. They knew the situation and gave me an escort to the hospital. They were ready and waiting for him when we arrived.

The guy survived. The car was a total mess, but putting everything in perspective, a small price to pay.

He survived with 2 or 3 life-threatening wounds, making a full recovery, the police and the medics told me I’d saved his life.

I was later thanked by both him and, believe it or not the perpetrator, who received a jail sentence far shorter than he would have got for murder. Apparently they were friends and a disagreement over rent had got out of all proportion leading to the incident. Had I not had the feeling this was not just another drunk staggering around in the dark, a lot of lives would have changed that night.

As a manager how far have you had to go to fire someone?

As a newly hired IT Director in a City, I discovered one programmer who had been there for a number of years had no real assignments. He came in each morning, read the paper, then put his feet up and took a nap.

I promptly gave him an assignment and watched as he did nothing. I met with him numerous times and he finally mentioned that I couldn’t do anything because he had been there so long, he couldn’t be fired – certainly not by a new manager like me!

Challenge!

I documented my meetings and his comment and went to HR. They told me he was likely correct as he was a union steward, as well. I escalated to a HR Supervisor who suggested I build a file then apply progressive discipline.

And so it began. I gave him an assignment in writing. I had him agree, in writing, that he understood the project and how long it should take to complete. I set weekly goals for him to accomplish and when he didn’t, I applied progressive discipline. The first time, I issued a written reprimands warning that he could be terminated if this continued. Next, a written disciplinary memo. After that, I sent him home for a day with no pay. He immediately appealed.

At the appeal hearing, he brought a union lawyer, who claimed the project was too difficult and he needed additional training. That was BS, IMO, for a Senior Programmer with 8 years experience. However, the mediator suggested providing the training.

He began two weeks of training the following Monday. I found out he skipped several days and the instructor told me he knew the material going in and we were wasting taxpayer money to send him.

He continued to miss assignments, and I wrote several more written reprimands before suspending him with a 3 day unpaid suspension. He filed another appeal.

In this hearing, the union Attorney suggested that he occasionally fell asleep because he had kids who occasionally kept him up late at home. The mediator supported the suspension. When he returned, we sent him to the City Doctor for a “fit to work” physical exam. The Doctor determined he had sleep apnea and said he should spend a month at home using a CPAP machine for a month before returning for another physical (with full pay, of course). While he was gone, I gave his assignment to another programmer who knocked it out in 3 days.

When he finally came back to , I gave him another assignment with specific written instructions. Within a week, he violated the instructions and made an unauthorized and undocumented change to the system that opened the City up to several million dollars of legal liability.

I issued a written suspension for two weeks without pay and began the termination paperwork. At the end of the two weeks, he came in and gave me his written resignation.

Game over in 10 months.

During this period, he constantly complained to other staff, hurting morale. I even got a phone call from his wife telling me how cruel I was because he liked his job and asking why I hated her husband.

Why did the Chinese army retreat from India during the 1962 Sino-Indian War?

1. There is no border between China and India.

Because there was no India before 1947, it was just a colonial area composed of hundreds of small kingdoms forcibly annexed by the British. Maybe you would say that there were many countries in South Asia with large territories before Britain, but no former Indian country had a territory as large as India now. In particular, even though North India was often unified into one Greater India, South India and Northeast India were almost never ruled by North India. Therefore, there is no definite border line between China and India.

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2 China was once very friendly and hoped to peacefully demarcate the Sino-Indian border.

India became independent in 1947. New China was founded in 1949. China and India are both third world countries. China wants to maintain good relations with India, so it wants to delimit the Sino-Indian border through peaceful negotiations with India. China says that we do not accept the boundary lines privately drawn by the colonists and that we can resolve them through negotiation. Our border areas are all no-man’s land, and the disputed areas on our borders total 120,000 square kilometers. According to the current actual control areas of both parties, China can recognize that 90,000 square kilometers of southern Tibet (now called Arunachal) belongs to India. India recognized that 30,000 kilometers of Aksai Chin belongs to China, and we signed a boundary agreement on this basis. From then on, both sides have an undisputed boundary line, and there will be no disputes or wars. From then on, friendly relations between China and India became the first Brotherly countries in the three worlds.

However, India firmly rejected any plan from China. It took the map drawn by the British and told China that this is the new India. You must fully accept that southern Tibet and Aksai Chin are mine. Because the Indians continued the arrogance of the colonizers. It has not learned to get along well with its neighbors, so this is the most important reason why India has poor relations with all its neighbors.

3. The reasons and purposes of the 1962 Sino-Indian War.

The reason is that India’s forward policy has invaded Chinese territory and challenged China’s bottom line.

The purpose is to make India understand that it must stop when China says to stop.

In 1962, India hoped to invade China step by step through the Forward Policy. The so-called forward policy is to advance the Indian barracks one kilometer towards Chinese territory every day, and then claim that this is India’s territorial scope. China has repeatedly warned India not to challenge China. But India ignored China’s anger and continued to invade China, even crossing the northern part of the McMahon Line claimed by India and entering undisputed Chinese territory. Therefore, China must use a language that Indians can understand to let India understand that the bottom line of the Chinese cannot be breached. This term is military power.

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Indian prisoners in 1962

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4 Why did China withdraw from the battle after winning the battle?

A Because China’s war goals were achieved, this is the most important reason.

From the beginning, China just wanted to teach the Indians a lesson, to let them recognize the reality, not to be too greedy, and not to ignore China’s warnings. When China says that LAC is the bottom line, don’t challenge China’s bottom line and don’t cross the LAC. When you really cross the LAC, China has enough strength to beat you back. So after China taught the Indians a lesson, China felt that was enough, so it returned to the state before the war and returned to the original line of actual control.

Maximizing revenue B

Simply put, it means achieving the highest benefit with the lowest cost.

If the Indians crossed one kilometer of LAC and China counterattacked 20 kilometers and stayed to occupy the land, it would definitely cause India to expand the war regardless of the cost, and the war would not stop lightly.

It would be unwise to plunge two countries with hundreds of millions of people into endless war.

It would be unwise to plunge two countries with hundreds of millions of people into an ongoing war over mostly uninhabited mountainous and desert areas.

War costs huge amounts of money. OThe value of a cannonball fired in one hour is enough to feed the residents of a small town for a year. In 1962, both China and India were quite poor countries, especially China. 1962 was the hungriest year in the history of New China. It would be very unfavorable for China to fall into a long-term war at this time.

China has pushed its battle line to the Indian plains. If China insists on fighting here, it will be at a huge disadvantage, because to transport an artillery shell from a Chinese factory here, it requires the use of donkeys to climb dozens of mountains over 3,000 meters. , spanning thousands of kilometers, requires a huge amount of transportation energy. Even if a 10-dollar artillery shell costs $1,000 here, Indian artillery shells can be transported directly by truck, and a 10-dollar artillery shell is worth at most $100. In other words, the cost in China is at least 10 times more expensive than in India. This is an asymmetric war. If China continues to fight here, the original victory will turn into a defeat, or a tragic victory. As a master of war, the Chinese will not make such mistakes. Therefore, China decisively returned to the LAC before the war.

In the 1962 war, from the perspective of territorial acquisition, China did not gain more territory than before the war. But the benefits are still huge.

The biggest benefit is that in the decades after 1962, Indians no longer dared to cross the LAC lightly and no longer dared to advance policies. In other words, Indians have heartily accepted that LAC is the default boundary line between China and India. This won decades of peace along China’s southwestern border.

The border conflict in 1967 was only a few days of minor fighting over the dispute between China and India over the LAC demarcation line at Nathu La Pass. At that time (32 Chinese soldiers died and 101 Indian soldiers died)

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Indian prisoners in 1967

Maybe 1962 has passed too long, maybe Indians feel that India in 2020 is no longer the India in 1962, so the Indians crossed the LAC again in 2020, so China was forced to take action again to teach the Indians a lesson. I hope Indians understand that although India is not the India of 1962, China is not the China of 1962. China was in its poorest period in 1962, when China’s GDP was even lower than India’s. China GDP in 2020 is five times larger than India. Don’t provoke China, China is more powerful than you think.

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Indian Captives of 2020

Nikki Haley says she will stop China from killing Americans with fentanyl. Is the PRC doing this? If so, how?

She’s lying. She has no idea what to do. What she’s trying to selli is the idea that she does.

Here’s the problem. Americans want fentanyl. Enough Americans want fentanyl as to make it worth the enormous risk of smuggling either it, or the raw materials to make it, into the United States. Capitalism 101. And there is no way to stop that. None. Every attempt we’ve ever made to stop drug use by prohibition has been not only an utter failure, but has caused us more trouble than the actual problem we were trying to fix.

There’s a deeper problem. Fentanyl is a symptom, not a cause. And that cause is the utter hopelessness and the lack of resources for the poor in the US. We’ve literally criminalized poverty. We have the weakest social safety net in the industrial world, and we’ve decided that a tax structure that makes it possible for a handful of men to amass fortunes that can buy them freedom from the law, is a good thing even if it leaves 20% of the country living below the poverty line in an information and resource vacuum that leaves most trapped.

Preying on the poor is hugely profitable, and the capitalists have risen to the task. We choose to look away and complain.

What work secret did you accidentally find out that changed everything?

I once worked for a dental lab as part of a “back-to-work” rehab program after a work injury. I was working late one Friday and took a delivery into the mail room for shipment the next day. The mail room was adjacent to the owner’s office and I overheard him and his wife (his accountant) and the office manager planning on replacing some 60% of the staff with high-school kids in work-study programs. The boss, Rick, heard me taping up the box and came in, asking what I was doing and if I heard them, to which I said no. He told me I wasn’t supposed to work late and leave the package for the next day.

On Monday I was called into a meeting with Rick, his wife and my rehab consultant about missing many hours of work. He slid three altered times cards across the table as proof, not realizing I had copies of all my time cards as required by the work comp insurer. I pulled them from my bag and told him he was lying and falsified the cards because I overheard him planning on firing staff. He fired me anyway so as I left, I walked into the large work area and announced loudly, “Rick is going to replace most of you with high-school kids and he just fired me because I overheard him planning it.”

Two weeks later he let nine people go, replacing them with high-school kids. By the end of the month another six employees left for the competition and without experienced employees, he went out of business by the end of the year. I actually ran into him at the grocery store the following year and asked him how his business was going. He said, “Go f*ck yourself!” Best. Vindication. Ever. 🙂

What was the greediest thing you’ve seen a family member do?

This goes back fifty years, but I will never forget it.

My mother’s aunt and uncle (Annie and Homer) were married for over fifty years. They never had any biological children, but did adopt a daughter (Mary Catherine) and raised her as their own.

MC grew up, got married, and moved out of state with her husband. (The parents lived in Memphis, and the daughter lived in southeastern Missouri, about a five-hour drive apart.)

Being much younger, I only met the daughter a couple of times while I was growing up. She didn’t visit Memphis often.

Aunt Annie fell and broke her hip in an accident in her early-80’s. She survived the fall, but lapsed into dementia and died about two years later. Mary Catherine didn’t attend the funeral. (When I asked why, none of the adults in my family would talk about it.)

Uncle Homer lived another few years. His mind was sharp, but his physical health started failing. During the last year of his life, he was bedridden at home and required regular nursing visits during the day.

One afternoon, Uncle Homer called our house all frantic, asking my mother to come to his house. She and I drove over, a trip that took about fifteen minutes.

When we arrived, he was yelling and crying. His nurse had also arrived, but wasn’t able to calm him down.

When he saw my mom, Uncle Homer told us the story: Mary Catherine and her husband had shown up, and cleaned out the house of everything they wanted.

He had yelled and screamed, and had fallen out of bed trying to stop them, but they both just laughed at his efforts and took everything of value. He had gotten his gun out from the beside table, but his nurse had removed the bullets from it long beforehand.

The daughter and husband left before Uncle Homer called us, so we never saw them.

My grandfather had the daughter’s number in Missouri and called her that evening. She was not at all repentant and argued that the stuff she took was her just reward for putting up with her parents for decades. Apparently, she was upset because they had “lived too long.” She also let him know that she expected to get Uncle Homer’s house when he was gone.

Uncle Homer didn’t call the police on his daughter, but he was clearly heartbroken after this incident. His life spark and sense of humor were gone. He lasted about three more months, and passed away at age 92.

After he died, Mary Catherine didn’t attend the funeral, but did come back to deal with her inheritance. It turned out that Uncle Homer had altered his will and gave his house to his nurse, a widow who had been living in a rented place nearby.

The value of the house was a lot greater than the stuff that the daughter had stolen.

What was the cruelest rumor you’ve heard about another kid when you were in school?

There was that girl that had been lonely all her life. People, especially in school, disliked her because she was “strange”, “a nerd”, “too quiet” and just “different”.

One day she decided to talk to her teachers during the breaks instead of trying to fit in where she didn’t. She always acted older than her age and her teachers liked her, so they usually didn’t send her away, but had a friendly chat with her ever so often instead.

By tenth grade, she had almost developed some kind of friendship to a few of her teachers. When she got the “strictest teacher of the school” as her major course teacher in grade eleven, it took her mere weeks to find out that he actually wasn’t so strict at all.

They talked for at least half an hour after the lessons. About science, about our society, the people in school and whatever came to mind. Those two thought quite alike, despite an age difference of 34 years, and the girl now almost a woman could for the first time in years really live her passion for learning. Her teacher was highly intelligent and very knowledgeable, having not only written a dissertation in the past and worked in research for years but also being interested in a broad spectrum of topics.

Well, doesn’t sound so bad, now does it? So what happened?

Well, because teenagers are teenagers, it took about half a year for people to start whispering about the girl and her teacher. It started off lightly, she was still strange and why would she even talk to him?

But a few months after that, some people thought it to be funny to make up a non-existent romantic relationship between teacher and student. Despite that girl having been very close to other teachers before, but now that it was a male teacher, it suddenly was completely different. Because people of opposite gender can’t just see each other as friends, right? They just have to be in love to even think about talking to each other.

A less than funny “joke” became something way bigger. After two weeks, all of the 1600 students knew about this. And most didn’t know that it was a joke. People were laughing and pointing at her, throwing insults at the girl for something that never happened.

Finally, after about three months of dealing with it alone, she had the heart to tell her teacher. They decided to never talk to each other outside of class again, to prevent the teacher from getting problems with the school. While it was just a rumour, that didn’t mean that it wouldn’t lead to problems.

Both of them lost a friend on the day they made this decision. And the student lost a person she saw as a second father – her father barely ever was at home and her teacher had been one of three people (the other ones being her best friend and a female teacher she knew since fifth grade) she ever fully trusted. It might not have been cruel at the first glance, but it hurt her in more ways than the others students could’ve ever imagined.

That girl was me.

Some good ways to get revenge on someone?

Meet Kyle Tomlinson.

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image 375

As a 12 year old, he came to the auditions of Britain’s Got Talent.

You should go and get a singing teacher.

He was told by David Walliams

and that hurt the 12 year old kid. So much so that when he came for auditions 2 years later, he mentioned this on the stage again. David obviously did not remember the incident.

Kyle had taken it to his heart that ‘he was not good enough’ and had worked hard on his singing for the past 2 years.

Kyle sang that day with his heart out and the entire auditorium rose up to appreciate his talent. Everyone was moved and David Walliams somewhere realized how big a mistake he had done for hurting Kyle.

image 374
image 374

David pressed the golden buzzer, which meant Kyle went to the live shows directly. (Every judge has only one golden buzzer to use in one season.)

David came up to the stage and hugged Kyle.

Kyle transformed his embarrassment and made himself more than able in a period of 2 years.

He forced the man who had underestimated him to accept his mistake.

For me, that is the best form of revenge.

Turn your haters into your fans.

Film-Noir | Impact (1949) | Brian Donlevy, Helen Walker, Ella Raines | Movie, subtitles

One of my regrets

Oh, I have a lot of regrets. Though, I try to minimize the mountain of built-up and pent-up regrets and memories. Often enough, though distraction and labor. In one way or the other.

Some of the regrets are silly.

Here’s a silly regret.

When I lived in Boston, I used to go into the thrift stores, and antique stores and browse around. Over time, I would often find this kind of heavy (smash on the table) white coffee cup. And it would be cheap. 25 cents more often than not. These things were great, and were really popular in the United States say up until the late 1960’s.

mug
mug

Many had logos, and designs. Often symbols. All nicely done. Like for Naval Ships. Or for government agencies. Or for awards and events. Like a bridge opening in 1954.

So I had amassed quite a collection of them. I loved them. I had, maybe, about 35 of these things.

Later on, when I was living in Arkansas, and going though a nasty divorce with the witch that was poisoning me and who eventually got me sent to prison, I left the state with just a few items of clothing and my books.

When the time came to pack up the mugs, however, on a whim, I decided to leave them behind.

I guess that I was too upset, and too lethargic over everything to take them with me.

I shouldn’t have done that.

And now I have regrets.

Do not allow emotion…

…tiredness…

…frustration…

…stress…

…to allow you to make hasty and ill-advised decisions.

You will egret them in the future.

(A word to the wise.)

Today…

BULLETIN: Russian Forces Hit NATO Operations Center Inside Ukraine!

World Hal Turner 16 December 2023

BULLETIN: 2:49 PM EDT  16 December 2023 — Starokonstantinov, Ukraine — Russian Aerospace Forces have struck a NATO Operations center with a Kinzhal Hypersonic Missile.  

Russian Forces report and confirm the destruction of a NATO operation center in Starokonstantinov, Ukraine, by a Kinzhal hypersonic missile strike!!

Initial reports say Ukrainian suffered 28 casualties and NATO lost at least 12 officers!!

The Ukrainian forces have given no statement and have disabled communication in the region to prevent information from getting out!!  They’re too late.

The US and NATO are now directly involved in Ukrainian combat operations against Russia in Ukraine!!

Standpoint Theory

What is it like to ride a camel?

Riding a camel is quite an experience. It’s not like hopping onto a horse or sitting on a bike.

First off, before you even get to the exciting part, you’re going to face the camel’s getting-up process. Camels are tall creatures and they rise in stages—back legs first—which can leave you feeling like you’re about to be catapulted over their head. Holding on during that initial lurch is key.

Once you’re in motion, the rhythm is unlike any other. Camels have a swaying gait, and it can take a moment to find your balance with the camel’s oscillating movement (they often walk in a ‘pace’, moving both legs on one side of their body simultaneously). Think of it like a boat slowly rocking side to side—you need to relax and go with the flow.

The height can be disconcerting too—you’re way up there. A camel’s back is a lofty perch compared to the average horse. This means you get quite a vantage point; it’s like sitting on a slow-moving balcony. For me, here in Portland, OR, the tallest I usually get is standing up on Mount Tabor, which is nothing compared to being atop a camel, I’d bet.

But it’s not an amusement park ride. Expect some discomfort, especially if you’re not used to riding animals. The saddle, often just a blanket or a simple framework, isn’t the epitome of comfort, and it’s going to test your core strength and your backside.

Now, let’s talk about the personality of your ride. Camels can be temperamental. They’re known for being a bit…

Well, let’s say they have their own minds. They might decide to stop and refuse to move. Or they might express their displeasure in a more vocal way. Yep, they can spit if they’re really pushed. But mostly, they’re majestic creatures—stoic and adapted perfectly to their environment.

Here’s a pro tip: wear long trousers and maybe even some padding. You’ll thank me later when you’ve avoided chafing and can still walk normally the next day.

Lastly, enjoy the quirks. It’s an ancient mode of transportation, a connection to a different way of life. Riding a camel can be an opportunity to take in the landscape at a slower pace, from the deserts of the Middle East to the wilds of Australia, or even special tours elsewhere.

All told, it’s about embracing a unique adventure, one sway at a time.

The USA needs this man

What tiny detail have most people noticed but never bothered to stop and think about?

Have you ever pulled a “push” door?

image 233
image 233

Have you noticed that most public doors open outwards?

Picture this:

You’re at the cinema with your family or friends, enjoying a spectacular movie by some of your favourite actors.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a fire breaks out and the fire alarm rings.

At first people are confused, but very quickly they catch on. In chaotic unison, everyone suddenly starts to panic.

And like a herd of buffalo that have just spotted a lion, everyone darts towards the door. You’re in the lead.

You reach the door first and quickly try to push it open. But it doesn’t budge. It’s a “pull” door.

Realizing your mistake, you quickly try to pull it open. But it’s too late. Everyone’s already at the door trying desperately to push through.

You can’t pull the door back, because everyone is pushing you against it and cramming at the entrance.

At the same time, people are yelling at you.

“OPEN THE DOOR!!!”

“JUST PUSH IT YOU F*CKING IDIOT!”

“PLEASE, I HAVE A BABY!”

But you can’t.

You can’t even move. Your body is being crushed against the door by the panicking crowd. Combine that with the smoke and you can’t breathe.

You’re suffocating.

This was someone’s reality in the Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903.

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image 232

The deadliest theatre fire and deadliest single-building fire in United States history. Resulting in over 602 deaths.

Luckily, by chance a passing railroad agent saw the crowd pressing against the door and unfastened the hinges from the outside using tools that he normally carried with him, allowing the actors and stagehands to escape.

Because of this incident, most public doors now open outwards or are bidirectional.

And this is why a fire exit in particular will most likely open outwards.

Have you ever seen a mass exodus after a respected employee quit or got fired?

Not so much a mass exodus but a full team exodus – five of us. I was team leader but my elder mum (we lived together) was extremely ill, and it was clear to me that very soon the diagnosis would be one of terminal cancer, so I asked my Manager for a change in working hours so I could go home every lunch time to make sure she ate and was okay. I lived a 25 minute drive away so my intention was I would be absent 12 – 2 and make up the missing hour (1 of the hours being my lunch hour) by doing work at home that evening. Now bear in mind that for the entire 7 years I had worked for that company, and been team leader for 4 years, I had often gone in of a weekend UNPAID for at least a couple of hours to ensure that all was up to date, or took work home to do during the evening UNPAID. My team had a reputation for being fast, efficient, and friendly. We exceeded our targets every single year and received handsome bonuses.

My boss said NO. His only reason being that if he did it for me he would have to do it for others. The fact that this was exceptional circumstances and, as far as I could see, it would not be longer than a year or so (in fact, my mum died in the March of the following year, I had made my request in the July). I had already been headhunted by another local firm much nearer to my home (10 mins walk maximum) so I went back to them and they offered me a job. My boss was gobsmacked but still would not offer a change to my working hours, so I took the other job offer.

Well as soon as they knew I was leaving, my entire team started looking elsewhere and within a matter of months the entire team was gone! In fact, one member of the team actually came with me to my new employer :-D.

Repair

What is the one in a million coincidence you have ever had?

We sold a used car to a man who claimed that it was for his 16 year old daughter’s birthday that was the next day. He didn’t have all of the money, but said he would bring us the rest after he got his next paycheck. My heart went out to him, so I gave him the car with just a partial deposit. No surprises…he took the car and never came back. This was in Los Angeles.

Flash forward a few months, we were in downtown Las Vegas when who do I see but the thief who still owed us the money. My husband insisted it wasn’t him. I knew it was. I marched right up to him and demanded our money. The man was clearly caught off guard and then said that he didn’t have it on him. I said, “That’s okay, we’ll walk with you to the nearest ATM.” And that’s how we got the money that was owed to us.

Funny side note… the FBI called me a few months after that to see if I recognized anyone in a line up. There he was again! Turned out that he was part of an organized auto theft / chop shop ring. So much for my gut instincts!

Why does the military allow fresh, young, inexperienced college graduates to immediately enter OCS and gain the rank of a 2nd lieutenant, which places them above the rank of a master sergeant who probably has more than double the experience?

This is one of those “Yes but / However comma” answers.

Civilians with no military experience get hung up on this idea a lot, because they don’t understand two concepts that are pretty fundamental to how the US military (and most Western-style militaries, for that matter) operate: rank is not the same thing as authority, and officers and NCOs have fundamentally different jobs and responsibilities.

Caveat that I’m coming at this question from the perspective of the Navy. An officer or NCO from another service might things somewhat differently, but I’m trying to give as ecumenical an answer as possible.

A junior officer in the O-1 pay grade* is first and foremost an apprentice officer. Everyone understands this – the JO, his NCOs, his superior officers, etc. If a new 2nd Lt or Ensign doesn’t understand this, then his instructors at his commissioning source failed to do some pretty basic education. The new butterbar is there to learn how to be a leader; the philosophy of the US military is the best way to learn is by doing. So he or she is placed in a position of leadership and, at least by the pay grade table, outranks even the saltiest E-9.

*It’s different with officers commissioned from the ranks – the Navy calls them “mustangs” – and that’s a whole different discussion outside the scope of the OP’s question

This is where the however comma bit comes in. By matter of long service and experience, the NCOs in a unit have greater informal authority. The O-1 is there to learn from them. It’s supposed to be a good working partnership that combines mentorship, OJT, and maintaining unit discipline and morale. The officer should demonstrate willingness to listen and learn and respect for the NCOs’ experience and authority over the more junior enlisted; the NCO should demonstrate patience and good mentorship while respecting the officer’s rank and extending them the courtesy due that rank. An officer who confuses his pay grade with authority undermines the NCO in front of the junior E’s. An NCO who demeans or disregards the officer undermines the officer and fails in his duty to form the young officer into the kind of leader he’d want to work for.

Of course, people are people, in uniform and not, and it doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to. Sometimes a new officer doesn’t know what to do with their by-rank authority but tries to hide it (which is silly, nobody expects a brand new officer to know how to do everything) by blindly issuing orders without listening to his NCOs, or trying to be chummy with the junior E’s (who are probably closer to his age), or masking their insecurity about their inexperience with arrogance, etc. Not all NCOs are created equal. Some don’t have the patience to mentor an officer, or the desire. Those are the “go away and let me do my job…sir” NCOs. And some NCOs are just plain incompetent, or might have been great technical specialists but with no talent for leadership. The military promotion system is, to say the least, by no means perfect.

When it works as designed though, it works well for everyone involved.

It’s the BRO code

What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve heard a parent say when fighting for custody in court?

This wasn’t when we were fighting for custody, but when I was trying to have our custody case transferred to a different courts jurisdiction.

The judge asked me why I wanted the change. I told him that the kids and I had moved to the jurisdiction of the other court and I planned on asking for a change to our custody case. I had no car and with the way the public transportation ran, I had to come up with the kids the night before court and stay the night at a friends house to be able to make it to court on time and then the kids would all miss a full day of school. The judge then asked their dad why he didn’t want the change to happen. He told the judge that it would inconvenience him (even though he had a car). I had never seen a judge yell at anyone before that day. He was screaming at my ex “How does your inconvenience trump your kids missing school, spending the night away from home, spending hours on a bus?!”

I got the change of jurisdiction.

Have you ever started playing mind games with the interviewer during a job interview?

If it’s a “mind game” to shut down a “mind game,” yes. I got quite blunt:

  • Interviewer: “You’ve proven to me you are an excellent designer; but you haven’t proven your writing skills. Here is a writing assignment. Work on it tonight and bring it to me tomorrow at 2 and I will give you your portfolio back then.” THANK YOU, NO.
  • Interviewer: “Do you have any idea who would buy our product? I’m thinking salesmen. But I’m not sure. Do you have any ideas? Maybe we could write some down.” THANK YOU, NO.
  • Interviewer: “It’s only a one-day assignment, but we have a zero-tolerance policy, you we will need a urine test from you before we will consider hiring you.” THANK YOU, NO.
  • Interviewer: “I need to test you. Here’s a written exam (!). You have :30 to finish it.” (I realize the “exam” is an article the hiring company needs for a trade-industry magazine.) THANK YOU, NO.
  • The worst mind game played on me was by a nice, professional man who I liked instantly. I arranged to meet him after the staff went home, because I was still working a full-time job. This position was for a temporary marketing person that would cover a specific 3-month project. There was the possibility it could become permanent. We had a lovely chat, and he seemed ready to hire me. He said “let me show you around.” After we toured the work area (and he showed me “my” desk), he said “Can you come back on Tuesday? I just want to introduce you to a few co-workers.” (I’m thinking he’s hired me; I lied to my current boss so I had all Tuesday morning.) On Tuesday morning, I arrived all relaxed and confident. I asked to see Mr. Manager (who was oh so nice, did I mention?). The receptionist said “Mr. Manager isn’t in today.” Me: “I’m sorry, he was interviewing me for the marketing position. I must have confused the day.” “No; said the receptionist. Follow me.” She led me into a huge conference room with six large banquet tables arranged so it was one big table. People started filing in… 7, 11, 12… I lost count. They were “the executive board” and they started peppering me with questions. I did my best to answer, but my anger at Mr. Nice Manager was boiling over. So he deliberately lied to me to presumably see how I acted “under pressure” and didn’t have the decency to even be there. Sorry, I won’t work for someone who would do that to a person. This was years ago, but I still see the company’s vans and I cringe; what did they do to the guys that drive the vans, hold them out a window by the ankles? I fell flat on my face in that interview. Maybe that’s my fault, but that is the definition of a mind game, and I didn’t want any part of someone who would do that to a prospective employee.

In short, most of my mind game interviewers are trying to get work done for free or betray a weird corporate culture (OK, you have a zero drug policy for a one-day temp job and you can’t find anyone pre-screened and in-house?). A few interviewers have left me waiting for :45 to over an hour; if they were “tricking me” or just disrespectful of me and my time, I didn’t really care because I left.

TL/DR: Pay attention to how you’re treated in an interview because whatever game they’re playing is going to get exponentially worse if they hire you. An interview goes both ways. Plus, if they’re obviously playing you, you have every right to “play” back.

Rufus in action

What thing are people starting to make not fun?

I still enjoy going to theaters with my girlfriend—sometimes. It gives us an excuse to get out of the house and focus on a movie with no distractions.

It’s gotten remarkably expensive. The last time we went, tickets were nearly $25 each.

But the biggest problem is the people. There is constant talking and playing on phones.

We had teenage girls sitting in the front row during a showing of Dune. Their screens were flashing in the front row. They were sprinting in and out of the theater like hyper children.

My girlfriend left halfway through the movie to use the bathroom.

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image 211

She bumped into the teenagers and called them out for ruining the movie for everyone and they didn’t come back.

She got back from her bathroom break and said, “Don’t worry about those girls. I took care of it.”

For a brief second, I was worried she’d killed them.

Sadly, in the past three out of four movie dates we’ve been on, there has been some sort of incident. It’s making movie theaters damn near impossible to enjoy.

I’m hoping it’s just bad luck on our part. It wasn’t always like this.

Is it possible to have a giant nuclear powered aircraft that stays in the air all the time?

Yes, indeed. Behold the HTRE-3 nuclear aircraft engine.

image 160
image 160

Yes, this is real. Yes, the military was crazy enough to think this was a good idea.

In principle, it’s straightforward. A jet engine is just a heat engine. You suck cold air in the front, you heat it up, you spew the hot air out the back. What we normally think of as a “jet engine” heats the air up by burning jet fuel. But the heat can come from anywhere. A nuclear reactor? No sweat. They get plenty hot.

Thing is, it’s easy to make a lightweight nuclear reactor that gets as hot as you want it to. The heavy part of a reactor isn’t the core, it’s the radiation shielding around the core.

So. What do you notice is missing in this picture?

Core’s looking a bit exposed, innit?

The US military built and flew these engines [edit: an experimental reactor similar to the one designed to drive these engines, not the engines themselves: see comments!] in a test aircraft.

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image 159

They produce a lot of radiation, and you can’t easily shield them if you want them light enough to fly a plane. Which creates quite a problem for handling and servicing these things.

They considered a modular design where you could just undock the crew bits from the nasty radioactive bits…

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image 158

…and then just reprocess it or, I don’t know, throw it away or something.

Then some engineer somewhere said “you guys do realize this idea is both crazy and stupid, right?” and the idea went away.

America today

What’s the most pretentious thing you’ve ever seen on a résumé?

Originally Answered: What’s the most pretentious thing you’ve ever seen on a resume?

I received a resume from someone who had recently graduated from high school. They had one job on the resume and their job title was Director in Charge of Company Morale at a prestigious local law firm.

The resume lacked all the things I was looking for, but the job title listed intrigued me. I set the interview and was waiting to hear a litany of lies.

On the day of the interview this cleancut sharp dressed young man showed up. After brief small talk I asked about the prior job and what it entailed.

Turns out his Director in Charge of Company Morale Position entailed him going out each morning and getting coffee for all the partners. He said without their morning coffee, morale was very low.

Best belly laugh in an interview ever. I hired him. And he worked out well because he found a way to place a positive attitude on everything he did, however menial the task.

Edit: I am honored that so many people like my answer. Thank you all.

Update: I’ve had several people suggest editing the gender from “they” to “he”. At the time I read the resume and set the appointment, I had no idea if the applicant was male or female. Gender was not a decision point in our hiring process. This is why I have left the answer unedited. Thank you all again for the overwhelming response.

Filipino Egg Pie

filipino egg pie
filipino egg pie

Ingredients

  • 6 large eggs yolks
  • 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
  • 1 cup warm evaporated milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 large egg whites
  • 1 (9 inch) pie crust

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. In a large bowl, beat 6 large egg yolks, sweetened condensed milk, warm evaporated milk, nutmeg, vanilla extract and salt until mixed well.
  3. Whip egg whites in a separate bowl until they form stiff peaks.
  4. Add the whipped egg white to the milk mixture slowly until well incorporated. Pour into pie shell and bake for 45 to 50 minutes until the center is set.
  5. Let pie cool completely before serving.

Attribution

Recipe and photo used with permission from: American Egg Board
Recipe created in partnership with @thetastebud

What is the weirdest thing you’ve walked in on?

I had a very rocky second marriage, but I loved him so kept going back for more of the same bad treatment. (I have learned better behavior now!) Our marriage consisted of lots of comings and goings, and we split up with each other quite frequently because we were really incompatible. Being around each other all the time was a trial.

He was a big time gambler and many other things besides, and I couldn’t cope with all of his bad habits. I dare say I had some bad habits, but I didn’t have any addictions, thankfully.

One time, the last time, I left home and went to stay with a friend, my husband and I talked very frequently on the phone and missed each other’s company. It was a very strange affair.

Anyway, I decided to move back in for good and went back to the house one day with all my luggage. I got to our home and went in, and what do you know, I heard a familiar sound coming from our bedroom that was on the third floor. When I climbed the stairs, I realized what was happening. Despite the fact that my husband knew I was coming home, he was up in our bedroom making love to another woman.

Needless to say, that was grounds for divorce. He caught Covid in prison and died two years ago.

Traditional vs. Progressive

What did your pastor say or do that made you quit his church?

My pastor and his wife tried to convince me to stay with my abusive husband and just live separately until our children were both adults and then start living like a married couple again. Why would we have to live separately you ask? Well, that would be because a few days before this conversation I had Child Protective Services (or CPS for short), the San Berdarnio County Sherifs Office, Fort Irwin (I and my ex-husband were both in the Army at the time) Military Police, and Fort Irwin Criminal Investigation Department (or CID) at my door at 10 at night trying to take my kids away from me because he FINALLY got caught beating my son. (Before this point I could not prove it as there were never bruises or marks) But this time he threw a phone at my sons face because he did not get up at 5 in the morning when his 4 year old sister had to get up to go to daycare (My son was 12 at the time) and it “wasn’t fair that she had to get up that early and he didn’t so I make them both get up”. My son did not have to be to school until 830. My daughter had to go to daycare before we both started work in the morning but got to go back to sleep at daycare so can’t figure out where fairness comes in to play.

Anyway, the pastor and his wife call and say that divorce is against the Bible and we should stay married and live apart until the kids are adults and can move out and then we continue, at that point to live together. I told them flatly no because he was also abusive to me and oh, by the way that woman he has been bringing to church as a “friend?”, yeah he has been having an affair with her for over 2 years. So, tell me again about what the Bible says? I also may have threw in there about how the Bible says there are a few reasons why divorce is accepted and a couple of those just happen to be abuse and adultery. I may have also mentioned that they have no room to talk when their own daughter was getting divorced from her husband because he came out and told her he was gay and that is NOT an acceptable reason (for that religion) to get a divorce.

What is the most misunderstood profession?

Being a CEO.

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I often ghostwrite for executives. My job is to help tell their story, either in book or article form. The more I learn, the more I feel bad for them.

Not one of the CEOs I’ve written for looks back fondly on the actual day-to-day CEO experience.

They loved being CEO. But they hated the job. Their phone was ringing at all hours. Every problem rolled up to them.

They had to decide the fate of many people’s careers and lives. There was immense pressure on them from stakeholders and owners. The hours they put in were beyond intense.

Most are now very wealthy — but they were undoubtedly aged by the job. It changed them.

When I was in finance, I worked alongside a senior VP and sat in on many of the executive meetings, taking notes for my boss. This was not a room full of happy people.

When you start making $200K, $300K, and up, you can expect to pay a steep price and often get a target on your back.

It is constant worry and emails and people problems.

The idea of the CEO who kicks back, smokes cigars, and yells “mush” couldn’t be further from the actual job.

If China has so much money to invest in other countries, why don’t they develop the poor parts of China?

If China has so much money to invest in other countries, why don’t they develop the poor parts of China?

Which poor part of China do you refer to? Can you give just one specific example that China has failed or ignored to develop?

If you are not convinced, let us just look at the situations from the poorest part of China. Here are the last four provinces with the least GDP per capita (nominal) in China: List of Chinese administrative divisions by GDP per capita – Wikipedia

:

  1. Gansu province ($4735, 26 million people)
  2. Yunnan province ($5612, 48 million people)
  3. Guizhou province ($6233, 36 million people)
  4. Guangxi province ($6270, 49 million people)

Just for reference: India ($2036), Vietnam ($2551), Mongolia ($4026), Albania ($5289), South Africa ($6377). Note that all the listed are poorer than Tibet ($6550, 3m people) and Xinjiang ($7476, 24m) in term of GDP per capita.

We will look at these provinces and see what China has done specifically to develop these poor provinces.

This will be an extremely long post. Please read at your discretion. But if you read on, I’m sure you will learn a lot of new things about China:

1. Gansu province

Gansu is poor for a reason. On one side, you have the massive freezing Tibetan Plateau. On the other side, you have the deadly Gobi Desert.

God doesn’t want you to live here. But you insisted.

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Image credit: 地球知识局

What kind of environment are we talking about? Have a look at the following picture. This is what a typical village in Gansu looks like.

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Red stones, golden sands and deep valleys. Gansu is the Nevada State of China. There are a lot of sites just like the death valley and red canyon in the USA.

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The Taolai River Gorge at Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu

Imagine you are living here. You grow your food in the valleys but you have virtually no rainfall at all. Even if you managed to grow a few tons of wheat magically, where you do sell? To the nearest city? That’s fine. Please drive 5 hours out of this god damn dry mountains.

Even if you manage to find a customer to buy your wheat. He will buy your wheat for $150 per ton. But your transport and fuel cost to move the wheat out of these mountains has exceeded $100 per ton. Considering other costs, okay … , so do you grow wheat just for losing money?

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A mountain road in Jingtai County, Gansu

So you have no choice but to leave the village and become a Foxconn worker in Zhengzhou and spent your days making iPhones. That’s what most Gansu people would choose to do. As most people are leaving the rugged land to the cities, your village becomes deserted just like this:

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An abandoned village in Dingxi County, Gansu

What has the Chinese government done to address this problem?

For the 13th Five Year Plan (2016–2020), the central government has poured a huge amount of money in building expressways and railways across these God damn hills. And what’s more, they are not building “Level 5” bridges just enough for people to move. Instead, they are building “Level 50” shiny and massive bridges.

What are the differences between a “Level 5” bridge and “Level 50” bridge?

Here is an example of a “Level 5” bridge in France. Short in length and height. You have to rush down, cross the bridge and climb up the mountains.

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Here is an example of a “Level 50” bridge in Gansu. All you need to do is to pass through at the speed of 120km/h.

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Tian Ning Gou Bridge in Gansu, Tianyong expressway

These “level 50” bridges are indeed very expensive to build. But, on the other hand, they are very cost effective if you consider the amount of fuel saved for trucks, trains, and cars! You don’t have to go down and up again and again.

Even if there is already a “level 5” road along the valleys, the government is still not satisfied. They want to build another high-speed “level 50” expressway along with it. In order to run at 120km/h across the mountains and valleys, the expressway has to be filled with tunnels and bridges so that it is more stretched. This makes trucks and cars to drive faster with less distance. So the fuel cost and transport costs can be reduced significantly.

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Provincial expressways S2 in construction in Gansu (35°21’14.3″N 102°49’02.0″E)

In 2019, the total “Level 50” expressway length in Gansu has exceeded 4242km [1] (speed limit 120km/h), which is even longer than Mexico. And it is almost three times longer than India’s total length. Not only expressways but Gansu also has 4 lines of high-speed railways running at 250km/h to 350km/h (宝兰,成兰,兰新,兰渝).

In the next 14th Five Year Plan (2021–2025), the government will promise to connect every prefecture city of Gansu with high-speed railways and expressways.

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Lanzhou-Xinjiang high-speed railways

Why are “Level 50” bridges, roads and railways are so useful?

Imagine you are the farmer mentioned above, thanks to the village road built around you, you can transport your crops to your nearest city faster and also at a lower cost. The distributor in your nearest city can also find customers in a province that is even further away. People who are at 2000km away can buy your wheat at a higher price, thanks to the giant expressway network. Overall, you can finally make profits in growing wheat in Gansu!

Still think what I said is made-up or propaganda?

Well, here is another real-life example. Imagine you live in a distant village in Gansu and you want to buy a mobile phone from Taobao (Chinese Amazon), what does it cost to ship a package of 1kg from Shenzhen to Dunhuang in Gansu in 2019? Note that the total distance is around 3500km.

You can use this Chinese website for shipping cost calculation: 快递价格和网点查询 – 快递小帮手

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According to the website, the total cost for shipping over the 3500km is 15RMB ($2.2) and it promises to arrive in 3 days.

For comparison, the total cost for shipping one 1kg package from Boston to Reno in Nevada (a similar 4000km) in the USA is $26.13 according to the UPS shipping price calculator under the UPS 3-day service.

Therefore in the USA, it requires 10x more money to do the same thing! And note that they are both counted in the GDP calculation in both countries. Is it fair? Of course not. This applies to other services too.

That means Gansu is not that “poor” as we originally thought.

Instead, Gansu is also blessed with the richness in “green” natural resources. On one side, you have the freezing Tibetan plateau. On the other side, you have the hot Gobi desert. Boom! The temperature difference causes constant wind blowing. God doesn’t want you to live here but he really gives you another gift: the wind power.

Therefore, Gansu is the leader in its renewable energy sector. It has the world’s largest on-shore wind farm:

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Gansu Jiuquan Windfarm 40°40’31.2″N 95°24’44.5″E

There are so many on-shore solar farms in Gansu as well. I am not sure if it is the world’s largest. But you can spot them everywhere on Google Earth.

If you can’t grow crops on the land, then just grow solar panels.

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Gansu Wuwei Solarfarm 38°06’05.1″N 102°18’00.2″E

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God also said, “Let Gansu be light”. Thanks to the Chinese, do you see the holy light?

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Gansu Dunhuang Tower Solarfarm 40°03’49.3″N 94°25’29.9″E

However, despite China’s “great leap forward” in solar farm construction, they are faced with severe problems in Gansu. They are generating too much electricity and it is much more than the Gansu people can consume. The private sector is also investing heavily in Gansu, making the government unable to control the overall supply of the solar power in Gansu.

As a result, it is estimated 40% of the wind and solar electricity is wasted in Gansu [2]. We could not store the energy because currently, we don’t have giant batteries. Storing a huge amount of energy remains a problem to be solved by future technology.

The remaining choice is to transmit this huge amount of electricity through the ultra-high voltage power grid to the power-hungry Eastern China. However, building a 3000km power grid is not an easy task and people along the grid would complain about the danger and radiation above their houses. I will write about this on-going Chinese mega project and its achievements and problems in another answer.

In summary, these conclude the development in the poorest province of China —Gansu. The GDP growth for Gansu province in 2018 is 10.54% [3]. And it is still far from enough compared to other provinces because we still have a lot of distant villages in Gansu that are yet covered by decent roads and bridges. We will wait and see how China continues to eliminate poverty here.

2. Yunnan & Guizhou province

The next three poorest provinces: Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi are next to each other in the Southwest of China. There are around 140 million people living here.

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Image Credit: 地球知识局

Yunnan & Guizhou are poor for the same reason. So let’s look at them together and later we discuss Guangxi specifically.

If you have already been there, you might have already enjoyed those amazing tourist attractions in these areas. But they do not represent the majority of the people nor the whole poverty situation.

What is the real situation?

As the Indian subcontinent continues to squeeze, terrains around here are becoming more and more similar to “wrinkles”, as mountains are squeezed higher and the rivers continue to carve valleys deeper.

Yes, it is like the wrinkles of the skin.

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Imagine you are living in the middle of the “wrinkle”. You would be surrounded by tall mountains and deep valleys.

It is nearly impossible to move around without flying. Building roads is also nearly impossible. You would be isolated for your whole life. To get a taste of what it is like, you can just go to Google Earth and experience it. (26°12’28.4″N 99°07’57.1″E)

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Even if you can climb across the mountains to the other side, you have to climb up and down another three similar mountains in order to reach a nearby city.

As a farmer, can you get rich if you live here? That’s nearly impossible. If you are ill, you have to call a helicopter to fly to the nearest hospital. But you have to be rich to afford a mobile phone. No signals? Oh, why not just wait and die?

Are you desperate? Most likely.

But the Chinese said: “Hold my beer, I got this”.

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Beipanjiang bridge, Liupanshui, Guizhou (World’s highest bridge)

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Pu-Li-Te Bridge, Xuanwei, Yunnan (World’s third highest bridge)

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Jin-An Bridge, Lijiang, Yunnan (World’s fourth highest bridge, to be completed in 2020)

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Ya-Chi-He Bridge, Qingzhen, Guizhou (World’s fifth highest bridge)

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Liu-Guang-He Bridge, Liutong, Guizhou (World’s sixth highest bridge)

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Ping-tang Bridge, Liutong, Guizhou (World’s largest viaduct bridge, to be completed later in 2019)

A similar and smaller viaduct bridge can be found in Hunan as well. Here is the video for the beer:

The Chinese said: “Hold up. There are ten more to come in the next five years”.

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A high-speed railway arch bridge in Guizhou. Bullet trains pass through this bridge at the speed of 250km/h.

For comparison, a similar railway bridge is also being built in India. It is the Chenab Railway Bridge in J&K. Chenab Bridge – Wikipedia

However, this bridge started in 2003 and it was originally intended to be completed in December 2009. But ten years passed the Indian people have still not finished it.

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If the Indian engineers wanted to delay for another 2 years, the bridge would no longer be the world’s tallest railway arch bridge. The new King will be crown to the Sichuan-Tibet railway bridge.

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That’s enough for bridges. For the rest of the bridges please refer to List of highest bridges – Wikipedia

. Basically nearly the world’s top 100 highest bridges are all from Yunan and Guizhou (I’m not talking about China. Just the two provinces).

And we are not comparing the length of the bridge, because expressways in Yunnan and Guizhou are pretty much always in bridges or tunnels. So it is pointless to compare their length.

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The takeaway for this section is that please don’t take for granted if you see the expressway network like this in Yunnan and Guizhou.

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Think about their terrain and imagine how difficult it is to build expressways here.

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Now back to Yunnan and Guizhou. What kind of other developments that are worth mentioning?

4G Network Coverage

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Even in the most distant village with no good roads, you can always find 4G base stations installed. In terms of 4G, no other countries in the world can be compared with China. Not a single developed country like the USA, UK nor Japan can be comparable in such a scale.

According to the Ministry of Industry and IT in China [7], there are 1.204 billion users connected to 4G stations in China. There are 3.72 million 4G base stations installed in China, exceeding 20% more than the rest of the world combined. Guizhou has achieved 100% 4G coverage in all its 10k villages and Yunnan reaches 65% in its progress.

In 2019, the package price for unlimited 4G internet is 98rmb ($14.5) for one person and 134 rmb ($20) for a family of three. Compared to the USA, you have to spend $40 in T-Mobile just to have a 10GB of internet. Compared to India, although India has much cheaper Internet than China, their 4G coverage is relatively low compared to China.

Why does the 4G access useful? Well, this is another answer I will write. But just to draw your curiosity, do you notice that there are more and more Youtubers from Yunnan and Guizhou broadcasting their daily farming life?

Making Toufu online?

Picking tea leaves online?

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Hydroelectricity

Of course, 4G signals are inseparable from the electricity. Yunnan and Guizhou are also blessed with the hydropower. Most of the worlds’ largest dams and power stations listed here are from Yunnan and Guizhou. List of largest hydroelectric power stations – Wikipedia

. They contribute to 30% of the hydroelectricity generated in China.

Yunnan hydropower generation: 280.4 terawatt hours [4]
Guizhou hydropower generation: 65.8 terawatt hours [5]
Three Gorges Dam (only) generation: 88.2 terawatt hours [6]

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Just follow along the four major rivers in Yunnan from Google Earth. You can find many stages of Dam on the same river. For example, the Jinsha River (Yangtze) has nine stages of dams.

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A dam along the Jin Sha River 26°48’23.9″N 100°26’46.4″E

Compared to the power transmission and storage problem in Gansu, hydroelectricity generated in Yunan and Guizhou are directly transmitted to power up the Guangdong province and Hong Kong, because China has already built the ultra-high voltage power transmission line.

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That means a fraction of your made-in-China products are actually manufactured using the hydro-power from Yunnan.

Data centres

Thanks to the abundance of electricity and water resources for cooling, the Chinese government has chosen Guizhou as its most important base for data centres.

Deep in the caves of Guizhou, lies the Tencent T-Block data centre (腾讯七星数据中心). This is the place where the data of all Chinese Wechat/Tencent Video (Chinese Netflix) users are stored.

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In 2018, Apple has also decided to place its iCloud (China) data centre in Guizhou. This is where all Chinese apple users information are stored in China.

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Now pretty much every important IT company has set their data centres in Guizhou, such as Alibaba, Huawei, China Mobile, etc.

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Why do most companies choose Guizhou, such a poor place, to be the destination for data centres? Why not other places?

Because Xi Jinping wants it. He recommends IT companies to place their data centres in Guizhou to enjoy cuts in taxes and electricity bills. As Guizhou have more data centres, it finally has something to focus for its own to develop.

Why does Xi Jinping think Guizhou is so special?

Because Xi found that the leader of Guizhou, Chen Min’er, was exceptionally capable. It was Chen who led Guizhou to attract so many investments and called for IT companies to setup big data centre installations in Guizhou. Thanks to Chen’s excellent governing skill in Guizhou, he is now promoted to the Mayor of Chongqing.

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I think he will be the next president of China after Xi Jinping (if he continues to demonstrate his governance skills).

On the other hand, China can finally build its Great Data Bank of China in Guizhou so that the Chinese government can regulate API usage based on Chinese laws and validation using Chinese government licensed blockchain E-authentication.

Yes, this is really the authoritarian style of development in the Internet area. New forms of democracy are created: the government can instantly sample on what do the citizen feel from their mobile phones (like instant vote).

3. Guangxi province

Guangxi and Northen Vietnam are actually very similar in terms of geographic positions and terrains. They both have plenty of flooded plains, hilly mountains and coastal areas. Their cultures are actually very similar. Both are the descendants of the Nanyue Kingdom.

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In theory, their GDP per capita should be similar but Vietnam suffers many wars compared to Guangxi. Now Guangxi GDP per capita is $6270 and Vietnam is $2557.

Compared to Northern Vietnam, the main problem for Guangxi is that all of its tributary rivers are flowing east instead of heading the south to the sea. These tributary rivers are then forming into one giant Pearl River at Wuzhou and then reaches the South China Sea in Canton.

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Even for today in China, there are still a lot of heavyweight goods shipped through the rivers because of its cheap costs. This becomes really a problem for Guangxi. Since all its rivers flow directly to the east, all river-based shipment from Guangxi has to go through Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

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From the above picture, the biggest embarrassment for its Capital Nanning is that ships have to travel 1000km to the east to reach the sea, even though Nanning is only 100km away from the coast in the south. Just imagine the extra cost added for the Guangxi people for international shipment!

A similar terrain can be found in Brazil. A huge mountain can be seen blocking the coast. This is really a curse from God. That’s why the Brazilian economy is not so good and could not develop manufacturing.

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Guangxi is slightly better but shipping costs in Guangxi are more expensive compared to other coastal provinces in China. Due to the high costs, investments and talents would not come and it suffers the severe brain drain from the nearby Canton. This is the ultimate reason why Guangxi is poor.

On the contrary, if you look at Northern Vietnam, they are blessed with a wide natural river — the Red River. 5000-ton ships can easily reach Hanoi from Hai Phong. Low-cost transportation gives Vietnam the destiny to be the next center of low-end manufacturing. With the current US-China trade war, Vietnam would receive more foreign investments and its economy would be sky-rocketing.

Hopefully, if the Vietnamese government could follow the same approach as the Chinese government and massively expand its infrastructure and energy sectors, Hanoi-Hai Phong (the red river delta) would become the next mega metropolis around this region and they may experience over 10% growth over the next three decades.

Therefore Guangxi people have to be aware that Vietnam people are catching up quickly. What they need to do is to try everything best to improve its infrastructure and attract shipment from Chongqing and Kunming.

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For the above map, you can see that it is actually closer for Kunming to go through Vietnam to reach the sea. If the Vietnam government is really clever, they should reduce the shipping costs (by improving road quality) and attract goods from Kunming and Tibet and use Hanoi port. This would make Hanoi to become the next logistic center for international shipping.

That’s why it is vital for the Guangxi government to counterbalance Vietnam and promote its connections to Yunan and Chongqing.

However, in the past two decades, the Guangxi CCP government have gone in the wrong direction. They’ve built three giant international ports along the coast. But not many people and ships wanted to use them. The combined port shipment volume is only 200million tons, which ranked at 18th among all ports in China.

Originally for Kunming and Chongqing, it is always cheaper and easier to go through Guangzhou instead of coming here. And what’s worse. You made all your three ports (Fang-cheng-gang, Qinzhou, Beihai) compete with each other, instead of focusing on building a combined giant port.

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Image: A massive expansion in Fangchenggang port. Now it is pretty much a “ghost port”. 21°33’59.4″N 108°22’37.0″E

And what’s worse. The top CCP leader in Guangxi focused on building expressway and railway connections to Guangdong and ignored the roads to Kunming and Chongqing. As a result, more Guangxi people are drawn by the gravity from Guangdong and they are not coming back. This causes a severe brain drain in Guangxi.

People are leaving and ships are not coming. That’s why the Guangxi CCP leader did not get promoted. However, Guangxi is not a province, but it is an autonomous region in China. So it has its own laws and regulations. One of its regulation is that the Guangxi leader must be a Zhuang entity Zhuang people – Wikipedia

. This race-based selection obviously breaks the meritocracy system of CCP. And I think this is probably the reason why Guangxi is not developed so well. That’s why I suggest to remove the “autonomous” status and make Guangxi a province.

Lucky the current CCP leader in Guangxi has realized the problem and focus on promoting connections between Yunnan and Guizhou. And also they proposed to

Build Canals!

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For the 13th Five Year Plan in Guangxi, the CCP is planning to “evaluate” the possibility of the Ping-Lu Canal (平陆运河) that connects the Pingtang river to the Qinjiang river in the south.

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The canal is 20km long and it is very expensive to build. For reference, it is half the length of the Kra Canal in Thailand. It requires a lot of in-depth studies before the CCP finally decides to spend billions of RMB to build the canal. Whether it is worthwhile, it remains to be seen.

If it were built, it would be truly a significant boost to the Guangxi economy. With connected water, ships can then carry extra-heavy machinery and goods across most of the river network in Guangxi. It would finally solve the Guangxi problem!

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For the road and railway network, Guangxi still has a lot of rooms to improve in terms of density and accessibility. I’m not listing their detailed projects because they are similar to Yunan and Guizhou.

Conclusion

After this extremely long post, I hope you can know something about the on-going developments in the four poorest provinces of China. The take away is that China invests much more domestically than abroad. These are all in the news but people just don’t pay attention to them.

And also note that most of the above projects are led by Chinese state enterprises. They lose money for doing this. But they bring huge social benefits to the general people. This is called “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and it is working. That’s why the West such as the USA and Europe could not achieve nor even consider doing it.

Finally, let’s finish up with a view of the expressway in Guangxi province. Thank you for taking the time to read this extremely long posts.

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Please enjoy the real China 🙂

College-Age Carousel Rider Tries Lecturing Men That A “High Body Count Should NEVER Matter”

What is the best example of human kindness you have witnessed recently?

I was at a mall today, paying bills, having lunch and planning on a visit to the gym (pat on the back: I did all three!).

As I walked to the bank, I noticed an older man sitting by a water feature, dipping his fingers in the pool. This was unusual as people here in Thailand rarely do this in a mall.

When I passed him again 10 minutes later, he was standing in the middle of the walkway, searching to his left, then to his right, over and over, looking distressed.

I was about to approach him when a group of (uniformed and backpacked) high school students got to him first. They spoke to him respectfully and quickly realized that he didn’t know where he was or who should be with him.

One young man sprinted off to Information while the others tried to distract the old man to calm him.

A few moments later, a female security guard approached the group, having been notified by Information. She told the kids they could leave, but they refused, feeling they should stay and keep ‘grandfather’ happy.

An announcement was made, and within a few minutes, a very worried, middle-aged couple rushed over to the old man, and although they fussed at him for disappearing, they were clearly relieved.

The high school students were thanked, and then they respectfully took their leave.

The old man watched them go, turned to the couple and asked, “Where are the grandkids going?”

The couple smiled at him and gently said, “It’s ok, Father. They are going to school.”

The old man replied, “They are such good kids. You raised them well.”

Why do some civilians choose to stay in war zones?

Yesterday, I met a journalist friend who had just arrived from Avdiivka and we were talking about this issue.

Although this city in the Donetsk region is at the risk of encirclement by the Russian army and there’s no electricity and no internet, there are still some civilians living there.

My friend visited some of them in a bomb shelter and while he was doing his interviews, a woman in the shelter died.

Not from old age (she was fifty) or a sickness but because she had drunk hand sanitizer. Some people there are so poor that they cannot afford to buy alcohol so they drink disinfectants.

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Avdiivka, Ukraine. (Picture: Forbes)

There are obviously two kinds of hand sanitizers, the clear one and the colored one, and one of them is extremely poisonous. The woman drank the wrong one, started sh*tting blood and died a few hours later.

Of course, not every civilian who stays behind in a war zone is a complete alcoholic but a lot of them are old, sick, or suffer from mental disorders.

Many of the civilians in Donetsk are also of Russian origin and wouldn’t feel much at home if they were to evacuate to Western or Central Ukraine.

Their lives were already screwed up long before the war and now, they simply don’t care anymore.

What’s the cleverest cheating you’ve ever seen as a teacher or student?

We take our exams in the classroom, where there is a projector that looks like this. It’s hanging from the ceiling and underneath it, there was a shiny piece of plastic that the school had never bothered to remove.

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One of my friends, who sat directly below the projector, looked up to see the bottom of the projector in the middle of a Chinese exam. He was that friend who struggled a lot with Chinese, and guess what he saw at that moment?

The answers of the guy who sat next to him, reflecting off that shiny plastic.

The projector itself was black, so he could see the white exam paper easily. He copied down the answers, which was easier to do because that exam was multiple choice.

A few days later, we got our papers back and he was copying the answers off the wrong page, but in the next exam he used the same trick and made sure that he was on the same page as the person next to him (who was smart).

We don’t use that classroom now because we moved to a different building, but this “cheating hack” was passed down to the next generation and I’ve heard that they now fight for the seat underneath the projector. The teachers never found out.

Why do the men that admire Tyler Durden also admire Patrick Bateman when the two are about as opposite from the other as anything could ever be?

Love this question.

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The Yuppies of American Psycho (and similar characters in the Ellisverse) are the Masters of American Consumerist Culture. They are the, in a sense, heroes of the Consumerist Myth. Rich, powerful, beautiful, and crushingly successful at everything they put their mind to.

So successful at consumption are they that they have moved beyond merely consuming things; they consume people and souls.

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Fight Club could easily be put in the same universe. But instead of looking at the Masters of said Universe, Fight Club looks at its losers. The men who weren’t born to wealth and didn’t make it up the ladder.

The movie, through Tyler Durden, constantly points out the failures of these men to reach the levels of the Patrick Batemans of the world. Here is one particularly blunt, powerful scene:

Of course, Durden is also a consumer — in that he is actually consuming Jack and plans on erasing him entirely. He also “consumes” Marla, and eventually holds most of the Fight Club men in an iron grip. He even begins to morph into a “Master of the Universe” like-figure.

Notice the comments on the male model. In the Ellisverse, models are of the Elite.

Notice here that not only does Durden look like a male fashion model, he states that it’s exactly what Jack wishes he could look like and how he could live. And he’s not wrong, obviously. “All the ways you wish you could be? That’s me.”

As I see it, while Durden and Bateman would absolutely be opposed to each other’s “political” goals, such as they are, a Durden victory would be a “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” kind of thing at core.

Basically: Patrick Bateman and Tyler Durden really aren’t that different. If Durden were born in Bateman’s world he would be another Bateman; if Bateman were born in Durden’s world he would be another Durden (might sound implausible but remember, Bateman is crushingly charismatic, intelligent, and quite driven when he wants to be).

While Bateman is more openly aristocratic, Durden fairly quickly sets himself up as the undisputed King of Fight Club and clearly sets himself apart from the other men. I can’t find the video but there is a scene in the movie where the men dig ditches while Durden yells at them through a megaphone. He’s not in the ditch with them.

Durden presents himself as a hero of the common man… but he isn’t a common man himself. And the fact that he isn’t, makes him far more appealing. Because who wants to be the common man?

So.

They are the Elites of their Universes. All the women want them and the men want to be them. So of course many male viewers would admire them both and ignore their drawbacks. The political stuff is immaterial — at core they represent the same desires that many men have.

What’s the most ridiculous thing someone has claimed to be allergic to?

This is a prison story.

An inmate at a certain prison in the western US claimed that he was allergic to sodium. Now, this is ridiculous because, as my freshman chemistry teacher once pointed out, sodium is in everything.

Inmates with special diets (medical, dental, allergies, etc.) would go at the end of the line after everyone else had gotten their meal trays. Sodium guy would go last of all and put on a performance that was annoying and stupid but oddly comforting because of its predictability.

Prison staff mostly want things to go smoothly. Nobody was yanking this guy’s chain or trying to piss him off. At each meal they genuinely tried to come up with something he could eat. And at each meal, when his tray slid out the window, he would look at it and say (or scream), “I can’t eat this! It’s got sodium in it!” And he would slide it back into the window. This happened every time. Eventually he would eat something.

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image 212

Once I saw him drinking a half-pint of milk. Showing him the ingredient list, I pointed out that it had sodium in it.

“That’s OK,” he said. “The sugar counteracts the sodium.”

Right. Whatever.

Who was the most ignorant American you have ever met?

A previous boss.

I was required to issue a monthly report of sales by geographic region, listing each project.

One was a project in China sold to New Sun (China) Energy. I dutifully indicated the sale was in Asia.

My boss protested. “No!” said he. “You need to report that in Europe.”

I blinked and said, “But it’s in China.”

“Yes,” said he. “China’s in Europe.”

“Um…no.. China’s in Asia.”

He slammed his hand on his desk and said, “China’s a state of Germany, now report it in Europe.”

Me: “Ok” while silently muttering dumbass.

We had another dispute over Egypt. Apparently Egypt is also in Europe.

I had a grand time explaining to our lead sales person (a Chinese lady citizen of China) and our production manager (a German citizen) that Germany had expanded its population by a billion with this master stroke of geopolitical theater. They both rolled their eyes.

Yeah, boss was that dumb.

What made fighter jet dogfights obsolete after World War II? Was it because of radar or missiles or something else entirely?

They weren’t obsolete after WW2. They still occurred over Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, and Israel.

  • In Korea – There were no good air-to-air missiles yet, so jet aircraft had to close in to within gunnery range to shoot each other down. There were some pretty epic dogfights in Mig Alley, over the Yalu River.
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image 152
  • In Vietnam – Missiles were now available, and the “clever fellows up on high” declared the dogfight was dead because jets could now fly at Mach 2, too fast for dogfights. That meant the F-4 Phantom was fielded with 8 missiles…and no gun. Well, turns out the dogfight wasn’t actually dead yet, and while the missiles of the time were “adequate” for downing bombers flying straight and level, they were pretty lousy against maneuvering fighters. And the ROE (Rules Of Engagement) for Phantoms required a visual ID, eliminating the BVR capability of their Sparrow missiles. So, dogfights were in fact…not obsolete.
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image 14
  • In the Falklands 1982 – Dogfights still weren’t dead, and there were some pretty intense battles between British Sea Harriers and Argentinian Mirages/Daggers. But, we could see the beginning of the obsolescence of dogfighting because of the AIM-9L Sidewinder.

While still an Infrared Homing (Heatseeker) missile, the “Lima” Sidewinder no longer required getting on a opponent’s 6 o’clock so the heatseeker would home on a hot tailpipe. The Lima Sidewinder was all-aspect, meaning it could get a lock from any angle…even head-on, completely changing the nature of dogfighting.

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Even, now with missiles such as the AIM-9X, Meteor, R-77–1, and the AMRAAM, which do not require being within dogfighting range (WVR—Within Visual Range) to score kills, I am reticent to claim the dogfight is dead. I’ll say it no longer will be the bread and butter of aerial combat, but won’t go so far to say the dogfight is obsolete.

It still may happen. Let’s see what happens when Ukraine finally gets their F-16s, and make a decision then. I expect most kills will still occur at BVR, but we may still see genuine dogfights once more. And when both sides are operating stealth aircraft, who knows what we’ll see?

What is the most disrespectful thing someone did to you while you were on an airplane?

Disrespectful?? Weird absolutely. About 8 months ago flying from Portland Or to Amsterdam Ne.

Woman behind my seat has a infant 6–10 months old. Infant cries and cries and cries. I put in ear plugs. I doze off. About an hour later she taps me on the shoulder and hands me said infant. “I need to talk to my husband in first class, you watch her”. She hands me the baby and is gone about 3 hours. Eventually the cabin staff goes and finds her. She is angry because she is hauled back to her seat. I hand her her child and she is upset.

To this day I wonder why she would hand off a perfectly good infant to a total stranger and wander off.

Candy Cane Fudge

candy cane fudge
candy cane fudge

Yield: 24 pieces

Ingredients

  • 2 cups white chocolate chips or semisweet chocolate chips
  • 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
  • 3/4 cup crushed candy canes

Instructions

  1. Line an 8 inch square dish with parchment paper, making a sling to lift the fuge out when ready to cut.
  2. In a medium glass bowl, combine the chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk.
  3. Microwave on 50% heat in 30 second intervals until fully melted and combined. Be sure to stir well in between each interval.
  4. Transfer melted mixture into the prepared pan.
  5. Sprinkle on crushed candy canes and slightly press into the top.
  6. Refrigerate for at least 4 to 6 hours to set or freeze for 2 to 4 hours (allow to thaw for 30 minutes before cutting).

Attribution

Photo credit: ohsarahrose on Visualhunt

Deadline U S A 1952 (720p) Humphrey Bogart, Ethel Barrymore, Kim Hunter

Laughing at the big blob

I was living in Florida back after I left the Navy. I was living with a girl, who moved out, and abandoned, I ended up with some extra tickets to a Aerosmith / Journey rock fest. Yeah. She wasn’t there at the time.

She went back home to visit a guy. She thought that he was boyfriend material (I found out later). He wasn’t. Not even friend material. And she regretted turning down Florida to go sit waiting on this boy who didn’t know how to treat a hot chick.

Anyways…

So I went to the concert alone.

I spent the entire day there in Miami and enjoyed the concert as much as I could. Though, it wasn’t the same being alone.

Being alone pretty much sucks.

I found a hitchhiker. Took him to the concert. He made some friends there. And all four of us enjoyed the concert. They were younger than myself. But it was cool. I was the stable older guy. LOL.

Anyways, I ate a a sandwich on the way to the concert, and wouldn’t you know it… a big blob or mayonnaise plopped down right on my white tee shirt.

What a mess. It was about the size of a quarter.

But I noticed, and then got caught up in the traffic. I forgot about the glob.

I arrive at the concert. Got inside, and am jamming to the music, when I notice a few girls pointing at me, looking at me and laughing at me.

This happened again. Different girls.

Then a few minutes later… another group of different girls.

Hummm. What’s going on?

Anyways I had to pee, and went into the mens-room, and looked in the mirror. Sure as shit, it looked like I had a big blob of cum right above my groin. The sun had baked it into the exact appearance of days old cum. Oh Lordy!

Oh. My. God.

How embarrassing.

I cleaned myself up as best I could, but the glob made a heavy stain that REALLY looked like I ejaculated right then and there. Yellow-white on a bright blue-white tee shirt. Ugh!

I mean it.

It was the splittin’ image!

Sigh.

Anyways… Yeah… I met a couple of chicks from Cuba. Met some younger guys that I hung out with for a spell, and then went home late at night alone. Ah, my tale for the day.

The one persistent memory of the event was that glob of fake cum that all the chicks were joking about.

And… Sammy Hagar the “red rocker”.

And… getting hosed with water in the heat of the day…

And… the Journey songs at the end of the concert.

Now you know.

Today…

What was the most you’ve ever eaten in one sitting?

You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but when I was a teenager, I used to ride my bicycle several hundred miles per week.

Somewhere along the line, I read an article that said you could burn more fat by eating after you exercise than eating before. (Never mind that I was already at something like 12% body fat at the time.) I thought this sounded like a great idea, so I had a tiny breakfast, and set out for a 100-mile ride in the mountains.

All you experienced cyclists and marathoners know where this is headed. The bonk. The wall. I used up all the readily available fuel in my system, and started burning anything my body could find—fat, muscle, heck, brain cells for all I know. And I was still 40 miles from home.

10 miles from home, I couldn’t even stand up, let alone ride a bicycle. I called my sister from a pay phone to come get me. She was a long-distance cyclist herself, and knew what I was up against. There were two huge bagels with cream cheese waiting for me on the passenger seat when she arrived.

I walked into the house still eating, and headed for the kitchen, where I ate an entire bag of granola. Not a little one, either—one of those 3-pounders from Trader Joe’s. I was still starving, so I started in on a box of cereal. (Honeycombs, I think it was? The ones that hurt your mouth if you don’t soak them in milk for 10 minutes? I wasn’t bothering with the milk.)

While I was still shoving handfuls of painful cereal in my mouth, my parents arrived, and said they wanted to go out to eat at Souplantation. I scrambled for the car, box of cereal still in hand.

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image 128

For those of you not familiar with Souplantation, picture the biggest soup and salad bar you’ve ever seen in your life, and double it. Now double it again, and add a baked potato bar, a bakery, and a dessert area with a dozen kinds of cake, pie, and frozen yogurt.

One price . . . all you can eat.

I ate. I think I lost track of how much I was eating about the seventh time I went back to get more food. I ate as much as all of the rest of my family put together, and then some. And then I went back for dessert.

By that point, I finally started feeling normal again. Not stuffed . . . normal.

Holiday Glazed Pork Roast

holiday glazed pork roast 1
holiday glazed pork roast 1

Ingredients

  • 1 (4 pound) boneless pork loin roast
  • 2 teaspoons cornstarch
  • 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel
  • 2 tablespoons orange juice
  • 2 tablespoons dry sherry
  • 1 (14 ounce) can Ocean Spray® Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce
  • 1 large red onion, cut into 6 to 8 wedges or 12 small whole onions, peeled

Instructions

  1. Combine cornstarch, cinnamon, salt and orange peel in small saucepan. Stir in orange juice, sherry and cranberry sauce. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened. Set aside.
  2. Place roast in shallow roasting pan. Insert meat thermometer. Roast at 325 degrees F for 1 hour.
  3. Place onion wedges around pork. Spoon about 1/2 cup cranberry mixture over roast and onions. Continue to roast for 30 to 60 minutes or until meat thermometer registers 155 to 160 degrees F.
  4. Let stand for 5 to 10 minutes before slicing.
  5. Serve with remaining cranberry mixture.

Attribution

Recipe and photo used with permission from: Ocean Spray
Recipe from the National Pork Producers Council.

What is your most memorable cultural shock?

I had written this elsewhere but it was unfortunately collapsed due to an image policy violation. So, here it is again with the offending image removed.


It’s been 15 years now, but here’s what I remember finding shocking about moving to the United States:

  • The pervasive waste of food. I grew up in a culture where even in rich families, the memory of poverty isn’t that far off: either your parents grew up poor or their parents grew up poor. There’s a strong taboo against putting more on your plate than you can finish and throwing away the food you don’t want instead of saving it for the next meal. But this is what greeted me in high school… every single day.
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image 113
  • Acceptance of gays: people being openly gay… and it not being a thing, like not at all. Now, I know we have a long way to go on gay rights but the concept of gay rights doesn’t even exist where I grew up. Homosexuality isn’t viewed as a matter of sexual orientation so much as a matter of sexual deviancy. But here were people being gay and the sky wasn’t dropping. What a concept!
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image 112
  • How ignorant so many people were of life outside the US. Here, 2 things specifically come to mind:
    • I grew up in Africa. You wouldn’t believe how many times I was asked versions of:
      • “Hey Kunta, ever been hunting a lion?”
      • “Hey, Motumbo, do you guys sleep in trees?”
      • “Are you married? Cuz, in your culture, people get married at, like, 15, right?”
      • “You guys have TVs/cars/zoos/cell phones in Africa?”
    • People also didn’t seem to understand just how freaking huge Africa is.
      • Random guy: Oh, you’re from West Africa? This guy over there is from Tanzania.
      • Me: O….kay.
      • Random guy: Do you know him?
      • Me: …ummm
  • How intensive parenting is! Holy cow, people! How the hell do you guys do this? People have full time jobs and then another full-time job attending the litany of things they enroll their kids in: recitals, soccer games, hockey, baseball, summer camp, etc. The last thing any kid in my country wants is their parents showing up at a soccer game, loudly yelling words of encouragement. Oh no, the horror! Your friends will laugh at you for being a baby forever. The loss of prestige would be so immense, you’d never recover any shred of dignity. Parents might show up to big events like if you’re a national finalist in some competition. That’s about it. But here I saw parents everywhere, hovering like so many helicopters. It was mind-boggling!
  • Nerds. Where I grew up, the most respected kids in the school were those with the highest grades. Everybody’s GPA was public information and there was a high premium placed on being seen as one of the smart ones. That annoying kid sitting in front and answering all the questions? All the smart kids wanted to be that kid. The first few times someone poked fun at me for being a nerd, I answered something like “wait, you’re making fun of me because I’m smarter than you?” and proceeded to laugh in their face. Needless to say, I wasn’t very popular in high school.
  • Hugs. Mine was not a touchy-feely kind of culture. No “I love you” among family members. Hugs were reserved for when someone was going on or coming from a trip. Once, when I was 9, my mom was coming from a 3-month long trip and came to pick me up from school. I ran to give her a hug… friends made fun of me for months afterwards. Like, look at the little baby running to hug his mom when she picks him up from school. I tried to explain that I hadn’t seen her in 3 months, but they were having none of it. Here, it seemed like everybody wanted a hug. At first it was “what is wrong with this girl?” But after it kept happening, I realized that I was the odd one for not liking hugs. (I’m really cuddly now, having lived half my life here, but it was definitely an acquired taste).
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image 111
  • How forthcoming people were with personal matters. You’d meet strangers in the bus and have a conversation with them where they’d proceed to tell you their dad was dying from cancer, or that their parents were getting divorced. I still can’t get my mom to tell me exactly how my grandma died. People are really, really, really protective of that kind of info where I grew up.
  • How readily available information was! No need to go borrow the ONE family encyclopedia from 15 years ago. Get online and research any topic you want. I just about had a mental orgasm when I first discovered Wikipedia.
  • Puns are not funny to most people!!! Puns were, like, the epitome of cleverness. Sigh. Never going to win this one. Never going to stop thinking that I’m hilarious for telling people that:
    • Coffee is not my cup of tea.
    • Sometimes, I’m meaner than average.
  • Abortion rights!!! Again, a very strong taboo in my country. Not something most women there want to openly be associated with. Hell, people are still shy about talking about oral contraceptives!
  • Female equality. Women are equal people! What a concept! Again, things are not perfect here but it would come as a shock to most of the men I grew up with that their wives should enjoy the same rights/decision-making powers as themselves.

Anyway, I could go on, but that will have to do for now.

I Lived 2 Weeks In A Parallel Universe | 4 TRUE GLITCH IN THE MATRIX STORIES

Explore four more true and extraordinary accounts where ordinary lives intersect with alternate realities, offering us glimpses into parallel universes. These tales challenge our understanding of reality, inviting us to question what lies beyond the realm of the known.

What do you think about Russia?

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image 129

Meet Kirill Cherkalin. He’s an ordinary Federal Security Service (ex-KGB) colonel.

Police officers had found 12 billions rubles ($165 million) in cash in three apartments owned by Mr. Cherkalin.

Mr. Cherkalin calmly announced that he agrees to return to the Russian state 6 billion rubles, or about half, in return for keeping the other half for himself. He claims he has every right to take the rest, because it was acquired through honest work.

He said he “did not mind” if the investigators confiscate 6.5 million euros, 4,000 pounds, 793 million rubles, a Porsche Cayenne and, “all my Swiss watches and cufflinks too”.

But this is where Mr. Cherkalin wants to draw the line.

“$85 million in cash, the apartments, the private residences, the non-residential property, the land, and the jewelry belong to my ex-wife, my parents and other relatives.”

The investigators calculated the colonel and his whole family had earned 55 million rubles (less than $1 million) in the past fifteen years.

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image 130

Mr. Cherkalin had a special talent that distinguished him from the rest of his colleagues. He is soft spoken and intelligent. That’s what made him perfect for the job.

A group of Federal Security Service officers had insider information about banks with bad debts that were on the radar of the Central Bank. They sent Mr. Cherkalin in to explain to the bankers in the most polite terms that they would provide protection in exchange for a certain compensation. They received compensation, but the bank licenses were still revoked by the Central Bank.

In other instances, they “created problems” for the banks and then offered their protection services. If the bank didn’t pay up, they organized for their licenses to be revoked.

Have you actually ever heard someone say ‘Do you know who I am?’ indignantly?

It wasn’t the person themself..

Years ago, I worked as a receptionist in the showroom of a prestigious car dealership. I would greet customers, settle them comfortably in the seating area, then ask a member if the sales staff to attend to them.

One morning, a gentleman came in, and after exchanging pleasantries, he gave me his name, and explained that he had an appointment with a particular member of the sales staff. I invited him to take a seat, offered tea or coffee, then called the salesperson to advise them that he was waiting for them in reception.

Minutes later,vthe staff member all but ran over to my desk to ask where he was (I think he’d excused himself to use the facilities) and hissed at me “Don’t you know who he is?!!” I told her that he’d said his name was XYZ, and she stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

“YES! DOESN’T THAT MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU?” she sounded outraged when I told her that no; I understood he was an important customer (they all were) but his name wasn’t familiar to me

As he walked up behind her, she told me furiously that I SHOULD recognise his name: he was the star player for one of our city’s football teams. Looking her right in the eye, I told her “Oh… that explains it. I support the OTHER guys…” salesperson was mortified into silence!

The customer just about died laughing; told the salesperson that I’d been nothing but courteous and professional, and off they went to arrange delivery of his shiny new car. When they were done, he made a point of coming to thank me for the coffee, and say goodbye, shaking my hand, and wishing me well.

Nice guy: awful taste in football teams, though

What is the most ridiculous thing you had to deal with regarding an HOA?

A few days after I moved into a townhome in Flagstaff, I received a visit from my local HOA representative, who was an old and very severe looking woman. She provided me with a pamphlet detailing the rules I had to follow, and explained the trash and recycle pick up days/times.

For the most part, they were pretty simple, and easy to follow.

Except for the garden gnomes.

Every townhome needed to have a garden gnome somewhere near the entrance. The purpose of this was to keep up the whimsical spirit that the neighborhood wanted to convey to outsiders.

Unfortunately, I hate garden gnomes. I find them cheesy and annoying.

While the HOA representative offered to provide one to me, I declined her offer and decided to find one of my own that I could tolerate.

A few days later, I happened to be walking around Downtown Flagstaff, when I spotted this whole set of garden gnomes on a table. There were garden gnomes on motorcycles, garden gnomes staging a rock concert, garden gnomes going to the bathroom, among other weird garden gnome offerings.

Finally, I spotted a lawn ornament that perfectly conveyed my feelings for them.

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image 114

Upon seeing this, I just knew I had to have it, and bought it without a care for the price.

When I returned home, I immediately placed it in the little garden area by the entrance of the townhome. I was certain that the head of the HOA would hate it and ask me to remove it.

A few days later, I heard a knock on the door. It was the head of the HOA.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, she mentioned that she had seen the lawn ornament, and absolutely loved it! She thought it was a quirky and unique twist on the lawn gnomes, and gave me a batch of homemade butter cookies for my cheekiness.

This kickstarted a friendship that remains to this day.

MINDBLOWING NDE! Woman POISONED, Shown the Layers of REALITY!

The West is wrong about China’s economy says Irish Economist Philip Pilkington

Open a Western business newspaper and one would probably come away thinking that the Chinese economy is doing poorly, or perhaps even on the verge of collapse. While it is true that the country’s economy continues to suffer from structural problems, this perception is not just wrong but risks undermining the credibility of Anglophone publications and the capacity for our policymakers to make rational decisions.

Last week Chinese price data showed mild deflation, a data point out of which the Western financial press made hay. “China’s deflation worsens as economic pressures mount”, read the Financial Times headline. Bloombergran

with “China’s consumer price drop worsens, fuelling deflation fears”. The mild deflation that is taking place in China does indeed stem from structural problems in the economy — especially the fact that it is overly reliant on investment spending and insufficiently reliant on consumer spending. But, at a certain point, the negative press becomes outright misleading.

Two other data points were released last week which show the Chinese economy growing robustly. The first came

from the private sector Caixin Services Purchasing Managers Index survey, which showed stronger than expected growth in the very sector about which bearish commentators have raised concerns.

Interestingly, the private sector surveys of the Chinese services sector show it expanding quicker than the official

Chinese government studies which showed a mild contraction in November. Those who accuse the Chinese of inventing economic statistics would do well to explain why government surveys are more conservative than their private sector equivalents. Whatever way one looks at it, the Chinese services sector is now expanding.

Then there is Chinese export data, which showed exports expanding for the first time in seven months. Combined with the service sector data, this shows a broad-based expansion of the Chinese economy. Not a veritable economic boom, it must be stressed, but continuous growth that is consistent with the IMF’s own projections

. These show that Beijing will comfortably meet its 5% growth target this year — a projection China bears seem to ignore when they pass judgement on the economy.

There are rumours that China may have advanced in its capacity to produce semiconductors. A specialist hardware website notes how a recent Huawei laptop listing suggests that the Chinese have broken the 5 nanometer chip barrier. If the listing is correct, it suggests that China has advanced even further than the 7 nanometer processor found

in the new Huawei Mate 60 smartphone. The phone shocked Western analysts who thought that such technology was beyond the production capacity of the Chinese. It increasingly looks like the American-led chip sanctions are just pressuring China to produce the needed technology domestically, and thereby undermining the competitiveness of incumbent Western players.

The Chinese economy will not grow at the runaway rates it did in the 2000s and 2010s. No one expects this now that the average Chinese person has become wealthier. Indeed, the Chinese government’s own growth targets reflect this new reality. But at a certain point, the obsessive bearishness about China is discrediting. Last year at a conference, Fang Xinghai, vice-chair of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, stated: “I would advise international investors to find out what’s really going on in China and what’s the real intention of our government by themselves. Don’t read too much of the international media.” In response to this, UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher said

that he and his colleagues were not reading Western media on the issue.

How long can the financial papers continue to push their bearish China narrative without discrediting themselves? More importantly, who exactly do they think they are helping? Policymakers benefit from being well-informed, and businesspeople who actually engage with China will quickly turn to other news sources, as Kelleher alluded to last year. Critical stories on China may make Westerners who have recently soured on the country feel good. Yet they are nothing but a soporific, and the effects cannot last forever.

As Sun Is Killing Humans , Plane Must Avoid Daylight By Travelling Around The World

In World War II, there was an SS group so evil that even the Nazis and Hitler questioned what they did. What happened to them after the war?

You’re likely thinking of the notorious Dirlewanger Brigade, led by infamously sadistic necrophile, alcoholic and rapist Doktor Oskar Dirlewanger, which unit was filled with convicted criminals and other undesirables recruited from prisons and concentration camps.

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image 115

Dirlewanger himself had been in trouble for various odious crimes, including raping a 14 year old girl, prior to the war, but his disgrace was short-lived, and he was rehabilitated (and his doctorate, in political science, reinstated) for pragmatic reasons, it seems; his willingness to do things that most normal people would consider unthinkable a useful asset in the amoral environment of the SS.

His disgusting sexual proclivities and intense cruelty and sadism meant that the unit he led was given more or less free rein, to murder, torture, rape and burn. They started life guarding a concentration camp, and the cruelties inflicted on the prisoners by Dirlewanger and his criminal cronies were so evil as to almost defy belief.

Thereafter, they were moved on to Belarus where they took action against “gangs”, basically a euphemism for terrorising the population, with rape, torture and extortion aplenty. Dirlewanger and his brigade, a division at this point, was eventually shot to pieces by the Red Army during Operation Bagration, and then reformed to suppress the Warsaw Uprising, with more of the cruelty and sadism that had come to characterise the unit, and for which Dirlewanger was promoted and received the Knight’s Cross.

Oskar Dirlewanger himself survived the war, but not for long. He died in a prison camp in 1945; most likely he was beaten to death by the guards.

You may also be thinking of the Kaminski Brigade, led by Bronislav Kominski, pictured below, which was a unit of the Waffen SS formed from Soviet nationals who for whatever reason chose to collaborate with the Nazis.

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image 116

Similar to the antics of the Dirlewanger Brigade, the Kaminski Brigade was noteworthy for their evil practises behind the lines, and during Operation Bagration and the Warsaw Uprising. Rape and torture, as well as large scale murder of the civilian population, characterised these men, much to the disgust of the Army and even the SS, which recognised the unruly and ungovernable nature of the unit, dissolving it in 1944.

What is a problem that people who smoke weed every day face?

I can’t smoke on my balcony anymore, even though I live in a country where cannabis became legal from shore-to-shore on October 17, 2018. And the tobacco smokers in my apartment building in Peace River, Alberta, Canada, can’t smoke on their balconies either.

For a while, the landlady of my building turned a blind eye to tobacco and cannabis smokers in the building. From 2021 to the spring of 2023, we all smoked on our balconies until someone complained.

All the smokers received notices as summer began in 2023. We were warned not to smoke in common places including the balconies, or we faced immediate evictions. We all were expected to smoke or vaporize at least five metres away from the building.

At first I was angry, but I have since adapted. I also smoke less a bit less now, because that puff is a little harder to get at.

During the summers, when the skies never get dark, I smoke up in the hills behind the Catholic school near my apartment.

A little girl warned me not to up into the hills once because of the bears. The neighbourhood up in the hills behind the school is active with nature, as I discovered in the summer of 2023. I heard a bear several metres above me on an August day. He might’ve become irritated or attracted to the fruit-scented smoke of my flavoured pre-roll. Another time, a marten ran along the path in front of me. A creepy deer often followed me around the schoolyard after I had walked down the hill. The animals were cool, but the dirt biker in July was annoying. Still, he was easy enough to miss or evade.

In the winters when it starts getting dark after 4 p.m. in December, I have been going out for puffs on the pipe in the parking lot, taking care not to smoke less than five metres away from the building. The winters often freeze our patio doors shut anways, so the balconies aren’t easy to open up from January to March.

Below is a photo of the hilly area where I often smoke above Peace River in the north part of town taken in September 2022.

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image 127

4 Unexplained TIMESLIP AND TIME TRAVEL STORIES From The US & UK

Explore five more true and intriguing timeslip tales that challenge the boundaries of time. From Jacob Ward’s historical encounter with a centuries gone indigenous village, to Amanda Clark’s pastoral encounter with an ancestral homestead, Karen Sinclair’s eerie descent into a 17th-century stable, and Jeff Morgan’s nostalgic glimpse into his own childhood. Such extraordinary time slip accounts defy reality and invite us to ponder the mysteries of existence.

For those of you who keep a clean home, how do you do it? What tricks or techniques do you use?

My mother was a nurse. You know how busy a nurse could get? Really, really busy. But I had a clean home growing up and I maintain a clean and tidy home now, thanks to my mom’s rules:

  • You take something out to use, put it back where it belongs after you’re done using it. Right away. For example: get the scissors out of the drawer to use? Put them back in the drawer RIGHT AWAY after.
  • If something take under two minutes to do, do it RIGHT AWAY. Right away, not “in a bit”, not “later”. For example: after taking a shower, it takes just 1 minute to wipe down the shower glass door and walls, do it right away.
  • Always spend an extra minute looking back at what you just did. – This may sound silly, but it’s so true for me. For example, after doing the dishes and thinking I’m done, when I look back, I might notice a wet spot on the floor that need to wipe up; a bowl left out on the countertop that should be put away;…
  • If you spend 5 minutes cleaning up every day, you won’t have to spend 3 hours cleaning up at the end of the week.
  • Train your kids (and your husband/boyfriend) these rules.

I hope these rules could help you a little bit!

Will a warning shot scare a bear?

Not always. When I was a younger man, I used to guide on the rivers in Northern BC and the company required us to carry large-frame revolvers to protect our guests and ourselves. Predatory grizzlies in remote areas have one of three reactions when you fire a warning shot – they either run away, they stop in their tracks or they continue to come at you. Literally, it’s “Oh. Oh sh*t. Sh*t sh*tsh*tsh*t no no nononono….”

It’s the last scenario that usually ends by shooting the bear and having to take photos to accompany a report. These revolvers are ridiculously loud, but some bears simply don’t give a rat’s ass and continue to come at you. I’ve personally seen it happen more than once, and it’s absolutely terrifying – it’s like they’re on a death wish and they come at you with a locked-on stare, as if their heads were mounted on a gyroscopic frame. Not sure why it happens, but it does – if they’re deaf, how does one tell, right? 😉 . And you would not believe how fast these monsters can run, it’s mind-blowing that something that big can move that quick over rough terrain. No one can outrun a grizzly at full pace.

Other bears like black bears are more timid, but if they’re sick or starving, one can’t predict their behavior. Kodiaks are even bigger than grizzlies, but I’ve never been to the Kodiak Archipelago – I’ve never seen one in person. Can’t imagine they like head-pats from smelly fishermen.

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image 126
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image 125

What is it like to have a beautiful wife?

My wife is an insecure woman’s nightmare: IQ in the 130s, talented musician, funny, head-turningly beautiful.

We’re both in our 40s, at her work this year she’s had a guy literally fall down the stairs after seeing her. Multiple guys from the IT department come along if she needs something. It’s hysterical.

I get it easy. Comments from men about her being better looking than me, is about it really. I’ve had a guy come on to her whilst we’re at the bar together ordering a drink. Found it funny. I can pretend when we’re both dressed up and we walk into a restaurant and several people turn and look at us that I’m remotely anything to do with that. She doesn’t notice.

I was shocked when we first met (mid to late 30s) how women reacted around her. Passing her on the street she would be looked up and down with the most hateful, evil faces. She’s told me when she was younger on nights out women would put cigarettes out on her clothes or lie about her to start arguments in group situations.

She deals with a load of envious rubbish, which is a shame because she’s a naturally shy person. I just have to deal with people wondering if she’s married to me because I’m rich, hilarious or very well endowed. Let them wonder.

GHOST ARMY* Summoned to Fight- Lord of the Rings

What did someone do on an airplane that made you say “You’ve gotta be kidding me”?

I was on an airplane flying home from a work trip. I noticed a young lady sitting across the isle from me. I don’t remember exactly what it was that clued me into the fact that she was military but, I noticed it and commented, being a military brat, I am always happy to chat with our military personnel. Turned out she had just graduated from advanced schooling (or something like that, its been many years ago) and was heading home to visit her family before heading out to whatever was next. She mentioned that she had her dress blues in the bin above her because she was worried about checking the uniform. As the last of the plane was loading this fellow sees her clothing bag and goes to shove his carryon bag in on top of her uniform, crushing it. I quickly told the fellow to stop, that the bag he was crushing was her military dress blues, and that he needed to find another place for his bag. (To be clear, her bag was neatly folded up and only taking up the space of a single suitcase, the fellow just decided that it would be acceptable to crush someone else’s clothing rather than finding another place for his bag). He started to argue with me when the flight attendant (who must have overheard) approached and asked to see his ticket. His seat was in the back of the plane and we were up in the expanded economy section. The flight attendant calmly told the man he would need to take his luggage to the back of the plane and find a spot for it there since the bin was obviously full. (which it was). He grumbled but, carried on his way. The flight attendant carefully pulled the girls uniform bag out, refolded it correctly and neatly, put it back in the bin and closed the bin lid. The young lady told me, “Thank you for stopping him”. I simply replied I was happy to be of help for our military personnel.

When the flight landed and I was at baggage claim, a couple came up to me. It was her parents. Apparently the young lady had told them the story and they wanted to thank me. Again, I told them I was happy I had seen it and been able to stop it. Wished them all the best, grabbed my bag and headed on my way.

What is the number of tanks in China compared to other countries such as the USA, UK, and France? How many tanks does China produce annually?

Do you know the basic difference between China versus US, UK and France?

These group of nations regularly attack and invade nations at their will and certainly get drawn in on conflicts at any moment in time. So these despicable nation can and will need tanks in abundance apart from its own defence need.

China don’t. China only need it for defence and it has more than necessary. China have not been at war since 1979. Or 44 years ago! You ought to know this as it showed clearly China is not an aggressive or a war mongering nation like these despicable barbaric nations.

But since you ask, China can and will build anything including tanks on immediate notice and it can build more numbers than what these 2 nations put together. Hopefully it never have to as China prefers peace not war. Making tanks don’t make China rich, making cars do!

What’s the funniest court case you’ve seen?

I didn’t think it was all that funny, but my courtroom was in tears over this, they were so amused.

I found myself sitting as a judge pro tem in Los Angeles County’s night court, which is held once a month at various courthouses in LA County. I had a Spanish language interpreter for this one case, and the lady before me was crying and doing her best to control her tears. I could tell she was very, very upset. I gently asked her what was wrong. Through the interpreter, she said she was so scared and so nervous about what was going to happen in court. I told her not to worry, no one is going to jail tonight, so let me see what was going on.

I read through the county’s paperwork, but my copy was terrible and I could only see that it looked like she was cited for an expired dog license, it had turned into an arrest warrant, and the bail was enormous. Then there were penalties on top of the bail.

I said, “Ms. Doe, are you really here for an expired dog license?” The audiences laughed aloud, and she said, “Yes,” with tears streaming down her face. I was confused because I had never seen anything like this before. I must have really looked confused, because the people in the courtroom laughed harder when I tried to read my terrible copy of the paperwork, then looked up at her which led to more laughter.

I told the woman that I am confused by why the fine was so high. Then she said she didn’t know what the fine was, and I told her it appears to be $7,000, give or take. She began to cry again, and the audience laughed again. I reminded the audience that they were in a courtroom.

I told the woman that it looks like the citation was given in 2012, and she said she got the ticket in 2002. I asked, “You got this citation 15 years ago, and only now you decide to come to court?” The woman nodded tearfully, and said, “yes.” Again, laughter.

I asked her what happened to cause this citation, and she said she was out jogging and had Goofy with her. I said, “Who’s Goofy?” She said, “My little dog.” I asked what kind of dog is Goofy, and she said, “a chihuahua.”

I asked her to go on, and she stated, “I crossed the street, and there was a police car that I didn’t see, and the cop motioned for me to come back across the street back to him. So I ran back across the street to him, and the police officer said I jay walked and he was going to give me a ticket. I told him that that was crazy, because he is the one who called me to come back across the street. Then he said he wasn’t going to give me a ticket, and he was playing with Goofy. Then he said that Goofy’s tag was expired, so he wrote on a paper to get Goofy’s tag renewed. I didn’t think it was a real ticket, because I didn’t have to sign anything, and it didn’t look like any ticket I’ve seen before….” The audience again started chuckling.

“I see,” I said with a sigh. “And where is Goofy today?” Her eyes welled up with tears, and she said he just died. And I asked if I was correct in believing that she got a note to update Goofy’s license it didn’t look like a real ticket to her, so now, 15 years later she decided to come to court. She said, “Yes, because I got a letter saying there was a warrant out for my arrest and I had to come to court. I thought I was going to go to jail today for Goofy’s license.” This amused the audience to no end.

I kept thinking that this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in court. I said softly to myself, “What to do? What to do?” which brought laughter to the room again. I asked if she has other dogs at home, and asked if they have licenses. She said yes, and yes, of course.

I looked at this lady with tear-stained cheeks and said, “OK, here’s what I’m going to do.” Her eyes were welled up with tears, she sucked in her breath and looked like she was going to faint. The courtroom for once became very silent. “This ticket is over 15 years old, you were never properly noticed, as you never signed a promise to appear, and the legal file has nothing indicating you signed any such promise, but you did appear when you received notice by mail, 15 years later. In the interest of justice, I am recalling your arrest warrant, and dismissing this citation in its entirety and waiving all fines, fees and assessments. I need you to go to the cashier and get a document saying this is all cleared up. Do not leave without this. I don’t want to see you back here on this matter. The cashier may ask for a $25.00 administration fee, and I am ordering that fee waived. If the cashier disagrees, have them call me, and I’ll walk over there and straighten this out myself.”

The audience applauded, and this lady, for once actually smiled, and said, “Oh my God, thank you, thank you.”

Then of course I said, “This concludes this matter. Next, I have matter number…”

What is the most misunderstood foreign policy issue of our day?

North Korea.

The usual way of covering them in Western Media is as utterly irrational. This is in the long tradition of viewing East Asians as “inscrutable orientals.” But generally speaking, if you think a country’s foreign policy is entirely devoid of reason, it’s safe to assume that you’re not getting the full picture.

The picture we get is of Kim Jong Un as an overgrown baby.

2023 12 16 20 24
2023 12 16 20 24

Look! Doesn’t he look like a pudgy toddler? Look, he’s a fat and mean dictator who murders his own family members! Look, his people are starving!! Look, he’s testing yet another ballistic missile! Oh, no, that one was a flop! Hahahaha, isn’t that funny? He tried to flip this missile into the sea, near the Japanese coast, but instead, it was a flop!!!

This, to put it mildly, is not designed to inform; it’s designed to entertain and scare. And it’s succeeding. Very few people take the time to understand what kind of grand strategy lies behind their actions.

This is not to say that I myself can explain everything they do, but I’d like to submit to you a radical thought: the North Korean leadership is entirely rational. Here’s what you need to understand:

  • .
  • But, surely, they must know that we’re not REALLY going to invade them? They know no such thing. Dictatorships have this advantage over democracies: they have very long institutional memories. The Korean War is something most Americans don’t ever think about. Things are very different in North Korea. We tried to wipe them off the map, within living memory. We routinely invade countries we don’t like. Why wouldn’t they take us seriously when we threaten them?
  • They want nuclear weapons because it would prevent us from invading them. That’s it. They’re not going to nuke anyone first; that would mean nuclear annihilation for them. They want one thing: to survive. They know they can’t win a war against us; they’re not stupid. But they can make the cost of a potential invasion very, very costly by acquiring the capacity to nuke one of our cities.
  • There is nothing we can do about this. We have three bad options: diplomacy, sanctions, and war.
    • Diplomacy won’t work because there is nothing we can offer that will make them be willing to give up their nukes. They have seen what happens to people who make deals with the West in which they give up their quest for nuclear weapons. They know that both Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi would still be in power if they’d had nuclear weapons. It doesn’t matter what we offer; they’re not going to trust us. They will never willingly give up their nuclear weapons. It’s their biggest guarantee that we won’t topple their regime.
    • Sanctions won’t work because we’ve basically done everything we can do on our own. Their main economic lifeline is China, so China would have to agree to sanctions that bite. But China will only go so far in sanctioning them, because at the end of the day China prefers a nuclear North Korea to a collapsed one. We don’t care if they collapse. What is it to us? They’re far away and won’t affect us. But China very sensibly doesn’t want millions of refugees pouring into its borders. It also doesn’t want regime change, because that would mean replacing the Kim regime with something more friendly to the US. Why the hell would we expect China to help us replace a regime that is friendly to them with one that is friendly to us? That makes no sense whatsoever.
    • War won’t work because we don’t have the stomach for it. This is not a bad thing. We would win, but at what cost? Seoul is very close to the demilitarized border between North and South. North Korea has enough artillery to annihilate the city. They can also easily hit Japan. Potentially hundreds of thousands of civilians would die. We’re not going to invade them. If we show that much disregard for the lives of the civilian population of our allies, everyone will conclude that mutual defense agreements with us are meaningless. South Korea, Japan, and all our major allies would have renewed incentives to produce their own nukes. China would feel threatened by a nuclear Japan and South Korea and would have renewed incentive to ramp up its aggression in the region before these countries got nukes… it would not be pretty.

The reality is that North Korea has found the one thing that will allow their regime to survive: nuclear weapons. They’re very sensibly not going to give them up. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

I Woke Up In A Parallel Universe Without Covid-19 | 3 TRUE GLITCH IN THE MATRIX STORIES

Venture into the perplexing realm of parallel universes with three more true and gripping accounts. Meet Seth Boyle, who after a brief nap finds himself in a world where a global pandemic is unheard of; Phoebe Donovan, whose lucid dreams offer glimpses into similar yet distinct alternate lives; and Clarissa Stone, whose deep sleep propels her into a version of her home where she’s unrecognizably out of place. Such experiences challenge our notions of human existence, and leave us wondering if we are more than what we perceive ourselves to be.

What things do Americans do that people from other countries find extremely weird or strange?

There are so many things, I don’t know where to begin. I will briefly mention a few things that friends in East and Southeast Asia have said seem strange to them:

  • They think Americans are odd for constantly speaking words of love, as well as hugging and kissing family and friends so freely.
  • They do not understand why comments (that we Americans consider rude) about my appearance or weight are not appreciated or welcomed by me. Literally I have lost friends because I’ve tried explaining the differences in our cultures when some do this.
  • They are flummoxed as to why we tolerate an ineffectual government that switches parties every four to eight years. We don’t understand either. I assure you.
  • They don’t see why Americans are so arrogant or that they are unable to be promoted in their career path because they are humble and unassuming. Many don’t realize that the arrogance and self-promotion of one’s best qualities is why those people are given a raise or a more prestigious position.
  • More than one or two romantic dates for them is to be heading to the marriage altar. They don’t understand why I want to know a man very well before marriage. They think marriage should come first and then we can spend the rest of our lives getting to know one another. My anxiety could never!
  • They can’t comprehend why we don’t take off our shoes before entering our homes. They think it’s unsanitary to bring in germs from the outside world. They definitely have a good point.
  • Some think it strange that as a society we tend to place elderly family members in nursing facilities. Though this attitude is changing as large amounts of people are entering retirement years with not enough young family members to provide adequate care.
  • Depending on the country, they sometimes think it is odd for us to be driving cars so much. It’s a necessity for us unless living in huge cities like New York or Chicago.
  • They don’t understand why our desserts are so sweet. Or why we don’t season our food!
  • They do not understand why people in America own so many guns!

I could go on and on. Differences don’t have to divide us though. I think instead we should share each others cultural background so that we gain understanding. I certainly need it.

What was the moment you realized your significant other didn’t care about you at all anymore?

There were many signs that my husband didn’t care about me anymore—like after 15 years of making a big deal of Valentine’s Day, he didn’t even acknowledge it. Despite the fact that the whole family came out of their rooms to find cards, gifts and candy from me, and I had hand-sewn little red lacy heart ornaments to decorate our ficus tree. Even after that, he did nothing to honor me.

I discovered that he had been spending all our disposable income taking his co-workers to lunch while I was home clipping coupons for food, buying dented and expired cans and sewing all the kids’ clothes to save money.

He had nothing to say to me anymore despite our long history of lively debates and philosophical discussions and sharing of stories from our earlier lives.

But the moment I knew beyond doubt that he didn’t care about me anymore was the day we were both in the kitchen and I aspirated a mouthful of water. My airway was completely blocked. I frantically signaled to him that I was choking, that I needed help. He just stood there completely calm with his arms folded, watching me. I signaled the Heimlich maneuver but he didn’t lift a finger to help me. I was starting to get tunnel vision. So I doubled my fist, placed it over my diaphragm and fell against the edge of the counter, launching the water out of my throat and gasping for air.

I looked at him incredulously. “Why didn’t you help me?”

“What was I supposed to do?” This, from a guy who did Search and Rescue for the Navy.

“Couldn’t you see I was signaling the Heimlich?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t think that would work for water.”

“So you just chose to do NOTHING?” I admit I’m a bit slow on the uptake but I finally realized that he was hoping I’d die to save him the trouble and expense of a divorce and custody battle, not to mention alimony.

And then I remembered that his previous wife, who’d been an alcoholic, had died suddenly.

He found Giants then the Government Found Him | What really happened to Andrew Dawson?

What is the most “how could that even happen” thing you’ve heard of?

Meet Frane Selak, the world’s (un)luckiest man.

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image 123

In January 1965, Frane was aboard a train travelling through a cold, rainy canyon.

At one point of the journey the train was somehow flipped off of its tracks, and tumbled into a river.

A bystander rushed to the train’s aid, and pulled Frane out of the river. Unfortunately, 17 people drowned, trapped inside the train as it sank to the river’s bottom.

A narrow brush with death.


The next year, Frane was aboard the only plane ride he would ever take.

During the flight, the plane malfunctioned, and Frane was blown out of the aircraft.

He tumbled through the air— and landed safely in a haystack.

The plane crashed in a field, killing all 19 of its passengers.

Yet another close call.


It seemed that Frane had experienced his fair share of near-death experiences, but life still had quite a lot in store for Mr. Selak.

  • 1966- A bus Frane was aboard crashed into a river, killing four. Frane was able to swim to safety with only minor injuries.
  • 1970- While he was driving, Frane’s car suddenly caught on fire. He managed to escape just before the fuel tank exploded.
  • 1973- In yet another driving incident, the engine of Frane’s car was doused in scalding oil from a malfunctioning fuel pump, causing flames to shoot through the air vents. Other than singed hair, Frane was unharmed.
  • 1995- While on a trip in Zagreb, Croatia, Frane was struck by a bus. Luckily enough, he only sustained minor injuries.
  • 1996- As Frane was driving, he was forced to swerve into a guardrail to avoid an oncoming truck. The rail collapsed under the car’s weight, sending it plummeting into a gorge. However, Frane wasn’t wearing a seat belt, so he was flung out of his car—right onto a tree. He held on, and safely watched as his car tumbled down into the gorge.

While he’s lucky to have survived more than seven brushes with death, Frane Selak seemed plagued by misfortune.

That is, until 2003 rolled around.

Two days after his 73rd birthday, Frane purchased a lottery ticket—- and won. It wasn’t a small amount, either: Roughly $1.1 million USD.

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image 122

Perhaps even better than his lottery win?

He’s gone over twenty years without being placed in a life-threatening situation.

Frane Selak truly has beaten all odds.

Every time I try to ask out a girl, they tell me I’m too ugly and lower my smile off my face. Why?

You don’t realize how lucky you are. Any woman who would tell a guy that he’s too ugly to date, is a horrible person, shallow and unkind. You are SO lucky not to be dating her.

Here’s the real problem: Dating is a horrible system for meeting people of the opposite sex. If you walk up to a stranger and ask her out, you don’t know her and she doesn’t know you. Therefore the transaction is based entirely on physical appearance. She judges you, not on whether she might like you, but rather on whether she will look good with you. She’s too dumb to know that when a pretty girl is with a less attractive guy, people assume he’s got amazing money, a real provider, and SHE got him.

You’re not interested in dating for show. So don’t walk up and ask out strangers.

Instead, get involved in ongoing community projects — cleanup, building, feeding the homeless, hospice service — things that really help people who really need it. You work hard at it, do it well, and are polite and kind to everyone. If a woman of merit working on the same project sees your merit, she will be drawn to you for genuine values that you share.

Even if she’s married or not into guys or is too much older than you, she still values you enough to talk about you to her friends or kin who value the same things. And you’ll allow yourself to be set up on dates by a woman who likes and admires you for your character.

Public service is far better for meeting women who aren’t looking for arm candy. than cold-call asking them out. I’ve never seen a good marriage that resulted from attractiveness dating, but I’ve seen several happy marriages arise from working together on various projects of worth. None of these people devoted much attention to looking or acting cool. But they did put in a lot of effort on being kind to others — even to less-attractive guys. And after many years together, they both had the beauty that comes from caring about other people.

What are some unwritten social rules everyone should know?

  1. Sometimes the best time to call others is text them.
  2. If someone says “wow, that’s crazy” 3 times, it’s probably time to wrap up your story.
  3. Don’t abandon your friend at a party where they hardly know anyone.
  4. Don’t fake that you’re interested in someone. Faux interest is worse than none.
  5. If you’re borrowing something for a third time, you need one of your own.
  6. Don’t mess up an apology with an excuse. “I’m sorry but…” only taints the sincerity of the apology you were attempting to give.
  7. Sending the right rejection texts is a much better option than ghosting when online dating.
  8. Don’t make plans in front of people you are not inviting.
  9. When someone tells you a secret, take it with you to your grave, even if you wake up as enemies the next morning.
  10. Respect different shades of opinions. Remember what’s 6 to you will appear 9 to someone facing you.

How do you bounce back when life gets hard after you lose everything in your life?

Jackson Hinkle, an American political commentator, was banned on YouTube on 12 October, he believes, for saying certain things about the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

I looked him up. He’s just 21, spent 3 years of his life building his 300,000 YouTube follower base and a livelihood instead of doing a degree, wow, but it all just went, boom, because of some decision by some committee or algorithm at Google.

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YouTube didn’t give him a reason.

So he pivoted his focus to X.

Within SIX DAYS his number of followers there rocketed from 500,000 to 1,000,000, a rate of almost 80,000 per day, and he’s probably far from done yet!

Whether Hinkle should have been banned or not is not the point. The point is this, if you ever lose your job, don’t get that job offer, don’t win that contract, or any door just closes on you IF YOU STAY POSITIVE AND KEEP AT IT you’ll more often than not end up getting something way better, and this is just one of many examples I’ve seen.

How do you bounce back? By reminding yourself that there are far more doors than the one you’re trying get through.

Voyager Receives a Message from Pre-Warp Society

Star Trek Voyager Season 6 Episode 12 Blink of an Eye.

What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?

Field Service Engineering.

Small outfit. Manager hired an accountant.

Accountant treated the 5 or 6 of us engineers like we were all theiving fucks and she was going bust us. (best group of guys I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. I’d trust any of them with my life. Never met a better group of dudes).

Fine. The corporate credit card and accompanying expense and travel software we used at the time underwent a change of ownership and became super jank. Never worked. Like EVER. She cranked up the strictness on policies and whatnot, and made my boss the approver for ANY purchases made. Now, the thing is, at this company our per diem for food and drinks was handled with that card, and it being a small team and close knit group of guys we had an understanding that there was a dollar limit that we should try to keep it under. It was a generous amount, and let’s say you were frugal for the week and on Friday you and the boys went out for a nice dinner, nobody cares if you went over that amount. Just you know, be cool.

With the new accountant taking the reigns we suddenly had to have EVERY transaction approved, with receipts uploaded, on an app that literally wouldn’t work on the weekends, and most days of the week, and would almost never save a receipt the first time. With 6 guys on the road trying to buy breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, hygiene, laundry, plus any parts tools supplies etc for work, plus fuel and airline tickets and hotels and on and on and on.

Within days we were effectively shutdown. Unactionable while my boss sifts through hundreds and hundreds of transactions that he wasn’t even aware would be oiling up in his junk folder, and the kicker was- there hundreds that just couldn’t be approved because the engineer had expensed it, uploaded the receipt, and the app promptly deleted the photo and called it a day. When I left I still had like 300 plus transactions sitting in “upload receipt limbo.”

All the sudden it was back to the honor system again.

What do poor people in the United States of America eat?

10 years ago, I was living on a meager $600/month.

I lived in a rooming house where my rent was $250. That left me $350 for living expenses.

What did I eat?

  • Not much fast food, interestingly enough.
  • Lots of ramen noodles. Very filling, very cheap.
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image 119
  • Rice-a-Roni. Easy to make. Quick. Relatively filling.
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image 118
  • Chicken leg quarters bought from Save-A-Lot. I would cut those in half and have either 1 thigh or 1 drumstick per meal.
  • Lots of canned tuna.
  • Hard-boiled eggs.
  • Peanut butter.
  • Beans. Black beans, red beans, pinto beans, all beans. I ate so many beans I’m surprised there are any left on the planet.
  • white rice.
  • Yogurt.
  • Frozen mixed vegetables. Fresh vegetables? Forget it! Too expensive.
  • I lived next to a Domino’s Pizza. So, there would be some of that.
  • Raisin bran cereal and whatever cheapest yogurt I could find.

My most standard meals would be:

  • ramen noodles plus one chicken drumstick plus one hard-boiled egg.
  • hard-boiled egg, mayo, and tuna sandwich.
  • Occasionally, I would cook my chicken in an African peanut sauce and eat it with white rice (another of my staples).
  • Fried plantains. This is still one of my favorite things to eat.
image 120
image 120
  • yogurt with raisin bran and red grapes.
  • Rice-a-Roni pasta with one chicken thigh. Aah, good times.
  • When I felt like splurging, I would buy a chicken shawarma sandwich. But I would agonize over the decision: a whole $5 spent on only 1 meal… at this rate, I’d spent a whole $300 on food for the month, an unimaginably large sum.

My dream in life used to be to earn enough to go buy a chicken shawarma sandwich whenever I felt like it without having to worry about whether I could afford it or not.

Now I’m literally living the dream.

I’ve come a long, long way.

Have you ever tried to get what you want by threatening to quit your job and then have it backfire on you?

My boss did. She was a little El Salvadoran spitfire who’d had servants before moving to America, and apparently thought her employees should fill that role as well. She made everyone’s life miserable, but especially mine. I was the IT manager, and since she had no idea what our remote system could do, she kept asking for things it couldn’t and would raise holy hell when informed of that fact. She also seemed to dislike men in general and was much harder on us penis-bearers than her employees of the female persuasion.

Nobody in administration could stand her, but she was cagey enough not to commit any fireable offenses. This went on to the point that I was actively looking for another job, but IT jobs were scarce in the remote area where I lived. Her office was across the hall from mine, and one morning my data entry person and I were talking when we heard a loud commotion coming from her office, with screaming and loud invective hurled in Spanish. We waited for things to calm down, and then went across the hall to see what was going on.

Turns out she had thrown one of her patented fits in the Administrator’s office. I never learned exactly what it was, but she was denied something she wanted and blurted out that she quit. The administrator quickly seized on that statement (there were witnesses) and asked her to give him her resignation ASAP. She tried to backpedal, but no dice. Hence the screaming, etc. I don’t usually wish people ill, but that night my assistant and I celebrated at a local bar. And life immediately got much better.

5 Unexplained TIME SLIP AND TIME TRAVEL STORIES From The US & UK

Dive into a collection of five more true and fascinating time slip accounts, each offering a glimpse into the past within the present. Experience Michael’s mysterious encounter with the revival of an old school, Sarah’s disorienting drive through Christchurch, Debbie and her uncle’s encounter with a Victorian era Preston, Callum’s discovery of a remote Scottish festival, and Stephanie’s brief journey to an earlier era on a Hillside Road. These narratives blend history and reality, challenging our understanding of time, while inviting us to contemplate its mysteries.

China slams U.S. statement for attempting to endorse Philippines’ infringement of Chinese sovereignty

image 117
image 117

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson on Wednesday said China firmly rejects the statement issued by the U.S. State Department to groundlessly attack China’s fully justified law enforcement activities at Ren’ai Jiao and Huangyan Dao, calling it an attempt to endorse the Philippines’ infringement of Chinese sovereignty and provocation.

Spokesperson Mao Ning made the remarks when asked to comment on the statement released by the U.S. State Department on Dec. 10, in which the U.S. side threatened once again that the U.S. Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty extended to the South China Sea.

Huangyan Dao has always been part of China’s territory and China has indisputable sovereignty over Huangyan Dao and its adjacent waters, Mao said at a daily news briefing.

Mao said on Dec. 9, three official vessels of the Philippines, without permission from the Chinese side, intruded into adjacent waters of Huangyan Dao. China Coast Guard took necessary measures in accordance with the law, which were professional, restrained, lawful and legitimate.

The U.S. State Department, in disregard of the facts, issued a statement to groundlessly attack China’s fully justified law enforcement activities to safeguard our rights at Ren’ai Jiao and Huangyan Dao, she said.

“The statement is an attempt to endorse the Philippines’ infringement of Chinese sovereignty and provocation. We firmly reject it,” Mao added.

Mao said for some time, out of selfish geopolitical interests, the United States has incited, supported and assisted in the Philippines’ infringement and provocation at sea, and repeatedly made threats by citing the U.S. Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.

Such moves blatantly embolden the Philippines’ violation of China’s sovereignty, seriously violate the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and gravely jeopardize regional peace and stability. China has made clear that the so-called arbitral award on the South China Sea is illegal, null and void, and has no binding effect whatsoever, Mao said.

“The United States itself would not implement the judgement of the International Court of Justice and international arbitral awards. In what position is the United States to tell China that it should implement an illegal arbitral award?” said Mao.

The United States needs to know that no threat, coercion or unfounded attack and accusation will lead anywhere or shake China’s firm resolve and will in safeguarding its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, Mao said.

“China will continue to resolutely uphold its legitimate sovereignty and rights and interests in accordance with domestic and international law. The U.S.’s attempts will not succeed,” she added.

Caramel Walnut Glazed Spiral Ham

A delicious twist to a traditional holiday dish, this succulent caramel-glazed ham is sure to become a family favorite. Hints of ginger, crunchy walnuts and aromatic apple make this recipe a magnificent centerpiece for Christmas or Easter dinner.

caramel walnut glazed spiral ham
caramel walnut glazed spiral ham

Cook: 2 hr 40 min | Total: 3 hr 25 min | Servings: 30

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup toasted California walnut pieces
  • 10 pound spiral ham
  • 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup mulled apple cider
  • 1/3 cup crushed ginger snaps

Instructions

  1. Toasting Walnuts: In large, dry skillet over medium-high heat, toast walnuts, stirring occasionally, until lightly brown, about 1 to 2 minutes.
  2. Cook spiral ham as per instructions found on the label (or for 13 to 15 minutes per pound in a 375 degrees F).
  3. Ten minutes prior to serving ham, place a sauce pan over high heat and combine brown sugar and apple cider. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer until it forms into a thick syrup, about 6 to 8 minutes.
  4. Remove from heat and add ginger snaps and walnuts to syrup.
  5. Remove ham from oven and place on platter; pour syrup over ham, slice and serve.

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

I had a break in at my apartment. Someone was knocking on my door. I had one of those chain link locks and when I cracked my door open to see who was there. The person on the other end kicked the door open breaking the lock.

I then had my face beat to a pulp by the intruder. Both my eye orbits were fractured, my nose broken, my teeth were bleeding. He started choking me and I lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness I was holding the shattered remains of a desk lamp in my hands. Edit: I should mention that durring the time I blacked out I managed to move from my kitchen, where my front door was, into a roomates room and I was backed against the wall in his room. This means I traversed about 30 feet of my apartment and managed to get ahold of a lamp, ripping the cord from the wall.

My attacker was standing in the middle of the room holding the skin of what had once been the left side of his face and his left ear against his head trying not to bleed out. His skull was clearly visible, blood was spurting out of a crack in it, it was spraying over my celing. I didnt realize it but the crack that was spurting blood was his brain, which was now exposed to the air. I told him I would kill him if he didnt leave. He left.

It was winter and it had been snowing. The police followed the blood trail and footsteps. I shit you not he was found in a cemetary, passed out from blood loss. He was put in a medically induced coma and had multiple blood transfusions over the course of two days before he was able to be charged. Edit 2: After being treated by EMS I had to go to the police station to give statements. I also had to get blood work which included an STD test. I had gotten his blood in my eyes and mouth and this was to make sure I didnt contract any blood born diseases.

I dont know what he was convicted of but he was sentenced to two years. Fortunately my testimony wasn’t necessary in court. I guess the evidence was beyond debate. He may have beaten the shit out of me, but I almost killed him. I was told that if it weren’t for modern medicine he would have died. And It turns out having your brain exposed to air from blunt force trauma basically guarantees permament brain damage.

Edit 3: As of my making these edits this answer has gotten 4,200 views. I was not expecting that. There is alot of information I am leaving out of this story for my own privacy, the privacy of others involved, my personal safety and also because its just way to much to tell.

What are your most controversial or unpopular opinions?

I judge the book by its cover
Not the whole book, but not a small part of it.
Literally speaking, the book cover plays a very important part in my decision if I want to buy it or not. Of course, I don’t judge the whole quality of the book without reading it, but a good cover weighs heavily in.


I find one of the most important skills that needs to be trained early in life and to have is the skill to judge things/ situations quickly and accurately.

For example, in this situation: my daughter was home alone, and a homeless person showed up at my door and asked her to come inside my house and asked her for something to eat. What would I want my daughter to do? I would want her to judge immediately. It’s not about the person in front of her, it’s about the situation. She was home alone, therefore, no strangers could get into the house. Simple as that.

Another example: How to pick friends. I tell my daughter to look at that person’s grade. You are a student, your main job is to study, grade is the result of that. I’m not telling her that just pick straight-A students to be friends with, but look at how they try to improve their grades and their attitude toward studying. If the student with bad grades just shows up at school and doesn’t do anything to improve it, you might want to consider before making friends. Not everyone can be a top students, but everyone can be a hard-working one.

Or like when you are on your first date, look at how they dress up to see you. They don’t have to wear fancy clothes or expensive accessories. But if they wear wrinkled, dirty clothes with bad hygiene, show no interest in trying to look good to see you, I think you should consider seriously before getting into a serious relationship.

So, yeah, I find it’s very important to judge the book by its cover – but remember to judge it with the accurate aspects.

What’s something a flight attendant did to you that you will never forget?

After years of flying there are many memorable stories. These are two.

I was traveling on then Continental Airlines. The flight attendants were coming through the cabin to hand out drinks. I asked a very attractive flight attendant for an extra bottle of water. She said she would, but only if I told her she was pretty. I said she was pretty and she handed me two bottles of water.

After a moment, she told the flight attendant on the other end of the cart that I said she was pretty. I interrupted and said, “No, I didn’t. I said you were gorgeous”. The very beautiful woman responded by lipping back, “I love you”.

Years later, also on a Continental branded flight, but really another airline operating under the name. It was a commuter jet. I was seated next to a gentleman and both of us had broad shoulders. I am shoulder to shoulder with me, meaning my left shoulder is blocking a good portion of this little plane. It as a 1–2 seat configuration, if I recall correctly.

The flight attendant was a younger lady, still having fun in her job. We had started bantering around with her. And giving her a little grief. Nothing horrible, just friendly teasing. At one point, she decided she was going to turn the tables on us.

She grabs the PA mic and tells the plane that “Little Tommy and Jimmy would be by to collect the items from the plane”. At which point, I and the guy next to me got up and started collecting trash from the other passengers. It was completely funny.

That fight attendant should have flown for Southwest Airlines.

What is something that people were better at 100 years ago?

Because I am 71, I knew people who were in their prime of life a hundred years ago (1918) and there were definitely things that they did easily and routinely that are rarely done today:

  • Baking bread and caramel rolls. My grandmother learned it from her mother but did not pass it on to her daughters, probably because sliced store bread had essentially taken over.
  • Writing cursive and writing letters. I have saved some of my grandfather’s letters. For a person with an eighth grade education, he wrote simply but beautifully.
  • Sewing and mending. My grandmother was not wealthy, but she was capable of producing wonderful pajamas for all of her grandchildren on her trusty Singer. My generation has lost the ability to create heirlooms.
  • Gardening and canning the things they grew. In an era when you were not going to see fresh fruit or vegetables in stores after growing season, people developed great preservation skills. Things like pickles, berries, tomatoes were canned as were peaches and plums when in season. I do not remember kale or zucchini, however, and that was also a blessing.
  • Memory work. I grew up with great uncles and aunts (all born about 1900) who had memorized massive amounts of poetry and famous speeches as well as scripture. Rote learning was fairly normal in their education, so they did group memorization. We loved to hear their recitations.

I miss those folks. They just slipped away one at a time between the seventies and today.

What would happen if someone ever robbed a drug dealer?

Working a refinery job in the 80s in Washington state a couple of guy’s from the job went into a bar one night and started asking around about where to buy some weed. A guy was there and they came to terms and went to the guy’s house. His wife was a dispathcer for the sherriffs office, she was at work at the time. The two guy’s ended up tying the guy to a chair planning on ripping they guy off, one was a real party animal and somewhere found a double barrel and blew the guy’s brains out. I went in to work and the superintendent asks me if I know where such and such is, I told him no I didn’t know he was on the job haven’t seen him. He said aren’t you roomin with him. I said no, Mad Max and I are bunked at the motel. He said the cops were looking for him and the other guy. I asked if they said why and he said they did. Homicide. The one guy lived on the other side of the cascade mountain range in a small town outside of Hanford nuclear reservation. They found him hiding underneath his trailer three days later. The other guy they found after a week. So for a couple of pounds of weed and a few hundred bucks, the one guy who they found after a few days got nine years, the other trigger dude got 40 years to life.

Have you ever kicked a customer out of a restaurant?

Yes, and I didn’t even work there.

Dennys, late night. Two drunk guys getting loud and rude with the waitress. One smacks her on the backside. Manager asks them to leave and they refuse, asking what’s he going to do? Start intentionally spilling water, making a mess.

My 3 friends and I get up and block them into their booth. “Pay your bill. You’re leaving.”

Before “Or what?” Was even out of one guy’s mouth, my buddy slapped him hard on his ear. Sobered him up pretty quick.

“Pay. Your. Bill.”

Grumbles as they start pooling cash. Once the money was on the table, “Get out.”

We followed them to the door where one turned to square off, but realized his buddy took off running. The panic in his eyes was a delicious dessert.

As an employee, if I find my manager is going to terminate me tomorrow, how should I handle or behave in the meeting?

A recruiter called for my boss. He was out so I asked if I could help. The recruiter told me he had some great candidates, and since the incumbent’s (me) last day would be that Friday, he wanted to get some people in front of him. When my boss returned to the office I relayed the message exactly as it was told to me, and asked him if they were planning on letting me go. He said no, they were looking for a counterpart for me since they had expansion plans. He was obviously not being truthful and just like that, I knew when my last day would be.

That evening I took home the few personal things I had at work, and made sure I didn’t have any company property in my possession. At the end of the day Friday, I was asked to see the owner’s son in his office. I knew I was being fired. It was a very short conversation. He said they were letting me go. I asked if they would contest my unemployment and he said yes. I said okay, got up, got my car and drove home.

The timing was horrible…if there’s ever a good time. It was February and every day was grey and below freezing. I couldn’t afford the $1200 a month for cobra, so I went without health insurance. I came down with shingles on my face and scalp. It looked like someone threw hot grease in my face. As promised they contested my unemployment.

While I was employed there I faced harassment (I’m unable to talk about the circumstances or the settlement) including very specific verbal comments, jokes, and various notes. I kept their notes to me. I believe that because of the hand written notes we were able to settle without a jury trial in 1 day. In retrospect I wasn’t hurt that I was fired. I was hurt that they knew what I was when they hired me and still did everything in their power to make it a negative and diminish me as a human being.

I eventually started collecting unemployment, put my settlement money in the bank, and found a job with a sincere, no surprises group of people.

To finally answer your question, don’t sign anything. Don’t say anything. Leave quietly. Go home and regroup and think about what you would like to happen, and what you like for yourself in the future. They’ll be a time and a place and possibly even an attorney’s office that you can square up in down the road.

Have you ever bought something at a garage sale that turned out to be unexpectedly awesome?

Once. Years ago my new husband and I wanted to buy an old trunk to use as a coffee table. So, we went to a local auction and bid on an old trunk. The auctioneer said they had pulled it from the attic of a deceased, old woman’s house. The auctioneer said they hadn’t opened it and had no idea what was inside. We didn’t really care what was inside, we wanted the trunk. We bought it for $20.00.

When we got home we opened it and found a lot of old newspaper shreds and some ribbons. But, included in there was an Irish linen tablecloth and 12 matching huge napkins. On our way home from work one day, I made my husband stop at the local fabric store. I went in and asked what Irish linen was selling for. They told me it was selling for about $15.00 a yard. lI thanked them and went home, pulled out the table cloth and measured it. It turned out the tablecloth alone was worth over $100.00. The 12 napkins combined added to the value.

I kept the table cloth and used it whenever I had a formal/fancy dinner – usually only Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. I am now 75 yeas old and have used this “find” every year since I was 35. It still is beautiful and I still have all 12 napkins.

Noir Thriller Mystery Movie – Shock – Vincent Price

Full movie. Enjoy.

The wasteful television

You know what?

I don’t have a television, In fact, I haven’t had one since around 2004.

It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s just that I am not interested in one. I occasionally watch movies, but those that I do watch are downloaded torrents, and I watch them either on the laptop of on one of the (too many) pads that we have lying around the house.

Sure, there are television shows in China, and I could watch them, but they are all kind of silly and are of no interest to me. Shrug.

Were I to purchase one, it would be a big waste. Just running all day as “background noise”. With perhaps a video or kids show every other day. Ah. We have different priorities.

Sometimes I wonder if I am an outlier. Or is this just the way that society has changed? I don’t know. I really do not know.

Maybe it was me that changed.

Or perhaps… just perhaps… I am no longer addicted to that propaganda box. And once away from that “drug” I find that I no longer need it.

Ah. I “cut the cord”… so to speak.

Today…

Why are sanctions on Russia so weak that Russia is constantly laughing at those sanctions?

The sanctions are actually quite deadly, if it was some other country.

The US used SWIFT as weapon on Syria, Iran, and Russia in recent years.

Banning someone from SWIFT should be the strategical threat, like nuclear weapon. However, the US probably really doesn’t have any more conventional method to force the “enemy states”.

When the atomic bomb got dropped, the world suddenly realized that it’s not that devastating.

With enough countries being considered as “enemy”, they are now able to form their own environment. It means that they are able to establish an internal circulation, so that the sanctions from the western group became virtually invalid.

Iran now is able to sell its oil to China or with currencies other than USD. This does not only lowered the usage of USD in international tradings, but also partially took the right to price the oil. Petrol dollar is the foundation, at least one of the supporting pillars, of nowadays US economic hegemony.

It’s the same for the Entity List of US government. When there were only a few companies and organzations on it, they were technically isolated from the world, and it was devastating.

However, with enough companies being sanctioned, they are able to support each other. US government sanctioned Huawei, so that TSMC cannot make chips for Huawei. However, conveniently, the US sanctioned SMIC too, which is a Chinese chip maker in Shanghai. Now SMIC is able to hold hands with Huawei with no hesitation.

It used to work because after the collapse of USSR, there was only 1 world leader. It was either the US way or the highway.

Then the US pushed Russia into the corner and hoped Russia to kneel before it. This reached a peak when the US successfully launched a color revolution to overthrow the pro-Russia authority. What the White House didn’t expect is Putin putting his pride aside and holding hands with China.

Russia has sources, China has manufacturing, and both countries are vast.

They are forced by the US to became the leader of the “evil world”, and started to provide sanctuary for countries which have nowhere to go.


Logic of the US: You are my enemy if you are not my friend.

Logic of China: We may not be friends, the least we could do is to coexist in peace.


The US on one hand doesn’t want China to be in its group, because China is not Japan or South Korea, it doesn’t just do whatever the US wanted; on the other hand, the US doesn’t want China to be in other groups, including forming its own, because that will weaken the control power of the US group over the world.

You cannot have everything.

It might be the case in the 90’s because the US was the only super power.

But time has changed.


Maybe one day Russia would turn against China, but that would for sure be after the decline of the US.

The Tiny Cell called “Little Ease” was the Most Feared Room in the Tower of London

little ease
little ease

The story of Little Ease begins with a prison break from the Tower of London.

In 1534, a man and woman hurried past a row of cottages on the outer grounds of the Tower. They had almost reached the gateway to Tower Hill and, not far beyond it, the city of London, when a group of yeomen warders on night watch appeared in their path.

In response, the young couple turned toward each other, in what seemed a lover’s embrace. But something about the man caught the attention of a yeoman warder. He held his lantern higher and within seconds recognized the pair. The man was a colleague, fellow yeoman warder, John Bawd, and the woman was Alice Tankerville, a condemned thief, and prisoner.

So ended the Tower’s first known escape attempt by a woman. But Alice’s accomplice and admirer, the guard John Bawd, was destined to enter the Tower record books too: he is the first known occupant of a peculiarly infamous cell used during the reigns of the Tudors and early Stuarts.

The windowless cell measured 4 square feet (1.2 meters) and bore the faintly prim name of Little Ease. Its effect was simple. The prisoner within it could not stand nor sit nor lie down but was forced to crouch over, in increasing agony, until freed from the suffocating, dark space.

In 1215 England outlawed these kinds of grim practices through the passage of Magna Carta, except, however, by royal warrant. The first king to authorize it, and he did so reluctantly, was Edward II. He submitted to intense pressure from the Pope to follow the lead of the king of France and demolish the Order of the Knights Templar, part of a tradition begun during the Crusades.

King Philip IV of France, jealous of the Templars’ wealth and power, had charged them with heresy, obscene rituals, idolatry, and other offenses. The French knights denied all, and were duly tortured. Some who broke down and “confessed” were released;  all who denied wrongdoing were burned at the stake.

Once Edward II ordered imprisonment of members of the English chapter, French monks arrived in London bearing their dreaded instruments. In 1311 the Knights Templar “were questioned and examined in the presence of notaries while suffering under the torments of the rack” within the Tower of London as well as the prisons of Aldgate, Ludgate, Newgate, and Bishopsgate, according to The History of the Knights Templar, the Temple Church, and the Temple, by Charles G. Addison. And so the Tower—principally a royal residence, military stronghold, armory, and menagerie up until that time—was baptized in pain.

Did the instruments remain after the Knights Templars were crushed, to be used on other prisoners? We cannot be certain, although there is no record of it. The next mention of a rack within the Tower is a startling one—an unsavory nobleman made Constable of the Tower pushed for one to be installed. John Holland, third duke of Exeter, arranged for a rack to be brought into the Tower. It is not known if men were stretched upon it or if it was merely used to frighten. In any case, this rack is known to history as the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter.

It was in the 16th century that prisoners were unquestionably tortured in the Tower of London. The royal family rarely used the fortress on the Thames as a residence; more and more, its stone buildings contained prisoners.

And while the Tudor monarchs seem glittering successes to us now, in their own time they were beset by insecurities: rebellions, conspiracies and other threats both domestic and foreign. There was a willingness at the top of the government to override the law to obtain certain ends. This created a perfect storm for torture.

“It was during the time of the Tudors that the use of torture reached its height,” wrote historian L.A. Parry in his 1933 book The History of Torture in England. “Under Henry VIII it was frequently employed; it was only used in a small number of cases in the reigns of Edward VI and of Mary. It was whilst Elizabeth sat on the throne that it was made use of more than in any other period of history.”

Yeoman Warder John Bawd admitted he had planned the escape of Alice Tankerville “for the love and affection he bore her.” Unmoved, the Lieutenant of the Tower ordered Bawd into Little Ease, where he crouched, in growing agony.

The lovers were condemned to horrible ends for trying to escape. According to a letter in the State Papers of Lord Lisle, written on March 28,  Alice Tankerville was “hanged in chains at low water mark upon the Thames on Tuesday. John Bawd is in Little Ease cell in the Tower and is to be racked and hanged.”

Today no one knows exactly where Little Ease was located. One theory: in the dungeon of the White Tower. Another: in the basement of the old Flint Tower.  No visitor sees it today; it was torn down or walled up long ago. Besides Little Ease, the most-used devices were the rack, the manacles, and a horrific creation called the Scavenger’s Daughter. For many prisoners, solitary confinement, repeated interrogation, and the threat of physical pain were enough to make them tell their tormentors anything they wanted to know.

Often the victims ended up in the Tower for religious reasons. Anne Askew was for her Protestant beliefs; Edmund Campion for his Catholic ones. But the crimes varied. “The majority of the prisoners were charged with high treason, but the taking of life, robbery, embezzling the Queen’s plate, and failure to carry out proclamations against state players were among the offenses,” wrote Parry.

The monarch did not need to sign off on these kinds of requests, although sometimes he or she did. Elizabeth I personally directed that torture be used on the members of the Babington Conspiracy, a group that plotted to depose her and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. But usually, these initiatives went through the Privy Council or tapped the powers of the Star Chamber. It is believed that in some cases, permission was never sought at all.

Over and over, names pop up in state papers of those confined to Little Ease:

“On 3 May 1555: Stephen Happes, for his lewd behavior and obstinacy, committed this day to the Tower to remain in Little Ease for two or three days till he may be further examined.”

“10 January 1591:  Richard Topcliffe is to take part in an examination in the Tower of George Beesley, seminary priest, and Robert Humberson, his companion. And if you shall see good cause by their obstinate refusal to declare the truth of such things as shall be laid to their charge in Her Majesty’s behalf, then shall you by authority hereof commit them to the prison called Little Ease or to such other ordinary place of punishment as hath been accustomed to be used in those cases, and to certify proceedings from time to time.”

After Elizabeth and the succession of James I came the most famous prisoner of them all to be held in Little Ease, Guy Fawkes. Charged with plotting to blow up the king and Parliament, Fawkes was subjected to both manacles and rack to obtain his confession and the names of his fellow conspirators. After he had told his questioners everything they asked, Fawkes was still shackled hand and foot in Little Ease and left there, though no one knows for how long.

And after that final burst of savagery, Little Ease was no more. A House of Commons committee reported the same year as Fawkes’ end that the room was “disused.”

In 1640, during the reign of Charles I, the practice was abolished forever; there would be no more forcing prisoners to crouch for days in dark airless rooms, no more rack or hanging from chains. And so, mercifully, closed one of the darkest chapters in England’s history.

What are your thoughts on U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo saying that Nvidia can sell artificial intelligence chips to China, but just not “the most sophisticated ones”?

It’s called the Calcium Carbonate Protocol

In the 1950s and 1960s, China needed Penicillin very badly plus Sulfonamides

The US used a harsh Korean War rule to restrict all shipments of Penicillin and Sulfonamides to RED China and passed a law demanding that Hongkong, Singapore and Philippines have END USER CERTIFICATES for shipments of these drugs

So THE US MAKERS SIMPLY ADDED CALCIUM CARBONATE TO THE DRUG MIX and sold the same penicillin plus calcium carbonate for 40% extra cost which the Chinese paid

It was deemed very legal in federal and circuit Court and UPHELD in 1967 as ‘Fair Business Practice’

So ultimately when there is demand, there will be a supply

Nobody can change that

image 82
image 82

Raimondo is no fool

Privately she knows none of these policies would work and she knows that she is butchering the same FREE TRADE principles that kept the US as the world’s most reliable nation all these years

Yet the fact is Chinas growth has stunned them all

That China is narrowing the tech barriers at such an astounding rate is something nobody expected

In the 2018 paper to the Congress, the Technological Independence of China was predicted to be 2048 , in THIRTY YEARS

Trump later said he had pushed that further

Yet in 2021, the same experts reassessed and claimed Chinas Technological Independence could be as early as 2035

Now it’s 2032, DESPITE THE EXPORT MEASURES

In fact the stronger these restrictions are, the more likely China will need to break strangeholds and that would lead to newer Independent Technology


Today China can buy Less Sophisticated AI Chips from Chinese Entities

The Quality is same as NVDIA

Tencent for instance makes excellent high quality AI Chips at the lower and mid levels of computing power that are now the lock, stock and barrel for Russian and Belorussian markets and even the Saudi markets

Only the last two generation or the most sophisticated AI Chips made by NVDIA has no rival in China domestically

It is these Chips that China wants

If China doesn’t get them, NVDIA will sell them to China by producing a slightly less sophisticated version (Maybe throw in a few transistors less) with say 97% efficiency and sell them to China by passing the sanctions and winning legally


You see the problem

If US sells China everything openly, China will beat US by 2030 in every field of emerging technology like AI and Quantum computing

If US restricts exports to China, China will develop it’s own high tech supply chain and that may delay it’s ascendancy until 2035 but after that China no longer needs any Tech from the West and the whole world will have a Multipolar world where US can no longer use it’s technology as a bargaining Chip

Either way the Writing is on the Wall

Zydeco’s Pork Tenderloin Etouffee

2023 12 10 17 11
2023 12 10 17 11

Ingredients

  • 1 ounce oil
  • 1/3 pound diced onions
  • 1/3 pound diced celery
  • 1/3 pound diced green bell peppers
  • 1 teaspoon garlic puree
  • 2 ounces tomato paste
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 teaspoon basil
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 1 quart veal stock
  • 1/4 cup light corn syrup
  • Pinch of thyme
  • Pinch of chili powder
  • Pinch of cayenne pepper
  • Pinch of black pepper

Instructions

  1. Sweat onions, celery and bell peppers in the oil.
  2. Add the tomato paste and garlic.
  3. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for 15 minutes.
  4. Brown pork in a sauté pan.
  5. Add sauce and reduce.

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

My uncle was an outlaw, an honest-to-goodness criminal who did multiple stints in prison. He was a biker, but he wasn’t stable enough to be a member of the Hells Angels. He was a small guy who looked a lot like Charles Manson.

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image 85

People didn’t mess with him because he was prone to violence, skilled at fighting, and willing to use weapons when he had to. He fully embraced the criminal lifestyle. Around Christmas, the largest of his pot plants would usually be decorated as a Christmas tree.

One evening on my grandparent’s farm, he decided to make a bonfire out of an old date-packing conveyor belt. The flames must have reached 50 feet or more into into the sky, and were likely visible from any nearby farmhouse. The fire department sent a truck out to extinguish the fire.

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image 84

But my uncle wouldn’t let them put out his bonfire. Faced with an angry, shirtless, tattooed guy who looked like Charlie Manson. They called in the Sheriff’s Department.

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image 83

A youngish Hispanic Deputy got out of the car. My uncle thought he could push this guy around like he did the fire department. This young deputy had been a college wrestler. When my uncle tried to stop the fire department again, this deputy gave my uncle a first class attitude adjustment.

He was wearing the bruises from his arrest when my grandmother bailed him out of jail.

Lucky Luciano Put a Hit on a Rival Mob Boss using Fake IRS Agents

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Born Salvatore Lucania (but better known as Lucky Luciano) in Sicily in November 1897, the future brains of the New York mafia took the name Charles Luciano after he was arrested for dealing heroin and his parents disowned him. By the 1930s he was known as “Lucky” Luciano, although no one can say with certainty what first prompted the nickname.

The leading theory for his being known for his remarkable luck was his surviving a savage beating in October 1929. Luciano was not only beaten but stabbed by a group of men who then dumped him on a beach on Staten Island, left for dead. A police officer discovered him, and Luciano was taken to the hospital. As a result of the attack, he had a deep scar on one side of his face and a permanently drooping eyelid.

His attackers’ identity was murky. Sometimes Luciano said it was three police officers who beat him, other times it was thugs sent by mafia boss Salvatore Maranzano because Luciano worked for a boss that Maranzano was at war with. Whatever the reason for the attack, within two years, Maranzano was dead and out of Luciano’s way in his meteoric rise to the top.

The 1920s were in many ways flush times for the underworld, thanks to Prohibition, which handed the Italian, Irish, and Jewish gangs lots of opportunities to make money. But the New York City underworld was in the throes of a deadly rivalry between two men: Sicilian immigrant Joe Masseria, known as “Joe the Boss,” and the more recent arrival, Maranzano, driven out of Italy by Benito Mussolini, who hated the mafia. Following restrictions on immigration by Italians to the U.S., mafia members fleeing Mussolini applied for political asylum, saying they were oppressed by fascism.

charles lucky luciano excelsior hotel rome
charles lucky luciano excelsior hotel rome

Luciano worked for Masseria–which is why he was beat up and left for dead–but he was weary of the turf wars, because they were keeping people from making money in not just rum running but gambling, racketeering, robbery, and prostitution. He was part of an up-and-coming gangster class, along with Frank Costello, who despised the “old country” ways of the Sicilian bosses they called “Mustache Pete’s.”

Luciano had been a criminal since his early teen years. He dropped out of school, and at 14, took a job delivering hats, but there was heroin hidden in the hats. He later explained his fondness for crime by saying, “I never was a crumb, and if I have to be a crumb, I’d rather be dead.” After a prison term of one year for drug possession, he flourished in an East Harlem gang, and was mentored by Arnold Rothstein, the racketeer who is believed to have fixed the 1919 World Series.

Luciano decided to double-cross his tiresome boss Masseria, so he made a deal with Maranzano to kill him and in return take his place and cease hostilities. He invited Masseria to a lobster lunch in Coney Island, Brooklyn, on April 15, 1931. “Before dessert arrived, Luciano left for the toilet,” wrote Selwyn Raab in Five Families. “Mysteriously, Masseria’s bodyguards vanished from the restaurant as four of Luciano’s killers suddenly appeared and riddled Joe the Boss with a volley of gunfire.”

But if Lucky Luciano thought that matters would improve after he took his boss’s place, he was wrong. It was set up that there’d be five families controlling their own gangster turfs in New York City.  Maranzano, however, declared himself capo di tutti capi, boss of bosses, and imposed a lot of rules on everyone. Now Luciano decided that he needed to eliminate the boss of bosses.

Doing so wouldn’t be easy. Maranzano was always accompanied by a fleet of bodyguards, he drove a bulletproof Cadillac, and his office was in a fancy building overlooking Grand Central Station, with the address of 230 Park Avenue (later the Helmsley Building). But Luciano was able to learn that his target was having tax problems and Maranzano had instructed his bodyguards to not carry guns to the office because, any day now, the Internal Revenue Service was expected to descend on him.

At this point, Luciano turned to his old friends, Jewish gangsters Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. When he was a child, Luciano lived on the Lower East Side, on 1st Avenue between 13th and 14th streets. He became close friends with his neighbor Lansky and then Siegel.

For the hit on Maranzano, they came up with the idea of outfitting a group of men in suits and ties–and guns and knives.

Saying they were with the IRS, the assassins showed up at Maranzano’s 9th floor Park Avenue office on September 10, 1931. At that point, Maranzano was fanatical about only employing Italians, and he insisted that the whole mafia do business with exclusively other Italian gang members. None of the “IRS agents” looked at all Italian, so Maranzano believed they were genuine and went into a room with them. There he was killed.

And with that, Lucky Luciano rose to power in the New York City mafia, and as the man who put the “organized” into organized crime, eventually became the Number one gangster in the entire United States.

What are some of the common mistakes that home buyers make when dealing with real estate agents or purchasing property in general?

A few.

One: Just because the bank approves your $800,000 loan doesn’t mean you can afford the payments.

Two: Buying a fancy custom home that has unique designs and architecture.

Per my inspector, those homes have the most problems and leaks of any of them. If you buy a standard house design, or one in a neighborhood with a bunch of similar houses all clearly built by the same builder, you set yourself up for success more. Those homes, even if they seem boring, are proven models and have been built over and over by the builder. All the problems have been worked out.

Three: assuming a fixer upper is going to be easier than it is. When you walk through a house, you may see a few items that you can easily fix. Make a list of those items, count them up, and when you get home—triple it. If you can still manage that much work—have at it.

Four: carpeted floors. It tends to get super smelly and is harder to clean.

God forbid you have carpet in your bathrooms or by water sources.

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image 86

Then, you are just asking for it. I can smell the mold from here.

In 2025, The U.S. Will Finally Begin Preparing To Fight A Nuclear War With Russia

by Michael

A point of view out of the United States. Trust me, it's bad, but NOT dire. Do not freak out. -MM

Will the upgrades that are coming to our strategic nuclear arsenal be ready in time?  Right now, hopelessly outdated Minuteman missiles that first went into service in the 1970s form the backbone of our strategic nuclear arsenal.  The silos where they stand ready to be launched still use rotary phones and 8 inch floppy disks in many cases.  Once they are launched, the brand new S-500 anti-missile systems that the Russians have deployed will be able to intercept them.  Meanwhile, the Russians have introduced a brand new intercontinental ballistic missile known as the Sarmat.  A single Sarmat carries enough firepower to destroy an area the size of Texas, and our anti-missile systems are not able to deal with this new threat.  The balance of power has fundamentally shifted, and so we desperately need to update our capabilities.

Unfortunately, this process will not even begin until 2025.

So we better hope that we do not get into a shooting war with Russia during the next couple of years.

The U.S. has been developing a brand new ICBM known as “the Sentinel”, and it is desperately needed

The control stations for America’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles have a sort of 1980s retro look, with computing panels in sea foam green, bad lighting and chunky control switches, including a critical one that says “launch.”

Those underground capsules are about to be demolished and the missile silos they control will be completely overhauled. A new nuclear missile is coming, a gigantic ICBM called the Sentinel. It’s the largest cultural shift in the land leg of the Air Force’s nuclear missile mission in 60 years.

These upgrades cannot happen fast enough, because right now the infrastructure of our strategic nuclear arsenal is constantly breaking down and falling apart

The silos lose power. Their 60-year old massive mechanical parts break down often. Air Force crews guard them using helicopters that can be traced back to the Vietnam War. Commanders hope the modernization of the Sentinel, and of the trucks, gear and living quarters, will help attract and retain young technology-minded service members who are now asked each day to find ways to keep a very old system running.

This is something that I have been warning about for years, but most people didn’t want to listen.

Now our military is in a race against time, because the clock is ticking.

Overall, 750 billion dollars will be spent to overhaul our strategic nuclear forces, and it is being projected the silo work for the Sentinel could begin “as soon as 2025”

The Sentinel work is one leg of a larger, nuclear weapons enterprise-wide $750 billion overhaul that is replacing almost every component of U.S. nuclear defenses, including new stealth bombers, submarines and ICBMs in the country’s largest nuclear weapons program since the Manhattan Project.

For the Sentinel, silo work could be underway by lead contractor Northrop Grumman as soon as 2025.

I am glad that they are moving forward.

But if work will not even begin until 2025, when will it finally be completed?

Until the Sentinel is ready, the Russians will continue to possess a major strategic advantage over us, and they know it.

If the war in Ukraine spirals out of control, we could easily find ourselves facing a nightmare scenario.

The Russians have been steadily gaining ground in Ukraine in recent weeks, and over the past few days they have started to gobble up significant chunks of territory.

The Ukrainians are running out of warm bodies to throw into the fight, and that is a major problem.

They are also running out of ammunition and equipment, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky just made a trip to D.C. to beg for more money

Zelensky is in D.C. to ask Congress to pass $61 billion more for Ukraine, on top of the $113 billion they approved early this year. However, it looks increasingly likely that any more funding for Ukraine will have to wait until next year.

The Biden administration requested the funding as part of a $106 billion package, which includes only $13 billion for securing the border, but Republicans say it does not go far enough, and are calling for a number of reforms to reduce the number of asylum seekers and illegal border crossers, which recently hit 12,000 per day.

Johnson said at a Wall Street Journal event on Monday that Democrats and the White House must agree to some or all of the border-security measures outlined in H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act.

Even with all of the money that we have given him already, his forces are still losing.

And even if we give him what he is asking for now, Russians forces will continue to advance.

Zelensky is holding a losing hand, and as the Russians advance he is going to become very desperate.

And very desperate people do very desperate things.

Eventually, I expect that events in Ukraine will force the U.S. and Russia into a showdown.

When that day arrives, will the U.S. be ready?

Earlier today, I came across an article about a calendar that is being sold in Russia that shows “a Russian soldier outside the US Capitol building in Washington DC with a drone and helicopter overhead”…

A Russian veterans organisation is selling a 2024 calendar featuring a muscle-bound Vladimir Putin.

The calendar continues a series of propaganda images including one showing a Russian soldier outside the US Capitol building in Washington DC with a drone and helicopter overhead.

Many Russians believe that a war with the United States is inevitable.

And as I have repeatedly warned my readers, the Russians have been feverishly preparing for such a conflict for a long time.

Thankfully, the U.S. is finally starting to get prepared as well.

But if work is not even going to begin until 2025, will the much needed upgrades to our strategic nuclear arsenal be completed in time?

How has China’s shipbuilding industry contributed to the expansion of its navy?

The first thing to understand is that commercial shipbuilding and building warships are completely different businesses.

Commercial shipbuilding is like building a family car. The technology, equipment, and quality standards used in the two businesses are very different.

Just because a country has strong commercial shipbuilding capabilities does not necessarily mean that it has strong warship manufacturing capabilities. For example, South Korea has huge commercial shipbuilding capabilities, but it does not have strong warship construction capabilities. Their naval equipment is almost entirely dependent on American technology authorization.

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image 9

China has huge commercial shipbuilding capabilities (accounting for 60% of the world’s total). Will this help their warship manufacturing?

Helps keep costs down during peacetime.

China’s large shipyards are typically dual-use, meaning they are building container ships at the same time they are building Aegis destroyers.

The commercial business dilutes the shipyard’s operating costs, and various costs are allocated to commercial projects. This makes them offer very low prices when building warships. The Burke III destroyer costs approximately US$2 billion, while China’s similar Type 052DL destroyer costs only US$500 million.

Obvious advantages in emergency situations.

1. Numerous facilities

In order to build very large commercial ships, China has countless giant shipyards and gantry cranes. They have 50 giant docks and supporting large equipment that can build aircraft carriers. The only one in the United States is Newport News Shipbuilding.

2. Large supporting production capacity

Warships require not only shipyards, but also countless raw materials. From the most basic steel and non-ferrous metals to diesel engines and steam turbines. In order to satisfy commercial business, China has huge production capacity for these things.

3. Abundant talents

The shipbuilding industry has limited automation and a high proportion of manual work. A large number of skilled shipbuilders were needed. In order to meet the annual shipbuilding needs of 20 million tons, China maintains a team of 180,000 to 200,000 skilled workers (some surveys say that including various small shipyards, the number exceeds 500,000). The United States only has a shipbuilding business of 100,000 tons per year and only has 18,000 skilled shipbuilders.

When the Navy needs it, they can clear out commercial projects and put all their resources into warship manufacturing. The picture at the beginning of this article shows the ability of a Chinese shipyard to build 6 052D destroyers and 2 055 cruisers at the same time (5 ships are being built on the slipway, and 3 ships are outfitting equipment).

Imagine that starting tomorrow, China and the United States begin to build warships with all their strength. The materials, facilities and personnel required by China are all complete. As long as they get the order, they can immediately start construction of 10 aircraft carriers, 20 Aegis destroyers and 8 nuclear submarines at the same time.

However, the United States has limited resources and can only start construction of one aircraft carrier, two Aegis destroyers and one nuclear submarine immediately. At the same time, the United States needs to urgently build large shipyards, purchase and install large cranes, purchase equipment and train workers, and gradually expand production capacity within 2-3 years.

By the time the U.S.’s manufacturing capabilities reached a level similar to China’s, China had already built ten times as many warships as the United States.

Solution to the Fermi Paradox Found! Scientists Hope They’re Wrong

Have you ever seen an employer fire someone without realizing what a crucial role the employee played?

What is the pettiest thing you’ve seen a cheap person do at a restaurant?

Years ago I had a blind date. We had talked on the phone and the guy asked if he could take me to lunch. Not MEET me for lunch, but take me. He was inviting me so I assumed he would pay.

We met at a casual inexpensive chain restaurant. I had something modestly priced – it was probably around $7 (like I said, years ago). When the bill came, he told me what my share was – he actually said, “You had the french dip plus an iced tea, so your total is…..” I was pretty surprised but I figured that the cost of my lunch was worth finding out what a cheapo he was so I wouldn’t waste any more time dating him. But here’s the kicker – he had a Buy One Get One Free coupon! So his meal was free and I paid for mine! That was enough for me. He walked me to my car and asked if he could see me again. I said, “No” and he looked surprised and asked why. I said that anyone as cheap as he was shouldn’t date. Thank goodness he never called again.

What’s the most you’ve ever tipped someone, and why?

$500 tip on a $12 meal. It was at a diner in New Jersey. When my father was about 80, he lost interest in eating. My brother and I finally insisted he have dinner at a restaurant every night. My father reluctantly agreed. He found a local diner where he felt comfortable. Over time, he became very friendly with a waitress there. She treated him like royalty (in fact, all the staff did). He was by no means wealthy, but he always left a generous tip. The waitress would give him cookies to take home and was genuinely happy to see him every day. Many times when I would go with him, I would see her smile when he came in, run over to hug and kiss him, and just take wonderful care of him. It was one of the only joys for the last years of his life. Earlier this year, my dad died. When I went back to handle his estate, one evening I went to the diner for dinner. I told the waitress that my dad had died (she suspected as much, having not seen him for over a month)…and after eating there, I left her a $500 tip. She deserved every penny and more.

Tracking him through “discarded DNA,” police arrest a 72-year-old “suburban grandfather” suspected of being the Golden State suspect

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For years a serial killer and rapist traumatized the entire state of California, committing at least 12 murders, before coming to a seeming halt some 40 years ago in his horrific spree of violence. For victims and families of victims, not knowing who committed the crimes caused lasting emotional damage.  That changed on April 24, 2018.

“In a perfectly executed arrest, my detectives arrested Joseph James DeAngelo, 72 years old,” said Scott Jones, Sacramento County Sheriff, at a press conference. Police were able to match DeAngelo’s DNA to evidence from the investigation, saying they used “surveillance and discarded DNA.”

USA Today published a story saying that police investigators submitted the DNA of someone whom they believed was the suspect, gathered at a crime scene, to Ancestry.com, not officially as police detectives but as a regular customer of the genealogical research site, and were then able to narrow the search through matches to relatives of the person with the mystery DNA, using “trees.”

This use of Ancestry.com is raising questions. In a story published by the Associated Press, Steve Mercer of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender said there aren’t strong privacy laws to keep police from trolling ancestry databases. “People who submit DNA for ancestors testing are unwittingly becoming genetic informants on their innocent family,” Mercer said, adding that they “have fewer privacy protections than convicted offenders whose DNA is contained in regulated databanks.”

However, the arrest of DeAngelo is also sending shock waves of relief throughout California. He is believed to be responsible for 12 murders, 45 rapes, and more than 120 residential burglaries between 1976 and 1986.

According to an interview in the Los Angeles Times, Jennifer Carole, the daughter of 1980 victims Lyman and Charlene Smith, “said she had long thought that the person who bludgeoned her father and stepmother to death had probably died in the following decades. To find out he was not only alive, but living among them in Sacramento, was an overwhelming revelation, she said.”

“In my mind I thought he was dead the whole time,” Carole said to the press. “I’d compartmentalized it. But to find out … he’s been in Sacramento, where all my family lives … it’s unbelievable. How can he have just been here?”

A cold-case unit with the Ventura County district attorney renewed their efforts to find the Golden State Killer within the last two years. The FBI offered a reward of $50,000 for information leading to an arrest in 2016. “We all knew we were looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.

A series of rapes in an area east of Sacramento in 1976 were first linked by the authorities because of their proximity and the similar description of the rapist — a white male with blond hair who was close to six feet tall — and the sadistic rituals that he inflicted on his victims. His targets were women home alone and women at home with their children. The suspect went on to rape women with their husbands present and then the two of them would be murdered.

Neighbors of DeAngelo, whom the Washington Post described as a “suburban grandfather” in a headline, said that he kept to himself and sometimes yelled at people over infractions like mowing their lawns too early in the morning, but gave absolutely no indication of anything more frightening. He showed an interest in model airplanes, some say. He was the father of three daughters and had a number of grandchildren.

DeAngelo was a police officer in Auburn, California, in the 1970s but was fired after being accused of shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent. He retired last year after working 27 years at a distribution center for Save Mart grocery stores, the chain confirmed.

Public interest in the Golden State Killer was sparked this year with the publication of the true-crime book I’ll be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, written by Michelle McNamara, who died in April 2016 before finishing it. The book, published in February 2018, was completed after her death by a journalist and researcher recruited by her husband, the comedian Patton Oswalt.

The Golden State Killer was believed to have tracked the movements of his planned victims. He wore gloves and a mask and spoke in an angry whisper. Investigators at the time suspected he had military or law enforcement training.

The New York Times wrote, “Mr. DeAngelo was arrested by investigators using some of the same tactics employed by the suspect to stalk his victims — the police surveilled his movements, studied his routines, and pounced when he left his house.”

Eagles – Hotel California (Live 1977) (Official Video) [HD]

If war erupts between China and the Quad countries, who would win?

Let’s see

First would be the Cost of War

China would need to spend 1 Billion RMB a day to fight in the South China Theatre across the Taiwan Straits and Sea of Japan

Quad would need 2.5–3 times this or around $ 400 Million a day to be able to equal China given the cost and scale of production that is severely lagging

This means a 100 day war would cost China around 100 Billion RMB ($ 14 Billion) versus a whopping $ 45 Billion for Quad

Assuming a 3 year war, that would be 1 Trillion RMB ($ 140 Billion) for China versus $ 450–500 Billion for Quad

I am sure only one guy will be coughing up all that money and that’s USA

India, Australia, Japan combined won’t cough up $ 1 Billion

Since China now pays for its food and fuel in RMB , it can easily afford 1 Trillion RMB

The US needs to print $ 450–500 Billion and already the strain of printing $ 170 Billion for Ukraine is showing

Next would be the Logistics

Quad has an arsenal of 960 Missiles combined on their patrolling vessels and carrier groups (720 US, 240 Others)

Add another 320 with Japan and Korea and maybe 160 from Taiwan

That’s 1440 Deployable Missiles

China has 2400 Missiles on its Patrolling Vessels and Carrier Groups plus 1200 Land Battery Missiles plus 800 Intermediate Range Launch Missiles all aimed for the South China Sea

That’s 4400 Deployable Missiles not to include 90–110 from North Korea

That’s 3:1 in Chinas favor in just the South China Theatre

Let’s see the Weapon Supply status

Japan, Australia and India are Net Importers of weapons with a near zero indigenous supply line in most naval equipment or aerial equipment or even Intelligence gathering

If India risks it’s limited advanced equipment imported on this theatre, Pakistan can have a field day and so can the PLA on the Arunachal Front or the Ladakh front

Same with South Korea

Thus US has to supply all the intelligence gathering equipment and by chance some fall into China, that’s years of priceless IP reverse engineered

Today US has 20 key pieces of equipment over the Baltics handing intel to Ukraine against 90–120 key pieces handing intel to Russia and owned by Russia

Even if the US manages to quadruple it’s Ukraine strength and bring in 80 pieces of key intel gathering equipment like advanced radar etc, China has close to 250 and that’s 1:3

China will always have the Intelligence advantage


Bottom line is NO

QUAD will lose

QUAD cannot win

Quad will rely on a shock attack and HOPE China has an internal coup and regime change within 60 days

It didn’t happen in Russia and it’s more unlikely to happen in China

The US is too far away and China aint Iraq or Afghanistan

Others are too insufficient to take on China


In its theatre, China is not likely to be defeated

The only thing that can change this equation is if SOMEHOW Russia can be convinced to fight against China on another front

The one bodyguard assigned to Ford’s Theater to protect President Lincoln abandoned his post for a drink on the night of the assassination–and wasn’t fired for it

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On the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln decided to take in a production of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater, in Washington, D.C. The one policeman assigned to guard the president on that fateful night left his post—to go next door for a drink.

Whether from hubris or humility, Lincoln was unconcerned about his safety, even amid near constant death threats. In August of 1864, he survived an assassination attempt, when someone fired a shot at him as he rode a horse—all by himself. (His hat was recovered the next day, with a musketball hole through the side.) It seems impossible to imagine today, but the president was known to go to plays, to church, and on walks without security.

John Parker was a carpenter and machinist born in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He moved to Washington and joined the Metropolitan Police Force when it formed in 1861. He was not an exemplar. The force cited him for conduct unbecoming an officer, drinking (and sleeping) on the job and frequenting a whorehouse, according to Smithsonian magazine. He had 14 disciplinary infractions on his record. Somehow he managed always to get off. When a four-man detail was created to protect Lincoln in 1864, Parker was selected to join the team.

Parker was late to his assignment on April 14, showing up at Ford’s Theater at 7 P.M. instead of 4. Lincoln and his party arrived at his box in the balcony at 9 P.M., after the play had already started. The actors stopped mid-scene while the orchestra played “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln bowed to the actors, and the play carried on.

Parker was stationed outside Lincoln’s box, in the passageway by the door, a good place to guard a president but a lousy place to take in a play. The bored Parker moved down to the first balcony to better see the performance. During intermission, he went next door to the Star Saloon for a drink with Lincoln’s coachman and footman.

As it happens, John Wilkes Booth was also at the Star Saloon, having a shot of whiskey before his nefarious mission. When Booth arrived at Lincoln’s box, the chair in the passageway was empty. Booth went into the box, shouted “Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!” and shot Lincoln in the back of the head. Booth leaped to the stage, exited the theater, and escaped on his horse. (Booth would be tracked down and killed within two weeks.)

It is of course possible that even had Parker been at his station, he might not have stopped Booth’s assassination of Lincoln.

“Booth was a well-known actor, a member of a famous theatrical family,” Ford’s Theater historical interpreter Eric Martin told Smithsonian magazine. “They were like Hollywood stars today. Booth might have been allowed in to pay his respects. Lincoln knew of him. He’d seen him act in The Marble Heart, here in Ford’s Theater in 1863.”

But Parker’s fellow guards never forgave him, nor did Lincoln’s widow.

“It makes me feel rather bitter when I remember that the President had said, just a few hours before, that he knew he could trust all his guards,” William H. Crook wrote in his memoir. “And then to think that in that one moment of test one of us should have utterly failed him! Parker knew that he had failed in duty. He looked like a convicted criminal the next day. He was never the same man afterward.”

Parker was charged with failure to protect the president, though the charge was dropped. The public did not know of his culpability, though Mrs. Lincoln did. Remarkably, Parker stayed on the White House security detail, at one point being assigned to Mrs. Lincoln, who confronted him as recounted in the 1868 memoir Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave, and Four in the White House, by Elizabeth Keckley.

“Why were you not at the door to keep the assassin out when he rushed into the box?” Mrs. Lincoln said.

“I did wrong, I admit, and I have bitterly repented it, but I did not help to kill the President,” Keckley recalled Parker saying. “I did not believe that any one would try to to kill so good a man in such a public place, and the believe made me careless.”

To which Mrs. Lincoln responded, “I shall always believe that you are guilty,” and sent him away with a wave of her hand.

Parker stayed on the Metropolitan Police Force three more years before finally he was fired for sleeping on the job in 1868. He turned back to carpentry and died in 1890 of pneumonia, an all but forgotten man in the drama of Lincoln’s assassination.

Have you ever seen a new employee stealing from the workplace?

The grocery store I managed allowed cashiers a margin of error of $5.00, plus or minus. Most of the cashiers were usually within $1, either way, but a newbie that the store owner ordered me to hire — she was a friend’s granddaughter — was short a total of $16 dollars — $1, $5, $5, $5 — over her first four days. The cashiers were rarely on the money (zero balance) and most were proud when they were 25¢ or less off either way, so I found it odd that this girl was off by whole dollar amounts on each of her first four days.

So I put a camera on her.

She was scheduled to work a six-hour shift and at the end she was, you guessed it, $5 short. So I reviewed the video and watched her pocket a dollar here and there; she’d appear to be putting it in her drawer but each time her hand would go into her pocket. She did this five times and I knew that I had her.

I went to the owner and he called her into his office before her next shift. He told her what I’d found and that she was, obviously, fired, but he wanted to know why she did it. She said she didn’t want to work as a cashier. She didn’t like the pay, or the hours, or the “stupid people”, and she thought she deserved more for putting up with it all. She also said she didn’t pocket more than $5 because she knew she’d get in trouble if she did. She felt that she was “allowed” to take that $5 each day.

The owner was dumbstruck and decided to lower to amount cashiers could be over or short to $1. And he never forced me to hire anyone else.

How do people with low IQs (≤80) perceive things in everyday life?

I used to teach Special Education. And, I’m here to tell ya that I’ve had arguments with a nine year old kid with a 40 IQ about how to spell a word.

Joey, brain damaged at birth, was capable of learning the correct spelling, just barely capable, but he was entirely convinced that his version of the word was the correct spelling. I took a very long time to gradually get him to change that view, because I could see that it wasn’t about how to spell a word, it was about nurturing in Joey what was plainly there: his love of correct spelling. He was proud of his version, doncha know! And also, of versions of other, much more important things too.

Joey the Saint

Joey had a fixation — he was an assembler of trophies. His father was in business selling trophies and plaques, ya see, and Joey would make bowling, golf, baseball, etc. trophies out of the pieces his father could not use in the business and gave to Joey to play with. These were scuffed or dented, but to Joey they were GOLD. He made some of the goofiest looking amalgams — football players in full stride with a football tucked in one arm and a tennis racket in the other, for instance. And it was always catch as catch can, but Joey didn’t care. He just loved assembling them, thought they were very marketable, thought of himself as a businessman like his father. Oh, he was full of esteem about it, let me tell ya. It was, you see, just about the only thing Joey could do well “in his own eyes.” With a 40 IQ, Joey was looking at a future like a life sentence without a chance for parole.

But Joey was happy.

And Joey taught my class, in one stroke, something more important than ANYTHING I ever taught anyone in that class.

One day, Joey came to school with three big boxes. His father helped him bring them in. And his father and I stood there and watched Joey teach us all. Joey opened the boxes, and out came a special, unique statue for every kid in the class. 18 statues made by Joey who couldn’t spell the word “statue.” 18 statues that were to Joey, by his own inner logic, as precious as fingerprints that could only be assigned to one and only one person. 18 statues in boxes that Joey knew so well that he could dive into the boxes after saying each pupil’s name and instantly pull out Pedro’s statue, then Anna’s statue, then Cathy’s statue . . . 18 statues with names assigned to them. Joey knew which was to go to whom.

Silently, for Joey could hardly talk, he gave each statue out like it was a soul. And every kid there opened themselves to Joey’s vision of the moment and took their statues into their hugging arms like each trophy was a newborn babe. Joey gave everyone a symbolic kiss on the forehead to take home. Everyone deserved a symbol of “job well done,” thought Joey. And 18 kids with almost no chance to succeed in life, hummed with delight.

And no one I’ve ever seen in my whole life was as happy as Joey that day. He so innocently beamed his love.

That’s my goal in life. Be as happy and as wrong . . . and as right as Joey.

Addendum. So very grateful for all the heartfelt responses. When I wrote this decades ago, Joey was so much fresher in my mind. I now see that writing style as a bit “much,” but I dare not change a word. Also, the title question is not my doing, so I cannot justify changing it either.

This essay’s success is due solely to Joey — not my writing.
This essay is his, not mine.

Has someone ever been fired because of you?

Yes.

I worked for a financial call center. I excelled there and loved my job. I was there for nearly 3 years and during the last 6 months my attendance suffered greatly. I had pain from a hernia and had taken time for those occasions and had repair surgery, so I had STD for that. I was also going through a very bad divorce and the emotional distress was so extreme that I couldn’t eat or sleep. I worked odd hours of the night because I was working during UK operating hours and by the time I would finally fall asleep, I’d have to be up 2 hours later.

My manager knew all of the issues impacting me, yet, never thought to look into how to help my situation at work (being an exemplary employee). I was one day called in to HR and was terminated. I later found out that I could have taken another short term for stress, and had I been informed sooner, it could have saved my job.

I explained these things to HR, but it was too late. Apparently, my manager had become intimidated by me and the success I achieved in a short period of time and didn’t want to help me, I learned.

After my termination and the walk of shame, being escorted out, HR summoned my manager to discuss what I had to say. That woman began text messaging me, upset that I would place any kind of blame on her. I told her that I was no longer an employee and to stop messaging me. She still messaged me.

Next day, I contacted HR about her harassment of a non employee and she was terminated.

Instant karma!

The only unsolved skyjacking case in U.S. history might have a break: “D. B. Cooper” is Robert Rackstraw, a Vietnam vet and ex-CIA operative, investigative team claims

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On November 24, 1971, on a rainy afternoon in Portland, Oregon, a man approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines. He wore a dark raincoat, a dark suit with a skinny black tie, a neatly pressed white shirt, and loafers. He appeared to be in his forties, nearly six feet tall, with receding hair. “He looked like a business executive,” witnesses said later.

Using the name Dan Cooper, he used cash to purchase a one-way ticket to Seattle on Flight 305. The man, who carried a black attache case, sat in the last row of the Boeing 727 for the 30-minute flight, seat 18-C, ordered a bourbon and soda. After the plane took off, he handed an attractive flight attendant a note, which she slipped in her pocket and ignored.

A bit later, when the flight attendant passed by him, the man leaned toward her and whispered, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.”

With that, the legend of D. B. Cooper was born.

Hours later, in the Seattle-Tacoma airport, Cooper, now wearing sunglasses, boarded a second plane empty of passengers and with only a flight crew. After he showed the flight attendant on the first plane the bomb in his attache case and she conveyed the note’s contents to the pilot, his instructions had been followed.

He now had four parachutes and a briefcase containing $200,000 in $20 bills. (What he did not know was that while the plane circled the Seattle airport, FBI agents photographed the money.) It was now night time, and rain was getting heavier.

The man had more detailed orders to be followed: the plane would follow a southeast course to Mexico City at the minimum airspeed possible at a maximum 10,000 foot altitude. The landing gear would have to remain deployed during takeoff and the cabin be depressurized. As with all of his communications, he was quite polite.

According to the FBI document on the case: “Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, a little after 8:00 p.m., the hijacker did the incredible: he jumped out of the back of the plane with a parachute and the ransom money.” Two aircraft from a nearby air force base had been following the airliner, but saw nothing.

Extensive searches on the ground found no trace of Cooper, his parachute, or the money. The FBI says, “Calling it NORJAK, for Northwest Hijacking, we interviewed hundreds of people, tracked leads across the nation, and scoured the aircraft for evidence. By the five-year anniversary of the hijacking, we’d considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration.”

It is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in FBI history. Despite theories put forth in books, documentaries, symposiums, and an enthusiastic website, no one has proven the identity of D. B. Cooper (a journalist mistakenly turned “Dan” into “D.B.” and it stuck). None of the photographed money turned up until 1980, when a boy found three packets of the ransom cash in a stream near Vancouver, Washington.

One of the most widely believed theories was that Cooper died in his audacious jump from the plane. He had a parachute that couldn’t be steered, he jumped at night into a heavily wooded area, in the rain, in clothes certainly not practical for such an act. On July 8, 2016, the FBI announced that it had “redirected resources allocated to the D.B. Cooper case in order to focus on other investigative priorities.”

But in late January 2018 a startling claim was made to the media: D. B. Cooper was actually a former CIA operative named Robert Rackstraw, alive and well and living in Southern California.

A team of private investigators hired by TV producer Tom Colbert that has been working on the mystery for several years said they cracked a code proving the infamous hijacker is, in fact, a man who has ties to the San Diego area named Robert Rackstraw, and he is still alive. Rackstraw is a decorated Vietnam War veteran and, according to the investigators, an ex-CIA operative.

2023 12 13 19 04
2023 12 13 19 04

Portion of Brian Ingram’s 1980 discovery

The code was contained in a Dec. 11, 1971, letter the cold-case team got their hands on that they say was sent by “D. B. Cooper” to several major news outlets. The taunting letter, which the newspapers did not publish at the time and officials said were a prank, was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

“The letter, which went to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times and The Washington Post, contains strings of letters and numbers at the bottom of the page,” according to the Seattle Times.

A code breaker on Colbert’s team, Rick Sherwood, was able to decode the letters and numbers, and he said they pointed to the three Army units Rackstraw was connected to between 1969 in 1970 when he was in Vietnam.

The encryption was meant to serve as a signal to those in his units who knew the code that he was alive and well after the jump, Colbert said. He also taunted law enforcement by including “SWS” in the letter, which stands for “Special Warfare School.”

According to the website dbcooper.com, “Colbert said Pentagon records he obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show detailed skill sets Rackstraw received from Green Berets in 1968, including 400 hours of Special Forces classes, HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) parachuting, psychological operations (PSYOPS) and other training.”

In addition to claiming to have found the real D.B. Cooper, Colbert said he has strong evidence that the FBI deliberately worked to keep the hijacking case unsolved —due to Rackstraw’s CIA ties.

Although his CIA employment is not confirmed, Rackstraw, 74,  was not an angel by any definition. He was charged with murdering his stepfather but acquitted in a trial in 1978.

He once reportedly tried to fake his own death by using a Mayday call and bailing out of a rented plane–it quickly unraveled. He was even arrested in Iran and deported back to the United States, which certainly doesn’t happen every day.

According to the Washington Post, “he faced charges of aircraft theft, possession of explosives and check fraud … Colbert said Rackstraw was convicted and spent more than a year in jail before being released in 1980. Rackstraw’s attorney said he couldn’t confirm those details.” Those who feel that D. B. Cooper was a polite mastermind who behaved like a business executive are unconvinced that Rackstraw, who hit lists of possible Coopers in the late 1970s, was this man.

When tracked down recently by a TV crew, Rackstraw, when asked if he were the real D. B. Cooper said, “What difference would it make?” Rackstraw’s attorney has said that he denies any part in the skyjacking.

He was 28 at the time of the skyjacking, and one of the original flight attendants, when shown photos of Rackstraw, said he did not resemble the man she saw on the plane in 1971.

In a press conference in front of FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., Colbert said, “The FBI may hold the strings, but Rackstraw holds the ripcord. And thanks to his coded bragging, it’s now been pulled. We’ll be waiting for him at the drop zone.”

Last Chance To Get Out Of Dodge?

by Michael

More doom and gloom out of the United States. Ugh. Not. That. Bad. Don't buy into all the fear mongering. -MM

Time is running out.  Lately, I have been hearing from so many people that believe that 2024 will be the year when our society goes over the edge.  Our financial system is teetering on the brink of disaster, crime is absolutely exploding all over the country, homelessness is rising at the fastest pace ever recorded, food banks are facing unprecedented demand for their services, and I believe that 2024 will be the most chaotic election year in the entire history of our nation.  And of course all of this is happening in the context of a global environment in which war, pestilences, economic problems, famine and natural disasters are all on the rise.  A “perfect storm” is raging all around us, and millions upon millions of Americans have become deeply concerned about what our immediate future will look like.

So where will you be when things finally hit the fan?

During the past several years, we have seen a mass exodus of conservatives from blue states.  For example, Fox News is reporting that 65 percent of those that have recently moved to the state of Idaho are Republicans, and only 12 percent are Democrats…

Data published by the Idaho Secretary of State’s office shows that out of the nearly 119,000 people who recently moved to the state, 65% registered as Republicans, compared to just 12% registering as Democrats.

The data, which was reviewed by Fox News Digital, show that out of the roughly 20,000 Americans who moved from Washington state to Idaho, 62% registered as Republicans, compared to 12% as Democrats, 24% as unaffiliated and 2% as “other.” The percentage of registered Republicans originally from Washington who recently moved to Idaho is actually higher than the state’s overall percentage of registered Republicans, which sits at about 58%.

And for those moving from the state of California, the numbers are even more dramatic

Out of the nearly 40,000 people who left California for Idaho, a whopping 75% registered as Republicans, the data reviewed by Fox News Digital show. Only 10% of the California pool registered as Democrats, 14% as unaffiliated and 2% as “other.”

Wow.

Real estate agents in Idaho are urging potential clients to “escape liberal hell” and to get to the state “before the coming collapse”

The Seattle Times noted that real estate ads advise residents in states such as Washington to “escape liberal hell” and move to Idaho.

“Time is not on your side, flee the city NOW before the coming collapse!” another ad for a house listing in Idaho states, the outlet reported.

Perhaps you are thinking that you should move to Idaho too.

Unfortunately, for many Americans it is already too late, because property values in some areas of the state have more than tripled.

Of course property values have also skyrocketed in desirable areas in many other red states as well.

Meanwhile, mortgage rates have also soared, and as a result home payments have risen to absolutely absurd levels during the Biden administration

WSJ analysis of the housing market:

Average monthly new home payment
when Biden took office: $1,787

Average monthly new home payment
today: $3,322

You can still try to relocate.

But it will cost you much more than it would have a few years ago.

Renting is also an option, but we have just been through a period of time when rental prices have also jumped substantially

After suffering through a three-year period when rents jumped by 30% or more in many U.S. cities, renters are now starting to enjoy small breaks like this.

Ultimately, if you were planning to relocate, you should have already done it by now.

But the good news is that conditions are still at least somewhat relatively stable as we approach the end of 2023.

So if you want to get out of Dodge, you can still do it.

In fact, for many of you this may be your last chance.

But don’t wait too long, because the clock is ticking.

At this point, most Americans can feel that something has gone horribly wrong.  The warning signs are all around us, and conditions are getting worse with each passing day.

Even Warren Buffett can sense that a really big shift is coming.  During the first three quarters of this year he sold off a whopping “$28.7 billion of stock”

Warren Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway sold $28.7 billion of stock in the first three quarters of 2023 in a move that some economists have interpreted as ringing alarm bells for the American economy.

According to the company’s earnings, the Nebraska-based firm of the legendary investor and billionaire, known as the Oracle of Omaha, sold a net $10.4 billion of stock in the first quarter of the year. In the second quarter, it sold close to $13 billion of shares and bought less than $5 billion. In the third quarter, it sold about $5.3 billion worth of stocks.

As Buffett is considered one of the greatest investors of all time, as well as one of America’s richest men, his moves are closely observed and analyzed.

He didn’t make so much money by being stupid.

Buffett may not fully understand all of the specifics, but he realizes that something is up.

As our society crumbles, most of the population is not going to be able to handle it.

The suicide rate just continues to go up, and psychologists are reporting unprecedented demand for their services…

For the third consecutive year, many psychologists across the country say they are seeing patients struggle with worsening symptoms, many of them needing longer treatment times.

Those are among the findings of an annual survey by the American Psychological Association, released this week. The APA first launched this survey in 2020 to gauge the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practicing psychologists.

A majority of psychologists reported that more people are seeking mental health care this year, adding to already long waitlists. Over half (56%) said they had no openings for new patients. Among those who keep waitlists, average wait times were three months or longer and nearly 40% said that their waitlist had grown in the past year.

When conditions get really bad, we are going to witness a national emotional meltdown of epic proportions.

Where will you be when that occurs?

Global events just continue to accelerate, and 2024 is less than three weeks away…

Abandoned in space in 1967, a U.S. satellite started transmitting again in 2013
Nov 28, 2017

After learning that a satellite that’s been silent for decades has suddenly started sending out new signals you may, of course, suspect that the device has been hijacked by aliens now trying to communicate with Earth. Perhaps they’re warning us that they are planning an invasion!

It’s possible such thoughts ran through the mind of Phil Williams, an English amateur radio astronomer based in Cornwall, who was the first person to pick up the strange signals coming in as “ghostly sounds” in 2013. It turned out that the transmitted messages were coming from an abandoned LES1 satellite, but experts needed three more years to authenticate that this was indeed the American satellite that was “lost” in 1967.

LES1 was one of several units produced and launched into space by the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in between 1965 and 1967. These units, primarily designed for testing new satellite communication technology, were each labeled with numbers, running from LES1 to LES9.

As it turned out, the launch of the first four satellites did not go that well. LES1, in particular, failed to reach most of its planned objectives. Contact with the satellite was completely lost two years after its launch, and it has ever since revolved around our planet, staying entirely out of touch. Things went better for the later four, LES5 to LES9 units; the LES7 unit was canceled as the program was then coming to an end and there was no more funding for it.

What surprised everyone in 2013 is that LES1 started sending signals in repeats of every four seconds. Phil Williams has suggested that a failure in one of the device components is what perhaps caused it to start sending signals again.

The designated frequency of the signal is 237 MHz. However, the satellite manages to send the transmissions only when its solar panels are directly exposed to light. The signal reportedly ceases once the craft’s panels fall into the shadow of the satellite’s own body. “Tension in the solar panels jumps, and it can do the phantom signal,” Williams has stated.

It is probable that the satellite’s on-board battery is entirely diminished by now, so what powers the transmission of the signals is a bit of a mystery. As to whether LES1 poses any threat, there is apparently nothing to fear. This is yet one more piece of space junk spinning around in orbit.

What’s more striking is that the electronics used in LES1 were produced five decades ago and though they’ve been exposed to the severe conditions of space, they still appear to be in some sort of working order. And five decades ago is a long time in terms of the technology and its development.

LES1 was launched more than a decade before the probe Voyager-1 was launched into space to explore the outer realms of the solar system. And the electronics used back in the 1960s were way simpler than those used since, hence, perhaps, their durability.

The news of this out-of-date satellite coming back online after so much time staying silent has certainly surprised everyone within the scientific community. The satellite was launched February 11, 1965, from Cape Canaveral. It ceased sending signals just two years later. Still, this is not the only case of a satellite having been lost and then found again.

It also happened to the much more costly Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft (SOHO), which disappeared without a trace back in 1998. SOHO stopped sending signals while conducting its mission of observing the sun. NASA astronomers eventually located the lost craft and re-established contact with it as it was helplessly spinning in space.

In the case of SOHO, it was reportedly a glitch in the software that led to the craft’s malfunction. The satellite was eventually fully recovered, and it continued its set mission. But in the case of LES1, it all seems a lot more strange and way more unexpected as such an old piece of equipment had been long forgotten.

The Feed Bag Chicken Gumbo

pot of chicken sausage gumbo 1200
pot of chicken sausage gumbo 1200

Yield: 8 to 10 servings

Ingredients

  • 4 to 6 chicken breast halves
  • 1 cup chopped celery
  • 1 cup chopped green bell pepper
  • 1 cup chopped onion
  • 1 cup fresh or frozen okra
  • 1 cup fresh, frozen or canned corn
  • 1 tablespoon thyme
  • 1 tablespoon oregano
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 tablespoon Cajun Seasoning
  • Dash of red hot sauce
  • 1 tablespoon gumbo file (mixed with water until gooey)
  • 3 (14 1/2 ounce) cans diced tomatoes
  • 2 cups uncooked rice

Instructions

  1. Place chicken breasts in a kettle with enough water to cover. Cook until done, about 20 minutes. Remove chicken to a platter. Strain chicken broth.
  2. Return broth to kettle. Add celery, green pepper, onion, okra, corn, thyme, oregano, garlic powder, Cajun Seasoning, hot sauce and gumbo fil paste. Bring to a rolling boil.
  3. Chop chicken into bite-size pieces and return to kettle. Add tomatoes. Bring back to boil. If soup is too thick, add chicken broth.
  4. Cook rice according to package directions.
  5. To serve, place desired amount of rice in serving bowl. Add gumbo.
  6. Serve immediately.

What is the dumbest life decision you’ve seen somebody makes?

“Susan Shannon trying to rip off her old friend”

52-year-old Washington woman, Susan Shannon (pictured below), wanted to destroy the life of her old friend, a successful US Army colonel, David Riggins, and possibly make some big cash out of her bogus claims, but she never expected the outcome of her decisions.

In 1986, Sussan and Riggins were both cadets at West Point, the U.S. military base in New York. While Sussan dropped out of the military, Riggins excelled. But just before he received a major promotion in 2013, Sussan started dropping bombs on her blog which haunted Riggins.

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image 88

In her blog posts, she claimed she was brutally r-aped by Riggins while the two were cadets. Her claims got to the authorities leading to Riggins’s dismissal, this hurt him badly because he was just about to receive a life-changing promotion when the chaos started.

Once he left the military, Riggins fought back and sued her for defamation. Following several probing, investigators discovered that Sussan had made everything up.

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image 87

She was asked to pay $8.4 million in damages to Riggins: $3.4 million in compensatory damages for hurting his reputation and lost wages, and $5 million in punitive damages. This will keep her a pauper for life.

More:

How Susan Shannon Destroyed Colonel David Riggins’ Career

What do you regret not buying when you had the opportunity?

In the fall of 2008, a few months into the Great Recession, my family was actually in a pretty good spot, financially. My wife and I were both working full time, we were renting an apartment, and we had only one kid at the time. We were saving to buy a house.

One night, I convinced my wife that we would be stupid if we didn’t take advantage of the stock market crash. I’d been interested in purchasing stocks, we had about $30,000 in savings for our house, and stocks were at near record lows. She agreed to let me spend just $1,000 on stocks.

The idea was to start with $1,000, and buy a few more stocks each year. We never followed through with that. We ended up opening college funds for our kids and IRAs for ourselves instead, but my original stock account from that night still remains.

I considered buying some stock in Apple. I was still a PC user then, but I really liked my iPod. I wanted to purchase stocks in companies whose products I used.

But I decided against Apple. I went with Disney and a few other companies instead.

My original $1,000 investment is worth about $3,500 today.

The day I decided against Apple stock, it was selling for around $13 a share. I could have bought 77 shares for $1,000 that day.

Today, those shares would be worth almost $16,000.

Had we skipped the house and put all of our savings into Apple shares that day, we could have sold all of that Apple stock today and bought a half-million dollar house in cash.

Oh well.

What was a Christmas bonus you got from your company that made you speechless?

I was downsized from a company I had been with for a pretty long time. Every year I would work really hard to make my goals so my bonus would be maxed. The cap was $1000. The CEO of the company had 4 houses, several race horses, and 3 private jets. The company made a ton of money. I moved on to another, much smaller company about the middle of September the same year. Needless to say, my bonus that I had been working for most of the year evaporated. I didn’t give it much thought beyond just being grateful I found another job that paid me equally. Christmas came around and I didn’t think much about it because nobody had ever mentioned anything about bonuses and I had only been there about 4 months. The last payday before Christmas the CFO popped in and just casually asks everyone if they’d received their bonus, tells everyone not to eat too much, and he’ll see us all next year. I didn’t even bother to look up. During lunch a coworker asked me what I was going to do with my Christmas bonus. I told her that I didn’t get one and that was to be expected since I had just been there a short time. She told me I should check my bank because the CEO was very generous and isn’t the type to leave someone out. So, I checked. There was my paycheck direct deposit and holy crap! Another deposit for $10,000 from the company! I later found out that mine was a gesture compared to some others. I’ve been there 8 years and counting now. The cash bonuses fluctuate more now than they did back then, but I’ve never gotten anything disappointing. I’ll be there the rest of my life.

Albert Einstein’s Strict List of Conditions for his Wife to Follow

Apr 16, 2019

Samantha Flaum

Albert Einstein’s relationship with his wife was a bit rocky to say the least. In contemporary times, prenuptials seem to be almost as common as vows. Before you walk down the aisle and say, “I do,” you first have to sign here, here, and here.

Contracts are not a new element of marriages. The act of getting married is, itself, a legally binding contract — provided it meets the requirements of the state or country in which the ceremony takes place. For example, according to New York City Bar, in New York, as in many other jurisdictions, “If either of you are still legally married to a former spouse, or do not meet the age requirements, then you are not legally married.”

Throughout history, marriage contracts have been negotiated between rich and influential families, with papers signed outlining the gains and losses of each party in the union — such as dowries payed and lands redistributed. To this day, you need to obtain a license to have a marriage legally recognized.

Today, a growing number of engaged couples wanting to avoid upset in any potential future dispute sign a formal prenuptial agreement — a private contract that both parties agree would be a fair way to split their combined assets.

It outlines dos and don’ts, haves and have nots, should the couple choose to split up in the future. They’re an increasingly popular element of a marriage, especially in the celebrity realm.

In some cases, postnuptial agreements come into play. These are agreements in which the couple draws up a contract after they are married, outlining certain requirements for the continuation and betterment of their union.

History provides an unfortunate example of a celebrity postnup that only served to make matters worse: it was written by Albert Einstein to his first wife, Mileva Marić. Einstein met Marić in 1896 at the Zurich Polytechnic, Eidgenossische Technische Hoschule, when she was studying for a teaching diploma in mathematics and physics. FemBio notes that Marić was the “second woman to finish a full program of study at Department VI A: Mathematics and Physics.”

Over the years, the friendship founded through their shared work interests developed and eventually lead to marriage in January 1903.

Their union was blessed with two sons, Hans and Eduard; but speculation exists, based on letters sent to each other, about a first child, born out of wedlock the year before the couple was married. Her fate is unconfirmed.

After 11 years of matrimony, though, the couple agreed that there was no longer any romance between them. Einstein and his wife agreed to approach the subject logically. They didn’t want to divorce recklessly, so for the sake of their children’s continuity, they decided to stay together.

According to Walter Isaacson in his book Einstein: His Life and Universe, Albert Einstein’s wife had some behavioral conditions to follow, which he outlined in the following list:

“You will make sure: that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order; that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room; that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.”

“You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego: my sitting at home with you; my going out or travelling with you.”

“You will obey the following points in your relations with me: you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way; you will stop talking to me if I request it; you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.”

“You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.”

Concise and direct, the list drives a hard bargain. It sounds particularly harsh considering it was issued from a husband to his wife. Mileva agreed to his conditions anyway.

Logic can’t dictate such a strong emotion as love, or lack thereof. A few months went by before Mileva changed her mind. Taking their two sons, she left her husband in Berlin and moved back to Zurich. They officially divorced five years later, having not seen each other all that time.

He may have been able to calculate the amount of energy contained in a given mass, but Einstein couldn’t write the perfect formula for maintaining a marriage.

Howling Chinese

I had a Chinese-English dictionary when I was in the ADC. And I studied it constantly. I would practice drawing the characters and memorizing the tones. I don’t really think that it ever helped me, but it did keep me focused on my goals and dreams on what I would do once I got out, and free from the USA.

For a short while, my father would xerox off pages from a learn-Chinese book, and later on, after he died, my sister bought me two introduction books of Chinese that I studied.

Every day, I had a routine.

I would sit on my rack from around 9am up to lunch and study Chinese. Then I would do my job, and come back and study again from 4pm to chow. Overall, I studied on average about 8 hours a day.

R 1
R 1

Of course, everyone made fun of me. But it was my way of coping and dealing. All of us did it. It’s just that my way was studying in Chinese. For others it was drugs, boxing or gambling for cigarettes.

Let the rest of the world howl. Perhaps it did or didn’t help me, but one thing for certain, it keep me focused on my dream. Perhaps you too have a dream.

Stay focused.

Today… some confirmation of my previous vision of Gonzalo…

Journalists Gonzalo Lira Has Died While Imprisoned In Ukraine

Gonzalo Lira was tortured, extorted, and reportedly has died in a Ukraine prison for just reporting the news. The US State Department refused to help Lira, a US citizen, because Lira’s journalism didn’t serve Kiev or the Biden administration. Here’s a quote from WSAU:

WASHINGTON DC (WSAU) – 55-year-old American journalist Gonzalo Lira has reportedly died in a Ukrainian prison after nearly eight months of imprisonment.

According to the Post Millennial, Lira was arrested by Ukrainian security in May 2023 after he was reportedly critical of President Vladimir Zelensky’s handling of the war being fought against Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine.

Lira’s comments included claims that Ukraine’s efforts to win the captured territory back have gone nowhere and their people are dying for a war that is already lost.

[1]

Footnotes

[1]

Report: American Journalist Gonzalo Lira Has Died While Imprisoned In Ukraine

He smells like pinecones and lust

Why is China the country of the future?

Chinese politicians have a grand dream: a global community with a shared future for mankind.

People all over the world are prosperous and living a happy life together. What a wonderful world it is. With the development of modern technology and the completion of automation and intelligence, humans can produce material conditions that provide everyone with a happy life. There is currently a lack of a system that unites humanity around the world.

China needs to first become a beautiful country and then influence the surrounding countries. Ancient China used this strategy. Ancient China first built its own country into a prosperous and strong country, and then neighboring countries envied China and learned about its culture and system. For example, Japan has sent more than ten batches of international students to study in China.

The foundation of a country is its people. If the people live a happy life, then the country is strong; if the people are poor and destitute, then the country is weak. Many rulers of countries do not understand this truth.

Food is paramount to the people. This is an ancient Chinese saying and the foundation of governing a country. When there are signs of chaos in the world, China will purchase a large amount of food. In terms of food safety, economically developed provinces in the east have begun to implement full monitoring of food production processes.

In terms of housing, the central government is implementing housing reform, which is a slow process.

In terms of transportation, China has built a national transportation network and has been continuously improving it.

In terms of cultural and entertainment, China actively promotes the promotion of justice, promotes healthy cultural information, and actively reports positive information. The network firewall successfully blocked junk culture.

I believe that China should first become a future country, and then drive countries around the world to become future countries. The the Belt and Road policy is the link between China and global human development, and also an opportunity for the development of countries around the world.

The PLAAF’s PL-17 AAM was caught on camera again, this time in a full loadout:

The PL-17 is special for two reasons:

  1. It’s the longest range AAM in the world at 400 km (estimated by British intelligence)
  2. It’s actually a ballistic missile. It doesn’t fly straight towards the target. Instead, it flies into the stratosphere where there’s much less air friction and cruises there to the target. Then it trades its potential energy (altitude) into kinetic energy in its terminal attack phase.

Like most high-end BVR AAMs, the PL-17 has both active radar and optical guidance. The optical guidance makes it much harder to jam when it has entered its terminal phase and can actually see the target.

This latest photo showing four J-16s is special because it demonstrates just how much the J-16 can carry: at least two PL-17s in addition to a bunch of other PL-10, 12s and 15s. If it only carries the PL-17 and no other missile type, the J-16 may be able to carry 3 or even 4 missiles. This proves the J-16’s value as a “missile truck”, similar to the USAF’s F-15EX.

The difference is that the USAF has no equivalent to the PL-17. The longest range American AAM is the AIM-120D, with an estimated range of 160 km. The only other American missile to challenge the PL-17’s range is the AIM-260 JATM, which is still in development.

In a head to head engagement, the PL-17 gives the PLAAF a significant first strike advantage against the enemy’s key aerial assets, like AWACS, EW, etc. Loss of these aerial force multipliers would be crippling, and force the USAF to retreat or be destroyed before their radars can even spot their Chinese counterparts. The Americans would effectively be blind.

The only other nation to field a AAM of comparable capability is the Russians with their Vympel R-37, a hypersonic (Mach 5) missile with a range of close to 400 km. Unlike the PL-17, it is not a ballistic weapon, and flies straight for the target instead. It’s also much thicc-er than the PL-17. Combat usage of the R-37 in Ukraine has demonstrated its ability to keep Ukrainian fighters from closing the distance against their Russian counterparts for fear of getting hit by this monster.

image 26
image 26

MiG-31 armed with four R-37s. Keep in mind that the MiG-31 is more a bomber than it is a fighter.

What it is really about

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/33RYOGqQRqg?feature=share

The War In Ukraine Is Done

The Washington Post has produced a long, two part piece, about the failed ‘counter-offensive’ in Ukraine. It dispenses equal blame on the U.S. and British planning of the whole mess and the Ukrainian execution of it.

The bullet points from the first part:

Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine (archived)

Key elements that shaped the counteroffensive and the initial outcome include:

  • Ukrainian, U.S. and British military officers held eight major tabletop war games to build a campaign plan. But Washington miscalculated the extent to which Ukraine’s forces could be transformed into a Western-style fighting force in a short period — especially without giving Kyiv air power integral to modern militaries.
  • U.S. and Ukrainian officials sharply disagreed at times over strategy, tactics and timing. The Pentagon wanted the assault to begin in mid-April to prevent Russia from continuing to strengthen its lines. The Ukrainians hesitated, insisting they weren’t ready without additional weapons and training.
  • U.S. military officials were confident that a mechanized frontal attack on Russian lines was feasible with the troops and weapons that Ukraine had. The simulations concluded that Kyiv’s forces, in the best case, could reach the Sea of Azov and cut off Russian troops in the south in 60 to 90 days.
  • The United States advocated a focused assault along that southern axis, but Ukraine’s leadership believed its forces had to attack at three distinct points along the 600-mile front, southward toward both Melitopol and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov and east toward the embattled city of Bakhmut.
  • The U.S. intelligence community had a more downbeat view than the U.S. military, assessing that the offensive had only a 50-50 chance of success given the stout, multilayered defenses Russia had built up over the winter and spring.
  • Many in Ukraine and the West underestimated Russia’s ability to rebound from battlefield disasters and exploit its perennial strengths: manpower, mines and a willingness to sacrifice lives on a scale that few other countries can countenance.
  • As the expected launch of the offensive approached, Ukrainian military officials feared they would suffer catastrophic losses — while American officials believed the toll would ultimately be higher without a decisive assault.

And from the second part:

In Ukraine, a war of incremental gains as counteroffensive stalls (archived)

Key findings from reporting on the campaign include:

  • Seventy percent of troops in one of the brigades leading the counteroffensive, and equipped with the newest Western weapons, entered battle with no combat experience.
  • Ukraine’s setbacks on the battlefield led to rifts with the United States over how best to cut through deep Russian defenses.
  • The commander of U.S. forces in Europe couldn’t get in touch with Ukraine’s top commander for weeks in the early part of the campaign amid tension over the American’s second-guessing of battlefield decisions.
  • Each side blamed the other for mistakes or miscalculations. U.S. military officials concluded that Ukraine had fallen short in basic military tactics, including the use of ground reconnaissance to understand the density of minefields. Ukrainian officials said the Americans didn’t seem to comprehend how attack drones and other technology had transformed the battlefield.
  • In all, Ukraine has retaken only about 200 square miles of territory, at a cost of thousands of dead and wounded and billions in Western military aid in 2023 alone.

All those points played a role.

My personal ones:

  • Both, the Ukraine and its supporters, systematically underestimated Russian capabilities. (And still do.)
  • Satellite reconnaissance showed Russian defense preparations on the level of the Battle of Kursk. There the German Wehrmacht, after way too long preparations, failed to break the Russian lines. The unlearned lesson from 1943: When you see defense lines like these, try something else.
  • Battle simulations and table top war games have a ‘moral factor’ input for each side. Setting your sides’ factor to 10 and the enemy’s factor to 0, as the U.S. and UK obviously did, will let you win every time – but has no relation to reality.
  • Air support would not have helped. Russian air defenses are too strong to counter it.
  • The decision to use barely trained, ‘green’ brigades without any fighting experience was a serious error.
  • Not to use smoke grenades and, in general, means of deception, was not reasonable at all.
  • To have half of the new troops, the more experienced part, fight Zelenski’s already lost battle for Bakhmut, was a major political mistake.

All together made sure that the so called ‘counter-offensive’ never had a chance to take off. The bickering now is just an attempt to put the blame for the failure onto the other side of the table.

The Ukrainian General Zaluzny has learned from the battle. He now puts up somewhat realistic numbers to let the U.S. understand how small its chances to win really are:

Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhnyi asked Pentagon chief for 17 million rounds of ammunition

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was informed during a visit to Kyiv that Ukraine needed 17 million rounds of ammunition and that US$ 350-400 billion worth of assets and personnel would be required to liberate the country.

Quote from a senior Defence Forces official: “Austin was told 17 million rounds of ammunition were needed. He was stunned, to put it mildly, because you wouldn’t be able to collect that many rounds in the whole world.”

The Ukrainian army does not have the ten thousands of barrels required to fire 17 million rounds. Nor has it the men to feed those imaginary guns.

Zaluzny obviously thinks that the war is lost and done with. And that it is time for politics that pursue peace:

In addition, according to a source, Austin also said Zaluzhnyi had complained privately to American generals about interference from the President’s Office [..]: “Austin told us privately that Zaluzhnyi was always complaining to his generals about the President’s Office and how it obstructed him. Well, obviously the president learned about those conversations too. And that isn’t conducive to trust.”

However, the President’s Office is inclined to believe that Zaluzhnyi’s dismissal would facilitate his political career.

It is high time for the Biden administration to wrap this whole thing up. Do the usual thing: declare victory, leave and forget-about-it.

Gilbert Doctorow muse about ways to do that:

Seymour Hersh, Anatol Lieven and the desperate DC gambit to end hostilities in Ukraine while claiming ‘victory’

Whatever happens thereafter will be left for the footnotes.

Posted by b on December 5, 2023 at 7:09 UTC | Permalink

Jingling, tingling

Group: nmixx

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/t_iy_VZkwjo?feature=share

When World War 3 Breaks-Out and Arrives HERE in the USA, Liberals, Progressives, Socialists, Marxists, Should be BULL-WHIPPED TO DEATH By Their conquerors

World Hal Turner 05 December 2023

On my radio show tonight, I was asked by a caller what is likely to happen to New England when WW3 Breaks out and all the military-age illegals who are embraced by liberals, take-up arms and attack us?  I told him the Liberals should be BULL-WHIPPED TO DEATH because their efforts at Gun-Control have left them unable to defend themselves, and the illegals they embrace, will be their conquerors.

I went on to point out that Liberals, Progressives, Socialists, Marxists and their ilk are too stupid to be considered Americans anyway, so losing them won’t amount to much.  The trouble with these dimwits is that they spread their idiocy to others, which will endanger the rest of the country.

Your thoughts about my remarks?  Subscribers can offer their thoughts below in the Subscriber comment area.

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What are some “never underestimate” facts of life?

  1. Be wary of people who try to sell their pity as kindness. They may pretend they feel compassion toward you by supporting you during difficult times, but in reality, all they can offer you is some pity you never asked for.
  2. Hard work will always beat talent. If you are talented at something, you already have a head start in life, but if you never combine it with hard work, you might as well never had it in the first place.
  3. The power of little gestures. Even a little gesture of kindness can make someone’s day more than you can imagine.
  4. The destructive nature of negative words. Whether you want it or not, you end up taking some words to heart automatically, so it’s important not to use words as weapons that can inflict damage on someone.
  5. Sometimes it may seem like life only gets harder. But even then, it’s important not to lose hope for a better future because if you lose hope, you lose everything.
  6. You can’t expect a person to change for you because in most cases, they rather cling to their old ways than find new ones. And maybe you’d not want to change them anyway unless they are a toxic person doing all the wrong things.
  7. It’s better to have no one to depend on rather than being surrounded by fake people who pretend they care for you when in reality they secretly celebrate all your downs in life.
  8. Don’t stay friends with someone who doesn’t know how to be happy for you. They are not your real friend.
  9. You have to leave your comfort zone in the present to secure a comfortable future.
  10. Betraying your intuition means betraying your best interests. When your intuition gives you an awful feeling about something, retreat. It’s like a danger alert that is ingrained in human biology from birth, so it’s important to make use of it by not missing any of those danger alerts.

An ifn’ I don’t…

Magnolia Bar and Grill Crawfish Etouffee

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03ae3a3506889cf3a0a0b4a4eb9b0f85

Ingredients

  • 1 pound cleaned crawfish tails
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
  • 1 medium onion, chopped fine
  • 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
  • 2 thin slices lemon
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • 1 tablespoon green onion
  • 1 tablespoon parsley

Instructions

  1. Use a saucepan with a tight fitting lid to “Etouffee”.
  2. Season crawfish tails with salt and pepper; set aside.
  3. Melt butter, add chopped onion, and cook over medium heat until onions are tender.
  4. Stir in flour, blend well, and add 3/4 cup water, lemon and tomato paste, and cook slowly for about 20 minutes, and add a little more water occasionally.
  5. When sauce is done, add crawfish tails; cover with lid. Cook for 8 minutes.
  6. Season again, to taste.
  7. Add green onion and parsley; cook 2 minutes longer.
  8. Serve over steamed rice.
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218597e0e82391b36524cb31e96401e4

What is the most touching act of kindness you have ever witnessed or experienced?

This is the story of a deaf and blind man who decides to fly – alone – across the country to visit his sister.

When he arrives on board, the stewardesses have difficulty communicating with him because although he manages to say a few words here and there, he cannot hear them. To help himself, he touches their face and hand in hopes of understanding their intention, but the task seems difficult.

His neighbor gave up his seat (on the aisle), prepared drinks for him, sugar in coffee, spoon, etc. and led him to the toilet, but it was impossible to communicate with this man.

Then the flight crew had an idea: why not call to see if any of the passengers on board knew sign language?

Here comes this 15 year old girl, she is dyslexic and it was her learning difficulty that made her decide to learn sign language rather than any other:

image 25
image 25

Very patiently, the girl began to “sign” each letter against the passenger’s hand, which allowed them to start a conversation.

This teenager did not skimp on making this man’s journey much more pleasant and comfortable than if he had been locked in his solitude.

The passenger who took the photo and witnessed the scene described the moment as very moving and it’s easy to understand why.

What is the strangest reason someone else has seen you naked?

TLDR: I was seen totally nude, mid-coitis, by 4 male police officers with guns drawn, shouting “Krystal are you safe? This is the POLICE! Krystal are you ok?” And I am not Krystal. Lol.

I dated (for the brief period of 5 weeks) a very unstable male. I knew at 4 weeks there was no way we would last, he had already become physically violent and had about ten older women believing he was their knight in shining armor, via the internet. He explained that they sent him money, that was why he even talked to them. Gag me with a keyboard, right? He decided to stalk me after I ended things. Fast forward a few months. I was getting to know a different male, and we decided to get physical, but in a non-violent manner, if you catch my drift. Right in the heat of the moment I hear the back door of the house being violently kicked open. Followed by shouts of “Krystal are you safe? POLICE!! Krystal, are you ok?” Then the bedroom door opened and 4 male police officers with guns drawn burst through the doorway. My name is not Krystal, my roommate (who was out of town) is Krystal.. I hastily climbed off of my guest and threw on a large hoodie then ushered the officers out of the house. Turns out my stalker ex had called the police pretending to be the next door neighbor, claiming it sounded as if a violent altercation was taking place and they were worried their dear neighbor Krystal was being murdered. He actually (convincingly) made his voice sound like a little old lady. Just in case it wasn’t known, the cops are able to see what number a call is made from even when the person tries to hide it with an app like TextNow. They told me the # that had made the call and I was able to show them it was in fact my ex’s phone number. One of the officers saw the blip of a text message while I was showing them that it was his number and asked to see the conversation. All of this while wearing a hooded sweatshirt that came down to my mid-thigh. Needless to say they went and arrested him for calling in a fake emergency, stalking, threatening to cause bodily harm (the messages said that he was going to dismember me after strangling me) and a few other charges like harassment.

What was the time you realized your life is messed up?

When i took 8 Valium on top of the 6 i took earlier in the day, then realized a half a bottle of whiskey might not be enough. When i woke up the next morning(??) on the kitchen floor soaking wet and covered with mud, i asked my wife what had happened. She told me that i passed out outside, then it started to rain. She couldn’t lift me, so she “coached me” for half an hour getting me inside and up 5 stairs. That night- i did it again until eventually i made it to a detox/rehab where i was placed on a 17 day Valium taper. I was later informed it was their longest ever. I called my wife after a week(??) or so and told her to throw out the weed i was saving that knew i was gonna need after getting out of rehab. I had terrible tinnitus and shook horribly for months afterwards. It’s probably not the worst. Other people’s stories may be far worse but, well, you asked. P.S. I’ve beeb clean and sober ever since-almost 7 years now. Thanks God, for being there for me, whether i wanted you or not.

Time

Time

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sWo-hN0-e8Y?feature=share

What are some of the best ways to find inner peace?

  1. Be willing to let some parts of you die. Not all of you is perfect and you know it better than anyone else. So don’t be afraid to let some of it go. After all, that’s what personal growth is all about.
  2. Don’t run away from yourself. This means facing your trauma(s), mistakes, and bad life decisions, no matter how unbearable it feels.
  3. Don’t suppress your negative thoughts and emotions. You don’t have to act on them but you need to acknowledge them lest they turn into an unruly beast ready to devour you any second.
  4. Come to terms with the fact that life is meant to be difficult. It’s a default setting you can’t change. The only thing you can do is to cope with it to the best of your abilities.
  5. Keep in mind that suffering is cruel, yet a necessary teacher of life that can make you stronger and wiser.
  6. Try not to stress about the things you can’t change. It will disrupt both your physical health and peace of mind.
  7. Know when to share your burdens with others. It’s admirable to take care of things on your own, but it’s just as important to open up to those you trust when life gets too much.
  8. Treat yourself with the same compassion you treat others. If you are nice and understanding toward your loved ones, you have no reason to treat yourself any differently.
  9. Avoid whining. It’s alright to complain every once in a while but doing so constantly will fill your mind with negativity you can’t shake and make you feel miserable.
  10. Remember that there’s more to life than being constantly happy. And you’d not want to be constantly happy anyway because you’d start taking happiness for granted. Your life would also become dull and uneventful, living like a character in one of those imaginary, utopian lands where everything is perfect all the time.

What do you think about people using food stamps to buy fresh seafood?

I worked as a courier for about 9 years. During that time, I never made more than $20,000 a year. More like I averaged around $18K.

A lot of my courier brothers were supporting families on that sort of income and they qualified for SNAP and some other food stamp like benefits.

Occasionally, they would save their nickels and then buy steaks and all the fixings for their family. Not often, but maybe every other Blue Moon they would do something nice for dinner.

These guys busted their asses 10–12 hours a day with no benefits, no Healthcare, no retirement and no paid holidays. They worked in the rain, in the cold and snow, they worked in ice storms and 115degF heat.

So what do I think about them using their hoarded nickels to buy a Lobster or some good Crab for the family once in a while? I think it’s none of your fucking business.

What is something that someone told you that made you immediately realize that the crazy story they were telling you was actually true?

A guy I worked with back in the mid 80’s, had a reputation as a bit of a fantasist. He was a large, very over weight, half Chinese guy, figure like a sumo wrestler. Said he was a karate instructor, played drums in a band amongst a lot of other ourlandish claims. Said his dad was a friend of the Kays, and was the last man sentenced to hang in England. He was late to work a lot and always had the oddest excuses. One week he was late every day because, he said, the papers kept sending reporters around to interview him, because they were making a documentry about his dad. Every one chuckled about that one. Then a few weeks later, I was watching TV, and it was about this guy who had murdered someone. I had missed the beginning. This bit showed the mans wife visiting him in prison. She was Chinese, and had her little chubby boy with her. I looked the program up the the TV guide and yes, it was about his dad. A few weeks later I was at a school fete and he was there, with his karate pupils doing a demonstration, and later on his band played

Oct 7 ‘Disinfo’ Org Founded By Top Jewish Lobbyists – Full Scale Propaganda Effort

World Hal Turner 05 December 2023

The largest Jewish Groups are forming what they call the Oct 7 ‘Disinfo’ Organization, to spin the events of that day, and shape the narrative. Even casual observers are calling this a full scale propaganda effort.

The most powerful Jewish interest groups in the US have gotten together to form the 10/7 Project – an effort to combat “Jewish hate in America and the world” and to dispel “myths” about the day’s events.

The organization will fund a centralized communications operation to feed mainstream newsrooms with ‘fact-based information’ about the war, and will also release a daily newsletter to inform news outlets what is being ‘underreported.’

It will be the biggest unified effort from the Jewish lobby in recent memory, with the American Jewish Committee (AJC), The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations working together.

Why are there no stupid people in Chinese politics?

Of course there are. But these people are weeded out by merciless competition.

The ones that rise are tested every step of the way, and only the best survive the climb.

That’s what competition looks like in a 1.4b society.

Chinese politicians who attend the Two Sessions are not chosen because they’re tall, good-looking or give nice speeches. They are chosen for exceptional performance over the sum total of their careers. Each person wields considerable influence or power in their professional or personal capacity. That’s why they are selected as the people’s representatives. Selection is largely immune from the influence of money.

Who Is Really Behind The Mass Slaughter In Gaza?

Who is really behind the Israeli mass slaughter of the people of Gaza?

Here is the answer to that question:

Israel’s dependence on the United States was stated bluntly by retired IDF Maj. General Yitzhak Brick in an interview earlier this week.

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

Period.

Posted by b at 8:00 UTC | Comments (225)

What professions do you know from the past that have almost disappeared today?

The list of jobs is endless, I am not sure that all of them were professions. 40 years ago, I read an article about buying stocks, and it said buy quality, but understand the changes in the market. They talked about something that had happened 40 before I was born. Evidently a well known banker and investor said, that it wouldn’t hurt to buy a little stock in these new fangled automobiles, but keep the majority of your money, in something solid, like a good buggy whip manufacturing company. Fads will come and go, but you will always need a good buggy whip. He said that because buggy whips had been made for two thousand years, and it wasn’t going to change.

In my life time I saw the job of tinker disappear, he was someone, who could fix anything, if your glasses broke, if your electric frying pan broke, he could fix it. If you wore a hole in a pot, he would braze it, often they came door to door. We had door to door Fuller brush salesmen, sold brushes door to door. Milkmen delivered dairy products door to door. The bread man delivered baked goods door to door. Their used to be commercials for the Maytag repairman, and now its thrown out when broken.

Our little town still had a livery service when I was a kid, they looked after your horses when you came to town, but by my time, they mostly stored cars.

Movie theater usher, who would bring you in and show you your seat. Elevator operators, I always thought it was such a cool job. You closed an accordion door, then closed the outer door, then shifted the lever to up or down, and stopped it when it reached the floor you wanted. Sometimes requiring some fine tuning.

I had a girlfriend who was telephone operator. There used to be girls that would wander around night clubs, selling cigarettes and matches. Hat check girls.

Brake men in the caboose of a train.

Dragline operator.

Signal men, telegram and telegraph operators at train stations.

Telex operators.

Gestetner repair men.

I can see just as many jobs disappearing in the next 20 years as disappeared in the last 60 years, as self driving cars and trucks become main stream, as digital finishes wiping out paper, as online services and stores replace brick and mortar. Etc.

What is an insane coincidence that you’ve experienced?

This happened about 15 years ago. My then partner came home from work very upset. Somewhere that day he had lost one of a pair of distinctive silver cuff links that I had gifted him for his birthday.

Probably a month later I was out in my car, driving an unfamiliar route in the countryside, when I noticed my fuel gauge flashing. I resolved to stop at the next fuel station which turned out to be in a small village. I pulled up at one of the three pumps and got out of my car to fill it. As I walked around to the side of my car with the fuel cap something caught my eye on the ground. Embedded in the top tarmac surface was something silver and shiny. I bent down to inspect it further and couldn’t believe it when I identified the item as a cuff link. Not just any old cuff link but THE lost silver cuff link. I used my car key to gently ease it out of the tarmac. Amazingly, it was undamaged.

That evening I asked my partner if he knew of the little village. He did recall he’d driven that route to a business meeting some weeks before. ‘And you filled your car at the petrol station?’ I asked. ‘’How did you know?’ he asked. I laughed as I handed him his missing cuff link.

I still can’t believe this incredible coincidence. I must’ve ‘guided’ to its location by an unknown force. It still weirds me out.

What is the best comeback you used on someone?

Until I retired I was a Plumber for fifty years. On this particular occasion I was working with a builder repairing the lead flashing around a chimney at the local church hall. To do the job safely we had set up a scaffolding that blocked the entry to the car park, but this should not have been a problem because the Church Commissioners had told us the church was waiting for the new vicar and no functions had been booked at the church hall.

We were working about 20 feet above the ground when a voice from below shouted “ Hey you!” I looked down to see a man in a grey suit and white dog collar. “Yes you!” he continued, “I have a Bible study class in twenty minutes and no one can get into the car park!”

I was surprised by his rather rude and aggressive tone but politely replied “I’m sorry, but we were told the church has no vicar and that there was nothing in the diary.”

“Well, there obviously is and you are blocking access to it. If you do not remove this scaffolding immediately I shall report you to your employers!” he shouted back.

It was then that I had a stoke of genius and replied. “ Very Christian of you sir.”

That immediately took the wind out of his sails and after a moment or two he replied, “Ahem, perhaps I was a trifle too hasty, carry on gentlemen.”

What is the rudest thing a guest has done in your house while paying you a visit? Are you still friends?

A guest came to stay for Thanksgiving, I had warned we had cats and dogs. They came anyway. They went to unpack in our guest bedroom. Half a hour later the husband came to me and said there was an issue. They had stripped the sheets off the beds and scrapped the mattress. Horror of horror there was cat fur. I immediately said” oh my, you can’t stay here, perhaps you should go to a hotel.” They did. As they are relatives we are civil but they are not invited to stay anymore.

The thing is, I knew the wife wanted to make trouble, I refused to fight and stayed calm. She didn’t win, I did.

Atheists: your five-year-old daughter is on her deathbed and asks, “Will I go to Heaven when I die?” How do you reply?

Let me take this out of your hypothetical nonsense, and make it real. During the 1990’s I was a professional clown. I did birthday parties, wedding receptions, school shows, store promotions, holiday parties, company picnics – you name it, Violet P. Lavender was there. I even had several client families, where I would come celebrate the same child’s birthday three or four years in a row.

In one of those client families, there was an adorable little girl (I’ll call her Emily for this story). I met her at a cousin’s birthday party, and then was at her 4th birthday. I was happy to be at her 5th birthday as well. Because she lived in an area where Violet was very popular, Emily saw Violet four or five times during the year, in addition to her own birthday. That particular cluster of families really kept me on my toes, because I had to constantly rework my show, since all the kids saw me so often!

One day, I got a call asking me to come visit Emily, it was months too early for her 6th birthday – and to please come to the Children’s Hospital. I had a habit of visiting the hospital whenever I had free time between shows. This was the first time I was asked to come for a specific child.

When Violet arrived, Emily had been put into a private room. I was met in the hall, and warned that she was very weak and was quite fragile. They told me she did not know she was dying.

So, into that antiseptic, mostly white room filled with machines sailed Violet P Lavender. A totally Purple Person, with balloons and magic and fun! Emily smiled and clapped and used her precious energy to laugh. Only two visitors were allowed in the room at a time, so it was just me, Emily and one of her parents, with everyone else watching through the glass wall.

I stayed for only about 20 minutes. While I was saying goodbye, she took my hand and asked the hardest question… “Violet, will I ever see you again?”

I did what anyone in that position would do – I lied. I smiled at her and said “Of course you will! I’m going to be at your 6th Birthday Party!” That beautiful child shook her head sadly and gently told me, “Violet, I’m sorry. I’m not going to have any more birthday parties. I meant, will I see you again, in heaven?”

So much for her not knowing! Her mother bolted from the room, leaving me ‘alone’ to face that horrible truth with her.

So what does the atheist in a clown suit say to a child who wants to talk about heaven, as she lay dying?

I asked her “What do you think heaven is like?” She didn’t know, but she was scared that she would be all alone “up there” in a big house, with no one to talk to ever again.

Now, why would she think that? It seems some well meaning idiot had told her that God had prepared a Mansion just for her, in Heaven, and that she would be going there soon. And a Mansion was described to her as “a big house” … just for her! She was scared by the idea, and she did not want to go, but she couldn’t ask her mommy or daddy about it because (and she whispered this) “they don’t know I’m dying.”

So I laughed and told Emily that of COURSE she was not going to be alone! Her house was going to be on a street with lots of other kids, and right next to her street is the street where all the CLOWNS LIVE! And right past that is a big park where all the puppies and kittens play! (That made her smile.)

“Will you be there too, Violet?” Stubborn child! She wasn’t going to let it go! I told her I wouldn’t be there for a long time, but I had friends there, and she could tell them she knows me. Also, in her house there is a magic TV that she can use to watch over her friends and family who are still alive, while she is waiting for us to all join her. So she could watch me and her Mom and Dad and anybody else she wanted, any time she felt like!

She was relieved. She said she wasn’t scared anymore. Then reminded me not to say anything to her parents, because they are already so worried about her being sick, she didn’t want them to get sad about her dying.

I made it out of the room and into a nurse’s station before I started crying.

Violet did attend her next ‘party’ … I made sure her parents were ok with it, and Violet came to the funeral with a huge bunch of bright balloons, to say goodbye.

So the answer to your silly hypothetical question is – in REAL LIFE, you tell that child whatever you can so that they are not afraid and give them comfort.

ANY OTHER ANSWER regardless of your personal belief in an invisible guy building fancy houses in the sky is wrong.

The emotional well being of a dying child is more important than any religious or philosophical argument you could make.

Express yourself

What are some psychological tricks to make someone like me?

1. Instead of responding immediately after someone says something to you. Wait a couple of second. This makes them feel like you’re really thinking about what you’re going to reply. And it makes you seem like a better listener. ( Don’t over do it ).

2. In a conversation, when someone is talking, nod your head in affirmation.

This will do so many things to their brain. First of all, it will give them that feeling of validation. It will make them feel like you’re truly listening to them and it is that feeling of validation that we search for unconsciously, that we got from our mom, and we’re searching in our partner, we’re searching in other people. So it becomes really addictive when you do this, and you make people feel validated.

3. When you’re talking to someone, always show the palms of your hands. This communicates to their subconscious mind that you have nothing to hide, that you are open, that they can trust you and you are their friend.

4. When you talk to someone try to match your body language and talk at the same volume and speed as they are.

This will tell subconscious mind that you are like them and they will trust you more

5. Ask people for their advice. Making them feel like their opinion matters. According to reasearch done by Katie Liljenquist makes them form a commitment to you and makes them like you more.

Example:

“What do you think I should order?”

“I think you should get the vegan burger, it’s really good”

“Ok, I’ll get that! thank you!”

“Aw I feel like I like you already”

What should you never say to an elderly person?

A younger friend of my grandmother once said something that made her as angry as I have ever seen her. The 35-year-old was trying to stress the fact that her challenges and worries were different from those of a 75-year-old. She had in mind that some of life’s problems are over by the time you are 75, which may be true. But she said it in a terrible way.

You’ve lived your life.

Don’t make this mistake. Life can be just as sweet no matter how many birthdays you’ve had. And there is no age at which life’s failure to be sweet on any given day is not painful.

The 80- or 90-year-old has not “lived their life.” They are in the process of living it, just as you are.

OMG!

Ukraine Presidential Advisor: “The West Came to this war with no pants on”

World Hal Turner 05 December 2023

Ukraine Presidential Advisor: "The West Came to this war with no pants on"

The Emperor is naked . . .  or so we now hear from the former Aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenski.  Alexy Arestovich tells media outlets now that “The West came to war with its pants down” when it dealt with the Russian Army entry into Ukraine.

2023 12 06 13 11
2023 12 06 13 11

Commenting to media outlets, Arestovich pointed out “The Americans cannot produce a million shells a year, and North Korea can. What kind of war and victory are we talking about, what boundaries of 1991?”

Of course, when he speaks of the “Boundaries of 1991” he is referring to the then-break-up of the former Soviet Union and the “Boundaries” for NATO that were agreed-to by then US President George HW Bush.   It was then Secretary of States James Baker who agreed, at a meeting, in the Kremlin in Moscow, with then Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev and then Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevrednadze, that NATO “will not move one inch eastward of the Elbe (River) in Germany.”

Of course, history shows that when Bush Sr. left office, and Bill Clinton came in as US President, that NATO boundary promise went right out the window.  The map below shows NATO Expansion from 1949, and points out who was in and who was not in 1990 when Bush promised Gorbachev “not one inch eastward:

Yet, as shown by the countries imaged in purple, that promise to the Soviets went right out the window in the late 1990’s under then-President Bill Clinton.

Here’s how it went:

U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).

The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels. 

The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”[1] The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”

President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (“I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests; but neither Bush nor Gorbachev at that point (or for that matter, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl) expected so soon the collapse of East Germany or the speed of German unification.[2]

The first concrete assurances by Western leaders on NATO began on January 31, 1990, when West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher opened the bidding with a major public speech at Tutzing, in Bavaria, on German unification. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn (see Document 1) informed Washington that Genscher made clear “that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’” The Bonn cable also noted Genscher’s proposal to leave the East German territory out of NATO military structures even in a unified Germany in NATO.[3] 

This latter idea of special status for the GDR territory was codified in the final German unification treaty signed on September 12, 1990, by the Two-Plus-Four foreign ministers (see Document 25). The former idea about “closer to the Soviet borders” is written down not in treaties but in multiple memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and the highest-level Western interlocutors (Genscher, Kohl, Baker, Gates, Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major, Woerner, and others) offering assurances throughout 1990 and into 1991 about protecting Soviet security interests and including the USSR in new European security structures. The two issues were related but not the same. Subsequent analysis sometimes conflated the two and argued that the discussion did not involve all of Europe. The documents published below show clearly that it did.

The “Tutzing formula” immediately became the center of a flurry of important diplomatic discussions over the next 10 days in 1990, leading to the crucial February 10, 1990, meeting in Moscow between Kohl and Gorbachev when the West German leader achieved Soviet assent in principle to German unification in NATO, as long as NATO did not expand to the east. The Soviets would need much more time to work with their domestic opinion (and financial aid from the West Germans) before formally signing the deal in September 1990.

The conversations before Kohl’s assurance involved explicit discussion of NATO expansion, the Central and East European countries, and how to convince the Soviets to accept unification. For example, on February 6, 1990, when Genscher met with British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, the British record showed Genscher saying, “The Russians must have some assurance that if, for example, the Polish Government left the Warsaw Pact one day, they would not join NATO the next.” (See Document 2)

Having met with Genscher on his way into discussions with the Soviets, Baker repeated exactly the Genscher formulation in his meeting with Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on February 9, 1990, (see Document 4); and even more importantly, face to face with Gorbachev.

Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the “not one inch eastward” formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” (See Document 6) 

Afterwards, Baker wrote to Helmut Kohl who would meet with the Soviet leader on the next day, with much of the very same language. Baker reported: “And then I put the following question to him [Gorbachev]. Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position? He answered that the Soviet leadership was giving real thought to all such options [….] He then added, ‘Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO would be unacceptable.’” Baker added in parentheses, for Kohl’s benefit, “By implication, NATO in its current zone might be acceptable.” (See Document 8)

Well-briefed by the American secretary of state, the West German chancellor understood a key Soviet bottom line, and assured Gorbachev on February 10, 1990: “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.” (See Document 9) After this meeting, Kohl could hardly contain his excitement at Gorbachev’s agreement in principle for German unification and, as part of the Helsinki formula that states choose their own alliances, so Germany could choose NATO. Kohl described in his memoirs walking all night around Moscow – but still understanding there was a price still to pay.

All the Western foreign ministers were on board with Genscher, Kohl, and Baker. Next came the British foreign minister, Douglas Hurd, on April 11, 1990. At this point, the East Germans had voted overwhelmingly for the deutschmark and for rapid unification, in the March 18 elections in which Kohl had surprised almost all observers with a real victory. Kohl’s analyses (first explained to Bush on December 3, 1989) that the GDR’s collapse would open all possibilities, that he had to run to get to the head of the train, that he needed U.S. backing, that unification could happen faster than anyone thought possible – all turned out to be correct. Monetary union would proceed as early as July and the assurances about security kept coming. Hurd reinforced the Baker-Genscher-Kohl message in his meeting with Gorbachev in Moscow, April 11, 1990, saying that Britain clearly “recognized the importance of doing nothing to prejudice Soviet interests and dignity.” (See Document 15)

The Baker conversation with Shevardnadze on May 4, 1990, as Baker described it in his own report to President Bush, most eloquently described what Western leaders were telling Gorbachev exactly at the moment: “I used your speech and our recognition of the need to adapt NATO, politically and militarily, and to develop CSCE to reassure Shevardnadze that the process would not yield winners and losers. Instead, it would produce a new legitimate European structure – one that would be inclusive, not exclusive.” (See Document 17) 

Baker said it again, directly to Gorbachev on May 18, 1990 in Moscow, giving Gorbachev his “nine points,” which included the transformation of NATO, strengthening European structures, keeping Germany non-nuclear, and taking Soviet security interests into account. Baker started off his remarks, “Before saying a few words about the German issue, I wanted to emphasize that our policies are not aimed at separating Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union. We had that policy before. But today we are interested in building a stable Europe, and doing it together with you.” (See Document 18)

The French leader Francois Mitterrand was not in a mind-meld with the Americans, quite the contrary, as evidenced by his telling Gorbachev in Moscow on May 25, 1990, that he was “personally in favor of gradually dismantling the military blocs”; but Mitterrand continued the cascade of assurances by saying the West must “create security conditions for you, as well as European security as a whole.” (See Document 19) Mitterrand immediately wrote Bush in a “cher George” letter about his conversation with the Soviet leader, that “we would certainly not refuse to detail the guarantees that he would have a right to expect for his country’s security.” (See Document 20)

At the Washington summit on May 31, 1990, Bush went out of his way to assure Gorbachev that Germany in NATO would never be directed at the USSR: “Believe me, we are not pushing Germany towards unification, and it is not us who determines the pace of this process. And of course, we have no intention, even in our thoughts, to harm the Soviet Union in any fashion. That is why we are speaking in favor of German unification in NATO without ignoring the wider context of the CSCE, taking the traditional economic ties between the two German states into consideration. Such a model, in our view, corresponds to the Soviet interests as well.” (See Document 21)

The “Iron Lady” also pitched in, after the Washington summit, in her meeting with Gorbachev in London on June 8, 1990. Thatcher anticipated the moves the Americans (with her support) would take in the early July NATO conference to support Gorbachev with descriptions of the transformation of NATO towards a more political, less militarily threatening, alliance. She said to Gorbachev: “We must find ways to give the Soviet Union confidence that its security would be assured…. CSCE could be an umbrella for all this, as well as being the forum which brought the Soviet Union fully into discussion about the future of Europe.” (See Document 22)

The NATO London Declaration on July 5, 1990 had quite a positive effect on deliberations in Moscow, according to most accounts, giving Gorbachev significant ammunition to counter his hardliners at the Party Congress which was taking place at that moment. Some versions of this history assert that an advance copy was provided to Shevardnadze’s aides, while others describe just an alert that allowed those aides to take the wire service copy and produce a Soviet positive assessment before the military or hardliners could call it propaganda.

As Kohl said to Gorbachev in Moscow on July 15, 1990, as they worked out the final deal on German unification: “We know what awaits NATO in the future, and I think you are now in the know as well,” referring to the NATO London Declaration. (See Document 23)

In his phone call to Gorbachev on July 17, Bush meant to reinforce the success of the Kohl-Gorbachev talks and the message of the London Declaration. Bush explained: “So what we tried to do was to take account of your concerns expressed to me and others, and we did it in the following ways: by our joint declaration on non-aggression; in our invitation to you to come to NATO; in our agreement to open NATO to regular diplomatic contact with your government and those of the Eastern European countries; and our offer on assurances on the future size of the armed forces of a united Germany – an issue I know you discussed with Helmut Kohl. We also fundamentally changed our military approach on conventional and nuclear forces. We conveyed the idea of an expanded, stronger CSCE with new institutions in which the USSR can share and be part of the new Europe.” (See Document 24)

The documents show that Gorbachev agreed to German unification in NATO as the result of this cascade of assurances, and on the basis of his own analysis that the future of the Soviet Union depended on its integration into Europe, for which Germany would be the decisive actor. He and most of his allies believed that some version of the common European home was still possible and would develop alongside the transformation of NATO to lead to a more inclusive and integrated European space, that the post-Cold War settlement would take account of the Soviet security interests. The alliance with Germany would not only overcome the Cold War but also turn on its head the legacy of the Great Patriotic War.

But inside the U.S. government, a different discussion continued, a debate about relations between NATO and Eastern Europe. Opinions differed, but the suggestion from the Defense Department as of October 25, 1990 was to leave “the door ajar” for East European membership in NATO. (See Document 27) The view of the State Department was that NATO expansion was not on the agenda, because it was not in the interest of the U.S. to organize “an anti-Soviet coalition” that extended to the Soviet borders, not least because it might reverse the positive trends in the Soviet Union. (See Document 26) The Bush administration took the latter view. And that’s what the Soviets heard.

As late as March 1991, according to the diary of the British ambassador to Moscow, British Prime Minister John Major personally assured Gorbachev, “We are not talking about the strengthening of NATO.” Subsequently, when Soviet defense minister Marshal Dmitri Yazov asked Major about East European leaders’ interest in NATO membership, the British leader responded, “Nothing of the sort will happen.” (See Document 28)

When Russian Supreme Soviet deputies came to Brussels to see NATO and meet with NATO secretary-general Manfred Woerner in July 1991, Woerner told the Russians that “We should not allow […] the isolation of the USSR from the European community.” According to the Russian memorandum of conversation, “Woerner stressed that the NATO Council and he are against the expansion of NATO (13 of 16 NATO members support this point of view).” (See Document 30)

Thus, Gorbachev went to the end of the Soviet Union assured that the West was not threatening his security and was not expanding NATO. Instead, the dissolution of the USSR was brought about by Russians (Boris Yeltsin and his leading advisory Gennady Burbulis) in concert with the former party bosses of the Soviet republics, especially Ukraine, in December 1991. The Cold War was long over by then. The Americans had tried to keep the Soviet Union together (see the Bush “Chicken Kiev” speech on August 1, 1991). NATO’s expansion was years in the future, when these disputes would erupt again, and more assurances would come to Russian leader Boris Yeltsin.

When the US and EU/NATO tried to expand once again by admitting Ukraine, Russia’s financial and military condition was far improved, and the Russian’s had enough of our perceived lies about NATO Expansion.

Russia told the West that Ukraine could NOT enter NATO, because Russia knew they were planning on placing US Missile defenses on Ukraine soil.   Those missiles would have about a five minute flight time to Moscow, which no country on earth could defend against.

Russia pointed out that the conventional warheads on US missile defenses were of a type that could be “switched-out” with a NUCLEAR warhead. This change could be done in about 90 minutes, and no one would even know about it.

That would put Moscow within 5 minutes of nuclear annihilation, and Russia would not tolerate it.  Russia made it explicitly clear they viewed Ukraine’s entry into NATO as an “existential threat” and they would use military power to stop it if they had to.  No one in the West took them seriously.

The West apparently doesn’t teach actual history to its military and political class anymore, because folks in the US under Joe Biden continued to press for Ukraine’s entry into NATO.  No one in the Biden regime realized that Russia meant business on this issue, and ALL of them were . . . . SHOCKED . . . . when Russian troops crossed into Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

(HT REMARKS: Older guys like me, who have a memory that actually works, knew full well the Russian’s were going to do this; they HAD TO.   It literally is a matter of survival for Russia, given the vast expansion of NATO during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.  I knew it was coming.  I said so on my radio show in the weeks leading-up to the entry.  I told my audience we were breaking our word and we had to stop.  I told my audience this could result in World War 3 and the Russians were serious about this.  No one – at least in government —  listened.)

Fast-Forward to December of 2023, and former Aid TO President Zelensky now says “The West came to the war with his pants down, he turned out to be a naked king, he will not be able to win this war.

I see fewer and fewer chances for the West to win in a clash with the global South and East.”

He’s right.

But the people running the US government and military, are so ignorant of history, so arrogant in their erroneous beliefs about the Russian Army, none of them saw this coming.  None of them ever expected to lose a war with Russia, and THAT is exactly, precisely, what is actually happening right now in Ukraine.  Ukraine is losing and will lose.  Period.  Full stop.

All because the US EU and NATO install people into powerful positions who are either ignorant of history, or whose word means nothing.   I suspect– it’s both.

Thanks to those people, half a million Ukrainians are now dead.   A smaller number of  Russians are also dead.   And for what?  NONE of this, had to be.

Had we honored our word, none of this would have happened.

Funny surprise

If your girlfriend hit you, would you hit her back? if so, why and if not why and what would you do?

I had a girlfriend that hit me all the time. I thought she was just being playful, until she snapped and said, why can’t I hurt you. Up until then, I thought we were just playing. I am 6′1″ 200 lbs, she was 5′1″ 100 lbs.

If you can’t tell that it was supposed to be painful, then you know how lopsided punching her back would be.

After we broke up, there were rumours that her new boyfriend was beating her. He was 5′6″ 140 lbs.

She asked me if I remembered her hitting me, I said I did, she replied, well he hits back.

So, if you can escape without being hurt, then you shouldn’t punch anyone, but if you need to punch someone in self defense, then you do what you have to do.

Simpsons Predictions For 2024 Are Insane

LOL.

Magnolia’s Spicy Shrimp, Sausage and
Tasso Gravy over Creamy White Grits

9736f4b1f1daa21f310fd30dc5b62ba6
9736f4b1f1daa21f310fd30dc5b62ba6

Ingredients

Creamy White Grits

  • 12 cups chicken broth
  • 4 1/2 cups coarse stone-ground white grits
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • Salt and white pepper to taste

Tasso Gravy

  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 1/2 cup sliced Tasso, cut in 1-inch strips
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 4 cups chicken broth
  • 2 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
  • Salt and white pepper to taste

Shrimp and Sausage

  • 1/2 pound spicy Italian sausage (3/4 pound of raw)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 pounds medium or large peeled and deveined shrimp*
  • 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
  • 1 recipe Tasso Gravy
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

Instructions

Creamy White Grits

  1. Bring the chicken broth to a boil in a heavy-bottomed stockpot or large saucepan. Slowly pour in the grits, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat to low and continue to stir so that the grits do not settle to the bottom and scorch. In about 5 minutes, the grits will plump up and become a thick mass.
  2. Continue to cook the grits for about 20 to 25 minutes, stirring frequently. The grits should have absorbed all of the chicken stock and become soft. Stir in heavy cream and cook for another 10 minutes, stirring frequently. The grits should have a thick consistency and be creamy like oatmeal. Season to taste with salt and white pepper. Keep warm over low heat until ready to serve. If the grits become too thick, add warm chicken broth or water to thin them down.

Tasso Gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat. Add the Tasso. Sauté for 1 minute, browning slightly. Make a roux by adding the flour and stirring until well combined. Continue to cook over low heat for 5 minutes, stirring frequently until the roux develops a nutty aroma.
  2. Turn the heat up to medium and gradually add 2 cups of the chicken broth, stirring vigorously. Keep stirring constantly until the broth thickens into gravy. Reduce the heat and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes to cook out the starchy flavor. Add the parsley. Simmer for another 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Shrimp and Sausage

  1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
  2. To cook Italian sausage: Place the Italian sausage on a baking sheet with raised sides. Place on the top rack of the 400 degrees F oven and bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until the sausage is firm and its juices run clear. Cool and cut into small bite-size pieces.
  3. Heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottom frying pan over medium heat. Add the precooked sausage and sauté for 2 minutes to brown slightly. Add the shrimp and sauté until they begin to turn pink-no longer than 1 minute. Add 1 cup of the chicken broth to deglaze the pan. Add the Tasso Gravy and one tablespoon of the parsley. Bring up to a boil and let simmer for 1 minute. The last 1/2 cup of chicken stock is to be used to thin the gravy if needed.
  4. Divide the hot grits between 8 warm bowls. Spoon the shrimp, sausage mixture over the grits. Sprinkle with the remaining tablespoon of parsley and serve immediately.

Notes

* If using large shrimp, allow 6 per person; for medium sized shrimp, 8 to 10 shrimp.

Attribution

Source: magnolias-blossom.com – Magnolia’s, Charleston, South Carolina

I enjoyed this

What office rule made you say “You gotta be kidding me”?

A family friend who worked as an FBI agent was about to get married in the early 1970s. Shortly before the wedding, he got a memo from the Director’s office, signed by J. Edgar Hoover himself, pointing out a policy to the effect that agents needed permission to tie the knot, and that he hadn’t received it.

His intended was Black (he’s white), and the Director wasn’t cool with interracial marriage.

He married her anyway, and they stayed together until death did they part half a century later.

They framed the Director’s letter and hung it on a wall in their residence.

As a car mechanic, what is the craziest discovery you have found on an automobile?

While working at a dealership in Arizona, I was doing a LOF on a late model Nissan, and got to checking the air filter as part of my routine workup on the vehicle. I popped the top of the air box, and casually lifted the filter out, and promptly slammed the air filter back in and closed the lid. I took a breath, walked over to my service manager, and told him that we needed to call pest control.

When the pest control tech arrived, he put on heavy gloves, and carefully removed a mama Western diamondback rattler and six of her babies, all alive and well in the air box. The customer mentioned that her car had recently sat for a few weeks while she was away on business. She politely apologized to me for the snake incident, gave me a nice tip (to cover my new boxers, presumably!), Paid for the pest control visit, and left.

To top this off, the next time she came in, she requested me. When I popped the hood, I was greeted by !!! Another snake! Thankfully, this time, it was rubber. Inside the air box (I was VERY cautious lifting the air filter out this time!), taped under the lid was a $20 bill with “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself!” written on it. Probably one of my favorite customers ever! She gave me a hug after I came in with a sheepish smile after I finished the oil change. I hope she’s still messing with people 🙂

My son punched a bully in his face at school today and his teacher made writing an apology letter his homework assignment. If I tell the teacher he’s not doing it, am I wrong?

Yes you are wrong.

Make your son write this letter

“Dear teacher, I apologize to the bully for his attacking me and forcing me to have to defend myself. I promise that if he attacks me again I will defend myself to the best of my ability..I realize that the school supports his behavior and wishes us to submit to being bullied, punched hit,kicked and ridiculed. I apologize to you and the school staff, for not being a submissive punching bag as you seem to want me to be.

sincerely,

(name).

EDIT

seems a popular post. I am guessing the problem is widespread.

How can you overcome your envy of people who are your age but are far more successful?

  1. Keep in mind that you are looking at someone who’s already at the top of the mountain. That is to say, you don’t know the effort and time they had to put into to get where they are right now. And how many mistakes and slips they had to endure to reach that peak.
  2. Remind yourself that the only person you should race against is yourself. It sounds easier said than done, but keep practicing and you’ll soon realize it’s not as difficult as you initially thought it was.
  3. Throw out all the comparisons out of the window. It tends to aggravate your envy even more. Instead, focus on what you can do to get your fair share of success as well.
  4. Don’t become resentful toward life or people who seem to have it all. Because if you do, that resentment will start living inside your mind rent-free, for your entire life.
  5. Be grateful that nothing is over yet. As long as you are still breathing, you have a chance to change something for the better. Everyone takes things at their own pace, so don’t put yourself down just because you fell behind in the race. We can’t all be Usain Bolts, after all. So stick to the pace you are comfortable with and take occasional breaks if you have to. And once you feel rested, keep moving because, in the end, it’ll be worth it.

What is the most condescending advice you received from someone who assumed you were poorer or less educated than them?

I was sitting on a bench outside a hotel in DC near the valet desk. I admit I wasn’t exactly dressed for style.

Lady imperiously demands I get her car and I tell her I don’t work there. She sniffs at me and scolds me for being a useless bum, a blight on humanity and if she had her way we’d be rounded up and put on press gangs to clean the streets.

About then the valet pulls up with my car, a late model BMW convertible. She started to say “that’s not my car” when I tipped the valet and drove off.

What’s the weirdest situation you’ve woken up to after a night out?

A coworker went to a local bar after work where a group from the office was going to meet up. It was a Friday so no work the next day.

He woke up in a strange bed at an apartment complex. He couldn’t find his clothes, car keys, wallet. He called another coworker to come get him. He had to look out the window and get the street intersection off street signs to tell his coworker friend where to pick him up.

When his coworker friend showed up he ran out with a sheet wrapped around himself. His coworker friend took him back to his apartment where a roommate let him in. He had a spare key for his car and he and his roomate went looking for his car. They found it in the parking lot of the local bar down from the office.

He spent the weekend trying to remember what happened to no avail.

On Monday while he was at work sitting at his desk when one of the office girls came into his office with his freshly washed clothes, wallet and keys.

She had taken him back to her apartment for an evening of love making, during the night of this he had gotten sick from too much alcohol, vomiting on his clothes beside the bed, then passed out.

She had gotten up that morning, cleaned up the mess, taken his clothes down to the laundry to wash them before ordering breakfast from a deli across the street. She returned to find him and one of her sheets missing.

She waited until Monday to bring him his belongings. They never went out again and had a strained office relationship for several years until he transferred to another office.

What was the worst decision you made in your life?

If I had a chance for a do over I’d take it. My life today would be totally different. I’ve never told or discussed it with anyone. I was 20 in college and I was engaged when I got pregnant. He didn’t want to start out marriage that way. He was all of 21 and also still in college. I didn’t have a job or any money. I thought my Catholic parents would disown me. I made the horrible decision to terminate the pregnancy. It took decades before I could forgive myself. He was right it was no way to start a marriage. It was a horrible way to start a marriage when he didn’t want to offer any emotional support for our shared tragedy. Nearly 10 years later we were finally blessed with a child followed by 3 more. We were married over 40 years. The roots of the failure began with I don’t want to start out marriage that way.

Are there any examples of geniuses who had children who were also geniuses?

A few. But it’s a very hard job to be the son or daughter of a genius. I’ve had the good fortune of getting to know several Nobel Prize winners and their families. And to talk with some of the kids about their point of view. For the most part, they suffered. Many Nobel Prize winners made no secret of this. George Wald was once asked whether he might donate his sperm to a sperm bank to make superior children. He answered in two parts, but only the first was charming.

He said they should have asked his father for sperm so as to make another George Wald. Then he went on to say that his kids were not geniuses but had become bums. Which was not only unkind, but also very unfair to them as they were both teenagers at the time, sensitive and awkward, but also sweet and certainly very bright. But I remember one dinner at his house where Elijah, the son, sort of bragged about having done something clever. Most parents would smile and congratulate him. But George said something along the lines of, “Why, at your age I had already discovered….” Why was there any comparison or competition?

Other genius parents had more sympathy for their kids and took the pressure off. But still, comparisons with the father’s legendary (and oft exaggerated) accomplishments made it tough for the kid. Richard Feynman was very kind and supportive of his kids,but his daughter, Michelle, was initially too intimidated to try anything academic. Nonetheless, Richard was proud of her and of his son Carl.

Linus Pauling (two Nobels) had several children and his son Peter did brilliant work on the structure of biological molecules using crystallography. The son contributed to the work that led to the Nobel Prize that went to Watson and Crick.

But my favorite example of genius father and genius son would have to be the Nobel Laureate in physics, Luis Alvarez, who contributed much to the building of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project, and his son, Walter. Working together they generated the hypothesis and found a testable way to confirm that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a giant asteroid hitting the Yucatan Peninsula 63 million years ago. And there are many other good examples (like Marie and Irene Curie, etc.). So, despite the psychological and social obstacles, sometimes the apple does not fall far from the tree.

What are some lessons every men should know?

  1. Boys turn into men when they understand that nobody cares about them if they can’t provide any value.
  2. If you find somebody smarter than you. Work with them. Don’t compete with them.
  3. Just because someone is “family” doesn’t mean you have to tolerate lies, chaos, drama, manipulation, and disrespect.
  4. Act like you can’t afford the bread until they find out you own the bakery. Stay humble.
  5. Becoming the best version of yourself comes with a lot of goodbyes.
  6. The quickest way to succeed is to start now and figure it out as you go. You can’t learn to drive in a parked car.
  7. Call me crazy but I believe I can have everything in this life that I want.
  8. Mention someone that is very hard working and you wish them nothing but success.

Boston loves the snow

Everyone in Boston loves the snow.

Who’d figure? Let me explain.

First of all, the great and grand snow squalls are called ”Northeasterner’s”( also called “nor’easter“). A weather cell hovers over the Atlantic ocean, and then migrates to Boston… then then unloads a shit-load of snow on everyone.

It is truly amazing. My last experience was in 1 April around 1997. Eight feet of snow in four hours.

Well, of course, the roads are impossible.

But…

If you have a snowplow on your truck… wait, because the local government will PAY YOU GOOD MONEY to clear out specific streets and roads. No shit.

It’s a great program, and works wonderfully.

Other states, such as Indiana and Pennsylvania should really give this system a try. Hint Hint.

Different places… with different laws and policies. Isn’t life grand? That’s why travel is important.

Today…

What are the most fascinating “weird but true” historical facts you know about?

I have an amusing anecdote involving Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy from 1943–1945.

The imposing naval figure above was a daring submarine commander in World War One. In the lattermost stage of his career he was responsible for fleets of warships, hundreds of thousands of personnel, and the mightiest war-fighting vessels of his nation. He reached the height of naval command and was covered in honors. He was even briefly Head of State.

But with a steep rise came an equally steep fall. After Germany’s surrender in 1945, he was in a Allied prison cell, awaiting trial at Nuremberg. To while away the time, one of Admiral Friedeburg’s adjutants taught him and his fellow prisoners how to play the game Battleship.

Of course, the game requires an opponent. Who else did he find to play against him but his fellow Commander-in-Chief, Hermann Göring. Those who once directed wars and decided the fates of nations, now directed fantasy fleets across pads of paper. Göring tried to sink Dönitz’s warships with as much gusto as if he was directing his Luftwaffe’s bombers against them personally, and he did not like to lose. Once the Admiral protested,

“Hermann’s cheating! If he doesn’t like where my shells are falling, he marks them in on different squares!”

You read that right: a Grand Admiral was reduced to playing Battleship, sparring against none other than Hermann Göring, who was a dirty cheater. If that’s not hilarious yet completely in character for both of them, I don’t know what is!

In the right way

CIA in China

The CIA I mean the NED is hiring and paying shot wages. No wonder we run circles around them.

But would you whore off your soul for such a pitiful amount?

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main qimg a028c7a1bc221d4e96b3777863364131

She fucked up

Creole Andouille and Shrimp Jambalaya

This jambalaya recipe will become an extremely popular dish with family and friends because it’s filled with tasty sausage, boneless chicken thighs, shrimp, fresh vegetables and rice…let’s be honest…it screams comfort food!

creole andouille shrimp jambalaya
creole andouille shrimp jambalaya

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (13.5 ounce) package Johnsonville® Andouille Rope Sausage, cut into coin-slice pieces
  • 1 pound boneless chicken thighs, cut into dice-size pieces
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 cup chopped onion
  • 1/2 cup chopped celery
  • 1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 tablespoons Creole or Cajun seasoning
  • 2 ounces tomato paste
  • 2 cups crushed tomatoes
  • 1/2 cup diced tomatoes
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • 4 cups chicken stock
  • 2 cups uncooked long grain converted rice
  • 1 pound cooked shrimp, thawed
  • Parsley and green onion, to garnish

Instructions

  1. In a skillet, cook and stir sausage and chicken in oil over a medium-high heat until browned; about 5 minutes.
  2. Add vegetables and Creole seasoning, cook and stir for 5 minutes or until vegetables are tender.
  3. Add tomato paste, cook and stir for 2 minutes.
  4. Add the crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, bay leaf, sugar and salt. Simmer for 5 minutes to let the flavors blend; stirring occasionally.
  5. Add stock and bring to a boil. Adjust seasoning and make sure it is a little over seasoned because rice absorbs a lot of flavor.
  6. Add rice, stirring well. Return to a boil, cover and simmer on low for 10 minutes.
  7. Turn off heat, uncover and stir rice.
  8. Fold in shrimp and cover for 20 to 25 minutes to let rice finish cooking and shrimp heat through.
  9. Garnish with parsley and green onions.

To make in a multi-cooker

  1. In the multi-cooker, add the oil, onion, celery, bell pepper and garlic.
  2. Select sauté setting, cook and stir occasionally until tender, 10 to 15 minutes.
  3. Add seasoning, tomato paste, tomatoes, bay leaf, sugar, stock and rice.
  4. Secure lid on pot and close pressure-release valve.
  5. Select rice/porridge setting and pressure cook for 7 minutes; use quick release to depressurize.
  6. Add shrimp.
  7. Secure lid on pot and close pressure-release valve. Select egg setting and pressure cook for 2 minutes; use quick release to depressurize.

High Value

Why does Argentina, a prestigious defender of human rights, accept to belong to the BRIC, where Russia, China, and Iran are denounced by Amnesty as serial violators of Human Rights?

Why do you care what Amnesty International says?

BRICS is an economic organization, and if you care about human rights, you should be upset at many countries which are allies of the west.

Your thinking is very muddled, and it is apparent that you let just one criteria be the judge of your economic decisions, when economics and politics are completely separate issues. The world is changing and it is important to be flexible.

A Chinese mystery

What has an employee said that immediately caused you to fire them?

The Unspoken Line

At the prestigious “AAAA” firm, Mr. Stevens was known for his level-headed approach and patience. As the Head of Department, he’d mentored many and had rarely ever lost his temper. But there was one incident that everyone in the office remembered.

A young intern named Jake had recently joined the team. Ambitious and eager, he sometimes came across as overconfident. One day, during a team meeting, a colleague, Mrs. Ramirez, proposed an idea she’d been working on for months. Instead of providing constructive feedback, Jake laughed dismissively and said, “Do you really think that old-school idea would work? Maybe it’s time you retired and made way for the new generation.”

A hush fell over the room. Mrs. Ramirez, a veteran with 20 years at the company and revered for her innovations, looked hurt but stayed silent.

Mr. Stevens, usually so composed, turned to Jake, his face stern. “In this company, we value respect as much as we value innovation. If you cannot provide the former, you have no place here, regardless of your skills or ideas.” By the end of the day, Jake’s internship was terminated.

It became a tale that echoed in the corridors, not as a threat but as a reminder: talent without humility means nothing.

I would do anything…

How do I politely refuse a request from my boss to go make her coffee or any other job that is not my responsibility?

Before I moved to the U.S.; I worked for my boss for 5 years. He was a big-ish deal of my company and I worked under his direct supervision.

It was a very normal thing when I picked my boss up from one vendor’s office at 11.30am to another vendor’s office for another meeting at 1.00pm. He used to ask me to get him a sandwich and a coffee so he could eat in the car while listening to my briefing about what’s the next meeting about. He could just tell me, ‘My flight arrived at 5.30pm Thursday, and I want to fly back Friday evening. I want to meet Mr.X for dinner’ and I would contact Mr.X’s office, try to arrange the meeting, make the reservation for dinner, and jot down a list of things Mr.X might want to discuss and the status of all ongoing matters for him. I also always carried an extra box of my boss’s name card, just in case he ever forgot and needed a backup.

I was hired to manage a computerized lottery system nationwide (43 cities). None of the above was in my job description. Yet, I did them gladly, just because I could, and I felt like I did make his life a little bit easier.

When I told him I would move to the U.S shortly, he offered me three extra months of pay added into the last paycheck, so I could have a little ‘runway’ to settle things down in a new country. At my farewell party with the team, he told me, ‘You’re not just one employee to me, you’re my brother-in-arms’.

While I totally understand others’ reasons for not wanting to be bothered to ‘make me a coffee’; I still think it won’t hurt if I go a bit further in terms of doing things for others.

Maybe I’m just too naive.

A real woman

Did you ever see karma hit someone who deserved it so befittingly that it was eerie?

When me and my husband split up my landlady decided to evict me and my son because she wanted to be able to rent the house for more money. We’d lived there for 10 years and even spent money out of our own pocket for small repairs. Our rent was only $400 a month. Went back a year later. The house is falling apart and is sitting empty. There was a workers permit laying on the front porch. It was really faded and I could make out it was for electrical work. I tried the front door and it was unlocked. 2 of the rooms looked like they had been half painted. You could tell no one had been in there for quite some time. The back porch had completely fallen apart. I guess she realized it was going to cost her more than she was willing to spend to get this old farm house up to the standard to rent for $1200. And now she is bringing in no income for the house. Bet she’s regretting kicking us out now.

Not staged

Do you think it’s fair for Arkansas to order that the Chinese-owned Syngenta to sell farmland in the state on the grounds that China is subject to US arms export controls?

Fair doesn’t factor in the U.S. vocabulary list at all. A nation who is the only nuclear bomb user don’t know the word fairness. A nation that used Agent Orange and Nepalm fire bombs on Vietnamese civilians don’t know fair. A nation build on the backs of ten of millions of African slaves never knew fair. An nation that become a nation after genociding and carrying out biological weapons of western influenza on its natives certainly don’t know fair.

Stop mixing up US and fairness. It is like oil and water. It will never mix.

Has the body of Shani Louk, the Israeli-German woman thought to have been kidnapped by Hamas fighters at a music festival in Israel, been found?

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image 9

Her skull has been found and identified by authorities.

Her body has not been found.

Reports are that she was brutally raped and beaten by Hamas soldiers after her kidnapping.

Which raises a huge question.

This is supposed to be a religious war.

A jihad against the infidel and usurper Israel. A war to restore control of the Middle East to Islam.

Islam has very rigid rules on sexual behavior, especially for women. In many societies they must be totally covered.

Yet the warriors or Allah are gang raping their victims and parading them around nude in the streets.

Why?

It is against their religion.

Did they receive special dispensation from Allah to rape and parade naked women around?

Or do they really not believe what the Koran says.

Or do they choose to disregard it?

Or do the rules only apply to women?

I realize here is a certain level of hypocrisy in all religions.

But the level here is deafening. To fight a religious war for Allah but violate all the tenets of the faith.

Shani Louk was one of the victims of Hamas disregarding their faith. Of being hypocritical.

I had to call the store…

What was a red flag that made you stop talking to a person immediately?

A new gal started in my dept. at work and she seemed really nice. We both started early so began talking over coffee before the others straggled in. After a couple of weeks though, I saw that the humor I had admired so much at first was really a thinly disguised nastiness. She would make fun of her handicapped husband, and then laugh raucously. Everyone else was joining in, but I recognized that what she was putting forth were her true feelings disguised as humor.

Some of the things she joked about was hiding her spouse’s wheelchair before she left for work, and then watching him on the cameras she had placed around the house while she was at work. (The man was blind and unable to walk, yet she thought it was so hilarious.) The saddest part was that the supervisors and bosses, as well as the co-workers all thought it was hilarious, too. They laughed even more when she showed them the videos she had recorded of his struggles.

I transferred out of that department as quickly as I could after that. I couldn’t stand to work with people who thought being a bully was funny.

What strange law did you accidentally break when you were in a foreign country?

I play flute, and years ago I spent four months busking around Europe. I had three encounters with police:

The Netherlands. Playing in Amsterdam, a mounted cop pinned me up against the wall of a building with his horse. The horse stepped on my flute case (open on the ground, full of coins) and broke it. The cop told me this was illegal and scared me to death; though I wasn’t hurt. After he left, while I was picking coins and stuff off the ground, some older men came out of the pub across the street. They helped me get everything and invited me into the pub to play in there, where they asked if I could play some Frank Sinatra for them (on the flute?) I did my best, and they were very generous.

Switzerland. I was playing in a square in Geneva, making a ton of money. Suddenly some cops pull up to me in a van and tell me to get inside. My travel companion was having coffee nearby and she came running over. The cops explained that this wasn’t allowed in Geneva, drove us to the outskirts of the city, and dropped us off. Message received.

Sweden. Playing in a square in Stockholm, a uniformed cop came over and listened while I ran through a movement from a Bach sonata. (First played straight and then the Jethro Tull version, part of my act.) When I stopped, he told me that that was beautiful but that sadly, it wasn’t legal in Stockholm. Then he put some kronor in my (new) flute case and wandered off.

What is your best dating advice?

For years, I often heard women complaining about the dating scene, and men who didn’t “Do what they say they were going to do.”

It struck a chord with me as I went through my 20s, and grew increasingly impatient with flaky friends and people who were constantly, and egregiously late to things.

I realized that the people who were the flakiest, and least likely to honor their word, were also the people who had far more problems in their life. Their careers were stagnating. Their relationships were turbulent and problematic.

Their lack of commitment to their word correlated to a bunch of other character flaws, for which they were paying a steep price.

I have since kept a strong radar pinging for people who fail to follow through on even tiny commitments.

My advice to you — and one that I’ve painfully followed — take a knightly approach to your word. This means saying no to things you aren’t sure you can follow through on.

If you explain yourself and say, “I don’t want to make a commitment I am not sure I can honor.”

They’ll usually understand and appreciate it.

This is especially true in dating. Women hate, hate flakey dudes.

Someone was stealing my lunch at work

What is the rudest thing that a new neighbor has done to you immediately after you had moved in?

My home burned down in 2012, end of January. Lost everything, including all my pets. Lived in a motel for 8 days, 5 of which my aunt gave me money for. My boss and cousin helped me find housing in a highrise, primarily seniors. Snoopy seniors.

I was sitting on my floor on blankets since I had no furniture. But I did have a TV and free basic channels from the building’s antenna. I could hear whispering in the hallway, right by my door. “Why’s she sitting in the floor? Why doesn’t she have furniture. Maybe she got out of rehab.” Typical gossipy old ladies. The maintenance guy hadn’t replaced my peepholes in the door and they were looking through the holes. I yanked that door open so fast one almost toppled over her walker. Told them I was burned out, was a working woman who drove many of them to doctors and church. I was not putting up with their shit. They took off down the hall. I put duct tape over the holes, which I hadn’t thought anyone would be rude enough to look through. Notified the office the next day. Both ladies got a letter about respecting privacy. They were on camera, peeking into my place.

What are the most blatant examples of double standards and hypocrisy in America?

Here we see an image from in interview in which actress Amber Heard “fights back tears” after telling about the horrific domestic abuse she claims to have suffered at the hands of her former husband Johnny Depp. She’s sad. She’s pitiful. She’s a brave victim, telling her story… only she isn’t. She’s bullshitting.

The truth is, Amber Heard has a history of domestic abuse. As in, committing it. Before Depp she primarily dated women, and she has a tendency of flying off the handle with them physically. Domestic violence between women, like female partners beating up female partners, is historically massively underreported. So is violence against men, by women. There’s shame, and there’s stigma involved.

She was arrested for it, before. Got into a physical altercation with an ex-girlfriend. Hit her, in public, in an airport.

And the case was dropped. And she got away with it. Because she’s a woman. A pretty woman. Better yet, a pretty rich woman. All the nasty stories about Amber Heard were carefully buried for years. Until the moment her then-husband, Johnny Depp, had enough and defended himself physically.

He then became “the bad guy”. The man with many wild and rocky relationships, who in spite of his substance abuse had never, ever been accused of abusing any of his partners… was accused by the woman who had a history of abuse. And yet she was believed, by default. Why? Because she was a woman.

That’s the most blatant double standard I’ve witnessed in recent years — you can literally be a woman with a history of abuse and beat up your husband, slap him, call him names, cut off his finger and defecate on his bed (Heard did all these things to Depp!) and the MINUTE he defends himself physically? He’s labeled a ‘wife beater’ and all-but blacklisted from Hollywood.

Christians, do you think funding missions in China will weaken the tyranny of the Chinese government?

As a Christian and a lover of Chinese culture and history, I have to tell you that there is so much wrong with the premise of this question that it’s scary.

True Christianity (not the “new evangelical movement” we see in America) is strictly Bible based. Bible based Christianity is not political. Bible based Christianity isn’t interested in overthrowing governments. Bible based Christianity won’t send you on crusades to conquer nations and set up a state church.

Understand that I’m not just talking out of my butt like most US politicians and popular evangelists. I actually devoted years of my life earning a degree in theology. I have studied the history of the Christian missionary movement. I have studied the history of Christianity from the New Testament down to modern day. I have researched and written books on it. I’m not trying to brag but I give my credentials to explain that I know of what I speak.

The very attitude behind this question is why Christianity finds itself unwelcome in some countries; because the government fears that that in allowing Christianity that they are importing a Trojan horse of imperialism. This very line of thought is what got Christians killed in China’s Boxer Rebellion. Some of those killed did seek to claim parts of China for their country. Just like the political cartoon of the day, nations gathered around China as if China were a pie to be sliced up in pieces. Is it any wonder that China fought against it?

However, some true Christians suffered in China during that time. I want to tell you about one of them. His name was Hudson Taylor. Born in 1832, he was English and had studied medicine at The Royal College of Surgeons. He became a Christian at the age of 17 and committed to go to China as a missionary. But not just any missionary.

At this time in his life he began studying Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Mandarin. He earned a degree from the Royal College of Surgeons, and he studied the ways of Christian missions of that time period. He arrived in Shanghai in 1853.

He was not well received to start with. And had arrived during Civil War. He wondered what he could do to better fit into life in China. You see, he wasn’t there to convert Chinese people to English ways. He wasn’t interested in making them more like the West. He didn’t want to destroy Chinese culture.

In fact, he chose to embrace Chinese culture. He began dressing as a Chinese man. He shaved his head and grew a queue, as was the hairstyle of the Qing Dynasty. He began living among the Chinese people instead of at the Christian missions. He learned Mandarin, Cantonese, Chaozhou, Shanghaineese, and dialects of the Wu and Ningbo. He even learned them well enough to give them a New Testament in their language.

The established English missionaries were horrified. It was considered improper for him to live this way. They very nearly stopped his marriage because of this. They thought him a fool, but he didn’t care. He renounced the ways of the English and said that if he had a thousand lives he would give them all to China.

He traveled to remote villages and gave them free medical care and free schooling. And yes, he preached the gospel. But he genuinely loved China and the people of China. He and his wife adopted orphaned Chinese children and raised them with their own children. He buried many of his children and his first wife in China, but that didn’t stop him.

As time passed, the people that he ministered to came to love and respect him and his family, as well as those who came to work with him. He would only allow missionaries who were serious about giving their lives to China. To follow Hudson Taylor, you had to renounce English ways and live as the Chinese lived. In dress, language, and custom. He was turning the English Chinese, rather than making the Chinese English.

His living children grew up and his daughters married in China, living among the Chinese all their days. Hudson Taylor remarried, and continued there. He survived the Boxer Rebellion, probably in part because he genuinely loved China, but many of his followers were killed—58 missionaries and 21 children. He refused to accept money from the government as reparation, though other Englishmen criticized him for this, but he maintained he had not come to take from China but instead, to give.

His health caused him to leave China for a time, where his second wife died in Switzerland. He returned to China again, in 1905. He died in Changsha, Hunan Provence and was buried with his first wife.

Hudson Taylor was the right kind of Christian missionary. He had no use for politics, and no desire to please the English. He immersed himself in the culture and way of life of the Chinese people. He preached Christ, yes, but he lived as a Chinese. He gave them hospitals, schools, and churches, but he did it while living among the people that he loved.

I am convinced that Christians today would find themselves better received if they’d leave politics and government and American ways out of mission work, and focus on loving the people of their chosen mission field. God didn’t call Christians to make converts to Westernization. God could care less about Western ways.

God isn’t interested in overthrowing governments or turning China into a democracy. Show me in the Bible where God said to establish democratic governments. Chapter and verse, please. God doesn’t care about your democracy. He said to obey government as long as it didn’t command you to go against the Bible. In the event that government and Bible clashes, God was ok with civil disobedience in that area, but that didn’t mean topple the government. You want to win people to Christ? Then stop trying to make them like you.

American women with crazy expectations

Why do some people carry grudges for a lifetime?

My Dad and his brother started a feud when they were in their early 30’s and kept it going until they both died fifty years later. No, I tell a lie. My uncle forbade my Dad from coming to his funeral, so he carried the feud on even after his death.

The irony is that neither could explain what the feud was about, so I am convinced that it was a trivial matter that just grew, and neither of these two headstrong men could let it drop because that would be to admit that their years of feuding had been a silly waste. In a sense, the longer it went on, the stronger the feud became even as the memory of the cause became weaker.

It hasn’t been a total waste though. My cousin and I are very close. It’s united us. It has also acted as a lesson to the extended family, a kind of example of how not to behave.

The brothers were both child refugees from the Nazis and had very difficult childhoods. They were both angry young men, and perhaps that explains their decades of refusing to go to family events if the other was going, the forbidding of the other’s name to be mentioned, etc. I don’t want to get into amateur psychotherapy except to say they were both nuts.

What’s the best thing you’ve done for your employee? How did he react?

I have an employee that I assigned to a huge deal. He not only made it. He absolutely killed it. He did far better than my wildest expectations. I called him into my office and told him to contact our travel people and to book a ten day cruise (all expenses) to anywhere he and his wife wanted to go. He was speechless and then didn’t understand how he earned it. I explained to him that his contribution to the company was invaluable. Prior to the cruise he was a Departmental Manager. On the day he returned he was Named a Vice President. I always reward high performance and talent. The cruise didn’t cost me a thing. He’s repaid the cost many times over. Did I have to do that? No, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

What is the USA gonna do now?

China’s SMIC and Huawei have surged ahead in chip technology, defying the U.S. restrictions aimed at curbing their technological advancements, Burn J. Lin, a former TSMC vice president, told Bloomberg in a rare interview. He believes ASML lithography tools that SMIC already owns will allow the company to advance to a 5nm-class fabrication process.

“It is just not possible for the US to completely prevent China from improving its chip technology,” Lin told Bloomberg.

Despite the U.S. imposing technological constraints via sanctions, SMIC has showcased notable resilience and ingenuity by developing its 2nd generation 7nm-class fabrication process. It also achieved yields high enough for Huawei to make plans to supply 70 million smartphones. SMIC allegedly used ASML’s Twinscan NXT:2000i litho tool, which is a deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography scanner that can produce chips on 7nm and 5 nm class process technologies. Exports of this tool to China were curbedby the Dutch government earlier this year.

The resolution that the Twinscan NXT:2000i features (≤38nm) is good enough for 7nm-class single-patterning lithography mass production. However, when it comes to 5nm-class process technologies, a finer resolution is required. To produce it, chipmakers can use double, triple, or even quadruple patterning, a lithographic technique that involves splitting a complex pattern into several simpler patterns, which are printed sequentially to achieve higher precision and detail in semiconductor manufacturing. Usage of multi-patterning is a tricky process that affects yields, and the amount of chips per wafer that can be used, so typically its usage is limited due to economic reasons.

But being limited to tools that it already owns, SMIC has no other option but to use multi-patterning for finer resolutions. Apparently, it has managed to achieve yields acceptable to Huawei. As a result, one can ask whether the U.S. government’s curbs against China’s semiconductor sector work.

“What the US really should do is to focus on maintaining its chip design leadership instead of trying to limit China’s progress, which is futile as China is adopting a whole nation strategy to boost its chip industry, and hurting the global economy,” former-TSMC R&D VP Lin is reported to have said.

Interestingly, the U.S. sanctions seem to have inadvertently opened the doors of opportunity for SMIC. The restrictions imposed on TSMC, barring it from transacting with certain Chinese entities, have allowed SMIC to step in and capitalize on substantial orders. This shift has facilitated SMIC’s enhancement of its manufacturing techniques and technological capabilities.

The really harsh reality…

Looks what mothers actions (when she was single) did to her 13 year old boy years later.

What is the least intelligent thing you’ve ever seen a tourist do?

Visiting Banff National Park, touring motorists left their parked vehicles to take photos of the cute Black Bears and their cubs. One stopped and before long a dozen more. The bears were grazing on a meadow about 100 metres (300 feet) from the road. Some brave individuals without telephoto lenses tried to get up closer for a good picture. A mama bear sensing a threat to her cubs could reach those touring idiots in 6 seconds, not even enough time to open the car door and get in, let alone run the distance back to their car. It took Park Rangers about 5 minutes to notice the “bear jam”, and they were screaming at everyone to get back in their cars and disperse the traffic jam.

I discovered that driving down any infrequently used Canadian wilderness road, when descending a slope, if the engine was turned off to coast down, half a dozen heads popped up to see why the sound had ceased. It surprised me that so many bears were hiding in the growth on the sides of roads, and how close they were. I would not recommend hitch-hiking. Another time just as I was passing, a huge timber wolf appeared and just stood there looking at me as I drove past. The paws were bigger than my hand, and in the rear view mirror I could see he was still looking at me for some time.

What do you think of the opinion that Australia’s trade tensions with China are its own fault?

Of course.

Basically Australia deserves it. Not Aussies. Many are smart good people. They lose a meal a day because your racist PM Scott Morrison prefer to have alliance with Mike Pompeo and confirm that Australia is indeed a China hater and Chinese hater. You harvest what you sow! Aussies promptly kicked him out of office. But the damage is done.

Not only China. But Asian especially South East Asian lost trust and faith in Australia. It sees them as a U.S. stooge and a colonial minded nation thinking that it is ordained by god to be white man run roughshod over coloured people. We Asians has a jolt of awareness that Australia don’t want to be part of and partner to Asia. It wants to be a U.S. dog nation.

Asia don’t want and don’t need a U.S. assistant sheriff! So Australia need some soul searching if it wants to be a real partner or a colonial outpost. Asia is watching.

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

HiI was working as a security guard outside a 24:-hour McDonald’s in Australia around 2am. I was about 21 and a small-framed woman working alone and it was a bit of a rough area so I had to be careful.

A group of 5 or 6 teenager boys turned up and were standing around in the car park trying to pick fights with any guy who looked at them sideways. Mostly men were ignoring them but they were getting bolder and I was beginning to think I was going to have to call the police before things escalated.

Just at that moment a small thin guy exited the building. Everything about him said scared. He held the food bag in front of him like a shield, he was looking at his feet and walking fast trying to avoid any conflict with the boys.

Predictably one of the loudest lads zeroed in on him as an easy target to hassle and impress his friends. He runs over with the usual, “What are you looking at? Are you looking for trouble?” bullshit and the small man just sped up. I started to walk over to rescue him, thinking he was about to be beaten up by the group if they were allowed to proceed.

The guy ignored all provocation until the boy laid a hand on him. I have never seen anyone move so fast. The man dropped the bag grabbed the kid by the hair and pulled him backwards off his feet in a move he had clearly used before. He proceeded to punch the boy in the face 4 or 5 times til the kid was out on his feet.

There was a moment of shocked silence then the guy gently put the kid down and picked up his meal. He suddenly saw me standing there in uniform completely frozen in shock. The guy had yanked the kid’s head back so hard there were clumps of his hair on the ground.

As soon as he saw me the guy was like a lost kid. He said nearly in tears, “He started it. I just wanted to go home and have my dinner.” I just nodded and said, “OK off you go” because I sure as hell wasn’t going to stop him, and he drove away.

The kid suddenly came round, with a split lip, bloody nose, and a few loose teeth I would think. He was a bit dazed and I asked him if he needed an ambulance or the cops. He said no so I told him and his mates to piss off.

I have never seen a beat-down like that. From scared little guy to full psycho and back again in less than a minute. The guy must have been on parole or something because he wanted no piece of that fight before or after.

As for the kids, they learned an important lesson about picking fights with people you don’t know. Sometimes the little guy is not the easy bet. Sometimes people avoid fighting for your protection rather than theirs.

As my grandfather used to say, “Beware the wrath of the quiet man.”

Updated Response: thanks to everyone who up voted. When the incident occurred I was only 21 and very unsure of how to respond. Unfortunately the law in Australia is very clear. Security guards have no rights to remove people from anywhere and calling the police is often the worst response. While many people have criticised my actions that’s OK. The story illustrates as much as anything the lack of support guards have.

For those who could have done better, this reminds me of another of my Grandfathers sayings, “Everyone knows how to tame the mad bull, except the man who owns him.”

Road rage going too far…

Do you have 100% trust and faith in your government(US)? If no, why would you want to ban civilians from owning guns if it’s our only defense against a government you don’t trust?

Name a time when people with guns have ever stopped US government overreach. Want to know a secret? Most people prefer tyranny, as long as they aren’t the ones being tyrannized.

People with guns didn’t stop government racial segregation and Jim Crow. They cheered.

People with guns didn’t stop the mass interment of Japanese citizens in concentration camps. They cheered.

People with guns didn’t stop the police or government from lynching Black men. They cheered.

People with guns didn’t stop the police or government from persecuting gay men and lesbians. They cheered.

See, normal people know your felusional Rambo fantasies about “mY gUn WiLl StOp ThE gOvErNmEnT fRoM tYrRaNy AnD iNjUsTiCe” is a self-serving lie. No it won’t. You lot line up on the streets and celebrate government tyranny and injystice, as long as it hurts people you hate.

Gimme a break. You need guns to stop government oppression…ah HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Riiiiight. Sure you do.

What was the moment you cancelled the friendship with your best friend?

It’s been a couple of years now but this happened with a friendship that began in the early 90’s so that’s a long time. We had a slight falling out and it was over something I said, but her response to it changed me feelings of close friendship with her. I didn’t mind that it made her made or maybe offended her but she said friendship altering things that were beyond what the issue was. There was damage and issues that had evidently occurred that I just wasn’t aware of. I wish she had talked to me about whatever was going on with her towards me but, she didn’t. So when the opportunity arose she gave me more than I was ready for. It was a deal breaker for me and I think that, that is what she wanted. This may sound odd…….I miss her because we enjoyed a lot of things together but I’m okay with it at the same time.

Must South Koreans and Chinese pay their governments for living in the USA?

Hi, Joseph Mcmanus. Thanks for the very interesting question.

I’m Chinese and I spent a handful of years living in the States.

During my time stateside, I paid rent to my landlords.
I paid school tuition fees to the school I was attending.
I paid all living expenses out of my own pocket.

At no time during my handful of years in the States did I have to pay the Chinese government for living in the US.

Unless, as Frosty Shoat mentioned in their answer, you’re counting the cost of the passport as an expense for living in the US. But I don’t see how that is an expense exclusive to Chinese alone.

I hope that helps clear things up.

Hero Rufus

What is the best thing that has ever happened to you for being nice?

I saw a Facebook post from an acquaintance of the hysterical variety. “Can anyone help me move on Tuesday? I’m being kicked out of my place. “

Being the guy with a truck, and having that afternoon free, I said I would meet her at 3 and help move. So day of, I’m there at the appointed time and she’s nowhere to be found. The owner of the house is there and there’s a pile of stuff outside. I start hauling the stuff up to the Uhaul which fortunately is there and talking with the owner. Turns out my acquaintance is being kicked out because she hasn’t paid rent in 10 months and has left the landlord (her ex-sister in law) about $35,000 in the hole. They are going to have to sell the place to recover the money. She shows me around the place. It’s a bit of a mess but an absolutely lovely home. Quiet neighborhood but close to downtown Honolulu, views, parking. All the things.

I tell her that I love the place and before she talks to anybody else or lists it, to let us make an offer. My acquaintance shows up an hour and a half late, after the bulk of the work is already done. I finish helping her move, with a lot less sympathy now.

Six months later, after a lot of talking and negotiating and inspecting, we moved into the beautiful house! And because we negotiated directly we saved about $45,000 in realtors fees.

What real life legal events sound straight out of a movie?

A crime watch group in Homestead, Florida held a neighborhood crime watch.

This meeting took place outside on a back patio. The Chief of Police was meeting with all the participants and team members.

He was outlining all of the things to be on the look out for. He was going down the list of agenda items related to criminal activity.

As he was talking, they heard a loud engine sound. The BZZZZZZ of an airplane motor.

It got louder and louder.

Then.

vvvVVVVVVROOOOOOM

It streaks by.

And

<boom>

Something hits the ground.

Everyone is startled. Then they see a big box right next to them.

The officer goes to check it out.

What is in it?

Seventy-five pounds of cocaine.

The plane that had been flying overhead was on the run from Customs, and it was dumping its cocaine so as not to be caught when they landed.

Let me restate that – a box of cocaine fell on top of a crimewatch meeting.

The plane dumped its last box shortly after that before they landed and were arrested. (Source: What’s that falling from the Florida sky. It could be pork, poop — or worse. Miami Herald. Cohen, Howard)

Luckily that last box of cocaine only hit a church.

Just another day in Florida.

The argument from intimidation

What is the worst thing a woman can say to her husband?

The woman loved a man .

Both got married .

Both had children .

After few years of the marriage suddenly one day the woman announced her husband that she is in love with another man .

If he wants he can divorce her . But she won’t leave the other man .

The man had no choice but to agree her condition because of his children and social standing .

This is the worst thing in a man’s life to compromise with a cheating wife and spending entire life with that woman .

What is the fastest you wiped that smirk off your manager’s face?

I wrote a letter to my manager outlining his misbehaviours. I gave a copy to every one of his staff. In due course I was in the state managers office with the personnel manager there too.

The state manager told me he was going to take disciplinary action against me. I looked from one to the other and said:

I don’t often beg, but I am going to beg this time. I’m begging you. Please take disciplinary action against me.

They looked at each other and there was silence for about ten seconds.

Then I said:

You’re not going to do it are you?

And quietly the state manager said “No”.

I told them the meeting was over and went back to work.

That was not the end of the issue, but there were no consequences against me.

What is the most badass thing your parent has ever done?

My dad … brought us up to NEVER LIE so when he blatantly lied to the State Trooper standing in the family kitchen one early afternoon I was dumbfounded!

My aunt (dads younger and only sister) married an abusive drug addict/alcoholic child abuser (his own kids).

My aunt had a black eye and lots of other injuries, new and old but she told of her husband having an abusive fit and while beating her he grabbed their three year old son and threw him so hard he went through the plaster and lathe board leaving his whole body as a marker to how hard he was thrown. My aunt called the police eventually (this was mid 1970’s) but her husband threatened if she told them what happened he’d kill the children (1 boy 3, and a girl 1.). She didn’t press charges because she knew he had guns and knew how violent he was.

About three days later two State troopers were in our driveway. They asked my dad if he owned a handgun. They also knew what had happened to my aunt and her little boy (small community).

My dad wanted to kill her husband but knew he wasn’t worth it. So, my dad’s younger brother obtained a gun I think it was a .45 handgun. My dad climbed in the window of his sisters house after his brother dropped him off … and he waited. The abusive husband/father came home, unlocked the door and was going about his business. At some point my father came into view with that gun. He made that scum get on his knees and beg for his life.The end of the gun was put in his mouth. As my father was asking him how tough are you now? Beating up your wife and 3 year old son is easy. How tough are you now? The scumbag pissed his pants while begging for his life.

I’m sure there were a lot more things said and done.

The gun went back to its owner. My dad was having coffee and a cigarette when he invited the cops in. He was so calm, cool and collected as he told the cops he didn’t do anything. He was home all morning. He LIED! Then one cop left and the other one told him, “it’s just me and you, I’d have done the same thing if my sister and nephew got beat up. C’mon, you can tell me. My partner is outside and he can’t be witness to you telling me what really happened.”

My dad calmly lied again and told the cop he knew nothing about it.

After they finally left I asked my dad why he didn’t tell the one cop that he did it. There wasn’t a second cop to corroborate his confession. My dad told me, “Oh yes there was! They don’t carry two way radios for nothing!

My dad was a badass. Just a humble middle class auto shop rat. He died last summer. I learned a lot about life from him.

***edit: I thought that the abuser of my aunt was dead. I recently asked a family member of his. He’s alive but in bad health, still drinking and drugging. He did leave the state but it was after my aunt divorced him. He had a girlfriend. He beat her up so bad she died. I don’t know anymore details than that. I have no idea why he isn’t still in prison. I only know my dad changed his sister’s life for the better and probably saved her life. Her daughter was younger than her son (who was 3 years old when the abuser threw him through a plaster and lathe board wall) and she only recently found out that my dad also changed HER life for the better by scaring the sh;t out of her father and giving her mother the strength to divorce him. I’m sure the a$$hole knew he’d be severely beaten if he ever touched my dad’s little sister again.

Did you ever see karma hit someone who deserved it so befittingly that it was eerie?

Driving an ambulance in response to a “Man down” call on a Saturday morning; lights and siren activated. My travel route took me over a twisting two lane road that was frequented by bicyclists. I encountered a pack of cyclists – maybe 40 – who wouldn’t yield to me. The winding road prohibited me from swinging into the opposing traffic lane to pass.

Took me several extra minutes to work my way to the front of the pack whereupon the lead rider flipped me off and offered me some salient verbal advice. Got past them, delayed in responding to a serious call.

Returning to the station afterwards, made comment to one of my co-workers, a fellow volunteer and a full-time police officer in the local jurisdiction. On the next Saturday, he donned his police uniform, drove his cruiser to the bike-traveled road and waited for the particular bicycle club to cruise thru the stop-signed intersection, en masse….their usual disregard. He pulled the ENTIRE pack over and wrote reckless riding tickets for each and every cyclist. Took him more than two hours!!!!

I went to court with the officer, as did the rest of our ambulance crew….some riders showed; many defaulted. After the 4th or 5th defendant appeared, the judge called them all up together —— maybe a dozen —— spoke for a bit and found them ALL guilty. Good karma day.

EDIT: And before I receive another comment going to legal procedures, please know that in our community, organized bicycle groups make frequent use of a gent who is well-known as the “Bicycle Advocate”. He commonly appears at proceedings where/when bicyclists are cited. On the appearance day discussed above, The Advocate was on-hand, standing up to assert his interpretation of the motor vehicle statutes as they do/don’t pertain to cyclists. The rhetoric is without legal support, and the guy is neither an attorney, nor does he actually represent a defendant. He’s very good at deflection.

With serial defendants and the same fact-pattern, the judge soon tired of the Advocate’s repeated and time-consuming speeches. He cautioned the guy a couple of times and eventually fined him $200 for contempt. He then called up the remaining defendants, asked them to declare an exceptional circumstance or individualized defense(s) to their citations. Hearing none, he passed the collective judgment. The individual defendant due process rights were, indeed, preserved by the judge’s line of questions prior to rendering his decision.

And, yes, I am an attorney.

Un-bound

What is the most unfair advantage a person can have?

Being born to the right parents.

This single coincidence tends to make more of a difference to a persons’ life than any other factor, including whatever efforts the person himself makes to try to improve his lot.

Who your parents happen to be has a tremendous impact on a huge range of things that shape just about everything in your life to a huge degree.

  • It determines if you’re born in Sweden or in Somalia
  • The genes they gave you determines whether you’ll be tall, intelligent and handsome or short, stupid and ugly.
  • The genes also play a big role in whether or not you’ll be healthy, whether or not you’re likely to get a long list of diseases.
  • If your parents are kind, compassionate and nurturing your start in life will be very different from if they’re cold, inconsiderate or abusive.
  • The hobbies and interests they have in many cases have a lifelong influence on your own hobbies and interests.
  • Their wealth and their income determines what material standard of living you’ll have for the first 20 – 25 years of your life, and in fact often for your entire life. (in most cases lazy sons of multimillionaires end up better off than hardworking daughters of slum-dwellers)
  • They more or less entirely decide who is important in your life for your first 5 years. Such early formative relationships are very important for a child’s development.
  • They determine what quality education you’ll get, this depends on their wealth, where they happen to live, and their priorities. You as a young child have low influence on all of this.


I’m not at all saying that it’s hopeless to get ahead in life if you had a bad start. What I’m saying is that having the right parents means getting to play life on “easy” mode, while having the wrong parents makes everything a whole lot more difficult.

If someone came to your house late at night and asked to use your phone because they need a ride home would you open the door or would you call from a window or the door yourself?

When I was 16, I was driving home from my boyfriends house which was a good 15 miles away. My car suddenly stopped working. It was dark and it was 1996, so no cell phones. I was out in the middle of nowhere! I saw a house and decided to walk up and ask to call my dad. I was TERRIFIED!

A woman answered the door but barely opened it. I told her that my car broke down and asked to call my dad. She asked me to give her his number and she would call from inside. I agreed. It was cold outside and I was shivering (both from cold and fear). She called him and asked if he had a daughter etc. Then she gave him her address and she invited me inside. I was still scared, but went in because I heard my dad was on his way there.

She made me hot chocolate and I sat by the fireplace, petting their dogs and chatting until my dad showed up. My dad got there about 20 minutes later asked if he could come pick my car up the next day and they said, “of course!” Her husband put his coat on and helped push my car off the road and into their driveway. We both thanked them sincerely and they said “If You ever need anything again, you come straight here!” The lady gave me a warm hug and said goodnight.

My dad sent a tow truck to get my car to the shop the next day and it was back in order with a new timing belt. I made sure to always take that route home just in case I broke down again.

Date Night

What types of antiques have considerably dropped in value?

Roll Top Desks….

My Mom loved Roll Top desks. She always wanted on one. So in 1975, she went to a local Sotherby’s auction and she emerged victorious but financially wounded. In 1975, she paid $1500 for a desk almost identical to this one.

In 2023 dollars, that cost my Mom about $8,500 dollars.

When my Mom died in 2022, we had a professional estate sale guy come to the house. Now my parents lived in the heart of Silicon Valley. He said…………you know, around here this item is really difficult to sell. Nobody wants them because they aren’t super friendly to computers. Anyone young with money around here, won’t be interested. We’ll be lucky to get $2500-$3000, even if we can find a buyer.

That puts my Mom’s purchase around $500 in 1975 dollars.

I’m actually glad she never knew…it was her crown jewel among all her antiques.

ALERT: LARGEST NAVAL FORCE SINCE WW2, ATTACK ON TWO NUCLEAR PLANTS, HEZBOLLAH DECLARE WAR IN 5 DAYS

Looks like a war buildup against Iran.

What’s the most enjoyable thing you’ve ever said to a manager as you’ve quit your job?

Not me but my dad. He was a supervisor, and had a less than stellar employee. My dad was offered a job with the potential for a promotion on the other side of the country. He was retired military so we had moved a lot, so he didn’t take it as he didn’t want to move us again. The job was offered to the problem employee; my dad was happy to see him leave.

Two years later, the guy comes back, only now, he was my dad’s supervisor, and made his job a living hell. For example: this was back in the days of overhead projectors (a precursor to PowerPoint). My dad was to give a presentation to some high-level people. He starts, but the projector isn’t working, so he had to give the presentation with hastily copied handouts. His boss had removed the lightbulb from the projector, and then chastised him for not “checking his equipment”.

He pulled a lot of similar unprofessional stunts. My dad had already retired from the military, and had enough years in to retire again. His physician told him that based on his medical problems, he could retire any time he wanted to, so my dad had him draft an undated letter stating he was retirement-eligible based on years of service and medical issues.

We had an expensive vacation planned, and were to leave on a Friday night. My dad had put in for vacation, so the boss was well aware of it. Ten minutes before he’s about to leave, the boss shows up, drops a file on his desk, and tells him not only does he have to stay late to get started on the project, but he’s cancelling his vacation.

My dad got a box, and started filling it with his personal items. The boss goes ballistic, so my dad pulls out the physician’s note, dates it, and says “I just retired” and walked out. It was a tad petty, but it was epic.

Wife Has MELTDOWN After Husband Secretly Discovers Her Affair, Plans A Strategy & Then Divorces Her!

Do firefighters really eat the food people bring them?

Yes and No.

We had a very nice lady come by our fire station with an “ice chest” full of hot tamales (which we purchased). Everyone who ate the tamales got food poisoning (including myself). We were not incapacitated, but close.

The question is, by eating food that is given to us, will we be able to perform our job of protecting our community? Could we fight fires? Could we perform rescues or fulfill our duties as EMTs? The answer could be “no.”

For example, on another occasion a family was nice enough to deliver a big plate of cookies and other homemade treats. The family appeared dirty and reeked of bad hygiene. We thanked them profusely (as was the polite thing to do). After they left their treats (unfortunately) went in the trash.

We had a few regulars who brought us pies, which we ate. It took a bit of a size-up on the individual delivering them, at first.

On some holidays a major restaurant chain brought us an entire meal, which we ate (it was prepared in a professional kitchen).

All the food that was brought to us was appreciated and accepted. It was never looked at as a bribe (we had no involvement in enforcement issues).

Coffee or tea offered on fire scenes? Now that is something I’d like to see adopted in America! A lot of winter fires were in below freezing temperatures. We were wet and cold. A hot drink of just about anything would have been much appreciated those freezing nights.

We once had a terrible fire, with much loss of life (Deadly Reno Fire

). It was across the street from the rear door of the original Harrah’s casino, in Reno, Nevada. The investigation lasted for two weeks. The casino set up a room for us with 24/7 coffee, tea and snacks. They also provided many meals, which they did at no charge. They expected nothing in return. They were just being good neighbors. Kudos to Harrah’s!

The best policy is “Unless you know the history of the food, it’s unsafe to eat.”

The boats

Al Copeland’s Basic Cajun Jambalaya

8af59975dcc2510a22cf8acf3a022972
8af59975dcc2510a22cf8acf3a022972

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 2 medium onions, chopped
  • 1 pound pickled pork, diced
  • 1 pound smoked ham, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
  • 1 pound smoked sausage, sliced
  • 4 cups beef or chicken stock or hot water
  • 2 cups rice
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper or to taste

Instructions

  1. In large saucepan with lid, melt butter with oil.
  2. Add onions and pork and sauté until onions are soft.
  3. Add ham, garlic, thyme and parsley and sauté for 5 minutes.
  4. Add sausage and cook until browned. Stir in stock and bring to boil.
  5. Add rice, bay leaf and cayenne. Return to boil and cover. Simmer over very low heat for 30 to 45 minutes, checking after 30 minutes to see if all liquid has been absorbed and rice is tender. If necessary, add 1/4 to 1/2 cup more water if liquid boils away before rice is cooked.

He should have been patient

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_nyfUtpSlZQ?feature=share

Can you give an example of how smart cats are?

My cat is four and a half months old. He’s part of our family for a month now.

As I was playing with him with the laser pointer about a week ago, he happily chased the red dot over the floor as always. But when he sat down to look at me, he suddenly looked over to my hand where I held the pointer, than back to the red dot and my hand again. His enthusiasm for chasing the moving red dot was suddenly gone. As if he understood that it was I who made the dot move and that wasn’t as interesting for him as a red dot that’s kinda “magically” moving on its own.

He also found out how to open drawers after watching me doing it two times.

And he’s been exceptionally quick to understand that I keep his “special” toys in the black plastic box on top of the shelf in our living room. As soon as I touch the box, he jumps off the desk and runs over to sit at my feet, waiting for whatever toy I might pick this time.

He’s extremely vocal and complains loudly when I chastise him whenever he does something undesirable, like playing with the computer chords (cuz he chews on them), jumping onto the kitchen table, scratching the wall corners instead of his scratching post, etc.

American Psychosis Chris Hedges on the US empire of narcissism and psychopathy

This is DAMN good!

https://youtu.be/Zp3gCeAI0ds

Welcome to the NEW DRAGON

2022 was a dumpster fire.

2023 was a cracked sewer pipe…

But 2024 is going to be different. How different, remains to be seen. But I have hope; I am optimistic.

It is the year of the DRAGON.

Chinese Horoscope 2024 – Year of the Dragon

The Chinese zodiac marks the start of a new cycle with the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, when one animal gives way to another. On February 10, 2024, the Year of the Dragon begins.

The Dragon is a powerful and auspicious creature in Chinese mythology, representing courage, creativity, and innovation. 2024 promises to be a year full of possibilities and opportunities.

According to the Chinese zodiac, the Dragon is the most powerful and auspicious animals. It represents strength, wisdom, luck and prosperity. The dragon is also associated with one of the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal or water. Each element gives the dragon a different personality and destiny.

The Year of the Wood Dragon 2024 is also known as Yang Wood on Dragon, or Jia Chen 甲辰 in Chinese. The fixed element of the Dragon (Chen) is Earth (Wu 戊), which represents stability, honesty and loyalty. The variable element of the Dragon in 2024 is Yang Wood, or Jia 甲, representing growth, creativity and flexibility.

The Wood Dragon is the most creative and visionary of the dragons. They are optimistic, ambitious and adventurous. They like to explore new ideas and challenge themselves. They are also generous, compassionate and loyal to their friends.

Therefore, the Year of the Dragon in 2024 is expected to be a time of visionary leaders, innovators and problem solvers. 2024 is also predicted to be a great year to start new projects, explore new opportunities and create value for yourself and others.

Some of the most promising sectors for business growth in the Dragon Year 2024 are fintech, AI, cybersecurity, blockchain, and solar energy. These industries are driven by innovation and demand for cutting-edge solutions. To succeed in these competitive markets, businesses need to embrace new technologies and communicate their value proposition effectively.

The year of the Wood Dragon 2024 is special because it is a rare combination of the dragon’s power and the wood’s creativity. It is a year of innovation, vision and growth. It is a year to pursue your dreams, express your ideas and expand your horizons. It is also a year to be generous, compassionate and loyal to your friends. The next Year of the Wood Dragon in the Chinese zodiac will be 2084, which is 60 years from now.

A Black and White Cat Kept His Owner Awake Until the Ambulance Arrived

Happy 2024

2024 01 01 19 10
2024 01 01 19 10

WTF??????

What is the best piece of advice you could give someone about life?

Mr. Andrew Carnegie arrived in America in 1848, with no money and with no formal higher education.

His parents decided to move the Carnegie family to the United States after a famine hit the Scottish countryside.

At thirteen years old, Carnegie found a job that would pay him $1.20 for a 70-hour week.

During his free time, Carnegie read books loaned to him from one of the local libraries.

These books impacted his life so much that later he donated millions of his money to building over 2,500 public libraries and educational institutions around the world.

image 577
image 577

When Carnegie was about 18 years old, Thomas Scott, the owner of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, employed him as a telegraph operator at a salary of $4.00 per week.

By age 24, Mr. Scott saw great potential in the young Carnegie, and promoted him to superintendent of a division of the Railroad Company.

Mr. Scott eventually became Carnegie’s mentor, a relationship that changed his future.

image 576
image 576

The experience Carnegie gained working closely to Scott was a vital ingredient in his success in the steel industry.

Years later, Carnegie sold his company to JP Morgan. That was what made him the wealthiest man on earth, and the philanthropist he later became.

To answer your question, what is the best piece of advice you could give someone about life?

1.- What are you filling your mind with?

Are you consuming your free time with worthless social media? Carnegie read books. He invested continuously in his personal growth.

Stop wasting your time!

2.- Are you trying to figure out how to do it alone! Who do you take advice from?

Carnegie was inspired by Mr. Scott. He listened to his advice. He was a hard worker. He was coachable.

Don’t try to do it alone!

Meaningful

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/URkqD59wmj4?feature=share

Rhodes Runzas

rhodes runzas
rhodes runzas

Ingredients

  • 12 Rhodes Texas™ Rolls, or 24 Rhodes™ Dinner Rolls, thawed but still cold
  • 4 cups sliced cabbage
  • 1 cup sliced yellow onion
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 8 ounces ground beef
  • 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
  • 2 tablespoons butter, melted

Instructions

  1. Sauté cabbage and onion in oil. Cover and steam for 40 minutes.
  2. Brown ground beef in a large pan, and drain well.
  3. Add cabbage, onion, sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper and cook for an additional 20 minutes.
  4. Flatten each Texas roll, or 2 dinner rolls into a 6-inch circle. Divide filling among 12 circles (about 1/3 cup).
  5. Place 1 tablespoon mozzarella cheese on top of filling. Pull edges around filling and pinch to close.
  6. Place on a large sprayed baking sheet, pinched side down. Brush tops with melted butter.
  7. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes.

Russian missile strike kills 200 foreign Mercenaries, Intelligence officers, military commanders.

What was the most satisfying display of instant karma you have ever seen?

In January 2019, Copdy Litz made a 10-foot snowman with his fiancée and his sister, and then posted this on Facebook:

image 579
image 579

It received a lot of admiration online as well as from his neighbours. However, when something marvellous attracts admirers, it also brings jealous assholes. Same thing happened with this snowman.

Turns out that one day when Copdy was away, a douche driver tried to destroy the snowman by ramming their car into it. To their horror, however, the result wasn’t as amusing as the driver was expecting.

When Copdy returns home, he sees this:

image 578
image 578

Tyre tracks leading to the snowman but they stop abruptly and the imprint of a bumper can be seen exposed in the snow. The snowman is still standing. Any idea how?

Do you see that black-brown part where there’s no snow? Well, that’s a thick tree stump used as a base for this snowman, but it was concealed by the snow. Hence, when the driver decided to ram their car into the snowman, they had no idea of the surprise they were in for, and ended up crashing their car into the sturdy stump. That’s why you see the imprint of a bumper on the snow and no more tyre tracks beyond the snowman.

[1] Sadly, the driver fled the scene after this surprise they received, and therefore, there’s no photo to show the damage on their car, but I bet it must be a good one (lol).

Copdy Litz later revealed in an interview that the purpose of using a tree stump as a base for this snowman was to teach vandals a lesson because such incidents were very common in his region. For sure other vandals must have learned the lesson.

Anyway, this display of instant karma seems pretty satisfying to me. If only I could see the damaged car, I’d be more satisfied.

Glitches In The Matrix People Can’t Explain

Wow!

What is your most “you’ve got to be kidding me” experience at a car mechanic?

I bought a car in TX. Private party. In winter. To drive to MN. On turnpike it was getting cold. I stop at Goodyear shop near a hotel. “I want radiator flush, engine block heater installed, -20 antifreeze”

got estimate, signed, walked to hotel, called with room info as next day Saturday they were open till noon. Next day 11:30 am check out, walk over. “owe did not have correct size front plug replacement block heater. So we put a lower hose heater in. We charged your card, here are keys we are closing early”

I KNEW lower hose not recommended. As angles all wrong. Warmed water flows to radiator first. NOT engine. But what can I do? So I will drive. Go to local Goodyear shop have it corrected.

50 miles hose blows apart. I had bought gallon antifreeze as knowing how shops screw filling empty radiator. But gauge looked great. Using knife I tighten hose clamps, add gallon antifreeze strait, limp to rest stop, gallon water, next town.

Get to local Goodyear. “we are not in same Goodyear chain as that place. But we will give you $5 off new hose, new frost plug heater, installation and full antifreeze replacement”. I did it myself.

10 American Cities That Are DEAD Forever

What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?

Many years ago, I worked in a small sewing factory that made water ski vests. When I was hired, I was paid by the hour but was told that I would get raises based on my work, and the sky was the limit. I soon discovered that there was a very low cloud cover.

I got a small raise after one month. I was assigned to do the finishing job, but devised a new method and could complete 600 vests a day. The other workers could not keep up with me, and I had to learn all of the other jobs so that I would have at least 300 vests ready to finish.

Minimum wage increased; new employees were now being paid 10 cents an hour less than I was. I asked for another raise based on my performance and was told that if I kept doing what I was, I would get a raise in 6 weeks.

A month later, the owner brought in an “efficiency expert” who looked at my finishing job and suggested “improvements”. The improvements made me do twice the work for half the numbers.

The next day, I tried to talk to the owner about it. He told me to try it for six weeks, and I would get a raise. But, I was two weeks away from my promised raise. I said, “I quit!”

A couple of weeks later, I ran into my supervisor. She said she had to do my job until they could train someone else. After two hours of doing the “improved” method, she realized why I quit and went back to my method.

I also ran into the person they trained to replace me. She could complete 50 vests a day, instead of my 600.

The business went bankrupt 3 months later. There was a riot and police were called when the boss showed up with no paychecks on payday 🙂

What is a slap-in-the-face job offer?

I once responded to a job ad that advertised a pay rate of $10–25 per hour.

I showed up to the business to do an interview with the owner. The guy was busy so I had to wait 30 minutes past my scheduled time. Apparently, the guy didn’t even remember what was on my resume, nor did he seem to care. He didn’t even ask about my skills and mostly just talked up about himself and his business.

Finally at the end of the interview, he offered me the current minimum wage ($9.25 at the time, it was going to increase to $10 in a few months) and that we can “sit down and talk” about increasing the rate after a month.

This was an IT software and hardware repair shop and I had a master’s degree in computer science with several years of work experience. I wasn’t looking for a massive salary rate, but a side gig that paid reasonably well. I wasn’t going to work for minimum wage and then hope to God this business owner was going to be convinced to double the rate after one month.

I was really surprised by the salary rate, but I caught myself before I might have reacted negatively and said, “I’ll think about it.” I probably would have accepted it at $15 an hour, but minimum wage for a position that requires some technical knowledge, did not make any sense to me.

I thought about it and there were just too many red flags:

  • He didn’t read my resume, which isn’t respectful of my time to go to an interview.
  • Did not even offer the pay rate mentioned in the advertisement. He lied.
  • Clearly a sign that this guy is going to be very stingy, so the 1 month “sitdown” salary evaluation meeting did not look promising at all.
  • Doesn’t seem to be able to keep employees for very long. This was based on what I asked during the interview.

Needless to say, I followed up with an email saying that this wasn’t what I was looking for.

Update: Some bonus info I recalled recently. I remembered him mentioning in the middle of the interview that he had a mortgage to pay as if to get sympathy. I realized after the interview he was already thinking about making that shitty offer.

All empty stores all San Francisco

Have you ever caught someone in the action of stealing packages off your doorstep?

I used to be an Amazon Flex driver on the weekends to make some extra money. The base pay was $18 an hour and if I did my deliveries quickly, I was making more than $25 an hour.

They have a program where you sign up to be an “independent contractor” and get paid for delivering a certain number of packages in a prescribed amount of time. It was a lot of fun even though you have to basically fight other people online to get a run.

One day I was out making deliveries and I noticed a car pull over at a house where I had just dropped off a package. I thought to myself that it must be the homeowner and stopped to deliver the next. But, I kept an eye on the car and sure enough, they were following me and grabbing my packages.

I called the police and kept on delivering. Within 5 minutes, a police car pulled them over and as soon as I saw that they had them stopped I turned around and went to speak with the officers.

Come to find out that they had followed me out of the station and began taking my packages from the start. I looked in their car, and they had grabbed 9 of my packages! Had I not called the police, who knows how many more they would have gotten. They were arrested on the spot and taken away in handcuffs.

I was incredibly angry, because not only had they stolen my packages, but now I had to go back and deliver them all again!

It screwed up what should have been a very simple day, but I was thrilled to know that these porch pirates got what was coming to them!

1940s Life

People all over the world see the US as terrorist, look down on the US and have a bad image of the US, but why are only the Americans not aware of this?

Americans thinks the world thinks the world of them!

They are full of it!

Can you believe that the U.S. thinks people in Iraq welcome them warmly after they carpet bomb Baghdad killing civilians including women, children and babies! What Iraqis are doing is the lured them into the lions den and sniped them and bomb them into smitten! But U.S. officials and some Americans think the Muslim and Arab communities loved them!

The critical question

When being terminated from a job, have you ever warned the company of something important that only you knew how to do, and your advice has gone unheeded?

About 20 years ago I worked for a huge Multinational American Call Centre that had opened a centre in Belfast. I worked hard and got several commendations and promotions, eventually being in charge of Annual leave for all the Call Centres in the UK. Problem was, the call centre didn’t want to spend money on software to track annual leave.

So I made it, on excel, as they didn’t support Access, go figure. Anyone who knows, will tell you access was far better for something like tracking annual leave for over 2000 employees across 3 sites on, but I am damn good at excel, and I made it do things its really not designed to do.

For 3 years I told them that it wasn’t fit for purpose and I needed proper software. Eventually we got a new director and they seemed to take note of what I was saying. So they looked at what I was doing, how I was doing it, and then decided to outsource it to a team in a South African Call Centre and Lipa City in the phillipines, apparently paying the two teams was less than my salary. They asked me to create an instruction manual for the tracker so that these guys could do my job, and they would move me to another department.

Once completed, they terminated me, paying me 10 weeks severance for my time served plus owed leave. I warned the centre Director he was making a mistake, he just laughed.

4 weeks later I got a phone call from a friend who still worked there, the Leave tracker had crashed as the teams running it weren’t doing the daily maintainence in the manual, they had also deleted the back ups to save disc space. There was no record of who had taken what leave and who had what leave left to take. So with 3 months left in the financial year, they ended up having to give all 2316 members of staff their full leave entitlement again (turns out payroll didn’t bother recording what they had paid to whom and for why).

I phoned the Director and simply said, “I warned you what would happen, but you decided you knew better, good luck.” He simply hung up, no response. 3 weeks later he was terminated for costing the firm millions in additional payments for all the extra leave.

I lasted just short of 8 years, he lasted just short of 8 months.

Not a lady

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VMAFAuibDlI/frame0.jpg

What is a slap-in-the-face job offer?

I worked for a large aerospace company in the Midlands. I never worked more than my contracted 38 hours/week, travelled away from base once a month and needed an overnight stay 2-3 times a year.

I was approached by a large consultancy to work for them and had a first round of informal meetings. Their HR person then phoned me and asked me about my current salary and expectation. Before I answered, I asked her to confirm what had been hinted at in the first meeting, 50–60 hours per weeks, 2–3 overnights a week. Yes she said. In that case, current salary +20%. She went quiet and then asked why I expected that much. Extra hours and nights away. We are only allowed to offer 7% over current. I replied “I’m sorry, but that fails the Tesco test.” What’s that she asked. “I could work the extra hours stacking shelves in my local Tesco for minimum wage, make more money and still sleep in my own bed.”

She Changed Her Face In Front Of The Camera Within 10 Seconds

2023 was a strange year

2024 01 01 19 13
2024 01 01 19 13

What is the difference between a king and an emperor?

A king is ruler of a sovereign country. An emperor is the ruler of the whole continent, considered to be higher than any other secular rulers. The Islamic equivalent is caliph, the Zoroastrian equivalent is shahanshah and the Hindu equivalent is maharaja.

Traditionally there were two Emperors in the Christian world: the Holy Roman Emperor (Western Emperor) and the Eastern Roman Emperor (Eastern Emperor).


Once the Eastern Roman Empire fell in 1453, the Russian grand prince Ivan III the Great assumed the title of Czar (from caesar) and Peter I the Great nominated himself as the Russian Emperor.

The French Revolution was basically a re-enactment of fan fiction of Rome. First they deposed the King, then they declared Republic (which went pear-shaped in five years instead of 500) and finally Napoléon imitated Augustus and declared himself the Emperor of France. By doing this, he juxtaposited himself with both the Habsburgs (Holy Roman Empire – itself more or less a fan-fiction of the Western Roman Empire) and Romanovs (Russian Empire – a fan-fiction of the Eastern Roman Empire). Naturally there could be only one, so Napoléon had the Holy Roman Empire abolished in 1806. Instead, the Habsburgs would claim the title of Kaiser des Österreiches (Austrian Emperor). Which made sense, as Czech was a kingdom, Hungary was a kingdom, Croatia was a kingdom and the rest of the Austrian lands were principalities.

Finally Germany unified under the Kingdom of Prussia in 1870. Since Germany was a hodgepodge quilt of kingdoms, princedoms, republics and city states, King Wilhelm declared himself as the Kaiser (Emperor) of Germany (from caesar).

All European Kaisers and Czars fell in the WWI. Ever since 1918, there hasn’t been an Emperor in Christian lands.


Also China and Japan have had an Emperor. The Chinese emperor was deposed in 1912, China becoming a republic, but Japan has maintained its emperor (mikado). The current Emperor of Japan is Naruhito, and his reign is called Reiwa.

Peculiar

2024 01 01 19 15
2024 01 01 19 15

When did you realize that you had grown up?

I know the exact moment when I realized I was an adult.

It was the Christmas of 1998. I was in Beijing. I was one of those spoiled rich brats who went on a joyride with my fancy friends in my fancy car that my dad bought me. So that night, although none of us were Christian, it seemed like a good idea to celebrate some random holiday, drive to a dance club and have some fun. We were fully prepared to get drunk and party until dawn.

I was driving with 4 other friends in the car and I got into an accident. I was very scared, it was completely my fault. We realized no one was hurt and tried to leave. But the police arrived at the scene before we could drive off. And things got really serious.

I remember this old police officer, he had this “seen it done that” attitude, and asked “Who’s the driver?” I said that it was me. And he asked “Could you explain to me what happened?” I said “I want to wait until my dad is here.” And he asked again: “Are you the driver?” I said I was. And he replied, “If you’re old enough to drive and get yourself into this mess, you’re old enough to explain to me what happened and take responsibility.”

He was not mean, he was not angry with me or anything. He just said it as a matter of fact. And that’s the moment I realized I was an adult.

Why I choose to raise my child in CHINA and not the WEST

Why isn’t anyone talking about the Zhaoxin KX-7000 CPU?

Nobody was talking about Chinese EVs until they took the world by storm at the Munich car show this year.

It was all Tesla, and more recently, the Germans and Koreans. The Japanese were not in the game at all, preferring ICE hybrids.

No one was paying attention to the charging infrastructure put in place in China, or the huge number of models from diverse manufacturers no one outside of China had any experience with.

My friend says there are at least 100 Chinese EV brands operating today.

100! China today is where the US automobile industry was pre-war.

Why isn’t anyone talking about the CPU? Because this is the English medium, and there is an automatic filter on any news that puts a positive spin against the narrative of the Chinese being a backward sub-human species who cannot innovate and therefore copy and steal exclusively from the west.

Read the Chinese to keep up with the Chinese.

Don’t read ABOUT them.

Otherwise, be prepared to be surprised/shocked repeatedly by the Chinese.

This Just ΗΑPPΕNED In The Netherlands, Υet Something Εven More Bizarre Is ΗΑPPΕNING IN AMERICA

Have you ever had such a close call it makes your skin shiver everytime you think about it? If so, what happened?

It was 1989 in Richmond Virginia. Even though I was in my first year as a cop with the police department I was assigned a new recruit from the academy to be his field training officer. This young man was an immigrant from Jamaica. He said that his mother had read my future and that I needed this to keep me safe, and he handed me a bloodstone. As I was looking at it we got an alarm call for an industrial site that was a quarter of a mile away from where we were parked. I turned the key to the patrol car and nothing happened. I decided we would get out and run the distance to the site. When we were about two hundred yards away the building exploded, blowing the both of us back ten to fifteen feet. I still have scars on my left forearm that I instinctively put over my eyes. When we went back to the car it turned over the first time. My trainee looked at me and said, “My moms be looking out for you!”

If the car had worked we would have been there when the building exploded, and we would have both been dead.

Never break this rule

What aspects of life in middle ages Europe do movies always get wrong?

My mother-in-law always pointed out that, if Hollywood were depicting medieval Europe accurately, between one-third to one-sixth of young adult women between the ages of sixteen to forty should be visibly pregnant when they waddle into range of the camera and every shot of urban areas should be swarming with young children (the majority of which will eventually die before reaching adulthood). You should have at least four children visible in every scene in which at least one adult is visible.

It was a world without legal birth-control, and women had a large number of children if they weren’t nuns. Walking down a medieval street, you would have seen swarms of children—think Rwanda-level disparities in the young compared to adults. Margery Kempe in the early 1400s, for instance, had fourteen children by the time she was forty. A reasonable guess at the normal number would be for an average married medieval woman to have ten children, of which fewer than a third would survive to adulthood. The most common cause of adult female mortality in the medieval world appears to be death in childbirth.

During each woman’s pregnancies, I believe there is little visible bulge until the the last few months of pregnancy. After that, she should be visibly pregnant. The swarms of children should be everywhere, running in the streets, crammed into alleys and houses, and pouring through doorways constantly.

Visiting the USA After 5 Years Living Abroad

What is the most selfish act you have ever witnessed?

A little background — I was working in a chain drug store in Southern California, the only employee who came to work, on Christmas Eve. We were a 24-hour store, so, having cleaned everything, and faced all the stock on the shelves, I was thinking how to murder the “dancing Santa” (bad recording, 2 1/2 feet tall, and poorly made).

10:30 (22:30 for 24 hour clocks) a guy comes in, freaking out. His wife has recently left him for her “hot stud boyfriend”, with whom she has a brand-new baby. They are divorced, but she got the kids on holidays. He had bought and wrapped the presents for the kids (daughter, son), and dropped them off at her boyfriend’s house — left them on the porch, because she refused to open the door until he left. He gets home, and finds the kids waiting on his front porch. His ex-wife’s mother had just dropped them off, and left them alone, because ex-wife, new baby, and “Hot Stud” were going to his parents for Christmas, and she didn’t want the kids “getting in the way”. Grandma had plans of her own, and refused to take the kids with her.

Ex-wife left him with two kids with no change of clothes, no presents, not enough groceries, on Christmas Eve. And there was no way he could not make her sound like the totally selfish bitch she was.

Semi-happy ending. I abused the hell out of my authority as the manager, and “store-used” or “over-ride discount”ed everything we needed to put together a Christmas for his kids.

Each of them got a ream of paper, the largest box of Crayola (crayons) we had, a generic fuzzy toy, and two other toys that he thought they might like. Each present was individually wrapped in a different paper, with big fancy (store-bought!) bows, and a Christmas card on each present, plus each one got a good sized bag of “stocking stuffers”. (Pocket sized toys and games, candy, fruit, nuts, etc). Then I threw in (from me) a couple of bags of Christmas candy and chocolates.

It’s Christmas Eve, and your mother has her mother drop you off at your father’s house — who isn’t even home — because she doesn’t want you, because she has the new baby that you aren’t even allowed to touch.

I really, really hope she got what she deserved.

Why are so many AMERICANS moving to CHINA?

What was something small you went to the doctor for that turned out to be very significant?

A few weeks before my nineteenth birthday, I was sitting to the right of my mom. When I went to look at her, she pointed out that my left eye did not track with my right eye, which made it look like I had a lazy eye.

image
image

The next day, after we had all laughed it off (because it did look quite goofy), my mom made an appointment with a neuro-opthalmologist. We went in on a busy Saturday and after he examined my eye, he requested that we make another appointment on a day when he would have more time to dedicate to me and the testing that would have to be done.

About two weeks later, my mother and I went to his other office and he examined my eye. He asked me if I had experienced any double-vision recently, and I realized I had. So, he explained the possible reasons for the eye (which he diagnosed as sixth cranial nerve palsy): it was an infection, or, in very rare cases, a brain tumor. He ordered a chest x-ray, blood work, and a head MRI.

The blood work and chest x-ray went well and nothing was found. Going into my MRI, my mother was optimistic, but I just had a feeling that the diagnosis was going to be bigger than a little infection. After the MRI, my mother and I got lunch and were high in spirits. When we returned home, I got to work on my classes (they were online- thanks, 2020). A few hours later, my mother ran into my room, very upset, and told me to come to the phone.

My doctor was on the other end. He told me that I had a mass in my brain that was pressing against my sixth cranial nerve. He suggested that it was a very rare form of bone cancer in my brain called chordoma that had grown on my skull base, in the middle of my head. I was diagnosed two days after my nineteenth birthday.

Since then, my diagnosis was confirmed and I had surgery to remove the tumor. I had many complications, like infections and brain fluid leaks, but I made it out. There was about 5–10% of the tumor left, so I underwent proton radiation therapy to kill the rest of the cancer. In a few weeks, I will have been in partial remission for a year 🙂 I also had eye surgery about ten months ago to correct my eye, which was stuck looking inward since my first surgery. Since then, I’ve been dealing with a lot of other issues because of my tumor and treatment, like chronic nerve damage/pain, Hashimoto’s disease and hypothyroidism, but I have a wonderful team of doctors who have provided me with great treatments.

I was a freshman in college when I was diagnosed, and now I’m going to be a junior. I’m studying psychology and music, and I participate in my college’s choirs, theatre productions, and student life team. In the future, I’m hoping to get my Master’s degree in mental health counseling and work as a therapist for adolescents and young adults with disabilities, rare disease, and cancer. I would also love to perform professionally in my city’s symphony orchestra/choir and maybe even audition for America’s Got Talent.

Remembering 2023

From HERE

If I were to pick the first biggest reason 2023 will be remembered (if it isn’t because of the brewing World War III that seems to be on the verge of breaking out) it will be as the year that A.I. became a reality.

No, I’m not talking about generalized artificial intelligence, but I am talking about A.I. that’s useful enough to start taking jobs away.  This won’t be the first time that’s happened.  Google Translate® has cratered the market for interpreters/translators.  Why?  Even if Google Translate© isn’t right, it’s probably close enough for 99% of tasks that people used to use translators for.  I mean, I can now ask, “What is this growth in my armpit?” in Swedish.

Translator wages have been flat, and in the United States (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) there is the need for a total of 14,000 in the country at a stagnant average wage of about $50,000 with roughly 10% unemployment in the field.

Finding out

Bohemian Goulash Soup

Bohemian Goulash Soup
Bohemian Goulash Soup

Ingredients

  • 3 tablespoons butter or margarine
  • 2 large onions, coarsely chopped
  • 1 tablespoon paprika
  • 1 teaspoon vinegar
  • 1 1/2 pounds beef stew meat, diced
  • 6 cups beef broth or bouillon
  • 1/2 teaspoon marjoram
  • 1 tablespoon caraway seed
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 pound potatoes, peeled and cubed
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Heat butter or margarine in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Sauté onion until golden.
  2. Stir in paprika and vinegar.
  3. Add meat, broth, marjoram, caraway seeds, tomato paste, salt and pepper. Mix well. Cook gently, covered, for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until meat is tender.
  4. Dilute flour with a little cooled liquid from pot. Stir into soup.
  5. Add potatoes and cook until potatoes are tender.

Yield: 6 servings

Go and get it

Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations

NYT

image 2
image 2

By Mark MazzettiAdam GoldmanMichael S. Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo

  • May 20, 2017

阅读简体中文版

WASHINGTON — The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.

Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.

But there was no disagreement about the damage. From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.

Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.’s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.

Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.

The previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors. The C.I.A. considers spying in China one of its top priorities, but the country’s extensive security apparatus makes it exceptionally hard for Western spy services to develop sources there.

At a time when the C.I.A. is trying to figure out how some of its most sensitive documents were leaked onto the internet two months ago by WikiLeaks, and the F.B.I. investigates possible ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russia, the unsettled nature of the China investigation demonstrates the difficulty of conducting counterespionage investigations into sophisticated spy services like those in Russia and China.

The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. both declined to comment.

Details about the investigation have been tightly held. Ten current and former American officials described the investigation on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing the information.

image
image

The first signs of trouble emerged in 2010. At the time, the quality of the C.I.A.’s information about the inner workings of the Chinese government was the best it had been for years, the result of recruiting sources deep inside the bureaucracy in Beijing, four former officials said. Some were Chinese nationals who the C.I.A. believed had become disillusioned with the Chinese government’s corruption.

But by the end of the year, the flow of information began to dry up. By early 2011, senior agency officers realized they had a problem: Assets in China, one of their most precious resources, were disappearing.

The two nations are jockeying for influence on the global stage, maneuvering for advantages on land, in the economy and in cyberspace.

The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. opened a joint investigation run by top counterintelligence officials at both agencies. Working out of a secret office in Northern Virginia, they began analyzing every operation being run in Beijing. One former senior American official said the investigation had been code-named Honey Badger.

As more and more sources vanished, the operation took on increased urgency. Nearly every employee at the American Embassy was scrutinized, no matter how high ranking. Some investigators believed the Chinese had cracked the encrypted method that the C.I.A. used to communicate with its assets. Others suspected a traitor in the C.I.A., a theory that agency officials were at first reluctant to embrace — and that some in both agencies still do not believe.


What we consider before using anonymous sources.Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

Learn more about our process.

Their debates were punctuated with macabre phone calls — “We lost another one” — and urgent questions from the Obama administration wondering why intelligence about the Chinese had slowed.

The mole hunt eventually zeroed in on a former agency operative who had worked in the C.I.A.’s division overseeing China, believing he was most likely responsible for the crippling disclosures. But efforts to gather enough evidence to arrest him failed, and he is now living in another Asian country, current and former officials said.

There was good reason to suspect an insider, some former officials say. Around that time, Chinese spies compromised National Security Agency surveillance in Taiwan — an island Beijing claims is part of China — by infiltrating Taiwanese intelligence, an American partner, according to two former officials. And the C.I.A. had discovered Chinese operatives in the agency’s hiring pipeline, according to officials and court documents.

But the C.I.A.’s top spy hunter, Mark Kelton, resisted the mole theory, at least initially, former officials say. Mr. Kelton had been close friends with Brian J. Kelley, a C.I.A. officer who in the 1990s was wrongly suspected by the F.B.I. of being a Russian spy. The real traitor, it turned out, was Mr. Hanssen. Mr. Kelton often mentioned Mr. Kelley’s mistreatment in meetings during the China episode, former colleagues say, and said he would not accuse someone without ironclad evidence.

Those who rejected the mole theory attributed the losses to sloppy American tradecraft at a time when the Chinese were becoming better at monitoring American espionage activities in the country. Some F.B.I. agents became convinced that C.I.A. handlers in Beijing too often traveled the same routes to the same meeting points, which would have helped China’s vast surveillance network identify the spies in its midst.

Some officers met their sources at a restaurant where Chinese agents had planted listening devices, former officials said, and even the waiters worked for Chinese intelligence.

This carelessness, coupled with the possibility that the Chinese had hacked the covert communications channel, would explain many, if not all, of the disappearances and deaths, some former officials said. Some in the agency, particularly those who had helped build the spy network, resisted this theory and believed they had been caught in the middle of a turf war within the C.I.A.

Still, the Chinese picked off more and more of the agency’s spies, continuing through 2011 and into 2012. As investigators narrowed the list of suspects with access to the information, they started focusing on a Chinese-American who had left the C.I.A. shortly before the intelligence losses began. Some investigators believed he had become disgruntled and had begun spying for China. One official said the man had access to the identities of C.I.A. informants and fit all the indicators on a matrix used to identify espionage threats.

After leaving the C.I.A., the man decided to remain in Asia with his family and pursue a business opportunity, which some officials suspect that Chinese intelligence agents had arranged.

Officials said the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. lured the man back to the United States around 2012 with a ruse about a possible contract with the agency, an arrangement common among former officers. Agents questioned the man, asking why he had decided to stay in Asia, concerned that he possessed a number of secrets that would be valuable to the Chinese. It’s not clear whether agents confronted the man about whether he had spied for China.

The man defended his reasons for living in Asia and did not admit any wrongdoing, an official said. He then returned to Asia.

By 2013, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. concluded that China’s success in identifying C.I.A. agents had been blunted — it is not clear how — but the damage had been done.

The C.I.A. has tried to rebuild its network of spies in China, officials said, an expensive and time-consuming effort led at one time by the former chief of the East Asia Division. A former intelligence official said the former chief was particularly bitter because he had worked with the suspected mole and recruited some of the spies in China who were ultimately executed.

China has been particularly aggressive in its espionage in recent years, beyond the breach of the Office of Personnel Management records in 2015, American officials said. Last year, an F.B.I. employee pleaded guilty to acting as a Chinese agent for years, passing sensitive technology information to Beijing in exchange for cash, lavish hotel rooms during foreign travel and prostitutes.

In March, prosecutors announced the arrest of a longtime State Department employee, Candace Marie Claiborne, accused of lying to investigators about her contacts with Chinese officials. According to the criminal complaint against Ms. Claiborne, who pleaded not guilty, Chinese agents wired cash into her bank account and showered her with gifts that included an iPhone, a laptop and tuition at a Chinese fashion school. In addition, according to the complaint, she received a fully furnished apartment and a stipend.

Cheating GF

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HytNH3FVC7k?feature=share

AI generated

2024 01 01 19 21
2024 01 01 19 21

The NORD Sea

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eEL8mZbElFQ?feature=share

What is a slap-in-the-face job offer?

Once, I was truly between jobs: had quit the old one, and a signed contract to start the new one in 2 months.

I was looking forward to spending 2 months doing nothing but sleeping, playing pool, drinking, and having fun.

Then an ex-colleague and friend called: the little firm he worked at was having serious IT problems; could I come in and consult/fix things?

So I put on a suit, pack a CV, head down to their office, and quickly see the worst computer setup I have ever witnessed on Wall St. Like, it’s a bundle of ancient Windows boxes doing God knows what. They couldn’t do things like keep the system running, never mind managing risk, or managing orders, or any normal business function.

I figure $40K for me, plus $20K in real server hardware, and they can have this on the road to fixed in a month.

My friend and I go into the CEO’s office, lay out my CV, I present a rough plan and cost estimates. The CEO just grabs a black marker and starts crossing out everything in my CV he feels is inapplicable: stuff like “Yale University” and “computer science.” Then he says “Your resume says you’re unemployed, $10K should be enough!”

My friend turns green with embarrassment, but I just get up and walk out. Through the trading floor of frustrated people yelling that the system has crashed again and they can’t enter trades.

An interesting event happened in the South China sea on 24 December 2023

There was an interesting event happening on South China sea 24 December 2023.

This is a translated Chinese article pulled off the American platform Quora. Access to the article has since been "suppressed" and is not so easily found. Enjoy this article. -MM

Fact confirmed :

U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet announced Thursday night that the Electronic Attack Squadron 136 (VAQ-136) on the “Carl Vinson” aircraft carrier (CVN-70) currently operating in the South China Sea Commander Lieutenant Colonel William Coulter was relieved of his duties on the grounds that he “lost confidence in his command ability” Paul Ritter(Another military high rank in US navy), who was originally scheduled to serve as the squadron commander in April 2024, immediately Take over.

image 474
image 474

William Coulter is temporarily transferred to the Electronic Warfare Wing, Pacific. William Coulter has only served as the commander of VAQ-136 in January 2023, but was suddenly dismissed a few days after the “Carl Vinson” entered the South China Sea.

Speculation :

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image 473

The F-18 “Three Brothers” on the US aircraft carrier. In the top is the single-seat F-18E, which is used for air control. The one in the middle is the F-18F multi-purpose type, which is mainly used for anti-ship/anti-ship and close range. the one in the bottom is an EF-18 “Growler” electronic warfare attack aircraft.

The fired electronic warfare commander (William Coultier) of the USS Carl Vinson managed this type of electronic squadron.

The strength of electronic warfare capabilities is extremely important for the US military’s aircraft carrier strike group (different from battle groups). Failure to obtain “electromagnetic control” means that enemy fighters, warships and even land-based anti-ship equipment will have a high chance of successful penetration, The warhead charge of modern heavy anti-ship weapons is no longer RDX, but CL-20 explosive (hexanitrogen), its power is three times that of TNT. The equivalent of about one ton of TNT explodes inside the aircraft carrier (more advanced weapons are equipped with armor-piercing nose cones, which can easily penetrate the aircraft carrier) with more than 6 times Mach impact energy, although the probability of sinking if hit by one is low, severe damage and loss of combat effectiveness are certain!

image 472
image 472

It is said last week, the US military’s EP-3E “Aries” electronic warfare aircraft encountered our military’s Y-8 electronic warfare aircraft over the southern Taiwan Strait. The two aircraft conducted a complex electronic offensive and defensive battle. The US aircraft did not gain any advantage, Evacuated the premise.

EP-3E is not under the management of the commander of the VAQ-136 Electronic Warfare Squadron aboard the USS Carl Vinson, which has nothing to do with his dismissal, but it is likely that he was defeated when he commanded the EF-18 to confront our J-16D, which resulted in the “Carl Vinson” being exposed to the firepower of our military.

image 471
image 471

Our army’s J-16D may be the most powerful operational/tactical electronic warfare aircraft in the world. It is derived from a heavy fighter, while the E/F-18 is a medium-sized aircraft. With comparable levels of electronic devices and integration technology, The former has a larger fuselage, higher engine power generation and greater power. It has a slight advantage over the “Growler” in interference and burn-through capabilities (anti-jamming), and our military has geographical advantages. “Growler” “It needs to take off from an aircraft carrier, and it is also at a disadvantage in terms of range and fleet size. However, our military can launch more J-16Ds at the same time to implement spectrum suppression (which can interfere with the Aegis radar on the Burke-class destroyer). This is all It was the reason that led to the downfall of the E/F-18.

image 470
image 470

The J-16D cooperates with other electronic warfare aircraft to compete for electromagnetic control rights, and then the H-6K carries long-range hypersonic missiles to strike. This is a tactic that US aircraft carriers cannot crack at this stage.

Needless to say, the struggle between our country and the United States is intensifying. In the past three or four years, when American aircraft carriers have entered the South China Sea from the Bashi Channel, our military will organize large fighter formations to conduct simulated offensive and defensive battles against them!

image 469
image 469

With the improvement of our military’s technology, the US aircraft carrier battle group can no longer show off its power like it did during the “96 crisis”. It has more symbolic significance than military significance. the US military’s four EA-6D “Prowler” electronic machines were able to interfere with telecommunications signals in most areas of Fujian and Zhejiang.

Conclusion of the speculation :

William Courtier putting the aircraft carrier at risk from our forces, and was dismissed.

Author Note :

US often send their war machine to china’s sea. do you really think US submarine hit mountain in South China Sea?

image 468
image 468

if you see the damage in that submarine, you can clearly see it was not caused by a breeding box, why because the upper part was not damaged. it was caused by a Chinese underwater drone, the best speculation due to damage is in the middle of the upper part of your so called sophisticated submarine.

Winter Stew

Well, my doctor has stated that I need to stay in the hospital for a week or longer. And then afterwards, I really have to be very moderate and calm in my activities. Apparently, I can trigger my blood pressure to launch towards the stars, and I need to tame that beast. So, this is MM going calm and serene.

Drinking is going to stifle for a spell. Same with smoking, and many of my favorite vices. Sigh.

Gotta be good, and lend myself to some serious chill.

I really get upset about the crazy relationship scene that the West has collapsed into. And this mix of rampant sexuality, free-lovin’ (not that I’m complain’) and isolationism with a woke political class is just another sign of a seriously collapsing Western society.

Men need love.

Women need understanding and compassion.

And let’s not forget about our kitties. Right?

Let’s all strive to be a tad better to ourselves, and to those around us. It’s so easy to get caught up, and ignore our very own needs and situation.

We need to chat about food. And stews are great Winter fare. (Unless you live down under) then I would recommend prawns. Stews are great, and I’ll guess that many readers haven’t had a home-made stew in some time. I suggest that you make up one and enjoy it.

With butter and bread.

Life is too short otherwise.

Today…

Cajun Meatball Stew

2023 11 10 09 45
2023 11 10 09 45

Ingredients

Meatballs

  • 1 pound ground round or chuck
  • 1 1/2 cups soft bread crumbs (3 slices)
  • 2 tablespoons each minced parsley and cold water
  • 1/2 clove garlic, crushed
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 teaspoon each cayenne and pepper
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 4 green onions, trimmed and minced (save tops for gravy)
  • 2 teaspoons salt

Gravy

  • 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
  • 5 cups cold water
  • 4 envelopes or 4 teaspoons instant beef broth
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt pinch of pepper
  • 1/3 cup minced parsley
  • 4 green onion tops, sliced thin
  • Meatball drippings plus vegetable oil to total 1/4 cup

Instructions

Meatballs

  1. Combine beef, bread crumbs, green onions, parsley, garlic, egg, salt, cayenne, pepper and cold water in a medium size bowl. Mix lightly and shape into 24 balls. Place on tray and chill for 30 minutes.
  2. Heat oil in large, heavy skillet and brown meatballs quickly on all sides (don’t overcook or the meatballs may toughen).
  3. Drain on paper towels; save drippings.

Gravy

  1. Place combined meatball drippings and vegetable oil in a large, heavy saucepan or skillet. Blend in flour, and heat and stir over moderately low heat until flour begins to brown, at least 10 to 15 minutes. Good Cajun cooks take about 45 minutes to make a roux. The roux should be a rich topaz brown.
  2. Add water and instant beef broth gradually, whisking until thickened, about 5 minutes.
  3. Add meatballs to gravy. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally for 45 minutes.
  4. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed.
  5. Stir in parsley and green onion tops. Heat for 15 minutes longer.
  6. Serve in soup bowls or on plates with the meatballs and gravy ladled over fluffy rice or egg noodles.

What is the most useless career advice ever given?

I’ve seen this question hundreds of times over the years on Quora and the knee-jerk answer is always some version of “Follow your passion is terrible advice.”

There was a time when I thought exactly that and wrote a similar answer. Sure, following your passion can lead you to become a starving artist or a passionate amateur beach volleyball player who lurches from one financial crisis to another.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have accountants under neon lights, droning through their days like robots, their life becoming a series of monthly, quarterly and annual closes.

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image 10

Having been on both sides, I didn’t see a lot of difference in the happiness between those two groups.

My biggest advice is to “see the grey” and not take anyone’s career advice as a one-size-fits-all tip. Be like a CEO and take in differing perspectives of your VPs, and attach weights to each piece of advice given your own circumstances.

Don’t ever, ever, treat anyone’s advice as gospel. And that includes anything I say or write.

Hustle culture has spawned this nauseating obsession with meme-quotes from billionaires that supposedly solve all of our problems.

Spoiler alert: I don’t give a shit what Elon Musk said. He’s smart and capable. But he came up through a very narrow silo in the world. His circumstances are extreme and hardly applicable to most of our own. Hell, I’m half-convinced he’s a narcissistic sociopath.

You can do what you love. Or you can learn to love what you do. Life changes. New passions evolve and the economics of those passions make new paths possible while destroying old ones.

You may wake up one day and realize you hate the thing you thought you’d spend your life doing.

The only constant in success is hard work and focus.

The more I’ve accepted that life is a fluid situation, with everything in constant change, and given assumptions always being tested, the better I’ve done.

Work hard, stay flexible, and expect waves of upheaval. Because I promise those waves are coming. We all get our turns.

One day

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1wTPwaehusw?feature=share

What is the simplest military tactic in history?

People really overlook the classics.

The first military tactic, and for thousands of years the most successful by far, was “stand together in a line and point our sharp sticks in the same direction.” Here’s the Sumerians doing it about 4500 years ago:

Proto-warfare involved individual fighters going essentially one-on-one with other individual fighters: think a modern gang fight or bar brawl. But you can’t really do that if the guy you are trying to fight has two guys immediately adjacent to him also holding spears: they’re going to stick you. If the guys in the line have shields and/or armor, you can’t even hang back and chuck shit at them, which was the other proto-warfare classic.

Now, this sounds really easy, but it turns out it actually isn’t. Warfare involves a bunch of people you hate trying to kill you. The natural response to that is to either (1) sensibly run away, or (2) run over and get the bastards first. Standing in a strict formation with even spacing is fairly unnatural in those circumstances: you need to practice it a lot, especially if you want to have any hope of moving.

(1) in particular is hard: even if you know that in theory your phalanx will survive a cavalry charge, it’s a harder sell when you have a couple thousand pounds of muscle and steel coming at you at a gallop. Gaps in your line means you are fucked: it’s hard to convey how absolutely shafted (pun intended) disordered infantry are in the face of cavalry, but it might be helpful to recall that the reason Napoleonic and Civil War soldiers stood in closely packed formation while getting mowed down by musket and cannon fire was because that was the safer alternative. And, to make things even more fun, the first guy to run away is probably going to be fine: he’s got all of his buddies holding them off. The last guy is going to get shishkebabed by a Gothic/Frankish/Norman/English lance, so how much do you trust your buddies?

(2) also isn’t actually easy to overcome, either. If you are a professional soldier, you might like the fighting. That’s how you get honor and, more importantly, loot. If it looks like you’re winning, you might really want to be the first person on the scene. You might make a lot of money. This is actually how the English lost at Hastings. The English housecarls, who were pros, successfully stood in a line with the pointy sticks the right way against a half dozen Norman charges, but broke when the Normans faked a retreat. They were then slaughtered.

But yeah, “get my guys in a line with sticks the right way” was sufficient for Alexander, the Romans, and Napoleon to get into the world conquest game. Simple, but that shit really works if you can actually do it. But you do need to actually do it.

Why do landlords not want to, or outright refuse to rent to people with Section 8, or HUD certificates, while fully knowing that such a practice is both illegal and subject to a big fine? Why do they think that they will not be be liable and caught?

Well, first, you are just flat wrong.

We bought a building that previously had section 8 tenants. None paid on time, the very first month that we owned it. The housing authority didn’t pay either. After 8 phone calls spanning 3 weeks, during which time we had already given 3-day notices to pay, and filed for eviction, the housing authority finally called us back, asking what the heck we were doing evicting THEIR tenant.

We informed them that under state law, we were following the required procedure for eviction for non-payment. They told us that under the terms of the 17-page Section 8 Contract, we could not evict the tenant for any reason whatsoever, including non-payment. We asked why they didn’t pay us on time, and they replied because we had not signed the Section 8 Contract yet, after the purchase. Ah-Hah!

We then informed them that we would be proceeding with the eviction, and would not be signing the Section 8 Contract. They told us that the previous owner had already signed it, and it is not revocable! They then threatened us with legal action if we continued with the eviction.

We told them that we had already consulted our attorney, who told us it is illegal to enforce or coerce anyone into signing or upholding an agreement that they did not willingly enter into. Thus, upon the sale of the property, as clearly stated within the Section 8 Contract itself, and apparently unbeknownst to the Housing Authority, the new owner has a choice to enter into Section 8 or not. And, oh by the way, selling the property is the only way to get OUT of Section 8, and the only way to evict Section 8.

The Housing Authority huffed and puffed, and went away. The tenants were evicted.

End of Story. Yes, it is legal. We’ll never do Section 8 again, ever, for any reason whatsoever.

What a fucking shitshow…

How would you describe the relationship between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken?

An articulate well known diplomat with high integrity and trust Wang Yi is meeting a 6 year old mindset, with Neocons drumming his voice with China hate and U.S. hubris thinking China is still in its 100 years of humiliation and the U.S. is still the one eye king after everyone loses both eyes after 2nd World war in 1945.

I hope for Blinken’s sake he will stop talking like the U.S. is the angel and China is the devil. He may think so but 180 out of 195 nations think it is the other way around. Best don’t even go there! Pretend to act civil and learn humility. That will go a long way Blinkyboy!

Confucian ethics says it is better to overestimate your opponent and underestimate yourself than the other way a around. The U.S. needs a lot of this balancing. China don’t listen to hot air after all. China sees more than hear. Anyone can say anything.

The U.S. better not talk about its own self made propaganda, lies, misinformation and fabrications. China is way too smart to let you lecture. Moreover the U.S. has done too much evil to even dare preach. Better focus on how to work with China on each others progress. Projects of common interest and goals to enrich the world, China and the U.S.

Without China the U.S. will die of pneumonia, with China it may suffer common influenza once in a while. Sure China will fly with the U.S. and still travelled at breakneck high speed rail without the U.S. but the faster China goes the more the U.S. will benefit too. If it knows humility.

Men want and need respect

What is the rudest thing that a new neighbor has done to you immediately after you had moved in?

We bought a house in a small California town, primarily because of our dogs. It had two and a half fenced acres, and was in a semi-rural area. Our dogs were getting old, and we wanted them to have a peaceful place so that they wouldn’t be stressed while we were at work. Well, it seemed like we bought a house in the “snob hill area.” During the first week we were there, a man stopped by our gate and informed me that our car was too old, and that we needed to get a new one. I told him that we were new to the area, and asked him to recommend a dealership. He did so, and I told him that I would meet him there the next morning, and to remember to bring his checkbook. For some strange reason, he hasn’t spoken to me again.

In the military, are you only allowed to keep on you what is issued to you by the government or can you buy extra protection if you want to? (knives, extra guns, extra supplies, etc), also, is your weapons and gear all new when you get them?

In the military, are you only allowed to keep on you what is issued to you by the government or can you buy extra protection if you want to? (knives, extra guns, extra supplies, etc), also, is your weapons and gear all new when you get them?

From a Navy perspective…

In the military, are you only allowed to keep on you what is issued to you by the government or can you buy extra protection if you want to? (knives, extra guns, extra supplies, etc)

Being on ships, there are some things you can and can’t have. No one, except a few watches, carries a gun on a regular basis. Generally, they’re issued out prior to watch, during security drills, or during actual events that threaten the security of the ship. Having a personal firearm onboard would have been useless, as it would always need to be locked up in the armory. There’d be no reason to have a personal firearm. The only people who MIGHT be allowed to have one would be the Commanding Officer, or a flag officer.

As for knives, I used to have one or two I carried everywhere while on ship. I was an engineer, and knives are essential, but not issued. I usually had a large Buck folding knife (I liked how they kept an edge), along with a small Swiss knife on my keychain. At one point I did have a double edged boot knife that I would keep hidden, specifically because they weren’t authorized. And only certain fixed blade knives were allowed (based on size).

Other types of gear we could go outside of regular issue were certain uniform items. When I was in, we had what were officially called “chukkas”, but which we all called “boondockers”.

These weren’t too bad, if they fit right, and they got more comfortable as they wore in, but they were about as mass produced as you could get, and the quality was inconsistent. They had steel toes that would cut through the inner lining and tear your toes apart, and a little saltwater would destroy the shine and eat the leather.

So, many of us would spend a small fortune on civilian shoes, much like these…

The Navy was fine with them, as long as they had steel toes and were black (for enlisted). They were supposed to be leather, too, but a lot of us would go for the ones that were synthetic, specifically because they were water proof.

There were other items that were not “issue”, but were sold as extras in the uniform shop. Back in the 80’s, there was a light black jacket we called the “Johnny Cash” (not to be confused with the black working uniform with the same nickname). If you ever went to certain overseas ports (generally Hong Kong), you could get your dress blues lined with an Asian motif embroidery on silk. This was out of sight for inspection, so the command never had a problem with them.

As for “extra equipment”, we sailors really didn’t need much more than what was already given us. We were allowed to bring on personal items, as long as they could be stowed properly. Electrical items always needed to be safety checked, and might need a request chit (permission slip) to bring it on board, but I usually had a computer for cruises, and game consoles were popular.

also, is your weapons and gear all new when you get them?

This all depends.

Your primary issue for almost everything is in Boot Camp. That’s all your uniforms, toiletries, and other kits, such as sewing. These are always new, and upon issue, you have to identify your items with you name. In my time, we had a “stencil party”, which consisted of the entire company sitting down on the deck and using a machine cut stencil and special pens, we stenciled our names on everything.

I can literally smell the stencil ink as I write this. Not unpleasant, but strong.

From that point on, you’re responsible for replacing any items that aren’t up to standard. You get an annual allowance for this, and you can choose where to buy your gear.

I have broken service, and my uniforms weren’t in the best shape when I got back in. I was given an allowance that was meant to buy a new seabag (what we call our full set of uniforms), but I decided to save a little money and go “used”. There are always “boot drops”, the recruits who didn’t make the cut, and they have to return their uniforms. These were in good shape, but stenciled. We could buy our uniforms used, then cross out the old stencils and add our own. Saved about half what I would have paid for new.

Ships also have a lost and found, and those items are sometimes auctioned off for the welfare and rec fund. You could get some decent items from that.

As for weapons, well, you don’t keep your service weapon when you leave. Those are turned around and reissued. You might get new, you might get used.

Giving and getting nothing…

Qatar government claims to have intercepted electronic communication between Israel and the accused naval officers who were working on a secret submarine project. If this is true, can the officers be saved?

Look

The Conviction is finished

The Evidence has been submitted and the case is closed

The Judgement has been delivered.

DEATH.

The MEA tried many times to help out but Qatar refused to comply

So there is no point discussing the evidence

We can go to the ICJ but given that Qatar is a gas lifeline to Europe, I am certain ICJ will pass

They openly bankroll the Hamas and yet not even a pinky finger has been pointed at them to this day


We need to get our boys out

That’s crucial

Now I am almost certain, the death sentence would not be carried out.

It never does

Except Eli Cohen and a handful of others, most spies are never killed or executed

Eventually there will be trade offs and exchanges

My guess is if India backs a Two State Solution in UN and votes against Israel for a cease fire and UN involvement in the Gaza conflict, that alone could secure a commutation to life imprisonment

Typically there could be a round robin exchange

Meaning a third country could mediate the release of hostages in exchange for India doing something for this third country

Like US or Russia or China

Ideally if we had a few Qataris in our Jail, we could do a swap

We don’t

Qatari tourists to India are non existent

We can’t pull out business contracts because we have only 6% and the Chinese would grin and happily take over

We can’t pull out of Oil and Gas contracts because we have no major long term deals and these are fungible goods

AI Tinder Buster…

What are your thoughts on China’s economic growth? Do you think they will eventually overtake America? If so, how long do you think it would take for them to become more powerful than us militarily?

Of course they will, that is a a done deal, in fact they have already. Overtaking the U.S. is a piece of cake. A bunch of war monger selling stuffs no one one wants to buy at astronomical prices because they pay their greedy CEO 100 times that of China with workers that demand 10 times higher salaries working half the hours and insist 5 times more benefits!

Never mind this, the Yanks believed they can spend till thy kingdom come and spend like there is no tomorrow! China will pretend that they fear the U.S. but to the Chinese they not need to lift a finger, Uncle Sam will bankrupt it selves.! Hubris will bury them. Superiority complex will destroy themselves!

Let me help you hubris and racist Yanks understand the real world. As long as you still think the world belongs to you, the easier it is for us! China today in reality is at least twice bigger than you and that is being highly overestimating Uncle Sam and underestimating ourselves!

At the very worst., China is growing 5 times faster than you. The U.S. is totally fxxked! But we will pretend that the Chinese is 50 years behind the US! You loved that don’t you?

Build a better society

Who is your inner demon?

I saw earbuds on Amazon for a ridiculously cheap price.

It was a 2 pack for $2.99.

I thought, “Hmmm, how many could I order?” It had the option to order up to 10.”

I ordered 6 pairs.

I know this exact type of headphones. This same seller has sold me a pair before. Although I didn’t remember them being this cheap.

Fast forward a week.

I go to check on my order time.

It is going to be another 4 weeks before these are delivered to me.

I thought, “How in the hell is it going to be 4 weeks?’

My inner demon whispers, “Master!!!! You must give the seller time to steal the headphones!!!”

“Shutup!”

My inner demon speaks evil truths that I’m trying to ignore.

What are the best ways to make your life easier?

Embrace a lifestyle that costs only a fraction of your earnings.

Living below your means is like having a superhero cape you never have to show off. It’s the ultimate life hack for me, it makes one feel invincible, calm, and in control.

It’s likened to standing in a rock-solid tower while chaos swirls around you, that’s a feeling words won’t be able to capture.

In many places, especially in my home country, living modestly is more than just a money-saving trick; it’s a shield against life’s darker corners.

It keeps you off the radar for all sorts of unpleasant situations, from kidnappings for ransom to targeted robberies.

It also makes you less of a walking ATM for friends, family, and even strangers who see you as their personal bailout fund.

Choosing simplicity when you could go grand is a power move. It’s like having an invisible army guarding your peace. You’re not just scraping by; you’re flourishing but on your terms.

This lifestyle is the ultimate stress-buster. You’re cruising in a relatively comfort zone where you’ve got the choice but not the pressure to splurge. When you do spend, it feels like tossing a pebble into a pond, not like drilling a hole in a dam.

Living this way gives you access to a type of joy most people can’t even put into words, let alone experience in their lifetime.

Imagine being able to book a dream vacation or buy a dream home on a whim, leaving everyone around you stunned. That thrill is something money can buy only with a huge dose of discipline.

When you can comfortably afford your belongings, life takes on a different hue. You’re the boss, and everything you own is just a tool to make your life better, not a golden calf to be worshipped.

You only hurt one person, you, when you chose to live above your means. It is a recipe for sleepless nights and constant stress.

Being smart about how you live pays dividends in happiness and freedom, the very assets that are truly priceless.

Not wife material

How do I tell if somebody is intelligent?

There was a tall, lanky fellow who always wore long sleeves and sat down the table from me in engineering class. He didn’t talk much, had a strange sneeze and mostly kept to himself.

I had a sneaking suspicion he was smart, really smart. I shouldn’t have cared either way but between my bloodthirsty competitive side and penchant for people watching, my radar was always on.

And it wasn’t like I had any evidence, grades, test scores or even a remote conversation to draw my conclusion from.

All I had was a subtlety I’d noticed: His body language.

It was a cool confidence juxtaposed with a complete lack of stress on his face.

This absence of stress is not to be confused with slackery. He was laser focused on our material but rarely took notes. That pencil just sat by his hand begging for playing time, but no. Class didn’t seem to faze him. It was as if he was just in cruise control, coasting along while we all paddled to keep up.

He would go on to graduate first in his class.

But I had confirmation before that.

One day towards the end of the term, our teacher put a very high level problem on the board and asked who knew the answer. I immediately looked at him – he knew the answer. I could tell. His head sat still while his eyes were darting around waiting for someone to answer.

He was smart. He had it in his pocket. But he wasn’t looking for attention.

The teacher reiterated, “Anyone?”.

Finally, he slowly raised his hand and read off the answer like a trained assassin: calm, cold and collected.

You don’t need test scores to realize someone is smart.

Just watch them, it’s usually there. And it’s usually the quiet ones. Still waters run deeper.

China is TAKING OVER! Tiangong Space Station HUGE Update

How likely is it for the Chinese government to start buying bonds again, according to Jim Cramer?

Zero! Unless the US cancels all sanctions and restrictions it has placed on China. China is using the proceeds of its bond selling to buy gold. The expectation is that China will begin using gold backed currencies whether the Yuan or a BRICS currency. China sees the US headed for bankruptcy or at best, a financial and economic restructuring. So far, the US continues to print dollars and spending like there is no tomorrow, especially its spending on foreign wars. Yesterday, it was Ukraine, today it is Israel, tomorrow???

What are the reasons General Secretary Xi Jinping has for refusing to meet with President Biden?

What is there to discuss?

Schumer’s recap of his meeting with Xi has the tone that is as condescending of a lecture by an adult to a child. Here are all the points.

Point #1: At the foundation of our relationship must be a level playing field for American businesses and workers as well as responsible competition. We need reciprocity. That means allowing American companies to compete as freely in China as Chinese companies are able to compete in America. I made clear to President Xi that we do not believe there is a level playing field or reciprocity now.

Schumer is complaining about a level playing field? Reciprocity?

This is from a Congress and administration that has more than 1,200 Chinese tech companies on the Entity List and cried economic coercion when China placed restriction on one U.S. companiy. And he’s “making it clear to President Xi” that the U.S. wants a level playing field?

Point #2: “I raised the huge structural inequities and serious imbalances the U.S. faces in its economic and trade relationship with China. For decades, the Chinese government has erected significant barriers aimed at restricting the ability of American companies to compete in an open and fair manner in China. I made clear that the United States cannot sit idly by and that we must address the Chinese government’s forced technology transfers, theft of intellectual property, required joint ventures, and intimidation of U.S. businesses operating in China, among other troubling actions, that undermine economic reciprocity.

Specifically, I also raised the need to remove restrictions and open up the Chinese market to U.S. companies, including from the semiconductor, financial services, and aerospace industries, and putting an end to policies that intimidate U.S. businesses operating in China.

What restrictions? What structural inequities?

Shouldn’t U.S. companies be making their own decisions on these? And as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

U.S. companies are making money in China. This is why they’re in China. It is precisely because of the structural benefits that China offers that U.S. companies are accepting the Chinese terms for doing business in China. U.S. companies can at any time decouple to India but are not because of the superior structural benefit China offers. And it is also why there is a “structural inequities” between the U.S. and China because, like India, we do have the infrastructure and manufacturing resources to compete with China’s. And this is not China’s fault. If the U.S. and India want to compete, then its incumbent on themselves to build the requisite “structure”.

Evidence of China’s open market? There’s Tesla in China’s automotive market and Apple in the mobile market, both market leaders in the world’s largest market. Nvidia was also the market leader in the world’s largest semiconductor market but its the U.S. banning them, not China.

Point #3: “Equally important to the need for reciprocity is the need for China to take more aggressive action to stop fentanyl from coming into America. Right now, the scourge of fentanyl is costing tens of thousands of lives and destroying American families. I called on President Xi to work with the United States to stem the flow of precursor chemicals that are fueling America’s fentanyl crisis.

And how exactly is China suppose to do this when precursor chemicals are not even banned substances in the U.S.? Fentanyl is a legal drug precribed by U.S. physicians for their patients.

Enforcement of illicit drugs is the sole responsibility of the U.S.. Blaming China is just a sorry excuse for failing at controlling an epidemic of our own making. It’s our greedy Pharmas in collusion with the FDA and physicians that promoted opioid use and solving this can only done by us alone.

Point #4: “I raised with President Xi the unfolding atrocities carried out against Israel and the need for the world community to stand together against terrorism and with the Israeli people, and pointedly requested from President Xi that the Chinese Foreign Minister strengthen their statement; they did.

Schumer is lecturing China on its foreign policy. He stressed the “unfolding atrocities” against Israel but omitted the greater “unfoldering atrocities” that the Israelis are committing against the Palestinians that he wants China to ignore.

Point #5: While we must ensure that our trade policies are fair, the United States will also prioritize our economic and national security, including protecting advanced technologies. Our delegation made clear that America is not seeking a confrontation with China, but we will remain steadfast in our commitment to promoting stability in the region, freedom, and democratic principles, and vigorously defend our values around the world.

This is just BS political talk. He’s saying that U.S. policies should be fair but justified when it’s not when we prioritize economic and national security, including protecting advanced technologies. So the U.S. subsidizing companies to the tune of $52 billion on building chip fab in the U.S. is ok but accusing China of doing the same subsidizing its tech companies as unfair and illegal trade practice. And its ok to sanction China from advanced chips and machines that make them – even forcing the Dutch, South Korean and Japanese companies to join – is justified for the sake of U.S. national security.

Now, how different would a Biden meeting with Xi be from Schumer’s? The Democrats has an election in 2024 and this will be nothing more than an electionering tactic at China bashing to win votes.

Radical Culture Change

Russia’s Top General: “Ready for Post-Conflict Negotiations”

World Hal Turner

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said today “Moscow is ready for negotiations on post-conflict resolution of the crisis in Ukraine and on further coexistence with the West.”

Russia knows Ukraine has lost.   Russia knows the West can no longer provide weaponry or money to keep that conflict going.  Russia knows it’s defense production is SEVEN TIMES GREATER than all the West combined.  Yet, they are extending an olive branch.

Hal Turner Remarks — 

We in the West should seize the moment and take this opportunity to move forward in peace.

Sadly, I fear the West simply CANNOT seek peace.  I think the West – especially the United States — is literally Bankrupt.  I believe the West **needs** a nuclear war or at least a partial nuclear war, so they can blame their financial collapse on the war.  I perceive the West **needs** debt forgiveness and the only way they can get it is through mass destruction.  

It seems to me the West needs to be able to go to their creditors and say “Our cities are destroyed, our people are dead, our economy is smashed.  We have no hope at all of ever paying you back.  We need debt forgiveness.”

If I am right, the Creditors, seeing this is the actual reality, will have little choice.

I suspect at that point, the very people in the West who perpetrated the massive financial destruction, get to walk away, free and clear, **remain in power ** (that’s the key) and start the whole shitshow all over again.  Then, in maybe another 75 years, they have to do it all again.   Round and round the wheel spins.  Same old, same old.

If the West turns down this move for peace that Russia is offering, then ALL OF US know the whole Russia-Ukraine thing, and the whole Israel-Hamas thing, was specifically designed to intentionally CAUSE nuclear war for debt forgiveness.

Nothing else about these situations, makes any sense to me.

What lessons will most people only learn the hard way?

When to quit.

This is especially true of athletes in their mid and late 30s.

Men’s testosterone begins to decline around 30. We don’t recover as fast and lose a bit of our power over time. It’s a subtle change that catches up to them.

And many champions don’t know when to walk away in their prime.

Ronaldo is now sitting the bench on Manchester United:

True soccer fans knew this day was coming—as in fans who aren’t Ronaldo fanboys. He wasn’t playing at a high enough level to start on Manchester United. He was leaving the midfield too open while he camped out waiting to score goals.

He’s 37 and feeling his age. And that’s fine. Father Time catches up to everyone.

The sad truth is that this happens to the best of athletes. And it’s never more evident than in combat sports. Fighters that seem invincible, will go from being 31–1 to suddenly losing 8 of 10 fights in a row.

Muhammed Ali stuck around wayyyy too long and at least accelerated his mental decline.

Anderson Silva used to look untouchable. And then, age 38, he began a long losing streak.

Losing 6 of his last 8 fights.

The only person smart enough to walk away seems to be Khabib Nurgademedov. He was 29–0, and the allure of 30–0 whispered his name—but he stayed disciplined and knew to step away.

Meanwhile, his nemesis Conor McGregor has been racking up losses.

It’s a good metaphor for life.

Some phases of our life have an expiration date. Relationships. Jobs. Parties. And if you stick around too long, it just makes things worse.

The most dangerous creation of society is the man who has nothing to lose.

Absolutely!

What is your story of becoming discreetly wealthy?

My goal was $1M net worth by age 40.

We attained the goal at age 31.

Today, at age 34 our combined net worth is $1.6M, not including equity in our home and equity in a small business my wife runs.

I can tell you our story, but it will probably bore you to sleep.

I had it in my head at the age of 25 that I wanted to be a millionaire in 15 years. So I sat down in front of a computer and opened up excel. I made a simple spreadsheet that assumed market returns of 7%. I then calculated how much we needed to save each year to obtain millionaire status by 40. We then proceeded to save the amount of money generated by the spreadsheet and invest in index funds, basing our lifestyle around the remaining income.

That is it.

Why did it happen sooner?

My wife hated her job. She was treated with very little respect by some members in the office, I suspect because she was young and good at her job. So she left. I told her to take some time for herself and figure out what she wanted to do. Little by little she began doing some book-keeping and tax work for former clients (she is an accountant). As word got around, more people called. She began networking and eventually built up a small accounting business with her and two employees. It’s humble, but we are able to save 100% of her earnings which helped us reach our goal sooner.

If you met me on the street you’d think I was a generic 30-something with all the same stresses of a corporate job, house and kids that most middle-class 30-somethings deal with. You’d probably assume I was barely getting by when you saw my dirty 14-year-old car, especially after you learned that I like to commute by bike most of the time anyway.

And that’s it. Having means is often more about your life style than your earnings. Unfortunately I’m not a savvy business man who made millions in his 20’s while driving a Ferrari and flying first class. I used a spreadsheet, saved that amount of money and built my lifestyle around that savings rate.

Then my wife and I woke up rich.

I told you it was a boring story.

Cajun Pork Chili

2023 11 10 09 48
2023 11 10 09 48

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds ground pork
  • 2 large onions, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 sweet red bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 sweet green bell pepper, chopped
  • 3 stalks celery, chopped
  • 1 (28 ounce) can tomatoes
  • 1 (28 ounce) can kidney beans, drained
  • 1/4 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano*
  • 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • Dash of hot pepper sauce
  • Salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. In a heavy saucepan, cook the pork over medium heat, stirring to break up the meat, for about 5 minutes or until browned. Pour off the fat.
  2. Add onions, and cook until tender.
  3. Add garlic, red and green peppers and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until vegetables are softened.
  4. Add tomatoes, breaking them up with the back of a spoon.
  5. Stir in kidney beans, hot pepper flakes, oregano, cayenne pepper, hot pepper sauce and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Notes

* If you prefer a more traditional chili flavor, use cumin instead of oregano, and add chili powder to taste.

Father’s day

Bathtub Mary

Bathtub Mary.

This is a New England “thing”. Don’t ya know.

It looks a little like this, only in a old claw-foot bathtub…

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2023 11 08 21 23

Wikipedia says…

A bathtub Madonna (also known as a lawn shrine, Mary on the half shell, bathtub Mary, bathtub Virgin, and bathtub shrine) is an artificial grotto typically framing a Roman Catholic religious figure.

These shrines most often house a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary but sometimes hold the image of another Catholic saint or of Jesus. Infrequently, more than one figure is represented.

While often constructed by upending an old bathtub and burying one end, similar designs have been factory produced. These factory produced enclosures sometimes have decorative features that their recycled counterparts lack, such as fluting reminiscent of a scallop shell.

The grotto is sometimes embellished with brickwork or stonework, and framed with flowerbeds or other ornamental flora. The inside of the tub is frequently painted a light blue color, particularly if the statue is of Mary because of her association with this color. Over time, distinguishing characteristics of these shrines can become blurred. Instances occur of shrines whose statue is missing and conversely of grottoes being removed, leaving a statue in place. 
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2023 11 08 21 54

What’s something a flight attendant did to you that you will never forget?

One time, I was traveling with my little sister on a nine-hour flight. We were harassed by a drunk man in the middle row for the entire flight, which was incredibly uncomfortable. He kept staring at us, trying to touch us with his arms and legs, and getting up to stand next to our seats and stare and laugh, trying to get closer with his face.

There were still six hours left before we reached our destination. I spoke to the flight attendants and burst out crying because it was so uncomfortable. My little sister was also crying. The flight was full, so they couldn’t move us or him. The flight attendants tried to talk to him, but it was no use. He became weird and slightly aggressive.

There were still a few hours left to go. The flight attendants had a male flight attendant from business class come down to us and talk to us and comfort us. He stood behind our seats for the rest of the flight.

The other flight attendants were so sweet. They kept coming with snacks and sweets for us, and they even went to their private locker and gave us their own snacks and candies that they had brought. They wanted us to write down the whole incident so that the pilots could see it. The pilots then decided to call the police.

Cajun Pork Butt

2023 11 08 11 49
2023 11 08 11 49

Yield: 8 to 10 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 to 3 1/2 pound) boneless pork shoulder butt roast
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
  • 4 teaspoons prepared mustard
  • 1 tablespoon hot pepper sauce
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tablespoon steak sauce
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 teaspoon seasoned salt

Instructions

  1. Place roast in a shallow baking pan; cut 8 to 10 small slits in roast.
  2. Combine remaining ingredients; press into slits and over top of roast.
  3. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes.
  4. Cover and bake 1 3/4 hours longer or until a meat thermometer reads 160 degrees F.
  5. Let stand for 10 minutes before slicing.

A co-worker who is not my supervisor snapped her fingers at me and told me to hurry up. What should I do?

I worked in Theatre for many years. Out-of-work actors often earn stop-gap money waitering. Here are two neat reposts.

A famous (I’ll leave her anonymous) actress had been difficult in a high-end restaurant all evening. Nothing was good enough for her. Eventually the waiter handed her the dessert-menu. The actress barked angrily at the waiter: “What the hell is Banana cream pie?”

The waiter politely replied: “Which word, exactly, is causing you difficulties?”

Another actor/waiter pal had a difficult patron snapping her fingers at him and yelling: “Boy! Over here, boy!”

The waiter, ever so calmly said to her: “Madam, if you tell me where you lost your dog, I’ll gladly help you find him.”

Come up with a calm, elegant put down; it’s much more stylish than taking other people’s bad manners to heart and getting rattled. You also end up with some terrific anecdotes.

What are the most famous last words in history?

It’s gotta be this guy:

image 90
image 90

James French

He was a convicted murderer in the 1960s and was sentenced to death via the electric chair.

But his last words were pretty hilarious,

“How’s this for your headline? ‘French Fries’”

image 89
image 89

Pun + capital punishment = Savage

What is a polite response when someone says they don’t like your home?

I bought a huge house backing onto a stream, and on the other side of the stream was a golf course. My next door neighbors were a famous professional hockey player, and a neurosurgeon on the other side.

It had a carpeted garage with built in oak cabinets.

It had a thousand square foot master suite, walkin closet, and ensuite. The Jacuzzi was surrounded by windows that actually opened, it was on the third floor.

I was having Christmas one year and a very competitive relative, who had a nice, but not awesome house, was asking for a tour of the house.

The windows around the Jacuzzi were open. He said, you can hear traffic with the windows open, I like my place better.

I would never dream of finding fault with someones house, especially when they asked for a tour. I was stunned. No mention of the grand entrance way, with the sweeping spiral staircase, that split in two directions. No mention of the mountain view from the 20 foot tall windows. No mention of the finished walk out basement that allowed you to play in the stream. Just criticism of the one tiny flaw he could find.

I being the polite person I was, just said, I have learned to live with it, when I have the third floor Jacuzzi windows open. He didn’t have a third floor, and the year before, he complained he couldn’t use his Jacuzzi, because the hot water tank wasn’t large enough to fill it. So I knew the working Jacuzzi bothered him.

You couldn’t hear the traffic on the bottom two floors, because of the houses and trees blocking it. You could only hear it, when the windows were open on the third floor, and just barely then, because the road was a km away.

Have you ever walked into a room and seen something that made you go, “Nope,” and turn 180 degrees and walk away? What was it?

1989 or 1990, one of restrooms in highschool.

Walked in, saw handiwork of someone’s halloween prank. Red liquid / Gel / Syrup / idk was everywhere. Walls, floor, stalls, sinks, ceiling… everywhere.

Executed a perfect 180, and ran into couple of guys carrying a skeleton (liberated from nearby classroom).

Year before that, had a few smoke bombs left over from 4th July, decided that student population of Library wing needed a bit of drama. Wrapped paper matches around fuses, lit matches, and calmly walked out and left building.

Nothing happened, no alarm, no mass exodus, etc. Being young and stupid, I revisited the scene od the crime. Opened door, walked around corner, and there were 3 teachers and resource officer standing by sinks / drowned smoke bombs. Executed a perfect 180 to leave, and was told to stop before could get out. School resource officer found the matches on me…

Was told was same matches that were used. I glanced at drowned non-incendiary devices and told him “Nope, these are white with red heads, those are all black”. Was asked why had them, replied “just had them by mistake after asked to change partners in Chemistry after lighting my Bunsen.”Mr Maeker, chem teacher, confirmed that I was asked to move, but did not disclose his class used *wood* matches.

Who was the most unfortunate person in the history of mankind?

The story of Joe Arridy comes to mind, marked by misfortune from the very start.

Born to parents who were related and faced with severe learning difficulties, having an IQ of just 46, Joe didn’t even start talking until he was five.

image 8
image 8

School was a bust; after just one year, the principal told his parents to keep him home.

His family life was rocked when his dad got laid off, and unable to cope, they sent Joe to a state institution. But that place offered no refuge, instead, Joe found himself the target of cruel bullying.

Life threw another horrific punch when, as a teenager, Joe was attacked by a group of boys. That awful incident got him sent back to the institution, where he’d already suffered so much.

At 21, Joe hit the road, riding the rails like many did during the tough times of the Great Depression. It was a rough existence, and sadly for Joe, it led to the most unjust chapter of his life.

Accused of a gruesome crime; the r*pe and murder of a young girl in Pueblo, Colorado. Joe’s fate was sealed by a confession that was disjointed and filled with inaccuracies.

No physical evidence linked Arridy to the crime scene. His conviction was based solely on the questionable confession and the loose testimony of witnesses and was only pardoned posthumously.

He went to death row but carried a strange kind of joy, one that stood out in the grimness of prison life. He was fond of a toy train, a symbol of his childlike innocence, which he spent most of his days playing and kindly gave it to a fellow prisoner right before he was executed.

image 7
image 7

On the day of his execution, Joe didn’t grasp the finality of what was happening. He left behind a bit of ice cream, which he requested for as a last meal, asking for it to be refridgerated for later, not realizing there was no coming back from where they were taking him.

The sobering story of Joe is a stark reminder of life’s unpredictable harshness and the importance of compassion and unwavering justice in our society.

And to also remind people who have it a little easier in life than others to be eternally grateful.

What is the strangest failure you have ever seen on a car?

I worked at a nursing home as a physical therapist and one of my clients was a retired cable TV executive with end-stage Alzheimer’s. After he passed away, I went to his wife’s home to offer my condolences and as I was leaving, I saw an older Cadillac in a covered carport behind the home.

A 1975 baby blue Sedan de Ville with a white vinyl top and a 500 ci V8 under the hood. I was fascinated and asked the widow about the car. She said it was her late husbands and that he had purchased it brand new. But before he was able to enjoy the car he developed Alzheimer’s and was no longer able to drive.

I told her if she ever wanted to sell it to let me know and left.

She contacted me later when she was moving and said she would like me to have it since I worked with her husband at the end of his life. We settled on a price and I bought the car with 24,000 original miles on the odometer. As I was leaving, the wife handed me a box of brand-new original floormats that had never been opened.

After driving the car around for a few days, I discovered a constant “thumping” that would increase with speed. After taking the car to a mechanic, he explained to me that the tires were original from the factory and although there was plenty of tread left, the tires had developed flat-spots from sitting in the driveway for years.

I replaced the tires and the car now has about 60K. Rides like a Cadillac.

Biden neocon war drums beat louder

As an American, I can tell you firsthand that folks are so unengaged in these events and their consequences. It appears that we believe we’re undefeatable. Our hubris will destroy us.”

Should the government continue to make prices or fix prices?

I like the Chinese Method

China adopts a strategy that is not exactly the Socialist Price Fixing but more of a Price Control

And purely for foodstuffs

China has in place a market mechanism for prices to rise and fall, a sort of a farm futures index

China also engages in buying 44%-77% of all the grain produced and Pork Produced and all other Agriculture produced in China , minus a few products like Fruits or Pears Or Shrimp etc

They pay according to the market index

Then when and if prices rise higher, they release foodstuffs from their storage and increase supply and this automatically lower prices to acceptable levels

This is because China has a storage capacity of 33 months for Grain at a 3.28% wastage

This is astounding for a Country that in 2007 had a 11 month storage capacity with 18% wastage


Now this is technically against Economic Laws

However Adam Smiths Free Market didn’t include manipulations

In the West, Agro Futures and Prices are pretty much capitalist controlled and can surge and fall in a way controlled by cartels

It’s worse in Africa , far worse

And Pakistan, by God it’s atrocious


Surprisingly India has a good old fashioned system like the State Purchases and Mandis that keep prices controlled


So my belief is Government should practise staunch capitalism and free market as long as :-

  • The market is dictated by PURE DEMAND AND SUPPLY and not by Cartel players
  • Education & Food & Health & Transport are excluded from pure capitalism and treated as Public Services

To the best of my knowledge only 17 Nations practise the above including China & the GCC& Scandinavian Countries

Uh oh… Big mistake

If you had one wish, and you can’t ask for more wishes, what would it be?

I’m in a second-hand furniture store.

It smells like mothballs, and the woman at the counter is at least 126 years old.

What’s this? An antique lamp. Looks old. I pick it up and wipe off the dirt and…

*POOF*

A genie.

He’s big. Blue. Sounds a lot like Robin Williams.

He says I get one wish and can’t ask for more wishes. I get it. The United Genie Association (UGA) doesn’t want one person taking all the wishes. They want to share the love. It’s a noble idea… but it’s one I can sidestep.

“I WISH… to be given the option to accept the same thing that every person wishes for when they find this lamp”.

Boom.

Someone wishes for a million dollars a week later… I’ll accept it too.

Someone wishes for the power of flight a month later… I’ll accept it too.

Someone wishes for world peace a year later… I don’t want that (not because I’m against the cause, but what are we going to do with TWICE the world peace?).

I haven’t asked for more wishes.

I’m just being offered a gift now and then.

Checkmate genie.

Now get back in the lamp. There’s an antique apothecary table I’ve got my eye on, and I want to get back to my shopping.

If your car is stolen, and then you just so happen to stumble across it parked in the street, are you legally allowed to steal it back then and there without calling the police or anything in the USA?

Yes you can. My cousin had her car stolen while at work. While riding the bus home a few days later, she saw it in a grocery store parking lot. She jumped off the bus keys in hand and sure enough, it was her car. Still hadsome of her belongings in it. Still had her registration and other documents in the glove box too. So she hoped in, locked the door and called the nonemergency police number to report she found it. It started up fine so they said she could drive off with it. As she was on the phone with them, someone came out of the store (with a cart full of groceries) and screamed at her that it was their car and to get out ECT. She cracked the window just enough to tell them it was her car, they stole it, and that they were idiots for leaving HER registration in the glove box. She then said I have the cops on the phone if you want to talk to them. They took off running. Left their groceries behind. She proceeded to load them into her car and drive off with the $200 worth of food. She said she took it as payment for stealing her car. She said what are they gonna do? Call the cops and say “Yea the lady who’s car I stole a few days ago took back her car and stole my groceries”

Stop watch is a ticking…

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Zn3_hUFVas0?feature=share

If China wanted to retaliate against Britain for the Opium Wars, without other alliance interference, who would win (modern day)?

The UK is already in a fairly bad way.

China could destroy the UK economy at the stoke of a pen.

Pull HSBC’s banking licence in China. HSBC is a UK bank. It’s got several trillion in assets and relies heavily on Asia and China now. HSBC withdrew from the US market as they were caught money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels.

The UK government would bail HSBC out and need to print 900–1500bn to do so.

GBP would suffer mega inflation.

Next up sanctions to push that inflation up some more. Without Chinese imports and exports to China their inflation would go up another 10–25% that would cause loss of faith immediately and they’d be looking at £50 bread. Massive riots would happen at this stage.

Biden Threatens War With China Over The…Philippines?

How deluded are these people if they think the US can talk down to China about anything at this stage, let alone human rights…

In WWI, how long did it take to dig a full scale typical WWI trench for any sized unit, and how did they not get shot, mowed-down, or barraged while they were digging it, considering they were in the wide open and on a huge front?

Obviously, the exact timing depended to a significant extent on the nature of the ground but, in the British army, a man was considered capable of moving, on average, a cubic foot of earth in three minutes. It was assumed that the rate would start at a cubic foot every two minutes in the first hour and then decline to a cubic foot every six minutes by the fourth hour. The work rate also slowed as the trench was dug deeper as the earth had to be lifted further. Reliefs should be provided at least every four hours.

A contemporary example I have seen suggests that forty men, using 40 shovels and 20 picks, could dig a:

forty rifle trench, 18″ command, traversed, recessed, and with head cover, in easy soil, in seven hours.

It is further noted that the minimum practical distance between men working was 5′ if a pick was being used and 4′ otherwise.

A full trench would be 6′ 6″ deep, being constructed of a 1′ 6″ parapet (above ground level), a 3′ drop to the fire step and then a two foot drop to the bottom of the trench. Initially the trench would be 4′ 6″ deep (including the parapet) and a minimum of 18″ wide. As soon as time allowed, the area behind the 18″ fire step would be dug out another 2′ and 2′-3′ wide to create the passage trench, the bottom of which would now be 6′ 6″ deep.

image 10
image 10

Of course, when under fire, they didn’t start building the full trench all at once. It would have started as a shallow scrape around 6′ x 2′ x 1′. That’s 12 cubic feet and would have taken around 40 minutes to dig. The scrape would then, successively, have been deepened so that it could accommodate a kneeling man (3′ deep) and then a standing man (4′ 6″ deep).

A scrape is defined, in considerable detail, thus:

[The soldier should] tear up and collect any vegetation within arm’s reach, and heap it up loosely as a screen at full arm’s length to the front.

(Lying on the left side of the body, and using the pick or blade of the grubber, according to the hardness of the ground, he should quickly hack the earth loose in a furrow, about 1′ 6″ feet away on the right side, from as far back to the right rear to as far forward to the right front as he can reach.

Then holding the grubber by the handle close to its head, thumb pointing towards small end of handle, and, using the blade as a scoop or hoe, he should scrape the loose earth out of the furrow and heap it up close in front of his left eye and shoulder. He should hack loose another strip of earth along the near side of the original furrow, so that the grubber will strike into ground which is probably softer than the crust, and can thus be undercut and wrenched up from below. He should continue to scrape loose earth towards the parapet and hack off the crust until the furrow is about 1’ 6″ feet wide. Any lumps of earth available should be used to build up the near edge of the parapet as steeply as possible.

Each new lot of loose earth should be disposed so as. to thicken the parapet in a direct line between his head and the point from which the most accurate fire appears to come, or, if the enemy’s fire seems to come from every direction, he may extend the parapet right-handed in a general horseshoe round the front of he trench, keeping. the past of the parapet over which he intends to fire about 6″ lower than the remainder, and of bullet-proof thickness if possible.

When the depth of the trench reaches about 6″ at the front end and 12″ at the back, and the parapet is 6″ high and bullet-proof, some vegetation, if any is available, should be scattered over the parapet to conceal the earth thrown up. The soldier is then ready to join the firefight.

The following diagram shows the evolution of the scrape (A) through successive digging to the full trench (E).

image 104
image 104

When sapping or extending an existing trench, the working face, and thus the number of men that can be employed, is obviously limited and it was expected that a trench could be extended by between one and two feet per hour.

Do you have any childhood memories that you didn’t understand until you were an adult (or teen)?

Before I was old enough to go to school my best friend was a little boy named Lester who lived across the street. We were almost inseparable. Then, just before starting school, we moved away. We visited Lester and his family a few times over the next couple of years, and then my parents started saying it was too far away and making other excuses for not visiting. After a while I got used to not seeing Lester any more, but I never forgot him.

After I had grown up, finished college and gotten married, my wife and I went back to my hometown and visited my mother. While looking through Mom’s old photo albums I came across an invitation to one of Lester’s birthday parties. Mom then told me the truth about Lester for the first time. One day she and Lester’s mother had taken us to the doctor together for our regular checkups. My results came back normal, and Lester’s showed he had leukemia. He still looked healthy when we moved away, and for the next couple of years. But then he became visibly ill and my parents didn’t want me to know, so they found reasons to stop the visits. But Mom secretly kept writing and talking on the phone to Lester’s mother for several years afterwards, and knew that he died not long after our visits stopped.

Even though it had been many years I was very shaken and saddened by that news, and to this day I wish I had been told what was happening and had a chance to say goodbye. All this happened in the late ’50s and early ’60s (I was born in 1955). Then, a few years ago, I decided to try and find out what had happened to Lester’s family. Mom had died in 1999 so my only recourse was to search online with what I had from my own memories. After a long search I finally came across a picture of Lester on a genealogy website and sent an email to his cousin. She put me in touch with her mother, who was one of Lester’s sisters. We exchanged several emails with memories of Lester, and though she wasn’t much older than him she vaguely remembered the little boy across the street (me) who had been his friend. I scanned several photos of him and me together from Mom’s photo albums and emailed them to her, including a few in which he was wearing the same clothes as in the picture they had put on the website. She was glad to know someone outside the family still remembered her little brother with fondness.

I’m 68 and I still wish I could have seen him once more, but this experience at least finally gave me a little closure.

Loving Two girls…

Why is almost everything in America made in China including the national flag and the clothes the president is wearing?

Thanks for the a2a. Why? Those of us old enough to remember all the manufacturing jobs going to China know that capitalistic greed is the reason. Owners and CEO’s thought paying Chinese workers rock bottom prices was more cost effective than to continue producing product in the US.

I don’t blame China. They needed the jobs back then. They took those low wages because it was better than none. It was better than starving in the Great Leap Forward. They were just providing for their families, same as the rest of us. I don’t begrudge them their success and rise to greatness.

In fact, I am impressed and absolutely thrilled with how far China has come. By the way, you get what you pay for. Pay them low wages and you might get low quality. Pay them well and you may see high speed rails and virtual reality. What you get from China is really up to you.

But don’t resent China or the people. Resent the factory owners. Resent your bosses that took your job out from under you. Blame the true villain instead of the straw man.

Pearl WARNS Modern Women About This

This is very harsh, but very true. Sadly.

https://youtu.be/hdCEjGjqd9Y

Why did not more countries join the Soviet Union?

Rats reach giant sizes in the battlefield of Ukraine as they feed on corpses of the dead soldiers and they’re never out of new meat.

The Western Siberian oil basin is the largest oil and natgas producing region in Russia. One would think that locals benefit from cheap gasoline.

Residents of Orenburg, Omsk, Chelyabinsk, and other neighboring Russian regions who live close to the border go on gasoline tours to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan filling tanks and canisters with much cheaper gasoline. For A-92 the difference is about 50%; for A-95: 30-33%, for diesel fuel: 30-37%.

What gives? High taxes to pay for war in Ukraine.

In Russia, the share of taxed in the liter of gasoline is much greater than in Kazakhstan. The excise tax on diesel fuel in Kazakhstan is 540 tenge (90 rubles), while in Russia 9,556 rubles per 1 ton (the share of excise tax per liter of fuel is 8 rubles).

The excise tax on imported gasoline in Kazakhstan is 1,839 rubles per ton while in Russia it’s 13,262 rubles, or about 10.3 rubles per 1 liter.

As a result, the share of the tax component in the liter of Russian gasoline at the moment, taking into account the excise tax, mineral extraction tax, and VAT, is over 70%!

Therefore, Russians pay extra for gasoline in order to dispatch fellow citizens to feed rats in Ukraine! Lucky rodents.

In the Perm Krai, an 11th-grader was given military summons right at school after celebrating Conscript Day. “Rats are hungry,” said the representative of the conscription office.

The Hamas delegation led by a member of the Politburo of the militants Abu Marzuk arrived in Moscow. They plan to discuss with their Russian counterparts how to conduct surprise targeted raids and kidnappings, share secrets about how to fool intelligence services, and receive additional lessons in paragliding.

But you do not worry, I’m sure that Russian President Vladimir Putin remains a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who first came to power two years after Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus killed all his competitors. These elderly men are birds of the same feather and flock together. Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has regularly entertained Taliban, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas as they have one crucial thing in common – they have dedicated their lives to fighting America’s hegemony .

During the Civil War in Sri Lanka, Mossad sold weapons to both sides of the conflict. Likewise, after seeing Hamas out of the door, Putin will meet with a delegation from Israel.

Military service is advertised on buses. Russian state agency plans to have ads on space rockets. In case aliens will see the phone number in the outer space and decide to become heroes of Russia.

The Head of the General Staff of Russia’s friendly India stabbed Brutalsky in the back and turned the knife one hundred and eighty degrees.

“Russia’s geopolitical importance will decline over time, even though it is a nuclear power.”

Flashing his nuclear head has been Putin’s favorite pastime for the duration of two years. Having an Indian general say publicly that they’re not impressed with the endowment and that the size doesn’t matter is appalling.

  • Russia depends on India. India can squeeze Russia for discounts as they have to sell oil somewhere while India has many options where to buy it.
  • After the start of Special Military Humiliation, the whole world stopped being afraid of Russia witnessing the low level of training of the military and the lack of modern weapons.
  • India is now considered a space power with its own lunar mission, while the Russian moon probe crashed and burned, the mission unaccomplished.

Sergey Shoigu should issue a threat that they would nuke the Taj Mahal and invade Goa on the pretext that thousands of Russian creatives are engaged in non-conservative and non-traditional activities there.

Rule One

What makes Japanese engines so reliable?

Many years ago I worked at a Toyota factory in the USA. One day we had some visitors from GM taking the factory tour and the visitor’s center was hospitable and had them meet some of the engineers and technical people (I was in IT and honestly had the best personality to deal with visitors so was invited along).

The GM people asked us to see our rework yard. I had no idea where or what that was so I asked my colleagues what it is and where it is. They were as confused as me.

When asked, the GM folks told us it’s the lot where they keep cars that come off the assembly line with defects so that they can be patched up and sold.

So we took them to the small warehouse area where we keep the dozen or so cars that come off the line with a minor issue that we can fix and make it as good as every other car. More often than not it was an issue with the stitching on the seat or a steering wheel or something like that, and we would just replace the part that was imperfect.

GM guy: “Where’s the rest of it?”

Me: “This is it. What do you do?”

GM guy explained they had a large lot for cars that come off the line with faulty body work or engines or transmissions, and they’re patched up so they can be sold. Then he said “what do you do with your defective cars?”

We explained that it rarely happens, and when it does we study it, figure out what went wrong, fix the issue so it won’t happen again, and then either keep the car for further study and training purposes or crush it. Nothing that comes off the line with a serious defect leaves the factory.

And that’s why Japanese engines (and vehicles) are known for reliability. Yes, tolerances are tight and yes, Japanese companies avoid untested technology. But that’s secondary.

The main reason is that anything defective that gets produced is studied, not sold, and then improvements are made so it won’t happen again.

The Japanese do make bad cars sometimes. They just don’t sell them.

Not everyone can say that.

Edit: Thanks for your awesome comments everyone. This is the sort of thing that makes Quora fun.

Second edit: Since Edward Deming keeps getting mentioned in the comments I feel I should address his influence on Japanese industrial processes. I’m no expert on Deming but from what I’ve read he’s clearly a remarkable man who had a tremendous impact on Japan’s postwar industrial development. With that said I feel it’s wrong to entirely credit him with Japan’s reputation for building quality products. He could have made the same contribution in other countries and received different results. Deming planted the seed and the Japanese nurtured the plant. Deming certainly deserves accolades for his contribution but the main credit for Japanese quality goes to the Japanese themselves. By all accounts Deming was a very humble man and certainly would agree. The world is a poorer place without him in it.

Iran Defense Minister to USA: Ceasefire in Gaza or be “Hit Hard”

World Hal Turner

Iran’s defense minister said Sunday that the U.S. would be “hit hard” if Washington doesn’t push for and implement a cease-fire in Gaza.

“Our advice to the Americans is to immediately stop the war in Gaza and implement a cease-fire, otherwise they will be hit hard,” Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani said, according to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Why are the Chinese not as aggressive like Indians?

  • Chinese people, by nature, are very calm/collective/and incredibly hard-working.
  • I have never seen/met even one Chinese in Canada/or China who is boastful, talks too much, and delivers nothing. Their talk is zero percent, and delivery is almost 100 percent. I have worked with Chinese Canadians at different levels for nearly fifty years.
  • By nature, they are very humble.
  • They are not gossipy/very goal-oriented.
  • And they are wired to work very cooperatively and team-spirited.

To describe Chinese: There used to be one advertisement. It used to say: Let your fingers do the talking.

Regardless, It was an advertisement for OLD TIME: Yellow Pages, before the internet. Some people may remember these Yellow Pages in the phone books used for publicity for all kinds of things/services/almost everything.

For Chinese people, I have a similar thing to say: Let the achievements of the Chinese do the talking.

  • I have observed and tried to implement/copy some of their trademark habits.

To win from the Chinese is almost mission impossible.

I could write many things about others, but these are my impressions/observations, it may upset some people.

And

It is sufficient to say that China and the Chinese will rule the world for a long time from now onwards.

A word of caution:

Yes, I am very aware of the lifestyle of rich kids: A present is small numbers but eventually will put one nail in the coffin. It happens to every race/country/company: To become complacent/wasteful/lazy/let it go. It is a usual growth curve, stagnation, and dying of wealth and power.

  1. Yes, I am aware of the shortcomings/evils/of the riches, too. There is a start of problem of obesity.
  2. Yes, there is an onset of flaunting new riches, too.
  3. Yes, there is the onset of being complacent.
  4. Yes, there is the onset of being lazy.

Yes, some of the new affluent Chinese kids are becoming obese/lazy/show off/useless/they come to the West to live in penthouses/fancy cars/big money in the bank by the daddy/and blow away dady money.

One line sums up: China and the Chinese: Let their achievements do the talking.

No race can compete with them: They are killing -machines in every field. And most of our neighbors are Chinese, and our kids went to school with their kids.

There is zero tolerance for not excelling in academics in a Chinese household.

I want to share something: One of our kids was neck to neck-with the Chinese kids in school. Chinese, by nature, as said earlier, keep to themselves, do not discuss their game plan, and work very hard. They surprise the competition with the result.

They did the same thing with China: They closed the doors to outsiders and put their houses in order. When they opened the doors, the world had a big surprise.

Go to China, see it yourself: Come back to the “Developed” so-called first world and see it yourself.

Rest assured, the world will not be the same: Life will be insensitive for the rest.

It is NOT only their industrial might: It is also relatively crime-free/corruption-free/full equality of women/and not wasting money in useless wars. During my six visits, I found that most people in China hope for a bright future.

Sadly, the West was in gloated form, complacent form, and ignorance form, and China’s bashful behavior of not flaunting took the whole world by surprise.

And

Due to the Chinese’s very reserved nature, not flaunting, keeping a shallow profile, however, the fact of life in Canada is they own massive real estate. In one city where I make most of my living, Chinese money is behind in all gigantic projects. And in other words, China owns an enormous share of Canada. (Please note this statement is based on my gut feelings/observations.)

It is also a myth that most Chinese are atheists. There is no truth to it. The Chinese have found the real God (Do your good Karma and do not worry about the results). Their massive churches are not ONLY for praising the LORD. There is all mutual business, comparing notes about the kids’ super achievements, kids helping kids, and parents exchanging their business cards. In the end, yes, it comes to Praise the Lord.

I have worked with almost all the races on the earth in Canada. Rest assured, NOT even one race except the Chinese can work together. You do not need supervisors/guards on any other race; if one tries to come out of the hole, the other members of his race pull him down, except the Chinese, they will lift the one who is trying to get out, and the same way the whole pit will be empty. Moral: That is why the Chinese are the wealthiest community in almost every country. (The hole is a metaphor for the poverty of comers; helping each other is a metaphor for a deep bond for each other, coming out of the hole to enjoy prosperity.) These were all metaphors and my observations.

Here is a bit more information on the author:

Something about myself and my family: I was born a few years ago; India was independent in 1947in the Punjab region of India, in a Hindu/Punjabi family. I did a BSc with two extra B.A. subjects and a BEd MSc from Punjab University Chandigarh. Now, it is in the U.T.

I moved to Canada in the early 70s when I was in my early 20s, enrolled in a grad program at U of Guelph, and finished my MSc with almost double the courses than expected and a lovely thesis on an industrial problem of that time.

I became very interested in learning about China and the Chinese in primary school. Our teacher was very impressed with China/Buddhism/Culture/and so on. He sowed powerful seeds in my mind about the great civilization of China. I vowed that one day I would visit China. I saw it six /visited times, and I just scratched the surface. Then COVID hit the world, and my continued journey stopped. Hopefully, I will start again to explore China.

I have been in Canada for close to fifty years. My wife and I raised our kids. Now, we are blessed with grandkids.

I hope it helps.

Sam Arora: MSc Food Science U of Guelph, Canada MSc Dairy Science U of Punjab, NDRI, India

Beautiful Shanghai: The area is called The Bund. In the background, the Pearl Tower salutes China’s rise to the Unofficial Chairman of the board(In my view). China and the Chinese showed the world that everything is possible with super hard work, And that is the real essence of Hinduism: super Karma.

Most Chinese people do not believe in reducing anyone’s height. They increase their very quietly and with total devotion.

What are shocking historical facts they don’t teach you in school?

image 102
image 102

It is possible that in the eighteenth century, the US may have adopted the metric system of measurements if it were not for a series of unfortunate events that befell Frenchman Joseph Dombey. Mr. Dombey was sent to America in 1794 to help the Americans reform the imperial system of measurements inherited from the British. The Americans had with the help of the French defeated the British and might be interested in a non British measurement system.

Dombey took with him copper prototypes for the newly devised meter and kilometer, which he intended to present to Congress. Unfortunately, his ship was blown off course to Guadeloupe where French royalists imprisoned him. H, Dombey was released only to be captured by pirates who stole his measurements and held him for ransom. While in captivity the unfortunate Frenchman died of a fever- thus depriving America of the the opportunity to adopt the metric system.

What is in the needle that soldiers injected wounded comrades with in Vietnam War movies? Did every soldier get issued one?

image 101
image 101

The morphine syrette used in WWII and Vietnam had a wire loop pin with a guard in the end of the hollow needle that was used to break a seal where the needle was attached to the tube. After breaking the seal, the wire loop pin was removed and the hollow needle was inserted under the skin at a shallow angle and the tube flattened between the thumb and fingers. After injection the used tube was pinned to the receiving soldier’s collar to inform others of the dose administered.

In the infantry, usually the medics carried them however some soldiers did carry some in case needed.

Today’s wounded soldiers suck on lollipops.

image 100
image 100

The new treatment offers an alternative to the morphine needle you see in the World War II movies, with medics jabbing a syrette into a soldier’s leg or arm.

The Fentanyl lollipop offers medics a faster way to ease the pain of a battlefield injury as the drug can be absorbed more rapidly through a lozenge in the mouth than from a needle injected into the muscle.

The absorption is actually faster through the blood vessels in the mouth. You don’t have to worry about shock which will constrict the blood vessels in a major muscle in a leg or an arm.

What’s the most disrespectful thing a doctor/nurse did to you or your newborn after you gave birth?

I was young and unwed. The doctor I saw attended me nicely, tried to counsel me, teach me about babies, etc, assuming at 17 I wasn’t capable.

After my beautiful baby was born and about 3 months old, at a routine check up, the doctor began asking me odd questions about wanting my freedom, needing money, etc., until he finally got around to saying he wanted my baby. Said he could do more for her than I ever could blah blah blah.

I was dumb struck. Insulted beyond belief. Scared me, too.

I told him he wasn’t her mother and could do any more than I could because he could never be her mother.

An odd response, I suppose, but I believed it then and still today. I was young, naive, resourceless, etc., but I knew he could never love her like I did (and do).

What is the best excuse you have given to the police for speeding?

I got pulled over in Florida on Interstate 95 in Palm Beach County. FHP trooper came up to me and asked me how I was doing. I replied, “Well, honestly, I was doing pretty good before I met you.” He laughed and replied, “Oh yeah. Ninety five. Ninety FIVE!”

Now it just so happened that he pulled me over right in front of an interstate marker sign. So I pointed at it and said, “But look right there. The sign says 95.” He laughed and then pointed to a piece of paper lying beside me on the passenger seat. “What’s that right there,” he asked. Um. A ticket. “Let me see that.” I handed it to him. He looked at it, then said to me “You’re going to screw around until you lose your license.”

Then…he let me go. I couldn’t believe it. I think he realized with the ticket he was about to give me, coupled with the ticket I already had, actually would result in a suspension of my license. I think that because I gave him a good laugh, he decided to cut me a big break.

I was grateful. And I still believe in miracles.

What is the most embarrassing moment of your life?

When I was 17-years-old, I was working as a waitress in a hotel restaurant.
I was clumsy as hell and uncomfortable serving people. I started as a kitchen hand so I was used to being in the back and safe from the patrons.

One day, a group of four from England, came in wanting to be seated. We only had one table available and we hadn’t cleared it yet so as they walked toward the table. I’m panicking about getting it prepared for them.

One of their party is an older gentlemen probably in his 40s and he’s quite handsome. He looked a little like Mads Mikkelsen.

​He was just like this and pretty fetching in my eyes. So, I apologized to his group and there were really gracious about it. They were lovely, lovely people. However, just as I’m removing a water jug from the table and one of the other girls is cleaning it, I bang into the gentleman as I’m turning and I spilled water all the way down the front of his shirt and all over his trousers.
I’m instantly horrified and I’m pretty sure I actually stopped breathing. He just said, “Ooops!”

He grabbed a serviette and starts dabbing at his shirt and without thinking and TRYING to be helpful, I also grab a serviette and I “dab it on his crotch”. Realizing the mistake I’ve made, I just drop the serviette and walk away back into the kitchen followed by the other waitress who is pissing herself by laughing hysterically while I’m nearly crying.

I had to return to their table to give them their cutlery, and as I’m placing it on the table, my hands are visibly shaking from my shame and embarrassment. However, the people at the table are so friendly, they’re laughing and joking so I feel less shitty about accidentally molesting the nice man. They were staying at the hotel so I saw them a couple more times during breakfast and dinner again the following night. Every time the group came in, they stopped to say hello and asked how I was.

To this day, I cringe and I still see the embarrassed look he gave me when I had my hand on his crotch. Oh, floor…please swallow me!

What is an example of a person practically falling into a movie career and becoming famous (with no prior experience)?

Johnny Depp. He had zero acting education or prior experience. He simply accompanied his band mate (!) to an audition for A Nightmare On Elm Street before a band rehearsal and waited in the lobby. Director Wes Craven spotted him, noticed his boyish good looks and said “You! Get in here right now.”

I’d say that qualifies as practically falling into a movie career.

Johnny Depp in A Nightmare On Elm Street:

image 92
image 92

What are some of the best examples of ‘work smarter, not harder’?

It was the year 1980.

A programmer named Tim Paterson worked hard writing code for a new operating system. Later that year in August 1980 Seattle Computer Products, shipped the first version of the operating system.

One day, a young energetic guy with large eyeglasses walked into the company searching for the operating system named 86-DOS.

He negotiated a non-exclusive license for $25,000 and took it to the computer giant named IBM. He showed the demo, offered a few modifications that they were requesting and closed a deal.

A few weeks later, in May 1981, this bright guy named Bill Gates who worked on a startup named Microsoft went back to Tim Paterson and hired him to further develop the software.

On July 27, 1981 he paid another $50,000 for the full rights, totaling $75,000 and renamed it to MS-DOS.

image 91
image 91

A month later, Microsoft was shipping MS-DOS on IBM personal computers, and within a year Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies!

Eventually this work turned Bill Gates and Paul Allen into the world’s richest men.

This my friend, is one of the best examples of “Work Smarter, NOT harder!”

What’s the cleverest cheating you’ve ever seen as a teacher or student?

I’m not sure that this counts as cheating, but a couple students did exploit a loophole.


It was about 2000, and I was teaching a large (~200 students) circuit theory course at the University of Washington, in Autumn quarter, in the big lecture hall in Bagley Hall. As the time for the second midterm approached, students began clamoring, “Professor Sahr, how can we get extra credit on the exam?” I kept telling them, “just study for the exam, okay? And do your best. No extra credit!”

But the students kept whining and whining, and finally (exasperated), I said this: “Okay, any students who cross Drumheller Fountain on the day of the exam get 10 extra points.” The students said “awwww, you’re no fun.”

You can probably see where this is going.

At any rate, the day of the exam arrives, and the weather just sucks. It’s mid November, and (unsurprisingly) it’s raining cats and dogs, and the wind is blowing. As I stagger over to Bagley Hall, I notice that Drumheller Fountain is on — there are these water jets in the middle of this 100-foot-diameter fountain which is (by the way) about seven feet deep. And I think to myself, “why in hell is the campus running the fountain right now?” because the wind is blowing the spray all over the place, and making a miserable day even more miserable.

Anyway, I get into the auditorium, and I look around. Everyone is kind of bedraggled, because of staggering through the rainstorm outside. Obviously there’s a lot of water on the floor, because of the 200 or so students tracking it in with their wet feet and clothes.

But it seems to me that there was kind of more water than I would expect, even on such a rainy day. Glancing further around the room, I notice something weird off to the side: it’s a rubber raft. As I look up into the seats, I see the hundreds of students, but then I notice two students sitting next to each other, and *nobody* is sitting near them. These two students are wearing orange survival suits, and it dawns upon me that these two idiots have crossed Drumheller Fountain in that rubber raft.


They got their 10 points, of course.

When was the last time you used science to help you out in a desperate situation?

I had a friend of my father-in-law’s reach out to me in desperation. His daughter was about to graduate from U. Buffalo with a major in cinematography. She was working on her final project and her Mac crashed on her. He implored me to help her out as best I could.

I got her laptop and pulled the drive. I popped it into an external enclosure and it had 10k available. A hard drive should have 15+% free so the computer can write temp files to it. 10k is REALLY bad. Then I heard a click come from it. This is desperation time, now. A click from a hard drive usually implies a “head crash”. This occurs when the magnetic reader inside the drive makes contact with the platter that has the data written to it. It’s usually a fatal situation.

It was about 9PM on a Saturday. I broke out a bottle of Jameson’s and knuckled down for some serious thinking.

OK, the reader is making contact with the platter. I need to make the platter smaller, so the head comes off it. Come on, science, help me out here. What makes things smaller? COLD! I took the drive and stuck it in my freezer (in a ziploc baggie). Then, I built a box that could hold the drive, and I attached a bunch of computer fans to it, pointed down where the drive will lay. After a couple of hours, I removed the drive from the freezer, stuck it in the box with the fans, and fired it up.

NOTE: the fans were there, not for cooling, but to prevent condensation from forming on the drive and its controller card.

I fired it up and was able to recover the entire contents of the drive. I finished the bottle and powered down the drive. Just for S&Gs, I turned it back on and it failed HARD, like it’s never gonna work again, “hard”. I just managed to recover it as it was on its final death throes.

I told my FIL’s buddy to send me another (bigger) drive and that I was able to recover everything. He asked, “How? I thought it was completely dead.”

“SCIENCE!”

Somewhere out there is a cinematographer who owes her college graduation to me, Jameson’s, and science!

Is there any toilet in Boeing B-52 Stratofortress?

The B-52 does have a toilet, but it is very basic and primitive. The toilet is located behind the offense compartment, which is where the pilot, co-pilot, and electronic warfare officer sit. The crew members have to use a bag to defecate and dispose of it when the bomber’s mission is over.

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image 99

There is no privacy, as there is no door or curtain. The toilet is also very close to the classified communication servers, which can be awkward and uncomfortable.

The B-52’s toilet is not very convenient or comfortable, but it is necessary for the crew members who have to fly long and demanding missions. Its pilots and crews have to follow strict procedures and protocols, such as pre-flight checks, post-flight checks, flight planning, flight testing, and flight training, to ensure the safety and readiness of the aircraft.

Its pilots and crews also have to deal with varying atmospheric conditions, such as temperature, pressure, and humidity, which can affect their health and comfort. The B-52’s toilet is one of the few amenities that the crew members have on board the aircraft.

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image 98

So the B-52’s toilet is not very convenient or comfortable, but it is necessary for the crew members who have to fly long and demanding missions.

What is the strangest experience you ever had in an elevator?

When I was 19 years old I was in an elevator in a high rise building at night on my way to the 50th floor.

At the 5th floor, the elevator stopped, a man got in and pressed the ground floor button. Once the doors shut he suddenly grabbed my purse! I stood there looking at him while he frantically started pressing the first floor button.

I explained to him the car would go all the way up to the 50th floor first but he ignored me and kept pressing the button.

We slowly went up. It was quiet and creaky. Old elevator in an old building. No cameras (that I know of).

About halfway up I asked if he could take the cash out and leave me the purse so I would not lose my pictures and identification. He said “sure”, took the cash, handed me the purse. I mumbled thanks.

When we got to the top and the doors opened, he said “please stay in the elevator until I get off”.

So I stood there in my corner, nervous, but also calm while we went all the way down to the first floor where he got out. The doors shut and I went back up to the top floor.

He got about $60.

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image 97

What are some weird facts about North Korea?

1.Elections.

  • In the country, there are elections every five years, there is no other candidate in the elections.

2.Owning cars.

  • In North Korea, only rich people, powerful people and government officials can on cars including luxury cars.

3.If you commit a crime, the rest of the family would go to jail.

  • In North Korea, committing a crime would lead your Innocent family to be in jail as well if they didn’t commit a crime.

4.There is an abandoned propaganda village within the border of South Korea to attract south koreans who desire to defect to north korea.

5.You will find almost every empty roads in that country.

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image 96
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image 95
  • In North Korea, almost every roads in that country are very empty with few cars and people.

6.Don’t talk to locals when you’re a tourist.

  • When you’re tourist, you’re not allowed to talk to locals citizens of that country.

7.Western products are not allowed in that country as well as products from South Korea.

  • Because of the sanctions by the international community, products from the outside world including k pop music and products from South Korea aren’t allowed in that country.
  • Despite the ban of these products by the North Korean government from the outside world, people smuggle them and they are sold in black markets.

8.People aren’t allowed to wear jeans in that country.

  • Jeans aren’t allowed in that country because the North Korean government thinks that they are western made clothes.

What is the most outrageous order you have seen while working for In-N-Out Burger?

Years ago I was on a tour with a bunch of classmates in Northern California.

Naturally, we had to stop at In N Out and since most of my classmates were from the East Coast, it was their first In N Out experience. They quickly learned that you could order as many hamburger patties as you liked for your burger and one guy decided to push the limits.

In true first timer fashion, he ordered an 11×11, meaning eleven patties and eleven slices of cheese between the same bun. The burger cost him more than 20 bucks and for some reason he ordered fries as well. He couldn’t finish the damn thing and ended up wasting a good portion of it. This was before camera phones and social media, so he was even able to get a picture and brag about it. The glory of ordering an 11×11 was lost to a rubbish can that day.

Fortunately, In N Out won’t put more than 4 patties on a single burger any longer. That’s my understanding anyhow.

Are nuclear-powered submarines the most deadly weapons ever made?

No, but they are certainly among the most powerful and formidable weapons in the world. Nuclear-powered submarines are not weapons themselves, but platforms that can carry and launch various types of weapons, such as torpedoes, missiles, and mines.

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image 94

Some of these weapons can be nuclear-armed, which means they can deliver a nuclear warhead to a target, causing massive destruction and radiation.

Nuclear-powered submarines have several advantages over conventional submarines, which are powered by diesel engines or batteries. Nuclear-powered submarines can operate at high speeds and depths for long periods, without the need to surface or refuel. They can also travel long distances and access remote areas, such as the Arctic or the South China Sea. They can evade detection and countermeasures, thanks to their stealth and maneuverability. They can provide a credible and persistent deterrent, as well as a rapid and flexible response, to potential adversaries.

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image 93

Nuclear-powered submarines also have some drawbacks and limitations, which make them less than the most deadly weapons ever made. Nuclear-powered submarines are very expensive and complex to build, maintain, and operate. They require highly skilled and trained personnel, as well as strict safety and security measures.

They are vulnerable to accidents and malfunctions, which can result in radiation leaks, fires, or explosions. They are also subject to international laws and norms, which regulate their use and proliferation. They are not invincible, as they can be detected, tracked, and attacked by other submarines, ships, aircraft, or satellites.

I’d appreciate an upvote if you found this answer helpful or informative.

What is the best tip you have regarding anything?

In any military, young recruits are often highly idealistic — as many of us are with any new profession.

These recruits have played Call of Duty and watched Full Metal Jacket. They love battle and are excited to go full Rambo and blow things up.

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image 103

And then they experience war for the first time.

They are shot at. They see a friend bleeding to death, knowing they can do nothing to save them. The recruits learn the hard way that war is true horror.

In the US Army, there’s a phrase, “Standard Operating Procedures are written in blood.”

It means that every stupid rule a cadet is drilled on, is there for a massive reason. Other units have learned these lessons in a very, very difficult way.

No, not all of your life’s lessons will be written in blood — but you may pay a steep price if you don’t listen to people wiser than yourself. They’ve seen things.

Cajun Pot Roast with Maque Choux

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2023 11 08 11 51

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (2 to 2 1/2 pound) boneless beef chuck roast
  • 1 tablespoon dried Cajun seasoning
  • 1 (9 ounce) package frozen corn
  • 1/2 cup onion, chopped
  • 1/2 cup green bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Instructions

  1. Rub entire surface of beef roast with Cajun seasoning.
  2. Place roast in 3 1/2 to 4 quart slow cooker. Top with onion, corn and bell pepper.
  3. In small bowl, combine tomatoes, pepper and hot pepper sauce; mix well. Pour over vegetables and roast.
  4. Cover; cook on LOW setting for 8 to 10 hours.
  5. To serve, cut roast into slices.
  6. Serve corn mixture with slotted spoon.

Presidential Talents

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5enU2jXd1ZI?feature=share

Good memories save us

When life is hard… I often look backwards and try searching for pleasant memories.

Stand by me…

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2023 11 13 15 17x

One of my favorites is walking along the abandoned railroad tracks, along the river, in rural Western Pennsylvania. It’s a pure “Stand by me moment”. I lived this life in my early teens. And I often look back in time to this pleasant series of moments.

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2023 11 13 15 16

Do you, fellow MM reader, have memories of your past that comfort you? What are they? A pet… a tree house… a uncle or auntie?

I’m good.

Don’t fret, though. I am just talking in general.

I have friends in trouble. But me, oh, I’m really good.

2023 11 13 15 22
2023 11 13 15 22

Please don’t forget your pasts…

Today.

What do you think is “right and what is wrong” in the Taiwan dispute between the US and China?

Chinese in China and Chinese in Taiwan will resolve the dispute if any between China and Taiwan. That is absolutely the right thing to do. The U.S. has absolutely nothing to do with this totally internal domestic issue. Any move to manipulate and war monger in Taiwan is totally and absolutely wrong you will certainly fail.

I am a Chinese ancestry from the same district that the majority of Taiwanese Chinese people migrated from. I have folks in China and Taiwan and we are of the similar stock. We certainly see that the U.S. trying to jam a spanner in the works as totally and absolutely wrong from Chinese people point of view and dare I say from the American point of view too.

How foolish can American think that it can shed blood and disrupt China by interfering in Taiwan? Do Yanks want to blow another 10 trillion dollars you don’t have to fight a war that 99.99% you will lose badly! Do the right thing pull out every single U.S. force out of Asia and make amends with the worlds most humongous market. Stop wasting more money flexing your sagging muscles by parading you aircraft carrier at a billion dollar a pop!

Your homeless need this money. Your uninsured healthcare citizens needs the money. Your infrastructure is dilapidated, Your streets are crumbling and totally not safe. Your banks are dropping like flies. You need to retrain the entire work force even compete with China.

What is right? The U.S. must get the fxxk out of South East China seas. And North Asia. You do that and Taiwan and China will resolved what ever issues it in a week. You can focus on making America great again. By being here you are helping g to make China great again!

Loyalty

Do you think Huawei will take back much of the market share it lost to Apple in the coming years?

Yes, Huawei will dominate the China and global south markets. But it will not in the global north market cuz the US will not lighten the pressure on Huawei.

However, Huawei makes not just phone, its strength is in network which is the weakness of Apple. No matter how good iPhone is, it’s limited by the network performance. While Apple created macOs, iPadOS and iOS (it’s a mess in my opinion) Huawei have unifies all in one OS; harmonyOS, an important step for the future IoT world. The US had inadvertently given Huawei a rare opportunity to self alliance and placing itself in a dominant position in the IoT market. Anyone wants to do business in China in the future should think twice being a lapdog of the US now.

Furthermore, Apple brags about their 3nm chip, yet it doesn’t have satellite voice communication compared to the less powerful Huawei Kirin. Indeed, it is impressive, but how does the 3nm technical supremacy benefit the users when Huawei offers more functions for less money? Trump started sanctions on Huawei, and Pompeo lied about China worldwide and now Biden’s growing pressure on Huawei, which invokes higher patriotism doesn’t help Apple sales in China. Apple will unlikely to regain market share in the near future.

What don’t they tell you about married life?

  1. Marriage is like a joint-stock corporation: you have to invest in it to have it run smoothly and both of you need to make a commitment to make it happy.
  2. There are only difficult marriages and very difficult marriages. None are easy. But problems usually are resolveable.
  3. All happy marriages are happy in the same way, all unhappy marriages are unhappy in their unique ways. This is known as the Anna Karenina principle.
  4. Divorces follow the Pareto law. 80% of all divorces happen to 20% of people, 64% of all divorces happen to 4% of people and 50% of all divorces happen to 1% of people. Conversely, 80% of all marriages will last to death, and most people never divorce.
  5. Learn to cook like your mom, not to drink like your dad.

Joker: The best thing a veteran can get is a strong-willed but a loving spouse who will take PTSD seriously and provide love and guidance when needed. My maternal granny was one.

Cajun Meat Loaf with Sweet Pepper Sauce

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2023 11 08 11 33

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

Meatloaf

  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 1 cup finely chopped sweet red pepper
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped sweet green pepper
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 4 slices white bread, torn
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1/2 cup dried bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup ketchup
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Sweet Pepper Sauce

  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 1 cup diced sweet red pepper
  • 1 cup diced sweet green pepper
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 cup cider vinegar
  • 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon whole mustard seeds

Instructions

Meatloaf

  1. Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add red pepper, green pepper, onion and salt; cover and cook over low heat until very tender, about 8 minutes.
  2. Remove from heat and cool slightly.
  3. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan.
  4. Combine bread and milk in large bowl; let stand 5 minutes to soften.
  5. Add beef, crumbs, ketchup, egg, hot pepper sauce and sweet red pepper mixture; toss gently to coat.
  6. Spoon and pat into prepared loaf pan.
  7. Bake for 1 hour.
  8. Let stand 15 minutes before serving.
  9. Top each serving with a dollop of Sweet Pepper Sauce and serve.

Sweet Pepper Sauce

  1. Heat in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the red pepper, green pepper, onion, water and salt; cook, stirring occasionally, over medium heat until very tender, about 8 minutes.
  2. Stir in cider vinegar, brown sugar and mustard seeds; cook over medium-high heat until most of the liquid has evaporated and sauce is thickened, about 8 minutes.

More Brinkmanship: NATO Shows Pics of Netherlands F-35 loaded with Nuclear Bombs!

World Hal Turner 12 November 2023

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2023 11 13 11 30

NATO (i.e. the United States) has upped-the-ante-with Russia . . . again.  They published photos of a Netherlands F-35 stealth jet with two B-61 nuclear bombs in its bomb bays – SIMILAR TO THE FILE PHOTO shown above.

No announcement.  No publicized “threat.”  Just loaded the plane with nukes, sent it into the air, told it to fly over a cameraman with its bomb bays open, and then publishes a photo showing the nukes are onboard.

Hal Turner Remarks

THIS is how NATO tries to intimidate Russia – over Ukraine.

Except the Russians don’t get intimidated.

We are still, very much, on the brink of outright nuclear war with Russia.   And with NATO pulling crap like this, we get closer and closer as each day goes by.

Of course, no one in the Western “mass-media” bothers to show you how we continue to “poke the (Russian) bear” but I do show you.

I show you because when it actually happens, YOU will all know who it was that drive the issue.  YOU will know it is OUR side that did it.  ANd YOU will know who to hold accountable when they slither out from their bunkers in the aftermath.

Delusional

What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?

When I was working in my job of 23 years for a company making a certain medical product, I was the sole full time employee with 2 directors.

I was getting older, my eyesight got weaker and the machinery more worn and needed more maintenance and broke down more often.

Production was lessening. I asked for a helper, but was refused!

Management then came up with a plan! They required me to write a daily journal of the work I did and the time taken and a detailed description of the work! On top, I needed to requisition any purchases required to maintain the function of the factory.

So, besides the set-up and operate of 7 machines, I had to clean my hands after each repair and sit down to fill in the journal. Any time I needed parts, I had to write a requisition, fax it to HQ, and wait for approval before driving to suppliers to buy them…one time, a machine was down for a month for want of 1 screw! They forgot because it was only 1 screw on the requisition!

Production plummeted, and eventually they moved back to the UK and set up there. Not a problem hiring 7 people to do the job I managed on my own for 23 years!

At least I got a decent severance and control of my pension fund…which was neglected as well!

Marriage Material

What is your biggest “only in the USA” moment?

Teacher: “So over 6 million Jews died in the Holo-”

Student: “Why aren’t we learning about the Confederacy? Why do y’all erase our Southern history but not the Holocaust?”

Teacher: *goes silent for a few moments*

Teacher: “Well, those are rather loaded questions. But can you tell me the name of this class?”

Student: “AP European History.”

Teacher: “…and where was the Confederacy?”

Student: “The United States.”

*The student continues to argue that we should still be learning about the Confederacy and not the Holocaust*

-A student with a thick country accent.

This is also the same student who wrote a huge passage from the Bible from memory on the whiteboard when the teacher wasn’t looking. But I digress.

Teacher: “So which countries in Europe weren’t under communist control?”

Student: “China!”

-A very confident friend of mine in our AP European History class.

Teacher: “Sarah, pop quiz, how many states are in the United States?”

A very unconfident Sarah: “Oh, goodness… um, 51?”

Teacher: “Are you serious?”

Sarah: “Wait, there aren’t 51!? Is Puerto Rico not a state?”

-A former military officer and current teacher, chatting with a very aloof student before a Veterans Day parade.

Godfree Roberts talks about China

Author James Howard Kunstler questioned me about Why China Leads the World: Talent at the top, Data in the middle, Democracy at the top this week. He’s a typical, educated, intelligent American whose sole source of information about China is the New York Times. His tone was civil and he gave no clue that he believed nothing I told him. When he released the interview, he labeled me a troll.

Stay classy, Jim!

Listen to the podcast here.


Here’s the outline I sent him prior to the interview:

  1. PARTY PEOPLE: The Communist Party’s ninety million members contribute a billion dollars in annual dues and billions of volunteer hours. They took an oath to ‘bear the people’s hardships first and enjoy the benefits last’. 48,000 of them flew into Wuhan when Covid broke out and 90% of staff deaths were members. Few work for the government and even fewer benefit from membership, yet they determine the country’s direction. 
  2. THOSE WHO PLEASE THE PEOPLE. China chooses politicians the way the US Navy chooses admirals and treats them similarly. Chosen from the top two percent of university graduates, theyspend years away from home, are modestly paid, earn PhDs, take orders, perform distasteful missions, observe a restrictive moral code, are held responsible for subordinates’ mistakes, constantly assessed, scrutinized,  tried in special courts and punished more severely than civilians. China’s elite has always been non-hereditary, and they’ve been the country’s heroes for millennia.
  3. DATA-DRIVEN DEMOCRACY. Constitutionally, electively, popularly, procedurally, operationally, substantively, and financially, China is democratic. The Carter Center oversees elections, voter participation is higher than ours and, in survey after survey, they trust their government and say it responds to their needs. 
  4. A DATONG ECONOMY. For seventy years China’s economy has grown three times faster than ours and, by 2028, will be twice as big. They spend four times more on R&D and lead the world in most sciences and technologies. 
  5. THE GRANARY IS FULL. Because Beijing allocates 59% of GDP to wages, incomes have outgrown GDP for decades and, by 2023, 96% of people owned a home and had a job, plenty of food, education, safe streets, health care and old age pensions. Their mothers and infants survive childbirth better, their children graduate school three years ahead of ours and live longer, healthier lives. There are now more drug addicts, suicides and executions, more homeless, poor, hungry and imprisoned people in America than in China.
  6. A SAN FRANCISCO EVERY MONTH. China has built the equivalent of one San Francisco every month since 1951. Now they’re building City V2.0, a clean, green home for six million people that integrates 5G, driverless electric cars, maglev trains, vast wetlands and prevailing winds. Designed to pay for itself by doubling inhabitants’ productivity, it opens in 2024. 
  7. EDUCATION. Chinese youngsters graduate high school three years ahead of ours. Tier One urban teachers are limited to fifteen hours of classroom instruction weekly and their principals have chauffeured limousines and overseas sabbaticals. They take education more seriously than heart attacks.
  8. LOST GIRLS AND HALF THE SKY. The first bill Mao, a lifelong women’s libber, signed in 1949 was the Equal Rights Amendment. The ‘missing’ thirty million girls have been found–beating boys in school–and their big sisters lead gigantic science and defence programs and comprise most of the world’s self-made female billionaires. 
  9. RELIGION. Two-thirds of Chinese are atheists and one-fourth non-religious Taoists. Though a Christian uprising killed thirty million people and brought down the Qing dynasty, the Constitution guarantees freedom of worship and the government supports seventy-four seminaries, one thousand seven hundred Tibetan monasteries, three thousand religious organizations, thirty-nine thousand mosques, eighty-five thousand religious sites and three-hundred thousand clergy.
  10. CONFUCIAN ETHICS AND RULE OF LAW. Of all government services, the Chinese are happiest with their legal system. With one-fourth of our security budget, their police are unarmed, streets are safe, prisons are empty and reoffense is rare. The Supreme Court’s chatty website has had two billion visitors.
  11. EARTH IS MY MOTHER. The Chinese have lived on the same land for thousands of years and it’s more productive today than ever. Thanks to the EPA, they avoided our environmental disasters and emulated our successes. Today, 42% of the country is wilderness and Giant Panda National Parkalone is bigger than Massachusetts.
  12. HUMAN RIGHTS: Of the original thirty rights in the UN Declaration, China leads America in twenty-six and has proposed three that the US opposes: rights to food, shelter and national development. 
  13. CORRUPTION: The government, which tells the truth and keeps its promises, is the most trusted on earth. Though many local officials became dishonest during the boom, policy-making remained untouched. Now, AI and a dedicated, Cabinet-level anti-corruption department have the upper hand. 
  14. PROPAGANDA: xuānchuán, ‘transforming the people through exemplary behavior and instruction,’ has been a government responsibility since ancient times. China’s success in rolling out new programs depends on it.
  15. DISCUSSION IS SUSPENDED. The Office of Chief Censor is two thousand years old and its incumbent is, and has always been, the country’s leading intellectual. Today, he’s a famous author and also a Cabinet member. He oversees the world’s largest, richest, most trusted media and his mandate is constitutional: “Once a policy has been widely discussed, voted on and legislated, discussion is suspended while everyone unites to implement it”. 
  16. THE TIANANMEN CAPER. Inflation, race, sex, wages and loss of university scholarships triggered the Tiananmen Square demonstration. President Clinton discussed it on Chinese national TV for an hour, but the story ended with an in camera trial in London’s Crown Court.
  17. TIBET AND THE DALAI LAMA: More Tibetans can read and write their native language today than all the Tibetans who have ever lived, and those who have lived under both governments prefer the current one. Running water, schools, universities, hospitals, airports, high speed trains and forty years of rising wages have made a difference. As has the Lhasa Hilton. 
  18. HEGEMONY AND HUMANE AUTHORITY. China’s military, which humiliated ours in 1951, has more firepower than the US but plans to lead the world by virtuous example. Failing that, they’ll blow the US Navy out of the water with weapons a generation ahead of ours.
  19. A DATONG WORLD. Ten years ago President Xi founded the BRI, promising to, “Jointly promote democratization of international relations by building an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security and common prosperity–a world community of common destiny, a shared planetary home for humanity.’

What women look for in a man

Have you ever had anyone hit your car because they weren’t paying attention, and get out & yell at you like it was your fault?

Oh I have a good one! Not only did this crazy woman run into me, she then tried to sue me!

I’m in the UK so traffic directions may differ in your country.

Here we go…

I’m turning right. I’m stationary waiting for a gap in traffic. One comes and I start to turn and – wham! – this lady runs straight into the back of me.

Took me a moment to realise what happened but I get out of my vehicle and check on her. She immediately states aggressively that it’s my fault. Errr, you run into the back of me I was stationary, love. She’s having none of it.

Anyway a police car happens to pass and stops checks that there’s no injuries. She is still ranting to the point even the policeman has had enough and points out she run into the back of me so it’s cut and dry your fault mrs.

So we swap details and I go home. As it happens I was turning into the street I lived at the time so no need recover my vehicle. I just park it and go to have a beer.

I call my insurance company and they’re not really interested as my car was worth £500 and with no injuries, there’s no money to be made. I was planning to scrap the car in three months when the MOT ran out so I just replaced the tire that was damaged, replaced the light cluster, tied a rope to a telegraph pole, straightened the chassis the old-fashioned way. Bit of duct tape on the bumper, and I’m good to go for the remainder of the car’s life. I wasn’t hurt so it’s all good.

That’s the end of that I thought… NOPE

Eighteen months later I get a court letter claiming against me personally. Not contact my insurance company just put in a claim for £4500 ish claiming I had overtaken a line of traffic and swerved in front of her not giving her time to brake. I know not even possible.

So I contacted my insurance company and they’re not interested. So fuck this I think I’ve never been paid for the damage to my car I’m going counter claim against the bitch.

So that’s what I did: I claimed £500 against her.

So the court day comes round and I’ve prepared my paperwork best I can do. I rock to court not really knowing what I’m doing but hey ho.

So I turn up early and don’t sign in; instead I sit close to the sign-in desk and wait for this nut job to turn up. She does with her slimy solicitor. So I let them sit and quietly go and sign in then I sit behind them so I can hear what they say. (Neither of us could remember what the other looked like of course).

He’s telling her I hadn’t turned up so they will win by default and as I was a day late responding to one of his slimy letters he was going get my entire case ignored through a loophole even if I did.

So the afternoon court session starts and off he goes up to the desk triumphantly stating that as I not turned up he expects this to go in his favour without a fuss.

Oh my friends on quora — if you could have seen his face when the nice lady paused, looked at him and said “but he is there” pointing at me. Sitting sneakily right behind him since he turned up listening to everything he had said. I know I shouldn’t have but I had to give him a cheeky wink. Lol

So we get into court — it was actually the judge’s chambers rarther than a large open court so there were only the four of us: me, crazy lady, her solicitor, and the judge . He starts off with his he wants throw my paperwork out through some legal loophole the judge looks at me and I come out with one of the finest lines in my adult life… I simply said “well that’s not cricket, judge”. I laughing as I recall this… the judge puts his pen down looks at this solicitor over the top of his glasses like a headmaster at a naughty pupil. He immediately retracts his request; I hold in my chuckle.

So the case carries on. Somehow my paperwork is far better than his and the guy is dying on his feet. I had just split from a solicitor I’d been dating for couple of years so I must have picked some stuff up. So this goes back or forward for 30 minutes or so and we get to the end. He sums up and he literally says “I surpose” … blar blar you did this, etc. Sits down.

Judge says to me right you have a go like he just has so up I stand… this is where I came out with the second best line of the day: “once upon a time… I was turning right… blar blar even the judge cracked a smile at my comedy genius.

So anyway I win – guess how much I got?

3 days pay @ £100

£500 for my car

£4.50 parking while I was at court.

£804.50

They even paid the parking !

Rob 1

Slimey solicitor and crazy lady Nil

Now that’s cricket, folks.

Admitting the truth

What are some examples of the demand “Since I don’t have it you too should not have it”?

This woman is a common story but there’s a twist.

image 15
image 15

She was psychotically jealous and eventually decided her husband can’t be with anyone else so she would take him off the market. She stabbed him seven times killing him.

To be clear, violence against wives/women is much more common—which is what makes these cases so interesting and unique.

This one was especially unique.

She stabbed her husband to death after seeing a picture of him with another woman. Yet she didn’t realize it was an old picture of her and her husband and she didn’t recognize herself.

In your time in the military, have you ever met a high ranking officer and were unaware of their rank?

I was a PFC in the USMC Reserves back in the 1960s and we were spending the weekend down at either Pendleton or Miramar, I don’t remember which, for our annual rifle qualification. Every Marine up to some high rank must qualify with a rifle every year. In the USMC, every Marine be they a cook or a company commander can put lead up the a$$ of the enemy just as well as an infantry Marine.

We were an artillery unit and our battery had finished our qualification with M-14s; we were told to stick around as we had to score and “pull butts” (mark targets with little discs to show where the shot had hit) for other regular Marines who were scheduled to qualify that day. One of my buddies was in the pit (200 yard range) and I was up on the firing line keeping score and recording.

An older Marine came up to qualify. He had a shooting jacket on so I couldn’t see his rank. We chatted for a while and when he was ready he began firing shots – I don’t remember the sequence but it was something like 10 shots prone, 10 shots sitting, and so on for – I think – 50 rounds to complete the effort. Depending on where you hit the target – bulls eye, or one of the outer rings, or missed completely (then the guy in the pits waved a red flag, which we called “Maggie’s Drawers”) you got a score for each shot. You had to get a score of something like 190 to qualify.

Anyway, this older guy started shooting and did a terrible job. He frequently hit near the edge of the target and even got a few “Maggies”. I made some joking comments about how he was going to get his a$$ kicked if he didn’t do better, then he changed positions and I could see he was a Major. That gold oak leaf peeked out from his shooting jacket, and I realized if he failed he might be retired out.

So I called my buddy in the pits and said we had a Major on the firing line and he had to qualify. No more Maggies and make sure he passes. We didn’t make him an expert or anything, but made sure he hit just over the minimum.

When it was over, I apologized for not recognizing his rank and saying “Sir”; he said laughingly no problem and then “thanks a lot, Marine” and went on his way.

Why is Iran trying to get its money back from the United States?

From the 1950s to the late 1970s, the Shah of Iran robbed the country blind and sent all the money to the United States for investment.

Then a new government came into place in 1979 and demanded the United States return both the Shah (who was in the United States for “medical treatment”) and the Shah’s ill-gotten gains. When the Iranians stood by and let the American Embassy in Iran be taken over by “student protestors”, the United States implemented a complete embargo with Iran which effectively prevented them from repatriating assets in the United States. The United Nations soon followed suit, which prevented Iran from reaching its money in several other countries.

No-one is quite sure how much money is involved, but the low estimate is $100 billion U.S. dollars. China holds the largest share of that – $20 billion, but the United States still holds about $2 billion although it has over the years allowed Iran to repatriate some of its money on conditions of paying off U.S. court judgements.

Most recently, $6 billion in assets held in South Korea was transferred to Qatar for humanitarian uses. However, all the money still appears to be in Qatar.

Modern Woman’s Awakening: Choosing Family As Well As Career Success

What’s the saddest thing you have seen an adult do at a shopping mall?

I worked at the cookie store in the mall and there was a small seating area. A woman came in with an elderly woman who was clearly frail and suffering from later stages of dementia wearing a housecoat, slippers and what was clearly a bright yellow fall risk bracelet from the hospital, her frail body shaking as she sat making these soft whimpering noises.

The younger bought her a cookie and a soda and told her she’d be right back and took off, moving the elder woman’s walker well out of her reach and leaving the elderly woman alone. It didn’t take long before the elderly woman got more upset and kept trying to get up.

Our manager called security and went out to sit with her, but the elderly woman was scared of her, not knowing who she was. Security came and that just made the situation worse.

We ended up calling the police, the elderly woman had no ID on her (fall risk bracelets don’t contain personal information) and no way to call the younger woman over the PA system. Unfortunately this was not a high emergency situation for them and it was well over an hour before someone got there.

By the time the younger woman returned, social services had arrived and were loading the woman up into an ambulance.

She had abandoned her own mother for over two hours at the mall to go to dinner and shopping.

What is the craziest thing you’ve ever seen a bullet do?

In 1977 I was in the army; a SP4 in the 978th MP Co., 76th MP BN stationed at Ft. Bliss, TX. My MP shift was was preparing to go to work and we had all just been issued our 1911 .45 autos from the arms room and were in the CO’s ready room. A soldier named Stone was issued a new holster and had taken the old one off his gunbelt and replaced it with the new one. They were of this type:

Stone had inserted his pistol into the stiff, brand-new holster. It was not easy. He hadn’t gotten it fully seated and the leather flap was still propped up some. I was standing right beside him and casually watching. We wore a white lanyard that attached to a loop on the butt of the weapon. When Stone tried to attach the lanyard, the 1911 discharged. His hand was nowhere near the trigger.

The Captain was in his office adjacent to where we 12 or 15 MP’s were and at the sound of the round going off he came storming into the ready room:

“Who the fuck fired that shot!??!!”, he screamed. “What the hell is going on here?!!”

Stone slowly raised his hand and the captain’s full and acidic ire and venom were directed at the young PFC. The cap called him every name in the book as he dressed the kid down a full minute or so for being reckless. Finally, at the end of his tirade the Captain asked, “Now where the fuck did that round go?!”

Stone had no idea where the round went and was near tears from the harsh words from the CO, especially since he hadn’t touched the trigger of his weapon at all. Everyone was looking around for the impact of the .45 ball round when I noticed a small, half-moon shape on the toe of Stone’s boot.

“Move your foot, Stone”, I said.

Stone shifted his right foot and there, in the floor under his boot was the bullet, fully imbedded into the tile floor. We all realized the round must have passed through Stone’s foot.

The transformation in the captain’s attitude was immediate and remarkable. Suddenly he became the very personification of the father figure, very concerned and compassionate about the young PFC.

“Sit down here son. Are you okay? Don’t worry about a thing..” he said as he took Stone gently by the arm and lead him to a chair. Medics were called and the CO continued to comfort Stone until medics arrived. Stone was transported to William Beaumont Army Medical Center.

So here’s the theory we came up with about how the round was fired and the remarkable path the bullet took:

Stone’s new holster was very stiff. We surmise that when he was shoving the .45 into the new holster the slide caught on the rough leather just enough to chamber a round and jam the hammer partly cocked, but not locked into place. As he was trying to attach the lanyard the hammer was released, causing the discharge. I have no idea if that’s what really happened, but I do know for sure he never touched the trigger and his hand was not on the grip.

The Path of the Bullet:

When the round discharged the bullet first blew out the bottom, including the small wooden plug, of the military holster. It then entered Stone’s right trouser leg about 5 inches above his knee (he was wearing fatigues). Amazingly, the bullet passed between his skin and the cloth, for about 7 inches or more, without contacting any flesh. It exited a few inches below the knee and continued to his right combat boot, entering at the toe. It passed though and entered the floor.

When he arrived at the hospital and his boot was removed, the doctors discovered that the big ‘ol .45 round had passed right through Stone’s right big toe without touching the bone. Now I don’t know how much meat you have on your big toe, but that was astonishing and very lucky for Stone.

Because there was so little damage, Stone recovered in just a few weeks. Had that big round entered his leg and struck his knee joint, I think it’s likely he would never have fully recovered the use of that joint. Thanks for reading!.

Cajun Pepper Steak

2023 11 08 11 31
2023 11 08 11 31

Ingredients

  • 1 pound beef (round or sirloin) cut into strips
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • Tabasco sauce, to taste (that means USE A LOT)
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 2 large onions, cut into strips
  • 2 bell peppers, cut into strips
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch (or all-purpose flour and a little water)
  • Steamed rice

Instructions

  1. Brown steak in oil for about 5 minutes turning to brown both sides.
  2. Add 1 1/4 cups of the water and Tabasco Sauce. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.
  3. Add the onions and and bell pepper and simmer until meat is tender.
  4. If the gravy is too thin, thicken it by mixing 1/4 cup of water with the cornstarch or flour stirring until there are no lumps.
  5. Remove beef mixture from heat and slowly add the thickening mix while you continue stirring.
  6. Return to heat and simmer until gravy thickens.
  7. Serve over rice.
  8. Garnish with chopped shallots and make sure the bottle of Tabasco is on the table.

Have you ever caught a car mechanic lying about a part they said they replaced?

Not exactly, but I got suspicious of one dealership who serviced my car on a regular basis.

When I left the car, I set up a few things…

When I went to pick up the car, I paid the bill then went out and inspected the car. I then asked the service advisor to review a few things and he came out to the car with me. First thing I noticed was my right rear tire was inflated to only 15 lbs, which is where I’d adjusted it to five minutes before dropping the car off. On the service checklist it showed that all the tires had been checked for proper inflation. Service advisor commented the tech must have missed that one, and apologized. I said let’s look at the spare, it’s noted as being the right pressure too. I popped the trunk, lo and behold there was the gas cap sitting on the floor of the trunk. I pointed to the list and noted that I’d been charged for a fuel additive, so I asked if it was common practice to leave the gas tank cap in the trunk after adding the fuel additive to the tank. At that point the advisor ran out of excuses and started stammering his apology. He refunded my money and offered a free service job in the future. I took the money, declined his “free offer”, and never darkened his doorway again.

I went no further with that, but told several people I knew that used that dealership to beware.

What does poverty look like in your country?

If you are poor in Finland, you live in council housing.

image 14
image 14

Since Finland is located between 60° and 70° North, homelessness kills. The Finnish winter will simply kill you if you do not have a roof over your head.

Social housing – council housing – has been the thing since Industrialization. If your income level drops below a certain limit, your hometown or municipality will arrange you a subsidized council flat.

Poverty in Finland is essentially relative. Your basic needs (food, water, warmth, protection from weather, etc.) are covered, but you lack the means to attain the higher levels of the Maslow hierarchy of needs.

Köyhyys ei ole synti, mutta pirunmoinen häpeä. Poverty is no sin, but a god-awful shame, is said in my native Finnish. Yet it can be ameliorated, and for most people, poverty is a temporary state of things.

There are two sure-fire ways to become poor in Finland; one is divorce and the other is developing an addiction. Divorce and single parenthood are things which are to be avoided whenever possible, since they mean costs skyrocketing. Since both parents working (and sharing the costs of living) is the norm in Finland, divorce means there are now two separate households, but single incomes, meaning there will be less spare money to use and to invest. Developing an addiction (alcoholism, drug addiction, etc.) means skidding into antisocial lifestyle and derailment of the labour and workforce, meaning unemployment and unemployability.

Relative poverty usually hits families with young children worst. Since both parents are in the entry stage of their work careers, their incomes tend to be low, but their spendings high due to the children, and many of them actually do qualify for council housing. Things usually tend to get better once the children grow, and the parents advance in their careers.

The good thing with council housing is that, once you qualify for it and do not live in an antisocial, filthy or disturbing manner, you cannot be evicted. Many families with decent incomes, who once have been poor, actually choose to live in council flats, because that will leave them far more disposable money to use than if they lived in “good reputation” suburbs or purchased their own homes.

Was Hermann Göring allowed to speak in the Nuremberg trials despite his crimes against humanity?

Yes. And he was very erudite, eloquent, and oratorially intelligent. Probably the best defense speaker at the trial. It didn’t stop the prosecution from convicting him, but most admit that it was an outstanding presentation. Maybe not all that logical, but it symbolized the Nazi mindset.

image 16
image 16

Herman Goring, Reich Marshall of the Third Reich, presenting defense argument at Nuremburg before sentencing.

Rather than being hung, he committed suicide by swallowing cyanide pills smuggled in to him.

Will the USA take the risk to have a war with China to maintain hegemony?

Indeed, this is a question that many people are asking.

And precisely, because it is on many people’s minds, that I will answer it. Well, without a “crystal ball” perhaps, but in my own way.

So let’s look at the parameters…

[1] No actual leadership

President Biden is a figurehead. There’s no one “upstairs”.

This is not a political assessment. It’s an actual observation by anyone who watches the videos of him. He cycles in and out of clarity, and often appears to be suffering from pretty advanced dementia.

He goes though the motions. Read the teleprompters, and “kisses babies”.

But in the strategy briefing rooms, in high level discussions, and other important roles, he’s present but not proactive.

[2] Careening out of control

Without leadership, the “car careens wildly on the road”.

Financial opportunists place all sorts of bills and initiatives for personal profit “on the table”. These then “grow legs” and take on a life of their own. The Tiktok ban is one such example. Thus the Senate and Congress appears to be simply a forum for grandstanding while the “representatives” try to accept higher and higher piles of cash for their participation.

Congress more aptly resembles a shark feeding frenzy over a cow carcass.

There’s no real statesmanship, leadership, or forward planning. It’s all on “autopilot”, and being run by monied interests.

[3] The road is not empty

It wouldn’t be so bad if the “careening car” is on a wide and open empty highway. But it isn’t. There are many other cars on this road. There are cars with couples. cars with families, and school busses full of children.

It’s only a matter of time before the careening car smashes into someone else.

After smashing into Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, the car is now banging into a large clunky tractor-trailer; Russia. And, each time the tractor-trailer tries to get unstuck the car smashes again, and again, and again. It’s almost like the driver for the United States car has no brakes. It’s acceleration only. And Russia while dinged up, is still moving forward.

Now a big yellow bus full of school children looms up ahead. This is China, and it is enormous (being double-Decker), and powerful, and does not want to be hit.

And everyone around is terrified.

And what does the United States car do?

It “floors” the gas petal, and is zooming straight ahead. The driver seemingly wants to broadside the bus at high speed.

Conclusion

Is it no wonder why people are concerned? People are terrified.

At this stage of the game, and I am loathe to say this, there are only five (x5) things that can stop the upcoming disaster…

  • The car rams the bus full of children. There are deaths in both vehicles, and a chain reaction occurs where other cars start hitting the wreckage on the road.
  • The car runs out of gas, and stops dead in the middle of the road. It sputters, and dies.
  • The people inside the careening car take control of the wheel. And then, carefully and slowly, ease it to the side of the road.
  • The crazy car drives off the highway on it’s own, and destroys itself without hitting anyone else.
  • The tractor-trailer and the bus full of children coordinate and with their combined mass, push the madman off the road on their own. And other cars, acting in good faith, help in whatever capacity they can provide.

Ho-flation?

Bubble Gas Tank

When I was in college, I went to visit my father in Erie, Pennsylvania. I rode my motorcycle to visit him, and parked it outside. I didn’t get along with his wife (my step-mother) and went inside.

On that day, my step-mother was visited by her older brother. He brought his two sons. They were slightly younger that myself, being in High School.

Now, while I was inside with my father, those two kids poured bubble liquid into my motorcycle gas tank. Laughed about it. And of course, the action truly busted up my motorcycle.

Sigh.

Anyways… the entire family claimed that “I deserved it” as I didn’t have a lock on my gas tank. Not even remotely true, but I had to grit and take it.

Went without a motorcycle for about a month, while my bike was fixed.

It sucked, but those little snits were able to get away with it.

I swallowed and took it.

Sometimes due to situations, you take the hits.

You walk away.

It does not mean that you are weak. It’s just a pothole that you must endure. You learn from it.

I did.

Todays…

What are some of the ugly truths about divorce?

My future ex-wife didn’t like Navy life. She met a fellow at work who was a year or two younger, was decent looking, had a new Corvette and a line of shit as long as your arm. She asked me to move out while she “got her head screwed on straight”. A week later, she filed for divorce, and moved in with Mr. Wonderful. “We don’t have anything in common, and you don’t have anything I want”, she said. (Oh, OK). In California it takes 6 months for a no-fault divorce, but both parties must have a financial settlement on the table in order to proceed to “final”. She dragged her heels all the way, saying “no, no, no” to every settlement I put forward, but finally we hammered it out after 8+ months. About 4 months later, she called. “Let’s be friends. We have so much in common.” (Mr. Wonderful wasn’t so wonderful any longer).

I said, “We tried that for 10 years. I didn’t like the way things worked out”.

Strange “Coincidence?” Hong Kong Flu Re-Emerges from 1968 — in far eastern Russia

World Hal Turner 07 November 2023

2023 11 10 18 03
2023 11 10 18 03

The first case of Hong Kong Flu since the 1968-69 “pandemic” has emerged in the Sakhalin Region of far eastern Russia.

1968 flu pandemic, also called Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968 or Hong Kong flu of 1968, global outbreak of influenza that originated in China in July 1968 and lasted until 1969–70.

The outbreak was the third influenza pandemic to occur in the 20th century; it followed the 1957 flu pandemic and the influenza pandemic of 1918–19. The 1968 flu pandemic resulted in an estimated one million to four million deaths, far fewer than the 1918–19 pandemic, which caused between 25 million and 50 million deaths.

The 1968 pandemic was initiated by the emergence of a virus known as influenza A subtype H3N2. It is suspected that this virus evolved from the strain of influenza that caused the 1957 pandemic. 

Although the 1968 flu outbreak was associated with comparatively few deaths worldwide, the virus was highly contagious, a factor that facilitated its rapid global dissemination. Indeed, within two weeks of its emergence in July in Hong Kong, some 500,000 cases of illness had been reported, and the virus proceeded to spread swiftly throughout Southeast Asia.

Within several months it had reached the Panama Canal Zone and the United States, where it had been taken overseas by soldiers returning to California from Vietnam.

By the end of December the virus had spread throughout the United States and had reached the United Kingdom and countries in western Europe. 

Australia, Japan, and multiple countries in Africa, eastern Europe, and Central and South America were also affected. The pandemic occurred in two waves, and in most places the second wave caused a greater number of deaths than the first wave.

The 1968 flu pandemic caused illness of varying degrees of severity in different populations. For example, whereas illness was diffuse and affected only small numbers of people in Japan, it was widespread and deadly in the United States.

Infection caused upper respiratory symptoms typical of influenza and produced symptoms of chills, fever, and muscle pain and weakness. These symptoms usually persisted for between four and six days.

The highest levels of mortality were associated with the most susceptible groups, namely infants and the elderly. Although a vaccine was developed against the virus, it became available only after the pandemic had peaked in many countries. 

The H3N2 virus that caused the 1968 pandemic is still in circulation today and is considered to be a strain of seasonal influenza. In the 1990s a closely related H3N2 virus was isolated from pigs. Scientists suspect that the human H3N2 virus jumped to pigs; infected animals may show symptoms of swine flu.

Russia now reports The first case of Hong Kong flu was recorded in the Sakhalin region, according to the website of the regional Rospotrebnadzor

According to the department, the virus is characterized by rapid and sharp development of infection, which lasts a long time and often requires symptomatic treatment. The infection affects the mucous membrane of the nasal cavity and oropharynx, causing inflammatory processes.‌‌

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

Yes. I know a guy who is an accountant. Imagine the geekiest-looking accountant that you have ever seen in your life. Coke bottle glasses, nerdy clothing, white as a sheet. He and his wife were walking down a street in Hollywood, just two nerds out for a stroll. Perfect targets for any street hoodlum. Sure enough some two-bit street thug stepped out in front of the two with a cocky self-assured grin and a knife in his hand, and he ordered them to give him all their money.

Quick as a flash, the accountant grabbed the guy’s wrist which held the knife, gave it a turn, and literally flipped the guy over, breaking his arm in the process. While the guy lay there screaming , the accountant looked down and asked the guy if he wanted some more. The guy just kept screaming, so the accountant let him go and walked on with his wife.

Okay. The backstory on this accountant was that he grew up on a Midwestern pig farm with five older brothers. From the time he was 8 years old he had to carry 50 lb buckets of feed every morning before school. After school he had to work the farm until it was time to go in, do his homework and go to bed. His older brothers were mean. When they weren’t fighting with each other, or getting beaten up by their dad, they were picking on this guy. As a result of his upbringing this guy developed skeletal muscle strength which is hardly ever seen these days. Not only that, he learned to fight guys that were just as tough as he was and who were all bigger.

I have seen this guy working on his own house knocking down walls with a sledgehammer held in one hand. I’ve even seen him lift the front of one car off the bumper of another during a minor fender-bender. To say this guy was strong was an understatement.

He managed to conduct his life in a very civilized manner. He was a great musician and a very talented writer as well, but I have seen more than one guy step out of line around him, and watch The Farm Boy come out. When that happened it usually didn’t take more than a look for everyone to start behaving better.

Men’s most powerful tool

Damn!

What did a family member say or do that you don’t talk to them anymore?

I was 18 and my girlfriend had committed suicide. I went to my dad and told him what happened. At this point my stepmother and I were at odds, always fighting and never getting along. This had been going on for years. My dad knew this and told her to lay off. The moment my dad left for work, she comes in my room and says that I deserved what happened and that it was my fault she killed herself. I was shocked. I packed my bags and left the same day. I had had enough. I called my dad and told him what happened and that I was leaving.

I haven’t spoken to her since and I don’t want to.

Boudin

Boudin is one of the most famous Cajun recipes. This excellent version has no liver. This is a great dish to make and it freezes well. Many people cut the casing off the boudin before eating it. This dish is a good one to learn because once you have mastered its preparation you can use almost anything in the place of the pork. Some of the most popular are chicken, shrimp, crabmeat and crayfish. Bread is a traditional but not as good replacement for the rice.

boudin2
boudin2

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds lean pork, minced
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 1/2 bunch green onions, chopped
  • 1 green or red bell pepper
  • 1/2 bunch parsley, chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 tablespoon salt, or to taste
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
  • 1/2 teaspoon thyme
  • 1 teaspoon ground white pepper
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 2 cups water (approximately)
  • 3 cups rice, cooked
  • 20 inch long sausage casings

Instructions

  1. Put pork into a pot along with the onions, bell pepper, parsley, garlic and seasonings. Add just enough water to meet the level of the ingredients. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
  2. Transfer to a large bowl and stir in the cooked rice. Adjust seasonings if necessary.
  3. Tie the 4 sausage casings at one end and stuff them with the mixture. Twist each 20-inch length into three equal lengths. Tie open end.
  4. The boudin can be cooked covered in a little water, grilled or pan fried in a little butter.
  5. Cut the sausages and serve 2 to each person.

What do you do if the boss tells you, “Don’t come to me with problems, come with solutions”? Is it time to start looking for a new job?

Yes, and no.

I had a manager who said exactly this this to me. He dismissed all my solutions out of hand, as they might cost money. This was a guy who a. stuck me in an office where I couldn’t work, as it wasn’t safe for me to be alone in a building with mental health clients, without an emergency alarm. He refused to install an alarm and so I had to go to work every day for a year with no work to do. Less than a week’s salary would have paid for an alarm. B. He rented and paid for the complete outfitting of an office for the family therapists, with a cctv and so on, despite them telling him it wasn’t suitable. The office reminded unused, the equipment was stolen and replaced TWICE, and they never moved in, in the end -as it just wasn’t suitable.

Come to me with solutions, was complete and utter bullshit from beginning to end.

The only reason I stayed, was it was a permanent and pensionable job, and I was a skint single parent.

We were overjoyed when he retired. I was still so angry with him years later as he’d made my life a misery for so long that I couldn’t attend his funeral. And if you’re Irish, you’ll realise what a big huge bloody deal that is.

What is the most clever life hack you’ve learned?

  • Golden spending rule: If you can’t afford two of it, you can’t afford it.
  • When you’re thinking about buying something you don’t necessarily need, imagine the item in one hand and the cash in the other. Which one would you take?
  • If you have trouble choosing, flip a coin. While you’re waiting to get the result, your mind automatically starts to wish for what it wants. Then you can choose easily.
  • Honey does not go bad; if it has gone solid it has just crystallized and can become liquid again with just a little heat.
  • If you put something down temporarily, say out loud “I’ve put the screwdriver by the microwave” or whatever.
  • Read the three and four star reviews for the most reliable information on Amazon items.
  • When moving house, always set up your bedroom/ make the bed first so when you’re exhausted and just had enough you can fall into bed. Nothing worse than being exhausted and having to make the bed before getting into it
  • If there’s a jar or container you can’t open, run the lid under hot water for about 30sec. Dry it so you can get a good grip, then open. It really works.
  • Secretaries, tech support, and janitors are the true power in an office. Make friends with them and you’ll be able to get anything you need!
  • When a friend is upset, ask him one simple question before saying anything else: “Do you want to talk about it or do you want to distract from it? ”
  • It is important to know when to stop arguing with people, and simply let them be wrong.
  • If someone offers you something you want, take it. Don’t decline every kind of offer out of politeness.

Bingo truths

The male and female struggle in the United States (West) is REAL.

When was a time someone tried to contradict you about an area in which you are an expert?

Many years ago I was visiting one particular North Sea Oil Production Platform as a consultant employed by a specialist contractor. On arrival onboard the platform all the people from the helicopter, who were not regular crew, were directed to heli administration and informed we could not leave without watching a safety briefing video. Some six or seven of us settled down while the helicopter clerk loaded the video player and pressed play.

I was hot and tiered from the early check-in and the long flight. I dozed off after about ten minutes watching the video. I must have been asleep for about five minutes before the clerk noticed. He practically slapped me awake and proceeded to scream in my face. He accused me of being stupid and having a death wish, which was justified, but then began to scream insults and to question my parentage which was far too much.

When he eventually asked if I considered it beneath my dignity to absorb information designed to save my life and did I regard myself above listening to the video that I lost my temper. I stood up without saying a word and marched to the front of the room. I stood next to the video screen and quietly asked him to look at the screen himself.

I will never forget the expression on that man’s face as it dawned on him that it was me appearing on the screen giving the safety briefing. He looked from my face on the video screen to my face standing next to the screen and back to the video just as if he was watching a tennis match. He turned bright red and stuttered an apology.

When I sat down to watch the rest of the briefing he sat at the rear of the room and chewed his finger nails worrying if his job was safe. When the video finished and everyone else had left the room I let him know that he had been correct in chastising me but to tone down his language if anything similar happened in the future.

The War Is Lost – Zelenski Will Leave – The White House Has Failed

What a difference a year makes …


biggerbigger

Time’s big new story is quite revealing:

‘Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.’ Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the FightTime – Oct. 30, 2023

That offensive has proceeded at an excruciating pace and with enormous losses, making it ever more difficult for Zelensky to convince partners that victory is around the corner. With the outbreak of war in Israel, even keeping the world’s attention on Ukraine has become a major challenge.

 Quoting a soldier on the front of the counter-offensive, the Economist agrees:

“Left Handed”, an infantryman fighting at the front between Robotyne and Verbove, says Ukrainian losses have increased to alarming levels, in part due to the work of drones. The plains of Zaporizhia have turned their back on life, he says. “It’s hellish. Corpses, the smell of corpses, death, blood and fear. Not a whiff of life, just the stench of death.” Those in units such as his own had more chance of dying than surviving. “Seventy-thirty. Some don’t even see their first battle.”

Still, Zelenski is urging them on:

But his convictions haven’t changed. Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace.

On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

Zelensky’s stubbornness, some of his aides say, has hurt their team’s efforts to come up with a new strategy, a new message. As they have debated the future of the war, one issue has remained taboo: the possibility of negotiating a peace deal with the Russians. Judging by recent surveys, most Ukrainians would reject such a move, especially if it entailed the loss of any occupied territory.

The war is lost. They know it. But they are unwilling to give up.

Zelenski’s people put the blame everywhere but on the those who have caused the mess. It was the ‘victory’ messaging by Zelenski and his crew that has led the public into utter complacency.

As Strana headlines (machine translation):

Ukraine is losing the war with the Russian Federation due to the inadequate perception of the situation by society — commander of the Armed Forces of UkraineStrana.news – Oct. 30, 2023

Strategically, Ukraine is losing the war because of the inadequate perception of the situation by society.

This opinion was expressed by the commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Dmitry Kukharchuk in an interview with Channel Five.

He claims that at the beginning of the war, all Ukrainians were ready to defend the country, there were many volunteers. But after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kiev, the situation changed.

“Immediately after that, I noticed that there were theses in the media that we are fighting with homeless people, that the Russian army does not know how to fight, that in principle victory will be in a week or two, a maximum of a month. That first in the spring, then in the summer, then in the autumn, then in the winter, without specifying which winter, we will go to the Crimea. That the victory is basically victorious. So people were put in a warm bathroom. We have broken down the vision of reality. But it didn’t happen in Russia. They began to realize that the war was not going to be easy for them. They realized that they would have to fight for a long time, ” Kukharchuk believes.

He also says that the Russians are “getting stronger” every day, and if Ukraine really fought the “degenerates”, it would have defeated them long ago.

“That’s why we’re losing. They have these processes going on, and their public readiness is much higher than that of our society. And when they talk about a nuclear bomb, a war of all against all, for some reason it seems to me that they are ready for these processes, ” the battalion commander added.

Napoleon, Hitler and several other folks who had sought war with Russia, had to learn to never underestimate the depth of its resources. Now NATO, the U.S. and its European proxies, are learning that lesson.

Zelenski still hasn’t. He won’t concede:

The cold will also make military advances more difficult, locking down the front lines at least until the spring. But Zelensky has refused to accept that. “Freezing the war, to me, means losing it,” he says. Before the winter sets in, his aides warned me to expect major changes in their military strategy and a major shake-up in the President’s team. At least one minister would need to be fired, along with a senior general in charge of the counteroffensive, they said, to ensure accountability for Ukraine’s slow progress at the front. “We’re not moving forward,” says one of Zelensky’s close aides. Some front-line commanders, he continues, have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President. “They just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line,” he says. “But we can’t win a war that way.”

When I raised these claims with a senior military officer, he said that some commanders have little choice in second-guessing orders from the top. At one point in early October, he said, the political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? “They don’t have the men or the weapons,” says the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”

In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”

Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”

The Ukraine’s old problems, foremost corruption, persist:

Amid all the pressure to root out corruption, I assumed, perhaps naively, that officials in Ukraine would think twice before taking a bribe or pocketing state funds. But when I made this point to a top presidential adviser in early October, he asked me to turn off my audio recorder so he could speak more freely. “Simon, you’re mistaken,” he says. “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”

Knowing that the ship is sinking, this its probably what I would do too. Bring anything available onto my personal life raft and prepare for cutting its lines to the mother ship.

The Time piece is a signal. It announces the end of Zelenski’s regime. I am sure that the National Security Council, as well as the State Department, is feverishly looking for an alternative – and for a face saving way to install it.

Someone seems to protect and promote Alexey Arestovich for exactly that purpose (machine translation):

After leaving the Presidential Office with a scandal in January 2023, Arestovich, although he began to criticize the actions of the authorities, nevertheless did it carefully until recently.

But right now, he’s just slamming the ruling team.

Arestovich focuses on two things: the military decisions of the country’s leadership and its domestic policy.

The second version: Arestovich enlisted the support of Americans who want to see more political diversity in Ukraine and are not interested in Zelensky’s monopolization of power.

In favor of this version, they also use the fact mentioned above that the tightening of the rhetoric of the ex-adviser to the president’s Office began after his trip to the United States. Also in this regard, they recall his interview with Gordon in early October, where he says that if the West decides to end the war without reaching the borders of 1991 and Zelensky resists this, then the president of Ukraine will be “changed” in the elections.

“It is possible that Arestovich is supported by a certain part of the Western elites, who care about the breadth of opinions in Ukraine. They say that the country can speak not only with Zelensky’s voice, but there are also different critical opinions, ” political analyst Ruslan Bortnik comments to Strana.

In its grand strategy the White House had sought to pivot to Asia. But the U.S. is – first in Ukraine, in a completely unnecessary conflict the U.S. itself has caused, and, with Gaza in flames, again in the Middle East.

In a recent talk in Australia John Mearsheimer takes a deep dive into this dilemma (video). He doesn’t foresee a good outcome.

Posted by b on October 31, 2023 at 8:12 UTC | Permalink

I’m exercising my Rights

What event was the equivalent of a bomb being dropped on your relationship?

I was hesitant to write this as it is somewhat personal but it might be therapeutic, I’ve already shared so much and I suppose I can without naming anyone:

I went on my partner’s laptop and stumbled across a strange message on her Facebook browser that made me scrunch my eyes —strange.

It was pictures of my partner with another family I didn’t know.

She was holding a guy’s toddler, standing (closely) next to him, and his parents behind them, and she had no wedding ring. Behind them was the Disney Castle.

The direct message was from a woman (his sister) that said “___ told me not to post these on Facebook because things were complicated.”

That was the moment—my eyes widened and I realized something was amiss. “… things were complicated?!?!?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture. That part fucked me up.

Many of you are in relationships. Just imagine the person you love, that you might be sitting next to right now, suddenly appearing in a picture at a theme park (like the above) with another family, “with” someone else. Nobody in that picture you recognize. And everyone appearing to be very familiar with each other.

It would mind fuck you pretty hard, too.

And the more I dug into it, the worse it got.

It was a full-blown affair.

It caused an avalanche on the relationship.

You feel this rush of fury at having been lied to. You are disgusted with the person. You suddenly see all the pieces to the puzzle coming together in your mind, the nights “out with the girls” and “crashing at a friend’s house,” and all the strange subtle behaviors you’d been blind to.

“How could I have not known?”

After discovering the cheating, the sequence of events probably mirrored the same pattern others have experienced.

You confront the person.

They deny, deny, deny.

Finally, they fess up after you wave the obvious evidence in their face.

Then there is this rush of apologies, they are so sorry, they never meant to hurt you, they really want to be with you, the other person isn’t the one, please forgive them, pleasepleaseplease.

As she says this, more evidence and damage seems to rain down behind her. It gets worse with each apology.

From there, it gets ugly fast. The fan is set to max speed. And shit is thrown upwards.

It’s a terrible situation. Because here you have this person that you deeply love. That you have a lot of history with. That you have a shared identity with. And come to truly think of as an ally; a better half.

But now – you have to face a dark, undeniable reality that cannot be ignored, that things aren’t what they once were, and this person isn’t the person you thought they were.

It is the deep, painful cut of betrayal that takes years to heal.

Everything that came before this event gets called into question.

“Were they lying then?”

“What else were they lying about?”

“How did it start?”

“Does this person really love me like they said they did? Then how could they do all of this?”

In my case, things couldn’t be reconciled. It went far beyond the realm of repair.

It was a terrible, messy breakup but ultimately it was the right thing. Even though I’ve now come to fully forgive this person, she isn’t someone I could ever trust or be with again.

It sucks, though.

You never think you will be “that person” who gets had in some relationship, who gets run around on and completely duped.

It’s a terrible, hurtful experience and I hope none of you go through it.

What was the funniest thing that happened to you in college?

I had an exam on English when I was in college, around 19 years old. The night before I had helped my sister prepare for her in-class essay with the same teacher in English. My sister had problems with the course, and I excelled so my teacher suggested I help her.

Anyways, in the middle of my exam my teacher walks up, and without thinking, says “Thank you for last night” and walks away. Everybody in the class looked up at me. It was the middle of an exam, so I couldn’t explain so I just sort of turned around to my friends, gave them the look – look and went back to the test.

Authority and Leadership

As a part of the judicial system, what is the hardest you have ever laughed in court?

I was in traffic court as a witness in another matter. The judge was hearing a case where a 14 year old was driving a motorcycle without a license because he was too young. He was accompanied by his mother. She was small but loud, and the 14 year old was big (looked 18). Throughout the morning she had been nagging him about one thing or another—wasting my time, lazy good for nothing, etc. The young boy was quiet and appeared contrite.

When their time came, the mom again reminded the boy to be quiet and not say a word.

The clerk read the case. The judge looked at her notes and pronounced judgment. “Case dismissed with 60 days suspended sentence on the condition that the defendant does not ride the motorcycle until he turns 16 and gets a license.” This was the least the judge could do.

The mother erupted with anger. “60 days suspended sentence. Are you crazy. He has to go to school. He has to do chores.” Clearly, she did not understand what suspended sentence meant.

The judge then stated. “Are you finished? I could make it contingent on selling the motorcycle.”

Mom: “That’s crazy. You’re nuts.”

The judge: “Suspended sentence contingent on selling the motorcycle and you (indicating to the mom) get to spend the night in jail for contempt of court.”

The boy, who hadn’t said a word all morning. “Thank you, your honor.”

The entire court erupted in laughter.

The level of disappointment

Were you ever treated poorly when you wanted to purchase an expensive item until they found out you were rich?

Not treated poorly but rather taught not too.

As a teen way back in 1979 I went to work for Neumann Marcus in Dallas. It was still owned by the Marcus family and known worldwide for its service and exclusivity.

our trainer stressed treating everyone, no matter how they looked or were dressed, with the same respectful diligent service. He gave the following example of his personal experience, I don’t know if it was true but it makes the point.

It was a rainy day in downtown Dallas and the store was not busy. He was working in epicure, I don’t know about now but back then they had the most amazing food and specialty kitchen wares. A man in shorts, a wrinkly shirt, baseball hat and unshaven wanders in. His thought was “looked what came in to avoid the rain”.

The man was looking at a very expensive grill and asking questions. He politely answered them but eventually wanted to get rid of him. He asked the man if he had a Neimans card. He said no so he suggested he go over to the Credit dept and they could give him on on the spot.

The man left. When he returned he said “I’d like 2 of these. One sent to my house in LA, one to my house in Malibu.” My trainer was pleasantly surprised. Surprise turned to shock and embarrassment when the man handed him his new Neimans card and he saw the name. “Of course Mr. Sinatra. I will take care of everything.”

Winners and Losers

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UMjYwXFBd80?feature=share

What are the cleverest scams you have come across?

The phone rings. My elderly uncle picks up. A young woman is on the line.

“Grandpa?” asks the young woman.

Being a grandfather of 20 children, Uncle answers, “Yes,” then he thinks of who the caller may be.

“Is this Beth?” he asks.

The young woman quickly admits that she is Beth, and then she starts crying,

“I am in Florida with my friends. We get in trouble and I am in jail. Can you send me money for bail?”

My uncle is alarmed. Why is Beth in Florida? What has she done? Before he can ask her a question, the young woman says, “Please don’t tell my parents. They will kill me.” She cries even harder now.

My aunt enters the room to find her husband frantically scrambling for his credit card. She gets suspicious and asks him what is going on.

“Beth is in jail in Florida. We need to send her money,” he explains to her.

My aunt rolls her eyes and grabs the phone from him,

“This is grandma. We are not sending money. Please rot in jail. Bye.”

The cleverness is not the scam itself, but the ability of the scammer to improvise. They prey on vulnerable elderly and toy with the few items they cherish in their twilight years – family, health, and savings. I have a feeling the caller could have swayed the conversation in whatever way was most effective once she identified my uncle as an easy target.

Boudin Blanc with Muenster Cheese

2023 11 08 11 24
2023 11 08 11 24

Yield: 24 servings

Ingredients

  • 3 pounds boneless pork butt, cut in 1/4 inch dice
  • 1 pound mixed boneless chicken, cut into 1/4 inch dice
  • 1 pound pork fat back, cut into 1/4 inch dice
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 2 teaspoons ground ginger
  • 2 teaspoons ground cayenne pepper
  • 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1 pound Wisconsin muenster cheese, cut into 1/4 inch dice
  • Kosher salt to taste

Instructions

  1. Grind meats and fat through meat grinder using plate with small (1/8 inch) openings.
  2. Place ground mixture in large bowl of standing mixer and add all ingredients except cheese and salt. Mix with paddle attachment. Fold cheese into the farce.
  3. Case sausages in pork hank, twisting to form 4-ounce links.
  4. Dry for 1 hour in walk-in cooler.
  5. To poach, bring 4 to 5 gallons of water to a boil. When boiling, turn off heat.
  6. Add sausage and cover with lid. Let stand for 10 to 15 minutes or until sausages reach interior temperature of 145 degrees F.
  7. Cool sausages on sheet pan lined with kitchen towels.
  8. Store in refrigerator up to 5 days.

Notes

To reheat: Grill, broil or bake sausage until hot. The sausages can be made into patties and sautéed until cooked through.

The chef serves sausage with Spaghetti Squash “Choucroute” and whole grain mustard.

The MOCKERY of the Western Male…

Cultural Programming at it’s worst.

Entering the reconstruction period

Well, this is the first post for my new series: “Correcting Society Ills“.

This new series, as I have mentioned previously, is concerned with RECONSTRUCTION of the West.

As I have already mentioned, the threat of Global War has passed the DANGER ZONE. That was in 2020 through 2022. What we are experiencing now is a “lesser” state of war. Oh, sure, nuclear weapon threats are being bantered about, and provocations are seemingly everywhere at a global level, but the unseen global counter-threats are not being made public and they will quench any aggressive moves against the great Asian powers.

So, global change resembles this dynamic…

  • Change; old to new.
  • Threat of war… either occurs or fizzles out with a *pop*.
  • I claim that it fizzled out.
  • What is left is a ruined Western society.
  • And a need for RECONSTRUCTION.

So we are going to discuss that reconstruction and what needs to occur.

Mind you, actual war can still occur, it’s just that it becomes less and less probable as time progresses forward.

In our reconstruction discussions and talks we will cover all sorts of issues and maladies that the West are suffering through. From fat-generating use of polyunsaturated oils in Western foods, to the destruction of family culture, and the strange ideas of modern Western youth.

You will find all sorts of videos and discussions on related topics herein. It’s part of a phase in our society, and the world must go through this to get to the other side; one of an overall better quality of life.

I hope that you enjoy this new chapter in MM…

Do you think you are a selfish person overall?

My friend’s two-year-old son developed a fever. He started shaking and vomiting. They rushed him to the hospital.

That first sleepless night spent watching the doctors scramble to administer medicine and draw blood for lab tests became two. And then five.

And then twenty.

Something was wrong with the boy, but no one could figure it out. Meanwhile, his medical bills were piling up.

Costa Rica offers free public healthcare. But if you want immediate help, you need to go private.

After many months of sickening worry, the boy got better.

But my friend had already taken predatory loans at 20% interest. And to keep up with the payments, he had to sell his phone, and then his car.

The lenders would show up at his house unannounced, threaten him, and yell profanities.

His life had become unbearable.

When I found out I was furious and sad. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?!”

“I was ashamed,” he replied.

I couldn’t stand his suffering. I felt it burning inside of me. His misery had become mine.

I had to do something about it.

So I lent him money. He paid up and closed a few of the accounts. Got his first full night’s sleep in a year.

I realized something startling about helping others along the way—

It’s the most selfish act in the world.

But it’s the only kind of selfishness that makes sense.

10 Unwritten Rules you should live your life according to them

  1. You just have to play the role of a fool to fool the fool who thinks they are fooling you.
  2. Things end, people change, and life goes on.
  3. Sometimes your problem is that you think everything is embarrassing.
  4. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
  5. Your soulmate is money. Stop forcing relationships.
  6. An over-thinker must date a great communicator.
  7. First, know your worth. Second, control your emotions. Third, never settle for less than you deserve.
  8. You are the reflection of your partner. Choose wisely.
  9. Life gets better when you see people for who they are, not who you want them to be.
  10. Sometimes the disrespect is all the closure you need.

Texas T-Bones

2023 11 07 15 35
2023 11 07 15 35

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 (1 1/2 pound) beef T-bone steaks, 1 1/2 inches thick
  • 1 clove garlic, cut in half
  • 2 teaspoons black peppercorns, crushed
  • 1/4 cup butter, softened
  • 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
  • 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/4 teaspoon lime juice
  • Salt and pepper to taste, if desired

Instructions

  1. Trim fat on beef steaks to 1/4 inch thickness.
  2. Rub beef with garlic.
  3. Press pepper into beef.
  4. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
  5. Mix butter, mustard, Worcestershire sauce and lime juice; reserve.
  6. Heat coals or gas grill.
  7. Cover and grill beef 4 to 5 inches from medium heat 16 to 18 minutes for medium doneness, turning halfway through grilling.
  8. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  9. Place beef on warm platter; remove bone.
  10. Cut beef at slanted angle into thin slices.
  11. Serve with butter mixture.

What religion do the Chinese outside mainland China practice the most?

I can’t answer for near overseas Chinese (that is Chinese in Asia). I can write about my UK experiences.

It was Christianity and FG being a very distant second.

Christianity preyed on recent immigrant types and how they were often alone and isolated having migrated. I had numerous xian types try convert me constantly mistaking me for a migrant.

Same shit when my mother got cancer, some how the jesus types found out and went to find her to try convert her.

I told them to fuck off.

Mother told them to fuck off.

$240 Billion Lithography Machine Order Canceled,China Achieves Full Technological Autonomy!

SMIC, a prominent chip manufacturing company, operates in various areas such as chip design, manufacturing, packaging, and sales. The quality and efficiency of chip production heavily rely on the technological level and precision of the lithography machines, a crucial equipment in chip manufacturing.

However, due to escalating global trade tensions and US export control policies on Chinese high-tech companies like SMIC, the company has been unable to purchase advanced lithography machines and other equipment from the United States. This has prompted SMIC to cancel a $24 billion lithography machine order with the US company ASML, attracting significant attention and raising concerns about alternative markets for chip sales.

The cancellation of the lithography machine order by SMIC is influenced by both the global trade environment and domestic policies. As one of the largest chip manufacturers globally, SMIC’s decision has implications for the global chip industry. The uncertain global trade environment has disrupted the chip supply chain, while the Chinese government’s support for the chip industry has limited its domestic development.

The event’s impact on the global chip industry is two-fold. On one hand, competition in the global chip market will intensify, requiring major chip companies to enhance their technological capabilities and supply chain management. On the other hand, SMIC’s actions may inspire imitation by other countries, further intensifying global chip market competition.

Analyzing the impact of this event reveals that SMIC’s cancellation affects not only the global chip industry but also the US technology sector. Intel, one of the major US tech giants, has highlighted the significant impact on the global chip supply chain, prompting questions about the effectiveness of the Biden administration’s policies for the US industry.

Addressing this challenge requires several approaches. Firstly, China should strengthen international cooperation to collectively navigate the uncertainties in the global trade environment. Secondly, domestic policies should be enhanced to support and promote the development of the chip industry within China. Lastly, SMIC should focus on capacity building, continuously improving technological capabilities, and enhancing supply chain management.

https://youtu.be/6Wh_YDUaOXg

What is Rule 1 of success?

I want you to go online right now and type in the name of some of your heroes or the successful people you look up to.

Find their Biographies.

Then go look at their “Early Life” section and find the answer to this question:

When did they start?”

Very often you’ll find sentences like: “… started at the age of 26, and got his first big achievement of … at the age of 43…”

To most of us that seems like just another random fact, but look at what that really means.

It means that that person worked on their craft for 17 years before making it.

Do you really think that in that time they never failed? Do you really think they never cried or were doubtful of what they were doing?

Do you really think that those 17 years just went by like that?

What made them keep going for so long?


Most of us look at the successful few and say they got a lucky break or assume they reached their success immediately.

Actors, Athletes, Writers, Authors, and Entrepreneurs encounter failure after failure.

They loose, fall, and crash but they still stand up.

Success is not about winning but about being willing to lose once more than everybody else.

When everyone has gone home, you kept working.

When all you encountered was failure, you kept trying.

When none of the habits took, you kept starting.

When no one believed anymore, you kept trusting.

And when everyone quit, you kept going.

Do that and it will leave you as the last person standing in the ring.

For the #1 Rule of Success is to get up once more often than you fall.

Do you think China’s large consumption of the NBA influences how the league responds to calls to ban the use of shoes and other apparel made by forced labor in China?

China doesn’t use forced labour to make shoes and apparel. It is another political bit of nonsense that the US government made up.

The US government even claimed that China uses forced labour to pluck cotton, just like how the USA enslaved black people to pick cotton in the past. Goodness gracious, what nonsense, who even uses human beings to pluck cotton nowadays. That’s the old primitive way of the USA. Most of the cotton in China is machine-picked and high-speed packed.

So, This is Happening in West Maui, It’s changes EVERYTHING for Oprah & the Rock

The way these people have been treated is beyond disgusting. Greene lies through his teeth. Banks should freeze their mortgages for at least a minimum of three years to allow the people to get back on their feet.

Is there a military branch that will allow me to start as an E4 because I already have a 4 year degree?

Funny story. In 1986, I went through basic at Fort Cambell, Kentucky. I had a two-year degree, and so I entered as an E3. A couple of weeks into the training, the 1stSgt called me into his office. He’s reviewing my record and commenting that he thinks my records are wrong. Because of my two-year degree, he thinks I should have entered as an E4.

He looks at me and asks, “When you enlisted, did they promise you E4?” I quickly answered, “Yes, 1stSgt.” He quickly responds, “I knew it! I will have you promoted to E4, but it will take a week or two. I said, “Thank you 1stSGT!” and was dismissed.

A couple of weeks later, the C.O. of the training company stopped me on the way back from evening chow and said, “I wanted you to know that your next LES will reflect that you were promoted to E4. I cannot have you pinned while you are in basic, nor can you wear the rank because you would be the same rank as some of the soldiers assigned to the company, but, you have been promoted to E4.” I said, “thank you sir,” saluted and went on my way.

As soon as I graduated, I upgraded all my rank insignia to SP4. I get to Aberdeen Proving Grounds for schooling, and as I check-in, the soldier behind the counter asks, “Are you promotable?” I did not know what that meant, but I said, yes. Because I identified as E4 promotable, I was assigned to the barracks with all the other E4s and NCOs going through the same school for retraining. No drill sergeants for me!

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

My Mum was a very formidable Italian lady (all five feet three inches of her!) and took very little nonsense from anybody!! When my sister was 15 and I was 9 my sister went out for the night with a young guy who was 18 (Mum didn’t know this or it would not have been allowed) She was told to be back by 10.00 pm, no later! Midnight approached and my parents were not happy (this was in the days before Mobile Phones) They finally turned up and my Dad went out to remonstrate with the young man whilst my Mum exploded at my sister who was well aware what kind of trouble she was in. Dad came back in with a cut lip where the young Guy had punched him!! Mum grabbed one of my Dad’s hobnail boots went outside and proceeded to bash the young guy around the head and shoulders, loudly cursing him in Italian! The guy screamed at my Mum that he would get the Police on her, she shouted back ‘Do it! my daughter’s 15!! I’ll have you in prison! and every syllable corresponded with another blow to his head and face! After about 10 minutes of the the guy ran away screaming in fear. The next day, right outside our house, the pavement was covered with bloodstains!

New IRS $600 Tax Rule For 2023 (Venmo & Cash App & PayPal)

Americans screwed over YET AGAIN. Good thing, everything is in my Chinese family, not me personally. $20,000 threshold to $600. No fucking way!

Do you actually have to get a driver’s license to drive your privately owned automobile? I have seen some say that a driver’s license is for commercial drivers. Is this true?

You need a drivers license in order to drive your privately owned automobile on public roads. If you drive on your own private property, or someone else’s private property with their permission? No.

The whackos who told you that a driver’s license is for commercial drivers belong to a weird fringe conspiracy cult called “Sovereign Citizens.” To give you an idea how dumb these loonies are, they’re the ones that Flat Earthers point to and say “god, those people will believe anything.”

Sovereign Citizens have all kinds of bizarre beliefs that basically focus on the notion “you do not have to obey any law you do not consent to.” They believe they do not have to obey any law enforcement officers except county sheriffs, they do not have to pay taxes, and that (yes, I’m serious) the Federal government sells each American citizen at birth, and so a “birth certificate” is actually a record of sale to a foreign government.

As you might imagine, these dingbats get arrested rather frequently. When they do, they generally go into court shaking their fists and screaming that the government has no jurisdiction over them and no right to put them on trial, which…goes about as well as you might imagine.

What are the biggest culture shocks people face when coming to Germany?

People and people, but this will put Americans into a coma:

Older people going naked in city center parks. (I am not going to post pictures, because if I do I will get blocked by Quora moderators who obviously are not German and have never been to Germany).

16 year olds drinking beer or wine.

Kids riding alone on buses and trains.

Autobahn on a Friday.

Some people will behave like concentration camp guards but when you forget your credit card they will send it to you in the mail.

How has the US reacted to China’s rise and what are the consequences of its attempts to curb China’s development?

The U.S. thinks that it is exceptional and that the U.S. must always lord over the world. There lies the problem it is certainly not exceptionally strong or good. It may be seen as exceptionally cruel and evil to the developing nations of the world.

China’s phenomenal growth and rise in a way, together with the phenomenal rise of the non western world has resulted in the ending of a Western centric or U.S. dominated world that is in fact a virtual colonisation post colonialism for 300 odd years.

In effect the poor and underdeveloped countries were forced or connived into the so call rules based international order but in effect it is a set of rules to preserve the wealth of the west and continue the looting and theft of resources of the poor to enriched the west. From 1946-at least 2000. You can call this virtual colonialism.

China together with BRICS effectively put and end or at least the beginning of the end of this virtual colonialism order. That upset the U.S. to no end. That is easy to understand. If the biggest mafia in town lost its ability to steal, to or loot at will it may burnt down some buildings and businesses and probably go on a shooting spree. So you can expect war mongering and doing some shit.

But it does not matter what or how U.S. rave and rant. Asia alone represents 60% of the worlds GDP and U.S. is now a mere shadow of itself since 1945 where its economy alone represented 52% of the world’s economy. Today in 2023 China’s growth alone is 36.4% and the entire G7 including the U.S. together adds up to a mere 25.6%! The Ukraine war and the U.S. sanctions and pure robbery of Russia’s reserves will lead to the end of U.S. dollar hegemony and so will western financial institutions.

To me the more the U.S. try to curb China the faster China will eclipse the U.S. There is nothing the U.S. that can do that don’t make the status worst for the U.S. Today it tries to stop the export of Chips to China. It won’t work. It actually means it actually heighten. It’s inflation and suffer crippling shortages. You see China itself now represent 30% of world demand and another 30% of worlds manufacturing. This ban in effect, deprives the U.S. companies of doing business to 50–60% of the world’s demand.

This act will means bankrupting US and its allies chip makers. China will face some challenges. But in a short 5 years 90% of its chips requirements will be Chinese made and in a decade China will totally handle its own demand and it will totally kill off the U.S. chips. Like everything China will make it faster, better and cheaper.

ANGRY Young Man DIES; Meets ANCIENT Soul Family He Has Known for LIFETIMES!

Very down to earth awesome gentleman.

In combat situations and under special circumstances, can leaders in different branches command soldiers that are not in their branch, like a Marine Sergeant giving orders to an Army Infantryman?

Still shot of a Blackwater contractor during the Battle of Najaf in April of 2004

Service members of different stripes in a circumstantial combat situation can certainly order each other around if it’s in a joint environment, but in the most recent conflicts, now private military contractors may just be giving the orders too.

During the Battle of Najaf in the early days of the Iraq War, Iraqi insurgents from the Mahdi Army began to surround a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Building within the city of Najaf. Within the confines of the CPA compound, the personnel consisted of CPA employees, Spanish/El Salvadoran soldiers, a detachment of US Marines, and an eight man team of Blackwater contractors.

The situation was deteriorating with insurgents having grabbed an unfortunate El Salvadoran soldier, shoving a grenade into his mouth then pulling the pin in full view of the CPA compound. This was on top of the firefights were breaking out between those in the CPA compound and insurgents who were now attempting storm the compound with the mob that had just killed the soldier.

While this was all occurring, a Blackwater contractor called for help to his higher up’s in Baghdad who had been monitoring the situation. The Blackwater contractors in Baghdad then made an ultimate judgment call to intervene with the CPA compound battle when it became apparent that the US military itself will not provide any sort of assistance in the confusion.

Three Little Bird helicopters were then loaded up with six Blackwater contractors coupled with one Little Bird filled with boxes of ammunition and equipment due to the CPA contractors notifying that they were now dangerously low on ammunition.

The contractors then flew to the CPA compound, unloaded the ammunition and additional support, then evacuated a wounded Marine who had been shot during the battle.

With the additional support of the contractors and ammunition, the combined force of Blackwater contractors, Marines, Coalition troops managed to keep the insurgents from reaching the CPA compound. CPA employees would reload empty magazines then run it up to the men who were fighting off the insurgents, keeping everyone busy.

The Blackwater contractors would find themselves dictating where the Marines and other troops to head to during the battle, which would later draw controversy from critics who claimed that now mercenaries were giving orders to military troops.

Eventually, the siege of the CPA compound would subside after almost two days of battle which could be viewed on many videos via Youtube.

Infamous video of Blackwater contractor Travis Haley during the Battle of Najaf. Critics would later use this video to denote how he had no qualms killing random people with a second nature attitude when he was literally going after insurgents attempting to assault the compound.

The Battle of Najaf would serve as an example of how private military contractors mixed with troops in circumstances that called them to fight side by side.

This does not look like it would end anytime soon with the Russo-Ukraine conflict where Russian private military contractors from the Wagner Group and Russian troops are fighting alongside each other in the conflict.

SCOTT RITTER, ANDREI MARTYANOV, AND GARLAND NIXON JOIN ON NATO, UKRAINE’S TIME RUNS OUT

In this special roundtable, Scott Ritter Andrei Martyanov and Garland Nixon join the program to discuss the ongoing developments of the Ukraine proxy war, what it tells us about Russia, and the growth of the multipolar world in the context of history.

Great crew. Great discussion.

Why do Westerners like you defend China online?

I’m going to try to provide an answer with a slightly different perspective.

First off, I’m an Australian Chinese (in that order), born and educated in Singapore. My family is Peranakan or Straits-born meaning that we were the products of intermarriage between the Chinese and locals in what was then British Malaya.

So I grew up speaking English and Malay and a smattering of dialects. As I was educated in English mission schools, I did not learn Mandarin.

As far as I can remember, I was taught to hate Chinese and Communists. Pretty much everything I read about Communists described them as a threat peace-loving people everywhere. And China was communist.

I think I was 17 when I first read Dick Wilson’s A Quarter of Mankind. This was followed by Emmanuel Hsu’s The Rise of Modern China. In those pages I glimpsed a very different China. So I started reading Chinese history, from the Qin dynasty, and continued my inquiry at university.

Most of my working life was spent as a journalist, a sub-editor to be specific, and much of my work involved, among other things, fact checking.

Nixon’s ping-pong diplomacy opened up a new era of ties with China and Singapore was quick to get in on the act (read quick to realise the profits that could be made trading with China. That is the subject of a whole different set of questions and answers). Trading with the enemy? No, it cannot be. But it was.

The opening up of relations with China also led to a relaxation of travel restrictions on travel to the Middle Kingdom. Up till then, I had visited Hong Kong and could only imagine life across the border. I also visited Taiwan and imagined China to be everything the opposite of Taiwan.

Fast-forward many years when I moved to Australia and started travelling to China (Shenzhen, Chengdu, Guangdong, and Shanghai).

I saw modern cities, efficient public transport, rampant capitalism, and I felt completely safe even in quiet streets in the wee hours of the morning.

Many of the Chinese I met were as friendly as people in other places that I have travelled. Often friendlier. Especially to an ethnic Chinese who did not speak the language (I started learning conversational Mandarin at 54 and can now read a write a little).

To the core of the question: Much of the information about China that’s peddled about is false. Many people have very wrong impressions and ideas about the PRC. And most of the people who hold these ideas will never go to China to see and verify for themselves if what is reported is anywhere near the truth.

So I, and many others, try to provide a balance by correcting the grosser erros of belief held by many as a result of, well, propaganda.

A footnote: In my youth I wanted to move to the West (America, UK, the Scandinavian countries, … thataway). If I were young again, I would go east. To China.

Netherlands Reconsiders Huawei After 5G Successes

If US is not learning from China, it is more important that China learns from US. China should never forget who forsaken her in its hours of need. To be kind to enemy is to be cruel to oneself .”

https://youtu.be/pt9mnzwUj4I

People say you should get an attorney if you win the lottery, but why? Say I win the Mega Millions, and I sign the back of the ticket, photograph it, and show up at the lottery office bright and early the next day. What bad things would happen to me?

The reason you want a lawyer is to protect you.

I won a scratch ticket for $100,000 one hundred thousand. the accoutant handled the taxes.

After claiming my prize we had 2 weeks where different reporters were looking for pictures and wanting to do an interview with the store that sold the winning ticket. churches and charities knocking on the door looking for a slice.

3 people i went to grade school with came knocking I had not seen them in 10 years. Family calling wanting to get a share or asking for a loan they cant afford to repay.

people were confused when I told them I spent it all.

I divided it up 3 ways and gave equal amounts to my 3 kids for thier college funds. I

f I ever hit another winning ticket I am getting a lawyer to deal with the bullcrap and I am gonna move to Alaska to a remote cabin in the middle of nowheresville with no phone or roads.

What are the myths that need to be busted about China?

The number one myth?

That you can hope to understand China using the English medium.

I am confident I am in the top 1 percentile when it comes to Chinese proficiency in the pool of English speakers beyond the mainland.

I won’t be surprised if I am in the top 0.1 percentile either.

But if I were honest, I will admit as an east Asian that I find it difficult to keep up with the mainland, even though I possess skills and networks to access media and contacts within greater China.

No, it’s not just about the language struggle, which exists even for someone like me with more than a decade’s worth of formal education in the Chinese language.

It is about developing a contextual understanding for mainland frames of reference and how the mainlander thinks.

That is mostly absent in this medium, even among the rare pool of articles grounded in facts. Most are written by east Asians, not westerners.

My advice? Don’t waste time on the China expert who doesn’t speak Chinese. Even foreigners who do are often wrong or misguided, because that is what it takes to pass through the stringent msm filter these days.

When have you fired someone on the spot?

Yes and within the first HOUR of employment!!…

The new employee was just starting, his first day, first morning on the job…

Every morning employees would gather all of their supplies, tools, etc. and load their vans to be ready for the day’s work.

All new employees are to ride with a senior person to gain knowledge and get the hang of things. This was our busiest season and the day was FULL of jobs that needed to be done – all previously scheduled and set in time slots.

This employee was in the process of helping load the van when he came to me and said:

“I need to go to an appointment today; I need the (driver) to drop me off and then pick me up, or wait for me to get done.”

Me: “I am sorry, we are too busy to be able to do all of that on work time. If it is important why don’t you just take the day off, go to your appointment and come back tomorrow ready to go?”

Employee: “Are you F@*king kidding me? What kind of place is this that you don’t care about your employees!!”

Me: “Ummmm, I said you can have the day off, it’s your first day here and I still said go ahead and take the day and come back tomorrow ready to go, I am not sure I understand?”

Employee: “This is BullS@@t, I can’t believe you won’t take care of your employees and have him drive me to my appointment across town and wait for me, you’re F@*ing ridiculous.”

Me: “Um, I am trying to be reasonable here and work with you. How about you can take your own car and follow behind him and when you need to go you can just cut out and go to your appointment. We don’t have the time to do that for you. ”

Employee: “This is ridiculous, I can’t believe you treat your employees this way, you are being so unfair, this is Bull S#@t, F@*!ng ridiculous!”

Me: “Actually, why don’t you go ahead and go home and not come back at all. Thank you for your time.”

Employee then was shocked that I fired him and could not believe or understand why I was letting him go.

This was truly shocking to me. Fired him on the spot within ONE hour of being employed.

“Ukrainian soldiers are being DRUGGED and forced to fight” Ex-CIA Larry Johnson

We now have reports that captured Ukrainian soldiers are turning up drugged out of their minds on some kind of inhibition blocker. Reports say these soldiers are going on withdrawals after being captured. Ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson joins us to discuss.

What is the current relationship between China and the United States? How did this come to be, and what are the implications for the rest of the world?

The relationship with China from the U.S. perspective as always needs to be one of subservience and submissive to the U.S. That has been the default mode of what US expect it to be since 1945. Let’s call a spade a spade. The U.S. cannot deal with a nation that can and will say no to the U.S.

But if I should be completely honest to the US I will recommend to them to move on and keep your winnings. China with 1.4 billion highly discipline, extremely hard working people who are driven and industrious, today equipped with the state of art infrastructure and leading in 37/44 key and strategic technology cannot be push aside without untold damages to the U.S. itself.

But the U.S. political system, one based totally on popularity contest means that it cannot be pragmatic and realistic. It has to drain tremendous resources to try to keep its hegemonic place, even if it means bankrupting the U.S. that is precisely what the U.S is doing today.

For China is is so simple. Let the US have a long and strong rope to hang itself slowly to death. Lure the U.S. to fight China in a way that drains away the U.S. resources, influence and turned away its allies one by one. It does that be staying the moral high ground. It is the U.S. that is desperate so while the U.S. goes low, China stays high. It is winning without a fight. Remember Mohamad Ali “Rope a dope” the big George Foreman drains all its energy and knock him out in 15 rounds.

China is doing the “rope a dope” while the U.S. is ranting and panting away. Trump thought it wins popularity by starting the trade war with China. China pretends to avoid war but knows so well that it will hurt and harm the U.S. several folds of what it hurts China. Do you notice Biden wants to end the tariff and China says. Not so fast Amigo!

The implications to US allies are particularly bad and the more of a U.S. lackey the worst it gets. Asia is doing just fine and dandy.

How did it come to be? Well China grew astronomically strong economically, politically and even militarily and the U.S. is in denial and Americans are ignorant and naive about China till it is way past too late. The U.S. is in a quick sand. The more it struggles. The faster it sinks.

Since you asked about implications, The US pay the highest price for doing shit on China. The world is moving on faster than the U.S. realised. The U.S. dollar hegemony is all but gone. The U.S. and western order may appeal to a handful of its close allies. No different from a pack of street hoodlums hanging on to its biggest bully as beneficiaries.

US debts will reach 100 trillion in a decade, US deficits cannot go down. It cannot make anything at less than twice it cost worldwide. US standard of living has stagnated back 60 years to the 1960s. And the poor U.S. growing while it’s middle class is collapsing.

Meanwhile for China, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Once it made T-shirts and Toys. Today it makes your computers and smartphones. Soon it makes your EVs and AI and Jet planes. It middle class is now at 700 million will grow to 1 billion people within a generation. 4–6 times the size of the U.S. middle income.

Harvard Economist Reveals Shocking SECRET About China In 2023

Dr. Keyu Jin is one of the most outstanding China insiders. She is a professor at the London School of Economics and has an incredible knowledge of how the US and China both work. In today’s video I share with you her insights into China innovation and how China really works.

16 People Describe What A Dead Body Smell Like

1. “Understand that a pound or two of rotten meat only gives you a faint whiff of the smell of a full-grown corpse. The power of the smell is incredible. Personally, I’m not sure it’s describable. You want to gag when you’re fifty feet away. It can take years for the smell to leave a house. It just lingers in the background. Cars are totalled by the insurance company for the odor. And the guy driving the wrecker can’t drive fast enough to get away from the smell.

It gets on your skin and clothes. (People use bio-suits for body removal for a reason.) Maggots abound, fluids abound, and I’ve never read a good description of the experience. No matter how well you write, it will be but a pale imitation of the experience.”

2. “Buy a Boston Butt pork roast and let it rot. Pigs and humans are apparently similar, meat-wise. It actually turns like a sea blue-green color. (It smells like farts and then gets worse.)”

3. “A dead body, specifically a human corpse has a rank and pungent smell mixed with a tinge of sickening sweetness. Imagine a rotting piece of meat with a couple drops of cheap perfume and you’re halfway to understanding what a human corpse smells like.”

4. “It varies from person to person and how long they have been decomposing.

You get a very sharp, foul smell similar to horrible cheese mixed with the same smell you get from a full trash can in the sun.

If the body decompressed and they had a full bladder, you’ll also smell body fluids, so stale urine and straight fecal matter. For those who don’t know, toilet poop smells bad, but shit that is airborne, not water logged or anything is straight horrific on its own.

If you have flying insect and larva development increase smell this far times two. If it’s hot outside times three and if it’s cold out and the heat in the house is cranked it’s times five at minimum for the dry heat.

The worse part is the materials they died on. Wood mixed with death has a woody slime smell mixed with the death ratio above, carpet has a wet padding smell (like cat wizz) plus death and it’ll it’s on furniture it’s really fun as it usually leaks through to the carpet and wood subfloor.

If you’re smelling these things outside a house, you don’t want to be near it when they go in. Cleaning and deodorizing that is pretty rough.”

“I have assisted in an autopsy on a body several days old, and even though it was in a huge chilling compartment, the smell was in the whole complex. It smells like there are a million dead and rotting rats around you.”

5. “Rotten eggs, feces, and a used toilet left out for a month x 1000. It is unholy.

The smell gets into your throat and you can taste it. You will literally run to find some clean air. Even then, it lingers and you can’t quite get the smell away. Even though you can no longer physically smell it, you remember it and it takes quite a while to get over it.”

6. “A dead body to me smells like a cross between rotting meat and very dirty kitty litter box. Very distinct smell that you won’t forget.”

7. “You ever have like a dead mouse or something hiding somewhere and you just smell something awful? It’s pretty much that. The best I can sum it up to is like shit mixed with meat…in a weird way

8. “In my experience, any formerly living creature, whether human or non-human, has that same powerful, pungent, disgusting odor that I can only describe as a garbage can left to ferment in high heat for an extended period of time. It does vary some between species, though.

A couple of other answers written in this feed point to some things that are accurate. First, two chemicals, Putrescine and Cadaverine, are both found in decomposing tissue. Both are diamenes and they are produced as a result of amino acids (most notably Lysine) breaking down. They each gave their own characteristic odor which by themselves are bad enough. When they are combined due to the simultaneous presence, they are indescribable.

Second, pigs are indeed closest to humans in terms of the odor they give off when decomposing. Any animal with a musk gland (skunks, badgers, and muskrats are some examples. I’m sure there are many others as well) are also pretty stinky when they break down. All produce these same two chemicals because when you think about it, any creature that breathes in Oxygen and releases Carbon Dioxide is going to have a similar metabolic makeup that, when stopped is going to respond in a similar manner.”

9. “Once, I took a trip. When I returned, there was a terrible odor in my den. I know the odor of dead animals on the road or in the forests. Mom puts out poison for mice, so I have smelled them under things in her home. There was a rotten odor like this in my den, so I looked under everything, but I found nothing. The next day, I saw some cops and medics at the next apartment. I learned that my neighbor had died and decomposed for days before anyone found him. The odor is sickening. It’s hard to describe fully.”

10. “It depends how long it’s been dead but if you have ever smelled rotten meat it’s similar to that. some words commonly used to describe it would probably be rancid, foul, putrid, the smell of decay, etc. If it’s decomposed down to the skeleton there probably won’t be any smell anymore since the flesh, muscle, and organs are the ones that create the most smell and decay quickly.”

11. “I recently in countered a dead body that had been rotting in a van near my home for 5-7 days. At first, I though it was Korean people making kimchi, but after seeing the body removal with my own eyes I know that the smell was not of pickled vegetables. I work for a plumbing company so I’m always finding myself walking in raw sewage in basements. And I have to say the smell is similar to sewage or waste. Its nauseating and quite foul. Authorities have removed the body, but the area still smells of fragrant corpse. To be honest, I don’t know why you’d ever wonder about this. But yes indeed, it’s very disgusting. As a female I always find myself running out of breath when I’m dealing with sewage, but a body is about 10 times worse.”

Now, death depends on the environment in my opinion. I’ve smelt a few bodies in morgues and things like that, they just smell of death, it’s indescribable really, but you remember that smell. It’s a cold smell, a heavy smell (this is the best way I can describe it).

Rotting corpses of course just smell like any other rotting mammals, next time you spot some road-kill, stop and give it a sniff, pretty much what a rotting human corpse smells like.”

12. “I was a volunteer firefighter and police had to enter the residence before any of us could. The SCBA is automatic. So I quickly put it on a cop to enter the residence of a woman who neighbors haven’t seen in weeks. Those SCBAs block toxins and the cop ran out of the house drowning on his vomit. He claims he smelled her through the mask….That’s how bad a dead person smells. We eat everything. Those toxins in our bodies is what makes us stink so bad when we die. And to make it worse, when I got home I snorted soap while in the shower. A few hours later I began smelling the stench of her again. The bacteria is said to cling to your nostril hair and remultiplies later until it’s gone. I can’t tell you what it smells like. You’ll know it when you do.”

13. “Not very pleasant. It is a very strong, stomach turning, smell. It does in a way smell like rotten eggs, but it is much more intense. That is the best I can describe the smell, but I heard from someone else on how to make a small replica of it. Take a bag of soy beans, saturate them in water,let them stand a few days in heat above 70F while keeping them moist,crush some of the mixture.In a few days you will smell what decaying flesh/protein smells like.”

14. “My brother-in-law died in his appt. & was there 5 days before being found. When my wife & I went for the funeral (just a picture of him, no body) we went to help clean his place. I can’t describe the smell nor will I ever forget it. It permeated all soft things so badly they had to be throw out, we managed to keep a couple tables only. Even the TV stunk after airing out for week.

15. “Take some meat and leave it in a bag outside for about 3 days in the middle of summer. Then open the bag and mix in some Mexican food diarrhea. Add a good helping of the strongest catfish stink bait you can find. Mix well. This is the best that Death will ever smell.”

16. “Living in an apartment building and the guy next door fell in his bathtub (apparently). We didn’t see him often, so it wasn’t anything weird to not see him but his audio books were put on his doorknob and stayed for a couple days (he was blind, they delivered books to him to listen to).

Started smelling really weird, and since my son was just a baby at that time we’d initially thought somehow we hadn’t put a diaper in the garbage and it had ended up somewhere and was stinking up the place, searched high and low but couldn’t find it. The landlady knocked on his door (all our doors, handing out notices) and we mentioned we hadn’t seen him in a bit…half an hour later she was letting the police into his place.

I can’t imagine the smell in the same room though, it was bad enough being in the next apartment!”

What is the current relationship between the United States and China? Does China still need the United States for its economy?

No China don’t need the U.S. to survived or even to be a moderate growth economy in 2023. I will argue that containment, decoupling or de-risking of China which to me and most in the world means the same thing, is counter beneficial to the U.S. and good for China in the long term. The U.S. meanwhile loses the worlds. Biggest market or equivalent to the 2nd to the 10th biggest market for the U.S. put together.

There lies the enormity of the U.S. problem. Without China, the U.S. will suffer between 25–50% inflation which will highly impoverish American’s on the one hand with its U.S. brands becoming unsaleable and losing market share by half at least. All these while losing a humongous market.

By right the U.S. ought to not even dare to utter those threatening words but U.S. politicians lose too much to go soft after their media demonised China for a century. Sure China could be richer with the U.S. being rational. But China don’t take threats by the U.S lightly. The US political system is essentially a popularity contest and even if is suicidal the politicians compete to be a bigger China hawk while its own people suffer.

The trouble with threat is once you utter the word on banning China, sanctioning China, decoupling from China, containing China or even de-risking from China. China won’t hold back to defend itself. And China will make sure it will never depend on the U.S. and the west. That means China will totally do its own thing from now onwards.

That is very bad news for the U.S. as China do everything better, faster and cheaper than anyone on earth by a long shot. And the Huawei Mate 60 pro proved beyond doubt that there is nothing it cannot do! The U.S. should really think many times over before it challenge China for American sake. But the trade war and the chip ban proved to me and the world beyond doubt that the U.S. government don’t care about its own people and it’s own economy.

What are your general advices/tips for a college graduate (fresher) stepping into the corporate world?

Same advise I gave my son :-

  • Don’t follow any instruction related to investing money or sanctioning a loan or allocating money UNLESS YOU HAVE A WRITTEN INSTRUCTION from your superior/cby email or whatsApp or paper letter
  • Never start smoking due to peer pressure or tension. Use bubble gum instead
  • First Beer with first month paycheck. First hard liquor after six months of paychecks at least.
  • Don’t express any political opinion or make any comment apart from work and movies and games and sports
  • Don’t ever go over your superiors head unless he is on leave or unreachable or is a total dumbo
  • When a woman wants to come to your office to talk to you, keep your door open or ask a friendly female colleague to sit in the office during the meeting under the pretext of taking notes
  • Never meet any Vendor or Supplier outside work or at your home. Always meet in office and keep your door open during the meeting and ask a colleague in to pretend to take notes
  • Never accept any gifts from Vendors or Suppliers whose value exceeds ₹2000/— unless everyone else is accepting the gifts and it’s been approved by your superiors
  • Never ever accept a meeting in a Hotel room with a potential client or customer. Always MEET IN THE LOBBY OR COFFEE SHOP where you have CCTV cameras
  • You may be finding yourself forced to spend a lot of money by being in the company of your superiors and indulge in pubs, golfing and high class call girls. Resist. Make excuses and resist until they get the message
  • No more than 120 ml of Scotch / Rum with 180 ml Club Soda Or Tonic Water Or 3 Tequila Shots at any office party , in fact my son makes the excuse that his liver is weak and avoids any drink entirely
  • Save around 45% of your paycheck if possible. At least 30%
  • Don’t ever eat Chickpeas, Beans, Cauliflowers, Kadalai, Sundal for breakfast. If you fart, you become a joke and it’s tough to recover your reputation
  • Never assume your female colleague who laughs and talks to you likes you romantically. Always ASK if in doubt. Simply ask “Are we friends or could this turn into something more”. Don’t presume.

She Is Against Mandatory Paternity Tests At Birth

This is trending in the United States. Jeeze!

That woman who said requiring DNA testing would open up a can of worms scared the daylight out of me. Is she suggesting that a whole host of men are providing for children that aren’t theirs and letting this be known would blow up lots of families? What on earth have you women been up to?”

Graham Perry on China and US

Graham Perry is a UK-based China observer, and wrote a good piece on China/US relations which is worth reading at length:

On the surface things look good in the US; unemployment is low; their economy is growing at 2.4% and inflation is falling. And yet consumer confidence, according to Irwin Stelzer in the Sunday Times, is at its lowest in four months. And Prof Percy Allen – in Pearls and Irritations – concludes that American society is more divided than it has been since its Civil War of the 1860s. “According to a Pew Research poll

about six in ten Republicans and more than half of Democrats have a very unfavourable view of the other party. Thirty years ago, fewer than a quarter in both parties rated the other party badly.”

A recent CNN poll showed almost 70% of Republicans do not accept the electoral legitimacy of the Biden administration. And almost 60% of voters lack confidence that elections in the US today reflect the will of the people.

Other polls by States United Action and Chicago University’s CPOST Research Centre found that over half US voters think elections won’t solve America’s most fundamental political and social problems, and almost half consider political elites, both Democrats and Republicans, are the most immoral and corrupt people in America. The US is fast becoming a dysfunctional nation – and that was before yesterday’s sacking of Speaker McCarthy.

But when it comes to China, Americans unite and rally around the flag. Hatred of China is the one single issue that brings America together.President Biden’s #1 worry

is that China will become the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. Biden has promised to stop that. He has referred to China as “bad people” who when they have problems do “bad things” The demonisation of China has clearly worked. The 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 83% of Americans hold negative views of China. The share who says China is an “enemy” is now 38%. An IPSOS poll

found one-third of Americans view China as an imminent threat and two in five Americans think that war with China is likely in the next five years.

The US under Bush and Obama held to the view that China’s economic growth and increased prosperity would bring a relaxation of political rhetoric as the number of Chinese middle class citizens increased. Expanding economic rights would lead inevitably to increased political rights and the downgrading of the role of China’s Communist Party. China would become “compliant reasonable and accommodating”. It has not happened. Billionaires may flourish in China (800+ in number) but the Party remains at the apex of power. China has not changed.

Trump heralded a new and antagonistic approach to China when he started a trade war by unilaterally imposing high tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the US. And when that did not work, he resorted to allegations of genocide against the Uighurs in Xinjiang province to try to demonise China in the eyes of the world. But it, too, has not worked. China remains China and continues to be welcomed by the rest of the world in part because of its Belt and Road Initiative – as historian Professor Francis Fukiyama has said “China has lent more than $1 trillion to more than 100 countries through the Initiative, dwarfing Western spending in the developing world and stoking US anxieties about the spread of Beijing’s power and influence”.

Trump’s successor, President Biden increased economic sanctions on China and announced that “he would not allow China’s economy to overtake America’s” even though, as Prof Allen notes, most economists think that this is inevitable given China’s huge population and income gap.

The flashpoint is Taiwan for two reasons. First, China’s long-standing policy to reunify China with Taiwan and, second, as explained in yesterday’s Post #473, the US is worried sick that a confrontation with China could seriously jeopardise the US economy by impeding, even stopping, the export from Taiwan to the US of essential semi-conductors. Within the US hierarchy – the White House, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff – there are those who want to give China “a bloody nose” and fundamentally derail China’s economic growth by military action – the Hawks – before China is way ahead and out of sight. “Act Today Because Tomorrow Is Too Late” is their cry.

There are also Doves who fear hostilities and prefer an uneasy but non-confrontational approach to China. For the Doves, second place to China is preferrable to war with China It is not clear who will win but certainly if the Hawks prevail over the Doves the world will be set on a most dangerous path.

Oliver Anthony- Rich Men North of Richmond (Remix Mashup ft Dax & Jo Tyler)

Another great mashup remix.

What is the lamest “benefit” you’ve been offered by an employer?

At Papa John’s Pizza I was getting fed up that they weren’t hiring the sufficient amount of staff to properly run the store. Along with doing bike deliveries I also cashed, took phone calls, entered orders, swept, mopped and emptied garbage. They kept a skeleton staff of 3 workers per shift and whenever they had to pay overtime they grumbled and wanted explanations as to why.

Frustrated and fatigued I applied for Dominos Pizza delivery. This is how snippets of the conversation went during the interview.

Interview Lady: We pay the highest hourly rate of all pizza restaurants. $21 per hour.

Me: Papa John’s paid $20 an hour. This is just a dollar more.

Lady: Yes! The highest rate for delivery riders in the country!


Lady: When you come to the restaurant you’ll be happy to see that you’ll be getting so much deliveries. Endless deliveries!

Me: How much do I get paid per delivery?

Lady: $7 per delivery!

Me: That’s the lowest delivery payment of all the pizza restaurants.

Lady: Yes but you’ll be doing so many deliveries, getting so much tips that it wouldn’t matter.

(I later found out that Dominos charged customers $20 for delivery, the highest delivery charge of all fast food restaurants in the country. They paid the driver $7 out of the $20 charge and the restaurant pocketed the remaining $13 for themselves.)


Me: What are the closing hours?

Lady: 10:30pm.

Me: You mean like only on Fridays and Saturdays?

Lady: No everyday.

Me: Thats a bit late and taxis round here stop working around 8pm. Any transport provided for me to get home?

Lady: No.

Me: Will I be able to use the Domino’s motorcycle to get home? (I was allowed this benefit in a previous restaurant I worked that had this same issue)

Lady: No.

Me: Can I leave earlier then?

Lady: Of course. Due to your transport situation we’ll allow you to leave 10 minutes earlier!


Lady: We are a very flexible organization.

Me: How so? (inwardly groaning, expecting more bullshit)

Lady: We give you the choice to work either as contracted or non-contracted.

Me: What does that mean?

Lady: Contracted means that you work somewhat as a permanent staff. You can work all the overtime hours you want. However overtime would be paid at the usual rate of $21 an hour. No time and a half. The same applies for public holidays.

Non contracted is like temporary staff. We pay the usual time and a half for overtime but as you are non contracted you don’t get overtime hours as we send you home after you’ve made your 40hrs a week. We don’t allow you to work on holidays so you basically get your flat salary every week whereas with a contract you are allowed more hours.

Me: More hours at the same rate?

Lady: Yes.

Me: Wouldn’t that be a lose-lose situation?

Lady: No. It’s a win-win!


Me: Am I entitled to a free meal?

Lady: No.

Me: And the uniform?

Lady: We are the only pizza restaurant that provides free uniforms for staff?

Me: How many uniforms?

Lady: Two free Dominos shirts and a cap. We are having them laundered after being returned by a delivery driver who recently left.

Me: You’re giving me a guy’s used clothes?

No: No. She only used them for two days. They’re practically new.

Me: You’re giving used female clothing?

Lady: It’s a free uniform!

Suffice to say I instantly and humbly returned to Papa John’s and their skeleton staff.

Mystery Cambodia

A nice fun video that takes you to another world. LOL.

It will probably upset some folks, but too bad. This is real life. This guy interviews some prostitutes in Cambodia. If you don’t want the experience then you can pass on this video. It’s ok.

How can we become a winner at everything in life?

Originally Answered: How can we become a Winner at everything in Life?

What made Muhammed Ali the best Boxer in the world?
What made Michael Phelps go above and beyond every time he swam?
How come Gandhi made so much more of an impact than anybody else?

None of them were exceptional people since birth.

Sure, there is the claim that Michael Phelps, for example, has double the lung-capacity of most humans, which has been disproven.

And while he does have some physical advantages, like longer arms and shorter legs, while being tall, so does everybody else he is competing against!

What made the difference in their ability was not their born talents but rather the way they approached what they did.

They were willing to work harder and produce more than anyone else was willing to.

They are willing to do whatever it takes, go the extra mile and do more than those around them, which is what eventually gets them to succeed.

I remember reading an article back when Michael Phelps was just getting traction, that talked about how ridiculous his training regiment is and how it was way too intense.

At the time many doctors and health experts argued about his routine.

Today, I cannot find any article even mentioning that he was doing too much anymore.

After about 2 days of looking for that article I gave up.

All articles about him only praise his efforts and his routine; obviously because it worked.

He revolutionized the field.

The same can be said about Mahatma Gandhi, who did something no one else dared to do to make a statement that inspired millions.

And the effort that Muhammad Ali made can be clearly seen by one of his quotes:

I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. That is when I start counting, because then it really counts.

That’s what makes you A CHAMPION. — Muhammad Ali

Each of them made their entire day about training, sacrificing a lot of their day so they could focus on just that one thing.

And then we wonder why we cannot succeed.

The big question you need to ask yourself is: Are you doing enough?

Are the results showing up in the way you want to? Are you succeeding or do you need to do more?

Now, I cannot give you the exact stats of the men named above, as every page I visited had different numbers they boasted about, most of them disclaiming each other.

So I will instead share my own story and numbers to make this point.

Now I am by no means even close to as great as the men above, but I hope the point still comes across.

I started out as a Writer with a WordPress Blog.

At the beginning, it was just to practice my consistency and I wrote about 300 posts in my first year, yielding a total of 20 followers.

This was very little and so I switched to a site called Quora. In my first 6 months there I wrote about 1,000 posts, averaging 3 a day, before I wrote one answer that went viral.

This was back in 2016. Since then I have averaged about 3 posts a day consistently over the years.

I have been published on The Huffington Post, Time, and many more sites, have over 75,000 followers, 60M content views and get over 1M views a month still, and none of it because I was a good writer!

My very first post that I wrote was a page long block of text that was essentially a Writer’s Nightmare.

The only thing that pushed me through was that no one else wrote that much.

Many people wrote one post a day, if that, some even less.

And let me tell you this, after 18 Months of writing every day, the one viral post did not feel like a stroke of luck anymore, it felt deserved.

The point I want to make here is it is not about where you start or what prerequisites you have.

Winning is not about being better than everybody else.

Winning is about being the last person running in a race where everyone else gave up.

If you want to win you have to break through the noise by either doing more than others are willing to or doing it longer than they want to.

I have seen so many amazing writers leave Quora to never write again because they just did not break through the noise.

Mahatma Gandhi just did not eat, Michael Phelps only swam a lot, and Muhammad Ali trained a bit.

We have all done these things before, they are nothing special when you look at them like that. It’s not like they invented something none of us could ever dream of or did something that was so unbelievable it looked like Magic.

What made them special was the fact that they kept pushing and kept going with it when many people around them gave up or would have given up!

So let me ask you this then: Are you doing anything that stands out?

When you are working out do you do more and take shorter breaks than anyone else? When you are with your partner do you give them more attention and love than they can handle? When you are working at your job, do you work 10x more than any of your colleagues?

Are you doing anything that stands out?

You cannot expect yourself to win by just doing what everyone else is doing.

Sorry, but you are just not that special!

You have to become special by doing something extraordinary, and I mean that in the most literal sense possible:

Extra-Ordinary!

That means you do not overexert yourself.

Don’t expect to be able to train 6–8 hours a day, 7 days a week after having done no training at all.

Take it one step at a time but work yourself up and stay committed to it.

If you have the time and energy, then you can push further faster; it will get easier.

The 3 posts I wrote took anywhere from 3–6 hours a day at first. Now I can often write better posts in 15 minutes.

It does get easier.

Pick something, anything in your life that you wish to win at, and commit yourself to more of that.

Even if it is just an hour a day, if you do it long enough you will become absolutely amazing at it.

Push your limits day by day, even one more minute each day gets you 6 hours more in just one year.

“Let me tell you something you already know.

The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.

It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.

But it ain’t about how hard ya hit.

It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.

That’s how winning is done!” — Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa

Breaking US Sanctions: How Huawei Changed US-China Tech War

Carl Zha talks to tech expert TP Huang about how latest Huawei breakthrough in advanced chip design and manufacturing is a game changer in the US waged tech war and economic war against China. Why ultimately US sanctions on China will fail. The rest of this interview is on my Patreon site

Of those who join the U.S. military, how many end up in unglamorous jobs like driving a supply truck or handling paperwork in an office?

During WW2 there was a company that always submitted excellent paper work, head Quarters noticed this and moved their clerk typist to Headquarters, Battalion noticed him and moved him up to their office, he continued to be so dependable the higher ups wanted him, so eventually he ended up in Eisenhower’s front office.

One day, A hard nosed colonel came in to the office and demanded to see Ike, now. The clerk typist asked him, what does this pertain to? The Colonel started getting loud, said he didn’t need to explain anything to a clerk typist.

Ike came out to see the commotion, the colonel again was indignant.

Ike looked around the waiting room, saw another colonel sitting there, took an eagle pin off that colonel’s collar, and pinned it on the collar of the clerk, and said “ Now tell the colonel what you want”, and returned into his office.

The clerk was a colonel for the duration of his enlistment.

What did you learn in the military that has been useful for your civilian life?

During basic training, I did a lot of cleaning.

On a daily basis, my team and I would clean toilets, floors, rooms, the kitchen, our rifles, the floor around the barracks, our vests, our magazines and even the dog who lived in the barracks. I hated it.

I truly did not understand why I was spending months of paratrooper training time to clean up places that were spotless, instead of shooting and learning to fight.

And then I experienced my first operation.

My team and I were sent with four vehicles to meet up with a field intelligence unit, and prepare for the operation.

I remember meeting the field intelligence guys. It was the first time in my service meeting men, on duty, serving in a different unit than mine.

Their gear was obviously ill maintained, their vehicles were disgusting and dusty, and I could see the soot on the barrels of their rifles who have obviously not been cleaned in weeks. I wanted to tell their commander he was doing a shit job at maintaining his team’s gear.

And then it struck me.

All that cleaning during training has turned me into a neat freak.

Everything, even now in my apartment, needs to be perfectly placed, spotless and maintained. There are no excuses, and there should be none. An organized living is the basis for an organized life.

The lesson I took from all this epiphany?

There is shit in life you will not want to do, and you might even hate doing it, but truly successful people do the things they do not want to do, as best as they can, because eventually it will pay off in the long run.

China-Japan-South Korea Upcoming Summit: What’s Behind this Surprising Diplomatic Shift??

In a surprising turn of events, China has recently announced its willingness to hold a summit with Japan and South Korea leaders. This unexpected move begs the question: what has prompted this significant change? Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, revealed that the three countries have reached an agreement to convene a meeting of their foreign ministers “in the next few months,” with the intention of facilitating a gathering of leaders as soon as possible. Undoubtedly, this initiative is driven by the collective interests of the three parties involved.

This development comes on the heels of China’s denouncement, in late August, of the statement released at the conclusion of the Camp David summit. The gathering, which brought together the leaders of the US, Japan, and South Korea, raised concerns about transforming the Asia-Pacific region into a geopolitical battleground. However, China’s willingness to engage in dialogue with its neighboring nations demonstrates an intriguing diplomatic shift. Be sure to subscribe to my channel for regular updates on global affairs & geopolitical shifts. Don’t miss out on my in-depth analysis of significant events shaping the world today!

The US is digging for a deeper hole.

As Washington reportedly plans to update its export curbs against China in October, an analysis report by a Dutch media posits that the previous export curbs imposed a year ago exposed the Biden Administration seem to have no clear idea of their objectives.

According to Dutch media Bits&Chips, the semiconductor restrictions against China are likely a product of the US struggle between hawks and doves concerning the China issue, leading to loopholes and a lack of clear goals.

To consider the interests of US-based semiconductor equipment and material suppliers, the US government allows the delivery of equipment that may be used to make advanced chips, highlighting the incompleteness and inconsistency of the curbs.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security set a threshold that requires exporters to get a license before shipping to China for equipment that can make logic chips with FinFET or GAAFET architecture of 16/14nm or below. However, the current export controls are insufficient if US export controls aim to deny China’s production capabilities of 14nm and below.

For example, ASML’s NXT:1980Di, capable of making 7nm chips using multiple patterning, is not subject to the current curbs . Suppliers, such as Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA, continue to deliver advanced products to China.

On the other hand, the US may not achieve its intended results if it aims to prevent China’s progress in the semiconductor industry, as demonstrated by Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro, which highlights the fact that China can make advanced chips without advanced equipment.

As Reuters reported that the US is reportedly expected to unveil an update for the export controls in the coming days, it may be challenging for related suppliers to adapt to tighter controls if the US tries to close the loopholes.

Huawei has obtained crucial patents on 6G technology, which may allow the Chinese company to thrive in the 6G era, according to Simon Chen, chairman of Adata Technology.

When did you realize small things matter?

7:02 am:

The shop’s doors just opened for the day.

A green Toyota Celica drove into the customers’ parking space and a man alighted and walked into the store.

He was a first-time caller.

He was supporting his trousers with his hands.

Please I just need a belt. My belt snapped in the car, and I live far away from here. I am late for work and I don’t have money on me now. Can you trust me, I will bring the money at the close of work today’.

O My God!

First business of the day!

A man I never knew?

And here in this country, Nigeria?

Give him, he looks genuine. Could as well happen to you!’, one side of the brain was preaching.

Don’t!! Could be one of them. You’ll lose if you do!!’, the other side was screaming and countering.

Why can’t we live in a world where we can trust people and help them without fear?’, I was trying to make sense of this mental back-and-forth.

I gave him a very good quality belt, made the necessary perforations and he thanked me profusely and left.

5:06 pm:

The green Toyota Celica pulled up.

It was him.

To make good his promise.

Why isn’t life just this good!

Today, many years after that day, he no longer works around the area or passes through the route daily, but for such a small thing, he is one of my most valuable customers and has repaid the trust many, many times over.

Texas Jambalaya

2023 11 07 15 37
2023 11 07 15 37

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 cup diced onion
  • 1/4 cup diced green bell pepper
  • 1/2 cup diced celery
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped garlic
  • 1 cup converted rice, uncooked
  • 4 ounces smoked sausage, cut into 1/4 inch slices
  • 4 ounces ham, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
  • 2 cans Ro*Tel diced tomatoes and green chiles
  • 1 cup chicken broth
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 2 cans Ranch Style Texas beans, undrained

Instructions

  1. In a 5 quart saucepot over medium-high heat, heat oil.
  2. Add onion, green pepper and celery; cook until onions are translucent.
  3. Add garlic, cook 1 minute longer.
  4. Add rice, sausage and ham. Cook 2 to 3 minutes to coat rice with oil, stirring frequently.
  5. Add next 4 ingredients and heat to boiling.
  6. Cover and steam 20 to 25 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed.
  7. Remove bay leaf, stir in beans and serve.

The Exhausted and Unable to Survive, the Cat was Thrown Out on the Grass to Die

Bless you for saving this baby from death…

Why did Chariots lose their popularity on the battlefield?

On the 1st of October, 331 B.C.E., the Persian king Darius III finally had that Macedonian pest Alexander the Great right where he wanted him – on a big flat plain where Darius could make full use of his cavalry and 2–1 numerical advantage against the Greek upstart.

The location was Gaugamela in what’s now northern Iraq. For the past three years Alexander had been making Darius’s life a living hell but it was payback time.

At the head of Darius’s forces were 200 heavy chariots. The plan was, as usual, to unleash these monsters running at full speed into the Greek infantry lines. The weather was good, the field was dry – perfect conditions for slaughtering the Greeks and sending them all the way back to the Aegean.

Things…. didn’t work out. As with any battle that took place 3,300 years ago there were different stories about what happened. The only things we know for sure are:

  1. Alexander’s forces killed or captured most of the Persian army at a loss of no more than 1,500 troops; and
  2. The chariots turned out to be entirely useless.

Alexander knew the problem posed by the chariots and was ready for them. He drilled his men to fall back into pockets that would allow the chariot to penetrate the line, only to be met by infantrymen with their spears jammed into the ground pointing directly at the pocket.

What would happen is the horses, running at full speed, would run into the pocket but, facing the spears, would stop suddenly. The charioteers would find themselves surrounded on three sides and no way forward, and horses and chariots don’t reverse easily. As you can see, the chariots mostly went through the gap in the Macedonian line, only to find Alexander leading a cavalry charge back at the gap that wiped them out entirely.

The tactic remained a military favourite against horse soldiers for most of the next 1,800 years.

When the tactic was revived in the 15th century, it similarly made knights on horseback pretty much obsolete.

After Gaugumela, Alexander’s tactics were similarly widely adopted and the use of chariots started to tail off as they became ineffective and easy to lose.

Rich Men North Of Richmond, but it’s a Rap Type Beat

Made a beat to the song everyones talking about rn – Rich Men North Of Richmond by Oliver Anthony. Had a lot of fun with this one, went from idea to finished product in a day. The song isn’t set to a bpm so forgive me for parts that are off time, it was tough putting it all in time. Also shoutout to @TimGuitarLessons I used his audio in some parts.

Why do Westerners like you defend China online?

As you get older, you realize that people who lie constantly have some kind of mental problem. It might be a habit; a neurosis, or a DMS-4 illness. But they are not “right in the head”. Something (not saying what it is) is wrong.

Fully functioning adults do not need to lie. They say things as they are. If they don;t want to answer a question, they say so. They have self-confidence, pride and a sense of self-worth.

When I first came to China I started to compare my life as an American, to that of China.

And, as such, I quickly realized that SOMETHING was seriously, very seriously wrong with the United States.

The best way for me to describe this is to imagine that you are married to a mentally ill person. (I was, by the way. My first wife was schizo-effective; which had the worst qualities of bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia). Then you get divorced, and meet up with a healthy person.

It was like that.

I am in China. It is a healthy nation. It is calm and peaceful. The leadership works towards allowing people freedom and happiness, and it shows.

When I was in the United States, however, everything was a struggle. One problem after the other. And today, it’s only getting worse.

Why do I defend China?

Because a mentally ill nation is attacking it using every single DSM-4 technique in the book.

Has a patient ever been forgotten in an exam room?

My girlfriend was to remove the patient’s prostate through a so-called radical prostatectomy. It was Wednesday morning, a couple of weeks ago.

And Wednesdays can be tough.

A typical Wednesday typically includes brutally waking up very early, getting ready, driving to the hospital, and starting the first scheduled surgery at 8AM sharp. Usually a number of operations are planned, depending on the time they take, and urgency.

The afternoon typically consists of a large number of consultations.

After consulting, she usually drives to her father’s house (which is pretty far away from the hospital), because our daughter will be there, but before leaving the hospital, she always visits the patients who had surgery in the morning to have a little chat about the operation, about how the patient is feeling, and about everyday stuff.

When she was back home, we fetched a drink and talked about our day (“what a day, what a day, what a day”), and watched some TV before dinner.

Suddenly she shouted:

I forgot to see my patient !!”

The prostate man. In all the Wednesday hubbub, she had totally forgotten about the patient, and driven out of the hospital with other things on her mind. She immediately called the hospital and asked a nurse to tell the patient that she would visit him first thing next morning — promised !

The poor man had been a bit worried, thinking that something was wrong, that the cancer was worse than she had expected, and that this was the reason why she did not come.

But next morning, when the doctor was in the house again, he was a happy man. The operation went as planned, and the cancer would be gone now.

Thursdays are often much better than Wednesdays.

What is China’s response if Germany proceeds with banning Huawei and Chinese manufacturers from its 5G networks?

Germany is not the US.

Just because China puts up with US bullying doesn’t mean China has to put up with the same shit from a much weaker nation. In fact, Germany is seen kind of like a joke nowadays by the Chinese public, politically, due to it staying silent on NATO blowing up its Nord stream pipeline, and this public sentiment limits how much compromise the Chinese government can have with Germany. Instead of sitting idle and just take the unfair abuse on what’s now pride of Chinese companies for Huawei’s standing up to the US, China would more likely set Germany up as an example in the Chinese philosophy of “kill the chicken to scare the monkeys”.

I can see China starting by reacting proportionately with banning of Siemens from some operations inside China, as well as making life miserable for German cars, which are extremely dependant on China as their largest market worldwide and their factory as well since energy prices drove up costs in Europe, but China being China, it would reserve the stronger responses in hopes of descalation, and would only apply them if Germany escalates things further.

Things are going very, VERY, wrong; Netanyahu Tells Israelis to “Leave Egypt”

World Hal Turner

Things in the Hamas-Israel fight are going very much wrong for Israel.  This afternoon, The US ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier Strike Group to move into the eastern Mediterranean Sea to be closer to Israel. This signals ALL the players that the US is moving-in to get involved militarily.  The Players are NOT backing away.

Hamas: Moving the American aircraft carrier does not scare us, and the American administration must realize the consequences of this step.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office calls on Israelis to leave Egypt ‘as soon as possible.’  This is a HUGE . . . no . . . . GIGANTIC . . . flashing RED sign.

Egypt was the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel, and depending upon what course Israel pursues in Gaza (i.e. possible Ground Invasion) that peace with Egypt may now be in very real jeopardy.

The Palestinian President Mohammed Abbas, who was safely away in Jordan, is now leaving Jordan and heading into Syria.

In earlier reporting, I mentioned Intelligence info that Palestinians in Israel got word to their allies elsewhere to be ready to turn up the heat on Europe if Israel engages in a ground war.   Now, we see they also got word to their pals in New York City, where, this afternoon, supporters of the Palestinians and supporters of Israel faced each other in Times Square.   Chanting . . . for now . . . .

American Middle Class Is the New Poor | Renters Are Out of Options

Working and homeless! The new slogan. It’s not always drug addiction that leads to this. We NEED to stop this stereotype. Cost of living, especially rent is far outpacing wages which are not even remotely keeping up.. For people with no roommates or family to move in with and not making more than 75K, it’s rough out there.

A painful passing

When I got out of Prison, I suddenly came down with two maladies. The first was Ball’s Palsy (where my face was paralyzed, and I couldn’t close my eyes), and the second hit me about two weeks later. I had terrible kidney stones. And man oh man was it painful.

Because I had no money, and was transitioning from prison, I went to the hospital emergency room and they gave me a number to call to get some medicine for the pain.

And when I called that number, the receptionist answered the phone and accused me of wanting drugs and said that I could come in, but they weren’t going to give me anything for the pain.

I endured that pain for a week before I passed the stone, and it was a mighty bad situation. The pain was HORRIBLE.

Never the less, the thing that I remember was not the pain; the stone; or the egress from prison. I remember that holier than thou bitch at the reception desk that was giving me a hard time.

For all you Karens out there, I have a message for you all.

FUCK

YOU.

Good, now that I got that off my chest, let’s do todays post…

What are a few bitter truths of life?

Robert Sandifer’s life began in two overlapping hells.

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The first hell smoldered outside of his home, the streets of the South Side of Chicago, infamously dangerous, and marred by a blistering gun violence that persists to this day.

These streets are so dangerous that Google actively censors the imagery that populates on Google Streetview.

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Robert Sandifer’s second hell raged in his own home.

He was born to a prostitute mother who had dozens of arrests, and who was addicted to cocaine before, during, and indefinitely after his birth.

Sandifer’s father was wholly absent, serving a long prison sentence for felonies related to brutal gun violence.

He received severe physical beatings that started long before he could speak, that left him with terrible bruises and bloody lesions.

At age 3, Child Protective Services opened an investigation after finding cigarette burns on his body, caused by his mother’s boyfriends.

CPS tried to save him. They moved him to his grandmother’s house, but that home was a 3rd hell, already overflowing with as many as 20 kids at a time, many of them from similar circumstances.

Sandifer quickly became a product of his environment, adopting a violent lifestyle, beating children mercilessly on the playground, stealing their money, and their food. He began burglarizing homes, breaking into cars.

He dropped out of school at age 8 and roamed unsupervised in the gun-born, blood-soaked streets of The South Side.

Sandifer was assimilated into a notorious gang, The Black Disciples, who embraced and celebrated his violence.

At age 10, he was arrested after being caught driving a hijacked car, not the first he’d stolen – nor the last.

After Sandifer’s arrest, his family requested that he be kept in juvenile detention for his own safety and for that of the public – but they were denied – Sandifer was too young for juvenile detention.

And thus – he was released to his Grandmother’s custody.

And into the arms of The Black Disciples.

On a fateful 28th day of August, his gang ordered him to take out a hit on a rival gang member.

Sandifer arrived at his target’s house, he positioned himself behind a parked car on the opposite side of the street.

And opened fire.

His bullets plunged into the crowd, hitting several bystanders, and ultimately killing the wrong person – a 14-year-old girl Shavon Dean.

3 days later, Robert Sandifer was taken under a bridge, told to get on his knees, and shot, execution-style in the back of the head by members of his own gang to silence him.

At the time of his death, he had committed 23 felonies and 5 misdemeanors.

At his funeral – the only picture his family owned of him was his mugshot.

He was 11-years-old.

The bitter truth of life: some kids never stand a chance. People really do not understand just how bad it gets.

Have you ever sabotaged food because someone was stealing it?

Yes I have. I was a single mom struggling to keep my head above water so I would take leftovers for my lunch. This one co-worker would help himself to my lunch, then tell me how delicious it was. I tried explaining my situation to him, but he still continued to eat my lunches. I even bought an insulated lunch box so I didn’t have to put my lunch in the employee refrigerator. He would steal my lunch while I was away from my desk. And still brag about it. Now this coworker was from a different department than I was and made almost twice as much as I did. One day I had enough. That night as I was preparing my lunch for the next day, I included a healthy dose of mineral oil. Mineral oil is edible, it has no taste or smell, but it is a very good laxative. It took the guy about a week to figure it out. He went to HR and tried to get me fired or at least pay his lost wages ( he had to leave work 2–3 hours early all week.) HR talked to me and when I told them my story and how long it had going on, they made him reimburse me for all my lunches he ate. They verified my story first, of course. Later an email went out to all employees that theft of any food would be grounds for termination.

Is a California poppy extract-related product legal to sell in China?

Illegal, in China, selling drugs is illegal, exceeding 1 kg will be sentenced to death.If you know Chinese, you should know that.

In June 2021, 215.37 kg of drugs were hidden in 67,000 tons of soybeans exported by the America to Qingdao port, China, and were intercepted by Qingdao Customs. Relevant personnel have been punished.

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I hope you can understand Chinese hatred of drugs. Qingdao is an eastern port city, and it is obligatory to prevent drugs.

In 2017, Mianyang city Sichuan Province, southwest of China, a thief broke into a house to steal.When he find drugs on the ground,he gave up the plan and report to the police, confessed his crimes and discoveries, and helped the police officers catch a large drug-making-trafficking gang.

Yes, even thieves also despise drug dealers,they also join Antidrug.

Lone Star Bacon and Cheddar Fries

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Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound (3/8 inch) regular cut fries with skin on
  • 2 ounce shredded Cheddar cheese
  • 2 strips cooked diced bacon
  • 3 ounces sour cream
  • Finely chopped green onions, for garnish
  • Jalapeno peppers, for garnish

Instructions

  1. Deep-fry regular cut fries (350 to 360 degrees F) for 3 to 3 1/2 minutes or until golden brown and crisp.
  2. In fry serving basket, arrange hot fries.
  3. Top with cheese and bacon.
  4. Garnish with sour cream and green onions.
  5. If desired, garnish with jalapenos.
  6. Serve immediately.

What are some small things that matter a lot?

It was a hot summer afternoon in the month of May.

I was riding on my bike to home. A man who may be in his early 50s asked me for a lift. He was sweating profusely and needed to reach home. As his house was on the way I was going in, I gave him a lift.

He explained to me that, his sugar levels are dropping and need to reach home fast. I dropped him off at his home and he thanked me whole heartedly. I got back home and forgot about it.

After a month, a small hotel was opened nearby. I went there to try it out. I was checking out the menu and someone tapped on my shoulder from behind. He was the same man whom I gave lift earlier.

He asked me if I had recognized him. I said no. He explained that I gave him lift a month ago. Then, I recollected him. He asked me, what would I like to eat. I was surprised.

He giggled and said that, he is the owner of that hotel and as a token of gratitude I can have anything for free. I politely refused it but he was stubborn in his offer. So, I gave in.He asked the chef to make the best of the dish I ordered and was given for free.

That day, I realized, the good you do however small, goes far.

Any small help you do to people will for ever be engraved in their minds forever and it comes back to you in the ways you can never imagine.

So, don’t stop doing good and spreading smiles!

Why don’t more people move to Wyoming?

This map of Wyoming offers one of the reasons:

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The areas shaded in green are owned by the federal government. Although Wyoming is large, the federal government owns about 47% of the land. So, some of the most beautiful parts of Wyoming are not places to which people are moving because there is very little private land for them to buy and live on.

But the problem is even deeper than that. These federal lands contain timber, pasture, and minerals which are leased or sold to those industries, but those leases and timber sales are prone to fluctuate with political fads for or against use of federal timber, minerals, and grazing. Even aside from that, the bureaucracies in authority over these lands do not take responsibility for maintaining the jobs in these industries. Since they have often not worked in the private sector, they either do not understand or do not care how delays and unpredictability in their decisions kill private-sector jobs.

Another reason for the low population in Wyoming is the 75,000-person tipping point in urban population. There is a pattern in the United States: cities tend to grow faster once they have reached a population between about 50,000 and 100,000. At this population, there is enough demand for specialized services in medicine, law, finance, engineering, management, entertainment, air transport, and other professions to support higher-paying jobs in these industries. There is also enough population to entice specialized types of businesses to locate there. Some of these are businesses that hum along below the surface of your local economy, but are important in helping other businesses thrive: machining, transportation, calibration, training and testing. Some of these businesses are retailers and national food chains that make a place more inviting to new residents. No Wyoming city has broken through this tipping point, although Cheyenne may be doing so now.

A third factor: By geographical accident, Wyoming’s neighboring states tended to have urban clusters near their borders with Wyoming which hindered any Wyoming city from reaching this population tipping point. Specialized, high-paying jobs and businesses are less likely in an area within 150 or so miles of existing firms. Denver and Salt Lake City are large cities with trade areas which include much of Wyoming. But the smaller cities of Rapid City, SD, Billings, MT, and Idaho Falls, ID also have large parts of their trade areas within Wyoming. Have a look at the map of United States trade areas and influential cities. All of Wyoming is depicted as being within an out-of-state city’s trade area. The map has flaws. Certainly Casper, Wyoming should qualify as having a trade area if Butte, Bozeman, and Helena, Montana and Alliance and Valentine Nebraska do, but the map nevertheless makes a valid point about Wyoming’s lack of urban areas with trade areas.

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In the long run, Wyoming will be one of the nation’s faster-growing states and will develop larger urban areas. It contains major freight rail lines and major interstate highways. It has cheap electricity, low taxes, and lots of money in the bank from all the mineral wealth. It has major electricity transit lines and energy pipelines. Culturally, it has a good work ethic and an openness to newcomers. It has enough water resources to accommodate lots of population growth.

Which incident did you consider to be an absurd hoax but later found out to be crazily true?

Many, many years ago I received a letter in the post. It was a recorded delivery and I had to sign for it to confirm delivery. I was intrigued and opened it immediately. It was a summons to appear in our local small claims court. I was being sued for £6,000. There were no details about the charges or any explanation of what the case was about other than the name and address of the complainant. I was mystified as I didn’t recognise the name. Lets call him Mr Smith.

In the three weeks before the stated date I convinced myself that one of my sons was playing an involved joke on me. I quizzed them all mercilessly but nobody would admit to knowing anything about it. As the date drew closer I determined to go to court just to find out which of my boys was the perpetrator of this rather involved joke.

Court day arrived and I went into the court building and presented my summons to an attendant, still expecting to be told it was a forgery. I was wrong. I was politely directed to a small waiting room and told my case would be called in 10 minutes. I was stunned.

When I was escorted into the courtroom the Sheriff (a lay judge in Scotland) asked me if I had a legal representative. I explained how I thought that the summons was a joke and I had no lawyer. He said that I could ask for a deferment to get legal advice if I choose but he didn’t think that was necessary. I sat down still stunned and confused but by now rather scared.

The Sheriff now asked the other side to outline their case. I listened in stunned amazement as the story unfolded.

Apparently some 6 months previously I had sold Mr Smith a tenpin bowling ball and drilled the ball to suit his hand. I had explained to him the need to keep the ball clean of lane oil on a regular basis. Mr Smith had taken me at my word and had left his bowling ball soaking in a bathtub of hot soapy water overnight. Feeling that the finger and thumb holes were wet when he fished the ball out of the bath in the morning he had decided to dry out the ball. Fifteen or twenty minutes in the microwave should dry it out nicely.

Some time later the ball had exploded. The force of the explosion was enough to destroy the microwave and send the door of the microwave flying upward with enough energy to punch through the ceiling and the floor of the room above his kitchen. Unfortunately the room above his kitchen was his neighbours bathroom. The microwave door not only punched through the floor but punched through the actual bath. Really unfortunately the poor woman was taking a bath at the time.

She was suing Mr Smith for the damage to her bathroom from the flying microwave door as well as the water damage to her carpets from the bath full of water. She wasn’t suing for the shock of a microwave door suddenly puncturing her bath although it must have been a terrific shock.

Mr Smith was suing me for the same amount on the basis that I had sold him a bowling ball without specifically telling him not to put it in the microwave.

By this stage several people in the gallery were laughing and the sheriff was definitely smiling. I was still worried but feeling considerably less scared. We all sat politely until Mr Smith’s lawyer had finished. The Sheriff then drew himself very straight and without a trace of a smile said that he was here to apply the law of the land and not to educate idiots. Case dismissed.

WARNING something BIG is happening in Ukraine, Putin stays quiet

Something big is about to happen in Ukraine. Is Putin about to launch a pre-winter offensive now that Ukraine has exhausted all of its resources? Logistical signs are showing newly built railway tracks and large troop movements on the Russian side. Also multiple reports over the past 48 hours show an increased number of young Ukrainian men racing to get the hell out of Ukraine.

How has living in China changed you?

it’s aged me!

I was in my mid-20’s when I came, and after 30+ years here I’m already 57. If I stay here a few more years I’ll be 60. No one cares!

I don’t know which changes are due to maturing and which are due to living in China, but I can say how I’m generally different than Americans who haven’t lived in China.

  • I’m less emotionally invested in news reports, especially about politics. If you’ve lived in a place or have a job that’s occasionally the focus of the international media (as China manufacturing has been) then the discrepancy between what’s reported and what you know is obvious. It makes you skeptical at first, then cynical. Apathy soon follows.
  • I don’t take it for granted that multi-party democracy is superior to one-party rule. I tend to look at the results not the process.
  • I accept rapid, sweeping, head-spinning change as the norm. instantly accepted and accommodated.
    • Yesterday we used paper currency to purchase things. Today we use cash cards. Tomorrow we’ll buy everything with our phones…. oh wait… we’re using the phones now, today, not tomorrow. OK, ok. I got it. Yesterday we used cash cards, today we use phones, tomorrow well use something else.

      I don’t remember when I stopped carrying cash and then stopped using my cash card. But that’s where I am now. That’s where everyone is—even beggars on the street accept mobile payments.
    • Got a meeting in the next city… ? Better schedule 1/2 a day to get there. Then, all of the sudden, you realize you’re always arriving early to meetings. Everything started moving faster like this. Now that half a day gets you from Shanghai to Beijing by train. And if you start in the morning in Shenzhen, you can have an authentic Hunan lunch in Hunan, and be back in Shenzhen for an authentic Cantonese dinner.
  • I’m more appreciative of people in general, Chinese or expat. I don’t love everyone, but I value my relationships and feel grateful for the respect and assistance I’ve been given. I often feel like the big bang has distributed the universe’s molecules with my wellbeing in mind.

Koreans React To ‘Mr. Rogers’ For The First Time

Why are many Indian Ph.D. graduates from top institutes now choosing China for their postdocs? How is the life of an Indian post-doc in China? Do the Indian postdocs settle in China?

Money!!!

Chinese programs in Universities today get more funding than even USA, as US focuses on Private Funding

In 2022, US Universities spend $ 208 Billion in University Research against $ 346 Billion by China

You write a good paper for your PHD in Biotechnology, you could get offered an Research Associate position for 25000 RMB a month that’s around ₹ 34 LPA plus housing against a mere ₹7.6 LPA in India

That’s equivalent to $ 83,666 a year in US that’s higher than the US median of $ 64,712 for a Research Associate in PPP terms

China pays highest in PPP terms for most research today barring Norway and Switzerland and Taiwan


Life of an Indian Post Doc in China

My son is one

He is doing research for a Private Company on a 5 year grant (2023–2028)

Here are his observations:-

  • Knowing Rudimentary Mandarin is very important. The Lab assistants, the research students do their best in mandarin. The english is pretty accented. Luckily most Universities offer you Mandarin elementary classes for free if you are doing research there.
  • Softwares and Settings are programmed to Mandarin. You have to set it to English. Then print in English and Mandarin.
  • Money is pretty good. Housing is pretty good.
  • You will have two security reviews by the Government.
  • If you do research funded by the Government Or research classfied as National Research , you get a ID that gives you some powers. You get clout with cops. Now technically these IDs are only for National projects but like India, my sons director has managed to wrangle these IDs for these guys as well.
  • Very easy to get a Chinese girlfriend if you are unmarried. Unlike Singapore where girls are steady since secondary school. My son has 3 Assistant Researchers from Vietnam, Indonesia and Kerala. All have Girlfriends in less than a year.
  • Research is very well funded. You want to buy a $ 300,000 machine, you get approval in a matter of 2–3 days

It’s damn good


Settling down in China ?

Not encouraged

Finish your grant, extend your grant, live for 15–20 years in China and then go home or to Singapore

Meanwhile train as many Chinese as possible

Most people who settle down in China are married to Chinese Mainlanders and have kids and full families

They become Chinese themselves, speak like mainlanders, act like mainlanders

They are eligible for Citizenship of China


Are Indian Postdocs selecting China?

Yes

China beat Japan to the fourth position in 2023

It’s US, Germany, UK and China at fourth position beating Japan which was at fourth place until 2023, France is sixth, Middle East & Africa is seventh (no idea how), Singapore is Eighth and Canada is ninth

However in absolute numbers only 8.63% Postdocs go to China with almost 39.44% going to US and 71% going to US, UK and Germany

However this is a huge increase because in 2006 only 0.51% Postdocs sought careers in China meaning a Eighteen fold increase in a mere 17 years

Men DESTROYED Modern Women’s Beauty Standard

Rating women’s attractiveness is dramatically affected by make-up. I’ve seen them transform from as much as 2’s to 9-10’s. Truly amazing results.

https://youtu.be/pf3qHed8TtA

How has living in China changed you?

A few years back I had to change my careers. At that time I took a big change and moved halfway across the world to China.

I lived there for 3 1/2 years. I was there for 3 years in NE China in a small rural area. Then about 4 years later I move back but to the big city of Shanghai(but only for about 1/2 a year).

That’s the background story now to your question.

My first 3 years in China was very humbling. I was in a rural area still governed by old rules and ideas. I met a friend who lived in South China in a big city and she told me that I experience things that she never experienced while there. Each person’s experiences are so different. In the rural areas you live like the Chinese, but in a big city, you live like a foreigner in China.

When I say humbling it’s because I learned to live on very little. I spent $200 a month for food, shopping and traveling. When I went back to China in a big city you definitely can’t live on that. I learned to appreciate what I had and how to make do with what I had.

I discovered that my own culture lack respect for elders. That we are far behind when it comes to public transport. (China is far ahead of us). I gained a love for food, Chinese eat all the time (but are skinny). They eat tons of vegetables and meat as well…but it’s fresh produce…which my own country lacks…we eat way too much processed food. Of course, I learned how to use a squatty potty.

Now, when I went back to China 4 years later…so much has changed. They are so advanced when it comes to technology. While China was a humbling place for me for my first 3 years. It was not so the second time around…why? The simple answer is that times have changed. Don’t get me wrong I loved Shanghai and appreciated it, but I learned that sometimes you can’t go back…memories are better left in your mind.

China will always be a part of me. It has changed me so much more than I can ever put into words. But for me, “humble” is what learned from all my experiences in China.

No Handyman Jobs! People are BROKE!

I guess I was spoiled with the abundance of jobs these past few years. Well, I guess that has come to an end…

https://youtu.be/eJTOxnL_nBw

If a drone is flying on my property and I have already notified that I do not want it to be flying on it, can I destroy it without legal repercussion?

Ok, so here’s my experience.

A few years ago, a kid in our neighborhood got a drone for Christmas. He started flying it around people’s houses. The first time. I was sitting on my deck and it flew to the edge of the deck. I waved and it flew away. The next day, the same thing. After a few days, the kid got bolder. He started to fly it right over the deck. There was also one time that I was doing dishes in the kitchen it was hovering right outside the kitchen window, watching me.

This went on for about a month. I would see it right outside my windows or around my yard. I knew it was just a kid but it was getting kind of creepy. I wasn’t sure if I could be heard on it but I tried telling the drone that the fun was over and please don’t come back. Guess what? It came back the next day again. I didn’t know who the drone belonged to so I called the PD and they really didn’t know what to tell me. At this point, drones were just becoming popular and there wasn’t really any protocol. I asked around the neighborhood and no one seemed to know where it was coming from. I tried to follow it but it was faster than me and was piloted over houses and through other yards that I couldn’t go through.

Another month passes and now this kid is just taunting me. I tried throwing things at it, putting up a sign asking them not to fly it near my house anymore, my then-husband actually had it in his hand at one point but those things are pretty strong and he wasn’t able to keep a hold of it. We would flip it off when we saw it or curse at it, anything we could think of. I even fired a few warning shots with a BB gun. Nothing worked.

Finally, we were just done. The last day I ever saw it, I was again sitting on my deck and I hear the familiar drone sound. I tried to ignore it, hoping it would go away. I could hear it getting closer to me but I just kept my head down, pretending to read my book. The living room window was open so without looking up I yelled “It’s back again!!”. My then-husband walked out onto the deck and the drone moved towards him. He pulled out his pistol and pointed at the drone. No shots fired, it wasn’t even loaded and the drone high-tailed it out of there. Within 15 minutes, a very angry father and 2 police cruisers were in my driveway. The father wanted us arrested for threatening his kid. We explained what had been going on and the cops had several reports over the last few months from me as well (including pictures of the drone in various places around my house, date and time-stamped). Basically, nothing happened. The gun was registered to a licensed gun owner, no property was damaged, and the documentation from the police department showed that this kid was a nuisance. The cops went and had a talk with the kid. I found out later that other neighbors had the same issue with the drone so the cops had not only our complaints but many others. I don’t know what happened to the kid but I do know I never saw that drone again.

***EDIT***

A lot of people are commenting about the police not doing their job and yes it does seem that way. However, we have to remember that this was the first year that drones became really popular and it was the IT thing to have. People were having a lot of fun with their drones but there weren’t any clear laws that the police could follow. Also, you couldn’t trace them so you had a basic idea of the surrounding area where the drone was coming from but unless you actually saw where it went “home” to, there was nothing you could do so I believe that the police did the best they knew how at the time.

I don’t even blame the parents that much because the kid was like 13 or 14 years old. When I figured out who the drone belonged to, I knew exactly who this kid was, and quite honestly, he was an entitled little sh**. His parents were actually pretty nice people who tried their best but had very little control over their kids. The father showed up with the police because the kid made the father believe that a gun was pulled on him while cutting through our yard. That was not the case and when given all the facts, the father was still upset but it didn’t have a whole lot to say anymore.

And before you come for me, yes, most times kids are a product of their environment but sometimes the parents are doing everything right and the kid will still be a jerk. My kids are 21 and 17 and I have been involved in many of their activities over the years and have seen it all.

The Real China Shocked This British Man

Whenever I hear the China collapse theory, I always ask the person if s/he wants to take a bet, just provide a time frame when you think China will collapse and I bet you two whiskey that it won’t. I had been winning so many whiskey in the last 15 years, but none of those losers pay up.

Do the majority of people in China wish to remain communists, or if they had a choice, would they want democracy?

Seriously, do you really think the people in China really care whether China is a Communist or a Democracy if all there is to it is just some meaningless labeling.

Is like categorizing races by color, when you call it white I saw pink, when you call it yellow I saw light beige, when you call it black I say are you color blind, do you know what black looks like?

Chinese people in general are very much pragmatic, results orientated and doesn’t give much crap to whose camp they are in as long as they prosper and live a better live then the past. Also, Chinese history and philosophy never taught them life is simply black and white we know it has at least if not fifty shades of grey in between.

Furthermore, if one look at the Tai Chi symbols we see the black and white are not shown as antagonistic to each other, whilst they may be opposite to each other in direction but they intertwined in a circle with the opposite instead of a straight line in between a square. It also house a fraction of the opposite too, all for the purpose of equilibrium and in layman term it is call Win-Win or Harmony.

Life cannot always be a equal sum game, it has many elements and each play an important role, if one element does not survive well or is missing rest assure others will also get affected adversely by it. In science term, it is what we call a Eco System.

Balance reduce conflict, hegemony are always short lived and unintelligent, longer it stretches it more violent is the snaps when it breaks.

So is it really true that there are no democracy in a Communist system and when a country is not run by Communist does that mean they have no tyrant, no dictator, no ruthless regime, no poverty, no corruption and their people live a much better happy life?

Whats’s the big fucking deal about democracy if the leader doesn’t really practices it. “For the People, To the People, By the People” my arse when I see what’s going on in their land of Oligarchs Plutocracy.

What are some things you genuinely like about living in China that back home still needs to catch up to?

That is a great question indeed.

  1. Safety – yesterday, today and tomorrow.
    At first, right after moving to China I was truly amazed that there are so many chairs for valets randomly placed on the sidewalks. In Russia these chairs will end up at someone’s country house.
  2. Small businesses
    In Russia shops, restaurants, coffee-shops etc. belong to the large chains, you cannot find a small bar with homemade food for example. And places like that are my favorite in Beijing.
  3. Infrastructure – in Russia you hardly can:
    – get anywhere by subway and pay under 10 kuai for it,
    – get anything delivered to your house,
    – pay for the stuff via wechat,
    – get foot massage in the middle of the night,
    – pay for electricity and water using your own terminal, etc. etc.
  4. Variety of entertainment choices
    The only places that are really good for eventful life would be Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, other cities cannot be ever compared to Beijing: lots of events, activities and parties. Russia does need to get on this level.
  5. Taobao
    This is the most genius thing ever – I am a big Taobao fan and would love if a platform like that will be developed in Russia someday.

China moves into position to support Syria

So happy to see China & Syria are working together! Stronger united against the Empire!

School Bus Driver Rant

As a school bus driver, I would like to explain something.

My job is to transport your child from point A to point B safely, on time and ready to learn.

That is all.

What do I mean when I say safely? Let me explain. Safely means I pre-trip my bus daily to ensure it is running properly and that it hasn’t been tampered with. Safely means my eyes are constantly scanning all 7 mirrors, blind spots, and the road in front of me.

I’m NOT a babysitter.

I’m NOT a mediator.

I’m a BUS DRIVER.

I would absolutely love to be able to watch and hear each and every little thing that goes on in the 40 feet of school bus behind me, but while I’m watching Johnny jump across the seat, I just missed a car pull out in front of me. And oops, while I’m yelling at Susie to keep her hands to herself, the light changed and now I’m slamming the brakes to stop in time at the intersection. And what’s that? Now Joey has a nose bleed? And now someone dumped all of Katie’s stuff out of her bookbag, and “bus driver, Bobby is flicking me”, and “bus driver, Lily said she doesn’t like me anymore”, and what’s that? While I’m looking in the mirror behind me reprimanding your perfect children, a car just ran my reds and Sally almost got run over!

It’s Never Ending to us…

And that doesn’t even include the way the children speak to us. I’m pretty certain they don’t speak to other school faculty like that. And certainly don’t speak to their parents the way they speak to us.

So please, parents, tell me … where do you want me to look? Behind me? In front of me?

Would you prefer I pull over each and everytime someone yells “bus driver”? Because then YOU will complain that the bus is never on time, and trust me if I did pull over everytime, we wouldn’t even make it out of the school parking lot before I’d have to stop. Incase you didn’t know, your children are not perfect…no one is.

Would you rather I continue down the road watching what’s going on BEHIND me more than what’s going on with other vehicles on the road around me? Because I can assure you, if I’m not scanning every angle around the bus, there WILL be an accident, and then I will again be to blame, because I should’ve been paying attention to the road.

Now, on top of that, we see your children for less than 30 minutes a day, in most cases. Please teach your child to respect the bus driver, and to behave themselves when riding the bus…because we want to return them to you, SAFELY.

~ Unknown

Russian & American In China Are SHOCKED What They Experienced

What is the craziest request you have gotten when you were buying something (car, boat, bike, furniture, etc.) from someone who was so deeply attached to the item it felt like they were losing a part of their family?

Not crazy at all, just unusual and — under the circumstances — quite touching.

A 1969 Ford F250 was advertised for sale located in a town about 400 miles away. I called and spoke with the elderly original owner. He was not an enthusiastic seller and seemed to be throwing up obstacles to buying it. For one thing, he asked the questions, not me. The conversation went like this:

Me: Hello, I’m calling about the F250 for sale. Is it still available?

Him: Yes. What do you want with it?

Me: Uhhh, well, sir, I was thinking about buying it.

Him: Why?

Me (looks at phone with a WITW? expression): Because I need a truck.

Him: What do you need a truck for?

Me: To haul tools and material.

Him: That’s good. How old are you?

Me: (Young in spirit but wise beyond my years. More or less.)

Him: That’s good. How’s your driving record? Any accidents or tickets recently?

Me: No wrecks, no tickets.

Him: Will you put different wheels and paint and interior and engine in it?

Me: Gosh, no. I want it all original. Like it is now.

Him: Okay, you can come look at it. My address is…

I went all that way, looked, endured another vetting from him and was finally judged worthy of his treasured pickup that he could no longer drive because it had manual steering and he could no longer turn the steering wheel. As I drove away in the truck he’d named Whitey back in 1969, I glimpsed him in the rear view mirror crying unashamedly.

But wait, there’s more.

I drove directly to the other side of town and viewed a second 1969 Ford F250 for sale by its elderly original owner who also subjected me to a lengthy qualifying interrogation. Satisfied, he sold me the truck he’d named Rita in 1969 and helped me disconnect the driveshaft then attach a tow bar so I could pull her home with Whitey. After I had remote lights rigged up on his Rita, I got into Whitey and pulled away. In the rear view mirror I glimpsed Rita’s original owner crying unashamedly.

Nearly 10 years later Whitey and Rita are still exactly as they were the day I brought them to their new home. It was a good day, as have been all all the rest with them. As their original owners requested I have kept them exactly as they were: working trucks, now 50 years young, in original condition and carefully maintained. I even built them a canopy to protect them from the sun and inclement weather.

When you speak this way, your reality evolves…

Fair video. Fits in with my affirmation campaigns.

If the one child policy was such a disastrous idea, then why didn’t the Chinese experts object to it?

Was it a disastrous idea though? Who said?

Sure it wasn’t a comfortable idea for the people. I haven’t had children yet. But I do want to have two. One is scary in many way. What if something happens to him or her? What if he/she wants to join the military… and not come back?

But if I insist on having a second child, I would end up paying a fine. Then I would be liable to pay for the child education. The first child will get free ride from K-12 and university.

In fact, I can have as many children as I would like. I just have to afford raising them all with minimal government support.


Why the one child policy?

Look at China in the 60s – 80s

It was a simple life. Classism may have been at the lowest in Chinese history. To be a well respected person, you can be a teacher, a village chief, a policeman, a small government official, a factory manager, etc…

This simple peaceful life was made possible by the One child policy.

Do you know that unemployment was low? Job selection wasn’t great, but as long as you were willing to work, someone could find you a job.

Despite the scare of Western invasion and atomic bombs, it was a relatively safe society. Petty crimes were plentiful, from pickpocketing, theft, to scam artists. But it was unlikely your house would be broken in at gun point.

All these wouldn’t be possible if the population was left to balloon unchecked. Far more crime, homeless, desperate people out for blood, and money.

If I went back in time to 1970s…

Knowing the future is a hell of an advantage. I would start trading goods, then collaborated with the government’s economic expansion programs.

Humble start, this was how many Chinese entrepreneurs in the 70s and 80s had their start.

Moving up, buying a truck. One man transportation company in the 90s.

Eventually able to have enough money to open a factory. TV production company in the 80s.

Not really a photo of China, but of 1980 computer stores in the US. My computer store would look like this.

I would get into computers as early as 1975. This was around the time Bill Gates and Steve Jobs founded their companies.

I would even go to India in 1974 to meet the penniless backpacker Steve Jobs and offered him his first initial investment before he even knew he was to found Apple. He would be indebted to me for life.


Two prospects regarding to One Child policy:

  • One Child Policy: Boosted economy. I could be rich, easily affording 4–5 children if I wanted to.
  • Booming population: China would still be a shithole like any of the third world country China’s BRI is helping now. Raising one child and keeping my family fed would be very hard.

I actually knew people in China who had more than one children after 1980. They were not jailed or anything. Their neighbors and friends were supportive of their decisions.

Putin at Valdai, civilizational world order is here to stay

I thought Putin was exceptionally clear, rational, even handed, well spoken, honest, and painfully accurate about everything he said. He has my vote for US president.”

Have you ever judged someone and realized you were wrong?

Oh my, yes!

Steve seemed such a surley man. Unsuprisingly older than me by a couple decades since this was my first professional job as a newly minted college graduate, he seemed to growl at me whenever I saw him.

With the confidence only available with youth, I judged him.

I judged him mean, old, and a bit scary.

Imagine my horror when after about a year on this entry level job when I was reassigned to work for Steve. Of course, the reality was that I knew nothing about him.

What happened over the course of the next year was one of those special times of life that changes who you are forever. I learned that while I knew nothing about him, he knew quite a bit about me. Turns out that this wasn’t some corporately bland reassignment, but, rather, he asked to take me on as a project.

As I got to know Steve, it turned out that the gravelly voice, which I can still hear in my imagination as I write, was just his voice. And the surley demeanor I had judged so harshly was a product of a direct and unassuming style this loquatious post-adolescent did not yet grok.

One teaching moment in particular is one I’ll never forget. I carry this lesson with me every day.

You see, I’d made a mistake. Not a huge one, but a clear screw-up. I had a plan for spin control. I was confident in the plan. The lies were off-white lies at best.

But Steve believed in me enough to ask questions gently. And after he had twisted me into a logical knot, he said, and I’ll never forget his words, “Tony, you can do better than this.” He proceeded to teach me the value of not spinning and just dealing with my own limitations as a human. He showed me the real value of honesty: building trust.

And, Steve was right. I came clean and it was all ok. And, a few months later when I made a yet bigger mistake, that was ok too.

I got to know Steve better over the next couple of years. I learned that we shared some basic interests and religious faith, but he was not the type to over-share or brag. Sadly, when I had this incredible access to him, I never fully understood Steve.

But, I understood far better when he died.

Just a couple years after this priceless mentoring, Steve was stricken with brain cancer. He was far younger than I am right now, so even in death he taught me to value every day.

But this wasn’t the last lesson he had to teach. Not hardly.

I was invited by his widow to his funeral. I had known of his faith, but not quite the extent to which he walked the walk. I’ve omitted a great deal of detail, but Steve had not had an easy life. In my mind, he was doing all he could to just survive and raise his own family. I assumed his faith was like my own: sincere, yet mostly a coping mechanism.

In the shadow of his recent death, some mutual acquaintances filled in some details. There was far more to the man than even I suspected. My admiration was already deep. My tears were quite real.

Steve had been an elder at a prominent church for many years. The details of his service to others would make this long answer far too long. The debts others expressed dwarfed my own sense of gratitude.

But, the funeral blew me away.

You see, it was a large church. Very large. That day, it was filled to the rafters. I have never been to anything like it since. The love expressed for Steve that day over powers me even as I write this.

And there, in that pew, I knew i wanted to be like Steve.

Not for glory or acclaim—not at all. Just to have left this place a better place than I had found it. And, as I traverse my new career in coaching, I am still chasing his example.

Thank you, Steve, for teaching me how to be real. I’ll never forget you. I’ll never achieve what you did, but I am so much happier for trying.

And, I even learned from misjudging you.

How did Huawei replace over 13,000 components in its range of products with local substitutes in response to US trade sanctions?

In a short sentence, the completeness of the supply chain.

In brief exposition, this is the bitter fruit of embargo.

No, I’m not referring to Donald the Orange’s tariffs and dismantling of Huawei.

I’m talking about the 30-year EMBARGO that the US enforced on China after the breakout of the Korean War, along with the withdrawal of Soviet tech support as relations cooled heading into the 60s.

In fact, the Cultural Revolution’s deurbanization was a direct policy response to having the economic rug pulled under by foreign forces.

China learned a very important lesson: Any weakness in a supply chain can and will be exploited.

The Chinese prioritized the control of key enabling heavy industries, beginning with steel manufacture, before using policy tools to encourage the organic growth of eco-systems downstream.

The Chinese were not happy with assembling a shoe from components. Rather they focused on being able to make every component, down to the dye and synthetic materials suitable for footwear.

This process was repeated up the tech ladder, and by the 2010s, the Chinese had the most complete supply chain in the world, encompassing all categories of the UN industrial sector classification. China remains the only country to maintain this milestone.


China’s strength is hardware, and the world’s greatest concentration of hardware engineering talent—whether it is chips, IC, antennas, speakers, motors—are found on the mainland, and overwhelmingly Chinese.

These are world class talent who’ve delivered on big projects, and thoroughly up-to-date with their field of expertise. I daresay set them loose on any problem and they will find solutions, because the intensity and breath which they attack problems is unrivaled. The Chinese have the scale to apply multiprong strategies in parallel*, while the competition iterate sequentially. This is the famed China speed, and China has made up plenty of ground in recent decades expertly harnessing economies of scale.

America uses its heft to force compliance, through the threat of market access withdrawal. But the Chinese market is already bigger than the US, especially hardware components, just because China is the world’s factory. Huawei is able to find enough domestic partners who don’t mind losing the US market, because there are enough customers within China. Besides, this is a matter of survival for entire industries, and it is imperative to break the tech embargo.


Huawei’s telecoms gear isn’t like cellphones, because they are tethered to the mains. Power efficiency isn’t a make or break consideration, and there is no need for the latest and greatest off the cutting edge node, chip-wise.

This makes domestic substitution a breeze compared to say, the Kirin SOC, because hacks are always available, especially under the umbrella of Huawei’s immense patent portfolio.


In the final analysis, I’d say it boils down to the quality and quantity of talent, and it shows in the remarkable speed of the turnaround.

欺负华为没人?

门儿都没有。

Heinz Guderian noted in his diary that he had observed snow for the first time in the campaign in the Soviet Union.

The original plan for Operation Barbarossa was extremely sketchy for such a massive operation. One of the odder aspects of planning was that the endpoints for the invasion were never set forth, and became vaguer and more nebulous the further along planning got.

The first battle plans, prepared for the OKW by General Erich Marcks in mid-1940, actually did set forth a terminal line of the invasion. Marcks proposed the “A-A line” as the operational objective. This was to run from the northern city of Arkhangelsk on the Arctic Sea through Gorky and Rostov to the port city of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga on the Caspian Sea. This assumed that the European portion of Russia and its satellites was the only part of the country of any interest and importance. There, the German Army could stop and set up a defensive line beyond which whatever was left of the Soviet Union could be allowed to wither away, as it would pose no threat.

After the Marcks Plan (as it came to be called), though, the idea of any kind of ultimate objective for the Wehrmacht disappeared. The debate instead degenerated into one of whether or not it was even important to get to Moscow, let alone reach any points further east. The prevailing theory – primarily Hitler’s – was that the entire Soviet Union would capitulate after a few decisive border battles destroyed the Red Army, failing that Hitler issued a directive to pursue the Soviets.

As of 6th October 1941, there has been no “pursuit” in the Soviet Union or at least none that has lasted very long. Every step has been contested, every river has been defended, every city has been fought over and sometimes even been boobytrapped after the Red Army has left. The defense has been uncoordinated and lacking in effectiveness on many occasions, but the Red Army has been fighting all the way. Now, the best campaigning months of 1941 are already gone and it is only going to get worse before it gets better again. Given all that, the astounding underestimation of the effectiveness of Red Army opposition during the planning stage of Operation Barbarossa has not really hampered German operations yet, it just has required adjustments to compensate for a slower rate of advance than anticipated. The tanks still run, the trucks still carry supplies, the horses are still fed from grain in the fields.

However, everything is about to change forever, and the men on the front line see why after dark as the snow begins to fall around them. The lack of effective antifreeze for trucks or tanks, the lack of chains for wheeled vehicles, the absence of winter clothing which was considered superfluous in June – all of a sudden these omissions loom large.

Late Night Flight

While drinking, a Pilot bet he could land outside the bar, 2 hours later he touched down in central New York in a stolen aircraft. Years later he repeated the stunt because someone wouldn’t believe him.

In September 1956 after drinking heavily at a bar in New York City, Thomas Fitzpatrick made an intoxicated barroom bet that he could travel from New Jersey to New York City in 15 minutes.

At 3 a.m. he stole a single-engine plane from the Teterboro and flew without any lights or radio before landing on St. Nicholas Avenue near 191st Street in front of the bar where the bet was made.

The New York Times called it a “fine landing” and a “feat of aeronautics”. For his illegal flight, he was fined $100 after the plane’s owner refused to press charges.

In October 1958 just before 1 a.m., Fitzpatrick again stole another plane from the same airfield and landed on Amsterdam and 187th after another bar patron disbelieved his first feat.

For his second stolen flight, judge John A. Mullen sentenced him to six months in prison. When asked why did had undertaken the 2nd flight Fitzpatrick told the police “he had pulled off the second flight after a bar patron refused to believe he had done the first one”

Fitzpatrick was a Marine during the Korean War and received a Purple Heart. He has three sons and was married to his wife, Helen, for 51 years working as a steamfitter. He died in 2009 at the age of 79.

Fitzpatrick has a mixed drink named after him for his feat called the “Late Night Flight”

Oh SH*T, The Collapse Has REALLY Begun

The threat of a US recession is escalating fast as corporate bankruptcies and debt defaults pile up. As the Federal Reserve continues to hike interest rates, small businesses are starting to collapse and close down. There’s going to be a tipping point where job losses will accelerate and consumer spending will crash.

What is the best case of, “You just tried to scam the wrong person,” that you’ve witnessed?

I got the “You owe money to the IRS and are going to jail” phone call. I knew it was a scam because not only does the IRS not call you, but I could hear multiple voices in the background…classic boiler room. Duh! So I decided to play along. I let the guy go into his spiel and about halfway through I started crying. When I say crying, I mean REALLY wailing, gasping for breath, totally panicked! The guy has to stop talking in order to calm me down as I’m really losing it. As soon as he calms me down, off he goes again, telling me if I don’t pay, I’ll go to jail. Well, I just lose it again…crying, wailing, the whole nine yards.

Again, he tries to calm me down. Finally, with hitching sobs, I calm down enough to ask him how much I owe the IRS. When he tells me it’s $24,000, well, you know, I just lost it again. Crying. Wailing. Sobbing. What am I going to do?? OMG, I’m going to lose my house! I won’t be able to feed my kids! I’ll have to give away my dogs! Oh, noooooo! Noooooo! He calms me down (again) with the suggestion that he might be able to reduce what I owe to just $12,000. Which, of course, just sets me off again. Where, oh where am I going to get that kind of money?? I’m going to lose everything! Death! Doom! Destruction!

Finally, for the last time, he manages to calm me down enough to where I can ask him one final question…before I gave him my credit card number, would it be okay if I ask my husband first? After all, he IS a tax attorney. Dead silence for the space of about five seconds, then he let loose a torrent of profanity such as I’ve never heard before (and I’ve heard a lot) while I’m laughing my ass off. He then warns me that, “I’ll be sorry” to which I reply, “Not as sorry as you, you thieving, scum-sucking piece of humanity!” He hung up on me then, and surprisingly enough, I’ve never gotten another IRS phone call again.

It was the highlight of my week!

What are the biggest culture shocks people face when coming to Germany?

I’ve been in Berlin for about two months now.

Here’s my longish list:

  1. I started learning German before coming here. People said I was wasting my time, that everybody here speaks English. That’s not true. Many Germans don’t speak English. Also, a number of people (usually officials or clerks) were upset that I don’t speak their language yet, as if my not having learned the language yet in the span of two months is some grave offense.
  2. Maybe it’s only this year but the summer isn’t really summer. There are hot and cold days. Sunny and overcast days. Clear and rainy days. A day can start sunny and end in rain. You can walk out in your shorts and have to wear pants and a light jacket by the end of the day. Also, the days are unbelievably long. The sun rises before 5 AM and sets at around 10 PM.
  3. WWII and the Holocaust. I am of Jewish descent. Many of my ancestors were taken to Auschwitz and other camps to be exterminated. I remember the first time I saw a stolperstein or “stumbling stone” in Berlin (these are brass plates inscribed with the names of Jews and information about the dates of their deportation and extermination, inlaid in the pavement outside their last place of residence) I froze. My heart sank, and a deep sadness welled from within me.
  4. Ethnic Diversity here is wonderful. There seem to be people from all over the world, all co-existing. Yes, there have been some glitches, but seeing this melting pot of diversity brings hope to the heart. Plus, you can have authentic food from almost anywhere—from Mexican to Vietnamese to Turkish to Lebanese to Korean, etc., etc.
  5. Many, many people are tattooed, so much so that un-tattooed individuals seem rarer than tattooed ones. And so much so that I sometimes wonder if even the businessmen and women, under those fine tailored suits, are hiding some large and colorful dragon or tiger adorning their skins.
  6. I assumed Berlin would be cleaner. Before I came I had a vision of Germany as a glinting-clean place. And although it’s not filthy, there’s some waste strewn about in parks and on the streets—empty beer bottles and food leftovers and dirty plastic packaging, etc.
  7. And speaking of beer bottles, people drink alcohol. A lot of it. I see many people walking around with some kind of drink in their hands, or people sitting outside bars or even in parks with an unbelievable amount of empty bottles by their side. Or in supermarkets, walking out with cartfuls of booze.
  8. Maybe I notice it more because I’ve never lived in a place with so many churches, but there are so many of them here. Imposing ones with rising spires and crimson bricks and huge bells resonating blocks and blocks away. Having grown up in Israel, I find it hard to imagine how the visions of a carpenter in the Middle-East, over centuries and millennia, transmogrified into these massive, gothic places of worship in a completely different culture and milieu.
  9. The other day we went to a pleasant park and there were a bunch of kids playing in the nude, splashing each other with water and running around in the sand giggling. My son took off his clothes and joined them, and I thought, how wonderful that no one is embarrassed seeing naked kids playing around, that they are granted this easy, unconscious freedom that in many other parts of the would would have been considered inappropriate.
  10. Sex seems to be less of a big deal here. I’ve seen a number of adverts in the street depicting some form of sex in illustrations. In the US, there would have been a lecherous quality to it, some kind of cleavage or exposed thighs, something to suggest and tease and taunt. But here there is something unassuming about its depiction—a couple or even a threesome lying in bed covered in blankets, a cartoon of a man with his loins covered by a popping champagne bottle and a smiling woman by his side. Unassertive—as if this, too, is a natural part of life and there’s no need to make a fuss about it.
  11. Organic food is available in most supermarkets and is not necessarily exorbitantly priced. In fact, almost every little place that serves food will have some kind of organic lemonade or soft drink.
  12. Although I am not vegetarian, when I came here I imagined würste (sausages) everywhere, and a dearth of other, non-pork based offering. But, in fact, it is very easy to get vegetarian food here. From vegetarian gemüse kebap (Turkish food—vegetables in bread) to vegetarian asian dishes, to tofu, grain- or legume-based meat substitutes in supermarkets, it is not only possible to be vegetarian here, but even easy.
  13. The streets and the curb are wide and spacious, oftentimes cobbled and shaded by evenly-distanced stately trees. Having grown up in Israel and lived in India, this was novel for me—this European expansiveness.
  14. Some people can be incredibly proper and strict here. I’ve been scolded for standing out in the street when the bus came, and then for standing in the wrong place inside the bus as I was paying. In some places and settings people are expected to behave in a certain ways, and are frowned upon if they are not.
  15. The bicycle is a serious mode of transportation with its own lanes and a substantial number of riders.
  16. Drivers are not as courteous as in other places—in less trafficked streets with no stoplight, and unlike the US, cars will mostly not stop when they see a pedestrian, and one has to wait for an opportunity to cross.
  17. Things are well made. The walls of the apartment I’m staying in are almost as thick as my outstretched arm. The woodwork is precise and sturdy. Some of the buildings around look like they’ve been in existence for centuries, and that they will last for many centuries more. There is an assuring sturdiness in the material existence here—like things are dependable and robust. Also, it is not difficult to find objects that are Made in Germany or Europe—be it knives or rucksacks or wallets, etc.—that look like they will last for a lifetime. I like that.
  18. Almost all shops are closed on Sundays.
  19. Parcels are left with neighbors. If you’re not in and you have a package, it will be left with one of your neighbors, who will then, perhaps later in the day, come knocking on your door and claim the package with a slip.
  20. People have been incredibly helpful. When I arrived, a neighbor helped carry our luggage from the street. Another neighbor helps me whenever I need something in German translated. I’ve had people in the street, after asking for directions, pull out their phones, search for the place, and give me clear instructions. Of course, as with everywhere else, there are also unfriendly people, but the friendly and helpful ones have left a greater impression on me.

Boeing is Panicking! Brunei and China Order 30 Aircraft | Boeing Completely Loses The Chinese Market

In May 2017, China successfully conducted the historic first test flight of the C919 aircraft, which marked the complete break of Boeing and Airbus’ half-century monopoly on large commercial aircraft. Soon after, China’s C919 aircraft attracted cooperation intentions from many countries.

Up to now, China’s orders for C919 aircraft have exceeded an astonishing 1,061 aircraft, but I think this is just the beginning of the emergence of China’s C919 aircraft. At this year’s 20th China-ASEAN Expo, China’s C919 aircraft once again became the focus of attention.

Among them, Brunei spent US$2 billion to purchase 30 large passenger aircraft from China, including the much-anticipated C919 aircraft. As more and more countries purchase China’s C919 aircraft, Boeing in the United States begins to panic and even begs to regain the Chinese market.

https://youtu.be/7kIH65mOefQ

What’s the most useless map ever made?

One day at the end of the School year, my teacher was throwing out some old junk. One of which was this old globe that was so inaccurate, I’m surprised it wasn’t thrown away as soon it came off the assembly line.

Some Countries don’t exist at the same time.

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As far as I know, Tibet did not exist at the same time with a unified Independent India, Southeast Asia with a unified Vietnam, and what’s that little country north of Mongolia?

image 205
image 205

Oh that’s right, It’s Tannu Tuva! You know the country that was annexed into the USSR during the middle of WW2. Because the Partition of India took place after the World War ended (1947). The inconsistency with time are the least of this Globe’s problems.

Making major countries the same shade of blue as the OCEAN!

As you saw above, China is the same color of the Ocean, but that’s not the only one.

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image 206

The color they chose for Turkey just makes it look like the Black Sea is part of the Mediterranean if you’re not looking close enough.

Same goes with the Great Lakes area.

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Since the State of Michigan is sandwiched between massive lakes, it should be a different color to make it stand out more. Well the designer didn’t think so, because instead of the Great Lakes, it’s just ONE Great Lake.

Plus New York makes lake Ontario and Erie look like an extension of the Atlantic. So does Quebec.

But this doesn’t go with what makes the map the most useless.

They got the freaking hemispheres on wrong!!!!

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I’m pretty sure Australia is not directly south of Ethiopia!

South America is just floating in the middle of the Ocean.

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Though Southern Africa actually fits well with the Northern Hemisphere part of South America.

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This Globe has to be the most Useless reference of the World ever!

Have you ever let your dog loose on someone who was on your property and refused to leave? Is it legal to do so?

I got Montana at a church fundraising garage sale for $1.15. She was a Rottweiler/GSD mix and the owners were selling the puppies for $3. After three hours of wheedling my mother, and scrounging as much change as I could from the car, I paid for her quite proudly. She’d been the runt of the litter, and all her litter mates had long been snatched up. I brought her home, and made a bed for her in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Took her to the vet the next day to get her all of her shots. Did basic obedience training with her and all the requisite fun things a teenage girl could do with a dog.

Flash forward three years and I’m off at school across the state, and she’s at home with my mother, grandmother and younger brother. Due to her general quirkiness, she never barked or growled unless she felt that her family was in danger. She was quite content to roam the backyard, playing chase along the fence lines with the dogs that neighbored on either side. About three am my mom hears the neighbor’s golden retriever barking up a storm, then hears the fence rattle. Thinking it was a raccoon or opossum, she laid back down. Then Montana is growling right under her window. That’s when she hears a lot of cussing, more growling and then a whimper and the fence on the other side rattle. Now there’s even more cussing and growling as the other set of neighbor’s black malamute is in on whatever is happening now. Mom grabs a flashlight and the cordless phone, calls 911 and rushes out to find out what’s happening. That’s when she sees a man vaulting the far side of the fence in the neighbors yard, only to be confronted by a massive Great Dane. Montana comes slinking to her, whimpering with cuts running down both her flanks. Grabbing her leash, she takes my dog out to greet the police, explaining what happened. Apparently they caught up with the guy a few blocks away, having been bitten by about four different dogs. Mom took my brave girl to the vet immediately. The cuts were superficial and shallow, needing nothing more than some cleaning. She had a chemical burn on her backside because he’d sprayed her with either mace or pepper spray. Montana was handsomely rewarded with a steak for doing her job protecting the family, and no one ever set foot in our backyard without permission again.

Do the majority of people in China wish to remain communists, or if they had a choice, would they want democracy?

Not the slightest chance of that

There is anger against the CPC by some people, especially in the big cities however none of these people want democracy or voting

They simply want more capitalist reforms by the CPC

The Majority are very satisfied and happy with the CPC

Especially the younger generation

They regard US democracy as a JOKE

They are so proud of their country and it’s growth and the CPC that they only want reforms, reforms and more reforms

Here are the main suggestions

  • The Average Age of a Party Member is 49 and they want it to reduce to 40
  • The Average Age of a Politburo member is 56. They want it to reduce it to 50.
  • 70 Investments were banned by the CPC between 2017–2023. They want these investments regulated.
  • They want flexible and productive work hours to enhance maximum output instead of the rigid slogging workstyle of the older generation

They have contempt for the USA

Especially the 17–30 year olds born post 1993

Chinas future

They are brilliant, they have the midset to be the BEST in the world


The Older generation in their forties and fifties, born between 1973–1983 are more of the WHY IS THE US SO UNFAIR rather than any contempt for the US

They have a lot of relatives in US and the West who migrated from 1965–1990

They have contempt for the Russians and Russian Technology

They are also a bit colonial and sub consciously believe they are not in the same league as the West deep down

They MAY have no problem if China becomes a democracy but they wouldn’t want it as a choice


The even older generation in their 60s and 70s, born between 1945–1965 are steeped in Patriotic Ideology. They remember the old days and the way the CPC took China to the top

It’s for their sake that China still has the name Communist when it’s anything but communist

They would abhor any democracy

Xi has created a very nationalistic patriotic generation of Youngsters brimming with confidence

The CPC needs to make some changes though in the next 10 years to ensure the Youngsters connect to the party and that wave of nationalism is retained at it’s same fervour

But Democracy? Especially Western Style?

Good God No!!!!!

Could China force all countries to use their yuan instead of American dollars for trading internationally if they took over from America economically and militarily?

No to both questions,

  • Economically,

Countries opt for local currencies in bilateral trade due to several reasons that align with their own interests:

  1. The high interest in the US dollar has driven up the cost of purchasing US dollars.
  2. Foreign exchange transaction fees associated with using US banks are expensive (3%), and the SWIFT system not only takes several days to settle transactions but is also subject to US monitoring for unilateral sanctions, even when the transactions involve purely business matters.
  3. A surplus of expensive US dollars is circulating in the global economy, with many countries selling them back to the Federal Reserve Bank where billions are used to fund the record national debt and crowding out private investment by keeping the interest high.
  4. There is a concern that the US dollar could face a collapse if the Federal Reserve Bank ceases its policy of increasing interest rates, as this could exacerbate inflationary pressures and erode the currency’s value.
  • Military,

In contrast to historical colonial powers and the dominant influence of the United States, China lacks the ambition of global control through culture/racial superiority, military endeavors, and covert activities. Instead, China offers an alternative vision to the world by fostering connections among people through infrastructure development and trade.

The Real Reasons I Left United States (and won’t go back)

I really enjoyed this video.

Real Talk about why I don’t like living in the United States anymore and why I can’t see myself ever returning. I had invested a lot of time and money to research and travel the world to find where I best fit in, which culture I feel more comfortable in. After almost 6 years of continues life abroad, I really can’t see myself ever going back.

What are some strange things that only happen in China?

The sheer logistics of trying to feed a nation of 1.4 billion people are insane. Take this building right here — it’s a pig farm. A 26-story pig farm named Ezhou farm. It’s one of the biggest ‘only in China’ moments for me.

image 4
image 4

Basically, China has been having some pretty major geopolitical tensions with many of its neighbors lately, and there have been a lot of issues with the ongoing trade war with America. So China wants to be less dependent on imports of vital things such as food.

[1] As a result, it has started building absolutely MASSIVE pig farms on an industrial scale unseen anywhere in human history. It’s pretty crazy. Also, I gotta say, pretty impressive.

So yeah, 26-story pig farms are a strange phenomenon I’ve not seen anywhere else. Anyone who’s ever enjoyed Chinese cuisine knows it cannot survive without pork. So if ever war breaks out and trade routes are blocked, China is ensuring it’ll never run out of pork chops.

Who are the most professional and skilled foreign soldiers you have served with?

Let’s start with the worst:

Unfortunately, some stereotypes might be true. When I served in the German army we trained for a week with Italy’s famous “Folgore” parachute unit. Although they were considered elite in Italy, they really sucked.

When we went with them to the shooting range my job was to count the targets they were hitting, which weren’t many. With one guy it took me a while to figure out that he was missing his target by at least 5 meters- at a 150 meters shooting distance.

These guys failed at everything they did, except for one thing: The last night of their stay we went to a bar with them and after a few German beers they started singing Italian songs. Very well and beautiful and not like our “barbaric” German singing.

I also trained a lot with French units. Most of them were really decent fellows, but their officers were completely useless. They were unable to motivate their soldiers and always seemed to be screaming at them. As a result the French troops we trained with didn’t perform as well as they could have.

Although I trained with British troops on several occasions, they didn’t leave an impression with me. Neither good nor bad. Later on my German army unit got their a** kicked by a British Special Air Service unit during an exercise in Denmark. I didn’t participate in this exercise and therefore these SAS guys are not in my ranking.

In Bosnia I fought for the Croats. They were all decent soldiers and what is very important, they were eager to learn. The Croatian army during the war lacked material and sometimes professionalism, but they more than compensated these flaws with outstanding bravery and high motivation. Especially their leadership was exemplary.

Later I fought in Kosovo with the Kosovo Liberation Army. I trained the unit that I fought with, so of course, they did ok. What I often saw in battle was that with the right guidance one could really make a difference. Sometimes we had soldiers from other units under our command and although we first thought that they were completely useless, watching our guys fight it out, these soldiers started to give their best.

I trained twice with US Army units and both times it was a pleasure. First time with a battalion of the 82nd Airborne in Italy and later I had the privilege to attend the German commando course with a US Army Special Forces unit. While the Airborne soldiers, although very good soldiers, were not really a match to our German “Fallschirmjäger” platoon, the US Army Special Forces (SF) were amazing.

They somehow weren’t that good at achieving many tasks during our training inside the barracks and were also not the fastest team on the obstacle course, but as soon as they were in the forest they showed admirable infantry skills, very good adaptation to the terrain, speed and stealth.

These SF would make the first place on my ranking if it wasn’t for a couple of Dutch LRRP’s (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) soldiers who also attended the same German commando course. They were good at everything and in the end had the highest score from all attendees.

They were also very modest, quiet and polite, almost shy, and these are qualities one doesn’t find very often with elite soldiers. Therefore I rank them first.

If a drone is flying on my property and I have already notified that I do not want it to be flying on it, can I destroy it without legal repercussion?

I will answer with my experience in this. There was a drone that would come over my house three times a day and roughly the same time each day. I put out a sign said please stop recording my house and yard for a couple of days but it kept coming. Thay is when I noticed a police car parked in the lot behind my house while the drone was there. So each time I’d check and see on my camera if the cop car was there and every time the drone came around sure enough. So new sign unless you have a warrent stop filming my house and yard. At this time I checked with courts for any investigation warrents for me and my property and none. So I then went out and threw rocks towards the drone each time it would take off. But still coming back. So I set the trap. I sat out front and waited for this thing to come flying over my back yard with a rather large rock. I nailed it the first try. It broke and landed in the back yard. It took three days for the cops to get a court order to come and retrieve it. Seems in the attempt to get me into trouble they had to show the footage of the drone and the warning to stop recording was enough to exonerated me for damage to the drone. They have not been back since.

Man Didn’t Want This Cat. Now They’re Inseparable Swimming Buddies

At first this man didn’t want a cat, but his swimming buddy Frosty changed everything. It took time for them to develop the bond, but when they did, a cat dad was born. Soon, Stefan discovered Frosty’s affinity for swimming, He was super curious about water and started jumping to the shower, and then the bath and finally the swimming pool.

https://youtu.be/-wSl9unZ7wE

What’s something commonly eaten in America that British people find strange or disgusting? I’m looking for foods that are viewed as normal in America that British people can’t understand.

So what the bloody hell is this?!

Biscuits and gravy is a popular breakfast dish in the United States, especially in the South.

No.

No.

NO!


I don’t care that you have your own version of English – that is an abomination.

That quite clearly consists of a scone:

With some kind of weird elephant ejaculate on top.


So not only is the name utterly wrong to British ears (if you ask someone here if they wanted “biscuits and gravy” here you will either a) end up in a mental institute, or b) be hounded out of town like a demon), but:

The actual thing doesn’t look much better.

I mean seriously guys – that stuff looks pretty damn unappetising, and that’s a “glamour shot” taken from some recipe website!


So America – let’s recap:

  • You’ve taken a food item traditionally eaten in the UK with cream and jam – and decided it would be better with some weirdass sausage-jizz-sauce.
  • You gave it a name which makes it sound bloody awful to British people

In case you haven’t gathered – this is not a popular food item in the U.K.

And we would rather it stayed that way – it looks ghastly.


EDIT:

From some of the very angry comments, it seems like some of you Americans just can’t seem to take a light-hearted ribbing, or a smidge of sarcasm. The whole point of the question is that us Brits don’t understand why you like it.

And for crying out loud:

  • yes, I know you call biscuits “cookies”. That’s part of the bloody joke.
  • Yes I have tried it. Calling me ignorant isn’t going to help.
  • Yes some British stuff is weird too. But we’re not talking about us – the question is about America.

Some people are treating this answer like I did a big squishy turd on your beloved flag.

It must be that sarcasm is hidden away in the ‘u’ in humour….

Which countries have the most brutal and horrific history?

This answer isn’t really about saying what one single country has done the worst, but I do want to share below on the cruelty of humankind that many people don’t know about.

Graphic content below but I want to make this known because so many people around the world have heard of Hitler, Nazis, concentration camps but they have not heard of the Asian holocaust that took place around the same period. In western schools, history classes do not teach people about this part of the world.

This is regarding what the Japanese did during their occupation of China and Korea and the war crimes they committed to the surrounding Asian countries, including some Pacific Islands they invaded: Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar, East Timor, New Guinea, Indonesia, Guam, Nauru, Wake Island, Attu and Kiska Islands, and Kiribati.

They even had some prisoners of war from the west such as America, any forces against them at the time etc.

Hundreds of thousands of women from my country in Korea were forcefully abducted (called comfort women) during the Japanese occupation in WWII. They endured torture beyond imagination if they did not sexually submit to these vile men and were forced to have sex with 60–100 men every single day. Their innards rotted because of the STD’s and they were destroyed, unable to have children even after they were rescued. They have still not been compensated for the war crimes that they endured and majority have died.

Pregnant mothers were cut open and rape victims were sodomized with bamboo sticks and bayonets until they died in agony.

On top of this they literally tore the unborn from women’s wombs and speared them alive with bayonets in front of them. They’d crush the infant’s skull against concrete floors. They would actually do this for fun.

They tied sons and daughters up and tore them apart, spearing them and forced their own parents to watch.

They raped and pillaged women of all ages, even toddlers to old women in the most vile, disgusting way imaginable. They would often disembowel them while in the process, leaving them to die in agony.

They conducted unspeakable evil torture and experiments on LIVE prisoners from these countries even children and infants in UNIT 731. Torture methods such as vivisecting pregnant women without any anesthesia, centrifuging and killing people in pressurized chambers, and slowly burning and freezing people alive. They artificially created what is similar to the ‘bubonic plague’ to see the effects on the prisoners. They were forced into X-rays until they perished and hung people by their thumbs or tongues etc. These torture tactics were deliberately planned to see death happen SLOWLY, not fast as the scientists wanted to observe the resilience of the human body.

Unbelievably Inhumane Japanese Torture Methods Used During World War II

(image deleted – too unsettling)

Bodies of slayed, raped, mutilated women in China.

(image deleted – too unsettling)

Carcasses of babies and children piled up

Despite this, Japan still presently denies what has happened and even believes that it is a rumour. The young people as shown in this video are absolutely clueless on the whole tragedy, or are so far removed in cognitive dissonance and lack of care it is astounding. There is even a middle aged woman in the video who even says “Well I’m not sure if it’s a rumour or not…” which is an absolute lunacy and an embarrassment of the failure of the country in not properly educating their citizens of what truly happened. One young girl even says “Well, I wonder when they will ever get over it…” How are people supposed to get over it when there are still thousands of victims still alive who didn’t receive any form of compensation for what they have been through??!

Their government still warps their history books and deliberately tries to hide the evidence of what truly happened. There are active groups within Japan who refuse to accept what happened and truly believe that it is just a ‘rumour’ to make Japan look bad.

Below is a real life account by a South Korean comfort woman on the horrors she went through. It is heartbreaking to watch but quite educational. She sadly passed away early January of this year, fighting until her last breath but still never receiving any compensation or apology from the Japanese. They don’t even recognize that she went through this or who she is.

(Video no longer available on YT)

What Japan did wasn’t just an invasion or occupation, it was a literal carnage, hell on earth genocide. They didn’t have to go this far as majority of the Koreans and the people they invaded were helpless farmers, uneducated servants, and innocent people who were not trained in war at all. They did this because they did not see these people as human, and their goal wasn’t simply to occupy, but to desecrate the spirit from within. They knew when you destroy someone’s spirit from inside out, the enemy will bend the knee and yield to the point where they do not have the soul to fight back. On top of this, it was just pure, raw sadistic savagery because all of these helpless people surrendered and begged for mercy yet they were still tortured for absolutely no reason.

(Video no longer available on YT)

Presently Japan is one of the most wealthiest and prosperous Asian countries in the world yet they cannot even fully take responsibility for their own committed atrocities. It shows the savage barbarism that still resides in some of these people and makes one question just how this is even acceptable. Instead they choose to warp their own history books, flat out deny it existed and have refused to offer sincere, acceptable compensation/apology for the people who are still alive. They are waiting until every last victim is dead so they no longer have to worry about it. They are not truly ashamed of this past, they just see it as an eyesore they want to bury. Keep in mind Japan has very strong political parties that strives to ensure this shameful past does not reach the masses to retain their false honour. Still to this day, they praise their war criminals in shrines.

From the invasion of China in 1937 to the end of World War II, the Japanese military regime murdered near 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most probably almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. This is more than the estimated Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe controversially claimed that “there was no evidence to prove” that the women had been coerced into sex.

“The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is engaged in an all-out effort to portray the historical record as a tissue of liesdesigned to discredit the nation,” wrote Mindy Kotler, director of Asia Policy Point, in 2014.

Mr. Abe’s administration DENIES that imperial Japan ran a system of human trafficking and coerced prostitution, implying that comfort women were simply camp-following prostitutes,” Kotler continued. “The official narrative in Japan is fast becoming detached from reality, as it seeks to cast the Japanese people — rather than the comfort women of the Asia-Pacific theater — as the victims of this story.”

Japan’s Textbooks Reflect Revised History

Japanese Broadcast Official: We Didn’t Commit War Crimes, the U.S. Just Made That Up

Why is it so hard for Japan to say sorry?

China criticises Japan after Shinzo Abe honours war criminals as martyrs

Letter threatening to hunt Koreans sent to South Korean embassy in Japan: media

The Harrowing Story Of Filipina Women Enslaved In Japan’s Wartime Rape Camps

Edit: Since I’m getting quite a lot of people who clearly don’t seem to understand and may not have read or researched in depth in this matter. They are saying that ‘Japan does not need to offer apology or compensation for what people of their past did etc’

It’s more complicated than that.

Please read the links again. Even if they can’t take full responsibility for their past, they SHOULD take responsibility for the future by not warping textbooks and giving power to political parties who enforces the dangerous fallacy of denying any of this ever happened or triviliazing everything that has happened. They should make sure to teach the correct history not just for educational purposes but to ensure their citizens fully know and accept their own history and in hopes that it never happens again. This is also to help not silence the voices of the people who did suffer in the past and to not spit into their graves and ruin their legacy by spreading false lies.

Also the comfort women and people who were forcefully taken into labour camps as prisoners, many are still alive who didn’t actually get any compensation or even sheer RECOGNITION. They suffered their entire lives without anyone hearing what they have to say with nothing from Japan. This isn’t just about wanting Japan to go up to a stadium and saying ‘I am sorry’ and stepping down. Words are meaningless and worthless when not backed up by actions.

They are hypocrites by warping textbooks and also praising their own war criminals. Imagine what the world would say if Germany praises Nazis and gave strong political power that has the power to make Germans never even hearing of the Nazis or even contemplate if it was just a rumour or not. Think about how insane that would be.

So why do they need to apologise? Because unlike Germany what they are doing is absolutely deplorable and morally bankrupt by continuing to CONTRIBUTE to the legacy of the abomination Japan was in the past. You don’t see Germany do the same about the Nazis and for good reason. It means Japan hasn’t learned and is not truly remorseful. By Japan I am talking of the FACES of Japan which are the politicians who represent that country. The rest of the Japanese experience their trickle down effect so while it’s not saying it’s their fault, they end up indirectly contributing to supporting these vile politicians. So yes the people who represent JAPAN who hold the power of influence does need to sincerely apologise and stop contributing to what they are presently doing.

As I am getting tired of having to repeat the same information again and again, any comments that say things along the lines of ‘Japan does not need to apologise’ or those questioning or defending the existence of any of these crimes, their war criminals will be either ignored, deleted or blocked. It is extremely disrespectful to the victims and deplorable. The links are already here clear as day for reading and one can also do the research themselves. Also for anyone who brings up another atrocity and pitting them against each other, STOP. This post isn’t about pitting one atrocity against another, it is disgusting to even keep doing that and seriously lacks any insight into the original point of my post.

Otherwise thank you for reading and have a nice day.

TLDR: Japan did some truly horrific shit that many people including the present day Japanese citizens are unaware of. What they did is abysmal carnage from the Antichrist itself.

Also, piece of shit apologies that require uttering words and throwing money at victims isn’t a true apology when they are still in 2019 warping textbooks and none of their youths know anything about their crimes.

Why do you think Germany forces every citizen to learn about their nazi history and Japan doesn’t ? It is to deliberately ignore and not acknowledge their past due to their pride and selfishness. I’d equate this to even pathological narcissism and psychopathy due to how far they have gone in managing stomping this knowledge out of their own present day citizens.

Edit 2: As I am still getting very disrespectful, deranged comments on here pitting atrocities against each other, saying that I am spreading lies and others spewing ignorant hatred against Koreans, here’s my final message.

Instead of blaming others, look at what Japanese Nationals do. Stop diverting the attention away by blaming the mistakes of other countries yet not acknowledging the corruption of the Japanese government

Japan’s leaders are still stubbornly refusing to admit their war crimes

What Japanese history lessons leave out

Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia

The Germans in contrast have personally done everything possible to make people aware of their Nazi past. Japan doesn’t scratch the surface of what it means to have true honour while Germans go to great lengths to do humanitarian work and to allow their citizens to understand the FULL facts. This is what true compensation and remorse actually is, not the dogshit excuse of what Japan does by also denying people, correct history. End of.

We must remember Nazi crimes, says Merkel

Westoids get rid of this sick mentality

Disappointed that china isn’t collapsing and Chinese people are not starving with 50 cent hoes selling their body to you?

A channel which is ironically named “Economics Explained” is possibly the worst when it comes to it. Western propganda is not just limited to mainstream media, but to nutwits like these.

Imagine if a Chinese made a video “sorry to disappoint America/India isn’t collapsing ..yet”. What wud their reactions be.

In all honesty, the best channel for economics is Xiao Lin, light years better than these sick bas***ds.

Meanwhile Indian videos on China’s economy are even more hating than that of westoids.

Like seriously westoids, get a forking life other than hating a new country every decade. Last decade was Russia, last to last was Iraq. You guys got no job other than invading countries and telling “we love the people hate the government” then getting sad why that country hasn’t collapsed yet?

Original San Antonio Chili

2023 10 18 16 01
2023 10 18 16 01

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds beef shoulder, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
  • 1 pound pork shoulder, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
  • 1/4 cup suet
  • 1/4 cup pork fat
  • 3 medium-size onions, chopped
  • 6 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 quart water
  • 4 ancho chiles
  • 1 serrano chile
  • 6 dried red chiles
  • 1 tablespoon comino seeds, freshly ground
  • 2 tablespoons Mexican oregano
  • Salt to taste

Instructions

  1. Place lightly floured beef and pork cubes in with suet and pork fat in heavy chili pot and cook quickly, stirring often.
  2. Add onions and garlic and cook until they are tender and limp.
  3. Add water to mixture and simmer slowly while preparing chiles.
  4. Remove stems and seeds from chiles and chop very finely.
  5. Grind chiles in molcajete and add oregano with salt to mixture. Simmer for another 2 hours.
  6. Remove suet casing and skim off some fat.

Notes

Never cook frijoles with chiles and meat. Serve as a separate dish.

What is the toughest difficulty you have ever faced in life?

The pain was beyond anything imaginable.

Chiang Mai Thailand 2013. I had a rare form of Tuberculosis cysts lodged in my spinal cord and on my right kidney. The doctors didn’t know how I contracted this deadly bacteria. I was too ashamed to tell them it was from drug abuse and the unhygienic practices that came with it.

It felt like a hot knife piercing my back continuously for months as I lay immobilized on the bed of my apartment. I could not hold down food and went from 220 lbs to 163 lbs. There was no sleep, only my body eventually shutting down from the pain.

My mother was an LPN and flew in to take care of me because I could not afford a hospital. My poor mother, I screamed at her to take my life. I switched from fentanyl to methadone to morphine, but none of them worked – they only made the pain worse because my feeble body could not process the drugs. It was gasoline on the fire raging inside me.

Once a week or so, my mother would help me to sit up, place a back brace on me, and help me move six feet to the bathroom so I could attempt a bowel movement and a brief shower. Every inch of every movement was excruciating pain; I had no more tears; it was hollow bellowing, and even cursing was painful. And then back to bed. That simple exercise would be an hour of horrific suffering.

After three months of strong antibiotics, I could finally eat and hold it down. With a back brace and cane, I could stand and walk briefly. The photo above was from this time, taken with my beautiful mother. You can see the back brace under my shirt and the cane I used to walk.

2023 10 31 10 46
2023 10 31 10 46

This life I have today is beyond anything imaginable

I never thought it possible. I thought I was doomed to the bondage of self, and the slavery of active addiction.

Now, I live a lifestyle of sober recovery – drug and alcohol-free at 56. I train daily in the gym, go for power walks and jogs in nature, and have a purposeful, meaningful life.

I Just Got an Email That Left me SPEECHLESS. WE’RE AT DEFCON 2

This is really good, from a prepper. DEFCON 2. Holy Shit!

What are things about corporate life no one tells you about?

  • Your appraisal is dependent on last 2 months efforts and not 12 months
  • You ask for a raise, and your boss thinks you’re looking for a job change
  • You complain about administrative issues and your manager thinks you’re trying to be a rebel
  • Don’t share secrets with your colleagues, they might be sharing your secrets with colleagues or managers
  • Your office friend is not your real friend and they won’t swear by your death bed
  • If you die tomorrow, there is a replacement within a week
  • Your efficiency is decided by number of hours you clock in vs number of productive efforts you place in
  • A junior person can outsmart a senior person but he will still be called junior
  • Your mistakes will always be discussed during appraisals
  • Your best performance will be discussed when you want to quit
  • If you finish your work on time and leave early, this is getting noted in the system as you don’t have enough work. [Your efficiency is not counted 90% of the time.]
  • Hiring is done based on communication skills and not on management, writing, negotiation, programming, analysis, attitude and mindset
  • Your CTC, Variable, Bonus and Take home salary are different components (understand the difference)
  • Utilize your earned and casual leaves when you get time
  • Find your interests and do some certification courses from LinkedIn, Coursera, edX etc
  • Documentation is king
  • Lazy ones are the smartest but are difficult to manage
  • Love your job and be committed to the work. Period.
  • Your salary will increase by 1.5x, 2x or 3x only when you switch companies
  • At age 20–30 skill set is primary and salary is secondary.
  • If you find a mentor in your current company, listen to him/her and always consult when you get stuck
  • Be open to change and learn how to become smarter
  • Try to be 1% better than yesterday
  • Kill the boredom, go for a walk when you don’t have anything to do at office or talk to your colleagues and find out how they do what they do
  • Be happy and learn the financial management, this will help you stay afloat after 10–15 years

Chen Si.

He works at a logistics agency in Nanjing, China. He also spends his free time saving other people’s lives.

Let me tell you his story.

In 2003, a very close relative of Chen’s committed suicide after watching his sons argue over who would take care of him. The incident was deeply traumatizing. Having to lose someone he held so dear to his heart just because his sons didn’t seem to show enough respect and compassion for him. Chen also read in the local newspaper that the Nanjing-Yangtze River Bridge was a major suicide hotspot — in fact, by 2006, about 2,000 people were estimated to have killed themselves by jumping off the bridge since the year it was constructed (1968). He then became greatly determined to devote the rest of his life saving those of others trapped in hopelessness by foiling suicide attempts.

In response, Chen began to patrol the Nanjing-Yangtze bridge either on his motorbike or on foot, continuously on the lookout for people willing to jump from it.

He has been there almost every day, even on holidays and weekends, regardless of the weather.

He has kept a lookout for signs of depression, for example, in the way some of them walk, which Chen describes as “passive with no spirit or direction”.

Chen also keeps a diary documenting the people he has encountered and the reasons why they wanted to kill themselves.

  • Some had been greatly shamed for not being successful enough in school.
  • Some had broken up with their boyfriend or girlfriend.
  • Some had wasted away their money on needless things.
  • There was also, for example, a migrant worker who was drowning in debt because he couldn’t pay off the $15,000 bill for his daughter’s leukemia treatments.

Chen also gives out suicide prevention pamphlets to potential jumpers, detailing emergency contacts.

And not only does he simply pull people off the bridge. In fact, he has spent 10,000 yuan ($1,457 in dollars) renting a two-room house not far from the site, which he calls “a station for the soul to rest in”.

He sits with people and lets them share all their suffering in their stories, which in a way ignites friendship, trust, and newfound confidence. Chen also occasionally brings victims back to the bridge as volunteers, helping others see a way forward in life.

Throughout his time engaging in this, Chen has stopped over 300 people from ending their lives. That is an example of being a hero without having to fight. An example of generosity and compassion at work without the necessity for bloodshed. Sometimes the best heroes simply dedicate themselves to lending a hand to people who feel like they’ve got nothing left for them. Chen Si isn’t called the “Angel of Nanjing” for nothing.

Not all heroes wear capes”, they say. That is most definitely true.

Footnotes

[1] Chen Si – Wikipedia

What are some of the oldest contracts still in place that include some regular payments, like a lease that requires the user or tenant to pay something?

Every October since 1211 the City of London has paid rent to the Crown for two pieces of land even though nobody knows their exact locations.

The Ceremony of Quit Rents is the oldest legal ceremony in England apart for the Coronation of the Monarch. It takes place between St Michael’s Day (October 11th) and St Martin’s Day (November 11th) every year in the Royal Courts of Justice in London where the City pays the King’s Remembrancer.

The King’s Remembrancer is the oldest judicial position in England and was created in 1164 by Henry II to keep track of what was owed to the crown.

For the first piece of land, called The Moors, the City pays two knives, one blunt and one sharp.

The Remembrancer’s duty is to test the knives. The billhook is tested on a hazel tally and should make a mark representing the payment. The sharp axe then splits the tally in two, one for each party as a receipt. The Remembrancer then calls “Good service”.

This is called a split tally where in order to record debts a stick was marked with a number of notches and then split lengthwise. This way the two halves both record the same notches and each party to the transaction received one half of the marked stick as proof.

The second quit rent is for the use of the forge in Tweezer’s Alley, somewhere near The Strand. It is believed that the first tenant, Walter Le Brun, was a blacksmith who had set up his business near the tilting ground of the Knights Templar sometime around 1235.

The rent for this land is sixty-one nails and six horse-shoes. The horseshoes used are believed to date back to 1361 and are probably the oldest horseshoes still in existence. After the payment is received, the shoes and nails are then loaned back to the City of London for the next year.

When presented with the horseshoes and nails, the Remembrancer calls “Good number”.

There are also other quit or peppercorn rents. In Medieval times when a piece of property was deeded over as a reward for service a nominal rent was often charged as a reminder that the tenant didn’t own the property outright. A single peppercorn (or a single rose i.e. rose rents) was among the most popular forms of this style of rent but there were various other interesting forms of payment, such as a frog, a roast pork dinner, the donation of a petticoat to a poor woman, or even a raw calves head and a pair of gloves.

What do you dislike most about the U.S.?

Hi.
I am an Australian who is married to an American and, due to the nature of my work, lived ALL OVER the US over a decade.

Half my family are American and many of my closest friends.
In short, I’m very fond of the United States and support my nation’s close affiliation with them.

So please forgive me if I’m blunt.
This is NOT an American bash, it’s an honest expression of the one thing that [SOME] Americans do that never fails to trigger me.

We saved your asses in World War Two”.

Americans often tell us bluntly, over and over how they “saved our arses” in both World Wars.

I assure you, EVERY SINGLE Brit, Aussie, Kiwi or Canadian reading along can hear those words spoken in an American accent as they read them.

That’s how often we hear it.
Almost weekly.
Certainly once a month.

Wars that we ourselves stepped up and fought in the protection of others.
Wars that wouldn’t even have affected us directly.
Wars we fought for YEARS before the United States.

Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand particularly could have turned their backs on Western Europe.

Britain herself could have closed her borders and looked the other way.
Hitler had no designs on the UK – He admired them.
All they had to do was stand back and allow the holocaust to happen.

But of course they couldn’t because fighting Nazi Germany was the right thing to do.

We didn’t make Britain wait 3.2 and 2.3 years to enter either great war.
We were there from day one.

We didn’t charge Britain for our goods or help.
We didn’t keep a tally and make them pay it back for seventy years.
We didn’t insist they realign their trade preferences to favour our markets setting their still very young colonies prematurely adrift or cost them their empire, wealth, dignity or preeminence as a world power.

We didn’t use Britain’s plight as a springboard for our own wealth and dominance or spend the following century diluting their culture with Pan Americanism and shallow consumerism.

CANZUK didn’t ask for anything.
We just went because we’re family and that’s what family does and despite what some of you are going to assert in the comments, yes, America, though you are the black sheep you are also family.

Speaking for Australia, from a population of six million (2/3 of which were women, children, the elderly and infirm), a full one million Australian men served in the military during the Second World war.

Let that sink in.

We had, from our far-flung nation gathered together the fourth-largest air force in the world and the fifth largest navy and lost so many men in every theater of both World Wars that we had a noticeable lack of them right into the 1980s.
Indeed, by the time American boots had touched the ground in North Africa and Europe, CANZUK had already sacrificed literally millions of men.

It’s SO, rude.
I’m not even sure you understand just how disrespectful it is and how much damage it does [at street level] to our relationships with the US.
Honestly – it’s there in the pit of all our stomachs whenever we even engage with an American.

I will leave you with this quote from the memoirs of one of your own.
American journalist Ernie Pyle who was killed in action by the Japanese in April 1945.

His account of D-day and the liberation of Paris.

One cannot help but be moved by the colossus of our invasion. It was a bold and mighty thing. One of the epics of all history. I hope that we can rejoice in victory but humbly. The dead men would not want us to gloat.”

Peace.

Do people realise that China is an authoritarian country?

Probably. So?

I don’t live in China. But I do live in another country that is often said to be authoritarian (Singapore). And what else can we say about Singapore?

It’s ranked in the world’s top five richest countries (by GDP per capita). It’s ranked among the world’s top five least corrupt countries. Its public transport system is often ranked as the world’s best. It’s also ranked as the world’s no. 6 most peaceful country. It has one of the world’s highest average life expectancies. It’s ranked No. 1 for infrastructure. Singapore is ranked the 2nd safest city in the world. Singapore students are the world’s best in science, math and literacy. Its economy is ranked the 4th most competitive in the world. Singapore has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world. Homelessness is very rare here. Singapore’s rate of death by drug overdose is 81 times lower than in the US. There hasn’t been one gun homicide in the past 17 years.

Etc etc etc. I could go on and on. Basically Singapore is a very successful country across a wide range of different indicators and criteria. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it – what exactly is so bad about authoritarianism.

Yeah, yeah, you can’t smoke pot; you’ll be caned if you are a rapist, and you have no right to utter hate speech to bully anybody. Sounds quite good to me.

Which is the best thing to import?

Cigarettes 😀

You do the maths. I used to be able to buy them at HKIA for $90HKD a carton. The airport staff said you have to pay duty if you take more than 2 cartons. I said yes and filled my suitcase.

I’d take them to the UK and sell them for £35–40 a carton. I’d sell them to somebody who looked like he’d stab you in the face. First time I met him he wanted to rob me, but realised I could supply him regularly. Anyway he’d sell them for £50–60 a carton (it’s about £50 for 100 a carton is 200).

The trick was to land late at night, if you did this the customs agents were usually not too attentive and wanted to go home.

Same thing with France, I’d go for a razz now and again and come back with a car filled with cigarettes.

It was easy money and made me my seed money to get my business off the ground.

What are some sad truths about life?

Chris Langan was born with a freakishly potent brain, having arguably the highest IQ of any living person.

Langan began speaking at six months old and went on to skip several grades. He had an adult vocabulary by age 10. He breezed through college-level tests as an adolescent. He took his SAT several years early and got a perfect score in half the allotted time and took a nap.

Today, he is a rancher. He never finished college. Most of his adult years were spent as a bouncer at a bar, and in manual labor jobs.

image 202
image 202

It all stemmed from his rough childhood. He grew up in a poor family. His mother married multiple times before he turned 12. One stepfather committed suicide. Another was psychopathic and abusive.

His stark upbringing created behavioral problems and a persisting contempt for authority. Combine this with inadequate mentorship, resources, and an absent professional network and he never weaponized his extremely rare gift.

The sad truth is that there are many like Langan, who are like the gifted child working on a 3rd world farm, born into poverty and dealt a common, cruel blow to the chance of success.

TikTok on the cost of living | RANT ON INFLATION | EVERYONE IS BROKE AND TIRED

Hi guys, just to clarify I do not own any of these videos I just thought it would be interesting to see how people are dealing with the cost of living, sending prayers and well wishes to you ”

Captain MM

After I left the Navy, and before I got married to my first wife, I spent a period of time single… living alone, in Florida… and being a “beach bum”. I went out on a lot of dates. Met many girls, and had a lot of fun. Fun that was unfortunately short lived. I was just a “boy toy”.

At that time, as a “beach bum”, I had long blonde hair, a super tan, and a really laid back attitude. In short, I was “Captain Ron”. LOL

But seriously. I was “Captain Ron”.

2023 10 28 10 15
2023 10 28 10 15

Anyways, I was in love with a girl. She lived in another state, and I wanted to marry her. It was a long distance relationship. And so I went and packed up and bought an engagement ring and wanted to surprise her with a visit, a ring and then bring her back down from Pennsylvania to Florida.

Well… I walked in on her… with a “close friend” having sex.

The standard boiler plate of next steps occurred.

  • Denial
  • Confrontation
  • Emotional screaming and yelling
  • Decisions
  • And departure

I returned back to Florida alone.

2023 10 28 10 20
2023 10 28 10 20

And you know, I went into the store and returned the engagement ring to the very attractive girl behind the counter.

And she disappeared in the back, and I noticed that all the 20-something girls were peeking though the curtains and whispering amongst themselves.

There were so many “ahh sounds” and a lot of sad pity on my part.

The really noticeable thing about this event was that I really didn’t appreciate what I was (at that time), and how these young 20-something local chicks thought of me. I was that blue-eyed, beach blond, mellow fun dude… LOL!

2023 10 28 10 25
2023 10 28 10 25

An attractive subtype…

Sigh.

Not the grizzly old cuss that I am today, I guess.

Enjoy who you are in your various stages of life. You might be surprised on all the opportunities that you might miss out on. Be brave. Be aware, and for god sakes, have some fun!

Today…

What’s the best revenge you’ve gotten after being fired or let go from a job?

I have only been fired once in my entire adult life. I was working as a Case Manager for a national company with remote digital presence, but no brick and mortar offices in our state. Another local nurse wanted my position and started planting weevils in ears up the chain of command. Long story short she was committing a bunch of tomfoolery and blaming it on me without my knowledge at the time.

She got my position, but was fired within 3 months because she was caught committing aforementioned tomfoolery. Her misdeeds were of such a nature as to make finding another job within the field very difficult. She was caught partially because her accusations caused a state level investigation and audit. Which cleared me and cost her, her job.

Brilliant planning on her part.

Fast forward 2 years and she applies for a job at another local facility. One that I happen to be the associate clinical director at. She has been on a suspended license with remediation and stipulations after reactivation, and basically unable to work for 2 years. She walked in to the interview, saw me sitting behind the desk, whispered “Oh, Shit!” and just ran out of the building. I didn’t have to say a word.

Texas-Style Egg and Potato Skillet

Scramble Mexican favorites, like potatoes and tortilla chips, for a fast and tasty breakfast skillet or simple supper.

texas style egg potato skillet
texas style egg potato skillet

Prep: 5 min | Cook: 15 min | Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 4 thick slices (4 ounces) turkey bacon, chopped
  • 1 medium baking potato, diced 1/2 inch
  • 8 eggs, beaten
  • 1/2 cup pico de gallo or chunky salsa
  • 1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded smoked Cheddar cheese
  • 6 flour or whole wheat tortillas (8 inch), warmed (optional)

Instructions

  1. Cook bacon in large nonstick skillet over medium heat until edges begin to brown. Pour off drippings.
  2. Add potato; cook and stir until potato is tender and browned and bacon is crisp, 6 to 8 minutes.
  3. Pour eggs over mixture in skillet. As eggs begin to set, gently pull the eggs across the pan with an inverted turner, forming large soft curds. Continue cooking – pulling, lifting and folding eggs – until thickened and no visible liquid egg remains. Do not stir constantly.
  4. Stir in pico de gallo; heat through.
  5. Sprinkle with cheese.
  6. Serve with tortillas, if desired.

Notes

Lighter Option: Recipe can be made with reduced-fat cheese, if desired.

Nutrition

Per serving: Calories: 379 Total Fat: 18g Saturated fat: 6g Polyunsaturated fat: 3g Monounsaturated fat: 6g Cholesterol: 277mg Sodium: 1046mg Carbohydrates: 32g Dietary Fiber: 2g Protein: 21g Vitamin A: 462.9 IU Vitamin D: 57.7 IU Folate: 91.8mcg Calcium: 167.9mg Iron: 3.3mg Choline: 188.7mg

What’s the most offensive thing you’ve heard when someone assumed you didn’t understand their language?

Bought some string in a nice little stationery store in Munich back in 1999. The clerk was counting out my change in German, marks and pfennigs, and stopped and said, auf Deutsch, “Why am I even counting out the change to you? You don’t understand anything.” I smiled. Though I understood well enough, my German wasn’t good enough to let him have it.

My ex was visiting Croatia with her Croatian friend about fifteen years ago. Guess both of them looked like Americans. While walking along the water somewhere together two local, uh… gents were walking toward them, discussing amongst themselves, and quite graphically, the sexual adventures/positions/at one time “crimes against nature” they would enjoy with the two gals. As they passed one another her friend shouted in Croatian “DO YOU TALK TO YOUR MOTHER WITH THAT MOUTH?!!” They nearly melted in embarrassment.

Tucker Carlson Has Us SCARED With This One!

At what point (if any) will China surpass the United States in economic and/or military power?

Simple 2014.

It’s done. It is almost a full decade since China is the real superpower and U.S. is a has been. I know if you are a westerner or especially if you are proud American it sounds ridiculous. But. Let me point out facts and not hubris or blind pride.

China’s growth today is 36.6% and the U.S. together with the entire G7 is a mere 24.6% of the worlds growth. China overtook the U.S. where it counts most the real purchasing power GDP or PPP. Today China is roughly 18.5% and the US is 15.2%. Of worlds economy. While the U.S. is one of the biggest spender China is the biggest savers.

In infrastructure the Chinese has the biggest ports, the biggest ports has the most ships and it has build 120 thousand miles of high speed railway criss crossing China the U.S. build 100 kilometres.

On influence. China gets support almost the entire Asia, Middle East, Latin America, Caribbean and Africa. The U.S. has support from roughly 15 nations. The Anglo nations, their vassal states Germany, Japan and South Korea. Some former colonial powers and some small Eastern European enemies of Russia. In most UN votes China always almost has support in excess of 150/195 nations.

In military, China has more arms, more ships more planes and more troops by a very long shot than the U.S. The Chinese close knit relationship with Russia will make the U.S. rather weak if pitted against both of these nation. The U.S. has lost 4 wars against smaller and weaker nations, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

On sustainability China has 175 out of 195 nations as its biggest trading partners and the U.S. has 29/195 nations as its biggest trading partner. The U.S. debts and deficits is simply unsustainable. China is growing at a rate of 3–4 times a year for the past 40 years against the US. And its standard of living has grown 30 times in the past 40 years and the US has stagnated since 1960!

On the present and future technology, in a recents Australian research from ASPI, China leads in 37/44 most crucial and strategic technologies while the US lead in only 7/37. China’s registrations of US patent office has doubled the US for the past decade.

For me China has absolutely and totally overtook the US by 2020 but it start overtaking the US in 2014. What we are seeing is a decade or more of US refusing to accept the status quo. I suspect by the 2028 election the US and America will move from disbelieving to accepting this status quo.

Oliver Anthony – Rich Man North of Richmond (REMIX) -Vapor Reggae/Dub-

Reggae Dub.

Worth the time to check out.

Are the rich really different from you and me? Why or why not?

[I’m answering anonymously because I don’t want this to come up in a google search — it would suck if my family found it — but I’m sure plenty of regulars will know who wrote this. Please don’t out me.]

I spent a few years of high school attending Brillantmont International School in Lausanne, Switzerland.

My classmates were 100 of the wealthiest kids in the world. I don’t mean hedge fund money — I mean Middle East royalty money. I mean kids whose entire addresses were: People’s Palace, Khartoum, Sudan.

Were they different from the kids I went to public school with in middle class suburban New Jersey? Not in any way that mattered at age 15. (Except they all smoked. I mean upwards of 80% of my classmates smoked. Just crazy.) At 15 it was about boys and sex and alcohol and dieting and who was going where on winter break. The clothes were nicer, the vacations more luxe, but the status games were all the same.

As an adult, here’s the biggest difference I notice, and this really only applies to people who grew up with money:

There is a sense of security that comes with growing up with wealth. A sense that no matter how bad things get, there is a safety net. Even if the net is actually gone — even if somehow you’ve lost all your wealth, your family has disowned you, whatever — it is hard to shake that sense that somehow, some way, things will work out.

Some of my rich friends think they can empathize with poverty. Maybe, but I don’t kid myself that I can. Even when I’d severed ties with my family and had been sleeping on a beach with my belongings for a few months because I couldn’t afford to eat *and* pay for a bed. Even after I’d been robbed a couple of times and put in worse danger a couple of times…

When I got sick — really stupid sick that would have cost me a limb if I hadn’t finally gone to a doctor when I did — I didn’t for a minute think I’d lose my leg. Somewhere deep down I knew that whatever was going to be required, the resources would be there. Whether it meant calling home or a family friend or an old classmate… the idea that the world would let me drown because I couldn’t pay a bill was just never on my radar. It was too far outside everything life had taught me up until then.

I’d have to be on the street for a very long time before I’d be convinced that no one was coming to save me. Of all the privilege that I enjoy, I think that one would be the hardest to shake.

What court case result made you smile?

Rustling. That’s what I called it.

A man, who had sold my client a herd of Texas Longhorn cattle, had returned months later, carted them off, and could not or would not account for their whereabouts.

I was in court. It was a trial to the judge (without a jury) for “conversion” and violations of the D.T.P.A. (Deceptive Trade Practices). I had the bad guy, the chief rustler, on the stand. He was squirming.

The key to the whole case was an award winning Longhorn bull named “Squanto.” We called him “Squanto the Wonder Bull” at the office.

Eventually, he admitted to taking the herd… Finally I asked the chief rustler, “Where exactly is Squanto?” In a flippant remark the defendant laughed and said, “Hell, I don’t know. Probably in a can of spam by now,” and laughed again. He thought he was pretty funny.

About an hour later the judge ruled for us but did not award triple (3x) damages as required by the law in Texas. My client, who was crazy angry about his lost herd, wanted to appeal. So we appealed.

Months later in the court of appeals my client, the other lawyer, and I appeared for argument. What surprised me was that the chief judge of that court was on the panel of three judges. He was old, very crippled, and brilliant. He assigned himself to the cases he was interested in and always made a difference.

I went first. I made an impassioned plea. I talked of the Texas Rangers, the Alamo, and the treatment of rustlers in early Texas history.

They wanted nothing to do with me.

The three judges were silent, dead silent the whole time. They said nothing. They just watched me and nodded. I did not know whether to sh#t or go-blind I was so unhorsed. I thought I was a dead man. They were supposed to ask questions, seek clarification, or ask me if I had a case on X, Y, or Z. Nothing. When I finished the chief judge thanked me without comment. I sat down silently and waited.

Now generally when a lawyer begins to speak in the court of appeals we say something to the effect of “May it please The Court … I am X and I represent the Appellant Disney, or GM, or Joe Blow.”

The lawyer for the rustlers did just that. He said, “May it please The Court, I am …” and that’s all he got out of his mouth.

The chief judge leaned forward in his chair, as far as his crippled body would allow him, and said, “We know who you are and who you represent. What we don’t know is where this herd of Longhorns is, Sir.”

There was silence. I mean the kind of silence you sense rather than hear, like when you know a predator is approaching in the woods. Then the chief judge looked at the transcript of the trial and read aloud, “Hell, I don’t know. (Squanto) is probably in a can of spam by now.”

Those judges weren’t in the trial court. They didn’t see the flippant attitude of the witness. They didn’t hear him laugh. They didn’t know he had been sarcastic. The Court Reporter had not noted “laughing” or “sarcastic” in her notes, which she was prohibited from doing. The Judges could only read the words on the paper, and the words were clear — Squanto had been rustled and made into spam.

”Sir, you and your client are here in our Court trying to justify stealing this man’s cattle and taking his prize bull, Squanto, to slaughter for ‘Spam.’ Is that right? IS THAT RIGHT?” The lawyer was dumbfounded. Speechless. So was I.

For the next 20 minutes those three old judges waged a holy war on that lawyer and his rustler clients and defended our Longhorn herd, Squanto the Wonder Bull, and “mom and apple pie” like they were the judges’ own children. I have never seen another reckoning like that one, not in a trial court and certainly not in the appellate courts.

I got the award. I got the Judgment. We collected the money.

The Rangers would have hung those rustlers. We could not.

But we never saw Squanto or his herd again …

I don’t know why Squanto’s demise set those old judges off, but it did.

As lawyers, we discuss the fact that Judges and Juries are forgiving at times, but never if you injure a baby, an old person, or a helpless animal. This was a great reminder.

I smiled that day. I smile now, and every time I see a can of spam I think of Squanto the Wonder Bull.

That’s not the only story that makes me smile, but it is a favorite.

Your friend in Texas,

Jim


Update: It’s still happening: $26K Reward Offered for Information on 489 Missing Steers

If Putin drops a nuke on Ukraine, will China stay friendly to Russia at the cost of parting ways with the West?

China has already parted ways with the west.

What hard lesson should you learn sooner than later about corporate life?

Long ago, a mentor warned me that, “Human Resources is there to protect the company — from you.”

A manager I supported could not have been a bigger HR nightmare. For example, I was sitting in a clear-glass meeting room with him and three other employees.

A female coworker walked by on the outside of the room. A coworker said, “Oh is Becca pregnant?”

This manager said, in a deep southern drawl, “If she was with me, she’d stay pregnant.”

On another occasion, I heard him say, “I hate the Japanese cuz’ they bombed Pearl Harbor. I hate the Jews cause they killed Jesus.”

Why was he still at the company? He made the company buckets of cash and was great at his job. He epitomized the predicament of the high-performing jerk.

Most HR departments aren’t worth their weight and everything they do is bound in red tape. Ignore any talk of “we are family” — they’ll still show you the door. Ignore any employee awards. I saw a woman win employee of the quarter (for the entire company) and get let go two months later.

I’m not trying to scare you or sound cynical. Just be hyper-realistic as you go into this world and you’ll position yourself to thrive.

And choose wisely when making an HR complaint. People that do often end up with a cleaned-out desk.

Is there any chance that China will dominate the Nobel Prize in 20 years?

Unlikely

China is a master at derivative research today. The world’s best in fact

It’s what morons mistakenly call REVERSE ENGINEERING which is actually dramatic process improvisation

Derivative research is building on existing research

The US were masters of derivative research from the 1950s to late 1970 before they started Pioneering Research

The US derived mainly from European Researchers until then and even today Europe is the master of Pioneering or Original Research

Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia are the leading countries for original or pioneering research


Chinas research is very PRACTICAL

The Universities fund research based on the value of the research to China

Original Research Or Pioneering Research doesn’t have any viability for a minimum 15–30 years

They need astronomical budgets for very little real life improvement

China prefers to identify research and BUILD ON IT

Most of Chinas Hypersonics, Space Communication, Rocketry is a result of Phenomenal improvement of US Original Research done in the 1970s-1980s and abandoned then as UNVIABLE


Another reason is Chinese are world class ENGINEERS

They handle every problem as an ENGINEERING PROBLEM Or a DESIGN PROBLEM

They are masters at this. The Best in the world on large scale

The Huawei Mate 60 is the best example

Huawei and SMIC solved the problem like an ENGINEERING DESIGN PROBLEM than a Physics Problem at electron level

Thus Chinas focus on Physics and Maths is entirely to develop an ENGINEERING BASE


It would take a longer time, maybe 30–40 years for China to finally focus on Original Research and win a few Nobel Prizes


The World’s leading nations by Original Research are :-

  1. Europe -50. 43%
  2. USA – 31.40%
  3. UK – 7.88%
  4. China – 3.79%
  5. Others -8%

The World’s leading nations by derivative research are :-

  1. China -35. 56%
  2. USA – 26%
  3. Japan – 14.98%
  4. Europe – 13.33%
  5. Others – 11%

China’s Technology LEADS the World (Americans in Shock)

Yes. I forgot how unique and technological China has become. It is so commonplace. I forgot that the West doesn’t really have this…

In this video, we take a look at China’s amazing technology and how it’s far surpassing America’s in terms of innovation, convenience and creativity. China’s amazing tech is making America jealous, and many Americans are in shock. They won’t believe it!

What is the best thing you have done today?

I did something today that will make me smile for entire life.

I frequently visit a coffee shop near my flat in Delhi for coffee. I am visiting the shop for more than 1 year now.

A couple of months ago, a 13 year old boy started working there. It made me furious on the shop owner because he is promoting child labour without hesitation.

I asked him :“ Don’t you know it’s a cognizable criminal offence to employ a Child for any work?”

He said : “ Yes, I know but you’re seeing only one side story”.

He explained that the child is from Bihar and belong to a very poor family. Last year, his family which included his father, child and his sister came to Delhi to earn some money in order to put food in their bellies. His mother died when he was born. His father is doing a job of a security guard while his sister is working as a maid in a house.

The child is getting a salary of Rs 6000/month at the shop.

I went home but I was not able to stop thinking about it.

I wanted to do something for him but I don’t know how to tackle the situation.

In July, he was not on the shop for a couple of days, so I asked the owner and got to know his sister died due to some health issues. It made me feel worse.

After a few days, he joined the shop again. I started talking to him daily to know more about him and his aspiration. He studied till 3rd class but left study to help his family.

I asked him if he wants to study? He said nothing but his glittered eyes gave me the answer.

Slowly, he became my friend. He used to ask me about what do I do and how I learned these things. I used to answer him in the best understanding way.

I don’t know but it created a great bond between us. I was really desperate to help this kid.

A few days ago, I was drinking coffee with a few of my friends. I was asking them a logical question (Which I saw in a video

of Ted-ED)

No one gave the right answer but that kid was listening to all things and said : “Bhaiya, mein batau?” (Bhaiya, may I tell?)

I was shocked, how sharp he was to give the correct answer. I gave him 50 rupees as a reward and left the place.

I decided that I will give him a better life whatever it takes. I started telling his story to people in my network so that if someone will come forward to help me.

One of my friends came forward who is working in an MNC and his wife is doing some a Non-profit work.

Today, that kid got admission in a boarding school.

It will only cost us 40,000 Rs/year and I will pay his salary of Rs 6000/month to his father.

After a few days, he will be in school and I cannot express my happiness and satisfaction.

I want to work more for children if some people come forward and make it possible together.

Rajnish Prajapat

Which was the most tactless tourist you have ever seen?

I was at Notre Dame in Paris. My friend and I were eating lunch on a bench. There was a group of American young adults with 2 chaperones. They were eaching McDonalds (In France? go figure) And way, the finished before Peggy and I did. The got up and left their trash all over the place with a trashcan right there.

Now remember, this is in France at a gorgeous cathedral that is world famous with tourists from all over the world. Me, being me, I got upand loudly said, “Hold it. Stop right there. All of you.” They all turned to me as if I was a crazy lady. Any way, I let them have it about leaving their trash around like their mothers where here to pick up after them. I told them they needed to pick up every piece of trash they had left and put it in the trash can. This wasn’t their country and they needed to respect it.

I think the shock of me, an American loudly calling them downfor being pigs (and yes I did call them that) totally embarrassed them enough to have them clean up the area where they had been sitting.

I went back to my lunch, still ticked that they were so disrespectful of France and Notre Dame that I almost snapped at this lady that came over to us. She said that she appreciated what I’d done and handed us tickets for the underground and to be able to climb to the top of one of the towers. I tried to refuse, but a gentleman behind her said it wasn’t allowed since we had shown we weren’t the normal Americans.

Even to this day, I am still aghast at how the chaperones didn’t bother to have them clean up after themselves. I can only imagine what the entitled kids who didn’t even consider cleaning up their trash are like today.

Will the “Uyghur Genocide” Propaganda dies out in incoming years?

Incoming years? Nah it’s already on life support and flat lining.

Reddit yeah? It’s got a terrible reputation of being filled with ignorance and racists.

Yet on Reddit there have been frequent pushbacks. You can see the major turning point was Rushan Abbass.

As such the 10000+ post omg China bad started getting pushed back by people doubting.

For a while it was treading water as those 10000 post threads deleted anything that went against their narrative.

People then started noticing the massive deletions.

Their last omg genocide post has 600 posts of which the majority called bullshit. The op ended up deleting the thread.

If you can’t convince even the cesspit that is Reddit and Reddit is calling you out… then it’s over.

I mean shit. On Reddit hongkong (no space) there was a yellow (HK rioter faction) saying anybody in Hong Kong who went to Shenzhen or used Chinese products was a traitor.

He got downvoted into oblivion. The burning of a man in HK really had a huge change against many of them.

How heavily does Apple depend on China, and what would happen if China decided to seek revenge for the Huawei ban by kicking Apple out of their market and supply chain?

This is a highly improbable scenario, as China has shown restraint and rationality in dealing with the US-led tech war, which seeks to curb China’s rise as a global powerhouse in innovation and technology.

China’s strategy to cope with the US sanctions on Huawei and other Chinese companies is to pursue a dual path of self-reliance and openness. On one hand, China has stepped up its efforts to develop its own core technologies, such as chips, operating systems, cloud services, and 5G networks, to lessen its dependence on foreign suppliers and enhance its competitiveness. On the other hand, China has also reaffirmed its commitment to opening up its market and promoting trade and investment with other countries, especially those that share its vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity.

Apple is one of the beneficiaries of China’s openness and pragmatism. Apple depends heavily on China for both its production and sales. According to Apple’s latest financial report, China accounted for about 20% of its total revenue in the third quarter of 2023, making it the second-largest market for Apple after the Americas. Moreover, Apple relies on China’s vast and sophisticated supply chain to manufacture most of its products, such as iPhones, iPads, Macs, and AirPods. According to a recent study, about 90% of Apple’s suppliers are based in Asia, with China being the largest source country.

China has no interest in disrupting Apple’s operations in China, as it would harm both sides’ interests and undermine the global economy. Apple is an important contributor to China’s economic development, employment, innovation, and tax revenue. According to a report by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Apple directly and indirectly supported 4.8 million jobs in China in 2019, including 1.8 million iOS app developers. Apple also invested $6 billion in research and development in China in 2019, making it one of the largest foreign investors in China’s high-tech sector. Furthermore, Apple paid about $13 billion in taxes to the Chinese government in 2019, making it one of the largest taxpayers among foreign companies in China.

China also appreciates that Apple is a valuable partner in promoting global cooperation and mutual understanding. Apple has been actively participating in various initiatives and projects that support China’s social and environmental goals, such as poverty alleviation, education, health care, renewable energy, and cultural preservation. For example, Apple has donated more than $50 million to support education programs in rural areas of China since 2013. Apple has also committed to powering all of its facilities in China with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Moreover, Apple has been showcasing China’s rich and diverse culture through its products and services, such as featuring Chinese artists on Apple Music, offering Chinese language courses on iTunes U, and celebrating Chinese festivals on App Store.

It is evident that China has no reason or incentive to kick Apple out of its market and supply chain. On the contrary, China welcomes Apple’s presence and contribution in China, as it benefits both countries and the world at large. China hopes that Apple will continue to uphold the spirit of openness and cooperation, respect China’s laws and regulations, protect users’ privacy and security, and play a positive role in enhancing bilateral relations and global governance

How does the communication between a person with a low or average IQ and a person with a high IQ look like?

During my two decades in sales, I observed many interactions between people with obviously large gaps in IQ scores. They were often very emotionally loaded, and the gaps may sometimes have far exceeded 3 SDs.

I could observe three things consistently happening there.

  • For those on the high end of the IQ continuum, the opposite party appeared as irritatingly slow-moving. It’s like they only understood every tenth of the words that were said, at best. The same thing had to be repeated over and over again just to be sure that even a fraction of it would stick.
  • Those on the lower end typically saw the opposite part as arrogant or neurotic jerks who couldn’t talk about one thing at a time and constantly jumped from one unrelated thing to another. Someone needed to keep them focused on the task and not waste everyone’s time on irrelevant asides.
  • After some to and fros in the discussion, a threshold happened where the innate human ability to find common ground and cooperate for a particular common task—we got to the top of the food chain as social animals, after all—broke apart, and these guys entered the zone of “anti-social” toward each other. Someone else was needed not simply to mediate but to use power to break up the clinch and show them to each his corner in the rink. The enmity, though, lingered, often forever.

Afterward, if forced into shared social settings, each of the two often pursued different coping strategies.

The underdog often veered toward violence. It was either physical—throwing objects, overturning tables, getting into fistfights when drunk, or grave verbal assaults in public. Insults typically were sexually tinged.

The “smart guy” most often tried to escape the company of the underdog, even to the point of not mentioning him when talking to others. When forced into a shared company (board meetings, sales sitdowns, training sessions), he often insulted his enemy in an indirect way. He made oblique jokes about him addressed to the rest of the crowd and fell back before the other guy had time to process and react.


Below, a painting from the sunset years of Soviet rule by painter Ilya Glazunov. He was covertly anti-Communist but managed to stay on the good foot with the censorship. The title is, “The Campfires of October.” In Soviet parlance, “October” was short for “The Great October Socialist Revolution” by Lenin and Co. in 1917.

You see a glamorized Lenin, his right hand at organizational matters inside the Party Yakov Sverdlovn, and the founder of the Communist secret police Cheká, Felix Dzerzhinsky. Behind them, a night of Communist rule envelops Russia for the next seven decades. In the darkness, you see the spire of Petropavlovsk Fortress like a syringe needle ready to inject the poison of progressivism into the mind of the nation.

A campfire casts an infernal light on Lenin’s face. During the first chaotic months of Communist rule, campfires in the streets were an everyday feature in our cities. They marked the checkpoints of the Red Guards on the lookout for counter-revolutionaries and bourgeois scum.

The trio sports the typical cold, calculating look of a “high-IQ” individual prepared for a fight, through the lens of their “low-IQ” opponents. It’s not entirely clear to me how both are distributed across the “progressive vs conservative” divide. But I see the pattern in ongoing propaganda, east and west.

“Law and order” has a strong appeal to the low IQ crowd. Pecking order doesn’t require you to be a rocket scientist. It’s all in your face. Entrenched frameworks and their well-armed guardians are easy on your processing power. You’ve got plenty of time and room to figure out what is what. And if things turn too complicated, you can always join the army and the police force and help make things plain and simple again. “Dirty Harry” works, folks!

“Equality and justice” is the grazing ground for the high-IQ bunch. Everyone has their own idea of what is true equality and high justice. Agreeing on common action needs tons of negotiations, painful compromises, quick decisions, and nimble footwork. That’s a high-IQ game.

What is certain is that the top guys in both camps are “high-IQ” individuals who use social dynamics for their own benefit. That’s how you get American billionaires leading the crusade against the “globalist elites.” On the other side, it’s the “conservative Communists” like Stalin and Mao who have no time for any wokeness and “culture wars”.

Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home (REACTION)!

The voice of the voiceless.

I live in Washington state and watching our farmland get turned into amazon warehouses is heartbreaking. Another great reaction, God bless”

What did your boss do or say to you that made you quit your job?

Briefly: after the regional manager called the store manager “stupid,” over the phone, the store manager quit. But not just him—his wife, who was the shift manager, and his cousins, who basically made up the rest of the staff for our little cinnamon roll shop.

It was Christmas, 1995, and I found myself all alone at dinnertime in a mall. Rolls needed proofing, baking, dough needing making, dishes washing, and don’t forget the sales!

I was seventeen, nearly eighteen years old and had been working there for a year. I loved the product, I knew my way around the shop, and even at rush hour in a booth that should take at least three people to man, I was holding my own for an hour until the regional manager showed up to help me finish the shift. I knocked it out of the park that day, and I was always a good employee, getting along great with the rest of the workers, including the regional manager’s wife, who had been my manager at some previous point.

I didn’t bring up the rather loud phone conversation for the rest of the night. It was just professional working the whole time, and when the evening was done, I washed dishes while he counted money and didn’t bother him then.

Finally, it was time for me to go. He thanked me perfunctorily and asked if I could work extra shifts the next day. He was going to call some other stores he managed and fill in with other worker until he found a new manager and employees. That made sense.

“Given how well I performed today,” I offered, “and since we need a new experienced shift manager, might I get a promotion?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I don’t want you to be a manager.”

One more employee quit that day. Who wants to work under that kind of person?

What is the purpose of the US sending its senators to China regarding the micron ban, and do they intend to withdraw sanctions on Chinese entities before demanding the withdrawal of sanctions on Micron?

The upcoming senatorial meeting is unlikely to address any new issues. Longstanding problems like Cold War sanctions and the Taiwan red line have been extensively debated in previous meetings without finding resolutions. The same lack of progress is expected this time, including discussions on the Micron issue. These meetings, initiated by the US, appear to primarily aim at garnering attention from the American public in anticipation of the upcoming election, as they mark the first congressional visits in four years. Given the prevailing anti-China sentiment in the US, it seems improbable that this trip will result in significant outcomes. Mr. Xi, who is currently focused on addressing China’s domestic challenges, is unlikely to view this unproductive gathering favorably.

What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?

I was working as a Test Electrician for a small industrial place that did custom order emergency power generators. Think hospitals and grocery stores.

We were paid hourly and tracked our time on a hand written time sheet. X number of hours on PO YYY.

This chugged a long nicely. The Timesheets were hanging on the wall of the shop, the shop supervisor could see them at any time, errors were quickly seen and corrected and the work got done in a timely fashion. Guy running the shop was a retired E8 Marine who knew how to keep things organised.

He retired.

Company hired in a older gentleman who had an MBA and not a lot of sense.

He did not like keeping track of the hours worked every day so instead he implemented time cards and a punch clock. He also would walk the shop floor with a clipboard to keep track of who was working on what and when.

So, previous system all the data collection and collation is done in one place. New system the time worked and the place worked is being tracked in two very different processes.

We also have folks getting paid by the time card times, not the hours recorded on the Time Sheets.

This chugs along for a month and then we all get gathered together one morning and are told, explicitly, that over time is not paid if not authorised in writing and tardiness of more than 6 minutes at the start of shift or return from lunch will result in pay being docked an hour.

Could you be more stupid?

So instead of working that extra bit to get a job finished up before the end of the day, folks are cleaning up 30 minutes before quitting time so they can be ready to punch out at the hour. Instead of coming in 10 minutes late and taking a short lunch, they just show up an hour late. Instead of coming back from a lunch late, they don’t come back.

Unhappy workers, unhappy customers since the products are not getting out on time, unhappy accounting since the costs of various product lines are no longer the same as before because hours are not being counted accurately.

Doofus MBA was gone by the end of the second month and the E8 was back from retirement. He claimed he hated it but his wife said he was just moping around the house and jumped for joy when the owner called to beg him back to work.

China suspends European and American chip orders, US chip technology suffers heavy losses!

I told you all that this was going to happen. Duh!

If a drone is flying on my property and I have already notified that I do not want it to be flying on it, can I destroy it without legal repercussion?

Depends. In most places it’s not legal to invade a person’s privacy. So if the drone has a camera and it’s flying low over your property it would not be unreasonable to think it’s taking pictures, possibly seeing into windows or into a privacy fenced area where you reasonably have an expectation of privacy.

So I’d not attack the drone, but rather attempt to identify who owns it and have a photo of it flying in a manner than suggested it is being used to invade your privacy.

Flying low across a property line in an invasive manner would be a type of “tresspass” which is most countries is a 1st time warning second time arrested sort of thing.

LINK to USA Court Ruling

The character of the Trespass is critical.

Just flying over someone’s back yard isn’t a trespass. Lets say you have an outdoor shower under the cover of a back porch, inside the “property taxed living area of the home”. So the drone flies under the porch cover and takes video of your wife naked in the shower. Is that act a criminal trespass? Most likely.

Conversely, your wife is sunbathing naked in the back yard plainly visible from the perimeter of the property and anyone who looks over the top of the privacy fence. Oh, well, she really had no reasonable expectation of privacy. Now if you live on 20 acres in the country and have no privacy fence, she would be reasonably sure that in her own back yard a mile or more from any other persons lawful access she can sunbathe. And no its not reasonable to say what about a person selling magazines walking around to the rear of the home? That is a trespass I think, as there is no reasonable cause and claiming you heard a child crying out probably won’t get you out of it.

What’s the most ridiculous adult tantrum you’ve witnessed that you couldn’t believe?

We were on Legian Beach two nights ago watching the sunset…

We were also having some drinks while we were waiting for the fire dance to start. The sun goes down and at precisely 7.00 pm, the fire dance kicks off… and it’s awesome!

A very talented team came out and began a wonderful performance of a combination of Balinese dance combined with your classic fire handling.

I’m just getting into the show when the music starts going weird… it sounds like shrieking in between the beats. It’s really off-putting… even the dancers hesitate for a second – I look around wondering if anyone is confused only to see a big bunch of people milling around in the middle of the seating area and that’s the source of the shrieking.

It turns out that a woman has come down front to take a photo of the fire dance and she obscured some guy’s view for a moment and he LOST. His. F#(k!ng. MIND! He was shrieking at her so hard that his voice broke repeatedly… it was embarrassing to watch.

I was irritated as hell. He was so loud and outraged that you just couldn’t focus on the dance. There was a palpable aura of chagrin from the audience. The distraction and disturbance must have been even more frustrating for the dancers (and the woman who made the photo faux-pas).

The group of people milling around were there to (apparently) try to calm him down and make sure he didn’t physically attack the woman. She could be heard apologising profusely to him but he wasn’t having it. This screaming went on for 2 minutes? In the end, people were telling him to shut the hell up or F3ck off! and he wound up storming off STILL screaming at the top of his lungs…

Who does that?

Who turns a moment of thoughtlessness by a stranger into a drama that interrupts the evening of 100’s of people AND proffessional dancers?! Couldn’t he just tap her on the shoulder if he was angry that she obscured his view for a moment? The performance he put on was incredible for all the wrong reasons. It was a childish screaming tantrum for what?

What did he even achieve with it?

He irritates the crowd, interrupts and nearly ruins a performance for everyone, humiliates someone for a minor error and then misses out on the rest of the performance when he storms off and everyone thinks he’s an angry violent loud man-child who never learned self-control. I *swear* some of the crowd applauded when he finally stormed off…

How bad is living in China ?

It is really bad :

Because I have some grey hair I am treated in the same embarrassing way every time I get on a city bus or on the subway …… younger people get up and offer me a seat.

Recently I had problems with a tooth. One morning I went to one of the dental hospitals. They did xrays and preformed a root canal in a 2 hours. It cost me 1/6th of the price of a root canal I had done 30 years ago in North America. Just terrible prices.

I am invited out to eat or to go to some celebration a few times a month. I never have to pay for the meal, while I am offered beer and cigarettes. I do not smoke so I decline the cigarettes but accept free beer.

Oh how terrible to invited out by the locals constantly. I have been to at least 25 weddings, more then dozen birthdays and half a dozen 100-day celebrations for babies.

There are 100+ channels on the TV, with a few in English as some western movies. The nightly news reports on all the major news around the world. I have internet access 24/7 and spent way too much time browsing the internet from Europe to North America. It is a terrible way to waste time.

I often visit my daughter who works 300km away in another Province. Being so far away, I am forced to take the train which takes 1hr 30 minutes to make the trip with 2 or 3 stops along the route. I could drive my car but that would make for a much longer trip.

The really bad thing in China is access to food.

  • We have 2 farmers markets within 2 city blocks. These are markets where the farmers come into the city around 6-7 am every morning to sell that days fresh crop of fruit vegetables and meat.
  • This in addition to 2 grocery stores and a Walmart in the area.
  • Then on my small city block, we have 14 restaurants, open 7 days a week.
  • There are even the evil food chains – KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Starbucks, plus all the Chinese ones etc
  • We have the French Carrefour and Auchan super stores and the Germany’s Metro cash & carry stores.
  • Worst of all, we have these applications on our smartphones (80% of folks own a smartphone). Where we can see menus of hundreds of restaurants in our area, order food and they deliver it to your door usually within 30 minutes.

If we need to go to the bank, we can not go 365 days of the year. There are about a dozen days a year when the banks are closed.

Schools are much more demanding on students compared to North America, with homework every night.

  • However they do get a month off in summer.
  • My daughters students spend some of their summer travelling. The US and Europe for some, others within China or to nearby places like South Korea or Thailand.

So far no one has noticed any difference due to the Trump Tariffs, but according to western media China is under some sort tremendous pressure. Or maybe there were talking about the tropical storm? In either case it was a lot of wind.

That is how bad it is living in China.

Please have pity on our oppression, as we say in my group of expats who live in China as well, some for over 20 years.

Of course we live a large city. The situation differs in rural areas as it does in most countries.

The Canadian couple that were recently killed by a grizzly bear took all the proper precautions. Why didn’t they survive?

Because life isn’t fair. A spokesperson for the Alberta government said, that since they had banned grizzly hunting, the population has exploded. He said that going into the woods, isn’t like it was before, when Grizzlies had a fear of man. What we have always thought of, as being bear smart, might not be as safe as it once was.

We have grizzlies venturing back out onto the prairies and ripping open grain bins. Probably because there isn’t enough food to support all of the Grizzlies in the mountains.

The bear that killed the couple and their dog was emaciated, had bad teeth, and probably wouldn’t have survived the winter, if she didn’t get whatever food she could. She was desperate.

She was a small older bear, one that had never shown up on surveys, so probably wouldn’t have been included in any bear counts. She was likely forced out of her territory by a larger bear. This was a bear that had never caused any trouble until she was starving.

The couple did everything right. They had a satellite phone and checked in regularly, and used it to call for help. They each had a can of pepper spray, and used one. Their food was hung up, out of a bears reach.

They and their dog were in their tent, shortly after dark, when they were attacked, so they didn’t blunder into the bear.

There have been 7 people killed by Grizzlies within 100 km of me, in the last 16 years.

They ended grizzly hunting 17 years ago. In the 26 years before ending grizzly hunting, there were no fatalities, within 100 km of me, and only 3 in all of Alberta.

Many were mothers defending their cubs.

So as the spokesperson says, what we always considered best practices, might not be enough to keep you safe anymore.

The End Of US Dollar Hegemony | Jeffrey Sachs

Yes, we have greatly abused the privilege of having the U$ Dollar being the main currency. And broken every Fiduciary rule with our unilateral sanction practices. We deserve whatever the blowback will be from having allowed our Leaders to carry on the way they have.”

Israeli Radar KNOCKED-OUT in the North. Americans Confirmed Killed, Wounded, Kidnapped/Captured in Israel. Nuclear Intentions

World Hal Turner

As of 10:51 AM EDT on Sunday, October 8, 2023, it is confirmed that three Israeli Radar stations in the north have been attacked and destroyed. Israel has no radar to monitor into Lebanon.  It is also confirmed that Americans have been killed, wounded, and captured/kidnapped inside Israel.

Overnight, after what was “Day one” of the HAMAS-Israel fight, an actual TSUNAMI of propaganda came flooding out onto the Internet and into the mass-media.  The shear volume of propaganda is extraordinary.  It is making it very difficult to discern what is truth and what is fiction.

There is an INTENSE effort to promote and propagate Israeli victims – and that’s OK I guess; they are, in fact, victims of an actual conflict.  But there is also an absolutely unparalleled effort to suppress and censor anything factual about the Palestinians.  It is almost as if the public is being manipulated into seeing ALL Israelis as “victims” and ALL Palestinians as animalistic perpetrators.

Official sources are very reluctant to provide Intel today.  It’s like a giant lid has been slammed shut on factual information; only “the narrative” is allowed out.

I have had to adjust the manner in which I obtain information.

Here is what I can __confirm__:

My former colleagues in the Intel Community, from my years working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), confirm that over a week ago, uniformed, flag-wearing, ID-carrying regular  UKRAINIAN Army Troops attacked Wagner PMC Troops . . . .  in . . . . . . SUDAN.    You know, Africa!

I also found out that Mossad has been sabotaging/burning/blowing-up Iranian Drone Factories to stymie Iran helping Russia.

I also found out that planeloads of Israeli military weaponry were sent to Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan in the days and weeks before Azerbaijan launched another military attack upon Armenia last week, grabbing Nagrono-Karaback and forcing 100,000 Armenian Christians to flee for their lives.

What is taking place inside Israel right now, is payback.  Payback from Russia for Israel helping Ukraine.  Payback for the planeloads of weapons to Baku, Azerbaijan, and Payback for Israel blowing up Iranian drone factories. 

It is also payback from Iran for all the air-strikes by Israel against Iranian forces in Syria for the past two years. 

Lastly, it is also payback from Armenia for what Israel helped Azerbaijan facilitate in grabbing Nagorna Karaback.   

The most interesting part?   Iran used the $6 Billion released by the Biden administration two weeks ago, to fund today’s outbreak of hostilities!

I also found out this payback, is not going to stop.   It __is__ in fact,  “war.”

Moreover, I can now positively __confirm __:

This morning, the Israeli Security Cabinet invoked Article 40A of the “Law on Emergency Situations” — WAR.

So this morning, it is absolutely “official”  Israel is at war.   This is the first time that this Article has been invoked in Israel since the 1973 war.

Israel has decided to commit troops to a GROUND INVASION of the Gaza Strip.   Door-to-Door.  House-to-house.

This is going to be an absolute bloodbath.

I can also positively __ confirm__:

Israeli Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Ben Zvi told the Russian Government:

“Israel sees Tehran as one of the culprits of the Hamas attack.”

 He then went on to tell Russia  “This is how we quietly approached the threshold of the real use of Israeli nuclear weapons against Iran, and a demonstration of what the term “threat to the existence of the state” means . . . from the Russian “Fundamentals of State Policy in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence.”

I can now also positively __confirm__: 

There are some 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip.  About half being men.   If that half – or a good portion of it, were to come out into Israel bearing arms, the Israelis would be over run.   Thus, the Ambassador to Moscow told the Russians that Israel is considering the use of smaller, “Tactical” nuclear bombs against Gaza, in case Israel is over-run.   Same with the West Bank.

Finally, the Israeli Ambassador to Moscow told the Russian government that since Israel sees Iran as being primarily responsible for the ongoing onslaught, Tehran would be hit with much larger “Strategic nuclear bombs” as would . . . . Damascus, Syria, for being the Coordination point for HAMAS and Iran.

(Biblical: Damascus a ruinous heap?????)

Ergo, there is now actual and active discussion within the Israeli government of the potential use of nuclear weapons.

If Muslims begin to actually over-run Israel, where its existence is threatened, then Israel is already making known it will use the Samson Option and take a lot of people out.

HEZBOLLAH MASSING TROOPS

 Hezbollah in Lebanon is already massing troops and moving rocket launchers.   Hezbollah made clear yesterday that if Israel launches a ground war into the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah will attack from the north.

This morning, Israeli combat aircraft are in the skies over Lebanon all the way north to Kersewan, Lebanon.

 There have been some mortars fired into Israel from Lebanon, and corresponding response with artillery fire from Israel, but these incidents do not even rise to the description of a skirmish.

RADAR KNOCKED OUT

The big news this morning is that THREE (3) Israeli radar stations in the north were successfully attacked from Lebanon and as of 10:51 AM EDT here in the United States eastern time zone, those three radar stations are OFFLINE. 

 For a brief time today, Israel had no effective radar coverage of its northern border.   They have since moved portable, truck-mounted, military radar into new positions to restore coverage.

TALIBAN to JERUSALEM?

The Afghanistan Taliban reached a deal with Iran that is satisfactory, wherein Iran WILL allow Taliban armed forces to cross the country with the intent of entering Israel to grab Jerusalem.  But the Taliban ran into several obstacles along the way.   

Iraq did not respond to the Taliban request for permission to cross Iraqi territory.

Jordan flatly and explicitly BARRED the Taliban from entering their country.

So from a political perspective, the Arab states are now seen as acting as a shield for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

IN AND AROUND GAZA 

Hamas says that their fighters are still fighting in southern Israel, including in Ofakim, Sderot, Yad Mordechai, Kfar Azza, Be’eri, Yatid and Kissufim.  Mind you, this is __Israeli__ territory.

“Israel will evacuate all residents living in towns near the Gaza border within 24 hours”

Israel has put itself in a bind with Gaza over the years so this isn’t so easy.

Gaza has been set up as a walled off open air prison, where the good inmates get to come out in daylight hours and do stuff like janitorial work for the chosen (their words – not mine) to eek out an existence. Then back through the gates by dark.

In theory, Israel can’t blow up a whole walled off city they created and kill every one because then everyone would scream genocide. But apparently everyone is cool with the status quo open penitentiary setup for some reason.

So the initial thinking is that Israel will just bomb here and there and level enough buildings to make everyone think they got payback and that will be that. It has always been that way.  But no one is quite so sure this time.  It may end up being an actual Genocide of Gaza.

The Israeli army issued orders to close all resorts near the border with Lebanon.

Most interesting this morning so far:  : US weapons left behind in Afghanistan were used to attack Israel.

A high-ranking Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commander said US weapons left in Afghanistan by the Biden administration were found in the hands of Palestinian groups active in the Gaza Strip.

POLAND EVACUATING NATIONALS FROM ISRAEL

Poland has announced it intends to evacuate its nationals from Israel.  Poland threatens: If any Polish aircraft is targeted or Polish nationals feel in danger after their aircraft enter the airspace.”
Article 5 of the 31-nation NATO alliance will be activated and raids will be launched across all of Palestine.

EUROPE WARNED OF COMING RIOTS

Intel sources are now urgently reporting that Muslims will be on the rampage in Europe shortly; burning every major city in protest of the coming Israeli offensive into GAZA.

The authorities running Gaza know they cannot withstand a full Israeli military onslaught, so they have reached out to Muslims in Europe to have THEM cause trouble, making the Gaza problem, Europe’s problem too.   The thinking is that Europe will be able to call-off a full blown Israeli wipeout of Gaza.

Intelligence sources say worst hit will be Paris, Brussels, London, and Marseille.

No Way Out! Rafah Border Crossing into Egypt Closed after Israeli Air Strike

World Hal Turner

The only way out of the Gaza Strip in Israel was the Border crossing at Rafah into Egypt.  That crossing is now (temporarily?) closed after an Israeli air strike; thereby trapping 2 million Palestinians.

Israel has given HAMAS until *today* to surrender and release all the hostages, or the Gaza Strip will be flattened. Yet Israel targeted a particular house in the town very near the Rafah Border Crossing to kill the leader of the Nasser brigades.   It was after that air strike that the Rafah crossing was closed by Egypt out of fear of more strikes.

The Israelis believe Rafah will be re-opened.  But believing it, and seeing it actually happen are two different things.   Without Rafah being open, the 2.3 Million Palestinians in Gaza are trapped and being hit with ongoing air strikes.

With the exits closed, the Palestinians trapped, and air strikes ongoing against those same people, some folks are saying this looks like a Genocide fixing to take place.  

Passions are running almost out of control.  The Palestinians see this conflict as a way to liberate Palestinian lands grabbed by the Israelis for years, and to then force the creation of a Palestinian state.  Other groups agree with that view, and as such, we are seeing Hezbollah in Lebanon calling-up fighters to the Lebanon Border with Israel’s north.  We are also seeing Arabs in Iraq and Syria moving fighters toward the Israel border (West Bank and Golan Heights) in the east of Israel.   Gaza is still fighting in the south of Israel.

So with fighters attacking in the south, massing in the east and in the north, this situation does not bode well for Israel at all.

The Israelis see this situation as an existential threat to their nation and the wholesale slaughter of their innocent people.  That view is well-based in reality; we’ve all seen the brutal, indiscriminate slaughter of Israeli civilians and it’s horrifying. 

The two sides, Israel and Palestine, seem intractable.

If it comes down to a simple, brutal fight, millions in Gaza may be killed.  This week!   THAT would compel Arab nations in the region to come full blast at Israel and try to wipe it out of existence.  The numbers favor the Arabs.

Which leads us to Israel’s “Samson Option” to go down fighting, and take as many with them as they can, using nuclear bombs.

If Israel did that, certain other nations of the world would recoil in horror and erase Israel from the globe.  And when THAT starts, other nations will hit those attacking nations with nukes and we’ll see World War 3 happen and be over in about eight hours, with the entire northern hemisphere radioactive for decades.

What we are all seeing right now could very well be dispositive of all these issues between Israel and Palestinians; but dispositive with gigantic booms and millions dead to finally decide the issues.

With the US southern border being left open by Traitorous Democrat politicians, “Sleeper Cells” of terrorists have been crossing into the US at-will, for two years of the Biden phony-presidency.  This is what happens when election fraud steals a US Presidency, as happened in November 2020, and a dementia-addled man is installed as a puppet, while unknown, unseen, Bureaucrats actually run things.

Vast numbers of military-age young men crossed illegally into our country and are now pre-positioned here in the US to attack us from within. The bleeding-heart Democrats and their useful idiot Republicans who want cheap labor, are personally to blame for this taking place.  

As things escalate in the Middle East, enemies from around the world could use that as a “go-signal” to attack us here, inside the US.

My fellow Americans are the most heavily-armed civilian population on this planet.   We may need our fellow Americans to step up and defend our own land, as all hell breaks loose in the Middle East.

Americans should clean their weapons, zero their sights, increase their ammunition supplies, and be mentally prepared to do what needs doing if, God forbid, the need arises to defend ourselves, our families, and our land from those who would harm us.

Gas-up your vehicles, have spare gas cans for your electric generator, and have emergency food, water, medicines and other supplies just in case.  Don’t wait. Do it now.   Once the troubles start, there will be panic buying here, the same way there was panic buying in Israel which wiped-clean the store shelves.

This situation halfway around the world may not SEEM to be our problem, but there are many around the world ready to MAKE IT our problem; and they CAN.   Worse, our politicians, ever eager to mind OTHER PEOPLE’S BUSINESS, are already sending our troops, planes, ships, men, and military supplies into Israel.  So we are already being set-up by our own politicians to be “in”
the fight, which will make you and me targets in our own land.

We’re already seeing minor protest-skirmishes between Pro-Palestinian and Pro-Israeli people here in the US and over in Europe.  These expressions of support are mostly peaceful – for now.   But there have been isolated incidents of actual fighting and it is clear  that the POTENTIAL exists here and in Europe for the sides to start actually fighting.

If Civil unrest erupts as folks take sides here in the US and in Europe, that will only add to the danger for all of us.

Be ready with guns, ammunition, food, water, medicine, fuel and be vigilant.

No rational person wants to see any of this taking place.  I certainly don’t want to see all this trouble taking place. But it __is__ taking place and we had all be ready for how bad this could actually get.  If it happens, it will happen very fast.

RELATED

King Abdullah II of Jordan Orders Humanitarian Aid to Gaza; IDF Says “no”

REPORTS: GAZA GROUND INVASION TONIGHT; IDF FIRING ARTILLERY INTO LEBANON NOW

Five secrets of men

LOL. This is great.

Being a fine Rufus

“On a chilly California afternoon, Deputies Anderson and Arbuckle, with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, pulled into a Denny’s restaurant for lunch. They noticed a young woman sitting all by herself in the parking lot, and she seemed distraught. And it looked like she had a really bright-colored polka dot suitcase that apparently carried everything she owned.

Deputy Anderson knew something was wrong, so he approached her and politely asked her some questions. The young woman was all by herself… stranded, with no transportation. So the officers invited her into the restaurant with them and asked her to join them for a meal, which they paid for out of their own pocket.

But something kept nagging at Deputy Anderson. He wondered how she was gonna get back home. After the meal, the deputies had her follow them out to their squad car, and they drove her to the nearest Greyhound bus station. Deputy Anderson then bought her a bus ticket so she could get back home.

The officers’ story about the young woman touched everyone in the department, and it was posted on their website. In the story, it said their “actions demonstrate adherence to the Mission, Vision, and Values of our Department, most notably a concern for the community and treating the woman with empathy and respect when she was in a bad situation.”

Credit: FB: Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office

What is your opinion on the current state of trade relations between the US and China? What does each country stand to gain or lose?

The U.S. stands to lose the most if trade dispute or decoupling happens by a very long shot. It is simple China’s market is way way way bigger than the U.S. Chinas growth today is bigger than the entire G7 put together. China’s middle class is at least 2 times that of the U.S. plus the fact that China is the worlds factory. It influences the intermediate products hence its commands in excess of 50% of global demand when added together.

Try to imagine yourself as a businessman, you pick a fight with a customer who buys 50% of everything you sell. That is the ridiculousness of the U.S. trade war and decoupling. No wonder during the trade war period from 2017–2021 China grew by 26.5% while the U.S. grew by less than 5% in 4 full years! And now you understand why inflation shot up and why the U.S. is literally begging China to open up post Covid-19. And why Biden is sending overtures to cut tariffs on both sides.

Trump says trade war is easy and not only he destroyed the U.S. economy he lost his reelection bid and doubles US homelessness while hurting the Middle Class badly through inflation.

China’s exports to the U.S. though it is big it is a small portion of China’s world wide trade. Hence it barely affects China. For 2023 forecast GDP, China will grow by a minimum of 4.5% and U.S. is projected to grow by a mere 0.5%.

The last thing the US ought to do is to pick a fight with China over trade. China is not only the most humongous market and for nation like US that needs trade and business, it is suicidal to do just that. But short term political gains is the U.S. priority over longer term sustainability.

The media assisted the politicians to good wink the American people who are ignorant and naive about this fact and that is why here in QUORA there still Americans that thinks the trade war and decoupling is good for the U.S.

What was your first clue you were no longer as young as you thought you were?

I’m 61. My best friend, same age, was on a train station with his son – the platform was very busy, and someone backed into my friend, turned aggressively and pushed his face within a few inches of my friend, evidently looking for a confrontation.

My friend told me later that only one thought occurred to him: “Oh no, there could be trouble here, I must protect my son”.

In fact that son, who’s 6′2 and a very good amateur boxer, lifted the stranger off his feet, moved him calmly a yard away, put him down, looked him squarely in the eye, and just said, “No, mate.”

The stranger looked down, apologised, and shuffled off.

Later, on the train, my friend said a lady of perhaps 25 looked up (he was having to stand, a crowded train) – and said, “Would you like my seat?” My friend said he actually looked over his shoulder before realising that the offer was for him.

Sobering stuff.

12 Behaviors of a highly confident person

  1. They don’t say yes to make someone happy if they really don’t want to.
  2. Even when they fail in the initial stages, they believe in themselves and they only listen to themselves.
  3. They do not pay attention to things without work, but when they listen then very carefully.
  4. They know what needs to be done and what needs to be left out.
  5. They gives priority to their health over any work.
  6. They don’t do anything just to get attention.
  7. They are not afraid to go wrong and take the steps that should be taken.
  8. They know when to give up and how long to keep trying.
  9. They don’t complain about having fewer resources.
  10. They are not just involved, they are more productive in less time.
  11. They do not prepare a list of much work, but in the work they pick, they give constant dedication.
  12. They don’t just take risks, they take very calculative risks.

Brainwashing a Nation!

America spends 500 million tax dollars a year spreading negative news about China. They make up fake news, they pay foreign news channels to demonize china and their own people don’t know what is true and what is propaganda. Welcome to the world of the United States of Fake news on the world stage and you as a tax paying American are paying for it. How does it feel to pay for your own brainwashing?

China-Russia Arctic shipping route

HONG KONG—China’s goal of becoming a major player in the Arctic has long been frustrated by its neighbor Russia, which has closely protected its dominant rolein the region.

Now, along with the ice that encases the earth’s northern pole, Moscow’s resistance is beginning to thaw.

Faced with economic isolation over its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is turning to China for help developing the Arctic as Western energy companies are trying to pull outof Russian projects. The newfound cooperation is most evident in surging shipments of crude through the Northern Sea Route, which traverses the Arctic from northwestern Russia to the Bering Strait.

The volume, while still small compared with what is carried via southern routes, has shot up in recent weeks. Russia asserts the right to regulate transit on the route. It says the demand has driven it to permit larger tankers without so-called ice classification—stronger hulls and other reinforcements to sail the ice-filled waters—raising fears of spills in the remote region. The first of two larger tankers arrived at a Chinese port in recent days, each carrying more than one million barrels of oil.

Russia has joined with China in naval exercisesand maritime security arrangements in the far north, and looked to it for aid in technology such as satellite data to monitor ice conditions.

When it comes to the Arctic, China “doesn’t have to care so much about official Russian policy anymore,” said Marcus M. Keupp, an economics lecturer at the military academy of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich who studies the region.

For China, which declared itself a “near Arctic” nation in 2018 despite being more than 900 miles from the Arctic Circle, Russia’s new welcome provides a long-sought opportunity. Beijing has wanted to expand its role in the Arctic to increase access to shipping routes, natural resources, climate and other scientific research opportunities, and expand its military and strategic clout.

It has proposed a “Polar Silk Road” as a component of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s broader Belt and Road infrastructure initiative that would make use of the shorter distance to ship goods via the Arctic, avoiding chokepoints at the Suez Canal and Malacca Strait.

Except for Russia, Arctic nations are all Western democracies that have grown increasingly cautious toward Chinese investment. Security concerns led Denmark to thwart a Chinese plan to build three airports in Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory. Canada blocked a Chinese company from buying a gold mine in its Arctic region in 2020after military officials raised security concerns.

Russia hasn’t always welcomed China to the region. At one point, it opposed China’s application to become an observer on the Arctic Council, the body of eight Arctic nations that is the leading forum for addressing regional issues, and previously blocked Chinese ships from conducting Arctic research.

In 2020, even with ties between Beijing and Moscow at their warmest in decades, Russian authorities arrested an expert on the Arctic on suspicion of providing intelligence to China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ’s invasion of Ukraine has changed Moscow’s approach. Western sanctions have forced Russia to lean more heavily on China to prop up its economy, support its war effort and maintain its longstanding goals of developing the Arctic.

Putin signaled the shift during Xi’s visit to Moscow in March, describing “promising” cooperation with Chinese partners to develop the transit potential of the Northern Sea Route.

“Russia certainly has the manpower, and it certainly has regional knowledge, but it no longer has capital or technology,” said Keupp of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who edited a 2015 book on the route. “It’s to China’s big advantage because it can now really exert influence and economic pressure on Russia and develop this route according to its own needs.”

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the country “always adheres to the basic principles of respect, cooperation, mutual benefit and sustainability in its participation in Arctic affairs.” The Russian Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

As Western companies are trying to pull out of their projects in Russia, Moscow has sought help from Chinese companies to develop ports, mines and other infrastructure in the Russian Arctic. Russia changed its Arctic policy document in February. Russia’s policy, which previously focused on “strengthening good-neighbor relations with Arctic states,” now emphasizes access to all foreign states—a move that further opens the door to China. …

Have you ever fired an employee who then retaliated against you or the company? What happened?

I reported an employee once who was subsequently fired. She filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the company and me personally. What she didn’t know, and her attorney never asked, was if I had proof of what I’d reported for. And I did.

She was a clerk and had duties that were, for lack of a better term, timely. She had to get items off her desk before 10AM, 1PM and 2PM. Those items needed to go to another department, who would then pass them onto the warehouse. This wasn’t a difficult job and she’d been hired as an 8:30–4:30 employee with an hour for lunch.

One of the other employees in her department came to me (as office manager) and requested that I say something to her about taking half hour or longer breaks in the morning and afternoon, which were making her late in submitting her paperwork each day. Keep in mind, by paperwork, it wasn’t real paper, it was coding and analyzing from a computer program.

After that, I kept an eye out for two weeks. Every day at 10AM, she would disappear into the Lady’s Lounge (we had a wonderful ladies room there that had a sitting area with sofas, etc.) and would take a nap on the sofa. With no clock to wake her, she would sleep for anywhere between 20 minutes and 45 minutes. She would also repeat this at lunch, and at her afternoon break. I witnessed this numerous times and spoke to her about it three times before I decided this was too much of a burden on the other people in her department, who had to pick up her slack. I took it to the Secretary of the Corporation, who was also the head of our Human Resources department. He wrote her up, found out she was still doing it, and fired her, citing my verbal and written warnings, as well as his own. I have to add, I asked her about narcolepsy, asked her about her living arrangements, whether she was able to sleep at night…everything I could think of. This was about 20 years ago, but the laws on discrimination haven’t changed much in that time.

When I was deposed for her lawsuit, no one asked me if I had any proof, and I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer it. It was a civil case and she was asking for a LOT of money. I’m not a lawyer, but somewhere along the line, her attorney asked for something that prompted ours and mine into asking me if I would show my proof in court, in front of a judge. As I said, I have no idea what type of hearing this was, but here I was in court, with pictures of her sleeping on the sofa. My camera at the time was a 35mm Canon A1 and I had taken the pictures every day for 2 weeks. She never woke up, and my camera clearly had the date and time on every picture. I had 33 pictures I’d taken, and it deflated her legal team. I know the case against me was dismissed that day, and I believe the whole thing was dropped by the end of the week.

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

Many years ago I bought my first home in a small town called Oakley in California, back then I think they had a population of about 20,000 people not including the Lamas, and the Sheep, the Chickens, the Emus, that was another 100 inhabitants in the town of Oakley. Oakley was not yet a city and was unincorporated so a lot of things were allowed.

I had met my next door neighbors, an older lesbian couple, they were very friendly and helpful and offering any assistance that I may need, I thanked them for that because I was a city boy and unfamiliar with suburban lifestyles. We shared this old fence that was in fair condition but it was going to need attention soon. One day I was mowing the tall weeds down on my backyard lawn, it was in the middle of a hot summer day, temperatures in that town would get up to 100 or more and it definitely felt like a hundred this particular day.

As I was mowing I accidentally bumped one of the slats of our tattered wooden fence and the wood slat leaned over to one side exposing my next door neighbor in the nude laying in the sun. Oh my what a goddess she was, dark glistening skin, hoping that was sweat beading off her perky breast, it was a Kodak moment for sure, but she must’ve suddenly realized the lawn mower was no longer moving because she immediately sat up and looked at me for a quick second then realized its just the guy next door and laid back down as if it were nothing?

So I pushed the wooden slat back into place finished mowing the weeds in my lawn, then later drove a couple screws to hold the wooden slat temporarily in place, and life went on, we would wave at each other from a distance and never mentioned anything about it.

Texas-Style Beef Sausage Rolls with Jalapeño and Cheddar

texas style beef sausage rolls
texas style beef sausage rolls

Yield: 21 rolls

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 onion, finely diced
  • 1/3 cup bread crumbs
  • 4 jalapeño peppers, de-seeded and diced
  • 6 ounces sharp or medium cheddar, finely diced
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
  • 3 (10 inch) sheets puff pastry, thawed
  • 1 egg, beaten

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. Place olive oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add onions and brown for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring frequently. Allow the onions to cool.
  3. In a large bowl, combine beef, cooled onions, bread crumbs, jalapeños, cheese, salt and pepper. Mix gently but thoroughly as to not overwork the meat.
  4. Lay one square of pastry on a board or work surface. Use a third of the beef mixture to form a log down the center. Fold the pastry over the beef mixture on one side, then brush along the edge with egg mixture to create a “glue”. Continue to fold the roll over so it’s fully encased in pastry, and the edges line up on the egg glue line, then press the pastry lightly to ensure a good seal. Repeat steps with each pastry square.
  5. Flip each beef roll so it’s seam side down, then cut into 6 to 8 pieces. Place the pieces onto a sheet pan and bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown. You may need to rotate the tray during baking to ensure even browning.
  6. Allow to cool slightly before serving.

Nutrition

Per serving (based on 90% lean ground beef): 250 Calories; 129 Calories from fat; 14.3g Total Fat (6.4g Saturated Fat; 2.7g Monounsaturated Fat); 35.4mg Cholesterol; 363.6mg Sodium; 15.4g Total Carbohydrate; 0.8g Dietary Fiber; 13.4g Protein; 2.04mg Iron; 117.2mg Potassium; 0.02mg Thiamin; 0.09mg Riboflavin; 3.1mg Niacin (NE); 0.1mg Vitamin B6; 0.9mcg Vitamin B12; 2.4mg Zinc; 9.2mcg Selenium; 28.5mg Choline

This recipe is an excellent source of Protein, Niacin (NE), Vitamin B12 and Zinc. It is a good source of Iron.

U.S. Senate Delegation to visit China while U.S. House of Representatives in disorder

So glad that US internal turmoil is the karma of her bringing the same to the world for too long. Writing on the wall.

What problems does the Chinese economy face in its technological catching-up of advanced economies?

Good News

The Problems that China faces are not Economic Or Market Driven in nature. They are Political.

It’s like trying to hold a massive dam with a 7*3 door

It will crack and collapse as Market forces and Economic Forces crush the Political forces into oblivion. May take a year, five years or maximum ten years.

Why is Chinas Technological surge so fast?

I mean what took US 30 years has taken China just 9 Years.

Sure you may say US already gave them the blueprint but you can’t give a blueprint to a random person and ask them to build the Empire State Building right?

The Answer is DEMAND

China had massive manufacturing requirements and thus evolved Industrial Robots

China had a massive demand for distribution of workers from Semi Rural and Semi Urban areas to big manufacturing centres and thus evolved the rapidly growing High Speed Trains Network

China needs more Robots and AI to integrate the Country having reached a basic level of development and this evolves the Chinese AI revolution.

China wages rise and Low grade manufacture may be affected, thus evolve Chinas surge in Logistical Robotics

Every Technological development is demand based.

Like how US developed in the 1920–2000 period or UK in the 1750–1920 period

Demand based Technological growth is the only real technological growth that drives a Nation forward.

It’s why Shanghai thrives as a Port whereas Hambantota crashes.

It’s why 21% of the BRI projects are unable to stand , because they are Political Ego driven projects not demand based.


Any other Country having demand based technological growth?

None.

You either have Saturated Nations like Western Countries where Pocket Forces cause technological growth (Latest Car, Latest Iphone, Latest Nikes) which is much slower than Demand based technological growth.

Or

You have nations like India or Mexico or Bangladesh where Politics dictates a pesudo technological situation by hook or crook

It’s why GPay works so well but why Bullet train would be a fiasco and why our Airports are all heading to White Elephant Status while our Ports do much better.

It’s why we don’t develop Drone Technology or Robotics or AI at even 10% of Chinas speed. For us these are Gimmicks, there is no Demand.

Political Gimmicks!!!


What Problems does China face?

Stifling Core or Critical Technologies

Chinas growth in AI and Robotics is alarming the West

Yes US and Japan may be ahead of China bit Chinas rapid growth is worrisome in every way.

Huaweis Cloud Computing Architecture is as advanced as any US equivalent at 1/3 the cost.

So the West decide to stifle the Core Technologies that US or the West Develops that China uses.

Throttling the Free Market

It derails projects by a few years and causes problems


How does China handle this?

Economically!!!

Core Technology Companies need Chinese Markets badly. Not just the Profits or Revenue but also the Technological demand based advantage

Without it they will stagnate

And China will bridge the gap faster

So on one hand China invests in its own Core Technologies, brings in Overseas Chinese experts back home, creates more facilities for youngsters and has all technology firms pumping 30% profits into Research

On the other hand Intel, Qualcomm, Renesas and NVDIA actively bypass US Sanctions to keep doing business in China so that they can keep their edge for a longer time.

Boston Dynamics refused to sell Robots to China, and today Chinese Tech companies have replicated to near perfection, four of their best models at 1/2–1/4 the price.

Had they sold liberally, China may have taken 10 more years to do the same.


So how does Technological Growth actually get disrupted?

Internally.

Usually it’s Religion or Social Justice that destroys a rapidly growing Technological base.

This leads to Democratic Divide which leads to Stifling Tech development

So tomorrow if US can being a religious divide in China or pressure Paupers and Unworthy Rabble to demand equality in all areas – then China will be truly stifled

It’s this Human Rights nonsense


So Right now China has no fears whatsoever

It is following the perfect path

A Path the US cannot win under any circumstances

What is the craziest story of a criminal’s plan backfiring hard on him?

I’m not usually a fan of crime stories. Even when the criminal is caught, I end up feeling sad for the victims: Nobody is a winner in a murder case.

The shows are also super predictable. The husband is almost always the killer. He’s your standard self-serving sociopath with narcissism and vindictiveness running through his veins.

Money, or some new young sexual interest, becomes a convenient excuse to kill someone and ruin the lives of an entire extended family. I still don’t understand why people can’t just get a divorce.

Occasionally, I stumble across a crime story that’s plain delicious. It drips with karma and, in this case, an epic set of last words.

A long workday with an unfortunate end

Susan Kuhnhausen was a 51-year-old emergency room nurse in Portland, Oregon. Her job often entailed holding down out-of-control patients. She’d just ended a 13-hour shift and was getting a haircut at a local salon.

Around 6:37 PM, she arrived at her small house and disabled the security system at the entrance.

She walked into her house and dropped off her things in the kitchen. She’d recently thrown her husband of 17-years out of the house. He had a drinking problem and was abusive for years.

Still wearing her blue scrubs, she walked out front to get her mail.

Susan came back in and noticed something was off. Things had been moved. Curtains were now open and slightly fluttering as if they’d been touched. Things on her table weren’t where they’d been left beforehand. She lived alone. Nothing should have moved.

She walked through the house uneasily, looking down hallways, inching along quietly.

Susan walked past her bathroom. She turned into her bedroom and as soon as she walked in, she saw a bearded man holding a hammer. He charged her and swung his hammer, hitting her on the side of the temple. She fell with him jumping on her. She shook him off her back.

Susan was regularly trained in self-defense at her hospital. They taught her how to disarm and break the hold of unruly and mentally ill patients. She knew that if she stayed close to him he wouldn’t be able to swing his hammer properly.

They tumbled into her hallway wrestling. Susan was a larger woman and had the gift of natural strength. Susan locked both hands on his wrist that held the weapon and was able to shake it loose.

Then, they started wrestling and they fell to the ground and she got on top of him, locking her arms around his neck in a sleeper hold.

She held him tight. When she released him his throat had been crushed.

Not knowing if anyone else was in the house, Susan ran next door to see her neighbor Anne, asking her to call the police. Ann later said that Susan was remarkably stoic given the circumstances.

When Anne called the 911, they asked her what the neighbor’s injuries were and she said, “No, it’s for the burglar”

The transcripts from the 911:

Neighbor: She hit him in the head several times. That’s the hammer he had with him. She struck him, and she strangled him, and she thinks he’s dead.

Dispatcher: What did she use on him? She strangled him. What else did she do?

Neighbor: She put a chokehold on him.

Dispatcher: I’ve got help on the way. Stay on the line.

Neighbor: She has a hammer here.

Dispatcher: Don’t touch it. Don’t touch it. Just leave it there.

The would-be assassin was pronounced dead at the scene. He’d been sent by her husband. Their marriage was falling apart and he wanted her dead. He’d paid the assassin $50,000 to go to the house and kill her, giving him the security code to get inside.

She was later treated for injuries and made a full recovery:

Her husband was given a 10-year sentence but he died in prison a few years later. I don’t wish death on anyone but if you break into someone’s house with the intent of killing them, all bets are off.

And if I’m being completely honest, my favorite part of this story was the assassin’s final words, “Wow. You are strong.”

What happened in a courtroom that gave the judge a belly laugh you will never forget?

I was on a jury for a personal injury case. It was my first time at jury duty, and as an engineer, I was interested in the whole process, taking notes, watching the attorneys’ actions, and the judge’s reactions, and general control of the courtroom. I found the whole process fascinating.

When we got to the end of the testimony, they dismissed us into the jury room. It was Friday at 10:30am, and we’d been there since Monday. It only took us about 30 minutes to walk through the instructions, the testimony, and then a unanimous verdict. The foreman was about to knock on the door to tell the bailiff that we were ready when I called out, “Wait!” I explained that if we waited for 15 more minutes, the bailiff would be in with a menu, and they’d get us lunch (that day was a local sandwich shop that had excellent submarine sandwiches). We all agreed that would be worth it, so we waited 15 minutes, ordered lunch, ate, and then told the bailiff we were ready with a verdict.

We returned to the jury room after the verdict was read (to pick up our belongings), and then the bailiff came in to ask if anyone would like to meet with the judge and ask any questions about the process. I certainly did! No one else was even vaguely interested, so they all left the room. The bailiff brought in the judge, and when he saw me, he started laughing, “I knew you would be one of the people to stay and ask questions!” Evidently while I was watching the folks in the court, the judge was watching the jury! That was belly laugh #1.

Belly laugh #2 – the judge and bailiff had a bet that we would/would not be done with the verdict before lunch. IIRC, it was the judge who had lost, and had paid the bailiff $20. When they told me that, I told them we had decided on a verdict before lunch, but didn’t tell them until after we had our food – the judge gave a great guffaw, and told the bailiff to pay up!

REACTING TO OLIVER ANTHONY‼️- “I want to go home”

Amen honey! So good to see our young folks GET THIS AND DEEP!

https://youtu.be/a7YrDtDXm58

What is the lamest “benefit” you’ve been offered by an employer?

Years ago, I did a very brief stint as a departmental admin at a large urban university.

At the HR orientation, we were given a lot of the classic rundown about the history of the school, various policies to know, to do X if Y ever happened, etc. And then they got to talking about the overall compensation packages that this school provided. Essentially, and apologies that this won’t be word perfect after >10 years but it should be fairly close, these were the broad strokes:

“The pay here isn’t very good, but we make it up to you with our very generous benefits”

Now, what were those benefits that were so generous, you ask? The two most memorable were:

  • Partial tuition remission for most graduate programs
  • Large amounts of paid time off

Now, on the face of it, those two are pretty good, right? Well, yes and no. However…

Tuition remissions, even FULL tuition remission, is only in any way useful if you’re actually taking advantage of it. If you’re not looking to take courses, even if “someday” you might want to, for every year you’re not actually doing it, I’m pretty sure you’d rather have that salary $$…no?

As to the PTO, as it turns out, this was a very normal amount of vacation time and then large amounts of sick time. Now, as with many such institutions, if you leave your position you can only get cashed out for your vacation time. So as with the tuition remission, this is a “very generous benefit” that’s only of any use if you actually need large amounts of paid sick time.

At that point in my life, I didn’t have any need of tuition remission, nor any need of large amounts of medical leave.

I instead had a need of money.

[Thankfully I got out after just a few months, because the above was just the tip of the iceberg for why that was the worst freaking job I’ve ever had]

What is the lamest “benefit” you’ve been offered by an employer?”

What does it say about he leadership of the US/Russia/China, that life expectancy in the US was 76 years in 2000, and is still 76 y (despite big technical progress), 67 y in Russia, 2000, and now is 73 y, and 69 y in China, 2000 and now 78 years?

Yes on average Chinese live 2 full years more than the American’s. Go figure!

And to think just a mere 73 years ago their average life expectancy is a mere 39 years ago!

Let me address the many in QUORA that slur China to no end! Tell us what us wrong with a civilisation that can do that! Oh yeah they also took out 1 billion from abject poverty during the same time. And yes the grew from an economy the size of one nation in Africa to. The largest real purchasing power economy on the planet!

Still think demonising China sounds clever? What about your own neocon funded ASPI concluded that China leads in 37 out of 44 most strategic technologies! Or what about having close to 800 million middle class consumers! What do you say? still parroting western narratives that China U.S. authoritarian, it is failing nation and its economy collapsed for the thousandth time since 1949!

At what point do a brain dead Caucasian Chinese hater and China hater quits? Do you prefer to be seen as a pathetic naïveté loser hanging to lies, half truths, fabrications that 95% of the world clearly sees as nonsensical hate wish? Or do you quit while your families still see you sane?

Is China’s goal to decimate the US economy, and in their weakness, allow the Russians to come through and steamroll the USA with nukes?

No, China’s goal has been to raise the standard of living and GDP of all of China’s 1.4B citizens and to be the leader in many industrial sectors through its Made in China 2025 development program. Since the Chinese government sets economic and development policy, it has encouraged Chinese industries to move up the value chain and let more labor-intensive industries relocate to other countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Thailand.

Since the Communist Party of China has control of society and major state-owned enterprises, it is able to channel China’s human and economic resources much more effectively than any G-7 country can. This means that China has an advantage in how quickly it can change, and in the scale of the change.

China is an elephant which can tap-dance.

But this feature was not introduced to decimate the US or to help the Russians steamroll the US with nukes.

This system developed because Chinese society is the most competitive in the world, and for this reason, Chinese believe that China needs to work hard to be competitive in a rapidly changing international economic environment.

Americans and Chinese have completely different attitudes to change. China’s economy and society have changed more in the past 50 years than they have at any other time in China’s long history. This means that Chinese are comfortable with new technologies, with working hard to stay competitive, and constantly adapting.

Americans, for the most part, do not like change. Instead of learning, embracing change and continuously adapting, most Americans reject change. Many implicitly believe that the rest of the world should embrace the American way, so that Americans don’t have to change. The division in US politics is all about rejecting change instead of embracing it. Many Americans view the future with fear and trepidation.

This includes many US government policymakers. This is also the reason behind questions such as this one on Quora.

It is fear based on laziness and ignorance.

The simple truth is that we are architects of the future, but many in the west are too lazy to do the work.

The only place they are not lazy is in finger-pointing.

What’s the most offensive thing you’ve heard when someone assumed you didn’t understand their language?

I worked for a few years in a Chinese restaurant while in my teens and twenties. All the guys from the restaurant lived and worked together.

We were out in an Asian restaurant in Chinatown one night and a very well dressed Chinese man comes to the table and approaches one of my friends speaking to him in Cantonese, of course. I’m the only non-Asian at the table.

The guy exchanges the usual pleasantries with my friend, then asks him why he’s eating with white people. They move on to another subject, but then he returns to dirty, barbarian white people line. He tells my friend he wants to pick up dinner but won’t pay for the “Lofahn”.

I can see my friend is pretty embarrassed as he knows I understand everything that was said. I was going to thank the guys for all his kind words and compliment him on his astute observations.

Unfortunately, this would have caused my friends at the table to lose face, so when he was leaving I wished him a good night in Cantonese leaving him to wonder if I knew…

Britain’s Plan To Disrupt Hong Kong Is Doomed To Fail, Experts Confirmed!

How stupid is the UK? Really!

https://youtu.be/ABYWz7r44MY

Square dancing and Chicago food

When I was in High School there was a on-going activity that was very popular with us guys and girls. This was square-dancing. And you know what? I loved doing it. I also loved the attention that the girls would give to me when they would ask me to go out dancing.

It has been many years… but seriously, I haven’t square danced since. And you know what? I miss that aspect of my life. A fun time during school that occurred so, so very long ago.

However, the bright side is here in China, free dancing is morning, noon and night. Woo! Woo!

Sigh.

Today…

The US Establishment: The Dumbest People In The Room

Roger Boyd

Oct 17, 2023

With the unbending support provided by the US foreign policy establishment for the obvious Israeli “atrocity” propaganda ploy to facilitate a second Naqba, the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, that establishment has once again shown itself to be the dumbest people in the diplomatic and international relations room. Below, I cover the increasing utter ignorance and stupidity of those that have a self-image of the cleverest people in the room; a disabling combination of ignorance, stupidity, corruption and arrogance. The current Israeli elite, the vast majority of which hold US, other Western and even Russian passports, may not be as dumb but are being driven to desperate means by the demographic dynamics of the region together with the now obvious decline of US power.

Part of the pure dumbness of the US foreign policy establishment is due to its utter corruption. Within the military, the generals tend to be those that could kiss ass and politic well, not those that served their countries well. Part of that kiss-assing is to the deeply corrupt corporations of the Military Industrial Complex, who are focused on profits not improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the US military nor its use for the general benefit of the US population. That MIC is the retirement plan for the generals, and admirals, as this piece by the Quincy Institute details. To quote:

·      26 of 32 four–star officers who retired after June 2018 — over 80 percent — went to work for the arms industry as board members, advisors, executives, consultants, lobbyists, or members of financial institutions that invest in the defense sector.

·      The biggest category of post–retirement employment for four–stars, by far, was as board members or advisors for small and medium–sized arms contractors, with 15 choosing that option. This compares to five who became board members, advisors or executives for one of the top 10 arms contractors. 

·      Five retired four–stars became arms industry consultants, five became lobbyists for weapons companies, and four joined financial firms that make significant investments in the defense sector.

The politicians are also widely known to be utterly corrupted, with the MIC making sure that it has factories in the electoral districts of every senator and representative, and “money as free speech” rained down upon them like rain from the oligarch rain makers. Bob Menendez is only one of the worst examples:

Then we have the “intellectuals” who sell their knowledge and skills relatively cheap on the “thinktank” circuit. With respect to Occupied Palestine they have many such intellectual pimping organizations to choose from, one of them being the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, full of ex State Department operatives and craven academics. Nowhere can you find who actually funds this so obviously pro-Israel and pro-aggressive US foreign policy outfit. The beauty of such “thinktanks” is that propaganda can be so easily washed through their hands onto the pages of the mainstream media as if from some, “independent” academic source:

Today, almost daily, newspapers in the U.S. and Europe carry analysis about the Middle East by experts of the Institute, but without identifying the organization as pro-Israel and close to the Israel lobby … the Washington Middle East Scene … changed radically … with the advent of the Clinton administration. Clinton appointed Martin Indyk, who founded WINEP as the research arm of AIPAC, as his chief Middle East advisor (he did not have U.S. citizenship at the time and his papers were rushed in to meet the confirmation process).

The administration then cleansed all Arabists from the State Department and anybody who was identified as tilting to the Arab point of view was sent to Siberian posts. The message was loud and clear: the U.S. government would no longer tolerate anybody daring to express the “Arab point of view” in the Arab-Israeli question.

That quickly elevated the status of the Washington Institute and many of its researchers served in high positions of government, especially at State and Defense. At least three of its “experts” served as assistant secretaries of state for the Near East (the top Middle East post at the Department of State). The reputation of the Institute as the organization which staffs Middle East posts at the National Security Council in the White House, State, and Defense grew.

The US State Department was consciously made dumb, with those that understood the complexity of the Middle East replaced with Zionist ideologues. The same can be said for Russia, with true academics such as Stephen S. Cohen pushed to the media and academic edges as they had the temerity to consider that Russia may have its own legitimate interests. The same with those that truly understand China and understand that cooperation with China is the best option for the US long term.

The US establishment, dominated by the international and global corporations from at least the 1930s onwards, seeks complete domination of the globe for the facilitation of the extraction of resources and value added for the furthering of its own wealth and power. With the coming of the second unipolar moment, all arms of the foreign policy and security establishment were cleansed of those that understood and empathized with other nations and restaffed with ideologues that would happily implement the plan for global domination. This is the reason why the Eastern European Division of the State Department etc. was filled with extremist ethnic Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans who have a pathologic hatred of Russia. These people are simply tools of the oligarchy, courtiers who will only stay in place if they carry out the oligarch’s wishes. The same for the many Jews in senior state positions, who after the post-WW2 attack upon the Jewish community as communists (e.g. the McCarthyite taking down of the Jewish Hollywood moguls, Oppenheimer, the Rosenbergs etc.) quickly moved to the right to protect themselves; becoming consiglieres to the US Mafia-State in addition to the Italian Mafia.

Their positions are not a sign of their strength, rather a sign of their readiness to serve the US establishment; empires many times use compliant ethnic minorities to help administer their territories. The same as Israel itself being a colonial project of the UK and then the US as a Western island of influence to keep the Middle East weak, just as with Ukraine after the 2014 coup.

Even with the highly obedient ethnic courtiers, no risks are taken with the oligarchic control. Three oligarch-serving and quite prominent Muslim anchors, Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohieddine and Ali Velshi, have been removed by MSNBC during the current Israeli colonial escalation. This after the US Jewish courtier Dan Abrams (ABC’s Chief Legal Analyst and media entrepreneur) singled out the three of them for opprobrium for their delivery of an honest balanced view of the true causes of the conflict. How dare the ethnic courtiers question the oligarch’s policies! Perhaps they feel how US Jews felt after being victimized during the McCarthy era?

Taking Afghanistan and Iraq without a plan

Sheer over weaning arrogance drove the US establishment to invade Afghanistan and Iraq without a plan for “what after?” Six trillion dollars later they had exited Afghanistan through a pathetic retreat and had greatly enhanced Iranian influence in Iraq. For much less money the US could have easily funded the development of the two nations and gained the support of their populations. But of course, that would not have provided a massive process of financial extraction through which the MIC and US capitalist ruling class in general extracted vast amounts of money from the US state. The money would end up in the bank accounts of the already rich, and the debts were owed by the US people. As would much of the drug profits from the poppy fields that came back into production after the Taliban was removed, and ceased production soon after the Taliban returned.

Attempting to thwart Chinese technology parity to the US

After blindly profiteering from cheap Chinese labour for more than two decades, while facilitating the development of China as an industrial competitor to the US, the US establishment is now trying to close the technology door after the horse has bolted well down the field. Instead of crimping China, these policies will simply reduce the sales of Western technology companies. Within a decade at most, China will have equalled or surpassed the West in all technology fields. In microchips, as in many other technology fields, the Chinese were happy just to buy the goods from the West. It was the sanctions which actually galvanized Chinese corporations and the state to launch a massive program to overcome the Western technology lead, and the Western sanctions designed to keep China as a subaltern.

Attempting to use Ukraine against Russia

The utter ignorance and delusion of the foreign policy elites was shown in their utterly ridiculous belief that Russia would fold like a house of cards under Western sanctions and its population would rebel and overthrow Putin. The opposite has occurred, as Russia is poised to win the Ukrainian war in the next year or so, support for Putin has strengthened, and it is Europe that has been weakened. At the same time, the Western financial system has been exposed as a tool for the expropriation of those that disagree with the West. In addition, the sanctions have freed Russia to align with both Iran and North Korea; strengthening both in their opposition to the West and strengthening the EurAsian anti-West alliance.

Creating and Facilitating the extremist Zionist Israeli Settler Apartheid State

The vast majority of European Jews in the post-WW2 period wanted to emigrate to the United States, but the still relatively high level of antisemitism in the US blocked this route, as was the case with Canada and the UK as well. Another route would have been to carve a new nation out of the ruins of those that had attempted to exterminate them, primarily Germany but also perhaps a Lithuania where the extermination of the 200,000+ Jewish community had involved many members of a deeply antisemitic community. The latter option was not probable under the Stalin leadership and the former not under the German occupation by the US, Soviet Union, the UK and France. Instead, the Arab population would be made to pay for the centuries of antisemitism of the Europeans.

This option fit the foreign policy aims of the British (who issued the infamous Balfour Declaration in 1917), and later the US, to have a European settler colony to aid the control of the Arab lands under which oil had been found while once and for all ridding themselves of the Jewish issue. This option also fit the aims of the Zionist Jewish minority, a group of non-religious Jews who planned for an ethnically pure Jewish homeland. With the support of the British, an increasing number of European Jews (Ashkenazi) were allowed to settle in Palestine; prior to the British mandate that started in 1920 only about 5%, 25,000, of the population was Jewish. During the mandate, over 400,000 Jews emigrated to Palestine, and by 1947 the Jewish population was 630,000 out of a total of a total of 2 million. Through a UN dominated by the Western powers (the Soviet Union had not taken its chair at the UN Security Council and the Chinese chair was taken by Taiwan), the Jews were allotted a contiguous homeland that was disproportionate to their relative numbers (56% of the land) and contained much of the coast as well as the best land; the desire to “hem in” the Palestinian population was obvious. The Zionists then grabbed much more land through the Nakba ethnic cleansing which was the primary cause of the Arab-Israeli War, forcing 700,000 Palestinians to flee. The UN have since passed endless resolutions telling the Israeli’s to relinquish this stolen land, but with the US, France and the UK enjoying veto powers at the UN Security Council these were toothless. The establishment of Israel was fundamentally a British and then a US geopolitical project, led by non-religious Jews who had planned a nationalist and racist project of ethnic cleansing for decades; the latter simply took advantage of the Holocaust to wrap themselves in religious victimhood clothing.

Since then, Israel has served the US Empire well both as an offsetting power in the Middle East and also as a provider of enforcers across the globe. The latter are extremely useful as they give the US a gift of deniability, with Israelis doing the Empire’s dirty work. Just as the Nepalese Gurkhas and Indian ethnic minority Sikhs had done for the British Empire. Over the past few decades a greater number of non-European Jews (the Mizrahi) have settled in Israel, and their birth rate has exceeded that of the European Ashkenazi. The Mizrahi tend toward a greater level of religiousness and extremism, with the worst elements being akin to a Jewish ISIS that wants a Jewish state ruled by Jewish religious law. It is this group that also wants to demolish the Al-Aksar mosque, the third holiest place in the Muslim world, and build a Jewish synagogue upon its ruins. The current Israeli government, and an increasing number of its armed forces and police, represent the Mizrahi. The Ashkenazi – Mizrahi ideological split represents the basic conflict within Israeli society that had broken out prior to the most recent Gazan conflict.

This excellent Duran panel with Alastair Crooke and Glenn Diesen covers this schism within Israel.

Both the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi are ethnically cleansing Zionists, their only differences are between the nature of the Israeli state and the tactics used to gain their objective. For the Ashkenazi, their plan of the slow death of the Palestinian West Bank communities under a thousand settler cuts has worked extremely well at keeping their ethnic cleansing under the geopolitical radar; greatly aided by Western and Arab elite complicity. The Mizrahi are pushing for tactics that would enflame the whole Arab world and make it impossible for the complicit Arab elites not to side with the Palestinians. Unfortunately for the Israelis the Middle East has greatly changed in the past few decades, and not in their favour:

·      Iran survived the Iraqi invasion meant to quash the still-young revolution against the Western-puppet Shah, and Western sanctions have also been resisted. The Western attempts to destroy Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have resulted in a great expansion of Iranian power in the region; an Iran of 90 million people possessing a highly developed Military Industrial Complex.

·      The second Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 (the first was in 1976) proved to be an abject failure, with the Israeli army being forced back by the forces of Hezbollah. The latter has only grown stronger since then, now possessing over 100,000 soldiers (many having gained experience in Syria) and highly advanced military equipment including 130,000+ missiles.

·      Syria survived the attempts of the Western powers, Israel and some Arab powers to destroy it and has now substantially recovered. One result is a war-hardened armed forces and the presence of both Iranian and Russian military forces.

·      Demographic shifts have massively changed the balance of forces against Israel, with Arab populations growing much more rapidly than the Israeli one with a heavy skew to military-age adults.

·      The peace initiatives between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council states (which includes Saudi Arabia) and between Syria and the Arab states, have greatly increased the cohesion of the Arab world.

·      The Ukraine conflict has very significantly deepened diplomatic, economic and military relations between Iran and Russia. Turkey’s rapprochement with both Russia and Iran also removes it as a tool of Us foreign policy in the region, isolating Israel further. Significant amounts of Israeli munition stocks were also sent to Ukraine.

Fundamentally, the issue for the Israeli’s is that they need to come to terms with the new reality that they are no longer invincible or the dominant power in the West Asian region. But this would require Israel to retreat from all of the land stolen from 1947 onwards, together with the Syrian Golan Heights; something that both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi are completely unwilling to do. Together with the power of the US and the West waning, Israel only has a short window where it may be able to complete its ethnic cleansing and that seems to be the strategy that the Mizrahi-dominated government has set upon. The highly fabricated Hamas “atrocities” provide the propagandist smokescreen behind which the 2+ million Gazan population will be driven out through military terror tactics. After that the West bank can be ethnically cleansed in a much less visible way, one enclave at a time.

The fact is that this has to be one of the dumbest strategies possible; one guaranteed to unite the Arab world against Israel as well as ignite a significant proportion of Western populations. As has been noted even by the US state apparatus, Israel does not seem to have a plan for what to do after it has triggered the Arab world’s response. Can it fight a multi-front war against Hezbollah (who have stated that they will intervene if Gaza is invaded), Syria, an exploding West bank, 20% of its own population that is Arab, and possibly hundreds of thousands of Arabs travelling to fight a holy war against Israel? None of these considerations seemed to have passed through the Israeli leaders’ heads, nor at first through the heads of the US and Western leaders who knee-jerked absolute support for their colonial project.

This support, in parallel to the multiple crimes of humanity carried out by the Israelis against the Gazan population (cutting off of basic amenities such as electricity and water, bombing of hospitals, indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas etc.), has destroyed the West’s credibility with respect to the “other 7 billion” and the Arab states in particular. The Abraham Accords designed to support the slow quiet ethnic cleansing of Israel are dead and buried. The Western elites have also been forced into propagandistic gymnastics that serve to undermine their own narratives; for example, being for Muslims in Xinjiang but against Muslims in Palestine, applauding a Nazi in the Canadian parliament only weeks before being “fully behind Israel”. Not unexpectedly, the height of dumbness was reached by Blundering Blinken who on arrival in Israel stated that he came “as a Jew” as well as the US Secretary of State. What are the Arabs supposed to make of such a statement, or the non-Jewish citizens of the US? His partner in the Duo of Dumbness, The Joke Sullivan (US National Security Adviser) had stated that the Middle East was very stable only a couple of weeks ago.

As Bhadrakumar points out in Indian Punchline, an Arab-Iran-China axis has been created on this issue focused on the plight of the Gazan population, aligning the major Middle Eastern Arab and Persian powers and placing China as an ally of both them and the Palestinian people. Such an alliance attests to the incredible failure of US foreign policy in the region while Blundering Blinken flits from one country to another repeating Israel’s “right to defend itself” against those that it has imprisoned. The parallels with the statements of the Nazis with respect to the rebelling populations of the occupied territories during WW2 are redolent, but invisible to this ideologically blinded numbskull. A great product of the esteemed Dalton school, Harvard (social studies degree) and Columbia (law); none of which seem to have taught him any real history or improved his critical faculties. His ascent from lowly speech writer and political fixer to US Secretary of State reflects his craven courtier qualities much more than any great intelligence.

No matter what happens next, the US establishment and its foreign policy and security service courtiers have created a new foreign policy debacle that can only hasten the decline of their soft power across the globe while increasing the cohesiveness of their opponents. Through decades of support for the colonial ethnically cleansing apartheid Israel they have simply fostered an ever more extreme regime. One that threatens to destroy itself, and perhaps the rest of humanity by its actions. Unfortunately for the predominantly Anglo-Saxon US establishment, the Zionists have spent decades embedding themselves in the US state, political and economic circles. The disciplining of Israel would require the disciplining of a core section of the US Mafia-State, the US media, and significantly rich Zionist citizens and their powerful association AIPAC. So, instead Muslim anchors are quietly removed from the media to keep the “Israeli victims defending themselves / terrorist Hamas” narrative unchallenged.

The US establishment may be the “Empire of Chaos” but the result seems to be more of it reaping the whirlwind of blowback rather than gaining advantage against its opponents. Pepe Escobar called it nine years ago, perhaps the Duo of Dumbness and their establishment backers should have read his book.

Chicago-Style Breaded Steak Sandwich

This is a much loved Chicago sandwich. The Italians in Chicago really know how to make yummy sandwiches. You won’t be disappointed!

chicago style breaded steak sandwich
chicago style breaded steak sandwich

Prep: 10 min | Cook: 30 min | Yield: 6 sandwiches

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 6 sandwich steak or round steak cutlets, pounded to 1/8 inch thick
  • Salt and pepper, to season
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3 eggs, whipped with 2 tablespoons water
  • 1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
  • 2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped (added to bread crumbs)
  • 1 1/2 to 2 cups tomato basil spaghetti sauce
  • 6 French rolls
  • 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 6 ounces hot or mild Giardiniera

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Heat oil in a 12 inch skillet over medium heat.
  3. Warm tomato basil sauce over medium heat in a skillet.
  4. Season steaks with salt and pepper, then lightly coat in flour, shaking off excess.
  5. Coat steaks in egg wash, again shaking off the excess egg, then press steaks into breadcrumbs, coating completely.
  6. Fry 2 or 3 steaks at a time in the oil for about 2 minutes per side, or until deep golden brown.
  7. Dip the steaks one by one into tomato basil sauce to coat, then transfer to French rolls, folding them into a v shape.
  8. Sprinkle cheese and giardiniera into the fold of the steaks or over the top of the steaks, as desired, then wrap each sandwich in foil.
  9. Place wrapped sandwiches in the oven. Bake for 3 to 5 minutes.

Why are people getting lazier about finding good jobs?

They aren’t.

What’s happening is employers are posting job ads like…

“Senior Developer required! Must have at least a master’s degree in computer science, Ph.D. preferred. Minimum 15 years experience running a large development team for a Fortune 500 company. You will be responsible for rolling out a new $8 billion distributed computing platform that will help our company increase its revenue by $2 billion a year. Starting pay $7.95 to $8.25 an hour. No benefits. “

WhY dOeSn’t AnYoNe WaNt To WoRk AnYmOrE???!

PeOpLe ArE sO lAzY!!!!!”

A Visitor Reports on China

Just finished a 2-week trip in China (Shanghai, Beijing, Xi’an, Yen’An)

Hadn’t been since Dec 2019, previously visited multiple times/year for 20+ years. Had to see for myself how things are vs. media reports within the US. For the record, I am neither Pro or Anti China, I am Pro-Business. Here are my summary observations/opinions:

  • Economy is definitely slowing down and most people feel or see the impact. However, the loudest complainers are from the ‘elite’ segment (well educated, experience with MNCs, live in Shanghai, etc.). Noticed people in Beijing, Xian, and smaller cities weren’t as concerned.
  • Despite downturn, most people aren’t severely impacted for now. They have plenty of savings, almost no debt, and can live with their parents. Chinese are notoriously frugal and save for a rainy day – guess what? It’s raining now. Also, for perspective, economy still going to grow 4–5%, just not 8–10% as hoped/expected. So people aren’t buying as many luxury goods, the 10+ Uber/Lyft rideshare companies aren’t getting as much traffic, and not every engineer will get their dream job.
  • Foreign population visibly lower, the smallest number I’ve seen in 20+ years even in Shanghai. Took a flight from BJ to Shanghai, saw less than 20 foreigners at airport and plane, most appear to be from Europe. Shouldn’t have been surprised given the situation but eye opening nonetheless.
  • Technology progress in China is for real. ~35–40% of cars in Shanghai are EVs. And they are much nicer than expected, even from brands I’ve never heard of. BYD has a version that can do 900 KM on full charge (vs. 450 for a Tesla). Huawei 6G pro is impressive. Bullet train system is easy, convenient, and fast (some routes didn’t exist just a few years ago). Subways are upgraded. Robotic companies everywhere. This was my area of expertise, a bit disturbed to see how quickly they copy-catted, highly likely they got some IP improperly IMO. One executive told me they don’t need any tech know-how from America today. This is where things are at whether the US admits to it or not.
  • 80–90% of all money transactions for me was electronic. I linked my ATM card to Alipay and it was pretty easy most of the time. I got a bunch of added charges though, some expected, some not. Kind of annoying.
  • My US cell phone was blocked in China, meaning I couldn’t iMessage or call Chinese numbers (not the case before). My WeChat messages to locals came with warnings. Just some minor retaliation from China.
  • Downloaded 2 VPNs, between the two I was able to get most of what I needed from US though they would crash 1/day or work very slowly sometimes. People still use WhatsApp a lot in Shanghai. One bonus: Spotify worked great even within the firewall!
  • In Shanghai I saw signs of small groups of “youts”, meaning younger generation Chinese dressed more hip or alternative (baggy pants, blond hair, etc.). Hadn’t seen much of this before, we’ll see if it evolves like Japan in the 80s.
  • Most Chinese are aware of the Sino vs. US tension. The more educated are privately quite critical of the current CCP government. But they are also confused with US positions. For example, why are Huawei and BYD banned in the US but Apple and Tesla are allowed in China? They don’t see all the negative coverage on China from the US, but do get amplified coverage of US deficiencies (gun violence, Trump, Biden gaffes, gov’t shutdown talk, etc.). They all hope things get better. And nearly all Chinese I talked to aren’t big fans of Russia.
  • In summary, my takeaway is China is going through a pretty big correction. For some, it’s hurting but for now, the country is fine. I do see the impact of lesser foreign investment but IMO, there is still significant opportunity. China still covets global products and services, and believe established quality is paramount – especially in Shanghai. The rules are just tighter and some sectors are more complicated than before. I believe if things don’t get better in 1–2 years, there could be some serious trouble. I’m guessing many Chinese nationals outside of the country are also paying attention to this as well.

Scott Ritter: THIS is Why the US Will LOSE Its War on China

This is surprisingly good. Take this video to the bank. It is really, really good.

Easy Sloppy Joe Pot Pie

All the great taste of classic sloppy joes in an easy one-skillet pot pie. No one will miss the buns!

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611f5b8cfcab738997cb80af22a265bb

Prep: 5 min | Bake: 40 min | Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
  • 1 (15 1/2 ounce) can original sloppy joe sauce
  • 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Cheddar cheese
  • 1 cup Original Bisquick® mix
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 egg

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
  2. Cook beef and onion in ovenproof 10-inch skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until beef is brown; drain.
  3. Stir in sloppy joe sauce.
  4. Sprinkle with cheese.
  5. Stir remaining ingredients until blended. Pour over beef mixture.
  6. Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Notes

Special Touch: Before baking, sprinkle with a tablespoon of sesame seed.

What did a family member say or do that you don’t talk to them anymore?

I was adopted by an amazing family when I was 4 1/2. My adoptive mom and adoptive dad had a biological child, my adoptive sister, who was 3 years my senior that was killed in a car accident when she was 21. I was 18 and a senior in high school. The loss of my sister devastated us all and changed the framework for our family for sure. My mom, dad, and I became even closer and cling to one another after knowing that any of us could be gone in an instant after losing my sister under such sudden circumstances.

Fast forward 27 years. My father was diagnosed with Brain Cancer. He quickly gave me Power of Attorney to make all medical and financial decisions on his behalf since he knew I’d honor his every wish. He had a sister that basically controlled and manipulated all their siblings except for him since he was the oldest sibling and had moved away from all their drama first chance he got. When my aunt found out that my father placed me in charge of his care and not her, she angrily called me and said, “You aren’t a REAL daughter! You’re just a daughter on paper!” She then added, “The only reason he put you in charge is because he didn’t have a choice!!”

So, I quietly hung up the phone on her, continued to allow her to visit my father (but kept a close eye on her so she wouldn’t steal anything). On the day of his funeral I went up to her and told her that our mutual point of contact is gone and I no longer wanted any contact with her or anyone she knew! I told her that I wished to cut off all communication and contact with her and that side of the family now. That if I heard from her or anyone that she sent to call, visit, spy on my or my daughter that I’d promptly call the police for trespassing and/or harassment. I later put that in writing when returning an assistive device she had given my dad to tell him get out of the car.

Have not heard a peep from her since. Best decision I ever made! Keep toxic family members out if your life and keep things moving forward for yourselves!!

America at its best

the result of its strong and capable leadership

image 78
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This is Evil and Demonic

always calling for war, killing and destruction of others

but they cannot stop threatening or demonizing others

as they and their nation – consumed by hate – are now controlled by the anti-Christ himself

PLEASE do NOT let their hate get to you so that you also lose your humanity and become like them

because that is the exact intention of their Deity

Will the US dollar lose its global power in the next 5 years?

Nobody today wants a confrontation with the United States

It is the United States which is becoming unbearable

After Barack Obama, the US has been :-

  • Reneging on past promises
  • Bullying almost every Nation
  • Imposing illegal Tariffs
  • Making fake claims with no substantive evidence against one and all

The US is becoming so unreasonable that other nations are rightfully ten times more frightened of the US than they are of China & Russia

The US unilaterally blocked all trade from Cuba for almost 65 years for no reason

Cuba hasn’t attacked the US once and is no threat to the US

Now US openly tells Venezuela that only the person US says must be the President if Venezuela want their money back or they will be sanctioned

They have refused to pay 12 nations their own money including Russia

They threaten to sanction any nation that does business with a nation sanctioned by the US

They are like the Catholic Church in the 1100s with their excommunication powers


The US Dollar is a weapon which the US could use to starve a nation of energy and food and imports ON A WHIM

Vermin like Lindsey Graham who still think they rule the world and have a say in what anyone does


So there are at least 100 Countries that want a backup plan to ensure continuous delivery of energy and food if the US decides to go rogue on them

So many nations are going to ensure that they REDUCE THEIR DEPENDENCE on the Dollar

That’s guaranteed

Unless the US goes back to it’s best behaviour and passes a law regarding the legality of sanctions against a nation and against associate nations in the house, Senate and by the President.

Unless the US stops interference everywhere


Now will that lose the Global power of the Dollar

Not necessarily

The USD will remain the largest reserve currency

Yet the US can’t weaponize the Dollar anymore

There will be alternate payment systems and alternate payments for Energy and Food including Cross Currency payments

That’s undeniable

The days of the US Army threatening people are gone now.


The USD and it’s dominance will be dependent on Economics and Trade and not the strength of the US Army Or the threat of Sanctions

That’s virtually a guarantee in five years

BIBLICAL PROPHECY- REAL LIFE: Netanyahu Warns will “Destroy Damascus if Hezbollah Enters War”

World Hal Turner

Biblical Prophecy seems to be playing out in real life right now, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just announced “Israel warns that the United States will join (the war) if Hezbollah joins. IDF will destroy Damascus, target Syrian President Assad if Hezbollah joins war; US warships will support Israel in war.”

When I first heard this remark, I recoiled in horror, and instantly recalled the Prophecy of Damascus:

Isaiah 17 predicts the destruction of Damascus, Syria.

Isa 17:1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.

Folks, I’m no Priest, or Rabbi, or Preacher, or Reverend.  I’m not some Bible scholar or even a Bible Thumper.  I’m just a regular guy, who grew up a “Holiday Catholic.”  That means I went to church on Christmas and Easter.  Throw in a few weddings and funerals, and that was about it.

Yet even a Biblically-ignorant man like me knows the prophecy of Damascus and now it looks as though we’re seeing it take place in real time.  OUR TIME!

This is terrifying to me because if this takes place, the steps to Armageddon are well along their way.

When US accuses China on information dominance, it’s like Uncle Sam talking about itself

A topic most likely missed

Karl Sanchez

Oct 4, 2023

An Outlaw US Empire government report was issued by the Department of State last Thursday called “How The People’s Republic Of China Seeks To Reshape The Global Information Environment.” The immediate reaction from China and most other nations resounds in the above title, where one writer says, “And the first reaction of the most readers is – isn’t the report about the US itself?. Another article headlines: “People are not blind in seeing US’ empire of lies: Chinese FM refuting State Department’s China report”.

Before I provide the text of those two articles there’s an important observation that needs to be made that some will know while for others it will be a revelation. Some know the history of the US code breakers prior to and during WW2 which was of profound importance and served as the basis for what became the National Security Agency post-war, although it’s most properly known as the National Surveillance Agency. Prior to my working for one of its smaller arms during my US Army Reserve service with an EW/Sigint Company based at Moffet Field, California, I became aware of what was the largest industrial espionage program ever in world history: Project Echelon, which was the #1 NSA project at the time, well before the Internet Age. I wasn’t too shocked by this revelation despite the significance of it being a quasi-fascist relationship between government and Big Business. And it was the Cold War so spying on the Other Side was a given. The work my Company did was tactical battlefield spying and interdiction, not strategic, although it was interesting what the jammers and other spies would listen to during our monthly exercises. On our larger Summer Field Training Exercises (FTX), we were always tasked as the OpForce—the Soviets—and we’d always win because the operational security (OPSEC) of the regular army formations was horrific—as bad or worse than ‘Nam I was told by many. And from what I hear and know, it hasn’t improved much since then. The point being, we were actually good at spying on others but we were woeful when spied upon. And apparently, that’s been and continues to be a chronic problem—US troops just don’t want to follow OPSEC regardless their generation—WW2 to present. The result is an acute sensitivity to the problem—Project Echelon revelations were denied by one and all despite hard evidence and protestations from nations who thought they were seen as friendly. (Thus the lesson that the Outlaw US Empire has no friends only interests.) The Pentagon Papers revealed the degree of propagandization the US public was subjected to, and other revelations told even more, like Operation Mockingbird. Watergate was also revelatory—the president spied on himself! Wow! Was that ever a revelation; and then it was revealed that Ike had started it and JFK continued it. And of course, before all of that was 1984 and its Ministry of Truth that merged well with the propaganda aimed at the West by the West about the Soviet Bloc and then the Red Chinese, etc. And even before 1984 there was George Seldes and other journalists who wrote about their being censored not just by the government but by their own publications”: You can’t Print That! was one of Seldes titles filled with revelations that if published when written might have made a difference. Seldes was followed by IF Stone as the 1940s became the 1950s, and ever since there’ve always been a small number of genuine patriot journalists trying to tell the public what’s actually happening. Which brings us back to our new, latest government lie, which is actually propaganda aimed at the US public to demonize what the Warmongers see as their next opponent.

This op/ed was published in Global Times on 29 September but its access was blocked until today by I don’t know who/what. Because the US government lies all the time to one and all, many assume other governments do the same thing, but that’s not the case, particularly with today’s Info War where the high ground is being truthful and factual consistently so you gain credibility because you’re honest. Lying about others and yourself propagandizes your populace to not trust any government. And in this case, the US Government doesn’t want anyone to trust the word of Russia or China. So, one can see the Outlaw US Empire’s lying campaign as a Psyop aimed primarily at its own people. So, here’s the op/ed’s contents:

The hypocrisy of the US is on full display in its newly-released report on China, while Washington’s anxiety on its own capability to dominate public opinion is also bubbling. The report, launched by the US Department of State on Thursday local time, is called “How The People’s Republic Of China Seeks To Reshape The Global Information Environment.” And the first reaction of the most readers is – isn’t the report about the US itself? 

The report focuses on accusing China of information manipulation via propaganda, disinformation, and censorship in an attempt to seek information dominance globally. Yet it sounds more like a portrayal of Uncle Sam himself when he is looking at the mirror, and then makes it about China, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times.

Has China ever manipulated global information like the US has been doing? Like the time when Washington claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the media parroted the claim, and US allies followed suit in US-led invasion of the Middle East country? Or like the time when the US faced the world’s highest COVID death toll, the US took the top spot on Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking?

If the US claims No. 2 in the world in disinformation and public opinion manipulation campaign, no one dares to claim No. 1. Think about how US political elites and media outlets uniformly bleats the word “unprovoked” in reference to Russia-Ukraine conflict, despite the fact that the conflict was not only provoked, but deliberately provoked by NATO’s eastward expansion; and how the US distracts public attention from US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report that the US was the mastermind behind the Nord Stream pipelines explosion, by claiming the sabotage was made by a six-member team of a pro-Ukraine group.

The US takes every measure to make the world hostile against Washington’s rivals. Launching an information war against China is therefore a part of US containment strategy, with a goal to create an “evil” image of China in the international public opinion arena. The new report is simply a latest example in US long list of tactics to make the world vigilant toward China. 

This is why the US has been encircling China, half a world away from US own soil, with a chain of military bases and ports, yet calling China an “aggressor.” When a Chinese civilian unmanned airship accidentally floated over the US, the later made no hesitation in labelling the incident an act of espionage. The hysteria lasted for months until Pentagon, after a lengthy examination, confirmed it did not collect any information, not to mention send any data back to China.

American elites are so comfortable living in their echo chamber to repeat their accusation on “forced labor in Xinjiang,” which appears in almost every China-related report issued by US authorities. Unsurprisingly, it also shows up in the latest report. When people, especially from Western countries, have actually visited Xinjiang, acknowledge the development, improved healthcare, rising education and employment levels in the region, as what they see with their bare eyes, the politicians in Washington are busying clamoring so-called genocide and forced labor. 

But whenever someone tells the truth, or whenever Chinese media tell the truth, they are labelled as a puppet of a Chinese propaganda machine. Who is manipulating information? How come the US has the freedom to spread disinformation but China becomes a manipulator for telling the truth? 

The US State Department gets one thing wrong. It is not China manipulating information. But the US has been undermining its own credibility by lying for so long. It seems the US can also sense the fragility of its manipulation. Unfortunately, the way it responds to it is spreading more disinformation by smearing its rivals. 

The more the US tries, the more its hypocrisy is exposed. The last thing the US cares about is public access to information, it cares about its hegemony, including that in the information field. Otherwise, why Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have to go through prosecution just for telling the truth?  

This is what the Global Majority wants stopped ASAP.

On October 1, a reply made by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was made and an article built around that was published by Global Times, “People are not blind in seeing US’ empire of lies: Chinese FM refuting State Department’s China report”. Putin’s term, Empire of Lies, is now in wide use, which helps in the Info War but doesn’t mean the use of truth and facts can diminish. And here’s its content:

Refuting the US Department of State’s malicious report claiming that China has invested billions of dollars spreading disinformation globally, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the report itself is disinformation, and people of the world are not blind in seeing the US’ ugly attempts that have proven time and again that it is an “empire of lies” through and through.

Titled “How the People’s Republic of China Seeks to Reshape the Global Information Environment,” the US report focuses on accusing China of information manipulation in an attempt to achieve global information dominance. It says that China’s “global information manipulation” is a challenge to the integrity of the global information space. 

Responding to the report, a spokesperson from the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Saturday the report is in itself disinformation as it misrepresents facts and truth. In fact, it is the US that invented the weaponizing of the global information space. 

The relevant center of the US State Department which concocted the report is engaged in propaganda and infiltration in the name of “global engagement.” It is a source of disinformation and the command center of “perception warfare.” 

From Operation Mockingbird that involved bribing and manipulating news media for propaganda purposes in the Cold War era, to a vial of white powder and a staged video of the “White Helmets” cited as evidence to wage wars of aggression in Iraq and Syria earlier this century, and then to the enormous lie made up to smear China’s Xinjiang policy, facts have proven time and again that the US is an “empire of lies” through and through, the spokesperson said.

Even some in the US, such as Senator Rand Paul, acknowledged that the US government is the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world.

Some in the US may think that they can prevail in the information war as long as they propagate enough lies, but the people of the world are not blind, the spokesperson said.

“No matter how the US tries to pin the label of ‘disinformation’ on other countries, more and more people in the world have already seen through the US’ ugly attempt to perpetuate its supremacy by weaving lies into ’emperor’s new clothes’ and smearing others,” the spokesperson noted.  

China’s response has revealed the distorted narrative of the US and fully exposed the US’ use of this report as a crucial element in trying to shape public opinion and international consensus in its strategic competition with China, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Sunday. 

The spokesperson’s remarks have unveiled the insidious intentions and deceptive nature of Washington, contributing to a clearer and more comprehensive understanding within the international community of the US’ unscrupulous practices in its China policy, Li said. This includes the US’s longstanding history of hypocrisy, deception, and inconsistency in its words and actions.

The US has been taking every measure to make the world hostile against Washington’s rivals. Launching an information war against China is therefore a part of US containment strategy, with a goal to create an “evil” image of China in the international public opinion arena. The new report is simply a latest example in the US’ long list of tactics to make the world vigilant toward China, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times.

However, the more the US tries, the more its hypocrisy is exposed. The last thing the US cares about is public access to information, and it cares about its hegemony, including that in the information field, the expert added. 

Disinformation disguised as disinformation? Why not. The Establishment Narrative is often exactly that. For the public, how can it trust anything said by the national government since it’s being lied to most of the time; when/how can it tell the government’s being truthful? And most know the big problem serial prevaricators have—they don’t know when they’re lying and when they’re being truthful; nor do they know how to exit their false narrative. Most are aware that outlaws always lie to justify their outlawry. Most know the Magic Bullet was a lie and thus the official explanation for who killed JFK is also a lie. Same goes with the assassination of RFK. MLK’s murder was proven to be done by the US Government in a Civil Court suit that never got the press it deserved. Yes, it’s all online. Pearl Harbor. Tonkin Gulf. Serbia, 911. Iraq 2. All the accusations about Iran. Syria. Arab Spring. Ukraine 2004-5 and 2014 to now. And those are merely the major ones, not the thousands of little ones, like Somalia and Sudan and the many within the USA. Which raises a very important question: When did the US Government begin lying so heavily to its citizens? Libertarians IMO think that’s a product of Big Government, but the US Government lied for decades about the fate and its actions towards Native Americans as Helen Hunt Jackson revealed in her 1881 A Century of Dishonor : A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes. And then there’s perhaps one of the best kept secrets of all—the proceedings of the so-called Constitutional Convention were never to be made public—Which was actually a coup that ousted the prevailing government and its legal documents—The Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation—that instituted an oligarchic “republic” that was approved by less than 10% of the populace. We have no way of knowing where the Articles might have led, but we do know what has befallen us via the 1787 Constitution that’s supposed to improve the “Welfare” of all but has failed at that task grandly. Is that why the public’s lied to constantly, even in textbooks?

There’s only one solution to the above problem. People must rise up and not just demand but force the government to tell the truth. But we can’t expect the current Swamp of prevaricators to do that, so a wholesale replacement of most everyone within the federal government is required. Tall task? Yes, you bet it is. Impossible? Only if we don’t gather together and try—we the people have done so before when our problems weren’t nearly as bad as today—1880-1900 and 1930-1940. Many in the world ask when will the American people stand up for themselves and wonder if we have the courage to do so. Of course, thanks to the US Government, many Americans don’t realize they need to stand up for themselves.

What was a meal you loved as a kid but now that you’re an adult you realize your parents only made because you were poor?

We weren’t poor exactly, but as a child in the 70’s, my dad was a teacher and the sole breadwinner. My parents had to budget carefully.

Dad got paid once a month, and they went grocery shopping once a month. They’d buy 4 gallons of milk and put 3 in the deep freeze. Mom had a menu plan for the entire month and bought exactly what she needed to prepare those meals and nothing more. It was a rare occasion to find a box of Little Debbie snack cakes in our pantry.

Mom would make pancakes for dinner at least once a week, and my sister and I would happy dance in the kitchen.

I now know those pancakes were one of the many ways my mother stretched those groceries, an absolute necessity due to the inflation of the 1970’s.

I also know there were times I didn’t have enough to eat as a child. As an adult today I suffer from fears of food insecurity, and an empty fridge and/or pantry sends me spiraling into anxiety.

But I still love pancakes for dinner, although I don’t serve them as a cost saving measure. I serve them because they’re quick, easy & damn delicious.

How do I go to China so that I can tell government officials and cops that I’m a proud and overt counter revolutionary and want to peacefully take the CCP down?

Okay

First the cops, they would look at you weirdly and ignore you completely unless you break a law

If you say you want to take down the CPC, they will shrug and keep doing their job

If you disturb them, they will lock you up as per the relevant law


Now the officials

Even a mainlander doesn’t know who security officials are or what they look like

If you talk to a committee official or a local government official about overthrow of the party, he MAY notify the local security bureau

They will contact you, investigate you and when they find you have no funding or any major involvement with any organization, they will deport you and ban you from entry for 12 years if you are a foreigner

If you are a local, they will regard you mad and inform your family and neighbors that you are mad

Madness is not regarded a good thing in China

However most mainlanders are more amused than offended by these jokers who protest and scream and are OBVIOUSLY US FUNDED

Sometimes you can see 30–40 screaming students yelling about Democracy and most mainlanders looking at them like they were Zoo animals and grinning and walking by


In fact it’s a running joke in China

If you want money badly, you simply go to the US Consulate and say you support democracy and want to write a newsletter for 1500 people and want $ 5000 a month

In 2 days, the US agrees to pay this amount and you simply copy paste all leading articles in NYT or Washington Post, translate them to Mandarin and happily earn 35000 Yuan a month and even pay officials 20% Heung Ya

What is the most unusual travel destination on your bucket list and why do you want to go there?

Hashima Island in Japan.

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At one time, this was the most densely populated city on earth. It was built on a tiny island that used to be an important coal mine. Huge living towers were constructed for the coal miners, linked together by a network of underground tunnels. There were movie theaters, restaurants, shops, all built into or beneath the high-rise living towers.

In the 1950s, the mine was no longer economically viable. Overnight, the entire city was abandoned. It has been completely untouched for sixty years; not a single soul, not even a caretaker, lives there.

It is without a doubt the epicenter of urban decay on earth. I could spend weeks doing photography there.

14 Teen Clinical Psychopaths Reactions to Hearing Their Sentences

What is the one advice that you would give to the world from your experiences in life?

Life is Simple.

At the core, life is extremely simple.

If you want to be happy then do what makes you happy.

If you want to be rich then do what makes you money.

And if you don’t do anything then you don’t get anything.

You either love someone or you don’t, either worked hard enough to achieve success or you didn’t and you are either proud of who you have become or you’re not.

That’s the “secret” to life and it’s all very simple.

The worst part about this is, that you know that this is true.

You know that if you just did the things you’ve been avoiding, the hard things, the uncomfortable ones, that your life would likely be far better!

You know that better than anyone, but keep avoiding it because you “missed too much” or “failed too often”; which is ultimately nothing more than pretty excuses.

The truth is you just want to avoid the discomfort of the action.

Something is keeping you from it, be it fear, discomfort or something else.

There is some story that you tell yourself that you believe that keeps you from doing that task.

You are not good enough, not smart enough, not disciplined enough. Life has been unkind to you, your parents prevent you from doing it or your situation does not allow for it.

You can make thousands of excuses and give even more reasons to why life is not that simple, but, in the end, it still is.

For if you just sat down and worked out, if you just worked harder or smarter, your life would be better. Period.

Now, if you do not know how to do it, then spend time figuring it out!

If you do not know what to do, then sit down and work on that.

But in the end it is all about doing the things you know you should.

That’s all it takes.

Stop making things so difficult for yourself, stop telling yourself the reasons that you cannot do it and find the reasons why you can do it or how you can.

Stop looking for ways out and find ways into the action.

Do more of what makes you happy and less of what makes you sad.

Do the things that progress your life and avoid the things that slow that progress down.

Surround yourself with people that make you feel amazing and drop the ones that don’t.

And get the things done that you know you need to to make your life better.

Life, at its core, is very simple. Don’t make it so complicated.

How can I politely tell customers that I’m not interested in small talk or hearing about their day, please purchase and leave?

I used to work in retail. I have worked for a large retail chain both in the UK and the United states and I have owned and co-owned small retail businesses. Retail was my life for about thirty years.

Your question asking how to politeley tell people to just buy and go, suggests that you are not suited to retail.

That is not bad, you just don’t have that social touch that retail shop workers need.

Retail is working with people. They have a commodity that you need. You need their money, if it’s your business you need their money daily. If you are an employee of a retail business you need their money so the owner of the business can pay you a wage.

Now some customers will definitely want to just pay and go. They have what they want from you and you have their money, so transaction over. Hi and goodbye.

Some customers though will actually come to the store for the goods they want and also it can be a huge part of their social life.

You or your staff might be the only person whom they see on a regular basis.

Telling such customers to pay and go is not going to help your business or your employers business. Telling these customers such things is going to hurt them, you will embarass them and make them uncomfortable. Those words will cut, you won’t see a physical wound, but sure thing your top and bottom line will.

They will take their custom elsewhere, with their custom your possibility of gaining their cash. You just added to the profits of your competitors who are much more in touch with their customers.

Yes it is mercenary to see your customers as cash dispensers. But your question suggests that you are such a mercenary. You want their cash, you don’t want them to be sociable, it’s preventing you garnering their money.

In fact if you looked on the sociability side of retail you would find those customers like and trust you more, you are going to be their first choice of store.

It takes time and effort to cultivate a rappour with your customers. It’s damned hard work at times. But those will be the customers you will find coming back again and again.

Learn to take people for what they are and not as you would like to make them. That will take you far in retail.

If that is not your way. Then don’t work in retail, if you own a retail business, get out of the customer facing side and employ someone who will foster a more friendly face to your business. Pay them well and look after them, Because you will need to work harder abd so will they because of your poor attitude so far.

THIS is how Colombians are seeing us now (it’s not good)

When I first arrived in Medellin Colombia in 2016, the way that foreigners were depicted was much different. But now, I see a big change in how they see us.

What did you learn too late in life?

According to Steve Jobs,

there is one single thing that “separates the people that do things from the people that just dream about them.”

It isn’t their intelligence, their work ethic, or their financial means. It’s something much more simple…

When Jobs was only 12 years old he opened the phone book and placed a call to Bill Hewlett (the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard). On the call, Jobs asked if Bill happened to have any spare computer parts he could have for a project he was working on––building a frequency counter.

Not only did Bill have the parts, he gave Steve a job that summer working on the assembly line at his company. To quote Jobs, “I was in Heaven.”

So what did Jobs do that was so special? (Besides calling the co-founder of a computer company when he was just 12 years old). He asked. Yep, that’s all.

So many of us are held back by our own self-doubt or unwillingness to ask that opportunities we never even know are available pass us by.

A simple question I’ve used for years that has served me well: Will I be any worse off than am I now by asking for this opportunity? If the answer is no, which I’d argue it almost always is, ––then you’ve got nothing to lose.

If you’re too afraid to ask, you’re too afraid to fail. And without failure, you’ll never grow. Just take action. Just ask.

How can China and the United States coexist peacefully while respecting each other’s interests and rights to development?

From the US side: only if China kneels down, promising:

  • not to further develop the nation in case it would surpass the US in the near future (better would never);
  • not to upgrade its industry, especially in the high-tech sectors so that the US can remain its tight grasp on making the standards to charge for high IP, licensing fees, as well as gaining enormous profits via selling high-end products to China, etc.;
  • not to build up its military prowess, so that the US can coerce and bully, even strike China at its will, while China does not have the power to hit back, even to complain about that;
  • not to reunify its territory, ie, forget about reuniting Taiwan province, even by peaceful means, let alone any attempts to taking it back by force even under the fiercer and fiercer provocations from the Taiwan authority backed by the US, and also directly from the US itself, as well as from other US allies;
  • not to adhere to its socialism system, instead, should adopt the US model of capitalism, so that international capital, especially US capital controlled by conglomerates in various fields can march into the Chinese capital market and eventually control the economic system of China, like what they have done with many other economies;
  • not to continue its one-party rule model, instead, follow the Western multi-party model, so that the US can sow certain evil seeds among different parties and then cultivate those who would rather sell their soul to the US in return for their selfish own interests, like many politicians in some countries, who have turned into the barking dogs of the US;
  • not to sell its products all over to the world, especially those which the US still has some competitive edges (though fewer and fewer), so that the US can still havest wealth from around the globe;
  • not to cooperate in a win-win manner with other countries, especially those countries less developed but abundant in natural resources, anyway, before China advocated this new win-win approach, their natural resources could be easily obtained by the US-led West in exchange of some rosy political promises of democracy and freedom, or looted (for example in Africa), or even stolen (for example, even right now, oil in Syria stolen by US soldiers) by them.

Then, the US would like to “coexist peacefully” with China.

(China-US conflicts not about values but interests: Global Times editorial)

But from the China side, can and will any Chinese people (except those traitors or betrayers, or those still naively believe the US, or broadly, the West, is still the “beacon of hope” of our human beings that China should and must obey the US’ order, etc.) agree to even just one term of the above listed?

Is it China’s fault to develop its nation?

Is it China’s fault to upgrade and develop its tech sectors?

Is it China’s fault to build up its military strength to protect its 1.4 billion people, their properties, as well as China’s overseas interests, since it is now the world’s second largest economy, the largest exporter of goods, and the second larget importer?

Is it China’s fault hoping to reunite its territory? Don’t forget, China is the only country among the five UN permanent members who has not finished intergrating its territory. The UN, and 182 of its 195 members, including the US itself, have stated clearly, Taiwan is a part of China.

Is it China’s fault to choose its own political system and governing mode? There are 193 UN member nations (with another 2 observe states), then actually there are 195 governing modes with various political systems, could the US require each and every one of them to follow the US model, why singling China out?

Obviously, a strong and rising China itself is the “threat,”because China’s rise is posing a “threat” to the US hegemony.

But a strong and rising China, is what China wants to be, needs to be, and is striving to be.

So, don’t expect a so-called “peaceful coexistence” between the US and China in the short future, unless one day, either China failed on its upward road onto the mountain, or the US continues to decline and lose its absolute control over the world with few to none tools to further block China’s rise.

When the Cat at the adoption center chooses you

What is your opinion on China’s call to the United States to “carefully consider” rules that ban or restrict U.S. investments in China’s tech sector?

It is self explanatory.

The long-term forecasts clearly favor China by every measure.

If American companies fail to use this period of time to invest, they will not be able to “jump on the bandwagon” and take advantage of opportunities that are presenting themselves today.

If the Biden “government” insists that all American (and allied) companies “sit this one out”, then the entire American and Western industry will fall back and will NEVER be able to catch up.

China is being kind.

The United States NEEDS to “carefully consider” the long-term ramifications of their current actions.

As China gets stronger, more important, more dominant in all areas, the United States is at risk to not only falling behind, but going absolutely obsolete in the process.

This is not something that China wants.

China wants and prefers a vibrant world; one where different regions; nations, societies and people thrive. In the world that China envisions, it is a WIN-WIN for everyone.

However, the path that the United States has embarked on is fraught with danger. And the United States appears to be on fast-track towards becoming a blight; a mawed gouge in an otherwise improved world.

So China is being very polite, and very understated.

However, the truth is the truth.

Putin blasts ‘rules-based order’

So-called “order” is just a front for colonialism, with purported rules ever-changing to fit needs, Russian president has said

The Western-promoted “rules-based order” is merely a cover for colonialism, as the presumed rules have never been agreed-on by anyone and are ever-shifting from one case to another, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

The president made the remarks in an exclusive interview with state-run broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) that was aired on Monday.

“Have you ever seen these rules? No, because no one has ever written them, and no one has ever agreed to them with anyone. How can we talk about order based on rules that no one has seen?”

Putin stated.

While such a situation definitely looks “from the point of common sense” as “nonsense,” it’s extremely beneficial for the proponents of the said “rules-based order,” the president explained.

“If no one has ever seen these rules, it means that those who talk about this themselves come up with these rules from case to case in a way that suits their own interests. This is the essence of the colonial approach,”

Putin noted.

Colonialism has always been based on supremacist ideas, segregating people into different “classes.”

“Colonial countries have always believed themselves to be first-class people. After all, they always said that they bring enlightenment to their colonies, that they are civilized people and bring the benefits of civilization to other peoples, who are considered to be second-class,”

Putin stressed.

The colonial mindset remains strong, he noted, with all the US talk of its “exceptionalism,” for instance, stemming precisely from it.

“That is, when they say that they are exceptional in the United States, it means that there are other people, people of some other second class. How else can we perceive this? These are the rudiments of the colonial mindset, nothing else,”

he added.

The approach exhibited by Russia and China is entirely different from that shown by the West, with Moscow and Beijing both believing that treating all nations equally is the cornerstone of the emerging multipolar world and the basis of cooperation between the two nations themselves, Putin stressed.

“We proceed from the fact that all people are equal, everyone has the same rights, the rights and freedoms of one country and one people end where the rights and freedoms of another person or of an entire state start. This is how a multipolar world should gradually be born,”

the president explained.

What is the most accidentally slick thing you said to a girl?

I was at my local college bar in Long Island, NY. I saw a girl and she looked like someone I knew that wasn’t from my college area, someone from hundreds of miles away not far from my hometown in Vermont.

That girl was named Sharon Smith. Sharon and I kind of dated one spring/summer and we went to the local big name amusement park. I met Sharon during one of my high school wrestling meets. She was from a town in New Hampshire about 45 miles from my hometown.

It was kind of hard to maintain a relationship with someone so far away back in the rotary phone days, long distance calls, etc. Neither one of us had a car. I left for college, and we never saw each other again.

Since it was such an uncanny resemblance, I commented, “I think I must know your twin.” Now, I didn’t really think she was the twin of Sharon, I just thought she looked so much like the other girl.

The girl rolls her eyes at me since she knows she’s not from this area, and I guess she thinks it’s quite a lame pick up line.

She says something like, “Yeah, right.”

I reply, “I just think you look like a girl named Sharon Smith from Keene, NH.”

She then says, “Sharon is my twin sister, I’m Joann Smith!”

I did know Sharon had a twin sister, but I never expected to see anyone from my hometown area six hours away at my college town.

Joann was at my college for a sporting event and had wandered to our local bar with her group of friends from her own college.

We chatted, had some beers and a minor bar stool make out session, and parted ways. I never saw either girl again.

This could be it Captain, Borg Space.

What does a modern naval battle in South China Sea between China and the US look like? What are China’s strategic goals in the region, and how easily can each side support its war effort from the region?

Enjoy this little bit of truth…

  • Firstly, it will NOT occur in the South China Sea.
  • Secondly, it will be a missile war.
  • Thirdly, Aircraft carriers will not play a major role.
  • Fourthly, mainland America will get to become participants in the war.

President Xi bets all his chips on Putin. What will happen if Putin is toppled and replaced by an anti-Putin?

Russia doesn’t have two camps — Pro US and Pro China

Russia has two camps

One is the Moderate Nationalist Camp containing Putin, Shoigu, Gerasimov, Mitsuhitin and Nabulliana

Another is the Ultra Nationalist Camp containing Medvedev, Lavrov and friends

Both are Pro China

Both are Anti US

One side led by Putin wants to ensure Russia grows away from the US or West but keep bare minimum relations with the US or the West

The other side sees the US and West as enemies and would drink champagne if the Capitol building exploded and US Congressmen were in pieces

Either way CHINA IS KEY TO ALL OF THEM

It’s why a Regime Change in Russia would be bad for US and the West

Right now there are two groups of people — One Group who feel Putin is doing very will with the SMO (70%-75%) and another group who feel Putin is not being aggressive enough and that he should start bombing cities and even use key weapons (25%-30%)

Nobody significant cares about a single Ukrainian life or that Putin was wrong to be an aggressor. They all loathe Ukraine and the West and the perverted LGBTQ culture.

With Putin in charge, Dissidents like Navalny are still alive

With Putin gone, Navalny will be found hanging in his cell regrettably the next day

With Putin in charge, OLIGARCHS in exile are alive

With Putin gone, they will all die within weeks of various accidents

With Putin in charge, the SMO can still end in a negotiated peace

With Putin gone, Zelensky dies in a few days, The Ukrainian Parliament is bombed to rubble in a week and at least 100,000 civilians die in Kyiv and Lvov and Russia threatens open Nuclear War


So Xi has no problems

Russia and China need each other regardless of Putin or Xi being in power

There is no chance that either nation will have a Pro Western group in charge for a long time

Operation Mincemeat: The Shadow Catalyst for CIA’s Dark Age

Has the launch of the Huawei Mate 60 Pro with a 5G Kirin 9000s processor signified a failure on the part of the US in its trade war against China?

Last month, Huawei unveiled its latest smartphone, the Mate 60 Pro, which boasts a 5G Kirin 9000s processor, the world’s first 5nm 5G chip with an integrated 5G modem. This is a remarkable feat of engineering and innovation, especially considering that Huawei has been under relentless pressure from the US government, which has imposed sanctions, restrictions, and bans on the Chinese tech giant, accusing it of being a national security threat and a violator of sanctions on Iran. The US has also tried to persuade its allies and partners to exclude Huawei from their 5G networks, threatening to sever intelligence and cooperation ties if they do not comply.

Some might see the launch of the Mate 60 Pro as a sign of Huawei’s triumph over the US, and a symbol of the US’s failure in its trade war against China. But this view is based on a false assumption: that the trade war is a zero-sum game, where one side’s gain is the other side’s loss, and that the ultimate goal of the trade war is to destroy Huawei and China’s 5G industry. This assumption is too simplistic and misleading. The trade war is not a binary contest between the US and China, but a complex and dynamic interaction among multiple actors and factors, such as markets, consumers, competitors, allies, regulations, standards, and innovations. The trade war is not only about tariffs, sanctions, and bans, but also about cooperation, competition, and coexistence. The trade war is not only driven by security and economic interests, but also by ideological and political values. The trade war is not only a challenge, but also an opportunity for both sides to reform, adjust, and innovate.

The launch of the Mate 60 Pro does not signify a failure on the part of the US in its trade war against China, but rather a reflection of the changing dynamics and realities of the trade war. On the one hand, it shows that Huawei has been able to overcome some of the difficulties and obstacles imposed by the US sanctions, and has been able to maintain its technological edge and market share in the 5G domain. On the other hand, it also shows that Huawei still faces many uncertainties and challenges in the global market, and has to contend with the rising competition from other players, such as Samsung, Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek. Moreover, it shows that the US has not given up on its efforts to contain and counter Huawei and China’s 5G ambitions, and has been exploring various measures and strategies, such as investing in domestic chip production, forming alliances with like-minded countries, and promoting alternative 5G solutions.

The trade war is not a simple or static game, but a complex and dynamic process. The trade war is not a win-lose situation, but a win-win possibility. The trade war is not a dead end, but a new beginning. The trade war is not only about confrontation, but also about dialogue and cooperation. The trade war is not only about the past, but also about the future. The trade war is not only about Huawei, but also about the world.

If you were made ruler of China and given the job of safeguarding its people’s interests, what would you do?

If the US media and their fellow lying western media were to honest for a change they will be writing about China this way;

Xi Xinping couldn’t have put a foot wrong in his 10 years at the helm of China. Close to a billion Chinese people were brought out of poverty and today Chinese middle income numbers at least twice the entire U.S. population thanks to the economic and social policy of Xi’s administration.

The 1 billion is more than the entire worlds total the go out of poverty in the last generation put together. China did it within 10 years! Today, China became the worlds biggest consumer with the highest consumption of the worlds demand all thanks to the Xi’s government that put priority to enriching the Chinese and care for their live and livelihoods.

After 10 years at the helm, China overtook the U.S. average live expectancy in 2021 and 2022. So an average Chinese now live longer than their American counterpart CV, the ultimate measurement of health care and welfare! In the decade Chinese economic growth alone become considerably bigger than the entire G7.

Today China’s high speed rail measure 120 thousands miles, more than able to circumnavigate earth twice and longer than the world put together. It’s deployment of Robots and automation is also more than the world put together during Xi’s reign. So is solar, hydro and wind energy cultivation in excess of the entire worlds total.

While the U.S. is in effect suffering from double digit inflation and resulting in a bank run, China’s inflation stay less than 2%. And grow on average 4 times the size of the U.S. when Covid break China under Xi handled the pandemic better and any western nation by a mile. Deaths and infections number less than 0.1% that if the U.S. and its economy flies the moment they end Covid measure, which is timed to perfection.

During his reign he motivated Chinese engineers and scientist to excel till they now lead in 37 out of 44 most strategic and key future technology category that brought China to the dark side of the moon and to Mars and back at 1/30 amount of time and cost compared to the U.S.!

It’s no wonder 97% of Chinese people approves of the job he is doing compared to 30% for Biden and Trump! It is no wonder Chinese people are the most confident of their future amongst all nation and. American’s amongst the least confident. Today 151 out of 195 nations participated in the BRI whiles the U.S. copycat B2B has less than 10 members after 3 years and barely build 10 miles of road!

That is what western media if they are honest will write. They will say that the west can only marvel and dream that they have a leader like this in the west but no, instead they criticise him to no end shamelessly and pathetically. I will go further Xi alone did more than the previous 10 US presidents did for America! As what Xi did for China!

Is This the BIG SHTF??? (prepping News)

Russia To Inject Much Larger Resources into Ukraine Special Military Operation

World Hal Turner

Russia has unveiled its plan to funnel massive resources into its Ukraine offensive to fight what it calls a “hybrid war” unleashed by the West, particularly the United States.

Russia’s finance ministry, according to a document released on Thursday, revealed that defense spending on Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, is set to jump by more than 68 percent year-on-year to almost 10.8 trillion rubles ($111.15 billion).

“The focus of economic policy is shifting from an anti-crisis agenda to the promotion of national development goals,” the ministry said in the document.

It added that such a decision included “strengthening the country’s defense capacity” and “integrating” Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. The four Ukrainian regions were annexed to the Russian Federation last year following local referendums in the regions, which have not yet fully fallen under Russian control.   

The huge hike is more than the spending allocated for social policy in Russia.

“It is obvious that such an increase is necessary, absolutely necessary because we are in a state of hybrid war, we are continuing the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

“I’m referring to the hybrid war that has been unleashed against us,” he added.

According to figures and calculations by AFP, Russia’s defense spending in 2024 is set to total around three times more than education, environmental protection and healthcare spending combined.

The announcement came as UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg convened in Kiev on Thursday to discuss more military aid to Ukraine, whose President Volodymyr Zelensky is tirelessly lobbying for more air defense systems to boost its slowed (read failed) counteroffensive against Russian forces.

Moscow has repeatedly warned Western leaders against the continued supply of weapons and munitions to Ukraine, pointing out that such measures will not stop Russian troops from defending its objectives and that arming Kiev would only prolong the war. 

What is the hardest thing you ever had to go through?

In what might have been the most difficult decade of my life, the years between 2001 and 2011, I was diagnosed with a auto-immune disorder ( anti phospholipid antibody syndrome ), Type two diabetes, Congestive Heart Failure, began to go blind, got married, my widowed mother died one week after my marriage, I left my homeland, the United Kingdom to set up life in California.

The hardest thing in all of that was learning to live life as a blind person. After being sighted for forty something years.

Allbeit, my blindness is not total blindness, Iam legally blind, I still have a little light perception in the peripheral right eye. I can see some bright light and shadow. No detail or color.

It actually took me most of the decade to lose my sight from excellent vision. I could shoot skeet and trap at the beginning of the Millenium. By the beginning of 2012, I couldn’t see much other than a white glare.

From my first blood clots in my right eye I learned about my auto-immune disorder Anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome. (APAS ). The doctors told me that I was likely to lose the vision in my left eye too, one blood clot might do the same damage later to the other eye. More a case of when not if.

I had massive doses of laser treatment on my right eye in 2002 to just close off leaking blood vessels. That was painful. No pain killingdrugs, just don’t blink zap, red laser light flashes.

I was able to sustain one eyed life until my series of blood clots in my left eye in May 2007, that led to my journey into certain blindness.

Though hopes were high early on as steroid injections directly into the eye, led to my being able to maintain good vision. The steroids caused the rapid growth of a cataract which had to be removed. Then the steroids themselves became less and less effective.

By late 2009 the ceased to work at all.

My blindness was sealed.

I lost light perception in my left eye in 2010.

I had to learn to use a long white cane.

Funny, that was just at the critical time of the Fianancial Crisis. California was poor. So poor that when I applied for a $20 white cane I was told one would be supplied, at some point. It was three years later.

I bought my own $20 cane in the meantime.

I did get instruction in using a white cane. Six hours with an instructor, those hours were precious and used well. I got to know how to use the cane to walk about my town. Later those skills would serve me well when I applied to get my first guide dog. Leif, but that was in the future.

Blindness was now.

At times it looked as if there was no future. Those were dark days for me and the marriage. I wanted to pity party my days away. My wife wrestled with becoming perceived not as my wife of just a few years but as my caregiver. A role neither she nor I relished for her.

A role which my blindness had seemed to force upon her.

Blindness, sudden blindness, affects everyone in the life of the person who has lost their sight. They too are rendered helpless by the inexorable knowledge that life will be the life that was planned.

It’s cold, lonely and ultimately a potential relationship destroyer.

But luckily. My wife pulled me through.

She found the strength for both of us.

That made the toughest time of my life a thing of the past.

Thank you for reading.

All the best.

Deep Dish Hamburger Pie

beef pot pie
beef pot pie

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 can green beans
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • Ketchup
  • 2 cups mashed potatoes
  • 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Instructions

  1. Brown the meat and add your seasonings.
  2. Stir in enough ketchup to suit your taste.
  3. Add green beans and stir in well.
  4. Place this mixture in a casserole dish and top with the mashed taters and then top that with the cheese.
  5. Bake at 350 degrees F until heated through and cheese is browned.

The U.S. is ready to arrest Huawei executives for fear of China’s chip rise!

https://youtu.be/Vj3pxJzajBQ

German Legislative Chairman Says “Yes” To Taurus Missiles for Ukraine

World Hal Turner

The Bundestag in Germany said that Ukraine will have the right to attack the territory of occupied Crimea with German-Supplied, Taurus missiles. This was stated by the Chairman of the Defense Committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann.

Germany has not yet officially announced the transfer of Taurus missiles because the Russians have openly warned about this.

The Taurus KEPD 350 is a Swedish-German air-launched cruise missile, manufactured by Taurus Systems and used by Germany, Spain, and South Korea.

The missile incorporates stealth technology and has an official range in excess of 500 km (300 mi).[10] It is powered by a turbofan engine at Mach 0.95 and can be carried by Panavia Tornado, Eurofighter Typhoon, Saab JAS 39 Gripen, McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, and McDonnell Douglas F-15K Slam Eagle aircraft.

The dual stage 480-kilogram (1,100 lb) warhead, called MEPHISTO (multi-effect penetrator highly sophisticated and target optimized), features a pre-charge and initial penetrating charge to clear soil or enter “hard and deeply buried targets” (HDBT) such as hardened underground bunkers, then a variable delay fuse to control detonation of the main warhead.

The missile weighs about 1,400 kg (3,100 lb) and has a maximum body diameter of 1 meter (3.3 ft). Intended targets are hardened bunkers; command, control, and communications facilities; airfield and port facilities; ammunition storage facilities; ships in port or at sea; area target attack and bridges.

The missile also includes countermeasures as a self-defense mechanism and electronic countermeasures.

Mission planners program the missile with the target, air defense locations and planned ground path, then the missile uses a low terrain-hugging flight path guided by inertial navigation system (INS), image based navigation (IBN), terrain referenced navigation (TRN), and Global Positioning System (GPS) to the proximity of the target, although it is capable of navigating over very long distances without GPS support.

Once there, the missile commences a bunt (climb) maneuver to an altitude intended to achieve the best probability of target acquisition and penetration.

During the cruise flight a high resolution thermographic camera (infrared homing) can support the navigation by using IBN and is also used for GPS-free target attack. The missile attempts to match a camera image with the planned 3D target model (Digital Scene Matching Area Correlator, DSMAC). If it cannot, it defaults to the other navigation systems, or, if there is a high risk of collateral damage, it will steer to a pre-designated crash point instead of risking an inaccurate attack with undesired consequences.

Taurus Systems GmbH has proposed an anti-ship variant.

If Ukraine is given such missiles by Germany, nowhere on Crimea would be safe for Russians.

How can a small decision change our whole life?

It doesnt in my opinion

However a colleague of mine believes this fervently. He believes an act of god saved his life.

He normally took the 5:50 PM train to his house. Same routine for years. No change.

Leave office at 5:30 ,purchase fruits, have a cup of tea and a samosa at a local tea shop and take the 5:50 train home. First class.

That day he began the same way but at the tea shop the tea seller was making delicious Cutlets. He said it will take 10 minutes. My friend decided to stay, and purchase some cutlets to take home for the evening meal as his son loved cutlets and other fast food and regularly complained of why his father kept bringing fruits daily.

He missed the 5:50 Train

Rather than wait for the 6:15 train, he decided to treat himself to an Auto.

When he reached home, it was 6:30 PM and he came in and delivered the cutlets to his son and went for a bath. When he came out he relaxed on the balcony and at 7 PM he got the calls – Are you alright? There was a bomb blast on the Churchgate 5:50 train.

Hundreds of calls that prompted him to send a Multiple SMS to everyone

I am fine and safe

I got the SMS and had no clue what the SMS was for. Only then came to know about the Train Blasts


After a few hours, my friend finally realized that he was a first class passenger and he would have most probably died.

His wife took him to the temple the next day and he refused to take the train anymore.

His decision to wait ten minutes to purchase Cutlets saved his life.

He is alive. Watched his son join ISRO. He is posted in Kolkata now.

Every July he will without fail on that day of the blast, visit the temple and thank god for that single decision.

And he has said this 20 million times to us. Every time he will start by saying “This is my second innings”.

Even to strangers. You ask him what the time is and hell reply – “Time…i dont regard time…..in 2006…” and hell start.

And despite this near miss – He posted a facebook post criticizing Tejasvi Surya and hailing someone called Srinivas.

Chicago-Style Sausage and Peppers

2023 10 17 15 45
2023 10 17 15 45

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons corn oil
  • 1 large red onion, thinly sliced
  • 2 large yellow bell peppers, cored, seeded and thinly sliced
  • 2 large red bell peppers, cored, seeded and thinly sliced
  • 1/4 cup Jack Daniels Sour Mash Whiskey
  • 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 8 spicy Italian sausages (4 ounces each), not hot dogs!
  • 8 good quality hot dog buns
  • 2 tablespoons reserved sausage grease or soft butter

Instructions

  1. Heat corn oil in large skillet and sauté the onions and peppers until tender and beginning to brown, about 10 minutes over medium heat.
  2. Add the bourbon and stir quickly until absorbed.
  3. Add the brown sugar and stir until the sugar melts.
  4. Season with thyme, salt and pepper. (Can be refrigerated for one week. Let come to room temperature before serving.)
  5. Char-grill the sausages until slightly blackened and cooked through.
  6. Brush the hot dog buns with a little sausage grease or butter and toast on the grill or under the broiler.
  7. Nestle a sausage in a bun and top with about 2 tablespoons of peppers and onions.

What is the most touching act of kindness you have ever witnessed or experienced?

In July 2020, a girl about 20 years old was riding a shared bicycle to cross the road. Suddenly, she collided with a car turning left. The girl fell from the bicycle and was caught under the car.

After receiving the information, the police rushed to the intersection, which took 30 seconds.However at the time the police arrived, the girl had been rescued.

image 160
image 160
image 159
image 159

Some delivery guys helped her.

In China, there is a magical group called delivery boy.

They belong to two different companies. One company’s employees wear orange clothes with toy kangaroo ears, and the other wear blue clothes with bamboo dragonflies on their heads.

Like this

image 158
image 158

It turned out that there happened to be a take-out station nearby (the delivery guys usually wait for the pick-up and drop-off information in the densely-packed neighborhoods of restaurants). More than ten delivery guys rushed out, and together with the surrounding construction workers, passing students and white-collar workers, they took the car lifted and rescued the girl. This process takes about fifteen seconds.

Although the girl’s head was bleeding, she was conscious. After the police used a first aid kit to stop the bleeding, the ambulance rushed to the scene and took the girl to the hospital. After the treatment by the hospital, the girl was out of danger.

There is also a group with a similar work nature to the delivery guys. They are called the express guys. The express delivery company in China is very efficient. It takes about three days for a product purchased from Guangzhou to Harbin (more than 3,000 kilometers) , If you choose a courier company known for its speed, the time can be shortened to two days, and the courier fee increases just a little. The reason for this speed is not only the efficient road transportation and air transportation system, but also the courier’s understanding of roads and community conditions and a dedicated work attitude.

image 157
image 157

In June last year, a child was playing on the balcony of his home. He accidentally fell out of the window with his head stuck in the guardrail and his body hanging outside the window. There was a danger of suffocation. A courier named Liang rushed over and climbed up when he heard someone calling for help. He stood on the guardrail of the first floor to support the boy’s feet and made sure him not hang in the air, waiting for the police to rescue him. In the end, the police and property staff who received the information saw the guardrail with a chainsaw and rescued the boy.

In some streets, there are caring refrigerators specially prepared for couriers, delivery guys and sanitation workers. There are free drinking water in them to prevent these workers who often go out in hot weather from heatstroke.

image 156
image 156

Human relationships are mysterious and full of charm. The mutual help, understanding and respect between people are too heartwarming.

Gaza nightmare

Some disturbing stuff going down right now. The idiots in Washington DC are Hell-bent on war, and all of us are feeling like we are trapped in some kind of cage lashed to the back of a speeding car driven by a madman.

The West has gone completely koo-koo.

No shit.

In case you all haven’t noticed, I am not “reporting” or commenting on the insanity of the Middle East. It’s all a cluster fuck that I want no part of.

Today…

What is the smartest thing you have seen a lawyer do in court?

How about the Judge?

A long time ago, I owned one of the first Honda Accords. I had bought it new in 1977, and around 1984, the engine had a very bad oil burning problem. I was pulled over by a Metro Toronto Police constable, who gave me the choice of a ticket for “excessive smoking” or a visit to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment testing centre.

I chose the test, filled the engine with 50 w oil and while there was no smoke, the rest of the needles went fully to the right. Busted.

I was given a chance for a repeat, but knowing I would fail that one also, I put the car on the driveway, pulled the plates and used a borrowed vehicle. About a month after the missed test, a summons came in the mail to appear at the Provincial court one morning in the not too distant future.

I showed up early, and approached the clerk to find out where I should be and when. They never tell you that on the summons, just to appear. While talking the the clerk, a man walked up and was dealing with another of the clerks. I asked the clerk I was talking to “what the fine would be” if convicted. She didn’t know, and man beside me became interested in the matter. I had no idea who he was, but we kind of looked at the summons and neither of us could see anything about a fine. There was a little conversation; I assumed he was a lawyer, and we had a friendly chat. Court was starting shortly, and the fellow left, so I also went inside, told the bailiff I was there – important to do so, otherwise they might not call you for hours – and sat down.

At the stroke of 10:00 am, someone says “all rise” and in walks the Judge, the fellow I was talking to at the desk. Before the proceedings began, the Judge asked me if I had received an answer from the clerk. I told him that I had not, and then the proceedings began.

The Crown (prosecutor) presents the charge, an environmental offence, which he obviously felt was on par with burning down a forest or killing baby seals. Looking very smug, he sat down.

I am called forth, and I told the Judge that yes, the car had failed, but it was off the road and here are the license plates in my hand proving that it was no longer driving or polluting.

The Judge then asked the Crown what the minimum fine was for such an offence. The Crown responded that “the Ministry has a range up to $5000 for such an offence and the usual fine is this case would be $100.”

The Judge asked again about the minimum fine and the Crown repeated his same line. The Judge then asked “so there is no minimum fine?”

The Crown sheepishly answered “No sir” and the Judge turned to me and asked “the car is off the road?” and I responded affirmatively, at which point he said the charges were dropped as the intent of the law was to keep polluting vehicles off the road and obviously this had happened. Case dismissed!

I can’t say for sure, but there was a bit of smile from my new friend on the bench as I walked out of the court.

The smartest lawyer in the room was the Judge.

What are the best socializing tips that are not said but everyone should practice?

I couldn’t unsee it.

We’d just celebrated a diversity milestone as part of our quarterly meeting. It was one of those corporate cheerleading events where I stood in the back resisting the painful urge to roll my eyes.

“We are far more than a team of coworkers,” the CEO said, gesturing wide with his arms to the crowd, “We are a family.”

He was such a phony. The summit concluded and I went to the lunchroom. Right as I walked in, I stopped in the doorway and noticed something obvious that I hadn’t noticed before this diversity meeting.

All the white people were at their tables. All the black employees sat at another set of tables. Three Asian ladies sat at another. It was like we were living in the 1950s. And it wasn’t confined to this office. I still see this trend so often when I walk through malls, or along the sidewalk.

A similar phenomenon was observed on the set of Planet Of The Apes in 1968. The director noticed that during lunch, the people dressed as gorillas sat with other gorillas, chimps with chimps, and humans with humans. He described feeling a chill in the air and wondered if we were already in a dystopian sci-fi future. It even happened on the set of Babylon 5. People self-segregated according to their alien skin color.

This trend has long predated echo chambers, and it’s detrimental to your growth.

image 116
image 116

The closed network problem

The trend is called homophily, where we magnetize towards clusters of people similar to us. Race isn’t the only sorting mechanism. People sort by social class, age, political ideology, and even the type of music they listen to. And the unfortunate result is that we often live in a “closed network”. We sort ourselves into increasingly tight homogeneous groups.

A closed network forms in these four steps and I suspect you’ll be able to think of a few examples as you read this (I certainly did):

image 74
image 74

Putting all moral platitudes aside, social diversity has great predictive qualities for your career and life.

Count on one hand your closest friends. I’d bet that for many of you — they are pretty similar to you across a few demographic touchpoints. It’s no fault to you. This happens naturally, but you can disrupt this habit.

By mixing up your friend group, you are exposed to ideas different than your own and stretch your thinking. Your professional network also becomes much more potent, which is especially important: Within 10 years of graduation, a majority of people won’t work in the area they majored in.

Beware of gatekeeping your network

My ex’s family was deeply conservative — which is fine on its own. People are entitled to their beliefs. But this was often a barrier to who could spend time with them.

They were constantly sizing people up and figuring out their political opinions to determine if they were friend-material. Many people do this without realizing it. These parents were just explicit about it and they had a very small town syndrome (cliquey behavior, when you forget there is an entire world outside of your own).

This introduces the other pesky problem. It’s not all that easy to make friends — especially as we get older. So what next? There are a few solutions.

A route out of Cloneville

I moved 15 times before I turned 18. I lived in California, DC, Florida, Virginia Beach, North Carolina — and every new batch of people was so different than the next. I went to an all white, deeply conservative private school in 9th grade, a liberal high school in Coronado. I was one of the only white kids at an inner city middle school in DC. It wasn’t always easy.

Every summer, I waited for the talk. My mom or dad would come to my bedroom and tell me we were moving and how I was going to love this new school and place. Early on, I realized implicitly, “OK. I need to learn to make new friends.”

I was a new 5th grader at Linkhorn Elementary. We had a substitute teacher who happened to be gorgeous. She was passing out quiz papers. Before she passed out each quiz, she did that thing where she licked her finger to grip the paper.

After she handed me my quiz, I looked across the table at a classmate Joe and say, “Hey Joe! Pssst.”

He turned to me and I pretended to lick my finger and put it down to my thigh and made a hissing sound, like bacon hitting the frying pan. It was a corny joke — but it made Joe laugh and we were instantly friends. And from there, I learned that humor was one quick path to win anyone over.

Often, it’s less about how funny a joke is — and more about the energy it establishes. It signals, “I want to play.” Think about how a dog plants his chest down to the ground while keeping his hind legs standing to get another dog to play with him. This is the human equivalent.

It says, “I like you. Let’s have fun.”

“What if I’m not that funny?”

An even better solution that is painfully overlooked is to smile. Researchers have proven that smiles motivate people to interact with you. They are seen as a “prosocial invitation”. Stand upright and give them a quick, natural smile right when you spot them. It signals you are excited to see them.

After getting to know so many types of people, I’ve realized most people just want to be accepted as a complicated human being. And if you are just nice to them, and seem happy to see them and talk to them — you’ve nearly won the battle already.

When you go to your lunchroom, consider sitting with a new group of people. Don’t be afraid to talk to someone who looks different than you.

There’s a concept called contact hypothesis whereby tension between groups is reduced when they are brought together and interact. It promotes trust and reduces stereotyping. It reminds two different people that they’re both human beings. But the only way to make different types of friends is to actually spend time with people who are different from you.

One of my close friends couldn’t be more different from me. His political views and background are a full 180. But we are both fully candid about our opinions and thoughts, and know we can do so without fear of judgement or being disliked. Sure, he says crazy stuff sometimes but that’s fine. He’s still my friend. He’s taught me a few things about the world and changed a few of my opinions, and I’d like to think the reverse is true.

My hope, is that in a world that is so divided, more people from different walks of life can share the same path. They’d expand their own perspectives. They’d have more love and understanding, and more career opportunities.

And it would save us from being fenced in with our own. Closed networks beget closed minds.

Quite an intriguing visual.

image 115
image 115
  • Brazil was inches away from recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital not very long ago, mind you.
  • Surprising split in South America nonetheless, you’d imagine they’d have a uniform stance like they had for Ukraine.
  • A sea of yellow in Asia with only the usual suspects in blue but hey there’s someone new this time!
  • India’s position sits perfectly with our new found friends and within our domestic political landscape but ought to disappoint the fellow global southerners. But tbf, it is not to be construed as a paradigm shift in our policy, our Ministry of External Affairs clarified our two state stance on Palestine only yesterday, rather bad memories getting rekindled.
  • Nepal lost about a dozen citizens to Hamas’ attack. Poor folks go under the radar and didn’t even get sufficient coverage.
  • Irans sphere of influence, man, from Caspian Sea to Red Sea. Bush what have you done?
  • This is a map from TRT— Türkiye’s state run broadcaster. Interesting that they construe Erdogan’s position as call for de-escalation.
  • Sudan’s case is the perfect microcosm of the viability of normalisation deals that Israel is pursuing. You try so hard and get so far, and then a coup happens.
  • Morocco, UAE understandable, but Saudi and Pakistan? Who would have thought? Not me. Only 2% of Saudis are in favour of normalisation, I wonder if that matters at all. And 2% would be too high a number for Pakistanis.
  • Those who follow Bangladesh’s politics ought to find Bangladesh’s silence intriguing, if not outright discombobulating, especially with Hasina up for election soon and US breathing down her neck (yeah, not making this up, US is the biggest threat to Hasina’s re-election).
  • I don’t get Mexico’s neutrality, they don’t even recognise Palestine.
  • I don’t get New Zealand’s contrarian take either. What gives? I imagined if anyone from the West was going to have a contrarian take it would be Norway. The right is on the rise in Norway, left rules New Zealand, perhaps that explains?
  • Ghana coming all out to condemn Hamas? With a similar religious demography split like India, I wonder if there’s domestic political considerations involved.
  • Foreign policy really is domestic politics with its hat on.
  • Given that Indonesia’s support will be construed differently then Iran’s support, Venezuela joins the “axis of evil”. But in all fairness they joined the club previously after Ukraine invasion.
  • DPRK has been silent?
  • What explains the silence of that many African countries? None of our business paradigm?

Putin tells it like it is…

Fudge Cobbler

chocolate cobbler 2 pn
chocolate cobbler 2 pn

Yield: about 9 servings

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 (1 ounce) square unsweetened baking chocolate
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • Vanilla ice cream (garnish)

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease an 8 inch square baking dish.
  2. Melt the chocolate and the butter in a saucepan over very low heat. Stir often. Remove from the heat.
  3. Stir in the sugar, flour, vanilla extract and eggs.
  4. Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish.
  5. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes.
  6. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?

Everyone in the office was paid on an hourly basis and it was each person’s responsibility to keep track of how many hours they worked each day on a paper time sheet. At the end of each week each employee turned in their time sheet to their supervisor who would sign them and then give the to HR so everyone can get paid for the hours they worked. In practice, everyone showed up each day, did their work, wrote down”8 hours” on their time sheet and went home. Everyone was happy.

Then along came a new guy in management who stated that nobody was actually keeping track of their hours and just writing down what HR wanted to see. This meant that the company was losing money and productivity from people not working a full day but being paid for it. So he instituted a new digital time sheet system where each person had to log their times in and out on their computers and the system would track how many hours each of us worked.

What the company discovered was that everyone tended to come into work 10–15 minutes early, hardly ever took a full hour for lunch and often stayed 10–15 minutes late to get their work done. Thanks to the new time sheet system every employee was now getting paid for all that overtime they had been working but not tracking. This affected the company because it was added payroll expense that wasn’t budgeted. So management put out a new rule that nobody would be allowed to work any overtime without written permission from their supervisor and HR. So everyone was very diligent to log in and out exactly in time.

Except now productivity had fallen because nobody was working those extra minutes each day, which multiplied over all staff added up to an extra 60 hours per week of work. The company ended up needing to hire two more people to make up that productivity.

After Huawei released Kirin 9000S, Biden revised the bill: banning China from owning high-end chips.

So China cannot make their own, if they do, they will violate American law.

Malaysia’s switch to a dual 5G network will allow for more effective participation by China’s Huawei – PM Anwar

Malaysia Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Wednesday the country’s switch to a dual 5G network will allow for more effective participation by China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.

Malaysia in May had said it would allow a second 5G network to operate from next year, following concerns over a monopoly held by a single state-run network.

The European Union and the U.S. had warned Malaysia of risks to national security and foreign investment amid efforts by Huawei to bid for a role in its telecoms infrastructure.

Anwar on Wednesday acknowledged concerns from some countries over the “security and capacity” of technology stemming from China, but said the decision to allow a second 5G network was made so that Malaysia could benefit from different technologies.

“We in Malaysia… and I believe rightly, decided that while we get the best from the West, we also should benefit the best from the East,” he told an event hosted by Huawei in Kuala Lumpur.

“After extensive discussion… we made the decision to allow for a dual network, and thus the decision for more effective participation by Huawei.”

Malaysia had in 2021 unveiled a plan for a state-owned agency, Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB), to own the full 5G spectrum, with various carriers using the infrastructure to provide mobile services, but the plan had come under industry criticism over pricing and competition.

State-run DNB partnered with Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson to roll out Malaysia’s 5G network. It is unclear how Malaysia’s plan for a second network would affect DNB’s agreement with Ericsson or other mobile operators.

WHAT THESE FILIPINAS CAN OFFER TO THEIR PASSPORT BROS!

Three chicks talking.

How do expats view other expats in China?

I really don’t like most western expats in China.

They are generally ignorant about China and Chinese, and conversations about China are very shallow and full of misconceptions. It is not worth my time to correct those misperceptions, and there is no reward for doing it.

Chinese are much fun and interesting, and even if they have silly ideas, they are often entertaining. Most importantly, they know the local restaurants and dishes, and can introduce me to some dish I have never had before. Unlike for most westerners, dining out is a social event, not just filling the tummy.

What was a gift that made you speechless?

I was age 14 in the early 1960s and living with a family who had one child around my age. On my 14th birthday, my mother said I needed to pay room and board. I decided to pay for a room in other homes where there was no violence. My rapidly increasing scoliosis was becoming a problem. I had three jobs to pay room and board — (1) feeding and washing people in a nursing home and doing laundry), (2) babysitting at the country club 1.5 miles away, and (3) stocking shelves in a dry goods store. I made $29.00 a week. My room and board was $28.00 a week. I went to high school about three days a week.

I was happy with this family. The father was Welsh and sang Welsh songs every Friday night as he walked home from the Legion. The mother was one of the cafeteria ladies at the high school. They were good to me.

Then one day, the father came home with an envelope and pulled out a Beatles ticket and handed it to his daughter.

And then he handed another ticket to me.

TO ME!

It cost $15.00. I told him it would take me years to pay him back. If I didn’t buy shampoo, pads, or deodorant, it would take me 15 months to repay him. The father disregarded this idea with a flick of his hand and a Welsh phrase I didn’t understand.

The father drove us the 80 miles to the venue, let us off and circled the building during the performance and was right there when it was finished. Not only that, but the man put up with us singing Beatles songs all the way home. We were not good singers.

Even now, decades later (and I am a retired person), whenever I do something nice for someone, I think, ‘this is for you, John Cooper, this one is for you.’

I carry such lightweight debts with me.

Pepe Escobar: China Has DEFEATED the Neocon Agenda as US War Fails Before It Starts

I don’t expect Xi or Putin to meet with Biden. He doesn’t make the decisions.

This is really, really, REALLY good.

Do you think Huawei can produce smartphones with advanced chips in large volume despite the US claims that Huawei may violate trade restrictions?

LOL, this is China.

If they know how to do something, they automatically know how to do it at scale.

This is a country that builds entire new cities at one go. They produce 600,000 engineers per year. They make four out of every five solar panels in the world. They can build a 57-storey skyscraper in 19 days, and as we saw during the covid-19 pandemic, a brand new hospital in 10 days. They are the world’s biggest factory.

If they know how to make one Huawei Mate 60, they already know how to make 100 million Huawei Mate 60s.

China does not know how to think SMALL. It is unnatural and weird for them to think on a small scale. China has cities with populations larger than countries such as Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, even Australia. Thinking big is China’s default mentality.

New round of US sanctions started against Huawei! U.S. tech war enters stage 2.0!

In this episode, we dive into the latest updates on the potential second round of sanctions by the United States on Huawei. Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, unveiled its new smartphone, the Mate 60 Pro, sparking intrigue amidst ongoing U.S.-China tech tensions.

These cutting-edge smartphones, powered by 7-nanometer chips from China’s SMIC, bring 5G connectivity to the forefront.

The implications of this move are significant, causing a reevaluation of the technology blockade against Huawei and even calls for a complete halt to technology exports. We also explore China’s efforts to boost its self-sufficiency in chip production and navigate U.S. export restrictions.

https://youtu.be/CI-ZOcv2CaI

What sort of sexism do most women face in the workplace?

I generally like my employer.

But the worst part of my job is that I occasionally have to be the “male voice”.

One of my female colleagues will refer a call to me to tell a caller about some iron clad policy we have that we can never, ever overlook.

I am on the same pay level as all of them. I am not the manager. I often work in a different department. I am, however, the only one of this fairly large group of people that is male.

I tell them the iron clad policy. They shut up. End of story.

Part of the problem is that the engineering profession is still about 80% male, and so is the applicant base. They are not used to being told “no” by someone who isn’t male. It’s not like it’s just immigrants either.

Here’s the irony. The second highest ranking staff member, and the person two steps above me, is a woman. She’s had to put up with it too.

But I will tell you about my ex-colleague, boss and PEO president. She left her position as my boss to take on a five year position at the university she was hired by to get female enrollment in the engineering program up to 40%. It took her one year and she shot past the 40% goal to boot. Then she went to another university and did the same thing.

China’s LATEST Hypersonic Drone Can Destroy US F35 Stealth Fighter in Seconds

China’s hypersonic program has emerged as one of the biggest and heavily advanced sectors of the nation. In this remarkable sector, the PLA boasts having a drone in its arsenal which is capable of reaching hypersonic speeds and destroying world renowned stealth fighters that have dominated the aerial warfare sector for years. Today’s episode is covering China’s hypersonic drone and how it can be used to destroy US Stealth fighters.

Why is Quora full of Westerners who praise China?

Many of the westerners have been to China, like it, and see a lot of criticism of China in the western media which is based on planted information and is basically untrue, in order to drive western public opinion against China.

These westerners try to compensate for this distorted view by praising China. Their intention is to restore balance in how China is viewed.

Unfortunately, the western view of China has become so distorted that it is impossible to have a balanced view of China: either it is completely bad, or it is good.

A balanced view of China would say that there are many good things about China, and there are some bad things as well.

China is just like the US: it is just another country and society, each facing its own set of challenges.

What is the most satisfying thing you have done to someone who blocked your driveway?

I live in Northern Maine. My property borders a state park/forest. The state forest has a parking lot you need to pay to park in the lot although the park/forest is free to enter. Alot of people will park along the main road and walk into the park. my property is on a side road that is beside the park the park entrance is 2 mile up the main road from my road.

Some park/forest visitors have taken to pulling down my road and parking on my property and hiking across my property to enter the park. they block driveways and the road with poor parking abilities. Some pull into driveways.

My property is a farm I have many driveways used by tractors and equipment to enter the feilds for feeding livestock and tending crops. All driveways are gated (keep livestock in feilds and out of crops)

One group of annoying tourists pulled up in 3 vehicles (2 rvs and a 12–15 passenger van) All had New York plates. they pulled in blocking the access to the feilds and began hiking across my feilds. I caught up to them and informed them that they would be towed if they did not move the vehicles. The leader of the group told me to f-off while giving a one finger salute. I watched as they walked away across the feild. once they entered the park/forest I went to my equipment barn got my large green and yellow tractor hooked up a slurry spreader tank and drove over to the slurry bin and filled the tank. ( Slurry is cow manure that is mixed with water to make it able to spray) I adjusted the spray bar and drove over near the area and sprayed liquified manure (did not spay any on the vehicles) just near the road along the fence a nice heavy thick layer then sprayed more along the area they entered the forest. Since it was 85 degrees outside the smell would bake in the sun to keep it fresh I placed a water tank and sprayer/ sprinkler nearby and set the timers to run for 5 minutes every hour. After 4 hours I called and had the vehicles towed.

They returned and found me spraying slurry in my feilds as they walked across the feilds the slurry is sticking to the shoes (most wearing sandles or flip flops – Nothing like the feeling of liquid poop between the toes) They find the vehicles gone and ask me where they are. I tell them where the inpound lot is and inform them that as they exit onto the main road they should stop and read the large SIGN that says private road. I called the police who informed them that they could walk to impound as it was 20–30 minute walk down the road.

I would imagine that they found out that the oder of sun baked slurry permeates into things. (they left the widows open on the vehicles) and with what was on the shoes it must have been an interesting ride back to New York.

Josep Borell, EU foreign policy chief, accuses China of treating Europe as a US puppet. How can this perception on the part of the Chinese be changed?

The problem with the EU is Josep the Chief Diplomat’s words do not represent the cohesive attitude, or indeed, policy decisions of the EU towards China. EU member states hold even more divergent and polarizing attitudes.

The fact of the matter is, the G7 does not have a China seat, but the EU gets its own seat, on top of individual EU members. The currencies of these nations power the global financial market, while the yuan issued by the world’s No. 2 economy is an afterthought in BIS reports.

Senior figures in the EU have repeatedly made rude and damaging attacks on China and Chinese interests, including the core issue of Greater China sovereignty. Entities and individuals have been sanctioned, just like their American counterparts, whose actions they mirrored.

Nord Stream is a key European infrastructure that cost billions to build. After it was bombed, the lack of condemnation for an act of war is curious, to say the least. Government findings were blocked from release, while there remains a shocking lack of blowback and demand for accountability in the press.

The EU-CHINA CAI, which is tilted in Europe’s favor, is also dead in the water, after 10 years of painstaking negotiation securing an agreement in principle. EU leaders are complaining about lack of market access in China, when it is self-inflicted.

There is also the issue of the EC, with Ursula completely at odds with Josep’s conciliatory, if shaky, diplomacy. She was given the cold shoulder on a recent visit to Beijing as Emmanuel’s invited partner. The message was clear. She wasn’t the guest invited by the Chinese state.

Who represents the EU? Who has the authoritative voice that can be trusted? How has the EU demonstrated long-term policy independence from the US?

Wang Yi, and before him, Yang Jiechi, have had regular hours-long closed door conversations with Jake, the National Security Advisor. Jake is 46, and not even elected, but he has access to top Chinese leadership that the EU can only dream of, because he is the personal envoy of Joe.

Do we really have to spell out who calls the shots in NATO, which is tied at the umbilical with the EU power structure?

As the Cantonese say, 画公仔唔使画出肠。

Israel Conflict Just Became Scarier And Weird!

Yes. Too odd. For certain.

How does culture influence human behavior?

During a 10-hour flight, she was heading from Seoul, Korea, to San Francisco, USA. This mother distributed more than 200 passengers on the plane a plastic bag for each one. The bag contains candy, chewing gum and earplugs as a kind of advance apology for using them in the event that her 4-month-old baby screamed during the flight.

The bag also contained a message containing (hello, I am Jan Woo. I am 4 months old and today I’m traveling America with my mom and grandmother for my aunt’s outfit. I’m a little nervous and scared. This is my first flight in my life. It’s normal for me to cry or cause some disturbance. I’ll try to stay calm, but I can’t promise you. Please use it if my voice gets too loud.. Enjoy your trip. Thank you)

A culture of respecting the freedom of others…

Is China still a communist country? Can we say that the rivalry between the US and China is the ideology conflict?

Not at all.

Communism and Marxism is hardly an issue to the U.S. with Vietnam that the U.S. is courting shamelessly and Saudi Arabia a Islamic Monarchy hardly liberal democracy but does it bother Uncle Sam for the last half a century?

For me it is as simple as China cannot be made submissive and subservient to the U.S. that is all to it. And worst China is simply a lot lot more efficient and effective than the U.S. can ever be! In fact China has a better human rights record than the U.S. anyway! That perturb the US to no end.

But what is worst for the U.S. Is 150–175 nations out of the world’s 195 nation prefers Chinese and China way and none in the global south wants anything to do with Uncle Sam. They find them obnoxious and despicable. To me this is not due to China at all but due to the shit U.S. did to the world since 1945.

I know Americans who are mostly highly naive and hugely made ignorant to think the U.S. media or government is well liked by the world. But in truth it couldn’t be further than the truth!

Abusing nations has consequences, bullying nations turned them off, arbitrary sanctions puts nations off, they will hedge, they will stop letting you fxxk them! It does not matter what your media lies and your propaganda says. The world is no fool!

Just figure this. US the biggest murdering nation telling China in Alaska about human rights! Is totally laughable and utterly ridiculous! Chinese officials told Blinken save the advise for your dogs and slave vassal nations!

The “American Dream” is actual Slavery (It’s all a Lie)

Harsh truth about the United States. Soak it in.

What’s the dumbest thing your boss has gotten mad at you for?

I was an admin assistant at a department at my local university. I was just about to clock off and make my way home in a wild windstorm that eventually knocked down 20,000 trees across the city when for some reason I decided to check one of the grad student offices and discovered that the skylight had blown off, exposing multiple desks and computers, some of them running data, to the elements. I called the relevant campus department and was told that restoring electricity and clearing roads and whatnot took priority, and they likely wouldn’t get to replacing the skylight (which I’d located, but lacked the strength and roof access to lug it up myself) until the next day at the earliest. So I cracked open the earthquake kit and rigged, using tarps and duct tape, a patch, then moved, ever so carefully so as not to accidentally disconnect the computers, all six desks away from the skylight shaft, in case my patch failed.

This all took about four hours past my usual knock-off time. Everyone was really glad I’d taken the time and initiative to do it, but my supervisor refused even to consider giving me time off in lieu for those four hours because she hadn’t pre-approved them, never mind that, in those pre-cell days, I’d had no way of reaching her. So I appealed to the department head, who overrode her. She was livid, and thereafter made my life so miserable that I leapt at the first decent opportunity to leave.

If universal healthcare is actually cheaper than our current system and covers everybody. Why not just do it?

I’m a retired US citizen who moved to Uruguay in 2015 after spending my entire working career in “Corporate America”.

It’s entertaining to read discussions about the possibility of implementing Universal Healthcare in the United States.

It will NEVER happen. It’s 1000% impossible. The reason? Health insurance companies.

The concept of Universal Healthcare does not involve insurance companies. There is no need for a bloated middleman.

There are 563,366 Health & Medical Insurance Employees in the US, costing approximately $50 billion annually.

These companies would have to be closed, freeing up all this cash for actual medical care, instead of bloat.

The main problems with the US Healthcare system are listed below. None of these problems exist with Universal Healthcare.

  • Greedy Health insurance companies run by highly-paid executives.
  • High-paid pharmaceutical & insurance company lobbyists.
  • Greedy congressmen who take millions of dollars in bribes annually.
  • Expensive TV commercials pushing expensive drugs.
  • Doctors who earn outrageous salaries to pay for outrageously expensive college educations with insane education loans.
  • Outrageous malpractice lawsuit settlements, requiring doctors to carry outrageous liability insurance.
  • People with no medical knowledge make decisions about whether a patient can have a medical procedure, overruling the attending physician.

Now, with the outsourcing of call centers, people with no medical knowledge in Jamaica, India, and Pakistan make those decisions.

Here are some typical costs in Uruguay:

  • Office visit: US $8.00
  • ER visit: US $ 10.00
  • House call: US $12.00.
  • Electrolyte blood analysis: US $7.11.
  • Cerebral CT Scan: US $23.29

If you call an ambulance, it arrives with a full-fledged MD, not an EMT.

Before I turned 70 years of age, I paid around US $55 per month for health coverage.

Now I pay around US $70 per month. For that, I get totally free hospital stays and all costs are free, including hospital stay, surgery, medications, doctor care, and nursing care. When you check out, regardless of what was done or how long you were hospitalized, you pay nothing.

The monthly cost for my cancer medication is around US $2.50. The same medication in the US is around $500.00.

Here are the main reasons everything is so cheap:

No claims to file

No EOB

No Deductible

No Out-of-Pocket

No Coinsurance

No Allowed amount

No Benefit period

No Preauthorization

Sincerely, A Tax Payer

“It sucks being poor…”

Can China manufacture semiconductor chips and create a rival to Intel, Apple, TSMC, and NVIDIA?

It’s been proven China can with Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro.

Chinese companies can rival the giant U.S. tech companies like Intel, Apple and Nvidia but what takes time is building up the ecosystem to make this possible. Thousands of companies make up the support system that manufactures and supports the tools and machines for the manufacturing processes of semiconductors.

The most critical of these companies are in the design (specifically EDA tools) and packaging (chiplets) processes, as well as the lithography machines for the making of the chip itself. There are now Chinese companies with the leading edge (or close to) technologies to rival industry leaders.

Just as critical is the consolidating of resources and capabilities to have the companies to ensure adequate supply of legacy chips. These are actually the more important players because they make up 90% of demand.

U.S. sanctions have forced China to come up with its own self-siufficient semiconductor indiustry.

If the average Chinese person supports 1 party rule and the average American supports democracy, how can we determine who is correct?

Chinese don’t necessarily support single party rule; they support a strong central government to maintain order.

Whether it is single party or not is secondary.

In today’s China, it is led by a single party, but it is much more than any western political party because it has 100M members who meet monthly to discuss local, provincial and central government issues, and how to solve them.

Do the Republican and Democratic parties ask their members to meet monthly to discuss how to solve social issues? I think not.

My point is not that one system is better than another, but they are very different, and talking about the ruling party in China being the same as the political parties in the US is silly and ridiculous, because China developed according to its historical conditions, and the US developed according to its historical conditions.

As Everyone’s Lοοking At Ιsrael, Something Τruly Unbelievable Has Begun Ιn America

Very interesting.

He’s saying that (it’s official) World War III is on-line.

https://youtu.be/DA3aRJrAyOo

Why is it NOT a good idea for an American White woman to marry a Middle Eastern Muslim man?

I did it. I regretted it.

People are imbued with cultural and religious ideas they don’t even recognize and simply take for granted.

I, an American, was imbued with the idea “I am my husband’s equal. In marriage we will have the same freedoms and similar expectations of each other. I would never shout at him for wearing shorts, so of course he will not do that to me. I don’t consider cooking his job, so I am sure he won’t consider it my job. I would always discuss a big purchase with him – and naturally he will give me the same respect.”

That sense of equality and “Don’t treat your spouse in a way you don’t want to be treated yourself” was my cultural norm.

I found that my husband had absolutely no cultural or religious norm of equality. He absolutely was willing to treat me in ways he would hate to be treated himself. He did not think a woman deserved what a man deserves.

He found it absolutely normal to expect control over me, and be resentful thst I didn’t make his life as comfortable as he believed a man’s life should be. He was constantly looking at the very unequal marriages of his (Muslim Arab) friends and resenting me for not being a submissive woman who cooked and cleaned and expected nothing but money from him.

My husband and I are in the same profession. I worked longer hours than him. I was also the one who was sometimes pregnant or recovering from childbirth.

But he could not appreciate me. He had a cultural and religious idea in his head : a man should come home from work and be catered to. Clean house, good food, obedient wife who wears certain clothes and lets her husband forbid her from certain activities or friends that do not please him. The man should be comfortable, should be served, should have things his way. (It is similar to the relationship between a dog owner and his dog. They love each other – but the owner does not think the dog should share in decisions or come and go as it pleases. A dog is expected to be happy being owned and trained and played with.)

My husband started off claiming he would love me forever.

It did not last.

But his cultural ideas of what a man is owed and how a wife must serve — those ideas will last in him forever.

What is wrong with American politicians’ fascination with Huawei?

Let’s answer this question using 5 Low IQ positions that the US politicians are taking –

Low IQ action 1 – Raimondo threatens Huawei before her China trip. She is simply arrogant and lacks intelligence. Who in the right mind threatens someone’s kid before visiting their home?

Low IQ action 2 – It is simply embarrassing to see a country using full state resources to bring down a private company. You brought an army to a fist fight and didn’t knock your much smaller opponent out!

Low IQ action 3 – The Western chips companies are making large profits selling products to China. And you stopped the sales and force your biggest customer to make their own?

Low IQ action 4 – You give billions of dollars of subsidies to your own chip companies to build factories. But you stop the demand from your top customer. So where are US companies gonna sell their excess chips to?

Low IQ action 5 – You take away Huawei’s access to Google and they went to develop their own operating system to threaten Google’s and Microsoft’s future dominance. You like shooting your own foot?

Irish Girl Watches MISTER ROGERS For The First Time

Oh nostalgia tv, except I don’t know who Mister Rogers is. I’ve always heard the name Mister Rogers as a reference in American tv and films but this Irish Girl had no idea who that was. Join me on a very emotional journey as I watch Fred Rogers first through last tv appearance, see him sing “I like you just as you are” and “ it’s a wonderful day in the neighbourhood” Mister Rogers Neighbourhood. Couldn’t we all do with some nice insight from a Fred Rogers right now.

What was your experience like when you realized that life outside of the United States was better than inside it?

I was in the US Army stationed in Germany for 3 and half years… Just turned 18. During this time I never took leave and went back. Travelled all over Europe! In Germany, I drunk my first beer, had my first kiss, and my first Girlfriend, was amazed by the people, the culture, the infrastructure, the cuisine, almost everything. I even took German courses and was proficient at least with speaking German. Anyway the day came, when i was being discharged ( I never really liked the army, andjoined for the Gi Bill) Back in the rural midwest, working at Walmart while going to community collage, I realized how much I missed Germany, the lifestyle, the urban vibe and so many things ( missed having a GF too, in the US I wasnt rich enough or cool enough to date anyone, in Germany this was never a thing at all, about money and all that. I decided if I was going to have a dull dead end life with no future, why not go back to Germany? At least have an adventure of some kind, i could always come back to the US.. 7 months after I ETSed ( left the army) I got a passport, got a cheap one way ticket and reconnected with some German civilians I knew.. I ended up staying in germany, has been 30 plus years now. I remember when the plane landed and I was disembarking, and set foot on the ground, I felt like,, this is it..the place you are meant to be.

Will the US dollar lose its global power in the next 5 years?

Yes it absolutely will.

I takes longer than that but slowly and surely it will.there is not even a speck of doubt. Tell me which nation wants to save in U.S. dollar reserve if can be confiscated away from you at the whims or fancies of the U.S? Do you want to keep your savings in a bank using a currency that the US can take it all away anytime it wants?

No one do, no want does, no one will ever want to. The fact that the US and the west can even phantom that by stealing gold from Venezuela and US dollar reserves from Russia is an acceptable behaviour tell how little the west thinks of the rest of the world.

Every nation on earth, even the US allies are figuring how to hedge against the US dollar. Direct Currency swap arrangement is very popular and it must have have grown several fold in the last year alone! Some agree on a basket of currencies, Others revert back to barter.

JEFFREY SACHS ON A HISTORIC DEBT

Israel Attacks Damascus Airport as IRAN Foreign Minister Plane Coming-in; Plane Forced to Divert

World Hal Turner 12 October 2023

The Israeli Air Force fired missiles at Damascus Airport and Aleppo Airport this morning, just before a plane carrying the Iran Foreign Minister was approaching Damascus for an official state visit.  The Iran Minister’s plane was forced to divert from the area to avoid conflict.

Attacking Syria was an illegal act of aggression by Israel.   Conducting that attack while a Diplomat was approaching for a state visit is arguably an Act of War.

Damascus Airport is now damaged and closed. Aleppo Airport is also reported to be damaged and closed.

The Iran Foreign Minister plane appears to be returning to Iran.

Syrian Defense Ministry: “At approximately 1:50 pm this afternoon, the Israeli enemy simultaneously carried out an air aggression with bursts of missiles, targeting the international airports of Aleppo and Damascus, which led to damage to the airports’ landing strips and them being out of service.

This aggression is a desperate attempt by the criminal Israeli enemy to divert attention from the crimes it is committing in Gaza, and the great losses it is suffering at the hands of the Palestinian resistance.” 

( HT Remark: Nothing like escalating the already bad situation with Gaza into an international incident with a foreign Diplomat.   Unschooled, these Israelis.  Totally devoid of class.)

How does the cost of Whoosh, Indonesia’s first high-speed railway, compare to other high-speed railway projects around the world?

According to our Singapore media reports, the cost of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail is approximately US$7.3 billion. We tentatively believe that this number is real.

So this figure exceeds the budget given by China when bidding for the project eight years ago by US$1.2 billion. The project completion time was delayed by 4 years than originally planned.

This doesn’t seem like a good number.

But compared to current plans in other countries around the world to build high-speed rail, these are two very good figures.

1. Cost per kilometer

Even calculated based on all costs after overruns (including land costs), the cost per kilometer of Indonesia’s high-speed rail is only US$58 million. The high-speed rail in the United Kingdom is US$300 million per kilometer, and the high-speed rail in California is US$200 million per kilometer.

India’s high-speed rail was originally planned to cost US$35 million per kilometer. However, it has not actually been completed yet. Only ten kilometers have been built. The cost has been doubled and the final cost cannot be estimated. Due to serious delays in construction, some experts predict that there is a high probability that the cost per kilometer will exceed US$80 million when completed.

2. Time spent

The Indian high-speed railway started construction one year earlier than the Indonesian high-speed railway and is scheduled to open in 2023. According to media reports some time ago, only 10 kilometers have been built so far.
The completion date has been changed to 2028, but many experts believe that the actual completion time may be after 2032.

The first phase of the British high-speed railway is planned to build 160 kilometers. Construction will start in 2020 and is scheduled to be completed in 2029. It has now been changed to 2033. The real completion date cannot be determined.

Therefore, although the Indonesian high-speed railway experienced a 16% cost overrun and a 4-year construction delay.
But this is mainly due to the virus problem over the past 3 years.

Judging from similar large-scale projects around the world, Indonesians have reached the top level in terms of project time and budget control.

I believe that for many years to come, no country will be able to surpass Indonesia’s level.

This is due to the efficient work of the Indonesian government, the unity and support of the Indonesian people, and the technology and efficiency of the Chinese. Their achievements deserve congratulations.

Star Trek – Fire On the Forcefield

America Can’t Stop China’s Rise — Foreign Policy

There’s little doubt that the American government has decided to slow China’s economic rise, most notably in the fields of technological development. To be sure, the Biden administration denies that these are its goals. Janet Yellen said on April 20, “China’s economic growth need not be incompatible with U.S. economic leadership. The United States remains the most dynamic and prosperous economy in the world. We have no reason to fear healthy economic competition with any country.” And Jake Sullivan said on April 27, “Our export controls will remain narrowly focused on technology that could tilt the military balance. We are simply ensuring that U.S. and allied technology is not used against us.”

Yet, in its deeds, the Biden administration has shown that its vision extends beyond those modest goals. It has not reversed the trade tariffs Donald Trump imposed in 2018 on China, even though presidential candidate Joe Biden criticized them in July 2019, saying: “President Trump may think he’s being tough on China. All that he’s delivered as a consequence of that is American farmers, manufacturers and consumers losing and paying more.” Instead, the Biden administration has tried to increase the pressure on China by banning the export of chips, semiconductor equipment, and selected software. It has also persuaded its allies, like the Netherlands and Japan, to follow suit. More recently, on Aug. 9, the Biden administration issued an executive order prohibiting American investments in China involving “sensitive technologies and products in the semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence sectors” which “pose a particularly acute national security threat because of their potential to significantly advance the military, intelligence, surveillance, or cyber-enabled capabilities” of China.

All these actions confirm that the American government is trying to stop China’s growth. Yet, the big question is whether America can succeed in this campaign—and the answer is probably not. Fortunately, it is not too late for the United States to reorient its China policy toward an approach that would better serve Americans—and the rest of the world.


America’s decision to slow China’s technological development is akin to the folly revealed by the old cliché: closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. Modern China has shown many times that China’s technological development can’t be halted.

Since the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, several efforts have been made to limit China’s access to or stop its development in various critical technologies, including nuclear weapons, space, satellite communication, GPS, semiconductors, supercomputers, and artificial intelligence. The United States has also tried to curb China’s market dominance in 5G, commercial drones, and electric vehicles (EVs). Throughout history, unilateral or extraterritorial enforcement efforts to curtail China’s technological rise have failed and, in the current context, are creating irreparable damage to long-standing U.S. geopolitical partnerships. In 1993 the Clinton administration tried to restrict China’s access to satellite technology. Today, China has some 540 satellites in space and is launching a competitor to Starlink.

The same principle played out with GPS. When America restricted China’s access to its geospatial data system in 1999, China simply built its own parallel BeiDou Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) system in one of the first waves of major technological decoupling. In some measures, BeiDou is today better than GPS. It is the largest GNSS in the world, with 45 satellites to GPS’s 31, and is thus able to provide more signals in most global capitals. It is supported by 120 ground stations, resulting in greater accuracy, and has more advanced signal features, such as two-way messaging. Other nations have also previously tried and failed to block China’s technical rise. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the USSR withheld nuclear weapons technology from China, China launched its own “Manhattan Project” in the early 1960s and succeeded in testing its first nuclear weapon by 1964. Russian nuclear leverage over China ended that day.

Many of the measures taken by the Biden administration against China were also executed without factoring in China’s capacity to retaliate. While China does not physically construct many truly irreplaceable components of the American technology stack, they are keenly aware of the importance of their raw materials inputs (rare earths) and demand (revenue generation) in fueling the American innovation ecosystem and are now using them as leverage. In the current tit-for-tat dynamic, China will start squeezing these two critical ends of the value chain in response to American technology and capital export restrictions. China’s July ban of the gallium and germanium exports was merely an opening shot across the bow to remind America (and its aligned allies) of China’s dominance in the rare earths and critical metals space. The country has a near monopoly in the processing of magnesium, bismuth, tungsten, graphite, silicon, vanadium, fluorspar, tellurium, indium, antimony, barite, zinc, and tin. China also dominates in midstream processing for materials essential to most of America’s current and future technology aspirations such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper, which are critical for the rapidly developing EV industry globally.

While America and other neutral countries have mineral reserves of many of these materials, it would be naïve to believe that one can simply flip a switch on mining and production. It will take at least three to five years just to build the requisite extraction and processing infrastructure. This is to say nothing for recruiting and training skilled labor, or receiving requisite operational and environmental permits for such activities. Both could prove impossible. The processing of rare earths is a highly toxic and environmentally destructive endeavor. It’s unlikely such approvals will be granted. If Arizona is struggling to find qualified workers for its TSMC fabrication facility, and to address domestic union opposition to importing foreign skilled labor, it’s unlikely that America can develop similar capabilities for material processing. Along the way, China gets to play kingmaker in how it doles out access to its processed materials, likely restricting supply to American technology and defense giants. The failure to factor in China’s retaliatory capacities indicates that the United States doesn’t have a well-thought-out and comprehensive approach to dealing with China.


American measures to deprive China access to the most advanced chips could even damage America’s large chip-making companies more than it hurts China. China is the largest consumer of semiconductors in the world. Over the past ten years, China has been importing massive amounts of chips from American companies. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, China-based firms imported $70.5 billion worth of semiconductors from American firms in 2019, representing approximately 37 percent of these companies’ global sales. Some American companies, like Qorvo, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom, derive about half of their revenues from China. 60 percent of Qualcomm’s revenues, a quarter of Intel’s revenues, and a fifth of Nvidia’s sales are from the Chinese market. It’s no wonder that the CEOs of these three companies recently went to Washington to warn that U.S. industry leadership could be harmed by the export controls. American firms will also be hurt by retaliatory actions from China, such as China’s May ban on chips from US-based Micron Technology. China accounts for over 25 percent of Micron’s sales.

The massive revenue surpluses generated by these sales to China were ploughed into R&D efforts which, in turn, kept American chip companies ahead of the game. The Chamber of Commerce estimates that if the United States were to ban semiconductor sales to China completely, U.S. companies would lose $83 billion in annual revenues and would have to cut 124,000 jobs. They would also have to cut their annual R&D budgets by at least $12 billion, and their capital spending by $13 billion. This would make it even more difficult for them to remain competitive on the global scale in the long run. American semiconductor firms are painfully aware that U.S. actions against China in the chips arena will harm their interests more than Chinese interests. The U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association released a statement on July 17, saying that Washington’s repeated steps “to impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions risk diminishing the U.S. semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty, and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China,” and called on the Biden administration not to implement further restrictions without more extensive engagement with semiconductor industry representatives and experts.

The Chips Act cannot subsidize the American semiconductor industry indefinitely, and there is no other global demand base to replace China. Other chip producing nations will inevitably break ranks and sell to China (as they have historically) and the American actions will be for naught. And, in banning the export of chips and other core inputs to China, America handed China its war plan years ahead of the battle. China is being goaded into building self-sufficiency far earlier than they would have otherwise. Prior to the ZTE and Huawei components bans, China was content to continue purchasing American chips and focusing on the front-end hardware. Peter Wennink, the CEO of ASML, stated that China is already leading in key applications and demand for semiconductors. Wennink wrote, “The roll-out of the telecommunication infrastructure, battery technology, that’s the sweet spot of mid-critical and mature semiconductors, and that’s where China without any exception is leading.”


Germany Just Warned Europe On “China’s Counterstrike Move” | Silent EV War Explodes

Simple, like the UK with Brexit, Germany should leave the EU. This will solve the problem, as Germany will then be able to distance itself from investigations implemented by the EU parliament.

What is the most dangerous thing you have done and why?

I used to be a Tower Climber.

Installing antennas and transmission lines on cellular towers.. Day in and day out we would climb 150, 200, 300feet and stay up there literally all day – often 10–12 hours.

Those heights were the norm, but I also did 400ft a couple of times, and then 500ft once.

And I did it because I needed a job and this paid really well. Plus I was a brand new divorcee and just starting over, so at the time working this tough, dangerous job with other guys was a very good thing for me. I made close friends, we partied and had fun, we laughed a lot, and it was just what the doctor ordered.

The end of Evergrande.

Bloomberg News has reported that billionaire founder and chairman Hui Ka Yan was taken away by police earlier this month and put under so-called residential surveillance , a type of police action that falls short of formal detention or arrest.

The surveillance doesn’t necessarily mean that Hui will be charged with a crime, and the exact circumstances of his situation remain unclear. But it’s not looking good: Evergrande has halted trading and confirmed in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing that authorities have told the company that Hui has been subjected to “mandatory measures,” due to “suspicion of illegal crimes.

The latest twist in an ongoing saga for the world’s most indebted developer has left creditors confused and concerned about what’s to become of their investments. The fate of the developer’s restructuring plans are now at risk, and the chances of a full-on liquidation have increased.

There’s a long list of victims: the hundreds of thousands of homeowners who bought into some 706 residential projects that are still being built; people who bought into Evergrande’s wealth management products, worth 40 billion yuan ($5.5 billion) a few years ago; global investors who collectively own at least $30 billion of offshore debt; suppliers and banks who are among those owed some 2.39 trillion yuan in liabilities. The company is facing more than 2,000 lawsuits, too.

I remember a time when Evergrande was still able to overcome its detractors. When a shortsellertargeted it for alleged financial mismanagement back in 2012, a Hong Kong tribunal provided vindication by saying the report was misleading and false.

But so much has changed since then: Evergrande has become a harbinger of the nation’s real estate meltdown. Its fate seemed to be sealed back in 2020, when a liquidity scare fueled by its massive debt load triggered aggressive regulatory tightening. Compounded by pandemic-related woes, the company defaulted the following year.

What happens after Evergrande? As we know, this property crisis is far from over. China’s property developers face a liquidity shortfall worth some 19 trillion yuan, or 15% of GDP, that could morph into a solvency crunch by year-end, Bloomberg analysts estimate.

Property downturns are always painful. In China, that’s especially the case because of the outsized role that the sector plays in the economy: As much as 70% of household wealthis tied to the industry.

The government has responded by relaxing property buying rules, since it doesn’t want the current distress among developers to trigger financial contagion — nor does it want to see social unrest.

Dragging out the Evergrande saga, though, has wreaked havoc among homebuyers, construction workers, suppliers and investors. And as the government has shown no intention of bailing out developers, the only certainty we’re left with is the idea that this pain is far from finished.

Asian point of view

Have you ever tried to fire someone and it backfired?

This happened to my ex.

My ex was the CFO of one of the largest private construction companies in the world. His main role was to make sure the company stayed profitable. Simple really.

The owners’ son, who recently graduated from college and was having trouble finding gainful employment, (seems nobody would hire him to get stoned) was parachuted into my ex’s job. My ex was quickly let go.

He didn’t mind too much. Even though a little disappointed, he still was paid out fairly and started his own firm with the severance money.

A tender came up for a new skyscraper in London. My ex’s former company put in its bid and came in ahead of everyone else by millions. Turned out months into construction that the new CFO had forgotten to add the cost of electrical wiring into the cost of construction. A mistake that sent his family bankrupt.

Luckily there was one new firm with the creditor’s backing, experience and ability to jump in immediately. My ex hired a lot of the now redundant employees and bought a large chunk of his old company’s heavy equipment at a huge discount in a mortgagee sale.

The lesson here is to never kill the golden goose!

Elderly shelter cat had weeks to live. So this woman adopted him.

This woman is a saint! What she does for these cats is beyond compassion!

Capitalist and socialist modernisation

The Sixteenth Forum of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) took place from 25 to 27 September 2023 in Fuzhou, China, co-organised by Fujian Normal University. The theme of the forum was Chinese modernisaton and the prospects of world modernisation. Although unable to attend in person, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez was invited to submit a video presentation.

Carlos’s presentation, entitled Capitalist and socialist modernisation, takes up a number of questions: What is modernisation? Is modernisation desirable? How has modernisation been achieved in the West? What is China’s modernisation plan? What are the unique characteristics of Chinese modernisation? How does socialist modernisation differ from capitalist modernisation? What effect does China’s modernisation on the global journey towards development and socialism?

The video and the text of Carlos’s presentation are available below.

What is modernisation, and is it necessary?

Modernisation is a somewhat nebulous concept. It means different things to different societies at different times. By definition, its parameters are constantly changing.

In the broadest sense, it means adapting to the latest, most advanced ideas and techniques for meeting humanity’s material and cultural needs.

In sociology, there is more or less an equals sign between modernisation and industrialisation, and is generally held to begin with Britain’s Industrial Revolution. We can think of it essentially as the transition from ‘developing country’ status to ‘developed country’ status; from a predominantly rural society to a predominantly urban society; from a technologically backward society to a technologically advanced society.

Is this desirable? Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder, but most people consider modernisation to be desirable, because it enables higher living standards for the masses of the people.

With modernised industry, production techniques, communication methods, transport systems, energy systems and healthcare strategies, there exists the possibility of providing a healthy, meaningful and dignified life to all, such that each individual has reliable access to a healthy diet, to decent housing, to clothing, to education, to healthcare, to a vibrant cultural, social and intellectual life, and to fulfilling work. In short, modernisation makes it possible to attend to people’s basic human rights.

The fruits of modernisation have thus far been divided extremely unequally: the process of industrialisation in North America, Europe and Japan has created previously unimaginable wealth for a few, but this has been accompanied by desperate poverty and alienation for significant numbers. However, modernisation creates a material basis for common prosperity, far beyond what a pre-modern economy can offer.

Specifically in the case of China, the government has set a goal of “basically realising socialist modernisation by 2035”, and has defined some parameters for this:

  • Reaching a per-capita GDP on a par with that of the mid-level developed countries such as Spain or the Czech Republic
  • Joining the ranks of the world’s most innovative countries in the realm of science and technology
  • Becoming a global leader in education, public health, culture and sport
  • Substantially growing the middle-income group as a proportion of the population
  • Guaranteeing equitable access to basic public services
  • Ensuring modern standards of living in rural areas
  • Steadily lowering greenhouse gas emissions and protecting biodiversity, so as to restore a healthy balance between humans and the natural environment

If achieved, these aims will constitute a significant – indeed world-historic – improvement in the living standards of the Chinese people, and will blaze a trail for other developing countries.

How did the West modernise?

But is China doing anything new? After all, it won’t be the first country to achieve modernisation.

In mainstream modernisation theory in the West, the dominant narrative is that the countries of Western Europe, North America and Japan achieved their advances via a combination of good governance, liberal democracy, free-market economics, scientific genius, geographical serendipity and a dash of entrepreneurial spirit.

Historical investigation reveals a considerably different story.

The most important precursors of the West’s modernisation are colonialism, slavery and genocide. The conquest of the Americas, the settlement of Australia, the transatlantic slave trade, the colonisation of India, the rape of Africa, the Opium Wars, the theft of Hong Kong, and more. The profits of colonialism and the slave trade were essential for propelling the West’s industrialisation, as was so eloquently uncovered in Eric Williams’ classic 1944 work, Capitalism and Slavery.

As Karl Marx famously wrote in Volume 1 of Capital: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.”

Such is the ugly truth of European modernisation. And the story is not so different in the United States. Many of the so-called founding fathers of that country were slave-owners, and they established a slave-owners’ society. They went to war against the indigenous peoples and against Mexico in order to expand their territory.

In the 20th century, having established their domination over the Americas, they constructed a neocolonial global system that is still in place to a significant degree, imposing American hegemony on the world.

A network of 800 foreign military bases. NATO. An enormous nuclear arsenal. Genocidal wars waged on Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Systems of economic coercion and unilateral sanctions.

Proxy wars, coups, regime change projects, destabilisation.

This is the global system of violence that has facilitated and accompanied North American modernisation.

Japan’s rapid rise was facilitated first by its brutal expansionist project in East Asia, particularly Korea and China, and then through adaptation to and integration with the US-led imperialist system, the much-vaunted ‘rules-based international order’.

South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan Province constitute the small handful of non-imperialist territories that have been able to achieve modernisation, but these are special cases. Their shared proximity to China and the DPRK is no coincidence; they have been inducted into the imperialist club by the US, to play a dual role as regional policemen and living advertisements for capitalism on the frontline of its confrontation with socialism. Both roles rely on at least a certain degree of prosperity for a section of the population.

There is no shortage of countries of the Global South which have attempted to apply the “liberal democracy plus free market capitalism” formula, but none have been successful in modernising. Indeed the West’s prescriptions for (and interference in) developing countries have largely led to chaos and disaster.

The contrast between the West’s success in modernising and the Global South’s failure has fed into a largely unspoken but widespread and pernicious racism: an assumption that white people are somehow inherently more advanced than everyone else.

This supremacism is allowed to fester, because in addition to dividing working class and oppressed communities, it provides convenient cover for the reality that capitalist modernisation is built on the foundations of colonialism, imperialism and hegemonism.

As Kwame Nkrumah commented, “in the era of neocolonialism, under-development is still attributed not to exploitation but to inferiority, and racial undertones remain closely interwoven with the class struggle.”

How is China modernising?

China’s journey towards modernisation starts in 1949 with the founding of the People’s Republic, the early construction of socialist industry, land reform and the extirpation of feudalism and the landowning class, and the provision of at least basic levels of education and healthcare services to the whole population.

In 1963, Premier Zhou Enlai, supported by Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun, first raised the question of the Four Modernisations: of agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology. Despite a complex political environment this goal was revived in the early 1970s, and, with the launch of reform and opening up in 1978, China accelerated its pursuit of those goals, and ushered in an era of rapid development of the productive forces and improvement in the people’s living standards.

China’s journey of modernisation has evolved again in recent years with the pursuit of the second centenary goal: of building a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by 2049.

China is on a fast track to becoming an advanced, developed country, and this process stands in stark contrast to the West’s modernisation process:

First, China’s modernisation is built on the efforts of the Chinese people rather than on war, colonialism and slavery.

Second, its fruits are to be shared by everybody, not dominated by the wealthy. As General Secretary Xi Jinping said in his work report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China’s modernisation is “the modernisation of common prosperity for all.”

Even today, not everyone in the West is able to enjoy the fruits of modernisation. Consider for example the US, where tens of millions lack access to healthcare; where over half a million people are homeless; where life expectancy for African Americans is six years less than for their white counterparts; where – according to the US Department of Education – over half of adults read below a sixth-grade level.

Third, China’s modernisation is becoming a green modernisation, fuelled by clean energy, careful not to destroy the planet that sustains us. Again quoting Xi Jinping’s work report, “it is the modernisation of harmony between humanity and nature.”

Capitalist modernisation has had a disastrous impact on the environment. With 4 percent of the global population, the US alone is responsible for 25 percent of historic greenhouse gas emissions. The simple fact is that humanity literally cannot afford for China’s modernisation to follow this pattern.

Socialist modernisation will become the ‘new normal’

The West’s modernisation path is not open to the countries of the Global South, and it wouldn’t be desirable even if it were. Today, the road of capitalist modernisation is closed, so how is China able to modernise?

China does not have an empire, formal or informal, but it does have a particular advantage of being a socialist state, a “people’s democratic dictatorship based on the alliance of workers and peasants”, to use Mao Zedong’s expression. Such a state can use its power to direct economic activity towards the goals of the social classes it represents.

Thus the specificities of China’s modernisation – the commitment to common prosperity, to ending poverty and underdevelopment, to preventing climate collapse and to peaceful development – are a function of China’s political system, its revolutionary history, and the leadership of the CPC.

At a meeting of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2016, Xi Jinping made this point very succinctly: “Our greatest strength lies in our socialist system, which enables us to pool resources in a major mission. This is the key to our success.”

Or as Deng Xiaoping famously commented in 1984: “the superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of the productive forces than under the capitalist system.”

In a world still largely dominated by capitalism – and an intellectual world still dominated by bourgeois ideology – it’s easy to forget this system’s fundamental and irreconcilable contradictions, which Marx identified with such clarity and profundity 150 years ago; contradictions which lead inexorably to inefficiency, stagnation and crisis. A political economy directed at the production of exchange values rather than use values can never result in common prosperity.

In China, the capitalist class is not the ruling class and is therefore not able to direct the country’s resources according to its own prerogatives. At the top level, resources are allocated by the state, in accordance with long-term planning carried out by, and in the interests of, the people.

This is what is enabling a new type of modernisation, which is blazing a trail for socialist and developing countries the world over.

The fruits of this process are being shared with the world, via mechanisms such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Development Initiative, which are creating a path for the countries of the Global South to break out of underdevelopment, even where they lack China’s resources and political advantages.

As such, China’s evolving modernisation has great historic significance, and offers valuable lessons for the world. It is an embodiment of historical materialism in the current era: capitalism has long since exhausted its ability to fundamentally drive human progress, and therefore the future lies with socialism.

What were the most ‘badass’ moments of history?

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Galvarino was a legendary warrior of the Mapuche people who rebelled against the Spanish Conquers who had invaded their land.

The Mapuche people were natives of the Araucana region of Chile who fought against the Spanish conquest of South America. The Arauco War was the bloodiest and longest-running battle in the history of the New World.

In what became known as the Battle of Lagunillias, Galvarino led his people in a fight against the Spanish invaders who were trying to force them into servitude.

During the battle, Galvarino and his men were captured by the Spanish. As punishment for defying the Spanish, Galvarino had both his hands amputated at the wrists and sent him home as a message to the other Mapuche tribes.

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He returned home defeated and severely wounded. He showed the war council his wounds and begged them to let him lead an army against their oppressors. For his bravery, he was named commander of a squadron of men in a fight against Governor Mendoza.

With long Sharp knives fastened to his mutilated stumps, he led his army into battle against Governor Mendoza and his men. The Brutal battle lasted for an hour, with Galvarino striking and killing Mendoza’s number two in command with his modified stumps.

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image 73

Although Galvarino and his men fought a brave battle, they were soon overwhelmed and captured. All the remaining captured warriors including Galvarino, were executed on the orders of Governor Mendoza.

Has Huawei successfully challenged the dominance of American tech giants and truly democratized the tech industry?

Huawei has established the third truly COMMERCIAL Asian Tech Ecosystem from China and the eighth in Asia after Toyota, Nikon, Canon ,Samsung , BYD, Trina and Xinyi

image 106
image 106

The Huawei Ecosystem now has

  • The Chip
  • The OS
  • The 5G Modem
  • The GPU
  • The Networks

Yet Huawei Ecosystem is fragile because SMIC the manufacturer of the 7 nm Node depends on Advanced DUV equipment from ASML

Now SMIC has stockpiled massive orders from ASML and that will keep SMIC going till maybe 2026

However that’s still dependence, a lot of dependence on the West

So i would say HUAWEI has made a start

Meanwhile people forget the REAL WINNERS of the three companies that have established it’s own dominant ecosystem on which the West is entirely dependent on :-

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image 105

BYD

BYD has:-

  • The Chip – The Mature 28nm Chip that only China can today manufacture cost effectively and in huge volumes
  • The Software
  • The Satellite Navigation System
  • The Battery
  • The Dynamic Unit

It’s completely and entirely Independent from Western Technology

Trina and Xinyi who have :-

  • The Intelligent Chip
  • The Micrograde Wafer Panel (That to this day no nation can produce except France but at 87% higher cost)
  • The Carbide micro layering etching equipment (Chinas equivalent of the EUV Lithography Machine)
  • The Silicon extraction process into Mono, Poly Crystalline Silicon with infusions

Yes Huawei deserves all the admiration for its clawback and fighting

Yet BYD, Trina and Xinyi actually get Proprietary License Fees from the West which is unique for a Nation that to thia day didn’t kowtow to the West unlike Japan, Israel and South Korea


Huawei to win, needs SMIC to become another BYD or Xinyi or Trina

If SMIC can achieve that, then China truly begins the challenge to the established Semiconductor industry

Lego just hit a climate BRICK wall

Lego says that it cannot make bricks from recycled material. They tried and they simply cannot do it without increasing carbon emissions. That’s a refreshing admission. Most companies take on “green initiatives” anyway, even if they prove to make the problem worse. In a similar vein, the CEO of Lufthansa admitted that“going green” would require the airline to use up HALF of Germany’s electricity. So not green at all then. Meanwhile, Ford says that it will pause construction of a $3.5 billion plant to build EV batteries in Michigan. They aren’t saying why. It just goes to show: It ain’t easy being green.

Is the Belt and Road Initiative losing steam?

You’ve probably heard of China’s ambitious plan to connect the world with its Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI for short. It’s a massive project that involves building roads, railways, ports, pipelines, and other infrastructure across Asia, Africa, Europe, and beyond. China says it’s a win-win situation for everyone, a way to boost trade, development, and cooperation among more than 140 countries that have signed up for it.

But not everyone is buying it. Some critics in the West say that the BRI is a trap, a scheme, or a tool for China to expand its power and influence at the expense of other countries. They say that the BRI is saddling poor countries with unsustainable debt, damaging the environment and human rights, and undermining the international order. They also say that the BRI is losing steam due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the backlash from some host countries, and the changing global dynamics.

So what’s the real story? Well, if you listen to what China has to say on its official websites, you’ll get a very different picture. According to them, the BRI is not losing steam at all. In fact, it’s gaining momentum and achieving positive results in various aspects.

First of all, they say that the BRI has shown strong resilience and vitality amid the COVID-19 pandemic. China has actively cooperated with other BRI partners to fight against the virus, provide medical supplies and vaccines, share prevention and treatment experiences, and support economic recovery. The BRI has also contributed to the global efforts to build a community of health for all.

Secondly, they say that the BRI has promoted high-quality development and green cooperation. China has adhered to the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits, and has followed the international rules and standards in implementing BRI projects. China has also attached great importance to environmental protection, social responsibility, and debt sustainability, and has encouraged green investment and financing under the BRI framework.

Thirdly, they say that the BRI has enhanced mutual trust and friendship among different countries and peoples. The BRI has fostered dialogue and exchange among different civilizations, cultures, and religions, and has supported education, culture, tourism, sports, media, and other fields of people-to-people cooperation. The BRI has also created opportunities for poverty alleviation, job creation, livelihood improvement, and social development for millions of people in the participating countries.

So there you have it. The BRI is not losing steam but rather advancing steadily and fruitfully. The BRI is not a solo show by China but a chorus by all participants. The BRI is not a challenge or threat to anyone but a benefit and opportunity for everyone. The BRI is not a zero-sum game but a win-win cooperation for common development. That’s what China wants you to believe. And if you don’t believe it, well, too bad for you. Because China is not going to stop or change its course anytime soon. It’s going to keep pushing forward with its vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Why Australia’s Housing Crisis Is a Warning for the World

My goodness!

What is something that needs to be said that nobody wants to hear?

Trump supporters have a point.

They weren’t misled by Russian trolls. They weren’t ignorant. They weren’t racist or sexist or xenophobic or homophobic. They were mad… they felt left behind and ignored by the media and the federal government… and they had a point.

They were left behind, and ignored.

For many of them, the America their parents and grandparents grew up in was a lot better. And no, that’s not because other groups were oppressed. It was because the economy was better for working-class people back then.

If your grandparents raised a large family on a single income, while the media and politicians cared about what your grandparents cared about, and now, 50 years later, you and your wife can’t get by on your dual incomes, and the media and politicians spend more time talking about transgender bathroom usage than the fact that families like yours are falling further behind each year… then yes, you have a point, and Make America Great Again makes sense.

Blueberry Grunt

2023 10 14 11 57
2023 10 14 11 57

Ingredients

  • 4 cups fresh blueberries
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 tablespoons grated orange peel
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup milk

Instructions

  1. In a skillet, combine blueberries, sugar and water; bring to a boil. Simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes.
  2. In a bowl, combine the next 6 ingredients; stir in milk just until moistened (dough will be stiff).
  3. Drop by tablespoonsful over blueberries.
  4. Cover and cook for 10 to 15 minutes or until dumplings are puffed and test done.
  5. Serve warm.

Should secondary sanctions be imposed on China and Russia for their complicity with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Myanmar?

All terrorism in the world is linked to the United States! It is no longer a secret that the United States Government supports terrorism in South-East Asia!

US-backed Terrorism Targets Vietnam & Myanmar in Wider War on China

  • Two terrorist attacks this month (June 2023) in Southeast Asia have been carried out by groups backed by the United States government and its allies for decades;
  • This includes a singer murdered in Myanmar and a series of armed attacks carried out on police stations in Vietnam killing 9 including several civilians;
  • British state media, the BBC, and US government-funded media platform Radio Free Asia have attempted to spin and even justify this terrorism as part of a much wider pattern promoting and defending terrorism as a means to counter China’s rise and punish nations working closely with China;
  • The opposition in Myanmar has openly been backed by the US and UK for decades – fighting to reinstall Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy back into power;
  • In Vietnam, the ethnic Montagnards had fought alongside US invaders in the Vietnam War, and since then have worked closely with the US through the National Endowment for Democracy toward separatism;
  • Much of this context is omitted from Western state-media accounts of the terrorism;
  • Both Myanmar and Vietnam’s current governments have close relations with China. Vietnam, while depicted in the Western media as “anti-China,” has worked with China to build infrastructure within its borders and access Chinese rail projects to bring their products all the way to Europe;

Why Companies That Go Woke Go Broke

I saw the title and I instantly clicked to watch, really wanted to see a documentary about all these companies that went woke, then broke!

What is the most amazing thing you overheard because people didn’t think you understood their language?

Well one fairly amazing thing happened in Penang. I (white Australian) was speaking to my friend (Asian Australian) in English.

An American tourist interrupted us and asked “excuse me, do you speak English?” We were both quite shocked and I said “a little.” I don’t know if she really couldn’t understand Australian English and didn’t realise what language I was speaking.

She said “Can you direct me to XYZ hotel?”

Now ordinarily two Aussies, neither of whom have ever been to Malaysia and speak no Malay wouldn’t be the best choice. But I pointed to the building we were standing in front of and said “walk about 10 yards that way.”

She was WAY out of her depth and her next international holiday should probably be to Hawaii.

However, I did the opposite in Austria. I speak no German, but if I look at a menu and plan out my sentence I can pretend to. So I asked in perfect German “Could I please have 2 hot chocolates; one with whipped cream and one with rum thanks.” She answered with something as simple as “that will be 8 euros” and I looked at her blankly and said in English “I’m sorry, I don’t speak German.” She laughed and did the transaction in English. She said I fooled her.

Pretty much the same thing in Poland, back in the days before Schengen membership. Apparently I needed a visa. So they berated me in Polish for a while, and I said I didn’t speak Polish. They went to the lingua franca of Eastern Europe and said “something something Russky.” I replied with what I’m told is an excellent accent “nye poni mayu po Russkiy.”

Here’s a guy in Lithuania, driving an Estonian-registered car, saying in perfect Russian in response to a question IN Russian “I don’t understand Russian.” I’m sure they weren’t thrilled and may not have believed me but I looked blankly at the rest of their diatribe. So eventually they wrote down my name, pointed me to Vilnius and said “visa.”’

Why is Urumqi, Xinjiang cleaner, safer, civilized, and developed than New Delhi?

Almost every Chinese City beats Indian Cities hollow in terms of Cleanliness, Safety and Development

image 113
image 113
image 114
image 114

There are Primarily three reasons for this :-

A. One Party Meritocracy & Funds

In China, fund allocation for Cities and their overall Urban development is based on the Urban Development Index (UDI) plus between 15% upto 46% of the revenue generated by a City is used by the Local Government of that Province and the Administration of that City to develop the place

There is no political rivalries or party based discrimination between Fund Allocation and Revenue sharing

It’s all about How much the City develops and how well maintained the City is

In India, funding is a nightmare because the State themselves have no claim over the money they generate as revenue. Everything is handed over to the Centre which then decides how much each State should get and then the State decides how much each City should get

China has 20 times the provincial autonomy than an Indian State


B. Continuous Development to prevent overcrowding

India keeps on dumping on the same city again and again for year after year. Thus every such city attracts migrants like flies and that leads to overcrowding of the worst order

China keeps developing and expanding new Cities regularly

Chengdu, Chongqing etc were small towns a decade or so ago that are now bustling cities, brimming with Prosperity

Urumqi was once a town , now it’s classified as a Tier 3 City

Thus if you notice Shanghai and Beijing both lost 4% and 5.6% of the population due to migration between 2013–2023 whereas Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad netted between 7.6% and 12% SURPLUS population by migration between 2008–2023


C. Chinas Housing Policy

Everyone living with a proper Job in a City in China MUST have housing

This is a law from the time of Chairman Mao and when it’s a Chairman Mao law, it’s enforcement is very strict

Public Housing is thus available for every single resident of the city including the poorest of them

Only Shanghai and Beijing has slums today , which existed before the 1998 law and thus can’t be torn down

image 112
image 112

If you have a legitimate job in CQ City, you get a Public Apartment of 39–52 Square Meters with indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning and gas and electricity and drinking water for a mere 78 RMB / month

Of course many Chinese become prosperous enough to rent much nicer places and sub lease their public homes for which they pay rent of 78 RMB/ month for 400–500 RMB / month

During Covid 19, many such people were discovered and fined very heavily (30, 000 RMB plus 60 months rent or 100 Days in Prison)


A Fourth reason is the fact that Migration into Cities is heavily controlled

You just can’t come to a City that easily without housing or a job unless you are a tourist there

In India it’s the opposite

You can flood into cities and sleep on the roads and everywhere else and even defecate

It’s like a Zoo

image 110
image 110
image 111
image 111

So it’s the Chinese System

They may have their flaws but by God they have excellent City maintenance and keep themselves very clean

image 109
image 109

Their Air Quality improvement in a mere decade is something every nation takes notes on


image 108
image 108

Primarily another reason is the Chinese are proud of their country and love their country

Not the bogus love that Indians show which translates into defending India for all it’s weaknesses, glorifying mediocrities as superheroes, forcing people to stand up for the National Anthem etcetera

The genuine love that ensures they actively take pride in their development and their cities

When stray cats see this man, they compete with each other to get a place on his lap.

This is fun.

No longer human

On a somber note, the Israeli destruction on Palestine is a (text book) genocidal event. This is just as disturbing to me as the complete killing off of all the males in Ukraine.

There is something truly evil about the oligarchy that rules the West.

Their “heads aren’t screwed on tight”. They are unhinged and behaving in complete disregard for their fellow humans.

No care towards humanity.

Which means that they have evolved into something NOT HUMAN.

I shake my head in sadness.

As Everyone’s Lοοking At Ιsrael, Something Τruly Unbelievable Has Begun Ιn America

https://youtu.be/DA3aRJrAyOo

What is the craziest thing you’ve found in an old coat pocket?

The identity of a MURDERER!

I bought a used coat from a yard sale and months later, when it turned cold, I put the jacket on and noticed a hand written note in the left pocket. It had listed things to buy at Ace Hardware.

It said Lye, ropes, tape and a small shovel.

Next to the list was the actual receipt showing the stores name, what was bought and exactly when.

I thought it seemed suspicious so I took it to the local police and they ran the info I had against an unsolved murder case.

After pulling the archived video from Ace Hardware, it was clear who the man was and after interrogating him and his fake alibi, he broke down and admitted that he was the one who picked up a 22 year old hitchhiker and raped and murdered her.

He forgot about the note and receipt in his left pocket.

He was also left handed. Had he not written it himself, it would not have proved anything, but it matched the handwriting analysis.

He also had no idea his wife sold the old jacket in a yard sale months earlier. That simple task on her part, cost him his life and he sits on death row today.

You just never know what you’re gonna get for three dollars at a yard sale.

A strategic nightmare sneaks into Washington’s political agenda: Global Times editorial

By Global Times Published: Oct 14, 2023 12:38 AM

This is horrifying. -MM
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2a989a23 cfb0 46b3 80df fe98ad456b23

A simultaneous war with China and Russia is a strategic nightmare that sober American strategists such as Henry Kissinger have been warning the US to avoid at all costs, and it is also a topic that some US media outlets have become more and more fond of talking about in recent years. At least from the publicly available information, Washington has never previously addressed it as a formal political agenda, supposedly aware of its seriousness and the terrible risks it carries. But the publication of a report by a congressionally appointed bipartisan panel titled America’s Strategic Posture crossed this “red line” on October 12.

The central point of the 145-page report is that the US must expand its military power, particularly its “nuclear weapons modernization program,” in order to prepare for possible simultaneous wars with China and Russia. Notably, the report diverges completely from the current US national security strategy of winning one conflict while deterring another, and from the Biden administration’s current nuclear policy. It is not a fantasy among the American public, but a serious strategic assessment and recommendation in the service of policymaking.

The 12-member panel that wrote the report was hand-picked by the US Congress from major think tanks and retired defense, security officials and former lawmakers. This report makes us feel that a “strategic nightmare” is sneaking into the US political agenda, but has not drawn due concern and vigilance in Washington, and to a large extent, the American elite group represented by the panel is actively working to make this nightmare come true.

A look at the specific recommendations of this report will send shivers down the spine of those who retain any basic rationality. The report recommends that the US deploy more warheads, and produce more bombers, cruise missiles, ballistic missile submarines, non-strategic nuclear weapons and so on. It also calls on the US to deploy warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and to consider adding road-mobile ICBMs to its arsenal, establishing a third shipyard that can build nuclear-powered ships, etc.

What depths of insanity is the US sinking to? The US’ military spending accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world’s total defense expenditures, and it has been growing dramatically for several years, with military spending in 2023 reaching $813.3 billion, more than the GDP of most countries, but even that is not enough for these politicians. Such a report full of geopolitical fanaticism and war imagery, whether or not it actually ends up as a “guide” for Washington’s decision-making, is dangerous and needs to be resisted and opposed by all peace-loving countries.

According to some American media, the report ignores the consequences of a nuclear arms race. In fact, the report doesn’t seem to consider this at all and doesn’t suggest any measures other than nuclear expansion to address this issue. In other words, it is a reckless approach. Both China and Russia are nuclear powers, and everyone knows that provoking a confrontation between nuclear powers is a crazy idea. Even promoting a nuclear arms race under the banner of “deterrence” is a disastrous step backward in history. Washington’s political elites, who lived through the Cold War, cannot be unaware of this. However, the fact that such an absurd and off-key report is being presented in all seriousness by the US Congress is both surreal and unsurprising. It is in line with the distorted political atmosphere in Washington today.

The motives behind this exaggeration of threats and creating a warlike atmosphere are highly suspicious. The recent outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict caused a sharp increase in US defense industry stocks, while American defense industry companies have also been the biggest beneficiaries of the long-standing Russia-Ukraine conflict. The military-industrial complex, like a geopolitical monstrosity, parasitically clings to American society, manipulating its every move, pushing Washington step by step to introduce and even prepare for ideas that were once considered “impossible.”

The prosperity of the American military-industrial complex is built upon blood and corpses, and carries a primal guilt. Serving the interests of the American military-industrial complex is unethical.

The reality is that such rhetoric is becoming increasingly politically acceptable in today’s Washington. The idea of “preparing for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China,” once a fringe fantasy, has gradually made its way into Washington’s agenda, which is deeply unsettling.

If Washington were to adopt even a small portion of the recommendations in this report, the harm and threats it could pose to world peace would be immeasurable and would ultimately backfire on the US itself.

There is an old Chinese saying: “Those who play with fire will perish by it.” This is something that is worth Washington’s careful consideration.

Have you ever bought a car that didn’t run and found that it was an easy fix?

In 1980 my boss had left the company and had planned to sell his very nice 1970 Buick LeSabre for $500. One Monday I came into my office and the keys to the Buick were on my desk with a note saying that the automatic transmission was bad and that it would cost more than the car was worth and that I could have it for $25 since that is all the wrecking yard would give him.

I picked up the car one evening and was able to make it part way home before the “transmission” problem occurred.

Fortunately, I was near the company parking lot where I left the car. The next morning, in daylight, with the help of my brother-in-law, we discovered that the “transmission problem” was actually the air conditioning compressor intermittently locking up and putting a severe drag on the engine.

Since it was fall in southern California, we just cut off the single belt that drove the AC compressor and the car ran great. Months later, a neighbor was putting a Chevy V8 into a Toyota pickup and gave me the AC compressor, which we installed on the Buick. And the AC worked perfectly.

I told my boss how we fixed the “transmission” problem and offered him $500 for the Buick.

He declined and said I should keep the car for $25.

I told him I didn’t want my wife driving a $25 car, so he agreed to $250.

That summer I decided to install an aftermarket cruise control unit on the Buick and while routing wires under the dash, I noticed a small spring, not unlike the ones in ball point pens, was broken in an AC/heater duct. I replaced that spring (cost was less than $1) and noticed that the AC was coming out of the dash vents where previously it was just coming from the floor.

When I next saw my former boss, he said that he had taken the Buick to the dealership to complain about the AC/heat not coming from the dash vents, and they told him that to fix the problem they would have to remove the dash and it would cost more than the car was worth.

I put an additional 100K miles on that car and only recall replacing the brakes and a distributor, in addition to routine maintenance. In 1992, as I was moving to Texas from NJ, a co-worker asked if I would sell him the car, which I did.

As an aside, my former boss went to work for a company that made high power gas lasers, costing at that time about $25,000.

At my next company, I needed one of those lasers. I happened to mention to my former boss at a conference that I hoped to buy one of those lasers, but didn’t have the budget.

A few weeks later, a high power gas laser unexpectedly arrived on the shipping dock!

I called my former boss and he said if and when I get the budget, let him know and he will replace the “loaner” laser with a new one. Probably a year or so later, I did find the money and paid for the “loaner” laser.

My former boss’s company also made an even higher power laser for $50,000. I later wondered if I had given him $500 for the car if he would have shipped a $50K “loaner.”

I would ask him, but he passed away, way too young, years ago.

Rest in peace, Dean…

Life in URUGUAY! – South America’s Richest and Safest Country

As an Uruguayan I want to make a comment. First, great video, mostly accurate expect for a couple of details.

When you show the ‘gauchos” those look more like people on horses from Bolivia or Peru, or even maybe somewhere in northern Argentina or Chile. Because, first of all, in Uruguay, the gaucho’s “poncho” is usually made of plain dark colors, and most important, we do not have mountains, like the ones you show. About population “skin” color, let me make some remarks.

The original population in Uruguay is around 90% of European descent, and when I say European I mean, from all over Europe, including countries like: Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Russian, Denmark, etc. Not only Southern Europe. So there are a lot of fair skin color people including blonde, blue eyes.

But what has been happening in the last decade is that there’s a large immigration wave, such as from the Caribbean countries, as well as from the rest of Latin America.

So, the demographic is changing rapidly because Uruguayan’s population as you established is very small, so the culture is also changing, including the food and even the language…

https://youtu.be/sTP44M2vQzk

How heavily does Apple depend on China, and what would happen if China decided to seek revenge for the Huawei ban by kicking Apple out of their market and supply chain?

2500 Foreigners have been invited to the Hangzhou Asian Games in China

Ordinary Foreigners

From US, Canada, Europe and Japan and South Korea

Fully paid for, Business Class Tickets, Five Star Pampering

All China asks them to do is to cover the Games on their Social Media (TikTok mainly or YT or Instagram)

The result is despite the Western Media almost entirely ignoring the Asian Games, a whopping 673 Million people worldwide are watching the events

This is China’s Strategy to counter thr Western Media

Not launching their own MSM and insanely and making accusations

Instead , they bring ORDINARY PEOPLE and treating them to what China looks like and spreading the message

A Popular Teenager goes home and says “Man do you know China is so different from what we hear in our TV channels”

Slowly this gains traction

It’s a long term plan targeting the 19–24 year olds today and gradually influencing the Younger Generation

The key reason is INFLUENCE

The 12–36 year old US Generation doesn’t view China as an enemy but as a neutral country or as a mutually beneficial country

Yet 36–65 year old Americans, the MSM influenced generation see almost 75% of them view China as an enemy

China is slowly influencing the younger generation and in a way that US simply cannot comprehend

Long term, slow and PATIENTLY

Every year you have 20,000 Vloggers invited to China and cover China positively

They influence around 60 Million -150 Million people

Tourvashu is one of these

He influences 2 Million Indians

Most are 16–20 year olds

More likely to watch Tourvashu than Palki Or Gravitas or Arnab

Slowly the Younger Indians will be influenced and say “Yaar Tune Chaayina ka wo Video dekha. Mast tha”


So you wonder why Apple is not banned. In China?

Same reason

It’s not the Chinese way

These Brash, Useless and Economically unsound tactics are not something the Chinese do

China will encourage Apple, use it as a gold standard to develop their own industry, and undercut the iphone eventually

Take the Chinese High Speed Rail

In 2005, Chinese imported exclusively their Boring Machines (Germany, Switzerland), Engines (Japan, Spain), Software (UK, Singapore, US) and Electronics (Japan, S Korea)

Today nearly 90% of their High Speed Rail Supplies are COMPLETELY MADE IN CHINA with same or better quality

They have decimated TBM markets in Germany with export shares plummeting from 69% in 2000 to 11% in 2023

Took them 17–18 years


That’s how China works

These loser protectionism bans don’t work for China

They COMPETE and UNDERCUT and enhance quality with competition

The Trump Ban begun in 2019

So the key is to see if China will beat the Apple and undercut the company by 2036–2037

I am willing to guarantee that they will

It’s what they do

Kind of their Mantra


Banning is what Losers do

Competing and beating with Economics is what Winners do

What is the smallest thing a person ever did for you that impacted your life?

When I was a young boy I used to get teased a lot in school and I didn’t have many friends. I was a fat kid and often got called a “fat slob”, “pig”, and “smelly or “stinky”. I took a bath at least once a week, more in the summer, and tried to keep clean so I knew I was just getting teased because I was fat. When I was eleven my best friend’s mom drove us home from baseball practice one day. Out of the blue she turned to me in the back seat and said, “Andy, you smell and you need to bathe more often.” She did not say it in a mean way but in a stern businesslike manner. My best friend was horrified and said nothing.

When I got home I immediately took a shower and wondered about what was going on. Obviously, I’d been sweaty from practice but she must have known that. As I thought it over, it also dawned on me that my skinny little sister often got teased as “smelly” too. I’d always assumed she got it from association with me, not because she smelled. So I told my mom what happened and asked her to tell me honestly if I smelled. She said, “no” and started to get a little upset about my best friend’s mom saying that to me.

I went to play outside and saw one of my classmates across the street. We had an on-again/off-again friendship up to that point. I guess we were what you might call “frenemies” today but at this point in time, we were more on the friendly side. I decided to get his opinion believing he wouldn’t hold back. In fact, he had teased me before about being smelly. So I asked him straight-up, “Do I smell?” He answered very matter-of-factly, “yes”. “My sister too?” “Yes, her too,” he replied. Then I asked him what we smelled like. He then told me that this had actually been a subject of discussion among his family who did not want me or my sister in their house because of our smell. He said his parents said we smelled like “old books”. Immediately, this brought to mind the set of Encyclopedia Britannicas I had in my bedroom closet. I immediately went home to check them out. Not only were they covered in mold but vast sections of my closet and room had mold. In fact, I found it throughout our home. But it didn’t smell to me. I was used to it. We all were. We lived in the woods surrounded by soggy tree pools so our home was often damp. We had no AC nor did we need it. This was back in 1972 before the internet and all the scares about the dangers of mold.

I told my mother what I’d learned and was able to convince her this was what was causing my sister and me to smell and probably her too. We cleaned everything with bleach, aired out the house, and bought dehumidifiers. From then on I showered every day. My friends all told me I no longer smelled. That following summer I also worked my ass off to get physically fit. I don’t know how many more years I might have suffered but for this very simple and brutally honest admonition from my friend’s mother. To this day, my best friend of 58 years still tells me how embarrassed he was that his now-deceased mother said that to me. And I always remind him she did me one of the greatest favors of my life.

Flip Flop Cherry Cobbler

CHERRY COBBLER 05 28 2028115 1
CHERRY COBBLER 05 28 2028115 1

Yield: 6 to 8 generous portions

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 8 cups cherry pie filling
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar

Instructions

  1. Coat a 9 x 13 inch baking dish with cooking spray.
  2. With an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar.
  3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture alternating with the milk; mix until well combined.
  4. Spread batter evenly into prepared pan.
  5. Top with filling and sprinkle with sugar. Cover and freeze.
  6. To bake: Thaw completely in refrigerator.
  7. Bake at 375 degrees F for 40 minutes or until browned.

Mighty China Remove All Iran Sanctions Placed By U.S and E.U

In this eye-opening video, we explore the shifting dynamics of power and influence between Iran, the United States, and China. With the U.S. imposing stringent sanctions on Iran, China steps in to form a strategic alliance, challenging the global power balance. Learn more about the economic, political, and strategic implications of this trilateral relationship and how it could shape the future of global geopolitics.

What was one experience in your life that hardened you as a person?

Going anonymous because it is a part of my life that not even my closest friends are aware of.

This is from the time when I was 12 years old. My mom had a problem where her breast would develop lumps which would have to be removed surgically. This problem started before I was born and she would undergo these procedures every couple of years. We lived in a small town with limited access to advanced medical facilities, but the doctors always told us that the lumps were not malignant.

When I was 12, this one lump was growing very big. My dad (who is a doctor himself) decided to take her to Delhi to get some tests done. I have two elder sisters and we (me, my sister and my parents) live with my grandparents.

So, my parents were away in Delhi and my grand mother would spend the day on the phone talking to relatives, spreading rumors that my mom actually had cancer and saying that we three are a burden on them and that they just want my parents to come and get us off their head.


My sisters, who were older and more mature, would mostly stay in their room, but I, by nature liked to be outside with my mom and in her absence, my granny. Hearing these things used to hurt me, but I wouldn’t tell my sisters since I knew they’d be hurt even more.

I started taking up house-work with my granny (though we had help by my granny used to crib that we 3 were a burden)-cooking half meals, helping with washing clothes. All this I did without my sisters’ knowledge (or they’d never have let me do it).

This was a time when mobiles didn’t exist in India and fixed line phones were the only means of communication. News from my parents used to reach us with a lag. We just kept praying that our mom comes back safely.

After tests at AIIMS (top hospital in India), our parents returned awaiting results and my granny immediately left for my aunt (her daughter’s) place citing she needed “rest”.

Results came in-the growth didn’t seem malignant but needed a fairly complicated medical procedure in Chandigarh. These were times when my dad was under a lot of financial pressure (though my grandparents were well-off and my dad was the only son). My dad requested my granny over call that they need to leave immediately and that though he had applied for their life savings-their FDs to be broken, but if it doesn’t happen on time, if my grandparents could lend money till the FD money could reach home.

Unbelievably, my granny just didn’t come home! She made my aunt call in saying she would stay longer at her place and that my parents can leave for the surgery! I still remember my dad almost crying, not sure if he would be able to arrange money on time to save his wife (the tumour had grown visibly big). By God’s grace, the FDs broke a day before they had to leave and they left us alone, at the trust of the neighbours who were more helpful than my grandparents!

It was a long, painful time when my mother received treatment-a surgery which lasted 9 hours, where doctors almost gave up hope, where she was on ventilator support for days. All this while, I kept hearing from my granny’s conversations as she invited friends over, that it was certainly cancer, that such complicated surgeries could only be for cancer. It kept on making the 12-year old me scared as I knew cancer is something bad, it is something that can take away my mom.

We first got a chance to speak to our mom after 35 days when she managed to call from a hotel after her discharge. Those 35 days had been a struggle beyond my imagination for my parents (which they told me much later when I was around 20). With just my dad for company-he had managed everything from sleeping on hospital floors to washing my mom’s clothes.

My mom has recovered fully and still prays everyday for the doctors who cured her.

My dad still hates my grand parents, and I don’t feel any love for them wither.

My grand dad passed away a few years ago and we still live with my granny because my mom still thinks its our duty.

But, the pain is still there, the fear that the 12-year old felt is still there ,the betrayal is still feels fresh when I see my granny.

I grew up in those 2 months, chopped off my hair because I had long hair and my granny wouldn’t help manage them.

I hardened, realized I only have my parents and my sisters who will stand by me, and I will stand by them till I die.

I realised the world is cruel, looking at my relatives’ behaviour in that period.

The child in me died.

Why do rich people work even after they become rich? Why don’t they play?

“Dad, when will you retire?” I asked him one day.

“Hector, I retired before you were born,” he laughed.

Confused, I asked again, “Be honest, Dad, I mean, when will you stop working?”

His response was simple, “Working? What’s work? I don’t know what work is.”

“OK, Dad, forget about it,” I said as I assumed he wasn’t willing to talk about this.

“Hector,” he said, “what you know as my job is not work for me. I enjoy architecture so much that I could do this 24/7. This is who I am. Architecture is my life.”

So, to answer your question, why do rich people work even after they become rich? Why don’t they play?

My father lived to be 91 and worked until his body gave up on him. He was a passionate architect who found joy in his work. That’s what kept him active and full of joy every day. His passion for architecture was infectious, and it taught me this valuable lesson about work as a lifestyle.

So, if you ask me about retirement or work-life balance, I’d say it’s better to find what you love and make it a part of your life. When you find that, you’ll stop working and start living. We achieve a balance not by separating work from life but by integrating what you love into your lifestyle.

Today, this is how I see it: It’s not about working less; it’s about loving more what you do.

That’s the secret to a fulfilling life. As my father always said, “The day you find what you love is when you will stop working.”

Heavy Rain forced Mother Cat to Carry her kitten in Streets, but No One Opened the Door for Them!

In the pouring rain, we spotted a soaked cat seeking shelter. Feeling sorry for her, we followed as she led us to her hidden kitten in the woods. We gently petted the mama cat, who had braved the relentless rain. The tiny, wet kitten needed our care, so we wrapped him in a warm blanket. Back at our home, where rescued cat families and foster cats live together happily, we ensured both mother and baby were dry and well-groomed. A vet visit ensured mama cat’s health, and we even gave the kitten a bath, revealing his adorable charm. The heartwarming reunion between mother and kitten was filled with playfulness and bonding, showing the strength of family ties.

https://youtu.be/-xzP2TMSoMQ

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

Here’s one example, regarding myself: I was working as a bouncer at a bar in Erie, Pa one night and some guy, about 24 years old or so was making quite a bit of trouble, harassing customers, pushing some, bullying others, etc.

He was somewhat high, but not drunk, and it seemed he was there just to harass and embarrass/humiliate some who were there with a date. He was pretty big, about 225 pounds and about 6 feet and acting like a real bully. When I was told about some guy doing these things ( He wasn’t near my door, but farther inside ), I went in to see what was up.

When I got there he was harassing some poor kid who was clearly scared and was with his girlfriend. As I approached, a few people pointed at this guy and said, “get him out if here, he’s an asshole.” .

I got up to him and very nicely told him to leave the kid alone and that he’d have to leave because he was causing too much trouble.

He looked at me, stood up as high as he could (I hate when they do that, like it matters), and said, “Who’s going to make me?” I said, simply, “me.”

He told me to get lost or he’d beat the shit out of me.

I said, “Well, let’s go outside and see who comes back in, and, if it’s you, you can stay.” He smiled, said,”I’m gonna enjoy this” and said, “let’s go” and we walked outside. By that time, everyone, including the other bouncer at my door knew what was going to happen.

The other bouncer, Tommy Williams, just stood at the door and smiled while we walked outside. Well, when we got out about 15 feet from the door, the moron suddenly turned and tried to hit me with a roundhouse kick which I not only blocked, but grabbed his leg and picked him up by the leg and threw him to the ground, saying, ”I don’t think karate is going to help you here.”

He jumped up and said, “how about this, asshole? and then tried a double leg takedown, as, apparently, at some time he was a wrestler. I actually laughed and said, “oh, you want to wrestle, huh?” and then as I countered his sad attempt, the other bouncer, who had heard everything, shouted out: “Wrestle? well you picked the right guy, he’s the National wrestling Champion……”

I just said, “You picked the wrong guy you moron,” and, as my friend, Tommy later said to me, I literally swept the parking lot with him.

I never saw him after two of his friends ended up taking either home or to the hospital.

He was a bully.

He got to feel like those he had bullied before.

I was NOT kind to him.

No regrets, but I bet he was kinda surprised when he heard the other bouncer tell him who I was, and he had no escape, as even as he said over and over, “I quit, I give up.”

I told him that it wasn’t up to him, It was my call and I wasn’t done yet.

That is a scary thing to realize, that you can’t quit, that it’s up to the guy beating the crap out of you. But I believe it has led others like that guy to never bully anyone again. Jeff

Have you ever met a dangerous person and not known it at the time?

Sat in a bar in South Pattaya one Sunday afternoon in 1991 I noticed a fairly fit looking bloke dressed only in flip flops and shorts. He suddenly ordered everyone a drink then turned to me and said “I see my friend that you are interested in my tattoos.” I wasn’t that interested but I wasn’t going to argue and let him tell me. One he’d got for some work in the Philippines – the other some thing in the Mekong Delta. A mahout then came by with a large elephant which the man went across to look at saying they’d always fascinated him. So I asked him where he came from – American Samoa he replied. And what did he do? He worked “for the government”.

He then stepped back and ordered another drink for everyone in the bar. I thanked him and he turned and said “Let’s eat and drink for tomorrow we may be dead”. He then looked me in the eye with the coldest eyes I’d ever seen and said “ You know it is very easy. I pick up the gun, I pull the trigger and they are gone.” It was evident he wasn’t bullshitting.

That evening I saw the bar owner – who comes from Texas – and mentioned this guy. “Oh yes that’s so and so – he’s a US Navy SEAL. Bad news when he’s drunk.”

Guess I can be thankful I met him whilst he was sober!

Atheist Overdoses; Shown Soul’s Process Of Pre-Life Planning (NDE)

Her story is powerful. All of her words should have been heard and none bleeped out….

What are your thoughts on the owner of Home Depot saying,” The rise of socialism is making people too lazy, fat, and stupid to work”?

If you are offended by profanity, best skip this response.

I, too, am in the top 1% of wealth holders in this country, albeit, on lowest rung, yet minimum wage at my small Inn is higher than it is at this billionaire cunt’s company. I have no problem finding employees. This piece of shit motherfucker sits on his yacht sipping pina coladas while his employees need a second job to just pay the bills to live their day to day lives.

This asshole supports the Republican Party with massive amounts of money, and as a wealthy person, I can tell you a thing or two about how tax laws work in this country. For those of you who make less than $250k a year but still vote Republican, your economic misery is your own fault. The Democratic Party has LOTS of problems, but one problem they don’t have is trying to make life better for the average person and if you stopped watching your choice of right wing media, you’d soon realize that. It’s people like this cunt who are destroying America and contributing NOTHING to it.

What did this prick do? He built a fucking store, massively exploited his workforce by grabbing all the loot for himself and then whining when ordinary people have had enough and don’t want to work for anymore. Fuck him, and his fellow cunt billionaires.

How do you know you are rich?

When I was doing my B Tech, there was a Professor Talukedar who used to teach us ‘Mechanics’.

His lectures used to be very interesting since he had an interesting way to teach and explain the concepts.

One day, in the class, he asked the following questions,

  1. What is ZERO.
  2. What is INFINITY.
  3. Can ZERO and INFINITY be same.

We all thought that we knew the answers and we replied as following,

  1. ZERO means nothing
  2. INFINITY means a number greater than any countable number
  3. ZERO and INFINITY are opposite and they can never be same

He countered us by first talking about infinity and asked, ‘How can there be any number which is greater than any countable number?’

We had no answers.

He then explained the concept of infinity in a very interesting way, which I remember even after more than 35 years.

He said that imagine that there is an illiterate shepherd who can count only upto 20.

Now, if the number of sheep he has less than 20 and you ask him how many sheep he has, he can tell you the precise number (like 3, 5 14 etc.). However, if the number is more than 20, he is likely to say “TOO MANY”.

He then explained that in science infinity means ‘too many’ (and not uncountable) and in the same way zero means ‘too few’ (and not nothing)

As an example, he said that if we take the diameter of the Earth as compared to distance between Earth and Sun, the diameter of earth can be said to zero since it is too small.

However, when we compare the same diameter of earth with the size of a grain, diameter of earth can be said to be infinite.

Hence, he concluded that the same thing can be ZERO and INFINITE at the same time, depending on the context, or your matrix of comparison.


The relationship between richness and poverty is similar to the relationship between infinity and zero.

It all depends on the scale of comparison with your wants.

  • If your income is more than your wants, you are rich.
  • If your wants are more than your income, you are poor.

I consider myself rich because my wants are far lesser than my income.

I have become rich not so much by acquiring lots of money, but by progressively reducing my wants.

If you can reduce your wants, you too can become rich at this very moment.

Ep 9. We just moved to Bulgaria! How is it going?

From the UK to Bulgaria.

Have you ever caught your spouse cheating on you in your own home? How did you deal with it?

I came home very sick with flu one day, went up to my bedroom, my husband was in my bed with the mail lady. I told them both to get the fuck out of my house. He argued that he needed sleep cuz he worked overnights. He needed his clothes and stuff. I told him all his clothes would be alongside the garage by Monday. It’s where the garbage is kept. Take a shirt and stuff he needed for tonight and get lost. Take a shower at her house or work. I packed up his stuff in garbage bags along with the topper to our wedding cake, some mementos from our honeymoon, I was being passive aggressive I agree, but how dare he sleep with her in our bed, in our home. We had a 2 year old and a 6 mos old. He was just wrong. He showed up a month later crying to me that she had broken up with him. I told him too bad, I didn’t feel bad for him in the least. I got the house( and mortgage) in the divorce. It was ok cuz I wanted the kids to stay in their home and school and I made more money, the root cause of the problem. He felt inadequate cuz I was a senior manager and he was doing maintenance work. This was no issue for me, just for him.

What caused you to fall out of love with your past lover?

When I first got married, we would be passionate everywhere, if you know what I mean, bed, floor, couch, where ever. We would do things for each other. And we enjoyed each other’s company. She was from Japan I am white american.

I learned to speak Japanese and we lived in Japan a few years and life was good. We had kids together, but over the years things grew cold between us.

They say that people change and you grow apart. I don’t think either of us changed. I doubt that most people change. What I suspected happened was that I would base my love on how much she loved me and visa versa. If she did something nice for me, I would do something nice for her. Or if I did something nice for her, she would do something nice for me.

That all sounds fine and dandy, but I think in practice, it doesn’t work. When I do something nice for her, I expect something of equal niceness in return. However, often is the case that you don’t perceive what is done in return is as valuable as what you gave him or her. So the next time you do something, you feel less inclined to do something as nice. And so the love kind of fizzles.

You basically stop caring because you perceive your partner as not caring. And chances are your partner feels the same way about you. Neither person has changed. They are both the same person, but the love isn’t there anymore. They let it spiral into nothingness.

That is what my wife and I did. After 20 some odd years of marriage, there was nothing. I really had no desire to do anything for my wife, because she wasn’t going to do anything for me. We didn’t hate each other. We helped each other when needed, but that is about all.

I was unhappy with the marriage. I either wanted out or I wanted it fixed. But after 20 years of marriage, I knew that she wasn’t going to try and fix the marriage. I knew that she thought I would not change so why should she have to do anything special and if I did change, it would only be temporary and things would go back to how they were, so why even try. I knew this would be her mind set.

So I had 3 options. Divorce, stay in the lifeless, sexless marriage, or take a chance and do something about it.

I thought perhaps divorce would be the better way. Start anew. She had given up on me and didn’t care.

But I decided to give it a try anyway. I completely revamped my approach. I decided that I would try for one year to fix this. I would not require her to do anything. I would just do these things on my own. If these things wooed her back then she would be back on her own terms and not mine.

So I did the following.

  1. I committed to get into shape… better diet, exercise
  2. I committed to do something special for her everyday regardless of whether we were getting along or not.
  3. I committed to do at least an additional 30 minutes of house work every day.
  4. I committed to pay her a sincere compliment at least once per day.
  5. I committed not to fight with her and to only have calm arguments with her.
  6. I decided to fix her dinner and breakfast as often as possible.
  7. In essence I decided to love her every day.

As I thought, I got essentially no response from her day after day. I mean she would sometimes say thank you, but that was about it. After about four months she started to change. I kept at it. She continued to change. Ok.. she didn’t change. She was the same person, but she saw that I was trying. She saw that she was important to me. She saw that I wasn’t giving up. She wanted to be loved.

She started doing things for me again. We started talking a lot more and doing a lot more together. We started dating again and going on trips. It was almost like we were newly weds again, but with less passion, but it felt great. Sometimes I would just hold her in my arms for 30 minutes.

Love can be revived. It is not easy. True love takes work. Making the decision above to love her regardless was the second best decision of my life. The first of course was to marry her. Our marriage is not perfect, but I look forward to seeing her every day. She is an awesome woman. She is basically the same person I married. We just let our love die. We were lazy lovers. She asked me one day what got into me and I talked with her about my plan. I think it was a pretty good plan and so did she. And yes, we are still married, but much more happily now.

I knew our love couldn’t be one sided, but I also knew it needed to start somewhere and why not me. Ask yourself, why not you? Do you want the love back? what kind of sacrifice are you willing to make to have the love back? If I had decided that she needed to do something while I was doing something, then we would have been right back to where we started. You can’t base your actions on what the other is doing in return. You need to commit to love regardless of what is done in return. That is the sacrifice and that is where real love will begin.

Edit.

I can’t believe how many people have read and liked this. Someone mentioned the 40 day challenge. I found out about that several months after I started on this path. There is a movie out there along these same lines called fireproof that is worth a watch.

For me things didn’t change around in 40 days. It took quite a bit longer. But you have to ask yourself is divorce really the better way out? Yes, sometimes it is. But infidelity doesn’t have to be the end of life as we know it.

I look back on these events and they seem like a distant memory, the hurt and pain. like a forgotten dream. But it really wasn’t that long ago. I am a better person because of it. She has become a better person as well and we are definitely a better couple.

6 REASONS WHY AMERICANS ARE OBESE. WHAT IS CAUSING THE RISING OBESITY IN THE USA?

It’s no secret that obesity in America has been an ongoing issue and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.

In fact, according to Harvard University; about 2 in every 3 adults or 69 percent of the population in the US are overweight while1 in 3 adults are obese or 39 percent.

It has to make you wonder how the most powerful and advanced nation in the world can be so obese especially when compared to countries in Europe and Asia, it’s not like we don’t have the means as a nation for healthier lifestyle and better-quality food.

Or maybe Americans are meant to be obese, and they want us to stay that way? Sounds controversial right, well in this video we will expose 8 reasons why Americans are so obese compared to other countries.

Why is Burma so poor?

Our country born with troubles since its independence.

Have you ever heard about the Burma Campaign in World War 2? It is quite thorough and one of the most destructive campaigns largely forgotten by Western Powers and historians. The entire infrastructure of the country was destroyed during the course of the war. By the end of the war, the country was totally in rubbles and a massive number of firearms were widespread even in the village level which was left behind by warring powers. The situation was ripe for armed insurgencies.

The country was never been administered as a whole before British arrival. The region out of central Myanmar was usually administered by local petty chiefs with vassal-high king relationship which never need any direct contact between different cultures (except a few tributary missions and merchants). There is no large-scale internal trade and the transportation was also difficult. Different cultures and ethnic groups suddenly came into contact under British rule. As usual, the British exploited the situation by creating a divide & conquer strategy by favouring ethnic minorities over the Burmese majority. This led to extreme Burmese nationalism.

Due to economic disaster in the 1930s and later devastating war, the country is under very hard economic conditions which was a natural breeding ground for communism. The Burmese Communist Party which never believed in British plan for independence already went rebellion even before independence.

Then, the world’s longest-running civil war began.

In the 1950s and 60s, the civil war lost momentum and Burma came under the spotlight of international relations due to its leading role in third world nations, one of the founders of the non-aligned movement. The country was also the only real democratic nation in Southeast Asia with regular elections. The country largely recovered from the war at the beginning of the 1960s and hopes ran high. A federal system was proposed by the ethnic leaders and the government agreed.

All out of sudden, the coup came. At first, people weren’t serious as they already seen a short 2 years long military rule which stabilized the country and the coup ended with the mostly free and fair elections. By the time they realized that the military is no longer intended to give up the power this time, the civil war gained intensity and all the things we achieved in the last 10 years were gone.

The military junta slowly transformed themselves into businessmen by laying hands on the country’s economy entirely. The Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) ran by the military alone control nearly 40–50% of the country’s economy directly or indirectly. With the lack of a proper banking system, the ordinary people have no access to much-needed capital for investments. Small and Medium scale businesses have no chance to grow unless the monopoly of military elites and their relatives were removed.

My daughter hit her younger brother in the groin so he slapped her across the face. I confiscated all his devices and grounded him for a month. Was that a good enough punishment or not?

So he responds in self-defense and you teach him that if the attacker is female he’s supposed to just sit there writhing in pain getting injured? And she got off scott-free?

What’s next? She stabs him and he gets tossed in a closet and fed gruel and water? Because you might as well.

If you knew she attacked first, you should have punished HER. You discipline all parties that have transgressed, not just the ones who have a penis. Having a vagina doesn’t magically bestow immunity on a person.

If you confiscated all his devices, you should have confiscated hers as well. For his month of grounding, she should have received two.

There’s a big difference between a slap in the face (which stings but quickly dissapates) and kicking someone in the jewelies (which could cause irreparable damage).

No. You’re punishment wasn’t good enough. You half-assed it due to sexist reasoning. Go back and discipline your daughter as well.

Who Wants To Be A WARMONGER?!

Inspired by the war hawks that run the West, it’s the game show that always ends badly!

What is the kindest act you have ever witnessed?

Even though this was a relatively small thing, it affected me profoundly.

On my lunch break from work, I went to a fast food place. A homeless man came in. He was absolutely filthy, with long, greasy hair and dirty hands, dressed in raggedy clothes with a piece of blanket wrapped around him. He smelled bad. He didn’t seem able to talk and he went from table to table, sort of chittering at people, like a rat. People were pretty horrified and either gave him a quarter or just ignored him.

There was one table with 4 Mexican day laborers. These are guys who often are in the U.S. “illegally” and who hang around outside home improvement stores, hoping to pick up jobs. They don’t make much money and sometimes people cheat them, knowing the laborers can’t go to the authorities. A lot of these men may live in one house so they can save money and send it back to their families in Mexico.

When this homeless man came up to their table, they asked him, “Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?” Then they gave him all of their food, packing it up for him so he could carry it away. Then they didn’t go and buy more food themselves (they probably couldn’t afford it), but simply cleared the table and walked out. They knew what it was to suffer, and they very likely would suffer a bit from their generosity. But that didn’t stop them; and they were the best example of kindness I have ever seen. It was over 30 years ago, and it still affects me.

What is an insane coincidence that you’ve experienced?

The night my daughter died in a double hit-and-run in Colorado, a stranger stopped to help her and was witness to the second car that hit her, ending her life. He had been trying to help her though; he called for an ambulance and although it was ultimately unsuccessful, every effort was made to save her life. That stranger is a hero as far as I’m concerned.

The man who tried to help was very traumatized by what he had witnessed and had to change jobs so that he no longer had to daily pass by the place where my daughter died as he went to and from work. Unrelated to the accident, he and his wife got rid of their landline when they moved. I wanted very much to thank him but although I had tried every way I knew, his job had changed, he no longer had a telephone I could call 411 for and he no longer lived in the same place. I finally decided that simply being grateful would have to be enough, even if I couldn’t tell him myself.

Two years later, I’m sitting at the dinner table in a hostel in London and strike up a conversation with a guy also having dinner there. He was from the same area as me. He remembered my daughter’s death not just from it being in the news, but because the husband of one of his co-workers had stopped and tried to help the young lady.

OMG.

To make a long story short, he put me in touch with his co-worker and I was able to email her and express my thanks and gratitude for her husband’s efforts that night. She emailed me back and said that although her husband was desperately sorry he couldn’t save her, he was grateful that she didn’t have to die alone. He is a hero in my eyes and I’m so glad I got to let him know how grateful our family is. May he and his loved ones be abundantly blessed.

China Reveals HUGE Sanctions On US Tech Giants Due A STAGGERING Unpaid $1 Trillion

The direct consequences for the implicated U.S. tech companies are potentially disastrous. China is a significant market for many of these entities, and the sanctions could drastically affect their revenue, stock prices, and global operations. Companies like Apple, which rely on China for both sales and a vast portion of their supply chain, could see significant disruptions. The same goes for firms like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which have invested billions in capturing the Chinese market and establishing a supply chain nexus.

Furthermore, these sanctions could also impact hundreds of smaller U.S. tech firms and startups that might not be direct targets but could suffer collateral damage due to the intertwined nature of the tech ecosystem. This isn’t just a bilateral U.S.-China issue; the sanctions have ramifications for the global tech industry. Supply chains across the world are intricately linked, and disruptions in China could lead to ripple effects impacting tech manufacturing globally. Countries and businesses that rely on these tech giants for critical infrastructure, software, and hardware might find themselves caught in the crossfire.

The European Union, India, Japan, and South Korea, among others, will be closely watching the developments. Any prolonged conflict could force these nations to recalibrate their tech dependencies and alliances. On the diplomatic front, this escalation further strains an already tense U.S.-China relationship. The last few years have witnessed a hardening of stances on both sides, with trade wars, tech bans, and territorial disputes. This new development might just push the diplomatic ties to a new low.

As the news of China’s unprecedented sanctions reverberated across the globe, key stakeholders began weighing in, highlighting the vast complexities of the issue. Major international business councils, traditionally silent on political matters, expressed deep concern over the possible long-term disruptions to global trade. Wall Street responded predictably, with significant declines in tech stock prices. Investor sentiments seem to mirror the broader fears. If China and the U.S., two of the world’s largest economies, can’t resolve their differences amicably, what hope is there for the stability of the global economic order?

Moreover, experts in international relations also sounded the alarm. The escalation of this magnitude in the U.S.-China tech conflict marks a deviation from conventional trade disagreements. The integration of geopolitics with business is not new, but the scale of this rift indicates a deep-seated power struggle reflecting ambitions, fears, and strategies beyond mere economic interests.

One of the most pressing concerns for the sanctioned tech companies and the international community is the verification of China’s claim. How is this enormous one trillion dollars figure reached without transparent documentation and a clear breakdown? Suspicions linger over the validity of such a vast sum. The call for a neutral third-party audit has gained traction in various quarters. International bodies like the World Trade Organization could potentially mediate, ensuring that claims and counterclaims are examined impartially.

While the U.S. government has not yet announced any countermeasures, there’s widespread speculation about potential retaliation. Would the U.S. respond with equivalent sanctions on Chinese tech companies? Could there be a broader economic response that targets other sectors of the Chinese economy? Such a move would undoubtedly lead to further escalation, intensifying the trade war and potentially causing harm to global economic stability.

https://youtu.be/0HdX5XhiMMQ

Date Pudding Cobbler

Date Pudding Cobbler
Date Pudding Cobbler

Yield: 9 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed, divided
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 tablespoon cold butter
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 3/4 cup chopped dates
  • 3/4 cup chopped walnuts
  • 1 cup water
  • Whipped cream, for garnish
  • Ground cinnamon, for garnish

Instructions

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar and baking powder.
  2. Cut in butter until crumbly.
  3. Gradually add the milk, dates and walnuts.
  4. In saucepan, combine water and remaining brown sugar; bring to a boil. Remove from heat; add the date mixture and mix well.
  5. Transfer to a greased 8 inch square baking pan.
  6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes or until golden brown.
  7. If desired, top each serving with a dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkling of cinnamon.

What are the cleverest scams you have come across?

As an immigrant, one thing that always spooks me is paperwork and all related things to immigration process.

One day, I was outside working on my garden, when I came back inside, there were four missed calls. Just like a habit, I copied and pasted the phone number to Google search, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection – Corpus Christi Border Patrol Station popped up.

I started panicking. Why? Why they called me?!?? So, when the phone number appeared again a few minutes after that, I picked it up.

A woman on the phone let me know that there was someone used my identity to cross the border, tried to traffic drugs into the country. She told me that this could happen because I traveled outside of the country recently (which was correct). I was nervous. Then the woman proceeded to tell me she ‘would help me to verify and straighten things up’. Then she asked me my full name, DoB and Social Number.

At this point, I started smelling B.S. I told her, wasn’t it an identity thief case? Shouldn’t she have those information already? She got furious and told me, she was ‘trying to help’ and I needed to ‘cooperate’ or else I would ‘end up in jail’.

I decided to cut off the call, told her I would contact my lawyer and said goodbye then hung up.

I did some searching, then I decided to call back the phone number. It went to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection – Corpus Christi Border Patrol Station for real. I talked to an officer. He told me I was right hanging up the call and told me scammers nowadays gets really aggressive. They can hi-jack the phone number line like that, so the Caller ID looks like it’s legitimate from government offices. He also told me: If the government wants anything from you, they will send snail mails, they don’t call.

It was a very interesting experience.

Star Trek – Parallel Universe

Sawdust and hotdogs

When I was a young boy, growing up in Bridgeport, CT, my father would take myself and my sister to the butcher to buy meat. He would always buy meats that a typical 1960’s era family would buy. This would include pork, beef, chicken, and many many roasts. I am sure that he bought some occasional steaks, as well as lots of pork chops.

What I remember most from that time was the wood sawdust floors, and the fresh hotdogs that he would procure for us from the butcher there.

Today… the “local butcher” is more than likely an employee at a supermarket chain, rather than an individual with a shingle and a business storefront.

It’s a sad thing… you know, to lose something that seems all so common at one time.

In those days, the meat were all wrapped in newspaper or butchers paper, today, it’s all prepackaged in cellophane and sterile.

Appreciate what you have today. The mundane is soon to be replaced with something different. And as you get older, you will reminisce of the common day to day lifestyle that you had once taken for granted.

Today…

2nm Chips

2nm Chips: China to challenge ASML with a new technology better than EUV — Techovedas

In the race for semiconductor chip manufacturing, China has embarked on a groundbreaking venture to revolutionize lithography technology by exploring novel avenues that could potentially disrupt the industry especially ASML.

China is strategizing the establishment of an immense chip manufacturing facility propelled by a particle accelerator to challenge ASML. This technology could be a game-changer that outstrips US sanctions and make China a key player in the chip world. They’re actively pushing forward with the construction of a crucial particle accelerator to bring this cutting-edge technology to life.

This initiative is focused on leveraging particle accelerators to create a cutting-edge laser source for lithography machines, a crucial component in microchip production. Unlike traditional approaches, the Chinese project aims to localize manufacturing and bolster high-volume, low-cost chip production by constructing a colossal factory housing multiple lithography machines around a single accelerator.

This innovation could position China as a global leader in the industrial production of advanced chips, including coveted 2nm chips.

One of the potential applications of our research is as a light source for future EUV lithography machines. I think this is why the international community is paying close attention,”

Professor Tang Chuanxiang from Tsinghua University in a report on the university’s website.

The SSMB Theory and its Potential:

At the core of this technological breakthrough is the innovative Steady-State Microbunching (SSMB) theory, proposed by Professor Zhao Wu at Stanford University and his student Daniel Ratner in 2010. SSMB theory utilizes the energy released by charged particles during acceleration to act as a light source, resulting in a narrow bandwidth, small scattering angle, and continuous pure Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) light.

ASML prioritizes downsizing chip manufacturing machines for international trade. In contrast, the Chinese initiative centers on domestic production. It aims to construct an extensive facility consolidating numerous lithography machines around a central accelerator. This advancement can fuel abundant and cost-effective chip production. It positions China as a leader in industrializing advanced chips, including 2nm and beyond.

China tech Better than ASML EUV

Compared to the existing ASML EUV technology, SSMB, china tech proves to be a superior light source. It offers higher average power and increased chip production while maintaining lower unit costs.

ASML utilizes laser-induced plasma to generate an EUV source, involving the projection of strong laser pulses onto tin microdroplets. This impact crushes the droplets, producing EUV pulse light. Following intricate filtering and focusing processes, an EUV light source with an approximate power of 250W is generated.

Conclusion

China’s ambitious project aims to create a new light source for lithography machines. It utilizes particle accelerators and SSMB theory. This endeavor could reshape the semiconductor industry significantly. China seeks to localize chip manufacturing and diminish reliance on foreign technologies. The focus is on becoming a leader in semiconductor fabrication, particularly in advanced chips like the 2nm chips. The success of the SSMB-EUV light source could revolutionize chip production. It has the potential to unlock new horizons for scientific research and technological innovation. The future of chip manufacturing may very well be illuminated by this groundbreaking Chinese initiative.

Tri-Tip Stroganoff

2023 10 12 12 37
2023 10 12 12 37

Ingredients

  • 1/2 small onion, diced
  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 1 (1 pound) tri-tip steak
  • 7 fresh mushrooms
  • 2 cans cream of chicken soup
  • 1 pint sour cream
  • 1 package large egg noodles
  • Salt, pepper and garlic, to taste

Instructions

  1. Melt butter. Add onions and garlic. Cook until onions are translucent.
  2. Add steak and salt and pepper. Brown steak.
  3. Add fresh mushrooms and cook well.
  4. Add 2 cans cream of chicken soup. Let boil. Add water to thin a little.
  5. Add sour cream last. Stir well and simmer for 10 minutes.
  6. Serve over hot egg noodles.

Do you think American users’ data on TikTok could end up in the hands of the Chinese government?

Yes. This is all very valuable data to the CCP. They really want to know how many funny cat videos you watch each week. Also, whether you really like Taylor Swift more than Beyonce. Some of you also watch many videos each week relating to your favourite sports, such as baseball, football and basketball, while others among you may be into cooking, gardening or the latest Internet memes.

These are grave matters of national security that have a significant impact on geopolitics. Therefore the Chinese Communist Party would make it their top priority to get hold of such critical data.

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Rufus Story

“To the pharmacist and assistant who saved my son’s life today. Thank you, but that’s not enough…

I wish I could explain what you mean to me. I wish I had the words to tell you what you did for my family.

Today my son choked on a sucker outside your window. Today my son turned every color of the rainbow and went limp in my arms. Today you screamed instructions and told me what to do while you ran to me.

You cared.

Today while I was in shock you remembered my oldest son witnessing this and even asked if he was okay while I couldn’t. Today you walked me through every step that I froze on. Today you saved my son’s life without even thinking about it. You called 911 when I was speechless.

Erin and Tami, I wish I could repay the favor but nothing I could do could equal what you did today. After this extreme incident, you went back to work helping people like you do every day, but today was different. Today time stood still for a moment, but you kept moving and kept helping without hesitation.

I hope this reaches you. I hope you know how much I appreciate everything you have done.

Because of you, he smiled on the way home. Because of you, I heard him giggle in his room just now. Because of you, I have time. Time to enjoy these moments.

‘Thank you’ seems like the smallest word on the planet. but has the most powerful meaning. You took just a few minutes out of your day to give me a lifetime more with my son and I will forever be grateful.

Thank you.”

If you could go back in time 10 years and give yourself advice, what would you say?

So, 10 years, that would be 2013. I had just started my job as a producer at a big game company, working on a high-profile, very well-known title. By that time, I had a few years of production experience with various start-ups and large companies, mostly doing outsourcing work or working on smaller games. But I never directly involved in the production of an AAA title. That job was my big break into the actual, “legit” game production, the kind you’d see your name listed when the credit started rolling. I was full of aspirations and unrealistic expectations about what production (of an AAA box title video game) was like, as in, video game production was like a well-oiled machine. We all do our part, and magic happens. I was very ready to give it 120%. As for burnout, what burnout? If you love video games, you won’t get burned out because you’re working on something you love, right? Right?

Oh, I have so many horror stories to tell the 2013 me. It didn’t even take long for me to get burned out. I worked for that company for 3 years and experienced burnout multiple times. The first couple of times, it wasn’t that bad. I barely felt it. It’s just a long period of exhaustion and numbness. I could usually recover, especially if there was a holiday break right after the release crunch. Then I couldn’t recover. I was in a perpetual state of numbness and exhaustion that impacted every aspect of my life, not just work.

But it’s OK, I tell myself. I wanted this. This is what it takes to ship a game.

I changed jobs and worked on a different game. I told myself it was OK. I was not doing it for the company or even the game. I was doing it for my team. They were like my family.

The other day, I read one of my older answers about game production, and I said in that answer: you came for the title. You stay for the team. And I laughed at myself. Oh, silly, silly me. Your team ain’t your family, Feifei. “Found Family” is a literary trope, not a real thing you can actually go search in real life. To think, I actually told candidates that this company was like a big family when I did interviews, not knowing it was a gigantic red flag if you’re applying for a job. I was a walking red flag of burnout, and I didn’t have the self-awareness to see it in the mirror.

I’m glad I got out of that fantasy back in 2020.

So what advice would I give the 2013 me? Nothing.

Because the 2013 me wouldn’t listen. I was stubborn and so full of myself. I knew what I wanted, and I was going to get it. Ain’t nobody gonna tell me no. I wouldn’t listen to anyone, even the 2023 me. 2013 me would tell the 2023 me that she can make a difference. She wouldn’t end up working a middle management corporate job that gets off work at 5 p.m. because that’s pathetic.

Something in life you just have to learn the hard way. You have to learn from experience. You have to learn from having your dream and aspiration crushed by being exploited mercilessly and discarded.

So, what do I say if I met my 2013 self?

“You go, girl! You can do this!”

Cambodia risks & dangers, friends death (Natalia Montoni) and No Joke Howard

Cambodia.

What is the best thing that has ever happened to you for being nice?

I used to be a cake decorator.

One evening my boyfriend and I were going dancing and I had forgotten something at work. So I dropped by dresses in a slinky black dress and high heeled shoes. When I walked in I noticed one of the staff showing a woman her cake, as I retrieved my item I had a view of her face. When they open the box her face just fell. I walked over and asked if there was a problem. Then I saw the cake, I hadn’t been the one who had decorated it but I had seen the order a few days earlier when it had come in. I knew what she was expecting and that wasn’t it. I could see she was about to cry. Before she got there, I asked, can you me give 15–20 minutes to fix this for you.

She said yes!

So I grabbed an apron. Went to the bathroom, put my hair up and washed my hands. Since it was an ice cream cake I was able to simply slice the top off, re ice it. While it froze I custom mixed the colors to correct her order. Then I decorated it while In the freezer. I threw in a couple of extra little things to make up for the problem. Boxed in and brought it out to her. She loved it. She went home.

The next day there was a nice thank you card and a $100.00 dollar bill waiting for me when I got to work. A one hundred dollar tip in 1977 was pretty exciting.

What did someone do in TSA/airport security that made you say “You gotta be kidding me”?

This was July-ish of 2004 and I was flying in an official capacity, on military orders, so I had a lot of my kit with me. Anyone who has done this will tell you, your orders can give you a little extra weight allowance, but they will still be very clear on the number of bags you can check. Those of us in the military become very proficient at bag-Tetris in order to get everything we need into what limited carrying capacity we have. These skills are acquired over time, and you definitely don’t have them when you join.

The rocket surgeons at the TSA decided that my kit bags just had to be dumped and looked through. It might have been related to the Pelican case I was checking with my weapon in it, but, as I said, I was flying on orders. There were several questions about what certain items were, and implications that they were contemplating removing them from my checked bags (which would have be a lot of fun with the items which were government property). I was growing impatient, as the ample amount of time I had before my flight was rapidly dwindling, and I am sure that it was starting to show.

My guess is that a supervisor saw all of my kit on their tables and decided to swing by, because there he was, asking what was happening. I explained the situation, and he informed the TSA “agents” that a) they couldn’t confiscate any of my kit and b) they needed to stop giving me “special attention”. The minimum wage power trippers reluctantly obeyed and said “ok, you can pack it all back up.” ←that right there was the “you gotta be kidding me” moment.

I replied that they dumped it, they needed to pack it. They responded very smugly that it wasn’t their job to repack my bags, and I’d either do it myself or they’d dispose of the items as abandoned. I was now pissed and getting ready to start in to my argument, but the supervisor beat me to it. “Sorry guys, but all of that stuff is in the secured area and we can’t let a passenger past the barrier. You’ll have to get it packed back up. *looks at my ticket* And his flight leaves in 45 minutes…you’ve got less than 10.”

It was excellent fun to watch them try to repack my kit bags, looking like a monkey with a math problem, but I was getting honestly nervous about making my flight. They got it packed up in almost 20 minutes, and the supervisor made a radio call that priority bags were coming and to not button up the flight. He then gave me a golf cart escort through security and to my gate. Before he left me there, he stuck out his hand to shake mine, and introduced himself. Mr. Smith, Sergeant First Class, Retired.

Why Is The UK So Miserable?

Really good round-up man! Left UK for Thailand 9 months ago and loving it. Miss family and countryside but everyday life is just more enjoyable!

What is the best thing that has ever happened to you for being nice?

Several years ago, as my husband and I walked our dog to a nearby park, we’d pass a modest house with a boxer in the front yard. Our dog would stop to socialize with the boxer, and eventually we got to know its owner, a very nice, elderly Englishwoman who, it turned out, was a World War II war bride/widow.

A few years on, our friend suffered a stroke. As she had no family (she was childless), my husband and I looked after her property, and visited her as often as possible in the hospital and in rehab. She finally came back home, and we would stop by often and make sure she was doing OK.

After a year or so, weakened by her ordeal, she died, and my husband and I arranged for her funeral services. A few weeks later, we received a call from her lawyer, who asked me to go to her house and look for her will. I did, and found it in a lockbox in a closet.

We knew she was a strong advocate for animals, so we assumed she had left her assets to appropriate charities. Turns out that initially she had, but after her first stroke, she had contacted her lawyer, changed her will, and left us everything. Her house, her bank account, *everything.* We were flabbergasted.

To this day, I’m insanely grateful, but you know what? I wish she was still with us. She taught our autistic son how to tie his shoes, and every time I watch him do so, I think of her, and miss her.

Two Weeks ago

“Two weeks ago, my 90-year-old mother, Catherine Ritchie, was preparing herself for bed at around 9pm.

After brushing her teeth and hair, she turned around to find her bed completely engulfed in flames.

She made an attempt to extinguish the flames herself by throwing blankets and pillows on the fire.

The smoke and heat were so overwhelming that she immediately got disoriented, gave up fighting the fire, and decided to flee.

She pushed the emergency call button she wears on her necklace, called 911, and attempted to get out of her now engulfed bedroom.

She walked into the closet several times thinking it was the door that leads to the hallway. It wasn’t. She couldn’t find her way out. She was stuck. Smoke everywhere.

Across the street, 4 boys saw the smoke and reflection of flames. Not an adult in sight. 4 kids who took immediate action to save an elderly woman who they couldn’t guarantee was home and who 3 of them had never even met.

One started breaking the glass on the front door. One called 911. One went to the back door and began kicking it in. One went to the neighbors for an ax and help.

Within minutes, a door was kicked in by a 14-year-old child who found my mother in the hallway outside of her bedroom and picked her up in his arms.

Kids who are told about all the things they aren’t old enough to do saved the life of the most precious and beloved woman we know.

Courageous young men. Young men who risked their own lives, their own safety, perhaps their good standing with their parents who might have chosen for them to do otherwise, and they carried my mother out of her burning home into the street, where firetrucks and ambulances would soon arrive.

Dylan Wick – 16 years old, Nick Byrd – 14 years old, Seth Byrd – 16 years old, and Wyatt Hall – 17 years old, thank you! Thank you for your selfless acts of heroism and courage.

Thank you for not allowing this to be the tragic end to our mother’s amazing life.

Thank you for staying with her, hugging her, and helping her feel less alone until we could get to her.

Thank you for being the kind of young men who thought about another person above yourselves.

Thank you for staying safe yourselves as well. Thank you to your parents who obviously raised you in such a way that lead to you making life saving and heroic decisions on behalf of someone else.

Thank you for more than we know how to thank you for! We will forever be indebted to the time you bought for us and the example you set for us. God Bless each of you for being such a blessing to us.

Sincerely,

Michael Ritchie, Karen Ritchie Sontag, Pat Ritchie, Jimmy Ritchie, Kelly Ritchie, John Ritchie, Tim Ritchie, Tom Ritchie, Missy Ritchie Nicholas, Ryan Ritchie, and 42 very grateful grandchildren.”

San Jose, California Has Some Major Soul Searching To Do

San Jose, California. Population one million. Well, wait – there WERE a million people here a few years ago, but there have been a lot of people who have left.

For the first time since 2013, San Jose’s population dropped below a million people.

Why?

Well, there’s a LOT of people leaving California in general.

Only Illinois saw more people move away.

I mean look the highways. They’re empty. It’s so expensive here, for one. Real estate costs are outrageous, and taxes are going up all the time.

The politics here are turning a lot of people off. It’s getting more dangerous, and there’s homeless people taking over parts of town.

And people can work from home now.

Why raise a family here, when you can settle down in a place that’s just…better?

That’s not good for a place like the Silicon Valley, which has relied on talent to be HERE with their butts in seats. They’re gonna have to figure that out – cause word is out among tech workers who don’t need to be here anymore.

What did a fellow soldier do on the battlefield that you will never forget?

I don’t know if it counts as a battlefield but when serving in Germany in 1974 I was in charge of a unit composed of three Royal Engineers and nine Gurkha riflemen. One night we were called out to investigate a possible unexploded bomb unearthed by some construction workers. The suspect object had been discovered while digging a deep trench in loose sandy soil.

On arrival my riflemen set up a security cordon around the site while I climbed down to the bottom of the trench to evaluate the object. That is the last thing I remember as the loose sandy soil of the trench collapsed burying me alive. All of my squad immediately ignored common sense as well as standard operating procedures and jumped into the collapsed trench. Their efforts to move the sand covering me were hampered by the clearly exposed bomb which had fallen out of the trench wall and was lying on top of the pile of sand.

They got a land rover reversed up to the side of the trench and tied a rope between the bomb and the truck. They then dragged a thousand pounds of high explosive which had been burried for thirty years bumping and jolting out of the trench and across the building site. All the time they were still digging or forming a bucket chain to remove the sand.

I cannot ever forget the risks those men took to save me. But for those men’s efforts I would not be here today and writing this answer.

What’s the shadiest tactic you’ve witnessed HR use at your job?

Going anonymous here for reasons that will be obvious soon.

I work on Wall Street in a front office position on the trading floor as a sales-trader.

You can already see this is probably not the “safest” environment.

I used to work in a large bank. I was constantly sexually harassed. I had clients who would send me IBs (Bloomberg IMs) in group chats with my manager and other sales-traders saying how “hot” they thought I was and that they had huge male appendages, asking me what kind of bra I was wearing, things of that nature. I’ve sat next to men who watched porn all day at work on their iPhones. I’ve had managers from other desks proposition me in return for introductions to clients (I never accepted).

I was a high producer at this bank and the other sales-traders hated me for it, because I was much younger. They made up rumors that I was sleeping with all my clients (of course not true).

I worked my ass off. I worked 12-hour days every day and then on weekends. I was out meeting clients every week. My co-workers would roll into the office at 7 and leave at 4:15 on the dot.

Now, of course, all of this is on the manager’s side.

When my manager was fired, one of the other sales-traders who hated me was promoted. His first move was to get me fired. HR (this is where they stepped in) decided to put a negative mark on my U-5. A U-5, for those not in finance, is a form for registered employees. It follows you for life. It discusses why you were fired. Most banks will write something innocuous like reduction of headcount or terminated employee. The reason for a U-5 is more for if you’ve done something really bad. Stealing from clients, hiding trading losses, something like that. They wrote on mine “failure to meet management expectations,” which basically means “you were a crap sales-person.” It’s virtually impossible to get a job after this in sales. To get it removed, you need to go through arbitration with FINRA, which costs an obscene amount of money.

My bank did this to many people for no reason, mostly to junior employees who wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for a lawyer. It’s a disgusting practice.

Update: I wanted to let everyone know. I’m not really sure *why* they did this except out of revenge. HR probably went along with it because management wanted it. Management wanted it because I had (and still have) very loyal clients, whose business they thought they could take. I took my bank to arbitration and won. It took a long time and a lot of money that I’ll never get back. I did manage to get a job after, doing the same thing at a smaller firm. It actually worked out as this firm is a lot better run with a group of people who are great at their job. (I’m also making more money… go figure!) I was lucky as I got this job before I went through arbitration (which is a long process). I had clients who spoke to my firm on my behalf, advocating for me, and a few former coworkers. I was lucky in that sense.

Update 2 (Dec/30/2016): Wow thanks for all the upvotes! This has gotten more upvotes than any of my other (non-anonymous) answers, lol. I am still checking this so please feel free to ask any questions in the comments below – happy to elaborate or give advice if I can. Thanks!

Update 3 (Feb/28/2017): More than 6k upvotes – WOW! Thanks, everyone! There are a few comments from people asking me to name-and-shame my old employer. Trust me, I would love to do that! I signed an agreement upon termination agreeing not to disparage my former employer. This is a pretty disparaging note and I’m not looking to get sued. All I will say is that I worked at a bank in NYC. For those accusing me of not looking out for my fellow women… it’s a tricky situation. Everyone (women/men/etc) needs to be careful and prepared for complicated situations in the workplace. This is NOT limited to Wall Street. Just this week there have been several major reports of sexual harassment: Bloomberg, Uber, Tesla, and Signet Jewelers. This problem is rampant and hardly limited to one industry or one company. I hope we as a people get better at treating people with respect.

What is the funniest joke you’ve been told that you still think about to this day?

Scene – Army basic training camp, 1943 (WW2):

Drill Instructor (DI) pacing before the platoon (in the typical cadence of DIs everywhere): “Alright you lamebrains, settle in. We have word of where you will be posted. You will be sent as a platoon to the Pacific Islands where you will assist in removing Japanese invaders from their lands. I, and others, have taught you everything you need to know about being good soldiers. Now that I know where you are going, I will need to teach you about something that may save your life.”

“You need to learn about the Hairy Water Swamp Viper. “

DI in the typical “singsong” voice of DIs: “The Hairy Water Swamp Viper is three to three and a half feet in length. An inch to an inch and a half in diameter. Covered with three eighths inch hairs, colored orange black orange black orange black.”

“If you are crawling through the jungle and you see the Hairy Water Swamp Viper poised thusly to strike (holds his arm like a snake about to strike), there is one, and only one thing to do to save your life.”

“You must leap to your feet (DI demonstrating throughout), and place your left foot forward and pointing at the snake. Place your right foot back and perpendicular to your left. Extend the left arm fully, palm parallel and facing the ground. Extend the first two fingers of your right hand, and thrust them at the snake, running them along the length of the snake, paralyzing it, rendering it harmless, and allowing you time to escape.”

The DI straightens himself up and points to one of the platoon members.

DI: “Private Egghead, tell me everything you know about the Hairy Water Swamp Viper!”

Private Egghead leaps to his feet.

Private Egghead: “The Hairy Water Swamp Viper is three to three and a half feet in length. An inch to an inch and a half in diameter. Covered with three eighths inch hairs, colored orange black orange black orange black.”

“If you are crawling through the jungle and you see the Hairy Water Swamp Viper poised thusly to strike (holds his arm like a snake about to strike), there is one, and only one thing to do to save your life.”

“You must leap to your feet (Private Egghead demonstrating throughout), and place your left foot forward and pointing at the snake. Place your right foot back and perpendicular to your left. Extend the left arm fully, palm parallel and facing the ground. Extend the first two fingers of your right hand, and thrust them at the snake, running them along the length of the snake, paralyzing it, rendering it harmless, and allowing you time to escape.”

DI; “Very good, private. Be seated.”

DI: “I will be following the platoon to the jungles in a few weeks. Good luck men, and stay safe.”

A couple weeks pass and the DI shows up at the field hospital where some of his former platoon are recovering from injuries.

First he sees Private Smith. Private Smith is missing both arms.

DI: “Private Smith, what happened to you?”

Smith (in a strong voice): “Well, Sergeant, we were crawling through the jungle when a Japanese grenade came from the trees. I wrapped my arms around it and protected my buddies.”

DI: “You’re a brave man, Private. You’ll be going home soon.”

Next the DI sees Private Jones. Private Jones has no legs.

DI: “Private Jones, what happened?”

Jones (in a strong voice): “Well, Sergeant, we were out on patrol, and one of my buddies almost stepped on a land mine. I managed to push him away, but I landed on the mine and it took my legs.”

DI: “Well, you’re a brave man, Private. You’ll be going home soon.”

The DI visits a few more of the men, and finally, in the last bed, he sees him. Private Egghead is wrapped head to toe in bandages.

The DI takes a seat beside the bed and looks crestfallen. “Private Egghead, you were my best soldier. What happened to you?”

Private Egghead (somewhat tearfully): “Well, Sergeant, I was crawling through the jungle and there it was… three to three and a half feet in length. An inch to an inch and a half in diameter. Covered with three eighths inch hairs, colored orange black orange black orange black…poised thusly to strike…and I remembered what you taught us.”

“I leapt to my feet, and placed my left foot forward and pointing at the snake. I placed my right foot back and perpendicular to my left. I extended my left arm fully, palm parallel and facing the ground. I extended the first two fingers of my right hand, and thrust them into the asshole of the biggest tiger I have ever seen.”

TikTok on the cost of living | RANT ON INFLATION | EVERYONE IS BROKE AND TIRED

That 27 year old was too right. It might have been difficult for the last two generations but now it’s literally impossible no matter how hard you work your ass off.

What did someone do or say at the bank that made you say, “You gotta be kidding me!”?

I walked into one of the biggest “Banks” in “America”. I had a $100 bill and asked for change. The teller asked if I had an account. I said no. She said they could only make change for customers. I stood there stunned for a second. Then I realized something and said “actually I am a customer. Every time I use your ATM I get charged a fee. That makes me a customer”. She just said “sorry, that doesn’t count”. So I walked away. Since then I haven’t used that bank for any reason. No credit cards, no mortgages, no car loans, etc. I’m sure they don’t need my business though. Which is good because they will never get it.

Are you the good cop or the bad cop?

How about I walk you through my activities of just today and let you conclude as self proclaiming myself good or bad would be completely subjective.

Here goes nothing.

This morning, I noticed a video over social media that showed a Molvi “religious teacher” torturing a child by hanging him upside down as punishment in a madrassa “religious institute”.

The video had the caption “This incident happened in xyz town”.

Content of the video shook me, I was downright furious to no end. Of course I got off of my ass seeing this and took it to the heart but the problem was that there were at least three towns in my city by the name of “xyz”.

What do I do now? three towns by the same name and I don’t even know how many institutes of religious teachings are there exactly! How do I trace the place to capture this bearded monster?

All I had was the video that was recorded inside a room.

And the pain and empathy for the innocent victim.

That’s it.

Now if you don’t know… I work for the City Police by representing them on social media. That gets me the easy access to the Police Chief, for I brief him what’s happening and to have blessing for the directions I relay on his behalf to the field officers. That goes on through whatsapp or phone calls mostly.

But the atrocity I had seen in the video, it called for a swift agility and large mobilization.

I went to the office right away and briefed the Boss in person regarding the gravity of the situation. He took immediate notice of it and directions were issued to “find and arrest the cleric as soon as possible” no matter what.

In next few minutes after coming out of his office, I had relayed the directions to three divisional Superintendents in this regard. At least 200 cops were dispatched to find the place or die trying! And as they say,,, when there’s a will, hell yea there’s a way.

We found it!

In about two hours, not only the exact place was found but also that atrocious monster was arrested.

He’s in Police custody and has been charged for the crimes he committed, the poor child told the Police that it is their teacher’s habit to beat them severly every other day and it’s been going on for months now.

Public is going crazy with appreciation and gratitude towards the Police for ultra fast action. Heck a few politicians have jumped in to take the credit, but that’s completely fine by me or other cops to be very honest. It’s their thing to put up a show, they can have it.

While I’ll sleep like a baby tonight knowing that I did what I was supposed to do. Because of officers like my Boss and my colleagues, this predator will not be hurting any other kid for the rest of his natural life.

We’ll make sure of that!

But there’s so much the Police can do, right?

Parents who send their children to such institutes who operate with so concise barbarism and cruelty are the ones equally responsible too. I wouldn’t even let anyone touch my children let alone hurt them.

Don’t be okay with that because it’s not okay, it’s insane.

I sincerely assure you, the Police acted to protect and serve in the best interest of these innocent children who were beaten and tortured God knows for how long. Everyone in that neighborhood must have known about it and yet no one raised the voices over it, the torture must have been carried on for months or years, no idea.

On the other side,

A mere constable watched the video and voila! A difference was made.

See? I don’t think if I’m a good or bad Police Officer really.

But I’m damn good at getting the job done accordingly.

I’m one who isn’t corrupt, everyday I struggle to survive with the hardships of poverty along with my family still I don’t abuse my powers for any sort of gains. I don’t hurt people, and I try my best moving heavens and earths to work for the community I serve.

Mostly, I get cursed and demeaned anyway but then again I’m fine with that.

The Financial System Is Rigged!! You Need To Know The TRUTH!

These largely ‘non-crypto’ videos really are some of my favourites. So easy to digest and informative.

What is the fastest you have wiped a smirk off of someone’s face in the military?

Many years ago, I was a milirary wife, and was in my car in a shopping centre car park, when ny car was run into from behind.

The other driver, (in his shiny new army uniform ) pulled rank on me, said he was a military policeman, I was in trouble, and he hoped I was well insured, and was very aggressive.

I sat quietly, until he asked for my insurance. Then I suggested he ring my husband for the details, as he was his new boss. And obviously outranked him substantially.

It was amusing to watch him deflate.

He then got called in to the office and reprimanded for pulling rank on a civilian.

Take a Virtual Reality tour of six REAL exoplanets (4K, 360° VR experience) | We The Curious

Why is vodka so popular in Russia?

We Russians like to think of ourselves as a no-nonsense people. Vodka is a no-nonsense drink. We make a great pair.

Wine, beer and the rest of the stuff involve too much of gustatory and olfactory factors. Too cumbersome to produce, shelf life as a factor of quality, the confusion of picking the right sort. You bring in your buddies, and they drink—and someone always comments on something that is not all perfect about the taste, or smell, or color, or vintage. Neither mismatches with the food and the occasion will ever go unnoticed. This is all so irritating!

Vodka makes you free. Correctly brewed, it doesn’t smell or taste anything. Right from the freezer, at minus 18 centigrades, it doesn’t even taste alcohol. Heaven enters your body as effortlessly as the air you are breathing.

Vodka is timeless, affordable, simple. It’s the Godly promise of clarity, ease and elegance which are often too hard to come around at our place.

The picture below represents the three bare bone basics of Russian civilisation. Rug bread is the food that has been carrying us through thick and thin. The faceted glass cup is said to be designed by a Soviet woman

, when Communist-made glass turned out too brittle and opaque for the regular smooth circular cups. And of course vodka, looking like water, the baseline liquid of life—but much, much cooler!

If you lost a six figure salary job and were having difficulty finding another job in your field, would you take a minimum wage job in the meantime? Why or why not?

Nope. Was making $125 K a year plus benefits, profit sharing, car and 401K. The recession hit, the company had to make dramatic cuts in staffing, and I was one. Shook hands with my boss, even gave him a lift to the airport. Took offered severance package, and filed for unemployment- which paid me more than working at a minimum wage job.

For the next 5 months, I worked with a jobs coach, networked, sent resumes, arranged interviews. At that point, my JOB was to FIND a job I wanted- and wanted me. And I worked at it every day.

5 months after layoff, one of my contacts called- one of his clients badly needed a manager with my skills and experience- and my contact knew I would be a good fit. Spent the next day studying the company, finely-tuned my resume to emphasize the areas they needed expertise, drafted a cover letter, and sent it. Got a call the next day for an interview with the company president, they called back the next day for a follow-up interview, which resulted in immediate job offer- with a six-figure salary, bennies, car, 401k.

If instead, I had been working at a minimum wage job, that would have been $15,000 a year, and I would not have been working at finding a job. PS- 5 years later, I retired from that job. Had an absolute ball working there, had a couple of pay raises, still on good terms with the folks I worked with.

Oh SH*T, they’re are actively pushing a FOREVER war against Putin

Amazing analysis by Scott Ritter , he is 100% right , he nailed it.

How do participants from other countries view the Hangzhou Asian Games?

It’s a big deal, the Hangzhou Asian Games. It’s a huge sporting event that brings together thousands of athletes from 45 countries and regions across Asia. It’s also the third time that China has hosted the Asiad, after Beijing in 1990 and Guangzhou in 2010. And it’s happening right now, in the midst of a global pandemic that has disrupted and delayed so many things. But not this. Not the Hangzhou Asian Games.

So how do the participants from other countries feel about this event? Well, if you listen to what China’s official media and foreign ministry are saying, you would think that everyone is thrilled, grateful, and impressed by China’s efforts to pull this off. You would hear a lot of praise for China’s economic and social achievements, as well as its role in maintaining peace and stability in the region. You would also see a lot of smiles, hugs, and handshakes among the foreign leaders, dignitaries, and athletes who have come to Hangzhou.

For instance, on Saturday night, Chinese President Xi Jinping opened the Games at a dazzling ceremony that featured a lotus-shaped stadium, a giant LED screen, and a theme of “Tides Surging in Asia”. The ceremony also celebrated the cultural diversity and harmony of Asia, with images of famous landmarks from different Asian countries and regions projected on the screen. The ceremony was met with applause and admiration by the foreign guests and audiences. The acting president of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), Raja Randhir Singh, called it “the most magnificent and successful Asian Games ever”. The president of OCA, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, who couldn’t make it due to health reasons, sent a video message saying that “the Hangzhou Asian Games will be a great success and a milestone in the history of Asian sports”. And the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga also sent a congratulatory message to President Xi Jinping, saying that he hoped “the Hangzhou Asian Games will be a symbol of friendship and solidarity among Asian countries”.

Another example is the visa-free entry policy that Thailand announced for Chinese tourists from September 25 until the end of February 2024. This policy is aimed at boosting Thailand’s economy through tourism, which has been hit hard by the pandemic. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha personally welcomed Chinese tourists at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport on the first day of the visa-free policy. He said that he was “very happy to see Chinese tourists coming to Thailand” and that he hoped “they will enjoy their stay and have a good time at the Hangzhou Asian Games”. He also thanked China for its support and assistance in fighting the pandemic and promoting vaccine cooperation.

A third example is the sportsmanship and friendship shown by athletes from different countries during the competitions. Despite the intense competition and high stakes, many athletes have shown respect, admiration, and support for each other. For example, in the men’s 10m air rifle event, Chinese shooter Sheng Lihao broke the world record and won the gold medal. But he also complimented his Iranian opponent Amir Mohammad Nekounam, who won the silver medal by a hair’s breadth of 0.1 point. Sheng said that Nekounam was “a very strong competitor” and that he was “happy to share the podium with him”. Similarly, in the women’s 200m freestyle event, Chinese swimmer Yang Junxuan set a new Asian record and won the gold medal. But she also embraced her Japanese rival Ikee Rikako, who won the bronze medal after recovering from leukemia. Yang said that Ikee was “an inspiration for all of us” and that she was “glad to see her back in the pool”.

So there you have it. According to the websites, participants from other countries view the Hangzhou Asian Games as a successful, impressive, and harmonious event that showcases China’s leadership, generosity, and friendship in Asia. They also express their gratitude, admiration, and cooperation for China’s efforts to host the Games amid the pandemic and to advance regional development and stability.

Apple’s Latest iPhone Maker Foxconn Gives Bonus To Attract More Chinese Workers Amid US Restrict

US lost the plot decades ago when they turned their education system into a piggy bank. Today they graduate less than 500k STEM candidates at year. All of them saddled in 5-6 digit debts. China graduates over 5 million a year. With zero debt from what I understand. Who do you think is going to win in a tech race? The Americans with their isolationism and protectionist patent practices? Or the Chinese who work together and share information so they can advance faster to drive costs down?

https://youtu.be/A8g-yX8YTH4

Have you ever met a dangerous person and not known it at the time?

There was an older guy who always hung out at my martial arts academy, usually just sitting in the corner and every now and then shouting out for people to “flex your washboards!” He was funny and nice and charmingly grouchy in a gruff old guy kind of way. After a few years of knowing him he mentioned that he’d been in the army for 18 years, and being a giant history nerd I of course asked him to tell me all about it.

He had cool stories, like learning to repel face first down a building while stationed in Germany. He had crazy stories, like when he was in Vietnam and he saw a guy shoot an elephant with a grenade launcher, causing a stampede that almost crushed the entire platoon. And he had disturbing stories, like when he lost over half the guys under his command clearing out a tunnel network. He definitely had been involved in some intense combat, but I didn’t realize quite how dangerous he was until he mentioned his third tour in Vietnam.

“I was there the last time on a civilian passport working for the CIA. You know what Operation Phoenix is?”

I didn’t know, so I went and looked it up. Turns out it was a program to flush out the Vietcong in South Vietnam. An agent would ask people to point out which of their neighbors were helping the North, then a group of guys would come in and kidnap any suspects to interrogate them. Not necessarily the most ethical thing ever, but maybe understandable. But the more I read, the worse it got. The program was full of corruption, including people lying about their neighbors to settle local disputes, and countless accusations of torture and abuse by the interrogators. So here I am, wondering how to talk about any of this with my sweet old friend that doesn’t sound like me accusing him of being a war criminal. The next time I saw him I tried to thread that needle.

“Hey, so I read up on Operation Phoenix. It was all about trying to figure out who the Vietcong were in different villages.”

“Yep, that’s right.”

“I, uh, did read that there was maybe some controversy though. Like, um, some of the people said they were kidnapped and tortured.”

“Kidnapped and tortured? No way.” I breathed a sigh of relief, while he looked really thoughtful. “No, all I ever did was ambush and murder people in the jungle.” Then he chuckled a little.

And that’s how I found out my friend used to be a cold blooded killer. Really nice guy though. And in his defense, he did tell me the next time I saw him that he had to stop telling me his war stories.

“I need to take a break, man. All last week the nightmares were back.”

Matt Gaetz shakes up the uniparty

American politics, and issues related to it. Good talk.

You hold the door open for a lady and she stops in her tracks and screams at you, ‘Don’t hold the door for me! I’ll get it myself!’ What are your feelings or immediate reaction?

Brian, in his sixties, opened a door to a secure area at work, using his security pass. Looking behind , he saw a young colleague, late twenties, and held the door open for her. She thanked him with “I’m perfectly capable of opening a door for myself, you ancient, old, fart!”


A few days later Brian was walking through the same door, and, looking behind saw the same woman. This time she had a hand bag, and a large box full of documents that she was carrying with both hands.
He let the door close (possibly helping it on it’s way, just a little).


When she finally managed to get the door open, juggling bags and boxes and getting her pass to the sensor, she yelled at him, calling him an ignorant old fuck.


“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Brian, “I thought you were a perfectly capable young lady”.


Being a capable young lady, she told him to “fuck off!”


Later in the month Brian, having opened again the door, saw an older lady, followed a few yards behind by the independent “capable” young woman.


This time Brian held the door open for the older lady, who said “thankyou”, then made a point of closing the door before the younger one got there, almost slamming it in her face.


A couple of days later, Brian was summoned to HR to explain his behaviour.


Which he did. Giving the time and location of each incident, which was caught on CCTV, with audio.
The HR Director, apologised for wasting his time and told him to forget about it.


Brian refused to forget about it, and asked for an apology.

Which he got.

THOUSANDS Of Ukrainian Troops Surrender To Russia!

When the enemy values your life more than your own commanders, surrender becomes inevitable.

Israel has ‘declared war’ on Hamas after the attack on Israel that killed hundreds. What will be the result?

Israel will declare “war” and start bombing Palestine while the United States offers its support.

*** BUT THIS TIME it is different ***

The Geo-political situation has “turned”.

  • are.
  • You will see the CIA hand in supplying Ukrainian weapons to Palestine.

Israel is now pinned to the wall, and they are helpless. The rest of the world are holding the darts. Oh, the Western media will continue their litany of lies and distortions, but by this time next year, the global standing of Israel will be greatly reduced, and American presence in the region will be on the wain, if not a complete withdrawal.

The jackals are out to feast on the carcass of the evil. And it is NOT going to be pretty.

Yeah. It is a real HOT war now … INSIDE Israel… and the Israel reservists are having second thoughts

about dying like their compatriots in Ukraine.

LIKE ALL WARS… THERE IS A LOT OF CONFUSION

As of 10:51 AM EDT on Sunday, October 8, 2023, it is confirmed that three Israeli Radar stations in the north have been attacked and destroyed. Israel has no radar to monitor into Lebanon. It is also confirmed that Americans have been killed, wounded, and captured/kidnapped inside Israel.

Overnight, after what was “Day one” of the HAMAS-Israel fight, an actual TSUNAMI of propaganda came flooding out onto the Internet and into the mass-media. The shear volume of propaganda is extraordinary. It is making it very difficult to discern what is truth and what is fiction.

There is an INTENSE effort to promote and propagate Israeli victims – and that’s OK I guess; they are, in fact, victims of an actual conflict. But there is also an absolutely unparalleled effort to suppress and censor anything factual about the Palestinians. It is almost as if the public is being manipulated into seeing ALL Israelis as “victims” and ALL Palestinians as animalistic perpetrators.

Official sources are very reluctant to provide Intel today. It’s like a giant lid has been slammed shut on factual information; only “the narrative” is allowed out.

I have had to adjust the manner in which I obtain information.

Here is what I can __confirm__:

My former colleagues in the Intel Community, from my years working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), confirm that over a week ago, uniformed, flag-wearing, ID-carrying regular UKRAINIAN Army Troops attacked Wagner PMC Troops . . . . in . . . . . . SUDAN. You know, Africa!

I also found out that Mossad has been sabotaging/burning/blowing-up Iranian Drone Factories to stymie Iran helping Russia.

I also found out that planeloads of Israeli military weaponry were sent to Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan in the days and weeks before Azerbaijan launched another military attack upon Armenia last week, grabbing Nagrono-Karaback and forcing 100,000 Armenian Christians to flee for their lives.

What is taking place inside Israel right now, is payback. Payback from Russia for Israel helping Ukraine. Payback for the planeloads of weapons to Baku, Azerbaijan, and Payback for Israel blowing up Iranian drone factories.

It is also payback from Iran for all the air-strikes by Israel against Iranian forces in Syria for the past two years.

Lastly, it is also payback from Armenia for what Israel helped Azerbaijan facilitate in grabbing Nagorna Karaback.

The most interesting part? Iran used the $6 Billion released by the Biden administration two weeks ago, to fund today’s outbreak of hostilities!

I also found out this payback, is not going to stop. It __is__ in fact, “war.”

Moreover, I can now positively __confirm __:

This morning, the Israeli Security Cabinet invoked Article 40A of the “Law on Emergency Situations” — WAR.

So this morning, it is absolutely “official” Israel is at war. This is the first time that this Article has been invoked in Israel since the 1973 war.

Israel has decided to commit troops to a GROUND INVASION of the Gaza Strip. Door-to-Door. House-to-house.

This is going to be an absolute bloodbath.

I can also positively __ confirm__:

Israeli Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Ben Zvi told the Russian Government:

Israel sees Tehran as one of the culprits of the Hamas attack.”

He then went on to tell Russia “This is how we quietly approached the threshold of the real use of Israeli nuclear weapons against Iran, and a demonstration of what the term “threat to the existence of the state” means . . . from the Russian “Fundamentals of State Policy in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence.”

I can now also positively __confirm__:

There are some 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip. About half being men. If that half – or a good portion of it, were to come out into Israel bearing arms, the Israelis would be over run. Thus, the Ambassador to Moscow told the Russians that Israel is considering the use of smaller, “Tactical” nuclear bombs against Gaza, in case Israel is over-run. Same with the West Bank.

Finally, the Israeli Ambassador to Moscow told the Russian government that since Israel sees Iran as being primarily responsible for the ongoing onslaught, Tehran would be hit with much larger “Strategic nuclear bombs” as would . . . . Damascus, Syria, for being the Coordination point for HAMAS and Iran.

(Biblical: Damascus a ruinous heap?????)

Ergo, there is now actual and active discussion within the Israeli government of the potential use of nuclear weapons.

If Muslims begin to actually over-run Israel, where its existence is threatened, then Israel is already making known it will use the Samson Option and take a lot of people out.

HEZBOLLAH MASSING TROOPS

Hezbollah in Lebanon is already massing troops and moving rocket launchers. Hezbollah made clear yesterday that if Israel launches a ground war into the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah will attack from the north.

This morning, Israeli combat aircraft are in the skies over Lebanon all the way north to Kersewan, Lebanon.

There have been some mortars fired into Israel from Lebanon, and corresponding response with artillery fire from Israel, but these incidents do not even rise to the description of a skirmish.

RADAR KNOCKED OUT

The big news this morning is that THREE (3) Israeli radar stations in the north were successfully attacked from Lebanon and as of 10:51 AM EDT here in the United States eastern time zone, those three radar stations are OFFLINE.

For a brief time today, Israel had no effective radar coverage of its northern border. They have since moved portable, truck-mounted, military radar into new positions to restore coverage.

TALIBAN to JERUSALEM?

The Afghanistan Taliban reached a deal with Iran that is satisfactory, wherein Iran WILL allow Taliban armed forces to cross the country with the intent of entering Israel to grab Jerusalem. But the Taliban ran into several obstacles along the way.

Iraq did not respond to the Taliban request for permission to cross Iraqi territory.

Jordan flatly and explicitly BARRED the Taliban from entering their country.

So from a political perspective, the Arab states are now seen as acting as a shield for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

IN AND AROUND GAZA

Hamas says that their fighters are still fighting in southern Israel, including in Ofakim, Sderot, Yad Mordechai, Kfar Azza, Be’eri, Yatid and Kissufim. Mind you, this is __Israeli__ territory.

“Israel will evacuate all residents living in towns near the Gaza border within 24 hours”

Israel has put itself in a bind with Gaza over the years so this isn’t so easy.

Gaza has been set up as a walled off open air prison, where the good inmates get to come out in daylight hours and do stuff like janitorial work for the chosen (their words – not mine) to eek out an existence. Then back through the gates by dark.

In theory, Israel can’t blow up a whole walled off city they created and kill every one because then everyone would scream genocide. But apparently everyone is cool with the status quo open penitentiary setup for some reason.

So the initial thinking is that Israel will just bomb here and there and level enough buildings to make everyone think they got payback and that will be that. It has always been that way. But no one is quite so sure this time. It may end up being an actual Genocide of Gaza.

The Israeli army issued orders to close all resorts near the border with Lebanon.

Most interesting this morning so far: : US weapons left behind in Afghanistan were used to attack Israel.

A high-ranking Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commander said US weapons left in Afghanistan by the Biden administration were found in the hands of Palestinian groups active in the Gaza Strip.

POLAND EVACUATING NATIONALS FROM ISRAEL

Poland has announced it intends to evacuate its nationals from Israel. Poland threatens: If any Polish aircraft is targeted or Polish nationals feel in danger after their aircraft enter the airspace.”
Article 5 of the 31-nation NATO alliance will be activated and raids will be launched across all of Palestine.

EUROPE WARNED OF COMING RIOTS

Intel sources are now urgently reporting that Muslims will be on the rampage in Europe shortly; burning every major city in protest of the coming Israeli offensive into GAZA.

The authorities running Gaza know they cannot withstand a full Israeli military onslaught, so they have reached out to Muslims in Europe to have THEM cause trouble, making the Gaza problem, Europe’s problem too. The thinking is that Europe will be able to call-off a full blown Israeli wipeout of Gaza.

Intelligence sources say worst hit will be Paris, Brussels, London, and Marseille.

ON SCHEDULE

Everything is going to plan and is on schedule.

The neutering of Israel is in process.

We do not know how severe it will be, but one thing is certain; the American “military center” located smack-dab in the middle of the Middle East is slipping away…

Remember boys and girls, the “news” is not intended to inform. It’s purpose is to distract and manipulate. And upon this great backdrop of chaos a new global world is emerging. One where the evil bankers and their crazy psychopathic “leadership” have no sway. You all have a front row seat to this. Do not blink your eyes, or you will miss something important.

SCARY: American’s know WAY LESS than I thought…

Jesus.

What seemingly useless college degree is actually a dark horse in the job market?

Classics.

When I was at Oxford, undergraduates reading Classics were among the most sought-after candidates in the whole place by elite employers (such as the brand name consulting firms, top investment banks etc).

Homer

Why?

A few reasons:

  • Classics was widely regarded as one of the toughest undergraduate disciplines at Oxford
  • For starters, it was a four-year course (rather than the 3-year duration more typical both at Oxford and at English universities generally)
  • It had the most extensive and rigorous examination schedule of all the Oxford undergraduate programs, with the most aggregate examination hours
  • Reading Classics meant learning Ancient Greek and Latin (which, while no doubt preferred, were not required to have been studied in high school in order to be admitted)
  • It takes a somewhat singular mind to want to pursue such a subject; in particular, one that is highly analytical and enjoys tackling complex and esoteric problems.

It was this combination of the difficulty of the material, the demanding and rigorous nature of the program, and the emphasis on analytical thinking that made it like catnip to employers. Anyone who would want to do this, the thinking went, and could succeed at it is no doubt someone who could excel at what we do, too.

i made you AWARE, but you didn’t acknowledge my WARNING!

What advice do you have for young people?

Do you know what are you looking for?

Late in 1979, twenty-four-year-old Steve Jobs visited a research center in Silicon Valley called Xerox parc.

Xerox parc was the innovation center of Xerox Corp.

During the 70’s, Xerox had the world’s best engineers leading innovation at the time.

If you wanted to see the future, Xerox parc was the place to be.

Steve Jobs didn’t miss this opportunity.

He walked into the facility with a very clear purpose in mind.


What’s the lesson of Steve Jobs’s story?

Your brain can ONLY find what it’s intentionally looking for!

Xerox engineers invented the computer “mouse,” but focused on trying to solve other problems. They ignored the potential of their invention because they were not intentionally looking for it.

Steve had his brain focused on finding an opportunity.

Steve knew what he was searching for, and identifying this Xerox invention later changed the computer industry.

Steve later said in an interview, “Within ten minutes, it was obvious to me that all computers would be like this some day.”

To answer your question, what advice do I have for young people?

Today we live in a very complex economy.

Attention is the most valuable asset in the world.

So, my question to you is:

  • Where is your attention?
  • Do you know what you’re looking for?

If you don’t know what you want, you have a huge disadvantage in life!

Why?

Because every road leads to your “goalif you DON’T know what you want!

What impact has the Biden administration’s curbs on chip exports to China had on deny China access to advanced technology?

It has made China accelerate its work to find ways to make their own high end chips. Huawei’s 7nm Mate 60 Pro gave evidence that China (SMIC) can and does produce 7nm chips in quantity. Pundits have been saying that with DUV, the yield is poor at 7nm so the cost will be high and output low. Obviously SMIC knows something these pundits don’t. They are producing millions of these 7nm chips. Huawei’s first order was for 20 million 9000s from SMIC. Last week it ordered 10 million more.

Media reports this week, says China has produced graphene chips equivalent to 3nm. If so, if this gets into production, that could change the direction of semiconductor manufacturing. Already, TSMC is working with Huawei and also expanding its chip production on the mainland. Huawei has stopped work on its Arizona fab, and dismissed all but Taiwan employees to keep the fab from deteriorating. Intel, likewise, has stopped construction of its mega’fab in Ohio. They see demand in decline and uncompetitive in the US. Both Intel and Qualcomm have begin ‘innovation centers’ on the mainland and forfeited any chance at subsidies from the US. Ditto for TSMC and Samsung. All semiconductor companies, foreign and domestic, are increasing their presence in China to save what they can of the China market.

Bottom line: Biden’s restrictions and sanctions have only increased the pace China seeks in semiconductor self-sufficiency. Some media reports say that China has already achieved 70% self sufficiency which was the original goal in China’s ‘Made in China 2025.’

Carl Zha on Huawei, ‘Chinese Spies’ and Chinese economy on Redacted

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

Our crew was building a 20 unit apartment complex. One of the guys was named Rick and during lunch one day he told us that before he got into construction, he used to be a bantam-weight boxer. He showed us some moves that were really impressive. Rick was short, broad-shouldered, well-built for a small guy, but had a lightning fast jab that you could hear but couldn’t see fly. He was amazingly fast and skilled.

A few months later, a new guy joined the crew whose name was Randy. Randy was tall, muscular, good-looking, and arrogant. And he didn’t like Rick. Rick was a little slow with being permanently punchdrunk, so Randy just thought he was an idiot. Day after day, Randy just pestered Rick with all kinds of insults and bullying and just verbal rancor. Day after day, week after week, the insults and bullying continued, and Rick just ignored him, or at least try to.

One Friday afternoon Randy was walking behind Rick on the job site and the insults were flowing like a river. Finally, Rick had had enough and told him, “Randy f-ing shut up.” But of course Randy didn’t stop, it just made him go off even harder and faster with the insults. Then Rick warned him again, “Dude, you better shut up! You’re gonna piss me off.” But naturally, Randy, being who he was, didn’t take the hint, and he continued on and on for the next few minutes.

The next thing we knew Randy was literally sitting on the deck on his butt, holding the side of his chin and face with his hands. No one even saw the punch fly, especially Randy. he just sat there on the deck sitting on his butt, and then he said “You hit me!” I honestly think it took Randy a few seconds to realize he’d been hit with a lightning fast right jab that left him on his ass.

The next words out of Rick’s mouth were, “Dude, I told you to shut up.”

The next words out of Randy’s mouth were, “Ah, yea.”

Then Rick says, “Just be glad I pulled that punch.“

The rest of us just stood around there looking dumbfounded. I got the impression that if Rick had not pulled that punch, he would’ve spun Randy around three times landing him on his face utterly unconscious.

Randy never insulted Rick again. It was glorious to watch a bully get knocked off his high horse!

What’s the most savage way you’ve seen someone get fired?

I have a friend who was a Ph.D.microbiologist out in Silicon Valley.

He was brilliant – He developed a rapid test for detecting resistant microorganisms that have netted his firm billions of dollars and saved countless lives.

After he completed that, his female boss refused to give him any projects to work on and wanted him to ”let the woman employees have a chance to shine now”.

For the next 3 years, he came to work, with no assignments, and just read or searched the internet for 8 hours a day. His boss told the other employees not to bother him.

He was getting bored and restless with no work and had a couple of discussions about it with his boss.

He and his husband had purchased a retirement home in Fort Lauderdale and they had been spending vacation time fixing it up for when they retire. He was not ready to retire and was still working after 65.

One time when he was in Fort Lauderdale to work on the house, his company-owned cell phone suddenly quit working, He called his boss to see what was up. She told him that they were terminating him because he was not doing anything.

They deposited his final check and a severance check directly to his bank account, They terminated his computer access (understandable, but they would not even let him have access to his personal research notes).

They hurled all his personal items from work into a box and broke some of them. It was delivered to his apartment knowing he was out of town. It was placed by his apartment door. Fortunately, a neighbor found it and saved it for when he returned. Lastly, they demanded that he send his 10-year-old cell phone back by mail right now (that is just crazy, Do you know how much a 10-year-old phone is worth?)

The worst thing they did to him was to cash out his multi-million-dollar company retirement account and stocks and deposit it into his checking account so that he was suddenly responsible for federal and California income tax in one lump sum. He was devastated! And they refused to talk with him anymore.

He is a pleasant, affable person who always wanted to help out his coworkers. We have known each other for 45 years and this was the first time I saw him cry.

He decided to bail out of working anymore.

It was a tremendous loss to the microbiology community and the lab tests that he could have brought to market to save countless people’s lives.

You Just Changed Timelines – Kyle Cease

He’s talking about “time lines”. But what he actually means is “templates”.

Triple Pepper Steak

This dish was made for meat lovers! Beef is sliced and seared in a wok, then tossed with a robust brown sauce filled with colorful bell peppers.

2023 10 12 12 35
2023 10 12 12 35

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

Marinade and Beef

  • 2 tablespoons oyster-flavored sauce
  • 2 teaspoons cornstarch
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 3/4 pound flank steak, thinly sliced across the grain

Sauce

  • 1/3 cup beef broth
  • 2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine
  • 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
  • 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 2 tablespoon cooking oil
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic
  • 1/2 teaspoon minced ginger
  • 1/2 each green, red, and yellow bell peppers, julienned*
  • 2 tablespoons water
  • 1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 2 teaspoons water
  • 1/2 fresh jalapeno chile, sliced

Instructions

Marinade and Beef

  1. \Combine marinade ingredients in a bowl. Add beef and stir to coat. Let stand for 10 minutes.

Sauce

  1. Combine ingredients in a bowl.
  2. Place a wok over high heat until hot. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons oil, swirling to coat sides. Add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 10 seconds.
  3. Add beef and stir-fry until no longer pink, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes.
  4. Remove meat from pan.
  5. Add remaining 1/2 tablespoon oil to wok, swirling to coat sides.
  6. Add bell peppers and stir-fry for 1 minute. Add water and stir-fry until peppers are tender-crisp, 2 to 3 minutes. Return meat to wok and add sauce; bring to a boil. Add cornstarch solution and cook, stirring, until sauce boils and thickens.
  7. To serve, garnish with chile slices.

Notes

* Pepper Prep: Cut off the top and bottom of the pepper. Next, make a single cut along the side, to open the pepper. Pull out and discard the central core of membranes and seeds. Now lay the pepper, skin side down, on a cutting board, spreading it out flat. Holding a sharp knife or cleaver flat against the pepper, trim away any remaining membrane. You now have a long flat rectangle that’s easy to slice crosswise.

A Slaughtered Cat Turned into a Beauty in the Hands of a Kind Girl

Suddenly, she noticed a small gray face peeking out from the dense bamboo.

Pago Pago Shirts

When I lived in Pago Pago I bought a local Tee Shirt.

23d14767ff27cb0329a019ed70359fe7
23d14767ff27cb0329a019ed70359fe7

I thought the polynesian pattern was interesting. So I bought it and wore it to work.

Imagine my surprise when every local polynesian uniformly told me that the image was evil and hateful. Whoa! I was not expecting that.

2023 11 17 06 24
2023 11 17 06 24

I was the outsider wearing a “Fuck You” tee shirt. Who’d know?

I was totally surprised.

I wore it once.

Threw it away.

Maybe like this clueless gent…

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2023 10 10 19 20

Life is silly some times, eh?

Today…

What was a red flag that made you stop talking to a person immediately?

I travel full-time via my FJ Cruiser and my RV. A year or two ago, I met a guy who turned out to be a federal agent. No, I was not being investigated, at least not for business/national security reasons.

Before finalizing our first date, he casually mentioned that he had run the front plate on my FJ Cruiser, which absolutely horrified me. This isn’t some random guy using Google. This is a federal agent!

It was also the way he said it. As if it was the most normal thing in the world to invade someone’s (especially a woman traveling solo!) privacy in that way.

After he told me he ran my plates, I just stopped responding. I mean, next thing I know, he could be checking my IP address or something and figuring out where I was camping alone that night.

It was creepy.

So a week goes by and he blasts me for ghosting him. I respond, “Are you seriously asking me why? Dude, you RAN MY PLATES!”

Instead of apologizing or acknowledging that that was kinda creepy, he proceeded to tell me that I was “asking for it” by sharing a picture of my rig. He told me the fact that I had a custom plate intrigued him, so it was 100% my fault for dangling the carrot (a custom plate) in front of his face.

I blocked him after that. As far as I know, I’m not currently being stalked by any federal agents. But who really knows? The feds are pretty crafty.

Swiss Bliss

old fashioned swiss steak 3056883 Final 5ba96bcc46e0fb002534cbd6
old fashioned swiss steak 3056883 Final 5ba96bcc46e0fb002534cbd6

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 (2 pound) chuck roast, cut 1 inch thick
  • 1 envelope onion soup mix
  • 1 (4 ounce) can mushrooms, drained
  • 1/2 medium green bell pepper, sliced
  • 1 (20 ounce) can tomatoes, drained and chopped, reserving juice
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1 tablespoon A-1 steak sauce
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • 1 tablespoon parsley flakes

Instructions

  1. Coat center of large sheet of heavy foil with butter and place into a 13 x 9 inch dish.
  2. Place meat across foil, overlapping each piece slightly.
  3. Sprinkle with soup mix, mushrooms, green pepper slices and tomatoes.
  4. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.
  5. Mix tomato juice, steak sauce and cornstarch.
  6. Add enough water to make 2 cups liquid.
  7. Pour over meat mixture and sprinkle with parsley flakes.
  8. Cover with foil and bake at 375 degrees F for 2 hours.

World in chaos w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

Always a great discussion!

What is the most outrageous thing you’ve heard said to or seen written to a judge?

I had a black client who had been arrested in his house and white cops slammed his head into a dresser drawer just for fun, as witnessed by several officers in the house. As the dresser was pushed against a casement window on the front of the house, slamming his head into the dresser “blew” the window into the front yard with a shotgun-like explosion, witnessed by all the neighbors watching the police action from across the street. The black jailer saw the bruise on the client’s forehead when taking the mugshot.

On the motion to dismiss for unreasonable police violence, all the cops lied and denied slamming the client’s head against the dresser. The judge and prosecutor acted as if the cops were not lying and the window blew itself into the yard.

It was late afternoon and the only civilians in the courtroom was a fifth-grade civics class of 20 kids aged 10–11 years and their teacher. The judge had a reputation as a racist and a hard-ass.

I turned during argument on the (hopeless) motion to the kids and asked the courtroom rhetorically: “Why in the world would police officers take the witness stand, swear on the Bible to tell the truth, and then lie?” Then I said, “Well, it makes winning their case a lot easier, and no one in authority stops them, and the officers know this.”

So I was accusing the judge of “letting” the officers lie to win the motion. That is, the judge OFTEN knows officers are lying and so does the prosecutor, but they don’t stop it. The officers know this, so they lie. Not all and not always, but in cases like this, they all lied together.

The judge got really pissed and started haranguing me, so I stoked his anger higher. The prosecutor could see how bad all this was starting to look to the appellate judges in any appeal and hung his head in defeat. My client walked out of the courtroom with a very sweet deal from the prosecutor to cut his losses.

TikTok on the cost of living | RANT ON INFLATION | EVERYONE IS BROKE AND TIRED

Hi guys, just to clarify I do not own any of these videos I just thought it would be interesting to see how people are dealing with the cost of living, sending prayers and well wishes to you.

What common food, was prepared in a way that knocked your socks off? How was it prepared? What made it one of the best things you ever ate?

The Chicago dog:

When I was a kid, hot dogs were lame flavorless picnic fodder that got a squirt of mustard and ketchup and onions if you were daring, nothing more.

One summer a diner opened near me that specialized in char broiled burgers and Chicago dogs. I’d never heard of a Chicago dog before, so naturally I had to try one. Man, what a life changing experience.

It was a snappy Sabrett dog topped with mustard, sweet neon green pickle relish, diced onions, spicy sport peppers, tomato slices and a wedge of dill pickle. Every bite was overflowing with crunchy, spicy, sweet, sour, salty and savory goodness. In my 15 years of life it was literally one of the best things I had ever eaten. I still love them today.

More than just a poem, the Chicago dog contains a lesson: ketchup doesn’t belong on a hot dog.

It was brought to my attention that a true Chicago dog is made from Vienna Beef brand hot dogs and always includes celery salt. I’m down with both of those, so that’s what a true Chicago dog should be made with.

If the United States freezes China’s assets, how do you think China will react?

Tit for tat

There are many American assets in China, estimated to be worth 2.2 trillion.

The US companies that own these assets are not going to be happy with the US government if China were to freeze these assets.

Do you think that the US companies owners and employees will vote for Biden next year if China freezes their assets in response to the US freezing Chinese assets?

The old trick is repeated! Biden attempts to arrest Huawei executives with criminal charges!

Jesus! These idiots cannot stop!

Lavrov claimed at the UN General Assembly that Russia was misled by NATO at the end of the Cold War when it gave guarantees that it would not expand eastward. What was the situation back then that would have caused NATO to make such guarantees?

Thought & Ideology

The US foreign policy from 1948 to 1991 was centred around INTERNATIONAL LAW

Diplomats, Army, Businessmen, Politicians worked as per INTERNATIONAL LAW and relied on their entire foreign policy from a derived paper from 1955 called ‘Peace during the Cold War’, penned right after the Korean War

It taught a formula for maintaining peace and coexistence of different nations with different ideologies

The core objectives of this ideology was :-

  • Strive for Peace always
  • No War Or conflict with Nuclear Nations
  • Preserving Human Spirits & Freedom
  • Ensuring Capitalism and Free Trade flow between allies
  • Economic Cooperation
  • Preserve and not endanger the Security of the United States and it’s allies

Diplomats like McNamara, Kissinger, Baker etc were steeped in this doctrine and founded this doctrine

Kennedy, Nixon, Bush Sr and Reagan followed this core ideology

It was a healthy doctrine

Barring a 7 year aberration with the Vietnam War (1968–1975).


Thus James Baker easily promised not to expand eastwards

He wanted a peaceful handshake with the Russians


Post 1991, a new paper was published which reflected a NEW IDEOLOGY infecting the Americans

A POST COLD WAR ORDER

That was it’s early name

INTERNATIONAL LAW quickly changed into what we know today as the INTERNATIONAL RULES BASED ORDER

The core of objectives of this ideology were :-

  • The US has to lead the world into a permanent peace after the Cold War
  • The US must stop the rise of any nation that could lead the world into another cold war
  • The US must bring peace to Europe, the Middle East and Asia even at the cost of strategies that could heavily curtail freedom of thought and independence in those nations
  • The US must always maintain a lead in arms and troops and military power for the betterment of the whole world
  • Russia for its own people’s sake needed to be broken down further and controlled by the Rules based order to prevent it slipping back into anarchy and chaos
  • The Middle East and Europe had to be controlled by the USA for their own security and security of energy in the world

This slowly became the leading ideology in USA with all diplomats born in 1966 or later (who are 57 years old or younger today) being steeped in this ideology and thought

This was also called

WDC as coined by Madeleine Albright – WEAKEN, DEMOCRATIZE, CONTROL

Many Politicians, then in their 40s and early 50s endorsed this philosophy openly including Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Al Gore etc

The US Ideology back then never considered Africa or China as serious

This was the birth of the NEOCON ideology

Bush Sr, Rice, Albright, Kagan, Nuland, Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Ned Price, John Kirby, John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden have all been steeped with this Neocon Ideology or International Rules Based Order Ideology

A Core part of this ideology is to bring peace to Europe by controlling Europe & to break down and weaken Russia

To do this NATO had to keep expanding

A Dramatic turnaround from the Old Ideology of INTERNATIONAL LAW


Today this is the leading ideology but since this ideology doesn’t mention China or Africa or India or how to handle a tougher Putin, the Americans are clueless on how to continue

Unless a new ideology for peaceful coexistence again develops , endorsed by 40–45 year old politicians and diplomats born on or after 1998 or Political Science Students born on or after 2006

The US will slowly sink due to this Neocon policy

Note most of the political ideologues of these thoughts are 65–70 years old at the very least


The Ideology changed, thus NATO kept expanding

That’s the Ideology that drives the US today

Others who are steeped in this Ideology include :- Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, Kishida and our favorite JUSTIN TRUDEAU

As a dying person, what is your advice to the living?

I can give you a first hand answer here.

In 2009 I was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a grade 4 brain cancer, after surgery the oncologist came back with the sad news that the statistics look quite ugly, he gave me treatments for 9 months, and 6 months to one year to live.

I was engaged preparing to marry in few months. We broke up, I didn’t see why I would leave a widow behind and break her heart.

I had no desire to pursue anything further in life…

It was a time of complete shutdown.

I wanted to quit my job, however my managers managed to convince me to stay with a relaxed schedule…

They started to teach me statistics again.

An average of 1 year, means some people die in 3 years, while others die in 6 months, and that I should have the positivity to assume I’m on the long term survival side.

By continuing to go to work, I kept myself busy, not thinking too much about my cancer.. I travelled , did some of the stuff I always wanted to do, visited places I always wanted to go.

I started to revisit my friends, hang out with those I really liked, got rid of those who made me feel sad, or felt pity. There are those who just don’t know what to tell you, then it gets awkward…

It is not something you want to talk about with everyone. You want to feel good, and not be down all the time.

I started to be more of a minimalist.. I had no desire in all the nice stuff I had always dreamt of, as My life seemed to come to a stop

However over time.. I started to realize that I’m happier .. I had special concerns for my parents, I started spending more time with my parents. With my family They are the joy of my life.. Too sad I never realized that earlier

8 years later I’m still around, although the cancer hit back several times, and my left side is now paralyzed, I’m still active going to work, participating in charities, trying to keep myself busy and active.

I was 32 when I was diagnosed, now hitting the 40’s I feel more mature, I’m guessing age is an important factor in how we take such news.

After all life goes on, and it is how you take the news that makes all the difference..

Keep busy, don’t let your mind wander too much.. No one knows when you are going to die..

There’s a shock at the beginning, try to pass it, embrace the news and you will feel the tranquility after a while..

My key messages would be:

  • no one knows when you are going to die, all doctors have are statistics.
  • Happiness is in the small and little things.. Time with family, reading a good book, listening to nice music, enjoying a movie.. Spending time on the beach, watching a sunset, nature, forest , a bird…
  • Through charity work I started to appreciate what I have, there are sooo many underprivileged people who would dream of what we take as granted, running water, electricity, food,medicine, family.
  • Each night I count at least 10 things I’m grateful for in my life.
  • I also started to keep a journal of the things that make me really happy and doing more of that.

Lavrov: “If the West want war, they can have it. If you insist, let’s decide it on the battlefield.”

God bless Russia and Mr Putin and mr lavrov… The Russians have the balls to tell the truth.. unlike the English and the yanks.

What exactly is a midlife crisis? And how common are they?

Originally Answered: What exactly is a midlife crisis? And how common are they ?

I can only speak from my experience, but here’s a personal account of my own midlife crisis. I was about 34 and I had a strong and relentless urge to pursue an unrealized goal that had been bothering me for quite a while, in fact, over 10 years.

Long ago, I had wanted to pursue nursing school, and due to circumstances such as an abusive ex-husband who prevented me from studies, I was not able to do so. When I finally escaped that decade-long relationship, it took a while for me to get back on my feet as I had to start from scratch to build my finances, portfolio, and confidence up. Time passes, I remarry and have a child and although things are great with my career and family, the thought of nursing kept nagging me at the back of my mind. I got increasingly upset at myself that I had let so many years pass and wondered when would be the time for me to do what I originally wanted to do.

So in my mid-thirties I made the decision to apply to nursing school, quickly took all the prerequisites and I got in a few months later, even though it was extremely competitive. I had to scale back on my other jobs and my schedule became MUCH more complicated. My social life definitely dwindled to nothing! Most people would ask, why are you going back to school? Don’t you like being a photographer and music teacher? Yes, yes I completely love my jobs. But I also want to be a nurse, and I will forever think “what if” if I do not pursue this.

Nursing school is demanding, and there is so much material to know that is compressed in such a short time frame. A typical day would be: wake up at 530am for hospital shift from 7am–3pm, study/edit until family arrives home, feed/play/bathe toddler and put toddler to bed, study/edit until midnight. Rinse and repeat. There were times I felt overwhelmed and perhaps I bit off more than I could chew. The amount of textbooks and notes I have from my studies, stacked on top of each other towers over me! However, I feel the most alive when I am caring for patients, and when they thank me heartily for the care I’ve given to them, my heart swells and that is the best feeling in the world. Therefore, my midlife crisis was a catalyst for me to take a leap and reach for my goal of becoming a nurse.

What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?

I can tell the experience of a friend. who married a woman who was multi-millionaire since birth. Saying that they were rich is an understatement. They only flew first or business class, he got a new Porsche or Mercedes every single year and they always lived in the best areas in Manhattan,

I remember when he and his wife moved to New York they hired an interior designer from Milan to do the decoration. They spent around a million dollars only with the renovation and furniture for the apartment.

They had it all, and not even in my dreams I would imagine that one day they would lose it all.

However, like many other stories, they didn’t lose it overnight, but little by little.

I never imagined they would lose all their money because apart of being filthy rich, they were really lucky.

My friend’s wife grew up being a millionaire. Annual trips to Aspen with her family, then summer in Europe and everything we imagine rich people do. I was lucky to enjoy some of these perks when I was invited to one of their vacation homes.

They had a lot of money but they didn’t work. After all, they never needed to do it. She received a monthly allowance from her family that I believe was around 700K to 1M per year so they would probably not bother to work 9 to 6 to make $100K more.

They lived this life for around 10 years. Then, they had some disagreement with their family and they stopped receiving the allowance. They lived by their savings for around 3 years. During those years they lived a very good life, but not so lavish as before. After 3 years, when they were about to start selling everything so they could have some money, her uncle died. He didn’t have any kids so she received a good sum of money that was sufficient for around 3 more years.

When their bank accounts were about to run dry again her mother passed away and she inherited, along with her brothers, around 4M each.

For most people, it would be sufficient for a lifetime, but they made very bad investments along with some poor decisions and I don’t know how, but they ended up losing everything in around 3 more years.

After losing all their money they started living with the money of a trust her parents left to her, Something around 5K per month. But they are on their 50s, they never worked and have no professional skills and they have to pay rent (as they don’t have a home), pay all their bills and above all, health insurance with that amount.

I saw them around 6 months ago and they were miserable. My friend developed a neurological disease due to the stress he endured in the last years. His wife was making all decisions as he wasn’t able to do it anymore. Unfortunately, he is so sick that he couldn’t work even if he wanted to.

I was really sad it happened to them because they were really nice people, It’s easy to judge them for never bothered to have a job or be wiser with their money, however, she was born in a different universe for most of us. What we see as a lavish lifestyle she sees as a regular day since birth.

I asked them if they needed anything and obviously what they need is their old lifestyle back. They moved to a modest apartment in a different state.

She told me that the biggest issue is that they don’t know how to live like that. She can’t imagine what’s like to do their own grocery shopping, and worst than that, go to Walmart with a shopping list. She said that if she spent a little more on things she like she might not have money for the supermarket next week.

I would not dare to say that this experience was humbling to them because they were always nice people, the difference is that they were nice people with lots of money. The only positive thing I believe this experience brought to them is that they are no longer superficial. They used to see everything like poverty, sorrow, and problems from a different perspective, and I used to see them through a mask that looked like they were using all the time

Now, for the first time, I was able to see who they really are. What are their emotions, their fears, their desires, and their regrets… For the first time in their lives they desire things, they no longer pull their credit card and immediately satisfy their desires and in that sense, they look like real people for me.

Every time I visited them over the years I always invited them for lunch, breakfast or coffee and even though I’m not wealthy I always offered to pay, and 6 months ago, when I saw them for the last time, I invited them to have a coffee at Starbucks and that was the first time in more than 15 years that they said thank you after I offered to pay for our breakfast.

It felt different. They don’t need to thank me for anything because during their life, just by inviting me to stay with them, they offered me much more than anything I’ve ever offered to them, but for the first time in their lives, they are learning to value every small good thing that life gives to them.

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UPDATE
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Thank you all for the upvotes and feedbacks to this story. In fact, I had two stories about the theme but Quora doesn’t allow to publish two answers for the same question, so, for those who are interested I’ll post the second story here.

In 2007 I was hired by a medium size tech company. The company had around 150 employees and they were growing fast. When I was hired they told me they would be moving to better offices in two months and they really did it. The new office was really impressive. Huge, very modern to the point it made the cover of a magazine.

My boss and her husband were the owners of the company. They were simply amazing. She was sweet, very polite and it was a pleasure to work for them. They were also very rich. In fact, she was so down to earth that it took me two months to realize that she was one of the owners of the company. It happened one day that we had a meeting with a client and she told me if I was OK to be squeezed on the back seat of her car, as another person was coming with us. I Imagined that she had one of those very small cars, but she showed up on a brand new convertible Porsche .

Little by little, we became acquainted. They invited me to have dinner one night and I was impressed by how rich they really were, They lived on a mansion, the land was so big that they had a tennis court, swimming pool and a stable with 5 horses on their land. He also was a motor enthusiast and had 9 cars. They owned a farm and a beach house in another city, even though we lived in one of the most beautiful beach cities in the world.

They made money fast because I was hired in 2007 and the company was founded in 2002 and it looked like they had a good lifestyle for some years.

They were amazing people, very humble, very calm and you would never say they had so much money just by talking to them.

I left the company by the end of 2007 because I received an offer to work in another place. I talked to them before accepting the offer, I explained my reasons and they were really supportive and told me that if I changed my mind the doors would be open.

By the end of 2008, a former colleague contacted me asking for a reference as he was leaving the company. I asked why he was leaving the company and the told me that the company had gone into receivership. Basically, they were impacted by the GFC.

They were so rich that I imagined that although the company had bankrupted they probably had a lot of savings.

I never heard from them again until 2017.

I had a health issue and I needed to see a specialist. When I got to the doctor, I was talking to the receptionist when I saw a sign with her name over her desk. (Let’s say Jennifer Parker – I’ll omit her real name). So I said to her. Hey Jennifer, what a coincidence, I had a boss with exactly the same name.

Then she told me that she was not Jennifer, that Jennifer was the other receptionist, that she worked Monday and Tuesday and Jenniffer Wednesday to Friday. I saw the doctor and two weeks later I came back for my return and when I arrived who I see working as a receptionist there? My former boss.

When she saw me she recognized me and told me that the other receptionist told what happened and when she saw my name she connected the dots.

She told me what happened to the company, basically was a problem with the contracts they made and as they weren’t able to get a new loan from the bank they could no longer keep the company and pay their debts. With that, they lost everything, not only the company but literally everything.

Their kids moved from private to public schools, they had all their cars, properties and assets confiscated and ended moving to a small apartment near the city. Her husband was able to get a new job (at nearly 60 years of age) and she had to go back to work to complement their income.

It was a huge surprise for me because you always expect that these things will happen to bad people, but never to nice people like them. They were honest, decent, hardworking, family oriented, and everybody in the office liked them.

Coincidentally I bumped into them again 3 months later in the mall. What surprised me the most is that they were able to go from a very rich to a very modest lifestyle without changing who they were. We sit together to have lunch in the food court and they were living like that was the life they always had. They were exactly the same people I met 10 years before, they were happy, making jokes with their kids (that were teenagers by then) and even when she told me what happened she didn’t do it with sadness.

I don’t know how they managed everything so well. Going through an experience like that could be very damaging, but it looks like they had a way to cope with everything.

It taught me a lesson that money can’t be trusted, life can be full of unexpected events with many things out of our control.

Spock – McCoy banter and friendship

Starlink lost over 200 satellites in two months

Pay attention to this bit of news. -MM

Starlink, a satellite constellation operated by aerospace company SpaceX, lost 212 satellites in the period spanning July 18th and September 18th, data compiled by satellitemap.space shows.

Data shows the number of burned-up satellites steadily increasing over the past three years, but a significant spike can be observed starting the month of July.

It’s unclear whether these satellites were scheduled to de-orbit or whether the burn-ups were a result of a failure. Cybernews has reached out to SpaceX for comment but has not received a response.

Some experts questioned the accuracy of numbers posted on the tracker website, saying they appeared to be unusually high. According to satellitemap.space, its data is based on public tracking information published on space-track and elsewhere.

Starlink satellites are designed to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere at the end of their life cycle, which is approximately five years.

SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019. Over 5,000 have been sent into Earth’s lower orbit since then. Of those, about 4,500 are believed to be active.

Satellites can also be vulnerable to electromagnetic storms, with strong solar flares recorded this summer as the sun enters a period of heightened activity.

Destructive solar events have affected Starlink before. In February last year, SpaceX said it lost 40 new satellites shortly after launch because of an electromagnetic storm. When accounting for the rocket launch, it potentially cost the company about $100 million in damages.

Steak with Gorgonzola Thyme Crust

img 5811
img 5811

Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 (6 ounce) beef tenderloin or small rib eye steaks, cut 3/4 inch thick
  • 1 large or 2 small cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried
  • 1/2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled Wisconsin Gorgonzola cheese

Instructions

  1. Heat broiler.
  2. Spoon Worcestershire sauce over both sides of steaks; let stand for 5 minutes.
  3. Sprinkle garlic and pepper over steaks. Place steaks on rack of broiler pan.
  4. Broil 3 to 4 inches from heat source for 3 to 4 minutes per side for medium rare steak.
  5. Remove pan from broiler. Sprinkle thyme, then cheese over steaks.
  6. Return to oven and broil for 2 minutes or until cheese is golden brown.

China is Sending Armored Vehicles To Mali Africa ! U.S PANIC

Nations like Mali have been overlooked in international forums, but as China’s prominence rises, Mali has found a key ally. This video explores China’s involvement in Mali’s development and security, delving into the intricate dynamics of China’s relationship with Africa and its potential implications for the global stage.

What was the most expensive thing you ever got for free, because someone made a mistake and didn’t charge you?

Back in 1983, I needed an upscale cocktail dress for a cosmetic industry function. I found a delightful $1200 silk dress marked down 50% to $600. It has a tiny rip by the zipper that I could repair but it was still way over my budget. (I was a very junior marketing person at the time, so not earning great.)

I asked the sales clerk if they do better on the price due to the rip and she agreed to take another 50% off bringing it to $300. She retickets it over the original ticket and the 1st sale ticket. Still more than I could truly afford but I decided to buy it anyway.

I go to the cashier to pay and she asked me if it came off the 50% sale rack. When I said it was, she says it is 50% off and rings $150 into the register, instead of the $300, even though it had multiple sales tickets on it. Lucky me, I’m thinking.

But before I can pay, she notices the small rip and says she will deduct an extra $50 which now brings it to $100. I happily paid and left the store ASAP, just in case. Lol

And I received many compliments for my dress at the event.

If someone knocked on your door, with tears in their eyes, saying they haven’t eaten for days and beg you to give them food, would you?

Walking into a McDonald’s one morning a young couple pretty dirty living rough approached me. The young man probably mid twenties asked if I could buy his girlfriend a egg McMuffin because they only had a handful of change not enough for the sandwich. So I asked them to come to the counter with me and asked them what on the board they would eat. The young man’s eyes went wide. Told me they had not eaten in three days. I said you can have whatever you like. The both asked for the big breakfast and a juice and a milk. I told them maybe they should order the sandwich she wanted as well. they were extremely happy they thanked me. They went and sat outside ate their meals cleaned up and moved on. Maybe they don’t even remember the event in their lives. But I was satisfied that I and spent my money wisely and am still left with a good memory of a McDonald’s breakfast when I was heading to get a seniors coffee.

BEDAZZLED Clip – “Famous Writer” (2000) Brendan Fraser

PLOT: Desperate to gain the affection of a beautiful co-worker, Elliot (Brendan Fraser) strikes a deal with the Devil (Elizabeth Hurley) — a drop dead gorgeous woman with a wicked sense of humor. In exchange for Elliot’s soul, she will grant him 7 wishes. But with each wish, he gets more than he asked for.

A global interruption to the BRI

If you take a moment to look at the globe, you will notice that the United States (and remember they OWN both Ukraine, and Israel) started wars in Ukraine, and in Israel (After all, HAMAS is Western trained).

Why?

Well, for one, war is a business racket. But that is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the BRI.

Both wars effectively block two major routes of the BRI to the West.

  • War in Ukraine = Europe BRI
  • War around Israel = African BRI
2023 10 14 08 13
2023 10 14 08 13

Thus the BRI is now geographically limited to the Asian nations.

Hum…

Today.

What “black technologies” have shocked the world at the Hangzhou Asian Games?

The Asian Games in Hangzhou, which kicked off on Sept. 25, are not only a showcase of athletic prowess, but also a dazzling display of technological wonders. China has spared no effort to impress the world with its cutting-edge innovations in various domains. Here are some of the most remarkable examples of what I call “black technologies” that have made the games a spectacle to behold:

Digital torchbearers: This is the first time that the Asian Games have used holograms to create virtual torchbearers who can carry the flame across different locations and interact with real people and surroundings. The digital torchbearers include some of the most famous and influential figures in sports, entertainment, and history, such as Yao Ming, Jackie Chan, and Confucius.

Electronic identity registration cards: These are smart devices that replace the traditional paper-based accreditation cards for all participants. They can perform multiple functions, such as verifying identity, controlling access, monitoring health, making payments, and providing information. They also support various authentication methods, such as NFC, QR code, and biometrics, making them convenient and secure.

Digital spectator service platform: This is a comprehensive platform that offers a range of features and services for both online and offline audiences. For example, users can watch live streams, replays, highlights, and VR videos of the games; chat with athletes, coaches, and experts; join quizzes, games, and lucky draws; and access information about venues, transportation, tourism, and culture.

Intelligent robots: These are robots that can assist in various scenarios and tasks. For example, there are robots for guest reception, patrolling, firefighting, and distribution; robots for public performances, such as dancing and drumming; robots for sports training, such as playing table tennis and badminton; and robots for media coverage, such as interviewing and reporting.

These “black technologies” reflect China’s leadership in digital transformation and innovation. They also add to the cultural significance and social value of the Hangzhou Asian Games. By blending technology and culture, the Hangzhou Asian Games have created a new paradigm of sports events that is more intelligent, interactive, and inclusive.

Blueberry Dumpling Cobbler

This is good served warm with vanilla ice cream. Strawberries may be substituted for the blueberries.

blueberry dumpilng cobbler
blueberry dumpilng cobbler

Ingredients

  • 4 cups blueberries
  • 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
  • 2/3 cup granulated sugar
  • 2/3 cup milk
  • 2 1/4 cups Bisquick baking mix or Biscuit Baking Mix
  • 3/4 cup Quaker oats, uncooked

Instructions

  1. Bring blueberries, 1 1/3 cups sugar and butter to a boil in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring gently until butter is melted and sugar dissolves. Remove from heat.
  2. Beat cream cheese and 2/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy; add milk and beat until smooth.
  3. By hand stir in Bisquick mix and uncooked oats.
  4. Spread two-thirds of dumpling mixture onto bottom of a lightly greased 9 x 13 inch baking dish.
  5. Spoon blueberry mixture evenly over dumpling mixture.
  6. Dollop remaining dumpling mixture evenly over blueberries.
  7. Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes.

This is a Briefing, I’m not asking for your consent.

I love how in this altered timeline, the relationship between Picard and Riker is completely different. Far more strained and much less casual as well. It’s little touches like that that make the overall picture clearer and more believable. Great writing and great execution by a very talented group of actors.

Hersh Reveals U.S. Motive For Destruction Of Nord Stream Pipelines

Seymour Hersh just published a new piece about the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.

When the pipelines were blown up on September 27 2022 I had asked:

Whodunnit? – Facts Related to The Sabotage Attack On The Nord Stream Pipelines

I had collected the various known facts around the incident and they in sum suggested that it had been the U.S. of A.

Seymour Hersh put the same question to some of his intelligence contacts. He was given the same answer.

He now reports on further facts and final motives to trigger the incident.

A YEAR OF LYING ABOUT NORD STREAM
The Biden administration has acknowledged neither its responsibility for the pipeline bombing nor the purpose of the sabotage
(archived version)

At the core of Hersh’s report is this:

It was no surprise to the agency’s secret planning group when on January 27, 2022, the assured and confident Nuland, then undersecretary of state for political affairs, stridently warned Putin that if he invaded Ukraine, as he clearly was planning to, that “one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The line attracted enormous attention, but the words preceding the threat did not. The official State Department transcript shows that she preceded her threat by saying that with regard to the pipeline: “We continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies.”

The German leader was considered then—and now—by some members of the CIA team to be fully aware of the secret planning underway to destroy the pipelines.

What I did not know then, but was told recently, was that after Biden’s extraordinary public threat to blow up Nord Stream 2, with Scholz standing next to him, the CIA planning group was told by the White House that there would be no immediate attack on the two pipelines, but the group should arrange to plant the necessary bombs and be ready to trigger them “on demand”—after the war began. “It was then that we”—the small planning group that was working in Oslo with the Royal Norwegian Navy and special services on the project—“understood that the attack on the pipelines was not a deterrent because as the war went on we never got the command.”

After Biden’s order to trigger the explosives planted on the pipelines, it took only a short flight with a Norwegian fighter and the dropping of an altered off-the-shelf sonar device at the right spot in the Baltic Sea to get it done. By then the CIA group had long disbanded. By then, too, the official told me: “We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war”—Putin was in the process of annexing the four Ukrainian oblasts he wanted—“but was part of a neocon political agenda to keep Scholz and Germany, with winter coming up and the pipelines shut down, from getting cold feet and opening up” the shuttered Nord Stream 2. “The White House fear was that Putin would get Germany under his thumb and then he was going to get Poland.”

All of this explains why a routine question I posed a month or so after the bombings to someone with many years in the American intelligence community led me to a truth that no one in America or Germany seems to want to pursue. My question was simple: “Who did it?”

The Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine. It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russia gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.

The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will now have to answer some serious questions …

Added:

This is of course related:

Stephen Stapczynski @SStapczynski – 22:47 UTC · Sep 25, 2023

Europe must rely on LNG from the US for decades, said EU’s top energy official 🇪🇺🤝🇺🇸

🚢 “There will be a need for American energy,” said Jørgensen, energy director-general

⚡️ This is one of the strongest signals that the EU needs US LNG well past 2030

ft.com – Top EU energy official says US gas will be needed for decades

Posted by b on September 26, 2023 at 14:26 UTC | Permalink

Get Out of America Now… Something Strange is Happening

Hey fam! Let’s talk about why we believe you should leave America for good. Back in 2020 we left America and have never returned and hope to never go back. As time goes on, the country isn’t getting better from everything that happened with the planned-demic and now hyper-inflation. What do you think? Will you be leaving America in search of greener pastures? It’s up to you to decide!”

Mainstream Media Admit – Ukraine’s Propaganda Is Full Of Lies

As a sign of the turning narrative of the war in Ukraine we find a new New York Times piece about ‘disinformation’ that is not about Russia but about lies from Ukraine.

Andrew E. Kramer, the NYT correspondent in Kiev, opens with an anecdote from the first weeks of the war:

Six weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine sank the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, dealing a serious blow to the enemy navy, and, a Ukrainian official said, killing the ship’s captain.

“We do not mourn,” an adviser to the interior minister at the time, Anton Gerashchenko, said.

The only problem was that the captain — or somebody who resembled him — later appeared in a video of survivors released by the Russian Navy. He had escaped his sinking ship, the Moskva, the video seemed to indicate.

Then comes a paragraph that could fit both countries but the following one it is again related to disinformation from Ukraine:

What is clear is that misdirection, disinformation and propaganda are weapons regularly deployed in Russia’s war in Ukraine to buoy spirits at home, demoralize the enemy or lead opponents into a trap. And it is often hard to know when reports are false or why they may have been disseminated.

Now, Ukraine and Russia are offering dueling narratives over whether a more senior Russian naval officer, the commanding admiral of the Black Sea Fleet, is alive or dead.

Well, in this interview Adm. Viktor Sokolov looks quite alive.

Then comes an astonishing admission:

Few military analysts, […], believe the Ukrainian military’s optimistic daily account of Russian casualties running into the hundreds that is nonetheless reported widely in Ukrainian media.

It is the first time I see a public refutation of Ukraine’s laughable claims about Russian casualties in the mainstream media. It is also an indictment of the Biden administration and the Pentagon who publicly use the Ukrainian numbers.

The piece ends with a wise acknowledgement:

Mr. Gerashchenko said that, in the end, war propaganda is only effective when it accompanies battlefield successes. The missile strike on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet last week, he said, was a “stunning success of Ukrainian intelligence and the air force that fired the cruise missiles on a supposedly well-defended site.”

You cannot win the propaganda war without winning the real war,” he added.

Oh really? Guess who told you so:

Good to see that this obvious truth is finally sinking in.

Yesterday the Minister of Defense in Russia, Sergei Shoigu, gave an update (in Russian) on the war in Ukraine. The speech seemed to include a time frame for the war to end (machine translation):

The United States and its allies continue to arm the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the Kiev regime throws untrained soldiers into senseless assaults, for slaughter.

Such cynical actions by the West and their cronies in Kiev only encourage Ukraine to self-destruct.”

“Under these conditions, we continue to increase the combat power of the Armed Forces, including through the supply of modern weapons and improving the training of troops, taking into account the experience of a special military operation. Consistent implementation of the activities of the Action Plan until 2025 will allow us to achieve our goals.”

Shoigu expects the war to run throughout 2024 and into 2025. But if the current loss rate of the Ukrainian army continues the country will be running out of soldiers and armored vehicles before the end of next year.

Schadenfreude:

Posted by b on September 27, 2023 at 13:50 UTC | Permalink

Ask Prof Wolff: China Vs. a Myth of Stolen Technology

China has pulled it off because it is unique with huge, diligent and hard working population, and a one party state with consistent long term goals but flexible enough to adapt and adopt so as to be pragmatic.

Other Asian and South East Asian countries have similar ethos but their populations and geographical size are much smaller.

More to the point, those countries have multi-party political systems that would ensure continuous changes to whatever the previous government has done, ie no consistency in long term targets but all short term political gains (Western style).

Vietnam is actually a communist country but the US and the West like Vietnam; they rarely publicly criticise or smear Vietnam because it is not seen as a “threat”.

Singapore is a prosperous city state virtually dominated by one political party.

Rarely, if any, have I seen negative opinions of Singapore from the West. Some local and Asian people think that Singapore acts like a dictator.

So you know what I am leading to.

Political system may or may not matter. It is a matter of effective governance.

During an interview, the founder of Huawei questioned that how could the West accuse Huawei of stealing technologies from them that they had not got?

A senior employee said in an interview about 5G that the company had been researching on 6G several years ago.

By the end of 2020 the entire underground transport network in Shanghai was covered by 5G.

In contrast, the Mayor of London has promised to cover the entire London Underground network with 4G by the end of 2024.

That’s how much more advanced Chinese technology is in terms of development and implementation. Without Western interference of all kinds, I bet that African nations with help from China will leapfrog the West.

This may sound far-fetched.

The US will do its utmost, including starting a war and regime change, to next suppress the rise of Africa.

Many areas on the Belt and Road Initiative have since 2013 had bombings, massive political protests and chaotic civil wars etc.

This is the dirty work done by a particular organization to stop the success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

If China and the Chinese had the technology to migrate to live in Mars, I bet the US would try to stop the Chinese travel in mid-space.

My 18-year-old believes that as an adult, he doesn’t have to respect the rules of my home. He refuses to do his only chore, so I grounded him but he’s ignoring it. What do I do here?

Grounding an adult has no effect other than making them more belligerent.

Instead, I changed her living conditions…

  1. Turned off her phone service
  2. Changed the wifi password
  3. Changed the password for all TV services and accounts
  4. Put a lock on the laundry room door, where the breaker box just happened to be located
  5. Flipped the breaker for her room
  6. Finally, I ordered take out for me for a full week and bought no groceries

After a week, she came in throwing a tantrum. I was abusing her! How dare I do this to her.

I calmly told her that family enjoys the perks of living in a family, including my electricity and food…but they also are respectful, do household chores or pay their share. Squatters get no considerations of family. And next week, there will be a lock on my room and no hot water in my guest bathroom.

She was a butthead for another week. She talked to other adults and the cops and CPS (who asked if she was a vulnerable adult who needed guardianship)…then decided being pleasant and respectful and doing about 2 hours of chores a week was worth the perks of being family.

I never raised my voice, never argued with her, simply impressed upon her what I no longer HAD to provide for an adult.

‘Armed to the Teeth’ Frankish Warrior’s Untouched Grave Found

In a discovery that has left historians and archaeologists astonished, a completely untouched grave from the Merovingian period was uncovered in Germany. Hidden among other graves that were plundered over a millennium ago, this singular grave had rested undisturbed for over 1,300 years.

The discovery was made by the archaeologists from the Kaiserpfalz Research Center , who have been digging at this early medieval burial ground since 2015. Christoph Bassler, excavation manager described the discovery:

“We first spotted the edge of a shield boss…It wasn’t immediately clear which grave it belonged to. But, as we dug further, the realization dawned that we had stumbled upon a grave that, for some reason, had been overlooked by ancient grave robbers.”

A 7th Century Frankish Warrior, ‘Armed to the Teeth’

The grave’s occupant, known as the “warrior from grave 447,” was evidently someone of importance in his time. A splendid double-edged sword, or ‘spathe’, lay next to him, measuring nearly 93 cm (3 foot) in its entirety. Its blade, even after so many centuries, remains slightly flexible , pointing to an impeccable state of preservation, noted Bassler.

The sword wasn’t the Frankish warrior’s only companion in the afterlife. A massive broadaxe, another heavy knife, a lance tip, and a shield were found, showcasing an array of almost every weapon from that era—except for a bow.

Interestingly, while adorned with an impressive weaponry collection, this man was not a full-time soldier. In the early Middle Ages , there were no standing armies as we know them today. Free men were expected to gear up and respond to their leader’s call to arms when required.

The Franks in Europe

The Franks, one of the prominent Germanic tribes, played a central role in the reshaping of European geography and politics after the fall of the Roman Empire . Their history in the region was rich and transformative.

Between the 5th and the 8th centuries, with the decline of Roman power, the Franks under King Clovis I unified various Frankish tribes and expanded their territories. In 486 AD, Clovis defeated the last Roman governor in Gaul, marking the end of Roman rule in that region. Clovis and his successors, known as the Merovingians, expanded the Frankish kingdom into what is now Germany, establishing a significant portion of the region as “Austrasia.” Under the Merovingians, the Franks converted to Christianity, and the fusion of Germanic and Roman traditions began.

Secrets Remain intact, For Now

While the grave’s goods have been handed over for restoration, further studies are expected to shed light on the precise dating and intricate details obscured by rust. For instance, silver inlays hidden beneath the rust layers, might offer deeper insights into the artistry of the time. “This incredible discovery adds a significant piece to our understanding of early medieval Ingelheim,” remarked department head Eveline Breyer.

Analyses are also underway to ascertain the cause of the man’s death, who was believed to be in his 30s or 40s when he passed. Whether he succumbed to illness or fell in battle remains to be seen, but given his grave’s martial ambiance, a warrior’s end in combat wouldn’t be unexpected.

How does China feel about the ban of Huawei products in other countries?

Typically China doesn’t use political muscle to counter Anti Chinese sanctions or Anti Chinese hostility

image 103
image 103

China is in a very good position today

It is very strong, it is bustling with emerging technologies, every day sees new developments and it’s people are enjoying the lowest inflation possible and saving the most money in the world with very little personal debt

China is developing at a very rapid pace and surging ahead

It’s Military and Navy are building up at a rate that the US has not hit since 1944

image 104
image 104

Israel placed an order for 1.5 Million units of Body Armor Vests for their Paramilitary with China

Delivery within 30 days

Express order at 2.5 times original tender price

Bangladesh can do it, India can do it

Yet the quality, price and time taken combo is entirely Chinas baby

No Nation on earth can come even 50% close


At this stage, China is too prosperous to get into fights and get into any situation that could jeopardize it’s progress

In fact if you go to China, you will realize that a Company sanctioned by US is a MARK OF HONOR in Beijing

DJI is flush with orders from South America, Central America and the Middle East today

They lost a potential $ 4 Billion of deals in US and Europe and gained almost the entire $ 4 Billion in Saudi, Oman, Qatar and Brazil and Peru

Huawei has China

The Sheer Network in China alone would ensure Huawei covers 5G for 1.4 Billion people

Add the BRI Nations and another 36 Nations and you have a whopping 3.47 Billion People who are using Huawei equipment for their 5G

Plus Chinas smartphone market of 867 Million Units a year is more than US and EU and UK and Japan combined (574 Million Units)

Plus Huawei is an expert at using Western IP developed for Billions using a few tweaks and minting money on the same by spending pennies on the dollar

Best example is 3G and 4G.

The Collective West spent almost $ 15 Billion on the development

Huawei modified these IP and developed their 5G Patents by spending a mere $ 600 Million

Thus while Cisco hasn’t even recovered 15% of it’s investments, Huawei has already quadrupled it’s investments in 5G


image 102
image 102

China thus is in the best position to just sit by and surge ahead while doing very little

Things are so good for them that any counter action could make things worse

Huawei too is building a base among its Global South clients and will ultimately reach the peak without the West or their markets


Don’t under estimate China

They use their soft power for other things

This UNHRC is the best example

The Collective West twisted arms until they broke

Yet China grinned and became a full member for 2 more years

The Collective West twisted arms until they broke to avoid the BRICS expansion or the G20 condemnation of Putin

China crushed both these plans through tough diplomatic manoeuvres


The US is in a very weak place

It’s breaking up and is in deep trouble

Thus all this posturing to divert attention from the problems at home.

Same for UK, Canada and Europe

China has no such diversion needed

They just want to keep doing their job – developing Technology and soft power and surging ahead

FIRST TIME REACTING TO | Merkules ”Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix

He’s been around many years. A true badass rapper. Dudes flow is always crazy.

What’s a point in time when you realized nothing would ever be the same again?

I was 14. No friends. Each day I dragged myself home to where I lived with my schizophrenic Mother, just the two of us.

I would be in trouble for something: I lived in a perpetual state of confusion as I often couldn’t remember what she told me I had done.

She told me I was stupid and needed to go to a special school because I didn’t know what I had done wrong.

In the past she had often slapped me until my nose bled and beat me with the metal pole of a fly swatter, but that stopped the summer before high school.

She told me she didn’t love me repeatedly for months.

According to her I was a horrible daughter.

Her friends from church had stopped coming weekly to yell at me and slap me senseless as well. I knew when she sent me away with my Aunt and Uncle the summer that had passed she had read my diary, where I detailed all the abuse and talked about wanting to die.

She denied reading it, but it stopped the physical abuse so now it was just verbal and believe it or not that hurt just as bad.

I was unloveable and alone.

She didn’t work and depended on government assistance.

She just sat at home chain smoking and playing cards.

During the week I woke myself up, made breakfast, went to school. She complained about the smell of eggs in the morning and of course I was useless.

I had a hard time socializing, and she decided she didn’t like the friends I’d managed to make the previous year, so put me in a very small private Christian high school the church paid for.

As a low income, single parent house I was a freak among higher income two parent families.

So I spent my days an outsider and bullied at school and then came home to be bullied some more.

I got in trouble once because someone told her I walked around with my head down and never smiled!

I remember trying out and making the school play that year. I was so proud.

My Mother decided to use that as leverage for her every whim: if I did anything wrong (sang doing dishes) she threatened to not allow me to be in the play. It got so bad I just quit the play rather than have it continually be held over my head as a threat.

A school councillor regularily made me talk to him.

I refused to give anything up.

He persisted. He asked me if I was abused: as she was no longer hitting me I said no.

I had no words to explain the verbal abuse.

Being stupid and unloveable didn’t seem to qualify.

Then one magical day a girl at school approached me and we became friends.

A few weeks later she asked me if I could spend the weekend at her house.

Her house was beautiful and she lived with her parents and siblings and it was loud, noisy and chaotic.

On the Saturday of this weekend sleep over, my new friend had to take piano lessons so I was to hang out in her room until she got back.

I was surprised when both her parents wanted to speak with me while she was gone.

They informed me that the school had asked them to be my foster parents and presented me with a ‘contract’.

They gave me 30 minutes to decide if I wanted to live with them.

I was 14 years old.

I had no friends.

My Mother was the only family I had ever known.

I knew I was stupid. I knew that I was worthless and unloveable. 30 minutes was a ridiculous amount of time for a decision that would change the course of my life that I was too young to make. I didn’t know these people at all.

But a voice in my head screamed at me to do it, with everything it had.

So I took that leap of faith. I jumped off the cliff away from everything I’d ever known.

My roller coaster ride wasn’t over my any means, but to this day I am so grateful I left.

My life 30 years later is wonderful and I often wonder where I would be if I had stayed growing up in that horrible house.

U.S. Confirms M1A1 Abrams Tanks Arrive in Ukraine

World Hal Turner Hits: 10439

The United States is confirming that the first (official) group of M1A1 Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine to be used against Russia.  The escalation of fighting between Russia and Ukraine continues.

At some point, and we are now very close to it, Russia is going to declare the US a “combatant” in the fighting, and when that takes place, it will be public notice that we — here in the USA — are now subject to Russian military strikes.

Americans will be caught completely blind-sided if and when this takes place; they won’t understand how or why we got attacked by Russia – because our Mass-Media has not done its job to inform the public just how far our government public servants have escalated the fighting.

China just gave US chip materials’ permission, the US ordered to escalate sanctions against China!

Tired of this wicked government of america.

What is the biggest surprise about getting rich?

I made $30M from my previous tech company.

For me, the most surprising thing about being rich is that it’s an incredibly isolating experience. What I mean by that is you can’t really complain about your problems except within your small circle of rich friends. Otherwise, you will sound like a douchebag. Even if you do, non-rich people can’t really empathize with you.

There are a few problems associated with being rich such as general (lack of) motivation for work, family/friends asking for money, worry for how to motivate kids, spouse with different attitudes toward life after getting rich, potential spouse being a gold digger, unexpected jealous reaction from friends/family, pressure to deal with more complex tax, estate planning and investment planning and etc.

The joy of “set for life” doesn’t seem to offset the anxiety from hoarding the huge sum of money. In addition, when you don’t work because you are rich but can’t hang out with your friends who have to work during the week, you feel like an outcast of society.

Overall, being rich is very isolating and that’s the most surprising thing I have experienced.

China’s new missile DF 51, called a small Sarmat, can evade the Aegis defense system at sea

The New DF-51 ballistic missile can carry 10 miniature missiles. When the DF-51 flies to a certain area and launches 10 atomic bombs at the same time, the power is so great that the existing air defense system of the United States cannot bear it at all.

What is the best moment you witnessed in which somebody proved they weren’t “all talk”?

I watched a 90 lb female put a 235 lb guy in the hospital. This was a fight between 2 neighbors in my neighborhood. This guy harassed her for weeks then for some reason he decided to walk up to her front porch and knock on her door. I was sitting on my front porch when it happened. I was thinking this is not going to be good, and had my cell phone within reach.

She open her door and in a clear loud voice, she requested he get off her property. He said, what are you going to do about it. She said, I’ll call the police. He laughed at her and reached for the screen door. Before I could move she kicked him in the head twice, swept his legs out from under him, and he was down and bleeding.

I started to call the police, but again before I could dial the number a patrol car pulled up and the officer put the guy in handcuffs. I just sat there, drank my coffee and waited for him to come over and ask what I saw. I told him and signed the bottom of the form.

As he walked away he said you know the woman? I replied yes, she’s a former Marine. He chuckled and said. I guess the guy didn’t know that, and I laughed.

How I see the US after living in Europe for 5 years

I moved to France 5 years ago. Came home to Maryland to spend Christmas with the family. I got sick, went to the ER, and came out with a bill worth $1,900. The doctor saw me a week later for a follow-up. I needed surgery and it would cost more than $ 45,000. I went back to France after the holidays, saw a doctor, got surgery, 2 months off work and I PAID NOTHING. “

What kind of leader is Xi Jinping?

What kind of leader is Xi Jinping?

He’s somebody who will deal with shit.

I mean it literally.

In 1974, Xi volunteered to go to Liangjiahe, a dirt-poor village in Northwestern China. His dad was getting the rough treatment during the Cultural Revolution, so he probably felt that getting out of Beijing was a safer move. So he volunteered.

China’s GDP per capita in the 70’s was around $100 per year, which is obviously not great. But Liangjiahe was a totally different ball game. It was a famously poor place. I would guess the GDP per capita was maybe $20 a year. No, I did’t miss any zeros. It was really that poor. There was no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no toilet, no heat, no rice or flour. Corn was a luxury, millet and wild grass were the normal diet. and people just dug dirt caves out of mountains to live.

The villagers that Xi lived with – were mostly illiterate and covered in fleas. So Xi looked around, and was like, fleas, oh well, I just have to get used to it. Food? That’s OK, I’ll take a hoe and go farm with the villagers. We can feed ourselves. Electricity? Water? Nah, nothing can be done about that. So what do we have? Poop! OK, so we have poop. We can make something with that, maybe.

So he read about fermenting poop to make methane gas, and tried to build a poop-fermenter in his village, so that people can use it for light and cooking at night. He was only 16 or 17 at that time, so he wasn’t very good and got the pipe stuck, so he had to jump into the cesspool to clear the pipe, and got poop all over himself, but he got it working. The next year he traded his motorbike for a water pump and some other tools for the village, and pretty soon his village was getting more prosperous. He stayed and worked in that village for 7 years, applied to join the CCP 10 times, got rejected 9 times, and finally got admitted on the 10th time. The villagers promptly elected him the Party Secretary of the village.

That was how he started his political career in China.

He’s not unique.

Actually, all of China’s leaders have been through absolute hell to get to where they are.

CCP tradition is that unless you start from the very bottom, you’ll never get to the very top. I mean, you are selecting 7 out of 80 million, once every 10 years, so the CCP traditionally has been absolutely ruthless in terms of discipline and promotion.

Election bribery? Expel 70.

Industrial accident? Send 25 to jail.

Corruption? Punish 100,000 in one year.

Get GDP to grow at 10%+, while keep your nose clean? OK, you get a one step promotion.

A small purge once every 2 years.

A big purge once every 5 years.

You’ve got to beat out 80 million people to get there, and everybody is swimming as hard as you are. The ones who pop out at the end, after 35 years, are all NOT your normal people!

When Beijing announced the plan to eliminate extreme poverty in 2015, most foreign observers were dubious. Can China Wipe Out Poverty By 2020?

Since the announcement, People Daily, the top Chinese newspaper, has been literally reporting on poverty reduction DAILY – success, failure, method, strategy, recidivism, lessons learned, statistics, etc. Everyday! I suspect the guy is actually serious about it.

Why I Am Leaving The United States and Never Coming Back

In this video I will be explaining why i am leaving the united states and never coming back. this discussion consists of reasons like social life in the united states, dating in the united states, cost of living for quality of life and more. I am going to thailand for the first time leaving the country in a couple months. expect upcoming traveling vlogs.

What is one absolute cast-iron classroom practice you use all the time that your day wouldn’t be the same without?

I sit behind the students and use an iPad hooked up to a projector to show them things on a screen in front of them.

It’s a really big screen, too. It’s one of those “backyard movie projection” screens, for which I built a frame and now it’s taking up the better part of one wall in my classroom. I have the projector at the back of the classroom, aiming over the students’ heads. And, since the projector is next to my desk (which is a sit/stand desk, by the way), I can physically plug my iPad into it. I tried doing this all wirelessly a few years ago, but it was more trouble than it was worth.

Usually, I’m showing them pages from their textbooks or workbooks. I snap pictures of the relevant pages for that day, turn them all into a single .pdf, and work my way through them, for the class to see. I use an Apple Pencil to mark them us as I go.

If the students seem bored, I ask for volunteers to come over to the iPad and do a few problems for everyone to see. The students enjoy it when one of their classmates takes on the role of “teacher.” The students who are taking on that role enjoy using the iPad and Apple Pencil.

Every now and then, I have to sub in another teacher’s classroom for a single period. No one else at this school has a set-up like mine. I genuinely don’t understand how teachers can stand being in front of their students while they’re trying to teach them, writing things on a whiteboard. Turning your back on your students while you write on the board is nerve-racking for me.

As an added bonus, when I’m using the iPad as a whiteboard or e-reader, and our textbook mentions something interesting, I can quickly and easily pull up YouTube or Safari, to enlighten the students a little more. Just this morning, our lesson on appositives featured 10 sentences about jazz music, including several about Louis Armstrong and Wynton Marsalis. I was able to pull up videos of both men, so the students could see who we were learning about. I was then able to find out that, not only is Marsalis still alive (the students asked me), but he’s playing in Chicago next spring.

At least once per day, I pull up something online that one of our textbooks mentions, to teach the students a little more about it.

Originally, I sat behind my students so I could see their screens when they were online. Yes, there is monitoring software, but just looking around at their screens in much easier. That was 15 years ago, when I began teaching. I’ve been doing it like this ever since.

The Video I Never Wanted to Make.

This is honestly getting scary hopefully it doesn’t get as bad as we all think but something tells me that we may not get that lucky. Crazy to think I am only 28 years old and I am prepper but i might have to start teaching my family how to do this stuff. Everyone stay safe.

When have you fired someone on the spot?

Yes.

Several years ago I inherited a “team” of people that included a lady I’ll call “Nancy.” She was what we called a houseplant: she’d been there forever and didn’t do much, but firing her would be a mess.

Nancy was a disaster from day 1. She would take two hour lunches. She’d hand in work so poor I could have just done it.

I once asked her to compile a spreadsheet and all she did was dump files into a folder and send it to me. She literally had one job of compiling a single report that she was doing. We even made her a simple guide that anyone could follow. We had her do this because it kept her away from everyone.

She also had beefs with three of my other people, so much that I moved people around the office to avoid her. She once accused a lady of drinking beer at her desk and it turned out to be some generic cola from Winn Dixie. When she wasn’t satisfied by this she reported me and the lady to HR. One fellow on my team was on long term pain management after being wounded by an IED in Afghanistan. He took some serious pain medication but he was a fantastic employee. Again, she called HR on him after telling her to mind her own business. When HR didn’t do anything she called the police and tried to have him arrested for drug possession.

One day we were doing end-of-year reporting and needed the report that Nancy was running. I go to the share drive and it’s empty. I ask her for it and she claims it’s there. I check again and it’s just raw data from our database.

I go over to her desk and ask what was happening. She immediately lies and says I never told her about the report. I point out the file detailing the steps on how to pull the report on her desktop.

One of my other employees, Wondah (pronounced Wanda) walks over and is trying to help. Nancy keeps trying to just push her away or delete files. Wondah tells her she’s costing us time and resources and it hits. Nancy looks at Wondah and yells “Shut up n*gger!”

The office goes quiet. I take two steps back. I put my hand on Wondah’s shoulder and gently pull her back a bit. I call over a neutral guy on another team. I ask him to walk Nancy out of the office and wait.

30 seconds later I’m on a conference call with HR confirming she’s getting fired. Wondah and five other employees confirm what she said.

I walk out in the hallway. Any illusion of civility is gone. Now she’s spitting and swearing at everyone. I tell her she’s fired. I get deluged by a string of racist screeds and threats to send her sons to my house to kill me. Security is there to escort her out. She turns and spits at me.

She tried suing the company for everything under the sun. On the stand she was a total disaster of a witness and I think the jury hated her as much as I did at that point.

She lost and had to pay our legal fees. Last I heard she’d fled the country to avoid paying a bunch of debts.

Silvio.

What is the most interesting fact you know about a film?

This is a somewhat worrying fact.

In the movie “The Wizard of Oz”, aluminum powder was used as makeup for the “Tin Man” costume.

This dust ended up getting into Jack Haley’s eyes and causing him a chronic infection.

But this was not an isolated incident. Buddy Ebsen, the original Tin Man, retired when he realized that makeup was slowly poisoning him.

The Tin Man’s character makeup was changed when Jack Haley replaced Buddy Ebsen.

Haley’s eye infection became so severe that he was forced to undergo surgical treatment and use antibiotics for years.

The production of this film was complete chaos.

Reacting to the Song that Stole America’s Heart

What is the best case of, “You just tried to scam the wrong person,” that you’ve witnessed?

As a gullible 30 y.o. I met a really cute man that seemed to like me. We started dating. His car broke down and he asked to borrow $80. I loaned it to him and he returned it. About 6 weeks later, his Mom had an emergency and he needed $400 and asked to borrow it until the next payday. I loaned it to him. Then I found out he had a live-in girlfriend and child. She came to my work and tried to beat me up for trying to steal her boyfriend. I broke up with him but I tried to get my money back. That wasn’t happening. He kept trying to get back with me, but I found a note that he had written about how much money I had in my checking account. He didn’t realize it had fallen out of wherever he put it. So I decided to beat him at his own game. I asked him to meet me for lunch at a restaurant. I had stashed a dear friend of mine at another table within ear shot and vision of what I was doing. I had handwritten a small “loan agreement with interest” that I told him I needed him to sign for me to rebuild trusting him. The Sucker signed it thinking it wasn’t valid. My friend witnessed it and signed as a witness. I then took him to Small Claims Court, asked for damages and Court costs, garnished his wages, and got my money back over time, including interest.

10 Reasons Why You Should NEVER Move to the United States

The USA has become a TERRIBLE place.

Apricot Cobbler

Apricot Cobbler
Apricot Cobbler

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

Filling

  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 cup water
  • 3 (15 1/4 ounce) cans apricot halves, drained
  • 1 tablespoon butter

Topping

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3 tablespoons cold butter
  • 1/2 cup milk

Instructions

Filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and nutmeg.
  2. Stir in water; bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil and stir for 1 minute; reduce heat.
  3. Add apricots and butter; heat through. Pour into a greased 2 quart baking dish.

Topping

  1. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl; cut in butter until crumbly.
  2. Stir in milk just until moistened. Spoon over hot apricot mixture.
  3. Bake at 400 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes or until golden brown and a wooden pick inserted into the topping comes out clean.

What is a split-second decision you made that changed your life?

When I was 14 years old my Mom suddenly decided she wanted to move to Colorado. Apparently it was a place she had always wanted to see, so next thing I knew we were living in the ultra small town of Limon, Colorado. I was not happy about this at all. My brother, who was 19 at the time, had stayed in South Carolina. All of my friends were still in South Carolina. I was miserable.

I spent my freshman year in Limon, and hated almost everything about it. The one part I didn’t hate was that my freshman class of 30 students included 5 guys and 25 girls. That was fun. On the other hand, I was the fattest kid in school, so even playing football didn’t help me in that arena.

One day, about a week after school let out for summer, I was sitting in my bedroom listening to music when I suddenly really wanted to hang out with my brother. I didn’t even think about it. I grabbed my rucksack that I used for camping, loaded it up with clothes, my radio and some tapes (this was 1990), and I walked out the door. I was going to hitchhike the almost 1500 miles to South Carolina.

It took me 63 hours to get there. To this day I am amazed at how easy it actually was, and how fast I made it there. What’s even more amazing is that when I showed up at my Aunt’s front door (my brother was living with her after we moved) it was my Mom who met me at the door. As soon as she had gotten home from work and I wasn’t there she knew what I had done and where I was going. Since she was able to drive straight through she made the trip far quicker than I did.

My Mom was angry, but she was just as relieved that I was safe, so she agreed that we could stay for one week before we headed back to Limon. That was on a Friday. The following Wednesday was June 6th, 1990. That date might not matter to most people, but it was very important to us, because of this:

Limon marks 20 years since devastating tornado

A tornado ripped through the town, destroying almost half of the town – including the apartment we were living in at the time. If we hadn’t been in South Carolina, I would have been home when it came through, and likely would not be alive right now.

Oddly enough, this would not be the last time something like that would happen to me. In 2010 I made the split-second decision to move back to South Carolina again, leaving behind my apartment in Joplin, Missouri. I had already been planning to move, but my plan had been to go to Florida to be near my parents. At the last minute my Mom told me not to come because the Space Center had just laid off 10,000 NASA employees, and that was a job market I did not want to try to compete in during those hard times. I could have stayed in Joplin, but I had already sold off most of my furniture, so I just decided, “Screw it, I’ll go back to South Carolina.”

A year later, Joplin was hit by an F5 tornado that destroyed almost 25% of the town — including the apartment I had been living in when I was there. Combined with the fact that an entire street I lived on in South Carolina was destroyed by a tornado a couple years after I moved away, and the fact that I left South Carolina months before Hurricane Hugo hit, and again just before Hurricane Andrew hit, and now my friends joke that if I ever move away they are all coming with me.

Jamaican Sista Warns Black Immigrants, The American Dream Is A Farce Because US Is A Plantation

You will work until you are literally DEAD!”

Stacked 1,400-Year-Old Zhou Dynasty Emperor’s Tomb Uncovered in China

Archaeologists in Shaanxi Province, northwest China, have discovered the tomb of Emperor Xiaomin (birth name Yuwen Jue), the founding emperor of the Northern Zhou Dynasty (557-581). Emperor Xiaomin’s tomb, a medium-sized one in the context of the Northern Zhou dynasty, is situated in Beihe Village, Weicheng District, Xianyang, an area known for its concentration of high-quality tombs spanning from the Northern Dynasties (439-581) to the Sui and Tang dynasties (581-907).

Uncovering Zhou Dynasty Emperor Tomb: Medium-Sized but Power Packed

The tomb itself faces south and is a single-chamber soil cave tomb with four patios along the sloping tomb passage, according to a press announcement by Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology on Tuesday. Covering a total length of 56.84 meters (186.5 ft) from north to south, the bottom of the tomb lies 10 meters (32.8 ft) beneath the current surface.

According to the press announcement:

“The archaeological discovery of Yuwen Jue’s tomb from the Northern Zhou Dynasty is of great significance. It is the second Northern Zhou emperor’s tomb that has been excavated after the Xiaoling Mausoleum of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty.”

Though the tomb had previously been looted, archaeologists have managed to recover 146 burial objects, primarily pottery figurines in a single chamber holding funerary offerings, depicting warriors and cavalry units. Furthermore, the presence of an epitaph on the tomb’s eastern side has allowed archaeologists to confirm that the tomb belonged to Emperor Xiaomin (542-557), reports  Heritage Daily .

This discovery holds immense significance for historical research into the emperors of the Northern Dynasty , as highlighted by Zhao Zhanrui, an assistant researcher at the academy.

Northern Zhou: Foundation of a Short-Lived Dynasty

Rather than assuming the title of emperor, Xiaomin, also known as Emperor Ming of Northern Zhou, chose to adopt the Zhou Dynasty’s title of “Heavenly Prince.” However, his reign was marred by internal strife and power struggles. A significant conflict unfolded between Xiaomin and his cousin, Yuwen Hu, who sought to consolidate his own power.

In a dramatic turn of events, Yuwen Hu managed to depose Xiaomin from his position and subsequently had him killed. This political maneuvering further highlighted the instability and internal divisions that plagued the Northern Zhou Dynasty during its relatively brief existence.

The Northern Zhou Dynasty , which reigned from 557 to 581 AD, was a significant but relatively short-lived era in the history of ancient China . Founded by Yuwen Tai, who took the title of Emperor Wen upon his ascent to power, the dynasty was established following a successful rebellion against the ruling Northern Wei Dynasty .

The Northern Zhou’s capital was Chang’an, an influential city located in what is now Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. Chang’an was known for its cultural richness and strategic importance as a center of trade and governance .

One of the most notable aspects of the Northern Zhou Dynasty was its association with Buddhism. Emperor Wen and his successor, Emperor Wu, were fervent Buddhists, and they played a pivotal role in promoting Buddhism as the state religion. They supported the construction of Buddhist temples , sponsored the translation of Buddhist scriptures, and actively contributed to the growth of Buddhism in China. This period marked a significant turning point in Chinese religious and cultural history.

Emperor Wen and Emperor Wu also implemented important political reforms aimed at strengthening the central authority of the emperor. Land redistribution was one such reform, aimed at reducing the power of the aristocracy and redistributing land to the common people. These efforts were indicative of the dynasty’s desire to create a more equitable society.

Despite these reforms, the Northern Zhou Dynasty faced challenges. The empire’s unity weakened over time, leading to regional fragmentation and conflicts among various power centers. Eventually, the Northern Zhou Dynasty succumbed to internal strife, and it was conquered by the Sui Dynasty in 581. This marked the end of the dynasty’s relatively short but culturally impactful existence.

Legacy and Historical Relevance of the Northern Zhou

The legacy of the Northern Zhou Dynasty lives on in several ways. Its patronage of Buddhism had a lasting influence on Chinese religion, culture, and art. The dynasty’s contributions to calligraphy and sculpture, particularly in the context of Buddhist art, marked significant advancements in Chinese culture. Furthermore, some of its political reforms, such as those related to land distribution, influenced subsequent Chinese dynasties, including the powerful Tang Dynasty.

Notably, the Northern Zhou Dynasty was unique in its ethnic background. Its founding emperor, Yuwen Tai, belonged to the Xianbei ethnic group, making the dynasty one of the few in Chinese history to be ruled by a non-Han Chinese ethnic group, a rarity.

FILIPINA WIFE DEFENDING PASSPORT BROS.

One of the best, most intelligent responses to these woke, American women. Thanks Leah. You and Gary have a great family and life. Wish you both the best!

Snow weathered doozy

When I took car of my mother (when she had cancer), I had to put a halt on my career, and just take care of my mother. Sure, I still was in MAJestic, but I operated while taking care of my mother, instead of doing corporate engineering and all that stuff

It was mostly just being there. Oh, sure, I took care of the grounds, repaired things, and built and repaired homes on the property, but for the most part I was a companion to her. And as a result we got to be pretty close.

But “the manor” was in a rural area outside of Kittanning on Highway 422. It was isolated. And while I grew up in the area, I really didn’t know anyone, so for me it was lonely. And over time, I depleted my savings looking over her, and with no other sources of income, I was just scraping by with her charity.

Winter comes, and Christmas arrives.

The grandchildren are lavished with presents, and I fade into the wood work. Ignored. I just sat off by the fire in the back. Watching things.

But you know, I had to give my nieces something, so I scraped up the little money I had, and got a simple hackisack ball. Nothing fancy. But it was all that I could afford.

I gave it to my niece as they were leaving the house.

My brother in law, told my niece, “give me that”, and he went and threw it as far as he could. Did that right in front of me too.

Rude Ass Fuck face.

Yah. It upset me.

My mother just negated it. Said, “well, it’s his right“. She noticed that I just moped around all subsequent week. “Just let it go” she said.

It was ALL the money I had.

Gas money. Date money. Medicine money.

Discard on a whim.

I just wanted to participate. I just wanted to contribute. I just wanted to be treated as family.

After Winter, I went mowing the North Forty, and found the ball. It brought up bad memories to me.

I suppressed them out of deference to my dying mother.

When my mother died, this jackass and my “sister” were a constant pain in the ass and contributed greatly to my discomfort. And as they prospered and continued in their overt bellicosity, I started to deal with massive changes in my life as my Bazi fate forecast was pinging black…

Life moves on.

Let me tell you guys this, I don’t know how, or when, but bad selfish and hurtful actions will construct your pre-birth world-line template. You forge the topography that you will experience though your actions.

His, oh boy yes, will be a doozy…

Today.

Scott Ritter: THIS is Why the US Will LOSE Its War on China

Great discussion with Jack Ritter discussing the MAJOR backtracking that the USA has made regarding a war with China. I strongly recommend that you all watch it.

This is surprisingly good. Take this video to the bank. It is really, really good.

Panda Wars

Uncoupling between China and US extending to pandas? All the pandas in US are returning to China. No replacement for now. US won’t have any pandas for the first time in 50 years Washington says goodbye to pandas amid bitter US-China backdrop

Roquefort Steak

2023 10 06 09 47
2023 10 06 09 47

Ingredients

  • 1 (2 1/2 pound) porterhouse steak, cut 1 1/2 inches thick
  • 6 tablespoons Roquefort
  • 1 tablespoon dry sherry
  • 1/3 cup Claret or Burgundy
  • Kitchen Bouquet and a pastry brush
  • Fresh ground black pepper

Instructions

  1. Blend cheese and sherry to a smooth paste. Make small incisions 2 1/2 inches apart on both sides of the steak, cutting only halfway through.
  2. Pack the cheese paste into the slits; use it all, making more slits if needed.
  3. Paint one side of the steak with kitchen Bouquet (lightly but thoroughly) and broil 3 inches below heat for 4 minutes.
  4. Sprinkle cooked side of the steak with pepper, turn and paint the other side lightly with Kitchen Bouquet. Broil again for 3-4 minutes.
  5. Remove to a warmed platter and sprinkle lightly with more pepper. NO SALT! There’s enough in the cheese.
  6. To the broiler pan juices, add Claret or Burgundy. Stir for 1 to 2 minutes over medium heat to warm through, and pour over the steak.

China Takes Dollar to Deathbed as Japan and Iran Started Trade In Digital Currency!

Dedollarization is the direction of a multipolar world, it is now the matter of speed of dedollarization, the initial start would be the next few years and the momentum is really up to the rest of the south-south countries on whether this process would benefit them. Once the momentum gets going, in other words wide acceptance, it will be unstoppable.

https://youtu.be/ztYzRwTGJbw

Can National Day tourism stimulate the Chinese economy?

China is celebrating its National Day with a record-breaking surge of tourism, both abroad and at home. Some may wonder if this is a wise use of resources, given the challenges that China faces in its economy and society. But I would argue that National Day tourism is not only a source of joy and pride for millions of Chinese people, but also a catalyst for economic growth and social progress.

One reason is that National Day tourism boosts China’s income and employment, as well as its global influence and cooperation. China is the world’s largest outbound tourism market, spending more than $277 billion in 2018. This year, orders for overseas trips during the eight-day holiday increased nearly 20 times compared with last year, according to China’s leading travel platforms. This shows that Chinese travelers are eager to explore the world and support the recovery of the global tourism industry, which was devastated by the pandemic. Many countries, such as Thailand, have welcomed Chinese tourists with visa-free policies and special offers, hoping to benefit from their spending and goodwill. China’s outbound tourism not only helps the airlines, hotels, and travel agencies, but also stimulates the consumption of goods and services in the destination countries, creating jobs and opportunities for local people.

Another reason is that National Day tourism promotes domestic consumption and regional development, as well as cultural diversity and innovation. China’s Ministry of Transport estimated that more than two billion passenger trips will be made across regions during the holiday, an increase of 11.5 percent over 2019. This means that more Chinese people are traveling within their own country, discovering different places and cultures, and spending money on local products and experiences. Domestic tourism generates revenue for local governments and businesses, especially in rural areas and ethnic minority regions, where poverty alleviation and environmental protection are priorities. Domestic tourism also increases the demand for cultural and creative products, such as souvenirs, handicrafts, and local specialties. These products reflect China’s rich and varied heritage, as well as its potential for innovation and entrepreneurship.

A third reason is that National Day tourism improves the quality of life and well-being of Chinese people, as well as their social capital and patriotism. Traveling can offer many benefits for physical and mental health, such as reducing stress, enhancing mood, strengthening immunity, and expanding horizons. Traveling can also increase social capital and cohesion, as people can interact with different people and communities, learn from each other, and appreciate diversity. Furthermore, traveling can also inspire patriotism and civic responsibility, as people can witness the achievements and challenges of China’s development, as well as participate in various activities to celebrate the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival. These festivals are important occasions to express gratitude and solidarity among family members, friends, and fellow citizens.

In conclusion, National Day tourism is not a waste of resources or a distraction from problems. Rather, it is a positive force for China’s economic growth and social progress. National Day tourism can help China achieve a more balanced and resilient economy in the long run, as it can support the global economic recovery, enhance China’s economic cooperation and influence, enrich China’s cultural diversity and identity, foster innovation and entrepreneurship, improve quality of life and well-being, increase social capital and cohesion, inspire patriotism and civic responsibility. Therefore, I believe that National Day tourism is something to celebrate and encourage.

What is the best revenge you got on a superior in your workplace?

This happened to my husband when we were first married. He was working (salary) 60–70 hrs a week. He worked for a company that was a family business, except my husband and the skilled field employees. The familly office staff didn’t do as much as my husband, so he asked a raise, since he was doing a higher level position than he was working. He also asked for an assistant, because he was doing that much work. My husband knew they would probably not honor his requests, so he went prepared. He had gotten a license to form his own company, and and went in with a resignation letter. When he asked for the raise and an assistant, his boss literally laughed in his face. My husband gave his notice and walked out. He had a couple of jobs lined up from other contractors whom he know from his connections other than his job, so he didn’t skip a beat in getting work.

A week went by, and his boss called him begging him to come back. My husband rightfully declined. They had to hire 3 people to fill his position there, and within 2 years, they went out of business. I’m proud that my husband did all of this with class, dignity and integrity!

Fake coordinates, shadow tankers: How Russia is transporting oil to avoid G7 sanctions

Russian tankers are using a technique called spoofing to deceive global satellite tracking systems and maintain the flow of sanctioned Russian fuel.

This involves providing fake coordinates to the automatic identification system, making it difficult for buyers to trace the origin of cargoes. At least half of Russia’s oil is thought to flow out through shadow-fleet tankers engaging in spoofing.

The G7 granted exemptions for handling Russian oil and fuel traded at or below fixed levels — $60 a barrel for crude and $100 for premium refined fuels like gasoline and diesel.

On a sunny day off the southern coast of Greece last week, two aging tankers nestled next to each other while one pumped oil to the other. As far as global satellite tracking systems could tell, it never happened.

The deviation between real and electronic locations — measured in this case at over four miles — wasn’t a glitch, but a deliberate deception that’s part of a sophisticated system to keep sanctioned Russian fuel flowing, often at prices that are higher than western powers would like.

The practice of giving fake coordinates to the automatic identification system, known as AIS, is called spoofing. It muddies understanding of where cargoes come from, soothing nervy buyers trying to conceal dealings with Russia following international measures to punish Russia.

China SLAMS Sanctions Again on US Tech Giants Over Alleged $1 Trillion Debt

China’s government has recently announced sweeping sanctions against several major US tech corporations, citing an outstanding debt purportedly amounting to a staggering one trillion dollars. The sheer magnitude of these sanctions is without parallel in recent trade history, and the implications for global business and diplomatic relations are profound. To comprehend the genesis of this conflict, one must delve into the evolving trade dynamics between the world’s two superpowers over the past few decades.

https://youtu.be/sTGz2wqQ7vs

Riddle me this. China has been doing quite well under Deng-Jiang-Wu-early Xi when China was friendly to foreign countries and being part of the global community. Why did Xi change all of that? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?

Depends on your definition of ‘GLOBAL COMMUNITY’

If it’s the actual global community, then Xi has been more part of the Global community than anyone else in the world

Under Deng, China was top trading partner to 6 Countries

Under Jiang, it was 19

Under Hu it was 78

Under Xi it’s 137

Likewise

Under Deng, China assisted and helped build the infrastructure of Zero countries

Under Jiang it was 5

Under Hu it was 34

Under Xi it’s 96

Likewise

Under Deng, China mediated security treaties with 4 Countries

Under Jiang, it was still 4 Countries

Under Hu it was 9 Countries

Under Xi, it’s 51 Countries

Likewise

Under Deng, China averaged $ 1.3 Billion annually on trade benefits to other countries

Under Hu, this was $ 102.9 Billion

Under Xi, this is $ 436 Billion

Not to mention that under Xi , China has mediated and settled terms with 5 Countries while Hu and Jiang did nothing

So it’s evident that Xi is more part of the Global Community than either Deng or Hu or Jiang were

The Vaccines were the best example

China sent vaccines to 119 Nations with 86 Nations vaccinating their populace majorly with Chinese Vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm

The US?

34 Nations, 12 of them for a Price like Japan and Israel and Singapore

Europe?

26 Nations like Japan, Israel, Korea and Singapore


If you say the word ‘Global Community’ means the G7 and their lapdogs then you are right

The reason is because under Deng until the 1990s, the US followed their own rules to a great extent

They weren’t hypocrites

They asked you to follow the same rules that they followed

Made sense to everyone

Later on this began changing from the INTERNATIONAL LAW to the INTERNATIONAL RULES BASED ORDER

  • US invaded Iraq brazenly
  • US passed a law that their soldiers can’t be tried for Military Atrocities outside US and such trials will lead to Sanctions
  • US would be immune from WTO appeals and rulings

In short, the US and by extension it’s lackeys began to dictate rules to the rest of the world BUT WOULD THEMSELVES NOT FOLLOW SUCH RULES

As China grew more and more, the US became more and more belligerent and nervous

  • Accusations against Huawei of Security threats
  • Accusations of Uyghur Genocide
  • Throttling Chinese companies through blacklists using trumped up charges (No Pun Intended)

So is that your ‘AIN’T BROKE’?

So Xi had two choices

Either be like a servant like Japanese, spread his legs and do what he is told to do

Pay for US technology all his life, Never develop beyond a Global Factory making low end products and then phase out and stagnate once these products leave China for other Nations and end up leaving China as an MBA question for 2040

Or

To challenge the US and it’s belligerence and use Chinas 5000 year diplomacy, 1.4 Billion People and the United States own massive problems like Social Divisions and Political Corruption against the US and spear the development an alternate Multipolar world

Xi is doing the latter

He isn’t a gutless jap is he?

A significant change in policy and let the market set the floor.

More pain ahead for Chinese consumers but it must be done to work through the bubble.

In recent weeks, articles appearing in state media have argued that it may be time to ditch the policies and some cities are starting to loosen them. On Tuesday, the southwestern city of Chengdu removed price restrictions for projects on newly sold land in central areas and scrapped government-guidance prices for existing homes.

A broader retreat from price floors could help developers to clear inventories of unsold properties and raise revenues to pay down their sizable debts

, setting the stage for a potential recovery.

But it could also expose Chinese homeowners to bigger drops in home prices, hurting consumer confidence when growth is weak

—and potentially destabilizing the financial system.

About 96% of urban households in China owned an apartment as of 2019, according to the country’s central bank. And for many, their home is their largest financial asset.

By comparison, U.S. home prices tumbled nearly 20% between 2006 and 2008. Markets including Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco saw drops in excess of 30% at one point during the financial crisis.

Economists say China’s price floor mechanisms are helping to prevent steeper falls because many buyers and sellers don’t want to do deals when they can’t price properties at their true market value. That has left many properties sitting on the shelf.

Private data shows home sales among China’s 100 largest developers plunged by 34% in August from a year earlier, extending a decline since April. Pain from the slowdown has rippled through the economy

, depressing consumer spending and construction activity.

Momentum for a Change

The price-floor rules are a legacy of Xi Jinping’s efforts to control a housing market that ballooned into a massive bubble

in the years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic. Initially, the government required developers to seek approval on listing prices before they could sell new units—a measure meant to keep them from pushing prices too high.

When Chinese real estate entered a major downturn in late 2021, Beijing ordered cities to make sure the property market continued to develop at a “stable and healthy pace.” Local authorities in many cities—mainly smaller ones—responded in part by barring developers from lowering prices too far below the original ones that they registered with the government.

While some cities set the floors at 10% to 15% below the original prices, others left the details vague, banning developers from malicious price-cutting

” without specifying what that meant.

Recently, Beijing has sent signals indicating it is okay with cities easing or abandoning the price floors, in tandem with other steps the central government has taken to support the market, such as lowering interest rates

.

China Real Estate Business Weekly, the flagship newspaper of China’s Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ministry, published an editorial on Aug. 20 urging local policy makers to eliminate price floors.

Developers should be allowed to carry out self-rescue through price reduction promotions in order to raise funds as soon as possible,” the article said. Other articles in state media have made similar cases.

Some industry analysts have pushed back, arguing in other media that it is too dangerous to remove the floors.

Guangzhou, a manufacturing hub in southern China with a population of 15 million, this month allowed developers to start selling apartments freely without seeking approval on sale prices, according to Chinese media reports. It also lowered the city’s price floor late last year.

10 KEY Reasons I Left The United States (and might never return)

I emigrated from The United States as a U.S. Citizen to Spain (Europe) 2.5 years ago and I give you 10 reasons why I did so.. Some move to Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, or Ecuador, to name a few, but many of the reasons are similar as to why we do.

Timestamp & Chapters:

00:00 intro

01:42 Healthcare

03:29 Minimalism

04:17 Acquiring a skill

06:50 Climate

08:12 Travel Experience

09:38 Infrastructure

12:19 Social Life/Dating & Food

16:58 Cost of Living/Spending Cycle

19:30 US Culture and Individualism

21:59 Figuring your life out

Huawei has officially announced that Huawei Mate 60 Pro is using true 5nm chips whose performance is one to two generations ahead of the iPhone 15 whose chips are fake 3nm chips. Why?

Okay

I am a huge China fan and you know that but this is not true by any means

First

The Huawei 60 Mate Pro is using a MODIFIED 5 NM CHIP DERIVED FROM THE 7 NM PROCESS

This is now confirmed by Huawei

They also confirm this is from SMIC

Don’t get me wrong, this is EXCELLENT NEWS and something to be very proud of.

Most Nations would have lain down and surrendered by now.

China has not only fought but innovated and ensured a comparable product that can match the best product of the west using sheer backdoor innovation and technology

However this 9000S Kirin Modified 5 NM Chip has been tested by various experts and the most neutral of them say

  • It beats the Chip in the Iphone 13 Hollow (7247 vs 6414)
  • It squeaks ahead of the Chip in the Iphone 14 (7247 vs 7118)
  • It is quite behind the Chip in the Iphone 15 (7247 vs 8831)
  • It lags behind the Snapdragon 888 mildly (7247 vs 7470)

So the 9000S Kirin Chip of the Mate 60 Pro known in China as CHONGSHEYENG (Meaning Rebirth) is very good but still a generation behind the Iphone 15 Chip


Now they say something else

The 3nm Chip SUCKS

The Chip is poorly performing and is by no means delivering enhanced power and processing capabilities

It is still better than the 9000S Kirin Chongsheyeng


So you can safely say

The Kirin 9000S processor for the Mate 60 Pro has EXCEEDED ALL EXPECTATIONS

The 3 NM Bionic A17 has not delivered or performed upto expectations

However the Chips are a generation or so apart

In fact the experts say the Mate 60 Chip while very innovative, still works as a 7 NM Chip than a 5 NM Chip


Chinese win because they acknowledge facts and work to improve them

Don’t become like Indians and start with all this 1–2 generation superiority

How to Survive the End of a US Superpower

The US is slowly circling the drain, and its painful to watch because it used to be great in many ways. In recent months I’ve visited a few parts of SE Asia, what an eye opening experience. The people, the culture…..the whole vibe about that part of the world is quite different from the West and I have become very drawn to it. More trips are planned as it is now my personal first choice for a retirement location in a few years.

ASML Stock Falls as Analyst Warns of Order Cuts for Chip Equipment

ASML shares dropped on Wednesday after TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the chip-equipment maker may face cuts to orders next year.

ASML makes the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines that are critical for manufacturing advanced semiconductors. Its customers include TSMC, Samsung and Intel.

Kuo is widely followed for his checks on supply chains in Asia and the conclusions he draws from them. “My latest research indicates that ASML may cut EUV equipment shipment forecasts significantly for 2024 by about 20–30%,” he wrote in a post on social media and Medium.

ASML shares were down 1.4% in trading on Wednesday, with a noticeable drop after the report was published.

The company had no comment on Kuo’s analysis, but said it would offer a forecast on sales of EUVs when it reports third-quarter earnings in a few weeks.

Demand for advanced chips and the gear needed to make them may come in below expectations in 2024, the analyst said, citing softening sales for MacBook laptops and iPads. He also predicted that makers of memory chips may not go ahead with planned factory expansions until 2025 at the earliest, hurting ASML’s business.

Kuo is uncertain about an imminent recovery in the chip industry, saying it may take longer than anticipated.

“The current market consensus is that the semiconductor sector will bottom out in 2H23,” Kuo wrote. “However, it needs to monitor closely whether this bottoming timeline would be pushed back to 1H24/2Q24.”

Huawei M60 Pro shocked the world. Why is it?

It’s not just Mate 60 pro that shock the world in terms of self development in OS, chips, EDA, GPU, but showing other products that they are launching on 25/9 that sends shivers to the tech world. What Huawei said they planned to do, in building a totally new, truly fully integrated ecosystem down to networks (5–6G), satellites, servers, homes, cars & any electronic devices is on track and no Western companies are anywhere close!

Ro*Tel Pepper Steak

2023 10 06 09 49
2023 10 06 09 49

Ingredients

  • 1 to 1 1/2 pounds round or sirloin steak (tenderized)
  • 1 small onion
  • 1 green bell pepper, sliced
  • Garlic salt (to taste)
  • Salt (to taste)
  • 1 envelope brown gravy mix
  • 1 can Ro*Tel tomatoes, diced

Instructions

  1. Cube and braise steak. Add onion, sliced bell pepper, garlic salt and regular salt.
  2. Mix gravy mix as directed on package and add to mixture.
  3. Stir in Ro*Tel tomatoes with their juice. Let simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.
  4. Serve over rice.

Have you ever experienced karma in real life?

It was a sunny day. I was going to my class. Suddenly I saw a lot of people gathered at one place. I stopped my bike and saw a cow badly injured with her broken leg. She was trying hard to get up.

I just couldn’t take it!

I called a tempo and took the cow to the hospital.

There,

Doctor: it will take around 5000 rs to treat her(a big deal for a 17 year kid)

Me: I will arrange the money you start her operation.

I rushed to my home broke my piggybank and gave money to the doctor

i just saw how calmly the cow was walking after treatment i smiled and got away

after 6 days!

I was going by the same road and suddenly I lost my balance and fell from my bike

I felt like someone took me in hands and put me on road

I got no injury!

when I opened my eyes I had fallen on the road.

I saw the same cow looking at me with the bandages still on her!

I felt she saved me. I was on the 7th sky feeling the feel of karma!

Sorry for the grammatical mistakes if any!

so I made this tag line of my life!

karma right

future bright 😉

What I think about the USA after a month in Italy

Learn from this video.

Groovy living

2023 10 05 10 19
2023 10 05 10 19

In the middle 1970’s I visited my fathers’ second cousin in Youngstown, Ohio. He had two daughters my age. And we stayed with them. Those girls were tall, blonde and nice. I’ll bet that they became amazing when they filled out and became grown women. I’ll tell you what.

They lived in a nice suburb, and it was decked out in mod 1970’s style. Silver and velvet wall paper, lots and lots of shag carpeting. A nice avocado green kitchen with wood trim, and they even had a downstairs cellar pool table. I was stunned. They were so groovy!

Times change. I know. Today, I want to dedicate some photos to the 1970’s era. Those of you that know… KNOW.

What is the craziest thing you’ve seen in a private school?

A little boy was beating on a little girl at a private school where I was working as a regular substitute teacher. None of the regular teachers were doing anything, so I went over and separated them. I was called into the office and told that touching children at their school was forbidden. I explained the situation, and they said it didn’t matter why, we were not to do it. Their ATTORNEYS had made it clear to them that no adult was to touch a child for any reason in their school building or on their property. Period. I went home and searched news services for anything that might have caused attorneys to insist that little boys be allowed to beat on little girls while teachers looked on. Yeh, there was quite a scandal, I couldn’t believe I’d never heard about it. I went into the office the next day first thing, and explained to the principal why standing by and letting that small child be physically terrorized was just as bad as what the attorneys were trying to prevent. He wouldn’t hear it. I walked out and never went back.

Peppered Beef Puffs

Beef Curry Puffs 16 768x512 1
Beef Curry Puffs 16 768×512 1

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

Steak

  • 2 pounds minced steak
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/2 cup packaged dry breadcrumbs
  • 6 shallots
  • Salt, pepper
  • (2 ounces butter
  • 1 pound packet puff pastry
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1 tablespoon water

Mushroom Sauce

  • 3 ounces butter
  • 8 ounces button mushrooms
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup dry red wine
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 2 beef stock cubes
  • 1/2 teaspoon basil
  • 3 tablespoons tomato paste
  • Salt, pepper

Instructions

Steak

  1. Put meat, eggs, breadcrumbs, finely chopped shallots, salt and pepper into bowl; mix well.
  2. Divide meat into 6 equal portions. Shape into small loaves, pressing in lightly.
  3. Heat butter in frying pan, cook loaves on all sides until golden brown, remove from pan, cool.
  4. Cut pastry into 6 equal portions, roll out each portion to 9 x 5 inches rectangle.
  5. Put cold meatloaf into center of each pastry strip, brush edges of pastry with egg yolk mixture.
  6. Bake in hot oven for 10 minutes or until golden, reduce heat to moderate, cook further 15 minutes.
  7. Serve sauce separately.

Mushroom Sauce

  1. Heat butter in pan.
  2. Add finely sliced mushrooms, sauté until mushrooms are tender.
  3. Add flour, stir until combined; cook for 1 minute.
  4. Remove pan from heat, add wine, water and crumbled stock cubes.
  5. Return pan to heat, stir until sauce boils and thickens; season with salt and pepper.
  6. Add basil and tomato paste, mix well.
  7. Simmer sauce uncovered for 5 minutes.

What is the biggest culture in China?

The culture of the Han people is the biggest culture in China.

Han Chinese constitute approximately 92% of the population of China and 95% of Taiwan; 76% of Singapore, 23% of Malaysia, and about 17% of the global population – making them the world’s largest ethnic group, numbering over 1.3 billion people.

image 8
image 8
  • Malaysian Chinese children wearing Hanfu, to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival in Kuala Lumpur; Sept. 24, 2023

Mandarin is the primary language of the Han people, and hence the official language of China, and with such a vast majority of the population identifying themselves as Han, you can find their influence at nearly every corner of China.

image 45
image 45

The written history of the Han people dates back to 1,000 B.C., which is one of the longest unbroken written histories in the world aside from Jewish people. The ancestral homelands of the Han, where they live in the highest concentration, are along the middle and lower parts of the Yellow River Basin, the Yangtze River basin, and the Pearl River.

With an agricultural and urban culture, it is not until recent years that you would find the Han people in mountainous or desert regions. Despite being such a large group, the Han people still share a common culture of celebrating traditional cuisine, clothing, and customs, which have been passed down from its ancient history.

  • All other ethnic groups – 56 officially recognized – in China outside of the Han’s are considered to be minority groups, and the largest minority in China is the Zhuang people, whose population today is around 18 million. They are mostly located in Southern China, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
image 44
image 44
  • Young girls from the Zhuang ethnic group
image 7
image 7
image 43
image 43
  • Han Chinese commemorating the 2,574th anniversary at the birthplace of Confucius in Qufu, eastern Shandong Province, China.

Chinese people tend to honour tradition, but they also embrace many parts of Western popular culture. Thanks in part to the enduring influence of Confucianism, Chinese customs include a strong sense of family, a deep respect for hierarchy, a reverence for education and an appreciation for harmony over conflict.

Why do so many people suddenly think it’s acceptable to continue to live with their parents into adulthood?

You used to be able to work 40 hours and rent a HOUSE.

When I first started going to college a huge 4 bedroom house that allowed pets was 1250 a month. Now its 1400 for a decent 1 bedroom apartment. A really shitty two bedroom is available for 1400 but no pets.

Just 8 years ago when I first turned 18 and moved out — you paid first and last or first and deposit to move in.

Now you have to pay first, last, full month as deposit, plus extra for the pets. If I had 5000 to move somewhere I’d be buying a house.

Two people working 45 hours plus weekend side gigs dont even make enough to clear the 1600 monthly rent necessary for our barely adequate housing for myself and our daughter. I have a Masters in administration. I didnt pick something shitty, I chose to ignore passions and get a useful degree. Every year that goes by — the decent jobs now only schedule you 31 hours, because at 32 they’re required to pay benefits. Now, if you’ve been there 5 years but you’re sick for a week, they still fire you. Because now companies dont care. They don’t know your name. They have 15 people lined up for your job.

Rent should be 30% of your income. Now? Its 85%. We pay for our food with our side gig money. We need a car for work but we share one. We have never had credit cards, because we could never even fathom spending money we dont have? So our credit, while not horrible, isnt good. We dont have enough credit nor enough savings to even consider buying a house, which are all absolutely overwhelmingly expensive even out an hour out of town. I got up to working 80+ hours a week before finally I couldn’t anymore and it was costing me raising my daughter. We never took vacations, only my daughter and dogs have insurance because it was too expensive for us adults. We cooked our own meals, we used our left overs, I meal planned for a month at a time. We had very few special occasions for treats, and I sought out all free and cheap kids fun stuff. Crafts and socializing. But then rent got higher. And higher. And I couldn’t work any more. My partner already worked an 8-6 5 days a week. I worked two jobs, 31 hours at my degreed office job. Another 45 at any restaurant that needed help.

There is NO reason two people working for above minimum wage 40+ hours a week shouldn’t be capable of buying a home. Renting shouldn’t cost all of our money. We should be allowed to have pets.

Like what the fuck.

It didnt become “suddenly acceptable “ it became UNFORTUNATELY NECESSARY.

Bedazzled Elliot has a TINY problem

Scene from the movie Bedazzled where a huge basketball star discovers he has a small penis.

Have you ever talked a mugger out of robbing you?

Back in the late ’60s, my father, a self-employed plumber, was working in a house in a Brooklyn neighborhood that wasn’t a very good one.

My dad had no problems working in the poorer neighborhoods. He was especially compassionate about larger families in smaller homes with one bathroom.

One day, while working in a house, he found he needed some tools from his car. Some guy came up from behind him and held a knife to his neck.

Gimme the money,” he told dad.

He rummaged through dad’s pockets.

That’s not the money,” dad said calmly, “those are parts for my plumbing clients. My money is in my other pocket.”

As dad went to get his money, the lady of the house came running out.

Please, mister, don’t hurt the plumber! He has to fix our toilet!” she pleaded.

You a plumber?” The mugger asked.

Yes,” my father answered.

My toilet’s been broken in my apartment for weeks,” the mugger added. “The landlord won’t fix it. My kids all gotta use the neighbor’s.”

My dad said quietly, “Let me finish here and I’ll come to your house and see if I can fix yours.”

The mugger removed the knife and stepped back.

You’d do that—for me?”

For you and your family,” my dad said.

Dad wrote down the address and promised he’d be there soon. The mugger walked away.

The lady of the house wanted to call the police. Dad said no, not to worry. He fixed their single toilet, and, sure enough, drove to the mugger’s apartment. Dad saw a bunch of children and no working toilet. Dad fixed the problem.

The mugger shook dad’s hand and started to cry. He hugged dad and apologized over and over for trying to rob him. My dad hugged him back.

He told the mugger, “Son, if you want to really help your family, don’t keep robbing people. If you go to jail, who will help them? Try to get a job. I know it’s hard.”

My dad came home that night and told us this story over dinner. My brother and I thought our dad was losing his mind. I started to cry thinking my father was in danger.

He could have hurt you, Daddy!”

My dad pulled me to his side. “No baby, that man wasn’t looking to hurt people. He just wanted money for his family.”

How can you tell?” I asked.

When he put the knife to my neck, the blade wasn’t sharp. It didn’t leave a cut. He couldn’t have cut butter with it. He was looking for help.”

My father was just like that. He was the sort who would pick up hitch hikers and swear he was going their way—even if it was really out of his way. I saw him stop a few times in the pouring rain to help people—someone changing a tire or needed a jump start for their battery. One man wanted to give dad money for helping, and dad, always with a smile, would say no.

I miss my dad.

Bedazzled – Rich

Fun clip.

The Politico reports that the infrastructure bill sends a message to China who had been outpacing the United States on infrastructure. Will this legislation put the United States on more of a competitive pace with China to may surpass them?

BEIJING: The infrastructure bill touted by the Biden administration is not as wonderful as the Democrat Party claims it to be.

The US$1 trillion bill will lead the US federal government into deeper sovereign debt while creating new infrastructure projects that will take decades to complete if approved.

The government boondoggle will not free up funding immediately for the construction of new highways, bridges and railroad lines, since that requires contractors winning approvals from local, state and federal governments while they must obtain

hundreds of inspectors’ permits and support from local community activists.

Building a bridge in the United States is not a simple process even if Washington provides ample funding for it.

I had witnessed the complexities of government-back infrastructure when I lived in Dallas from 2007 to 2010 and I was assigned to cover the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court public hearing every Tuesday morning for the Dallas Blog.

You would often hear amazing ideas to construct major projects in Dallas County but then they got political. Even extending the highway a few extra miles required much public debates, while the landowners directly impacted sought big payouts from government agencies.

But that was just the beginning. Contractors made bids to compete for the project and if they lost out they hired protestors to attend the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court to give speeches claiming the new project would become an environmental hazard or harm local communities.

If Dallas County Commissioners voted in favor of the highway extension, they required an environmental impact report that took years to complete.

Most construction projects from the moment they are approved to the time contractors start building took seven to nine years.

I recall one time after two decades of waiting for approvals; contractors for a toll road extension in North Dallas were blocked from construction when an elected official at the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court announced he would block it since the leading construction firm failed to meet racial hiring quotas on the management side.

But upon closer review, I learned from County officials that the elected official allegedly was upset the contractor never gave him a donation for his re-election campaign.

I mention this tale to explain why the US will continue to struggle in playing catch up with China in regards to infrastructure. Beijing is way ahead and Washington will not be able to start construction on new projects for another few years at the earliest.

You can review the Politico article with the link HERE.

As reported by Politico:

But a review of proposed spending in Beijing’s latest annual budget and five-year plan indicate that the U.S. faces an enormous challenge merely in keeping up. Here’s a number that is illustrative of the gap:

China poured more cement from 2011-2013 than the U.S. did in the entire 20th century.

Numbers from the National Bureau of Statistics show that China spent about $8 trillion on infrastructure investment in 2020.

The U.S. spent $146 billion in federal money over the same period.

A comparison of 2018 infrastructure spending as a percentage of GDP by 48 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries ranked China first at 5.57 percent compared to 0.52 percent for the U.S.”

In recent years, China has constructed some of the world’s finest infrastructure projects. They had built very long sea bridges, road tunnels and highways reaching to many parts of the country.

The building in China will keep going and the US will fall further and further behind.

Star Trek – Throw The Switch

Biden said that America will go to war if China invades Taiwan. If China does invade, and the US declares war on China, will the US military reintroduce the Draft?

It is impossible for Biden to have made such a statement

Impossible!!!

That’s because the US officially follows the ONE CHINA POLICY

This means China can never invade Taiwan because they are the same country

It’s like India invading Punjab tomorrow


So all US can do is to provide weapons to Taiwan and claim to help them defend themselves citing human rights and aggression

It will be like a Civil War & extension of the 1931–1949 Chinese Civil War


US in fact not fight against China at all

They will give an excuse of Chinese aggression and get ASEAN to turn against Taiwan and get the entire South China Sea nations to join a Military Alliance with the United States by SACRIFICING TAIWAN

That is the game plan of the US termed Operation Majullah coined by Pompeo in 2018

  • To provoke China into an invasion of Taiwan by 2023 (Assuming Trump won the election in 2020, so now 2025–2027)
  • To convince a terrified Philippines & Vietnam into joining US in a Military alliance and allowing NATO to expand to South East Asia
  • Persuading ASEAN to join NATO and finish the encircled shield against China and recommence a trade war with full cooperation of the ASEAN to hopefully break the CPC and it’s hold on China

Of course Trumps defeat has set back Operation Majullah badly because this operation assumed Russia would be close to the US under Trump (Assuming he won 2020)

Yet now Russia is firmly with China so that opens up a long trade route

Plus the world had COVID so US is economically much weaker

Plus the Ukraine war has draines the West of it’s influence and strengthened China and Russia and the BRICS

So it’s a different world now and Operation Majullah would be redundant now

“THIS IS IT! Most people have No idea what is Happening in Maui, Oprah & the Rock

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Oprah Winfrey face backlash for asking fans to donate to Maui fund instead of contributing more themselves The family of a woman who died trying to flee a wildfire on Maui is suing the county, the state and one of Hawaii’s largest landowners, alleging they neglected to maintain their fire-prone property.

https://youtu.be/NFT2EW9B9hw

What shocked you when you opened someone’s safe deposit box at the bank?

In the early 80’s I was Operations Officer (in charge of all non-lending, non-trust functions) of the headquarters branch of a large, state-wide bank. 80 odd branch employees on the first three floors, senior management of the region and holding company on floors 7–11.

This bank had grown and evolved from a family owned institution, and a solid chunk of the shares were still held by family members, and a number of the Directors and senior managers were related. A former President and Chairman had recently died, and his son, a Senior Vice President in charge of Commercial Lending, was his estate’s Personal Representative, but had not yet filed and received Letters of Administration. In addition, the owner keys could not be located, so it would need to be drilled.

Under our state’s laws, a safe deposit box can be opened, an inventory of contents made, and certain time-sensitive items can be removed, such as a will or life insurance policy. As a large office with a disproportionate ratio of older customers, this was something we saw with some frequency. It required the bank’s Safe Deposit Custodian (a non-officer employee), an officer, and a locksmith. Unlike normal box access, the bank representatives had to be present, go to a private room in the Safe Deposit area with the estate representative, make the inventory and insure only authorized items were removed, and then re-secure the box contents pending further legal proceedings.

Not this time. Me, the Custodian, the Senior Vice President son, the Corporate General Counsel, and a stenographer from the holding company cluster around the locksmith, who had the door open in about 30 seconds. We took the rather large size box upstairs to a Corporate conference room and opened it.

It contained this somewhat crusty old gentleman’s most precious and important documents – 40 years or so of birthday cards, Christmas cards, letters and notes to and from his wife, children and grandchildren, school papers and projects, refrigerator drawings, and family pictures. Not a single will, stock certificate, or business paper.

There was not a dry eye in the room.

5 Scary Truths about The Digital Nomad Life

This NEEDS to be said.

Can China destroy the American Navy fleet if they get into Chinese waters?

China can destroy any fleet anywhere in the world. Not only an American one. Not only near and around China, but anywhere.

The idea that China has the ability, technology, capability and wherewithal to destroy a complete fleet of military grade vessels is well known, well established and incorporated in contemporaneous Pentagon planning scenarios.

Just because China CAN, does not mean that it WILL.

After all, the United States can eliminate hunger, and homelessness overnight simply by funneling a fraction of the USA budget dedicated to Ukraine towards the needs of American citizens. But, of course that’s NEVER going to happen.

Questions like these used to raise my ire; get me infuriated by the ignorance of those questioning the obvious, and a general fury at that the troll and ‘bot attacks that invariably follow. But now, given the utter hopelessness of the Untied States on the global stage, I just shrug my shoulders and feel pity.

It’s like this question:

Can the United States drop a nuclear weapon on Beijing?

Well. Yes it can.

But it won’t.

Or this question:

Can the United States assassinate Alexander Putin?

Well, it can.

But it won’t.

Or this question:

Can I force my spouse to eat dog shit?

Well, you can.

But you won’t.

In all the cases above, a hypothetical fantasy is generated. But the scenario will never occur where the test of validity were to be realized.

Why?

Because other factors come into play.

So, let’s go back to the question at hand.

Can China wipe out any American fleet that sails near China?

Well, it is obvious. Of course it can.

Will it do so.

No. Other factors come into play.

I know that there are ‘bots, teenagers, drunken misfits, and trolls that want to argue this point, but China is not stupid. It will maximize the damage through retaliatory measures it deems suitable, given the situation and scenarios that manifested.

My PERSONAL opinion is that if China sinks one fleet, it will sink them all.

The reason is simple; economies of scale.

And that’s not all, folks.

Not by a long shot.

Sorry to say.

So, let’s just keep our personal fantasies, and delusions to ourselves. Just because you own a shotgun, doesn’t mean that you intend to go Postal, perform a “suicide by cop” or have a Columbine mass shooting with it. Seriously. Those are just fantasies. Nothing more.

China is currently working with the United States on a wide range of issues, and as the provocations by the neocon arm of the American government subsides, so with the over all prosperity of the (remaining) American middle class increase.

It’s a win-win for everyone!

Why are so many smart and diligent people successful in school but fail in real life?

Here’s “School-Smart” vs “Street-Smart” in a LEGO analogy:

School is like getting a very complex LEGO set:

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The goal: “We expect you to put this Lego together,. We will show you how to do it! Follow the instructions and you will succeed!”

So, we go from first grade through to sixth grade.

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In each grade, we get a set of instructions to follow:

For example, this is first grade:

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Attention!

If we fail to meet the required standards, we WON’T be able to move forward. If we DO meet the standards, we will be allowed to move to the next level — each level stacks upon the other, growing in complexity.

If we complete elementary, we move on to middle school, and then to high school:

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Once we successfully finish high school, we move on to college. We continue “stacking” up ALL the sets of instructions, meeting the standards.

If we don’t do it EXACTLY as expected, we will fail!

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Finally, the day comes …

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We celebrate …

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CONGRATULATIONS! We all get a “certificate” that proves we are capable of following very complex instructions.

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Then, we face the real world …

The real world is also like Lego, but with NO INSTRUCTIONS!

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We feel confused and overwhelmed. “What should I do?” we ask ourselves.

We urgently need someone to tell us what to do (boss). After all, we were all trained to FOLLOW instructions, indoctrinated, not really educated.

What’s the difference?

Indoctrination teaches us WHAT to think, not HOW to think!


So, to answer your question, why are so many smart and diligent people successful in school but fail in real life?

Being “school-smart” is radically different than being “street-smart.”

Do you want to be “street-smart?”

Consider this: We are now in an age where computers, algorithms and robots, are unbeatable at FOLLOWING instructions. If our value to the world is being good at following instructions, we then do NOT stand a chance at succeeding in today’s new economic environment.

Who will win?

“Street-Smart” in the new economy means we have extraordinary creative skills, meaning that we can innovate and think “outside the box.”

Creativity CANNOT be automated!

Computers, robots and algorithms CANNOT compete with us in creativity. Well, at least not yet …

Schools MUST stop “standardizing” us. We are all different and that’s where success comes from, from our unique abilities and strengths that make us stand out in this competitive world.

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We now live in a very different world. Our educational system was built and perfected to serve the Industrial Age. The Industrial Age was all about competing with efficiencies. Following instructions with excellence increased productivity. Today that work belongs to machines, not to us.

Today the world belongs to CREATORS!

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There are NO instructions ahead of us! The way we solved things yesterday is now outdated. Change is only accelerating.

The sooner we understand this, the better chance we all have at succeeding in this world of exponential change.

THE REAL REASONS WE LEFT THE UNITED STATES (and why we can’t move back)

We left the United States for several reasons, but only one prevents us from ever moving back. Are we upset about it? NO! Our only regret is not leaving SOONER!

Why is America the best place to live?

Absolutely not the best to live in, I would say it’s the worst developed country to live in.

Life for most people is about work, just running a hamster wheel hoping not to slip or you will be climbing out a hole. I remember life being a rat race just staying afloat and never catching a break. I imagine wealthy people don’t experience this but when 80% of the country are living paycheck to paycheck, obviously that’s not a good sign.

Food prices are triple sometimes four times more expensive than what I have paid in Western Europe for the same goods. Yet our minimum wage is significantly lower, so when 1 hours minimum wage barely covers a couple items of groceries, imagine how those families are feeling the sting for housing, water, utilities. Many 1 bedroom apartments cost more than an entire 1 month minimum wage.

You will prioritize work over family, because there is little choice in the matter.

So little choice because a social safety net is not available to help you, I’ve exhausted this option to death on hard times and it just wasn’t there. All I got was a lot of wasted time and disappointment.

Healthcare, higher education, child care is exhorbitant, they will drain your disposable income, along with the high costs of basic things that Americans believe they are getting a great deal for, for example in UK you get higher speed internet for a fraction of the price an American pays, I have cable with lots of channels, WiFi, and landline for £40 a month, my mom has the same with less channels for over $169 a month (that was 2014 prices).

The worst part of living in the US is the limited choices for people at the bottom, social mobility is low. There is this illusion you can make your life anything you want, this is available to the well connected and rich but it’s sold off as something all Americans can achieve through hard work and it’s not obtainable.

Another issue is just existing in the US is a price. If I don’t want to be homeless and totally ostracized by society, I have to pay a price…just the act of existing means I must pay for health care at the very least. If you happen to fall on difficult times, the fines, fees, interest, just pile up and it consumes you. I compare it to someone piling rocks on your chest and sternum to your lungs collapse. The thought of trying to maintain a bare minimum life style while problems are karate chopping you from all angles is exhausting.

In the 2.5 years I lived in the UK, at my very worst I have never felt this level of despair and hopelessness. If I allow myself to slightly remember my past in the US, the whole thought conjures up loads of anxiety, and resentment.

The USA is NOT Letting Citizens Renounce

What you didn’t mention and should have mentioned is that the US is one of only 4 countries in the world who taxes their citizens no matter where they live or where they make their income. So the obvious reason the US is rejecting renunciation of US citizenship is to keep wealthy international businessman from escaping this always/everywhere tax system.

What is the most incredible thing you’ve seen someone work out in their head?

My father and I were just chatting and he offhandedly said he wasn’t an educated man. I said “Not formally but you’ve had a great practical education.” He said “What do you mean?” Dad had left school after the 8th grade but had worked for a company that provided the equipment to move water, pumps and pipelines and such for many years. I asked “If you have a pipe 18” in diameter under a pressure of 15 pounds per square inch, how many gallons of water a minute are you moving?” He looked at me a moment, stared off into space for another moment and then gave me a number. I smiled and said “See? I’d have to dig out my textbooks and calculator to get an answer and you just did that in your head! Serious practical education!” I think he was pleased at my expression of respect.

How will the USA react when BRICS will control 80% of the world’s petrol production with new members?

G7 is in denial. According to them BRICS is a “gang that can’t shoot straight” due to the fact that “all members have their own individual interests”.

They even fail to realize what this sort of criticism says about their “rules based order” where everybody is supposed to jump or run on command, regardless of own interests, and they have a nerve to call it freedom and democracy.

Giant lights flame: and check out Taiwan team’s arrival

Wow! Just WOW!

How do you respond to people who say money is everything?

When my wife was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, I found out the worth of money.

It allowed me to buy time with my wife. She was given an 18 month prognosis by her Gynocological Oncologist. (Don’t be ashamed if you didn’t know that was a medical specialty, I didn’t either in April of 2016 when we met Dr. Steven Andrews. Now, his name goes to any woman who might need it.) She and I resolved to fight her cancer for two reasons:

  1. To have as much quality time as possible.
  2. For whatever her fight could teach her team for the NEXT woman.

We knew there were limits to what insurance would pay. I accepted them, she wasn’t so sanguine. There were a couple of times she begged me not to go on because of what we were spending. I firmly said NO.

In the end, due to the medical miracles Dr. Andrews and his team pulled out of their collective asses on a regular basis, Andrea’s 18 months became over 4 years. I held her hand when she took her last breath, kissed her cooling forehead, and called the home Hospice nurse to pronounce her death officially.

The cost? 85% of our retirement savings. I will be living most of the rest of my life on Social Security. The worth? As the MasterCard commercials say: PRICELESS. She and I made memories together in many different ways, many of them during the time we weren’t supposed to get. Yes, hers are gone, but mine remain, and that is worth everything to me. I knowingly spent the money to keep her beside me as long as she was willing to fight.

And Dr. Andrews may be a step closer to saving another lady later. I know he’ll give many more extra time with their loved ones.

I bought time, and it was worth incalculablely more than the money I spent.

In Malaysia, I noticed all the newly built buildings, public transportation, and park are not properly maintained after a few years. Everything looks run down. Is this a norm here or lack of funds?

I’m sure you are aware, but I don’t live in Malaysia. I’ve only had the privilege of visiting thus far. While in Kuala Lumpur, which I assume qualifies as a large city, I was very taken with the architecture. In my opinion, it was like a mosaic of old and new. Colonial and modern. Malay, Chinese, and Indian. Some bright and colorful like the Chinese temples, others somber and stately like the buildings from colonial days, others bright and shiny like the Merdeka building and the Petronas towers.

I can’t deny that some streets could do with some cleaning and anti-littering campaigns. But I also don’t expect perfection from a developing country and I certainly shouldn’t complain when I am a guest in the country and treated with such kindness from hotel staff and Grab drivers, to dear friends I cherish. Without fail I was made to feel welcome. Who am I to judge?

If you are bothered by messy streets then I have a few suggestions. First, you could organize meetings to mobilize people in the area to have a community beautification day where any able bodies who are willing could pick up trash, sweep the streets, and make minor repairs to building fronts. Secondly, you could print and pass out pamphlets highlighting the importance of a clean community environment for the sake of disease prevention. Third, petition the government for funds to revitalize and gentrify the area and to pay more people for trash collection. In my state the cities employ people for the purpose of landscaping and garbage disposal. I’m not sure how that works in Malaysia though.

If none of that helps then move. Seriously. If you are unhappy and uncomfortable there’s no reason to stay. And the people around you likely don’t appreciate the complaints without action.

Is the EU’s Global Gateway project aimed at competing with China’s Belt and Road Initiative?

Let me tell you the biggest thing that the EU’s Global Gateway project has accomplished in the past nine months.

It organised a party. One party.

It wasn’t even a real party. It was an online party.

Despite being an online party, it cost $400,000.

Next, guess how many people showed up for the party.

Six. Only SIX.

Well, that means the virtual party cost about $66,667 per attendee.

Does this inspire you with confidence about how skilfully the EU will manage its budget around the Global Gateway? Do you even feel sure that the EU will actually build any infrastructure in the real world – as opposed to imaginary party venues in the Metaverse?

At the moment, it is meaningless to speak of the EU Global Gateway competing with China’s BRI. They are just not doing the same sorts of things. China is building mega-sized ports, bridges, highways and railways. The EU is holding online parties for six pax.

Zelensky at the UN, kicking and screaming

The Duran. Very interesting.

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

I didn’t actually witness it, but, saw the aftermath. My youngest daughter was a bit reserved and quiet. She had a lot of friends, though and they nicknamed her “Chipper”.

One day I got a call from the Dean of Girls at her junior high school asking if I could come in. When I got there the first thing I saw was two hall lockers (the tall upright ones) with the doors caved in.

The Dean told me that some of the boys had been getting grabby.

“Chipper” was talking with some friends in the hall when a passing boy grabbed her breast. She never said a word, she grabbed him by the throat and proceeded to try to throw him through a locker twice.

The Dean said, when she got there, the boy was crumpled on the floor with my daughter standing over him daring him to get up.

I said: “I’m proud of her. But, I’m willing to pay for the damages.”

The Dean smiled and told me the boy’s parents were on the way and they were going to pay for the damages.

When I picked my daughter up to ride home. I said: “You made a bit of a mess”. She said: “He had it coming.”

I said: “You’re right. How about we stop for ice cream?”

As a Christian man, back in my Asian church, I never struggled with lust for women because I’m not really attracted to Asian women but at my new church with a lot of different ethnicities, I’m really struggling with lust for women. What should I do?

Become a Muslim and marry four of them and have children with each of them.

China Foreign Related Military tech.

When China had no navy or air force, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps would dare to cross Yalu River in North Korea. After China has an air force, the United States only dares to sit across the 17 degrees north latitude. After China’s naval and air rocket forces are formed, we don’t have any more problems dealing with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is currently developing a hypersonic missile to increase its presence in Japan and South Korea. The question is, aren’t fixedly deployed missile bases vulnerable to missile bombings? When the island and the mainland China fire missiles at each other, which one suffers more? As a result, the Air Force basically has no chance in the Western Pacific. Warships can still run away, but aircraft are really useless. Guam was immediately taken care of by first wave of Dongfeng 26.

local wars require detailed analysis. If it is a protracted all-out war, the United States will be exhausted. No matter how profitable the financial industry is, a real fight still depends on how many tons of steel are produced.The Chinese and American militaries are the only militaries in the world that have completed information transformation and have begun to move towards intelligent and unmanned armies. The problem with the U.S. military is that it wants to integrate the entire U.S. military into a digital command system. As a result, various practical factors and historical problems have made it bloated and complicated. The Chinese military is relatively late due to its military reform, confidentiality system and informatization changes. The outside world has always been blind to the internal situation of the military and has only a partial understanding. Although more and more new equipment and new technologies are being exposed, the People’s Liberation Army itself is becoming more and more mysterious.

Taking the 1998 flood fight and the 1998 earthquake fight as examples, we can intuitively understand the PLA’s combat readiness and mobilization status and shortcomings. With the improvement of the country’s comprehensive strength, the military no longer needs to be on the front line all the time. After all, the COVID-19 epidemic is just a glimpse, and it is more of a big test for politics and society. China is the only industrialized country in the world with all industrial categories, and it continues to invest in upgrading industrial capabilities. The marginal costs brought about by large-scale production are reduced, and a large number of engineering talents continue to promote technological progress and efficiency innovation while solving one problem after another. We can regard the COVID-19 epidemic as a global biological and chemical war waged by USA. China has not only demonstrated unparalleled industrial advantages and political mobilization advantages, but also exposed some problems. As the “lighthouse of the world”, the United States wanted to show off, but its butt was exposed. The war has extended from a battle of blood and fire to a comprehensive contest of technology, political system, population quality, industrial system, culture and public opinion. The boundaries between the military and civilians are gradually blurring. War is no longer the exclusive preserve of military personnel. Everyone is colliding in the whirlpool of the emergency times. We firmly believe that in the end, it is people who determine the victory of a war .

(1) Army confrontation in local wars

Assuming that armies of US and China engage in one on one decisive battle. When we read the report of US patriot performance is really rubbish. On our hand we have these weapon.

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PHL-191, a long-range guided rocket, can be equipped with 370mm guided rockets and 760mm tactical missiles.

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The Huolong 280A tactical missile has a double-cone warhead, commonly known as a water-floating bomb. The existing air defense system cannot effectively intercept it. You think rockets are fired at each other, but they are actually derailed missiles bullying the “patriots”

Strategic Bureau Chief created top ten ranking of weapon each country, US weapon rank first in all category except rocket launcher, no matter how the US try to deceive US, we know truth.

In other words, if it is an army duel alone, it will be on a battlefield of 100-500 kilometers. The U.S. Army can only be bombed unilaterally.

(2) Air Force comparison

In terms of overall combat strength, air power has always been the core of the US offensive. Even as the navy most favored by Congress, the core of offense is still aircraft carrier-based aircraft.After equipping the complete J-20 and J-16 series with WS15, the Chinese Air Force is the only one capable of fighting against the U.S. Air Force. At this stage, the Chinese Air Force is only transforming from homeland defense to peripheral offense. Relying on military bases deployed around the world, the U.S. Air Force can achieve global strikes. The United States dismantled the F22 production line and concentrated on producing the F35. Today, after the J-20 was put into service in batches, it is a stupid move. But there were no problems at the time. The original design intention of the F22 was to hunt the Su-27 on the battlefield in Eastern Europe. However, as an air superiority fighter, the F22 does not have ground bombing capabilities. The mission of the U.S. Air Force is to seize air superiority and then blow up all obstacles in front of it. The Army is responsible for cleaning up the battlefield. Just like the Gulf War. This is will need an in depth analysis after this article, i will write about air battle between J-20 and F-35. I will also write a comprehensive J-20 reception anything related to J-20 after this article.

(3) Navy comparison

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To be honest before 055 destroyed entered service, the chinese navy has no chance of winning a navy combat.

The 055 changed everything, or to be more precise, it was the YJ-21 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile carried by the 055.

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With a range of thousands of kilometers, the 055 destroyer is no longer the escort of the aircraft carrier, but the firepower center of the fleet. Instead, carrier-based aircraft only need to focus on driving away enemy fighters and cruise missiles. The 112-unit vertical launch system of the 055 itself was originally designed for air defense and anti-submarine warfare. When the electromagnetic catapult aircraft carrier and the J-35 enter service and become combat effective, the PLA naval fleet will form a dual-core attack queue. At that time, nuclear power was no longer enough. conventional ballistic missile The United States has been researching stealth anti-ship missiles over the years, but the cost of developing them is too high, and the U.S. Navy has never been equipped with them. Ten years ago, there were no surface ships that could threaten the Navy. As a result, they have been making do with subsonic anti-ship missile. To put it bluntly, except for strategic nuclear submarines that launch nuclear warheads. Submarines have always been a hobby of second-rate navies. Only in a silent ambush in a fixed water area is there a chance of winning. Once targeted by a destroyer or anti-submarine aircraft, it can only be passively beaten. Therefore, the role of German submarines in World War II was not to confront the British and American navies head-on, but to intercept merchant ships.

Now the Fujian ship is about to undergo sea trials. If the Ford aircraft carrier has not solved the reliability problem of the electromagnetic ejection and arresting device after the Fujian ship is put into service and has achieved combat effectiveness, it will be really a reverse event, we will have the upperhand.

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Academician Ma Weiming. Academician Ma recently issued a document that our country needs to build a new type of warship, a nuclear-powered all-purpose ship that integrates electromagnetic guns, laser weapons, microwave weapons, all-electric propulsion systems, and comprehensive management systems, and is also equipped with two electromagnetic ejection tracks to launch unmanned ships. Man-machine. Of course, this kind of warship is indispensable for its electronic warfare system.

(4) Mainland coastline versus islands and aircraft carrier battle groups

Put aside the Grand Theater Chess. The most likely local war between China and the United States is in the Western Pacific, that is, around taiwan island. In the ten years from 2010 to 2020, the equipment of China’s navy and air force has made a complete leap forward. And many people who don’t care about current affairs still have their mindset of the last century.

With the Rocket Force’s hypersonic missiles, the Air Force’s fifth-generation electronic warfare aircraft and long-range supersonic anti-ship missiles, the Navy’s aircraft carriers and 055 large-scale drive and the sea-based hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile Eagle 21, and combat support long-range early warning radar space-based reconnaissance With the launch of satellites, the area within 1,000 kilometers of China’s coastline has become an absolute military restricted area. 1,000 to 4,000 kilometers is China’s advantageous area for firepower projection. The decisive factor is the range of the ballistic missile.

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Dongfeng 17 not only glides in the atmosphere to avoid all existing anti-missile systems, but more importantly, it is low cost.

Dongfeng 17 uses the propeller of Dongfeng 16 to glide through the atmosphere to reach a range close to that of Dongfeng 21 , so the manufacturing cost is low. In recent years, China has made breakthroughs in the integrated molding technology of solid rocket motor fuel, which no longer requires manual carving and decoration of gunpowder pillars. Production costs have been significantly reduced, and the result is that ballistic missiles have become the price of cabbage, and Dongfeng 17 has begun to serve in large quantities. Unfortunately, Dongfeng 31 and Dongfeng 41 are too big, so they can only rely on manual modification of the gunpowder pillars.If the production cost of intercontinental ballistic missiles is reduced much in the future and waverider warheads and scramjet engines can be used, the picture will be so beautiful.When the Dongfeng missiles of the Rocket Force and the YJ-21 of the Navy and Air Force can effectively destroy the aircraft carrier fleet, the only one problem left is positioning.The simplest way to locate an aircraft carrier is to send a ship to follow it. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s strategy to deal with the U.S. aircraft carrier fleet was to use destroyer tracking and anti-ship missile saturation attacks.

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Of course, during wartime, the aircraft carrier fleet spreads out and starts attacking hundreds of kilometers away, so tracking is only a last resort.Therefore, there are shore-based long-range early warning radars , space-based reconnaissance satellite patrols, underwater submarine patrols with unmanned underwater vehicles, large-scale early warning aircraft in the air, stealth unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, and even electromagnetic signal reconnaissance. Ballistic missiles themselves can also serve as reconnaissance vehicles. In short, use all means to locate the enemy’s coordinates. Similarly, the farther away from the coastline, the fewer means of reconnaissance, and the more difficult it is for the aircraft carrier to accurately locate it. It’s just that the aircraft carrier loses its threat to land when it is far away from the coastline. And China’s aircraft carrier fleet has broken away from the barriers of the land air force and rocket force, and the danger has also greatly increased.Aircraft carriers at sea can still operate, but air force bases, naval ports and missile launch sites on land can only be named one by one as long as they are within the missile range.

(5) Hypersonic ballistic missiles

In the 1990s, China is fully engaged in research on ballistic missiles under tremendous pressure of the superiority of US airforce and US navy. At last, the double-cone Dongfeng 21D with air rudder was built, making it a reality for ballistic missiles to maneuver against surface ships at the end. Then the Dongfeng 26 was further developed to cover Guam. Then the epoch-making Eagle Strike 21 was developed, which allowed surface ships and aircraft to carry ballistic anti-ship missiles, completely changing the rules of war.

There are currently three technical paths for hypersonic ballistic missiles. Biconical warheads, waverider warheads and scramjets. The double-cone warhead can significantly increase the range and terminal maneuverability of the missile when it re-enters the atmosphere. In the 1980s, the United States used biconical warheads in Pershing medium-range ballistic missiles, but they were not water-floating warheads. They were retired after the United States and the Soviet Union signed a treaty limiting intermediate-range ballistic missiles. North Korea and the Houthis have also tested biconical warheads.

Although it is not a hypersonic ballistic missile, it can achieve terminal limited orbit changes, which greatly increases the difficulty of interception by anti-missile systems. Currently, only China and Russia have biconical hypersonic ballistic missiles in active service. Russia currently only has one “Dagger”. On the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, russia conducted targeted clearing and attacks on the “Patriot” air defense system.

It is obvious that Russia does not have much equipment and can only use it sparingly. The hypersonic ballistic missile that the United States is closest to successfully testing is also a biconical warhead. Yes, the United States has no active hypersonic ballistic missiles. That’s why he is so passive. Asfor the waverider warhead in active service, only China’s Dongfeng 17 is publicly available. According to public information, Dongfeng 17 does not fly out of the atmosphere after launch, but begins to glide laterally at the edge of the atmosphere, with a maximum speed of Mach 10 and an attack speed of Mach 5 at the end. The special thing about Dongfeng 17 is that it avoids the detection and attack range of the current mid-course anti-missile system, and its ultra-high mobility makes the terminal anti-missile system completely unable to intercept.

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What is inconsistent with Qian Xuesen’s trajectory is that the Dongfeng 17 does not fly out of the atmosphere. It also has a vector nozzle that can maneuver laterally. Even if a missile launch is detected during the boost phase, the impact point cannot be predicted and it is even more difficult to track when maneuvering without thrust. As for rocket scramjet engines, China, the United States and Russia are all in the research stage. Traditional rocket engines come with their own fuel and oxidizer. The ramjet engine introduces compressed air into the rocket engine combustion chamber to save fuel. The problem is that the engine first requires rocket combustion to accelerate to supersonic speed and then start the sub-burn or super-burn engine. The best performance range of sub-fuel engines is around Mach 3, and the best performance range of scram engines is around Mach 5. Therefore, the best combination is the engine composite design rocket plus sub-burning and super-burning, three forms. Or accelerate the aircraft to supersonic speed and release the sub-fuel and super-fuel engine. July last year, China’s Northwestern Polytechnical University completed a multi-modal test of a ramjet engine.

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Now you know why USA sanction NPU and hack NPU website.

(6) industrial competition under total war.

If we reach the stage of total war, the logic of war will shift industrial potential into industrial military. United states has completely failed on this.

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The U.S. Congress has been requiring the U.S. Navy to speed up the manufacture of new surface ships and purchase at least three of the latest model “Arleigh Burke” class destroyers every year. However, the U.S. Navy still submitted the purchase of two ships in the budget list for fiscal year 2024. Planning Check.

McCord, the U.S. military’s top budget official, said that’s because U.S. shipyards are barely able to build two destroyers a year, let alone three. In 2022, the United States will actually have only one Burke-class destroyer in service. China has 3 055 destroyers and 4 052D destroyers in service. The reason behind it is actually very simple.

In 2022, the total tonnage of U.S. shipbuilding will be 600,000 tons, including approximately 100,000 tons of new warship tonnage. 2022, China’s total shipbuilding tonnage will be 40 million tons, accounting for 55% of the world’s total tonnage. In 2022, nine large warships with a capacity of 150,000 tons will be commissioned. The world’s total crude steel output in 2022 will be 1.8785 billion tons, of which China’s output will be 1.013 billion tons, accounting for nearly 54%. The United States is the fourth largest steel producer in the world, with a crude steel output of slightly more than 80 million tons, and the EU alone is less than 220 million tons. In 2022, India’s crude steel output will be 125.1 million tons. in 2022, China’s power generation capacity will be 8,534.25 billion kilowatt hours (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), a year-on-year increase of 9.7%; the United States’ power generation capacity will be 4,115.54 billion kilowatt hours, a year-on-year decrease of 1.4%.China’s railway mileage will be 155,000 kilometers in 2022, including 42,000 kilometers of high-speed rail. In 1916, the operating mileage of railways in the United States reached its peak, reaching 410,000 kilometers. Now, there are only more than 220,000 kilometers of railway mileage left in the United States. In 2021, the total railway freight volume in China was 4,773.72 million tons, and the total railway freight volume in the United States was 12.026 million tons. It is clear that the total mileage of American railways is longer, but the freight capacity is hundreds of times different. On the one hand, there is a gap in demand for industrial raw materials such as coal, iron ore. On the one hand, American railways are in disrepair, and their transportation efficiency cannot be improved. There were 868 rail freight derailments in the United States in 2021.

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The weakening of basic industrial strength has hindered the progress of military industry. In the field of hypersonic ballistic missiles, which the United States is eager to catch up with, test launches of biconical missiles often fail. It is normal for weapons tests to fail. What is abnormal is the reason for the failure, such as launcher failure or rocket engine starting failure. Just like the Ford aircraft carrier, the electromagnetic ejection failure is understandable, after all, it is a new technology. It makes no sense that the weapon lifts frequently malfunction. After the Russo-Ukrainian War, it is not surprising that the United States turned to South Korea to produce 155mm artillery shells. In a total war, the first wave consumes active weapons, equipment and personnel. The rest depends on the reproduction capacity of weapons and the ability to mobilize personnel. Today, only the aviation industry can retain the face of American industry. The reason why we skipped the air force earlier is that in the Western Pacific, the air force must rely on the flight runways of air force bases on islands. As soon as the war started, the Rocket Force focused on taking care of them. they have room to take off. The only place that can allow the U.S. Air Force to exert its full strength is the United States itself.

F35 Production Line

Although the Boeing 737 max has brought shame to the United States, Boeing factories have repeatedly reported that workers’ quality has deteriorated due to marijuana use. Before the epidemic, Boeing produced more than 800 passenger planes per year. Lockheed Martin’s F35 production is also above 150 aircraft per year.

For comparison, China delivered its first passenger aircraft C919 last year, and plans to have a production capacity of 150 aircraft in five years. The J-20 production capacity is estimated to be 30-50 aircraft. Where are the limitations? Training of production line and industrial workers. Taken together, in local wars, China has an absolute advantage in East Asia. China’s ocean-going offensive capabilities are improving, but the United States still has the advantage on blue ocean war. It is only a matter of time before China’s industrial strength is finally transformed into military strength in a full-scale war.

Therefore, the United States has been fanning the flames around China and constantly provoking, but it does not want to enter the war by itself. It is best to replicate the situation in Ukraine, with South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Australia resisting harm from the front, and the United States standing behind and selling arms. Once China puts on a desperate posture, the US military will retreat on its own. In a total war, China will win the final victory, but it will only be a miserable victory. The United States has been standing still for 20 years. Even if China’s military technology keeps up, there is still a huge gap in weapons inventory.

The United States wants China to enter the conflict in 2025, stimulate the return of financial capital to the United States, and take over the supply of U.S. debt. China wants to delay it until 2030, or at least until 2027, and is ready to defeat others without a fight.

China is actually the only country in the world today that is preparing for a world war.

The whole industrial category system manufacturing is not to brag, but to always be prepared to fight against the entire world in an isolated and helpless situation. It is no exaggeration to say that even in the event of a full-scale nuclear war, China can rely on strategic reserves to recover quickly. China’s history is too long and its imprint is too deep.

(7) Informatization

As the pioneer of the Internet revolution, the US military is undoubtedly the leader in military informatization. The Gulf War shocked the whole world. Traditional armies were powerless to fight back against armies empowered by information technology . What is informatization?

Basically, soldiers are networked together and commanded in a unified way. US the only army back then who have this ability because at that time china Without an information-based society, there would be no information-based military. Just like there is no industrialized society without an industrialized army. Because of the core position of the military, although advanced systems and advanced technological weapons will be the first to be used in the military, without a responsive social environment, the military will also be dragged down by social realities and become a castle in the air. For example, the Chinese army has established a modern army by learning from the German-Russian military system and through its own exploration.

However, the confrontation with the world’s largest industrial country on the Korean battlefield completely exposed China’s weakness in industrial strength and lack of professional military logistics support. On the ChangJin Lake battlefield, the volunteer soldiers who were short of ammunition, food, and clothing relied on their tactical proficiency and revolutionary will tempered by blood and fire to cut off the retreat of the US Cavalry Division at all costs.

After blowing up the Watergate Bridge three times, the U.S. military air-dropped steel beam components urgently customized in Japan to the battlefield. After engineers urgently installed them with engineering equipment, the main force of the U.S. military retreated smoothly.

Thirty years later, after arduous industrial construction, China has initially established a basic heavy industry system. In 1979, the People’s Liberation Army, which had been lacking training for a long time, faced the Vietnamese army. The quality and command of its individual soldiers were significantly different from those in the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and they were even inferior to the enemy. But the military-industrial system established showed great progress.

That is, the density of artillery fire exceeds that of the US military at that time. our army is not a volunteer army. In the subsequent two-mountain battle, the major military regions will conduct fire mainly with artillery firing. After the reform and opening up, China transformed from a planned economic system to a market economy, and the society transformed from an agricultural society to a modern industrial society. We thought we catch up.

So when the trend of informatization was revealed in front of the Chinese military, how anxious it was at that time. We experienced hundreds of years of suffering when we were left behind in the industrialization era. Will we continue to fall behind in the information age? Back to the basic concept, what is informatization? The definition given by data scientist Shannon: “Information is something used to eliminate random uncertainty.” Definition of information war: It is a full-scale war carried out under the premise of network digitization and the extensive use of information technology and information weapons and equipment. The specific battlefield performance is-destroy upon discovery.

For example, in a war simulation game, our teammates and enemy units can directly communicate with each other and cooperate with each other in real time on the small map without any barriers. It is extremely difficult to achieve on the actual battlefield. Indian air defense systems shot down their own rescue helicopters, and Iranian air defenses shot down civilian airliners. Identification of friend or foe is still a big problem today. Fortunately, China has caught up with the information age. Although we now criticize Lenovo, NetEase, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, etc., at that historical stage, these companies were undoubtedly the promoters of China’s information society. Huawei, BOE, Changxin, SMIC, BYD, DJI, MiHoYo, etc. The only possible Information war happened is when a war between USA and China broke out. Because only China and the United States have complete information industries in the world today. The United States uses Internet social tools to cause destruction around the world, while China builds walls and engages in Internet social governance. Other countries have no choice but to surrender the Internet and let the situation go unchecked. During the war disconnecting the Internet means completely losing the possibility of victory. China has benefited from an unprecedented wave of industrialization in the new century, and computers and mobile phones have begun to spread on a large scale. After 2010, society began to enter the mobile Internet era again. People realize that the so-called informatization is the “Internet of Everything”, the ultimate integration of the Internet and the Internet of Things. The popularization of sensors, mobile terminals and communication technologies has generated massive amounts of data, and big data applications have been born in order to process these data. Big data processing has promoted the progress of artificial intelligence (AI algorithm). In the past, the United States bullied small countries, but it actually did not reflect the power of informatization. The Russia-Ukraine war is also known as the “poor man’s version of information war.” First, the Ukrainian army used the US “Starlink satellite” to access NATO’s reconnaissance system. After the reconnaissance satellite long-range early warning aircraft discovered the Russian target, it sent the message to the frontline commander of the Ukrainian army team. The Ukrainian army team decided on its own to ambush the target. There is also the fact that the Russian military uses mobile phones to access the Ukrainian telecommunications network for communication, which is simply a living target. In the early days of the war, a large part of the casualty rate among Russian officers was related to miscomunication. The reason is not complicated. There is no digital communication equipment between Russian military tanks – this is not a problem due to lack of money but because without any concept of information technology. However, Russia is still good at learning war in war. Immediately carry out targeted electromagnetic interference. “Starlink” communications and electronic reconnaissance are greatly reduced. On the one hand, it reflects Russia’s profound accumulation of electronic technology, and on the other hand, it also illustrates Russia’s lack of war awareness – what has it been doing so long ago. A person who is fond of fighting but not good at preparation will only gain his progress after suffering losses.

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“Murmansk-BN” integrated electronic warfare system. As the main combat equipment of the Russian army’s electronic warfare, this system can perform strong electromagnetic suppression on targets within 20 frequencies within 5,000 kilometers.

Russia and Ukraine use a large number of drones for battlefield reconnaissance and calibration, plus a large number of artillery pieces left by the Soviet Union. The cannon has the same barrel, but its power has been increased by several levels. Because of the massive smuggling of a certain civilian four-copter drone from a large Eastern country, Russia densely arranged a large number of frontline observation points in front. How dense is it? The drones on both sides can collide with each other. The battlefield that was originally filled with the fog of war became transparent. On the one hand, the whole world was watching the war live broadcast. On the one hand, any tank concentration and assault on either side will inevitably lead to a salvo of artillery fire from the by opposite side.

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Last year, the Russian T72 crossed the river and was set on fire by artillery.

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This year, the Leopard 2 tanks and Bradley armored vehicles assisted by NATO were attacked by the Ukrainian army without air defense. They were greeted by Russian mines, artillery, Lancet cruise missiles, and armed helicopters in turn.

The mine-protected vehicles assisted by NATO can only protect against roadside bombs, and can only be penetrated by the Russian army’s large number of mines.

Now the Russian army has even played tricks, using cheap shuttles to attach mines, grenades, and RPG warheads to carry out suicide attacks in VR.

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The thousands of FPV quad-rotor drones purchased by the Russian army cost about 1,000 per unit, and it is cheaper to procure parts and assemble them from Shenzhen Huaqiangbei.

Comparing it to the Russian military’s own Lancet cruise missile, which costs US$100,000, it seems like it costs nothing.

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The tanks and bayonets that military fans imagine, and the T80 vs. Leopard 2, cannot be realized on a battlefield where they are immediately destroyed upon discovery. The reason why Russia and Ukraine are called the poor people’s information war. For a big country, this kind of random flying of four-axis drones should not occur on the battlefield. Whether it’s electromagnetic suppression, laser irradiation, or anti-aircraft artillery. For China, even if its drones collide, it can still drown the opponent with its terrifying production capacity.

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The Land Shield 3000 close-in defense gun is a modification of the 1130 close-in defense gun on a warship to an armored vehicle, with 11 Gatling tubes and 12,000 rounds per minute. Can intercept missiles up to Mach 4.

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Although the US military does not pay attention to the army’s air defense system, you cannot say that it does not exist.

Ground-based electronic warfare systems are as dazzling to the Air Force’s electronic warfare aircraft as search lights in the night sky, waiting for them with an anti-radiation missile. Russia and Ukraine have been fighting fiercely for a year, and the air force has completely become a cheerleader. The Russian air force has the advantage but did not destroy the Ukrainian army’s air base and air defense system in the first time. It probably has no money. It has never gained control of the air, and the Russian Ka-52 only launched the “Vortex” anti-tank missile at the ultimate range of 10 kilometers when fighting the Leopard 2. The Russian military’s annual military expenditure of 80 billion US dollars is probably a lot of propaganda. There is also a question mark on where the US$50 billion in US aid to Ukraine was spent. Is it really written off? No way? Why are their firepower are so low?

One thing that can be mentioned is that the United States is the pioneer of the information-based military. A large number of digital combat systems and joint combat systems have been developed. Basically, each military service has one set, and the theater joint command has another set. Later, in order to solve the problem of too many vertical layers, insufficient horizontal interconnection, and poor ability to identify friend or foe, the US Global Command and Control System (GCCS) was developed.

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Found the problem? Although it looks very cool, the US military has always wanted to develop a system, which is a center to command thousands of troops. Under the system with American characteristics, the sea, air, and ground forces compete for military spending. Unified command is inherently troublesome. On the battlefield in Iraq, there were situations where the presidential envoy, theater headquarters and military commanders were competing for command. Who would listen at this time? The final result may be that everyone listens to no one, and everyone goes their own way. Anyone who has been exposed to the project code knows that no matter how simple a system is at the beginning, it will be iterated over time, functions will be improved and hardware will be updated. In the end, it will pile up into a “hill of shit”. Imagine that when you sit in the position of the President of the United States and issue instructions to the nuclear base, you may need to broadcast signals. To issue orders to the Seventh Fleet Anti-Submarine Group – the Japanese Navy, a fax machine is required, and to issue orders to the Air Force’s F22 and F35 requires separate arrangements. Because the data links of different production years are incompatible, what about upgrading the F22? It couldn’t be done, because after the suspension of production, Lockheed Martin directly dismantled the production line to save costs. Where is the contradiction? The original design of the American command system is for an order to go directly to the soldiers. The soldiers do not need to think, they can just obey the orders. But an army is made up of individuals. Soldiers, officers, military services, theater commanders, the Department of Defense, and the White House all have their own agendas. A $1,000 coffee pot, tens of thousands of dollars of warship toilets, $6 million of Italian goats, and trillions of dollars of bad debts are expectable.

(8) Intelligent and unmanned – the battlefield heading into the future

While information warfare is still being hotly debated, military changes in the new era of intelligence and unmanned warfare have arrived.

The predator swarm drones in the “Wandering Earth 2” are smarter and more maneuverable than in reality.

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Question: In the movie, when the J-20 and Su-57 take off at the same time, why do the drones chase the Su-57?

中国无人机“蜂群”作战系统亮相 !无人机密密麻麻对地精准察打_哔哩哔哩_bilibili近期,中国电科集团电科院开展了陆空协同固定翼无人机“蜂群”系统的相关试验试飞工作,验证了陆上发射和空中投放固定翼无人机“蜂群”开展对地察打、精确打击等各项任务能力。(海客新闻)

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14i4y1j7jg/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=fae9e83d4aec1b716a9461884314dfa9

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浙大Science Robotics封面 全自主微型飞行机器人集群_哔哩哔哩_bilibiliScience Robotics 2022年5月封面 论文标题:Swarm of Micro Flying Robots in the Wild https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.abm5954https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1qv4y1K7Y6/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=fae9e83d4aec1b716a9461884314dfa9

The two-seat version of the J-20 has begun to be developed, and together with the unmanned wingman, it constitutes the development direction of the new era.

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无人机、排爆机器人、机器狗、无人车……_哔哩哔哩_bilibili无人机、排爆机器人、机器狗、无人车……_哔哩哔哩_bilibili

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1qT41137om/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=fae9e83d4aec1b716a9461884314dfa9

UAV reconnaissance, guiding fire strikes; blasting minefields, EOD robots quickly clear minefields; commandos launch attacks, UAVs cooperate with fixed-point blasting; in addition, robot dogs go out to conduct reconnaissance, and no one Vehicles accompany the support… A combined brigade of the Army’s 80th Group Army conducted an all-element combined battalion real-force confrontation exercise. Multiple types of unmanned equipment were unveiled, and human-vehicle collaborative training was carried out.

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Combined with the recent Ukrainian battlefield, the Ukrainian counterattack was tortured by landmines before it reached the Russian defense line. But for Zelensky, mobilizing troops may not be worth as much as unmanned vehicles. However, new smart landmines will be more widely used in the future, including automatic reconnaissance and friend-or-foe identification, automatic leaping overhead attacks, and one landmine can control hundreds of square meters of battlefield. Anti-smart landmines have become a new topic.

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At the 2022 Zhuhai Air Show, the VT5U foreign trade light tank on display carries an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft and console for unmanned driving, greatly improving battlefield awareness and reducing casualties.

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At the Abu Dhabi International Defense Exhibition, “China Military Industry” exhibited the “Sky Shield” anti-drone system. On the basis of the original laser killing method, it adds killing methods such as high-power electromagnetic suppression and combination of projectiles and artillery, making it closer to actual combat.

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U.S. Marine Corps – Logistics robot dog, material handling robot dog, robot mule, robot cow. It can carry more than 180 kilograms of weapons or other equipment for about 32 kilometers. Like a well-trained military dog, its structural design is highly flexible and can accompany soldiers in harsh terrains, including woods, rocky beaches, etc.

We found that the United States was the first to apply drones on the battlefield. A superstar on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.

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RQ-4 Global Hawk, which was put into service in 2000, is active in military hotspots around the world. The cost is US$4000-120 million. It was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 2019 and will retire in 2022. Off-topic: Japan spent 61.3 billion yen to purchase three Global Hawks in 2014, with maintenance costs of 263.7 billion in the next 20 years. As a result, production delivery will only begin in 2020.

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The MQ-1 Predator, an integrated surveillance and combat drone, is both famous and infamous. It first flew in 1994 and has participated in all U.S. foreign wars starting from Kosovo. Counter-terrorism and indiscriminate killing of civilians have become its labels.

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MQ-9 “Reaper” drone

What is strange is that among the drones that have been active around the world in recent years, there is a lack of U.S.-made drones. Chinese Wing Loong and Rainbow series drones active in the Middle East and Africa. In the Naka conflict , the Turkish TB-2 equipped by Azerbaijan stole the show. The Iranian “Witness-136” suicide drone purchased by the Russian army that bombed Kiev, Ukraine, also made a splash. As the world’s largest arms trafficker, the United States’ absence is really inappropriate. So, whose fault is this? Answer: The enemy is on Capitol Hill. The U.S. Congress has enacted legislation to ban the export of large drones. When the AVIC Wing Loong drones and China Aerospace’s Rainbow drones were dumped in the Middle East, they were not receptive. In order to satisfy the contradiction between the growing needs of gold customers for foreign military intervention and our country’s love of peace, we simply exported the production lines to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Let me tell you a little story. The tall drones were originally flown by retired pilots. Without it, because the airflow in near-earth space is complex and requires manual control by experienced pilots. Nowadays, highly automated civil aviation aircraft require the full participation of two captains during takeoff and landing, just for the sake of safety. The problem is that airplanes in third world countries are all bought on a case-by-case basis, and the pilots are all spoiled. Where do so many retired pilots come from? The customer is the king. Change it. Added autopilot function, one-click takeoff and landing, automatic cruise, simplified operation process, one handle joystick can solve the drone flight control. Just one standard – to satisfy customers with all fool-proof operations. Later the customer made another request. The flight was too short. And firepower was not enough. Changed is made, increased body size and fuel capacity, and added attachment points.

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Rainbow 6 UAV

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Wing Long 2 UAV

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The Nigerian military used Wing Loong 2 drones to conduct air strikes against terrorists. Drones allow some small countries to do an offensive air force.

Later, the customer made another request. Turkey’s TB-2 is too annoying. It’s not satisfying to bump into each other without shooting. It needs to be shot down. To meet the requirements, air-to-air missiles are installed to specifically counter UAVs. Through constant upgrading and improvement, Pterosaur and Rainbow formed a huge family pedigree. Wing Loong UAVs have begun to be sold back to the domestic civilian market. In 2021, communications were interrupted in some areas of Henan due to floods. Wing Loong drones took off from the Guizhou base and arrived in the disaster area to provide 5 hours of mobile communication services, and sent back radar in real time to scan the damage in the disaster area. While waiting for U.S. arms dealers to obtain export licenses, the world has changed. Wing Loong 2 sells for $5 million. Because Turkey’s TB-2 has weak industrial strength and its technology is not as good as that of Chinese companies, and the price is more expensive. India purchased 31 MQ-93s for US$113 million each. Even the domestically purchased MQ-9 is priced at as high as $30 million. If combined with the industrial production capacity mentioned earlier, it is actually not surprising. The cost is too high and the price is too expensive. As a result, there are less and less equipment, and the purchase price cannot go down. Regarding the performance of modern warfare, I recommend the annual update video produced by the owner of Bili bili station up. It should be noted that the tactical arrangements in the video are demonstrations by military fans based on public data and are not real military tactical details. For example, the J-16D’s decoy deception, and the two-seat J-20’s A-shooting and B-guided missiles with unmanned wingmen. In order to arrange for all of our country’s equipment in active service and under development to leave the country, we deliberately strengthened the enemy’s military quality and armament capabilities, and also thoughtfully supported the opponent’s space-based reconnaissance intelligence of Uncle Sam. For example, in order to intercept low-altitude penetrating cruise missiles, the J-8 was allowed to take up its duties as an interceptor aircraft.

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https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1gX4y1v7ud/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=fae9e83d4aec1b716a9461884314dfa9

(9) Industrialization
The United States, which attracts talents from all over the world, still has a strong innovation capability. However, under the influence of decades of deindustrialization in the financial industry, the United States has lost its production capacity. Industrialization is not just about factory workers and engineers, but also a whole social system that revolves around industry.
Including unified market, education and training, financial services, government policies, etc.
When the relationship is good, American companies design and sell and capture most of the profits, while Chinese companies are responsible for production and make hard money. But after the United States regarded China as an opponent, the world gradually turned into two parallel production systems. However, if there is no technological generation gap in military equipment, only players that can expand production at low cost will have the last laugh. In a sense, quantity is quality. Defeating more with less and relying on technology to make a comeback can certainly win a lot of glory and leave a name in history. But the real masters rely on operations to accumulate strength, and then rely on size to get through.
So what’s important?
Scale, scale, scale.
Han Xin ordered troops, the more the better.
Hiding new technologies will only lead to others taking advantage of them.
What is industrialization?
Machine production machines and standardized assembly line production and improvement processes.
When encountering problems, propose solutions, improve and then provide feedback, and continue to optimize.
Achieve technological leaps and improve productivity through continuous iterative improvements.
What advantages do industrialization, the entire industry chain, and system engineering capabilities bring?
Give a few examples.
An example, the balancing car was invented by an American company.
But it has always been a toy for the rich. The unit price is 8,000 US dollars, and the annual sales volume has been stable at 30,000.
After being acquired by a Chinese company, the price of the new generation product dropped to 14,500 yuan.
Later, it cooperated with Xiaomi to develop and sell products priced at 1,999.
Nowadays, Taobao sells a variety of balancing scooters ranging from 300 to 3,000.

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Relying on its low-cost advantage, China’s bulletproof vests occupy 70% of the world’s market share. Because body armor is for civilian use in China, you can buy it casually on Taobao. American and Russian soldiers often privately purchase Chinese-made bulletproof inserts to put into their body armor. You’ll know how good something is after you’ve been shot a few times on the battlefield.

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On the Syrian battlefield, heavy mortar shells modified with gas tanks imported from China have an impressive range, their accuracy also impressive. there is no problem in destroying a three-story building with one shot.

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Rockets produced by the Palestinian Hamas organization.

Laiyang Steel Pipe Factory: Although this is a seamless steel pipe, what I export is indeed a water pipe.

After China converted the Varyag into the Liaoning ship, a lot of media asserted that the Chinese aircraft carrier would not be able to form combat effectiveness in a short time. Because only the United States and Russia can build the crown jewel of industry , the arresting cable , aircraft carriers that cannot take off and land carrier-based aircraft are just large flat plates. Then the Liaoning ship realized the take-off and landing of carrier-based aircraft after two months of service. Many years later, people discovered that the arresting cables for China’s aircraft carriers were supplied by Hebei Ju li Rigging Group, a private enterprise. Four months after the military tender, Ju li took out samples and passed the acceptance test.

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After the military opened the tender, Ju Li raised his hand cautiously: That. The parameters seem to be similar to a product I exported to the United States.

More famous is DJI’s quadcopter drone. Before DJI, there were some aerial photography drones in the United States. The cheap ones cost more than 300,000 yuan, and the expensive ones cost several million. Only the film industry dares to use this thing. The French company Parrot launched the consumer-grade AR.Drone quadcopter toy in 2010. It has 720P aerial photography function and is compact, lightweight and highly entertaining.

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In early 2012, DJI launched the Phantom all-in-one computer. It has certain wind resistance, positioning and carrying capabilities. DJI has always emphasized that its products are flying cameras. The price is several thousand yuan.

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in 2015, the American star startup 3D Robotics launched the solo drone to challenge DJI’s status. The solo drone comes with autopilot capabilities and sells for $1,700. However, problems such as unstable flight caused by the GPS system connection affected sales. 100,000 units were produced and only 22,000 units were sold. A few months later DJI launched the Phantom 3, with the professional version priced at US$1,300, and a few months later the price was reduced to US$1,000.

In 2016, 3D Robotics exited hardware production.

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Solo drone

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Phantom 3 DJI

Although DJI has always emphasized that it is a private company. But in the Middle East, pterosaurs and rainbows are used by governments to eliminate terrorists at targeted locations. Terrorists have also learned to use DJI Phantoms strapped with grenades to “air-strike” government troops. On the Ukrainian battlefield, DJI drones have become “Internet celebrities”. Russia and Ukraine both use it.

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Picture above translated as follow

Russian Embassy in China

General Baruyevsky, former Chief of the General Staff of Russia: Ordinary commercial quad-rotor drones made in China are incompatible with traditional drones. The application of artillery and rocket launchers brought about a real revolution in technology, which actually completely solved the old problems in artillery reconnaissance, target designation.

√ When the drone continues to hover over the target area for adjustment, the artillery can use conventional ammunition, with accuracy and efficiency comparable to precision-guided munitions, while the number of ammunition and artillery required to kill is greatly reduced.

√ The Mavic quadcopter drone manufactured by the Chinese company DJI has in principle become a true symbol of modern warfare.

Russia Embassy : 5 stars review from the costumer.

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DJI tweet translation :

All DJI products are designed for civilian purposes, serving people’s production and life, and are committed to benefiting society and making life better. DJI’s products are not suitable and do not meet the needs of military applications. We do not have applications technology in the military field.

DJI: I’m not, I don’t have it, don’t talk nonsense

When the Ukrainian counterattack was overwhelmed by landmines, frontline soldiers discovered new uses for DJI drones.

A few hours after sunset, due to the difference in heat dissipation between metal and soil, there will be an obvious color difference under the camera of the drone carrying an infrared sensor, which can identify large-charge mines on the ground.

I don’t know, will Russia and Ukraine be drooling over when they see this model?

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DJI T50 agricultural drone, 50kg load capacity | coaxial twin rotors | front and rear phased array radars | two sets of binocular vision | high-definition FPV | integrated aerial survey, flight and defense.

DJI, you still said you don’t know military technology?

Well, drones, phased array radars. Something feels wrong. Why are civilian drones equipped with phased array radars? Because it’s cheap.

(10) Sky Eye – Active Phased Array Radar

The Ministry of Commerce and Customs has recently implemented export controls on gallium and germanium rare metals and compounds. Exports after August 1 need to be declared. Gallium and germanium are both core raw materials for semiconductors. Among them, gallium production accounts for more than 90% of the world’s total production.

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Is it because China has abundant reserves or has mastered core technology? neither. Because gallium is a rare metal, there is no abundant mine. It can only be obtained from the companion products of bauxite. The average gallium content in bauxite is 50 parts per million. So the production of gallium requires an entire alumina production line.

The largest downstream demand for alumina is electrolytic aluminum. It is well known that electrolytic aluminum is a large consumer of electricity. Cheap electricity is needed. In 2022, China will produce 40 million tons of aluminum, accounting for 60% of the world’s total production. It is this 40 million tons aluminum industry that produces 400 tons of gallium.

Gallium has an important compound, gallium nitride What we come into contact with most every day is gallium nitride fast charging. It has properties such as wide direct band gap, strong atomic bonds, high thermal conductivity, good chemical stability (almost not corroded by any acid) and strong radiation resistance. The GaN material series has low heat generation rate and high breakdown electric field, and is an important material for the development of high-temperature and high-power electronic devices and high-frequency microwave devices.

Therefore, gallium nitride also has a very wide range of application scenarios in the field of military equipment. The most typical phased array radar. Radar is the clairvoyance and ear of the modern military. In an information-based battlefield where discovery means destruction, the performance of radar directly determines whether the enemy fires first or a sitting duck. We know that radar is a device for transmitting and receiving electromagnetic waves. Early radar can detect the direction, distance and height of obstacles and other information by emitting electromagnetic waves and receiving echoes reflected by obstacles. However, the positioning effect for high-speed moving objects is very poor. Later , pulse Doppler radar was created based on the Doppler effect (the received frequency of waves becomes higher when the wave source moves toward the observer , and the received frequency becomes lower when the wave source moves away from the observer), which can accurately locate moving objects. Later, based on the interference of waves, phased array radar was invented. Phased array radar is a combination of Doppler radars.

The most intuitive way to experience the power of phased arrays is in the science fiction movie “The Wandering Earth 2”, in which nuclear warheads are arranged through phased arrays to concentrate the energy of the nuclear bomb explosion wave at one point.

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The difference between passive phased array radar and active phased array radar is that passive phased array radar has only one central receiver/transmitter. In active phased array radar, each radiation component has an independent transmitter and receiver. One is a cyclops and the other is an insect with compound eyes. Because of the huge gap in performance, passive phased array radar is just a transition before the development of active phased array radar. Because of the independent transceiver characteristics of phased array radar subunits, the beam direction can be quickly changed through phase difference, and the mechanical scanning of traditional radar has been changed to electronic scanning. You can also group any unit independently to perform multi-beam scanning. It has strong anti-jamming and multi-target reconnaissance capabilities. Phased array radar also has disadvantages, that is, high power and high heat generation.

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The phased array radar is a big house from the beginning, and a considerable part of the equipment is used for heat dissipation. Can only be used as missile and aircraft early warning

After the phased array radar is installed on the destroyer, it will become the famous “Aegis” air defense destroyer. In 2007, when China’s KJ-2000 was put into service, it was said to be a generation ahead of the American early warning aircraft because it installed a huge phased array radar on the aircraft. The powerful attack capabilities of the American F22 “Raptor” fighter jet are also related to the pioneering use of active phased array radar. It turns out that the huge radar can be installed in the radome of a fighter jet because of the use of gallium arsenide. Gallium nitride is an important raw material for the next generation of active phased array radar.

At the 2018 Zhuhai Air Show, Chinese military industrial enterprises launched an air-cooled active phased array radar for fighter jets. Later, it was directly installed on the “Fierce Dragon” Block III fighter jet jointly developed by China and Pakistan. As we know earlier, active phased array radars have high power and heat, so fighter jets are usually equipped with a liquid cooling system in their radome. Some simply use onboard fuel to dissipate heat for electronic components. Therefore, generally heavy fighter aircraft have space to install source phased array radars. But the Xiaolong is a light fighter and a cheap version. Is there something wrong? Remember the properties of gallium nitride mentioned earlier? High thermal conductivity. As long as the power supply and cooling requirements for the replacement of gallium nitride radar can be met, the detection range of active phased array radars on several types of fighter jets has the opportunity to be doubled.

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Above picture is phased array radar multi target tracking high speed military radar is sold online casually in china the price 1 million yuan.

So it’s not surprising that DJI drones are equipped with phased array radars.

Hence the monster below.

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20 tons AEGIS Unmanned warship. Each ship is equipped with 8 vertical launch missiles and 2 torpedoes.

The Iranian Navy has considered launching suicide attacks on U.S. warships using missile speedboats. If dozens of these small boats, which cost tens of millions of dollars, surrounded warships worth billions of dollars, or were equipped with towed sonar and spread out to hunt submarines in the vast sea area, the picture would be too beautiful.

Is it easy to get a job in China?

Any job?

Pretty easy. The government puts a lot of effort ensuring that if you are sincere about getting employed, there will be a job for you.

But a good job?

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No. It is very hard.

There are also people who start working straight from high school, or perhaps they go to trade schools instead of the standard university route.

Unfortunately, the competition is just as fierce.

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And just for reference, do you know what this graph from China: Number of university graduates | Statista

means?

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It means China needed to create 7.585 million new jobs in 2019.

Remember that China is changing rapidly. The people who are retiring from low-end manufacturing or agriculture aren’t doing the same jobs as the 20 year olds in hi-tech and STEM fields.

Competition is fierce.

Ranch Round Steak

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2077caab3c77906b7b00eea380916c17

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 pound) round steak
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons dry mustard
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/4 cup shortening
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Instructions

  1. Cut steak into serving size pieces; trim away excess fat and pound to tenderize.
  2. Combine flour, dry mustard, salt and pepper; use to coat meat. Reserve remaining flour mixture.
  3. In skillet, brown meat, half at a time, on both sides in hot shortening. Push meat to one side; stir in reserved flour mixture.
  4. Combine water and Worcestershire sauce; stir into skillet mixture. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly, reduce heat. Cover and simmer for about 1 hour or until meat is tender.
  5. Remove meat to platter.
  6. Skim excess fat from gravy. Drizzle gravy over meat and serve.

What Elon Musk just did in Ukraine could change EVERYTHING

Could Elon Musk end the war in Ukraine with this one move? Democrats are calling for an investigation into how Starlink is used in the warzone. Redacted Correspondent Dan Cohen dives deep into the details.

A full Scottish kilt ensemble

When I was a young boy, perhaps in first grade, my father had a business trip up into New Foundland. And there, he did some work and (apparently) attended a local festival.

When he came back, he had a special gift for me.

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It was a full Scottish kilt ensemble.

And I, well I wore it with pride, and being the photo buff that he was, took a zillion pictures of me wearing the outfit.

I don’t know what ever happened to the outfit, or the pictures, but I do remember that time, and how I felt being parading about in Bridgeport Conn wearing that kilt.

My dad was kind of silly. But he was cool in a strange way. And this little event is one of my best memories.

Today…

What would happen if the United States were to change its stance on recognizing Taiwanese sovereignty?

The U.S. have a right to adopt or adapt any any stance it wants. Or behaves as obnoxiously and despicably as ot wants too! But China will act swiftly in its own path forward to protect and defend and its own territories including Taiwan. And the world’s 99% will be behind China solidly. The Taiwan issue is totally and absolutely none of US or anybody’s business except the Chinese people and the Chinese authorities. Get that through your think skull once and for all.

You can talk as much shit, or stir as much shit as you want but touching an inch of Taiwan and we all go to war fully and comprehensively till the world as we know it will be change forever. If that is what you want. Let that be absolutely clear even a single U.S. marine parachute into Taiwan and China will without a doubt take drastic and immediate action.

No go back to asking shit like this and waste all your time. If you want. China don’t gives a shit about U.S. stupidly and waste fully sailing 10 thousand miles blowing a billion gallons of fuel to aimlessly flex your muscles a million times. We don’t mind if you to go hang yourself if that is what you want. You can have a million discussion in Washington for all we care but the business of Taiwan is decided in Beijing.

FLASH TRAFFIC: GERMAN ARMY TANK CREW CAUGHT OPERATING TANK IN UKRAINE, ATTACKING RUSSIAN ARMY

World Hal Turner 23 September 2023

German supplied Leopard Tank With German Army Crew Zaporozhye Started WW3 2 large
German supplied Leopard Tank With German Army Crew Zaporozhye Started WW3 2 large
FLASH TRAFFIC: GERMAN ARMY TANK CREW CAUGHT OPERATING TANK IN UKRAINE, ATTACKING RUSSIAN ARMY

This is FLASH TRAFFIC: It appears World War 3 has officially begun.  Saturday morning the Russian Army engaged a German-supplied Leopard Tank operating for the Ukraine army in Zaporozhye.  The Russians hit the tank with an anti-tank guided missile. The tank blew up.  The tank crew evacuated and were captured.  The crew identified themselves as ACTIVE DUTY GERMAN ARMY TROOPS.

Thus, the actual Army of Germany has now been caught waging actual war against Russia inside official Russian territory, Zaporozhye.   The image above is the actual tank involved in the actual incident this morning, 23 September 2023.

Hal Turner Remark: It appears, on its face, NATO has just started World War 3; using the active-duty German Army to attack Russians.

More as I get it . . . .

UPDATE 10:14 AM EDT —

Details are emerging.  It is now CONFIRMED a Russian Army reconnaissance team destroyed a German-supplied Leopard tank of the Ukrainian military but manned with a crew comprised of Bunderswehr soldiers.   The Bunderswehr is the actual active duty Army of Germany.

This took place in Zaporozhye this morning.

A member of the actual Russian Recon team directly and personally involved in the incident has stated the following: “When we curbed another offensive and ATGM-ed [destroyed with an anti-tank guided missile] the Leopard, we moved out to the burned vehicle hoping to seize the ‘tongue.’ Then we saw that the crew’s driver-mechanic was severely injured and the others were dead. Once he awoke, the mechanic started yelling ‘nicht schießen‘ [“do not shoot” in German],” the head of the reconnaissance team said.

“The mechanic repeatedly stated that he was not a mercenary but a Bundeswehr serviceman, and that he and the rest of the crew were members of the same unit of the German army,” the Russian fighter said, adding that while receiving medical aid, the German soldier named his brigade and its dislocation site.

 The tank’s driver died from wounds minutes after he was found despite efforts to save him.

Philly Cheese Steak Stuffed Peppers

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2023 09 25 15 22

Ingredients

  • 1 pound thinly sliced sirloin steak (or deli roast beef)
  • 8 slices provolone cheese
  • 4 large green bell peppers
  • 1 medium sweet onion
  • 1 pound white mushrooms
  • 3 tablespoons butter
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • Kosher or sea salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

  1. Slice a thin piece off each pepper lengthwise, remove ribs and seeds.
  2. Slice onions and mushrooms. Sauté over medium heat with butter, olive oil and a little salt and pepper. Sauté until onions and mushroom are nice and caramelized, about 25 to 30 minutes.
  3. Salt and pepper the steak and sauté in a little olive oil until just not pink, about 5 minutes.
  4. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
  5. Add steak to the onion/mushroom mixture and stir to combine.
  6. Line the inside of each pepper with a slice of provolone cheese.
  7. Fill each pepper with meat mixture until they are overflowing.
  8. Top each pepper with another slice of provolone cheese.
  9. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until the cheese on top is golden brown.

What is the most satisfying thing you’ve seen happen when someone rudely cut ahead of a long line?

Back 20 years ago my 8 year old son and I went to the bank. When we walked in the only customer was a lady filling in forms at the bench. We walked up to where the lines started, identified by some silver poles with plastic chains showing the flow of foot traffic. We waited while the teller finished doing her task.

As we waited a few people came into the bank and lined up behind us. The lady at the bench then walked over and pushed in front of us stating that she was in the bank first but had to fill in some forms. I commented that she should take her place at the back, and again she said she was in the bank first. My son looked up at me, knowing that her behavior was rude but he had a glint in his eye. I should have known better.

Silently, without anyone noticing, including me, he picked up the end of the plastic chain from the top of a metal pole and hooked it into her handbag.

As she stepped forward in her self importance her snagged handbag then pulled 4 or 5 poles onto the tiled floor with such a loud clatter. As she spun around to see what had happened she pulled another 2 poles over.

We slipped past, went to the teller and on our way out saw that she had been passed by most of the line and was still picking up her paper, pens and other things that had spilled from her handbag.

On my next trip to the bank the teller told me that was the funniest thing she had ever seen and presented me with a savings book for my son with $20. Each teller donated $5 because no one liked that lady.

One day it will be you.

Twice this week, I have watched an elderly individual, fade into the busy life in which we all live. One man just needed Panadol for his wife but the shop assistant simply said it’s in ‘6’.

But he struggled to navigate the supermarket and as I watched him go in the wrong direction, I left all my groceries and took him where he needed to go.

Today, I watched an elderly man struggle in the heat, who had obviously had a fall with a huge scrape and blood on his leg. He walked past people in the cafe, while he slowly made his way to his car. Not one person stopped. Or looked.

Or acknowledged him. I took him to his car and checked he was ok. He told me he had a fall and wasn’t sure how the air con worked in his car so he just didn’t use it. I sat with him, until his air con kicked in and heard him talk about the old frail body that he is in, that fails him now, every single day.

When you see an elderly person walking down the street, searching in the supermarket or struggling to their car, take a minute out of your busy schedule and ask them if they need a hand. Think about your grand parents and your parents and how pissed you would be if someone didn’t stop to help them. But more, think of them as you.

Once upon a time they were you. They were busy, they had work, they had children, they were able…. Today, they are just in an older body that is not going as fast as it used to and this busy life is confusing. They deserve our utmost respect and consideration.

One day it will be you, it will be us. I wish more people gave a sh*t about them and acknowledged them for their admirable existence and geez I hope someday, not that far away, someone does it for me.

Full-Time RV Life: The Quitting Has Just Begun – Why Many Have & Will Come Off The Road

Notice these trends that are going on in the United States.

Chinese complain about the US becoming increasingly anti-China over the past 10 years, but hasn’t the PRC always spoken of the US as its chief enemy since 1949 (except for a brief period in the late 70s)? How do patriotic Chinese reconcile this?

Chinese people are consistent with Japanese people, only one enemy is japanese imperialism and chinese national scum. – Mao zedong, 1941.5.15 (This was at a time when Japanese imperialism was invading China)

Likewise. Chinese people are consistent with US people, only one enemy is US imperialism and chinese national scum.

The Chinese national scum includes Taiwan independence elements, Hong Kong independence elements and overseas dissidents funded by the US government. not elaborated here.


The point is: who represents US in the world? Is it the US people, or is it US imperialism?

  1. No other country in the world has invaded the United States. Even if Bin Laden had created 9/11, it was not an act from the military of any country.
  2. It’s not US politicians or capitalist who die on the battlefield, it’s you! idiot! In war the politicians give ammunition, the rich give the food and the poor give their children… When the war is over the politicians get back the leftover ammunition, the rich grow more food and the poor search for the graves of their children.
  3. The US people need to pay more in taxes and lives for the war of aggression waged by the US government. Obviously, the U.S. government has launched a war of aggression against all countries in the world, which goes against the interests of the US people.

Do you think it is in the interests of the US people for the US government to go around the world invading?

It is not in the interest of the US people, nor is it in the interest of the Chinese people, who are simply generating profits for the capitalists of the US military industrial complex.

Because US is a capitalist country, capital controls US politics.

The US has more than 240 years of history, only 16 years without war.

So, Does the US government represent the interests of the US people, or the interests of US imperialism?

Do you represent the interests of the US people, or the interests of US imperialism?


Biden did not tell the US citizens that he wanted to invade China, only “to defend Taiwan”.

So, I ask, how does the US plan on doing that? with some sort of video game competition?

I mean, in order to “defend Taiwan”, you have to have military troops pertorming military actions, aka combat inside of China.

And that’s because Taiwan is in China.

So currently America has soldiers in Taiwan, which is either illegal, or at the very least gray area because that’s part of China.

And the government of China doesn’t approve of that and hasn’t allowed it.

So that’s the current status.

If US start performing military action, that’s an effort to militarily conquer at least China or push them back inside of China.

That‘s called an invasion.’

Sorry, everybody, if you don’t agree with this definition, but that’s what it is.

So US is yet again confirming that it will invade China if China attempts to continue its reunification by using military action.

So this is a very, very dangerous game that US are playing.

George Carlin – It’s A BIG Club & You Ain’t In It!

Classic.

What’s the funniest reason you’ve been called in to school to collect your child?

Lots of bullying stories. Here is mine. My son (autism spectrum, language disabilities) had a chum who happened to be a boy-crazy girl. Dating wasn’t his thing, but she was pretty smart and he liked her and they looked out for each other.

Another boy in the class was a little behind on his social skills, and was doing some low-end bullying of her. Calling out to her “Hey— coat rack!” or similarly stupid things. She was annoyed, but it wasn’t quite so bad that teachers noticed or disciplined him.

Anyway, we got a phone call from school that my son finally lost his temper and pushed this kid against the wall, telling him to knock it off and never do it again. It was pretty clear that regulations about bullying required us to be told of his inappropriate response, so they were following the rule but they weren’t too concerned.

When I told the program director of his previous school about this, he high-fived me. It never would have happened when my son was overwhelmed with sensory overload, so it was a real sign of progress.

China Destroyed US Sanctions Whole Car Industry in Big Trouble

Historic times!

Patrick Lawrence: The Real Threat From China: They’re Better at Capitalism Than We Are

The Biden regime’s robotic procession to Beijing proceeds apace. Following Antony Blinken’s fruitless visit in mid–June, we have paid Janet Yellen’s airfare for another fruitless visit, and following Yellen it was the same for John Kerry. This week it is Gina Raimondo’s turn. The secretary of state, the Treasury secretary, the chief climate envoy, and the commerce secretary: What is the point of this parade?

I cannot but wonder whether these officials are dispatched across the Pacific in descending order of competence. Raimondo, who previously flopped as governor of Rhode Island—except for her plan to cut civil service pensions, an unfortunate success—is mediocrity made flesh. The Chinese must be wondering, with chagrin or amusement or both, who the Biden regime will next send their way.

The assignment in all these cases is the same: It comes down to “two seemingly contradictory responsibilities,” as The New York Times’s Ana Swanson put it in a curtain-raiser last week. She described “a mandate to strengthen U.S. business relations with Beijing while also imposing some of the toughest Chinese trade restrictions in years.”

This is succinct, although we can live without the “seemingly.” Proposing to conduct routine business while sabotaging China’s competitive position in advanced technologies is prima facie a ridiculous idea. But The Times must have its “seemingly,” because it is imperative we pretend the Biden regime thinks sensibly and means well in its relations with the People’s Republic.

Blinken got nothing done, Yellen got nothing done, Kerry got nothing done, and in Raimondo’s case it is hopeless. The final item on her itinerary is a visit to Disneyland in Shanghai, and you have to credit the secretary’s scheduler for the parting reference to dreams and fantasy. An English friend observes that we Americans are doing a lot of blinkin’ and yellin’ across the Pacific these days. Fair enough, but I think it is more of the former than the latter for the time being. This administration simply has no idea what a sound China policy would look like.

What is this all about? For a long time now I have concluded that Biden’s foreign policy people match the definition of insanity commonly but mistakenly attributed to Einstein. These people seem to be doing the same thing again and again while expecting a different outcome. But with Raimondo’s visit to Beijing this week I have to revise this assessment. Those running Biden’s national security policies are unimaginative ideologues petrified of diverging from the neoliberal catechism, yes, but they are not insane. I start to see in their dealings with Beijing a diabolical design to which the Chinese are very right to object.

The Biden administration’s China strategy comes down to parrying, in a word. All the pointless talk is intended to obscure a concerted effort to undermine China’s economy because we cannot compete with it in various strategic sectors, while—part two—buying time to move maximum U.S. military hardware as close to the mainland as possible under the program the Defense Department named a few years ago the Pacific Defense Initiative, the PDI.

At the horizon, we are likely to see Washington’s trans–Pacific military ambitions trump longstanding trade and investment relationships. This is what “decoupling” and now “delinking” are all about. They are warnings to the corporate and financial sectors that their interests, which came first in the decades after the Dengist reforms of the 1980s, will no longer take precedence as the new Cold War Biden constantly denies provoking destroys relations with the mainland.

Two years ago Raimondo gave an interview to CNBC

, the financial news network, that more or less announced the Biden regime’s intention to subvert key sectors of China’s economy. She was about to address something called the U.S.–E.U. Trade and Technology Council and told her interlocutor, “If we really want to slow down China’s rate of innovation, we need to work with Europe.”

It is useful once in a while to have dumbheads such as Raimondo in high positions, because, without meaning to do so, they can tell you so much more than you are supposed to know. Slowing down China’s impressive advances in high-technology sectors was precisely Washington’s intent by the time Raimondo spoke. The Commerce Department under her direction has since imposed a wide variety of restrictions on U.S. exports to China of semiconductor chips, software systems, and the machinery used to produce both. As Ana Swanson reports, Raimondo is likely to pile on more of these as soon as she returns from Beijing.

The Biden regime dresses up this profoundly undignified conduct as “narrowly targeted” to technologies that could be of use to the Chinese military. Jake Sullivan set the tone for all of these visitors to Beijing in a speech at the Brookings Institution last April. “We are imposing necessary restrictions on specific technology exports,” he explained, “while seeking to avoid an outright technological blockade…. The administration intends to maintain a substantial trade relationship with China.”

This is what Raimondo and all of those who preceded her to China say when explaining their intent: Washington’s sole concern as Raimondo imposes her regime of restrictions is national security, and all else can proceed rosily. It is hard to think of a flimsier dodge. By this standard, she would have to restrict sales of Juicy Fruit gum to the Chinese. What the Biden administration is doing comes down to securitizing the economic relationship. If you have ever doubted that the United States is a failing imperium unwilling to accept 21st century realities, I offer this as proof of the proposition.

The Chinese know this and have said so many times. I no longer think Blinken, Yellen, et al. have any thought of persuading them otherwise on these journeys. That only looks like their intent. Their true purpose is in the way of theatrical, and Americans are their true audience: They must make sure we do not understand Gina Raimondo’s efforts to punch the Chinese well below their belts for what they are: an uncompetitive nation’s attempts to hold back a rising economic power.

I found that speech Sullivan delivered last spring

interesting for what he left out as much as for what was in it. There was not a single mention of the U.S. military buildup at the western end of the Pacific.

Talk about elephants in the living room. The Pentagon is developing the Australian–British–U.S. alliance known as AUKUS, there is the Quad group, comprising the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan, there are these recently and assiduously fortified alliances with Seoul, Tokyo, Manila, and Canberra, and none of this, we hear again and again, has anything to do with surrounding China or providing for the movement of U.S. military capabilities westward toward the mainland. This is only “seemingly” the case, as The Times would put it.

It is the same as with Raimondo’s projects on the technology side: Neither the Chinese nor anyone else in Asia believes these silly explanations, and no one expects them to do so. Beijing knows very well there is a point to all these apparently pointless visits U.S. officials insist on making. The Biden regime is buying time as it remilitarizes the western end of the Pacific. The only people who are supposed to understand otherwise are Americans. We are not supposed to watch as Washington provokes and prosecutes Cold War II before our eyes. We are supposed to watch as American officials—reasonable, constructive, well-intended—make all efforts to talk to the Chinese in the face of their stubborn reluctance to cooperate.

This is my revised take on the Blinken–Yellen–Kerry–Raimondo cavalcade across the Pacific. These people are not clods. They are purposefully malicious and, it should go without saying, are making the world even more dangerous than it already is.

There are two things to think about here. One, the Biden regime’s efforts to obscure what it is up to at the other end of the Pacific is a straight reprise of the first Cold War, which now resides in all but the most important history books as the responsibility of the Soviets. We have a responsibility to render and defend an accurate record so that this does not happen again.

Two, there is this administration’s immense betrayal of Americans as it aggresses in the Pacific, along with the numerous lost opportunities of which American are deprived. You will find in that Jake Sullivan speech grand and plentiful references to the revival of the American middle class, bipartisan unity, and other such elevated thoughts. Read the speech and then ask: What is this nation’s leadership doing in the cause of a competitive America?

Are we redoubling efforts to educate our people or are we, diabolically, shutting down access—see the University of West Virginia—to liberal arts education? What are we doing to produce the doctors and scientists we need to find our way in the 21st century? What are we doing to bring the dispossessed into the economy, address drug addiction, and all our other debilitating social ills? What are we doing—seriously doing, I mean—to repair and build out the infrastructure we need? Nothing or not enough are my answers.

The Chinese challenge could and should be understood as a chance to reinvent America by way of a Great Mobilization, cap “G,” cap “M,” of New Deal magnitude. There is, of course, no more than lip service to any such idea. We are instead sacrificing this historic opportunity to the military-industrial complex, the greed of corporations, and the ambitions of political leaders who lack all principle or any thought for the commonweal.

Maybe you think, as I do, that none of the Biden officials flying off to Beijing is serious about the true work to be done in our relations with China, or is competent to do it. We must consider, bitterly, that they are perfectly representative of our circumstances as defined by a leadership that is more or less across the board unserious and incompetent to meet the great challenges of our time—China merely one among many.

Biden’s adviser meets China foreign minister in bid to ease tensions

Its working now – thanks to Huawei chip.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has held “candid” talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Malta this weekend, as the world’s two largest economies seek to stabilize troubled relations over trade and militarization of the Pacific.

During the two days of talks on Saturday and Sunday, Wang brought up the issue of Taiwan – a self-governing, democratic island that China claims as its own territory – as a “red line that cannot be crossed in Sino-US relations”. The US has vowed to defend Taiwan against possible Chinese aggression.

“The United States noted the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” said the White House in a statement, adding that the two officials “committed to maintain this strategic channel of communication and to pursue additional high-level engagement”.

A Chinese government statement on the Malta meeting largely echoed the US version, saying “the two sides conducted candid, substantive and constructive strategic communication”.

China has accused the US of weaponizing tech and trade issues under the guise of national security while Washington has warned Beijing against its military ambitions in Taiwan and the Pacific. The US has forged security alliances in the Pacific to counter growing Chinese influence.

Sullivan’s meeting with Wang was the latest in a series of high-level discussions between US and Chinese officials that could lay the groundwork for a meeting of US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping later this year.

Sullivan last met Wang in the Austrian capital Vienna in May.

Why I Gave up on the American Dream

Huawei is full of surprises

Huawei has made an interesting discovery about the Kirin 9000s processor after a recent software update. Previously, this processor was thought to have an 8-core architecture, but it turns out it actually has 12 cores. This revelation has attracted significant attention, as it brings a substantial boost in processing power and performance for devices using this chip. It’s always exciting when technology surprises us with hidden capabilities, and this discovery could have a positive impact on the performance

of devices powered by the Kirin 9000s processor.

Huawei has released HarmonyOS 4.0.0.116 for its Mate 60 series and Mate X5 smartphones. These devices are powered by the Kirin

9000s chipset, which is a new processor developed by Huawei. This update brings the latest features and improvements to these smartphones, enhancing their performance and user experience. It’s always a good sign when manufacturers continue to support their devices with software updates, ensuring that users can enjoy the latest innovations and enhancements.

There seems to be a discrepancy in the reported core count of the Kirin 9000s chipset in the Huawei Mate 60 series. Initially, phone information apps and Geekbench indicated that the chip had an 8-core architecture. However, after a recent software update, these sources are now reporting that the Mate 60 is running a 12-core chip. This is indeed an interesting development, and it could indicate that Huawei has unlocked additional cores in the chipset

through a software update, potentially improving its performance. It’s a noteworthy change, and users may experience enhanced performance as a result of this update.

in the meanwhile … see Huawei new Cloud Service

I gave up on the American Dream|And you should too

Have your parents tried to reach you out after cutting contact with them?

My mother did. I moved out at 18 because of physical abuse (beatings). I didn’t talk to her for about 10 years. She called me one day and asked if she could see me. I said no. She started crying and begged me to see her. I agreed. We met and talked for awhile. She told me how sorry she was for the way she treated me growing up. She apologized and begged my forgiveness. She told me of the abuse she went thought from both her parents. Like burning her tongue with a red hot knife for lying. And the beatings that left her bloody. By the time the evening was over, we were both crying and hugging. After that we had a more loving relationship until she passed away.

What’s the most offensive thing you’ve heard when someone assumed you didn’t understand their language?

Years ago, pre-Covid, I went on holiday to Hong Kong with my mother and aunt. I was a teenager at that time, so most of the time, I was roped in to become my mother and aunt’s ‘pack mule’ when we weren’t sightseeing, and they were shopping like no tomorrow.

So one time, we passed by a shop that was selling jewellery and my aunt wanted to take a look. One of the shop attendants take one look at us and spoke to her colleague in Cantonese.

Now, I live in Singapore, and me, my aunt and my mother are all Singaporean Chinese. As such, we are bilingual and Cantonese happened to be one of the languages we can speak and understand.

Essentially, the shop attendant is telling her colleague to not serve us or just show us the cheapest items they got as ‘we can’t afford it anyway’.

Oh geez, I wish phones have the video function at that time, as the dressing down my aunt and mother gave to that shop attendant is GOLD! Not to mention her very impressive imitation of a fish out of the water!

6 Major Culture Shocks After Returning to the US From Europe

Do you agree with Eric Xu Zhijun that China’s semiconductor manufacturing technology will continue to be in catch-up mode for a long time because of US export controls?

The world knows better. China will absolutely take over the entire chip making process, production, business and industry. The U.S. can make some chips for its military equipment. At 1000 times the cost of a Chinese equivalent to fool themselves that they are in charge if that is what they want. That is their right.

But there is no way China will stop till they make their own stuffs. And they will get it done faster, better and cheaper. They always do. The U.S. export control will end the U.S. involvement in 99.9% of chip business losing them trillions of dollars over time. It is too bad. It is not what China wants it is what China is forced into it by the U.S. excesses and U.S. obnoxious and despicable behaviour.

Which childish things you still do?

I grew up in a poor family from a small, poor village in Vietnam.

I don’t know why, but to me when I was a small kid, a globe being displayed on the top shelf of a glass cabinet in the living room was the symbol of wealth. A family had that thing, they were rich – that was my silly logic. I liked the globe a lot, but I knew I couldn’t ask my parents for one – because we’re poor.

In my neighborhood, there was a decent family. The husband was a math teacher. He liked me, because every time when I had a tough math homework, I would bring it to him, asked for his guidance, listened and tried to solve it. I also played chess with him. I liked him, because, well, he was nice but also because he had a globe.

One day, after finishing a chess match with the math teacher, I stood there in front of their cabinet, looked up to the globe with my widening eyes. I guessed that he noticed it. He opened the cabinet, took the globe down, then he showed me and asked, “Do you know which country is The land of the Rising sun? Do you know why they said The empire on which the sun never sets?”. I shook my head. Then he told me stories about countries, and the world. All of my dreams were condensed into two things: traveling the world and owning a globe.

I grew up. My dream about traveling around the world is still an on-going dream. But I do own a globe now. A very traditional old school style globe. I don’t display it in a cabinet. I have it on my dining table.

Every day, during dinner, we play a game called Where am I now?. Each of us will take turn to pick a country, then others will ask questions, ‘Are you in Asia?’; ‘You border the ocean?’;… and try to guess which country is it.

Why I Left the USA (Again)

The consumerism here in the USA is ridiculous. And people’s self worth is all determined by what they buy and their social media reels. So sick of it.

What is the sleaziest, dirtiest trick an auto insurance company tried to pull on you? Did they succeed?

In mt early 20’s I had a cute little expensive sports car that I had worked multiple jobs to afford. Some idiot rear ended me and did a lot of damage to it and it should probably have been totalled. Insurance adjuster comes to my house, reeking of alcohol, and decides it can be saved.

Trying to take advantage of my youth & sex, he tells me that he can help me out by referring me to his buddy’s shop to get all the work done. RED flag #1 And that I needn’t worry about getting ripped off. RED flag #2. And that his friend would gladly send a flat bed to my house that afternoon, free of charge, to pick it up. RED flag #3. He gives me his friend’s business card

He then proceeds to hand me a pre-written “letter” from my insurance company, that he has personally signed, that authorizes any & all work to be done. RED flag #4. I read it and realize that nowhere in the paperwork does it state that I have to use his friend. Actually, it is an authorization for me to go anywhere.

I sign it, get my copy and quickly usher him out, implying that I need to call his friend and get this in the works. He leaves smiling. I call my buddy who owns a high end exotic & sports car repair shop and read him the letter. He confirms what I thought and arranges to have a flat bed sent ASAP.

My buddy does the accident repairs, plus a few other custom things that I wanted done. Ends up costing 40% more that a brand new version of my car. Pissed off insurance company contacts me to find out how this all went down. I explained about the adjuster being drunk, pushing his friend’s business, the pre-written letter he showed up with etc.

Ends up the adjuster was getting kick backs from his “friend” and gets fired. Plus the insurance company sued him & won a judgement requiring him to pay the full cost of my car’s repair. And I got my car back in better shape than when I bought it.

As a Canadian, would you like to switch your healthcare system to one like America?

I was in Michigan with a bunch of Canadian students on a SERVE trip. Our host, the pastor of a church, complained that when he retired all he would have was “‘Obama Care, like the health insurance you Canadians hate so much.”

I said,”Whaaaaat?”

He insisted we Canadians hate our health care system with its delays and problems. He ‘knew this fact’ from TV and articles he’d read.

I told him, “There’s not a single politician I’ve heard of in Canada who would publicly say he would get rid of our health care and replace it with an American system. Not one. He or she would never be re-elected.”

“Whaaat?” he asked me. “How about heart attack victims who never got treated in time and died? I read about a guy…”

“You have to start reading Canadian newspapers and watching Canadian news channels. We love our health care system. Sure, there are delays, but usually serious cases are treated quickly and families are not bankrupt when they have a medical emergency. You can thank Kiefer Sutherland’s grandfather…”

“Who?”

“Tommy Douglas, grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland, the actor. First Canadian leader to initiate universal health care in his Province.”

“His what?”

Finding True America: Why Americans have left the U.S.

Should Putin be made aware that his future lies with the West and not China? Does he not see this?

Putin cares about the security of Russia preserving the Russian motherland and it’s glory

He cares about RUSSIA and he will choose his future based on what is best for Russia

Putin has no ideology

He is a crisp man of logic and reasoning


Here is why he won’t trust the West again:-

  • They are LIARS – They promised no eastward expansion of NATO, They made promises with Minsk 2 – eventually they lie and lie and lie some more.
  • They are steeped in Ideology – They are insane. The leaders are. They are steeped in ideology equivalent to Hitlers. They have caused death and devastation of millions of people in the name of human rights and freedom.
  • They HATE RUSSIA – The West hates Russia. It’s as simple as that. They want Russia balkanized. They want Russia broken up and swindled of all it’s resources by the Evil Coalition of the West

Putin may do business with the West in the future but he will never trust them or come on their side

Now let’s see the track record of the West :-

  • They nuked Japan and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people
  • They destroyed Vietnam, a war where they had no direct causation
  • They destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and Syria all for some demented ideology and flooded the world with migrants plus Al Qaeda plus ISIS

They haven’t helped a single country fruitfully towards Independence and Strength

They throttled Japan single handedly in the Plaza accords


China is where the USSR should have been and that rankles Putin

Yet he is enough of a realist to understand that China is a giant and the only major economic bulwark to the USA today

So it’s a mutually beneficial partnership

China has no interests in Europe and Russia has little interest in the South China Sea

They have territorial peace now

Russia has the Military Capabilities and the Energy Resources & Raw Materials and China has the High Intellect People and the Manufacturing and the Economy

Together these two nations form a strong bulwark against Western Sanctions & Bullying & Restrictions

They have the largest pliable land area on earth now and they can route bulk of their energy and trade by land and entirely bypass blockades

Plus China has never let down it’s friends at crucial times nor caused color revolution in any of it’s friendly countries nor interfered with any such country

It’s always been TRADE, TRADE and TRADE


It’s why Putin and Xi are teaming up

It’s the only way to form a bulkwark against Western Hegemony

Get Iran into the picture and maybe Saudi Arabia and that would be a very powerful alliance

Ranch Steak

2023 09 25 15 24
2023 09 25 15 24

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
  • 1 1/2 to 2 pounds round steak
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup beef broth
  • 1 tablespoon Ranch dressing mix
  • 1/2 cup sour cream

Instructions

  1. Heat oil in large heavy, nonstick skillet.
  2. Fry onions until limp. Remove from pan and set aside.
  3. Cut meat into serving size pieces. Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper. Dust lightly with flour and beat it into meat with edge of a saucer. Brown on both sides, adding more oil if needed.
  4. Return onion to pan with meat. Add beef broth, cover and simmer for 50 to 60 minutes or until meat is very, very tender, adding a little more broth if needed.
  5. Combine Ranch dressing mix and sour cream. Remove meat to platter.
  6. Stir sour cream mixture into meat juices. Heat through until bubbly. Pour over meat and serve.

It’s Happening. Americans FINALLY Leaving The US!

What is the reason for the belief that there is no middle class in China, despite the country having billions of citizens and having one of the largest economies in the world?

This is not true. Since poverty was wiped out in 2020, 800 million Chinese entered into the middle class, that’s 2.5 times US entire population. Half of rural population moved to cities for better education and healthcare. China has 4 times the US population, but less homelessness. Wealth is concentrated in 1% of population in the US, trillionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, and the middle class is shrinking, many without healthcare. “Middle class” as defined by 96% literacy rate in China, people with basic needs of food and shelter, healthcare and old age benefits.

Russia Retaliates for Sevastopol; Hits Kremenchug Airport Where Missiles were launched

World Hal Turner 23 September 2023

Kremenchug airport large
Kremenchug airport large

Just days ago, Ukraine fired either French-supplied “SCALP” or British-supplied “Storm-Shadow” missiles at the Russian Black Sea Fleet HEadquearters in Sevastopol, Crimea, Russia, killing what we are now told was 34 high-ranking Russian officers.  Now, Russia has retaliated.

The Kremenchug Airport, launch site for the cruise missile attack upon Sevastopol, has been hit by a significant Russian missile barrage.

NO AIR-RAID WARNING WAS SOUNDED PRIOR TO THE ATTACK, with locals suggesting Russia utilized low-observable, KH-50 cruise missiles for the retaliation attack.

Both SCALP and STORM SHADOW missiles, which were stored at the Kremenchug airport, along with the Ukrainian SU-24M/MR bomber aircraft which fired those missiles, have been destroyed.

A substantial number of fire-fighters and ambulances have been dispatched to the airport.  We are told there are “significant casualties among pilots, ground crews and even NATO personnel, including Polish troops, who were involved in coordinating the operations and maintaining the missiles.

What do McDonald’s workers do on the overnight shift when there are no orders or customers?

After my first year at university, I ended up working for McDonald’s, where I made a number of friends and several lovers, and even met my first wife.

I generally worked the night shift. The night shift is quite a lot different from day shift: the average age of the workers is slightly higher (at least when I was there, this was decades ago), and the workload is different.

During night shift:

  • We spent a huge amount of time cleaning. We deep-cleaned the lobby, dismantled and cleaned the shake machine, and deep-cleaned cooking trays and food prep utensils. (We didn’t have an industrial dishwasher, this all happened by hand.)
  • We cleaned the grills, a rather tedious process involving lots of scraping with a dedicated tool that was basically an aluminum handle with a stainless steel blade bolted to the end, another tool with a wire mesh pad on the end, and a special cleaning solvent that would take the hair out of your nose.
  • We changed deep-fryer oil.
  • We received the supply truck.
  • We snuck off to make out in the walk-in freezer. Yes, I’m serious. I had several rather delightful makeout sessions with a lovely woman whose name I sadly no longer remember.
  • We played with the helium tanks that the cDonald’s kept on hand for birthday parties. I will never forget working the back drive-through booth one evening when my friend Henry filled a garbage bag with helium, walked into the booth, and pushed it out the window. We all just kind of stood there watching it float away…including the customers in the drive-through lane.
  • We played practical jokes on day shift, like stacking the trays the hamburger buns were delivered in all the way to the ceiling, so you actually had to take the entire stack outside to remove the top tray.
  • At closing, we’d disassemble and clean the various bits of equipment before we locked up. Then we’d go across the street to the 24-hour Perkin’s, which back then was called Perkin’s Bar and Grill (this was before they re-branded as “Perkin’s Family Restaurants”). We called the place “Perkin’s Brawl and Grill” because it would usually be the scene of at least one or two knock-down-drag-out bar fights a month.

Bitten by rattlesnake

When I was taking care of my mother in Pennsylvania (she had cancer, and was living alone) I was responsible for the house care taking. This was a “manor”; a massive old house on 11 acres of land.

I did a lot of work on the property; renovating buildings, fixing things, and what-not.

One day, I went about the property and painted fresh white paint on all the water taps that littered the yard.

As I was painting, I heard something that sounded like a shaking rattle and then suddenly there was a blur in front of my eyes, and then nothing.

Sigh.

I hopped back on the tractor and rode to the manor, parked it in the “carriage house” workshop and started to notice that my arm seemed to be sore. I felt a little dizzy and so turned in early.

The next way I woke up with “cotton mouth”, and my arm was all yellow and swollen up and puffy. It was one big lump of piss-colored balloon / eggplant / muscle. I looked in the mirror and I looked like shit.

When looking at my arm, I saw two tiny puncture holes. That to this day I still have.

And that is my story of what it is like getting bit by a rattlesnake.

Todays…

What happened to all of the soldiers who were sent to fight in Vietnam, but didn’t make it there?

One of my favorite Vietnam veteran stories the likes of which never get told. I had a buddy in college post army who was a “Vietnam Vet”. Why the quotation marks? He gets to Nam and settles in at repl. During the first formation an NCO asks if anybody there has experience as a bartender. Having grown up in his father’s bar in Rochester, NY he raises his hand. After checking him out to their satisfaction he packs his shit and is flown to Guam to run the officer’s club bar for the length of his tour. His total time in Nam was about 36 hours!!!

After watching the American playbook in Ukraine, it is so obvious to China what the US will do in the Asia-Pacific. How has China’s thinking changed with regards to Taiwan?

U.S., Japanese and South Korean fleets scurried away during military exercises last month. Do they want to repeat?

Why don’t they stay? It turns out that they were afraid that the PLA would take over their nest!

If it were an actual battle, Apra Naval Base and Andersen Air Force Base would have been reduced to ruins long ago. The United States Indo-Pacific Command is in danger.

image
image

Taiwan is Chinese territory, Taiwan is in China.

The Yankee fleet only dared to circle around, but did not dare to enter the area near Taiwan.

Transport ships, transport planes, the PLA lets them in, they can come in. If they are not allowed in, they can only fire with their mouths on the other side of the network.

Nice Picture

2023 09 26 16 54w
2023 09 26 16 54w

Herbed Steak

Herbed Steak is excellent served with hot buttered noodles with dill.

Herbed Steak 610x407 1
Herbed Steak 610×407 1

Ingredients

  • 1 pound round steak
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon seasoned salt
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 1 tablespoon herb seasoning

Instructions

  1. Cut steak into serving-size pieces.
  2. Combine flour and seasoned salt.
  3. Pound into steak. Brown meat on both sides in hot oil in heavy skillet.
  4. Add remaining ingredients. Cover; simmer 45 minutes, or bake at 350 degrees F for 1 hour.

The Sopranos – Tribute music video

Lonely Road – Everlast

“Today while at the gas station I overheard a lady in her late 20’s telling 2 other men to leave her alone

so I decided to walk over to them and I asked her ” how was the meeting today darlin? ” she looked at me and said ” it was good, I’ll tell you more about it when we get home in a few “. I replied with ” wonderful I’ll pick up your favorite for dinner”.

The two guys left in a hurry and she told me ” you have no idea how much that meant to me …. thank you.” I said “you’re very welcome ma’am …. you can never be too careful. “

I made sure the guys left before I walked back to my car and as I was walking back all I could do was think ” I hope a man does that for my future daughter one day”.”

~ Cody Bret

Confession of the Day

$300k in debt (no mortgage). $297,677.49 to be exact.

$215k law school debt, $40k graduate school debt, $25k credit cards, $11k car loan, and a personal loan.

After 5 years of deep denial- I think I’ve finally accepted how badly we fucked up. I feel like I’ve gone through the stages of grief multiple times this year.

We paid for very expensive degrees that didn’t need to be. We racked up a shit ton of credit card debt by spending money like entitled a**holes and not using a budget. I wish I could go back in time, slap 23 year old me (and my husband) and ask, repeatedly- what the hell are you doing??

We would go out to bars and dinners every weekend with friends. insert Discover card. We would regularly order takeout. insert Amex card. We went on yearly vacations. insert Jet Blue card. We financed furniture???? Not to mention we walked right into the “prestige” private school bullshit.

We ate that shit up. And for what? To impress people? To prove that we’re worth something? All the above? It’s so normalized to be in debt as a millennial.

Everyone had credit cards, everyone was going out, everyone had student loans. We were super normal! You’re only young once- amiright?!

I found Dave last year, when I was hitting rock bottom. My debit card was getting declined at the gas station and the grocery store regularly.

After listening to The Ramsey Show for a couple weeks, I realized how screwed we were. I remember the first time he talked about the borrower being a slave to the lender.

That’s exactly how I felt. I couldn’t breathe. I had a mental breakdown. I haven’t really been able to relax since. My husband and I spent all last year fighting about money and almost got divorced.

We’re on BS2 right now. We should bring in around $170k this year before side gigs. We have paid off $12k since June. We started FPU last week. We’re throwing everything at the debt. I’m working my ass off. Husband is working 65+ hrs a week and donating plasma.

We dropped more than half of our “friends.” It’s a humbling experience to say the least. My mother in law makes us dinners a couple days a week to help out.

Family and friends ask why we’re not having kids or buying a house yet. The whole situation is embarrassing, but we deserve it.

I don’t blame anyone but myself. I’m not expecting anyone to “forgive” or payoff our dumpster fire. We were extremely stupid and entitled, but we need to get out of this ourselves. I just need prayers that we can make it out of this. We will. Hopefully better than who we were before.

Just trying to “embrace the suck” and keep up the motivation.

Europe-US tech war breaks out! 17 European countries boycott the US!

https://youtu.be/78bH7wbM-kc

What was the most brutal military tactic in history?

I’m serious when I say this is actually one of the cruelest things you can do in a battle because it exploits human’s basic survival instinct.

Leave your enemy a way to escape.

Human beings aren’t so different from the many types of creatures that roam the planet, One of the universal traits shared by so many species is this. Fight or flight or freeze.

In a situation that presents danger, living creatures will perform one of these actions. Fight, meaning we leap into action and confrontation. Flight, meaning we try to remove ourselves from the danger. Freeze, where we are facing an unfamiliar situation and do nothing.

As the last several thousand years of recorded history has shown, humans have yet to grow beyond these basic instincts. It’s a part of who we are.

The brilliance comes in exploiting this mindset in a military situation. Consider a classic military tactic. Encirclement.

The idea of encirclement is simple. Use your forces to surround an enemy and isolate them. Cut off their means of supplying themselves with material and reinforcement. Strangle them as you make sure that you don’t run low on supplies. It’s classic thinking for military warfare, especially in regards to sieges.

But I want you to think of that in terms of what I just told you. “Fight, flight or freeze”.

If you take away an enemy’s ability to retreat, you are actually giving them a subtle advantage.

This might be hard to understand for people who don’t expect to face life or death situations. Facing a scenario where you have a high chance of dying without chance of survival is less stressful than a situation where you might survive. Why is this? Because it’s less complicated.

if you make your enemy think they can’t escape, you remove the “flight” option. And you have increased the chances of them choosing “Fight”.

I’ll use a real world example to explain this better. Pirates.

Now back in the days when piracy was men in giant wooden ships sailing through the Caribbean, there were several unspoken rules of piracy. One of the most important of which was FLAGS. A lot of successful pirates had their own heraldry, much like Noble Houses of Europe.

Pirates would hide their flags from plain sight. They would only unfurl their banners when stalking targeted ships. They would suddenly spring the flag from cover, displaying to their prey their intent to rob and plunder.

Now if you were some poor merchant ship who was suddenly ambushed on the high seas, your greatest fear was seeing THIS flag.

If you saw a RED Pirate flag unfurled that meant you were in serious trouble. Pirates who used red flags intended no mercy for their prey and were going to kill and do unspeakable things to whomever they captured, even if they surrendered and begged for their lives. Red flag pirates were torturous, murdering bastards who would probably laugh as they set you on fire or tossed you into the sea with weights tied to your ankles.

What you wanted to see was a white pirate flag.

Pirate flags that had white (or lacked red generally) were from pirate crews who were more reasonable. Generally if you surrendered to these pirates (either immediately or after a short battle), the worse they would do is steal your valuables, most of your food and maybe abduct some of your crew. After that they’d let you go peacefully. They would usually kill you only if you fought to try to stop them. If you happened to be belligerent and refused to give them your supplies, they would probably torture you or threaten to torture you.

Defeating your opponent isn’t just skill at arms. There’s a mental component to combat and sometimes you can defeat an opponent before you even cross swords.

If you are a pirate with a red flag, here is what your opponent is going to be thinking.

“Okay that pirate ship is coming for me. If I surrender or do nothing, they are definitely going to kill me. If I fight back, they MIGHT kill me. But if I fight back, maybe I’ll kill them before they kill me. I might even be able to win and go home. I think I’m going to fight back.”

If you are a pirate with a non-red flag, here is what your opponent will be thinking.

“Okay that pirate ship is coming for me. If I surrender or do nothing they are probably going to let me go free if I let them steal everything. If I fight back I might be able to win. If I fight back though, I could lose, be captured and then tortured to death in front of friends. Combat is unpredictable, I could be killed fighting before the battle is over. If I die I won’t be able to go home, get a drink, make love to a woman and live a peaceful life. I think I’ll take my chances with surrendering.”

Contrary to what you may think, it is a poor sign of a warrior to seek battle over capitulation. Fighting is unpredictable. On the high seas, pirates defined success by captured treasures, not the number of people they killed. Sailors knew this. This is why when pirate offered fair terms their enemies surrendered almost immediately.

If you back a man into a corner, he will fight to survive. If you back a man into a corner and give him a way to escape unharmed, there’s a good chance that man will take the escape route.

This is why professional armies don’t massacre their prisoners. It’s why armies take prisoners in the first place. If you have an enemy surrounded, that enemy faces a choice. Fight and likely die or surrender and likely live. It’s much harder to have a man fight knowing he can surrender than fight until he stops breathing.

image
image

Facing death when it’s the only option is easy. Facing death when you want to survive is hard.

Now here comes the brutal part.

As your enemy runs through that corridor of escape you strike HARD. Your enemy thinks they are safe. That they still have a clear path to run away. Then you attack them at their most unsuspecting. Take advantage of their weakness.

This is a tactic that is used in battles of annihilation. Where the objective is to annihilate enemy spirit, not just manpower. There are countless examples of this used in history. But there is one example that chills my very soul when I think back on it.

Napoleon’s Folly

image 1
image 1

It was the year 1812. Napoleon had just realized he couldn’t conquer Russia. Napoleon’s campaign to dominate the largest European kingdom had ground to a halt. He could win on the battlefield, but an extended conflict would ultimately accomplish nothing. The Russians refused to surrender, even when their own capital had been seized and the Tsar had fled. Facing an impossible situation, Napoleon ordered a withdrawal.

Now the Russians could have counterattacked, encircled Napoleon and tried to capture him with their superior numbers and knowledge of the land. What they did was worse. They let the French walk back the way they came.

image 2
image 2

The French army marched back through lands they had already conquered. These areas had been picked clean of food. In their places was less than nothing. Napoleon’s grand army, the largest on Earth at that time, was cut off from supplies. This was literally as the Russian winter was beginning.

But they could still escape. The Russians were only behind them. So they started walking back.

image
image

Yellow line represents French invasion into Russia. Black line indicates retreat. The thickness of the line represents amount of men.

All the while, the Russians bled them with raids. Mounted horsemen, Irregular militias. Pin prick attacks from a thousand directions. But never a concentrated military attack. The Russians kept bleeding the French. Bit by bit by bit.

The French couldn’t turn around and retaliate. The invasion had failed and now all they wanted to do was go home. They thought they would be safe if they just kept walking west. And they kept getting more and more hungry. The weather became worse and worse.

image 3
image 3

This is when the Grand Army began to break down. Deserters abandoned the army in droves. Their equipment was insufficient for fighting in winter and broke down in unrelenting cold. And the Russians kept circling their flanks. Never surrounding them. Never stopping them from retreating.

So the French kept walking west. There was still a chance they probably thought. If they endured a few more days, a few more hundred miles, they could make it. They kept weakening themselves. Structure and order were undone as desperation infected the French ranks. They lost whatever advantage they may have had fighting the Russians directly and weakness began to suffocate them. Hunger, disease and deprivation on a massive scale.

The retreat from Russia lasted from October to December of 1812. By the time the Grand Army had entered friendly territory, they had been reduced to barely 20,000 emaciated survivors.

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And that’s how you destroy an army of 700,000 men. You give them hope of escape.

The Nurse

“Today I woke up feeling like I had a hangover. I’m starting my 4 day break from the ICU, after working 6 of the last 8 days. I drug myself down the stairs and starting cleaning house as I normally do on my days off. I glanced at myself in the mirror at the bottom of my stair case. Horror. My face blatantly shows the pure exhaustion that I feel, and my hair looks a complete mess. “Thank god I’m off work today and my patients won’t have to see this worn out version of myself” is my first thought.

People who aren’t nurses always tell me, “You only work three days a week? Wow! That must be great. I wish I had your schedule!”..Only three days a week? ONLY!? I wake up at 4:30AM, shake off my fatigue, drive an hour to work, and then begin my scheduled 12 hour shift. 12 often turns into 13 hours or even more depending on the patient load and if I were able to keep up with my charting. When I’m done and finally clock out, I drive home arriving around 8PM, where I strip out of my scrubs and collapse onto the couch where I snuggle my cats and tell my husband about my day until I pass out from exhaustion. I slip upstairs to bed, to the disbelief of my husband that I could possibly be so tired, and I set my alarm and prepare for my next shift.

ONLY 36 hours a week. But does anyone who’s not a nurse know what those 36 hours consist of? Juggling all my nursing tasks for each individual patient while also trying to communicate with the doctors, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, PT, OT, social work, our aides, the patients themselves, and their families?! Yes, that’s right, I communicate with all of these people on a daily basis. I am personal coordinator for my patients. I am their voice, their advocate. I must be aware of my patients needs at all times. Room 101 is going up stairs to cath lab at 0900. 102 wants their pain medicine at 0915. 103 needs to be turned at 0930. Got it. My mental check list is a never ending dynamic that I must prioritize and rearrange constantly.

My job is scary. Always thinking, always analyzing, ALWAYS aware of my actions. I could cause a patient to lose their life if I am not critically thinking about everything that I do and every medication that I give. Is this dosage appropriate, does this patient need this medication? It is all my responsibility to keep the patient safe.

Even when I am doing everything that I can it isn’t always enough. I’ve had family members displeased that I took a little longer to answer a call light. I’m sorry that I couldn’t get you a coke right away, I was busy titrating a lifesaving medication in the room right next to yours. I have been asked by a family member if I were qualified to even be a nurse, surely I was too young for that. I have been told that I am too weak to help lift a patient when in reality I can lift more weight that I weigh. Nursing is hard. I take all these comments and offer a kind response to remain professional even though it can make me feel really small at times. Not feeling appreciated is hard when all I am trying to do is help.

I have been there when a patient said their lasts words before being intubated and never being able to come off of the vent. I have been there as a patient has taken their last breaths on the earth. I have been there when a patient has decided that their body can no longer fight, and they would like to receive comfort care. I have provided comfort care as family members are silent, with tears streaming down their faces, as I turn the lifeless body of their once resilient family member. I have been there when a doctor has told a healthy, active patient in front of their spouse that they have stage 4 cancer, and will not survive. I have stood and held my tears to remain strong for family members who have had their hearts shattered by the news that their loved ones will not be coming home again. I have sobbed on my way home from work because my heart is shattered too. I am so sorry that you have to go through these things. I am so sorry that your loved one has cancer. I am so sorry that myself and the doctors couldn’t get your loved one to wake back up after being sedated on the ventilator. Nursing is hard. I am human. I care about my patients. How could I not? My heart breaks along with my patients and their family members. Then I go home and try to pretend that I have not been broken during my shift. I don’t want to burden my husband with my sadness, and I need to pull it together so I can go back to work in the morning and do it again.

So how do I do it? How do all nurses do it? How do we manage ONLY 36 hours a week? Because nursing is beautiful. I have been there as a scared patient on a ventilator has woken up so I held her hand and told her that everything would be okay. She could not speak as she had a lifesaving breathing tube down her throat. Somehow she managed to grasp a pen with her weak hands and wrote “I love you guys.” My heart exploded with joy. I have provided comfort to someone when they were far from comfortable. I have been there when a patient has come off of a ventilator after being on it for a week, and watched as they cried and said they were so happy to be alive. I helped bring that person relief. I have bought lip gloss for an elderly patient whose son forgot to bring in her lipstick. The smile on her done up face was priceless as she put on the lip gloss to complete her look. I have made a patient genuinely happy even though she is sick and in the critical care unit. I have been there providing comfort care to a dying loved one and family members have hugged me and thanked me for being the angel that their family member needs. Nursing is beautiful. Life is beautiful. I watch lives change, I watched lives end, and I watch lives get a second chance because of the care and medicine that I have provided.

Nursing is hard. Nursing is stressful. Nursing is exhausting. It drains me both physically and mentally. I come home tired, sweaty, and defeated. Not all days are good days. Nursing is not all sunshine and rainbows. But nursing is my life. I dedicate my life to saving the lives of others. Those break through moments when a patient miraculously recovers, when a patient holds your hand and tells you how thankful that they are for you, and the moments when myself and a patient can share in a good laugh. The feeling of pride I feel when my patient came in on a ventilator but walks out at discharge, makes it all worth it. All the wonderful, precious moments are why I love nursing. The great moments are what get myself and my coworkers through the long, difficult 12 hour shifts. Thank god for fantastic coworkers. My coworkers are like my family. I know that they understand the mental turmoil that I go through after a hard day. Only nurses understand truly what nurses go through.

So the next time that you want to tell a nurse that it must be great to work ONLY 36 hours a week, please be mindful of what those 36 hours are like. Give a nurse a hug today, and be thankful that we continue to do what we do, and don’t judge us when we drink a little extra wine. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

Sincerely,

the exhausted,

but still smiling ICU nurse.”

“Men Deserve To Be Lonely!” Responding To Backlash Over ‘The Male Loneliness Epidemic’

Shoe, I don’t think you’ll ever know how much these videos mean, but thank you. It’s absolutely heart-warming to realise that not everyone in this world is crazy and I don’t have to feel so isolated, that not everything has to be a war, that I could go outside and not be scared to socialise based on things of which I have no control. Thank you.”

Confession of the Day

We got married almost 3 years ago. She started having an affair with her coworker 1 year ago. I got to know that because I saw his car outside my house one day. I had my suspicions. I hired a PI and gathered evidence that she was having an affair with him. I was angry.

Then I got a call from the coworker’s wife that she came to know about the affair. She only had texts they used to send but I have all the receipts of their hangouts. Together we decided to confront them. We used to meet up a lot. She told me she had suspected his affair since her pregnancy. They have 3 children together. One day we had an idea that we should sleep with each other as revenge.

We did and not going to lie it felt good. We have been meeting and having sex for a while. She is an amazing woman. I would say she is better at some things in bed than my wife. Mostly, I am very angry towards my wife. Because in some of her texts with her affair partner she and AP made fun of AP’s wife. Saying things like she has gained weight, her vagina was destroyed and other disgusting stuff. I cannot believe that she would say something like this while being a woman. She even made fun of my fertility issues saying that I am not a man because the chances of me having kids is very low.

I do not feel bad about my affair. I like the sex life I had with AP’s wife way more than my wife. She hardly ever gives me oral but expects me to give her one. At least AP’s wife was more enthusiastic about it and it was the best oral I ever had. AP’s wife wants to tell his husband.

I guess we are both tired about carrying out the revenge affair. We both got carried away. We were both so driven by the revenge that we got addicted to it.

I will confront my wife soon. I already have the divorce papers ready. Since we do not have a joint account or marital assets it will be easy for us.

AP’s wife might have some problems because they have kids but she has the power to take him to cleaners. I know I sound like an awful person. But I am already checked out of my marriage.

What are some common misconceptions about happiness?

Last weekend, my boyfriend asked me to make some creme brulee, so I did. After dinner, I served the dessert.

My boyfriend then pulled out from his pocket a small spoon with an owl on it and handed it to me. I love owls very much (I have a lot of owl things around the house). He told me this is the designated spoon for creme brulee – just for me.

I was happy. And he, after finishing the creme brulee, also was happy.


I find that a lot of people, myself a few years ago included, tend to think and look for big things to be happy in life, like a big house, a fancy car, a steady career,… But then, I learned that, it doesn’t take much for you to be happy.

Life is a difficult journey, lots of things we have to deal with every day. But if you try to collect small and small pieces of happiness along the way, you will be much happier.

Couple finds cats in new home. Guess how they responded.

What did you do when you saw someone stealing while on the job?

I laughed and laughed. He was a maintenance guy at Nabisco back when Nabisco had a Houston facility and he decides to steal a big bench grinder. It maybe weighed a hundred pounds and would have cost around eighty or ninety dollars. Anyway, he couldn’t get it past the guard house so he decided to back his truck up to the building and drop the bench grinder into the bed of the truck from the top of the second floor roof, that would be about a thirty foot fall. Now just doing this in my head and playing fast and loose with the numbers I’m figuring that the bench grinder is going to exert somewhere around ten thousand pounds of impact force when it meets the bed of that truck, and I stood back and smiled.

The grinder hit just in front of the third member and went through the bed of that truck like a cannon shot. It was fabulous!

Man Dies Car Accident; Learned The Truth About The Matrix (NDE)

What screams “I’m educated, but not very bright”?

While living in Atlanta, I met a guy who told me he wanted to move to New Zealand. I was a little surprised. At the time, it wasn’t a country you heard Americans talk about often, at least not in Georgia.

He was a culinary arts graduate though, and in my country (Jamaica) they tend to be pretty cultured people. Partially because of the classes but also because it attracts a lot of upper-middle class students (not sure why!). So I figured this guy likely just knew something I didn’t.

“Why do you want to move to New Zealand?” I asked.

“Because they speak English!” he answered. “I don’t want to have to learn another language.”

I puzzled over this in silence for a moment and then I asked. “Ok, but that’s an interesting choice just for English. I mean, why not Britain?”

“Well, I don’t know what language the British speak,” he responded.

I thought he was joking so I burst out laughing, but I soon realized he wasn’t joining in. “Wait….are you serious??”

“Yes, it’s not like I’ve ever googled that or anything.”

“England is part of Britain…” I hinted, still wondering if maybe he was just toying with me.

Nope. He started to get angry. “I don’t know what language they speak either.”

I was flabbergasted. “DUDE…what language do you think THE ENGLISH speak??”

“I just told you I don’t know,” he started to say, until it dawned on him. He stared at me in awkward silence for a moment and then he got up and left, lol.

He never spoke to me again. 😂

I don’t remember his name or even how we met, but every so often, I think about him and wonder if he’s gotten any smarter with time.

Can you tell me about a time that you sued someone in civil court and won?

While living in a housing community, one morning I returned to where I left my car the previous night, it was gone. Wondering why someone would steal such a crappy car, I called the local police. I wanted a police officer to come out and take a report. Instead, the officer asked me over the phone where the car was removed(address), and license plate number. While we were talking on the phone, other community tenants were wandering the parking lot looking for their car too. The officer informs me that my car was at a local low yard and had been impounded with twelve other cars. It seems the community had issued new parking permits yet failed to notify ALL the tenants.

With a ride from a friend, off I go to the impound lot. When I arrive, I’m welcome by many young retired gang bangers covered with jail and prison colored tattoos. They hold my car hostage, demanding over two hundred dollars I didn’t have to lose. After I pay the ransom, I lean over the counter getting as close to the cashiers face as I can. I tell him I will be suing their company, and it will cost them far more than I’m paying. He responded, laughing, “I hear that threat a dozen times a day”. I respond, “get a good look at my face so you’ll remember me later as the one person who actually did sue you!”

Due to rampant predatory towing, in 2004, California signed into law a detailed code and section listing nearly 12 specific criteria that a towing company must preform prior to impounding a car. No towing companies ever satisfy these requirement. That same law listing the requirement also lists the penalties for towing company and possibly security staff non-compliance. I’m my case, it was four times the extortionist tow charge that they charged.

Off to court I go, filed and waited several months for scheduled court date. When our court date arrives, the company didn’t bother to appear. I was awarded everything I asked for, plus interest.

Off again I go to the tow yard with copy of court order demanding payment, they told me to “pound sand!” The next day the towing company attempted to appeal the order not knowing that you cannot appeal an order issued on a case in which you failed to appear.

Now the fun starts. Off to the Sheriffs Department with my court order to request a till tap levy. Due to the sheer volume of deadbeats in Orange County, this task takes another nine months to arrive. After nearly a year since my car was stolen and held for ransom, the Sheriffs department forcibly collected over a thousand dollars in restitution, penalty, and interest, from a very angry business owner. When it was all over and I’d received my money, I went back to the towing yard and thanked them for stealing my car.

How do I deal with a neighbor who insists on telling his kids to play in my yard? They’re always climbing my tree and messing up my yard while his yard is immaculate. What should I do or say?

I am Answering the question. I am not the one who asked it. I said how I handled it. To the one who asked it.

I am single. No girlfriend or wife to keep me company. I bought a house in a really nice neighborhood. After settling in one weekend I decided to go for a swim in my pool. Lo and behold, there were kids already in there. I thought, am I in the wrong house? I pinched myself. Nope I am in my home. So I sat outside to watch the kids to make sure they stay safe while swimming. After a couple hours they got out and left, saying hi as they left. Just as they were leaving. I told the kids that I really do not want anyone in my pool except me or my family, because of liability issues. Plus I am afraid the kids will urinate in the pool. (I did not tell them that.) So I told them my pool is off limits. They looked at me as if to say “Whatever “. Then they left.

It was OK for a couple days. Then one Saturday I heard the sound of someone in my pool. So outside I sit and watch the neighborhood kids. Like I said before I am single. With no companion. I had always wanted a dog. I thought not only would I have a life companion, I would also have a way to guard my home. So one day I brought my friend home. I installed a dog door and got him a huge comfy dog bed. Now since my dog has access to the back yard I posted warning signs by the gate to state “Guard dog on premises. Do not enter.” Did not think too much about it. Now since I got a friend I wanted to be active with him. We go on walks, go to the park to let him stretch his legs and run, as well as mine.

One morning I heard the doorbell and the dog barking to let me know someone is at the door. So I got up and went to the door. There were kids with towels standing at my door. I asked what they wanted. They told me they are afraid of my dog, and could I put him up so they could swim. I told them “I am sorry, but you are going to have to find another place to play.” I also told them every once in a while it would be OK, but only if they asked first and one of their parents was there to supervise them.” I never heard from them again. I am not saying you should do this, but that is how I solved my issue. Also I am glad I got a dog. He is my best friend and goes with me pretty much everywhere. Where you see me, you see Kronos.

9 SHOCKING Retirement Statistics…We’re In Trouble

What scares you most in life?

It started so innocently. I asked my son to get me something out of the refrigerator. I forgot the word “refrigerator”. I pointed to it and said get me something out of “that.”

I opened the mail once and I received a ticket for running a red light. A camera saw it and I could view what it saw. It was early in the morning and I never tried to stop when the light was red. I could have killed someone. No cars were coming. I don’t remember even being there. Twice I have pulled out of a parking lot and for some reason, I touched the gas pedal hard instead of the brake. I have taken two driving tests by the VA. I passed. I have to focus on every aspect of driving. My driving days are numbered.

My doctor has given me two tests for dementia. Part of a test involves her giving me five words like “apple” to remember. Minutes later, when I am asked to repeat the words, I remember maybe two. I’ve seen a specialist for a four hour session. Drawing a clock, etc. are part of the test.

I have minor to mild dementia. It’s hard to scare me but dementia sure does.

I write and forget grammar rules I’ve known for years.

Any disease is a label, it doesn’t define me. I get to choose what defines me. I was diagnosed with dementia three years ago and I’m fighting it like hell.

Never take for granted looking in a mirror and knowing who you are. Someday I fear I will have no clue who the hell the person is that’s looking back at me.

I plan to fight dementia as hard as I can. I hope it will be years before I slip into total darkness.

The Rise and Fall of the American Mall

What bad experience had you saying “I will never buy from that company or use their service ever again”?

U-Haul

(What I believe should happen to the company)

My wife was moving from Virginia to Ohio, had a U-Haul reservation, and showed up on Saturday morning to pick up her truck. There was no truck, they had rented it out to somebody else, who showed up earlier that Saturday without a reservation. When asked about why they had done that, they blamed us for not being there earlier, on an 8–12 pick up window, when we showed up at 9:00.

Within an hour, we had a Ryder truck. However, later that afternoon, when we were nearly done packing up her stuff, U-Haul called to say they had her truck ready. We said “no” in very definitive terms. Sure enough, two weeks later, when my wife got her credit card statement, U-Haul had charged her for the rental in spite of not having the truck. The customer service representative at U-Haul was inflexible on the charge, stating that they had a truck for her, and it was her fault that she didn’t pick it up.

Never again, they suck. If you rent with them, it will happen to you.

China proposes a new domestic EUV lithography machine plan: “super large lithography factory”!

Wow, China is very innovative by proposing to build EUV lithography as an infrastructure project to get the advantage of large scale production.

This is a great idea as chips will always be needed in the future and it’s applications will be in every product.

By consolidating all the chips manufacturers together one can reduce the price of chips significantly.

No other country will be able to compete as it will be integrated in the infrastructure project. China will be self sufficient all the way through the 21st century.

If your car is stolen, and then you just so happen to stumble across it parked in the street, are you legally allowed to steal it back then and there without calling the police or anything in the USA?

My friend had something like this happen, the rented garage where he worked on his race car was broken into and burgled. They didn’t take the car but took a set of wire wheels with Dunlop Race Tires (a special order option for wet conditions) on them, along with all his tools, etc. He filed a police report.

Well, a week later my friend is downtown and sees an MG B parked at the curb, with his tires and wheels on it. He knew they were his because he had marked them with chalk showing which locations on the car they were on.

He went to a payphone on the same block called the police, and went back to stand by the car.

A cop showed up within a few minutes. He explained to the police officer, and. They waited a while, but the owner didn’t come back.

The police took all the information off the car and called a tow truck.

They eventually tracked down the owner of the car, who was related to the people who rented him the garage. They searched his garage and found all my friend’s tools and other things that were stolen.

The guy was arrested, tried and sent to jail.

What’s the coolest death in history?

I’d vote it would be Ben L. Salomon who was an army Dentist during WWII. In June 1944 he volunteered to replace a wounded surgeon due to there not being much need for a dentist during combat when all hell broke lose.

The Japanese General Saito, after taking massive casualties and being pushed back so far, ordered his remaining 3000-5000 to advance to attack the American forces and die with honor. Outside the medical tent Captain Salomon saw a Japanese soldier bayonet some of the wounded soldiers. He grabbed a nearby rifle and killed the Japanese soldier and went back to tending the wounded inside the medical tent. At that point the defensive line collapsed, unbeknown to Salomon, and two more Japanese soldiers ran into the tent. Salomon clubbed both of them with the rifle, then shot one and bayoneted the other. Four more Japanese solder started crawling under tent. He shot one, bayoneted another one, knifed the third, and head-butted the fourth, allowing one of the wounded soldiers to shoot him. Realizing the dire situation, he ordered the medics to evacuate the wounded. Meanwhile he stayed to provide cover for the soldiers evacuating.

When the military retook the area 15 hours later they found Captain Salomon’s body slumped over a machine gun with 76 wounds from being shot and bayoneted (autopsy revealed 24 of them were inflicted before death), and the bodies of 98 Japanese soldiers piled in front of his position. Based on the blood trail of the wounded Captain, Salomon relocated the machine gun 4 times to maintain a clear field of fire due to the build up of piles of bodies.

Ben L. Salomon is pretty much the embodiment of “Going Out in a Blaze of Glory”

The Feline Couple Came to the Family’s Doorstep Every Day

Nice story.

My wife is a parasite and I feel stuck

My wife (37f) and I (38m) and I have been married for 11 years, together for a few years before that, and have known each-other for over 20 years. We met online when she was 16 and still in high school, and I was 17 and just starting college. For the sake of this rant we’ll call her Connie.

Connie and I lived several states away and, at first, there was some attraction on her part – but I just wanted to stay friends. Over several years we grew closer and decided to have a long distance relationship. I was always awkward with girls in high school and it continued into adulthood. With Connie things just felt natural. After a couple years, when we were talking about meeting in person, she destroyed me. She let me know that she had been having multiple other online relationships and one of these men came to meet her and she wanted to be with him.

Looking back, the smart thing to do would have been to end the story there. Nearly a year later she reached out to me, saying she was sorry and that she missed our friendship. I decided to give friendship another chance and, for a while, it worked. She had a couple other relationships. We’d talk and text regularly. But, over time, the old feelings came back. I admitted them to her and she said she felt the same.

We decided to give things another shot. Eventually she came to visit me and then we would alternate visits. We talked about her coming to live with me, and she did. She worked for a national chain store, so the plan was for her to simply transfer locations. She didn’t do that. Instead she quit. After a couple attempts at finding work, she asked if she could stay at home and take care of the house. Cook, clean, etc. I agreed, since we didn’t really have many expenses. She also refused to get her own bank account, instead using mine and calling everything ‘our’ money. Looking back, the red flags are so blatantly obvious – but I was young and in love.

She never cleaned and rarely cooked.

Instead we ordered out most of the time, wasting any money I had saved. We got several pets, at her insistence. She begged me for over a year to get her pregnant because she wanted a baby. I said I wanted to get married first, which is what ended up happening. When my daughter was an infant we bought a house in order to have more space. She also wanted to be nearer to one of her world of warcraft friends, who we’ll call Aaron.

It was because of Aaron I learned of her fixating behavior.

She will find a male friend online, become ‘besties’ with them, and then eventually find someone else. After Aaron it was Roy. Roy lived further away, but was in a bad relationship with his own wife (ironic) and suicidal. Connie begged me to let him come stay with us until he could get on his feet, admitting she’d already invited him. Defeated, I agreed since I didn’t want to make someone homeless.

He lived with us for a year before he was able to get a job. He is still living with us nearly 9 years later. And to be quite honest it’s because of him I haven’t gone completely insane yet. Connie still barely does any housework. Roy is the one who does the dishes, laundry, and yardwork. All of it.

He does not pay rent, but Connie has access to his bank account and regularly spends his money to the point of overdraft. In the interim years I’ve mostly separated my money from her. There is a bank account she does not have access to, with some savings and from which I pay our bills. If I didn’t do this, she would spend me to overdraft as well. Some of my paycheck goes into a shared account for her, which she regularly overdrafts. After Roy lived here for a while she found another man to be friends with and the cycle continued.

We have two children now, and she barely spends any time with them. Preferring instead to smoke weed (it’s legal here) and play video games for the entirety of the day. Sometimes she cooks, sometimes she’ll even straighten up a bit. However she has filled my house to the brim with clutter. Every room has boxes and boxes of useless shit. Some of it untouched.

I knew she had mental health issues when we were dating, but they have gotten worse and, with the use of tik-tok, she has weaponized them against me. Every time I criticize her for ordering stuff we don’t need (such as groceries that we already have, or junk we will never use) she defends herself by saying she has ADHD and it’s a symptom. She probably does have it, but she’s undiagnosed. She won’t go to a psychiatrist for it. Her medical doctor prescribed her antidepressants, which have helped, but not with everything. The thing is, I have plenty of friends with ADHD. They view it as a part of them which needs to be addressed and worked around/through. She sees it as an excuse to do whatever she wants without consequences.

Recently we went on vacation and she asked if her her latest friend, who is recently divorced and looking for jobs in our area, could stay at our house while we were away (though Roy would be there). I agreed, since it felt bad to make him spend several thousand dollars a week on a hotel room. He’s still here, and it’s been weeks. He’s done some Zoom interviews and occasionally does door dash to make extra cash, but he’s still here. We’ll call him Joe.

Connie and I have hit a breaking point and are talking about divorce. After a long conversation she’s admitted she sees nothing wrong with her behavior, and finds it aggravating that I try to ‘fix’ her. I realized then that there is nothing for me in this relationship anymore. She’s also admitted to having feelings for Joe, and he is in love with her.

The problem now is money. We have 60k left on our house and just bought a new car. She wants to keep the house and the car when we split. I’m fine with this because I would rather live somewhere that isn’t full of her garbage and I don’t drive. But she can’t pay for them, and no bank in their right mind would give her a loan to buy me out. Even if they did, she couldn’t pay it on her own (either Roy or Joe or both would be paying for it).

I want to be done with this relationship so badly, but I feel like I’m trapped here. My kids love their school and I don’t want to make them move. I’m more than happy to get my name off of the house and the car, get some money from the equity, and start over. It would be great to take my kids each weekend and actually DO things with them. But I don’t see a path to get there. I feel trapped in my own house, which is becoming increasingly full of my wife’s pets (both human and otherwise) and all of her garbage.

Even though I want out, I still love Connie (in a way) and don’t want to hurt or destroy her – even though it’s probably better than what she deserves. She first broached the topic of divorce, but now she gets sad regularly thinking about it – and is confused at why I am so often upset with her. All of the stress of having her, and Roy, and Joe, and two young children is eating away at me. And I feel ashamed of the divorce. Ashamed that I couldn’t fix her. Ashamed that I couldn’t put my foot down and say no. Ashamed that there are multiple people living in MY house that I don’t want here. I haven’t told my extended family or friends yet, though I am going out with a friend tomorrow and plan to tell him. And we haven’t told the kids either. It’s all eating me up inside, but just typing this out has helped. I hope it wasn’t too bad of a read. And I hope I can get through this situation sooner rather than later.

(Reddit)

I asked DIGITAL NOMADS how they MAKE MONEY in Bali

Nice Picture

2023 09 26 16 5f3
2023 09 26 16 5f3

The How And Why Of Heroin Addiction

Let me explain it to you, I’ve been an opiate addict for a long time and tried many drugs.

Drugs that are ‘uppers’ have the most ‘obvious’ euphoria.

For example if you take adderall/coke/meth/speed/MDMA you will get this shining bright euphoria, self confidence, energy, and other drug-specific feelings (for meth like you are king or for MDMA like you love everyone).

However, you owe these drugs back what they delivered to you.

After a meth binge, or lots of MDMA use, or staying up all night on coke you will feel like shit.

To an extent this aspect is similar to an alcoholic hangover.

On the other hand, for many people who experiment with heroin they are underwhelmed (not including IV usage, but most experimenters rarely ever IV first time).

They just feel good, chill, happy, but they feel like this spooky drug ‘heroin’ hasn’t delivered. They are just mellow.

Oh obviously it has all been a lie they will think.

Heroin isn’t spooky, it’s chill.

It’s not addictive like everyone else thinks. It doesn’t make you do stupid shit or stay up all day and hallucinate like amphetamines or coke. It doesn’t empty your serotonin like MDMA or give you a hangover like alcohol.

People tend to just think oh, what a nice drug.

So the next day they wake up and everything is normal. No headache or shitty feeling–just a slight afterglow of that nice feeling. Oh it was cheap as well! It only cost $10 for a whole night of being high! I thought people said heroin was expensive?

And then next weekend comes… There are all these drugs I could do but I liked heroin. It didn’t ‘fuck me up,’ I could still think clearly. No hangover. No feeling like shit later. I still was awake. It just made me happy and content with life. Oh and it’s only $10! Well, I should get some more for the whole weekend.

This is great!

I will use Heroin on the weekends now!

Now let’s say this person works and has responsibilities. He knows he can’t go into work drunk, or on MDMA, or high. So he doesn’t. It’s actually simple.

But heroin… Well the user might actually find they do better work on heroin.

Instead of being sad or grumpy or depressed with his job… he is just… happy. Mellow. Content. Everything is fine and the world is beautiful.

It’s raining, it’s dark, I woke up at 5:30AM, I’m commuting in traffic. I would have had a headache, I would have been miserable, I would have wondered how my life took me to this point.

This point I’m at right now. But no, no, everything is fine. Life is beautiful. The rain drops are just falling and in each one I see the reflection of every persons life around me. Humanity is beautiful. In this still frame shot of traffic on this crowded bus I just found love and peace. Heroin is a wonder drug. Heroin is better than everything else. Heroin makes me who I wish I was. Heroin makes life worth living. Heroin is better than everything else. Heroin builds up a tolerance fast. Heroin starts to cost more money. I need heroin to feel normal. I don’t love anymore. Now I’m sick. I can’t afford the heroin that I need. How did $10 used to get me high? Now I need $100. That guy that let me try a few lines the first time doesn’t actually deal. Oh I need to find a real dealer? This guy is a felon and carries a gun–he can sell me the drug that lets me find love in the world. No this isn’t working, I need to quit.

To answer your question, heroin feels nice.

That’s all, it just feels very nice. Y

ou can make the rest up for yourself. Attach your own half-truths to this drug that will show you the world and for a moment you will feel as clever as Faust.

Redfin Reports San Francisco Is About To Collapse

I’m happy that we sold our house there a few years ago. I didn’t want to risk that for an AirBnB rental.”

Boxloads of New COVID-19″ Death Darts Arrive at US Military Bases Marked “2023-2024”

World Hal Turner

Box loads of Pfizer’s latest COVID-19 Death Dart, marked with its brand name COMINARTY” are arriving at US Military Bases.  The boxes are labelled “2023-2024.”  They’re planning another COVID outbreak to steal the Presidential Election (again) next year.

This has got to be one very smart virus; it seems to KNOW that it can only come out when a Presidential Election is coming, so they can demand mail-in paper ballots, and steal the election again; just like they did in 2020.

Except we’re not falling for this again.  DO NOT COMPLY. 

No more of their death dart, phony, “vaccines. No more masks. No more social distancing, and for damn sure, no more “lockdowns.”

That whole thing was total bullshit for a virus that is no worse than a nasty Flu.

They scammed us in 2020, don’t fall for it again.

This Is What Happens When Men Stop Simping…

Big, big, big changes in the West.

What is the saddest thing you have heard a child say?

Don’t cry, ma. I know, and I am ready…”

These were words spoken by a 5-year old girl under my care when I worked in a Paediatric Oncology ward a few years ago.

She was a Beta Thalassemia Major patient. A real cutie, i can still remember her curly hair, friendly smiles and she was always very talkative on her good days. She had undergone two bone marrow transplants in the past, but came back with recurrent complications from the procedures.

We tried our best, but she was dying. And she knew it. We were on the verge of crying when we did our morning review that day, and heard her; comforting her parents. She then passed away peacefully in her sleep, after weeks of fighting.

(May you rest in peace, baby girl).

The “American Dream” is actual Slavery (It’s all a Lie)

Outstanding message! It’s such a materialistic world and we’ve been brainwashed to think the more possessions the better. It’s not true. Sad that it takes us all our lives to realize the lie.

The news is full of headlines about ‘China’s economic collapse’ — ignore them

Once again, the Western media Establishment, and sadly some on the left, are talking up an impending economic disaster in China, when the truth is quite the opposite, argues JOHN ROSS

IN THE last four years, covering the period of the Covid pandemic, China’s economy has grown two-and-a-half times as fast as the US, 15 times as fast as France, 23 times as fast as Japan, 45 times as fast as Germany, and 480 times as fast as Britain.

To add in smaller G7 countries, China has grown four times as fast as Canada, and 11 times as fast as Italy.

China’s outperformance of advanced capitalist countries is even greater in per capita terms — a still better measure of productivity changes and potential for increasing living standards.

China’s per capita GDP grew three times as fast as the US, five times as fast as Italy, 44 times as fast as Japan or France, and 260 times as fast as Britain — while per capita GDP fell in Germany and Canada.

China’s outperformance of developing capitalist countries shows the same pattern — China’s per capita 4.4 per cent GDP annual average growth compares to 2.6 per cent in India, 1.3 per cent in Brazil, or 0.9 per cent in South Africa.

What is important about such economic growth, of course, is not abstract statistics but its meaning for the real lives of ordinary people.

The International Labour Organisation data on real, inflation-adjusted, wages shows that up to the latest available data — for most countries to 2022, and for India to 2021 — China’s annual real wage growth was 4.7 per cent.

For Britain it was 0.1 per cent, for the US it was 0.3 per cent, in France it was minus 0.4 per cent, in Germany minus 0.7 per cent and in India minus 1.3 per cent.

Given this enormous economic outperformance by China of capitalist countries, any rational discussion that should be taking place in Western mainstream media about the international economic situation would be, “why is China’s economy hugely outperforming the US and the rest of the capitalist West?” and, “what lessons are to be learned from China’s socialist economy that is so outperforming the West?”

For the left, the issue that needs to be assessed and publicised is, “Why are real wages rising 18 times as fast in China as in the US, 44 times as fast as in Britain, while in France, Germany or India real wages are falling?”

Indeed, the present author would argue that much greater stress should be placed on the latter point. The international left has begun to absorb that China has lifted more than 850 million people out of World Bank-defined poverty in 40 years — by far the greatest poverty reduction achievement in human history.

But it has not yet internalised how rapidly not only the poorest but average living standards are rising in China — far faster than in any Western country.

But, of course, this real economic situation can’t be discussed in the mainstream media, because its conclusions would be too damaging for the capitalist West.

Instead, a type of mad discussion is unfolding, with US claims about China’s economy becoming increasingly bizarre — one might say deranged — as they get further and further out of touch with reality.

President Joe Biden, for example, recently made a speech claiming China’s economic growth rate is “around 2 per cent,” when it was 5.5 per cent in the first half of this year and, as already noted, China’s economy is growing two-and-a-half times as fast as the US.

Biden bizarrely claimed that in China “the number of people who are of retirement age is larger than the number of people of working age” — entirely false, and inaccurate by a figure of many hundreds of millions of people.

Discussion in the US financial media equally refuses to face real facts. Because I am an economist, every morning, after the overall news, I switch on Bloomberg TV to catch up on the latest economic data. Discussion there is like Alice Through the Looking Glass — the book the principle of which is that everything is reversed compared to the real world.

Apparently, according to Bloomberg’s analysis, China’s annual average of 4.5 per cent a year growth in the last four years is an economy in severe crisis, whereas the US’s 1.8 per cent is allegedly strong growth — not to speak of Britain’s 0.1 per cent. Similar rhetoric, out of all contact with factual reality, pervades the Financial Times, The Economist, or the Wall Street Journal.

The left is well used to such US political lying — the completely fake claim that North Vietnamese ships attacked US naval vessels on August 4 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, used to launch the Vietnam war, or the equally untrue claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to justify the US invasion, were classic examples.

Today, the US systematically lies about the state of China and its own economy because it is crucial for US capitalism to prevent its own citizens, and close allies, from understanding the real economic trends.

It is further proof, if one were needed, of the truth that if the real world and a theory do not coincide only one of two things can be done. One is to abandon the theory, the other is to abandon the real world.

In this case, the theory is that the US, because it is capitalist, should outperform socialist China. The real world is actual economic performance — in which China continues to outperform the US and other capitalist countries by an enormous margin.

Unable to abandon its theory the US is therefore forced to abandon the real world — hence the demented denial of comparative economic performance noted at the beginning of this article.

While the left should expect lies from capitalism what is rather shameful is that some sections of the left repeat such nonsense — apparently believing that if they put in a few left phrases into an analysis taken from the Western press this constitutes “socialist” commentary.

For example, an article in the New Left Review’s Sidecar called China a “zombie economy.” Some “zombie” when China’s economy is growing anywhere between two-and-a-half times and 480 times as fast as any major capitalist economy.

The real data shows the reality is simple. China has far outgrown any Western capitalist economy for more than 40 years. It continues to do so.

The result in China is by far the world’s most rapid rise in living standards — not only for the poorest but for the whole average population. It is known as the practical advantage of socialism. It is fact. We know why the US has to make up big lies about it. There is no justification for sections of the left echoing them.

How has a mother-in-law offended you?

I’ve been married for 6 years together for 8. Every single year we celebrate both of my husband’s parents birthdays. And every single year they don’t even acknowledge mine or my daughters. We both reach have one daughter from a previous and no children together. My husband spends hundreds on each of their birthdays year after year with custom ordered cake from the fanciest bakery in the area and we don’t get so much as a card. His parents don’t dislike me they just wish he would’ve stayed in a relationship with his ex who he never married but shares one child with. They still hold hope they will get back together after all these years so they pretend we don’t exist. It makes me want to stop showing up on their birthdays but I don’t know how to do that without hurting my husband who has had several private conversations asking them to please atleast acknowledge my daughter on her birthday but to no avail.

Italian Beef Stir Fry

Few ingredients – fast and flavorful!

2023 09 25 14 56
2023 09 25 14 56

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound beef top tip steaks, cut 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 small zucchini, thinly sliced
  • 1 cup cherry tomato halves
  • 1/4 cup fat-free bottled Italian salad dressing
  • 2 cups hot cooked spaghetti
  • 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Cut beef steaks crosswise into 1-inch wide strips. Cut each strip crosswise in half.
  2. Heat oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic and stir while cooking 1 minute.
  3. Add half of the beef strips. Stir-fry 1 to 1 1/2 minutes or until no longer pink.
  4. Remove with slotted spoon and keep warm.
  5. Repeat with remaining beef strips.
  6. Add zucchini to same skillet. Stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes or until tender-crisp.
  7. Return beef to skillet with tomato halves and dressing. Heat through.
  8. Salt and pepper to taste.
  9. Serve beef mixture over hot pasta.
  10. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Attribution

From the kitchen of Martin James – Copenhagen, Denmark

Confession of the Day

My fiancé has a micropenis

Wow, it’s almost a relief just to write that down. IRL I have not told a single person- not anyone in my family not my bestie. I really have no one to vent to.

Obviously it’s not a deal breaker for me- I want to spend the rest of my life with him. He is an amazing man, treats me so well, highly intelligent. He is tall, very good looking and fit. He is basically the whole package and I’m so proud to be with him.

Now- his dick. He is 3 inches hard and very thin. Basically the size of my thumb. The one area in this world he is insecure about. It was definitely a shock for me at first. We do have sex often. Pretty much every day without fail. He has magical hands & tongue and he is a very enthusiastic lover-making sure I cum every time. He has a tremendous imagination. We do use toys, such as dildos, sleeves and straps ons from time to time. It’s good and all, but it’s just not the same.

Now here is the real get off my chest stuff. He would ask me if I ever miss a bigger dick. I don’t have it in my heart to tell him ABSOLUTELY YES. I was always a very sexual being and I was very orgasmic from PIV. I absolutely miss cumming from PIV. I absolutely crave that full filling that I don’t get now.

I wake up horny and just crave it.

It’s not a deal breaker because of the amazing man he is and my love for him. He is very much the greatest man I have ever met. I would never cheat- I’ve never cheated on anyone and I won’t start now. But I admit, my mind is dirty and can wonder. I would imagine fucking a big dick while I masturbate- and I would cry with guilt after I cum.

I feel so bad that the world is so unfair. I would read on Reddit about men being so sad and insecure over their average cocks. 5-6 inches and your insecure? Like STFU!!! Whoever, I’m part of the problem myself. I was the girl that previously bragged to her girlfriends about how well endowed my ex boyfriend was. It’s funny how the world works.

The world sucks. We suck.

What is the nicest thing you’ve ever done for a complete stranger and vice versa?

He was the tallest person I had ever seen, and he saved my brother.

It was the early 80’s, and that meant unsupervised play, staying out until you heard your Mom’s voice, or the street lamps coming on.

Our neighborhood, and everything in it, was our playground.

Including our car.

While I was busy building a ramp for my bike, my brother had climbed into our family car, and was doing his best Knight Rider impression.

That’s when I saw him.

A giant. I was stunned as he bolted through our yard. So stunned that I failed to notice our family car backing quickly out of our driveway, building up speed, and heading straight for our neighbors house.

I watched as The giant stepped in front of the car. It was like seeing Superman in real life.

The momentum of the car was slowed, but it didn’t stop, and he struggled to bring it to a stop.

The car, with my brother inside, was still rolling towards our neighbors house.

Then little by little, inch by inch, he stopped the car.

I watched in stunned silence.

He was our quiet neighbor. A single guy in a family neighborhood that kept to himself. His name was John, he was a giant, and the closest incarnation of Superman I’d ever seen.

Oprah DELETES Accounts, LOCKS Comment Section in Maui Fire BACKLASH

Oprah could’ve given $50 or $100 million and not even felt it…. Or she could’ve had cabins put onto her land, far away from her home and shown true charity towards the residents. Instead she showed her true colours and at the first hint of criticism she threw a tantrum, went on the attack and then stopped people from being able to give feedback.

Stressed out PP

When I lived in Shenzhen (ripe out of the ‘States) we had a little dog. We called him ShaoPi, or “PP” for short. He was a good little Bishion breed. He was a mini version, and so didn’t live as long as a normal breed would of.

Anyways, we also had his son; “Super”. Which was a mixed breed. Bishion and Bomei. And he was absolutely one heck of a handsome dog.

One thing, though. He hated my guts.

I mean it. He HATED me; with a searing level of disgust and malice. Including biting me, and forcing me to get rabies vaccinations. Ugh!

I was an “outsider” and he “owned” my wife and her ex-boyfriend. And to exert his displeasure on me, he would make messes all over the place, bark non-stop and generally did everything he could to try to chase me away.

Well, that was causing our PP to get super stressed out. And he was a good dog, always trying to straighten out this wayward son. But it was to no avail. Eventually, both dogs were super stressed out, and start a non-stop peeing contest in the house. I mean, they were urinating over everything.

Everything.

And so we would take PP out with us and we did out chores and made our rounds, and it helped some. But, you know, he was so stressed out that he still continued to pee everywhere and over everything.

We knew that there was a problem. But we didn’t know what to do.

Then one day, while riding on an elevator there was a really cute 20-something girl all “decked out” wearing nice clothes and makeup going out (probably) on a date. We were also going out. PP was at our feet, and we were making arrangements for an evening dinner.

She was checking out her phone while adjusting her makeup, and sure as shit…

…PP urinated all over her high heels, and her nylons and her dress.

She screamed out so loudly that PP jumped back as if electrified….

That week we found a home for “Super”, and that was another trial, I’ll tell you what. But the moral of this little story is when people, or loved ones are stressed out…

…do something about it, before things get out of hand!

Todays…

Shi Jiangiao

This is Shi Jiangiao, a Chinese assassin who lived during the Warlord Era (1916-1928) in China.

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main qimg eb07899e1f58eb5278ddfabcdd38fccc

Shi came from a family of humble beginnings as her grandfather was a simple farmer and tofu seller. However, that all changed when her father and uncle became decorated soldiers, rising through the ranks in the Chinese military. This helped raise the social status of her family.

In 1925, when Shi was only 19 years old, her father was leading a brigade of soldiers to capture Guzhen, Shandong, when he became surrounded by a warlord by the name of Sun Chuanfang. Sun decapitated her father and had his head mounted on a pike and put on display at a local train station.

Two years later, Sun was disposed of by the Kuomintang (aka Chinese Nationalist Party) who wanted to reunify China, which had become fragmented after the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing. Sun peacefully retired from his life as a warlord and founded a Buddhist society.

Meanwhile, Shi spent her 20s tracking down Sun who had disappeared without a trace. In 1935, ten years after her father’s death, Shi managed to track Sun down in Tianjin, a major port city close to Beijing. (If you recall, Tianjin was the city that had that major explosion in 2015.)

Shi entered the Buddhist temple and found Sun kneeling in front of the altar. She approached him from behind and shot him several times with a pistol. She did not attempt to flee the scene of the crime but began distributing pamphlets explaining her actions.

Her case drew significant coverage and reached the Nanjing Supreme Court. In the eyes of the law, she was guilty. However, Confucian morality stipulates that one must avenge their parents. Ultimately, the Nationalist government decided to pardon her on the grounds that the assassination was justified because it was an act of filial piety. It also helped her case that the man she had assassinated was guilty of trafficking opium, suppressing strikes by factory workers in Shanghai, and collaborating with the Japanese.

What did someone say to you that instantly made you realize their life was in danger?

While I was working as a Hospice Nurse one of my patients had a great grand daughter that visited often. One day she came in and could hardly walk.

She wouldn’t look at me.

I made an excuse to get close to her.

Her eye was almost closed shut and her face was black and blue.

I ask her who beat her but she was too scared to talk.

I didn’t wait.

I immediately called 911 just as her boyfriend came in and was going to pull her out of the room.

Security came and the boy tried to hit them.

It took 3 police and a taser to get him in their police car.

The poor girl had [1] broken ribs, [2] a ruptured spleen, [3] collapsed left lung and [4] she had a miscarriage the next day.

We made good friends regardless of the age difference and her family is so nice.

I thank God that I didn’t look away and could help her.

I had to be a witness at his trial and he got 40 years for attempted murder and spousal abuse.

Exposing Philippines!

Take a little vacation and look at how the “Global South” looks like. This is the Philippines.

Green Chile Steaks

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51595f96cbb0a4af99317b453abce66d

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound lean ground beef
  • 1/2 teaspoon Lawry’s Seasoned Salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon Lawry’s Garlic Powder with Parsley
  • 1 fresh green chile, seeded and minced*
  • 3 tablespoons chopped scallion

Instructions

  1. In medium bowl, thoroughly combine all ingredients.
  2. Form into 2 oval steak patties or 4 hamburger patties.
  3. Cook in skillet, broiler or on grill until done.
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green

What accidentally rude things do Americans do while traveling even without realizing it?

Saying “Give me this/that” instead of asking for it.

I was once in a bar in Turkey, watching football (as in kicking a ball with the foot) with some other foreigners, German & Danish IIRC, drinking beer, & nibbling cacik & bread.

A group of American men walked in (I think from the nearby air base). They knew the barman’s name. They asked if the back room was free, & on being told yes, headed for it & commanded the barman to bring them beers – all done by shouting across the bar in English. He smiled to their faces & scowled at their backs. Then he noticed two of us looking at him & looked embarrassed.

A little while later we needed more beer, & it was my turn, so I went to the bar & asked (in Turkish – as we’d all done) for more beer e.g. “beş bira, lütfen”. He still seemed embarrassed, & said something like (IIRC) “You’re OK. You say lütfen” (Turkish for please). In his terms, the Americans were extremely rude. They probably had no idea. We, on the other hand, were at least trying to be polite. We knew how to ask for a beer (or a few), & how to say please & thank you, & understood that was customary.

I expect the Americans would have been very surprised to know that they were constantly being rude to locals.

They’re FINALLY Been Arrested in MAUI,The Rock & Oprah

Thank you for speaking on our Maui brothers and sisters. Thank you James Okeefe also. This is unacceptable as well as unbelievable!!

https://youtu.be/cXv1Cb93OGA

Confession of the Day

I started self directed investing in 2012 with $20k. My first big success was betting on American Airlines after they filed bankruptcy before the merger with US Airlines. It was a 5x return in less than two years. I took that money and bought a house to Airbnb and ended up with about $250k.

I reinvested into the market and made my way all the way up to about $600k during the Covid spurt. Then I began to fuck with options. The first few wins were big for me, $5k, $10k, $20k, etc. then I really started betting big and hit returns over $100k in a single day. I couldn’t stop. The dopamine rush was too good.

The ups were euphoric and the downs sent my mind and body into a total whirlwind of intense emotion. It was the sickest drug. I couldn’t get enough. Nothing else matter other than becoming as rich as possible. And then I finally crossed the $1m threshold…. For only one day.

The next day I the market looked like shit but I was so hard up for my next fix I played anyway. Down $100k – eh it’ll come back, I can’t lose. Down $200k – if Itake the hit now that means I’m a loser, no way. Down $250k – ok I was wrong, time to switch sides and redeem myself. Down $330k – fuck fuck fuck!!! Don’t worry, I’II get it back next week…. And I did. $980k. Nice, almost back to $1m.

And then down. And down. And down.

All of it. Gone. 9 years of building $20k into $1m. Because the high was never high enough and the low was never enough to stop me. I went through deep depression, lots of suicidal thoughts, and darkness I didn’t think I’d come out of. A year of therapy, books, podcasts, support, and I’m doing better. Relapsed once and lost another $90k in a single day, just because I couldn’t lose.

We’re a dopamine nation now. This forum says it all. Gambling at your fingertips and the ever looming reminder that some people actually win and get super rich. At least for a little while. But the highs are never high enough and it never ends. Check yourselves before it’s too late. Day trading can be a real gambling addiction and you really can lose it all no matter how good you are.

I hope this helps save even just one person.

Is there Any Hope for this Once Great City?

Who do you fear the most in your country?

As ridiculous as it sounds, roving bands of young fellas off the estates, typically aged between 10 and 16.

I know some Americans will probably read this and think I’m a right pussy for being scared of a load of kids, but you don’t know man! You weren’t there!

See, the thing is with these kids, be they scallies, chavs, neds, roadmen, townies or whatever you call them in your region, is that typically they appear in large groups, they have little to lose and so don’t care about doing the stupidest shit possible, and they are not afraid to hound you and make your life a misery if you challenge them.

Sure, one on one, I wouldn’t be particularly scared about a 14 year old scal (although they increasingly carry knives and machetes and shit), but the point is that you rarely do encounter them one on one.

And let’s say, there’s a load of them camped outside your nan’s house chucking stones at her windows and you think, “Fuck that, I’ll go chase them off,” what is likely to happen is that they’ll start posturing around you and throwing stones at your head or they might fuck off, but then they’ll find out where you live (if you live nearby) and they’ll start wrecking your house and you might even find your house firebombed. It might sound extreme, but it does happen.

The police are ineffective as they have no respect for the police and, anyway, they’re minors so cannot properly be held accountable unless they do something really bad. And anyway, being tough on crime only goes so far. A more holistic long-term approach to the issue is required, but sadly no government has the vision or appetite to really commit to such policies.

So, essentially, you are powerless to do anything meaningful against them because you will only exacerbate the situation. These kids have the capability to make your life hell. They can make going to the local shops a genuinely nerve-wracking experience, particularly for the elderly and those with disabilities. They can really ruin the atmosphere of otherwise solid working class communities.

And that’s the thing too, it is the working class communities where they live and hang out that suffer the real brunt of their aimless destructive behaviour. You can be somewhat insulated against them if you live away from them or even just on a road they don’t frequent, but if you are forced by circumstance to live where they congregate, then your life can be pretty miserable if you get on their bad side.

And yeah, I’m scared of them. I’m less scared of some actual high up gang leader than I am these kids because at least with the real gang members they’re not interested in you unless you give them a reason to be, whereas, like I said, these kids have nothing to lose and might target you simply because they can and they think it’s funny.

It’s the one thing I really don’t miss about living in more working class areas, which can otherwise be much more friendly and interesting places to live

US efforts to strangle China & reassert hegemony – Jeffrey Sachs, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

“Emerging nations fight wars at their borders, declining nations fight wars far away.” ~Chris Hedges

What is the rudest thing anyone has ever done to you in your own house?

My mother-in-law was visiting us in Canada from her home in South Africa. There she had two house servants and a garden “boy” who did all the work. She sat smoking her cigarettes and “supervised”. Staying in my home where I had two children under age 6, a lot of my mornings were spent in child care, household chores, meal planning and all of the hundred other jobs of the Canadian housewife. One morning my mother-in-law sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee I had made and smoking her cigarette (which I had objected to from day one) and told me that I needed to change my routine to do my household chores after everyone had gone to bed so that her day was not “spoiled” by me having to do chores on “her” time.

What legitimate reasons does the US have for prioritizing military goals over economic ones in countering China’s influence in the developing world?

Let’s see

Is there the slighest chance that China will invade USA or any NATO country?

Absolutely not.

The US is impregnable with Canada and Mexico as buffers and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as it’s maritime buffers

There is a nuclear deterrent as well

So why else is US prioritizing it’s Military Goals

The Answer is IT HAS TO KEEP FEEDING IT’S MILITARY INDUSTRIES

Critical issues


The US has to keep paying money to keep it’s Defence Industries rich and profitable so that their shares are profitable and so that the Corrupt Senators, Congressmen and Lobbyists get rich

It’s a vicious cycle

Guess how many Senators have more than 30% of their investments in Defense Stocks?

61 – SIXTY ONE

35 Republicans and 26 Democrats

Guess how many Senators have more than 30% of their investments in Tech stocks?

67 – SIXTY SEVEN

38 Democrats and 28 Republicans and 1 Independent leaning to Democrat

Congressmen?

209 – 108 Democrats and 101 Republicans

Of these 51 have more than $ 5 Million worth of stocks

Lloyd Austin has earned $ 4.3 Million after leaving the Pentagon just by sitting on the boards of various Defense Contractors

He doesn’t have 50 grams of brains in that massive skull of his


So the Military Industry in US is like a shark that has to keep swimming

They always need an enemy to keep selling weapons to

They HATE PEACE because any peace means less potential to sell weapons

First it was the Cold War – Weapons sale

Next it was fighting Communism – Weapons Sale

Next it was fighting Saddam & Milosevic – Weapons Sale

Next it was fighting Terror – Weapons Sale

Now it’s fighting Russia and China – Weapons Sales

Tomorrow they may decide India is the enemy and wage a war on India and sell weapons or decide it’s Japan Or even Aliens


Their Military Goals have led to the worst disasters on earth

  • Vietnam
  • Cambodia
  • Laos
  • Afghanistan
  • Iraq
  • Libya
  • Syria
  • Ukraine
  • Taiwan (Next)

They have single handedly led to their deaths more men than Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS and Saddam Hussein and Gadaffi COMBINED

They have destroyed countries with their bombs and Agent Orange


Today their Target is China and Russia

They don’t have the balls for a direct fight because a MAD means the evil politicians will also die and they don’t want that

So these proxy wars will be their way of milking and flattening the military defense industries


Basically they are part of a corrupt hellhole with many idiots even today proudly saying how the US Dollar is backed by the US Army

They will be destroyed one day as history is proof of

One day they will collapse when their own people begin to rebel and fight this evil system

Until then these a**holes will keep harrassing everyone and lying to the whole world


I refer only to around 300,000 Evil Americans in US and another 2 Million more brainwashed evil corrupt minions

The other 336.7 Million Americans are very decent and nice people

Eliminate these 2.3 Million a**holes and the US will be back to the Pre Eisenhower era. A Nice Country with genuine morals

OH. MY. GOSH.🤯😟 MUST SEE: Can Americans answer ANYTHING correctly!?

I fully support the movement to require a civics test before voting or even just knowing the difference between a STATE and a COUNTRY would be a start.

Dog-fight between France & Germany. But drag China along. What is the dog-fight about?

Chinese electric cars surprised the world in the 2023 car exhibition.

France started the dog fight. It called for EU investigation if China has subsidized its electric car industry. EU chief took France’s case.

EU Commerce Chamber in China right away told EU that there is no electric car subsidy by Chinese government. What makes China successful in electric car is because China has lots of scientists who work hard to improve their car tech so as to compete in the world, said the Chamber.

German business-people also opposed the EU investigation. Saying it will force China’s to react & counter EU’s unreasonable action. It will harm German economy.

It is a dog fight between France & Germany.

France’s car sales in China accounts for less than 1%. Germany, more than 17%. No need to explain further, right?

France can afford to lose its <1% to weaken Germany’s >17%.

If Germany wants to, Germany can counter target France’s luxury products eg cosmetics & fashion that sell well in China.

Despite objection from German business people, German politicians agreed to EU investigation. … really, politicians do not care about the welfare of the country & its people. They only care about votes ie personal interest.

Has German government subsidized electric car industry? Many times. From internet.

What is more irony is that: when USA subsidized its electric cars under the disguise of Inflation Reduction Act, EU protested & warned USA that EU will also subsidize its electric car industry. Today Germany is subsiding its electric cars industry based on … false accusation as testified by EU Commerce Chamber.

Is it true that Chinese people seemed not to get offended and are too weak to fight back when abused racially because interracial fighting is something very shameful in their cultures?

Chinese do not like direct confrontation. Confrontation is seen as a sign of stupidity. Two thousand years ago, the founder of the Han dynasty summed it up: 吾寧鬥智不鬥力: I prefer to fight with my wits, not by power. From a very weak start, he thrashed 項羽 Hsiang/Xiang Yü, his main rival, whose army was much more powerful.

Fighting is for children and inferior people. Look at it this way: a four year old can strike out in anger, but is incapable of coming up with a better plan.

Chinese always prefer to use strategy rather than brute force. 難忍能忍大丈夫: a powerful cultural standard is that a real hero is someone who can say, “My head is bloody but unbowed.”

This is strength, not weakness, and does not mean that Chinese will not fight back. Look what happened to the mighty Japanese warlords when they attacked China. The Chinese in general avoided direct confrontation, drew the Japanese in, and overcame them. China has stood off some of the most powerful armies in the world. Even though the Mongols eventually conquered China, it took them decades and weakened them so much they were unable to conquer Viet Nam (of course there are other factors, such as VN fighting prowess, but this is an essential factor.) In China, the Mongols were close to their home but suffered great losses at Chinese hands. Compare that to the European powers, where the “flower of chivalry” was butchered in short order on their home territory by Mongols far, far from their home base.

I do not know how much the person asking the question knows about China, but I would guess that most people have heard of China’s long tradition of martial arts. Chinese will fight, but consider it uncivilized, immature, beneath an adult’s dignity.

We left America for Police putting guns to our heads. Part 1-2

This channel is to bring the awareness to the world of the beautiful continent of Africa. My intentions are to show the development, people, property and investment opportunities. All the adventures and opportunities that is for people to take advantage of. Also showing how America is not necessarily the perfect place for people to live.

ASMR: What it is, what it stands for and how it works

What is ASMR? How does ASMR work?

What does ASMR stand for?

Are you “ASMR sensitive”? Do you get ASMR tingles?

Is this the first time you’ve heard of ASMR which stands for “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response”?

It might not mean what you think it means.

Millions of people experience ASMR “tingles” when exposed to certain stimuli.

Triggers like hair brushing, whispering, finger tapping, clicking, chewing and caring role-playing send shivers down some people’s spine.

These same ASMR triggers are actually “misophonic” triggers for others; meaning these sounds cause negative responses.

For example: nails on a chalkboard will drive some people nuts but others aren’t affected.

The Why Files answers these questions and raises a few more. The science behind behind ASMR is still new but research is underway.

Though ASMR is a relatively new phenomenon, the online ASMR community is vibrant and growing rapidly.

Are you ASMR sensitive?

What are your triggers?

Who is the most evil person you have ever met?

I once had a therapist for four years. He spent every session of that 4 years grooming me. Yes grooming me as if I were a child and he were the predator – except I was an adult and never knew what was happening until it was too late. If I questioned anything about the ethics of something he did or said – he always twisted up an answer that made enough sense in my mind that I would disregard. It was a disgusting abuse of power. He was extremely subtle about his approach and he nearly destroyed me as a human before it was all finished. Looking back years later I can see how correlated he was in what he did and I am sure he had many victims besides myself. At one point he even talked of “getting rid of my husband”. (I never told me husband this part of everything)

In the end he chose the wrong victim. I had to rise above the fear and confusion. I did. I had to be careful to make sure to keep all of my complaints and even my lawyer was a secret till the moment that he was piled with so much legal shit and my states’ board and Human Resources was all brought out at once. I did this intentionally so there was no way he could get out of the situation or harm me without someone knowing who did it to me. And so what he was doing was made known without ANY space for “reasonable doubt”.

I’ve taken a lot of time to heal and am still now in the process of forgiving him, forgiving myself, and moving forward to be as healthy as I can be. Sometimes I wish he’s a trash guy now… except the get paid too much. But he’s the most evil person I have ever met.

It’s unfortunate that what he did to me isn’t a criminal offense in my state as it is in many states. I plan to make this change through whatever legal route I need to take and make a difference so nobody else ever has to go through what I did. That man should be in prison. He’s a rapist and a cunning one at that. A sick sick human.

Syrian conflict.

When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011 , Western-backed rebels launched a full-scale attack on the Syrian government, and an extremely bloody color revolution began.

We Chinese often say that we experienced 14 years of hard resistance against Japan during World War II. Warning the war in Syria is not over yet! The United States also steals oil, food, and cultural relics in Syria…

No one expected that at the opening of the Asian Games in Hangzhou , China would make a move that would completely change the world.

On September 21, the Syrian president and his wife arrived in Hangzhou, China, and then arrived in the capital Beijing on September 24, visiting two places in a row.

Below is a picture of the Syrian president and his wife arriving in Hangzhou and Beijing. My heart moved at this moment.

Perhaps the whole world did not expect that Syria, which has long been completely blocked in the West, has received the most respectful reception in China. We do not belittle Syria just because it is a small country in war.

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Put yourself in my shoes, if you were a Syrian , how would you feel when you saw this scene? What is the characteristic of a great country? This is the It! China has deservedly become a true morale beacon of human civilization. The picture below is really shocking.

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During their visit to Hangzhou, the Syrian president and his wife visited Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou . During the visit, a female tourist could not help but touch Asma, the Syrian lady, because she was so beautiful. The female tourist said to Asma, “You are so beautiful.” Unexpectedly, Asma replied: “You have a beautiful country.” From the look of the video, the female tourist seems to be an older person, but even so, I don’t think it’s good to touch her face, since she is the president’s wife after all. However, this reply from the wife of the Syrian President suddenly sublimated the matter. Yes, we have a beautiful country, and for the Syrian people, this is their biggest dream. Syria was once a beautiful country. There is an old saying that goes like this: “If there is a paradise on earth, Damascus must be in it. If paradise is in the sky, Damascus will be as famous as it.” Asma, the wife of the Syrian President, is known as the Desert Rose . She is a very beautiful and gentle person, but behind this beauty, there is an extraordinary experience, which can even be said to be legendary.

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Asma was born in London, England, to Syrian parents. Her family conditions are very good. In 1996, Asma graduated from King’s College London with a BA in Computer Science and French Literature . After graduation, she started working at Deutsche Bank Group as an economic analyst in the hedge fund management department. In 1998, Asma joined JPMorgan Chase & Co. in investment banking. She was also preparing to pursue an MBA at Harvard University, but moved to Syria after meeting her husband, Bashar , while on vacation with her family. I can be said to be an absolute intellectual and business elite. Her husband Assad is the second son and is not the successor that the family focuses on training. The family focuses on training his eldest brother. As a result, his eldest brother died unexpectedly in a car accident in 1994.

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Assad himself is relatively flat. His early dream was to be a doctor and he had little interest in politics. He himself has been studying medicine in the UK. After meeting Asma, we hit it off and became even less interested in politics. However, the eldest brother, who had been trained by the family and was supposed to take on the succession, unexpectedly passed away. Assad could only return to his country to take charge of the overall situation. At this moment, the gears of fate began to turn. The Assads would never have imagined that they would be pushed to a turning point in human history by chance.

The general background of the outbreak of the Syrian civil war is that the United States instigated the ” Arab Spring ” throughout the Middle East . Don’t read the name and think that is a good thing like it’s name “spring”. In fact, it is a large-scale national subversion. According to Egyptian statistics afterwards, the Arab Spring caused more than 1 million deaths in the Middle East and damage to infrastructure worth 1 trillion. It started with the collapse of the political situation in Tunisia , followed by the complete collapse of the situation in Egypt, Libya , Yemen, and Bahrain…

That is, in 2011, Gaddafi’s regime came to an end. He himself was caught in the north of the country. He was tortured, then executed on the same day, and finally his body was exposed in a market… After trouble occurred in the above countries, it was Syria’s turn. This was the background of the early outbreak of the Syrian civil war. At that time, no country believed that Syria could survive. The United States in 2011 was not the sick cat it is now. It was the peak moment of the US imperialist regime. Hanging Saddam , destroying Gaddafi while laughing… Moreover, at that time, the United States had almost no opponents in the world.

Let’s talk about China and Russia back then . At that time, Russia was still dreaming of integrating into the West. It had already joined the G7 and became a small G8. At that time, China did not have a falling out with the United States and was still busy doing business and making money. Except for Iran, an absolutely anti-American country, almost no one in the world supports Syria. However, China and Russia still helped Syria during the UN vote. Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the United Nations Security Council has held seven votes on the Syrian issue. Due to opposition from China and Russia, all seven votes have been vetoed.

That was only the beginning… After all, if you look other than Syria, no country in the Middle East can withstand this combination of punches from the United States. At that time, Russia was not realized being duped and China was not strong enough. In the first four years, the only way for Syria to survive was to hold on by itself. After all, if the Syrian regime collapses at the first sign, it will be useless for outsiders to help. But no one expected that the Assads would refuse to surrender! I swear that I will never surrender to USA. Assad said that this is not a matter of the Syrian civil war, or that once our regime fails, the entire country will be carved up by foreign countries, and the Syrian people will have no future. From a current perspective, Assad’s judgment back then was very accurate. Just think about today’s Libya and today’s Iraq . Since the civil war, the economy has not recovered yet, and the country is still in a state of fragmentation. It was very smart to be able to make this prediction in 2011. We can recall that in 2011, support of the US was rampant on the Internet in china. The point is USA really fooled many people into believing that the United States was good. The United States in 2011 was still at the peak of its empire, and its influenced was indeed much stronger than it is now. At least in those days, American women were still women, and men were still men… When the Syrian civil war was at its most dangerous, the rebels fought directly near the capital. Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, has been occupied by Syrian rebels for six years. It is only a stone’s throw away from the capital. At this time, it is a great test for the Assad’s resilience.

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After all, the fate of Saddam and Gaddafi lies ahead if Syria government lost. If they do not flee for their lives, once the rebels enter the city, their entire family will definitely be killed. But Assad insists on one thing. No matter how crazy the “expendable” supported by the Americans are around me, I will not surrender. I will live and die with my motherland! I believe that many people at that time advised Assad to save the country and choose to surrender. But Assad has an attitude, I will not surrender! I don’t care how strong the opponent’s is, but this is our own motherland, if we the Syrian people don’t resist, won’t we just perished? However hopeless we must fight! This scene suddenly reminded me of our people during the Anti-Japanese War. “Yes, no matter whether we can win against the Japanese or not, this battle must be fought. If we don’t defend our own motherland, who will we defend?” “And if we don’t fight, how do we know we won’t win? Those who say surrender is a way to save the country, better die as quickly as possible!” As a result, with the help of Russia and Iran, it was actually recovered!

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Although these external help are important, I think the most important thing is the persistence of the local people. Russia’s military intervention in the Syrian situation was in September 2015. The war in Syria broke out in 2011. If Assad himself could not hold on in the first four years, it would be useless even if reinforcements came. What is touching is that in the Battle of Aleppo , the Syrian army, after repeated bloody battles, was about to completely regain the lost territory… However, Western countries have appealed for an armistice at the United Nations, and they are talking about providing humanitarian relief. What it actually means is that you stop fighting and give me some time. I will re-arm the rebels so that I can kill you after.

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It was immediately vetoed by China and Russia. Don’t stop, keep firing, shoot with all your might! Just beat up the drowned dog. Our veto vote greatly helped Syria and won them a lot of space at the level of international public opinion. On the New Year of that year, China became the guardian symbol of the Syrian people. In the New Year of 2016, Aleppo, Syria, was liberated. The five-star red flag was raised on the Syrian land, and countless Syrian people grateful to our country’s flag.

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“Thank you, China, thousands of miles away. “

If you look at the first half of Assad’s life, you will feel like a young college student, a refined intellectual who did not have a strong desire for power and just wanted to spend a comfortable life with his beautiful wife. It was the wave of history that pushed him to the critical point of life and death in Syria, but he actually withstood the test of history, which no one expected. The United States not only funded the Syrian rebels, but also created the Devil Isis organization. What the Isis organization has done can be said to be insane. If I were to tell what they did, I’m afraid this article wouldn’t even pass the censorship. In short, it’s extremely anti-human and more Nazi than the Nazis… During the process of regaining the territory, the eastern Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor encountered a siege by the “Isis Organization” for more than three years! No one knows what kind of will the Syrian people relied on to survive and win again…

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In the end, this city, under the leadership of the legendary Syrian general Issam Zarushidine, and the 104th Brigade, finally changed the tide of war after four-year defense, which can be called the Syrian version of battle of Leningrad, and the situation in Syria began to fundamentally change. reverse! To be honest, I feel that the Syrian Civil War is very similar to our country’s Anti-Japanese War, both of which are won by persistence . During the Anti-Japanese War, there were some bastards who were promoted as liberal masters by domestic intellectuals. His so-called literary character was just like a piece of shit…

Hu Shi (bastard liberal master) once said: “We should have the determination of a strong man to cut off his own limb, make the highest sacrifice of abandoning the three eastern provinces, seek the preservation of remaining territories and administrative integrity, and seek a peace relations between China and Japan…”

During the Anti-Japanese War, our country was too poor and weak. To be honest, the key to reversal in World War II lay in Stalingrad and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor . Stalingrad laid the foundation for a complete Soviet counterattack, and the German army was defeated decisively . The attack on Pearl Harbor meant that the United States could no longer stay aloof and had to personally attack Japan. So for our country, it really means victory in the “anti-Japanese war”, and we “carried” it by force ! The whole process was extremely arduous. But this definitely does not mean that our resistance is meaningless. Before the war started, the Japanese army said that China would be conquered in three months. If there was really no resistance and we would be wiped out in three months, then the situation in World War II would be impossible to reverse! Because once the Japanese army obtains China’s vast territory and resources, it will not be so easy for the United States to attack Japan, and the US military may not even go to war personally. The same is true for Syria and Assad. They have endured it for 12 years, during which they have defeated countless opponents… Now think about it, among those Western politicians who originally called for Assad to step down, how many of them are still on stage?

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At the opening ceremony of the Hangzhou Asian Games, one of the most touching details was that when the Syrian athletes first entered the venue, they were very nervous and reserved , because after all, Syria has been blackmailed by all Western countries on the international stage. Now, what the world sees every day is the fake news about Syria. They don’t know whether they will be welcomed after entering the venue. After all, they are just a small country in war…

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But what none of them expected was that the Chinese audience gave out a roar of welcome for twice make a wave a tsunami.

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Then the Syrian athletes became more and more relaxed and began to wave the national flag vigorously. The Syrian president and his wife stood on the stage with peace of mind and smiles, watching the scene below.

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This scene seems to say: “We the Syrian people are still exist in this world!” This visit by the Syrian President to China is not simple. Syria has been sanctioned by all Western countries. Many airspaces are inaccessible and many places are very dangerous for them.

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Being able to bring the President of Syria to China is in itself a manifestation of the strength of a great power. We need to have sufficient aviation endurance and at the same time have enough friendly land neighbors so that you can have the transportation capacity and airspace to welcome distinguished guests.

Currently Syria’s cultural relics have been placed in China for more than three years. This is also a high degree of trust in our country. After all, the US military is still stealing things in Syria. The whole of Syria has not ended the war. Syria can only put the cultural relics in a place that he thinks is safest. country, that is China. At the same time, this time the Syrian President visited Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, which sent a positive signal, because after all, Syria is a “Middle East religious” country. As a “Middle East religious” country, they often do not go to places of other religions, but this time the Syrian president personally visited Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou. This also expresses to the world that Syria is an extremely tolerant country and is not as extreme as Western society has smeared it to be. As a Chinese, I sincerely hope that the war in Syria will end soon. The visit of the Syrian President to China made me deeply moved. Back then, our athlete Liu Changchun , as the only Chinese athlete, represented China in the Los Angeles Olympics . It was precisely because we were caught in the “Rain” that year that we always want to hold an “Umbrella” for others… .. The difference is that our country faced an extremely brutal world back then. Now Syria is living in a rising new global order.

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Liu Cixin once wrote a sentence in his novel The Three-Body Problem: “I hope that one day, the bright sunshine can shine into the dark forest.”

Today China is that beam of light to fight unipolar world order!

In today’s China, we are the deserved to be called as beacon of multipolar world order!

May China’s multipolar world ray shine upon the victim of bullies on the entire earth and human civilization.

I came across a video in which their president praised China and said this during an interview:”China is great but humble”. At that moment, I suddenly felt very touched. This was the most accurate, heartfelt, and profound compliment.

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1.8K views

What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever said in a foreign language by accident?

I am very allergic to penis.”

When I was learning English, I had terrible pronunciation. Combined with the fact that I had just lost my front tooth (I was 7 at the time), it was very difficult for me to pronounce “t”, “th”, and “s” sounds.

The story starts with my mom taking me out for lunch. I wanted Kung Pao chicken, which is a delicious, succulent dish made up of spicy stir-fried chicken, peanuts and vegetables. The problem was, I was allergic to peanuts.

Excited to show off my English speaking abilities to my mother, I proudly waved over the server and asked, “Does this dish have pee-nits in it?”

Confused, the server repeated, “Penis?”

Delighted that he understood what I was saying, I nodded enthusiastically. “Yes! Penis. I am very… allergic. To penis.”

“We typically remove the penis from the chicken before we cook it, so that’s not an issue. Unless you were referring to you being a lesbian. In that case, let me assure you that our restaurant is very LGBT friendly.”

“So no penis?”

“Uh, sure. No penis.”

At this point, my mother interjected the conversation. Wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, she said, “She means peanuts. Alex is allergic to peanuts.”

The chicken was eventually ordered, and luckily contained neither peanuts nor penis.

In what significant way has American culture shifted?

The Balkanization of pop culture, entertainment, and news outlets.

There is no single screen that families gather ’round in the evenings to watch together. Everyone in the family now has their own screen, with which they can watch whatever they wish to watch, without worrying about if anyone else in their house also wants to watch it.

There is no single television series that dominates the ratings on a regular basis. Currently, the single most-watched non-sports television series is “Yellowstone,” which gets around ten million viewers per episode. So… barely 3% of the adult population in America watches the single-most-watched television series these days.

There is no more “must see TV.” This includes most sports finals, too. Ratings for things like the NBA finals peaked in 1998 and now aren’t even half of what they were back then. Only the Super Bowl has seen an increase in ratings since the 1990s. If not for that one four-hour event every year, there wouldn’t be a single time when more then 40% of American adults were all tuned into the same thing.

Any form of entertainment that finds a substantial audience across demographic lines is rare these days. With the exception of the NFL, seeing a large, diverse group of American adults enjoying the same event or even enjoying the same music is rarer now than it was in the past.

There is no single news outlet that most Americans consider trustworthy and rely on for their news. There is no modern-day Walter Cronkite. Sure, many Americans trust their particular news sources. The problem is that there are so many news sources, and they all cater to their particular audience’s interests, that there isn’t a single news narrative upon which most American adults can agree. The current events you know about as an American adult, and the facts of those current events, are largely determined by which media outlet you get your news from.

In any crowd of American adults, the chances of finding even two of them who partake in the same entertainment options is low. The “pop” in “pop culture” used to stand for “popular.” Now it’s just “popular, relative to the thousands of other options people have to entertain themselves these days.”

We’re not really living in a pop culture melting pot anymore. It’s more of a miles-long pop culture charcuterie board, where everyone takes exactly what they want, with no need to worry about what others are taking. There’s no peer pressure to “fit in” with what the popular crowd is doing. There is no real “popular” crowd anymore. Just relative popularity, in a culture of unlimited choices.

Passport Bros Love TWO Countries

This video showcases how passport bros and other of men can live an amazing life outside of The West and away from modern women. Feminism has gone too far in America which is driving men to seek more traditional lives in countries like Thailand and the Philippines.

We compare the crazy woke women to the masculine movement.

We encourage the manosphere, redpill and MGTOW community to self improve, work hard and live your best happy life. We also enjoy a bit of modern woman fail, cringe and hitting the wall along the way.

Is it possible to have a bias without being aware of it?

Corporates in US now have Blind Hiring

No Voice, No Name, No Direct Interviews – the Candidate is vetted first and then the name is deleted and replaced with a Number like 287. Then the Interview is completely in generic voice which means man or woman the voice of candidate is generically modified by software so you wont now if its a man or woman.

The Numbers are then selected or chosen and only then is it known who the Candidate is

The reason is to avoid Civil Rights Lawsuits on Workplace Discrimination and Equal Opportunities.

Likewise in Promotions too – An outside agency is hired to evaluate the employees and they do so using Blind Techniques and output monitoring programs.


This is because EVERYONE HAS BIAS

If you sit on an interview panel and see a Beautiful Girl and an Average Looking Girl – you will either develop bias to the beautiful girl or a grudge against the beautiful girl in favor of the average looking girl.

If you had a bad interaction with a Nepali person , then you may bear negative bias against a Nepali who comes for an interview even though he may be from Manipur or Mizoram.

My wife is one of the most liberal persons in the world and always talks about secularism etc. Yet when one of the houses in our Colony was to be sold to Muslims, She was among the neighbors who persuaded the owners not to sell. She could not explain it. She had a subconscious bias.

Another example is me. Having seen so much bungling done by Mr Modi – even if he does something good now – I develop bias and start looking for the negative aspects only. This is why before answering – i always consult with the Bank community and only if others feel similarly do i know i am on the right track.

During the Cauvery Riots – Tamilians develop Kannada Bias and vice versa. So in an interview if a Tamil employee appears and the Authority is a Kannadiga – then you could have a subconscious bias.

Its Human. Only Machines and Robots can be unbiased. We can develop subconscious bias all the time.

Tractor-Trailer Carrying NUCLEAR WARHEADS on-the-move-North Dakota

Nation Hal Turner

A Tractor trailer carrying nuclear warheads was caught on video Saturday afternoon in North Dakota.  The truck was being escorted by local police, Military Police, armed Military troops, and protected overhead by helicopter gunships.

Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota is the most well-known nuclear missile base in that area of the country.  All the missiles in that base are already armed.  So why the additional warheads?

Under Barack Obama, the US nuclear arsenal was made much smaller.   Missiles that had previously carried TEN (10) Multiple Independent Re-Entry Vehicles (MIRVs) were reduced to only one warhead.  Perhaps the US is re-installing multiple warheads on our existing missiles?

Why would they be doing that unless they are expecting an actual nuclear war?

Hal Turner Personal Remarks

And expect one they should, given the meddling the US is doing in Ukraine, and the harshest economic sanctions ever imposed, against Russia, are all adding up to the US being hit by Russia.

Of course, the American people remain blissfully unaware that their government has us all on the threshold of actual nuclear war.  They’re unaware because the “mass-media” has utterly failed to do its job of reporting actual news.  The mass-media seem more interested in the severely mentally-ill who think men can be women and vice-versa.

Do you have a favourite joke from a homeless person who asked for money?

I was sitting on a bench outside my business smoking a cigarette. I had been there since 8 AM and it was already 9 PM, and I was just waiting for a few people to leave.

A homeless man, riding a bicycle with an attached cart in the back, stopped near me. I expected him to ask for a cigarette, but instead he said, “I’ve got a lighter in each of my hands. One works and one doesn’t. If you pick the lighter that doesn’t work, I win a cigarette. If you pick the lighter that works, you win the lighter.” I thought that both lighters were probably non functional but I decided to play along.

I picked his left hand and he handed me the lighter. I tried it a couple times, but it didn’t work. I handed him a cigarette and he lit it with the lighter in his right hand.

We sat and smoked, and I asked him how he pulled off that trick. He told me that he was an amateur magician and he used some kind of slight of hand to do his trick. I was working at a recovery house, and we had a party coming up on Saturday. I asked him if he wanted a job doing magic tricks as a wandering performer in the room. A little negotiation and he was hired for a two hour gig for 200 dollars.

Saturday came, and he had shaved, cleaned up, and dressed casually but well for the performance. He did card tricks, coin tricks, and other kinds of sleight of hand for the 2 hours and then some.

One of the people who was attending the party owned a coffee shop, and he ended hiring the guy to perform in the coffee shop on weekends and some week nights.

His funny way of tricking people for cigarettes turned into a gig and then a job. He performed a trick on me that changed his life.

(Sopranos) Christopher Moltisanti || Soldier On [for Reece]

Sopranos was the only show that came so close to capturing what life is really like, and what it’s all about. Never seen a show cover complex themes and problems like this in such a captivating, real way (and even funny often).

Why are most engineers not rich?

I’m an engineer and I’m rich.

Most engineers, like most Americans, spend everything they make. Then they run up credit card debt. Then they borrow $100k each to send their brood of children to liberal arts colleges for degrees that don’t make them employable. If they’re lucky, when they retire, they can sell the family home and live modestly on that and social security.

Why am I rich? I saved at least 10% of every paycheck since I was 24, and invested in no-load stock mutual funds, mostly as IRAs. My family lived modestly, but well. I didn’t buy bitcoin, didn’t day-trade, didn’t hit a lucky startup. Later in life, I gave my savings to a reputable stock manager, but I’m only doing a little better than if I’d stuck with mutual funds. I bought a house and paid down the mortgage when I had unspent income, three times. Have I been lucky in investments? Hell no. It took me a few years to learn to steer clear of retail stock brokers’ siren songs, for instance.

My investment strategy goes like this:

  • Spend less than you earn.
  • Invest unspent income in no-load stock-index mutual funds and ride the long-term upward bias of the stock market.

It’s really that simple.

A real coup

I think Huawei executed a ruthless, cold-blooded coup on Apple. It successfully kept Apple in the dark, getting complacent with its delusional domination of the Chinese market, so much that it thought it could maintain its grip by introducing the next model with not much more than a new metal case and USB connector. Then a week before Apple’s new release, with no time left to make any last-minute changes (no matter how much FoxConn can turn on a dime), Huawei dropped the bombshell. Classic!

What if you had a gay son?

Actually, I might have a gay son now.

There he is, sleeping in his green room, in his little bed.

Here are things I know about him:

  • He is the most talkative toddler on this earth. He literally does not shut up. Ever.
  • He loves to play with his sister’s dolls. He feeds them, carries them around, and puts them gently to sleep.
  • He is also obsessed with handy-man tools. He walks around with his drill, chain-saw and hammer, and repairs things that are then irreversibly un-repairable ever again. After this, he is utterly proud of himself.
  • He is compassionate. When his sister cries, he will drop his toys and run to hug her. Yesterday he used his shirt to wipe her tears, while telling her: Don’t cry, don’t cry…
  • He loves to dance, and when ever he can get himself an audience, off he goes..
  • He snores like a grandpa, and giggles in his sleep.
  • He wakes up in a great mood, proclaiming: “I woke up!” and every day he fills our home with love, music, laughter and dance.

These are some of the things I know about him, but let me tell you one thing that I don’t know:

I do not know if my little son is gay. And I don’t give a damn.

Is this the beginning of the end of China’s economic dominance?

It is the beginning I would say

China had an enormous trade surplus for nearly one and a half decades plus enormous savings by its people

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Here

Chinas problem is that the three years of lockdown meant the expenses were much lesser and thus people have huge savings and thus very low inflation

This is why China is issuing more and more debt instruments, to push that savings and prevent a glut of money

It’s why China is so keen on pushing up Consumption

It’s why when everyone is raising rates, China is slashing them

Because China has a lot of money in the banks and wants to discourage saving and encourage spending

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This is the US, the total opposite

Expenses are higher than wages, Savings are at an all time low compared to the SUPERB TRUMP ERA pattern (Call him all the names but that man ran a good economy until Covid)

Thus people don’t have money in the US

Savings have been depleted and so now US Fed encourages savings by raising the rates

Same with other nations including Bharat

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As you can see, Economy is doing beautifully under Modi until 2017 when Demo happens and Wages crash and expenses rise

Again by 2018, there is a recovery but by 2019 the savings are depleted by rising expenses

Two years of lockdowns mean savings crash but expenses rise due to the opening up policies and finally today you are NECK TO NECK

Better than the US


So today China has too much money

US and India and EU and UK have too little to no money

The best solution would be China lending to UK, EU and US by buying more Debt

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They said it was a WIN WIN

China has too much money and if they don’t spend it, it will lead to a glut and a deflation

US have no money and keep printing and piling inflation

However China said NOTHING DOING

They don’t trust the West anymore and believe the West may renege on their debt

After what they did to Russia


If only China and India were closer, China would have lent to India and invested heavily

Best to get 6% from India than 2.5% in China with great difficulty


My guess is China will spend huge money on Technology investments and hope it yields a big change

Meanwhile China has a huge economic dominance today.

They can cut a cheque of $ 300 Billion without printing money

The entire EU and UK and US combined can’t do the same


Post 1950

US was also flush with money while UK and Europe were broke

Thus US lent the money and invested in Europe and UK and grew their money enormously

They then invested this into Military Industry and sadly it mutated beyond recognition

China has a BRI luckily

FIRST DAY in Beijing, China – America warns NOT to visit CHINA but I Did

This is John Eisenman.

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main qimg c0cfd14689a0f3abb6a3cc4c68cf7818

He lost his daughter to sexual trafficking.

She was sold for $1,000 in Seattle Washington.

He did what a father should do and researched, investigated and found out about her abduction.

He RESCUED her HIMSELF.

He found out the person who sold her into trafficking was her 19 year old boyfriend.

He met up with him, abducted him, bludgeoned and stabbed him to death in Nov, 2020.

The authorities found him [dead AF boyfriend] in Oct 2021 in the trunk of the car he abandoned.

John Eisenman sits in prison knowing his daughter is safe and growing up after he has already lived 60 years of his life.

I bet you, he rests easy.

Live your life to the fullest. Do your absolute best to make sure your children have the opportunity to do the same no matter what the sacrifice.

What is the rudest thing you have ever done that you are glad you went through with?

My brother called me to let me know our dad was in the ER and it didn’t look good for his survival. I drove like a bat out of hell the 120 miles to get there. In the ER waiting room sat my brother & his wife, who knew nothing and had not been given any info or updates on our dad in over 2.5 hours.

I went up to the admitting desk to ask for an update and was told to sit down…that the clerk at the desk was busy and couldn’t deal with me. Unacceptable response so I just marched into the actual ER room to find my dad. Brother and SIL followed.

Found my dad and he is basically gray with no one attending him. The attending comes up to me and starts screaming at me. I asked him what was wrong with my dad, (who has a heart problem and has a pacemaker). The Dr responds in a horrible accent and terrible English that my dad has vertigo. It took several tries to figure out what he was saying and even the nurses were having a problem understanding him.

I lost it and didn’t care if I got arrested or not. I loudly proceed to tell the Dr that my dad is gray, not green, indicating heart problem & that my dad had his last heart surgery at this hospital 1 year prior. That I want a heart monitor on my dad ASAP.

The smug Dr asked me where I my medical degree. I smiled and again, loudly said that I didn’t have one but that I had a law degree. That I hoped he enjoyed his sojourn in the US because by the time I’m done suing him, deportation will look like a good option.

He quickly put on a heart monitor on my dad and it showed my dad was having a heart attack as they attached it. Luckily, they were able to treat him and he lived many years after that.

3 things:

  1. This was at a top nationally ranked hospital
  2. I filed a complaint with the BoD and the Dr was let go due to his repeated negligence.
  3. I was bluffing — I don’t have a law degree!

Why don’t doctors put dying patients under a medically induced coma to suppress the pain? Why can’t the patient and/or family members opt to do that so that the person will not have to be conscious while they die?

The day my mother-in-law died they called and told us that she was not going to live through the day that her whole system was shutting down and she didn’t have more than a few hours.

My wife and I went to the hospital she was conscious and complained because they had the bed in a head lower position. She complained that it was uncomfortable and asked to have it moved to a sitting position, the nurse said that they couldn’t do that because it would shorten her life.

We insisted and they moved it so she was more comfortable.

While we sat there they kept coming in and drawing blood, etc. Finally, when they rolled in a portable x-ray machine, my wife stood up and threw them out.

Eventually, she got to the point where she wasn’t conscious any more and in the evening she finally passed.

I still believe that they were trying to bill everything they could get on her bill before she died, why take ex-rays of someone they already told us was dying?

Fortunately, when my wife died of cancer she died at home in hospice and not in a hospital. She died peacefully in her sleep, with no hassles.

Why Do We Have to PAY Others Just to LIVE?!?! IT’S INSANITY!

We are out here on this Earth and surrounded with everything we need to live amazing lives. So why have we created, and continue to tolerate, a system that makes us work our whole lives earning money so we can pay for the privilege of living?

What are your opinions about the sanction against Huawei?

The explanation given to me by a Dumbo on Quora was that Huawei which used US Technology and US Patents, did not follow US rules and did business with countries sanctioned by the US

This despite the WTO ruling on 8/7/1998 clearly citing that

Trade restrictions on Technology and it’s free and fair use shall be determined by the commercial aspects and by the political ones

This was wrt Iraq

So the sanction on Huawei was illegal

Plain and simple

So the US essentially claim that because they control the technology, they can use it to demand obedience from the entire world

That because they control the dollar they can demand obedience from the entire world

They are immune from WTO appeals and rulings

So if the US is against you, you have no where to present your case

If the US is against you, you either comply or die

That’s the RULES BASED ORDER

Tell me i am wrong

Tell me of one example where the US sanctioned a nation and reversed it when the Nation without any change in its Government Or Leader Or Policies, appealed to a higher authority

It has NEVER happened ever

Under the same Rules based order, Saudi Arabia cannot decide to refuse to sell Oil to a paying customer but the EU can decide to cap the price of oil and force the whole world to comply


I wouldn’t have had a problem if Huawei had been taken to court and fined billions of dollars for patent violation

That’s Commerce and Trade and Business

However merely because you sell stuff to Iran, just because you use US technology, you can be sanctioned and cut off from Chips on a mere order from a US President is terrifying


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Xi, Putin, Assad may all be many things but today they are the ONLY PEOPLE preventing us all from becoming slaves of the United States of America

Its why I support them wholeheartedly

As long as they are strong, there will always be two camps, and the US better be on its best behaviour or it will lose friends to the other side


I believe Huawei was the beginning

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When Meng Wanzhou was arrested for baseless charges that were never established for 3 years on the whims of a 70 year old syphilitic promiscuous orange man with half his brains eaten out by some STD or another

It was the moment when one realized that the United States was growing not only too big for their britches but capable of becoming something that would put Nazi Germany to shame

Plus these evil men would justify it saying “We are the good guys”


Huawei paid a heavy price for trusting the US

Yet they also ensured that every other Chinese company was now on its guard when dealing with the US

Plus other companies too

Today ISRO is tolerated because it’s so much below NASA

The day it starts climbing higher, you will see sudden references to Kashmir and Genocide and sanctions will begin

Unless India learns from Huawei like China did, Russia did and Iran did

Hawaiian Steak

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85635394094818e496b535193d9d941d

Ingredients

  • Individual steaks, 1/2 inch thick or less
  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 1 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/4 cup vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • Pineapple slices
  • 1 large can mushrooms

Instructions

  1. Punch both sides of each steak well with a fork, then marinate for 24 to 36 hours in a marinade made by combining soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar and sugar.
  2. Simmer steaks on a low fire for 10 minutes in the marinade.
  3. Remove them and place steaks in a 350 degree F oven for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on thickness of meat. Three minutes before removing steaks, place a pineapple slice on each.
  4. To make gravy, slowly sauté a large can of mushrooms in butter. While doing so, boil down the sauce used for the marinade to make a gravy.
  5. Combine mushrooms and reduced marinade sauce.
  6. Serve individual steaks with the pineapple on top, over which has been poured a generous amount of gravy.

Have you ever come into contact with a deranged lunatic who made you fear for your life?

Yes, I nearly died.

This is a bizarre survival tale that includes jaguars, politics, cactus, assassination threats, near-death, and yes… a deranged lunatic. Oddly enough, even though I’m a dedicated liberal, this mad-man was a far-far-left liberal himself.

It was the mid-2000’s, and I was actively engaged in all sorts of wildlife research for a variety of government agencies and civilian groups. One of my projects was with a great organization called the Sky Island Alliance, in Tucson, AZ. (Read about them here, if you’d like: What are “Sky Islands”, and do they exist? ) This particular project involved looking for signs and tracks of jaguars that were reportedly crossing over the border from Mexico and setting up shop in the mountains of southern Arizona, in order to have data to set up protected areas for this extinct-in-America Big Cat.

One day, I received a call from a graduate student from a University in Colorado, who was looking for a research assistant for his project. The project consisted of living out in the wilderness and setting up camera-traps throughout the mountains, trying to get photos of the elusive cats, and learn more about their habits. Since I had a very good reputation among the environmental research community, I was recommended for the job by a professor at a local university. So I interviewed with the guy over lunch, we seemed to bond, and I got the job. I spent the next couple weeks putting in a lot of extra time at the Tucson Zoo, observing their two beautiful black jaguar sisters, Nikita & Simone, up close and personal. I would help with the feeding, collect scat and urine samples and do a lot of watching, reading and interacting. [1]

Eventually, it was time to head out toward the Mexican border and set up in the cabin. No electricity or running water. Right in the middle of the smuggling route from Mexico. Surrounded by the wildest remote mountains around. I was looking forward to a great adventure and a chance to get some good science accomplished. Emil and I got started with our automatic cameras. The challenge was to make continuous hikes into the mountains, replacing batteries and exchanging film in the many dispersed camera traps. It was some treacherous hiking. We were getting along fine. On the second day, we got a surprise… Emil’s dad decided to come from Colorado and join in.

He was a surly old guy from the Rocky Mountains. He probably wasn’t as old as he looked, because he was extremely “weathered”, leathery and wiry, with deep creases in his face; a constant suspicious squint. Grey stubble grew from almost right under his eyes, down to his chin. Not an ounce of fat on his stringy hard muscles. When you said something to him, he’d jerk his face left or right like a chicken, to look at you sideways, always seeming to be about to say an accusatory “Wha’ju say!?”, and perhaps bite your head off. He happened to look incredibly similar to this actor, Roberts Blossom. [2]

He wasn’t very trusting and he took an immediate dislike to me for some reason. I think he wanted to be the assistant, and have me leave. There was some weird father/son dynamic going on between them, and I got the impression Emil had grown up with beatings being a normal part of life.

Emil’s and my relationship suddenly subdued and the atmosphere changed.

These were the days of the George W. Bush administration. Emil’s dad turned out to be an extreme far-left liberal. The most far-left I’d ever come into contact with. I was also a liberal… but a moderate. I wasn’t a fan of Bush, but I was pushing through it, waiting for the next election. On that second night, we sat down to dinner. Tin plates of beans and bacon, with some tin cups of coffee. Emil’s dad sat across from me at the small wooden table. I tried to talk to him, and it immediately turned to politics. I nodded my head at all he was saying about the damned republicans and “that asshole Bush”. He spat out a long list of complaints. It wasn’t long before he said something about killing him if he had the chance. Oddly… I was of the mind that we shouldn’t be thinking of killing our president, whoever it may be. I said something to that effect.

Dad growled, “You mean you wouldn’t kill him?” He looked straight into my eyes, like a maniac.

I half-laughed out a response of, “Look, I don’t like him, but I’m not going to say we should assassinate the President”.

He glowered through me. His hands were in fists on the table, one of them holding a fork. I felt a pressure tank across from me, building up steam. His lips were pursed, breathing hard through his nose, staring at me. Suddenly he exploded up in a jerk, flipped his plate of beans toward me and about leaped on top of me, ranting about what the president was doing to destroy the country! He bent over and got in my face. I stood up quick and said, “Back the fuck off!”

Emil finally got involved and said something. I was fuming. I looked at them both, then left the cabin to go chill out outside in the night air. This suddenly took a weird turn.

Eventually we all went to bed, as we had to get up very early. In the morning, we had breakfast in silence, then all headed out in the pickup, toward the beginning of the trail. The whole way, he was insulting me in every way possible; from my knife being too big; “Only green-horns and pussies think they need a big knife,” to my hair, “Why don’t you get a haircut and look like a real man.” Beyond all belief, I kept my cool and waited for Emil to reign in his crazy old man. Emil wouldn’t look at me, and stayed silent. The old man hadn’t been with us on our last outing, and we had used a comfortable pace to make our rounds. But this time dad took the lead. It turned out that not only was he half jack-ass… he was also half mountain goat. He set off at a crazy unnecessary pace, clearly meaning to break me, or leave me behind. I was in average shape, but I had a trick knee from an old parachuting accident I’d had while I was an Army Paratrooper. So I needed to watch my step. As we sprinted up and down the mountains, eventually the worst happened and my knee blew out as I was racing down a steep slope of forest. I yelled out. They kept going. Eventually I stumbled down to the rocky dry river bed at the bottom, where they were waiting.

I explained I had a bad knee from the Army. “How many jumps you got?” he scowled. I told him 26.

He says, “My buddy has over a thousand and he never had no bad knees.” At this point, I was vulnerable, and I really needed to restrain myself for my own safety. He pointed up a steep rocky slope and said he was heading out. I told them I couldn’t make it. He derided me some more and told me to wait while they continued. I had no choice. I agreed. They left me with most of the heavy batteries and set off. “3 or 4 hours,” they said. I waited, surrounded by dry boulders.

There was no shade in that valley. I had to get out of the sun. The nearest shade was 150′ straight up a cliff, where I saw a tree. I made the choice to climb after about 2 hours. I got up and started hobbling toward the cliff of rocks, dirt and some dry grass. Now came my biggest misfortune. All the extra batteries they piled into my backpack made it extremely heavy. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that my pack was on top of my camel-back, which held all my water. It was fine when my pack was light, but all the batteries were pressing down on my water bladder, and at some point during my climb, the pressure popped the end off the drinking tube. I didn’t notice as all my water squirted out and left me empty, until 30 minutes later, I reached the top. I pulled out the tube for a well-deserved drink, and… nothing. “Damn it!”

The tree wasn’t as full as I wished and only gave a smattering of shade. Better than nothing. It was about 118 degrees F. After a total of 5 hours had passed since they left, I was getting desperate. As I sat on that cliff side, I saw a barrel cactus not far away. I stumbled over. Ya hear that they have water in them. So, I gave it a shot. Luckily, I had my big knife with me and was able cut off the top. No puddle of water. Just an off-white mash of cactus innards. It was moist. It would have to do. I don’t recommend this method. It had a bitter tannin taste to it, as I scooped out a chunk and sucked on it. Horrible! Again… better than nothing, but not much better. 7 hours passed and I was dehydrated and starting to get hazy vision and a crazy headache. I considered starting a signal fire. But I worried about it getting out of control and consuming me. 8 hours.

Finally, I saw them down in the valley of rocks. I yelled out. Again and again. At last they answered. “Come on down!” I heard. Clearly I had to go down. But I was only thinking of water. I scrambled down the cliff again, knowing that in just a few minutes, I could drink. At last… “Water” I croaked.

You don’t have any water?” he says. I wasn’t up for a discussion to explain, I just needed a fast drink. I shook my head.

Again, I asked for water. “We don’t have any water.”

What the hell? I see them both with canteens. Emil started to give me his canteen. The old bastard again yelled out, “I said we don’t have no water” and he shot a look at his son. Emil backed down silently. I couldn’t believe this! I reached out and tried to grab a canteen and the bastard got up and started walking away, saying, “There’s water at the truck.” I was dumbfounded. I started following them, listening to the water sloshing in their canteens just feet away. I was going a bit mad from the sound.. and from the entire situation. But I barely had the strength to be mad. I did my best at keeping up but fell further and further behind. I tried calling out. They stopped one time for me to catch up and as soon as I did, again they took off. At last, I could go no further. Five minutes later they came back, with the old bastard bitching at Emil. Emil gave me water. One drink, and then that evil bastard yelled out, “That’s enough! We need it!” Emil put away the water. They started to take off again.. my knee was throbbing and I could hardly walk. I set short range goals of just making it to the next boulder. One after another. My vision made everything wavy. And finally Emil grew a pair and defied his old man, and put an arm around me and helped me the rest of the way… another mile. He mumbled an, “I’m sorry” quietly.

The truck was ahead of us. 100 yards more. I willed myself to keep going. Then… we were there. A 5 gallon jug of water that had been heating in the sun was brought down. It was hot enough to brew tea, but I drank. And drank. Near-boiling water. It was good.

It was a quiet ride back. I packed up my gear and got in my car and drove off, back to civilization. All I keep thinking about was that water sloshing ahead of me, out of reach, and hearing him insist “We don’t got no water” while I was looking right at it. All this, because I didn’t agree that President Bush should be assassinated.

It’s quite clear that he would have left me to die out there and concocted some story of me wandering off and getting lost, if it wasn’t for the intervention of his minimally-less corrupt son.

Months later, Emil got indicted for illegally trapping our jaguar in a noose, causing stress in the poor cat, which eventually led to the death of the only jaguar in the United States at the time. Here’s the picture he took of the tortured, snared cat. [3]

It was a whole big deal with scandal and blame spread all over. It became a Federal case. After being indicted, he lied to investigators and blamed his assistant for putting lure around the trap without his direction. This wasn’t true and eventually came out. This assistant was the person who took my place! In the end, he was banned from practicing any more research, anywhere. You may be interested in reading about the debacle here: emil mccain prosecuted over jaguar

Conspicuously absent from the indictment, was one old, evil, bastard goat, that I damn well know had a hand in the unethical activities that led to the jaguar’s death, due to over-bearing parental pressure. And he certainly had a hand in convincing his son to lie about the circumstances afterwards. I have no doubt. It was, after all, the government against his son. The government that he wanted to take out with a bullet. I know that lunatic bastard helped kill our jaguar, and let his son take all of the fall. Not that his son didn’t deserve it as well. I’ve no proof. But I know it. He damn near killed me.

Damn near. But not quite.

What is the most famous crime case that’s unsolved in the United States?

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John Holmes was a legend during the golden age of porn. He played the famous Johnny Wadd, a fictional detective in a series of porn films. At the time, he was most famous for having a 13-inch penis, although this was never proven. He also claimed to have sex with over 14,000 women. This is also disputed, but he did star in over 500 movies.

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As his porn career was taking off in the early 70s, so was his drug use. At his height, he was earning 3,000 dollars a day from his films, which was mostly spent on freebasing cocaine. His habit greatly affected his ability to maintain an erection, and by the end of the 70s, he was selling drugs and prostituting himself for drugs to both men and women.

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By the early 80s, Holmes was heavily involved in criminality. He was a close associate of drug dealer and nightclub owner Eddie Nash and was also close to the notorious “Wonderland Gang,” a group of heroin-addicted cocaine dealers, that ruled the drugs trade in Los Angela’s.

Holmes had confided with some members of the Wonderland Gang about a stash of drugs and money being kept at Eddie Nash’s house. Holmes had fallen out of favour with the Wonderland Gang after taking more than his fair share of drugs. So he helped them by setting up the home invasion and robbery of Eddie Nash.

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Eddie Nash suspected Holmes was involved in the robbery. He admitted to his part in the robbery after Nash threatened to kill his family. In the early hours of July 1st 1981, a gang of Nash’s enforcers along with Holmes entered the Rowhouse located on Wonderland Avenue, where five members of the Wonderland gang were sleeping. All but one of the gang members were beaten to death, and the fifth barley surviving the brutal attack.

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A handprint belonging to Holmes was found above the headboard of one of the slain gang members, putting Holmes at the scene during the attack. Eddie Nash was the prime suspect for the crime along with Holmes who took more of an active role. Holmes was charged with personally committing all four murders but was acquitted due to lack of evidence after a three-week trial. The trail was a landmark case, where it was the first trial in history to introduced video as evidence. The Wonderland murders remain unsolved to this day.

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By 1986, Holmes was diagnosed as HIV positive, and it was around this time he landed a lucrative deal to star in two adult films with “Paradise Visuals.” He went on to have unprotected sex with his co-stars while not revealing his diagnosis.

He died from Aids related complications on March 13th 1988, at the age of 43.

i gave up on the american dream | regularism

I feel you girl! I’m 34 renting a room in a house, I hardly own anything anymore. I let go of the illusion of how life is “supposed to be”. We are free this way, living simply! It’s all a state of mind starting with gratitude for what you have.”

CIA impressions

When I first arrived in China, I lived downtown in Lohu. And to get around, I rode the subway. Very convenient, and super cheap too.

I have many, many stories about those days.

At that time, My hair was short, but I had a long beard. I also wore a red baseball cap (backwards) and wore tan cargo shorts, and a black cargo vest over my black tee-shirt. I didn’t think too much about it.

My eyeglasses were tinted, giving me the appearance of wearing really dark sunglasses.

The baseball hat was to cover up my bald spot, and the beard was to over compensate. The cargo shorts were the norm, being 90F at 90% humidity daily. And the cargo vest is, well necessary, for tissues, phone, charger, wires, and all the rest.

I would ride the subway, and lean, casually on the side rails as the subway sped through the underground tunnels.

One day, I noticed another fellow on the train. He was of middle east appearance. Swarthy, perhaps from Afghanistan, Pakistan or maybe Syria. And he just keep looking at me. I tried not to look back, but he was just sitting there staring at me. His mouth open.

Open.

O-P-E-N

I would watch him in the glass reflection on the train. Yup. He was fixated on looking at me….

I wonder why?

2023 09 27 11 22
2023 09 27 11 22

Today…

Did China ever buy Mig-29s from Russia?

No, China has never imported MiG-29

Historically, in 1990, the Chinese Air Force planned to import MiG-29s. But when they visited Moscow, a MiG-29 crashed during a demonstration.

This makes the Chinese hesitant to sign purchase agreements.

At this time, the Sukhoi Design Bureau quietly gave the SU-27 information to the Chinese (the SU-27 was still confidential at the time)

The Chinese compared the performance indicators of the SU-27 with the MiG-29. In a short period of time, a consensus was reached: buy back SU27 at any cost.

Facts have proved that the Chinese are wise. As a country with a vast territory, the range of MIG29 is too short and cannot meet the requirements. The SU-27 is more powerful and has a better design. An upgraded version of SU27 made by the Chinese: J16 fighter jet 

The Chinese have developed and produced many upgraded models based on the SU-27, and their performance even surpasses the Russian version.

Until China’s fourth-generation fighter jets entered service, the improved SU-27 fighter jets had always been the absolute main force of the Chinese Air Force.

What is something that your mother-in-law said that you’ll never forget?

My MIL raised 5 boys, I married the eldest Son, we had 2 sons so I was the only girl for a couple of years..when he died in a car accident 8 years later. I made sure my boys spent time with her. I remarried but still visited her thru the years. Forty-six years later, She is now 90, on one visit, we were just talking, when she said, I always wanted a daughter, but had the boys instead, I had to wait till you came to have my daughter. I had called her Mom all these years, i was so touched to hear that. Bless her.

Cumin-Rubbed Steaks with
Avocado Salsa Verde

3443d757981d90bae33d132252411a07 salsa verde restaurant recipes
3443d757981d90bae33d132252411a07 salsa verde restaurant recipes

Ingredients

  • 2 beef shoulder center steaks* (ranch), cut 1 inch thick (about 8 ounces each)
  • 2 teaspoons ground cumin
  • 3/4 cup prepared tomatillo salsa
  • 1 small ripe, Fresh California Avocado, diced
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Instructions

  1. Press cumin evenly onto beef steaks.
  2. Heat large nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot.
  3. Place steaks in skillet; cook 13 to 16 minutes for medium rare (145 degrees F) to medium (160 degrees F) doneness, turning occasionally.
  4. Meanwhile combine salsa, avocado and cilantro in small bowl.
  5. Carve steaks into slices; season with salt, as desired.
  6. Serve with salsa.

Notes

* Two beef top loin (strip) steaks, cut 1 inch thick, may be substituted for shoulder center steaks. Cook for 12 to 15 minutes, turning occasionally.

The Blinken Doctrine: A two front war with Russia and China

Blinken might be the worst American “diplomat” in American history. He’s drunk on American exceptionalism out of touch with the new realities of multipolarity.

This is important. Pay attention.

What is the craziest arrest you have ever seen?

Back in my late teens, many moons ago, I saw cops arrest my friend to cover their asses late at night. Earlier, they had pulled over a motorcycle rider & passenger for riding on a bike with no lights on a back, unlit , dangerous windy road. But even though they were riding a black bike and wearing black (so basically invisible) the cops let them go…no ticket

20 minutes later, I was standing by the side of the road waiting for my friend to back his car out of a tight space so I could get in. The bike rider came around a bend and plowed into my friend’s car. He & his passenger were killed instantly when they were thrown from the bike. The cops, when they showed up, arrested my friend after verbally abusing & berating him and threw him in back of the squad car. They then proceeded to pick up the money, laying on the road, that had fallen out of the rider’s pocket and we’re stuffing it into their own pockets. I brought that to the attention of the crowd that was assembling. Cops told me to mind my own business. Then they started yelling at my innocent friend some more who was beyond distraught.

I finally opened the squad car door & let him out which then got me arrested also. Get to the station and I make my phone call. 5 minutes later the Chief walks in and all hell brakes lose as the cops on duty try to get their stories straight and throw my friend & I under the bus. The Chief sees me & demands to speak to me directly. I tell him everything that happened, including the cops taking the victim’s money. Of course the arresting cops call me a liar.

One slight problem for them. The Chief was a family friend who had known me since I was a baby. His best friend was my grandfather who just happened to be a police Chief 3 towns over. Long story short, two of the cops lost their jobs over this.

AUSTRALIA AND AUSTRALIANS

The following has been written by the late Douglas Adams of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” fame.

“Australia is a very confusing place, taking up a large amount of the bottom half of the planet. It is recognisable from orbit because of many unusual features, including what at first looks like an enormous bite taken out of its southern edge; a wall of sheer cliffs which plunge into the girting sea.

Geologists assure us that this is simply an accident of geomorphology, but they still call it the “Great Australian Bight”, proving that not only are they covering up a more frightening theory but they can’t spell either.

The first of the confusing things about Australia is the status of the place. Where other landmasses and sovereign lands are classified as continent, island or country, Australia is considered all three.

Typically, it is unique in this.

The second confusing thing about Australia is the animals. They can be divided into three categories: Poisonous, Odd, and Sheep. It is true that of the 10 most poisonous arachnids on the planet, Australia has 9 of them. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that of the 9 most poisonous arachnids, Australia has all of them.

Any visitors should be careful to check inside boots (before putting them on), under toilet seats (before sitting down) and generally everywhere else.

A stick is very useful for this task.

The last confusing thing about Australia is the inhabitants.

A short history: Sometime around 40,000 years ago some people arrived in boats from the north. They ate all the available food, and a lot of them died.

The ones who survived learned respect for the balance of nature, man’s proper place in the scheme of things, and spiders. They settled in and spent a lot of the intervening time making up strange stories. They also discovered a stick that kept coming back.

Then, around 200 years ago, Europeans arrived in boats from the north.

More accurately, European convicts were sent, with a few deranged people in charge. They tried to plant their crops in autumn (failing to take account of the reversal of the seasons), ate all their food, and a lot of them died.

About then the sheep arrived, and have been treasured ever since. It is interesting to note here that the Europeans always consider themselves vastly superior to any other race they encounter, since they can lie, cheat, steal and litigate (marks of a civilised culture they say), whereas all the Aboriginals can do is happily survive being left in the middle of a vast red-hot desert – equipped with a stick.

Eventually, the new lot of people stopped being Europeans on ‘extended holiday’ and became Australians. The changes are subtle, but deep, caused by the mind-stretching expanses of nothingness and eerie quiet, where a person can sit perfectly still and look deep inside themselves to the core of their essence, their reasons for being, and the necessity of checking inside their boots every morning for fatal surprises. They also picked up the most finely tuned sense of irony in the world, and the Aboriginal gift for making up stories. Be warned.

There is also the matter of the beaches. Australian beaches are simply the nicest and best in the world, although anyone actually venturing into the sea will have to contend with sharks, stinging jellyfish, stonefish (a fish which sits on the bottom of the sea, pretends to be a rock and has venomous barbs sticking out of its back that will kill just from the pain) and surfboarders. However, watching

a beach sunset is worth the risk.

As a result of all this hardship, dirt, thirst and wombats, you would expect Australians to be a sour lot. Instead, they are genial, jolly, cheerful and always willing to share a kind word with a stranger. Faced with insurmountable odds and impossible problems, they smile disarmingly and look for a stick. Major engineering feats have been performed with sheets of corrugated iron, string and mud.

Alone of all the races on earth, they seem to be free from the ‘Grass is greener on the other side of the fence’ syndrome, and roundly proclaim that Australia is, in fact, the other side of that fence. They call the land “Oz” or “Godzone” (a verbal contraction of “God’s Own Country”). The irritating thing about this is… they may be right.

TIPS TO SURVIVING AUSTRALIA

Don’t ever put your hand down a hole for any reason – WHATSOEVER.

The beer is stronger than you think, regardless of how strong you think it is.

Always carry a stick.

Air-conditioning is imperative.

Do not attempt to use Australian slang unless you are a trained linguist and extremely good in a fist fight.

Wear thick socks.

Take good maps. Stopping to ask directions only works when there are people nearby.

If you leave the urban areas, carry several litres of water with you at all times, or you will die. And don’t forget a stick.

Even in the most embellished stories told by Australians, there is always a core of truth that it is unwise to ignore.

HOW TO IDENTIFY AUSTRALIANS

They pronounce Melbourne as “Mel-bin”.

They think it makes perfect sense to decorate highways with large fibreglass bananas, prawns and sheep.

They think “Woolloomooloo” is a perfectly reasonable name for a place, that “Wagga Wagga” can be abbreviated to “Wagga”, but “Woy Woy” can’t be called “Woy”.

Their hamburgers will contain beetroot. Apparently it’s a must-have.

How else do you get a stain on your shirt?

They don’t think it’s summer until the steering wheel is too hot to handle.

They believe that all train timetables are works of fiction.

And they all carry a stick..

Russia strikes Kiev’s depleted uranium stocks, Storm Shadow missiles depots, intelligence centers.

“NATO is a suicide pill to the world. So if you want peace, pray for a Russian victory.” ~Scott Ritter

Have you ever been pulled over by a police officer for an unusual reason?

Yes I was pulled over by the police while driving in London. As I hadn’t done anything wrong I asked the one who wasn’t checking my details why I’d been stopped. He said his colleague happened to be interested in the make of car I was driving and noticed that the number plate didn’t seem to match the year it was manufactured.

He e quite correct as it had been kept at factory for their use and so had only been registered for use on the road a year later. I thought it amazing that he’d noticed that while driving in the London traffic.

What’s the hottest thing a teacher has ever said to you?

Ms. Tan was this petite girl in her early 20s, she was athletic, tanned, had the most perfect brown-tinged hair right out of a shampoo ad, and most of all she had a certain “get-out-of-my-way” badass attitude matched with an inexplicably attractive resting-bitch face.

She was the latest in a string of Physical Education teachers assigned to my class of 12 year old boys thoroughly enjoying the first blasts of puberty.

We were all on the ground pretending to do sit-ups or something like that while she yelled at us like a drill instructor, except this drill instructor was in skin tight hot shorts and her fluorescent sports bra was shining through her translucent T-shirt. We were all really enjoying that.

She was so caught up in her yelling that she didn’t watch where she was walking and she tripped over me.

She was sprawled face first all over me.

She was pressed so close to me I could smell her hair.

The whole class erupted into a derisive but mostly envious “Ooooo~” and “WAAAH!”

Instead of shooting up and telling everyone to shut the hell up, Ms. Tan locked her sympathetic eyes with me, smiled a smile I’d never before seen, and said:

So sorry, looks like I fell for you”

She laughed, and got up. She then told everyone to shut the hell up.

I was the class hero for the entire year.

Uncanny Valley Explained | Why Robots, Dolls and Mannequins are Creepy

Man in Peru Caught Out Drinking With an 800-year-old Mummy!

A pre-Hispanic mummy of between 600 and 800 years old, was found inside the backpack of a delivery man from a delivery company in the Peruvian region of Puno, near Bolivia. The 26-year-old Peruvian man who was caught with the mummy said, ‘Juanita’ was a kind of ‘spiritual girlfriend’ he kept it at home “and took it out to show his friends.”

Drunk in Charge of a Mummy

The police found three young men accompanied by a mummy that was inside a thermal delivery suitcase. The discovery occurred on Saturday, February 25, 2023, in the city of Puno, in southern Peru. The group of friends was surprised by the police authorities in a routine check while they were consuming alcoholic beverages at the Mantaro viewpoint of Puno.

The 26-year-old had with him a delivery box from the company ‘Pedidos Ya’. Inside, there were human remains in a fetal position still bearing soft tissues with characteristics corresponding to a mummy.

According to the BBC , the young man described the mummy as ‘a kind of spiritual girlfriend’ as he had been sharing his room with it for some time. The mummy was supposedly owned by his father, and was generally kept in a box next to the TV. It is unknown how the mummy came to be owned by his father.

The Ministry of Culture specified through a statement that the remains – classified as a national cultural asset – were identified as a mummified adult man presumably from the eastern area of Puno. Sources from that office informed EFE that the individual would have been over 45 years old and approximately 1.51 meters (5 foot) tall, according to preliminary investigations.

#PUNO Momia era trasladada en mochila de un delivery @pedidosya. @PoliciaPeru #terna intervino a joven y sus amigos libando junto a los restos arqueológicos de la época pre hispánica en el mirador Manto en Puno @MinCulturaPe @CNNEE @ReutersLatam pic.twitter.com/mI3cA2EOMb

— Puno Sin Filtro (@PunoSinFiltro) February 26, 2023

An Odd Housemate

The authorities estimate that the human remains were 800 years old, and would likely come from the district of Patambuco. Apparently, they had been in the possession of the family for about 30 years, the authorities from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture informed various local media.

The delivery man stated that the mummy was kept at his parents’ house and that he took it out to be seen by his friends from the neighborhood, according to the newspaper El Comercio .

The police confiscated the mummy and turned it over to the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. The delivery man and his two friends, aged between 23 and 26, have been detained and are being investigated for possible crimes against the country’s cultural heritage.

Why You Need to Leave America – 5 Signs You Can’t Ignore Anymore (It’s Time to GO!)

Yup. Good video.

What was the cruelest thing a company has ever done to you as an employee?

I was working as a photo engraver for a major newspaper. It was a union job, so I was making a pretty good salary. I was a newlywed, having gotten married two months earlier. I was working the day shift, 8 AM to 4:30 PM. My wife and I were still learning how to live as a couple.

Just before quitting time on a Thursday afternoon, I was told that starting next Monday, I was being moved to the graveyard shift, 1:30 AM to 8 AM. This meant that I would no longer be able to sleep with my wife. We made the best of the situation, but I was pissed that someone had enough control over my life that they could make me do something I did not want to do.

I was working in a room by myself operating a huge graphic arts camera. People would bring work to me, but I primarily worked by myself. Each night I would come to work and try to figure out how I could get out of this mess. I realized I had to work for myself. I had a lot of time to think.

After months of soul searching, I decided to go to law school. This would allow me to get out of the newspaper and work for myself. My schedule was work: 1:30 AM to 8 AM, go home, have a meal with my wife and then go to bed. We never figured out what to call the meals as it was breakfast for one of us and dinner for the other. I would sleep until 5 PM when my wife woke me for another meal. I would go to school, take classes from 7 PM to 10 PM and would stay out at school until midnight studying, come home and start the cycle all over again.

It was rough, but worth it. Right in the middle of law school, my first child was born. I was now the sole income for the family, a law student, and a new father.

I just retired from practicing law for over 35 years.

China is exploring the use of a new EUV light source in making its own lithography facility

China is exploring the use of a new extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source in making its own lithography facility but technology experts said such an ambitious goal may take many years to achieve.

Over the past few days articles and videos have gone viral on the Internet in China claiming that Tsinghua University has made breakthroughs in steady-state microbunching (SSMB) technology, which can create an EUV light source with a power several times higher than that of ASML’s EUV lithography.

They say the future launch of a SSMB accelerator, nicknamed “Lithographic cannon”, will help China bypass the export controls of the United States and the Netherlands.

These came after Huawei Technologies on August 29 commenced the sale of its flagship smartphone Mate60 Pro, which used a 7 nanometer chip produced with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) N+2 processing technology and ASML deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography.

The SSMB technology in lithography can help China break the technological blockage of ASML.

An article published by Acta Physica Sinica (a Chinese academic journal) has proposed to create SSMB-EUV lithography while Tsinghua’s research has already proved the feasibility of this idea.

News about China’s plan to build an SSMB facility in Xiongan New Area near Beijing, with this project, if it’s successful, China can bypass the US sanctions.

China should develop the SSMB technology because it can obtain neither the EUV lithography from ASML nor key parts needed such as lenses from German’s Zeiss and laser beam tools from the United States’ Cymer and German’s Trumpf.

Currently, ASML’s EUV lithography is using a light source originating from a laser-produced plasma (LPP) source that has a maximum power of 500 watts. A ring-shaped SSMB accelerator can create an EUV light source with a power of about 1 kilowatt (1000 watts). Its circumference may range from 100 to 150 meters.

Another EUV light source comes from superconducting radio-frequency free electron laser (SRF-FEL), which can achieve maximum power of between 1 and 10 kW. Such a facility can stretch out for as long as 200 meters. More technological breakthroughs are needed to achieve this.

In general, the power of a laser beam should reach 250W for making 7nm chips, 350W for 5nm and 500W for 3nm. It needs 1kW to make 2nm chips.

All these long-term developments have recently caught the attention of Chinese netizens, who wish to see China move on to making its own EUV lithography after the successful launch of Mate60 Pro.

Coming Back Home After 3 Years In Thailand, here are my thoughts

Very interesting.

With top Chinese universities scrapping English tests, will China become more isolated or do we all need to learn Mandarin as China advances?

Hi, Henry R. Greenfield. Thanks for the interesting question.

Don’t worry about it.

Put such thoughts out of your head.

Chinese are very accommodating.

We learn English so that you don’t have to learn Chinese.

Some of us even give ourselves an English name so that you won’t have to struggle with our Chinese names.

My former colleague in Dublin, Ying Xue, introduces herself as “Snow”, so that no one will struggle with her name.

My former housemate in Dublin, Chu Jun, introduces herself as “Jennifer”, so that no one will struggle with her name.

My former classmate in the States, Shi Ting, introduces herself as “Kelly”, so that no one will struggle with her name.

See the pattern here?

In my opinion, that’s pretty accommodating.

Your facility with Mandarin – or lack thereof – matters not one whit to me.

We can just converse in English.

I admit, I’m not the Second coming of the Bard – to be honest, I don’t really get poetry, I can never tell great from doggerel – but I strongly believe that my command of the English language is at a much higher level than your grasp of Mandarin will ever reach, could ever reach, in this lifetime at least.

And that’s not hubris speaking.
Just common sense.

So, rest easy.

You will never need to learn Mandarin.

Banish those fears from your mind.

Take a deep breath.

Wipe the sweat that has beaded your brow.

Steady your hands.

And enjoy what remains of your existence on this ball of rock.

Life is too short to wallow in fear and hate.

Crumb-Crusted Top Sirloin and
Roasted Garlic Potatoes with Bourbon Sauce

crumb crusted top sirloin roasted potatoes with bourbon sauce
crumb crusted top sirloin roasted potatoes with bourbon sauce

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients

Roasted Garlic Potatoes

  • 2 large russet potatoes, each cut lengthwise into 8 wedges (about 1 1/2 pounds)
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Steak

  • 1 beef top sirloin steak, boneless, cut 2 inches thick (about 2 to 2 1/2 pounds)
  • 1 tablespoon prepared spicy brown mustard
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 cup soft whole wheat bread crumbs
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Bourbon Sauce

  • 1/2 cup beef broth
  • 2 tablespoons bourbon
  • 1/4 cup Half-and-Half
  • Pepper

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 425 degrees F.

Roasted Garlic Potatoes

  1. Place potato wedges in 15 x 10-inch metal baking pan.
  2. Combine oil, garlic, salt and pepper in small bowl. Drizzle over potatoes; toss to coat. Spread potatoes in single layer. Set aside.

Steak

  1. Combine mustard, garlic and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in same small bowl; spread evenly onto beef Top Sirloin Steak.
  2. Combine bread crumbs and parsley in another small bowl. Pat mixture evenly over mustard mixture.
  3. Place steak on rack in shallow roasting pan. Insert ovenproof meat thermometer so tip is centered in thickest part of beef, not resting in fat. Do not add water or cover. Roast steak and potatoes in 425 dgrees F oven for 25 minutes; turn potatoes. Continue roasting 15 to 20 minutes to medium rare (145 degrees F) to medium (160 degrees F) doneness for steak and until potatoes are tender.
  4. Remove steak when meat thermometer registers 135 degrees F for medium rare; 150 degrees F for medium.
  5. Transfer steak to carving board; tent loosely with aluminum foil. Let stand 5 to 10 minutes. (Temperature will continue to rise about 10 degrees F to reach 145 degrees F for medium rare; 160 degrees F for medium.)
  6. Meanwhile prepare Bourbon Sauce.

Bourbon Sauce

  1. Add broth and bourbon to roasting pan; bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring until browned bits attached to pan are dissolved. Boil for 2 minutes.
  2. Add Half-and-Half; bring to a boil. Season with pepper, as desired. Keep warm.
  3. Carve steak into slices. Spoon sauce over beef. Serve with potatoes.

Confession of the Day

My dying wife asked me if I’d be okay if she had sex with her ex one last time

My wife has a terminal disease. She is projected to live at most 9 months. I am of course destroyed. We’ve been together for a decade. I don’t remember life without her and I don’t know what I’m going to do when she’s gone. I have been doing my best to make the last days of her life good and grant whatever wish I can.

The doctors said that she was likely to need a wheelchair in 4 or 5 months, then by month 8 she’ll be bedridden for the last few weeks. That’s if she doesn’t decline faster.

Recently she sat me down and told me that one of the last things she wanted to do was have sex with a previous partner of hers. I of course was shocked and when I asked why the fuck she wants that. So basically she thinks that her most physically compatible satisfying lover was him. She gave a whole monologue about how sex sometimes is just physical and how emotionally fulfilling sex is with me but it was bullshit to get to that point.

So now I’m left with this, deny my dying wife a wish for my own ego, or let her go fuck another man who she feels was better. Honestly I’m so pissed of and betrayed that she asked this of me. I feel like I’m put in a position where I have to say yes because she’s dying.

I know what I want to say, but I don’t know if that’s right. I’m so hurt that sex with an ex was apparently so good that she needs to do it once before she dies.

I just hate everything about this.

Victor Davis Hanson warns America’s witnessing a ‘systemic collapse’

It amazes me how many don’t see the country collapsing before their eyes.

What was the best answer given by a bartender to a rude customer?

My best answer to a rude customer didn’t require speaking.

I had a foreign “dignitary” attempt to dine at the Japanese restaurant I bartended at. He showed up in 1 rolls Royce and his 7 wives arrived in a second one.

He sat drinking at my bar, ogling (in a very creepy way) every female in the bar while his wives stood quietly lined up against the wall without any refreshment. He complained about everything, including the bar snacks we put out demanding that I go to some specialty store to get a specific olive mix for him to munch on while waiting for his table. I declined

At one point in time, I bent over slightly to wash a glass and he just reached down my blouse to grab my breast. Without missing a beat, I grabbed a soda gun and sprayed the hell out of him with coke soda. Just happened that there were a couple of off duty cops sitting there so he was escorted out while a few of his wives snickered.

The gallons of coke soda answered for me. Lol

Will the reentry of Huawei into the market push Apple to prioritize innovation, or will their efforts primarily revolve around lobbying against Huawei through Congress and the federal government?

First of all, “Huawei’s reentry” is possible only because they overcame all the U.S. sanctions and built a better chips on a 7nm platform two generation behind the leading edge 3mn chip that Apple has. . . and producing it without ASML’s EUV machine that people said they had to have. And Huawei’s can even do what Apple’s can’t – make satellite calls that is essentially 6G.

So what do you expect any lobbying will do for Apple? Just as Biden expected Russia to topple with the SWIFT ban, all of Washington never thought Huawei could come up with its own chip. . . . and this soon!

And most important of all, Apple doesn’t want really to get China upset because they’re the only ones in the world who could make Apple’s leading devices. They may pass on assembly of legacy devices to India or Vietnam to please Washington but no one is set up to even touch China on their high end production lines.

Apple is indeed caught between the rock and a hard place, especially with the mobil market being down. They just canceled order for about 20% of the 3nm chip for which they were suppose to be taking up 90% of TSMC’s manufacturing run. So, it’s not just Apple that will be hurting.

In the meantime, Huawei has increased their orders for more Mate 60 Pros. its uhheard of that a dated chip is outperforming and outselling the leaders and if even last for a short while, expect red ink to be outflowing.

Shopping at One of the Last Open Sears Stores – Newport Centre Mall Jersey City, NJ

The tiny squeeze

Normally, I talk and relate stories about China. And yes, Hong Kong is part of China, but the fact is that it has been “polluted” by the UK and it is sort of a hybrid “Western city” integrated into China. It is interesting in many, many ways. But today, I want to talk about the shopping centers; not the malls… the small grocery stores.

You see, in HK space is at a premium. You cannot get around without bumping into anyone, and some days it is just truly crazy; I mean “soylent green” type of crowding. And because of the massive crowding, the HK folk have devised walk around, and one such work around (or walk around) is the supermarkets.

They are tiny, tiny.

Tiny isles, jam packed with all sorts of food items. Really small grocery carts, and checkout lanes that require you to slide out sideways. LOL

Is it really important to have a four bedroom, three bath, three car garage? Or can you make due with less and spend more time doing OTHER things?

Yes. that is why the HK-Macao-Zhuhai bridge is being so heavily used. Many HK folk have bought homes in Tanzhou (where I live). It’s crazy actually.

Today…

Have you ever known someone who was too perfect?

Definitely. There was a girl at my high school who was as seemingly perfect as one could get – she was pretty, had tons of friends, an amazing figure, good grades, a large social media following, played in the first hockey team…the list goes on. She was nice, too, in a polite, composed sort of way.

This worked for her for a few years. Our school was single-sex and quite prestigious, and for a while the intense and competitive environment often felt like a contest for Who-Can-Be-The-Most-Perfect. Although she never stood out in any way, she was often praised by students and teachers alike for her good work ethic, perfect hair, perfect legs, perfectly pleasant demeanour. As you might be able to tell, the word was thrown around a lot.

Unfortunately, I think it eventually went to her head, twisting her thoughts. She became resistant to change. I suppose it would be an easy position to take; if a flawless person cannot be improved, any alterations are damaging, right? Instead she became obsessed with sustaining her image. As school became more difficult, she studied harder, refusing to let her grades slip. People began describing her as vain – a word I’d never before associated with her name – due to her new, unreasonable concern for her looks and social media persona. Her friends became increasingly frustrated as she fretted over Instagram posts and projects and pimples, and eventually her group of admirers dwindled. I can only speculate that it was in response to this that her fixation with her body began, and continued to develop into anorexia.

In year 11 (2014) she was admitted to hospital because they thought her heart would stop. She remained there for a few weeks, then spent a few months visiting ED specialists. She later moved schools, and from what I have been told and what I have seen from her (much less-used) social media accounts, she seems to have let go of Perfection. Apparently, she’s really happy.

In my experience, a person is too perfect when perfectionism consumes them.

The Sopranos | Wolves

This was actually amazing.

What is it like to date someone from another culture?

It’s eye opening and makes you rethink the things you take for granted.

It took me and my husband a while to know that when we’re talking about the same topic, often times we’re talking about completely different things because our backgrounds are different.

  • Meaning when we talk about abortion, we have different scenarios in mind. Because it’s much more prohibited in Egypt, and because pregnancy outside marriage is a disaster and may endanger the mother, my view on abortion is shaped so differently from his since abortion in his culture isn’t usually caused by these motives.
  • Similarly, when we talk about adoption we’re coming from such different directions ! The percentage of adoption in Egypt is very different from the percentage in the US. I don’t know a single adopted person in my community. So we’re talking about very different experiences.
  • Another example, one time my husband told me “I’m the king of my house”. In my culture this sentence indicates superiority.I got really mad and told him, “I am no servant !” He said “of course you’re not. You’re the queen of the house so I’ll have to spoil you“. I was like “Oh“.
  • We discovered that our definition of control is so different. My tolerance of control is way higher than his. So something like “Stop using your phone and sit with me already” sounds controlling to him. To me the thought doesn’t even come to mind.

We learned, after many misunderstandings, that whenever we discuss something, we’ll have to take a step back and describe what kind of setting we have in mind. Or even ask about the very basics that one normally wouldn’t consider asking while talking with someone from your own culture. The phrase “everybody knows this” is simply thrown out of the window.

It’s definitely thought provoking. But it’s a very enjoyable, enlightening journey.

90’s-Style Swiss Steak

90s style swiss steak
90s style swiss steak

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 pounds boneless beef round or chuck shoulder steaks, cut 1/2 inch thick
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 3/4 cup finely chopped carrots
  • 3/4 cup finely chopped onion
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped green bell pepper
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped celery
  • 1/2 cup prepared picante sauce
  • 1/4 cup ketchup
  • 1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar
  • 2 1/2 cups uncooked bow tie pasta, cooked

Instructions

  1. Cut beef steak into 6 pieces; pound to 1/4-inch thickness.
  2. Combine flour, salt and pepper. Lightly coat beef with flour mixture.
  3. Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium heat until hot. Brown beef in batches. Pour off drippings.
  4. Return beef to Dutch oven. Add remaining ingredients, except pasta; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover tightly and simmer 1 1/2 hours or until beef is fork-tender. If sauce becomes too thick, stir in a little water.
  5. Serve over pasta.

Huawei’s Explosive Revelation! Huawei Mate 60 Pro Flying off the Shelves, Shining as China’s Pride!

Recently, the most notable queues in China are not found at tourist attractions like the Great Wall or train stations, but at Huawei smartphone stores.

People are lining up in large numbers to purchase the latest Huawei phones, creating winding queues that stretch around corners.

For instance, in Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, customers wait in line outside a Huawei flagship store to get their hands on the newest Huawei smartphone.

The situation is similar in Shenzhen, where a Huawei offline store sees such long queues of customers buying Huawei phones that the store employees have resorted to buying them fried chicken to keep them satisfied.

Huawei exclusive stores in various parts of the country are also experiencing significant queues.

The reason behind this surge in demand is the release of the Huawei Mate60, which marks Huawei’s comeback and allows consumers to partake in its success.

Initially, analysts predicted the sales of the Huawei Mate50 series to be around 5 million units, but they now estimate that the Huawei Mate60 series could surpass 6 million units in sales.

“China Focus” is a YouTube channel created to provide current events and pop culture headlines from China.Here you can get to know a more real China through my video. |

https://youtu.be/E2W8DfTUIYc

The US helped China, Japan, and S. Korea industrialize and become wealthy. Japan and South Korea show their gratitude to the USA by being strong allies. Why does China treat the US as an enemy?

Sorry, I can’t help laughing,good narcissistic question!

I want to correct you, Japan and South Korea allied with the US because they want to rely on the US for development, and the US also wants to use Japan and South Korea to contain China. They each have intention. Besides, the alliance with the United States was not so easy. Both Japan and South Korea were severely emasculated in key areas such as military, and were unable to control their own destinies. So don’t think that America is the god and such great and selfless.

You said China sees the US as an enemy. I don’t see that. Hostility towards a country usually manifests itself in suppressing its economic development, denying its achievements, confronting it, accusing or even stigmatizing it. Isn’t that exactly what the US is doing to China? So you are wrong, it is the US that sees China as a thorn in its side because it feels uneasy about the rise of China. In fact, China wants to be a partner with the United States, not an enemy. Mutual benefit is what China wants to see. China is doing what it can to improve relations with consumer companies around the world, especially in Europe and the United States. But in the past two years, some of America’s actions have been disappointing.

Maybe you are used to the privileged position that the United States has long enjoyed in the world, and when a more confident, unyielding, and tough China appears in front of you, you feel that it is against you. I would urge you to stop looking at things from such “American perspective”. It is normal for countries to have differences, but there are also relations of cooperation and exchanges. Don’t assume that the entire world is succumbing to the United States. This is abnormal and impossible.

Lalo Salamanca | Revenge | GTA IV Theme

“Man was on the vengeance grindset”

‘De-risking’ may kill EU economy — Hungarian minister

The proposals of European politicians on “decoupling” and “de-risking” with China will amount to a knockout of European economy, according to Hungary’s top diplomat.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Péter Szijjártó told the Belt and Road Summit 2023 in Hong Kong on Sept 13 that these politicians by those terms mean to cut economic ties with China.

What would happen if you cut such ties? You are killing the European economy,” he said, noting the annual trade volume between the EU and China has reached over 800 billion euros ($859 billion).

Therefore Hungary is urging for an even tighter, stronger, more successful and more efficient economic cooperation between China and Europe, the minister added.

Hungary is one of the very few EU member states that have not delivered weapons to Ukraine. And Hungary is aimed at becoming the meeting point of the West and the East, he said.

Szijjártó told a panel discussion that European policies toward Ukraine and sanctions against Russia are total failures.

Europe is in bad shape, to say the least, confronting both security and economic challenges, noting his country’s neighbor Ukraine has been at conflict for the last one and a half years.

He said Europe is bearing the cost of the Ukraine-Russia conflict as European people are dying, its infrastructure is being ruined, and the economy is suffering huge losses.

Unfortunately, the answer Europe has given to this war proved to be a big mistake, a huge failure,” he told the summit, adding that Europe should have isolated this conflict, but instead of that, Europe has globalized it.

Europeans should have prevented the conflict itself, but now everyday even higher risks of escalation keep emerging due to illogical acceptance and following of moves by the world’s top military power. On top of this, Europe has decided to implement a policy based on sanctions, said Szijjártó.

These sanctions proved to be a total failure,” Szijjártó said. This is because the goals of such sanctions, pressing Russia and ending the conflict, have not been fulfilled, while the competitiveness of the European economy is decreasing day by day.

When it comes to the long-term impact of the conflict, the minister said there is another “very serious risk” as the world is going to be divided into blocs again.

The economic development of Europe had been based on a good combination of highly developed technologies and easily accessible and cheap natural resources from Russia. “But now the ties between the two … are now being cut, one by one,” he said.

The Sopranos || SCARS

WADDAYA SAY, WADDAYA HEAR?

How do Chinese people view white Europeans?

Instead of reading answers by non-Chinese telling you how we Chinese view white Europeans, why not listen to an actual Chinese telling you how Chinese might view white Europeans?

It’s very possible and plausible that an actual Chinese person who has lived in Europe might have a more accurate view of how Chinese people might view white Europeans compared to the non-Chinese people trying to tell you what we Chinese think of them.

I lived in Germany for just under a year and in Ireland for about three years and have traveled many times to the UK, and made more than a few trips to France and the Netherlands.

In that time, I’ve made more than a handful of good friends.

The obvious answer would be that I view white Europeans with my eyes.

The boring answer would be that my experiences living with white (and non-white) Europeans tells me that they aren’t different from anyone else.

It’s not like they’re from a different planet.

They bleed red.
They defecate and micturate.
They want to be healthy but can get ill, whether physically or mentally.
They enjoy hanging out with their friends.
They enjoy having a healthy social life.
They treasure their leisure and alone time.
They love their vacation time.
They watch movies and enjoy eating and spending time with friends and family.
Family – parents, siblings, children – are important.
Parents want the best for their children.
There are times when they get their hearts broken – by a woman, by a man, by a friend, by someone they’re close to, by a pet’s death.
There are times when they get their hopes dashed and when they feel frustrated because there are many obstacles in front of them, obstructing the path to their dreams, their goals.
They want to have a good life – with “a good life” having as many different meanings as there are people in their countries.
They like feeling loved, feeling appreciated.
They indulge in stereotypes – just like everyone else on the planet.
Some of them are passionate about football*, and many support their national football teams.
Some enjoy politics, some don’t.

*As an interesting aside, when I was living in Germany, I managed to strike up a conversation with a TOTAL stranger about football – we ended up talking for more than an hour, just about football, nothing else. The funny thing is, this conversation took place not in a pub or biergarten but when I was helping someone else with ther gardening.

As a Chinese, I don’t see Europeans, white or otherwise, as any different than Chinese or any other group on the planet.

Fundamentally, their wants, their needs, their desires are the same as everybody else’s.

Having made more than handful of friends while I was working and living in Europe, I will say this:

Developing real meaningful friendships kills ignorance and prejudice.

Try it and see for yourself.

U.S Lawmakers Banned All Tech Exports To China And Lost The Tech War

Really pathetic to see the USA behaving this way. But, it does expose a desperate attempt to halt it’s decline. Hope more Chinese scientists and skilled experts return to the motherland.

https://youtu.be/YajA1UV0awU

Is it a pleasant surprising movement at G20 where Chinese PM Mr. Li Qiang did a supportive and constructive role by joining unanimously the G20 leaders declaration?

It was BRILLIANT

I always wondered why Li Qiang was at the G20 instead of Wang Yi which is the actual protocol

Now I can see why Xi didn’t come

India, Russia and China bamboozled the G7 completely

They got their G21 and THEY GOT RUSSIA REFERENCE OUT OF THE ORIGINAL JOINT DECLARATION


The Original deal was the G7 would approve of the inclusion of the AU into G20 in return for India agreeing to a joint declaration which indirectly referenced to Russia and it’s Aggression on Ukraine and universally agreed that Russia had to do something to stop the SMO

That’s what the Foreign Ministers Agreed

Then the West would say “The Whole World condemns Putin”

It was a win – win for the West or so they thought

Either they would get a declaration condemning Putin and Russia or they would not get a statement and declaration because China and Russia would object and that would badly affect India with a dead G20 summit and drive a wedge between the three BRICS founders

Cant fool these two old foxes can you?

The Masterstroke was sending Li Qiang

He simply said “I don’t have the authority to accept any declaration other than the one I have been told to accept”

Li Qiang isn’t Head of Government

Had it been Xi, he would have had to refuse and that would have made him look belligerent

Maybe if Modi didn’t get his declaration and the summit ended up a lame duck, the tensions would have widened between the two nations

Instead Li Qiang brilliantly shrugged and sent back the declaration to Beijing and said he needed approval

Lavrov saw the same trick and sent the declaration back to Moscow

Time kept flying as planned

Ultimately Jaishankar as planned moved in and said “Look, we need our declaration to make the summit a success. We have everything else. Let’s forget Russia”

Li Qiang jumped and endorsed everything else including the aggression statement

The West were entirely outmanoeuvred and they HAD NO CHOICE


Lets see now

  • Modi gets his G20 Summit – the Most Fruitful Summit in the last Decade
  • China gets their BRI friends into G20 and widens their influence
  • Russia avoids Global pressure and continues its SMO slowly shrugging off the West

Win, Win and Win

Who Loses?

We found the abandoned white cat with homeless kittens. the mother cat needs help immediately

In scorching heat, we came across a cat and her two kittens by a roadside park, seemingly abandoned. Determined to find a safe shelter, the cat led us on a journey to shelter her little ones. Finally, she settled down, and we offered her water and a creamy treat, hoping to build trust. She eagerly accepted, realizing our care and support. Nourishing food followed, as we felt compassion for her hunger and the intense heat. With her trust gained, we brought the family home, ensuring protection from heatstroke. Witnessing their newfound peace and happiness filled us with deep contentment. Watch the inspiring video till the end and witness the heartwarming journey of a mother cat and her kittens finding hope and a safe home in the face of adversity.

China deHow technologically advanced is China? Can you give some perspective and examples of how advanced in technology they are?

China is the most advanced Nation in the world in terms of Applications of Advanced Technology

They can apply advanced technology on a scale that no other nation to this day can manage

It is undeniable that China is the world’s foremost nation to apply advanced technology

By comparison the US pales with most Americans using 4G speeds and with most applications falling flat. They actually use paper certificates for vaccines

South Korea comes second in this aspect followed by Japan and Singapore


My sons first word was “It looks like one of those Futuristic Cities shown in many 1980s Hollywood movies”


The Key here is CORE TECHNOLOGY

Now for instance, all these wonderful apps that are being built , they are coded in a specific language right?

They need high performance servers right?

You need processors right?

Every one of these is controlled entirely by the West in terms of their Core capabilities

It was a perfect relationship with China developing the most fantastic advanced applications and developing their software at fantastic pathbreaking pace

The West sold and licensed their Core Technology for a fat fee

The whole Global economy relished the partnership


The West chose to WEAPONIZE their core technology

This accelerated Chinas own pursuit of Core Technology

In a mere decade China today controls almost 11% of the World’s Core Technology and Research in various areas

They are almost on par with Europe and Japan and well ahead of South Korea

Yet THEY ARE STILL ONLY A SIXTH IN TERMS OF CORE TECH CONTROL AS THE USA


Had the US simply shut the f*** up and simply encouraged Green Cards for Researchers from China with a 10 year path to Citizenship in 2012, China would have been in all sorts of trouble

Had the US encouraged actual competition on even grounds, the Intel and Qualcomms and Huawei would be on level playing fields and smaller Chinese entities would never have got the Billions of Yuan needed to leapfrog which would have instead gone into Real Estate & Paper

So Today China is surging ahead or at par on almost all modern commercial technologies like Rail, Green Energy, Latent Communications, Face recognition etc

Yet China is only around 16% in Control of Core Technology, far ahead than ANY ASIAN NATION IN POST WW II HISTORY but still a long way to go

Experts believe China will control 30% of all Core Technology by 2032


Conclusion is China is on its way

As they say in Hindi

China CHAL PADA HAIN

China opens ties with Venezuela, challenging US ‘hegemonic mindset’

Condemning Washington’s “hegemonic mindset” and sanctions, China strengthened its strategic partnership with Venezuela. The oil-rich South American nation’s President Nicolás Maduro took a historic trip to Beijing, and applied to join BRICS. Ben Norton analyzes the important geopolitical and economic consequences.

What damaging belief has pervaded Western societies?

The two worst beliefs are Judaism and Christianity, which have been used by power elites to control and manipulate societies for thousands of years.

By promoting belief in a god and afterlife; they actually promote the false belief that humans are not responsible for improving their lives on this earth in this life. Then, by promoting the belief that individuals could ask for forgiveness before they died, it encouraged all kinds of bad behavior during their lifetime.

These religions have twisted western society into embracing the idea of the white savior, out to save other civilizations because of their unique connection to the creator.

They have been a curse on the development of human societies.

How is the iPhone made in India costlier than the retail price in other countries?

Let me guess?

You expected the Iphone 15 to cost ₹50K right?

You saw ‘Assembled in India’ and decided that the price will be pretty low

Instead as usual India has the most expensive iphones apart from maybe Turkey


The primary reason for this is that India is a pretty weak market for the Iphone today

The Lowest price is ₹80K and most Indians can’t afford this price tag

It’s why you have 96,000 Pre Orders for this Phone from India against nearly 3.15 Lakh Pre Orders in Dubai and almost 6.8 Lakh from USA (China of course had a very bad reception for the Iphone 15 with only 2.66 Lakh Pre Orders so far)

Most Indians are waiting to see how much cheaper the Iphone 13 becomes and buy that phone instead

So without Volume, there is no scale for Apple to lower it’s costs

It costs ₹52,000 to assemble the iphone and pay all import duties in India for all components

That’s $ 840 or 5500 Yuan

It costs only 3630 Yuan in China

So the Chinese retailers get a much larger share of the retail price than the Indian retailers

The retailers in India would likely end up with ₹4K to ₹5K for a Iphone 15 costing ₹80K or around 10%

In China the Average retailer could get 24%

Another reason is TAX

T A X

India charges too much tax

Import duties, GST cost a big chunk of sales of the iphone

It exponentially increases the cost of almost all products assembled in India and makes them pricier than actually importing the product


Apple thinks India will one day be big enough for a large market share of the iphone

That’s wishful thinking

The Iphone high end model (9999 Yuan) costs around 55% of the Average Monthly Salary in Beijing, 49% in Shanghai and 46% in Shenzhen

It costs 16.8% of the Average Monthly Salary in New York

In India it costs 261% in Chennai, 236% in Bangalore and 219% in Mumbai

So either the price of the iphone must be brought down to ₹35000/- Or salaries must rise by 4 times

India will thus be worthless for Apple unless they exclusively assemble and sell lower grade Iphones pricing them at ₹40K each

Sorry, when I say Apple – I mean Foxconn

Apple still will earn a lot of money from its Proprietary Fees & Profits.

Foxconn will ultimately make very little money and will leave India like others before


So to those geniuses who said Iphone prices in India will come down and more Indians will buy the same

I TOLD YOU SO

Guitar Teacher REACTS: Robin Trower “Too Rolling Stoned” 1980

So glad you discovered Robin Trower! You have to give a listen to the entire album “Bridge of Sighs” Brilliant album. He’s still alive and cranking it out.

THE OSTRICH!

A man walks into a restaurant with a full-grown ostrich behind him. The waitress asks them for their orders. The man says, “A hamburger, fries and a coke,” and turns to the ostrich, “What’s yours?”

“I’ll have the same.” says the ostrich.

A short time later the waitress returns with the order. “That will be $9.40 please.”

The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out the exact change for payment.

The next day, the man and the ostrich come again and the man says, “A hamburger, fries and a coke please.”

The ostrich says, “I’ll have the same.”

Again the man reaches into his pocket and pays with exact change.

This becomes routine until the two enter again.

“The usual?” asks the waitress.

“No, this is friday night, so I will have a steak, baked potato and a salad.” says the man.

“Same,” says the ostrich.

Shortly the waitress brings the order and says, “That will be $32.62.”

Once again the man pulls the exact change out of his pocket and places it on the table.

The waitress cannot hold back her curiosity any longer. “Excuse me, Sir. How do you manage to always come up with the exact change in your pocket every time?”

“Well,” says the man, “several years ago I was cleaning the attic and found an old lamp. When I rubbed it, a Genie appeared and offered me two wishes. My first wish was that if I ever had to pay for anything, I would just put my hand in my pocket and the right amount of money would always be there.”

“That’s brilliant!” says the waitress. “Most people would ask for a million dollars or something, but you’ll always be as rich as you want for as long as you live!”

“That’s right. Whether it’s a liter of milk or a Rolls Royce, the exact money is always there.” says the man.

The waitress asks, “What’s with the ostrich?”

The man sighs, pauses and answers, “My second wish was for a tall chick with a big ass and long legs who agrees with everything I say.”

Despite US Blackmailing, 90 Nations Confirmed Attendance At The Belt And Road Initiative For China!

Great analysis. Yes, China’s BRI dominance is about peace and prosperity. US dominance is about bullying and exploitation.

https://youtu.be/i7ukFh58rFk

If China does invade Taiwan and the USA, Japan, and Australia go to war to defend Taiwan, how many soldiers, warships, and combat vehicles would they lose? Who would really win?

Taiwan is in China. The island of Taiwan is surrounded by Chinese warships and the American, Japanese and Australian fleets are unable to approach Taiwan.

Biden did not tell the US citizens that he wanted to invade China, only “to defend Taiwan”.

So, I ask, how does the US plan on doing that? with some sort of video game competition?

I mean, in order to “defend Taiwan”, you have to have military troops pertorming military actions, aka combat inside of China – And that’s because Taiwan is in China.

So currently America has soldiers in Taiwan, which is either illegal, or at the very least gray area because that’s part of China. And the government of China doesn’t approve of that and hasn’t allowed it. So that’s the current status.

If US start performing miltary action, that’s an effort to militarily conquer at least China or push them back inside of China.

That‘s called an invasion.

Sorry, everybody, if you don’t agree with this definition, but that’s what it is.

The 1.4 billion Chinese people have told the small hooligans led by the United States countless times that the Taiwan question is the bottom line of the Chinese people, and foreign forces are not allowed to get their hands on it.

China can use all its forces to resist the invasion, and after this naval battle all the warships of China, the United States, Japan and Australia will be destroyed.

Do you think that after the end of the naval war, it will stop here? No, it has not come to a stop yet.

At the same time, China will fight back against its territory. Although all of China’s warships were sunk in the war with the United States, Japan and Australia, let us not forget that China has the largest number of civilian ships in the world, and Chinese soldiers will be present in those countries.

No matter what era we are in, apart from the indiscriminate bombing in the early stage of the war, the later stage of the war will be a ground war.

  • Does Australia have 50,000 soldiers combined? China can send 500,000 troops to Australia and take it over.
  • Japan: China does not need to send troops to occupy, dropping a few atomic bombs would be enough. The four Japanese islands are so resource-poor that even if China occupied them, they would be a liability and would be better off being completely destroyed.
  • As for the US, China wouldn’t send troops to occupy it either, but a huge army landing on US soil would be enough to make the US pay. China’s huge population could provide a steady stream of soldiers. You have to be prepared for America to become a battlefield.

The United States is keen on Preemptive war. However, China has always adheres to the principles of defense, self-defense and post-strike response, and adopts active defense. It keeps to the stance that “we will not attack unless we are attacked, but we will surely counterattack if attacked”.

post-strike response“,”we will surely counterattack if attacked” →→→ We have already told you what we will do!

Don’t think that if China is bullied, it will swallow its anger and not take revenge. There are limits to tolerance. Modern China is no longer the China a hundred years ago.

This is like a group of American hooligans always bullying a high-achieving Chinese student at school. Chinese students usually don’t give a damn about the provocations of American hooligans, but once they can’t stand it anymore and decide to fight back, the American hooligans will have to start paying a high price for their previous stupid provocations.

Girlfriend Disrespects Her Man, Instantly Regrets it

Mad respect for Joyce, she took those roasts in the chin like a champ.

What are some tried and tested ways to get rid of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses when they come knocking at your door?

A couple of years ago an elderly couple knocked on my door. I could tell at a glance they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I opened the door and said, “I’m sorry but I’m really busy today and don’t have time to chat. I’ll be happy to take a Watchtower, though.”

The man said, “There’s a really good article in there about saving for retirement.”

I said, “I’ll be sure to read it.”

As they left the woman turned back and said, “Thank you for not being mean to us.”

What was the reason for the Luftwaffe’s neglect of fighter production?

They didn’t neglect fighter production. Thanks to German mega presses the Germans churned out far greater fighter quantities (by the simplification of major parts), than they should have been able to.

German 19,000 ton Heavy Press of WW2.

Germany also had fewer aircraft types in service. So they had high volumes of fighter production.

The problems were many, like a lack of higher octane fuels so they couldn’t max out engine performance and later on a huge attrition of skilled pilots, followed by a lack of new well trained ones due to fuel shortages..

The fact that the 109 was still competitive at all by wars end, was a miracle considering that they were restricted to lower octane fuels.

Even after Germany reduced bomber production, it would still be impossible to keep up…

The simple truth, was simply that the Allied nations potential industrial capacity, by far dwarfed that of Germany’s. And sabotage along with a reluctance to cooperate in captured territory, meant Germany could not successfully leverage the entirety of the assets they had stolen in Europe’s Industry.

For America alone they entered the war after Sunday, December 7, 1941…So basically in real world production terms 1942. And they had gone from a peacetime to full wartime economy (outstripping German AND Japanese war production) by mid 1943. That’s not including Russia or the massive output of the British Empire. IN ONE AND A HALF YEARS.

Ultimately it comes down to simple math’s.

More people, more resources, more factories = more production.

In a war of production…Germany could never win. No matter how perfect they could have tried or how much war porn advocates bleat they could..

Tony Soprano – Putrid Existence

The Sopranos is one of the greatest deconstructions of the glamorous and honorable depiction of the mafioso’s lifestyle. In reality, behind the money, drugs, power, these men lead the life of misery and pudrid existence, betrayal, mindless murder, constant lies and theft. The legacy they leave behind ultimately drag down their families and friends.

Why is China advancing rapidly in technology?

China’s rapid advancement in technology can be attributed to several key factors:

  1. Government Support and Investment: The Chinese government has made technology development a top priority. Through initiatives like the “Made in China 2025” plan, they’ve provided substantial funding and resources to support the growth of high-tech industries.
  2. Large Pool of Talent: China has a vast population, which translates to a large pool of skilled engineers, scientists, and innovators. This human capital is a crucial asset for technological advancement.
  3. Education and Research Institutions: China has been investing heavily in its education system and research institutions. Universities like Tsinghua and Peking University are producing world-class graduates in technology-related fields.
  4. Emphasis on STEM Education: China places a strong emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education from an early age. This helps nurture a generation of students with strong technical skills.
  5. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: China has seen a surge in entrepreneurial activity, with a thriving startup culture. This has led to the development of innovative technologies and business models.
  6. Market Size and Demand: China’s enormous domestic market provides a substantial incentive for companies to innovate and develop new technologies to meet the demands of a rapidly growing middle class.
  7. Global Collaboration and Partnerships: China has been actively engaging in international collaborations and partnerships with leading technology companies and research institutions around the world. This helps them access global knowledge and expertise.
  8. Regulatory Environment: The regulatory environment in China, while strict in some areas, can also be more flexible and accommodating in others. This can facilitate faster development and deployment of new technologies.
  9. Focus on Strategic Industries: China has identified strategic industries like artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and biotechnology as areas of focus. This targeted approach helps concentrate resources and talent on areas with high potential for growth.
  10. Adoption of Emerging Technologies: China has shown a willingness to adopt and implement emerging technologies like 5G, artificial intelligence, and blockchain on a large scale, which can accelerate their development.

Is America Destined to Fall Like Rome? | Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson explores the striking similarities between ancient Rome and modern America in this thought-provoking video. Including the parallels between these two great civilizations and the lessons we can learn from history.

https://youtu.be/UR40MYBjSm8

Has anyone ever been wrongly executed?

This is the story of the happiest man to live on death row.

In 1936, 15-year-old Dorothy Drain was raped and murdered at her home in Pueblo Colorado .A man had entered the Drain’s home and assaulted Dorothy and her mother with an axe. A massive manhunt was launched, and the police were under pressure to catch the killer.

As they searched the railway lines, they came across 21-year-old Joe Arridy who confessed to the murder when they brought him in for questioning. He also fit the profile that was any Mexican-looking man, a description given by two women who were also attacked.

Joe wasn’t even Mexican, and his dark complexation was down to both his parents being Syrian. He also had an IQ of 46, and couldn’t tell the difference between a rock and an egg. His parents were first cousins, so Joe and his siblings suffered from problems related to inbreeding.

Joe couldn’t tell the difference between colours, talk very slowly, and was easily misled and was known to take the blame for things he didn’t do.

During Joe’s arrest, the police learned another man named Frank Aguilar had been arrested for the murder of Dorothy Drain. Frank was Mexican, worked for the murdered girl’s father, and was fired before the murders. They also found an axe head at Frank’s home, he also admitted to the murders.

The had concluded that Joe was with Frank at the time of the murders even though Frank admitted to the murders and told police he acted alone. Even Dorothy Drain’s mother who survived the attack pointed to Frank and said he was the only attacker.

Joe’s story would change depending on who was questioning him and it should have been clear Joe wasn’t a suspect. Even though three psychiatrists testified that Joe was mentally handicapped, he was still convicted and sentenced to death.

While on death row Joe, spent his time playing with a toy train given to him by prison warden Roy Best. He was treated well and with respect by prisoners and prison staff. Prison warden Roy Best would bring him gifts and said he cared for him like a son.

With the mental capacity of a small child, Joe didn’t understand he was going to die. When asked about is upcoming execution, Joe didn’t understand what a gas chamber was, and just said, “No no, Joe won’t die.”

Joe ordered ice-cream for his final meal, and before they took him to the gas chamber he asked prison staff if they could put the ice-cream in the freezer so he could finish it later. Joe smiled as he was led to the gas chamber, and when he got momentarily nervous, the warden held his hand.

Joe was executed on January 6, 1939, after many stays of executions and appeals. In 2011, Joe was finally pardoned seven decades after his death.

Huge Cat Hugged A Woman In a Shelter And Didn’t Let Go! It Must Be Seen

It happened about a week ago, Andy Brumagen and his fiancee Jessica came to the shelter, where their attention was completely captured by a pretty cat of quite large size. The couple loves animals and, of course, they couldn’t walk further down the hallway without giving this cat some warmth and care. As soon as Jessica opened the enclosure and pulled out the cat, she hugged her and buried herself in the girl’s shoulder, clearly not wanting to let go.

https://youtu.be/CEv8dgvKvc0

Can a human actually fire a handheld Minigun the way they do in movies and videogames?

The answer here is a really big, no.

It was tried once by US Army Special Forces and the results were practically catastrophic. Even in the movies you’ve seen it done in, there’s a lot more happening off-screen to make it look real than you could imagine.

The one everyone knows was designed around Jesse Ventura’s personal preferences for the movie Predator (it helps that he was actually an armorer when he served on a US Navy Underwater Demolition Team during the Vietnam era – UDT was a part of Naval Special Warfare and was a close relative of the SEAL Teams). It has an M60 handguard to hold onto, and is fitted with a harness, so that he could carry it for the movie. Arnold later used the same gun for T2, with slightly different modifications.

What you don’t see on screen is that neither of them are carrying the batteries for it, (Miniguns are electrically operated) because they were simply too heavy for either Ventura or Arnold. The wire leading to the batteries were hidden down their pants’ legs. It also has a supply of ammunition that can be exhausted in seconds (a Minigun fires up to 6000rpm, and a human just can’t carry enough of the 7.62x51mm ammunition it fires to make it useful). Even significantly reducing its ammunition consumption (you can slow it down) to about 1250rpm, the one they used fired its total ammunition supply in seconds. Even at that sedate rate, the ammunition canister for it held only 550 rounds which it could exhaust in 26.4 seconds. And carrying 550 rounds on top of the batteries and gun would be back-breaking work. Neither Ventura, nor Arnold after him, both extremely strong body builders, could even do it. And remember, that’s only 26.4 seconds worth of ammo, at only 21% of the gun’s actual potential rate of fire.

Next, they used blanks in those movies, for obvious reasons. But if they hadn’t, the recoil force is so extreme it can’t be controlled. Blanks don’t produce recoil the way live rounds do. The one time US Army Special Forces tried this, the gunner was literally spun halfway around by the force of the recoil. The only reason he didn’t kill anyone behind him was, fortunately, the gun had consumed all of its ammunition by the time that 180 degree spin was complete.

Awesome Beef Stroganoff

classic beef stroganoff 3051443 Final
classic beef stroganoff 3051443 Final

Ingredients

  • 6 cups uncooked egg noodles
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 pounds beef sirloin steak, cut into thin strips
  • 1 package onion or roasted garlic gravy mix for steak
  • 8 ounces fresh mushrooms, quartered
  • 1/4 cup tomato paste
  • 1 (10 ounce) can beef broth
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley (for garnish)

Instructions

  1. Cook noodles according to package directions-keep warm.
  2. In a large heavy bottom pot, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add meat and brown.
  3. Sprinkle gravy mix over meat.
  4. Add mushrooms; sauté for 5 minutes.
  5. Stir in tomato paste and broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, or until thickened, stirring occasionally.
  6. Remove from heat, and stir in sour cream.
  7. Top with parsley and serve over hot cooked noodles.

Can the US really obstruct China’s technological breakthroughs through export controls?

No!

There is no way it can stop China from overtaking the U.S. and the more it try, the faster China will overtake them and the faster the U.S. will implode.

I don’t think the U.S. realised it but everything the U.S. do to contained China it cost the US an arm and a leg yet it is barely a little inconvenience for China. China is a lot lot lot better than what the U.S. thinks China is in terms of technological prowess, in resilience, in preparedness in determination and in its ability.

Meanwhile the U.S. almost always over estimates it’s own ability, capability and capacity hence it always spend billions to do shit on China and harmed the U.S. instead of affecting China. So U.S. bring it on do as much shit as you want. The more you do the faster you die.

The U.S. has a mere quarter of Chinese market size over time and if the U.S. is smart and not so full of itself it better build a good relationship with China. Whatever the US wants to sell some 50% of customer is in or made in China! If you fxxk up this market you are fxxked. Thinking of containing China is a pipe dream. They can contain the US. Not U.S. containing China.

Simple, Chinese are more hard working, Chinese are willing to sacrifice, Chinese save more, Chinese invest more, Chinese learn fast, Chinese Market is way bigger, all SUPPLY CHAIN partner is in China, Chinese government is way, way, way more effective, 60% of the world s Market in around China. If China stop doing business with the US, you will suffer chronic inflation! If U.S. stop doing business with China they still have 95% of the worlds market.

Take my advise don’t pick a fight with China. They won’t lose. You will.

If I am the next US president, the First Nation I visit is China. Not Japan, not UK not Canada. I will double up trade with China. I will visit China every year and Invite Xi Xinping to make US their biggest partner. I will make Chinese a compulsory second language. Bring 10 million Chinese students Chinese students and send 2.5 million Americans to study in China!

I am not your enemy, I am giving you an advise to make the U.S. great again!

The Sopranos || Day is Gone

Jesus this deserves so many more views.

Safety Glasses

My father was an engineer. He was a metallurgical engineer. Which was a guy that tests the composition of steel. He made sure that it was pure and the alloying elements were in the right percentages. It was a very important job.

You need this, you know.

No one would buy a cake if pickles were substituted for eggs, and salt was substituted for sugar. Right?

Anyways, being older than me, he had his old work clothes that I inherited, and throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, I used his old safety glasses at work.

LOL.

They were God-awful! Horned rimmed, ugly. Like a scene from the movie “falling down”.

2023 09 18 10 59
2023 09 18 10 59

Now…

The funny thing was that EVERYONE knew that those were MY glasses. Everyone wore contemporaneous safety glasses, and not those old things.

So, sure as shit, if I misplaced my glasses, after an hour or so, I would find them on my desk at work. They would magically appear out of nowhere.

Not only once.

Not twice…

But every single time! I couldn’t give them away.

i even threw them into the trash bin…

Sure as shit, they walked back to my desk. I’ll tell you what!

What do you know?

Life is funny sometimes.

Today…

Thought considerations…

2023 09 18 10 48
2023 09 18 10 48

War as desirable outcome

The Army War College’s John Deni (Wall Street Journal, 12/22/21) urged the US to take “a hard-line stance in diplomatic discussions,” because “if Mr. Putin’s forces invade, Russia is likely to suffer long-term, serious and even debilitating strategic costs.”

The fact that US officials pushed for a Ukrainian counteroffensive that all but expected would fail raises an important question: Why would they do this? Sending thousands of young people to be maimed and killed does nothing to advance Ukrainian territorial integrity, and actively hinders the war effort.

The answer has been clear since before the war. Despite the high-minded rhetoric about support for democracy, this has never been the goal of pushing for war in Ukraine. Though it often goes unacknowledged in the US press, policymakers saw a war in Ukraine as a desirable outcome.

One 2019 study from the RAND Corporation—a think tank with close ties to the Pentagon—suggested that an effective way to overextend and unbalance Russia would be to increase military support for Ukraine, arguing that this could lead to a Russian invasion.

In December 2021, as Russian President Vladimir Putin began to mass troops at Ukraine’s border while demanding negotiations, John Deni of the Atlantic Council published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (12/22/21) headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine,” which laid out the US logic explicitly:

Provoking a war would allow the US to impose sanctions and fight a proxy war that would grind Russia down. Additionally, the anti-Russian sentiment that resulted from a war would strengthen NATO’s resolve.

All of this came to pass as Washington’s stance of non-negotiation successfully provoked a Russian invasion.

Even as Ukraine and Russia sat at the negotiation table early in the war, the US made it clear that it wanted the war to continue and escalate.

The US’s objective was, in the words of Raytheon boardmember–turned–Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, “to see Russia weakened.” Despite stated commitments to Ukrainian democracy, US policies have instead severely damaged it.”

OLIVER ANTHONY – 90 SOME CHEVY REACTION

Again, any postings of Oliver Anthony is not about his music. It is about the reactions to his music. It appears that for many Americans, they have a voice. Finally.

Todays reaction REALLY BROKE ME! Anthony’s “90 Some Chevy” really hit home for me!

Since Huawei is also a network equipment maker, does that mean Huawei phones are likely to be superior for network communications such as satellite?

It certainly gives Huawei advantages.

Their phones are likely to work better with the network equipment than other phones on their network.

But for satellites, they don’t make satellites but they do make network base station equipment. So they might have better knowledge than building to a spec on paper.

You can see with Apple trying to build their own 5G modems and failing. Apple’s 5G modem won’t debut again until 2025. They need time and experts and a lot of testing to make sure that it is going to work in all situations instead of just in the lab. Which was what happened when their modems didn’t work right.

So I would guess yes. But any company can hire experts who have experience to make sure that their equipment works well.

Southern Karo Syrup Chicken

2023 09 16 15 14
2023 09 16 15 14

Ingredients

  • 1 broiler-fryer chicken
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1/2 cup Karo corn syrup
  • 1/2 cup orange juice
  • 3 tablespoons lemon juice

Instructions

  1. Cut up chicken.
  2. In skillet over medium heat, cook chicken in butter about 30 minutes or until tender. Drain off fat.
  3. Mix remaining ingredients and pour over chicken. Cook over medium heat, turning often, for 5 to 10 minutes or until glazed.

What is the most messed up thing you have seen a nurse/doctor do to a patient?

I didn’t ‘see’ a doctor do this… I was the doctor doing this to a father in a pediatrics emergency room.

Many staff reported this as terrifying, horrifying and other descriptions. I went to many meetings following my actions. If I had to do it over again, with my experience and age, I would have chosen different actions that day and we are outside the statute of limitations for assault and battery.

I’ve never written this one down, so here it goes:

I was the on-call anesthesia provider at the hospital, a children’s hospital. I was moonlighting and doing routine things when I was called to the emergency room to consult. (Moonlighting is when a doctor does his regular job or a lesser medical job, for an hourly wage but usually not at his normal hospital or setting.)

When I came out of the elevator they asked me if I was anesthesia?

I nodded and I was led quickly to a trauma room. There was no trauma but a bunch of people in hazmat suits! They dressed me quickly. I apparently had no choice in the matter. I then was led to another room where a small five-year-old boy was having visible stress and very labored breathing. They were assisting him with oxygen, a bag and mask but his color was just, off. Blue, maybe a little green grey. I had never seen this color for a human before, at least not one alive.

People were screaming at me through their suits. We could hardly hear one another. Unknown poison. Unknown toxin. They told me this patient’s brother is in the next room and fading fast, as well. They then ask me what drugs I want to give to intubate this child.

  • Holy oral board question from hell!!!! For those of you who are not inside the anesthesia world, the oral-board exams for an anesthesiologist are notoriously difficult. They boast a high failure rate for first-time takers because they are designed to scare the ever living crap out of you so you will be a perpetual student of anesthesiology for life. When you have three minutes to figure something out, you cannot hit the books or even ask “Watson.”

“I don’t want to give him anything!” I thought and said simultaneously.

I am a large male… so… I chose physically to intubate the child without any drugs. I managed not to break any teeth also… always a bonus in my job. I did reason they are baby teeth and if he lived he would be more grateful to be alive than to have all his baby teeth.

I then proceeded in rapid succession to the 7-year-old’s room. He was bigger, stronger and was spasming much worse than his brother, especially his jaw. They could not open it. I thought about man-handling the intubation. Broken teeth, I could break his jaw, but, no, so I ending up choosing and using an older drug to completely paralyze the child to attempt to undo the spastic jaw. This choice of drug was not as fast as some of the modern drugs in the anesthesia arsenal. It was among the most stressful four minutes of my clinical career!

“Please be right. Please be right. Please be right.” In my mind over and over again. I slid my hand to his wrist and felt for a pulse. It was there. Weak, fast, but there.

His color was off, too. Similar to his brother. Our oximeter was not picking up a signal. I was terrified in that moment I had chosen incorrectly and would kill the child. Utterly terrified. Tube in, first time, done. The boys were moved to the ICU.

Had to get out of the small room. Very hot. Hard to breathe myself. Am I poisoned? Did I get exposed?

I threw up.

I was soaked head to foot in sweat and ripped off the headdress.

Yes, you read that correctly. I threw up and THEN I got the stupid headdress part of my isolation bunny suit ripped off. Cold air felt great!

I heard screaming and commotion from the other room.

I’m now pumped with adrenaline. Really pumped. In retrospect, I should probably have not gone to investigate, but I did. An older anesthesiologist would have likely gone back to his on-call duties or hit the call room and slept. I was young.

Nope. Not me. What is happening?!?

I marched in. My bunny suit flapping. The headdress still attached to the back of my neck pulling uncomfortably on the front zipper at my neck. I reached up with my hand and pulled it down away from my throat.

Once in there, I see two police officers, a half a dozen nurses, a pediatric ER doc who was about 4′11″ in shoes and they are screaming at everyone to just stop it!

I am a large male… so… I bellowed, “What the fuck is going on?” Yes, I am a good doctor. Yes, I am human.

Everyone looked and the ER doc said looking at me in the eyes, “the father just drank the poison.”

WTF. WTF. WTF. WTF. WTF.

Toxicology? Still no hit on what the substance was from the poison center but they had said to someone it was likely not transmitted through touching or breathing.

Good to know. It’s ‘not likely’ I’ve exposed myself to God knows what.

I knew one of the nurses standing there, she was holding a nasogastric (NG) tube and the nurse next to her had a charcoal drink and a funnel.

The NG tube goes from the nose to the stomach and allows the ‘forceful’ introduction of liquids such as charcoal to neutralize things, the poison in this case.

The man, for all his abject fright and stupidity, blurted out at me, “None of them know what it is so I drank it to find out, use me to find out, use me!” He pleaded, tears streaming down his face. He was just being a parent. He was just being human. That’s when I saw the small fasciculations in his facial muscles. Fasciculations are involuntary small portions of muscle that ‘fire’ on their own without neural impulses. Have you ever had just one part of your muscle move, twitch and do it over and over again without you consciously controlling the movements? That is fasciculations and both boys had them all over their tiny bodies when I first saw them.

“Nurse.” I said in my ‘Superman’ voice. When I was an intern, some of the staff, younger females mostly, nursing mostly, referred to me as Superman because I always got everywhere so fast in the hospitals and, oh yeah, I am a large male with dark kind of curly longer hair at the time. I used to get that one thick curl on the forehead naturally.

She did not speak but began moving toward the father of the boys. The other nurse followed lock step behind her.

“Fuck no! You’re not sticking that thing in me!” The man backed away reflexively animal like in speed and suddenness. He ran into the wall behind him. His back to the wall, literally.

Not. My. Finest. Medical. Moment.

I used a somewhat unorthodox medical maneuver. I hit, or struck, or punched with the my full force in the father’s face. I caught him with the hand I punched him with and pinned him up against the wall. He semi-slumped, in shock, I believe more than for the blow. Not too certain though.

“Tube.” I reached out with my left hand but did not take my gaze off the man.

I looked at his nose and the one side began bleeding. Well, there are two cops standing behind me. I sighed loudly, I may even snorted a bit. They can write my statement for me at this point. Definitely, battery, maybe assault and battery, and with many witnesses, great. I wonder what jail is really like?

Blood is a lubricant. The NG tube slid down that bloody side quickly and completely. The man bucked hard at me. I let go of the tube and ‘pushed’ well, perhaps thrust with nearly full force upon his chest with both open hands and very physically slammed him the two inches back onto the wall.

The nurse(s) got the tube and out of my peripheral vision I saw a funnel and charcoal pouring down the tube very quickly.

The man made noises. I interpreted that as him having an Airway, he was obviously Breathing and clearly he was Circulating blood as he was semi-conscious. ABC’s checked off. He’ll live long enough to sue me probably.

As the man made a fast grab for the NG tube, I was slammed into and from behind and on either side forcefully.

The two cops grabbed either arm and held them back, pinned tightly on the wall.

I love cops. Even when they pull me over and give me a speeding ticket. Even then.

I let go and slowly slid back a bit. Maybe I was two feet from the man’s face.

… and he threw up charcoal all over me. Along with the ‘poison’ so…

I froze. Kept my eyes shut and my mouth shut. I was led a bit away and then someone poured water over my head several times. I cleaned off with a towel. Several towels, actually.

The man was a farmer. He had left fertilizer of some sort, or perhaps it was a pesticide/fertilizer combo in a mixing jug, an old white plastic milk jug. Some years later, he poured diesel fuel into this same white jug. Years after that, the boys found the jug in the barn and it had brilliant blue crystals in it and some opaque grey liquid. Stunning, they looked like hard candy. The boys shook the crystals out and put them in their mouths.

The reason I told you this story was that it was horrifying to watch. That word was used in reports describing my actions. ‘Terrible. Terror. Unprofessional. Shocking. Disturbing. Ugly. Dysfunctional. Chaotic.” All used in reports to describe the event.

One of the nurses who knew me told me her heart just ‘throbbed’ at the whole surreal situation. Your wording in your question triggered the whole event for me.

Doctors are people, they are human, they make mistakes. It was a mistake striking that man. I know that, now. I was afraid in the moment. My fear and anxiety got the best of me and the human animal part of me reacted, poorly.

Some of you may say what I did is fine. Others will condemn any physical attack or action, especially from a doctor to a civilian in an ER setting.

Everyone lived. They did finally identify the culprit. It was a semi-paralytic chemical. Onset of symptoms in minutes. Spasticity, followed by slow paralysis and then asphyxiation from breathing ceasing with one to two hours in an adult.

What do you think?

~Chris

Dr. Christopher Yerington

Columbus, Ohio

Bio: Retired from clinical anesthesiology by a disability in 2010, Dr. Yerington has turned his love of teaching and service to others to his family, medical colleagues and community. He speaks and educates medical groups and residency programs about the importance of great disability insurance and having an income protection plan. Having attended law and business schools, Chris is a perpetual student, currently working on his financial certifications.

Russia Uncovers US Plot to Eliminate Niger Coup Leaders

You may not know what must be done but many people like me do. It’s time to start down the road towards ending all of the theft of Africa’s god given wealth. Nationalize all of Africa’s resources and perform all value adding operations in Africa, unless it truly messes up the environment to do so. Doing this will uplift the lives of the people and in the end make Africa the best place to live on earth.”

What is the one in a million coincidence you have ever had?

Not me, my mother. She is Cuban and when she was on her first year of teaching, she was teaching first grade and had a kid that was held back. The teachers called him a bad kid. He found it hard to sit down and pay attention, so he still could not read. My mother made him her “helper” and whenever there was free time she would sit alone with him to go over lessons. He passed first grade and actually did great!

Later on, after the Castro regime took control, my mother left Cuba. She met my father, had children, and moved on with her life.

Years later we were traveling in Florida and a man and his wife came up to her. It was the student! He said he recognized her right away because he never forgot her. He introduced her to his wife as the teacher that did not give up on him.

She is my inspiration!

Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond | Singer Reacts & Musician Analysis

UK girl reacts. Very interesting.

All over the West, the “people” are seeing just how bad and corrupt the American-style of “democracy” actually is. This is the moment in time when quiet people, in secret back rooms, start planning on how to hang people, and burn down their edifices of power.

What was your “I am surrounded by idiots” moment?

At a family gathering. It was a birthday party for one of my SIL’s kids. It was a nice day and we were all outside while the kids played with all of their friends and cousins, having a great time while we adults caught up and enjoyed the music and weather.

Then we all hear the terrified scream of a small child. One of the kids ran up and said “Sean is hurt!” We all ran over and there he was with blood pouring from a gash on his head. He had stumbled while running and went head first into the fence and an exposed nail.

Every single adult starts freaking out, running around and NOT HELPING this 4-year-old child who was screaming in fear and pain. WTF did they do when their own kids got hurt??!!

Husband and I were surrounded by not only idiots but dithering, panicking, hand-flapping, weak stomached idiots.

Husband and I picked him up and took him in to the bathroom and we were able to calm him down while we cleaned the approximately 1+″ wound and looked for non-existent bandages (really? in a house with four kids?!) and told him how brave he was and that he was going to get stitches but that it would only hurt a little bit, etc. and that sweet little boy just nodded and said “I’m brave.” We just wanted to adopt him on the spot.

When we brought him out he would not let go of me so husband and I just held him and some paper towels to his wound until his grandmother picked him up to take him to urgent care. Then MIL and BILs start freaking out about all the blood on our clothes (yes, head wounds bleed like stuck pigs) and their biggest concern was that it wouldn’t come out in the wash. IDIOTS!

The next time we saw Sean he showed us his scar and said “I was brave!” Yes he was and much more so than about 12 grown ass adults.

Oh SH*T, America Moves To Counter China!

The US has no (real) money and no railways to speak of…and yet they want to build and finance a new multicountry rail network 10,000 km away from home.

How is the USA going to cough up the money?

Five Russian “Doomsday Planes” in the air 0300 Russia time- Shut Off Transponders mid-flight

Five Russian “Doomsday” aircraft are in the air over Russia or have landed after shutting off transponders near the Ural Mountains, including Aircraft PA-96024, ID RSD309, which is the Presidential plane.

While no one can be sure who – if anyone – is actually on these government evacuation aircraft which took off out of Moscow, and having shut their transponders off, we cannot know the exact landing site, it is very disconcerting to see this type of military aircraft activity inside Russia at this ungodly hour.

In particular, the Presidential aircraft shut its transponder off after crossing over the Ural Mountains.

Did they then make a U-turn to land at Mount Yamantau?

MOUNT YAMANTAU

Mount Yamantau, along with Kosvinsky Mountain (600 km to the north), are claimed by the United States of being home to a large secret nuclear facility or bunker, or both. Large excavation projects have been observed by U.S. satellite imagery after the fall of the Soviet Union, as recently as the late 1990s during the government of Boris Yeltsin.

During the Soviet era two military garrisons, Beloretsk-15 and Beloretsk-16, and possibly a third, Alkino-2, were built on the site. These garrisons were unified into the closed town of Mezhgorye (Russian: Межгорье) in 1995, and the garrisons are said to house 30,000 workers each, served by large rail lines.

Repeated U.S. questions have yielded several different responses from the Russian government regarding Yamantau, including it is a mining site, a repository for Russian treasures, a food storage area, and a bunker for leaders in case of nuclear war.

Responding to questions regarding Yamantau in 1996, Russia’s Defense Ministry stated: “The practice does not exist in the Defense Ministry of Russia of informing foreign mass media about facilities, whatever they are, that are under construction in the interests of strengthening the security of Russia.”

In 1997, a United States Congressional finding, related to the country’s National Defense Authorization Act for 1998, stated that the Russian Federation kept up a “deception and denial policy” about the mountain complex after U.S. officials had given Cheyenne Mountain Complex tours to Russian diplomats, which the finding stated “… does not appear to be consistent with the lowering of strategic threats, openness, and cooperation that is the basis of the post-Cold War strategic partnership between the United States and Russia.”

So why are these Russian military Government evacuation aircraft in the air over Russia at this strange hour? Why have they shut off their transponders mid-flight?

MEDVEDEV MAKES OMINOUS REMARKS “Nuclear 9/11”

On Sunday, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council (Senate), made a post to his official Telegram account, calling it “a few words on the eve of [9/11].” In it, he derided the U.S. for what he called its “arrogance and disgusting narcissism” among Western nations and its “universal arrogance on any issue.” Near the end of the post, he also made the ominous prediction that the U.S. would suffer “another 11/09/2001-style attack, but with a nuclear or biological component,” without suggesting outright that Russia would be the nation to launch the attack.

This sequence of events happened simultaneously when President of China Xi Peng addressed his military and told them to urgently get ready for conflict.

The American public overwhelmingly thinks war is the only way to stop China. How is China going to respond to this eventuality?

This “mindset” is a direct result of of the “organ of misinformation” funded intentionally to “drum up” anti-China sentiment. This effort is funded in the many billions of US dollars. And it is working.

So…

The question is (better worded) …

With the American people ripe with rage against China and ready for war… how is China going to respond?”

Oh…

You haven’t noticed?

  • The value of the USD is approaching that of toilet paper.
  • The American economy is in tatters, and it is only going to get worse; much worse.
  • Geo-politically, the “friends” of the United States are slithering away and making arrangments in favor of China.
  • The American people; uneducated with lofty degrees, a work ethic that resembles a lazy hound-dog on a hot August day, legalized looting at every level, and a media of crazy disinformation are about to ignite a civil war.
  • Organized crime, mental illnesses, collapsing infrastructure, and crazy levels of inflation, all aggravated with massive drug abuse…

And you (the questioner) somehow thinks that China is worried about the United States and what the American people think?

It’s not even on “the radar screen”.

The United States is in CHECK MATE.

Everything that it does; any action it takes, any movement in any direction is a lose move for the nation.

In the slight chance that the United States actually makes a military move against a united China-Russia-North Korean-Iran-BRICS+ axis, the result would be very bad.

Bad as in nuclear bad.

Do not go there.

Accept your life and do the best you can for you and yours. Do not worry about things that you have no control over.

I am optimistic about the future.

I really am, but there are many in the West that will have to adjust to a much lower standard of living than they have become accustomed to.

Merkules – ”Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix (Veteran Reaction)

Here I am doing a reaction to Merkules – ”Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix. Thank you for taking the time to watch this and for helping me on my journey to 50k subscribers.

Again.

Small Americans are getting a voice. This is the point in time when pitchforks and torches start to get lit.

Was the public lied to about the Vietnam war?

Yes. Big time.

In fact Francis Ford Coppola deleted a key scene in the movie Apocalypse Now which explains in two minutes what the New York Times couldn’t explain in millions of words in their twelve years of biased reporting.

The United States Office of Strategic Services- the OSS, the precursor to the CIA- invented the Viet Minh to fight the Japanese in wwii. The Viet Minh moved south after the first Indochina war against the French and became known as the Viet Cong. The fact was the U.S. was aware of Ho Chi Minh since he tried to get a meeting with Woodrow Wilson while he was president to elicit U.S. help in his opposition to French colonialism. When war broke out U.S. intelligence agents picked Ho to organize armed resistance against the Japanese and their Vichy French allies in Indochina.

After the Japanese left Indochina in 1945 the British and the French decided that they wanted their respective empires back and instead of holding elections the next year to settle the political situation in Indochina the French battled Ho and General Vo Nguyen Giap for eight years until their ignominious defeat in May, 1954 at a remote valley named Dien Bien Phu.

The United States, which had been bankrolling the French in their losing war at a cost of a million dollars a day continued the war against what was now communist North Vietnam. The United States began it’s war slowly by first setting up military advisory groups in Saigon. Commando missions were initiated from ships at sea to destroy coastal military objectives in the north and naval batteries were used to shell targets up to ten miles inland from the coast. In 1964 the U.S. started launching sorties from aircraft carriers in the Tonkin Gulf to destroy power plants and other targets of high value in the north. The U.S. landed a marine expeditionary brigade (MEB) on the coast of South Vietnam in March of 1965 to provide additional security around the U.S. air base at Da Nang. The marine landing was followed in the next two years by the largest military build up in history with an occupation force eventually totaling over half a million U.S. army troops.

Coppola had to delete the scene at the French plantation because in 1979, four years after the war ended, the truth about the war in Vietnam and how the United States created the conflict and had at various times assisted, armed and bankrolled each side would have been just too much for the American public. Ironically characters in the movie telling the truth about the war in Vietnam would have removed any perceived veracity from Coppola’s film. It was far easier getting the American public to swallow lies about an imaginary ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’ or a fictional ‘Domino Theory’ or even that Vietnam was a ‘winnable’ war then it was to get the public to believe actual facts about a long running conflict.

We Have Never Seen Anything Like This Before!

These insane people have got to stop!

https://youtu.be/IogGVqbf6tE

What is something your neighbor did that you couldn’t believe?

I was going through treatment for cancer back in 2005, and in addition to a surgery I was receiving radiation treatments. There are restrictions on people who receive internal radiation treatments (in my case, it was a large dose of radioactive Iodine 131) and then being sent home after taking the dosage. In the past, I had been kept in the hospital for the treatment in a special hospital room that was lined with lead panels, and the toilet sewer system was sent to a specific tank, where it was kept before being sent to the public sewage system.

At any rate, after taking the treatment I was told to spend three days in isolation, and a few extra days staying away from small children and pregnant women. (It was a a different time, and perspectives on cancer treatments and radiation.)

Anyway, I came home and met my pregnant neighbor near the front door to the building. I stepped away from her and told her I was going through radiation treatment and that I didn’t want to harm her or her baby. She smiled, went in, and a few minutes later I went to my apartment.

About 2 hours later, I heard a knock at my door. It was around 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and I went to the door and asked who is it, but got no answer. I opened the door, and on a tray was a meal of beef tips and noodles, some home baked bread, a single flower in a vase, and a note. The note was from my pregnant neighbor, and she had written something like my mom had cancer and I wanted you to know that I am available to talk if you need anything.

Nicest response I got from anyone who ever found out that I was a cancer patient.

China STRIKES BACK at Neocons as Biden ‘Disappointed’ Xi Skips G20 w/ Carlos Martinez & Ken Hammond

This conversation is so good, unbiased and informative.

Southern Shrimp and Grits

Southern Shrimp and Grits is a cheesy delight, and the bacon and green onions add a ton of flavor!

2023 09 16 15 12
2023 09 16 15 12

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 slices bacon, chopped
  • 3 cups water
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup instant grits
  • 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
  • 1 pound medium shrimp, peeled, deveined
  • 4 green onions, thinly sliced (about 1/3 cup)
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Instructions

  1. Cook bacon in large skillet over medium-heat heat until crisp.
  2. Drain on paper towels; set aside.
  3. Bring water and salt to boil in medium saucepan.
  4. Slowly stir in grits. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover. Cook for 7 minutes or until thickened. Stir in cheese; set aside.
  5. Add shrimp, onions and garlic to skillet; cook and stir 3 minutes or until shrimp turn pink.
  6. Add bacon, parsley and lemon juice; mix well.
  7. Serve shrimp mixture over grits.
  8. Serve with a mixed green salad.

Arriving with only the clothes on your back

When I left my retirement in Arkansas and flew to China, the airlines lost my baggage. So when I arrived in China, all that I had was a backpack, some of my most important papers, my laptop computer, and what I was wearing.

At that time, and to this day, I wear very comfortable clothes on planes during air travel. And given TSA back in the State’s, my clothes were simple;

Black hospital scrubs, and black slippers with black socks.

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So, here I am arrived in China, with literally only the clothes on my back.

And for the first month or so, I had to live and wear in them until I got settled in, reestablished, and start earning money again.

In hindsight, it’s kind of funny.

Everyone, including my wife, wanted me to toss those things and never wanted to see me in them ever again. As a result, she went on a spending spree and outfitted me right and proper.

I don’t know what the fuck I was doing when I planned this cluster-fuck of a life, but I’ve got to tell you all, it’s almost a parody. Seriously.

Did I have a sense of humor, or was my “crew” trying to make a point when they planned my pre-birth world-line template?

I wonder…

…how many meme’s have I personally experienced in this life? Hum….

Enterprise Under Attack from the Suliban Part II

Stra Trek Enterprise Season 2 Episode 16 Future Tense

Carolina Hot Dog Chili

hot dogging
hot dogging

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 pounds ground beef
  • 1 large onion (about 1 cup chopped)
  • 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
  • 1/2 cup ketchup
  • 1 tablespoon chili powder
  • 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 teaspoon cider or white vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper (optional)

Instructions

  1. Place the beef, onion and 2 cups of water in a Dutch oven or soup pot over high heat. Bring to the water to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and stir to begin breaking up the meat.
  2. Add the tomato paste, ketchup, chili powder, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, salt and pepper, if using. Stir well until the tomato paste and ketchup are dissolved and the meat is mostly broken up.
  3. Continue to cook at a simmer, stirring about every 5 minutes, about 15 minutes. As the chili thickens, you may need to reduce the heat to medium-low or low so it doesn’t stick. Refrigerate, covered, up to 2 days, or freeze in small freezer bags for up to 6 months.
  4. Thaw or reheat in a microwave, stirring often.

If you want a finer texture, you can cool the chili at least 20 minutes and process in a blender or food processor for 30 to 45 seconds.

Are India’s GDP numbers intentionally misleading, suggesting that the country is faking its economic data?

I don’t really see GDP numbers too closely

They may fudged be but by very small margins

Say tomorrow we are at $ 4.981 trillion, then it’s possible we may fudge to somehow make it appear that we have reached $ 5 Trillion

There is no conceivable way that any GDP number is off beyond say 2% at the most


The Point is Economic Development can be seen with your own eyes and not on paper

Take UP

I visited UP and traveled to quite a few places

I saw nothing to indicate bountiful prosperity

There was nothing to indicate the hum of a busy growing economy

Sure they had nice roads and a lot of nice commercial and techno parks but frankly it looked like more like

If you build it they will come

That’s what happens when you don’t develop your own populace with good secondary and tertiary education and instead rely on only investments under gun point or unrealistic concessions by the state

Now Take Bangalore or Hyderabad or Chennai

They are buzzing with activity and you can see that the economies are doing well

The Problem in India is that a few cities and few hubs are carrying the weight of the entire nation


There are 3 Key points in a booming economy

  • Unemployment is pretty low
  • Savings are pretty high (>= 36%)
  • Inflation is typically 50% of RORR

India has neither of the three

  • Unemployment is way above the target 5%
  • Gross Savings are 30.20%
  • RORR is 7% and Inflation is 5.05% which is way above the 3.50% target

That alone tells me there are pending issues that need looking into

As a teacher, what’s the most personal thing a child has told you about their parent(s) that they definitely were not supposed to mention?

I taught a shop class in an inner city high school…One day as the students were changing into work clothes I noticed some relatively new wounds on Jerome’s back…I politely and discreetly took him into my office and asked him what happened…He told me his step father had tied him to a metal bed spring and beat him with a coathanger…I knew where he lived so when school was out for the day I went to his apt and his stepdad was there…I proceeded to beat the living shit out of that evil man…And told him if he wasn’t gone before Jeromes bus got there I’d finish the job…AND call the cops…I drug his worthless carcass down to his pos car and he drove off…never to be seen again. Jerome stayed in my class for the full 3 years and graduated high school…Neither of us ever mentioned it…30 years later Jerome still calls me to visit ever so often…

The US Bankrupting Itself on Wars -w/ Ron Paul, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Oh HELL yeah! The dignified and stately Dr. Ron Paul is one of the very best Americans living. Thanks very much for this, you guys.

A laughable 89% of the Chinese people actually trust their authoritarian government! Where are the renaining 11% who do not?

Laughable because you are ignorant and naive like a 5 years old kid. If you know the truth you will be the one of the 89% too.

While the U.S. real standard of living deteriorated back to the 1960’s Chinese real standard of living grew 30 times in 40 years! While 35% in the U.S. has no health insurance, every single Chinese gets free health care. While the U.S. kids get into debts for just getting into college Chinese are provided totally free college tuition.

Chinese average life expectancy overtook the U.S. in the last 2 years straight. While your infrastructure is crumbling China has the latest state of the art ports, airports, highways, high speed railways. While your trains travel at snail speed China’s high speed trains travel at 400 KM per hour.

Do you still laugh now? To be honest everyone in the world is laughing at you. You want to know about the 11% so that you can orchestrate a coup? Organised a protest and a demonstration? Do a colour revolution? And you think the Chinese are fools to give you the information? Just because you have a IQ of a snail doesn’t mean others are the same like you!

Tex-Mex Biscuits

Tex Mex Biscuits
Tex Mex Biscuits

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup enriched hominy grits or quick grits
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
  • 1/2 cup butter or margarine
  • 4 ounces Monterey Jack cheese (with or without jalapeno peppers), shredded
  • 1/2 cup dairy sour cream
  • 1/4 cup milk

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly grease a cookie sheet.
  2. Combine dry ingredients; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
  3. Stir in cheese.
  4. Combine sour cream and milk; add to dry ingredients, mixing just until moistened. Shape dough to form a ball; knead gently on lightly floured surface 10 to 12 times. Roll dough to 3/4 inch thickness. Cut with floured 2-inch biscuit cutter. Place 1 inch apart on prepared cookie sheet.
  5. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Yield: 12 biscuits

Have you ever applauded an act of vigilante justice?

This is Kalinka Bamberski, who used to be a 14-year-old from France.

During the summer of 1982, she briefly stayed in Lindau, Germany, with her mother and her stepfather, Dr. Dieter Krombach.

On July 9th of that summer, Krombach killed Kalinka. The next day, Krombach told the authorities that he simply found Kalinka dead in the morning.

Autopsies could not determine the exact cause of her death, and Krombach got away with the murder. This led Kalinka’s biological father, Andre, to grow suspicious and to investigate further.

Despite the authorities’ failure to discern the exact cause of Kalinka’s death, there were multiple red flags in the original autopsy: Kalinka’s corpse had multiple injection marks, fresh blood stains and a “whitish substance” around the genitals, and indigested food near the throat suggesting that she died soon after a meal.

Andre, rightfully suspecting that his daugher was raped, called for an additional investigation. This time, the authorities discovered clear evidence that, right before her death, Kalinka was injected with a drug named “Kobalt-Ferrlecit,” a substance capable of causing immediate discomfort and nausea in a victim. Andre pressed a case against Krombach, but the German courts judged that there was insufficient evidence for an indictment. Despite multiple red flags, Krombach was not indicted.

In 1995, however, the French courts officially sentenced Krombach in absentia to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.

Furthermore, later in 1997, Krombach admitted in a German trial that he had drugged and raped another girl using Kobalt-Ferrlecit, the same substance found in Kalinka’s corpse. Numerous other girls came forth, saying that Krombach had also raped them using the same drug. For this, the German courts took away his medical license, but did not sentence him to prison.

Unfortunately, in 2001, Krombach’s French manslaughter conviction of 1995 was annulled by the European Court of Human Rights, the reason being that Krombach was not capable of defending his case in that French trial. Not only was the 1995 French verdict annulled, but all attempts to extradite him for retrial were rejected.

But for Andre, the case was not over. Andre was deeply frustrated at the international legal system’s failure to bring justice; he decided he was going to take justice into his own hands.

In 2009, Andre and three other men secretly kidnapped Krombach from Germany, beat him up, and left him tied up near a French police station, allowing the French authorities to detain him and honor their 1995 decision.

Despite Germany’s requests to bring him back, French officials and courts ignored these complaints and officially re-tried Krombach.

With other victims testifying that Krombach had injected them with the same drug to rape them, on October 22, 2011, Krombach was finally sentenced to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.


Kalinka’s father, Andre, was convicted and given a suspended sentence for abducting Krombach.

But in my opinion? Andre Bamberski was a heroic father who spent 30 years of his life to bring justice for his daughter’s death. Yes, he broke the law — but refusing to convict Krombach earlier and ignoring the mountatin of evidence against him was a clear failure in the international justice system.

For Andre’s determination and commitment, I applaud him.

Prof. Richard Wolff on American Labor: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Pretty good and very interesting.

If China is indeed collapsing, why is every leader visiting China? Why is the US commerce secretary visiting China?

Reality vs Propaganda

The USA imports almost $ 560 Billion of Goods from China

Guess the retail value of these goods?

$ 1.567 Trillion or almost $ 1.6 Trillion

This means a US importer who pays $ 27.50 for a Jeans from China sells it for $ 69.99 retail

A Laptop imported for $ 700 from China sells retail for $ 1199

A Burnished Ebony Table Factory made. Imported with 6 Chairs for $ 121 from China sells retails for $ 249

Hence $ 564 Billion of Imports from China makes around $ 1.6 Trillion to the US Importers

1.6 Trillion Dollars Or around 6.5% of US GDP

Now let’s do the opposite

The US exports $ 165 Billion to China

Guess their retail value?

Around $ 255–260 Billion only

Why?

Because China exports low cost products manufactured with CONTINUOUS VALUE ENHANCEMENT from Market pricing and Brand pricing and Technology pricing

A $ 37 Purse of Calf Leather retails for $ 360 with a Gucci brand name

A $ 3.10 T Shirt retails for $ 43.99 with a Tommy Hilfiger Brand name

However US exports products with almost ZERO VALUE ENHANCEMENT POTENTIAL

Soybeans, Wheat, Corn, Semiconductors, Advanced Machinery etc

There is very little value enhancement due to market pricing or Brand pricing or Technology Pricing

Even a Boeing makes at the most a couple of million dollars commission to a Chinese Importer while earning nearly 100 Million Dollars to the US Economy


You see right?

No Nation on earth can export $ 564 Billion worth of goods to the USA

It’s estimated that at thrice the manufacturing potential today – India, Vietnam and Mexico combined can export $ 338 Billion worth of Goods by 2030

This that’s around $ 226 Billion of Exports but also around $ 700 Billion of final retail goods

That’s the amount that US players and entities will be deprived off if US entirely decouples from China EVEN IN 2030 with India, Vietnam and Mexico tripling their Industrial Output

Even then US Economy and it’s players will be deprived of $ 700 Billion Dollars which by 2030 could be around $ 1 Trillion with inflation

That’s a lot of jobs, lots of payments GONE

Meanwhile China?

China may lose around $ 564 Billion of Exports in decoupling

At 0.4% inflation

That’s $ 580 Billion vs $ 1 Trillion


So even in the worst case scenario of US entirely decoupling from China and India, Mexico and Vietnam tripling their Industrial output today – China would lose $ 580 Billion while US would lose a whopping $ 1 Trillion

At normal Industrial output for these three nations, US would lose $ 2.4 Trillion or nearly 4.5 times as much as China stands to lose as an economy


Same for EU

Same for ASEAN

Same for India

Its why Raimondo visits China

It’s why 27 Chinese entities were removed from a Blacklist recently

The Media has been spinning fiction and propaganda so far and China hasn’t cared

Now if China decides to take their revenge by drastically cutting off key exports of say $ 100 Billion, then US cannot source more than $ 30 Billion from other countries

China loses $ 100 Billion but US loses around $ 210 Billion of value to it’s economy

That’s 44% of the projected $ 470 Billion that the US Economy hopes to enhance itself this year at 1.8% growth


So Raimondo says

Please keep trading with us as usual. Ignore what we say in our media. Our contention with you is for the $ 10–15 Billion portion of our Trade, let’s keep the balance $ 685–690 Billion of Trade as normal

That’s why China doesn’t need to visit everybody and reassure anyone much

Everyone loses far far more by decoupling with China

So ultimately it creates a slow down globally where China albeit having very low growth still beats the rest of the world

Solving The Most Mysterious Children in History

THREE STORIES: The Most Mysterious Children in History In 12th century England, two children were found lost in a forest.

They spoke only gibberish, wore strange clothing and had bright green skin.

When the children finally learned to speak English, they described where they were from.

And that’s why, after almost 1,000 years, people still talk about The Green Children of Woolpit.

In 1828, a teenage boy was shuffling through a public square in Nuremburg. He seemed confused and disoriented.

He had trouble walking and speaking. When police finally approached him, he was holding an envelope containing two letters.

And those letters sparked the mystery of Kaspar Hauser.

In April 1922, in Brittany, France, 2-year-old Pauline Picard went missing. A massive search turned up nothing.

The family was losing hope. A month later, Pauline was found wandering around a village over 200 miles away.

Though her parents were overjoyed to have her back, they soon realized something wasn’t quite right with their daughter. These are three unsolved cases of the most mysterious children in history.

POMPEO said ‘Covert operations, ousting democratically elected governments, inciting revolts and supporting transnational companies are run of the mill operations for the CIA.’ WHO GAVE THEM THOSE RIGHTS?

We did, all us minions. America was once set up having a government described as ‘a government of the people, for the people, by the people’, but the people couldn’t be bothered and went home, leaving ‘those who shouldn’t be’ in charge. Industry filled the vacuum created by our conspicuous absence, which over time gave way to the American Industrial Military Complex which runs the country today.

Now industry owns the puppet show called ‘Democracy’, which in no way should be confused with actual democracy, and yet we continually pretend they are one and the same, and that our vote counts, even though voting either left or right basically changes nothing of significance. Results may vary but the rich are always always always the primary beneficiary, either way they lean.

We demand and receive empty platitudes, and are duly amused by military antics across the globe, ignoring the fact that such behavior merely mirrors us here at home, and that the same shit is pulled on our own, until folks like Snowden and Assange et al dare to shatter our deliberately cultivated ignorance. No matter, we have ways to deal with such moral assholes, as throwing them under the bus in various ways has become a time honored national pastime.

So, when you want to look at who’s at fault, go look in the mirror. When you wish to look deeper, check out your family albums. We are the bloody problem, and as we are paying the price, with record numbers driven from their homes in this rich nation, and yet, still we refuse to accept responsibility for our democracy, knowingly leaving it in the manipulative hands of industry, which is exactly how to kill actual democracy, regardless of the puppet show which operates by the same name.

Whether you love Trump or hate him, he reflects us, and had he actually run the country as we pretend to believe, he would have surely killed it, as would Biden. We need to wake the fuck up to the reality we have created, and make the necessary changes within ourselves which can then be reflected through our leadership, before it’s too late, if it’s not already.

But who among us want to actually be the change we want to see?

Who?

What scary gut feeling did you have that turned out to be true?

Many years ago, when I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I had a work commute on a typical Monday through Friday schedule.

One evening on my way home from work, I turned off a main street into the side streets that would lead me the rest of the way home. It was a very familiar drive and I knew each block well – which ones had a stop sign for me, which ones had stop signs for the cross traffic, and which ones had four-way stops. I was cruising the last few blocks toward home and had no more stop signs, so I was probably going about 35 mph when suddenly it was as if someone inside my head said, “Slow down!” It was so forceful and unexpected, I did just that. “Slower!” was the next command, and then again, “Slower!”

I was just about to chalk it all up to being a little kookie after a long day, when suddenly someone driving a vehicle on the cross street blew through their stop sign at an alarming rate of speed. I am 100% certain if I had not slowed down, I would have been T-boned by someone doing a good 60–70 mph. The close call freaked me out. I’m not a religious person, but it sure felt like I had a guardian angel that day.

Dead For 7 Minutes; Man Is Shown Past Lives During Incredible NDE

Have you ever had a bad gut feeling about someone and it was right?

Yes. My dad’s best friend growing up has a son my age. We were really close as kids but they moved away and I didn’t talk to him for years. When we were teens, my dad’s friend came to visit. Something about his son literally made my skin crawl. I was left alone at home with him and my three young siblings while the parents went out for the night and I was nearly frantic trying to ensure he did not have a moment alone with my siblings. When our parents returned I told them something was wrong with the son, and to please not leave me alone with him again. My dad was upset and demanded to know why I would say that, did the son do something? He honestly hadn’t actually done or said anything that I could pin this feeling on. So I told them, I think my animal brain just knows a predator when I see one. My dad thought I was being dramatic but my mom believed me and made sure we weren’t alone with the son for the rest of their visit. About a year later it turned out the son got caught in the act of raping his niece. He told the police he was glad he was caught because he couldn’t stop himself. My dad has never doubted my intuition since.

Tony Confronts Tony Blundetto – The Sopranos HD

When Tony B looks up after Tony S said someone got a look at the guy. That’s the reaction of someone who did it. Split second panic and then cool as a breeze. Steve Buscemi nailed it.

What work secret did you accidentally find out that changed everything?

I worked for a major retail company, in a team running the mainframe.

One task was keeping the (huge, size of a car trailer) printers running.

Some printouts were for the board, and these we were told to check for misprints and missing pages.

We’d just been told that we couldn’t have any pay rises since there wasn’t any money in the budget. Inflation was running high, so not getting a pay rise really meant a pay cut.

The company annual account report was printed and I was checking it before putting it in internal mail.

I noticed that the IT department budget was underspent by half a million!

No money for pay rises!

Showed printout to my manager. He ran off with it to the copier. Multiple copies of the page showing the surplus in the IT department were placed around the department.

We got pay rises.

Ralph Cifaretto Refuses Tony’s Drink – The Sopranos HD

Why is Huawei able to get a large number of chips to release new mobile phone products like Mate 60?

SMIC has been making 7nm custom GPUs for the past 2–3 years, mostly for crypto customers who couldn’t get in the TSMC queue.

This filled real market demand that other players didn’t, or couldn’t.

SMIC used this opportunity to refine its process, on the quiet.

Huawei, in the meantime, found willing partners to share talent and resources, in a concerted effort to save the high-tech industry on the mainland from American destruction through the threat of sanction.

How did Huawei et. al. find the tools necessary for chip design, especially the GPU? What black magic did Huawei use to improve the transistor geometry? How did they penetrate the Qualcomm 5g patent wall? I don’t know. Neither does my friend in TSMC. It’s a separate ecosystem now, and quite independent.

The fog of war has descended, but the outcome point to solidarity across the ranks, with competitors working together like they are part of a conglomerate.

The Chinese are capable of cooperation on unheard of scale, because of long history.

The Mate 60 Pro is merely a first step, lacking polish and maturity. What’s coming though, will be a deluge.

Alien Artifacts on Mars: What NASA doesn’t want you to know

This is fun. But don’t take too seriously.

Is it true that Huawei phones are monitored by the Chinese government?

Of course. The Chinese government really wants to know how many times you call your girlfriend every week, and which are your favourite games, and which pop stars you follow on Instagram, and most of all they are interested in the photos of your meals that you regularly post on Facebook.

These are vital secrets so critical for the national security of the USA, so the evil communist spies from China will be watching intently. Remember that well, and be careful! The everyday events of your online life have the devastating potential to alter the direction of global geopolitics and the history of the world, basically.

How Huawei Mate60 5G Overcome US Sanctions? | Time to invest in Chinese tech stocks

100 sanctions. Imprisonment of it’s CEO. Mandatory shutdown of partner factories in the West.

Huawei survived!

This is really good.

Are you worried that China’s new $40 billion state fund for semiconductor manufacturing will disrupt the global supply chain for advanced chips?

Why worry US. Remember most Yanks still think Chinese live in caves and eat bats! To these hubris Yanks China can only make T-shirts and toys. And U.S. can deprived them technologies and send them back to the Stone Age.

Well, what happened? While the U.S. is still in the midst of ordering and coercing Taiwan to build its chip plant to manufacture 7nm chips that it thinks China is unable to do. To the horrors of U.S. officials. It took a mere 3 years for China to. Make it and now inside the Huawei Mate 60!

Where are the neocons who convince Biden to spend a trillion in losses, in subsidies, in coercions, in tax breaks, in new shining plants, in luring specialist to the U.S. only to see that China get it done in no time and made products that are not only comparable but better, faster and cheaper!

Huawei may have developed its own 5G chip to bypass US sanctions

Huawei, under tight US sanctions since 2019, started selling its latest Mate 60 Pro smartphone this week, raising speculation about its 5G capabilities. Some online reviews claim the device comes with the Kirin 9000s chip to support 5G and satellite calls.

The US and some European governments have labelled the Chinese giant a threat to national security, despite the company’s denial. Huawei had restricted access to US components and software, including from foreign chipmakers.

Early this year, Japan and the Netherlands joined the US effort to curb the export of advanced semiconductors. However, Huawei has been rumoured to be actively trying to overcome these sanctions to return to the 5G smartphone market, even resuming production on advanced chips with China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).

Why does it matter?

Huawei’s development of its 5G chip may have implications for the tech industry, the global economy, and national security.

The smartphone launch coincides with US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s visit to Beijing, reiterating the Biden administration’s stance on export controls to China.

If the new Mate 60 Pro is confirmed to have a 5G chip, that would mark a significant achievement for the Chinese tech champion.

China’s ability to produce its own advanced chips would also announce a considerable advancement in technological capabilities and would mean a serious blow to current US measures aimed at slowing its progress.

It could inspire the country’s largest tech firms to get around US sanctions, fueling the ‘whole nation‘ endeavor to produce Chinese innovation to beat the US.

Breaking Bad – Shooting Tuco Scene (S2E2)

Why do people support Bernie Sanders?

I’ll tell you.

In the United States, I was a conservative Republican working at a wage earning job. Then, while driving for my employer, on a delivery, on the clock, at a red light I was stopped. A person who was not paying attention smashed into my stationary vehicle and totaled it, and sent me to the hospital.

The hospital bill was thousands upon thousands of dollars. My employer didn’t cover any of it. My automobile insurance replaced my new vehicle with an old one that barely ran. I ran up many thousands of dollars of medical debt that I couldn’t afford.

Note: I spent one hour at the hospital, getting one scan. I received zero actual treatment, before or after that scan. It still cost me more than I made in a year. And no, the insurance didn’t cover it. Insurance that would have covered it, would have taken up half of my wages in a given month.

Cut to a few years later. I am now happily married, living in Norway. Still an American citizen. My wife is Norwegian and the pay is much, much better here, because they have things called unions. I literally earn three times as much as I did in Florida, working the same type of job. Scratch that, I was in management in the USA. Here, it’s an entry level job, no promotion. I still make far more money than I did in the states.

But the point is, whenever I need to see a doctor now, I just go. Whenever I need an operation, I can afford it. Whenever I am sick, I take time off. Because over here, in Norway, they have single payer universal healthcare.

I’ve never seen a doctor more often than I have since moving to Norway. I’ve gotten medical conditions diagnosed that I never would have found the money for before. I’ve gotten sick leave from work when I have been ill. Seeing a doctor tends to cost less than I make in a day, and if I go over a certain amount in a year, I can pay nothing.

Instead of getting bills from a doctor for thousands of dollars, I end up paying around 30 bucks out of pocket each time.

The doctor earns plenty. They make slightly less money here, but are still among the highest paid people in society. The citizens are healthier, they live longer. They take their health more seriously. Norway spends more per patient than almost any other country in the world, and they cover every citizen, every resident, completely.

Norway still spends only about half as much as US citizens are forced to spend on their healthcare.

The reason is because healthcare is considered a right here, like getting a public school education. People don’t go without simply because they’re poor.

And as a result, lifespans and healthcare outcomes and healthcare expenses are all a better outcome or a cheaper deal here in Norway.

Bernie Sanders is one of the few politicians in my native United States who understands that progressive ideas like universal healthcare would greatly enhance the lives of my fellow citizens.

I care about my fellow citizens, and I’d like for my son to be able to live in the USA someday, as he is born to a US citizen and he can certainly go far there.

The problem is, if he decides to come to the USA; there won’t be a union fighting for him against corporate greed. There will be greatly reduced wages. And if he gets hurt, sick, or otherwise needs medical care, he will likely need to have far more money than he earns in order to get that care.

That’s ridiculous.

Of course, he could just get a college education (something that is free in Norway) and then he could afford the outrageous healthcare prices in the USA.

But if he wanted to get such an education in the USA, he could find himself a hundred thousand dollars in debt just for college alone, in a shitty economic downturn, without even the benefit of having a place to live. Throw on a mortgage payment on top of that, and he would be downright stupid to deliberately choose the USA over Norway.

The difference is that Norway governs for its citizens and certain things are prioritized here, like education and healthcare.

Whereas in the USA most of the money you spend in taxes goes towards prepping for world war 3 and giving subsidies to already profitable corporations, and then giving them loopholes where they don’t have to pay any corporate taxes at all. And then billionaires pay for senators to give them even more tax breaks personally, and then they use that money that should be funding your government services to bankroll candidates for the Republican ticket that will never, ever do anything to help a working class person.

I support Bernie Sanders because he’s spent decades representing working class people, without ever selling out. It’s a shame people keep rejecting him in favor of billionaires who bail themselves out on the taxpayer’s dime like Donald Trump.

Norway isn’t alone. Basically any other modern, western nation has a universal healthcare system of some kind, and doesn’t shit on the poor like the USA does under Republican rule. Needless to say, I don’t think much of my former political party. They haven’t done anything for any working person in at least 4 decades. I was a fool to support them at all when I was younger. I believed their lies, basically.

China’s Punishes Japan, Cancels $154 4 Billion Order!

https://youtu.be/Xwrfk3eD3bc

Is the Huawei Mate 60 Pro chip equal to the latest iPhone chip or even better?

No

The Mate 60 is superior to the performance of the Iphone 13 and is on par with the performance of Iphone 14

Yet the Mate 60 is expected to be half a generation below the Iphone 15

The Price of the Mate 60 however is at least 3000 Yuan lesser than the Iphone 15 and given the mild differences in performance between the two, the market for the mate 60 is likely to zoom and surge and definitely affect the market for the Iphone 15

I believe Iphone will lose around 15% of it’s present market share in China to Huawei due to the Mate 60 and the Mate 60 Pro Plus to be released in 2024 April

Saudi & Russia Have CHANGED The Game!

How come some of these parents did not discipline their children at an early age and then as they get older and get more and more into trouble they end up having to either go to jail or prison because they weren’t raised up by parenting skills 101?

I’ve often told this story:

As a child, I was an incorrigible thief. Absolutely nothing could stop me.

I stole books. We had no local library, no school library, and no money to buy books. And I WANTED TO READ! (That may have been why I developed the habit of re-reading books.) I also stole art supplies, but that wasn’t quite the same problem, because you didn’t need a new set of pastels every week. When I was caught, I was punished — usually beat, because that was punishment in Little Italy in the 1960s.

My brother also stole. He tended towards candy and comic books. He also got beat when he got caught.

When I turned 16 I got a job, and I never had to steal a book again. Within three months I had enough books (and money) to build my first bookshelf. My current bookshelf, which is about half the size of its maximum ever, is 13′ long and 7′ high. I built that one, too.

I don’t steal art supplies, either. I order them online.

My brother decided stealing was fun, and meant he didn’t have to work. He made a living illegally hooking up electric lines after the power was shut off; later, he added cable TV installations. And he didn’t need a full-time job, ever.

Same parents, same beatings, same reason — poverty. When I had a choice, I stopped stealing. When he had a choice, he became a better thief. Good parenting helps, but nothing will tell you why a child turned out the way they did.

Clear interference shown in docs leaked to Mintpress

This is pretty good. Heads up!

Why is the Huawei Mate 60 phone called “the world’s first phone that the CIA can’t monitor”?

Theoretically, any cell phone that makes calls through a terrestrial carrier could be monitored by the CIA. It doesn’t matter whether the phone is made in the United States, South Korea or China.

After all, their signals and data must eventually be aggregated into the operator’s computer room and lines.

However, Mate60 is so unique that it is the first mobile phone in the world that can send short messages and make calls directly through artificial satellites. Previous similar products required the help of ground operators for transit.

Some people may say: CIA will also monitor satellites! Of course.

But what if these satellites are not operated by Americans?

Yes, if two people hold Mate60 at the same time, they can rely on a series of artificial satellites in space for global communication that do not rely on the United States. Perfectly avoiding every link that the CIA may touch.

The Future of the WORLD is here in CHINA!

A new trend: Leading young Chinese physicists, engineers refuse to study, work in the US

While many Chinese scientists and engineers have returned to China after working years in the US, there is a newer trend which just came to my attention: Young Chinese star physicists and engineers are refusing to go to US universities and companies for study and then work, and are choosing to do their post-graduate study and work in China.

Why?

They have seen how research and product patents are owned by US universities and companies, and are used against Chinese companies and interests if a tech war breaks out.

They do not want their inventions used against Chinese companies and interests, so they choose to stay in China.

Huang Qianqian 黄芊芊 is a leading student and researcher on electricity consumption in chips, who went to Beijing University for undergraduate work, and is now doing graduate work there. In spite of being offered full scholarships to US universities, she decided to stay in China to do her work. She already has several patents under her name.

The US wanted decoupling; it is getting decoupling.

Douglas Macgregor: They Moved Past The Border!

https://youtu.be/L8QFXPEfn4c

ISRAEL TO DEPORT ALL BLACKS BACK TO AFRICA!

World Hal Turner

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for plans to immediately deport Blacks out of Israel and back to Africa.

Plans should be drawn up to remove all African migrants from Israel after groups of Eritreans were involved in a violent clash in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says.

He also wants the migrants involved in the demonstration to be deported immediately.

His remarks came a day after rival groups of Eritreans clashed in bloody protests that left dozens of people injured.

The groups, supporters and opponents of Eritrea’s government, faced off with construction lumber, pieces of metal and rocks, smashing shop windows and police cars.

Israeli police in riot gear shot tear gas, stun grenades and live rounds while officers on horseback tried to control the protesters.

The violence broke out near the Eritrean embassy when protesters were stopped from reaching the building ahead of a cultural event set to take place there.

The issue of migrants has long divided Israel and the latest violence has brought it back to the fore.

“We want harsh measures against the rioters, including the immediate deportation of those who took part,” Mr Netanyahu said.

He requested that ministers present him with plans “for the removal of all the other illegal infiltrators,” and noted in his remarks that the Supreme Court struck down some measures meant to coerce the migrants to leave.

Under international law, Israel cannot forcibly send people back to a country where their life or liberty may be at risk.

About 25,000 African migrants live in Israel, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, who say they fled conflict or repression.

Israel recognizes very few as asylum seekers, seeing them overwhelmingly as economic migrants, and says it has no legal obligation to keep them.

Stray Cat Follows Every Stranger and Asking to Take her Home Until This Happened

Heartwarming.

Media Say … Gloom And Doom In China

The New York Times, and other western media, are running a ‘doom and gloom in Xi’s economy’ campaign.

The latest entry is this piece:

China’s Economic Pain Is a Test of Xi’s Fixation With Control

The core claim is this:

Consumers are gloomy. Private investment is sluggish. A big property firm is near collapse. Local governments face crippling debt. Youth unemployment has continued to rise. The economic setbacks are eroding Mr. Xi’s image of imperious command, and emerging as perhaps the most sustained and thorny challenge to his agenda in over a decade in power.

But lets look at the sources the author quotes to make up ‘evidence’ for his claims:

  • Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Asia Society’s Center for China Analysis, said in an interview
  • Some experts say …
  • not all observers believe that China’s economy is in a sharp downward spiral. But …
  • Chinese internet users circulated an essay by a retired Hong Kong businessman, Lew Mon-hung …
  • Liu Shijin, a retired senior Chinese government economist, said …
  • said Alicia García Herrero, the chief economist for Asia-Pacific at Natixis
  • said Bert Hofman, director of the East Asian Institute at National University of Singapore
  • said Ms. García Herrero, the economist
  • Some Chinese economists and former officials have warned
  • Lou Jiwei, a former minister of finance said in a recent video interview with Caixin

The author of the gloom and doom piece is:

Chris Buckley, the Times’s chief correspondent in China, where he has lived for most of the past 30 years

If Chris Buckley lives in China why doesn’t he quote even one person who is really involved in China’s economy or policy making?

Isn’t there any active Chinese politician or Chinese CEO or Chinese economist or Chinese worker he could quote?

Why is he quoting an Asia Society fellow?

Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a nonpartisan, nonprofit institution with major centers and public buildings in New York, Hong Kong, and Houston, and additional locations in Los Angeles, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, New Delhi, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Seoul, Sydney, Tokyo, Washington, D.C., and Zurich.

Why is he mentioning the disgraced Lew Mon-hung?

In 2016, he was found guilty and imprisoned after being found guilty of perverting the course of justice by asking Leung, in letters and emails, to stop the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) from investigating him.

Why is he quoting the Vice-something professor of this or that Liu Shijin?

Former Vice-President (Vice-Minister), Development Research Center. Currently, Vice-Chairman, China Development Research Foundation.

Why Bert Hofman, the Dutch ‘expert’ of the EU financed Mercator lobby?

Why ask a Spanish ‘economist’ from a French investment bank?

Natixis is a French corporate and investment bank created in November 2006 from the merger of the asset management and investment banking operations of Natexis Banques Populaires (Banque Populaire group) and IXIS (Groupe Caisse d’Epargne).

Natixis provides financial data for the ‘Markets’ section on the news channel, Euronews. On October 26, 2010, Natixis Investment Managers (NIM) has acquired a majority stake in asset management start-up ‘Ossiam’.

Why use some other outlets interview with the retired Lou Jiwei without giving this (2019) context?:

Lou Jiwei, who has long been seen as a liberalizing force in China, an advocate of market reform and international openness. He served as finance minister, ran the country’s massive sovereign wealth fund, and has palled around with western economists since the 1980s. But recently he made a prediction that contained a startling phrase: At a forum in Beijing, according to reporting in the South China Morning Post, he said: “The next step in the frictions between China and the United States is a financial war (jinrong zhan). The U.S. has been hijacked by nationalism and populism, so will do everything in its power to use bullying measures [and] long-arm jurisdiction.”

In this financial war, he continued, the U.S. will exploit its dominance of the international financial system to hurt China—and China will fight back.

Now back to what matters:

Godfree Roberts @GodfreeTrh – 11:17 UTC · Sep 3, 2023

REALITY: Only four economies have ever grown by $1.5 trillion in a year, and 2023 will see the fifth. All five boom years are Chinese, of course. Its economy is booming and so are wages: 4.7% nominal rise last year, 4.2% after inflation. Bwahahah.

FT: China’s economic slowdown reverberates across Asia https://ft.com/content/…

bigger

But it’s all gloom and doom in China. The NYT says so.

Posted by b on September 6, 2023 at 8:23 UTC | Permalink

Tex-Mex Baked Potatoes

OIP Potato
OIP Potato

Ingredients

  • 4 baking potatoes
  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 1 (12 ounce) jar mild or hot salsa
  • 2 teaspoons chili powder
  • 1/4 cup diced green bell pepper
  • 1 tablespoon chopped stuffed green olives
  • 1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
  • 1 cup thinly sliced iceberg lettuce
  • Sliced tomatoes

Instructions

  1. Scrub potatoes; pierce skin with fork. Bake at 400 degrees F until tender, about 1 hour.
  2. Fifteen minutes before potatoes are done, sauté meat in hot skillet until all pink disappears.
  3. Add salsa and chili powder to meat. Cover. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes.
  4. Add green pepper and olives to meat mixture. Heat through.
  5. Cut baked potatoes open. Spoon hot meat mixture into potatoes. Top at once with cheese so that it melts slightly.
  6. Serve with lettuce sprinkled on top and with sliced tomatoes alongside.

Apple In Tears: China Ban Iphone In Response to U.S Sanction

In today’s video, we dive deep into the recent ban imposed by China on the use of iPhones for its government officials and its potential impact on the U.S economy. From Apple’s position in the global market to the ripple effects on allied industries, join us as we uncover the implications of this significant move.

What was the stupidest thing someone has called the police on you for?

Some years ago I was living in rural Texas. My housemates decided to raise chickens. They thought it would be “fun.” As someone who had to raise chickens in the past, I did not agree with them, but compromised because chickens were probably the least expensive and bothersome livestock they could mess with. Eventually, they got bored of the chickens, so I processed the chickens for future consumption in the front yard where the light was good. My neighbors called the local police and claimed I was conducting Satanic Rituals. Once again, this was rural Texas (no HOAs, large tracts of land with the Piney Woods for our backyards). All of these neighbors claimed to be descended from farmers and country people. They should have damn well recognized what cleaning a bunch of chickens looked like versus “Satanic Rituals.”

Has a cop ever said something to you which was completely unexpected?

Yes.

About 15 years ago I was driving through a part of Miami, Florida in my work van, which contained lots of specialized tools. My company was based out of South Georgia, and we usually didn’t work this far South, but there I was, driving through unknown territory.

I was on a very long street with stop signs every block, and I dutifully stopped at each one before proceeding. Of a sudden, as I stopped at one of the stop signs, a police car pulled up on the left side of me, lights flashing. An officer jumped out of the passenger seat and stood at my window, asking me where I was headed. I told him that I was heading to the interstate so I could make my way back North to Georgia.

The officer asked what I had in the van, and I told him a bunch of tools. Wearing a pained expression, the officer told me that he and his partner had observed me stopping at every stop sign and then he said that it was several miles to the Interstate and that I was in a very rough part of town. In fact, the officer believed that my life would be in danger if I were to stop at every stop sign, as someone may jump on / in the van, shoot me, or whatever, and take the van.

The officer ordered me not to stop at any of the stop signs between where we were and the interstate. He said I could slow down and make sure it was safe to proceed, but under no circumstances was I to stop and that if anyone tried to stop me or signal me to stop, that I should ‘floor it’ and get the hell out of there.

The officer assured me that they were radioing my vehicle description / license plate # to other officers in the area to let them know what I would be doing.

I thanked the officer and proceeded toward the Interstate, running every stop sign on the way.

PASSPORT SIS Thought She Could Talk Down To Men In Africa Like In USA

The arrogance of US women is astounding. I live in a poor country, but that does not mean that their education is bad. Very smart people here.”

What is the extent of the U.S. dependence on China? Why is this allowed to happen? What can be done about it?

Yes you are 100% correct. The U.S. is totally dependent on the Chinese in 3 main ways.

Without the Chinese products the U.S. will suffer a 50% inflation at the very least.

Without China producing stuffs productively and efficiently for them they cannot sell a thing in the world.

Without access to the humongous Chinese market most U.S. companies will go bankrupt and out of business within a year.

Just take Apple and Tesla as an example. Without the Chinese market it will suffer a good 30% less sales. Without China making their products they will be totally uncompetitive and lose the entire world market.

What can be done about this? You can do something to avoid dependence on China but you won’t. And you can’t. You wanted the cake and eat it too. You see US wants to be the world’s baddest nation and fight wars upon wars upon wars. It needs to outspent the top 20 nations put together! If you do that much shit you need to watch your back, your side and your front, your top and your bottom too!

There lies your problem. You need to spent all your money on wars you have no more money to produce anything. You thought that your CEO can earn 100 times China’s CEO, your workers must be paid 5 times more than Chinese workers and get 10 times the Chinese benefits and the customer will pay for your excesses! But the customer won’t! Not even American customers!

It is that simple. The U.S. cannot have the cake and eat it too! The U.S. needs to choose being competitive or being hegemonic! It cannot have both. American need to decide!

You want to compete with China, do the following. Close your 800 foreign military base, turn your dozen aircraft carriers into holiday cruise! Divert your trillion dollar military budget to building U.S. infrastructure, stop spending money talking shit and doing shit spend it on building relationship with your customers. Disband NATO, CIA and NED! Ban Industrial Actions and Trade Unions!

Can you do this? I doubt so. So the U.S. will rather be dependent on China!

The Sopranos || Feelin’ Good

I am really starting to like these Sopranos themed fan videos.

Blinkin is delusional

Yesterday, Global Times critiqued the speech Blinken delivered at John Hopkins and said he decaled a New Cold War, “Blinken sounds a rallying cry for a ‘new cold war’ that US cannot win”:

The growing US’ geopolitical competition with Russia and China marks the end of the post-Cold War world order, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, speaking at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies on Wednesday. “What we are experiencing now is more than a test of the post-Cold War order. It’s the end of it,” he noted. “Decades of relative geopolitical stability have given way to an intensifying competition with authoritarian powers, revisionist powers.” This statement appears to be a rallying cry for a “new cold war.”

Since the post-Cold War order is coming to an end, what kind of new world order does the US want? Various signs indicate that the US wants major power competition and camp confrontation in order to maintain its global hegemony, even at the expense of the interests of other countries, including allies, and partner nations. However, the reality is that major power competition goes against the trend of the times and cannot solve the US’ own problems and the challenges facing the world. It will only further divide the world, leading the world to slide toward a more dangerous cliff edge.

Regarding Blinken’s remarks, there are two main points to consider. Firstly, Blinken was creating a sense of crisis in the world. The underlying message to US allies and other countries is that there are challengers, particularly China and Russia, who want to change the existing order. Secondly, Blinken’s remarks also reflect a sense of anxiety in the US. The US is attempting to slow down China’s rise through strategic competition, while hoping to sustain its hegemony without jeopardizing its own interests. However, it seems that the US has no clear solution to this dilemma.

China is one of the beneficiaries of the existing system and does not seek to challenge or subvert this order. However, the US has viewed any legitimate demand made by China, even those that reflect the reasonable demands of the majority of developing countries, as a challenge and ill-intentioned sabotage….

As for China, the US is attempting to stifle its development by imposing unlimited technological restrictions, but it is unable to completely decouple from China economically. For the US and its main allies, China is either their largest single trading partner or one of the largest. Today, the US is a reckless strategic aggressor, attempting to unite its relatively weaker strength with its allies to wage a new cold war. It should be noted that the power of US allies has declined significantly, and the unity of the “West” is crippled due to the US transitioning from a “blood donor” to a “vampire”.

There’s no way the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals can contain China or the rest of the Global South. The degree of geoeconomic dependency noted in the final paragraph above is far too much for that Bloc to overcome. The attempts made so far beginning with Trump have illustrated the damage the Empire can inflict on itself in its ill-considered policy toward China and the world. The Outlaw US Empire’s illusion of “primacy” has faded into the mists of time and is irretrievable so matter what it tries.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 15 2023 14:31 utc | 4

An Elderly Cat was Scratching At People’s Door, Begging for Help

My goodness!

Botox time in Lahaina!

US: No bread for you China, 
China: No flour for you US.

Well, I’ve been putting it off, and putting it off, but I made the big leap. I went and got a Botox treatment.

Before:

f727185e0138801ff938949208aa954c
f727185e0138801ff938949208aa954c

After:

article 2690336 1F9B768E00000578 832 634x797
article 2690336 1F9B768E00000578 832 634×797

I cannot believe that is me in the mirror!

LOL

Personally, I don’t think it did anything. But everyone else ohhs and ahhs about it. WTF? They say I look twenty years younger. What?

Do I look like I’m 14 years old?

The procedure was simple. They put this icy cold (it was stored in the refrigerator) gel on my face, and then covered it up with clear plastic wrap. Then after about 40 minutes, I laid down and had the procedure.

ouch. ouch. ouch. ouch.

(Only kidding.)

About 50 or so little tiny pin-pricks that I could hardly feel.

And that was that. All the skin on my face relaxed, and those troublesome crevices and gullies disappeared! Who would have thought?

The effect lasts for about six months and then I’ll need to do it again. Don’t you know.

I don’t know what the Hell I was afraid of. It was “nothing”. Really. Not a big deal at all.

Now, if only I could do something about my hair… or lack of it. LOL.

Sigh.

The amount of money you pay, vs the look that you are trying to achieve can be either very important or trivial. If it is very important to you, then well… yeah pay that money. If it isn’t, then NOPE… buy a case of beer instead.

It’s all about priorities.

I do not know if I am going to continue with the six month Botox treatments. They cost money, and I am not seeing any real significant changes or improvements in my appearance.

So I probably will not…

By the way, a 18 year old girl started to flirt with me today, so….

Todays…

Many anti-China YouTube channels are saying President Xi Jinping is losing his grip as China suffers from devastations from the flood and high youth unemployment. Is there any truth to what they are saying?

That would be like saying that the US collapsed every time there was a recession, high unemployment or depression.

If that were the case, the US would have collapsed at least eight times in its history. Last time I looked, the US is still there.

You depend on YouTube for getting your information? There is a thing called a brain; when it works right it does this thing called thinking.

Thinking helps me to tell the difference between what is useful information and what is just someone going blahblahblah.

Got Me Again! Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home ( Reaction )

2023 08 26 07 59
2023 08 26 07 59

What bad experience had you saying “I will never buy from that company or use their service ever again”?

My family owned and drove nothing but Mitsubishi vehicles for about ten years. Three cars and a (small) truck, all purchased new.

One of the cars died four days after the warranty expired.

Four.

Days.

I don’t mean it developed mechanical problems. I mean the engine locked up solid. Like a brick.

Like all of our vehicles, this one had been well maintained. All scheduled maintenance performed on time, regular oil changes, tire rotations, fuel injector cleanings, the works.

I wrote a long, detailed letter to Mitsubishi Motors, explaining about the car. I made it clear that we were faithful customers, and that we knew the warranty was technically expired, but… four days? Seriously? The car had less than 50,000 miles on the odometer, and it had been immaculately maintained.

I asked if Mitsubishi could do anything.

They responded about three months later with a one-sentence letter. Something to this effect…

After careful investigation, we have determined that that your vehicle’s warranty was expired when the failure occurred.

That pissed me off.

Careful investigation?

I told them in the first paragraph that the warranty was expired. I mentioned it about six times in my letter, along with exact dates, mileage readings, and all the details, including photostatic copies of maintenance records.

Honestly, Mitsubishi could have sent me a $300 voucher toward an engine replacement and kept my business.

Instead, they lost a customer for life.

More than one customer, actually.

My daughter (grown now) won’t even look at a Mitsubishi product. Neither will my (now) ex-wife. And – before I eventually calmed down – I showed their rejection letter to a LOT of people.

I got more than a few calls from people who knew that I’d been driving Mitsubishis for years, wanting to know what kept me coming back. They got an earful.

I’ve probably bought eight vehicles in the years since then, so I know that crappy letter cost them eight car sales. I imagine at least a few car shoppers decided against Mitsubishi after seeing that letter.

Someone once told me that a satisfied customer tells six to ten people about their positive experiences, but an unsatisfied customer tells fifty to a hundred. I’ve told more than a hundred.

I can guarantee that.

Careful investigation, my ass!

Corned Beef Hash

2023 08 26 08 12
2023 08 26 08 12

Yield: 4 servings

Equipment

  • 10 inch cast iron skillet

Ingredients

  • 1 pound cooked Certified Angus Beef® corned beef, 1/2 inch dice
  • 1 1/2 pounds baby new red potatoes
  • 2 tablespoons rendered bacon fat or butter
  • 1 onion, quartered and sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 4 cups thinly sliced cabbage (1/4 head)
  • Freshly ground black pepper to taste
  • 4 fresh eggs

Instructions

  1. Dice potatoes to 1/2 inch. Add to salted water and bring to a boil. Turn off heat, sit for 10 minutes, strain and set aside.
  2. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
  3. Add bacon fat to skillet over medium-high heat. Sear potatoes until golden, about 5 minutes.
  4. Add onions, garlic, thyme and oregano; sear until onions are transparent. Stir in cabbage and corned beef. Season with pepper.
  5. Gently crack eggs on top of the hash and place skillet in the oven.
  6. Bake for 10-15 minutes depending on desired egg doneness.

Oliver Anthony’s Emotional Speech About the Future of America

Oliver Anthony fought back tears as shared his thoughts and opinions on the current state of the United States of America and its future. Oliver Anthony also gave a very candid response to his song “Rich Men North of Richmond” being used as a political tool with both Conservatives and the left.

Have you ever met an inmate that was actually a very nice person but did absolutely horrifying crimes? If so, what’s their story?

Yes, I met a really nice guy that was serving two life sentences. It was really hard for me to wrap my head around the idea had so much time, so I asked him about it. The guy was a Vietnam War vet. He was a tunnel-rat, meaning that sometimes he had to belly-crawl into holes to clear them with just the use of his boot-knife. He got very efficient at it during his tour. Meanwhile, his tour was almost up and he was looking forward to coming home. However, he kept hearing stories about his sister being in an abusive relationship. He explained that normally he didn’t involve himself in the details of other people’s relationships but this was his sister that he was very protective of and he just didn’t know how much he could tolerate knowing that she was in an abusive relationship after he’d spent years killing people just because they were the enemy. So he sent her a letter to break off that relationship, in hopes he would never meet the guy that was abusing his sister.

Eventually, he did return to the United States. He caught a cab from the airport to drive him home. But as they entered the neighborhood the police had everything sealed off because of some crime scene investigation. He didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes but he did explain that he was just returning home from Vietnam and only wanted to get home which was only a block away. So they asked for his address and he gave it only to be met by a detective requesting his company down at the station. So he reiterated that he literally just returned from Vietnam and didn’t know anything about what was going on, but the police insisted.

So he goes down to the station to be informed that his sister and mother were killed by his sister’s boyfriend. Apparently, the guy wasn’t so keen about breaking off the relationship. The police had the guy, it was pretty cut and dry, he was in custody, and the police only asked him to let them do their job without him interfering.

Well, turns out that the boyfriend bonded out, and this Vietnam vet had friends that knew where this guy hung out. So this guy goes down to a bar the boyfriend frequented and had him pointed out. He approached the guy at the pool table and started chatting the guy up. He explained that he just got back from Vietnam and that he was a tunnel rat there. He pulled out his combat knife to explain what it was like belly crawling through tunnels with that particular knife because his .45 would have alarmed the enemy. He told stories of spiders the size of basketballs rushing at him that he had to kill without giving away his position. But the guy he was talking to just wanted to know if he wanted to bet on the pool game.

So he told the guy (his sister’s abusive boyfriend that killed both his sister and his mother), that he had a bet for him. He told him that he was going to take that very same knife he used in Vietnam to skin him alive and that he was willing to bet nobody in the bar would intervene. And so he did. And he didn’t stop cutting up that guy (in front of everyone) until the police arrived and asked him to.

When he went to court, the judge wasn’t too happy about his vigilante justice and convicted him for murder, but when he was asked if he’d like to say anything before sentencing he asked for the name of the magistrate officer that gave his sister and mother’s murderer bail.

Oh SH*T, The Fuse Has Been Lit!

The economy is on its last legs and the Fed is about to push it off a cliff. Powell’s conviction to crash the economy is alive and well, he wants higher unemployment to destroy inflation. Here’s why interest rates will stay higher for longer & how it could collapse this leveraged economy.

The father just paid child support, and now he’s asking the mother of the child to start showing him receipts. Do you think he is right for asking?

No. Me ex tried that.

So I sat with his attorney and mine….one time….and listed out everything I had bought for our daughter, divided it in half and that’s what his money paid for.

Then I showed my lease and renters insurance and water bill and cable bill and light bill, you get the gist.

Half of all them are for her.

Divided hers in half and started adding up his responsibilities.

It turned out I was short $300 a month of his responsibility.

It took him a minute to look at the breakdown and I stood and leaned over the table and started pointed and numbers and adding them again on my calculator and then handed him the calculator if he wanted to add it himself since he was looking at a major spreadsheet (I do accounting) and asked if he understood.

It took a few minutes for it to sink it but he got it. About 6 months later he asked me to see the chart again and I showed him and he handed me an extra $300.

He said to keep him up and what the bills are and if I need more to let him know. He always paid for her school supplies and new clothes and shoes for school.

Once it was all in black and white and he saw I wasn’t screwing him over like all his friends said then he put his love for his little girl ahead of everything else. He was a crappy husband but a wonderful father.

How I see the US after living in Europe for 5 years

What is America like after experiencing life in Europe? BIG. Consumerism. Gun violence. The homeless. The police. “What do you do for work?” This is how I see the US after living in the Netherlands for 5 years. Sometimes it takes leaving a place for one to truly understand the pros and cons of a place. There are things I love and dislike about the US. Hope you enjoy this short movie!

What inventions had deeply personal origins?

In 1981, a young Japanese engineer named Kikuo Ibe broke the mechanical watch his father had given him as a gift. Ibe accidentally dropped the watch on the way to work and it broke into pieces on the floor. At the same time, he began to observe some construction workers around his office who were using jackhammers, and he noticed that they never wore watches because of the vibration. After that, he got the idea to create a sturdy watch that couldn’t be destroyed.

When Ibe later got a job at Casio Computer Co., Ltd. , he developed the rugged digital watch called the G-Shock. The G-Shock was designed as a watch that would have triple resistance 10, meaning it would have a battery life of 10 years, water resistance of 10 bar and could survive a drop of 10 meters. As most watches on the market were as slim as possible, it was not an immediate success, only attracting construction workers and police officers. But it later became a style icon when the skateboarding craze hit the world, prompting young people to look for a tough watch to match their baggy clothes. Subsequently G-Shock became very popular among the general public. On September 1, 2017, Casio celebrated its 100 million shipment of G-Shocks worldwide.

Rock Music Producer Reacts to Rich Men North of Richmond by Oliver Anthony Reaction Video

2023 08 26 08 02
2023 08 26 08 02

As a British person visiting the U.S., what is the most astounding thing someone over there has said to you?

I was living in Arizona and working a good paying job, living in what I thought was a good sized house when a young British man, probably 17, knocked on my door selling books.

Like seriously, who sells books door to door anymore right? And this dude had the coolest accent, and how many British people do you honestly come across in southern Arizona. So what the hell, I invited him in for a soda, and bought some books.

But here’s the thing. Got to chatting with the guy, he was here on some exchange program for the summer, had to live with some American family, only had $3 to spend on breakfast each day (he ate at Denny’s) and had to sell books all day for the company who sponsored the travel.

Slave labor I thought. He had stained dirty clothes that didn’t fit him, and was riding a bike. I felt so bad, I took him to my closet and started going through all my clothes.

I said here, you can have this, and that. If you are going to be selling books door to door in this neighborhood, you ought to look your best.

He smiled humbly, and said friend, you really don’t have to do this. I have lots of clothes back home, and my family…

Nonsense I said. Here’s a nice button up shirt, and some slacks. What size shoe do you wear?

Sir, please, you really don’t have to..

Long story short, we became pals, added him to the Facebook, sent him off on his little bike with a pile of clothes, and kind of forgot about him for awhile.

Sometime later, I noticed a post he made. He was all dressed up in a Tux, attending some royal party in England. Turns out his family was pretty important, and he was super rich.

Probably had a house the size of mine just for his horses.

So the most astounding thing I ever said to a British person visiting America, who happened to be some kind of British Royal person, was “Hey, have some of my clothes friend, and a drink!”

Hope he sees this and gets a good laugh.

BRICS 11 – Strategic Tour de Force

Pepe Escobar • August 25, 2023

Chinese President Xi Jinping defined all the major decisions embedded in the 15th BRICS summit in South Africa as “historic”. That may be seen as an understatement.

It will take time for the Global South, or Global Majority, or “Global Globe” (copyright President Lukashenko), not to mention the stunned collective West, to fully grasp the enormity of the new strategic stakes.

President Putin, for his part, described the negotiations on BRICS expansion as quite difficult. By now a relatively accurate picture is emerging of what really went down on that table in Johannesburg.

India wanted 3 new members. China wanted as many as 10. A compromise was finally reached, with 6 members: Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Argentina and Ethiopia.

So from now on it’s BRICS 11. And that’s just the beginning. Starting with the rotating Russian presidency of BRICS on January 1, 2024, more partners will be progressively included, and most certainly a new round of full members will be announced at the BRICS 11 summit in Kazan in October next year.

So we may soon progress to BRICS 20 – on the way to BRICS 40. The G7, for all practical purposes, is sliding towards oblivion.

Bur first things first. At that fateful table in Johannesburg, Russia supported Egypt. China went all out for Persian Gulf magic: Iran, UAE and the Saudis. Of course: Iran-China are already deep into a strategic partnership, and Riyadh is already accepting payment for energy in yuan.

Brazil and China supported Argentina, Brazil’s troubled neighbor, running the risk of having its economy fully dollarized, and also a key commodity provider to Beijing. South Africa supported Ethiopia. India, for a series of very complex reasons, was not exactly comfortable with 3 Arab/Muslim members (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt). Russia assuaged New Delhi’s fears.

All of the above respects geographic principles and imprints the notion of BRICS representing the Global South. But it goes way beyond that, blending cunning strategy and no-nonsense realpolitik.

India was mollified because Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, at the table in Johannesburg negotiating on behalf of President Putin, and highly respected by New Delhi, fully understood that a new, single BRICS currency is a long way away. What really matters, short and medium term, is expanding intra-BRICS trade in their national currencies.

That was stressed by New Development Bank (NDB) president Dilma Rousseff in her report to the South African summit hosts – even as Brazilian President Lula once again emphasized the importance of setting up a work group to discuss a BRICS currency.

Lavrov understood how New Delhi is absolutely terrified of secondary sanctions by the US, in case its BRICS role gets too ambitious. Prime Minister Modi is essentially hedging between BRICS and the completely artificial imperial obsession embedded in the terminology “Indo-Pacific” – which masks renewed containment of China. The Straussian neo-con psychos in charge of US foreign policy are already furious with India buying loads of discounted Russian oil.

New Delhi’s support for a new BRICS currency would be interpreted in Washington as all-out trade war – and sanctions dementia would follow. In contrast, Saudi Arabia’s MbS doesn’t care: he’s a top energy producer, not consumer like India, and one of his priorities is to fully court his top energy client, Beijing, and pave the way for the petroyuan.

It Takes Just a Single Strategic Move

Now let’s get into the strategic stakes. For all practical purposes, in Eurasian terms, BRICS 11 is now on the way to lord over the Arctic Sea Route; the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC); BRI’s East West Corridors; the Persian Gulf; the Red Sea; and the Suez Canal.

That blends several overland corridors with several nodes of the Maritime Silk Roads. Nearly total integration in the Heartland and the Rimland. All with just a single strategic move in the geopolitical/geoeconomic chessboard.

Much more than an increase of BRICS 11 collective GDP to 36% of the world’s total (already larger than the G7), with the group now encompassing 47% of the world’s population, the top geopolitical and geoeconomic breakthrough is how BRICS 11 is about to literally break the bank on the energy and commodities market fronts.

By incorporating Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, BRICS 11 instantly shines on as an oil and gas powerhouse. BRICS 11 now controls 39% of global oil exports; 45.9% of proven reserves; and at least 47.6% of all oil produced globally, according to InfoTEK.

With BRICS 11 possibly including Venezuela, Algeria and Kazakhstan as new members as early as in 2024, it may control as much as 90% of all oil and gas traded globally.

Inevitable corollary: operations settled in local currencies bypassing the US dollar. And inevitable conclusion: petrodollar in a coma. The Empire of Chaos and Plunder will lose its free lunch menu: control of global oil prices and means to enforce “diplomacy” via a tsunami of unilateral sanctions.

Already in the horizon, direct BRICS 11-OPEC+ symbiosis is inevitable. OPEC+ is effectively run by Russia and Saudi Arabia.

A ground-shaking geoeconomic reorientation is at hand, involving everything from routes plied by global supply chains and new BRICS roads to the progressive interconnection of BRI, the Saudi Vision 2030 and massive port expansion in the UAE.

By choosing Ethiopia, BRICS expands its African reach on mining, minerals and metals. Ethiopia is rich in gold, platinum, tantalum, copper, niobium and offers vast potential in oil and natural gas exploration. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, incidentally, are also involved in mining.

This all spells out fast, progressive integration of North Africa and West Asia.

How Diplomacy Goes a Long Way

The BRICS 11 Shock of the New, in the energy sphere, is a sharp historical counterpoint to the 1973 oil shock, after which Riyadh started wallowing in petrodollars. Now Saudi Arabia under MbS is operating a tectonic shift, in the process of becoming strategically aligned with Russia-China-India-Iran.

Diplomatic coup does not even begin to describe it. This is the second stage of the Russian-initiated and Chinese-finalized rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran, recently sealed in Beijing. The Russia-China strategic leadership, working patiently in synch, never lost sight of the ball.

Now compare it with collective West’s “strategies”, such as the G7-imposed oil price cap. Essentially the G7 “coalition of the willing” self-imposed a price cap on Russian crude imported by sea. The result is that they had to start buying way more oil products from Global South nations which ignored the price cap and duly increased their purchase of Russian crude.

Guess who are the top two: BRICS members China and India.

After wallowing in several stages of denial, the collective West may – or may not – realize it’s a fool’s dream to attempt to “de-couple” the West-ruled part of the global economy from China, whatever is spewed out by Washington.

BRICS 11 now shows, graphically, how the “Global South/Global Majority/”Global Globe” is more non-aligned with the West than anytime in recent history.

By the way, the president of the G77, Cuban leader Diaz-Canel, was at the BRICS summit representing the de-facto new Non-Aligned Movement (NAM): the G77 actually incorporates no less than 134 nations. Most are African. Xi Jinping in Johannesburg met in person with the leaders of most of them.

The collective West, in panic, regards all of the above as “dangerous”. So the last refuge is, predictably, rhetorical: “de-coupling”, “de-risking”, and similar idiocies.

Yet that may also get practically dangerous. As in the first ever trilateral summit in Camp David on August 18 between the Empire and two Asian vassals, Japan and South Korea. That may be interpreted as the first move towards a military-political Asian NATO even more toxic than Quad or AUKUS, obsessed to simultaneously contain China, Russia and the DPRK.

The Collective Outstripping of the Global North

The UN lists 152 nations in the world as “developing countries”. BRICS 11 is aiming at them – as they outstrip the Global North on everything from population growth to overall contribution to global GDP growth measured by PPP.

In the past 10 years since the announcement of BRI first in Astana and then in Jakarta, Chinese financial institutions have lent nearly $1 trillion for infrastructure connectivity projects across the Global South. The upcoming BRI forum in Beijing will signal a renewed drive. That’s the BRI-BRICS symbiosis.

In the G20 last year, China was the first nation to lobby for the inclusion of the 55-member African Union (AU). That may happen at the G20 summit next month in New Delhi; in that case, Global South representation will be close to parity with the Global North.

Claims that Beijing was organizing a malign conspiracy to turn BRICS into a weapon against the G7 are infantile. Realpolitik – and geoeconomic indicators – are dictating the terms, configuring the Shock of the New: the G7’s irreversible irrelevance with the rise of BRICS 11.

Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond REACTION

2023 08 26 08 00
2023 08 26 08 00

Why did the leaders of BRICS accept Ethiopia to join the club?

There are four major countries in Africa:

  1. South Africa
  2. Nigeria
  3. Ethiopia
  4. Egypt

Ethiopia was the only major African kingdom not be colonized by the Europeans, except for an Italian occupation in the 1930s.

It has a significant middle-sized population of 120M.

Ethiopia has a government which is dedicated to the modernization of Ethiopia led by Abi Ahmed.

Abi Ahmed was educated in China and is fluent in Putonghua, and there are other Chinese-educated members of government who are adapting lessons from China’s modernization to fit into the Ethiopian model of development. China has been involved in various infrastructure development projects in the country.

The country also has cordial relations with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa.

The US and G7 have overlooked Ethiopia for a long time, and have considered it to be unimportant.

Beef and Gravy over Potatoes

Beef Tips Gravy verticle 720x540 1
Beef Tips Gravy verticle 720×540 1

Ingredients

  • 3 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1 envelope brown gravy mix
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 3 tablespoons butter, softened
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon pepper

Instructions

  1. Place potatoes and water in a microwave-safe dish. Cover and microwave on HIGH for 8 to 10 minutes or until tender.
  2. Meanwhile, in large skillet, cook beef over medium heat until no longer pink; drain. Stir in garlic powder and onion powder.
  3. Prepare gravy mix according to package directions.
  4. Place potatoes in a mixing bowl; add milk, butter, salt and pepper. Beat on medium speed until smooth.
  5. Serve beef and gravy over mashed potatoes.

What does the richest person you know do for a living?

Do you recognize this famous street hawker occasionally featured in international media in discussions related to global economic dynamics?

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main qimg e4ca011c257b768e0bbd84bc2facc2e2 lq

He is Sirivat Voravetvuthikun—Mr. Sandwich of Thailand.

Previously a high-flyer multi-millionaire businessman, Sirivat went bankrupt by impacts of the infamous Asian financial crisis of the late 1990’s. The crisis not only took away all his fortunes but also left him in debts of millions of dollars.

But all this mishap could not smash him to simply become a poor and rot. Srivat took himself to the ground to kick off a restart, afresh.

His wife would make sandwiches from night till dawn and he would go out to the street to sell them starting early in the morning.

Soon he became a media-feature, a subject of the critics and many raised their eyebrows at the sight of a multi-millionaire selling sandwich on street.

But nothing could hold him back. Srivat stirred himself through.

Then, as he kept on doing what he was doing, the populace started to re-discover Srivat Voravetvuthikun. The dignity, courage and honesty that Srivat was trying to uphold: he was not trying to cheat or steal someone else’s money. Nor was he trying to escape from his lenders. Nor did he choose to live a disgraceful life of a fallen runner. Instead, he was trying to re-establish himself, to stand again on his own feet, pay off his debts and live with his head held high in the society.

People now started buying his sandwiches.

Sirivat’s sales started growing, then soaring. At the height of his popularity, he earned a loving nickname: Mr. Sandwich.

Soon Mr. Sandwich became a brand—one of its kind and ever, as Srivat started settling with his sandwich/coffee shops nationwide.

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image 21

Mr. Sirivat Voravetvuthikun once again became a millionaire. This time a more renowned one, and well-respected.

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To answer the question— unless born with silver spoon in the mouth, a genuinely rich person does anything he/she needs to stay on. I’ve learned about this great man, and I also know about quite a few other rich men. They work hard no less than the mediocrity, even harder than the average people. They don’t care how much it takes, what the critics talk on the face or behind. They only keep their promise to themselves: live in affluence with dignity.


Thailand’s Mr Sandwich happier 10 years on

He Died & Was Shown The Future of USA Democracy – Ken Leth’s NDE

Ken Leth shares his Near Death Experience (NDE) that he had when he was 8 years old when he was shown the future and a civil war. This is his testimony

What’s the most questionable cost-cutting move you’ve seen an employer make?

The Company I worked for made over $9B in 2004 on the revenue of $36 billion. That was a lot of money for a company to make back then. And a 25% profit margin is just sweet.

One fine day, in 2004, the leadership decided they needed to be more nimble. More efficient. The solution? Supplies were no longer available on each floor, you had to walk down to the ground floor to get them.

So you’re in the middle of something and realize you need a notepad and a pen.

You walk to the elevator, push a button, wait for it, enter, push the G button, wait, exit the elevator, walk to the supply room, get a pen and notebook, walk back to the elevator, push a button, wait, enter the elevator, push the desired floor button, exit, walk back to your desk.

For a company that paid its software developers well over $100k! This came at a time when tech companies started giving free lunches to keep their employees productive. The waste of time alone meant the change was a net negative.

Who the heck thought it was a good idea to save pennies by removing supplies from each floor from a company that made 25% profit (over $9B / year at that time)?

I know of several people who quit the company over this. Not because this specific thing was painful for them, but because it signaled the company was in a downward spiral. They went to other companies (often competitors) where they were more valued.

In coming years The Company was going to prove those quitters right by losing a lot of market share in key upcoming markets, from the browser to mobile devices.

What are some examples of the daily lives of people receiving the “karma” they deserve?

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main qimg cf12f5d965fa0b6b1fa1600aeecd7a2c pjlq

Virginia Western Regional Jail

The photo above is by Cole Carini. He is 23 years old and is from Virginia, USA.

On June 2, 2020 (yes, a few days ago), he walked into a local medical centre with serious injuries to his body… and a missing hand! When local authorities asked about the reason for these extreme injuries, he lied to them saying he had received them because of an accident he had with a lawn mower. Due to the severity of the injuries, the FBI became involved in the case.

But the FBI soon discovered that he was creating a bombshell for an alleged attack on a group of women he described as “Cheerleaders.” During the making of the bomb, he somehow ended up exploding the bomb and blew off his entire hand, causing very extreme injuries to his body.

For me, this is an example of instant karma, though perhaps not so much in everyday life. He was definitely making the bomb to hurt others, but he ended up almost killing himself. I’m sure now he wishes he wasn’t even able to make a bomb!

First Time Hearing | Oliver Anthony – I WANT TO GO HOME | Reaction Video

What is the craziest thing your kids have told you that you thought was a lie but turned out to be true?

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main qimg b93c251a0d7293a6a37fc6372b725523 lq

When he was six years old, my son came excitedly out of the garden and threw a stone he had found in my hand. He told me he found a Stone Age tool. I put it down to a vivid imagination, but to appease him I told him we could ask the head of the local historical society for an opinion.

We did that a few months later, and the man’s eyes popped out of their sockets. He was also a delegate to the state archeology office and said he needed to send the stone to the museum in Stuttgart for a professional opinion. He was sure it WAS a primitive tool.

As it turned out, the stone was a flat tool used to poke holes in leather to sew pieces of leather together. It dated back to the end of the Stone Age. How my six year old recognized I had no idea.

LIBERAL REACTS Oliver Anthony I Want To Go Home & I’ve Got to Get Sober REACTION

Preach it brother!

2023 08 26 11 22
2023 08 26 11 22

“Information Designed To Show …”

Yesterday CNN published another Russiagate like nonsense story:

Newly declassified US intel claims Russia is laundering propaganda through unwitting Westerners

Russian intelligence is operating a systematic program to launder pro-Kremlin propaganda through private relationships between Russian operatives and unwitting US and western targets, according to newly declassified US intelligence.

Caitlin Johnstone takes it apart:

Another Day, Another CIA Press Release Disguised As News

She concludes:

One of the craziest things happening in our world today is how westerners are being trained to overlook the massive amounts of western propaganda they’re inundated with day in and day out and focus instead on “Russian propaganda”, which has no meaningful existence in the west. In 2017 before RT was shut down in the UK, it accounted for 0.04 percent of the UK’s total TV audience. A New York University study published earlier this year found that the supposed Russian Twitter influence campaign ahead of the 2016 election which dominated headlines for years had had “no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior”. An earlier study found that suspected Russian accounts showing up in Facebook’s news feed during that time amounted to “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content.” A study by Adelaide University found that despite headline after headline warning us about a massive wave of Russian bots manipulating online discourse after the invasion of Ukraine began last year, the overwhelming majority of fake accounts they examined (more than 90 percent) were pro-Ukraine accounts.

Contrast this microscopic smattering of influence with the fact that westerners are continually getting their news reporting from western propaganda outlets which openly publish CIA press releases disguised as news on a regular basis. These people are absolutely telling us the truth when they say we’re under constant bombardment by propaganda and influence operations — they’re just lying about who’s really doing it to us.

CNN was not the only outlet that plugged the stupid CIA press release. The New York Times had it too and its report is a bit more revealing:

Russia Pushes Long-Term Influence Operations Aimed at the U.S. and Europe

Reading through the stupid disinformation stuff one stumbles over this sentence:

[T]he information released by the United States on Friday is designed to show how much deeper Russian influence operations are than those efforts to sow dissent on the internet.

That is quite revealing. The information contained in the CIA release was ‘designed’ or construed to create a certain propaganda narrative. It wasn’t just information that could be found or observed by a reporter but a curated collection of items put together to create a certain effect.

Think about that for a minute and you will recognize that most of the ‘news’ one reads is made like this.

Someone asserts that there is a need for to create a certain effect. A narrative is thought up that could lead to it. The some bits of facts or rumors are collected, sorted, filtered and then written up until the constructed narrative is thought to be likely to create the desired effect. This is then the declassified product and fed to the media which are willing to distribute such stuff.

The current very long Spiegel story about the U.S. attack on the Nord Stream pipelines is a nice example for such a ‘product’:

Investigating the Nord Stream Attack – All the Evidence Points To Kyiv (archived)

German politicians are too coward to call out the U.S. for the attack and to discuss the necessary consequences. They need a different narrative.

When an attempt was made to declare that ‘Russia did it’ the public did not fall for it. Blaming Ukraine is a convenient out. It can later be forgiven because, they will say, Ukraine did what it thought was necessary and only did it because Russia was attacking it.

That is the desired effect of the story. The information in the Spiegel piece was carefully ‘designed’ to create the appropriate narrative.

That the Spiegel needed 19 named authors to put it out says something about the complexity of such a process. It is still disinformation but on a large scale.

Posted by b on August 26, 2023 at 15:53 UTC | Permalink

Have you ever walked out of a car dealership just before signing a final purchase contract? What happened?

Yes. I test drove a demo car. It had been driven by one of their salesmen for year. We agreed on a price. I had everything set up and I was ready to sign.

I looked at the contract and saw $250 tacked on to the price. I asked what it was for. They told me that it was for the pinstriping, floor mats and hubcaps. All things that were part of the car while it was being driven around by the sales person and when I test drove it.

I told them I expected to purchase the car for the price they quoted me as it was shown to me. They offered to remove the pinstriping, floor mats and hubcaps. I said no and once again told them that I was ready to sign for the price I agreed to in the condition the car was in when they gave me the price.

The manager refused to budge and so did I. I walked out. The salesman seemed surprised: I told him I would not pay the extra $250 they tried to slip in on the contract.

The sad part for them is, if they had quoted me the higher price to begin with when we made the deal, I would have purchased the car. It was the fact that they added it at the last minute to the contract they handed me to sign.

Heartbreaking! Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home / Reaction Video !

What is the worst product name of all time?

In 1964, two entrepreneurs paid a marketing company to help them come up with a name for their service, which would also be the company name.

They started with Analytical Technology. Then, quite, unfortunately, condensed it into AnalTech. They’ve had the name now for more than 50 years.

They provide services for forensic science and pharmaceutical development. Per their own words, they’ve always faced challenges with people on the internet using juvenile humor about their name (guilty). Additionally, spam filters on other company websites have caused them problems.

JohndoeATanaltech.com never seems to be able to reach anyone’s inbox. They’ve considered other names but seem married to the one they have.

In 2017, a truck lost control and went off the road, not only mowing down the Analtech sign but also plummeting into the actual building:

Adding on to this, and I’m not joking with you — locals reported that a bizarre smell began coming out of the Analtech building after the impact.

You can’t make this stuff up.

MM Commentary

There are a lot of “fringe” and conspiracies out in Internet land.

My favorite (head scratcher) has to do with the strange coincidence that all of the roofs on the homes of the ultra-wealthy were painted this brilliant blue. And everything that was not scorched were blue. Like mailboxes, plastic refuse bins and things like that.

2023 08 30 14 12
2023 08 30 14 12

Really odd.

And the really strange thing is what the ultra rich did to their homes a few years earlier…

2023 08 30 14 10
2023 08 30 14 10

I watched a video on you-tube that shows how a laser can destroy everything except the color blue. WTF!

DEW being used on …

Maui Fires, DEWs & The Secret Of The Color Blue!

Maui Fires, DEWs & The Secret Of The Color Blue!

2023 08 30 14 11
2023 08 30 14 11

So…

Here you have this super strange fire.

And the strange way that the United States government is hiding everything and policing the area… People! This is not how FEMA handles fire devastated regions.

Gov’t Installs BLACK FENCING Encircling Lahaina!

This is damn odd.

In a recent video that went viral online, a Hawaii resident documents the miles of black fencing that has gone up around Lahaina in Maui as well as other burn zones from the recent wildfires. Getting necessary supplies to the fire’s victims has been rather slow, but all this fencing went up in record time. So what’s going on?

Plus, you add on the facts that this prime section of real estate has been in the process of being bought up by very wealthy interests, with the lowly commoners in the town of Lahaina in the way.

What is going on?

2023 08 30 14 33
2023 08 30 14 33

I welcome your thoughts. -MM

A cold slice of pizza in the morning

I must admit that I enjoy a cold left over pizza in the morning. It goes good with black coffee. It doesn’t matter what kind of pizza, or how much, or what the toppings are. You can reheat it or not. Personally, I guess I am strange, I prefer the cold pizza in the morning. Who figures, eh?

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2023 09 02 13 44

It’s an American thing.

Pizza is an American food, and one of the things that I love, but cannot eat too much of. It tends to make my body rotund, and you guys know that I am in the process of losing weight.

I am at 85Kg today.

Last week I was at 90Kg, and (if you recall) my BMI listed me as obese. I said “NO!”, and then lost 5Kg in one week!

I also noticed that I became weak at noon and needed a nap, and afterwards I really needed to urinate. I noticed that my urine became very thick and deep in color.

My waist shrank.

But you know, the rest of my body is still bony as ever. LOL.

What I did was change my diet to “slight”.

  • Breakfast = 1/2 cup of black coffee.
  • Lunch = One small chicken burger or Baozi.
  • Dinner = Tiny dinner. Vegetables with meat and small portion of rice.
  • No snacks.

Today, we are going to sponsor another meal with friends. The excuse is a shared birthday. We rented a room and we will be drinking a case of Shiraz, and 5 liters of Guoji wine. (37% alcohol).

I’m sure to gain some weight. But I will not glutton out, We will enjoy fine seafood, BBQ chicken and other tasty morsels and sign and dance until midnight, and then take my daughter to bed.

Then I will return back to my (now normal) routine.

My affirmations agree with my new lifestyle.

I’m one week into my latest campaign and the transformations are stunning. I am actually witnessing the slides manifest in real time. Not since my Majestic days have I experienced such “easy” changing.

My daughter has really taken to boxing, and loves to spar with me. So I get on my knees and allow her to punch me relentlessly. It’s a father’s duty, don’t you know.

She also loves Hip-Hop. Ah. She’s a natural.

And sports; she loves basketball. And she can dribble like there is no tomorrow!

Not too bad for a four-year old. LOL.

While she understand my English, she has preferred to speak in Chinese. But lately, she has been speaking to me in English, and it makes me very happy. Still, it’s baby-English and she speaks it like it’s Chinese, but still, it makes me glad.

I’m a proud father.

The world continues to turn.

The “news” has hit the stratosphere and now orbits the earth in some kind of lime-loop. And we all move on with our lives one way or the other.

The editors and their owners are absolutely clueless.

Typhoon hit yesterday. Today is a steady medium rain with small squall gusts. Much flooding. Some debris on the ground, and some trivial damage. Most of the trees are intact and remain rooted in place.

We took a ride out to check out the damage. Trees are down. Flooding everywhere. Many shops closed. Leaves galore. Some damage to face scanners, cameras, and traffic lights. The thermal scanners are mostly intact, though.

We drove in circles looking for a snack place that served coffee and hybrid / fusion food. Only one open was good, but the dishes served were too big. We wanted a light snack, not a banquet. Sheech!

We swam the car home, dusted off the branches and leaves and ordered home-delivery. I ordered some Zha Jiang Mian for myself and a cup of coffee, the rest got some pigs feet, Chinese spinach and some rice. Ok. Fair enough.

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Zha Jiang Mian

Zha Jiang Mian is very much like American spaghetti. Only the sauce is very thick with lots or ground pork, and thickened with bean paste. You can eat it spicy if you want. Often it is served with these toothpick thin slices of cucumber, which you stir into the noodles.

Its one of my favorites.

I just cannot believe the Chinese expats being happy in the USA and not being able to enjoy such delicious Chinese food on demand. You have to make it at home. Sheech! What a pain!

Today’s post…

What is the significance of James Cleverly’s visit to China’s Vice President Han Zheng?

This is what Cleverly thought he can do in China in one day:

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2023 09 01 21 46

He thinks the U.K. is a peer to China and for the sake of the British people and the world, he wants China to work with the U.K. on climate change, prevent nuclear proliferation, and matter relating to AI and other technologies.

It’s humiliating if you think so much of yourself and China politely listens to you and quickly send you off home without discussing any of these.

Cleverly’s humiliating China visit was the perfect symbol of isolated, ill-led ‘global Britain’ | Simon Tisdall

The foreign minister set off with the aim of both ‘standing up for our values’ and securing profitable trade. He failed at both, says foreign policy commentator Simon Tisdall

What Cleverly can’t admit to is that the U.K. needs economic assistance and densely believes that the U.K. can get it from China while barking ever so loudly as a U.S. lapdog.

LOL.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

China doesn’t care if the U.K. is ignoring China.

It’s just that China is simply ignoring the U.K.

LOL!

(Burst of laughing loudly and rolling on the floor.)

Cleverly hasn’t realized it yet that the U.K. is irrelevant to most of the world.

What is the point of China giving basically free money to African nations, and building their infrastructures?

China isn’t giving free money to African nations.

Here are the Chinese goals and motivations:

  • The African nations are rich in natural resources, but are weak in infrastructure development, especially transport infrastructure. China is now the world’s leading manufacturing nation, and it needs raw materials and natural resources to keep Chinese factories busy. For this reason, it makes sense for Chinese construction companies to improve the transport infrastructure of the African nations;
  • The quality of government and governance in the African nations has been gradually improving, and the African farmers and miners of today are destined to become the African consumers of tomorrow. It makes sense for China and Chinese companies to improve their standard of living so that these Africans will eventually buy the output of Chinese manufacturers, instead of only supplying raw materials to Chinese manufacturers;
  • Because the African economies will become more important, it makes perfect sense for China to build goodwill with future African political leaders and business leaders and entrepreneurs. If they attend Chinese schools, learn Chinese, and understand Chinese culture, they will become future ambassadors for China in their home countries, and will be well disposed to building bridges between their government, society and Chinese official and business interests. These societies are also likely to have significant local Chinese populations which will serve as bridges between China and their new African home countries. Because China’s relationship with Africa has never been tainted by a history of brutality, racism and slavery, Chinese and Africans are able to deal with each other equally, and are not burdened with negative historical stereotypes based on racism and discrimination. This racism, discrimination and condescending attitude are something which western societies have great difficulty escaping from, which hinders the development of relations with the African nations and societies. For Africans, this mutual respect with China and Chinese based on pursuing their individual interests, and seeking shared interests when possible, is a breath of fresh air.
  • Chinese manufacturers have the know-how many African nations need to move up the value chain. Some of the lower value-added manufacturers, such as textile manufacturers, may move some of their operations to African nations since the Chinese government no longer sees China as being leaders in these areas, and is encouraging high-tech manufacturing development, especially with the Made in China 2025 plan. So far, most Chinese textile makers have been moving to Vietnam, Thailand and SE Asia, but it is likely that some will move their operations to African nations. This will help Africans to get their first step into manufacturing. In contrast, during the colonial period, the British, French and Germans never allowed manufacturing in Africa, instead preferring to keep Africans poor and underdeveloped. China and the Chinese have no such agenda.

To sum up, China is not giving away free money.

China is investing in the African consumer of the future, and sees them as important future Chinese partners.

China Exposed the US Call to Ban Anti Satellite Missile Tests; Fake Arm Control!

Chinese laser technology and rail-gun are more advanced than the U.S.’ ones, while Russia has the most advanced hypersonic missiles. The U.S. lags behind in those fields. That’s why, the latter tries to prevent these cutting edge technologies from destroying Western satellites in case of conflicts. The Americans also aim at slow down the progress of the Russian and China space industries. When Russia and China hadn’t such technologies, the U.S. didn’t offer peaceful use of space, because of Russia and China lagged behind American military and space technologies. It’s too late !

https://youtu.be/EhTFmIswgVU

The “government” is simply fucking with us…

You’ve got to be kidding me…

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2023 09 02 12 20

Beef Curry

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2023 08 25 21 45

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 3 pounds beef round steak, cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon curry powder
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 cup raisins
  • 2 apples, peeled, cored and sliced
  • 1 cup diced onion
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 (14 ounce) can beef broth
  • 2 apples, unpeeled, cored and finely chopped
  • Fluffy rice

Instructions

  1. Dry beef well with a paper towel.
  2. Mix flour and curry powder.
  3. Coat meat cubes with flour mixture.
  4. Place meat in slow cooker.
  5. Add garlic, raisins, sliced apples, onion, salt and pepper.
  6. Pour in broth and stir to blend.
  7. Cover and cook on LOW for 8 to 10 hours or on HIGH for 4 to 5 hours until meat is tender.
  8. Before serving, stir in additional curry powder to taste (up to 1 tablespoon) and chopped apples.
  9. Serve over hot fluffy rice.

What surprises Americans when they come to Australia?

Kangaroos! They are a lot bigger than what I’d imagined. These days what with YouTube one can get a good idea about their size, but when I went to Australia I had no idea. I also imagined them to be, you know, out in the bush or somewhere out there away from civilization, but no, I get up in the morning and look out the window and there a pretty big dog outside. Then it stands up and is about 8 feet tall, well maybe not 8 feet, but hella big. My brain sort of short circuits for a second until I realize I’m looking at a kangaroo! Big and in the suburbs of a large city!

I burst out of the room yelling that there’s a giant kangaroo in the back yard! My friend, er… mate says, “Yup, he’s probably eating the dog’s food”. He doesn’t even bother to look. Later we go out the front door and there’s a couple more just standing there. I’m slack jawed and he just walks past them, gets in the car, and off we go. Kangaroos!

Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home And Rich Men North Of Richmond (Reaction)

2023 08 25 16 24
2023 08 25 16 24

What’s the craziest thing you have said to your boss?

Originally Answered: What is the craziest thing you have ever said to your boss? And still kept your job? Or been fired?

I have been asked to tell the following story many times, and it became so famous that I was even asked to record it for NPR.

I worked for a high-tech company when high-tech was just starting to make an impact on the world. This was before the internet, even before everyone had PCs. We had one IBM PC for the entire department and it was a thrill to use it. I say this just to give an impression of how things have changed since then.

Our company made high speed modems, but the fastest anyone could do in those days was 9600bps, and you paid 10,000 dollars a piece for each modem — and you needed at least two of them, one for each end. We had invented a mechanism that would double that rate to 19,200bps, which was like lightning at the time. The benefits were immediately apparent and every major company wanted them, damn the cost. Unfortunately, the techniques we were using were in their infancy and had lots of bugs. Even though we were selling them like ice cream on a hot day, they didn’t really work as advertised.

A huge oil company bought a massive amount of product. Their plan was to link all of their gas stations across the US to their central site and have the managers report daily sales to the home office. This previously had been done by mail or phone and was slow and inefficient. With a modem system they could know what their revenues were to the penny overnight, or even several times during the day. They did some cursory testing on the devices and rolled them out. But they didn’t work.

Our engineers worked day and night to fix the issues but it turned out to be intractable. There were grave concerns that we might never solve the problem. Our salesman for the company was a brave and confident expert with years of experience but he was becoming increasingly despondent. The customer was agitated and angry and threatening to return the product. This would have been a huge setback, possibly a death blow to the company. They were by far our biggest customer and by far the biggest sale we had ever achieved. And the salesman would not get his commission.

I was the manager of the business unit, newly promoted into the role at the age of 26. I thought I was something special, and to be honest if not modest, I was a world-wide expert on these technologies and frequently flown around the world to solve problems. But what I didn’t know was that behind the scenes the senior managers of this customer were now DEMANDING a reckoning with our company. Our management knew it was the end if we did not have a solution, and we had no solution.

The salesman set up a meeting with the Senior Vice President of this oil company, a man who probably had the power to overthrow third world countries or have people killed. Suddenly, the President of our company had pressing business in Europe. So did every other executive down the line until, casting about, they looked at me. I was to be the sacrificial lamb they would send to the slaughter. I was told to go “make nice” with the customer to buy more time. I was unaware of the political issues behind the scene. If I failed, I would be unceremoniously fired as a token of good faith. The salesman knew it. I did not.

Thinking this was going to be yet another triumphant visit, and with a swelled head, I went out, bought a new suit and briefcase and flew from Boston to the West Coast. I didn’t even have anything to put in the briefcase except a pad and pencil since I wasn’t given any progress report, possible solutions or any token that might mollify them. Management was so certain of disaster that they thought it best I go completely in the dark.

I was picked up by our salesman in his new Jaguar , along with our field engineer, both of whom knew the gravity of our situation and how dire things were. I was cheerful and humming in the car as I took in the sights. I was surprised by their gloomy silence until we got to the customer’s campus. I had never seen anything like it before. Oil money can buy anything, and this building was modern and massive, the lobby was an art museum with original paintings by the Masters.

We didn’t even have to wait. As soon as we announced ourselves we were shown to a conference room. This is when I really got scared. The room was huge with an impossibly long conference table surrounded by the most expensive leather chairs money could buy. There were tuxedoed waiters with white gloves bringing crystal glasses for the pitchers of water. There was a stenographer with a real steno machine to take the minutes. The room was already filled with executives and lawyers speaking to each other in low voices and grim expressions. I knew then that I was doomed.

Finally the door opened and the SVP came in. A hush fell over the room. Here was a man that everyone in that room feared and respected. You could feel the power and electricity coming from him as he strode in. He sat directly opposite me. I blinked stupidly as the sweat rolled down my sides. Next to me our salesman was gripping his Mont Blanc pen like a drowning sailor clutches at a piece of driftwood. On my right the SE sat stoically. No matter what happened, he would be safe — unless the company went broke because of this debacle.

The SVP opened the meeting as if it were a legal proceeding, reading a summary of the problem and all the actions taken to date, emphasizing our failure to solve it. As he got into it he became angrier and angrier. He started pounding the table and he got red as he spoke of how much time and money had been wasted and spoke of “fraud” and “malfeasance” and “misrepresentation”. All of this vitriol was directed at me. He was further insulted that our company had the nerve to send me, of all people, not even a VP. Finally he pointed at me and said in a harsh voice, “If you can’t fix this problem today, right now, around town your name isn’t going to be worth squat!”

And then he sat back in his chair. I can still hear the leather creaking. There wasn’t another sound in the room. Every eye was on me now, and what I would say next. I had nothing. I didn’t even have anything in my briefcase to fumble with for time.

And then, without even thinking, I said, “Around town it was well known that when they got home at night their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives”

I couldn’t believe my own ears. I couldn’t believe I had just said that. To my left, our salesman looked at me in horror and tried to pull himself away from me in his chair. The SE had his mouth open. So did all the important lawyers in their suits and suspenders. Even the stenographer looked up from her machine at me. I was well and truly fucked. The SVP wound up to scream at me and I flinched.

Then he stopped.

“Wait a minute,” he said, “I know that line…”
“Yes,” I whispered, “It’s from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ album.”
He said, “I knew that. You like Pink Floyd?”
“Yes,” I said, “It’s my favorite group.”
“Mine too,” he said, suddenly smiling and getting up, “I saw the ‘Wall’ concert in LA in 1980. It was fantastic! I even caught one of Gilmour’s guitar picks. I have it framed in my office with the ticket stubs. Come on, I’ll show you!”

And he got up and walked over to the door. I numbly followed. My ears were ringing and I knew I stunk of sweat and fear. The people in the room were dumbstruck. Everyone had their mouths open or were looking at us in absolute amazement. No one said a word.

As we left the room, the SVP smiled and said to the room, “Oh, we’ll give them a few more weeks,” and he waved them off and we went down the hall. The rest of the visit passed in a blur.

The salesman was pounding the wheel and laughing out loud on the trip back to the airport. “We gotta get you a great big steak,” he said, “You know, you can only get away with that once in your career.” The SE didn’t say a thing except, “I like Pink Floyd too.”

When I got back to the office I was the hero of the hour.

The salesman had called and related the story to everyone he could reach, and I was called into a meeting to recount the adventure. Everyone was laughing and slapping me on the back. It felt good to be the hero for once: tomorrow I would once again be the goat, I was sure. Over the next few weeks we had a dramatic breakthrough in Engineering and the problem was solved, the situation resolved, the customer saved. They went on to buy many thousands more modems.

Pink Floyd saved the day.

What’s a real fact that sounds made-up?

2023 08 25 17 55
2023 08 25 17 55

In 2005, in outskirts of Istanbul Turkey, 1500 sheep were grazing in the field. It was early in the day when all the sheep were relaxing in the field eating there breakfast. The shepherd’s were watching the sheep graze, when they noticed one lone sheep break of from the herd and wander off on it’s own.

This didn’t seem out of the ordinary as sheep tend to wander. They watched as the sheep made it’s way to a cliff edge, but before they even realised what was happening the sheep jumped to it’s death. This was obviously devasting for the shepherd’s watching, and they were definitely not preprepared for what happened next.

Suddenly another sheep left the herd and made it’s way to cliff before following the first sheep to it’s doom. This caused another to follow and jump to it’s death causing a domino effect of suicidal sheep.

main qimg d1a9c2231810618b0ce75407968a7b34
main qimg d1a9c2231810618b0ce75407968a7b34

The Shepherds tried in vain to stop the sheep from jumping, but it was like they were determined to follow their brothers into the unknown. The sheep began piling up at the bottom of the cliff, but as the sheep piled up in a mass of blood, guts and wool they began to cushion the rest of the sheep as they hit the ground.

main qimg 41616e7418223a9f8c2a2ea96af45dd9
main qimg 41616e7418223a9f8c2a2ea96af45dd9

The whole herd, 1500 in total had jumped, but only 450 perished with the rest being cushioned by the first of the doomed sheep.

THIS IS THE WORLDS ANTHEM! FOR THE PEOPLE! (Reaction) | Oliver Anthony-Rich Men North of Richmond

Absolutely incredible! Oliver Anthony shines light on those hiding in the shadows. Those D’s wanting to C everything we do, while trying to cover up and hide everything they do. THIS is the voice we need!

What screams “I’m upper class”?

Many years ago my ex husband and I had our own pottery business.

We sold a lot to members of the British Aristocracy (for some reason it seemed to appeal to them).

We only ever realised who they were when they paid by cheque (credit cards weren’t really a big thing at the time).

We had cheques signed by The Marquis of Bath, The Marchioness of Tavistock, Marquis of Salisbury, Earl Spencer amongst many others.

They were the nicest, most down to earth people that you could wish to meet. All of them were very casually dressed and you would never know that they were aristocracy.

My current husband 🤣 was on guard duty at Windsor Castle during the Falklands conflict. Very early one morning our beautiful late Queen Elizabeth passed him on the way to the stables, no bodyguards or companions. She stopped to talk to him, asking where he was from, about his family. She had no particular need to do so, nothing to prove to anyone.

These people screamed class, without making any sound.

Will Russia become the main bargaining chip in the US-China relations?

No because:

  1. China does not see relationships as being transactional the way the US has;
  2. Russia deserves respect as a sovereign nation which makes its own choices, and if China sold out Russia, it knows that Russia would never trust China again.
  3. It understands that the US always views relationships as transactional, and that it would turn against China when expedient.

Tucker: “We Have Proof Obama was Having Sex With Men, Smoking Crack…”

There is a bunch of pictures of Obama with “a brother”, only before he had the sex change. That’s right. “Michelle is a trans man”.

“Biden is the Obama’s third term”.

BRICS: the China-India factor

By Pepe Escobar

After a long-running buildup pinpointed by immense expectations all across the Global South, Global Majority, or “Global Globe” (as coined by Belarus President Lukashenko), the BRICS summit in South Africa, on its first day, revealed a “lost in translation” incident that should be taken as a serious warning.

The BRICS Business Forum feed on South African network SABC turned into a BRICS linguistic Babel. The voice of all the translators, simultaneously, was clashing on the feed. Explanations vary from the desire to forge a new Esperanto (not likely); plain incompetence from the sound engineering team; the isolation of the translators in a separate cabin, not warned to turn off their mikes; or last but not least, NSA interference, messing up with the translators’ mic frequencies.

Whatever happened metastasized into a serious impediment for a South African – and international – audience, online, to understand what was being discussed. Even though “lost in translation” would not nullify the BRICS’s ambitious agenda for change, it certainly will be played up to the max by the usual Divide and Rule suspects to boost their already in effect all-round Hybrid War against BRICS.

The Shakespearean de-dollarization drama

Whatever the final concrete results of these potentially game-changing days in Johannesburg – I analyzed the key themes here

– the basic facts are immutable.

China and Russia, as the main drivers, are bent on expanding towards BRICS+ to resist imperial bullying, diplomatic and otherwise; build alternatives to SWIFT; promote economic self-reliance among members and autonomy from the sanctions dementia (which will only increase); and eventually forge an alliance against imperial military threats – with the possibility of BRICS+ merging in the future with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The China factor is arguably the key vector in all these complex, intertwined processes. It’s no wonder that President Xi, in his only second state visit abroad in 2023 (after Russia), will convene a special meeting in Johannesburg with dozens of African heads of state.

Chinese public opinion is absolutely riveted

by the BRICS summit, with “interest surpassing the G7”. There’s extensive debate on the whole Empire-defying agenda – from de-dollarization to heightened influence in the energy market – and on the China-India divide, with New Delhi often pointed out as a hostile agent inside BRICS.

Sherpas, off the record, as well as diplomats from the current BRICS five (soon to expand) have been extra-cautious to frame the whole debate not on de-dollarization – still a distant prospect – but on alternative trade/payment systems in local currencies.

Yet in his address by videoconference – saluted like a rock star – President Putin was adamant: the de-dollarization process inside BRICS is irreversible.

Yet it’s internal contradictions that stand out when it comes to BRICS+. New Delhi has been extremely cautious – even as sherpas let it be known that the main rules for admission have been agreed upon.

The proverbial Divide and Rule spoilers have been spinning that Beijing wants BRICS+ to be a competitor to the G7. That’s nonsense. Chinese geopolitics is way more sophisticated – and would never present partners with an iron imperative. Beijing wants to solidify its de facto role of geoeconomics leader of the Global South by seducing the maximum number of partners, not intimidating them.

Thus the importance of the China-Africa meeting. South Africa was the first African nation to sign up to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Beijing and Pretoria are celebrating 25 years of diplomatic relations. Xi and Ramaphosa will be talking overall African economic integration, in detail, with all those heads of state.

What does India really want?

China’s vision for BRICS+ and especially for Africa is intrinsically linked to BRI, which after all is Beijing’s overarching foreign policy concept for the next few decades.

India, for its part, has other ideas when it comes to configuring itself as a leader of the Global South. Earlier this year, New Delhi hosted a Voice of the Global South Summit, attended by over 100 nations. That might have conformed a sort of informal, multilateral alliance with diverse values but focusing largely on the same aims promoted by BRICS.

If China rolls with BRI, India rolls with a sort of – complementary – counterpart: the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), where it’s one of the main actors alongside Russia and Iran. So here we have a top BRICS member and a putative BRICS+ member: India is very much keen on Iran’s accession.

All of that in fact points towards integration of BRICS, BRI, INSTC and also SCO (Russia, China, India and Iran are all members). Once again, the devil will be in the “lost in translation” details. There’s no categorical imperative stating Chinese and Indian priorities may not converge.

The RICs (Russia, China,India) have also noted that the overwhelming majority of Global South/Global Majority nations did not support – nor adhered to – the collective West wet dream of strategically suppressing Russia. Even though Russia is now the fifth-largest economy in the world by PPP (over $5 trillion) – ahead of imperial European vassals – the Global South’s perception of Moscow is as “one of our own”.

All that adds extra power to the new Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – which has to be courted full-time by the RICs. Global North late “initiatives” such as the American Build Back Better World

and the EU’s Global Gateway

are regarded as lush rhetoric at best.

Even as China is bound to solidify its prime Global South role especially in Africa after the summit, India counts on a boost as well in its self-designed role as a North-South power. That may be seen as a hedging-your-bets sort of game, as the New Delhi establishment prides itself to be intertwined with the Global North when it comes to strategic goals (Quad? Really?) while remaining a Global South actor.

Well, sooner or later something’s got to give. The Empire tailored its bogus “Indo-Pacific” terminology and strategy specifically to ensnare India. No one across Asia-Pacific has ever referred to the region in terms of “Indo-Pacific”. Yet, in one go, the Empire gets rid of China, the South China Sea and even Southeast Asia to accommodate in a catchy slogan what it regards as a geopolitical neo-colony at best and battering ram against China.

It seems that New Delhi is developing a trend: never live up to its potential when it comes to exercising sovereignty to defy the Hegemon.

Undermining BRICS+ from the inside

Russia’s reach is way more ambitious – ranging from the post-Soviet space across the Heartland to the real Asia-Pacific, West Asia and, much like China, also Africa. All of these players rely on Russian energy, food, chemical fertilisers and a host of commodities. As far as all of them are concerned, there will be no “decoupling” or “de-risking” when it comes to trading with Russia.

In his videoconference address to BRICS, Putin absolutely killed it on the connectivity front – expanding on the INSTC and the Northern Sea Route. Same when it comes to providing free grain to the poorer African nations. He also destroyed the “so-called” grain deal: Moscow would consider coming back, but only if its legitimate demands are met.

In contrast to fast expanding Russian soft power, how could Beijing expand its own – which may be severely lacking in several areas? Setting up Confucius Institutes is not enough; ideally the Chinese should start promoting a string of Global South think tanks, from West Asia to Africa and Latin America, to analyze the ever mounting geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges to the multipolar road.

For the moment, Beijing will turbo-charge institutional forms of South-South interactions, such as the Belt and Road Forum (the next one is in October); the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation; and the China-CELAC forum with Latin American and the Caribbean.

But then again, inside BRICS, it all comes back to China-India. 2023 might become a turning point in their bilateral relations. New Delhi organized the latest SCO summit (unfortunately only online; rumors about internal dissent were never fully disproven). And will preside over the next G20 summit.

And then there’s the toxic external factor: the already ongoing imperial Hybrid War against the BRICS. The usual suspects will go no holds barred to pit Beijing against New Delhi, especially after everything they threw against Moscow miserably failed.

This multi-faceted Hybrid War has been designed to undermine BRICS+ from the inside, especially weaker nodes Brazil and South Africa, and including already mega-sanctioned Iran if it becomes a member. The Empire will go no holds barred to not lose key pivots to Latin American and African hegemony.

As a whole, the RICs – and perhaps soon RIICs – should concentrate their attention on Africa. That doesn’t mean that a host of African nations should be allowed to join BRICS+ literally tomorrow; the question is to be able to help them in several crucial fields as the process of breaking from imperial/neocolonial control is now irreversible.

The Empire never sleeps – at least those who really run the show: Crash Test Dummies impersonating Presidents is another matter. With Taiwan false flag dreams fast waning, all bets are off that the Empire might set up its next big war psyop in Africa.

WHO THE F**K IS THIS GUY?!? Reacting To Oliver Anthony “Rich Men North Of Richmond”

2023 08 25 17 21
2023 08 25 17 21

HUNGARY BLOCKS ALL E.U. AID TO UKRAINE!

World Hal Turner 31 August 2023

HUNGARY BLOCKS ALL E.U. AID TO UKRAINE!

Hungary has vetoed the European Union’s intent to give more money to Ukraine until such time as Ukraine accounts for the 50-70 Billion EUROS already given!   

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said today “Of course I won’t give-=in to pressure.   Until we get a detailed, clear account of what the approximately 50-70 billion EUROS spent on Ukraine, was spent on, and until the OTP Bank is removed from the list of so-called International Sponsors of the War, there can be no question of making a decision about additional funds to finance armaments, or _anything_ related to Ukraine.”

European Union Chief, Borrell, was literally in tears (pictured below) over the situation.   

Borrell had tried to allocate more “Peace Funds” to Zelensky in Ukraine, but had to publicly admit he could not release the next tranche of funds to Kiev “because Hungary said no.”

With European money now halted for Ukraine, it is only a matter of time before the Ukrainians completely collapse.

Another Betrayal Saudi Arabia Dumps US, Backs Up China In The US China Rivalry!

2023 08 25 17 45
2023 08 25 17 45
https://youtu.be/NVfM07YUMYA

Russia Announces “SARMAT” ICBM’s Now on Combat Duty”

World Hal Turner 01 September 2023

SARMAT Being Loaded Into Silo large
SARMAT Being Loaded Into Silo large
Russia Announces "SARMAT" ICBM's Now on Combat Duty"

Russia’s Sarmat strategic missile system has been put on combat duty, Yuri Borisov, the head of Russian state space corporation Roscosmos, said on Friday.

“The Sarmat strategic complex has been put on combat duty,” Borisov said during an educational event.

Russia tested the nuclear-capable Sarmat missile throughout 2022. Last December, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia will maintain combat readiness and improve the country’s nuclear triad, which he called the main guarantor of its sovereignty.

The Sarmat system is meant to replace RS-20 Voevoda missile systems. The new missile is capable of striking targets at long ranges using various flight trajectories and is guaranteed to overcome any existing and prospective anti-missile defense systems.

Having the longest range of target engagement, Sarmat is also expected to reinforce the combat capabilities of the Russian strategic nuclear forces. The first test launch of the Sarmat missile was carried out on April 20.

SPECIFICS

The RS-28 Sarmat is a three-stage, liquid-fueled ICBM equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs).

The operational range of RS-28 Sarmat is up to 18,000 km allows it to target almost any location on Earth.

The missile can be armed with 10-15 warheads or a combination of warheads and countermeasures, including dummy warheads to confuse enemy missile defenses.

Additionally, the Sarmat can carry up to two dozen Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, making it an even more formidable weapon.

Each warhead of the RS-28 Sarmat is estimated to have an explosive power of up to 500 kilotons, equivalent to leveling a major metropolitan area.

To put this into perspective, the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 had an explosive power of 15 and 21 kilotons, respectively.

The destructive potential of the Sarmat is unparalleled, and it serves as a potent deterrent against any aggression directed towards Russia.

RESPONSE TO U.S. “PROMPT GLOBAL STRIKE”

Russia points out that the Sarmat missile system is Russia’s response to the Prompt Global Strike (PGS) concept developed by Pentagon planners.

PGS proposes preemptive conventional massed cruise missile strikes to disarm an adversary and eliminate its leadership.

This concept, unveiled after the US withdrew from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in 2002, prompted Moscow to develop advanced weapons, including hypersonic missiles and glide vehicles, and ultimately, the Sarmat.

THIS SONG GOT ME EMOTIONAL! Oliver Anothny-Rich Men North of Richmond | Reaction *SONG OF THE YEAR*

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2023 08 25 17 48

What little-known fact about a dangerous animal would change people’s perception of that animal?

Cheetahs seem ferocious, they’re natural predators; carnivores. They typically stalk their prey, charge towards it, trip it up and bite its throat to suffocate it, you know, to make it nice for the eating.

They’re the fastest land animal, too.

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Cheetahs are “instinctively shy” – they’re nervous and shy animals by nature

So, when they’re kept in zoos, their anxiety keeps them from socialising with each other, and most importantly, from procreating. This puts them at a high risk of becoming extinct. (Risk of extinction is why they’re in zoos in the first place – to help get their numbers up.)

For years zoos have been pairing cheetahs with their very own support dogs.

These doggos are raised from very young ages alongside the cheetahs. They live companionably; the cheetahs take their social cues from the dogs, because dogs are very sociable animals by nature.

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Cheetahs are so sensitive by nature that almost all of those who are held in captivity suffer from anxiety-related conditions, but dogs make it better, just by being their friends.

[1]Footnotes

[1]Jordan Zhouyi’s answer to What rare fact do you know about an animal that would change a lot of people’s perceptions of that animal?

“We Have Never Seen Anything Like This” | Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture. Victor discusses current political and social events and ideas, and current and past cultural trends.

2023 08 25 17 52
2023 08 25 17 52

Beef Ragout with Grilled Bread

This dish can be made in a slow cooker or the stovetop. Canola oil is used to make both the ragout and grilled bread because of its neutral flavor and heat tolerance. The ragout is served with bread to soak up the hearty and flavorful broth, but it can be served with pasta or polenta instead.

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2023 08 25 21 46b

Yield: 6 servings; serving size 1 1/2 cups (375 mL) ragout

Ingredients

Ragout

  • 1 pound lean beef roast such as round tip roast 500 g
  • 1 tablespoon canola oil 15 mL
  • 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tablespoon dried Italian seasoning 15 mL
  • 1 medium eggplant, not peeled, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) cubes
  • 2 green bell peppers, chopped
  • 2 (15 ounce/426 mL) cans low-sodium crushed tomatoes
  • 1 cup red wine 250 mL
  • 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped 60 mL

Grilled Bread

  • 12 slices whole grain Italian bread, sliced on bias, about 1-inch thick each
  • 1 tablespoon canola oil 15 mL

Instructions

  1. In large, nonstick skillet, brown each side of beef roast in canola oil. Place roast in slow cooker.*
  2. Add onion, garlic, Italian seasoning, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and red wine. Cook on LOW heat for 8 to 9 hours (or on HIGH heat for 4 to 5 hours) until beef is tender and has an internal temperature of 145 degrees F (65 degrees C).
  3. When beef is cooked, shred with a fork.
  4. To prepare grilled bread: Brush bread with canola oil and grill for 1 to 2 minutes on each side, until toasted.
  5. To serve, top ragout with parsley. Serve with grilled bread.

Notes

* If preparing on stovetop, use a large pot (8-quart) and bring ragout ingredients, except parsley, to boil and simmer covered for at least 30 minutes.

If I travel and visit China, does that also mean that my face is also permanently in the database of Chinese government? Do non-citizens effectively have fewer rights than citizens?

In the US, if you go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get your driver’s license, the same thing happens, and US security services and intelligence agencies can access your photos and data.

The same thing happens when you apply for your passport.

Get over it.

Rescue a dying kitten that the owner abandoned it front my clinic the kitten only breathing

Sad, but then there is hope.

Eating turtle

I wasn’t until I was living in China for a spell that I tried turtle.

As a food.

Don’t you know.

It tends to be a tad expensive, but is rather tasty. So I tend to only eat it on business occasions. It is served in a large dish, and the turtle is cut up into chunks.

When you get an opportunity, I suggest you give it a try. It’s sort of like “gator”, but not so chicken-like, rather it has its own unique flavor. I like it.

Goes great with white wine…

Phoenix, we are a problem

The performance gap is massive

Godfree Roberts Aug 29

Taiwanese microchip manufacturer TSMC blames struggle to build the Phoenix plant on skilled labor shortage but workers cite disorganization and safety concerns.

A former Wafertech employee told the Guardian that Wafertech told American employees they were all lazy​ in July 2023.​

“We were in shock – and angry. The man that told us we were lazy during the all-employee meeting was the president of Wafertech at the time, Steve Tso,” they said.

“Anyone in the hi-tech world understands how tightly these processes are run. Nothing is done without a procedure in place. To say that there are no Americans to do this part of the job is nonsense.”

“This was constantly the whole process. Everything was rushed. They weren’t giving us actual blueprints, just engineer drawings. It felt like a design-as-we-go type of deal. The information we were getting was really strange, never complete, and always changing. We would get updates constantly and these were big updates to the point where we would have to start pulling things down.”​

The Guardian.

Gods of Waters, Railroads and DamsEngineers have been China’s most esteemed professionals since in 256 BC, when Governor Li Bing designed and built the mighty Dujiangyan Irrigation Scheme​.

It works as well today as it did in 256 BC, ​and a grateful people deified him so that today, he is known as God of Waters. Xi Jinping is a chemical engineer.

President Hu was a hydrological engineer. Skilled work crews in China – on railroads, skyscrapers, canals, dams or UHV lines – have 3-5 more years of math than their Western counterparts, can read engineer drawings, and can adapt them to local conditions where necessary.

An email from a friend – a director-level employee with an engineering background who has worked with multinational companies primarily based in the US – suggests that TSMC’s Phoenix problems may be symptomatic of a widening gap.

Why American manufacturing really moved to China

Dear Godfree,

Thank for asking. American manufacturing moved to China not because of dumb labor, but because we could hire high IQ people for dirt cheap.

If your machine broke down, no problem; some Chinese guy (with basically a masters in EE) would pull out the circuit boards and using probes and other instrumentation determine what board needed replacing and he would work for a fraction of the annual salary of his equivalent in the US.

Manufacturing in the US is a nightmare: at our US facility our only requirement for an assembler​s was a high school degree, US citizenship, passing a drug and criminal background check and then passing a simple assembly test: looking at an assembly engineering drawing and then putting the components together.

The vast majority of Americans were unable to complete the assembly test, while for our facility in China they completed it in half the time and 100% of the applicants passed. An assembler position in the US would average maybe 30 interviews a day and get 29 rejections, not to mention all the HR hassles of assemblers walking off shift, excessive lateness, stealing from work, slow work speed and poor attitudes.

​O​ur product​s ​are highly specialized equipment, so it makes no sense to fully automate it, most of the components are assembled by hand and for certain steps we use custom engineered jigs. And for those saying that the position wasn’t paying enough, it paid $12 an hour starting in an area with an extremely low cost of living where property taxes for a 2000 sq​ ft house is $800-$1000 a year.

Assemblers don’t make $150K. An assembler takes parts and puts them together. The position starts at $12 an hour in flyover country which is pretty reasonable compared to other jobs that only require a GED and no prior work experience.

Offers medical, dental and annual raises with plenty of opportunity to move up in the company.

The national average salary for a Production Assembler is $33,029 in the United States, which is what you mak​e if you stay 5+ years.

Finding an American worker capable of ​meeting these simple requirements and passing the assembly test is merely impossible, nevermind ​having them be competent, punctual and of good moral character (not stealing from the company or starting conflicts with coworkers).

And these are the main groups that apply for this position.

The same exact product line has the same ​e​quipment in China, and the same positions in China pay the same wages as other positions there with only a high school degree and no work experience.

Yet the applicant quality is much higher, and this applies as well to the white collar professions that support the manufacturing: schedulers, quality inspectors, equipment testers and calibrators, engineers, supply chain managers, account managers, sales etc….their labor quality is simply higher. ​\…

When did you first realize your child was different?

I used to play math games in the car with my kids, son four and daughter, two and a half. I would say, ‘What is 2+3? My son would yell, ‘Five!’ I’d ask, what is 1+1? My daughter would hold up two fingers.

As months passed, the math games became harder and harder as they learned. One day, before my son was in kindergarten I meant to ask, ‘Whats 5–3?’ But it came out backwards, ‘Whats 3–5?’…

My son sat quietly for a moment looking perplexed. Then he yells, ‘Two on the other side of zero!’.

I almost crashed the car. He didn’t know how to say it correctly, but he had the grasp of negative numbers! At five years old! I was shocked and then scared with the reality of raising a kid that bright. He passed me intellectually by age ten or so in mathematical skills.

That was twenty years ago. He now works as an engineer for Tesla in the battery division. I’m a proud mommy!

Driving is ruining our lives

Our dependence on cars is harming us. Why did we give up public transportation for individual cars?

Who do you think best embodies bad luck?

Dylan McWilliams.

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2023 08 28 20 13

At 20, this nature-loving American was attacked by a tiger shark while surfing in Hawaii. He got away with hitting the shark repeatedly and then swimming as fast as he could to the beach. Result: 7 stitches in the thigh.

Probability of being attacked by a shark in the USA: one in 11.5 million chance.

A year later, Dylan is wild camping and, while he is sleeping in his tent, he is attacked by a brown bear which takes his head between its jaws… He gets out of it by digging his fingers into the eyes of the bear. ‘bear. Result: 9 staples to close the wounds on the scalp.

Probability of being attacked by a bear in the USA: one in 2.1 million chance.

A year later, Dylan is hiking in Utah and steps on a rattlesnake that bites him. As he is far from any hospital and he does not suffer too much, he decides to continue his hike. He feels bad for two days, but eventually regains his form.

Probability of being bitten by a snake in the USA: one in 37,500 chance.

Lifetime probability of being attacked by a shark, bear and snake: one in 894,000 trillion chance…

What has your landlord said that left you completely dumbfounded?

I got a call that my landlord would be coming to the property to take down the tumbleweeds in an area that I didn’t have access to. No problem, it wasn’t going to bother me.

About 15 minutes before they were supposed to arrive, a strange car pulls into my driveway and a man gets out and starts walking around the outside of the house. I had no idea who he was and immediately went out like a bat out of hell demanding to know who he was and why he had the audacity to be going in my backyard without my permission.

To my utter shock, he said he was a real estate agent and he was there to meet my landlord to put the property up for sale! I told him I had JUST renewed my lease for a year and why in the world would the landlord do this if he was going to sell the house???

Well, the landlord comes slinking up the driveway to find me VERY pissed off and tries to tell me that he and his wife were “only seeing what the property was worth” and that since he wanted to retire soon, they wanted to see what the value of the house would be. I told him he could have checked Zillow, but he finally fessed up that he really was planning on selling the house. I asked why he had just signed a one year lease, and come to find out that the landlord had told the property management company to put me on a month to month lease and they had screwed up.

I told him that it wasn’t my problem and that I would not be moving and good luck selling a house with a tenant that had a full year lease!

His wife finally came over and calmed things down between the two of us, and asked if I thought I could get a loan and buy the house myself. I had never thought about buying a home and never thought I would qualify, but I told him that on Monday I would check into it, and come to find out, I COULD buy the house!

We ended up working together without a real estate agent for either of us, and I closed on the house 30 days later! This was just one year ago and I locked in a great rate. He took almost $30,000 off the price so I could afford to buy the house and I am so thankful! Yes, he could have gotten $30,000 more but he knew how much I loved the house (I had lived there for four years and treated it as my home, including adding a beautiful garden) and he and his wife wanted to know that whoever bought it would love it and knew the history too.

I now own my home and couldn’t be happier. Had my landlord not felt so guilty about trying to sneak around to sell the place, he probably would have sold the place for an additional $30,000 to someone else!

Guilt is a wonderful thing sometimes LOL

How US Presidents are selected…

Do Marine Corps drill instructors act like the character in Full Metal Jacket?

Yes. That was not a character.

R. Lee Ermey (1944–2018, RIP), was in the Marines from 1961 to 1972 and was a real drill instructor from 1965 to 1967 at the MCRD, San Diego, CA and his portrayal, most of which was improvised and spontaneous, was very accurate.

He was originally hired as a consultant, but, so impressed the movie’s director that he was given the part of the senior Drill Instructor represented by the black leather belt he wears in the movie.

The only inaccurate thing about the movie was that, as the drill instructor, he was a Gunnery Sgt., E-7.

This was very unusual and mostly unheard of for a GySgt. to be a drill instructor.

Also, we should have seen his two assistant drill instructors at certain point during the training.

The only time I ever saw a Gunnery Sgt., E-7 wearing a campaign cover was as a Series Gunnery Sgt. over a Series of four platoons.

In my 1028 Series, the Chief Drill Instructor was a Master Sgt. over 4 platoons (1028, 1029, 1030, 1031), but neither took any part in the everyday, hands-on training of the platoons under their command.

During Vietnam, the most common ranks for drill instructors were Corporal, E-4 and Sgt., E-5, with the not so common rank of Staff Sgt., E-6.

The second photo is of a young Corporal, E-4

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Ermey when he was a drill instructor at MCRD San Diego, circa 1965. While in the Marines, he was sent to Vietnam in 1968 where he served for 14 months. He was medically retired in 1972 due to several injuries he received while in the Marines. In the photo of the medals on his dress blues, I do not see a Purple Heart, so I must assume his injuries were not received in battle. In the below photo of Ermey in his dress blues, the rank on his left shoulder is Gunnery Sgt., E-7. There are 2 hash marks on his left forearm. Each one represents 4 years. If he had made it to 12 years, he would have been authorized to wear three hash marks.

Marine drill instructors only have 12 weeks to mold a sloppy, immature, undisciplined civilian into a disciplined, squared away Marine and in most cases, has to undo 20 years of spoiled, entitled behaviors instilled by the parents that have kept him in perpetual boyhood. This cannot be accomplished with the same coddling treatment that the parents used in raising their son from a little boy to a big boy. The Marine’s first order of the day is to quickly destroy the boy in order to build the man. Everyday of training is important and there is not a moment to lose. A strong impression must be made by the drill instructors and shock and awe is the best way to leave a lasting impression. Fear of being yelled at, insulted or being punished is a very good incentive to learn, learn quick, retain what they learn and do well so as not to suffer the wrath of the drill instructor which has become the center of his world and the authority figure he most wants to please. I can tell you that it works. Semper Fi.

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“DeDollarization Is IRREVERSIBLE” – Putin at BRICS Day One

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2023 08 25 09 33
https://youtu.be/RkAHInTEb7o

What is the biggest waste of electricity you’ve seen in a home you visited, were a guest in, or even in your own home?

A co-worker of mine figured out why her electric bill had tripled with the help of their neighbor’s cats. For three months one summer their electric bill suddenly went through the roof. They checked out all their appliances, air conditioning, etc. and couldn’t find the problem. Then one cool evening she looked out the window and noticed there were several neighbor cats lying on her driveway. This was an “Ah Ha!” moment. She had a driveway heater with a switch in the basement that was used very briefly when the driveway was icy in the winter. Turns out a workman who was doing a job in her basement was looking for a light switch and flipped on the driveway heater switch. When no light came on, the guy figured that light was broken and found a different light, The driveway switch wasn’t labeled (at least not then). So her driveway had been continuously drawing electricity all summer. Only the neighbor cats could detect the difference in temperature on the driveway and would “chill out” there on cool evenings. It took her 3 months to notice the abundance of cats lying on her driveway and connect that with the driveway heater and the high electric bill.

What should I do if I have almost no luck (different from bad luck)?

Alfred Nobel created the Nobel Prize near the end of his life as a public relations move. He’d invented dynamite for mining and construction. But people used it as a weapon, killing thousands, and earning him the label, “The Merchant of Death”.

There was Alfred Binet, who invented the IQ test, with the intention of classifying children who need assistance. His test unintentionally fueled the eugenics movement and was a key tool for discrimination.

There was Alfred Vanderbilt, who was one of the world’s wealthiest young men and most eligible bachelor. He narrowly avoided boarding the Titanic, canceling his trip at the last moment. Unfortunately, three years later, he boarded the Lusitania, which was sunk by German U-boats.

And then there is my friend, Al.

Al was a fellow swimmer. He was 6’3, easygoing, and per my female friend “handsome enough”. He had a good sense of humor and straw-like brown hair that was ravaged by chlorine. Al had squeaked through high school and landed an athletic scholarship at our university.

His father was a volatile alcoholic, the type who sings karaoke and is everyone’s best friend in the first hour of drinking, and a belligerent monster for the remaining six.

I saw it firsthand when he came to town for a swim meet, which he overslept and missed. Al invited me to dinner, which was a bit unusual for “parent’s weekend”. I suspect he didn’t want to endure it alone. Sure enough, his dad showed up at Applebees at 6 PM and was already blitzed, full of stupid ideas, and making inane, brutally awkward attempts to flirt with our waitress.

He was a walking meme, stopping just short of wearing a varsity jacket and bragging about his high school touchdowns.

It was a long two-hour dinner. I walked through the parking lot, exhausted, and immediately knew why Al had never touched alcohol. Then I winced, remembering the scene of me holding a cup of beer up to his face, playfully saying, “Just one sip … c’mon.”

As we walked to the car, I asked, with a bit of hesitation, “So is your mom…more…normal?”

“She was. Yes.”

“Was?” I instinctively asked, thinking she’d become an alcoholic too.

“She died when I was 9. Ovarian cancer.”

I nodded and got quiet, realizing this ridiculously nice guy had probably endured a terrible childhood. I knew his sister had left home at 12 to live with his grandmother for reasons unnamed.

Al noticed me looking bummed out and gave me a half smile, “Dude. It’s OK. I’m all good.” I suppose he didn’t want my pity. He’d probably gotten enough of that already.

One month later

Our college swim team was doing a mixer party with the women’s lacrosse team. It was fun — your typical party scene, with lots of laughing, talking, and loud music. It looked just like those American parties you’ve seen in movies.

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A few girls were walking around in lacrosse pads. One teammate was shamelessly walking around in a speedo and goggles, with a beer bong poised at the ready.

Eventually, the night turned south as it often does with so much drinking. A couple of the lacrosse girls’ boyfriends had become jealous of this mixer. They showed up to start trouble, trying to push through the front door. There was a bunch of shouting. No fists were thrown thankfully. But a few girls began crying and fighting with their partners. It was a total vibe kill.

We decided to get out of there before things got worse. Two of us left with Al around midnight, who was the DD as always. He dropped us both off that night and I thought nothing of it.

The next morning, I got an ominous text, “Did, you hear about Al?”

Al had been hit by a drunk driver on the way back to his house. He’d been T-boned at high speed on his driver-side door. He was in the hospital with a broken leg, collar bone, shoulder, and two broken ribs.

He was alive. He’d walk fine. But his shoulder was never right again and his swimming career was over. I stopped by to see him and he looked like a shell of himself on the hospital bed.

His eyes were sunken, hair disheveled, and hanging over his swollen face. We hung out and talked for a bit. He was out of it from the pain meds and fell asleep mid-conversation. I saw his dad at the hospital, sober for once.

The good news is that life went on as normal. He eventually returned to class and hung out with us. But not without great cost to him.

Al didn’t have the prestigious accolades of history’s famous Alfreds. In fact, his background was mostly the opposite: absent of wealth, stability, and the type of love a kid needs. He inherited and then endured great misfortune.

In fact, there was a time when I thought Al was the most unlucky guy I’d ever met. I was sure he’d break at any moment. How couldn’t he?

He’s gone on to be quite successful, have kids, and a loving wife. And despite all the hardship, he’s always had a great attitude. He has lived in defiance of the groundwork for so much sorrow.

I know many others, who are born into relative privilege and spared of major tragedies, myself included, who have struggled to appreciate their life at times.

My father-in-law is one of the happiest men I know, despite having a troubled and turbulent childhood. He is a big storyteller and relays everything interesting from his life. Yet he has a DMZ line drawn on his childhood. We know nothing. That’s how bad it was.

People forget that luck, good or bad, is all a construct. It isn’t actually a proven thing — in the sense of a mystical universe choosing favorites among us. Luck is just probability playing out in real time. For us, it’s more accurately defined as how humans choose to describe their lives.

It’s also a decent proxy for how people frame their problems. For example, those who believe in good or bad luck tend to be more cynical and less happy.

The name Alfred isn’t intrinsically unlucky. I just looked up a bunch of Alfreds from history and cherry-picked those who’d had the most bad luck. It was a whimsical way of framing a trajectory. Because each person has a narrative they tell themselves of their life story.

I’ve heard from many readers and people over the years, who had horrible childhoods and lives — on paper — yet have gone on to be quite happy.

I’ve tended to downgrade my definition of problems as life has improved (another pesky byproduct of hedonic adaptation). Yesterday, I caught myself cursing up a storm while setting up a new soundbar. You’d have thought I just caught someone cheating on me. I’d lost sight of how first-world, and truly spoiled I sounded.

It is in the quieter moments, when sleep is evasive, that the mind can wander and wallow in misery and egregious mistakes. I am reminded that happiness and contentment requires intent. Life is messy and complicated, and one cannot feel better simply by comparing themselves to those less fortunate. It takes more work.

It is a sense of presence in the moment, gratitude, perspective, lifestyle, community, and purpose that I have found the most happiness, as my unlucky friend Al did.

But he’ll be the first to tell you how lucky he is.

Saudi Arabia Joins BRICS (The New Global Order & Silver)

2023 08 25 06 45
2023 08 25 06 45

A Realistic View of BRICS and BRICISSTAN

Roger Boyd Aug 24
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The true core of BRICS will consist of China, Russia and Iran, with elites that are nationalist and in the case of China and Iran also heavily socialist.

Russia still operates with much of the neoliberal inheritance of the 1990s, even within the minds of many of its ruling elite. The Ukraine conflict, and the resultant Western sanctions, has facilitated a significant decolonization of the Russian mind and a rebalancing of state-oligarch relations in favour of the latter. These three nations have the potential to dominate Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan), Belarus, Iraq, and Syria; with the aid of the overlapping Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO) security alliance. Linking together a huge landmass that contains the greatest global manufacturing power, the second greatest global military power, and colossal natural resource deposits. This is the true core of the challenge to the West, perhaps we can call it BRICISSTAN. Mongolia represents an independent variable, but simple geography and trade flows will mean that it never becomes an enemy.

For this challenge to be successful it requires at the least the non-alignment of the rest of the non-West, and their usage of the new multi-polar world to rebalance they economic relations with the West to their advantage. Such non-alignment was shown with respect to the Western sanctions upon Russia, where the Rest of the World (ROW) refused to be part of the Western attempt to subjugate Russia. In ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations) plus Bangladesh and Pakistan, China has a grouping that will be at least non-aligned, with some nations such as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia being much closer to China. The underlying dynamic of Chinese demand and respect for sovereignty will continue to pull ASEAN toward China, no matter what the West does. The latter is doing as much as possible to disrupt this process, with widespread interference in the elections in Malaysia and Thailand and support for Western-comprador forces in Myanmar (greatly aided by India), but its efforts will come to nought; with Chinese patience and restraint paying dividends.

India, the “I” in BRICS will never be a truly anti-imperial force as its ruling class are fully neoliberal, with many educated in the West. This elite treats China as a regional competitor that must be resisted, and with a mindset that protects its national rentier profit-making. This combination has repeatedly led India to cut off its nose to spite its face, with Chinese (and other foreign) companies treated in highly arbitrary ways that stifle the ability of India to utilize Chinese (and other nation’s) help for national development. India will remain as a developing nation, never to repeat the Chinese (and South Korean, and Taiwanese, and ongoing Vietnamese) growth and development miracle. India’s long-term alliance with Russia will mitigate its relationship with BRICISSTAN, but India will always be a prickly neighbour that will look to work with the US against China when it sees advantage. In many ways, India’s geopolitical role resembles that of Turkey under Erdogan.

South Africa, the “S” in BRICS is a neoliberal fun house run by an ANC traitorous elite that turned its back on the masses of the Black population to massively enrich itself in cahoots with the white national capitalists and Western capital. If any nation has truly implemented the story of Animal Farm it is South Africa. “All [black people] are equal, but some [black people] are more equal than others” and “[socialists] good, [capitalists even white ones] better” seems befitting of current South Africa. The Black elite may very well exercise a level of nationalism, but they will never be socialist brothers. This is where the RIC respect for national sovereignty and political non-interference becomes such a weapon to wield against the neo-colonial ever-interfering West. To stretch a saying of Deng, the RIC must make friends with socialist, capitalist, and even medieval theocratic monarchic cats to overcome the West; but it must also be wary of the non-socialist cats.

Brazil, the “B” in BRICS, is a nation dominated by the elites that it was bequeathed at the time of independence. A poisoned chalice that, as I have written here, here and here, provides a disabling legacy for Latin America. There are a few nations that have fully or partially escaped that legacy, mainly Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia, but for the vast majority the comprador landed, and financial domestic elites dominate. As I have covered here, the very best of Lula was “neoliberalism with crumbs” and the most recent reincarnation is certainly not the best version. He will tread very carefully with respect to the West, being seen more to hold the coat of the RIC than directly engage in the duel. The Latin American comprador elites are simply looking for improved prices for their exports, and a bit more leeway in their exploitation of their populations, by working with the RIC. Argentina, which is swaying back to the right from a mildly progressive government very much reflects that reality.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are medieval-style monarchies that claim their nation’s wealth for themselves, but they have smelt the wind and notice the new way that it is blowing. Together with the cooperation with Russia and Iran within OPEC+, they are more forcefully pivoting to the RIC (with Saudi Arabia and Qatar becoming an observer of the SCO); reflecting their interests with their fellow OPEC+ members and the biggest market for the fossil fuel exports, while turning away from Western divide and conquer tactics. Due to the Western inability to stop interfering in the domestic politics of its “allies”, Egypt has started to drift away from the Western sphere (including observer status at the SCO) ; but again, we must remember the nature of its leadership. Ethiopia does seem to be a state that under its new leadership is attempting to turn away from the West and gain the alternative financing and help that it needs to do so. Given its location in the Horn of Africa opposite Saudi Arabia, its geopolitical positioning will affect the whole region.

The West is utterly dependent on its ability to source raw materials from the Rest at knockdown prices, keep them underdeveloped so that they provide a good market for Western exports, and steal the value added produced by the Rest through unequal trading and legal relationships backed up by technology controls. This avenue has already been shut down in Russia and Iran (mostly be the West’s own self-harming sanctions), and China is increasingly moving up the technology curve and gaining a greater share of its own value added; the real reason for Western aggression. As especially China expands its increasingly sophisticated exports around the world, imports more and more from the Rest, and funds development projects, the flow of cheap resources and value-added to the West is reduced. In the Middle East, China and Russia are working with Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States to remove their dependence upon the US dollar and Western financial system. The capitalist centre is slowly strangled. In the Middle East and Africa, Russia also provides hired military muscle to facilitate the success of nations such as Niger in rebalancing their economic relations with the West.

RIC and BRICISSTAN do not need Brazil, India or South Africa as full allies against the West, they simply need them (as with the rest of the ROW) to not be enemies and to utilize multipolarity to rebalance their economic and financial relations with the West. Without the neo-colonial flows of plunder to the West, the capitalist centre will be strangled into a slow collapse with no need for war. The over-sized Western elite response to the coup in Niger shows that they are very cognizant of this possibility, but they may also be becoming more conscious of their inability to stop it happening. The failure of the Western comprador ECOWAS to mount a military campaign against Niger in the face of popular resistance in their own nations is a marker to which way the wind is blowing.

So, we do not need to be disappointed when Brazil, India and South Africa and others show their unwillingness to become true partners of BRICISSTAN. All we need of them is to stand aside from the duel and use it to rebalance their relations with the West to their advantage. This by itself will help bring the Western house down.

Pepe Escobar: The Prigozhin Era Is GONE | MOATS with George Galloway Ep 267

2023 08 25 06 41
2023 08 25 06 41

How rich do you have to be to not carry cash or a credit card?

Choosing to be debt free and being able to walk around without spending money isn’t a lifestyle reserved for the wealthy — it’s for people who make a conscious decision to live within their means.

Some friends of mine are a young couple in their early 30’s with a combined income of $65,000 per year, and own their home outright (no mortgage), have no car payments or credit cards, have money in their savings account, and are building up for retirement.

How? By being smart with their money and avoiding things like credit cards and walking around with cash. Almost half of their income goes straight to their savings every month.

Instead of buying new cars and having a car payment, they saved for a few months and bought used cars they could write a check for. Instead of getting a 30 year mortgage on the biggest house they could afford, they rented a small apartment for the first four years they were together so they could save up to buy some land. They paid cash for their land, set up a well, power, and septic, and then bought an RV trailer and parked it there to live in while they saved up to build their dream house.

By doing this, they eliminated the monthly cost of their apartment and were literally living for free in that RV on land they owned outright. And they were smart about the next step too – every month, whatever money was to go in their savings went toward a step in the build process of their home. One month it was a concrete foundation, a couple months later it was buying some of the timbers, framing, plumbing, electrical, etc. One step at a time, as they could afford to do it.

Eventually the house was ready to move into – still not “finished”, the interior walls and flooring weren’t done, but the roof was up, the windows and doors were in, and it was livable. So they sold the RV, almost for what they paid for it, and spent the cash from that to finish the interior and did most of the work themselves. I chipped in a little myself — woodworking is a hobby of mine and I helped them build their cabinets.

The whole build process took almost five years from start to finish. But in that five years of sacrifice, they built their dream home and will never have a monthly house payment. They’re in their early 30’s and are further ahead financially than most people making three times their income.

Imagine being their age and never having a house payment again, ever. Imagine being able to write a check when it’s time for a new car instead of having to finance it. Imagine having half or more of your paycheck going straight to your savings account instead of going out the door to monthly payments on debt.

You don’t have to be rich to live that way. You just have to plan for it, and be disciplined enough not to buy things you can’t afford with money you don’t have.

Scott Ritter: “The CIA is working directly with Ukraine” | Redacted News

Scott Ritter is a former UN Weapons Inspector who exposed the lies in Iraq. He told the world that Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Powerful people in Washington didn’t want to hear it and he resigned in protest. The War in Iraq cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars. Now Ritter is revealing the truth about the latest U.S. military incursions in Ukraine, Syria, and beyond.

2023 08 25 06 36
2023 08 25 06 36

Biden Greeted With Extremely HOSTILE Response In Maui

President Joe Biden took a few hours away from his vacation in Lake Tahoe to visit the fire-devastated island of Maui, and the reception was, well, let’s say lukewarm. Chants of “Fuck you!” greeted the presidential motorcade before Biden attended a few events to acknowledge the suffering Hawaiians at which he made his typically tone-deaf or otherwise insensitive comments.

Every store is CLOSED in Oakland

440,000 people call Oakland home ,but their stores are rapidly closing We are walking downtown Oakland to witness the city through a camera’s lens Market street

What person became famous for an absurd reason?

It was the year 1931, Plennie L. Wingo was discussing with his friends ways to make money, his friends told him that everything had already been done, that the one who made money did and the one who didn’t should settle, to which he after thinking about it for a few seconds, he replied:

“Not everything is done, nobody has gone around the world…”

His friends interrupted him and laughed in unison, telling him that this was very hackneyed, that many people had tried it and to forget it.

To which he replied:

“I repeat, no one has gone around the world… walking backwards”

That idea, as silly as it was, for some reason stuck with him.

That is how in that same year, on April 15, he bought some glasses with mirrors to see in reverse and began his journey. While doing his feat, he lived off the generosity of the people he met along the way, getting paid to sign newspapers in which he appeared and occasionally stopping in a town to work for a few weeks and continue on his way.

Although he could not achieve his mission, since in Turkey they told him that he could not pass and would have to return to North America, he ended up traveling 13 thousand kilometers, became internationally famous, appearing in shows and even publishing his own book.

Plennie L. Wingo, the man who became famous for walking eight thousand miles on his back, which was completely absurd, but in the end it worked for him.

Rich Men North of Richmond (Oliver Anthony Cover)

What do the nonpoor not realize about being poor?

Being poor is not determined by education, mental health, some status of “deserving it” or what have you.

I am a top writer on Quora a couple years running now, and I live under the poverty line.

I was rear ended by a drunk driver some years back. The subsequent series of health crises drained my bank accounts, savings and 401K, because that’s how our health system is designed.

It was only after my assets were reduced under $2000 that I was eligible for public health benefits. I will never be allowed to have over $2000 in assets again, so it’s highly unlikely I will ever escape poverty. I was at one point the VP of Marketing and Business Development of the 3rd fastest growing private company in Oregon, listed on a couple Inc. indices. I was, at the time of the accident, the founding executive director of The Tor Project.

My then boyfriend — who was scrambling to keep me, my elderly mom with Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia, and my teenage son afloat, with me as primary breadwinner out of commission — didn’t know to look at Quicken to see how much of the bank account was sequestered to pay taxes when I got taken out on April Fool’s Day. So I will never be able to pay off my tax debt, and never be able to have a bank account again.

Living in this country without a bank account is hell.

I have all kinds of illness and mobility disabilities, and live in subsidized elder/disability housing. But these people don’t take the stored value card I get my social security on, as payment for rent.

So I have to physically get myself to the post office, and pay to have a money order cut and mailed to them. When I am too ill to get myself there by the 5th, I can pay an extra $50 in rent on my tiny studio apartment. That’s a 20% surcharge on my rent, because I’m ill. And I’m in this place, because I’m ill. I’ve asked my social worker if I can get assistance with this, and I’ve been told that I can not unless I sign all of my financial affairs over to a representative of the State. I frankly feel uncomfortable with that.

I can still write, but not consistently enough for people to pay me. I have a Patreon. Social Security makes it hard for people who don’t get a consistent paycheck, who work when they are on SSI, who don’t fit a cookie cutter “work in a bakery on night shift” disability job.

I spend about half my days in bed, immobile and in pain. I would love more than anything to be working again at a job that I loved. But my body won’t allow it. They even put me on opioids for a bit before the epidemic became a known thing, and I weaned myself off of them and live with the pain, because on the drugs, I could not read and write and my life was one continual useless meaningless fog.

Most of my neighbors here in subsidized housing are lovely people who have to deal with a small minority of terrible people who end up here and make things hard for all of us. Those people are the only ones that you probably think of when you think of poor people, just as when one might think of persons of a particular religion many people think only of religious extremists.

Similarly, the greatest harm done by the bad actors among the poor is done to other poor people, statistically. We have checks stolen, packages stolen, assaults, rapes in poor neighborhoods, but most often among people who know each other. In proportion, mugging of strangers and other things that people who are not poor fear are incredibly rare.

But what the priority that police provide is not enforcement, but containment, because they know who is paying their salaries, and their time is limited.

When I grew up poor and rural in central Vermont, there was no shame in being poor, and to a certain extent there is still far less stigma in rural areas. So long as you are neatly put together and clean, and respectful, there’s nothing to set you below any other American.

In the cities, however, being poor seems to be treated as though it were a contagion, and a shame, like leprosy in the Bible, like a venereal disease, like AIDS is, undeservedly, shunned.

This is a shame on our country as a whole, and makes us less able to create a resilient culture in hard times. And, in case you hadn’t noticed — not being poor — these are hard times.

Empathy is a virtue.

Saudi Accept China Bid for Nuclear Plant | U.S. Is Worried

Explore the intriguing dynamics between Saudi Arabia and China as they contemplate a joint venture in nuclear technology. This deep dive analyzes the geopolitical implications for the United States, India, and the broader West Asian region. Join us for a comprehensive breakdown of these unfolding events.

Children who have had to clean out your parents’ house after they passed, did you find anything that completely changed how you viewed them?

Yes, my father. He went into a nursing home after a fall and brain beed. I had to handle selling his house and cleaning it out.

I found a file labeled “dirt”. Inside was paperwork related to his response to my mom’s request in 1973 for an increase in child support. Now I found copies of his letter to a friend where he bragged about how his income had tripled since their divorce in ‘68, when his support was set at $150 total for 3 kids. So he was prosperous 5 years later.

Mom’s 2nd husband committed suicide Jan ’73 and times were tough. She lost her job 2 months after. Bad recession. She was wrecked. We were on food stamps and she was picking up temp work when she could get it. Food was rationed. AC wasn’t turned on until June, in Florida. No luxuries. Oldest sister married and moved out so support was cut to $100 for 2. Then it was 1974 and this support request was being dragged out.

Dad wrote Mom a letter saying how her situation was unfortunate but not his problem, and that he had a new wife, and she and her 4 kids from 1st marriage and deadbeat ex husband were his first priority now. And he added that I and my sister could help support ourselves. He made a lot of accusations against Mom and threatened to report her to the government for some kind of fraud, which I think was bogus. Mom had no money for a lawyer so the issue was dropped.

Sis and I were underage teenagers and the same ages as 2 of his step kids. He wasn’t confiscating their pay from any pt jobs they had, and later some of them got private college education at least partially funded by him.

Bless my mom, she didn’t ever tell us anything and never asked us to turn over our meager earnings. She found better work and we got off food stamps. We did have to fully fund our cars we eventually bought, and any luxuries. She was teaching us how to adult. She totally took the high road.

So now I have to dutifully take care of my father’s needs and handle his finances and paperwork and visit occasionally, knowing how little he cared about us. We had sensed the discard and how little he cared, but it sucked reading confirmation of it. My oldest sister wants nothing to do with him for other reasons.

Oh, and he’s on Medicaid because he blew through his retirement savings too soon and that now ex wife with the 4 kids went to court and got almost all the equity from his house to cover unpaid alimony. He actually tried to order me to move him from the nursing home into my home, but nfw. I’m not going to live with his alcoholic ass and disrupt my life when he didn’t give a shit about us when we were going through a terribly hard time.

Rich Men North of Richmond – Fiddle Version – Oliver Anthony and Philip Bowen

If I win 8 million at the casino and leave immediately, what will be the consequences?

As someone who’s been the duty manager in a casino where people have won a similar amount to that referred to by the question setter, I’ll tell you exactly what does happen.

This person won’t be a stranger to us. UK casinos don’t function like that. So we’ll know this person. Chances are they’ve lost several million with us over the years. So we won’t be surly. We’ll be professionally happy for the winning player. Handshakes all round. I’ll ask if they fancy having dinner with me in the casino restaurant, or perhaps share a bottle of something suitably lovely.

We want you to come back to us next time. That sentence is the most important factor in the whole process. If you win and there’s people around you being happy for you, then you’re more likely to return. The table staff also want you to tip, or continue tipping. They’ll be very happy for you too.

So after the handshakes and pleasant meal, I’ll sign the cheque made up by the cashier. More likely nowadays is the BACS transfer back to their account. But not all 8 million. Maybe only 5 or 6. The other 2 million they’ll leave on deposit with us. (Always their choice. Never suggested. Never needs to be suggested). I mean, after all, they’re in town for a few more days and may want to play again. We can always BACS that 2 million whenever they ask us to.

Once all the financials are done, I will personally escort Mr/Ms. Big Winner up to one of our waiting chauffeured cars, where they will be taken to wherever they so desire. They may even hold onto our car and driver, in case they fancy popping back our way in the next couple of hours. Of course sir, no problem at all.

And all this time, at every interaction I have with the player, we’ll be discussing how their particular business is doing – did their daughter’s recent wedding go well – how’s their son finding business school – we have some tickets to the sporting / cultural event they’re interested in. All this is in their file.

So that’s what happens. It may sound a little oily and rehearsed, but it’s just business.

Elon Musk: “Oumuamua Has Suddenly Returned and It’s Not Alone!”

Yeah. They have been talking about this is China too.

Why couldn’t Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other regions within China that resist CCP’s rule form a coalition with US, and Japan and other anti-China nations to fight against China and declare independence?

Let me share a perspective that might be controversial in China. Many of us, especially among the Han Chinese, feel that it was the people of Tibetans and Uyghurs who wanted to be with us more than we wanted to be with them. We contribute with our taxes to support those people, and some feel that we don’t receive equivalent benefits in return.

If you ever consider supporting them, please understand that it may involve significant financial commitments. Without it, Tibetans and Uyghurs might not be industrious or eager for independence. If you want to pour your money as much as we do, nobody will stop you, You are more than welcome. Remember saying something is always cheap, show them your wallet.


And Japan?

It is really funny. You know the US doesn’t want Japan to be strong, and neither does the whole world. You can ask the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan. They want to be a little bit far away from China, but it doesn’t mean that they want to be with you. Even if people in China, disagree with the CCP, they will communicate with the CCP, instead of standing with you.

You know your situation, don’t you?

You Japan is the enemy of the US, China, Russia, Korea… Almost all of the big and strong countries in the world.

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2023 08 28 10 57

You Japan did so many bad things during WWII, You don’t apologize for it, you don’t regret it. And now you are trying to isolate China? How could you be so stupid? And where does your confidence come from?

Ask the people to betray China to be with you Japan? A dirty country like Japan? Are you out of your mind?

This Is How Xi Jinping Is Kicking The US Out And Making China A Global Superpower And Peace-Make

2023 08 25 06 26
2023 08 25 06 26
https://youtu.be/go2ttilRU8k

How effective is a shield wall against a cavalry charge?

The shield wall isn’t that effective in and of itself. Shield walls are not very maneuverable, and smart riders can still get up close to them and try to find a weak point (or flank.)

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main qimg f30a7062f1bd8a3ada54b651efda69f4 lq

A man and his full war gear might weigh 200 pounds. You know what weighs a lot more? A horse. Horses will trample people. Even killing the horse in front of you doesn’t stop the momentum.

That sheer momentum is part of why cavalry charges can be so devastating.

No, the part about shield walls that does anything to cavalry is the pikes:

image 24
image 24

Horses are not machines; they have a brain in their head. They will not willingly skewer themselves on pikes. The reason pikes are so effective if they stay in formation is because the horses won’t charge into that. If you break formation, different story. Then you get a one way ticket to trample town.

It was extremely common for a line of Pikemen in the Middle Ages, upon facing charging knights, to soil themselves and run away, not necessarily in that order. Against fleeing or disorganized enemies, cavalry is lethal. That’s where all the casualties happen. (And it’s why they often come from the flanks.)

What stops the charge once they’ve made contact is the guys behind the front ranks. The men up front can’t go anywhere. The guys in the back can choose to push back or flee. A warhorse, for all its mass, can’t do much in a solid crowd of human bodies resisting them. It’s when they break and flee, and thus loosen up the center and then front of the formation, that everything goes down hill.

It sounds easy- just stand firm and the horses can’t rout you! But it wasn’t until professional armies, particularly professional infantry, became common that the hyper dominance of knights faded. Because I promise you, when faced with incoming knights – trained murder machines – you would start getting real freaking nervous. Shields themselves won’t stop cavalry: formation and discipline does.

(And then the professional infantry realized they could just charge each other with their pikes. Eventually, guns developed enough to put a stop to that insanity.)

Should Westerners adopt some Asian culture like addressing your husband or wife as father, mother, dad, and mom like in Chinese culture, Japanese culture, and other oriental culture, etc.?

I don’t think Westerners would EVER want to adopt the family tree naming convention based on “Chinese culture”.

Why?

Well the obvious reason is because it isn’t their culture 🙂

And secondly, nobody, NOBODY would want to add a galaxy’s worth of complexity into their lives.

The Chinese family tree doesn’t just take generation and biological sex into account.

It also takes into account:

  • Maternal and Paternal Lineage
  • Marriage
  • Relative Age
  • Consanguinity (the fact of being descended from the same ancestor)
  • etc.

See the “Complicated Chinese Family Tree” below.

So, how would you address your mother’s older brother?
He’s not just your “Uncle”.
He is your 舅舅 (Jiùjiu).

And his oldest son who’s older than you?
He’s not just your “Cousin”.
He is your 表哥 (Biǎo gē).

Okay, then how about your father’s younger brother?
He’s not just your “Uncle”.
He is your 叔叔 (Shūshu).

And his youngest daugher who is younger than you?
She’s not just your “Cousin”.
She is your 堂妹 (Táng Mèi).

If you look at all this and you think it is hard – well, yes, that is because it is hard.
As a kid, my dad would GRILL me before any extended family gathering.

If I got the appellation for any family member during this Grilling Session wrong, his face would be a mask of disappointment.
If I got it wrong when actually addressing family members – he would correct me on the spot, in front of EVERYONE, while shaking his head in disappointment.

As a kid, being corrected in front of ALL your extended family members, with your dad looking on at you in disappointment, while some of your extended family members perhaps laughing and chuckling at your mistake… it’s not a fun thing, I can assure you.

Mortifying. That’s the word.
Absolutely, completely, totally mortifying.

Who would want to willingly add this much complexity into their lives?

It must be so, so, so refreshing just to be able to say “Uncle” or “Aunt” or “Cousin” without having to worry about which side of the family they’re on, whether they’re your mom or dad’s older or younger sibling, whether this person is older or younger than you, who they’re married to, etc.

As a kid, I was like – “Why can’t I just call him Uncle?”

My dad – “Because you’re Chinese.”

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main qimg d14345923a8c68fa7f729aab7761e722

AMERICA IS WORRIED! China Will Build 8 Overseas Military Bases in The Future

2023 08 25 12 05
2023 08 25 12 05
https://youtu.be/ErLOXUdjcbc

Saving Momma

15 floors, in this case.

This guy

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2023 08 28 10 54

scaled a 19-storey building just to save his mother.

And he did that with an injured hip.

West Philadelphia. 2019.

His mother was at the hospital, unwell and bedridden. A fire breaks out on the lower floors. He gets a call from his sister telling him their Momma’s stuck in the hospital and it’s on fire.

He races to that building’s entrance, only to be told by police officers who were on the scene, barring the entrance, that it was too dangerous to let anybody in.

He didn’t let that stop him, he climbed up.

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main qimg ba2c98b16d87c46e82f111bf55cef7ed

On the 15th floor he found her safe on a balcony. She told him she was told by police over the phone not to move from there as the fire was being contained.

Appeased, at ease that she was okay, he climbed back down. The fire was taken care of and eventually his mother and others were able to leave the building.

“I took it upon myself because that’s my mother. There’s no limits. That’s my mother.”

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2023 08 28 10 5t4

Footnotes

The man who scaled a 19-story building like Spider-Man did it to save his bedridden mother | CNN

Do you realize if Trump goes to prison, America is truly not a free country anymore?

Oh! One guy might go to prison and all of a sudden you’re worried that America isn’t “free” anymore?

Well, I’ve got some news for you.

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2023 08 29 19 52

America currently incarcerates 664 of every 100,000 people living in the country. Millions more are on probation or are suffering some sort of civil disability because of having a criminal record. For example, in New York State, people with a felony conviction aren’t allowed to become barbers.

If you want to say “America sends too many people to jail” I would heartily agree with you. However, if you’re complaining that some idiot who tried a harebrained scheme to overturn an election he lost by a wide margin proves America isn’t “free”, you’re about 40 years too late.

John Dean spent more time in prison than any other person involved in Watergate, and he was the guy who first blew the whistle on the operation.

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main qimg d086a4c373d3d65211ad769d2690f8ae

What are some ways to live a stress-free life?

Personally, at age 66 , I’ve eliminated stress by making three major changes in my life. Firstly, eliminating all friends and family members who were unnecessarily stressed, and unfairly imposing that stress into my life. Secondly, I stopped earning money in a manner which was extremely stressful, and resulted in an unhealthy lifestyle. Thirdly, I started going to the gym, and began lowering my Resting Heart Rate, through a vigorous training program.

Ultimately, for myself, it was all about changing three major components of my lifestyle. My social life, my employment, and my health.

Can you think of something that needs to be fixed in our education system, but no one talks about it?

I can think of a lot of things, but I’ll just focus on one: a lopsided allocation of resources away from advanced/gifted, middle-or-upper income, able-bodied students with stable home lives.

That is, the more academic, mental, social, economic, or familial challenges a student has, the more resources school districts will allocate towards them. But, in a world of finite resources, that means that the students who don’t have those challenges have resources taken from them.

For example: In the early 2000s, a paraprofessional at a public high school in the Chicago suburbs. I was hired to help exactly one student. That student had cerebral palsy and was quadriplegic. He was of average intelligence, but he had no realistic chance of ever living alone. He had a very slight chance of finding some sort of job that would pay him enough to where he could be taxed on it. But, in all likelihood, he would spend his entire life relying on others to do everything for him.

It wasn’t his fault, of course. And yes, he still deserved an education. He was a cool guy. We got along great. I just checked, and I can’t find anything online about him from the last 13 years. His parents would be well into their 70s by now, so I’m guess that, if he’s still alive, he’s living in a group home somewhere.

Anyway, back then, I made $36k annually helping that one single student. That’s the equivalent of about $63k today.

And I was one of over a dozen paraprofessionals at that one school, each working with one student with similar struggles. I know for a fact that at least three of those students didn’t live past 25, due to their conditions.

Now imagine if schools spent equivalent resources on the students on the opposite end of the challenge spectrum. Imagine if, for every student who needed a 1:1 paraprofessional just to get through the day, the school hired a gifted education tutor to help challenge the academically advanced students. Imagine if, in addition to a special education resource room for students with challenges, each school also had a gifted education resource room, for students for whom the regular education options were too easy.

That could apply to areas outside of academics as well. Have a student who is an athletic or artistic or musical prodigy? Why shouldn’t the school hire someone to help them reach their full potential, the way they hire people to help students with challenges?

“Child prodigies” aren’t all that rare. They’re just advanced students whose parents had the resources to help them succeed. If schools started providing those resources to all advanced students, we’d see a lot more “child prodigies.” And, ultimately, a lot more adults whose contributions to society went beyond “making those around them feel better about themselves for being empathetic and inclusive.”

Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home (REACTION!!!)

2023 08 25 12 10
2023 08 25 12 10

How could soldiers live with themselves after invading another country and slaughtering their women and children?

Americans, Australian, Canadians and a few of the so called alliances were willing to slaughtering and being hypocritical and pretentious. But more than that for me it is a tinge of racism. They the soldiers are slaughtering coloured people that they don’t have affiliation or affinity to.

Let us call a spade a spade. The world knows the U.S. lead in slaughter of 2 million in Korea, 3 million in Vietnam, 1 million in Manila and 1 million Muslims in Mindanao Philippines, 2 million in Iraq and 1 million in Afghanistan and it is not over yet… the U.S. will kill and kill and kill. They will justify some shit like pretentious democracy or freedom.

But the culling will continue till one day they pick in the wrong nation like China and their world go up in nuclear dust!

What’s something your cat has done that you’re going to talk about forever?

Almost 20 years ago, my then husband (now ex-), who was verbally and emotionally quite abusive, was ripping my face off with an enraged tirade. I was sitting on the sofa, with my face leaning on the palms of my hand, waiting for the tirade to be over.

Then I heard a pitty-pat of paws and I looked up to see my Skittles came from the bedroom into the living room, where we were.

She sat down in front of me and my ex (who had not noticed her and kept screaming his rage). Skittles looked first at me, then at him, then at me, then at him again. And then she let out a VERY angry meow/hiss/growl AT MY EX, all without leaving her spot.

It was a very, very clear message: “Knock off being so verbally violent to mom!”

My ex jumped from the sofa completely startled, looked at the cat and said, “OK!”

He then resumed his tirade in much, much milder tones, finished off very soon after and then left.

That cat had defended me like a dog.

Then and there, in my mind, I promised her I would always take care of her. And I did. Skittles was with me for 13 years and she was my best friend. Could not have had a better cat.

Here is a picture of Skittles.

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main qimg e41198daae7fa45a57281e55be81d9ef 2

And the obese milking welfare…

Massive historical changes going on. Some geopolitical, and others domestic.

My you-tube channel has me locked out for a week. I got a “strike”. I posted inappropriate content on the internet that “violated Community guidelines”.

All I did was post a Chinese video about the Ukraine war.

Not that it matters. It only had 25 views total. My channel is buried deep in the sludge due to algorithm manipulation.

Anyways.

So much for “freedom of speech”, when Chinese can view things that are censored in the United States. But the USA censors anything made in China.

Hey!

Tell me all about that delicious “freedom”TM and Democracy”TM that the USA has. Eh?

First time hearing Oliver Anthony “I Want To Go Home” Reaction

What is the smog situation in Beijing? Why isn’t it talked about as much as it used to be?

Smog?

You mean the seasonal dust storms that darken the skies?

China eliminated it with draconian anti-pollution legislation, and green tree-planting efforts on the sandy soil.

This was coupled with corruption police and harsh (Chinese harsh) punishments for non-compliance of the pollution laws.

Air quality is still not perfect, but is actually much, much better than it used to be.

Worried mother cat took her kitten for medical checkup but kitten didn’t want to go!

Why does China have no illegal immigrants problem? Even people in poor neighbor countries like Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar do not want to go to China.

China at one time, did have an illegal immigrant problem. This included areas of South-East Asia, and North Korea. And even today, there is a problem. Though, the magnitude of the problem is quite small. Trivial, actually.

China is a bonafied surveillance state.

I am not using that term neither lightly, or pejoratively. It is what it is. China has a massive population. Simply massive, and to keep things running, surveillance is the “name of the game”.

When you enter China legally, your bio-metrics are entered into the national computers, and the AI algorithm tracks your every move. As long as you are not doing anything wrong, you are ignored. And that is just the way it is. Those of us who are new to this kind of government are often frightened by it. Which is a “knee jerk” reaction after decades of contrary American pre-programming.

Now, when an illegal is inside of China, that person is immediately flagged as a non-database registrant.

If you look and watch the AI monitoring video in the local police station, you can easily see who is “ok” and who is “flagged”. This is done by the rectangular box that surrounds the person.

In general, there are different colors that are used. For instance; Green is fine. Red is a concern.

Any illegal cannot operate inside of China. They will “stand out like a sore thumb”, and be unable to do anything electronic.

A police visit, followed by incarceration and deportation are the usual outcomes upon being flagged.

Tucker Carlson’s VIRAL SPEECH DESTROYS Pro Ukraine LIES

https://youtu.be/Aa-sokRTBGo

Would BRICS have expanded so quickly if the West had not introduced broad sanctions against Russia and other governments they did not approve of?

Thanks for the request.

Yes, indeed. trump didn’t dare to but Biden did pul the trigger.

Biden crossed the red line by using SWIFT to sanction Russia and even worse, froze the country’s foreign reserve. This was the death blow of the U.S. that the world feared and expected the Russian economy and ruble to crumble down like the wall of Jericho.

But Russia withstood these and all the subsequent sanctions the G7 countries could muster.

The turning point is that when all these failed and the G7 tried coercing the rest of the world to join, the Global South chose not to, not so much because they’re a fan of Russia but because they did not want to be subjected any more to the economic hegemon of the West and saw a way out.

First to break ranks were Saudi Arabia and the UAE who started accepting Yuan for their oil deals with China. And now there’s the rush to join BRICS.

BRICS is the world’s irresistible force for de-dollarization. BRICS formalized their expansion that also officially signalize the demise of the petrodollar. When mortal enemies like Saudi Arabia and Iran at war with each other could set aside their differences and agree to work together as BRICS members, who together with the UAE and Russia are now constituting the most powerful block controlling the global energy market . . . and combine this with China and India, the world’s most populous countries as consumer countries, this is part of the clout of the irresistible force.

Further, Brazil’s Lula call to wholly dump the US$ is no empty threat. A BRICS roadmap is ready to actually do this – with Brazil and Argentina leading the way. And this is how it would work – with China’s yuan to be officially used as their bridge currency for trade.

China, Brazil and Argentina are already their own biggest trade partners and have begun using their own currencies in trade with China. With yuan as their main revenue currency, and like Russia with India’s Rupees, it’s the logical next step to use the yuan as their bridge currency for trade between themselves, thereby eliminating not just the U.S.$ but the FX volatility risk of their own currencies to each other.

Add to this the precedent set by the IMF accepting yuan to settle debts originally denominated in US$, Brazil and Argentina could completely not have to use the U.S.$.

To complete dethroning the U.S.$, BRICS will be issuing through their development bank a new currency backed by gold. This would serve as another role that U.S.$ had so far been the only option – as the reserve currency for the long-term depository of excess earning of countries like China, Japan and Germany, supplanting the need to buy U.S. treasury bonds.

The fiat money regime needs a reset and this is upon us.

WE REACT TO OLIVER ANTHONY: I WANT TO GO HOME – HITS OUR SOUL

He’s so relatable, the angst and soul in his voice is amazing.

Have you ever had a strange experience buying or selling something on Craigslist?

There had been a lot of stories on the news about people using Craigslist as a way to lure people into a robbery.

My dad really wanted to get rid of some random items he had stored in the garage, so he posted them for sale.

When he found a buyer off Craigslist, he asked me to go with him as “back up”.

I was already a little sketched out, but to make matters worse, we were meeting the buyer in a funeral home parking… after dark.

When we got there, my dad grabbed his pistol, looked at me, and said “just stay behind me until we know it’s not a set up.”

We got out of the car and slowly approached the buyer’s vehicle.

The other guy got out of his car, stood behind his door, and said

“Hey, just so you guys know, I have a gun on me.”

When we realized this guy was just as paranoid as we were, we started laughing.

The buyer and my dad spent about 15 minutes talking about their guns before they finally actually made the sale.

Craigslist is a wild place.

Rappers React To Oliver Anthony “Rich Men North Of Richmond”!

As a landlord, who was the strangest tenant you’ve ever had?

I had a man/boy with TBI(Traumatic Brain Injury). He smoked at least 3 packs a day and left the butts in Coke liter bottles out on the rear deck. He was very dirty. He screamed and blasted the stereo at all hours of the day. I was constantly calling his mother &/or Attorney. He was banging on the ceiling with a broom screaming at me during the night. I finally was able with the help of his attorney to move him out. But he took that broomstick and broke every fixture in the house, plus smashed the glass cooktop. The Attorney sent me a check for the excess cost over his security.

This one GOT to me.. Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home REACTION

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2023 08 24 20 52

What is the most outrageous “fee” you’ve ever been charged?

I own a 250 gallon propane tank and get it filled about once a year. Because I own the tank I get to choose who fills it. One afternoon a propane delivery truck comes to my home and start to set up like they’re going to fill my tank. I tell the driver that I’d not ordered any propane and I ask what’s going on? His reply was that they were in the area and saw that I’d not had my tank refilled in over 2 years so they thought that they’d just go ahead and fill it.

Well, that didn’t seem right to me. First, how did he check delivery records from his truck and why would he do so? Second, I recently had the tank filled from a different supplier so there was no room in the tank for any more. So I refused the delivery and other than putting a lock on the tank access lid thought no more about it. That is, until the bill for the delivery came. Only one item on the bill, a fee for an emergency delivery.

To their credit, when I contacted the supplier they quickly dismissed the bill.

Member of the European Parliament: “Stop Complying. Start Rebelling”

World Hal Turner 23 August 2023

MEP Christine Andersen large
MEP Christine Andersen large
Member of the European Parliament: "Stop Complying. Start Rebelling"

Powerful words from a member of the European Parliament, Christine Andersen, about the state of affairs in our world: “You cannot comply your way our of a tyranny.”

“In the entire history of mankind, there has never been a political elite concerned about the well-being of regular people,” said Andersen.

“And it isn’t any different now,” she stressed. “You cannot comply your way out of a tyranny. It is impossible. Trying to do so, you will only feed a gigantic alligator in the hopes of being eaten last. But guess what? Your turn will come,”

Andersen also warned. “Speak up! … stop complying — start rebelling,” she urged. “In order to deal with this unfree world, to defy this unfree world, I have decided to become so absolutely free that my very existence is an act of rebellion. And that’s what we all need to do.”

Saxx reacts Oliver Anthony Rich men north of Richmond. call this Racist next?

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2023 08 21 07 54

Have you ever met someone and disliked them instantly?

Originally Answered: Have you ever met someone and hated them instantly?

“LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE AND STOP STALKING ME!!!”

Heads immediately turned.

“I-I’m not stalking you…”

“SHUT UP!!!”

People’s eyes widened, and they began staring. Nevertheless, I continued.

“ YES YOU ARE!! I KNOW YOU ARE!!! NOW LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE AND BACK OFF! I AM SO TIRED OF YOU ENDLESSLY FOLLOWING ME AROUND!!”

My vocal cords started to hurt, but nonetheless, I continued screaming at the boy before me, shrieking my desire to be left alone.

At first, he was in my face. Then he was 20 feet away.

But… how did it come to this?

For nearly an entire year, this boy messaged me. Endlessly told me how he wanted to become friends with me, how he wanted to “figure me out,” told me how “we were the same,” he followed me home, taunted me, watched me, became friends with my friends, taunted me with things he supposedly knew about me, told me some personal things he knew about me. He’s slapped one of my friends. He’s dated another one of my friends before even knowing me.

When I first laid eyes on him, I knew something was off. I saw that he was an egotistical maniac.

I hated him.

And boy was I right.

Would going underwater in an upside down boat like Jack Sparrow actually work?

If you are a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, you might remember the scene where Jack Sparrow and Will Turner use an upside-down boat to walk underwater and sneak into a fort.

But is this trick actually possible in real life? Or is it just another Hollywood fantasy?

The answer is: no, it is not possible. There are several reasons why this stunt would not work, and here are some of them:

The pressure problem.

Water pressure increases by about 1 atmosphere (atm) for every 10 meters of depth.

This means that the air trapped under the boat would compress as they go deeper, reducing the volume of air available for breathing.

For example, if they started with a boat that had 1 cubic meter of air under it, and they went 10 meters deep, the air would shrink to 0.5 cubic meters.

If they went 20 meters deep, it would shrink to 0.33 cubic meters, and so on. Eventually, they would run out of air or suffocate from carbon dioxide buildup.

The buoyancy problem.

The air under the boat would also make it very buoyant, meaning that it would tend to float up to the surface.

To keep it underwater, they would need to attach heavy weights to the boat, which would make it harder to move and balance. The weights would also add more drag, slowing them down.

The visibility problem.

The water under the boat would be very dark, since the boat would block most of the light from above.

They would not be able to see where they are going or what obstacles they might encounter. They would also have to deal with the turbulence and bubbles created by their movement.

The leakage problem.

The boat would not be perfectly sealed, so water would leak in through the gaps and holes.

This would reduce the amount of air under the boat and increase the weight of the boat. They would also get wet and cold, which could lead to hypothermia.

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2023 08 24 21 13

So, as you can see, walking underwater with an upside down boat is not a feasible idea. It might look cool in a movie, but in reality, it would be a very dangerous and impractical way to travel underwater.

What’s the best way to take down the CCP while I’m in China?

Next time you go to Beijing, go to Tiananmen and visit the area where Mao announced the founding of the People’s Republic. Then go to the ledge and unfurl a banner which says “Down with the Chinese Communist Party” and shout slogans against the Party.

Then jump off the ledge so that you go splat right in front of Mao’s portrait.

Make sure that you have photographers and videographers ready to record your actions before and after you go splat.

When the video goes around, all Chinese will rise up and overthrow the Party, and your name will live in history.

Savory Onion Brisket

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2023 08 21 09 02

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (4 1/2 pound) beef brisket, untrimmed
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/4 cup white wine vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 2 tablespoons ketchup
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons garlic powder
  • 2 teaspoons pepper
  • 1 envelope dry onion soup mix
  • 1 cup water

Instructions

  1. Brown brisket in hot oil over high heat for 5 minutes on each side.
  2. Place brisket into a lightly greased 13 x 9 inch pan.
  3. Stir together vinegar and next 6 ingredients. Pour over brisket. Add the water to pan.
  4. Bake, covered at 350 degrees F for 2 hours, basting every hour.
  5. Reduce heat to 300 degrees F and bake 1 more hour.
  6. Skim fat from drippings. discarding fat; serve drippings with brisket.

HE DID IT AGAIN! (OLIVER ANTHONY – I WANT TO GO HOME REACTION)

How shocking is the news that Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has been killed in a plane crash in Russia, with nine other people on board also dead?

Not shocking at all.

The Russian, American, British and Ukraine security services likely all wanted him dead. Oh, I forgot to mention the Polish security services, since the Wagner Group is active across the border in Belarus. The French might have also wanted him dead because he was recently in Niger, where the Africans in the Sahel have decided that they have had enough of the French, and Wagner Group has offered assistance.

Probably the only thing they could agree about.

Now they can go back to fighting each other.

Why do I get a say on the USA? Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home (Reaction)

This reactor to the video has some really good things to say about the USA.

Almost every man carried a gun in the old days in the West and shootouts were quite common. Would the same thing happen if all men were allowed to carry today?

That’s simply not true.

The old school Westerns in which the stranger strolls into the saloon and the next minute everybody is brandishing a six iron are just movies.

In reality, few people would walk around with a gun on their hip and shootouts were in fact rare. The idea of the lawless frontier is mostly nonsense.

Most of our perception of the Old West is totally coloured by entertaining fiction like Rawhide and ten-a-penny old Hollywood pictures. It just wasn’t really like that at all, not least because the majority of people weren’t wandering from town to town like Clint Eastwood, or gathering at high noon to risk life and limb in a duel.

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main qimg e2b34e31d011c2f25d0485f6ce545a4b

I remember as a boy reading a book about the reality of the life of the cowboy, and how dull and uneventful most of it was, because they were herding cattle rather than running around shooting “injuns” or blowing up bank vaults.

In reality, what really tamed the West wasn’t the pistol or rifle, it was barbed wire, for with that came manageable territories and the end of the age of the cattle drive.

DJI Defies Astronomical US Fine, Faces Probe into Drone ‘Critical Tech’!A Battle of Resolve Begun!

A non-drone company (in the USA) is suing a Chinese Drone company. All evidence suggests some pretty underhanded dealings to acquire technology..

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2023 08 21 09 09
https://youtu.be/LPmo7wE1EyI

What are some examples of things that sound right but are actually wrong?

English astronomer Sir Patrick Moore pulled one of the biggest April Fools’ hoaxes of all time which fooled the country into thinking they could float.

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main qimg a51831939e77f0767ca6118229d53b76 lq

On April 1 1976, he made an announcement on BBC Radio 2 stating that, at exactly 9:47 a.m., Pluto would pass directly behind Jupiter in relation to the Earth. This would create a noticeable reduction in gravity on Earth itself.

[1]

He said that, if people jumped at this exact time, they would be overcome by a ‘strange floating sensation’.

This was known as the ‘Jovian-Plutonian effect’.

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main qimg 0680abb9e9c47b55ff65fc67f912ee4e lq

I’m no physicist, but in hindsight this is obviously rubbish—yet the public bought the whole thing—and I’m talking hook, line and sinker.

For a lot of people, this sounded completely right and reasonable, despite just how ridiculous it was. And fair enough—it came from a pretty reliable source.

The BBC reported getting a hell of a lot of calls from people all over the country telling them they were having bizarre gravitational experiences.

One woman claimed that she and her friends were sitting and had ‘wafted from their chairs and gently orbited around the room.’

[2]

Another woman said that she and her eleven friends were sitting at a table—and soon enough, everyone (and the table) began to ascend.

[3] (Kind of Harry Potter-esque in that scene with the inflation of Marjorie Dursley.)


The reason that Moore performed this hoax was really just to raise awareness of the fact that the whole idea of ‘planetary alignment’ and its effects on Earth are nonsensical.

‘Let us hear no more of this nonsense about the ‘planetary alignment.’ It happens every 170 years or so; nothing spectacular will be seen in the sky; and in the opinion of almost everyone, it can [a]ffect nobody and nothing.’


It’s strange how so many people thought it sounded right—but when it actual fact, it was completely wrong.

I guess a lot of it has to do with the mind—although the phenomenon wasn’t real, in a way people believed in it and so it felt real.

But a clever hoax on the part of Sir Patrick Moore nevertheless.

Footnotes

[1]

Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect – Wikipedia

[2]

Martin Wainwright on some of the silliest April Fool tricks

[3]

Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity

HEAR THE PAIN & SOUL!! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond

2023 08 21 08 04
2023 08 21 08 04

Surovikin Reportedly Fired/Resigned as Chief of Russian Aerospace Force

World Hal Turner 23 August 2023

Surovikin large
Surovikin large
Surovikin Reportedly Fired/Resigned as Chief of Russian Aerospace Force

Gen. Sergei Surovikin, a top Russian general who has been out of public view since the Wagner mercenary rebellion, has now reportedly been dismissed as head of the country’s aerospace forces, Russian state media reported today.  

“The ex-Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces of Russia Sergei Surovikin has now been relieved of his post, Colonel General Viktor Afzalov, Chief of the General Staff of the Aerospace Forces, is temporarily acting as Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces,” Russian state news agency RIA reported, citing a single unnamed source.

Russian news outlet RBK and Rybar, a popular Telegram channel close to the country’s defense ministry, reported on Tuesday that Surovikin had been removed from his position. RBK reported, citing unnamed sources “familiar with personnel changes in the defense ministry,” that Surovikin was relieved of his duties due to a “transfer to another job,” and is currently “on a short leave.

The Izvestia newspaper, reported what it said was Surovikin resignation from the post, citing its own unnamed sources. 

Alexei Venediktov, former head of the Ekho Moskvy, a prominent independent radio station that was shut down by authorities within days of the Ukraine invasion was the first to report that Surovikin had been dismissed on Tuesday, but said the general was being “retained by the defense ministry.”

What have you heard accidentally after someone thought their phone call with you was over?

My 85-year-old grandfather is still learning to use his Android phone at a slow pace. Every day before lunch, I get a call from him enquiring if I had my food on time.

Grandpa : “Did you eat? If not, shall I bring you some dish?”

Me : “No, thatha(Grandpa in Tamil). I had my lunch an hour back.”

Sometimes, I wouldn’t pick up his call because I know the obvious question. I did not even have the courtesy to return the call because of my mood swings.

One afternoon, he forgot to click on the End call option and so did I. After what must be around 20 seconds, I realized it and checked if he was still on line.

Grandpa (to Grandma) : “Sandhya picked my call! I must have dialled it in the right procedure today. Anyway, she had her lunch. I am yet to check on Savi (my mother).”

Grandma : “You can check after having your lunch. Shall I serve you your food at least now?”

Grandpa : “No no! Let me check on them first. What if either of them forgot to eat.”

Hearing this made me pause for a moment and realize that in this fast paced world where we are all running towards eternity, not many people put you before themselves.

Moreover, he thinks he hasn’t dialled the right number when I don’t pick the calls.

From then on, I never miss his lunch call. Even on my bad days, it is a tiny, but happy reminder that someone remembers me in spite of their own bustling life.

THIS BROKE ME! First Time Hearing Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North of Richmond REACTION

2023 08 21 08 00
2023 08 21 08 00

Wasabi-Beer Braised Brisket

Enjoy the heat of wasabi with the complex flavors of beer in this beer-braised brisket, thinly sliced and served on a wheat baguette.

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2023 08 21 09 04

Yield: 12 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 beef brisket flat half (4 to 4 1/2 pounds)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tablespoon peanut or vegetable oil
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 2 medium onions, each cut into 12 wedges
  • 1 bottle (12 ounces) beer
  • 1 bottle (12 ounces) chili sauce
  • 2 teaspoons wasabi paste
  • Coleslaw (recipe follows)
  • 3 whole wheat baguettes, cut into 10 to 12 pieces (4-1/2 to 5 inches each), split

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 325 degrees F.
  2. Press garlic evenly onto all surfaces of beef brisket.
  3. Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat until hot. Place brisket in skillet; brown evenly. Remove brisket from skillet; season with salt and pepper.
  4. Add onions to large stockpot or large baking pan. Place brisket over onions. Stir in beer and chili sauce; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover tightly. Continue cooking in 325 degrees F oven for 3 1/2 to 4 hours or until beef is fork-tender.
  5. Meanwhile, prepare coleslaw.
  6. Remove brisket; keep warm. Skim fat from cooking liquid; bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes. Stir in wasabi paste.
  7. Carve brisket diagonally across the grain into thin slices. Return beef to cooking liquid; keep warm. Divide beef and onions evenly over roll bottoms; close sandwiches. Serve remaining sauce for dipping, if desired. Serve with coleslaw.
  8. Coleslaw: Combine 1/2 cup rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil, 2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger and 2 teaspoons honey in large bowl. Add 1 package (16 ounces) coleslaw mix and 1 package (8 ounces) shredded red cabbage; toss to coat. Season with salt, if desired.

Is it okay to wear other race’s cultural clothing?

I think the Xenomorphs don’t wear clothing, and I doubt most people would want to wear the bulky armor of the Predators.

But if you’re asking whether it’s okay to wear another (human) culture’s traditional clothing, my question to you would be: why wouldn’t it be okay?

I recently wrote a very short answer to the question:
Which Chinese fashion is still not adopted in Western countries?

I got a few replies, from non-Chinese Quorans, who mentioned that their wearing hanfu might be considered “cultural appropriation”.

Although I haven’t polled every Chinese, I’m pretty confident that the vast majority will consider “cultural appropriation” a load of bunkum.

If my non-Chinese friends were to wear hanfu, I think I’d be busy smiling, unleashing a lot of “wows” and “you look great!” and taking a thousand and one pictures on my phone (and probably on their phones too) rather than spend even one microsecond feeling offended by their wearing hanfu.

I don’t think Chinese are alone in this when it comes to “cultural appropriation”.
I believe that people from the vast majority of cultures would feel flattered and genuinely appreciative of your taking an interest in their traditional clothing.

So why not go ahead and don that traditional attire you’ve always wanted to try on?

Here are some pictures of Chinese and non-Chinese wearing hanfu.

Chinese wearing hanfu:

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main qimg b7f0cd26594673a6f16db94c6cdfd4a0
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Non-Chinese wearing hanfu:

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main qimg a37eaff9d1ca8a0fc50b75108995ea14
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Oliver Anthony Performs Rich Men North of Richmond for a wild crowd in North Carolina

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2023 08 21 08 10

Is the CCP able to continue defying the laws of economics and pull off another economic miracle?

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main qimg 890505c6f020ea491cf27c4ce9baf8e2

Why not wait and watch?

You predicted their doom before based on complete garbage

You predicted Russia’s doom before based on gutter garbage

Let’s wait and see what happens

China has been predicted to collapse maybe 10,000 times so far based on absolutely zero economics

Maybe this time you will be right?

The point is the Chinese don’t give a damn what you think

They restructure their economy, They use experts and see what can or cannot be done and they do everything within the scope of economic forces

Ultimately neither the Chinese nor anybody else can hide Economic resilience or Economic Doom

Problem is the day you realize you were dead wrong about China for the 10,000th time, you would promptly change the goalpost and move on to something else


Let’s wait and watch

I put money on the Chinese as always

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main qimg 8b711925447ac9b29e32bc50c1612287

I always liked Efficiency and Ability more than Gas and Propaganda

Let’s see how it goes

Guitar Teacher REACTS: OLIVER ANTHONY – I Want To Go Home

What was the best revenge you’ve ever gotten?

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2023 08 24 21 09

My dad was a coal miner in Yorkshire, UK. He started work aged 14 in 1935 and retired aged 60 in 1981.

Circa 1978 (when I was 15), he complained that somebody kept stealing his Kit Kat chocolate biscuit from his snap tin (sandwich box). This kept happening and he was getting really pissed about it, as much the principle as anything else: Miners didn’t steal from their workmates. Except that one was now doing that. Like most working guys those days, he had his routine. Lunch was a flask of tea, sandwiches and a chocolate biscuit. If somebody steals part of your lunch when you’re down a coal mine for 8 hours, you can’t just nip out to a nearby shop.

I was pissed too when he told me what was going on. He was a nice old guy and I didn’t like anyone doing anything bad to him. Nobody was gonna hurt my dad with impunity. So I had an idea.

Very carefully, I unwrapped a Kit Kat (the two-fingered variety). In the 70′s Kit Kat biscuits had an inner wrapper of aluminium foil and an outer wrapper of paper which you could slip off sideways (not the one-use sealed plasticated-paper wrap like now that you have to tear to open).

Having found a nice fresh soft brown dog turd out on the pavement, I used a knife to fill in the gap between the two fingers, creating a strip of shit maybe four inches long, a quarter inch wide and a quarter inch deep, right down the centre of the bar, where it wouldn’t be obvious. Technique-wise, it was like pointing masonry. Only somewhat smellier. Then I carefully re-wrapped the Kit Kat.

Dad thought it was a great joke and took it with him to work as usual. Halfway through his shift, he heard some guy further down the coalface barfing his guts up and spitting profusely. He couldn’t stop work to find out who it was as he drove a massive coal-cutting machine (known as working “on the chocks”). Sure enough though, come break time, he opened his snap tin to find the Kit Kat gone. That, however, was the last time it ever went missing again.

My dad died of emphysema and pneumoconiosis in 1993, the usual coal miners’ diseases. To his dying day though, he would still fall about laughing when regaling friends with the story of how his son had “put paid” to the Kit Kat thief with a shit sandwich.

Ep. 18 | Alarming Assessment of U.S. Military Decline and Ukraine War Dangers, Col. Douglas McGregor

This is REALLY good.

What was your best “Thinking outside of the box” idea at your place of employment?

One of my many contract engineer jobs was at a company that manufactured security doors. My main task during my 6 month contract was to find ways to improve their product and/or save costs. That’s kind of what I do everyplace because… well, that’s what I do.

So, by the time I get hired by a place, they have already gone through the most obvious solutions that they could think of. Generally what’s left, really needs to be found someplace out of the box. I enjoy finding these solutions, when others couldn’t. But there is one particular idea that sticks out as one of my most unconventional, which was a really big success. And it was at this door manufacturer, where it appeared.

One of their issues was that it took too damn long to put a door together along their assembly line, and there were numerous bottlenecks. One of the bottlenecks was at the station, near the end, where the 14″ square security-glass window was installed. Security glass is the glass that has that grid of criss-crossing wire embedded in it. Installing that glass securely, so that it couldn’t be removed from the outside required a complex framework of retainers that were first welded in place to the door, and then needed an additional steel frame that then screwed into the welded frame, holding the glass in place. There was always a terrible log-jam here, what with all the precision welding and screwing. It was ripe for an out of the box idea.

On the first day, it came to me… and it was brilliant, if I do say so myself.

I eliminated everything except the glass. No frames that had to be made, no drilling, no welding, no screwing, no second frame… all that was gone. All we had left was door and square of glass. The new process removed about 20 minutes from each door. That was about 20% of the entire time it took to make a complete door, start to finish.

In place of all the metal frames, welding, drilling and screwing, I used… Velcro!

I Velcro’d those windows in, directly to the door. This was the strongest Velcro that was made. Super Industrial strength. I used permanent glue to glue the “hook” part of the Velcro to the door, and the same glue to attach the corresponding “loop” part of the Velcro all around the edge of the glass, then just pressed them together, and… Bob’s your uncle! Done.

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main qimg ade08342ec35ff7a02f03ba94a5f42af lq 1

To un-attach one part of the Velcro from the other part, a screwdriver was needed to carefully pry the glass away all around the edge. Took less than a minute, but could only be done from the inside-side of the door. And the Velcro was stronger than the glass itself. Smashing the glass in from the outside would break the glass before it released the Velcro.

Yeah, I’m kinda proud of that one. When I first mentioned it, they all said that was ridiculous. It was a “Security” door, after all. Not a basketball shoe.

What was ridiculous was the ridiculous success of the process. They all gave it their best shot at finding the flaw in the idea. Nope. It held tight no matter what was thrown at it. They’ve since permanently changed how they install their security glass. Your own security door, in fact, may have a Velcro attached window. No hardware at all. No worries, though. It works! Even if you know it’s Velcro, and you’re a potential burglar… it still works.

And with that… my horn-blowing in this article has come to an end. Thank you very much!

Life On The Streets Of China | SHOCKING AMERICANS !

2023 08 21 09 07
2023 08 21 09 07

Have you ever seen a pickpocket in action? What did you do?

I am a retired British Police Officer and was standing on a crowded train in Italy with my wife. I saw a woman and child enter the carriage. The woman had a large but open empty bag and the child immediately left her side and started mingling with the other standing passengers. I knew what was happening and got ready to pounce. I waited as I wanted to catch them in the act. However, just before I took action my wife shouted, “Attention everyone there is a pickpocket here and she is trying to steal your belongings”.

She had effectively stopped the crime but prevented my intervention. At the next station, we all alighted including the potential thieves. I asked my wife why she had done that and she responded that she knew what I was like and what I would be planning and didn’t want to spend the day in an Italian Police Station making statements when we should be taking in the local culture. Actually, I thought we might have been about to get immersively intertwined with the local culture, but I took her point.

What product has a common use that surpasses its intended use?

WD-40 isn’t just for squeaky doors.

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main qimg 97728ece5f1bc8d2ab1328a7c727d984 lq

It’s rumored that before John Glenn circled the earth in 1962, NASA engineers slathered the Friendship VII with WD-40 from top to bottom, thinking it would reduce friction upon re-entry. That’s probably not the best example, but the company publishes a PDF on their website (linked below) with roughly 2,000 other uses.

Some highlights:

  1. Removes grime from book covers.
  2. Prevents mud and clay from sticking to shovels and boots.
  3. Removes grease and oil stains on clothes.
  4. Softens new baseball gloves.
  5. Cleans chrome fixtures in bathrooms.
  6. Makes puck slide faster on a hockey table.
  7. Cleans and softens paint brushes.
  8. Cleans and protects cowboy boots.
  9. Removes crayon from walls, carpet, wall-paper, plastics, shoes, toys, chalkboard, monitors, screen doors, and rock walls.
  10. Eases arthritis pain (spray the painful joint.)
  11. Cleans piano keys.
  12. Removes super strong glue from fingers.
  13. Keeps wicker chairs from squeaking.
  14. Removes scuff marks from ceramic floors.
  15. Cleans and protects copper pots and pans.
  16. Polishes and shines sea shells.
  17. Removes water spots from mirrors.
  18. Removes tea stains from counter tops.
  19. Keeps pigeons off window ledges (they hate the smell).
  20. Removes ink from carpet.
  21. Keeps metal wind chimes rust free.
  22. Prevents mildew growth on outdoor fountains.
  23. Removes gunk from plastic dish drainers.
  24. Cleans dog doo from tennis shoes.
  25. Removes tomato stains from clothing.
  26. Gets ink stains out of leather.
  27. Removes roller-skate marks from kitchen floor.
  28. Removes black streaks from RV’s and siding.
  29. Unkinks gold chains.
  30. Penetrates frozen mailbox doors.
  31. Removes tar from shoes.
  32. Cleans silver plates and trays.
  33. Removes soap scum in the bathroom
  34. Polishes wood.
  35. Takes the squeak out of shoes.
  36. Removes a stuck ring from a finger.
  37. Wipes off graffiti.
  38. Removes Silly Putty from carpet.
  39. Loosens burrs, thistles, and stickers from dogs and horses.
  40. Removes bumper stickers from cars.
  41. Removes duct tape.

Working Class Anthem Attacked By Establishment As “QAnon!”

Jimmy Dore responds.

I wasn’t able to save the kitten

On the 3rd of July, a few years back, I visited an animal shelter. And there in the back room was a little Maine coon kitten that was trying to get my attention. So I went up to it and we bonded strongly. I wanted it right then and there.

But the chick at the front desk was busy with a customer and closing up and told us to come back on the 5th of July (as tomorrow was a holiday). So I said “good bye” to the kitty and promised that I would come back for it.

I kept looking back over my shoulder and the kitty was imploring me “don’t leave. You are my last hope”.

And then on the 5th of July I came early, ready to get the kitty. I waited in the parking lost one hour early and just sat there listening to music.

Eventually they “opened up”.

And it was too late. They put the kitty down the day before.

I was too late.

When an opportunity occurs DO NOT TRUST IN SOMEONE ELSE, stand your ground and take action.

I should have just got the kitty then and there, and told them that I would come back in a day or two to do the paperwork.

Todays…

“This is what love looks like.”

“When I asked my 11-year-old son to help me unload dirt from our small pickup into his mother’s new garden boxes, his reaction was typical.

“Ummmm… I’m busy right now,” He said.

He was playing Roblock on the family laptop, wearing sweat pants and an old T-shirt, lounging on the sofa, feet on the coffee table.

“No you’re not,” I said.

There was a fight, moaning, excuses… the usual.

Moments later, we were next to a wheelbarrow shoveling dirt. He looked at me with flat eyes, his hood up, shoulders slumped, and said, “Why do we have to do this?”

I thought for a moment, because I’ll admit, it was a valid question. Neither of us were all that into flowers or vegetables, or any of the things that would be grown in those garden boxes. But my wife, Mel, loves gardening.

I thought, and he waited, and finally I said, “When you love someone, you serve them.”

I went on, telling him that I want him to grow up to be the kind of man who serves his family, friends, and community.

“This” I said while gesturing to the dirt, and the garden boxes I built the weekend before, and the wheelbarrow and shovel, and the first of many truckloads of dirt we would unload over the next few weeks, “Is what love looks like.”

He didn’t like my answer. I could see it in the way he reluctantly picked his shovel back up.

We finished unloading the dirt. The next day, while I was at work, and the kids and Mel had the day off because it was between terms, Mel sent me this picture. Mel picked up another load of dirt and before she had a chance to unload it, Tristan voluntarily started working. When she asked him “why,” he shrugged and said, “Because I love you.”

I’d never been prouder of my son.”

TEES

After the accident, she was left on the side of the road, no one stopped the car to help her!

An Englishman, taking a road trip through the US, notices he’s low on fuel, and pulls into the first gas station he sees.

An Englishman, taking a road trip through the US, notices he’s low on fuel, pulls into the first gas station he sees. The attendant walks out and approaches the car.

“How can I help you, sir?”

And in a posh voice, the man says, “I’m low on petrol; please top off the tank.”

With an odd look, the guy begins to fill ’er up.

The Englishman then says, “Also, while I’m here could you open the bonnet and check the oil?”

Now looking slightly peeved but still saying nothing, the serviceman does as requested.

“Oh, yes,” says the Brit, “It appears my windscreen needs a good cleaning. Would you mind terribly-”

Unable to hold his tongue any more the attendant angrily snaps, “Alright, that’s enough! It’s not Petrol, it’s gasoline! It’s not a bonnet, it’s a hood! And it’s not a windscreen, it’s a windshield! We invented cars, so you call them by their American names!”

And with that wonderful, charming, stiff-upper-lip UK wit, the Englishman calmly replies, “Well yes, my friend, you may have invented the automobile, but we invented the language!”

How Elites Will Create a New Class of Slaves | Whitney Webb | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Journalist Whitney Webb has worked to uncover some of the most dangerous stories of our lifetime, and she joins Glenn to reveal just how eye-opening it’s been. Her new two-volume book, “One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein,” examines Epstein’s elaborate network of corruption and power, from Bill Clinton to Ghislaine Maxwell and many more. Her research into transhumanism has given her a terrifying perspective on the World Economic Forum and tech elites, including Elon Musk. And she tells Glenn the dark truth about Biden’s push for electric vehicles that she noticed while living in Chile.

What did you read on the internet that you did not like?

Few days ago, a very significant incident made headlines. Jacinda Ardern resigned as the Prime Minister of New Zealand. She strongly performed the role of PM for 5 years. Her reason for the resignation was simple – “I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple.”

Jacinda Ardern:

I’m leaving, because with such a privileged role comes responsibility – the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I am human, politicians are human. We give all that we can for as long as we can. And then it’s time. And for me, it’s time.”

However, amidst all this, BBC came up with a very se*ist headline and an article to share the news with the world. It read, “Jacinda Ardern resigns: Can women really have it all?”

Saddened to see such a reductive, se*ist and inaccurate headline from the BBC World. This is so regressive and misogynist…The 1950s came by and picked up their headline.

This is absurd misogyny from BBC. Boris Johnson was ousted in a whirlwind of scandal & failure but BBC humanized him for the pain he felt. 🤔.

Jacinda Ardern gracefully led New Zealand through historic upheavals & leaves on her terms but BBC repeatedly dismisses her as a failure & quitter. 🤦‍♂️

An embarrassing day for the media. What a disrespectful way to celebrate a refreshingly phenomenal leader like Jacinda Arden.

Big Po “Rich Men North of Richmond” (Remix)

What are some advanced and modern military innovations that have failed?

I’m not sure if I would say it failed. But it was a very awesome piece of gear that for various reasons (namely budget, and politics) was cancelled. Full disclaimer: at one point I worked with the company that made this, and have seen and held parts of this system.

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main qimg 1d8f532a0336e98fa0d47c42807825bf lq 1

The Xm-25 CDTE. It shoots programmable 25mm grenades.

Imagine a typical firefight scenario. Both sides end up behind cover, trying to deal with each other. Perhaps a heavy machine gun is mounted up in a window behind sandbags, etc. Maneuvering around and neutralizing the threat is dangerous and time consuming. But what if you had a grenade rifle that could precisely detonate a round just over their heads? Then you could aim just above the MG nest, pop of a shot, and those unlucky bastards would be no more. Firefight over in a minute. No need to call in artillery or air support!

The way this works is that scope has a rangefinder and a computer, and it can program the round to explode at the lazed distance, or before or after that distance in (I think) 1–3m increments. So, in the above example, you laze the sandbags or the side of the building, set the burst just after that distance, and fire. It’s very clever engineering to fit all that capability onto an electronics coin inside a 25mm casing. Unlike traditional grenade launchers, this one shoots a much flatter trajectory; and the range is 600–700m instead of 300ish. The Army was always pushing for more and more range.

When field tested, it apparently developed quite a reputation amongst insurgents, who would sometimes flee when they realized the US squad had one with them. I only heard glowing praise about the 2010 field tests. Being able to neutralize cover with a weapon like this is literally game-changing.

However, the project was ultimately cancelled in 2018. The ‘official’ reason always cites a particular misfire in 2013, although internal sources indicated it was more of a political fight over competing budget priorities. The misfire was only the propellant and not the charge itself. resulting in minimal injury; and, try as ATK did, they could not figure out what this particular soldier did to cause it. (Read: he almost certainly fucked up and did something he wasn’t supposed to, like a double feed.) This is the only incident of a misfire.

I think the other headwind is that current US squad tactics and organization don’t really have a good way to incorporate a system like this. Who wants to carry around a 14lb weapon and give up his rifle? They were patrolling around afghanistan, not taking Berlin. It is, however, a very outstanding little system. If I recall one particular conversation correctly, I believe the round can even punch through some wooden doors and explode on the other side. How’s that for breaching?

There were also problems with HK, who made the frame of the rifle itself, being a poor partner and failing to deliver on time. (This also angered program managers.)

The good news is that fitting this tech onto a 25mm grenade is the hard part. I can promise you that the same technology will find its way into a 40mm grenade system at some point. Imagine being able to lay precision, long range airbursts across a battlefield with one of these:

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main qimg 08bb26a9819550940bbafc986d7beea0 lq

Automatic grenade sniper rifle, anyone?

Men Are Refusing To Help Women and They are Panicking They don’t Know Why

https://youtu.be/qXWc6IxxfUs

Greek Style Skillet Supper

For a taste of Greece, this one-dish complete meal is sure to be a hit. Feta cheese accents the authentic flavor.

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c348c1de3ce051299623d2cbf7d8e409

Prep: 5 min | Cook: 25 min | Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1/2 cup chopped onion
  • 2 teaspoons McCormick® Oregano Leaves
  • 1 teaspoon McCormick® Cinnamon, Ground
  • 1/2 teaspoon McCormick® Garlic Powder
  • 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can reduced sodium beef broth
  • 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
  • 2 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 1 1/2 cups uncooked penne pasta
  • 1 1/2 cups frozen leaf spinach, thawed
  • 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese, divided

Instructions

  1. Cook ground beef and onion in large skillet on medium-high heat until beef is no longer pink, stirring occasionally. Drain fat. Add oregano, cinnamon and garlic powder; mix well.
  2. Stir in broth, tomatoes and tomato paste. Bring to boil. Stir in pasta. Reduce heat to medium; cover and cook 10 minutes or until pasta is nearly tender.
  3. Stir in spinach and 1/2 cup of the feta cheese. Cover. Cook 5 minutes longer or until pasta is tender.
  4. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup feta cheese. Cover. Let stand for 5 minutes.

Western Nations BANNED from Joining BRICS if they Apply “Sanctions”

World Hal Turner 25 August 2023

Western countries do not have a chance of joining the BRICS group of emerging economies as long as they pursue hostile policies against Moscow, says the Russian deputy foreign minister.

Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday that the “most important criterion” for membership was the “non-application by a potential BRICS participant of illegal sanctions against any member of the association.”

“All the countries who have been invited to join BRICS undoubtedly meet this requirement. 

As for Westerners, all of them as a group and each individual [Western] member pursue exactly the opposite line and thus inviting anyone from that group to join BRICS or even attend its events is out of the question. This is absolutely ruled out. And we will continue pursuing this course.”

If any Western state finds BRICS membership an attractive idea, and refrains from the sanctions policy against any BRICS member and applies to join, such an application will be considered.

“There is no other way.”

According to Taiwanese media reports on August 2nd, TSMC stated that the production delay at its Arizona factory was due to a lack of skilled American labor, and they have dispatched personnel from Taiwan to support the construction of the factory. However, labor union leaders in Arizona criticized TSMC, stating that it was using this as an excuse to introduce “low-wage foreign labor.”

https://youtu.be/GG5O-xmThFs

What has an employee said that immediately caused you to fire them?

Jerome (not real name) was a new worker with a big mouth. He was 28 years old at the time, quite older than most of the guys he worked with like myself yet he acted, at best, like a spoilt 15 year old.

He was always talking. He always had an opinion about something. He always had to question even the most simple orders and instructions. He believed himself to be the most intelligent person to ever walk the floor of the warehouse and always spoke at length of all the flaws he saw in our system and what he would do to fix the business if he were in charge.

Our job was simple: a retail store wants products that we have, we go out with our grocery carts, pallet jacks, forklifts etc, get the products and have them packaged and ready for delivery in the morning.

Not Jerome.

Jerome’s job was to distact you from what you were doing to talk shit about the company and how the money wasn’t worth it. He would quote some nonexisting OSHA law that the company wasn’t complying with and how he could sue the company if he wanted to. He would discuss his harebrained, get rich quick schemes that he never had to guts to actually attempt. He bragged about his family in the US waiting for him and how he didn’t need to work himself like a slave for chump change like we did.

At any given day he probably put out 20% of the output of the average worker. He was on a six month probationary period of which it would be decided whether he would be contracted as a permanent worker, given extended probation or let go. No one expected him to be permanently hired. Everyone basically tried to tolerate him for the six month probationary period as best as they could.

However he started taking his shenanigans to the next level.

He started making the (typically secluded) shampoos lane in the back warehouse his secret hideout. The lane was quiet, had no cameras and far away from our superiors’ field of vision. He decided to set up a makeshift man-cave behind a pallet of Tresemmé 2 in 1 Shampoo and Conditioner. There he would smoke, talk shit with the rare, harmless worker who came by for shampoos and he would watch rap music videos on his cell phone.

At the month’s end all warehouse workers were allowed to take from the damaged products. We had our own system of fairness whereby we rotated each worker to get a chance to get first pick among the damages.

Jerome couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the system. During the third month of his employ it was observed that practically all of the best damaged goods had gone missing. A co-worker and myself smelt a rat in Jerome and we went to his man cave while he was on lunch and saw the damages were there hidden in boxes.

We reported it to the supervisor who came and saw it. He held an emergency meeting and asked for the person who put those damaged goods in the back to come forward. Everyone eyed Jerome angrily but he remained silent. The supervisor reported the matter to the manager who reported it to the company owner and she immediately put a stop to the free damages giveaway.

Now the anger towards Jerome had turned into a bloodlust. However the more angry everyone got the more lazy and defiant Jerome became. He was smart enough to abandon his man-cave after his attempted theft but he still spent more than half his working day loitering and talking shit.

Every year the company paid for the company staff to have a party, usually at a classy sports bar or a nightclub. We all looked forward to it including Jerome who discussed at length his intention to get drunk off of free premium drinks and score with one of the pretty head office girls. However, one fateful afternoon the owner of the store had an impromptu meeting with everyone in the warehouse.

She explained that the company decided to change the format of the staff party. She explained that it was expensive and inefficient having this party every year when too many employees ran up a bill drinking premium drinks all night and then not being able to come to work the following day. She gave the disappointing news that this time the party would be held at 12pm — 7pm the upcoming Sunday.

Jerome released a snorting laugh while she spoke. Everyone in the warehouse went dead silent. No one had ever dared interrupt the owner, far less mock her.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘Is there something amusing?’

‘Nobody ever heard of a party 12 o clock in the afternoon,’ Jerome said in his spoilt 15 year old voice.

‘I’ve been to many parties 12 o clock in the afternoon’ she replied.

‘Yeah, birthday parties for kids’ Jerome said smugly and looked about for someone to laugh but found only silence.

The owner asked Jerome his name and how long he worked in the warehouse. Afterwards she continued her talk uninterrupted but after the meeting was dismissed she, the manager and Jerome went into an office for a talk. Some minutes later Jerome was seen leaving the compound, he was terminated from the job.

Sad thing for Jerome was the owner apparently thought over what he said about the party and changed her mind about it. We were allowed to have our traditional, late into the night, party albeit minus the free premium drinks.

We had a great time dancing the night away and toasting Jerome whose big mouth finally done some good for a change.

MY SOUL!!! | Oliver Anthony – “I WANT TO GO HOME” | Reaction

2023 08 26 08 26
2023 08 26 08 26

What bad experience had you saying “I will never buy from that company or use their service ever again”?

Nissan. I bought a brand new Nissan Truck with a supercharger. The supercharger crapped out at 12,000 miles. They had to fix it because it was under warranty. The mechanic at the dealer told me they were all failing due to a manufacturer’s defect which was widely known in the company. I drove the truck a couple more years and the supercharger crapped out again, this time just about 200 miles beyond the end of the warranty. At about the same time, my son’s identical Nissan truck also lost its supercharger at 18,000 miles. I wound up talking to a factory representative. I asked him if they would split the $1,800 bill since it was a factory defect. He said no because Nissan just couldn’t afford to pay for all those repairs.

I later bought a Toyota truck which lost a head gasket. Toyota fixed it for free outside of the warranty period. They said that their engineering and design philosophy was that a head gasket should last at least 200,000 miles.

I have made a point to tell this story at least 100 times over the years. I know I have talked at least 20 people out of buying a Nissan.

What is the weirdest canine species?

In terms of uniqueness, it’s hard to find a canine species that rivals the short-eared dog. Genetically, it is very distinct from other living members of the canid family, and indeed in many ways it is more like a cat than a dog!

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main qimg 652937cca60a6da81536f998d6861a86 1

It is found only within the dense and dark jungles of the Amazon Basin in South America. Such densely forested habitats are unusual for canines, other than the bush dog, which I’ll mention later. What’s more, it is an extremely shy and reclusive creature, leading a solitary nocturnal lifestyle. All of the characteristics above are more typical of felines, interestingly.

Where the short-eared dog differs from your average cat is its affinity for water. As vast swathes of its Amazonian habitat are swampy or regularly flooded, it is well-adapted for a semi-aquatic world. Its feet are webbed, with membranes of skin stretching between the toes, which makes it an excellent swimmer. Much of its diet is actually represented by fish, crabs, frogs and the like. The dog makes short work of these slippery customers with its impressive set of cuspid teeth (another rather cat-like feature).

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main qimg 55d9ffacb1413422b8ed6023e94b79ec

As canid species go, the short-eared dog takes an exceptionally long time to reach sexual maturity. They cannot reproduce until the age of three, something we discovered relatively recently. Before it was known that it’s a bit of a late bloomer, one expert jokingly suggested it should be renamed the “small-balled dog”!

When they eventually do achieve sexual maturity, males get to work in the hopes of attracting a female (uniquely, the females are much bigger than the males!). They spray a strong-smelling musk secreted by the tail glands, and produce mating calls all through the night. These vocalisations are bizarre and haunting, sounding like those of owls!

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main qimg 4290a3b41bbb5df7b9b2b79d59c6a00a

During the day, they take shelter, usually dwelling inside burrows and tunnels dug by giant armadillos, after they’ve been vacated by the original owner. Short-eared dogs’ nocturnal lifestyle, in addition to their impenetrable habitat and shy evasive nature, means that they are still shrouded in mystery. They are rarely photographed in the wild – indeed, all the pictures above are of an individual called Oso, who was raised by humans since puppyhood (hence the collar). He’s taught us much of what we know about the species.

As such, we still have much more to learn about short-eared dogs. I, for one, am very curious to know more about how they interact with the only other wild canine species found in the Amazon Rainforest – the bush dog. This comically short and stubby little pupper lives in packs of up to twelve individuals, which specialise in hunting giant rodents such as capybaras and pacas. I’m sure the two species cross paths at times – what a fascinating interaction that would be.

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main qimg 553d64ecc8ed67d60c3fd1fed09a1d40

I eagerly await all the new short-eared dog discoveries that are sure to be ahead! In the meantime, this has been everything you need to know about this underappreciated and handsome creature. I hope you liked the answer, thank you for reading! And have an amazing day.

I failed out of college.

Not MM, mind you. -MM

I ended the 2nd semester of my freshman year with a 0.9 GPA.

You read that right: a 0.9 GPA

When the school year ended, my parents drove four hours to campus to help clean out my dorm room and take me home.

During the ride home I remember staring out the car window in complete silence the entire four hours.

I was devastated. I had no idea what I was going to do.

My parents were upset.

They were disappointed.

They didn’t have anything to say.

Neither did I.

Their disappointment was nothing compared to the numbness I felt. I was far more disappointed in myself than they ever could be. It was completely my fault and I knew it.

I struggled all through high school, so it was no surprise I struggled the way I did when I started college.

I was terrible at taking tests. I had such a difficult time studying. I have no idea why. It was something I lived with that I cannot explain.

In grade school I had special tutors to help with my test-taking anxiety. I can’t say it helped much.

As I finished my final year of high school, I did not know if I would get in to college. I only applied to one college.

I was accepted to attend the only college I applied to.

And now I failed out of the only college I applied to.

I struggled all through Freshman year of college until it got to a point where I felt I had no chance of success. My grades were terrible. So, I did not show up for any of my final exams. There was no way I could study well enough to get passing grades on my finals.

I gave up.

During the four hour drive home, I became painfully aware that I could have done better. I didn’t bother searching for an excuse to justify the horrible mistake I made.

I had to figure out a Plan B.

Not even a week passed after moving back home with my parents before I started piecing together a plan.

Even though I ‘failed’ as far as the university was concerned, I knew I was not a failure. I certainly did not feel like one.

I dug myself into a very deep hole and I knew it was up to me to pull myself out.

I had to figure out how to approach life differently. I wasn’t doing it right. And it felt horrible.

I knew I had to try again.

The problem was, since my GPA was so poor, I got suspended from attending that college.

I called the admissions office and asked how I could come back to earn my degree. They told me I needed to go to a community college for a year and earn a 3.0 GPA, then I could reapply to be accepted back.

My entire experience of life changed from that point on. I was never the same again.

All of a sudden I had a goal to accomplish. I never set ambitious goals for myself prior to that moment. I was social and active and participated in sports, but I was mostly just showing up. I never associated much of a purpose or goal with anything I was doing.

I now had a goal, fueled by an intense desire to accomplish that goal.

I did what the admissions office told me to do. I got a job. I took courses at the community college. I accomplished the GPA they required.

A year after failing, I reapplied and was admitted back in to the same college so I could finish my degree.

By the time I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree, I was getting grades that earned me a spot on the Dean’s List several semesters in a row.

Why was failing out of college the best mistake I ever made?

  • This mistake was a wake-up call that helped me discover what I am capable of.
  • I experienced what it feels like to recover from a major failure.
  • I shifted my mindset to one that is fueled with purpose.
  • I discovered the power of setting ambitious goals that are created from my own desire to accomplish those goals.
  • And most importantly: I remember feeling as though my entire life was over during that silent four hour drive home with my parents. The reality was, this failure ended up being a mere bump in the road. It was quite a rough bump at the time but it did not ruin me. I learned that our failures do not define who we are.

I Want To Go Home ( REACTION ) Something SPECIAL is Happening Here…

2023 08 26 11 32
2023 08 26 11 32

How does it feel to be secretly rich?

Originally Answered: What does it feel like to be secretly rich?

Around strangers, it’s easy. Around friends and neighbors, its work.

Most people in the United States have at least one of my products in their home, and would instantly recognize the company, but they wouldn’t know me. There’s never a random “hey, aren’t you the CEO of…” on the street, or checking into a hotel, so that part is fairly easy.

On the flip side, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping things on the down low among friends. I personally bring home about $4 million a year, but I’m not really into displays of wealth – not because I’m actively hiding anything, I just think most of that stuff is kind of tacky and isn’t interesting.

Our house isn’t over the top. It’s larger than average, but we also have three kids so that’s expected. It does sit on 60 acres, but we tell people only five of those acres are ours. We have a couple of cars (her primary, my primary, a truck, and a couple of classics in the garage) but all are American made and none newer than five years old. Both of the classics are actually pretty rare cars which would fetch over $100k a piece if I ever sold them, but since I’m also known for being kind of a gear head and did a lot of work on it myself, everyone just assumes they were once junkers I brought back from the dead or aren’t all original parts.

This part is pretty easy since there visibly aren’t too many cues that would tip someone off. Everything was paid for with cash, including the house, but realistically outside of the land value, someone making $150k-200k could afford all of the same stuff if they financed/mortgaged it.

The main difficulty is trying to relate and being careful what I say. Most of our friends are in that $150–200k range, but they’re in debt up to their eyeballs to maintain their lifestyles. They’re driving new leased Mercedes and BMW’s and probably think they’re doing better than I am financially – which is fine by me.

Its just little things I have to watch out for. A buddy invited me to bring one of the classics to a car show he was going to once, but I declined and said it acting up and I needed to work on it. I left the hood up for a week in case he came over. Really I just didn’t want the attention – someone there would have recognized it for what it was. Occasionally when someone notices how much land surrounds my house, I’ll say something like I hope the owner never decides to build on it. Before we take a family trip, I will mention that I’m saving up for it a couple months prior, when really we could just go. I also own property in other states that no one knows about – one of them is a place along a river in Tennessee and a few of us are going down there next month to witness the eclipse. They think it’s just a place I rented for the weekend.

Honestly, I don’t like the deception – these are good friends, but seeing how they all are with their money and how they regard it, I don’t want them to know the truth. I hear about all of their money problems and how they talk about other people who are better off than they are, and there’s a lot of disdain and jealously there. it’s just not worth the hassle. The problem is I think most of the people I’ve met in my own income bracket and higher are pretentious douchebags, so I don’t really want to hang out with them either.

My life doesn’t revolve around money, and that isn’t the case for most of the people I’ve met with an income over $1 million, so I don’t really relate to them. I would rather vacation to a rustic cabin in the woods than some flashy five star resort.

Chili-Stuffed Potato Skins

OzzzIP
OzzzIP

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 4 large baking potatoes
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 small yellow onion, diced
  • 1 tablespoon minced jarred jalapeno peppers
  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 1 cup canned crushed tomatoes
  • 1 (14 ounce) can refried beans
  • Salt and ground black pepper, to taste
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
  • 2/3 cup ricotta cheese
  • 1/2 cup milk

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 425 degrees F.
  2. Wash and dry the potatoes, then pierce each several times with a fork. Microwave on HIGH for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until cooked through. Timing varies by microwave.
  3. Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine the olive oil, garlic, onion and jalapenos. Sauté until the onion just begins to get tender, about 5 minutes.
  4. Add the ground beef and sauté until browned, about another 5 minutes.
  5. Add the crushed tomatoes and refried beans, then mix well and reduce heat to low. Bring to a simmer, season with salt and pepper, then cover and reduce heat to just keep warm.
  6. Carefully cut the potatoes in half lengthwise, then use a spoon to scoop out the insides and place them in a large bowl. Leave about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of potato all around the skin. Arrange the potato skins on a baking sheet. Set aside.
  7. To the bowl of potatoes, add 1 cup of the Cheddar cheese, the ricotta and milk. Mix well, then season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
  8. Fill the potato skins almost to overflowing with the meat-and-bean mixture. Carefully spoon a bit of the potato-and-cheese mixture over the meat. Sprinkle each with some of the remaining Cheddar.
  9. Bake until the cheese melts and the mashed-potato topping just begins to brown, about 12 to 15 minutes.

Jordan Peterson Tells the TRUTH about ALIENATED Young Men – (Better Audio Quality)

This is STUNNINGLY great!

2023 08 26 11 58
2023 08 26 11 58

It’s Official: “BRICS” Adds Saudi Arabia, Iran, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, and UAE; Will Control 80% of Global Oil

World Hal Turner 24 August 2023

brics 2024 nEW mEMBERS large
brics 2024 nEW mEMBERS large

It’s Official: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)  will become full members of BRICS on January 1st 2024.  All totaled, BRICS nations will control eighty percent (80%) of Global Oil and Gas production.The map below lays out what the newly enlarged BRICS will look like:

BRICS 2024 Control 80 Percent Worlds Oil
BRICS 2024 Control 80 Percent Worlds Oil

Cutting right to the chase, it should be stated that “The-Powers-That-Be (TPTB) cannot survive this without World War 3.”   

If the current globalist cabal stands back and does nothing as this new Commerce Alliance comes to life, then on January 1, 2024, they may wake up to find that no one in any of the countries shown above, will accept the U.S. Dollar or the EURO as payment for trade in goods and services anymore, because both the Dollar and the EURO are backed by nothing.

They may find that no one around the world is willing to sell oil in US Dollars anymore, and could demand that we convert OUR currency to some other currency to buy oil.

The way the Biden Regime has curtailed our own oil and gas production, we would see shortages and price increases the likes of which has never been seen before.

Since we in the United States do not manufacture much of anything here anymore – because CORPORATE IMBECILES shipped all our manufacturing jobs overseas– we could see our ability to buy things for import-severely curtailed as well.

Let’s not forget Economic Sanctions.   It was the excessive and arbitrary use of economic sanctions by the US, which spurred countries around the world to seek out – and now CREATE — some other means for settling international trade because they got tired of the US imposing Sanctions and forbidding the use of the US Dollar by countries under sanction.

Now that BRICS is creating its own Gold-Backed currency for settlement of international trade debts, the US won’t have any clout anymore because it won’t be able to sanction pretty much anybody.   The US Government will be toothless on economic sanctions . . . but the rest of the world will not.

What if the rest of the world decides it is “Pay Back Time” for the US?   What if THEY impose economic Sanctions upon us??????  The new BRICS organization and its coming currency could make that a reality.

All these facts make clear that the Powers-That-Be simply cannot allow this BRICS to go any further or TPTB will lose their grip on controlling the world.  Some of TPTB are such ego-maniacs, they would rather burn the entire world to the ground rather than lose control over it.

Thus, it seems logical to me, that World War 3 is coming before the end of this year.  Perhaps a lot sooner than that.

What is the best thing a teacher did for you that you still remember?

Too many things to name here, certainly. But I’ll narrow it down just to 2.


In Middle school, I got sick. Started falling all the time, couldn’t smile, could barely keep my eyes open and double-vision exhausted me trying to see the board and read, hands couldn’t write long, got brain fog and couldn’t remember anything etc. I was in and out of the hospital… diagnosed with anything from ‘imminent death’ to ‘attention seeking’. I missed A LOT of school.

After I was finally diagnosed a couple of years later, I was definitely in danger of failing. Had a thymectomy, which at that time required cracking open my sternum, and definitely couldn’t go back to school for awhile, but was feeling mentally better on my new meds.

Mrs. Howard, who had been my homeroom teacher the prior year, came to my house to bring me school work and tutor me, and administer me quizzes, so I wouldn’t get too far behind. I ended up passing my classes and was able to proceed to high school with the rest of my classmates.


We were poor. Like wringer washer and rotary dial phone (in the 90s) poor.

I wanted to take Home Ec and Shop, but we couldn’t afford the class fees. I ended up taking a couple of design courses. Web Design and Drafting. My hands still got weak pretty easily, and I was left handed (the drafting machines on the desks were only for right-handed people), so I got to use AutoCAD most of the time.

I ended up in Drafting classes for 3 1/2 years, and competed in regional and state for VICA (vocational industrial clubs of America) and the IDEA (Illinois Drafting Educators Association).

Turns out? Those classes and competitions had fees, too. My instructor, Pete Tucker, paid my fees. He also wrote me a glowing recommendation later for college.

When I was 19, I interviewed for my first drafting internship, and that 3 month internship lasted 13 1/2 years. I became a cad manager, then programmer, then solutions architect for facilities software, and had a side career as a technical editor and author, teaching others how to use AutoCAD and similar programs.

A few years ago, I looked him up on Facebook and thanked him for giving me an entry into a career that lifted me out of poverty, provided me with insurance coverage for my disability (fun fact, if you managed to live 5 years without treatment, you got to lie and say you didn’t have a pre-existing condition) and allowed me to raise my kids with everything I’d never had (both of them can use AutoCAD, too 😉 ).

main qimg 9d81def631e060b32cb573b479671080
main qimg 9d81def631e060b32cb573b479671080

COUNTRY GOSPEL! Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home | REACTION Video

What’s the worst parenting advice you’ve received?

Our first child was not toilet trainable. We took her to doctor after doctor from age 3 to 6, eventually carrying an x-ray made by the local radiologist. Everyone agreed that poor parenting skills were the problem, though some added that our lovely daughter, who had a BM only when standing or lying down, really enjoyed tormenting us.

One of the last doctors said, “If she were my kid, I’d lock her in the bathroom until she did it on the toilet!”

A few weeks later, a surgeon hundreds of miles from home held up that x-ray and said, “She has a birth defect.” Her lower intestine was positioned in a way that made a BM impossible unless her body was absolutely straight, NOT sitting on a toilet. Surgery fixed that. Thank you, Dr. Hardy Hendren, and RIP.

Jason Aldean – Try That In A Small Town (Official Music Video)

I would have never even heard of this song if people hadn’t been upset about it.

Strange English phrases on t-shirts in China: where do they come from?

Some of them are a clever twist based on an underlying Chinese phrase.

For example, on the T-shirt, the Chinese characters read:

已读不回

Literal translation would be “Have Read, Not Replied”.

The context here is that this is a common behavior on instant messaging apps – the receiver (of the instant message) has left the sender (of the instant message) on Read or Seen: they’ve read/seen the instant message, but haven’t replied.

This is a common course of action for some girls who start getting a lot of instant messages from guys trying to woo them but to whom they feel no affection for.

Rather than outright telling her pursuer that his romantic overtures are unwelcome, she leaves him on read/seen and doesn’t reply his messages.

In this way, she hopes that he gets the hint and finally stops sending all those silly little messages.

She’s “seen” all his instant messages but never bothered replying any of them.

So, this girl, she is a “Seenderella”.

It’s a clever twist on Cinderella.

Clever and funny.

Well, to me anyway 😀
I am easily amused 😀

If you only saw “Seenderella” on the T-shirt, you might be going “Huh?”

But with the Chinese characters right there next to it, if you know how to read Chinese, the twist becomes immediately obvious.

Grammy Member Reacts to Oliver Anthony’s I want to go home

Hitting too close to home.

Final Report

In January 1969, the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency released Volume 1 of its “Final Report” on a field test involving the “Demonstrated Destruction of Nuclear Weapons.” The field test’s purpose, the publication’s abstract states, was to “develop and test inspection procedures to monitor the demonstrated destruction of nuclear weapons.” In addition, a goal of the test was to determine the extent to which the “proposed method of demonstrating destruction” would expose classified weapon information. The test included 40 actual nukes and 32 fake weapons.

As a result of the test, it was concluded that the proposed destruction techniques could, indeed, reveal classified information about the weapons’ design. However, by masking some of the weapons’ features and limiting inspectors’ visual examinations of the weapons, such disclosures could be prevented.

The inspectors’ poor ability to distinguish between bona fide and fake nukes might also conceal classified information, as could “evasion schemes,” suggesting that less U-235 was being used than was actually the case. The field tests suggested that, overall, the inspection procedures were reasonably secure but resulted in several recommendations for the conduct of such inspections.

Breaking Bad 2 – Official Trailer

This looks like its gonna be… confusing.

Japan has started to release the contaminated nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima disaster into the Pacific ocean. Would you stop consuming fish and seafood caught in the areas surrounding Japan, Alaska, the Pacific Ocean, Korea, and China?

I would definitely recommend you stop consuming any type of seafood imported from Japan, and be cautious towards seafood from Alaska, the Canadian west, South Korea, the Pacific islands, and eastern China.

Two reasons:

  1. The United States has been buying less Japanese seafood
    “Listen to a man’s words but observe his deeds”, as the Chinese idiom goes. While the US has shown public support at the government level for Japan’s discharge of radioactive wastewater[1] , in the first six months of 2023 alone, they have actually drastically reduced the amount of surimi (fish paste), scallops and sake imported from Japan[2], amounting to up to 8.3 billion Yen. This was before Japan officially admitted they were releasing the wastewater by the way.

    It would be interesting to see whether the Americans, post 24 Aug, would put their money where their mouth is, and start importing more Japanese aquacultural and agricultural products than ever before, perhaps as a show of solidarity with fellow neoliberal democracies.

    The more likely scenario, however, is that the US would cite concerns with radiation pollution but ban Chinese seafood instead. Feel free to check back in a few months.
  2. Even the Japanese themselves won’t eat their own seafood
    The release of the tainted radioactive water began only a couple of days ago, but already there are reports all over Japan that local consumers are steering clear of not just Fukushima seafood, but all kinds of local seafood [3]. Even people in Japan know better than to trust their government and Tokyo Electric – a company so ruthless and dishonest [4], it turned an INES level 3 incident into a level 7, same level as Chernobyl, and is now solely in charge of monitoring its own wastewater discharge.

    Imagine that, a nuclear power company that caused the disaster to begin with, is now put wholly in charge of the discharge operation, and every statistic the company reports is treated as gospel truth by the local government. We have truly reached peak cyberpunk, ladies and gentlemen.

    Moreover, the Japanese fishing industry has been protesting the government’s decision to release the tainted water for years [5]. Such an irresponsible move, as they have rightly predicted, would effectively destroy the prestigious brand and reputation of Japanese seafood, and is likely to affect other Japanese products such as agricultural products in the near future.

Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home Fiddle player REACTS WITH FIDDLE!!

What do real WW2 Nazis think about Holocaust deniers?

Oskar Groning was what nobody wants to be, a guard at Auschwitz. His primary job was sorting and valuables new arrivals turned over. A big source of income for the Third Reich was the valuables prisoners handed over.

When the war ended Oskar wasn’t brought up on charges. He was captured before the war ended, did some time in a British POW camp, and when the war ended he went home to his wife.

Upon seeing his wife again she asked about his experiences and he said “Girl, do both of us a favour: don’t ask” and she left it there. One day a while later someone made an offhand joke that Oskar could actually be a killer given his time at Auschwitz. He banged on the table and demanded that nobody ever mention Auschwitz again or he would leave.

Oskar wanted to put what he had done behind him. He was a devout Nazi, an Auschwitz camp guard no less, and he wanted this to remain a secret.

Oskar got a job at a glass factory and worked his way up into a management role. He worked there for decades and lived a very normal life. Oskar collected stamps and was even a judge.


In 1985 Oskar met a Holocaust denier and was given a pamphlet on Holocaust denial. Shocked that such a thing exists, Oskar came forward to dispute it. He made multiple statements and gave a full account of what he had seen.

I saw everything. The gas chambers, the cremations, the selection process. One and a half million Jews were murdered in Auschwitz. I was there.

I would like you to believe me. I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I would like you to believe that these atrocities happened, because I was there

(letters/calls) From people who tried to prove that what I had seen with my own eyes, what I had experienced in Auschwitz was a big, big mistake, a big hallucination on my part because it hadn’t happened.”

Now Oskar was put on trial for this and found guilty. It mattered little as he died a few years later at the age of 93.

But this shows you what Nazis think about Holocaust deniers- they think deniers are idiots.

What screams “I’m upper class”?

I’m a school bus driver. I drove students in a VERY nice school district. If you were looking for kids to be the illustration of white privilege, these were the ones. (These were kids who got hoverboards from the tooth fairy.) Every single morning and afternoon, these kids, with much more expensive clothes than I have, would thank me for driving them. When parents would meet the kids at the bus, they would tell the kids “make sure you say thank you.” These people weren’t upper class simply from money, but from having habits and attitudes to make them better people in life. Behavior problems were rare.

PEPE ESCOBAR AND MICHAEL HUDSON JOIN ON BRICS PLUS SIX, UKRAINE, AND THE MULTIPOLAR WORLD ECONOMY!

2023 08 26 08 57
2023 08 26 08 57

How can intelligence help?

As Flaviane Carvalho was finishing her shift, a family of four was sitting in her section.

She immediately noticed that something was “off” about their behavior.

main qimg 83a416535a93b8eeb261c759f3ec420a lq
main qimg 83a416535a93b8eeb261c759f3ec420a lq

As the mother of a teenager, Flaviane’s eyes were drawn to the 11-year-old boy who was sitting hunched over at the table.

His eyes were downcast and his family wouldn’t let him eat or drink.

main qimg 5cc45c70524815b3eb955dea70aceec4 pjlq
main qimg 5cc45c70524815b3eb955dea70aceec4 pjlq

Flaviane asked if everything was okay with the food and they said that the child would eat at home.

Warning signs ringing in her head, Flaviane took a closer look.

Under the boy’s hood, hat and face mask, there were deep bruises, cuts and scratches.

Thinking quickly, Flaviane wrote a simple note and held it behind the child’s parents so they couldn’t see.

main qimg 77db2cd715b2f37800bcf3d4af92e185 lq
main qimg 77db2cd715b2f37800bcf3d4af92e185 lq

At first, the boy just nodded, but Flaviane quickly added another message: “Need help?”

A small nod told her all she needed to know.

“I will never forget the feeling I had when I saw that boy. I just knew something wasn’t right!

He was scared and so was I.”

Flaviane told her boss what was going on and then called 911.

When the police arrived, they told Flaviane that she probably saved at least one life that night.

“This could have been a homicide situation if she hadn’t intervened,” said Orlando, Orlando Rolon Police Chief .

“The lesson here for all of us is to recognize when we see something that isn’t right to act on it…. It saved a child’s life. ”

It turns out that the boy was being horribly abused at home by his stepfather, Timothy Wilson II.

He was covered in bruises from head to toe and was about 10 pounds underweight because he was often deprived of food as punishment.

His parents were arrested and charged with multiple counts of aggravated child abuse and child neglect.

Steak and eggs to calm the soul

Let’s continue on some Geo-political stuff. We are in the middle of a global “turning” which is centered in the United States.

I am optimistic, though the entire world is spinning, and spinning.

When things seem to be really hard, and my emotions are crushed, I calm myself by remembering two things…

[1] A very bleak and bad time that I went though.

Followed by…

[2] A wonderful and happy time that I experienced right after it.

The world operates in cycles, so please do not get too caught up in all the many, many things going on. It’s like scenery out the window. Just watch it go by.

And spend some time relaxing with friends and family.

One thing that I like to do when I am stressed is watch cat videos.

Another thing is go on Pinterest and look at “food porn”.

FUN FACT: when I had pictures of food on my desktop, I was a much more relaxed person. However, for some reason, I seemed to start taking on a lot of weight. Who’d figure, eh?

Steak N Eggs
Steak N Eggs
Steak N Eggs 4
Steak N Eggs 4
Steak N Eggs 2
Steak N Eggs 2

Is Xi Jinping a fascist?

No, he is Chinese.

Have you heard of the country named China. He comes from there.

There are a few other people who also come from China.

They eat something called food. They usually cook it over a flame so that it is warm when they eat it.

Anti-social irritations

2023 08 21 11 54
2023 08 21 11 54

What’s the best revenge you’ve gotten after being fired or let go from a job?

Moving on and getting a much better job where my passion, skills, ethics, knowledge, fortitude, and integrity are appreciated.

My first job as a chief of police sent me to NE Colorado to a police department that had been neglected by their previous chief for nearly two years. Chief’s wife got a job in WY and Chief couldn’t stand being apart from her. He decided to live in his RV in one of the city parks for three nights a week. He would come to town…work 40ish hours as quickly as he could in three or maybe four days…and leave to go back to WY to be with wifey. Big issue is that he’d rarely answer phone calls from his employees and they didn’t get the help they needed. EVENTUALLY, the city council got tired of hearing the noise and let the chief go.

I was lucky enough to be hired. I was crazy enough to want to go into the chief business and thus, took a job at the first place crazy/wise enough to hire me. I went from nearly $90k a year to $55k a year for the opportunity to start my administrative career.

Longest story told short, there had always been conversations about “what if council tells you to fire someone?” It wasn’t hypothetical… it had happened before. My answer was, “If there’s a reason to fire someone, they will be given due process and they will be fired at the end of due process.”

One of my cops’ wife started a stir. Sadly my cop didn’t do the right thing by his career. This resulted in an internal affairs case where the writing of “employment ends” was in large letters on the wall.

Council demanded I fire “right now.”

I couldn’t. Due process was required.

Tried to explain the cost of wrongful termination suits etc. They didn’t get it.

I was agenda item #2 at the very next city council meeting. After hours of executive session, the board came out and voted 5–1–1 to terminate my employment.

They had the interim chief fire the guy the very next morning.

That guy did not sue the department…I’ll never know why. Sadly, I would have been a plaintiff witness instead of a defense witness and would have had to tell the truth about the lack of due process. I can see a check with four or five zeros before the decimal point.

The interim chief lasted a while. But guess what. He decided that tending to his cattle and going to his kids’ sporting events were MORE important that serving his community and guiding/coaching his police officers. He was absent while still in town for 18months…not showing up on urgent calls, not taking calls from his police officers when they needed guidance, not… not…. Shades of the guy I replaced. It took council 18months of this before they separated his employment.

Meanwhile, 4 months after being let go by that council, I was hired to serve in NW Colorado.

Here, my focus on community service, equal protection under the law, fair play, integrity, delivering more than necessary in MOST aspects of my job… being involved in the community and actually caring for people is appreciated.

I make more here than I could have EVER made there and I come home every day knowing that my work was appreciated and understood.

That, my friends, is SWEET revenge.

And, it pays every day!

Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond Reaction | She’s Crying From The Pain

2023 08 20 17 46
2023 08 20 17 46

Blue Cheese Stuffed Steaks

73657A97 F21F 427A A925 C0CF6FFFE71F
73657A97 F21F 427A A925 C0CF6FFFE71F

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 4 beef tenderloin steaks
  • 2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened
  • 4 teaspoons crumbled blue cheese
  • 4 teaspoons plain low fat yogurt
  • 2 teaspoons minced onion
  • Dash of white pepper
  • 1 large clove garlic, halved
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
  • 2 teaspoons chopped parsley

Instructions

  1. Combine cream cheese, blue cheese, yogurt, onion and pepper; reserve.
  2. Rub each side of beef steaks with garlic.
  3. Place steaks on rack in broiler pan so surface of meat is 2 to 3 inches from heat. Broil for 5 to 6 minutes.
  4. Season with 1/4 teaspoon salt.
  5. Turn and broil for 3 to 4 minutes.
  6. Season with remaining salt.
  7. Top each steak with an equal amount of reserved cheese mixture.
  8. Broil for an additional 1 to 2 minutes.
  9. Garnish with parsley.

Anti-social irritations

2023 08 21 11 53
2023 08 21 11 53

Why doesn’t the trickle down theory work?

Because it is based on the false assumption that rich people would automatically create more and better jobs if they are just given more money. If there is no profit to be made with creating more or better jobs and you give the rich more money, they will simply pocket it. That’s what has been happening for half a century now.

What is your biggest cultural shock from visiting America?

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During one of the school years, a classmate became pregnant. The weekend before the final exam, she “popped.”

(The way that I got a text saying Alison* popped to convey that she conveyed her child was in itself a shock however that is unimportant)

Clearly, she was in the emergency clinic and couldn’t go to the tests. She decided, however, that it would be prudent to leave her newborn in the hospital for a few hours so that she could attend the university and take the wheelchair test.

Our professor was clearly concerned by her plans. As a result, he called her, wished her well, talked to her, and persuaded her that she would be able to take the exam “anytime” she was ready. Her progress throughout the semester would not be impeded by her absence.

I must admit that this surprised me. For a student, that much freedom, respect, and flexibility? This was so foreign to me.

Because the principal would not allow it any other way, my friend in India, who lost her father on the morning of the midterm exam, was compelled to arrive at school covered in tears.

Concentrating on in the US was certainly a much needed refresher. A beneficial encounter!

Who was the most ignorant ruler?

Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769-1849).

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main qimg 1a99c12fdfed1345705a4abac8d77408 lq

Bloodthirsty like many others, he proposed something that no one had dared to imagine: dismantle the pyramids of Cheops, Kefren, Menkaure.

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It was 1830 and he came up with this brilliant idea to reuse that already pre-cut material in other construction operations. Luckily, someone in his right mind opposed this massacre.

The chief engineer, in an attempt to save the pyramids, submitted false cost reports , managing to prevent their demolition.

BLACK LIBERAL REACTS TO Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond & Virginia REACTION

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2023 08 20 17 51

If you found yourself earning $104 per month, what would you do over the next ten years to become a millionaire?

Assuming I didn’t have the knowledge to run a business, or any high-paying job skills, I’d do the following:

  1. Quit whatever part time meant-for-a-high-school-student job you’re doing where you’re only making $104 a month and get a real full-time job earning at least minimum wage.
  2. Put at least $1,000 per month aside from your income to invest in growth stock mutual funds earning ~8% annually, and only live on the rest. If that means getting a roommate or three, so be it.
  3. In ten years, the value of the invested dollars will be be worth about $183k.
  4. Buy a house for cash in a low tax state. If I liked my roomies, maybe I invite them to start paying me rent instead, maybe not. Either way, no more house payment.
  5. Continue to invest, adding the portion that used to go toward the house payment. By this point, you should have advanced enough in your career path to be able to put more than $1,000 per month aside, and if you’ve kept your expenses low, you should be able to invest $2,000 per month.
  6. That $2,000 per month invested over the next 20 years will be $1.18 million.

If you started with step one at age 20, you’d have a paid off house by 31 and be a millionaire by 50, never doing anything but working at your regular job. At that point, you could retire early and start taking the annual return on your investments as a $7,333 monthly payout for the rest of your life – which is plenty when you have no house payment. And when you die, your $1.1 million will still be there for your kids.

Calm down time…

Ultimate Steak 211
Ultimate Steak 211
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Ultimate Steak 207
Ultimate Steak 206
Ultimate Steak 206
Ultimate Steak 200
Ultimate Steak 200

Do cruise ships carry guns in the case of pirates?

Pirates are a serious threat to the safety of cruise ships and their passengers, especially in some regions of the world, such as the Gulf of Aden, the Somali Coast, and the Strait of Malacca. Pirates often use small boats, guns, rockets, and grenades to attack and hijack ships, either to rob them or to hold them for ransom. According to the International Maritime Bureau, there were 195 incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships worldwide in 2020, with 135 crew members kidnapped.

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2023 08 21 12 06

Cruise ships are aware of this danger and have taken various steps to prevent and deter pirate attacks. One of these steps is to carry guns on board, but not in the way you might think. Cruise ships do not have their own guns or armed guards, as this would violate the laws and regulations of many countries they visit. Instead, they hire private security contractors who are licensed and trained to use firearms and other weapons.

These contractors are usually former military or law enforcement personnel who have experience in dealing with pirates and other threats. They board the cruise ship before it enters a high-risk area and disembark after it leaves. They also follow strict rules of engagement and only use lethal force as a last resort.

Another step that cruise ships take is to install non-lethal anti-piracy devices, such as water cannons, electric fences, razor wires, nets, slippery foam, foul-smelling liquid, long-range acoustic devices, and anti-piracy lasers. These devices are designed to create physical or psychological barriers that make it difficult or unpleasant for pirates to approach or board the ship. They can also alert the crew and passengers of an impending attack and give them time to take evasive actions or seek shelter.

A third step that cruise ships take is to cooperate with international naval forces that patrol the pirate-infested waters. These forces include NATO, the European Union, the United States, China, India, Japan, Russia, and others. They provide escort services, surveillance, intelligence, communication, and assistance to cruise ships and other vessels that are under threat or attack by pirates. They also conduct anti-piracy operations to capture or deter pirates and disrupt their networks. Cruise ships can contact these forces through radio or satellite phones if they need help or guidance.

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2023 08 21 12 10

These are some of the main ways that cruise ships carry guns and other weapons to fight pirates. It is important to note that pirate attacks on cruise ships are very rare and unlikely to happen. Cruise lines have prepared for many challenging scenarios and have implemented various safety protocols and procedures to ensure the security and well-being of their guests and crew members. They also monitor the situation closely and avoid sailing through known hotspots or during peak seasons of pirate activity. You can rest assured that your cruise vacation will be safe and enjoyable.

WARRP Reacts to Oliver Anthony…Rich Men North of Richmond

2023 08 20 17 54
2023 08 20 17 54

Have you ever seen a pickpocket in action? What did you do?

Yes. I have. We went on a school trip to Barcelona for the week when I was around 15 years old. Whilst in an art gallery there, I had had my purse stolen from out of my handbag and didn’t even notice until I needed to go in my bag in the bathroom. Luckily, I had heeded my fathers warning and only taken out my daily amount of money with me. I reported it to the security staff and the found my actual purse, empty and dumped in one of the gallery rooms.

Whilst walking back to our hostel with my friends, we witnessed some smaller, older women in headscarves and children bustling into people and then the child would reach into a pocket/bag and take what they wanted. We couldn’t stop them but managed to catch up to the people to inform them they had been robbed.

We didn’t want it to happen to us again, so, in our wonderfully weird teenage brains, we hatched a plan! We stole (I know!!) one of the glow in the dark emergency exit signs from the wall in the hostel and put it in a handbag! We put all our purses underneath (at the bottom of the bag) and the sign was on the top to form a barrier. And it worked! Whilst out a few days later, we were in a huge crowd of people when my friend Emma, who was carrying the bag at the time, heard someone make a noise behind her. There was a 10/12 year old child looking a bit flummoxed. She couldn’t get her hand in to steal our things. This made the older women of the group really mad and they started shouting at us (in Spanish so I have no idea what she was saying – probably something about how unfair it was that they couldn’t rob us!). We laughed and walked off, leaving them all arguing amongst themselves.

Anti-social irritations

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2023 08 21 11 55

What is the most outrageous “fee” you’ve ever been charged?

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Last month I was medevac’d from my local hospital on the Big Island of Hawaii to Straub Hospital Critical Care Burn Unit, which is on the island of Oahu.

This is the actual bill I received in an email before I was discharged.

There are two flights listed. Why, you ask? Because five minutes into the first flight, the pilot told the two nurses caring for me, that there was something wrong with the plane, “it didn’t feel right.”

I am being charged $38k for a flight on a plane that wasn’t in top shape?

Bear in mind that in December 2022 a medical flight crashed into the Pacific Ocean on its way from Maui to Oahu killing all four souls on board.

When the crew told me that we needed to return to the airport, I immediately asked for a life vest.

As the plane began to turn back to the airport, it started making loud groaning noises and metal scraping against metal sounds.

Thankfully we made it safely to Hilo International Airport. I am grateful for the pilot’s skill in landing and for noticing whatever it was that was wrong with the plane.

Ohhh… that life jacket I asked for? I never got it. Because the crew could not find any. I’m not saying there were none aboard the plane. I’m saying they could not find a single life vest.

I have only been home a few days now, but you can be assured I am contesting the cost of my first flight. Why should I have to pay for a plane that wasn’t sound enough in the first place.

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main qimg 5612c8c452b1e400582418b9c6d43367

Here’s a picture of the first plane and pilot before I was boarded on to it.

There was a two hour wait on the tarmac for a new plane and crew to take me. Here’s a snap of how crowded and dark the inside of a life flight plane is. However that’s no excuse for not being able to locate a life jacket.

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main qimg 58f12c36edfad42b09d9c8a3aa7c1248

PIC ANGRY RANT To Oliver Anthony | Rich Men North Of Richmond | NPR #354

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2023 08 20 17 56

What do I tell a girl when she says “tell me something interesting”?

Whenever you see an Old English word or name with an AE ligature in it, the ae is pronounced like the A in cat.

Whenever you see some fake archaic sign like “Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe”, the first word is actually “the.” Old English had a letter called “thorn” [þ] which typesetters sometimes represented with a Y, often with a crossed stem. At the time, every literate person knew to pronounce that Y as TH. But as TH took the place of the thorn character, people forgot that the sound used to be represented by a modified Y, and started pronouncing it like a regular letter Y.

Did you know that the Appalachian Mountains are way older than the Atlantic Ocean?

If she does not find these facts remotely interesting, then I know she’s not going to enjoy my company or conversation for long.

Bushmills Flamed Steak

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fe3354ecd1c0da717b45105d4420acaf

Ingredients

  • 1 (1 1/2 pound) boneless sirloin strip steak, 3/4-inch thick
  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 2 cups sliced freresh mushrooms
  • 1/2 cup thinly sliced onions
  • 1/4 cup Old Bushmills Irish Whiskey
  • 3/4 cup cream
  • 2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon tarragon
  • 1/8 teaspoon granulated sugar
  • Salt and pepper
  • Parsley, to garnish

Instructions

  1. Heat skillet very hot.
  2. Melt butter until golden and add steak. Sear on both sides and cook to your taste.
  3. Remove steak to heated platter.
  4. Quickly sauté onions and mushrooms in pan drippings.
  5. Put steak back into skillet and drizzle with 1/4 cup Old Bushmills Irish Whiskey and flame.
  6. Remove steak only back to platter.
  7. Reduce heat to medium and sprinkle sugar, flour and tarragon on mushrooms and onions. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute.
  8. Stir in cream and cook until reduced by half.
  9. Season to taste.
  10. Pour over steak and garnish with parsley.

When has anyone received a longer sentence for a crime they committed while in prison?

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main qimg 2bc9ac63ba961587dc025f26aca8ddf8

It is. If the prison’s administration didn’t know their relation when they assigned them to be roomies, they should’ve known later when the brother claimed he had informed them and requested for a different cell.

2021. Washington State Prison. Shayne Goldsby, then 26, was serving time in prison.

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main qimg 1dcd65af2fade023256d0c6d7ae1d0a6

His cellmate, 70-year-old Robert Munger, was sentenced to 43 years in prison for child molestation and possession of child pornography. Odds are, this garbage would’ve died in prison anyway.

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main qimg 9281fc85cf03b00213d95f8b91c10132

I can’t find out how long Goldsby’s term was, but his crime was stabbing someone, stealing a police car and injuring a state trooper.

He killed Munger. One of Munger’s victim’s was apparently his sister.

Goldsby said he had no intention of killing Munger, and would rather see him rot in prison. He also said Munger tortured him with details of how he molested his sister, who was a minor.

That’s why he snapped.

He hit Munger in the face multiple times, stomped on his face, and kicked him. This happened in a communal area of the prison, year 2020.

Munger died three days after the attack.

A year later, Goldsby was sentenced to almost 25 years after pleading guilty to murder.

If Goldsby’s claims are true, why did the old fart keep provoking him?

Perhaps he was sadistic and got off on emotionally torturing him, or perhaps he didn’t want to live the rest of his miserable life in jail and wanted a quick exit, who knows?

Why did the prison ignore his request?

I don’t understand this. They claimed they didn’t know of Goldsby’s connection to Munger’s victim as Goldsby and his sister used different last names.

I believe they didn’t mention anything on his request to be transferred. Maybe it was genuine incompetency.

Goldsby claimed it was done intentionally; corrections officers had set him up for injuring a police officer and making the police look stupid during his wild car chase.

He said, “This stuff doesn’t happen. You’re talking the same institution, the same unit, the same pod in the same cell as this dude. That’s like hitting the jackpot in the casino seven times.”

He gave Munger what he deserved, but was it worth it?

Footnotes

Man sentenced to 25 years for murdering sister’s rapist in prison

Page on washingtonpost.com

What is the difference between the US debt bomb and the China debt bomb?

The biggest difference?

An exploding U.S. debt bomb affects disastrously all the countries of the world.

Take the 2008 global financial meltdown. What caused this were predatory mortgage lending, unregulated markets, a massive amount of consumer debt, the creation of “toxic” assets and the collapse of home prices. All exclusively by the U.S. And the rest of the world suffered for these U.S. excesses.

This 2i008 meltdown was the foretaste of a 1,000-year storm that is now pouring down every 5 years because of the unrestrained U.S. debt flooding the global financial market and exporting U.S. inflation overseas to everyone. Expect this to be cyclical and as predictable as trump farting a lie every 5 seconds.

On the other hand, China’s debt bomb is domestically contained.

China’s Evergrande Group — once the country’s second-largest property developer — filed for bankruptcy in New York last week. Others followed – including equally major developers like Kasia, Fantasia and the Shimao Group.

All these were “fiscally precipitated”, coming off Beijing’s crack down on excessive borrowing by developers in an attempt to rein in soaring housing prices. China’s banking system is owned and controlled by the CCP and they can micro-target specific companies in the greater attempt at preventing an uncontrolled explosion of the property market’s bubble that could easily implode the wider economy for which China’s real estate sector accounts for 25.4% of the country’s GDP.

And nary a repercussion overseas in the international financial market.

The Male Loneliness Epidemic

This is another puzzle piece of the collapse of Western society.

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2023 08 21 11 35

Dollar ain’t shit and its taxed to no end

Historical times…

Today, while driving, I saw an accident on the road.

A “garbage granny” (one of those old ladies that are in their 90s or so that collect garbage for coins) was “hit” by a truck in the middle of a busy intersection. Now, you all must know that these folk have a reputation of driving and waking in busy highways with the intention of getting hit, and then being awarded free medical care, and financial reimbursement.

Now, this particular granny looked fine. But she just sat there in the road next to her pile of garbage with this expression… “I’m waiting. Come get me and give me my money”.

Meaning; “Everyone knows what is going on, and why I meander in the middle of six lanes of traffic. This driver was the fool that hit me. He will now fund my life, and there isn’t a damn thing anyone can do about it.”

Ah. I shit you not.

China.

Love it, or hate it. But it is 100% unique, that’s fer sure.

The mother left her 1-year-old child in an abandoned house, but after 10 years she returns there and discovers something that makes her cry

Residents of the Russian city of Yaroslavl will never forget an incident that took place more than 10 years ago.

However, it started when a neighbor heard a baby, crying in a nearby house. He didn’t think much about it and continued with the things he had to do that day. But the next day, the baby kept crying.

No neighbor didn’t see anyone in the house where the crying came from, and the lights were never on, not even in the evening.

But at that point, the neighbors started to worry and called the police.

They came and when they entered the house, it was completely empty inside. Those who had lived there had taken everything and disappeared. The only thing they had left behind was their own child!

The one-year-old girl was found on the dirty floor and it was clear she had been there for several days.

An investigation showed that the girl’s name was Liza Verbitskaya, and her parents seemed to have entered the ground, no one could find them.

Liza was taken to hospital, where she recovered in a few days. In the same hospital was a woman, Inna Nika, who was taking care of her sick son, her mother was sitting at his head day and night, but one day she heard a scream from the next room and went to see what it was all about.

She saw Liza and her motherly instincts asked her to protect and take care of her. From that day on, Inna visited Liza daily and brought her clothes, toys, food.

One day, Inna visited the little one and noticed that she was no longer in her hospital room, then found out that she had been taken to an orphanage. She also went to the orphanage to see her, but then it was clear to her that she had to adopt her!

When the adoption documents were completed, Liza was two years old and still had problems with chewing and was traumatized, she could not stand the loud noises. While growing up, Liza had darker skin than her relatives, but now she is beautiful. She became a model and, thanks to her story and modeling career, she became known throughout Russia. People who laughed at the way she looked bit her tongue when they saw her win, as a teenager, more talent contests.

Now that she has become famous, her biological mother tried to contact her but was not allowed. Liza received the woman’s phone number, but she’s still wondering if she wants to meet the one who left her. Our respect goes to Inna, an adoptive mother who turned out to be the hero in the life of this abandoned child, but with such a special destiny!

Does BRICS have any concrete actions or results? Or is it just talk?

Well seeing that they’ve built their own bank, for transactions without using the dollar, using concrete, bricks, steel and glass, that looks fairly concrete to me,

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main qimg 5f48a3622daf54d74eacbba6e40f6f08

It’s certainly big enough for every member to have a representative office in the building, you can see even the building next door is connected. So it’s very big,certainly plenty of concrete,

First Time Reaction to Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home

In this video, TNT reacts to Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home

What will eventually happen in California when the middle class, their jobs, and even some of the “Hollywood elite” leave the state?

What is actually happening in California is actually an interesting case study.

First, the state of California is enormous – close to 40 million people. Most of them are pretty urban, concentrated around the coastal cities (Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego), with a growing number of large and mid-sized suburban and exurban areas (especially spreading east and north of Los Angeles).

For the first time in its history as a state, California lost a US House seat in the 2020 census, and has actually seen a net-net decline in its population. Many of those leaving are middle class people who, despite the plentiful jobs here, find the cost of living too daunting. I live in San Francisco, where the median price of a house recently got close to two million dollars. And for that money, you are not going to get one of the picturesque Victorian homes overlooking Alamo Square. You are going to get (most likely) a 1300–1500 square foot house that was pretty cheaply constructed in the 1940s or 1950s with three small bedrooms and a bathroom, maybe a half bath.

If you have kids, then you are most likely going to have to choose between putting them in a poor to terrible public school or shelling our more for private school (we were lucky – our son scored high enough on the tests to be admitted to Lowell High School, a ‘magnet’ school which is among the best in the state).

It’s a city where a family of four with an annual income of $150,000 qualifies for low income housing. If they can get on the list.

People are not leaving California because of the liberal politics (we could of course argue the role that those politics play in the current situation) or the taxes. They are leaving because the cost to live here – including the ambient and rising crime – is not worth it.

Some (the largest share) are actually leaving the cities for other parts of California – Sacramento, the central valley, the deserts east of LA – where a family that is solidly middle class can still (sort of) afford a traditional, middle class life. Still more are going to Oregon or Washington or Texas. Recently, many more have moved to Florida, to the glee of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

(NB: One of the answers incredibly remarks that Californians are not going to move to “Cleveland or St Louis or other MAGA strongholds,” which of course is true. The comment is laughably wrong because, of course, few Californians are moving to the midwest, because they are moving to places that economically are growing; they are not moving due to politics. And Cleveland and Saint Louis are not “MAGA strongholds.”)

They are not taking “their jobs” with them, mind you. They are taking their tax dollars and the electoral power.

But here is the hidden truth:

this is not really “new.” In fact, for close to 30 years, net domestic migration in the state has been negative.

Net-net, there are more than a million more people who have left California for other states than the other way round. Most are going (as stated) to Texas or Arizona. The outflow of middle income Californians (and Californians with families) has been hidden for two decades by waves of foreign immigration. So despite the gap of (in some years) more than 100,000 people, the state continued to grow.

Due to COVID and other factors (the growing economies of Asia, for example), this is no longer the case.

Without foreign immigration, California is going to see a significant drop in population.

What does it all mean?

First, if trends continue, what we are going to see is growth in the top (many people moving to California are doing so chasing high-end jobs, like AI engineers or medical researchers) and at the bottom (a large number are also low and unskilled workers coming to take entry-level jobs). That is going to make California’s already terribly skewed wealth inequality even worse. There will be more wealthy enclaves that can afford private security, private schools, privately funded infrastructure. There will also be more crowded sub-standard housing, crowded, poorly-performing schools, and deteriorating public infrastructure.

It’s not really too much of an exaggeration to say that the economy in California more and more looks like a third-world country, with a few super wealthy people, a lot of poor people barely hanging on, and a small number of people in the middle who struggle to justify staying here.

With such wealth and capital inequalities, I strongly suspect that the social fabric here is going to fray. The wealthy, insulated from the problems of the poor, will carry on thinking that everything is fine. Crime – especially property crime like car break-ins and home robberies – will grow, but will not really affect the rich and powerful.

The “Hollywood elite” (and other super-wealthy) will be just fine.

The other truth is, life in California is very nice if you can afford it. The weather in the coastal cities is close to perfect. The geography – coastal mountains, beaches, redwood forests – is beautiful. The diversity of people gives us incredible choices in food and culture. The state is home to the UC system (the best public schools in the country) as well as Stanford and CalTech. The knowledge industry is driven out of Silicon Valley, and the entertainment capital of the world is in Southern California.

These facts are not going to change.

The Reign of the Swamp Monster

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2023 08 21 09 38

What are things you shouldn’t do in life?

Originally Answered: What are things you shouldn't do in life?
  1. Don’t abandon someone suddenly after giving them attention. It kills them.
  2. Don’t waste your time by stalking your ex on fb or checking people’s ‘last seen’ on WhatsApp. If they want to talk to you, they will. If they don’t, they won’t, even in a hundred years.
  3. Don’t compare yourself with anyone. You and the rest are so different, that when you realize it, a comparison won’t even be possible.
  4. Don’t ignore your body and health.
  5. Don’t miss out on important engagements – Birthdays, weddings, your child’s first performance, your dad’s retirement party, reunions – its these events that make the fondest memories.
  6. Don’t take things personally. Even if you know its personal, don’t take it personally. Then you win.
  7. Don’t be rude to your parents. Or siblings. When everyone else will run for cover, its your family that will stand with you as you drench in your storm.
  8. Don’t force someone to be in your life. Let them go, if they want to.
  9. Don’t find reasons to be unhappy. It doesn’t pay to be sad. It pays to be joyous.
  10. Don’t underestimate the power of people. Network.
  11. Don’t let anyone make you feel badly about yourself. Always know your good things and your flaws. Accept them. Correct them. Or don’t correct them. But don’t let anyone else capitalize on them.

Cheers!

What is one remarkable thing you’ve witnessed at a funeral?

My fiance suddenly stopped breathing, went into a coma and remained that way for 10 days; after numerous hospital tests we found out there was no blood flow to his brain. We removed his life support and donated his organs.

Since he was only 35 years old when he died, and a former DJ popular in the Chicago and Detroit areas, the funeral home was packed full of people for his wake. One of his childhood friends, we’ll call him “Jack,” was in need of a kidney transplant and VERY sick, and we were able to directly donate his kidney to Jack. Due to the organ donations, autopsy and other things that had to happen prior to the funeral, the wake was scheduled a week after my fiance passed away. During that week Jack received the transplant and was able to make it to the wake.

He stood in front of my fiance’s red casket and spoke of his health issues and how he had given up hope, believing he wouldn’t be around much longer. Now, my fiance had given him another chance at life and Jack would be able to watch his 4-year-old son grow up. Jack’s son was there too, and walked up to him and held his hand during the speech.

I was already an emotional wreck, but through my tears I glanced around long enough to see that there was not a single dry eye in the funeral home at that moment. Though I questioned how I would go on living without my best friend and my lover, Jack provided a ray of sunshine during the wake that day and reminded us all that my fiance would live on in all the people he helped save with his organs.

Awesome Beef Stroganoff

classic beef stroganoff 3051443 Final 5bacdeb4c9e77c0025142dc9
classic beef stroganoff 3051443 Final 5bacdeb4c9e77c0025142dc9

Ingredients

  • 6 cups uncooked egg noodles
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 pounds beef sirloin steak, cut into thin strips
  • 1 package onion or roasted garlic gravy mix for steak
  • 8 ounces fresh mushrooms, quartered
  • 1/4 cup tomato paste
  • 1 (10 ounce) can beef broth
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley (for garnish)

Instructions

  1. Cook noodles according to package directions-keep warm.
  2. In a large heavy bottom pot, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add meat and brown.
  3. Sprinkle gravy mix over meat.
  4. Add mushrooms; sauté for 5 minutes.
  5. Stir in tomato paste and broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, or until thickened, stirring occasionally.
  6. Remove from heat, and stir in sour cream.
  7. Top with parsley and serve over hot cooked noodles.

Why do people say you couldn’t live off one million dollars for the rest of your life?

Inflation.

I remember my grandfather telling me the story of buying his first home, and how stressful it was. He was working as a teacher making $2,500 per year, and was trying to figure out how to budget so he could afford to make the payments on the $5,500 house he just bought.

If he had managed to get his hands on $50,000 back then, he probably would have thought he was set for life — a mere 5% return would have matched his annual salary, and he would never have to work another day.

Obviously that plan wouldn’t have worked out — what he made in a year back then is less than most people make in a month today.

Right now, $1 million is about equivalent to what $50,000 was in his day, where a 5% return would put you right at the median income. And, just like in his day, that won’t be enough for someone in their early 20’s to make it to retirement age. In another 50–60 years, one million dollars will be the median household income. Minimum wage will be $200k a year, and it still won’t be enough to support a family.

The only way $1 million will be enough to retire on is if you don’t plan on living that long.

If you think that’s impossible, just remember the story about a how a teacher from Massachusetts once mortgaged a $5,500 house on a $2,500 annual salary — a house that today would fetch about $950,000.

AMERICAN RAPPER REACTS TO -Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond

2023 08 21 07 32
2023 08 21 07 32

Do people ever feel guilt or shame over their wealth compared to the poverty of others they see around them?

I will speak for myself: No.

By “see around them,” I’m literally talking about the people I see here in Chicago. I’m not talking about global poverty or people I don’t literally see with my own eyes.

Compared to the majority of people in my city (Chicago), my family is doing very well for ourselves. Yet there are entire zip codes in this city where practically everyone lives in poverty.

My wealth and their poverty are unrelated. I didn’t steal my wealth from them. I’m not the one failing them. Their political leaders—none of whom I’ve ever supported or voted for—have been failing them for generations now. The concentrated poverty in parts of Chicago is the completely predictable result of political policies enacted by politicians who get almost universal support from those same areas.

There’s been a huge increase in the number of homeless people, beggars, and refugees in the parts of Chicago I travel through on a regular basis. I am actually about to run my Sunday morning errands, and I already know which intersections will have which beggars. I’m not exaggerating when I say that literally every single major intersection (where two two-lane roads meet) has at least one beggar now. Some of one at all four stops at the intersection.

Again, my relative wealth and their poverty are unrelated. The system has failed them. I am not the system.

One intersection near me has a man who begs on the street, while his wife and child sit nearby on the sidewalk. According to his sign, he is a refugee from Guatemala. Assuming he got here via the normal refugee channels, his family has been failed by the governments of at least three countries (Guatemala, Mexico, the USA), two states (Texas and Illinois), and now one city (Chicago). I did not fail this man and his family. Several dozen politicians did. My wealth, or lack of it, would not have changed anything for this man.

I give food to the homeless sometimes. I donate to my church’s food pantry on a regular basis. I never give cash directly to the homeless.

I also have A LOT of money taken from me via taxes which, in theory, should be used to help those in need. The problem is, of course, that, unlike when I give food to the homeless directly, the taxes which are taken from me go through the hands of politicians on its way to help the needy. Shockingly, very little of it ends up helping the needy.

And a lot of the “help” the needy get from the government is designed in such a way as to create dependence on that help. I’m not saying that’s intentional. I’m not saying it’s not intentional, either.

I’m just saying that when I see this:

2023 08 21 09 31
2023 08 21 09 31

But I also see scenes like this increasing all around Chicago:

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And I think about how much the government takes from me in income, property, and sales taxes every year, I realize pretty quickly that I’m not the problem here. I should feel no shame for my lifestyle.

Taking all of my family’s wealth away wouldn’t help poorer people at all. In fact, it would likely make things worse for them, at least here in Chicago. Chicago needs all of the upper-middle class taxpayers it can get. The single worst thing that can happen to a city is for it to lose most of its wealthiest citizens.

Just ask the citizen of, say, Gary, Indiana, or Detroit how well that worked out for them, when anyone who could afford to leave town did so.

How do China and Singapore deal with squatters who illegally occupy a house that doesn’t belong to them? Do the police kick them out swiftly?

If the house was occupied illegally, the police will come and remove the occupants.

If the house rightfully belongs to a citizen and the citizen refuses to move, the City just builds the highway around the house.

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This house went viral last year. The highway was located in Zhuhai in Guangdong province. It seems the government had offered the owner 8 million RMB (around 1.4 million USD) to move. The owner refused. Rumor had it the owner thought the government would give him 10 million. But the moving cost has actually exceeded the cost of the (section of the) highway itself. So the designers revised the design to build the highway around this house.

It seems that the owner had eventually moved out of this house to a government-provided location. But the highway was already built.

My First time hearing Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond

2023 08 21 07 36
2023 08 21 07 36

Chinese mainland suspends mango imports from Taiwan

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The Chinese mainland has decided to suspend the entry of mangoes from Taiwan starting Monday, according to a mainland spokesperson.

In accordance with relevant laws, regulations and standards on the mainland, the decision by the General Administration of Customs was taken as a scientific and reasonable biosecurity precaution, said Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council on Monday.

The mainland had informed the Taiwan side of the decision, Zhu said, adding that Taiwan is urged to further improve its phytosanitary quarantine management system.

Since 2023, customs authorities on the mainland have detected Planococcus minor, a quarantine pest, in mangoes from Taiwan. This pest could pose a serious threat to agricultural production and ecological security on the mainland.

What is the most destructive handheld radiation source?

This guy.

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This is Cobalt-60, the most emissive radioactive isotope currently known. As far as I know, it’s also the only one with a label that says “Drop and Run.” It’s used to sterilize medical equipment and can quite easily sterilize you within just a minute or 2 if you held it in your hand.

How did Americans get so fat?

There is a stand-up sketch by Ricky Gervais, in which he overhears two morbidly obese American women sitting in a plane. One of them is eating a bucket of KFC chicken, and tells the other:

“This is the best chicken I had all day.”

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We just spent some time in the US, and on one of the last days, we grabbed a movie in a dine-in movie theatre in Las Vegas. (The Meg 2 — don’t ask.) When a waitress came to take our order, we asked for the smallest size of popcorn they had. She had a hard time understanding the question (“why order the smallest size ?”).

She kindly explained that they only had one size, and that was a bucket.

With the three of us, we managed to eat about a quarter of the bucket, but we saw other people finish an entire bucket on their own.

I think this is one of the main reasons of America’s obesity problem: Americans eat by the buckets. In many restaurants, the portions of the food are so grossly exaggerated that it is hardly a mystery why so many Americans are (morbidly) obese. Same for soda drinks and the like.

And besides that, American food is in general much less healthier than your average European or Asian food, due to less strict food regulations and the enormous amounts of added sugar in virtually everything.

Add to that the fact that Americans stopped walking altogether (so to speak), and that more and more, the obesity pandemic is embraced instead of fought. In the places I have lived in mainland Europe, I have never seen a morbidly obese person ride around in a trolley (such as in the picture), but you see them on a daily basis in the US.

Instead of actively losing some weight, such people simply step into a trolley because walking has become too hard. The woman in the image is twenty-three, by the way.

So there you have it: Buckets, Trolleys and Sugar.

The problem is BTS.

For the People! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond- Reaction

2023 08 21 07 41
2023 08 21 07 41

Rather than responding to all the smearings from the West, wouldn’t it be better for China to just quietly and steadfastly get on with what it has to do?

China hopes to do so, China is trying to do so, but it’s no longer an easy task for China to do so now.

There is an old Chinese saying, 树欲静而风不止, which means “the trees may prefer calm but the wind will not subside”, or “the trees long for peace but the wind will never cease”.

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Just like the picture I took in the Summer Palace in a windy day, if the wind is too strong, how could the tree stay calm? Just impossible.

The smear campaigns initiated by the US and followed by some other Westeren nations, are the wind, getting stronger recently as Joe Biden has indeed rallied them once again.

China is the tree. Its roots are still stable in the soil, its major branches are still steadfast, but it really can’t hold all its smaller branches and leaves still. And sometimes, it has to even sacrifice some of its smaller branches and leaves if the winds are way too strong and turn into storms.

But, as long as the roots and main branches are still healthy, strong and steadfast, new branches will sprout out next year!

What is the biggest problem caused by an inheritance or a will that you ever saw or heard about?

My grandma passed in 2022, my father had passed in 2020. In her will she had it to where my 2 brothers and I inherited my dad’s 3rd. We were also to be included in any decisions on her property. My 2 uncles thought since they were co executors that everything was now theirs and they didn’t have to say anything to us. They gave away and took a lot of her belongings before I found out. I went to a lawyer and told him what was going on. I then called my uncles and told them they HAD to include us. They said “well, our lawyer says we don’t have to.” I called their lawyer and told him what they said. He immediately went and called them and said they were wrong. My 1 uncle gave his stepchildren first dibs over us and any of the actual grandchildren. The stepchildren who wanted NOTHING to do with my grandma or our family got first dibs. Then they tried to auction off my grandma’s house and 200 acres without telling us. I found out and called lawyers, everyone knew I wanted the house and 10 acres. They were trying to sell it behind my back. Grandma did not have any debt. So they were just being stupid. In the end, they were granted to sell 190 acres. We bought the house. 114 years of family history in this house.
I have not heard an apology from any of them. Our trust in them was broken. At this time, they are not allowed at my house.

What is the most useful thing you know that most people do in the wrong way?

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A man in China has been using a club as a nutcracker for 25 years, until he realised what it was actually used for. A man living in the Shaanxi Province in China was given a gift by a friend and for 25 years he didn’t know what it was.

The mans favourite treat was Wallnuts and the gift was perfect for cracking open the shells. He figured his friend know off his love for nuts so gifted him a club to crack them open, and for 25 years he used the club thinking that’s what it was intended for.

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It wasn’t until he seen the nutcracker on a Government flyer identifying dangerous, prohibited explosives when he realised the club wasn’t in fact a nutcracker, but a Chinese type 67 hand grenade. The grenade which was a nicknamed the Potato masher, was invented by the German Army during World War 1.

The hand grenade had a explosive device at the top with a pulling string running through it to a cap at the bottom. Pulling the string lights the fuse before being thrown at the enemy, but in this case it was used as a nut cracker for a quarter of a century.

The Man Who Discovered a Lost Ancient City In His Basement

A man from Derinkuyu, in the Nevsehir province of Turkey was renovating his basement. Using only a sledgehammer, he broke through one of his walls; and felt cool air coming in from the other side. Inside he found a small room-sized cave. This area of Turkey has complex cave systems so he thought he accidentally stumbled into one. He didn’t. That first small room — was only the beginning.

Has a cop ever said something to you which was completely unexpected?

Wow, does this bring back memories…

I was 17 years old. I was driving drunk, with five other kids in my car. It was 1970. We had bought two cases of beer (illegally, of course) and it was pretty much all gone. It was about 1 AM.

We came to the main intersection in the small city nearest to where I lived. There wasn’t a single car in sight. Oddly, there was a cop in the intersection, presumably directing whatever traffic there was. Perhaps the stoplight was not working; I have no recollection.

I stopped at the light (working or not). At which point my friend Ralph, who was 15, leaned out the back seat window, yelled out “Fucking cop,” and threw an empty beer bottle at the policeman. It landed at his feet, where it smashed into pieces.

The policeman calmly walked over to our car, at which point Ralph started yelling “I didn’t do it,” which was rather obviously a lie. The policeman had me pull over. He told all of us to get out of the car. As he did this, one of the passengers, Denise, started explaining to him that she was from another planet. The cop ignored her. He told us to take all the beer bottles out of the car and place them on the hood of the car. When we ran out of room there, we put them on the roof. There were 46 empty bottles and one full one. Ralph asked if he could please drink the full one. The cop said no. Then he had us take them all to a nearby garbage can and dispose of them.

Then came the truly amazing part. He talked to us. For about five minutes. He explained that when he was our age, he also did stupid things. But he never drove drunk. He explained how dangerous that was. He did not tell us to swear we would never drive drunk. He simply told us that he was going to let us go. He did not even say how much trouble we could be in for underage drinking and drunk driving. He did not have to.

Finally he asked if there was anyone among us who was sober and had a driver’s license. My older brother did. He had us get back in the car, handed my brother the keys (which he had taken away when he first stopped us), and told my brother to take us home.

And that was all.

Even then, I realized the officer was an exceptional cop. He gave us a second chance when he could have ruined our lives. I never properly thanked him. So if, by some miracle, Officer Roger Strickland of the Freehold, New Jersey police force is still out there—thank you from the bottom of my heart. I think you would be proud of how my brother and I ended up (I have not seen any of the others in my car that night for over 50 years). All the best to one of the best.

Bacon-Wrapped Filet Steaks
Topped with Roasted Garlic Butter

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Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 12 large garlic cloves, peeled
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
  • Kosher salt
  • 3 1/2 teaspoons chopped chives
  • 1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
  • 4 (6 to 7 ounce) filet steaks, about 1 inch thick
  • 4 very thin slices of lean bacon
  • 6 inch wooden skewers or toothpicks, soaked in water for 10 minutes and patted dry

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
  2. Place peeled garlic and olive oil in 1-cup, ovenproof ramekin, soufflé dish or custard cup. Cover dish tightly with aluminum foil and place in oven. Roast on center rack until garlic is golden and very tender and soft when pierced with knife, about 30 minutes (start checking cloves after 20 minutes and then every 5 minutes until done).
  3. With slotted spoon, remove garlic from bowl and reserve oil. Place garlic, 1 1/2 teaspoons of the reserved oil, butter and 1/8 teaspoon salt in food processor or blender and process, pulsing machine on and off for 30 seconds or less until garlic is coarsely chopped and blended with butter and oil. Transfer garlic butter to small bowl and stir in 2 teaspoons of the chives. (Garlic butter can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature 30 minutes before ready to use.)
  4. When ready to cook steaks, oil a grill rack and prepare grill.
  5. In small bowl, stir together 1 teaspoon kosher salt, coarsely ground black pepper and thyme. Rub both sides of each filet with some of this seasoning. Then wrap each steak around its sides with 1 slice of bacon. Skewer bacon in place with wooden skewer or with 2 to 3 wooden picks.
  6. Grill steaks until lightly charred on the outside and until bacon is cooked, about 5 minutes per side for medium-rare.
  7. When done, remove steaks from fire and place on warm serving plate. Remove toothpicks.
  8. Top each steak with 1 generous pat of roasted garlic butter and sprinkle with some of remaining chives. Butter will start to melt and season the steaks.
  9. Serve immediately.

Why is China so uncivilized?

I am from India and recently visited China. In india we use to blame the population for all our problems. But China had no issues of it. Atleast not in its urban areas. The people there respected rules and have high value about their culture. They take care of their health and have a proper diet. I don’t know what you mean by uncivilized. But if there are uncivilized Chinese I am sure it’s because they are exposed to western culture and those who embraced west including Indians are certainly uncivilized.

OLIVER WHAT THE F**K!!!!! | First Time Reacting To Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond!

2023 08 21 07 45
2023 08 21 07 45

What bad experience had you saying “I will never buy from that company or use their service ever again”?

The company is called Toolup.

I put in an order for tools for work. The order was for myself and two coworkers. Hundreds of dollars worth of tools, including getting one of our newbies set up with good kit so he didn’t have to scrounge for tools like myself and the other senior tech.

Toolup split the order into two shipments, which is fine I guess. The first package arrive with one wire stripper and one screwdriver. For weeks the other shipment showed “in processing”. Finally I called asking where the hell my tools were. They had no idea. After several days of calls they figured out that six weeks prior the shipper had been unable to locate a fucking Air Force base and sent the order back. Toolup refunded the purchase, but made absolutely zero meaningful contact with me about it. I’d been deluged with promotional crap, but I double checked. The last contact I had about my order was “in processing”. This meant that I missed the purchase window and funding got pulled so I can’t reorder my tools for at least a year.

So in the end they literally tripled the amount of paperwork I had to do by forcing me to amend all my prior paperwork and also process the return credit, and I still don’t have my fucking tools because they utterly failed to do any sort of meaningful follow up communication.

Personally or professionally I’m never doing business with them again.

What is the most disturbing thing your ex did after you broke up with them?

My ex boyfriend and I dated for three years through college. He had been abusive, emotionally, physically and sexually. We had broken up many times. We finally broke up for the final time when he punched me and the RA had found out and told the college officials. It was his last year of college. I was brought into the deans office. It was up to me if he should be kicked out of college. This was a private college and in the early 90’s.

I told them not to kick him out of college. I knew if I had, he would have killed me. He graduated. One morning I woke up to find that someone had broken into my house, and my earrings that he had given to me were gone. Nothing else was touched. Then the phone calls started. Mind you he had supposedly left town to move back with his parents until he left for grad school. “Hey, I liked that flowery dress you were wearing last night.” Yes, I was wearing a flowery dress the night before. Or .”I can see you wherever you are at all times of the day.” Or “ I am sorry to hear about your cat.” Wait, what?? Only to find out my cat at my parents house was missing. And never found.

I started dating someone else. Then it was, “please tell ____ that I know all about him, and I am watching.”. We found out from friends that he would be coming to the area to fly out of LAX to go to grad school at Harvard. By this time the police had been notified of everything that had happened, and they told me that bc he hadn’t harmed me physically, there was nothing I could do, but it would be a good time to get out of town for the weekend. This is how I met my new boyfriends family. I was in hiding. They lived in Northern California.

We came back to school. The phone calls stopped and then the letters started. The anger, was now put into writing. How dare I hide away from him .He went out and bought a gun and he was looking for away to use it, etc..

I started to work as a nanny that fall. One time as I was getting the kids ready for school on a Monday, the kids went outside to wait so I could walk them to school, I had to get something for the baby inside. I came outside and as we were all walking to school the little girl who was in the 4th grade said, oh your friend says hi. I was like what friend, who knows I work here. I said oh, did this person have a name, no, he just said a friend. I immediately went into that place of panic. I kept my cool, and I asked what he looked like, and yes it was him, he had found me.

Not a lot happened to me after that. I did find out that he had gotten kicked out of grad school for raping someone, and he had been fired from a few jobs. Karma?

Oliver Anthony Rich Men North of Richmond Reaction Video

2023 08 23 16 55
2023 08 23 16 55

Could you share a story about a time when you felt like you were the dumbest person in a particular situation?

Not only one time, but every time all of my children are over for a family get together. I don’t consider myself dumb, I graduated high school with honors, I have worked hard all of my life so far, was taught to use common sense by my parents and married a wonderful, smart, and hard-working lady, and we have four children. As they grew up and progressed through school, they have each chosen their own path.

Our oldest son is an I.T. computer “nurd” and works from his home running the I.T. help line for a division of Sony helping any embedded I.T. techs solve problems they cannot solve themselves.

Our oldest daughter just received her Doctorate in Nuro-psychology from Yale University and is proving to be an innovator in the field with her front-line work to advance innovations in Alzheimer’s research.

The youngest Son is a 2018 honors graduate from The United States Military Academy at West Point, Captain, and Company Commander, in the U.S. Army, Working on his master’s degree in military history.

Any our youngest daughter just graduated with honors with a degree in teaching drama and starts her first teaching position next week.

All four are extremely intelligent and found vastly different careers, and when they are together the conversations are so far above my head I can only sit there and smile.

I smile because I look around and think to myself “How in the world did I get so lucky?” And then I realize “it is all thanks to my wife, and God.”

Why can’t India manufacture cheaper products as compared to the Chinese?

A few months ago I was in the Liaoning province in northeastern China. We met the CEO of a smart city there who was offering us rent-free premises for 3 years, a low interest loan [2%] and cheap electricity if we choose to build our robots there.

Chinese governments really believe that industrialization is crucial to mass employment and need to woo not just large companies but SMEs too.

In contrast, Indian general public attitude towards industrialization is often poisonous. The bureaucrats are too slow to move, the politicians often careless and the common public think “industrialists” make a lot of profits, who just needs to be taxed high.

It is far harder to start a factory in India and the interest rates are substantially high. Land prices near major cities are through the roof and the infrastructure abysmal. Thus, industrialists are not able to fully tap into India’s lower wages.

Indians often moan about the low rate of innovation in India. We moan that very few things are made in India. To really make in India, the society has to put industrialization at the highest priority. It cannot be seen as lower priority compared to agriculture and other sectors.

WHAT IN SOULFUL PAIN IS THIS?! (ADHD Reaction) | OLIVER ANTHONY – RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND

One of the best reactions videos ever.

2023 08 23 16 59
2023 08 23 16 59

I once had a cat named Scooby

I once had a cat named Scooby.

I loved him dearly, and he was a good cat. I will tell you that we had him for perhaps four years when he started having problems, and so we took him to the vet.

It turned out that he had Feline AIDS, and Feline FIV, and was very contagious. Our vet recommended that we put him down so as not to contaminate the rest of the cats in the neighborhood. So we resigned ourselves to keeping him in our home and isolated.

But over time, he started to behave aggressively and strangely. Like peeing over everything.

And he kept on breaking out of the house…

Eventually, we got him, and took him to the vet and “put him down”.

I was there, and from the moment the needle was inserted he knew what was going on; and he hated me for it. I could feel his spirit attacking me, clawing at me. Biting me, and hissing at me.

This went on for hours before it finally dissipated.

I hated it.

I hated everything from having to put him down, to the fact that he was sick, to the hate being directed towards me. It was a grim time.

Two days later, I had to fly out for a job interview.

While I was sitting on the flight, Scooby came to me (in spirit form, of course) and curled up in my lap. He forgave me. And was giving me love. He lay there in my lap for the three hour flight, and then disappeared.

I do miss that lanky old cat.

He was a good little guy.

Nothing lasts forever. I look forward to seeing him again “on the other side”.

Todays run…

China’s 6nm automotive-grade chip passes certification!

2023 08 19 17 06
2023 08 19 17 06
https://youtu.be/dLB7xvbhtfY

What is the coolest line a pilot has said to the passengers?

Flying back from Mallorca on Jet2, the pilot said on the intercom:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I have some good news and bad news. The good news is that we’re ready early and we’ve made it with plenty of time for our departure slot. The bad news is that unfortunately it seems the Spanish air traffic controllers have decided to walk out in solidarity with striking French controllers so we currently have a 2 hour wait. However, to ease the boredom, I’ll step out of the cockpit and you can all come up, sit in the pilot’s chair and be shown around by the first officer who’ll answer any questions you have”

The second I saw him come out of the cockpit I sprang out of my seat to get to the front of the inevitable queue and had a good chat with the FO while sitting in the seat. My impressions were that the cockpit of a 737–800 is a lot smaller than you’d think and that the seats are pretty difficult to move.

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After 90 mins the pilot is on the intercom again:

“Folks, unfortunately we’ve been told we have another 2 hours, 45 minutes wait (huge groans from the cabin)
Only joking, we’ve got to get going quickly so back to your seats and buckle up soon as you can! (cheers from cabin)”

The pilot landed pretty hard in Birmingham and 10 seconds after reducing reverse thrust was back on the intercom:

“I’ve just been informed that my landing was a bit on the hard side. I don’t know what the fuss is about, it seemed fine to me. But apologies to anyone with loose fillings”

My goodness!

2023 08 19 17 51
2023 08 19 17 51

What is the most outrageous “fee” you’ve ever been charged?

Decades ago, I received a past-due notice for a loan payment to a bank I’d never done business with. Puzzled, I called the bank. After explaining my confusion three times, I finally was talking with someone who had sense enough to look into it instead of fobbing me off to someone else.

“Did you make a purchase from Such-and-such Music Store?” Indeed, I’d purchased a piano for my wife a month or so earlier. (Might’ve been nice if the salesman had mentioned they’d turn the loan over to a third party, but whatever.)

I then asked the bank worker how the *very first* communication I’d received from the bank could be a past-due notice.

“You should have received a payment coupon book,” she said. (As indicated, this was ages ago.)

“I’ve received nothing from you till this,” I replied.

And then, to my everlasting amazement, she said, “I know. The printing company we use had an equipment breakdown and the coupon books haven’t gone out for a while.”

That “I know” blew me away. The bank *knew* their customers weren’t being told when their payments would be due, and how much they would be—and, in cases such as mine, didn’t even know their loan had been sold to that bank—and instead of notifying people, they just sent out overdue notices.

With a late fee attached, of course.

So I told the nice lady that I’d be happy to make the payment, but I would not stand for a late charge.

Now it was her turn to be puzzled. “Why not?”

“Because I wasn’t late—*you* were!”

In the end, she had to have a VP call me later, and after I went over it all again, he agreed it was kinda dumb for them to send late notices to people who didn’t even know they had a loan with that bank, he waived the late fee.

That only took half of my day.

U.S And Europe in Trouble As China Rush Into Legacy Chips!

What is the most, “What were they thinking?” marketing mistakes you’ve seen?

2023 08 20 12 04
2023 08 20 12 04

In 2007, Jennifer Strange entered a competition to win a “Wii. console.” The competition was run by local radio station in Rancho Cordova, in California, and was called “Hold Your Wee for a Wii.”

The challenge was a group of participants had to drink as much water as you can, and who ever could hold their wee the longest would win the Wii console.

2023 08 20 12 0g4
2023 08 20 12 0g4

Jennifer strange drank more than one and half gallons of water in just three hours, but still only managed to come second in the competition. One of Jennifer’s co-workers who was driving her home after the competition, said she started to complain about a sever headache, which became so bad she started crying.

A few hours after the competition Jennifer Strange was found dead in her room, with the cause of death ruled as “Acute Water Intoxication.”

Her parents sued the radio station and they were found liable for her death, and the parents were awarded 16 million dollars in compensation.

China Scientists Tease the US as They Found a Weak Spot in US “Undetectable Submarines”!

https://youtu.be/9FYE_-FiHPw

South Korea To Run “NUCLEAR ATTACK” Evacuation Drill August 23

World Hal Turner 18 August 2023

The entire country of South Korea will stage a NUCLEAR ATTACK EVACUATION DRILL on August 23.  Fifty-one Million (51,000,000) citizens are REQUIRED to participate to practice evacuating to shelters or underground safe spaces during the 20-minute exercise.

The drill, scheduled for 2:00 PM on Wednesday, August 23, will see many drivers required to pull over to the side of roads and the exits to subway stations closed with commuters required to remain inside, a statement from the South Korean Interior Ministry said.

“We expect to strengthen the response capacity of the nation through a practical drill reflecting the aspects of provocations of North Korea,” Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said in a news release this week.

The release said the 20-minute drill is part of a larger exercise to test the South Korean government’s response to potential threats including “advanced nuclear missile threats, cyber attacks, drone terrors, etc.”

The prime minister also called on South Koreans to take the drills seriously, something that hasn’t always been the case.

The Interior Ministry said 17,000 shelters would be open nationwide, and locations are searchable in popular Korean online apps.

The South Korean prime minister said the civil defense drill would be held in conjunction with large-scale US-South Korea military exercises that have drawn sharp criticism from Pyongyang in the past.

It will also come less than a week after South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol travels to the United States for a trilateral meeting with US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, where “the continued threat posed by” North Korea will be on the agenda, according to a White House statement.

Hal Turner Opinion

HMMMMM. Having a nuclear evacuation “drill” of 51 Million people into 17,000 shelters at THE SAME TIME as a large-scale US-South Korea military “exercise???????????”

Gee, it occurs to me that maybe that military “exercise” isn’t an “exercise” at all.  What if they first-strike North Korea?

With 51 Million South Koreans already inside Shelters, and US-South Korean Troops already on-station and fully armed – seems to me it would be a perfect opportunity for the US to first-strike North Korea.

What better conditions would exist than the ones described above?

Easy Sloppy Joe Pot Pie

All the great taste of classic sloppy joes in an easy one-skillet pot pie. No one will miss the buns!

2023 08 19 17 23
2023 08 19 17 23

Prep: 5 min | Bake: 40 min | Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
  • 1 (15 1/2 ounce) can original sloppy joe sauce
  • 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Cheddar cheese
  • 1 cup Original Bisquick® mix
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 egg

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
  2. Cook beef and onion in ovenproof 10-inch skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until beef is brown; drain.
  3. Stir in sloppy joe sauce.
  4. Sprinkle with cheese.
  5. Stir remaining ingredients until blended. Pour over beef mixture.
  6. Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Notes

Special Touch: Before baking, sprinkle with a tablespoon of sesame seed.

Woman Dies And Is Shown The Year 2042 And Beyond | Near Death Experience | NDE

2023 08 19 17 15
2023 08 19 17 15

U.S. Sanctions Syrian ‘Moderate Rebels’ It Had Previously Armed

In 2013 the CIA was handing out TOW anti-tank missiles to ‘moderate rebel’ groups who were fighting the government in Syria. These groups were allegedly ‘vetted’ before they receive money and weapons. Unfortunately ‘vetting’ was something the CIA had never been good at.

One of the groups that received such support was the Hamza Division:

Hamza Division (Forqat al-Hamza – فرقة الحمزة): An FSA-banner group composed of six substituent brigades that operate mostly in the environs of Inkhil, Daraa. The Hamza Division has received TOW ATGMs and it works under the supervision of the Daraa Military Council. They receives foreign support from Western and Arab state backers and are a member of the Southern Front coalition. The Southern Front has stated their commitment to a civil state, and have released a comprehensive political program in support of democratic reform. The Division came together with the Syria Revolutionaries Front and the 1st Artillery Regiment to create the 1st Army, which later disbanded. The Hamza Division continues using the 1st Army imagery alongside its own while the other former substituents do not. Social Media: YouTube;YouTube (older channel)

Hamza was later also supported by the Pentagon. Without such support the group would never have become a viable entity. Things got a bit complicated when militias armed by the Pentagon started to fight those armed by the CIA.

Later Hamza was sponsored by the Turkish state. This again made things a bit complicated:

Elijah J. Magnier @ejmalrai – 17:39 · Oct 16, 2019

Do you remember when the #US spent $500 million to train/arm Al-Hamza Division?

Well the US-trained “Moderate rebels” are fighting – under a NATO flagged country (#Turkey) – the US-trained Kurdish YPG in the area occupied by the #US.

I’ll make it even easier: A few minutes ago, #US Prsdt @realDonaldTrump said the “PKK is far more dangerous than #ISIS (The Islamic State)”.

The US trained & armed Syrian Kurds proxies, the YPG, are the Syrian branch of the PKK that Trump considers far more dangerous than ISIS.

Ten years after being ‘vetted’ the Hamza division is again receiving U.S. attention. This time from the Department of the Treasuries:

Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating two Syria-based armed militias and three members of the groups’ leadership structures in connection with serious human rights abuses against those residing in the Afrin region of northern Syria. An auto sales company owned by the leader of one of the armed groups is also being designated.

The Hamza Division, another armed opposition group operating in northern Syria, has been involved in abductions, theft of property, and torture. The division also operates detention facilities in which it houses those it has abducted for extended periods of time. During their imprisonment, victims are held for ransom, often suffering sexual abuse at the hands of Hamza Division fighters.

The Suleiman Shah Brigade and the Hamza Division are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13894 for being responsible for or complicit in, or for having directly or indirectly engaged in, the commission of serious human rights abuses against the Syrian people.

Sayf Boulad Abu Bakr is the leader of the Hamza Division and its public face, appearing in numerous propaganda videos produced by the Hamza Division. While Abu Bakr has been commander, the Hamza Division has been accused of brutal repression of the local population, including kidnapping Kurdish women and severely abusing prisoners, at times leading to their death.

Sayf Boulad Abu Bakr is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13894 for acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Hamza Division.

The AP report about the new sanctions does not mention any Pentagon or CIA support the groups had previously received.

One wonders how long it will take until the U.S. will sanction the fascists militia it has and is now arming and sponsoring in Ukraine.

Posted by b on August 18, 2023 at 15:36 UTC | Permalink

Well Ladies, Men Have Gotten The Message…Enjoy Your Cats!

2023 08 19 16 50
2023 08 19 16 50

Confessions of a 57-Year-Old Virgin

August 16, 2023

I’m a 57 year old man, about three years away from whatever the grandmaster of all the wizards are. I’ve never hugged a woman before (beside female relatives), never dated anyone before, no one at all. And then obviously that means that I never had my first kiss and I’m still a virgin.

Now, if I were to sit here and tell some random stranger on the street about my current life predicament, I would be laughed at until the end of time.

That brings me to my first point of advice. Ignore all of that crap. It’s worthless to feel like shit, for what? Because life didn’t come as anticipated. It can be harsh, but it’s not entirely over.

Which brings me to my second point of advice. Get out any way that you possibly can, I cannot stress this enough!

Up until the age of around 52, I never went out. I was a complete loner. One day, I decided enough was enough and I finally got off my ass and made something worth living for.

I began engraining myself into work dynamics and friendships. (By the way, get a job if you dont have one). I made it my personal goal to make friends any way that I could.

Eventually I had my first solid group of friends in roughly 45 years, yes you heard that number right.

The results? I currently do fantasy league with them once a week, as well as a cards night. Every couple of weeks we meet up at a bar, and I’m telling you it all came about from not giving up and striving to make something of my life.

Also, I keep up with hobbies such as working on used cars in my past time, so that’s another thing to keep in mind. I’m going to guess most people aren’t as old as me, maybe a majority are in their late teens to early 30s.

If you are in this range, even mid 30s, you still have a shot to not only make good friends like I did being the bum that I was, but also to get a date. Especially if you are a teen, that won’t be a problem in the slightest.

I’m saying this because doing what I’m doing at 57 is far more valuable during the younger years.

I know now that if I would’ve started this train of thought, I probably could’ve picked a date or two at least by now. That ship has sailed for me. Don’t worry though, I got over my self pity at 45 and my libido has dropped, so good friends, my dog, and beer, is what I make of life now.

Finally, good luck out there guys and ladies and don’t put yourself down. Strive to bring self-worth and meaning to your life!

BRICS Bank Just Dropped A Huge Bombshell | Stuns Everyone With This Move

Wow wow wow Amazing Incredible BRAVO CONGRATULATIONS.

Woman Finally dates Traditional Man

2023 08 19 16 58
2023 08 19 16 58

Cool Finds

buried treasure 07
buried treasure 07
buried treasure 06
buried treasure 06
buried treasure 01
buried treasure 01
buried treasure 04
buried treasure 04
buried treasure 03
buried treasure 03
buried treasure 02
buried treasure 02
buried treasure 05
buried treasure 05

What Is Self Discipline And How To Build More Of It

August 15, 2023

Self-discipline means that you do the things that you know are right or beneficial, even if they’re difficult. But what does that really mean? What does that actually look like?

People often associate self-discipline with diet and exercise, but it goes beyond that. Yes, staying active and eating clean in our current culture takes discipline, but being a self-disciplined person goes way beyond that.

When you build self-discipline, you’ll find it reaching into all areas of your life: your career, your relationships, your goals, your attitude, your self-talk, your mindset. Self-discipline becomes a part of who you are and impacts every single decision that you make each day. Disciplined people start to prioritize their future selves out of habit.

Discipline means having the ability to hold back those damaging words that you want to say during a disagreement. It’s being honest with yourself, looking at your weaknesses and assessing them so that you can improve. It’s sticking to commitments that you’ve made, both to other people and to yourself.

Self-discipline is a skill!

I cannot tell you the number of times that people have said things like, “I wish I could do what you do,” or “I wish I was as disciplined as you are,” to me, and it frustrates me every single time.

I know that it’s easy to tell ourselves that we aren’t capable of the things that other people accomplish. When we decide that we just aren’t capable of working out five times per week or starting a business or building a happy and stable relationship, we give ourselves an out.

By deciding that disciplined people are somehow different from you, you have what seems like a valid excuse for why you haven’t done all of those things that disciplined people do. You’ve convinced yourself that you just aren’t capable of it so it’s okay that you haven’t done it.

But that’s not true.

You are capable.

You are stronger than you realize.

And I know this because I know that self-discipline is a skill. I haven’t always been a disciplined person. I, too, have spent 14 hours a day sleeping, eaten whatever I felt like eating, procrastinated on my homework until the absolute last second, and gone months without getting any real physical activity.

Then, I decided to build self-discipline. And just like building any other skill, it took practice. I made mistakes, I faced setbacks, I struggled, and sometimes I fell off the wagon—in fact, I still do all of these things. Discipline is a skill that I am still building because—just like any other skill—there is always more to learn. You can always continue to improve.

You can become a disciplined person.

If you’re reading this blog, I’m sure there are a lot of things that you want to do, but you haven’t done them yet, and you likely aren’t working toward them consistently, or even at all.

You might want to start a business, go to school, improve your grades, get in better shape, learn to play an instrument, work on your mental health, write a book, etc. You have things in mind that you would like to do.

These things haven’t happened for one reason: lack of self-discipline.

Self-discipline is the skill that lets you build every other skill.

When you build self-discipline, you become the kind of person who does all of those things that you’ve always wanted to do.

A little later in this article, I’ll give you some advice on how to start building self-discipline, but for now, sit with everything I’ve just said. Start to consider that you are much more similar to me than you might realize. You are 100% capable of the things that you want to do and the only thing standing in your way is a lack of discipline. You can build that discipline.

How does self-discipline improve my life?

You already know that eating healthy, starting your homework early, going to bed on time, exercising regularly, managing your time, and meditating will improve your life. But as most people already know, doing all of these things, and doing them regularly, is difficult.

If you try to rely on motivation to do these things, you’re never going to do them because most of the time, most people don’t feel like doing these things.

You’d rather do what’s easy and enjoyable. You’d rather sleep in, eat fatty, sugary foods, and have a lazy, fun, easy life.

But that lazy, fun, easy life is only fun at first. Soon, you’ll start to face consequences. You’ll be tired all the time. You’ll see others reaching their goals and realize you haven’t accomplished anything in months. Your mental and physical health nose-dive.

What started out as fun and easy soon becomes miserable.

Those things that disciplined people do—exercising, planning, goal setting, thinking ahead—those things benefit your future self. And one day, you’re going to be your future self. The actions that you take now directly impact the life that you will get to live one day.

So how does self-discipline improve your life? Well, if you have the discipline now to save money, eat clean, exercise, work toward a career that you love, build healthy relationships, and create systems and routines that benefit you and your mental and physical health, one day, all of those things will pay off.

One day, you will be happy and healthy. You’ll be in a positive place living a life that you enjoy waking up to.

And I know this because I’ve done it. I’ve been putting in the work for long enough that I’m living and enjoying a life that I built intentionally. And I’m continuing to put in work that will improve my life so that it only goes up from here.

Self-discipline directly translates to living a life that you love. Self-discipline brings stable, long-term happiness.

Why is self-discipline important?

This is something that I’ve touched on before and is probably fairly apparent already from the previous section of this post. Self-discipline is important because motivation is fleeting and unreliable.

To get where you want to go, you need to complete a set of tasks, and either you want to do those tasks or you don’t. I doubt anybody would argue that those statements are untrue.

If you want to do those tasks, that’s motivation. In those moments, it’s easy to find the time and energy to do what needs to be done.

If you don’t want to do those tasks, and you’re trying to rely on motivation to get them done, the chance that those tasks will ever be completed is low. You likely know from experience that it’s hard to drum up motivation when you need it.

Discipline, on the other hand, is reliable. When you have self-discipline, it doesn’t matter if you want to put in the work. Disciplined people do what needs to be done regardless of how they’re feeling.

Many of us fall into the habit of doing what’s easy rather than doing what needs to be done. When you have discipline, you can do what needs to be done. When you can do what needs to be done, you reach your goals. If your goals are important to you, then self-discipline should be as well.

How to build self-discipline

Self-discipline is an odd beast to tackle. It’s simple, yet it’s not. And because it isn’t something that you can build outside of the context of your everyday life, becoming more disciplined inherently involves changing your life.

Begin by figuring out a direction. Start considering what actions that you currently do that you’d like to quit and what things that you don’t currently do that you’d like to do habitually.

Realize that building discipline is necessary to change your life and that the act of building discipline is what changes your life. The two things are inseparable. If you aren’t ready to change your life and don’t have a direction you want to go, you aren’t in a place to start becoming more disciplined.

Recommended Reading: The 5-4-3-2-1 Method for Setting and Getting to Your Goals

Self-discipline doesn’t look the same for everyone, and it doesn’t look the same day-to-day. What gets you moving one day might not work the next. Learn and grow with it so that you build an arsenal of strategies to use when you need them, and don’t beat yourself up if you have a bad day or five. It’s normal to struggle sometimes.

At its core, self-discipline means taking action.

Your aim throughout this process is to practice quickly making the decision that you know is right and then acting on that decision.

Rather than debating whether or not to go to the gym, then eventually deciding two hours later that it’s the right choice, then sitting on the couch for another 45 minutes before putting on your sneakers, discipline means deciding to go to the gym the moment it crosses your mind and then heading out the door.

That is your eventual goal. That is what you’re working toward. Some days, you’ll have no problem doing that. Other days, it will be a battle. The more you practice deciding quickly and taking prompt action, the better you’ll get at it. This is how you build discipline.

Let’s be clear: if you aren’t acting, you are not building discipline. Reading this blog post is a decent first step, but if your actions don’t change because of it, you have made exactly zero progress in the self-discipline department.

Practice taking action.

Practice doing small actions even when you don’t want to do them. This is probably the best way that I know of to build discipline. You don’t want to hang your coat up when you come home? Too bad. Do it. Don’t think about it, just do it.

You don’t want to do the dishes? Too bad. Do it.
You don’t want to write that paper? Too bad. Get started.

I know that it sounds harsh, but when you start with small steps and work up to bigger tasks, it becomes easier to act despite your feelings. Practice ignoring your desire to avoid action.

Now, I’ll soften that blow a bit. Yes, “just do it” is the ideal. Acting quickly based on what you know is right is the aim, but that isn’t always possible. Sometimes it’s a bit of an internal battle, and that’s okay. There are some strategies that you can use to act when you don’t feel like it. After all, the goal is action. Getting there with a little help is better than not getting there at all.

START SMALL

I wish I could scream this from the rooftops. I wish I could scream it and scream it and scream it until my lungs give out.

The bigger the task is that you don’t want to do, the more you won’t want to do it. The smaller you can make it, the easier it will be to do.

Your goal is action. A smaller action than you intended is always better than no action at all. There is no shame in scaling back a bit so that you have an easier time getting moving. Doing one pushup is better than doing zero of the ten you intended to do. Washing three dishes is better than not cleaning the entire kitchen, even if that was your original goal.

On a broader scale, don’t attempt to overhaul your entire life overnight. I have a whole blog post about this. Focus your efforts on one area at a time. You’ll be much less likely to burn out, you’ll see faster results, and you’ll be much more successful in the long run.

Find Your Why

I’ve talked about this about 10,000 times before so just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll just link you to the post about it.

I do want to note, though, that it’s okay if your Why stems from wanting to leave a negative situation rather than wanting to reach a positive one. I often frame Whys in terms of positive things—the goals that you’ll reach, for example—without acknowledging that my first Why was that I wanted to improve a bad situation.

I was trying to build a better life after a rough break up, largely out of spite and a little sadness. Though I now focus my Whys on the good things that I will reach because of my actions, it is valid to build discipline that is motivated by a desire to leave a bad situation. In fact, wanting to leave a bad place in life is a pretty common reason for people to want to build self-discipline.

Practice calling yourself out on your excuses

Most of the “reasons” that we give for why we didn’t do something are invalid. On the surface, they may seem fine and they’re enough to placate our brains and prevent us from feeling guilty, but they don’t stand up to further inspection.

Start taking time to assess your excuses. Remind yourself that you really want to see results. You really want to start making progress. Does your excuse truly prevent you from doing what you need to do? Is there any way that you could create a backup plan?

Next time you find yourself making an excuse, write it down. Then write three reasons why you want to do the thing you’re trying to avoid and three things that you could do instead, even if you don’t accomplish your primary goal.

For example, if you decide you can’t go for a run because it’s raining, list three reasons why you want to exercise, and then create a list of three things that you could do instead of going for a run, like doing yoga or going for a run on a treadmill. You’ll train yourself to reconsider your excuses and realize that just because you can’t accomplish your original goal doesn’t mean you can’t many any progress at all.

Monitor your feelings

As I’ve said before, self-discipline means doing what needs to be done, even if you don’t feel like it. Most of the time, “I don’t feel like it,” and “I don’t want to,” are not valid reasons not to do something that needs to be done. Learn to shut them down.

But that isn’t to say that you should totally ignore your feelings. They’re there for a reason. Notice them—meditation can help—and respond appropriately. Often, we may not feel like doing something that’s good for us even though that thing will actually make us feel better. Self-discipline often means getting uncomfortable and knowing that the discomfort is worth it.

Self-discipline is a tricky beast. It gives you what you need to be consistent, which gets you to where you want to be. It takes practice and patience, but it will improve your life in the long run.

Discipline means being willing to choose long-term gains over immediate success. When you think long-term, the whole process starts to become easier and make more sense. Practice becoming friends with your future self, and before long, you’ll start seeing the results of your self-discipline paying off.

– Life By Grit

Europe Panic: China Cancel $100 Billion Car Order from Germany!

In today’s video, we explore the complex relationship between the European Union and China, focusing on Germany’s recently canceled $100 billion car order. How did we get here, and what does this mean for Europe’s future? Join us as we dive into the policies, decisions, and global economic trends that have shaped this unprecedented situation.

Interesting

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2023 08 19 17 53

Raining spiders, frogs, fish and … meat. Yes, meat.

What is Occam’s Razor?

August 15, 2023

Occam’s razor is often misstated as “the simplest answer is the correct one,” but it should more accurately be “the simplest answer is the best starting point to investigate.”

The idea is that the more different variables or assumptions have to add up to get to a solution, the more difficult it is to investigate, and the less likely it is to occur in general. “Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” is the classical way to state it.

So the classic example is: you hear hoofbeats outside, is it a horse or a zebra? Well unless you live in the African savannah, it’s very unlikely to be a zebra. We’d need more assumptions to get there – a zebra was imported to a local zoo, it escaped captivity, and now it’s running amok. Whereas a horse requires just one assumption – a horse is nearby. That doesn’t mean that it cannot be a zebra, it just means that you should start at “it’s probably a horse” and investigate from there.

I had a fun moment the other day, when I went to my kitchen and saw a jar of pickles left out on the counter. I knew it wasn’t me, which left two possibilities that my brain somehow jumped to:

  1. A burglar broke in, stole several other items, and also ate a pickle. He left the jar out to taunt me.
  2. My wife had a pickle and then forgot to put away the jar.

I could have totally checked my locks, made sure my valuables were still in the right place, etc. Instead I just yelled “Hey, did you leave this pickle jar out?” and got the simpler answer right away. Starting with the simpler solution (fewer assumptions than my burglar story) got me to the right answer efficiently.

Man Dies, Sees Future & Says Don’t Freak Out (Powerful NDE)

Gary Wimmer had an NDE (Near-Death Experience) and discovered what happens after death. He saw seven beings/angels, and after leaving his body was shown future events. Gary’s NDE (Near-Death Experience) showed him that there is life after death, and it was a life-altering experience that changed him forever.

Now this is something that I would buy

2023 08 19 17 55
2023 08 19 17 55

Gobble It Up Pot Pie

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f1260eab8eea6b2a543ee4e09b6b3fa6

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

Filling

  • 2 (15 ounce) cans mixed vegetables, drained
  • 1 pound (2 cup) cooked turkey, shredded
  • 1 (12 ounce) jar turkey gravy

Topping

  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 1/3 cup chopped onion
  • 1/3 cup chopped celery
  • 1 (6 ounce) package instant turkey stuffing mix
  • 1 2/3 cups water
  • 1/4 cup dried cranberries

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Filling: In large mixing bowl, combine vegetables, turkey and gravy; mix well.
  3. Pour into a greased 2-quart casserole.
  4. Topping: In skillet, melt butter.
  5. Add onion and celery and cook until tender.
  6. Add seasoning packet from stuffing mix and water. Bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 5 minutes.
  7. Remove from heat; stir in stuffing. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes.
  8. Stir in dried cranberries.
  9. Spread stuffing evenly over vegetable mixture.
  10. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes, or until heated through.

Girl With Huge TaTa’s Gets HUMBLED For The First Time In Her Life!

“A small peep is natural, BUT a wide pussy is man-made” I laughed so hard at this statement it took me 12 minutes to gather myself enough to write it down

How to (actually) talk to kids

It’s not dissimilar from talking to other adults, but even the most well-meaning grown-ups can forget that.

By Charley Locke Aug 13, 2023, 7:00am EDT

Somehow, despite our best efforts, it still happens to even the most self-assured adult. You’re at a birthday party or a family dinner or a picnic in the park, and suddenly, you find yourself face to face with a kid. You introduce yourselves, there’s a slight pause, and then, even though you know better, you hear the boring question coming out of your mouth: “So how’s school?”

Why are adults so bad at talking to kids, considering each and every one of us used to be one? “We forget what it’s like to be a child,” says Tina Payne Bryson, a psychotherapist and co-author of The Whole-Brain Child. “It’s hard sometimes to relate to kids because the rhythm of our days is so different.” Our brains and habits have changed, and as adults, it can be tough to remember what it’s like to be a 10-year-old.

But that’s the key: Talking to and connecting with 10-year-olds now doesn’t require remembering what you were like at 10. Instead, it’s all about approaching them as people: individuals who have their own interests, insights, and personalities. If you’re curious, warm, and earnest, you can make a new friend — and leave your awkward adult persona behind.

Find a point of connection

Much like in an initial conversation with an adult stranger, it can be hard to know where to begin. But once you offer up an open-ended topic, a kid will often run with it. Icebreakers with a kid can be situational. If you’re at a barbecue, ask them what their favorite condiment is. Or they can be general: Did you see a funny animal video recently? “You just want to get the kid talking,” says Ben R., an 11-year-old who lives in Highland Ranch, Colorado. “You want to get to know them.” Ben recommends starting with a question about something that you enjoy. If you like video games, ask what games they like to play; if you’re a big reader, ask about their favorite recent book.

The framing is important. “Adults reach for whatever they can, and ask a yes or no question,” says Robyn Silverman, host of the podcast How to Talk to Kids About Anything. If a kid is wearing a baseball cap, asking whether they like baseball is not a good question — just like if you were wearing a baseball cap, that question wouldn’t encourage you to keep talking. Don’t despair: You can just tweak the format of a question to improve it. “Instead of ‘How’s school?’, you could ask, ‘If you were principal for the day, what’s one thing you’d absolutely change?’” suggests Silverman. “A more interesting question will elicit a response more than ‘fine.’”

That first conversational volley is all about finding a point of connection. It could be a shared interest, such as the card game Codenames, or a low-stakes disagreement, like whether dipping french fries in a milkshake is delicious or gross. “The great thing about asking questions is to find out what you have in common,” says Ben. “You’ll feel more relaxed then and can focus on connecting through that.”

Ask good follow-up questions

The next step in a good conversation with a kid? Pay attention. This is where many adults slip up. Instead of actually listening to what a kid has to say and asking a relevant follow-up question, they jump in with a long story about themselves — or, worse, offer up a weird non sequitur. Recently, Ben was waiting in line for a waterslide when the adult behind him asked what grade he was in. After he answered, the stranger, who had not previously met the fifth-grader, replied by saying that he grew up so fast. “I thought to myself, is this how adults are? They just ask simple questions, half-pay attention to the conversation, and get distracted by something else?” Ben says. “I felt like he could have just realized that I could talk the same way everybody else could, but he made it really awkward for the rest of the conversation.”

Asking a good follow-up question is all about active listening, which requires humility. A kid is a person with their own interests and expertise, and you can learn from them, just like you learn from a conversation with another adult. “Kids are egocentric in nature, and they love to talk about what they love,” says Morgan Eldridge, a clinical psychologist who recommends framing a child as the expert on what they care about. “If you don’t know anything about Pokémon cards, ask them to tell you about it.”

More key aspects of active listening are body language and tone. If you’re talking to a younger kid, physically get down on their level so that you’re not looming over them. For kids and adults alike, face them, put away your phone, make eye contact, and smile. No need to speak in a different voice, though. “There are multiple occasions where adults have talked to me with a childish tone,” says Ben. “We’re more sophisticated than they think.”

When you’re fostering a comfortable conversational environment for a kid, you should also think about safety. There’s an inherent power imbalance between an adult and a kid, especially when you don’t know each other well, and as the adult, you’re responsible for making sure that your relationship and conversation stay appropriate. “Kids need to feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure,” says Bryson. “When you smile and have relaxed posture, it sends signals of safety and connection.”

Let their enthusiasm lead

Once the conversation is moving, step back. “When talking to kids, adults make the mistake that they need to talk a lot,” says Silverman. “But people [not just children!] actually love it when you listen.” Instead, ask questions and let the kid direct the flow; they’ll naturally lead the conversation toward what interests them most.

In many cases, this means going in a speculative, silly direction, which can be tricky for grown-ups. “Adults are more logical and solution-driven,” says Bryson. “We’ve forgotten what it’s like to play.” To rediscover your playful side, you can always ask an open-ended question, or even a goofy one: If you were going to open a restaurant that only serves three dishes, what would they be? What celebrity has the coolest style of all time? Would you rather have to fight 50 mosquito-sized alligators or one alligator-sized mosquito?

No matter what, don’t dismiss their enthusiasm. If a kid loves basketball but you don’t care about sports, ask them to tell you about their favorite player of all time. If they just learned a ton about bugs in a science unit, don’t try to show off how much you know — encourage them to share instead. “There’s a power imbalance, and it seems to give adults permission to belittle,” says Silverman.

If you do make a faux pas, like talking over them or getting distracted, own up to it, apologize, and redirect. You can always say, “I just spaced out, I’m sorry. What were you saying about summer camp?” Just pick the conversation back up afterward.

Be yourself (even if that means being shy)

Kids have different temperaments and personalities, just like adults do. They don’t expect everyone to be outgoing and loud. In fact, not every kid will want you to be. “Just like different friends appeal to different people, different kinds of adults will appeal to different kids,” says Bryson. “The boisterous adult doesn’t appeal to some kids, and the quiet adult doesn’t appeal to others.” Just come as you are, since kids can tell whether you’re being authentic or not. “It’s really about showing up as yourself in the moment,” Bryson says.

If you are on the quieter side, don’t worry. Kids know what it’s like to feel anxious in a conversation, too. “Sometimes you just get nervous, and that’s okay,” says Fiona A., an 8-year-old who lives in Salinas, California. “Or sometimes you need a little bit of alone time. Just be you.”

Ben suggests a trick that he uses when he feels awkward or unsure about what to talk about: When you get stuck and start to feel self-conscious, ask a question. “Even if you don’t pay attention, it diverts the conversation away from yourself,” he says. “You learn more about them, and also you don’t have to talk as much.”

Sometimes, you’ll notice that a kid seems anxious to be talking to an adult. In that case, make sure you’re projecting a warm, friendly, safe environment. Being vulnerable can help them feel more comfortable, too. “A lot of adults are authority figures, and sharing something embarrassing can make us more accessible,” says Bryson. When she’s talking to a quiet kid, she often shares a story about when the class rat bit her in first grade at the school Christmas party; her listeners are always on the edge of their seats, ready to share their own best animal story afterward. You can be vulnerable about feeling awkward, too: If you share that you often feel shy at parties, then it normalizes the kid feeling shy.

And if they’d rather be quiet, it’s also fine to share a companionable silence. “If we ask a question or two and they don’t expand, it just means they don’t want to be asked a question right now,” says Bryson. If they’re not uncomfortable with quiet, then you shouldn’t be, either.

Refer back to your shared interests

Once you’ve had a friendly conversation with a kid and found some common ground, you can start to develop an ongoing relationship with them. Just like with a new adult friend, it’s important to remember details about them and refer back to them in future conversations. Did they tell you about joining the soccer team? Ask how the season is going. Did you bond over your love of superhero movies? Ask them what they thought of the sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. If you know in advance that you’re going to see a kid who you’ve already spent time with, you could send them something that you can then talk about in person. Bryson recently hosted a friend and their 13-year-old son; in anticipation of his visit, she sent him some funny dog videos on Instagram. That offers an easy way to break the ice and connect in person again.

No matter the age gap, making conversation and becoming friends always happens much the same way: capitalizing on shared interests, asking good questions, and paying attention. And once you’re friends, conversation is easy. “After I get to know an adult, it’s easy to talk to her,” says Fiona. “It’s more complex to build friendship with an adult, but once you do, it’s like they’re a kid just like you.”

He Did It Again!

At a recent speaking engagement, President Biden attempted to tout his success at getting a bipartisan infrastructure bill through Congress. At least that’s what one would assume, even though what actually came out of the President’s mouth sounded more like “bipah infraloction.” This is, of course, just the latest verbal stumble from Biden, and you know there are plenty more to come. Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss not only this difficult phrase for Biden, but also his similar inability recently to say a series of Asian names.

The Hardest Pill To Swallow About Self-Improvement

August 16, 2023

One tendency I’ve noticed about a lot of us who are into self-development is that we are incredibly hungry for information.

Some of us may have had neglectful parents or an upbringing that was very scarce, we may have not gotten the encouragement for self-betterment, we have no one around us who are striving for the best — so we want to consume and process all the information, methods, tips, and tricks we can.

I think that’s great because being deeply desirous to change yourself is better than being apathetic and lethargic.

Unfortunately, this over-consumption of information can become gluttony. Gluttony then leads to lethargy, which then leads to sloth and not doing anything with this information.

More books! More articles! More podcasts! More lectures! More, more, more! I need to know the secrets of the universe before I end up starting my business, before I apply for that job, before I take that trip, before I ask out that girl.

We need to be perfect and then, then we’ll act. One day. One day.

But one day never comes. Neither does perfection.

The real truth about self-development, the real pain is the application. It’s in the messy interactions between imperfect human beings.

You’ve read what’s in that book about dating. Now, go out on a Friday night and apply it.

You’ve read how to start a business. Now, start your own.

A lot of people are dreaming with their heads up in the clouds, thinking they’re moving the needle when they’re just reading a book or an article online.

How many people are out there actively trying, failing, getting knocked down on their ass, and trying again? Very few.

Most people read about a diet in a book, try it for 2 months, then relapse into their old eating habits.

Many people say “I’m gonna meditate for 20 minutes a day” but they “can’t find the time…because Netflix”.

Then people wonder why 2021 is 2020 is 2019 is 2018. Repeating a fucking Groundhog Day existence for 30 years.

Then you’ll be 68 years old and realize that you just twiddled your thumbs in your ivory tower while your life passed you by.

Because the real pain of self-development is exertion, it’s doing it when you don’t want to do it, it’s progressively getting better and actively cutting out areas where you don’t need to be doing things.

What methods work? They all work. There are some that are more “optimal” than others, but they will all work – if applied. If you read a self-help book starting from ground zero (like you know nothing about this stuff), you will be a better person on page 258 than you were at page 1. I guarantee it. So it’s not about “choosing the right methods”. It’s about application.

There are people who think self-development and self-help is a joke. These people have never even walked into a book store and yet they’re laughing all the way to the bank or living the life that we want to live!

I can pretty much guarantee that if you took one book like Deep Work or Psycho-Cybernetics and applied everything in there to the T, your life would dramatically alter.

You wouldn’t need to be browsing Inc. magazine for the newest hacks. You wouldn’t need to go on Entrepreneur and say you’re “hustling”.

We need to stay focused, guys. We need to build a core set of practices and not stray from the narrow road of improvement.

We need to throw ourselves into the task with everything we have and not look around for another hack or tactic to help us when we have an arsenal of 1,000 inside our head.

You won’t know all the answers. You can’t know all the answers before you take action. You need to act before you are ready.

You will NEVER be ready.

You can’t solve the puzzle without taking action to assemble the pieces.

Get going and the pieces will start to fall in place. Then the puzzle starts to solve itself.

Voynich Manuscript Decoded | The Mysterious Book Finally Solved?

For 600 years the Voynich Manuscript has stumped scholars, cryptographers, physicists, and computer scientists. Now, a researcher in Germany has claimed to have finally decoded the most mysterious book in the world.

Bad, just bad.

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New and improved BRICS to emerge in South Africa. Morocco wants to join

Biggest global events…

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What’s the best revenge you’ve gotten after being fired or let go from a job?

I was terminated without notice only to be offered my job back for significant less than I was making. I declined and filed an unpaid wage claim costing them over $12,000 in damages due to me.

Worked for a Co. that terminated me at end of day on a Monday without notice or reasoning other than, “It just wasn’t working out;” but was promised to be paid the rest of the week as a courtesy severance for the inconvenience. Wanted to stay professional, so I complied and thanked them for opportunity. I was allowed some time to pack up my things and head out.

I handled all payroll and AR/AP but wasn’t presented final check upon termination and even offered to do it before I left but was told it would be mailed to me. Fast forward 6 days and I receive a text message from former employer urging me to return their call as soon as possible.

I called the next day and was offered my job back for $10,000 less per year than I originally was hired for and was told a few duties would be taken off my work load. It was insulting and I asked to think about it but asked about my final check prior to ending call and they asked me to go pick it up from office. I was out of town for a few days so made arrangements to pick up the following week (now 14 days after term).

I arrive and was presented with a check. I open it and say that it’s incorrect. They apologize and agree to have an amended one in mail next day. I offered to wait but they had an “interview coming shortly.”

I waited 7 more days before filing a wage claim for the final check. I end up receiving a final check for the one day of that week a few days after but didn’t include my vacation time / PTO, the severance, or penalty for late payment.

After 8 months, we were granted a hearing where they were ordered to pay me for 30 full days salary as penalty, all vacation and PTO, adjusted benefits, and severance as promised.

Employer called me an extortionist, and Labor Board representative interrupted their tirade to say “No, that’s the law. You should be happy he didn’t sue you for retaliation, well, he still can. So maybe you should lay off the insults and direct that energy to educating yourself and finding counsel.”

It was vindicating.

Hey! Look at what “president” Biden is doing…

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Nearly ALL of America FEELS This | Oliver Anthony “Rich Men North of Richmond” | Just Jen Reacts

This song is resonating with people.

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This is MEGA-viral.

The United States is about ready to EXPLODE!

My icy cold Razzmatazz

We continue…

The voting in the USA was rigged. No doubt about it.'

And not only at the last election, it has most likely gone on for two or three elections before that.

There is only one cure. Paper votes, hand counting and representatives for all interested parties as observers.

And it would be nice if you had a working judicial system as well.

I cannot see how this is not going to end in bloodshed.

It is just a matter of time, before people revolt.

In a way I'm surprised it has not already happened.

Posted by: g wiltek | Aug 15 2023 16:07 utc | 4

When I was in training for my MAJ role at NAS China Lake, I had my first experiences with world-line travel. It wasn’t until later that I start to notice that my journeys would “stick”. I would find myself on a new world-line with new things, and old things that never existed.

One of the things that I miss is the breakfasts with beans. In this present world-line it is with potatoes. Of course, to youse guys, it’s always been that way.

One of the things that seem to be forever changed for me is the soft-drink Razzmatazz. It never existed on this world line. But back in the day, prior to me joining the Navy, it was THE soda that you all would drink. And while there were coke and Pepsi drinks, I always loved my icy-cold Razzmatazz.

My favorite was a malted cherry soda that they made. It had a kind of cherry-butterscotch like feel to it. There was also a birch beer & vanilla, and a malted root beer. Sigh. But none of it exists on this world-line.

All’s the pity.

Today… have some fun.

France Reportedly Thinks That The US Backstabbed It During Nuland’s Trip To Niger

By Andrew Korybko

AUG 15, 2023

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France fears that the interim military-led government is willing to explore a deal whereby they’ll agree to keep Russia/Wagner at bay and retain the US’ bases in their country in exchange for Washington ensuring that ECOWAS doesn’t invade like it threatened to do. In that event, the full fury of the Nigerien people would be directed against France, which could either go it alone in trying to forcibly reverse last month’s coup in vain or chalk up the strategic loss and withdraw.

Le Figaro cited an unnamed diplomatic source over the weekend who alleged that the US backstabbed France during Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s trip to Niger. The piece is paywalled but was summarized here

. France reportedly fears that the US might tacitly recognize Niger’s interim military-led government in exchange for being allowed to retain its bases. Should that happen, then the US would proactively replace France’s security role in the Sahel before Russia/Wagner has a chance to.

This concern is predicated on rational calculations. From the US’ strategic perspective, the anti-French sentiment that’s sweeping the Sahel will inevitably result in ousting that country’s military from this part of Africa, which could lead to a security void that would likely be filled by Russia/Wagner. Even if France resorts to force for clinging to its last regional bastion in Niger, whether directly and/or via Nigerian-led

ECOWAS, then it’ll only exacerbate the hatred that locals feel for their former colonizer.

A swift victory is doomed to be pyrrhic since another round of anti-French unrest would follow sooner or later to complete the decolonization process that the prior one couldn’t, while the outbreak of a larger regional war risks Russia accelerating its envisaged replacement of France’s security role in the Sahel. Both outcomes are contrary to America’s long-term interests, though some policymakers might find their potential short-term benefits to be alluring.

It’s in this context that Nuland visited the Nigerien capital last week to “push for a negotiated solution” according to what she informed the press during a special briefing after her meetings there. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin reacted to this development by boasting that “the US has recognized a government that it did not recognize yesterday just to avoid meeting the Wagner PMC in the country.” While some might have dismissed his remarks as trolling, they actually convey a stark truth.

Nuland’s trip was likely driven by her government’s desire to determine post-coup Niger’s intended relations with Russia/Wagner. She made contradictory statements about this during her briefing that were analyzed here , but the point is that this was probably the real reason behind her visit. If she assessed that no clear commitment had yet been made to solicit that group’s services, then it would be possible to make progress on the vague “negotiated solution” that she claimed to have in mind.

Judging by Le Figaro’s report, France fears that the interim military-led government is willing to explore a deal whereby they’ll agree to keep Russia/Wagner at bay and retain the US’ bases in their country in exchange for Washington ensuring that ECOWAS doesn’t invade like it threatened to do. In that event, the full fury of the Nigerien people would be directed against France, which could either go it alone in trying to forcibly reverse last month’s coup in vain or chalk up the strategic loss and withdraw.

The US already backstabbed France a few years back by stealing its nuclear submarine deal with Australia via the surprise unveiling of AUKUS so the precedent exists for it to backstab that country again in the Sahel by stealing its “sphere of influence” there through these means. In this particular case, American policymakers might have concluded that France’s military ouster from the region is inevitable so it’s better to proactively replace it with their own forces than risk Russia/Wagner filling the void.

To that end, it makes sense to opportunistically exploit the latest events in pursuit of a pragmatic deal with Niger’s interim military-led government despite being at France’s expense. There’s no guarantee that it’ll succeed, but it’s strategicallysound from the perspective of the US’ New Cold War interests in Africa. America could present itself as a peacemaker that averted the wider war that France wanted to spark all while stopping the spread of Russian military-strategic influence on the EU’s Sahelian doorstep.

The aforesaid reframing of Nuland’s trip in light of Le Figaro’s report compellingly explains France’s alleged fears of her country’s real intentions in wanting to diplomatically resolve the West African Crisis. The ulterior motive behind its latest “push for a negotiated solution” is to proactively replace France’s security role in the Sahel before Russia/Wagner has a chance to. In this way, the US could mitigate the strategic damage from the Nigerien Coup and arguably benefit from it to an extent.

the GIRLS REACT to *Terminator (1984)* THIS IS TERRIFYING!! (First Time Watching) Sci-fi Movies

Is America a Second Rank Power?

Blame deindustrialization.

Godfree Roberts Aug 16

Since the Second World War most Britons have unquestioningly accepted the premise that Britain should continue to rank as a first order world Power while, on the other, insisting that living standards should continue rising and social services be protected from taxes to finance foreign policy commitments. The question is not whether Britain can continue to think and behave as a Great Power, but whether it can afford to. – F. S. Northedge, 1970.

The good news is that there will be no war.

The rather sad news is that America can’t afford one.

1980s neoconservative policies – downsize government and privatize everything – have left the US a second-tier power, uncompetitive economically, industrially, scientifically and even militarily, as this STEM ranking suggests:

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Why we fail

There are at least seven reasons why the US failed in Ukraine. Says Correlli Barnett, “The power of a nation-state by no means consists only in its armed forces, but also in its economic and technological resources; in the dexterity, foresight and resolution with which its foreign policy is conducted; in the efficiency of its social and political organization. It consists most of all in the nation itself: the people; their skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative; their beliefs, myths and illusions. And it consists, further, in the way all these factors are related to one another. Moreover, national power has to be considered not only in itself, in its absolute extent, but relative to the state’s foreign or imperial obligations; it has to be considered relative to the power of other states”. Let’s break that down.

The Power of Other States

  1. Armed forces. No serious military scholar imagines the US Army could challenge the Russian Army in Europe, nor the PLA in Asia – after being humiliated in Korea in 1951. Next year the PLAN will have 400 new warships armed with hypersonic missiles – which the US Navy’s 293 older boats neither possess nor can defend against.
  2. Economic and technological resources. Russia’s economy is the world’s fourth largest, its military sector is 800% more productive than America’s, its military technology is a generation ahead, and its generalship is the world’s best. China’s productive economy is 300% bigger and leads the US in almost all sciences and technologies.
  3. The dexterity, foresight and resolution with which its foreign policy is conducted. Ninety percent of the world’s people do business and sympathize with Russia or China, and their leaders are rock stars wherever they go. Ten percent of the world’s people support America, whose leader is pitied, even insulted to his face.
  4. The efficiency of its social and political organization. 80% of Russians support their government’s policies and 96% of Chinese support theirs. Barely 34% of Americans trust their government or support its policies.
  5. Skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative, beliefs, myths and illusions of the people. China’s and Russia’s recoveries reflect their people’s resilience, skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative and collective self-belief. The US has yet to recover from the GFC, struggles to staff a chip fab, and hasn’t given its workers a raise since 1974.
  6. Foreign or imperial obligations. Ukraine, on the heels of the Afghanistan imbroglio, suggests that the US is incapable of sustaining its obligations towards its allies. Its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear pact suggests that it is incapable of making agreements.
  7. National power relative to the power of other states. If America wants to match Russia or China militarily, Washington must double real defense spending through 2034 just to match the 2023 capabilities of either, not both, of them.

America is overextended abroad, overinflated at home and its State competence is deteriorating in almost every way – from governance to justice to military to infant mortality – while it ignores its decline.

Next Stop: Failed State?

A failed state’s institutions are feeble and flawed. Often, the executive barely functions while the legislature, judiciary, bureaucracy, and armed forces have lost their capacity and professional independence. A failed state suffers from crumbling infrastructure, faltering utility supplies, educational and health facilities, and deteriorating human-development indicators like infant mortality and literacy. Failed states create an environment of flourishing corruption and negative growth rates, where honest economic activity cannot flourish. Encyclopedia Britannica.

Even before Covid, there were more hungry children, drug addicts, suicides and executions, illiterate, incarcerated, poor, homeless people in America than in China. How long can post-Covid America, riven by factionalism and distrust, weakened by disease, and dying younger each year, compete with dozens of initiatives like this?

The only real barrier to China’s bid to capture Eurasia’s vast Middle Space was the US occupation of Afghanistan. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, TAPI, joining Central Asia’s gas fields to South Asia, was announced in 2018 but progress through the critical Afghan sector was slowed by the war. Since then, the scheme has been revived, opening the way for Chinese investment that could complete its capture of Central Asia. Alfred McCoy

10 Reasons I LOVE China (in 10 minutes)…

Is it true that China’s economy is 60% smaller than it is actually reporting?

Wow!!!!

Did you know this was exactly the same stuff published in the Soviet papers and East German papers and Czech papers and Polish papers in the 1970s?

That the US Economy was exaggerated and 60% smaller that it really was

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Man , this is bad

Back then in the 1960s to 1990s, Americans won by Competition, Ability and Achievement

Back then the Soviets claimed victories in paper by publishing lies, lies and more lies and used brute force and twisting of data to claim a superior system (US)was collapsing all the time


Today the opposite is happening

US and the West are Soviet Russia and East Germany today

They hate competition, They hate tolerance in any area other than Transgenders and Homosexuals, They are losing ability by the millisecond

They claim victories by publishing lie after lie, most of which are bizzare and illogical and use the same brute force to claim a superior system is collapsing.

Meanwhile China is becoming exactly what the US was in the 1960s – 1990s

Critically truthful, Exploring Solutions openly, Admitting Problems openly, Keeping Victories as subtle as possible, Fostering Competition in every sphere, Tolerant of every race and religion provided they identify as Chinese first, Focus on Ability and Merit only.

Russia too is following the same road now


The Democracies are collapsing due to their fatal flaws

The Meritocracies and carefully planned one party systems are flourishing


So this Chinas Economy is 60% smaller is basically History going around in Propaganda and Lies

A Testament to the theory that eventually all Democracies decline into a Mediocracy

You Won’t Believe What China Have Done | American CEO’s Protest !

A tiny microchip smaller than a fingernail is at the heart of a high-stakes technology war between superpowers.

Advanced semiconductors form the brains powering everything from AI to hypersonic missiles.

Now a global battle is unfolding between the US and China over who controls the future of these foundational chips.

With national dominance at stake, the US has imposed sweeping sanctions to blockade China from cutting-edge semiconductor designs and manufacturing.

But China is marshaling its vast resources to achieve self-reliance and circumvent restrictions.

The race is on to shape mastery over the electronics underpinning 21st century innovation.

Join us as we uncover the events, technologies, companies, and strategies fueling this multifront semiconductor conflict.

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The trajectory of global scientific progress and economic power hangs in the balance.

Are there any other countries taking action against China for their treatment of Uyghurs?

I’m from Indonesia, a country with the largest Muslim population in the world.

When the Uyghur topic arised a few years ago, it was also a trending topic here.

Many people started to curse China because of this issue.

But Indonesia is a neutral & non block country, which means we’re friends with many countries, including China, even North Korea.

Indonesia, as well as many other Muslim countries has been sending alot of Imams (priests), delegations, and even students to China, including Xinjiang regularly.

Guess what? None of Muslim countries condemn China on their acts, because later we realize that it’s only propaganda made by Western countries to weaken China & to create destabilization.


As for me myself, I’ve visited Xinjiang 2 times before the Covid pandemic, I know that there were terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, which the members were mostly from Uyghur ethnic.

The terror movement is called the East Turkestan (Islamic) Movement. It’s backed up by Al Qaeda & Taliban.

The United Nations on their website also listed the Movements as a terrorist Movement, also they list most of the attacks on their website too.

The US already know this issue, and they also bombed Uyghurs, who ran to Afghanistan after Chinese Central Government took control of Anti-Terror acts (because the local government failed to control them and the situation became worse)

Note: This is an American news media, not Chinese media.

So the US also bombed Uyghurs, but later accusing China for their treatments against the Uyghur, don’t you think that it’s hypocrisy?

Nowadays Taliban is close to China, and they promised not to help Uyghur militants anymore, they even sending back the militants who ran and hide in Afghanistan.

I can read a little bit of Mandarin, I use some Chinese social media and make friends with Uyghurs, so I know what happened and what’s happening from the Uyghur themselves.

They said that those terrorists use Turkestan name because they want support from Turkic countries nearby, while those terrorists also killed their own Uyghurs who don’t wanna support them, as well as Uzbek, Kazakh & other Turkic people, also Tajik Muslim, Hui Muslim & Han people in China

And they use “Islamic” name, obviously for supports from Islamic countries.


On the early morning of Wednesday, 30 July 2014, an Uyghur Imam, named Juma Tahir, the imam of China’s largest mosque, (Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar), was stabbed to death by three young male Uyghur terrorists because he was strongly against the terrorists.

Alot of Western Media covered this, but it seems that they forget it easily (or intentionally).


These videos are the example of Muslim Scholars visiting Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region recently, there are Indonesian Scholars too in that event

Beside of those videos, there are still alot of informal visits from Islamic Scholars & imams to China.

In fact, tour to Xinjiang is available in Indonesia and it’s always fully booked, as I work at the one of the biggest Tour & Travel agency in Indonesia.


Latest Xinjiang Muslim Festival in Indonesia, featuring tribes in Xinjiang especially the Uyghurs, and Indonesian ustadz (Islamic preacher), leaders, government, etc

From 19 July – 10 August 2023 to celebrate the Islamic New Year, this is the re-stream from 2 August:


As for now, there are some people who are still condemning China in Indonesia, but most of them are either from extremist groups (we call them kadrun), or just ignorant & uneducated people. Which later we found to have links (directly or indirectly) to the US’ Anti Chinese founding

U.S Boeing Near Suspension in China as Tensions Between US China Escalate!

2023 08 16 20 50
2023 08 16 20 50
https://youtu.be/pZAhDLwkp9c

The TSMC Arizona project is one of the biggest FDI deals in United States history with Taiwan investing over $40 billion. It’s all part of the $52 billion dollar CHIPS Act to bring Taiwan’s flagship company to the US, but there are a plethora of problems amounting the question the entire legitimacy of this project. In today’s video we examine the top 5 biggest problems TSMC is currently facing and if this project will be a success.

Beef Chili Cheese Fries

2023 08 16 10 25
2023 08 16 10 25

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 2 cups chopped yellow onions
  • Salt and cayenne to taste
  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 1 tablespoon chili powder
  • 2 teaspoons ground cumin
  • Crushed red pepper to taste
  • 2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
  • 2 tablespoons chopped garlic
  • 3 cups peeled, seeded, and chopped fresh or canned tomatoes
  • 2 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 3 cups beefsteak or beef broth
  • 2 tablespoons Masa Harina
  • Vegetable oil for deep frying
  • 2 large Idaho potatoes, peeled and cut into shoestrings, rinsed in cool water and patted dry
  • 1/2 pound grated Cheddar cheese
  • 1/2 pound grated Monterey Jack cheese
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1/2 cup sliced pickled jalapenos

Instructions

  1. Heat the vegetable oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onions, season with salt and cayenne, and cook, stirring, until they begin to wilt, about 2 minutes.
  2. Add the beef, chili powder, cumin, crushed red pepper and oregano. Season with salt and cayenne, and cook until all the pink in the meat disappears, 5 to 6 minutes.
  3. Add the garlic, tomatoes, tomato paste and 2 1/2 cups beef stock; bring to boil, and reduce the heat to medium-low. Simmer, uncovered, until the meat is tender, about 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface.
  4. Combine the Masa Harina with the remaining 1/2 cup stock and mix to blend. Slowly add to the pot, stirring to blend. The mixture will thicken. Cook for 30 minutes, then season again with salt and cayenne. It should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
  5. In a heavy, deep pot or an electric fryer, heat 4 inches of vegetable oil to 360 degrees F. Fry the shoestring potatoes in batches until golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes per batch. Drain on paper towels, then season with salt and cayenne.
  6. Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
  7. Cover the bottom of a large, glass rectangular baking pan with the shoestring potatoes.
  8. Combine the Cheddar and jack cheeses. Sprinkle the cheese over the fries.
  9. Bake just until the cheese melts, 3 to 4 minutes.
  10. Remove the pan from the oven and spoon the chili over the top of the fries.
  11. Garnish with the sour cream and jalapenos.
  12. Serve immediately.

“U.S. bullying ends now!” – Putin issues stunning military plan

Yeah. Give nuclear weapons to Iran, Mexico, and a host of other nations that are sick and tired of the USA.

Ukraine’s Grifter Wars Through Gonzalo Lira’s Eyes

Former Glasgow MP George Galloway said it best about Gonzalo Lira, whose re-arrest by Zelensky’s Gestapo was announced by American transsexual grifter Sarah Ashton Cirillo, who is now a staff sergeant in Zelensky’s Wehrmacht even though, as we previously pointed out, Sgt Sarah has not yet completed basic military training.

In wishing Lira well, no matter what Lira’s motives were for staying in Zelensky’s Fourth Reich, Galloway spoke for most of us, who don’t take our marching orders from a transgender American who left his wife and children back in Yankee land to play act at being a girly spokesperson for the homophobic Ukrainian Wehrmacht.

In acknowledging Lira’s chequered history, Galloway said that was not a massive problem for him or for his listeners, who were more interested in Lira’s bird’s eye view on the conflict, rather than on tips on how to pick up hot Ukrainian chicks or, indeed, chicks with dicks like Sgt Sarah. Galloway, with his excellent command of the English language, also doubted that Lira “inflicted strategic damage on Zelensky’s regime”, thereby implicitly agreeing with my earlier analysis that Lira should have got a kick up the transom and be booted across the Hungarian border.

Leaving aside that Sergeant Sarah was a Federal informant, an agent provocateur, a gambler, a sexual deviant, a complete sociopath, and a terminal narcissist who pals around with terrorists, I, amongst others, have seen this D grade Hollywood plot play out a hundred times before.

Ukraine has an unhealthy sprinkling of such grifters on both sides of the lines. Former USMC officer Scott Ritter, who previously defended Lira, now believes Lira is a liar and SBU asset as does Eva Bartlett for the same reasons she objected to the family of Syrian President Assad bringing competition for her begging bowl to Damascus.

Brian Berletic, who posts informative videos under the New Atlas name, believes Lira is more fool than knave and, like Galloway, he admits he found Lira’s input helpful in his own analysis. To counter Berletic, there are a stream of twitter threads like these “exposing Lira” and all ‘kinds of “Putin shills,” some of whom, like Bartlett, Galloway was reduced to calling “flat earth fucks” because of their grifting, much of which, such as lying they were in Syria when they were not and stealing over $1 million of Iranian aid for Syria I have witnessed firsthand.

To get a feel for some of the whack jobs MI6 and the CIA support in Kiev, consider this MintPress article which reports on Cormac Smith, MI6’s hired Irish field hand who tells us that ““Russians are fucking animals” and that the Russkies have committed genocide by admitting that they forcibly transferred “700,000 Ukrainian children” to Russkie land, a figure Smith obviously plucked from Sgt Sarah’s more than ample ass.

MintPress goes on to discuss some of the usual suspects, such as MI6 asset Michael Weiss, the Henry Jackson Society, The Interpreter, the Atlantic Council, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Bellingcat, the 77th Brigade, MI6 contractors Torchlight, and NATO fixer Chris Donnelly, all of whom are grifting in Ukraine.

To me, all of those grifters are just noise. I go back to first principles, to the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and South Tyrone where the British fought a successful 40-year intelligence campaign against the Provisional IRA. As part of their war effort, MI5 bankrolled supposed former PIRA member Vincent McKenna’s Families Against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT),who gave the IRA a series of very black eyes until grifter McKenna was jailed for raping his own daughter.

When I asked two members of the IRA’s Army Council, their governing body, why did MI5 hire such a boomerang, they replied that MI5 were so hell bent on beating the IRA that they turned a blind eye to everything, child rape included. Using that and similar examples as my compass, it is, to me, beyond doubt that MI6 and the CIA have exotic and unhinged operatives working behind the lines in Syria, Ukraine and everywhere else; however, I doubt Lira is one of them. Rather, I believe he is one of those well-meaning fools I have come across who have paid either with their lives or by serving very long prison sentences for their folly in the killing fields of Ireland and Syria.

The problem is that it can be hard to differentiate the wheat from the chaff, the fool from the knave. Jamal Daoud, a Jordanian living in Australia, complains here about an alleged former Hindu extremist terrorist, planning to bump him off. But they, in turn, reported Daoud to Syrian Military Intelligence for bringing Jonathan Spyer, an Israeli spy, into Syria. Because of all that, I bought Spyer’s book, which is published by Routledge, which more or less specialises in academic vanity publishing. Chapter 14, Undercover in Damascus, the relevant chapter of the book, is as forgettable as bland bread and served no benefit to Israel or its allies.

And then we have the Sydney based Anglican priest, who is on an Israeli naughty list because of his long-standing friendship with nuclear missile whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu Barrett tried to manipulate for one of her $40,000 scams and whose face another “street artist” scammer plastered on murals all over Sydney when the priest was already in very hot water with his archbishop for bringing the church into disrepute with his activism. The end result of their “humanitarian intervention” was that the priest became homeless.

That is not to say Israel does not want their legions of little helpers in Syria. It does and I have blocked some of them and observed some others of them up close. But they, like Lira and his critics, are not the main game and they are hardly even a sideshow. As Syria’s best secret service agents joined the colours, it was often the dross that stayed behind to mop up the bribes, often in cahoots with the grifters.

When I told two former senior members of the IRA, whose brothers were murdered by the SAS that Assad had, despite Bartlett’s keening, invited Major General John Holmes, the former commanding officer of the SAS to Damascus, one of them thought it a good idea as, to him, bridges have to be built and the other thought it a bad idea as, to him, the only good SAS officer is a dead SAS officer.

Schooled by such experiences, my own prognosis is quite simple and to the point. The main vectors in the Ukrainian shemozzle are the Armed Forces of Russia and their military allies on the one hand, and NATO and their lemmings on the other. All else is tinsel.

Allied and perhaps even integral to the Russian Armed Forces are a number of spokespeople, the best known of whom are Russian President Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Russian Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zakharova, all of whom tend to tell it as it is, not as Tinseltown’ transexuals would like it to be. Opposed to those spokespeople are Hollywood circus clowns like Zelensky and Sgt Sarah, as well as a bunch of supporting clowns in Washington, London, Paris and Brussels.

The Syrian situation is slightly different as Syrian civil society and, indeed, Syrian military intelligence, have left far too many holes for domestic and foreign grifters to exploit. I have met many of these grifters and, not to put too fine a point on it but far better people were found in the back roads of Fermanagh and South Tyrone with bin bags over their heads and bullets through their brains.

Lira, as my previous article described him, is simply a middle-aged Chilean Ukraine will try to trade at a premium, just like they have done with previous civilians they kidnapped. Though Lira is only an irrelevant sideshow, I wish him and his family the best.

That said, this Ukrainian war will end with a resounding Russian victory that is already resonating across Africa and throughout Asia, from Syria in its West to China in its East. Cold comfort for Lira if he gets an OBE (one behind the ear) but, whether he lives or dies, his torture at the hands of Zelensky and transexual nut job Sergeant Sarah is one more score that has to be settled, one more vendetta that must, if necessary, be avenged in blood by the Russian Armed Forces.

Tucker Carlson EXPOSES Ukraine Biolab SHOCKING Details

The United States does this…

2023 08 16 07 21
2023 08 16 07 21
https://youtu.be/ZMTznqsHmM0

How Will Trump’s Fourth Indictment – And RFK Jr. – Influence The Election Season?

Another month brings another indictment of Donald Trump:

ATLANTA — Former president Donald Trump and 18 others were criminally charged in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an indictment made public late Monday night.

Trump was charged with 13 counts, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents.

With so much alleged conspiring should we call all these indictments a conspiracy theory?

This indictment is again too wide and borders on, like the others against Trump, criminalizing the retelling of rumors and free speech.

Just consider this part:

COUNT 29 of 41

And the Grand Jurors aforesaid, in the name and behalf of the citizens of Georgia, do charge and accuse DONALD JOHN TRUMP with the offense of FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS, O.C.G.A. § 16-10-20, for the said accused, in the County of Fulton and State of Georgia, on or about the 2nd day of January 2021, knowingly, willfully, and unlawfully made at least one of the following false statements and representations to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs, and Georgia Secretary of State General Counsel Ryan Germany:

  1. That anywhere from 250,000 to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
  2. That thousands of people attempted to vote in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia and were told they could not because a ballot had already been cast in their name;
  3. That 4,502 people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia who were not on the voter registration list;
  4. That 904 people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia who were registered at an address that was a post ofiice box;
  5. That Ruby Freeman was a professional vote scammer and a known political operative;
  6. That Ruby Freeman, her daughter, and others were responsible for fraudulently awarding at least 18,000 ballots to Joseph R. Biden at State Farm Arena in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
  7. That close to 5,000 dead people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
  8. That 139% of people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Detroit;
  9. That 200,000 more votes were recorded than the number of people who voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Pennsylvania;
  10. That thousands of dead people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Michigan;
  11. That Ruby Freeman stuffed the ballot boxes;
  12. That hundreds of thousands of ballots had been “dumped” into Fulton County and another county adjacent to Fulton County in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
  13. That he won the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia by 400,000 votes;

said statements being within the jurisdiction of the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, departments and agencies of state government, contrary to the laws of said State, the good order, peace and dignity thereof;

Even the Washington Post write-up finds that a bit too excessive:

The indictment takes an expansive view of the behaviors it alleges were acts “in furtherance of the conspiracy” — including, as an example, at least a dozen instances of Trump’s tweets alleging fraud and other claims. Such details from the indictment quickly drew criticism as potential violations of the defendants’ free speech protections.

Trials over these indictments, if any, will likely start only next year and will take quite a long time. Any judgment in them will be appealed.

All this will mean little for voters who mostly have made up their minds:

Yet most Americans made up their minds about Mr. Trump long before prosecutors like Fani T. Willis or Jack Smith weighed in, polls have shown. He is, depending on the perspective, a serial lawbreaker finally being brought to justice or a victim of persecution by partisans intent on keeping him out of office. The Georgia indictment, powerful as it is in its language, has been priced into the market, as the Wall Street types would put it.

“The accumulated indictments are kind of a white noise for voters,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican political consultant who has organized opposition to Mr. Trump and conducts weekly focus groups with voters. “They can’t tell the difference between Georgia and Jack Smith because it all blurs together in one long news cycle of Trump’s-in-trouble.”

I believe, like Trump, that the indictment will help him. First in the primary and then in the general election:

Speaking to supporters in Alabama a couple of days after his last arraignment, [Trump] claimed he was looking forward to the next one. “We need one more indictment to close out this election,” he boasted.

That is bravado — the sort of bring-it-on bluster that electrifies a Trump rally.

Contrast that with the case and against the Bidens which will be laid out by a special prosecutor to the same public. As I wrote when the last bits about the Bidens-Burisma saga came to light:

On the one side we have a case which shows the deep corruption of ‘the big guy’ and his family who are supported by the deep state they control.

On the other side we have the underdog who thought he was doing the right thing but is now indicted by the deep state for, at that time, saying so.

The media will shine the light on both cases. Each time they will mention Trump it will, independent of what they write about him, be positive for him by making the case of the lone guy who gets unfairly prosecuted by the deep state.

Each time the Biden case will be mentioned it will remind the public of Biden’s corrupt dealings.

Proceed through that for sixteen month and the outcome is assured.

Now add to that the possible quirks of the Democratic primary. RFK junior has entered that race:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has raised eyebrows as the first right-sympathetic populist to run as a Democrat since William Jennings Bryan. Launching with twenty paid staff and functioning now with seventy, Kennedy’s campaign has latched on to several issues important to mainstream Republicans—Covid tyranny, censorship, government surveillance—as well as to the dissident right: public health threats posed by chemicals in food and water, ending forever wars. The difference is the right frames these issues as matters of social cohesion and public order, while Kennedy uses the language of democracy and freedom.

In the currant fashion RJK Jr. is not really a Democrat:

When discussing the issues that animate him most—the environment, censorship, state and corporate collusion—he brightens. His hopeless intellectual humility and his hesitation to emphasize the most divisive ideological commitments of his own party while regularly taking up the language of his partisan opponents are setting up a general election that could divide populist voters almost entirely on the basis of aesthetics.

During the primaries the Democratic Party mafia will do their best to eliminate him even when he is unlikely to be a real danger to Joe Biden’s candidacy.

Should Trump then consider to run for president with RFK Jr. as his future vice-president he could form a quasi bi-partisan populist ticket that might well attract a larger majority.

Posted by b on August 15, 2023 at 15:47 UTC | Permalink

Taiwan is in BIG TROUBLE as China Vows Retaliation for DPP Visit to US

China has rebuked the U.S. for its latest escalations on Taiwan, from a growing economic war to the DPP’s latest visit to the United States. Here’s what we know thus far about the potential consequences.

The Perpetual Wars You Aren’t Supposed to Notice

By William J. ASTORE

In his message to the troops prior to the July 4th weekend, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin offered high praise indeed. “We have the greatest fighting force in human history,” he tweeted, connecting that claim to the U.S. having patriots of all colors, creeds, and backgrounds “who bravely volunteer to defend our country and our values.”

As a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel from a working-class background who volunteered to serve more than four decades ago, who am I to argue with Austin? Shouldn’t I just bask in the glow of his praise for today’s troops, reflecting on my own honorable service near the end of what now must be thought of as the First Cold War?

Yet I confess to having doubts. I’ve heard it all before. The hype. The hyperbole. I still remember how, soon after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush boasted that this country had “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.” I also remember how, in a pep talk given to U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2010, President Barack Obama declared them “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known.” And yet, 15 years ago at TomDispatch, I was already wondering when Americans had first become so proud of, and insistent upon, declaring our military the world’s absolute best, a force beyond compare, and what that meant for a republic that once had viewed large standing armies and constant warfare as anathemas to freedom.

In retrospect, the answer is all too straightforward: we need something to boast about, don’t we? In the once-upon-a-time “exceptional nation,” what else is there to praise to the skies or consider our pride and joy these days except our heroes? After all, this country can no longer boast of having anything like the world’s best educational outcomes, or healthcare system, or the most advanced and safest infrastructure, or the best democratic politics, so we better damn well be able to boast about having “the greatest fighting force” ever.

Leaving that boast aside, Americans could certainly brag about one thing this country has beyond compare: the most expensive military around and possibly ever. No country even comes close to our commitment of funds to wars, weapons (including nuclear ones at the Department of Energy), and global dominance. Indeed, the Pentagon’s budget for “defense” in 2023 exceeds that of the next 10 countries (mostly allies!) combined.

And from all of this, it seems to me, two questions arise: Are we truly getting what we pay so dearly for — the bestest, finest, most exceptional military ever? And even if we are, should a self-proclaimed democracy really want such a thing?

The answer to both those questions is, of course, no. After all, America hasn’t won a war in a convincing fashion since 1945. If this country keeps losing wars routinely and often enough catastrophically, as it has in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, how can we honestly say that we possess the world’s greatest fighting force? And if we nevertheless persist in such a boast, doesn’t that echo the rhetoric of militaristic empires of the past? (Remember when we used to think that only unhinged dictators like Adolf Hitler boasted of having peerless warriors in a megalomaniacal pursuit of global domination?)

Actually, I do believe the United States has the most exceptional military, just not in the way its boosters and cheerleaders like Austin, Bush, and Obama claimed. How is the U.S. military truly “exceptional”? Let me count the ways.

The Pentagon as a Budgetary Black Hole

In so many ways, the U.S. military is indeed exceptional. Let’s begin with its budget. At this very moment, Congress is debating a colossal “defense” budget of $886 billion for FY2024 (and all the debate is about issues that have little to do with the military). That defense spending bill, you may recall, was “only” $740 billion when President Joe Biden took office three years ago. In 2021, Biden withdrew U.S. forces from the disastrous war in Afghanistan, theoretically saving the taxpayer nearly $50 billion a year. Yet, in place of any sort of peace dividend, American taxpayers simply got an even higher bill as the Pentagon budget continued to soar.

Recall that, in his four years in office, Donald Trump increased military spending by 20%. Biden is now poised to achieve a similar 20% increase in just three years in office. And that increase largely doesn’t even include the cost of supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia — so far, somewhere between $120 billion and $200 billion and still rising.

Colossal budgets for weapons and war enjoy broad bipartisan support in Washington. It’s almost as if there were a military-industrial-congressional complex at work here! Where, in fact, did I ever hear a president warning us about that? Oh, perhaps I’m thinking of a certain farewell address by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961.

In all seriousness, there’s now a huge pentagonal-shaped black hole on the Potomac that’s devouring more than half of the federal discretionary budget annually. Even when Congress and the Pentagon allegedly try to enforce fiscal discipline, if not austerity elsewhere, the crushing gravitational pull of that hole just continues to suck in more money. Bet on that continuing as the Pentagon issues ever more warnings about a new cold war with China and Russia.

Given its money-sucking nature, perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the Pentagon is remarkably exceptional when it comes to failing fiscal audits — five of them in a row (the fifth failure being a “teachable moment,” according to its chief financial officer) — as its budget only continued to soar. Whether you’re talking about lost wars or failed audits, the Pentagon is eternally rewarded for its failures. Try running a “Mom and Pop” store on that basis and see how long you last.

Speaking of all those failed wars, perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that they haven’t come cheaply. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, roughly 937,000 people have died since 9/11/2001 thanks to direct violence in this country’s “Global War on Terror” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere. (And the deaths of another 3.6 to 3.7 million people may be indirectly attributable to those same post-9/11 conflicts.) The financial cost to the American taxpayer has been roughly $8 trillion and rising even as the U.S. military continues its counterterror preparations and activities in 85 countries.

No other nation in the world sees its military as (to borrow from a short-lived Navy slogan) “a global force for good.” No other nation divides the whole world into military commands like AFRICOM for Africa and CENTCOM for the Middle East and parts of Central and South Asia, headed up by four-star generals and admirals. No other nation has a network of 750 foreign bases scattered across the globe. No other nation strives for full-spectrum dominance through “all-domain operations,” meaning not only the control of traditional “domains” of combat — the land, sea, and air — but also of space and cyberspace. While other countries are focused mainly on national defense (or regional aggressions of one sort or another), the U.S. military strives for total global and spatial dominance. Truly exceptional!

Strangely, in this never-ending, unbounded pursuit of dominance, results simply don’t matter. The Afghan War? Bungled, botched, and lost. The Iraq War? Built on lies and lost. Libya? We came, we saw, Libya’s leader (and so many innocents) died. Yet no one at the Pentagon was punished for any of those failures. In fact, to this day, it remains an accountability-free zone, exempt from meaningful oversight. If you’re a “modern major general,” why not pursue wars when you know you’ll never be punished for losing them?

Indeed, the few “exceptions” within the military-industrial-congressional complex who stood up for accountability, people of principle like Daniel Hale, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden, were imprisoned or exiled. In fact, the U.S. government has even conspired to imprison a foreign publisher and transparency activist, Julian Assange, who published the truth about the American war on terror, by using a World War I-era espionage clause that only applies to American citizens.

And the record is even grimmer than that. In our post-9/11 years at war, as President Barack Obama admitted, “We tortured some folks” — and the only person punished for that was another whistleblower, John Kiriakou, who did his best to bring those war crimes to our attention.

And speaking of war crimes, isn’t it “exceptional” that the U.S. military plans to spend upwards of $2 trillion in the coming decades on a new generation of genocidal nuclear weapons? Those include new stealth bombers and new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) for the Air Force, as well as new nuclear-missile-firing submarines for the Navy. Worse yet, the U.S. continues to reserve the right to use nuclear weapons first, presumably in the name of protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And of course, despite the countries — nine! — that now possess nukes, the U.S. remains the only one to have used them in wartime, in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Finally, it turns out that the military is even immune from Supreme Court decisions! When SCOTUS recently overturned affirmative action for college admission, it carved out an exception for the military academies. Schools like West Point and Annapolis can still consider the race of their applicants, presumably to promote unit cohesion through proportional representation of minorities within the officer ranks, but our society at large apparently does not require racial equity for its cohesion.

A Most Exceptional Military Makes Its Wars and Their Ugliness Disappear

Here’s one of my favorite lines from the movie The Usual Suspects: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.” The greatest trick the U.S. military ever pulled was essentially convincing us that its wars never existed. As Norman Solomon notes in his revealing book, War Made Invisible, the military-industrial-congressional complex has excelled at camouflaging the atrocious realities of war, rendering them almost entirely invisible to the American people. Call it the new American isolationism, only this time we’re isolated from the harrowing and horrific costs of war itself.

America is a nation perpetually at war, yet most of us live our lives with little or no perception of this. There is no longer a military draft. There are no war bond drives. You aren’t asked to make direct and personal sacrifices. You aren’t even asked to pay attention, let alone pay (except for those nearly trillion-dollar-a-year budgets and interest payments on a ballooning national debt, of course). You certainly aren’t asked for your permission for this country to fight its wars, as the Constitution demands. As President George W. Bush suggested after the 9/11 attacks, go visit Disneyworld! Enjoy life! Let America’s “best and brightest” handle the brutality, the degradation, and the ugliness of war, bright minds like former Vice President Dick (“So?”) Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald (“I don’t do quagmires”) Rumsfeld.

Did you hear something about the U.S. military being in Syria? In Somalia? Did you hear about the U.S. military supporting the Saudis in a brutal war of repression in Yemen? Did you notice how this country’s military interventions around the world kill, wound, and displace so many people of color, so much so that observers speak of the systemic racism of America’s wars? Is it truly progress that a more diverse military in terms of “color, creed, and background,” to use Secretary of Defense Austin’s words, has killed and is killing so many non-white peoples around the globe?

Praising the all-female-crewed flyover at the last Super Bowl or painting rainbow flags of inclusivity (or even blue and yellow flags for Ukraine) on cluster munitions won’t soften the blows or quiet the screams. As one reader of my blog Bracing Views so aptly put it: “The diversity the war parties [Democrats and Republicans] will not tolerate is diversity of thought.”

Of course, the U.S. military isn’t solely to blame here. Senior officers will claim their duty is not to make policy at all but to salute smartly as the president and Congress order them about. The reality, however, is different. The military is, in fact, at the core of America’s shadow government with enormous influence over policymaking. It’s not merely an instrument of power; it is power — and exceptionally powerful at that. And that form of power simply isn’t conducive to liberty and freedom, whether inside America’s borders or beyond them.

Wait! What am I saying? Stop thinking about all that! America is, after all, the exceptional nation and its military, a band of freedom fighters. In Iraq, where war and sanctions killed untold numbers of Iraqi children in the 1990s, the sacrifice was “worth it,” as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once reassured Americans on 60 Minutes.

Even when government actions kill children, lots of children, it’s for the greater good. If this troubles you, go to Disney and take your kids with you. You don’t like Disney? Then, hark back to that old marching song of World War I and “pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, and smile, smile, smile.” Remember, America’s troops are freedom-delivering heroes and your job is to smile and support them without question.

Have I made my point? I hope so. And yes, the U.S. military is indeed exceptional and being so, being #1 (or claiming you are anyway) means never having to say you’re sorry, no matter how many innocents you kill or maim, how many lives you disrupt and destroy, how many lies you tell.

I must admit, though, that, despite the endless celebration of our military’s exceptionalism and “greatness,” a fragment of scripture from my Catholic upbringing haunts me still: Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Why I’m Raising My Children in CHINA – NOT The UK.

2023 08 16 10 09
2023 08 16 10 09

What I Wish My Dad Taught Me When I Was Little, According To 11 Me

It’s impossible to teach everything. But it’s helpful to know what untaught lessons might be felt the most.

by Matt Christensen

Aug. 10, 2023

A father’s influence on their sons is profound. As young men, we look first to our fathers to help lay the foundation for our own future growth and development. In an ideal world, they show us what to do, and what not to do. They help us distinguish between right and wrong. They encourage our strengths and nurture our struggles to prepare us for the future.

But, as well all know, fathers aren’t perfect. Sometimes opportunities to teach life lessons, impart simple skills, or prepare for hard-to-swallow truths get lost in the chaos of life. It happens. And it’s easy to look back with longing and regret at those moments. No, the point here is to not dwell on mistakes. Rather, it is to learn about what you might want to prioritize. We asked a dozen men what they wish their dads taught them when they were still kids. Whether learning how to problem solve, develop confidence, or rock and roll, they all had something to say. Here’s what they told us.

1. How To Be Present

“I grew up in a relatively low-income family with my mother on disability and my father always working hard to put food on the table and clothes on our backs. At one time my family had to file for bankruptcy because of debt. But my father still managed a way to get us what we needed.

My dad was a hard worker and taught me the meaning of hard work and perseverance.

But the one thing I wish I had learned sooner from my father was the importance of experiencing life, moments, and relationships over working for the dollar. Make your living doing what you do, but be present and don’t live life stuck in the past or even the future. Learn from past mistakes, but be in the present and cherish experiences and family because time is the one thing you can’t get back.” – Adrian, 31, Missouri

2. How To Know My Worth

“My father never taught me to be confident in myself. Instead, he forced me, as a little boy, to be timid, weak, and feel inferior to others, especially my peers. He was abusive and manipulative, and as a result, I would doubt whether any actions or decisions I took were the right ones.

Later on, colleagues would insult, hurt, and bully me, and I didn’t have the strength to defend myself.

I did learn lessons from my upbringing, though. The one that stands out in my mind all the time is that I must cherish and value my own children. I should never mistreat them or allow anybody to make them feel inferior. I’m traumatized by what my father did, and I wish he would’ve taught me differently. But what I have learned are essential lessons that I will never forget for the rest of my life.” – Phillip, 37, Colorado

3. How To Play Guitar

“My father was a musician, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I begged him to teach me how to play the guitar like him, but I wasn’t very good, and he wasn’t very patient. He got frustrated easily and nudged me toward other interests.

As a father myself, I certainly understand frustration. But I also know how wonderful it feels when your kids finally learn how to do something new.

I did eventually learn to play guitar. I’m still not good, but I’m better than I was when I was younger. My dad passed away before I had any skills worthy of sharing, and I always wonder what it would’ve been like if he were my teacher and we actually got to rock out together at least once.” – Jim, 45, New York

I begged him to teach me how to play the guitar like him, but I wasn’t very good, and he wasn’t very patient. He got frustrated easily and nudged me toward other interests.

4. How To Fix Things

“My dad was one of those guys who was very mechanically inclined. He had a blue collar trade for a career, worked on cars in his spare time, and fixed anything and everything that needed fixing around the house.

I’m not wired the way he was, unfortunately. Fixing broken things and working on cars is not a skill of mine. If I could go back in time to being a kid again, I would have asked my dad to take time to bring me in on some of his repair jobs.

To give me a shot at turning the wrench, so to speak. Not only would it have given me much needed knowledge, but it also would have given me much needed confidence when working with my hands, which happens a lot as a dad.” – Scott, 36, North Carolina

5. How To Set Goals

“When I was younger, I wish my dad had taught me about setting realistic goals. It’s a really important skill that could have helped me grow and become better. It would have made me more disciplined, determined, and adaptable from a young age.

Breaking big goals into smaller tasks can make a big difference in how kids deal with challenges.

If I knew this earlier, I would have been more motivated and faced difficulties with more confidence. Also, understanding the importance of setting timelines would have made me feel more urgent to get things done and not procrastinate. If my dad had taught me to celebrate even the small achievements, I would’ve felt better about myself and been more encouraged.” – Erik, 40, Texas

6. How To Care

“I wish my dad had taught me how to develop emotional intelligence. My dad wasn’t very present during my childhood. He was a traveling jeweler and usually out for two to three weeks, then back home for one or two.

He didn’t show me how to play sports, read, or any of the ‘normal’ stuff.

But the biggest thing he never showed me was how to care for the people I love.

I didn’t need him to be constantly checking up on me, but to be involved in how I felt, what I thought, or even what actually interested me outside of buying me whatever game I wanted. I now know this was something that he just didn’t know how to do, which is why I’ve made it a priority.

My kids will know that I’m interested in what they like, how they think, and the people they are going to become. And my wife will know I support her in whatever she does. Ultimately, their happiness and emotional health are priorities for me as a husband and father.” – Joshua, 33, Arizona

7. How To Connect With People

“Being a dad to two cool boys, 9 and 11, often makes me think a lot about what my own dad taught me growing up. One big thing I wish he’d shown me is how to connect with people.

I’m an introvert and striking up a conversation with someone new feels like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded.

It’s tough, and I see the same thing in one of my boys. I realized a few years back that I had a small group of friends and didn’t stay in touch as much as I should. This hit me hard and got me thinking about the importance of connecting and building relationships.

I’m learning to get better at this, and I’m taking my boys on the journey with me. I want them to understand that making friends and keeping them close is just as important as acing a test or scoring a goal. It’s something I’m still figuring out, but hey, that’s part of being a dad, right? We learn, and we teach.” – John, 31, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

My dad was very much a ‘Let me do it’ kind of guy. He wanted to fix the problem, whether it was a broken appliance or hurt feelings, rather than explore it.

8. How To Let Certain Things Roll Off Me

“I wish my father had known about and been able to teach me about the mind, and not letting what others say and do get to me so much. Sometimes the things other people say and do make us change how we do something or what we think about something, which has interfered with my life quite a bit.

Had I have been taught how to manage those types of thoughts, I’m sure some of life’s worst moments wouldn’t have weighed upon me so heavily, for so long, and I would have been able to move on from them sooner.” – Michael, 40, Michigan

9. How To Problem Solve

“Getting older has made me learn to appreciate the ability to understand how and why things work. I’ve taught myself a lot by taking things apart and putting them back together, and I realize now that I’ve been conditioning my problem-solving abilities.

My dad was very much a ‘Let me do it’ kind of guy.

He wanted to fix the problem, whether it was a broken appliance or hurt feelings, rather than explore it. Or help us learn about it. I appreciate what he was trying to do, but I think it hindered my ability to think for myself and really figure things out while I was growing up.” – Trevor, 40, Pennsylvania

10. How To Nurture My Inner Child

“I wish my father had taught me that most adults, even parents, still feel like kids themselves deep down inside. That the feeling of not being ready for adulthood never really goes away, and most grown-ups are still trying to learn how to do stuff the right way.

Since becoming a dad myself, I’ve realized that the feelings I have, like not always knowing the right answers, or trying my best but still making mistakes with my kids, must have been there for my dad, too.

I’ve realized that they must have occasionally felt like a child with adult responsibilities sometimes, just like I do. I also think that lesson would have helped me be a bit more calm and understanding with other people throughout my life.

When I stop and think of other adults as basically kids on the inside, with the same insecurities and fears that I have, it’s a lot easier for me to have patience and compassion for them.” – Phil, 45, Ohio

11. How To Manage Money

“I wish my dad had taught me about stocks and investing when I was young. He rarely talked about money or his work as a director at a large financial institution. His passing in December 2001 left a void in my life and financial knowledge.

As I grew older, my interest in finance intensified, and I felt unprepared to manage money.

I took it upon myself to learn about investing through self-education and seeking advice from others. Now, as a father, I understand the importance of sharing knowledge with my boy. I aim to be open and communicative about finances, empowering him to make informed decisions.

Though my journey to financial knowledge was self-driven, I hope to create an environment for my son where he feels supported and encouraged to learn about finance and investing, just as I wish I had been in my youth.” – Patrick, 45, Korea

How China Space Program Is BIGGER, BETTER & ADVANCED Than NASA

Armed with aggressive timelines, strategic investments, and an insatiable appetite for innovation, China’s space endeavors have propelled it into the forefront of the race to space. The nations remarkable successes, like landing rovers on the hidden part of the moon and building a growing space station, have caught the world’s attention and clearly show that China wants to be a leader in space exploration, challenging the long reign of the US. In today’s episode, we will cover how China space program is better than NASA in several aspects.

What are some facts that a disturbingly large percentage of Americans are ignorant about?

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Black Wall Street in Tulsa Oklahoma, was one of the richest black community in all of America. Then in 1921, a group of white supremacists attacked the community with the help from the National Guard.

Known today as the Black Wall Street massacre, where 35 square blocks were decimated. The community was home to 10,000 African American residents. It was a thriving community, with brick and wood frame houses, and a bustling place of commerce, with shops, night clubs and theatres. It was a vibrant place, and full of promise which is why it became known as Americas Black Wallstreet.

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main qimg 58a0b6d6fed3b7d3edbe103263712d38

Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed wiping out years of generational wealth. Hundreds had been killed and buried in mass graves as a heavily armed gang of looters and arsonists destroyed everything in there wake. One of the factors in the destruction of the community was resentment over the financial prosperity of the black community.

What are the world’s weirdest court cases?

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2023 08 16 21 46

In Charlotte, North Carolina, a Lawyer bought a really expensive box of Cigars and then insured them against fire. Within a month he had smoked all 24 of these rather fine Cigars, without even paying his first premium payment on the insurance policy.

The Lawyer then filed a claim against the insurance company. In the claim the Lawyer claimed the Cigars were lost in a series of small fires.

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2023 08 16 21 4gg7

The insurance company out-right refused to pay, stating the obvious reasons for not paying out the insurance claim, and that the man has consumed the Cigars in the normal way. The Lawyer filed a lawsuit against the insurance company and won.

The Judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous, but the judge stated that the lawyer had a policy from the insurance company, which it had warranted that the Cigars were insurable and guaranteed that they would insure them against fire, without defining what was considered to acceptable fire.

Instead of having to go through a lengthy legal battle and costly appeals process they accepted the Judges ruling and paid the lawyer 15,000 dollars for the smoked Cigars.

After the Lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson.

The Matrix (1999) | First Time Watching | Movie Reaction | Asia and BJ

Would a Russia and China alliance be an unstoppable force? With Russia’s oil and natural gas resources and China’s large economy and sheer population and both countries military power, arsenals and nukes

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2023 08 16 21 49

Absolutely

The Russo – Sino combination would produce an Economic Giant with :-

  • Combined Real GDP of almost $ 25 Trillion
  • Combined Food Per Capita of 575 Kg per Year (400 Kg per year being minimum desirable)
  • Combined Gold Reserves of 5000 Tonnes officially and around 6500 Tonnes unofficially
  • Around 4 Million Soldiers including Reservists
  • Capable of outproducing NATO at 17:1 in Ammo, 9:1 in Missiles, 6:1 in Ships and 6:1 in Choppers and Tanks
  • Oil and Gas Reserves

However this isn’t just adding numbers

China isn’t ready to split the world into camps

China wants a multipolar world and wants both the East and West

No matter what the West does, China is not burning bridges with the West because China still gets a lot of stuff from the West

My guess is China will wait and if Taiwan becomes a major issue then China may finally formally cut off the West and form a major alliance with Russia

Russia is ready even today

It’s tired and sick of the West

Putin and Shoigu are moderates but Medvedev, Lavrov, Surovikin, Prighozin are all extremists and tough hawks who want the West beaten and crushed

So it all depends on Taiwan

That would be the red line for China

If US supports Taiwanese Independence, China will formally get into a United Nuclear Alliance (If anyone nukes China, Russia nukes him back and vice versa) and a United Military Alliance (Anyone attacks Russia or it’s friends and China supplies everything including soldiers )

US politician Robert Kennedy Jr. has confirmed the existence of American biological laboratories in Ukraine which are used to produce banned biological weapons.

Tuesday, 15 August 2023 2:40 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 15 August 2023 9:37 PM ]

US politician Robert Kennedy Jr. (File photo by AFP)US politician Robert Kennedy Jr. has confirmed the existence of American biological laboratories in Ukraine which are used to produce banned biological weapons.

"We have bio-labs in Ukraine because we are developing bioweapons," the Democratic Party presidential candidate told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a video interview posted on the X social network (formerly known as Twitter) on Tuesday. "Those bioweapons are using all kinds of new synthetic biology and CRISPR (an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats in DNA) technology and genetic engineering techniques that were not available to a previous generation," the US politician, also known by his initials RFK Jr., said in the interview. "When the Patriot Act reopened the biolabs arms race in 2001, the Pentagon began putting a lot of money into bioweapons," Kennedy Jr. added. "But they were nervous at that time because if you violate the Geneva Convention, it’s a hanging offense," he explained. "So they were nervous about actually going full force into bioweapons development. So they transferred the authority for biosecurity to one agency in the HHS [the US Department of Health and Human Services]," the politician added. "But now, when you do bioweapons development, every bioweapon, it needs vaccine so you develop them side by side because in 100 percent of the cases when you deploy a bioweapon, there’s blowback. Your side also gets sick," he concluded. The Russian Defense Ministry revealed the existence of US military biolabs in Ukraine working on producing bioweapons as early as February 2022. In mid-April, a Russian parliamentary commission presented its final report on the investigations into the activities of the US-run bio-labs in Ukraine. The report concluded that the Pentagon’s military biological program had grown large in scale, being implemented under the guise of anti-terrorist projects and activities that were permitted by the Biological Weapons Convention. The parliamentary commission also pointed out that the activities of all the US-controlled laboratories involved Pentagon experts. However, the results of their work were confidential and government agencies in the host countries only had access to secondary research results. Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, revealed that the secret US labs in Ukraine were producing biological warfare. As a result of the illegal activities that were being carried out at US bio-labs in Ukraine, Russia last year asked the United Nations Security Council to establish a commission to investigate the reports that Washington and Kiev were in violation of the Convention prohibiting the use of biological weapons. In the meantime, Moscow believes that the US bio-labs in Ukraine are only a fraction of a global network of 300 similar facilities. However, the US government has now denied the existence of such military bio-labs. Instead, the US government has admitted to what it calls US-funded biological research facilities. Earlier this year, Russia said it had obtained documents in Lisichansk, in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), that revealed the US military-funded labs in Ukraine had been creating biological weapons components and testing them on the population of the country. "Russian troops have secured over 20,000 documents, reference and analytical materials, and interviewed eyewitnesses and participants in American military-biological programs" since the start of the war in February last year, said the commander of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov. The general said that the documents "confirm... the focus of the Pentagon on creating biological weapons components and testing them on the population of Ukraine and other states along [Russia's] borders."

What are the lessons people most often learn too late in life?

I am 67 years old. These are among the best things I have ever learned:

  1. You spend your first 20 years worrying what people think about you. You spend your next 20 years swearing that you don’t care what people think about you. You spend the next 20 years realizing that they aren’t thinking about you. A liberation!
  2. Any day on this side of the dirt is a good day. Some people didn’t make the cut last night. I was hit by a speeding taxi as I was walking to a bus stop. I spent a month in rehab with two broken legs, a brain injury, multiple back injuries and other fractures. The night before I was hit, a young, married couple was also hit. They both died. Practice gratitude.
  3. A woman I know spends most of her time thinking about how much she hates her thighs. She can give you a detailed report on what is wrong with them. She forgets all the places those legs have taken her, all the miles they have walked for her. It doesn’t occur to her that when she gets up in the middle of the night to pee, those very thighs walk her to the toilet. Spend more time appreciating what you’ve got— a heart that beats, a way to pick up your cup of coffee, the eyes that see that cup and know what color it is. Blessings abound.
  4. There are two kinds of people in this world – those who believe there is enough to go around, and those who don’t. Here is an example: If Margo is leaning up against the car kissing her boyfriend, and I think how nice that must feel, do I try to steal Margo’s boyfriend or do I go out and get my own boyfriend? I go out and get myself a boyfriend. I don’t need to steal Margo’s. I know that there is enough to go around.
  5. An old Native American woman was asked why she was always so happy. She said that she has two wolves in her heart and they are both hungry— one wolf is angry and evil, the other wolf is filled with love, and that’s the only one she feeds.

India Just BURIED The Dollar, Saudi Arabia Is Next

Yes. It is happening.

A truth

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funny memes 4

Can you give some examples of revenge being served cold and sweet?

About 30 years ago, I lived in an apartment complex where the owner paid the heat, hot water and cooking gas. The owner was one of the cheapest people I knew and she refused to fix anything or hire a decent Super. Btw, she had paid off the complex 15 years prior so she was making good $$$ off the complex

The boiler breaks and she has an old, used one, that she found in the newspapers, installed during the summer. By state law she was required to provide heat by November 15th. By the 23rd, it is brutal cold and we still didn’t have heat. I called her up to find out what is going on. Her response was that she was out of $$$ and for me to buy some electric heaters. Btw, that meant my expenses would up, since tenants paid for their electricity.

I go to town hall, met with the appropriate officials, let them know what is going and file a complaint. I also let them know that there was a large elderly group of tenants in the complex.

The official calls her, tells her that she is in violation and that she needs to get the heat on ASAP. She tells him off and refuses saying that she knows people. (She didn’t) He tells her that he will fine her $1000/day for each unit or $48,000 a day starting with that day. She tells him that he can’t do that and called him some choice names. What she didn’t realize that the town’s lawyer heard the entire phone call.

The next day she was delivered a notarized invoice for $48,000 along with a legal document stating that this daily fine will continue until the heat goes on. Now she is in a panic since she now owes the town $48,000.

But the best part of the revenge is that this happened on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Do now she had to scramble to find someone who could get the system working which she eventually did. But he charged her double claiming that it was interfering with him going away for the holiday.

One last thing, the town official told her if she tried to harass me for reporting her, the town would go after her and would pay my legal bills if I had to sue her

Couldn’t Be Easier Brisket

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2023 08 16 10 23

Prep: 5 min | Bake: 2 to 3 hr | Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 3-4 pounds boneless beef brisket
  • 1 bottle chili sauce
  • 1 can Coca-Cola
  • 1 envelope dry onion soup mix

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 300 degrees F.
  2. Combine chili sauce, Coca-Cola and soup mix.
  3. Place brisket in a foil-lined baking pan*. Pour sauce mixture over brisket and cover with another sheet of foil sealing edges.
  4. Bake at 300 degrees F for 3 to 3 1/2 hours until tender.
  5. Carve brisket against the grain and serve the pan juices as a sauce.

Notes

* or use a cooking bag for really easy clean-up.

Now CHINA Missile Force Can Destroy US Asia Pacific Command in Just 7 minutes

This audacious assertion unveils a stark reminder that in the realm of modern warfare, the boundaries of possibility are continually pushed, leaving the world to grapple with the implications of China’s missile might and its potential to reshape the geopolitical landscape in a matter of minutes. Today’s episode will cover China’s missile force power.

Which Chinese fashion is still not adopted in Western countries?

Hanfu.

During my years in Australia, the States, Germany, and Ireland, I have seen Western women wearing the occasional qipao.

But never hanfu.

I guess because hanfu can be cumbersome and is generally impractical for modern urban city life.

And maybe because most people in Western countries don’t even know it exists.

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main qimg ab2d380d524ef3b13940811c9b017641

MUST WATCH: Oliver Anthony “Rich Men North Of Richmond” Review

The Cheyenne Social Club (1970)

Today’s treat. Full movie with James Stewart. Please enjoy!

Out of the blue, the grizzled farmhand, John O'Hanlan, receives an unexpected letter from an unknown solicitor in the far-off town of Cheyenne, Wyoming, informing him that he is the proud owner of the Cheyenne Social Club, now that his estranged brother, D.J., has passed away. Intrigued and eager to trade in the dusty landscapes of 1867 Texas for an easy life as a businessman, without delay, John sets out on a long trip with his best friend, Harley Sullivan, to create a better future for himself. But somehow, John's newest and only acquisition has both a good and a bad reputation. Either way, the establishment's inexperienced manager now holds the fates of its loyal staff in his hands: a beautiful sextet of dedicated, and above all, famous female employees. However, is John cut out to run this type of business?
https://youtu.be/aRjhZSGaWbE

A mix of many

When I was in 5th grade, my friends and I stumbled upon an old “bottle dump” in the woods. These were 100 year old garbage and trash dumps that were reclaimed by the woods and forests of Western Pennsylvania.

The junk and organic matter was taken over by nature, thus leaving a thick and rich soil covered by native vegetation. The only things not decayed were the glass bottles, and the shards of broken glass that were everywhere.

Thus, we had stumbled upon a “bottle Dump”.

And for the next three or so years I would go out with my friends, happily digging away and collecting all sorts of colorful and interesting 100-year old bottles. My favorites were whittle bottles, and bitters.

Whittle marks are a very descriptive term for a bottle body feature that almost never has anything whatsoever to do with its name. The term "whittled" or "whittle marked" is a reference to a hammered or wavy surface to the glass that one could imagine was caused by the "whittled" marks of the mold maker on the inside surface of a wooden mold. Early 19th century glass makers called this effect "ruffled glass" while later it was referred to as a "hammered look" (Toulouse 1966)

Bitters, intact bottles, were rare and very much prized.

These bottles were the most popular medicine bottles in the 19th and 20th centuries. They were popular because of their content. The Bitters came from mixing natural herbs with a lot of alcohol. These medicines were widespread because, during the movement, they allowed the legal consumption of alcohol.

Anyways, we could collect the bottles, and I must have had hundreds in my basement, and many, many lining my boyhood walls. Where I had hanging model airplanes, books, and the brick-a-brack of my boyhood youth.

All was forgotten when I went to university, and then the Navy. And discarded by my mother by the time I got married.

Bottled collecting was a silly but enjoyable boyhood hobby that I have fond memories of. It allowed me to explore the history of my local area, crawl and climb in the woods and spend a lot of time outdoors.

If your kid ever gets into something so harmless, don’t hassle him over it. Embrace it. It could be far worse. Don’t you know.

Now you know

Two People – an Argentinian and Carmela Vitale of New York filed separate patents – 11 years apart – for a small piece of Plastic that prevented the Top Layer of Cheese and Tomatoes on a Pizza from scraping the Top of the Pizza Delivery box – which often ruined the Pizza.

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The Argentinian did not renew the patent but Carmela Vitale earned royalties for this small piece of plastic of 3 1/2 cents per piece sold from 1.1.1986 to 31.12.2010 and earned a whopping $ 57.7 Million in Royalties alone

I would have to say this is the simplest yet at the same time the most lucrative business idea.

Driving tip

If a deer runs onto the road in front of you while your driving, its better to hit the deer then swerve into a ditch. If a Moose runs onto the road its better to swerve into a ditch, Moose’s are tanks.

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NATO order Italy to stand away from China

“Signing up with China’s BRI was a dangerous mistake, and Italy needs to embrace the United States leadership”.

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2023 08 02 16 11
https://youtu.be/cJYFGtuqWsI

The last building standing in Hamburg.

This marvelous feat of modern aesthetics sits smack in the center of Hamburg, and will keep doing so for at least a millennium. It’s a flak tower / bomb shelter for the population, the kind of thing that was really needed in the mid-20th century in Germany.

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main qimg 189c60aebffb51d180923041b6f358f1 lq

When the war was over, the new government tried to get rid of most of the old Nazi-looking stuff that the previous administration had left behind. They commissioned their most elite demolition crew to this specific building. The guys scratched their heads for a very long time and came to the conclusion that tearing this beauty to the ground would require enough explosives to blow the whole city sky-high. So better not.

It’s still there. One of the best clubs in town uses the top floor. The walls are up to 3.5 meters thick, so the music doesn’t bother the neighborhood.

It’ll be the last building standing in Hamburg.

Wild West Chili Soup

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2023 08 02 11 54

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
  • 2 medium garlic cloves
  • 2 cans tomato soup
  • 2 cans pinto beans, undrained
  • 3 tablespoons chili powder
  • 1 cup onion, chopped
  • 1 can beef broth
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 cups macaroni, cooked
  • 2 tablespoons vinegar

Instructions

  1. Brown beef with onion and garlic until tender.
  2. Add remaining ingredients, and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

What’s Actually Happening At U.S.-Mexico Border Is MIND BLOWING!

There’s a tremendous amount of hyperbole and emotion surrounding the border crisis, but what’s really going on? To find out, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. traveled to Yuma, Arizona and spoke with border guards as well as migrants themselves, and what he learned was nothing short of shocking. Jimmy and RFK Jr. discuss the myths associated with the border situation and the revelations that criminal cartels are actually in charge of U.S. immigration policy.

Have you ever had a neighbor who believed they had free reign of your property?

Yep. Her name’s Elena.

She frequently trespasses in my garden, sleeps on top of my car, and if I ever leave my door open – as I do during a heatwave – she walks right in like she lives here.

A few weeks ago I was taking a bath with the window open downstairs, with my AirPods in, and I left the bathroom door open so the place wouldn’t steam up, and she came and jumped on me in the bath while my eyes were closed. I don’t know which of us got a bigger fright.

Fortunately for her, she’s awful cute.

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main qimg 51a1e3befb135b4451a2e1f8dcd3cd9f

Face hidden to avoid incrimination.

What role does China Evergrande Group, the world’s most indebted property developer, play in the debt crisis in China’s property sector?

The question is who takes the loss.

In the US subprime mortgage crisis, the government decided to let Lehman go under before the full extent of the debt was known, and this had a domino effect. The outgoing Bush administration decided that the banks needed to be bailed out to prevent running out of cash, and the losses were passed onto ordinary Americans.

In China’s case, the government is slowly letting the air out of the debt bubble instead of letting it collapse, and it is acting to prevent the losses being passed onto ordinary Chinese. Don’t expect a US-2008 style crash because real estate has been the main savings vehicle for ordinary Chinese over the past 40 years. The Chinese government knows that if they lost value on their homes too quickly, then Chinese would stop spending in the domestic economy, and China wants to cut back on exports as a portion of the Chinese economy. The aim is to switch over to a consumer-driven economy from an export-driven economy and this can only be achieved by making Chinese feel secure. This is the reason for all the spending and development on infrastructure and technology.

The important thing to remember about China is that the People’s Bank issues the currency, and government-owned banks make the loans. The US Fed only has control of interest rates, but the Chinese government has a much finer level of control than the US, and it reports only to the Communist Party, not an independent board of governors as the Fed does.

That makes a huge difference.

US/France threaten intervention in resource-rich Niger – Fears of war in West Africa

War! War! War!

The US and France have threatened foreign intervention to re-install a pro-Western regime in Niger, which produces uranium needed for nuclear energy and hosts large US drone bases. This follows coups led by nationalist, anti-colonial military officers in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, which warn intervention could set off a regional war in West Africa.

2023 08 02 16 15
2023 08 02 16 15

If you are ever kidnapped…

If you ever get kidnapped and put in the boot/trunk, disconnect the brake lights and there’s a chance the driver might get pulled over, given you a chance to call for hel

2023 08 02 10 24
2023 08 02 10 24

What are some of the worst industrial disasters that have occurred in the world?

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main qimg 07669d6b204c6ad344b8f4167db88c8f

The worst Nuclear disaster you have never heard of. In 1985 the Goiania institute of radiotherapy in Brazil, moved locations. They left behind a Cesium-137 cancer therapy machine. Two years later on September 13th, 1987, two men break into the building and steal the machine, as the guard that was hired to protect the building never showed up for work.

The men wheeled it home and began to dismantle it, with both men falling sick that night. Despite this they continued to dismantle the machine and by the 16th of September, they were able to puncture a hole in a capsule inside the machine.

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main qimg 0e11dc861b5e63f4fdd97a52e6e18e3f lq

Inside the capsule was a bright blue powder that they scooped up. They shared it with friends and relatives, even painting blue crosses on their shirts and some even used it as make-up, completely unaware of what they had.

The handling of the blue power was enough for the two thieves to require fingers and an arm to be amputated. But before it had gotten to that point the men decided to sell it to a local scrapyard. The machine was further dismantled by the owner, Devair Ferreira. When he was finally able to release the blue powder himself, he was fascinated by the it. Believing it to be highly valuable, even possibly supernatural, he invited family members over to see it, even passing it around.

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From there it was then sold to another scrapyard. Devair’s brother, Odesson, even took a chunk of the material home with him. He was a local bus driver and unknowingly contaminated dozens of passengers. He’s also one of the most contaminated surviving victims of the disaster and he says he can still feel the burning in his hands.

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His six-year-old daughter even played with the blue powder on the floor before having dinner, where some of the radio active material had fallen on her sandwich and she consumed it. Tragically, within just one month she passed away and was buried in a lead coffin, encased in concrete.

Nobody knew that the material was highly radioactive. As time passed, everyone who had came in contact with the machine or the powder began falling seriously ill. It wasn’t until a concerned relative had a feeling the machine had something to do with it and took some of the blue powder to the hospital to be tested. Doctors were quick to determine that they were suffering from acute radiation poisoning.

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They resulted in over 100,000 people being isolated in the Olympic stadium for screening. 250 people were found to be contaminated. 28 skin related injuries from radiation and two men, one woman and one child died.

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Over 40 homes and buildings had to be demolished. The remaining chunk of Cesium, as well as over 6000 tons of contaminated clothing, furniture, pieces of buildings and even dirt were packed into steel drums and containers and dumped in an abandon quarry.

Why don’t Chinese people wear their traditional dresses on a frequent basis? They are almost always in Western dresses. I think they should take more pride in their 汉服, for example.

Originally Answered: Why don’t Chinese people wear their traditional dresses on a frequent basis? They are almost always in western dresses. I think they should take more pride in their 汉服, for example.

OK, let’s say, sure, we want to wear our traditional dresses more. But which traditional dresses? from which dynasty? Like, here’s the thing about Chinese traditional dresses or 汉服, we kind of sort of don’t have a very clearly defined and universally accept definition of 汉服.

It’s not like 和服 or kimono. When people say kimono, you exactly what they’re talking about. The style is pretty iconic and consistent. There’s a long and continous tradition of making kimono following a very clearly defined processes from printing the fabric, to the cut, to how to wear them, to how to fold and store them.

Han Chinese traditional clothing do not have that because there are so much records about different type of clothing throughout history. We have record about our clothing style all the way back to the actual Han dynasty some 2000 years ago and beyond.

If someone want to wear a dress from 2000 years ago, we know how to make them.

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main qimg 39ccd9294a49f448e924620ce3ba7e68 lq

If someone want to wear Tang dynasty clothing from about 1000 years ago, we know exactly what they look like.

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So when you think about 汉服 (Chinese traditional dresses), what do you have in mind?

Do you think of something like this?

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main qimg b47cf62080f43328ae85624d96ba0382 lq

Except this is not even 汉服 or Han clothing. This is Manchu clothing, well, not even “traditional manchu clothing”. It is, more precisely, alternated modernized Manchu style clothing most popular during 民国 or Republic of China (1910s – 1940s) era. You aren’t seriously suggesting that the style popular during that 30–40 years represents the entirety of Chinese traditional clothing.

So if you wear this and call it 汉服, a lot of Hanfu purist would be very unhappy. After all, the Manchus are barbarians. Their clothing can not possibily be representative of Han Chinese clothing. That would be blasphemy.

And as a Manchu myself, I wouldn’t even call it “Manchu clothing” because this style is a westernized Manchu clothing only became popular AFTER the fall of Qing (Manchu) Empire.

You’re really talking about a “bastard” style between western and Manchu clothing that you (a westerner) is more familiar with, but has nothing to do with the real Hanfu (or Manchu clothing).

I do want to clarify that I love Republic of China era clothing. This was our “roaring 20s”, and I found the mix of Manchu and western style refreshing and glamorous. It’s just they aren’t Hanfu no matter how you cut it.

And on top of that, there’s also the practical consideration. As you can see most of the Han Chinese style clothing features long skirts (sometimes with trains) with long wide sleeves. They aren’t very practical in everyday life in our modern age. Try get on a crowded bus wearing a Ming dynasty clothing.

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main qimg 7acc0d6f9b67a3a54cc05dd8c6ea8245 lq

That being said, people do wear traditional Chinese clothing in everyday life.

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Even though we couldn’t quite agree on what exactly is 汉服. They’re all very beautiful.

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1eab1811efe3c9e1978edf2d44c8930d

Germany announced its first “strategy on China“. It will reducing dependencies in critical sectors by diversifying its supply chains — a goal referred to as “de-risking.” What does this de-risking strategy mean to China?

I am very interested in the implementation details of de-risking because almost all major German manufacturers are public companies which need to report earnings to their shareholders every quarter, and shareholders are interested in the business health of their companies.

These companies have two reasons for their China presence:

  1. That is where their supply chains are based and;
  2. China is their largest single market.

My feeling is that shareholders will want to know in exact terms what de-risking is going to cost? Who is going to pay for the costs of moving supply chains and moving to smaller markets? Since Foreign Minister Annalina Baerbock is making the demand, (isn’t it strange that the foreign minister is telling German businesses what to do), shouldn’t she have discussed with the Economic Minister (also a Green Party member) how these companies would be compensated for their loss? Would there be a corporate tax holiday? Or would the government cover their losses with some kind of subsidy?

Based on what I have seen so far, there is no guarantee of any compensation for their loss. Just look at TSMC’s move to Arizona; they have not been given any money by the US government, even though they have spent more than US$10B on the move. TSMC shareholders are not happy about the move. TSMC’s founder Morris Chang is one very unhappy person and has gone public with his unhappiness. He is in his 90s, so he doesn’t give a damn.

You see, there are problems with de-risking from China:

  • Every market after China is smaller;
  • Every supply chain outside China is smaller and less efficient.

So the final question German manufacturers are likely asking is:

Who is going to eat the loss?

Gonzalo Lira seeks political asylum in Hungary

Gonzalo Lira seeks political asylum in Hungary The Duran: Episode 1658

2023 08 02 09 57
2023 08 02 09 57

American “news”

From the 1AUG23 Drudge Report.

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2023 08 02 10 28

What are the strangest facts about history?

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In The 18th century, England’s wealthy had a peculiar taste for garden décor, live ornamental hermits. The English elite had an unique way of showcasing their wealth and tastes. They would hire people to live in their gardens. These individuals were not your typical gardener or caretakers. Instead, they were tasked with embodying the romantic ideal of the solitary, contemplative life

The wealthy landowners would construct follies, decorative buildings, or ruins in their gardens. These follies served as the living quarters for the hermits

The Hermits were expected to dress like druids, avoid bathing and let their hair and nails grow long. They were to spend their days in contemplation, writing and adding an air of mystic to the garden.

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main qimg 0532ae6341aee7259ac10ca4ecf57d50

The role of the hermit was taken quite seriously. Some were under contract for years. For an example, Charles Hamilton, reportably offered a hermitage for seven years at his estate, Painshill Park, with a salary of 700 pounds around 150,000 euros in todays money.

However, the hermit he hired was dismissed after just three weeks after he was caught drinking down the local pub. The trend of ornamental hermits died out by the end of the 18th century.

What is the most brilliant example of taking advantage of a loophole you have ever witnessed?

My father ran construction crews in the 70’s and contracted for several builders. One wrote a bad check for the job. After the draft bounced my dad demanded a replacement check and called the bank to verify funds before leaving the office with it.

He took it to the issuing bank to cash and they refused because he did not have an account with them. He asked again if funds were available and was assured there were, but unless he had an account there they would not cash it for him.

He then asked if they would exchange it for a cashiers check. They said they would and took the builders check and issued my dad a cashiers check. My dad immediately requested they cash the cashiers check. The teller refused stating he needed to have an account with them to cash checks there.

At this point my dad got loud enough for everyone in the bank to easily hear the conversation and asked the clerk if they were refusing to honor their cashiers check because it might not be good? Was the bank having solvency issues?

A supervisor came over to handle the issue and after being updated as to the details by the clerk he started laughing and told her “He got you. Cashiers checks have to be cashed regardless of account status as they are written on the bank itself are are guaranteed as if cash.”

Dad walked out with his money.

What is the coolest fact you know?

Hungarian engineers mounted two MiG-21 Jet engines on a Soviet tank.

Why would you do that?

Necessity gave birth to this invention after a better way was needed to put out oil well fires in Iraq after the Gulf War in the ’90s.

Necessity gave birth again giving us the world’s greatest water cannon.

This baby can propel 7000 gallons of water in a minute from those black hoses you see sticking out.

The MiG-21 jet engines take care of the rest by propelling that water nearly 800 MPH at the fire.

Who would have thought two former war machines could come together to create this tool for the common good of humanity?

If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this:

Two negatives really can make a positive.

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main qimg 5676db2b4ad4c4020024fdba7c4caf51 lq

How did Americans get so fat?

Well, it could be more food.

But look at the “fat cities” as opposed to the “skinny cities” and you find another correlation. Walkability.

Not a lot of New Yorkers are fat, particularly in Manhattan. Driving is a chore there and walking is often the best way to get around.

But go to Houston. It’s one of the most obese cities in the country. Naturally, the only way to get around the city is to drive. No matter where you are, there’s nothing within walking distance.

The YouTube channel “Not Just Bikes” calls it the “gym of life”. He lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and he rarely drives. Hell, he even has a cargo bicycle where he can bike for 15 minutes to a big-box hardware store, pick up stuff, and bike it home. He and his kids are in great shape.

But once he was in Houston, needed office supplies, and tried to walk a half-mile to a nearby office store. After navigating a landscape without sidewalks, including have to cross a small culvert while walking on the side of a road with 70 kph traffic, he took a cab back.

The highest correlation to weight is when your neighbourhood was built. If it was built before 1960, your chances of being obese are low. If it was built after 2000, it’s likely you’re obese, because you’re driving everywhere. Because you have to.

What is the most life-altering decision you’ve made in the spur of the moment?

I was 16 years old when I ran away from home. Parents divorced when I was nine, mom was raising seven of us by herself. I was number 4 but the oldest boy. Began working at age 10 (paper route) to give mom money to help. At 12 began de-tasseling corn, putting up hay, mowing lawns, etc. At 14 began working at a Pizza Hut as a cook. At 16, I had no life, never had a date, worked 50 hrs a week, began skipping school, drinking, running around. Doing things that could get me into trouble but not getting caught.

Friend came around and told me the cops were looking for us. I felt I had no life anyway because I was giving most of my money to my mom. We took his car (it was paid for) and ran away that night, ending up in Texas (from Missouri) a couple of days later. We got jobs, an apartment (with a guy from work) and began again drinking (in Mexican bars). No serious crime, never drugs, but heading down the wrong path. High school drop out, runaway, trouble seeking.

After a few months of sharing the apartment, our roommate showed his true colors, disappearing with our rent money and we were evicted. Was able to find a room to rent from an elderly woman, but my paycheck was a few days late so she locked me out. I was homeless for a while until my boss (another Pizza Hut) allowed me to sleep in the restaurant. One day, as we were getting off of work, my friend suggested we join the Marine Corps. I said, “OK, what’s that?” It was 1973 and I had no clue what the Marine Corps was.

Though we were only 16, we enlisted and were sent to recruit training. I don’t remember being asked my age but we were tall for our age and scored well on the ASVAB test. In any event, we were found out on the second day of training and sent back to Texas. I learned that you could enlist at age 17 with a parent’s signature, my mom agreed to it and I reported to boot camp again right after my 17th birthday. The rest is history.

Boot camp was HARD! My drill instructors pushed us hard and would not let me quit. They instilled a self-discipline and confidence that I had been lacking. My first duty station, I served under a 1stSgt (senior enlisted) who, though still firm and demanding, I looked at him as the proud, encouraging father that had been missing from my life.

I ended up serving on active duty for almost 26 years, married, raised a daughter and four sons. All of my children have served or are currently serving. The GI bill paid for my college degree, leading to a 15 year teaching career that I retired from last year.

Two spur of the moment decisions, one with negative, potential life-altering consequences, the other absolutely changed my life for the better.

For information, a few years after enlisting in the Marines, I learned that the cops that were looking for us (that spurred our decision to run away) were truancy officers. Sheesh!

How do you rate Chinese scientific prowess with that of the West lately?

Overall ?

Experts estimate that China’s Scientific roadmap at present is between 33% to 130% in various fields with those of the Western Nations

This is based on Research Papers published and accredited outside their country, Viable Patents (Patents that survive beyond 3 years and go to prototype stage), Number of Doctorate Students, Number of Post Graduates and Research Funding vs Application

Take Semiconductors

Overall, China is Sixth behind US, Netherlands, Japan, South Korea and Germany

Take Construction Technology

China is Number 1 , surging ahead of Japan in 2021

Take Geotechnical Engineering and Structural Engineering

China is Number 1 beating Canada and Israel in 2019 and 2022

Take Satellite Design and Fabrication

China is 2nd behind the US

Yet while US owns around 19 Core Technologies, China owns 13 and relies on the other 6 by less quality substitutions

However US took 47 years to develop these core technologies whereas China took a mere 7 years

Take Aeronautical Engineering

China is Seventh after USA, Germany, UK, Russia, France, Sweden

Take Robotics

China is Third in Cosmetic Robotics after Japan, S Korea beating US to fourth place

China is Fourth in Advanced Robotics after US, Japan and S Korea

China is First in Industrial Robotics beating S Korea in 2021


Areas where the Chinese Scientific Roadmap is way behind that of the West :—

  • Astrophysics
  • Nuclear Chemistry
  • Advanced Cellular Research
  • DNA and Genome Analysis
  • Virology & Serology (*)
  • Micro-engineering
  • Advanced Processors

In these areas China spends less than 25% of what the US spends on Core Research and less than 50% on Evolutionary Research

Except Advanced Processors where China spends around 310% of what the US spends on secondary research and 185% on Core research.

Thus China is between 25–40% where US is in these fields

(*) Experts Believe China is far ahead in Virology and Serology than it claims due to security reasons


Areas where Chinese Scientific Roadmap is on par with or almost on par with the Western Roadmap:—

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Quantum Computing
  • Advanced Computing
  • Satellite Engineering
  • Integrated Software
  • Packed Algorithms
  • Immunology (Vaccine related)
  • Medical Equipment (High Grade)
  • Quality Engineering
  • Core Science
  • Advanced Physics
  • Advanced Mathematics
  • Precision Engineering

In these areas China spends between 55% to 200% of what US spends and is anywhere between 60% to 90% of where the US is today

Experts believe without the export ban, China could overtake the US in these areas by 2030. Now it’s likely 2040.


Areas where the Chinese scientific Roadmap is ahead of the US and the West :—

  • Mineral Extraction
  • Deep Sea Bore Tunnelling
  • Agricultural Sciences
  • Hydraulics and Hydrology
  • Construction Technology
  • Rare Earth Extraction and Development
  • Transportation Engineering
  • Low cost engineering
  • Industrial Engineering
  • Production Engineering
  • Manufacturing Engineering
  • Thorium Salt Reactor Engineering

Chinas Road Map is ahead of the US and the West in these areas

China leads the world in most of these fields and controls the most core technologies and most unique indigenous processes for itself and depends on nobody beyond raw materials


So as an outsider, China may be roughly say 70% of where the US and the Collective West is today — overall as far as Scientific Progress is concerned

Japan is around 80%

So what’s so worrying?

TIME

Japan took nearly 57 years to reach this level of scientific depth with massive massive western cooperation

China took a mere 16 years with minimal western cooperation

Oh SH*T! Now Kenya is INVADING Haiti?

The U.S. government will provide Kenya with the “resources” – presumably this means money, weapons and training – necessary to lead an invasion of Haiti, pending UNSC approval. Kenya will conduct an assessment mission to Haiti in the coming weeks. So, we’ve outsourced the invasion of Haiti. Why? Redacted correspondent Dan Cohen reports on this.

What are the most bizarre appliance repair stories you’ve encountered?

One of the weirdest I have was years ago, back when the old analogue CRT TV’s were still the norm…

One had gone into ‘black and white’- a common issue when the signal strength dropped too far…

The complaint was ‘TV needs colour refilling and leak fixed, it has run out on the carpet and is now black and white’

Um WTF???

And yes- the TV was black and white (and a bit ‘snowy’) ie low signal strength, and there were indeed a couple of stains on the carpet under it, a red one and a greenish/blueish one right next to it…

UM again, WTF???

The real fault???

The balun on the TV antenna had lost its plastic cover, and it had filled with water- which had run down the old ‘air spaced coax’ which acted like a hose- right into the back of the TV…

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main qimg 53596bccec1729b37acc09c0520978b0

Thats it on the left- and each of those ‘air spaces’ is completely open from end to end… like tiny little hoses… (ETA these are the inner cores, both coax cables obviously have a woven metal ‘shield’ and a pvc insulation outer cover- these have been cut away to show the inner wire and the insulation for clarity)

The balun is the black box under the antenna itself (except this ones on the bottom, not the top like the one in the story- obviously this wasn’t the only time it had happened…lol)

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What had happened was each time it rained, it filled the balun on the antenna and sent water down the coax into the TV, and that was corroding various parts of the socket, and other things inside…

The greenish/blue was copper oxide from the copper conductor, and the reddish stain was rust from the metal chassis and screws… And because of the corrosion in the socket, the signal strength had dropped, meaning it dropped back to ‘black and white’

So the lady concerned (who had no technical knowledge of how TVs worked of course) rang it in with ‘the colour needs refilling in my TV, its leaked and run out over the carpet’

Why is most everything made/assembled in China?

I have been traveling a lot to China for the production of IoT products. This falls on the Engineering triangle. China can produce Quality, Fast, Cheap.

I feel all the answers about cheaper labor is missing the point of the question. Since the majority of the third world countries have cheaper labor. From most of Africa, South America, India, and so on… Cheap labor has already been pointed out. Here are a few more:

Mostly because it has a billion people, about the same as the rest of the developed world combined, but isn’t yet developed enough to be heavy in service industries.

China has invested a lot in infrastructure. Factories have reliable power, good highway and rail system to port, and large modern ports.

Educated, young and reliable labor force. People that can read and a good primary school science education.

Stable government policies. Companies know from year to year what the government will do. No surprise revolutions, uprising, and riots.

Good neighbors. The majority of the Chinese factories are owned by Japanese, Taiwanese, Singaporeans and South Korean.

The economy of scale. If you are making shirts, you want to be near button factories, zipper factories, and so on.

About the Quality, time, Cost. You can only pick 2.

If it is Time and Cost:

A bulk of Chinese products are designed to be available fast and cheap. Therefore the “Good” suffers. And it’s because of the fast and cheap, those items generally fail quicker than their other counterparts.

If you pick Quality and Time:

China has the capacity for quality items too, the bulk of electronics like Lenovo, Apple products come from China. They are generally high quality and available immediately. But those products are not always “Cheap.” Let me ask you this? Do Apple products have this reputation?

China only makes whatever quality someone is willing to pay for. iPhones are made in China but you don’t see people complaining about the build quality on them.

Lastly, when you see a product with “made in China” sticker, it’s not all made in China. China usually is the assembly point for most products, the parts come from a wider range of places.

Chinese girls ‘way ahead’ says UK education study

Girls scored better than boys in every ethnic group, and Chinese girls were well ahead of everyone else, says a study of UK academic achievement of 16-year-olds. People of Irish origin were ahead of Brits, contrary to popular prejudices!

What is a real meaning of success?

We spent the weekend at my parents (in-law) to celebrate my mom’s birthday. We had a fire:

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(The picture of the fire is too beautiful not to share, so I’m sharing)

After the fire lit up, my mom decided to get some s’mores. My dad looked at her walking inside the house, and told us, ‘I want to outlive her, so she won’t have to live a day alone, missing me.’

I think, my mom has succeeded in life, having someone loves her that much.

Is that the true meaning of success?

Putin launches DEVASTATING assault on Ukraine as NATO plan crumbles

NATO has been pushing Ukraine to launch massive armored offensives instead of small scale pin prick attacks. This plan has been devastating to the Ukrainian army which has come under intense air and ground attacks by the Russian army. Is it NATO’s plan to finish off what’s left of Ukraine’s military? Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter joins us for tonight’s live show.

Subway tip

If you ever fall off the edge of a platform on to the tracks, don’t try and crawl back up, there’s a crawl space built underneath in case this happens.

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What would happen if men let women do anything they wanted?

This is exactly why I have to move 2–3 throw pillows any time I want to sit down anywhere in my house, and then I’m expected to put them back on that seat when I’m done.

I just counted. There are 45 throw pillows in the living room, den, and basement sitting areas. We have another half-dozen throw pillows for our outside seating area, but those are in storage for the winter.

The women in my life… my wife and oldest daughter… are 100% responsible for all of these completely pointless, pain-in-the-ass pillows.

This is what will happen when you let the women you live with do anything they want. If you’re a young man who is thinking of getting married, I highly recommend that you keep your woman’s throw pillow purchasing in check early in the marriage. So many habits that you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life are established in those first few months of marriage. Unless you’re comfortable with seeing this every time you walk into any room with a seat, you need to put your foot down and stop it early:

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main qimg 90f84b2e4776bbf96ecbb2a820418348 lq

This Is The Protest Song Of Our Generation

This is what is going on RIGHT NOW.

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2023 08 20 10 20

Do you like China?

Several years ago, I had the distinct privilege of teaching for a year in China. How lucky I was! The people were so considerate, kind and helpful. The students were hard working and totally engrossed in learning. The parents super supportive. Assignments were done on time and to perfection. The pride expressed in everything was so refreshing. I return regularly to see my former students and friends. The experience changed my life and how I respond to life. Truly a gift!

Famous Actors Who Died in the last 12 months

Well…

What do you love but are embarrassed to admit to it?

Being the true American male that I am, I have more fishing poles than necessary. I have three for me, and two for my kids. I’d have one for my wife, if she wanted one. She doesn’t. I’ve asked multiple times.

I take my younger children fishing whenever possible. I pick one of my poles, and they each have their own pole. My son has a Spiderman one, and my daughter has a Barbie one. Before the gender stereotype police come after me, I want everyone to know that I let them pick out their own poles, and that’s what they chose.

Anyway, I carry my pole with me to the fishing spot, where it sits on the ground while I fish with my 4-year-old daughter’s Barbie fishing pole. She has an attention span for fishing of about five minutes, so I don’t have to take the pole from her. She just sets it down and walks away, and I pick it up and use it for the rest of the time.

She usually explores the shoreline, throws rocks in the water, names the worms we’re using for bait, or just sits and chats with us. She’s not bored… she just doesn’t want to fish.

And that’s fine with me, because I prefer her children’s Barbie fishing pole to mine. It’s short and easy to use and does everything I need it to do: cast out, and come back in. My grown-up pole has some features that I don’t use and just over-complicate a simple process.

I get good results with it too. I’m going to keep using it until I have a reason not to. If you’re in the Chicago area and you see a giant man using a tiny pink fishing pole, don’t be too judgmental of him.

This is NOT me in this picture, but this is the same pole that I’m talking about. This is roughly what I look like when I go fishing now:

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main qimg f7f77f5e3cdedd70ffc149b784f27344 pjlq

Colorized | The Cosmic Man 1959 | John Carradine | Sci-Fi | Thriller | Full Movie | Subtitles

Today’s treat. Full video.

1950 era science fiction.

I would rate this movie along with Star Trek IV and The Day The Earth Stood Still as being the most positive-minded when it comes to the portrayal of extraterrestrials and the message being presented by them to the people of Earth. 

It definitely shows that fear is the default state of Man's way of looking at matters be it toward extraterrestrials or himself and his fellow creatures, and that a new way of thinking is required in order to live life as he is meant to do so, that is to say, a decent, more enlightened and beneficent way to live with his fellow creatures here on Earth as well as those who live out in the vast depths of outer space. 

Only then can Man truly call himself a civilized and advanced being. And who is to say that extraterrestrials aren't among us right now making use of materials here on Earth to benefit both themselves, and trying to create a better existence for mankind as a whole!!!

Welcome to the Outer Limits

The “news” out of the United States is reaching hysterical levels. And as far as China is concerned, it is absurd.

On REDACTED, Clayton is reporting how Chinese soldiers drink blood…

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2023 07 12 21 08

On another (that I just cannot find at the moment), that China has secret bioweapons labs and one was accidentally discovered in California… an army of Covid mice to spread it all over California… not that it would matter. California is mostly a waste as it is.

Huawei phones read your brainwaves… don’t you know…

5G destroys your brains… well it did until… American companies renamed their 4G. Calling it “5G”.

India, Japan and the Philippines are going to stop China “dead in its tracks”… yeah. What ever you say.

The bullshit is really deep these days.

Meanwhile in China, actual troubling reports are coming forth.

I sure as fuck hope that China can sidestep this massive insane buildup towards war, but I am starting to waver and have my doubts. I need to contact the DC and find out its take on all this…

The USA is spewing wars everywhere.

2023 08 03 08 20
2023 08 03 08 20

“President” Biden is taking a nine day vacation. You know the kind you take right before you know that you will die. And he placed Victoria Nuland in charge.

Personally, I think she promoted herself. As there is NO ONE at the helm.

Sheech!

War time again

2023 08 03 16 20
2023 08 03 16 20

The Chinese are buying up more and more property in Western nations. Is there any agenda behind this?

These are Americans who work and live in US, just like you, 100% Americans, except they are Chinese Americans, nevertheless they are Americans just like Donald Trump and you.

Chinese living in China can’t transfer enough money from China to buy properties in U.S. or any foreign countries, because China has strict $50,000 annual limit. It takes 10–20 years of transfers to buy an average home in California.

The Chinese do it again

An update on superconductivity for our science sipping barflies, “Chinese scientists successfully synthesize magnetic levitation-enabled LK-99 crystal”, although it’s not the great breakthrough that’s awaited. However, it is advancement:

“Room-temperature superconductivity would enable long-distance lossless power transmission, leading to a new wave of global infrastructure development in the electricity network. Additionally, breakthroughs are expected in areas such as superconducting magnets, superconducting cables, and superconducting maglev trains, according to media reports.

“The breakthrough in room-temperature and atmospheric pressure superconducting materials would undoubtedly bring about revolutionary changes in various fields, including energy, transportation, computing, and medical diagnostics.”

The “news” against China is getting more and more hysterical, while the “reporting” seems to be nothing but lies and distortions. There MUST be an eventual peak inflection to this. When will the peak occur?

It shows how pathetic and desperate the western news media houses are. The people all over the world are getting more informed and they are now not easily deceived by their blatant lies and deceptions anymore. Thanks to all these social media apps where fact-checks on faked and fabricated news could be shared at the speed of light to all corners of the world. The more the news media spew such silly news, the stupider they look. Even the old grannies today could differentiate them. A laughing stock!

When will the peak occur? It is occurring NOW, and it will go downhill from here.

Aside from labor costs in China being so cheap, can we outsource the work to Chinese and let them do it for us? This way, you don’t have to work to get paid.

Actually that is what western nations has become all due to its own doing. You see the west thought that it could simply keep increasing its price each time it’s Union asked for a pay rise and it’s CEO wants another 10 million dollars dollars bonus!

What it does not know is that when no one knows how to do what you do they have no choice paying higher and higher and higher. But close to around 2000 the world has become way smaller and there is really always an alternative product that is just as good.

Hence when the western producer increase the price it lose customers and market to the point that it no longer makes business sense to produce it in the west and it has to be outsourced to the cheapest and acceptable quality producer. This is almost always China.

Why China? First China has 1.4 billion hardworking, skilful workers who are discipline and highly intelligent working long hours and not demanding benefits and absurd salaries. Their automation robots amount to more than the world put together.

Their infrastructure is state of the art and their government focus on making organisations efficient and effective. Together they are simply unbeatable and everything done in the west cost 10 dollars the rest of the world may do it for 5 dollars. And China does it shipped it back to the U.S. for 3 bucks!

Many racist or superior minded individuals here like to fall into self delusions about cheap labour. But China’s labour is certainly higher than many nations yet it still remains the most competitive manufacturer on planet earth.

Today China U.S. making for 50% of humanity.

To do it yourself you need to reduce your CEO salaries by 90% workers salaries by 70% and you need to spent 100 trillion dollars for 10 years. You need to reduce your 800 military bases to 5 and cut your aircraft carriers by 10 and retrenched 1 million CIA and NED payrolls.

Or in plain simple English. You just cannot and won’t do it.

So stop talking shit about China. Just slapping tariff on some products from China caused you a double digit inflation and now a recession. Imagine China decoupling from you? The U.S. will nosedive into a 50 years recession! If I were you, I will be nice to China.

Interesting video…

How propaganda works and how US politicians get American voters to vote for them. Video put together by American university students to show the absurdity of it all.

Russia forgives African debt

Along with China, they are cutting the purse strings of the West from plundering the global south. More bad news for the USD.

2023 08 03 14 01
2023 08 03 14 01

China’s first HSR designed for 350 km/h delivers 340 mln passenger trips in 15 years

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2023 08 03 10 54

A train coded C2551 slowly pulled out of the Beijing South Railway Station and headed for Tianjin Binhai New Area Tuesday morning, marking the 15th anniversary of the opening of the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway.

As the first high-speed railway (HSR) with a design speed of 350 km per hour in China, the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway carried a total of 340 million passengers since it entered operation.

Over the past 15 years, the daily frequency of trains running on the rail line has increased from 47 pairs to 128 pairs, and the shortest departure interval has been shortened from 15 minutes to 3 minutes, according to data from the China Railway Beijing Group Co., Ltd.

Wang Manman, a resident of Wuqing District, Tianjin Municipality, takes the bullet train to work in Beijing every day. The quickest journey takes only about 20 minutes, and there are eleven trains for her to choose flexibly during the morning rush hour from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.

The operation of the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway in August 2008 was strong support for the hosting of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and has accelerated regional integration and development. It has also unveiled a fast-expanding modern HSR network in the world’s most populous nation, coupled with its booming economy.

By 2022, China had 42,000 km of operational HSR, ranking first in the world, and the length of high-speed rail regularly operating at 350 km per hour neared 3,200 km as of June 2022.

High-speed trains have changed people’s commute circle and lifestyle and greatly optimized resource allocation, noted Cheng Shidong, a transport official with the National Development and Reform Commission.

THE MAN FROM UNCLE Season One Long Opening

How US “democracy” really works…

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main qimg a2ed51d4dcca98768961b1b59931f83d

Japanese Artist Creates Epic Anime Costumes For His Cats

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If you’re a fan of cats, anime, and adorable cats dressed in tiny anime costumes, this one is going to be a treat. Apparently, there’s a talented Japanese man likes to create handmade anime costumes for his two cute cats and you can find his beautiful creations on his Twitter account.

If you know your anime well enough, you might be able to tell that most of the costumes he creates are based on those seen in productions from Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation film studio. It’s also worth noting that all of his designs are made from scratch and with his own two hands.

15 Reasons Appalachia Might Not Exist One Day

This video made me cry.

What would happen if the US defends Taiwan against China and gets defeated by China?

My take is that the US will not dare fight China because it fears losing. It is no different from the supposed meanest and baddest mafia refrain from going after their strongest peers. Losing means losing everything.

You see today a good majority of the world still thinks the U.S. is the head honcho. It still fears the U.S. somewhat, though much lesser these days. But what if it is proven without doubt that China’s weapons are much more superior and that in a war the U.S. lose?

What if the Chinese jets simply blow off the F16 in the sky like swatting flies? What if 13 US carriers disintegrate by Chinese hypersonic missiles raining down on them at 10 times the speed of sound giving the U.S. 3 seconds notice? What if a million drones attack in unison and what if China takes Okinawa and Russia takes Hokkaido and Pyongyang takes Seoul and Tehran takes Israel all in a week? What is the dollar becomes a dime a buck? What next?

The U.S. pretence is exposed the aura is gone. For good. It’s weapons will need to be on cheap sales. The U.S. cannot even bully it’s own slaves anymore. That is the real reason it will not fight if China takes Taiwan by force. It won’t and it is smart. China have nothing to lose. The U.S. has everything to lose.

So the U.S. will do the only thing it can do. Talk a lot of shit. And rant and rave. Gang up it’s unholy alliance and pretend it cares. That is what the U.S. can and will do.

White House PISSED at Tucker Carlson for Exposing THIS!

Would you rather be rich in a poor country, or poor in a rich country?

Without exception, being rich in a poor country is the way to go. I moved to the Philippines in 2011. Eleven years later my Filipina wife and I opened our first small day resort on the island of Leyte.

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Though the resort is still under construction, people still want to stop by and enjoy the pool.

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main qimg 68311a820d8b8894eaaf74dfb6bf6aff lq

We’ve done a number of projects but this is the biggest and is scheduled to be fully functional with overnight accommodations and all the amenities in three years. Aside from using a backhoe to dig out the pool, everything is done manually using hand tools.

These projects employ a dozen local workers and puts money back into the hands of those that need it the most.

This project started in August of 2021 and my first milestone to have a working pool and pump room was achieved on February 16.

I was raised poor in the richest country in the world. It sucks to be poor in a rich country. Better to be rich in a poor country.

On 1983/3/30, the then China president Deng Xiaoping told US Congress leader O’Neill that USA’s 1979 Taiwan relations Act has interfered China’s internal affairs. USA has returned to Dulles ideology. What is Dulles ideology?

What is Dulles ideology? God’s Mission. America has a mandate from GOD, the King of the Universe, to impose its will on “Godless communism” anywhere, everywhere, on earth, at gunpoint if necessary.

Wild Rice Cheese Soup

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2023 08 02 20 05

Ingredients

  • 1 pound Italian sausage
  • 1 small onion, diced
  • 1 cup uncooked wild rice
  • 1 (10 3/4 ounce) can condensed cream of potato soup
  • 1 (10 3/4 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup evaporated milk
  • 1 pound cubed processed cheese

Instructions

  1. Fry sausage and onions in a medium skillet until sausage is no longer pink. Drain and set aside.
  2. In a small saucepan, cook rice in 2 cups of water until tender, then set aside.
  3. In a stockpot, combine sausage, onion, rice, soups, milk and evaporated milk. Cook over low heat until warm.
  4. Stir in processed cheese and heat. Stir occasionally until cheese is melted.

China Issues STRONG WARNING to NATO: Stay Out of Taiwan and Asia or Risk WAR

China has rejected NATO’s plan to expand into Asia and warned the Alliance that such a move risks all out war in the region.

2023 08 03 10 06
2023 08 03 10 06

France opposes ‘decoupling’ after economic talks with China

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday that he opposes the “illusion” of countries “decoupling” from China and he does not believe the world’s second-largest economy constitutes a risk.

He made the remarks after China and France concluded the 9th China-France High Level Economic and Financial Dialogue in Beijing on Saturday. The two countries reached a series of consensus ranging from finance to climate change and aerospace.

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Le Maire said Chinese investors are welcome in France, especially in the field of electric vehicles, batteries and energy transition, citing an example of Chinese group XTC New Energy Materials that has invested with French nuclear giant Orano in batteries, French newspaper Les Echos reported.

Le Maire told a press conference on Sunday that France wants to get better access to Chinese markets. France is on the right track, Le Maire said, opposing the “illusion” of countries “decoupling” from China.

Why do Western leaders have no fears about starting World War Three? Are they not in touch with reality?

Delusions of Grandeur

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main qimg 6d3101566a5b9fd983a15bbf82193adf

In 1986, Ronald Reagan said “There is no problem in lying to your people. As long as you don’t believe the lies yourself and fail to see the truth in front of your eyes”

He was talking about USSR and East Germany

Today that’s the case with the Collective West

They believe their own lies

They twist everything to keep believing in their own lies

They will destroy themselves to keep believing in their own lies

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main qimg 9fb4cad30516286d6b6702d0d7a62ea2
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main qimg fac75268ba058d998eac24640a030677

Take Biden

He is still living in the 1990s

He still thinks Russia is a gas station and China is a cheap factory nation

The Pentagon tries to tell him but he brushes them off

He soon only ensures the YES MEN are heard from and his closest advisors are the same

Like our Indians brainwashed by Whatsapp University, they are all brainwashed by their own lies and propaganda

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main qimg 3494848144938ff6353b2f4abae4fdfa lq

Take Nuland

She has never made a diplomatic move in her entire life

She believes the US is supreme and anyone can be threatened and she threatens everyone with dire consequences

So most nations she threatens, hates her and hates the US and waits for the time to plunge the knife into the heart of the United States and twist the handle


Even now they are deluded into believing World War III will be won by them

They are deluded into believing that somehow Putin and Xi will be overthrown by their own Generals and US will triumph once again

They don’t realise that XI AND PUTIN are probably the only ones who are keeping the hawks in their countries at bay

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main qimg 68bf47b8cae9bd0a29a1acd6b5b592bd

The Ultra Nationalists like Medvedev or even Lavrov and Kadyrov would happily launch nukes tomorrow and die if the Americans also die

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main qimg 17c96277b32b7879d2ba62e162c0a1d1

Anyone who knows China would know General Liu and his faction


Luckily until now these fools don’t have the full power to start WWIII

Macron isn’t quite as deluded as he pretends

Erdogan is a wily fox who plays the middle well

Austin is certainly more Pro Pentagon than White House now

Sunak is a lickspittle but he is too Indian to not be cautious

Gen Milley knows WWIII would be a disaster

Sullivan is a political animal but not an idiot or an ideological fool

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main qimg 1788f9b18f5de0796cd6dc74d39a2ba4

Obama controls a huge chunk of the party today and he certainly is no fool. He wouldn’t want Malia and Sasha to become vapor tomorrow.

So does the Pentagon

So push comes to shove, they can push off Biden and say “F*** off Mr President” or push the old man down the stairs after killing the cameras and say “He had an accident”

Yet who knows?

Ursula Van Der Leyen, Habeck, Baerbock, Nuland, Scholz, Marin are all spineless fools or doped to their eyeballs in Lies and Propaganda and they would burn themselves and their people in their delusions

They can happily start WWIII

So the only hope for humanity is for these insane creatures to be voted out or naturally die of some cause

Collective strike of 500,000 people!Will this president step down early?May have a toughest new one!

https://youtu.be/ezBTV_5x5us

How is your experience in banking in China?

It’s smoother than your dad’s bald head.

In the first few weeks I was here I was required to create a new bank account. I took the subway to the bank headquarters with my passport and a nice little letter from my supervisor confirming I was a current student at my university.

I filled in a form, she looked over my documents, did some typing, went to the back to get something, had me sign something, and BOOM, done! She handed me my new card.

All this in twenty-something minutes.

My little mind was blown to smithereens.

In my country (Papua New Guinea) to create an account it would take two weeks (for the paperwork to be processed). You would go to the bank, fill in the forms and show them your ID, birth certificates, and any other docs they need. You’d be told to come back after two weeks to collect your new bank card when your account is ready.

Even though I could still understand much of what this teller said to me in Chinese, she still made sure to type out what she said on a translator app and show me the message on the phone screen.

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main qimg 2d77e8767db37efacff5342a0e61a57b

I’ll even go far as to say I got special attention, which, being black, I was not really expecting. While I was seated waiting for my number to be called an assistant bank worker came to check if I have everything I needed, and to let her know if I needed any help. She also pointed out the direction of the washroom in case I needed it. Just doing her job, I know; still, I appreciated it.

I had gone recently to do some transactions via Western Union, they handed me this form.

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main qimg beec5e1debbae9ff241fc0757074910f

That was wrapped up quite quickly, too.

All in all, my experiences with banking had gone smoothly and quickly. You don’t even need a good command of Chinese to get your business done. They usually know English themselves or they’ll try to find some other way to communicate.

Treasury Tsunami Coming – U.S. Deficit Spending A Big Disaster

A massive treasury dump is coming and the markets aren’t prepared for a tsunami of bonds hitting.

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2023 08 02 19 43

While the US government spending is nothing new, they are borrowing tons of money at high-interest rates. This creates two big problems. It could spark another banking crisis as well as create an even bigger inflation crisis down the road. Here’s what you must know!

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2023 08 02 19 40

What the Hell…

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1587303478 eqwqy9n13t
thrift shop 33
thrift shop 33
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thrift shop 23
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1587303424 buuo2slqe7
thrift shop 14
thrift shop 14
thrift shop 13
thrift shop 13
thrift shop 12
thrift shop 12
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1587303430 4c3e05iuqd

China buying clothes

1905

In 1905, a photograph was taken in Japan capturing the moment when a Geisha, a female Japanese performing artist and entertainer, washed her hair before styling it. Geisha are renowned for their expertise in traditional Japanese performing arts, including dance, music, singing, and the art of conversation. They possess a distinctive appearance characterized by long, flowing kimonos, traditional hairstyles, and oshiroi makeup.

Geisha entertain at gatherings called ozashiki, frequently entertaining affluent clients. They also showcase their talents on stage and participate in various festivals.

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main qimg dd2572534a8ef378d1cbb95faf78e004

China’s latest victory! First chip cutting machine! Domestic production is 100% self-sufficient!

2023 08 03 17 02
2023 08 03 17 02

China’s groundbreaking advancements in the semiconductor industry as wafer laser cutting equipment achieves full localization.

China’s Hua Gong Technology has successfully manufactured the world’s first 100% domestically produced high-end wafer laser cutting equipment, a crucial component in semiconductor manufacturing.

Wafers are made of brittle materials mechanical dicing of thousands or even tens of thousands of chips on a 12-inch wafer typically results in a heat-affected Zone and dicing line width of about 20 microns compared with about 10 microns for conventional lasers the reduction in dicing line width means that Wafers can achieve higher levels of integration making semiconductor manufacturing more cost effective and efficient.

This breakthrough not only enhances China’s self-sufficiency in semiconductor equipment but also reduces reliance on foreign technology, countering US technology restrictions.

The “news” against China is getting more and more hysterical, while the “reporting” seems to be nothing but lies and distortions. There MUST be an eventual peak inflection to this. When will the peak occur?

Bill Chen

Lives in Singapore

This is a video from a purported “engineering” channel.

But you may be shocked by the arresting headline:

How Gotland-Class Submarines Transform NATO’s Approach to China and Russia

My eyes popped when I saw it in my feed.


Sweden isn’t even an official member of NATO and people are already incorporating Swedish military power into the wargame against the Russians and Chinese!

The acceptance that war with Russia AND China being inevitable is frankly, either gut-wrenching terrifying or utterly mind-blowing.

But a reading of the news over the past few years will convince even the skeptic that a consensus is being shaped among the first world citizenry, while the Russia-China axis is under constant dehumanization and presented as cartoon whims.

Victory, it seems, is assured, and plans are afoot to upgrade readiness for real conflict in the near future.


Part of the reason why I write about military affairs (particularly from the Chinese angle) is to draw the Western response.

To describe the experience as sorely disappointing is too mild.

I am gobsmacked flabbergasted by the repeated fairy tales thrown my way that bombers and nuclear subs lobbing tomahawks and other missiles will be able to sink the entire Chinese navy or disable the PLA, in a repeat of the 100-hour Iraq War. The rest of the American military then joins in the mopping up.

In other words, a turkey shoot even more spectacular than the Korean War, where 1 American died for 30 Chinese KIA.


The American-dominated media is suspending reality for the American people. No one has questioned the 200b increase in military spending since Donald took office. To put that figure in perspective, the increase is equal to two thirds of the Chinese military budget, the second largest globally. This is in tandem with massive increase of military spending in Europe, Japan, Korea, India, Australia and elsewhere.


In a recent market research note, one recommendation caught my eye. It promoted the merits of the weapons sector—Lockheed, Raytheon, etc—and pointed to the massive inflow that’s been announced by many governments. As far as killing and maiming is concerned, it’s boom time, never mind the frothy market.


There is no equilibrium right now. The American-led west has been upping the pressure since the Barack administration’s pivot east, to the point President Xi is openly exhorting the PLA to be ready for war at all times.

These are dangerous times.

I see two outcomes.

One: The Americans realize the folly of their ways, and u-turning. I find that unlikely, given the dysfunctional politics that refuses to forego the God complex.

Two: Provoking conflict between Japan and China over Taiwan, dragging Korea into the same mess. The entry of Russia into the issue of Taiwan is a stabilizer for the Western Pacific, because Japan will have to work through the strategic calculus of a direct northern neighbor that has an iron grip on Sakhalin.


The risk goes up with time, as both sides ratchet up and escalate. This will continue until there is a clear winner. The best we can hope for is a continuous stream of economic crises emanating from the first world’s profligate and irresponsible ways, forcing leaders to focus on domestic discontent, rather than fixing “the enemy”.

Five years ago, during Donald’s tenure, I would have put the possibility of war within the next decade at 20–30%. Today, it’s 60–70%.

We, as in East Asians, should all make our own preparations for a uncertain and dangerous future.

The Bellero Shield | Full Episode S01E20 | The Outer Limits

https://youtu.be/V3FA5FF_ILY

Won Ton Soup

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f8213ef37b46fbfe65f812fd4cd11433

How to Prevent Won Ton Wrappers From Drying Out: Keep won ton wrappers covered with plastic wrap until ready to use. Wrap any remaining won ton wrappers tightly in plastic wrap and store in freezer.

Make Ahead: Fill won tons as directed. Place in single layer on baking sheet. Freeze 1 hour or until frozen. Transfer to resealable plastic bag; seal bag. Freeze up to 1 month. Thaw in refrigerator before adding to hot soup to cook as directed.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound ground pork
  • 1/4 cup finely chopped shiitake mushrooms
  • 1/4 cup finely chopped water chestnuts
  • 2 green onions, finely chopped
  • 2 tablespoons GOOD SEASONS Asian Sesame with Ginger Dressing
  • 1 egg, separated
  • 32 square won ton wrappers
  • 8 cups fat-free reduced-sodium chicken broth
  • 1 cup thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms
  • 1/2 cup thinly sliced water chestnuts
  • 2 green onions, sliced

Instructions

  1. Mix meat, mushrooms, water chestnuts, onions, dressing and egg yolk until well blended. Spoon evenly onto won ton wrappers, adding about 1 teaspoon of the meat mixture to each wrapper.
  2. Beat egg white lightly. Brush onto edges of each wrapper; fold in half to form triangle. Press edges together to seal. Bring opposite corners of long edge of each triangle together, overlapping corners; brush with egg white to seal.
  3. Combine chicken broth, mushrooms, water chestnuts and onions in large saucepan. Bring just to boil on medium heat. Carefully add won tons; simmer 4 minutes or until filling is cooked through, stirring occasionally.
  4. Serve immediately.

Yield: 8 servings, about 1 1/4 cups each

Military Veterans React to Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond

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2023 08 20 10 41

The Third Man (1949, Film-Noir) Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli | Full movie

HUNTED…By a thousand men! Haunted…By a lovely girl! Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.

It is a GREAT MOVIE. Watch it if you have the time.

https://youtu.be/UcfrHVrNLK0

Whales sleeping, and Pepe Escobar

One of my first cars was an AMC Pacer. It was like driving in a large greenhouse. It had windows all around, and it rode pretty smooth. My particular vehicle was yellow; a nice 1970s yellow.

amc pacer
amc pacer

I used a lot of scrap shag carpet to line the floors at which my grandmother, and her girlfriends all thought that I had a great car to drive about in.

Man, that was a long time ago.

My friends drove other cars, of course. But I was forced to drive this after my GTO was lost while driving at speed along the dark curvy roads of wooded Pennsylvania.

GTO OIP
GTO OIP

In those days, the price for gasoline was cheaper than today. But it was still high. It was 65 cents per gallon. So we would fill the tank and go a crusin’. Maybe stop at the local burger joint and grab a burger and drink some beer.

e40635876e97d579deeb190586da819b bob s nostalgia
e40635876e97d579deeb190586da819b bob s nostalgia

Today, my life is very different.

Here we have to worry about psychos wanting to set the world on fire, instead of grooving and jamming to some tunes.

Sigh.

Gonzalo Lira Update and the Doom Loop Tour

So Gonzalo is alive. Yay!

Money

Large sums of money are a real HEADACHE. You do not want a large sum of money, and all those ideas that you might have about what you would do with it are just fantasies.

Hollywood is not reality. So get over it.

In today’s world, any amount of money over that which you can fit in your wallet is suspect. And if you are an American, it is subject to seizure as “potential criminal gains”. Which is, by the way, how this question was written. In the USA, the police really do not need a warrant, or an excuse to seize your money. They will just do it, so it’s really not in your best interests to have a lot of money on you.

But, I live in China, and the rules on money use, obtainment and storage are really strict. If you have a lot of money, then you will have a lot of headaches.

TRUE STORY TIME

I had an affirmation about getting a large; an enormous sum of money. And sure as shit it materialized, just not like I expected. I wrote about this event HERE.

in 2020 one of my clients approached me. And they had an interesting “project” that they wanted me to help them with.

Outside of Guangzhou were four warehouse complexes filled with 3.4 billion dollars in USD. These bills were in $100 denominations, counted and wrapped, and shrink wrapped on pallets. The owner of the bills, the warehouses, obtained the money over a span of many, many decades though various legal businesses, and just accumulated the money as he believed that the USD was a guaranteed hedge against the ups and downs of the Chinese political scene.

Well, things changed a lot since the 1980s.

He just kept on collecting the money, and not really using a bank to store the money. So the money was transparent to the Chinese government. Hidden really.

Around 2013, China started to crack down on this kind of activity, and so he registered the amount with a bank in Guangzhou. So now the money is recognized as his, and as legal tender. However, due to the laws inside of China, he can spend no more than $50,000/year of it inside of China. Nor can he take more than $50,000 out of China in any given year.

The warehouses are not really hidden, but non-descriptive and distressed, and patrolled by his security guards. He’s not worried about thieves. How would anyone haul away any of the money? Five million trips in a van?

Any kid could easily climb though the rusted chain link fence, and walk in and around the complexes. But they don’t. He has a very good reputation in the local area, and everyone knows him, respects him and loves him. He’s a very down to earth kind of fellow.

What he wanted me to do was figure out some legal way to use the cash (hard cold cash) to buy assets or something; like businesses, hotels, investments, minerals, etc. Without breaking any laws or rules. As for certainly, the government is now absolutely tracking his actions with his cash.

So, I and some of my staff met him at a hotel, had lunch and he drove us out in the countryside where he took use to one of the warehouse complexes.

The guard waved us in, and it was just a big complex of huge vine covered old warehouses and peeling paint. And he opened up the big sliding hanger doors and we went into the complex. It was stacks and stacks and stacks of shrink-wrapped pallets of cash one on top of the other as far as the eye could see.

And this was true for all of the warehouses. I have never seen so much paper in my life.

The owner told us that his biggest problem were local field mice and rats that liked to gnaw on the pallets and get into the money to eat it, as well as an occasional leak or two in the roof that might seep into the bundles of palletized cash.

He was tired of spending money to protect all this money that he could not spend, and he wanted an out.

We left, and went back and came up with some ideas and solutions. He was willing to pay us 10% on whatever we could “free up”. So for every 1 million that we can de-paper, he would give us $100,000 USD. Though, according to the law, it would have to occur over two years before we could get the money.

Of the various ideas that we came up with, none of them were acceptable to him. And so, after a few months of “wracking our brain” we gave up. Too much of a headache.

End of story

Now, that client is doing well. More money than he knows what to do with. Four girl-friends that he supports, plus a wife. And being older, in his 80s, I’m sure that the gals are more for company than for any “exercise”. But all this money is a big waste. He cannot spend it. He cannot give it away. The most he can do is give one person $50,000 that’s it. And he cannot move it.

It is the proverbial “white elephant”.

You do not want piles of cash. You do not want the hassles that come with it. You want freedom from worry, a roof over your head, and some delicious food and fun. But over and above that becomes more and more problematic as times moves on.

Same with fame. But that’s another story for another time.

Another idea

I’d amend Jon Mixon’s #1 to say “pay for some necessities and bills, then save the rest”. On paper, you’d just look like a very frugal person, but the savings would be essentially laundering the money very slowly.

If you’re living comfortably in a middle-class or professional job, maybe you’re saving $1–2k a month or more with this method. That’s $12–24k in a year, which you can easily turn around into small legitimate investments that can then enjoy compound interest.

People get away with embezzlement this way for decades at a time, and the only way they ever get caught is that an accountant *at the place they’re embezzling from* catches them. Since you’ve already got the $1,000,000 in hand, and no one’s looking for it, there’s relatively low risk of getting caught.

The trick is to spend your paycheck on everything that you’d use a credit card for: TVs, car note, gas and insurance, modest groceries, airline flights, etc. The practical rule is that “if it’s going to be sitting around your house when the IRS comes around, use your paycheck on it”.

Everything else? Use the dirty cash! Eating out, babysitters (already traditionally paid in cash!), subway tickets, beer money, and so on. If the IRS is too concerned with checking your bank records to make sure you DID buy that TV with a credit card, and that checks out, they won’t think you’re worth investigating how often you’ve been eating out.

One last thing.

I’d keep a storage unit, paid for out of a separate bank account in my name. Every month, like clockwork, I’d personally make a cash withdrawal from my paycheck, and a cash deposit in this bank account, in order to pay the storage fees.

And all I’d do is store my old junk in it. None of the $1M! The practical reason is, of course, very smart: if the IRS ever decides to audit you, you want something that *looks* suspicious on paper, maybe even borderline stupid in that way that most people get caught on “something very stupid”, but is an absolute nothingburger upon any closer inspection. It distracts people and makes them figure nothing else is wrong with you.

Plus, I’d just love to see that look on the IRS agent’s face when I rolled up the garage door and all he smelled was SOCKS.

Blinken’s accusation on China a disrespect of Tonga as sovereign state

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Upon arrival at Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wasted no time throwing mud at China.

This time, he called Beijing’s engagement in the region “problematic behavior” and Chinese investment “predatory” that would hurt the local economy.

Behind the China-bashing cliche, Blinken, the first U.S. state secretary to visit Tonga, was actually asking the island nation to take sides and making the region a new arena of rivalry, but he should understand that smearing others’ normal cooperation is a real problematic behavior. His accusation is not only an attack on China, but also unwise questioning of Tonga’s judgment on choosing partners as a sovereign country.

At a joint press conference after his meeting with Blinken on Wednesday, Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni told the U.S. guest that his country had no concerns about its relationship with China.

When Tonga was faced with multiple challenges, including volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and the COVID-19 pandemic, China often rushed to its assistance. As facts have proven, China’s friendship has always been based on deeds rather than words, Tongan King Tupou VI has said.

In the broader Pacific islands, China has carried out a large number of assistance projects that meet the actual needs of the countries it tries to help. These projects have strongly promoted local economic development and improved people’s livelihood. While offering help, China always fully respects the sovereignty and independence, as well as the will and the cultural traditions of the countries assisted.

Based on its own development experience, China has conducted mutually beneficial cooperation with other developing countries by upholding justice and pursuing shared interests, and provided assistance without attaching any political strings.

Such cooperation has greatly promoted economic and social development as well as people’s livelihood in relevant countries. The Mombasa-Nairobi Railway financed and built by China has created nearly 50,000 jobs for Kenya. By the end of 2022, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has brought 25.4 billion U.S. dollars in direct investment to Pakistan and created 236,000 jobs. The list goes on.

If Washington really cares about the development of the Pacific islands, it should first apologize and fully compensate for the damage caused by its over 60 nuclear tests in the region, address the islands’ pressing challenges of climate change with concrete actions, and focus on the real needs of local people, rather than sending senior officials to stage a runway-show-like diplomatic campaign.

And if the United States is truly committed to a better future and the well-being of the people in other parts of the world, it should stop slinging mud at China, and instead join hands with China to help countries in need.

A country that offers very little help, but tries very hard to obstruct other countries’ helping hands, and even pursues its own interests at the expense of others’, does not measure up to the image of a respectable major power.

Geopolitical INFERNO: Victoria Nuland’s South African Visit Sparks Fear and Fury!

Dive into the fiery world of geopolitics as we dissect Victoria Nuland’s enigmatic trip to South Africa. Uncover the deep-seated anxieties and justified fears that arise from her actions. Could her visit be a menacing threat to South Africa’s sovereignty? Is she secretly aiming to sabotage the BRICS’ new currency? Brace yourself for a no-holds-barred exploration that leaves no stone unturned!

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2023 07 31 15 55

Chengdu facilities, services wow athletes, officials

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“Amazing” is the buzzword in Chengdu, Sichuan province, the venue for the FISU World University Games.

Athletes and officials participating in the biennial Summer Universiade, which opened on Friday, said they are deeply impressed by the games facilities in the provincial capital, and underlined that Chengdu has set the bar high for future hosts.

The organizing committee of the games has taken recommendations from all sides into consideration and made sincere efforts to include them in the preparations, which has set a perfect stage for athletes to shine on, Leonz Eder, acting president of the International University Sports Federation, said in an interview with China Daily.

A total of 6,500 athletes from 113 countries and regions are competing in 269 events across 18 sports at the Chengdu games, which will run until Aug 8. Thirteen new venues have been built for the competitions, while 36 existing ones have been upgraded and renovated to meet international standards.

Athletes echoed the FISU acting president and said that they were also touched by the warm welcome accorded to them.

Elavenil Valarivan from India, who won the women’s 10-meter air rifle gold at Chengdu Shooting Sport School on Saturday, said the competition venue and its services are excellent. “What they have done here is so good, I mean, so much better than many of the places where I have competed before. … I’m really happy to be in Chengdu,” she said.

Brazilian basketball player Caio De Souza Pacheco said the smooth organization of the event is helping him focus on his game.

“I’m very happy to be here. We’re very excited. … What you guys have been doing in Chengdu, in China, has been amazing,” Pacheco said.

Jonathan Larsen, coach of the German badminton team, said that all athletes received a warm welcome at the Shuangliu Sports Center Gymnasium. “The venue looks absolutely amazing. And we are looking forward to competing in it,” Larsen said.

The badminton venue, which has a floor area of 14,626 square meters, boasts 14 courts and a warm-up area.

Sofus Rasmussen, head of the Norwegian delegation, said he is very impressed with how things have been organized. “From the moment we’ve arrived, we’ve been taken such good care of. … Things have been handled very efficiently. I think this organizing committee has set the bar really high for the next committee.”

Rasmussen said the opening ceremony on Friday was so splendid that it has been the most-discussed topic among athletes and officials over the weekend.

“It was incredible and nothing like (any ceremony) I’ve ever been to before. I was expecting it to be spectacular, but not on that level. And the audiences were fantastic. The athletes were so touched. For these young people, it was something they will never forget,” he added.

Why do I never hear of India’s economic challenges but keep hearing of Chinas all the time?

Ah

Mainly because China is a major challenge to the West and is the only Eastern Nation which is coming closest to pipping the West from its supremacy that was established nearly 400 years ago

So the smallest rainfall becomes a deluge ,a two man protest becomes a major massive million man protest and a minor confrontation at a bank ends up being a major run on banks

Likewise a normal cyclical economic problem where China should have been hailed for 6.3% growth despite all negative factors is being treated as a major economic crisis

Tomorrow if China convinces the West that it will allow western hegemony, purchase $250 Billion of US T Bonds and defunds it’s investments in AI and Defense and appoints someone like Hu Jintao as President and Secretary — then suddenly every media will be pro China and hail China as a modern miracle


India?

India is way way below anyone’s radar today

  • Zero core technology today
  • Heavy reliance on the West
  • Relatively low economic power
  • No major military threat to anyone
  • Parliamentary Democracy as per Western Norms

So why focus on India

They will instead focus on RRR & Leo & Diwali as a holiday & all the superficial stuff and rate India’s 7.2% growth as rocket like while China’s 6.3% in a six times larger economy as huge crisis

If India comes close to say 50% of Western GDP (US) and looks like it may be of some significance and a threat to Western Hegemony, then India will face its own share of horrors and fake stories


Within India?

That’s how Indians are most of the time

Always short term and Always burying problems under the carpet

Typical Democracy sadly !!!!!

Whatever wins votes will be what’s discussed

The Lowest Cost Airline You Can Imagine | The Carol Burnett Show

China is collapsing while the US is growing exponentially…

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main qimg 35141858cac5c8375fc76467c0754e18

Look guys…. US is growing exponentially with whooping ONE POINT ONE PERCENT. It’s a lot you know? So awesome. America numba ONE. Best country in da world!

China is suffering horrific growth of mere 6.6%. So pathetic! China is going to collapse in 10 days!!

Another headline for this post is: ”Western media fail at math”.

I Visited a Chinese Factory…What I Saw Shocked Me!

Hold on…this image is crazy!

This is what the Mars landing looked like from the perspective of the Perseverance rover about 10 km above the surface. We are in the middle of the descent phase into the atmosphere, and that disk in the center is the heat shield, just released, that protected the probe from the intense heat as it plummets toward the ground.

It’s all real! Human ingenuity is extraordinary!

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main qimg 8e509f44e91784e338722e550441f41a

Mama’s Family – Don’t call Mama while she’s at work

When did you realize you’re an asshole?

Today, ‘John’ was bragging to me about how good he is with chess. He kept rambling on and on about how nobody he met in real life could beat him.

So to shut him up, I challenged him to an online game of chess.

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main qimg 3a30784ffadc575d5e8b2e480be45141 lq

And I completely utterly thoroughly destroyed him, while taunting him in the chat at the same time.

I also made my moves super-fast, like within a few seconds after he finished his moves. More than once during the game, he exclaimed, “Wow Shanks, how do you play so quick?”


Unbeknown to him, during the game, I had another tab open where I was playing Chess against an AI set to ‘insane’ difficulty.

I played as Black against John, but white against the AI. This meant that John started first against me, while I started first against the AI.

All I did was mimic each of John’s move in the match against the AI and mimic the AI’s move against John. In other words, while it appeared that I was playing two chess matches at the same time, I wasn’t actually playing at all — John was playing the match against the ‘insane’ AI.

To top it off, I’ve only played like 5 chess matches my whole life. I barely know how to move the pieces!

Suffice to say, John wasn’t very pleased when I told him.

24 hours back in America from China | American China Expat’s Thoughts

24 hours back in the USA from China. What do I think about it here? What are my first impressions? Expectations?

Why did ASML export $646 million of equipment to China? Isn’t there a ban?

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main qimg d34f9efd205014aa073e9ebc740fce2e

Ah!!!

Trade can never be disrupted

In this case , these were orders placed by China before the so called Export Ban

There is no provision in the Export Ban asking for cancellation of existing orders and thus ASML happily exported $ 650 Million of Equipment to China

It’s no coincidence that before the ban, China placed almost $ 1.7 Billion of orders with Tokyo Electron and ASML for advanced semiconductor equipment and

NEITHER JAPAN NOR NETHERLANDS included any clause which called for cancelling existing orders in their legal notifications

Basically the Japanese and Dutch told their companies

Sell as much equipment as you guys want and we will turn a blind eye but before we pass the export ban

Experts estimate that Chinese plans for semiconductors will remain uninterrupted at least until January 2025 thanks to these small loopholes which I believe were deliberate

Meanwhile only one Moron blindly agreed to all the export bans and included cancellations of orders for the Chinese worth $ 1.46 Billion

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2023 07 31 14 40 1

SAMSUNG & SOUTH KOREA!!!!!!!

Everyone else,even the Japanese used simple common sense

Sure they hate China but they like money and they know , nobody else will pay $ 1.7 Billion for that equipment

Ultimately it’s why Politics never succeeds against Economics

It’s why Donald Trump never suggested an Export Ban but an extra Tariff on Exports to China from Japan or Netherlands or S. Korea. A Tariff would have increased Chinese costs and made them uncompetitive

Trump said “Develop your AI but PAY THE PRICE FOR IT”

Luckily Bidens win has given China four years to combat the situation and hopefully before Trump comes to power, China would have made the preparations to battle the onslaught

Malaysia, Hong Kong Plan Economic Hub Near Singapore Border

Development to come up near JB-Singapore rail terminus

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Hong Kong will join Malaysia in developing an economic hub in southern Johor, near the Singapore border, as Malaysia looks to tap the land development potential near the site of an upcoming cross-border rail link.

Malaysia’s MRT Corp. and Hong Kong’s MTR Corp.

signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a six-acre land for mixed use in Bukit Chagar on Friday, as part of Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee’s visit to Malaysia.

The development, worth 3 billion ringgit ($660 million), will come up less than one kilometer from the Malaysia-Singapore border. The location is also the site of the under-construction Bukit Chagar terminus station that’s part of the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System.

The intended mixed development is expected to transform the area into an attractive investor destination, for local and international investors.

The RTS project, which is expected to serve up to 10,000 commuters per hour in every direction, is due for completion in 2026. It is expected to ease traffic congestion at Malaysia and Singapore’s land border crossing, one of the world’s busiest. The four kilometer transit has two stations — Bukit Chagar in Johor and Woodlands in Singapore.

MADtv Bon Qui Qui King Burger

Why did Nouriel Rubini say that China’s real strength was being demonstrated this year?

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Nouriel Roubini in a talk said that China growing by 6.3% against the worst geopolitical and trade climate showed the strength and power of the country’s resilience

He also said China’s internal debt was something that could be infinitely restructured and be an ASSET to the Nation rather than a liability

He said their 2% inflation was also a huge positive against reeling inflation in the West

What Roubini says isn’t rocket science

Anyone who understands 101 of economics knows this

Still the West is rooted by SO MUCH PROPAGANDA that even something so basic , appears like some form of huge redemption for China

Not that the Chinese give a damn

They simply do their job and do their best for their country and people


The Best line of Dr Roubini was

Ten years from now, China would have moved on , solved it’s problems and be on its way as a developed economy

We (The US) would still be reeling with debt and inflation because we are so damn afraid of facing the truth and for once putting common interests over politics and ideology

Star Trek Next Generation – U.S.S. Lantree

What is your biggest “only in the USA” moment?

My teenager went to a very diverse Chicago public high school. I knew she, as a white girl, was in the minority at her school. I didn’t realize just how much so until her graduation a few weeks ago.

I watched her and about 400 of her classmates walk across the stage. Between their names, skin tones, and outfits (about a dozen girls wore hijabs), I’d bet that there were at least 50 different nationalities/ethnicities/races represented in her graduating class. That type of diversity was intentional… it was an International Baccalaureate (IB) school. My daughter was one of just a handful of students that represented what is actually the majority demographic in most of the country: white, born in the U.S., Christian, and straight.

Naturally, the parents in the audience were just as diverse as the students on the stage. Except, most of us had something in common. It wasn’t our skin tone or the way we dressed or even the language we spoke… it was that most of us, the parents, were noticeably overweight.

I’m a really big guy. I don’t lie to myself about it. I notice when people are as tall as I am, because it is rare. I notice when people are as big as I am, because it is rare. Well, it used to be rare. Now it’s becoming common.

When I sat in my seat for the ceremony, I expected to be cramped and uncomfortable. When you’re my size, you just get used to that whenever there’s side-by-side seating. But I noticed that it wasn’t just me. Every single person in the row in front of me looked cramped. Everyone in the row in front of that one look cramped. A few people were standing on the sides, unable to fit in the seats at all.

There was nothing unusual about the seats. They were the regular size you might find at any stadium. But so many of the adults in the room barely fit in them, because so many of those adults were overweight.

And that’s my “only in the USA” moment: hundreds of people, representing dozens of demographics from all over the globe, gathered in one place to celebrate our children’s accomplishments and transitions into adulthood, and most of us carrying at least 50 extra pounds on us.

Star Trek Next Generation – Ancient Space Capsule

What are some things that are ethical, but illegal?

Have you heard of Arnold Abbott? He was a 90-year-old man with a big heart and an unwavering belief in helping those who were less fortunate. He lived in Florida, where there was a growing problem of homelessness and he was concerned about this issue and wanted to do something to help.

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So he decided to start feeding the homeless in his community. He set up a table in a public park and began serving food to anyone who was hungry. Soon it became a regular fixture in the park, and many homeless people came to rely on him for a hot meal.

However the city council of Fort Lauderdale had recently passed a law making it illegal to feed the homeless in public spaces. The law was intended to address the problem of homelessness in a different way, but it made it difficult for people like Abbott to provide much needed help to those in need.

Abbott was undeterred. He believed that it was his moral duty to help the homeless, and he continued to feed them despite the new law. Soon, other volunteers joined Abbott in his efforts to help the homeless. They set up tables in other public spaces and began serving food to those who were hungry.

The city of Fort Lauderdale was not happy about this. They began to issue citations and fines to Abbott and the other volunteers who were feeding the homeless. But he remained resolute in his belief that feeding the homeless was the right thing to do and many others agreed with him as well.

Despite the legal challenges, Abbott and the other volunteers continued to feed the homeless. Their actions inspired others to join them, and soon a movement was born. People all over the country began to speak out against the criminalization of acts of compassion, and many cities began to repeal their laws banning the feeding of the homeless!!

The case of Arnold Abbott raises the question of what is truly ethical and what is legal? In some cases laws may conflict with our sense of right and wrong. In such instances, it is up to individuals to decide whether to follow the law or follow their conscience.

Star Trek Next Generation – Mystery Ship

Is BRI a wicked political scheme or is China stupid to invest in infrastructure that they cannot take away?

China doesn’t just lend the money. It also builds the projects. Yes it gets its hands dirty in the actual work, and its Chinese architects and civil engineers and construction workers are right there on the sites working as well.

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(This, by the way, is another reason why the US “Build Back Better” project will fail. White Americans are not going to move to Africa and stay there for 5 years working alongside their ex-slaves. But I digress.)

The point is – Chinese construction companies always get involved in the construction, which means that they are making money out of the work they do, which also means that basically part of the Chinese loans are recouped as profits for the construction company.

Commentators are often so wrapped down in the politics that they forget the business side of things. Chinese construction companies are the best in the world – they have a tremendous amount of experience and expertise. When they go overseas and build things, they are just exporting their experience and expertise in the form of their construction work. It’s their business. Building things is how they make money.

Why The U.S. Gave Up On Public Transit

VIDEO: Ukraine Troops SURRENDER en-masse; WHITE FLAGS on Tanks

World Hal Turner 30 July 2023

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2023 07 31 11 27

Hundreds of Ukrainian troops, displaying white flags on their tanks and infantry vehicles, surrendered en-masse to Russia today. More and more common as troops see with their own eyes, it is hopeless to continue fighting.

 Video from the battlefield shows the mass surrender:

Star Trek Next Generation – Sentient Starship

China’s Chip Production Soars with Arrival of 6 Lithography Machines, US Blockade Falters!

In recent years, China has made tremendous breakthroughs in the chip field, while the United States, in order to maintain its dominant position in the chip industry, has attempted to curb China’s development in this field and use a series of measures to suppress China.

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2023 07 31 11 26
https://youtu.be/ksL7xQ6Gvy4

Are sanctions actually hurting Russia’s economy? Will the sanctions deter Putin from continuing the war?

Are the Sanctions Hurting Russias Economy?

Yes. They are.

However their Impact is much lesser than what was expected by the West.

The West threw their entire financial might at Russia and the Sanctions against Russia are perhaps the worst Sanctions against any Nation ever.

Yet Russia stands , survives and even grows

Its like say the difference between blowing up a house with Dynamite and burning a house with a slow fuse and kerosene.

Russia stands to lose around 34% of its Export Volume and Revenue by 2023 which translates to 55,000 -75,000 Jobs

This in turn translates to around $ 34 Billion Contraction in GDP

Add to this Russia stands to lose around 14% Industrial Productivity due to Restriction of Spares by the West. This translates to around $ 44 Billion Contraction in GDP and around 45,000 – 60,000 Jobs

Add to this Russia stands to lose around 41% Service Industry temporarily for minimum 12–18 months. This translates to around $ 21 Billion Contraction in GDP and around 14,000 Jobs-21,000 Jobs

Adding we get around $ 99 Billion GDP Contraction or around 5.45% Contraction of GDP

Adding we get around 186,000 Jobs

This means we can add around 279,000 Auxiliary Jobs

So Yes. It Definitely isnt a Walk in the Park. It would require a lot of hands on work for Russia

However it could have been far worse

The West expected a far higher impact. Around 15% Contraction. Around 1.5–2 Million Jobs etc.

Russia can make this up by 2025 easily

Why did the Sanctions not make things as bad as the West expected?

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2023 07 31 14 44

China primarily boosted the Russian Economy. They almost replaced 70% of all Car Parts , purchased Car Factories, Building Plants, Took over other financial projects – and you know the speed of the Chinese….they are very fast

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2023 07 31 14 4hg4

The Dragon may be the Elder brother but the Elephant India – too played a role here as Chota Bhai.

The Huge Orders of Oil, Coal, Diamonds and the Cooperation for Alternate Mechanisms and best of all indicating that the Hachet of Galwan can temporarily be buried by trading and purchasing Yuan for the FIRST TIME EVER.

Add to this China and India both refused to delist Russian Bonds and Russian Instruments and have accepted payment for these instruments in RMB & Rubles. Another big concession from India.

For example Indian Investors who were to get $ 15 Million in Interest can now get 750 Million Rubles paid by Russia into SBI Kathmandu who will in turn swap for Chinese Yuan and use the Yuan to buy more Coal and Oil and Gas.

So Russia is far better off than the West believed. It will Survive and Grow much Stronger.

Especially if the SINO-RUSSO-INDO-IRANIAN Alliance clicks off


Will Sanctions deter Putin from Continuing the War?

In March 2022 – there was a 50% Chance that Putin was looking for a Face Saving Off Ramp and was deeply worried about Economy and Militarily

Now – Not the Smallest Chance

The West had their shot. They could have forced Putin to the Table, forced much smaller concessions and ended with a Strong “Victory”

Now Putin calls the Shots

Star Trek Next Generation – Ancient Battle Cruiser

YELLOW FREIGHT COLLAPSES – SHUTS DOWN!

Nation Hal Turner 30 July 2023

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2023 07 31 11 29

Trucking giant Yellow collapsed on Sunday, ceasing operations immediately and leaving some 30,000 workers without jobs.

The closure is the biggest in terms of jobs and revenue in the U.S. trucking industry.

The company, which received $700 million in federal COVID relief funds in 2020, is preparing to file for bankruptcy and is in talks to sell off all or parts of the business.

The nearly 100-year-old firm is known for its competitive pricing and has more than 12,000 trucks shipping freight across the US for brands including Walmart and Home Depot.

At this time, it __appears__ that all of Yellow’s subsidiaries may be GONE too:

  • YRC Freight reflects the Yellow Transportation (founded in 1924 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) purchase of and subsequent merger with Roadway (founded in 1930 in Akron, Ohio).
  • YRC Freight is the largest subsidiary of Yellow with corporate headquarters in Overland Park, Kan.
  • Other Yellow subsidiaries include Reddaway, Holland and New Penn.

HAL TURNER OPINION

I am just guessing, but given the sheer size of Yellow, ad some of its subsidiaries like Roadway and New Penn, this could trigger “supply-chain disruption” that would make COVID look like child’s play.

Think about this.   Yellow is an LTL carrier.  That stands for “Less-Than-Truckoad.”   They handle things like skids (pallets) of shipments.  

They have 12,000 trucks.   Each day, each truck handles about ten pick-ups, and ten deliveries.  (Average)

That means tomorrow, about 120,000 deliveries — won’t come.  Another 120,000 pick-ups, won’t be made.

Stores won’t get products.

Factories won’t get raw materials or parts.  They also won’t be able to ship finished products out.

Do the math.  How long before this becomes an actual catastrophe in the supply chain?

Are there other truckers?  Yes.   Can they just step-in and take up the slack? NO!

Trucklines must carefully balance their equipment to their actual need.  There simply isn’t enough capacity within the rest of the system to absorb a sudden change like this.

Moreover, certain truck lines only service certain geographic areas.   In some places, where maybe YELLOW was the only carrier, shippers simply may not be able to get a trucker to come to them!  No service.  At all.

I cannot even begin to guess the impact this is going to have on the US economy and supply chain.  And I suspect it will show itself within a matter of  days.

Youtube is Deleting my Views, WHY?

Yeah. MM has his you-tube wings clipped. Too.

It is the reality.

What do you think it was exactly that made Julius Caesar so formidable in battle?

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2023 07 31 07 12

Julius Caesar was once kidnapped by pirates, who would go on to regret that decision. In 75 BC, 25-year-old Caesar was traveling to the Island of Rhode’s to study oratory when he was captured by Cilician pirates, who infested the Mediterranean, but were usually left alone because they provided wealthy Romans with slaves.

Although this was about ten years before Caesar would start to make a name for himself, according to the biographer Plutarch, he didn’t act like he was a captive.

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2023 07 31 07 1ww2

When the pirates informed Caesar he was going to be ransomed for the some of 20 talents, he burst out laughing in their faces, telling them they clearly didn’t know who they had captured and should raise the sum to 50 talents.

Caesar only had a few friends in captivity and Cilician pirates were known to be particularly blood thirsty, but this didn’t stop him from sending his friends to tell the pirates to shut up because they were making too much noise as Caesar tried to sleep.

It’s also recorded that Caesar would recite poetry and speeches to the pirates and should they not be impressed he would openly call them illiterate savages and threatened to have them crucified.

Eventually, the ransom was paid and Caesar was released, probably to the relief of the Pirates, who were sick of him. However, the now free Caesar wasted no time in having the Pirates hunted down and crucified, which he over seen personally, making good on the promise he made when the pirates didn’t enjoy his poetry.

Sen. Feinstein’s Brain Melts Down DURING A VOTE!

By now everyone knows that 90-year-old California Senator Dianne Feinstein has no business holding public office — everyone except Dianne Feinstein, that is. Her most recent episode: attempting to pontificate about the importance of defense spending during a Senate vote when all that was required of her was to say “aye.” An aide came to her rescue but not before the awkward episode had made everyone in the room cringe.

How do whales sleep?

When sperm whales need a nap, they take a deep breath, dive down about 45 feet and arrange themselves into perfectly-level, vertical patterns.

They sleep sound and still for up to two hours at a time between breaths, in pods of 5 or 6 whales, presumably for protection.

No one knew whales slept vertically until a 2008 study documented the behavior.

And no one captured really good photography of it in the wild until 2017. French photographer Stephane Granzotto was documenting sperm whales in the Mediterranean for his book on the creatures when he came across these sleeping whales…

main qimg 26da45d2703148841c32730979cfa981
main qimg 26da45d2703148841c32730979cfa981

Factory Owner Reveals the Truth About Chinese Manufacturing

The world has trusted Chinese manufacturing for decades, but recently many politicians are stating Western countries must decouple from China. Will Chinese manufacturing continue to play a vital role in our global economy? Today I travel to Wuxi, China to visit a Chinese textile factory to see how Chinese factories make clothes.

What are some movie cliches about your country that are totally wrong?

American here.

Most American movies are written and produced by wealthier, trendier people who live in major cities. Thus, many of them are set in major cities. If all you knew of America was what you saw in movies, you may think things like:

Most young, single adult Americans live in nice apartments or condos in trendy areas of major cities and have “fun” jobs like museum curators or tour bus company owner/operators.

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2023 07 31 06 56

In fact, very few young, single people live in places like that and have jobs like that. Most young, single people can’t afford that lifestyle, and work “regular” jobs which they may enjoy, but aren’t really “fun.”

While there are some major cities in the United States, and a lot of people live in them, the majority of people do not.* For the average American, a scene like this is something they will only experience while watching it on a screen themselves:

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2023 07 31 06 5ee6

Taking public transportation from your condo or apartment, then walking down a crowded city sidewalk on your way to your job in a high-rise office building? That’s the exception, not the rule for most Americans. For most of us, it’s leaving your single-family home and driving your own personal car to your job in a building that’s two or three stories tall, max. And you park your car in the parking lot next to the building.

I live in Chicago, which has a good public transit system, but I only know two people who actually use it to get to work. Everyone else just takes it on special occasions, like when they want to take their kids downtown to act like tourists for a day. Actually, that’s also one thing my out-of-town guests always want to do when they visit me in Chicago, too: ride the subway. Why? Because it’s so rare here… it’s something that most Americans only experience in movies.

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2023 07 31 06 5d7

*A lot of people are commenting that the majority of Americans do, in fact, live in “urban” areas. “urban areas” and “trendy parts of major cities” are two different things. According to the Census, an “urban area” is any town with over 50,000 population. That includes literally tens of thousands of places most people would just call small towns.

Robot Chicken – Channel Flip Compilation Part Five

What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?

He sacked a colleague the day my colleague was leaving for a family holiday. My boss (and owner of the business), Paul, just liked to show people he had the power. He was often petty and a micromanaging control freak. He seemed to like me, so most of the time he left me to do my thing.

My colleague, Ian, had become a friend, and we’d hang out after work. He had been planning an overseas family trip for some time, and had been talking about it for a couple of months in advance of the date. He had requested leave, which was approved, before making the booking. He was a friendly, genuine guy, and most of us in the office shared his enthusiasm for his holiday. We could see he was looking forward to taking his family away.

He was due to fly out on a Saturday. On the Friday, Paul called Ian into his office and told him he had changed his mind, he was revoking the leave. Ian tried to argue that the tickets were non-refundable, everything was booked, his wife had taken leave, and they had permission to take their children out of school. Paul wasn’t swayed. He made it clear, cancel or be fired.

Ian asked what was so important that he needed to stay, Paul didn’t give a real answer. He just shrugged and said, “it’s my company, my call.”

Ian called his wife, and then decided to do the holiday. He didn’t want to lose the money or let his family down.

He came and told me just before lunch what had happened, and suggested we go for a farewell lunch.

I was incensed!

I immediately wrote a handwritten resignation, left it on Paul’s desk, packed my things, and went to lunch. I told Ian and some other colleagues at lunch that this was also MY farewell.

As lunch wrapped up, the others drifted back to the office, and it was just Ian and me, commiserating over a beer, when Paul came in, in a fluster.

I had never seen him in such a state (I later realized it was because he was no longer in control). Paul loudly tried to convince me to stay, offered me everything (other than more money!). I just said no, calmly. He left saying something like “you’ll be back when you can’t find another job.”

I called in on another friend on my way home, and had a job offer that afternoon.

Pepe Escobar: Russia-Africa Summit a GAME CHANGER as NATO Isolates Itself

Pepe Escobar discusses the significance of the Russia-Africa Summit and what it means for the ongoing move toward a multipolar world led by Russia and the Global South.

Heavenly Chicken Garlic Soup

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0b75f12f3a726b23c30ced30381d1083

Ingredients

  • 1 whole chicken, disjointed
  • 2 carrots, minced
  • 2 stalks celery, minced
  • 1 large whole yellow onion
  • Chopped fresh parsley
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 5 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 4 tablespoons softened butter
  • 2 tablespoons flour

Instructions

  1. Make the chicken broth by simmering chicken, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper in enough water to cover. When the chicken is thoroughly cooked, remove it and skim the fat from broth.
  2. Simmer broth, reducing it until it is very rich. Add the flour and butter to a small amount of broth and mix with a wire whisk until velvety. Pour this mixture into the remaining broth.
  3. Tear chicken into bite-size pieces and add to the soup.
  4. Sprinkle with fresh parsley and serve.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Climate Protest Seems Very Fake

What is one small thing that you can do differently to make your life better?

My name was called and I walked excitedly to get my diploma.

People were clapping. I could also hear the cameras shooting pictures around me.

I felt proud and important.

Well, it wasn’t much different than this picture below. I felt like a brand new Tesla freshly off the assembly line.

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2023 07 30 21 15

Image Source

Have you seen how a Tesla is made?

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2023 07 30 21 16

Image Source

Assembling the car requires a complex number of steps where hundreds of parts are put together. Each part is worth very little on its own, but when everything is together, the finished product has amazing value.

This is how I pictured college:

All my years of education assembled together to come to this very moment.

I felt like the world was telling me, “Congratulations! You are a complete product.”

So, imagine that moment… yes, it called for a victory fist pump!

2023 07 30 21 1we6
2023 07 30 21 1we6

Image Source

So, what’s my point?

Well, my educational “assembly line” took soooo… sooooo… long that my expectations had built up.

I felt like a top-of-the-line fully equipped Tesla Model S!

I felt entitled.

I thought that by just getting out of the “assembly line” with my degree in hand made me valuable like the Model S pictured above.

“Hey world! I’m an Engineer!” I would say with arrogance and pride, “You want some of my knowledge? It’s going to COST you!!!”

Haha!

Please don’t laugh at me…

I felt that my time had value, so whatever work I did, I felt I deserved to get paid.

I WAS WRONG!


My father taught me this lesson the hard way.

After I had spent one week working at his office, I demanded a late Friday evening, “Pay me, Dad!”

“Son, you’re not entitled to a payment.”

“I’m an engineer, Dad! Pay me as an engineer!” I said with pride.

“I pay for results!” my father said.

“But I’m working hard on this project! I have invested hours into this. Pay me!” I angrily said.

“No results, no pay!” he said firmly.


You know what happened?

He eventually changed my mindset!

He helped me understand that in this world I’m NOT entitled to anything simply because of my credentials or for sitting at the office all day long.

He helped me understand that if I don’t deliver results to others, my fancy college degree hanging on the wall might look nice, but it won’t pay my bills.


So, to answer your question: What is one small thing that you can do differently to make your life better?

Learn this truth: Life pays only for results.

The world doesn’t care for your credentials, or how hard you work, all it cares is for how much value you DELIVER!

It’s in giving which makes us deserve something in exchange.

There’s no secret formula.

The only thing that works is work!

We do not deserve what we want, we only deserve what we do.

Embrace this small truth, and it will radically change your life.

funniest moments from my name is earl

How does it feel to get convicted for a crime you didn’t commit?

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2023 07 31 16 14

You could ask this women. Caron McBride had no idea she was wanted for a felony for 21-years. She only found out when she went to update her married name at a Texas DMV, in April 2021 and they told her she was wanted for felony embezzlement.

She was charged after falling to return a VHS tape of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, from a Oklahoma video store, back in 1999. The shocking part is she had no memory of renting the tape or ever seeing the show. Its likely someone else rented the tape under her name, leaving her with a felony, that thankfully has been dismissed.

Cambodia’s Controversial Election: U.S. vs. Russia & China!

Cambodia is celebrating a new election of leader Hun Sen from the Cambodian People’s Party but the U.S. says: Not so fast. The U.S. says that it will announce punitive measures because it does not consider this to have been a “free and fair” election. They claim that the opposition was threatened and harrassed. But the U.S., E.U. and other Western countries did not send observers to the elections. Russia and China did. Is this U.S. posturing or something else?

Why is it the US’s business what happens in Cambodia?

What did someone do or say at the bank that made you say, “You gotta be kidding me!”?

“Your checking account is overdrawn. There’s a $35 NSF fee.”

When my ex-wife and I first started dating back in 1988, we got a bank account at a bank that no longer exists (after multiple mergers it’s now part of Bank of America) called Citizens & Southern.

So it turns out they hit on a great money-making idea. If you had money in your bank account, and write a check so that after it was cashed there would be less than $35 in your account, hit you with a $35 fee and say “See? Your account balance is negative!”)

Say you had $110 in your account and you wrote a $100 check. They’d hit you with a $35 NSF fee and say “See? You’re overdrawn by $25! Your balance is -$25! That’s why we charged the fee!”

You might think this is illegal, but…

…you’d totally be right.

Eventually someone hit them with a class action lawsuit for doing this, and years later they refunded us all the NSF fees they’d ever charged plus a couple hundred bucks on top.

Arizona teen missing for nearly 4 years shows up safe at Montana police station

An Arizona teenager who vanished without a trace nearly four years ago is safe after walking into a police station in Montana, authorities said Wednesday. Alicia Navarro, 18, of Glendale showed up alone this week in a small town about 40 miles from the Canadian border and identified herself, according to police in Glendale, a Phoenix suburb.

What are the worst man made disasters in world history?

The worst nuclear disaster in North American history was discovered by accident. In 1983 a hospital in Juarez Mexico had a Radiotherapy unit dismantled and sold to a scrap yard for just nine dollars. However, the person responsible for getting rid of the waste spilled an un-marked cylinder of 6000 cobalt pellets contaminating the entire junk yard. The metal was than sent to two foundries that produced 6600 tons of rebar and 30,000 contaminated restaurant table legs.

It was only by chance that a truck transporting some of the metal took a wrong turn and drove passed the Los Alamos National Lab where the first atomic bomb was developed and their sensers detected the radiation. By that time the metal had already been shipped around Mexico and the U.S, hundreds of people were exposed to the radiation making it one of the worst Nuclear disasters in American History.

ALMOST UNWATCHABLE: Kennedy Will Not Stop Listing Reversals Of Judicial Nom’s Decisions To Her Face

At today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) grilled Judge Karoline Mehalchick, nominee to be United States District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, about the several reversals of her decisions.

The average age of Congress is rising. That’s unlikely to change soon.

Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s sudden freeze-up in a news conference on Wednesday — during which he appeared unable to speak for about 20 seconds — is the latest episode involving different lawmakers that have called attention to the age and health of Congress.

On the whole, Congress is getting older.

The current class of lawmakers is one of the oldest in history, with an overall median age of 59. The median age of senators is 65, the highest on record. In the House, the median age has hovered between 57 and 58 for the past decade, higher than in any year before that period.

AA1erLcJ
AA1erLcJ

How is the experience of riding a subway in America Vs. China

Counter-Revolution – ‘Do You Know What Time It Is?’

Alastair Crooke

July 24, 2023

Both the U.S. and Europe have stalked brazenly into traps of their own making, Alastair Crooke writes.

To be blunt, both the U.S. and Europe have stalked brazenly into traps of their own making. Caught in the lies and deceit woven around a claimed inheritance of superior cultural DNA, (vouchsafing, it is said, almost certain victory), the West is awakening to a fast-approaching disaster to which there are no easy solutions. Cultural exceptionalism, together with the prospect of a clear ‘win’ over Russia, are draining rapidly away – but exiting delusion is both slow and humiliating.

The coming devastation is not just centred around the failed Ukraine offensive and NATO’s weak showing. It comprises multiple vectors that have been building over the years, but which are reaching culmination synchronously.

In the U.S., the run-up to momentous elections is underway. The Democrats are in a fix: The party has long since turned its back on its old blue-collar constituency, engaging instead with an urban ‘creative class’ in an exalted, world-shaping ‘social engineering’ project of moral redress, in alliance with Silicon Valley and the Permanent Nomenklatura. But that experiment has run off into the weeds, becoming ever more extreme and absurd. Push-back is building.

Predictably enough, the Democratic campaign is not gaining traction. Team Biden has low, low approval ratings. But Biden family pressure insists that Biden must persevere with his candidature, and not yield to another. Either way – Biden staying or going – there is no ready solution to the Party’s conundrum of a non-performing, non-platform.

The electoral landscape is a mess. Heavy ‘lawfare’ artillery is intended to break the Trump defences and drive him off the field, whilst an attrition of disclosures of Biden family malfeasance are intended wear down and implode the Biden bubble. The Democratic Establishment is spooked too by the flanking manoeuvre of the R. F. Kennedy candidature, which is snowballing rapidly.

Put simply, the Democratic wokish ideology of historical redress is separating the U.S. into two nations living in one land. Divided not so much by ‘Red or Blue’, or class, but defined by irreconcilable ‘ways of being’. The old categories: Left, Right, Democrat or GOP are being dissolved by a Cultural War that respects no categories, crossing the boundaries of class and party affiliation. Indeed, even ethnic minorities have been alienated by the zealots wanting to sexualise children at age 5 years, and by the pushing of the trans agenda on to school children.

Ukraine has served as the solvent to the old order and has become the Albatross hanging around the neck of the Biden Admin: How to spin the looming Ukraine debacle as somehow ‘mission achieved’. Can that be done? Because the escape route of a ceasefire and a frozen line of contact is unacceptable to Moscow. In short, ‘Biden’s war’ cannot continue as it is, but nor can it do ‘other’ without facing humiliation. The myth of American power, NATO competence and the reputation of U.S. weaponry hangs in the balance.

The economic narrative (‘everything is fine’) is poised, for somewhat unconnected reasons, to turn sour too. Debt – finally – is becoming the sword suspended above the economy’s neck. Credit is being tightly squeezed. And next month, the BRICS-SCO bloc will take the first strategic steps to disentangle up to 40 countries from the dollar. Who then will buy Yellen’s $ 1.1 trillion Treasuries – now and in the future – that is needed to fund U.S. government expenditure?

These events ostensibly are disconnected, but in reality, they form a self-reinforcing loop. One leading to a ‘run on the political bank’ – that is to say, the U.S.’ credibility itself.

Faced with many questions – and no solutions – the mood amongst sectors of the electorate is driving a radical and increasingly iconoclastic mood. A counter-revolutionary spirit, perhaps. It is too early to say whether it will sweep a majority, but it may – for the radicalism is coming from the two wings: GOP grassroots and the Kennedy ‘camp’.

One strain of GOP voters separates conservative leaders into two camps: those who “know what time it is” and those who don’t. That is the catchphrase on the Right that has become increasingly important to a significant wing of the Party who see a country weakened and corrupted by ideology; who hold that there is almost nothing left to ‘conserve’. Overturning the existing post-American order, and re-establishing America’s ancient principles in practice, is advocated as a sort of counter-revolution – and the only road forward.

That aphorism for ‘knowing what time of day it is’ refers to an emerging sense of urgency and appetite for sweeping action, not dragging and dull academic debates among more populist-minded conservatives. “The premise is that the struggle against wokish cultural power is existential, and that extreme tactics that would shock an older generation of conservatives need to be the norm”.

In fact, if a leader is not shocking in his conduct and proposals, he or she probably “doesn’t know what time it is”.

The second key feature of this us-against-them mentality is that any policy consensus, ipso facto, triggers suspicion and becomes a focus of attack.

When you realize this, what looks at first like a hodgepodge of different ideas seems more unified. Covid health policy, disgust about Jan. 6, the Pentagon budget, immigration, support for Ukraine, promoting racial diversity, trans rights — these are all issues that enjoy a measure of élite bipartisan consensus. But for the Tucker Carlson wing – Republicans who embrace these things simply – don’t know what time it is”, Politico explains.

What is salient in this formulation is that just as unreserved support for Covid regulatory practices was a ‘marker’ of ‘correct-think’ in pandemic time, so support for Ukraine is defined as ‘a marker’ of correct liberal-think (and being in the Team) in the in the post-pandemic era.

This suggests that – already and as the election nears – Ukraine will be no-longer bi-partisan in terms of support, but rather will become a sword used against the hated Uni-party establishment, and any hint of a major f*ck-up will become centre-piece in this counter revolutionary war.

The GOP’s sense that U.S. culture has gone off-track: Legislation was snarled in Congress earlier this month, when the formerly sacrosanct Pentagon Defence Bill became the target of culture-war amendments on abortion, diversity and gender that could scuttle its passage. Speaker McCarthy was forced to accept the far-right rebellion against the Defence budget bill and push it through, without the usual widespread bipartisan support.

The measures stripped funding for diversity initiatives in the military and added restrictions on abortion and transgender care for service members. GOP lawmakers said they acted because liberal ideology was weakening the military. But the amendments endanger the bill’s path in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The heightened feelings on both sides are reflected in a poll that found that about 80% of Republicans believe that the Democratic agenda “if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.” About the same share of Democrats had the same fear of the Republican ag.

Col Macgregor: NATO’s FRIGHTENING Plan For Russia

Absolutely. The United States is in the hands of someone who is mentally unstable.

https://youtu.be/k1TwoB1mGOk

What’s the most impressive thing you’ve ever seen a doctor do?

My daughter was 13 years of age and something was very wrong. She is a nonidentical twin. This information only matters because her illness is genetic and hopefully her twin will never have it.

We went to a new doctor at the practice we had been to before. He was just downright off in behavior. I had been a teacher about 20 years at this point and one of my Master degrees was in special education. I immediately saw him for what he was. Autistic.

I had twin daughters in the exam room. He could not function until we were all seated and all 6 feet flat on the floor. He paced silently in that tiny room until we were exactly as he felt we should be. He seemingly ignored all questions until he was leaving and would turn his head to the side and in a rapid fire voice, answer all questions. There were many more indicators but those were very telling. It was really odd but I saw it for what it was and shushed my daughters comments.

He took one look at her and gave a devastating diagnosis. A thirty year life span with a very low quality of life until then. I was not about to have that. Oh no.

I went home and Googled of course. Life became more grim. I realized she had all the classic physical signs. No doctor in our 200,000 population was taking a pediatric with her disease. The nearest was Dallas Texas which was a six hour drive each way.

As a working single Mother this seemed impossible.

Three days pass. I receive a phone call from a local specialist who is willing to take her at 6:30 am in the morning. She tells me that when one of her patients die, we can have their later slot.

She also tells me that the ONLY reason she is taking our case is because of the doctor who called her. The doctor who could not speak until we were all seated properly. The doctor who could not speak until he was leaving the room. This doctor meant so much to her that she was willing to take my daughters case.

As the next few years progress I learned many things. I learned that our autistic doctor was the doctor that all the other doctors, nurses and medical personnel went to. I also learned that this man saved my daughter’s life at this time and that she was very near a critical time in her disease. I learned that he gave her more quality and more meaning in the years ahead of her. When one of her many specialists were being hostile, he believed her. He LISTENED to her. He stayed with her through many trials in her health.

We continued to see him three times a year. He began to relax around us. My child held a special place in his heart and he began to joke and speak a bit differently. Not a great deal but enough for us to notice.

For those of us who have a loved one who is terminally ill, a doctor can be ambivalent, an asshole, or one such as this “A Jewel”.

This is impressive.

Italian Style Pot Roast Soup

leftover pot roast soup 500x750 1
leftover pot roast soup 500×750 1

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 to 4 pound) chuck roast with bone, cut into pieces
  • 1 (16 ounce) box acini de pepe (very small pasta)
  • 8 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
  • 2 large yellow onions, sliced
  • 5 stalks celery, cut into pieces
  • 3 -5 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 2 (15 ounce) cans diced tomatoes
  • 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 6 quarts water
  • Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Place meat, vegetables, garlic tomatoes and tomato sauce in a large pot with the 6 quarts of water. Season with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 to 3 hours until meat is tender.
  2. Toward the last half hour cook the pasta until al dente. Drain pasta add a little bit of butter and set aside.
  3. With a slotted spoon remove meat. Trim fat, remove bone and shred the meat. Place meat back into pot.
  4. Place some pasta in a bowl and ladle in the soup. Top with lots of parmesan cheese.

The Chase (1946, Film-Noir)

Todays treat; full movie. Film Noir.

Hunted … Haunted … Hounded … Chuck Scott gets a job as chauffeur to tough guy Eddie Roman; but Chuck’s involvement with Eddie’s fearful wife becomes a nightmare.

Africa says NO to Western colonization, control and Rules-based order

When I was a boy I never played sports with my father. He was always working and then going to night school. When he was home, we tended to go to museums and parks. Oh, sure there were some trivial times when he tried to get me to participate in sports.

For instance; Once he introduced me to the son of a local friend. He tied on some boxing gloves and the boy kept hitting me over and over, and I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Nope. Hit and then hit again. Then hit, and then stomach punch. WTF?

I started to cry. And that was it.

That did not work out fine.

My friends were playing tag-football outside and I happily wanted to join, but my mother said NO! Being safety minded. So…

It wasn’t until I hit third grade when I was forced to participate in sports at school. My new school put a strong emphasis on sports. Football. Baseball. Softball. Basketball. And I didn’t have a clue on what to do.

Heck! I didn’t even know what a basketball looked like.

You see, all these kids knew how to dribble basketballs when they were 2-3 years old. They were playing football and baseball at 4 years old. I didn’t have any experience, and so here I was at 10 years old completely clueless, and… I couldn’t catch, throw or do anything at all about these balls.

…I became the brunt of the jokes.

My father didn’t help. He simply said “…just go and play.”

WTF?

These are skills you learn with practice. It’s not a natural ability that you learn by osmosis. It caused me many years of grief…

…then I started lifting weights.

And things changed.

All I needed to go was beat the fucking shit out of one or two kids, and the rest of them fell into line.

You see. The clueless follow the bullies. And they just go along with them. Sure, they don’t want to be called toadies, but that is exactly what they are. Followers. Cowards. Sniveling little shits.

Sometimes you have to break a few bones to know that there’s a “new kid on the block”, and you had best mind your Ps and Qs.

Schoolyard, or Global Geo-Politics. It’s all the same…

Nuland, ‘frank and difficult’ meeting in Niger

Yeah. Lots of changes, and Africa is in the “cross hairs”. Africa says NO!

China Declares It Will Hit The U.S Hard Against The CURBS!

China says NO!

https://youtu.be/uAStM1gOpjQ

When did the United States start viewing China as a threat?

Obama’s 2012 pivot to East Asia was the start of US apprehension concerning the rise of China, Democrats didn’t see China as as enemy until President Biden but the Republicans always did see China as an enemy beginning with H.W Bush.

Obama’s comprehension of Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road initiative with Egypt the very next year, this Chinese policy operation began as a response to Obama bombing Libya 28 th March 2011, thereby breaking the “UN Security council resolution 1973″ made on the 17 th. March 2011, an almost unamious agreement with just 3 abstentions China wasn’t one of them.

Bombing Libya followed by the Arab Spring’s attempt to oust the Syrian Government changed the course of history, Xi Jinping recognized this and began building barriers to repulse the United States economically recolonizing China.

Prior to this China was first courted by President Nixon visit to China meeting Mao Zedong in 1971, 20 years later these ground breaking events became the main player in the overthrow of the Soviet Union which was achieved in 1991 with the help of the Orthodox Russian Church who swallowed the lies of Catholic Pope John Paul which they soon came to regret.

President Nixon wasn’t appreciated for his contribution towards the overthrow of the Soviets and was shafted as a result by conservative America leading to the Reagan era of the 1980′s that became the overwhelming contributing factor of the political reality which led to the unipolar moment of 1991, in itself only achieved by the US and Allies with the support of China and of course the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Immediately after Yeltsin fired on the Russian Parliament in October 1993 US President Bill Clinton started viewing China as a threat, but Clinton wasn’t good enough in that capacity and was replaced by the real anti China hawk GW Bush in 2009, it was this US President that began the transition of China from friend to enemy.

As a Chinese citizen, how would you like to see China deal with its drug problem?

There isn’t any serious drug problem. However, my point of view, which is shared with the 1.6 billion fellow citizens is clear….

Absolutely zero tolerance. It should be harsher than current strength. Should publicly (on TV, all airport, seaport…) and continuously broadcast the miserable lives of drug users, and the execution process of drug dealers/makers.

El Dorado Casserole

I have been making this casserole for as long as I can remember. It’s very good and exceptionally good warmed up the next day.

food
food

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 16 ounces tomato sauce
  • 1 cup sliced black olives
  • 8 ounces sour cream
  • 1 cup cottage cheese
  • 1 (4 ounce) can diced green chiles
  • 7 ounces tortilla corn chips, crushed
  • 8 ounces (or more, if desired) Monterey Jack cheese, shredded

Instructions

  1. Cook beef until browned.
  2. Drain. Add onion, garlic powder, tomato sauce and olives. Cook over low heat until the onion is clear.
  3. Combine sour cream, cottage cheese and chiles.
  4. Layer half the chips, meat mixture, sour cream mixture and Monterey Jack cheese in a greased 2 1/2-quart casserole.
  5. Repeat this layering a second time.
  6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.

What is the biggest fear of the Chinese Communist Party, and how does it mitigate this fear?

main qimg 5d2c95c9952a2b5e0774c337db9b64d1
main qimg 5d2c95c9952a2b5e0774c337db9b64d1

The CPC have taken China to the top of the world

The Average Chinese has seen his life change by a whopping 180 degrees

His country is now so powerful that the entire West are plotting actual strategy for it’s downfall

So frankly the CPC have little to fear within China

Nationalism has permeated throughout China now

The Young generations stand fully behind the CPC and any threat to China

Again this is partly due to the USA whose insanity has resulted in a kind of anger for the US Politicians by the Locals


The CPC also know how to handle angry people better than anyone else

They are REASONABLE all the time

They defuse situations better than most democracies

They have no opposition so they see no reason why they can’t give in to people’s protests from time to time if the protests make some sense


So don’t worry

The CPC knows better than any other party in the world how to ensure China keeps rising

After all this is a Communist Party that took an Agrarian Nation into a rising power that stands shoulder to shoulder with the US

In a mere 40 years !!!!!!!!

Nobody else can boast the same

China’s Missing Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, Is Gone, But Why?

This is very very good.

Do soldiers have personal time while serving in combat zones? Are they ever off duty, even when sleeping or eating?

I was a combat infantryman in Vietnam. Most days we were in the jungle on “search and destroy missions” our job was to search out the enemy and destroy them. That included their weapons, supplies, food, shelter and anything or anyone who supported them. We were on rotation with three other infantry companies. Three weeks in the jungle then one week on the fire base providing perimeter security for the artillery company stationed on the top of the hill. The three weeks patrolling were 24/7 “on duty”. Searching out the enemy by day and taking a guard shift every night. No time off at all. During our one week on the fire base, we had time to clean our weapons, get clean clothes and shower. We were still on duty filling sandbags, repairing bunkers and digging trenches.

Every three months or so, our company would be airlifted by helicopter to the rear area for three days of “Standdown” where we could drink beer, watch movies and relax. We were also entitled to take two one week R&R trips out of country to “relax and recuperate”.

The standdown and R&R were our only downtime. Rear area troups had Night clubs, PX stores and occasional USO shows to entertain them. Infantrymen’s jobs didn’t allow for such.

No ONE is ready for what’s coming in weeks, it’s going to be bad

New reports suggest NATO is getting ready to throw Ukraine under the tank.

Ex-CIA Larry Johnson says western intelligence are looking for ways to get rid of Zelensky and make it look like a Russian missile strike. General Cavoli says Russia’s military hasn’t been degraded AT ALL by the conflict in Ukraine despite what CNN says.

And how long until the weapons bound for Ukraine wind up in the hands of African countries rising up against the U.S. and France?

Why can’t India manufacture cheaper products as compared to the Chinese?

Let me tell you that manufacturing is hard. Its Super Hard. It is THE hardest thing to do in the business world.

Now who else will know it better than the man himself – Elon Musk.

2023 08 08 21 15
2023 08 08 21 15

The man who has single handedly taken on giants in the automobile sector, the sector for which production is considered to be the toughest, and where no new startup had emerged successful in the last 100 years in USA. And then with SpaceX in the aerospace sector, where there was no commercial presence initially. And then Solarcity too!

Production can be 1,000% harder than design, says Elon Musk | Acquisition Talk

Even the production king, Henry Ford, chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production and who introduced “Fordism” : mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers; failed in his first attempt of car production with Detroit Automobile Company (DAC)

as it got dissolved within a year!

You see, a nation cannot simply become a manufacturer of cheap, affordable products with the click of a button. It needs several factors to back its industrial development –

  1. Welcoming markets : Setting up an industry in India is a nightmare. Should I mention the numerous layers of govt administration to get the approvals, the babus(administrative officers); or the policies, or the taxes, or the absence of subsidies, it never ends. On the other hand, China in spite of being a communist nation welcomes its entrepreneurs with a warm hug and provides innumerable subsidies. You might be shocked to know that China was hell-bent to attract Tesla to set up its factory outside USA in China and even went to the scale of breaking rules and policies to welcome Tesla! USA’s Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program provided Tesla with $465 million when Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy. Can these things happen in India?
  2. FDI(Foreign Direct Investment) : China received about 20 percent of all FDI to developing countries over the 1st decade of this century. India on the other hand has been slow on attracting FDI. This condition has been improving since 2015 with Narendra Modi focusing on improving the FDI in India with Make in India. Reliance Jio has attracted more FDI in the past 3 months than all the Indian startups combined in the entire last year.
  3. Infrastructure : Unless the Indian government increases the government spending to improve the infrastructure, industrial development is impossible. Industries simply cannot flourish without continuous supply(without power and water cuts) of electricity & water throughout the year. Without the presence of roads, railways connecting supply and demand, industries can’t supply goods at a cheap price.
  4. Access to skilled labor : Migrant workers need to be trained to contribute maximum work in less time. Productivity is an essential factor for the success of the industries which directly depends on how skilled the labor force is. India loses big to China on this front.
  5. Owning the supply chain : In several sectors, China literally owns the entire supply chain right from the raw materials to the finished goods. This helps you produce goods at the cheapest rate in the entire world. Moreover you can also increase the rate and bring other helpless countries to their knees. For e.g., India is among the leading producers of pharmaceutical drugs in the world. However, the raw materials needed – APIs(Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) – to produce the drugs are imported and not produced in India. And 70% import share of the APIs is that of China. So when China increased the price of these APIs during the CoVID-19 crisis purposefully, India simply cannot sell the finished products – drugs – at a cheaper price as they have to buy the APIs from China at a higher price.

Let’s hope that the Government in the upcoming years realizes the huge role that it has to play to help India manufacture cheaper, affordable goods and compete with China.

Gonzalo Lira Sr: The Value of Human Life in Ukraine is ZERO

Gonzalo’s father is confident that his son was seized by the Ukraine police as he attempted to leave for Hungary.

Have your neighbors ever called the cops on you for something ridiculous?

All the time.

One time was when I went to the swimming pool in my apartment complex. A white resident spotted me and stormed over to where I was sitting, demanding to know who I was and insisting that I prove I lived there and repeatedly asked for my address.

Now, there was no way that I was going to give my address to some random person, and I didn’t feel the need to prove my residency to her, so I ignored her. She threatened to call the police, and I just shrugged. So, she called them.

The police arrived, and she ran to meet them, screaming that I didn’t belong there and I had to leave.

I didn’t budge

The pool is right next to the rental office. The property manager saw the police and immediately came out to find out what was going on. The white resident was screeching that I was trespassing and refused to leave. At this point, the property manager confirmed that I do, in fact, live there.

One of the officers questioned me. “Why didn’t you just say that you lived here? It could have saved us a lot of time.”

I looked up from my book and asked, “Why do I have to justify my existence in a public space? Out of all the people here, she chose to single me out. Why? Is there some rule about black people not being allowed to live here that I don’t know about? Why do I have to endure the dehumanizing experience of constantly having to justify my existence and ‘prove’ to some random person that I have the right to exist in some public space?”

And I just got up, gathered my belongings, and left. The property manager straightened things out and—I guess—gave the white resident a warning or something.

Some time later, I was sitting in front of my apartment, in my car, which was in my assigned space. The cops arrived and demanded that I got out of the car and that they received a report of a “suspicious person” in the area. They asked for permission to search my car, and I refused. Of course, they came back with the, “If you don’t have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about,” line, and I simply asserted my rights, which didn’t go over very well.

I placed a call to the property manager, who came over immediately. He confirmed that I was a resident and that I was parked in the space assigned to my unit. I simply grabbed my things out of my car and went upstairs to my apartment.

A few months later, the cops came back out because they received a call of a burglary in progress. Someone spotted me going in and out of my apartment and found that to be suspicious. Yeah, because all burglars break in and leave groceries, right?

The property manager had to come out yet again and confirm that I was a resident and lived in the unit in question. I was just done at this point. I think that the property manager knew who it was; about two weeks later, I saw the moving truck near my building and one of the residents moved out.

Once they were gone, I had no more problems after that.

China Just Destroyed US Sanctions …American CEOs in Shock!

2023 08 08 21 21
2023 08 08 21 21

US TSMC plant faces calls to ban Taiwanese workers; German plant expected

Ben Lovejoy | Aug 7 2023 – 6:35 am PT

Controversy over the first ever US TSMC plant aren’t going away – especially plans for around 500 Taiwanese construction workers to be flown in.

A petition has been created, calling on senators and members of Congress to block the visas needed to bring in their foreign workers …

Ongoing controversies over US TSMC plant

While things started on a high, with Apple touting US-made chips for older devices in its line-up, construction of the Arizona plant isn’t going well.

There have been questions about worker safety at the site, and the project is behind schedule, and over budget. Production has already been pushed into 2025, from 2024, and there is talk of US-made chips costing more than those made in Taiwan.

To help address this, TSMC wants to bring in around 500 Taiwanese workers. The company says that these workers have experience of setting up similar plants in Taiwan, so will help with faster and more cost-effective working.

However, unions say it breaks a promise to create jobs for American workers.

US-EU BIG Trouble Coming; BRICS and Oil

World Hal Turner 08 August 2023

As of late Tuesday evening, August 8, 2023, countries expressing their intent to join BRICS account for SIXTY PERCENT (60%) of known global oil/gas reserves.  At the very least, this means sixty percent of the worlds oil sales will take place in a currency OTHER THAN the U.S. Dollar, once BRICS brings their new, gold-backed currency to life.

The official announcement surrounding the development of this new currency is scheduled to be made on August 22.  The currency is not created yet and is not available yet.

But this change will come like a lightning bolt out of the blue for the Untied States.

As things are right now, ALL oil sales around the world, are done only in U.S. Dollars.  So every country that needs oil, or which sells oil, conducts those transactions only in DOLLARS.

That means every country on the planet needs to hold physical dollars in its central bank, so that the country can buy the oil/gas it needs.

Once the new BRICS currency comes online, all those excess DOLLARS being held all over the world, will start to come back tot he United States.

Thus, the value of OUR currency will drop against all those other currencies, because nobody will want or need our DOLLARS anymore.

Now, bear in mind, the US does not manufacture much of anything anymore.  We import all our stuff.

So as the value of our DOLLAR falls against foreign currencies, the cost of the things we buy will utterly skyrocket because our currency is worth less and less compared to other country’s currencies.

We will see hyper-inflation here in the USA that I suspect could rival the Weimar Republic just before it collapsed.

As of tonight, these are the countries that intend to join BRICS:

COUNTRIES THAT HAVE A DESIRE TO JOIN BRICS
Algeria
Argentina
Bangladesh
Bahrain
Belarus
Bolivia
Venezuela
Vietnam
Guinea
Greece
Honduras
Egypt
Indonesia
Iran
Cuba
Kuwait
Morocco
Mexico
Nigeria
UAE
Tajikistan
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
Syria
Saudi Arabia
Ethiopia

Once this gets done, and oil sales begin in the new BRICS currency, the United States will economically collapse and nothing can stop it.

I smell a world war coming . . . .

Petition for EB-2 visas to be denied

Any TSMC employees brought over from Taiwan will need EB-2 visas in order to work legally in the US. These visas are intended for workers with “exceptional ability,” which would justify their employment over a US worker.

You must be able to show exceptional ability in the sciences, arts, or business. Exceptional ability “means a degree of expertise significantly above that ordinarily encountered in the sciences, arts, or business.” You must meet any requirements specified on the labor certification as applicable.

(An alternative basis for application is an advanced degree, for a job which requires one. This seems unlikely to apply to construction work, however skilled it may be.)

The Arizona Pipe Trades 469 union has started a petition to block the issuing of these visas.

I ask you to take swift action to protect American workers at TSMC’s Arizona facility from losing their jobs to foreign workers, and to block the more than 500 EB-2 visas the company has requested for construction workers.

Despite receiving large financial breaks through the CHIPS Act, TSMC has shown a lack of respect for American workers, placing profit above worker safety and deliberately misrepresenting the quality, skills and experience of Arizona’s workforce.

Replacing Arizona’s construction workers with foreign construction workers directly contradicts the very purpose for which the CHIPS Act was enacted – to create jobs for American workers. It is important that TSMC be held accountable and American workers be protected.

I ask you to use your influence to halt the EB-2 worker visas, and to make sure that American workers are given the respect, opportunities, and job security you voted for and President Biden ensured when signing the CHIPS Act.

Arizona working families are counting on you to fulfill the spirit of the CHIPS Act and protect American jobs.

A separate “Stand with American Workers” microsite has also been launched. This accuses TSMC of broken promises, insulting American workers, and trying to exploit cheap labor.

TSMC planning a plant in Germany

Separately, the Financial Times reports that TSMC is “widely expected to announce plans for a new fabrication plant” in the Saxony of Germany.

As with the Arizona plant, this relies on the availability of government subsidies for domestic chipmaking, where again overseas workers look set to be brought into the country.

Martin Dulig, Saxony’s economy minister said: “Germany faces an acute skills shortage and demographic decline. The number of working-age people will fall by 200,000 over the next 10 years.” The solution will probably be to recruit more workers from overseas.

Captain Christopher Visits the Bridge

2023 08 08 21 27
2023 08 08 21 27

Why are Russia and China conducting military exercises off the Alaska Coast?

Why are Russia and China conducting military exercises off the Alaska Coast ?

The US and it’s cronies warships are parked right up off the coast of China, so, China and Russia cruising near the coast of Alaska shouldn’t be any business of others.

What is good for goose is good for the gander!

It is reported that people don’t travel to China anymore. What is your reason for avoiding China as a tourist destination?

I was in China for several weeks in April and May. The flight was full, and the immigration queues for foreigners were incredibly long. So where or which is the “report” that tourists are avoiding China? Western medias ? Well, you know how China bashing and slanted news are their typical menu when reporting on China !

Honey Mustard Pork Tenderloin

2023 08 09 21 12
2023 08 09 21 12

Ingredients

Pork

  • 1 pound pork tenderloin

Glaze

  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
  • 1 tablespoons mustard
  • 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Place pork on a greased rack in a baking pan lined with foil.
  2. Combine glaze ingredients in a bowl, set aside 3 tablespoons glaze. Spoon remaining glaze over pork.
  3. Bake uncovered at 400 degrees F for 28 minutes or until done, basting occasionally with reserved glaze.
  4. Let stand for 5 minutes before slicing.

Jordan Peterson: “Once I Saw That Detail I Knew The Moon Landing Was…”

https://youtu.be/Sbm69DjEqvE

What is the intention of the United States to sanction the Chinese military?

In September 2018, the United States announced sanctions against the Equipment Development Department of China’s Central Military Commission and its responsible individuals based on its domestic law. At that time, the Minister of the Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission was Li Shangfu, who is now the Minister of National Defense. The unreasonable behavior of the United States has not been corrected to this day, seriously hindering the normal communication between the Chinese and American militaries, and fully exposing the nature of U.S. hegemonism.

According to the U.S. side, in July 2017, the U.S. Congress passed the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” which listed the Russian defense and intelligence departments and related personnel as sanction targets in order to cut off their sources of funding. After the passage of the act, the Equipment Development Department of China’s Central Military Commission continued to engage in military trade with Russian companies on the sanctions list and purchased Russian Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 air defense missiles. Therefore, China “should be subject to sanctions.” In other words, the U.S. “intention” was to target Russia, but China was “collaterally affected” this time.

This is the infamous “secondary sanctions” imposed by the United States, which involves sanctioning the targeted entities while also restricting the financial and trade activities between third countries and the targets, and imposing penalties on third-country organizations or individuals that violate the regulations.

As we all know, regardless of their size or strength, all countries are equal in sovereignty. No country should interfere in the internal affairs and external affairs of other countries. The United States attempts to elevate its domestic laws to the status of “international law,” which clearly violates international law and the basic principles of international relations. The fundamental purpose of the United States is to suppress China’s high-tech development, hinder China’s national defense modernization, and restrain the deepening of comprehensive strategic cooperation between China and Russia.

The United States is completely shooting itself in the foot. Even Elbridge Colby, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Trump administration and a representative of the Republican Party’s hardline stance towards China, criticized this approach.

main qimg efb6a71997ee159776fc7c010cb176ed
main qimg efb6a71997ee159776fc7c010cb176ed

Instead of correcting its own mistakes, the United States blames China for “rejecting the goodwill of the US to ease relations,” which exposes nothing but its double standards. No normal country would accept a practice of pressuring and containing through actions while seeking communication through words. Without a doubt, it is the United States itself that has led to the current situation between the Chinese and American militaries.

Star Trek Next Generation – Class 8 Probe

2023 08 08 21 31
2023 08 08 21 31

Chicken Diable

Chicken Diable makes a wonderful sauce, and it is delicious served over rice.

Chicken Diable
Chicken Diable

Prep: 10 min | Bake: 1 hr 30 min | Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 pound) frying chicken
  • 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
  • 1/2 cup honey
  • 1/4 cup wet mustard
  • 1 teaspoon curry powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

  1. Cut frying chicken into large pieces.
  2. Melt butter and add honey, mustard, curry powder and salt. Coat chicken pieces with the sauce and place in a baking pan (do not stack).
  3. Bake at 350 degrees F for 1 1/2 hours, tightly covered.

U.S. Debt Explosion Guaranteed – They Just Did It!

A US debt implosion is guaranteed as the Treasury keeps selling bonds ramping up deficit spending. However, this borrowing now affects the longer-term bonds which traps America into a debt crisis which will be near impossible to dig out of. Inflation won’t stop and here’s what you must know!

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2023 08 08 21 35

Why are Russia and China doing joint tactical movements in the Bering Sea? Are they flexing and ready?

Unlike the US, Russia is doing it in front of his house. Or are you saying that Russia and China are not allowed to do this?

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2023 08 09 20 46

Star Trek Next Generation – Gomtuu

Are people overblowing the Deflation going on in China? I mean there’s nothing wrong with people saving their money, which is common in Chinese society. Or am I missing something?

Of course they are

There is no deflation for god’s sake

The CPI has fallen by 0.3% in the month of July

First you have to have Stagnancy where your Economy doesn’t grow or grows by very less

In China that’s defined as <= 2.5% a year for minimum 8 quarters

Then you have deflation where a stagnant economy sees little growth in CPI and that sees everything cheap and prices falling everywhere and wages falling too where savings banks no longer pay interest to you or pay 0.1% interest instead of 1.85% that China pays today

Then you finally have stagflation where you have the trouble

It takes 12–20 years for Stagflation to hit the economy


This is entirely because 2022 was a lockdown year and the base for CPI was too too high

The Chinese economy has almost 300 Trillion Yuan of money

There is no way there is deflation whatsoever

First there has to be Stagnancy, then after a couple of years , there will be deflation if at all and finally after a decade there will be stagflation

You can’t have deflation in a month

For God’s sake use Logic

China controls it’s entire Yuan supply

No way that this is deflation

1421: The Year China Discovered America

Book By: Gavin Menzies, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, NY

REVIEWED BYDON LIU

This book challenges conventional wisdom and turns 15th century seafaring history upside down by making a case for Chinese exploration. Such a revision of history undoubtedly excites many people and makes others very uncomfortable. World famous figures and heroes along with their legacies are being questioned, and previously “unknown” explorers may now replace them. Whether or not the author manages to convince the reader of his viewpoint, my first questions are: why are the Chinese explorers hitherto ‘unknown to most of us?’ Do we not have our own bias in learning, writing, understanding, and teaching history?

Many years ago, the author Gavin Menzies, a retired British Royal Navy nuclear submarine commander, chanced upon a chart signed by a Venetian cartographer Zuane Pizzigano in 1424 at the James Ford Bell Library of University of Minnesota. Certain features on the chart caught his attention and aroused his curiosity. On investigation he found that conventional history as we know it could not satisfactorily explain the features he saw on the 1424 chart. He thus began his long journey into a little known corner of maritime history.

In the subsequent 15 years, he journeyed to more than 900 museums and libraries in 120 countries and met with scholars and experts in various fields. Using 34 lines of argument and a huge body of supporting evidence, the author concludes that a Chinese fleet under Admiral Zhen He circumnavigated and charted the globe, and discovered land, long before the European explorers such as Magellen, Columbus, and Cook set sails.

The book begins with the author’s questions about the Pizzigano map and how this fueled his determination to answer them. As he searched for answers, he encountered more questions. With his own immense knowledge of sea as a reference point, and a consuming passion for medieval history and tremendous interest in early European explorers, he carefully studied maps and charts of the world from the 15th and 16th centuries. He meticulously dissected and analyzed communications, diaries and logs of various European explorers and travelers. In the end he concluded that the world had been accurately charted by the Chinese in 1421.

Menzies demonstrates, for example, that by 1428, long before Magellan was born, the location and significance of the Strait that bears his name today had already been documented. The existence of many Caribbean Islands as well as the coastlines of Australia, Antarctica, Greenland, and Bering Strait had already been documented well before Columbus, Cook, and Bering started their voyages. The Europeans did not sail into the unknown, as conventional history has it. Rather, Menzies asserts, they had maps guiding them, and the maps were copies of earlier Chinese ones. If Menzies is correct, other questions immediately arise. How, the, did the Chinese do it? And why? Menzies explores these important questions. Contrasting 15th century China with the rest of the world at the time, he came to the conclusion that only the Chinese had the knowledge, the interest, and the capability to explore the world and to produce such maps.

Historians generally accept that a Chinese fleet under Admiral Zheng He made multiple voyages overseas in the early 1400’s. The composition of Zheng He’s fleet makes for interesting comparison with the Columbus expedition of 1492. The Chinese fleet was, literally, an armada comprised of hundreds of large and small ocean-going ships crewed by tens of thousands of sailors and soldiers, as well as many interpreters, surveyors, and scientists. Historians and scholars have not doubted that Zheng He’s fleet visited Indonesia, India, the Arabian Peninsula, and the East Coast of Africa. But as conventional wisdom has it, very little is known about the fleet’s exact routes since logs and detailed records were destroyed by the new Emperor’s edict upon the fleet’s return to China.

Menzies attempts to reconstruct and describe how the Chinese fleet might have sailed, often relying on his own seafaring knowledge as a nuclear submarine commander. Taking into consideration of the trade winds, ocean currents, and the Chinese seafaring technology of the era, he believes that once beyond the Cape of Good Hope and into the Atlantic Ocean, the Chinese fleet was divided into three groups, with two sailing south and one heading north. The two south-sailing fleets were credited for the discovery of and the passing through the Magellan strait before it was so named. One of the fleets was credited with surveying Antarctica and the other, for discovering New Zealand and East Australia. The north-sailing fleet discovered many Caribbean Islands, surveyed the east coast of North America, Greenland, the Arctic Sea, and Bering Strait before returning the China.

To support his hypothesis, Menzies has gathered a large body of supporting evidence and proposes many methods to prove his points. In all, he presents 34 different lines of argument or suggestions. According to the author, evidence of such Chinese exploration include shipwrecks of Chinese junks found in America, Australia, and Indonesia; carved stones, stone steles, or other monuments of possible Chinese origin in Africa and Pacific Islands; remains of Chinese peoples unearthed in South America, and clusters of Chinese DNA detected in Native Americans. Such evidence and other artifacts of Chinese origin are dated before the Europeans’ arrival and are either found or yet to be verified in various places along his reconstructed routes of the Chinese fleet.

Quoting various contemporary 15th and 16th century European sources, Menzies shows that early European explorers or travelers had records documenting their encounters with Chinese or Asiatic people in many of their newly discovered lands. The Europeans encountered many natives whose legends or oral traditions included stories of Chinese or Asiatic peoples living among them before the Europeans arrived. The author contends that other indirect or circumstantial evidence includes linguistic and ceremonial similarities between the Chines and various local tribes in the Americas. Menzies also noticed a strange animal depicted in the famous and very accurate Admiral Piri Reis map. He consulted experts in various disciplines, and the animal was later identified as a mylodon, a native of Patagonia. Notably, its likeness was depicted in the Chinese literature in 1430, well before the Europeans’ arrival.

Chinese exploration is the author’s intriguing explanation for the presence of Asiatic chickens and African coffee in the Americas before Columbus, the cultivation of American maize in Southeast Asia before the Europeans’ arrival, the pattern of spread and timing of the appearance of rice, coconuts, and sweet potatoes, and many other ‘displaced’ plants and animals in various parts of the ‘new worlds’. He also brings our attention to curious facts such as the introduction of iron and copper mining and the appearance of Chinese silk, jade, or lacquer in the least expected places and at a time prior to the Europeans’ voyage. Looking at these many fascinating yet seemingly unrelated questions with a bird’s eye view and treating them as one large and integrated question, the author believes the only satisfactory explanation is the exploratory voyages of the Chinese fleet in the early 1420’s.

In the 15th century Western sea-going exploration was in its infancy. Europeans did not discover the New World for 70 years after Menzies’ claim for Zheng He’s team, and circumnavigation of the globe was not accomplished by European explorers until 30 years after that. The question naturally arises as to whether the Chinese had the skills and the necessary technology to successfully carry out their mission. The author describes some of the necessary tools, skills, and technology for such an endeavor. By all accounts, the Chinese possessed the necessary hardware such as compasses and rudders and were in fact advanced far beyond Europeans in ship building technology, design, and construction. Furthermore, the Chinese had marine-related infrastructure such as the dry docks to build and maintain these vessels.

Quoting various sources and using his own knowledge of navigation at sea, the author believes the Chinese solved the fundamental navigational question of longitude by building observatories at various places and relying on their centuries-old astronomic records. Of particular importance was the lunar eclipse. Following this line of argument, the presence of many mysterious structures scattered all over the world is explained. These structures of unknown origin along the path of the Chinese fleet, he claims, could be the early navigational observatories which the Chinese had built.

This book is clearly the product of the author’s love and a consuming passion. It offers new ideas and a perspective that challenge conventional wisdom. It presents a min-opening theme and many angles of argument with plausible explanations. It is well written, well referenced, and nicely illustrated. The author masterfully presents numerous seemingly unrelated supporting evidence derived from various fields of study in a well-organized manner. The narrative is easy to understand and a pleasure to read. To be sure, much of this valuable information would escape detection and be left in a dusty corner if it weren’t for the author’s diligent efforts. Reportedly, this book has now been translated into 36 different languages and has been reviewed all over the world, with mostly favorable responses.

Because the theme in this book is so revolutionary, crediting little known Chinese sailors for history-changing discoveries, it engenders amazement and inspiration in many people. To those who find this book exciting, it should be remembered that this book, like any other work, is not without flaws. For example, the author states that the Chinese do not eat chicken and use these birds only for divination. This is wrong. Chinese do eat chicken. The author also seems to confuse the observation and recording of a supernova by the Chinese in Tang Dynasty for the detection of a pulsar. Many of the author’s proposed experiments or studies are yet to be carried out and much of the purported evidence needs to be verified. However, these ‘errors’ and ‘delays’ do not affect the overall quality or the validity of his arguments.

Some of the Menzies’ claims are bold and the evidence is slim, but his ideas are not impossible. For example, he believes some of the Chinese ships sailed the arctic seas before returning to China. But could the ships built then be strong enough to handle such an icy voyage? The author believes they were, based on the evidence he gathered. Menzies will be proven correct if some day physical evidence turns up, demonstrating that the Chinese ships indeed sailed the Arctic Sea. Yet, if he is proven wrong on this particular point, he may not be wrong on other points. There is a high probability that not every claim proposed by the author turns out to be true. But not everything needs to be proven true to support his central theme. If one of his clams is proven true or if one solid piece of evidence turns up, all of us need to re-think that part of history as taught to us hitherto. If one shred of physical evidence turns up in Australia or scientific studies such as DNA testing or archeological findings in the Americas proves positive, the author’s central theme that the Chinese fleet had visited some place before the Europeans remains intact.

Admiral Zheng He’s voyages are great human achievements in themselves. Circumnavigating the globe, if true, would be the pinnacle of that great explorer’s achievements. This feat would put him, and China, in the forefront of the intrepid sailors and explorers of that era. Although his fleet’s exact routes and extent of his explorations may be an academic question, Zheng He’s world vision and his men’s courage and accomplishments ought to rank among the greatest in history. It is rather appalling that History, as we know it, is relatively quiet about that. The burning of his logs and records, his dismissal by the new Emperor, and the subsequent silence about the whole affair are among the most tragic events in history. Political intrigues and an inward looking mentality of the Ming court, and ignorance and apathy of the public are among the main culprits. How could this be and why did we allow it to happen?

Because the ideas in this book challenge traditional teachings, they most certainly cause uneasy feelings in many. The Euro-centric heritage, if not a racial pride, of many Westerners might hinder an appreciation of this book. Some in Europe and America might find it hard to conceive that a non-European people could have beaten the Europeans at the own game which they took pride in over 5 centuries. However, as Americans we can take pride in a heritage which is enormously rich and varied and which encompasses far more than our European roots alone. Any open-minded person should read on. The book certainly raises many more questions, enriches our own experience, and starts a healthy debate.

The author may be criticized for his presumed lack of rigorous scholarship, as he lacks impressive academic credentials. Because he is not a historian, an archeologist, a botanist, or a linguist by profession, the author may be criticized for his lack of training and lack of scientific rigor in his writing. Before any purist or traditional academician discredits this book, however, it should be understood that the author does not propose that his book be History itself. Nor does he claim it to be a textbook of archeology or botany. The book raises important academic questions and offers possible and potentially verifiable solutions. Serious academicians should take advantage of his proposals and challenges. The author, in fact, humbly admits to his limited academic credentials and called on many experts whenever necessary. Too often, proud academicians rely on their own professional expertise and hesitate to consult others. Consequently, the author’s lack of credentials becomes his very strength because he is able to think outside the box.

Most of us probably would not spend much effort trying to decipher a strange word or animal on a chart. Some may not even notice the strangeness. The author consulted many scholars and experts: linguists, museum curators, historians, botanist, archeologist, and cartographers. While similarities in customs, words or phrases in different parts of the world and unexplained phenomena in far corners of the world might kindle a momentary spark of curiosity in most, the author persisted until he found what he considers to be the answers.

Without innovative thinking and a bird’s eye view of the whole picture, one cannot see any possible connections of these seemingly unrelated subjects scattered all over the world. Menzies connects the dots for us. He asks intriguing questions, pulls together experts in diverse disciplines and makes them think harder. Often found by tradition, confined by narrow focus, and limited by their own pride, many scholars might dismiss some of these findings as isolated aberrant phenomena because they do not fit the classic model. Such a thinking mode is perhaps the true meaning of sloppy scholarship.

In summary, this book is highly readable. It provides ideas and questions that stimulate our thinking. It questions our preconceived notion of history, peoples, cultures, and our own ability to ask and answer questions. It enriches our own American experience and heritage.

Since its English version’s publication, this book has been translated into many languages, sold in the millions, and created an exciting phenomenon throughout the world. The readers’ reaction seems overwhelmingly positive. They have formed many study groups, organizations, and institutions, pouring new efforts dedicated to the research of Admiral Zheng He’s voyages and that era of Chinese history. Many research projects have been proposed and/or been under way to look for evidence to test the author’s theory. International conferences on these various related subjects, both amateur and academic, have been organized. Many websites, either in support or in refutation of the author have sprung up. All of this says one thing: this book is indeed thought-provoking.

The author’s theory that the Chinese discovered America before Columbus is shocking. It turns upside down the well-accepted 15th century seafaring-discovery history. It excites many readers and inspires many researchers. At the same time, it upsets many. For this theory dethrones many of the well known European heroes and replaces them with a hitherto little known Chinese explorer. As with any theory, it needs evidence supported by rigorous scientific methods in many diverse fields. These fields include but not just limited to the study of world history and Chinese history in the 15th century, court politics, astronomy, anthropology, languages, biology, zoology, epidemiology, migration patterns, statistics, cartography, ship building technology, navigation, and an understanding of various local cultures and customs at a particular time, just to name a few. It is gratifying to see that experts in various fields have come together and held open discussion. These efforts are expected to continue for many years to come. This is exactly what the author wishes to see and it has indeed come to fruition.

In formulating his theory and supporting it with evidence, albeit circumstantial in many cases, the author presented 34 lines of argument with suggestions of many possible tests. With a bird’s eye view, the author skillfully connected many seemingly unrelated dots and came up with a new picture: the 15th century Chinese maritime explorers beat the Europeans in just about every discovery. Since the early 2000’s, there have been occasional reports of new found evidence, either positive or negative, showing up in academic work or amateur circles, in prints or online. Again this only shows that the author has raised very important questions and people, lay or academic, have responded to them enthusiastically.

It may take decades or more for academicians to come to some conclusion whether the author is correct or not and which part of the theory he is correct or incorrect. As in any discussion, there are hard-core purists and die-hard traditionalists on both sides. As long as we are able to put aside pride, traditions, and keep an open mind, we are able to consider other possibilities. Only then, can we further our knowledge, broaden our horizon, and enrich our own experience. Whatever the final verdict, the 15th century seafaring history as we know it, needs a new perspective if not a major revision: Admiral Zheng He and his brave sailors should be given the credits properly due them.

This book is an excellent starter to 15th century maritime world for the general public. It stimulates our thinking process: studying details, looking for possible explanations, putting isolated incidents together, and coming up with a new picture. For serious academicians, it offers an opposing view, challenging the long-held beliefs. It is indeed the academicians’ responsibility to keep an open mind, to accept new challenges, and to freely discuss and exchange ideas.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Records of Zheng He’s expeditions had been lost for some 600 years because subsequent Ming emperors disapproved of the wasteful activities. Many documents were lost to fire or insects. Therefore, it becomes important to continue research on other sources and records of the voyage. The book did not claim that Zheng He personally discovered America. He started his seventh and last voyage in 1429 when he was in poor health. It took him three years to 17 different ports to reach as far as Kenya. He died on his way back to China in Indonesian waters and was buried at sea. The seven expeditions of 27,800 sailors spanned 28 years from 1405 to 1433. Some crew members did not go back to China but stayed on at various locations. Today there are claims of their descendants in Africa with Chinese surnames, relics found in America, etc. Timing of Chinese expeditions preceded Columbus’ “discovery of America” by 70-80 years.

4 Youtubers Murdered By Mexican Drug Cartels

2023 08 08 21 47
2023 08 08 21 47

Is America a Second Rank Power?

Blame deindustrialization.

Godfree Roberts

Since the Second World War most Britons have unquestioningly accepted the premise that Britain should continue to rank as a first order world Power while, on the other, insisting that living standards should continue rising and social services be protected from taxes to finance foreign policy commitments. The question is not whether Britain can continue to think and behave as a Great Power, but whether it can afford to. – F. S. Northedge, 1970.

The good news is that there will be no war.

The rather sad news is that America can’t afford one.

1980s neoconservative policies – downsize government and privatize everything – have left the US a second-tier power, uncompetitive economically, industrially, scientifically and even militarily, as this STEM ranking suggests:

Why we fail

There are at least seven reasons why the US failed in Ukraine. Says Correlli Barnett, “The power of a nation-state by no means consists only in its armed forces, but also in its economic and technological resources; in the dexterity, foresight and resolution with which its foreign policy is conducted; in the efficiency of its social and political organization. It consists most of all in the nation itself: the people; their skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative; their beliefs, myths and illusions. And it consists, further, in the way all these factors are related to one another. Moreover, national power has to be considered not only in itself, in its absolute extent, but relative to the state’s foreign or imperial obligations; it has to be considered relative to the power of other states”. Let’s break that down.

The Power of Other States

  1. Armed forces. No serious military scholar imagines the US Army could challenge the Russian Army in Europe, nor the PLA in Asia – after being humiliated in Korea in 1951. Next year the PLAN will have 400 new warships armed with hypersonic missiles – which the US Navy’s 293 older boats neither possess nor can defend against.
  2. Economic and technological resources. Russia’s economy is the world’s fourth largest, its military sector is 800% more productive than America’s, its military technology is a generation ahead, and its generalship is the world’s best. China’s productive economy is 300% bigger and leads the US in almost all sciences and technologies.
  3. The dexterity, foresight and resolution with which its foreign policy is conducted. Ninety percent of the world’s people do business and sympathize with Russia or China, and their leaders are rock stars wherever they go. Ten percent of the world’s people support America, whose leader is pitied, even insulted to his face.
  4. The efficiency of its social and political organization. 80% of Russians support their government’s policies and 96% of Chinese support theirs. Barely 34% of Americans trust their government or support its policies.
  5. Skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative, beliefs, myths and illusions of the people. China’s and Russia’s recoveries reflect their people’s resilience, skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative and collective self-belief. The US has yet to recover from the GFC, struggles to staff a chip fab, and hasn’t given its workers a raise since 1974.
  6. Foreign or imperial obligations. Ukraine, on the heels of the Afghanistan imbroglio, suggests that the US is incapable of sustaining its obligations towards its allies. Its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear pact suggests that it is incapable of making agreements.
  7. National power relative to the power of other states. If America wants to match Russia or China militarily, Washington must double real defense spending through 2034 just to match the 2023 capabilities of either, not both, of them.

America is overextended abroad, overinflated at home and its State competence is deteriorating in almost every way – from governance to justice to military to infant mortality – while it ignores its decline.

Next Stop: Failed State?…

Why are Chinese people’s car purchasing power so strong?

Actually most westerners will never get it. The middle income equivalent to the middle income in the U.S. is today in excess of 750 million. That itself is easily 3 times the size of the U.S. now! In a decade it will easily hit 1 billion strong. So if the U.S. buys a car Chinese will easily need 3–4 but because the people in China U.S. getting rich quickly. And the U.S. is in a defector recession and inflation the U.S. middle income is shrinking fast. The demand is easily 6–7 times that of the U.S. economy.

France never stopped looting Africa, now the tables are turning

As developments in West Africa demonstrate, the francophone countries are no longer willing to accept French neo-colonialism. With the fear factor finally removed, Africa’s quest for genuine independence is steadily coming to fruition.

By Brad Pearce

AUG 8, 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The 26 July coup in the West African nation of Niger, which threatens to undermine French and US military presence in the region, has shed light on the historical exploitation and continued practices of Francafrique – the term used to describe the persistent exploitation by the former French Empire in Africa.

France heavily relies on nuclear energy, with 68 percent of its power coming from nuclear plants. It obtains 19 percent of the uranium required to run these plants from Niger. Despite this significant contribution toward France’s energy needs, only 14.3 percent of Nigeriens have access to a power grid, and even that is often unreliable. This stark contrast highlights the disparities and ongoing exploitation by rapine foreign powers throughout the African continent.

The Legacy of Francafrique

Francafrique has been known for its exploitative systems designed to profit from African resources, using pressure, capital, and frequently outright force to maintain control over its former empire. As a result, many African states, including Niger, continue to face poverty and underdevelopment.

Burkina Faso’s young, charismatic leader Ibrahim Traore recently spoke at the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg and decried the fact that Africa is resource-rich, but its people are poor, and criticized African leaders seeking hand-outs from the west, as they perpetuate dependency and poverty. He also described what is being imposed on Africa as a form of slavery, stating:

“As far as what concerns Burkina Faso today, for more than eight years we’ve been confronted with the most barbaric, the most violent form of imperialist neo-colonialism. Slavery continues to impose itself on us. Our predecessors taught us one thing: a slave who cannot assume his own revolt does not deserve to be pitied. We do not feel sorry for ourselves, we do not ask anyone to feel sorry for us.”

France’s inability to justify its presence in Africa with a coherent narrative further complicates the situation. Paris cannot openly confess its greed, feign a “civilizing mission,” or admit to any responsibility due to its past crimes. This lack of purpose weakens French power on the continent, leading to violence and poverty in its wake.

West Africa’s drive for further independence has left Atlanticists concerned about the opening this leaves for Eurasian powers like Russia and China to increase their influence in Africa. The west’s reaction reflects a lack of respect for the sovereignty of African countries, viewing the continent merely as a theater to maintain global dominance.

Since the Ukraine war’s onset in early 2022, Atlanticists have expressed alarm over the unwillingness of Global South states to support the west’s anti-Russia policies, a trend further amplified by the shift to multipolarism everywhere. This weakening of western hegemony has opened a path for many nations to avidly explore their geopolitical options and diversify their economies.

A report from the Munich Security Conference held in February highlighted this very real schism with the west:

“Many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have steadily lost faith in the legitimacy and fairness of an international system which has neither granted them an appropriate voice in global affairs, nor sufficiently addressed their core concerns. To many states, these failures are deeply tied to the west. They find that the western-led order has been characterized by post-colonial domination, double standards, and neglect for developing countries’ concerns.”

Fleeced by the CFA Franc

The aftermath of the Second World War marked a significant shift in global power dynamics, and the victorious powers sought to establish a new world order that would maintain peace and promote economic balance.

In the context of African colonies, where colonial troops played a major role in the allied victory, the victorious powers, including France, aimed to retain economic control and benefit from their former colonies even as the world moved towards decolonization.

This included the establishment of new currency systems, with French leader Charles De Gaulle creating two currencies collectively known as the CFA Franc in 1945 for former colonies in the Western and Central zone.

As the push for political independence grew stronger in the late 1950s, France organized referendums in its African colonies to vote on accepting a constitution drafted by the French.

Guinea, led by former trade unionist Sekou Toure, opposed accepting the French constitution and voted overwhelmingly against it. In a furious response, De Gaulle’s government withdrew all French administrators from Guinea and took action to sabotage the country’s infrastructure and resources. The harsh measures by Paris aimed to serve as an example of what would happen to any former French colony that resisted France’s agenda.

During the Cold War, the Communist states exploited such actions by presenting themselves as liberators and allies of African countries that sought independence from European influence. This stance has led to some Africans viewing countries like Russia as more equitable partners compared to France.

Over the years, France has demonstrated a pattern of intervening militarily – over 50 times since 1960 – in African countries to secure governments that remain compliant with French economic interests, particularly related to the continued use of the CFA Franc.

The system by which the CFA Franc operates has historically been one of a fixed exchange rate where the currency has unlimited convertibility but is permanently pegged to the French currency , previously the Franc and then the Euro.

African currency under French control

This means that African countries cannot influence the value of their own currency, and the difference in value makes it so that France can buy African products artificially cheap while Africans are able to buy fewer goods with the money they exchange .

Worse yet, France had requirements to store, and thus profit from, the foreign reserves owned by its former colonies, though the requirement of holding 50 percent of their foreign exchange reserves in a French-ran bank was dropped for the western zone in 2019.

Under this scheme, African states received a nominal amount of interest, but the bank benefited from lending that capital out at higher rates and attaining massive profits off of African resources and labor. This is despite the fact that many countries in Francophone Africa are major gold exporters and thus have a multitude of options for storing wealth to back a currency in alternative central banks.

While the CFA Franc system has provided some benefits in terms of stability and preventing Zimbabwean-style hyperinflation, it has also come under scrutiny for imposing requirements on African countries that are not placed on more powerful nations. The lack of control over their own currency has hindered economic growth and made these countries vulnerable to global economic shocks.

Northern African states such as Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco chose to leave the CFA Franc upon gaining independence and have experienced relatively higher prosperity. Similarly, Botswana’s success with its own national currency demonstrates that proper management can lead to stable democracy and economic growth, even for less developed nations.

Exclusive rights and privileges

The CFA Franc system has been the geopolitical equivalent of one’s father insisting he manages their savings while leaving them out of his will. There are benefits to having a trade and currency zone, such as the current ECOWAS union that covers the Western part of the continent, but by design under the CFA Franc system, independence has been an illusion by which France has fleeced these countries.

France has been dependent on Africa for its status as a world power for more than a century. Among other privileges it has carved out for itself in post-colonial treaties, France has had the exclusive right to sell military equipment to former colonies, and enjoys the first right to any natural resources discovered. Paris makes great use of these privileges: as just one example, 36.4 percent of France’s gas is sourced from the African continent.

Moreover, a vast network of French business interests, which include major multinational companies, dominate industries such as energy, communications, and transportation in many African countries. France’s government also supports French businesses in Africa in several ways, including through an enormous public company called COFACE which guarantees French exports into these underdeveloped markets.

Towards independence and self-reliance

This economic dependence has contributed to the perpetuation of a system where African states remain weak, pliant, and reliant on resource exports, primarily benefiting French companies and interests. Additionally, African states are obligated to ally with France in any major conflict, further eroding their national sovereignty.

The African continent suffers from many ailments, but perhaps the most persistent and nefarious are a lack of sovereignty and access to capital. Meanwhile, much of Europe’s prosperity has been derived from looting the Global South for centuries.

The case of Brussels, built on the wealth derived from the brutal exploitation of the Congo under Belgian King Leopold II, is a stark reminder of the deep-rooted impact of colonialism. When the monarch’s crimes against humanity were discovered, he was ultimately forced to bequeath the majority of his fortune to the Belgian state upon his death.

Not wanting to do so, he embarked on an enormous series of public works to spend his ill-gotten gains , creating modern Brussels. Now the EU and NATO meet there and audaciously give disingenuous lectures about universal human rights while surrounded by the profits of some of the most brutal cases of oppression in human history.

While military governments often face challenges in achieving their stated goals, it is evident that western-backed “civil democracies” have also struggled to significantly improve the security and well-being of the African public.

The path to solving Africa’s problems lies in transformative leaders who can shrug off the legacy and remaining shackles of colonialism and enable the continent to carve out a genuine, homegrown path to independence and self-reliance.

THIS ENERGY!!!! AHHH! BABYMETAL “Megitsune” (Live Budokan 2021) | REACTION

Great reaction as always, thanks! Yes, “Megitsune” is on another level. It’s not surprising that this is one of the most loved songs by fans (and their most performed live one). Not to mention that Moa started doing some mischief during the mask number on the breakdown: doing funny faces (hengao), saying something, doing some silly move or gesture (even throwing a kiss, haha…) just to break Su. They usually cut it out on pro-shots, but you can see here Su laughing behind the mask afterwards.

Now, this is almost part of the choreo (so to speak), Moa has involved Momoko into this recently and fans always expect this happens. They are co cool!

What are the implications of China’s economic growth of 6.3% in the second quarter?

The grow rate might have fallen short of some relatively high projections.

However, I think this is normal. If Beijing tends to make the economic data look good, it only needs to work a little harder in two aspects: real estate and enormous economic stimulus.

Real estate

Behind real estate is a long industrial chain, which can be said to be the first contributor to China’s economic development in the past 20 years of this century, but the direct consequence of this is the soaring housing price. In my mind, the most prominent economic risk in the world is the US stock market and the Chinese housing market.

Fortunately, China did not choose to do that. Although it implemented a support policy for real estate this year, the purpose is by no means to make real estate the engine of growth for national economy.

Economic stimulus

In the first half of this year, China carried out a series of stimulus measures such as interest rate cuts and RRR cuts, and the current weighted average interest rate of demand deposits in 0.23%, and the weighed average interest rate of time deposits is 2.22%, which has fallen sharply, but it is a rhythmic decline, and there is no trillion stimulus plan after the economic crisis in 2008.

We can also reason the other way around, assuming we have another trillion-dollar stimulus package, then our economic data must be very good.

But that would certainly accumulate new economic risks, especially the debt problem. At present, China’s macro leverage ratio is about 280%, which is comparable to that of Western developed countries such as the United States. China is a developing country, and it is generally believed that the macro leverage ratio of developing countries should be lower than that of developed countries.

From this point of view, although China especially needs rapid economic development this year, China chose not to quench its thirst with poison.

China’s new engines for development

China was determined to pursue healthy economic development. To pursue a healthy development, China needs new engines, with typical examples such as chips in the high-tech industry, new energy vehicles, as well as new energy represented by wind and solar energy.

2023 08 09 20 54
2023 08 09 20 54

For China’s economic development, the new engine is slowly accelerating, but the old engine is falling off a cliff. Because we really can’t use the old engine of real estate, and we didn’t force it to run at high speed, which led to China’s economic performance in the second quarter of this year not being as good as people expected.

I believe that such an arrangement in China is calm, scientific and reasonable.

To Die for Beef Roast

This is one of the best roasts you will ever taste. Carrots, potatoes and celery can also be added, if desired.

2023 08 09 21 09
2023 08 09 21 09

Ingredients

  • 1 beef roast (any kind)
  • 1 envelope Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing mix
  • 1 envelope brown gravy mix
  • 1 envelope Italian dressing mix
  • 1/2 cup warm water

Instructions

  1. Place roast in slow cooker.
  2. Mix contents of all 3 envelopes and sprinkle over roast.
  3. Pour water into the bottom of the slow cooker.
  4. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 7 hours.

MOODY’S LOWERS CREDIT RATINGS FOR TEN BANKS; ISSUES “NEGATIVE OUTLOOK” ON 11 OTHERS — DONE QUIETLY OVERNIGHT

Nation Hal Turner 08 August 2023

Later last night into the wee hours of Tuesday morning, MOODY’S Investor Service lowered credit ratings for 10 small and midsize US banks and said it may downgrade major lenders including U.S. Bancorp, Bank of New York Mellon Corp., State Street Corp., and Truist Financial Corp.

Higher funding costs, potential regulatory capital weaknesses and rising risks tied to commercial real estate loans amid weakening demand for office space are among strains prompting the review, Moody’s said in a spree of notes late Monday.

“Collectively, these three developments have lowered the credit profile of a number of US banks, though not all banks equally,” it wrote in some of the assessments.

Firms that had ratings cut included M&T Bank Corp., Webster Financial Corp., BOK Financial Corp., Old National Bancorp, Pinnacle Financial Partners Inc., and Fulton Financial Corp.

Northern Trust Co. and Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc. are also under review for downgrades.

And Moody’s adopted a “negative” outlook for 11 lenders including PNC Financial Services Group, Capital One Financial Corp., Citizens Financial Group Inc., Fifth Third Bancorp, Regions Financial Corp., Ally Financial Inc., Bank OZK and Huntington Bancshares Inc.

What the world thinks about China

We all know that Western countries hate China, but when you include the whole world and not just the collective West, the picture is totally different. Learn what the other 80% of the world thinks of China.

This Cambridge study completely contradicts the highly biased Pew study I posted last week. Gee, I wonder why…

Second “Proxy War” Brewing Between US-Russia: Niger, AFRICA

World Hal Turner 08 August 2023

On July 26, a military Coup d’Etat took place in the country of Niger.  Democratically-elected President Mohamed Bazoum was taken under arrest by his own Presidential Guards and is now in confinement.  Bazoum was pro-U.S./EU, especially France. His Guards do not approve of the tight control exercised by France over Niger, and they see Niger’s future as aligned with Russia. 

The scalable map below shows the country of Niger – which is DIFFERENT from the other African nation named Nigeria.

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2023 08 10 09 32

Reading from a statement, Colonel Amadou Abdramane, seated and flanked by nine other officers, said defense and security forces had decided: “Put an end to the regime that you know due to the deteriorating security situation and bad governance.”  He went on to say Niger’s borders are closed, a nationwide curfew declared, and all institutions of the republic are suspended.

The soldiers warned against any foreign intervention, adding that they will respect Bazoum’s wellbeing.

Land-locked Niger, a former French colony, has become a pivotal ally for Western powers seeking to help fight “terrorists” and insurgencies, but they are facing growing objections from the new juntas in charge in Mali and Burkina Faso.

Niger is also a key ally of the European Union in the fight against “irregular migration” from sub-Saharan Africa.

France moved troops to Niger from Mali last year after its relations with interim authorities there soured. It has also withdrawn special forces from the nearby country of Burkina Faso amid similar tensions.

Within days of taking power, Niger’s military DENOUNCED “Cooperation Agreements” with France, allowing French troops to be in the country.  Specifically, Niger invoked a 30 days notice within the Cooperation Agreements telling the French their military must leave. 

Here is the machine-translated letter (Page 1 only as it is relevant) from Niger to France telling them to leave:

Letter From Niger To France Troops Muist Leave
Letter From Niger To France Troops Muist Leave

The French REFUSE to leave.France Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said bluntly “The possible departure of French soldiers in Niger is not on the agenda.  All the efforts of the international community are aimed at forcing the juntato abandon its dangerous adventure that is detrimental to Niger and the region.” At the publication of this story on August 8, 2023, there are about 1,500 French soldiers inside Niger. The French contingent has been in Niger continuously since 1979. Dangerous Adventure?So what is the “dangerous adventure” referred to by the French Foreign Minister?   Well, when the military coup took place, thousands of regular citizens in Niger came out in SUPPORT of the troops and one man sized-up the situation almost perfectly.   He said,  “Niger has Uranium, Diamonds, Gold, and oil, yet we live like slaves.  This is unacceptable.”  Here’s the video

.

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2023 08 10 09 33a

It’s THAT simple.  The people of Niger see the natural wealth their nation has, but they do not benefit AT ALL from their own natural wealth; France takes most of it!

For instance, Niger has a lot of Uranium.  It is mined and shipped to France . . . which then gets seventy percent (70%) of its electric power from nuclear power plants.

Similarly, in another former French colony in Africa, Mali, the people there observed this inconvenient truth:

So France has no Gold mines, but has over 2400 TONS of gold in its Bank vaults.   Mali has 860 Gold mines, but NO GOLD in any of its Bank vaults.  So where is France getting all its Gold? Simple; they take it from Mali!  The people of Mali, get no benefit from THEIR own natural wealth.

People in Africa have had enough of this type of thing going on, while THEY are forced to live like slaves.  

The military in Niger has taken a bold first step to break the status quo.  France is not happy.

Turns out, Europe is not happy, either.   But there isn’t much mention about WHY Europe is unhappy.   So I did some digging and . . .

Well, well, well . . . . Lookie, lookie here:

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2023 08 10 09 35

Turns out that Niger is right in the path of . . . .  a proposed new OIL and GAS pipeline ! ! ! ! !

It would run from the well established oil/gas fields in nearby NIGERIA, up through Niger, through Algeria, where it would meet existing pipelines to supply Europe with Oil and gas.

CHEAP oil and gas.

But with the Russia-Ukraine conflict ongoing, and the hideous “Economic Sanctions” placed upon Russia by the US and Europe, Russia signed military agreements with a number of Africa nations.  Here’s a map showing the nations on the continent of Africa, that have signed military agreements with Russia:

African countries with russian military agreements
African countries with russian military agreements

– including Niger — and now, suddenly, that whole pipeline thing. . . . just isn’t happening for Europe.

As long as Europe continues to intentionally harm Russia, it seems that Russia will continue to fight back.

So now we see that Russia has gotten in the way of European plans — again.    Just like happened in Syria.

Remember the Europeans wanted to run a gas pipeline from the Middle Eastern country of Qatar, up through – among other countries – Syria, but Syria said No.   

So what did Europe and the United States do to Syria?  That whole uprising which began in 2012 that tried to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.  Remember Hillary Clinton telling the world that Bashar Assad was “a brutal Dictator.”  Remember how the “Free Syrian Army” seemed to spring up out of nowhere, with heavy weapons, brand new Toyota Pick-up trucks, and tons of food supplies from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and more?  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the West sent in paid mercenaries, under the guise of “ISIS” (yes, you know, the guys who cut off people’s heads) to try to overthrow Assad.   

Assad went to Russia for help, and Russia came to Syria and smashed the crap out of ISIS.

So Russia and its ally, Syria, smacked down Europe’s effort to make an end-run around Russia, to get gas from Qatar, and that ended up blowing up in Europe’s face.  Bashar Assad survived the attempted overthrow and still leads Syria to this very day.

Next, the West started trouble in Ukraine – overthrowing its democratically-elected leader, Viktor Yanukovich, and installing a puppet Regime. Why? Because the West (U.S. and EU) want to install US missiles in Ukraine so they have only about a 5 minute flight time to Moscow. 

Russia said “No.” 

The West said “too bad, we will bring Ukraine into NATO and do it anyway.” 

Russia told Ukraine “no” you cannot join NATO because we cannot tolerate missiles with a 5 minute flight time to Moscow.   

Ukraine said “too bad, we’re gonna join NATO and put NATO missiles here.” 

The Russians said “Oh yea?  Here, meet the Russian Army.”

Now the whole US-EU-inspired Ukraine thing is blowing up in their faces, too.  Ukraine is losing so badly it can only be a matter of weeks before they collapse.

So what is the West doing right now? Starting crap on the continent of Africa.

Who did the US send to Niger just days ago?   Under-Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland.  You know, the same one we sent to Ukraine when we overthrew it’s President.   

Nuland Niger
Nuland Niger

Yea, her.

Maybe I’m biased but it sure seems to me that wherever that woman is sent, death, destruction, and war soon follows.

This week, she was in Niger.  

You know what Niger told her?   “We don’t want your LGBTQ Foreign Aid Money.” 

But wait, there’s more.   The Foreign Ministry of Niger then sent a letter to the US State Department reiterating that Niger does not want US Aid money and then told the State Department “We don’t want your money, why not use it to start a weight loss program for Victoria Nuland?”

Yes, they actually said that!

So the very same people who brought us the Syria war, who overthrew the Ukraine President, who started the Ukraine war, are now in Niger on the continent of Africa.

Guess where this is going?

No, you don’t have to guess; everyone seems to know already . . . Here’s the Flight Radar for Africa.  Somehow, all the commercial airlines, already know that Niger is now a “No Fly Zone.”

08 08 2023 MOST OF AFRICA NO FLY ZONE NEW PROXY WAR
08 08 2023 MOST OF AFRICA NO FLY ZONE NEW PROXY WAR

Yea, her.

Maybe I’m biased but it sure seems to me that wherever that woman is sent, death, destruction, and war soon follows.

This week, she was in Niger.  

You know what Niger told her?   “We don’t want your LGBTQ Foreign Aid Money.” 

But wait, there’s more.   The Foreign Ministry of Niger then sent a letter to the US State Department reiterating that Niger does not want US Aid money and then told the State Department “We don’t want your money, why not use it to start a weight loss program for Victoria Nuland?”

Yes, they actually said that!

So the very same people who brought us the Syria war, who overthrew the Ukraine President, who started the Ukraine war, are now in Niger on the continent of Africa.

Guess where this is going?

No, you don’t have to guess; everyone seems to know already . . . Here’s the Flight Radar for Africa.  Somehow, all the commercial airlines, already know that Niger is now a “No Fly Zone.”

Wagner Troops from Russia are already in the Capital City of Niamey, Niger, at the request of the Niger military, to protect the Capital city.

Why would Wagner PMC Troops from Russia be there so fast?   Well, when the Niger coup took place, guess who France, the EU and the USA turned to for support?

ECOWAS.

I can hear you saying . . . . . . “Uhhhhhhh.  Who?”

ECOWAS  —- the “Economic Community of West African States.

It’s sort of like the African version of the “G-7” and deals with issues like trade and such.

ECOWAS publicly gave a deadline of Sunday for the guys in Niger to restore the President or face military action!  The deadline came and went, but no military action.

How could ECOWAS threaten military action if it is just a trade association?   Well  . . . . it is headed by a guy named Bola Tinubu.  This guy:

This guy has a VERY INTERESTING Background: Laundering millions of dollars for . . . . wait for it . . . . Chicago Heroin Dealers!

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2023 08 10 09 39

Now . . .  forgive me for asking . . .  but how and why would the French and American governments put a guy like THIS in charge of the Economic Community of  West African States?   HMMMMMMM. Maybe because he launders money?  Maybe the bigshots inside the US and French (and maybe other) governments, NEED some money laundered??????

THIS is the type of person our governments are working with!  A Money launderer for Chicago Heroin dealers rubbing elbows with the Biden regime in the US and the Macron Regime in France.  THAT is the type of people we have running our governments, folks! 

One cannot help but wonder how a Chicago Money Launderer got in touch with the Biden regime.  Maybe the former President, Barack Obama, who is from Chicago?????  Just wondering is all.

So now, with this guy Bola Tinubu threatening military action, the guys in Niger have to worry that the Asian Heroin Cartels and their pals from elsewhere in the world, might start sending “mercenaries” to Niger to shake things up a bit?  Maybe THAT is how Bola Tinubu could threaten “military action?”

Clearly, the pieces are already moving rapidly into place for what seems to be Proxy-War #2.   On the continent of Africa.

But this time, the US and the EU don’t have a lot of ammunition or weapons — or troops — to spare because they’ve thrown most of it away on the lost cause of Ukraine.   HMMMMM, what might that add-up to?

Well. . . it’s Africa . . . .  You know, where the detonation of Tactical nukes won’t matter very much . . . .

The so-called “Main-Stream” media hasn’t told you this.  I have. 

Because I think the public should know when its  incompetent public servants are starting yet another war.

Niger DESTROYS Victoria Nuland’s Plot to Return Africa to France w/ Ben Norton

Journalist and analyst Ben Norton reacts to Victoria Nuland’s visit to Niger and provides the context needed to understand why Niger’s coup has the Collective West panicking.

OK.

Enough of global Geo-Politics.

The Venusian / Stranger from Venus (1954, Sci-Fi) Colorized Movie

Today’s mid-day movie…

The Enigma Of Steven Kubacki and other stuff

Have you ever wondered about missing time? I have. What was going on when you are unable to remember things? Like when you are in deep sleep, sedation, or completely “blacked out”.

Yeah.

I wrote about how I was surprised during my retirement, that compartmentalized personalities manifested during my retirement sequence at the ADC Pine Bluff. And of course, the DM explained to me what some of them were and what triggered them. Sigh.

I suppose that might make me dangerous if some evil, sadistic fuck wanted to mess with me. That’s why I am in the safety of China. It is darn difficult for someone to trigger this kind of personality encroachment upon myself. Phew!

Never the less. It is disturbing.

You know, I take this to mean that MKULTRA actually generated results and they have been utilized and applied to various members of the SAP organizational tier to include myself. From the 1980s onwards.

Makes you think.

I need a drink.

Today…

Have you ever been deeply insulted by someone?

There was one memorable attempt.

After my father died, my mom got increasingly difficult and frequently outright nasty to any convenient target.

At one point, I made a suggestion about a way to improve her quality of life — I think I was recommending a speakerphone.

Mom turned on me and said in her most acidic voice: “You’ll never be the man your father was!”

I was startled, but oddly, I went to a very calm, centered place, and said simply: “Nobody could.”

That stopped her in her tracks — a rare event. She looked at me for a moment, and just gave me a brief nod.

For that one moment, we had been fully connected in our memories, admiration, and mourning for someone we both loved.

And for that moment, we rose above all our differences.

She continued to be problematic, but she never used that line again.

The Slob Arrives at NATO Summit; 300,000 NATO Troops Placed on “Alert”

World Hal Turner 11 July 2023

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2023 07 12 06 50
The Slob Arrives at NATO Summit; 300,000 NATO Troops Placed on "Alert"

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived at the ongoing NATO Summit this morning about 10:45 AM EDT.  Wearing his typical green army shirt as he exited his limo, spectators were overheard commenting “The Slob has arrived.”

Before Zelensky’s arrival, NATO bigshot Jens Stoltenberg told assembled media that NATO has agreed to put 300,000 troops on “Stand-by” alert.  “This includes air and naval assets” he added.

On the Ukraine issue, NATO allies have agreed to simplify the process of Ukraine’s entry into the North Atlantic Alliance, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.   Nearby Observers remarked that this had to be done because Ukraine is so retarded, they cannot get through the normal 2-step process of entering NATO.

“We reiterated that Ukraine will become a member of NATO and agreed to cancel the requirements for an action plan for membership in the alliance. This will change the path for Ukraine to join NATO, instead of a two-stage process, it will be a one-stage process,” Stoltenberg said at a press conference in Vilnius.

According to Stoltenberg, the NATO summit also agreed on the establishment of a Ukraine-NATO council, as well as a multi-year support program aimed at bringing the Ukrainian Armed Forces up to NATO standards.

As leaders covened above, The Bulgarian PM basically said that NATO is at war with Russia.

Nikolai Denkov told Sky News: “We are in a full-fledged war so when you have a war the treaties are important, but it’s even more important to have success on the battlefield”.

He said decisions made around cluster bombs are “politically sensitive”, but added that he did not want to go “deeper into the topic.” (HT Remark: Of course they don’t; Most NATO Countries are Signatories to the Oslo treaty banning Cluster Munitions. They say they don’t agree with the transfer (wink, wink).

In addition, Germany is to announce an aid package with a total cost of about 600 million euros after lunch at the NATO summit. The new package includes:

  • Several Patriot launchers and other surface-to-air weapons from the Bundeswehr stockpile.
  • Additional Marder BMPs
  • Leopard 1 tanks  
  • Demining equipment
  • About 20,000 artillery shells
  • Shells for Leopard tanks
  • Several drones for reconnaissance.

Macron confirms media reports saying that France has sent SCALP long-range missiles to Ukraine. They have a range of 300 km

What is an experience you had at a car dealership you’ll never forget?

I was returning from FL to IL on Labor Day weekend I was about 30 yo I had my wife and 2yo son with me in an old minivan. The transmission went out about 40 miles south of Nashville. I’m a construction worker and my wife was laid off so money was really tight. We found a dealership to tow the minivan to it was early afternoon on the Saturday before Labor Day and there was only the sales manager left at the dealership. This guy goes way above and beyond he get a mechanic to verify what we knew. The minivan is shot. Shows us great little cheap almost new car then gives me a ride to the Nashville airport to get a rental because I didn’t think I could get that car. On the way he invited us to his house Sunday for dinner after church since we were going to have to wait until Monday to do something about the minivan. After Sunday dinner we go back to the dealership and I buy the car but of course no paperwork can be processed he tells me it will be fine take the car and Tuesday the paperwork will go through. I let him know I’m gonna put a lot of miles on this car getting home what if I can’t get that loan? He says it’ll be ok. Go home and he is positive it will be fine. It was fine and I’ll never forget how that guy treated me and my family.

America is COMING TO AN END…

Absolutely SPOT ON. -MM

Chris Hedges has expressed deep concerns about the decline of America in various aspects.

He believes that the United States is facing a crisis on multiple fronts, including political, economic, social, and moral dimensions.

Here are some key points he has made regarding the decline of America: Political Dysfunction: Hedges criticizes the corrupting influence of money in politics, the rise of corporate power, and the erosion of democratic institutions.

He argues that political leaders prioritize corporate interests over the needs of the general population, leading to a loss of faith in the political system.

Economic Inequality: Hedges highlights the significant wealth disparity in the United States and its negative consequences for society.

He argues that the concentration of wealth among the elite has resulted in the impoverishment and marginalization of large segments of the population.

Cultural Decay: Hedges laments the decline of cultural values, intellectual depth, and the rise of a shallow consumerist culture.

He criticizes the prevalence of celebrity culture, the degradation of public discourse, and the erosion of critical thinking.

Imperialism and Endless Wars: Hedges is highly critical of American imperialism and its military interventions around the world.

He argues that these interventions drain the nation’s resources, cause immense suffering, and contribute to the decline of America’s moral standing.

Environmental Crisis: Hedges raises concerns about the environmental crisis, including climate change and ecological degradation.

He argues that the failure to address these issues adequately further accelerates America’s decline.

Hedges often calls for resistance, grassroots movements, and a reawakening of civic responsibility as potential remedies to address the decline of America.

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2023 07 13 11 36
https://youtu.be/06dzkahfthQ
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2023 07 13 11 3r6

Huevos Divorciados (Divorced Eggs)

The name derives from the way the dish is served. Traditionally half of them are served with green salsa and half are served with red salsa. This recipe is easy to adjust for only two servings.

huevos divorciados 1
huevos divorciados 1

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 8 large eggs
  • 8 (6 inch) corn tortillas
  • 4 teaspoons butter, divided
  • Salt and pepper
  • 2 cups prepared refried pinto beans, warmed
  • 1/2 cup tomatillo or green salsa
  • 1/2 cup tomato or red salsa
  • 1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion
  • 1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro

Instructions

  1. Bake tortillas in a single layer on a large baking sheet in preheated 400 degrees F oven for 7 to 10 minutes or until crispy.
  2. Heat half of the butter in large nonstick skillet set over medium-high heat until just melted. For sunny-side up, over-easy or over-hard eggs: Break 4 eggs and slip into skillet one at a time. Immediately reduce heat to low.
  3. Cook eggs for about 5 minutes or until whites are completely set and yolks begin to thicken but are not hard.
  4. Use as is or flip eggs carefully with spatula and cook second side to desired doneness. Sprinkle eggs lightly with salt and pepper. (Repeat method with remaining butter and 4 eggs, or prepare all 8 at once in two large nonstick skillets or on one large flat griddle.)
  5. Spread warm refried beans evenly over tortillas. Spoon tomatillo salsa over half the tortillas and tomato salsa over remaining tortillas. Top each tortilla with one fried egg. Transfer one of each salsa-topped tortilla to four plates and garnish with red onion and cilantro. Serve immediately.

Notes

Mix 1/4 cup sour cream with juice from one fresh lime and drizzle on top of eggs right before serving.

Garnish with chopped avocados and lime wedges.

Prepare recipe with refried black beans instead of pinto beans if desired.

This recipe is an excellent source of protein, vitamin A, folate and choline, and a good source of vitamin D.

Altered States: Unraveling The Enigma Of Steven Kubacki

The disappearance (and reappearance) of Steven Kubacki has become quite a lasting mystery. As is typical, there is more to the story than most people are aware of. I hope you enjoy it.

Here is Ellen Killoran’s substack for those wishing to learn a bit more.

NATO’s Big Climb Down

From the:

Vilnius Summit Communiqué
Issued by NATO Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Vilnius 11 July 2023:

11. We fully support Ukraine’s right to choose its own security arrangements. Ukraine’s future is in NATO. We reaffirm the commitment we made at the 2008 Summit in Bucharest that Ukraine will become a member of NATO, and today we recognise that Ukraine’s path to full Euro-Atlantic integration has moved beyond the need for the Membership Action Plan. Ukraine has become increasingly interoperable and politically integrated with the Alliance, and has made substantial progress on its reform path. In line with the 1997 Charter on a Distinctive Partnership between NATO and Ukraine and the 2009 Complement, Allies will continue to support and review Ukraine’s progress on interoperability as well as additional democratic and security sector reforms that are required. NATO Foreign Ministers will regularly assess progress through the adapted Annual National Programme. The Alliance will support Ukraine in making these reforms on its path towards future membership. We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.

The statement ‘when Allies agree and conditions are met’ sets arguably a higher bar than the 2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration had promised:

23. NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO. Both nations have made valuable contributions to Alliance operations. We welcome the democratic reforms in Ukraine and Georgia and look forward to free and fair parliamentary elections in Georgia in May. The Membership Action Plan (MAP) is the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their direct way to membership. Today we make clear that we support these countries’ applications for MAP. Therefore we will now begin a period of intensive engagement with both at a high political level to address the questions still outstanding pertaining to their MAP applications. We have asked Foreign Ministers to make a first assessment of progress at their December 2008 meeting. Foreign Ministers have the authority to decide on the MAP applications of Ukraine and Georgia.

Also note that the ‘conditions’, just like the rules in the ‘rules based order’, are undefined. It seems like any NATO member will be able to define its own ones.

Added:

Also note this from the:

Pre-Summit press conference
by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ahead of the NATO Summit in Vilnius

Iryna Somer, Interfax Ukraine
Thank you Oana. Iryna Somer, Ukrainian News Agency Interfax Ukraine. I have follow up question on Mindaugas, regarding declaration. I do understand you can’t comment on the language which will in decleration regarding membership. But can you tell us how far or how close Allies are regarding wording in the declaration regarding a possible membership for Ukraine, which also will be satisfactory for Kyiv? Thank you.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
[…]

We will provide support to Ukraine for as long as it takes. Because unless Ukraine wins this war, there’s no membership issue to be discussed at all.

Ukraine’s victory in the war, which is unachievable, is now a main condition for its admittance to NATO.

It wasn’t what the Ukrainian government had wanted to hear.

Via Strana.news (machine translation):

“Unprecedented and absurd.” Zelensky criticized the allies for the lack of an invitation to NATO – 13:59, Today

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky commented on Western leaders’ plans not to include any specifics on Ukraine’s NATO membership in a forthcoming statement.

“Now, on the way to Vilnius, we received signals that language without Ukraine is being discussed. And I want to emphasize that this wording is only by invitation, and not by Ukraine’s membership. It is unprecedented and absurd when there is no time frame for the invitation (! ), and for the membership of Ukraine; and when some strange wording about “conditions” is added even for inviting Ukraine

It seems that there is no readiness either to invite Ukraine to NATO or to make it a member of the Alliance. Consequently, there remains the possibility of bargaining Ukraine’s membership in NATO – in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror. Uncertainty is weakness. And I will frankly discuss this at the summit,” Zelensky wrote.

Well. The little comedian seems disappointed. As if the whole play had not been obvious from the very beginning. Since 2008 the Ukraine was to be used as a tool to nag Russia. It is otherwise of little value. It will end up as a discarded rag while NATO will, in the end, again recognize the Russian Federation as the super power that that it is. NATO will have to relearn to listen to and negotiate with it.

Now lets wait and see what NATO’s climb down will do to the morale and motivations of the Ukrainian army and people.

Posted by b at 16:13 UTC | Comments (203)

TikTok Star Ends Her Career In One Night

She left her 3 year old alone while she went to meet someone a total of 22 miles away? Mother is completely out of her mind. You never consider much less perpetrate something like that. This woman is not a responsible mother at all. This is unbelievable.

https://youtu.be/JtZpdgDrfnw

Civil War Surprise as Kentucky Farmer Unearths Valuable Coin Hoard

A Kentucky farmer was digging in his corn field earlier this year when he discovered over 700 coins. About 95% of the unexpected stash dated back to the American Civil War. This chance finding of a Civil War hoard included rare, minted coins and has now been branded “the Great Kentucky Hoard.”

According to the Numismatic Guaranty Company ( NGC), who certified the coins’ authenticity, the rare Civil War hoard of coins includes the “finest-known 1863 Double Eagles, as well as several interesting varieties and errors.” The lucky farmer from the Bluegrass State told Live Science that the discovery was “the most insane thing ever.”

Pulling Riches from the Earth: The Civil War Hoard

The finder of the hoard, which includes hundreds of gold coins dating to between 1840 and 1863, in addition to a handful of silver coins, decided to remain anonymous. “Those are all $1 gold coins, $20 gold coins, $10 gold coins,” stated the discoverer on GovMint.com as he pulled the coins from the Civil War hoard from his corn field.

NGC stated that around 95% of the hoard is composed of gold dollars, and that it included “about 20 $10 Liberty coins and eight $20 Liberty coins.” A report in Live Science highlighted that “one of these coins can go for six figures at auction.” The Great Kentucky Hoard boasts 18 of them!

The rarest coin within the Civil War hoard is a 1863-P $20 1-ounce gold Liberty coin, which circulated from 1850 to 1907. What makes this coin particularly rare is that its face was not stamped with the words “In God We Trust.” These were added in 1866 after the end of the Civil War .

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2023 07 12 06 56f

The Civil War hoard was made up of over 700 Civil War-era coins. ( Numismatic Guaranty Co. )

Bury the Stash Quickly, Here Comes Morgan

Professor McNutt, a conflict archaeologist at the Georgia Southern University’s Archaeological Laboratory , told Live Science that the fact the coins were unearthed in Kentucky, which was neutral at the time, means that the hoard was most probably “buried in advance of Confederate John Hunt Morgan’s daring raid in June and July 1863.

Leading a force of 2,400 cavalrymen, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan’s raid from June to July 1863 left an indelible mark on the American Civil War . Over 46 days the raid covered more than 1,000 miles through Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, destroying supply lines and causing panic among civilians.

Morgan’s guerrilla tactics confounded Union forces , allowing him to evade capture multiple times. While Morgan was ultimately arrested, his legendary raid cemented his reputation as one of the most daring and resourceful Confederate commanders of the American Civil War.

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2023 07 12 06 56

Panic in Louisville, Kentucky, as the troops of John Hunt Morgan near the city. One archaeologist has argued that the Civil War hoard was buried in advance of Morgan’s raid. ( Public domain )

The Lost Legacy of Kentuckian Plunder

Because this coin hoard represents federal currency, McNutt suspects it may have been left by “Kentuckian’s dealings with the federal government.” The archaeologist explained that many Americans affected by the Civil War became experienced with hiding goods and valuables from Confederate raiding parties.

Another example given of a Kentuckian stashing treasure was James Langstaff, who wrote a letter declaring he had buried “$20,000 in coins on his property in Paducah.” Furthermore, Live Science reported on a William Pettit, who buried “$80,000 worth of gold coins near Lexington.”

Because neither of these Civil war-era coin caches have been discovered to date, so much value is being associated with the recently discovered Civil War hoard, both financially and historically.

Are Federal Laws Damaging U.S. Archaeology?

American laws state that any historical finds made on private land “do not need to be reported.” Professor McNutt stressed that as a result the vast majority of ancient artifacts found on private land go straight to auction without ever being studied by archaeologists; a situation which he finds “frustrating.”

In this instance however, McNutt’s efforts investing time into developing close relationships with landowners through education and outreach have paid off. Thanks to the finder reporting the Civil War hoard discovered on his land, this particular “snapshot of the past” won’t be lost forever.

America’s archaeology laws have faced harsh criticism for their perceived shortcomings, with critics arguing that fragmented legislation, insufficient funding and limited enforcement hinder the protection and preservation of archaeological sites and artifacts.

The U.S. Antiquities Act protects any “object of antiquity” even though it fails to define this term. The Archaeological Resources Protection Act ( ARPA) addresses the ambiguity over this term claiming it means “any material remains of archaeological interest.” However, ARPA does not consider items under 100 years old, or paleontological items such as fossils, to be “archaeological.”

By Ashley Cowie

Major Earthquake Strikes in Atlantic Ocean Near Antigua, Barbuda, Puerto Rico

World Hal Turner 10 July 2023

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2023 07 12 06 52
Major Earthquake Strikes in Atlantic Ocean Near Antigua, Barbuda, Puerto Rico

A Magnitude 6.6 earthquake has struck in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coasts of Antigua, Barbuda, Puerto Rico, etc.  The quake took place at a shallow depth of only 10km.  Tsunami computers are crunching the data to see if a Tsunami Warning may be needed . . .

Developing fast, check back for updates.

UPDATE: NO TSUNAMI

WEXX32 PAAQ 102035
TIBATE

Tsunami Information Statement Number 1
NWS National Tsunami Warning Center Palmer AK
435 PM AST Mon Jul 10 2023

...THIS IS A TSUNAMI INFORMATION STATEMENT FOR THE U.S. EAST COAST,
   GULF OF MEXICO STATES, AND EASTERN CANADA...

EVALUATION
----------
 * There is no tsunami danger for the U.S. east coast, the Gulf of 
   Mexico states, or the eastern coast of Canada. 

 * Based on earthquake information and historic tsunami records, 
   the earthquake is not expected to generate a tsunami. 

 * An earthquake has occurred with parameters listed below. 


PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE PARAMETERS
---------------------------------

 * The following parameters are based on a rapid preliminary
   assessment of the earthquake and changes may occur.

 * Magnitude      6.4
 * Origin Time    1629  EDT Jul 10 2023
                  0429  AST Jul 10 2023
                  1529  CDT Jul 10 2023
                  2029  UTC Jul 10 2023
 * Coordinates    20.1 North 61.1 West
 * Depth          6 miles
 * Location       in the North Atlantic Ocean


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND NEXT UPDATE
--------------------------------------
 * Refer to the internet site tsunami.gov for more information. 

 * Caribbean coastal regions should refer to the Pacific 
   Tsunami Warning Center messages at tsunami.gov. 

 * This will be the only U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center 
   message issued for this event unless additional information 
   becomes available. 

Have you ever checked into a hotel room and found something unexpected?

I live in Las Vegas and I will take random staycations at several hotels during the year with myself or with friends. I checked into one resort in town for a couple of days after the Fourth of July to just relax. As I was putting my stuff away in the closet, a bag fell to the floor where the extra pillows are kept. Inside the bag, an unmarked bank deposit bag with almost $45,000 of cash. Money was in bands of $5000 and $10,000.

I called security. They made a report and police were called. I was told by law, the hotel needs to hold it for 30 days and see if the owner claims it, afterwards it can be claimed by me. Per the hotel and police efforts were made to contact the previous people in the room. No one made a claim for it, so I claimed it.

When A Killer Realizes His Victim Tricked Him

https://youtu.be/x4_j-PofxaI

When a car dealership will not negotiate price, should you walk away at that point?

In Providence, Rhode Island, there was a Ford dealer named Robert “Bob” Tasca. It was his policy to have a fixed price for every car on his lot. He wouldn’t haggle.

He was the second largest Ford dealer in the United States based on volume of vehicles sold, even though the footprint of his dealership was about 20% of the size of the largest one, which was in Texas.

That’s because he led the region in after-sales service. Even on used cars. Ford once ran a test where they loosened the alternator wire and took it into Ford dealers in the area for service. Tasca Ford was the only one that correctly diagnosed the problem. The others just replaced the alternator. Tasca also fixed it for free. It wasn’t even one of their vehicles.

Tasca was legendary. Once Edsel Ford himself came into Tasca Ford on a Saturday with an experimental Ford vehicle Tasca couldn’t possibly have the parts for. Edsel was in a hurry, so Tasca loaned him his own car, then phoned Detroit for the part. By Monday afternoon the car was fixed and he gave it back to Edsel. Edsel wrote a personal thank you note.

If a dealer is willing to negotiate price, they are probably going to screw you in other ways. Margins on new cars are thin, so dealerships make it back in financing and service. Tasca instead developed the two-year lease so you could essentially get a new car every two years for the cost of the lease payments. Then when a customer came in looking for a particular used car, he would call a customer to trade in their car for a new one and sell the formerly leased car to the customer who wanted it. No extra charge.

Bad dealers want to squeeze you for every penny they can right away. Good dealers want you to keep coming back to them, so they charge you more money, but cost you less in the long run.

The Insane Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897

An important detail is that they were extremely unprepared for the arctic and brought a lot of unnecessary shit. Like, their clothes were too cold for a start, and instead of bringing you know, useful stuff, they brought champagne and chandeliers and silverware and whatnot because they were only preparing for the fancy reception they’d get when they landed. Andrée ignored all the red flags because all he could think about was the honour and glory he’d receive. He even noticed that the balloon was leaking while they were setting it up and went and filled it up in secret so people wouldn’t notice! They also seemed like, totally unafraid of the polar bears and didn’t realise that they’re vicious killers. We don’t know exactly how they died, but it was probably a combination of bear attacks, malnutrition, disease, hypothermia and too much morphine (which can cause you to not realise you’re freezing). A swedish doctor and writer named Bea uusma have Ben pouring over this case for the last ??? 20 years or something, her book about it is fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone who understands swedish.

Why do people want to move to China even when it is communist?

You need to get over your obsession with the word “Communist”.

China has a lot to offer: friendly people, good food, great infrastructure, modern technology.

Chinese have a very different relationship with government from Americans: Chinese look to their government as the final defense against foreign oppressors and invaders, and against domestic chaos. This is because of China’s history.

Americans have a tendency to distrust a strong government, and believe that it will take away their freedoms. This is because of Americans’ historical experience.

Americans tend to think that because Chinese tend to obey their government and follow the rules that Chinese are brainwashed people who have no concept of freedom and democracy and that given a free choice, Chinese would choose to live like Americans.

Actually that is not true. It is just that Chinese have a different history and experience.

If you can be open-minded about China and are interested in it, my suggestion would be that you go there for a visit and decide for yourself what you think about it.

12 YO Escapes Death Cult Minutes Before Massacre | The Case of Tracy Parks

What are some things that literally make no sense?

American Schools punishing students who fight back in self-defense.

Back in grade-school, teachers and administrators always told us to “never fight back” because then we would be liable to the same punishment that our aggressor would receive. Instead, they told us to simply “call out for help” and wait until someone arrived.

Are you kidding me?

So even if we’re getting pummeled,

And even if the other person has a weapon like a knife,

And even if there were multiple aggressors,

And even if we felt as if our life was in danger,

We’re just supposed to “sit there and take it?”

F**k that. What a load of bull.

The schools further told me that if I even threw a single punch back to protect myself, I could be, at worst, expelled.

But what if there are no witnesses?

What if the aggressor said I fought back even though I didn’t?

What if no one actually comes to help?

Imagine the societal outrage if victims of assault received the same sentence as their aggressors simply because they “fought back in self-defense.”

It just doesn’t make any sense.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you “followed the rules” if your life is at risk, because by the time help does come, you might already be dead or disabled.

What is the most epic thing anyone has ever done?

Originally Answered: What is the most badass thing anyone has ever done?

September 2010.

Bishnu Shrestha, a 35-year-old Gurkha soldier, was on his way to home after retiring from his position as Naik in Gurkha Infantry . He was travelling via the Maurya Express . About forty armed robbers attacked the train while it was passing through dense jungle and robbed valuables of passengers.

He was asleep when the looters reached him. He was quiet and prepared to give up his valuables, but the 18-year-old girl next to him was grabbed by the robbers who intended to rape her in front of her parents . The girl called for help. He could not sit back and witness all happenings . He pulled out his khukuri, used one of the attackers as shield and attacked other robbers. He succeeded in killing three robbers and injuring eight other robbers.

By then, passengers also started fighting back.

The robbers that were left ran away.

He was heavily bleeding from his left hand.

At next station, police and emergency were waiting for them. They took him to the hospital immediately.

After two months, he was fully recovered.

Also, robbers were arrested with money and other valuable things.

He received Sena medal and Uttam Jeevan Raksha Padak medal for this bravery.

Also the family of the girl on the train offered him large cash reward but he refused saying ,”Fighting the enemy in battle is my duty as a soldier. Taking on the thugs on the train was my duty as a human being.”

Jay Gurkha

What role did government policies play in Foxconn’s decision to withdraw from the joint venture with Vedanta?

Two Key Policies

First is INDIAN SUBCONTRACTORS

This is a mess endured by most manufacturers

Only two companies got exemptions — Bosch (2007–2017) and Toyota (2010–2020)

When these exemption periods ended both companies cut down their expansion plans immediately

That was under the INC when I think Kamal Nath was the Minister

In this case it’s about Machine Assembly

The SUBCONTRACTORS cannot be Indian because Indians don’t have the expertise

In this case the three top companies are Chinese and the fourth is Singaporean which is also 15% more expensive

So usually the Indian Sub Contractor himself contracts the work to the same Singaporean or Chinese firm and gets a lion’s share of money for doing zero work

Instead of Foxconn →Singaporean Subcontractor

It becomes Foxconn →Indian Intermediary →Singaporean Subcontractor

The Cost rises almost 300% ($ 2.5 to $ 7)

It was happening under the INC as well but it was more open literally saying “Transfer so much to this account as commission”

This is called Indian Intermediary

In China the same thing happened but FROM 2013 after China had the world’s finest workforce and excellent quality of manufacture

India wants it today when Indian manufacturing is near Zero

They promised an exemption to many companies but sadly the exemption is impossible

Why?

Politics

The Indian Subcontractors are amongst those who fund elections and need to get back the money they pay for MLAs and MPs to contest elections

Indian Subcontractors are so incompetent that most manufacturers just pay them money to contract someone else from Korea or China and end up spending ₹8 instead of ₹4–5 which affects their competitiveness

Vedanta had assurances that this policy would be exempted

However now GOI rolled back and demanded only Indian Subcontractors

The Reason given is:—.

If you give exemption to one, another fifty will ask why and will stop funding elections or worse will fund Rahul Gandhi instead


Second is Pre Operational Period

Again the biggest headache for manufacturers

Establishing a facility in India could take 3 years

Then there are teething problems

That could take a year

Who funds the operation for these four years ???

Under the Law — It is the Indian partner who is responsible for all the initial operations and the pre operation costs

No Issues

Maybe in 2010 or 2011 it was fine

Today?

Vedanta could end up spending ₹6000 Crore and at the end of 4 years of things suddenly collapsed , they could be facing NPAs, CBI and ED investigations

So the Indian partner resolutely said NOTHING DOING

They wouldn’t spend and take so much risk because the BJP Climate of Police State and Russian Mafia is so strong that anybody can end up facing Jail time

So Vedanta wanted to share the liability with Foxconn

Foxconn said sure

Then Vedanta likely must have asked Foxconn to deposit their 50% in an account as guarantee because Foxconn could simply leave India in 10 seconds and tell Vedanta “Sorry”

My guess is Foxconn said Nothing Doing because they saw Bangalore and Chennai and they know how India is all about when it comes to delays and drags

It’s why many Indian partners are very reluctant to begin JVs

They could be holding huge liabilities and that could tank their shares and leave them with crores and crores of Debt


There is a third reason — TAX TARIFFS

This is also a promise made

Foxconn wanted exemption of 113 items from Tariffs

The Normal Tariffs are 20% to 60%

This would cause a loss of revenue to GOI

In Short term the Foxconn project may take 10 years to start paying off but the revenue loss could be seen as early as 2024

Our PM may be dead or retired by 2034 when Foxconn pays off but he has two elections to contest before then

If India sees a drop in revenue ,that would be a problem for him and his Government

Always the Short term

China is a One Party System

They provide the cuts in tariffs because THERE ARE NO ELECTIONS so the long term plan of 15–20 years always works

India has elections and that means everything is based on 3–4 years and that always causes SHORT TERM THINKING .


Now there is a fourth reason and that is related to water but that is nonsense


Its possible India may finally break and concede and give the terms to Foxconn or that Maharashtra State Govt could step in and GOI can make the concessions

Maybe by March 2024 or even before the MAHA Elections

That needs to be watched

What are the chances that mainland China could successfully retake control of Taiwan through military force after Taiwanese independence?

100%, and 0%.

We can most definitely liberate Taiwan by military force, you can actually find a retired general from Taiwan talking about this, he knew exactly how the Mainland military will act, and he acknowledged that Taiwan has no way, absolutely no way to defend against it.

But it won’t come to that, because those are our families, brothers and sisters over there. We share the same ancestors, traditions, languages, cultures, and blood. You don’t raise your hand to your family, even if they are acting like an ass.

Unless of course, they try to declare “independence”, which would be an act of treason, also a full-on insult toward our ancestors and their legacy, then we will strike down upon them with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.

Zelensky HUMILIATED At NATO Summit

https://youtu.be/zYrYPubBkl0

Easy Beef Stroganoff Casserole

Beef Stroganoff Casserole 46
Beef Stroganoff Casserole 46

Ingredients

  • 1 pound round steak, cubed
  • 1 large onion, cut into rings
  • Salt, to taste
  • Pepper, to taste
  • 1 can mushroom soup
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 (8 ounce) package macaroni, cooked

Instructions

  1. Brown meat and onions; add seasonings. Add mushroom soup; simmer for 10 minutes.
  2. Remove from heat. Mix in sour cream. Combine meat mixture with macaroni. Bake in a greased casserole dish for 45 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Why are so many people avoiding casual chains like Applebee’s now?

Because of Yelp.

Don’t get me wrong, Yelp didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about Applebee’s. Everyone has always known that Applebee’s (and Chili’s, Outback Steakhouse, Olive Garden, and the rest) serve OK food at a moderate price.

The value of these places is and was in their consistency. You can walk into an Applebee’s in Colorado and you’ll get the same food you’d get at one in Massachusetts. Also you *won’t* get food poisoning, there are decent options for picky eaters, and they can usually handle large groups even without reservations.

In the days before Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc, all this had huge value. Are you a hungry business traveler who just arrived in an unfamiliar town? Good news, there’s an Outback Steakhouse near the motel. Exhausted couple on a road trip? The billboard says there’s a Chili’s at the next exit. Suburban parents who want to take the whole soccer team out after the big away game? Fuddrucker’s has you covered.

These days, if I’m in Texas for business I can pull out my smartphone and find out instantly whether T-Bone’s Grill outside town is a gem of a local BBQ joint or an unsanitary mistake that will keep me on the toilet for the rest of the trip. So there’s really no reason to play it safe and go to Texas Roadhouse instead.

The value of chain dining has always been that people know what to expect. Now that we have Internet reviews, we know more or less what to expect from any restaurant.

This Fell From the Sky But No One Knows What It Is

“EVERYONE. This man came into my yard a couple hours ago and offered to cut my grass for a certain price. I didn’t have enough money today to afford that on top of everything else, and I told him to come back in a week.

A few minutes ago, I hear a loud noise outside of my house. I opened the door and noticed that he was cutting my grass.

I went running out to him and yelled for him to stop… he shook his head no.

He told me that he saw my kids playing in the yard and was worried about snakes being in the grass and biting them because the grass was too tall.

I again told him to stop because I couldn’t pay him. He said that he didn’t need to be paid, he had grandchildren and that he hoped someone would look after them in the same way.

I was brought to tears. I hugged him. We talked about different struggles we’ve had in life and he told me that this is what the news doesn’t report. He told me the news doesn’t report the black neighbor helping out the white neighbor because it isn’t good for the network to make money.

I told him that he has a good heart. I told him I wish more people on earth were like him.

We hugged again. He is still outside cutting my grass and it’s dark now. I am so grateful to have him as a new friend. His name is Johnny and he lives in Taylors, South Carolina.

He cut my grass for free tonight because he was worried about my children playing outside in the tall grass. I hope he gets the recognition he deserves.””

Trail Cam Captures What No One Was Supposed To See

Fun stuff. Do not take too seriously.

What are the major cultural differences between China and Taiwan?

I live in Taiwan and I was in mainland China for several months this summer. I spent most of my time in Yunnan but also visited Beijing, Shanghai and Fujian.

*Major subjective generalizations ahead*

  • The first thing I noticed in China was that the frequency of ”不好意思“ dropped tremendously. 不好意思(bù hǎo yì si) is a Mandarin phrase that can be loosely translated to mean “excuse me”, “pardon me” or “I’m sorry”. Taiwanese use it when they bump into someone on the street, when they ask for a favor, when they are late, when they offend you, when they interrupt someone or any other time to express shyness, shame, politeness or a mild apology. Chinese seem to reserve this word for more severe offenses such as being very late to a formal meeting or bumping into someone so hard they actually stumble over and fall to the ground.
  • Chinese tend to be more nationalistic, patriotic and proud of their country. There is something of an identity crisis going on among young Taiwanese. Many young Taiwanese think Taiwan is a poor economic backwater that is not a “cool place to live”. This is very unfortunate because the quality of life here is really quite high and they take things for granted such as the high level of safety(particularly for women) and the affordable national healthcare system. When I told Chinese that I was leading a language immersion course for American high school students to learn Chinese, people were delighted and proud that people wanted to learn their language. When I told Taiwanese, they just asked why would anyone want to learn such a useless language when they already speak the ‘all-powerful’ English.
  • Chinese people are more likely to boast about China and compare it to other countries. Taiwanese love to complain about Taiwan and praise other countries. Chinese will proudly tell me that China is a very safe country and even make jabs about how America is dangerous with all the mass shootings and gun violence. Meanwhile, my Taiwanese relatives complain to me about how “dangerous” Taiwan is and that they live in debilitating fear riding the subways of Taipei. That is 100% insane because Taiwan is literally one of the safest countries on earth -definitely the safest country I’ve ever lived in. And no, not a single one of my relatives has experienced a single crime, not even a minor one, in the last three decades. (Crime was higher in the 1980s).
  • Many Chinese are highly critical of Japan, the US and South Korea; Taiwanese love fantasizing about moving to Japan, South Korea or the US. Even Chinese who do want to live abroad are still more critical.
  • Chinese are much more optimistic about the future of their country and sincerely believe living standards will continue to improve. Taiwanese are much more pessimistic, in fact, they are too pessimistic, saying things like “Taiwan is becoming a third-world country” or “there is absolutely no future here” or “we have the most corrupt government in the history of the human race”. There is indeed corruption in the Taiwanese government, especially during the time of former president Chen Shui-bian, but it is relatively mild by global and historical standards.
  • Older Chinese men love to pressure and coerce other young men into drinking hard liquor. If your glass if empty, they will pour you another drink and then you are obligated to 乾杯 with them. I’ve never experienced this in Taiwan except in aboriginal villages and even then the pressure was mild compared to rural China. Chinese also drink considerably more than Taiwanese.
  • Many Chinese men are heavy smokers. They smoke at home and they smoke in public. They smoke in restaurants, bars and markets. I was offered many cigarettes by strangers in China. I’ve never been offered cigarettes in Taiwan and there is less smoking in Taiwan(thank god).
  • Chinese have less respect for food preferences, diets, vegetarians or food allergies. I have G6PDD which means I could die if I ate fava beans but folks in Yunnan still insisted I eat their home-cooked fava bean meal. They seemed to just think I was being picky. In Taiwan, people understand allergies and will go out of their way to accommodate most food preferences.
  • I don’t know why this annoyed me but cafes in China always listed green and oolong tea under no-caffeine beverages which is incorrect. In Taiwan, a no-caffeine beverage is an herbal tea like rooibos or lemon ginger.
  • Chinese, especially in the Yunnan, are okay with eating just about anything. I ate all sorts of bugs and strange meats and fungi in China. I was told that people who are picky or do not eat certain foods, including crickets and worms, are just privileged. Young Taiwanese are appalled at the prospect of eating dog, insects, donkey or larva.
  • There is a higher percentage of Chinese who are rugged, tough and aggressive. Taiwanese tend to be more sheltered, non-confrontational and ‘nerdy’. I certainly met people in China that I wouldn’t want to mess with. I rarely meet such people in Taiwan.
  • Southeast Asian cuisines, and foreign food in general, is a lot more popular in Taiwan. There are several dozen pho restaurants in Tainan alone. I could not find a single pho restaurant in Kunming even though Yunnan literally borders Vietnam.
  • As a half-Asian, half-White person, I was much more likely to be seen as a Chinese or some other Asian in China. Taiwanese usually think I am a non-Asian foreigner – either American, Brazilian or Turkish. People I chatted with on the train in China were surprised I was half-White. Taiwanese, on the other hand, are surprised I am even half-Taiwanese and are often shocked I speak Chinese. My theory for this is that there is a broader spectrum of phenotypes and ‘faces’ in China that are considered Chinese whereas Taiwan essentially has two faces – Han and aboriginal(Austronesian). You can refer to my answer about Chinese minorities to learn more.
  • Chinese will openly and bluntly talk about people’s physical features. I chatted with two people on the train who began discussing with each other why my “nose was not right” or how my “eyes were abnormal”. Another time, I chatted for a while with an old man. When I mentioned that I was mixed, he looked at me with surprise and said ”你長得像中國人,真的是混血失敗“ which means “your mix was a failure because you look totally Chinese.” LMAO! Taiwanese are generally more polite about this.
  • Most Chinese do not value democracy, freedom of speech or freedom of the press. While many people I met used VPNs and complained about the censorship, most people still thought the Great Firewall was for the greater good. Taiwanese love their freedom of speech and freedom to demonstrate. Neither really care about privacy or surveillance however.
  • Despite the censorship and propaganda, I found Chinese to be generally more aware of geopolitics than Taiwanese. Many young Taiwanese are completely apolitical. Taiwanese media often focuses on bizarre things such as how handsome an interpreter is rather than the conference itself.
  • Blue collar and service jobs are filled by domestic migrant labor from poorer provinces in China. The same jobs are filled by Southeast Asian workers in Taiwan. Consequently, the “dirt cheap but delicious food” throughout China is Sichuanese hot pot whereas the equivalent in Taiwan is Vietnamese pho.
  • Taiwanese are more open-minded and tolerant of LGBT people compared with Chinese. Taiwanese are also less overtly racist towards Black people and South Asians. Outside the big cities, Chinese will stare shamelessly at foreigners – especially foreigners they see less often such as Black or Indian people. Taiwanese are curious to see foreigners too but will at least try and pretend they aren’t looking. Taiwanese will also smile to be polite whereas Chinese will often just stare blankly and say something like “Look! She’s black.” or “What is an Indian doing here?” or “Why is that guy so fat?”.
  • Taiwanese are slightly friendlier on average but the margin is not as great as I previously thought. I was told that mainland Chinese are rude and unfriendly but that was not my experience. If Taiwan gets a 9/10 rating for friendliness, then Yunnan and Fujian both get 8/10, Beijing, Singapore and Penang get a 7.5/10 and Shanghai a 6/10 while Hong Kong, Seoul and Kuala Lumpur all get a mere 5/10 – 不好意思!
  • Chinese have a more positive view of Taiwan than vice versa. I was genuinely surprised by the number of Chinese who had visited Taiwan or were planning to. People liked my Taiwanese accent and thought Taiwanese were cool. They also do not hate the pro-independence Taiwanese politicians but rather just think they are ‘silly’. China is a much more polarizing topic in Taiwan. For obvious reasons, Chinese do not see Taiwan as a threat whereas many Taiwanese see China as their greatest threat.
  • Finally, Chinese tend to be early-adopters of technology. Everyone from rural fruit vendors to beggars took payment via WeChat or Alipay. Almost every business in Taiwan is cash only, even the higher end places that take card only take certain types of cards and often the machine doesn’t even work. There is an app for everything in China and businesses are more integrated with the internet whereas many businesses in Taiwan are still off line.

The beggar Yellen is going to beg China to buy the US treasury securities to save the US economy and military tomorrow. Will the beggar Yellen be able to be successful?

Some people say one of Yellen’s goals this time is to persuade China to buy more U.S. dollar bonds.

The question is why should China do that when it is already one of the biggest foreign holders of US bonds and the US has adopted a hostile approach towards China in nearly all fields including the financial sector?

Actually people in China don’t have very high expectations about Yellen’s trip to China this time.

They know that it’s very likely that US officials will break their promises when they return to their country.

The US is treating China as an enemy and has imposed sanctions towards China’s economy and Chinese companies.

Under such circumstances, how can we expect that the United States is serious in stabilizing and developing ties with China?

The world is facing so many challenges at present such as climate change, food crisis, supply chain disorder and regional conflicts.

Just take a look at the violent riots that have been taking place in France and the unceasing mass shootings in the US.

The world would reap tremendous benefits if the US disabused itself of the unnecessary hubris and disregard of others in its international relations policy.

Mutual respect and trust must be restored in the relationship between the US and China, and the first step has to a change in attitude on the part of American leaders.

When Suspects Try To Seduce Cops

CLAIM: UKRAINE USES CLUSTER BOMBS ON TOKAMAK – Russia to Respond in-kind; “Third World War is Approaching”

World Hal Turner 11 July 2023

2023 07 13 10 46
2023 07 13 10 46

The Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, warned that “the Third World War is approaching,” stressing that Russia will respond to a bombing carried out by Ukraine with cluster munitions.

Medvedev wrote via “Telegram” that the preliminary results of today’s “NATO” summit were identical to Russia’s prior expectations, pointing out that the special military operation will continue with the same goals, and that the most important of these goals is to reject Kiev’s efforts to join NATO.

Commenting on the results of the preliminary NATO summit today in Vilnius, Medvedev paid special attention to the decision to invite Ukraine to join NATO, although the date of its accession was left open, and no conditions were set for that.

He also pointed to the decision to raise the amount of military aid provided to Kiev regime.

Medvedev also said that all Western aid to the Kiev regime with various weapons, the latest of which is cluster munitions, is doomed to a dead end, adding that “the Third World War is approaching.”

He added, “What does all this mean for us? Everything is clear. The special military operation will continue with the same goals, and one of those goals is the refusal of the Kiev Nazis’ group to join NATO, which we insisted on from the beginning, and it is considered impossible for us.”

Medvedev indicated that this goal “means that Russia will have to get rid of this group,” stressing the need to complete this plan to end the conflict and bring peace to Ukraine.

Medvedev concluded by saying: “Note: It was reported that the city of Tokmak was bombed with cluster munitions. This means that it is time to reveal our arsenals of this inhumane weapon.”

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly stated “The confrontation in Ukraine will not end unless the West backs down from the idea of ​​inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia.

On top of that, Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, while visiting military factories in Tartarstan, said “If Washington makes good on its promise to send cluster munitions to Kiev, the Russian military will use its own diverse arsenal on the battlefield.”

He then went further with a rather ominous remark “It should be noted that Russia has cluster munitions, as they say, for all occasions. They are much more effective than American ones, their range is broader and more diverse.”

Chris Hedges: The Absurdity of American Empire

What happens when you force communities, families and entire ecosystems to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace? You get what Chris Hedges, co-author with Joe Sacco of Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, calls “sacrifice zones.” From Appalachia to North Dakota to Camden, New Jersey, these zones, ravaged by the excesses of capitalism, prefigure our collective future.

https://youtu.be/J_dkEgNGpzY

I am likely to move to Australia in the near future. What are your recommendations?

  1. Buy a hat. The sun is fierce.
  2. Don’t shoot people. We really don’t like that sort of thing.
  3. Rent, do not buy, a kangaroo for transport. Kangaroo registration is expensive.
  4. Don’t swim where signs say, “Do not swim here.” The signs are there for a purpose.
  5. Don’t try to find a Starbucks. They died a dog’s death years ago.
  6. Don’t try to imitate an Australian accent to be cute. People will hate you.
  7. Don’t carry on about how better/different things were where you used to live. No one cares.
  8. Keep your politics and religion to yourself.
  9. Go barefoot if you want. It’s perfectly OK.
  10. Vote in state & federal elections. It’s compulsory.
  11. Accept basic scientific facts: the earth is spherical; vaccines save lives; humans landed on the moon; Donald Trump is a dangerous cartoon character.
  12. No, you can’t have a bloody gun just because you want to. Get over it.
  13. Any distance between point A and point B in Australia will probably be large. And in the outback, it can also be deadly.
  14. Never stick your hand into dark places. We have spiders. Yes, some of them could kill you.
  15. Drive in the left lane. Wear your seatbelt. Do not touch a phone while driving.
  16. Australians swear. Don’t be precious and get your tender tiny little fragile Christian feelings hurt if a friend calls you a stupid bloody wanker. He’s your mate: that’s what mates must do when you insist on being a stupid bloody wanker.
  17. Spread Vegemite thinly.
  18. When walking, if you lock eyes with someone for half a second, you are obliged to say, “G’day.” If you repeat this with the same person within a week, you need to add a nod. On the third occasion, you should raise your hand in a weak sort of wave. On the fourth instance, you need to tear off each other’s clothes and make sweet sweet love on the footpath… if they are of legal age.
  19. I repeat: Spread Vegemite thinly.
  20. Don’t believe weather forecasts in Melbourne. Google Assistant, ABC news, and the Bureau of Meteorology have been at war for years and none of them can be trusted. The North has two seasons: the wet and the dry. The South has four seasons in any given day. Always carry sunscreen and an umbrella.
  21. Work your allotted hours, then go home. You do not have to live your life based on your employer’s whims. Work/life balance is sacred here. The accepted response to being asked to do unpaid overtime is, “Fuck the hell off. I’m out of here, you creamy wanker.” If you are further pressured, you have copious legal protections.
  22. Did I mention Vegemite distribution?
  23. In Australia, we do not have lederhosen, stoats, Steiegl beer, or birthplaces of Mozart. Nor do we have shrimps on barbies.
  24. Our magpies sing sweetly, but will dive-bomb you ferociously and peck your head or eyes in Spring. You have been warned. Ignore the fear of spiders and snakes: only maggies truly scare Australians.
  25. The American season “Fall” is “Spring” here. Don’t whine. Just accept it. Yeah, and summer is in November to February. We have a hot and sweaty Christmas and find it hilarious about the snow and shit that American/European Christmases feature.
  26. Stuff tends to be expensive. Shipping a microwave oven from 10,000km away is not cheap.
  27. We’re pretty tolerant of different races and cultures. We’re not perfect, but most of us do try.
  28. The turntables of our microwave ovens turn clockwise. This has nothing to do with the Coliolis effect, or our drains.
  29. In Australia, we see a different side of the moon than people in the northern hemisphere. In Oz, the man in the moon has a moustache.
  30. Because of our proximity to Antarctica, the southern states of Australia smell distinctly of Emperor Penguin poo. But you quickly get used to it.
  31. The King/Queen of England has no power here. Except during Royal Arm-Wrestling Championship Tournaments. In the 1960s, Liz was a beast.
  32. Because we are in the Southern hemisphere, many things – like the seasons – are reversed. So, 90% of Australians are left-handed and homosexual. Believe it or not.
  33. Don’t.
  34. Australia has no volcanoes and very rare earthquakes. This means that our continent has suffered little disruption in billions of years: mountains have not been forming, and volcanoes have not been terraforming the landscape. This means that the continent has been continually eroded by winds for millennia without any upheavals of hills, so it is pretty flat. Australia is a VERY old, unmolested continent.
  35. Get used to a British sense of humour and spelling. The Dutch might have reached Terra Australis before the Brits did, but even now we tend to favour British political traditions, spelling, and comedy. We like sarcasm, wordplay, understatement, and irony – like our British forefathers. The British are our parents, New Zealanders are our brothers, Canadians are our cousins. South Africans are the annoying distant relatives we desperately try to avoid at Christmas.
  36. Sicut mala cadunt ursi – “Bears, like apples, drop”. Isaac Newton 1725, from Principes Cadens Ursi (Principles of the Dropping Bear).

Hope that helps.

DESTINATION MOON (1950) | FULL MOVIE | CULT | SCI-F

Big surprise! A great old science fiction movie presented in full. Enjoy it. Carve out some time. You’ll enjoy it.

It’s Robert Heinlein’s only film.

2023 07 13 11 16
2023 07 13 11 16

The Black Knight and some video out of China

In this article / post we will chat a little bit about extraterrestrials, and mysteries. Mainly by posting a few videos up, and some associated articles. The idea behind this post is to show some of what it “out there” in internet land, and to state that they tangentially touch on things that I have so painfully explained. Often they are just blind people in the dark trying to figure things out through disinformation…

So enjoy the videos and the articles. Do not get too caught up.

Now, at the end of the article is the “The Black Knight” mystery spacecraft. And the “reports” all take a few NASA images and “run with them”.

Totally oblivious to the fact that China is in space, has a huge space presence, and has also been filming and videoing these various objects.

Yes. China has been very active in filming UFOs and other strange things.

And I will be putting some of this stuff on MM in the future.

At the very end of this article / post, is my Chinese video taken of what The Black Knight” seemingly is. I am convinced that you all will find it very interesting.

Not available on any American or English Speaking websites, eh?

Imagine that.

Just the same old regurgitated bullshit, endlessly discussed, and theories bantered about, but with no new information of value.

Except here on MM.

Have fun guys…

First a daily dose of geo-political, and some other stuff…

Who has been the strangest world leader of the last five decades?

Definitely this guy.

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2023 07 09 08 49

His name is Duterte and he is the current president of the Philippines.

(A little background about the Philippines – The country of Philippines can be called ‘Mexico of Asia’. It is plagued by drug dealers. It is almost a normal occurrence in the Philippines for drug lords to kidnap citizens for ransom. Watch drugs in Philippines-2014 documentary Al Jezeera)

It is a normal custom for the president of the Philippines to issue Christmas greetings message to the citizens, every year. Duterte got elected in 2016. Following is his 2016 Christmas greetings message.

“I’m only human. So let me say ‘Merry Christmas’ to all the thieves, drug lords, drug pushers, corrupt and whoever made the life hard for Filipinos (People of Philippines). By the way, if you don’t cease and still continue your brutality, this will be your last Merry Christmas’

And this man ain’t kidding.

Within a few months of this message, two mayors who were caught in corruption were killed during the operation. 3600 drug lords were killed during the operation and 1.3 million drug addicts surrendered.

More than 1 million drug addicts surrender to gov’t

Duterte told his cops, ‘Go and hunt them. If possible arrest them. If he/she attacks you, just shoot him first.’

And all this happened in just 6 months after the message. In an interview with CNN, Duterte quoted, “We Filipinos are poor and our kids are our wealth. When we get old, we depend on our kids to pay for our medicine and even for burial. Drug lords and users, I warn you ‘Do not destroy the lives of young Filipinos with drugs. If you do so, I will surely kill you’.

The self-proclaimed moral consciences of the world (Read West) condemn Duterte for his ‘War on drugs’. President Obama condemned Duterte and Duterte had this following thing to say…

‘You bomb Syria and you kill thousands of innocent civilians, yet you have guts to call me? You bomb schools and hospitals and kill hundreds of innocent kids. You went to Iraq with an excuse of ‘Weapon of mass destruction’ and slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians, yet you found nothing. In your country, policeman shoots a handcuffed Black man for he is simply a Black. At least in my country, I shoot criminals. So Obama, _______ yourself

And by the way, Duterte’s approval rating as of 2019 is 87%

Duterte trust, approval ratings unchanged after Recto Bank incident

Personally I don’t like him using ‘Colorful’ languages in public, cause he is seen as an inspiration by many young people, so it is good if he stops using those words, but this man really introduces a new unconventional political style.

Note; For those commenting, ‘Duterte jokes about rape’ and other bunch of crazy stuff you better come up with video evidence. After Duterte refused to be the American puppet, Western media has been spreading this propaganda and sadly many fell for it. Any comment accusing Duterte with out video proof will be deleted.

Note 2: WESTERN MEDIA HAS A HABIT OF TAKING DUTERTE’S QUOTE WAY OUT OF CONTEXT. IT IS EASY TO DO SO CAUSE DUTERTE SPEAKS MOSTLY IN HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE. Any comment accusing Duterte with out video proof will be deleted.

Why has China been cracking down on private enterprises like Ant Group?

A Message had to be delivered

China is not USA or India or Russia. Try any tricks and we will castrate you

Ant Group has been playing with capitalism hard and fast

First is their following the US mode of creating monopolies and throttling smaller entities. Jack Ma had this bad habit of identifying any potential business and shackling it under Alibaba . Later suppliers and vendors were squeezed because Alibaba and Ant controlled their markets

Second is their brazen credit lending without actual substance or collateral. They would lend a lot of money belonging to banks with minimal compliance and without a tenth of the assets and collateral.

Third is their valuation models and their repeated ability to keep using investments to float value. The sort of thing Byjus does in India.

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2023 07 08 18 59

China and the CPC in 2019 began to realize that if companies like Ant group were allowed to do things so rampantly ,China would be floating and bloating with paper values in a matter of years (Like India will be by 2025)

So they began squeezing on all the players including Ant Group

  • First they ended credit lending without a minimum 40% asset backing.
  • Next they ended the monopoly by providing a 120 day period to all suppliers and vendors to counter with their own price bid
  • Next they ensured that bloated valuations would have no role in China by linking valuation to technology development and profits

The Fine of $994 Million is just the culmination of all the excesses that Any Group has enjoyed all these years

China simply says “No Illusions and No fast bucks. You want to grow, grow the right way and benefit society and yourself. Develop Technology along the way”

The message is for all other Tech Companies and other companies in China

2023 07 08 19 01
2023 07 08 19 01

Had this been 2017, Ant could have scoffed and shrugged and left China and gone to US or UK

Sadly this is 2023

Chinese Entities have no other way to go but into the Chinese economy and market which gives them more than two thirds of their revenues


So it’s a message at the end of the day

Do things right and we are always with you. Try to fool people and line your pockets at the expense of the Chinese people and we will destroy you

2023 07 08 19 0z1
2023 07 08 19 0z1

Jack Ma for instance made the cardinal mistake of becoming too capitalist and putting his pocket above that of the people through ruthless monopolies and blind valuations

So he has been neutralized and the message has been very strong indeed

It’s why no other Tech CEO since 2020 violated the Tech Laws set in place by the Chinese Government


Always the message with the Chinese

They always deliver a message through such actions

The Moon Revealed: It’s a Hollow Spaceship, so who built it and why?

Ah, sort of.

But don’t get too caught up. I wrote about this earlier. Fun view, though. Enjoy.

“Today while at the gas station I overheard a lady in her late 20’s telling 2 other men to leave her alone

so I decided to walk over to them and I asked her ” how was the meeting today darlin? ” she looked at me and said ” it was good, I’ll tell you more about it when we get home in a few “. I replied with ” wonderful I’ll pick up your favorite for dinner”.

The two guys left in a hurry and she told me ” you have no idea how much that meant to me …. thank you.” I said “you’re very welcome ma’am …. you can never be too careful. “

I made sure the guys left before I walked back to my car and as I was walking back all I could do was think ” I hope a man does that for my future daughter one day”.”

~ Cody Bret

City School Pizza

2023 07 09 08 5fa6
2023 07 09 08 5fa6

Yield: 24 servings

Ingredients

French-Style Pizza Crust

  • 2 packages dry or cake yeast
  • 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
  • 3 1/2 cups lukewarm water
  • 9 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon salt

Topping

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 tablespoon instant minced onion
  • 1 (8 ounce) can tomatoes, drained and chopped
  • 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 3/4 teaspoon oregano
  • Salt
  • 3/4 teaspoon dried sweet basil
  • 3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 3/4 pound ground or chopped luncheon meat
  • 1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions

French-Style Pizza Crust

  1. Dissolve yeast and sugar in water.
  2. Add flour and salt. Knead until smooth.
  3. Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk.
  4. Cut into 2portions. Let rest 15 minutes.
  5. Pat or roll to even thickness in 2 (15 1/2 x 10 1/2-inch) jellyroll pans. Set aside.

Topping

  1. Brown ground beef and onion in a large skillet.
  2. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, water, oregano, salt to taste, basil, garlic powder and luncheon meat. Sauté until mixture comes to a boil. Simmer for a few minutes.
  3. Spread sauce on prepared French-Style Pizza Crust in pans. Sprinkle each crust with cheese.
  4. Bake at 400 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes or until cheese layer is bubbly and browned.

Is corruption the only reason some countries in South Asia are stranded in “developing” status?

Do you think Corruption doesnt exist in China or Singapore or South Korea?

Of course it does. Corruption exists everywhere and wherever there is position of power.

It is when Corruption and Development become Mutually Exclusive that trouble starts.

Lets take the Chinese and Singaporean Example:-

The “Golden Rule” of Deng Xiaopeng (Later emanated by Lee Kuan Yew) was that Corruption is inevitable.

So Deng developed his golden rule.

The Rule was called the “Bridge on the Village River” rule – where Deng would instruct his ministers

I want a Bridge on the Village River. It should be strong and it should be durable for 20 years and should not break or develop any problems or issues. I estimate the budget to be 100000 Yuan (Purely arbitary number) so i will sanction 120000 Yuan – so that 20000 Yuan can be used for miscellaneous purposes. I dont care how this money is going to be spend or who gets what portion. I will turn a blind eye to it BUT if the bridge collapses due to shoddy construction – i will personally crush any and all persons who were responsible for it.

That is the BOVR rule followed by China or Korea or Singapore.

End Results are all that matter. This way – the Nation gets the best product and the Nation develops and moves forward. People get enriched but Chinese or SIngaporeans regard this as a sort of Service Charge rather than Corruption or Bribes or Graft.

2023 07 09 08 15
2023 07 09 08 15

The Hong Kong police consisted of Chinese Nationals upto the rank of Sergeant and Britishers from the ranks of Inspector and above.

Every Chinese National would get at least 100% of his salary amount from Graft (Bribes) from Nightclub owners, Businessmen etc etc.

The Result – Hong Kong was almost completely crime free. The Triads did not touch common man. Not a single pistol could be brought into HK without consequences.

A Contractor who can get a superb building made within budget – takes a 10000 yuan commission will not be penalized until the building collapses in which case he is finished as are the party officials who chose him in the first place.

In Singapore – to ensure corruption does not exist – Lee Kuan Yew established measures like Huge Salaries to Ministers and Bonuses to Officials. A $ 100 Million contract into Singapore – would mean a bonus of $ 200000 for the Officials at the concerned ministry. With such incentives – why would anyone turn to corruption????

Check out the Chinese Ministers – Each one wears a $ 12000 – $25000 Suit – tailored in London or New York or by Expats living in Shanghai. They have Rolls or Bentleys and the big ministries have exclusive helicopters.

They earn between 70% to 450% higher than the Median Base Pay for College Graduates.

Conclusion:-

A. Corruption Exists in China or Korea – but the Corruption is regarded as a Service Charge as long as the End Result is not harmful to the public or is not defective or of poor quality – NOBODY CARES. Imagine a Agent who is able to bring a 100 Helicopter Deal to China – he takes a kickback of $ 1 Million. As long as the Helicopters are top notch – nobody in China will care.

B. These countries pay commissions, incentives and higher salaries (Like Singapore) to ensure that Corruption is kept out or at least minimized completely. Imagine you get $ 10 Million a year as Minister – would you be stupid enough to accept or coordinate a bribe?

Gifts like Rolex Watches, Works of Art, Jewelry are commonplace and wont generate a huge public controversy.


Now lets see India and Pakistan and Bangladesh

Thats where the Hypocrisy starts

main qimg 3584056107ac1261b9f6f3002f96f472 lq
main qimg 3584056107ac1261b9f6f3002f96f472 lq

Our Leaders pretend to be simple people. They Wear Khadi in the peak of summer, the Gandhian Caps, They balk at gifts which exceed over Rs. 5000/- and our Newspapers go on and on about a Chief Minister who accepted a $ 10000 Watch (Siddaramaiah) as a gift and he has to prove that he gifted the watch to a museum.

main qimg cab2904aa1cd996d7b833e35b90d14df pjlq
main qimg cab2904aa1cd996d7b833e35b90d14df pjlq

Yet 60% of the Politicians Ministers all have assets exceeding Rs. 50 Crores with allegations of exceeding Rs. 1000 or even Rs. 5000 Crores.

The Simplicity is a Deception on the People of India (Some people like Lal Bahadur Shastri were born simple but most of them are deceiving the people).

Poor Christian Michel gets thrown in Jail for bribery whereas the people on both sides are scot free.

CBI pursue a small time Havildar who took Rs. 1000/- bribe on Diwali

And we claim to be Tough on Corruption

And in our case – since unlike China or Singapore or South Korea – Our Leadership is Illiterate or Semi Literate in most cases – the Corruption affects our Quality very badly

Roads that get Potholes with 2 days of rain , Bridges that Collapse regularly, Structures that are rarely steady and would not receive certification by the blindest Quality Engineer anywhere outside India or Pakistan or Sri Lanka or Bangladesh, Poor Quality Manufactured goods etc.

The Gandhian Mentality is solely responsible for why our Leaders pretend to be simple yet why they become richer and richer while the country gets zero or near zero quality products or infrastructure.

Had we been China – we would have offered a 1.5% flat commission to the Officers who got us the Rafale Deal. This would have eliminated corruption since the bribe money would have come in the form of incentives and service charges.

Had we been Singapore or Korea – we would have ensured that Christian Michel would be regarded as nothing more than a Commission Agent and we would not have even glanced in his direction considering his “Payments” as nothing more than “Service Fees”

Instead our System is a Gigantic Hypocrisy – as is the case of Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.

Pretence, Pretence, Pretence

Punish the small fry and ignore the huge sharks and whales

Ensure that corruption has a direct and total impact on the quality of products

Ensure that Rhea Chakraborty is sent to jail with the whole nation clapping and cheering while Ministers who ordered Bridges to collapse or Contractors responsible for building roads which kill due to potholes – end up getting more contracts.

That is why – while the Asian Countries like China or SIngapore grow – India is doomed. It is the system that is corrupted completely and totally.

JRE: What Scientists Just Discovered At The Grand Canyon TERRIFIES The Whole World

Just a reminder that the “powers that be” control what you know and what you do not know.

This is a fun video.

However, why would Egyptians be in Arizona, or New Mexico without any Egyptian communities on the coasts for their ships to travel to? A lack of infrastructure is troubling.

So do not get too caught up.

The “missing pieces” might be trivial or alarming, but they are still MISSING.

https://youtu.be/Ivv79NU6tRw

What are the reasons behind China being the dominant producer of gallium and germanium?

Profitable Extraction!!!!!

China has the reserves and the procedure to extract the elements profitability and purify them profitably

China is able to deliver a processed product at lowest cost ($ 2400/PTK) and make a 17% Profit

It’s estimated the US can deliver the processed product at lowest cost of $ 8900/PTK and make a 35% Loss which needs subsidy

Thus instead of $ 2400/PTK with 17% profit , the raw material and base material now costs $ 8900/PTK and the US Govt or Taxpayer has to pay $ 3080/PTK as subsidy

That’s $2400 vs $11980

Unless US manages to import slaves again and manufacture the machinery on its own — US can’t lower costs

Because GUESS WHAT?

CHINA CONTROLS THE ENTIRE EXTRACTION MACHINERY FOR RARE EARTHS!!!!!!

You have a Lithium mine?

Without China, you can’t extract a nano gram of Lithium because the machinery is theirs and they control the market


Plus Environment is a big big thing here

The Green party will hate any processing foundry or extraction mine for Gallium or Germanium or Lithium in US due to pollution that is almost guaranteed


Solution?

Start making extraction machinery in India and Vietnam and ship them to US along with 100,000 migrant workers

And maybe in 20 years , US can take up around 30–40% of the market share of Gallium or Germanium

It’s a headache but US are idiots and that’s exactly what those stubborn fools will do

“Stay single until someone actually complements your life in such a way that makes it better to not be single” What do you consider someone complementing your life to be?

I got divorced 12 years ago. After that, I stayed single for almost 7 years. Well, 1. I was too busy, and 2. I was hurt.

After that, I decided to start dating again. Man, it was so difficult. I had a few first dates, and either they escaped from me or I escaped from them.

Then I saw him.

The way he smiled was like this:

main qimg a885f47d2ec13b655ad21b793c1214a3
main qimg a885f47d2ec13b655ad21b793c1214a3

You know what I mean? The smile that makes you want to smile. The smile that makes you feel all the stresses you are carrying get lighter a little bit. I knew I wanted to be around him.

He asked me out, I told him I was busy and didn’t have much time. He said then we could date the busy way: he showed up at my lunchtime to have a sandwich that I prepared; sometimes just a small walk before bedtime late at night. He understood my priorities and supported me.

Sometimes, I got a text from him saying, “I know you have an important meeting today, try not to kill anybody.” Sometimes, I “escaped” from the office to go to a coffee shop with him next to me. We both worked on our laptops, didn’t talk to each other the whole time; we just enjoyed the feeling we were together.

I smile more and live fuller with him in it. I truly feel that the pain I had in me, turned into the memory, it’s not hurt anymore. Is he complementing my life? I think so. Because he healed me.

12 ALIEN CRAFT In US Custody, Per Intel

From “The Hill” which is a MAJOR political organization in Washington DC.

OK. Whoop! Whoop!

Now what?

Stupid Jackasses. At the end of the day, nothing will change. The reality of what is going on is far too dangerous to expose.

Why do liberals think that sexually explicit books should be available in school libraries?

I remember this quote, I think from Neil Gaiman, about fairy tales and stories. It goes something like this. Fairy tales didn’t tell children there were dragons. We already knew dragons existed. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be defeated.

Books don’t tell children sex or violence or gay people exist in the world. They already know. Books tell them how to deal with these complicated things. Books and stories allow them to explore uncomfortable ideas and situations in a safe environment. It helps them process their emotions.

My family didn’t believe in “age-appropriate” books. As long as I could read it, every book on the bookshelves was open for grabs. The community library right next to our house did not have special library cards for children. Everyone has the same type of cards and has access to the same collections of books. I was reading The Decameron in middle school. In case you didn’t know, it’s a collection of stories, including some pretty graphic sex scenes and gore.

You know what my grandma did? We talked.

I remember telling her about this story I read from Decameron, about this priest and bread and oven. It’s a sex joke. It took me quite some time to figure it out, and I talked to my grandma about it. We all laughed, not because of the sex innuendo but rather because of the hypocrisy of the whole situation. And that’s the whole point of the story, the hypocrisy of the catholic priests during the 14th century. I got that in middle school. Children aren’t stupid. They understand things if you take the time and help them figure it out.

I talked to her about the books I read, the parts I don’t understand, and/or make me uncomfortable. Whatever dysfunctions my family had, we could always get together and talk about books.

That’s what being a parent is about.

I always suspect parents who want to ban books don’t really want to “protect” their children, but rather, they don’t want to or don’t know how to have difficult conversations with their children about the books they read. Either they themselves do not read books and don’t understand how to discuss literature and narrative. They don’t know how to apply lessons learned in books to real life. They don’t understand the importance of stories. Or they simply don’t give a shit. They would rather put off these conversations and wait until the kids are old enough and have them figure it out themselves.

There’s no such thing as a dangerous book. Ideas do not “corrupt” children. Not if they have good parents to talk to. When children are “corrupted” by the internet or social media, or books, it’s not because the materials are dangerous. It is because they are isolated, they’re confused, and there are no adults in their lives they can rely on to guide them.

Banning books is never about “protecting children.” It is always about shitty parents who couldn’t be bothered to be proper parents.


I started to get conservative comments that defended the book ban, and I got a common theme from these comments that they seemed to believe that there are books in school libraries or public libraries that contain graphic depictions of extreme pornographic/fetish content.

One comment talks about how they don’t want their children to learn about sex fetishes that involve human feces from books in school libraries. Another comment says they don’t want their children to learn about blow jobs from books containing young boys giving each other blow jobs, other comments talk about “government teaching my son how to give a hand job.”

… like… I’m so confused. Like… have you been to a library?! What kind of books do you think they have?!

Seriously people, stop watching Fox News, and go visit a public library.


Also, I got this gem today.

2023 07 09 08 24
2023 07 09 08 24

What is proof for you that karma exists?

The suicide bomber who died alone.

In 2016, Abdullahi Abdisalam Borleh was a suicide bomber with a laptop full of explosives who boarded a plane from Somalia, Daallo Airlines.

main qimg 60ed8fc71c78d7a1985fbaf732a25abc pjlq
main qimg 60ed8fc71c78d7a1985fbaf732a25abc pjlq

He had embarked as a disabled person and claimed to be on a trip for a medical check-up.

Twenty minutes after takeoff from Mogadishu, Somalia at an altitude of 14,000 feet, an explosion occurred inside the aircraft. There were 74 passengers and 7 crew members on board.

The explosion created this opening.

main qimg fc509f2401747ea89e98508081adec34 pjlq
main qimg fc509f2401747ea89e98508081adec34 pjlq

He was the only one to be sucked into the opening.

main qimg a85e4a3cc52df49a67965e4151d83217 pjlq
main qimg a85e4a3cc52df49a67965e4151d83217 pjlq

His intention was to kill all the passengers of the plane but according to fate, he had to be the only one to die.

The plane’s controls were not affected by the explosion, allowing the pilot to return the plane to Mogadishu safely.

Karma sometimes works… as if by magic.

The evidence we are living in a Simulation is everywhere. All you have to do is look.

No problem with this.

What do engineers no longer think about today?

main qimg ddb4845850372969ea39f392189692a9 lq
main qimg ddb4845850372969ea39f392189692a9 lq

To the little things that make life easier for people.

The designer of the castle of this medieval door probably liked to drink a little too much.

And when it got late, it was pitch black.

So it was a great thing if the design made it a little easier to find the keyhole to finally get some well-deserved sleep.

This designer was a real humanitarian.

Why do Indians have so many problems against a Sino-Indian trade alliance?

As on date China doesn’t see value in a Sino Indian Trade Alliance

China isn’t like US or UK , a nation that makes decisions in a hurry

China is evaluating India and has decided that as on date India is not valuable enough for China to seriously offer a trade alliance and make some serious concessions

China is more impressed with Vietnam which follows China’s own building strong bases, building a workforce and then slowly layering to the top

China isn’t impressed with India’s hotch potch ‘Cant manufacture a Ball point pen fully but sure let’s build 2 nm chips’ method

Today India’s entire manufacturing is because of the fact that Indian government says unless you manufacture in India, we won’t buy your product (or assemble)

That was never the Chinese model

The Chinese were always about “Manufacture in China, we will give you land and labor and you give us jobs and development”

So as on date this Make in India is a gimmick meant for elections and to impress gullible people into making them think India is heading to becoming a superpower

China knows too well the real state of India manufacturing

The real state of regressive taxation

The horrible political system

The atrocious labor laws

The greedy and inefficient manufacturing environment

China knows India hasn’t made 0.0001% effort to improve any of them

So China knows all this Indian manufacturing is just a gimmick like everything else for headlines and some random numbers

Simple example is Vietnam makes 11% of all Smartphones on earth and India makes around 17%

Yet scale and size wise India is around 6.65 times the trade scale of Vietnam

India needs to be making around 77% of its smartphones by now to be equivalent to Vietnam in manufacturing

Plus India assembles smartphones on a 69:31 basis

Vietnam does so on a 38:62 basis

It shows how much superior Vietnam is to India

And if Vietnam is like M.Sc first year then China is like five years post Doctorate


So frankly China isn’t impressed much with India

Sure it will make noise here and there but there is no serious view of India managing anything remotely significant in the next few years without serious reforms and serious changes in national policy towards manufacturing


The Day India is serious about manufacturing and we see laws changing and tax laws changing and separate jurisdictions and liberal policies and judicial reforms

Then China definitely will make offers to India including potential concessions on Arunachal or Ladakh

Until then it’s not worth it

A Sino Indian Trade Alliance with Today’s India in exchange for giving up claims on Ladakh or Arunachal is a bad bad deal for China

Today’s India is 90% Talk and 10% Actual Progress

When it’s 60% Talk and 40% Actual Progress, China will handle the issue differently

What are some examples of scientists who had brilliant ideas and became millionaires? 😶‍🌫️💡

One recent example is a 34-year-old Japanese mathematics professor who decided to host his lectures on… Pornhub.

main qimg 5a9b455284fb95c2bfcfb83ed3a1db77 pjlq
main qimg 5a9b455284fb95c2bfcfb83ed3a1db77 pjlq

His earnings of €250,000 per year stem from the fact that even though many may not be interested in the subject, they are nonetheless curious about his presence and attempt to watch the video, generating views.

What is your biggest “only in China” moment?

This…

main qimg 48ed91e13ba47a177e4ad126815d787f lq
main qimg 48ed91e13ba47a177e4ad126815d787f lq

A Buddhist monk seeking religious advice from a Taoist.

If it’s hard to understand how unusual this is, imagine a Catholic priest seeking religious teachings from an Islamic cleric or vise versa.

Chinese religions (Buddhism was localized after settled in China) are very tolerant to each other. It’s pretty hard for Chinese to understand why there could be centuries of hatred and violence just because of different beliefs.

Michio Kaku JUST LEAKED China’s SHOCKING Discovery On The Moon!

This is a fun and interesting video.

Keep in mind a date of 11,000 – 13,000 years ago. Notice that this date disagrees with my own beliefs, but please pay attention to their argument. Have a good time. Enjoy.

Cafeteria Cole Slaw

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2023 07 09 08 56

Ingredients

  • 1 head cabbage, chopped fine
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 2 or 3 tablespoons mayonnaise or salad dressing

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients well until cabbage is completely coated.
  2. Salt and pepper to taste.

China plans to perform a crewed lunar landing before 2030. What do you think of this goal?

China is 99% possible to keep its words.

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2023 07 09 08 52

This is a photo of 2 newspapers in 2004.


Let one is about China’s moon project. China Lunar Exploration Project was announced in Feb 2004, and it was already in implementation stage. China was planning to have a moon orbiting satellite within 3 years, a soft-landing on the moon in 6 years, and have moon dirt sample taken back by a robot before 2020.

By the end of 2020, in December, Chang-e 5 returned with 1731 gram of moon dirt. China barely kept its words, due to delays caused by rocket making.


On the right, it was moon projects announced by the US, Russia, Japan, and India.

The US was going to land on the moon again in 2015, and establish an international moon base no later than 2020.

Russia was going to have a test launch of its latest moon landing ship.

India was going to launch its first unmanned moon ship Chandrayaan-1 in 2008.

Japan was going to eastablish its moon base in 2025, and send robots there.


Chinese newspaper reported moon projects from 5 countries in 2004.

So far, only China managed to keep on schedule.

So when China says that it’s people will land on the moon before 2030, it’s highly possible that it knows exactly where it is now, and how fast its moon project will go.

If universal healthcare is actually cheaper than our current system and covers everybody. Why not just do it?

I’m a retired US citizen who moved to Uruguay in 2015 after spending my entire working career in “Corporate America”.

It’s entertaining to read discussions about the possibility of implementing Universal Healthcare in the United States.

It will NEVER happen. It’s 1000% impossible. The reason? Health insurance companies.

The concept of Universal Healthcare does not involve insurance companies. There is no need for a bloated middleman.

There are 563,366 Health & Medical Insurance Employees in the US, costing approximately $50 billion annually.

These companies would have to be closed, freeing up all this cash for actual medical care, instead of bloat.

The main problems with the US Healthcare system are listed below. None of these problems exist with Universal Healthcare.

a. Greedy Health insurance companies run by highly-paid executives.

b. High-paid pharmaceutical & insurance company lobbyists.

c. Greedy congressmen who take millions of dollars in bribes annually.

d. Expensive TV commercials pushing expensive drugs.

e. Doctors who earn outrageous salaries to pay for outrageously expensive college educations with insane education loans.

f. Outrageous malpractice lawsuit settlements, requiring doctors to carry outrageous liability insurance.

g. People with no medical knowledge make decisions about whether a patient can have a medical procedure, overruling the attending physician.

Now, with the outsourcing of call centers, people with no medical knowledge in Jamaica, India, and Pakistan make those decisions.

Here are some typical costs in Uruguay:

Office visit: US $8.00

ER visit: US $ 10.00

House call: US $12.00.

Electrolyte blood analysis: US $7.11.

Cerebral CT Scan: US $23.29

If you call an ambulance, it arrives with a full-fledged MD, not an EMT.

Before I turned 70 years of age, I paid around US $55 per month for health coverage.

Now I pay around US $70 per month. For that, I get totally free hospital stays and all costs are free, including hospital stay, surgery, medications, doctor care, and nursing care. When you check out, regardless of what was done or how long you were hospitalized, you pay nothing.

The monthly cost for my cancer medication is around US $2.50. The same medication in the US is around $500.00.

Here are the main reasons everything is so cheap:

No claims to file

No EOB

No Deductible

No Out-of-Pocket

No Coinsurance

No Allowed amount

No Benefit period

No Preauthorization

Why does communist China feel entitled to export cheap products to foreign countries and destroy their local manufacturing industries?

China just takes purchase orders and supplies, be it from a rich country or a poor one. You should rather ask this question to those countries, why they go to China to get cheaper things.

However, the point of “destroy” is interesting, indeed. Chinese cheap products have destroyed industries in the higher-income countries like Europe and America. And those developed countries deliberately did this to save cost, but eventually ended up at the cost of their own citizens’ unemployement. Surely they had a vision, though probably a wrong one. But they would know it better.

But China’s “cheap” products helped the poor countries a lot, particularly those who did not yet have industries. For example let’s talk about Bangladesh where the vast majority people are poor. They could not afford to buy Europe/Japan/America-made products even they were in a dire need. But they can manage to get the similar peoducts from China at their afforable price. Thus, life has become much easier and even safer when they got this products-support from China.

Take few essential products for example:

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This mosquito killer racket helped save millions of lives from life-threatening Malaria and Dengue fever in Bangladesh.

energy-saving bulbs:

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These bulbs from China lit up millions of households in Bangladesh where electricity cost is rocket-high.

Then this:

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2023 07 09 0ger8 38

Thousands of commuters have benefitted from this cheap motorbike in Bangladesh where public transports are rare and nightmare.

Now, let’s talk about the other, even life-changing benefits gotten from these imported products. Bangladeshis acquired the technical knowhows, bought cheap machineries and raw materials back from China and now have started making them in their own country. Means, now they have established their own industries, providing employment to their own people and altogether contributing to the national economy. And gradually this country is climbing the ladder of self-industrialization. I think such transformation is taking place in many other poor countries as well.

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Bangladesh recently started making its own motorbikes

Then, how are you going to blame China? Or thanking China, instead?

Sunman-Dearborn School Chili

This very popular Sunman-Dearborn School Chili was always served with cornbread and butter on the side.

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2023 07 09 08 58

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • 2/3 cup ketchup
  • 1/2 cup tomato paste (6 ounces)
  • 4 ounces spaghetti, broken into thirds
  • 3 tablespoons onion
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
  • 2/3 cup tomato sauce (8 ounce can)
  • 2/3 cup pinto beans (15 ounce can)

Instructions

  1. Brown ground beef and onion. Drain off extra fat.
  2. Add remaining ingredients, except spaghetti. Add one quart water. Bring chili to boil. Add spaghetti.
  3. Serve when spaghetti is soft.

How can greed harm someone?

50 Cent gave her son’s mother $500,000 a year (about $40,000 a month) as child support, and she said it wasn’t enough.

main qimg 28b3959dea162bede13f019f1734e9ba
main qimg 28b3959dea162bede13f019f1734e9ba

So, she turned to the family court to ask for an increase in maintenance. To his disappointment, the court said 50 cents would have to reduce the amount to just $6,700 a month.

Most of the money given before the court decision was used to maintain a lifestyle for the mother and not for the maintenance of the child.

Why are rural towns in America dying?

Let’s say you grew up in Lander, Wyoming — a decent-sized town at about 7,500 people.

Unless you’re Catholic, there are no colleges in your town. So when you graduate high school, you can either:

  • Go into a trade
  • Get a minimum-wage job
  • Move to another town

In this case, you want to go to college so you move.

Fortunately, Wyoming has about 6 community colleges to choose from. You choose the second-largest town in Wyoming at 55,000 people, Casper. You do your two years and when you’re done, you realize you’ll need a Bachelor’s to further your career.

Now you have 4 options:

  • Give up on your degree and move back home
  • Move to Laramie to attend the University of Wyoming — the state’s only 4-year public institution
  • Stay in Casper and finish through the UW/CC program
  • Move to another state

As many kids find, the program you want isn’t even offered at UW (or what they do offer is really, really poor).

If you give up on your degree, you won’t have many job prospects, so you relocate again to Colorado where you can choose from ~14 4-year schools — actually, those are just the public ones. There are ~14 more private 4-year schools you could attend, too.

After graduating, you have a bunch of new job connections down in Colorado. You look online and see jobs in Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, and elsewhere — so you can live virtually anywhere in the state you want. And, most of those cities are near smaller towns, so you can feel like you’re back home while reaping the benefits of city living.

Or, you can go back to Lander — population, 7,500 — which is a 4-hour drive to the nearest cities (both Fort Collins and Salt Lake City).

So your options are:

  • Stay in Colorado, where you have tons of work options
  • Move back to Lander, where the few local businesses might have job openings that might be in your industry, and you have no option to commute to larger cities if opportunities open up

You stay in Colorado. Because that’s where the work is.


This is what a lot of kids who grew up in rural Wyoming end up doing. They move for school — often to Laramie, which is right on the WY/CO border — then when they need to find a job they migrate where the work is: cities.

Brain drain is a huge problem and it’s one Wyoming, in some ways, is trying to combat. You can go to college for free at any community college and get cheap tuition at UW if you’re a Wyoming resident. They very, very actively promote the community colleges and UW to Wyoming high schoolers, hoping that if they go to college here, they’ll stay after they graduate.

But a lot of people are still flocking out of the state for college because of the opportunities. Because Wyoming has no major cities, the opportunities you get in cities are inaccessible to Wyoming residents.

It’s why I left. Why my whole family left. Because we like having job options, and going to concerts, and eating new foods (have you ever had Ethiopian? WOW). And while Wyoming is wonderful in many ways… it doesn’t have that.

One reason rural life is dying is that people want to do things. They want options.

And you don’t get that in rural areas.

Ancient Craft Watching us From Orbit | The Black Knight Satellite

This is fun.

Spending a little bit more time on this that what I normally do with these kinds of you-tube videos. It is important and holds some clues.

Keep in mind of a date of 11,000 years ago.

EPSILON BOÖTIS REVISITED.

by Duncan Lunan   (Analog, 1998;  revised August 2013).

In January 1974 Analog published my article ‘Space Probe from Epsilon Boötis?’1, which caused such a stir that I’m still asked about it every time I appear in the magazine.   It was based on the mystery of long-delayed radio ‘echoes’  (LDEs), first reported in the 1920s.

Actually, the ‘echoes’ were much too powerful to be simple reflections of signals from Earth.   Experimenters studying round-the-world propagation of radio waves found their outgoing pulses were being returned to them with a delay of three sec­onds, as if they were being amplified and returned by something at the distance of the Moon – but definitely not the Moon it­self.   In later experiments the delay times began to vary up­wards from three seconds, in increasingly complicated sequen­ces, but with no variation in intensity – still indicating a single source amplifying and returning the pulses.

Prof. Ron Bracewell of Stan­ford suggested in 1960 that the ‘echoes’ might have been re­broad­cast by an unmanned probe from another civilis­ation, trying to attract our attention, and in 1972 I worked out a ‘trans­lat­ion’ of the 1920’s echo patterns.    The variations of delay times appeared random;  but Prof. Brace­well himself had suggested the first signal from such a probe might be a star map, and the stars are spaced at random in the sky.   I tried plotting the delay times against the order in which the echoes were received  (fig. 1(A)), and at only the second attempt I found what looked like a star map – in which it appeared that the probe had come from the double star Epsi­lon Boötis, in the constell­ation Boötes, the Herdsman  (fig. 1(B)).   Arc­turus, the brightest star in the constell­ation, seemed to be out of place in the map;  but on checking, was shown at its place about 13,000 years ago.

Other parts of the supposed message seemed to give the scale of their planetary system, orbiting Epsilon Boötis A, and seemed at first to make sense.   Epsilon Boötis A is an orange giant star, and the translation indicated that the probe makers had evolved on its second planet, emigrating later to the sixth when their sun began to expand.   But there was a problem:  the com­panion star  (Epsi­lon B)  was bright blue, ap­par­ently a short-lived sun of spectral type A2.   It emerged that the dis­tance given for the star in most refer­ence books was too low, and at the true distance of 203 light-years, Epsilon B really was an A2 star and the orange giant Epsilon A had been an AO, like Sir­ius – too massive and with too high a radiation output to sustain habit­able planets, too short-lived for life to have evolved there.   At the same time, more accurate 1920s records were located, and most of the ‘star map’ trans­lations were ruled out – not the ‘Epsilon Boötis’ one, but it too had to be treated as suspect.   I with­drew the entire translation,2 but now it seems I may have gone too far.

Dropping it didn’t rule out the space probe sug­gest­ed by Prof. Bracewell  (though he himself has abandoned the idea).3   James Strong suggested that the probe could be located in either the ‘Lagrange 4’ or ‘L5’ point, also called ‘Trojan’ or ‘Equi­lateral’ points, equi­distant from the Earth and Moon.4   The dates and times of the 1920s LDEs showed that the L5 point was at least one source of the effect.5   Anthony Lawton of the British Int­er­planetary Society suggested that in ideal conditions the Trojan points could form tempor­ary, stable iono­spheres of their own which would generate LDE’s;6  it was reported that I accepted that, but scientists I consulted re­plied that such clouds would be dis­rupted by currents in the Earth’s mag­neto­sphere, or at other times of the month by the Solar Wind, the constant outflow of charged particles from the Sun.   In any case, as the Lagrange points have no gravitat­ional fields of their own, a cloud of charged particles would be sca­t­tered by their mutual electro­static repulsion – unless there was a powerful magnetic or electrostatic field to hold them in place.   If this was prod­uced by a space­craft, I sug­gested, Lawton might have hit upon the method by which the Brace­well probe generated LDE’s – by accident!

Many books and articles said that Lawton conducted an act­ive radio search for LDEs, but in reality he stopped after get­ting an initial ‘reply’, on the grounds that further trans­missions “would constitute a biassed experiment”.   Opti­cal searches of the Lagrange points failed to find anything as large as the Skylab space station, or, in a later search, as large as the Pioneer 10 space probe.7   Meanwhile, however, Epsilon Boötis just would not lie down.

There are several real or suggested Zodiacal star maps, laid out on the ground, which centre on Boötes.   That’s just because the constellation lies near the pole of the Ecliptic, perpendicular to the Earth’s orbital plane around the sun, so any Zodiacal map will be centred near it.   But also, we are in Boötes as viewed from Tau Ceti, one of the nearest stars like our Sun, and at relativistic speeds, Epsilon Boötis would be a prime navigational reference on the journey here.8   And there was an even stranger develop­ment.

After my book “Man and the Stars” came out,9 I was con­tacted by Alan Evans, who was then a British Army Captain.   He liked the analysis I’d made of Erich von Daniken’s claims, where I concluded that Earth had not been visited more than four times, at most.   Alan sug­ges­ted we jointly attempt some­thing still more systematic:  if the Earth had ever been visited, our aim would be to find proof.   He stressed that his was purely a personal interest, which had to remain confid­ential, but as he’s since left the Army that no longer applies.

We tightened up my approach into four categories of poss­ible evidence.   Category A would be our objective, an artifact of unquestionably extraterrestrial origin.   Category B would be optical or electromagnetic anomalies pinpointing such an object  (like the Tycho monolith in 2001);  Category D would be the ‘von Daniken material’ of legends, drawings etc. which were no use except in suggesting areas to search for other types of evidence.   But Alan pressed me to include a new category, C, which would be anomalous astronomical alignments in man-made structures – anomalous because they revealed knowledge which the builders should not have had.   For example, on high-reso­lution photographs of Stonehenge, he had identified markings which seemed to indicate galactic alignments.

I wasn’t impressed at first.   I had studied megalithic astro­nomy under a leading expert, Prof. Archie Roy, and seen nothing unusual;  there was no correlation even with Category D;  and when I did the calculations, the markings Alan had found didn’t seem to be galactic.   At the time when he put this to me, circa 1975, it was supposed that Stone­henge I was built in 1800 BC, near the end of the Stone Age in Britain  (not many people realise that Stonehenge was one of the last megaliths), with Stonehenge III, the inner circle, still later in the Bronze Age.   Soon afterwards, however, Archie Roy himself published an article from which we learned that the radio­carbon dating scale had been revised, pushing Stonehenge I back from 1800 BC to 2700 BC.   Further revision made it c.2840 BC, and that radically changed the whole position.

Archaeoastronomy at Stonehenge.

Fig. 2A shows the celestial sphere as viewed by an observer in the northern hemisphere.   The altitude of the pole above the northern horizon is equal to the observer’s latitude, and the heavenly bodies circle around it, parallel to the equator, with the daily rotation of the Earth.   The altitude of a body above the horizon, and its azimuth measured along the horizon from the north point, change constantly as the Earth turns.   Apart from the circumpolar stars, which are too near the pole to rise and set, everything else rises in the east and sets in the west at a position which is determined by the declination of the object, measured from the equator  (Fig. 2B).   Where the dec­lination equals the observer’s latitude, the star passes over­head once a day.

Horizon positional astronomy was all the Stonehenge build­ers could do  (Fig. 3).   Stonehenge I incorporated the ditch, bank, Avenue, Heelstone and Station Stones;  what most people think of as ‘Stonehenge’ are the great sarsen archways of the inner circle, Stonehenge III, erected in the early Bronze Age.   It’s universally agreed that the Stonehenge Avenue and the later structure both mark the midsummer sunrise.   But few arch­aeologists agree with Gerald S. Hawkins that the ‘Station Stones’ of Stonehenge I mark the extreme positions of the Moon’s 18.6 year cycle;10  and still fewer with Prof. Alexander Thom, that the megalith builders had a soph­isticated programme of lunar observatories, spread over the British Isles.11   Person­ally, I’m convinced;  I’ve even built a modern megalith, under the auspices of Glasgow Parks Dept., to compare its per­formance with the prehistoric sites, and demonstrated that high precision could have been achieved by naked-eye observations.12

When it comes to star alignments, the position is more complex.   Because the Earth’s equatorial plane doesn’t coin­cide with the Ecliptic, nor with the orbit of the Moon, the com­bined pulls of the Sun and Moon on Earth’s equatorial bulge cause the Earth’s axis to ‘wobble’ around the Ecliptic Pole with a period of 26,000 years  (Fig. 4).   13,000 years ago the north pole star was Vega in Lyra, and 5,000 years ago it was Thuban in Draco, at the time of Stonehenge I.   The pull makes the equator move around the Ecliptic, constantly changing the position of the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes  (Precession of the Equinoxes).   As a result a star’s declination is const­antly changing – like­wise its Right Ascension, which is mea­sured from the Vernal Equinox along the equator, in the same direction as the Sun’s motion on the Ecliptic shown by the arrows in Fig. 2(B).

Astronomers can partly get round the problem of coordinate change by giving star positions in Ecliptic Latitude, which remains constant, and Ecliptic Longitude, which changes smooth­ly with time.   But for coordinates which are fixed over human time-spans, even the spans of civilisations, we have to use Galactic Latitude and Lon­g­itude, whose zero point is the Galactic Centre and whose pole lies on the perpendicular to the plane of the Milky Way  (Fig. 5).

On the high-resolution photographs of Stonehenge Alan Evans pointed out a curious horseshoe-shaped marking on the north­west, cutting the bank and overlying Station Stone 93  (Fig. 3).   It’s not on official plans and may not be sig­nif­icant:  the photos were taken in 1966, eight years after one of the fallen trilithon archways was re-erected, and the ‘horse­shoe’ coincides at least in part with the tracks of the heavy mach­inery used then.   We have located a smaller version of it in a prewar aerial photo, but it’s still historically suspect.   Still earlier photos, taken by balloon, show a similar but different pattern.10   But the relationship the horseshoe pointed out to us was real enough.

As Fig. 3 shows, the orientation of the horseshoe is to the rising point of the Galactic Centre, and of the Galactic Equator’s intersection with the Ecliptic, c.2840 BC.   Even more extraordinarily, it turns out that the declination of the North Galactic Pole was then equal to the latitude of Stone­henge.   Consequently, when the Galactic Centre was on the horizon, the Galactic Pole was in the zenith and the Galactic Equator coincided with the horizon  (Fig. 6).

It would be remarkable if that was a coincidence, but if it’s not coincidence, it’s an extraordinary finding.   The Galactic Centre is 27,000 light-years from us and hidden behind dense clouds of absorbing dust in the inner regions of the Milky Way, so its location cannot be pinpointed visually, only with a radiotelescope.   Until you know exactly where the Centre is, you can’t determine the true plane of the Galactic Equator and the true positions of the Galactic Poles.   At the Moscow General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in 1958, new values for the positions of the poles and the Centre were officially adopted, based on the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the inner Milky Way and study of the radio source Sagittarius A.   Prev­ious optical studies had suggested the Centre was in Scorpius, so it was a big change.   Maps using the old galactic coordin­ates were still on sale as late as 1963, with addenda giving corrections to the new system.13    Yet apparently the builders of Stonehenge knew exactly where the Galactic Centre was, or took their cue from something or somebody or who did.

In this context, why are galactic coordinates so import­ant?   Imagine a spacecraft travelling be­tween the stars.   Its attitude sensing platform might be orien­ted to its home world – its own Right Ascension and dec­lination – or its home planetary system, its own Ecliptic co­ord­inates.   But neither will be relevant when it enters our Solar System:  the only coordinate system common to its system and ours is the galactic one.   In any manoeuvres or landings it made here, you would expect it to navigate in galactic co­ord­inates;  and if it chose a landing site on the declination of the galactic pole, then once a day the azimuth and altitude of any star, measured from the rising point of the Galactic Centre, would correspond to its galactic coordinates, like B’s in Fig.6.   If the spacecraft’s attitude-sensing platform was fixed, built into its structure, it would still be correctly lined up with the sky once a day.

So if the horseshoe marking is modern, its ‘prehistoric’ align­ment might be a curious coincidence.   What looks more likely, on Fig. 3, is that there was something in the centre of Stone­henge I, which was gone by the building of Stone­henge II and III.   In fact, after Stonehenge I was built, around 2700 BC the site was abandoned for over 200 years while the same neolithic people built the much larger complex of Avebury and Silbury Hill, due north of Stonehenge itself.14

What would annoy archaeologists, who don’t even admit most ‘con­ventional’ archaeoastronomy, is the suggestion that the Stonehenge orientation is galactic at all.   I looked for an optical marker, something which would have let the builders create Stonehenge without knowing about galactic coordinates or even without a spacecraft necessarily being there.   And I found one, but it didn’t exactly make the alignments less con­tro­versial.   The star which had the same declination as the North Galactic Pole in 2840 BC, equal to the latitude of Stone­henge, was Epsilon Boötis itself.

It was so hard to believe, when I’d abandoned the Epsilon Boötis ‘translation’ of the radio patterns, that I arranged to see for myself, twice in the planetarium of the Jewel & Esk College in Musselburgh, then all over again at the much larger one in Armagh.   It feels extraordinary to see such findings, worked out with long pages of calculations, simulated on the planet­arium ‘sky’ overhead.   With the date set for 2840 BC, at the Stonehenge latitude, the Milky Way really does line up with the horizon once a day and Epsilon Boötis really does go through the zenith as well, earlier each day.

The Ecliptic and the Pyramids.

But Alan Evans has a strong intuitive grasp of spatial re­lat­ion­ships, and he had found another which he wanted me to verify.   Projected north, the alignment of Station Stones 94-91, and 93-92, meets the Arctic Circle at a tangent  (Fig. 7).   As the Earth turns, when the Ecliptic Pole comes overhead at that tan­gential point, those stones mark the Ecliptic Meridian passing through Stonehenge.   And when that line is projected south, it meets the equator due south of the Egyptian ‘Memphite Necropolis’, containing the great pyramids of Giza.   Putting it another way, the Ecliptic merid­ian through Stone­henge meets the prime meridian of Giza at the equator.   And Alan realised this created another extraordinary relation­ship:  at midsummer sunrise at Stone­henge, the one alignment there which even the sceptics recog­nise, the Vernal Equinox was on the prime meridian at Giza.

That one can’t be verified optically in a planetarium with the same certainty, because the tilt of the Earth’s axis to the equator is not constant, varying between 22 and 24 degrees.15   In 2840 BC it was near maximum, and has since declined by over half a degree.   None of the planetaria we’ve used could allow for that, but the relationship is extremely close, even today.  I had my calculations confirmed by Paul Benson, then curator of Airdrie Observatory;  and more recently Alan had it all done from scratch by Peter Tyler, (of the Posi­tional Services Dept. of GECO-PRAKLA, Oslo, a leading internat­ional seismic survey company), who confirmed that around 2700 BC the alignment was close.   In his calculations the margin of error was less than one-fifth of a degree;  my own put it even closer.

The oldest feat­ures of all at Stonehenge lie over the brow of the hill, northwest from the circle.  The ‘Car Park Post Holes’ held huge vertical tree trunks or totem poles, and radio­carbon dating has them as old as 8000 BC.16   Even that was a mystery:  it was believed that the first mesolithic settlers reached Britain long after the Ice Age, around 6000 BC,17  but now we know that people returned to Britain as soon as the glaciers retreated.    It’s possible that the weathering on the Bluestones of Stone­henge II, which were brought from the Prescelly Mountains in Wales, makes them older and perhaps once erected elsewhere;  that could have been any time after they were first exposed to the atmosphere around 12,000 BC.18   The ice sheets never covered Stonehenge and Pres­celly, even at their greatest extent in 20,000 BC.15

As Alan Evans pointed out, the Ecliptic Meridian passes through the line of Post Holes,19 on the line of stones 92-93  (fig. 3).   If there really was a space­craft, and its attitude sensing plat­form was relating our ecliptic and celestial co-ordinates to the gal­actic ones, then if galac­tic alignments determined the latitude of the touchdown site on Salisbury Plain, then the ecliptic ones show an intent­ion to go to Egypt afterwards, which determined the longitude and brought it down at the future site of Stone­henge I – which raises the interest­ing speculation, were the Posts still standing at that time, as if to mark the landing place?   Below, we’ll see some reason to think that might have been their intended purpose, at least.

The next question is, are any of the Stonehenge galactic align­ments repeated at the Old Kingdom Egyptian pyramids?   The Step Pyramid at Saq­qara, whose longitude is one-tenth of a degree east of Giza’s, was the first stone build­ing in the world, created around 2650 BC by the architect Imhotep for the pharaoh Djoser (Fig. 9).  Imho­tep changed the design several times during con­struct­ion, and some arch­aeologists suggest that he filled in the steps with rubble and faced them with lime­stone, to give the illusion of a true pyr­a­mid.27   (The next two, intended to be true pyramids, were par­tial failures before the Great Pyramid’s builders got it right.)

And if the Step Pyramid was originally faced in that way, then as nearly as we can measure it, a perpendicular line up the north face met the prime meridian at the declination of the southern intercept between the galactic equator and the eclip­tic, marked I2 in Fig. 3 – one of the same alignments we’d found at Stonehenge.   But, extraordinary as all this was, we were still a long way from our goal;  we knew what we wanted to do next, but it was beyond our financial means.   So we with­held public­ation, until April 1996, when a whole new situation developed.

The Pyramids and the Sphinx.

Archaeoastronomers are in some ways remarkably conservative.   Their own ideas about science in ancient society are rejected by many astronomers and most archaeologists;  in consequence, they refuse to entertain any more controversial notions, such as a previously unknown civilisation on Earth, or extraterrest­rial visitors.   I suggested to the 1996 Edinburgh Internat­ional Science Festival that we organise a seminar on ‘Heresies in Archaeoastronomy’, examining the ideas that were too contro­versial even for archaeoastronomers to consider.   Prof. Archie Roy gallantly agreed to introduce it, and not surprisingly it drew a capacity audience.   Naturally, Alan Evans was there to present his paper on the Ecliptic meridian.20

Another participant was Robert Bauval, whose book “The Orion Mystery”21 suggested that the three giant pyramids of Giza not only incorporated star alignments in their so-called ‘air-shafts’  (Fig. 8), but represented the stars of Orion’s Belt mapped on to the landscape.   When Alan Evans checked their findings, he found that the same shaft which marked the meridian transit of Alnitak, the left-hand star of Orion’s Belt, also marked the transit of the Galactic Centre.   So of the two galactic alignments marked at Stonehenge, one was incorporated into the Step Pyramid and the other into the Great one.

Robert had now collaborated with Graham Hancock on a new book, “Keeper of Genesis”, based on the possibly great age of the Sphinx.   The apparent evid­ence of water erosion sug­gests that the Sphinx and its flanking temples were built as long ago as 10,500 BC, when Egypt last had a wet climate towards the end of the Ice Age.22    The Vernal Equinox was then in the constellation Leo, and Robert and Graham suggest that the Sphinx was built to face its counterpart in the sky.   Furthermore, the orientation of the Belt stars to the Milky Way cor­responds to the Pyramids’ in rel­a­tion to the Nile – not when they themselves were built, but when the Sphinx was carved out 8000 years before.

In 10,500 BC, as far as we know, the Nile delta was inhab­ited only by hunter-gatherers, wholly lacking the techno­logy to carve out the Sphinx and build the temples in 200-ton blocks.   In a previous book Graham Hancock tried to get round this by sug­gest­ing a world-spanning civilisation, unknown to us, which lasted over 8000 years and was based on the coast of Antarc­tica.23   It used to be thought that the Antarctic coast was ice-free during the Ice Age in the northern hemisphere;  how­ever, that idea had been attacked by the early 1980’s15 and more recent Antarctic surveys continue to stack up evidence against it.   And it’s very hard to believe that such a world-spanning, long-lasting civilisation would leave so little evidence behind.

Graham couldn’t attend the Edinburgh seminar, but he and Robert were both in Glasgow three weeks later and I was able to arrange a continuation, in which we went to the planet­arium at the College of Nautical Studies.  First I showed them what Alan Evans and I had discovered, and when they saw the galactic align­ment at Stonehenge I, Robert Bauval made an extraordinary remark, which I’ll come back to in a moment.

Then, holding the date c.2700 BC, we shifted to the lati­tude of Giza, and verified Robert’s calculations for “The Orion Myst­ery”.   It had never occurred to him to do so in this way, and he was as moved as I had been at seeing the lay­out of the ancient skies for himself – especially since everything he had calculated was confirmed.   So too were the “Keeper” calculat­ions for 10,500 BC, Leo, Orion and the Sphinx, when we moved the setting back to that date.   When the Sun rose below Leo at the Vernal Equinox in 10,500 BC, Orion was on the meridian, and the orientation of the Belt stars to the Milky Way matched that of the Giza pyramids to the Nile 8,000 years later.   Whatever its significance, that claim is true:  we saw it with our own eyes, re-enacted.

But when I showed the galactic orientation of Stonehenge I, and explained what it might mean in terms of an ET landing, Rob­ert’s show-stopping remark was, “It’s the same at Giza in 10,500 BC, we just didn’t know what it meant.”   Now the time had come to verify that.   Once again, if it was true at all, it would be true once a day, every day, at that latitude and date.   So, just by let­ting the stars wheel on, we verified it at once.   At Giza, in 10,500 BC, due to the effect of pre­cession, the same gal­actic relationship existed as at Stone­henge c.2840.   Once a day, the sky took up the same Fig. 6 configuration, with the galactic pole in the zenith and the plane of the Milky Way coinciding with the horizon.   We saw it for ourselves:  like a galactic ‘compass rose’ at each location, but separated by eight millennia in time.

But in that case, what was happening then at Stonehenge?

We kept the date at 10,500 BC, and the custodian took the plan­et­arium ‘back up’ to the latitude of Stonehenge.   Having no idea what to look for, once again we just let the stars wheel freely around, through a normal day.   And Epsilon Boötis went through the zenith!   It was doing that daily in 10,500 BC, when the galactic alignments were in force at Giza, and the effect of precession on it, over the next 8000 years, was to bring it back to the Stonehenge zenith, as an optical marker for the same galactic alignments at Stonehenge itself when Stone­henge I was created.   Unless it’s all coincidence, it can only mean that the events of 2840-2500 BC represented a return to both sites.   And the first, 10,500 BC date goes along with the ‘approx­imately 13,000 years ago’ given by Arcturus’s posi­tion in that first map of my 1973 ‘trans­lation’, fig. 1(A).   If that map meant any­thing, it would have to be as a time marker, not a navigational reference as I thought.

It still isn’t Category A evidence, the artefact of indis­put­ably extra­terrestrial origin, nor the Category B anomaly that leads us to it.   In this context, Category C might stand for ‘circum­stantial’.   But I can’t believe that all those circumstances are coincid­ental;  these multiple high-tech astronomical alignments are, in my opinion, the best evid­ence for Past Contact ever put forward.   The syn­er­gistic com­bination of our research with Bauval and Hancock’s has con­vinced me that we’re on the track of something big.

It left two questions to answer:

1.  What about the Green Children?

In the September 1996 Analog I suggested Past Contact in 12th century England.  Is there a connection?   There’s one I pointed out in that article.   The latter half of the 12th cen­t­ury AD featured the most violent solar activity since the Bronze Age, indicated by aurorae, car­bon-14 ratios, tree-rings etc.24   And that previous peak was a triple one, between 2700 and 1800 BC, covering the building of Avebury, the Pyramids, Stone­henge II and Stonehenge III.   It may be coin­cid­ence;  but it’s interesting that it was the case in both hist­orical per­iods which I’d consider candidates for Contact events.

Even more remarkably, however, Alan Evans discovered that during the crucial years of the 12th century, between the Second Crusade and the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin, Jerusalem too had the same galactic alignment as Stonehenge I and Giza in 10,500 BC.   At that point, the three enquiries – in the three very different areas of ancient positional astronomy, mediaeval history and the 1920s radio echoes – are actually three aspects of the same enquiry.   It’s still circumstantial, all of it, but it looks as if it may add up to something very significant.

2.  So what about the Space Probe?

Optical searches of the Lagrange points in the late 1970s found nothing.   But in April 1995 Dr. Duncan Steel drew atten­tion to the dis­covery, at Kitt Peak in Arizona, of a most unusual ast­eroid de­s­ig­nated 1991 VG.   In December 1991 it passed Earth at a distance of only 485,000 miles.  Its diameter was est­im­ated at 9-19 metres, as­sum­ing that it was made of one of the more common ast­eroidal rocks.  However, observ­ations at clos­est approach suggested “strong, rapid bright­ness variations which can be interpreted as trans­ient specular reflections from the surfaces of a rotating spacecraft”.25

During the space age 1991 VG would have passed only twice be­fore, in February-March 1975 and in mid-1958 – possibly 1959, if the 1975 approach altered the orbit.   Nothing that big was launched in 1958-59, nor in 1975;  the European Helios 1 was launched in December 1974, but its carrier’s upper stage did not escape from the Earth into orbit round the Sun.   Per­haps, instead, 1991 VG was orbiting Earth then, until it was ‘dis­cov­ered’ and moved away before any­thing more ser­ious happened.

But when it comes backin 2017, let’s hope that a major attempt is made to look at it.   The solar-sailing ‘Comet-chaser’ Gordon Ross and I sug­gested here would be ideal,26 but it can be done by conventional means:  NEAR, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, is to orbit the asteroid Eros shortly, and Europe’s Rosetta probe is to do the same with a short-per­iod comet after 2000;  NASA’s Deep Space 4 will reach Comet Tempel in 2006, and a Japanese probe will reach asteroid Nereus the same year.   1991 VG should be next on the list.

References.

1.  Duncan Lunan, ‘Space Probe from Epsilon Boötis?’, Analog XCII, 5, 66-84, January 1974.

2.  – , ‘Long-Delayed Echoes and the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis’, Journal of the Society of Electronic and Radio Technicians, 10, 8, 180-182, September 1976.

3.  Ronald N. Bracewell, ‘Manifestations of Advanced Civilis­ations’, in John Billingham, ed., “Life in the Universe”, MIT Press, 1981.

4.  James Strong, “Flight to the Stars”, Temple Press, 1965.

5.  George Sassoon, ‘A Correlation of Long-Delay Radio Echoes and the Moon’s Orbit’, Spaceflight, 16, 7, 258-265, July 1974.

6.  Anthony T. Lawton, Sydney J. Newton, ‘Long Delayed Echoes:  the Search for a Solution’, Spaceflight 16, 5, 181-187, May 1974.

7.  Robert A. Freitas, Jr., Francisco Valdes, ‘A Search for Natural or Artific­ial Objects Located at the Earth-Moon Libration Points’, Icarus 42, 442-447  (1980);  ‘A Search for Objects near the Earth-Moon Lagrangian Points’, Icarus 53, 453-457  (1983).

8.  James R. Wertz, ‘Interstellar Navigation’, Spaceflight, 14, 206-216, June 1972.

9.  Duncan Lunan, “Man and the Stars”, Souvenir Press 1974;  US editions “Interstellar Contact”, Henry Regnery Co., 1975, “The Mysterious Signals from Outer Space”, Bantam, 1977.

10.  Gerald S. Hawkins, “Stonehenge Decoded”, Souvenir Press, 1966.

11.  A.Thom, “Megalithic Sites in Britain”, Oxford University Press, 1967;  “Megalithic Lunar Observatories”, OUP, 1971;  (with A.S. Thom), “Megalithic Remains in Britain and Brittany”, OUP, 1978.

12.  Duncan Lunan, ‘Solar Events at Sighthill’, Griffith Observer, 50, 6, 2-11, 20, June 1986.

13.  J. Gall Inglis, Arthur P. Norton, “Star Atlas”, 14th edition, Gall & Inglis, 1959.

14.  Dates for the various construction phases at Stonehenge remain in some dispute;  Aubrey Burl, “Prehistoric Avebury”, Yale University Press, 1979, puts the earliest construction around 2800 BC, as do the Thoms  (ref.19), with no further work until c.2150 BC.   Some recent reports compress the building into one continuous process;  yet there seems to be clear evidence for an interruption, during which the Stonehenge I ditch silted up, although its discoverer put the event strangely far back, dating it at 3100 BC, well before the starting dates given elsewhere.   (Christopher Chippendale, ‘Life around Stonehenge’, New Scientist, 101, 1404, 12-17, 5 April 1984).

15.  Fred Hoyle, “Ice”, Hutchinson, 1981.

16.  Sean O’Neill, ‘Totem Poles Give Pointer to Siting of Stonehenge’, The Daily Telegraph, 28 June 1996.

17.  Robert Dawson Scott, ‘Silent Power from a Time of the Ancients’, The Daily Telegraph, 10th January 1997.

18.  Nigel Hawkes, ‘Stonehenge Dating Dispels Icesheet Theory’, The Times, 5 December 1994.

19.  A. Thom, A.S. Thom and A. Thom, ‘Stonehenge’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 5, 13, 71-90  (June 1974).

20.  A.C. Evans, ‘The Three Dimensional Grid’, paper presented at ‘Heresies in Archaeoastronomy’, Edinburgh International Science Festival, 16th April 1995.

21.  Robert Bauval & Adrian Gilbert, “The Orion Mystery”, Heinemann, 1994.

22.  Robert Bauval & Graham Hancock, “Keeper of Genesis”, Heinemann, 1996.

23.  Graham Hancock, “Fingerprints of the Gods”, Heinemann, 1995.

24.  John A. Eddy, ‘The Case of the Missing Sunspots’, Scien­tific American, 236, 5, 80-88 & 92, May 1977;  ‘The Maunder Minimum’, Science, 192, 4245, 1189-1202  (18th June, 1976.)

25.  Duncan Steel, ‘SETA and 1991 VG’, The Observatory, April 1995;  ‘Of Asteroids and Aliens’, The Skeptic, 15, 1, 9-10  (1995).

26.  Duncan Lunan, ‘Keep Watching the Skies!’, Analog, CXIV, 12, 70-84, October 1994.

27.  I.E.S. Edwards, “The Pyramids of Egypt”, Penguin, 1947.

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2023 07 08 17 44e

Do you believe that love avoids problems?

In 2016, Kanye West had a $52 million debt and everyone turned their backs on him. His wife Kim created a game called Kimoji that generated 80 million dollars, with this transferred 52 million to her common account cleaning up her husband’s debts.

main qimg a957d3fd690e549d4e82b2aa397ac943 pjlq
main qimg a957d3fd690e549d4e82b2aa397ac943 pjlq

Today Kanye, thanks to the sales of his Yeezy product line, has a fortune of more than almost 2 billion dollars.

A man also needs an intelligent and strong woman who will stand by his side, regardless of the situation at the time. What would Kanye be without his wife’s support?

Raw Feed of the Dark Knight from China

This is RAW feed from a Chinese satellite used for land surveying. The image is NOT captured by camera. Only the background is captured by the camera. Instead, the “collision avoidance radar” captured the 3D object in the foreground and rendered it in this clip. Thus you have a rendered 3D object overlay over the satellite camera background.

The clip is a Chinese commentator discussing the object and its features.

It is part of a much larger video clip which also includes other anomalous objects captured by an array of Chinese satellites.

The Black Night is the conventional name for this object that is believed to be an extraterrestrial vehicle in orbit around the earth for the last 11,000 years.

There are clearer photographs of this object in great detail, but they only show one singular side. This clip is unique as the entire shape is rendered and we can observe how it travels in orbit around the earth, though without the photographic clarity that the NASA photo has.

Gonzalo Lira out of prison and escaping

Today, I woke up to discover that Paul Rubens died. He was the fellow that played Pee Wee Herman. He was 70 years old.

He died of cancer.

"Last night we said farewell to Paul Reubens, an iconic American actor, comedian, writer and producer whose beloved character Pee-wee Herman delighted generations of children and adults with his positivity, whimsy and belief in the importance of kindness," according to a statement posted to his Facebook.
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2023 08 01 09 37
"Paul bravely and privately fought cancer for years with his trademark tenacity and wit. A gifted and prolific talent, he will forever live in the comedy pantheon and in our hearts as a treasured friend and man of remarkable character and generosity of spirit."

“Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years,” he wrote. “I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”

Whatever you might think of him, he was an iconic reminder of my early days in MAJ training in Ridgecrest, California. It was there, shortly after I was “recovered” and started my training that I watched my first Pee Wee Herman skit. There in the hot high desert.

You know, 70 years old is youngish, and he must have been diagnosed with cancer when he hit 64. Sigh. Scares me.

We all gotta go when it is our time.

But as I get older, those that I grew up with; friends, loved ones, pets and celebrities fall to the wayside, and are replaced by others. Others, not as worthy, and others that don’t seem to have the depth that the iconoclasts had.

Philadelphia Pepper Pot

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2023 08 01 11 19

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound honeycomb tripe
  • 6 cups chicken stock*
  • 4 slices bacon, cut into small pieces
  • 1/2 cup onion, chopped
  • 1/2 cup celery, chopped
  • 1 green bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 small bay leaf
  • 1 teaspoon peppercorns, finely ground
  • 2 tablespoons parsley, minced
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 cup diced raw potato
  • 2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream

Instructions

  1. Cook tripe, rinse and cut into 1/4-inch cubes. Place in large kettle and add chicken stock.
  2. Fry bacon until crisp and sauté the onion, celery and green pepper in the bacon drippings. Add to tripe and chicken stock. To this mixture add the bay leaf, peppercorns, parsley and salt. Cover, and when mixture comes to the boiling point, add diced raw potato. Cover and simmer gently for about 1 hour.
  3. Blend melted butter or margarine with flour and stir into hot soup mixture. Season with additional salt if necessary.
  4. Just before serving, stir in the heavy cream.
  5. Serve piping hot.

Serves 6 as a main dish.

* Or use 12 chicken bouillon cubes and 6 cups water, or 6 teaspoons chicken concentrate with 6 cups water.

From Gonzalo Lira – Out of Prison – Escaping .

World Hal Turner 31 July 2023

Gonzalo Lira large
Gonzalo Lira large

Gonzalo Lira is alive and he said this today:

Right now, I’m about to try to get out of Ukraine, and seek political asylum in Hungary.

Either I’ll cross the border and make it to safety, or I’ll be disappeared by the Kiev regime.

This is what’s happened to me over the past three months.

On May 1, I was arrested for my YouTube videos. The photos of my arrest are pretty funny—morning bed-head made me look like a character out of Dr. Seuss.

My crime was making videos critical of the West and their proxy regime in Kiev—and how they are destroying Ukraine.

Attached to these tweets is the full indictment against me, both the original Ukrainian and English translation.

As you can see, even the prosecutor admits I committed no crime against property or any person. And I certainly provided no aid or intelligence to the Russians.

My indictment explicitly states that all I did was discuss publicly known facts about the war—the epitome of free speech in a democracy.

But Zelensky’s Ukraine is no democracy—it is a thieving, corrupt, murderous gangster regime PRETENDING to be a polite “western” democracy.

Once arrested, I was given documentation assuring me that I was “guaranteed the right” to contact my lawyers and loved ones, as well as post bail.

In fact, I was blocked from calling anyone—even my lawyers. And I was not permitted to post bail—though I had the cash to do so.

In other words, the formalities were carried out scrupulously—while judicial and ethical grotesqueries ruled.

That’s Zelensky’s Ukraine. That’s what his thuggish regime cares about: The >perception< of democracy and the rule of law, so as to mask the sordid, corrupt reality.

That’s why they relentlessly persecute anyone who tells the truth about this war. I’m not the only so-called “propagandist” the Kiev regime has thrown in prison.

It’s also why they shoot any AFU soldier who dares retreat. That’s why the AFU losses are so horrific—but hidden.

As you can see by the indictment, the video I made that really chapped their ass was “Ukraine: A Primer”, which gives the historical background to the conflict—where I state outright that this invasion wasn’t out of the blue. That indeed, it was provoked by the Kiev regime.

Once inside Sizo Prison, I was tortured in two of the four cells I was in—by the other prisoners. Guards NEVER beat prisoners—they outsource torture to the other prisoners. 

One prisoner actually apologized to me, telling me he had no choice. He wasn’t lying. I understood.

I got a cracked rib in my first cell, but it wasn’t too bad. The worst stretch was in my fourth cell.

From 1pm on June 21 until 7pm the next day—30 hours—I was beaten and sleep deprived, my arms twisted the wrong way around at the shoulders, and generally beaten pretty bad.

I’ve taken a beating in my time. So sure, it hurt like hell, but it was manageable—but then at one point, two thugs held my head and used a toothpick to scratch the whites of my left eye, while asking me if I could still read if I had just one. 


Near the end of this session, one of the thugs struck me in the chest so hard and so repetitively that the beating left a yellow-and-green splotch dead-center on my sternum.

He was >berated< by the cell boss, because he’d left a mark on me—which was a no-no.

Then as luck would have it, two days later—when the bruising was in full bloom—a senior guard came to give me a wellness check!

This was likely because of the Chilean embassy efforts.

The US embassy called me three times, but gave me nothing but “support”—empty bromides.

The guard told me to remove my shirt so he could look me over. The bruising was really spectacular—but he just nodded and pretended he didn’t see a thing.

>Perceptions< He’d checked me, right?

Why was I beaten to the point of torture? Well—it wasn’t over my YouTube videos!

I was imprisoned because of my videos—no doubt. The videos are why the SBU arrested me and put me in Sizo Prison without bail.


I was imprisoned because of my videos—no doubt. The videos are why the SBU arrested me and put me in Sizo Prison without bail.

But as they investigated me—and examined my computers and accounts, all of which they confiscated and opened—the SBU realized that I’m not poor.

So once they had me imprisoned for my videos, the SBU took the opportunity to extort money from me—using the guards as accomplices, who in turn used the prisoners as the muscle.

How I discovered this is too complicated for a Twitter thread. But I’m writing a book about it.

All told, they extorted USD$70,000 out of me, and split it among themselves. They also took another $9k when they arrested me (my emergency cash). And another 11 grand, which was the bail money.

With the computers, iPhone, etc., I’m out an even 100k on this adventure.

I’m never seeing any of that back, not even the bail money—because I’ve decided to leave Ukraine before my trial.

My trial is on Wednesday August 2—and I’ve already been told: I WILL be found guilty.

My sentence will be five to eight years in a prison labor camp.

Yeah.

But here’s the thing: The conditions of my bail are that I have to wear an electronic monitor, surrender my passports, and not leave the city of Kharkov, much less the country.

HOWEVER—after posting bail, I >didn’t< get an ankle monitor—and they >returned< my passports.

Later at the SBU offices, they >returned other documents< they’d confiscated—my driver’s license and my motorcycle registration.

In Sizo, I told an inmate how last year I’d been detained, released, but told not to leave Ukraine. He laughed. “They were telling you to leave!”

This time, it looks like the same is happening: They’re telling me not to leave—but leaving the door open.

Or so I hope.

Or maybe I’m being set up by them so they can justify putting me away in a labor camp—so no one will ever know about their sordid extortion scheme.

I simply don’t know. So I decided to die trying.

I rode my motorcycle across Ukraine—1,400 kms in two days. 

I’m going to Hungary to ask for political asylum. 

When I fail to show up in court in Kharkov, an arrest warrant will be issued, likely an international warrant.

No doubt other EU countries will comply like sheep, returning me to serve five to eight years in a prison labor camp—

—regardless of the fact that Kiev arrested and imprisoned me for >YouTube videos!<

For free speech!

What happened to “European democratic values?

lol

And the US State Department would return me too. I’m not a black lesbian druggie, or a transgender grifter. Besides, Victoria Nuland hates my guts, or so I’m told.

I’m hoping the Hungarians will read my indictment and say, “This is bullshit—we’re not sending him back.”

I’m posting this thread just as I’m getting to the border checkpoint. I’m also posting videos on the two channels I have access to, The Roundtable and Gonzalo Lira—Again.

If you don’t hear from me in the next 12 hours—whelp! I’m on my way to a labor camp!

Wish me luck.

During your time in the military, did you ever see something that made you say, “you can’t be serious…”?

During your time in the military, did you ever see something that made you say, “you can’t be serious…”?


Too many times to count. Some days passed without me asking that question, but not many.

I was an officer but I lived on base in officer’s apartments. One Sunday I went to town intending to stay the entire day, but I had to come back for some reason.

Upon my return, I could not find the officer on duty, nor his XO.

In the “Piazza D’armi” (the big square in the middle) there was a bridge tank, sans the bridge on it, doing donuts and fish-tailing all over the place.

Mind you, this was a big German tank, not a M113 or something that size. This thing is a land ship. Looks something like this:

main qimg 54b5949aace67c6401859fd9f2ad0f1d lq
main qimg 54b5949aace67c6401859fd9f2ad0f1d lq

Anyhow, the guys doing maintenance on it were taking it for a joyride taking advantage of the absence of the officer on duty for reasons too complicated to explain here.

I sat there dumbfounded at the sight. I had seen people use the washing ramp to launch 4×4 into the air, I had seen M113 roll over. But I had never seen a tank being driven like Tokyo Drift (30 years before the trend).

I didn’t know what to do. The place was deserted and I wasn’t about to go anywhere near this thing.

Then they lost control.

The tank took out the entire corner of our infirmary, which was empty at the time, fortunately, and they had barely noticed. This was a 1800-something building made of stone, concrete and masonry, not a quonset hut or anything like that. The way they used to built things, yet the tank took out a huge bite out of it.

Following that they disappeared behind another building leaving a scene out of Mosul after the ISIS retreat (also 30 years in the future).

I still couldn’t find the officer in charge, but at that point I was running some mind calculus about whose ass was going to be in a sling for that little mishap, so I decided that whatever I had come back for wasn’t worth it and I left.

The next day there was a shit-storm of epic proportions with officers, non-coms and soldiers in the brig or otherwise disciplined.

I still don’t know exactly what happened (or which of the 75 different version to believe) but since I had signed out in the morning and officially returned late that night, I was never questioned.

关于芯片战争的二三事 A few things about the Chip War

By Boss Dai

Today, we are presenting an interesting article on China-US tech rivalry, because in our eyes it reflects how many of the Chinese elite look at the US technology ban on China. These are the main ideas of the article:

  • One important consequence of the US embargo is that it helps create a huge market demand for China’s semiconductor industry, so the market mechanism replaces government subsidies as the main driving force.
  • Building a domestic semiconductor industry is hard, and will take very long time, but China is no stranger to this type of development. It’s only a matter of when and how fast.
  • However, the revolution in artificial intelligence adds a new variable to the game, something China must seize on as quickly as possible (you may read here on how Chinese government is responding with the final version of AIGC regulation).

The original article is written by Boss Dai 戴老板, a famous technology and business influencer in China. Our translation is not reviewed by the author.

Recently, Janet Yellen visited China with reportedly many “tasks” to accomplish. Foreign media summarized one of her tasks as “convincing Chinese officials that the series of measures taken by the US to prevent China from accessing sensitive technologies such as semiconductors in the name of national security is not intended to harm the Chinese economy.”

It is already 2023, and the US has launched more than ten rounds of bans on China’s chip industry. The number of mainland enterprises and individuals on the entity list has exceeded 2,000. It is heartwarming that they can still come up with such a noble reason.

It is estimated that even the Americans cannot stand it anymore. This statement was soon refuted by another article on the New York Times.

Four days after Yellen left China, Alex Palmer, a well-known China reporter for foreign media, published an article in the NYT that explained the essence of the US chip blockade in the title: “This is an Act of War.”

Alex Palmer graduated from Harvard and was among the first Yenching Scholar at Peking University. He has been reporting on China for a long time, covering topics such as Xu Xiang, fentanyl, and TikTok. He is a familiar figure who has been “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people”. However, in the matter of chip technology, he managed to extract the truth from the Americans.

In the article, one interviewee bluntly stated, “Not only will we not allow China to make any technological progress, but we will also actively reverse their current technological level.” The chip ban is essentially aimed at eradicating China’s entire advanced technology ecosystem.

The Americans used the word “eradicate,” which carries the meanings of “exterminate” and “uproot,” often associated with diseases like smallpox or Mexican drug cartels. Now, this word is being used to describe China’s high-tech industry. The author predicts in the article that if these measures succeed, it could impact the progress of an entire generation in China.

Anyone who wants to understand the severity of this war only needs to repeatedly ponder the word “eradicate.”

An upgraded war

The rules of competition and the rules of war are two completely different things. Business competition is a contest under legal framework, but war is different. The opponent will almost never consider any rules or restrictions and will do whatever it takes to achieve their strategic objectives. Especially in the chip industry, the United States can even keep changing the rules – as soon as you adapt to one set, it will immediately switch to a new one to deal with you.

For example, in 2018, the US Department of Commerce sanctioned Fujian Jinhua by using the “Entity List,” directly leading to the latter’s shutdown (which has since resumed operations); after this kind of small success, [The US Government] also included Huawei in the Entity List in 2019, restricting US companies from providing products and services to it, such as EDA software and Google’s GMS.

After discovering that these methods were not enough to completely “eradicate” Huawei, the US changed the rules: starting in May 2020, all companies using US technology could not supply Huawei, such as TSMC’s foundry. This directly led to the stagnation of HiSilicon and the significant decline of Huawei’s smartphones, bringing more than 100 billion yuan in losses to the Chinese industrial chain every year.

Afterward, the Biden administration escalated its targets from “companies” to “industries,” and a large number of Chinese companies, universities, and research institutions were subsequently included in the ban list. On October 7, 2022, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce issued new export control regulations, effectively imposing a “ceiling” on Chinese semiconductors. Logic chips below 16nm or 14nm, NAND storage with 128 layers or more, and integrated circuits (DRAM) below 18nm are restricted from export. Additionally, computing chips with a performance exceeding 4800 TOPS and interconnection bandwidth exceeding 600GB/s are also restricted from supply, whether through manufacturing or direct sales.

Using the words of a Washington think tank: Trump targeted companies, while Biden is targeting industries.

When reading the novel “The Three-Body Problem,” ordinary readers can easily understand the plot of the Trisolarans to lock down Earth’s technology [Baiguan note: This novel is a widely-read and widely-cited Chinese sci-fi series, in which the aliens, called the Trisolorans, used a super technology to keep a lid on basic science research on Earth]. However, in real life, many non-industry individuals tend to have a certain perception when observing the chip ban: as long as you comply with U.S. rules, you won’t be targeted; if you are targeted, it means you did something wrong.

Having such a perception is normal because many people’s thinking is still within the framework of “competition.” However, in a “war”, this perception may be just an illusion. In recent years, many semiconductor executives have expressed that when a company ventures into advanced fields in R&D (even just in preliminary research), they will encounter an invisible barrier.

The development of high-end chips is based on a global technology supply chain. For example, to make a 5nm SoC chip, one needs to license from ARM, software from Cadence or Synopsys, patents from Qualcomm, and coordinate production capacity with TSMC. By doing these actions, one will come under the purview of the BIS’s regulations.

A case in point is a chip company under a certain smartphone manufacturer, which set up a R&D subsidiary in Taiwan to attract local talent for consumer-grade chips. However, it soon encountered an “investigation” by relevant Taiwanese authorities. Helpless, this subsidiary was separated from its parent company and became an independent supplier, but still had to proceed with caution.

In the end, after a raid and seizure of servers by Taiwanese “inspecting authorities” (where no violations were found), this Taiwanese subsidiary was forced to shut down. A few months later, its parent company voluntarily dissolved as well – senior management realized that under constantly changing restrictions, any high-end chip project carried the risk of being “reset with a single button”.

[redacted]

This ability to “reset with a single button” essentially turns the previously practiced “global division of labor based on free trade” into a weapon for attacking enemies. To whitewash this behavior, American scholars have even coined a term: weaponized interdependence.

Once these facts are clear, many previously disputed matters no longer need to be discussed. For example, it is pointless to mock Huawei for violating the Iran sanctions because they have already stated clearly that “Iran is just an excuse.” Likewise, criticizing China’s industrial policies seems ridiculous, as the US promptly allocated $53 billion to subsidize chip manufacturing and promote re-shoring.

As Carl von Clausewitz once said, “War is the continuation of politics.” The same can be said for the Chip War.

How the blockade can backfire

Some may ask: Is there really no way to respond to the US’s “all-out war”?

If you’re looking for a miraculous move that can defeat the enemy in one stroke, there really isn’t one. Computer technology itself, including the integrated circuit industry, was born in the US. By using war tactics to exert dominance over the industrial chain, China can only take longer to conquer the upstream and downstream bit by bit. This is a long process.

However, if one is to think this “war behavior” doesn’t have any side effects and can be used continuously, it is not true. The biggest side effect of this all-industry blockade by the United States is that it has given China the opportunity to rely on market mechanisms – rather than pure planning power – to solve the problem of “卡脖子 technology stranglehold”.

This sentence may seem difficult to understand at first. We can first understand what “pure planning power” means. For example, in the semiconductor industry, there is a project that specifically supports major technological breakthroughs called the “Manufacturing Technology and Complete Set of Processes for Ultra-Large-Scale Integrated Circuits,” commonly known as the “02 Special Project”, which is funded purely by government finances.

Many companies have received funding from the 02 Special Project. When I was researching semiconductor companies, I saw many prototypes left over from this project. After seeing them, I had mixed feelings. Although the 02 Special Project provided valuable funding for companies during the economic downturn, the efficiency of using these funds was not high. Even if the funds were given to the companies in the form of subsidies, it was difficult to produce technologies and products that could enter the market. People who have done scientific research probably understand this.

Before the chip war, China had many struggling equipment, material, and small chip companies that were difficult to compete with foreign counterparts. Companies like SMIC, JCET, and even Huawei did not pay much attention to them because they could buy more mature and cost-effective foreign products. However, the US blockade of the Chinese chip industry has brought a rare opportunity for these companies.

Under the blockade, domestic companies that were previously ignored by wafer fabs or test and packaging factories were pushed to the forefront. A large number of equipment and materials were sent to production lines for validation. Domestic small factories suddenly saw hope, and no one dared to waste this precious opportunity. Therefore, they burnt the midnight oil to improve their products.

Although this is a forced market mechanism, an internal circulation market mechanism, its efficiency is much higher than pure planning: one party is determined to replace imports, while the other is desperately holding onto a lifeline. Under the inspirations of wealth creation effects of the Shanghai STAR Board, almost every vertical segment of the semiconductor upstream has many companies involved.

I asked my colleagues to compile the profit trends of Chinese semiconductor listed companies over the past decade (only selecting companies with ten years of continuous performance). There is an obvious growth trend: ten years ago, the total profits of these domestic companies was only more than 3 billion, and by 2022, their total profits exceeded 33.4 billion, nearly ten times that of ten years ago.

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2023 07 31 18 53

Alex Palmer commented in his article: When Chinese companies can access Western chip suppliers, domestic manufacturers do not have much business. But now, if Chinese companies do not unite, the outcome will be collective destruction. “Previously, they could choose between national resilience and business development, but now this choice no longer exists.”

Of course, some people may question: “These domestic alternatives are all in the mid-to-low-end field. We still cannot break through in the high-end chip market.” This questioning is not unfounded from a factual perspective. However, chips are not like the internet, where a few programmers can come up with something in a few months. It is an industry that requires years of investment and development, and it cannot be rushed.

In the past decade, the domestic semiconductor industry has made significant progress. However, public opinion often has a tendency to focus on lithography, to the extent that the belief “if China cannot produce EUV lithography machines, its semiconductor industry is not capable” has become very popular. This viewpoint is neither objective nor correct, and it obscures the efforts and hard work of many people, but it is widely embraced.

Of course, the success of an industry ultimately depends on whether it possesses the necessary conditions for success, such as funding, talent, and market. This is not greatly influenced by public opinion. Moreover, many extremely pessimistic remarks have appeared not only recently, but also many years ago in fields such as high-speed rail, wind power, solar power, and new energy vehicles.

Greater challenges

It may be fate, or it may be a coincidence, but at a time when the Chip War is in full swing, the fourth industrial revolution driven by AI has begun.

At the end of 2022, the roar of OpenAI brought a new world to carbon-based humans, and also made the Chip War part of a wider confrontation. In fact, the United States has already restricted Chinese technology companies from accessing the latest AI chips, and plans to prohibit American capital from investing in Chinese artificial intelligence companies, according to reports.

As we all know, the early stage of the industrial revolution (initiation stage) is a period of emerging new technologies, dazzling new models, and emerging new giants. If we cannot keep up with the changes in core technologies at this time, the gap later on may become increasingly wider. A small mistake can lead to a big loss, and it will take more time and money to catch up later on.

During the initiation stage of the first industrial revolution (steam engine), China adopted a closed-door policy; during the initiation of the second industrial revolution (electricity), China was in a turbulent period at the end of the Qing Dynasty; and during the initiation of the third industrial revolution (computers), although new China was catching up synchronously, the progress was greatly affected by political movements.

Therefore, every footnote in history tells us: we cannot fall behind this time.

Fortunately, China still has some foundation in the field of AI. Since 2012, internet giants and startups have been continuously pouring into the AI field. Although it was the Americans who discovered the new continent, looking around the world, China seems to be the only country closely following behind, and there is no need to underestimate ourselves.

However, there are also many unfavorable factors. Firstly, the methodology used by the US in the Chip War will definitely be extended to the field of artificial intelligence. However, unlike the global division of labor and the ultra-long industrial chain in semiconductors, most of the fields in artificial intelligence are innovative at the software level, and the chain is relatively short, with a lower (but not zero) probability of being strangleheld than semiconductors.

Secondly, venture capital funds are in short supply. Due to the influence of geopolitics and [the slump in] Chinese ADRs, it is an open secret that US dollar funds cannot be raised. The RMB market is greatly affected by local finances. Therefore, the current AI entrepreneurship wave in China is far smaller than the mobile Internet wave ten years ago, and it is also far smaller than the currently thriving scene in Silicon Valley.

In terms of basic innovation, there is still a relatively large gap in China. The Bell Labs, which invented the transistor, and OpenAI, which launched GPT, are essentially “raised” by large companies (the former is AT&T, and the latter is Microsoft). China currently lacks such roles (government-funded Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence and Shanghai AI Lab are potential candidates).

If we cannot keep up with innovation, there will be an awkward situation of “if you dare to open source, I dare to innovate”. [Baiguan note: this is a piece of satire on the phenomenon that a lot of innovation in China is based on open-source technology in other parts of the world.]

In the years leading up to the outbreak of a new technological revolution, countries that actively embrace it are likely to create a “generational gap” with their rivals. For example, the British invented tanks in 1915, but Germany was the first to form an armored army centered around tanks, with combat power far surpassing that of other surrounding countries. After that, they swept almost the entire European continent with lightning warfare.

Cooperation between the US military and technology departments has always been smooth – the Minuteman Intercontinental Missile was once the earliest major customer of integrated circuits, digesting 20% of shipments. And US defense suppliers such as Palantir and Ghost Robotics have already launched military products that incorporate the latest AI technology earlier this year.

Mao Zedong once said: “The Anti-Japanese War cannot be rushed, but the Liberation War cannot be delayed.” The same saying may apply to the current situation: “The Chip War cannot be rushed, but the War of AI cannot be delayed.”

In 1900, global steel production was 28 million tons, and oil production was 20 million tons. By 2022, these two numbers have become 1.88 billion tons and 204 million tons respectively – steel and oil are undoubtedly the basic raw materials for constructing human industrial civilization for more than a century. In the 21st century, however, silicon is the new steel and oil.

Before Pearl Harbor, the focus of the US embargo was on steel and oil, which were the foundations for military victory due to their strong metallurgical and refining capabilities. After the failure of the Moscow campaign, Germany fought desperately to advance towards the Caucasus, just to seize the Baku oil field – each era has its own strategic resources, and losing them is tantamount to failure.

We are at an unprecedented intersection of the industrial revolution and the great power game. Respect the law, maintain awe, and be full of confidence, and dawn will surely come.


Our Take

We agree with Boss Dai that, when looking at China’s semiconductor industry, the right assumption to make is not that the US ban will slow down its development. Rather, the ban might actually help create conditions for growth that wouldn’t become possible if Chinese end-users still had access to more competitive foreign chips and equipment.

In the end, when it comes to high-end chip-making, there is no theoretical barrier barring China. It is not as if there are some fundamental law of physics and chemistry that Chinese engineers do not know. The main obstacle is accumulation of technical know-how, which in turn requires sustained support of large amount of patient capital, something that is not possible till now.

Who was the craziest leader in history?

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main qimg 1423a9e843e8b1ae59a0b86316b29a2c

Albania’s first and only king managed to survive dozens of assassination attempts and hundreds of blood feuds. In traditional Albanian culture Blood Feud is the social obligation to kill an offender or a member of their family in order to salvage one’s honour.

King Zog 1st, of Albania, reined from 1928 to 1939, and had his first brush with death in 1923, when he was Prime Minister of the Albanian government. After refusing to step down after an election he was shot twice in the chest in the Albanian Parliament building.

Zog was an authoritarian and made enemies in almost all political groups in Albania, communist, Democrats, landholders, and fascist, alike.

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main qimg c73799c473962b4d6a0c5d012739512f lq

In 1932, one of King Zog’s bodyguards was shot in the back of the head three times after been mistaken for the King. Zog apparently drew his pistol and fired back.

Zog became so terrified of being poisoned that he made his mother monitor the royal kitchens. Allegedly Zog was the target of over 600 blood feuds. Despite this Zog managed to survive all the assassination attempts on his life, although is was his strained relationship with fascist Italy that eventually spelled the end of his rein.

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2023 07 31 19 36

While Zog utilized Mussolini’s Italy for occasional support, Italian influence grew to great in the aftermath of the great depression. Zog’s attempt to curb Italian control and seek other European allies, led the Italians to invade in 1939.

Taking his family and a great deal of gold with him Zog fled Albania never to return. He died in 1961, due his habit of smoking 200 cigarettes a day.

If Americans are overweight, why do they not walk and ride a bike instead of driving a car?

Because it’s too dangerous.

The vast majority of roads and streets in the United States are built to move cars as quickly as possible without regard for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. They’re wide, fast, have no obstacles anywhere near the road, are built for cars to get in and out of massive parking lots without having to slow down and often don’t have sidewalks, let alone protected bike lanes.

Since commercial uses are often concentrated on wide fast roads, you should try to make them easy for pedestrians to cross, but they aren’t. Signaled cross walks are often hundreds of yards apart and pedestrians often have to dodge turning vehicles.

It hardly matters how easy you make crossing the street though because the chances of anything being within walking or cycling distance of your house are next to nothing. It isn’t uncommon for the closest store, restaurant or park to be several kilometers away over residential streets that don’t go in straight lines.

You wake up in the morning with $100K dollars in debt, what’s the first thing you do?

You wake up in the morning with $100K dollars in debt, whats the first thing you do?

I’d be thrilled that most of my debt got paid off overnight somehow. I might even take a day off of work to celebrate.

If we’re including mortgages, I’d bet that a lot of Americans my age are more than $100k in debt.

Even if we’re not including mortgages, but just student loans, car loans, credit cards, and back taxes, I’ll bet a lot of Americans my age would be thrilled to owe just $100k.

I’ve owed considerably more than that for most of my adult life. You get used to it. Once you accept that debt is like taxes… just a fact of life for most people… you learn not to let it bother you so much, and just do what you were going to do anyway.

I could probably take summer jobs over the next ten years and pay off my mortgage a year or two earlier, but I feel like I’d just find myself sitting in my paid-off house wishing that I’d spent more time with my children when they were younger. I know my father felt that way late in his life. He worked all of the overtime he could when my sister and I were children. During my visits to him when I was in my 20s and he was retired, we both lamented the fact that he “missed much of my childhood,” and warned me against doing the same with my kids.

The Unspeakable Things Genghis Khan Did To His Enemies

Bolivia becomes third South American nation to use Chinese yuan for trade settlement amid global de-dollarization wave

Amid an accelerating wave of de-dollarization across the world, Bolivia has become the third South American nation to use Chinese yuan for trade settlement, and the Bolivian government is pushing for the opening of Chinese banks in the country as soon as possible, according to media reports.

Bolivian Economy Minister Marcelo Montenegro told a press conference that the country is already using the yuan and “it’s a reality and a good start,” the Times Magazine reported on Friday.

“Banana, zinc, and wood manufacturing exporters are conducting transactions in yuan, as well as importers of vehicles and capital goods,” Montenegro said.

Bolivia conducted financial operations amounting to 278 million Chinese yuan ($38.7 million) from May to July, which accounts for 10 percent of Bolivia’s foreign trade during the period, according to Montenegro.

Prior to Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil had already initiated the use of yuan in their trading settlements. Argentina in April announced plans to use Chinese currency yuan to pay for goods imported from China; while Brazil in February signed a memorandum of cooperation with China to establish yuan clearing arrangements in Brazil.

Argentina’s central bank’s enabling of Chinese yuan accounts in the Argentine banking system is a great advancement in reducing exchange rate costs, promoting financial efficiency and currency diversification, Argentine Ambassador to China Sabino Vaca Narvaja told the Global Times in an exclusive written interview

in June.

“More and more countries have turned to Chinese yuan for trade settlement, and this phenomenon will become increasingly common,” Xi Junyang, a professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Saturday.

China has been the world’s largest trading country which will generate huge demand for yuan settlement. The nation has been expanding the opening-up of its financial activities and the exchange rates of the Chinese yuan have been relatively stable compared to other major currencies, Xi said.

In the meantime, a growing number of countries have realized the significance of seeking a more diversified international monetary system as the US continues to weaponize its currency, especially after the Ukraine crisis, Xi noted.

Chinese experts said under the US Fed’s aggressive interest rate hiking cycle, many developing countries have been facing mounting pressure from capital outflows, currency depreciation and the rising costs of servicing debt.

Bolivia has experienced dollar shortages since February which has severely affected the country’s economy, according to media reports.

During a meeting with the Chinese ambassador to Bolivia Huang Yazhong on July 20, the Governor of Bolivian central bank, Edwin Rojas Ulo, said that the financial sector is an integral part of China-Bolivia’s collaboration in promoting the Belt and Road Initiative, per a statement published by the Chinese Embassy in Bolivia.

Bolivia’s central bank will continue to maintain strong cooperation with Chinese financial institutions to foster healthy development in trade and investment between the two countries, the governor said.

China is Bolivia’s second-largest trading partner and its primary source of imports. Bilateral cooperation between China and Bolivia encompasses various sectors, including infrastructure, aerospace, information technology, and oil and gas development, reports said.

In the first half of the year, bilateral trade between China and Bolivia totaled 8.42 billion yuan, soaring 77.4 percent year-on-year, according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs.

The yuan has become the world’s fifth largest payment currency, the third largest trade finance currency and fifth largest international reserve currency.

Global Times

The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary

What is your opinion on India’s stand on the Russia-Ukraine conflict?

2023 07 31 21 20
2023 07 31 21 20

Textbook Perfect!!!!

Thats exactly the Stand to take

Right now – India is sitting on the Fence and leaning towards the Russian Side. Just like Nehru did and INC did for the last 70 years of Indian existence as an Independent country.

As i said earlier- Russia is our biggest defence supplier. We have S-400s coming, we paid for Nuclear Submarines , We have major Ak-203 SA Rifles on the way. We have major Engine Components from Russia due, We have a lot of Tank Components from Russia, We have 42 Chopper Due from Russia – $ 26 Billion worth of Orders of which we have paid around $ 2.6 Billion plus placed guarantees for a further $ 3.8 Billion plus a further $ 40 Billion of Potential Orders.

We have had 70 years of Friendship with Russia where they have never once stabbed us in the back. Never Once.

On the other hand you have the United States who have done nothing for us except Talk and threaten and hold some stage shows like Howdy Modi or Namaste Trump.

Best example was 2021 – when They refused to let us have 1 gram of Vaccine Raw Materials even though we were QUAD Allies. Not a single gram!! As we begged and begged.


Indias Stand is so far – Perfect

I only hope it continues because the pressure on Jaishankar is enormous.

Every Quad Member apart from India have condemned Russia openly – Aus, Japan and USA

4 out of 6 Countries with Which India is likely to sign FTAs (66%) have condemned Russia. Only India and UAE havent condemned Russia yet.

Lets Hope Jaishankar can hold strong.

I am sure Sushma Swaraj would have but she is gone.

Meatball and Ravioli Soup (T&T)

This soup is very hearty and oh, so delicious!. It is a quick and very easy soup to make. I hope that everyone will give this delicious soup a try.

2023 08 01 11 18
2023 08 01 11 18

Ingredients

Soup

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 large onion finely chopped
  • 1 garlic clove minced
  • 1 (28 ounce) can chopped tomatoes
  • 1/4 cup tomato paste
  • 1 (32 ounce) container Swanson chicken broth
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/4 teaspoon each dried thyme and oregano
  • 12 ounces cheese-filled ravioli (I like to use the mini ravioli)
  • 1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley
  • Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Meatballs

  • 1 egg slightly beaten
  • 1/4 cup fresh soft bread crumbs
  • 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
  • 3/4 teaspoons onion salt
  • 1 garlic clove minced
  • 1 pound ground beef
  • Freshly chopped parsley to taste

Instructions

  1. In a food processor place bread and pulse until you get a medium or almost fine crumb mix. To this add parmesan cheese, onion salt, egg, parsley garlic and ground beef, process until all ingredients are combined. Shape into 1/2- to 1-inch balls.
  2. In a nonstick 4- to 6-quart soup pot, brown meatballs in heated olive oil until cooked through. Mix in onion and garlic and cook about 5 minutes, being careful not to break up meatballs).
  3. Add tomatoes and liquid, tomato paste, broth, water, sugar, basil, thyme and oregano. Bring mixture to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer 30 minutes. Add ravioli and cook, covered at a gentle boil according to package direction (approximately 10 to 15 minutes), until they are just tender and no longer have a starchy taste. Salt to taste. Stir in parsley and sprinkle with cheese.

(T&T)

This soup is very hearty and oh, so delicious!. It is a quick and very easy soup to make. I hope that everyone will give this delicious soup a try.

Ingredients

Soup

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 large onion finely chopped
  • 1 garlic clove minced
  • 1 (28 ounce) can chopped tomatoes
  • 1/4 cup tomato paste
  • 1 (32 ounce) container Swanson chicken broth
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/4 teaspoon each dried thyme and oregano
  • 12 ounces cheese-filled ravioli (I like to use the mini ravioli)
  • 1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley
  • Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Meatballs

  • 1 egg slightly beaten
  • 1/4 cup fresh soft bread crumbs
  • 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
  • 3/4 teaspoons onion salt
  • 1 garlic clove minced
  • 1 pound ground beef
  • Freshly chopped parsley to taste

Instructions

  1. In a food processor place bread and pulse until you get a medium or almost fine crumb mix. To this add parmesan cheese, onion salt, egg, parsley garlic and ground beef, process until all ingredients are combined. Shape into 1/2- to 1-inch balls.
  2. In a nonstick 4- to 6-quart soup pot, brown meatballs in heated olive oil until cooked through. Mix in onion and garlic and cook about 5 minutes, being careful not to break up meatballs).
  3. Add tomatoes and liquid, tomato paste, broth, water, sugar, basil, thyme and oregano. Bring mixture to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer 30 minutes. Add ravioli and cook, covered at a gentle boil according to package direction (approximately 10 to 15 minutes), until they are just tender and no longer have a starchy taste. Salt to taste. Stir in parsley and sprinkle with cheese.

What was the Earth like at the time of the Giant Insects ? | Documentary History of the Earth

If you had walked on the surface of the Earth in the Carboniferous period, it could have happened. When people talk about gigantism, they tend to think of the famous dinosaurs that roamed the Earth during the Jurassic, 150 million years ago. However, dragonflies, millipedes, spiders and even scorpions once reached exceptional sizes. This amazing evolution is due to the constraints imposed by the living environment. But how did insects so small reach such large dimensions? And why did they become extinct?

What is happening to China’s manufacturing market share as labor costs continue to rise?

Let’s see

As of today in 2023 — China’s manufacturing market share globally ROSE by 3.66%

The reason is simple

European Industrial Manufacturing FELL by 15.2% due to the Ukraine War especially Germany where Manufacturing fell by 27% this year

Korea’s Industrial Output also fell by 2.82% this year

Japan’s Manufacturing Output fell by 6.37% this year

India’s Manufacturing Output rose by 8.16% in 2022 but has fallen by 3.39% upto June 30, 2023

Thus China’s Share in Manufacturing or Manufacturing Output has RISEN by 3.66%

In 2023 — Russia is the only Nation whose Industrial Output ROSE by 6.22%


Remember while China’s SHARE rose , it’s Industrial Output reduced by 3.10% in 2023 so far

What’s the saddest thing a new mother said to her doctor?

“I made a bracelet for you!”

She handed me a friendship bracelet she’d made with a little plastic loom. I thanked her and put it on my wrist.

I walked out of her room and saw her nurse, tears in her eyes, wearing one as well.

She should’ve been exchanging friendship bracelets with her friends at school and planning for a sleepover that weekend.

Instead, she was in a hospital bed starting an induction of labor.

She was 14 years old.

Ed Wood Jr | Plan 9 from Outer Space 1957 | Colorized

Todays special treat is the cult classic

Fun, pain and the Golden Voyage of Sinbad

The small things are really BIG BIG things. In all sorts of ways.

Don’t you know.

I get a lot of crazy people on MM…

Not that it is bad, mind you. But I am a VERY BUSY fellow.

So this guy pops up on the comment boards.

Long, long diatribes. Interspersing praise, with meandering comments, and passive aggressive demands.

Very suggestive of a home-bound; locked in person with neurotic tendencies. I told him to stop posting long comment trains on the articles, and instead use the forum.

He responded…

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2023 07 03 11 33

I don’t want to be dictated to jump, beg and roll-over like a common dog by a stranger on my own God-damn website.

I did not send him to the cornfield. But I did blow away all the MM followers around Nebraska. Oh well…

Passive aggressive FUCK.

2023 07 03 11 37
2023 07 03 11 37

I do not need this shit.

Good fucking bye.

Interesting Discussion

The United States was sharply critical of Germany’s energy dependence on Russia, imposing sanctions on the construction of pipelines carrying Russian gas beneath the Baltic Sea to Germany (if not, as a now-refuted report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh recently claimed, getting its navy divers to blow them up).

However, the US’s economic dependence on China runs far deeper, and severing the link—for example, in the event of conflict between the two nations—would be far more disruptive.

A provocative report by economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis suggests China could more easily break free of the relationship of mutual dependence than the US.

Varoufakis relates that a Chinese official described to him the ‘dark deal’ China struck in the 1970s under which its manufacturers would send their excess production (that is, their output beyond China’s domestic needs) to the US and reinvest the bulk of their US-dollar profits into America’s ‘FIRE’, or finance, insurance and real estate sectors.

‘It ensured that the dollar’s supremacy was just as functional to the interests of US rentiers as it was to Chinese capitalists,’ he says. Of course, the losers in the transaction were the US domestic manufacturers (and their workers) who went out of business under the pressure of Chinese competition.

Article HERE

41 countries lined up for embracing BRICS currency

Please note: EUROZONE has just 20 countries.

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main qimg bd8bf0c2a8fa58457e9cdea0cfb5e163

The list of countries ready to join the BRICS alliance and accept the new currency is growing leaps n bounds. From a set of 19 countries in April, the numbers have spiked to 41 by the end of June. A total of 22 new countries expressed interest to enter the bloc and ditch the U.S. dollar in two months. The next BRICS summit will be held in August in South Africa where the bloc of five nations will combinedly decide the formation of a new currency.

The decision to expand the alliance will be jointly taken in the next BRICS summit and the bloc could soon become BRICS+.

The total number of countries that could challenge the U.S. dollar on the global stage has reached 41. The developing nations that want to accept BRICS currency hail from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

Belarus is the first country in Eastern Europe that expressed interest to accept the new BRICS currency. On the other hand, France has also shown its interest to attend the next BRICS summit in South Africa.

Additionally, many countries in Africa remain on the sidelines and could announce their support for the BRICS currency after its launch. Kenya has urged African nations to stop using the U.S. dollar and trade with native currencies within the continent.

Offensive, but funny

2023 07 03 11 17
2023 07 03 11 17

How free am I really in CHINA?? 在中国的自由

She is correct.

These “little things” are really BIG and important things.

Here’s my version (MM version) of her video above…

A Typical Day in China (MM lifestyle)

Yeah. It’s cool.

Putin Wins – on All Counts

By Pepe Escobar

June 26, 2023

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main qimg 62db95ce3c3c373bb8748459f7b74d56

When the lightning of History strikes, better cut to the chase in our first draft.

When the lightning of History strikes, better cut to the chase in our first draft.

Here we go.

After the extraordinary events in Russia during The Longest Day, President Putin wins on all counts.

Among other feats, he has made an absolute, inter-galactic ass of the whole collective West MSM – all over again.

He rallied virtually every Russian to end the Special Military Operation (SMO) – or “almost war” (according to some business circles) quicker.

He – and the FSB – amassed a formidable list of traitors and 5th and 6th columnists, which will be properly dealt with.

And he now enjoys unlimited freedom to deploy de facto Counter-Terrorist Operation (CTO) martial law powers.

As much as Putin helped perennial Lukashenko in August 2020, preventing regime change in Belarus, good ol’ Luka prevented Russia from sliding into civil war in June 2023.

A complex wide-ranging counter-terror op is now in effect in Moscow and beyond, while assorted Western sub-zoology specimens are stunned, dazed and confused: wasn’t that supposed to be Putin meeting his Czar Nicholas II moment?

A first glance at the chessboard tells us that all the pieces seem to be falling in their right places.

Prighozin gets a golden parachute in Belarus. Shoigu may be about to be sacked, perhaps even Gerasimov (yes, there are deeply dysfunctional layers inside the Ministry of Defense). The Wagner musicians will be incorporated as a regular Army Corps. They may keep doing business in Africa: demand is huge.

So what really happened after The Longest Day? Hefty CIA funds may have changed hands. But in the end the “coup” could turn out to be the Greatest Russian Trolling of the West Ever.

The Mother of All Maskirovkas

Once again, facts on the ground prove Putin is the undisputed champion of Russia. After keeping a strategic silence for a few hours, his intervention gathered full support from the civilian population, the FSB, the Chechens, the Army, the Communists, everyone.

The exact terms of the deal between Luka and Prighozin, with help from the governor of the Tula region, Alexey Dyumin, are still unclear.

Prighozin said he was satisfied with the terms. Peskov confirmed on the record that a criminal case against Prigozhin would be dropped. A key Prighozin demand was the twin resignation of Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of Staff Gerasimov. That may – or may not – happen in the immediate future.

And that brings us to the still fascinating possibility this was the Mother of All Maskirovkas. Prigozhin sets up all this circus just to get a meeting in Moscow with Shoigu and Gerasimov.

Talk about an overkill just to go out on a date.

The Mother of All Maskirovkas scenario also implies a move worthy of 5D chess.

On Saturday, Wagner was 200 km away from Moscow.

Yet on Sunday, Wagner was 100 km away from Kiev.

Next level Sun Tzu Art of War, anyone?

Between sovereignty and betrayal

Alexander Dugin correctly points out how this was also an exercise in Sovereignty: “Only Sovereign Lukashenko, together with Sovereign Putin himself, confronted [Prighozin]…It turned out that many can frame the President and the people, acting in the shadows and apparently on his behalf, but saving the Fatherland in a critical situation is not their specialty.”

The corollary is that Russia needs “a sovereign elite, otherwise everything will repeat itself.”

As for the dazed and confused collective West, especially the NATO-Kiev junta, with everyone instantly rebranding Wagner from “terrorists” to “freedom fighters”, getting bogged down in their own swamp is the art they excel in.

Mainstream media spun that the proverbial “Western officials” were “taken by surprise” by the mutiny. That depends on the amount of funds that changed hands, and in which direction, during the preparation.

The SMO, now CTO keeps rolling along. The Russian Army continues to fight, undisturbed. The “counter-offensive” remains teetering over the edge of a cliff, ready to kiss the black void.

Putin winning on all counts implies the whole civilian population – and the military – engaged into preserving him and the Russian institutions, as well as perfecting them. There’s absolutely no nation anywhere across the collective West where we find this level of citizen support.

Russian politics is a special animal. It works at the highest level and also at grassroots level – unlike in the West, where the norm is deep hatred between the elites and the people.

Of course it should always be stressed it’s the less patriotic Russian oligarchs who run away every time something approaching The Longest Day takes place.

For a few hours, the West was betting heavily on the dismemberment of Russia. Not now. And not in the foreseeable future.

The succession is already being prepared, by Team Putin and selected patriotic oligarchs. Among the contenders, there’s a secret name that will stun everyone when it pops up. He’s still invisible in terms of public opinion, and works in the shadows. His name should remain secret for the time being.

As it stands, what matters is that Russia as whole emerged even stronger out of The Longest Day. The man and woman in the street showed himself and herself, once again, as a true patriot, ready to defend the Motherland whatever it takes.

There was no confrontation between those who are pro-Russian institutions and those who are pro-Wagner. People actually support both. People regarded Wagner like the “polite green men” who helped to peacefully retake Crimea in 2014. Facing them, there was not a single policeman or military.

So Putin is stronger than ever. But everyone should always keep this in mind: the one thing he can’t forgive is betrayal.

HazMat Incident at the White House

Nation Hal Turner 02 July 2023

HazMat Incident at the White House

There is an ongoing hazmat incident at the White House in Washington DC. The US Secret Service along with emergency personnel are investigating the situation.

The Secret Service has cordoned off a significant area around the White House, and a full hazmat response has been requested to the scene.

2023 07 03 11 22
2023 07 03 11 22

Zambia President’s speech made China take only 1% interest on its loans

China does not play.

Russia’s S-70 Okhotnik Heavy Stealth Drone Starts Bashing Ukron

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2023 07 02 19 34

Russia may have started operating its S-70 Okhotnik heavy-strike stealth drone against Ukron. Based on photgraphs of the drone flying in the Ukron skies published by Ukron’s telegram channels, Turkish media first reported the use of the drone in the Sumy region.

The drone is speculated to have struck military facilities of the Armed Forces of Ukron (AFU) in the Sumy region.”

On the afternoon of June 27, the Ukron media reported explosions in Sumy and Kremenchuk, Poltava region.

Report Credibility

A photograph, purportedly of the drone flying over Ukron, posted on Mash Telegram Channel conforms to the shape and size of the Okhotnik (Hunter).

At least two Okhotnik drones are known to be undergoing flight testing.

In June 2022, Janes reported, quoting RIA Novosti, that the S-70B Okhotnik had conducted its first test launch of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) against ground targets on May 28, 2022. The drone had launched air-to-surface missiles developed for the manned Sukhoi Su-57

Janes reported that the missile was likely the Kh-59Mk2 standoff cruise missile, a development of the Kh-59-series heavy tactical missile that entered service in the early 1980s.

Kh-59Mk2 range and payload estimates vary widely, but it’s likely to be able to reach targets at least 150 miles away while carrying a 500lb warhead. The modular nature of the design may allow for multiple configurations, such as larger fuel sections, to be swapped for smaller warhead sections.

Izvestia reported in February 2020 that the Grom (Thunder) 9-A-7759 glide bomb had been integrated with the Okhotnik. The drone can carry four Groms in its internal bomb bay.

The Russian Ministry of Defense (RuMoD) has not commented on the report.

Drone Availability

As per open source information, two Russia Okhotnik prototypes are undergoing flight testing, and two more are under construction/flight testing.

main qimg ec104c82f138e5357f722a2fd60ffdd6
main qimg ec104c82f138e5357f722a2fd60ffdd6

The first prototype, which features a non-stealthy circular exhaust, flew for the first time on August, 2019.

The second prototype incorporated tweaks to the aerodynamic design and electronics based on the operational experience with the first Okhotnik.

“The third and fourth drones “will match the production version of the Okhotnik,” the source said.

In March 2021, it was reported that construction of the second prototype of the S-70 Okhotnik was underway. Besides improved electronics and software, the drone would have a shaped nozzle for improved rear aspect stealth.

On December 14, 2021, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexei Krivoruchko reportedly told Russia-24 TV channel that a serial contract for the supply of the S-70 “Okhotnik” would be concluded within six months. A special control center is being created for the newest Hunter drone.

Flight testing of the second prototype began in July 2022 summer.

Russia may have operationally deployed two Okhotnik drones. Also, it’s conceivable that the two additional prototypes, under construction in 2021, are either available to Russian forces or will be available shortly. It is even possible that they have been operationally deployed already.

The Su-57, S-70 Combination

Russian officials have consistently reiterated that Okhotniks can operate under the control of a Su-57 fighter jet pilot.

“These planes and drones can interact not only with each other but also in various types of combat formations,” said Andrey Yelchaninov, the first deputy chairman of the Board of the Russian Military-Industrial Commission, in April 2021. “Within a very short timeframe, there will be a possibility to control several Okhotnik drones from the Su-57 cockpit.”

Conclusion

Extrapolating development timelines, Russia may have operationally deployed the Okhotnik drone in Ukron. Indeed, it would be logical for Russia to do so to obtain feedback and accumulate operational experience.

The drone in the published photograph features a circular exhaust, which would mean it’s the first prototype. The use of the first prototype would also be logical. Having been under flight testing since 2019, the prototype has likely served the purpose that it was developed for.

Also, losing the first prototype wouldn’t compromise trade secrets or set back the development program to the same extent as losing the second prototype for reasons discussed earlier.

The first prototype is unlikely to operate as a Su-57 loyal wingman. The communication suite, computer hardware, and software required for loyal wingman operations would most likely have been installed and tested on the second prototype.

If the Okhotnik proves itself capable of penetrating Ukron’s airspace undetected, Russia could fast-track serial production of the drone.

Russia’s competent military industrial base could eventually turn the tide against Ukron, which relies heavily on free Western weapons supply.

Now, let’s get on with some more important stuff…

Your BACKWARD voice reveals all your secrets (And the CIA knows it)

Declassified CIA report says

  • Zero evidence of any link between the pandemic virus and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, whether deliberate or accidental
  • Zero evidence that the Wuhan Institute even researched the particular strain of coronavirus that was responsible for initiating the pandemic, or even a similar strain

Coronavirus is a large family of viruses. And what the fuck does an Institute of Virology do if not conduct research on viruses?

“We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic,” the report said.

Out of 6 other US intelligence agencies, 4 have concluded that the pandemic was due to a “natural transmission” of coronavirus, while 2 others are “undecided.”

The declassified CIA report is 4 pages long. That’s how little they have.

But watch their politicians state or suggest the opposite again and again.

First Time Hearing Ronnie James Dio | Rainbow’s “Stargazer” Vocal Analysis

Russia’s Medvedev: “. . . there will be a nuclear winter . . . “

World Hal Turner 02 July 2023

2023 07 03 11 23
2023 07 03 11 23
Russia's Medvedev: ". . . there will be a nuclear winter . . . "

Statements by Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, made during an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta:

Below are statements made by Deputy Chairman of the Russian Federation Council, Dmitry Medvedev. Pay close attention!

The course of the AFU counter-offensive proved unexpected for Kiev’s Western sponsors, who believed in the “omnipotence of unlimited dough”. The defeat of the AFU in the Artemovsk direction was a foregone conclusion;

European businesses that have left Russia are “biting their elbows”, lamenting their lost revenues. It has permanently lost the Russian market; goods have been replaced by others. Production growth in Russia is “much higher than in Europe”, and inflation at the end of the year will be lower than in the eurozone;

Russia was forced to conduct a special military operation to protect its sovereignty and millions of people. The Kiev regime should be scrapped and banned as fascist;

The situation in Ukraine is not a regional conflict but a total confrontation between the collective West and the rest of the world. The confrontation between the West and the rest of the world could last for decades;

The current confrontation between the West and the rest of the world has brought the world to the brink of a third world war. In the event of a third world war, there will be no winners – there will be a nuclear winter, epidemics and famine on Earth;

The outcome of the total confrontation between Russia and the West should be enshrined in a new document like the Helsinki Act.”

Tex-Mex Beef Lasagna

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2023 07 02 13 44

Turn to Tradition for Tex-Mex Taste

(Family Features) The next time your loved ones crave a comforting dish that’s warming from the inside-out, turn to an all-time classic with a touch of southern flair.

Take inspiration for this Tex-Mex Beef Lasagna from season 3 of “BBQuest: Beyond the Pit,” a video series that dives into the long-held traditions, new flavors and everyday inspiration that make Texas barbecue legendary. Developed from the show by BBQuest co-host and “Hardcore Carnivore” cookbook author Jess Pryles, this tasty take on comfort food can be the perfect solution for a family meal with plenty of leftovers.

After dinner, settle in together and learn pitmaster techniques from the experts as the series follows four themes that capture the essence of Texas barbecue: legacy and tradition; creativity and innovation; Texas trailblazers; and family and community.

“Since launching BBQuest four years ago, it’s truly remarkable to see how much has changed and yet stayed the same when it comes to Texas barbecue, and that’s exactly what you see in season 3,” said Rachel Chou, Texas Beef Council’s director of consumer marketing. “There has been so much exciting innovation around cooking methods and international flavors while there’s still a huge dedication to long-held recipes and smoking techniques.”

To find more pitmaster-worthy recipes, visit BeefLovingTexans.com.

Watch video to see how to make this recipe!

Total time: 60 min | Servings: 10

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 2 teaspoons kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon cumin
  • 2 teaspoons chipotle powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
  • 15 ounces canned corn, drained
  • 15 ounces canned seasoned black beans, drained
  • 10 ounces canned diced tomatoes with green chiles, drained
  • 15 ounces canned red enchilada sauce
  • 1 cup Mexican crema or sour cream
  • Nonstick cooking spray
  • 12 corn tortillas
  • 8 ounces shredded Mexican blend cheese
  • Cilantro (optional)
  • Green onions, thinly sliced (optional)

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. In large pan or skillet, heat olive oil over medium-high heat then add onion. Cook until softened, 4 to 5 minutes, stirring regularly.
  3. Add ground beef and cook, stirring regularly, until beef has browned.
  4. Add kosher salt, garlic powder, cumin, chipotle powder and onion powder; stir well. Add corn, black beans and diced tomatoes. Turn heat to medium and simmer 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
  5. In bowl, combine enchilada sauce and crema; mix well.
  6. Spray casserole dish with nonstick cooking spray. Pour about 1/4 cup enchilada sauce mixture on bottom to prevent tortillas from sticking.
  7. Layer 2 to 4 tortillas across bottom then top with layer of ground beef mixture. Use ladle to spoon some enchilada sauce mixture on top, distributing evenly. Top with another layer of tortillas then repeat layers until casserole is full, 3 or 4 layers. Top with shredded cheese.
  8. Loosely cover dish with foil in tent shape to help prevent cheese from sticking, then bake for 30 minutes.
  9. Remove foil and bake for 10 to 15 minutes until cheese is bubbly and golden brown.
  10. Cool for 5 minutes before serving. Top with cilantro and green onions, if desired.

You NEED to run… NOW!

https://youtu.be/2L1Z5V_-eQM

Have you ever gotten roadside help from somebody unexpected?

My mom HATED this story, but it makes me laugh.

I turned 16 in January of 2000, my dad “gave” me his beat up old 1987 Ford Ranger. “Gave” is in quotation marks because it wasn’t REALLY mine, it was my dads but I was the primary driver.

In the summer of 2000, my mom’s youngest brother (my “guncle”-gay uncle) got ANOTHER DUI. I don’t remember if it was his 2nd or 3rd one, but it didn’t matter. He ended up losing his license for a year.

My home life wasn’t the greatest that summer, my mom and dad had separated, I finally had the freedom you can only get when you have a car, but you have to have money for gas and fun things to do.

I had already worked at McDonalds since I was 15 and a half, and I took on another job at our local movie theater (one of the best jobs ever!!)

Of course, since I had my license, and a vehicle, and my uncle’s schedule just happened to work with mine, I became his chauffeur for the summer. No one asked me if I would help, I was told to help.

I was a little peeved about it. I love my uncle, but I wish I had been asked. That’s all.

I’d normally work at McDonalds from noon to 4, go home, change, eat and then head to the movie theater and work from 6 to close.

My uncle worked at a seafood restaurant and had to be there by 9 until 4, the he’d walk to his other job and work from 5 to close, which just happened to be the time I got off of work. Sometimes he’d get a ride home from another co-worker, but it was mostly me.

Most of the time it worked out great. I got to know my uncle better than anyone in my family, I even ended up working with him at a pizza joint for a few months the next summer.

We had our own little rituals, I’d run by Wendy’s once in a while before I picked him up from his 2nd job and get him an iced tea, and he’d make me personal pan pizzas once in a while.

We both worked Saturday nights, so I’d take him grocery shopping after work. It was fun.

As I mentioned before, my truck wasn’t in the best of shape, so the inevitable happened.

I had dropped my uncle off at his apartment and was heading home. My truck broke down. I was able to get it to a side street, but it was in the middle of the road.

I walked over to the gas station and used a pay phone (Hahahaha) and I called my mom. It was like 11:30 PM. I was literally a 10 minute drive from home.

ME: “Mom. My truck broke down. Will you come get me?”

MOM: “Why aren’t you home yet?”

ME: “It’s Saturday, you know I take Trevor grocery shopping.”

MOM: “Well, you’re going to have to find your own way home then. It’s not my fault you’re ‘hanging out’ with Trevor so late.”

ME: “Yes it is! I didn’t volunteer to be his chauffeur, you volunteered me!! I don’t mind doing it, but it’s not fair to pin it on me.” I was so frustrated I shouldn’t have said it, but I did.

MOM: “I will NOT pick you up. Walk home if you have to.”

She hung up on me.

Okay. Fine.

I didn’t want to walk home, in the dark, after midnight, and I didn’t want to leave my truck in the middle of the road.

I sat in my car and cried for about 20 minutes. It was well past midnight.

I look up, and in my rear view mirror I see flashing blue lights.

GREAT. GOOD. A TICKET ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE!!

I rolled down my window and the police officer approached my car.

PO: “Hello young lady. Are you okay?”

ME: “My car broke down and I can’t find anyone to pick me up, plus, I know it shouldn’t be in the middle of the road.”

PO: “Okay. Let me see what we can do. Can I see your license, registration and insurance. I’ll be right back.”

I handed him the paperwork, and he went back to his car.

He came back a few minutes later.

PO: “Everything looks good on my end with you. Why are you out so late?”

I explained that I had gotten off of work and taken my uncle grocery shopping, and my truck stopped and that was as far as I got. I called my mom and she refused to pick me up. I didn’t want to leave my truck in the middle of the road and risk it being towed and it was an almost 2 mile walk home, and I didn’t feel safe walking that far by myself.

PO: “I understand. How about we do this? Put your truck in neutral and we will push it to the side of the road, and I’ll take you home. I’m off at 1, so this will keep me busy until I can clock out. How’s that??”

I started to cry. We got my truck where it needed to be and he took me home.

I can officially check the “rode in the back of a police car,” box off my bucket list.

When we got to my house, he asked me to stay in the car while he talked to my mom.

He knocked on the door and my moms face dropped.

He said something along the lines of “Your 16 year old daughter was stranded on the side of the road She was scared and didn’t know what to do. When she called you, the one person she should be able to rely on, and you refused to take the 20 minute drive to go and pick her up. She is in the back of my car, right now, and she’s still scared. I’m glad I found her before someone else did. In the future, of this happens again, please pick her up or send someone else to.”

He let me out of the car, I told him thank you, and I went into the house.

My mom apologized to me, and we had a long talk. I told her I loved spending time with Trevor, and I’m glad he’s in my life. However, it wasn’t fair for her to punish me for doing something that I was told to do.

She never let me down after that.

For those who will ask why I didn’t call my dad, he was working. This was pre-cell phone (well, they were expensive for the time, and I didn’t have one) and I didn’t have his work number memorized.

The Over-Hyped ‘Spy’ Balloon That Didn’t

With regards to China President Joe Biden said on June 20 2023:

And the reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two boxcars full of spy equipment in it is he didn’t know it was there. No, I’m serious. That’s what’s a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened. That wasn’t supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course up through Alaska and then down through the United States. And he didn’t know about it. When it got shot down, he was very embarrassed. He denied it was even there.

I commented that:

Biden acknowledges that the weather balloon was ‘blow off course’ and thereby debunks previous claims that it was steerable. China had no intent to let the balloon cross Canada and the United States. And if there had really been ‘two boxcars full of spy equipment’ on the balloon why hasn’t the U.S. shown any of it?

Why would or should a president of the U.S. or China know of some weather balloon floating somewhere?

Xi was embarrassed by the circus the U.S. made over that affair?

Xi denied that the ballon was where it was to whom? And the U.S. would know about that how?

There were so many questions about those ‘spy balloon’ claims that, from the very beginning, I was sure and said that it was all bunk:

But the Biden administration created a scandal over the randomly floating weather balloon. It thereby opened itself to criticism from the hawks in the Democratic and Republican parties. It canceled, without need, the planned mission of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to China.

Well – as it turns out it all was bunk, just as I had claimed.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal headlined:

Chinese Balloon Used American Tech to Spy on Americans
Preliminary U.S. findings show the craft collected photos and videos but didn’t appear to transmit them, officials say

The ‘spy balloon’ was not spying at all. It had a U.S. made camera on board for this or that (navigational orientation?) purpose and was not submitting any pictures from it:

The US gear was intermixed with “more specialized Chinese sensors and other equipment” with the purpose of snapping photos and capturing videos and other information to transmit to Beijing, according to the Journal.

Despite the spy balloon’s surveillance capabilities, the Defense Department does not believe the spy balloon collected data while it was flying over US territory, Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday.

Via Reuters the Pentagon confirmed that the ‘spy balloon’ was just a balloon that was not spying at all:

A Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States earlier this year before being shot down did not collect information as it went across the country, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

“We assess that it did not collect while it was flying over the U.S.,” Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder told reporters.

The balloon spent a week flying over the United States and Canada before the U.S. military shot it down off the Atlantic Coast on Biden’s orders.

Biden had already confirmed that the balloon was ‘blown of course’ which had been immediately clear to me and to anyone who could look up and understand the relevant weather maps of pressure systems and their atmospheric wind directions and strength.

2023 07 02 14 00
2023 07 02 14 00

The balloon was also not a spying device because there are obviously much better ways, like satellites, to gain more precise information than a randomly floating weather balloon will ever be able to catch.

The Biden administration is intentionally using anti-Asian racism to create an ‘enemy’ by alleging that the Chinese are doing wrong in this or that or in whatever may randomly float over the horizon. At the same time it is copying those Chinese policies it had previously criticized:

Bidenomics seems increasingly likely to play a pivotal role in US President Joe Biden’s upcoming 2024 presidential election campaign. With great fanfare in a June 28 speech in Chicago, he offered a stirring endorsement of “industrial policy” as the centerpiece of his economic strategy.

For the US, there is a certain irony, possibly even hypocrisy, in embracing industrial policy as an effective strategy to counter China. Washington has long been critical of Chinese industrial policy as one of its most egregious anti-competitive sins. That was a key allegation in the Trump Administration’s March 2018 Section 301 report that quickly became the foundational evidence for tariffs and the broader trade war that was to follow. The Section 301 report argued that China was unique in relying on the subsidies and targeting of industrial policy—a conclusion I took strong issue with in Chapter 4 of Accidental Conflict, in which I presented evidence of a legacy of industrial policy strategies in Japan, Germany, and, yes, the United States. And now the Biden Administration, which has endorsed most of the tactics of Trump’s trade war with China, is embracing the very same industrial policy approach that China has long practiced.

Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Doing like China does, because what China does is successful, is now the new normal.

Next: A U.S. weather balloon, with a defunct Chinese camera on board, unintentionally crossing China. “U.S.A., U.S.A., …”

Unfortunately the U.S. is not good at imitating China’s policies:

[T]he point I am trying to make here is that both approaches rely on the government’s ability to target the so-called vital, strategic industries of the future. Japan failed miserably at that, and the US didn’t exactly distinguish itself the last time it tried—ironically aimed at the same semiconductor industry that is getting all the attention today. Indeed, the failure of the then widely-heralded Sematech effort of the late 1980s seems all but forgotten.

The US economy is performing well by many accounts. Competitiveness, however, always remains a major challenge. Bidenomics is aimed at addressing this key challenge, a goal I certainly applaud. But is industrial policy, one of China’s hallmark tactics that we, ourselves, have been so critical of, really the best way to pull it off?

The tax-payer money that Biden is now providing to industries is likely to bump up stock prices and CEO wages through major bullshit projects like the over-hyped garbage in-garbage out patter recognition algorithms that are sold to the public as Artificial Intelligence.

Is there, after all the previous promises and investments, any autonomous driving vehicle out there today that is trusted to do no harm? No?

Well, get ready for another such marketing hype.

Posted by b on June 30, 2023 at 8:41 UTC | Permalink

How would you stop people from walking across your lawn?

I was over run by a group of very tough, young criminals living in a re-hab group home located about 1/4 mile behind an old caretakers cottage I was renovating. The group home was at the end of an unpaved road in a heavily wooded border to a multi-thousand acre forest. My cottage was down closer to the highway.

As soon as the trades left, they swarmed to their new “clubhouse” to smoke and drink all sorts of stuff and the rubbish they left made it a big problem. Some friendly local cops and the caretakers that ran the house were helpless in discouraging my nighttime and weekend visitors.

The solution: I posted a little typed notice on the front door (no locks yet). “ Caretakers wanted! Meet me here at 6PM Tomorrow. Cokes and snacks provided.”

I was met by a hoard of 6–8 that you wouldn’t want to meet after dark. After a short intro, cooler opening and chip bags handed out, I explained the problem. Damn trespassers, always on days of no work, nights, weekends, neither the cops or I could catch them. The damn mess they left should be a shootin’ offense. I needed help with security.

My proposal was that if they would keep an eye out for trespassers, helped clean up any mess left by ones we couldn’t catch, and get license plate numbers, I’d let them hang out on the porch and every weekend I would fill a cooler with drinks and provide a couple of big bags of chips for weekends and do a monthly hot dog cook out for the couple of months left until I expected to move in.

Brinks Security could not have provided a more secure work site than I enjoyed for the remainder of the project. And Brinks does not offer the trash and debris pick up as a bonus. These kids took to the project as if there was a Nobel Peace Prize at stake.

These truants all, one arsonist, a couple of brawlers, most thieves, all turned out to be some pretty fair neighbors and great lookouts for my little hideaway.

Tex-Mex Calabacita con Puerco

calabacitas con puerco 1a
calabacitas con puerco 1a

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons shortening
  • 3 pounds pork chops, boned and cubed
  • 3 or 4 serrano chiles, or more or less to taste
  • 1 large onion
  • 2 teaspoons whole cumin seed
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 1/3 cup flour
  • 3 ounces squash (yellow or zucchini or Mexican squash), sliced, large slices quartered
  • 1 can whole kernel corn, including liquid
  • 2 cans Ro*Tel chopped tomatoes
  • 2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

  1. Heat shortening in Dutch oven; fry pork cubes in batches until browned. Return all pork to pan.
  2. Place chiles and onion in food processor container and process until chopped (or chop together by hand).
  3. Slice garlic and place with cumin seed and salt in a mortar and pestle and grind together. (The garlic and cumin seed and salt can be chopped in the food processor with the chiles and onion, but grinding it gives it more flavor).
  4. Add chiles, onion, garlic, cumin and salt to pan with pork and cook over high heat until onion is transparent.
  5. Sprinkle flour over pork and vegetables and stir to combine. Cook a few minutes to remove the raw taste of the flour.
  6. Add all remaining ingredients plus about 1 tomato can of water — enough so that pork and vegetables are not quite covered with liquid. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cover with a lid. Cook at a simmer for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally, checking periodically and adding more water if necessary.

Makes a lot, but it freezes well.

What is the most condescending advice you received from someone who assumed you were poorer or less educated than them?

I was a witness to this during my first year of med school:

One of the second year med students and I decided to hit a pizza place one day for lunch. Our server, who looked like she was in her mid-20s, was walking over wearing a cast on her ankle and using crutches. The guy I was with said “watch this- I’ll show you how to pick up girls using your med school knowledge.” He mentioned her cast and then in an arrogant tone told her that she must have injured this and that tendon or muscle. Second year students can tell you the names of nearly every muscle in the body and tens of thousands of other medical facts but don’t know a lot of clinical information yet because they have not spent much time in the hospital. To make this scene worse he finished with a condescending look and said “oh, I’m sorry, sometimes I forget that you non-medical folks don’t know all of the advanced medical information that those of us in the profession know.” I was cringing.

We had our pizza, paid the bill, and as she was picking up the checks turned around and said to him “ hey sport, it wasn’t any of the muscles you mentioned, I actually injured a different set of muscles” then started listing them. She topped it off by explaining in excellent detail the surgical procedure using flawless medical terminology. His mouth was open, I was dying inside, and her mic drop comment as she walked away was “I’m a fourth-year medical student who just matched in orthopedics. You need to get some better pick up lines.”

Poland Requests Nuclear Bombs from USA

World Hal Turner 30 June 2023

2023 07 02 14 02
2023 07 02 14 02
Poland Requests Nuclear Bombs from USA

The Prime Minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki stated today that he has requested for the United States to begin the Deployment of Nuclear Weapons into Poland due to the recent transfer of Russian Tactical-Nuclear Weapons onto the Territory of Belarus.

Polish President, Andrzej Duda stated in October of 2022 that he had also spoken to U.S. Officials about the possible Deployment of Nuclear Weapons to Poland but this was before the transfer of Russian Nukes to Belarus.

What does Poland want with US Nuclear Bombs on its territory?  What do they think it might accomplish?

If such devices were placed in Poland, the Polish government could NOT use them; they don’t have the Permissive Action Link needed to arm the bomb. 

Moreover, having US Nuclear weapons on their territory only guarantees that Russia will target Poland with VERY MANY nuclear bombs to make certain Poland cannot achieve anything with any bombs they might get.

So what is Poland actually thinking?   Unless they want to get our bombs, disassemble them, take out the enriched nuclear cores, install those cores in Polish-made bombs, then use them . . .

Việt Nam, China issue joint press release following PM Chính’s visit

June 30, 2023 – 10:55

Việt Nam and China have issued a joint press statement on the occasion of Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính’s official visit to China and attendance at the 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions (AMNC) of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Tianjin from June 25-28.

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Chinese Premier Li Qiang hosts a welcome ceremony for Vietnamese Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính in Beijing on June 26, 2023. — VNA/VNS Photo Dương Giang

HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam and China have issued a joint press statement on the occasion of Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính’s official visit to China and attendance at the 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions (AMNC) of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Tianjin from June 25-28.

During the visit, PM Chính met with Party General Secretary and President of China Xi Jinping and held talks with Premier Li Qiang. He also had meetings with Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) of China Zhao Leji, and Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Wang Huning.

The two sides have informed each other about the situation of their respective parties and countries, engaging in in-depth discussions and reaching important shared understandings on deepening the Việt Nam-China comprehensive strategic cooperation in the new context; as well as on international and regional issues of mutual concern.

They agreed to continue effectively implementing the joint statement on further deepening the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between Việt Nam and China, which was issued during Vietnamese Party General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng’s visit to China last year.

They agreed to maintain high-level exchanges and strengthen party-to-party, government-to-government, and parliamentary exchanges between countries. They agreed to enhance mutual learning and exchange experiences in promoting the cause of socialism building and seeking distinctive modernisation paths in each country. They vowed to promote the overall coordination role of the Việt Nam-China steering committee for bilateral cooperation in deepening exchanges and collaboration in such key areas as diplomacy, defence, law enforcement, trade and economy, and culture.

Việt Nam considers the development of relations with China as a strategic choice and top priority, while China views Việt Nam as a priority direction for its neighbourhood diplomacy. Both sides said they will engage in in-depth discussions on related specific measures.

The two sides concurred to actively promote strategic connectivity, accelerate joint work in building a high-quality “Belt and Road” initiative, strengthen connectivity in border roads and railways, build a multi-modal and efficient logistics system, accelerate the upgrading and connectivity of their border infrastructure, and promote smart border cooperation. They will step up mutual learning and exchange between their state-owned enterprises; explore opportunities to foster bilateral and multilateral cooperation in key mineral sectors. Việt Nam pledges a favourable business climate for Chinese enterprises investing in the country.

The two sides agreed to enhance friendship exchanges and mutually beneficial cooperation between localities, especially border ones, raise the awareness of the two countries’ people, especially youths, about the bilateral friendship, and well organise exchange programmes, including the Việt Nam-China Youth Friendship Meeting, the Việt Nam-China border people festival, and the Việt Nam-China People’s Forum.

They will seriously materialise important common perceptions reached by leaders of the two Parties and countries, and the Agreement on basic principles guiding the settlement of sea-related issues, satisfactorily control disagreements at sea, foster maritime cooperation, and work together to maintain peace and stability in the East Sea (known internationally as the South China Sea).

Việt Nam and China will also push ahead with the comprehensive and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and on the basis of negotiation and consensus, soon reach a substantive and effective Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC) in line with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982 UNCLOS).

The Vietnamese side affirmed that it consistently supports the “One-China” principle.

On the basis of equality and mutual respect, the two countries will cooperate in human rights issues, promote dialogue and international cooperation in this field, and resolutely oppose the politicisation of human rights issues.

The two sides consented to persist in true multilateralism, work together to safeguard international justice and fairness, and enhance coordination in major international and regional issues.

They will maintain coordination and mutual support within international and regional frameworks such as the United Nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, ASEAN-China Cooperation, and Mekong-Lancang Cooperation, while effectively implementing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Việt Nam supports China’s accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in accordance with standards and procedures of the agreement.

During the visit, the two premiers witnessed the signing of cooperation documents in market supervision, smart border gate development, and less-sensitive sea-related fields.

The two sides shared the view that the official visit to China by Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính was a great success, helping deepen the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries, for peace, stability, and development in the region and the world at large.

PM Chính has on the occassion invited Premier Li Qiang to visit Việt Nam. The Chinese leader accepted the invitation with pleasure. — VNS

Have you ever met a famous person?

Steve Wozniak called me uncreative.

It was October 2016. At the UMass Club in Boston, Tom Ashbrook was set to interview the Woz for an alumni event. When I heard about this, I simply had to go. I had to meet the legend and get his autograph on my working Apple II.

Ticket prices were a staggering $250, so I called the event organizer and asked if I could volunteer for free entry. She said yes!!

So there I was in Boston, clutching my Apple II as I waited to be let in to his room. When Woz saw me and the artifact I was holding, he smiled and turned towards me. He started telling me about the making of the original Apple I and how he got color to work for the Apple II series. He also told me about his devotion to circuitry since a very young age.

When it was finally time to get his signature, I offered him a marker I brought. He then told me that I must be uncreative, because I couldn’t predict that he would bring a marker of his own. Simultaneously, he whipped out his personal marker. I just stood there with my mouth open; what could I possibly say!? I was too happy to care, and posed for the following picture.

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main qimg 33dc67e7a8ae086be732f05521825591 lq

You can see the marker in my right hand.

What a night that was!

How do I see problems as opportunities?

Yesterday I took my young son to see a property I just closed.

He was in shock.

“What piece of JUNK did you buy, dad? Why waste your money on this?”

I laughed and asked, “Why is it that I find opportunity here, while you see a massive problem?

“But how can this be an opportunity, dad? The place is in ruins!”

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It’s incredible how our reality is determined by how we perceive the world around us…

— While one is giving constructive feedback, the other person may feel criticized and offended.

— While some may feel they’re making the best use of their time, others will feel they’re wasting it.

Our beliefs, values, experiences, and even our mood will massively influence our perspectives.

I enjoyed helping my son change his perspective and visualize the opportunity I had found on this property.

It’s important to note that without his willingness to listen to me, his wrongful perspective wouldn’t have changed.

This made me think how important it is for us to stop, analyze and LISTEN to our trusted friends and advisors before we settle our ideas on stone.

Chinese ambassador wear Mao suit to meet Biden

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Screenshot 20230703 094919 com.android.chrome

He’s EXPOSING The UFO Secret Access Programs

Hey! He is saying that I have been saying for years. LOL! Plus lots of other things, curious. But don’t go too far down the “rabbit hole”. Just pay attention to the overview. Not the details.

So, after watching this video…

Now you know WHY I refer to reptilians, and Tall Greys as a “joke”. Stage-play, and other cover activities that are unbelievable, but used to hide the real truths.

Lots of reverse engineering stuff. But I was involved in actual work with DOMAIN.

Now you know WHY my entire section was “retired”.

Now you know WHY everyone in my MAJ branch fled to China when we had the opportunity.

Which screenshot deserves 500.88k views in a day?

2023 07 02 20 00
2023 07 02 20 00

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)

This is my BIG treat for you all today. This is the absolute full movie! FREE. And please take the time to enjoy this wonderful, wonderful film.

Take the time to cut out an hour or two to watch it. On a nice long lazy afternoon, enjoy this great video.

https://youtu.be/PaqoLAIYO1Y

Update on Gonzalo Lira and other USA insanity

For those of you who are new to MM, please take note.

We provide information, and actual intel not found anywhere else here

But, we immerse it in a deep salty mix of random (but fun) posts, videos, and food. It is very effective in stopping the “troll bots”, and other internet denizens that everyone assumes are organic, but are actually government-instigated interrupter agents.

Though, I do get an occasional stray bullet or two.

Dumb-fucks.

We do have an above average count of visitors. Many are cloaked, or disguised. Nothing like the millions that Drudge pulls in, or the thousands that MoA gets, but about on par with Remus’s old Woodpile Report (back in the day).

This is an intentionally suppressed and avoided website; it’s not hidden, just “in the grey”. No one (who is smart) “touches it”. It’s “electric” if you know what I mean.

Very few reference it. Ron’s UNZ (with respectful disclaimers), CGTN (with special caveats), and a cross-linked network of bloggers.

So, enjoy.

Lots and lots of odd, unusual, cool and interesting stuff on MM.

The important bits are accumulative. Over time, you see the REAL picture, free of the distortion lens. And that makes it atomic.

You’ll find some stuff here that will go against the main steam “news” and the alternative “news”, but it’s real. Plow through the haystack to find the needle that lies within.

It will take time. So be patient.

We start with this…

Green Acres – Hot Water Soup

A classic.

Punishing Sanctions

Xi to Biden:

Do you really want to hamper our chip producing companies?

Really?

China curbs critical metal exports in retaliation for Western restrictions on chip industry

China on Monday ordered export restrictions on two technology-critical elements in retaliation for new Western sanctions on its semiconductor industry.

The restrictions, which take effect on August 1, will apply to gallium and germanium metals and several of their compounds, which are key materials for making semiconductors and other electronics.

The Ministry of Commerce said in a statement that the export controls on gallium- and germanium-related items were necessary “to safeguard national security and interests”.

Exporters in China will need to apply for permission from the ministry, with information about the end users and how the materials will be used.

Gallium and germanium are used in lots of electronic components. AESA (active electronically scanned array) radars used on modern warships and fighter airplanes can not be made without those metals. China produces some 95% of those available on the global market.

It will take one or two years until the currently available stocks outside of China are diminished. But it takes much longer to open up new mining and processing facilities for replacement of the Chinese production. The processes used therein are quite dirty. A not-in-my-backyard attitude will make any setup of new facilities difficult to pursue.

The situation will soon become similar to the titanium market where Russia is the biggest global supplier but has restricted access for certain customers.

This is just one of many cards China (and Russia) can play in their anti-sanction games.

The U.S. is reaching the limits of its sanction power.

Posted by b at 7:21 UTC | Comments (143)

Can China develop its own chip industry?

Can.

Its happening much faster than you think.

Over 2022 and 2023 China has intentionally cancelled in excess of USD 100 billion worth of Chips from the U.S.

You see the majority of the chip business like every businesses is highly skewed toward the lower end higher cut throat business with the higher end more profitable being a minute proportion of total business.

Just like 1000–3000 cc automobiles totalling 99.9% of the world’s car market and 4–6000 cc representing 0.1% of the business.

That is where the U.S. chip strategy of the U.S. gets into serious problems. The U.S. thought naively and simplistically that China will suffer if it bans China from buying the high end chips. True China over a 3–5 years range may encounter some inconvenience but in the 5–10 years range China will have developed an alternatives which is faster, better, smaller and cheaper and wrecked the U.S. business all together.

Meanwhile the U.S. is being totally haunted by China cancelling orders of the 99.9% business. Chip companies at that level is imploding and losing a ton of sales. Most companies have collapsed and depending on tax payers subsidies. If you understand today’s technology and production. There are say 100 parts of materials and parts of the chips. China actually is responsible for a good 60–70% of these and say 5% comes from the U.S. China simply replace all the U.S. parts.

Some by Chinese technologies and others by US competitors. Not only has the U.S. lost the entire bread and butter chip business it is now suffering severe shortages in most US industry.

The harm China’s counter action is destroying the U.S. industry while China has a short term pain and long term gain for the higher end chips. Once again the short sighted nature and the hubris of the U.S. government is laughable. Those who really understand the business equate the U.S. action like shooting both its own foot to scratch China’s shine.

By replacing the 99.9% market chips US parts, China could reduce its cost and improves its profit. And with this it focus R&D fully on the 0.1% business to replace the U.S. within 5–10 years.

Why are the “unsafe” and “unprofessional” incidents mentioned by US officials recently all happened near China’s airspace and territorial waters, rather than near those of other countries?

The United States today has been so diseased, and so damaged, that it resembles a drug addict with dementia shuffling along a street and throwing insults at the normal people walking on the sidewalks.

Experienced people, know that it is important to avoid this madman.

You walk on the other side of the street. You hope that someday, some compassionate person will imprison this ranting lunatic and put them in a place with care and proper treatment. But it is beyond your control. There is nothing you (personally) can do. You accept the madman at face value; useless. A poison inside society, and one that needs to be quarantined.

However, for now, all you can do is ignore his actions.

Gilligan’s Island – The Lie Detector

The “good ol’ days”.

BRI introduces key tenets of Chinese philosophy to wider world

By Martin Jacques Published: Jun 18, 2023 07:57 PM A view of the construction of Peljesac Bridge in Komarna, Croatia on July 28, 2021.Photo:

VCGEditor’s Note:

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Through the lens of foreign pundits, we take a look at 10 years of the BRI – how it achieves win-win cooperation between China and countries along the Belt and Road and how it increases people’s sense of fulfillment in these countries.

“China became a powerful voice on behalf of the developing countries, not just by word but crucially by deed,” wrote Martin Jacques, a visiting professor at the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University and a senior fellow at the China Institute, Fudan University. 

This is the first article of the series.

When the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was first proposed 10 years ago, as well as much anticipation, there was considerable puzzlement. “What is it?” was a widely asked question. And quite reasonably so. Because it was like nothing we had seen before. This was not a plan with fixed dates. There was nothing concrete. There were no boundaries. There was no end date. In every sense it was open-ended. It was an idea, a concept. It was a totally new and original way of thinking about a project. Furthermore, it was on the hugest of scales, encompassing the great majority of the world’s population. 

We have never seen anything like this before. The nearest was America’s Marshall Aid plan between 1947 and 1952, but that was puny in comparison. Its inspiration, if anywhere, lay in China’s own past and such extraordinary feats as the Great Wall and the Grand Canal.

The point of departure for the idea of BRI was a reflection on China’s own economic transformation. What lessons might be drawn from this for the developing world? What could the developing countries learn from it? At the heart of China’s transformation was state-led, large-scale investment in infrastructure. If it worked for China, then why not for others? Most of the Eurasian land mass, together with Africa and Latin America, suffered from a disabling shortage of infrastructure. BRI would seek to change that. China would be the hub of the project. It would consist of a multitude of bilateral agreements between China and the developing countries, with China providing the funding, typically in the form of loans. The response has been enormous with 151 countries now participating in BRI.

If many scratched their heads in puzzlement about BRI when it was first announced, this has long ceased to be the case. Everyone now knows in varying degrees what it is about. In 10 short years, it has become part of the global geo-economic firmament, no less than the IMF and the World Bank. Let’s remind ourselves where China was in 2013 when it was first launched. The country was in the process during which the overriding priority had been China’s own economic development; it was quiescent on the global stage, seeking to keep a low profile, a rule-taker not a rule-maker, famous for its extraordinary economic growth rate but not for its international initiatives, which it sought to avoid. Little did we know at the time, but the launch of BRI was to signal a huge shift in China’s relationship with the world. It marked the moment of China’s coming out. And it was to prove remarkably successful. It is not an exaggeration to argue that over the decade of its existence it has changed the world. 

In what ways?

First, BRI promoted the question of development to a position of fundamental centrality on the global stage. The West had always paid little more than lip-service to the developing world, which it looked down upon and treated in an exploitative, paternalistic, and authoritarian manner. BRI offered a new kind of solution for the developing countries. And in the process the developing world came to occupy an increasingly important position on the global stage. 

Second, BRI forged a new kind of relationship between China and the developing world. China came to be seen as the champion of the developing countries. It became a powerful voice on behalf of the developing countries, not just by word but crucially by deed. 

Third, BRI paved the way for a new kind of global alignment and, as a result, a new kind of global politics. The relationship between China and the developing world is not based on a shared view of politics or ideology, nor military alliances, but on the most important issue facing the great majority of the world’s population, that of development. This is entirely different from the West’s approach. BRI has been the agency and stage for this shift, which we see expressed in many different ways. One example is the very independent attitude of the Global South towards the Ukraine war. BRI has heralded the rise of geo-economics as a new force in geo-politics.

Fourth, BRI has introduced, for the first time, key tenets of Chinese philosophy to the wider world. For over two centuries the language and concepts of international relations and politics have been exclusively Western. That era is now well and truly over. With BRI has come new ways of conceptualising: the ability to think in truly global terms because development is quintessentially a global issue; a very different idea of time, with timescales hugely longer – far from being limited to a few years, or at most a decade as in the Western mind, in the case of BRI we must think in terms of half a century, or even without any time limits at all, such is the challenge of development. Then, of course, we have the idea of win-win relationships rather than zero-sum thinking. Then there is China’s concept of a human community with a shared future, with BRI its living embodiment, that encourages us to think beyond the narrow constraints of the nation-state. BRI is like a crash course in Chinese philosophy. 

Fifth, BRI is an entirely new kind of international institution. The international system has been dominated by US-style institutions, like the IMF and the World Bank, whose distinctive characteristic is that they represent and speak on behalf of a small minority of humanity. BRI, in contrast, is a new kind of international institution that seeks to represent 85 percent of the world who live in the developing world. In other words, it offers a glimpse of a very different kind of international system in which the interests of the majority rather than the minority predominate.

BRI comprises the great majority of the world’s nations. They are drawn from across Eurasia – including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe – together with Africa and Latin America. China’s non-financial outbound direct investment to countries along the Belt and Road since 2013 had exceeded $140 billion by the end of June, 2022. It is important to see BRI as a dynamic institution, one that is constantly moving and changing as the world itself changes. In the initial phase, the main emphasis was on very large-scale infrastructural projects, but alongside these, SMEs, environmental and climatic needs, digital technology, and green projects have been acquiring growing significance. An obvious example of how BRI can ebb and flow depending on the wider environment was the pandemic which inevitably led to a period of significantly reduced Chinese investment. Or take a very different example. The Ukraine war has necessitated a new emphasis on maritime routes. For the time being some of the rail routes have been affected – most obviously in Ukraine.

What then, finally, of the Western response.

The US initially dismissed BRI as irrelevant. But, as a growing number of countries signed up for BRI, it became impossible to ignore, so the US then shifted its emphasis and sought to undermine it, accusing China of debt diplomacy.

The contrary, in fact, was the case.

China has gone to great lengths to help countries avoid getting into deep debt. What could China gain from seeing countries becoming debt-ridden: it would defeat the whole object of BRI.

With the overwhelming success of BRI, the West has finally come to recognize that it needs to offer an alternative to BRI. But there is little or no sign that the West, be it the US or EU, or the two combined, has the commitment, the resources, or the political conviction to come up with a viable alternative.

It would require a huge shift in the West’s attitude towards the developing world, one which is patently not forthcoming. After 10 years, the West has nothing to offer. BRI is the only show in town. And what an extraordinary show it has been.

Why are you glad that you are not living in America?

My wife and I moved from Texas to Scotland earlier this year. 3 weeks ago we had our first child.

Why am I glad we’re not living in America?

  • Total medical and dental bills for the birth of our child came out to £0 (that’s $0 when the current exchange rate is applied). The Scottish government even sent us a large baby box with starter supplies and toys, also at no cost to us.
  • I’m not worried about my daughter being a victim of gun violence here. I grew up 20 minutes from Thousand Oaks in California where there was yet another mass shooting just yesterday. That doesn’t happen here.
  • I’m not worried about my daughter ever being homeless or not being offered any social resources that she may need to achieve a basic standard of health and life.
  • Even with Brexit in the cards, I’m not at all worried about the UK becoming a dictatorship. The US could seemingly go either way at this point in time and that scares me.
  • I’m glad that people here don’t seem to have the keeping up with the Joneses mentality like they do in the US. Here people don’t flaunt wealth, it’s something to be a bit embarrassed about. And that leads to more realistic goals and general focus on what matters in life.

Scotland seems much more to me like the land of the free than where I’m from.

Why, you ask? Basically, I’m tired of getting the occasional troll or angry comment from someone (typically American but not always) who has taken great offense to my answer because they love America and clearly I must not.

For one, the question answered here doesn’t ask me what I miss from America or what I think America does better than other countries. Hint to those trolls – the answer to that is not “everything”. No country does everything the best and anyone who thinks that is deluding themselves.

Secondly, I’ve laid out some fairly clear facts around areas where America falters. There’s no need to continue debating them in the comments. We’re having another example of this right now, sadly, with the mass shooting in New Zealand. Obviously a terrible event, like any mass shooting of any group of people. But at least New Zealand has the wherewithal to take immediate action and start changing their gun laws. They should be praised for this. Contrary to America – where there are now more mass shootings than there are days in a year – and yet sits staunchly on it’s hands and does NOTHING.

Times change. Civilized people evolve. Help yourselves by helping everyone.

Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses- Reimagined on the Traditional Chinese Guzheng | Moyun

Washington kidnaps allies to squeeze China on chips

U.S.-China fight spreads to the chip factory

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The US is reportedly considering new curbs to hobble China’s semiconductor progress by utilizing long-arm jurisdiction, abusing export rules and coercing allies into further restricting sales of critical high-end chipmaking tools that are key for China’s technological rise.

The latest move underscores the US’ desperation in stepping up efforts to hold back China’s technological ascent after a years-long crackdown did not appear to have much effect, observers noted, while warning that a wider involvement of key firms such as ASML in the industry may deal a further blow to the already fragile global industrial chain.

On Friday, the Dutch government announced a ministerial order restricting exports of certain advanced semiconductor equipment, and though the Netherlands claimed the measures were “country-neutral,” it’s widely believed to have come under accelerated pressure from the US, targeting specific countries like China.

Moreover, the US is expected to go one step further on the Netherlands’ move and use its long reach to withhold even more Dutch equipment from specific Chinese fabs this summer, according to a Reuters report on Friday, which described the measures as “one-two punch” to China’s chipmakers.

This is an intensified siege on China’s semiconductor industry, indicating that the US is now extending its crackdown from advanced process chips to mature ones above 14 nanometers, Ma Jihua, founder of Beijing DARUI Management Consulting Co, told the Global Times on Friday.

At a routine press conference held by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday, spokesperson Mao Ning voiced China’s firm opposition to the US’ reported action, which “overstretches the national security concept and abuses export controls.”

“The US, under various pretexts, is attempting to cajole or coerce other countries into joining its technological blockade against China, and is intervening in normal economic and trade exchanges between companies through administrative means. This behavior seriously undermines market rules and the international economic and trade order, and disrupts the stability of the global industrial and supply chain, which is not in the interests of any party,” Mao said.

China will pay close attention to the relevant developments and resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.

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Now that China successfully built her own space station, will China ever approach the US and her allies to partner on anything? Or will China just go it alone from now onwards?

The United States unilaterally refuses to cooperate with China in the field of space. In 1998, the US Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, which stated that “the United States should not export to the People’s Republic of China missile equipment or technology that would improve the missile or space launch capabilities of the People’s Republic of China.” The Wolf Amendment

, enacted in 2011, further explicitly prohibits any form of exchange and cooperation between NASA and any government agency or enterprise in China.

Despite the long-standing technology blockade imposed by the United States, China’s aerospace industry has persisted in independent innovation, overcoming difficulties, and achieving a series of great accomplishments. At the end of last year, China’s space station was fully constructed, becoming the second operational space station in the world, in addition to the International Space Station. The Chinese space station is open to all United Nations member states, and currently, 17 countries including Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and Japan have had their scientific experiments selected, while the United States is unable to participate due to the restrictions of the Wolf Amendment.

China’s aerospace industry has always attached great importance to international exchanges and cooperation. Satellites manufactured in China have been exported to countries such as Nigeria, Venezuela, Pakistan, and Belarus, providing convenient satellite services to the world. At the same time, with the continuous improvement of China’s Beidou Navigation System, China has opened up relevant satellite data to the international community, providing support for global resource survey and monitoring, environmental monitoring and assessment, and Earth science research. In 2017, the European Space Agency even sent two astronauts to participate in the astronaut sea survival training organized by China.

Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who participated in the training, carried out a mission on the International Space Station in October last year. When the International Space Station flew over China, she took a series of photos and quoted a famous line from the ancient Chinese text “Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion”.

Why don’t Chinese know how to resist? Why is China’s work intensity so tight, but the wages are low? Do they not have unions, or are they all scabs?

You are comparing apples to oranges.

To be specific, the working environment and pay schedules are completely different from that of the United States; the self-proclaimed “leader” in freedom and democracy.

I have worked in both the United States and China. And I will use my personal, first-hand, experience to answer this question for you.

In this example, we will consider a fictional “white collar” office worker working in a factory. One factory is in the United States, and the other is in China. In general, the base pay for such an office worker is on the lower-tier of the bell-shaped payment graph for both the United States and China. Or, to put it another way, they are equal in social-economic opportunity.

China

Base pay

  • Minus 5% income tax
  • Plus one month vacation.
  • Plus paid medical.
  • Plus free housing
  • Plus free breakfast, lunch, dinners
  • Plus one month off at CNY
  • Plus 3 weeks of assorted holidays
  • Plus free daycare for children.
  • Plus free transportation into town.
  • Plus company sponsored activities every two months
  • Plus yearly bonus equaling roughly one month of salary at CNY
  • Plus discount coupons and awards for movies, and dinners, and KTV trips at neighboring establishments.

Because of this, our fictional Chinese “white collar” worker can save up a significant portion of his / her salary, being from 60% to 95%, for vacations, travel, buying a home, or other projects on their agenda. The Chinese worker, at the end of the year, can opt to stay and continue to save their earnings, or switch to another company, or take their savings and spend it.

United States

Base Pay

  • Minus 33% income tax
  • Minus 8% + (8% hidden) Social Security Tax
  • Minus 3–6% state tax
  • Minus City Tax
  • Minus misc taxes
  • Minus health care deduction(s)
  • Vacation is 1 week for the first year, and 2 weeks up to 10 years of work experience.
  • Days off are metered, and require a medical excuse for permission.
  • 7 days of holidays (some of with are “paid”)

Because of this, the fictional American “White Collar” worker lives “paycheck to paycheck”, and any family emergency or lay-off would devastate them. They clutch onto the position in the vain and hopeless attempt that “someday” things will change. But they will not. The only way out of this “rat race” is to leave the farm altogether and go somewhere else. Perhaps a place that has better working conditions.

Like Botswana.

And that is why Chinese workers are (in general) satisfied with their careers, their jobs, and their standard of life, while their American counterparts are popping pills to suppress stress, anxiety and depression, and hold off foreclosures, and divorce.

So to answer why the Chinese don’t have Unions, it’s really very simple. The entire nation of China is one big enormous Union. For that is what a Union is; a social organization formed and run by the workers.

Why is China organizing riots in France?

In a Zoo in England:—

Two kids were arguing furiously near a Crocodile pit

One Kid slipped and fell into the Pit and the Crocodile began to move from the ground where it was resting and move towards the flailing kid

A Chinese tourist rushed and jumped into the Pit and swam desperately and managed to escape just as the Crocodile was inches away from dragging the kid below

The Kid was rescued

The Next Day the most popular question by Quora Prompt Generator :—

WHY IS CHINA KILLING CROCODILES BY STARVING THEM????

BBC Headlines :—

CHINESE TOURIST STEALS LUNCH FROM CROCODILE

CNN Headlines :—

‘STARVING A CROCODILE SHOWS THE EXTENT OF CHINESE DESPERATION' — GORDON CHANG

That’s why

Because everything is blamed on China today

It’s ridiculous of course but that’s how low the Western Media have sunk

Macron is FINISHED! France collapsing!

Does China always say that it is a peaceful country and doesn’t want any conflicts? Why are they the most assertive country in recent years?

In the last four decades, America has fought wars

in Lebanon (1982–1984), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), Iran (1987–1988), Panama (1989–1990), Iraq (1990–1991), Bosnia (1992–1995), Somalia (1992–1995, 2007-present), Haiti (1994–1995), Yugoslavia (1998–1999), Afghanistan (2001–2021), Yemen (2002-present), Iraq (2003–2011, 2014–2021), Libya (2011), Syria (2014-present), Libya (2015–2019).

China, on the other hand, has fought no wars at all.

China is assertive about protecting its rights and territory. What, you think the Chinese should knuckle under Western imperialists like they did from 1839 to 1949 (the so-called “century of humiliation”)?

China should protect its interests. China should defend its territories in Taiwan and South China Sea. China should push back on US attempts to smear China’s reputation with lies about genocide, forced labor, etc.

China should voice its disapproval at US military provocations such as conducting naval exercises off the coast of China, and building more military bases in Philippines, and creating military pacts with Australia and Japan.

China should object to US delegations visiting Taipei and violating the One China principle, and to selling arms to Taiwan in direct contravention of the Three Communiqués.

Any nation that isn’t assertive will be stepped on. But being assertive is not the same thing as being aggressive.

Arctic Monkeys – Do I Wanna Know? (Official Video)

ASML says decoupling chip supply chain is practically impossible

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2023 07 03 12 07

Decoupling the global semiconductor supply chain would be “extremely difficult and expensive” if not impossible, a senior executive at ASML, the world’s most valuable chip equipment maker.

Christophe Fouquet, ASML’s executive vice-president and chief business officer, said in an exclusive interview that any single country would struggle to build its own fully self-reliant chip industry.

“We do not believe in ASML that decoupling is possible. We believe this will be extremely difficult and extremely expensive,” Fouquet told Nikkei at the company’s headquarters in Veldhoven in the Netherlands. “It’s a matter of time until people realise that the only way to be successful in semiconductors is through co-operation.

“The idea that we could go back to a little dark corner and do it all alone is most probably a very challenging concept,” Fouquet said.

His remarks came as large economies including the US, Japan, the EU, India and China rush to onshore vital semiconductor production in hopes of achieving self-reliance in chips.

The secret to ASML’s success, according to him, is its longtime collaboration with critical global suppliers such as Zeiss and Cymer and the support from its top chipmaking customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Intel.

ASML is the world’s exclusive maker of cutting-edge chip equipment known as extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, enabling production of advanced semiconductors below the 7-nanometre level. In chipmaking, the smaller the nanometre size, the more advanced and powerful the chips. The mobile chip in the premium iPhone 14 Pro and Nvidia’s graphic processors are built with 4nm tech, in which ASML’s machines play an indispensable role.

Zeiss of Germany is ASML’s only supplier of precision mirror systems, one of the most critical optical parts for the EUV machine, while San Diego-based Cymer, which ASML acquired in 2013, is the sole provider of the EUV light source.

None of ASML’s smaller peers — Nikon and Canon of Japan and China’s Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment — can yet match the European supplier’s capabilities in cutting-edge lithography. The US has no domestic makers of chip lithography equipment.

“We prefer to use the very best suppliers [globally] . . . This is a lot more effective. It allows us to move a lot faster,” Fouquet said. “The big difference [in strategy] is Canon and Nikon were trying to do a lot of things by themselves.”

While it is open to cross-border collaborations, however, ASML believes that for some of the most sophisticated components it is best to have only one supplier.

“The investment in Zeiss to get EUV optics is huge. If you make it in two to three places, the cost doesn’t work out any more . . . When it comes to unique technology, we develop partnerships with our suppliers,” Fouquet said. “When it comes to less advanced technology, then we will look at multiple suppliers.”

The bulk of ASML’s production, meanwhile, is done in one place, its headquarters, and Fouquet said it would probably keep the majority — about 80 per cent to 90 per cent — of its production and integration there until at least 2026.

“It’s very important for us to keep R&D and manufacturing together,” the senior executive said. The Netherlands-based company had more than 14,000 R&D employees and a total of 37,643 employees globally as of the end of 2022.

ASML’s headquarters is the tallest building in Veldhoven, an agricultural town in the southern Netherlands, and is about two hours by train from Amsterdam. Surrounded by corn and wheat fields, the building overlooks a vast wind farm at the border with Belgium.

Construction is under way to expand clean-room spaces that will eventually manufacture ASML’s next-generation chipmaking machines, which will use “high-numerical aperture extreme ultraviolet” lithography. The high-NA EUV machines will be essential for Intel, TSMC and Samsung in their race to introduce the most cutting-edge chips after 2025.

Hoàng Thùy Linh – Duyên Âm (Love of Ghost) | Official Music Video

Americans who have spent significant time away/lived abroad, what type of culture shock did you have returning to the US?

For me, the “culture shock” is mostly triggered by our pathetic state of infrastructure and lack of good public transportation.

This is New York:

2023 07 04 06 57
2023 07 04 06 57

This is Shanghai:

2023 07 04 06 5ggg7
2023 07 04 06 5ggg7

As much as I love New York, every time I land in the JFK airport, I feel that I am in some third-world country.

The airport screams “1950’s” – old, ugly, inefficient, broken down.

The contrast with Beijing and Shanghai airports is truly “shocking”.

The New York City subway, once the crown-jewel of the American cosmopolitanism, is now dirty, smelly, dark, disorganized. In the summer, it is hotter than hell inside the stations, in the winter colder than Siberia.

New York is actually the lucky one compared to the rest of the US – at least they have a public transportation system that works and is somewhat compatible with human life.

A Left- Handed Lead | Columbo

Why is the confidence level in the US the lowest in the G7?

Among many causes, the leading one is Biden’s narcissistic buffoonery and stumbling and falling (not only figuratively) along the way starting from the embarrassing Afghanistan retreat fiasco.

His Summit for Democracy flopped twice.

The money pumped into Ukraine is mostly embezzled.

EU economy is in the ICU thanks to the price-gauging of US LNG and blowing up Nord Stream Pipelines.

He affronted China gratuitously, even calling Xi a dictator. Now he is bowing to China’s new ambassador hoping to get Yellen a chance to go borrow some more money. Stubborn inflation still refuses to budge after high interest rate has wiped out a few US banks while Trains keep derailing and bridges are collapsing.

Olaf Scholz is much closer to China than France is, but he ordered (allegedly) color revolution on Macron instead, because the latter showed the balls to praise China and wants to join the BRICS.

Biden gave that disastrous Dylan Mulvaney a photo op in the WH and pissed off Nike and Budweiser loyal customers and almost all straight people. He apparently hangs his hope on fantasized wokeism, just like he does with Summit for Democracy, his one-and-only trick.

And he still hasn’t found his way out of the garage while making it a hobby to shoot himself in the foot, he wants 4 more years to f*ck up more. Maybe he’s got an Ace up his sleeve. Who knows. I frankly can’t think of anything he has done right so far.

How would you stop people from walking across your lawn?

Don’t have lawns. Instead, change your lawn to various plants native to your area.

Do you know lawns were designed as a tool of community conformity?

So lawns became popular first in medieval Europe. Originally as a defense structure, make sure areas in front of your gate were flat and open, so you can see whoever came to visit. Later, lawns became a symbol of wealth and prosperity, particularly because of how expensive it was to maintain large areas of lawn.

When nuclear families and Levittown became a thing, the government realized they had an opportunity to regulate families and promote the so-called “American dream.” If you want a government founding house, you need to follow the rules.

Lawns are expensive and labor-intensive to maintain. The government designed the community in such a way that you spend your weekends caring for your front yard and paying a ridiculous amount of money to water it.

2023 07 03 13 37
2023 07 03 13 37

Ditch the government conformity and grow your front yard with plants native to your area.

2023 07 03 13 38
2023 07 03 13 38

Nobody will run through your cactus garden.

Unveiling the Intricate Connections and Enduring Strength in Bethany Krull’s Porcelain and Mixed Media Sculptures

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Intertwining the intricate tapestry of humanity, fellow animals, and the vast natural realm, Bethany Krull breathes life into porcelain and mixed media sculptures.

Her art unravels the enigmatic bonds and unyielding strength exhibited by fragile beings. Within her creations, we witness the relentless growth emerging from decay, where the dance of life and death intertwines with resounding harmony. In the face of the ongoing Holocene or sixth extinction, Krull’s masterpieces serve as poignant reminders that each passing moment demands both mourning and celebration, for they are indivisible companions on this ever-evolving journey.

More: Bethany Krull

Chinese semiconductor manufacturers expect to raise over $8 billion

Chinese semiconductor manufacturers expect to raise over $8 billion from stock market listings so far this year, looking to expand output capacity to bounce back from a market downturn and U.S. export curbs.

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2023 07 03 12 08

Hong Kong-listed Hua Hong Semiconductor received approval in early June for a dual listing on Shanghai’s tech-oriented STAR market, where it aims to raise 18 billion yuan ($2.5 billion).

Hua Hong plans to build a $6.7 billion factory in the city of Wuxi, slated to start up in 2025. The state-owned China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, also known as the “Big Fund,” is investing in the project.

With production facilities in Shanghai and Wuxi, Hua Hong is China’s second-largest contract chipmaker behind Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. At an exhibit at the Semicon China trade fair, which kicked off Thursday, the company touts itself as a “world-leading foundry.”

Hua Hong and other Chinese chipmakers’ listings come as the U.S. is reportedly considering expanding restrictions it imposed in October on advanced semiconductors for artificial intelligence applications. The move would cover models from companies like Nvidia that fall outside the current bans.

Wei Shaojun, a professor at Tsinghua University who is involved in semiconductor policy, argued at the opening of the trade fair that China should respond by accelerating efforts to build its own supply chain.

Even if more Nvidia chips are added to the ban, that would not be entirely bad news for China, as it would spur further growth in the country’s semiconductor industry, he said.

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2023 07 03 12 09

In fact, big Chinese chipmakers have been expanding production capacity, focusing on so-called mature-node technology outside the cutting edge to avoid U.S. sanctions. China’s semiconductor market shrank about 5% last year, but sales of domestically made chips grew 14%.

Aggressive expansion requires funding. As of mid-June, 13 semiconductor companies have listed on yuan-denominated exchanges this year, raising 42.2 billion yuan, a quarter of the total for all IPOs over this period, according to China Central Television. Adding Hua Hong’s planned listing brings the total to roughly 60 billion yuan.

Semiconductor Manufacturing Electronics carried out the biggest float so far this year, raising nearly 10 billion yuan on the STAR market. The foundry is backed by SMIC along with government-linked funds. Many of the upper managers came from SMIC.

SMEC will spend at least 20 billion yuan over the next two or three years building new facilities that will produce power semiconductors that fall outside of U.S. restrictions.

The number of chip companies planning stock market debuts still lags behind the 40-plus IPOs seen last year. However, this does not tell the full story, according to an industry analyst.

“The Chinese government is encouraging the construction of semiconductor plants with tax incentives and money through investment funds,” said the analyst. “They’re quickly expanding capacity by procuring equipment ahead of tougher U.S. restrictions.”

SMIC is currently having difficulty bringing in equipment from overseas.

“We need to make the supply chain more resilient,” Han Di, senior vice president of SMIC, said Thursday at Semicon China.

Despite the U.S.-led pressure, global chip companies plan to continue investing in China. The country is the world’s largest market, commanding a roughly 30% share.

“In terms of sustainable growth, we can’t ignore China,” said an executive at a non-Chinese semiconductor company.

Top executives from Qualcomm, Intel and ASML have visited China this year. Although Chinese regulators have banned operators of key infrastructure from purchasing from Micron Technology due to a failed security review, Micron announced it is committed to investing roughly $600 million in a chip packaging facility in Xi’an, China.

Teen Opera Singer Reacts To Rainbow – Stargazer

Tex-Mex Macaroni and Cheese

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P022123202305 1 22755

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground pork sausage
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 (16 ounce) loaf Mexican pasteurized cheese
  • 1 (4 1/2 ounce) can chopped green chiles, drained
  • 16 ounces macaroni, cooked
  • 8 ounces shredded Southwestern cheese blend

Instructions

  1. Cook sausage and onion in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until sausage crumbles and is no longer pink; drain.
  2. Add flour, cumin and milk, stirring constantly, until thickened.
  3. Add Mexican cheese and chiles, stirring until cheese is melted.
  4. Add macaroni.
  5. Spoon mixture into a lightly greased 9 x 13-inch baking dish.
  6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes.
  7. Sprinkle with shredded cheese blend, and serve with salsa.

Couple React To Robin Trower- Too Rolling Stoned

$572 billion Added to US Debt in Two Weeks, Total Debt Now Exceeds China, Japan, Germany and UK’s Combined GDP

Over half a trillion more dollars have been dumped into the US government’s debt spiral in the last two weeks alone.

According to the latest numbers from FiscalData, as of June 15th, the US national debt was $32 trillion, a $571 billion rise from June 1st’s recording of $31.46 trillion.

Total US debt is now larger than the total gross domestic product of China, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom combined, and amounts to $244,000 per American household.

At current interest rates, the US is now paying over $2 billion a day in interest payments, and even if every American household contributed $1,000 a month to pay off the debt, it would take 20 years to pay off.

While the US’ debt issue has received increased attention from both analysts and regular Americans, most experts still expect the problem to intensify over the next decade.

Nigel Green, CEO of global financial advisory firm deVere Group, recently predicted that America’s debt was much more likely to reach the $50 trillion level than to shrink to more reasonable numbers.

“What’s the negative for Americans in particular? Well, the debt is continuing to increase. In other words, right now we’re at $31 trillion. It takes 8% to payback-adjust their debt of the taxes.

And you would say, ‘Well it’s only that percentage.’ Well, you can argue that, yes. But if it continues to increase and there is a downturn at some stage, then of course America is going to struggle to pay its debts.

I ask myself the question: it’s $31 trillion right now, is it more likely to go to $50 trillion or $25 (trillion)?

Ultimately, (the) reality is it’s more likely to go to $50 trillion than it is to go up to $25 trillion. So we’ve got this continuing situation. It’s not a bust right now but (at) some stage in the future, America has to repay its debt.”

Ray Dalio, the creator of the largest hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater Associates, also recently declared the the US was entering what he referred to as a “very classic late big-cycle debt crisis.”

“There’s a lot of debt. It has to be bought. It has to have a high enough interest rate.

If we continue down this path, in terms of what’s likely over the next five and 10 years, then you would reach a point that that balancing act becomes very difficult.”

Scarnfeld – Scarface as Seinfeld

Latecomer to semiconductors party, China is catching up faster.

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2023 07 03 12 03

A group of Chinese scientists has published (PDF) a paper titled “Pushing the Limits of Machine Design: Automated CPU Design with AI.” The paper details the researchers’ work in designing a new industrial-scale RISC-V CPU in under 5 hours. It is claimed this AI-automated feat was about 1000x faster than a human team could have finished a comparable CPU design. However, some may poke fun at the resulting AI-designed CPU performing approximately on par with an i486.

The goal of the Chinese research team was to answer the question of whether machines can design chips like humans. Earlier AI-crafted designs have been relatively small or limited in scope, reckons the team. Thus, to test the boundaries of AI design, the researchers thought they would try and get an AI to automatically design a RISC-V CPU.

Projects like this typically start with a period of machine learning. Training consisted of observing a series of CPU inputs and outputs. The scientists generated a Binary Speculation Diagram (BSD) from this I/O and leveraged principles of Monte Carlo-based expansion and Boolean functions to hone the accuracy and efficiency of the AI-based CPU design. Thus the CPU design was formed “from only external input-output observations instead of formal program code,” explains the scientists. It also boasted an impressive 99.99% accuracy.

Using the above-outlined process, an automated AI design of a CPU was created. The taped-out RISC-V32IA instruction set CPU was fabricated at 65nm and could run at up to 300 MHz. Running the Linux (kernel 5.15) operating system and SPEC CINT 2000 on the AI-generated CPU validated its functionality. In Drystone benchmarks, the AI-generated CPU performed on par with an i486. Interestingly, it appears to be a little bit faster than an Acorn Archimedes A3010 in the same test.­

Though some might be unimpressed by the performance of the AI-generated CPU, the scientists also seem quite proud that their generated BSD “discovered the von Neumann architecture from scratch.”

The building a new RISC-V CPU from scratch using AI isn’t just of academic interest, or of potential use for making new CPUs from the ground up. According to the researchers, AI could be used to significantly reduce the design and optimization cycles in the existing semiconductor industry. Moreover, in their conclusion, the scientists even ponder whether this research might be taken further to form the foundation of a self-evolving machine.

Latecomer to semiconductors party, China is catching up faster.

How to make TOTORO Diorama with clay

Why do many people (including the Americans who left the US) say that living in the US is hard and that leaving the country was the best choice they ever made?

I’ll start with the definite truth of my own life: Leaving the US was, without a doubt, the best decision I ever made.

I have said this out loud and reflected upon it often. In short – it had to do with identity and personal happiness.

I was always an energetic child and a hardworking student. Motivated by accomplishments; incredibly obedient; afraid of getting in trouble – a teacher’s pet type. I was generally nice to people around me; just wanted to do well and get on with my day.

After elementary school, I started going to private school – for a better education and hopefully better access in life. During that time, my Black, middle class background became the center of the world. I still did well in school, but I wasn’t spoken to as if I did well or was capable. I was made to feel inadequate at every turn, even in the face of great accomplishments.

As a teenager, this racial alienation was emphasized through social and dating dynamics. All teens have teen problems, but I wasn’t just a moody, insecure kid – I was a Black kid in a sea of White and there was nothing to be done about that. There was no amount of patience, kindness; weight loss; working out; grooming; hair perming – that would make me less Black. And you can’t talk about that to anyone; no one can relate; you’re unceremoniously accused of “bringing race into everything”. A very lonely reality.

Throughout the entire secondary school process, my intelligence was always doubted and I was constantly insulted. My school offered Chinese – they tried to tell me I wouldn’t do well because it’s “a very difficult language”. Within a year, I had top marks. I once had a teacher tell me my writing was so bad I probably had a learning disability. (I’m about to finish my Masters with distinction in England, and I’ll be starting my PhD in the fall).

By high school, I decided to spend a portion of my senior year in China. It was like night and day from my home school. Suddenly, I was smart again. Without a concerted effort of teachers telling me how stupid I was all the time, I was flourishing. I got straight A’s in AP Calculus – a course, among others, my home school wouldn’t let me take because it would be “too hard for me”. When it came to college lists – I was told I couldn’t get into any of the schools on my list; I shouldn’t aim higher than my State school. Mind, at 17 I was a varsity athlete; president of thespians; worked on a number of school plays; danced on the school team and studied Martha Graham independently; first chair clarinet; played alto sax in Jazz band; fairly skilled in drawing and painting; spoke Chinese and had a high honors GPA. So – what made me less than my peers?

In China, it was the first time anyone (other than my parents) had ever told me I was pretty. Looking back, I was still quite young; so a lot of firsts would be happening around that time anyway – but it was definitely different than in America. In America, I was just ugly. People might not say that to my face – but it was reflected in certain ways.

Beyond that, college was the same for socialization. I tried to be cute, preppy and peppy like my White friends – but I wasn’t. I was sad and defeated. And still had some discernible, inferior, human status.

So again, in college, I went to China. And again, I was able to find normality, humanity and love.

After I graduated college, I went back to China to work. I soon met my current partner and we’ve been together six years. We moved to England together last year so I could continue studying to change careers. I’ve done incredibly well and I’m just happy.

In summary:

I personally felt my intelligence and beauty were never appreciated in the US.

I was suicidally sad; until I could no longer deny that I needed to live life a different way.

My partner is Greek and it feels very freeing to not be a part of the radical, racialized, American fervor. Also, biracial relations aren’t questioned in England the way they are in the US.

Life doesn’t feel so heavy. My days are nice. I have a nice home. A nice partner. My efforts are recognized. I’m just, whole.

Ukraine Jailing American Journalist WITH U.S. PERMISSION!

This is all about Gonzalo Lira.

Smirk.

Oh and this inconvenient little thing.

2023 07 04 09 40
2023 07 04 09 40

What things do you encounter only in China?

In China, Pizza Hut had a salad bar policy of only allowing one trip. So Chinese people became very creative and created salad stacking or salad towers to get around this rule. Salad stacking led to Pizza Hut removing self-service salad carts from all of its restaurants in China. This policy introduced in 2009 ended salad towers from being made by customers. Here are some pictures so that you can be amazed by the ingenious art form.

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main qimg e7b8413a527217d72de201fe565a1f02 lq

It cost 28 renminbi ($4.57) for full access to Pizza Hut’s salad bar, but customers would only receive one trip to the salad bar.

This picture takes food hacks to the next level.

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main qimg 2ee8e0d62d8801f5ee1b2fde5891455b lq

Baby carrots and cucumber slices help make the foundation of the salad stacker.

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main qimg 328582d9e60ac16d2d9b982d616a0760 lq

The diagram below will teach you how to make a salad tower.

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main qimg bb2661256e44018d013052c6d73ceaca lq

Sources: Capital Bites: Pizza Hut Topples Salad Towers

Remembering the salad towers of Pizza Hut China | Investvine

The Three Stooges – Slowly I Turned

Kaboom!

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2023 07 04 09 45

From HERE

Was The Titanic Sunk On Purpose?

Europe must choose: back US tech war on China or support win-win solutions for all — SCMP

The European Commission made an announcement on June 15 that was widely reported as a ban on Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE. Rather, the communication endorsed the actions by some member states to restrict or completely exclude the two firms as being consistent with the European Union “toolbox” on 5G security – a set of guidelines designed to be interpreted and implemented by member states.

Some EU countries have followed the United States in treating Chinese telecommunications companies as security risks while others have not, which suggests political factors could be at play. Despite talk of “de-risking” in current EU circles, the growing trend is for language framing China as a security threat, rather like the US debate. Yet Europe is not the US and could benefit from de-escalating the US-China tech war.

China-EU relations have taken twists and turns over the years, but economic interests have usually driven a pragmatic approach when it comes to trade and investment. Some European countries and their consumers have embraced Chinese technology.

The US, on the other hand, in recent years has embarked on a campaign of wide-ranging sanctions and trade barriers to constrain China’s technology industry, notably banning Huawei, sanctioning supercomputer centres and blocking advanced semiconductors from reaching Chinese industrial customers. The US has long dominated global technology industries but now has a rival in setting the norms and rules for the technological revolution under way.

From 2017 onwards, beginning with the Trump administration, China has been identified as a key security threat and strategic competitor, with Huawei in particular singled out. Some political circles in the EU are now echoing the US position.

Without any evidence – at least on the public record – that Huawei is any greater risk than other firms, the claims of security risks or state influence cannot be disproved. The national security focus of the debate about Huawei risks taking our eye off the ball of where future cybersecurity threats may actually arise, and risks can arise anywhere.

Telecommunications systems have long been known to be at risk of hacking. Espionage or other threats to cybersecurity do not only come from China but from a wide variety of states, as well as from non-state actors such as terrorist groups, criminal gangs and even individual cyberhackers.

In some sectors, China plays a major role in setting global standards, such as in high-speed rail infrastructure and autonomous vehicles. However, there is no agreed-upon global set of rules in relation to new digital communications technologies, with progress frozen by the intensification of US-China competition. In the absence of shared rules, norms and institutional enforcement, technologies are being rolled out ahead of our ability to govern their use in the interests of society.

While politicians talk about security threats, telecommunications industry players are focused on developing the infrastructure, equipment and services for the coming convergence of high-speed communications, artificial intelligence and cloud computing that will transform industries and daily lives in the decade ahead.

Huawei is among the global leaders in these fields. If its innovations can be harnessed and securely governed in Europe, together with innovation by European firms, digital connectivity promises to be a major contributor to not only economic efficiencies but also in achieving the European Green Deal, with digitalisation reducing the environmental footprints of industries and consumers alike.

Europe has a choice.

On the one hand, it can join with the US in its tech war on China, risking splitting the world into two techno-nationalist domains weaponised against each other. In such a scenario, the US will still dominate its sphere of influence but at some stage could be overtaken by China. On the other hand, Europe could work to find rational and pragmatic solutions to the security problems posed by new technologies, taking politics out of the debate.

If Europe can help to build a cybersecurity system that is supplier-blind and operates on best practices which can be implemented by other states around the world, it could play a role in de-escalating the US-China conflict and consequently ensure a more secure future in a globalised tech domain. If consumers can both benefit from accessing Chinese and US technology and have their cybersecurity protected, Europeans can have the best of both worlds.

Tex-Mex Roasted Chicken

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Ingredients

  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin (comino)
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon basil
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
  • 1 (3 pound) broiler, skinned
  • 2 cups coarsely chopped zucchini
  • 1 1/4 cups unpeeled, seeded and coarsely chopped tomatoes

Instructions

  1. Combine first 6 ingredients; stir well and set aside.
  2. Remove neck and giblets from chicken and discard. Rinse chicken and pat dry. Rub outside of chicken with spice mixture. Place chicken, breast side down in a deep 3-quart casserole. Cover with wax paper and microwave on HIGH for 8 to 9 minutes.
  3. Turn chicken breast side up and microwave, covered with wax paper, on HIGH for 8 to 9 minutes.
  4. Remove chicken to a serving platter. Reserve drippings in casserole. Let chicken stand covered for 15 minutes.
  5. Add vegetables to drippings, tossing to coat. Microwave on HIGH for 3 to 4 minutes or until crisp-tender, stirring halfway through cooking.
  6. Arrange vegetables around chicken.

Yield: 5 servings

Moving Back to the USA

I have moved “back” to the USA multiple times. I remember my immediate reactions, though I can’t necessarily say they were the “biggest” shocks.

Return from France, as a student: Why are all these college students saying “I’m a wild and crazy guy?” It turns out that while I was studying outside the USA, a new show called Saturday Night Live became popular. Never heard of it. Also, why does everyone comment on how I hold my silverware?

Return from France again, seven years later, as a professional: Why is cheese so crappy in the USA? Why is bread so crappy in the USA? Why is coffee so crappy in the USA? (This was before those items became at least a wee bit more artisanal in the USA). Why are my friends irked when they ask where I bought that pretty sweater and I answer “Paris?” Hell, I was living there. Do you know how much it would have cost me to travel to the USA so I could buy a sweater in the USA and answer “Costco” or “Walmart?” I’m not being a snob, I’m just answering your question. I lived in Paris so I shopped in Paris. DUH! And, Americans sure are loud. I am too loud, too. But what a massive, gorgeous country to fly over. When did the American West get so vast?!!! This will be a recurring theme – get a window seat! Look down and fall in love all over again with the USA. Never tire of that. Never. Hate those people who have a window seat and just pull down the window shade and sleep during the day. See the Mid-West farms! See the Rockies! See the Sierras!

Return from Colombia, South America: Where are all the submachine guns? None in the US airport. How scary, no protection from guerrillas, sicarios and narcos. For that matter, where are my bodyguards? Also, how odd to see windows without bars on them. And hey, I MISS AJIACO!!!!! Also, when will folks – and coffee shops – in the USA learn to spell Colombia? It’s not Columbia! And, Americans sure are ugly and poorly dressed. I am ugly and poorly dressed, too.

Return from Ecuador, South America (the coast, not the mountains): Dang, it’s cold in the USA. And dark. And when will folks in the USA stop writing “Equador?” But, thank you for driving well in the USA. How nice to have lanes on the road and drivers who respect them. Americans sure are sweet. I hope I never hear the name Abdula Bucaram again or have to see his stupid Hitler mustache. But really, do American grocery stores need to offer us 10 brands of ketchup/catsup, 15 brands of cat food and an entire aisle of toilet paper choices? It’s so exhausting to go shopping here. Too many choices. Ridiculous abundance.

Return from Germany: Why is cheese so crappy in the USA? Why is bread so crappy in the USA? Why is coffee so crappy in the USA? I thought we were going to get better about this in the USA, but NO. And, folks, Starbucks sucks. It is NOT good coffee, it tastes like shit. Delude yourself and pretend you are cool drinking it, but it is junk. Also, what’s with the slow drivers? Move to the right, you turd turtle! I’m flashing my lights, let me pass. Don’t go 50 mph in the fast lane on the freeway. Also, Monica Lewinsky seems kinda cute….I’d only ever seen a print picture of her in the news, never a moving TV news shot. Yeah, she’s cuter than [my future boss] Hillary.

Return from Colombia, South America, again: Finally, most Colombian coffee bean labels are spelled correctly. Still feeling odd to walk around in the USA feeling safe without political assassinations here and there. Oh, whoops, 9/11/2001 happens on my second day back on the job in the USA. I spoke too soon. Silent skies for a week over Washington, punctuated only by the regular swoosh of US Air Force fighter jets circling the city. America feels on edge. I involuntarily start crying as I pass the Pentagon 2x day. Please send me from District of Columbia back to Colombia.

Teen Opera Singer Reacts To Dio – Last In Line

Shock returning to the USA

I wouldn’t call it a “life shock”, but there was a situation that made a lasting impression, for sure.

Back in early 2014, the day I arrived to the U.S, my team’s coach took me for grocery shopping to Walmart. It was a love at the first sight. For an active consumer like me, Walmart seemed like some sort of heaven. I still miss it, sometimes.

So, I bought some food, also some fresh fruits & veggies. Came to the dorm and put everything onto the book shelves, since there was no refrigerator.

Since candy & junk food seemed much more appealing at the time, I did put those on lower shelves. Fruits & veggies on higher shelves, some so high, it was out of my sight.

2 weeks later, an awful realization came to me. There are fruits & veggies on the higher shelves and I haven’t touched them in 2 weeks. They should be dead rotten and must smell awful. Oh NO! (I also hate wasting food)

So I reach to those shelves expecting an awful rotten smelly mess…and what do I see? FRESH fruits & veggies that HAVEN’T CHANGED A BIT! In 2 weeks.

It felt incredibly weird. Being raised on fruits and veg from farmer’s markets, these never last more than a couple days, a week max- in wildest fantasies.

So, for my peace of mind & sanity I decided not to give too much thought about what is done to those poor veggies for them to stay “FRESH” for so long.

My Neighbor Totoro | Multi-Audio Clip: Totoro and the Catbus

Why did China announce export controls on gallium and germanium?

Gallium itself is not a semiconductor, but a series of gallium-based compounds formed with arsenic, nitrogen, selenium, tellurium, phosphorus, antimony and the other metals and non-metals are high-quality and important semiconductor materials for the development of microelectronic devices and optoelectronic devices. It can even be said that gallium leads the development direction of semiconductor materials and is the navigator of the electronic information age.

A series of compounds prepared based on gallium metal, such as semiconductor materials, optical electronic materials, special alloys, organic metal materials and new functional materials, are important foundations for high-tech fields such as communications, military industry, aerospace, new energy, and medicine. one of the materials.

The second-generation semiconductor material gallium arsenide, as an example, is widely used in radar, satellite communication, optical fiber communication and other fields.

Germanium resources in the world are relatively poor, but germanium is a strategic optical information material that can be used for solar germanium cells on satellites. Germanium is also gaining more and more attention in healthcare applications.

The application fields of germanium mainly include infrared optics, optical fiber, electronics and solar energy, polymerization catalysts, etc. At first, germanium was mainly used in the military field in infrared optics, but in the past few years, there has been a demand for thermal imaging equipment using germanium lenses in the civilian field Increase. In addition, the addition of germanium to fiber optic materials can improve communication performance, and the addition of germanium-containing silicon compounds to solar panel production can improve energy differentials in solar panel production.

Gallium and germanium are both RARE elements, a key resource to support the technological innovation and move of China towards the commanding heights of the economy.

‘All I know is that Gonzalo was detained on May 1’ says Father

Will China be the next economic giant?

In the History of the World – Only Two Nations have ever dominated an entire Supply Chain at some point of time

A. United Kingdom

B. United States of America

Both these Nations at their times – the 1850–1920 (UK) and 1934–2000 (USA) dominated the Global Supply Chains and Technology and Markets

Its why they were Economic Behemoths

Of course later – the Capitalism caught up with them and forced outsourcing which made other nations richer and reduced the Technological gap and Economic Gap with rival nations.


CHINA

China has one weakness.

Energy!!!

UK had unlimited Energy in its Coal Seams , US has unlimited Energy in Oil/Gas and Fossils and Nuclear Fuel

China despite its rapid discovery of resources is growing too fast for Energy Independence.

Otherwise China has everything else

  • Super Powerful Domestic Market
  • Global Supply Chain
  • Indigeous Hub Culture
  • Huge Population and Talent Pool
  • Loads and Loads of Trade Money

So China have to solve for their Energy

If they can crack Alternate Energy and end dependence on Foreign Fossils – They are guaranteed to become the Next Economic Giant.

This of course is a tough ask

Option 2 is Russo – Sino Alliance


2023 07 03 21 15
2023 07 03 21 15

The Triple Axis World Order?

Definitely

If these Three Sides can continue their Good Relationships into a Firm and Strong Bond – They can collectively Dominate the World in the next 20 years

If China and the US go to war, how vulnerable is the Chinese food supply?

As of this date (June 2023) China is over 95% self-sufficient in food. The target goal of (near) 100% self-sufficiency in food seems to be on track to be reached by 2025.

This has not been an accident.

The Chinese government has recognized the vulnerability of its food supplies and have embarked on a very aggressive program of self-sufficiency. Not only in the numbers and quantities of food produced, but stability in distribution, farming techniques and sustainability, as well as development of high-yield harvests.

Were the United States foolishly attempts to engage in a “hot war” with China, the food supplies will remain stable, as systems are already in place to assure that no war-time interruptions could impact it.

I know that this does against the American narrative that “China would collapse” if “America did XXXXX”. But you all have to realize that any time a Western publication comes up with an idea to somehow “collapse” China, the Chinese takes this affirmation seriously and treats it as a threat. As a threat vector, systems have been put in place for EVERY SINGLE THREAT made in Western publications so that they will never materialize.

Yuppur!

The Chinese watch FOX “news” and “Alex Jones”.

The United States, under the leadership of John Bolton (reporting to President Trump) tried to create a famine in China in 2017–2018. It failed. But a study of the actions that China took is very illustrative.

  • Aggressive screening for imported pests and plagues.
  • Chinese (for profit) operatives running the virus-spraying drones for the NED became very patriotic and gave full information to the PLA. As well as the drones, and the virus handling protocols.
  • Rural and farm crews performed search-and-destroy missions to root out “novel and new” crop-specific viruses. With complete and total destruction of any infected crops.

But this is old news.

Were this to happen again, not only would China be ready, but the retaliation would be something quite horrible.

Today, China is unassailable.

Any attempt to harm it would be like trying to punch a swimming pool. Your hand goes into the water, and no damage is done.

It’s best that those who are so enamored with war, refocus their intentions towards peace and a “soft landing” for the ongoing collapse of the United States. A “soft landing” is not a bad thing. In fact, its a very good thing, and there will be a sharp increase in the standard of living, and the overall quality of life for most Americans.

But to get there, some fundamental changes NEED to occur inside the United States. Changes that the current “leadership” is unwilling to do.

“SPIDER BABY” Classic, Rare, Dark Comedy, Bizarre scary Cult film 1967 Colorized

We end with this.

This is one heck of a cool, weird, strange movie that is absolutely precious.

How did I ever get through 1967 and not see this. I feel like I have been missing something of great importance. It’s just so…

You’ve got to watch it. Take the time. You will not regret it.

This is the FULL MOVIE for your viewing pleasure.

This film has a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes! Is that even possible?

Watch it in HD. 

Very absurd but terrific curiosity from 1967. 

The film is apparently a cult film. 

I had never seen it before, so it was kind of a revelation. 

I tinted it and colorized it for fun. It looked good in B@W but I think it's better this way for the modern age. 

Stanley Kubrick eat your heart out. 

The full title is "Spider Baby or the Maddest Story Ever Told." and is pretty crazy. 

Sick humor., even slapstick. 

It is too scary for children and might gross out some adults, but ultimately just a comedy and a parody of horror movies. 

Starring Lon Cheney Jr and a bevy of fantastic actors and actresses mostly unknowns. 

Cinematography, direction, writing and acting is excellent for a film with a 68 thousand dollar budget. 

The movie really is a masterpiece of ridiculousness. 

Tell your friends to see it. 

Not really about cannibalism as an alternate title had suggested, so not that gross just quirky and deeply hilarious. 

Reminds me a little of Rocky Horror Picture Show, Devo the rock band or Todd Browning's, "Freaks" 

How I missed seeing this in 1968 is a mystery. 

The film is Public Domain, so I took liberties with the tinting. I tried not to get carried away on the tinting. The tinting is my work, nothing else added.

Reactions and adventures

Once, when I was living in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, my cat (a cute but smallish Maine Coon) named Phelie jumped on my bed at 4am. She took out her claw, and carefully… so very carefully… opened my eyelid. She wanted to see if I was alive.

I guess that (then, at that time) I must have slept deep.

Cats and dogs; our little buddies. Our pals. Well, they care for us. They worry about us. And if we have the opportunity, we should take care of them too.

Today, this article is going to be heavily laden with “reaction videos”. People listen to a song that they never heard before, and you listen to their reactions. You would be surprised how many of the younger folk (20s and so on) have never heard of the music that we all grew up with. And it’s a treat.

I suggest that you watch all of them, but if you are busy, then just watch the very first one, which is a compilation of reactions to an Opera, and the last one which is a reaction by an African woman to “Zombie”.

Enjoy today. And if you have the time, I strongly recommend watching all those videos. Most especially those with a “@” at the front.

First Reaction To Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody THE BEST BY FAR!

How would you stop people from walking across your lawn?

There was an older woman on my block growing up who disliked that a bunch of older boys kept walking on her lawn and garden. One day I watched as she called the biggest boy over. He was menacing and we all walked in fear of him. She said, “Son, I have a problem I am hoping you can help me with. I have all these kids who walk on my lawn and garden and I am trying to grow things. Do you think you could make sure no one tramples them since you are clearly such a leader in the neighborhood?”

From that day on not one person touched her grass or garden. That boy defended her turf like it was his own and with every fiber of his being.

All it took was a frail 80 year old woman with some wise rhetoric.

“Rebels beheaded, instigators arrested”? And this is not Prigozhin

From HERE

An audio recording appeared in one of the telegram channels of the Wagner group. Someone describes the situation with Prigozhin’s rebellion, prefaced his speech with the following words: “I ask you to put this on your information resources.” This person introduced himself as an officer of the Marine Corps of the Northern Fleet “from the Kherson direction.” He says that a unique KGB-style special operation was carried out – “lightning fast and deadly for the enemy.” And explains what it is.

The entry with the “officer’s” story, of course, may be stuffing and intrigues of enemies. And the fact that it was posted on the resources of PMC “Wagner” is not a guarantee of authenticity. First there was a recording, then its textual transcript. This “military” says that allegedly a group of rebels from the Ministry of Defense, the General Staff and the National Guard were going to remove Putin, but they did not succeed:

They are beheaded and destroyed. All the instigators, organizers, performers were handed over to the authorities that should deal with this. And they are already doing it hard.

He explains the role Wagner played in this:

Vladimir Vladimirovich turned to his loyal soldiers and his most trusted person, Prigozhin Evgeny Viktorovich. Special thanks to him for saving the country and people from the coup. He is a true patriot and deserves a second Hero star.

Next, the listeners are explained why the PMC units occupied Rostov-on-Don in the first place:

Because the headquarters of the Southern Military District is located there. The instigators-generals were sitting there. Some managed to escape to Moscow. In a panic, they gave orders to attack the Wagner columns with aircraft. But it did not bring results.

The narrator drew attention to the fact that the buildings of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were not occupied by the “Wagnerites”, but only cordoned off – because there was no need for this.

The generals who fled to Moscow could not believe that an uprising had been raised against them. They were really scared, because they don’t have combat-ready troops, everyone is involved at the front. They ran to the president: what to do?

Who is with the president?

Then there was Putin’s appeal to the people, in which he spoke about some rebels, but did not name “Wagner” and did not mention the name of Prigozhin. It was about the rebels, “who will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.” And the narrator emphasized in this regard that it was “precisely about the group of generals of the Ministry of Defense.”

Vladimir Vladimirovich is waiting after the appeal. The Federation Council speaks out for the fact that they are devoted to the Supreme Commander. Mayors, governors – too. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko calls Prigozhin: “Zhenya, hang up.” Wagner divisions are leaving for their permanent locations.

Here a hint is made that we did not hear such assurances from some leaders of the army, and by this they betrayed themselves:

That says a lot… That’s what “Wagner” did. The most unique operation. The rebels are completely beheaded. The grouping has been destroyed. According to some information, the leaders have been arrested. I don’t know for sure, but we’ll know tomorrow.

Quick “palace coup”

The narrator also answers the question: “What would we expect if this operation did not take place?”

“Wagner” was going to be disbanded the other day, depriving the president of such a power lever, because everyone is at the front. There would be regular regroupings like Kharkov, Kyiv. Only already in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. Something would have happened in Crimea. Then the people would get excited. Here the generals would make a quick palace coup, taking their place (Putin. – Approx. ed.).

Also, according to the author of the entry, as a result of the coup, Russia would pay indemnities to everyone and “would go to hell”, and the new rulers would rule “this decaying and dying” country.

And, of course, our president, as always, was on top. Grandmaster!

Will the Tula governor go for a promotion?

Wagner also reports in its TG channels that the Prosecutor General’s Office allegedly found procedural inconsistencies in the FSB’s decision to initiate a criminal case against Yevgeny Prigozhin, and it was closed (later, a message appeared in Telegram channels, without any reference to specific sources, that Yevgeny Prigozhin remains under investigation in connection with the rebellion):

Prigozhin, Lukashenka and Dyumin will meet in Moscow. You will learn about the results, detentions with resignations from the media.

Also, according to the “Wagner” channel, soon the governor of the Tula region, Alexei Dyumin, will begin work at the headquarters of the Southern Federal District of the Moscow Region, where he will be presented in a new position. And he will bring to the final the goals and objectives of the special operation:

Surovikin will be the chief of staff, some of the PMC fighters will enter a separate structural unit of the Russian Defense Ministry. Only Alekseev and Yevkurov will retain their positions. Prigozhin will be engaged in a new large project on the territory of Belarus.

The public also “promises” that a part of defense enterprises and strategic projects will be withdrawn from the structure of Rostec . Some of the design work and enterprises will be taken away from Roskosmos to strengthen the satellite and aerospace group of forces. And they will appoint a new minister of industry.

As for all PMCs, the Ministry of Defense signs a contract with them, and they cease to be structures of state corporations. And the Wagner structure will receive a unique legal status, which “will allow it to be a subject in a dialogue not only with the authorities in Russia, but also with the governments of other states.”

These are the plans voiced by the anonymous speakers of the Wagner Group. How true they are, time will tell. If this is the case, then we will see the results very soon.

The word “throw” immediately comes to mind.

The political observer of Tsargrad Andrey Perla expressed the following opinion about the conspiracy theory voiced in this material:

I think that such texts do not improve the situation, first of all, for Wagner himself. Because these texts are an attempt to prove that although you retreated in front of everyone, in fact you achieved everything and won everything. There is a public in the world that can believe this, but this public is always in the minority. And can never influence the decision makers.

The second point that Andrei Perla drew attention to is that these words were not spoken on behalf of the PMC, but were expressed by an anonymous person who calls himself a marine, but does not disclose not only his name and rank, but even his call sign. This, of course, does not inspire confidence in him , but adds doubts about the authenticity of the text. And the word “throw-in” immediately comes to mind.

In any case, very soon we will understand how great the consequences of the “mutiny”. I think they are quite large. But the content of these texts has nothing or almost nothing in common with everything that happened.

– considers the observer of Tsargrad.

@ Black Reactors First Time Listening To Luciano Pavarotti Singing Nessun Dorma Pt 2

I was once driving my car from Indiana to visit my family in Pennsylvania. On the way, we had our three (x3) cats riding with us, when we hit this massive traffic jam near the “Liberty Tubes” outside of Pittsburgh.

It was hot. Miserable, and traffic was slow. All four lanes were at a standstill.

We were listening to public radio, and they put on an Opera. And as we sat there, I watched the hair stand on end on all my cats simultaneously. They all arched their backs and their ears perked up, and they stood frozen for the climax of the music.

Then one by one, they got down and came up to me and kissed me on the face.

Music. Universal.

‘Give War a Chance’ – A ‘War That Even Pacifists Can Get Behind’

Alastair Crooke

June 5, 2023

The West is now waking up to the reality of the emerging, polycentric and fluid global order, Alastair Crooke writes.

More than a year into Russia’s Special Operation, the initial burst of European excitement at western push-back on Russia has dissipated. The mood instead has turned to “existential dread, a nagging suspicion that [western] civilisation may destroy itself”, Professor Helen Thompson writes.

For an instant, a euphoria had coalesced around the putative projection of the EU as a world power; as a key actor, about to compete on a world scale. Initially, events seemed to play to Europe’s conviction of its market powers: Europe was going to bring down a major power – Russia – by financial coup d’état alone. The EU felt ‘six feet tall’.

It seemed at the time a galvanising moment: “The war re-forged a long-dormant Manichaean framing of existential conflict between Russia and the West, assuming ontological, apocalyptic dimensions. In the spiritual fires of the war, the myth of the ‘West’ was rebaptised”, Arta Moeini suggests.

After the initial disappointment at the lack of a ‘quick kill’, the hope persisted – that if only the sanctions were given more time, and made more all-embracing, then Russia surely would ultimately collapse. That hope has turned to dust. And the reality of what Europe has done to itself has begun to dawn – hence Professor Thomson’s dire warning:

“Those who assume that the political world can be reconstructed by the efforts of human Will, have never before had to bet so heavily on technology over [fossil] energy – as the driver of our material advancement”.

For the Euro-Atlanticists however, what Ukraine seemed to offer – finally – was validation for their yearning to centralise power in the EU, sufficiently, to merit a place at the ‘top table’ with the U.S., as partners in playing the Great Game.

Ukraine, for better or worse, underlined Europe’s profound military dependence on Washington – and on NATO.

More particularly, the Ukraine conflict seemed to open the prospect for consolidating the strange metamorphosis of NATO from military alliance to an enlightened, Progressive, peace alliance! As Timothy Garton Ash effused in the Guardian in 2002, “NATO has become a European peace movement” where one could watch “John Lennon meet George Bush”.

The Ukraine war is portrayed, in this vein, as the “war­ that even former pacifists can get behind. All its proponents seemed to be singing is “Give War a Chance””.

Lily Lynch, a Belgrade-based writer, argues that,

“…especially in the past 12 months, telegenic female leaders such as the Finnish Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, and Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, have increasingly served as the spokespersons of enlightened militarism in Europe … ”

“No political party in Europe better exemplifies the shift from militant pacifism to ardent pro-war Atlanticism than the German Greens. Most of the original Greens had been radicals during the student protests of 1968 … But as the founding members entered middle age, fissures began to appear in the party – that would one day tear it apart”.

“Kosovo then changed everything: The 78-day NATO bombing of what remained of Yugoslavia in 1999, ostensibly to halt war crimes committed by Serbian security forces in Kosovo, would forever transform the German Greens. NATO for the Greens became an active military compact concerned with spreading and defending values such as human rights, democracy, peace, and freedom – well beyond the borders of its member states”.

A few years later, in 2002, an EU functionary (Robert Cooper) could envisage Europe as a new ‘liberal imperialism’. The ‘new’ was that Europe eschewed hard military power, in favour of weaponising both a controlled ‘narrative’ and controlled participation in its market. He advocated for ‘a new age of empire’, in which Western powers no longer would have to follow international law in their dealings with ‘old fashioned’ states; they could use military force independently of the United Nations; and could impose protectorates to replace regimes which ‘misgovern’.

The German Greens’ Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, has continued with this metamorphosis, scolding countries with traditions of military neutrality, and imploring them to join NATO. She has invoked Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s line: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”. And the European Left has been utterly captivated. Major parties have abandoned military neutrality and opposition to war – and now champion NATO. It is a stunning reversal.

All this may have been music to the ears of the Euro-élites anxious for the EU to rise to Great Power status, but this soft-power European Leviathan was wholly underpinned by the unstated (but essential) assumption that NATO ‘had Europe’s back’. This naturally implied that the EU had to tie itself ever closer to NATO – and therefore to the U.S. which controls NATO.

But the flip-side to this Atlanticist aspiration – as President Emmanuel Macron noted – is its inexorable logic that Europeans simply end by becoming American vassals. Macron was trying rather, to rally Europe towards the coming ‘age of empires’,hoping to position Europe as a ‘third pole’ in a concert of empires.

The Atlanticists were duly enraged by Macron’s remarks (which nonetheless drew support of other EU states). It could even seem (to furious Atlanticists) that Macron actually was channelling General de Gaulle who had called NATO a “false pretence” designed to “disguise America’s chokehold over Europe”.

There are however, two related schisms that flowed out from this ‘re-imagined’ NATO: Firstly, it exposed the reality of internal European rivalries and divergent interests, precisely because the NATO lead in the Ukraine conflict sets the interests of the Central East European hawks wanting ‘more America, and more war on Russia’ up and against that of the original EU western axis which wants wanting strategic autonomy (i.e. less ‘America’, and a quick end to the conflict).

Secondly, it would be predominantly the western economies that would have to bankroll the costs and divert their manufacturing capacity towards military logistic chains. The economic price, non-military de-industrialisation and high inflation, potentially, could be enough to break Europe – economically.

The prospect of a pan-European cohesive identity might be both ontologically appealing – and be seen to be an ‘appropriate accessory’ to an aspiring ‘world actor’ – yet such identity becomes caricature when mosaic Europe is transformed into an abstract de-territorialised identity that reduces people to their most abstract.

Paradoxically, the Ukraine war – far from consolidating the EU ‘identity’, as first imagined – has fractured it under the stresses of the concerted effort to weaken and collapse Russia.

Secondly, as Arta Moeini, the director of the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, has observed:

“The American push for NATO expansion since 1991 has enlarged the alliance by adding a host of faultline states from Central and Eastern Europe. The strategy, which began with the Clinton administration but was fully championed by the George W. Bush administration, was to create a decidedly pro-American pillar on the continent, centred on Warsaw – which would force an eastward shift in the alliance’s centre of gravity away from the traditional Franco-German axis”.

“By using NATO enlargement to weaken the old power centres in Europe that might have occasionally stood up to [Washington] such as in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Washington ensured a more compliant Europe in the short-term. The upshot, however, was the formation of a 31-member behemoth with deep asymmetries of power and low compatibility of interests” – that is much weaker and more vulnerable – than it believes itself to be”.

Here is the key: “the EU is much weaker than it believes it to be”. The outset of the conflict was defined by a cast of mind entranced by the notion of Europe as a ‘mover and shaker’ in world affairs, and mesmerised by Europe’s post-war prosperity.

EU leaders convinced themselves that this prosperity had bequeathed it the clout and the economic depth to contemplate war – and to weather its reversals – with panglossian sanguinity. It has produced rather, the converse: It has put its project in jeopardy.

In John Raply and Peter Heather’s The Imperial Life Cycle, the authors explain the cycle:

“Empires grow rich and powerful and attain supremacy through the economic exploitation of their colonial periphery. But in the process, they inadvertently spur the economic development of that same periphery, until it can roll back and ultimately displace its overlord”.

Europe’s prosperity in this post-war era, thus was not so much one of its own making, but drew benefit from the tail-end of accumulations hewn from an earlier cycle – now reversed.

“The fastest-growing economies in the world are now all in the old periphery; the worst-performing economies are disproportionately in the West. These are the economic trends that have created our present landscape of superpower conflict — most saliently between America and China”.

America may think of itself as exempt from the European colonial mould, yet fundamentally, its model is

“an updated cultural-political glue that we might call “neoliberalism, NATO and denim”, which follows in the timeless imperial mould: The great wave of decolonisation that followed WW2 was meant to end that. But the Bretton Woods system, which created a trading regime that favoured industrial over primary producers and enshrined the dollar as the global reserve currency – ensured that the net flow of financial resources continued to move from developing countries to developed ones. Even when the economies of the newly-independent states grew, those of the G7 economies and their partners grew more”.

A once-mighty empire is now challenged and feels embattled. Taken aback by the refusal of so many developing countries to join with isolating Russia, the West is now waking up to the reality of the emerging, polycentric and fluid global order. These trends are set to continue. The danger is that economically weakened and in crisis, western countries attempt to re-appropriate western triumphalism, yet lack the economic strength and depth, so to do:

“In the Roman Empire, peripheral states developed the political and military capacity to end Roman domination by force… The Roman Empire might have survived – had it not weakened itself with wars of choice – on its ascendant Persian rival”.

The final ‘transgressive’ thought goes to Tom Luongo: “Allowing the West to keep thinking they can win – is the ultimate form of grinding out a superior opponent”.

Interesting!

What are your thoughts on the U.S. and China’s failure to restore military-to-military contacts?

There are a number of critical steps that occur before two nations engage in open warfare.

All of these steps have already been taken by China in response to American aggression and provocations.

China has taken the necessary steps. It’s all public knowledge, though you would have to perform some pretty deep sleuthing to find anything about any of it in the Western “news”.

  • Publishing a Casus Belli.
  • Dumping the other nation’s currency.
  • Stockpiling of precious commodities.
  • Military mobilization.
  • Severing military lines of communication.
  • Severing diplomatic lines of communication (touch and go presently)

It’s pretty “cut and dry”. Obvious to everyone.

China already has provided the “due diligence” and set up the “rules of engagement”. World War 3 will be on the Chinese timetable, following Chinese defined rules of engagement, and China will dictate the terms of Western surrender.

The United States is being run by ignorant idiots that have no clue as to what they are fucking with.

China’s time line is running HOT. And the “stop watch” is ticking.

Brace for impact.

FREAKING SHOOK!| FIRST TIME HEARING Faith No More – Epic REACTION

Why is the US blaming China for its fentanyl crisis? What’s the cause of America’s drug abuse?

In the rest of the world, fentanyl is a controlled and regulated substance and is used as medication. In the US, fentanyl has been turned into a recreational drug inspite of the obvious dangers.

There is no effective government in the US. It is that simple.

It is obviously stupid to blame China or any other country. Other countries do not run the US government.

Only US citizens can run and manage the US government.

CAMEO CANDY VIDEO REACTION

Can China survive on terms enunciated and dictated by the US and her allies?

Well, if you distill the terms presented by the United States and it’s proxy “allies” you have this…

  • All Chinese must die.
  • Chinese culture must be erased.
  • All history books must be rewritten to avoid any mention of China.
  • China to be broken up into parts.
  • China to be looted until nothing is left except junk and stone.
  • The surviving Chinese are to be used as slaves, servants, and sex toys.

Can China survive under these conditions?

Personally, I actually think that China can.

But it will not want to, and it will flatten the United States into a radioactive wasteland of ruin if the United States continues it’s moronic march towards “suicide by cop”.

SO CATCHY!… | FIRST TIME HEARING Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Come On Eileen REACTION

All aboard the gravy train: an independent audit of US funding for Ukraine

HEATHER KAISER, ANYA PARAMPIL AND MAX BLUMENTHAL

·JUNE 27, 2023

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2023 06 28 06 10

President Joe Biden travels to Kyiv, Ukraine Monday, February 20, 2023. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

In the absence of official scrutiny of Washington’s spending spree on Ukraine, The Grayzone conducted an independent audit of US funding for the country. We discovered a series of wasteful, highly unusual expenditures the Biden administration has yet to explain.

During a recent discussion with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, touted her organization’s push to guarantee transparency for US taxpayer funds sent to Ukraine.

“We are involved in funding efforts at ensuring judicial integrity, which is intrinsically important to building Ukraine’s democracy and its integration plans to get into Europe,” Power declared, adding USAID’s work in Ukraine was “also really important in terms of assuring the taxpayer, the American taxpayer, that they’re resources are well spent.”

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While innocuous on the surface, Power’s comments revealed a great deception the US government is currently waging against the American public. In the roughly 16 months since Russia’s February 2022 escalation of the Ukraine conflict, the US government has approved several multi-billion dollar spending packages to sustain the Kiev military’s fight against Moscow.

Though many Americans likely believe that US dollars allocated for Ukraine are spent directly on supplies for the war effort, the lead author of this report, Heather Kaiser, conducted a thorough review of Washington’s budget for the 2022 and 2023 fiscal year and discovered that is far from the case.

US taxpayers may be shocked to learn that as their families grappled with fears of Social Security’s looming insolvency, the Social Security Administration in Washington sent $4.48 million to the Kiev government in 2022 and 2023 alone. In another example of bizarre spending, USAID paid off $4.5 billion worth of Ukraine’s sovereign debt through payments made to the World Bank — all while Congress went to loggerheads over America’s ballooning national debt. (Western financial interests including BlackRock Inc. are among the largest holders of Ukrainian government bonds.)

Though it is nearly impossible to calculate the total sum of US tax dollars sent to Kiev, Kaiser was able to perform an independent audit of Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine through a careful search of open source data available on the US government’s official spending tracker.

Kaiser reviewed all the funding allocations in which Ukraine was listed as the “Place of Performance” for fiscal years 2022 and 2023. Additionally, she discovered supplementary funds were sent to Kiev by listing Ukraine as the “justification” for spending, rather than the location where the money was physically sent.

Calculating the total dollar amount that the US has given to Ukraine is incredibly challenging for multitude of reasons: there is a lag in reporting expenditures; covert money given by the CIA (Title 50 Covert Action) won’t be publicly disclosed; and direct military assistance in the form of military equipment is not calculated in the same manner as raw cash. The Pentagon recently admitted to an accounting error revised up to 6.2 billion dollars. Despite this, Kaiser submitted a request to the Department of Treasury asking them to disclose the total dollar amount of US taxpayer support for Ukraine. Treasury has not responded at the time of publication.

Though Kaiser was able to search through pages of reported spending, the US government has yet to conduct an official audit of its funding for Ukraine. What’s more, there is currently no limit to how much Washington can send to Kiev.

In the absence of dedicated official scrutiny of Washington’s spending in Ukraine, The Grayzone has produced an independent audit of US tax dollar allocation in the country.

Among the many troubling contracts we discovered was a $4.25 million payment from the Pentagon to a military diving contractor that a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee has described as a “fraudulent company.” The US government asserts the payment covered the company’s delivery of explosives equipment to Ukraine.

So how exactly was that money put to use? And why has Congress so far refused to implement any program to track these shady weapons deals?

Unfortunately, the “justification” for contracts like these often consists of just a brief paragraph — or worse, a single sentence. Little little information is available that documents precisely how the funds were spent down to the dollar and item.

Beneficiaries of USAID’s Ukraine aid: Polish NATO lobbyists, a private equity firm, rural Kenyans, a TV station in Toronto

USAID awarded $21.8 billion

to Ukraine throughout fiscal years 2022 and 2023, roughly 41 percent of the 53.4 billion it spent during that period. Mysteriously, a portion of USAID funding earmarked for Kiev was sent to Kenya and Ethiopia via other agencies, with the award description stating projects in Africa were “partially funded with response funds and Ukraine supplemental funds.”

USAID sent $4.5 billion to Ukraine via the World Bank to pay off Kiev’s debt and fund various social programs, including government pensions. USAID made a total of $21 billion worth of direct payments to the World Bank in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 (9.1 Billion and 11.9 Billion respectively), more money than all of the funding Washington sent to the bank between fiscal years 2008 and 2021 combined. The $4.5 billion allocated for Ukraine funded programs directed by the bank’s International Development Association and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

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2023 06 28 06 13

USAID supplied a $1 billion grant to the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to subsidize projects “Ukraine cannot fund at this time.”

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2023 06 28 06 14

USAID has supplied $20 million to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees” since February 2020. Recipients include a Polish think tank called the Casimir Pulaski Foundation, a Toronto-based Ukrainian TV channel, a collection of Ukrainian “anti-corruption” organizations, and other groups listed in the screenshot below. These awards were issued on top of $26 million worth of funds USAID sent these groups between 2016 and the February 2022 war escalation.

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2023 06 28 06 cx14

USAID allocated $500,000 for the Casimir Pulaski Foundation in 2023 to fund a program dedicated to “advanc[ing] U.S. foreign policy objectives by supporting economic growth, agriculture and trade; global health; and democracy, conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance” in Ukraine. The funds were earmarked “to strengthen the International Center for Ukrainian Victory (ICUV) initiative in implementing international advocacy campaigns to keep high levels of international solidarity with Ukraine.”

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2023 06 28 06 1cx4

USAID’s support arrived on top of a $74,788

subaward the State Department granted to the Casimir Pulaski Foundation in June 2022 to “build capacity and policy formulating capabilities of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory (ICUV) and assisting Ukrainian civil society based in Poland.”

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2023 06 28 06 1fd5

According to their own so-called “Peace Manifesto,” the ICUV’s top priority is to admit Ukraine into NATO, a move that former US diplomats from George Kennan to Jack Matlock to Henry Kissinger and even current CIA director William Burns have described as a major provocation against Russia.

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2023 06 28 06 15
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USAID sent $3 million to the World Health Organization

(WHO) in 2022 “to improve health outcomes in drought affected areas in Ethiopia.” The description stated, “partially funded with response funds and Ukraine Supplemental Funds.”

USAID sent 30.9 million to Chemonics International, Inc. for the “Ukraine confidence building initiative (UCBI) 4. A private, for-profit aid contractor, Chemonics’ founder said he launched the company to “have my own CIA.” The Grayzone has documented Chemonics’ role in delivering US government funding and supplies to the Syrian White Helmets, which served as the propaganda wing of the Al Qaeda-tied armed opposition. Chemonics previously reaped a massive windfall

from the US occupation of Afghanistan, raking in as much as $600 million from USAID.

USAID sent $20.7 million to PACT, INC. for “USAID Ukraine’s public health system recovery and resilience activity and will strengthen the Government of Ukraine (GOU) capacity to address COVID-19 and other public health threats, sustain health services during a crisis, and protect the health of all Ukrainians including vulnerable and marginalized populations. According to its 2022 impact statement [PDF

], “In Ukraine, Pact’s work empowers citizens to push for transparent and democratic governance, advances gender equality and human rights for women and girls, and accelerates efforts to achieve HIV epidemic control.” The contractor’s work contributed to “172 people increas[ing] their net income,” according to Pact.

USAID sent $25 million to Horizon Capital Growth Fund IV

, a “leading private equity firm in emerging Europe, via the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), “to back high-growth tech and export-oriented [Small and Medium Sized Enterprises] succeeding globally, based on platforms in Ukraine and Moldova.”

USAID sent 7.6 million to UNICEF IDA

for emergency nutrition response in ASALs (Arid and Semi-Arid Lands) in Kenya. The description stated, “partially funded with response funds and Ukraine Supplemental Funds”

USAID sent $1.2 million to University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc.

located in Atlanta, GA to “support humanitarian information management through geographic information systems, data analytics and visualizations”. Ukraine was listed as the place of performance.

The Pentagon sponsors diving contractor with “history of fraud” to send mysterious explosives to Ukraine

The Department of Homeland Security sent 5.48 million to Gravois Aluminum Boats LLC

on June 8, 2021 for the following purpose: “PROCUREMENT OF TWO 38-FOOT FULL CABIN RESPONSE BOATS, FOUR 38-FOOT CENTER CONSOLE RESPONSE BOATS, TRAILERS, SPARE PARTS, AND TRAINING AS REQUIRED UNDER FMS LOA DB-P-LCL FOR THE COUNTRY OF UKRAINE.”

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2023 06 28 06 17

The Department of Defense has transferred 4.75 Million to Atlantic Diving Supply, Inc. as of February 3, 2023 for “PRO SAPPER AND EOD EQUIPMENT [CONTRACTING SQUADRON] UKRAINE” and “Marine lifesaving and Diving Equipment.”

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2023 06 28 06 1it7

Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and sapper equipment is exclusively used to blow things up or clean up explosives. And Atlantic Diving Supply

is a military contractor originally founded to provide tactical gear to Navy SEAL divers.

When a company like this is tasked with a highly specific delivery of explosives gear to any foreign nation, including Ukraine, it should prompt questions about the mission, particularly when US intelligence is blaming Ukraine’s military for attacking the Nord Stream pipelines without the knowledge of President Volodymyr Zelensky. (The payment date does not necessarily correlate with the date of delivery from the vendor; in other words, the equipment could have been delivered at a prior date.)

Luke Hillier, the founder of Atlantic Diving Supply, paid a $20 million settlement in 2019 to resolve charges that he defrauded the Pentagon by falsely claiming his company was a small business. Atlantic Diving is consistently listed as one of the top 25 largest military contractors in the country.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1362433588793380871&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fchinaworldleader.quora.com%2F%3F__ni__%3D0%26__tiids__%3D116011215%252C116010521%252C116010501%252C116010292%252C116010014%252C116007326%252C116007097%252C116006641%252C116005874%252C116005798%252C116004988%252C116002755%252C116002739%252C116000677%252C116000421%252C115999767%252C115998252%252C115994358%252C115993793%252C115993338%252C115992454%252C115991652%252C115991143%252C115991033%252C115988169%252C115985403%252C115984456%252C115984461%252C115982693%252C115982038%252C115980841%252C115979472%252C115978751%26__filter__%3Dall%26__nsrc__%3Dnotif_page%26__sncid__%3D41161125960%23anchor&sessionId=6a56fa8f326c7cdea064dc1c4393ff29b07cd102&siteScreenName=Quora&theme=light&widgetsVersion=aaf4084522e3a%3A1674595607486&width=550px

In 2021, Hillier raked in a massive $33 billion contract under the same program, prompting fresh accusations of fraud. This pattern of malfeasance prompted a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to bluntly denounce Atlantic Diving as a “fraudulent company.”

Hillier currently owns a $13 million mega-yacht in the Cayman Islands, $24 million worth of beachfront property in Hawaii, and two Bahamas-based companies with murky operations, according to the Project on Government Oversight

.

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2023 06 28 06 18

Atlantic Diving Supply founder Luke Hillier living his best life

The Department of Defense has paid 4.9 Million to BAE Systems GCS International as of September 12, 2022 for “UKRAINE LCS LW 155 SPARES” and “guns over 155mm through 200mm”. In Navy terminology, LCS means “Littoral Combat Ship,” while LW refers to the lightweight gun. And “155 SPARES” refers to the gun mounted on the ship’s main battery off the bow.

So what is the exact purpose of the LCS LW 155mm gun spares, why were they given to Ukraine, and where are they now? Is there a tracking mechanism in place to know where they are and how they’re being used?

Washington funnels cash to a private equity firm, Georgian finance corporation, a ‘private entrepreneur’ via Ukraine aid

US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) sent $25 million to Horizon Capital Growth Fund IV , a “leading private equity firm in emerging Europe, “to back high-growth tech and export-oriented [Small and Medium Sized Enterprises] succeeding globally, based on platforms in Ukraine and Moldova.”

US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) sent $1.5 million to the Gazelle Fund LP, another private equity firm, to relocate Ukrainian businesses to Georgia. Georgia does not border Ukraine, nor is it a primary location for Ukrainian refugee resettlement.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent $882,291 to a single individual described as an “private entrepreneur” in exchange for “overseas technical assistance program support services.” The private entrepreneur listed, Igor Lavreniuk, serves as the Program Coordinator for USAID’s Competitive Markets Program according to his LinkedIn.

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2023 06 28 06 18h

The National Science Foundation sent 1.3 million to University of Illinois for faculty and curricular development in remote sensing. The place of performance is listed as Ukraine.

The Department of State has paid 8.3 million to Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to help “refugees from Ukraine meet their essential needs during initial displacement.” According to SpendingUS.gov, Catholic Relief Services is listed as having received a total of 657 million from the State Department in 2021, 5.7 billion since 2008 and 670 million during the last 12 months

.

Sponsoring “democracy” at Americans’ expense

Along with the blowback from their government’s gratuitous sanctions policy against Russia and other official enemies, Americans are feeling the impact of this overseas spending spree at grocery stores, gas stations, and everywhere in between. Meanwhile, rising generations are not only struggling with historic inflation, but concerns that Medicare and Social Security will be insolvent in the near future.

Washington and Europe have insisted that the flood of aid to Ukraine is essential to defending democracy against the existential threat of an authoritarian Russia. This framing is designed to shut down all debate by casting anyone who questions the ballooning price tag as fundamentally anti-American — if you are against funding the West’s proxy war with a nuclear power, you oppose the very ideals that define our nation.

Yet our inspection of US government spending in Ukraine demonstrates that Washington has prioritized its supposed fight for “democracy” abroad over the well-being of the American people.

As the war drags on, lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham have marketed military aid to Ukraine in increasingly grim terms. As the senator boasted

during a recent trip to Kiev, “The Russians are dying…it’s the best money we’ve ever spent.” Meanwhile, Congress has rejected any mechanism that would guarantee transparency on the billions sent to Kiev, and shunned a war powers debate over the US military’s presence on the Ukrainian battlefield.

President Joseph Biden, for his part, has pledged that official Washington will support Kiev “as long as it takes.” As the potential for blowback grows from Western pressure to push Ukraine into NATO, and a nuclear-armed Moscow is backed into an existential fight for its survival, while economic powers including China gradually decouple from the Western financial system, Americans can only wonder how much will this war cost them when it is finally over.

FIRST TIME HEARING Brad Paisley – He Didn’t Have To Be *TEARS*

Pennsylvania Dutch Apple Butter

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2023 06 28 06 24

Ingredients

  • 3 quarts sweet cider
  • 8 pounds ripe, well-flavored apples
  • 2 1/2 cups brown sugar, firmly packed
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon allspice
  • 2 teaspoons cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions

  1. Cook cider over high heat, uncovered, about 30 minutes or until it is reduced to half.
  2. Wash, quarter and core unpeeled apples. Add to cider, and cook over low heat until very tender. Stir frequently. Work apple mixture through a sieve, returning the puree to the kettle. Stir in sugar, all the spices, and salt. Cook over very low heat, stirring almost continuously, until mixture thickens.
  3. Pour into sterilized pint jars and seal securely.

Makes 4 jars.

First Time Hearing Jay Chou (feat. Fei Yu-ching) “Far Away” Reaction

How To Plant Propaganda: “Putin has been weakened. Russia is crumbling.”

On Sunday the U.S.Secretary of State went on four morning shows to play the same distinct melody over and over again:

Secretary Antony J. Blinken With Margaret Brennan of CBS Face the Nation

SECRETARY BLINKEN: And it was a direct challenge to Putin’s authority. So this raises profound questions. It shows real cracks. We can’t speculate or know exactly where that’s going to go. We do know that Putin has a lot more to answer for in the weeks and months ahead.

SECRETARY BLINKEN: These create more cracks in the Russian façade, and those cracks were already profound. Economically, militarily, its standing in the world – all of those things have been dramatically diminished by Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. He’s managed to bring Europe together. He’s managed to bring NATO together. He’s managed to get Europe to move off of Russian energy. He’s managed to alienate Ukrainians and unite Ukraine at the same time. So across the board this has been a strategic failure. Now you introduce into that profound internal divisions, and there are lots of questions he’s going to have to answer in the weeks ahead.

Secretary Antony J. Blinken With Chuck Todd of NBC Meet The Press

SECRETARY BLINKEN: … So I think we’ve seen more cracks emerge in the Russian facade. It is too soon to tell exactly where they go and when they get there. But certainly we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead.

This is just the latest chapter in a book of failure that Putin has written for himself and for Russia. Economically, militarily, its standing in the world – all of things have plummeted. We have a united NATO that’s stronger than ever before, a Europe that is weaning itself off of Russian energy, Ukraine that Putin has managed to alienate and unite at the same time. Now, with trouble brewing from within, this, as I said, just adds more questions that he has to find answers for.

Secretary Antony J. Blinken With Dana Bash of CNN State of the Union

SECRETARY BLINKEN: But we can say this. First of all, what we’ve seen is extraordinary, and I think you see cracks emerge that weren’t there before

We’ve seen this aggression against Ukraine become a strategic failure across the board. Russia is weaker economically, militarily. Its standing around the world has plummeted. It’s managed to get Europeans off of Russian energy. It’s managed to unite and strengthen NATO with new members and a stronger Alliance. It’s managed to alienate from Russia and unite together Ukraine in ways that it’s never been before. This is just an added chapter to a very, very bad book that Putin has written for Russia.

Secretary Antony J. Blinken With Jonathan Karl of ABC This Week

SECRETARY BLINKEN: But I think we can say this much: First, we’ve seen some very serious cracks emerge.

But we’ve seen, I think, lots of different cracks that have emerged in the conduct of this aggression, because everything Putin has tried to accomplish, the opposite has happened. Russia is weaker economically. It’s weaker militarily. Its standing in the world has plummeted. It’s managed to strengthen and unite NATO. It’s managed to alienate and unite Ukrainians. It’s managed to get Europe off of dependence on Russian energy.

In piece after piece, issue after issue, what Putin has tried to prevent, he’s managed to precipitate. And Russia’s standing is vastly diminished as a result. Now, add to that internal dissention. Again, we can’t speculate on where this goes. We have to remain and we are focused on Ukraine, but it certainly raises new questions that he’s going to have to address.

The very same (false) talking points, repeated over and over again, are a sure sign of lies and an organized propaganda campaign.

For the record. Progozhin was all alone in his mutiny attempt. Not one element of the Russian government or civil society joint him in his ride. So where are the cracks? There are none. Also Russia’s military is now larger and better equipped then before the war. Russia’s economy is fine and growing. Its standing in the world has increased.

But Blinken’s propaganda works well because the U.S. media are trained to pick up any sheet of music an administration hands out and to sing its tune over and over again.

I could quote dozens of participants in that game to make that point. But the Washington Posts has made it easier for me when it asked eight of its columnists to comment on the issues. All but one, a neocon who wants to see more action, repeat Blinken’s message: “Putin has been weakened. Russia is crumbling.”

Opinion What happened in Russia — and what happens next? Our columnists weigh in.

David Von Drehle: Even failed coups have consequences

Putin evidently had no more confidence than Prigozhin as to the outcome of the clash. Rather than test the loyalty and strength of government forces to crush the uprising, the Russian leader grabbed the first exit he was offered — a sign of weakness that might invite another attempt. … The bad news: A weakened Russia has weakened leaders and is spinning out of control. Putin has taken his country into a disaster, and there is no one in sight to save it.

Max Boot: Prigozhin has made Putin’s weakness clear to everyone

Putin, has now had his own legitimacy undermined by the revolt of Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mercenaries. Whether the damage is fatal remains to be determined. … Even if Prigozhin is gone, the discontent he has revealed will remain an Achilles’ heel for Putin.

David Ignatius: After dodging the bullet, Putin will need to show he’s in control

Putin’s vulnerabilities were vividly on display last weekend, but so were his uncanny survival skills. He got inside Prigozhin’s conspiratorial plot and stopped it. … Putin will need to show that he’s in command now, after this near-death experience. That’s the bad news for Ukraine and Russia both.

Eugene Robinson: Putin is likely to survive this crisis

The revolt by the mercenary butcher Prigozhin did reveal Putin’s regime to be more brittle than it had appeared from afar.

Charles Lane: Prigozhin is the only Russian to publicly speak the truth

Vaclav Havel insisted that truth still exercised a mysterious, but latent, power.

It can unexpectedly “issue forth … in something visible: a real political act or event, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest, a sharp conflict inside an apparently monolithic power structure, or simply an irrepressible transformation in the social and intellectual climate,” Havel wrote. “And since all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a thick crust of lies, it is never quite clear when the proverbial last straw will fall, or what that straw will be.”

Spy, oligarch, warlord — Prigozhin was an unlikely candidate to confirm Havel’s prophecy. But in a way, he did.

Jason Willick: Chances for escalation in Ukraine have gone up

Some observers might be overstating Putin’s weakness — he did suppress the mutiny quickly, after all — but the spectacle has clearly dented his image of control.

Josh Rogin: Prigozhin’s failed gambit is an opportunity for the West

Now that the Kremlin can no longer pretend Wagner is a separate entity, Russian government and defense officials must also be held accountable for Wagner’s worldwide crimes, which include credible allegations of mass murder, torture, rape and other atrocities.

Megan McArdle: Turmoil in Russia shows the fragility of illiberalism

Nominally, Putin controls a massive army, a substantial police force and a population that returned him to office in 2018 with a resounding 77 percent of the vote. But when push came to shove, those same folks were indifferent between him and a murderous warlord — or, at least, didn’t care enough about the distinction to risk getting shot. Putin survived, but the risk to his regime has risen now that it is clear how little actual support he has.

The overall tone: Putin did not fight the loon Prigozhin but found a peaceful solution. This shows that he is weak.

This bears a question. If eight columnists at one paper come to the very same (but false) conclusion, just issued in different words, why hire and pay all eight of them? Clearly, one would suffice.

Oh, that would show a lack diversity? The religious believe in individualism where all humans must differ – but for the opinions they are allowed to espouse?

Posted by b on June 27, 2023 at 15:43 UTC | Permalink

Rap Fans React to The Cult- She Sells Sanctuary REACTION

Having participated in the 2019 Hong Kong riots, can I still go to mainland China?

Use of your HK residency card might cause some problems for you. You will not have the same kind of treatment that you have grown accustomed to.

Oh, of course, the Chinese will smile and be so very polite. But, a “black mark” is a interruption of normal process, and will require an override by upper management.

Of course you can apply for a visa.

[1] If you are denied that visa, accept that reality. That reality is one of a perpetual “outsider” that will not be given the chance for redemption. If so, then you fucked up BIG TIME. Nothing worse than “missing the bus” for the global future.

[2] If you are granted that visa, you must accept the reality that you will be monitored absolutely. The duration of the monitoring will be at least ten years, and if you apply for work, there will be limitations on your applications. Certainly the housekeeping, and janitorial professions will probably be open to you, but forget about any skilled positions.

You made a very BIG and BAD MISTAKE.

But there’s always hope for redemption. If you can prove that you are reformed, you have a chance.

Finally…

If you do enter China, and you decide to break a law, or participate in NED sponsored color revolution activities, your fate will sealed (and very horrible). Ask the two-timers from HK that participated in the Shanghai protest last year. They will never leave China.

Don’t be like them.

FIRST REACTION! Wild Cherry – Play That Funky Music SHOCKED! THEY WHITE?

How can I raise a bilingual baby that speaks both Chinese and English?

Answered by MM. -MM

I have a young daughter in Kindergarten.

  • I speak English to her.
  • My wife speaks Chinese to her.

She speaks fluent Baby-Chinese, and completely understands my English. However, the only time that she uses English is when she is MAD. When she is angry, that is when she spouts off in English. And lordy, it’s a sight to behold.

At home, she watches a mix of Chinese and English age-appropriate shows. And she attends Kindergarten, Dance, and boxing classes all in Chinese.

Yes. She is absolutely bilingual.

Jay Chou – Fearless Official Music Video|Reaction

What is your opinion on China’s more militarized coast guard?

Starting last night and into today, Beidu is reporting that China has laid out defined rules on violation of Chinese air space and sea lanes. No longer will China issue a verbal warning to planes to leave, or for ships to exit.

They now are authorized to fire weapons with the intent to kill and destroy the intruder(s).

My opinion is that…

  • This follows the North Korean model of engagement. Which is why the United States avoids flying into to North Korea, but happily pushes into China’s.
  • This is a direct result of [1] the Canadian / USA naval transit in the Taiwan strait, and [2] the Spy Plane violations of air space. Now, if those events were to reoccur, there would be two sunk Naval vessels, and one destroyed spy plane.
  • Never the less, the rules are going to be violated by the United States. The American “leadership” are just itching for a war. Like I have repeatedly stated, “stupid beyond comprehension”.
  • People are going to die. No way to avoid this result.

WOW!| FIRST TIME HEARING Tears For Fears – Sowing The Seed Of Love REACTION

How serious is Western propaganda against China compare to China‘s propaganda?

Western media and political propaganda works very much to China’s advantage.

Chinese strategy ever since the time of Sun Tzu is based on deception, and namely on making the enemy underestimate China.

This means that the more the west thinks that they are ahead of China, the more they underestimate China, and the more China hides its true strength, the better it is for China.

This means that if the Americans think that they will defeat China in the end because of American exceptionalism, and because the US is the city on the hill shining the bright light of freedom and democracy, the better it is for China.

This means that in the end, if China strikes, it will strike to kill.

There will not be any of that Russian pussyfooting around in Ukraine in the early stages of the war which Russia did, and which ended in failure.

@ A MASTERPIECE!!! Emotional Reaction to CRANBERRIES – ZOMBIE | Difficult to Get Over This

What are the unexpected and interesting travelling experiences you have had?

Back in 2007 I had gone to Russia. Being an African American woman in braids, I pretty much stand out over there. I even had a police officer ask to see my passport because, well, there’s not a lot of black people there, and those that are there are usually European and African descent.

So we were visiting a type of flea market in Moscow to shop for souvenirs. I only know three or four Russian words, so I did my best to bargain (but it helped to have Russian students in our group translating for us).

This vendor suddenly stared grabbing my hand joyfully and kissing my hand and arm! He was saying something like “krasivaya” or something like that.

He was pointing to my arm and I realized he was enamored with the color of my skin.

One the students (or another vendor helping him, I’m not sure), knew English and translated for me, “He says, “You’re beautiful.”

It dawned on me he had never seen a black woman before.

That actually amused me —- I mean, who knew that, considering all the crap black people have put up with because of our skin color, having dark skin would elicit such a positive response?

@ THIS IS FIRE!!! THE CULT – FIRE WOMAN (REACTION)

Should we congratulate EM Jaishankar for his honesty? He recently said that India is inferior to China in every way.

Yep

Absolutely

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main qimg df9a4fac3eb29a74fdfea38a27dc9093

His message was simple

China is too strong for India

It’s a simple message but 90% of Indians won’t agree

They simply won’t admit what Jaishankar admits

India can’t pick fights with China


Stupid to say India is exactly like China

That’s coping and it’s embarrassing

Stupider to say China manipulates it’s GDP and in reality it’s much smaller

That’s worse coping and it’s even more embarrassing

Jaishankar simply gave a dose of reality

That China is impossible to take on today by India in any sphere

Education, Technology, Diplomacy, War, Economy, Industry — They dominate in every one of these over us.


Nothing embarrassing here

China once was exactly like this compared to the US

They saw the US as advanced and ahead and decided to build themselves and develop themselves to reach that goal

We should do the same

Jaishankar did

Others?

Nope

The Average lunkhead still thinks somehow India is a superpower and that India can do this and that and Modiji is a god in disguise


Just read Quora answers and see how many people even acknowledge China is ahead of India without a “But…”

The Realist says

China is way ahead of India

India must slog and slog and stop lying, see their weaknesses and identify them and rectify them

How many Realists do you see?

Every one adds their own “BUT” that includes Tiananmen Square and a bunch of lies about the CPC gleaned from Western media


Jaishankar is a realist and that’s good

THIS WAS SO GOOD!.| FIRST TIME HEARING Tears for Fears – Everybody Wants To Rule The World REACTION

Have you ever purchased a home from an owner who left their belongings behind?

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2023 06 28 10 23

My parents built a cottage on Loon Lake in Ontario in 1965, Mum and I spent many happy summers there while Dad came up on weekends. Mum died in 1983 at age 60. Dad couldn’t stand going there anymore because “there was too much of Mum in it” so he sold it (with my knowledge and blessing) in 1986 fully furnished to include dishes, linens, two boats – everything. Apparently this is quite normal in that marketplace and situation.

Fast-forward to 2004; I took my wife and four sons to a rental cottage a couple lakes away. We took a boat trip to show the boys where I grew up. Fortunately the owner was there so we moved the boat over toward the boathouse (both boats were still there) where I turned off our boat and said, “My parents built this cottage when I was 10 years old.” His immediate response was, “Oh, you’re a Kuhs!” I was amazed. Not only were he and his wife the purchasers but they had owned the cottage – still named Cry of the Loon – for 17 years and he came up with our fairly odd name so quickly. They gave us the “grand tour”, Mum’s cottage was over 90% unchanged from the last day I saw it over 20 years before. Not a dry eye in the house!

We have lived on the upper Chesapeake Bay for 35 years so there’s no animosity.

Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive FIRST TIME HEARING THIS!

What does the U.S. have that China doesn’t to become a superpower? What can China do to surpass the U.S. as a superpower? How long will this take?

China isn’t in a race to be better than the US or to surpass the US.

The Chinese are in a race to become the best version of themselves after being poor and politically divided for so long.

The problem is that when Chinese say this to Americans; US politicians and western politicians tend to think that the Chinese are lying to them, when in fact, the Chinese are not.

This means that the fate and destiny of the US is in the hands of the Americans themselves, not in the hands of the Chinese.

Americans have done great things in the past, and if they work hard and apply themselves, they can do great things again, such as landing men on the moon, and defeating diseases like polio.

To do this, Americans would have to give up some bad habits, and apply themselves the same way the Chinese have in the past forty years.

If the US competed with China this way, the world would become a better place because all of humanity would benefit.

Reaction To “Simple Minds Someone Somewhere In Summertime Live 1983” THE WOLF HUNTERZ Jon and Dolly

How do you interpret Secretary Blinken’s statement on re-establishing dialogue with China?

I don’t. I don’t interpret it at all because it is not sincere, either way. No sooner than Blinken met with Xi Jinping, Biden called Xi a dictator and Blinken quoted more foolishness trying to justify arms sales to Taiwan. The U.S. is not capable or interested in following China’s conditions. There is no sincerity. It is always speaking with a forked tongue out of both side of the mouth with my country. Don’t be surprised. His visit was all an elaborate show on the world stage.

On a positive note, China chewed him a new backside, so I’d say it was a win for China.

WERE SHOOK! | FIRST TIME HEARING Patsy Cline – Crazy REACTION

UPDATED 10:39 AM EDT — Russian Presidential Fleet Plane Enroute to Washington DC – Evacuating Diplomats?

World Hal Turner 27 June 2023

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2023 06 28 10 30

An aircraft from the Russian Presidential fleet is presently on its way from Moscow to Washington, DC.  It is now feared this plane is coming to evacuate Russian Diplomats prior to . . . well . . . what __could be__ the start of a war.

As of 6:16 AM Eastern US Time, the aircraft has left air space which is tracked by radar, and is now over the Atlantic Ocean being tracked by Satellite:

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2023 06 28 10 31

No word yet from anyone why this plane is coming to the USA.

The Russian Federation maintains Consular Offices in three locations in the U.S., Washington, DC is its main Embassy.  In New York City and in Houston, are Consulate offices.

Main Russian Embassy:  2650 Wisconsin Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20007

Consulate New York City:  9 E 91st St, New York, NY 10128

Consulate Houston, TX:  1333 West Loop S Ste 1300, Houston, TX 77027

Folks in an around those cities may wish to take a drive by, and see if there are any obvious signs that staff are evacuating, or if there is dense smoke coming out of a chimney indicating the burning of documents.

 

BELARUS TO COMBAT ALERT

Belarusian President Lukashenko said that he has given orders to bring the army to full combat readiness against the backdrop of the events in Russia.

“If Russia collapses, we will remain under the rubble, we will all die” he said.

‘The threat of a new global conflict has never been as close as it is today.’“Once again, they are trying to blow up our country, our entire region, to disorient people. Shake up the situation by any means and, under this noise, impose your own rules, establish your own order.

An order in which there will no longer be either our countries or people.”

 

UPDATE 10:39 AM EDT —

The Russian Foreign Ministry has commented on this plane:

“A Russian plane is on its way to the United States to evacuate diplomats ordered to leave the country by US authorities, Zakharova said in her Telegram channel.According to the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, it is not a question of expulsion, but of restrictions on operations created by Washington.”

@ I DISCOVERED THE BEST SONG EVER! | Ram Jam – Black Betty (REACTION!!!)

All Sources inside Russia Have Gone “Dark” – Largest Submarine Sails with Poseidon Nuclear Torpedo

World Hal Turner 26 June 2023

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2023 06 28 10 32

A very troubling situation has developed inside Russia this morning, Monday, June 26, 2023.  All my intel sources have either gone dark or told me they have to go dark immediately.  Apparently ANYONE who expressed support for the Prigozhin Rebellion is being rounded-up and/or turned off violently.

More interestingly, Russia’s largest submarine, the “Belgorad” (K-329), set sail from its Arctic port in Severodvinsk, along with a support ship “Akademik Aleksandrov.”

This Support ship is associated with testing the “Poseidon” Intercontinental Nuclear-Powered Nuclear-Armed Autonomous Torpedo.

The sailing of the two vessels, together, plus other signs observed, may indicate that a Poseidon test launch is imminent.

The question becomes, is it a test or will it be live?

The Poseidon torpedo is autonomous.  It can be pre-programmed to travel almost anywhere in the world, silently, take up position off a coastline at a depth of 1-2 miles, and wait, undetected and undetectable.   

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2023 06 28 10 33 1

At the pre-programmed time, it can detonate its scalable 100 MEGATON nuclear torpedo, creating a radioactive tsunami that takes out the entire coastline of an adversary.  In some areas, the tsunami would come ashore as a 1500 foot tall wave of radioactive water, knocking down entire cities, and leaving them covered in a radioactive flood that would make the area uninhabitable for decades.

The submarine carries SIX such Poseidon torpedos.

It could place one off each coast of the UK, travel across the Atlantic, place one or more off the US East Coast, the travel down to the Gulf of Mexico, place another, and leave the US West Coast to typical Russian submarines.

None of us would have any idea at all that anything was wrong and then, suddenly, BOOM, all of them go off at once.  The US and UK would be completely crippled immediately, wiping out NATO.

Bad Company – Rock Steady REACTION

What steps can the US take to protect its research and intellectual property from being stolen by China through civilian research partnerships?

Don’t worry. The US Government and its loyal allies are already doing an absolutely fabulous job of this.

Chinese universities ranked above Oxbridge, Caltech in quality research

Xie Xiaoliang is latest Chinese scientist to give up US citizenship

China overtakes United States on contribution to research in Nature Index

British chair professor joins China’s hypersonic programme

Award-winning Chinese mathematician returns to Peking University from US

Chinese researchers in US ‘eyeing medical teaching jobs at University of Hong Kong’

China leads US in global competition for key emerging technology: study

China trounces U.S. in AI research output and quality

meanwhile back home…

Half of Americans think young people don’t pursue STEM because it is too hard

The Best Reactions to Black Sabbath “War Pigs” Compilation

A world where China is Number One

Kerry Brown’s new book notes folly of projecting Western values and a Manichean worldview onto China’s very different civilization and tradition

by Scott Foster June 28, 2023

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2023 06 29 15 15

The three key things about China we need to keep in mind are that

  • it is strong, not weak;
  • it has become a sea power; and
  • its values are both different from those of the West and not necessarily what Europe and America think they are.

“When we are discussing anything to do with the People’s Republic of China in the contemporary context, therefore, these three factors are good places to start,” writes Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese Studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London, in the first chapter of his new book, “China Incorporated: The Politics of a World Where China is Number One.”

The title reminds us of Japan Inc, the words used to describe Japan’s combination of industrial policy and mercantilism since the 1980s; and “Japan as Number One: Lessons for America”, the popular book by Ezra Vogel published in 1999. Brown’s book even has a chapter entitled “The Enigma of Chinese Power,” which echoes Karel Van Wolferen’s “The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation,” published in 1990.

But the book does not explain Chinese industrial and trade policies; it does not tell us what the West can learn from China’s rapid modernization; and it is certainly not about what the writer imagines is the hollow political center of a great economic power.

Rather, Brown examines the more important issue of how Western misunderstanding of Chinese thinking about the role of government and international relations has magnified the problem of dealing with a different civilization that has grown big and strong enough to reject our criticism and push back.

The misunderstanding has historical, cultural and political roots but fundamentally it can be attributed to the universalist, Manichean (good vs evil) worldview of what Brown refers to as the Enlightenment West – and the projection of that attitude onto a civilization that doesn’t share the same history.

“The distinctiveness of the intellectual and cultural history of inhabitants of the space now occupied by the People’s Republic of China is undeniable,” Brown writes. “In terms of language, modes of governance, economic behavior, and fundamental view about how the world operates and how society should be shaped, the Chinese tradition is a long, complex and sometimes (but not always) contrasting one to that which has created the Europe and North America of today.”

He continues, “The Western European proclivity has been to maintain the conviction, at least until recent decades, that there is a final, truthful, unifying vision of the world.”

On the other hand,

In the Chinese world where a notion of harmony in the abstract was privileged, the focus was on accepting different kinds of views and convictions for different spaces and occasions….

A syncretic worldview is the result – one that in the twenty-first century continues to puzzle and fascinate because of the ability of modern Chinese to place capitalism next to socialism while seeming under Xi Jinping to be proud of Confucianism as well as having as many as 200 million Buddhists in various sects and about half that number of Christians.

That description runs head on into democratically elected politicians’ abhorrence of one-party dictatorship and American alarm over perceived or potential subversion by Confucius Institutes, Huawei or any other Chinese organization under the sway of the Communist Party.

Brown does not dwell on the nature of the Communist Party, but points out that Confucius Institutes have often been their own worst enemies and that Huawei, due to its leading position in the telecommunications industry and the legal environment in which it operates, will never be free of suspicion.

After all, China’s National Intelligence Law stipulates that “all organizations and citizens shall support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with the law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.”

Combined with the rapid growth of its military power, including the ever-longer reach of its navy, the globe-spanning infrastructure investments of the Belt and Road Initiative, allegations of hacking and the hot-button issues of the South China Sea, Taiwan and Xinjiang, this makes China for “a large number of American and European politicians … not just a problem, but the problem.”

The problem with this problem is its ambiguity. The Chinese military has never used more than a fraction of its power. No clear evidence of surveillance via Chinese telecom equipment has been publicly provided. The motives and capabilities are there, but there is no smoking gun.

As for the Belt and Road, which critics regard as a combination of debt-trap diplomacy and strategic threat, Brown asks, “How much longer do we have to wait till we see Beijing’s hand fully exposed? What if, in the end, it really was all mainly commercial?”

For centuries, the West has been working to remake the world in its own image. Its Enlightenment mind finds it logical to conclude that the Chinese are trying to do the same, regardless of China’s doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other countries (rejected as duplicitous on the one hand and as unprincipled support for dictators on the other) and its cultural exclusiveness.

Western military and national security officials default to the worst-case scenario, while many politicians favor a simple narrative of evil communists oppressing the good Chinese people. But, as Brown writes, “one thing stands out – the complexity of the issues China poses, just being itself, and doing the kinds of things it does as an actor of its size and reach.

“Complexity alone is a vast problem, and one the Enlightenment West in particular, with its love of orderly frameworks and all-embracing tidy theories, clearly abhors. China upsets the epistemology of the West – it violates notions of universalism being universal.”

If economic prosperity either is contingent on the existence of multi-party government and Western style rule of law or inevitably brings these in its wake, this leads to:

  • China explanation number one – We are right; China is undertaking a huge con, and
  • China explanation number two – China has to democratize.

Otherwise, China will collapse. But it hasn’t collapsed since Gordon Chang’s book “The Coming Collapse of China” was published in 2001 and Brown now doesn’t expect it to collapse anytime soon. Rather, within a decade, “the world’s largest economy could well be an Asian country under a Communist government.”

If and when that happens, the West is likely to be a sore loser, angry and frustrated. In fact, it already is doing everything it can to slow China down and prevent that outcome.

At the same time, China

is certainly more frustrated and irritated than ever before at the outside world. This has reached such a level of intensity that there has been a formal policy response: “Dual Circulation” – a strategy in many Chinese people’s eyes to simply get whingeing, moaning, sore losing Westerners with their toxic social media, their crazy political systems, their moralizing and ignorance and arrogance, off China’s back.

Dual Circulation is an economic policy that puts priority on domestic consumption (internal circulation) while remaining open to foreign trade and investment (external circulation). Dependence on exports is to be reduced while technological independence is achieved through innovation. It is an answer to Western sanctions and protectionism, a sort of reverse decoupling or de-risking that is less ideological and more pragmatic.

Brown hopes that pragmatism will also take hold in the West. He states that, “Whether we embrace or have distaste toward China as it is politically today, we have no choice but to recognize that it is there and that it is as it is. We will not all wake up tomorrow, like protagonists in some fantasy film, and find China is no longer there, or that it has magically transformed to become somewhere we actually like and feel close to. We can console ourselves with the associated thought that exactly the same in reverse applies to China.”

There is a lot more to this book, which is informed by the author’s 30 years’ experience of life in China, where he has worked in education, in business and as a diplomat. He is the author of more than 20 books on China.

WHO DEY!!.. Guns N Roses Welcome – To The Jungle | FIRST TIME HEARING REACTION

China is ready to turn the tables on the US

32 Billion Chip Orders Canceled, Chinese Enterprise Installs First Domestic Lithography Machine!

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2023 06 28 11 07

The Chinese chip market is undergoing a transformation, and under US chip restriction rules, China has embarked on a self-sufficient development path. Not only has it set a goal of achieving a 70% self-sufficiency rate in chips and producing more chips domestically, but Shanghai Microelectronics is also increasing its research and development of lithography machines, and Chinese enterprises have moved in the first domestically-produced lithography machine.

China is the world’s largest chip market and spends a considerable amount on imports in the field of integrated circuits each year, especially for high-end chips imported to meet the needs of a range of consumer electronics products such as smartphones, computers, and tablets.

Chinese chip manufacturer SMIC is vigorously expanding its 12-inch wafer capacity for mature chips and significantly increasing its 28 nanometers chip shipments since China has its own domestically produced chips, its dependence on imported chips is not as great.

In the first quarter of this year China’s Imports of integrated circuits totaled 108 billion pieces a year on year, a decrease of 22.9 percent equivalent to a reduction of 32 billion chip imports from last year, a total of 32 billion chip orders were canceled, making it harder for overseas chip Giants to make big profits, more signs indicate that China’s chip industry’s self-sufficiency ability is constantly improving in the first quarter of this year.

In the 1st quarter of this year Chinese Enterprises moved in the first domestically produced lithography machine the advanced packaging lithography machine from Shanghai microelectronics was moved in by Chinese Enterprise conscience for a production line project.

Shanghai microelectronics is the only company in China that has mastered the production of complete lithography machines in the front-end lithography machine field.

Shanghai microelectronics has excellent capabilities and can produce 2.5 D to 3D Advanced packaging lithography machines perhaps many people do not know that there is a difference between front end and back end lithography machines.

The front end and back end lithography machines are two different steps in the semiconductor chip manufacturing process. Front-end lithography machines are mainly used to make lithographic masks in the chip manufacturing process that is to project the design chip patterns onto the Silicon wafer to form a pattern. While the back-end lithography machines are used to etch the patterns on the Silicon wafer to form the chip circuit component.

Front-end lithography machines usually require higher resolution and precision while back-end lithography machines require higher processing speed and stronger etching ability.

Relatively speaking the manufacturing difficulty of front-end lithography machines is greater, in that they require High Precision Optical systems, Precision mechanical systems and high stability control systems and require knowledge in multiple disciplines such as physics, Optics and Mechanics.

ASML can achieve high-end processes of five nanometers and below in the front-end lithography machine field and the most advanced EUV lithography machines are in short supply. The mass-produced process of domestic lithography machines in the front-end field is 90 nanometers and there is still a lot of room for improvement in the future.

The domestically produced lithography machine moved in by Chinese Enterprises belongs to the back end and is mainly used to meet the demand for chip Packaging.

Nevertheless advanced packaging is still of great significance for domestic chips this is because advanced packaging technology can improve chip performance power consumption and reliability while also reducing chip size and cost.

The use of advanced packaging technology can enhance the market competitiveness of chips attract more customers and partners and promote the development of China’s domestic chip industry therefore doing well in advanced packaging is of great significance for the development of domestic chips.

The frequent restrictions on Chinese Chips by the United States will only accelerate China’s self-sufficiency. China canceled 32 billion chip Imports and Chinese Enterprises moved in the first domestically produced lithography machine which is the best proof some foreign media have stated that Bill Gates is right.

Bill Gates has long said that the United States can never stop China from having powerful chips and restrictions will only make China self-sufficient while the United States will also lose many high-paying jobs.

The fact is indeed as Bill Gates said China’s chip industry shows signs of self-sufficiency while the U.S technology industry laid off 130 000 people from January to may this year with more than 410 000 layoffs nationwide, if the United States does not stop its restrictive measures it will only affect the profits of U.S companies and the number of layoffs will continue to swell.

Last week:

Go China go!

2023 06 28 11 08
2023 06 28 11 08

Baby Metal- Catch Me If You Can || Goth Reacts

This chip genius returned to China from the U.S. and created the “Starlight China Core Project!”

In today’s Information age the importance of chips is beyond doubt but as the crystallization of the world’s top technology the technical difficulty of Chip research and development is also very high.

China started late in the field of chips and many core Technologies and underlying Technologies are in the hands of the United States.

If China wants to independently develop chips it must start from the basics in addition to the difficulty of research and development the supply chain of the chip industry is also a problem just because chip manufacturing requires multiple steps such as photolithography etching cleaning and precipitation more than 10 kinds of semiconductor equipment are needed as well as chip design chip packaging and testing and other links.

The US just wants to slow down the development of Chinese Chips by excluding China from the world supply chain it’s just that this move by the United States is undoubtedly an invalid behavior and it will only lead to Market chaos in the semiconductor industry.

In any case if you want to develop Chinese Chips you need to rely on Independent research and development only by mastering the core technology can you avoid being stuck.

Many Enterprises and talents in China have devoted themselves to the field of chips and have made many important progress for the development of chips in China among them Deng Han and his Starlight China chip project are an important part of the history of China’s chip development.

It can even be said that China’s first self-developed chip came from Deng jonghan.

The young genius Deng jonghan left the US and returned to China. Deng Han who was born in 1968 not only founded vimicro group but also is an academician of the Chinese Academy of engineering and the commander-in-chief of the Starlight China chip project.

He has contributed a lot to the development of China’s chips and developed China’s first chip with independent property rights.

Since he was a teenager Deng Han has been full of curiosity an exploratory Spirit towards the world after he was admitted to the Department of Earth and space science at the University of Science and Technology of China Deng Han’s Talent was gradually discovered when he was in college Deng Han also pointed out the professor’s thinking deviation in solving problems and because of this he was favored by the professor and joined the project team after Deng junghan entered the University of Barkley he successively obtained a master’s degree in physics a doctorate in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in economics and management after graduation Deng Han founded an integrated circuit company in the Silicon Valley of the United States

Entrepreneurship was a great success and the market value of the company he founded once reached 115 million U.S dollars however at the invitation of chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology Deng Han resolutely gave up his company in the United States and returned to China to engage in chip research and development.

After returning to China Deng Han founded vimicro and started the Starlight China chip project officially entering the field of Chip research and development the Prelude to the rise of China’s chips has begun during the chip research and development process Deng Han’s conditions were very difficult and he could only conduct research and development in the warehouse and once faced the risk of capital chain rupture but in the face of many difficulties Deng jonghan did not give up lightly but faced up to the difficulties and solved one problem after another.

On March 11 2001 under the unremitting efforts of Deng Han and his R D team vimicro launched China’s first chip with independent property rights Ching Guang number one Starlight number one is a multimedia chip and it is also a large-scale integrated circuit chip.

After that vimicro launched the Starlight series chips into the market and successfully listed them in the United States which made the reputation of Chinese Chips and opened the Prelude to the rise of Chinese Chips himself became an academician of the Chinese Academy of engineering and a foreign academician of the American Academy of engineering it is not difficult to see from this information that Deng Han has provided a major boost to the rise of China’s chips.

With the development of time many top Chinese technology companies have entered the chip track one after another according to statistics from 2019 to the present the total of 40 000 companies in China have entered the chip related field it can be said that China’s chips are developing flourish and gradually rise with the support of national policies and the large investment of some top companies Chinese Chips have gradually made major breakthroughs in many fields such as huawei’s self-developed Korean chips and EDA industrial software which are also at the advanced level in the world.

Shanghai microelectronics has gradually come to the Forefront of the world and semiconductor Fields such as etching machines and lithography machines and can reach the top five in the world in terms of market share now China’s chip industry can be said to be flourishing and the entire chip industry chain has a Chinese layout but China should always keep in mind that it was Deng Han and his Starlight China chip project that opened the Prelude to the rise of China’s chips.

SQUEEZE – Tempted (By The Fruit Of Another) REACTION

What is the best thing that has ever happened to you for being nice?

I was going to a conference in Las Vegas to attend a huge convention. Hotel rooms were scarce, but I had made my reservations far in advance.

I got to the hotel after midnight after a long flight, and had just unpacked and was about to get ready for bed when the door opened. A weary-eyed man glared at me and showed me his room assignment. Same as mine. We had been double-booked by accident.

The man got on the room phone and started screaming at the assistant manager, demanding that he be given the room. The intruder then gave the phone to me, and the manager asked if I minded being moved. I did, of course, but given the white-hot rage of my accidental roommate, I said gently, “I understand. These things happen. I’ll take another room.”

I repacked my clothes and soon the manager arrived, full of apologies, and took my bag. The man who had “won” the room smiled triumphantly.

And then the manager took me to one of the hotel’s biggest suites, which had four bedrooms, a kitchen stocked with liquor and fruit, and a killer view of Vegas. It was worthy of Sinatra or Elvis, and it was all mine for the week-long stay, at the same price as the standard room I booked, the manager said.

I was dazzled. When I asked the manager why I was being given such a glorious upgrade, he explained that it was the only room left in the hotel. He had to make a quick decision as to who would get it, “and lady,” he said, “you were the nice one.”

The 70’s were a VIBE! 💃🏽🕺🏽| KC and the Sunshine Band – I’m Your Boogie Man [REACTION!]

What have you found on the Internet today that made you smile?

I’ve always had this almost irrational dislike for influencers. They’re just about the most self-obsessed, vain, terrible and entitled crowd of creatures alive on this earth. So whenever one of them gets his or her comeuppance, I’m quite pleased.

2023 06 28 11 34
2023 06 28 11 34

Apparently there’s some law where if someone steals just a small amount, you get a warning of a ‘slap on the wrist’ style of punishment. And that’s all they do to you. Whereas if someone steals a larger amount of value, a store can actually press charges and get the thief in serious trouble. Hence the store waited, patiently, as they wrote down all the things the little kleptomaniac was taking. Compiled a nice, neat, comprehensive list of all items stolen over the years…

…and called the cops. Who sent her to jail. These are the same entitled influencers who demand to eat at a discount in restaurants “because they will give a shout out on their channel” and act offended when the bill comes in and they have to pay the full amount. Nothing puts a smile on my face quicker than seeing such a person get arrested.

Rainbow “Gates of Babylon” REACTION & ANALYSIS by Vocal Coach / Opera Singer

Have you ever lost any respect for someone instantly?

Are you ready to hear a story about a friend I had for 32 years and would have done anything for, whom I met when I was 5 years old?

When I was about 5 I was walking around the corner of my street, it was only 3 houses down, to my friend mark’s house which was right after the culdesac immediately after the corner. As the further of the two end houses came into view, in the yard I saw a boy my age getting beat up by a slightly older boy, so I immediately ran to defend the boy. Next thing I knew, I was on my back on the asphalt with the older boy on top of me strangling me and bashing the back of my head against the asphalt. I remember the mother of the boy I tried to save yelling and the kid beating the crap out of me ran off.

next I’m scream crying as I run to my house and my mom sees the blood on the back of my head and we head over to the house of who beat me up and my mom verbally bitch slapped that woman and her kid. Never had any issues with him again.

anyway, the boy I tried to save became my best friend. As time went on, I started to notice that his mother was awful to him, constantly telling him “why can’t you be more like Joey?” and every time I went over there, his mom always made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with Peter Pan peanut butter and a glass of milk, always. I still love that peanut butter.

A short time later, my friend started calling me asking “Joey, can you please come over to my house and ask my mom for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” my friend did this because his mom would punish him by not feeding him when he got in trouble and my friend knew that his mom would always feed me, and so I would give my friend the sandwich and milk so he could eat.

This is just the beginning of the absolute madness that was this kid’s life.

His mom hated him and he knew it and she constantly told him that she wished he was like me, I was super polite and calm because I had to be or I got my butt whooped at my house. For our entire childhood I was always trying to suggest to my friend how he might want to try behaving because I thought that if he started acting like me, his mom wouldn’t hate him so much… my friend never listened and, in fact, he always did the opposite of what I suggested and he would cause chaos and get in trouble that I would always be there to help him out of.

I was always there for him, failed relationships, finding out that his mom was his adopted mom, when his real mom died from cancer, when he was homeless after becoming a methhead, the birth of his daughter, when the mother of his daughter left them… I was there for every single trauma he suffered, I was there for him…

I had been married 12 years and my son had been showing symptoms of autism and my then wife couldn’t handle that her son had autism so she left our boys and I and for the first time, I desperately needed a friend.

My friend ignored my phone calls for almost two months before he finally answered his phone and agreed to meet me so I could talk to him.

when I get to my friend’s girlfriend’s apartment, he was out of work and living with his girlfriend, I was devastated still and after I walked into the apartment and asked my friend what he has been doing that was so important he couldn’t answer my phone calls…

my friend said “I’m glad your life is falling apart, because now we are even.” He then walked outside on the porch to smoke and closed the glass door behind him.

I was shocked. I looked at his girlfriend who was right there when he said it and I asked “did he just say I’m glad your life is falling apart because now we are even?”

his girlfriend, who was also shocked said “yeah” after staring at me, or through me for a few seconds.

at this moment my friend was on his phone outside and that’s when I realized, that for my entire life, the friend who I was always trying to get back on his feet, the guy who I believed had an awesome potential, the guy I tried to train to become a martial arts instructor at my school but he quit before he became a black belt and he’d been trying to get me to quit, this entire time he had been hoping that my life had gone wrong because he was so envious of what I had… turns out, what my friend was doing on his phone was messaging my soon to be ex wife and trying to hook up with her…

for the entire 32 years I knew him, I never once wished harm or misfortune, in fact, this is the moment I realized that I’ve never once wished ill on anyone, despite the explosive drunken abuse I suffered from my family… I always wished that they would get better and stop destroying their lives and everyone’s lives around them. It was this moment that I have ever felt true hatred towards someone, this was the first time that I felt like if I ever see him again, I will beat his face in until he is mush.

I still wish him the best, I would never wish harm upon someone, but to this day, I know that if I see him, I won’t be able to stop myself…

I hope that answers your question… it was rough writing this, it brought up some seriously painful feelings. I’m getting tears…

Singer Reacts to BABYMETAL – Gimme chocolate!! (OFFICIAL) (ギミチョコ) *FIRST TIME*

Netanyahu set to visit China next month, likely to annoy Biden

Biden has made clear he won’t invite Israel’s premier in the near future.

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2023 06 28 11 39

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to visit China next month, signaling growing impatience with Washington, as Beijing increasingly throws its weight around in the region.

While there, the premier is slated to meet with President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders. Advanced contacts have been held in recent days between the two leaders’ offices to arrange the visit.

No dates for the trip were given and no plans for a visit have been announced by Jerusalem or Beijing. The Prime Minister’s Office said it had “no comment at present” when contacted. The Chinese embassy in Tel Aviv did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation.

Netanyahu is seeking some kind of assurance from Chinese, sort of an unwritten agreement on the similar lines as Russia with which Israel has strategic understanding involving Iran.

Israel does not want China or North Korea sell Nukes to Iran. It is Israel’s only and a prime concern because Israel is known as one bomb country.

But I think Iran should have nukes, this way there would be peace in the middle east. As it is, Israel has several (nukes) warheads of its own. Deterrence is the name of the game.

AC/DC – Highway to Hell – (REACTION!)🤟🏽🔥WE CAN’T BELIEVE IT WAS THEM THE WHOLE TIME‼️

What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?

Back in 1990, I was a Sales manager at a car dealership and was one of the winners of a sales contest for Sales Managers of all the dealers of that make in the Boston District. The bar was pretty low to win this contest and there was no big payoff for winning because I guess they just wanted to show some recognition and get the Sales Managers together to socialize, build communication, and cooperation between the dealerships which were located all over New England.

So we got to spend one night in a nice hotel in Boston, had a nice meal, and everyone received some recognition during the after dinner ceremonies.

But then came the after dinner fun. They gave us about two hours for a “Vegas Night”. Tables were set up just like in a casino: Blackjack tables, Roulette tables, and one Craps table.

The rules were they gave each of us $200 in chips that we could use to make bets. Whatever amount of chips that we had left at the end would be cashed in for real money.

Now, In the few years previous to that night, I had been to Las Vegas and Atlantic City a few times and found that Craps was my favorite game. I had played it enough and studied it enough that I was very familiar with the odds for every bet on the table and knew how to play the game.

So as soon as I got my $200, I headed for the craps table. Surprisingly, I was the only one who went to the Craps table.

And then, even more surprisingly, the person who was in charge of the tables came over and said to me and the dealers, “Just to make things simpler, we’ll pay out 2 to 1 on all the numbers bets.”

I don’t know why he said that. Maybe the dealers were inexperienced and he was trying to make it easier for them so they wouldn’t have to try to figure out the different odds for the different numbers, or maybe he figured that there was only one player at the table so not much damage could be done.

But as soon as he said that, I knew what he meant . . . and bells went off in my head . . . I knew immediately what I was going to do!

A Numbers bet is where you put a bet on one of the numbers: 4–5–6–8–9–10. You are betting that when the dice are rolled, they are going to add up to the number you bet on before they total 7. If the dice total 7, you lose. Different numbers normally pay different odds.

For instance, the 6 and the 8 have the best odds of coming up, but they normally pay the lowest odds because of that. Normally if you make a $6 bet on the 6 or 8, and you win, you would win $7.

What happened here was they changed the payout on that very same bet to $12. . . . Which drastically changed the odds in my favor. All I had to was make a pass line bet, roll the dice, then keep betting on the 6 and 8. The odds were in my favor!

What I didn’t do was say anything out loud. I didn’t want anyone rethinking that decision to change the odds.

So I started winning right away. But it didn’t look like much at first because I started with just $200. But as the money started coming in, I slowly raised my bets and the money started coming in faster.

After awhile, I was still the only player on the table when one of the other Sales Managers walked up and stood next to me at the table. I had previously talked to this guy a few times on the phone at work but didn’t really know him other than that. And then he decided to be chatty. He was started asking questions like, “Do you know how to play this game? I don’t know anything about it. Can you teach me how to play?”

Well, the last thing I needed right then was someone disturbing my concentration on the game. I knew that I only had a limited amount of time to take advantage of this unexpected loophole.

So I turned to him and said, “Listen, put your chips right up here and do exactly what I tell you to do. Don’t ask any questions. Just do it. I’ll explain it all to you later.”

He was kind of taken aback at that and I could see the confusion on his face while he was contemplating what I had just said . . . but then he said, “Okay”.

So I continued doing what I had been doing and started telling him where to place his bets, how much (how many chips) to bet, and what to say to the dealer when he placed a bet. He caught on pretty quick and followed my instructions very well, so I wasn’t slowed down too much, and he started getting more excited when he saw the money starting to roll in.

When the time was up, almost all of the players who played the other games were broke. They had lost their seed money. Very few players had any money left at all.

We were the big winners!

I won just over $3000 and my new best friend won just over $1500. Needless to say, he was ecstatic!

The funniest part was when other Sales Managers that he knew came over and asked him how he did it. His answer was, “I don’t know! All I did was do what he told me to do!”

It was a fun night!

I am so mad I haven’t heard this tribute until now: AC/DC – Back In Black (Official Video)

Where did the term “money laundering” come from?

From laundromats.

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2023 06 28 11 43

A 1920s laundromat

Back in 1920s, gangsters needed some way of showing their money came from legitimate sources. The solution was to invest into laundromats and show them as highly profitable enterprises. The bookeeping standards of the day made it quite easy to show 127 customers used their facilities in a single night, even though they only had 1 paying customer at the time. I will hazard a guess and say the term “money laundering” probably started as a joke.

The term stuck and now the process of showing illicit profits as coming from legitimate business is called “laundering money”.

I legitly cried😭| FIRST TIME HEARING LUCIANO PAVAROTTI – NESSUN DORMA REACTION

Watching these reactions, and reading the text really underlines THE MESSAGE.

What things should I never do?

  • Never (ever) touch someone’s laptop screen with your fingertip.
  • Never do this with someone’s book.
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2023 06 28 11 45

Please use bookmarks. Please.

  • Never take too much interest in someone else’s life, mind your own business.
  • Never believe on these types of Instagram quotes, “People having extraordinary creativity tend to have less sleep at night.” You’ll have less capacity to learn, you need deep sleep for deep insights.
  • Inspiration isn’t imitation. Don’t be a sheep, just because someone else is doing it, doesn’t mean it works for you.
  • “Never deduce that attraction is love.”
  • Never do something stupid just to fulfill your desire, know difference between desire and dream.
  • Don’t speak bitter words when you are angry, regret is unbearable.
  • Don’t rush. Never. If you’re late for office or college, it will make difference of a few seconds at most. Your life is far more valuable.

WHAT A SHOW!! Mötley Crüe – Home Sweet Home REACTION

What are some unknown psychological tricks?

Here are a few psychological tricks that you may find interesting:

1. The Power of Mirroring: Mirroring someone’s body language, gestures, and tone of voice can create a sense of rapport and connection. It can make the other person feel more comfortable and receptive towards you.

2. The Contrast Principle: When presenting options, strategically place a less desirable option before the one you want the person to choose. By comparison, the preferred choice will appear more attractive.

3. The Zeigarnik Effect: This effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. If you want someone to remember something, provide incomplete information or leave a task unfinished.

4. The Foot-in-the-Door Technique: Start with a small request and once the person agrees, follow up with a larger request. People tend to be more likely to comply with the second request if they have already agreed to the first one.

5. The Anchoring Effect: When making a negotiation or presenting a price, start with a higher number to anchor the person’s perception. Subsequently, any lower numbers will appear more reasonable and favorable.

6. The Halo Effect: People tend to associate positive qualities with someone who possesses one admirable trait. For example, if a person is physically attractive, others may assume they are also intelligent or kind.

7. The Primacy and Recency Effect: People tend to remember the first and last items in a list more accurately than those in the middle. When giving a presentation or conveying important information, place key points at the beginning and end for better retention.

8. The Ben Franklin Effect: Ask someone for a small favor or advice. This can create a sense of investment and liking, as people tend to rationalize their actions by thinking they must like the person they helped.

9. The Scarcity Principle: Highlighting limited availability or scarcity of a product or opportunity can increase its perceived value and desirability. People tend to place higher importance on items that are rare or in short supply.

10. The Power of Framing: The way information is presented or framed can significantly influence perception and decision-making. Presenting the same information in a positive or negative light can elicit different responses.

Use these psychological tricks responsibly and ethically, focusing on building positive relationships and improving communication.

@ Dio “Don’t Talk To Strangers” REACTION & ANALYSIS by Vocal Coach / Opera Singer

“I can’t get enough Ronnie James Dio. I hereby further profess that he is my vocal crush, and we’re digging into your next highest requested song “Don’t Talk To Strangers.” This is by far one of my favorite songs of all time. Its message, the vocal runs and how flawlessly Dio brings out that emotion is insanely captivating. He is a god.”

Can the US become a manufacturing power again, or is that just an unrealistic dream?

At the height of the United States being a “Manufacturing Giant”, there were clusters of industrial centers scattered throughout America. This is a fact that most Americans know, but few others understand. The United States was NEVER a homogenized Manufacturing Colossus. Instead, it was a nation that contained “manufacturing areas”.

A “Manufacturing Area” had the following characteristics…

  • Easy access to raw materials (Rail, roads, and canal, or ports)
  • Uninterrupted supply of electricity.
  • Access to water (to cool the machinery)

As these “Manufacturing Areas” evolved, they developed…

  • A series of suppliers (small industries) that served the major factories.
  • Housing for the workers.
  • A network of outlying communities.

Over time, These “Manufacturing Areas” would come and go as technology advanced. For instance, one of the first “Manufacturing Areas” was the Blackstone Valley in Massachusetts. They were big on Buggy Whips, and Corset Hoops. The canals in the Blackstone Valley delivered the products to the ports up and down the New England coastline for distribution to the population centers.

For our purposes, we will omit Blackstone Valley, and instead concentrate in the most recent clusters of “Manufacturing Areas” in the United States. These clusters are all that remains of the industrial might that the United States once was. These clusters were active from the 1930’s through to the 1970’s, with some migratory egress lasting into the 1990’s to places such as “Silicon Valley” and “Industrial Parks” located in the Southeast states.

At that time, the United States had (perhaps) five major “Manufacturing Areas”, and around twenty or so smaller “Manufacturing Areas”. They are all gone now.

The video tours of these areas are very telling…

  • Video tour of Pine Bluff AR (Clothing Hub) found HERE

.Video tour of the supporting towns surrounding Pine Bluff found HERE.Video tour of Jackson, MS (Household and commercial goods) found HERE.Video tour of Gary, IN (Automobile, heavy Industry) found HERE.Video tour of Chester PA (General goods, minor industry) found HERE.Video tour of California in 2023 (Western migration of Industry) found HEREVideo tour of Shreveport, LA (Oil, and light manufacturing) found HEREVideo tour of Pennsylvania (Steel and hard Industry) found HEREVideo tour of Kenningston PA (steel and manufacturing) found HEREVideo tour of Pasadena CA (High Tech Hub) found HEREVideo Tour of Steubenville OH (steel, automotive, and household) found HERE

I can provide many other videos. You take a camera and film yourself driving through these “Manufacturing Areas”. There are many of them, and they all look the same. Zombie empty cities. Ruined buildings, decayed infrastructure, crime, drugs, and many, many abandoned shopping carts.

The very few remaining “Manufacturing Areas” in the United States are very well dispersed. They are in these stand alone mini-clusters called “Industrial Parks”. Most American Industrial Parks house from five to up to twenty companies, and typically consist of an office building and a warehouse. Of those that provide any kinds of manufacturing, they tend to be primarily final assembly stations with people who unpack 40′GP shipping containers, re-box foreign-made items, and slap a “Made in the USA” sticker on them.

For the United States to regain ANY kind of major manufacturing role, it must focus on the basics.

  • Infrastructure. Infrastructure. Infrastructure.
  • laws and regulations that make it easy to create a supplier base to support manufacturing.
  • An educational system that encourages talented, and hard-working personnel.
  • A society that praises merit, fidelity, and an attention to detail.

I argue that of what remains in the United States today, the United States has a long, long way to go towards regaining it’s long lost industrial base. Do not be fooled by charts and figures that say otherwise. Anyone can lie and create bogus nonsensical charts and figures. Go outside yourself and look around.

American industry is dead.

What remains are either “soft industries” such as “Customer Service stations”, “Computer software coding centers”, or a handful of military and high-tech specialists. These types of industry are not providing “much needed” products and services to the United States domestic requirements.

Compared to China…

There is no comparison. China (which is large enough to house five complete United States inside of it) has over 2000 “Manufacturing Areas” supported by an amazing network of perhaps 10,000 smaller communities that provide first and second tier supply. All with everything needed to make, design, ship quality products globally.

So to answer the question; “Can American industry be revived to a point of serious competition against China?”

The answer is YES. But it will require a complete turnover of the American leadership class, a discarding of the American method of governance, a revamp of the American educational system, and a complete rebuilding of America’s infrastructure from the ground up. If the United States were to come to a full and complete screeching halt right now, and focus on this objective, you can see major changes in the “proper direction” with the next twenty years.

Otherwise, forget-about-it.

Ram Jam “Black Betty” Best of Reactions Compilation

Pennsylvania Dutch Brownies

Fudgy Brownies 2
Fudgy Brownies 2

Ingredients

  • 4 tablespoons butter or margarine
  • 1 (1 ounce) square unsweetened chocolate
  • 1/4 cup light molasses
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup plus 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
  • 1 1/8 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease 13 x 9-inch metal baking pan; set aside.
  2. In a 4-quart saucepan, melt butter with chocolate over low heat. Remove saucepan from heat. With wire whisk or fork, stir in molasses, then eggs.
  3. With spoon, stir in flour, ginger, cloves, baking soda, salt, 1 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon just until blended. Spread batter evenly in pan. Bake 15 to 20 minutes, until a wooden pick inserted 2 inches from edge comes out clean.
  4. Meanwhile, in cup, combine remaining 2 teaspoons sugar and 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon; set aside.
  5. Remove pan from oven; immediately sprinkle brownies with cinnamon-sugar mixture. Cool brownies in pan on wire rack at least 2 hours. When cool, cut brownies lengthwise into 3 strips, then cut each strip crosswise into 5 pieces. Cut each piece diagonally in half.

Source: Good Housekeeping Christmas Joys – Hearst Books

@ A Masterpiece! Cranberries – Zombie

So many Africans have been “moved”by this song and video. I guess all the wars in Africa really strike home.

U.S./NATO HQ in Kramatorsk Reportedly “Hit” by Russian Missile(s) – Conflicting Claims and Blame

World Hal Turner 28 June 2023

U.S./NATO HQ in Kramatorsk Reportedly "Hit" by Russian Missile(s) - Conflicting Claims and Blame
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2023 06 28 21 32

Late yesterday, June 27, 2023, reports began FLOODING out of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, that a Hotel/Restaurant had been brutally hit by “Russian” Missiles, and NUMEROUS American-English Speakers — and troops with American Flag patches — could be heard and seen in the aftermath.

Photos and video proved there was, in fact, a missile strike.  Those photos and video also PROVED American troop-type people were hit, some injured, some killed.

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2023 06 28 21 33

Within an hour, Ukraine publicly claimed that innocent children and “American tourists” were the victims. 

“Tourists?” In military uniforms? 

 In an area 30 or so miles from the active front lines that is being shelled almost daily now, after the loss of Bakhmut??

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2023 06 28 21 34

Then, some damning pictures came out showing the remnants of a missile trail in the sky over the hotel, and worse, missile debris on the ground PROVING the missile was a British Storm Shadow missile.    Russians don’t use those . . . .

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2023 06 28 21 35
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This morning, the story has changed quite a bit – TWICE !

First there was a claim that the Ukraine Air Force “accidentally” targeted the hotel.  Well, that might certainly be possible and would explain the Storm Shadow missile debris.   It would also explain the extensive damage – it could, in fact, have been a Russian missile and then a Ukrainian missile by mistake.

But wait, the story changed yet again. 

Word is out this morning that officials are “looking for the people who betrayed the secret meeting taking place, to the Russians.”

Secret meeting? 

With Americans and other NATO troops, under arms and in military uniforms? 

Inside the war zone of Ukraine?

Pass the peas Marge…

China had banned Google, Amazon, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, Discord, WhatsApp, Whisper, and pretty much every single major US website. Then made a Chinese knockoff that gives the CCP complete access. Why should anyone defend TikTok?

China has banned nothing in China and in the world.

Amazon, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, Discord, WhatsApp, Whisper, and pretty much every single major US website refuse to follow the Chinese laws to operate their operations in China, thus they have not been approved by the Chinese laws for these businesses to operate in China.

It is the US who has blocked all the free international media and internet such as the free Russian international media and internet.

As a result, all Americans have been living in their totally isolated, completely censored and lying media. Americans know nothing about the free world, but the US style of democratic nonsense and disinformation.

@ LUCIANO PAVAROTTI sings NESSUN DORMA (Reaction)

Playing around with CrAIyon

OK, so as of late, I have been experimenting with this “new” kind of Artificial Intelligence system. This one takes a sentence, a statement and then generates art from it. It’s fun, cool and quite an amusement. Something that I am just starting to “toy around with”.

2023 04 26 11 11
2023 04 26 11 11

And here’s my first attempt…

First trial

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2023 04 26 11 13

My images

I just screen-shot them…

2023 04 26 11 a16
2023 04 26 11 a16

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2023 04 26 11 16

Second Trial

2023 04 26 11 19
2023 04 26 11 19

The image matrix

2023 04 26 11 20s
2023 04 26 11 20s

2023 04 26 11 20a
2023 04 26 11 20a

Your Turn

Go click on this link to try it yourself…

CrAIyon

Playing around with Stable-diffusion

OK, so as of late, I have been experimenting with this “new” kind of Artificial Intelligence system. This one takes a sentence, a statement and then generates art from it. It’s fun, cool and quite an amusement. Something that I am just starting to “toy around with”.

This is pretty good. Style options are not present, though.

2023 04 26 10 38
2023 04 26 10 38

The first try pictures

4 rabbit
4 rabbit

3 rabbit
3 rabbit

2 rabbit
2 rabbit

1 rabbit
1 rabbit

My second try

2023 04 26 10 42
2023 04 26 10 42

My second try pictures

biff 4
biff 4

biff 3
biff 3

biff 2
biff 2

biff 1
biff 1

My third try

2023 04 26 10 54
2023 04 26 10 54

My pictures from the third try

pres 4
pres 4

pres 3
pres 3

pres 2
pres 2

pres 1
pres 1

My fourth try

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2023 04 26 10 58a

The images

a4
a4

a3
a3

a2
a2

a1
a1

My fifth try

2023 04 26 11 06
2023 04 26 11 06

The images

in 4
in 4

in 3
in 3

in 2
in 2

in 1
in 1

Your Turn

Go click on this link to try it yourself…

Stable-diffusion

Playing around with runwayML

OK, so as of late, I have been experimenting with this “new” kind of Artificial Intelligence system. This one takes a sentence, a statement and then generates art from it. It’s fun, cool and quite an amusement. Something that I am just starting to “toy around with”.

Personally, I do not like the results…

2023 04 25 15 40
2023 04 25 15 40

2023 04 25 15 39
2023 04 25 15 39

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2023 04 25 15 38e

2023 04 25 15 38
2023 04 25 15 38

2023 04 25 15 37
2023 04 25 15 37

2023 04 25 15 36
2023 04 25 15 36

Your Turn

Go click on this link to try it yourself…

RunwayML

Playing around with Dreamstudio.AI

OK, so as of late, I have been experimenting with this “new” kind of Artificial Intelligence system. This one takes a sentence, a statement and then generates art from it. It’s fun, cool and quite an amusement. Something that I am just starting to “toy around with”.

This one takes a little bit of time to figure out and work with, but it’s not that difficult.

You upload a “seeder” image. Blur it to represent the amount of change you want, pick a style. Write a description and the AI does the rest…

2023 04 25 15 10
2023 04 25 15 10

Here’s some examples when I typed in a sentence, and then clicked on the style icon…

I think that it is fun.

3136204005 tomato soup and cheese sandwich xl beta v2 2 2
3136204005 tomato soup and cheese sandwich xl beta v2 2 2

2151311876 tomato soup and cheese sandwich xl beta v2 2 2
2151311876 tomato soup and cheese sandwich xl beta v2 2 2

Now, let’s put a completely different image in the system. Everything else stays the same…

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2023 04 25 15 16

Some notes

This is part of a much larger “package” of tools for image manipulation and what-not. All in all it holds promise.

Go HERE to see the full “toolbox”.

Money issues

You need to purchase “credits’ to continue using this product.

It shows promise, but playing around for ten minutes isn’t enough time for me to judge it’s worth and utility.

I probably will get back to it and play around some more. Just not right now. I have others that I will evaluate before then.

2023 04 25 15 22
2023 04 25 15 22

Your Turn

Go click on this link to try it yourself…

DreamstudioAI

Playing around with Pixlr-X

OK, so as of late, I have been experimenting with this “new” kind of Artificial Intelligence system. This one takes a sentence, a statement and then generates art from it. It’s fun, cool and quite an amusement. Something that I am just starting to “toy around with”.

2023 04 25 11 35
2023 04 25 11 35

Here’s some examples when I typed in a sentence, and then clicked on the style icon…

I think that it is fun.

Some of my art renderings…

I just set up a brief sentence (I only have five tries), and then conducted variations…

2023 04 25 11 33y
2023 04 25 11 33y

2023 04 25 11 33b
2023 04 25 11 33b

2023 04 25 11 33s
2023 04 25 11 33s

2023 04 25 11 32re
2023 04 25 11 32re

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2023 04 25 11 32

2023 04 25 11 31
2023 04 25 11 31

2023 04 25 11 31a
2023 04 25 11 31a

Your Turn

Go click on this link to try it yourself…

Pixlr-X

Playing around with Dream by Wombo

OK, so as of late, I have been experimenting with this “new” kind of Artificial Intelligence system. This one takes a sentence, a statement and then generates art from it. It’s fun, cool and quite an amusement. Something that I am just starting to “toy around with”.

The capabilities of artificial intelligence just keep expanding, and this includes different kinds of art. We’re going to introduce you to an app that lets you create digital images with the help of AI technology.

Dream by Wombo is available for mobile and online, but the former has more to offer. Learn how to use this AI artwork mobile app and what you can expect from it in just a few steps.

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2023 04 25 12 05

Here’s some examples when I typed in a sentence, and then clicked on the style icon…

2023 04 25 12 08
2023 04 25 12 08

I think that it is fun.

Now, I did all of this on my computer. But you don’t need to. You can download the APP.

Summary on this…

It’s good.

It’s free, though you can buy a premium subscription.

It produces basic, recognizable art. The art style is cute / childish / basic illustration. Suitable for graphics, presentations and children’s books.

It makes nice renderings of cats and kittens. And after all, if you cannot render a kitty, then what is your value?

APP

This app is perfect for decorating books, websites, walls, or custom playlist art without hiring a professional illustrator or graphic designer. It’s fast and easy.

Whether you’re on your phone or computer, Dream by Wombo’s AI can quickly produce stunning images in an artistic style of your choice with a simple prompt.

The browser-based version is simple enough to use and has a Mint as NFT option, while it lets you download or buy a print of your AI artwork. The mobile app, however, puts more tools at your disposal.

We’re going to show you how to use Dream by Wombo on your smartphone or tablet, step by step. But first, make sure you have the app.

Download: Dream by Wombo for AndroidiOS (Free)

Some of my art renderings…

dream TradingCard37
dream TradingCard37

dream TradingCard13
dream TradingCard13

dream TradingCard12
dream TradingCard12

dream TradingCard26
dream TradingCard26

dream TradingCard25
dream TradingCard25

dream TradingCard24
dream TradingCard24

dream TradingCard23
dream TradingCard23

dream TradingCard22
dream TradingCard22

dream TradingCard21
dream TradingCard21

dream TradingCard20
dream TradingCard20

dream TradingCard19
dream TradingCard19

dream TradingCard18
dream TradingCard18

dream TradingCard17
dream TradingCard17

dream TradingCard16
dream TradingCard16

dream TradingCard30
dream TradingCard30

dream TradingCard36
dream TradingCard36

dream TradingCard35
dream TradingCard35

dream TradingCard34
dream TradingCard34

dream TradingCard33
dream TradingCard33

dream TradingCard32
dream TradingCard32

dream TradingCard31
dream TradingCard31

dream TradingCard29
dream TradingCard29

dream TradingCard28
dream TradingCard28

dream TradingCard15
dream TradingCard15

dream TradingCard14
dream TradingCard14

dream TradingCard11
dream TradingCard11

dream TradingCard10
dream TradingCard10

dream TradingCard9
dream TradingCard9

dream TradingCard8
dream TradingCard8

dream TradingCard7
dream TradingCard7

dream TradingCard6
dream TradingCard6

dream TradingCard5
dream TradingCard5

dream TradingCard40
dream TradingCard40

dream TradingCard39
dream TradingCard39

dream TradingCard38
dream TradingCard38

dream TradingCard4
dream TradingCard4

dream TradingCard3
dream TradingCard3

dream TradingCard2
dream TradingCard2

dream TradingCard1
dream TradingCard1

dream TradingCard
dream TradingCard

Your Turn

Go click on this link to try it yourself…

Dream

Playing around with Nightcafe

OK, so as of late, I have been experimenting with this “new” kind of Artificial Intelligence system. This one takes a sentence, a statement and then generates art from it. It’s fun, cool and quite an amusement. Something that I am just starting to “toy around with”.

2023 04 25 16 02
2023 04 25 16 02

My first attempt

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2023 04 25 16 05

Alteration 1

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2023 04 25 16 07

The results

mWh6BvWZ0AmfFCN7Xq5O 4 rjccz
mWh6BvWZ0AmfFCN7Xq5O 4 rjccz

mWh6BvWZ0AmfFCN7Xq5O 3 oc4qj
mWh6BvWZ0AmfFCN7Xq5O 3 oc4qj

mWh6BvWZ0AmfFCN7Xq5O 1 1miqo
mWh6BvWZ0AmfFCN7Xq5O 1 1miqo

mWh6BvWZ0AmfFCN7Xq5O grid
mWh6BvWZ0AmfFCN7Xq5O grid

Alteration 2

Rabbits instead of cats. Same style generator.

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2023 04 25 16 13

The results

NTl4T9TmgngkShCwLqfF 4 7cmm7
NTl4T9TmgngkShCwLqfF 4 7cmm7

NTl4T9TmgngkShCwLqfF 3 agt6a
NTl4T9TmgngkShCwLqfF 3 agt6a

NTl4T9TmgngkShCwLqfF 2 ipm8q
NTl4T9TmgngkShCwLqfF 2 ipm8q

NTl4T9TmgngkShCwLqfF 1 p0t5n
NTl4T9TmgngkShCwLqfF 1 p0t5n

NTl4T9TmgngkShCwLqfF grid
NTl4T9TmgngkShCwLqfF grid

Alteration 3

Changed the preset to Anime.

2023 04 25 16 15
2023 04 25 16 15

Your Turn

Go click on this link to try it yourself…

NightCafe

Playing around with DeepAI

OK, so as of late, I have been experimenting with this “new” kind of Artificial Intelligence system. This one takes a sentence, a statement and then generates art from it. It’s fun, cool and quite an amusement. Something that I am just starting to “toy around with”.

2023 04 24 21 22
2023 04 24 21 22

DeepAI offers an easy-to-use text-to-image generator that produces decent results with the right prompts. There are many image styles on offer, and almost half of those are free.

The free ones include basic text-to-image, cute creatures, fantasy worlds, cyberpunk, old, renaissance painting, and abstract, among a few others.

All of these styles produce images according to that theme, pretty much like the other tools on this list. However, among these styles, there is a logo generator as well that you can use to produce interesting logo ideas. It’s particularly useful for artists who are looking for inspiration to build on or to overcome a block.

Here’s some examples when I typed in a sentence, and then clicked on the style icon…

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2023 04 24 20 12

Pretty good.

You need to play with it, because if you use the wrong feed generation icon, your images won’t look “right”.

Here, I used the architectural icon for a house-based sentence…

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2023 04 24 21 01

I think that it is fun.

Some of my art renderings…

This one tuned out pretty good…

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Your Turn

Go click on this link to try it yourself…

DeepAI

My cat says fuck you

Actually, that’s a name of an “art series”.

...that's the thing... all this money going to the military and banking complex means eroding living standards for the same citizens.. 

the destruction of the fabric that holds a country together - medical system, gov't funding for any number of programs that benefit people - have to be removed so that more can be spent on the military.. 

oh and forget about this global economy where all boats rise.. no.. cordon it off into areas of exchange that remove all the so called bad guys... 

i hope this bites the west in the ass really hard to the point more people wake up to this bullshit.. 

i am not counting on anyone waking up though, or if they do - probably too late...

Posted by: james | Jan 31 2023 18:24 utc | 11

Today we are going to have some irreverent fun. Lot’s of cussing, profanity, and other anti-social behaviors. We are “letting loose”.


When I was in second grade, we were living in our new home in Monroe, CT. (Which by the way, ended up turning into a multi-million dollar house, in a very exclusive neighborhood. Too bad we sold the house, for a job in Pittsburgh. But it was the 1960’s, and my dad couldn’t peer into a crystal ball for the future…)

It was Easter.

My bad brought a cute white rabbit home. And all of us kids played with it all day. And of course, it being Easter, we had tons of hard-boiled Easter eggs, and chocolate. And of course, being kids, we fed that rabbit a long stream of our chocolate.

What we did not know, being all of seven or eight years old, and what our parents did not know, is that while we (as humans) could eat chocolate, little animals such as a dogs, cats and rabbits could not.

The next day; Monday, we woke up to a dead rabbit.

And there, on Monday morning, we had a little memorial service and buried the rabbit in our back yard.

The End.


Let’s get on with today’s installment…

This Instagram Account Creates Sinister Parodies of Kid’s Cooks To Ruin Your Childhood Memories

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Thomas Columbo is the creator of Digital Meddle. He alters vintage children’s books through the use Photoshop, adding the text in order to give the stories a different meaning with a comedic effect. Something that drives his passion for this unique art form is people’s disapproving comments, although overall his work is well received.

More: Instagram

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Egyptian FM delivered a Blinkie message to Russia

Lavrov: Blinken’s message on Ukraine contains only calls on Russia to ‘quit and stop’

From HERE

“It is reported that [yesterday] Jens Stoltenberg said in one of his speeches that Russia must lose, must be defeated, and that the West cannot afford to let Ukraine lose, because in that case the West will lose and the whole world will lose”

MOSCOW, January 31. /TASS/. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s message on Ukraine, handed over by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, contains only calls on Russia to “quit and stop,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a media conference following talks with his Egyptian counterpart on Tuesday.

Mr. Minister, while answering the previous question, said that he had conveyed a certain message from Secretary of State Blinken, who was recently on a visit to Cairo. I confirm this,” Lavrov said, answering a question from TASS. “Russia is ready to listen to any serious proposal that is aimed at resolving the current situation in its comprehensive context.”

“We have had one more message Egypt’s foreign minister has handed over to us to the effect that Russia should stop, that Russia should quit, and then everything will be fine,” Lavrov went on to say, adding that at the same time “Blinken omitted something.”

“The other part of the message, showing the true interest of the United States and the West, was stated by NATO Secretary General Mr. [Jens] Stoltenberg, when he was in the Republic of Korea yesterday,” Lavrov noted. “He said in one of his speeches that Russia must lose, must be defeated, and that the West cannot afford to let Ukraine lose, because in that case, he argued, the West will lose and the whole world will lose.” Stoltenberg, as Lavrov pointed out, “took the liberty of speaking not only on behalf of the North Atlantic Alliance, but also on behalf of all other countries of the world.”[.] (emphasis added)

Certainly, that message will not move 1 millimeter for talks.
3 Strikes: the West cheated at Minsk. Theft of RF’s foreign reserves. “Terror attack” on NordStream 1, 2 and last week very publicly bragged about the dastardly act.

Wake up. It will take decades to restore Confidence, Trust, Credibility.
Russia will soldier on (pun intended) until ALL its goals for de-militarizing and de-NATOfying to its 1993 borders are achieved.

Posted by: Likklemore | Jan 31 2023 18:39 utc | 19

Common School Blueberry Muffins

IMG 7463 682x1024 1
IMG 7463 682×1024 1

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup blueberries
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup melted butter

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease tins.
  2. Sift together dry ingredients; add blueberries to flour mixture and stir gently.
  3. Mix egg, milk and butter together. Add to flour mixture; mix only enough to moisten flour. Do not beat. Fill tins 3/4 full.
  4. Bake for 25 minutes.

Size Matters – On A U.S. Ground Intervention In Ukraine

A European financial research company has sent me one of their quarterly research letters. It is a ‘contrarian review of political and military ramifications’ of the war in Ukraine. It analyzes ‘winners and losers’ of the war.

It is contrarian only in the sense that it counters the false views of ‘western’ mainstream media with reality. The losers of the war are all on the ‘western’ side with the only two winners being the owners of the U.S. defense industry and Russia.

I was sent the courtesy copy because, as the company writes, the discussions at Moon of Alabama were “immensely helpful” in forming their view.

Note to the authors: You are welcome.

I will not quote from the paper as it seems to be a somewhat confidential business product. But I will steal two graphics from it that will help to understand the size of the war in Ukraine and how it will NOT end.

There have been theories that Poland or some U.S. led coalition force would intervene with their troops on the ground in Ukraine to ‘kick the Russians out’.

The two graphics though dispel any hope for such an operation.

The following is an operational map of Desert Storm. The U.S. led operation in spring 1991 to kick Iraq out of Kuwait.

 

iukr1
iukr1

biggerIt took the U.S. some nine month to assemble a forces of some 700,000 U.S. and 250,000 allied troops with all their equipment. Iraq had an estimated 650,000 troops in the theater. The U.S. first created total air superiority by destroying Iraq’s fighter aircraft and air defense forces. With that done it took only 100 hours of ground operation to destroy a third of the Iraqi forces. The rest of the Iraqi army retreated under fire towards Baghdad.

There are some 550,000 Russian troops in and around Ukraine. A hypothetical operation to ‘kick Russia out’ would thereby have about the same size as Desert Storm. But the geographic dimensions differ drastically.

The following is an operational map of Desert Storm from above overlaid in scale on the map of Ukraine.

 

iukr2
iukr2

biggerThe map was turned to the left by 90 degree. North is to the left, east at the top and Crimea in the south to the right.

Russia occupies some 87,000 square kilometer of Ukraine. The Desert Storm theater around Kuwait was five times smaller.

A hypothetical U.S. coalition of the size of Desert Storm could probably cross the Dnieper and cut of Crimea. But it could do little more than that. The Donetz and Luhansk oblasts and Crimea itself would still be in Russian hands.

But there are many reasons why no such operation will ever be planned and executed.

  • The U.S. no longer has a force of the size it committed to Desert Storm. Nor do its allies.
  • The U.S. was able to create air superiority in Iraq because it could fly from nearby Saudi airfields and from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. Air superiority in eastern Ukraine could only be achieved with the destruction of long range air-defenses within Russia. The next safe air fields the U.S. could use are in Poland and Romania. No U.S. aircraft carrier will dare to enter the Black Sea. U.S. fighter planes to not have the necessary reach for combat missions in eastern Ukraine.
  • The Ukrainian rail system is by now a mess. It is incapable of moving a large force from the west into east Ukraine.
  • Any attempt to move a large force through Ukraine would be subject to deep battle interdiction by Russian and Belorussian forces.
  • Iraqi equipment was badly maintained and Iraqi forces were barely trained. Russia has a well trained high tech army.

I could go on but you can certainly see the point.

No U.S. ground troops will move into Ukraine. It is ludicrous to think otherwise.

Posted by b on January 30, 2023 at 16:23 UTC | Permalink

Humorous Illustrations Blending Sarcastic Nature and Adopted Cat’s Attitude

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The Internet has been abuzz in recent years with the phenomenon of cats taking over, and now we have one more artist to add to their ranks. @st.aftercigs, an Instagram account with 190K+ followers, gives a whole new dimension to cat appreciation with their bold, humorous artworks inspired by the artist’s own adopted cat.

The artist behind the account expresses the stark contrast between cats’ sassiness, and their ability to be inspirational muses. By blending the artist’s own sarcastic nature with their cat’s grumpy cattitude, a unique and lively art style has been born. The artworks are a great reminder of the many nuanced personalities our cats possess and the joy they can bring to our lives.

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About the USA

The US only engages in direct conflict against a far weaker opponent.

It’s preferred method of controlling other states is to work in the shadows – propaganda and psy ops to turn people against their government, support of extremist factions, manipulation of elections, color revolutions, and sanctions.

All underhanded and sneaky.

The neocons were sure their toolkit would work in Ukraine.

The US government is committed to this as long as it doesn’t have to confront Russia directly.

The US public is committed to this as long as it doesn’t come down to thousands of boys coming back in body bags.

Otherwise it’s one big reality show to entertain.

There are descriptors to be used for people who act like the US acts, none of them complimentary.

Posted by: Mike R | Jan 30 2023 17:08 utc | 19

School Style Sloppy Joes

2023 01 30 21 09
2023 01 30 21 09

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • Chopped onion
  • 1/2 cup ketchup with water to make 3/4 cup
  • 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • Shake of Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 can tomato soup (undiluted)

Instructions

  1. Brown ground beef with onion and drain.
  2. Add other ingredients and simmer until warm through.
  3. Serve over hamburger buns.

Ugly truths about the United States

Ever since the Military coup in November 1963 (President Kennedy Assassination) the United States became a military empire. It is run by wealthy oligarchs associated with the military-industrial complex. By the very nature of this situation, the United States serves the interests of the hidden cabal, and ignores the needs of the citizenry. And it shows.

To keep the system running, the United States must be constantly engaged in war; feeding the military-industrial complex.

The United States, over the decades has become a nation of raw plunder, manipulation, and shadow activities to feed the handful of wealthy oligarchs.

But all that is now coming to an end.

The military empire model that the United States is built upon is not a sustainable model. You can only destroy so much, and steal so much, and pillage so much until limits are reached. Now, with much of the world plundered of it’s materials and products, a new competitor has entered the world; the re-awakened giant dragon; China.

As China flexes its muscles and sharpens it’s claws, other nations are flocking to China for support, aid, assistance and protection. Leaving the corrupt, inept, and tarnished American military to go elsewhere. And the American stature is shrinking as a result.

The smart thing for the hidden leadership to do is to accept the change in global stature and adapt to it. But, that is not what is going on. They wish to clutch onto what they have in some mistaken belief that their plundering, rape, robbery, and theft was ordained by God.

And with this belief is the idea that the United States military can actually fight China, defeat it, and then plunder it like it has so many times in the past.

It’s a fantasy.

The world has changed.

And that is why the United States is constantly trying to provoke a Gulf of Tonkin incident with China over the South China Sea and Taiwan. It is an attempt to change the developing world order back to one when a military dictatorship can rule the world.

royal tomb
royal tomb

Breaking: Ancient Royal Tomb Discovered in Egypt

Egyptian authorities have announced that a never-before-seen royal tomb has been uncovered in Luxor, Egypt, dating back around 3,500 years. Archaeologists believe it belongs to a royal of the 18th Dynasty of Pharaonic Egypt (1550 BC to 1292 BC), but it has not yet been revealed who and what is inside.

Dr. Mustafa Waziri , General Secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the tomb was unearthed on the west bank of the Nile River, where the famous Valley of the Queens is located.

Valley of the Queens

The Valley of the Queens, also known as Biban el-Harim, is a valley in Luxor, Egypt that was used as a necropolis for the wives and children of pharaohs during the 18th, 19th, and 20th dynasties of ancient Egypt. The valley contains around 75 tombs, including the tomb of Nefertari, the wife of Pharaoh Ramses II, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful tombs in the valley. The tombs in the valley are known for their well-preserved paintings and inscriptions, which provide valuable insights into the lives and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians.

location 26
location 26

The location of the newly-discovered tomb on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor. Credit: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

A Royal of the Thutmosid Lineage?

Phys.org reports that Piers Litherland of the University of Cambridge, head of the British research mission, said the tomb could be of a royal wife or princess of Thutmosid lineage.

The Thutmosid pharaohs include some of the most famous kings of ancient Egypt, such as Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amenhotep II, and Tutankhamun. During their reign, the Thutmosid pharaohs expanded the territory of Egypt through military campaigns, built monumental architectural projects such as temples, tombs and statues, and promoted the arts, literature and religion. They also increased the power and wealth of the central government and the royal court. The 18th dynasty was considered a golden age for ancient Egypt and it was the most powerful and prosperous dynasty in the New Kingdom. The significance of this discovery cannot be overstated, as it will shed new light on the cultural heritage of this era.

photo 3
photo 3

A photo taken from inside the entrance of the tomb looking out. The tomb has been secured with a metal gate to prevent looting. Credit: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Damage from Floods

The joint Egyptian-English mission between the Supreme Council for Archaeology and the Modern State Research Foundation of Cambridge University, led by Dr. Fathi Yassin, is continuing its excavation and documentation of the cemetery. However, it is in poor condition due to ancient floods, which filled the tomb with sand and limestone.

Recent discoveries in Egypt are playing a crucial role in reviving the country’s vital tourism industry. The highlight of these efforts is the highly anticipated opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, located at the base of the iconic pyramids.

Top image: The royal tomb discovered in Luxor. Credit: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

By Joanna Gillan

Chart of the week

trade with russia
trade with russia

Thessaloniki Metro Construction Reveals Unimaginable Treasures

Thessaloniki metro 2
Thessaloniki metro 2

The construction of local metro facilities in the ancient Greek port city of Thessaloniki have uncovered a massive stash of thousands of archaeological treasures from different periods of Thessaloniki’s history. This booty includes a  decumanus (an east-west oriented road, one of the primary highways of the time), along with a Byzantine avenue.

Construction 0
Construction 0

Construction site of Thessaloniki’s Metro seen from the inside of a tunnel. (Konstantinos Stampoulis /  CC BY-SA 3.0 GR )

Thessaloniki’s Tryst with Momentous Greek and Roman Heritage

There are architectural remains of many 15th to 17th century buildings built on top of the remains of Hellenistic and Roman buildings – a  nymphaeum, a marble paved square, a bathhouse heated by an underfloor hypocaust system and a large mosaic with intricate geometric patterns. There is even a paved  road with colonnades and a line of Byzantine period shops and workshops. Stunning images of the same have been released by  Attiko Metro SA .

The metro follows the path of the ancient  decumanus, which now serves as the main historical avenue cutting through  Thessaloniki, reported  Arkeo News . The ancient road begins at the famed Golden Gate ( Porta Aurea ), the contemporaneous Vardario Square, all the way to Kassandriotik Gate, known today as Syntrivani Square. Currently, the excavation of Thessaloniki is the largest in northern Greece and covers an area of as much as 20,000 square kilometers (7,722 sq mi).

According to  Arkeonews, over 300,000 artifacts have been uncovered so far, dating to the 4th century BC, excavated from six of the twelve station sites currently under  construction. This figure is likely to increase immensely as the rest of the sites are excavated. The unearthed artifacts are likely to be exhibited at the stations where they were uncovered, as well as two new museums set to be created before the end of the year.

images 4
images 4

The images released of the Thessaloniki metro excavations show the sheer scale of the project. ( Attiko Metro SA )

The Thessaloniki Metro Excavation that Keeps on Giving

Owing to its strategic placement along the Thermaic Gulf of the Aegean Sea, Thessaloniki received a fair bit of human traffic throughout its history. Located in the Macedonian region, it is Greece’s second largest city today and new finds from various phases of its history keep popping up at frequent intervals, including the declaration of Thessaloniki as a “Byzantine Pompeii” during 2013 metro excavations.

In 2012 a pre-Cassandrian small town from the 4th century BC was discovered in Pylaia during excavations of the main line of the metro. It led to an ensuing 31-acre (125,000 sq m) excavation in the area, with part of the city being laid out according to the Hippodamian grid plan – an urban planning system along the line of the great cities of  Macedonia, Olynthos and  Pella.

In 2018, the statue of  Aphrodite was discovered at the  Hagia Sophia  station, named after one of the oldest churches in the city, revealing an entire fountain complex around the area. Meanwhile, a  Roman cemetery  (2nd to 4th century AD) was discovered within the confines of Fleming Station, revealing previously unidentified settlements on the outskirts of ancient  Thessaloniki.

In the same area, a 3 kilometer (1.86 mi) cemetery basilica with mosaic floors was discovered on the site of a previous structure, revealing thousands of funerary monuments from the Hellenistic to Late Antiquity period. The tombs were of all kinds – pit-shaped, box-shaped, pot burials, altars, altar-shaped constructions, single and double vaulted, clay and glass vessels, silver and gold jewelry, and all kinds of coins.

Centuries 0
Centuries 0

Centuries of history has been unearthed thanks to the construction of a metro line in Thessaloniki. ( Attiko Metro SA )

Thessaloniki: A Checkered History of Power and Prestige

These finds are not surprising – after all, Thessaloniki was known as  Symvasilévousa or the co-reigning city of the  Byzantine Empire , alongside  Constantinople. Prior to that too, Thessaloniki had a strong economy and established socio-political structures and institutions, with the greatest development occurring in the second half of the 4th century.

In 315 BC,  Kassandros founded the city, though it was briefly abandoned after the fall of the Kingdom of Macedon in 168 BC. It regained its prestige and importance with the emergence of Rome as a trading hub with a vital highway running through it, known as the Via Egnatia, connecting Byzantium with Dyrrachium.

Thessaloniki reinvented itself as a seat of power away from Rome in the second half of the 5th century AD, after the  fall of Rome  and with the emergence of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, explained  Heritage Daily It was sacked again in 904 AD in a naval attack led by Byzantine converts to Islam led by Leo of Tripoli, and finally passed out of Byzantine hands three centuries later during the  Fourth Crusade .

Top image: Thousands of artifacts and architectural remains have been uncovered during metro excavations in Thessaloniki. Source:  Attiko Metro SA

By Sahir Pandey

What is the (ridiculously named) United States of America doing to ‘knee-cap’ or ‘hamstring’ China’s recovery from Euro-American/Japanese colonial ruination — a recovery which, given China’s share of humanity’s global population, naturally makes it a ‘superpower’? To the end of (to the American consensus) “keeping the Chinese ‘in their place’”?

Everything in their power.

The ‘running total’ ‘bottom line’ return on the (lol) ‘United’ States of America’ effort to handicap the PRC?.

Less. Than. Nothing.

Less than nothing? Yes. Less than nothing. Their every effort has worked to bouy-up China’s good global reputation — and to both justify and grow its defensive resolve.

The American consensus lives in gob-smacking denial re: how near to universal … let’s call it the ‘global antipathy’ towards America is — despite the evidence — and despite how indisputably earned thus reasonable that global contempt is. Perhaps a picture might help. (A long shot … but hey . . .)

Here, to use the American vernacular, is the map of “The New World Order” as of 1/1/2023:

main qimg 31568b8afffb33e0f11cd9ace58d972b pjlq
main qimg 31568b8afffb33e0f11cd9ace58d972b pjlq

Green hue nations are committed members of at the least one China-fostered strategic community. The deeper the green the more such cooperative arrangements.

Blue hue represents nations drinking out of the American kool-aid well. They comprise America, the UK, Australia, Japan, Canada — and (sort of) Mexico. Think ‘5 Eyes’ and ‘AUKUS’ plus Japan.

‘Europe’ is purple-hued. Well, sort of. Here’s the close-up of Europe as of 1/1/2023:

main qimg dd114939d4e9eb873b763fbd842a6c8a pjlq
main qimg dd114939d4e9eb873b763fbd842a6c8a pjlq

All of those purple w/green stripes nations are ‘committed’ to BOTH the EU AND Belts & Roads Initiative. Europe’s in a complex and increasingly fragmenting situation.

Here’s another world map to obviate how far the global majority have come in feeling empowered to shrug an “and these are the f___s we have to give you” in America’s bossy face.

main qimg 2fb8165bd9ab04843d5d371971f86970 pjlq
main qimg 2fb8165bd9ab04843d5d371971f86970 pjlq

The blue hue represents the nations who are now investors in the Belts & Roads Initiative’s primary funding agency — the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). Notice how America has only managed to “ahem” Japan to shunning the AIIB. Every nation with the capital to invest is doing so. Already this year Africa’s Mauritania has begun the paperwork in a trend that’s seeing borrowers empowered to become investors.

So. Why is America — the planet’s only ‘power projecting’ superpower — a status that it’s held for well over a generation — 30+ years — why’s it been increasingly powerless to sabotage China’s recovery and success? Why has America failed to isolate China? Why have America’s efforts to undermine China proved so . . . impotent?

Here it comes . . . another map. This one is of an organization improbable in its members’ ethnic, spiritual, cultural and political diversity. And why that community has thrived for 60 years. Here’s the map:

main qimg 486d95999ffb591c9d8206f055c8e52a pjlq
main qimg 486d95999ffb591c9d8206f055c8e52a pjlq

The Non-Aligned Movement was born and grew to include 120 of the world’s 195 nations. It did so because those 120 nations (plus observers) had no desire to ‘fall in line’ behind any power.

At the outset that meant America or Russia. By 1990 it was clear the only superpower they need fear was America. By 1992 there was zero room to doubt that America was the only hegemonic superpower threat. Russia having unilaterally, voluntarily, relinquished all its authority over the Warsaw Pact — followed by all the non-Russian republics of the USSR. Russia then having made nothing other than verbal responses to American (‘NATO’) exploitation of Russia’s de-militarization of the entire central ⅓ of the European continent for a full generation — 25 years.

No sooner had Russia retired from seeking to be a global hegemonic rival to America than the US began manufacturing ‘legitimacy’ to bombard to smithereens then invade — “Shock & Awe” they called it — assorted nations. The message made clear “If we can starve then smite into rubble Iraq imagine what we can do to you”.

Without Russia as a constraining counterbalance America’s 11 Carrier Battle Groups were free to ‘Commodore Peary’ swagger into any port they felt the urge to. Thru that full generation America doubled-down on its neo-colonialist ‘crusade’. (Hell, Bush Jr. called it a crusade. A blitzkrieg undertaken on what we’re clearly false pretenses . . . a ‘crusade’. Not even a mumbled “oops, our bad”. Americans in general revealed themselves such a**-holes they didn’t rush out and buy all The Dixie Chicks albums in contrition and compensation.

The world watched and weighed and judged — and found Americans wanting. Found America wanting. 1850 ‘gunboat diplomacy’ steroidally bloated to battle group diplomacy.

Decades of unrepentant self-righteous gunboat bullying shrugged off by Americans as perfectly okay left zero doubt America was the greatest threat to their sovereignty and success. China? Zero global ‘projection of power’.

Instead of the 11 super-carrier battle armadas gunnels-full with freedom-killing F-22s, F-35s, and missiles? China’s ‘blue-water fleet’ boasts equally massive bulk carriers heaped full of a cargo of capital and container ships filled and mounded high with 20,000 each of rail-cars of affordable life-enhancing consumer goods.

So. While China has treated its global villager neighbours with respect? America’s done little other than condescend — and coerce.

America simply by being its same old self doing the same old disrespectful things has stood in a stark contrast to China — making the choice of so easy.

Sorry, but I would do that for my cat too.

52 63be700dd204e 700
52 63be700dd204e 700

Odd Thrift Store finds…

thrift shop 40
thrift shop 40

thrift shop 39
thrift shop 39

thrift shop 21
thrift shop 21

thrift shop 13
thrift shop 13

thrift shop 15
thrift shop 15

thrift shop 17
thrift shop 17

This Artist Created Cartoons That Are Too Relevant To Anyone Who Likes Alcohol, Sex And Being An Idiot

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0 70

Iamnotanartist_ is an illustrator who creates comics about the stupid things that happen to him. The (not an) artist says the inspiration comes from their nights out with their mates: “Fortunately for me, they are degenerates and are really easy to write about.” From drunk abilities to life’s great mysteries, everyone who likes to have a pint (or five) once in a while will relate.

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iamnotanartist 40927885 1136697626506569 5298880128059646385 n

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Chicken Soup Mexicana

All of your favorite Mexican flavors mix together in this soup while the canola oil and avocado supply healthy fats. ¡Muy delicioso!

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2023 01 22 16 18

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon canola oil 15 mL
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 medium onion, sliced (about 1 cup/250 mL)
  • 4 celery stalks, sliced (about 1 cup/250 mL)
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper 0.5 mL
  • 2 teaspoons cumin 10 mL
  • 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes 5 mL
  • 8 cups low-sodium chicken stock 2 L
  • 2/3 cup lentils 150 mL
  • 1 (19 ounce) can tomatoes, chopped 540 mL
  • 3 medium carrots, thinly sliced (about 1 cup/ 250 mL)
  • 2 pounds cooked chicken, cubed 1 kg (about 7 cups/1.75 L)
  • 1 small zucchini, thinly sliced (about 1/3 cup/75 mL)
  • 1 cup frozen peas 250 mL
  • 1 small avocado, peeled and sliced (about 1/2 cup/125 mL)

Instructions

  1. In Dutch oven, heat canola oil. Add garlic, onion and celery. Sauté until vegetables are tender.
  2. Season with black pepper, cumin and red pepper flakes.
  3. Add chicken stock, lentils, tomatoes and carrots. Simmer, covered, for 30 minutes, or until carrots are tender.
  4. Add chicken, zucchini and peas. Cover and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes longer, or until vegetables are tender.
  5. Garnish with avocado slices.

Prep: 10 min | Cook: 50 min | Yield: 10 (2 cup) servings

Nutrition per serving: Calories 270 Total Fat 6 g Saturated Fat 1 g Cholesterol 75 mg Carbohydrates 17 g Fiber 6 g Sugars 5 g Protein 35 g Sodium 170 mg Potassium 571 mg

Vietnam’s ‘mini-China’ days may be numbered

President Phuc’s likely forced resignation could signal a less reform-friendly direction in one of Asia’s hottest economies
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With so many headwinds zooming Vietnam’s way, now seems an incredibly inopportune moment for Hanoi to carry out a major political shakeup.

That’s precisely the dilemma global investors faced this week as pro-market President Nguyen Xuan Phuc suddenly resigned.

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2023 01 22 16 16

Government officials claim that the unparalleled purge led by Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong was all part of an anti-corruption effort in the halls of Vietnamese power.

Investors, though, can’t help but wonder if Phuc’s departure is more of an internecine Trong power grab that will delay urgently-needed economic reforms in one of Asia’s hottest economies.

Phuc has been president since April 2021 and was prime minister from 2016 to 2021. Generally speaking, he significantly strengthened Hanoi’s ties with the US and European Union.

The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement signed in 2019 was emblematic of Phuc’s determination to internationalize the economy and an example of why he garnered considerable gravitas in global market circles.

It’s worth noting, too, that Phuc’s ouster follows recent news that numerous technocratic and Western-leaning officials have been shown the door as Trong centralizes power.

As such, notes Zachery Abuza, professor at the National War College in Washington, Phuc’s comeuppance is “good for China and Russia” and a sign that “Trong has effectively won the war against technocrats.”

From HERE

Planning the move…

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2023 01 22 16 22

If China and the US are persons. Here is the conversation.

USA: I hate you, commie bastard.

China: I don’t like you, too. Imperialist scum.

USA: You treat millions of your Uyghur people brutally, setting up Firewalls to contain your people from accessing cyberspace outside your turf, and you are stripping off the autonomy of Hong Kong, you don’t allow anyone to criticize your governance and make fun of “The Party”, and criminalize religious people and dissidents. You’re such a totalitarian dystopia, your people would be happy if you adpot democracy.

China: You are lynching a lot of African-American people, many streets in your cities are infested with homeless and gangsters, your cops are enforcing law by violence, let your people own guns to kill each other, you’re deporting a lot of Latino parents from their children and drugged them, bombing other countries that made a lot of refugees and terrorists in the world, and making my people turn against me by indoctrinating them by your so-called “freedom” and “human rights”. Your media is making a lot of lies and baseless accusations about me, and keep sticking your nose into other people’s businesses. You can only make your living from wars and conflicts. You are the source of chaos in this world.

USA: South China Sea is not your belonging, it belongs to everyone, douchebag.

China: South China Sea is not your pond in your backyard, get the hell out of there, jerk.

USA: I won’t afraid of you cuz your navy still sucks though you can build carriers.

China: Yeah, come to take it if you dare. My DF-21D supersonic anti-ship missiles would send billions worth of your carrier battle groups into Davy Jone’s Locker.

USA: You are enslaving a lot of 3rd countries by kicking them into your debt trap, a$$hole.

China: Oh, better than what you did to the Native Americans a century ago, you murderous dickhead.

USA: You plagiarized and stole all my hi-tech stuff! Unless you pay me the copyright licensing fee then I will let you make them!

China: Those stuffs were figured out all by myself! I don’t need to steal them from you! And why must I pay you for those?

USA: I’m selling weapons to Taiwan! Protect their democratic government!

China: And I’m buying those stuff from Russia!

USA: I’m putting more sanction and tariffs to you!

China: Bring it on! I still got a lot of friends would like to do businesses with me!

USA: You’re an eyesore, China! I’m just want to keep this world in order, but you are always standing in my way!

China: You’re a prick in my heart, America! I am just want to make this world a better place but you are always messing things up!

USA: I wanna destroy you but I can’t.

China: Yup, we are going down each other if we really flipped out.

USA: I will think the other ways to stop you from rising above me, just you wait. I will show you who’s the boss!

China: Come on, you know I’m not interested to preveil you as the “Big Brother” of the globe, there’s no need to be confrontational, we can sort this out together. However, if you are still being so worked up against me, then so be it. I got thousands of “ancient Chinese secret” techniques to put you on knees and don’t complain that I didn’t warn you.

“The Way We Fall”: Eerie Illustrations Of An Apocalyptical World By Yuri Shwedoff

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Whether we imagine the world as a futuristic dystopia or a charred wasteland, post-apocalyptic images weigh heavily on our cultural imaginations. In a stunning series of illustrations, Russian artist Yuri Shwedoff has created an intensely atmospheric vision of the “end of days,” one that blends fantasy imagery with science fiction. Among his scenes are sword-wielding warriors, blasted roads, alien architecture, and falling skies; as vestiges of the lost world, animals seem to take on a symbolic significance, communing with the human figures in moments of intensity and reflection. Pulled between oscillating states of violent destruction and quiet despair, Shwedoff’s images are bound together by a powerful atmosphere that emanates from the brooding, ash-filled skies.

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While many of Shwedoff’s artworks feature otherworldly phenomena — such as the telekinetic gladiator — what makes them most evocative are their ties to the world we know. The space shuttle, for example, sits dormant on its launch pad, embedded in dust and waste. Perhaps it was prepared to escape the world; now, it becomes aged scenery for the lone horseman who regards it on his journey. Similarly, the alien pods in “Cradle” suggest a landing with no escape plan; now, the structures are merely shelters for those who survive. Instilled with imagination and emotion, Shwedoff confronts us with powerful images of a lost humanity that has surpassed its technological limits and reached an inevitable end.

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You can view more of Shwedoff’s work on Behance, Facebook, and Instagram. He also has a page on Patreon where you can make pledges in exchange for artwork, undersketches, and process videos.

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Ugly truths about the United States

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https://youtu.be/TlUCkxnYWVE

Chicken Pot Pie Soup

All the ingredients for chicken pot pie – the chunky chicken and vegetables and the savory broth – are in this soup. A crisp crouton stands in for the pie crust.

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2023 01 22 16 19

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 teaspoons McCormick® Rosemary Leaves, crushed
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons McCormick® Thyme Leaves
  • 1 teaspoon McCormick® Garlic Powder
  • 4 teaspoons butter, divided
  • 1 (8 ounce) package mushrooms, sliced
  • 1 cup sliced carrots
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 4 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
  • 1 1/2 cups frozen pearl onions
  • 1 pound boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
  • 1 cup frozen peas
  • 8 thin bread slices
  • 1 teaspoon oil

Instructions

  1. Mix rosemary, thyme and garlic powder in small bowl. Reserve 1/2 teaspoon.
  2. Heat 1 teaspoon of the butter in large saucepan on medium heat. Add mushrooms, carrots and remaining seasoning mixture; cook and stir for 3 minutes. Remove from saucepan. Set aside.
  3. Melt remaining 3 teaspoons butter in saucepan on medium heat, stirring to release browned bits from bottom of skillet. Sprinkle with flour; cook and stir for 3 to 4 minutes or until flour is lightly browned.
  4. Gradually stir in broth until well blended. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to low; simmer for 10 minutes or until slightly thickened, stirring occasionally.
  5. Add vegetable mixture, chicken, pearl onions and peas; simmer for 8 minutes or until chicken is cooked through, stirring occasionally.
  6. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  7. Cut bread into rounds with 3 inch cookie cutter. Place on baking sheet. Brush bread with oil and sprinkle with reserved seasoning mixture. Bake for 10 minutes or until toasted.
  8. To serve soup, ladle into soup bowls and top each with 1 crouton.

Yield: 8 (1-cup) servings | Prep: 15 min | Cook: 25 min

2023 is a year of the Water Rabbit let’s take glimpses of the past to see the future

Let’s have a nice and easy slide into the new year of the Rabbit.

2023 is a year of the Water Rabbit, starting from January 22nd, 2023 (Chinese New Year), and ending on February 9th, 2024 (Chinese New Year's Eve). The sign of Rabbit is a symbol of longevity, peace, and prosperity in Chinese culture.

2023 is predicted to be a year of hope.

I’ll gather up some videos and put it up on you-tube when I get a chance.

Let’s check out today’s post…

Back in the day…

Most of us believe that Victorian era was a grim and serious era, full of hardworking people, so that they didn’t even have time to enjoy their lives and having some fun. While this isn’t true, because cameras were very expensive and for a single photograph one had to sit in static position with same facial expression from few seconds to 10 minutes. So it seems impossible for a person to smile or laugh for minutes, that’s why majority of the Victorians preferred to sit in static position with strict expressions.

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Hilarious side of Victorian era life 1890s38

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Hilarious side of Victorian era life 1890s37

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Hilarious side of Victorian era life 1890s12

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Hilarious side of Victorian era life 1890s8

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Hilarious side of Victorian era life 1890s6

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Hilarious side of Victorian era life 1890s2

The All New Baby Safety Seat. Never Leave Your Kid Inside A Hot Car While You Shop Again. Late 1950s, Early 1960s

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63be8adb0f76b ak6hpowiyvh91 700

East Texas Buttermilk Pie

buttermilk pie2
buttermilk pie2

Ingredients

  • 1 (9-inch) pie shell, baked
  • 3 rounded tablespoons flour
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • 3 eggs, slightly beaten
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • Nutmeg, to taste (optional)
  • Cinnamon, to taste (optional)

Instructions

  1. Mix flour, sugar and salt; add to butter.
  2. Add eggs, buttermilk and vanilla extract. Mix and pour into pie shell; sprinkle with nutmeg and cinnamon, if desired.
  3. Bake at 350 degrees F for 50 minutes. Test with knife. It should come out clean when pie is done.

https://youtu.be/6Aa-zF6-yGE

We Won’t Be Fooled Again – Inflation Is Most Definitely Not “Under Control”

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Inflation is going down!  Let’s all celebrate!  We all knew that when the Federal Reserve began aggressively hiking interest rates it would have an impact on inflation.  Higher rates have caused a new housing crash, they have crushed the tech industry, and they have sparked the biggest wave of layoffs that we have seen since the Great Recession.  We have entered a significant economic downturn, so it was inevitable that the annual rate of inflation would start to moderate.  But as I will explain below, that doesn’t mean that inflation is now “under control”.  The real rate of inflation is much higher than we are being told, and people all over the country are being absolutely crushed by the rising cost of living.

Let’s start with the good news first.  According to the Labor Department, the annual rate of inflation is rising at the slowest pace since October 2021

Consumer prices increased 6.5% from a year earlier, down from 7.1% in November and a 40-year high of 9.1% in June, according to the Labor Department’s consumer price index, a measurement of what people pay for goods and services, which labor released on Thursday.

The rise last month marks the slowest annual gain since October 2021 and matches economists’ estimates.

Okay, but Fox Business has just reminded us that the annual rate of inflation “remains about three times higher than the pre-pandemic average”

Still, inflation remains about three times higher than the pre-pandemic average, underscoring the persistent financial burden placed on millions of U.S. households by high prices.

So we are still definitely in a high inflation environment.

But let’s dig deeper.

Most Americans don’t realize that the way that the inflation rate is calculated has literally been changed more than two dozen times since 1980.

And every time it has been changed, the goal has been to make inflation appear to be lower than it actually is.

If the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the real rate of inflation would be close to 15 percent right now.

That would be comparable to the peak inflation that we witnessed during the Jimmy Carter era.

So don’t let anyone try to convince you that inflation is “low” or “under control” or anything like that.

The main reason why the rate of inflation moderated somewhat during the month of December is because energy prices have been falling

Americans saw some real reprieve last month in the form of lower energy costs, which fell 6.1% in December. Gas prices dropped 12.5% over the month, the biggest contributor to the overall headline decline in inflation in December.

That is great news, but it is already being projected that gas prices will rise significantly later this year.

And once war in the Middle East erupts, gas prices will go to heights that most people never even dreamed was possible.

Meanwhile, services inflation has just spiked to a level that we haven’t seen in decades.

The cost of living has become extremely oppressive, and the American people are becoming increasingly frustrated by this.

I would like to share a video with you that illustrates what I am talking about.

The woman in this video doesn’t understand all of the numbers that I have just shared in this article.  All she knows is that when she goes to the grocery store, prices are way higher than they once were.  This video contains some graphic language, and I apologize for that in advance.  But I want you to see her anger, because this is how millions upon millions of Americans are feeling about inflation right now.

 

Would you like to be the one that tries to convince her that inflation is “under control” now?

Sadly, the truth is that over the past few years the cost of living has been rising faster than our paychecks have, and so U.S. families have steadily been getting poorer

The average American family has lost the equivalent of more than a month’s salary in annual income since President Biden took office as high inflation and rising interest rates eat away at their finances, according to research by the Heritage Foundation.

Experts at the conservative think tank analyzed consumer prices and interest rates and found in their latest report released Thursday that the average American household has lost the equivalent of $7,400 in annual income since Biden’s inauguration Jan. 20, 2021. The income loss represents an increase of $200 from September, when the think tank’s research found a $7,200 decline in annual income for the average American household dating back to the start of Biden’s term.

Prior to the pandemic, we were in a low inflation and low interest rate environment.

Now that the Federal Reserve has dramatically hiked interest rates, we now find ourselves in a high inflation and high interest rate environment.

And higher interest rates are also hammering our standard of living

While their elected representatives in D.C. struggle to pay the nation’s bills, Americans are facing a similar challenge as their household budgets are stretched thin due to inflation and higher borrowing costs. Those financial challenges led more than one-third of households to rely on credit cards or loans to buy necessities in December. Average credit card interest rates reached a new record high of 19.14% APR compared to a Bankrate.com database.

“Americans are increasingly relying on credit cards to make it from paycheck to paycheck, resulting in higher levels of indebtedness. Rising credit card balances in an era of rising interest rates is a path to insolvency,” Antoni told FOX Business. “The average interest rate on credit cards is now around 20 percent while half of Americans cannot pay off their credit cards each month, and balances are growing at a 16 percent annual rate.”

We are getting hit from both ends.

We have to pay more to buy the things that we need, and we have to pay higher interest rates when we borrow money to pay for those things.

The Federal Reserve has lost control, and we are careening toward the sort of historic economic crisis that I have been warning about for years.

But those that are under the spell of the corporate media will continue to assume that everything is fine and that our leaders have a plan to get us out of this mess.

I truly wish that was true.

Unfortunately, the short-term economic outlook is extremely dismal, and prominent voices all over Wall Street are warning that 2023 will be a really rough year.

Remarkable Behind-The-Scenes Photos From ‘Back To The Future’ That Will Bring You Back To The ’80s

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Some people have speculated for a while now that there will be a remake of the legendary movie series Back To The Future. But this mindset is not without criticism and skepticism since many fans feel that without Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd there simply is no way that a remake would be good enough to even be considered.

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Here’s a great collection of rare behind the scenes photos for Robert Zemekis’ film Back to the Future. These images came from the incredibly well researched Back to the Future site Outatime, offer a candid behind the scenes look at this classic movie. Be sure to check out these 70 pics below, and let us know what your favorite Back to the Future scene is.

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Yikes!

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Vision-Dieter glasses

There have been countless weight loss hoaxes over the years, from pills and elixirs to topical treatments, fad diets, and more. One product sold in the 1970s with glaringly false claims was Vision-Dieter glasses, which were said to decrease cravings and hunger by using “secret European color technology.”

The initial objective of the creator was to manufacture glasses that would distort the color of food packaging in hopes of making shoppers less likely to purchase products just because they were in colorful containers. But realizing how much money could be made in the dieting field, he decided to market the glasses as a tool for consumers who were trying to lose weight.

It should come as no surprise that the Food and Drug Administration took action. These color-tinted weight reduction glasses were seized due to misbranding. Most pairs were eventually destroyed by the FDA when the claimant refused to come forward.

Totally cool!

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2023 01 21 09 54

Recently discovered?

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2023 01 21 09 58

A Starfish Waking Back To The Water

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Chef Eddie Jackson’s Smoky Texas Chili
with Cheddar Jalapeño Dumplings

This chili is absolutely divine. It’s rather labor-intensive, but the result is well worth the effort.

chef eddie smoky chili
chef eddie smoky chili

Yield: 16 servings

Ingredients

Smoked Chuck Roast

  • 4 pounds beef chuck roast, smoked, cut into 1 inch cubes
  • Salt and pepper

Chili

  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1 large yellow onion, diced
  • 1 red bell pepper, coarsely chopped
  • 1/4 cup dark chili powder
  • 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 1 tablespoon cumin
  • 1 tablespoon fine black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 2 roasted poblanos, coarsely chopped
  • 1 quart (4 cups) beef stock
  • 1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
  • 1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
  • 1 teaspoon beef base
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • Kosher salt to taste (optional)

Cheddar Jalapeño Dumplings

  • 1 cup cornmeal
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 cup honey or 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1/4 to 1/2 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
  • 1 small jalapeño, finely diced

Instructions

Smoked Chuck Roast

  1. Add wood chunks, chips, pellets or charcoal to smoker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Preheat to 250 degrees F.
  2. Season trimmed chuck roast generously with salt and pepper.
  3. Place chuck roast on rack in smoker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Set timer for 8 hours.
  4. After 4 hours, or when the roast reaches an internal temperature of 180 degrees F, wrap with unwaxed butcher paper and place back on smoker.
  5. After 4 more hours, or when the roast reaches 208 to 210 degrees F internal temperature, remove roast from smoker.
  6. Let rest in the butcher paper for at least 1 hour.
  7. Slice the roast into cubes right before adding to the chili.

Chili

  1. In a Dutch oven, heat vegetable oil over MEDIUM-HIGH heat. Add diced onion and sprinkle with salt, if desired. Saute until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes.
  2. Add the red peppers and saute for 2 minutes.
  3. Add chili powder, paprika, cumin, black pepper, and garlic powder stirring frequently for about a minute allowing the spices to bloom, but not burn.
  4. Add the cubed smoked chuck roast and poblano peppers. Once all ingredients are coated with spices, stir in beef stock and tomatoes to the pot, deglazing the bottom.
  5. Add oregano, beef base, and Worcestershire sauce to the pot. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
  6. Bring chili to a boil then turn stove to LOW heat and simmer covered for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.Meanwhile, make Cheddar Jalapeño Dumplings.

Cheddar Jalapeño Dumplings

  1. Mix together cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar for Cheddar Jalapeño Dumplings.
  2. Add eggs folding gently to combine. Then stir buttermilk into the mixture until combined.
  3. Fold in cheese and jalapeños, being sure not to over mix the batter.
  4. Place 1 to 2 ounce dollops of dumpling batter into the chili. Continue to simmer chili, covered, for 20 minutes or until dumplings are firm, but fluffy.
  5. Serve chili in bowls garnished with shredded cheese, sliced scallions, cilantro leaves and a dollop of sour cream, as desired.

You Guys Are Cute With Your Scary Spiders. I Found This Under My Couch A Month After I Fumigated

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This is “Wow Cool”!

I imagine the plumage must have been impressive.

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2023 01 21 10 03

Cool Pics That Show How People Enjoyed Parties In The 1970s

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Here below is a photo collection that shows how people enjoyed parties from the 1970s.

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This Will Haunt My Dreams

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We Are Witnessing An Enormous Wave Of Bankruptcies And Layoffs During The Early Stages Of 2023

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Is your job safe?  Right now, we are witnessing so much turmoil is so many different sectors of our economy.  The housing market is crashing, the cryptocurrency industry has imploded, the tech industry is laying off workers at an extremely frightening pace, and some of our most important retailers are heading into bankruptcy.  The information that I am about to share with you is deeply troubling.  It has become exceedingly clear that our economy is in huge trouble, and I fully expect that our problems will accelerate even more as the year rolls along.

Let me start by pointing out what is currently happening at Microsoft.  It is one of the wealthiest companies in the entire world, but due to a shift in “macroeconomic conditions” executives have decided that it has become necessary to lay off 10,000 workers

Microsoft announced thousands of job cuts this week, becoming the latest tech company to pluck its workforce as the global economy slows.

The software company confirmed Wednesday its reducing workforce by 10,000 people through the end of the third quarter of the 2023 fiscal year.

The cuts come “in response to macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities,” the company’s CEO Satya Nadella released in a statement to its employees Wednesday.

If even Microsoft is laying off thousands of workers, is any job in the private sector truly safe?

Meanwhile, some of the biggest names in the retail industry are plunging into bankruptcy now that the holiday season is over.

On Tuesday, it was Party City’s turn

Party City filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday, weighed down by competition and years of financial losses.

The largest party goods and Halloween specialty retail chain in the United States said in a regulatory filing that it reached an agreement with debtholders to cut its $1.7 billion debt load.

Even more alarming is the fact that it is being reported that a bankruptcy filing for Bed Bath & Beyond has become “likely”

Bed Bath & Beyond has been in discussions with prospective buyers and lenders as it works to keep its business afloat during a likely bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter.

The retailer is in the midst a sale process in hopes of finding a buyer that would keep the doors open for both of its major chains, its namesake banner and Buybuy Baby, said the people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

So many brick and mortar retailers are really struggling right now, and many of them are blaming competition from Internet retailers such as Amazon.

But if Amazon is doing so well, why did they start laying off approximately 18,000 workers on Wednesday?

Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in a blog post that the company was laying off about 18,000 people as it seeks to cut costs and would begin contacting impacted employees on Jan. 18.

“Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” Jassy said in the Jan. 4 post. “These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure.”

The wave of layoffs that we have been witnessing in the tech industry is truly unprecedented.

Prior to this week, more than 25,000 tech industry workers had already been laid off this year, and this comes on the heels of the massive layoffs that we saw last year…

According to the data tracking website, more than 101 tech companies around the world have laid off 25,436 employees so far in 2023. Most of the layoffs have taken place in the United States, accounting for 22,400 employees fired.

The number of workers being laid off from tech companies is a trend that is continuing since 2022, when 154,336 workers were fired from over 1,000 tech companies around the world, according to the data.

But at least the tech industry is in far better shape than the cryptocurrency industry is.

Let me share four major announcements that have all happened within the past 10 days…

#1 It is being reported that Genesis Global Capital “is laying the groundwork for a bankruptcy filing”

Genesis Global Capital is laying the groundwork for a bankruptcy filing as soon as this week, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The cryptocurrency lending unit of Digital Currency Group has been in confidential negotiations with various creditor groups amid a liquidity crunch. It has warned that it may need to file for bankruptcy if it fails to raise cash, Bloomberg previously reported.

#2 Crypto.com announced that it will be laying off “20% of its workforce”

Crypto.com announced plans to lay off 20% of its workforce Jan. 13. The company had 2,450 employees, according to PitchBook data, suggesting around 490 employees were laid off.

CEO Kris Marszalek said in a blog post that the crypto exchange grew “ambitiously” but was unable to weather the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire FTX without the further cuts.

#3 Coinbase has decided “to cut about a fifth of its workforce”

On Jan. 10, Coinbase announced plans to cut about a fifth of its workforce as it looks to preserve cash during the crypto market downturn.

The exchange plans to cut 950 jobs, according to a blog post. Coinbase, which had roughly 4,700 employees as of the end of September, had already slashed 18% of its workforce in June saying it needed to manage costs after growing “too quickly” during the bull market.

#4 The founder of cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato has actually been arrested.  Apparently he was laundering money on a scale of epic proportions…

The founder of the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato was arrested early Wednesday in Miami in connection with a vast money laundering operation, accused of transmitting more than $700 million in illicit funds in the past four years.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, a Russian national, oversaw a major “high-tech financial hub that catered to known crooks,” including cybercriminals and drug dealers seeking to process dirty money.

The cryptocurrency industry will never look the same again after all of this turmoil.

On top of everything else, the Saudis appear to be poised to make a major move that could literally change everything.

At the yearly gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Saudi finance minister decided to drop a bombshell

Saudi Arabia is open to discussions about trade in currencies other than the US dollar, according to the kingdom’s finance minister.

Needless to say, this could potentially completely undermine the dominance of the petrodollar.

Of course we cannot afford to have that happen, because the dominance of the dollar is one of the only things that is keeping our system afloat.

At this point just about everything is moving in the wrong direction for the U.S. economy, but most people still do not understand the bigger picture.

A lot of the “experts” assume that we will just suffer through a temporary recession and then things will eventually return to normal.

I wish that was true.

Unfortunately, our entire system is starting to crack and crumble all around us, and those that are currently running things are not going to be able to put it back together again.

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2023 01 21 10 00

I'm a retired trauma nurse, and, you did EXACTLY what you should do. Cold truly does slow the dying process!! Im in love with that adorable little fur ball!!! You are a genuinely good and kind person!!!

On the back side…

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2023 01 21 10 01

This is what happened to the CIA assets, the NED organizers and the participants in the Shanghai Covid protests

Let it be well understood that I covered (in great detail) what happened, and who was involved and why. As well as the final results and the various trends going on in China. However, this article summarizes the events related to the four participating groups. Now that China has secured them, arrested them, sentenced or sentencing them, and cleaning up the mess that they created;
The NED / CIA trained saboteurs.
The NED / CIA associated "news" reporters.
The local student Leaders.
The student pawns.

The trained saboteurs

These were the Taiwanese and Hong Kong “leaders” that directed the local leaders’ actions.

In Sichuan, Four Hongkongers who disclosed false information and bogus addresses, have already been charged with ‘Falsification for Entry’ which carries 3–10 years.

The sentencing will be next week.

Given the seriousness of their actions they will probably obtain a sentence on the “high side”. This is especially true if they are tied to any previous Hong Kong color revolution activity.

The student participants (Pawns)

Yesterday a total of 91 students apologized for their mistake with the protests.

Using AI obtained data, and 5G remote face scanning (though paper, and masks) the police compiled detailed photo evidence against everyone who was at the “protests”.

Using this photo evidence, every student who participated was visited by the police at their dorms and homes, and the leaders clearly identified.

They were made to sign an Oath that [1] they didn’t get any money and [2] that the protests were because of frustration that they could not go home for the CNY holidays (which now they can).

They also apologized [3] for sending the messages to Reuters & BBC.

The student leaders (Led the protests)

In addition, the leaders, have tougher penalties placed upon them.

There were 14 leaders, or “ring leaders”.

Those Students identified as leaders can no longer join the Civil Service. Which means that they cannot join the CPC, volunteer, or take the basic tests for advancement within Chinese society. They will never vote, or ever become a citizen inside of China.

They will require Security clearance level I for a passport (In short they are unlikely to ever leave China until maybe 2050).

All their social media accounts have been suspended for 3 years. Meaning their internet use is ZERO for the next three years.

  • No Wechat.
    • Unable to QR scan.
    • Unable to buy or purchase things via QR.
    • Unable to register APPs
  • No QQ
    • Unable to listen to music.
    • Unable to create and publish music.
    • Unable to use e-mail
  • No Douxing
    • Unable to play games
    • Unable to watch videos
    • Unable to create videos

The others will not be punished. They were warned and let off. They were visibly relieved.


Western Reporters (Choreographed and directed the protests)

8 Reporters were charged with Degree Three Incitement and Degree One Public Misinformation without evidence.These charges result in prison time.

Lucky for them that the charges were suspended pending deportation.

If they ever come back to China again, they face 6–14 years imprisonment and 200K Yuan fine

They have been deported

1 Reporter has been released on a 50K Yuan Bond. That he posted. I am sure that his every movement is recorded and watched as we walks the long slow path out of China.

Their Laptops, Phones are all in Security Service custody.

All lists and names, and addresses on the computers were obtained, and deep-deep-DEEP AI scanning of the electronic uncovered a “treasure trove” of information.

Let’s just simply say that any Chinese on any of those lists is finished


This so far was the Security Services… now some words about the dark-arm of China. The dreaded…

Political Corruption Police

Then the Political Corruption Police was involved and they made a number of stops which aren’t covered in any Chinese Daily. Nothing is reported about those events.

On Duoxing and Zhihu they say, many Taiwanese who were spotted have been detained and are questioned.

One must wonder how serious it must be for them as the Political Corruption Police handled their cases instead of the regular police.

They may be charged with spying in which case they may spend the next 20 years in a Chinese Cell. And it will be absolute. China does not have parole or negotiated settlements like in the West. Twenty years is twenty years to the second.

Or they may be killed. As is the historical norm.

Exactly.

Life over. Full stop.


By God the Crackdown was Swift

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main qimg 8eec948a6fb6bb51d31837d509161988 lq

It’s like Machines and Robots

The Authorities knew who the brains were and who the unwitting pawns were in seconds.

The Pawns were mostly poor students who were let go with a warning.

The Pawns were a handful of people who didn’t even understand what they were protesting against. They came to protest against Covid 19 lockdowns and were aghast to know that the protests called for Xi Jing pings resignation and overthrow of the CPC.

They admitted to being paid (by the United States government) agents.

They were ordered between 60–200 hours community service and they were visibly relieved. Grateful, even.

The Western reporters were deported. No sense jailing them and causing a major diplomatic incident.

Maybe Mengs charges being dismissed was a quid pro quo?

However the perpetrators from HK and Taiwan are finished. They paid for protests where overthrow of Xi was mentioned. It’s far better for them to simply  end their lives now.

Their own personal lives are going to be very dark.

About the student leaders…

The student leaders could face more serious charges if they find money was exchanged and even a Harvard or Yale admission is considered money exchange.  So if a letter, or voice message promising easy entry into a Western university is obtained, they will be facing very serious charges.

Then instead of Yale, the poor guy faces 15 years prison


The Overthrow of CPC and Xi

That was the only thing that was regarded serious enough.

The Authorities once again demonstrating their brutal efficiency

Many pro-DPP Taiwanese in Taiwan may no longer dare visit the mainland. They would be picked up within ten seconds and likely never see the light of day again.

Lots of exciting military stuff out of China, plus the usual array of nut-job bullshit from the United States

Today’s post is dedicated to the NOV22 Zhuhai airshow.

It’s pretty darn “ground breaking”.

I hope you all get something out of this.

China’s “J-20” Stealth Fighter Jet: I’ve Never Seen American Planes Do These Things!

At an air show in China Saturday, the Chinese Air Force displayed their J-20 Stealth Fighter Jet capabilities.   I’ve never seen an American fighter Jet be able to do some of these maneuvers!  Utterly amazing.  Video below . . .

They would be shocked to see this comparison.

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main qimg 5f90d4342bcf0c479ad1e5542e75b214 pjlq

What are the economic consequences of authoritarian rule in China?

The consequence is:

The fastest improvement of living standard in human history.

In 1949, Chinese GDP per capita was around 45 dollars. That number grew to 12500 dollars in 2021, an almost 280 times growth.

What does that translate into people’s lives? In 1949, life expectancy was 35 years in China. Slavery and drug addiction was rampant. Famine was always around the corner. Many people living in the countryside shared one pair of pants amongst the whole family. There was no public medical system to speak of. 85% of the population was illiterate.

70 years later, in just one life time, China grew to become one of the greatest world power of our time. People no longer worry about starvation but obesity, and are rich enough to send their children to universities in other countries, or take vacations overseas, while watching the country’s rovers roll on the moon and Mars.

In the province of Taiwan, authoritarian rule also worked wonders. The Taiwanese military dictatorship built the island’s economy and single-handed created companies like TSMC that we all respect today.

TD550 unmanned helicopter

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2022 11 14 15 16

I went to a club in new york and a guy at the bar offered to buy me a drink. I politely declined.

He insisted again, and I knew it was a scam to get me to hang out with him. before I could order my drink for myself he buys both of us a round, which was, you know, “the nice thing to do”.

I immediately got weird vibes from him and didn’t think I owed him anything for the beer and shot.

I made up an excuse to get away from him.

I didn’t want to leave the club because I spent a hefty cover so I got my friend to come save me. my friend was 30 mins away so this guy kept following me around the club calling me a b***h for not being interested in his little game.

I told the bouncers and they didn’t really care about the situation and just brushed it off.

I was so furious with this guy I stuck my finger down my throat and threw up all over him and said, “here’s your drink back, now leave me the f**k alone”. byyyeeeee ya f****n nerd.

This video showed us that the airplane can fly and turn. WOW MIND = BLOWN.

Don’t do this…

A random guy held my crutches for me as I walked down some stairs at uni. He seemed nice and joked about how he once broke a foot, it’ll get better, etc etc. We get to the bottom and he asks if we could get some coffee. I thank him, but tell him I’m seeing someone so he just drops my crutches on the floor and walks away

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creepy nice guy stories 5 635a969e47bd1 700

WJ-700 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

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2022 11 14 15 18

The Fremont Troll—Seattle, Washington

In so many old folktales and fairytales, we hear of mysterious, troublesome, or mischievous trolls who live under bridges. Often asking for a toll or price for passage, they cause a nuisance and, in some cases, can be quite frightening and creepy.

Well, luckily, they’re a work of fiction. That is unless you’re wandering through underpasses in the Fremont area of Seattle. Here you’ll find a huge stone troll holding up the underpass on their broad shoulders. If you’re not expecting it or are walking in bad lighting, it’s a creepy and surprising sight to behold.

The result of a local art competition in 1989 to revamp the area that had become an unsafe and dirty place, the Fremont Troll towers 18 feet (5.5 meters) and even has a shining metal eye that glints in the light. It’s not uncommon to see a horde of tourists standing around and even climbing up onto the troll’s shoulders for the perfect photo op. Keep an eye out for the Volkswagen Beetle that’s been crunched up in the troll’s hand…

J20s is the world first twin seats Stealth fighter that can command 3 or more loyal wing man drones to help attack its enemy in the sky. Something the F22, F35 cannot do.

I constantly forgot to breath while watching it making those magnificent moves, very impressive.

https://youtu.be/zAVYy9x0Kdc

I certainly have seen U.S. fighter jets be able to vertically “hover” with their nose pointed straight up, but I have never seen the reversal of direction in flight that these Chinese jets perform.  It shocked me as to the skill of the pilots, AND as to the maneuverability of the jets.

I kept waiting to see one of them just fall out of the sky with the maneuvers they were doing, but that didn’t happen.

US will build small modular nuclear reactor in Ukraine

WTF? I mean is President Biden pushing buttons, or what? -MM

Oddporium—Arden, Delaware

Sometimes you just want to wander around somewhere downright weird with a friend or loved one, pointing out old dolls, vintage medical equipment, or pig remains in a jar, cringing back and laughing. Whether you get grossed out easily or have a dark sense of humor when it comes to curios, consider checking out the Oddiporium on your next trip through Arden, Delaware.

If you’re traveling through in the evening, the Oddporium also screens horror films in the outdoor portion of the venue. Especially if you’re checking out the place around Halloween, you can expect plenty of spooky goings on. The perfect creepy combo: nighttime horror films and weird paranormal things in jars![HERE]

Don’t Poke The Panda!

https://youtu.be/E7B9TrGosr8

Maybe we’ve been out-classed by China?????

Maybe we shouldn’t be picking a fight with them over Taiwan?

Maybe we’re not as good as we think we are?

Saudi Arabia Reiterates Commitment To China, Regardless Of U.S. Concerns

Editor OilPrice.com
2 November 2022, 10:00
From HERE
Apparently confirming the view of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) that the U.S. is now regarded as just another one of its partners in a new global order that would see Beijing and its allies share the leadership position with Washington, Saudi Arabia last week reiterated its commitment to China as its “most reliable partner and supplier of crude oil,” along with broader assurances of its ongoing support in several other areas. 

That MbS seemingly now sees the U.S. as a partner just for its security considerations, with no meaningful quid pro quo on Saudi Arabia’s part, whilst regarding China as its key partner economically and Russia as its key partner in energy matters, should not surprise the U.S.

Back in March last year it was made clear enough at the annual China Development Forum hosted in Beijing, when Aramco chief executive officer, Amin Nasser said: “Ensuring the continuing security of China’s energy needs remains our highest priority - not just for the next five years but for the next 50 and beyond.” 

And yet, the U.S. is surprised by the apparent finalization of the transition of Saudi Arabia away from Washington and towards China, which effectively marks the end of the 1945 core agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that defined their relationship up until extremely recently. This transition has

Satellites discovered two “dark ships” near Nord Stream before the explosions

"I was in shanghai in 2017 and my accommodation was in the Marriott hotel overlooking a big re-development . So when I left in March of that year , only the foundations were laid . I came back to shanghai in July of the same year and was astounded to see 5 tower blocks were built up to the 17th floors . Eventually it was completed in a record time of 18 months . So I can see why America was not chosen .The world trade center was destroyed in September 2001 and the replacement one world trade Center officially opened in November 2014 . Taking 9 times longer to build than the Chinese".

Traditional vaccines like Sinovac may prevent severe disease in Covid-19 patients: Study

Duh! -MM

SINGAPORE – Though often considered inferior due to their induction of a lower antibody response compared with their mRNA counterparts, inactivated virus vaccines can play a role in preventing the development of severe Covid-19, a recent study has found.

This could mean that a combination of the two vaccine types may offer better protection against the coronavirus, researchers said, noting each had its own advantages.

The study by the Duke-NUS Medical School found that inactivated virus vaccines such as Sinopharm and Sinovac, which were used extensively in Asia, and mRNA vaccines – which include Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax – trigger different T-cell responses in fighting the coronavirus.

Inactivated vaccines – an older technology used in the polio and influenza vaccines, among others – are made up of dead viruses, unlike mRNA vaccines, which use just parts of the virus’ genetic material to stimulate an immune response.

While mRNA vaccines induce T-cells – a type of white blood cell – targeting the spike protein of the coronavirus, inactivated vaccines elicit a broader immune response against different proteins on the virus.

This means that while inactivated vaccines might not be as good at preventing Covid-19 infection, they can play a role in preventing the development of severe disease, said the study’s senior co-author Anthony Tanoto Tan, a senior research fellow with the Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases programme.

Earlier studies had shown that mRNA vaccines help patients produce a far greater number of antibodies, compared with their inactivated virus counterparts. However, newer variants have proved to be more adept at evading the antibody response, Dr Tan said.

Read the rest HERE

Damn china looking good.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

Some people who *think* they know it all, are claiming these are Remote Control model jets.   They are not.

The audio alone proves they are actual fighter jets, with actual jet engines – you can HEAR them for cryin out loud!  Full-throated jet engines!

This story is accurate. The jets are real, although I am now told they are J-16’s and not J-20’s.

Anyone who tells you otherwise does not know what they’re talking about.

Very advanced level weapons.

Many missed the point. This video is a catalog for weapons FOR SALE by Norinco. What PLA uses are going to be even more advanced.

All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy

Despite their temperament, Vikings took time out to play and make merry. They would often celebrate achievements by throwing parties. These parties they threw depended on the rank and wealth of the person or people hosting. The parties created not only an opportunity to make merry but also a “pissing contest” to display wealth and stature.

The wealthier a Viking or a group of Vikings were, the bigger the party would be and the longer they could hold it down. As archeological evidence suggests, Vikings were robust men and women. Considering their body size and way of living, one can easily conclude they could eat and drink a lot. Hosting a Viking party, therefore, was a noteworthy achievement. An achievement that earned the host a distinguished position in the community.

Did you know that Vikings found skiing amusing as well? They did, in fact, find it fascinating. One would be forgiven for assuming they did not have what it took to ski back in the day, considering how advanced the equipment we use today is. Archeological evidence points to the fact that they had wooden boards that they used to ski. They used to ski for fun when hunting and as a way of general movement.

Trainloads of Armor and other NATO Military Gear in Poland, Moving Toward Kaliningrad

Video has emerged of trainloads of NATO armor and other military gear moving through Poland, toward the Russia enclave of Kaliningrad.

The video, below, shows one of the trains moving through Gdynia, Poland:

The scalable map below shows Gdynia, Poland in relation to Kaliningrad:

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2022 11 14 15 10

Each day, NATO moves more and more military gear either toward Russia or Ukraine, and toward the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.  It doesn’t stop.

Today, the Russian Ministry of Defense ORDERED manufacturers to DOUBLE the production of hypersonic missiles.

It won’t stop unless or until citizens in NATO countries, get their governments back under control — and fast — or else World War 3 is on the menu.

Funny Failed Test Answers

So it’s exam day, you’ve forgotten to study, and you’re staring blankly at the test in front of you wondering how on earth you’re going to pass. What are you going to do? Well, you’re going to fail, that’s what. But that doesn’t mean you can’t fail in style! Take a look at this collection of funny exam answers to see how to do just that!

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Looks like a sexy gun. From what I’ve heard, it’s a righteous beast and even Americans are drooling and wish they had this gun. All China’s newest equipment is making USA jealous. Like type 055 destroyer which they decided to copy with their next gen destroyer.

https://youtu.be/wc4BB2Nr888

American Soldiers Found in Kherson – Video!

Duh! American soldiers fighting Russian soldiers directly. -MM

Many have been asking “What is happening in Kherson and why is Russia pulling out?” It’s complicated. One thing is now certain: Americans have entered Kherson.

This is no longer Ukraine versus Russia. This now appears to be Russia VS NATO…Ukraine is just the battlefield.

The video below comes from inside Kherson. Note the flag on the backpack first aid kit and note the language being spoken:

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, they have had to bring their troops back to across the Dnieper River for several reasons:

1) Bridges are mostly out on the Kherson City side of the river which makes it logistically very hard to bring ammunition and supplies to those troops, AND;

2) American HIMARS Rockets have been so horrifically precise, the Russian Army cannot set up Ammunition Dumps because HIMARS takes them out.

So they cannot bring large amounts of ammo (just yet) and they cannot store large amounts of ammo (for now) and that makes their forces incredibly vulnerable.

Therefore, the Russians say they took their troops out of one side of Kherson, had them cross the river to the other side, where the logistics problems will not exist and will not endanger the lives of Russian forces.

Kherson city is now Russia.   Russia will not give up that territory permanently, they say.  But a strategic fallback was necessary.

Now, as seen in the video above, we see Americans in Kherson.

If Russia can show that American soldiers have invaded Russia territory, that makes American territory subject to Russian attack.   It’s that simple.

https://youtu.be/eSvPZANKgzw

Gentle Paintings of Girls by Huaishen J

We know nothing about Huaishen J’s gender or any other orientation. All we know is that Huaishen J lives in the United States and paints fantastically gentle and charming young ladies. And that’s all we need.

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Great video. You should add Beidou was born out of necessity. In 1990s, US used / blocked GPS to disable a Chinese ship in an incident. And China joined Europe’s Galileo program but was blocked repeatedly. Beidou was born after China realized Europe’s true intension (and wasted time and money on Galileo.

UKRAINE “MILITARY AID” FROM USA — WAS INVESTED IN CRYPTO “FTX” BY UKRAINE!

From HERE

The sudden collapse of crypto exchange “FTX” and its Bankruptcy filing today, has revealed that FTX presently suffers from $10-$50 BILLION in liabilities with almost ZERO assets . . . and among those liabilities, are “investments” made by . . . . UKRAINE . . . .

At this early hour, it __appears__ that tens-of-billions in American “Military Aid” to Ukraine, which was allegedly to be used to fight Russia, was cash that Ukraine DID NOT use to fight Russia, but instead invested into FTX!

And, as you might guess from the Bankruptcy filing . . . . it now seems that all the money . . . is gone.

Yes, you read that correctly: Instead of using US Military Aid to fight Russia, Ukraine “invested” part or all of it, into FTX, and right now, it looks like all the money is gone.

Democrat Donations

Also at this early hour, it now also __appears__ that the Chief of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, was the #2 donor to the Democrats. He was only outspent by Soros himself!

It __seems__ Ukraine was receiving money from the US, Ukraine sent it to FTX, and FTX sent it to Democrats, who originally voted to send it to Ukraine.  At this hour, it __appears__ to some observers, to be pure, criminal, money-laundering, and a criminal conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws.

It now seems to closely-watching observers that the kid (Bankman-Fried) burned his own company — and his own ass — just to make sure the Dems won the mid-term elections, and seems to have done it by pulling the rug out from all those that had funds there in FTX.

So the collapse of FTX is now linked not only to Ukraine, but also to US Democrat politicians who got money from Sam Bankman-Fried, to campaign for the just-ended elections!

Here.  Learn:

From wiki
Sam Bankman-Fried was born in 1992 on the campus of Stanford University into a family of academics. Born and raised to an upper-middle-class Jewish family in California, he is the son of Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both professors at Stanford Law School.[2] His aunt Linda P. Fried is the current dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.[15] His brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried, is a former Wall Street trader[16] and the director of the non-profit Guarding Against Pandemics.

Politics
Sam Bankman-Fried was the second-largest individual donor to Democratic causes in 2021–2022 election cycle with total donations of $39.8 million, only behind George Soros.[59][60][61] Of this, $27 million was given to Protect our Future PAC, bankrolled by Bankman-Fried.[62]

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And the funniest bit of all? Who is handling the bankruptcy??? None other than Jon J Ray III who just happened to be in charge of the liquidation of….. ENRON!

Then too, there’s this:

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The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are looking into whether FTX.com mishandled customer funds. Bankman-Fried is also being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for potential violations of securities rules.

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UPDATE 11:34 AM EST –

Sam Bankman-Fried used the money to bankroll DEMOCRATS!

$10,000,000 PROTECT OUR FUTURE PAC 4/14/2022
$9,000,000 PROTECT OUR FUTURE PAC 2/4/2022
$6,000,000 HOUSE MAJORITY PAC 4/4/2022
$5,000,000 FF PAC 10/7/2020
$4,000,000 PROTECT OUR FUTURE PAC 6/13/2022
$4,000,000 PROTECT OUR FUTURE PAC 3/15/2022
$2,000,000 GMI PAC, INC. 1/18/2022
$1,000,000 AMERICA UNITED 4/18/2022
$500,000 SMP 5/19/2022
$500,000 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 5/5/2022
$400,000 DEMOCRATIC GRASSROOTS VICTORY FUND 8/31/2022
$350,000 VOTE TRIPLING PAC 9/24/2020
$300,000 OPPORTUNITY FOR TOMORROW 4/22/2022
$300,000 AMERICA UNITED 6/13/2022
$250,000 SMP 8/2/2021
$250,000 SMP 8/16/2021
$250,000 DMFI PAC 5/25/2022
$220,000 CENTER FOR ESSENTIAL INFORMATION 10/13/2020
$109,500 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 5/3/2022
$109,500 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 5/3/2022
$109,500 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 5/3/2022
$109,500 DCCC 6/22/2022
$105,000 ALABAMA CONSERVATIVES FUND 6/10/2022
$104,000 DCCC 6/22/2022
$50,000 BIDEN VICTORY FUND 10/23/2020
$50,000 HEARTLAND RESURGENCE 9/23/2022
$36,500 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 5/3/2022
$36,500 DCCC 6/22/2022
$36,500 NRCC 7/22/2022
$35,500 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 10/23/2020
$30,000 DSCC 3/21/2022
$30,000 DSCC 3/31/2022
$22,000 ACTIVATE AMERICA 9/1/2021
$20,800 STABENOW VICTORY FUND 1/13/2022
$20,800 MAGGIE HASSAN VICTORY FUND 7/29/2021
$10,800 GILLIBRAND VICTORY FUND 6/20/2022
$10,000 NEW HAMPSHIRE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 7/31/2021
$10,000 MICHIGAN DEMOCRATIC STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE 2/2/2022
$8,500 NRCC 7/22/2022
$6,500 DSCC 3/31/2022
$5,800 RICHARD BURR COMMITTEE; THE 8/2/2021
$5,800 BILL CASSIDY FOR US SENATE 8/2/2021
$5,800 JEFFRIES FOR CONGRESS 7/24/2021
$5,800 COLLINS FOR SENATOR 10/2/2021
$5,800 BOOZMAN FOR ARKANSAS 1/21/2022
$5,800 CITIZENS FOR BOYLE 5/9/2022
$5,800 HOEVEN FOR SENATE 6/13/2022
$5,800 HOEVEN FOR SENATE 6/13/2022
$5,000 LIMITLESS HORIZONS 10/17/2022
$5,000 GRANITE VALUES PAC 7/31/2021
$5,000 SUMMITT PAC 9/28/2022
$5,000 GREAT LAKES PAC 2/9/2022
$5,000 GUARDING AGAINST PANDEMICS PAC 4/27/2022
$5,000 HEARTLAND VALUES PAC 2/8/2022
$5,000 JERSEY VALUES PAC 1/24/2022
$5,000 GREATER TOMORROW POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE 7/22/2022
$5,000 THE NEXT 50 PAC 3/31/2022
$5,000 PRAIRIE POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE 3/19/2022
$5,000 BFB PAC 5/9/2022
$5,000 OFF THE SIDELINES PAC 6/20/2022
$5,000 AXNE PAC (AMERICANS X-PECT NEW ENERGY) 9/28/2022
$5,000 SERVING OUR COUNTRY (SOC) PAC 9/28/2022
$4,000 ACROSS THE AISLE PAC 10/19/2022
$2,900 ALESSANDRA BIAGGI FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 MANCHIN FOR WEST VIRGINIA 7/24/2021
$2,900 MANCHIN FOR WEST VIRGINIA 7/24/2021
$2,900 JASMINE FOR US 3/31/2022
$2,900 FRIENDS OF DICK DURBIN COMMITTEE 3/19/2022
$2,900 CONOLE FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 TINA SMITH FOR MINNESOTA 3/30/2022
$2,900 TINA SMITH FOR MINNESOTA 3/30/2022
$2,900 COLLINS FOR SENATOR 8/3/2021
$2,900 COLLINS FOR SENATOR 9/2/2021
$2,900 BILL CASSIDY FOR US SENATE 8/2/2021
$2,900 JEFFRIES FOR CONGRESS 7/26/2021
$2,900 MAXWELL ALEJANDRO FROST FOR CONGRESS 6/10/2022
$2,900 PETE AGUILAR FOR CONGRESS 7/24/2021
$2,900 PETE AGUILAR FOR CONGRESS 7/24/2021
$2,900 COLLINS FOR SENATOR 9/2/2021
$2,900 COLLINS FOR SENATOR 8/2/2021
$2,900 GILBERT VILLEGAS FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 SHONTEL BROWN FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 QUARTEY FOR CONGRESS 4/27/2022
$2,900 JAKE AUCHINCLOSS FOR CONGRESS 3/10/2022
$2,900 JAKE AUCHINCLOSS FOR CONGRESS 3/10/2022
$2,900 ALEX PADILLA FOR SENATE 7/24/2021
$2,900 ALEX PADILLA FOR SENATE 7/24/2021
$2,900 PEOPLE FOR PATTY MURRAY 7/24/2021
$2,900 PEOPLE FOR PATTY MURRAY 7/24/2021
$2,900 JOSH GOTTHEIMER FOR CONGRESS 1/24/2022
$2,900 ROBERT GARCIA FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 JOSH GOTTHEIMER FOR CONGRESS 1/24/2022
$2,900 CORY BOOKER FOR SENATE 10/18/2021
$2,900 FOUSHEE FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 GILLIBRAND FOR SENATE 6/20/2022
$2,900 GILLIBRAND FOR SENATE 6/20/2022
$2,900 GALLEGO FOR ARIZONA 3/31/2022
$2,900 GALLEGO FOR ARIZONA 3/31/2022
$2,900 STABENOW FOR US SENATE 2/11/2022
$2,900 STABENOW FOR US SENATE 2/11/2022
$2,900 JIM COSTA FOR CONGRESS 7/11/2022
$2,900 HALEY STEVENS FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 BRITTANY PETTERSEN FOR COLORADO 3/31/2022
$2,900 FRIENDS OF LUCY MCBATH 3/31/2022
$2,900 TORRES FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 WELCH FOR VERMONT 3/31/2022
$2,900 MAGGIE FOR NH 7/31/2021
$2,900 MAGGIE FOR NH 7/31/2021
$2,900 MENENDEZ FOR CONGRESS 4/27/2022
$2,900 CARRICK FLYNN FOR OREGON 3/31/2022
$2,900 BOOZMAN FOR ARKANSAS 1/21/2022
$2,900 CITIZENS FOR BOYLE 5/9/2022
$2,900 MORGAN MCGARVEY FOR CONGRESS 5/16/2022
$2,900 SEAN PATRICK MALONEY FOR CONGRESS 6/17/2022
$2,900 MAX ROSE FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 SEAN PATRICK MALONEY FOR CONGRESS 6/17/2022
$2,900 JOSH HARDER FOR CONGRESS 9/28/2022
$2,900 NIKKI FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 LOU CORREA FOR CONGRESS 9/28/2022
$2,900 CHUY GARCIA FOR CONGRESS 6/10/2022
$2,900 HOEVEN FOR SENATE 7/1/2022
$2,900 SALUD CARBAJAL FOR CONGRESS 10/19/2022
$2,900 BECCA BALINT FOR VERMONT 6/10/2022
$2,900 SALUD CARBAJAL FOR CONGRESS 7/2/2022
$2,900 SANFORD BISHOP FOR CONGRESS 7/2/2022
$2,900 LISA MURKOWSKI FOR US SENATE 8/2/2021
$2,900 LISA MURKOWSKI FOR US SENATE 8/2/2021
$2,900 ANGIE CRAIG FOR CONGRESS 7/2/2022
$2,900 SYDNEY KAMLAGER FOR CONGRESS 6/10/2022
$2,900 GILLEN FOR CONGRESS 4/27/2022
$2,800 BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT 10/23/2020
$2,800 CORY BOOKER FOR SENATE 10/18/2021
$2,500 CHC BOLD PAC 3/31/2022
$1,000 BENNET FOR COLORADO 10/27/2010
$1,000 DEMOCRATIC STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF MARYLAND 4/27/2022
$1,000 ACROSS THE AISLE PAC 7/18/2022
$780 ARIZONA DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 PENNSYLVANIA DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 NORTH CAROLINA DEMOCRATIC PARTY – FEDERAL 10/23/2020
$780 COLORADO DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 MINNESOTA DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF VIRGINIA 10/23/2020
$780 OHIO DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 NEBRASKA DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF FLORIDA 10/23/2020
$780 GEORGIA FEDERAL ELECTIONS COMMITTEE 10/23/2020
$780 DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF WISCONSIN 10/23/2020
$780 TEXAS DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 NEVADA STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020

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This doesn’t include “donations” by two other principles from FTX, the total is almost $80 million dollars, THIS CYCLE.

Imagine knowing your crypto money was stolen to pay for liberals to import illegals from 3rd world countries that are there to replace you!

Tom Brady is rumored to have lost $650,000,000.

UPDATE 6:45 PM EST —

Want to know how high this corruption goes?   Look who attended an FTX Event in the Bahamas, THIS PAST APRIL (2022):

Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, seen in the photo below, sitting on-stage with Sam Bankman-Fried!!!!!

FTX Event April 2022 Bahamas BillClinton TonyBlair
FTX Event April 2022 Bahamas BillClinton TonyBlair

Not only are the two former officials at the event, the event marquis clearly says “This Session is OFF THE RECORD.”  Here. Look:

FTX Event April 2022 Bahamas BillClinton TonyBlair OFF THE RECORD
FTX Event April 2022 Bahamas BillClinton TonyBlair OFF THE RECORD

Now, aside from the obvious millions of dollars in campaign donations shown above, the much bigger question is: How much cash ended-up in Politicians PRIVATE Crypto Accounts ??????     Many observers believe “Billions” got siphoned-off the Ukraine “Aid” and other “Foreign Aid.

Kittencal’s Perfect Prime Rib Roast Beef

“NOTE…THE INTERNAL TEMPERATURE NOT THE TIME IS YOUR BEST GUARANTEE FOR DONENESS so for a perfectly cooked prime rib roast invest in a meat thermometer and you will never go wrong with this recipe!

— if desired you may omit the au jus and just serve the roast, I prefer to make the au jus especially if I am serving this at a holiday table

— Use nothing else but only fresh garlic, a little salt and lots of fresh ground black pepper for this or you could use 1 teaspoon garlic salt, using any other spices will take away the flavor, nothing else is needed

— Cooking on very high heat then reducing the temperature will seal in all the meat juices to produce the most tender and flavorful prime rib, this actually is the method that a lot of the higher end restaurants use to make there prime rib and is the method I always use when I make prime rib roast at my home

— The cooking time stated on the recipe is for a 3-4 pound prime rib, you can use this method for a larger prime rib and increase the cooking time please see bottom of directions

— For a perfectly cooked prime rib roast a meat thermometer inserted in the roast should read about 140 degrees for medium-rare doneness, it is advised not to cook prime rib more that medium-rare

—– Using more that the specified amount of salt will draw out the juices from the roast, you could add a little more but it is best to salt the meat after it is cooked, using a minimum amount of salt will insure a juicy tender prime rib roast, 1 teaspoon or less of salt will be fine, remember to remove your roast from the fridge about 2 hours before cooking

2022 11 14 17 19
2022 11 14 17 19

Ingredients

  • 3 -4 lbs center-cut prime rib roast, nicely marbled, and trimmed, but leave a layer of fat on top of roast for flavor
  • 8 fresh large garlic cloves, sliced in half (or use many as desired)
  • fresh ground black pepper (use lots!)
  • 12 teaspoon white salt (can use up to 1 teaspoon salt) or 1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt (can use up to 1 teaspoon salt)
  • 12 cup dry white wine
  • 2 cups beef stock (or use a good quality beef broth)

Directions

  • Using a knife, poke small holes all over uncooked roast, and insert a half of a clove of fresh garlic in the hole (as many holes and as much garlic as desired).
  • Cover roast, and refrigerate overnight.
  • The next day, remove the roast from fridge and uncover; let sit out at room temperature for about 2 to 2-1/2 hours (this is an important step to relax the meat fibers, it will make for a more tender juicy roast, the length of counter-time will depend on the size of your roast).
  • Set oven to 450°F and allow the oven to preheat for a minimum of 15 minutes.
  • Season the roast with only a small amount of salt but lots of fresh ground black pepper pepper (that’s all nothing else but a little salt and fresh ground black pepper, using any other spices will take away the flavor from the prime rib!).
  • Place the roast fat-side up on a rack in a shallow-sided pan, then insert a meat thermometer in the middle of the roast but not touching any rib bones.
  • Roast uncovered at 450°F for 20 minutes (a few more minutes won’t hurt at 450°F).
  • After 20 minutes of high heat cooking reduce heat to 350°F and continue to roast for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes OR until the meat thermometer reads 130°F for rare doneness OR 140°F for medium-rare doneness, that is the way a prime rib really should be served, check your roast after 1 hour cooking time.
  • *NOTE* It is strongly advised to remove the roast slightly before desired degree of doneness is achieved as the roast will continue to rise in temperature several degrees after removing from the oven.
  • Remove meat to a carving board.
  • Cover loosely with foil and allow let rest (DO NOT CUT INTO ROAST for at least 20 or more minutes or all juices in the meat will flow out).
  • While the roast is resting prepare the au jus; place the roasting pan on top of the stove over high heat.
  • Add in the wine; cook for 8-10 minutes, stirring and scraping any brown bits.
  • Add in the beef stock; cook and reduce the juice by half (this might take about 20 minutes).
  • Add salt and pepper to taste.
  • Slice roast (just before serving!) and drizzle with some of the juice.
  • *NOTE* if desired you can cover the roast loosely with foil the first hour and then uncover and cook for the remaining time.
  • ——————————————–.
  • APPROXIMATE COOKING TIMES for the prime rib cooked at 350°F after the 20 minute cooking time at 450°F.
  • Rare; cook 12-13 minutes per pound or to 130°F.
  • Medium-rare; cook 14-16 minutes per pound or to 140°F (I would not recommend cooking a prime rib any more than medium-rare).
  • Since every oven cooks differently cooking times are only approximate.
  • SUGGESTED SERVING PORTIONS PER PERSON —-for a generous serving of prime rib roast you should figure on 2 people per rib, that means if you plan to serve 6 people you should be able to do so with 3 ribs/ eight people with 4 ribs/ do not bother with less than 3 ribs anything less than that is not a roast but rather a steak and would be better treated as such.

The aerobatic flight show conducted by four J20s yesterday was absolutely exhilarating even in relatively imperfect weather conditions. People on site were so obsessed with it that most still kept their eyes fixed on J20s after their landings, talking about their shows and nobody realized that a J16 has already taken off and performed several amazing maneuvers.

TSMC 7nm process capacity utilization falling rapidly

Monica Chen, Hsinchu; Eifeh Strom, DIGITIMES Asia
From HERE
This report coincides with an earlier report that China has already begun to mass produce the 7nm chipset. 

Biden policy NOW helps to hand over the world biggest chip market exclusively to Chinese chip makers. 

The end result is all other chip makers will lost economic of scale, and become noncompetitive. 

Capacity utilization rates for TSMC’s 7nm process platform and its process variants N6, N7 have fallen below 50%, according to industry sources.

Many IC design customers are cutting orders and delaying pull-ins of TSMC’s 7nm process. Companies that have had the biggest impact include MediaTek, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Qualcomm, Apple, and Intel, as well as Chinese companies like Unisoc, which have been restricted by bans. TSMC has not responded to market rumors.

Despite the market downturn, TSMC recently expressed confidence. However, TSMC’s utilization rates for its 7nm and 6nm processes have fallen and are not expected to return to previous levels until the first half of 2023, according to sources.

The largest application for 7nm and 6nm is smartphones, PCs, servers, and other high-performance computing (HPC). High inventory levels in the mobile phone and PC supply chains, combining with performance pressures, have led to order adjustments, even at the risk of affecting long-term relationships with TSMC.

Qualcomm and MediaTek have both warned about the seriousness of smartphone inventory levels and have taken conservative views of the near future.

MediaTek has high levels of entry-level and mid-range smartphones, and has been more affected by the weak market. It expects fourth-quarter performance to fall by 20% sequentially. Sources pointed out that MediaTek is one of the largest players in this wave of foundry order cuts.

Sources revealed that the utilization rate for the 7nm family at Fab 15B in Taichung is lower than expected. It has reportedly dropped below 50% and is expected to worsen in the first quarter of 2023. Plans for Fab 22 in Kaohsiung have been shelved indefinitely, according to sources. TSMC is expected to revisit the plans depending on future production capacity requirements.

Construction progress of Fab 12 P8 in the Hsinchu Science Park is also unknown, sources said.

According to sources, Intel was previously expected to expand its outsourcing strategy with a large order using TSMC’s 7nm process, but reduced its order as a result of weak market conditions and lower-than-expected PC and server shipments. Intel’s Arc A series of GPUs are built using TSMC’s 6nm process node, while its Xe-HPC architecture Ponte Vecchio uses the 7nm process node.

Despite the continuous launch of new products, pull-in momentum is weak, sources said. TSMC’s top 10 customers have all made order adjustments, including the return of new orders from Nvidia for 7nm A100 chips and 4nm H100 chips, as well as adjustments and pull-in delays for the RTX 40 series. Intel has also made significant changes to its 4nm and 3nm orders.

Regardless, TSMC remains the leader in advanced processes. Order visibility for 5nm and below is still relatively high. Not only does AMD’s newest Zen 4 architecture Genoa server and RDNA 3 architecture GPU use TSMC’s 5nm process, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 uses the 4nm process.

Starting in 2023, TSMC will take a large order for Apple’s latest Mac series, which has an annual shipment scale of 20 million units, sources said. Orders for iPhones and iPads will be stable.

Sources noted that once inventory has been cleared, global IC design customers including Broadcom, Marvell, and MediaTek will expand their orders with TSMC.

DHS Censorship Agency Strange First Mission: Banning Speech That Casts Doubt On Election

Very long. Bored me to no end, but important for Americans to read. -MM
.

Unfortunately, this country is headed for a horrible outcome. No self-governing society can suffer the strain to civil society that comes from loss of regime credibility.  This overt and actual illegal censorship, in violation of the First Amendment, must be brought to a halt.  How that takes place, really doesn’t matter anymore.

The US Department of Homeland Security is actively engaged in the deprivation of American’s constitutionally protected free speech rights.  They are using our own tax money to strip away our rights.  The full report, done by the Foundation for Freedom Online, appears below:
DHS Censorship Agency Strange First Mission: Banning Speech That Casts Doubt On Election
SUMMARY
  • Network throttled millions of posts ahead of 2020 election, blocked “emerging narratives” from reaching “virality threshold.”
  • Censors boast on video of getting tech companies to ban entire categories of election speech under threat of “huge regulatory pressure.”
  • Months before the 2020 election, censors systematically targeted all speech categories that could challenge a future “red mirage, blue shift” election scenario.
Last week, The Intercept published a set of leaks that drew broad interest in perhaps the most under-covered scandal inside the US government today: the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) quiet move to establish, for the first time in US history, an explicitly inward-facing domestic censorship bureau.What The Intercept glimpsed, however, is just the tip of a much larger iceberg.The size, scale and speed of DHS’s censorship operation are vastly larger have been reported. Based on our investigation, below are seven bottom-line figures summarizing the scope of censorship carried out by DHS speech control partners, as compiled from their own reports and videos:

    • 22 Million tweets labeled “misinformation” on Twitter;
    • 859 Million tweets collected in databases for “misinformation” analysis;
    • 15 tech platforms monitored for “misinformation” often in real-time;
    • <1 hour average response time between government partners and tech platforms;
    • Dozens of “misinformation narratives” targeted for platform-wide throttling; and
    • Hundreds of millions of individual Facebook posts, YouTube videos, TikToks, and tweets impacted, due to “misinformation” Terms of Service policy changes that DHS partners openly plotted and bragged tech companies would never have done without DHS partner insistence and “huge regulatory pressure” from government.

The citations above are from just the DHS censorship network’s impact on the 2020 election cycle alone. That was two years ago, when the narrative management machine referenced by The Intercept was first getting formed. Even the above figures, however, just scratch the surface of the full story.

While The Intercept rightly noted that DHS’s “truth cops“ now take on a range of other topics – such as Covid-19 and geopolitical opinions – it all started from, and grew out of, DHS’s speech control infrastructure set up to censor speech about elections.

That started with the 2020 election. But it continues, importantly, with the 2022 midterm elections, which are ongoing this week.

At Foundation for Freedom Online, for more than six months, we have been publishing and sharing research findings about a wide span of shocking components to DHS’s speech control operations. Our investigation has spurred multiple members of Congress to vow aggressive probes into DHS’s “government censorship by proxy.”

The whole story, however, has not all been published in one place. In this report, we seek to provide a comprehensive history and network map of DHS’s public-private censorship network, as told through a deep dive into its first mission — the censorship of the 2020 election.

Along the way, we will highlight the network’s role in censoring the ongoing 2022 midterm elections.

In the final section of this report, we will cover a particularly disturbing aspect of this story — DHS’s pre-censorship of speech that could “cast doubt” on a so-called “red mirage, blue shift” election scenario, months in advance of such an exact sequence playing out.

Background History & Cast Of Characters

In this background section, we will present a history and overview of the key players participating in DHS’s extended censorship network, with special attention to its formation in the run-up to the 2020 election.

This story has two main institutional sides: the government within DHS and the non-governmental side consisting of a web of like-minded private sector and civil society partners. Together, this network forms the DHS public-private censorship network that is the subject of this report.

The Government Side: Chris Krebs’s CISA

The key coordinating hub for the government side is an “obscure government agency” named CISA, which is tucked within DHS, and was created by act of Congress in November 2018, nominally to defend America against cybersecurity threats from hostile foreign actors (e.g., Russian hackers).

CISA’s longform name, the “Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency” has none of the Orwellian overtones of the “Disinformation Governance Board”. CISA took great pains to cloak itself as just a simple, security-focused cybersecurity directorate. CISA’s founding director, Chris Krebs, was fond of telling audiences that CISA was just “The agency that cares so much about security, it’s in our name twice”.

CISA’s mission was supposed to be cyber security. Not cyber censorship.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 2020 election.

First, on January 6, 2017, outgoing Obama Administration DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson designated “election infrastructure” as being “critical infrastructure” under the purview of DHS protection.

This designation, born out of unsubstantiated claims that Russia had just stolen, hacked or otherwise materially interfered with the 2016 election, tasked DHS with protecting election-related structure, such as polling places, voting machines and computer systems.

CISA’s Internet censorship power grew out of interpreting “critical infrastructure” beyond its hard physical meaning to apply to meta-physical concepts. By 2019, “foreign disinformation” on social media was increasingly framed as a “cyber threat” to election infrastructure.

Through this framing mechanism, CISA’s “cybersecurity” authority morphed into a “cybercensorship” authority. However, this move was initially limited to CISA only targeting “foreign disinformation”, through DHS’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force.

But when the 2016 election-era “Russian interference” Special Prosecutor’s probe ended in July 2019 with former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s failure to find “collusion” between then-President Trump and outside Russians, DHS and CISA began to change their tunes.

The entire “countering Russian disinformation on social media” apparatus that had been constructed before July 2019 to censor, throttle and identify “foreign disinformation” was quietly, but entirely, pivoted to focus inward on “domestic disinformation.”

This “Foreign-To-Domestic Disinformation Switcheroo” on censorship was never widely conveyed beyond DHS doors out to the American people. It was plotted on DHS’s own livestreams and internal documents. DHS insiders’ collective justification, without uttering a peep about the switch’s revolutionary implications, was that “domestic disinformation” was now a greater “cyber threat to elections” than falsehoods flowing from foreign interference.

This meant that, henceforth, any US citizen posting what DHS considered “misinformation” online was suddenly conducting a cyber attack against US critical infrastructure. That was the legal framework under which DHS – and CISA particularly – drew their jurisdiction.

To illustrate this, we’ve put together a supercut of DHS censorship network partners switching from a “foreign” to a “domestic” predicate for censorship between the 2016 election and the 2020 election:

o CISA’s self-invented censorship powers against “foreign disinformation” went from being pointed outward against supposed Russian bot accounts to being pointed inwards at tens of millions of US citizens simply talking lawfully about their own elections.

The main character in the CISA side of this story is its then-director in 2020, Chris Krebs. After the 2020 election, CISA’s leadership baton was handed to current head Jen Easterly, covered below.

Since this is a story about government censorship and abuse of power, Chris Krebs’s public statements on censorship issues provide insight into the founding intent of the government censorship operation that first grew out of Krebs setting it up. Here are eight data points useful to bear in mind:

    • Krebs, who administered the federal side of the 2020 election after DHS effectively nationalized election infrastructure on January 6, 2017, said that every lawyer who represented conservative clients on claims concerning 2020 election irregularities should be permanently disbarred and banned from legal practice for life.
    • Krebs said that the sitting President in 2020, Donald Trump, was a national security threat because he espoused domestic “disinformation.”
    • Krebs has repeatedly said on record that “misinformation” is the single biggest threat to election security. Note that Kreb’s role in government was not supposed to be as arbiter of truth; he was supposed to be a cybersecurity expert from Microsoft. Yet US domestic citizen opinions on social media became, in Kreb’s estimate, the top “cyber” security threat facing the US, replacing foreign hacking and malware.

After leaving CISA, both of Krebs’s two new jobs in January 2021 were outgrowths of the very CISA censorship network Krebs established with outside partners while in government.

First, shortly before President Biden’s inauguration, Krebs started a private consulting firm with former Facebook executive Alex Stamos, simply called “Krebs Stamos Group.”

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Stamos, covered extensively below, was perhaps the top figure overseeing the entire private sector side of the public-private censorship enterprise that Krebs and Stamos jointly built to censor populist political voices during the 2020 election.

It was Stamos who, according to his own group’s report, pitched the idea in July 2020 for DHS to even create a government censorship apparatus in the first place. Although, as we will cover, there is reason to believe such plans between Krebs and Stamos may have started considerably earlier than that reported date.

We will cover this Krebs-Stamos government-academia censorship relationship further below.

Krebs’s other role right after leaving CISA was becoming chair of the Aspen Institute’s “Commission on Information Disorder,” to galvanize a stronger “ whole-of-society” approach to censoring rumors and misinformation on the Internet.

Thus, Krebs – the original government censor – transitioned seamlessly through the revolving door of industry, into lucrative partnerships with private sector censorship professionals and prestigious civil society groups whose stated goal is decreasing the freedom of US citizen speech on the Internet.

Today, Krebs’s seat at the head of CISA is now occupied by Jen Easterly, a former military intelligence official who was deputy director of the National Security Agency (NSA) for counterterrorism. She appears to be taking her military intelligence experience squashing foreign terrorists from Tehran and using it to squash American populists on Twitter.

In October 2021, Easterly and Krebs held a 30-minute taped discussion for CISA’s “Cybersecurity Summit 2021: Continuity of Excellence” summit, in which they mutually agreed that Krebs’s construction of a “counter-misinformation” conglomerate with the private sector was among the top structures to preserve and expand at DHS going forward.

Easterly’s inheritance of Krebs’s censorship machine appears to be corroborated in the ongoing State Attorney General “big tech collusion” lawsuit versus the Biden Administration. There, the court recently ruled that Easterly can be deposed because of her “first-hand knowledge” of the censorship “nerve center” run out of CISA, her seeking “greater censorship… done by federal pressure on social media platforms”, and her reported statements that CISA’s “most critical infrastructure is a cognitive infrastructure.”

Before discussing the private sector side, it should be noted that the government apparatus at DHS is now larger and scattered beyond just CISA. As we have previously reported.

Let’s now move on to the private sector side of the equation. To whom did Chris Krebs and CISA outsource the task of mass social media censorship of the 2020 election? Who runs the private sector side and how is it all structured?

The Election Integrity Partnership

The main institutional character on the private sector side we will focus on in this story is a “counter-disinformation” collective called the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). EIP is made up of four of the most powerful and politically well-connected social media monitoring and mass-reporting groups in the world. Their respective directors were all early industry pioneers in the rise of the censorship industry after the 2016 election.

The four entities comprising EIP are two universities, an influential foreign policy think tank, and a private social media analytics firm. They are, respectively:

    • Stanford Internet Observatory;
    • Washington University’s (UW) Center for an Informed Public;
    • The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab; and

 

    • Graphika.

One common thread connecting these four entities is that each of their directors were involved in aggressively alleging (unsubstantiated) claims from January 2017 through early 2020 that Russian interference had helped Donald Trump win the 2016 election by using inauthentic bots and troll accounts on social media.

Each of the four entities comprising EIP is also deeply connected to the US military and foreign policy establishment. These four institutions further came into the 2020 election cycle with deep pre-existing connections to the major social media companies’ content moderation teams, having worked together on censorship issues since the field first began developing in 2017.

It is very helpful to understand EIP’s network and operations in depth, because it was through EIP that DHS built the infrastructure for its current role as government coordinator of takedowns and throttling of US citizen speech online.

Just to make this all perfectly clear up front, below is EIP leader Alex Stamos explaining the whole DHS-EIP partnership was set up to outsource censorship through EIP, “to try to fill the gap of the things that the government could not do themselves” because the government “lacked both kinda the funding and the legal authorizations”:

Massive article with much more HERE

China’s military hardware is incredibly impressive. It will be well received.Well done China.

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How many wars is the United States involved in?

The U.S. is now involved in more than 130 wars or none, depending on your definition of ‘war.’ Or it is involved in one worldwide “War Against Terror,” that successive U.S. Administrations, with Congressional support, have used to justify U.S. military operations in at least 134 countries, where they are engaged in direct combat operations, conduct special covert missions, act as military advisers, or train foreign troops or militias.

The problem is that our traditional definition of “war” is outdated, and so is our imagination of what war means.

World War II was the last time Congress officially declared war. Since then, the conflicts we’ve called “wars” — from Vietnam through to the second Iraq War — have actually been congressional “authorizations of military force.”

And more recently, beginning with the War Powers Act of 1973, presidential war powers have expanded so much that, according to the Congressional Research Service, it’s no longer clear whether a president requires congressional authorization at all to engage in war.

The recent US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will likely be the last time, in the foreseeable future, that the United States wages war in the way that’s most familiar to us: a lot of combat troops on the ground in a foreign country with lots of money and support and an ostensibly achievable objective.

US troop presence in Iraq peaked at 187,900 in 2008. In Afghanistan, it peaked in 2010 at 100,000.

On paper, it looked like the United States was fighting two wars. But the reality was much more complicated, and it’s only gotten more complicated. So how many wars is the US fighting right now?

Somewhere between zero and 134+.

Here’s the rationale:

Total # of wars: 0

Congress hasn’t declared war since 1942 so there is no war right now.

Okay, that makes no sense.

Look at a funding profile over time. It’s very clear.

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From this graph, we can CLEARLY see that American spending on weapons and military are clearly indicative of America waging active wars.

To ignore that outrageous and obvious “tell tale” is to act the fool.

Total # of wars: 6

This maybe sounds more reasonable.

Consider the definition of war put forth by Linda Bilmes (Harvard Kennedy School) and Michael Intriligator (UCLA), who defined war in a 2013 paper as “conflicts where the US is launching extensive military incursions, including drone attacks, but that are not officially ‘declared.’”

By that definition, the United States is at war in six places right now:

  • Iraq
  • Afghanistan
  • Pakistan
  • Somalia
  • Yemen
  • Ukraine

Total # of wars: 8

If you include nations that have American military, American military uniforms, weapons and systems, and is led with / by American generals. This then, adds two additional nations to the list above.

  • South Korea
  • Taiwan

Total # of wars: 134+

Whoa! Surprising, right?

In 2013, the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) — one of the nine organizational units that make up the Unified Combatant Command — had special operations forces (SOFs) in 134 countries.

The American military were either involved in combat, special missions, or advising and training foreign forces.

Since most of what SOFs do is classified, all we know about them is what we get told about them. Here’s what we’re told by the Joint Chiefs of Staff: What are SOFs?

“Special operations forces (SOF) are small, specially organized units manned by people carefully selected and trained to operate under physically demanding and psychologically stressful conditions to accomplish missions using modified equipment and unconventional applications of tactics against strategic and operational objectives. 

The unique capabilities of SOF complement those of conventional forces.”

And what do they do?

“Joint special operations (SO) are conducted by SOF from more than one Service in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments to achieve military, diplomatic, informational, and/or economic objectives employing military capabilities for which there is no broad conventional force requirement. 

These operations may require low visibility, clandestine, or covert capabilities. 

SO are applicable across the range of military operations. 

They can be conducted independently or in conjunction with operations of conventional forces or other government agencies and may include operations through, with, or by indigenous or surrogate forces. 

SO differ from conventional operations in degree of physical and political risk, operational techniques, use of special equipment, modes of employment, independence from friendly support, and dependence on detailed operational intelligence and indigenous assets.”

Examples: These tasks include;

  • special reconnaissance (SR),
  • direct action (DA),
  • unconventional warfare (UW),
  • foreign internal defense (FID),
  • counterterrorism, counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

SOCOM admited to having forces on the ground in 134 countries around the world (in 2014).

That doesn’t mean its forces are carrying out capture or kill raids in every country, but it’s almost impossible to know where and when different operations are taking place.

That’s especially true when it comes to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), an operational command within SOCOM that operates with an enormous amount of autonomy and secrecy — and, some would say, little accountability.

Founded after the failed mission to rescue American hostages in Tehran in 1980 and designed to handle similarly complex operations in the future, JSOC was a classified and little used command on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since then, it’s more than tripled in size, received an ever-increasing share of funding, and has conducted operations in dozens of countries.

(Journalist Jeremy Scahill wrote in depth about JSOC in his 2013 book, “Dirty Wars.” That’s where the following information comes from.)

JSOC was introduced to the world on May 1, 2011, when Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in a nighttime raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The raid was a collaboration between the CIA and an agency almost nobody had heard of: JSOC. “We’re the dark matter,” a Navy SEAL told the Washington Post of JSOC in 2011. “We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen.”

We know more about JSOC now, thanks to investigative reporters like Scahill and Mark Mazzetti. JSOC’s core is made up of three acknowledged “Special Missions Units” (SMUs).

You know these folks from TV and movies:

  • Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment (Delta Force),
  • the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVRGU or “Seal Team Six”),
  • the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron.

In addition to the SMUs, JSOC has its own intelligence division, the Intelligence Support Activity, and often oversees the 75th Ranger Regiment, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (the “Night Stalkers”), and other special operations forces. JSOC, along with the Special Activities Division at the CIA, have been the leading edge of counterterrorism.

Journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin found that JSOC has carried out counterterrorism operations in…

  • Iraq,
  • Afghanistan,
  • Algeria,
  • Iran,
  • Malaysia,
  • Mali,
  • Nigeria,
  • Pakistan,
  • the Philippines,
  • Somalia,
  • Syria,
  • Ukraine,
  • Taiwan,
  • Yemen.

An anonymous source with close ties to JSOC gave Scahill an even more expansive list that included those countries along with Indonesia, Thailand, Colombia, Peru, and several countries in Eastern and Central Asia.

“The world is a battlefield and we are at war,”

The source told Scahill of the logic that drives JSOC.

“Therefore the military can go wherever they please and do whatever it is that they want to do, in order to achieve the national security objectives of whichever administration happens to be in power.”

Add such nations of Iran, Bolivia, Kenya and more to the list and it seems really hard to keep track of all the killing, and wars that the United States is involved in.

Total # of wars: 1

“The world is a battlefield” isn’t just a vague, hawkish worldview — it’s a legal understanding of military force in the age of a single, global war: the War on Terror.

The world is a battlefield thanks in large part to the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which Congress passed on Sept. 14, 2001 and which gives the President of the United States broad power to fight terrorism around the world.

It reads in part:

“The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determined planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2011, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

A video that discusses what is next

Yuppur. The USA has Taiwan in it’s sights. Please check out this “must see” video…

Conclusion

So how many wars would you say the United States is now fighting?

The easy answer might just be: too many.

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The mysterious disappearance of the crew of the L-8

Ghost ship in the sky: The mysterious disappearance of the crew of the L-8
by SOFREP May 26, 2020. This article was written by Alex Hollings and originally published in 2017. 

Here is a short blurb of an article about a mystery. Please take a moment and enjoy the mystery presented here. Savor it. It will make good conversational discussion with some friends at the pub, or at the water fountain at work.

Stories of ghost ships adrift in the vast expanses of ocean have survived since man first took to the sea. Legends about ships like The Flying Dutchman, which was lost under the leadership of Van der Decken near the Cape of Good Hope as they traveled toward the East Indies, continue to spring up in reports given by sailors claiming to see the cursed vessel ever continuing on its voyage.

Another famous ship, the Mary Celeste, was found adrift in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872, completely unharmed and in good working order, but missing its crew, a lifeboat, and the captain’s logbook. All of the crew’s possessions remained on board, as well as its untouched payload of 1500 barrels of alcohol, prompting a number of theories ranging from mutiny to poisoning to sheer madness.

The two-thirds of our planet covered by water has always been ripe with mysteries, thanks in large part to its ability to swallow ships, airplanes, survivors, and wreckage into its depths, never to be seen again. Without any evidence left behind to help us to understand what happens on ships like the Mary Celeste, the mystery proves enduring, and like a fine wine, mysteries often get better with age. But not every ghost ship is lost at sea. Some ghost ships, in fact, are of the airborne variety.

Nazi U-Boats proved to be a significant threat to allied naval efforts throughout World War II, prompting a number of novel approaches to spotting and combating submarines before they could sneak up on our ships. One such approach was the use of L-Class blimps, which could float above the ocean and spot submerged enemy vessels.

On the morning of August 16th, 1942, Lieutenant Ernest Cody and Ensign Charles Adams climbed aboard their L-8 Airship, a former Goodyear Blimp that had been procured by the Navy in April of that year to deliver equipment to the carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) while at sea. Their mission was simple: head out to sea from their post on Treasure Island in California and look for any signs of enemy submersibles.

Prior to the August flight, Lt. Cody had flown the L-8 out to the Carrier Hornet to make one last delivery as the ship, and sixteen B-25 bombers, headed across the Pacific, bound for Tokyo. (National Archives)
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A little over an hour into their patrol, the two men radioed that they had spotted an oil slick on the water and were moving to investigate.Read Next: USS Independence Completes its Last Voyage – Towed to Brownsville Texas

“We figured by that time it was a submarine,” said Wesley Frank Lamoureux, a member of the Navy’s Armed Guard Unit who was aboard the cargo ship Albert Gallatin. “From then on, I am not too positive of the actions of the dirigible except that it would come down very close over the water. In fact, it seemed to almost sit on top of the water.”

According to his testimony, the blimp dropped two flares and circled the area, which was in keeping with protocol when investigating the possibility of a German sub. The Albert Gallatin cargo ship, believing the blimp could have located a U-Boat, sounded the general alarm, manned their guns, and made a hasty exit from the area. It would be the last time anyone would see the L-8 operating under the controls of its crew.

A few hours later, the massive air-ship approached the quiet town of Daly City, California. The sagging blimp eventually came to rest after getting snagged in power lines and crashing onto Bellevue Avenue. Crowds quickly amassed in the chaos and a number of people approached the wreckage in hopes of saving the crew… only to find the cabin empty.

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The pilot’s parachute remained where it had been stowed before the trip, the lifeboat was still there as well. The pilot’s cap sat atop the instrument panel, and its payload of two bombs was secured. A briefcase containing confidential documents the crew had orders to dispose of if compromised also remained on board. The only things out-of-place were the blimp itself, and its missing crew.

Like the Mary Celeste, the L-8’s crew had seemed to vanish without a trace, prompting its own slew of theories.

  • Some assumed both the pilot and ensign had simply fallen out of the vessel, though it would have been nearly impossible to do so without both crew members leaving the cabin of the ship while it was still airborne. If there was something damaged that required both men to address on the external hull of the vessel, there was no evidence to suggest what it was in the wreckage.
The blimp finally came to rest atop Richard Johnston’s freshly waxed car in Daly City, Calif. just South of San Francisco. (National Archives)
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  • Another theory postulated that the two men, were taken prisoner. They supposed that in the course of investigating the oil slick, lowered their blimp enough to be taken prisoner by the crew of the U-Boat or a Japanese vessel.
  • Still, others postulated that the two men were embroiled in a love triangle that drove one to kill the other and then escape by diving into the sea.
  • Other suppose a UFO was involved and either Reptilians or other dangerous extraterrestrials abducted them for heinous experimentation.

Despite a thorough investigation, no conclusion could ever be drawn.

 

The time to transcend the vaccine mind cage is NOW

Some thoughts.
“Americans today fear that linearism (alias the American Dream) has run its course. Many would welcome some enlightenment about history’s patterns and rhythms, but today’s intellectual elites offer little that’s useful. Caught between the entropy of the chaoticists and the hubris of the linearists, the American people have lost their moorings.” 

– Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
The following is from a MM influencer. I think that it is worthy of printing, and applies not only to nations, but to Magick, and other PSI issues. Please check it out. All credit to <redacted>.

A coincidence?

Is it a coincidence? Last night, before news broke out that there is a new deadly virus in China, I had asked Deirdre, Nathan, and Skwisgar why no one has thought to continue research on why some resident bacteria act as "first responders" or "resident aliens who signed up to be soldiers" (like Samoans signing up for the US Military to gain citizenship) in some people's bodies. I remembered reading this article so many years ago, when I was still in the US. Some women were getting around (a lot) and never got any STDs. It wasn't their native immune system that was protecting them, it was the resident microbiome in their bodies. I mean their native immune system is fine, but what attacked these pathogenic organisms were the entrenched "friendly" bacteria in their bodies. I also asked the repeat question about the lack of research in virophages and bacteriophages. So I woke up this morning and got your messages. And I know about the recent outbreak in Sanya.

We are all weary about these constant outbreaks. the masks, vaccines, travel restrictions, quarantine, etc. Right now, we have vaccines, masks, disinfectant chemicals, quarantine procedures. It's quite primitive and very inconvenient. Vaccines are slow, and masks will exert negative health effects (restricted air flow that leaves you breathing recycled old air is not good for your lungs or skin). 

I can tell you that there is some kind of mind block going on. This mind block is preventing the evolution of technologies that will really revolutionise the way we protect our health. You also know the Domain policy of waiting until you develop the gumption to ask. If you don't ask, you'll never get the answer. They're not gonna lay it out for you just because. 

So, how many American biolabs are there in this world? Do we have the time to make vaccines for each and every pathogen they store in those damn labs? It takes years to test and perfect vaccines. The fastest way and best way to protect the body is to harness the resident bacteria, viruses, and fungi in the body and recruit them as active attackers for the host immune system. The immune system is the "military" or "police" of the body, which serve as the nation state in our analogy. Right now, bacteria in our gut act as "factory specialists" who help break down food and extract the necessary nutrients out of it. Their wages are a "cut" of the food that we eat. They are good "permanent residents", working and paying taxes. But they are still civilians. Usually, in most bodies, only the body's actual cells (i.e. natural born citizens) are eligible for law enforcement and military (immune system, killer T-cells and macrophages). Now, the immune system knows to recognise the friendly microbiome and not hurt them (permanent resident civilians who work and pay tax).    But you see there's a missed opportunity...

Why can't the body recruit some of these resident bacteria/virus/fungi into active military service? Our body is their home, their nation. if they want to pick up arms and protect their home, well why not? Don't we need all the help we can get? Frankly, there would be no better soldiers for detecting enemy bacteria, viruses, and fungi. In the natural world, these micro-organisms know how to cooperate, protect each other, and even wage war. What are biofilms? Well this is protein goop made by groups of bacteria to protect themselves from chemical warfare (antibiotics). Yes, all bacteria know how to make antibiotics. even the ones in your gut. They know how to kill unfriendly bacteria if necessary. The human DNA has already incorporated some viral DNA (it's viral DNA that actually enables the viability of pregnancy through the placenta 

Now, we get this viral DNA that lets us make a protein that fuses things.” Once a viral protein, the virus essentially morphed or evolved into what we now know as syncytin. This protein gives baby the ability to fuse cells into a wall — the placenta — that connects mom and baby but also keeps them separate.

So clearly, our bodies have the capability to "naturalise" foreign organisms and make them a part of us, or at least convince them to work on our behalf, since we provide a stable home for them and their children. Well OK, you ask, so how do we convince more resident micro-organisms to do this to serve as our first line of defensive immunity? 

There is technology for this, most likely a hormone. And perhaps a device that sends/delivers the correct frequency. hormone is chemical communication, but also vibrations/frequencies of light and sound are forms of communication. Yes, the technology involves these. We already use light frequencies to heal bacterial infections, and sonic frequencies and radio frequencies to induce cells into healing themselves. 

You know, if human scientists are able to harness these technologies to recruit the microbiome as active soldiers for our immune system, we will never have to deal with vaccines or wear masks on a hot day ever again.  REMEMBER--these pathogenic organisms are MASTERS OF HIJACKING OUR CELLS, but they are not masters of killing other microorganisms like them. The reason they wreak havoc on our bodies is because most of our microbiome are "civilian" residents, and are therefore "standing on the sidelines" as our bodies are attacked. These civilian residents don't fight for our behalf, they let our killer T-cells and macrophages do all the fighting. This is a BIG MISTAKE. They watch as our killer T-cells fail, and their home (which is our body) is destroyed by these rogue pathogens before their eyes. But does it have to be that way? NO. 

I'm not making this up. The therapy technology to induce our microbiome to serve as active soldiers for our immune system really does exist, it really can be done--if we can break out of our self imposed cognitive cage. We are currently asking the wrong questions, forever thinking that vaccines are the only solution for enhanced immunity. Because we are so over focused on our own immune systems, we have overlooked the best soldiers for the fight against pathogenic microorganisms. They were always within us all along (figuratively and literally). 

FREQUENCY. THAT'S THE KEY. frequency is communication. This is by far the best protection against the current environment of lab grown bioweapons. Our microbiome has EVERYTHING it needs to manufacture the weapons for killing these frankenpathogens. 

This is kind of how Domain society operates. I won't get into it now, because that's another email altogether. It's a complex topic. 

The past nuclear damage from millions of years ago may play a role in the current mind blocks human scientists have at this moment. The mental cages we put ourselves in also keep us inert without us realising it. It's possible that the past nuclear damage has severely lessened our body's ability to communicate with our microbiome, limiting cooperation, and leaving our bodies more vulnerable to infection. There are so many factors on Earth that exert bad effects on human health, but I guess I would have to write a book about it. 

I sincerely hope that some connected scientists in China and Russia wake up and ask for Domain guidance on developing techniques beyond vaccines. I'm tired of these stupid outbreaks. Creating and injecting a zillion vaccines isn't the answer, not in the age of bioweaponry. 

This latest virus has no vaccine and a high fatality rate. I'd say that the time to transcend the vaccine mind cage is NOW. Maybe a brilliant Chinese or Russian scientist will get vibrational tremors of these thoughts due to "morphic resonance".

Why Is Walmart Laying Off So Many Workers?

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If brighter days are eventually coming for the U.S. economy, why would Walmart be so eager to lay off corporate employees?  Of course the truth is that brighter days are not coming.  Yesterday, I posted an article in which I listed 11 big companies that are laying off workers.  After I completed that article, I discovered that Walmart is also letting people go.  If a seemingly unshakable giant such as Walmart already feels compelled to eliminate jobs, what is the outlook for employees of companies that are far smaller and far weaker?

When Walmart announced that it would be laying off nearly 200 corporate employees, it rapidly made headlines all over the nation

Walmart let go of almost 200 corporate employees on Wednesday amid the economic downturn and rising inflation, according to a person familiar with the development. The company said in a statement that these layoffs are a part of updating its structure.

Yes, they are “updating their structure” because they know that really hard times are coming.

And the projections that the company recently released confirm this

Walmart said it now anticipates adjusted earnings per share for the second quarter and full year to decline around 8–9 percent and 11–13 percent, respectively. Previously, the retailer had predicted a 1 percent fall it had previously forecast for the full year.

“Food inflation is double digits and higher than at the end of the first quarter. This is affecting customers’ ability to spend on general merchandise categories and requiring more markdowns to move through the inventory, particularly apparel,” Walmart said.

I also just learned that SoundCloud has decided to lay off “approximately 20% of its global workforce”

SoundCloud will be laying off approximately 20% of its global workforce citing “a significant company transformation” and the current economic and financial landscape.

“During this difficult time, we are focused on providing the support and resources to those transitioning while reinforcing our commitment to executing our mission to lead what’s next in music,” reads a statement by a rep for SoundCloud.

Just like in 2008, the pace of layoffs is beginning to accelerate at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking.  If you missed my article from yesterday that contained many more examples, you can find it right here: “It’s Happening: Here Is A List Of 11 Big Companies That Have Announced Layoffs Within The Last 2 Weeks”.

As more Americans lose their jobs, the number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits will continue to go up.

In fact, the number for last week was up to 260,000

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits edged higher last week, hovering near the highest level of the year — the latest sign that the historically tight labor market is starting to cool off.

Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show that applications for the week ended July 30 rose to 260,000 from the downwardly revised 254,000 recorded a week earlier. That is above the 2019 pre-pandemic average of 218,000 claims and just narrowly missed topping the eight-month high of 261,000 recorded in mid-July.

Meanwhile, inflation continues to spiral out of control and that is causing immense hardship for millions of American families.

According to Zero Hedge, the Misery Index in the United States just hit the highest level since 2011…

Although the White House seems to believe that things are pretty OK, the US’s misery index suggests they’re not.

June’s misery index (a composite of unemployment and CPI inflation) has risen to 12.5. That’s the highest since September 2011 when the US economy was experiencing a time of very weak job growth and economic growth following the Great Recession. At the time, the yield curve almost inverted, and there were fears of a new recession.

June’s misery index is also above the index from the 2007-2009 recession when the index peaked at 11.4 percent.

So many people are hurting out there right now.

Many Americans are working as hard as they can, but it still isn’t enough to pay the bills because inflation has been absolutely eviscerating our standard of living.

As a result, more people are falling out of the middle class and into poverty with each passing day.

The lines at our food banks are getting longer and longer, and many of those that are now showing up for assistance were once solidly part of the middle class.  Here is one example

The first time Kelly Wilcox drove her 2017 Dodge Grand Caravan to the food pantry near her home in Payson, Utah, she immediately noticed one thing that surprised her: new models of Toyota and Honda sedans and minivans. “I saw a bunch of other people with cars like me who had kids in their cars,” she said.

The mother of four young sons didn’t know what to expect when she made an early visit to Tabitha’s Way Local Food Pantry this spring. She knew that she needed help. Her husband had lost his job. He soon found a new job as an account manager, but that wasn’t enough with inflation.

Can you identify with Kelly Wilcox?

When I was growing up, I lived in a middle class neighborhood and I went to a very large school that was packed with middle class kids.  At that time, I can’t remember encountering a single family that was truly impoverished.

But these days it seems like almost everyone is struggling.

For years I have been writing about the disappearance of the middle class.  Now we have gotten to a point where the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us is greater than ever.

One recent survey found that nearly half of the country has cut back spending on food because the cost of living has become so oppressive.

That is frightening.

But the pain that we are currently experiencing is just the tip of the iceberg.  As I have been warning for a long time, much worse is ahead.

So please try to enjoy this summer while you still can.

Compared to what is eventually coming, the middle of 2022 is actually a time of rip-roaring prosperity.

Ms. Leung

Ms. Leung was for years one of the most valued assets the U.S. had. She started off as the manager of an import-export company that was facilitating illicit technology transfers to the PRC in Los Angeles. She left this job just as the FBI was closing in on the company to shut it down.

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FBI Special Agent James Smith opened an investigation into her, found that she was vulnerable, and eventually turned her as an asset for the FBI.

Katrina’s information proved to be invaluable. She was codenamed “Parlor Maid” and provided information on the PRC for 20 years. Much of her information was corroborated by multiple sources. She became one of the best sources on the PRC and traveled to and from China often, always coming back with good intel. Smith’s career was set, he had a high-performing asset, and was on-track for promotions and accolades for his work.

Special Agent Smith just happened to also be carrying on a 20-year extramarital affair with Katrina as well.

To add to his issues, Special Agent Smith also had a habit of talking about things that he shouldn’t have in front of Katrina. Smith would discuss ongoing operations she had no business knowing about, share files with her, and generally break every rule on handling assets.

Things started to go downhill in the early 90s. Katrina was noted on a recording talking to a known MSS operative regarding the FBI’s counterintelligence program. Telling Smith that the MSS had found out about her activities and she was giving them information to save herself.

The only problem was that this was a lie. Katrina had always been a double-agent, just for the Chinese, not the U.S.!

Somehow, miraculously, she remained an asset for 10 more years!

It all started to topple in 2001 when the FBI got warrants to look into her. They found an FBI telephone directory, information on an ongoing FBI counterintelligence operation at Lawrence Livermore Labs (Royal Tourist), and other classified materials in her home.

In 2002, they found that she had likely transmitted photos of FBI agents to Chinese intelligence, and copied a Top Secret document Smith had checked out overnight.

When Leung was arrested in 2003, she was already deemed one of the most damaging spies in FBI history. Some compared her to Hanssen (many consider him worse than Aldrich Ames).

The biggest fail?

Leung walked away free on espionage charges due to prosecutorial misconduct. She was eventually convicted on, of all things, tax evasion. She received a slap on the wrist.

The magnitude of all of these fails was impressive in scope.[1]

  • Leung’s disclosures to MSS should have disqualified her immediately. Instead, she stayed on board for 10 more years.
  • SA Smith was never questioned about his handling of Leung. He was seen as “above reproach.” He routinely deflected and ignored threats to Leung.
  • Derogatory reporting on Leung was never followed up. Multiple times.
  • SA Smith knew about her disclosures and hid them because he was afraid of his relationship with her being exposed.
  • In 1992, the FBI had information on a PRC double agent named Katrina that was working with an FBI agent. An inexperienced analyst left out the identifying information. Smith sat in on the debrief of this source and deflected the informer as a misogynist and liar.
  • FBI managers were reluctant to confront Smith. Leading to the tail wagging the dog, as Smith insisted that Leung was the FBI’s best PRC asset.
  • FBI Management repeatedly toned-down language regarding Leung, and refused to compel her to take a polygraph or be subject to more rigorous vetting.
  • SA Smith treated Leung like a member of his squad, often providing her information she had no business knowing.

There’s more, but that gives you an idea of the cluster that this was.

The effects of this case are still echoing through the FBI today. What started off as a classic counterintelligence operation, with excellent results, turned into one of the biggest counterintelligence failures in U.S. history.

Vintage Pictures of Snow King Chairlifts without Any Safety Bars that Look Very Unsafe, 1950-1970

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These vintage photographs of Snow King chairlifts taken between the 1950s and 1970s show people riding in a very unsafe way without deploying any safety bars or other protections.

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While these chairlifts were actually dangerous, there’s also a forced perspective component that makes the lift look much higher than it actually was.

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Snow King Mountain winter resort is located in Downtown Jackson, Wyoming and the original 1936 ski hill was on the southeast edge of the city. It was the first ski area in Wyoming.

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The first chairlift was installed in 1946, a converted ore tram from Colorado. It had four stations, with the first starting where 1 town hill apartments are located.

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In 1981, The resort replaced the now 40-year-old “Snow king Chairlift” with a new Doppelmayr/Garaventa CTEC Double chair, Which started about 200 ft to the east of the old lift. This new lift ran a lift line that crossed the old about 3/4 of the way up the mountain.

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Living in Paraguay

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For me, the best thing about living in Paraguay is that you are really off the radar. Or perhaps the rest of the world is off your radar?

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In any event, you are truly elsewhere when you are in Paraguay.

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This is a place where you no longer know what year you are in, and you don’t care what happens in the rest of the world.

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You’re detached from the buzz and the craziness and the worries that throw you, day after day, elsewhere.

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Especially if you live in the countryside. It’s all farm life, red soil, seasonal pace, and life with nature.

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Paraguay is a complete “Time Out” from the world.

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It’s a world where focusing on the immediate here and now is good enough and the most important thing.

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And you get to enjoy the wonders of life without distraction, and at a fantastically slow pace.

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Of course, everyone experiences places differently. But for me, this is Paraguay.

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You may want to view the following photos while listening to music by Luis Alberto del Parana, perhaps his songs Recuerdos de Ypacarai or Amor, Amor or Sirena del Parana.

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CAUTION: You will want to live in Paraguay.

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One Of The Most Tragic Things That I Have Read In A Long Time

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Things have never been harder for America’s farmers and ranchers than they are right now.  Their relentless hard work keeps us fed, but now many of them are being financially ruined by forces beyond their control.  Prices for fertilizer, farm equipment and diesel fuel have spiraled to absolutely absurd heights, and meanwhile extremely bizarre weather patterns are making it almost impossible to operate successfully in many parts of the nation.  A lot of farmers and ranchers have already gone out of business, and many more will go out of business in the months ahead unless some sort of a miracle happens.

Back in 1900, there were approximately 5.7 million family farms in the United States, but at that time the total population of the country was just 76 million.

Today, there are only about 2.2 million family farms in the United States, but the total population of the country has grown to 329 million.

Agriculture is slowly but surely being consolidated, and the big fish have far more power than the little fish do.

It has gotten to a point where it has become nearly impossible for many small farmers and ranchers to survive.  To illustrate this, I would like to share something that a farmer named Sheila Payne Blackburn recently posted on Facebook

I am the last one left on our farm and ranch here in central Texas. It has been in our family and in our blood for over 150 years. I was raised to never back down, never give up, get back in the saddle, cowgirls don’t cry, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, hang tough, and every other cowboy expression you can think of.

I have watched my great grandparents, grandparents and my parents die young. Their bodies run down and weak, their minds overwhelmed with stress, and their bank accounts empty. They gave everything they had for our way of life.

I have survived drought, floods, excessive heat, -4 degree winters, broncs, bulls that want to kill you, and death of beloved livestock.

But today – today, I think I’m finally broken. Today my body, heart, spirit, and strength are gone.

When my dad left this world, he left me holding the bag. He didn’t want to! But he did. Massive debt, tractors that won’t run, old broken down equipment, pickups that barely make it through a pasture. But he also left me the land that I love, the cattle, my heritage, my dream, my knowledge, and passion.

But I feel I can’t go up from here.

Our government wants to destroy us. I can’t buy another 20 year old tractor at $120,000 for something that will not even probably make it a week.

I can’t afford the diesel to fill up that tractor for $600 to just have to do it again tomorrow.

I can’t afford the fertilizer, the seed, the oil, the grease, the parts. Why should I spend $700 an acre to plow, plant, fertilize, weed kill? A grand total of $140,000. To only lose it in a drought. And really never make that money back! Hell my calves will only bring $800 to $900 a piece. But that same whole beef will cost the consumer $5,000 at the grocery store.

Today my pride means nothing to me anymore! Today I want to live to see my grandchildren grow older! Today I am tired of the heat, the wind, the drought! Today I know that it is only me, and no one will probably take over! Today I wonder what I’m fighting for! Today I am weak. Today I think I am through.

I know I am not the only one that feels this way anymore!

Say a prayer for your farmers. Some of us are barely hanging on.

That is truly one of the most tragic things that I have read in a long time.

Small farmers and small ranchers are the backbone of this country, and without them we don’t eat.

Unfortunately, hardly anyone seems to notice that more of them are going under with each passing day.

Many Americans simply do not care about the plight of our farmers and ranchers right now, but they will definitely start to care when the price of beef doubles or even triples.  The following was recently posted on Facebook by a rancher named Brad Allison

$125 a roll, crap is getting real. The cattlemen doesn’t have a chance. Lick tubs almost $140 a tub, cubes close to $14 a bag. We are getting priced out of existence… Pray for your ranchers to be able to hang in there. Meat prices at the grocery is not their fault, it’s above their head, they surely are not making the profit. 10,000 head of cattle sold in three counties here in the last three weeks from cattlemen drowning. Middle age cattle going to slaughter because we can’t afford to feed them.

This is a very serious national crisis, but most Americans don’t realize it yet.

But once these cost increases start showing up at the grocery store in 2023, everyone will finally realize what we are facing.

For decades, we have been able to take our farmers and our ranchers for granted.

Now everything is changing, and a trip to the grocery store will soon be far more painful.

Double-Chocolate Muffins

Whole wheat flour and high-fiber cereal are the goodies tucked in a chocolate-lover’s sweet muffin.

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Ingredients

  • 1 cup Fiber One™ original bran cereal
  • 1 1/3 cups buttermilk
  • 1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
  • 1 egg
  • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup Gold Medal™ whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened baking cocoa
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/3 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

Steps

  • 1
    Heat oven to 375°F. Place paper baking cup in each of 12 regular-size muffin cups. Place cereal in resealable food-storage plastic bag; seal bag and crush with rolling pin or meat mallet (or crush in food processor).
  • 2
    In medium bowl, mix crushed cereal and buttermilk; let stand 5 minutes. Stir in oil and egg. Stir in remaining ingredients except chocolate chips. Stir in chocolate chips. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.
  • 3
    Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Immediately remove from pan. Serve warm.

Omayra Sánchez.

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A girl of thirteen.

It’s November 1985. A Colombian family are living peacefully in the agricultural area of Armero, with mother and father supporting the family on the modest income they pull together by working diligently at their jobs. The mother, Maria, is a nurse and has had to leave home to go on business.

Whilst she’s away, a local volcano explodes into life.

Come nightfall and Omayra, along the rest of her family, are still wide awake. They can’t sleep because the unfurling ashfall is keeping them in a state of nervous anticipation. Things are much, much worse than they could ever imagine though. The volcanic eruption has triggered lahars, a violent type of mudflow, and one of them steamrolls its way through Armero, engulfing the town and killing thousands of its residents:

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Omarya’s father, who had spent his life gathering rice and sorghum to support his family and protect their livelihood, along with the girl’s aunt, are amongst those who perish immediately.

By grace of God or the devil’s depravity though, Omarya herself survives. Initially, she’s trapped completely under the rubble, but is a fighter, so breaks open a gap just big enough to slide her hand through, allowing her to gain the attention of the rescue team.

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They manage to free her up more, so that her head at least was able to see the light of day above the cold, muddy water. However, there was a glaring problem — her legs were trapped. Keeping them anchored was sections of a wall, an iron bar stuck in her hip and her dead aunt, whose hands were clutched tightly onto her legs.

For sixty hours, rescuers did absolutely everything within their power to keep her alive, and to try to free her:

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Omayra was immensely brave throughout the whole ordeal; she sang songs, chatted with the workers and asked for sweets and soda. As the end of that time frame approached, it became increasingly clear that saving her was an uphill battle though. To do so would require amputation of her legs, and doctors decided they didn’t have the necessary equipment to ensure she’d survive that procedure within these conditions.

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She then began falling in and out consciousness and hallucinating, saying she couldn’t be late for school and mentioning a Maths exam. This, along with the fact that her eyes had turned red, her face bloated and her hands whitened, forced the cold reality of the situation upon her and the people who’d been trying to save her — she was going to die. Shortly afterwards, she slipped out of consciousness for the last time.

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The kicker is that she needn’t have died, if the authorities had properly heeded warnings about the volcano and/or had adequate resources and supplies in place ready for such a disaster. They didn’t though, and even necessities like shovels, cutting tools and stretchers soon ran out. Omayra died only as a result of other people’s poor planning and devil-may-care attitude. To think, she would have been forty-eight this year, a woman still well in the prime of her life, living it the way she wanted, and yet that future was snatched away from her.

China Just Made A Move That Could Literally Provoke A Major War With The United States

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If the Chinese don’t end their blockade of Taiwan, the Biden administration will be under immense pressure to respond.  So let us hope that cooler heads prevail in China and that a decision is soon made to end the pointless “military exercises” that the Chinese are currently conducting.  When the live-fire drills were first announced, we were told that they would last for only four days.  That was supposed to be it.  On Monday, they were supposed to go home.  But that didn’t happen.  Instead, on Monday the Chinese announced that the military exercises in the waters off Taiwan would be extended, and no new end date was given…

China said Monday it was extending threatening military exercises surrounding Taiwan that have disrupted shipping and air traffic and substantially raised concerns about the potential for conflict in a region crucial to global trade.

The exercises would include anti-submarine drills, apparently targeting U.S. support for Taiwan in the event of a potential Chinese invasion, according to social media posts from the eastern leadership of China’s ruling Communist Party’s military arm, the People’s Liberation Army.

This move by China crosses a very important line.

The Chinese have essentially established a “maritime and aerial blockade” around Taiwan, but it was only supposed to last from Thursday to Sunday…

The Chinese military designated six closure areas, one of which is merely 12 miles from Taiwan’s southern shipping hub of Kaohsiung. Beijing also warned commercial airliners to avoid wide swaths of airspace around Taiwan, in what amounts to a no-fly zone over major flight routes. Even though China portrays this as a step short of total encirclement, Taiwan’s defense ministry describes it as “a maritime and aerial blockade.”

A four day blockade wouldn’t have been that big of a deal.

But a full blown “maritime and aerial blockade” that lasts for weeks or even months is clearly an act of war.

Taiwan relies on food and essential supplies from the outside world.  If commerce is severely restricted or cut off completely, life on the island will radically change.

And the pressure on the Biden administration to “do something” will become enormous.

Of course it is still possible that the Chinese could decide to go home at some point this week.

And let us hope that actually happens.

But right now both sides continue to escalate matters.

For example, in response to the Chinese “drills”, the Taiwanese have decided to conduct live-fire exercises of their own

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s official Central News Agency reported that Taiwan’s army will conduct live-fire artillery drills in southern Pingtung county on Tuesday and Thursday, in response to the Chinese exercises.

The drills will include snipers, combat vehicles, armored vehicles as well as attack helicopters, said the report, which cited an anonymous source.

That certainly won’t ease tensions.

And members of the U.S. Senate are publicly calling for more economic and military aid for Taiwan

In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) backed the House speaker’s travel to Taiwan and tied the two foreign policy issues together — warning that China is watching how the U.S. continues to respond to Russia’s attack on Ukraine as the war nears its sixth month.

Graham directed his message directly at China and pushed for the passage of the bipartisan Taiwan Policy Act, which is aimed at bolstering Taiwan economically and militarily.

The Chinese are going to interpret this as a threat.  It has become quite obvious that many prominent members of Congress consider Taiwan to be analogous to Ukraine, and that is definitely not going to help matters.

On top of everything else, it has been announced that U.S. forces will actually be participating in war games very close to India’s disputed border with China later this year…

The US will participate in war games with the Indian military in an area of India that is less than 62 miles away from the country’s disputed border with China, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAN).

The drills will be held from October 18-31 and will be the eighteenth iteration of annual exercises between the two militaries known as Yudh Abhyas, which is Hindi for “war practice.” They will be held in the Auli area of the Indian state of Uttarakhand in the Himalayas mountain range.

For years, I have been relentlessly warning that a war with China was coming, but my hope is that cooler heads will prevail and that this current crisis can be resolved peacefully.

Because a shooting war with China would instantly change all of our lives for the worse.

If we go to war with China, shipments of the thousands upon thousands of products that we currently receive from China would immediately cease.

And if the Pacific Ocean becomes a war zone, trade with other Asian powers such as Japan and South Korea would be paralyzed as well.

In addition, Taiwan produces more of our microchips than everyone else in the world combined

In particular, Taiwan’s position in the world of semiconductor manufacturing is a bit like Saudi Arabia’s status in OPEC. TSMC has a 53% market share of the global foundry market (factories contracted to make chips designed in other countries). Other Taiwan-based manufacturers claim a further 10% of the market.

As a result, the Biden administration’s 100-Day Supply Chain Review Report says, “The United States is heavily dependent on a single company – TSMC – for producing its leading-edge chips.” The fact that only TSMC and Samsung (South Korea) can make the most advanced semiconductors (five nanometres in size) “puts at risk the ability to supply current and future [US] national security and critical infrastructure needs”.

If China invades Taiwan, the global flow of microchips would permanently be reduced to a trickle.

I don’t think that I even have the words to describe what that would do to the global economy.

The stakes are incredibly high, and our leaders should be doing all that they can to avoid a needless war with the Chinese.

Unfortunately, our leaders are not exactly what you would call “competent” at this point, and we could soon find ourselves involved in pointless conflicts with the Russians and the Chinese at the same time.

The way Americans see Africa

The way American people see Africa! Wow!

So I’ve met an African American from GTA Online a few weeks ago and we became friends.

Yesterday,we’ve been playing GTA Online and he asked me where I’m from.

I told him that I was from Tunisia. Since,Tunisia isn’t that well-known,I told him that it is in Africa.

He seemed pretty shocked and asked me:

“You have internet in Africa?”

“Yes,why wouldn’t we?”

“I don’t know,I thought you didn’t have clean water.”

what!?

We don’t have clean water!?

I had to explain to him many…many stuff…

I went to the internet to check out how people see Africa and it was totally the same way he saw it…

Africa is like any other continent,it has its poor countries and its rich ones. But even its poorest countries have access to internet and clean water,mostly.

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Durban,South Africa,Africa.

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Malabo,Equatorial Guinea,Africa.

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Casablanca,Morocco,Africa.

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Addis Ababa,Ethiopia,Africa.

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Tunis,Tunisia,Africa.

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Lagos,Nigeria,Africa.

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Port Louis,Mauritius,Africa.

Greek Yogurt Blueberry Muffins

Fat free, Greek honey vanilla yogurt is the secret to delicous homemade blueberry muffins.

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Ingredients

  • 1/3 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
  • 1 container (6 oz) Greek Fat Free honey vanilla yogurt
  • 1 egg
  • 1 3/4 cups Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup fresh or frozen (do not thaw) blueberries

Steps

  • 1
    Heat oven to 400°F. Grease bottoms only of 12 regular-size muffins cups, or line with paper baking cups.
  • 2
    In large bowl, beat milk, oil, yogurt and egg using wire whisk or fork. Stir in remaining ingredients except blueberries, until flour is moistened. Gently stir in blueberries. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.
  • 3
    Bake 16 to 18 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 5 minutes; remove from pan.

FOURTH TURNING DETONATION

This article is 2 years old, but is pretty much spot on. -MM

From the Economic Collapse Blog

“The ancients believed that each cyclical extreme, mirroring the hopes and fears of the other, helps generate the other. The night longs for the day, the day for night. In war, people yearn for relief from strife, leading to peace. In peace, people yearn to champion what they love, leading to war.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

When I started thinking about my annual beginning of the year article in early January, I tried to formulate a catchy title. Knowing we have entered the thirteenth year of this Fourth Turning, with the intensity of the crisis reaching an unparalleled level since November 4, I decided upon Fourth Turning Detonation. I immediately thought that might be too dire and figured I would change it later. After the first few weeks of the new year, I now think it might be grossly inadequate to describe what is coming in 2021.

It is easy to get distracted by the daily gyrations, ceaseless media propaganda, political theater, false narratives, and delusional beliefs of both the left and right, as this military empire built on debt and deceit spirals towards its fiery cataclysmic climax. Opposing forces have gathered themselves into position focusing on defeating their domestic enemies, with the left seeming to have strategic advantage but led by hubristic dullards, while numerous foreign adversaries circle like hungry vultures ready to pounce on the dying beast of an empire.

Last January I wrote a two-part article called 2020 – Year of Living Dangerously which harkened back to another article I had written eight years before 2012 – Year of Living Dangerously. I lamented the fact I had not understood Fourth Turnings will take their own sweet time on the way to a climax, with twists and turns which will differentiate it from previous Crisis periods in U.S. history. My impatience for the great battle to resolve this struggle has not and will not impact the timeline, but the three elements driving this Crisis remain firmly in control, as they have since 2008: debt, civic decay, global disorder.

My belief regarding the subtext of what has happened and is happening in this country has not changed. I certainly underestimated the lengths these psychopaths in suits would go to in 2020 to further pillage the world’s wealth while using a pandemic as cover to further their agenda of hegemony and turning the world into a virtual prison camp under constant technological surveillance. Despite the timing, I still believe that which is unsustainable will not be sustained.

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“It seems I always underestimate the ability of sociopathic central bankers and their willingness to destroy the lives of hundreds of millions to benefit their oligarch masters. I always underestimate the rampant corruption that permeates Washington DC and the executive suites in mega-corporations across the land. And I always overestimate the intelligence, civic mindedness, and ability to understand math of the ignorant masses that pass for citizens in this country. It seems that issuing trillions of new debt to pay off trillions of bad debt, government sanctioned accounting fraud, mainstream media propaganda, government data manipulation and a populace blinded by mass delusion can stave off the inevitable consequences of an unsustainable economic system.”

I used to try and make specific predictions about the new year generally centered upon economic chaos, stock markets crashing, global conflict, and various other doom-like events. But those running this clown show somehow convince the masses all is well, the economy is healthy, inflation is non-existent, debt does not matter, college makes you smart, we’re energy self-sufficient, 100 million working age Americans not working – but unemployment was 3.5%, the stock market hitting all-time highs is good for you even though your real wages haven’t gone up in a decade, and America was great again.

It is amazing to me how effective propaganda is when multiple generations have been indoctrinated and socially engineered in the government school system and decades of boob tube fake news has been programmed into their pliably ignorant brains. Edward Bernays created the game plan and the techno-oligarch despots currently running the show are executing it to perfection.

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“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” – Edward Bernays – Propaganda

This Fourth Turning likely has another 5 to 10 years before some sort of convulsive resolution, unless it is accelerated like the Civil War Fourth Turning, with similar tragic consequences and mass casualties. Predicting the actual events which will occur over a short-term time frame is a fool’s errand, so I prefer to try and discern the direction and amplitude of the ongoing Crisis to gauge how we should prepare for what is coming.

I do admire writers like Jim Kunstler who really go out on a limb and make extremely specific forecasts for the coming year, like he did on January 1 with his Forecast 2021 — Chinese Fire Drills with a side of French Fries (Jacobin-style) and Russian Dressing. If even 25% of his predictions had come to fruition, 2021 would have gone down as one of the most earth shattering in history. But here we are a few weeks later and all his predictions about Trump going to war with the Deep State and winning a glorious victory for the American people failed to materialize. Trump is golfing at Mar-a- Lago, while the Deep State remains firmly in control and in the midst of consolidating their power by crushing dissent through Domestic terrorism legislation and complete control of social media platforms.

Even Kunstler acknowledges the Fourth Turning as a generational dynamic driving the events pushing the country and the world towards armed conflict. My high-level prognostications for 2020 certainly did not include a global pandemic used to introduce an Orwellian global dystopia and justification to steal a presidential election through mail-in ballot fraud and voting machine rigging.

Of course, Bill Gates predicted the pandemic in 2018 and his buddy Fauci, in 2017, said there was “no doubt” Donald J. Trump would be confronted with a surprise infectious disease outbreak during his presidency. I wonder why he had no doubt. Fauci, an unknown lifetime government bureaucrat, is now a media darling, despite being wrong about everything. And Gates’ wealth has soared during this plandemic. My big picture guesses last year were colored by the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani on January 3, expecting Middle East conflict to erupt. These were my main conjectures for 2020:

  • The Fed will continue to run their electronic printing presses at warp speed until the inevitable banquet of consequences is served to all.
  • We have entered the extreme greed phase of this debt-based Ponzi scheme. The stock market is in the blow-off stage, where earnings, valuations, and rational thinking are meaningless. Momentum and a delusional belief in the infallibility of the Fed are all that matter. Who knows how far it will go, but fear will eventually rear its ugly head, and a cascading collapse will make a lot of useful investing idiots very angry for the third time in the last two decades.
  • The Democrats and their Surveillance State co-conspirators have determined the best way to cover-up their treasonous acts are to stay on the offensive by impeaching Trump on bogus charges.
  • The social distress I noted last year continues unabated today as the glorification of abnormality reaches new heights. The flames of division and disarray are fanned unceasingly by the left-wing media to distract from the true desperate financial situation of the country.
  • Israel quietly foments discontent and turmoil across the region to keep the focus off itself. Russia and China support Iran economically and militarily to offset Americans dominance of the region. Confusion reigns.
  • Anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skills knows none of this is about freedom, democracy or doing the right thing. It’s about oil and it’s about the military industrial complex requiring enemies to keep the profits flowing.
  • The shale “miracle” is just another delusion built upon easy money pumped out by the Fed. No one can make profits on shale oil at $60 per barrel.
  • The months leading up to the election will be a circus. Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies will be spread like manure. Of course, voting will not alleviate the issues which will continue to drive this Fourth Turning towards its climax – debt, civic decay, global disorder.
  • No matter the result of the upcoming election, neither side will accept the outcome.
  • There are no viable political solutions to our current dilemmas. It is just a matter of when and where the conflict goes hot and blood is spilled.
  • I do not know what events will dominate the coming year, but I do know the intensity of hate and vitriol will increase. I do know military conflict in the Middle East will expand. I do know the political machinations in this country will surge as the election approaches. I do know the Deep State will do everything in their immense power to undermine Trump. I do know the Fed will QE and Trump will cheer every new stock market record. I do know I will be lied to and propagandized by the mainstream corporate media.

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I knew 2020 had the potential to be a chaotic year, but didn’t anticipate a flu with a 99.7% survival rate being used by totalitarian minded politicians to destroy the global economy, usher in Orwellian police state lockdown measures across the globe; a stock market crash followed by Fed created bubbles still growing ever bubblier through $4 trillion of money printing; adding $4 trillion to the national debt (with another $3 trillion on the way in 2021); paying millions to sit at home eating Cheetos and watching Netflix; destroying a few hundred thousand small businesses while enriching mega-corporations; putting a nail in the coffin of the 1st Amendment through censorship of conservative speech; and blatantly stealing a presidential election.

The globalist elite want to keep the fear at a high level to institute their global reset, where you will own nothing and be happy, or you will be brought to heel by the truncheon. This was the year it became crystal clear, the world is filled with good people, governed, and manipulated by bad people.

By delaying this article until after January 20 I allowed the Qanon Psyop of Trump using the military to rescue the country to pass into history as another delusion of hope over reason. I truly do not know whether the Qanon phenomena (it was not widely known by Trump supporters or most people) was just a LARP being played by former Dungeons & Dragons keyboard warriors or an FBI/CIA counter-intelligence operation designed to keep a segment of the population distracted and ever hopeful their white knight would rescue them from the clutches of the evil Deep State. I am reminded of the quote about hope from President Snow in the Hunger Games.

The elevation of Trump to president and the spark of hope he would truly drain the swamp, arrest the traitorous Deep State coup co-conspirators, lead his legions to victory over the forces of evil, and make America great again, kept half the people in the country hopeful for the last four years.

Meanwhile, the military industrial complex raked in hundreds of billions more from the American taxpayer; Wall Street bankers gorged on the trillions of free money, manufactured by their captured puppets at the Federal Reserve; the Silicon Valley despots consolidated their hold on commerce and communication; and the average American saw their standard of living continue its 50- year decline. The question is whether those constituting the “invisible government” allowed too much hope and needed the engineered pandemic to re-introduce fear as their primary control technique moving forward.

They believe they have contained the spark with their fraudulent election victory; installation of an empty senile vassal as their conduit for the great reset; having their media mouthpieces propagate the falsity of a right wing white supremacist insurrection at the Capital; crushing dissent by censoring the truth through totalitarian social media conglomerates; proceeding with an impeachment farce based on Trump telling his supporters to peacefully protest the fraudulent election outcome; and threatening to destroy the lives of all vocal Trump supporters.

I am highly doubtful they have contained the spark. I believe there are smoldering embers just waiting to be stirred into a conflagration which will engulf the entire world in a fiery purging of the existing social order, which has exhausted itself and needs to be cleansed. Jefferson understood the nature of Fourth Turnings two hundred years before Strauss & Howe put it to paper.

“Try to unlearn the obsessive fear of death (and the anxious quest for death avoidance) that pervades linear thinking in nearly every modern society. The ancients knew that, without periodic decay and death, nature cannot complete its full round of biological and social change. Without plant death, weeds would strangle the forest. Without human death, memories would never die, and unbroken habits and customs would strangle civilization. Social institutions require no less. Just as floods replenish soil and fires rejuvenate forests, a Fourth Turning clears out society’s exhausted elements and creates an opportunity.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

In Part Two of this article, I will examine the concept of the Grey Champion, their role in Fourth Turnings, and make some speculations as to the course of 2021 and the remainder of this Fourth Turning.

Ginger

A nice story found on the internet. -MM

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About a 2 years ago I was pulling into my garage and heard a meow.

Not a kitten meow more like “ Hey I am here, Do you see me?”

And right there next to my trash can was a beat-up malnourished Tom Cat.

I walked past him and went inside.

The next morning, there he was again, same spot.

I reached down to pet him and he did not run or even seem scared. So I went inside grabbed him a bowl for food and water. I laid outside close to him and went on to work.

This went on for a good month or so and the beat-up malnourished cat became my friend.

Now I could not bring him inside because for one he is full grown and had not been raised with dogs.

I am the mama of 2 Pitbulls and also 2 rescue cats, but my cats came into my home when they were kittens so they had been raised around my dogs.

So he became my outside/Garage cat.

As much as I did not want to admit it, he became my cat.

And then I named him and we all know what happens when you name them, they become yours whether you like it or not.

I named him Ginger.

7 months later we decided to move.

During the 7 months I had learned from the neighbors he had belonged to a lady down the street who had moved and abandoned him.

During our move he was watching us sitting in the garage.

As I go to get in my car he follows me.

I open my door and he jumps in the car with me.

As if to tell me “ You are not leaving me”.

I smiled, because as much as he did not know, I was not going to leave him.

Ginger is still in the garage with his own door to come and go as he pleases.

He loves to sun and is a little territorial when it comes to the possums.

I have had to break apart a few fights between him and a possum.

He is ok being an outside cat.

He gets tons of attention from the little ones and enjoys his new home.

The reason I am telling you this is cats are by far one of the easiest animals to take care of.

Yes you should feed him, Yes you will get attached, yes it will make you feel good on the inside , Yes you will more than likely fall in love.

A smile will come across your face when he comes to you and trusts you because you saved him.

He will forever be grateful.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
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Ten Truths That Can’t Be Published in the United States

I am forced to have a small post for today. But it’s a good one. All credit to Eric. Brilliant write up…

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Ten Truths That Can’t Be Published Under The U.S. Regime

1. The overthrow of Yanukovych in Ukraine in February 2014 was a U.S. coup, and definitely not a democratic revolution there.

2. The U.S. Government and its ‘news’-media lied — didn’t merely “err” — to deceive the U.S. public to believe the “Saddam’s WMD” falsehoods that were used to ‘justify’ criminally invading Iraq on 20 March 2003.

3. The U.S. Government and its OPCW lied — didn’t merely “err” — to say that Assad was using chemical weapons, so as to ‘justify’ America’s criminal invasion and occupation of Syria.

4. The war between Russia and Ukraine is actually the war by America against Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine and started not on 24 February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine but even well before America’s criminal February 2014 coup in Ukraine and was already secretly in the planning stages in the Obama Administration by no later than June 2011.

5. The claim that Taiwan isn’t and hasn’t even been a part of China is a blatant lie about history, to deceive U.S.-and-allied publics and aiming to enable the U.S. regime to grab China too.

6. U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media lie constantly so as to deceive their publics to support their criminal invasions, coups, and sanctions, against countries that the U.S. regime is aiming ultimately to conquer, even countries (such as Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine) that never threatened, nor posed any threat to, U.S. national security.

7. The U.S. repeatedly shows up in international polls as being overwhelmingly a bigger threat to peace in the world than is any other nation. Whereas Americans don’t know it, foreigners certainly do.

8. The termination of American democracy, and the decision by the U.S. Government to ultimately conquer the entire world, occurred on 25 July 1945, and the Cold War excuse — that it was about communism, instead of about ultimate global conquest by the U.S. — was, and remains, a lie.

9. The U.S. regime’s statements that it had not in 1990 promised to Russia that its ending its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance would mean that NATO itself would not expand “one inch to the east [toward Russia’s border]” is a historical lie, and the U.S. regime started on 24 February 1990 secretly to inform its ‘allies’ (vassal nations) that it was a lie and that on America’s side the Cold War would continue until Russia itself becomes under its control.

10. The U.S. regime’s being a regime — a dictatorship instead of a democracy — has been repeatedly proven, and is an established fact, to the contrary of all the lies and liars. Calling it “the U.S. regime” is effectively prohibited, though it is certainly true. In fact, a good case can be made that the U.S. is the world’s #1 police-state.

On August 2nd, U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s speech upon landing in Taipei, Taiwan, said “Our congressional delegation’s visit to Taiwan honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant democracy.”

An earlier retort

NOTE: A reader of this article commented on it by saying: “Actually US democracy did not end in 1945, as it never existed in the first place. The authors of the Constitution deliberately made it a republic, not a democracy.” To this, I replied:

A “republic” IS a “democracy”: they are synonyms for a nation in which the government REPRESENTS the public, instead of being some dictator or (more commonly) dictatorial class of people who DON’T represent the public.

You got balled-up in words instead of thinking about WHAT THE WORDS REPRESENT. “Democracy” and “republic” represent the SAME THING.

(There supposedly are also nations that are ‘direct democracies’ in which the government is ‘direct’ from the voters instead of entailing any voting for representatives; but none such actually exists today, because a direct democracy is possible only for tiny nations, “city-states,” and even most of those do and have had representatives. In the real world, “democracy” and “republic” are the same thing.)

It is because of such confusions by, and gullibility OF, the public, that politicians such as Pelosi, Biden, and Obama, and such as Trump, Bush, and Reagan, can so easily fool the public to accept them as BEING representatives of the public, INSTEAD OF as being representatives of the billionaires who funded their political careers — which they actually are and have been.

Oh, by the way…

Here is how You-Tube automatically selects the title splash images for my you-tube videos. No wonder I am forced to generate my own…

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You-Tube suggestions.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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The dragon starts to move

You need a stiff drink to watch the apocalypse unfold. 

-Gonzalo Lira

I can tell you that many Chinese are upset that the PLA did not blow the plane carrying Nancy Poliski out of the sky. There’s all sorts of thoughts on this. In general, the mood in China is one of great seismic shift.

Things are forever changed.

That being said, the USA and the Western press is having a field day proclaiming the “victory dance” for “democracy” and all the rest. Mainstream “news” coverage is announcing how the USA “showed who’s boss”.

Do not be so sure.

I think that the Chinese strategy is to move (geopolitical) pieces in place. Whether it involves this particular person or not, is of no consequence. What has occurred is that NOW China has the pieces lined up to solve the “Taiwan Issue” once and for all.

Let me explain.

What has occurred (with Nancy Poliski) is a MAJOR violation of Chinese national sovereignty. China knows who the aggressors are. China knows the systems used. China knows the operational situation, and China understands what will come next.

Thus, you can expect the following to be truisms that the Chinese realize;

  • America is not only poking China, but it is goading it towards war.
  • The attacks will only get worse.
  • The main “pressure point” is Taiwan.

Now, China has the excuse to lock Taiwan down.

Now, China has the excuse to get rid of the American-sponsored Taipei government.

Now, China can argue “we did not attack American forces”.

And now China can seize Taiwan once and for all. Let America howl. But you know, it will do nothing. It will stand by and watch. Of course, it will then impose “sanctions from Hell.” Which, or course, China is fully ready to rub the American face in the shit it created.

We begin with how this affects Taiwan…

China Halts Exports of . . . SAND . . . to Taiwan

China has ordered a complete halt to the export of natural sand to Taiwan.   At first glance, most folks would say “Sand? So what!”  But Taiwan makes computer chips and the silicone to make those chips comes from . . .  Oh, yea . . .  sand.

Moreover, Chinese Battery Manufacturer CATL has announced they are “freezing” the opening of a $5 Billion battery plant in the USA.  The plant was supposed to supply batteries for Tesla and Ford.

We have also received reports CLAIMING (but not yet verified) that Chinese suppliers to APPLE have suspended all product and parts deliveries; allegedly crippling APPLE.

These changes took place within hours of Nancy Pelosi violating China’s demand that she not visit Taiwan.

Things will likely get much worse from this point as China retaliates for violation of its Diplomatic demands.

I am not alone in believing the consequences of this action…

From FOX “news”.

Tucker Carlson. He’s actually in agreement with me.

Errol Flynn

Legendary swashbuckler Errol Flynn would never have survived #MeToo had he been born sixty years later. The man was wild. And wildly immoral. He was like Charlie Sheen times a million. Orgies, everywhere. Underaged lovers. Drunk parties with multiple nude starlets and Erol, playing piano butt naked with his erect penis hitting all the right keys…

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No, this man was something else. And even in the era he lived, full of fixers and more forgiving of scandals when involving a man and his various sexual conquests… Flynn was still ‘a bridge too far’ for many people. He was scandal and intrige personified.

Drugs. Alcohol. Copious amounts of all sorts of pills, potions and powders known to man, many of it no longer in production. Fights, everywhere. With everyone. Sex with everyone. And with everyone’s wife, everyone’s daughter… Flynn was a tireless beast of seductive burden.

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See that lovely lady above? Her name is Beverly Aadland. They started ‘seeing each other’ when she was fifteen. And when I say ‘seeing each other’, I mean ‘banging the everlasting daylights out of each other’. As I said, the man was wild. And he didn’t care about age. Or legality.

It was in the presence of Aadland that Errol Flynn died on October 14, 1959… Flynn was fifty, Beverly just 17. He still got a heroes burial and a funeral worthy of a king. He was never cancelled and lived his depraved life full of debauchery free as a bird without a care in the world.

Quick Pepper Steak

When I need a speedy skillet supper, this pepper steak comes to my rescue. The tender meat is slightly sweet, with a hint of brown sugar and molasses. —Monica Williams, Burleson, Texas

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Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons minced fresh gingerroot
  • 3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 can (14-1/2 ounces) beef broth
  • 3 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon molasses
  • 1-1/2 pounds beef top sirloin steak, cut into 1/4-inch strips
  • 1 tablespoon canola oil
  • 2 large green peppers, cut into 1/2-inch strips
  • 1-1/2 cups sliced celery
  • 3 green onions, chopped
  • 4 teaspoons lemon juice
  • Hot cooked noodles, optional

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the cornstarch, brown sugar, ginger and garlic powder. Stir in broth until smooth. Add soy sauce and molasses; set aside.
  2. In a nonstick skillet or wok, stir-fry steak in oil for 4-5 minutes; remove and keep warm. Stir-fry peppers, celery and onions until crisp-tender, about 5 minutes. Stir broth mixture and add to the vegetables. Return meat to the pan. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until thickened, about 2 minutes. Stir in lemon juice. Serve over noodles if desired.

The Clacton Spear

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The oldest man made object on earth, sits in a display in the Natural History Museum, London.

This stunningly well preserved spear point is by far the oldest known wooden tool ever found, it was made over a hundred thousand years before anatomically modern humans first appeared on the scene, by some early ancestor of our species, a clever Hominin with a penchant wood carving.

Made from Yew wood, skilfully carved by razor sharp worked flints and shaped into a stout spear, a tool made for hunting the large prey of the land bridge between Britain and Europe.

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Perhaps this stout spear was made for hunting Giant Irish Elk, which roamed the area this spear was found, or maybe Mammoths or wild boar.

As someone who actively uses the wood of Yew trees to make Longbows, I’m acutely aware that this incredible unique wood has been used by ancient humans since the beginning of time, for making the finest heavy draw weight bows, strong staves, clubs, handshafts and spears.

Anyway, in 1911, an amateur prehistorian named Samuel H. Warren, was busy searching for prehistoric artefacts at low tide on the shoreline near his home, he had previously found worked stones and all manner of Neolithic trinkets, but then one day he spotted what looked like a muddy stick peeking out from just beneath the surface of the Palaeolithic sediment, he pulled it out and quickly realised it was something special and took it home to clean and preserved it. A few years later, Samuel Warren casually walked into a stuffy society of scientific research and upended their long held academic beliefs regarding the inability of premodern humans to manufacture such well made tools.

The 420,000 year old Yew spear that lay resting beneath the waves for almost half a million years.

  1. When you sign up for anything online, put the website’s name as your middle name. That way when you receive spam/advert email, you will know who sold your information.
  2. If you’re on a first date and aren’t connecting with the other person or feel they’re dull, ask them what job they’d choose if money wasn’t an issue. It initiates a talk about one’s passions, which are rarely dull and are simple to connect.
  3. If you want to be an effective communicators, let others talking about themselves and their interests – it’s as rewarding as sex.
  4. Do not try to be the man your father would want you to be. Be the man you would like your son to be be. It more clearly defines your own convictions, desires, goals, and motivates you to be your best.
  5. Pay Attention to the smell of your home when you come back from a trip – that’s what it smells like to guests all the time, you just get used to it.
  6. When a friend is upset, ask them one simple question before saying anything else: ‘Do you want to talk about it or do you want to be distracted from it?’
  7. No matter how much your workplace pushes “team building” and “family culture” – remember, they’re not your friends and it’s still a workplace.
  8. If you’re stuck on an annoying call, put your phone on airplane mode instead of just hanging up. The other person will see “call failed” instead of “call ended”.
  9. If you want to learn a new language, figure out the 100 most frequently used words and start with them. Those words make up about 50% of everyday speech, and should be a very solid basis.

King Louis XV

Louis XV had several lovers, some very young like those he kept in his “parc aux cerfs”, the place where his younger lovers stayed because they had not yet been officially introduced as official lovers.

Louis XV was always a very sensual person, and that is why he sent Mariana Victoria, his fiancée, back to Spain because she was too young to marry and consummate the marriage.

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Mariana Victoria of Spain.

At the age of 15, he married a Polish noblewoman who did not have a very prestigious lineage, but who was older and more experienced than him, as well as being relatively attractive: Marie Leszczynska. During their wedding night, it is rumored that he consummated her marriage “seven times”.

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Queen Maria van Loo.

And as for their sexual habits, it is unlikely that they were extraordinary. With the exception of Du Barry, her mistresses had little experience of the subject, as they were generally married women, often to other aristocrats (they only had experience with their husbands), or young virgins.

The King revealed to the Duke d’Ayen that Jean du Barry, his last lover and former prostitute, “had helped him discover things that he thought did not exist”, to which the nobleman replied that it was because “he had never been in a brothel ”.

The Duran Agrees with MM

Well, sort of. Mr. Barnes feels that China will not make a military move on Taiwan. I disagree. The entire nation of China, all 1.6 billion people are all ready to flood into Taiwan right now. The overall feeling is “enough is enough. It’s time to stop this nonsense!”.

Anyways…

Check this out.

Japan

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The Queen of Purza

My father did not really like cats.

I moved back home in 2013 to care for him, he was 93 at the time, and adopted a kitten 3 years later.

Dad was bedridden the last 3 months of his life so I made sure his door was securely closed to keep Purza out.

One day I heard Dad moaning in pain over the intercom, so I hurried to get his meds.

While I was getting them, Dad stopped moaning, which scared me because it was usually 30 minutes or more after his meds before he would quiet down.

I ran to his room and noticed his door was open.

What I saw in his room makes me cry even though it’s 4 years later.

Dad was in his bed with the head of it slightly raised, and laying beside him with her head right by his ear, was Purza and she was purring away.

She has a very loud purr.

Dad had his hand on her, a look of peace on his face, and he was sound asleep.

That was the first time he’d fallen asleep without pain meds in over 6 months.

I had named my kitten The Queen of Purza but right then I seriously thought of changing it to The Angel Purza, because that’s what she was.

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The Queen of Purza

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Taiwan is being used as a casus belli

In the first half of this year, the US economy shrank, contracted, got smaller. That is two quarters of contraction which clearly puts the US in a technical recession. Although, the Democratic party are desperately trying to redefine what a “recession” is.

In contrast with all the supposed difficulties of the Shanghai lock-down in the second quarter, the Chinese economy did NOT shrink. It’s true that it barely grew, but grow it did.

As for the rest of China, well, in the first quarter China’s economy grew at a bit over 4% if memory serves.

Time for some perspective. The United States is shrinking. While China is growing.

And what about inflation?

China continues to keep inflation in the realm of 2%. The US was at 9.1% for June (the last month available at this time of writing).

This was in the region of 7% for a long, long time before it took a turn for the worse during the last few months!

  • United States- recession and inflation.
  • China- growth and stable prices.

Of course China has <6000 deaths due to Covid. The US has well over 1 million.

In the Western media China always does badly in the PREDICTIONS. But in REALITY China always does better than the US.

I attribute this to many things, but in this case, it is the end results which matter.

Taiwan as a distraction

From HERE

By Amarynth for the Saker Blog

The current hot war of words regarding Nancy Pelosi’s announced visit to Taiwan is reaching a dangerous nexus and threatening to spill over into military action.

China considers this belligerent approach as a threat to their stated One Country, Two Systems policy as well as a threat to the 1992 consensus. The two sides of the Taiwan Strait reached the consensus in 1992 that “both sides belong to one China and will work together toward national reunification”. It defines the fundamental nature of the cross-Strait relationship and lays the political foundation for its development.

Taiwan is being used as a casus belli (an act or an event that either provokes or is used to justify war) in the very same way that Ukraine was used and is currently used. A war of media, tremendous even brutal propaganda to their own citizens to paint the enemy as evil to justify their own actions, continual accusations using a human rights platform, and doubling down! We see fantastical accusations that Huawei equipment sitting atop poles is spying on the US, China is infiltrating the US Fed, and in professional statements and documentation, China is the second biggest enemy of the US.  The latest are threats to attempt to impose sanctions on Russian oil supplies to China.

The trajectory is exactly the same toward China, using Taiwan as the hot button, as what we observed during the run-up to the Russia SMO with the Ukraine as the hot button.  It is:

blatant and intentional provocation and total denial of International Law.

Another point of convergence is that while professing ‘support for Taiwan’ (the very same as for the Ukraine), they are actually harming Taiwan (the very same as for the Ukraine).

A short history of the current dangerous brouhaha is:

  • Nanci Pelosi announced a visit to Taiwan in April, and China said NO! Pelosi developed Covid.
  • During May, June and July, timeframe, the US announced a 5th sale of weapons to Taiwan and China delivered strong demarch on the US to cancel this. There was also a continual stream of US dignitaries and ex-dignataries e.g., Pompeo, visiting Taiwan in some or other professional capacity
  • Pelosi announced a new visit to Taiwan in August,

The Chinese are not simply saying no, they have handed this matter to their Military. Whereas their foreign office spokesperson comments, we now get the commentary from the Chinese military spokesperson.

Our army will not sit idly by if U.S. House Speaker Pelosi visits Taiwan, will take decisive measures to curb foreign interference – Chinese Defense Ministry

The Taiwan question is the most important of China’s core interests. Safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity is the bounden responsibility of every Chinese, and no one, force or country should dream of separating Taiwan from China – Chinese SC & FM Wang Yi:
  • The latest is that US President Biden & China’s Xi Jinping will hold bilateral talks today amid this crisis because the Chinese see this as a direct assault on One Country, Two Systems, as well as the 1992 consensus between China and Taiwan.

If Pelosi tries to visit Taiwan, the Chinese will respond militarily.

Asked to comment on a recent Financial Times report which suggested Beijing would respond military should the speaker of the House visit Taiwan, China’s government confirmed the contents as true.

“We are seriously prepared,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in regards to the article.

“If the US side is bent on going its own way, China will take strong measures to resolutely respond and counteract. The United States should be held responsible for any serious consequences,” the official added.

We do not know what kind of military response, but at the moment, the American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group, including a guided missile destroyer and a guided missile cruiser, set out from Singapore on Monday heading northeast towards the South China Sea, according to ship-tracking information provided by Beijing-based think tank the South China Sea Strategic Probing Initiative.  The US military has not disclosed its final destination, but the route would bring the carrier group to the Taiwan Strait if it continues in the same direction.

The US administration fears that China could introduce a no-fly zone over Taiwan ahead of a possible visit by Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to the island to disrupt the plans of the American side – CNN

These provocations are a threat to the whole world, as are the provocations to Russia. Yet, the US and its cronies have failed to overthrow Hong Kong, they have failed to create an economic disaster in Xinjiang to destabilize this crossroad on the Belt and Road, and they failed in the Tibet Autonomous Region which is now a thriving region with no abject poverty or slave ownership of serfs and with protected religious and social mores, they failed the Trump trade war, and they will fail in Taiwan. They are failing in Latin America, they are even failing in Panama to safeguard their neoliberal democratic ‘free world’.

While failing everywhere, they live in virtual reality and most seriously believe that the world belongs to them.

“China will not allow “sanctimonious preaching” or bullying from foreign forces, and anyone who tries “will find themselves on a collision course with a steel wall forged by 1.4 billion people”.  Xi Jinping:

Taiwan is a distraction and a belated and hopeless but dangerous attempt at ongoing relevance from the US.

Caitlin Johnstone epitomized their dilemma:

Russia: Don’t cross our red lines in Ukraine or we’ll take action. 
US politicians: They’re bluffing. Cross those red lines. 
*Russia invades.* 

China: Don’t cross our red lines in Taiwan or we’ll take action. 
US politicians: They’re bluffing. Cross those red lines. 
*****

We wait to see the outcome and it will be China’s national reunification with its recalcitrant province on China’s terms, not imposed terms.  Bear in mind that Taiwan is not a candidate currently for independence. The current government does not dare to call for a referendum as 75% roughly of Taiwanese will vote for remaining with the Chinese mainland.

China Daily reports: For National Reunification we are willing to go to war.

Here are some actual historical facts from Nathan Rich:

Finally, Russia and China will coordinate actions.  Today in Uzbekistan:

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China Sanctions Nancy Pelosi; Refused Entry into China and Taiwan

Reports are coming in from Asia as of 4:09 AM eastern US Time, claiming that the People’s Republic of China has “Sanctioned” U.S. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.   The reports also claim that as a result of being Sanctioned, Pelosi is DENIED ENTRY into China and into Taiwan.

These reports are coming from media persons on the ground inside Asia, but their media outlets have yet to report these claims.

Pelosi departed the United States on Saturday, allegedly aboard a U.S. Air Force C-40 transport aircraft, which allegedly7 had TWO fighter jets as escort.

The plane was tracked across the continental U.S., out into the Pacific, and then landed in Hawaii to refuel.

Pelosi’s office tweeted a statement from her:

Later that same aircraft took off from Hawaii, but tracking of it was then BLOCKED, claiming the plane was no longer being tracked because of engine trouble . . . which is a complete non-sequitur; it made no sense at all.

As of 4:09 AM EDT Sunday, it is not known where Speaker Pelosi’s plane is, or if has perhaps landed elsewhere in Asia, as her itinerary did mention stops in Singapore, Malaysia and elsewhere for this trip.

Why the US Speaker of the House is engaging in foreign travel is also a mystery.  Generally, that’s why the U.S. has a Secretary of State.

More details as they become available.

UPDATE 9:17 AM EDT —

It turns out that when Pelosi’s aircraft developed engine trouble and it’s tracking was turned off, it returned to Hawaii.   Pelosi spent the night there.

This morning, the plane took off from Hawaii out westward into the Pacific.   At this hour 9:18 AM EDT, it is landing at Guam.

For what it’s worth

Getting Reports that Pelosi WILL Land in Taiwan this week . . .

There are now NEW reports, **claiming** US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, will land in Taiwan sometime this week.

No “official” word on this, but the reports are going around and getting louder.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) staged military exercises and published propaganda videos of various weapons, including an alleged “aircraft carrier killer,” on Sunday and Monday in anticipation of Pelosi (D-CA) arriving in Asia and potentially visiting Taiwan.

Pelosi landed in Singapore on Monday and has since met with its president and prime minister, bringing along a congressional delegation. Pelosi’s office confirmed the delegation would also visit Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan. Rumors for weeks have indicated that Pelosi had long been considering a surprise stop in the sovereign, democratic nation of Taiwan – defying the Chinese Communist Party, which claims Taiwan as a rogue “province” and dismisses its government as an illegitimate separatist entity.

Most striking about China’s public remarks about Pelosi visiting Taiwan, and that visit being a major incident against which China will respond, was China’s statement “Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

That particular statement is of very troubling history;  China has only uttered that statement to another country THREE times in its history:

The first time in 1962 just prior to its border war with India;

The second time in 1979 just before it invaded Vietnam, and;

two days ago . . . to the USA

 

US Military: Extraordinary Activity

The United States military is already on the move, perhaps in relation to China’s ominous message.

The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier Strike Group is now moving into position near Taiwan, as shown on its travel map below:

 

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Moreover, inside the continental United States, as of 1:49 PM eastern US time on August 1, 2022, ALL (every single one) of the planes shown on the FlightRadar24 map below, are US military aircraft over the Continental USA.

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That’s an awful lot of movement.  Rather unusual.

Perhaps they are preparing for . . .  something . . . .

PLA not to sit idly by if Pelosi visits Taiwan: Chinese spokesperson

From HERE

BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) — China on Monday once again warned the United States that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will not sit idly by if U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visits Taiwan.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the warning at a daily news briefing.

China has repeatedly stated to the United States its grave concern over the issue and the solemn position of resolutely opposing Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and stressed the severe consequences if Pelosi visits Taiwan, Zhao said.

“The will of the people cannot be defied, and those who play with fire will perish by it,” Zhao said. “It is believed the U.S. side is fully aware of China’s strong and clear message.”

China is closely following the itinerary of Pelosi, Zhao said. “A visit to Taiwan by her would constitute a gross interference in China’s internal affairs, seriously undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, wantonly trample on the one-China principle, greatly threaten peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, severely undermine China-U.S. relations, and lead to a very serious situation and grave consequences.”

China once again warns the U.S. side that China is on high alert, the PLA will never sit idly by, and will surely take resolute and strong countermeasures to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, Zhao said.

The United States should strictly abide by the one-China principle and the stipulations in the three China-U.S. joint communiques, honor U.S. President Joe Biden’s commitment that the United States does not support “Taiwan independence,” and not arrange for Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the spokesperson added.

 

White House Says Speaker Pelosi has the right to visit Taiwan: Taiwan Cancels All Troops Leave “Prepare for war”

Just moments ago, the White House officially confirmed the American position that the Speaker of the House “has the right to visit Taiwan.”

Routine Diplomatic practice for decades has been that if an official from any country wishes to visit Taiwan, they must get permission from Beijing, then fly into Beijing, then fly to Taiwan.  That decades-old practice is being ignored, and Taiwan is being treated by the USA as if Beijing no longer matters.

Beijing seems ready to show the US, and the world, they actually do matter . . . .

Video of the White House spokesman saying it:

 

Taiwan Cancels all Military Leave

Taiwanese defense officials have canceled the leave of soldiers and officers “to immediately prepare” for the chance of war in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Asia this week, according to local reports.

China warned early Monday that its military would not “sit idly by” if the House speaker visits Taiwan during her trip this week, echoing similar comments from Chinese President Xi Jinping last week that the United States should not “play with fire.” Pelosi is expected to stop in Taiwan during her visit this week, although the island is not listed on her itinerary.

“Her stature as the No. 3 U.S. official means a trip would be highly sensitive,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters Monday. “As to what measures, let’s wait and see whether she insists on this visit.”

If Pelosi travels to Taiwan, she’ll be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the island since former House Speaker Newt Gingrich made the trip in 1997. It’s not clear when Pelosi will arrive in Taiwan, but the House speaker is expected to stay there overnight, officials told CNN.

UPDATE 2:20 PM EDT —

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to visit Taiwan as part of her tour of Asia, according to a senior Taiwanese government official and a US official, despite warnings from Biden administration officials, who are worried about China’s response to such a high-profile visit.

The stop — the first for a US House speaker in 25 years — is not currently on Pelosi’s public itinerary and comes at a time when US-China relations are already at a low point.

The Taiwanese official added that she is expected to stay in Taiwan overnight. It is unclear when exactly Pelosi will land in Taipei….

China again warns of ‘serious consequences’ over Pelosi’s potential Taiwan visit

From HERE

China will take firm and strong countermeasures to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Monday, warning that the Chinese military will not sit back if U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visits Taiwan.

His remarks came amid the high tensions across the Taiwan Straits. Pelosi’s Asia trip schedule, announced on Sunday, includes Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan with no mention of Taiwan.

“The Chinese side has repeatedly made clear to the U.S. side our serious concern over Pelosi’s potential visit to Taiwan and our firm opposition to the visit,” Zhao told a regular news briefing.

“We are fully prepared for any eventuality,” he said, adding that it is the U.S. that has been distorting and hollowing out the one-China principle and making irresponsible remarks on the Taiwan question.

China demands that the United States honor the promise of President Joe Biden that it would not support “Taiwan independence” and should not arrange Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, he stressed.

During his phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, Biden reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to the one-China policy.

Policing the World Is a Full-Time Job

China pushes back against US-led military intervention in Asia

Every leader and top official now in power in the so-called Western World seems to have forgotten that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 as an alliance that was ostensibly defensive in nature, intended to counter the expansion of Soviet style communism in Europe.

That role continued to be the raison d’etre of the organization until communist governments themselves collapsed in both Russia and in the Eastern European states that collectively made up the Warsaw Pact during the 1990s. After that point, NATO no longer had any reason to exist at all as the alleged military threat posed by the Kremlin and its allies vanished virtually overnight.

But clever politicians were quick to put the alliance on life support instead of simply dismantling it.

Lacking the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact, NATO was forced to come up with other reasons to maintain military forces at levels that could quickly be enhanced and placed on a wartime footing. Washington and London took the lead in this, citing the now shopworn defense of a “rules based international order” as well as of “democracy” and “freedom.”

And fortunately for the national defense industries and the generals, it soon proved possible to find new enemies that provided justification for additional military spending.

The first major engagement outside the obligations defined by the original treaty took place in Europe to be sure, but it was in the Balkans where of NATO during the 1995 Operation Deliberate Force. The war ended after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on December 14th 1995. Peace negotiations were finalized a week later but fighting resumed between Kosovo and Serbia in the following year, which led to another NATO intervention that eventually ended with the restoration of Kosovo’s autonomy and the deployment of NATO forces, which bombed the Serbs to compel their compliance with a draft cease fire agreement.

NATO also played a role improbably enough in the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which was justified by claiming that an Afghanistan free to set its own course would become a hotbed of terrorism which would inevitably impact on the United States and Europe. It was a paper-thin argument, but it was the best they could come up with at the time and it also eventually involved soldiers from additional friendly countries like Australia.

As we have subsequently seen, however, it was all an argument without merit as Afghanistan became a money pit and a graveyard for thousands of locals and foreign soldiers. It is now again in the hands of the Taliban after a bungled withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the puppet government in Kabul that Washington had installed.

Turn the clock forward to the present. As everyone but President Joe Biden has recognized, the United States and NATO are currently engaged in a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which many observers already believe has some of the attributes of World War III. As Russia neither threatened nor attacked any NATO member state, the argument that the response in arming and training Ukraine was defensive was rendered irrelevant. Nor can it be credibly be claimed that Russia is a haven for terrorists, quite the contrary. Nevertheless, Biden has stated that the US will be in the fight on behalf of Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” Does he mean years, and all done without a declaration of war by Congress as required by the US Constitution?

And more appears to be coming. Joe Biden, during last week’s trip to Israel, made clear that the United States is “prepared to use all elements of its national power” to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and has signed a pledge with the Israeli government to commit itself to do so.

If Biden presses the argument that Iran is an international threat due to its impending development of nuclear weapons, will he appeal to NATO to support a joint military option to disarm it? I believe he just might do that.

And he might just want to consider how the entire set-up and framing of the issue by Israel is somewhat of a trap. Israel considers Iran’s current nuclear program to be intended to create a weapon, which “they continue to develop,” and there are plenty in the US Congress who would agree with that.

So, if Iran is clearly creating a thermonuclear device, the time to strike is now, isn’t it? And bear in mind how the US/Israeli campaign to condemn is multifaceted. Shortly before the meetings held by Biden and his crew with the Israelis, US government sources set the stage for what was to come by going on the offensive regarding reports that Iran may be selling highly capable offensive drones to Russia for use in Ukraine as well as subsequent claims coming out of Washington that the Iranians are seeking to assassinate senior US officials in revenge for the killing of Revolutionary Guards General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. One wonders why they waited so long and why the White House has chosen to publicize these stories at this point.

And the US and NATO are also getting involved with China’s geopolitical policies, on a path that Beijing is warning is extremely hypocritical and which might lead to armed conflict. The signs that the Chinese might be targeted by NATO, possibly over the Taiwan independence issue, came following a stark warning by US Secretary of State Tony Blinken delivered at the NATO summit in Madrid at the end of June. Blinken accused China of “seeking to undermine the rules-based international order,” the same type of critique recently leveled against Russia and Iran. Blinken’s comment was elaborated on by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who observed how “China is substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbors, threatening Taiwan … monitoring and controlling its own citizens through advanced technology, and spreading Russian lies and disinformation.”

Stoltenberg’s indictment of China was followed by a NATO issued “strategic concept” document last that declared for the first time that China poses a “systemic challenge” to the alliance, alongside a primary “threat” coming from Russia. The document copied Blinken’s language, citing “The deepening strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests.”

Finally, the US and British governments collaborated to condemn China as the “biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security.” The declaration came in a July 6th joint news conference in London, where Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, and Ken McCallum, director general of Britain’s MI5, accused China, like Russia, of interfering in US and UK elections. Wray also warned the business leaders in the audience that the Chinese government has been “set on stealing your technology, whatever it is that makes your industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian initially responded a few days after the NATO summit, observing that the “so-called rules-based international order is actually a family rule made by a handful of countries to serve the US self-interest,” adding that “[Washington]observes international rules only as it sees fit.” Addressing the issue of the role of NATO specifically, Zhao accused Blinken of using NATO to “hype up competition with China and stoke group confrontation.” He added that “The history of NATO is one about creating conflicts and waging wars…arbitrarily launching wars and killing innocent civilians, even to this day. Facts have proven that it isn’t China that poses a systemic challenge to NATO, and instead it is NATO that brings a looming systemic challenge to world peace and security. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, [NATO] has not yet abandoned its thinking and practice of creating ‘enemies’ … It is NATO that is creating problems around the world.”

China has a point. What NATO is threatening is war, as it is a military alliance. The Chinese appear to understand that NATO is the world’s largest military bureaucracy which has developed since 1991 an overriding institutional commitment to ensuring its permanent existence, if not expansion, even after it has clearly outlived its own usefulness. So Beijing might justifiably wonder, how does China – on the other side of the globe – fit into NATO’s historic “defensive” mission? How are Chinese troops or missiles now threatening Europe or the US in ways they weren’t before? How are the Americans and Europeans suddenly under military threat coming from China?

The Chinese appear to understand that if there is no threat to “defend” against, then a threat must be manufactured, and that is precisely what we are seeing vis-à-vis Russia, China, Iran and even Venezuela. Washington has become addicted to war and NATO is the chosen tool to give those wars the patina of legitimacy. To launch those conflicts requires either inventing an imaginary threat, or, as in the case of Russia, provoking the very threat the “defensive” bureaucracy was designed to deter or thwart. All indications are that NATO – now embracing 30 countries – is doing both and the results could easily be disastrous for all parties involved. Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard particularly abhors the cynical recklessness of the Biden Administration driving the process, explaining how “The reality is, President Biden, members of Congress, leaders in our country, the wealthy, they will have a safe place to be in the event of a nuclear war that they are behind causing while the rest of us in America and Russia, people around the world, will be decimated from this event.”

Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges has also defined the unthinkable that is at stake, and it is past time for Americans and Europeans to take note and stop the madness.

Hedges opines that “The massive expansion of NATO, not only in Eastern and Central Europe but the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, presages endless war and a potential nuclear holocaust.”

One might also note that New Yorkers are now being informed about what to do if there is a nuclear attack.

Yes, that is precisely the problem – we have an administration in Washington that should be protecting the people living in this country, not setting up scenarios that might lead to their slaughter.

Will someone please point that out to Joe Biden?

Will the West’s Suicide Bring World Peace?

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In The Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brzezinski speculated about the American unipolar hegemon’s ultimate geostrategic nightmare: “a new ‘antihegemonic’ coalition, formed around the three powers with the greatest geopolitical stake in reducing America’s primacy in Eurasia.” Those three powers, of course, are Russia, China, and Iran. Such a development, Brzezinski observed, would “bring together the world’s leading Slavic power, the world’s most militant Islamic power, and the world’s most populated and powerful Asian power, thereby creating a potent coalition.”

Such an alliance would require “a renewal of the bilateral Sino-Russian connection, capitalizing on the resentment among the political elites of both states over the emergence of America as the only global superpower.” That seemed unlikely when Brzezinski was writing in 1997 because, as he put it, such a coalition could only develop if the US were stupid enough to antagonize all three nations simultaneously.

Brzezinski should have known never to underestimate the stupidity of American foreign policy elites. As I write this in late July 2022 (Dhu’l-Hijjah 1443 AH) the neocon-led west is committing strategic suicide by doing exactly what Brzezinski warned against: not just antagonizing, but massively antagonizing Russia, China, and Iran all at once. The inevitable result will be the collapse of American pretensions to global leadership, sooner rather than later.

The US under Donald Trump blew up whatever shred of credibility it had with Tehran by tearing up the JCPOA and assassinating Gen. Qassem Soleimani after luring him to Baghdad with a fake peace offer. Moving the US embassy to occupied Jerusalem/al-Quds, deeming Israeli land-theft legitimate, and sponsoring the anti-Iran anti-Palestine Shaitan Accords (misnamed the “Abraham Accords” in a horrific insult to sayyidna Ibrahim alaihi as-salaam) was just the icing on the cake. After those actions, Iran had no choice but to face the reality that the US is, as the Russians say, non-agreement-capable.

Around the same time the US attacked Wuhan with COVID-19, inadvertently (?) unleashing a global pandemic. This came on the heels of suspected American bio-attacks on China in 2017 and 2018 that decimated the Chinese meat supply in the midst of Trump’s red-hot trade war. Immediately after exploding out of Wuhan, COVID suspiciously jumped 3600 miles to Qom, disproportionately infecting Iran’s political and clerical leadership just weeks after the US had murdered Gen. Soleimani. The Rahbar, Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei all but accused the US of perpetrating a biological attack, and Iran formally complained to the United Nations.

The US COVID bio-attack on Wuhan and Qom was presumably designed to be blamed on China in order to foster anti-Chinese hysteria and trigger the supply-chain decoupling that would be necessary during the lead-up to military escalation. Though elements of China’s leadership dropped many hints that they knew the score, Beijing apparently calculated that playing coy as the pandemic “returned to sender” was wiser than launching formal accusations and sparking domestic outrage that could force a premature hot war.

While angering China and Iran with such reckless mistreatment, the US would have been well-advised to play nice with Russia. Instead, the neocons did the exact opposite: They orchestrated the 2022 war on Russia through Ukraine. After installing a neocon-run puppet government in the 2014 Maidan coup, the US built a huge NATO-armed-and-trained “Ukrainian” army—and, in early 2022, sent it to attack the Donbass and Crimea. Russia’s pleas to respect the Minsk Accords and negotiate limits on NATO expansion were brutally rebuffed as US-Ukrainian biological warfare labs on Russia’s borders ramped up their suspicious activities. All of this was intended to trigger a pre-emptive Russian invasion of Ukraine, and it succeeded.

To win its proxy war on Russia, the US needs to isolate Moscow. To that end it slapped sanctions on Russian energy, banking, and raw materials. Washington’s obsequious European vassals meekly obeyed, depriving themselves of Russian natural gas and thereby committing economic suicide. But most of the world is defying the sanctions, and China and Iran are leading the way. As the US propaganda service Radio Free Europe recently whined, “China’s growing appetite for discounted Russian oil has made it the leading financier of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine by giving Moscow a reliable revenue source that blunts the impact of tough Western sanctions against its economy.” (Why would China kowtow to US orders even as Biden breaks with US policy and announces his readiness to go to war with China over Taiwan, which the US has officially deemed a province of China for half a century?)

Meanwhile the Rahbar of Iran brought Russian President Putin and Turkish President Erdogan to Tehran on July 19 to plan the eviction of the US from Syria while forging a Eurasian partnership that will eventually see all three nations working with China to build an alternative non-US-authorized trade and security order. According to al-Jazeera “The two leaders (Imam Khamenei and Putin) also reportedly discussed bilateral relations and gradually removing the US dollar from bilateral trade.” By accelerating the erosion of the dollar as global reserve currency, Russia and Iran, along with China and other Eurasian partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, will undercut Washington’s ability to print the unlimited currency it uses to finance its military occupation of much of the world.

Also at the Tehran conference, Russia announced its investment of $40 billion in developing Iranian gas and oil fields, while the two leaders jointly agreed to proceed with plans for enlarging Russia-Iran-China joint military exercises (which are already happening around the world including in Latin America, Washington’s “Monroe Doctrine” backyard). The multipolar alliance’s move into Central and South America has been facilitated by a wave of left-wing election victories empowering Latin leaders who never much cared for US dominance of their half of the hemisphere.

And even as Turkey was joining Russia and Iran in Tehran in a pointed rebuke to Biden’s visits to Tel Aviv and Riyadh, Pakistan’s Imran Khan won a smashing election victory in Punjab, signaling the Pakistani people’s refusal to accept the US-IMF coup that deposed Khan in April. Other Central Asian nations are also leaning toward the new multipolar axis based on the Russia-China-Iran tripartite alliance.

These developments, together with Russia’s victory over the US in Ukraine, suggest that the “new American century” has ended 78 years early. The boundless arrogance of America’s neocons, who seized power in their 9/11/2001 coup d’état and proceeded to squander America’s soft and hard power in a series of ill-advised adventures, has created the very nightmare scenario that all serious strategic thinkers, including Brzezinski, had insisted on avoiding at all costs.

Ironically, the Americans may be inadvertently preparing the groundwork for world peace even as they blunderingly bestride the globe waging bloody, counterproductive wars. By forcing Eurasia to unite both commercially and militarily, the US may have accidentally created the conditions for a more stable world order. Eurasia, after all, is the center of the “grand chessboard” and ground zero in the competition for land and resources that tends to erupt into war. As Eurasian nations band together into an anti-American alliance, they may be forging enduring ties that will eventually facilitate the emergence of more peaceful world bound by economic, intellectual, and spiritual exchange rather than military competition and plunder.

Is Taiwan’s Independence Worth War?

When a man knows he is about to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully, said Dr. Samuel Johnson.

If there is any benefit to be realized from the collision between China and the U.S. over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposed trip to Taiwan, it is this: America needs to reflect long and hard upon what it is we will fight China to defend in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

China, after all, is a nuclear-weapons nation with a manufacturing base larger than our own, an economy equal to our own, a population four times ours and fleets of warships larger in number than the U.S. Navy.

An air-naval-and-missile war in the Western Pacific and East Asia would be no cakewalk.

A massive barrage of anti-ship and hypersonic missiles launched by China could cripple and conceivably sink the U.S. carrier Ronald Reagan now in the South China Sea. The Reagan carries a crew of thousands of sailors almost as numerous as the U.S. casualty lists from both Pearl Harbor and 9/11, the worst attacks in and on the U.S. outside of such Civil War battles as Gettysburg and Antietam.

What in East Asia or the Western Pacific would justify such losses?

What would justify such risks?

Since President Richard Nixon’s trip to China, and President Jimmy Carter’s abrogation of the mutual defense treaty with the Republic of China on Taiwan in 1979, the U.S. is not obligated to come to the defense of Taiwan against China, which claims that island the size of Maryland as “part of China.”

Our military posture has been one of “strategic ambiguity.” We will not commit to go to war to defend Taiwan, nor will we take the war option off the table if Taiwan is attacked.

But if the U.S. went to war to defend Taiwan, what would it mean?

We would be risking our own security and possible survival to prevent from being imposed on the island of Taiwan the same regime lately imposed on Hong Kong without any U.S. military resistance.

If Hong Kong, a city of 7 million, can be transferred to the custody and control of Beijing without resistance from the U.S., why should it be worth a major U.S. war with China to prevent that same fate and future from befalling 23 million Taiwanese?

The retort comes instantly.

Allow China to take Taiwan without U.S. resistance, and our treaties to fight for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand become suspect.

Belief in the U.S. commitment to fight for the nations of East Asia and the Western Pacific would dissipate. The entire architecture of Asian defense against Communist China could disintegrate and collapse.

If we allowed Taiwan to be taken by China without intervening, it is argued, the value of U.S. commitments to fight to defend scores of allies in Europe and Asia would visibly depreciate. U.S. credibility would suffer a blow as substantial as the loss of South Vietnam in 1975.

The fall of Saigon was followed by the loss of Laos and Cambodia to communism, the overthrow of the shah, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the strategic transfer of Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Grenada to the Soviet bloc, and the rise of Euro-communism on the Old Continent.

Pelosi’s prospective visit to Taiwan, and the bellicose reaction of Beijing, should raise other relevant questions.

If this should lead to a U.S.-China war, what would we be fighting for? And what would victory look like?

A restoration of the status quo ante? Permanent independence for Taiwan, which would require a new and permanent war guarantee by the U.S. and a new U.S.-Taiwan defense pact?

Would a permanent commitment to fight to defend Taiwan from China be acceptable to an American people weary of commitments and wars?

Again, why would we risk our own peace and security for Taiwan’s freedom and independence, when we would not risk our own peace and security for the freedom or independence of Hong Kong?

And after our victory in the Taiwan Strait, how would we secure indefinitely the independence of that nation of 23 million from a defeated power of 1.4 billion, bitter and bristling at its loss?

After the United States has a victory against China? Seriously? Let me remind you of the Korean war, and the MASSIVE American rout with the enormous causalities taken against poorly armed peasants and farmers. -MM

Consider: China, in this 21st century, has grown massively, both militarily and economically, and in both real and relative terms, at the expense of the United States.

Nor are the growth trends for China, with four times as many people as there are Americans, favorable to the USA.

What guarantees are there that 2025 or 2030 will not bring a more favorable balance of power for China in what is, after all, their continent, not ours?

Unlike in the Cold War, time is not necessarily on the side of the United States and its allies when all three of the nuclear powers in East Asia — China, Russia, North Korea — are hostile to the USA.

Smokey

“my grandmother moved away recently, and one of my cats, Smokey, was very fond of her. They would cuddle together on the couch and watch my grandmas favorite shows.

When she left, Smokey wouldn’t stop looking for her best friend.

She always waited by the door as if she would come back any day. She sleeps in the now guest bedroom every night, and curls up in their spot every day. We’ve tried to make her feel better with new toys and treats, but she is very sad.

She meows at all hours of the night begging for her best friend to come home.

There’s a happy end to this though!

My grandma is coming home for thanksgiving and she will be taking Smokey back with her! We are all very happy she will be with her best friend again!”

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Update 2: Thank you everyone for reading! there is good news and bad news. I’ll start with the bad. My grandma had to have surgery, and she needs constant doctor visits to make sure she’s still ok. I’m not very good with medical terminology, but I know its bad. Good news is she’s going to stay here, and Smokey is very happy that she doesn’t have to leave her siblings.

CHINA WARNS USA: Will not accept *any* excuse for Pelosi Landing in Taiwan . . .

The People’s Republic of China today explicitly warned the United States against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi trying to travel to Taiwan.

They said “We will not accept any excuses for Nancy Pelosi trying to land in Taiwan, including any kind of emergency.  If problems with the plane occur, we will allow landing in Hainan, not Taiwan.”

So the stage is set for actual confrontation.

According to sources in Asia, the Hal Turner Radio Show can report that Nancy Pelosi’s aircraft is scheduled to land in Taipei, Taiwan, at 22:20 Hours local time TONIGHT.

Meanwhile, THREE United States Air Force B-52’s, with their transponders OFF, are presently in Taiwan air space.  As of Monday, Japan-based USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group is in the Philippine Sea after transiting the San Bernardino Strait on Saturday following a port visit to Singapore and operating in the South China Sea. California-based USS Tripoli is in just south of Okinawa. Tripoli has been embarked with up to 20 F-35Bs.

China has just CANCELED all civilian flights into or out of Fujian Province . . . the mainland province directly opposite Taiwan.

China will conduct military drills in some areas of South China Sea Aug. 2-6 and will ban ships from entering the areas.

 

 HAL TURNER ANALYSIS

The Democrats need a big change to prevent carnage at the midterm elections. The so called “defeat of Russia” is simply not happening. It all backfired into economic disaster.

So the thing to make everyone forget the past failures would seem to be a new war with China.

The timing of this situation has all been dictated by Nancy’s trip, which means the US and allies are dictating the timing. China has responded as expected with brinksmanship threats- paraphrasing from memory… “Play with Fire and Die by Fire, We WILL RESPOND MILITARILY, Prepare for war”, etc.

China has put themselves on a path with no turns at this point. Can’t back out now without losing face.

One of the last times the US chose the timing to start a major war was Bush Sr’s 1991 war to liberate Kuwait from Iraq. Saddam woke up that morning to the largest armada of aircraft and ships imaginable, launched from a huge consortium of the willing allies. 31 years ago. How time flies.

One thing that tends to be the case, from past observations. Whatever you think is the situation is wrong. The fog of war, or whatever you want to call it typically surrounds the opening moves. Silly reports of a half trillion dollar F-35 program being grounded because they “forgot to put the charge into the ejection seats”. Something that supposedly happened in April and is now being broadcast as a headline. Right before a major military engagement. riiiight.

Whatever the opening of this new war looks like is will certainly be interesting to watch if you overlook all the death and destruction. Biden obviously has nothing to do with the plans or strategy being a mental vegetable and all.
The Deep State war machine in running the show.

Hard to imagine the “Nothing will happen” scenario at this point, but I suppose anything is possible. Maybe China will try to save face by making some claim about their altruism and desire for world peace. They have been having big problems at home as well from what little I have gleaned from the interwebs. Financial problems, and a population that seems 30 seconds away from a full scale revolution.

May we live in interesting times. The old Chinese curse.
Both sides make public claims about the immense power of their militaries.

As Patton used to say, or I think he did, as I mis-remember and smoosh together his various quotes, something like, “War is the crucible of truth. Truths are reaffirmed, and lies are burned away to ashes.”

Times have changed in the last 31 years.

The US has abused its friendships around the world. Allies have been coerced and manhandled to the point that the great “political capital” that existed for the 2 Iraq wars has been spent and squandered.

Any coalition of the willing against China will be borne not of any love for America but for simple self preservation.  A China dominated world would be a lot worse than one dominated by the US, even on our worst day.

Obviously he has never been to China. -MM

I guess we don’t really know who the allies of the US will be in this conflict, but it is safe to say most or all of the following list: Japan, Australia, S. Korea, with some possibility of India, Vietnam, The PI, and a few NATO allies like the UK and France. Russia should have been our ally as well, but Biden has burned that bridge rather completely, which is the reason I have been rather vocal in opposing the doomed Ukraine conflict from the beginning.

 

UPDATE 8:09 AM EDT —

Taiwan is preparing eight Mirage-2000 fighter jets to escort Nancy Pelosi’s aircraft into Taiwanese airspace.

Meanwhile, China is NOW moving armor into Fujian Province near Xiamen.  This video just-in from Fujian Province showing the armor:

 

 

Strangely, for some reason, China is also NOW deploying what appear to be artillery onto the Beaches along the Taiwan Strait!   The artillery cannot reach Taiwan, cannot shoot down US planes, and there is no actual “invasion” of China planned, so it is not known what China will accomplish with this . . . but it is taking place as seen in the video below:

 

China shows what the USA can look forward to.

As punishment for pelosi visit, China suddenly bans more than 100 Taiwanese food companies export to China. More economic punishment to come…

From HERE

Ashley

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THis is Ashley. I was broke , I had bought her cat food with my last few rands , and it was 2 days from pay day. There was no food in the house. I went to bed hungry , and next morning i made her breakfast , and this beautiful creature looked at me , turned around and went out the window. I was thinking , great abandoned by the cat as well , and then i heard a Muffled Rowl. That sound i know , she came jumping through the window with a pigeon she had just caught , and dumped it by my feet. She looked at me and battered her eyes and cleaned herself. It was like she knew i was hungry , so she went and caught me something to eat.

What a beautiful soul …

CHINA DEPLOYS **NUCLEAR** ICBM’S

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China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is now actively moving nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM’s) in Fujian Province near Taiwan.  These missiles can reach the United States.   All this over a confrontation about Speaker Nancy Pelosi entering Taiwan when she was told she could not come, by Beijing.

VIDEO:

The images below are from the roads of Fujian Province, taken today:

The short and sweet of the DF-5B appears below:

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NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wants to visit China to ‘seize new opportunities’

NZ PM is the only smart Anglo-Saxon leader.
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From HERE

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Crystal Brown

When I was 16, I started dating my first real boyfriend…whom I ended up marrying, then divorcing because that’s what sometimes happens when you marry your first ever boyfriend.

The first time at their home, we pulled up to their old, shabby home in dire need of paint and repairs.

He opens the door and his mom greets us. Hugs him, hugs me.

I felt so awkward. I couldn’t recall ever getting a hug before?

We watched a movie together. Afterwards we decided to run down to the store a mile away to get some snacks & his mom said ‘Be safe! I love you!’

I was awestruck. They say ‘I love you’ every time they leave the house? I couldn’t recall ever being told ‘I love you’. I was 16 years old and never had anyone to ever say the words ‘I Love You’.

They didn’t have much. The house was shabby. They lived paycheck to paycheck. Old clothes. But they were happy. Loving. A family.

They talked about their feelings. They talked about their emotions. They talked through fights, even if they were yelling.

When we married, his parents welcomed me with open arms even though we were young. I was 17 and pregnant. His mom took me in as I was kicked out. Bought my maternity clothes. Took me to doctor appointments. And even through my awkwardness, my crying fits because of hormones & family issues, and the only way I knew how to handle that, was anger…they loved me. They hugged me. They told me they loved me. No matter how awkward I was, no matter how much anger I showed because I didn’t know how to show pain, no matter how hard it was for them…they loved me.

They taught me how to be a good mom. How to be a good person.

Even now, being divorced for 15 years, I still keep in contact with them. I still send Christmas cards and text them. My ex mother in law still calls me ‘her daughter’.

It enabled me to tell my children that I loved them on a daily basis. To tell them how wonderful they are. How they can do anything. To give them hugs nightly, to talk to them, show emotion and teach them to show their emotions.

I’ll forever be grateful. She helped me break the family cycle.

Jimmy Carter on why there is only ONE CHINA

1979 US president Jimmy Carter full public statement Re The people republic of China as the only legitimate government of china.
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Saddest last words

“The presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet has sentenced you and your family to be shot…” Yakov Yurovsky had loudly announced. He had rehearsed his speech hours before.

The Tsar whose face was blanched with horror and incomprehension, interrupted Yurovsky, “I don’t understand. Read it again…”

After Yurovsky re-read the death sentence, the Tsar turned back to his family, pointedly looking at his sickly son, the Tsarveich Alexei before turning back to the executioners.

The Tsar’s final words was a weak stutter.

“What? What?”

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These words are simple but it resonates all of his momentary feelings of horror, terror, and incomprehension. He and his family were blind to their tragic fates.

Unlike popular belief, the death of his family was not a fast execution. It was a murderous blood bath. Quick warning, the rest of my answer is going to get detailed about the murder.

As the shooting took place, every single Bolshevik in the room wanted to take a shot at “bloody” Nicholas. Therefore, he was the only family member to receive a quick death.

Just as Tsaritsa Alexandra was crossing herself, she was shot in the skull. Alexandra was the second death.

Dr. Botkin, who was hit twice in the abdomen and crawled toward the Tsar, was fatally shot by Yurovsky. His was the third death.

Alexei, too weak from his illness, didn’t budge as the shooting took place. Still covered in his father’s blood, he was too petrified to move. Yurovsky quickly finished him off with a bullet to the head. Alexei was the fourth death.

When they realized that the daughters were still alive, a second frenzied shooting took place but unbeknownst to the executioners, the daughters had unintentionally made bullet-proof vests by sewing layers of diamonds into their clothes.

After the smoke had cleared, Yurovsky’s men noticed Olga and Tatiana cowering in the dark corner of the basement and clutching tightly to each other. As Yurovsky approached, Tatiana struggled to her feet but was shot in the back of the head. Hers was the fifth death.

Olga, who witnessed her sister’s death, was frantically screaming before being shot in the jaw. Olga was the sixth death.

Anastasia and Maria, who were crouched against a wall, were the last Romanovs alive. The executioners decided to finish them off with bayonets, but the stabs would not go through the layers of jewels. Maria and Anastasia were shot in the head but only Maria died. She was the seventh death.

The maid Demidova awoke after fainting and cried out, “Thank God! I am saved!” Her proclamation was short-lived and she was stabbed with a bayonet. Hers was the eighth death.

Anastasia, the most mythologized of the sisters, had suddenly awoken as she was being carried out. Anastasia cried out and thrashed her arms but was clubbed in the back of the head. She was the last of her family to die.

I’ve always wondered what thoughts run through Tsar Nicholas’s head as he looked back at his family for the last time.

Did a sudden realization dawn on him that he was the cause of his family’s misfortune and tragic end?

Were his last regrets on his inability to protect his family?

Was he preoccupied with thoughts on how to withhold his family’s demise?

We’ll never know. All I could say that after his final words, an unimaginable violence took place that night that shattered innocence and allowed chaos to take its place.

Pelosi Plane has landed in Taiwan! . . . Now, CANNOT TAKE-OFF! – No-Fly Zone

The US Air Force plane carrying Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is now below 18,000 feet in altitude, and is on final approach to Tapei, Taiwan, in direct vioolation of Beijing’s order that she not enter.

Plane is now physically over land, no longer over Pacific Ocean.

Altitude 16,300 feet as of 10:32 AM eastern US time.

As of 10:38 AM Pelosi plane now at 8300 feet altitude.  China’s Global Times newspaper says Chinese Air Force fighter jets moving across Taiwan Strait to intercept.

10:39 AM EDT — Plane altitude 6400 feet.

10:40 AM 5600 feet.

5175 feet

4800 feet

Pelosi’s plane safely landed and Pelosi has deplaned.

 

UPDATE 12:16 PM EDT–

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian made an official statement.

“Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan will be a gross interference in China’s internal affairs, and will lead to very serious events and dire consequences,” Lijian said.

 

China’s Economy Ministry has stopped HALTED hundreds of food product shipments to Taiwan amid Pelosi visit

 

China vows ‘targeted military actions’ in response to Pelosi Taiwan visit.

 

12:28 PM EDT — 

Reuters confirms, the Air Space over Taiwan Straits is now closed.  China fighter jets are flying all around Taiwan.   AIR RAID SIRENS are sounding in southern CHINA:

 

 

Chinese military PLA Eastern Theater Command announced it will start military “exercises” in the coming hours around Taiwan Island in response to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

 

UPDATE 5:04 PM EDT —

China’s military exercises block the air and sea around Taiwan.   All of it.

China Central Television announced the start of military exercises in three areas around Taiwan. These maneuvers demonstrate the dissatisfaction of the Chinese ruling party with the actions of the United States, in particular with Pelosi’s statements on “democracy” in Taiwan.

Until the PLA completes the live-fire exercises,  Pelosi can’t LEAVE.   Her plane can’t take-off else it may “accidentally” be hit by live fire from the “exercises.”

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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It’s on! World War III has begun!

It’s war over Taiwan just like RAND specified. This comes at the heels of the great proxy war loss in Ukraine.

What has been made perfectly clear:

1. Taiwan is part of China. This is internationally recognized and has been since all the way back to soon after WWII.

2. China does not want Pelosi to "visit", and certainly not for her publicly expressed purpose of sedition and promises of military support from the US for such a purpose.

3. China will act in its sovereign interest on this and every other matter and if it so wishes it will be with any degree of violence of its choosing.

4. China repeatedly and consistently states points 1 to 3 and has done so every since the "one China" policy came into force a long time ago.

Simple, unambiguous, and clear.

There is nothing to not understand in the above.


-Sunny Runny Burger

Big changes everywhere, and I am smack dab in the middle of a big move. I will be quiet on all platforms for about a week. Do not fret. I am well, and I am safe.

America has decided to pick on China. And they are pushing towards this end with aggression.

[1] Biden calls Xi Peng

First up. Watch this very telling description of the talk between President Biden, and Xi Peng of China…

About 16 minutes. Well worth the watch.

Now,

[2] Check out this stuff from Hal Turner…

China Armor Headed To Fujian – Across from Taiwan; Navy Starts Live Fire Drills in Taiwan Strait

China is extremely displeased with the potential trip by USA Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan, and they are openly warning of military action if the Speaker dares to try landing in Taiwan without approval from, and transiting through, Beijing.

Pelosi is reported to have begun her Asia trip yesterday, with stops in various countries.   One potential stop may be into Taiwan.

In the past, if any high ranking political official from any country, wanted to go to Taiwan, that official asks for permission from Beijing, then travel TO Beijing, and later heads to Taiwan.   This is the way it has always been given that the world has a “one China” policy and that Taiwan is part of China.

Last year, however, U.S. officials began flying directly into Taiwan.   To China, this was like getting a finger stuck in their eye.  It was insulting and demeaning that the island was being treated as if it were its own country, which it is not.

So when it became public knowledge that Speaker Pelosi was planning an Asia trip, with a stop in Taiwan, China decided they’d had enough.

It was made known in China official state media that Beijing will not tolerate direct flights by foreign officials into Taiwan.  The U.S. basically ignored those challenges.

China’s “Global Times” newspaper, then began running a series of stories with accompanying editorials making clear a direct flight by Pelosi would not be tolerated.

In response, the Pentagon made known that the US Navy is setting-up concentric circles of “protection” for Pelosi’s plane!

Not only does Pelosi plan to enter Taiwan without getting approval from, or transiting through Beijing, now the US military is saying they will provide military protection for here to actually do it!   It’s almost as though the U.S. no longer acknowledges that China is its own sovereign country, and it makes the rules.

The Pentagon announcement of military protection for Pelosi’s plane caused even more backlash.  Just yesterday, the top Editor of the ‘Global Times” which is the mouthpiece of the China Communist Party, said the following:

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Yes. From the Chinese point of view, it is a MILITARY INVASION.

While some may say “He’s just an Editor giving a newspaper opinion” readers must understand that media in China is tightly controlled by the Communist Party.  Absolutely nothing appears in China media unless it is approved by – or speaks for – the Communist Party.  So while the remarks above appear in a newspaper, they are very much the actual positions of the China government.

In addition to that very blunt and direct warning of having Pelosi aircraft FIRED UPON, China’s army began moving trainloads of Armor into Fujian Province, which is in mainland China, precisely opposite Taiwan:

Even more ominous, China’s Navy announced sudden, unscheduled, LIVE FIRE naval exercises in the Taiwan Strait:

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It is therefore clear that China has had quite enough of the US thinking it can do whatever it wants.   There very well may be a serious confrontation over Pelosi’s trip . . . if she tries to enter Taiwan.

UPDATE 8:58 AM EDT —

CONFIRMED!  Pelosi has taken off in a US Air Force C-40 aircraft, headed out toward the Pacific Ocean,  as of early Saturday morning:

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UPDATE 10:39 AM EDT —

Pelosi’s plane made a landing in Hawaii around 9:00 AM EDT:

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“If Pelosi tries to visit Taiwan, the Chinese will respond militarily.

Asked to comment on a recent Financial Times report which suggested Beijing would respond military should the speaker of the House visit Taiwan, China’s government confirmed the contents as true:

‘We are seriously prepared,’ Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in regards to the article.

‘If the US side is bent on going its own way, China will take strong measures to resolutely respond and counteract. The United States should be held responsible for any serious consequences’” the official added.

We do not know what kind of military response, but at the moment, the American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group, including a guided missile destroyer and a guided missile cruiser, set out from Singapore on Monday heading northeast towards the South China Sea, according to ship-tracking information provided by Beijing-based think tank the South China Sea Strategic Probing Initiative. The US military has not disclosed its final destination, but the route would bring the carrier group to the Taiwan Strait if it continues in the same direction.

The US administration fears that China could introduce a no-fly zone over Taiwan ahead of a possible visit by Speaker of the US House of Representatives

These provocations are a threat to the whole world, as are the provocations to Russia. Yet, the US and its cronies have failed to overthrow Hong Kong, they have failed to create an economic disaster in Xinjiang to destabilize this crossroad on the Belt and Road, and they failed in the Tibet Autonomous Region which is now a thriving region with no abject poverty or slave ownership of serfs and with protected religious and social mores, they failed the Trump trade war, and they will fail in Taiwan. They are failing in Latin America, they are even failing in Panama to safeguard their neoliberal democratic ‘free world’.

While failing everywhere, American politicians live in virtual reality and most seriously believe that the world belongs to them…”

UPDATE 10:52 AM EDT —

Video has just been sent to me from minutes ago, showing part of the LIVE FIRE drill being conducted by China military off the coastline of Fujian Province, opposite Taiwan:

 

UPDATE 10:56 AM EDT —

China has just CLOSED the Taiwan Strait:

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Closed.

PLA Helicopters in Fujian Province take-off for “exercises.” A group of Z-10 attack helicopters of the People’s Liberation Army of China takes to the range on the shores of the Taiwan Gulf during a large-scale live-fire exercise.

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UPDATE 11:10 AM EDT —

Taiwan is now deploying Air Defense Missiles, including at Taoyuan International Civil Airport!!!!!

 

UPDATE 1:00 PM EDT —

U.S. Navy vessels in the area of Taiwan have begun their own, unscheduled, LIVE FIRE Exercises.

 

UPDATE 1:30 PM EDT —

Video from  a US Navy source aboard fleet nearing Taiwan.  Look what shows up at 23 seconds into the video . . .

 

UPDATE 2:00 PM EDT —

From early this week, Taiwan has been engaging in actual Civil Defense Drills, with Sirens and evacuations, so people of the island know where to get into shelters when China attacks.

 

UPDATE 3:00 PM EDT —

The Editor of China’s “Global Times” has tweeted the official position of China’s Communist Party:

"If Pelosi really visits Taiwan as planned, the Tsai Ing-wen authorities are accomplices. 

The mainland will definitely carry out severe punishment actions on Taiwan at the same time. 

The unbearable consequences will fall on Tsai authorities."  - 

Hu Xijin 胡锡进
@HuXijin_GT China state-affiliated media

 UPDATE 4:00 PM EDT —

From earlier in the day, video now emerges of China moving a division of the HQ-22 medium-range air defense system of the People’s Liberation Army of China toward the coastline of Fujian Province.  (This is a CORRECTION from  previously mis-identified hardware)

 

 

 

UPDATE 4:35 PM EDT — 

China’s military is still engaged in LIVE FIRE Exercises in Fujian Province, now firing missiles out to sea:

{mp4remote}https://htrs-special.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/China-LiveFiresMissiles.mp4{mp4remote}

 MORE:

The Russian Wikipedia page for Pelosi has been updated to show her death date as 31st July, 2022.

UPDATE 5:34 PM EDT —

The map below may be helpful for readers to grasp the potential theater of war in and around Taiwan:

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[3] Nuclear armed B-1 with four fighter wing escorts

Clearly, America is flying a nuclear armed B-1 bomber alongside the American leadership with four squadrons of support fighters into Chinese national territory.

This is obviously a war move, and technically an invasion.

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American invasion of Taiwan.

[4]  Russia and China hold High-level discussions

Not reported in the Western “news” media.

Conclusions

I will be going silent for the next week. Not so much because of geopolitical issues, but due to personal reasons. Do not worry.

On the Geopolitical front, the United States is run by pure maniacs and they are doing more than “just” provoking China.

"If US fighter jets escort Pelosi’s plane into Taiwan, it is an invasion. 

The PLA has the right to forcibly dispel Pelosi’s plane and the US fighter jets, including firing warning shots and making the tactical movement of obstruction. 

If ineffective, then shoot them down".. 

-Hu Xijin, Chinese state journalist and the former editor-in-chief and party secretary of the Global Times. From HERE

They are flying military aircraft with American leadership into China.

China will respond.

American “news” media will go full-on bullshit. “Proud and just America fighting for democracy against the evil ruthless vile Chinese. With America winning battle after battle… Yada. Yada. Yada.”

You won’t know anything. The truth will be hidden.

Keep in mind that China DOES NOT PLAY GAMES.

I do not know what they will do.

But I do know that it will HURT.

Life will be forever changed (for all of us) within the next 48 hours.

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The United States plan to conquer China and Russia has been unveiled

Picture above. Chinese “stealth aircraft” in a carrier launch configuration.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was seen in a luxury hotel in Moscow today.

Hum… Germany. Russia.

Ok. Things to ponder about. Obviously things are afoot.

I’m in the heat of my move. So things are going to be scattered and thin for a while. Please don’t get upset. It’s called life.

Now something absolutely frightening

The highlight of this collection (of misc bits and pieces) is a brilliant summary of the plan for the United States to conquer both Russia and China. It is comprehensive.

It is clear. and lordy is it frightening.

Heaven help us all.

Let’s begin with some odds and ends…

Crazy but true

The Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) was a huge catastrophe that resulted in one million dying from starvation and one million leaving their homeland, mostly for North America.

It’s really hard to put into words how scarring this famine was for so many Irish people and the suffering was tremendous. The psychological scars still impact Ireland’s psyche today.

It almost sounds like a fairy tale to hear how a Sultan from a far away land heard of this tragedy and went out of his way to send ships crammed with food and medicine to the Irish people dying from hunger and disease.

When Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid heard of the suffering from his Irish dentist, he felt great compassion and sorrow for the plight of the Irish. The Sultan originally wanted to donate 10,000 pounds to the starving populace but British diplomats were aghast to hear this because Queen Victoria had donated a small sum of 2,000 pounds.

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Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid

The British Government refused to accept the large donation so he only donated a measly sum of 1,000 pounds, but he secretly sent five ships loaded with food!

As you can imagine, the British government wasn’t happy to hear of this and the navy attempted a blockade to stop the aid from arriving. The ships made it through the lines and arrived at Drogheda, Ireland where they dispersed the food.

The people of Drogheda were so thankful that they had the Islamic and Ottoman symbols added to their city’s coat of arms.

It really does read like a fairy tale and is a gesture of great empathy.

It’s easy to imagine how happy the starving people were to see those Turkish ships arriving with food. According to James Hack Tuke, people were, “living, or rather starving, upon turnip-tops, sand-eels and seaweed, a diet which no one in England would consider fit for the meanest animal.”[1]

But the story does not end there.

During the Crimean War, Britain joined the Ottoman Empire in their fight against the expanding Russian Empire. About 30,000 Irish soldiers served in the war and it was noticed that the Irish people served enthusiastically in defense of the Sultan who had helped them during their greatest times of need.

This highest form of compassion was even remembered during the First World War. It was reported that British officers complained that the Irish lacked the will to fight against the Ottomans who remembered stories of the Ottoman Empire helping during a famine when no one else would.

Sultan Abdulmejid is a model of faith in humanity being restored.

Footnotes

On Speaker Pelosi’s potential visit to Taiwan, we are fully prepared for any eventuality.

China does not play. If the USA is that STUPID, they deserve exactly what will happen afterwards…

US military may be afraid China will shoot down Pelosi’s plane over Taiwan, Pelosi says

During a press conference on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the U.S. military may be concerned about her plane getting “shot down” by the Chinese military if she decides to travel to Taiwan.

US military may be afraid China will shoot down Pelosi’s plane over Taiwan, Pelosi says

Related:

Meanwhile on vacation…

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US To Assassinate Zelensky?

Rumors are now exploding that the US has decided to assassinate Ukrainian President Zelensky; he’s not useful to them anymore.

The rumors began after US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made a remark at the Aspen Conference this weekend.   That conference is basically a get-together of spooks and intel people.

At the conference, Sullivan remarked “I have concerns about the safety of President Zelensky’s life.”

When a remark like that, gets made by a guy like Sullivan, it is a signal . . . a projection . . .  of what has been decided.  It tells the intel community that Zelensky’s end is nigh.

Speculation surrounding Sullivan’s remark is already off the charts.   There is speculation that the US will kill Zelensky, likely while he is meeting with the top Generals of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Taking them all out with a missile strike is a simple task for the US, and it can be BLAMED on Russia!

That . . . .  that right there . . .  is RUMORED to be the new plan.

They kill Zelensky and maybe a couple of his top Generals, which will instantly implode the Ukrainian government and its armed forces.  There would be immediate chaos.   What’s left of the Ukrainian armed forces would disintegrate within hours.

Then, the RUMORS say, Sullivan and the Intel Community come out with all sorts of  (ahem) “evidence” allegedly (ahem) “proving” it was Russia that did it.

The mass-media in the west will dutifully make it the top news for a week or more, to lock-into the public mindset that it was Russia that did it.

This leaves Russia holding the bag of blame, making them a pariah state in the mind of the general public.

The conquest of the complete rest of Ukraine will be a simple task for Russia at that point but here’s the rub:

What Russia will “conquer” will be a rump welfare state.  A failed land area, incapable of supporting itself.

The whole thing will have to be reconstructed and that will be a gigantic financial burden upon Russia, not to mention the saboteurs, terrorists,  and troublemakers that the west will undoubtedly utilize to make things all that much harder for Russia.

The “war” will be over.   Russia will have won.   But the victory will be made as sour as possible by the West.

 

U.S. Game-Plan To Conquer Russia & China Is Clarified

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On 27 September 2021, the brilliant geostrategic analyst Brian Berletic headlined “US War Plans with China Taking Shape”.

He linked to and analyzed the then-latest draft of the U.S. Government’s detailed plans to conquer China. (The plan had been drawn-up in 2016, but sounds like today.)

The objective of these plans is for the U.S. Government to continue into the indefinite future the U.S. Government’s dominance over the entire world, and to do this by conquering first Russia, and then China.

Conquering both of the now-rising superpowers simultaneously.

And thus, not only extending its presently existing global dominance, but even increasing that, with the ultimate goal being for the U.S. to become the world’s first-ever all-encompassing global empire.

(by crippling both Russia and China).

I have personally checked and verified each one of Berletic’s linked-to sources there.

All of them are authentic, and reflect accurately the U.S. Government’s actual decisions and actions.

Right up until today, which fact (the U.S. Government’s doing all of these things) suggests that those are the U.S. Government’s operative plans.

These are the U.S. Government’s plans for China.

Berletic excerpted from the draft-plan its most crucial passages, and all of them have been U.S. foreign policies ever since 27 September 2021 (actually, even since 2016).

They accurately represent U.S. foreign policies toward, in fact, both Russia and China, as-of today.

They describe the ways in which the U.S. Government is hiring proxy-forces throughout the world.

They describe the purpose of these proxy forces, in order to destroy China’s Belt & Road Initiative before it can even become operative.

They describe the U.S. Government’s employing proxy forces and agents in order to defeat Russia in the opening battlefield of World War III, which is Ukraine.

It’s the function which Ukraine is serving for the U.S. Government.

Berletic makes clear that he does not believe that the U.S. Government expects things to extend so far as getting into a direct nuclear conflict between the U.S. and either Russia or China.

The decision makers in the United States are firmly convinced that no nuclear weapons will ever be used against America.

I have published elsewhere evidence that at least ever since 2006, the U.S. Government has abandoned the prior (mutually shared, both U.S. and Russia) “Mutually Assured Destruction” or “M.A.D.” meta-strategy.

This policy formerly had guided both countries’ nuclear-weapons strategy and designs.

M.A.D. was the meta-strategy in order to prevent such a nuclear war from ever occurring.

In America, it has been replaced by what is unofficially called “Nuclear Primacy”.

Nuclear Primacy is the design and deployment of nuclear weapons so as to win a nuclear war against Russia and/or China: aiming for all-out nuclear-war victory by the U.S. Government. It is a first-strike policy where the United States strikes Russia and China before they are able to launch counter attacks.

Such ‘victory’ would be defined as consisting of the United States being destroyed less than any of its nuclear-war opponents would be destroyed.

It is a policy of accepting minor nuclear destruction as long as Russia and China are both completely ruined by major nuclear damage.

They say that “the benefits of nuclear primacy may exceed the risks” (the destruction to the American side). The USA would rule a destroyed world, but it would still rule.

Among the possible “benefits” mentioned would be to “stave off the emergence of a peer competitor,” and to be “forcibly exporting democracy.”

The U.S. Government’s “Nuclear Primacy” meta-strategy says that there are ‘acceptable’ levels of destruction of America in a nuclear war against Russia and/or China.

It is a measure of acceptable damage so long as America ‘comes out on top’ globally, at the end.

Berletic unfortunately just assumes that the U.S. Government remains committed to the M.A.D. meta-strategy.

To me, that is instead an open question.

In fact, existing evidence (such as I have linked to) indicates that the U.S. Government is now guided by the “Nuclear Primacy” meta-strategy: arming to win a nuclear WW III, not to prevent one.

On 19 July 2022, Russia’s RT News bannered “Julia Melnikova: World War Three is off – why NATO can’t afford to have Russia as its main enemy”.

They basically seconded Berletic’s viewpoint that America probably wouldn’t go all the way to nuclear war, instead relying on the belief that the destruction of Russia and China can be accomplished through conventional means, and that Russia and China would not dare use nuclear weapons against America.

Her commentary alleged that the U.S. Government had only recently been intending to conquer post-communist Russia.

Naturally, NATO’s new strategic document differs from previous entries in the series. 

The 1991 concept noted a reduction in the security threat due to the change in the balance of power in Europe, but also noted the need to take the legacy of the Soviet Union’s military potential into account. 

The 1999 edition characterized Russia, Ukraine, and the Republic of Moldova as partners for dialogue. 

The installment from 2010 finally attached strategic importance to relations with Russia and was aimed at deepening them on issues of mutual interest.

That “partners for dialogue” and “deepening … issues of mutual interest” never has reflected the U.S. Government’s real attitude toward Russia after the Soviet Union ended in 1991.

I have documented that the plan by America’s Government was instead to fool Russia’s Government to believe that America ended the Cold War on our side at the same time when Russia ended its side of the Cold War in 1991.

But that the U.S. Government was actually planning instead to surround Russia by increasing NATO, right up to Russia’s borders.

As well as doing it in such a way so that by the time Russia recognized that this was the case, it would already be too late for Russia to be able to defend itself against the fait accompli.

And so Russia would then become swallowed-up by the U.S. Government.

That RT analysis remains deceived by the U.S. plan, which didn’t even start to become disclosed, even to America’s vassal-nations (such as the EU), until 24 February 1990.

Russia’s Government shouldn’t continue to publish affirmations of lies that America’s Government had privately admitted to its own vassal nations are lies, as early as 24 February 1990.

Why does it do that?

Does it make any sense continuing to do that?

Consequently: the U.S. game-plan is, as Berletic documented, to defeat Russia before defeating China.

And this is the reason why the U.S. Government is so determined to win the opening battle of WW III, which is on the battlefields of Ukraine.

(The U.S. Government was, in fact, so bold in the planning of their 2014 coup that took Ukraine, that it had even included their replacing Russia’s largest naval base, which was (and still is) in Crimea ever since 1783, and to turn it into another U.S. naval base, but that part of the plan failed.)

If Russia wins its objectives in Ukraine, while the U.S. fails to win its objectives there (which are simply to defeat Russia there — so that this is a zero-sum “game”), this would, in and of itself, end the U.S. empire.

This Empire started on 25 July 1945, when U.S. President Harry S. Truman decided (on the basis of the advice that he had received from his hero, Dwight Eisenhower), that if the U.S. wouldn’t take over control of the world, then the Soviet Union would.

Ergo, and so, America must take over control of the world.

It was either “us” or “them,” Truman was told; and he decided that it WOULDN’T be “them” that will win this zero-sum game.

And President GHW Bush secretly informed America’s ‘allies’, starting on 24 February 1990, that it STILL wouldn’t be “them” to continue equally with “us” in peace.

Meaning now Russia to be a “partner” except as being a continuing adversary.

Because “To hell with that!” (meaning real peace with Russia.)

“We prevailed, they didn’t” (and “they” still need to be totally and humiliatingly defeated, by “us”; “they” need to become conquered).

That is the reality.

It is the U.S. Government’s pure zero-sum-game mentality.

It is which Brian Berletic’s article documents to be the case regarding the U.S. Government’s plan regarding China.

And (as I have documented) it applies ALSO regarding Russia.

(Yet, Berletic seems to believe that it’s not being applied in U.S. thinking about the conflict in Ukraine.)

The Governments of both nations (Russia and China) would do well to publicize that it applies throughout the U.S. Government’s international-affairs policies, instead of continuing to promote the U.S. Government’s lies to the contrary.

This is the reality.

No myth.

America’s foreign policies are laser-focused on crippling, if not destroying, all possible competitors.

Destroying Russia absolutely, and completely.

Destroying China absolutely and completely.

Especially, all nations in Europe need to know this, and to reverse course because of it.

Because, if they don’t, then Europe’s economies will be crushed this coming winter, in order to keep up the U.S. Government’s lies.

It’s their choice.

Either continuing as American vassal-nations, or else making a fundamental turn, toward freedom and justice.

Freedom and Justice:  the breakup of the U.S. empire, and emergence of a real democracy and equal rights, in the relations among the world’s nations.

It’s their choice, to make, one way or the other.

Thus far, Europe’s leaders have been virtually suiciding their nations.

How, and how well, is the U.S. Government bribing them to do that, to their nations?

Or, are they actually that stupid, to be ignorant of what they are doing, or why, or whom the beneficiaries of it are?

Of course, the press has also played a role, but it’s serving the same group of ultimate masters.

How can European publics ever wake up?

Before it’s too late?

MM Comments…

Many assumptions on the US side…

  • China and Russia will NEVER use nuclear weapons.
  • The wars will be completely fought by US proxies.
  • Supplying an endless stream of weapons to the proxy nations require a USD with value.
  • Manufacturing has no bearing on the outcome.
  • Energy has no bearing on the outcome.
  • There will be little to no American domestic unrest.
  • Prodding and poking Russia and China can continue without consequence.
  • Both Russia and China will fight the proxy nations; never America directly.

Somehow, if I were a strategist, I would consider these assumptions as weaknesses, and attack them as they are unexpected.

No wonder the United States is doubling down, and planning to get rid of their stooge: the “President” of Ukraine…

RUSSIA DECLARES NEW GOAL: OUSTER OF ZELENSKY REGIME FROM UKRAINE

Early Sunday morning this web site published a story indicating a “major escalation” was coming by Russia in Ukraine, with trainloads of armor and troops arriving, bringing almost three times more Russian firepower to Ukraine.   Today, the world learned why:  Russia is going to oust the Zelensky regime.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking to envoys at an Arab League summit in Cairo late Sunday, said Moscow is now targeting the “absolutely unacceptable regime” of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“We will definitely help the Ukrainian people to free themselves from the regime that is absolutely anti-people and anti-history,” Lavrov said.

Zelenskyy was unbowed, pleading to win “this war for independence” and to keep Ukraine on a course toward full membership in the EU and becoming one of the most modern states in the world.

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

In one fell swoop, Russia completely undermined speculated western plans to get rid of Zelensky and blame it on the Russians.  Our earlier story (HERE) reported comments by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at the Aspen Conference last week.  Sullivan remarked that the US “Is concerned about the safety and the life of President Zelensky.”

This was viewed by many in attendance at the Aspen Conference, as being a “projection” of what the US has now decided to do — then blame it on the Russians.

Now that Russia has publicly declared they plan to remove Zelensky, they’ve pulled the rug out from beneath the west.   The west can no longer howl that “Russia did it” if Russia now publicly says they’re going to do it.

Now, the tables are turned.

Since Russia says they are going to oust Zelensky, the west is now forced into the untenable position of having to protect Zelensky.  IF all the intelligence apparatus and the military ight of the west cannot protect Zelensky, then who can it protect?

This announcement by Russia completely up-ended any western plans to kill Zelensky (because he knows all the dirt) and thereby make a pariah state out of Russia.

And if the Russians actually do manage to oust Zelensky in spite of the west . . . NATO will likely fall apart because all the smaller countries in NATO will know that NATO “protection” isn’t worth the paper it’s written on!

What a Diplomatic / Geo-Political coup!

Regime Change; it’s not just an American thing anymore!

WAIT!  WAIT! It gets better . . . 

Think for just a second about the position Zelensky is in.   The two most powerful nations on earth now want him dead.   

The Russians say it bluntly; the Americans were plotting and scheming secretly.

So seeing as Zelensky doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving . . . what is the best (and only) thing HE can do?

He can go to the Russians, offer to give them all the proof of all the shenanigans, all the payoffs, all the Biolabs, in return for . . . . oh this is priceless . . . Asylum in Russia!

He’d screw everybody with that!

Wow has this situation with Russia-Ukraine taken some wild turns.  This is better than a soap opera.

UPDATE 12:35 PM  EDT —

Below is the full, official transcript of Foreign Minister Lavrov’s speech to the Arab League, from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs web site:

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Transcript

UPDATE 8:31 PM EDT —

From the south of Ukraine, I am now receiving Intelligence reports saying a “massive transport” of Russian troops towards Kherson. is taking place.

The Armor and troops are being seen in Melitopol and Novooleksiivka…

Daddy going to work…

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America must destroy Russia in the Ukraine. At all costs!

$270 million in new military aid to Ukraine; Officially Considering Supplying US War Planes

The United States on Friday signed off on another $270 million in military aid to Ukraine including four new Himars precision rocket systems.

The fresh aid will bring to 20 the number of M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems sent to Ukraine and also includes up to 500 new Phoenix Ghost tactical drones, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Kirby also confirmed publicly the United States Air Force is considering donating U.S. A-10 “Warthog” ground-attack aircraft to Ukraine.   This was reported verbally on the Hal Turner Radio Show a full 48 hours ago, but only now — 2 days later — is the Pentagon publicly confirming that earlier report.

Poland Announces 400,000 Man Army with 1,000 Main Battle Tanks

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The Poland Ministry of Defense announced today that Poland will increase the size of its Army to 400,000 supported by one thousand (1,000) main battle tanks.

The tanks will be as follows:

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HAL TURNER PERSONAL OPNION

AN ARMY OF FOUR-HUNDRED-THOUSAND MEN.

If that sounds kind of small to Americans, it is, given the size of the US Military.

But wait, if what they plan to have is 400,000, and that is “small” then what do they have right now?

7500.

Yes, you read that correctly, the country of Poland has, right now, seven thousand five-hundred deployed armed forces troops.

Tiny!

And why is Poland doing this?   Russia!

OK, so we know that right now, Russia has eight-hundred thousand active duty troops and over ten thousand tanks.

What does Poland think it’s going to achieve bringing their army to half the strength of Russia, and only one-tenth (1/10) of the main battle tanks of Russia?

This is a joke, right?

. . . . . Inquiring minds want to know . . . .

Trainloads of additional Russian Armor Arriving against Ukraine – Giant Escalation Coming – Zelensky Assassination???

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Videos of Russian trains arriving with additional armored war machines, have been published on various social media the past three days and one thing has become clear: There is a GIANT escalation coming against Ukraine – and maybe NATO.

One such video, below, shows armor, on a train, as far as the eye can see:

This new echelon of armor is literally more than DOUBLE what Russia initially sent to Ukraine, before the Special Military Operation began.  If all of it is going into Ukraine, then Russian army strength in Ukraine will increase three-fold!

The Ukrainians can’t manage what Russia already has there, never mind three times more.

As things stand right now, July 24, 2022, Ukraine is losing the war very badly despite all sorts of weapons, ammunition, and intel, being supplied by the US/EU/NATO.   A new deployment of this scale by Russia will be a literal steamroller, and it will roll through the rest of Ukraine like a hot knife through butter.

 Hal Turner Analysis and Editorial Opinion

In my personal assessment of the situation, everyone has about 8 days until things go very HOT!

July 31st  -Aug 1st is the transition point into the next phase.   In fact, I am on record as saying I believe between July 28 and August 5, there __could be__ a nuclear exchange – not a full blown nuclear holocaust — between Russia and the US/NATO.

Right now, I assess that the Special Military Operation “Z” will intensify to levels of ferocity and speed yet unseen.

I personally perceive that the Deep State (NATO) forces will begin operations overtly and also with increased violence. It is my personal belief the US will cross “the line” via the proxy, Ukraine, and that action could start at any time now.

From August 1st to the end of this year the world will experience turmoil, disruption and violence that has not been seen since WWII.

Anyone with half a brain knows that Ukraine will never win this war.

There will never be peace. Russia will never be able to trust any so called security guarantees that NATO/US may come up with. Too many red lines crossed, too many broken promises.

Russia does not want to be an occupying force in Ukraine, but Ukraine, if it continues to exist AT ALL,  cannot be left to it’s own devices. Ukraine will end up being a buffer as a military no-man’s land between Russia and an encroaching NATO.  An uneasy truce if anything.

Recommendations:

1. If you live in the US or UK brace for possible attack.

2. If you live in any nation on the Russian “Unfriendly” list prepare for massive shortages and disruptions.

3. Wherever you live, get your preps in order NOW.

Note: Possible attack modes could range from Cyber, EMP, Nuke attack and or Tsunami Bomb attack. Therefore, all coastal areas, decision making centers, financial centers and military installations of the UK and US are at risk.

Prepare for possible loss of:

Electricity, Banking, Fuel, Internet and Cell Phones.

Of course, food and medical services availability will be GREATLY affected.

This is not a drill…

This is not a game.

May God protect the innocent and may the wicked…get what they deserve.

Best of luck to all.

How bad is it in the United States…?

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China’s top chip maker SMIC may have achieved tech breakthrough, experts say

  • Researchers at a Canadian tech analysis firm concluded that Shanghai-based SMIC has been able to produce 7-nanometre chips since last year
  • SMIC’s advanced capability would put the company ahead of American and European peers, but it could also spur further US sanctions, analysts say

From HERE

China’s top chip maker has likely gained the ability to produce 7-nanometre chips, according to a Canadian tech analysis firm, marking a significant breakthrough as the world’s second-largest economy pushes towards technological self-sufficiency to counter US sanctions.

Researchers at TechInsights made the conclusion after they reverse-engineered a sample chip made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), extracted from a cryptocurrency mining machine.

Analysts and industry professionals believe it is technically possible for SMIC to produce 7nm chips with existing deep ultraviolet (DUV) systems, under the leadership of co-CEO Liang Mong Song, a chip-making expert who was previously an executive at industry-leading Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. However, they are surprised that the Chinese were able to do so at this date.

Staged Incidents as the Western Approach of Doing Politics

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Lavrov

By Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister – Jul 18, 2022

Today, the Russian Armed Forces, together with the self-defense units of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, are delivering on the objectives of the special military operation with great resolve to put an end to the outrageous discrimination and genocide of the Russian people and eliminate direct threats to the security of the Russian Federation that the United States and its satellites have been creating on Ukrainian territory for years. While losing on the battlefield, the Ukrainian regime and its Western patrons have descended to staging bloody incidents to demonize our country in the eyes of the international community. We have already seen Bucha, Mariupol, Kramatorsk, and Kremenchug. The Russian Defense Ministry has been regularly issuing warnings, with facts in hand, about upcoming staged incidents and fakes.

There is a distinctive pattern that betrays the provocations staged by the West and its henchmen. In fact, they started long before the Ukrainian events.

Take 1999 – the village of Račak in Serbia’s Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija. A group of OSCE inspectors arrived at the site where several dozen corpses dressed in civilian clothes were discovered. Without any investigation, the mission head declared the incident an act of genocide, even though making a conclusion of this kind was not part of the mandate issued to this international official. NATO immediately launched a military aggression against Yugoslavia, during which it intentionally destroyed a television centre, bridges, passenger trains and other civilian targets. Later, it was proved with conclusive evidence that the dead bodies were not civilians, but militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army, an illegal armed group, dressed in civilian clothes. But by that time the staged incident has already taken its toll, offering a pretext for the first illegal use of force against an OSCE member state since the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. It is telling that the statement that triggered the bombings came from William Walker, a US citizen who headed the OSCE’s Kosovo Verification Mission. Separating Kosovo from Serbia by force and setting up Camp Bondsteel, the largest US military base in the Balkans, were the main outcomes of the aggression.

In 2003, there was the infamous performance by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in the UN Security Council with a vial containing white powder of some sort, which he said contained anthrax spores, alleging that it was produced in Iraq. Once again, the fake worked: the Anglo-Saxons and those who followed their lead went on to bomb Iraq, which has been struggling to fully recover its statehood ever since. Moreover, it did not take long before the fake was exposed with everyone admitting that Iraq did not have any biological weapons or any other kinds of WMDs. Later, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was one of the masterminds of the aggression, recognized that the whole affair was a fraud, saying that they “may have been wrong” or something like that. As for Colin Powell, he later tried to justify himself by claiming that he was misled by the underlying intelligence. Either way, this was yet another provocation that offered a pretext for delivering on the plan to destroy a sovereign nation.

There was also Libya in 2011. The drama had specifics of its own. The situation did not go as far as direct lies, like in Kosovo or Iraq, but NATO grossly distorted the UN Security Council resolution, which provided for a no-fly zone over Libya in order to “ground” Muammar Gaddafi’s air force. It did not fly to begin with. However, NATO started bombing the Libyan army units who were fighting terrorists. Muammar Gaddafi died a savage death, and nothing remains of the Libyan statehood. Efforts to put the country back together have yet to succeed, with a US representative once again in charge of the process, appointed by the UN Secretary General without any consultation with the UN Security Council. As part of this process, our Western colleagues have facilitated several intra-Libyan agreements on holding elections but none of them materialized. Illegal armed groups still reign supreme on Libyan territory, with most of them working closely with the West.

February 2014, Ukraine – the West, represented by the German, French, and Polish foreign ministers, de facto forced President Viktor Yanukovich into signing an agreement with the opposition to end the confrontation and promote a peaceful resolution of the intra-Ukrainian crisis by establishing a transitional national unity government and calling a snap election, to be held within a few months. This too turned out to be a fraud: the next morning, the opposition staged a coup guided as it was by anti-Russia, racist slogans. However, the Western guarantors did not even try to bring the opposition back to its senses. Furthermore, they switched immediately to encouraging the coup perpetrators in their policies against Russia and everything Russian, unleashing the war against their own people and bombing entire cities in the Donbass region just because people there refused to recognize the unconstitutional coup. For that, they labelled the people in Donbass terrorists, and once again the West was there to encourage them.

At this point, it is worth noting that, as it was soon revealed, the killing of protestors on the Maidan was also a staged incident, which the West blamed either on the Ukrainian security forces loyal to Viktor Yanukovich, or on the Russian special services. However, the radical members of the opposition were the ones who were behind this provocation, while working closely with the Western intelligence services. Once again, exposing these facts did not take long, but by that time they already did their job.

Efforts by Russia, Germany, and France paved the way to stopping the war between Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk in February 2015 with the signing of the Minsk Agreements. Berlin and Paris played a proactive role here as well, proudly calling themselves as the guarantor countries. However, during the seven long years that followed, they did absolutely nothing to force Kiev to launch a direct dialogue with Donbass representatives for agreeing on matters including the special status, amnesty, restoring economic ties, and holding elections, as required by the Minsk Agreements which were approved unanimously by the UN Security Council. The Western leaders remained silent when Kiev took steps which directly violated the Minsk Agreements under both Petr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky. Moreover, the German and the French leaders kept saying that Kiev cannot enter direct dialogue with the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and blamed everything on Russia, although Russia is not mentioned in the Minsk agreements even once, while remaining basically the only country that kept pushing for the agreements to be implemented.

If anyone doubted that the Minsk Package was anything but yet another fake, Petr Poroshenko dispelled this myth by saying on June 17, 2022: “The Minsk Agreements did not mean anything to us, and we had no intention to carry them out… our goal was to remove the threat we faced… and win time in order to restore economic growth and rebuild the armed forces. We achieved this goal. Mission accomplished for the Minsk Agreements.” The people of Ukraine are still paying the price of this fake. For many years now, the West has been forcing them to accept an anti-Russian neo-Nazi regime. What a waste of energy for Olaf Scholz with his calls to force Russia to agree to an agreement guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. There already had been an agreement to this effect, the Minsk Package, and Berlin with Paris were the ones who derailed it by shielding Kiev in its refusal to abide by the document. The fake has been exposed – finita la commedia.

By the way, Vladimir Zelensky has been a worthy successor to Petr Poroshenko. During a campaign rally in early 2019, he was ready to kneel before him for the sake of stopping the war.

In December 2019, Zelensky got a chance to carry out the Minsk Agreements following the Normandy format summit in Paris. In the outcome document adopted at the highest level, the Ukrainian President undertook to resolve matters related to the special status of Donbass. Of course, he did not do anything, while Berlin and Paris once again covered up for him. The document and all the publicity accompanying its adoption turned out to be no more than a fake narrative promoted by Ukraine and the West to win some time for supplying more weapons to the Kiev regime, which follows Petr Poroshenko’s logic to the letter.

There was also Syria, with the 2013 agreement on eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles in a stage-by-stage process verified by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), for which it received the Nobel Peace Prize. After that, however, there were outrageous provocations in 2017 and 2018 staging the use of chemical weapons in Khan Shaykhun and Duma, a Damascus suburb. There was a video showing people calling themselves the White Helmets (a would-be humanitarian organization which never showed up on territories controlled by the Syrian government) helping alleged poisoning victims, although no one had any protective clothing or gear. All attempts to force the OPCW Technical Secretariat to perform its duties in good faith and ensure a transparent investigation into these incidents, as required by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), failed. This, however, did not come as a surprise. The Western countries have long privatized the Technical Secretariat by having their representatives appointed to the key positions within this structure. They contributed to staging these incidents and used them as a pretext for US, British, and French airstrikes against Syria. Incidentally, they carried out these bombings just a day before a group of OPCW inspectors arrived there to investigate the incidents at Russia’s insistence, while the West did everything to prevent this deployment.

The West and the OPCW Technical Secretariat it controls demonstrated their ability to stage fake incidents with the would-be poisonings of the Skripals and Alexey Navalny. In both cases, Russia sent multiple requests to The Hague, London, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm, all left without a reply, even though they fully conformed with the CWC provisions and required a response.

Other pending questions have to do with the Pentagon’s covert activities in Ukraine carried out through its Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The traces that the forces engaged in the special military operation have discovered in military-biological laboratories in the liberated territories of Donbass and adjacent areas clearly indicate direct violations of the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons (BTWC). We have presented the documents to Washington and to the UN Security Council. The procedure has been initiated under BTWC to demand explanations. Contrary to the facts, the US administration is trying to justify its actions by saying that all biological research in Ukraine was exclusively peaceful and civilian in nature – with no evidence of any of this.

In fact, the Pentagon’s military-biological activities around the world, especially in the post-Soviet countries, require the closest attention in light of the multiplying evidence of criminal experiments with the most dangerous pathogens in order to create biological weapons conducted under the guise of peaceful research.

I have already mentioned the staged “crimes” of the Donbass militia and participants in the Russian special military operation. There is one simple fact that clearly shows how much these accusations mean: having shown the “Bucha tragedy” to the world in early April 2022 (we have suspicions that the Anglo-Saxons had a hand in setting the stage for the show), the West and Kiev have not yet answered the very basic questions about whether the names of the dead were established and what post-mortem examinations showed. Just as in the above-described Skripals and Navalny cases, the propaganda production has premiered in the Western media, and now it’s time to sweep it all under the rug, brazen it out, because they have nothing to say.

This is the essence of the well-worn Western political algorithm – to concoct a fake story and ratchet up the hype as if it’s a universal catastrophe for a couple of days while blocking people’s access to alternative information or assessments, and when any facts do break through, they are simply ignored – at best mentioned on last pages of the news in small print. It is important to understand that this is not a harmless game in the media war – such productions are used as pretexts for very material actions such as punishing the “guilty” countries with sanctions, unleashing barbaric aggressions against them with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, as it happened, in particular, in Iraq and Libya. Or – as in the case of Ukraine – for using the country as expendable material in the Western proxy war against Russia. Moreover, NATO instructors and MLRS aimers are, apparently, already directing the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and nationalist battalions on the ground.

I hope there are responsible politicians in Europe who are aware of the consequences. In this regard, it is noteworthy that no one in NATO or the EU tried to reprimand the German Air Force Commander, a general named Ingo Gerhartz, who got carried away higher than his rank and said NATO must be ready to use nuclear weapons. “Putin, do not try to compete with us,” he added. Europe’s silence suggests that it is complacently oblivious of Germany’s role in its history.

If we look at today’s events through a historical prism, the entire Ukrainian crisis appears as a “grand chess game” that follows a scenario earlier promoted by Zbigniew Brzezinski. All the good relations talk, the West’s proclaimed readiness to take into account the rights and interests of Russians who ended up in independent Ukraine or other post-Soviet countries after the collapse of the USSR turned out to be mere pretense. Even in the early 2000s, Washington and the European Union began to openly pressure Kiev to decide which side Ukraine was on, the West or Russia.

Ever since 2014, the West has been controlling, hands-on, the Russophobic regime it brought to power through a coup d’état. Putting Vladimir Zelensky in front of any international forum of any significance is also part of this travesty. He makes passionate speeches, but when he suddenly offers something reasonable, he gets a slap on the wrist, as it happened after the Istanbul round of Russian-Ukrainian talks. At the end of March, it seemed that light glimmered at the end of the tunnel, but Kiev was forced to back off, using, among other things, a frankly staged episode in Bucha. Washington, London and Brussels demanded that Kiev stopped negotiating with Russia until Ukraine achieved full military advantage (former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tried especially hard, and many other Western politicians did too, still incumbent, although they have already proved just as inept).

EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell’s statement about this war having to be “won on the battlefield” by Ukraine suggests that even diplomacy has lost its value as a tool in the European Union’s staged performance.

In a broader sense, it is curious to see how Europe, lined up by Washington on the anti-Russian front, has been hardest hit by the thoughtless sanctions, emptying its arsenals to supply weapons to Kiev (without even asking for a report on who will control them or where they go), and freeing up its market only to subsequently buy US military products and expensive American LNG instead of available Russian gas. Such trends, coupled with the de facto merger between the EU and NATO, make the continued talk about Europe’s “strategic autonomy” nothing more than a show. Everyone has already understood that the collective West’s foreign policy is a “one-man theatre.” Moreover, it is consistently seeking ever new theaters of military operations.

One element of the geopolitical gambit against Russia is granting the status of an eternal EU candidate country to Ukraine and Moldova, which, it seems, will also face an unenviable fate. Meanwhile, a PR campaign has been initiated by President of France Emmanuel Macron to promote the “European political community,” which offers no financial or economic benefits, but demands full compliance with the EU’s anti-Russia actions. The principle behind it is not either/or but “who is not with us is against us.” Emmanuel Macron explained the gist of the “community”: the EU will invite all European countries – “from Iceland to Ukraine” – to join it, but not Russia. I would like to stress that we are not eager to join, but the statement itself showcases the essence of this obviously confrontational and divisive new undertaking.

Ukraine, Moldova and other countries being courted by the EU today are destined to be extras in the games of the West. The United States, as the main producer, calls the tune and devises the storyline based on which Europe writes the anti-Russia screenplay. The actors are ready and possess the skills acquired during their tenure at the Kvartal 95 Studio: they will provide a voice-over for dramatic texts no worse than the now forgotten Greta Thunberg and play musical instruments, if needed. The actors are good: remember how convincing Vladimir Zelensky was in his role as a democrat in the Servant of the People: fighter against corruption and discrimination against Russians and for all the right things in general. Remember and compare it with his immediate transformation in his role as president. It is perfect Stanislavsky Method acting: banning the Russian language, education, media and culture. “If you feel like Russians, then go to Russia for the sake of your children and grandchildren.” Good advice. He called Donbass residents “species” rather than people. And this is what he said about the Nazi Azov battalion: “They are what they are. There is plenty of such people around here.” Even CNN was ashamed to leave this phrase in the interview.

This prompts a question: what will be the outcome of all these storylines? Staged incidents based on blood and agony are by no means fun but a display of a cynical policy in creating a new reality where all principles of the UN Charter and all norms of international law are attempted to be replaced with their “rules-based order” in an aspiration to perpetuate their dwindling domination in global affairs.

The games undertaken by the West in the OSCE after from end of the Cold War, where it considered itself a winner, had the most devastating consequences for the modern international relations. Having quickly broken their promises to the Soviet and Russian leadership on the non-expansion of NATO to the east, the United States and its allies nevertheless declared their commitment to building a unified space of security and cooperation in the Euro-Atlantic region. They formalized it at the top level with all OSCE members in 1999 and 2010 within the framework of a political obligation to ensure equal and inseparable security where no country will strengthen its security at the expense of others and no organization will claim a dominating role in Europe. It soon became evident that NATO members do no keep their word and that their goal is the supremacy of the North-Atlantic Alliance. Even then we continued our diplomatic efforts, proposing to formalize the principle of equal and inseparable security in a legally binding agreement. We proposed this a number of times, the last one in December 2021, but received a flat denial in response. They told us directly: there will be no legal guarantees outside NATO. Which means that the support of the political documents approved at the OSCE summits turned out to be a cheap fake. And now NATO, driven by the United States, has gone even further: they want to dominate over the entire Asia-Pacific region in addition to the Euro-Atlantic. NATO members make no effort to conceal the target of their threats, and China’s leadership has already publicly declared its position regarding such neo-colonial ambitions. Beijing has already responded by citing the principle of indivisible security, declaring its support for applying it on a global scale to prevent any country from claiming its exclusivity. This approach fully coincides with Russia’s position. We will make consistent efforts to defend it together with our allies, strategic partners and many other like-minded countries.

The collective West should come back to Earth from the world of illusions. The staged incidents, no matter how long they go on, will not work. It is time for fair play based on the international law rather than cheating. The sooner everyone realizes that there are no alternatives to objective historical processes where a multipolar world is formed based on respect for the principle of sovereign equality of states, fundamental for the UN Charter and the entire world order, the better.

If members of the western alliance are unable to live according to this principle, are not ready to build a truly universal architecture of equal security and cooperation, they should leave everyone alone, stop using threats and blackmail to recruit those who want to live on their own wits and acknowledge the right to freedom of choice by independent self-respecting countries. This is what democracy is all about, the real democracy, not one played out on a shabbily built political stage.

An interesting test

Here’s a great book called “The Psychopath Test” by Jon Ronson which has a particularly interesting case:

A man, Tony, was on trial for a violent assault on another man.

As part of his tactic to avoid doing time in prison, he came up with an idea.


Imagine you are sitting at a table, a psychiatrist is at the other end. She is asking you questions that run 360 around your entire life and your frame of mind.

At one point, you begin telling her:

“I enjoy watching people die.”

“I get sexual pleasure from seeing people scream in pain.”

And on and on. Every dark thing you can imagine.

Tony had a goal; to convince the court-appointed psychiatrist that he was mentally ill and thus unfit to go to trial.

He succeeded.

He was then shipped off to Broadmoor High Security Psychiatric Hospital.

Where he was quickly introduced to a life he didn’t want.

Strict controls, forced medication, and sedatives, smaller cells, a stifling atmosphere, surrounded by…highly unstable people.

He then began frantically telling everyone he’d lied about being crazy and that he’d made a mistake. He would rather go back to prison. When he finally got them to listen and he explained everything…

…the resident psychiatrist said the type of person who would lie about being mentally ill is actually someone who is mentally ill (a psychopath). And thus – he remained stuck at the mental institution.

Henk Heithuis.

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Henk Heithuis.

And I am warning you ahead of time, his story is absolutely gruesome and terrifying. Heithuis was born in the Netherlands in 1935 and placed in the foster system, to be cared for by Catholic priests. Now priests had a tendency of abusing young children under their care, there have been many such cases… but Heithuis was not like most victims… he was about to go public.

Usually, the abuse was quietly pushed aside, shrugged off, swept under the rug. It’s been that way for centuries. Victims stayed quiet out of shame and fear. Not Henk Heithuis. He decided to make a stand. For himself and for all those others he had known who were abused, molested, raped. So he went to the police, and officially accused the priests of sexual abuse. This was revolutionary, and absolutely unheard of in the 1950s!

What Heithuis had not anticipated, is the absolute cruelty and the far-reaching power of the institution he was about to face. Since he was still legally a minor at the time of the abuse, and at the time he made his accusation, Heithuis was still a ward of the state, unable to make his own decisions, the court argued.

He insisted, however, that he was raped. The priests then came forward and denied this. Instead, they instead, Heithuis was a homosexual boy who had “seduced the priests”, can you imagine their audacity? The young victim vehemently denied the accusations, maintained he had been raped and that he was, in fact, heterosexual — he even had a girlfriend he hoped to marry as soon as he reached the age of maturity.

The church, however, had quite a bit of influence with the courts. They convinced them that Heithuis was, in fact, homosexual. And in the 1950s, homosexuality was still illegal in the now-so-liberal Netherlands. The treatment consisted of either years in an institution, chemical castration, or physical castration… with Heithuis, no rebuttal was allowed, no second opinion considered and no option given — he was to be castrated immediately. Which he was.

They drugged the teenaged abuse victim, drove him to a clinic down South and strapped him to a table where they surgically gelded him. After the operation they kicked him to the curb… Heithuis was broken. Mentally. Physically. He abandoned his friends and his fiancée and became a sailor. He made it as far as Japan, when he broke down and, when on shore leave, found his way to the Dutch embassy. Here, he told his story to a diplomat who took pity on his fate. He even showed his scars, and explained how his hormones were now out of control, his body no longer felt like his and he was suicidal.

“Please tell my story…” Heithuis insisted, “make notes, remember it. They may come for me. They may kill me.”

Surely it wouldn’t be so bad, his friend, Cornelius Rogge, assured him. Surely they would not have him killed. How could they? But Heithuis was sure of it. Arrangements were made with the shipping company to have him brought back home to his country.

When he returned, Heithuis, helped by his friends who knew his story, once again pressed charges. This time for forcible castration, lying about his sexuality and mental health problems as well as slandering his good name. Still a fiery chap, still refusing to surrender, he wanted justice, he wanted his good name restored.

But in 1958, shortly after pressing charges, Henk Heithuis got into a car accident and died on the spot.

The police confiscated all his personal belongings and material provided to them by the deceased. All material was destroyed on the day of his death.

When the Globalists Crossed the Rubicon: The Assassination of Shinzo Abe

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First published by Global Research on July 14, 2022

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To read this article in Japanese, click here

この記事を日本語で読むには、ウェブサイトの翻訳ドロップダウンウェブサイトをクリックしてください。

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July 8 was a muggy day in the ancient capital of Japan. Shinzo Abe, the most powerful figure in Japanese politics, was delivering a stump speech for a local Liberal Democratic Party candidate in front of the Nara Kintetsu railway station when suddenly a loud bang rang out, followed by an odd cloud of smoke.

The response was incredible. Among those in the unusually large crowd gathered, not a single person ran for cover, or hit the ground in terror.

Abe’s body guards, who stood unusually far away from him during the speech, looked on impassively, making no effort to shield him, or to pull him to a safe location.

A few seconds later, Abe crumpled and collapsed to the ground, lying there impassive in his standard blue jacket, white shirt, now speckled with blood, and trademark blue badge of solidarity with Japanese abductees in North Korea. Most likely he was killed instantaneously.

Only then did the body guards seize the suspect, Yamagami Toruya, who was standing behind Abe. The tussle with Yamagami took the form of a choreographed dance for the television audience, not a professional takedown.

Yamagami was immediately identified by the media as a 41-year-old former member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force who had personal grievances with Abe.

Yamagami told everything to the police without hesitation. He did not even try to run from the scene and was still holding the silly hand-made gun when the bodyguards grabbed him.

Even after Abe was lying on the pavement, not a single person in the crowd ran for shelter, or even looked around to determine where the shots came from. Everyone seemed to know, magically, that the shooting was over.

Then the comedy began. Rather than putting Abe in a limousine and whisking him away, those standing around him merely called out to passersby, asking if anyone was a doctor.

The media immediately embraced the “lone gunman” conclusion for this attack, repeating entertaining tale of how Yamagami was associated with Toitsu Kyokai, a new religion started by the charismatic shaman Kawase Kayo, and why he blamed Abe, who had exchanges with that group, for his mother’s troubles.

Because Toitsu Kyokai has followers from the Unification Church founded by Reverend Moon Sun Myung, journalist Michael Penn jumped to the conclusion that the conspiracy leading to Abe’s death was the result of his collaboration with the Moonies.

Although the mainstream media accepted this fantastic story, the Japanese police and security apparatus did not manage to squash alternative interpretations. Blogger Takashi Kitagawa posted materials on July 10 that suggested Abe was shot from the front, not from the back where Yamagami stood, and that the shots must have been fired at an angle from the top of one, or both, of the tall buildings on either side of the intersection across from the railway station plaza.

Takahashi Kitakawa’s postings:

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Kitagawa’s analysis of the paths of the bullets was more scientific than anything offered by the media that had claimed, without basis, that Abe had only been shot once until the surgeon announced that evening that there had been two bullets.

The chances that a man holding an awkward home-made gun, standing more than five meters away in a crowd, would be able to hit Abe twice are low. The TV personality Kozono Hiromi, who is a gun expert himself, remarked on his show “Sukkiri” (on July 12) that such a feat would be incredible.

A careful viewing of the videos suggests that multiple shots were fired by a rifle with a silencer from atop a neighboring building.

安倍晋三元総理大臣暗殺について 言明します from Emanuel Pastreich on Vimeo.

The message to the world

For a figure like Shinzo Abe, the most powerful political player in Japan and the person to whom Japanese politicians and bureaucrats rallied in response to the unprecedented uncertainty born of the current geopolitical crisis, to be shot dead with no serious security detail nearby makes no sense.

Perhaps the message was lost on viewers at home, but it was crystal clear for other Japanese politicians.

For that matter, the message was clear for Boris Johnson, who was forced out of power at almost exactly the same moment that Abe was shot, or for Emmanuel Macron, who was suddenly charged with influence peddling scandal for Uber, and faces demands for his removal from office, on July 11—after months of massive protests had failed to sway him in any way.

The message was written all over Abe’s white shirt in red: buying into the globalist system and promoting the COVID-19 regime is not enough to assure safety, even for the leader of a G7 nation.

Abe was highest ranking victim so far of the hidden cancer eating away at governance in nation states around the world, an institutional sickness that moves decision making away from national governments to a network of privately-held supercomputer banks, private equity groups, for-hire intelligence firms in Tel Aviv, London and Reston, and the strategic thinkers employed by the billionaires at the World Economic Forum, NATO, the World Bank and other such awesome institutions.

The fourth industrial revolution was the excuse employed to transfer the control of all information in, and all information out, for central governments to Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, Google, SAP and others in the name of efficiency. As J. P. Morgan remarked, “Everything has two reasons: a good reason and a real reason.”

With the assassination of Abe, these technology tyrants, and their masters, have crossed the Rubicon, declaring that those dressed in the trappings of state authority can be mowed down with impunity if they do not follow orders.

The Problem with Japan

Japan is heralded as the only Asian nation advanced enough to join the “West,” to be a member of the exclusive G7 club, and to be qualified to enter into collaboration with (and possible membership in) the top intelligence sharing program, the “Five Eyes.”

Nevertheless, Japan has continued to defy the expectations, and the demands, of global financiers, and the planners within the beltway and on Wall Street for the New World Order.

Although it was South Korea in Asia that has constantly been berated in Washington as an ally not quite up to the level of Japan, the truth is that the super-rich busy taking over the Pentagon, and the entire global economy, were starting to harbor doubts about the dependability of Japan.

The globalist system at the World Bank, Goldman Sachs, or the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University has a set track for the best and the brightest from “advanced nations.”

Elites from Australia, France, Germany, Norway or Italy, learn to speak fluent English, spend time in Washington, London, or Geneva at a think tank or university, secure a safe sinecure at a bank, a government institution, or a research institute that assures them a good income, and adopt the common sense, pro-finance, perspective offered by the Economist Magazine as the gospel.

Japan, however, although it has an advanced banking system of its own, although its command of advanced technologies makes it the sole rival of Germany in machine tools, and although it has a sophisticated educational system capable of producing numerous Nobel Prize winners, does not produce leaders who follow this model for the “developed” nation.

Japanese elite do not study abroad for the most part and Japan has sophisticated intellectual circles that do not rely on information brought in from overseas academic or journalistic sources.

Unlike other nations, Japanese write sophisticated journal articles entirely in Japanese, citing only Japanese experts. In fact, in fields like botany and cellular biology, Japan has world-class journals written entirely in Japanese.

Similarly, Japan has a sophisticated domestic economy that is not easily penetrated by multinational corporations—try as they do.

The massive concentration of wealth over the last decade has allowed the super-rich to create invisible networks for secret global governance, best represented by the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program and the Schwarzman Scholars program. These rising figures in policy infiltrate the governments, the industries, and research institutions of nations to make sure that the globalist agenda goes forth unimpeded.

Japan has been impacted by this sly form of global governance. And yet, Japanese who speak English well, or who study at Harvard, are not necessarily on the fast track in Japanese society.

There is stubborn independence in Japan’s diplomacy and economics, something that raised concerns among the Davos crowd during the COVID-19 campaigns.

Although the Abe administration (and the subsequent Kishida administration) went along with the directives of the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization for vaccines and social distancing, the Japanese government was less intrusive in the lives of citizens than most nations, and was less successful in forcing organizations to require vaccination.

The use of QR codes to block service to the unvaccinated was limited in its implementation in Japan in comparison with other “advanced” nations.

Moreover, the Japanese government refuses to fully implement the digitalization agenda demanded, thus denying multinational technology giants the control over Japan that they exercise elsewhere. This lag in Japan’s digitalization led the Wilson Center in Washington D.C. to invite Karen Makishima, minister of Japan’s Digital Agency (launched under pressure from global finance in September, 2021) so that she could explain why Japan has been so slow to digitalize (July 13).

Japanese are increasingly aware that their resistance to digitalization, to the wholescale outsourcing of the functions of government and university to multinational tech giants, and the privatization of information, is not in their interest.

Japan continues to operate Japanese-language institutions that follow old customs, including the use of written records. Japanese still read books and they are not so enamored with AI as Koreans and Chinese.

Japan’s resistance can be traced back to Meiji restoration of 1867. Japan set out to create governmental system wherein Western ideas were translated into Japanese, combined with Japanese concepts, to create a complex domestic discourse. The governance system set up in Meiji restoration remains in place to a large degree, using models for governance based on pre-modern principles from Japan and China’s past, and drawn from 19th century Prussia and England.

The result is feudalistic approach to governance wherein ministers oversee fiefdoms of bureaucrats who carefully guard their own budgets and who maintain their own internal chains of command.

The Problem with Abe

Shinzo Abe was one of the most sophisticated politicians of our age, always open to make a deal with the United States, or other global institutions, but always cagy when it came to making Japan the subject of globalist dictates.

Abe harbored the dream of restoring Japan to its status as an empire, and imagined himself to be the reincarnation of the Meiji Emperor.

Abe was different from Johnson or Macron in that he was not as interested in appearing on TV as he was in controlling the actual decision making process within Japan.

There is no need to glorify Abe’s reign, as some have tried to do. He was a corrupt insider who pushed for the dangerous privatization of government, the hollowing out of education, and who backed a massive shift of assets from the middle class to the wealthy.

His use of the ultra-right Nihon Kaigi forum to promote an ultranationalist agenda, and to glorify the most offensive aspects of Japan’s imperial past, was deeply disturbing. Abe gave his unflinching support for all military expenditures, no matter how foolish, and he was willing to support just about any American boondoggle.

That said, as the grandson of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, and the son of foreign minister Shintaro Abe, Shinzo Abe showed himself to be an astute politician from childhood. He was creative in his use of a wide range of political tools to advance his agenda, and he could call on corporate and government leaders from around the world with an ease that no other Asian politician could.

I remember vividly the impression I received from Abe on the two occasions that I met him in person. Whatever cynical politics he may have promoted, he radiated to his audience a purity and simplicity, what the Japanese call “sunao,” that was captivating. His manner suggested a receptiveness and openness that inspired loyalty among his followers and that could overwhelm those who were hostile to his policies.

In sum, Abe was sophisticated political figure who was capable of playing one side against the other within the Liberal Democratic Party, and within the international community, while appearing to be a considerate and benevolent leader.

For this reason, Japanese hostile to Abe’s ethnic nationalism were still willing to support him because he was the only politician they thought capable of restoring global political leadership to Japan.

Japanese diplomats and military officers fret endlessly about the Japan’s lack of vision. Although Japan has all the qualifications to be a great power, they reason, it is run by a series of unimpressive, University of Tokyo graduates; men who are good at taking tests, but are unwilling to take risks.

Japan produces none like Putin or Xi, and not even a Macron or a Johnson.

Abe wanted to be a leader and he had the connections, the talent, and the ruthlessness required to play that role on the global stage. He was already the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history, and had plans for a third bid as prime minister, when he was struck down.

Needless to say, the powers behind the World Economic Forum do not want national leaders like Abe, even if they conform with the global agenda, because they are capable of organizing resistance within the nation state.

What went wrong?

Abe was able to handle, using the traditional tools of statecraft, the impossible dilemma faced by Japan over the last decade as its economic ties with China and Russia increased, but its political and security integration with the United States, Israel and the NATO block proceeded apace.

It was impossible for Japan to be that close to the United States and its allies while maintaining friendly relations with Russia and China. Yet Abe almost succeeded.

Abe remained focused and cool. He made use of all his skills and connections as he set out to carve a unique space for Japan. Along the way, Abe turned to the sophisticated diplomacy of his strategic thinker Shotaro Yachi of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to assure that Japan found its place under the sun.

Abe and Yachi used contradictory, but effective, geopolitical strategies to engage both East and West, making ample use of secret diplomacy to seal long-term deals that put Japan back in the great powers game.

On the one hand, Abe presented to Obama and Trump a Japan that was willing to go further than South Korea, Australia or other India in backing Washington’s position. Abe was willing to suffer tremendous domestic criticism for his push for a remilitarization that fit the US plans for East Asia.

At the same time that he impressed Washington politicians with his gung-ho pro-American rhetoric, matched by the purchase of weapons systems, Abe also engaged China and Russia at the highest levels. That was no small feat, and involved sophisticated lobbying within the beltway, and in Beijing and Moscow.

In the case of Russia, Abe successfully negotiated a complex peace treaty with Russia in 2019 that would have normalized relations and solved the dispute concerning the Northern Territories (the Kuril Islands in Russian). He was able to secure energy contracts for Japanese firms and to find investment opportunities in Russia even as Washington ramped up the pressure on Tokyo for sanctions.

The journalist Tanaka Sakai notes that Abe was not banned from entering Russia after the Russian government banned all other representatives of the Japanese government from entry.

Abe also engaged China seriously, solidifying long-term institutional ties, and pursuing free trade agreement negotiations that reached a breakthrough in the fifteenth round of talks (April 9-12, 2019). Abe had ready access to leading Chinese politicians and he was considered by them to be reliable and predictable, even though his rhetoric was harshly anti-Chinese.

The critical event that likely triggered the process leading to Abe’s assassination was the NATO summit in Madrid (June 28-30).

The NATO summit was a moment when the hidden players behind the scenes laid down the law for the new global order. NATO is on a fast track to evolve beyond an alliance to defend Europe and to become an unaccountable military power, working with the Global Economic Forum, the billionaires and the bankers around the world, as a “world army,” functioning much as the British East India Company did in another era.

The decision to invite to the NATO summit the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand was a critical part of this NATO transformation.

These four nations were invited to join in an unprecedented level of integration in security, including intelligence sharing (outsourcing to big tech multinationals), the use of advanced weapons systems (that must be administrated by the personnel of multinationals like Lockheed Martin), joint exercises (that set a precedent for an oppressive decision-making process), and other “collaborative” approaches that undermine the chain of command within the nation state.

When Kishida returned to Tokyo on July first, there can be no doubt that one of his first meetings was with Abe. Kishida explained to Abe the impossible conditions that the Biden administration had demanded of Japan.

The White House, by the way, is now entirely the tool of globalists like Victoria Nuland (Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs) and others trained by the Bush clan.

The demands made of Japan were suicidal in nature. Japan was to increase economic sanctions on Russia, to prepare for possible war with Russia, and to prepare for a war with China. Japan’s military, intelligence and diplomatic functions were to be transferred to the emerging blob of private contractors gathering for the feast around NATO.

We do not know what Abe did during the week before his death. Most likely he launched into a sophisticated political play, using of all his assets in Washington D.C., Beijing, and Moscow—as well as in Jerusalem, Berlin, and London, to come up with a multi-tiered response that would give the world the impression that Japan was behind Biden all the way, while Japan sought out a détente with China and Russia through the back door.

The problem with this response was that since other nations had been shut down, such a sophisticated play by Japan made it the only major nation with a semi-functional executive branch.

Abe’s death parallels closely that of Seoul’s mayor Park Won Sun, who went missing on July 9th, 2020, exactly two years before Abe’s assassination. Park took steps in Seoul City Hall to push back on the COVID-19 social distancing policies that were being imposed by the central government. His body was found the next day and the death was immediately ruled a suicide resulting from his distress over charges of sexual harassment by a colleague.

What to do now?

The danger of the current situation should not be underestimated.

If an increasing number of Japanese come to perceive, as the journalist Tanaka Sakai suggests…

…that the United States destroyed their best hope for leadership.

…And that the globalists want Japan to make do with an unending series of weak-minded prime ministers who are dependent on Washington.

As well as other hidden players of the parasite class.

This is serious, and such a development could bring about a complete break between Japan and the United States, leading to a political or military conflict.

It is telling that Michael Green, the top Japan hand in Washington D.C., did not write the initial tribute to Abe that was published on the homepage of CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), his home institute.

Green, veteran of the Bush National Security Council and Henry A. Kissinger Chair of the Asia Program at CSIS, is the author of Line of Advantage: Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo. Green was a close associate of Abe, perhaps the closest of any American.  

The tribute to Abe was drafted by Christopher Johnstone (the Japan chair at CSIS and former CIA officer). The weird choice suggests that the assassination is so sensitive that Green instinctively wished to avoid writing the initial response, leaving it to a professional operative.

For responsible intellectuals and citizens in Washington, Tokyo, or elsewhere, there is only one viable response to this murky assassination: a demand for an international scientific investigation.

Painful as that process might be, it will force us to face the reality of how our governments have been taken over by invisible powers.

If we fail to identify the true players behind the scenes, however, we may be led into a conflict in which the blame is projected onto heads of state and countries are forced into conflicts so as to hide the crimes of global finance.

The loss of control of the Japanese government over the military the last time can be attributed in part to the assassinations of prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi on May 15, 1932 and of prime minister Saito Makoto on February 26, 1936.

But for the international community, the more relevant case is how the manipulations of an integrated global economy by the Rothschild, Warburg, and other banking interests created an environment wherein the tensions produced by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary on June 28, 1914 were funneled towards world war.

Hong Kong students must learn China security law to graduate

From HERE

HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) – Students at Hong Kong’s most prestigious university will be required to take a course on Beijing’s national security law in order to graduate, the latest sign of China’s growing influence on the city.

The online course, titled “Introduction to the Constitution, the Basic Law and the National Security Law,” will become a graduation requirement at the University of Hong Kong from the coming school year, according to a spokesperson for the school.

“This course will be conducted in a self-directed learning approach. Students can take the course in any semester throughout their period of study,” the university said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.

The new course offers no credit but signals an effort to explain the controversial law – and the consequences for running afoul of it – to a demographic that was at the forefront of the 2019 street protests that prompted the legislation.

The law, which criminalises subversion, secession, colluding with foreign forces and terrorist activities, purged the political opposition and led to the closure of the city’s biggest pro-democracy media outlets.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University will also be offering national security classes, Ming Pao reported.

The newspaper said schools can plan their own courses.

Soylent Gates

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Hong Kong wants foreign English-language teachers to take oath of allegiance

From HERE

HONG KONG (AFP) – Foreign English-language teachers working in Hong Kong government schools will need to swear allegiance to the city, officials told AFP on Saturday (June 11), as fears grow about the territory’s ability to retain educators in the face of increasing restrictions.

Hong Kong’s Education Bureau said that native-speaking English teachers (NETs) and advisers working in government-run schools must sign a declaration by June 21 in order to continue working in the coming school year.

Since 2020, Hong Kong has applied oath-taking requirements to an increasing number of jobs, mainly those in the public sector, as a way to fulfil Chinese government demands of loyalty.

NETs must declare they will bear allegiance to Hong Kong and uphold the Basic Law – the city’s constitutional text – as well as be responsible to the government.

“Neglect, refusal or failure” to sign the declaration will lead to contract termination, the authorities said.

The new declaration will “further safeguard and promote the core values that should be upheld by all government employees” and ensure effective governance, a government spokesman said.

NETs are normally hired on renewable two-year contracts, with monthly salaries that begin at around HK$32,000 (S$5,660) and can go as high as HK$74,000.

Phishing Attacks On WordPress Site Owners Disguised As Copyright Infringement Warnings

Last year, we discussed how malicious actors on the internet were using fake copyright infringement notices in order to get people to click links that downloaded malware onto their machines. While there have long been these sorts of malware scams, what was notable about this one was that copyright culture and the fear of infringement had made this sort of thing viable. Putting the notices of a copyright troll and someone looking to infect machines with malware side by side, they’re basically the same thing in terms of tactic: scare the shit out of people over copyright infringement to get them to hastily do something they wouldn’t otherwise do. In some cases, that’s pay a settlement fee regardless of guilt. In other cases, click a link and get infected with malware.

Phishing Attacks On WordPress Site Owners Disguised As Copyright Infringement Warnings

Chinese general warned, PLA will take action should Nancy pelosi dare to visit Taiwan

This is a SERIOUS violation of the “one China policy” and will result in dangerous and lethal military action. China does not bluff. There are those saying that ships will be sunk, but rather I think economic discord will be the result rather than raw military action.

Video HERE.

An interesting coincidence…

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It’s just a coincidence.

The system is hacked: Leonkov explained why the US will no longer supply Ukraine with HIMARS MLRS

From HERE

The Russian military delivered an unpleasant surprise to the Americans by quickly hacking into the simple system of using HIMARS and learning how to crack them like nuts.

The four American installations destroyed in Ukraine are just the beginning. It was a kind of test pen for a secret system of counter-battery combat, which Russia has not yet used in the zone of the special operation. New challenges required new means and the allied forces were promptly equipped with some products that no one in the world knows about yet.

The news, unpleasant for the American military-industrial complex and the Ukrainian military, was reported in the studio of Vladimir Solovyov by military expert Alexei Leonkov, ironically noting that perhaps that is why Washington refused to supply modernized and more long-range MLRS, not so long ago promised to Ukraine. HIMARS has already received powerful anti-advertising lately – at first it turned out that Russian air defense systems are doing an excellent job of intercepting, and then the news came about the destruction of four installations at once. Now it is simply pointless to drive them to Ukraine – it is better to sell your useless iron to someone than immediately write it off for scrap, throwing it against much more advanced weapons.

“I once said that we have learned to recognize not only air targets, but also the places where these vaunted HIMARS take off. 

Their maximum range is 85 kilometers. 

Our counter-battery systems did not work at such a distance, so the Americans at first took advantage of this advantage, and even wandered constantly - quickly moving from place to place between launches. 

Everyone has already fired. 

The American system has been hacked. 

And our secret development will be deployed in all directions. 

It's a good system, I still can't name it, but it works. 

We now work at much greater distances and instantly fix the launch site. 

For the Americans, this was a very unpleasant surprise. 

They will no longer supply their over-praised “wonder weapon” to Ukraine, ”the expert expressed confidence.

Leonkov also noted that the United Kingdom and the United States have recently become confused in the information coverage of what is happening in Ukraine. British propagandists continue to announce the defeat of Russia, arguing that material exhaustion in the troops is already affecting.

The Americans are looking at things more sensibly and are warning their Ukrainian puppets that Russia is preparing a massive offensive. But they don’t know in which direction, since powerful strike groups are concentrated on several at once. US military analysts are seriously afraid of a simultaneous attack in different regions and state that the weakened Ukrainian army will not hold back such a strike.

Formerly Ukrainian politician Dmitry Vasyletstold how Russia responds harshly to the strike by UAF drones on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant.

Bots are pushing the need for a Vaxx narrative…

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Busy Bots.

NYC Emergency Management Now Telling New Yorkers to Have a “Go Bag” and Be Ready to EVACUATE

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Just two weeks after releasing a Public Service Announcement telling New Yorkers what to do if a nuclear bomb hits the city, that same agency is now telling New Yorkers to pack a “Go Bag” and be ready to EVACUATE New York City.

According to the official government web site for New York City Emergency Management, New Yorkers should:

Go Bag

Everyone in your household should have a Go Bag — a collection of things you would want if you have to leave in a hurry. Your Go Bag should be sturdy and easy to carry, like a backpack or a small suitcase on wheels. You’ll need to customize your Go Bag for your personal needs, but some of the important things you need in your Go Bag include:

  • Bottled water and nonperishable food, such as granola bars
  • Copies of your important documents in a waterproof container (e.g., insurance cards, Medicare/Medicaid cards, photo IDs, proof of address, marriage and birth certificates, copies of credit and ATM cards)
  • Flashlight, hand-crank or battery-operated AM/FM radio, and extra batteries
  • List of the medications you take, why you take them, and their dosages
  • Contact information for your household and members of your support network
  • Cash, in small bills
  • Notepad and pen
  • Back-up medical equipment (e.g., glasses, batteries) and chargers
  • Aerosol tire repair kits and/or tire inflator to repair flat wheelchair or scooter tires Doctors’ names and phone numbers
  • First-aid kit
  • Toiletries
  • Child care, pet care, and other special items
  • Supplies for your service animal or pet (e.g., food, extra water, bowl, leash, cleaning items, vaccination records, and medications)
  • Portable cell phone chargers

If you have children, pack child care supplies as well as games and small toys.

If you’re older or have any special medical needs, consider including these items:

  • Instructions and extra batteries for any devices you use
  • Aerosol tire repair kits and/or tire inflator to repair flat wheelchair or scooter tires
  • Back-up medical equipment
  • Items to comfort you in a stressful situation

If you have a pet or service animal, you need to pack a Go Bag for them:

  • A current color photograph of you and your pet/service animal together (in case you are separated)
  • Copies of medical records that indicate dates of vaccinations and a list of medications your pet/service animal takes and why he or she takes them
  • Proof of identification and ownership, including copies of registration information, adoption papers, proof of purchase, and microchip information
  • Physical description of your pet/service animal, including species, breed, age, sex, color, distinguishing traits, and any other vital information about characteristics and behavior
  • Animal first aid kit, including flea and tick treatment and other items recommended by your veterinarian
  • Food and water for at least three days
  • Food and water dishes
  • Collapsible cage or carrier
  • Muzzle* and sturdy leash (*Note: Nylon muzzles should only be used temporarily as they can restrict a dog’s ability to pant)
  • Cotton sheet to place over the carrier to help keep your pet/service animal calm
  • Comforting toys or treats
  • Litter, litter pan, and litter scoop
  • Plastic bags for clean-up

Include items that can help protect you and others from COVID-19, including hand sanitizer, and face coverings for each person.* (*Face coverings should not be used by children under the age of 2. They also should not be used by people having trouble breathing, or who are unconscious, incapacitated, or unable to remove the mask without assistance. Learn more from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC))

Avoid panic buying. Buy supplies slowly to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to buy what they need. Report overcharging and price gouging to the City

If that isn’t blunt enough, Emergency Management then goes on to tell New Yorkers about EVACUATING

Evacuations

Evacuation should be addressed as part of everyone’s planning efforts. City officials will tell you when to evacuate through the media and direct warnings. Evacuation is used as a last resort when a serious threat to public safety exists. If you must evacuate, your first plan should always be to stay with friends or family.* In a planned evacuation, such as for a coastal storm, the City will advise residents of which areas are impacted and provide guidance on how the evacuation will proceed. In the case of coastal storms, designated routes have been identified throughout the city to effectively get people from low-lying hazard areas safely to higher ground. To find out whether you live or work in a hurricane evacuation zone, use the Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder, the City’s evacuation mapping tool.

  • *Ask friends or relatives outside your area if you are able to stay with them. Check and see if they have symptoms of COVID-19 or have people in their home at higher risk for serious illness. If they have symptoms or people at higher risk in their home, make other arrangements.

In an unplanned evacuation, such as for a hazardous material spill, officials will advise affected residents to leave the immediate area until the danger can be removed. Always have your Go Bag prepared and easily accessible in case of any evacuation. You may not have time to assemble your belongings, and you may not be allowed back until the danger has passed.

Evacuate immediately when you:

  • Are directed to do so by an emergency official.
  • Are in immediate danger.

Be Prepared to Evacuate

  • Determine whether you live in a hurricane evacuation zone by accessing the Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder, or contact 311 (212-639-9675 for Video Relay Service, or TTY: 212-504-4115).
  • Know evacuation plans for all the places you and your household members spend time. Often buildings have floor marshals who are responsible for evacuation plans.
  • Make alternate transportation plans; the means of transportation you usually use may not be available.
  • Practice plans through regular drills. People who practice escape drills can evacuation with greater ease than those who are unfamiliar with the procedures.
  • If you have pets, consider what you would do if you cannot return home to them. Pet owners should read Ready New York: My Pet’s Emergency Plan for more information.
  • Residents of high-rise apartment buildings and basement apartments may face special risks and should be prepared to evacuate if needed. (Basements are vulnerable to flooding.)

What to Do When You Evacuate

  • If there is time, secure your home: close and lock windows and doors, and unplug appliances before you leave. Authorities will instruct you if it is necessary to turn off utilities.
  • Wear sturdy shoes and comfortable, protective clothing, such as long pants and long-sleeved shirts.
  • Bring your Go Bag with you.
  • Do NOT use an elevator during a fire or other emergency unless directed to do so by emergency personnel. If power goes out or is shut off, you may become trapped.
  • Remember, evacuation routes change based on the emergency so stay tuned to the local news, access NYC.gov, or contact 311 (212-639-9675 for Video Relay Service, or TTY: 212-504-4115) for the latest information.
  • Go to the nearest safe place or shelter as soon as instructed.
  • If you must go to an evacuation center or shelter, remember to follow the latest guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for protecting yourself and family from COVID-19.

Disaster Sheltering

If you are directed to evacuate, make arrangements to stay with friends or family outside the affected area whenever possible. For evacuees who have no alternative shelter, the City will open shelters throughout the five boroughs. Disaster shelters may be set up in school, municipal buildings, and places of worship. They provide basic food and water. If possible, bring clothing, bedding, bathing and sanitary supplies, medications, and your Go Bag to shelters. Bring a face covering for each member of your household to the shelter. Maintain at least 6 feet of space between you and people who aren’t in your immediate family.

 WRITING ON THE WALL

For anyone so dense that they cannot see the writing on the wall, New York City is preparing their citizens to be hit by a nuclear bomb and be forced to Evacuate.

And lest you think this is hyperbole, or exaggeration, the notion that New York City isn’t going to exist much longer seems to have struck a chord at the United Nations.

Interior space is now up for sale inside the UN Headquarters . . . .

Seems like a couple countries . . .  are leaving!

In America…

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Spetsnaz Commander: “NATO is the army of the Anti-Christ; Russia is the army of Jesus”

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A Chechen commander of Spetsnaz was on Russian television last night and he laid things out quite bluntly: NATO is the army of the anti-Christ; Russia and its allies are the army of Jesus.

It is quite interesting historically, to see Russia has returned to its Christian roots.  It is building thousands of churches and its society is prospering no matter what plots are formed against it, while the west has become a blood-soaked, authoritarian, empire.

Here is the Spetsnaz commander from Russian TV last night:

 

Tucker Carlson: This is bizarre

The United States justice system has collapsed.

Marilyn vos Savant

Marilyn vos Savant has the highest IQ ever recorded at 228.

She worked in her family’s general store, attended community college, then two years of state college before returning to work for her family.

She’s a kind, down-to-earth person, whose extraordinary intellect has done a lot of good in the world.

A passionate writer, Marilyn has written books on the power of logical thinking to clarify problems and make life better.

When news of her astonishing intellect got around, folks started writing her for advice.

Her surprising answers revitalized ossified areas of mathematics and logic, and generated interest in the power of logical thought.

Some famous exchanges:

  1. The Monty Hall Paradox
    
    Dear Marilyn,
    
    Suppose you’re on a game show and you’re given a choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say number 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say number 3, which has a goat. He says to you, “Do you want to pick door number 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch doors?
    
    Craig F. Whitaker, Columbia Maryland
    
    Dear Craig,
    
    Yes, you should switch. The first door has a 1/3 chance of winning, but the second door has a 2/3 chance. Here’s a good way to visualize what happened: Suppose there’s a million doors, and you picked door number 1. Then the host, who knows what’s behind the door and will always avoid the one with the prize, opens them all except door number 777,777. You’d switch to that door pretty fast, wouldn’t you?
    
    Marilyn vos Savant
    
    For this answer, Marilyn received more than 10,000 letters from outraged mathematicians at prestigious universities and research centers, accusing her of contributing to American innumeracy by refusing to understand basic math. 
    
    Whether you change your choice or not, they said, the odds are exactly the same.
    
    It took a team of MIT mathematicians and multiple computer simulations to show the doubting experts she was right.
    
    2. The gross inaccuracy of “accurate” tests
    
    Dear Marilyn,
    
    A particularly interesting and important question today is testing for drugs. Suppose 5% of the general population uses drugs. You employ a test that is 95% accurate. A person is selected at random and given the test. It’s positive. What does such a result suggest?
    
    Charles Feinstein, PhD
    
    Dear Charles,
    
    Given your conditions, once a person has tested positive, you may as well flip a coin to determine whether s/he’s a drug user. The chances are only fifty-fifty. …
    
    Marilyn vos Savant
    
    She again received a storm of outraged letters, this time from statisticians. She explained her reasoning: 
    
    Suppose the general population consists of 10,000 people and 95% of them (9,500) are nonusers and 5% of them (500) are users. Of the 9,500 nonusers, 95% of them (9,025) will test negative, as the test is 95% accurate. This means 5% of them (475) will test positive.
    
    Of the 500 users, 95% of them (475) will test positive. So there are 475 false positives and 475 true positives. 
    
    When we find an individual in the positive group, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that s/he’s a drug user. 
    
    It again took teams of experts in the testing field and the CDC to corroborate her conclusion. 
    
    This is why randomly testing the general population for anything results in a very high percentage of false positives.

Some folks are saying her answers are a trivially easy application of Bayesian reasoning, and they learned these answers in the 7th grade.

Vos Savant was born in 1942; these exchanges are why your 7th grade teacher reviewed these problems, and everything looks easy in retrospect.

The MIT mathematicians who agreed with Vos Savant said they initially disagreed strongly and needed a week to sort it out.

The world-famous mathematician Paul Erdos also vehemently disagreed and had to retract.

The inaccuracy of random testing was known, but not widely. Top experts, including some working at the CDC, had to write in and corroborate.

For further information, see Vos Savant’s books, or the mathematician Martin Gardner’s extensive commentary on her answers.

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If you build it they will come…

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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The movie that we are living in is now reaching the climax scene

My understanding of the latest Xi policy to talk to foreign leaders; he bluntly asks the them : "Do you regard China as friend or enemy?"

If not friend, than there is nothing to talk about.

I’m still in the middle of a move. Please mind the conditions that I am producing under. I hope that you enjoy this daily update.

Mamoudou Gassama

His name is Mamoudou Gassama

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His name is Mamoudou Gassama

He saw a baby dangling off a ledge and climbed four floors of the apartment like Usain Bolt would run a 100-meter race.

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He was an illegal immigrant from Mali, but after this incident he was made a French citizen and had many job offers.

He became famous, the video of his heroic act was rapidly shared on the internet, and he made news headlines. Everyone talked about him.

He was hosted by presidents:

  • Mamoudou with the president of France, Emmanuel Macron:

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In his new job in the fire service:

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In the twinkling of an eye, Mamoudou Gassama’s life was turned around. All for being a Rufus.

What he did was selfless. I thought, “What if he had fallen and died while trying to save another person?”

I am happy he was greatly rewarded for his kind act.

Truly, fortune favors the bold.

Fleet of nuclear submarines will be sent by Britain to Australia as a warning to China

  • Britain is to send a fleet of nuclear submarines to Australia port of Perth 
  • Deployment is seen as a warning to China in the Asia-Pacific region 
  • Move is part of AUKUS (Australia, UK and United States) security alliance

Britain is to send a fleet of nuclear submarines to the Pacific in a decisive move to thwart Chinese aggression in the region.

The dramatic decision could see UK subs based in Australia until 2040, operating within striking distance of China.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the Armed Forces, will agree the arrangement at a naval conference in Sydney next week. Assigning submarines to patrol the South China Sea will be Britain’s most assertive move yet against Beijing.

According to reports in Australia, Royal Navy submarines would be based at Perth on the country’s western coast and Australian submariners would be incorporated into British crews to improve their skills.

Basing the Royal Navy boats thousands of miles from UK shores is part of the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom and United States) security alliance.

AUKUS was set up last year primarily to confront Chinese military expansionism in the Indo-Pacific. Australia has become embroiled in a trade war and diplomatic stand-off with China. The deepening of defence ties with the UK is likely to cause further outrage with the Communist regime, which is vehemently opposed to AUKUS.

The Royal Navy declined to say last night how many of its submarines could be relocated to Australia, as all operational details surrounding Britain’s sub-surface fleet are classified.

The ‘Pacific tilt’ was signalled last year as part of the MoD’s Integrated Review.

The review set the target for the UK to become ‘the European partner with the broadest and most integrated presence in the Indo-Pacific’.

But given that China possesses the world’s biggest navy, some questioned the merits of such a deployment, arguing Britain’s boats would be massively outnumbered and outgunned.

Last night the MoD said: ‘It is UK policy that we do not comment on matters relating to submarine activity or operations.’

A brilliant solution!

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“According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington recently was faced with a unique problem. 

A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. 

That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the girls would put them back. 

Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. 

She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night. 

To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. 

He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it. 

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror. There are teachers, and then there are educators...”

The Washington Post believes that the USD is here to stay!

From HERE

China and Russia announced a joint pledge to push back against dollar hegemony

Last month, the United States broadened financial sanctions against China while simultaneously promising to prolong Ukraine sanctions on Russia and impose further ones for election interference, the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the SolarWinds hack. In a rare joint statement in late March, China and Russia doubled down on earlier pledges to upend the global reliance on the U.S. dollar, and the long-standing global financial system that enables the U.S. to strong-arm them.

Will the Sino-Russian strategy succeed? My research suggests “dollar hegemony” is stable for many reasons, primarily due to the United States’ financial centrality and ability to secure investments. The measures announced so far, such as de-dollarization, renminbi digitalization, and alternative financial settlement and messaging systems, are unlikely to kick the dollar to the curb…

Which "secure investments" is WP talking about? We have just watched the USA completely seize all of the assets and wealth of Russia. How is this "secure"?

Additionally, we have watched for decades as wealth has been squandered, and the American people, and those in the West live destitute lives... 

Now, there is a one trillion dollar MILITARY budget while Americans fight against dangerous levels of inflation during a recession. How is the USD secure? How are American banks secure? Are they backed with gold? Silver? Heck... copper? No. They are not.

So what the fuck makes them "secure"?

What are they smoking?

-MM

Noela Rukundo

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Noela Rukundo.

In 2015, the Australian Noela Rukundo (who’s the lady in the photo) went to Burundi to attend the funeral of her stepmother who passed away only a couple of weeks back.

Straight after the funeral when she was going out to get some fresh air, she was quite suddenly kidnapped at gunpoint and shoved into a vehicle. She was blindfolded and driven to a safe house somewhere in the country.

Inside the building she was tied up, and a sack put on her head and was asked by her captors:

“You woman, what did you do for this man to pay us to kill you?”

“Wh-what are you talking about?” said Noela, she was shaking uncontrollably.

“Balenga (Noela husband) sent us to kill you.”

“What? My husband will never do that, y-you’re lying!”

Her captors smirked and giggled. She then heard a phone dialling and a voice coming from a loud speaker:

“Kill her”

It was her husband. Noela fainted.

She was woken up much much later by her captors on the side of a road and they told her she was free. The men explained they didn’t believe in killing women, and they knew her brother and was friends with him. But they would keep her husband’s money and tell him that she was dead.

Not only was she freed, she was given a phone, recordings of the captors’ phone conversations with her husband and all the evidence she needed to take Balenga to court.

Although pretty messed up and a little dizzy, with the help of the Kenyan and Belgian embassies, she got a trip to Australia, where she planned her revenge.

Meanwhile back in Australia her husband had told everyone she had died in a tragic accident and all her friends mourned her at her funeral at the family home. On the night of February 22 2015, just as the Balenga waved goodbye to the last of his neighbours who had come to comfort him, Noela approached him.

“Is it my eyes?” screeched Balenga. “Is it a ghost?”

“Surprise! I’m still alive!” said a very angry Noela.

“ oh my god oh my god, I’m sorry for everything please forgive me” replied a rather shocked Balenga.

But Noela took none of his apologies. The police swooped in and captured Balenga, who ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison for incitement to murder.

During the investigations, it was found out that Balenga wanted to kill Noela because he thought she was going to leave him for another man, which apparently was not going to happen.

Balenga was sent to 9 years of prison while Noela lives with her 8 children somewhere in Melbourne, Australia.

US Navy aircraft carrier USS Reagan enters South China Sea

Getting ready for the Nancy Poliski visit, eh? -MM

From HERE

The ship was accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh and the guided-missile destroyer USS Halsey in a ‘routine mission’.

A US aircraft carrier group led by the USS Ronald Reagan has entered the South China Sea as part of a routine mission, the US Navy said, at a time of rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, which claims most of the disputed waterway.

The carrier is being accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh and the guided-missile destroyer USS Halsey, the US Navy said on Tuesday.

China frequently objects to US military missions in the South China Sea, saying they do not help promote peace or stability, and the latest mission comes after China condemned the Group of Seven (G7) nations for a statement criticising Beijing over a range of issues.

“While in the South China Sea, the strike group is conducting maritime security operations, which include flight operations with fixed and rotary-wing aircraft, maritime strike exercises, and coordinated tactical training between surface and air units,” the US Navy said.

“Carrier operations in the South China Sea are part of the US Navy’s routine presence in the Indo-Pacific.”

China has ramped up its military presence in the South China Sea in recent years, including building artificial islands and air bases, where it has installed missile systems and other equipment.

The South China Sea has become one of many flashpoints in the testy relationship between China and the US, with Washington rejecting what it calls unlawful territorial claims by Beijing in the resource-rich waters, which are also claimed by Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia.

In a show of force against the Chinese claims, US warships have passed through the South China Sea with increasing frequency in recent years, invoking “freedom of navigation” rights.

Lufthansa Cancels 1000+ Flights as Ground Crews Walk-Out

Changes in Germany. -MM

Deutsche Lufthansa AG will cancel almost ALL (over 1,000) of its flights from the main hubs of Frankfurt and Munich Germany because of a strike by Ground Crews.

Labour union Verdi had called for the walkout, which is due to run until 6 a.m. (0400 GMT) on Thursday, over its demand for a 9.5 per cent pay hike for around 20,000 workers and warned that more industrial action could be on the cards.

The strike has caused Lufthansa to cancel nearly all flights at its Frankfurt and Munich hubs for Wednesday.

Strikes and staff shortages have already forced airlines including Lufthansa to cancel thousands of flights and caused hours-long queues at major airports, frustrating holidaymakers keen to travel after COVID-19 lockdowns.

Lufthansa said on Wednesday it was “a sad day” for holidaymakers who were unable to catch their flights due to the strike, adding that the walkout was unnecessary and out of proportion.

A really bad feeling…

Interesting tale. Not by MM.

When I was younger, my boyfriend & I were eating at Bob’s Big Boy. Suddenly, he said that we had to leave because we’d be late to where we were going.

A little later, while driving away, I noticed that the little pinky ring with a dangling heart on it that he’d given me was missing from my finger. I freaked out, and begged him to drive back to the restaurant to look for it. He told me that he just couldn’t due to us being late.

I had noticed that when we were leaving the restaurant, there were 2 men in the parking lot walking towards the door that looked scary, but, at that moment, I really didn’t think more about it.

Soon after, every single news channel had the most disturbing story on…

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Those 2 scary men I’d seen walking in to the restaurant had gathered all the employees & customers at gunpoint, made them go into the walk-in freezer then shot & killed them.

If we had stayed longer or gone back, we’d be dead too..

STUNNING! Massive Escalation of Ukraine War

Getting ready for the big stuff. -MM

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Today an elected official from Donetsk, announced the latest plan for Ukraine and it marks the single most stunning change since Russia began its Special Military Operation (SMO).

Denis Pushilin is a politician from the Donetsk region who has served as Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) since 2018.

He had previously served as Chairman of the People’s Council, and became the acting Head of State following the assassination of incumbent Alexander Zakharchenko amidst the conflict in the east Ukraine region. He successfully ran for election to a full term in the 2018 elections.

That being said, when Pushilin speaks, he speaks with authority; he’s “in-the-loop” as it was his administration that asked for — and got — protection from Russia through the ongoing SMO.

This morning, Pushilin made the following announcement:

“Today it’s time to liberate again Russian cities founded by Russian people: Kiev, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Lutsk”

This announcement is likely the single most dramatic change since the Russian Army crossed into Ukraine back on February 24. The escalation of warfare necessary to accomplish this, now seems to fully explain why so many more trainloads of Russia troops and armor poured into the theater of war all last week, nearly TRIPLING the amount of Russian firepower available (but not yet deployed) inside Ukraine.

The war is about to escalate in ways no one thought possible.

Guess Who Bought-Up Ukraine Farmland Since 2014 Coup?

For those of us who have been scratching our heads as to why the US and EU are so bent on “helping” Ukraine, I found something out today:

Since the 2014 Coup which overthrew Democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovich, and put a puppet regime, favorable to the west, in his place . . . .

three giant corporations — Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto — bought seventeen million hectares of Ukraine agricultural land.   That’s sixty percent (60%) of the total agricultural land in Ukraine!

Thought you’d be interested in that.

Hundreds of Chechen Soldiers; Uniform Patches say “To Kiev”

Obvious or psyops? -MM

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Hundreds of new Chechen soldiers are boarding aircraft from Chechnya, wearing black police-style uniforms with large patches on the shirt back saying “To Kiev.”

It appears Russian strategy and tactics are escalating severely against Ukraine . . . exactly as has been reported on the Hal Turner Radio Show for days.

UPDATE 8:42 AM EDT —

Video is now available showing the troops:

 

Australian anti-drone jamming technology has been helping the Ukraine Nazi’s fight Russia

Australians in unified brotherhood with Nazi's. Who would have thought? -MM

From HERE

Australian-built drone jamming guns are helping protect Ukrainian
military units from Russian attacks.  Sydney-based technology company DroneShield told 9news.com.au it had been supplying Ukraine with its equipment as part of a military aid contract.

The company was founded seven years ago with the aim of producing technology to counter civilian drones adapted for military uses.DroneShield chief executive Oleg Vornik said the use of drones by Ukraine and Russia in the war had propelled the unmanned aerial vehicles into the media spotlight. 

"Small drones were used against Saudi Arabia, in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and the Syrian conflict," he said. "But drones largely stayed off the front pages in those conflicts until the Ukrainian conflict came along and drones were front and centre."

Since the Ukraine war started on February 24, drones have been used by both sides to pinpoint enemy positions, guide artillery strikes, track troop movements and jam opposing forces' communications. 

Vornik said his company's Drone Gun and hand-held radio-sized units have proven effective in Ukraine because many Russian drones used Western componentry. "Even Russian military-grade drones use commercial parts ... our gear is quite effective in detecting and defeating those drones," he said.

China has been shipping 7nm chips for over a year now

But, "experts" have been telling us that China is at least two decades behind in this technology. Don't you know. -MM

From HERE

SMIC has been shipping a 7nm chip for a year, says TechInsights which has reverse engineered the device and says “initial images suggest it is a close copy of TSMC 7nm process technology.”

Although it is a couple of nodes behind Samsung and TSMC, it is seen as an impressive achievement by SMIC because it is confined to using DUV lithography tools.

Although Samsung and TSMC made 7nm ICs using DUV in 2018-9, it involved using quadruple patterning.

TechInsights does not see the SMIC 7nm process as a true 7nm process but says it shows they’re getting there.

“This low-volume production product may be the steppingstone for a true 7nm process that incorporates scaled logic and memory bitcells,” says TechInsights, “since bitcoin miners have limited RAM requirements, they likely do not feature the typical bitcell memory that the true 7nm technology definition requires (both scaled logic and bitcell adoption). This chipset likely demonstrates the logic part but not the bitcell aspect." 

-SMIC said it had taped out a 7nm Innosilicon IC in 2020.

The chip TechInsights looked at was made for a Bitcoin mining company called Minerva.

China’s leading IC testing company Leadyo completes world’s first 3nm chip test

What was that about 7nm? Two decades, eh? Now China is readying for 3nm. You just can't make this stuff up. The neocons in Washington DC are either shitting in their pants, are living in a cocaine haze. -MM

From HERE

By Li Panpan

China’s leading IC testing company Leadyo(利扬芯片) said it completed the test and development of the world’s first 3nm chip.

The company based in Dongguan of southern China’s Guangdong Province shared this information in its investor relationship management platform of the Shanghai Stock Exchange on July 7.

They say that with rich experiences in testing 8nm and 5nm chip products, it would advance mass test of 3nm chips in an orderly manner.

Leadyo was founded in February 2010 and listed in the STR Market of Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2020. It has tested 44 categories of 12-inch and 8-inch chip products of various process technology.

It has increased investment in testing and R&D of high-end chips, especially the computing power chip testing technology, with a complete set of testing solutions for the discrete problems of advanced manufacturing processes.

Its testing solutions are widely used in chips for 5G communications, computers, consumer electronics, automotive electronics, biometrics, MCU, AIoT, and industrial control.

South Korea reluctant to join US-led chip alliance

"Join us begs the United States. Don't have anything to do with China. We have lots and lots of money to give you" -MM

From HERE

South Korea on Wednesday said it would not take any decision in a hurry to join the proposed US-led chip alliance, local media said.

The country’s Science and ICT Minister Lee Jong-ho said Seoul should be cautious about joining the chip alliance proposed by the US to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, Yonhap News Agency reported.

His remarks came after the US reportedly asked Seoul to decide by the end of August whether it is joining them or not.

Apparently, South Korea is avoiding going into conflict with China as the US also involved Taiwan in its proposed chip alliance.

“I believe we need to be cautious in deciding on the chip alliance matter,” the agency quoted Lee as telling reporters in Seoul.

“If a problem arises (from the decision), it could affect not only the semiconductor industry but also affect other industries,” Lee said, adding he sought suggestions from people who do business with China.

China currently supplies raw materials to the South Korean chip industry.

However, on Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the proposed alliance would help build more stable supply chains and reduce dependence on China, according to the agency.

The US proposed the alliance in March to chip manufacturing powerhouses in the Asia-Pacific region – South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan – to strengthen cooperation throughout the chip-making production chain.

Graft Investigators Target Regulatory Official Linked to Henan Bank Scandal

From HERE

Oh, and about those "banking riots" that is supposed to undermine, and topple Xi Peng...-MM

What’s new: An official once responsible for overseeing village banks in Central China’s Henan province has been placed under investigation by anti-graft agencies in the wake of a multibillion-dollar banking scandal.

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Li Huanting

Li Huanting, an inspector at the provincial branch of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), is suspected of serious violations of law and Communist Party discipline, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a statement Sunday, without offering further details. Such announcements typically allude to corruption.

Li, who is around 60, joined the Henan branch of the now–defunct China Banking Regulatory Commission in 2003. From January 2012 to October 2018, Li led the branch’s division that was in charge of supervising village banks, according to the CCDI.

Two of the four local village banks being investigated for freezing tens of billions of yuan in customer savings since April were set up during Li’s tenure.

The background: The four Henan lenders, along with another two in neighboring Anhui province, have been subject to scrutiny since customers complained in mid-April that they couldn’t make withdrawals online. The scandal triggered protests in June that turned violent.

Police in Henan have arrested at least two batches of suspects in the scandal, according to their statements since June. Authorities have been looking into the links between the banks and Henan Xincaifu Group Investment Holding Co. Ltd., a private company that colluded with bank executives and used online platforms to illegally take public deposits.

Plans have been announced by the CBIRC’s Henan office and the provincial government-run financial regulatory bureau this month to repay depositors in stages.

Trolling? Or Truth? Medvedev Shows “New map of Ukraine”

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Medvedev.

Ukraine is more likely to be reduced to Kiev and its surroundings than to ever re-encompass Crimea and the Donbass republics, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.  Is he just Trolling, or is this the simple truth?

The one-time president and long-time prime minister who now heads the national security council also posted two maps helpfully illustrating his argument.

The first map showed Ukraine in borders prior to the US-backed coup in 2014, including Crimea and the two eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. A month after the militants backed by Washington seized power in Kiev, Crimea voted to rejoin Russia, while the two Donbass regions declared independence.

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Ukraine before the US backed-coup and installation of a puppet regime by President Obama.

“In the mind of the president of Ukraine, damaged by psychotropic substances, this is what the map of his country’s bright future will look like,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram.

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Ukraine after the collapse of the USA installed puppet regime.

On it, “Ukraine” is reduced to Kiev and its surroundings. Seven regions in the West have been annexed by Poland, and three in the southwest by Hungary and Romania, respectively.

Everything else is marked “Russia.”

He did not specify which Western experts may have envisioned such a partition.

The Ukrainian government has repeatedly rejected any possibility of territorial concessions, insisting that Kiev’s objectives were a “capitulation” of Russia and “reintegration” of Donbass and Crimea.

 Medvedev served as president of Russia between 2008 and 2012, and then as prime minister until 2020, when he was put in charge of the national security council. Over the course of the conflict in Ukraine, he has made a name for himself with colorful Telegram posts. Just this month, he warned Kiev of “Judgment Day” if they attacked Crimea and offered a list of “Russian sins,” followed up by those of the West.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”

In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.

The Sampoong Shopping Centre Collapse.

During South Korea’s economic boom in the 1980s, Sampoong was erected in Seoul. Originally planned to be an apartment complex, a new boss by the name of Lee Joon decided midway that he wanted it to become a shopping centre instead. This required changes to the plans, most notably the removal of several support columns so that escalators could be installed.

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Due to serious constructional concerns, the construction company refused to carry out these changes, leading Lee to fire them and bringing in his own builders.

His further demands meant there were other issues with the completed building too; there was no steel skeleton or crossbeams, which meant that load couldn’t be transferred across floors. He also ordered the floor columns to be reduced to below the safe thickness, to maximise floor space, and had them spread further out—increasing the load on each—for the same reason. Three air conditioning units weighing fifteen tonnes each were installed on the roof, exceeding the load capacity by four times.

Cracks in the building started to appear just a few short years after opening, after the air conditioning units were dragged across the roof, causing cracks. By April 1995, more cracks were beginning to appear on the fifth floor too. Lee and the management’s only response was to move merchandise from the top floor to the basement.

Just a couple of months later, the cracks multiplied dramatically.

The management’s response was to close the top floors. They invited civil engineers to inspect the building, who quickly came to the conclusion that the building was at risk of collapse. The directors suggested to Lee Joon that the building be evacuated, but Lee angrily rejected the idea, saying he didn’t want to lose revenue. It was very much “one rule for them” though, as Lee was more than happy to evacuate himself alongside the other executives. Do you know who was working in the building at the time? His daughter-in-law.

He didn’t even tell her.

At 5PM on the 29th June 1995, the fifth floor ceiling began to sink. Still, Lee did not close the store or order any emergency repairs. Nearly an hour later, audible cracking sounds filled the building, prompting staff to sound the alarms and evacuate the customers. However, it was too late. The roof collapsed and the air conditioning behemoths dropped through it, smashing through each and every floor. The main columns buckled and within less than twenty seconds, the south wing of the building came crashing down, killing over 500 people and injuring over 900 more.

It took a days long rescue effort to free the trapped survivors, some of whom surviving the contemporaneous hot weather by drinking rainwater. By contrast, some of the trapped victims survived the collapse but drowned to death because of the water used to suppress the fire.

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The collapse was investigated by one Professor Chung, a civil engineering professor. During his interrogation of Lee, the latter disregarded the victims and stated his primary concern was the financial damage suffered by his company. He was ultimately arrested, convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison. He only served seven but died shortly after release anyway.

Lee Joon turned ruthlessness into an art form. He was utterly selfish and devoid of humanity; it’s an incredibly rare time when I say this of anyone, but I’m glad that waste of air is dead.

US fingerprints all over Hong Kong’s recent disturbances

From HERE (paywall)

Leung Chun-ying said the government had no need to reveal evidence of foreign forces interfering in Hong Kong affairs and undermining security. The former chief executive made the claim while speaking at a book launch last week.

That was a mistake. He makes it sound like the government and officials, including former ones such as himself, are making claims they can’t back up with evidence.

There is overwhelming evidence of interference in Hong Kong over many years, especially by various agencies of the US government, and not just during the unprecedented anti-government protests and riots in 2019.

Leung should have said such evidence was readily available as public records and anyone could just google the original sources, as well as news reports and numerous exposés over the years.

Those US agencies or Washington-funded entities have openly acknowledged it, either through their own documents, financial statements and other public records, or through US congressional testimonies.

I leave aside clandestine operations by secret services such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency, which by definition we could have no knowledge of.

However, revelations relating to spying on Hong Kong by Edward Snowden in 2013 did make some eye-opening reading…

Chinese Meat Pie (Xian Bing)

Traditional Chinese meat pie(馅饼) with beef, large scallion and onion.

This is my FAVORITE street food in China. Outstanding, and so very delicious. It is sort of like a deep fried hamburger encased inside of a bagel. It’s so smunching delicious!

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Traditional Chinese meat pie(馅饼) with beef, large scallion and onion.

Traditional Chinese meat pie provides a crispy wrapper and savory filling. There are in fact many types of meat pie popular across the country. The fillings differ from one house to another. You can use pork, lamb, beef etc. This is a popular beef and onion version.

Ingredients

Filling

  • 300 g beef , with 15% to 20% fat
  • 2 large scallion , finely chopped
  • ½ tsp. Sichuan peppercorn powder
  • ½ tsp. salt
  • 2 green onions
  • 1 thumb ginger , sliced
  • 1 tbsp. light soy sauce
  • Pinch of fresh ground pepper
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tbsp. oyster sauce
  • 1 tbsp. sesame oil
  • ½ tsp. sugar
  • 1 tbsp. Shaoxing cooking wine
  • ½ middle size white onion

For the dough

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour (300 g)
  • ½ cup hot water over 90℃ (120ml)
  • 60 ml room temperature water , plus 10ml more for adjusting
  • 1 tbsp. vegetable cooking oil
  • pinch of salt

Instructions

Beef filling

  • Add beef, ginger, scallion, salt, sugar, Sichuan peppercorn powder and white pepper powder. Blend 10 seconds.  Add egg, light soy sauce, sesame oil, Shaoxing wine and oyster sauce. Blend for another 10 seconds.  Stir the filling by hand for minutes until sticky.
  • Spread large scallion white on top and then drizzle around 2 tablespoons of hot oil. Mix in chopped white onion. Mix well, cover and set in fridge.  For beginners, I recommend set the filling until slightly hardened. The filling is for 2 batches, 20 pancakes. However the dough is for 10 pancakes each time. If you want to use all of the filling once, double the dough.

Dough

  • Add salt in all purpose flour and then add hot water firstly. Gently stir the hot water in. And stir in cold water too.  Roughly knead to form a dough. No need to be smooth. Cover and set aside for 30 minutes.
  • Re-knead the dough, it should be smooth very quickly.  Cut into 50g portions (10 pancakes from this batch) and then roll out to wrapper. Seal it completely. Avoid the edges meeting the filling, otherwise the sealing work is hard to complete.

Frying

  • Place the pancakes in a pan with oil, slightly press the center so the bottom can contact with the pan in better ways.
  • Heat until the side becomes crispy.  Then turn over and fry the other side. Once the two side becomes well browned, slow down the fire and over with lid and let the pancake heat for another 3-5 minutes. This can further cook the inside part and make sure the inner part is well cooked too. Then remove the lid and heat both side for another 30 seconds separately until the surface turn crispy again.
  • Transfer to oil paper to remove extra oil and enjoy!! Meat pies are always a little bit salty, so make sure you match it with some light and healthy vegetable soup.

Notes

The Nutrition Facts is based on each single pancake.

The filling is for 20 pancakes, namely two batches. If you want to sue all of the filling, double the dough and make a 4 cups flour batch.

Cook’s Note

About the filling: flavors of the filling decide whether the pancake is delicious or not.  I highly recommend adding Sichuan peppercorn powder, which is widely considered as the best spice for beef in China in the filling to enhance the aroma.   In order to make the filling juicy, usually water, stock or other liquid content is added. I use egg this time to increase the viscosity of the beef filling.

About the dough : the dough contents a larger amount of water, compared with other regular dumpling wrapper dough, so you will find it is very easy to knead and wrap because of the softness. There is just a little bit kneading needed in the process.

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Steps

To make the filling.  Add beef, ginger, scallion, salt, sugar  sichuan peppercorn powder and white pepper powder. Blend 10 seconds.  Add egg, light soy sauce, sesame oil, shaoxing wine and oyster sauce. Blend for another 10 seconds.  Stir the filling by hand for minutes until sticky.

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Spread large scallion white on top and then drizzle around 2 tablespoons of hot oil. Mix in chopped white onion. Mix well, cover and set in fridge. For beginners, I recommend set the filling until slightly hardened if you have enough time.

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Add salt in all purpose flour and then add hot water firstly. Gently stir the hot water in. And stir in cold water too. Roughly knead to form a dough. No need to be smooth. Cover and set aside for 30 minutes.

Re-knead the dough, it should be smooth very quickly. Cut into 30g portions (doubled size from dumpling wrappers ) and then roll out to wrapper. Seal it completely. Avoid the edges meeting the filling, otherwise the sealing work is hard to complete.

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Place the pancakes in a pan with oil, slightly press the center so the bottom can contact with the pan in better ways.

Heat until the side becomes crispy. Then turn over and fry the other side. Once the two side becomes well browned, slow down the fire and over with lid and let the pancake heat for another 2 minutes. This can further cook the inside part and make sure the inner part is well cooked too. Then remove the lid and heat both side for another 30 seconds separately until the surface turn crispy again.

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Transfer to oil paper to remove extra oil and enjoy!! Meat pies are always a little bit salty, so make sure you match it with some light and healthy vegetable soup.

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U.S. Sends F-22’s toward Russia

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Six US Air Force fighter jets have arrived in the United Kingdom at Suffolk’s RAF Lakenheath base in preparation for supporting NATO’s European Air Shielding mission.

The F-22 Raptors are from the 90th Fighter Squadron, 3rd wing, and are en route to Łask, Poland, from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

Following their departure from Lakenheath Thursday morning, the aircraft will join NATO’s Air Shielding strategy, which seeks to provide a near-seamless shield from the Baltic to the Black seas.

USS Ronald Reagan Strike Group Enters South China Sea for Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit

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China and the United States are building up their military strength around the Taiwan Strait as tensions rise over US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s possible visit to the island.

The American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group, including a guided missile destroyer and a guided missile cruiser, set out from Singapore on Monday heading northeast towards the South China Sea, according to ship-tracking information provided by Beijing-based think tank the South China Sea Strategic Probing Initiative.

The carrier strike group includes the Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), the embarked Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5, and embarked staffs of Task Force 70 and Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 15, as well as the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam (CG 54) and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins (DDG 76).

While in the South China Sea, the strike group is conducting maritime security operations, which include flight operations with fixed and rotary-wing aircraft, maritime strike exercises, and coordinated tactical training between surface and air units. Carrier operations in the South China Sea are part of the U.S. Navy’s routine operations in the Indo-Pacific.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will not sit idly by if Pelosi visits Taiwan island, the Chinese defense ministry warns; indicating the PLA ‘fully prepared’ for all scenarios

"Chinese analysts said the strong warnings from the Chinese military meant that the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) is well prepared for all the possible challenges if Pelosi visits the island, and they advised the PLA Rocket Force to conduct drills with new missiles targeting any possible US aircraft carriers and other large military vessels that may be involved in Pelosi's visit."

A Chinese ministry of defense spokesman has warned that the People’s Liberation Army would “take strong measures” if the speaker “insisted on going ahead”.

US officials have told media outlets that if her visit goes ahead, the U.S. military will increase its movement of forces and assets in the Indo-Pacific region.

They said U.S. fighter jets, ships, surveillance assets and other military systems were likely to be used to provide overlapping rings of protection for her flight to Taiwan and when she arrives on the island.

So not only will the Speaker of the House enter China air space without China permission, to land in China (Taiwan) without permission, her flight will be protected by US fighter jets! 

Reports describe a scenario that China could send aircraft to “escort” her plane and prevent it from landing if she visits Taiwan, possibly on a US military aircraft, and a US official said the scenario is a legitimate concern.

Hu Xijin, a commentator for the Global Times newspaper, the official mouthpiece for the China Communist Party, said that he expected to see PLA’s aircraft flying together with Pelosi’s plane into the airspace of Taiwan island. That would set a great precedent for the PLA to patrol above the island, which would be far more meaningful than Pelosi’s visit.

Sooner or later, the PLA’s aircraft will enter the airspace above Taiwan in a legitimate and righteous move to manifest China’s sovereignty over the island, he continued.

"To do this, we need an opportunity which could prompt the international community to better understand the mainland's move is natural rather than a provocation. 

Pelosi's potential visit to the island will lead to major changes on the situation in the Taiwan Straits.

The PLA's strong reaction is in line with the expectation of the international community and the visit will offer PLA a good reason to send aircraft over the island"

Hu said.

"So, the ball has come to Pelosi and the Biden administration that is cooperating with her and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on the island. 

We have to make full preparations this time for a showdown to them. 

If they dare to take a small step, we will take a major step to fiercely crack down the US and the DPP's arrogance and provocation," 

Hu said.

Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times that the US executive branch is very worried that this potential visit will cause a conflict to break out between China and the US.

“Pelosi doesn’t care that she might make a big mess of US-China relations, because the executive branch and the military will be the ones forced to take the consequences and deal with the aftermath,” he said.

Conclusion

China is not stupid.

They are completely aware that the powers (in the United States) has created this event. That Nancy Poliski is NOT acting alone, but rather than acting under orders.

The Chinese expect this event to fulfill some kind of global geo-political objective. Of some type. Of some consequence. Of some benefit to the United States.

What the United States is unaware of, or I would be surprised if they are aware, is that a very HARD response will be forthcoming.

My thoughts are that the expected results will NOT be the same as what the actual results will be.

I’ll leave this statement for you all to ponder.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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The Wentian spacestation module, a new global currency, and assorted life stories worthy of great interest

The big news is that China and Russia have created a new reserve currency, and the entire rest of the world (minus the USA and it’s proxies) are rushing to use it. This will have a stunning influence on the American economy. So we will start with this stunning development right now…

Putin and China just did the unthinkable and the West is in big trouble

It’s 11 minutes long. Watch it.

China launches second space station module, Wentian

July 24, 2022

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China launched the second of three modules to its permanent space station, in one of the final missions needed to complete the orbiting outpost by year’s end.

A live feed on state broadcaster CCTV showed the 23-tonne Wentian (Quest for the Heavens) laboratory module launching on the back of China’s most powerful rocket, the Long March 5B, at 2:22 pm from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan.

Space agency staff cheered and applauded when the Wentian separated from the rocket about 10 minutes after the launch.

The launch was “a complete success”, CCTV reported shortly after.

China began constructing the space station in April 2021 with the launch of the Tianhe module, the main living quarters, in the first of 11 crewed and uncrewed missions in the undertaking.

The Wentian lab module, 17.9 meters (59 feet) long, will be where astronauts can carry out scientific experiments, along with the other lab module yet to be launched – Mengtian (Dreaming of the Heavens).

Wentian features an airlock cabin that is to be the main exit-entry point for extravehicular activities when the station is completed.

It will also serve as short-term living quarters for astronauts during crew rotations on the station, designed for the long-term accommodation of just three astronauts.

Mengtian is expected to be launched in October and is to dock with Tianhe, forming a T-shaped structure.

They are slated to return to Earth in December with the arrival of the Shenzhou-15 crew. — Agencies

A lesson for all of us…

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Jews going to the cattle cars.

Angel, a Jew, owner of the most famous bakery in Germany, often said: “Do you know why I’m alive today? I was still a teenager when Nazis in Germany killed Jews mercilessly. Nazis took us to Auschwitz by train. Last night in the ward was deadly cold. We were left for many days in cars without food, without beds, which means without the possibility to warm up somehow.

It was snowing everywhere. The cold wind frozen our cheeks every second. There were hundreds of us on those cold, horrible nights. No food, no water, no hiding. The blood is frozen in the veins. Next to me was an elderly Jew who was very loved in my city. He was all shaking and looking terrible. I wrapped him with my hands to warm him up.

Hugged him tight to give some warmth. Rub his hands, legs, face, neck. I begged him to stay alive. I cheered him up. This is how I kept this man warm all night. I myself was tired and frozen. Fingers crossed, but I kept massaging this man’s body to warm him up.

So many hours have passed. Finally the morning has come, the sun has started to shine. I looked around myself to see other people. To my horror, all I could see was frozen corpses. All I could hear was the silence of death. Frosty night killed everyone. They died of cold.

Only two people survived: the old man and me. The old man survived because I didn’t let him freeze, and I survived because I made him warm.

We NEED each other. We NEED to be part of a community.

US warns losing access to Taiwanese chips could break the economy

Stark warning of a 'deep and immediate recession' if China takes over

Taiwan controls most of the world’s chip manufacturing capacity, and that worries US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Raimondo believes the US would go into a “deep and immediate recession” and face great security risks if it lost access to the island nation’s chips

The Commerce Secretary made the warning in a Wednesday interview with CNBC as part of her plea for Congress to aid a major US semiconductor manufacturing expansion by passing the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act, which would unlock $52 billion in subsidies for new plants and research efforts.

“If you allow yourself to think about a scenario where the United States no longer had access to the chips currently being made in Taiwan, it’s a scary scenario,” Raimondo told CNBC. “It’s a deep and immediate recession. It’s an inability to protect ourselves by making military equipment. We need to make this in America.”

The issue is that Taiwan has faced ongoing aggression from China, which claims the self-governing island nation as its own and has not ruled out using military force to “reunify” the two. This has sparked fears that China could invade Taiwan and seize its manufacturing plants, which are run by, among other chipmakers, three of the world’s largest contract chip manufacturers – it hte fabs aren’t deliberately destroyed first.

This scenario would spell big trouble for the US because Taiwan produces 90 percent of the leading-edge chips that are bought by the country, according to Raimondo.

She is likely referring to TSMC, which Reuters said controls 90 percent of global output for such chips, citing industry estimates. This includes chips designed by companies such as Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm, and they are used in everyday devices such as smartphones, PCs, and servers. And then there’s the whole military kit issue.

These concerns around Taiwan’s security and independence are why the Raimondo believes it’s important that the US rebuilds its semiconductor manufacturing base through the CHIPS Act.

“We need a manufacturing base that produces these chips, at least enough of these chips, here on our shores because otherwise we’ll just be too dependent on other countries,” she said.

Even if the CHIPS Act gets passed, which is moving along after the Senate voted on Tuesday to advance the legislation, it will take years before new manufacturing plants in the US start producing chips.

Intel, for instance, doesn’t expect its new fabs in Ohio to begin production until 2025. The company is building two new factories in Arizona too, and those are expected to go online in 2024. That’s when TSMC and Samsung also plan to open new fabs in Texas and Arizona, respectively.

While the new factories will expand US chip manufacturing capacity, research firm TrendForce believes that they won’t make much of a dent in Taiwan’s industry dominance in the short term. By 2025, the firm said, Taiwanese chip manufacturers will still hold 44 percent of the global foundry market, 47 percent of the 12-inch wafer capacity, and 58 percent of capacity for advanced manufacturing processes.

MM Comments

Much hype. China is now producing 7nm chips. 5nm is on the way. There’s no problem. The US can (of course) always buy them directly from China.

China’s SMIC Is Shipping 7nm Foundry ASICs

The Most Advanced Foundry In The World After TSMC And Samsung

SMIC, China’s largest foundry has slowly been catching up to TSMC, Samsung, and various western foundries in process technology. They are rapidly approaching position as the world’s 3rd largest foundry and have higher margins than the current number 3, GlobalFoundries. SMIC has achieved this through a combination of large subsidies from the state, poaching TSMC talent, and tremendous home-grown expertise. Their chips ship in large volumes to a variety of use cases from smartphones to the world’s fastest supercomputer. The foundry has now quietly released and started mass production of their 7nm process node dubbed N+2.

We say quietly as this didn’t come directly from SMIC, but rather the reverse engineering and teardown firm TechInsights who purchased the chip on the open market and sent it to their labs. SMIC likely has not discussed this publicly on earnings reports as they are afraid of blowback. To be abundantly clear, China’s SMIC is shipping a foundry process with commercially available chips in the open market which are more advanced than any American or European company. While the US has high hopes for Intel to be the savior, there are no Intel 7 class foundry chips commercially available for purchase currently and they still have to build out their foundry operations. The most advanced American or European foundry produced chips are based on GlobalFoundries 12nm.

Initial images suggest it is a close copy of TSMC 7nm process technology.

TechInsights Product Brief

SMIC’s 7nm just like TSMC’s 7nm and Intel’s 7nm class technologies does not use EUV lithography. TechInsights has more information in their 3 detailed reports titled “ASIC Digital Floorplan Analysis,” “(SMIC 7nm) Advanced CMOS Process Analysis,” and “(SMIC 7nm) Process Flow Analysis.” We recommend people check those out for more details.

This is a groundbreaking discovery because the US Department of Commerce was supposed to be restricting export licenses for any equipment which can be used on technologies more advanced than 14nm. Of course, the department of commerce handed out export licenses like candy as they always do. Furthermore, almost all equipment that is used on SMIC’s 14nm FinFET can be used on their 7nm process technology as well. While SMIC likely cannot develop beyond 7nm without EUV, they still should be able to ramp their 7nm over time to very large volumes. The US government is asleep at the wheel as Lam Research off-shores production and Intel uses subsidies to import equipment used to manufacturer chips from China. Government policy is why the US will lose semiconductors.

SMIC’s foundry customer, MinerVa states this chip has been in production since July of 2021. On September 22nd 2021, MinerVa’s website was updated with information about the product and the image above. It is a small 19.3mm2 chip used for mining cryptocurrencies, but in the future, this process technology could be scaled up and adopted for high end supercomputer and consumer applications. Their miner ships with 120 chips per board with 3 board per miner and a total power consumption of 3300W.

My generation as an American…

I am not young (fast approaching 60), but I still remember the phone call I took when I had gotten home after school that day, from a classmate whose 16th birthday it was. He had gotten home (about 3 miles from my house) to find his mother had packed his things and they were on the doorstep.

She was blunt with him. Get a job, now, or an offer of one starting after this semester, and pay rent, or don’t come back. He was due to take his examinations in a few weeks’ time, and had a school place sorted for next year in a very good school (as had I).

This was before many folks had cars, but moms were still stay at home moms. My mom and I drove over to pick him up and brought him back to our house. She then called my dad. He stopped by at my friend’s house and, by all accounts, had a furious argument with his parents. They would not relent.

My dad came home more than a little upset. He made some calls to colleagues early that evening and sorted my friend an apprentice position starting in September, with funded evening school at a local community college, and a temporary job for the June to August summer period.

My friend’s parents took him back that night. He lost out on an excellent school place, and the likely opportunity to go further. He moved out as soon as he was 18, old enough to get his own home. He has not spoken to his parents since. They have never seen his family, they were not invited to his wedding, and they have never met their grand children or great grand children.

I learnt a lesson that day, on my friend’s 16th birthday. Children are not a burden to be moulded into what we want them to be. They are to be loved and nurtured.

South China Sea: Chinese permanent rescue and maritime offices stationed on disputed Spratly Islands

  • China’s three biggest man-made islands in the Spratlys will host a new flying squadron, as well as maritime rescue and administration staff
  • There have long been calls to upgrade search and rescue capabilities ‘to enhance China’s dominance over South China Sea affairs’

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Chinese structures and buildings at its man-made island on Mischief Reef at the Spratlys group of islands in the South China Sea. Photo: AP

Beijing has stationed permanent rescue forces and maritime administrations on its artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea.

A new flying squadron and maritime resuce and administration staff will be stationed on the Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief reefs, China’s three biggest man-made islands in the Spratlys, state broadcaster China Central Television reported.

This boosts a regular on-call rescue ship deployment into a permanent institutional presence that could greatly improve the coverage of the southern area of the South China Sea.

God puts you where you need to be…

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“Last night, I left from pulling two 14 hour shifts. Stopped by the grocery store to grab food for dinner and as I was checking out a woman started crying in the next checkout line. Her daughter asked her what’s wrong and she said we can’t afford to eat tonight. A person behind her gave her a couple dollars and she bought her daughter a Kids Cuisine tv dinner. I told her to grab what she wants, ill pay for it. I NEVER stop at this Wal-Mart. I’m simply saying GOD puts you where he needs you to be WHEN he needs you to be there.”

Credit: Bear Taliferro Jr.

Of 29 Pregnant Women That Had Received Pfizer’s COVID-19 Inoculation, Only One Had a Baby That Lived

I Am In Shock

Dr. Byram W. BridleJul 22

The United States Food and Drug Administration (US-FDA) had requested 75 years to release the documents that they reviewed from Pfizer prior to issuing emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b mRNA ‘vaccine’ (Comirnaty) against SARS-CoV-2, which can cause COVID-19. However, a judge over-ruled this and issued a court order that the documents be released in large monthly installments.

Today, an absolutely shocking set of data were brought to my attention. They are not new. They are from a document that was in the data dump released back in May of this year. However, I want to help my fellow scientists in making sure that this science gets widely distributed throughout the world. This is for the sake of ‘fully informed consent’, something that regulatory agencies, public health officials and too many physicians seem to have abandoned over the past couple of years.

For a long time I have been arguing that our children need to be left out of the massive conflicts over the science underpinning COVID-19. In my opinion, adults can conduct their own risk-benefit analyses regarding whether they want to receive one of the current COVID-19 inoculations.

However, far too many adults are making these decisions based on pseudo-science, data from flawed studies, misinformation, and outright disinformation being propagated by physicians and public health officials, many of whom are unqualified to opine on anything in the field of vaccinology.

I have never felt comfortable about these injections being used in ‘children, adolescents and young-adults of child-bearing age’. This was the precise terminology I used in a parent’s guide to COVID-19 vaccines that I wrote more than one year ago.

The highest quality data for assessing a novel medical product are derived from clinical studies. This is because these types of experiments in people are typically well-controlled and include what is known as ‘active monitoring’; there is follow-up to assess safety and efficacy.

This is why the clinical testing phases should never be compromised. With this in mind, let’s explore a stunning set of data that Pfizer provided to the US-FDA. Here is the relevant document…

The data in this document were accumulated up until February 28, 2021. Notably, on page 9, safety concerns based on the US Pharmacovigilance Plan included “missing information” on “Use in Pregnancy and lactation”.

The data that had accumulated up to the end of February, 2021 were from too small of a sample size (i.e., # of pregnant or lactating women) to justify its use in these populations. However, here are the data that were available at that time regarding outcomes in pregnant women that had received Pfizer’s COVID-19 inoculation; this is quoted from the top of table 6 (I have italicized and/or bolded the most important points)…

Pregnancy cases: 274 cases including:

    • 270 mother cases and 4 foetus/baby cases representing 270 unique pregnancies (the 4 foetus/baby cases were linked to 3 mother cases; 1 mother case involved twins).
    • Pregnancy outcomes for the 270 pregnancies were reported as spontaneous abortion (23), outcome pending (5), premature birth with neonatal death, spontaneous abortion with intrauterine death (2 each), spontaneous abortion with neonatal death, and normal outcome (1 each). No outcome was provided for 238 pregnancies (note that 2 different outcomes were reported for each twin, and both were counted).

Apparently, outcomes will never be known for 88% (238/270) of the pregnancies. Why was the follow-up rate on these cases so abysmal?

NutriTruth has a great graph on their website that summarizes the results from cases for which follow-up data were available…

It appears that data would be available for five of the pregnancies, but these outcomes were still unknown at the time that Pfizer’s document was written. As such, there are solid data available from 29 pregnancies. One out of 29 of these pregnancies resulted in a ‘normal’ outcome.

This means that 28 out of the 29 babies died! That is a 97% death rate. I don’t care which trustworthy data set you look at to determine a ‘background’ death rate, none of them come close to 97%.

Spontaneous abortions are more common than many people appreciate, but, again, they are nowhere near the rate in this study. Even in the case of the ‘normal outcome’, this means there was an apparently healthy baby.

However, one cannot be certain that the outcome was ‘normal’, until the baby has had all of their physiological systems fully mature, which means early adulthood.

I have looked at Pfizer’s pre-clinical reproductive toxicity data and they are fatally flawed. Issues included ‘vaccinating’ the females only; apparently it was forgotten that ‘it takes two to tango’.

Also, the rodent models that were used express the low-affinity version of the receptor for the spike protein encoded by the ‘vaccines’. People express the high-affinity receptor. This means the rodent models aren’t capable of revealing toxicities that might be associated with the spike protein.

In short, the pre-clinical studies could provide no assurance whatsoever that Pfizer’s vaccine would be safe in the context of pregnancy. Now there is proof that data were in the hands of regulatory agencies that suggested the potential for a 97% fatality rate for babies from ‘vaccinated’ women.

I have collaborated with scientists and physicians about the post-rollout ‘real-world’ studies on pregnancy and the COVID-19 shots. They are highly flawed. I co-authored a paper about this, but have yet to find an editor that will even allow it to undergo peer review (I have had no problems with this for any of my cancer- or basic virology-focused papers).

Regardless, many other reputable scientists and physicians have been addressing this. Further, these ‘real-world’ studies should never have been authorized based on the data presented here.

Many countries have pushed Pfizer’s COVID-19 ‘vaccine’ on pregnant women, often via mandates. This was been done with the full blessing of their societies for obstetrics and gynecology. Are obstetricians and gynecologists going to continue to make these recommendations with these data in-hand?

At the end of the day, couples experiencing pregnancies or who wish to do so must make it their own responsibility to educate themselves to facilitate fully informed consent. Too many obstetricians and gynecologists are either too superficially trained in the immunological sub-discipline of vaccinology or are too afraid of contradicting a narrative for which dissent is punished. Some physicians are starting to speak up about this.

Unfortunately, their singular personal observations are simply deemed anecdotal. However, as a scientist, I have been trained to observe the cumulative nature of these reports; to not dismiss them out-of-hand, and to use them to formulate legitimate scientific questions.

If you or your baby have experienced any issues post-inoculation, please report these to your physician. They are obligated to submit an adverse event report, without opining on whether or not they think it might or might not be related. The accumulation of these reports is the only way scientists can help identify safety signals during a public rollout of a novel medical product.

A 97% death rate among babies from pregnant mothers that were ‘vaccinated’ is appalling. And this was from Pfizer’s own clinical trial data. This suggests a massive breakdown in the health regulatory process. The public, whom health regulatory agencies are to be serving, should demand accountability from these government-run institutions.

If I were a regulatory scientist assessing the pregnancy outcome data from Pfizer, there is no way that I would ever have supported the use of their inoculation in pregnant women. And I would never have allowed ‘real-world’ data from flawed studies to replace proper pre-clinical and clinical trials. Nor would I remain silent about this knowledge. Regulators who know better need to start speaking up.

An old lady

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An old lady.

This old lady handed her bank card to the teller and said “I would like to withdraw $10”.

The teller told her “for withdrawals less than $100, please use the ATM. The old lady wanted to know why…

The teller returned her bank card and irritably told her “these are the rules, please leave if there is no further matter.

There is a line of customers behind you”.

The old lady remained silent for a few seconds and handed her card back to the teller and said “please help me withdraw all the money I have.”

The teller was astonished when she checked the account balance. She nodded her head, leaned down and respectfully told her “you have $300,000 in your account but the bank doesn’t have that much cash currently.

Could you make an appointment and come back again tomorrow?

The old lady then asked how much she could withdraw immediately. The teller told her any amount up to $3000.

“Well please let me have $3000 now.”

The teller kindly handed $3000 very friendly and with a smile to her.

The old lady put $10 in her purse and asked the teller to deposit $2990 back into her account.

The moral of this story is…. Don’t be difficult with old people, they spent a lifetime learning the skill.

Italian Cheese Calzones (Folded Pizza)

Cheese calzones are an Italian classic. A calzone is a cheese stuffed pizza pocket (AKA folded pizza). Any toppings you like on pizza can be baked into these cheese calzones! Serve with homemade marinara.

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Cheese calzones are quick to make for a weeknight dinner, as a game-day snack, on a weekend date night, or as a fun activity with the kids! Last weekend, the hubby Eric was craving calzones, which we’d typically get from our local pizza joint. But we decided to try our hand at making calzones at home! It turns out they are SO easy and fun to make. My 3-cheese blend takes them to a whole other level, along with any other fillings of your choice!

Ingredients

  • Pre-made pizza dough – buy good quality pre-made pizza dough in the grocery store or at your local pizzeria. If you prefer, you can make your own pizza dough from scratch!
  • Ricotta cheese – ricotta cheese is essential in calzones. It’s the creamy goodness! I use whole milk ricotta cheese but you can also use part skim.
  • Mozzarella cheese – mozzarella cheese adds gooey, stringy cheesiness!
  • Parmigiano-reggiano cheese – parmigiano-reggiano (or parmesan) cheese adds depth of flavor.
  • Extra virgin olive oil – olive oil is brushed on the top of your calzones to help them bake to golden perfection.
  • Sauce for dipping – you can make or buy marinara, or a different type of dipping sauce! See dipping sauce ideas below!
  • Fillings of choice – want to fill your calzones with something more than cheese? See the list below for calzone filling ideas!

Ingredient Substitutions

  • Parmigiano-reggiano (parmesan) cheese – substitute grana padano or piave for parmesan cheese.

How to Make Calzones (The Brief Version)

  1. Shape the dough

    Form a roughly 8-ounce dough ball. Stretch the dough ball into a thin, large circle.

  2. Mix together cheese (and other fillings)

    In a bowl, mix together ricotta, mozzarella, parmigiano and a pinch of salt. Mix in any other fillings, or place on top of cheese mixture.

  3. Assemble

    Add cheese/filling mixture to half of the dough round, leaving a small border as a crust. Fold over the other half, on top of the cheese mixture, to create a pocket. Tightly pinch closed your calzone pocket.

  4. Bake

    Brush the top of the calzone with a bit of olive oil, and bake for 8-12 minutes until golden brown.

Difference Between Calzone and Stromboli

Calzones are basically folded pizzas whereas strombolis are rolled pinwheel pizzas. They’re both made with similar ingredients, except strombolis are rarely made with ricotta cheese like calzones. The major difference between the two is the shape and technique to assemble them before they’re baked!

How to Reheat A Calzone

Brush calzone lightly with olive oil. Place on baking sheet and heat until hot at 400 degrees, about 20-25 minutes. Of course, calzones are always best freshly baked!

Calzone Fillings (Mix-Ins)

If you want to fill your calzones with something more than cheese, here are some ideas!

  • Diced Veggies: sweet onion, garlic, peppers, roasted peppers, mushrooms, broccoli, spinach, tomato, broccoli rabe, potatoes, corn
  • Cooked Meats: crumbled sausage, salami, pepperoni, ham, bacon, chicken, ground beef
  • Miscellaneous: olives, basil, other herbs, black beans

Sauces for Dipping

The classic way to serve an Italian cheese calzone is with marinara. You can buy jarred marinara or make your own grated onion marinara or a traditional marinara. For traditional marinara, simply stir together a 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes, 2 minced garlic cloves, handful fresh chopped basil, 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil and salt. Heat on the stove until hot!

Substitute marinara for homemade vodka sauce, BBQ sauce, Buffalo sauce, or Ranch! Basically any sauce you can put on a pizza, you can dip your calzone in!

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  • Homemade marinara: 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes, 2 minced garlic cloves, handful fresh chopped basil, 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil and salt, heated on the stove until hot.

A story about the Yakuza

Despite what we hear about Yakuza in Japanese media, their lifestyle appears to be different from what most of us think. (myself included.)

Here is a story I heard from my father-in-law.

My-father-in law, Den, has been running a small restaurant in a rural area of Japan for the past 30 years. It’s located in the remote part of the town.

Because of the restaurant’s location, many customers come to avoid the crowd in the city for a nice, quiet sit down meal (food is very good, by the way).

Naturally, and eventually, some Yakuza members discovered this quiet establishment, for they, too, needed a place to eat lunch and dinner to avoid crowds. So, they started to come to the restaurant frequently.

Now, my father-in-law is quite a big man for his generation: at the age of 80, he is 183 cm (6’1″) tall and weighs 100 kg (220 lbs). Thanks to his physical feature, he is not easily intimidated, even by the Yakuza.

When one of the Yakuza members noticed his missing pinky finger, their mood suddenly changed. A missing pinky is a sign of the Yakuza – whenever they commit a serious mistake (among their organization), it’s their custom to cut their finger off.

“Hey grandpa, what did you do,” one of the Yakuzas asked.

“What do you mean,” Den asked.

“Your index finger.”

“Oh this? My finger got caught in the electric winch on my boat.”

“Your boat,” The Yakuza asked.

“Yes, I am a fisherman also. I go and catch fish and sell, when the restaurant is not so busy,” Den said.

“You are not ex-Yakuza,” The Yakuza asked.

“No. Are you?”

“Yes, we are. We thought you were because your index finger is missing. We thought you slept with your boss’s wife or girlfriend. That’s when we must cut our index finger. We normally cut our pinky for the mistakes. We thought you were reckless and courageous, worth admiring.”

“Really? Why courageous,” Den asked the Yakuza.

“Because you are reckless, we thought.”

“Why is it good to be reckless?”

“Because we cannot be. Police know what we are doing and where we are. They always have their eyes on us. Ordinary people put a petition together and force us to move out of the town. We cannot go to ordinary stores and Onsens (Japanese public hot springs prohibit a person with a tattoo to enter the bath because many of Yakuza members have tattoos.)” the Yakuza explained.

“How about all the other crimes and drug dealing we hear on the news,” Den said.

“Those are committed by the younger guys. They have too much energy and ambition, and they will do almost anything to prove their worthiness. They become Yakuza because they don’t want to deal with the rules set by the “ordinary” world, and the fact is, there are some rules in the Yakuza world, our own rules. We’ve been living in this world, and we learned and adapted to those rules, so we know better than to commit a small, stupid crime you hear about and see on TV. We almost never kill ordinary people or other Yakuza family members because, as I said, police are watching every move we make. Once we kill someone, they will know, so, it’s hard to kill someone without getting caught. In fact, the police can arrest any of us any time and shut us down by arresting the majority of our members. We think that’s harassment. We need as many members as we can to survive as a Yakuza organization. We never deal drugs because, for one, it’s really difficult to import into Japan. Even if we could, it’s hard on the buyers/users because drugs destroy their lives and, quite often, their families too. In fact, it’s hard on us. Think about it. Your product kills your customer. How would you feel to serve your food, knowing it’s going to kill us for sure? That’s hard as a person to watch.”

“Really? It sounds like you guys live in a very restricted world,” Den said.

“Yes, it’s very restricted. The challenge is that at the same time, we have to behave in the way to meet people’s expectations,” the Yakuza replied.

“What expectations,” Den asked the Yakuza.

“Well, most people who do not know Yakuza think we are loud, reckless and dangerous, like running around loose and engaging in all kinds of illegal activities. In fact, that’s not what we do. We do jobs ordinary people don’t want to do. Things that are in the “gray area” can turn either legal or illegal, and someone has to do them. Ordinary people come to ask us to perform those jobs because, for whatever reason, they are unable to do the jobs themselves, like extortion. That’s where we come in. Also, because of people’s expectations, in the view of the general public, we have to pretend and act like the stereotypical image of what Yakuza should be: loud, fearsome and reckless. We have to throw loud parties in our office so that people will notice us and be fearful of us. But, most of the time, we live quietly because otherwise, there will be no more places for us to live. Truth be told, many of us actually do live in fear, as we feel being separated from society.”

“Sounds like it’s a tough life,” Den said quietly.

“Yes, it’s tough, and probably tougher than yours. So, that is why I’d never recommend anyone to become a Yakuza,” the Yakuza said to Den.

When My Cat Feels Sad

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Love Child

My father joined the Navy in 1942 at the age of 17 and went to war on diesel submarines in the South Pacific. After WW2, he was assigned to duty in Japan as part of the occupational forces. There he met a local Japanese girl he wanted to marry, but it was prohibited to do so until the early ’50s when President Truman allowed it. Dad went back to Japan and married the girl he met during the occupation of Japan.

Dad was also involved in the atomic bomb tests in the South Pacific islands of Bikini Atoll in “Operation Crossroads.” Dad passed away in 1998, from lung cancer, and I submitted a claim to VA for a service-connected death and it was approved in record time. My mother lived until 2015. After mom passed away, my sister and I took our time to clean out our parents’ home. I stumbled on photos of my father with a young female child. There was nothing else associated with the picture. In my mother’s possessions were letters written in Japanese that we thought were from family members. During one trip to the house, there was a letter from Japan in the mail box. My sister decided to get the letter interpreted. To our surprise, the letter was from a Japanese woman who claims to be the daughter of my mother and father that he had during the occupation of Japan. The Japanese woman wanted to know why her mother hasn’t written her or responded to her phone calls. It was after this revelation that we decided to get all the letters mother had saved and get them interpreted. One of the letters had an email address so I used an app called Google Translate and wrote a letter to the Japanese woman. I learned that my mother and father had a child during the occupation of Japan in the late 1940s. This woman whose name was Terri had pictures to prove that she was a daughter of my parents. To my horror, Terri said our parents abandoned her because she lived with our mother until age 7 when dad returned to Japan and married our mother and brought her back to the USA. I learned that Terri was put up for adoption and the names of the birth parents were falsified thereby making it impossible for my parents to bring Terri back to the USA. Since my father was a career Navy Master Chief Petty Officer, he did not want the love child to hurt his career since fraternization during the occupation of Japan would result in a court martial. So, my parents made the decision not to adopt their real daughter and bring her back to the USA.

In my many Google Translate emails to Terri, I learned that our mother was one of six (6) children. Of the 6, two were female, mom and Terri (if Terri is her daughter, she can’t be her sister as well) and four (4) were boys who I was told were soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army and fought Americans in the South Pacific and all were killed. I learned that my mother was disowned by her family for marrying an America military man when her brothers died fighting Americans. I continue to write Terri and we are trying to organize a reunion but haven’t decided on when or where.

I would have never imagined that my parents had a love child while dad was involved in the occupation of Japan but short of a DNA test, I am convinced that Terri is my blood sister. To this day, my sister and I are amazed that our parents never told us that they had a daughter and abandoned her in Japan after WW2. I think that this story would make for a good book. This is something I have been wrestling with so I can get the money to have a reunion with my long-lost sister in Japan. This is a true story.

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A life hack

As a kid, I remember watching a cartoon in which the hero is arrested and imprisoned in a tower.

There’s an elderly man there who has spent his entire life in prison.

The gate opens as the hero requests to be let out. The hero exits the room. “You mean all I had to do was ask?” the old man mutters as he looks at the open door and then turns to the audience.

I used to giggle at this as a youngster, but as I think on my life, there have been many times when I’ve felt like that old man.

I had a three-year crush on someone I never spoke to, I never asked questions in meetings, and I never pushed for promotions.

I’ve tried with doing what the hero in the tower did and asking for what I want over the last five years.

And, in many cases, the door did really open, precisely as it did in the cartoon.

This can range from minor requests such as not having olives in my salad to more significant demands such as getting 20% of my work time to pursue self-directed activities.

You’ll be surprised how far simply asking for things will get you whether you’re honest and generally skilled.

A policeman recounts a “it doesn’t seem right” moment…

Back in the 90s as a young Police constable working in the Home Counties I decided to do a welfare check on a woman who had been the victim of domestic stalking and harassment. I had arrested her estranged husband and after interview he had been charged with harassment and bailed to magistrates court with conditions not to contact his wife.

Anyway, it was a quiet afternoon and I was in the area so I thought it would be a good idea to pop round and update her on the case and make sure she was ok.

On approaching the front door I could hear the sound of crying children inside. I knocked on the door repeatedly but there was no reply. I announced that it was the police and that I would force entry if I wasn’t allowed in as I was concerned for the welfare of the children. The woman opened the door and asked me what I wanted, which I found strange so I asked her if she was OK? She replied that she was and I should go away. I said that I wanted to see the kids to make sure they are ok. The woman called the kids to the door at which point I pulled them outside. I then grabbed the woman by the wrist and dragged her through the door as well. At that point the estranged husband appeared, from behind the front door. He was holding his right hand behind his back. I punched him in the solar plexus as hard as I could and he dropped to the floor groaning, as he did so he dropped an 8 inch kitchen knife.

I quickly handcuffed him to the rear and called for backup to transport him to the nick. I dragged the husband to the living room and sat him on the sofa and waited for my colleagues. As we waited I saw him glancing at a large black hold-all bag sat on the floor in the middle of the room. I opened the bag and inside was an axe, another knife, a large amount of plastic sheeting, a set of disposable coveralls and latex gloves.

The husband had basically turned up five minutes before I had with a ‘murder kit’. I honestly think that if I hadn’t knocked on the door when I did then he would have murdered his wife and children.

I’m glad that I followed my instincts and I’m glad that I am 6 foot 4 and 18 stone and he was 5 foot 7 and 12 stone otherwise the result could have been very different.

I love this man.

There is this guy, who is sitting on a subway with different, fake book covers. I find this so funny, so here are a few more. Enjoy! 🙂

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Swiss Steak

Swiss Steak is not Swiss. “Although many might think Swiss steak comes from Switzerland, in reality, the name comes from the ‘swissing’ technique for tenderizing meat,” according to The Spruce Eats. “Tough cuts of meat go through a mechanical tenderizer, or a swissing machine, and come out the other end with cube-shaped indentations.”

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This recipe for Smothered Swiss Steak is pure comfort food at its finest. It’s at the top of my list for when there is a chill in the air, and I’m looking for something warm and cozy for supper.

And although you can prepare this Swiss Steak recipe by simmering it on the stovetop, I like to braise it in the oven for a few hours. Because when it’s cold and blustery outside, it just makes my kitchen extra warm and inviting to have a pot full of something delicious slow-cooking in the oven. Also, can I just say that while these Swiss Steaks are in the oven simmering away, the whole house will be just amazingly fragrant with the aroma of home-cooked goodness!

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But I do tend to think of this recipe as something a bit old-fashioned (in a really good kind of way). This dish is something from my childhood, that my mom or grandma would prepare for supper on a cold fall or winter evening. Back in those days, growing up in Pennsylvania, fall was just magical to me (and still is to this day!) Hearty, warming foods were standard fare on those crisp autumn, after-school evenings, and were definitely a part of the magic.

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
  • 2 pounds cubed steak (cut into serving-size pieces if necessary)
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil (or other high-temperature cooking oil)
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 stalk celery, diced
  • 1 green bell pepper, thinly sliced
  • 8 ounces of cremini or white button mushrooms, sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 1 (15-ounce) can diced or stewed tomatoes (or use 1 pint of home-canned tomatoes)
  • 2 cups beef broth
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 pinch celery seed (optional)
  • 2 tablespoons of water + 2 tablespoons cornstarch

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 325° F. In a large resealable plastic bag, combine flour, salt, pepper, and granulated garlic. Add steak, a few pieces at a time, and shake to coat.
  2. On the stovetop, heat oil in a cast-iron Dutch oven (or other heavy, oven-safe pot) over medium-high heat. Brown steak in oil on both sides. Remove steaks to a plate.
  3. To the same pot, add the onion, celery, bell pepper, and mushrooms. Turn the heat down to medium, and cook and stir for 6-7 minutes, or until vegetables are beginning to soften. If needed, add a little extra oil. Add garlic and tomato paste, and cook for 1 additional minute.
  4. Stir in diced tomatoes, beef broth, Worcestershire sauce, thyme, sugar, and celery seed. Scrape the bottom of the pot with a spatula to release all of the flavorful bits. Return steaks to the pot, making sure they are covered by the gravy.
  5. Cover and bake 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until meat is tender. At this point, remove the pot from the oven and place it on the stovetop. Remove the steaks to a plate, leaving the gravy in the pot.
  6. In a small bowl, combine corn starch and water into a paste; stir into gravy. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring continuously, until gravy has thickened. Serve steaks with gravy, and mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or cooked white rice.

What are the ingredients for Smothered Swiss Steak?

Aside from being a nostalgic kind of recipe, though, I think it’s also a bit of an old-fashioned because I use cubed steaks for this dish, a cut of beef that I really don’t see too often in modern recipes.  I really believe these steaks deserve a revival, though, because when properly cooked low and slow, cubed steaks are just oh-so-tender. And as an added bonus, they are also typically very inexpensive. Often I can find cubed steaks on sale for less than the price of regular ground beef. But if you can’t easily find cubed steaks, just go ahead substitute thin-cut top round steaks.

And the gravy for these steaks? It’s a beefy-tomato gravy, filled with tender bell peppers, onions, celery, and mushrooms. And here comes the “smothered” part – this rich, thick, savory gravy is just begging to be smothered, not just over the steak, but also over a scoop of mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or even rice. Truly down-home comfort food!

Meet Shirō Ishii – a serious piece of shit

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Shirō Ishii

This guy was a Doctor and microbiologist- and a rather smart one at that. He was regarded as a brilliant person for nearly his entire life. He was well educated and joined the army as a doctor. While there he caught the eyes of his superiors and was sent for further education at Kyoto Imperial University.

During WW2 he was placed in charge of Unit 731 and this is what he was known for.

What was unit 731? Well, they were a scientific unit that conducted experiments and thought up new ways to win the war. Some examples of things they did include

  • Imprisoning women, raping them until they got pregnant, and then running horrid painful experiments on them just so they could see how certain poisons affected pregnant women.
  • They would infect people with syphilis and then cut them open (while alive and awake) so they could see what their bodies did as the infection progressed. Women, men, and even children were forcibly infected
    • This is called vivisection- its the practice of cutting someone open while alive to see what their body is doing and its typically done when experimenting on animals. In unit 731 they did it to people without anesthesia- always resulting in a slow agonizing death for the person.
  • Injected people with animal blood to see what happens (bad way to die)
  • Placed people in centrifuges and spun it until they died
  • Deprived prisoners of food and water to see how long it was until they died
  • Placed people in low-pressure chambers until their eyes popped out
  • Burned people alive to see how long they would live
  • Injected people with saltwater to see what would happen
  • Poisoned people to see the effects
  • gave people radiation poisoning to see the effects
  • Leave 3-day old babies in the cold just to see how long it took them to freeze to death
  • Tested flamethrowers on live people
  • Tested grenades on live people
  • Removed organs for fun. For instance, they would remove someone’s stomach and attach their esophagus to their intestines directly.
  • Tested hundreds of diseases and biological weapons on people

In all, around 10,000 prisoners were killed by Unit 731 and as many as 20,000 were tested on. The biological weapons produced by this unit were used to kill as many as 500,000 civilians

On a side note not even the Nazis used chemical weapons in WW2 (they only did in concentration camps). The ONLY nation to employ chemical weapons against civilian and military targets in WW2 was Japan.

You may wonder what happened to Shirō. I mean we caught him and put him on trial for war crimes right?

Nope

He was given full immunity in exchange for full disclosure of his tests. American microbiologists stated that Shirō’s findings were extremely valuable and impossible to replicate unless the experiments were done again. He was protected by the United States, provided with an ample salary, and sent off to the United States to live a life in luxury.

Shirō lived out the remainder of his life a free man in the United States, and traveled frequency to Japan where he was treated like royalty. He died in 1959.

Si Kaddour Benghabrit

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Si Kaddour Benghabrit

He was in charge of a mosque in Paris during World War II. He was originally born in Algeria before immigrating to France.

When World War II broke out, Germany began deporting Jews from France to concentration camps.

Si Kaddour began offering shelter to lots of Jews through willing Muslim families in the area.

When German inspectors came, he would lie about the records of Jews, saying that they were Muslim. He eventually had cellars and basements in mosques where he would allow the Jews to hide during the war. He also gave them fake certificates that would certify that they were Muslim, enabling them to escape certain death.

He had an open-door policy as well at his mosque. If any of the attendees had Jewish friends in need of refuge, they could bring them with them.

Si Kaddour saved 500 Jews by the end of the war. He risked his life in the process. And most people don’t even know of him.

A love bomber…

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A Love Bomber.

      • Day 1: “Dang you’re gorgeous.”
      • Day 2: “I feel like we have so much in common.”
      • Day 3: “I really like you.”
      • Day 4: “I feel like we’re soul mates.”
      • Day 5: “I love you.”

Love bombing is an attempt to influence a person by giving them affection and attention. Cult leaders like David Koresh used this tactic to control their followers.


Having experienced this before, the only way I can describe it is as if a sun is shining on you constantly for days, weeks and months. You’re blinded not by love, but by the idea of being wanted.

The love bomber makes you feel like you’re in a trance. They shower you with compliments, buy you gifts, promise a future and bombard you with romantic texts. It seems too good to be true because it’s an illusion.

Love bombers feed you this attention to gain something in return. Whether that’s money, power, control or sex.

They can’t love you because they don’t know you to love you.

They can’t love you because they don’t understand the meaning of the word.


Relationships take time. Boundaries, opinions and space need to be valued. Relationships that start off by resembling a romantic movie is an instant red flag.

It’s easy to create an attachment with a love bomber.

It’s harder to escape.

Get out before it becomes emotionally abusive.

Easy Buttermilk Drop Biscuits

Drop biscuits are one of the easiest baked goods to make.

Despite being so easy to make, these biscuits are tender, flaky, buttery, and one of the single best things you’ll ever put in your mouth.

And, by the way, they go GREAT with real salted butter.

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I’ve been nicknamed the “Biscuit Queen” by my family, because whenever we go out to eat for breakfast, the first thing I look for is biscuits. If there’s a biscuit on the menu, it’s going to be eaten.

Creating this recipe was the best AND worst decision. Since I’m a biscuit’s #1 fan, I feel like I’m well-qualified to tell you how good these little things are. Since I want to make them every week, my biscuit obsession can get a bit unhealthy…HA!

Serve with My Mom’s Homemade Strawberry Preserves.

What Are Drop Biscuits?

Drop biscuits are easy to make because they are made by simply dropping dough onto a baking sheet as opposed to rolling out and cutting dough into biscuits. No need for extra time or dishes!

Ingredients for Drop Biscuits

You need only 6 ingredients to make the most incredible drop biscuits:

  • All-purpose flour – flour is the base for our biscuits!
  • Cold buttermilk – buttermilk is the key ingredient for fluffy, flaky, tender drop biscuits. It also helps your biscuits rise.
  • Cold butter – butter gives biscuits flavor and moisture.
  • Baking powder – a combination of baking powder and baking soda helps drop biscuits rise and have a flaky, tender texture.
  • Baking soda – see above!
  • Salt – salt adds flavor.

Why COLD Butter and Buttermilk for Biscuits?

Cold ingredients, especially butter, are essential in biscuits. The cold butter pieces in the dough will produce steam when placed in the oven, creating moisture pockets and yielding a tender, flaky biscuit.

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How to Make Easy Drop Biscuits

Making drop biscuits is SO easy. You can make the dough and bake them in just 30 minutes! FULL instructions are in the recipe card below (this is just an outline!).

  1. Combine dry ingredients.

    In a large bowl, use a whisk to combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

  2. Add cold butter.

    Add in cold butter chunks. Use a fork or pastry/biscuit cutter to cut the butter into the dry ingredients to form a fine crumble.

  3. Add buttermilk.

    Add buttermilk and mix until just combined. The dough should be just wet enough to form a loose ball. Add a splash more buttermilk if the dough is too dry to form a loose ball.

  4. Form drop biscuits.

    On a greased baking sheet, use a ¼ cup measure to drop dough balls about an inch apart.

  5. Bake.

    Bake for 11-16 minutes at 425 degrees, until just golden.

What to Serve With Drop Biscuits

These buttermilk drop biscuits are absolutely AMAZING alone. But here are a few ways you can serve your biscuits to make them extra special:

  1. With 20-Minute Pumpkin Butter
  2. With My Mom’s Homemade Strawberry Preserves
  3. With Homemade Honey Peanut Butter
  4. As a dessert with Hot Fudge Sauce
  5. As a Pulled Pork Biscuit Slider

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How to Store Biscuits

Drop biscuits are best stored in an airtight container. They will keep well for 3-4 days!

Refresh them by heating them in a foil package in the oven at 350 degrees for 5-10 minutes.

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Keanu Reeves

He was abandoned by his father at 3 years old and grew up with 3 different stepfathers. He is dyslexic. His dream of becoming a hockey player was shattered by a serious accident. His daughter died at birth. His wife died in a car accident. His best friend, River Phoenix, died of an overdose. His sister has leukemia.

And with everything that has happened, Keanu Reeves never misses an opportunity to help people in need. When he was filming the movie “The Lake House,” he overheard the conversation of two costume assistants; One cried because he would lose his house if he did not pay $20,000 and on the same day Keanu deposited the necessary amount in the woman’s bank account; He also donated stratospheric sums to hospitals.

In 2010, on his birthday, Keanu walked into a bakery and bought a brioche with a single candle, ate it in front of the bakery, and offered coffee to people who stopped to talk to him.

After winning astronomical sums for the Matrix trilogy, the actor donated more than $50 million to the staff who handled the costumes and special effects – the true heroes of the trilogy, as he called them.

He also gave a Harley-Davidson to each of the stunt doubles. A total expense of several million dollars. And for many successful films, he has even given up 90% of his salary to allow the production to hire other stars.

In 1997 some paparazzi found him walking one morning in the company of a homeless man in Los Angeles, listening to him and sharing his life for a few hours.

Most stars when they make a charitable gesture they declare it to all the media. He has never claimed to be doing charity, he simply does it as a matter of moral principles and not to look better in the eyes of others.

This man could buy everything, and instead every day he gets up and chooses one thing that cannot be bought: To be a good person ♥ ️

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Fred Flintstone steak, Pot Roast, Monkey Pox Potato Peeling, and a lack of topsoil in todays installment

Please enjoy this selection of tidy morsels. have fun. Enjoy  the read, and have a great day!

I’m still busy in my move. Sorry that this post is so scant. I know that I should do better.

The Banquet of Chestnuts

The Catholic Church does not like to talk about the infamous Banquet of Chestnuts.

Allegedly, on October 31, 1501, a truly filthy sex orgy took place at the pope’s official residence in the Vatican. The host was Cesare Borgia, a cardinal and, to top it off, the son of Pope Alexander VI.

No less than 50 prostitutes are said to have been present. At first, they danced with the guests in full dress. Later in the evening, the candlesticks were placed on the floor and many chestnuts were scattered on it.

The naked prostitutes crawled across the floor on all fours, trying to pick up the chestnuts with their mouths, while the guests, including the Pope, watched them and enjoyed themselves.

There was even said to be a questionable contest. The guests who were able to perform the act with the prostitutes the most times were honored with valuable prizes, for example silk tunics or shoes.

The main source for this rather interesting claim is the Liber notarum, the ceremonial diary of Johannes Burckard, who was the Vatican’s master of ceremonies at that time.

The veracity of this source is increasingly doubted by today’s historians. However, this has not prevented various artists from using this peculiar dinner as inspiration for their works.

The German painter Heinrich Lossow was known for his illustrations for works by Shakespeare, Goethe and Schiller. But he also published some pornographic works that were received as extremely piquant at the time.

His most scandalous work was undoubtedly The Sin.

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The Sin

This particular painting is based on the events at the Banquet of Chestnuts. Heinrich Lossow was criticized by critics and the people for this work, but the church went one better. It accused the artist of all mortal sins at the same time.

Go East, My Son!

By Marwan Salamah for the Saker Blog

American nineteenth-century folklore tells of a young man asking his elders’ advice on what calling he should take up. The answer was a firm “Go West my son and grow!”, or to that effect. The gist of the advice was that the American West was at the time viewed as virgin, not yet settled and built up by the European immigrants. In fact, most of those who headed West did succeed, subject to exhibiting diligence, persistence, hard work, and some luck.

But today, in the twenty-first century, circumstances have changed. The West has matured, competition has increased, and returns have shrunk. Endless series of bubble booms and busts continue to occur and at ever shorter intervals. Classical economics concepts have gradually changed away from a real production economy to a paper economy which is considered by some to be fictitious, unreal, and unsustainable.

Today’s Western economy is dominated by the FIRE sectors (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) plus the military industry, all of which have usurped the bulk of the economy’s wealth and income, leaving far too little for the other sectors to survive let alone grow. The result is an alarming rise in extreme inequality with, it is claimed, the top 1% (or 10%) of the population owning the bulk of the wealth and income.

Other sectors have also grown, most prominent are those related to IT and services. But these are highly volatile and high-risk businesses and not all who enter them succeed or remain and prosper. Quite a few have turned into Zombie companies that absorb endless bouts of capital increases in the millions and even billions of Dollars but fail to show a profit.

The great western industry has all but disappeared. It has migrated to China, Asia, and elsewhere, as a result of an erroneous application of the famous economic edict of “maximizing profits”. It was applied exclusively to the short-term with total disregard to its negative long-term implications on both the companies themselves as well as the economy as a whole. The result, among other things, was the stripping of the West’s industrial capability, increasing its balance of trade deficit, creating endless supply chain bottlenecks, and increasing its vulnerability and reliance on the outside world.

Despite the negative description above, the US, so far, remains the biggest and strongest economy and the US Dollar remains the main trade currency, the main reserve currency held by the world’s central banks, and the number one safe haven currency. Also, we should by no means ignore the huge American agriculture capacity that has fed and continues to feed a substantial number of the world’s population.

But at the same, we cannot disregard the huge and important changes that are rapidly occurring elsewhere in the world, especially as most of these changes seem intent on competing directly, commercially and economically with the US and the West. Nor can we disregard the well-published data signaling a shrinkage in the West’s global market share and the gradual erosion of the US Dollar hegemony.

And once we add the increasingly belligerent geopolitical tug-of-war between the US and its allies against Russia, China, and part of the Global South, it quickly becomes apparent that the world is on the verge of a major historic and permanent split into two or more camps.

Regardless of who fares better in the coming split, it is clear that the economic development that began a few years ago in Russia, China, Eurasia, the Far East, and the Global South has been positive and impressive, and is likely to be more so if it continues – and all indications point to its continuity.

On this basis, it is logical to assume and expect a huge growth of business and investment opportunities in those changing countries (East and South), both quantitative and qualitative. Bear in mind that those markets are still more or less virgin in that they have not reached their market or financial peaks and have ample room for additional growth. The crown jewel here is that most of the available business and investment opportunities are in the “real” economy and not fictitious paper or pencil-pushing based. Many comprise opportunities in the industrial and agricultural fields and are thirsty for smart capital. The services, trading, and real estate sectors are similarly poised for development by those with proven know-how and expertise.

It is therefore not surprising to see Turkiye begin, a few years ago, to turn its attention Eastwards, especially after a decades-long frustrating wait for the glorious EU membership approval that never arrived.

But the true attention head-spinner is Iran’s resetting of its compass from West to East. After more than two millennia of looking West, Iran has at long last realized that its future lies in the East. Obviously, the US and West’s animosity, accompanied by an endless series of harsh sanctions, and the unlikelihood of a return to the nuclear agreement has not only tipped the Iranian scale away from the West but pushed it firmly eastwards where it sees a much brighter and mutually beneficial future.

As such, Iran began a couple of years ago with a mega multi-year investment agreement with China worth approx. $400 Mill to develop and upgrade its oil and industry sectors. It then joined several segments of the Belt & Road Initiative (the new Chinese Silk Road) as well as signed a joint venture agreement with India to develop Iran’s Arabian seaport of Chabahar as a main trade transit hub. In the process, it has significantly increased its trade with its northern, eastern, and southern neighbors and the trend appears continuing. On another front, it has recently jointly inaugurated the north-south route from Saint Petersburg through Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea all the way to the Arabian sea and henceforth to India and Asia. This is claimed to be a very fast and economic route and is another potential competitor to the Suez Canal. And finally, only last week, it signed a batch of agreements with Russia, including one with giant Gazprom to develop its many gas fields.

On the international organizations’ side, Iran joined last year the Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO), which is an important Asian economic and security cooperation organization. Turkey is a Dialogue Member and new applications are expected from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt. Similar developments are in progress in other Asian and Global South international organizations.

It is clear that the chess board layout is rapidly changing, and opportunities are aplenty. There is no logical reason not to head East and South… remember the early bird is usually well rewarded.

Just a few guns…

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American.

You may have heard on the news about a Southern California man who was put under 72-hour psychiatric observation when it was found he owned 100 guns and allegedly had 100,000 rounds of ammunition stored in his home. The house also featured a secret escape tunnel.

By Southern California standards, someone owning 100,000 rounds is considered “mentally unstable.

BUT…

In Michigan, he’d be called “the last white guy still living in Detroit.”

In Arizona, he’d be called “an avid gun collector.

In Arkansas, he’d be called “a novice gun collector.”

In Utah, he’d be called “moderately well prepared,” but they’d probably reserve judgment until they made sure that he had a corresponding quantity of stored food.

In Kansas, he’d be “A guy down the road you would want to have for a friend.”

In Montana, he’d be called “The neighborhood ‘Go-To’ guy.”

In Idaho, he’d be called “a likely gubernatorial candidate.”

In Georgia, he’d be called “an eligible bachelor.”

In North Carolina, Virginia, WV, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina and Minnesota he would be called “a deer hunting buddy.”

AND,OF COURSE,

In Florida , he’d just be “a guy who’s a little short on Ammo.”

Doomsday Approaches: Scientists Say That The Earth Will Run Out Of Usable Topsoil In 60 Years

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What will we do when we inevitably run out of topsoil?  This month, I have written a number of articles that show that the clock is ticking for humanity.  We are systematically destroying the planet that we live on, and we are already witnessing mass extinctions of plankton, insects and birds.  Our food is full of poisons, our water is full of poisons and the air that we breathe is full of poisons.  And it gets worse with each passing year.  But one thing that I haven’t talked about recently is the loss of our topsoil.  95 percent of the food that we eat comes from the soil, and so if we have no soil we have no food.  This is a crisis that has been building for decades, and now we are rapidly approaching a major crisis point.

The amount of land that is used for agriculture all over the world has been steadily climbing for decades, and the intensive farming techniques that have been employed have resulted in a staggering loss of topsoil

But beneath the feet of Iowa’s farmers, a crisis is unfolding. The average topsoil depth in Iowa decreased from around 14-18 inches (35-45cm) at the start of the 20th Century to 6-8 inches (15-20cm) by its end. Relentless tilling and disturbance from farm vehicles have allowed wind and water to whisk away this priceless resource.

The same picture is seen on farms worldwide. Soils are becoming severely degraded due to a combination of intensive farming practices and natural processes. As the layer of fertile topsoil thins, it gets increasingly difficult to grow crops for food. Without altering agricultural practices and urgently finding ways to preserve soil, the global food supply starts to look precarious.

According to Time Magazine, “soil is being lost at between 10 and 40 times the rate at which it can be naturally replenished”, and the outlook for the future is extremely bleak.

Sadly, this is even true here in the United States.  When early Americans first started to settle in the Midwest, a very thick layer of extremely dark topsoil was there to greet them.

But now that topsoil is rapidly disappearing, and what remains is soil that is “often much lighter in color”

The soil that’s darkest in color is widely known as topsoil. Soil scientists call this layer the “A-horizon.” It’s the “black, organic, rich soil that’s really good for growing crops,” says Evan Thaler, a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

It’s full of living microorganisms and decaying plant roots, also called organic carbon. When settlers first arrived in the Midwest, it was everywhere, created from centuries of accumulated prairie grass. Plowing, though, released much of the trapped carbon, and topsoil was also lost to wind and water erosion. The soil that remains is often much lighter in color.

I remember the thick, black soil that I could dig my hands into when I was a child.

I would love to experience that again, but the soil in the Midwest is far different today.

In fact, it is being estimated that the Midwest has lost 57.6 billion metric tons of topsoil already…

Since farmers began tilling the land in the Midwest 160 years ago, 57.6 billion metric tons of topsoil have eroded, according to a study published recently in Earth’s Future.  The loss has occurred despite conservation efforts implemented in the 1930s after the Dust Bowl, and the erosion rate is estimated to be double what the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says is sustainable. Future crop production could be severely limited if it continues, reports Rachel Crowell for Science News.

“Future crop production could be severely limited” is a nice way of saying that everyone is going to starve if something doesn’t change.

And that could happen a whole lot sooner than many people think.

According to the UN, all of our topsoil could be gone “within 60 years”

Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said on Friday.

About a third of the world’s soil has already been degraded, Maria-Helena Semedo of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told a forum marking World Soil Day.

Maria-Helena Semedo actually made that statement back in 2014.

So that means that we don’t actually have 60 years left.

If that projection is accurate, we only have 52 years remaining until all the topsoil is gone.

And one expert recently told CNBC that there are actually some places in the world that “have already lost all of their topsoil”

“There are places that have already lost all of their topsoil,” Jo Handelsman, author of “A World Without Soil,” and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told CNBC.

The impact of soil degradation could total $23 trillion in losses of food, ecosystem services and income worldwide by 2050, according to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.

2050 is only 28 years away.

Of course horrifying global famines will inevitably arrive long before we get to that point.

And we are actually hastening the demise of our soil by our own behavior.

Today, agricultural lands all over the planet are being saturated by trillions upon trillions of microplastics.

The amount of plastic that we produce continues to rise at an exponential rate, and that means that the amount of microplastics raining down on our farms will continue to rise at an exponential rate.

As the level of plastic in the soil keeps going up, it is going to become increasingly difficult to grow much of anything.

I know that the information in this article is difficult to take in, but it is vital that you understand what is ahead of us.

We aren’t just facing an economic collapse.

The truth is that what we are actually facing is the collapse of everything.

When I say that the clock is ticking for humanity, I am not exaggerating one bit.

Unless something really dramatic happens, we are heading into a future that is going to be far more horrible than most people would dare to imagine.

How Americans take care of their elderly..

I am 82 years old, I have 4 children, 11 grandchildren, 2 great-grandchildren and a room of 12 square meters.

I no longer have a home or expensive things, but I have someone who will clean my room, prepare food and bedding, measure my pressures and weigh me.

I no longer have the laughter of my grandchildren, I don’t see them growing, hugging and arguing. Some come to me every 15 days, some every three or four months, and some never.

I no longer work in the winter, I don’t bake cakes, I don’t dig up the garden. I still have hobbies and I like to read, but my eyes quickly hurt.

I don’t know how much longer, but I have to get used to this loneliness. Here at home, I lead group work and help those who are worse than me as much as I can. Until recently, I read aloud to an immobile woman in the room next to me, we used to sing together, but she died the other day.

They say life is getting longer. Why? When I’m alone, I can look at photos of my family and memories I brought from home. And that’s all.

I hope that the next generations will understand that families are born to have a future (with children) and that they do not forget about the family even in old age.

Please don’t show this to my children.

Grandma Maria loves you.

Chinese live in multi-generational homes…

From HERE

Many families have a growing number of multi-generational members, and the housing costs that can accompany such a large population can add up quickly. In these situations, Multi-Generational Homes can be a great option. These properties are usually built with several different floor plans in mind. For example, young adults often move home with their parents after college, but they don’t necessarily need a place to live. In many cases, the home will be used by the whole family, and the members of each generation can enjoy the same living space.

home builder

Many family members find that living in a large house offers several benefits, including easy home financing. In addition, because the family will be living under one roof, financial obligations and responsibilities can be shared among the various members. According to a former mortgage broker, multi-generational homes are particularly advantageous for managing property expenses. For example, you can share utility and insurance bills with each other, and two construction loans can be merged into one.

Many Asian cultures have multi-generational homes as a natural part of everyday life. South Asians have a common saying that the kids are their parents’ retirement plan. In many cultures, grandparents are a central part of family life and teach respect for the elderly. In addition, they pass on cultural traditions and a connection to their ancestry. But with rising housing costs and limited real estate, more families are opting for multi-generational homes.

Multi-generational homes can provide financial benefits during challenging times and allow family members to stay close to one another. They are also more flexible than traditional single-family homes and can accommodate multiple uses. So, whether you have multiple generations or only need space for one family, these homes are the ideal solution. There are several benefits to having this type of home. And they don’t have to cost a fortune. And, as long as you have the land and the financial means, you’ll be happy with your choice.

Having several generations in a household can be difficult. It’s essential to have separate living spaces for each generation. Those with older relatives will appreciate the privacy and independence of their aging parents. Children will appreciate privacy. A multi-generational home can also provide financial benefits when the elderly need extra help. The benefits of these homes are many. They can provide comfort to multiple generations and help their families avoid expensive medical costs.

For those with aging parents, multi-generational homes are an ideal compromise. While their parents are still independent, the adult children can live with them and save for a new apartment. Likewise, a multi-generational home can also be a transitional home for a college student. This type of home is often the right choice for your family. And it can also be a great financial benefit if you have elderly parents.

Building a multi-generational home is a smart choice for many reasons. First, the financial benefits are immense. A multi-generational home can be ideal for parents and their adult children to live. A single-family can enjoy the freedom and security of a single home while having the convenience of two separate homes. Finally, the multi-generational structure will allow your parents to live closer to their elderly parents if your family is older.

Multi-generational home is an excellent choice for aging families. A multi-generational home can be a wonderful investment for all family members. The added benefits of a multi-generational home include the convenience of having a large space for the elderly. In addition, they can be a good fit for all of your family members. There are also several benefits to living in a community with multiple generations.

Having a multi-generational home allows you to enjoy the benefits of a single home for your family members. It is also beneficial for the elderly, who may want to live close to their parents, as they will not have to worry about finding someone to care for them. Having a multi-generational home will also avoid the costs associated with multiple mortgages. A multi-generational home can also help you save on taxes, as your income will be more stable.

Police constable Neman Ashraf tells his story…

On June 1st, at around 2 in the morning, we received information of an eight years old girl brought to a private hospital, unconscious, injured and bruised. The man who had brought her left the premises without staying after only informing that the girl works at his home as a maid.

Police responded immediately upon learning of the news.

Condition of that girl was critical, a few officers remained at the hospital and others left to find the suspect or any pieces of information about him who had fled the scene.

His name is Hassan, a young man living at a posh and decorated housing society, well off family, rich people. Husband, wife and their child… an infant. They were keeping the girl “maid” whose name is Zahra as “help” to take care of their son.

But as the doctors shared medical reports of the victim, we learned that the girl beaten but physically “sexually abused” too as there were signs of bleeding. She was raped.

City’s Police Chief took notice of the matter right away and ordered registration of a case against the offenders with charges of attempted murder, rape and more. There was no complainant, no family of that girl present as her parents lived hundreds of miles away and had willingly gave their daughter in service of those people in return of money.

Police became complainant, and registered the case.

Minutes after that, the girl passed away.

Hunt was on, dozens and dozens of cops were dispatched to trace out the culprits and within a day, both of the accused, the husband and his wife were arrested, murder charge had been added to the case as of now, and this is where I personally and most probably my colleagues too went into shock of a lifetime.

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Arrested for the repeated rape, murder, and death of a 8 year old girl who was their slave.

Confessions, so horrific that make me say “May lord have mercy”.

That man abused the child to death as a “punishment”, for what you ask? For mistakenly opening their parrot cage that led to one of their parrots flying away.

That is it.

Wow. I mean… is that all there is to make a child subject of such gruesome endless torture and abuse?

There were videos found in his mobile phone that depicts the true horrors of what happened, the pain and misery the little Zahra went through, and all of this done by someone we’d otherwise consider a perfectly fine sensible person by his appearance.

12 injuries including vital injuries at the private parts, folks. I won’t share the images out of respect for the dead as well as for some of you will drop everything and feel like your heart skipping its rhythm. An eight years old baby girl. At such age, children giggle and roam free of worries, don’t they?

Of course, I’d consider her parents responsible of this despicable atrocity equally, as It was their duty to ensure their safety and well-being of their child. I can understand, that people are poor, needy and that people do let their children work in other people’s home for money.

Very respectfully, I don’t agree with that, and consider it insanely wrong. No matter how poorer or needy I get, I’d never let my child be on the mercy of another soul, I’ll never let my child be in service of a master simply because that’s a child we’re talking about for goodness sake!!! Those who do find it feasible, I’m not going to criticize them, they may have their reasons, but I fail to see a good one and I condemn the practice strongly.

So yea,

Zahra is gone.

I feel like she is up there in heavens, very contented of finally getting rid of all those who pained her.

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We are committed to ensure justice for the little angel, Sternest conviction and befitting punishment to be ensured. We the cops; owe it to her at the very least.

Tomahawk Steak

Tomahawk steak is the classic steak that Fred Flintstone ate, according to Omaha Steaks. It’s an over-the-top, larger-than-life, bone-in ribeye steak, meant to impress. It’s similar to the Cowboy Steak with one difference: The Tomahawk has a larger bone.

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This Reverse Seared Smoked Tomahawk Steak is slow smoked to perfection and then reverse seared over a hot griddle and served with a delicious garlic and herb butter compound. The result is an incredibly juicy and tender steak with a crisp outer crust that is packed with smoky flavor!

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Why You’ll Love This Recipe

  • The reverse sear method – Reverse searing is the process of cooking (or in this case smoking) steak slowly and at a low temperature before searing on a hot griddle to finish it off. This results in an incredibly tender and delicious piece of meat with a nice crust on the outside. A Blackstone and pellet grill works great for this recipe, but additional searing options are listed below.

 

  • Great for special occasions – A tomahawk steak is a rather expensive cut of beef but the next level flavor and all around presentation make it a fantastic cut of meat for a special occasion.
  • Garlic and herb butter compound – This tomahawk steak recipe is served with a delicious butter compound made up of fresh herbs and garlic that adds even more flavor to this cut of meat.

Tomahawk Steak vs Ribeye Steak

A tomahawk steak is essentially a fancy bone-in ribeye steak. This thick cut of meat is butchered leaving at least 5 inches of rib bone in tact on the steak. A cowboy steak, also a bone-in ribeye, has a shorter bone than the tomahawk.

A tomahawk ribeye typically has great marbling (meaning more fat throughout the meat muscle). In addition, it’s an extremely tender cut of beef. Because the rib bone of the tomahawk is left in tact, much of the juices are preserved helping to give it its fantastic flavor!

Ingredients Needed

For Smoked Tomahawk

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For Butter Compound

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For Butter Compound

Ingredient Notes

  • Tomahawk Ribeye Steak – You’ll often find this cut of meat at your local butcher rather than the regular grocery store. Look for thick steaks (approximately 2 inches) with good marbling.
  • Avocado oil – this helps the dry rub spices adhere to the steak. You can also use olive oil.
  • Butter or Ghee – Sear the steak in butter or ghee for even more flavor! Ghee is a fantastic paleo alternative to butter.

How To Smoke A Tomahawk Steak

  • Pat the steak dry with paper towels and apply a thin layer of the avocado oil over the entire surface of the steak.
  • In a small bowl mix the sea salt, pepper, granulated garlic, and dried thyme. Rub dry rub all over the outside of the steak including the sides of the steak, and press it in.
  • Set your tomahawk steak aside and allow it to come to room temperature for approximately two hours prior to beginning the cooking process. This will ensure a more even cook.
  • Preheat the Traeger or other pellet smoker to 250 degrees F when ready to cook.

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  • Insert the temperature probe of the meat thermometer into the thickest part of the steak. Place the steak directly on the hot grill grates and smoke at 250F until the internal temperature reaches 115 degrees F and then remove the steak from the smoker. (The time will vary based on the size and thickness of the steak).
  • While the meat smokes, mix all ingredients for the herbed compound butter in a small bowl. Place the bowl in the fridge until ready to serve.

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  • When the steak is nearing the end of the cook, add the ghee (or butter) to a preheated cast iron skillet or a preheated blackstone griddle and allow it to melt (being careful not to let it burn).
  • Add the steak to the hot griddle and sear for 2-3 minutes per side until the internal temperature of the steak reaches 135F or your desired doneness.
  • Let the steak rest on a cutting board for 5 minutes before serving topped with the compound butter.

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  • When the steak is nearing the end of the cook, add the ghee (or butter) to a preheated cast iron skillet or a preheated blackstone griddle and allow it to melt (being careful not to let it burn).
  • Add the steak to the hot griddle and sear for 2-3 minutes per side until the internal temperature of the steak reaches 135F or your desired doneness.
  • Let the steak rest on a cutting board for 5 minutes before serving topped with the compound butter.

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Recipe FAQ’s

Why should I let the steak rest?

Resting steak after cooking makes a big difference as it allows the juices in the steak to redistribute throughout the meat rather than drain out upon cutting immediately.
The internal temperature will continue to rise as your steak rests which is why it’s important to remove steak from the heat source prior to it reaching the internal temperature you desire.

At what internal temperature is steak done?

The USDA suggests an internal temperate of 145 degrees F plus a 3 minute rest for steak. However, cooking times and temperatures will vary based on your desired degree of doneness. I always recommend using a meat thermometer, like the meater+.

In addition, steak should be removed from the heat source when the internal temp is about 5 degrees lower than your desired level of doneness to prevent it from overcooking as it rests.

Rare – 125 degrees F
Medium Rare – 135 degrees F
Medium – 145 degrees F
Medium Well – 150 degrees F
Well Done – 160 degrees F

Source: certifiedangusbeef.com

Can I make this steak on a charcoal grill?

Yes! While the process differs slightly, you’ll still get a great charcoal smoke flavor on a grill without an electric smoker. The process involves cooking the steak over indirect heat before a hot sear with more airflow. This is a great article on How to Reverse Sear a Tomahawk Steak on a charcoal grill.

A Disease That Can Make It Feel Like Someone Is Peeling Your Skin With A Potato Peeler Is Spreading At An Exponential Rate

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I would highly recommend that you take this new global monkeypox outbreak very seriously.  On May 6th, there was one case.  Now it has spread to 78 countries and there are 14,945 cases.  In nation after nation we have seen monkeypox cases take off at an exponential rate, and that includes the United States.  Monkeypox cases have now been confirmed in 45 U.S. states, and the total number of U.S. cases has jumped to 2,102.  Any chance of containing this disease is gone, and that is really bad news.

Many have pointed out to me that this virus has been spreading primarily among those that are engaged in certain types of risky sexual activity, but that is not the only way that it spreads.

A bartender in Dallas named Luke Shannahan recently got monkeypox, and he is not quite sure how he contracted it

He’s not sure exactly how he got it, but Luke was contacted by the Dallas Health Department who told him he may have been exposed to monkeypox.

“I was at bars. I was going to pool parties. I did attend a music event over the weekend and recently all of those people have been becoming positive,” Luke said. “Apparently it was a contact tracing phone call.”

It is entirely possible that he was engaged in sexual activity that he is not admitting.

But if it is true that a lot of people that were at the same music event ended up contracting monkeypox, that would suggest that it is spreading fairly easily even in casual settings.

After the call from the Dallas Health Department, he was given a monkeypox vaccine, but that didn’t prevent what came next

Shannahan was administered a monkeypox vaccine after he was diagnosed, but still became bedridden for two days and felt so ill he feared for his life.

I keep making the same point, but most people out there still don’t seem to get it.

This is not the same monkeypox that we have dealt with before.

Scientists are telling us that there are approximately 50 key mutations that set this virus apart from previous strains of monkeypox…

But in the new study, when microbial genomics researcher João Paulo Gomes of Portugal’s National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge (INSA) and his colleagues compared 15 virus samples from the current outbreak with viruses isolated from people who traveled to West Africa in 2018 and 2019, they found that the present-day virus had mutated about 50 times in just four years.

So the truth is that we may be starting from square one because this virus is radically different from anything that we have previously faced.

And as I have warned in previous articles, this is a virus that you definitely do not want to catch.

According to Shannahan, any time that one of the sores on his skin touched something, it felt like “someone is taking a potato peeler to your skin”

Revealing his illness, Shannahan told KHOU 11: ‘It’s just the most traumatic experience I’ve ever had. It’s the worst sick I’ve ever been.

‘You have these blisters that are inflamed and anytime it grazes something or touches something, it literally feels like someone is taking a potato peeler to your skin.’

It turns out that Shannahan has also had COVID, but he says that monkeypox is “100 times worse”

‘The pain and tenderness was constant,’ he said.

Asked whether it was like Covid, he said: ‘Oh, 100 times worse. this was a totally different level of extreme fatigue.’

If the number of cases continues to rise at an exponential rate, it won’t be too long before monkeypox is literally everywhere.

So what will we do then?

If it can spread among people gathered at a music festival, then it can also spread at a church, at a store or at a school.

Will health authorities ultimately decide that extended lockdowns are necessary?

And will the general public start clamoring for such lockdowns?

Let’s hope not.  Personally, I don’t want to see lockdowns in the United States ever again for any reason.

But once people start to understand the sort of pain this virus causes, there will be a lot of panic among the general public.  Shannahan says that during his worst days it was as if “someone took a ball of needles and kept on stabbing you with it”

“The pain and tenderness was constant,” Shannahan said. “It’s like if someone took a ball of needles and kept on stabbing you with it.”

Of course Shannahan is not the only victim that is speaking out.

Another victim named Gabriel Morales says that he spent eight days alone in his apartment in “excruciating pain” after he contracted the virus…

Although he was covered with lesions, it took four hours of phone calls, and then five hours in a Harlem emergency room, for Gabriel Morales to be tested for the monkeypox virus earlier this month. And that was just the beginning of his wait.

Mr. Morales was sent home and told the Department of Health would call with his results in less than a week. The call never came.

He spent the next eight days alone in his apartment in what he described as excruciating pain, trying to find someone to prescribe him pain medication and a hard-to-access antiviral drug.

Doesn’t that sound fun?

If this virus is not contained, we could soon have millions upon millions of victims suffering through the most intense pain that they have ever experienced in their entire lives.

And just about everyone else could be in a state of full-blown panic because they are so fearful of catching the virus themselves.

There is a very real possibility that this plague could cause even more panic than COVID, and so it is absolutely imperative that authorities get this thing under control.

Unfortunately, many experts are now entirely convinced that it will be impossible to do so

It has been a mere nine weeks since the United Kingdom announced it had detected four cases of monkeypox, a virus endemic only in West and Central Africa. In that time, the number of cases has mushroomed to nearly 13,000 in over 60 countries throughout Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, new parts of Africa, South Asia, and Australia.

The growth in cases and the geographic spread has been rapid and relentless.

Now, even as global health officials race to curb spread of the virus, most experts polled by STAT said they don’t believe it will be possible to contain it.

For the record, I specifically warned that something just like this would happen.

Now that day has arrived.

I am still hoping that the numbers will start to level off and that this crisis will start to fade.

But I have been closely watching the numbers each week and so far that has not happened.

In fact, I believe that the WHO will soon officially declare that we have another global pandemic on our hands.

An era of great pestilences is here, and none of our lives will ever be the same again.

American Host REACTS to FACTS about CHINA

"China is run by engineers. - We're fucked."

This is a fun video. Please check it out.

Yankee Pot Roast

Pot roast has been a long-time popular dish in New England, especially appreciated on long, cold winter nights. Food world icon James Beard claimed that the dish’s roots can be traced back to France—apparently, French immigrants displayed their cooking method, à l’étouffée, for tenderizing meats, and thus the pot roast was born.

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Pot Roast

This pot roast recipe is an easy and absolutely delicious dinner! The trick? Canned onion soup! This recipe has been in my family for decades, passed down from generation to generation – and it’s the absolute best!

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Pot Roast

My grandmother came up with this pot roast recipe, simply using a big beef chuck roast, cans of condensed onion soup, potatoes and veggies. That’s it! Assembly takes just a few minutes, before you pop your pot roast in the oven and let it slow cook for four hours. For tender, flavorful pot roast, follow these steps. It can’t get easier!

Ingredients for Pot Roast

  • Boneless beef chuck roast – boneless beef chuck roasts make the best pot roast! I do not recommend chuck shoulder roasts for pot roast. A shoulder roast is a different cut of beef that is leaner and doesn’t shred as well as boneless chuck!
  • Canned French Onion Soup – onion soup will flavor your roast in a delicious premade oniony beef broth without the extra effort of making your own broth! My grandma always used Campbell’s Condensed French Onion Soup because of its rich flavor. It’s delicious. This is not an ad!
  • Fresh herbs (optional) – I like to add fresh herbs like rosemary and thyme to my onion soup broth for aromatics. It’s the perfect extra touch! This is optional.
  • Potatoes and root vegetables (optional) – although this step is optional, why not cook your sides in the broth with your pot roast? I like using baby red potatoes and baby carrots. You can also add cubed rutabagas, turnips, pearl onions or shallots!

How to Make Pot Roast

  1. Choose the right piece of meat in the grocery store! You want a 3 to 4 pound boneless chuck roast. A chuck shoulder roast is not the same thing! Make sure the size of your pot roast is between 3-4 pounds so the cooking time listed below gives you the best results!
  2. Place your chuck pot roast in a roasting pan. I use my 12x10x2 inch roasting pan. You’ll want a pan that’s large enough to fit your roast and deep enough to fit the broth!
  3. Add 4-5 cans of onion soup, so your roast is mostly submerged in liquid. I usually end up using five 10.5 ounce cans.
  4. Add as many potatoes, carrots and other veggies that can fit without the soup overflowing out of the pan! If your potatoes or vegetables are large, cut them into rough cubes.
  5. If you want to add in some herbs, pinch off a small handful of rosemary and thyme from the sprigs. If you only have dried herbs, you can use them instead!
  6. Cover your pan tightly with foil and place your pot roast in a preheated 300-degree oven for 4 hours. You might want to place a baking sheet or a few sheets of foil on the bottom rack of your oven to catch any juices that overflow!
  7. Let your pot roast slow cook for those 4 hours, untouched! At 4 hours, your roast should reach an internal temperature of at least 190 degrees for tender pot roast. Carefully take your roast out of the oven and enjoy, with lots of spoonfuls of that delicious onion soup broth.

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Pot Roast

Ingredient Substitutions

  • Fresh herbs – substitute dried herbs for fresh herbs.
  • I do not recommend using dried onion soup mix!

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Use 4-5 cans of soup so that the pot roast is mostly covered in onion soup broth.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the best cut for pot roast?

Boneless beef chuck roast is the best cut of meat for pot roast. A chuck shoulder roast is not the same thing! A shoulder roast is a different cut of beef that is leaner and doesn’t shred as well as boneless chuck roast. The shredded texture of chuck pot roast is unmatched!

Is pot roast beef or pork?

Pot roast is a beef dish, made by slow cooking (braising) an inexpensive, typically tough cut of beef in liquid. The liquid is usually a rich broth that not only tenderizes the beef but flavors it! Looking for slow-roasted pork instead? Try this Pulled Pork recipe!

What are the best potatoes for pot roast?

The best potatoes are baby red potatoes. They fit well in a roasting pan without cutting them, and baby red potatoes have a thin skin and a waxy texture that stand up well to slow-cooking.

What to do with leftover pot roast?

My favorite way to use leftover pot roast is to make a pot roast sandwich! Use rye or your favorite bread, slather with mustard, and stack with shredded hot or cold pot roast. There’s nothing better in the world!

How long is pot roast good for?

A cooked pot roast should last for up to 5 days in the refrigerator.

How to reheat your pot roast?

Reheat your pot roast by shredding it into small pieces in the broth, covering with foil, and heating in the oven at 350 degrees until hot. If you’re really in a pinch, place shredded pot roast, broth and veggies in a microwave safe covered dish and heat in increments of 30 seconds until hot.

Can you freeze pot roast?

Absolutely! Pot roast freezes very well, although the veggies might get mushy. I recommend using frozen pot roast within 3-4 months.

What to Serve with Pot Roast

One of the best parts about this pot roast recipe is that it’s easy: your veggies and potatoes (the side dishes) go right into the pan to slow cook with your roast for a complete dinner!

Root vegetables like carrots, turnips and rutabagas are classic accompaniments for pot roast. I love using a blend of veggies, along with baby potatoes and pearl onions or peeled shallots. They’ll absorb all the rich flavors of the onion soup broth, which is just AMAZING!

You can also serve your pot roast with Homemade Yeast Rolls, Buttery Crispy Potatoes Anna, Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes, or Roasted Carrots & Leeks.

From the ex-con forum…

I did 15 years in prison and when I got out it was like being on another planet. Everything had changed so much and it was so overwhelming, I couldn’t even walk into a store or just be around everyday people without panicking and sweating, words couldn’t describe how I felt… I stayed at a men’s shelter for 11 months and did any kind of work I could do. I got a car, got my own place and met a woman who changed my life. I’m a plumber, but I had been gone so long and so much had changed that I was scared to get back into plumbing, plus I had 20 years probation. I was blessed to be given the greatest Probation Officer in the world, who after time had faith and believed in me. Don’t get me wrong, when I screwed up and/or got too cocky she let me know who was in charge and hammered me!! But I kept proving myself and she would give me a little more and a little more lead way which also built my confidence in myself. That’s how a P.O. should act and treat you, especially as long as I had been down. I would not have or be in the situation that I’m blessed with if it wasn’t for having the Probation Officer I was given…. Thank you Kimiko..

My P.O. gave me the ok to work at a plumbing Company and I was rusty as hell and felt stupid but I stuck with it. Plumbing prices had gone up 4 to 5 times higher from when I got put in prison and it blew my mind. I made. 40 cents an hour in prison and now I was making $20 an hour and I was in heaven. I kept giving people breaks on the jobs I did, especially the elderly and it wasn’t going over good with the company and we butted heads over me doing this where I finally said that I think I can do better on my own and the owner laughed and said, “ Good luck “… They just thought I was a crazy old long hair and didn’t know what I was talking about…

So I talked with my P.O. and she gave me the green light to start my company. I hit the ground running. I contacted the Contracting Board , took the written part of the test and had to go before a 6 member panel and prove to them verbally and with documentation that I had turned my life around, because I was a felon. So I spoke (and I can talk) for 45 minutes and… they unanimously agreed to give me my Plumbing License…Ha!!!😎😎😎 . Just another thing all the know- it-alls said that I wouldn’t be able to get and/or do…I had built my credit up and got a $15,000 loan and started hitting up property management companies and started getting jobs and worked 12 to 14 hour days… that was 4 years ago and I haven’t looked back!! I let all the companies that I work for and all my long time regular customers know that I was in prison. All the stories you heard from the guys who got out and came back saying, “nobody will hire you or you can’t get a job”.. I don’t believe it!!! People LOVE the underdog and come back stories, you might get a few who are ignorant, but for the most part people WANT to see you succeed and go out of their way to help you anyway they can….

I just bought my 3rd house , I have 2 guys working for me and the work just keeps coming in… i don’t advertise, only the artwork on my van and business cards …word of mouth is the best. At my 5 year mark of being out I got a lawyer, petition the court to consider letting me off probation and the judge granted my motion and terminated the 15 years of probation I had left.. which rarely happens and guess who said THAT would never happen….the haters.…I was a drug addict and I was a hot mess and I wouldn’t have any of this if it wasn’t for my God and my Sobriety. I promised my God, myself and my daughter that I would do everything I could not to be that person that I was, if he could just help me make it out of prison alive. God kept up his end of the bargain and I have been sober since the day they put handcuffs on me on December 23rd 2000… And the woman I met… She’s my best friend, my beacon of light and loves me to death and she went and married me and it will be 4 years this December of 2021 and I’ve never been so happy!! It’s like a dream come true. I get to open my eyes every morning seeing this angel …. Thank you God!!

I was released from prison June 12th, 2015….

The reason I’ve written this long ass post is to try and pass on …it CAN be done!!! Don’t listen to the know-it-alls that got out and kept coming back inside saying how “you can’t do this, or you can’t do that”.. they didn’t want to put the work in!!! I did EVERYTHING they all said that I wouldn’t be able to do..I didn’t write all this to brag, I wrote this to let y’all know your dreams can come true after you get out no matter what you did… go for it!

An event at the Kroger Grocery Store…

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“I went to Kroger tonight wearing one of my husband’s sweatshirts. I got in line to check out and the man in front of me asked if the sweatshirt was mine.

I said ‘oh no, it’s my husband’s.’ It caught me pretty off guard, to say the least. He then asked if Austin was with me so he could say thank you and I just said ‘thank you, but unfortunately, he’s deployed right now.’

The man then, without hesitation started putting my groceries up on the belt with his and told me he was paying for my groceries tonight.

I was speechless.

The only thing I could get out was, ‘oh my gosh, are you sure, thank you so much’ almost a dozen times. He said, ‘that place over there almost took me away from my wife and my four kids. Promise you’ll stay true and honest to him while he’s gone and love him like you’ve never loved him before when he gets home.’

I’m still in shock over an hour later.

There’s still so much good in the world and we need to start focusing on that rather than focusing on all the bad.”

Oligarchy or Patriarchy? Rule by the Few or Rule for the Many?

By Batiushka for the Saker Blog

Introduction: Capitalism or Communism?

A commentator on this site recently accused me of being ‘a visceral anti-Communist’! I was quite amused (but also grateful, as he has inspired this essay). Such an accusation goes back to the old twentieth-century apparent abyss between ‘Left and Right’. Actually, although I have always been a social conservative, I have also always been for social justice, as I have said elsewhere. This would make me, I suppose, both left and right. Indeed, I have elsewhere (in the USA) been accused of being a ‘Socialist’, though it does not take much to be accused of Socialism in the USA. The word ‘justice’ alone is usually enough.

How do we square the circle, reconcile the apparently irreconcilable difference, as it seemed in the last century, between left and right? Let us look at the two systems of governance in today’s world, the Western system of the 13%, which is in effect rule by the few, in Greek called ‘Oligarchy’, and the system of the world’s 87%, rule for the many, which I will call ‘Patriarchy’. (Here I blatantly ignore the stereotypical feminist rejection of such a word, because it means something quite different to what hidebound Western feminists, imprisoned by their ideology, understand by it).

Oligarchy

Oligarchy (1) is simply Neo-Feudalism, rule by robber-barons, in this case, the financial barons who live in their contemporary castles. This is why Oligarchy is Anti-National, Anti-Sovereign, Anti-Traditional Religion, Anti-Traditional Culture, Anti-National Infrastructure and Anti-Family (2). This is why Oligarchy, through its CIA and other assets, has over the generations brought down so many monarchies and national governments, like that of De Gaulle in France in 1968. It does not mind fictitious monarchies, as in the UK, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Spain, as they are simply businesses, manipulations of the masses for large sums of money.

The Oligarchy does not like national identity, it destroys nation-states, as in the EU, for it wants ‘World Government’, which is code for World Dictatorship. This is the Dictatorship of the uprooted, which is why the Jewish component in it is strong (Jews have been uprooted ever since the Romans uprooted them in 70 AD). Oligarchy is based on the priority of accumulating money and therefore guarantees corruption, instability and the boom-bust cycle, because it rules by the financial sector. Hence the importance of Wall Street in New York, The City in London, Frankfurt in Germany and La Bourse in Paris. Hence the importance in all these countries of financial indices, which, so strangely, are always announced in their national news by their media.

Although Neo-Feudalism is also called Neo-Liberalism and is more commonly still known by the euphemism ‘Democracy’, it is run on the base profit motive, known by the euphemism ‘Monetarism’. It is certainly not Democracy because political parties are controlled by ultra-wealthy ‘donors’ and ‘lobbies’, that is, by the Oligarchy. This is why Democracy is also unfairly called ‘Demonocracy’, the choice for voters between a moron and a cretin. Very sadly, judging by recent leaders of the US/UK/EU, perhaps that is not so unfair, for most Western leaders are indeed oligarchs (Bush, Trump), or else the puppets of oligarchs (Macron, Draghi). The Oligarchy’s aim is always to preserve its elitist privileges.

No wonder there are so many conspiracy theories around covid, for example, that the Oligarchy invented covid because it wanted to kill off or zombify seven billion plus in order to create more resources for itself. By definition the profit motive of Oligarchy has no interest in the majority of the world because it wishes to strip their natural resources. Another word for this is ‘Parasitism’. The Oligarchy plunders the rest of the world. This strategy is enforced very aggressively by militaristic crusades (just as in the twelfth century, except now with high tech), forcing others to sell off (‘privatise’) their land, mineral resources, utilities and infrastructure to the Oligarchy’s agents.

This is why the Oligarchy is dominated by two sectors: finance and militarism, by its aggressive economic and military warfare against the rest of the world. Any who resist are threatened by economic sanctions or bombing (‘back into the Stone Age’). This is why the USA has 750 foreign military bases, spread across 80 nations. (After the USA is the UK, with one fifth of the US population, so with ‘only’ 145 bases) (3). Therefore the Oligarchy creates clients around the world wherever it can. These vassals follow exactly what the Oligarchy tells them to do. In other words, they are ‘zelenskyised’, for the Oligarchy has as its strategy looting the rest of the world, as in the Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, Syria etc etc.

Patriarchy

‘Patriarchy’ is rule for the benefit of the people. Patriarchy, exactly the opposite of Oligarchy, is Pro-National, Pro-Sovereignty, Pro-Traditional Religion, Pro-Traditional Culture, Pro-National Infrastructure and Pro-Family. The four great traditional religions of the world, Orthodox Christianity (and its cousin of Latin American, African and Asian Catholicism), Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, are Patriarchal. The bulk of the world, over 6 billion people, Russia, most of Asia (China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam…), Africa and Latin America, confess Patriarchy, ‘throne, altar and cottage’ (4). Thus, in the Tsar’s Russia, the State ran the economy through private investors, competing for contracts granted by the State.

Today, China, ruled by Chinese Nationalism, even though it is called Chinese Communism, does much the same, though shunning the central planning that discredited Communism in the Soviet and Chinese past. India does the same. They let people get rich by being creative, by being productive, but add a component of social and national responsibility through reference to the national religious/philosophical ideology. Wealth is to be used widely, for the Nation is a higher value than mere lucre. Although we can find exceptions of corrupt oligarchs, they are the exceptions that prove the rule. When the exceptions get caught in China and Belarus, at least, they are taken out and shot, in China in prison yards, in Belarus in the forest And oligarchs do not always have an easy time of it elsewhere.

The Patriarchal countries of Iran, pre-invasion Iraq, Libya and Syria, Russia and China are the enemies of the Oligarchy because they create industrial development by creating their own infrastructure, they provide everything to help do business and create the conditions for the potential prosperity of all. Patriarchy also provides free education and healthcare. This is exactly what ‘autocratic’ Prussia and Russia did five and six generations ago, with free education and healthcare, social insurance and pensions. Patriarchy provides the infrastructure for the basic human needs of the working people.

The Oligarchy called Patriarchy ‘Autocracy’ (Moghul India, Imperial China, pre-1917 Russia), and now call it ‘Socialism’ or ‘Communism’, because these are the opposite of their elitist ‘Democracy’. Their ‘Democracy’ is what is dictated by Oligarchy. Any country that goes its own way or develops the potential power to go its own way, such as China and Russia, is called a ‘Dictatorship’ by the Oligarchy’s paid hirelings in its propaganda mouthpieces, which it calls ‘the Western media’. For Oligarchy sells off State services like education, healthcare, schools, universities, hospitals, roads, railways and public utilities, water, electricity gas and telecom, in order to pay dividends to shareholders. This is why countries like China and Russia are the Oligarchy’s enemies.

Patriarchy is any country that is strong enough to make its own investments in its national infrastructure, any country strong enough to tax or control the financial sector. Patriarchy keeps banking in its own hands, so that it can finance the creation of infrastructure. It does not create money to lend to speculators to increase their profits, it creates production. So the chief public utility to be kept under the control of the Patriarchy is the banking system and credit creation. Patriarchy promotes just economic development. It prevents people from getting rich merely because they do not provide any productive service.

Conclusion: Why is Oligarchy Supporting the Ukraine?

Today the Ukraine is the battlefield where these two systems, Oligarchy and Patriarchy, are competing. The future of the whole world is being decided there. The Oligarchy has become embroiled ever more in its proxy war there because it intends to destroy Russia so that it can then destroy China. However, in order to do this, the USA must first finish off Russian-supplied Europe. The European elite has followed the Oligarchy’s dictates because its leaders are all only other ‘zelenskies’, whose strings are also pulled by the Oligarchy’s same puppeteers.

This is why the dollar has recently been rising against the pound sterling and the euro (and also the yen). However, seeing this, other countries are seeking alternatives and the USA is threatened with dedollarisation. There is no end game in the Ukraine for the Oligarchy. Meddling in Russia and Europe has meant heading towards economic meltdown. The Oligarchy is now pulling down an iron curtain on the Western world, not to protect it from some imagined foreign military attack, but to imprison the peoples of the USA, UK, EU, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. As those peoples cotton on, this will end badly for the Oligarchy.

The Ash Street Shoot-out.

This event honestly sounds like something straight out of a 90s action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Our story begins with US Army Ranger Bill Foulk.

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Sgt Foulk (the guy with the glasses in the center) with some of his Ranger buddies

In 1989, Foulk decided that he wanted to make plans for his life after service; maybe settle down, marry a nice girl, start a family. Live the American Dream. In order to start, he bought a small house on Ash Street in Tacoma, Washington for $10,000 ($23,572 today).

 While all that was happening, this handsome lad, Ronald Reagan, was the 40th president of the United States. During his presidency he had many ideas, and one of them was his infamous War on Drugs. You see, in the 1970s, drug use had become a huge problem in the United States, so Reagan proposed that we should crack down on drugs through eradication, interdiction, and incarceration.

However, this backfired. Spectacularly.

Drugs became an even bigger problem, and they facilitated the rapid rise of street gangs, including the notorious Crips. As they expanded, they moved from their original territory in California all the way up to Tacoma, Washington.

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The Crips, a notorious street gang that operated in the West Coast

As they moved into Tacoma, they decided that Ash Street would be a good place to do business. Soon, the entire neighborhood had basically become an open-air drug market.

Neighbors repeatedly called 911 on drug dealers and buyers, but to no avail. The Tacoma Police Department was hilariously underfunded, outnumbered, and overstretched. They could do little but watch as the gangs took control of the streets.

This was the situation when Sergeant Foulk returned to his house after participating in Operation Just Cause in 1989. He quickly became annoyed with the drug problem and began videotaping the buys. Neighbors started doing the same. Eventually, an article was published in The News Tribune on September 21, 1989.

“A group of a dozen neighbors who live in the area of South 23rd and Ash streets said they are on the verge of vigilante action because police have failed to curtail drug dealing around their homes.”

In order to show solidarity, Foulk invited his neighbors to a barbecue.

Foulk also called a couple of his buddies from the 2nd Ranger Battalion. Oh, and he also mentioned to them that they might want to bring their guns. You can probably see where this is going…

On September 23, 1989, the Saturday barbecue began. While the meat was grilling and the neighbors were talking, a car full of Crips drove by. As they did, all of them pointed finger guns at Foulk and his guests.

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The finger gun.

The meaning was clear; “we’re going to smoke you tonight.”

As it got dark and the neighbors left, Foulk and his Rangers took up defensive positions around his house. At some point, a car pulled up and two gang members got out. One of them took BB gun shots at the video camera Foulk had set up.

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Gangbangers

Foulk, fearless, stood up and walked across the street to the two hooligans and calmly requested that they leave his house alone. Probably high on drugs, they decided to respond by getting in his face and yelling that Foulk didn’t know who he was dealing with.

Foulk responded by saying that no, it was them who had no idea who they were dealing with.

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Army Rangers in Panama during Operation Just Cause

The gang member responded with, “You’re history, bitch!” As they walked away, Faulk heard one of them say, “I’m gonna shoot that Army SOB.”

Shortly after, he returned to his house and turned out the lights, signaling to his Ranger buddies to get ready. And then, at 9:20 pm, all hell broke loose.

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Imagine being so stupid that you think attacking these guys is a good idea

Dozens of Crip gang member surrounded the house and opened fire. The Rangers returned fire. In just 10 minutes, over 300 shots were fired.

The Crips had entered the night laughing and high, probably expecting an easy target. Instead, they ended up having to run for their lives. None of the Rangers were injured.

The incident drew national attention. The Tacoma police department finally got the resources they needed in order to effectively fight the gangs.

And the most legendary part? Bill Faulk, who is now retired and married at 67 years old, still lives in the same house: 2319 Ash Street.

From HERE

Brendan Fraser

A cocktail of circumstances contrived to make Brendan Fraser one of the most universally liked people on the planet right now.

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Brendan Fraser

Firstly, in his career he literally came out of nowhere and starred in a run of some of the defining movies of many peoples childhoods. In those movies such as ‘George of the Jungle’, ‘Dudley do-right’, ‘Blast from the Past’ and of course the ‘Mummy’ franchise, he almost invariably played the intensely likeable, funny, often naive, handsome, hero role. As a result people still mainly remember him in those terms.

Secondly, he has a tragic backstory. After his prime in the early naughties, he more or less disappeared off the face of the earth, appearing in less and less movies and becoming more famous for his dramatic weight gain than any acting roles:

For a while he was mocked for this in the press, however it has since come out that in 2003 he was the victim of a sexual assault by a very senior Hollywood player (allegedly Phillip Berk, the head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association). At around the same time, his wife divorced him and the judge imposed crippling $900,000 dollar per year alimony payments on Fraser, which he was unable to make, and his mother died. He also suffered serious injuries from the many stunts he had performed over the years, leading to a knee replacement, major spine surgery and vocal chord surgery (he legally died for 18 seconds on the set of ‘The Mummy’ when a hanging stunt went wrong and he was hanged for real). All of these events sent Fraser into a deep depression which caused his weight to spiral out of control and his choice to speak out against his powerful abuser caused his career to stall. With this outrageous run of bad luck, it’s not hard to see how Frasers story inspires sympathy.

Thirdly, perhaps surprisingly considering his experiences, he seems like a genuinely nice guy. Despite his financial troubles, he donated his entire salary from the 2013 film ‘Gimmie Shelter’ to the woman’s shelter featured in the film, he always seems to have time for fans and no one ever seems to have a bad word to say about him, which is quite an accomplishment for someone who has spent 30 years in Hollywood.

All in all, Fraser comes across as a nice guy whom a large majority of people think fondly of whom has had an amazingly bad run of luck, and obviously many people are happy to see him come out the other side of that. The fact that he’s still a pretty great actor with a charismatic screen presence helps as well. He’s currently experiencing a strong career resurgence on TV with more movie roles coming along the tracks, and he actually seems pretty happy. People like to see people they like coming back from adversity, it’s like watching a friend or family member you had been worried about finally sort their life out and seem like everything is going to be ok.

Tales of America…

“I thought someone else would do something…”

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March 13, 1964. 3 a.m

Catherine’s friends called her Kitty.

She was young, just twenty-eight, and petite. Tiny really.

And on this particular night, she was screaming for her life, as loudly as she could. After all, there were people all around. Someone would have to hear her.

Right?

Her shouts went on for thirty minutes, as her killer sliced her, mutilating her body.

38 neighbors heard her scream.

38.

How many tried to help her? How many called the police?

None.

Why?

“I thought someone else would do it.”

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April 28, 2010. 5:30 a.m.

Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, a homeless man in Queens, New York, threw himself into action as he saw another man trying to mug a woman.

He was stabbed, several times and collapsed, lying on the sidewalk.

His wounds were bad, but they shouldn’t have been lethal.

He laid there for an hour before bleeding to death.

Video footage showed 20 people pass his body.

20

One rolled his body over and just walked away. Another snapped a photo of him bleeding out but couldn’t be bothered to call an ambulance.

When help finally arrived. Hugo was dead.

Why did no one stop to help?

“I thought someone else would do it.”


What are the most deadly, most horrible words?

“I thought someone else would do it.”

The bystander-effect is this idea that we assume someone else will react, that they’ll do something, so we walk on, literally to the point of ignoring murder.

It’s a cycle too: we don’t react and we assume because others are calm too that nothing was ever wrong in the first place.

“I thought someone else would do it.”

That string of words is responsible for more losses, more deaths, than we can possibly imagine.

Tales of China…

Be the Rufus. It’s our highest calling.

Just some Rufus videos taken in China. I put them on you-tube. Hopefully they will not be banned. Imagine that! Videos that you can watch in communist China are banned in the USA. Who would have thought!

Finally,

I am officially banned from LinkedIN. All efforts to recover my extensive account, and work history is not accessible.

But it’s a shrug of the shoulders and a “Meh. So what” moment.

It’s probably for the best.

But, you know, it’s a sign of the times.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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Questions of our times, and BANG, a new reserve currency is announced by China and Russia today

“They should have understood that they (The United States and it's proxy nations) have already lost from the very beginning of our special military operation, because its beginning means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the World Order in the American way. 

This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world – a world based not on selfish rules invented by someone for themselves, behind which there is nothing but the desire for hegemony, not on hypocritical double-standards, but on international law, on the true sovereignty of peoples and civilizations, on their will to live their historical destiny, their values and traditions and build cooperation on the basis of democracy, justice and equality. 

And we must understand that this process can no longer be stopped.” 

-Putin

Guys, I’m in the middle of a move from my one house in JiDa to Zhongshan, so things will be a bit scarce. I will try to keep things a flowing, but don’t freak out by the density of the work.

American “Democracy”

American democracy
“Democracy” American style.

$270 million in new military aid to Ukraine; Officially Considering Supplying US War Planes

The United States on Friday signed off on another $270 million in military aid to Ukraine including four new Himars precision rocket systems.

The fresh aid will bring to 20 the number of M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems sent to Ukraine and also includes up to 500 new Phoenix Ghost tactical drones, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Kirby also confirmed publicly the United States Air Force is considering donating U.S. A-10 “Warthog” ground-attack aircraft to Ukraine.   This was reported verbally on the Hal Turner Radio Show a full 48 hours ago, but only now — 2 days later — is the Pentagon publicly confirming that earlier report.

Fork-Tender Pot Roast in the Oven | Roast Beef Recipe

Savory, fork-tender Pot Roast smothered in a rich brown gravy just might be the most wanted comfort food dish of all. This one, in particular, shines far above the rest thanks to a few simple steps other recipes are leaving behind. This is everything you need to know to make a killer Pot Roast every single time.

Today, in addition to a must-have recipe, we’ll cover the simple formula for a foolproof, perfectly tender pot roast, how to know if you’ve been searing all wrong, easy steps to add more flavor to your roast, and lastly, how to take your gravy from good to great without a reduction!

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THE SECRET TO PERFECTLY TENDER POT ROAST

When it comes to making a perfect, fork-tender pot roast, it’s all about cooking the right cut of meat low and slow, at the right temperature, in the right amount of liquid…for the right amount of time. When all of these factors come together perfectly, you are guaranteed a fork-tender pot roast every single time. The best cut of beef for a fork-tender pot roast is beef chuck shoulder roast, and a three-hour braise is perfect for a 4-5 pound chuck shoulder.

Braising sounds technical, but all it means is that you are cooking something partially in liquid (not necessarily submerged), in a covered dish. Dutch ovens are going to be your best friend for this cooking process.

COOKING ROAST BEEF IN A DUTCH OVEN

Dutch ovens are by far the best product out there for braising meats, which is exactly how we are going to be cooking our pot roast. Using the Dutch oven for cooking your roast beef allows you to build an incredible amount of flavor in just one vessel. It is also an excellent even-heat distributor because of its thick cast iron makeup. Here is a simple overview of how we will cook out roast beef in the Dutch oven:

  1. Season and sear the meat.
  2. Sauté the vegetables.
  3. Add in the braising liquid and the roast.
  4. Cook low and slow for 3 hours.

ARE YOU SEARING THE WRONG WAY?

The perfect pot roast recipe is all about building flavor, and the sear is where the flavor begins. After the roast is seared, it leaves behind a plethora of savory fats and juices on the Dutch oven floor. Then, the vegetables take a turn in all that beefy goodness, picking up on all those left-behind flavors. Once the vegetables have softened slightly, a bold braising liquid goes in, picking up on everything both the beef and the vegetables had to offer.

But, before we can get to the end, we must start at the beginning, and as I said before, it all begins with a proper sear.

2 ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR SEARING MEAT

  1. To prepare the roast, you should first pat it dry with a paper towel to remove any excess water from the cut of beef. This step is essential to getting a good sear on the roast before braising, which in turn, equals flavor.
  2. When searing a roast, you want to be sure that your meat is not going into the Dutch oven ice-cold. For the best sear, allow your roast to sit out at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

DON’T FORGET TO SEASON LIBERALLY

Once the excess water has been removed, season the beef liberally with your favorite seasoning. Adding the seasoning directly to meat will help to build flavor. I use my personal favorite, TAK House Seasoning. It’s a mix of Kosher salt, black pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder, and it’s perfect for beef.

In addition to a fair amount of seasoning, we’ll also coat the roast in flour before searing.

THE OIL MATTERS AND THIS IS WHY

The type of oil you use for the process of searing is important. To get a good sear on the meat you must work with medium-high to high heat. Canola oil has a high smoke point, which means that it does not quickly burn, or quite literally begin to smoke as fast as let’s say, butter, which has a low smoke point. You can use an oil other than Canola, just make certain it has a smoke point of 400° or higher.

KEEPING THE VEGETABLES SIMPLE

After a nice crust has been developed from searing, the beef goes out, and the vegetables go in for a quick sauté. This is an elegant, yet simple pot roast, and calls for only onions and carrots from the vegetable department. The carrots add a subtle sweetness to an otherwise savory dish, and they’re absolutely perfect coated in a thick and luscious pot roast gravy.

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A GRAVY THAT REQUIRES NO REDUCTION

To achieve a thicker consistency for your pot roast gravy, adding just a little flour to the vegetables before adding in your braising liquid is key. This approach also eliminates the need for any sort of stovetop reduction after the pot roast has finished its stint in the oven.

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WHY YOU SHOULD USE WINE IN YOUR BRAISING LIQUID

Earlier, we touched upon a couple of things throughout the searing process that would help us to build flavor in our pot roast. Now, we’ll bring that flavor full circle with a perfect ending of red wine, beef broth, and fresh herbs. A bold red wine like merlot or cabernet sauvignon will enhance the flavor of your pot roast and take it from good to spectacular.

After you’ve added your braising liquid to the mix, your roast goes back in, the Dutch oven is sealed, and it will need to cook for three hours total. Half-way through the cooking process, you’ll turn your roast, ensuring both sides are picking up on all of those amazing flavors.

Remember, the braise is quite likely the most important part of the whole recipe, and allowing your pot roast to cook low and slow for the right amount of time will ensure a perfectly tender pot roast every single time.

As soon as the cold winds finally start to drift into Texas, we gladly welcome them with open arms. And naturally, I begin to yearn for those hearty and warming dishes we love so much, and I don’t know that there is another meal in existence that speaks more loudly to this craving than this here very pot roast.

Braised low and slow until fork-tender, smothered in a rich and savory gravy, and variegated with soft, sweet carrots. It is the epitome of comfort food. It’s a recipe that requires only simple preparation, time, and a hearty appetite.

The You-Tube Video

And, here’s the video on how to make the above…

We arrested a father just after he had killed his own adult brother that was living with the family. A doctor and the arrestee’s 11-year-old daughter’s statement made it clear that the uncle had raped the child many times over the last several months resulting in her getting pregnant, which is why she was taken to the doctor.

The family had been told to call us when the suspect got home, but the father got home first and shot his brother in rage when the suspect arrived. The father then called us, said he had killed his brother, made no effort to run, and was standing in front of his house with his hands up when officers arrived. We had no legal choice but to arrest him.

The result was that the case was carefully walked through the district attorney’s office to obtain a DA reject and the father was released the next day, no charges filed. I still smile when I think about the instant justice of this case and how the father was treated with empathy since any father would want to kill someone who had raped his 11-year-old daughter.

The low part of the trip to Vietnam

Imagine that! Americans surprised that they are not imagined as heroes, and Rambos…

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Czeslawa Kwoka, Polish Catholic, 14 years old.

She died in the Auschwitz extermination camp on 18 February 1943 with an injection of phenol into her heart.

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She died in the Auschwitz extermination camp on 18 February 1943 with an injection of phenol into her heart.

Shortly before the execution, she was photographed by the prisoner Whilem Brasse, who testified against the executioner of Czeslawa, a woman who, before the photo was taken, hit her in the face, as the haematoma on her lip shows.

We only see the face of a terrified little girl, who did not even speak their language and who had lost her mother a few days earlier.

She was one of about 250,000 children and minors murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The photo, originally in black and white at the Oświęcim Memorial, was coloured by Brazilian professional photographer Anna Amaral, who was impressed by Czeslawa’s photo and decided to make it available to everyone in colour.

Russia And China Officially Announce A “New Global Reserve Currency”

And once again, as happens often with consequential news in the United States and the West, no one has noticed and no one seems to care.

If you’ve blinked over the last month, you may have missed it…

China and Russia are taking their shot at the U.S. dollar. And as often happens with consequential news in the United States and the West, no one seems to notice or even care.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been writing about the possibility of Russia and China challenging the US dollar’s global reserve status. Now, it’s happening.

It shouldn’t be any surprise to those paying attention that Russia and China are strengthening their economic ties amidst continued Western sanctions on Russia as a result of the country’s war in Ukraine.

What may surprise some people, however, is that Russia and the BRICS countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, are officially working on their own “new global reserve currency,” RT reported in late June. Nobody even seemed to notice.


“The issue of creating an international reserve currency based on a basket of currencies of our countries is being worked out,” Vladimir Putin said at the BRICS business forum last month.

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And of course, as Russia has been cut off from the SWIFT system, it is also pairing with China and the BRIC nations to develop “reliable alternative mechanisms for international payments” in order to “cut reliance on the Western financial system.”

In the meantime, Russia is also taking other steps to strengthen the alliance between BRIC nations, including re-routing trade to China and India, according to CNN:

President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is rerouting trade to "reliable international partners" such as Brazil, India, China and South Africa as the West attempts to sever economic ties.

"We are actively engaged in reorienting our trade flows and foreign economic contacts towards reliable international partners, primarily the BRICS countries," Putin said in his opening video address to the participants of the virtual BRICS Summit.

In fact, “trade between Russia and the BRICS countries increased by 38% and reached $45 billion in the first three months of the year” this year, the report says. Meanwhile, Russian crude sales to China have hit record numbers during Spring of this year, edging out Saudi Arabia as China’s primary oil supplier.

“Together with BRICS partners, we are developing reliable alternative mechanisms for international settlements,” Putin said.

Putin continued, stating last month: “Contacts between Russian business circles and the business community of the BRICS countries have intensified. For example, negotiations are underway to open Indian chain stores in Russia [and to] increase the share of Chinese cars, equipment and hardware on our market.”

In June, Putin also accused the West of ignoring”the basic principles of [the] market economy” such as free trade. “It undermines business interests on a global scale, negatively affecting the wellbeing of people, in effect, of all countries,” he said.

Do not leave in a world consumed by hate…

Her name was Rebecca Miller. She was the younger sister of a high school friend, and she and I became good friends as well.

She was always a bit awkward, and until she met me, she had no other friends except her sister (my friend). She took every bit of criticism or pushback as a hostile attack. She never dated in high school, but she asked me out on a date once, to go bowling, and then she asked me to go to her senior prom (I was already in college in state, and still living at home). I found out years later, she did not ask me to go bowling because she liked me; she asked me as a test to see if I would be a decent date for the prom).

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1987. Rebecca came to visit December 25, because she hated her parents and didn’t want to spend Christmas with them. We are Jewish and don’t celebrate Christmas. I told her that, and she didn’t care. I think she actually had a nice visit.

She hated everyone. I was still inferior in her eyes, but she wanted to go to the prom. She used to joke that she had a list of people she hated, that went all the way back to her kindergarten years.

After high school (and one year of a local college for me) all three of us wound up at the same university in California. The two sisters shared a dorm, and I was in a neighboring dorm. We were very close throughout college, but I always had to be careful about what I said or did. Not only was she hateful, but extraordinarily judgmental.

She was an outspoken atheist, and I am Jewish. I wasn’t extremely religious (I’m still not), but I loved my community and culture, and spent a lot of time at the Hillel Jewish Center at my university. I couldn’t talk about any of that with Rebecca or even mention the center at all, or she would call me things like superstitious (which couldn’t be further from the truth). She also called me a cult member a few times.

Looking back, I wish I had had the backbone to break off our friendship, but that would have meant losing her sister’s friendship as well (Rebecca controlled who her sister was allowed to be friends with).

Toward the end of my senior year in college, I stopped hearing from Rebecca and plans kept getting cancelled. It turned out that I had made her hate list. Her sister was not allowed to tell me why or see me again.

As difficult as Rebecca was, I was a little sad, because we did have some good times together. I saw the two of them almost as relatives.

Then I got a 19 page letter from Rebecca, telling me what a horrible person I am. Here are some of the reasons she gave for hating me:

  • I was a sexual pervert for ogling women all the time in front of her (I am gay, and I wasn’t out then, but I never ogled women).
  • I practiced a religion (Reform Judaism) which she equated with being ignorant and superstitious.
  • I wasn’t as smart as she was (She was in MENSA; I took the MENSA test and only scored in the 96th percentile, missing admission by 2 percentiles)
  • I majored in linguistics, and she majored in chemical engineering. She didn’t want to hang out with non-scientists.

So she disappeared from my life for a few years. About 5 years after graduation, I received another multi-page letter from her asking for forgiveness. She had been seeing a therapist and was all better now. Dummy me, I forgave her and agreed to pick up our friendship where we left off.

It went a little better this time,except that she and her sister lived together in California and I was back home in Las Vegas. They came to visit a few times, and I visited her and her sister once.

Then…out of the blue, I got another huge letter. This one was more brutal than the last. I don’t remember all the points of this letter, but I do remember her accusing me of lying about having cancer (I really did have cancer) and she mentioned that she suspected I was gay, but it seemed more of an attack rather than a real suspicion. Some of the things she said in her letter indicated that she was somehow spying on me, which was bone-chilling.

This letter was around 2000 or so, and that was the last contact I had with her. Later I found out what happened to her.

Her sister found me on facebook around 2010, and told me that Rebecca had committed suicide, after a decade of really hostile, bizarre behavior.

It seems she became deeply involved in the occult. Then she became a born again Christian. She tried to convert her sister (also an atheist) with no luck, and eventually cut ties with her, other than bombarding her mailbox with religious literature for 10 years.

Then one day, the sister was notified of Rebecca’s death. Rebecca had specifically put in her will that her family was not to be notified, but apparently that was against California law. The sister did not cry any tears. Their mother was destroyed over it though.

Rebecca had planned her death meticulously. She found homes for her two dozen cats, and went online to research the chemicals and methods needed for asphyxiation.

The funeral had only two people there: The clergy and Rebecca’s mother. Rebecca’s sister waited in the car.

I felt a little sad over the whole thing, but also free.

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United States “defense” spending

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China’s official government point of view.

Please use this understanding in all discussions about “what will China do, or how will China react to American XXXXX”

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The Story of Netflix

Netflix is just the latest victim of a highly predictable cycle which has been going round and round for decades that entertainment companies for some reason seem completely unable to learn from.

  • Company introduces a service people like
  • Industry gets greedy and overexploits the model, increasing prices for everyone
  • Consumers find a way around paying ridiculous prices
  • something new comes along that re-engages customers and starts the cycle again.

When TV was first introduced, everything was basically free at the point of watching. Then cable and satellite came along and started putting certain premium programmes behind a paywall. At first people were OK with it, they were paying but also getting a decent service, however the cable services diversified further and further, segregating movies, sports, and everything else behind further and further paywalls. In the early 2000’s, I remember my friend working out that if he wanted to see all the sport he wanted to watch on TV it would cost him £200 per month in various cable and satellite services. A lot of money in 2005.

As a result, people started stealing cable. In the 90’s and 2000’s it was incredibly common for people to steal cable, almost everyone knew someone who could set you up with a dodgy set top box or a cable hookup. This acted as a bit of a brake on the cable companies who knew that if they pushed too hard, more consumers would just jump to stealing it.

Then the internet came along and blew the doors off the system. The problem with internet piracy is that its effectively unstoppable and there’s approximately zero chance of consequences. 20+ years since it first became a major issue, governments and corporations are still basically powerless to stop it. The only things stopping people from streaming everything is that:

  1. People don’t like stealing. And,
  2. Its a pain in the ass. It’s often difficult to get a good stream to the show you want and it takes a while.

Then Netflix came along around 2010 and seemed to offer a solution that worked for everyone – for a low monthly fee you got legitimate access to a huge array of movie and TV services all packaged in a slick and easy to use format. It more or less removed the motivation to pirate for a huge majority of people, and people got out of the habit.

Now however, the exact same thing that happened with cable has happened again. Companies have seen the kind of money that can be made from streaming and are now taking their shows off Netflix and segregating their content behind more and more paywalls on their own subscription platforms. We are basically back where we were 20 years ago with cable where you are paying £200 for access to a dozen platforms if you want to access a similar level of content that early Netflix offered, only now there is an even easier way to steal content. What do they think is going to happen?

U.S. Attempts To Make China An Enemy Require A Lot Of Fantasy

The U.S. weapon industry needs U.S. enemies. Without those it is hard to justify an ever growing war budget. The most lucrative enemy, besides Russia, is of course China.

But there is a problem. China has no interest in being a U.S. enemy and certainly not in being THE enemy. In its view that only takes away resources that are better used elsewhere.

That is the reason why China avoids talks with the U.S. about military and strategic issues.

CIA columnist David Ignatius thus laments:

China wants to ‘reduce misunderstanding’ with the U.S. It could start by talking.

ASPEN, Colo. — Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang assured a foreign policy gathering here this week that Beijing wants “to reduce misunderstanding and miscalculation” with the United States. If that’s true, why does China continue to resist a U.S. proposal to discuss “strategic stability” between the two increasingly competitive countries?

What have talks about ‘strategic stability’ to do with reducing misunderstanding and miscalculation? The later can be achieved in very simple low level talks between ambassadors or politicians. There is nothing ‘strategic’ needed about them.

President Biden said on Wednesday, before his covid-19 diagnosis was announced, that he expects to talk with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the next 10 days, and a senior administration official said the president’s agenda will include a renewed emphasis on the risks in the relationship, and the need to establish better communications. But, so far, the official said of the Chinese, “they haven’t taken us up” on a U.S. proposal for the stability talks.

The Chinese do not see and do not want instability so there is no need to talk about it. What they sees is a U.S. trick that would make it possible to designate China as an ‘enemy’.

Ignatius’ next paragraph demonstrates that:

This difficulty in developing a Sino-U.S. dialogue about strategic issues has frustrated the Biden administration. An important lesson of the Cold War was that nuclear-armed superpowers must communicate to avoid dangerous mistakes. But China has resisted arms-control talks even as it expands its nuclear arsenal, and as a result, it hasn’t learned a common language for crisis management in the way the Soviet Union did.

China is not in a Cold war with the U.S. It does not see itself as a U.S. enemy. There is no reason then to talk in Cold war language:

Biden first proposed the talks in a virtual summit with Xi last November, saying the two countries needed “common-sense guardrails to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict,” according to a White House statement at the time. Items on the agenda for such talks would include expansion of a 1998 agreement for avoiding maritime incidents, measures to avert dangerous military activities, and plans for a hotline and other crisis communication measures, the administration official said.

If there were more agreements over incidents and military activities would the U.S. be more or less aggressive in its action against China?

Why does the U.S. want a hotline and crisis communication? Would they not help the U.S. in provoking more incidents than it dares to do without them?

Rather than embracing what former Australian prime minister and China scholar Kevin Rudd calls “managed strategic competition” in a new Foreign Affairs article, Beijing insists the United States should return to its old policies of supportive engagement, which facilitated China’s rise. Like nearly every other Chinese diplomat I’ve encountered over the past decade, Qin often repeated the phrase “win-win cooperation,” which China sees as a cure-all for its increasingly testy relationship with Washington.

What is bad with a ‘win-win cooperation’? Why replace that with ‘strategic competition’?

China wants to have it both ways as a superpower: flexing its muscles without being seen as a bully. Xi has been explicit in his “Made in China 2025” plans for dominance of major technologies. But China “has difficulty in recognizing the relationship [with the United States] as competitive,” the senior administration official said. Instead, it responds to criticism from the U.S. and Asian regional powers with a wounded tone, as though to say, “Who, us?”

Lots of countries have lots of plans to have dominance in major technologies. The Netherlands (and German) have such a dominance in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, needed to make modern computer chips, as well as in several other fields. Other countries, France, South Korea, Japan, Russia, the U.S., have other industry sectors in which they are globally dominant. That is just the normal way of global capitalism in which countries seek to do their best not in all fields but in those in which they are better.

Framing a strong and sustainable U.S.-China policy remains the Biden administration’s biggest long-term challenge, despite the current preoccupation with the war in Ukraine. Beijing is the only competitor that could genuinely challenge the United States militarily, officials believe. But Ukraine has complicated U.S.-China policy — for both sides.

Now we come to the point. How please could China genuinely challenge the United States militarily? By invading Mexico and Canada or with a big landing force that threatens Los Angeles and New York? Why would China want do that?

Xi was surprised that the Biden administration, which the Chinese expected would be weak and ineffective abroad, has been able to rally global support for Ukraine. But despite Xi’s wariness of incurring sanctions, he remains firmly aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the senior administration official said. Hopes that the war might encourage a break between Beijing and Moscow were misplaced.

Ignatius has forgotten to take his meds. The ‘global support’ is the NATO, EU and the 5-eyes spying cooperation. Those are some 34 countries out of the 193 UN member states. Why did anyone expect that China would not take the neutral stand that the majority has taken? Those who did should be send back to school to learn a bit about rationality.

Enough with that blubber. Ignatius, like many other people in the Washington DC bubble, does not understand China and makes no effort to learn about it. These people just mirror what they think the U.S. would do and project that on a country that thinks in very different terms.

Another example of these ‘thinkers’ is Elbridge Colby:

Elbridge Colby’s The Strategy of Denial offers a blueprint for containing and combating China’s rise in order to preserve American freedom, prosperity, and security—emphasis on security. The argument turns on a very specific vision of China’s plans, which Colby does not attempt to link to actual Chinese policy or strategy for achieving hegemony in East Asia. The resulting prescriptions, although they’ve been lauded by some, are fatally flawed.

Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development from 2017 to 2018, believes that China could pursue a “focused and sequential strategy” of threatened or executed “wars against isolated coalition members,” starting with Taiwan. He fears Beijing would do this in such a way that does not trigger a regional war but culminates in Chinese hegemony in Asia.

To prevent this, Colby believes the United States must pursue a “strategy of denial” to preserve U.S. dominance in Asia.

The problem is that there is no evidence that there is an actual ‘Chinese policy or strategy for achieving hegemony in East Asia’.

Colby provides no sources that claim such. He made up the ‘threat’ because he things that is what the U.S. would do if it were China.

The most glaring flaw is that Colby works off what he thinks China’s strategy should be, not the evidence about what it actually is. This is a particularly bad approach to analysis, because it makes mirroring or speculation easier to smuggle into predictions of adversary behavior.

A good defense strategy requires an understanding of how the expected adversary plans to fight. Yet he does not engage with Chinese military doctrine, Chinese strategic thought, or the robust debate in the United States about Chinese strategy and ambitions. Instead, he argues that because of uncertainty about China’s strategy, the United States should simply focus on China’s “best strategy” for winning Asia. In Colby’s words, “a state’s best strategy does not ultimately depend on what the state’s leaders think it is” because it relates to “objective reality.”

In consequence of his ‘garbage in’ process Colby’s output is likewise garbage.

Building a response according to an adversary’s “best strategy” also makes you much more likely to miss what that adversary is actually doing. Colby defends his approach of strategizing based on China’s “best” strategy by claiming that “Defeating a bad strategy is easier and less costly than defeating a good one.” Therefore, if the United States prepares for China’s best strategy, any real Chinese strategy should be even easier to handle.

In reality, the defense posture and investments needed to defeat an adversary’s “best” strategy might be significantly different from those needed to defeat an adversary’s second-best strategy.

Colby’s book is not about strategy but about spending as much money on a U.S. position of aggression towards China as possible:

Colby proposes that an American-led coalition impose a strategy of denial on China, blocking China’s ability to traverse the 80 miles of the Taiwan Strait. How to put the bell on the cat?

“Defending forces operating from a distributed, resilient force posture and across all the war-fighting domains might use a variety of methods to blunt the Chinese invasion in the air and seas surrounding Taiwan.”

The US and its allies might “seek to disable or destroy Chinese transport ships and aircraft before they left Chinese ports or airstrips. The defenders might also try to obstruct key ports; neutralize key elements of Chinese command and control … And once Chinese forces entered the Strait, US and defending forces could use a variety of methods to disable or destroy Chinese transport ships and aircraft.”

Colby leaves what means we might employ here to the imagination.

Like the first reviewer of Colby’s book this one also criticizes his factless starting position:

It isn’t so much that Colby gives the wrong answers. He fails to ask pertinent questions about Chinese intent and technological capability. Instead, he gives us a pastiche of generalities that obscure rather than clarify the strategic issues at hand.

In brief, Colby depicts China as an expansionist power eager to absorb territory, citing alleged Chinese designs on the Philippines and Taiwan on a half-dozen occasions – as if China’s interest in the Philippines were equivalent to its interest in Taiwan.

Garbage input producing garbage output topped with militaristic fantasies do not create a good strategy.

The problem is that in the next republican administration Colby will likely have another high Pentagon position.

That makes such dumb thinking a danger for the world.

Posted by b on July 22, 2022 at 15:59 UTC | Permalink

Pepe Escobar July 22, 2022
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NAM 2.0 drive – of which China is a key player – stands in stark opposition to how the Empire of Chaos – and Lies – wove its toxic net, via the war on terror, since the start of the millennium.

Those were the days, in 1955, at the legendary Bandung conference in Indonesia, when the newly emancipated Global South started dreaming of building a new world, via what became configured later in 1961 in Belgrade as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

The Empire of Chaos – and Lies – would never allow a starring role for NAM. So it played dirty: everything from hardcore subversion and bribing to military coups and proto-color revolutions.

Yet now, the Spirit of Bandung lives again, via a sort of NAM 2.0 on steroids: a Newly Aligned Movement, with the leaders of Eurasian integration at the vanguard.

We just had a taste of which way the geopolitical wind is blowing at the gathering of a new power troika in Tehran. Unlike Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill in 1943, Putin, Raisi and Erdogan did not meet to carve up the world. They met essentially to discuss how another world is possible – through bilaterals, trilaterals, multilaterals and an enhanced role for an array of relatively new geopolitical and geoeconomic institutions.

Russia – and China – have been on the forefront of all recent key decisions. Their diplomacy has brought Iran to join the SCO as a full member. Their pull is attracting key Global South players to join BRICS+. Russia has all but convinced Turkey to join BRICS+, the SCO and the EAEU, and facilitated the re-approximation of Tehran and Ankara as well as Tehran and Riyadh. Russia has largely influenced the remake/remodel process across West Asia.

This NAM 2.0 drive – of which China is a key player – stands in stark opposition to how the Empire of Chaos – and Lies – wove its toxic net, via the war on terror, since the start of the millennium. The Empire tried to subdue what it described as MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) on the basis of two invasions/occupations (Afghanistan-Iraq); a total devastation (Libya); and a protracted proxy war (Syria). All eventually failed.

And that brings us to the stunning contrast between these two foreign policy approaches, graphically illustrated by the spectacular failure of the teleprompter-reading “leader of the free world” in his visit to Jeddah – he was not even allowed to go to Riyadh – compared to Putin’s performance in Tehran.

Not only we are witnessing the lineaments of a Russia/Iran/Turkey informal alliance; we are witnessing the alliance reading a soft riot act to the Empire: leave Syria, before you suffer yet another humiliation. And with a Kurd-directed corollary: keep away from the Americans and recognize the authority of Damascus before it’s too late.

Ankara could never admit it in public, but the fact is Sultan Erdogan – as much against US troops in Syria as Putin and Raisi – even seems to have swiftly calibrated his previous designs on Syrian sovereign territory.

The much-debated Turkish military operation in northern Syria in the end may be restricted to taming the YPG Kurds. The heart of the action will in fact revolve around how the Russia/Iran/Turkey/Syria alliance will make like impossible for Americans stealing Syrian oil.

As Russia is now on “take no prisoners” mode when facing the collective West – the mantra in every intervention by Putin, Lavrov, Medvedev, Patrushev – and on top of it firmly aligned with China and Iran, it’s inevitable that every other player across West Asia and beyond is giving undivided attention to the new game in town.

Go Caspian, Young Man

Interconnecting West Asia and Central Asia, the Caspian Sea has finally reached the geopolitical and geoeconomic limelight – complete with the groundbreaking consensus reached by the five littoral states at the Caspian Summit in late June to officially ban NATO from these waters.

Moreover, the leadership in Tehran in no time realized how the Caspian is the perfect, cost-conscious corridor from Iran to the heart of Russia along the Volga.

So it’s no wonder that Putin himself, in Tehran, proposed the construction of a key stretch of highway on the St Petersburg-Persian Gulf route, much to the delight of the Iranians. Cue to the nostalgic Great Game crowd in that former “rule the waves” island getting serial heart attacks: they could never imagine the Russian “empire” finally having full access to the warm waters of the Persian Gulf.

So we’re back to the absolutely crucial re-engineering of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC) – which will play for Russia and Iran a parallel role the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) plays for China. In both cases, it’s all about multimodal Eurasia-wide trade and development corridors immune from interference by the imperial Navy.

And here we see the renewed importance of the hyper-strategic liberation of Mariupol and Kherson by the Russian and DPR forces. The Sea of Azov is now configured as a de facto Russian lake – and the same will eventually happen to what is bound to remain of the (currently Ukrainian) Black Sea coast, Odessa included.

So we have the ultra-strategic Caspian-Black Sea maritime corridor – via the Volga-Don canal – seamlessly connected to the Black Sea-Mediterranean, and up north, all the way to the Baltic and the fast developing Atlantic-Pacific connector, the Northern Sea Route. Call it the Russian Heartland Water Roads.

The NATO/Five Eyes/Intermarium combo has absolutely nothing to counteract these (overland) facts on the (Heartland) ground except to throw a pile of HIMARS into the Ukrainian black hole. And of course, keep de-industrializing Europe. In contrast, those across the Global South with a keen sense of history – as in the grand debate of ideas in a Hegelian sense – and also versed in geography and trade relations are busy getting ready to hit (and profit from) the new groove.

Have strategic ambiguity, will travel

As much as it’s a blast to survey all the instances of Russia playing strategic ambiguity to levels capable of baffling the entire, bloated “Western intel” apparatus, what is coming to the forefront is how Putin – and Patrushev – are now willfully turning up the pain dial to tactically exhaust not only the Ukrainian black hole but the whole of NATOstan.

Western governments are collapsing. Sanctions are being ditched – practically in secret. A Deep Freeze winter is a given. And then there’s the incoming economic/financial crisis, the Definitive Monster from Hell, as Martin Armstrong has made it quite clear: “There is no way they can get out of this other than default. If they default, they are worried about millions of people storming the parliaments of Europe…This is really a tremendous financial crisis that we are facing. They have been borrowing year after year since WWII with zero intention of paying anything back.”

Meanwhile, Moscow may be revving up the turbines to launch – this coming Fall? In the middle of Winter? Next Spring? – a multi-spectrum Mother of All Offensives, capitalizing on a rolling series of interconnected strategies that have already rendered dazed and confused every NATOstan “analyst” in sight.

That would explain Putin looking like he’s cheerfully whistling JJ Cale’s Call Me the Breeze in most of his public appearances. In his crucial intervention at the Strong Ideas for a New Time forum, he enthusiastically promoted the advent of “truly revolutionary” and “enormous” changes that would lead to the creation of a new, “harmonious, fairer and more community-focused and safe” world order.

Yet that’s not for everyone: “only truly sovereign states can ensure high growth dynamics.” What that implies is that the unipolar world order, followed by states in the collective West which are hardly sovereign, is condemned to fail, as it’s “becoming a brake on the development of our civilization.

Only a self-confident sovereign who does not expect anything constructive from the collective West can get away with describing it as “racist and neo-colonial”, bearing an ideology that “is becoming increasingly more like totalitarianism.” In the old NAM days these words would be met with an assassination.

So will the “rules-based international order” be preserved? Not a chance, argues Putin: the changes are “irreversible.” For those about to rock, NAM 2.0 salutes you.

Living in an Asian country I realized that modern Western values of “rugged individualism” are silly… There’s a certain charm to it, but the multi-generational households of many non-Western nations are far superior in my view. I know many elderly Western people who take great pride in how “they’re still living independently on their own at eighty!” or whatever.

Then they turn, say, 85, 86. Their health begins to worsen. Children and grandchildren stage some sort of mini-intervention and… grandpa or grandma gets sent off to the retirement home. Is visited a few times a year, sometimes more, sometimes less. Withers away. Dies in about a year or two, tops.

In non-Western countries, I see elderly people living with their sons and daughters. They grow old surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Some manage to hold a great-great-grandchild before they pass. Children, cousins, nieces and nephews live in houses nearby. Old friends at a walking distance.

And I don’t know, but these old people who simply rely on family, to whom a thought of wanting to be “super independent” never occurs, who aren’t ashamed to “bother anyone” and live and die surrounded by younger relatives… they seem happier. More vibrant.

My grandfather wanted to die the moment he got old to the point of losing some of his mental powers, his physical prowess, his skills. He lessened and had to rely more on others and he was always taught from an early age: “sink or swim”. He told me of old inuit walking into a snowstorm and freezing to death because they were “useless” and how he’d wish to get lost in a blizzard somewhere and die in a white blaze of glory…

It’s immensely sad to me that he couldn’t have shared a household with me or one of my siblings and our kids. In another culture he might never have felt like a failure when Alzheimer’s hit him and he ‘lost it’. But in the West, he did.

Russia and America compared…

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Real life “John Wick”

I present to you Julian Sinanaj (pronounced Youleean Sea-nah-naay), an Albanian contract assasin that worked as a lone wolf. Trained by the Russians, he operated initially in Greece and later in Albania. In the first page of his notebook he wrote “Don’t say anything to anyone or you’re going to get killed”.

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He operated for 15 years in Athens where he comitted over 20 assassinations. When he felt threatened by his clients there, he decided to move to Albania where he comitted another 6 assassinations, until he was cought by the Albanian police in 2014.

All it took to organize a hit was to write a Gmail address named after the children’s socialist era movie “Beni walks by himself”. His nickname was “the cleaner”. Julian could shoot with both hands, with the same precision. In Albania he also took a full course on criminology in order to avoid detection and capture. (It didn’t work out that well)

Julian also had some rules he went by. He did not accept commissions out of anger. Or he would not attack the target when accompanied by his wife and children. You know, the “clean conscience” affair.

His capture was organized as an ambush when he lowered his guard, without an exchange of fire (which is how Albanian police usually operates). When the agents went to grab him, he offered quite a resistance despite being much smaller and thinner.

As a trained assassin he remained silent but his girlfriend buckled under pressure. She gave them his address and there they found weapons, explosives and a notebook with detailed information about his targets, including pictures.

Julian Sinanaj was able to avoid life in prison by confessing to everything. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Italian writer Andrea Galli wrote a book about him titled “Sicario. How to become a killer. A true story”

The rules of the brotherhood…

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UK Agency Re-working Law to ALLOW INSECTS as Human Food!

The United Kingdom “Food Standards Agency” has announced plans to review using INSECTS in — and as — human food.

Earlier this month, the Food Standards Agency put out this public notice:

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The fact tthat any government, anywhere, is even THINKING of this, is astonishingly bad.

In 81% of the “edible insects” studies have found parasites of which at least 30% are known to be potentially harmful to humans.

Not only that, but these insect parasites literally mess-up your gut bacteria, also known as your microbiome.  You can read that lengthy (and highly technical/boring) study  HERE

There are also stories claiming that earth’s TOPSOIL is fading fast, and “will be gone in 60 years” thereby necessitating that humans develop new food supplies You can read that story HERE.

There are also alerts coming out now that levels of Plankton in the Atlantic Ocean have fallen so dramatically, that the Atlantic Ocean is all but “dead” from a Plankton food perspective, and that without Plankton, the supply of fish will quickly dwindle to zero, because Plankton are the base of the entire sea food chain.

An Edinburgh-based research team says plankton, the tiny organisms that sustain life in the seas, has all but been wiped out. The team’s spent two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic and in a dire warning says this means the Atlantic’s ‘pretty much dead’.

At the bottom of the food chain, plankton is consumed by the krill which are fed on by the fish that, in turn, provide nutrition for terrestrial animals including billions of humans.

You can read about that study, HERE.

All in all, the world seems to be going in a very dire direction on many, many, levels.

Domino’s Pizza

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Lemon-Pepper Ribeye Filets with Roasted Tomatoes

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Ingredients:

  • 4 beef Ribeye Filets, cut 1 inch thick (about 4 to 6 ounces each)
  • 2 cups red and yellow grape or cherry tomatoes, cut in half
  • 2 teaspoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons lemon pepper

Cooking:

  1. Heat oven to 400°F. Combine tomatoes, oil, thyme, garlic and salt in medium bowl; toss to coat well. Arrange tomatoes, cut sides up, on metal baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Roast in 400°F oven 30 to 35 minutes or until skins are wrinkled and begin to brown.
  2. Meanwhile, press lemon pepper evenly onto beef Ribeye Filets. Heat large nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot. Place filets in skillet; cook 10 to 14 minutes for medium rare to medium doneness, turning occasionally. Remove to platter; season with salt, as desired.
  3. Serve filets with tomatoes.
  • Wash hands with soap and water before cooking and always after touching raw meat.
  • Separate raw meat from other foods.
  • Wash all cutting boards, utensils, and dishes after touching raw meat.
  • Do not reuse marinades used on raw foods.
  • Wash all produce prior to use.
  • Cook beef until temperature reaches 145°F for medium rare steaks and roasts 160°F for ground beef.
  • Refrigerate food promptly.

Questions of our times…

Is this just someone’s opinion or is it objective fact?

"Truly revolutionary transformations are gaining momentum more and more. They are, of course, irreversible. Both at the national and global levels, the foundations of a more just, socially oriented world order are being worked out. An alternative to the existing unipolar world, which is becoming a brake on civilization. The model of total domination of the "golden billion" is unfair! Exclusivity based on the illusion divides peoples into first and second class, and therefore is racist and neocolonial. And globalist ideology is increasingly acquiring the features of totalitarianism. It seems that the West simply cannot offer the world its model. The West did not accidentally became powerful, but it gained its position largely due to the plunder of other nations. Therefore today its elites are panicking that other centers may present their own development models."

Hum…

Some of these statements are absolutely true. “We’re in for Truly Revolutionary Transformation”. And it is Irreversible.

And we’re all hoping that it will be “the foundations of a more just, socially oriented world order”. I for one believe that the root of ALL conflict IS perceived Injustice. It is very broad, and perhaps even difficult to know where to start. I think it is most important to start internationally. But we are completely at effect of various ministries of foreign affairs, many of which have a term of 4-5 years. Five years is too long to maintain “wrongheaded” policies, in these fast moving times.

So the populations are precluded from effective action by this bureaucratic momentum. The western nations, being of origin Christian, are all hoping for a savior. Now, Russia has been given this savior role, (in our minds), because they have finally stood up to western billionaires. It will crack a lot of nuts.

But will Russia take on this role to save the world? I highly doubt it.

Why should NOT Europe and America, and the other pipsqueak Australians and Canadians stew in their own juices? All of their acquiescent populations have failed to clean out the “corruption of conflict and violence” that runs their country, and sequesters their wealth to destroy peace on earth. Most often, increased stress is met with increased repression.

It is only billionaires that benefit from conflict. But it is always you that has to pay their way, in both gold and in blood.

Will the western populations make a move? It is not that they are asleep and could eventually wake up. They can’t. They are in 100’s of years of “going with the flow”, and avoiding all risks.

They were forced into 2 world wars with false flags and skewed reporting, but I am talking about the population’s inner desires.

The best way to avoid these risks is with blinkers, (those things they put on a horse to limit its peripheral vision). They put them on themselves. To try to change those 100’s of years of acquiescence will only produce immense
befuddlement, and lashing out.

Acquiescence is a social stage when reliance on “Our Laws” has been
achieved to uphold our present state of well-being, (for that part of
the majority that enjoys control).

In itself it is not necessarily bad or wrong. But movement from one social stage to another is very slow, even when conditions on the ground warrant it. Actually Russia was in the very same predicament, but then fortuitously the one word, NAZI, triggered a 70 – 80 year reset, and they are now fully willing to take
action.

The risk (of not taking any risks), is that the savior won’t come. You have to do it yourself. So no matter how positive armchair generals view Russian tactics and progress, and their potential against NATO: NOTHING IS ASSURED.

I view these discussions of an inevitable move toward social justice as dis  empowering diversions, that keep the billionaires in power.

Alastair Crooke  July 18, 2022
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Putin’s policy of cleansing the Augean Stables of ‘predatory western capital’ is music to the ears of the Global South, Alastair Crooke writes.

Of course, the conflict, to all intents, is settled – though is far from over. It is clear that Russia will prevail in the military war – and the political war too – by which is meant that whatever emerges in Ukraine after the military action is complete will be dictated by Moscow on its terms.

Plainly, on the one hand, the regime in Kiev would collapse were it to have terms dictated to it by Moscow. And, on the other hand, the entire western agenda behind the Maidan coup d’état in 2014 would implode, too. (This is why an off-ramp, short of a Ukrainian rout, is next to impossible.)

This moment thus marks a crucial point of inflection. One American choice might be to end the conflict – and there are many voices calling for a deal, or a ceasefire, with the understandably humane intent of ending the pointless slaughter of Ukrainian young men sent to ‘the front’ to defend indefensible positions, only to be cynically killed for no military gain, merely to keep the war going.

Though rational, the argument for an off-ramp misses the bigger geopolitical point: The West is so heavily invested in its fantastical narrative of imminent Russian collapse and humiliation that it finds itself ‘stuck fast’. It cannot move forward for fear that NATO might not be up to the task of confronting Russian forces (Putin has made the point that Russia had not even begun to use its full force). And yet, to cut a deal, to move back, would be to lose face.

And ‘losing face’ roughly translates to the liberal west losing.

The West thus has made itself hostage to its unrestrained triumphalism, posing as info-war. It chose this unrestrained jingoism. Biden advisers however, reading the runes of the war – of relentless Russian gains – have begun to scent another foreign policy débacle fast heading their way.

They see events, far from reaffirming the ‘rules-based Order’, rather the stark laying bare before the world of the limits to U.S. power – giving front of stage to not just a resurgent Russia, but one carrying a revolutionary message for the rest of the world (albeit a fact to which the West has yet to awaken).

Moreover, the western alliance is disintegrating as war fatigue settles in and as European economies stare at recession. The contemporary instinctive inclination to decide first, and think later (European sanctions), has landed Europe in existential crisis.

The UK exemplifies the wider European conundrum: The UK political class, frightened and in disarray, first ‘determined’ to knife its’ leader, only to realise afterward, that they had no successor to hand with gravitas to manage the new normal, and no idea how to escape the trap in which it is ensnared.

They dare not lose face over Ukraine and have no solution that meets the coming recession (except a return to Thatcherism?). And the same can be said for Europe’s political class: they are as deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming fast vehicle.

Biden and a certain network which spans Washington, London, Brussels, Warsaw and the Baltics view Russia from a height of 30,000 feet above that of the Ukraine conflict. Biden reportedly believes he is in an equidistant position between two dangerous and ominous trends engulfing the U.S. and the West: Trumpism at home and Putinism abroad. Both, he believes, present clear and present dangers to the liberal rules-based order in which (Team) Biden passionately believes.

Other voices – mainly from the U.S. Realist camp – are not so besotted with Russia; for them, ‘real men’ take on China. These want just to keep the Ukraine conflict at a face-saving stalemate, if possible (more weapons), whilst the pivot to China is activated.

In a speech at the Hudson Institute, Mike Pompeo made a foreign policy statement that clearly had an eye to 2024 and his taking the Vice-President spot. The gist of it was about China, yet what he said about Ukraine was interesting: Zelensky’s importance to the U.S. was contingent on his keeping the war going (i.e. saving western face). He did not explicitly refer to ‘boots on the ground’, but it was clear he did not advocate such a step.

His message was weapons, weapons, weapons to Ukraine, and ‘move on’ – through pivoting to China NOW. Pompeo insisted the U.S. recognise Taiwan diplomatically today, irrespective of what occurs. (i.e. regardless of whether this action triggers war with China.) And he rolled-up Russia into the equation by simply saying that Russia and China effectively should be treated as one.

Biden however, seems moved to let pass the moment, and to carry on with the present trajectory. This is also what the many participants in the boondoggle want. The point is that Deep State views are conflicted, and influential Wall Street bankers certainly do not warm to Pompeo’s notions. They would prefer de-escalation with China. Carrying-on therefore is the easy option, as U.S. domestic attention becomes fastened on economic woes.

The point here is that the West is comprehensively stuck: It cannot move forward, nor back. Its structures of politics and of the economy prevent it. Biden is stuck on Ukraine; Europe is stuck on Ukraine and on its belligerence towards Putin; ditto for the UK; and the West is stuck on its relations with Russia and China. More importantly, none of them can address the insistent demands from Russia and China for a restructuring of the global security architecture.

If they cannot move on this security plane – for fear of losing face – they will be unable to assimilate (or hear – given the ingrained cynicism that attends any words spoken by President Putin) that Russia’s agenda goes far beyond security architecture.

For example, the veteran Indian diplomat and commentator, MK Badrakhumar writes:

“After Sakhalin-2, [on an Island in the Russian Far East] Moscow also plans to nationalise Sakhalin-1 oil and gas development project by ousting U.S. and Japanese shareholders. The capacity of Sakhalin-1 is quite impressive. There was a time before OPEC+ set limits on production levels, when Russia extracted as much as 400,000 barrels per day, but the recent production level has been about 220,000 barrels per day.

The overall trend of nationalising the holdings of American, British, Japanese and European capital in Russia’s strategic sectors of economy is crystallising as the new policy. The cleansing of theRussian economy, freed of Western capital, is expected to accelerate in the period ahead.

Moscow was well aware of the predatory character of Western capital in Russia’s oil sector — a legacy of the Boris Yeltsin era — but had to live with the exploitation as it didn’t want to antagonise other potential western investors. But that is history now. The souring of relations with the West to almost breaking point rids Moscow of such archaic inhibitions.

After coming to power in 1999, President Vladimir Putin set about the mammoth task of cleaning up the Augean stables of Russia’s foreign collaboration in the oil sector. The “decolonisation” process was excruciatingly difficult, but Putin pulled it through”.

Yet that’s just the half of it. Putin keeps saying in speeches that the West is the author of its own debt and inflationary crisis (and not Russia), which gives rise to a great deal of head scratching in the West. Let Professor Hudson however, explain why much of the rest of the world sees the West having taken a ‘wrong turn’ economically. In brief, the West’s wrong turn has led it to a ‘dead end’, Putin implies.

Professor Hudson argues (paraphrased and rephrased) that there are essentially two broad economic models that have descended through history: “On the one hand, we see Near Eastern and Asian societies organized to maintain social balance and cohesion by keeping debt relations and mercantile wealth subordinate to the general welfare of the community as a whole”.

All ancient societies had a mistrust of wealth, because it tended to be accumulated at the expense of society at large – and led to social polarization and gross inequalities of wealth. Looking over the sweep of ancient history, we can see (Hudson says)that the main objective of rulers from Babylonia to South Asia and East Asia was to prevent a mercantile and creditor oligarchy from emerging and concentrating ownership of land in their own hands. This is one historic model.

The great problem that the Bronze Age Near East solved – but classical antiquity and Western civilization have not solved – was how to deal with mounting debts (periodic debt jubilees) without polarising society and ultimately impoverishing the economy by reducing most of the population to debt dependency.

One of Hudson’s key tenets is how China is structured as a ‘low cost’ economy: cheap housing, subsidised education, medical care and transport – means that consumers do have some free disposable income left over – and China as whole, is made competitive. The financialized debt-led model of the West, however, is high cost, with swathes of the population becoming increasingly impoverished and bereft of discretionary income after paying debt servicing costs.

The Western periphery however, lacking the Near Eastern tradition, ‘turned’ to enabling a wealthy creditor oligarchy to take power and concentrate land and property ownership in its own hands. For public relations purposes, it claimed to be a ‘democracy’, and denounced any protective government regulation as being, by definition, ‘autocracy’. This is the second grand model, but with its overhang of debt and now in an inflationary spiral, it too is stuck, lacking the means to step forward.

That latter model is what occurred in Rome. And we are still living in the aftermath. Making debtors dependent on wealthy creditors is what today’s economists call a ‘free market’. It is one without public checks and balances against inequality, fraud or privatization of the public domain.

This neoliberal pro-creditor ethic, Professor Hudson asserts, is at the root of today’s New Cold War. When President Biden describes this great world conflict aimed at isolating China, Russia, India, Iran and their Eurasian trading partners, he characterizes this as an existential struggle between ‘democracy’ and ‘autocracy’.

By democracy he means oligarchy. And by ‘autocracy’ he means any government strong enough to prevent a financial oligarchy from taking over government and society and imposing neoliberal rules – by force – as Putin has done. The ‘democratic’ ideal is to make the rest of the world look like Boris Yeltsin’s Russia, where American neo-liberals had a free hand in stripping away all public ownership of land, mineral rights and basic public utilities.

But today we deal with shades of grey – there is no truly free market in the U.S.; and China and Russia are mixed economies, albeit ones leaning to prioritising a responsibility for the welfare of the community as a whole, rather than imagining that individuals left to their own selfish devices will somehow result in maximising national welfare.

Here is the point: Adam Smith economics plus individualism is ingrained in the western zeitgeist. It will not change. However, President Putin’s new policy of cleansing the Augean Stables of ‘predatory western capital’ and the example set by Russia of its metamophose toward a largely self-supporting economy, immune to dollar hegemony, is music to the ears of the Global South and to much of the Rest of the World.

Taken together with Russia and China’s lead in challenging the West’s ‘right’ to set rules; to monopolise the means (the dollar) as the basis for settling inter-state trade; and with BRICS and SCO steadily acquiring ‘bottom’, Putin’s speeches reveal their revolutionary agenda.

One aspect remains: How to bring about a ‘revolutionary’ metamorphosis, without incurring war with the West. The U.S. and Europe are stuck. They are unable to renew themselves, as the structural political and economic contradictions have locked their paradigm solid. How then to ‘unstick’ the situation, short of war?

The key, paradoxically, may lie with Russia and China’s deep understanding of the flaws to the western economic model. The West is in need of Catharsis to ‘unstick itself’. Catharsis can be defined as the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed, emotions attached to beliefs.

To avoid military catharsis, it seems that the Russian and Chinese leadership – understanding the flaws to the western economic model – must then visit the West with an economic catharsis.

It will be painful, no doubt, but better than nuclear catharsis. We may recall the ending to CV Cafavy’s poem, Waiting for the Barbarians,

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

Australian Reasoning…

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Steaks, cats, human experience, life and Ukraine. A nice mix.

Here’s a mix of some news, and a bunch of human stores. It describes the behaviors of bad people, and the good people. Some good ‘ol Americana thrown in. I hope that you enjoy the articles, the little history lessons, and the thoughts regarding others.

Oh, and be the Rufus!

NATO Boss Whines Citizens Should STOP COMPLAINING about costs of Backing Ukraine

“Our citizens must suffer for Democracy!”

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NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg says that citizens of the west need to “stop complaining” about increased prices for food and fuel because these are necessary to support Ukraine.

Stoletenberg expressed his views in Brussels on Tuesday, telling assembled media he sees support for Ukraine as a moral issue; as if politicians have morals.

Give ear to this two minutes of political rationalizing to justify the unjustifyable. Almost everything he says is a worldview which is NOT based in reality:

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

Clearly, to me, he is trying to ‘guilt’ hundreds of millions of scared/threatened/angry EU citizenry. Did you know he left a position with Klaus Schwabb/WEF to assume the helm as NATO spokesperson?

I don’t have enough spit for this creature.

Classic Steak Diane

First things first. Who’s Diane?

According to What’s Cooking in America, Steak Diane was a popular dish in the 1950s/early 1960s, especially in New York City—in upscale restaurants, it was often prepared tableside with all the theatrics you’d expect from the flambéing of the cognac that is used to make the sauce.

The iconic dish was supposedly named after the Roman goddess, Diana or Diane. Diana was the Goddess of the Hunt and also Goddess of the Moon, and Steak Diane was originally a way of serving venison.

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Classic Steak Diane.

Looking for a classic steakhouse dinner? Steak Diane is the answer. Served with a creamy pan sauce made with mushrooms, shallots, Dijon-style mustard, and brandy, this recipe will have you skipping reservations more often.

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Classic Steak Diane.

Ingredients:

  • 2 beef Strip Steaks, Boneless, cut 1 inch thick (8 ounces each)
  • 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 pound sliced mushrooms
  • 1/4 cup minced shallots
  • 2 tablespoons brandy
  • 1/3 cup whipping cream
  • 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • 1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Cooking:

  1. Combine lemon peel, salt and pepper in small bowl; press evenly onto steaks. Heat large nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot. Place steaks in skillet; cook 12 to 15 minutes for medium rare (145°F) to medium doneness (160°F), turning occasionally. Remove steaks; keep warm.
  2. Add mushrooms and shallots to same skillet; cook 3 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally. Add brandy; cook and stir 1 to 2 minutes until browned bits attached to skillet are dissolved. Stir in cream, lemon juice, mustard and Worcestershire sauce; cook 3 to 5 minutes until sauce is heated through and slightly thickened. Spoon sauce over steaks.
  • Wash hands with soap and water before cooking and always after touching raw meat.
  • Separate raw meat from other foods.
  • Wash all cutting boards, utensils, and dishes after touching raw meat.
  • Do not reuse marinades used on raw foods.
  • Wash all produce prior to use.
  • Cook beef until temperature reaches 145°F for medium rare steaks and roasts 160°F for ground beef.
  • Refrigerate food promptly.

COVID mRNA “Vaccines” Compromise the Immune System

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Recently, The Lancet published a study on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and the waning of immunity with time. The study showed that immune function among mRNA vaccinated individuals 8 months after the administration of two doses of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine was lower than that among the unvaccinated individuals.

According to European Medicines Agency recommendations, frequent COVID-19 mRNA booster shots could adversely affect the immune response and may not be feasible.

The decrease in immunity can be caused by several factors such as N1-methylpseudouridine, the spike protein, lipid nanoparticles, antibody-dependent enhancement, and the original antigenic stimulus. These clinical alterations may explain the association reported between COVID-19 mRNA vaccination and shingles.

studies suggest a link between COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and reactivation of the virus that causes shingles [1213]. This condition is sometimes referred to as vaccine-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (V-AIDS) [14].

As a safety measure, further booster mRNA vaccinations should be discontinued. In addition, the date of vaccination should be recorded in the medical record of patients.

Several practical measures to prevent a decrease in immunity have been reported. These include limiting the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, including acetaminophen to maintain deep body temperature, appropriate use of antibiotics, smoking cessation, stress control, and limiting the use of lipid emulsions, including propofol, which may cause perioperative immunosuppression.

In conclusion, COVID-19 mRNA vaccinations is a major risk factor for infections in critically ill patients.

 

Friends & Friendship

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New Zealand Statesman denounces Five-Eyes/NATO Pacific war plan

A former New Zealand Cabinet Minister has warned that the actions of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in tying their two countries to NATO is pushing the Pacific towards war.

Matt Robson was a Cabinet Minister in Helen Clarke’s Labour-led Coalition government, and served as NZ’s Minister for Disarmament and Associate Minister for Foreign Affairs, with intimate knowledge of Pacific affairs.

He is also a barrister with extensive experience in international law.

In a striking new interview with the Australian Citizens Party’s Citizens Insight program on YouTube, Matt Robson takes on the manufactured consensus regarding supposedly virtuous NATO standing against authoritarian Russia and China, which is being used to undermine NZ’s commitment to banning nuclear weapons and an independent foreign policy, and turn Australia and NZ into extensions of NATO in the Asia-Pacific, for confronting China.

For Australia, Anthony Albanese is continuing his predecessor’s policies, which is bad enough, demonstrating Australia’s complete lack of independence on foreign policy; for NZ however, Ardern is actually destroying her country’s foreign policy principles, including its independent commitment to nuclear disarmament, by taking NZ under NATO’s nuclear umbrella.

To see a NZ statesman say what no serving major party politician in Australia or New Zealand would be game to say today.

Please click here to watch CITIZENS INSIGHT – New Zealand Statesman denounces Five-Eyes/NATO Pacific war plan – Matt Robson.

The story of Cambodia

Cambodia used to be a prosperous country. After the end of the Indochina War (1945–1954), under the leadership of King Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012), the economy of Cambodia rapidly went up for the next twenty years, with remarkable achievements.

In 1960, the GPD per capita of Cambodia was US$ 111,34 and it was even higher than both North and South Vietnam at that time (with US$ 51 and US$ 105, respectively).

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Cambodia in the 1960’s.

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Cambodia in the 1960’s.

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Cambodia in the 1960’s.

During the 1960s, while Vietnam was stuck into a devastated war, the economy of Cambodia continued to develop rapidly.

The capital of Phnom Penh was among the “pearls” of the oriental world, where notable figures of the world such as French President Charles De Gaulle (1890–1970) and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) had their visits.

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Phnom Penh was among the “pearls” of the oriental world…

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Phnom Penh was among the “pearls” of the oriental world…

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Phnom Penh was among the “pearls” of the oriental world…

However…

The fate of Cambodia was sealed on 18 March 1970, after the coup d’état against King Norodom Sihanouk, which was organized and implemented by the United States CIA.

Since then, Cambodia was mired in a bloody civil war during the next five years (1970–1975), with hundred thousand deaths.

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Cambodia civil war.

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Cambodia civil war.

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Cambodia civil war.

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Cambodia civil war.

Unluckily, the end of the Cambodian Civil War in 1975 did not mark the beginning of the new peaceful era for Cambodian nation. On the contrary, it subsequently marked the beginning of the Maoist genocidal regime of Khmer Rouge, as one of the most brutal dictatorships in 20th century.

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Pol Pot

With Cambodian Maoism in his mind, in just four years Pol Pot rapidly transformed his country into a massive “killing field”, where 2.0 to 3.0 millions of “counter-revolutionaries” or 1/3 of Cambodian population were exterminated!

Historically, it was called the “Cambodian Genocide”, in which the whole country of Cambodia was returned to the “Year Zero” (Année Zéro).

From a prosperous country during the 1960s, Cambodia became a constant famine-stricken and also one of the poorest countries in the world under the rule of Khmer Rouge regime.

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The Khmer Rouge regime believed in a Marxist Utopia.

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The Khmer Rouge regime believed in a Marxist Utopia.

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The Khmer Rouge regime believed in a Marxist Utopia.

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The Khmer Rouge regime believed in a Marxist Utopia.

The whole economic structure of Cambodia was totally bankrupt to the root when Pol Pot decided not to use the paper money anymore!

The city of Phnom Penh subsequently became a “ghost city”.

There were no more French-style coffee shops, no more luxury cars, no more beautiful lights of neon at night, but only the so-called “people’s communes” located around the country, where people were forced to work until their last breath.

These below pictures were about the city of Phnom Penh under the rule of Khmer Rouge.

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The city of Phnom Penh under the rule of Khmer Rouge.

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The city of Phnom Penh under the rule of Khmer Rouge.

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The city of Phnom Penh under the rule of Khmer Rouge.

The “Cambodian Genocide” was finally ended on January 1979, when the Cambodian national uprising together with the Vietnamese offensive finally overthrown the rule of Pol Pot and his henchmen.

During the next twenty years (1979–1999), together with the Vietnamese military assistance, the new government of Cambodia under the leadership of Hun Sen continued the fight against the remaining Khmer Rouge guerrillas until the death of Pol Pot in 1998 and the total disband of the Khmer Rouge faction in 1999.

Since 1993, Norodom Sihanouk officially returned as a King of Cambodia. Meanwhile, all of the former leaders of Khmer Rouge regime were charged with their crimes against the humanity.

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The Khmer Rouge is defeated by joint Vietnam and local Cambodian forces.

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The Khmer Rouge is defeated by joint Vietnam and local Cambodian forces.

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The Khmer Rouge is defeated by joint Vietnam and local Cambodian forces.

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The Khmer Rouge is defeated by joint Vietnam and local Cambodian forces.

Nowadays, although Cambodia is not a rich country, but the revival process is going on, the whole country of Cambodia is again going up rapidly from zero and obtains average GDP growth about 7.5% annually.

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Cambodia today.

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The Khmer Rouge is defeated by joint Vietnam and local Cambodian forces.

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Cambodian GDP.

Confidence

Confidence is the degree to which you can trust yourself.

We tend to confuse confidence for skill: we see someone who’s a great speaker, a serial entrepreneur, a daring athlete, and think “I wish I could be like them”. Able to show up and just do it.

What we don’t see is the hundreds of times they tried and it didn’t work out.

That’s how they built their skills: by having the confidence to show up again.

Confidence is not knowing that you will win at whatever game you choose to play; it’s the certainty that you can take a punch (or a few).

That, when things won’t go the way you want them to, you will keep showing up and take another one on the chin. And again. Because that’s the best way to learn and get that level of skill where things work out great most of the time.

Confidence is not about results, it’s about effort: do you trust yourself to keep showing up? Or will you give up and stop doing it?

That’s why my hack to build confidence is to get used to doing things I don’t want to be doing.

I used to hate cold water, so I took a cold shower every day.
I wasn’t a great runner, so I ran a marathon with 4 weeks of training.
I used to be uncomfortable talking to women, so I talked to 300 in a year.
I didn’t feel confident speaking in public, so I joined a speaking group.
I was scared to write online, so I started writing weekly.

I now feel confident at all the above, and more.

And that’s how I built my confidence.

By showing myself that I can trust me.

No matter the result, I’m going to show up.

– Matt

Russian Objectives “Have Changed” in Ukraine

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Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov announced just minutes ago “The geographical objectives of the special operation have changed, now it is not only the DPR and LPR, but also a number of other territories.” Lavrov said that Luhansk and Donetsk are not longer the sole objective of the Special Military Operation; other areas are also now an objective.  He did not specify which areas, but observers suggest that everything east of the Dnieper River . . .  meaning the entire eastern half of what is now Ukraine, may now be the actual objective. Lavrov also said “If the West continues to supply Kiev with longer-range weapons, the geographical objectives of the special operation in Ukraine will move even further than they just have.”

Lavrov – Extended Range Weapons In Ukraine Will Lead To More Loss Of Its Land

Today the foreign minister of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov, announced the extension of the land in Ukraine that Russia intends to capture.

It will depend on the maximum weapon range of the systems the Ukraine will have under its control.

Via RIA Novosti (machine translation):

Lavrov: deliveries of long-range weapons to Kyiv will expand the geography of the special operation

MOSCOW, July 20 – RIA Novosti. If Ukraine receives long-range weapons from Western countries, then the geographical tasks of the special operation of the Russian troops will change, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and the Rossiya Segodnya media group. “The President said very clearly, as you quoted him – denazification, demilitarization in the sense that there are no threats to our security, military threats from the territory of Ukraine, this task remains,” the minister stressed. At the same time, he recalled that during the meeting of the negotiators in Istanbul at the end of March, the situation on this issue was significantly different. “Now the geography is different. It is far from being only the DPR and LPR, it is also the Kherson region, the Zaporozhye region and a number of other territories, and this process continues, and continues consistently and persistently,” the head of Russian diplomacy added. He pointed out that as the West, in impotent rage or in a desire to make the situation as bad as possible, pumps more and more long-range weapons into Ukraine, for example, HIMARS, the geographical objectives of the special operation will move even further from the current line. “Because we cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Zelensky will control or whoever replaces him to have weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territory of those republics that have declared their independence, those who want their future decide for yourself,” he concluded.

Note to Washington: If you deliver HIMARS missile to Ukraine with an extended (300km instead of 80km) range, Russia will have to move further into Ukraine to secure its own and the Donbas republics borders.

This comes after calls in Ukraine to hit the bridge over the Kerch street that connects Crimea with Russia with extended range HIMARS missiles. The nearest point of the area which the Ukraine still holds is some 260 kilometer away from the bridge.

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There are also rumors that the Ukraine has already received such missiles. Via Naked Capitalism:

Zelensky Orders Troops to Hold Siversk Despite Heavy Losses, Purges More Officials; Putin in Tehran – Alexander Mercouris. Note in particular starting at 10:10, Mercouris reports that DPR official Eduard Barsurin has stated that Ukraine has received the 300 km missiles for the HIMARS. Ukraine has made clear it intends to hit targets in Crimea, which Russia regards as Russian territory, particularly the Kerch bridge. Mercouris thinks it would take an awful lot of missiles to do that, as in more than Ukraine has now, but any strikes at Crimea would lead to very forceful retaliation by Russia. Ukraine is smoking something strong if it thinks that will lead the West to do meaningfully more for Ukraine than it is doing now.

Mercouris is wrong when he claims that the long range HIMARS missile would only have a small warhead as it must be fired out of one of the 6 tubes of the regular HIMARS canister. The long range missile is the ATACMS. It comes in a different canister which has only one tube for a missile with a diameter of 610 mm. It can be fired by all systems that usually fire the 6 missile canister.

 

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The version of the MFM-140 ATACMS missile that would most likely be used is the M57 (ATACMS TACMS 2000):

It carries the 500 lb WDU-18/B penetrating high explosive blast fragmentation warhead of the US Navy's Harpoon anti-ship missile, which was redesignated as WAU-23/B when used in ATACMS.

It is not the ideal warhead to attack a hard target but it is significant enough to at least heavily damage the Kerch bridge.

If it should be used Ukraine will lose all land that is within 300 kilometer of Crimea, the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts and Ukraine’s northern border with Russia. Odessa is only 180 kilometer from Crimea and Kiev some 200 kilometer from the nearest Russian border. If we take Lavrov’s words seriously those cities would come under Russian occupation should an extended range HIMARS missile be used.

Lavrov named several Ukrainian oblasts that are already on Russia’s wish list:

It is far from being only the DPR and LPR, it is also the Kherson region, the Zaporozhye region and a number of other territories, ..

The number of other territories will have to include the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts to protect the border of Donetsk and Luhansk from longer reaching weapons. Mykolaiv and Odessa may have to be taken to protect Russia’s oil and gas installations west of Crimea. The Ukraine has already attacked those with longer range weapons.

 

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If I were a Ukrainian decision maker I would take Lavrov’s threat very seriously.

The longest reaching weapon that the U.S. and Great Britain have delivered to Ukraine so far is the Harpoon anti ship missile with a range of 124 kilometer which is near to the 120 kilometer range that Ukrainian Tochka-U missiles have. The Russian defense ministry had previously claimed that at least two Harpoon launchers had been destroyed. According to its daily report another one was eliminated yesterday near Usatovo in the Odessa Region.

Posted by b on July 20, 2022 at 13:18 UTC | Permalink

Sam Hunt – Water Under The Bridge (Official Music Video)

Artist Draws Disney Animals As Humans While Keeping Their Unique Personalities In Tact

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Ever wondered what Lady from Lady And The Tramp would look like if she were human? Maybe, maybe not, but artist s0alaina has given it a lot of thought. S0alaina has recreated many of Disney’s most iconic animals as humans, and the results are pretty awesome!

S0alaina writes via Bored Panda, “I’ve often wondered what these animals would look like if they were human and I have enjoyed others’ illustrations of this concept. But I noticed that most of these versions lacked character consistency thus making them not quite as believable and lovable.”

In order to stay true to the original Disney animals, s0alaina keeps them in the context and style of the movie they are from.

“I decided to draw them in the styles of their movies, and keep consistent shape language and features to interpret the character in a more thorough and believable way… I had LOADS of fun doing this!”

Enjoy taking a peek at what Disney animals would look like if they walked upright on two-legs and talked too much.

Aristocats

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“I think this one was harder, because O’Malley’s such a bulky character, in face and build, so he makes kind of a funny looking human. And maintaining the 1900-1910s look was hard to do for Duchess because her hair would look much better as a 20s girl~ but I found an appropriate hairstyle.”

The Lion King

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Bolt

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Tarzan

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Jungle Book

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Lady And The Tramp

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Webb telescope suffered ‘uncorrectable damage’ in micrometeoroid hit, NASA report says

·5 min read
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(NEXSTAR) – A micrometeoroid caused “significant uncorrectable damage” to NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Telescope, a new report explains. While experts say the impact was small, it has prompted further investigation.

At 21 feet, Webb’s gold-plated, flower-shaped mirror is the biggest and most sensitive ever sent into space. It’s comprised of 18 segments, one of which was smacked by the bigger than anticipated micrometeoroid in May. Micrometeoroids are fragments of asteroids that are usually smaller than a grain of sand, according to NASA.

At the time, Paul Geithner, technical deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explained it was known that Webb would have to survive the harsh environment of space, including micrometeoroids.

In a newly released report, Webb’s commissioning team said that while the mirrors and sunshields on the telescope are “expected to slowly degrade from micrometeoroid impacts,” the impact to one specific segment, known as C3, “exceeded prelaunch expectations of damage for a single micrometeoroid.”

Despite this, Webb’s team has determined the overall impact on the telescope is small. Engineers were able to realign Webb’s segments to adjust for the micrometeoroid’s damage.

“Bidenvilles” Popping-Up All Over America – The country is being wrecked

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Bidenville.

A worrisome icon of decades past has resurfaced and is worsening. Unregulated shantytowns persist around the nation — made up of tents, tiny houses, RVs or ramshackle shelters. The trend could be identified with President Biden, some say.

“It is just a matter of time before signs start sprouting up in the homeless areas of America proclaiming the existence of Bidenville,” advises presidential historian and author Craig Shirley.

Bidenville?

“We had widespread destitution under Herbert Hoover, just as we do today under Joe Biden. The poverty was indescribable. The world looked to be all black and white. No green. No sunlight. No hope. The dark humor at the time led newspaper writers to call them Hoovervilles. Utter destitution. Every day was worse than the previous, just as under President Biden,” Mr. Shirley tells Inside the Beltway.

“Shantytowns of grinding poverty were spread across America in the late 1920s and into the 1930s. John Steinbeck wrote about them as did other Depression-era authors. Millions of people huddled together, eking out a miserable existence. Sickness, homeless, disease and starvation spread, just as today. The plight and suffering was widespread — and it lasted for years,” Mr. Shirley continues.

“Mark Twain was right. History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme, he once said. Mindless liberalism has led to the new Bidenvilles,” the historian advises.

Hal Turner Remark:  Joe Biden is a monster. All Americans are in grave danger under this deranged lunatic and his mentally ill democrat cohorts.

Hooverville Life

Homelessness was present before the Great Depression and a common sight before 1929. Most large cities built municipal lodging houses for them, but the depression exponentially increased demand. The homeless clustered in shanty towns close to free soup kitchens. A “Hooverville” was a shanty town built by homeless people during the Great Depression. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States during the onset of the Depression and widely blamed for it.

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Dwellers in Circleville’s Hooverville, central Ohio.

The Bonus Army, a group of World War I veterans seeking expedited benefits, established a Hooverville in Anacostia in the District of Columbia in 1932. At its maximum there were 15,000 people living there. The camp was demolished by units of the U.S. Army, commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

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Hooverville of Bakersfield, California. A rapidly growing community of people living rent-free on the edge of the town dump in whatever kind of shelter available.

These settlements were often formed on empty land and generally consisted of tents and small shacks. Authorities did not officially recognize these Hoovervilles and occasionally removed the occupants for trespassing on private lands, but they were frequently tolerated or ignored out of necessity. The New Deal enacted special relief programs aimed at the homeless under the Federal Transient Service (FTS), which operated from 1933–35.

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Hooverville. Portland, Oregon.

Some of the men who were forced to live in these conditions possessed construction skills and were able to build their houses out of stone.

Most people, however, resorted to building their residences out of wood from crates, cardboard, scraps of metal, or whatever materials were available to them. They usually had a small stove, bedding and a couple of simple cooking implements.

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Hooverville- 1938.

Most of these unemployed residents of the Hoovervilles used public charities or begged for food from those that had some housing during this era.

They blamed President Hoover for this, and named the town after him. Democrats coined other terms, such as “Hoover blanket” (old newspaper used as blanketing) and “Hoover flag” (an empty pocket turned inside out).

“Hoover leather” was cardboard used to line a shoe when the sole wore through.

A “Hoover wagon” was an automobile with horses hitched to it because the owner could not afford fuel; in Canada, these were known as Bennett buggies, after the Prime Minister at the time.

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Life in a shanty town 1938.

After 1940 the economy recovered, unemployment fell, and shanty eradication programs destroyed all the Hoovervilles. Hoovervilles have often features in the popular culture, and still appear in editorial cartoons.Movies like My Man Godfrey (1936) and Sullivan’s Travels (1941) sometimes sentimentalized Hooverville life

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Huts and unemployed in West Houston and Mercer St by Berenice Abbott in Manhattan in 1935

The China threat: Dutton is dragging Australia into dangerous waters

Jan 13, 2022

The Defence Minister is stoking anti-China sentiment in Australia – a foolhardy stance that is damaging our economy and putting us at risk of military conflict. 

On November 23, shadow foreign minister Penny Wong said that the Morrison government’s constant

“amping up the prospect of war against a super-power is the most dangerous election tactic in Australian history”.

She is right that it is extremely dangerous, but the ploy has been used before. The difference this time is, of course, that China is a nuclear superpower.

In the 1960s the Coalition government terrified the Australian public with the prospect of the ‘Yellow Peril’ of Chinese communism toppling all the ‘dominoes’ in South-East Asia and wiping out Australia’s democratic way of life, unless it was halted in its tracks in Vietnam. So we joined the US in its ‘war of aggression’ in Vietnam (Daniel Ellsberg 2002) .

Following the destruction of cities and rural environment by more bombs than were dropped by all sides in WWII, with the attendant slaughter of 3.8 million people (Robert McNamara 1999) and the maiming and deforming of countless more by Napalm and Agent Orange, we were finally defeated in 1975.

Unsurprisingly the ‘Yellow Peril’ did not come flooding down to Australia, because the Vietnamese national liberation movement which won the war, was as opposed to Chinese intervention as it was to American intervention. It is delusional to believe that Vietnam would support an American war against China.

Wong said that Defence Minister Peter Dutton was “wildly out of step with a strategy long adopted by Australia and our principal ally” which was the “bipartisan adoption of a One China Policy and advocacy to deter unilateral changes to the status quo”.

But is Dutton really out of step with US strategy? On the contrary, he appears to be implementing the “strategy of denial” detailed in the book of that name by Elbridge Colby, a book he keenly read (Troy Bramston, The Australian, December 15).

Colby served as the lead official in the development of the 2018 National Defence Strategy (NDS). He served with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003 and the 2004-05 President’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, making him adept in campaigns of vilification through misinformation.

He is committed to the pursuit of the ‘Wolfowitz doctrine’ of maintaining US primacy in the world by military force.

He believes a ‘limited war’ between China and Taiwan would serve the US objective of inhibiting China’s rise.

The 2018 NDS has not been significantly revised under President Joe Biden.

In it Colby recommended that US allies Japan, India and Australia should be drawn into a coalition (like the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ against Iraq) to contain China.

Two years later, under Biden, the QUAD and AUKUS were formed.

Step 1: Vilification

In line with Colby’s strategy of demonisation, Dutton is generating fear of China by characterising its efforts to protect its national territorial integrity in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan as ‘aggressive expansionism’. These are specious examples, since all four provinces have been part of the sovereign territory of China since well before Australia existed as a nation state.

He seems unaware that China has never invaded another country for territorial gain, whereas the US has attempted the overthrow of 60 countries since WWII, succeeding in the case of 25 elected democracies.

Dutton said he had to speak the truth about China’s military build-up, but failed to mention the US ‘pivot to Asia’, which ranged 60 per cent of American naval capability along the coast of China. To the Chinese, this must have looked like a potential blockade of its most  economically vital ports, and provoked the acceleration of military counter measures.

He cited China’s construction of military bases in the South China Sea as a further sign of ‘expansionism’, but failed to mention that Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and even Taiwan had similar bases.

He did not acknowledge the possibility that China saw its bases as a counter to the constant  incursions by the US and its allies (especially Australia) into waters vital to its interests, through ‘freedom of navigation operations’. He made no mention of the fact that China has one base outside its own periphery, compared to over 800 US bases around the world, many of them encircling China.

To further stoke public fear, he pointed out that China’s navy was many times the tonnage of Australia’s and their missiles were capable of striking any target in Australia as far south as Hobart.

Step 2: Goad China to act

Colby argued that after a campaign to vilify it, China could be goaded into starting a military conflict over Taiwan and thus be portrayed as the aggressor. The US has already taken a number of steps in this direction, apart from stationing the bulk of its naval power off the coast of China. These include:

  • “Freedom of navigation” and combat exercises in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait;
  • Visits by senior US officials using US military aircraft;
  • Creation of a putative “air defence identification zone” extending well over mainland territory and then alleging Chinese violations of it;
  • Secretly providing military training personnel (while denying it);
  • Including Taiwan in the Summit for Democracy (December 8-10), implying it is a separate country.

Dutton is further goading China by reassuring Taiwan that Australia would “inevitably” come to its defence in the event of a military move against it from the mainland.

He is increasing the possibility that Taiwan will feel emboldened to declare independence from China and thus upset the status quo and provoke the war that Colby recommends.

Daniel L. Davies, a retired lieutenant-colonel and senior fellow at Washington think tank Defence Priorities, has argued that “refusing to be drawn into a no-win war with China over Taiwan will see our comparative advantage over China increase dramatically.

Their military would be seriously degraded … while ours … would be at full strength”.

The Taiwan Relations Act 1979 imposes a legal requirement on the US to “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character”. There is no treaty obligation for the US to intervene to defend Taiwan. According to Davies, the US should not risk any of its own military assets, but should push Taiwan to invest more in its self-defence capabilities. Colby has suggested that the US should not provide air defence to Taiwan, since widespread civilian casualties would whip up world anger against China.

Under the strategies proposed by Colby and Davies, China would become bogged down in a  drawn-out conflict that would severely deplete its armed forces and deflect its resources away from economic development and international infrastructure co-operation. It would also satisfy the insatiable appetite of the US military-Industrial complex for never-ending arms sales.

The ANZUS Treaty is a non-binding collective security agreement. It provides only that an armed attack on one of its members would  constitute a danger to the others and require consultations on measures to meet the threat. It does not bind the US to intervene to protect Australia should Australia attack a third party.

In the light of the Colby-Davies strategy for Taiwan, the US would be unlikely to risk its own military assets or any of its homeland territory in direct defence of Australia. It would increase arms sales to bolster Australia’s self-defence, at great cost to the budget and great profit to the military-industrial complex.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan promised that America would not leave Australia ‘alone in the field’ in its trade dispute with China. Instead of taking supportive action, however, the US leapt in to snatch up the markets lost by Australia’s ‘standing up to China’. This does not encourage confidence that the US would actively intervene in support of Australia in a military clash with China.

Commitment under AUKUS to heavy expenditure on nuclear-powered submarines, to arrive in the next 20 years or so, offers little  reassurance if Dutton’s ‘war with China’ erupts in the next five years.

Dutton has disingenuously asserted that the ASEAN countries would support Australia. He has failed to acknowledge that such support is far from certain, since ASEAN on November 22 renewed its Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with China. Each of its members has ongoing infrastructure projects under China’s BRI, which they would not wish to put at risk. They have all expressed varying degrees of disquiet at ‘increased power projection’ into the region through AUKUS.

The effectiveness of the QUAD in defence of Australia is also highly questionable, given that India has security obligations with China through its commitment to the Charter of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. India is also dependent for its armament on Russia, which has a “better than treaty relationship” with China. Russia seems unlikely to equip India to fight China.

The Colby strategy has not been formally adopted by the Biden administration, but there are signs that it is gaining increasing traction in policy-making circles in Washington. There are also strong voices in Washington in favour of direct US military involvement in defense of Taiwan, arguing that if it failed to do so, the US would lose international credibility as the ‘protector of democracy’.

Fortunately, President Biden has opted, for the time being, for continuation of the policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ (if somewhat weighted towards reassurances to Taiwan), eschewing the two competing, more aggressive scenarios.

In either scenario, the result for Australia would be the same: – If Australia were to join in the battle to “save democratic Taiwan”, as proposed by Dutton, then, judging from his own assessment of China’s capabilities, the Australian navy would be obliterated in short order and command-control centres in Australia destroyed (especially Pine Gap, in the unlikely event that US forces were involved).

The strident anti-China policy of the Morrison government has positioned Australia as the enemy of China, which is increasingly reluctant to trade with the enemy.

Hence the China trade would not be available to buffer Australia from the worst effects of the next global financial crisis (which many economic analysts believe is imminent), as it did in the 2008 GFC. Australia would be considerably weakened economically and much less able to sustain a military engagement with China.

Dutton’s pronouncements, however, are edging Australia inexorably towards outright warfare with China.

Australia needs instead to align itself more clearly to Biden’s public posture by unambiguously reaffirming (to both China and Taiwan) its adherence to the One China principle and its commitment to a peaceful, negotiated resolution of the ‘Taiwan problem’.

I’m 77. I created four successful businesses, married two beautiful women (one at a time) have two great sons, and retired at 49. My life has been full. And it really doesn’t matter – none of it. I wish I’d known that in the beginning – that it all wouldn’t matter. I beat myself up most of my life trying to accomplish success and I could have had a much easier time of it. I was chasing someone else’s dream, not mine.

No 14 hour days, six days out of the week. No heart attacks. No ulcers. No enemies. I could have learned the piano, painted, sculpted, read more books, learned to dance the salsa, had more dogs.

At the end of life, and mine is just around the corner, the important stuff is the stuff I didn’t have time for. I can’t speak for all wealthy people, but the ones I know are pretty damn empty. We come into the world naked and we leave pretty much the same way – and there are no “Mulligans”.

If you don’t get it right the first time, too bad for you. I’m too old to climb the mountains I always wanted to climb, too old to buy a dog, too old to learn to surf, too old to learn the piano. All the good stuff is behind me. Don’t get stuck in a life that isn’t yours.

Best relationship advice…

One afternoon a long time ago (we must have been around fourteen years old) a friend of mine was talking to his dad.

“I am in love with a girl” he said, “and I’d like to know how to keep her by my side.”

“You can’t” his dad said. “You can’t keep her. The best you can do is give her whatever she lacks.”

“Like, gifts? Like what?”

“No, no” said his dad. “I am not talking about stuff. I am talking about how she feels about her place in her life. Does she go through a lot of uncertainty? Give her stability. Does she feel in any way trapped? Give her freedom. Does she feel she does not matter? Give her the best quality of your attention. Does she feel things are always turbulent? Give her peace.”

I have thought about this advice for decades, and the distinction between “completing” someone and providing a counterpoint in their life.

The most fortunate relationships are a natural match between what a person lacks and what the other cannot wait to give.

Life in the “free” West

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Walker Hayes – Y’all Life (Official Video)

A little bit about living life in the USA… Small town… Friday Night… teenager life.

Bad Parents and a Rufus Grandmother

These things happened to me in the late 50s.

I think it’s different now with so many groups and even teachers who are trained to notice different behavior. I was 6 years old and cried all the time away from home. I cried at church, at school, on the playground, and in our neighborhood. Not one person asked what was wrong. I would look at leaders and teachers, almost begging with my eyes to get them to ask if things were okay at home. I waited outside until the last child was called inside the house, hoping we didn’t have to walk inside the cold, dark house alone. I told my brother it was an adventure. We had no food many times, so I found some dry cereal and gave it to him and then started his bath and made sure he was in bed. The following day, we dressed, and I was worried about lunch money. I would scour around and find enough change for milk and lunch money for my brother. I didn’t want to be different at school so not having lunch money was a big thing. At this time, my mother and stepfather told us absolutely to not call our grandmother. I think so she wouldn’t know they were gone most of the time.

I would say for my brother and me; it was the sadness on our faces that never left. You can’t pretend laughter or joy. I recently found a picture of us about that time and we neither smiled and both looked down. Whereas, my baby brother smiled and enjoyed visiting at times.

It was also never passing a class and doing homework. We were the ones that never did our homework. We were fearful, but we were more afraid of my mother, and we knew she didn’t care what happened to us. I was the child that didn’t want to make anyone sad because of me. I worried if I would make my teachers upset if we didn’t do our homework. Yet, my little brain had so much crammed inside it that I barely made it day by day.

If you notice a child looking sad, fearful, and especially crying, ask if they are okay. I imagine now it would be more watching to see if a child goes alone or with someone else alone. Do they have clean clothes or shoes to wear that are the right size? Are they hungry when you get your snack or lunch, but the child isn’t eating? Do they walk in the bitter cold or the blistering heat without shoes? Do they come to school late, or do they get into trouble so someone, somewhere, will pay attention, even if it’s bad attention? These are just a few of the issues I had as a little girl.

Thankfully, our grandmother got my two brothers and me at 73, and we were almost 6, 4, and 1 years old. My baby brother was very sick, and my grandmother happened to stop by, a “God thing,” I like to refer to it. My grandmother asked where the baby was, and I told her he was cold because he kept shaking, and I covered him in his crib.

Long story, she took the three of us with her, and he was hospitalized for German Measles and almost died. The Pediatrician told my grandmother later that he would have passed away if she hadn’t brought him to the hospital within an hour. We are so thankful God allowed him to live.

Our grandmother was a strong Christian, and when my parents divorced, they also told the Judge they didn’t want us. He was going to put us in foster care, but my dear grandmother stood up and said she would take the three of us and provide. He asked her questions, and she assured him she would be fine in taking three. He talked to me privately, and I told him we loved our grandmother and would be happy to be there.

She was our Angel.

Many wonder how hard it must have been for her to raise us at 73. She was born in 1890 and became a school teacher and taught in a one-room schoolhouse for years. She rose early and rode her horse to get to the school early enough to build a good, warm fire. She was very energetic and remained very active and told us we kept her YOUNG. I doubt that, but she kept us alive and whole. God allowed her to live to be 96.

I have no words to express how much I still miss her even after 30 years. she taught us about God and His love that would always be there if she died.

I’m enclosing the last picture of the 3 of us and our dear grandmother as adults many years ago. She is always in our hearts.

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CLOWN WORLD: Pentagon Spox Says Climate Change Caused fighting in Syria

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Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby proved the Pentagon has become a clown show, by telling reporters during a Press Briefing that it was Climate Change that caused the military hostilities in Syria.

 

 

How does a person with idiotic views like this, even get near the Pentagon for employment?  One would think that being reality based would be an important criteria for the Pentagon to hire someone.

Clearly, John Kirby, based on his remarks above, lacks being based in reality.

The entire federal government seems to be Clown World.

A tragic Incident

In a middle school of South Korea an incident occurred which completely disgusted me!

In the school it was a rule that “No phones during class hours”. So, students gives their phones to their homeroom teacher when the classes begin.

Once, “Student X” (let’s call her that) asked her teacher Mr. Song if she could take her phone for a work on her Science Homework. Mr. Song agreed and gave her the phone but he forgot that he gave permission. So, when he was looking at the students doing their work, and saw Student X with the phone, he scolded her. Student X got very upset about it…so she raised her voice, cried and stormed out of the classroom. When she was going…Mr. Song tried to stop her and held her arm. And unfortunately, this was the worst thing he did for Student X. She pulled her arm out and stormed out of the school.

She went to her home and being afraid to tell her parents about her behaviour and coming back from school soon. She said that Mr. Song sexually abused her and that he did bad things to her. Student X’s parents immediately informed it to the police. Soon, police started to investigate and question Student X and she told that Mr. Song sexually abused her and her friends. Then, the policemen questioned all the students and they took Student X’s side and said that Mr. Song hits them.

Mr. Song was questioned about it and he denied it but still police wanted to take him to jail and when Student X saw that it was getting out of hand, she claimed that she lied. The police case was soon closed but Board of Education still pressured the incident and was pressuring Mr. Song to admit that he abused the students. They wanted to ban him but students started to protest. They said “Mr. Song never raised his hands on us. He always pat our shoulder whenever we do a good job. He is a wonderful teacher. Please return him to us. We are sorry for accusing him.”

But still the Board of Education didn’t let it go. They said to Mr. Song “If the students really lied and accused against you, then they did a crime and we are going to punish them.”

Mr. Song wanted to save his students so he said that he did actually abused them. And thus he was banned from the school and people started to attack him with saying hateful things. They hated him and said:

He calls himself a teacher?

This gives me chills. What a horrible teacher!

I wonder how he would react if his children were involved.

How dare he call himself teacher!

This went on and on until Mr. Song took his own life in his garage. Mr. Song’s family tried to sue the North Juolla Province but the case was soon shut down by the prosecution of “Finding no legitimate ground” to investigate the Board.

This tragic incident of Mr. Song’s death remains a controversy in the Board of Education. It is heavily criticized for handling the situation like this. People not only blame Student X’s irresponsible lie but also the carelessness of the Board which caused the death of Mr. Song.

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President of Chechnya: First Demilitarization of Ukraine, Next the same for NATO – Poland first

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The President of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov says that he and his people are glad to support Russia’s demilitarization of Ukraine. He went on to say they are “developing a plan to demilitarize NATO. After the capture of Kiev, next is Poland.”

Given the reality that:

1) Ukraine had the largest standing army in all of Europe, which was trained, equipped, and certified by NATO,

AND;

2) Given the reality that the Russian Army is now chewing-up and spitting out the Ukraine Army, defeating Ukraine in almost every confrontation, it appears to many observers that NATO training and certification makes them only a paper tiger.

This paper tiger has been roaring at Russia for decades, and now may face being swept away by the very Russians they have demonized for decades.

A fucked up life

I was taken in by a same sex couple after my little brother and I were abandoned by our mom.

This couple completely ruined me.

They had their own son by the way, but anyways, I was the target for their abuse. From 2011 up until march 14, 2014, I was physically, emotionally, verbally, and sexually abused by them.

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These are the women I once called “my moms.”

I was taken in by them when I was I around three or four. Initially they seemed like a very nice couple they treated me and my little brother well. But they then started changing the way they treated me specifically when I was about six. I’m not sure why I was their target. Till this day I find myself wondering if I did something wrong for them to treat me like they did?

It was Christmas Eve of 2011 and they allowed me and my brothers to open one gift that night. I don’t remember what I got but I remember what my youngest brother Eraca’s son got. It was a little computer that taught you the letters of the alphabet and I grabbed it from him to look at it. When I did that Christian scolded me and asked me why I hit my little brother with it. I was really confused because I know I didn’t hit him with anything. That night I was thrown outside and had to sit on the porch in the cold for hours. That was the night everything changed for me.

Eraca was gone Monday through Friday so that just left us kids with Christian to care for us, she was a stay at home mom. Christian is the one who basically did everything to me. She had many different torture methods for me everyday while ‘her sons’ watched Cartoons and got to play outside. She would throw me into cold baths and put ice cubes in it and made me lay in it for hours. When she was feeling really good she liked to hold my head under water and attempt to drown me. I was only fed once a day, and if I didn’t do a chore right she wouldn’t feed me at all. Sometimes I went a whole week without receiving any food. It came to the point were in the middle of the night sometimes I would sneak into the kitchen and eat almost a whole entire box of cereal because I was so hungry.

One night I got caught stealing food and Eraca and Christian decided that since I liked to steal food I should be chained up. So the next day they went to home depot and purchased a dog chain for me. When we got home Eraca drilled the chain into the wall and chained me by my ankle. I was chained up everyday unless they had something they needed me to do, or if Christian was in the mood to do something crazy to me.

It came to the point were I was scared to ask if I could go to the restroom so I would constantly piss myself and poop on myself. I started doing it almost everyday and it became a habit but it was also disgusting to me because sooner or later I started smelling bad and Christian would just make me walk around like that while I did my chores. When I did sometimes get the courage to ask to use the restroom Christian would punch, kick me and drag me to the restroom.

They would have my little brothers pee on me, and Christian would sometime make me drink her pee. I was starting to get very weak from not eating and I started to have little black outs while doing chores. Just for the hell of it they would sometimes have me bathe in bleach and it came to a point were the skin on some of my toes was falling off. Christian would also put lemon juice on the missing flesh of my toes before sending me to sleep. That was one of the worst pains I’ve ever felt. They put me through more torture everyday that I just don’t want to think about.

I was saved on March 14 2014 ,and from there my biological brother and I were adopted into a Family. They changed our names and now my last name is Ochinang. I call them the Ochinangs since that’s their last name. When I got adopted I really thought I was safe and wouldn’t have to go through abuse again but little did I know.. For five years their biological son who was only two days older than me molested me and I never said anything because that’s what I learned to do best at Christian’s house. The parents never believed me and when I told them the mom said I was lying for attention. They never really supported me, and the mom also didn’t accept the fact that I was bisexual so she was always telling me I wasn’t normal and that I was going to hell.

I finally reported the sexual abuse to authorities on November 2018 when I was in the eighth grade. I got removed from my adoptive home, and since then I’ve been in this horrible foster system. I’m only fifteen-years-old and I have gone through the worst of the worst and I’m still here fighting for the love of a family. I’m in a group home at the moment until a family wants me. But I am a troubled teenager and most families see me as a bad kid. That’s how its been since May 2019. So right now I’m still going through a very bad time, but I’m still going to continue to be strong for myself. I just wanted to share my story with everyone..

Emily

(Insta- retr0.angel)

I just wanted to say thank you so much for everyone’s support! It means a lot to me

This is me btw..

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Update!!!—So I have found a very great family who is taking me in I’m very happy and i’ve always waited for this moment i’m truly blessed.

I also wanted to say that I recently found my bio mom after 13 years of looking for her.

It turns out when I was younger those two women that abused me kidnapped me and my little brother from my bio family when I was younger!!!

My mom was in tears when we found each other.

Deserving Respect

November 25, 2011

In the waiting room of Taiyuan Railway Station, China. An older man fell asleep on a bench and did not move.

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A passenger went up to try to wake up the older man. It turned out that the older man had already passed away! At this time, people are watching and panicking.

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At that moment, a Buddhist monk dressed in yellow sea green walked up to the older man, calmly bent his waist and Paying tribute to the dead. The monk folded his hands and, chanted the sutra for the old man and compassionately hold the hand of the deceased.

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Netizens have expressed that this monk pulled up not only the hand of the older man. More is to pull up the conscience and kindness of this indifferent society.

Be the Rufus

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Rufus Father

My grandfather died in a work accident when my Dad was 12. Some lady upset my grandmother by calling 3–4 times a day crying about my grandfather dying and hanging up. My Dad spent an entire day knocking on every door in a 3 block radius. Asked for the lady of the house and then asked them point blank if they were calling his mother. No one admitted to calling but the calls stopped.

My sister came home crying in the 4th grade because her teacher was too lazy to learn her name (Not a difficult name at all). Kept calling her, “you” during roll call. Dad found out where he lived . Sat outside his house until he came out. Told him if he doesn’t learn my sister’s name he was coming back. Teacher learned her name.

I got robbed by 3 older guys while in middle school. My Dad told me to find out where they lived (see a pattern?). Showed up at the first guy’s house at 6am on a Saturday. Basically kidnapped him and took him to the 2nd guy’s house. Rinse, repeat and off to the 3rd guy’s house. Took all their money and retrieved my stolen BB gun. Left them on the other side of town and threatened to kill them if he ever saw them again.

Group of guys broke in my Dad’s house. Hit him in the head with a pipe and tried to cut his Airborne ring off his finger. He managed to run them out of the house. Recognized one of the guys, a neighborhood teen. Went to his house and basically kidnapped him. Scared him into telling him who and where the rest were. Called the police and had them arrested.

My Dad was in his 60s when a wannabe neighborhood criminal was terrorizing the older folks in the neighborhood. Made the mistake of setting fire to my father’s car in the driveway. Dad waited till one of those cold, wet nights and destroyed the guy’s car. He then made good on his escape down the alley through the woods and pond, up his alley, over his 6’ fence and through his basement window. (see diagram). Never had any problems after that.

 

I don’t agree with some of his methods but I can’t argue with his results. RIP, Dad.

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My Dad was probably like a lot of fathers in the 60s and 70s who worked hard and had very little patience for foolishness. I started to edit the kidnap parts but I think most can tell the difference between a father grabbing young punks by the scruff of the neck and squashing a situation vs. an actual kidnapping. Some comments were like, “If your father did that to me I would blah, blah, blah…” To you I say something you already know:

Don’t mess with another man’s kids or his stuff.

There are stories that are not mine to share during that time period that make my Dad’s 5 stories over 50 years seem like fairy tales.

He was an Army vet, worked 20+ years at the same job. He spoke very little to my mother after they divorced but for 30+ years after their breakup, the first thing out of his mouth when we talked was, “How’s your momma doin?” He obviously thought the names we picked for his grandkids were trash and called them BrightEyes, Peaches, Amber & Amir instead.

He was a good, fair, tough, outspoken man that brought giant packs of toilet paper instead of food when someone passed away (You’re gonna run out of shit paper with all those people at the house), gave EVERYONE free cookies (retired from a large cookie company) and in his later years would call me every time Cheaters came on TV.

As one of the commenters said, if your father is still around, please pick up the phone and enjoy talking to him.

Grilled Cowboy Steaks

Giddyap! David Lewis runs a small kitchen, micro-bakery, and coffee roastery from his hometown in Alabama, and is the founder of Kitchen Ambition. And he knows a thing or two about a good cowboy steak.

“There are few meals more legendary in American lore than cowboys flipping steak over a campfire at the end of a long day on the range,” says Lewis. “If you want to saddle up your own inner cowboy, cooking cowboy steak is fun and easier than you might expect.”

For preparation over a campfire, you’ll want to pick a steak with high fat content so that it doesn’t dry out over the flames while you’re cooking it, he says. Try a ribeye with the bone in, at least 1.25 thick and with visible fat marbling, he says. “Choosing the right steak makes all the difference.”

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Streaked with gorgeous marbling, as juicy as they come, and equipped with a bone that translates into big steak flavor, Bone-In Ribeyes (a.k.a. Cowboy Steaks) are almost as impressive before they hit the grill as they are coming off of it. But, make no mistake, this particular cut of beef is as unforgettable as it is mouthwatering when it hits the dinner plate, and there’s nothing that satisfies an appetite quite like this hunky, flavorful Steak.

In addition to the best Cowboy Steak Recipe and cooking method, we’re talking all the essentials, and any questions you may have? Well, they’ve already been answered. You’ll find out:

  • How to pick the perfect steak!
  • How to properly season a thick-cut steak.
  • Degrees of doneness and time guidelines for cooking Bone-In Ribeyes.

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Cowboy Steak.

HOW TO PICK THE PERFECT RIBEYE

At the meat counter, you’ve likely noticed the same cut of beef comes in multiple grades with very different price tags. So what determines the quality of grade and that great big swing in price when it comes to steaks? Marbling.

Prime beef (numero uno) has more marbling, which is the fat running throughout a cut of meat, and when it comes to ribeyes, marbling is everything. These streaks of fat not only add a great deal of flavor, but they also help to keep the steaks moist and tender throughout the cooking process. Note, for good marbling, look for thin streams of fat running across the ribeye.

If you want a Cowboy Steak, be sure to get bone-in ribeyes. For an impressive presentation, you’ll want to look for a nice, thick, hunky bone. And, if you’d like the bone showing, ask your butcher to french it before you leave the meat counter.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

Beef doesn’t need a whole lot of help in the flavor department, but most especially ribeyes. Because of their heavy marbling Ribeyes are packed with flavor. Also because of their heavy marbling, no oil is needed before these bad boys hit the grill.

To simplify matters even further, the only seasoning you’ll need for this cut of steak is good old-fashioned salt and pepper. However, you’re going to need a lot of it.

These steaks are thick, so naturally, more salt and pepper is needed, but you should also consider that a great deal of your salt and pepper rub is going to fall through the grates of the grill. Point of the story? Don’t be afraid to season very liberally.

So just a recap, for your Cowboy Steaks, you will need:

  • Bone-In Ribeyes
  • Kosher Salt
  • Coarse Black Pepper

We promise — simple as has never tasted so good.

HOW TO MAKE COWBOY STEAKS

When it comes to cooking this particular cut of beef, nothing beats an open flame, and these hunky, gorgeous steaks deserve nothing but the best.

  1. Set out the ribeyes at room temperature 30 minutes before grilling.
  2. Prep the grill and bring to medium-high heat.
  3. Season steaks liberally with salt and pepper.
  4. Grill about 4 minutes on each side for medium-rare.
  5. Allow to rest 5-10 minutes, serve, and enjoy!

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STEAK DONENESS COOKING GUIDELINES

Note, there are multiple factors that go into the degree of doneness of a cooked steak, and it goes far beyond cook time and the temperature of the grill. For example, the internal temperature of the beef when it hits the grill, the amount of marbling, and the thickness of the steak will all affect cook time.

Therefore, these suggested cook times should be used as “guidelines,” for grilling accuracy, nothing beats an instant-read thermometer.

  • For rare steaks, cook for about 3 minutes on each side. Pull when the internal temperature reaches 120°.
  • For medium-rare steaks, cook for about 4 minutes on each side. Pull when the internal temperature reaches 130°.
  • For medium to medium-well steaks, cook for about 5 minutes on each side. Pull when the internal temperature reaches 140° – 145°.

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Cowboy Steak.

COWBOY STEAK Q & A

WHAT IS A COWBOY STEAK CUT?

A Cowboy Steak is a Bone-In Ribeye.

WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

A Cowboy Steak comes from the ribeye which is from the primal rib section of a cow, or the Prime Rib.

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WHY IS IT CALLED A COWBOY RIBEYE?

Some sources say Bone-In Ribeyes are referred to as Cowboy Steaks because cowboys would hold on to the bone like a handle. Others say it is because thick-cut ribeyes are big, hearty, and ultra-rugged, ensuring they would satisfy any hard-working cowboy’s appetite.

The heartiness of the steak is the most likely explanation, coinciding with the etymology of both Cowboy Cookies and Cowboy Casserole.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A COWBOY STEAK AND A TOMAHAWK STEAK?

A Tomahawk Steak has an impressively long, frenched rib bone, whereas a Cowboy Steak would likely be thinner cut than a Tomahawk Steak and if there is a bone extending out of the steak, it would not be nearly as long.

HOW BIG IS A COWBOY RIBEYE?

This is completely dependent on the size of the cow and how thick the steak is cut. These steaks can range anywhere from 14 to 24 ounces.

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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It’s all Putin’s fault! Well, that is the American narrative, don’t you know!

It’s all Putin’s fault. Don’t you know!

The United States has absolutely, and without question has tried THREE (x3) times to absolutely destroy and crush Russia. Three times. Now, on the eve of attempt four, by surrounding Russia with nuclear missiles, there should be no question that Russia has every RIGHT and every justification to launch a first-strike nuclear salvo to ERASE the United States.

And then there is China.

America has tried five times (x5) to topple, collapse and destroy China (within the last six years). And China, being what it is, just keeps on ticking along.But make no mistake, if you trip the on/off switch that is China, the fury and pain that will be unleashed upon the United States will be difficult to comprehend.

Truth.

Meanwhile the USA is a twitching, moaning, vomiting, and groaning. Ai! It’s in it’s death throes, and it is hemorrhaging. Money flowing out. Now Ukraine is asking for $20 billion dollars a month!. Heck one billion would get rid of homeless, and poverty. But that is not on the agenda for this brain-dead “clown show” that is driving American into the abyss.

Ok. Now you know everything that you need to know about the global political situation today. Wasn’t that simple?

Number of foreign mercenaries killed during the Ukraine Military Action as of 06/17/22

The Russian Ministry of Defense even presented a summary table, which showed how many mercenaries arrived, how many were destroyed and how many returned to their homeland with nothing.

Moreover, the department also showed the dynamics of the number of foreigners. It is expected that the representatives of Poland in this indicator belong to the palm. In the last three weeks alone, 166 militants have been killed. Another 71 fled in disgrace. Many mercenaries also come from Georgia and Great Britain. There are even Guineans, Liberians and three Peruvians.

Article from HERE

Poland – 544
Romania – 123
UK – 124
Croatia – 84
France – 73
Bosnia and Herzegovina – 53
Estonia – 56
Kosovo – 69
Albania – 51
Lithuania – 60
Portugal – 20
Germany – 37
North Macedonia – 24
Finland – 20
Ireland – 26
Italy – 21
Switzerland – 17
Netherlands – 13
Sweden – 5
Czech – 15
Spain – 6
Latvia – 8
Norway – 6
Belgium – 3
Denmark – 2
Austria – 2
Greece – 1
Montenegro – 1
Nigeria – 38
South Africa – 10
Senegal – 4
Guinea – 4
Equatorial Guinea – 1
Gabon – 2
Liberia – 2
Canada – 177
USA – 220
Colombia – 14
Bolivia – 15
Brazil – 19
Australia – 2
Georgia – 170
Syria – 94
Turkey – 21
Israel – 10
Republic of Korea – 4
Azerbaijan – 1
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“Soldiers of Failure”: Captured American mercenaries spoke about the Ukrainian army and propaganda. Alexander Dryuke and Andy Hyun are American mercenaries who were captured by our military during the battle near Kharkov. KP special correspondents Dmitry Steshin and Alexei Ovchinnikov managed to communicate with the prisoners. From HERE

The Inflation Monster That Our Leaders Have Created Is Voraciously Eating Away Our Standard Of Living

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The purchasing power of the dollar is not nearly as strong as it once was, and as a result our standard of living is rapidly going down.  The overall rate of inflation has been rising faster than our paychecks have been for quite a while, and this is causing a tremendous amount of pain for millions of U.S. consumers.  Unfortunately, this isn’t going to change any time soon.  The inflation monster that our leaders have created will continue to rage even as our economy plunges into a severe recession.  I relentlessly warned that the trillions of dollars that our leaders were pumping into the system would cause enormous problems down the road, and now we are trapped in an economic nightmare with no easy way out.

On Wednesday, we learned that the rate of inflation in the United States jumped even higher last month…

Shoppers paid sharply higher prices for a variety of goods in June as inflation kept its hold on a slowing U.S. economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The consumer price index, a broad measure of everyday goods and services related to the cost of living, soared 9.1% from a year ago, above the 8.8% Dow Jones estimate. That marked the fastest pace for inflation going back to November 1981.

Of course the way that inflation is calculated today is much different from the way that it was calculated back in the 1980s.  If the way that inflation was calculated had not been changed, the official inflation rate would be much higher right now.

But even if you want to take the 9.1 percent figure at face value, it is still extremely high, and last month energy and food prices were two of the main reasons why we witnessed such a dramatic surge…

  • Gas: 59.9%
  • Electricity: 13.7%
  • Food at home: 12.2%
  • New vehicles: 11.4%
  • Food away from home: 7.7%
  • Used cars and trucks: 7.1%
  • Shelter: 5.6%
  • Apparel: 5.2%

Let’s focus on that “food at home” category for a moment.

Every single one of us needs to eat, and so this is something that is deeply affecting all of us.

And right now we are seeing rapid price increases in almost aisle of the grocery store

  • Cereals and cereal products: +15.1%
  • Beef and veal: +4.1%
  • Pork: +9.0%
  • Poultry: +17.3%
  • Fish and seafood: +11.0%
  • Eggs: +33.1%
  • Dairy and related products: +13.5%
  • Fresh fruits: +7.3%
  • Fresh vegetables: +6.5%
  • Juices and nonalcoholic drinks: +11.6%
  • Coffee: 15.8%
  • Fats and oils: 19.5%
  • Baby food: 14.0%

Has your paycheck gone up by a similar amount over the past year?

If not, you are losing ground and your standard of living is declining.

Overall, real wages in the United States have now fallen for 15 months in a row.

In all the years I have been writing, I have never seen anything quite like this.

According to one expert that was interviewed by the Daily Caller, “American families are being crushed” by the inflation tsunami that we are witnessing right now…

Under the Biden administration, skyrocketing fuel costs and exploding inflation are hurting everyday Americans the most, according to an economist at the Heritage Foundation.

“Energy prices are trickling down into everything and American families are being crushed,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow for regional economics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Antoni also says that the average worker in the United States has “lost the equivalent of almost $3,400 in annual income” due to declining purchasing power since Joe Biden entered the White House

“The average worker has lost the equivalent of almost $3,400 in annual income since Biden took office,” Antoni explained.

Real average hourly earnings decreased 3.6% from June 2021 to June 2022, according to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.9% in the average workweek resulted in a 4.4% decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period.

“This is catastrophic, $3,400 is some people’s food budgets for a year,” Antoni continued.

The good news, if that is what you want to call it, is that the inflation rate will probably subside just a bit during the next few months.

I have to admit that I agree with Jay Hatfield’s assessment of the situation

Jay Hatfield, CEO at Infrastructure Capital Advisors, says this may signal the peak. “We forecast that this print will mark the peak of inflation as the Fed’s 15% shrinkage of the monetary base, which is the fastest decline since the great depression, will curb inflation as the QT has caused the dollar to appreciate by over 12% this year which has caused commodities to plummet by over 20% since the measurement period for June CPI.”

We are starting to see the size of the Fed’s balance sheet go down, and the Fed is likely to continue to aggressively raise interest rates in the months ahead.

Both of those moves are likely to add significant momentum to our economic slowdown, and demand will be suppressed.

Meanwhile, economic conditions will rapidly deteriorate as we plunge into an excruciatingly painful recession.

Won’t that be fun?

Unfortunately, even a deep recession will not be enough to tame the inflation monster, because our Congress critters continue to spend money like drunken sailors.

And I am entirely convinced that global supply problems will continue to escalate for a variety of reasons.

So even though demand will be suppressed, inflation is not going away.

I would encourage you to get prepared for the very painful years that are ahead of us while you still can.

You may think that economic conditions are bad now, but the truth is that we haven’t seen anything yet.

The entire system is starting to crumble, and our clueless leaders seem to be all out of answers at this point.

The disappearance of the 9th Roman Legion

Founded sometime before 90 BC, the 9th Legion was legendary. In 58 BC they fell under the authority of Julius Caesar and from there their legend would grow.

  • They would become one of Caesar’s veteran legions, fighting with him in all of his famous battles like at Alesia
  • They would fight with Caesar in his Civil War against Pompey- being involved in both battles vs Pompey Magnus
  • While Veterans were settled after Caesar’s victory, the Legion was reinforced and soon fought for Octavian against Mark Antony in the final Civil War of the Republic
  • Then 9th found in Hispania, winning Octavian a much-needed PR boost
  • They then fought in Germania in Augustus’s Germanic Wars. They were not involved in any of the disasters but they were stationed there regardless
  • They were involved in the Roman conquest of Brittania
  • The 9th fought the legendary Boudica and were badly defeated
  • They were a major part of the invasion of modern Scotland

After almost 2 centuries of service, the 9th Legion had truly become legendary. Sometime around 104 AD to 108 AD they were stationed on the Rhine. The last records we have of them date from the year 120 and they were confirmed to no longer exist by 197. So from 120–197 they disappeared.

What happened to the 9th Legion?

Well, there was a theory for a while that the 9th Legion was wiped out by the Britons in Northern Brittania. We knew there was a disaster up there where a legion was wiped out around 110s AD. Hadrian building his famous wall was a response to the catastrophe.

This was the leading theory but then things changed. In 2015 we found a record of the 9th Legion existing in 120 AD. The record is complicated but it proved the 9th existed and that officers of the 9th were going on to have distinguished careers.

So now there are 2 new theories

  1. They got wiped out during the Jewish Revolts. The 22nd Legion was recorded to have fought in Judea and similar to the 9th Legion, all records of them disappear after AD 120.
  2. From 161 to 166 Emperor Marcus Aurelias fought a war against Parthia. During this period an unspecified legion was surrounded and annihilated according to historians Cassius Dio.

The problem is that neither of these events records the death of the 9th Legion and you think they would. So, somehow, the most famous Roman Legion in history disappeared.

Confessions of a Woman With a Photographic Memory

Is studying super easy for you?

Studying? What is that?

How easy is it for you to take tests?

Absurdly easy. It’s actually pretty great, I never have to study. People at my university get a little pissed off sometimes by that.

I have never had anything but an A or a perfect score on any test (excluding math and my current studies in Russian). I chose not to skip any grades because I didn’t want to be “abnormal,” and my talent isn’t something that I reveal to most people.

How long does it take you to remember something you’ve read a year ago?

Instantly.

Have you ever tried to memorize the dictionary?

No, I have not. I got bored.

Are you able to scan quickly through a book, then “read” it later in your head?

No, I can’t. I have to actually read it the first time. That would be pretty sweet though.

Can you recall by Title/Page Number?

Title, yes, without fail. Page number is more sporadic, because I have trouble with numbers.

So how far back do your memories of things you have read go?

My earliest memory is from reading the book “Goodnight Moon” when I was in kindergarden, the first book I ever read.

How fucking easy were english classes?

Haha English classes are a fucking joke. I had to make a tough decision when I got to college; be an English major and do NO work, EVER, or actually pick something I’d need to try in.

Has anyone ever thought you cheated on a test or something like that?

YES. Sometimes during tests, teachers ask questions that come directly from the book. When I was younger if I wasn’t paying careful attention, I would accidentally just regurgitate the direct answer from the book, word for word. I didn’t mean it to be plagiarizing, I was just trying to be as precise as possible. After a few visits to the principal’s office and having to explain and prove that I wasn’t cheating, I learned to be much more careful when I take tests like that. I much prefer multiple choice.

How’d you prove to the principal?

In middle school, the first test I was sent to the principal for was given to me again verbally. After that, my teachers gave me my tests verbally for a while until they were convinced. They then sent a note in to my high school when I got older, explaining the situation.

Does your understanding of the material have any effect? ie, quantum mechanics. Do you have complete recall of writings you don’t understand?

No, my understanding is completely normal. If I read a book about quantum mechanics, which I have never studied, I would understand it precisely as well as someone who had also never studied it. I’d still have complete recall, though, and I could read other, more basic descriptions of quantum mechanics and slowly understand what I read previously based on that.

Could you in theory read a complex book then go ponder on it later without the book in hand? Then go and refer to other passages in the book or other relative books and piece it together pretty easily this way?

Yes. That’s sometimes how I do it when I read a book out of my depth.

When you are deciding on a book to read, does the fact that the memory off the book will be permanent influence you decision? I guess i’m asking if memory of garbage writing (tabloids, twilight) is a burden.

Yes and no. I don’t read magazines, ever, but I don’t mind reading books on the bestseller list or anything. Generally books like Twilight have no value or interest for me whatsoever, and subsequently kind of go away after I’m done. It is a problem when people constantly bring them up though, because then the entirety of the text floods my brain and I want to jump off a bridge.

Does this ability extend to words you hear?

No, I have poor listening comprehension. If I was ever going to suffer in a class, it would definitely be a lecture class with no textbook. I remember things I’ve heard or watched exactly as well as anyone else with moderately poor listening comprehension.

Is there every anything you remember that you wish you could forget?

Yes, absolutely. I’ve gotten some pretty nasty text messages/facebook messages, and the like. I really, REALLY wish that I could forget those sometimes.

Are there ever times it becomes a burden to remember so much? Perhaps something that you remember that you wish you didn’t have to?

YES. Sometimes it’s really lonely/upsetting to have so much wandering around in my head. If I’m happy and in a good mood, it generally is okay, but if I’m upset it can be terrible.

Are you autistic?

No, I am not autistic at all, I lead a pretty normal social life. I probably drink more than the average college student. I do have a fairly extreme case of OCD, which I’ve theorized might have something to do with my memory. I’ve heard of people with OCD who have super autobiographical memories, who can remember with extraordinary accuracy and in extraordinary detail the events of their lives and the days on which they occurred.

Has this affected your social abilities any?

Um, to an extent, yes. When I was younger I was extremely combative. There is NOTHING teachers and adults hate more than a child who constantly corrects them, and who is right in that correction. I was very depressed for a long time, because I never had anyone to talk to who understood. It was in high school that I realized that my memory was not unique. Knowing you aren’t the only one makes all the difference in the world, and I’ve become pretty normal socially since then.

Has this affected your love life?

I’ve had two boyfriends for two years each. The first was fairly docile and didn’t pick arguments with me; we had a low-key, nonargumentative relationship that ended due to him leaving for college. My second boyfriend was the most religious person I have ever encountered, and judged me deeply for my beliefs and failed to acknowledge anything I said. We fought continuously and we broke up due to college and also because we just didn’t get along. Now, I try to just opt for friends-with-benefits situations or one night stands. I’m not the most emotional person, and unless something really extraordinary happens, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Do you encounter any mental problems?

YES. I am CONSTANTLY inundated with random information. I’ll be talking to someone, and a quote from a book will pop into my head, and then another related quote will pop in, and it becomes an endless stupid chain. My current roommate discovered my ability through this once; I was very drunk and just went off on a quote chain like that, and basically gave her a running monologue of my train of thought. It gets pretty annoying sometimes. Also, if I am sad/upset/in any kind of negative mood at all, I feel like my head is a very unpleasant place to be.

Have you ever used your ability for profit?

Not yet. I’ve used it for my personal gain, such as academics, but that’s it as of now.

Do you want to use your talent for the better or follow your passion, or a combination of both?

Sort of a combination of both. I plan to attend law school after my graduation from college, which I have wanted to do since I was a child. I want to be a public defender, and I hope that my extensive memory can be put to good use there.

What is the most interesting thing you can remember reading? Favorite books, authors?

My favorite thing, and probably the most useful thing, that I have ever read has been the Bible. I am an atheist, and though I am less combative than I used to be as a young teenager, there is nothing more disconcerting to someone trying to convince me to be Christian than being able to recite the entire book back to them. Aside from this, Nietzsche, Sartre, Nabokov, Updike, and Dostoevsky are my favorite authors. My favorite book is The Possessed (also titled Demons and Devils), by Dostoevsky.

What is your favorite line of text you’ve ever read?

The poem Annabel Lee by Poe, and 2) “It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader. The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and capricious people could live under such a sky.” -Dostoevsky, White Nights

An American Special Forces Ranger talks about South East Asia…

I found the Vietnamese to be arrogant and that they felt superior to all of the different races found in the Nam. I did not like working with them. The South Vietnamese had Special Forces in their Army LLDB but we tagged the LLDB with a different set of words ‘Little Lousy Dirty Bastards’. Every payday they would shake down our Cambodian troops even to a point of taking personal items from our Cambodians. One of our teammates gave one of his Cambodian soldiers a watch only to see one of the LLDB soldiers wearing the watch.

The Cambodians were a beautiful race. They were short but well built and very brave. Many times during a firefight I had too yell for them to get down; he was showing everyone his bravery. When I proved to them that I was worthy they would come up next to me and hold my hand while we were moving toward a contact. They were always smiling with beautiful teeth and large round eyes all contained in a beautiful personality. My interpreter told me that the three guys standing near us have pledged to be my body guard. I told the interpreter to thank them but I couldn’t thing of jeopardizing their life to protect mins. The interpreter said, “you must accept or they will lose face.” So I walked over to the three and thanked them through my interpreter.

While dug in on the Nam side of a canal that separated the Nam from Cambodia there was a primitive village behind our position. Huts with dirt floors, to the left and right side once inside a hut were two platforms used for sleeping, cooking and every activity. Not wanting to take a dump in their area I asked SSG Lott (Lott was on his fourth year in the Nam without a break) where should I go to take a dump. He informed me that their was an outhouse behind the village. When I walked around doing to the back of the single row of huts I saw a reservoir approximately 50 yards long and 25 yards wide. Built close to the edge was a platform. I started walking to the structure gingerly not knowing if tThe board would hold my weight. Once on the platform I saw it was a three seater but there were no seats just three holes with worn down areas on each side of each hole. I undid my pants and squatted down to do my business. When my first load hit the water there was considerable thrashing about with water reaching up to the hole. I looked down and fish were eating my waste. As I was leaving I saw an elderly men fishing. At first you’d think damn these people are just one generation removed from the Stone Age but they built the perfect recycling system. The poop was broken down by the fish, the water would then be used in their rice patties beyond the reservoir; but also a source of food. One evening the village chief invited Lott and I to join his family for dinner. The dinner was rice and fish. I knew that I had to eat the rice and fish knowing from where the fish came from; it was a gift and could not be refused.

The one thing about the Special Forces training that is crucial to conducting guerrilla warfare, you must immerse yourself and study the local customs and respect their customs to maintain their trust. Before an ODA is deployed to a foreign country the team will study the Area Study so as to respect their traditions and culture. We didn’t like the Regular Army units coming through our area because they never respected the customs of the local people.

All of the people we were around were Buddhist and I learned that when you go to the bathroom you don’t take your Buddha with you; there will be a hook to hang your Buddha on. I was given a Buddha which I wore with my Crucifix. It must have worked came through without a scratch. When a nephew was being sent to Afghanistan I gave him the Crucifix and Buddha to him and again not a scratch after two tours.

When calling someone over you NEVER point and wave them over; you gesture with your palm down at waist level and motion them over. You only point to animals and wave them over. A kiss is simply placing your lips against their cheek and sniff once and that’s all. The French in the Nam taught them the lips on lips.

Layered Greek Dip

You’ve probably had this at a summer party in the past, and we think it’s time to bring it back – not only is this dip with hummus, feta, olives, and fresh veggies tasty – but it’s a showstopper if you get the layers just right. It’s also easy to make ahead and the flavors set into the layers to make the dip so savory!

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Ingredients

Ingredient Checklist

Directions

Instructions Checklist
  • In medium mixing bowl beat cream cheese, lemon juice, Italian seasoning, and garlic with electric mixer on medium speed until smooth and combined.

  • Spread cream cheese mixture into a deep 9-inch pie plate, or shallow serving dish. Evenly spread hummus on cream cheese layer. Top with cucumber, tomato, olives, feta cheese, and green onions. Cover and refrigerate 2 to 24 hours. Serve with pita chips and/or multigrain tortilla chips. Makes about 2-1/2 cups dip (16 servings).

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U.S.-led Imperialism is the World’s Leading Purveyor of Chaos

13 Jul 2022
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To say that the West, currently led by the dictates of U.S. imperialism, is in trouble would be an understatement.

  • U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned on July 7th amid an escalating political crisis of legitimacy .
  • Three weeks before Johnson announced his departure, Emmanuel Macron’s so-called centrist alliance lost its parliamentary majority in France.
  • U.S. President Joe Biden continues to face his own crisis of legitimacy in the form of declining favorability ratings and public humiliation from Democratic loyalists such as Debra Messing .

For the West, political crisis is undergirded by an unprecedented level of system chaos which has given the vast majority of workers and oppressed people little confidence in the future.

That chaos was compounded by the murder of Japan’s former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe on July 7th. Abe was an imperialist, a neoliberal, and the highest expression of what it means to be a puppet of the American Empire . Abe’s so-called Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was a literal creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Other detestable qualities of Abe include his worship of Japan’s fascist war criminals, his membership in the fascist cult Nippon Kaigi, and his unapologetic defense of Japan’s history of brutalizing and super exploiting “comfort women” from its colonies. Most important to the United States, however, was Abe’s unquestionable loyalty to the New Cold War and the military encirclement of China.

Abe’s murder and the attendant political crises in the West are a clear demonstration that U.S.-led imperialism is the world’s leading purveyor of chaos in the world.

At the economic base, the U.S. and the E.U. continue to prolong their proxy war with Russia through massive arms transfers and sanctions that have boomeranged back to spur shortages and inflation. Inflation has come with political costs. Already unpopular capitalist regimes in the West are finding themselves increasingly exposed as incapable of addressing the rising cost of living.

It doesn’t help matters that the so-called military superiority of the United States and its imperialist partners is also being challenged by Russia’s successful special military operation in Ukraine.

Thanks to the U.S. obsession with NATO expansion, the future is bleak for Ukraine’s U.S.-backed coup government established in 2014. Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine has made immense progress in the Donbass region. An already fragile and privatized vassal Ukrainian economy can only look forward to more pain once the U.S. and its junior partners in NATO come looking for repayment on its exorbitant aid packages. And Ukraine is just the beginning. The recent admission of Sweden and Finland into NATO is yet another declaration of war with Russia which opens the door to future conflicts even more destructive than the ongoing U.S. proxy war in Ukraine.

It is an undeniable fact that chaos follows U.S. imperialism wherever it goes. In Latin America, stability exists only where leftist governments have secured sufficient sovereignty .

In Africa, the spread of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has led to widespread destabilization and political insecurity in the aftermath of the U.S.-NATO-AFRICOM invasion of Libya in 2011.

In Asia, U.S. militarism has facilitated war in the West and attempted to organize a coalition of vassal states against China in the East. U.S. meddling in Taiwan has created a dumping ground for defense contractors and prompted Joe Biden to articulate on three occasions that the U.S. is willing to militarily intervene to “defend” the island , a guaranteed nuclear exchange scenario.

U.S. militarism is the principal barrier to political stability around the world which is a prerequisite to addressing global challenges such as climate change and poverty. U.S. and E.U. sanctions murder thousands of people in poorer, non-white countries. U.S.-sponsored color revolutions and “soft power” maneuvers are preludes to regime change. So-called U.S. “soft power” strengthens the most reactionary forces in the world. The far right and fascistic Contras in Latin and Central America , ISIS in West Asia, and the Azov Regiment in Ukraine are all outgrowths of U.S. interference disguised as “soft power.”

A dialectical relationship exists between the U.S.’s domestic and foreign policy. U.S. imperialism is an advanced stage in the system of capitalism predicated upon slavery, colonialism, and racism. Jayland Walker’s brutal murder at the hands of Akron police is a near daily occurrence in the United States. Black Americans and Indigenous peoples have been subject to the cruelest forms of racist violence for centuries. The U.S.’s endless wars are an expression of this violence turned toward imperialist ends.

The chickens of chaos have come home to roost.

The Euro-American imperialist world order is suffering from terminal contradictions. Political instability reigns supreme. Another economic crisis is said to be looming but is more than likely already here. Imperialist wars no longer hold any prospect for any real “victory” without serious consequences for the war-maker.

While material conditions are pregnant with possibilities, there is no organized and independent left challenge to the supremacy of U.S. capital and its armed guards of the state. That is the task ahead of the people’s movement residing in the belly of the imperialist beast. In the face of the unprecedented chaos produced by its leading purveyor, the United States, this is no doubt the most difficult one that the working class and oppressed in the long and storied history of resistance. But such a task is not a choice. It is forced upon us by the weight of imperialism bearing down on our necks.

We must not rest until we get the boot off by any means necessary.

Singaporean Artist Depicts How Strange She Feels In Japan

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Being silent on a train or not seeing a trashcan anywhere are just some of the things you can only experience in Japan. After spending some time there, the Singaporean artist Evangeline Neo decided to demonstrate the differences between the Japanese culture and her homeland.

More: Evangeline Neo, Instagram, Facebook h/t: playjunkie

“I studied in Tokyo during 2010-2014 and noticed a lot of cultural differences between Japan and my country so I started to draw these comic strips about them to deal with my culture shock,” the artist shared on Bored Panda. “I hope my comics will help more foreigners to understand Japan and Japanese better, as well as to increase awareness and change how we behave.”

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William Hartung, Call It the National (In)security Budget

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Yes, Afghanistan went down the drain and Washington’s global war on terror ended (more or less) in disaster 20 years after it began. But the urge to militarize the planet? Not a chance in an American world where, as TomDispatch regular William Hartung lays out in striking detail today, the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex plan to continue ruling the roost in Washington for time eternal.

So, war, what is it good for? Absolutely something! In that sense, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a horror of the first order, has been anything but bad for the Pentagon. Just in case you hadn’t noticed, three decades after the old Cold War ended, with a distinct helping hand from Russian president Vladimir Putin, the Biden administration has been playing its part admirably in ramping up this country’s newest version of the old Cold War into an ever more militarized set of confrontations.

It’s not just the CIA operatives in Ukraine or the sending of U.S. troops to neighboring Poland early in the Ukraine war. Only last week, at a NATO summit, President Biden announced that this country would ramp up its military presence in Europe yet again on land, sea, and in the air. (Keep in mind that, since the war in Ukraine began, Washington had already dispatched an extra 20,000 troops to Europe, raising its forces there above 100,000.)  At least 3,000 more combat troops are now heading for Romania, two F-35 squadrons for Great Britain, U.S. naval ships for Spain, and the U.S. 5th Army Corps will establish a sizeable permanent base and headquarters in Poland, while there will be unspecified “enhanced” deployments in the Baltics and American forces will be upped in Germany and Italy, too.

And this isn’t just happening in Europe to face down an outrageous Russian invasion of Ukraine. An increasingly militarized commitment to Asia, especially Taiwan, and a new Cold War with China has been in the cards for a while now. I’m sure you remember our president upping the ante there by responding to a reporter’s question about whether the U.S. would ever get militarily involved in defending Taiwan this way: “Yes, that’s the commitment we made.” True, his aides walked him back on the subject, but from sending American naval vessels through the Taiwan strait and into the South China Sea to ramping up naval war exercises with allies in the Pacific, everything seems to be getting colder and colder in ways that seem hotter and hotter.

The world may look more ominous to some of us, but not, it seems, to the Pentagon. In terms of what matters to our military leaders, things — think: funding — are only (and eternally) on the upswing.  Keep all of this in mind as you read Hartung’s latest yearly look at our national (in)security budget and how, in a world with so many other problems, it continues to go through the roof. Tom

Something That We Have Been Waiting For Just Happened, And It Is A Really Bad Sign…

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There has been a lot of talk recently about “the death of the dollar”, but the truth is that the euro is in far bigger trouble.  Inflation in the eurozone has risen to truly frightening levels, and the war in Ukraine threatens to plunge the major economies of Europe into a very deep recession.  Russia holds the key, because if Russia completely cuts off the flow of natural gas to Europe it really will cause an unprecedented economic nightmare.  Even now, energy prices in Europe have already soared to absolutely insane levels, and the Russians could make things much, much worse with a single decision.  The Europeans should have never allowed themselves to become so dependent on Russian energy, and now they find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place.

So with everything that has been going on, it shouldn’t be any surprise that the euro has been steadily falling.

In fact, on Tuesday the euro reached parity with the dollar for the very first time since 2002

The euro hit parity with the U.S. dollar on Tuesday for the first time in 20 years, meaning that the currencies have the same worth.

The euro fell to $0.9998 against the dollar, it’s lowest level since December 2002, as the euro zone’s energy supply crisis and economic woes continue to depress the common currency.

For years, I have been warning that the euro would eventually fall so low that it would be at parity with the dollar, and now that day has arrived.

And I have also been warning that such an event would be a really bad sign for Europe, because I always felt that hitting parity with the dollar would be an indication that a collapse of the European economy had begun.

In the short-term, everyone is going to be watching for what Russia does next.  On Monday, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline was shut down for a regularly scheduled 10 day period of maintenance

Fears of a recession have grown in recent weeks due to rising uncertainty over the bloc’s energy supply, with Russia threatening to further reduce gas flows to Germany and the broader continent.

Russia temporarily suspended gas deliveries via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Monday for annual summer maintenance works. The pipeline is Europe’s single biggest piece of gas import infrastructure, carrying around 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea.

Many analysts in the western world are greatly concerned about what will happen if the Russians don’t turn the gas back on when the 10 day maintenance period is over.

If it doesn’t get turned back on, we are being warned that Europe could actually be facing a “doomsday scenario”

As such, DB’s Jim Reid said that July 22, the day gas is supposed to come back online, could be the most important day of the year: “while we all spend most of our market time thinking about the Fed and a recession, I suspect what happens to Russian gas in H2 is potentially an even bigger story. Of course by July 22nd parts may have be found and the supply might start to normalize. Anyone who tells you they know what is going to happen here is guessing but as minimum it should be a huge focal point for everyone in markets.”

Fast forward to today when, one day after the start of the scheduled 10-day shutdown period which has already sent flows through to NS 1 pipeline to basically zero…

… and the market is now focusing on the worst case scenario: what happens if Russia cuts off all gas on July 22, the day even Bloomberg has now dubbed Europe’s “doomsday scenario.”

So let’s watch and see what happens on July 22nd.

If the Russians decide that it is time to completely cut off the gas, European financial markets will go completely haywire.

Of course energy prices in Europe have already gone completely nuts, and authorities in Germany are preparing to use “sports arenas and exhibition halls as ‘warm up spaces’ this winter”

Cities across Germany are planning to use sports arenas and exhibition halls as ‘warm up spaces’ this winter to help freezing citizens who are unable to afford skyrocketing energy costs.

Bild newspaper reveals how the the nation’s Cities and Municipalities Association has urged local authorities to set aside public spaces to help vulnerable citizens in the colder months.

This isn’t how things were supposed to play out.

The “green energy revolution” was supposed to have totally transformed Europe by now.

But that hasn’t happened and it isn’t going to happen.

On the other side of the Atlantic, we continue to get more signs that the U.S. economy is headed for serious trouble as well.  For example, we just learned that home sale cancellations have risen to the highest level since the early days of the COVID pandemic

Approximately 600,000 home purchase agreements fell through in June, according to a new analysis by Redfin.

The figure is equivalent to 14.9% of homes that went under contract during the month, an increase from 12.7% in May and 11.2% a year ago.

And as the greatest housing bubble in our entire history starts to implode, companies in the industry continue to lay off more workers

Another lender is resorting to layoffs as the mortgage market shrivels.

Tucked in near the end of a business plan released Tuesday morning, loanDepot announced it would shed 4,800 people, or 42 percent of its workforce.

About 2,800 of them have already been sent packing as the firm slashes headcount to 6,500 from 11,300.

The last housing crash was really painful, and this one is going to be even more bitter.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is warning that we are about to see another huge inflation number

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Monday said the administration expects a high inflation number when the new Consumer Price Index (CPI) is released Wednesday, but downplayed any fault of President Biden in the matter.

“On Wednesday, we have new CPI and inflation data, and we expect the headline number, which includes gas and food, to be highly elevated, mainly because gas prices were so elevated in June,” Jean-Pierre said. “Gas and food prices continue to be heavily impacted by the war in Ukraine.”

The Biden administration has lost control, and Joe Biden’s approval ratings continue to sink to horrifying new lows.

The Federal Reserve has lost control as well, and if Fed officials continue to raise interest rates they are going to greatly accelerate this new economic downturn.

If you are waiting for our leaders to rescue us from the economic nightmare that is now staring us in the face, you are going to be greatly disappointed.

The great “unraveling” that I have warned about for so long is here, and it is going to be exceedingly unpleasant.

I hope that you are doing your best to get prepared for the road that is ahead, because we are in for a really bumpy trip.

Chicken Fried Steak

Something about sitting outside with a plate of chicken fried steak and a nice slaw sure reminds us of summer at Grandma’s house. While it’s a labor-intensive meal to make, the crowd-pleasing crunch is worth it.

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Chicken Fried Steak:

Gravy:

Directions

  1. For the steak: Begin with setting up an assembly line of dishes. Mix the milk with the eggs in one; the flour mixed with the seasoned salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper, paprika and cayenne in another; and the meat in a third. Then have one clean plate at the end to receive the breaded meat.
  2. Work with one piece of meat at a time. Sprinkle both sides with kosher salt and black pepper, then place it in the flour mixture. Turn to coat. Place the meat into the milk/egg mixture, turning to coat. Finally, place it back in the flour and turn to coat (dry mixture/wet mixture/dry mixture). Place the breaded meat on the clean plate, then repeat with the remaining meat.
  3. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the butter. Drop in a few sprinkles of flour to make sure it’s sufficiently hot. When the butter sizzles immediately, you know it’s ready. (It should not brown right away, if it does, the fire is too hot.) Cook the meat, 3 pieces at a time, until the edges start to look golden brown, about 2 minutes each side. Remove the meat to a paper towel-lined plate and keep them warm by covering lightly with another plate or a sheet of foil. Repeat until all the meat is cooked.
  4. After all the meat is fried, pour off the grease into a heatproof bowl. Without cleaning the skillet, return it to the stove over medium-low heat. Add 1/4 cup of the grease back to the skillet and allow it to heat up.
  5. For the gravy: When the grease is hot, sprinkle the flour evenly over the grease. Using a whisk, mix the flour with the grease, creating a golden-brown paste. Add more flour if it looks overly greasy; add a little more grease if it becomes too pasty/clumpy. Keep cooking until the roux reaches a deep golden brown color.
  6. Pour in the milk, whisking constantly. Add the seasoned salt and black pepper to taste and cook, whisking, until the gravy is smooth and thick, 5 to 10 minutes. Be prepared to add more milk if it becomes overly thick. Be sure to taste to make sure gravy is sufficiently seasoned.
  7. Serve the meat next to a big side of mashed potatoes. Pour gravy over the whole shebang!

Artist Modernizes Disney Characters By Placing Them In All Sorts Of Interesting Scenarios

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While some are sworn haters of everything Disney, most of us enjoy a good Disney theme here and there. And then there’s a vast number of Disney fans that love everything related to it.

Well, today’s post was specially made for the latter group. Have you ever wondered what if Disney characters did cameos everywhere? Or if they lived a normal modern life? An artist that calls herself OneFairyFail on Instagram satisfies all of those needs for hardcore fans of Disney, and puts them in all kinds of weird situations. It gives a glimpse of how they would react, what they would do in certain scenarios, and satisfies such “what if” curiosity to the tee.

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One reason why Americans are fucked…

As I said, America is a land with a million tiny hands in your wallet. Check out this graph, clearly showing the numbers of “indians” compared to the number of “chiefs” in the medical industry…

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America’s $1.4 Trillion “National Security” Budget Makes Us Ever Less Safe

This March, when the Biden administration presented a staggering $813 billion proposal for “national defense,” it was hard to imagine a budget that could go significantly higher or be more generous to the denizens of the military-industrial complex. After all, that request represented far more than peak spending in the Korean or Vietnam War years, and well over $100 billion more than at the height of the Cold War.

It was, in fact, an astonishing figure by any measure — more than two-and-a-half times what China spends; more, in fact, than (and hold your hats for this one!) the national security budgets of the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined. And yet the weapons industry and hawks in Congress are now demanding that even more be spent.

In recent National Defense Authorization Act proposals, which always set a marker for what Congress is willing to fork over to the Pentagon, the Senate and House Armed Services Committees both voted to increase the 2023 budget yet again — by $45 billion in the case of the Senate and $37 billion for the House. The final figure won’t be determined until later this year, but Congress is likely to add tens of billions of dollars more than even the Biden administration wanted to what will most likely be a record for the Pentagon’s already bloated budget.

This lust for yet more weapons spending is especially misguided at a time when a never-ending pandemic, growing heat waves and other depredations of climate change, and racial and economic injustice are devastating the lives of millions of Americans.  Make no mistake about it: the greatest risks to our safety and our future are non-military in nature, with the exception, of course, of the threat of nuclear war, which could increase if the current budget goes through as planned.

But as TomDispatch readers know, the Pentagon is just one element in an ever more costly American national security state.  Adding other military, intelligence, and internal-security expenditures to the Pentagon’s budget brings the total upcoming “national security” budget to a mind-boggling $1.4 trillion. And note that, in June 2021, the last time my colleague Mandy Smithberger and I added up such costs to the taxpayer, that figure was almost $1.3 trillion, so the trend is obvious.

To understand how these vast sums are spent year after year, let’s take a quick tour of America’s national security budget, top to bottom.

The Pentagon’s “Base” Budget

The Pentagon’s proposed “base” budget, which includes all of its routine expenses from personnel to weapons to the costs of operating and maintaining a 1.3 million member military force, came in at $773 billion for 2023, more than $30 billion above that of 2022. Such an increase alone is three times the discretionary budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and more than three times the total allocation for the Environmental Protection Agency.

In all, the Pentagon consumes nearly half of the discretionary budget of the whole federal government, a figure that’s come down slightly in recent years thanks to the Biden administration’s increased investment in civilian activities. That still means, however, that almost anything the government wants to do other than preparing for or waging war involves a scramble for funding, while the Department of Defense gets virtually unlimited financial support.

And keep in mind that the proposed Biden increase in Pentagon spending comes despite the ending of 20 years of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, a move that should have meant significant reductions in the department’s budget.  Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn, however, that, in the wake of the Afghan disaster, the military establishment and hawks in Congress quickly shifted gears to touting — and exaggerating — challenges posed by China, Russia, and inflation as reasons for absorbing the potential savings from the Afghan War and pressing the Pentagon budget ever higher.

It’s worth looking at what America stands to receive for its $773 billion — or about $2,000 per taxpayer, according to an analysis by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. More than half of that amount goes to giant weapons contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, along with thousands of smaller arms-making firms.

The most concerning part of the new budget proposal, however, may be the administration’s support for a three-decades long, $1.7-trillion plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles (as well, of course, as new warheads to go with them), bombers, and submarines. As the organization Global Zero has pointed out, the United States could dissuade any country from launching an atomic attack against it with far fewer weapons than are contained in its current nuclear arsenal.  There’s simply no need for a costly — and risky — nuclear weapons “modernization” plan. Sadly, it’s guaranteed to help fuel a continuing global nuclear arms race, while entrenching nuclear weapons as a mainstay of national security policy for decades to come. (Wouldn’t those decades be so much better spent working to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether?)

The riskiest weapon in that nuclear plan is a new land-based, intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).  As former Secretary of Defense William Perry once explained, ICBMs are among “the most dangerous weapons in the world” because a president warned of a nuclear attack would have only a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch them, increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war based on a false alarm. Not only is a new ICBM unnecessary, but the existing ones should be retired as well, as a way of reducing the potential for a world-ending nuclear conflagration.

To its credit, the Biden administration is trying to get rid of an ill-conceived nuclear weapons program initiated during the Trump years – a sea-launched, nuclear-armed cruise missile that, rather than adding a “deterrent” capability, would raise the risk of a nuclear confrontation.  As expected, nuclear hawks in the military and Congress are trying to restore funding for that nuclear SLCM (pronounced “Slick ‘em”).

The Pentagon budget is replete with other unnecessary, overpriced, and often potentially dysfunctional systems that should either be canceled or replaced with more affordable and effective alternatives.  The most obvious case in point is the F-35 combat aircraft, meant to carry out multiple missions for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. So far, it does none of them well.

In a series of careful analyses of the aircraft, the Project on Government Oversight determined that it may never be fully ready for combat. As for cost, at an estimated $1.7 trillion over its projected period of service, it’s already the most expensive single weapons program ever undertaken by the Pentagon. And keep in mind that those costs will only increase as the military services are forced to pay to fix problems that were never addressed in the rush to deploy the plane before it was fully tested.  Meanwhile, that aircraft is so complex that, at any given moment, a large percentage of the fleet is down for maintenance, meaning that, if ever called on for combat duty, many of those planes will simply not be available.

In a grudging acknowledgement of the multiple problems plaguing the F-35, the Biden administration proposed decreasing its buy of the plane by about a third in 2023, a figure that should have been much lower given its poor performance. But congressional advocates of the plane — including a large F-35 caucus made up of members in states or districts where parts of it are being produced — will undoubtedly continue to press for more planes than even the Pentagon’s asking for, as the Senate Armed Services Committee did in its markup of the Department of Defense spending bill.

In addition to all of this, the Pentagon’s base budget includes mandatory spending for items like military retirement, totaling an estimated $12.8 billion for 2023.

Running national (in)security tally: $785.8 billion

The Nuclear Budget

The average taxpayer no doubt assumes that a government agency called the Department of Energy (DOE) would be primarily concerned with developing new sources of energy, including ones that would reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels to help rein in the ravages of climate change.  Unfortunately, that assumption couldn’t be less true.

Instead of spending the bulk of its time and money on energy research and development, more than 40% of the Department of Energy’s budget for 2023 is slated to support the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which manages the country’s nuclear weapons program, principally by maintaining and developing nuclear warheads.  Work on other military activities like reactors for nuclear submarines pushes the defense share of the DOE budget even higher. The NNSA spreads its work across the country, with major locations in California, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Its proposed 2023 budget for nuclear-weapons activities is $16.5 billion, part of a budget for defense-related projects of $29.8 billion.

Amazingly the NNSA’s record of managing its programs may be even worse than the Pentagon’s, with cost overruns of more than $28 billion during the last two decades.  Many of its current projects, like a plan to build a new facility to produce plutonium “pits” — the devices that trigger the explosion of a hydrogen bomb — are unnecessary even under the current, misguided nuclear weapons modernization plan.

Nuclear budget: $29.8 billion

Running (in)security tally: $815.6 billion

Defense-Related Activities

This catch-all category, pegged at $10.6 billion in 2023, includes the international activities of the FBI and payments to Central Intelligence Agency retirement funds, among other things.

Defense-Related Activities: $10.6 billion

Running (in)security tally: $826.2 billion

The Intelligence Budget

Information about this country’s 18 separate intelligence agencies is largely shielded from public view.  Most members of Congress don’t even have staff that can access significant details on how intelligence funds are spent, making meaningful Congressional oversight almost impossible. The only real data supplied with regard to the intelligence agencies is a top-line number – $67.1 billion proposed for 2023, a $5 billion increase over 2022. Most of the intelligence community’s budget is believed to be hidden inside the Pentagon budget. So, in the interests of making a conservative estimate, intelligence spending is not included in our tally.

Intelligence Budget: $67.1 billion

Running (in)security tally still: $826.2 billion

Veterans Affairs Budget

America’s post-9/11 wars have generated millions of veterans, many of whom have returned from battle with severe physical or psychological injuries. As a result, spending on veterans’ affairs has soared, reaching a proposed $301 billion in the 2023 budget plan.  Research conducted for the Costs of War Project at Brown University has determined that these costs will only grow, with more than $2 trillion needed just to take care of the veterans of the post-9/11 conflicts.

Veterans Affairs Budget: $301 billion

Running (in)security tally: $1.127 trillion

International Affairs Budget

The International Affairs budget includes non-military items like diplomacy at the State Department and economic aid through the Agency for International Development, critical (but significantly underfunded) parts of the U.S. national security strategy writ large.  But even in this category there are significant military-related activities in the form of programs that provide arms and training to foreign militaries and police forces.  It’s proposed that the largest of these, the Foreign Military Financing program, should receive $6 billion in 2023. Meanwhile, the total requested International Affairs budget is $67.8 billion in 2023.

International Affairs Budget: $67.8 billion

Running (in)security tally: $1.195 trillion

The Homeland Security Budget

After the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established by combining a wide range of agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Agency, the U.S. Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, and the Coast Guard.  The proposed DHS budget for 2023 is $56.7 billion, more than one-quarter of which goes to Customs and Border Protection as part of a militarized approach to addressing immigration into the United States.

Homeland Security Budget: $56.7 billion

Running (in)security tally: $1.252 trillion

Interest on the Debt

The national security state, as outlined so far, is responsible for about 26% of the interest due on the U.S. debt, a total of $152 billion.

Interest on the Debt: $152 billion

Running (in)security tally: $1.404 trillion

Our Misguided Security Budget

Spending $1.4 trillion to address a narrowly defined concept of national security should be considered budgetary malpractice on a scale so grand as to be almost unimaginable — especially at a time when the greatest risks to the safety of Americans and the rest of the world are not military in nature. After all, the Covid pandemic has already taken the lives of more than one million Americans, while the fires, floods, and heat waves caused by climate change have impacted tens of millions more.

Yet the administration’s proposed allocation of $45 billion to address climate change in the 2023 budget would be less than 6% of the Pentagon’s proposed budget of $773 billion.  And as noted, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are slated to get just one-third of the proposed increase in Pentagon spending between 2022 and 2023. Worse yet, attempts to raise spending significantly to address these urgent challenges, from President Biden’s Build Back Better plan to the Green New Deal, are stalled in Congress.

In a world where such dangers are only increasing, perhaps the best hope for launching a process that could, sooner or later, reverse such perverse priorities lies with grassroots organizing. Consider, for instance the “moral budget” crafted by the Poor People’s Campaign, which would cut Pentagon spending almost in half while refocusing on programs aimed at eliminating poverty, protecting the environment, and improving access to health care.  If even part of such an agenda were achieved and the “defense” budget reined in, if not cut drastically, America and the world would be far safer places.

Given the scale of the actual security problems we face, it’s time to think big when it comes to potential solutions, while recognizing what Martin Luther King, Jr., once described as the “fierce urgency of now.” Time is running short, and concerted action is imperative.

10 Lessons Learned From A Lifetime Of Bodybuilding Naturally

1) “Lift weights like there is no tomorrow.”

I have this in quotes because, word for word, this was one thing a bodybuilding judge, who I really respected, told me after a show and it has stuck with me through the years. It’s extremely simple, almost stupid, advice…. But it has really defined how I’ve approached this journey.

Too many people, I think, worry about which exercise is better, high reps or low reps, high volume or low volume, overtraining or undertraining, etc. I know I’ve done it… But honestly… Just go in there, lift weights as intensely as you possibly can.

Whether you choose high reps or low reps, just be intense, put your all into it. Don’t over think and don’t over complicate things.

Lift lift lift. And STAY CONSISTENT! Do it day in and day out, don’t stop lifting weights, you’ll figure out everything else as you go along. You’ll figure our your diet and you will continue to fine tune it with time, you will figure out what you need to do if you want to compete, but no matter what, just keep going into the gym.

Do machines, do free weights, do hammer strength, switch it up, try different things and see how you respond. But just keep doing whatever you need to do to get in the gym and get that work out in.

2) Consistency is the single most important factor when it comes to natural bodybuilding

This is piggybacking on that first item… but that includes being consistent with your training, with your diet, with your recovery, with everything pertaining to how you build your physique.

How many of you have had that friend that goes into the gym for a number of weeks and actually makes some decent progress, really packs on the gains, then takes a few months off and vanishes… then starts training again, and back and forth, back and forth, on and off, on and off.

In the end they just end up being stuck in the same cycle without really anything to show for it.

Bodybuilding can get extremely boring sometimes, and it takes foreverrrrrrr… Especially in natural bodybuilding…. It takes forever to move that needle and really make some significant gains, especially if you have been at it for a number of years.

But you have to find a way to make it fun and you have to love it to keep on going. You have to be passionate about it if you are going to stay consistent.

While there is still a lot of flexibility in the lifestyle, flexibility with the diet, with the training, etc… holistically you have to stay consistent.

You don’t need to put your life on hold to be a successful bodybuilder. But at times you will need to make some sacrifices.

I’ve turned down parties and dinner plans because I was prepping for a show, or needed to get up early to work out, I’ve also partied and went out clubbing until 5 am and found some time to train the next day.

You shuffle things around and you find a balance. Some mornings I get up and I don’t feel so good, I think to myself, I can skip and make it up another day, but then I think, what if I feel even worse tomorrow.

Sometimes I’ve gone in when I was sick, and left feeling so much better, sometimes I’ve gone in when I was sick, and I leave feeling worse.

Sometimes I’ve gone in when I was sick, and cut my work out short because I just felt like death. Everyday is different.

Mike O’Hearn once said in a video of his…. “Do your best for that day, not for your lifetime, but do you very best for that day.” We’ve all had days when we are sooooo unmotivated to go in, try not to cave to that… sure it’s ok to take some time off, but don’t abuse it. Consistency is key!

3) There is not one single exercise that you ABSOLUTELY have to do to get bigger.

This is blasphemy in some bodybuilding circles, but I truly believe it. There isn’t any specific exercise that you HAVE TO DO in order to avoid being doomed to eternal scrawniness.

Now, there are some exercises that are certainly more effective than others, but that doesn’t mean you have to do them if you don’t like them or if they make you uncomfortable, etc.THERE IS ALWAYS AN ALTERNATIVE.

Don’t like squats, leg press, don’t like barbell bench press, try hammer strength, don’t like barbell rows, try a seated wide grip rowing machine.

About 10 years into training I decided I would only do exercises that I enjoyed. This came at a time when I think I may have been getting burnt out, so I went in everyday only doing exercises I enjoyed.

Don’t get me wrong, I still kept everything balanced, and found ways to hit all the muscle groups, but I just focused on the things I love, and I go to the gym and do what I love, and I put my heart and soul into it!

4) Do not confuse motivation with discipline.

Even more piggybacking on the note about consistency… I know there are days we could be REALLY unmotivated to go train, and its fine to take some time off every now and then, but at I’ve said it’s also really easy to abuse this.

Something I do if I’m COMPLETELY unmotivated is what I call “Fuck around in the gym day” – basically I’ll just go in and train completely haphazardly… light weight just to get the blood flowing, random exercises with absolutely no structure or sense. just hop around from machine to machine just trying different things, eventually my competitive nature kicks in, and I start to go heavier, I start to get a good pump, I start to instinctly put some structure into the work out.

There have been times I walked into the gym extremely unmotivated and I end up leaving 2 hours later having completed a phenomenal work out, a switch happens at some point and I get into a good swing.

5)  I am still unsure if my dirty bulks throughout the years helped or hindered me.

But I have some thoughts… I would say that I have spent the majority of the last 20 years walking around looking more like a linebacker than a bodybuilder (Unless I was prepping for a show)…. Maybe an Offensive lineman when I got up to 275 lbs lol!

Nowadays, I’m more focused on staying lean but I’m still making great progress with respect to strength and even size.

Many have asked me if I think my several years of heavy bulking attributed to my progress and size today and I honestly don’t know. Would I have made the same progress if I stayed lean and built size slowly? It’s hard to answer that, but surely there has to be a middle ground somewhere.

It was cool to get up to 275 lbs and I was strong as a freaking ox… at the same time I think a big mistake is that I stayed at that weight for way way way too long, and I started to get sloppy, and lazy, People could always tell I worked out, but I was certainly a permabulker, and folks wondered, is this guy just a powerlifter? a wannabe sumo wrestler? You compete in bodybuilding? what? how? etc.

Did getting so big have it’s advantages in building muscle and my current form, sure I think so, but I think there would’ve been a ton of advantages if I just stayed a bit leaner as well. Maybe not as lean as I am now, but somewhere in the middle.

6) Having simple taste and not drinking has made things easier…

I don’t drink, never have, and I have never been drunk in my life, I think that has made things much more manageable on me with respect to bodybuilding.

I also have fairly simple taste, I’m not a big sauce and condiments guy in general, and actually enjoy plain food, this has also made things easier for me whenever I needed to cut down, or even bulk up…. I never needed to cook elaborate meals to get by.

On the other hand…. I have a major sweet tooth (see past post from a few weeks ago when I outlined one of my refeed…..er….. cheat days). This has made it hard hahahaha I’ve never been that guy that eats clean all the time. Now I do, and people think – wow I must love eating all this low calorie food… no not really… I love looking the way I do, that’s why I do it, but trust me, I’d much rather be chowing down on a bunch of chocolate chip cookies, then some chicken and broccoli. Just have to engage the suck if you want to stay lean lol

7) Don’t overcomplicate and overthink things.

And despite saying that, I have often over complicated things throughout the years, and I still do from time to time, but I’m learning that I don’t need to. Not always at least.

You need structure, you need to be scientific about it, you need to understand things, but there can still be a balance. Don’t sweat every single little detail but at the same time, don’t be overly lax, find a balance. Everything you can do to make progress, even by 1%, is worth it, but don’t beat yourself up about it.

8) I’ve always been a very high protein consumer

And I think that was a factor in how my journey has played out, but it’s not something I continue to do… So when I say high, I’m talking, around 300 to 400 g of protein… HOWEVER, only in the last year and a half did I do a dramatic cut, and now take anywhere from 160 to 180 g of protein.

This transition happened because I wanted to try a new approach to dieting and essentially cutting weight and getting lean while still eating up to 270 g of carbs on some days… It worked, and I keep asking myself why I didn’t cut my protein this low sooner, I’m energized, I’m lean, I’m still strong as hell, and still making progress with the weights. It’s been great.

But then I ask myself the same question as the earlier point about extreme bulking, Would I have made all this great progress through the years if I kept protein lower? I can’t answer that. But I can tell you that based purely on the last year and a half, I wish I had done dropped it sooner.

I’ve tried so many different diets. All of my contest preps were pretty much high protein , moderate fat, and low to no carbs depending on the point in time during my prep. I gradually decreased the carbs as I got closer to the show. But as I mentioned at the very top, now I only take in around 1 g per lean body mass.

9) I’m really glad I never crossed over to the dark side…

I shouldn’t really call it the dark side because I don’t really care if people use steroids or not… plus if you count my one time stint with M1T over 10 years ago then i guess you could say I did cross over once… but what I’m trying to say is that I’m so glad that I’m currently a natural bodybuilder and that steroids were never a staple or a necessity in my bodybuilding career.

There were many reasons I never fully went into it, first it was the legal aspect… But for a number of years I lived in countries where it was legal and still, I chose not to do it… It eventually became because of health concerns, then stigma, then I don’t even know why… I just didn’t want to add yet one more thing to have to worry about or think about.. but now it’s purely a pride issue.

And yes, I am fully aware users work just as hard as us naturals, some even harder especially when you get into the top ranks of the NPC or the IFBB… But still… for one reason or another, being natural is something that makes me so proud. I always joke with my wife and tell her I’m am more proud of my bodybuilding accomplishments than I am of my PhD. Bodybuilding and my physique is something that I literally built myself, with my bare hands, hard work, discipline, and tremendous consistency. But this is a good Segway to my last point.

10) It doesn’t feel like it sometimes but there are so many things in life that are much more important than bodybuilding

That’s right… I hate to admit it, because I certainly don’t practice what I preach… But putting things in perspective, unless you are a top 5 Olympia competitor in which this is your livelihood, most likely this is just a hobby… Or better yet…. a lifestyle that you’ve chosen and dedicated yourself to.

Again… Even I find it very hard to accept this… take for example our current situation with the Coronavirus… I think the number one thing I have complained about has been the gym being closed (and obviously I understand why and support the decision)… thankfully I have enough to get by at home for now… But in retrospect I should probably be worried about other things….

Will the kids manage without in-person schooling for this long? Is my job at risk? Is our mental well being going to be impacted by this? Will we get Coronavirus? Will someone we know get it? I should probably be thinking about any of these things… But no… I’m thinking… How long will it be until I get back to the gym. And maybe it’s a good distraction, but again….putting things into perspective, that’s fairly low priority.

Another example for you, in 2014 I had Thyroid cancer, and I had to have surgery to get it removed, my first question to the doctor as I was coming out of anesthesia… When can I start lifting again? Meanwhile my awesome wife was asking the important questions, what are the follow up procedures, risk of spreading to lymph nodes and recurrence, medication needed, etc etc. And here I was logging onto bodybuilding forums from my hospital bed to read about the latest bogus work out fad or the latest contest results.

There are many many many things in life that are so much more important than bodybuilding, maybe I’m writing this as a reminder to myself… But this doesn’t mean that we all should have to go and give up this sport or lifestyle that we love, it just means that we have to find the right balance so our life is complete holistically and full in all areas beyond just how big our muscles are.

– BIGACH

The Trains Could Stop Running In The United States Literally One Week From Now

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Did you know that an absolutely crippling national railroad strike could potentially start on July 18th?  If this actually happens, the historic supply chain crisis that we are experiencing right now will rapidly become far worse.  Each year, trains in the United States transport approximately “1.7 billion tons of raw materials and finished goods” to their ultimate destinations.  If that suddenly stops happening, our economy goes into the toilet.  I realize that may sound a bit crude, but that is the reality of what we are potentially facing.  So we better hope that national rail carriers and the unions representing the workers can come to an agreement before next Monday

Railroad freight traffic across the United States could come to a screeching halt July 18 if progress isn’t made on a labor contract between national rail carriers and their unions.

Union officials stressed they do not want to go on strike, but argued they are being forced to consider the option in a bid to get better benefits, wages and staffing.

We aren’t just talking about a partial paralysis of rail traffic.

This would be a nationwide strike, and the entire system would suddenly be frozen.

At the moment the two sides are in a “cooling off period”, but that “cooling off period” will be over at 12:01 AM on July 18th

The two sides were forced into a 30-day “cooling off period” after failing to reach an agreement working through the National Mediation Board. The cooling off period prevents unions from striking or railroads from locking out their workers while they continue to negotiate.

That cooling off period ends at midnight on July 18, and a coalition of unions could choose to go on strike at that point, said Sheet Metal Air Rail Transportation union president Jeremy Ferguson.

At this point, it appears that there will be a strike unless Joe Biden uses his powers to intervene.

And that is precisely what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is asking him to do

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling on President Joe Biden to help resolve a dispute between the country’s Class 1 railroads and 12 rail unions to avert a possible rail strike beginning July 18.

In a letter sent to the White House on Wednesday, U.S. Chamber President Suzanne Clark warned that the decision last month by the National Mediation Board (NMB) to release the railroads and unions from mediation and begin a 30-day cooling off period “presents a new challenge to the U.S. business community, which is already navigating a difficult environment.”

Unless the administration acts, either party is free to exercise “self-help” options — including a strike beginning at 12:01 a.m. on July 18, when the 30-day cooling-off period ends.

One way or another, this labor dispute will eventually be resolved.

Let us hope that it is sooner rather than later.

But the truth is that our planet is ultimately facing long-term economic problems that are far more severe than any sort of temporary supply chain disruptions.

It has been said that “energy is the economy”, and it takes a tremendous amount of energy to power the standard of living that we are enjoying today.

And with each passing year, the size of the global population continues to go up.  In fact, the UN just announced that the population of the world will hit 8 billion in 2022…

The world’s population will reach 8 billion in November, United Nations researchers said Monday, marking a milestone moment even as the global growth rate continues a long-term slowdown.

The Earth’s 8 billionth inhabitant will be born on Nov. 15, according to the U.N.’s latest World Population Prospects 2022 report, released to mark World Population Day.

Meanwhile, the amount of energy that we are producing has started to decline.

As Chris Martenson has pointed out, 2018 may have actually been the year when we hit “peak oil”

It all comes down to the amount of oil that’s available because oil is the KING of all energy sources. And the king is weak and fading…it’s entirely possible that we’ll never again see as much oil come out of the ground as we did back in 2018.  That might have been the actual peak…

There are warning signs everywhere that oil supplies are extremely tight and that spare capacity simply doesn’t exist at the moment. Someday oil will forever be in the rearview mirror and this is why an economic collapse is inevitable.

From this point forward, it is going to be increasingly costly to get energy out of the ground.

And that means that our standard of living will inevitably keep going down.  Please take 20 minutes and watch this video in which Chris Martenson goes into great detail about all of this.

 

You may have noticed that energy prices have been rising very aggressively over the past couple of years.

And energy prices have a direct impact on what literally everything else costs.

As food and other essentials continue to spike in price, that is going to cause societal breakdowns all over the globe.

In fact, just this week we have seen extreme civil unrest in Sri Lanka and Albania.

Sadly, what we have witnessed so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

What is eventually coming will be so much worse.

Here in the United States, everyone still has plenty of food for now.

But food prices have been going up and up and up.

Even Costco has had to raise prices substantially.  Needless to say, a lot of people out there aren’t exactly pleased to be paying quite a bit more for chicken and soda at their food courts now…

According to Business Insider, the national price hikes on its chicken bake and 20-ounce soda were confirmed by a location in Rochester, New York, as well as food courts in other locations.

The chicken bake now sells for $1 more than in June, at $3.99.

The price of the soda has increased by 10 cents, up to $0.69.

A lot of people out there still seem to think that the economic symptoms that we are currently experiencing are just “temporary”.

I wish that was true.

Unfortunately, a “return to normal” is simply not in the cards, and global energy supplies are going to continue to get tighter with each passing day.

Chris Craighead

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Chris Craighead, retired, at that time active duty SAS operator. On 15 January 2019, he singlehandedly stormed DusitD2 hotel complex in Nairobi, Kenya, fighting off Al-Shabaab terrorists that killed more than 20 innocent.

Craighead, who was in the country to provide training, while being off-duty that day, reportedly rushed to the scene, cleared the complex, shot at least two of the attackers, helped to coordinate Kenyan’s GSU rescue efforts, was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for extreme bravery.

His undesired fame forced him to give away his identity, facing multiple death threats afterwards.

He is currently authoring a book depicting events of that day.

MICHAEL HUDSON:

There is very little that a central banker can do when the West has declared a war, basically, a war on a country that is completely isolated.

The response has come from President Putin and from Foreign Secretary Lavrov. And they pointed out, well, how is Russia going to trade and get what it needs. And this is what the recent meetings of the BRICS are all about.

Russia realizes that the world is now broken into two halves. America and NATO have separated the West. Basically you have a white people’s confederation against all the rest of the world.

And the West has said, we’re isolating ourselves from you totally. And we think you can’t get along without us.

Well, look at the humor of this. Russia, China, Iran, India, Indonesia, and other countries are saying, hah, you say we can’t get along without you? Who is providing your manufacturers? Who is providing your raw materials? Who is providing your oil and gas? Who is providing your agriculture, and the helium, the titanium, the nickel?

So they realize that the world is breaking in two, and Eurasia, where most of the world’s population is concentrated, is going to go its own way.

The problem is, how do you really go your own way? You need a means of payment. You need to create a whole international system that is an alternative to the Western international system. You need your own International Monetary Fund to provide credit, so that these Eurasian countries and their allies in the Global South can deal with each other.

You need a World Bank that, instead of lending money to promote U.S. policies and U.S. investments, will promote mutual gains and self-sufficiency among the countries.

So already, every day in the last few weeks, you have had meetings with the Russians about this, who said, ok, we’re going to create a mutual trading area, starting among the BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

And how are we going to pay? We can’t pay in dollars, because if we have money in a dollar bank, or a euro bank in Europe, they can just grab the money, like they grab Venezuela’s money. They can just say, we’re taking all your money because, essentially, we don’t want you to exist as an alternative to the finance capital world that we are creating.

So essentially, Russia, China, and these other countries are saying, ok, we’re going to create our own international bank. And how are we going to fund it? Well, every member of the bank will contribute, say, a billion dollars, or some amount of their own currency, and this will be our backing. We can also use gold as a means of settlement, as was long used among countries.

And this bank can create its own special drawing rights, its own bancor, is what Keynes called it. It can create its own credit.

Well, the problem is that, if you have Brazil, for instance, or Argentina, joining this group, or Ecuador, that sells almost all of its bananas to Russia, how is it going to get by?

Well, if there is a BRICS group or a Shanghai Cooperation Organization bank, obviously the Western governments are not going to accept this.

So Russia realizes that as a result of Biden’s Cold War Two, there is going to be a continued rise in energy prices. You think gasoline prices are not high now? They’re going up. You think food prices are not high now? They’re going up more.

And in Europe this is especially the case, because Europe now cannot buy Russian gas to make the fertilizer to make its own crops grow.

So you’re going to have a number of countries in the Global South, from Latin America to Africa, being squeezed and wanting to trade with the Eurasian group.

And the problem is Russia says, all right, we know that you can’t afford to pay. We’re glad to give you credit, but we don’t want to give you credit [where] you’re going to simply use the money you have to pay your dollar debts that are coming due.

Because one of the effects that I didn’t mention of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates is there is a huge flow of capital from Europe and England into the United States, so that if you’re a billionaire, where are you going to put your savings? You want the highest interest rates you [can get]. And if the United States raises interest rates, the billionaires are going to move their money out of England, out of the euro, and the euro is going back down against the dollar. It’s almost down to a dollar a euro.

The British pound is heading downwards, towards one pound per dollar.

This increase in the dollar’s exchange rate is also rising against the currencies of Brazil, Argentina, the African countries, all the other countries.

So how are they going to pay this summer, and this fall, for their food, for their oil and gas, and for the higher cost of servicing their dollar debts?

Well, for Eurasia, they’re going to say, we want to help you buy our exports – Russia is now a major grain exporter, and obviously also an oil exporter – saying we want to supply you and give you the credit for this, but you’re really going to have to make a decision. Are you going to join the U.S.-NATO bloc, or are you going to join the Eurasian bloc?

Are you going to join the White People’s Club or the Eurasian Club? And it really comes down to that. And that’s what is fracturing the world in these two halves.

Europe is caught in the middle, and its economies are going to be torn apart. Employment is going to go down there. And I don’t see wages going up very much in Europe.

You’re going to have a political crisis in Europe. But also you’ll have an international diplomatic crisis over how are you going to restructure world trade, and investment, and debt.

There will be two different financial philosophies. And that’s what the new cold war is all about.

The philosophy of US-sponsored finance capitalism, of making money financially, without industrialization, and with trying to lower wages and reduce the labor force to a very highly indebted workforce living on the margin.

Or you’ll have the Eurasian philosophy of using the economic surplus to increase productivity, to build infrastructure, to create the kind of society that America seemed to be growing in the late 19th century but has now rejected.

So all of this is ultimately not simply a problem of interest rates and central bank policy; it really goes beyond central banks to what kind of a social and economic system are you going to have.

And the key to any social and economic system is how you treat money and credit. Is money and credit going to be a public utility, or will it be a private monopoly run for the financial interests and the 1%, instead of a public utility run for the 99%?

That’s what the new cold war is going to be all about. And that’s what international diplomacy week after week is trying to settle.

Butter Burgers

Midwesterners know, that the best burger is topped with a dollop of butter. It gives the meat a little extra umami and juiciness. You don’t really need a full recipe, just add a teaspoon of butter while the meat rests and let it sink in.

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Ingredients

Directions

  1. Preheat the broiler. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and cook until translucent, 6 to 8 minutes. Add 1/3 cup water, cover and continue cooking until the onions are golden brown, about 15 more minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer the onions to a bowl and wipe out the skillet.
  2. Divide the meat into 6 loose balls, then gently flatten into thin patties. Heat the skillet over high heat. Add the patties to the hot skillet, smash them flat with a spatula and season with salt and pepper. Cook, flipping once, until well done, about 3 minutes per side.
  3. Meanwhile, toast the buns under the broiler. Put the patties on the bottom buns and top each with 1/4 cup sauteed onions. Smear 2 tablespoons butter on the cut side of each top bun, then put on top of the burgers. Slice in half and serve immediately.

The four Valenzuela sisters

The four Valenzuela sisters had enough. They were tired of poverty, tired of their abusive father, and tired of being harassed by villagers who hated their father even more than they did.

Bye to El Salto de Juanacatlan, Jalisco, forever, and on to San Francisco del Rincon to start their lives over.

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The four Valenzuela sisters

The year was 1945. Prostitution in Mexico was a respectable business. The sisters weren’t talented and weren’t educated, but they certainly were not lacking in ambition. With few available choices, the Valenzuela’s set up their business. “Rancho El Ángel” was a bordello featuring, you guessed it, the four sisters. An attached bar was added to increase the allure.

Business was good, but the sisters wanted to expand. None of them were attractive. They knew what was needed. An advertisement was placed in the local papers: House maids needed; free room and board, plus good wages. Young females only.

The response was great. Those who showed up, and there were plenty, did get free room and board. But, no wages. They were to work as sex slaves, never to step outside.

Despite their booming business, the sisters wanted to expand even further. They hired mercenaries to kidnap girls along the border with the United States. Virgins who were brought in were set-aside for special customers who paid higher rates to perform the “deflowering”.

More bordellos were set up. First one, then another, and another, and another. But the prostitutes, never saw a dime for their dreadful duties. They were all enslaved, forced to take heroin and cocaine.

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The girls.

If someone got sick, she was killed. If someone tried to run away, she was killed. If someone refused to work, she was killed. If someone wasn’t popular with the customers, she was killed. If someone got noticeably pregnant, the fetus was pulled out with a hanger; any complications and the mother was killed. If a patron had a lot of money, he was killed.

After almost a decade, police picked up one of the kidnappers, a woman who attracted the bait to the men that would overpower the victims. She talked. Police searched the property and found the bodies of eighty women, eleven men, and several fetuses.

When asked for an explanation, one of the sisters reportedly said, “The food didn’t sit well with them.” Most of the bodies weren’t even on the property. Police estimated the total number killed at more than 150 and likely over 200. And the victims were not killed in a humane way. Locked in an isolated chamber, they would be starved to death. Those who were lucky got bludgeoned to death.

Tried in 1964, the Valenzuela sisters were each sentenced to forty years in prison.

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One of them, pictured above, died in prison. Her body was dragged outside by the guards and fed to the village rats. Several weeks later, the remaining bones were thrown in a nearby trash can.

Human trafficking remains a major issue in the world today.

Harpers Declares It’s Over – The ‘American Century’ Is Gone

From MoA

This month’s Harpers title is astonishing.

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To declare that the U.S. century is over, without a question mark, is in the mainstream view still heresy. Sure the American Conservative has already done that years ago. But Harpers is positioned on the more liberal side of things and there the view is rarely expressed.

The lead essay in the edition, by one Daniel Bessner, is headlined:

Empire Burlesque
What comes after the American Century?

For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States confronts a nation whose model—a blend of state capitalism and Communist Party discipline—presents a genuine challenge to liberal democratic capitalism, which seems increasingly incapable of addressing the many crises that beset it. China’s rise, and the glimmers of the alternative world that might accompany it, make clear that Luce’s American Century is in its final days. It’s not obvious, however, what comes next. Are we doomed to witness the return of great power rivalry, in which the United States and China vie for influence? Or will the decline of U.S. power produce novel forms of international collaboration?

In these waning days of the American Century, Washington’s foreign policy establishment—the think tanks that define the limits of the possible—has splintered into two warring camps. Defending the status quo are the liberal internationalists, who insist that the United States should retain its position of global armed primacy. Against them stand the restrainers, who urge a fundamental rethinking of the U.S. approach to foreign policy, away from militarism and toward peaceful forms of international engagement. The outcome of this debate will determine whether the United States remains committed to an atavistic foreign policy ill-suited to the twenty-first century, or whether the nation will take seriously the disasters of the past decades, abandon the hubris that has caused so much suffering worldwide, and, finally, embrace a grand strategy of restraint.

At Consortium News Andrew Bacevich provides additional background and offers a mild critique of Bessner’s essay. He seems to largely agree with it.

Me? I have always been for a policy of restrain, not just for the U.S., but for all countries on this planet. People are too different in personal believes, history, tradition and social surroundings to be put under one form of government or to submit to one peculiar form of economic organization. Attempting to do such is, as Michael Hudson provides, ruinous for those who try.

It is also a question of personal capacity. The U.S. does not have the leadership, and has not had it for some time, to be successful in such an endeavor.

Even Democrats have recognized that their current president is not up to the task. The New York Times writes Most Democrats Don’t Want Biden in 2024, New Poll Shows. The Washington Post adds Democrats are skeptical of Biden in 2024. Will the party’s left finally win?. Other have also chipped in with a NYT columnist outright declaring: Joe Biden Is Too Old to Be President Again.

Matt Taibbi calls this political signaling:

Along with companion outlets like the Washington Post and The Atlantic (as pure a reflection of establishment thought as exists in America), the paper in this sense fulfills the same function that Izvestia once served in the Soviet Union, telling us little or even less than nothing about breaking news events but giving us comprehensive, if often coded, portraits of the thinking of the leadership class.

The Democrat ‘leadership class’ has declared that Biden is now a lame duck president and that he better signal that he will not run again before the likely catastrophic results in the midterms election come out.

I agree with that view but it is not just Biden’s mental fragility that is the matter here but the incompetence of the people around him who essentially set his policies. The Sullivans and Blinkens of this world or what Ray McGovern calls the Effete Elite:

The questions posed led me to comment candidly on the regrettable state of Western statesmen like EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Yes, the same Blinken who, in one breath excoriates China and the “systemic challenge” it supposedly represents, and in the next makes a pathetically quixotic attempt to cajole his Chinese counterpart to abandon Beijing’s lockstep with Russia on Ukraine.

Blinken’s anti-China policy is, to say it mildly, not a success:

Washington has devised a series of plans to counter China, but few of them have won firm support in the region.

A coalition between the United States, Japan, Australia and India, known as the Quad, is meant to show solidarity in the Asia-Pacific region, but India buys huge quantities of oil from Russia; a new U.S.-led economic group of 14 countries, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, received a lukewarm reception from its members since it fails to offer tariff reductions for goods entering the United States; and an agreement for the United States and Britain to share technology to help Australia deploy nuclear-powered submarines remains vague.

This ‘elite’ who thought out those policies is now baby sitting Biden to prevent him, but not themselves, from making more ‘mistakes’.

Dan Cohen @dancohen3000 - 14:57 UTC · Jul 12, 2022

2 days ago, the NYT reported that the White House is so concerned by Biden's age that it delayed his trip to the Middle East by a month so he could rest. Now we learn that Blinken will accompany him. Another daily reminder that Biden is a figurehead and his advisors run the show.

Biden’s and Blinken’s current Middle East trip is also likely to add to their collection of failures:

President Biden is traveling to Israel on Wednesday for a four-day trip to the Middle East to try to slow down Iran’s nuclear program, speed up the flow of oil to American pumps, and reshape the relationship with Saudi Arabia without seeming to embrace a crown prince who stands accused of flagrant human rights abuses.

All three efforts are fraught with political dangers for a president who knows the region well, but returns for the first time in six years with far less leverage than he would like to shape events.

A month ago Biden declared that he will not meet the Saudi clown prince:

"I am not going to meet with MBS. I am going to an international meeting, and he is going to be part of it," Biden told reporters at the White House. 
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However, a Saudi statement announced that MBS and Biden: "Will hold official talks that will focus on various areas of bilateral cooperation and joint efforts to address regional and global challenges."

We will likely soon see photos with Biden and MBS shaking hands. Biden needs higher Saudi oil production and lower prices at the pump to lessen the Democrats midterm losses. He can hardly condemn Mohammed Bin Salman for killing the ‘journalist’ and lobbyist for Qatar Jamal Khashoggi while at the same time ignoring the Israeli murder of the U.S.-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

The return to the nuclear agreement with Iran was botched by Biden and Blinken when they dithered for months after their inauguration before starting talks. They then made new demands that Iran was obviously unwilling to fulfill. They are now left with contradicting their own arguments:

In the early spring, Mr. Malley and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said there were just weeks, maybe a month or so, to reach a deal before Iran’s advances, and the knowledge gained as it installed advanced centrifuges to produce uranium in high volume, would make the 2015 agreement outdated.

Now, four months later, Mr. Biden’s aides decline to explain how they let that deadline go by — and they still insist that reviving the deal is more valuable than abandoning it.

Following various financial crises and too high spending U.S. financial leverage is gone. As it has proven in the Middle East, and now in Ukraine, its hyper expensive military is unable to win wars against small and big competitors.

The U.S. role in international institutions has been diminished by China’s and Russia’s competing efforts like the Belt and Road program, the Asian Development Bank, Russia and Iran’s North-South Transit Corridor.

The Harpers title is correct. The U.S. century is indeed over. As the Harpers lead essay concludes:

The American Century did not achieve the lofty goals that oligarchs such as Henry Luce set out for it. 

But it did demonstrate that attempts to rule the world through force will fail. 

The task for the next hundred years will be to create not an American Century, but a Global Century, in which U.S. power is not only restrained but reduced, and in which every nation is dedicated to solving the problems that threaten us all. 

As the title of a best-selling book from 1946 declared, before the Cold War precluded any attempts at genuine international cooperation, we will either have “one world or none.”

One world, in which the individual countries refrain from boundless greed and provide for the common good, is certainly the better choice.

11 Minutes of Unvarnished Truth – The Most Blistering Assessment of the USA Ever Aired on Radio

As most Americans remain blissfully unaware that nuclear war is likely just weeks away, Love him or hate him, The Hal Turner Radio Show aired the most blistering assessment of the situation ever spoken on radio.

It is eleven minutes of absolute radio gold.  Truth for the ages.

"The USA has become a woke cesspool of 3rd world slums, meth/herion junkies, rabid feminists, and neutered femboys. 

Am I really supposed to care if 90% of it is annihilated in a nuclear fire? 

But, people say, but "muh freedums . . . 'mercia, fuck yeah!"

 Well, that place has been dead a long time. Maybe it's time its rotting carcass be put on a funeral pyre."

There’s more . . . much more.

Here is the most ferocious, brutally honest, political/social/cultural assessment ever spoken on radio:

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Delicious Chili, oil pipe lines connecting Iran with Russia and China’s BRI, and the howling of idiocy from the United States

Potentially, the most dangerous scenario [for America] would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. Joe Biden has finally managed to create that.

The world is STARTING to indicate that it is taking a multi-polar direction, and that the uni-polar; American ruled – “Rules based Order” is not going to happen. The issue herein is actually how long will it take for this realization to dawn on the “Leadership” of the west.

Depending on your opinion of the “leadership” oligarchy it can be anywhere from NEVER to “maybe some time this year”.

The real issue is how high the “pain dial” must be turned up by Asia to “bitch slap” the West into compliance. I guess, for most of us, it’s going to be a wait and see.

Let’s take our time and enjoy this snapshot of history…

Seven Life tips

1. Sometimes the weight you need to lose is not on your body.

2. Life is short. Smile while you still have teeth.

3. The struggle is real, but so are the rewards.

4. No body watches you harder than the people that don’t like you. Give them a show.

5. Don’t worry about being lonely at the top. It can be lonely at the bottom too.

6. Enjoy this moment of your life before it becomes a memory you wish you hadn’t taken for granted.

7. Accept your past without regret, handle your present with confidence, and face your future without fear.

China tests hypersonic missile with multi-mode engine

China is reminding the world that it is very much in the race to deploy hypersonic missiles, with a team at the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics of Northwestern Polytechnical University successfully launching the Feitian-1, a Rocket-Based Combined Cycle (RBCC)-propelled vehicle, in northwestern China.

Even though it is one of the top three contenders in the race to develop a practical hypersonic weapons system, getting solid data about China’s hypersonic program is frustratingly difficult.

Like Russia, but more so, China tends to keep its cards very close to its chest and what little information is released comes through the country’s state-controlled media, or is couched in claims such as that a test was for an orbital spaceplane.

What is particularly interesting about the launch of Feitian-1 is that it uses an RBCC engine to propel it to speeds in excess of Mach 5.

An RBCC engine is a combination of an air-breathing ramjet, air-breathing scramjet, and ducted rocket.

As the vehicle accelerates, the engine transfers from one mode to the next, allowing it to cope with air hitting the intake at greater and greater speed, and then becoming a pure rocket at top speed and very high altitudes.

School of Aeronautics and Astronautics of Northwestern Polytechnical University

Such an engine has a number of advantages, chief of which is that it doesn’t have to carry as much oxidizer as a pure rocket because it can harvest oxygen from the air like a conventional jet engine.

This allows it to carry more fuel or a larger payload.

In addition, the Feitian-1 can burn kerosene-based aviation fuel.

According to the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Northwestern Polytechnical University, such an RBCC engine is the first in a hypersonic flight vehicle.

It says the July 2 ground-launched flight test made a smooth transition from one mode to the next and carried out the expected thermal throat adjustment and ultra-wide flight envelope combustion.

Pirate Queens of the High Seas: Anne Bonny and Mary Read

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Female pirates.

When it comes to pirates, most people think of iconic names like Blackbeard, Calico Jack, or William Kidd . But what about female pirates? Although female pirates are less well-known, they did exist. Female pirates were not nearly as common as male pirates due to standard ship contracts which prohibited women and children from joining the crew. This “official” contract wasn’t enough to stop some women, though. Famous female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read found their way around these contracts, choosing lives of piracy over their domestic lives on land.

But how did Bonny and Read get around these contracts, and what did they accomplish as pirates?

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Female Pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read by Benjamin Cole. (Copper engraving coloured, from Defoe, Daniel; Johnson, Charles (1724) A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates )

Anne Bonny’s Preparation for Piracy

Anne Bonny was born in 1697 in Cork, Ireland. Though not much is known about her early life, it is known that she was the illegitimate daughter of William McCormac, a reputable lawyer, and his servant, Mary Brennan. After Anne’s birth, her father moved to London to escape the watchful eyes of his wife’s family. As Anne aged, her father would dress her as a boy and train her as his clerk. Once this ruse was discovered, his wife and her family stopped sending him money, prompting him to move to the Province of Carolina with Anne and her mother.

Upon moving to the Province of Carolina, Anne’s father changed their last name to simply Cormac to blend in better with the locals. They also struggled financially for a time, due to the halting of his wife’s money, but he was soon able to continue working as a lawyer, which eventually paid for a townhouse and a plantation. Although finances were challenging at times, he eventually joined the merchant business and built his wealth back up.

Unfortunately, Anne’s mother died when she was only 12. After this, Anne began displaying rebellious and aggressive behavior. It was even rumored that she had stabbed one of her servants to death with a knife when she was only 13 years old. The good news for Anne was that while she was known around town for her temper, she was also known for her good looks, which helped her find favor in the eyes of James Bonny, a poor sailor who dabbled in piracy. Anne was disowned by her rich father because of her choice of husband, which removed her rights to his estate after his death.

After being disowned, Bonny and her husband moved to New Providence Island, near a pirate sanctuary called the Republic of Pirates . While it was not an official republic, it was known for being a safe place for those turning from privateering to piracy. Anne’s husband James took advantage of this location and allegedly switched from sailing and piracy to becoming an informant for the governor of the region, reporting any pirates that did not turn themselves in for the king’s pardon. This led to many pirate arrests, as well as Anne’s distrust of her husband.

Because of this wariness, Anne started spending more time with pirates in secrecy. She would normally head to the taverns in the evening to mingle and try to protect them from her husband’s position. At some point, she met the famous pirate John Rackham, also known as Calico Jack, and started having an affair with him. Eventually, their love grew to the point that Jack offered money to Bonny to divorce Anne, but he refused and threatened Jack. Calico Jack then had Anne join his crew and they ran away together.

Because of pirate standards, women were not allowed to become a part of the crew. For this reason, Calico Jack had Anne disguise herself as a man so she could blend in. This worked until she became pregnant and could no longer hide her identity. Anne Bonny gave birth to a son, married Jack on his ship, and they continued their life of piracy together. After some time, she eventually met Mary Read, another female pirate.

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Famous Pirate Mary Read.

The Mischievous and Magnetic Mary Read

Mary Read was a bit older than Anne Bonny, and was born in England in 1685. She was the offspring of a woman and a sailor who died at sea soon after Mary was born. Mary was her mother’s second child; the first had been a boy, but he died soon after his father did. Mary’s mother, not wanting to lose the financial support of her husband’s family, dressed Mary as a boy to pass her off as her dead son. Soon, though, the family discovered the truth and cut them off financially.

Once they were on their own, Mary’s mother continued to dress her as a boy and would rent her out as a servant to make money for them to survive. She excelled at any task thrown her way, and even earned the position of “powder monkey” during the War of Grand Alliance, which required her to deliver bags of gunpowder to gun crews. She later served in both the infantry and the cavalry, where she eventually revealed her true identity and married one of her bunkmates, who died soon after they were married.

Once again on her own, she continued living her life disguised as a man and joined piracy on a Dutch ship set for the West Indies . On the trip, the boat was captured by English pirates, who took Mary as a prisoner. As it turns out, the ship belonged to the one and only Calico Jack.

On the ship, Anne revealed herself to be a woman to seduce Mary to get her to join the crew, not knowing Mary was also a woman. Mary then revealed that she, too, was a woman, and Anne promised to keep Mary’s secret if she joined the crew. She joined, and it is speculated that they became secret lovers during their time together, though it is not confirmed. Jack, jealous of his wife’s relationship with Mary over time, sought to kill Mary in her bed-chamber one day, where she revealed her identity to him as well. Impressed by her cunning (as well as her ruthlessness as a pirate), he spared her and continued to treat her as an equal.

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Anne Bonny: Real Female Pirate of the Caribbean.

Anne Bonny & Mary Read: A Deadly Duo

No longer having secrets between them, Anne Bonney and Mary Read sailed the high seas together with their pirate lovers. Around other pirates, they would dress in their men’s garb of loose tunics and wide trousers, often with their swords and pistols at their sides. They would often fight together as well, wielding their weapons and proving themselves as tough as any man on board.

One of their victims once wrote that they, “… wore men’s jackets, and long trousers, and handkerchiefs tied about their heads: and… each of them had a machete and pistol in their hands and they cursed and swore at the men to murder her.” She also noted that she recognized them as women because of the size of their breasts.

Their ruthless piracy eventually came to an unfortunate end. In 1720, Calico Jack’s crew was attacked by Jonathan Barnet, a privateer under the commission of the governor of Jamaica, Nicholas Lawes. There was little fight, as many of the pirates were drunk at the time of the attack, leading to a quick surrender.

Anne and Mary, never ones to back from a fight, continued to fight for their lives. According to legend, Mary yelled down to her crew during the fight, “If there’s a man among ye, ye’ll come up and fight like the man ye are to be!” When no man chose to fight with them, she shot through the door and killed one. Both women were captured soon after that.

Exchanging Gangplank for Gallows

Those captured were sentenced to death by hanging . Records state that Anne Bonny’s last words to Calico Jack, true to her character, were, “Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hang’d like a dog.”

Both women pleaded not guilty, but were found guilty in court. They were sentenced to be hanged; however, both were able to avoid execution as it was soon discovered they were each pregnant. Although they avoided hanging, Mary died in prison from a “fever,” likely caused by infection after childbirth.

Anne’s fate remains unclear. She survived childbirth, but there is no record of her execution or release. It is believed she either died in prison years later or perhaps escaped, though nobody is certain.

Either way, it’s clear these two female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read , gave their male counterparts a run for their money. Though they both met an untimely end, there’s something to be admired about the ferocity of a female pirate.

A bad date…

We were seated at the restaurant, chose our meals and I excused myself to go to the restroom. Upon returning we started talking. You know, all the small talk. At one point he mentioned that he knew I had a dog. My dog was a big boy, about 115 pounds. I said yes, he’s a rescue and a very nice dog. He sort of frowned and said, “well I have a cat and if we end up together the dog has to go.” Huh? I wasn’t sure I had heard correctly, after all this was a first date. Then the waiter showed up with our food. He set a lobster in front of me. I looked at the waiter and said, “Oh, I’m sorry but there has been a mistake: I ordered chicken.” My date, “no mistake, I’m not cheap; I changed your order.” Me: “I don’t like lobster.” Him: “just be grateful and eat it.” I didn’t say another word, just picked up my purse and walked out.

Make up some delicious “copycat” Chili…

When you need to feed a crowd and dish out a spicy kick, this retro stew can please any crowd. With roots tracing back to cowboys and cattle drives, few classic 1950s dishes evoke a similar image of the hardworking spirit that defines the U.S. Serve up a hot bowl of chili to warm up any cold night with an easy recipe and deep combination of flavors can make any home cook happy.

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Chili.

While I do love Wendy’s spicy chicken nuggets and chocolate frosty (usually enjoyed together), another classic order I like to snag at the restaurant is a small cup of their homemade chili. It’s the epitome of comfort food on a cold, winter day, which is why I decided to make a copycat Wendy’s chili recipe I could cook up at home.

Thanks to a clear list of ingredients on the Wendy’s website, it was easy to put together this recipe. According to the list, the Wendy’s chili has a chili base, tomatoes, chili beans, pink beans, kidney beans, onions, celery, green peppers, ground beef, chili pepper, garlic powder, and spices. While the recipe also has sugar and modified corn starch in it, I know that you can have a delicious chili without either of those additives, so I didn’t bother adding them into my version.

The trick to a delicious copycat Wendy’s chili

It may be surprising to you, but for my chili base, I like to use my homemade taco seasoning for the recipe. I like to have a jar of it prepared in my cupboard, so it’s easy to throw into the pot.

My trick to making the chili flavorful is to let it simmer for a long period of time. This recipe calls for a 30-minute simmer, but to be honest, you’ll get the best flavor if you let the chili sit for an hour—even two! Just make sure to stir it occasionally.

Don’t have garlic cloves? Try this instead

I also personally like the flavors that come from freshly minced garlic versus garlic powder, which is why I put it in this recipe. However, if you would rather use garlic powder, you can substitute the minced garlic for 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder.

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Copycat Wendy’s Chili

Ingredients

1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 lb. ground beef
1 tablespoon taco seasoning
1 10 oz can. pinto beans
1 10 oz. can kidney beans
1 10 oz. can tomato sauce
1 10 oz. can diced tomatoes
Shredded cheddar cheese, for topping
Sour cream, for topping

How to Make It

  1. Heat up a dutch oven or a stockpot over medium heat. Add in the olive oil, minced garlic, onion, celery, and green bell pepper. When the vegetables start to become soft (about three minutes), add in the ground beef.
  2. Using a wooden spoon, break up the ground beef and stir in with the vegetables. When the ground beef is no longer pink, using a spoon, drain the grease into an excess can.
  3. Add in the beans, tomato sauce, and diced tomatoes into the dutch oven. Sprinkle in the taco seasoning and mix together.
  4. Turn the chili on simmer, and let it cook for at least 30 minutes, stirring once in a while so nothing burns at the bottom. The longer you let it sit, the better the flavors will become.
  5. Serve with shredded cheese and sour cream, if desired.

Bruce Lee has some things to say…

Bruce Lee once wrote, “To understand and live now, there must be a dying to everything of yesterday, die continually to every newly gained experience and be in a state in the choiceless awareness of what is.”

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He means that you must allow your identity to constantly die and evolve. But this is painful. It requires surrender. And the reward is wisdom.

Meanwhile, fragile egos live in orbit of their insecurities. Information must first pass through a filter bubble. It blinds them to feedback that could improve their life.

If you learn to lose or have your mind changed, you become liberated.

Cute kid

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Today’s insanity from Yahoo “news”…

It’s outrageous! Yet what is even more outrageous is that many Americans BELIEVE this vomit.

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Crazy 1.

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Crazy 2.

Artist Imagines How Disney Characters Would Look As Oil Paintings, And You’ll Want To Hang Them In Your Room

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Merida.

American self-taught artist Heather Theurer has been observing people, environments, animals, and textiles for decades. She studying renaissance greats and pre-Raphaelities of the late 19th century, as well as modern artists and she feels she just couldn’t learn as much and see as much in the classroom.

In her works, you’ll recognize symbolism, fantasy realism, equine and wildlife, and below of course Disney reanimations. Her goal was to search for the meaning and emphasize the character’s struggles, hopes, and pride. Her work often includes many layers of paint and glazes, even up to 20. This is the way she gets the depth and detail she wants. Obviously, her amazing work and talent had to be recognized by many great organizations and it was. Awards were flying from everywhere including Lucca Comics & Games, Art Renewal Centar, Artist’s Magazine and Spectrum, and many more.

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Mulan

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Lilo & Stitch

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Elsa, Anna And Olaf

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Tiana

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Dumbo

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Alice

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Belle

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Ariel

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Rapunzel

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Cinderella

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Peter Pan And Wendy

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Mr. Toad

 Scammed in Rome

This is a true story.

What do you see in this picture ?

If you are like 99% of people I know, you may interpret this picture as a feel-good picture of a man cracking jokes with tourists. This is Rome. A city that looks and feels like a living museum. Every street corner seems to have a historic monument. It’s an amazing and enchanting place!

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External Image Source: Getting Scammed in Europe!

And, you are right. In fact, he is not only cracking jokes with them, he is offering them free gifts – bracelets and trinkets – gifts that he is going to give away to the tourists as a show of kindness.

You refuse but he walks up and ties it on your wrist. “Take it, my friend, this is for you!” In fact, he will not only tie you a friendship bracelet, but if you listen to him for at least 15 seconds, he will want to offer you a second and then another. It’s all for you to keep. And all he wants is for you to be happy. He has had a tough life and he sells items on the roadside to help his young family who live in poverty. Chances are, you’ll be at a point now to feel obliged to give him ‘something’. By human nature, we are too prudent to simply take (forced to receive rather, in this case) items for free.

“No, sir, please … don’t bother,” says he.

“Let me give you something …, ” you say, feeling even worse at this point that you are receiving “gifts” from someone who is exponentially more needy than you.

So you take out your wallet. At this point two things can happen –

The first, and I hear this is the most common – he will demand money and you better pay up. You’ll suddenly become aware that he has friends all around. You didn’t notice them because you were too lost in your feel-good moment of helping this fellow. But they are there. I realised this once I reviewed some videos I had taken and observed many – many other tourists being approached the same way.

The second – and the one I can relate to is the following. I’d add that this may be an exception, but this is exactly what transpired –

As you open the wallet, in a swift, completely unexpected, chilling, moment, he will snatch everything out of your wallet – EVERYTHING – the cash you kept on your way to the Colosseum from the hotel, US Dollars, Euros – everything. Gone. You stand there – trying to process what just happened. After two seconds, you ask him to give it back and he starts screaming that you are taking his money!

There are tourists all around you. But you are not getting it back. He will keep the money and he and all his friends are ALL armed. A second ago he was a kind-hearted, jovial, cheerful fellow with a difficult life trying to share happiness with the world. A second later – you are staring into the face of a vicious and angry man – his eyes have turned red – his voice has changed, the smiles are gone. You’ve been brought back to reality from a utopian world!


This ‘scam’ is apparently known as the “African Bracelet Scam”. This site on Rome Vacation Tips

explained the factors that make this one of the most successful scams anywhere – “

This scam works by preying on the natural human instinct not to be impolite: not to brush off a friendly greeting, not to drop an unwanted gift on the ground.

You’ll pay dearly for being compassionate towards someone and you’ll regret it. That gift is something way more sinister in disguise (See the comments to this post from so many other readers who have experienced the same situation)


Many of the individuals are Africans from war-torn countries who take a dangerous trip to Europe. Countless stories in articles such as, One Migrant’s Harrowing Journey From Senegal to Italy

, talk of the harrowing tales. Unfortunately, the actions of a few leave a stigma on the entire population from the respective countries. Based on the comments, it also seems that these scams are perpetrated by organised groups based in Italy, not just migrants.

These incidents also raise an ethical dilemma. If you call the cops the individual might get deported back to where he came from and might not survive. If you don’t, he would continue to scam other tourists. It’s a hard choice that you have to make in that brief, fleeting, animated moment!

Several commentators have also mentioned being forced to wear the bracelets and in one case with the other person brandishing sharp object. Once they put it on your wrist, they oftentimes do not let go of your hand until you pay them.

As you may observe from the comments, these incidents are not just common, it is the — norm — believe it or not. If you visit any Roman site, you’re bound to be approached by someone with bracelets in a majority of cases. Every traveller to Rome should be aware of this and avoid becoming a victim.

Why the United States has such an insane level of propaganda right now…

The smoke-filled room experiment

This study takes place in two stages.

First, the subject is placed in a room, completely alone, and is asked to fill out a questionnaire of some kind.

After a few minutes, smoke begins to spread through the room from a nearby door.

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On average, the test subject noticed the smoke within 2 minutes, got up and left the room.

Anyone would have done the same, right?

But that’s where it gets interesting (and scary).

The experts repeated the experiment, but this time filled the room with more subjects. They also included 2 accomplices who were instructed not to react when the smoke appeared in the room.

The result?

Only 10% of the subjects left the room or warned other participants that there was something unusual happening.

9 out of 10 people quietly continued to fill out their questionnaire (while rubbing their eyes because of the smoke).

This experiment, similar to Milgram’s or Ash’s, proved that human become more passive and easily influenced in the presence of other people.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Source: 4 Smoke Filled Room Experiment – 28 Psychological Experiments That Revealed Incredible And Uncomfortable Truths About Ourselves

Faith in humanity

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I know just what you mean.

I call it “The Interdimensional Lapse” (IDiL).

Sweden is one of those rare places that seems to be not entirely present in this dimension. Part of it is still… somewhere else.

A homeopathist friend of mine from Germany who has visited repeatedly has given me this very good picture: “Most of the world is in D-potency, homeopathically speaking. Sweden though is in a C-potency.”

Make of homeopathy what you will, I think it describes it very well. Homeopathic potencies describe how earthly vs. how ethereal something is. D is most like an actual substance of this Earth, while C is already a bit higher up the ladder of mirror images of reality.

I think there are perfectly robust explanations for this impression, of course, nothing esoteric:

  • Chronemics; the dynamics of interaction in Sweden are strangely delayed. Interacting with a Swede has an extra step built in you don’t normally see (anymore, perhaps?) in most of the world: The Pause. They will always wait before answering you, to make sure you really have finished speaking. That can give outsiders a strange sensation of “uh-oh, is he/she actually going to respond?”
  • Acoustics; I’ve said it often, and people don’t understand it until they’ve been here: Sweden is quiet. For some reason, everything here is somehow muted, as if on snow. The people speak more quietly, the cars are going slower, in a higher gear, the buildings seem to swallow more echo… you may feel like there’s something off with your hearing.
  • Lighting; due to its latitude, which is comparable to that of Alaska, the sun stands much lower in Sweden all the time. You are living in a perpetual morning- or evening atmosphere. Shadows are long and light, and the light has a mellow, golden tinge.
  • Colours; again due to the low sun angle, and the clear air, you will see colours that have higher saturation than elsewhere. As a photographer, I regularly go positively bonkers here because of that. I can measure that in my digital colour charts when I do my image management. Swedish blues and greens are unbelievable. Like in an old, Florentine painting.
  • Levity; the architectural style, together with the warm colour spectrum, give an impression of the built environment being of lower weight and less substance than it is. Swedish houses seem to be sitting on the meadows as light as doll’s houses that can just be picked up and carried away. Just because of the way they look.
  • Femininity (as opposed to Masculinity, according to Geert Hofstede’s index); the roar of the alpha male never comes. There is no final grumble of bearded approval, like in most other places. Sweden is a feminine place. Even though there are plenty of men here, it has a matriarchal touch.

So there you are. Simple, natural explanations, but still, not something you find in that combination easily, if at all.

Here some photographic evidence of some of the points above:

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I’ve heard this otherness described in many ways over the decades, and it is one of the main factors that kept pulling me back to Sweden all these years. It’s like a break from the world.

An Australian friend of mine once said “that place just seems magical.” An American I met at an airport described it as “strangely unreal.” A French colleague described it as “like meeting a beautiful fairy.”

I’ve been happily away with that fairy for quite some time now.

In The Multipolar World Iran Will No Longer Fear U.S. Sanctions

From the brilliant MoA

When U.S. president Joe Biden recently held a number of talks in the Middle East Iran was one point on his agenda. The U.S. has made it clear that it does not want to reenter into the nuclear deal with Iran. It is instead again attempting a ‘maximum pressure’ strategy to pressure Iran into additional concessions.

Iran has made it clear that there will not be any more then those it had made in the original agreement. Biden then tried to form an anti-Iran coalition out of Israel and the Gulf regimes. The Gulf Cooperation Council states rejected that:

[T]he Saudi foreign minister poured cold water over any imminent normalization with Israel, saying this was not a precursor to further steps. He said Riyadh was not part of any discussions on a Gulf-Israeli defense alliance to counter Iran.

All GCC are talking with Iran to normalize their relations.

Iran will benefit from the new multi-polar world. It has been seeking to ally itself with the Russia and China block with added relations to a neutral India. Last year Iran became a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This year it applied for membership in BRICS.

Last month Iran’s foreign minister visited India:

Amir-Abdollahian also called on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a privilege not accorded to all visiting foreign ministers. Tweeting on the meeting, Modi highlighted how “relations have mutually benefitted both the countries and have promoted regional security and prosperity.”

The official statement released by the Ministry of External Affairs highlighted the exchange of views on important issues like the Iran nuclear deal, the Ukraine conflict, and the situation in Afghanistan. India “appreciated the role of Iran in facilitating India’s medical assistance to Afghanistan, including supply of COVID-19 vaccines to Afghan nationals residing in Iran.” In addition, all bilateral issues including cooperation in the field of regional connectivity and the progress made at the Chabahar port were reviewed. Exuding confidence at the outcome of the visit, the Iranian foreign minister said that “preparing a roadmap for strategic cooperation between Iran and India can regulate long-term relations and protect it from the impact of destructive factors.”

A few moth ago Iran signed a new transport agreement with its northern neighbor Azerbaijan. It will be good for both sides:

On 11 March, Azerbaijan and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on establishing railway, highway, communication, and energy supply lines connecting Azerbaijan’s East Zangezur economic region and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic through the territory of Iran. According to the document, there is a plan to build four bridges over the Araz River and two railways and develop communication and energy supply infrastructure to establish a new corridor.

The better relations with Azerbaijan will also open a rail corridor towards Russia.

Another new trade route was finally opened to connect India via Iran with Russia.

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This project has been on and off for many years but this month it was finally activated:

An India-bound cargo sent from Russia using the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) reached the Sarkhas railway station in Iran on July 13. From the railway station, the cargo will go to Bandar Abbas port in southern India and then come to India via the Arabian Sea.

The cargo left Chekhov station in Russia on July 6 and it was received by a team of Iranian ministers

What is INSTC?

INSTC is a 7,200 km-long transportation network offering the shortest connectivity route to its member states. It was established on September 12, 2000, by Iran, Russia and India. The corridor encompasses sea, road and rail routes.

The main purpose of the corridor was to reduce carriage costs and transit time between India and Russia. The transit time is expected to reduce to almost half, once the corridor becomes fully functional.

In future the route will go from India to Chabahar, a port in south east Iran that India had helped to build. From there the goods will go by rail up north to the Caspian Sea and then by ship directly to Russia. This will shorten the route even more and will also end any dependency on other partners.

But the greatest news for Iran is a new deal with Russia’s Gazprom that was signed today:

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and Russian gas producer Gazprom signed on Tuesday a memorandum of understanding worth around $40 billion, Iran's oil ministry's news agency SHANA reported.

The deal was signed during an online ceremony by the CEOs of both companies on the day Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Tehran for a summit with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts.

Gazprom will help NIOC in the development of the Kish and North Pars gas fields and also six oil fields, according to SHANA. Gazprom will also be involved in the completion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects and construction of gas export pipelines.

Iran sits on the world’s second-largest gas reserves after Russia, but US sanctions have hindered access to technology and slowed development of gas exports.

Gazprom is a strong partner and can not be hindered by U.S. sanctions. Iran will finally be able export more of its plentiful gas. Russia will also have a chance to work with Iran to keep the prices at a certain level. With such a large deal will also come protection. Iran will be able to call on Russia should someone start hostilities against it.

When Iran produces enough gas it can also revive the old project of a pipeline to India. This could either go through Pakistan or, as India would probably prefer, through an undersea pipeline:

A 1,300-km undersea pipeline from Iran, avoiding Pakistani waters, can bring natural gas from the Persian Gulf to India at rates less than the price of Liquefied Natural Gas available in the spot market, proponents of the pipeline said on Tuesday.

Releasing a study on the Iran-India gas pipeline, former oil secretary T.N.R. Rao said natural gas imported through the over $4 billion line would cost $5-5.50 per million British thermal unit at the Indian coast, cheaper than the rate at which some of the domestic fields supply gas.

Despite U.S. sanctions Iran is again becoming fully integrated into its region. It is a great success and the gas and transit deals will help its economy to make some gains even as the U.S. adds new sanctions. Russia, India and China are partners who can and will ignore those.

Iran now also has the capability to produce sufficient nuclear material for a number of bombs. It will not use this capability as its religious ideology prohibits the making and use of such weapons. But it is a latent threat that can be used to deter Israel and the U.S. from any attack.

That Trump left the nuclear deal was dumb. That Biden did not revive it immediately after taking office was even dumber. To now stay out of it, only to keep some stupid sanctions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corp, is the dumbest step I can think of.

Washington has yet to understand that it has lost its mono-polar position that made the international sanctions which led to the nuclear deal with Iran possible. In the multi-polar world that exists now Iran can develop as it likes. Others will now ignore U.S. or EU sanctions and the threat of them is no longer useful. More countries under U.S. isolation, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba and Syria, will also find new ways and alliances to better their positions.

In his book The Great Chessboard the former National Security Advisor of the United States Zbigniew Brzeziński wrote:

Potentially, the most dangerous scenario [for America] would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances.

Joe Biden has finally managed to create that.

Life Lessons

  1. Cooking and cleaning is a basic life skill and not a gender role.
  2. If you don’t clear your misunderstanding in time, they became the reason for distance forever.
  3. If you want it, work for it. It’s that simple.
  4. The gap between the life you could live and the life you are living is called focus.
  5. If you’re not dating to marry, then you’re dating for heartbreak. Let that sink in and be in serious relationship.
  6. Stop comparing yourself with who started 10 years before you. Focus on your own journey.
  7. Confidence is not “I’m better than them”, confidence is “I’m great, so are they”
  8. Every time I lower my frequency to meet someone on their level I end up paying for it. That’s a lesson I really don’t need to learn anymore. Rise up to meet me.
  9. Real growth is when you start checking and correcting yourself. Instead of blaming others, you take your power back by being responsible for your life.
  10. You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
  11. Being kind to yourself is the best medicine.
  12. And there is always, always, always something to be thankful for.

And now it’s “Monkeypox”…

Monkeypox. Don’t you know…

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GAME OVER, EUROPE

Russia’s state-owned Gazprom does not plan to resume natural gas supplies via Nord Stream 1 after the planned maintenance of the pipeline is completed on July 22.   No more natural gas for Germany or most of Europe.  Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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Game over.

Haunting 100-Year-Old Chalkboard Drawings Discovered In Oklahoma School

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Emerson High School in Oklahoma City was the site of an amazing discovery last week when contractors renovating the school found several 100-year-old chalkboards hidden in the walls. The chalkboards, dating back to 1917, haven’t been touched for almost a century, and perfectly preserve the work of students and teachers from that era.

The images and writing on the boards include an unusual mathematics lesson where a wheel is used to teach multiplication tables.

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The students were also taught music…

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… and basic hygiene.

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“The penmanship blows me away, because you don’t see a lot of that anymore,” Emerson High School Principal Sherry Kishore told the NewsOK. “Some of the handwriting in some of these rooms is beautiful.”

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Several references to the pilgrims were also made.

 

 

A school district spokesperson says they are working with the city to preserve the chalk drawings.

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Joe Biden’s Secret War in Ukraine

American soldiers are already “boots on the ground”

The White House keeps insisting that it will not directly involve American soldiers in the war in Ukraine, but it keeps taking steps that will inevitably lead to a large-scale open combat role for the US against Russia.

Among the most recent moves to increase the pressure on the Kremlin, Biden revealed at a NATO summit meeting in Madrid on June 29th that the US will establish a permanent headquarters in Poland for the United States Fifth Army Corps, maintain an additional rotational brigade of thousands of troops in Romania and bolster other deployments in the Baltic states.

Also, the number of US troops in Europe, currently approaching 100,000, will be increased. Biden also was pleased to learn that Turkey had been enticed to drop its objection to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

On the way to the NATO summit aboard Air Force One, Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan advised that

“By the end of the summit what you will see is a more robust, more effective, more combat credible, more capable and more determined force posture to take account of a more acute and aggravated Russian threat.” 

Presumably Sullivan was reading from a prepared script, but the objective surely seemed to be to heighten tension with Moscow rather than attempt to reduce it and come to some kind of diplomatic settlement.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also did his bit. In an astonishing display of derriere kissing, he responded that the new US force posture commitments were demonstrative of Biden’s strong leadership.

What Stoltenberg did not mention was that Biden has been lying for some time about the presence of US military personnel in Ukraine.

He let the cat out of the bag back in March, when he told troops belonging to the 82nd Airborne division in Poland that they would soon be going to Ukraine, observing that “You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see —”

It was an admission that US forces are already in place inside Ukraine even though the White House quickly did damage control, asserting that the president continues to be opposed to American soldiers being directly engaged in the fighting.

Biden also claimed that the US was working to “keep the massacre [of Ukrainians] from continuing.”

Again, the language was hardly designed to make some room for a possible accommodation with Russia to negotiate an end to the fighting.

And now there is a New York Times report entitled

Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say: A secretive operation involving US Special Operations forces hints at the scale of the effort to assist Ukraine’s still outgunned military.”

The article describes a more active US role in Ukraine than the Biden Administration has been willing to admit publicly.

Back in February, before intervened in Ukraine, the US reportedly withdrew its own 150 military instructors, many of whom were training Ukrainian soldiers on newly acquired American produced weapons.

However, some Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitary operatives and special ops troops continued their service in the country secretly, directing most of the intelligence flow the US is sharing with Ukrainian forces.

In addition to that, special ops soldiers from Washington’s NATO allies have been managing the movement of weapons and equipment into Ukraine and providing some specialized training.

It has also been reported that British SAS commandos are actually guarding President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The NYT specifies, citing American and other Western officials, that the soldiers and CIA officers are currently not on the front lines with Ukrainian troops.

Also according to the Times, even though the US and NATO member states have not acknowledged the presence of their paramilitaries soldiers in operational roles in Ukraine, Russia and other intelligence services around the world are aware of this.

The New York Times report appears to be generally correct, though it does omit some details, some of which I have been hearing from former colleagues in the intelligence services.

There has been considerable overt training at the Grafenwoehr German army base as well as at the Ramstein US Air Base to familiarize the Ukrainians with the new weapons arriving.

Other NATO countries are also participating in the training.

Meanwhile, the cadres of special operations soldiers and intelligence personnel operating primarily in western Ukraine are not in uniform and many of them are working under various contrived cover designations, including sometimes loose affiliations with foreign embassies and NGOs.

There are also a conventional CIA Station, a group from the National Security Agency and a Military Attache’s office in the recently reopened US Embassy in Kiev.

All of the above means that Biden and other western leaders have been dissimulating regarding their active participation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Apart from his possible gaffe, Biden will not admit that there are American boots already on the ground, but they are there and are playing a major role in both logistics and intelligence sharing.

The potential downside for the president could come when some of these soldiers in mufti get killed or, worse, captured and start to talk about their role.

Retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, observes that deploying plausibly deniable non-uniformed personnel

“is completely typical of the initial stages of a US-backed long war, and for long-term political manipulation of the target country. 

This is the future that neoconservative ‘strategists’ in DC and their British and European allies imagine for Ukraine. 

Rather than a negotiated conclusion, with a new Ukrainian role as a neutral and productive country, independent of both Russian and US political influences, the US government and CIA see Ukraine as an expendable yet useful satrap in its competition with the Russian Federation.”

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson sees the activity in stark terms, while also commenting that the CIA has not won a semi-clandestine insurgent war in forty years.

He observes that “Ukraine is a proxy; the West is trying to destroy Russia, it’s that simple.

It would be one thing if Russia was the most evil, oppressive, authoritarian regime in the world.

It’s nowhere even close.

Even though the West keeps trying to portray Russia as such.

The fact of the matter is, the West wants the resources that Russia has and it wants to control Russia. [But] Russia is not about to be controlled.”

In other words, Washington might be seeking an unending war entangling Russia and limiting its options globally.

The Biden Administration has staked its reputation and possible political future on enabling Ukraine to survive without succumbing to Russian territorial demands.

It is a risky and even dangerous policy, both in practical terms and politically.

The persistence of the Ukrainians in their defense is largely a product of US and Western Europe guarantees that they will do all that is necessary to support Zelensky and his regime, which is already seeking $750 billion in aid for “reconstruction.”

If western military casualties begin to surface, the political support for the Ukraine war will begin to fade in Washington and elsewhere and there will be consequences in the upcoming midterm US elections in November.

A final comment on the Times piece is in response to the question why it has appeared at all at the present time.

The mainstream media has been a cheerleader for aggressive US support of Ukraine and Zelensky, but now it is beginning to step back from that position, as have also the Washington Post and other media outlets.

Perhaps they are becoming convinced that the game plan being promoted by Washington and its European allies is unlikely to succeed at great cost to the respective economies.

Larry Johnson puts it this way:

“I think the purpose of this article coming out now is just to lay the groundwork for why we can’t put or shouldn’t put any more US military personnel or even CIA personnel inside Ukraine because continuing to put US personnel…inside Ukraine to train is becoming too risky because of Russia’s success on the battlefield.” 

One might also add that it is exceptionally dangerous. A misstep or even a deliberate false flag coming from either side could easily make the war go nuclear.

Check this out…

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Coffee-rubbed steak

You may have seen meats coated with a coffee rub and wished you could cook something similar at home. Look no further than this recipe.

Coffee-rubbed steak is not only easy and quick, but it pairs with almost any roast vegetables you can imagine, making it the easiest main dish to make if you’re serving dinner for a big family.

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Coffee and steak might seem like an unlikely partnership, but the flavor of beef is actually heightened by the robust notes of java.

This coffee-rubbed steak dish would be perfect with grilled vegetables and a side of black or pinto beans, or heat up a few corn tortillas and pass them out so everyone can make their own little tacos.

Either way, be sure to let the beef rest (even if it actually makes this 10-minute meal a 12- or 13-minute meal); cut into it too early, and all the still-hot juices will bleed onto your cutting board, instead of being reabsorbed by the meat.

Patience is a virtue, and so is a home-cooked meal that will save you some serious calories compared to the fast-food version.

You’ll Need

1⁄2  Tbsp finely ground coffee or espresso
1⁄2  Tbsp chili powder
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 lb flank or skirt steak (Skirt and flank are among our two favorite cuts, but any steak—strip, tenderloin, ribeye—would benefit from this coffee treatment)
Pico de gallo
1 lime, quartered

How to Make It

  1. Preheat a grill, grill pan, or cast-iron skillet.
  2. Combine the coffee grounds with the chili powder, plus a few generous pinches of salt and pepper.
  3. Rub the spice mixture all over the steak. Cook the beef for 3 to 4 minutes per side, depending on thickness, until slightly firm but still yielding.
  4. Let the steak rest for at least 5 minutes, then slice thinly against the grain of the meat. Serve with a big scoop of pico de gallo and a wedge of lime.

Eat This Tip

Steak and coffee isn’t the only unconventional pairing that yields surprisingly excellent results. Try any of these tantalizing teams for a jolt to your taste buds:

Oscar Wilde Quote

“Give a man a mask, and he will show you his true face.”

The end…

Death sentence carried out.
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This morning, three foreign mercenaries from the UK (Eidin Aslin, Sean Pinner) and Morocco (Saadoun Brahim), who were sentenced to death for crimes in the DPR, were shot.

Cats are awesome!

And some sunshine.

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Boston cream pie and a very strange plane crash

I am falling a little bit behind right now. I have a ton load on my plate. Do not freak out if I go quiet for a few days. Please continue to check out the MM You-Tube channel, and the MM Patreon channel, as I am making regular contributions there.

In the meantime, please enjoy this daily post.

Anyone Else Want To Bring Back Kitchen Phones With The 10 Ft Cord?

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Anyone Else Want To Bring Back Kitchen Phones With The 10 Ft Cord?

Russia Announces Civilian Drills for NUCLEAR ATTACK

Moscow is announcing to its citizens the city will be conducting NUCLEAR ATTACK CIVILIAN EVACUATION DRILLS, complete with Outdoor SIRENS, TV and Radio Interruption Warnings, instructing citizens to proceed to nuclear attack shelters.

The dates of these “Drills” are not yet known, but the citizenry is being told the Drills will be upcoming and there will be SEVERAL of them.

Citizens are also being advised to have an evacuation bag with some clothing, medicines, money, ID, and hygiene products in it, so they can grab-and-go.

Beef Stroganoff

The rich and creamy combo of beef and noodles packs so much savory flavor in every bite, one taste will send your tongue on a trip down memory lane and can please anyone looking for a hearty meal. Indulge in this dish that has come to represent the cultural melting pot of American cuisine.

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Delicious.

Beef stroganoff may be Russian in name and origin, but it’s since become a global go-to, finding a home everywhere from Iran to Brazil to Australia. Only the best dishes inspire this type of universal love, and the ease and innate deliciousness of stroganoff is clearly why Americans have embraced it as their own. Though sour cream is normally stirred into the sauce at the last second, we tested this dish several different ways and found Greek yogurt tasted every bit as good for fewer calories. Just make sure to remove the pan from the heat before adding, as high temperatures can cause the yogurt to break, jeopardizing the smooth, velvety sauce you really want in this beef stroganoff recipe.

You’ll Need

1⁄2 Tbsp canola oil, plus more if needed
12 oz white or cremini mushrooms, stems removed, halved
1 lb. sirloin, cut into thin strips
Salt and black pepper to taste
1  yellow onion, minced
2  cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp flour
3⁄4 cup red wine
1⁄2 cup low-sodium beef stock
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1⁄4 cup 2% plain Greek yogurt
Chopped fresh parsley

How to Make It

  1. Heat the oil in large sauté pan over medium heat.
  2. Add the mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes, until softened and caramelized.
  3. Remove and reserve.
  4. Season the beef with salt and pepper.
  5. In the same pan, adding more oil if necessary, cook the beef for about 5 minutes, until well-browned all over.
  6. Remove and reserve with the mushrooms.
  7. Add the onion and garlic to the pan and cook until the onion is translucent.
  8. Stir in the flour until it evenly coats the vegetables, then add the wine, stock, and tomato paste, scraping the pan to release any flavorful bits stuck to the bottom.
  9. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for about 12 minutes, until the liquid thickens and reduces by about half.
  10. Return the mushrooms and beef to the pan and heat through, then remove from the heat.
  11. After the liquid cools just slightly, stir in the yogurt. (If the heat is too high, the yogurt will separate.)
  12. Serve over buttered noodles or steamed rice and garnish with parsley.

A truly British story…

Not mine. -MM

My wife and I were walking with our youngest over the old bridge between Lichfield Cathedral and the market place. A lovely spring day. I’m British, my wife isn’t.

A young man came dashing past the end of the bridge, a police officer in hot pursuit. They both vanished from view rapidly.

We stopped to read the information board about the historic bridge. A few minutes later, the suspect and the copper came walking back, a little out of breath. We overheard their conversation.

Copper: “Sorry for running after you like that, mate. But you were running away.”

Suspect: “Yeah, sorry about that, mate. I shouldn’t have run, but I didn’t want to get caught.”

My wife stood open-jawed. I didn’t quite see why it was so unusual. I mean, just because they’re trying to arrest you doesn’t mean police officers should be rude or unsympathetic. Just because they may have done something the law may forbid doesn’t mean someone has to be abusive.

We continued to eavesdrop.

Copper, leading suspect to a park bench, where they both sat down, “Are you ready to give me your name and address, or do you want a bit of a breather first?”

Suspect, “You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”

Copper, pulling a packet of fags from his breast pocket and handing it to the suspect, “Here you go.”

As he lit the man’s cigarette, the police van arrived. Copper: “Just finish your smoke and we’ll finish the details at the station.”

I told my wife there was a good chance the cop didnt smoke, but kept a handy packet to help put people at ease.

She’s told friends and family in several countries about that. It is, she says, absolutely the most British thing she’s witnessed: a cop apologising for arresting someone who apologised for trying to run away.

If this story has failed to entertain or amuse, all I can say is sorry. And what could be more British than that?

Do you remember?

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Bazooka Joe Gum

The very mysterious crash of a aircraft…

Strange.

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Plane Crash

It seems to be covered up and the entire story is just STRANGE. Looks like something really serious is going on. Everything about this is just ODD.

Satellite Image Reveals China Blew Up Mock Japan Warplane Amid Taiwan Invasion Fears

Saturday, Jul 16, 2022 – 10:00 AM

There’s increasing concern a possible Chinese annexation of Taiwan would fundamentally challenge Japan’s security and result in a broader conflict.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) understands an invasion of Taiwan would likely result in conflict with Japan because only 110 kilometers (68 miles) is Japan’s westernmost inhabited island of Yonaguni.

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Japanese leaders have linked Taiwan’s security with Japan’s, enabling the country to play a role in Taiwan’s defense. As a result, the PLA launched a missile(s) at mock Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) aircraft in a desert area in northwest China called Xinjiang, according to Nikkei, citing a report from Planet Labs.

Nikkei examined photos taken by Planet Labs, a U.S.-based satellite operator. Photographs of the same location in mid-May showed an object shaped like an E-767, an airborne warning and control system (AWACS) used by the SDF, a runway and buildings resembling a tarmac. A July 13 photo shows the destroyed object, along with debris and black burn marks.

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Previous satellite photographs showed the object was still in place as of July 2. The precise timing is not clear because of weather conditions that prevented photography on some days, but it appears that the object was destroyed in early July. It is the first time that an object mimicking an SDF aircraft is known to have been destroyed. -Nikkei

“I think we can safely conclude this was a test of a ballistic missile of some sort,” said Jeffrey Lewis, professor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a specialist in the military analysis of satellite photos, referring to what appears to be a mock Boeing E-767 AWACS used by SDF.

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Tom Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, also reviewed the images and concluded a missile might have been used:

"If the purpose of the mock target was to test the ability of a missile warhead to recognize and strike specific high-value aircraft, and that capability was in fact tested successfully, then deployment of such a weapon could improve the PLA's ability to strike key aircraft like the E-767." 

It’s unclear precisely what the PLA used to target the mock AWACS or surrounding aircraft. Kiyofumi Iwata, former chief of staff of the Japan Ground SDF, said there are no impact craters, suggesting the “AWACS object may have been set ablaze, rather than hit by a missile.”

PLA forces also built a mock U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers last year in the same desert area for weapons testing. Nikkei said the “aircraft carrier was found to have marks that experts said were made by missile impacts.”

If an invasion of Taiwan is planned, it seems China recognizes that Japan and the U.S. could be drawn into the fight. That’s why China and Russia aligned and conducted a joint military exercise last month between the island of Yonaguni and Taiwan.

Pizza Hut…

Do you remember this cup?

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Pizza Hut cup. Usually filled with Coke-cola.

Vintage Photos Of 12 Crazy Wooden Homes On Wheels From The Early 20th Century

There is no formal definition of a house car but in the early 1900s, Americans want to take to the roads and explore. Some creative Tin Can tourists decided that they’d rather bring their home with them rather than have the tent attachments on the sides of their Model T’s, so they built larger structures that resembled houses onto the frames and off they went. It really is the earliest example of what we commonly call a mobile home.

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The superb bus of Ray Conklin, president of the New York Motorbus Company in 1915.

Mobile homes often look blocky and sterile, but these wooden houses look like gingerbread Victorian houses on wheels. Check out how people have hammered and sawed their own homes onto cars.

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Gospel Car No. 1, built by William Downer in Glassboro, New Jersey, late 1910s.

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Dr. A. A. Foster and his family in an auto tourist camp, ca. 1920.

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A Ford Model T from the early 1920s.

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On a Ford TT chassis.

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A cute German country house on wheels in 1922.

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A traveling minister with a tiny church car, with a tiny organ inside and a foldable rooftop steeple, 1922.

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A fancy homebuilt motorhome, built on a Ford Model TT truck chassis in Ohio, 1924.

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W. M. O’Donnell and his family in their “bungalow auto”, 1926.

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The Burn Family (June and Farrar) and their moving house, 1929.

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The homebuilt car of Charles Miller with a nice bit of lawn, 1930.

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Ford Model A Traveler, 1931.

 

Do you remember this…

Paper Plate Holders.

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Paper Plate Holders

The West is Experiencing a Contraction of its Power

Boaventura de Sousa Santos

The strategists of the hegemonic country of the West, the US, without realizing the flagrant contraction, show unlimited ambition.

What Westerners call the West or Western civilization is a geopolitical space that emerged in the 16th century and expanded continuously until the 20th century. On the eve of World War I, about 90 percent of the globe was Western or Western-dominated: Europe, Russia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and much of Asia (with the partial exceptions of Japan and China). From then on, the West began to contract: first with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the emergence of the Soviet bloc, and then, from mid-century onward, with the decolonization movements. Terrestrial space, and soon after, extraterrestrial space, became fields of intense disputes.

Meanwhile, what Westerners understood by the West was changing. It began as Christianity and colonialism, then changed to capitalism and imperialism, and then metamorphosed into democracy, human rights, decolonization, self-determination, and “rules-based international relations”—it was made clear that the rules would be established by the West and would only be followed when they served its interests—and finally into globalization.

By the middle of the last century, the West had shrunk so much that several newly independent countries made the decision to align themselves neither with the West nor with the bloc that had emerged as its rival, the Soviet bloc. This led to the emergence, from 1955-1961, of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). With the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991, the West seemed to go through a time of enthusiastic expansion. It was around this time that former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev expressed his desire for Russia to join the “common home” of Europe, with the support of then-US President George H. W. Bush, a desire reaffirmed by Vladimir Putin when he took power in 2000. It was a short historical period, and recent events show that the “size” of the West has since shrunk drastically. In the wake of the Ukraine war, the West decided, on its own initiative, that only those countries applying sanctions against Russia would be considered part of the pro-Western camp. These countries comprise about 21 percent of the UN member countries, which constitute only 16 percent of the world’s population.

Questions

Is contraction decline? One might think that the contraction of the West works in its favor because it allows it to focus on more realistic goals with greater intensity. A careful reading of the strategists of the hegemonic country of the West, the United States, shows, that on the contrary, without apparently realizing the flagrant contraction, they show unlimited ambition. With the same ease with which they foresee being able to reduce Russia (one of the largest nuclear powers in the world) to a vassal state or bring it to ruin, they foresee neutralizing China (which is on its way to becoming the first world economy) and soon provoking a war in Taiwan, (like the one in Ukraine) to achieve that purpose. On the other hand, the history of empires shows that contraction goes hand in hand with decline, and that decline is irreversible and entails much human suffering.

At the current stage, the manifestations of weakness are running parallel to those of strength, which makes analysis very difficult. Two contrasting examples help understand this point more clearly: The United States is the largest military power in the world (even though it has not won any wars since 1945) with military bases in at least 80 countries. An extreme case of domination is its presence in Ghana where, according to agreements made in 2018, the United States uses the Accra airport without any control or inspection, US soldiers do not even need a passport to enter the country, and enjoy extraterritorial immunity, meaning that if they commit any crime, no matter how serious, they cannot be tried by Ghana’s courts. On the other hand, the thousands of sanctions on Russia are, for now, doing more damage in the Western world than in the geopolitical space being defined by the West as the non-Western world. The currencies of those countries that seem to be winning the war are depreciating the most. The looming inflation and recession led JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon to say that a “hurricane” is approaching.

Is contraction a loss of internal cohesion? Contraction can mean more cohesion, and this is quite visible. The leadership of the European Union, i.e., the European Commission, has in the last 20 years been much more aligned with the US than the countries that make up the EU. We saw this with the neoliberal shift and with the enthusiastic support shown by former President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, for the invasion of Iraq, and we are seeing it now with the current commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who seems to be operating as the US undersecretary of defense. The truth is that this cohesion, if it is effective in producing policies, can be disastrous in managing their consequences. Europe is a geopolitical space that since the 16th century has lived off the resources of other countries that it directly or indirectly dominates and on whom it imposes unequal exchange. None of this is, however, possible when the United States or its allies are its partners. Moreover, cohesion is made up of inconsistencies, as seen in the conflicting narratives about Russia. After all, is Russia the country with a lower GDP than many countries in Europe? Or is it a force that wants to invade Europe, and serves as a global threat that can only be stopped with the help of investments provided by the United States for arms and security to Ukraine—already around $10 billion—a distant country of which little will remain if the war continues for a long time?

Does the contraction occur for internal or external reasons? The literature on the decline and end of empires shows that, besides a few exceptional cases in which empires were destroyed by external forces—such as the Aztec and Inca empires with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors—internal factors generally dominate in bringing about contraction, even though decline can be precipitated by external factors. It is difficult to distinguish the internal from the external, and the specific identification is always more ideological than anything else. For example, in 1964 the well-known American conservative philosopher James Burnham published a book titled Suicide of the West. According to him, liberalism, then dominant in the United States, was the ideology behind this decline. For the liberals of the time, liberalism was, on the contrary, an ideology that would enable a new, more peaceful, and just world hegemony for the West. Today, liberalism is dead in the United States (neoliberalism dominates, which is its opposite) and even the old-school conservatives have been totally overtaken by the neoconservatives. That is why former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (for many, a war criminal) upset the anti-Russia proselytes by calling for peace negotiations while talking about the Ukraine conflict during a conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos in May. Be that as it may, the Ukraine war is the great accelerator of the West’s contraction. While the West wants to use its power and influence to isolate China, a new generation of nonaligned countries is emerging. Organizations like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Eurasian Economic Forum are, among others, the new faces of the non-Western states.

What comes next? We don’t know yet. It is as difficult to imagine the West occupying a subordinate space in the world context as it is to imagine it in an equal and peaceful relationship with other geopolitical spaces. We only know that for those leading the Western states, either of these hypotheses is either impossible or, if possible, apocalyptic. Therefore, the number of international meetings has multiplied in recent months—from the World Economic Forum meeting that took place in May in Davos to the most recent Bilderberg Meeting in June. Not surprisingly, in the latter meeting, of the 14 themes discussed, seven were directly related to the West’s rivals.

Do you remember?

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McDonald’s Ash Tray

Some words of advice from an older person…

  1. Loneliness doesn’t stop when we are surrounded by people. It stops when we are seen for who we truly are.
  2. Actions and words both have value, it’s when the two don’t align that the value is lost.
  3. Our partner cannot fulfill our needs, and it’s not their job to do so.
  4. If it doesn’t bring peace, profits, or purpose, then don’t give it your time, energy, or attention.
  5. A lot of conversations need to be had in person. Tones need to be heard, facial expressions need to be seen.
  6. Your greatest test will be how you handle people who mishandled you.
  7. You can mute people in real life too. It’s called boundaries.
  8. Never lose your self-respect for someone who doesn’t care about your feelings and emotions.
  9. Some people will always be important, with or without a conversation.
  10. When you care for someone more than they deserve, you get hurt more than you deserve.
  11. The people we choose to spend time with will shape who we become.

This Proxy War Has No Exit Strategy

Sunday, Jul 17, 2022 – 03:30 AM

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

The International Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America has released a statement opposing the US government’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, saying the billions being funneled into the military-industrial complex “at a time when ordinary Americans are struggling to pay for housing, groceries, and fuel” is “a slap in the face for working people.”

The statement advocates a negotiated settlement for peace, saying continuing to pour weapons into the country will “needlessly prolong the war, resulting in more civilian deaths” and that it “risks escalating and widening the war — up to and including nuclear war.”

In response to this entirely reasonable and moderate position, the DSA is currently being raked over the coals with accusations of Kremlin loyalty and facilitation of murder and bloodshed by blue-checkmarked narrative managers on Twitter. This is because the only acceptable positions for anyone of significant influence to have about this war range from supporting continuing current proxy warfare operations to initiating a direct hot war between NATO and Russia.

That’s how narrow the permissible spectrum of debate has been shrunk regarding this conflict: status quo hawkish to omnicidal hawkish. Anything outside that spectrum gets framed as radical extremism. As Noam Chomsky said: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

This spectrum of debate has been shrunk on the one hand by imperial spinmeisters continually hammering home the message that any support for de-escalation and diplomatic solutions is “appeasement” and indicative of Russian sympathies, and on the other by hawkish pundits and politicians pushing for the most freakishly aggressive responses to this war possible. By forbidding the spectrum of acceptable debate to move toward peace while shoving it as hard as possible in the direction of warmongering extremism, imperial narrative managers have successfully created an Overton window wherein the only debate permitted is over how directly and forcefully Russia should be confronted, with calls for peace now falling far outside that window.

Which is a problem, because both direct NATO hot war with Russia and continuing along the empire’s current course of action in Ukraine are stupid. Direct conflict between nuclear powers likely means a very fast and very radioactive third world war, and the status quo proxy warfare approach isn’t stopping Russia as more and more territory is taken in the east in cool defiance of western claims that Ukraine is bravely vanquishing its evil invaders. Biden administration officials have told the press that they doubt Ukraine will even be able to reclaim the territory it has lost already. Unless and until something significant changes, Ukraine has no apparent path to victory in this war anytime soon.

In short, there is no exit strategy to this proxy war. There are no plans in place to deliver Putin a swift defeat, and the Biden administration remains steadfastly dismissive of even the slightest gestures toward diplomacy with Moscow. Boris Johnson has reportedly been buzzing around admonishing Ukraine’s President ZelenskyFrance’s President Macron and who knows who else not to work toward peace in Ukraine. The doors to ending this war quickly by either winning it or negotiating a peace settlement are both bolted shut, all but guaranteeing a long and bloody slog.

Which as it turns out suits Washington just fine. Biden administration officials have stated that the goal is to use the Ukraine war to “weaken” Russia, and the US already has an established pattern of working to draw Moscow into costly military quagmires as we saw in both Afghanistan and Syria. Continuing to pour weapons and military intelligence into Ukraine while working to cut Russia off from the world stands no chance of ending the war in a timely manner, but it does stand a pretty good chance of bleeding and weakening Moscow.

And since this is the course of action that has been taken by the empire, we can only assume that this is its desired outcome: not victory, not peace, but a long and gruelling war.

One of the major recurring criticisms of the Iraq invasion was that Bush rushed into it without an exit strategy, without a plan for ending the war once it had been started. This proxy war with Russia not only lacks a strategy for ending the war, it apparently only has strategies for not ending the war.

No exit strategy is the strategy.

Whenever you point out the insanity of this approach you’ll get useful idiots of the empire objecting that by criticizing US proxy warfare and supporting a negotiated settlement you are guilty of “appeasement” and exactly the same as Neville Chamberlain, because the only argument empire apologists ever have is to compare every US-targeted government to Nazi Germany.

According to these propaganda-addled empire automatons, having the story of not compromising with Putin-Hitler and not committing the sin of “appeasement” is worth sacrificing everyone in the entire nation of Ukraine for. They will happily throw every Ukrainian life into the gears of this war while they sit safe at home eating Funyuns and tweeting, just so they can have that “we didn’t compromise with Putin” story hanging on their mental mantlepiece.

How many more lives are such people prepared to feed into an unwinnable war which the west knowingly provoked? How many more of other people’s children are they prepared to sacrifice? How long does the bloodshed need to drag on before their “no appeasement” story loses value to them? How long until people wake up from their propaganda-induced comas and realize we’ve been manipulated into supporting a proxy war which benefits ordinary people in no real way, and in fact impoverishes us and threatens our very lives?

There is no morally consistent argument for continuing this proxy war in the way it has been going. If you actually value life and peace, the only way out is through negotiation and compromise. I point this out not because I believe it will happen, but to hopefully help a few more people open their eyes to the fact that we are being deceived.

Kim Ung-Yong

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Kim Ung-Yong at five years old.

One of the smartest, perhaps the smartest person on the planet, Kim Ung-Yong, was doing calculus and speaking five languages before age five. By age eight he was doing math at NASA and finished his Ph.D. prior to age fifteen.

It’s all a bit over the top.

None of this was by his own decision. After the discovery of his genius, an I.Q. of over 200, he was placed on an ultra-fast track program for his life.

After accumulating a mind numbing pile of academic accolades, he worked at NASA for years until he abruptly quit.

Here you have the smartest guy in the world, someone whose intelligence dwarfs most Harvard students’, and he walks away from it all.

Why?

He wasn’t happy.

It was all too much intensity for him. He felt like a machine and just wanted something normal.

He now works in a normal university faculty position as a professor. A prestigious job for most people. But for him? Not so. Kim is still periodically targeted by Korean news outlets for being a “failed genius”. With all of his gifts he was expected to change the world and innovate within several science fields.

It begs the question, who decided Kim was supposed to change the world? It certainly wasn’t him.

Mr. Kim might not be someone most of us can relate to. But he is analogous, ground zero even, for the problems intelligent people face with regards to “potential.” Just because someone is smart, strong, creative, doesn’t mean they want to be king of the world.

Some people are happy with a low key life. Happiness is the great equalizer. If they are happy, your expectations no longer matter.

Embassy: “All Americans Should LEAVE Ukraine Immediately” — U.S. Nuclear Bombs Being Moved! – GAZPROM Declares “Force Majeure”

The United States Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, has increased its Alert status and is now publicly advising all Americans to get out of Ukraine IMMEDIATELY.  All Embassy functions will be transferred to Lviv, in western Ukraine.

This seems to coincide with a report issued yesterday (HERE – Subscribers Only!) which outlined that an ULTIMATUM had been given to Kiev by Moscow.

This also seems to coincide with intelligence reports saying Ukraine plans to use new HIMARS MLRS to attack Crimea.

Crimea is Russian territory now.   Russia has previously stated that if U.S. long range weapons are used against “Russian territory” then Russia will declare the US an active combatant, and will take military action.

The US says that Crimea is “Ukrainian territory” and so the Ukrainians can use HIMARS against it.

Over the weekend, former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev publicly spoke about possible Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, and said: “If something like this happens, Judgment Day will happen to all of them”

Overnight, the Russian Navy began moving several ships OUT of Crimea to their port at Novorossiysk.  The Russian Black Sea fleet pulled anchor and left Sevastopol, for the Kuban.  Clearly they suspect a missile attack on the port facilities. If this should happen, many observers think there will be war.

 

“FORCE MAJEURE”

This morning, Russian energy giant Gazprom declared force majeure on gas supplies to at least one major EU customer RETROACTOVE TO JUNE.

According to a document from inside the company, Gazprom tells a large client it cannot fulfil its supply obligations due to “extraordinary” circumstances outside its control.

REUTERS News Agency now reports that its sources are saying that the letter was referring to supplies to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.  The letter makes clear that GAZPROM cannot supply __any__ natural gas via Nord Stream One pipeline, until further notice.

The route is currently undergoing planned annual maintenance which is due to be completed on Thursday, however many in Germany fear that the flow will not be resumed.  Given today’s declaration of a “force majeure” it now appears certain that natural gas flows WILL NOT RESUME.

Without the flow of Russian natural gas, Germany and other European nations had to begin drawing-down on stored natural gas reserves in their countries as of July 11.  Those reserves are finite, and will run out.   Various countries in Europe have various amounts of gas in storage, but none of them have more than a few months worth.

As natural gas runs out, there won’t be gas to power the steam boilers in gas-fired electric generating plants.  No boilers means no steam.  IF there is no steam, that means nothing to turn the turbines.  No turbines means no electricity.

       UPDATE 2:05 PM EDT — With regard to GAZPROM’s declaring a “force Majeure” this is now explicitly CONFIRMED.  The company has thus decided to void itself from all contractual obligations. Gas will stop flowing to Germany through Nord Stream 1 indefinitely.   

So right now, July 18, 2022, many differing issues are all coming to a head at about the same time.  If Ukraine attacks Crimea using U.S.-supplied HIMARS, then Russia may declare the US an active combatant and use military force against the US.

If Russia refuses to restore natural gas flows to Europe, then Europe will run out of natural gas, and its economy will utterly stop.

If Europe’s economy stops, then two weeks later, the US economy stops.

These are things that cause nations to go to actual war.

In that regard, Russia announced today it will be holding NUCLEAR ATTACK CIVILIAN EVACUATION DRILLS so its citizens can become accustomed to where they have to be in such a situation.

The Russia-China Polar Silk Road Speeds Ahead

The Dancing Man Story

“Spotted this specimen trying to dance the other week. He stopped when he saw us laughing.”

Worth the Share! #DancingManStory

Source : Man Fat-Shamed Online Gets VIP Dance Party in L.A.

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Dancing Man. Stopped dancing.

He stopped dancing. was ashamed with everyone laughing, and went home sullen.

This was then published…

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The girls get organized.

A hunt is on!!!

Action is taken!

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Invitation.

Support pours in from all over the internet…

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Support.

Big names get involved. Such as “Moby”…

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Support from Moby.

And, you know what?

He got the message!

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He got the message!

Then it actually happens!

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Dance!

Go ahead enjoy yourself.

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Having fun!

Dance, dance, dance!

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Life is too short. Have a good time. Enjoy yourself!

Satellite Imagery Shows Global Crop Declines – Except For Russia And China

Sunday, Jul 17, 2022 – 11:00 AM

Infrared satellite imagery designed to measure moisture levels and the health of farmlands suggests that staple crops such as wheat are in poor condition and in sharp decline among major exporters including the Ukraine, the US and India.  Two countries do have bumper crops so far though; namely Russia and China.

It is hard to say which governments and institutions monitor this data, but a few months ago a multitude of political leaders and global banks issued simultaneous warnings of a “global food shortage” and an impending crisis.  Such institutions included the IMF, World Bank, the BIS and even the White House.  So far, a perfect storm of stagflation, supply chain disruptions and poor weather conditions have combined to disrupt food production around the world.

Price inflation due to central bank stimulus measures has been enough to do incredible damage to the many national economies, but a single bad year for crops on top of this could spell disaster.

Russia and China, on the other hand, are enjoying a strategic advantage.

As we entered spring of this year, the mainstream media heralded the end of the Russian economy and the swift collapse of their war efforts in Ukraine.

Today, Russia is selling more oil and exporting more commodities than ever before, and both Russia and China now have the most healthy staple crops in the world.

It’s almost as if the public in the west has been deliberately misled about our economic strength.

Sadly, many people in the west have forgotten the importance of commodities, industry and energy in terms of geopolitical leverage.  Without dominance of these three arenas there is no chance for a nation or group of nations to dictate terms to a country that has such advantages.  Economic warfare is about independent production and adaptability; these are two things the US and Europe do not have right now.

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With declines in crop exports, food prices will rise even further this year and there is also the possibility that Russia could cut off the EU and other nations from access to their agricultural market.  Though the Kremlin says this will not happen, given the right trigger event it remains a legitimate threat.  Already this month Europe is on the edge of an economic cliff as they wait to see if the Russian “maintenance shutdown” of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline is actually temporary, or the beginning of a full bore energy crisis that will last for years.

In other words, the temptation for the eastern nations to use food as a weapon against NATO countries will be just as high on their list as oil and gas.  With food and energy stability in doubt there is also a considerable danger of civil unrest.  Third world nations are likely to see the worst of the shortages, but price inflation in necessities is here to stay for first world countries as well.  And along with that comes all the associated economic problems, including rising crime, rising unemployment and rising poverty.

A cat story

Not mine, but adorable anyways. -MM

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Found my cat as a little kitten (about 6 weeks old) left to die in a box near a container. I warmed her up with my own body temperature on the way home, she was almost half dead. When I got her home and dry (because it was rainy October and I live in cold Scandinavia), she had a stable and semi-strong pulse.

I took her to the acute vet, I’m a student and I didn’t have much money, but I would rather eat oats for two-three weeks than let another living creature die. I ended up bottle feeding her every 2 hour every night and rushing home to bottle feed her in my school breaks.

That little thing is my child, all that bonding in the night when I bottle fed her. I have PTSD, and because of her, I don’t suffer from nightmares anymore.

When it was bad, she would panic and wake me up so I didn’t have to suffer through them. Even a year after I had my last nightmare, she still sleeps with her nose on my neck or cuddles with my hand and keeps her nose on my wrist to check my pulse so she can wake me up the instant she detects any distress.

The Only Real Solution Is Default

Saturday, Jul 16, 2022 – 10:30 PM

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The destruction of ‘phantom wealth’ via default has always been the only way to clear the financial system of unpayable debt burdens and extremes of rentier / wealth dominance.

The notion that the world could always borrow more money as long as interest rates were near-zero was never sustainable. It was always an unsustainable artifice that we could keep borrowing ever larger sums from the future as long as the interest payments kept dropping.

The only real solution to over-indebtedness since the beginning of finance is default. There are pretty names for variations on default that sound much less gut-wrenching–debt jubilees, refinancing, etc.– but the bottom line is the debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid and whomever owns the debt as an asset absorbs the loss.

Every default is a debt jubilee for the borrower. Whether the default is informal or formalized in bankruptcy, the debt payments are no longer being paid to the lender / owner of the debt.

Every debt jubilee is a default that forces the owner of the debt to write the value down to zero and absorb the loss. The jubilation of the owner of the debt is rather muted unless the state swoops in and passes the losses onto the taxpayers via bailouts / transferring the losses to the public’s balance sheet.

Every default is a refinancing–to zero. We’ve refinanced the debt so the borrower pays zero and the value of the loan / debt is now zero.

Very few ordinary households own other people’s debts as assets. It’s the wealthy few who own most of the student loans, vehicle loans, mortgages, government and corporation bonds, etc.

Yes, ordinary households may own other people’s debts through pension plans or ownership of mutual funds, but by and large debt is a favored asset of the rentier class, i.e. the wealthiest few.

We’re constantly told that mass defaults would destroy the economy, but this is flim-flam: mass defaults would destroy much of the wealth of the rentier class which has been greatly enriched by the global expansion of debt, while freeing the debtors of their obligations.

Recall that debt is the transfer of income from the borrower to the owner of the debt. Borrowing money is like every other form of consumption: when it’s cheap and abundant, we over-indulge. The costs are only apparent after the banquet has been cleared.

The illusion that the global economy could effortlessly add trillions in debt to fund living large forever was based on a brief historical anomaly of zero interest rates enabled by low inflation. There’s a long lag between the vast expansion of debt / consumption and the eventual consequences on supply, demand, risk and price discovery.

The lag time is up and now the consequences are finally visible: the tide of rapid growth in consumption and income required to fund ever-greater burdens of debt has ebbed, and so the global burden of debt–$300 trillion or so– is no longer sustainable / payable.

The favored solutions of the state–printing money or transferring the losses to the public–are no longer viable. Now that inflation has emerged from its slumber, printing trillions to bail out the wealthy is no longer an option. The public, so easily conned into accepting the bailout of the wealthy in 2008, has wised up and so that particular con won’t work again. (“Bail out the super-wealthy now or your ATM machine will stop working!” Uh, right.)

The state is the protector of the wealthy, and so defaults that actually impact the wealthy are anathema. The wealthy will demand the state absorb their losses (recall that profits are private, losses are socialized) The only equitable solution is to force the losses on those who bought the debt as a rentier income stream.

I’ve been exploring the Core-Periphery dynamic for a decade. ( The E.U., Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model May 24, 2012). This dynamic plays out in a number of ways on a number of levels.

Defaults will play out along the lines of Core-Periphery asymmetries. Some states will be able to “print their way out of default” but most will not, as unrestrained printing of money on such a vast scale would devalue the currency, triggering an even more destructive systemic default.

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Debt is a double-edged form of power. Being able to borrow and spend huge sums is an absolutely fabulous way to expand corruption, bribes, exploitation of the powerless, bridges to nowhere and mindless over-consumption, but the habits formed by mindless expansion of debt to fund soaring wealth inequality don’t serve the indebted entities very well when default removes borrowing as a way to pay and play.

Living within one’s means–i.e. net income–is the only solution there has ever been to the end-game of over-indebtedness, i.e. default. Those with relatively secure, diversified net incomes (i.e. the Core) will do much better than those with unstable, limited income.

The destruction of phantom wealth via default has always been the only way to clear the financial system of unpayable debt burdens and extremes of rentier / wealth dominance. Let’s guess that a bare minimum of $100 trillion of the $300 trillion mountain of global debt will default far sooner than most expect. The only question is who will absorb the $100 trillion in losses. Choose wisely, as defaults of debt that are transferred to the public end up bringing down the entire system via political overthrow or currency collapse.

A bad father story

By Jessika Halitski

Not my parents just my father. The only thing i will never forgive is that when I was 13 I was just released from a psyche hospital for troubled kids.

I told my mother (sole guardian) I wanted to leave and be with my dad.

So she emailed him and they worked out a plan.

One weekend right before summer break was over my mother and grandparents drove out to my dads. It was like 14 hours or something, We get to my dads house, I am outside saying good bye to my grand parents and my mother.

I am nervous I can feel my heart racing.

I was so excited.

So my mom was helping me grab my stuff out of the trunk.

While trying to call my dad, he wont answer, so she tells me to go knock on the door. I listen and go knock.

I can hear whispering but not what they are saying.

I keep knocking and nothing. A short time later, im still knocking and I hear a car pull up behind me, I just keep knocking.

My mom calls me over and I see two cops standing with her.

She looks mad. I walk over, slowly.

The cops ask me why I am TRESPASSING and that the property owner called me in for harassment.

I was so mad I just started to cry.

My mother begins to explain why we are at this house.

The one officer goes to the door and asks for my father.

He comes out I breathed a sigh of relief thinking that he would sort this whole mess out, the cop in front of my mother is still looking over the emails my mother had printed the other officer called me over and asked my father ‘is this your child did you agree to take her from the mother’ my fathers reply broke me ‘shes not mine I have never seen her before’ .

I was floored.

My mom heard it and I could feel the anger coming off her but she breathed and called me back to the car told me to get in and she shut the door.

I saw her arguing and yelling at him and the police.

Then she gets in and tells my grandfather to drive.

I did not speak to anyone for about a week.

Following this I had 15 failed suicide attempts.

It wasn’t till a while later that I realized that I had done nothing wrong that I slowly started to cope with it.

It still hurts to this day he calls and will try to pretend this never happened but, every time I hear his voice I can hear him saying those same words over and over again…

Is A US-Russia War Becoming Inevitable?

Saturday, Jul 16, 2022 – 11:40 AM

Authored by Pat Buchanan,

At the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland was invited to join the alliance. What does this mean for Finland?

If Russian President Vladimir Putin breaches the 830-mile Finnish border, the United States will rise to Helsinki’s defense and fight Russia on Finland’s side.

What does Finland’s membership in NATO mean for America?

If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world’s largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons.

No Cold War president would have dreamed of making such a commitment — to risk the survival of our nation to defend territory of a country thousands of miles away that has never been a U.S. vital interest.

To go to war with the Soviet Union over the preservation of Finnish territory would have been seen as madness during the Cold War.

Recall: Harry Truman refused to use force to break Joseph Stalin’s blockade of Berlin. Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. troops to save the Hungarian freedom fighters being run down by Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956.

Lyndon B. Johnson did nothing to assist the Czech patriots crushed by Warsaw Pact armies in 1968. When Lech Walesa’s Solidarity was smashed on Moscow’s order in Poland in 1981, Ronald Reagan made brave statements and sent Xerox machines.

While the U.S. issued annual declarations of support during the Cold War for the “captive nations” of Central and Eastern Europe, the liberation of these nations from Soviet control was never deemed so vital to the West as to justify a war with the USSR.

Indeed, in the 40 years of the Cold War, NATO, which had begun in 1949 with 12 member nations, added only four more — Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany.

Yet, with the invitation to Sweden and Finland to join as the 31st and 32nd nations to receive an Article 5 war guarantee, NATO will have doubled its membership since what was thought — certainly by the Russians — to have been the end of the Cold War.

All the nations once part of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact — East Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria — are now members of a U.S.-led NATO — directed against Russia.

Three former republics of the USSR — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — are now also members of NATO, a military alliance formed to corral and contain the nation to which they had belonged during the Cold War.

Lithuania, with 2% of Russia’s population, has just declared a partial blockade of goods moving across its territory to Kaliningrad, Russia’s enclave on the Baltic Sea.

To Putin’s protest, Vilnius has reminded Moscow that Lithuania is a member of NATO.

It is a dictum of geostrategic politics that a great power ought never cede to a lesser power the ability to draw it into a great war.

In 1914, the kaiser’s Germany gave its Austrian ally a “blank check” to punish Serbia for its role in the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. Vienna cashed the kaiser’s check and attacked Serbia, and the Great War of 1914-1918 was on.

In March 1939, Neville Chamberlain issued a war guarantee to Poland. If Germany attacked Poland, Britain would fight on Poland’s side.

Fortified with this war guarantee from the British Empire, the Poles stonewalled Hitler, refusing to talk to Berlin over German claims to the city of Danzig, taken from her at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler attacked and Britain declared war, a war that lasted six years and mortally wounded the British Empire.

And Poland? At Yalta in 1945, Winston Churchill agreed that a Soviet-occupied Poland should remain in Stalin’s custody.

Putin is a Russian nationalist who regards the breakup of the USSR as the greatest calamity of the 20th century, but he is not alone responsible for the wretched relations between our countries.

We Americans have played a leading role in what is shaping up as a Second Cold War, more dangerous than the first.

Over the last quarter-century, after Russia dissolved the Warsaw Pact and let the USSR break apart into 15 nations, we pushed NATO, created to corral and contain Russia, into Central and Eastern Europe.

In 2008, neocons goaded Georgia into attacking South Ossetia, provoking Russian intervention and the rout of the Georgian army.

In 2014, neocons goaded Ukrainians into overthrowing the elected pro-Russian regime in Kyiv. When they succeeded, Putin seized Crimea and Sevastopol, for centuries the home base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

In 2022, Moscow asked the U.S. to pledge not to bring Ukraine into NATO. We refused. And Putin attacked. If Russians believe their country has been pushed against a wall by the West, can we blame them?

Americans appear dismissive of dark Russian warnings that rather than accept defeat in Ukraine, the humiliation of their nation, and their encirclement and isolation, they will resort to tactical nuclear weapons.

Is it really wisdom to dismiss these warnings as “saber-rattling”?

Poverty is not measured by the amount of money you have.

I thought we were well off when I was young. We had a house, 2 older but functional cars, and we always had food. I did not understand why my dad was always away, or why my mom was always nervous and irritable. I did not notice that it was always the same food, and there were no pictures on the peanut butter, vegetables, or cheese. I didn’t know other people didn’t drink powdered milk. I didn’t realize a lot of things.

One day, in school, I noticed that my lunch tickets were a different color than the ones the kids around me had. I asked why the office gave them that color, and why they did not have to initial theirs. They said they got their tickets from their parents every week. They had no idea what I was talking about. My mom deflected the question when I asked. I got curious. I noticed we did not go to the store to get clothes. I always got boxes of clothes I tried on at home. Whatever didn’t fit just wandered off. My shoes didn’t have the same logos, and my coats had none. My dad always wore the exact same pair of boots to work, and I had happily chiseled the crusted blacktop off of them so they looked nice over the years. I began to see that our cars were rustier than most, and little losses were devastating to my mom. I saw the overall quality of what we had was shabbier than my classmates’ things. It all began to make sense.

There was no “aha” moment. It was a slow dawning realization. We were poor. Not absolutely, but relative to our community. I would guess we were one automotive breakdown, one major home repair, or one medical catastrophe from being homeless at any point in time. My mom figured out I knew before my dad did. My demeanor didn’t change, but my behavior did. I asked for less. I didn’t ask for anything for Christmas that year. Or any year after. I asked to have small birthday parties at home. I was never big on clothing trends, but wore clothes until they fell apart or I had completely outgrown them. I stopped asking for money for a donut and milk at the bakery across from the school (they were day olds the manager kept for me without me knowing.) I walked to school more and asked for rides less. I paid attention to prices when we went grocery shopping, and asked for less big ticket items. I did not tell my brother. I shared more with him. I accepted more invitations when my friends parents offered dinner or to stay over. I asked my friends to stay over less often. I learned to repair my bike, to sew, and to garden. I seldom turned on my lights, took short showers, bundled up in the winter, and avoided the TV aside from a few shows.

I understood that which my parents had hidden from me. I adjusted. They accepted that I was helping in my own way. To their credit, they would offer to buy clothes, try to tempt me with the Toys’r’us catalog, and would pay attention to everything I would eyeball at the mall and Farm&Fleet. They would not let me avoid the school book fair, since they knew my great love was reading. I still have that love. What they fostered grew. I am still frugal, weigh the cost of items against their value, buy mostly from thrift stores, and live simply. I cherish experiences and people more than objects. I try to constantly keep learning and growing. I learned I was never truly poor. I just lacked money.

Grandma’s “Afghan”

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The Blanket That Was Set Over Every Grandma’s Couch

We Are About To Experience An Absolutely Epic Housing Crash The Likes Of Which America Has Never Seen Before

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You may not want to buy a house right now.  What goes up must eventually come down, and we have just entered the “down” side of that equation.  Over the past two years, home prices in the United States have gone up nearly 40 percent.  Now mortgage rates are rising at a pace that is truly frightening, and they are likely to go even higher in the months ahead as the Federal Reserve continues to fight a relentless war against inflation.  Needless to say, higher mortgage rates mean higher potential mortgage payments for prospective home buyers, and so millions of Americans are being priced out of the marketplace right now.  The only thing that is going to bring those buyers back into the marketplace is for home prices to go down, and that is already starting to happen in some areas of the nation.

We were already in a historic housing bubble heading into 2020, and over the past two years we have witnessed another housing bubble develop on top of the previous housing bubble.

Overall, home prices in the U.S. rose 37 percent between March 2020 and March 2022.

That is insane.

Of course our incomes have not been going up as fast as home prices have.  In fact, it is being reported that “home prices have gone up four times faster than incomes” over the past year…

Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas put the real estate industry on edge this spring after they published a paper titled Real-Time Market Monitoring Finds Signs of Brewing U.S. Housing Bubble. Why the renewed concern? Over the past year alone, home prices have gone up four times faster than incomes. Simple economic theory, which dictates that neither home prices nor incomes can outgrow the other for very long, tells us that isn’t sustainable.

There is no way that this could continue for long, and we have reached a point where home prices in the United States are “overvalued” by almost 25 percent

The analysis conducted by Moody’s Analytics aimed to find out whether economic fundamentals, including local income levels, could support local home prices. On a national level, Moody’s Analytics finds U.S. home prices are “overvalued” by 24.7%. In other words, U.S. home prices are 24.7% higher than they would historically trade at given current income levels.

Does this mean that home prices will come down by 25 percent?

Well, it all depends on what the Federal Reserve chooses to do.

If the Fed decides to stop raising interest rates by the end of this year, the damage could potentially be minimized.

But if the Fed continues to raise interest rates throughout 2023, we are likely to see carnage that is unlike anything we have ever seen before.

Personally, I have been stunned by how rapidly mortgage rates have risen.  According to Peter Schiff, the last time that average 30 year mortgage rates crossed the 6 percent threshold was just before the last housing crash…

Average 30-year mortgage rates have pushed to nearly 6.4%. The last time we saw mortgage rates over 6% was right before the housing crash of 2008. Until mid-April, mortgage rates were in the 4% to 5% range. Just one month ago, rates were 5.49%.

Lower-income homebuyers have already been priced out of the market by spiking mortgage rates. The houses that are selling tend to be in higher price ranges.

Officials at the Federal Reserve can see what is happening, but they consider taming inflation to be a much higher priority right now.

So the housing bubble will inevitably continue to implode, and the numbers for the industry will just get even uglier.  Here is more from Peter Schiff

Air is hissing out of the housing bubble faster and faster every week.

Pending sales plunged in June and the inventory of homes on the market jumped as mortgage rates continue to rapidly rise.

Pending home sales plunged by 16% year-over-year in June. This follows on the heels of a 12% drop in May and a 9% dip in April. June marked the 10th straight month of year-on-year declines in pending sales.

Some of the hottest markets in the country have started to cool off really fast.

For example, just look at what is happening in California

The pace of California home sales plunged 21% in June from a year earlier as soaring mortgage rates took a bite out of buyer interest, the state Realtors group reported Monday.

And what we are witnessing in Boise is really alarming.

Boise was once one of the hottest markets in the entire nation, but now sales are dropping faster than Joe Biden’s approval rating

Before governors relaxed stay-at-home orders two years ago, white-collar professionals were already fleeing their exorbitantly priced apartments in cities like San Francisco and Seattle. The biggest beneficiary of that WFH homebuying wave was undoubtedly Boise—where home prices skyrocketed 53%. You could even call it the poster child of the pandemic housing boom.

But that Boise honeymoon is over. While spiking mortgage rates have pushed the overall U.S. housing market into a slowdown, it has delivered a particularly hard blow to the Boise housing market. That has seen both Boise home sales plummet—down 28% on a year-over-year basis—and inventory levels surge—up 161% this year. It’s also chipping away at home values. According to Zillow, the median Boise home sales price fell 3.5% in June.

This downturn is going to have enormous implications for home builders as well.

Sales are falling, and a key measure of home builder confidence just declined for the seventh month in a row

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which measures the pulse of the single-family housing market, fell for the seventh consecutive month to 55, the lowest level since May 2020. It is the second-biggest, one-month decline in the survey’s 37-year history.

The only time that the index has fallen more in a single month was during the very early stages of the COVID pandemic.

National Association of Home Builders CEO Jerry Howard fears that things will continue to get worse in the months ahead, and he is warning that “we’re going to go into a recession” unless something dramatic happens…

“For the last seven straight months it has been going down and this is a huge drop – and I think all it says is, ‘Somebody do something or we’re going to go into a recession,’” Howard said.

I am sorry to tell you this Jerry, but we are already in a recession right now, and it is going to get really bad.

Our leaders have been making decisions that have been mind-numbingly bad for a long time, and now we are all going to suffer the consequences.

If you are searching for an easy way out of this mess, you can stop looking, because there isn’t one.

What we are heading for is going to make 2008 and 2009 look like a Sunday picnic, and it will shake our nation to the core.

Memories

Television memories…

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Big Wood Grain Console TVs…

Boston Cream Pie

The Parker House Hotel in downtown Boston has bragging rights as the place where Boston cream pie was invented in 1856. It’s technically not a pie, but a yellow butter cake or sponge cake with a sweet rich custard and thick chocolate glaze.

According to Historic Hotels of America, the popular dessert was known as Chocolate Cream Pie, and became a Betty Crocker boxed mix in 1958. It is still a sought-out fave on menus in Boston and throughout New England. In fact, in 1996 the Boston cream pie was declared the official state dessert of Massachusetts.

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Boston Cream Pie

Check out this you-tube video…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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The forms we take as we escape

This is a Patreon video first released in early Summer 2022. It’s a very complex subject and discusses the quantum forms that are aligned upon the moment of death. Feel free to visit the MM Patreon site at any time to see the entire pile of in-depth videos that cover these most unusual subjects.

I hope that you get something out of this video.

Do you want more?

The Metallicman patrion page has daily videos and articles for the hard-core influencers and supporters. Here’s the really valuable stuff. Basic membership is only $5 a month. Great stuff here. It’s where I present the “secrets of the universe”…

MM Patreon Website

Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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President Biden is Hell bent on destroying the world (its a fact)

My long term observations is that:

These bankrupt nations/failed States have caused a sudden drastic currency depreciation, outflow of capital, and massive inflation (cost of living stress), stock and property price drop etc. They are all linked to the United States (incredible and reckless) massive money printing. As well as the Unites States reserve Bank's interest rate rise.

This is how (in the past) the American regime would end up periodically looting the world. Not just the world, but friends and enemies alike,  including its own allies. Doing so without any military action.

This is a complex topic.

Now, the Chinese CCP studied how this US policy works.  And now, this time, China is so well prepared that there are basically no inflation in China. At all.

This time, when the US regime ran this old technique again, the EU is seriously and badly affected.

What are they to do? Well, it's obvious. Watch the outflow of currency. Indeed, a large portion of EU money is flowing to China as safe heaven instead of to the USA. 

As a result, the United States suffered catastrophic inflation domestically...

... and, in regards to China, it completely lost it effectiveness as a tool of chaos, control and power.

Cheers
Chua

Here we go through the motions as our idiotic Western governments invite nuclear war upon the world.

President of Serbia: “All Hell is About To Break Loose in Ukraine” – World War 3 is Already happening

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The Ukraine conflict is in fact already a world war, given that the West is fighting Russia via its proxies in Kiev, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told local media on Wednesday.

We should understand that amid the world war – because all the talks that it is a regional or a local war must be dropped – the entire Western world is fighting against Russia via Ukrainians. It is a global conflict,” he said in an interview with Pink TV.

The president said that the ongoing global war is what concerns him the most, and, in his view, it will only get worse. He also added that the conflict in Ukraine is taking its toll on the Balkans, reiterating that Serbia would do its best to keep the peace in the region.

Moreover, Vucic believes that after Russia gains some more ground in eastern Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin will approach the West with a certain “proposal.”

I know what awaits us. As soon as Vladimir Putin has done his work in Seversk, Bakhmut and Soledar, after reaching the second line Slaviansk-Kramatorsk-Avdeevka, he will come up with a proposal. And if they [the West] don’t accept it, – and they won’t – all hell will break loose,” he predicted, without providing any details on the would-be initiative.

The Serbian president also offered the reminder that his nation maintains close relations with Russia and China, adding that pursuing such policies does not come easy for Belgrade right now.

Vucic’s comments come after Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin said in early July that the West should apologize to Belgrade for the 1999 bombing campaign instead of forcing it to become a “NATO foot soldier” in the conflict with Russia.

Threads – 10 minutes of the bunker scenes

Yeah. This is the real deal. Soak it up.

Tender and Militant: Artist Sung-Choul Ham and His South Korean Fantasy Worlds

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Sung-Choul Ham is an artist from South Korea, he draws illustrations and concepts (mostly fighting anime girls) for games and movies. He’s currently working at Majors Studio where he’s developing characters for South Korean fantasy MMORPGs and he’s doing a great job.

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U.S. Railroad Strike Begins July 18 – Trains will stop

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) voted by a margin of 99.5 percent to authorize a strike if such action becomes legal and “necessary to secure a contract worthy of their consideration.” A strike like this threatens to halt all train movement across the country.

In a statement, BLET National President Dennis Pierce said that this is the first nationwide strike vote since 2011, but that it is necessary because railroads “used and continue to use their economic strength to steamroll their employees, their customers and the nation, all for the sake of their bottom line, and it is clear that they have no intentions of changing.”

In the third year of the national contract negotiation process, he added, “the rail carriers have never made a contract proposal to our union that their employees, our members, would accept.”

The moment trains stop, all the supply-chain issues previously experienced by Americans, will grow worse by orders of magnitude.

Egg Salad

This salad takes some work, but if you don’t mind peeling a few eggs, you can enjoy this family-friendly, budget-conscious hearty salad. Mustard and paprika give it that extra kick.

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Egg Salad.

Ready for something fantastic and easy? You’re in luck! This is a classic egg salad recipe, just like Grandma used to make! Sit down with it for a quick lunch … or chow down for dinner at any time as the weather gets warmer.

I know what you may be thinking … “This is such a classic! I have my own recipe passed down through the generations. Doesn’t everyone?!” To that, I answer, tradition is wonderful, but just give this one a try! It’s my own perfected egg salad recipe that you’ll simply adore. You may even use it to tweak the recipe that’s been in your family forever! It’s that amazing: creamy, eggy, and full of crisp onions and celery. So good!

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Delicious.

And if you’ve never made egg salad before? Don’t despair!! This egg salad recipe is very, very easy. In fact, there are only a few steps: five steps to hardboil the eggs and three steps to put together the salad itself. The ingredients are the kind you can find at any store, and it lasts 3-5 days in the fridge (if you’re lucky enough to have leftovers!). If you’re someone who doesn’t have a traditional family egg salad recipe, well, here you go with your new family recipe!

Egg Salad Recipe

  • large eggs
  • mayonnaise
  • yellow mustard
  • green onion
  • celery
  • salt
  • ground black pepper
  • paprika

Note: Make sure your eggs are fresh for this recipe! Expired eggs will float to the top of the water when you try to cook them, but a fresh egg will sit neatly at the bottom of the pan on its side.

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Delicious and healthy ingredients.

How To Make Egg Salad

Time needed: 30 minutes.

How To Make Egg Salad

  1. Add the eggs to a medium saucepan. Add cold water to a level where it is just covering the eggs.

  2. Bring water to a boil and immediately remove from heat. Cover and let the eggs stand for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the eggs to a large bowl with ice water and let the eggs cool.

  4. Peel and chop the eggs and place them in a medium bowl.

  5. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well.

  6. Spread the egg mixture on your favorite bread or crackers, or serve on lettuce or in a wrap!

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Sandwich on plate.

I am in Pennsylvania . . .

I am at the house I inherited in Pennsylvania.  My wife did not come.

We’re trying to work things out.

Maybe she’ll come up next week.

I told her I feel that Russia is going to attack the United States with a nuclear first strike over our helping Ukraine kill Russian soldiers.

I told her that I believe New York City is a major target for such a first strike, because it will cripple the nation’s banking industry and stock markets.

I told her that Russia uses what they call the “YARS” missile for such attacks, and that each missile carries a warhead with an eight hundred kiloton (800kt) yeild.

I explained that such bombs are usually air-burst about 2900 meters (1.5 Miles) above a target.

With our condo being located just 3 miles west, southwest of the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan, our condo would not survive and neither would anyone in it.

At the initial blast, the bright, white, flash would instantly cause temperatures outside our front door of over one-hundred-thousand degrees.  The entire building would burst instantly into flames.  Then comes the blast wave from the air being pushed by the explosion.  Thousand mile per hour winds  causing an “over-pressure” of about 30,000 p.s.i. would crush the building into a burning pile of rubble in seconds.

I told her there is no way any of us would have any chance at all of surviving; that we would die a horrible fiery and crushing death within seconds.

I also showed her the PSA put out this week by NYC Emergency management, telling people what to do if a nuke hits NYC., and I showed her the new warning signs going up in shopping centers in New Jersey warning people of what to do in a “Radiation Emergency.”

I told her that the US Dept. of Homeland Security is the one paying to put those signs up because they KNOW what’s coming.

She said she has some things to do and some Doctors to see, but maybe she’ll come up later next week.

I said, fine, I just want you to understand that if Russia launches, their missiles can get here before I can get from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.  I won’t be able to save her.

She understood.

So that’s where we are.

I won’t go into the marriage issues that caused such an upheaval last Friday that I couldn’t do a show.  Suffice it to say things are bad.

How bad?

I took off my wedding ring.

That bad.

Hal

I feel really bad for this guy. I hope that things calm down and settle down. Be good to each other, and remember that it is your family and friends that are you greatest strength during these times of great stress. -MM

A most Japanese thing…

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Ready for an Interview.

Japan has a strict rule when you’re job hunting, especially for university students.

They all have to wear what is called recruit suit.

This is the basic black suit, white shirt, black business bag and black dress shoes. It has to be the standard design and length. Hair should be dyed black. There is a range of color of black dyes that are acceptable. For women, hair should be tied into a ponytail. For men, it should be cut short and professional-looking.

Clothing shops selling suits and businesswear sell these recruit suits every hiring season. You’ll see ads and posters all around Japan.

You should blend in together with the rest of the applicants. It will be disastrous for your application if you stray from these rules.

Very Japanese thing.

In Eurasia, the War of Economic Corridors is in full swing

Mega Eurasian organizations and their respective projects are now converging at record speed, with one global pole way ahead of the other.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and cross-posted with The Cradle

 

The War of Economic Corridors is now proceeding full speed ahead, with the game-changing first cargo flow of goods from Russia to India via the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) already in effect.

Very few, both in the east and west, are aware of how this actually has long been in the making: the Russia-Iran-India agreement for implementing a shorter and cheaper Eurasian trade route via the Caspian Sea (compared to the Suez Canal), was first signed in 2000, in the pre-9/11 era.

The INSTC in full operational mode signals a powerful hallmark of Eurasian integration – alongside the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and last but not least, what I described as “Pipelineistan” two decades ago.

Caspian is key

Let’s have a first look on how these vectors are interacting.

The genesis of the current acceleration lies in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital, for the 6th Caspian Summit. This event not only brought the evolving Russia-Iran strategic partnership to a deeper level, but crucially, all five Caspian Sea littoral states agreed that no NATO warships or bases will be allowed on site.

That essentially configures the Caspian as a virtual Russian lake, and in a minor sense, Iranian – without compromising the interests of the three “stans,” Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. For all practical purposes, Moscow has tightened its grip on Central Asia a notch.

As the Caspian Sea is connected to the Black Sea by canals off the Volga built by the former USSR, Moscow can always count on a reserve navy of small vessels – invariably equipped with powerful missiles – that may be transferred to the Black Sea in no time if necessary.

Stronger trade and financial links with Iran now proceed in tandem with binding the three “stans” to the Russian matrix. Gas-rich republic Turkmenistan for its part has been historically idiosyncratic – apart from committing most of its exports to China.

Under an arguably more pragmatic young new leader, President Serdar Berdimuhamedow, Ashgabat may eventually opt to become a member of the SCO and/or the EAEU.

Caspian littoral state Azerbaijan on the other hand presents a complex case: an oil and gas producer eyed by the European Union (EU) to become an alternative energy supplier to Russia – although this is not happening anytime soon.

The West Asia connection

Iran’s foreign policy under President Ebrahim Raisi is clearly on a Eurasian and Global South trajectory. Tehran will be formally incorporated into the SCO as a full member in the upcoming summit in Samarkand in September, while its formal application to join the BRICS has been filed.

Purnima Anand, head of the BRICS International Forum, has stated that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also very much keen on joining BRICS. Should that happen, by 2024 we could be on our way to a powerful West Asia, North Africa hub firmly installed inside one of the key institutions of the multipolar world.

As Putin heads to Tehran next week for trilateral Russia, Iran, Turkey talks, ostensibly about Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is bound to bring up the subject of BRICS.

Tehran is operating on two parallel vectors. In the event the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is revived – a quite dim possibility as it stands, considering the latest shenanigans in Vienna and Doha – that would represent a tactical victory. Yet moving towards Eurasia is on a whole new strategic level.

In the INSTC framework, Iran will make maximum good use of the geostrategically crucial port of Bandar Abbas – straddling the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and the Indian subcontinent.

Yet as much as it may be portrayed as a major diplomatic victory, it’s clear that Tehran will not be able to make full use of BRICS membership if western – especially US – sanctions are not totally lifted.

Pipelines and the “stans”

A compelling argument can be made that Russia and China might eventually fill the western technology void in the Iranian development process. But there’s a lot more that platforms such as the INSTC, the EAEU and even BRICS can accomplish.

Across “Pipelineistan,” the War of Economic Corridors gets even more complex. Western propaganda simply cannot admit that Azerbaijan, Algeria, Libya, Russia’s allies at OPEC, and even Kazakhstan are not exactly keen on increasing their oil production to help Europe.

Kazakhstan is a tricky case: it is the largest oil producer in Central Asia and set to be a major natural gas supplier, right after Russia and Turkmenistan. More than 250 oil and gas fields are operated in Kazakhstan by 104 companies, including western energy giants such as Chevron, Total, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell.

While exports of oil, natural gas and petroleum products comprise 57 percent of Kazakhstan’s exports, natural gas is responsible for 85 percent of Turkmenistan’s budget (with 80 percent of exports committed to China). Interestingly, Galkynysh is the second largest gas field on the planet.

Compared to the other “stans,” Azerbaijan is a relatively minor producer (despite oil accounting for 86 percent of its total exports) and basically a transit nation. Baku’s super-wealth aspirations center on the Southern Gas Corridor, which includes no less than three pipelines: Baku-Tblisi-Erzurum (BTE); the Turkish-driven Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP); and the Trans-Adriatic (TAP).

The problem with this acronym festival – BTE, TANAP, TAP – is that they all need massive foreign investment to increase capacity, which the EU sorely lacks because every single euro is committed by unelected Brussels Eurocrats to “support” the black hole that is Ukraine. The same financial woes apply to a possible Trans-Caspian Pipeline which would further link to both TANAP and TAP.

In the War of Economic Corridors – the “Pipelineistan” chapter – a crucial aspect is that most Kazakh oil exports to the EU go through Russia, via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). As an alternative, the Europeans are mulling on a still fuzzy Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, also known as the Middle Corridor (Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey). They actively discussed it in Brussels last month.

The bottom line is that Russia remains in full control of the Eurasia pipeline chessboard (and we’re not even talking about the Gazprom-operated pipelines Power of Siberia 1 and 2 leading to China).

Gazprom executives know all too well that a fast increase of energy exports to the EU is out of the question. They also factor the Tehran Convention – that helps prevent and control pollution and maintain the environmental integrity of the Caspian Sea, signed by all five littoral members.

Breaking BRI in Russia

China, for its part, is confident that one of its prime strategic nightmares may eventually disappear. The notorious “escape from Malacca” is bound to materialize, in cooperation with Russia, via the Northern Sea Route, which will shorten the trade and connectivity corridor from East Asia to Northern Europe from 11,200 nautical miles to only 6,500 nautical miles. Call it the polar twin of the INSTC.

This also explains why Russia has been busy building a vast array of state-of-the-art icebreakers.

So here we have an interconnection of New Silk Roads (the INSTC proceeds in parallel with BRI and the EAEU), Pipelineistan, and the Northern Sea Route on the way to turn western trade domination completely upside down.

Of course, the Chinese have had it planned for quite a while. The first White Paper on China’s Arctic policy, in January 2018, already showed how Beijing is aiming, “jointly with other states” (that means Russia), to implement sea trade routes in the Arctic within the framework of the Polar Silk Road.

And like clockwork, Putin subsequently confirmed that the Northern Sea Route should interact and complement the Chinese Maritime Silk Road.

Russia-China Economic cooperation is evolving on so many complex, convergent levels that just to keep track of it all is a dizzying experience.

A more detailed analysis will reveal some of the finer points, for instance how BRI and SCO interact, and how BRI projects will have to adapt to the heady consequences of Moscow’s Operation Z in Ukraine, with more emphasis being placed on developing Central and West Asian corridors.

It’s always crucial to consider that one of Washington’s key strategic objectives in the relentless hybrid war against Russia was always to break BRI corridors that crisscross Russian territory.

As it stands, it’s important to realize that dozens of BRI projects in industry and investment and cross-border inter-regional cooperation will end up consolidating the Russian concept of the Greater Eurasia Partnership – which essentially revolves around establishing multilateral cooperation with a vast range of nations belonging to organizations such as the EAEU, the SCO, BRICS and ASEAN.

Welcome to the new Eurasian mantra: Make Economic Corridors, Not War.

You’re a disaster

An outstanding commentary by a former Pentagon Advisor to the US President, commenting on what he would tell President Biden…

The story of emperor of China, “Wu of Jin”

At the end of his reign as emperor of China, “Wu of Jin” brought more than 5,000 women to his palace.

From that moment on, the emperor concentrated on celebrating and enjoying women, rather than on important matters of state.

It was said that there were so many beautiful women in the palace that he literally did not know who he should have sex with; therefore, he came up with a rather… “particular” solution.

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Every day he walked inside the palace in a small wooden carriage powered by goats, if the goats stopped in front of any woman, that was the one the emperor chose.

Because of this, many of the women planted bamboo leaves outside their bedrooms, in order to attract the goats.

This, I assure you, will not appear in any of your history books.

I’m 23 and I’m from California, USA but I’ve lived in Barcelona collectively for a year now. I work remotely with clients across Europe and the States.

There are quite a few things that keep me here.

Socially, I’m less isolated, less alone, more included despite my horrific Spanish.

I noticed immediately when I moved here how much more social and communal my days became. I had lived in New York City before coming here. One of the most crowded, diverse cities in the world and proclaimed ‘city that never sleeps’, made me feel the most isolated.

Anytime there is free time here, every night of the week, there is someone inviting me to just sit and get coffee or a drink. In the US, it would take me three weeks to see as many friends I catch up with here in three days. Plans are easy and people take time to interact. I’ve noticed how much happier everyone else is, including myself.

The more relaxed mentality counteracts my workaholic bs.

Both my parents are entrepreneurs as am I. I went to a competitive business school in Dallas, Texas. Stressed is a default setting for me. And to some degree, that’s been beneficial. But moving here and being surrounded by people who will tell me I’m over doing it and need a drink is absolutely priceless. I’ve actually noticed a difference in how I physically feel and physically how the day “looks” to me; more light and not so impacted even if I am still working a lot. A collective, calmer energy around me is really helpful.

They dress better and now I dress better.

Where I’m from, the standard look is work out clothes everyday and if you put on even so much as jeans people ask you where you’re going. My university in Texas was worse. Here, an actual adult outfit is what’s expected. Everyone looks nice. Of course, within about three days I went shopping and got my shit together. I actually feel more confident and put together when I’m here because of that social standard.

They eat better and now I eat better.

I find it so much easier to eat healthier here. The mediterranean diet is inescapable. At home, there is kind of this half-assed healthy/convenience diet everyone, myself included strives for. You might know what I’m talking about. I’m no longer living off Diet Coke and protein bars. Which is great. Meal time is taken a little more seriously here so I cook and put a lot more conscious thought into my food.

Social barriers we have in the States do not exist.

I have friends who are senior managers at Deloitte that are also best friends with waiters. No one cares. No. One. Cares. Career is not the main topic of conversation or what people align their lives around. It’s simply how you make money to be able to go out and drink with your friends whoever they may be. This was way different for me. My whole life is my business and I came from cities where everyone’s social circles revolves around their jobs. I really love it. There are more perspectives and understanding.

Anyways, I just spent a few months back in the US getting a new visa. Of course there are things about the US that are very much engrained in me that I believe have made me who I am and I love that. There will always be things I love about home. Right now, Spain is showing me things about myself and other perspectives I can really appreciate.

We’re learning more than ever about war from the Ukraine

By <name withheld>

That is, if you follow closely what is happening.

We see that it is brutal beyond our imagination. Our imagination fails
because for the last 30 years the Western Media’s main job was to
Ignore, Deny and Justify the daily carnage dealt out to “Brown-Skins”.
There were some Eastern Europeans in there too, but call them Commies.

Now the Western Media job is to report every nuance, and even invent
most of the stories to give their “reporting” a flare. Every atrocity
they report has already been happening for 3 decades, but the official
position is that we really didn’t care. Let “Democracy” do its work.

We see that the worst travesty on earth is what they call the proxy
war. Opposing “great” powers hire third world discontents to perform a
chicken (cock) fight, and the powers sit on the sidelines making their
bets. The person could probably make $10/day in their home country.
(Like the Ukraine average), If they can get an honest job. Or they can
push drugs and engage with crime and make more (like in Ukraine).

But on the battle field they are promised $50/day, sometimes even
$100/day, (but then are usually paid less). All they have to do is kill
some people. And most of the times it’s unarmed civilians. It is kind
of like a sports club or a fraternity. Make a few IED’s. Not quite the
same in today’s war.

In the Ukraine one side is proxy, (with their own people of course, but
with proxy armaments). The Ukrainian military is not paid any premium,
but their pay is sent in by proxy. And the other side, Russian allies,
are working for their own security against the proxy sponsors. (It is
a very interesting dynamic, that I can comment on, but not in this piece.)

The Ukraine used to have all the cities except those occupied the LPR
and DPR. They had 8 years to fortify them and stock military supplies,
according to their battle plan. Now they have lost much of that
territory plus a land bridge from Russia to the Crimea, Kherson and the
like. Therefore we can conclude by this movement, that Russia is on the
offensive and Ukraine on the defensive. Today I am not counting Russia’s
drive toward Kiev. Maybe it was just an experiment to see if things
could happen easy, without much loss of life. I find it honorable.

The offensive side controls the battle plan and the speed and direction
of the attacks. The defense has to absorb what the offense doles out to
them. The offense can easily go back and forth, with the objective to
save their lives. The defense cannot go back (unless they must), and
the lives lost can make NO DIFFERENCE.

Too many commenter’s claim the battle is stalled out. So Russia must be
hurting, because it doesn’t go forward according to MY (the commenter’s)
CONCEPT. Not to Russia’s plan? But if you look closely, on each day
that the front lines don’t move, many hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers are
killed, (each day) and many dozens of their heavy equipment destroyed.
It is through stand-off artillery not face to face combat, so the losses
are not equal. It is said that 50% of Ukrainian BTG’s have heavy
losses, one up to 80%. Can you imagine what it feels like to be in a
BTG of 900 soldiers and now there are only 180 left? Unfortunately, in
war, many countries understand only body counts. I think the USA is
like that.

So the mistake is to judge the war only by movement on the front. Asking
what major cities have been taken?

So far this war is to liberate the Ex-Russian, the Russian speaking
population from under the fascist regime. So the goal is to preserve
their lives, and allow them to build a productive society in the
future. We won’t know about the non-Russian speaking population until
they get there. You can’t just take a poll to ask what they think.
They are not allowed to express any doubt, under severe fascist
penalties, including death. If they are liberated, many might choose to
live far away from the Kiev regime. So you don’t want to kill or maim
those civilians either. Maybe by the time you get to Lvov, you can
take off the kid gloves.

1. Not all relationships will lead to marriage, some will help you discover new restaurants.

2. It’s not selfish to make your happiness your main priority.

3. Stay away from “still” people. Still broke, still complaining, still hating, still nowhere.

4. Anything that costs you your mental health is too expensive.

5. Make sure you’re not the only one who actually values the connection.

6. You don’t have to be liked by everybody. You don’t even like everybody.

7. People may be upset when you choose you over their mess. Choose you anyway.

8. Listen, that move you are scared to make, might be the game changer.

9. There is a past version of you that is so proud of how far you have come.

10. If someone’s absence brings you peace. You didn’t lose anything.

Sherry Cam.

Iran, Argentina apply to join BRICS bloc after recent summit: Report

Ahead of the summit, Saudi Arabia too expressed interest to join the grouping, according to reports.

From HERE

Every nation is "abandoning the USD" and "abandoning the West" and getting on board with the united Asia. -MM

and have applied to join the mechanism, the Russian state media reported, days after a summit of the five-nation bloc during which the leaders agreed to continue to discuss the possibility of admitting new countries to the grouping on the basis of “full consultation and consensus.”

and have applied for joining (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was quoted as saying by the state-run Tass news agency.

It reported that Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday that Tehran has applied for membership.

Tehran filed the application for accession to the BRICS, he said.

The diplomat expressed hope that “ will be able to contribute to the BRICS’ operation and benefit the organisation.”

Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez said at a BRICS+ meeting last week that his country wants to become a full member of the association, the Tass report said.

Ahead of the summit, Saudi Arabia too expressed interest to join the grouping, according to reports.

The issue of expansion of the BRICS bloc was figured in the June 23 virtual summit hosted by China, which is this year’s chair.

The declaration issued at the end of the summit said the leaders will continue to discuss the possibility of admitting new countries to the five-nation grouping on the basis of “full consultation and consensus.”

Asked for his reaction at a media briefing here on Tuesday about Iran and applying to join BRICS, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said many countries have expressed their interest to join the five-member bloc of emerging markets.

“BRICS countries agreed that it is important to step up cooperation with other emerging markets and developing countries to improve the representativeness of the BRICS mechanism and make it loudly heard on major issues so that we can better rise up to challenges and uphold the interests of emerging markets and developing counties,” Zhao said.

“We have noted that many countries including Iran and Argentina have expressed their willingness to join the BRICS family. As the chair of the BRICS this year China actively supports BRICS countries to start the membership expansion process to expand BRICS Plus cooperation,” he said.

Zhao said that at the 14th summit held on June 23 the BRICS leader made a unanimous voice on the expansion of the BRICS mechanism and they supported discussion, standards and procedure for the expansion.

“China will work with BRICS partners to move ahead with the expansion process steadily so that like-minded partners can join the BRICS family,” he said.

“We shall continue to set clear priorities in our wide-ranging cooperation, on the basis of consensus, and make our strategic partnership more efficient, practical and results-oriented,” the declaration said.

“We support promoting discussions among BRICS members on BRICS expansion process. We stress the need to clarify the guiding principles, standards, criteria and procedures for this expansion process through Sherpas’ channel on the basis of full consultation and consensus,” it said.

In Case You Were Wondering Why Inflation Has Started To Spiral Wildly Out Of Control…

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When you keep making horrible decisions, eventually the consequences are going to catch up with you.  That is true for individuals, and it is also true for entire nations.  Here in the United States, previous generations handed down to us the strongest and most stable national currency on the planet.  Having the default reserve currency of the world has been a great blessing, because it has enabled us to enjoy a standard of living that is far greater than we actually deserve.  But instead of doing their best to preserve and protect our currency, our leaders have decided to systematically destroy it instead.  As a result, the rate of inflation has gotten completely out of control, and many experts are extremely concerned about what lies ahead.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why we have such a problem with inflation at this point.

The money supply has ballooned to levels that were once unthinkable, and this is going to cause massive problems for the foreseeable future.

Let me show you what I am talking about.  The following chart of how M1 has changed over the years comes directly from the Federal Reserve

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The giant spike that you can see on the chart started during the early stages of the COVID pandemic.

Our leaders abandoned any pretense of restraint, and we went “full Weimar” for about two solid years.

I warned over and over again that what we were doing was absolutely insane, and now we are starting to experience the consequences.

Many people believe that M2 is a much more accurate measure of the money supply than M1 is, and so let me show you a chart of how M2 has changed

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This chart certainly looks better than the previous one, but it is still extremely frightening.

We are rapidly destroying the stability of our currency, and as a result our standard of living is being absolutely shredded.

I’ll give you an example.  A young lady down in Texas went viral this month when she revealed that she was living in a shed in a desperate attempt to save money

A young Texas woman who moved into a shed that she purchased for just $2,000 in order to save money amid the housing crisis has opened up about her desperate struggle to cope with the summer heat while living in the property – which has no AC or shower.

Is this what they mean when they tell us that we are going to “own nothing and be happy”?

Apparently she was promised that the shed would be “fully livable”, but she quickly found out that wasn’t exactly true

However, in a video shared to her TikTok, which gained over one million views, Elizabeth revealed that she was ‘ripped off by the builders’ because she was under the impression it was a fully livable shed and is ‘dying’ in the Houston heat while thinking about how ‘nice’ a shower would be.

The good news is that her father came down from South Carolina and installed lights and air conditioning.

So now Elizabeth and her boyfriend will be able to cool off during the summer months.

But they still have no way to bathe.

Sadly, the truth is that they are far better off than hundreds of millions of others around the globe right now.

As energy costs and food costs go absolutely haywire, we are starting to see widespread civil unrest in various parts of the world.

For example, check out what is currently going on in Sri Lanka

The political crisis triggered by months of socialist economic collapse in Sri Lanka continued on Wednesday with violent clashes between protesters and soldiers, resulting in upwards of 80 people hospitalized in one day and the military announcing soldiers were “empowered” to attack civilians if deemed necessary.

The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, governed for the better part of the past two decades primarily by the populous Rajapaksa family, began to run out of food, medicine, oil fuels, natural gas, and nearly every other basic good in March, the result of lavish government spending and the imposition of “green” policies that banned chemical fertilizer use.

They promised us that the “green revolution” would change everything, and they were right.

Things are starting to get really crazy in Albania too.

 

And what we are witnessing in Panama right now is extremely alarming.

 

All over the globe, energy and food are traded in U.S. dollars.

When interest rates rise in the U.S., the dollar tends to go up relative to other global currencies, and that makes things much harder for those at the very bottom of the economic food chain.

Unfortunately, in a desperate attempt to get inflation under control in the U.S., the Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising interest rates.

And we are now being warned that the Fed could raise rates “by a full percentage point” at the next meeting…

Investors see a growing probability that the Federal Reserve could hike interest rates by a full percentage point at its next meeting for the first time in the modern era. In June, the Fed raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, which it hadn’t done since 1994.

Considering the fact that we are plunging into a recession, it would be absolutely insane for the Fed to do such a thing.

But they seem quite serious about making another big move.

In fact, the head of the Atlanta Fed just publicly told us that “everything is in play” at the next Fed gathering…

Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Raphael Bostic said Wednesday that “everything is in play” when asked about the prospect of the central bank raising interest rates by a full percentage point later this month, expressing concern over the morning’s news that inflation hit a fresh 40-year-high in June.

Bostic told reporters he still needed to study the “nuts and bolts” of the latest data, but said he felt “today’s numbers suggest the trajectory is not moving in a positive way.”

The Fed seems to be obsessed with trying to tame inflation here in the U.S., but in the process they will essentially be exporting a tremendous amount of inflation to the rest of the globe.

Food and energy will become significantly more expensive all over the planet.

And since much of the debt that poor countries owe is denominated in dollars, we also run the risk of sparking an unprecedented global debt crisis.

The total amount of debt in the world has crossed the 300 trillion dollar mark, and if that bubble bursts we will suddenly be facing the sort of historic financial catastrophe that I have been warning about for years.

Our leaders thought that they could endlessly flood the system with money without ever suffering any serious consequences.

Russia’s Plan To Cut Off Kazakh Oil Supplies To Europe

  • The European oil market is already incredibly tight and will soon face a supply crunch as its embargo on seaborne Russian oil imports comes into effect.
  • Last week, the EU’s oil supply was squeezed yet again as a Russian court ordered the closure of a Black Sea oil export terminal.
  • The export terminal in question is the largest outlet for Kazakh oil, a non-Russian oil supply that Europe will be eager to secure.

The European oil market just received another supply shock ahead of the looming EU embargo on seaborne Russian oil imports. A Russian court has ordered the closure of a key Russian Black Sea export route, through which most of Kazakhstan’s crude oil passes to Europe.

The Russian court ruling further complicates Europe’s efforts to procure non-Russian oil in a tight physical market. It also highlights the fact that Moscow could go to any lengths to stifle oil supply to “unfriendly” countries which are banning imports of its oil, analysts say.

The move from Russia is a threat to Europe that the Kremlin will continue using oil and gas as a weapon as it looks to destabilize European economies and the EU’s unity in imposing and enforcing sanctions on Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine.

Targeting Kazakhstan’s oil is “Putin’s new weapon of mass disruption,” Bloomberg oil strategist Julian Lee says. But how did that new disruption in the global oil market happen?

Last week, a Russian court ordered the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which operates the key export route for two-thirds of Kazakhstan’s crude oil, to suspend activities for 30 days, citing environmental violations.

The exports take place from the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, and although it’s in Russia, its exports consist of 90 percent crude from Kazakhstan and just 10 percent of Russian oil.

The 1,500-km CPC pipeline from the giant Kazakh oilfields to Novorossiysk moves over two-thirds of all Kazakhstan export oil along with crude from Russian fields, including those in the Caspian region, CPC says. The consortium said in response to the court ruling that it “acts within the legal framework of the Russian Federation and is forced to execute the court Ruling.”

An appeal was heard on Monday, and the court overturned the ruling for a 30-day ban on oil deliveries from Kazakhstan.

Analysts also say it’s no coincidence that last week’s ruling of the Russian court came days after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev offered the EU the chance to buy more oil from Kazakhstan instead of Russia.

The Kazakh president “expressed concern about the risks to global energy security and emphasized Kazakhstan’s readiness to use its hydrocarbon potential to stabilize the situation in the world and European markets,” according to the website of the president, who had a telephone conversation with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, last week.

On Thursday, after the Russian court ruling suspending CPC, Tokayev said Kazakhstan needed to diversify its oil export routes. The president ordered a study into a project for bypassing Russia by building a pipeline across the Caspian Sea.

“The Trans-Caspian route is a priority. I instruct KazMunayGas [national oil and gas company] to work out the best option for its implementation, including the possibility of attracting investors to the Tengiz project,” Tokayev said as carried by The Astana Times.

While Kazakhstan is looking to diversify its crude export routes away from Russia, the European Union is scrambling for non-Russian oil supply as its embargo on Russian seaborne oil and product imports will enter into force at the end of the year.

Per tanker-tracking data that Bloomberg has compiled, crude exports from major suppliers to Europe, including the North Sea, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, West Africa, and Libya, declined by over 1 million bpd in June compared to May. With Libya’s oil supply expected to further decline amid protests and political bickering over who should control and distribute its vital oil revenues, a loss of another 1 million bpd supply from Kazakhstan due to the Russian court order is another blow to European and global oil supply.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com


The Japanese Invasion of Korea is the one I am thinking of now, largely because it shows the crucial importance of supplies and proper logistics.

In the late 1500s, Japan was engulfed in a period of Civil War known as the Sengoku Jedai. This is the famous period of Samurai fighting Samurai that people envision when they think of feudal Japan.

The wars ended when a man named Toyotomi Hideyoshi united Japan (for the most part) under his rule.

Hideyoshi had a problem though. Years of war left Japan a militarized island waiting to burst. So Hideyoshi decided to invade China to keep the massive Samurai armies distracted. In order to invade China Japan needed to conquer Korea.

Conquering Korea wasn’t seen as a big deal. Korea at this time was a very weak State. The limited Korean military just defended the border from raiders and that was about it. Japan meanwhile was bursting with warriors, skilled Generals, and professional armies.

Japan invades Korea and the Korean Army is crushed. Korean forces never stand a chance and are pushed back to the Chinese border. However, Japan didn’t yet win.

On the seas, a Korean Admiral named Yi Sun-Shin had taken a handful of Korean ships and laid waste to Japanese supply lines. Entire Japanese war fleets had been sunk and eventually, Japanese supply lines were shattered completely.

It’s hard to overstate Admiral Yi’s success. He was always outnumbered and outgunned and yet he won dozens of insanely one-sided victories. For instance, he once faced down 200+ Japanese warships with only 13 ships. Not only did he win, he didn’t lose a single ship.

The entire Japanese invasion had to be halted while Yi was dealt with. Japan threw more and more fleets at him and yet never defeated him.

Finally after years of their invasion being stalled China entered the fray. They began to push Japanese forces back and support Yi with their own fleet. Yi would smash the Japanese in 1 final battle, forcing them to surrender their campaign and retreat in disgrace.

Yi would die in this final battle- his final words to his son were “We are at the height of battle. Don’t let anybody know about my death!”. A warrior until the end.

Now Japan had EVERY advantage going into this war

  1. Their armies were larger
  2. Their armies were infinitely more experienced
  3. Their armies had more advanced weapons
  4. Their economy and society were built around warfare
  5. Their economy was drastically larger
  6. They had way more manpower to draw upon
  7. Their government was more stable

Korea shouldn’t have even been able to put up a fight and yet they ended up winning- all because of supply and logistics.

Sound familiar?

Russia and China haven’t even started to ratchet up the pain dial

by Pepe Escobar and posted with the author’s permission

The Suicide Spectacular Summer Show, currently on screen across Europe, proceeds in full regalia, much to the astonishment of virtually the whole Global South: a trashy, woke Gotterdammerung remake, with Wagnerian grandeur replaced by twerking.

Decadent Roman Emperors at least exhibited some degree of pathos.

Here we’re just faced by a toxic mix of hubris, abhorrent mediocrity, delusion, crude ideological sheep-think and outright irrationality wallowing in white man’s burden racist/supremacist slush – all symptoms of a profound sickness of the soul.

To call it the Biden-Leyen-Blinken West or so would be too reductionist: after all these are puny politico/functionaries merely parroting orders.

This is a historical process: physical, psychic and moral cognitive degeneration embedded in NATOstan’s manifest desperation in trying to contain Eurasia, allowing occasional tragicomic sketches such as a NATO summit proclaiming Woke War against virtually the whole non-West.

So when President Putin addresses the collective West in front of Duma leaders and heads of political parties, it does feel like a comet striking an inert planet. It’s not even a case of “lost in translation”. “They” simply aren’t equipped to get it.

The “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” part was at least formulated to be understood even by simpletons:

“Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield, well, what can I say, let them try. We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian – this is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people. But it looks like it’s all coming to this. But everyone should know that, by and large, we haven’t really started anything yet.”

Fact.

On Operation Z, Russia is using a fraction of its military potential, resources and state of the art weapons.

Then we come to the most probable path ahead in the war theater:

“We do not refuse peace negotiations, but those who refuse should know that the longer it drags, the more difficult it will be for them to negotiate with us.”

As in the pain dial will be ratcheted up, slowly but surely, on all fronts.

Yet the meat of the matter had been delivered earlier in the speech: “ratcheting up the pain dial” applies in fact to dismantling the whole “rules-based international order” edifice. The geopolitical world has changed.

Forever.

Here’s the arguably key passage:

“They should have understood that they have already lost from the very beginning of our special military operation, because its beginning means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the World Order in the American way. 

This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world – a world based not on selfish rules invented by someone for themselves, behind which there is nothing but the desire for hegemony, not on hypocritical double-standards, but on international law, on the true sovereignty of peoples and civilizations, on their will to live their historical destiny, their values and traditions and build cooperation on the basis of democracy, justice and equality. 

And we must understand that this process can no longer be stopped.”

Meet the trifecta

A case can be made that Putin and Russia’s Security Council are implementing a tactical trifecta that has reduced the collective West to an amorphous bunch of bio headless chickens.

The trifecta mixes the promise of negotiations – but only when considering Russia’s steady advances on the ground in Novorossiya; the fact that Russia’s global “isolation” has been proved in practice to be nonsense; and tweaking the most visible pain dial of them all: Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.

The main reason for the graphic, thundering failure of the G20 Foreign Ministers summit in Bali is that the G7 – or NATOstan plus (American colony) Japan – could not force the BRICS plus major Global South players to isolate, sanction and/or demonize Russia.

On the contrary: multiple interpolations outside of the G20 spell out even more Eurasia-wide integration.

Here are a few examples.

The first transit of Russian products to India via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) is now in effect, crisscrossing Eurasia from Mumbai to the Baltic via Iranian ports (Chabahar or Bandar Abbas), the Caspian Sea, and Southern and Central Russia. Crucially, the route is shorter and cheaper than going through the Suez Canal.

In parallel, the head of the Iranian Central Bank, Ali Salehabadi, confirmed that a memorandum of interbank cooperation was signed between Tehran and Moscow.

That means a viable alternative to SWIFT, and a direct consequence of Iran’s application to become a full BRICS member, announced at the recent summit in Beijing.

The BRICS, since 2014, when the New Development Bank (NDB) was founded, have been busy building their own financial infrastructure, including the near future creation of a single reserve currency. As part of the process, the harmonization of Russian and Iranian banking systems is inevitable.

Iran is also about to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the upcoming summit in Samarkand in September.

In parallel, Russia and Kazakhstan are solidifying their strategic partnership: Kazakhstan is a key member of BRI, EAEU and SCO.

India gets even closer to Russia across the whole spectrum of trade – including energy.

And next Tuesday, Tehran will be the stage for a crucial face-to-face meeting between Putin and Erdogan.

Isolation? Really?

On the energy front, it’s only summer, but demented paranoia is already raging across multiple EU latitudes, especially Germany. Comic relief is provided by the fact that Gazprom can always point out to Berlin that eventual supplying problems on Nord Stream 1 – after the cliffhanger return of that notorious repaired turbine from Canada – can always be solved by implementing Nord Stream 2.

As the whole European Suicide Spectacular Summer Show is nothing but a tawdry self-inflicted torture ordered by His Master’s Voice, the only serious question is which pain dial level will force Berlin to actually sit down and negotiate on behalf of legitimate German industrial and social interests.

Rough and tumble will be the norm.

Foreign Minister Lavrov summed it all up when commenting on the Declining Collective West Ministers striking poses like infantile brats in Bali to avoid being seen with him: that was up to “their understanding of the protocols and politeness.”

That’s diplo-talk for “bunch of jerks”. Or worse: cultural barbarians, as they were even unable to respect the hyper-polite Indonesian hosts, who abhor confrontation.

Lavrov preferred to extol the “joint strategic and constructive” Russian-Chinese work when faced with a very aggressive West. And that brings us to the prime masterpiece of shadowplay in Bali – complete with several layers of geopolitical fog.

Chinese media, always flirting with the opaque, tried to put its bravest face ever depicting the over 5-hour meeting between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Secretary Blinken as “constructive”.

What’s fascinating here is that the Chinese ended up letting something crucial out of the bag to slip into the final draft of their report – obviously approved by the powers that be.

Lu Xiang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences went through previous readouts – especially of “Yoda” Yang Jiechi routinely turning Jake Sullivan into roasted duck – and stressed that this time Wang’s “warnings” to the Americans were “the sternest one in wording”.

That’s diplo-code for “You Better Watch Out”: Wang telling Little Blinkie, “just look at what the Russians did when they lost their patience with your antics.”

The expression ”dead end” was recurrent during the Wang-Blinken meeting. So in the end the Global Times had to tell it like it really is:  “The two sides are close to a showdown.”

“Showdown” is what End of Days fanatic and Tony Soprano wannabe Mike Pompeo is fervently preaching from his hate pulpit, while the combo behind the senile “leader of the free world” who literally reads teleprompters actively work for the crashing of the EU – in more ways than one.

The combo in power in Washington actually “supports” the unification of Britain, Poland, Ukraine and The Three Baltic Midgets as a separate alliance from NATO/EU – aiming at “strengthening the defense potential.” That’s the official position of US Ambassador to NATO Julian Smith.

So the real imperial aim is to split the already shattering EU into mini-union pieces, all of them quite fragile and evidently more “manageable”, as Brussels Eurocrats, blinded by boundless mediocrity, obviously can’t see it coming.

What the Global South is buying

Putin always makes it very clear that the decision to launch Operation Z – as a sort of pre-emptive “combined arms and police operation”, as defined by Andrei Martyanov – was carefully calculated, considering an array of material and socio-psychological vectors.

Anglo-American strategy, for its part, lasers on a single obsession: damn any possible reframing of the current “rules-based international order”. No holds are barred to ensure the perpetuity of this order. This is in fact Totalen Krieg – featuring several hybrid layers, and quite worrying, with only a few seconds to midnight.

And there’s the rub. Desolation Row is fast becoming Desperation Row, as the whole Russophobic matrix is shown to be naked, devoid of any extra ideological – and even financial – firepower to “win”, apart from shipping a collection of HIMARS to a black hole.

Geopolitically and geoeconomically, Russia and China are in the process of eating NATOstan alive – in more ways than one. Here, for instance, is a synthetic road map of how Beijing will address the next stage of high-quality development via capital-driven industrial upgrading, focused on optimization of supply chains, import substitution of hard technologies, and “invisible champions” of industry.

If the collective West is blinded by Russophobia, the governing success of the Chinese Communist Party – which in a matter of a few decades improved the lives of more people than anyone, anytime in History – drives it completely nuts.

All along the Russia-China watchtower, it’s been not such a long time coming. BRI was launched by Xi Jinping in 2013. After Maidan in 2014, Putin launched the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) in 2015. Crucially, in May 2015, a Russia-China joint statement sealed the cooperation between BRI and EAEU, with a significant role assigned to the SCO.

Closer integration advanced via the St. Petersburg forum in 2016 and the BRI forum in 2017. The overall target: to create a new order in Asia, and across Eurasia, according to international law while maintaining the individual development strategies of each concerned country and respecting their national sovereignty.

That, in essence, is what most of the Global South is buying. It’s as if there’s a cross-border instinctual understanding that Russia-China, against serious odds and facing serious challenges, proceeding by trial and error, are at the vanguard of the Shock of the New, while the collective West, naked, dazed and confused, their masses completely zombified, is sucked into the maelstrom of psychological, moral and material disintegration.

No question the pain dial will be ratcheted up, in more ways than one.

“Blow Up to Be the Size You Want!” – Vintage Inflatable Bra Ads From the 1950s and 1960s

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What was a woman to do if she wanted to boost her cleavage in the days before Wonderbra was on the market and the more drastic measure of plastic surgery wasn’t so readily available? The answer is by wearing an inflatable bra that the wearer could blow up to the size they desired themselves.

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The “Trés Secret” inflatable bra went on sale in the early 1950s. Each cup contained a small plastic pouch that could be inflated by the wearer with an accompanying mouthpiece. Its makers promised the bra could give any woman “a boost to bosom beauty” with their advert adding, “Do it yourself. Make the most of you. Blow up! To be the size you want.”

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Shopping Mall Signs Warn of Nuclear War Emergencies

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The Menlo Park Mall in Edison, New Jersey is just one of many large shopping malls in upscale areas publicly warning people about what to do if a Nuclear Bomb Hits!  They have been told by government to begin warning people . . . because Nuclear War with Russia is not only a possibility, it has become a likelihood.

The horrifying reality that would be a nuclear blast is becoming so likely now over the Russia-Ukraine/NATO troubles in eastern Europe that governments and now private sector industries are warning people about what to do when a nuclear bomb goes off!

Below is a full image of warning signs now installed at the Menlo Park Mall in Edison, New Jersey:

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These signs, and a new Public Service Announcement (PSA) from the New York City Office of Emergency Management which came out earlier this week (Story Here) are all instructing people that if a nuclear bomb goes off, GET INSIDE.

The reason this effort is underway is that government knows it has caused such terrible troubles with Russia, over the Ukraine situation, that it is now LIKELY we are going to be attacked by Russia with nuclear bombs.

MISINFORMATION

While the first trouble is, of course, that this is a problem of our government’s own making, the second major problem is that the advice is utterly stupid.

they tell people to get inside.   Good advice . . . if there’s anything left standing to actually get inside of!

Russia uses the YARS intercontinental ballistic missile to launch nuclear attacks.   Those missile are equipped with an eight-hundred kiloton (800kt) warhead.

The blast map below is a scientific model from Nuclear Secrecy.org showing the actual scientifically-modeled blast effects of a single, 800kt nuclear bomb air bursting over New York City.

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The inner smaller yellow area in the center show the initial blast area, all of which is vaporized.  Absolutely nothing will be left.   No people, no buildings, no vehicles.   Nothing.

The next area is a grayish circular area.  Everything in this area will be physically knocked down and on fire.  Not even the strongest concrete and steel buildings will remain standing.  And everything — all of it — will be on fire.

The next circular area toward the outer edges of the blast circle, will be THERMAL DAMAGE.   Things in this area may be severely damaged or knocked down but SOME structures might remain standing as they erupt in flames.  As for people in this area, anyone who was outside, and who sees the bright, white, flash, will have third-degree burns all over their body.

The final light gray area is where there will be light blast damage.  Most structures will remain standing but windows are likely broken.  People in this area will be injured from flying blast debris.

The signs then advise people  “If you were outside when the blast hit, take off all clothes, shower and shampoo to wash the radiation off immediately.”

Trouble is THERE WON’T BE ANY RUNNING WATER.   The water mains will be ruptured from the blast and the electric that powers the water pumps will all be off for miles.

But wait, there’s more . . .  idiocy . . . . the signs tell people “stay tuned to local media and don’t go outside until authorities tell you it’s safe.”  THERE WON’T BE ANY LOCAL MEDIA.  It will all be blown up.  All the TV and radio transmitters will be wiped out!

THERE WON’T BE ANY CELL PHONE SERVICE. The towers will all be knocked down, the transmitters fried by electro-magnetic pulse, and the electric will all be out.  THERE WON’T BE ANY INTERNET SERVICE. All the Internet lines will be blown up and the wireless all offline from EMP or no electricity!!!

Yet even though the advice is utterly useless, the signs have gone up anyway.

Government doesn’t do things like this for no reason.  They are putting out these PSA’s and asking large retailers to put these signs up because government KNOWS what’s coming.  After all, it is government that is causing it all.

Unless Americans mobilize right now, and tell federal officials we will not tolerate them starting a nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine, we’re all dead.

You, me, our wives, husbands, kids, extended families . . . . will all be dead.

Pick up your phones and start swarming members of Congress and the Senate, telling them we refuse to allow them to start a nuclear war with their economic sanctions.

There is very little time left to act.   It may already be too late.

But we have to put forth the effort or all of us will be killed.

The Battle of Saragarhi.

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The Battle of Saragarhi.

In the 1890s, the British were trying to conquer Afghanistan and it was becoming a severe challenge. As the Russians and Americans would learn, Afghanistan is not a place easily conquered.

A revolt breaks out towards the end of 1897 and Afgan tribesmen rally in the tens of thousands to the rebel banner. They begin to march towards British forts to push them out of their home.

Soon a rebel army arrives at a series of British forts and the fight begins.

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It’s the morning of September 12, 1897, and the British see an army on the horizon.

The British forces are locked away in Fort Lockhart and from there they see a massive army on the horizon—numbering some 10,000-12,000. The British are dangerously outnumbered and they prepare for a siege.

A signaling outpost some miles away, called Saragarhi, is manned by 21 Sikh warriors. The Sikhs are informed that an army numbering 10,000 is quickly approaching. The Sikhs request help, but the British inform them that they cannot assist, as they cannot leave the fort unguarded.

The Sikhs could run or surrender—the Afgan tribesmen would show them mercy. But the leader of these brave men, Ishar Singh, tells his men they will stay and fight.

The board up the gate, get ammunition stockpiled, and prepare to defend their small compound from an overwhelming force.

The Afgan army approaches and the fighting begins.


The Afghans send a massive charge to overwhelm the fort but disciplined and accurate rifle fire from the Sikh warriors is enough to break the charge and send the Afgan warriors running.

A second charge appears. This time the Afghans come in even greater numbers. The Sikh fire is unable to break the enemy lines and before too long, the Afgan tribesmen are climbing over the walls. A tough melee fight ensues with rifle butts, swords, and bayonets.

Again though the Sikhs hold, killing hundreds. They turn back the massive force and maintain control of the fort.

By this point, the Afgan forces have taken significant losses, considering this is a lightly manned signaling post. But several Sikhs have died as well.

Bhagwan Singh is the first to be killed in the fighting and his body is taken to the courtyard. Another warrior named Lal Singh is wounded and out of the fight.

One thing to note—this is all known not only from secondhand accounts but also the signalman, Gurmukh Singh. While all of this was happening he continued to send reports to the British at Fort Lockhart.

Now the Sikhs are down to 18 fighters the battle continues.


The Afgan army offers terms of surrender. They offer wealth, safety, power, and whatever else the Sikhs could want if they will just lay down their arms. The Sikhs boldly refuse.

The Afghans light fires to the hillside clouding everything in smoke. The signalman soon gets word that a formation of Afgan warriors is approaching the fort from the side, hidden by the smoke.

It’s too late—the Afgan warriors are in the compound.

Ishar Singh along with a few of his men charge the Afghans and another round of brutal hand-to-hand fighting breaks out inside the compound. The Sikhs are relentless and skilled, killing hundreds of attackers and holding their own despite being overwhelmed.

The Afghan warriors keep coming, though, and the Sikhs are being worn down. Pretty soon the outer walls crumble and the Afghans capture that portion of the compound.

Ishar Singh knows things are desperate. He orders his men back to the inner compound to mount a defense. He knows that if they turn their backs and run they will be cut down.

In a moment of utter bravery, Ishar Singh orders his men back and then single-handedly charges the approaching Afghan army. He cuts down warrior after warrior with his sword and pistol, cutting through the ranks of the surprised Afgan army.

After a few seconds, Ishar Singh is overwhelmed and killed—but he has bought his men the time they needed to fall back.


The Sikhs are now defending their fallback point, but the situation is hopeless. The Afghans start chopping at the wooden gate with axes and swords. Before too long they break through and thousands of them come pouring into what remains of the compound.

The Sikhs continue to fight bravely but hopelessly.

At this point, the signalman Gurmukh Singh signals the British to ask permission to abandon his post and take up his rifle. The order is approved and he calmly puts away his signal gear, takes up his rifle, and fixes the bayonet.

By now, he is the last living Sikh in the compound. The British look on as he moves to defend the door to the small building he was stationed in.

The door breaks and enemy charges in. The British watch in awe as Gurmukh Singh cuts down one, then two, then three, and then finally eighteen Afghan warriors. The men retreat and Gurmukh Singh continues to hold the building.

More charge in and he kills another twenty Afghans as the British cheer him on, watching his final battle from the fort using telescopes.

Alone and cut off, Gurmukh Singh killed 40 ENEMY WARRIORS in only a few minutes. What a total and complete you-know-what.

The Afghans are terrified by this. Unwilling to try and take the building again they set it on fire.

As the building burns, Gurmukh Singh shouts his battle cry over and over again.

“Bole so Nihal sat sri akal”

“Bole so Nihal sat sri akal”

“Bole so Nihal sat sri akal”

Shout aloud in ecstasy, true is the great timeless one.


The battle was over—the compound was taken and the Sikhs had lost.

Yet like Thermopylae and other hopeless battles, the deeds of these heroic and ferocious warriors live on in history as one of the great moments of bravery and valor.

The 21 Sikhs had sold their lives at a high cost. While all 21 died, they took 1,400 enemy soldiers with them while injuring thousands more. Estimates from most sources list 600-1400 fatalities, with many more wounded. Either way, these 21 men took a heavy toll on their enemy.

Every Sikh there that day killed 28-50 enemies. This is an insane feat and only shows how skilled and dedicated these men were.

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The brave who died.

 

Marinated Tomatoes

Use up all those extra tomatoes with this easy make-ahead recipe – simply shake ingredients in a jar and pour over the fruit to marinate.

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Ingredients

  • 3 large or 5 medium fresh tomatoes, thickly sliced
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon salt, optional
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 garlic clove, minced
  • 2 tablespoons chopped onion
  • 1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
  • 1 tablespoon minced fresh basil or 1 teaspoon dried basil

Directions

  1. Arrange tomatoes in a large shallow dish. Combine remaining ingredients in a jar; cover tightly and shake well. Pour over tomato slices. Cover and refrigerate for several hours.

Some things I learned when I became old enough to get Social Security Insurance…

1. If you think you’re fat, you probably are.

2. Best friends see each other 3 times a year and may have no pictures together.

3. If you text, call, and still get ignored, just walk away.

4. Your hair was put on your head to remind you that you can’t control everything.

5. No one talks about how lonely healing can feel.

6. Don’t let your loneliness make you reconnect with wrong person. Meet better people here.

7. True relationship comes when the silence between you two is comfortable.

8. Go where your energy is reciprocated, celebrated, and appreciated.

9. You still haven’t met all of the people who are going to love you.

10. If today is not your day, remember there’re 365 days a year.

Sea Monkeys, X-Ray Specs, and the Twisted Secret Behind Vintage Ads from American Comic Books

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American comics first came to Glasgow as ships’ ballast. In the sixties it seemed every other corner shop had a stash of these glossy-covered comics displayed on carousels or placed beside their tamer British counterparts like Beano, Topper, or Dandy. With comics like Thor, Hulk, Superman and co. it was difficult to keep collecting consecutive numbers as it was pot luck as to what arrived in the shop every month.

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The clues were in the comic-book adverts for X-Ray specks, with which you could see the bones beneath your skin, or what was hidden under a layer of clothing; Sea Monkeys you could train who would entertain for hours; a mini-Polaris Nuclear Submarine with which to patrol local waterways; Aurora movie monster kits; and reinvent yourself like Charles Atlas or Arnold Schwarzenegger so no-one would kick sand in your face.

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Coming clean while the world is covered in filth

A wise man from China observed that in the US you can change the party but you cannot change state policy.

In China you cannot change the party but you can change state policy.

The Chinese government is much more sensitive to the will of the people. In the west the people are ignored apart from those brief periods called elections where they are all lied to.

-Sushi | Jul 12 2022 16:18 utc | 30

Coming clean while the world is covered in filth. Yes. The American led world order is over. The Western societies are now collapsed, the governments are running around and acting completely crazy, and yes. Here we are. Brace for impact.

The American led world order is over.

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The American led world order is over.

Make sure that you have a wood stove. Have wood. Solar panels. Try canning and make sure that you have a water filter, and a fully stocked larder.

Now, just move forward and enjoy this post.

The Superb Provocative Digital Art By Doping-Pong

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Based in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, Doping-Pong is a digital art-project started in 1997 by Dima Mishenin, Lova and Anna Maugli. Doping Pong are the pioneers of digital art in Russia.

The digital art world of Doping Pong is incredibly diverse. It is closely linked to contemporary visual culture and pop aesthetics. In the 90ties, te first digital works of Doping Pong were featured in popular youth magazines “Ptyuch” and “Om”. The late works of Doping-Pong are inspired by a realistic tradition, in which there is a place for both heroism in the spirit of socialist realism and everyday, idyllic romance of the late 60s.

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The American led world order is over.

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The American led world order is over.

Calm Before the Tempest?

Let’s start by stipulating the obvious: no one knows the future, and most of the guesses–oops, I mean forecasts–will be wrong. Arguing about the forecasts now won’t make any difference as to which ones are correct and which ones are wrong. Time alone will tell.

That said, here’s a scenario that fits the dynamics I see as most consequential: Core-Periphery and the demise of the waste is growth / financialization / globalization model as the reigning model of how the global economy should work.

Core-periphery dynamics are pretty simple: unraveling starts on the periphery and seeps toward the core. The core actually strengthens in the process as capital and talent seek havens where they’re treated well, and the core became the core by treating capital and talent well.

The periphery responds to the unraveling of financialization / globalization by tightening its grip on whatever capital and talent is still available, incentivizing the flight of capital and talent to the core.

A great many people think there are many core economies. In my analysis, there is only one, due to the qualifying requirements: 1) issues a reserve currency, i.e. not pegged to another currency 2) liquid global markets for securities, debt, commodities, etc., i.e. anyone anywhere can trade in size in the core markets 3) transparent market and governance mechanisms, i.e. no overnight devaluations, expropriations, capital restrictions, etc. 4) diverse economy not dependent on exports or imports for its well-being and 5) ease of flow: capital, talent, enterprises and employees all have essentially unlimited freedom of movement within the core.

We can argue about which nations qualify as core but it won’t change the outcome. Capital and talent will make their own decisions about risk, safety, exposure to devaluation and expropriation and where the odds of being treated fairly are highest. It’s a good exercise to put yourself in the shoes of a manager of a $10 billion fund and go through the decision tree of where to put this $10 billion to preserve its purchasing power first and foremost, and secondarily generate a return.

Would you really gamble $10 billion on a 15% return on the bonds of Timbukthree, whose currency has fallen 20% against the U.S. dollar this year? Or Timbukfour, which is dependent on exports of commodities in a shrinking global economy? Or Timbukfive, which is dependent on imports of commodities and exports of consumer goods in a shrinking global economy?? If you answer “yes,” you’re not actually playing like you are responsible for $10 billion.

As the periphery unravels financially, it also unravels politically and socially. Bordering states are at risk of destabilizing, and any entity with large exposure to the unraveling debt or markets starts unraveling, too. The destabilization spreads to second-tier nations whose exposure to the dynamics of unraveling are structural.

As all these dominoes fall, eventually those closest to the core also crumble, and then core itself is finally destabilized.

Humans have an interesting talent for adjusting to new circumstances, i.e. habituating to new conditions. Those households consuming 14,000 gallons of fresh water a month may well scream that they can’t possibly get by on 12,000 gallons, but then if circumstances change and all the water we have is what we can carry in buckets a kilometer over rough terrain, we find that we can live on the few gallons we can carry a kilometer.

The amount of waste in developed economies is beyond easy measure. It’s estimated 40% of all food in the U.S. is wasted. Energy, food and fresh water have been treated as if low cost and abundance were birthrights rather than brief explosions of excess. While we’re screaming about energy costs, empty buildings are brightly lit, water taps are left running and one individual per idling vehicle in a traffic jam frets about rising costs.

When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake closed the Bay Bridge across San Francisco Bay, the main artery between San Francisco and the East Bay, economic doom was predictably predicted. Yet people quickly managed via extra BART (subway) trains that rain beneath the Bay and carpools with four people per vehicle rather than one occupant.

Is it possible that all the predictable predictions of economic doom are somewhat exaggerated by the thrill of sensationalism and projections of past trends, as if people can’t possibly make consequential adjustments to their behaviors and consumption?

Systems have constraints, and so there are limits on what adjustments can be made without altering the structure, but in many cases, we’re far from reaching limits on basic conservation work-arounds.

Is it possible that things will prove less dire than currently expected? It seems little credence is being given to the potential to adjust to new conditions.

Is it beyond conception that the core actually strengthens for a length of time before the unraveling reaches it? In my crystal ball, it seems not just possible but likely. This will be the calm before The Tempest, when the unraveling reaches the core and structural changes are finally required.

New York City Begins Preparing Population for NUCLEAR ATTACK

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The New York City Office of Emergency Management has issued a video TRAINING NEW YORKERS FOR WHAT TO DO WHEN A NUCLEAR BOMB HITS.

The ninety second video was released this morning, July 11, 2022, appears below.  It is widely believed they have put out this video because THEY KNOW what’s coming . . . . because it is the government that intends to cause it.

They are pushing Russia so far with economic sanctions over Ukraine, that the Russians will have no choice but to launch a full nuclear attack because what we are doing is now an existential threat to Russia.

Rather than stop what we’re doing, they intend to keep pushing and THEY KNOW what the result will be.

Here’s the video:

 

IDIOCY

In the video, they tell New Yorkers to get inside.   Good advice . . . if there’s anything left standing to actually get inside of!

Then, in the height of utter stupidity, they tell New Yorkers “If you were outside when the blast hit, take off all clothes, shower and shampoo to wash the radiation off immediately.”   THERE WON’T BE ANY RUNNING WATER.   The water mains will all be ruptured from the blast and the electric that powers the water pumps will all be off for miles.

But wait, there’s more . . .  idiocy . . . . they tell New Yorkers “stay tuned to local media and don’t go outside until authorities tell you it’s safe.”  THERE WON’T BE ANY LOCAL MEDIA.  It will all be blown up.  All the TV and radio transmitters will be wiped out!

As if to add insult to injury, they tell New Yorkers “Sign up to NYC-alerts”  (with your cell phone). . . THERE WON’T BE ANY CELL PHONE SERVICE. The towers will all be knocked down, the transmitters fried by electro-magnetic pulse, and the electric will all be out.  THERE WON’T BE ANY INTERNET SERVICE. All the Internet lines will be blown up and the wireless all offline from EMP or no electricity!!!

THEY KNOW WHAT’S COMING

Government does not do things like this for no reason.   In this case, THEY KNOW what’s coming because it is government that is causing it.

They’ve been planning a “take-down” of Russia, for decades.  They expanded NATO when they promised Russia they would not move “one inch eastward” upon the re-unification of East and West Germany.  They broke that promise in stages, moving little by little closer to Russia’s borders.

When they got to Ukraine, they wooed then-President Viktor Yanukovich with promises of riches and wealth for Ukraine if they departed from Russia’s sphere of influence, and joined Europe and the United States sphere of influence.

Yanukovich thought about it.  He consulted with his government officials.  He spoke to businesses in Ukraine.  He spoke with many average Ukrainians.  In 2013, Yanukovich told Europe and America “Thanks, but NO THANKS.”  Well, that was an answer that Europe and America just wouldn’t accept.

So the US and Europe began pouring money into Ukraine to foment and facilitate violent protests; riots in every major city.  Within a year, in 2014, rioters burned government buildings. Snipers were shooting people on both sides to foment more violence.   It got so bad, that Yanukovich had to flee the country and the Ukraine government collapsed.

Who was right there to finance new political candidates?   Europe and America.  So they were able to install a puppet government favorable to the West.

When Russia saw this taking place, they were stunned.  This was happening right at their own border.  The west was overthrowing Ukraine’s government because they need Ukraine in NATO.   You see, they want to put American missile defenses on Ukraine territory.   By positioning our missiles there, they would have a flight time of only about five minutes to Moscow.  They would also have a flight time of only 7-8 minutes to Russia’s strategic nuclear missile silos.

Russia had to act in its own defense.

They did what our own President, John F. Kennedy did, when Kennedy found out the then-Soviet Union had placed medium range and intermediate range nuclear missiles in Cuba, with a flight time of only 5 minutes to Washington, DC:  Kennedy blockaded  Cuba and began massing troops for an invasion.

Thankfully, both sides negotiated a peaceful settlement to what became known as the “Cuban Missile Crisis.”   That was in 1962-63.

Today, the situation is exactly reversed; it is the West trying to put missiles within 5 minutes flight time of Moscow, and Russia said No.

When Ukraine decided they were actually going to join NATO, and allow those missiles . . . and even began preparing for a NATO naval base on the Black Sea, Russia had enough.

By November of last year, NATO had trained the Ukraine Army for eight years under the West-installed puppet government.  The Ukrainians had also massed about 80,000 troops on the borders of the eastern states of Luhansk and Donetsk (collectively called “The Donbas”) – and both states directly border Russia.   So Russia knew Ukraine was prepping its military and its land for a confrontation.  Russia thus had to strike first.  Russia entered Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Instead of backing off, the West upped-the-ante . . . they imposed crippling economic sanctions upon Russia specifically designed to crush Russia’s economy.   The sanctions backfired and are harming the west more than harming Russia.

So what is the west doing now . . . . massing troops in NATO countries along Russia’s border.

Russia has said that if NATO and Russia go to war, NATO has superior conventional forces.  Russia admits that.   But Russia also said “Russia is a nuclear power and Russian nuclear forces are superior to NATO.”  President Vladimir Putin said publicly, “It will be a war that no one will win.”

The only war that “no one will win” is a nuclear war.

NOW, the NYC Office of Emergency Management is publicly telling New Yorkers what to do when a nuclear bomb hits.

WHY?

Because they know what’s coming . . . . because our own government is the cause of it. That’s why, in the first few seconds of the video above, they actually tell you ‘don’t ask why, or how . . . .”   BECAUSE IF YOU START ASKING WHY, YOU’LL FIGURE OUT THAT IT IS OUR GOVERNMENT THAT IS CAUSING THIS! ! ! ! !

It is now clear that the US intends to engage in a nuclear war with Russia.  THAT is why NYC OEM is putting out these warnings.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

I cannot even begin to describe to you, the heat I have taken over the past few months, for warning my web site visitors and radio audience that nukes are going to fly.

I was called “crazy” by the public.   My stories were smeared as “click bait.”   My sources were derided as “fear mongers.”  My radio show was attacked as “scaring the public.”

So now that  the New York City Office of Emergency Management is actually telling New Yorkers what to do when a nuclear bomb hits, I wonder if folks might figure out that I’ve been right all along?

Skirt Steak

As delicious as a Bloody Mary is as a drink, it makes an even better marinade. That’s because the mix of sweet and salty from the tomato juice, the heat from the horseradish and Tabasco, and the acid from the lemon work together to both tenderize and energize an otherwise normal piece of beef. This marinade could do magic on chicken and pork as well, but the bold flavors of a Bloody seem to pair best with a hunk of grilled beef. Serve with grilled asparagus and roasted potatoes for a near-perfect meal. It is an easy brunch or simple dinner idea when you want a nice mix of protein, vegetables, and healthy carbs. Plus, it requires very minimal prep work for a big boost in flavor.

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Skirt Steak

You’ll Need

2 cups tomato juice (spicy V8 works best)
2 Tbsp prepared horseradish
4 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
1⁄2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
10–15 shakes Tabasco sauce
Black pepper to taste
1 lb skirt or flank steak

How to Make It

  1. Combine the tomato juice, horseradish, garlic, lemon juice, Worcestershire, Tabasco, and pepper in a baking dish and use a whisk to thoroughly mix.
  2. Add the steak and turn to coat.
  3. Cover with plastic wrap. Marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or up to 12.
  4. Preheat a grill.
  5. Pour off the marinade and discard.
  6. Use a paper towel to pat most of the marinade from the steak.
  7. When the grill is very hot, add the steak and cook for 3 to 4 minutes per side for medium-rare.
  8. Let the meat rest for at least 5 minutes before cutting into thin slices against the grain of the meat.

Eat This Tip

Skirt and flank steak are both thin cuts of beef that offer huge flavor and a pleasantly chewy texture at a relatively cheap price tag. Because they’re thin, you’ll want a very hot grill to ensure you develop a nice char before the interior is overcooked, so keep that in mind when you fire up the grill!

No, Iran Will Not Deliver Armed Drones To Russia

In March this year we were treated to an onslaught of obviously false claims that China would deliver weapons to Russia for the fight in Ukraine.

Russia seeks military equipment and aid from China, U.S. officials sayWashington Post – March 13, 2022

Russia has turned to China for military equipment and aid in the weeks since it began its invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, did not describe what kind of weaponry had been requested, or whether they know how China responded.

The development comes as White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan plans to travel to Rome on Monday to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi.

“We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions, evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them,” Sullivan told CNN.

Russia is an exporter of military weapons and China is one of its biggest customers. There is nothing in the Chinese arsenals that Russia can not and does not produce itself.

The claim was false from the get go but Sullivan, the mediocre National Security Advisor of the Biden regime, planted it to put pressure on China. It of course did not work.

China denied that it had received any request from Russia or that it was in any way willing to ever fulfill one if it would come:

No Chinese weapons have been seen in Ukraine.

Now an equally stupid claim was launched by the very same liar who launched the fake Chinese weapons claim.

White House: Iran set to deliver armed drones to RussiaAP – Jul 7, 2022

The White House on Monday said it believes Russia is turning to Iran to provide it with “hundreds” of unmanned aerial vehicles, including weapons-capable drones, for use in its ongoing war in Ukraine.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said it was unclear whether Iran had already provided any of the unmanned systems to Russia, but said the U.S. has “information” that indicates Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use them as soon as this month.

“Our information indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs, including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline,” he told reporters Monday.

Russia has for some time build mass production facilities for its own drones.

A decade ago, the Russian Armed Forces possessed fewer than 200 UAVs, and now this figure stands at over 2000, and each year is replenished by 300. Furthermore, the Russian defence industry is conducting R&D on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in UAVs, with the ambition of enabling them to perform as unified “swarms of drones” in combat zones. Sources claim that this was already tested in 2020, during the Kavkaz-2020 military exercise.

Russia has absolutely no need to buy drones from Iran. Besides that it is dubious that Iran would be able to deliver some and certainly not ‘several hundreds’.

Gregg Carlstrom - @glcarlstrom - 6:18 UTC · Jul 12, 2022

Does Iran even have "hundreds of weapons-capable drones" to export? It has limited production capacity; would be surprising (to say the least) if it could churn out hundreds, let alone hundreds of useful weapons systems rather than worthless tchotchkes.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj @yarbatman - 23:14 UTC · Jul 11, 2022

1. @jakejsullivan's claim that Iran is set to send "several hundred" drones to Russia doesn't make sense. Data is spotty, but it's unlikely Iran even has that many operational drones in its own fleet. It also has no experience exporting drones at scale.
2. The Defense Intelligence Agency's 2019 report on Iranian Military Power does not assess that Iran has the ability to mass produce and export drones. Hard to believe things have changed dramatically in three years.
3. From the report: "Despite advances in its UAV manufacturing capabilities, Iran remains reliant on Western manufactured engines and components to support its UAV production. Iran is developing a domestic UAV engine but is struggling with quality issues."
4. @RUSI_org's database seems to suggest that Iran has 50 operational drones in its fleet (cc @Justin_Br0nk). Also most of Iran's drones are rudimentary. These are not Bayraktars and would be of little value.
Perhaps someone can check the Jane's estimate.
5. Last year, @bellingcat reviewed satellite images and video footage "showing over 154 drones." But there's widespread agreement among analysts that these displays of air power probably include drones that are not fully armed or operational.
6. Sullivan's statement is also odd because he says that it is "unclear" whether Iran has already exported any drones. He was weirdly responding to a broader question about Russian capabilities. This export might happen, but I'll believe it when I see it.
7. The only explanation I can think of is that Sullivan believes Iran’s new drone JV in Tajikistan is primarily intended to supply Russia. But I am doubtful production can ramp up that quickly. Plus can’t the US just lean on Dushanbe if concerned?

The Washington Post notes the weird timing of Sullivan’s claims thereby hinting that it was made for purely political purposes which have nothing to do with Russia:

The revelation comes as President Biden prepares to depart for the Middle East, where he is expected to confer with key allies on a unified regional policy toward Iran. Tensions between Washington and Tehran have been further strained in recent weeks, amid faltering nuclear talks and an uptick in rocket and drone attacks on U.S. military installations in the Middle East, conducted by militia groups armed and funded by Iran.

The whole issues is just a talking point designed to put Iran and Russia into the same ‘baddies’ binder for Biden’s talks in the Middle East. The countries there may not like Iran but they will certainly not allow for a condemnation of Russia. The whole idea is, as many others Sullivan had, stupid to begin with.

So no, there will not be any Iranian drones going to Russia or fly over Ukraine.

Posted by b on July 12, 2022 at 9:32 UTC | Permalink

The Aquarium Tiger Shark that vomited up a human arm…

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In 1935 in a Sydney aquarium a tiger shark that had just been taken to the aquarium vomited up a human arm, at first it was believed to be that of an unlucky swimmer, but soon the police realized that this case went further.

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The shark that had vomited up the arm was not the same one that had eaten it. I mean, the tiger shark had eaten a smaller one and that was the one that had eaten the arm in the beginning.

It turns out that despite the damage to the limb, it was possible to know whose it was, in part because it had quite striking tattoos and because the fingerprints were still in good condition. Along his arm there were cuts produced by a sharp object, a razor or a knife. This indicated to the police that it had not been an accident.

The arm belonged to an amateur boxer and fellow criminal named James Smith, who had been missing since April 7, 1935.

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Where COVID came from…

Suppressed info…

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Ron Unz has written an EXCELLENT article on this subject. I strongly recommend you read it, if you are so inclined and want secondary confirmation that the USA is the culprit behind the world-wide bio-weapon attack. Article HERE.

Putin extends fast-track Russian citizenship to all Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday expanding a fast-track procedure to receive Russian citizenship to all Ukrainians, in yet another effort to expand Moscow’s influence in war-torn Ukraine.

From HERE

Stunning Illustrations By Michal Lisowski That Will Make You Think How Fragile Our Life Is

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Gorgeous and distinct illustration and digital paintings by the Polish artist Michal Lisowski based in Warsaw. Michal paints in both traditional and digital ways working already for clients like Ubisoft, Disney or NVIDIA. We are very glad to can present you some of his works and please have a look at his incredible portfolio.

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Michael Hudson: The End of Western Civilization – Why It Lacks Resilience, and What Will Take Its Place

Yves here. Below is the text of a new Micael Hudson speech for China’s Global University, which he delivered Monday morning. It’s already gotten 200,000 views in China and is getting coverage in the Chinese press. It focuses on how neoliberalism is a major culprit in the West’s wrong turn. Michael has graciously given us the first English transcript.

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is The Destiny of Civilization. Originally published at his website

The greatest challenge facing societies has always been how to conduct trade and credit without letting merchants and creditors make money by exploiting their customers and debtors. All antiquity recognized that the drive to acquire money is addictive and indeed tends to be exploitative and hence socially injurious. The moral values of most societies opposed selfishness, above all in the form of avarice and wealth addiction, which the Greeks called philarguria– love of money, silver-mania. Individuals and families indulging in conspicuous consumption tended to be ostracized, because it was recognized that wealth often was obtained at the expense of others, especially the weak.

The Greek concept of hubrisinvolved egotistic behavior causing injury to others. Avarice and greed were to be punished by the justice goddess Nemesis, who had many Near Eastern antecedents, such as Nanshe of Lagash in Sumer, protecting the weak against the powerful, the debtor against the creditor.

That protection is what rulers were expected to provide in serving the gods.That is why rulers were imbued with enough power to protect the population from being reduced to debt dependency and clientage. Chieftains, kings and temples were in charge of allocating credit and crop-land to enable smallholders to serve in the army and provide corvée labor. Rulers who behaved selfishly were liable to be unseated, or their subjects might run away, or support rebel leaders or foreign attackers promising to cancel debts and redistribute land more equitably.

The most basic function of Near Eastern kingship was to proclaim “economic order,” misharumand andurarumclean slate debt cancellations, echoed in Judaism’s Jubilee Year. There was no “democracy” in the sense of citizens electing their leaders and administrators, but “divine kingship” was obliged to achieve the implicit economic aim of democracy: “protecting the weak from the powerful.”

Royal power was backed by temples and ethical or religious systems. The major religions that emerged in the mid-first millennium BC, those of Buddha, Lao-Tzu and Zoroaster, held that personal drives should be subordinate to the promotion of overall welfare and mutual aid.

What did notseem likely 2500 years ago was that a warlord aristocracy would conquer the Western world. In creating what became the Roman Empire, an oligarchy took control of the land and, in due course, the political system. It abolished royal or civic authority, shifted the fiscal burden onto the lower classes, and ran the population and industry into debt.

This was done on a purely opportunistic basis. There was no attempt to defend this ideologically. There was no hint of an archaic Milton Friedman emerging to popularize a radical new moral order celebrating avarice by claiming that greed is what drives economies forward, not backward, convincing society to leave the distribution of land and money to “the market” controlled by private corporations and money-lenders instead of communalistic regulation by palace rulers and temples – or by extension, today’s socialism. Palaces, temples and civic governments were creditors. They were not forced to borrow to function, and so were not subjected to the policy demands of a private creditor class.

But running the population, industry and even governments into debt to an oligarchic elite is precisely what has occurred in the West, which is now trying to impose the modern variant of this debt-based economic regime – U.S.-centered neoliberal finance capitalism – on the entire world. That is what today’s New Cold War is all about.

By the traditional morality of early societies, the West – starting in classical Greece and Italy around the 8thcentury BC – was barbarian. The West was indeed on the periphery of the ancient world when Syrian and Phoenician traders brought the idea of interest-bearing debt from the Near East to societies that had no royal tradition of periodic debt cancellations. The absence of a strong palace power and temple administration enabled creditor oligarchies to emerge throughout the Mediterranean world.

Greece ended up being conquered first by oligarchic Sparta, then by Macedonia and finally by Rome. It is the latter’s avaricious pro-creditor legal system that has shaped subsequent Western civilization. Today, a financialized system of oligarchic control whose roots lead back to Rome is being supported and indeed imposed by U.S. New Cold War diplomacy, military force and economic sanctions on countries seeking to resist it.

Classical Aantiquity’s Oligarchic Ttakeover

In order to understand how Western Civilization developed in a way that contained the fatal seeds of its own economic polarization, decline and fall, it is necessary to recognize that when classical Greece and Rome appear in the historical record aDark Age had disrupted economic life from the Near East to the eastern Mediterranean from 1200 to about 750 BC. Climate change apparently caused severe depopulation, ending Greece’s Linear B palace economies, and life reverted to the local level during this period.

Some families created mafia-like autocracies by monopolizing the land and tying labor to it by various forms of coercive clientage and debt. Above all was the problem of interest-bearing debt that the Near Eastern traders had brought to the Aegean and Mediterranean lands – without the corresponding check of royal debt cancellations.

Out of thissituation Greek reformer-“tyrants” arose in the 7thand 6thcenturies BC from Sparta to Corinth, Athens and Greek islands. The Cypselid dynasty in Corinth and similar new leaders in other cities are reported to have cancelled the debts that held clients in bondage on the land, redistributed this land to the citizenry, and undertaken public infrastructure spending to build up commerce, opening the way for civic development and the rudiments of democracy. Sparta enacted austere “Lycurgan” reforms against conspicuous consumption and luxury. The poetry of Archilochus on the island of Paros and Solon of Athens denounced the drive for personal wealth as addictive, leading to hubris injuring others – to be punished by the justice goddess Nemesis. The spirit was similar to Babylonian, Judaic and other moral religions.

Rome had a legendary seven kings (753-509 BC), who are said to have attracted immigrants and prevented an oligarchy from exploiting them. But wealthy families overthrew the last king. There was no religious leader to check their power, as the leading aristocratic families controlled the priesthood. There were no leaders who combined domestic economic reform with a religious school, and there was no Western tradition of debt cancellations such as Jesus would advocate in trying to restore the Jubilee Year to Judaic practice. There were many Stoic philosophers, and religious amphictyonic sites such as Delphi and Delos expressed a religion of personal morality to avoid hubris.

Rome’s aristocrats created an anti-democratic constitution and Senate, and laws that made debt bondage – and the consequent loss of land – irreversible.Although the “politically correct” ethic was to avoid engaging in commerce and moneylending, this ethic did not prevent an oligarchy from emerging to take over the land and reduce much of the population to bondage. By the 2ndcentury BC Rome conquered the entire Mediterranean region and Asia Minor, and the largest corporations were the publican tax collectors, who are reported to have looted Rome’s provinces.

There always have been ways for the wealthy to act sanctimoniously in harmony with altruistic ethics eschewing commercial greed while enriching themselves. Western antiquity’s wealthy were able to come to terms with such ethics by avoiding direct lending and trading themselves, assigning this “dirty work” to their slaves or freemen, and by spending the revenue from such activities on conspicuous philanthropy (which became an expected show in Rome’s election campaigns). And after Christianity became the Roman religion in the 4thcentury AD, money was able to buy absolution by suitably generous donations to the Church.

Rome’s Legacy and the West’s Financial Imperialism

What distinguishes Western economies from earlier Near Eastern and most Asian societies is the absence of debt relief to restore economy-wide balance. Every Western nation has inherited from Rome the pro-creditor sanctity of debt principles that prioritize the claims of creditors and legitimize the permanent transfer to creditors of the property of defaulting debtors. From ancient Rome to Habsburg Spain, imperial Britain and the United States, Western oligarchies have appropriated the income and land of debtors, while shifting taxes off themselves onto labor and industry. This has caused domestic austerity and led oligarchies to seek prosperity through foreign conquest, to gain from foreigners what is not being produced by domestic economies driven into debt and subject to pro-creditor legal principles transferring land and other property to a rentierclass.

Spain in the 16thcentury looted vast shiploads of silver and gold from the New World, but this wealth flowed through its hands, dissipated on war instead of being invested in domestic industry. Left with a steeply unequal and polarized economy deeply in debt, the Habsburgs lost their former possession, the Dutch Republic, which thrived as the less oligarchic society and one deriving more power as a creditor than as a debtor.

Britain followed a similar rise and fall. World War I left it with heavy arms debts owed to its own former colony, the United States. Imposing anti-labor austerity at home in seeking to pay these debts, Britain’s sterling area subsequently became a satellite of the U.S. dollar under the terms of American Lend-Lease in World War II and the 1946 British Loan. The neoliberal policies of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair sharply increased the cost of living by privatizing and monopolizing public housing and infrastructure, wiping out Britain’s former industrial competitiveness by raising the cost of living and hence wage levels.

The United States has followed a similar trajectory of imperial overreaching at the cost of its domestic economy. Its overseas military spending from 1950 onwards forced the dollar off gold in 1971. That shift had the unanticipated benefit of ushering in a “dollar standard” that has enabled the U.S. economy and its military diplomacy to get a free ride from the rest of the world, by running up dollar debt to other nation’s central banks without any practical constraint.

The financial colonization of the post-Soviet Union in the 1990s by the “shock therapy” of privatization giveaways, followed by China’s admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001 – with the expectation that China would, like Yeltsin’s Russia, become a U.S. financial colony – led America’s economy to deindustrialize by shifting employment to Asia. Trying to force submission to U.S. control by inaugurating today’s New Cold War has led Russia, China and other countries to break away from the dollarized trade and investment system, leaving the United States and NATO Europe to suffer austerity and deepening wealth inequality as debt ratios are soaring for individuals, corporations and government bodies.

It was only a decade ago that Senator John McCain and President Barack Obama characterized Russia as merely a gas station with atom bombs. That could now just as well be said of the United States, basing its world economic power on control of the West’s oil trade, while its main export surpluses are agricultural crops and arms. The combination of financial debt leveraging and privatization has made America a high-cost economy, losing its former industrial leadership, much like Britain did. The United States is now attempting to live mainly off financial gains (interest, profits on foreign investment and central bank credit creation to inflate capital gains) instead of creating wealth through its own labor and industry. Its Western allies seek to do the same. They euphemize this U.S.-dominated system as “globalization,” but it is simply a financial form of colonialism – backed with the usual military threat of force and covert “regime change” to prevent countries from withdrawing from the system.

This U.S. and NATO-based imperial system seeks to indebt weaker countries and force them to turn control over their policies to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Obeying the neoliberal anti-labor “advice” of these institutions leads to a debt crisis that forces the debtor country’s foreign-exchange rate to depreciate. The IMF then “rescues” them from insolvency on the “conditionality” that they sell off the public domain and shift taxes off the wealthy (especially foreign investors) onto labor.

Oligarchy and debt are the defining characteristics of Western economies. America’s foreign military spending and nearly constant wars have left its own Treasury deeply indebted to foreign governments and their central banks. The United States is thus following the same path by which Spain’s imperialism left the Habsburg dynasty in debt to European bankers, and Britain’s participation in two world wars in hope of maintaining its dominant world position left it in debt and ended its former industrial advantage. America’s rising foreign debt has been sustained by its “key currency” privilege of issuing its own dollar-debt under the “dollar standard” without other countries having any reasonable expectation of ever being paid – except in yet more “paper dollars.”

This monetary affluence has enabled Wall Street’s managerial elite to increase America’s rentieroverhead by financialization and privatization, increasing the cost of living and doing business, much as occurred in Britain under the neoliberal policies of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Industrial companies have responded by shifting their factories to low-wage economies to maximize profits. But as America deindustrializes with rising import dependency on Asia, U.S. diplomacy is pursuing a New Cold War that is driving the world’s most productive economies to decouple from the U.S. economic orbit.

Rising debt destroys economies when it is not being used to finance new capital investment in means of production. Most Western credit today is created to inflate stock, bond and real estate prices, not to restore industrial ability. As a result of this debt-without-production approach, the U.S. domestic economy has been overwhelmed by debt owed to its own financial oligarchy. Despite America’s economy’s free lunch in the form of the continued run-up of its official debt to foreign central banks – with no visible prospect of either its international or domestic debt being paid – its debt continues to expand and the economy has become even more debt-leveraged. America has polarized with extreme wealth concentrated at the top while most of the economy is driven deeply into debt.

The Failure of Oligarchic Democracies to Protect the Indebted Population at Large

What has made the Western economies oligarchic is their failure to protect the citizenry from being driven into dependency on a creditor property-owning class. These economies have retained Rome’s creditor-based laws of debt, most notably the priority of creditor claims over the property of debtors. The creditor One Percent has become a politically powerful oligarchy despite nominal democratic political reforms expanding voting rights. Government regulatory agencies have been captured and taxing power has been made regressive, leaving economic control and planning in the hands of a rentierelite.

Rome never was a democracy. And in any case, Aristotle recognized democracies as evolving more or less naturally into oligarchies – which claim to be democratic for public-relations purposes while pretending that their increasingly top-heavy concentration of wealth is all for the best. Today’s trickle-down rhetoric depicts banks and financial managers as steering savings in the most efficient way to produce prosperity for the entire economy, not just for themselves.

President Biden and his State Department neoliberals accuse China and any other country seeking to maintain its economic independence and self-reliance of being “autocratic.” Their rhetorical sleight of hand juxtaposes democracy to autocracy. What they call “autocracy” is a government strong enough to prevent a Western-oriented financial oligarchy from indebting the population to itself – and then prying away its land and other property into its own hands and those of its American and other foreign backers.

The Orwellian Doublethink of calling oligarchies “democracies” is followed by defining a free market as one that is free for financial rent-seeking. U.S.-backed diplomacy has indebted countries, forcing them to sell control of their public infrastructure and turn their economy’s “commanding heights” into opportunities to extract monopoly rent.

This autocracy vs. democracy rhetoric is similar to the rhetoric that Greek and Roman oligarchies used when they accused democratic reformers of seeking “tyranny” (in Greece) or “kingship” (in Rome). It was the Greek “tyrants” who overthrow mafia-like autocracies in the 7thand 6thcenturies BC, paving the way for the economic and proto-democratic takeoffs of Sparta, Corinth and Athens. And it was Rome’s kings who built up their city-state by offering self-support land tenure for citizens. That policy attracted immigrants from neighboring Italian city-states whose populations were being forced into debt bondage.

The problem is that Western democracies have not proved adept at preventing oligarchies from emerging and polarizing the distribution of income and wealth. Ever since Rome, oligarchic “democracies” have not protected their citizens from creditors seeking to appropriate land, its rental yield and the public domain for themselves.

If we ask just who today is enacting and enforcing policies that seek to check oligarchy in order to protect the livelihood of citizens, the answer is that this is done by socialist states. Only a strong state has the power to check a financial and rent-seeking oligarchy. The Chinese embassy in America demonsrated this in its reply to President Biden’s description of China as an autocracy:

Clinging to a Cold War mentality and the hegemon’s logic, the US pursues bloc politics, concocts the “democracy versus authoritarianism” narrative … and ramps up bilateral military alliances, in a clear attempt at countering China.

Guided by a people-centered philosophy, since the day when it was founded … the Party has been working tirelessly for the interest of the people, and has dedicated itself to realizing people’s aspirations for a better life. China has been advancing whole-process people’s democracy, promoting legal safeguard for human rights, and upholding social equity and justice. The Chinese people now enjoy fuller and more extensive and comprehensive democratic rights.[1]

Nearly all early non-Western societies had protections against the emergence of mercantile and rentieroligarchies. That is why it is so important to recognize that what has become Western civilization represents a break from the Near East, South and East Asia. Each of these regions had its own system of public administration to save its social balance from commercial and monetary wealth that threatened to destroy economic balance if left unchecked. But the West’s economic character was shaped by rentieroligarchies. Rome’s Republic enriched its oligarchy by stripping the wealth of the regions it conquered, leaving them impoverished. That remains the extractive strategy of subsequent European colonialism and, most recently, U.S.-centered neoliberal globalization. The aim always has been to “free” oligarchies from constraints on their self-seeking.

The great question is, “freedom” and “liberty” for whom? Classical political economy defined a free market as one free fromunearned income, headed by land rent and other natural-resource rent, monopoly rent, financial interest and related creditor privileges. But by the end of the 19thcentury the rentieroligarchy sponsored a fiscal and ideological counter-revolution, re-defining a free market as one free for rentiers to extract economic rent – unearned income.

This rejection of the classical critique of rentierincome has been accompanied by re-defining “democracy” to require having a “free market” of the anti-classical oligarchic rentiervariety. Instead of the government being the economic regulator in the public interest, public regulation of credit and monopolies is dismantled. That lets companies charge whatever they want for the credit they supply and the products they sell. Privatizing the privilege of creating credit-money lets the financial sector take over the role of allocating property ownership.

The result has been to centralize economic planning in Wall Street, the City of London, the Paris Bourse and other imperial financial centers. That is what today’s New Cold War is all about: protecting this system of U.S.-centered neoliberal financial capitalism, by wrecking or isolating the alternative systems of China, Russia and their allies, while seeking to further financialize the former colonialist system sponsoring creditor power instead of protecting debtors, imposing debt-ridden austerity instead of growth, and making the loss of property through foreclosure or forced sale irreversible.

Is Western Civilization a Long Detour from Where Antiquity Seemed To Be Headed?

What is so important in Rome’s economic polarization that resulted from the dynamics of interest bearing debt in the rapacious hands of its creditor class is how radically its oligarchic pro-creditor legal system differed from the laws of earlier societies that checked creditors and the proliferation of debt. The rise of a creditor oligarchy that used its wealth to monopolize the land and take over the government and courts (not hesitating to use force and targeted political assassination against would-be reformers) had been prevented for thousands of years throughout the Near East and other Asian lands. But the Aegean and Mediterranean periphery lacked the economic checks and balances that had provided resilience elsewhere in the Near East. What has distinguished the West from the outset has been its lack of a government strong enough to check the emergence and domination of a creditor oligarchy.

All ancient economies operated on credit, running up crop debts during the agricultural year. Warfare, droughts or floods, disease and other disruptions often prevented the accrual of debts from being paid. But Near Eastern rulers cancelled debts under these conditions. That saved their citizen-soldiers and corvée-workers from losing their self-support land to creditors, who were recognized as being a potential rival power to the palace. By the mid-first millennium BC debt bondage had shrunk to only a marginal phenomenon in Babylonia, Persia and other Near Eastern realms. But Greece and Rome were in the midst of a half-millennium of popular revolts demanding debt cancellation and liberty from debt bondage and loss of self-support land.

It was only Roman kings and Greek tyrants who, for a while, were able to protect their subjects from debt bondage. But they ultimately lost to warlord creditor oligarchies. The lesson of history is thus that a strong government regulatory power is required to prevent oligarchies from emerging and using creditor claims and land grabbing to turn the citizenry into debtors, renters, clients and ultimately serfs.

The Rise of Creditor Control Over Modern Governments

Palaces and temples throughout the ancient world were creditors. Only in the West did a private creditor class emerge. A millennium after the fall of Rome, a new banking class obliged medieval kingdoms to run into debt. International banking families used their creditor power to gain control of public monopolies and natural resources, much as creditors had gained control of individual land in antiquity.

World War I saw the Western economies reach an unprecedented crisis as a result of Inter-Ally debts and German reparations. Trade broke down and the Western economies fell into depression. What pulled them out was World War II, and this time no reparations were imposed after the war ended. In place of war debts, England simply was obliged to open up its Sterling Area to U.S. exporters and refrain from reviving its industrial markets by devaluing sterling, under the terms of Lend-Lease and the 1946 British Loan as noted above.

The West emerged from World War II relatively free of private debt – and thoroughly under U.S. dominance. But since 1945 the volume of debt has expanded exponentially, reaching crisis proportions in 2008 as the junk-mortgage bubble, massive bank fraud and financial debt pyramiding exploded, overburdening the U.S. as well as the European and Global South economies.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank monetized $8 trillion to save the financial elite’s holdings of stocks, bonds and packaged real estate mortgages instead of rescuing the victims of junk mortgages and over-indebted foreign countries. The European Central Bank did much the same thing to save the wealthiest Europeans from losing the market value of their financial wealth.

But it was too late to save the U.S. and European economies. The long post-1945 debt buildup has run its course. The U.S. economy has been deindustrialized, its infrastructure is collapsing and its population is so deeply indebted that little disposable income is left to support living standards. Much as occurred with Rome’s Empire, the American response is to try to maintain the prosperity of its own financial elite by exploiting foreign countries. That is aim of today’s New Cold War diplomacy. It involves extracting economic tribute by pushing foreign economies further into dollarized debt, to be paid by imposing depression and austerity on themselves.

This subjugation is depicted by mainstream economists as a law of nature and hence as an inevitable form of equilibrium, in which each nation’s economy receives “what it is worth.” Today’s mainstream economic models are based on the unrealistic assumption that all debts can be paid, without polarizing income and wealth. All economic problems are assumed to be self-curing by “the magic of the marketplace,” without any need for civic authority to intervene. Government regulation is deemed inefficient and ineffective, and hence unnecessary. That leaves creditors, land-grabbers and privatizers with a free hand to deprive others of theirfreedom. This is depicted as the ultimate destiny of today’s globalization, and of history itself.

The End of History? Or Just of the West’s Financialization and Privatization?

The neoliberal pretense is that privatizing the public domain and letting the financial sector take over economic and social planning in targeted countries will bring mutually beneficial prosperity. That is supposed to make foreign submission to the U.S.-centered world order voluntary. But the actual effect of neoliberal policy has been to polarize Global South economies and subject them to debt-ridden austerity.

American neoliberalism claims that America’s privatization, financialization and shift of economic planning from government to Wall Street and other financial centers is the result of a Darwinian victory achieving such perfection that it is “the end of history.” It is as if the rest of the world has no alternative but to accept U.S. control of the global (that is, neo-colonial) financial system, trade and social organization. And just to make sure, U.S. diplomacy seeks to back its financial and diplomatic control by military force.

The irony is that U.S. diplomacy itself has helped accelerate an international response to neoliberalism by forcing together governments strong enough to pick up the long trend of history that sees governments empowered to prevent corrosive oligarchic dynamics from derailing the progress of civilization.

The 21stcentury began with American neoliberals imagining that their debt-leveraged financialization and privatization would cap the long upsweep of human history as the legacy of classical Greece and Rome. The neoliberal view of ancient history echoes that of antiquity’s oligarchies, denigrating Rome’s kings and Greece’s reformer-tyrants as threatening too strong a public intervention when they aimed at keeping citizens free of debt bondage and securing self-support land tenure. What is viewed as the decisive takeoff point is the oligarchy’s “security of contracts” giving creditors the right to expropriate debtors. This indeed has remained a defining characteristic of Western legal systems for the past two thousand years.

A real end of history would mean that reform would stop in every country. That dream seemed close when U.S. neoliberals were given a free hand to reshape Russia and other post-Soviet states after the Soviet Union dissolved itself in 1991, starting with shock therapy privatizing natural resources and other public assets in the hands of Western-oriented kleptocrats registering public wealth in their own names – and cashing out by selling their takings to U.S. and other Western investors.

The end of the Soviet Union’s history was supposed to consolidate America’s End of History by showing how futile it would be for nations to try to create an alternative economic order based on public control of money and banking, public health, free education and other subsidies of basic needs, free from debt financing. China’s admission into the World Trade Organization in 2001 was viewed as confirming Margaret Thatcher’s claim that There Is No Alternative (TINA) to the new neoliberal order sponsored by U.S. diplomacy.

There is an economic alternative, of course. Looking over the sweep of ancient history, we can see that the main objective of ancient rulers from Babylonia to South Asia and East Asia was to preventa mercantile and creditor oligarchy from reducing the population at large to clientage, debt bondage and serfdom. If the non-U.S. Eurasian world now follows this basic aim, it would be restoring the course of history to its pre-Western course. That would not be the end of history, but it would return to the non-Western world’s basic ideals of economic balance, justice and equity.

Today, China, India, Iran and other Eurasian economies have taken the first step as a precondition for a multipolar world, by rejecting America’s insistence that they join the U.S. trade and financial sanctions against Russia. These countries realize that if the United States could destroy Russia’s economy and replace its government with U.S.-oriented Yeltsin-like proxies, the remaining countries of Eurasia would be next in line.

The only possible way for history really to end would be for the American military to destroy every nation seeking an alternative to neoliberal privatization and financialization. U.S. diplomacy insists that history must not take any path that would not culminate in its own financial empire ruling through client oligarchies. American diplomats hope that their military threats and support of proxy armies will force other countries to submit to neoliberal demands – to avoid being bombed, or suffering “color revolutions,” political assassinations and army takeovers, Pinochet-style. But the only real way to bring history to an end is by atomic war to end human life on this planet.

The New Cold War Is Dividing the World into Two Contrasting Economic Systems

NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is the catalyst fracturing the world into two opposing spheres with incompatible economic philosophies. China, the country growing most rapidly, treats money and credit as a public utility allocated by government instead of letting the monopoly privilege of credit creation be privatized by banks, leading to them displacing government as economic and social planner. That monetary independence, relying on its own domestic money creation instead of borrowing U.S. electronic dollars, and denominating foreign trade and investment in its own currency instead of in dollars, is seen as an existential threat to America’s control of the global economy.

U.S. neoliberal doctrine calls for history to end by “freeing” the wealthy classes from a government strong enough to prevent the polarization of wealth, and ultimate decline and fall. Imposing trade and financial sanctions against Russia, Iran, Venezuela and other countries that resist U.S. diplomacy, and ultimately military confrontation, is how America intends to “spread democracy” by NATO from Ukraine to the China Sea.

The West, in its U.S. neoliberal iteration, seems to be repeating the pattern of Rome’s decline and fall. Concentrating wealth in the hands of the One Percent has always been the trajectory of Western civilization. It is a result of classical antiquity having taken a wrong track when Greece and Rome allowed the inexorable growth of debt, leading to the expropriation of much of the citizenry and reducing it to bondage to a land-owning creditor oligarchy. That is the dynamic built into the DNA of what is called the West and its “security of contracts” without any government oversight in the public interest. By stripping away prosperity at home, this dynamic requires a constant reaching out to extract an economic affluence (literally a “flowing in”) at the expense of colonies or debtor countries.

The United States through its New Cold War is aiming at securing precisely such economic tribute from other countries. The coming conflict may last for perhaps twenty years and will determine what kind of political and economic system the world will have. At issue is more than just U.S. hegemony and its dollarized control of international finance and money creation. Politically at issue is the idea of “democracy” that has become a euphemism for an aggressive financial oligarchy seeking to impose itself globally by predatory financial, economic and political control backed by military force.

As I have sought to emphasize, oligarchic control of government has been the distinguishing feature of Western civilization ever since classical antiquity. And the key to this control has been opposition to strong government – that is, civil government strong enough to prevent a creditor oligarchy from emerging and monopolizing control of land and wealth, making itself into a hereditary aristocracy, a rentierclass living off land rents, interest and monopoly privileges that reduce the population at large to austerity.

The unipolar U.S.-centered order hoping to “end history” reflected a basic economic and political dynamic that has been a characteristic of Western civilization ever since classical Greece and Rome set off along a different track from the Near Eastern matrix in the first millennium BC.

To save themselves from being swept into the whirlpool of economic destruction now engulfing the West, countries in the world’s rapidly growing Eurasian core are developing new economic institutions based on an alternative social and economic philosophy. With China being the largest and fastest growing economy in the region, its socialist policies are likely to be influential in shaping this emerging non-Western financial and trading system.

Instead of the West’s privatization of basic economic infrastructure to create private fortunes through monopoly rent extraction, China keeps this in public hands. Its great advantage over the West is that it treats money and credit as a public utility, to be allocated by government instead of letting private banks create credit, with debt mounting up without expanding production to raise living standards. China also is keeping health and education, transportation and communications in public hands, to be provided as basic human rights.

China’s socialist policy is in many ways a return to basic ideas of resilience that characterized most civilization before classical Greece and Rome.

It has created a state strong enough to resist the emergence of a financial oligarchy gaining control of the land and rent-yielding assets.

In contrast, today’s Western economies are repeating precisely that oligarchic drive that polarized and destroyed the economies of classical Greece and Rome, with the United States serving as the modern analogue (for Rome).

1940s Guide Shows How To Kiss Correctly

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LIFE magazine published this guide for actors in 1942, but it may still come in handy today. According to these romantic pictures from the magazine, there are some vital basic steps to follow to achieve the perfect clinch. First, the how-to guide recommends that kissers should not stand too far apart – pointing out that actors doing this on stage look ‘juvenile if they are so stand-offish’.

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“WRONG: They look too juvenile if they are so stand-offish”

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“RIGHT: Boy and girl should stand close together and not hold each other too tightly”

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“WRONG: Sprawling all over the chair is considered ungraceful”

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“RIGHT: Girl should sit on arm of the chair and boy should hold her firmly but lightly”

Watch: NYC Unleash Nuclear-Attack Preparedness PSA

Tuesday, Jul 12, 2022 – 05:45 PM

With COVID-anxiety having waned, America’s leaders need something to stoke the fear and make us more malleable.

In the case of New York City, it appears they turned the fearmongery up to ’11’ this week as they launched a nuclear attack preparedness public service announcement, saying it’s best to be prepared even if such a strike is unlikely.

“While the likelihood of a nuclear weapon incident occurring in/near New York City is very low, it is important New Yorkers know the steps to stay safe,” the city’s Emergency Management Department said in its announcement.

According to the PSA, there are three important steps to take – just do as you’re told and “get inside” a building fast and move away from windows, “stay inside” while removing and bagging all outer clothing to keep radioactive dust or ash away from your body, and “stay tuned” for the ‘experts’ and ‘officials’ to tell you what to do.

Oh, and don’t forget to wear your snugly-fitting N95 mask if you are forced inside a building in close confines with other humans… you can’t be too safe, right?

As Audacy reports, Emergency Management didn’t say if any factor in particular prompted the new PSA, but Commissioner Zach Iscol said in a statement, “As the threat landscape continues to evolve, it is important that New Yorkers know we are preparing for any imminent threats and are providing them with the resources they need to stay safe and informed.”

Watch the full PSA below:

Be afraid America, be very afraid…

Now An Outbreak Of The Marburg Virus Has Begun

Monday, Jul 11, 2022 – 05:30 AM

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Why are so many unusual outbreaks of disease suddenly happening all over the planet?  We were already dealing with a seemingly endless global pandemic coming into 2022, and so far this year a bird flu pandemic has resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of our chickens and turkeys, the worst monkeypox outbreak in history has spread like wildfire in the western world, and now it is being reported that there is an outbreak of the Marburg Virus in Africa.  We have already lost our opportunity to contain monkeypox, and that is really bad news.  But if authorities are not able to successfully contain this new Marburg outbreak, we could potentially be facing a scenario that is downright apocalyptic.

The new outbreak of the Marburg Virus is happening in Ghana.  The two victims that have died so far did not know each other, and officials believe that this is evidence that “the disease is spreading more widely”

Two people are believed to have died from the extremely deadly Marburg virus in Ghana as officials gear up for a potential outbreak.

The patients, from the country’s southern Ashanti region, were not known to each other, suggesting the disease is spreading more widely.

Initial tests came back positive for the virus and the samples are being reanalysed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Global health authorities have always warned that the Marburg virus is a good candidate for a horrifying global pandemic because it can have a very long incubation period.  The following information comes from the World Health Organization

The incubation period (interval from infection to onset of symptoms) varies from 2 to 21 days.

Illness caused by Marburg virus begins abruptly, with high fever, severe headache and severe malaise. Muscle aches and pains are a common feature. Severe watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain and cramping, nausea and vomiting can begin on the third day. Diarrhoea can persist for a week. The appearance of patients at this phase has been described as showing “ghost-like” drawn features, deep-set eyes, expressionless faces, and extreme lethargy.

All of that sounds terrible, but the next stage of the disease is truly nightmarish

Many patients develop severe haemorrhagic manifestations between 5 and 7 days, and fatal cases usually have some form of bleeding, often from multiple areas. Fresh blood in vomitus and faeces is often accompanied by bleeding from the nose, gums, and vagina. Spontaneous bleeding at venepuncture sites (where intravenous access is obtained to give fluids or obtain blood samples) can be particularly troublesome. During the severe phase of illness, patients have sustained high fevers. Involvement of the central nervous system can result in confusion, irritability, and aggression. Orchitis (inflammation of one or both testicles) has been reported occasionally in the late phase of disease (15 days).

In fatal cases, death occurs most often between 8 and 9 days after symptom onset, usually preceded by severe blood loss and shock.

The largest previous outbreak of the disease was in 2005.

During that outbreak, 88 percent of the victims died…

The largest outbreak to date was in Angola in 2005, when 374 caught the virus and 329 died – a fatality rate of 88 percent.

A disease that has a death rate of way less than one percent ended up paralyzing much of the planet for months on end.

So what do you think will happen if the Marburg Virus becomes a true global pandemic?

Needless to say, the panic would be off the charts, and there is no cure and no vaccine

The Marburg virus is a top concern for public health officials who are worried about the next pandemic. It has the potential to cause serious public health emergencies but there are currently no vaccines or antiviral treatments approved to treat the virus.

Meanwhile, the number of monkeypox cases continues to rise at an exponential rate.

When I wrote about monkeypox yesterday, there were 7,534 global cases.  Unfortunately, Friday was the worst day for this outbreak so far by a very wide margin, and now there are 9,109 global cases.

I had been hoping that this outbreak would fade after the initial spike of cases, but instead it seems to be rapidly picking up momentum.

Here in the United States, it has already spread to 39 different states and the total number of cases has now risen to 790.

If the number of cases continues to double at a very fast pace, it won’t be too long before we have a major national crisis on our hands.

Let us hope that doesn’t happen, because this is a disease that you definitely do not want to get.

This highly mutated version of monkeypox causes extremely intense pain In fact, one victim that was interview by NBC News said that it was “the worst pain in my life”.

Since monkeypox causes very ugly sores on the skin, many have suggested that this sounds eerily similar to a future scenario that I described in my books.

But we don’t know if monkeypox will become a true global pandemic yet.  We will just have to wait and see what happens.

Of course COVID has been a global pandemic for a long time, and now it is being reported that a new subvariant that is becoming dominant in the western world is “the worst so far”

The latest subvariant of the novel coronavirus to become dominant in Europe, the United States, and other places is also, in many ways, the worst so far.

The BA.5 subvariant of the basic Omicron variant appears to be more contagious than any previous form of the virus. It’s apparently better at dodging our antibodies, too—meaning it might be more likely to cause breakthrough and repeat infections.

Despite everything that they have tried, authorities have failed to stop this pandemic.  Our planet has been hit by wave after wave, and now hospitalizations in the U.S. are spiking once again

Eighteen states reported more cases in the week of June 30-July 7 than in the week before, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.

That has also led to a rise in hospitalizations, with hospitals in 40 states reporting more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier. Thirty-eight states had more patients in intensive care beds, and 17 states reported more deaths than a week earlier.

Personally, I am far, far more concerned about monkeypox.

If the number of monkeypox cases continues to explode like it has been, it won’t be too long before there is widespread panic among the general public.

And if the Marburg Virus starts getting loose in the western world we will be facing a scenario that is absolutely unthinkable.

So hopefully authorities in Africa are on top of this, because the death toll from a full-blown global pandemic would be off the charts.

Roast Beef

The Sunday roast has captured the imagination of anyone who wants to recreate the classic American meal, but how many of us take the time to try out this classic recipe? With slow-roasted flavors and a recipe anyone can easily tackle, taking a stab at these classic 1950s dishes should take a spot on any cook’s bucket list. Combine the roast with some sides of mashed potatoes and roasted carrots, and weekend meals are sure to transform forever.

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Roast Beef

Whatever happened to the days when the 6 p.m. dinner bell would ring and Mom would pull a beautifully browned roast from the oven? Well, plenty of things: microwaves, pizza delivery, the narrowing of the gender equality gap. Although it should be said that the pay-gap has nowhere near narrowed. So why don’t we make a new tradition with this favorite meal? Point is, we miss the roast, and there is no reason dads (and brothers, and boyfriends!) shouldn’t endeavor to make a roast beef every so often. That’s right, guys, you can do it. It’s as simple as turning on the oven, putting in the seasoned beef, and pulling it out when it’s ready. This type of roast beef recipe magic should be timeless (and genderless, too.)

You’ll Need

3 lb rump roast
8 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
2 Tbsp olive oil
1⁄2 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
Salt and black pepper to taste

How to Make It

  1. Remove the roast from the fridge at least 30 minutes before cooking.
  2. Preheat the oven to 250°F.
  3. Use a small paring knife to make incisions into the roast and gently insert garlic clove halves all over.
  4. Rub the roast with the olive oil and season all over with the rosemary and plenty of salt and pepper.
  5. Place on a rack on a baking sheet and place in the middle rack of the oven.
  6. Roast for 90 minutes.
  7. Turn up the heat to 475°F and roast for another 15 minutes, until the beef has developed a deep-brown crust and an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part registers 140°F.

Eat This Tip

No baking rack? No problem. Many recipes call for baking racks to allow the warm air to fully circulate around the meat, but you can simulate the effect very simply with no extra equipment.

  • Position one oven rack in the middle of the oven and another immediately below it.
  • Prep and season the meat, then place it directly on the middle rack.
  • Place a rimmed baking sheet below to catch the juices as they fall from the meat. (Those precious juices can be turned into gravy with a bit of flour and broth!)

Michael Hudson: The End of Western Civilization

Let me recommend to everyone the speech Michael Hudson has held on Monday for China’s Global University. It digs to the core of the illness that has taken over ‘western’ societies.

The issue is debt which historically was largely forgiven by the king or high priest in case of hard times. But during the time of the Greek and later Roman empires oligarchs took over and demanded to pay back all debt in full and even in hard times. This split societies into a rich rentier class and indebted plebs. Each empire that followed that path, from the Roman to the British one, eventually came down due to over-indebtedness.

The U.S. is the current global empire which is way down on this path. It is hostile to all societies that do not open their financial markets to be robbed by U.S. oligarchs. This is at the core of the current global conflict as China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela developed from different traditions and reject to give in to U.S. demands. The U.S. is used to solve such ‘problems’ by force but is now likely too weak to achieve that.

Naked Capitalism is the first to publish the English language version of Hudson’s speech:

Michael Hudson: The End of Western Civilization – Why It Lacks Resilience, and What Will Take Its Place

The core paragraphs are probably these:

The United States through its New Cold War is aiming at securing precisely such economic tribute from other countries. The coming conflict may last for perhaps twenty years and will determine what kind of political and economic system the world will have. At issue is more than just U.S. hegemony and its dollarized control of international finance and money creation. Politically at issue is the idea of “democracy” that has become a euphemism for an aggressive financial oligarchy seeking to impose itself globally by predatory financial, economic and political control backed by military force.

As I have sought to emphasize, oligarchic control of government has been the distinguishing feature of Western civilization ever since classical antiquity. And the key to this control has been opposition to strong government – that is, civil government strong enough to prevent a creditor oligarchy from emerging and monopolizing control of land and wealth, making itself into a hereditary aristocracy, a rentierclass living off land rents, interest and monopoly privileges that reduce the population at large to austerity.

It will be necessary to bring down the rentierclass. To recommit to a strong state that owns the public goods and services and does not hand them over to private interests. The coming malaise may well help to achieve that.

Posted by b at 14:00 UTC |

Russian Ministry of Defense: “We are on the verge of an immediate armed conflict with the United States”

The Russian Ministry of Defense issued a very late night Press Statement saying “We are on the verge of an immediate armed conflict with the United States” after Ukraine used U.S.-supplied HIMARS weapons to attack a Russian base.  As of 7:12 PM EDT, at least 7 Russian troops are dead and at least 40 are injured.  Those numbers are rapidly rising and changing fast.

In addition to the Russian MoD, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also issued a statement:

The United States and its allies are teetering on the brink of an open military conflict with Moscow, which would be fraught with nuclear tensions, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Tuesday.

“After provoking an escalation of the Ukrainian crisis and unleashing a violent hybrid confrontation with Russia, Washington and its allies are dangerously teetering on the brink of an open military confrontation with our country, which means a direct armed conflict between nuclear powers. Clearly, such a confrontation would be fraught with nuclear escalation,” the statement reads.

 

UPDATE 7:19 PM EDT —

Henry Kissinger just said on Fox News that we should expect direct conflict with Russia by mId-August.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Getting tired of this tedious Bla Bla

The “news” from the collective West (led by the United States) is a complete “cluster fuck”. It’s one set of ugly “news” after the other. It’s so very difficult to gleam truth amidst all the lies.  Here’s some selected (more accurate) “news” items that describe what’s going on, as well as some trivial subjects to interrupt the paid trolls and software compliance ‘bots. I hope you enjoy it.

Russia has made a decisive break with the West and is ready to help shape a new world order

Russia is now focusing on developing its ties with Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

By Russia Today

Just before the G7 leaders met at Elmau Castle in Bavaria, last week, their counterparts from the five BRICS countries held an online summit under the Chinese Presidency. Russia had been discussed as a threat at the G7 gathering but was a key participant in the latter.

Long gone are the days when Moscow could straddle the divide between the West and the non-West. Following the 2014 Ukraine crisis, the G8 reverted to its previous G7 format; in the wake of the Russian military action in Ukraine last February, Russian-Western confrontation degenerated into a full-blown “Hybrid War,” complete with an actual confrontation – if so far a proxy one.

Having tried, after the end of the Cold War, to become part of the new West, and having failed at that endeavor, Russia is now focusing on developing its ties with Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

This is both a difficult and a necessary task, for a number of reasons. First, there is a powerful inertia from the past. At least since the days of Peter the Great, Russian elites have looked westward, adopting western ways of appearance and behavior (while remaining distinctly Russian beneath the garb and manners); adapting western institutions (even if often only superficially); borrowing western patterns of thinking (while creatively developing them, as with Marxism); seeking to become a great European power; then, in Soviet days, a global superpower; and, more recently, a key component of a greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

This is a pathway hard to wean off from. Yet, now, for the first time ever, Russia is facing a united West, from North America, the European Union, and Britain, to Japan and Australia. What’s more, there are no allies in the West that Moscow can turn to – even notionally neutral states such as Finland, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland, have all ditched their neutrality. Russia’s political rupture with the West is thus complete, and any new norm of relations between them can only emerge as a result of the “Hybrid War,“ which will take years, if not decades, to fight out.

Second, Moscow’s economic relations have been largely built with the West. Historically, Russia has been a resource for Western European industry; a breadbasket of the continent; and a major importer of industrial products and technology. Until recently, Russia’s trade with the European Union alone accounted for more than half of Russia’s foreign commerce, and Germany was the lead exporter of machinery and technology to Russia. Since the early 1970s, oil and gas pipelines from Russia to Western Europe have formed the backbone of economic ties and provided for general stability on the continent, even in the dangerous decades of the Cold War and in the turbulent times of the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. This, too, is on the way out, however.

The severe sanctions imposed on Russia by the US, EU and the UK will not be lifted even when the actual fighting in Ukraine stops, and the painful experience of foreign exchange and asset seizures will leave a huge imprint on any future Russian approach to economic ties with the West.

Third, in cultural terms, Russians have traditionally identified themselves with the rest of Europe. Christianity; the legacies of Ancient Greece and Rome; the ideas of French Enlightenment and German philosophy; European literature and the arts, music, and dance – all of this helped shape and form Russia’s own culture, giving it a powerful stimulus for self-development. Despite the recent political rupture and the geo-economic shift, the foundations of Russian culture remain definitely European.

However, a number of elements of today’s cultural scene in the West, particularly the dominant cult of individual self-expression, runaway liberalism that is turning increasingly oppressive, the erosion of family values and the proliferation of genders, jars with the more traditional cultural code of the majority of the Russian population.

That said, the obvious necessity for Russia to now look beyond the West means it can probably overcome the historical inertia, the legacy of previous geo-economic priorities, and cultural affinities. With the West shunning Russia, trying to isolate and sometimes “cancel” it, Moscow has no choice but to kick its old habits and reach out to the wider world beyond Western Europe and North America. In fact, this is something that successive Russian leaders vowed to do repeatedly, even when relations with the West were much less adversarial, but the Europe-oriented mindset, the apparent ease of trading resources for Western goods and technologies, and the ambition to be accepted into Western elite circles prevented that intention from turning into reality.

It has been noted, however, that people start doing the right thing only when there are no other options. And certainly, capitulating to the West is no option for Russia, at this point. Things have gone too far.

Beyond the necessity of an overhaul of Russia’s foreign relations there are real opportunities to pursue. Since the end of the Cold War, the leading countries of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America have risen spectacularly in all respects, from economically and politically to technologically and militarily.

Even before the outbreak of the “Hybrid War,” China had overtaken Germany not only as Russia’s principal trading partner, but also as the leading exporter of machinery and equipment to Russia. India, a traditional importer of Soviet and Russian weapons, is now emerging as a major technology partner for Moscow. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are Russia’s principal partners in regulating oil output in the OPEC+ format.

Turkey and Iran are major independent players in a key strategic region. The fact that the vast majority of non-Western countries refused to condemn Russia for what it is doing in Ukraine – many of them despite strong US pressure – is most encouraging for Moscow. In the sense that those who are not against us could be considered to be with us.

From Indonesia to Brazil, and from Argentina to South Africa, there are many dynamic and ambitious countries that Moscow is seeking to engage.

To be able to do that, Russia’s foreign policy needs to come up with an appropriate strategy. Above all, it needs to give relations with non-Western countries priority over the de facto firmly frozen ties with the West. Being an ambassador to Indonesia should be more prestigious than an ambassadorship in Rome, and a post in Tashkent should be viewed as more important than one in Vienna.

There needs to be an audit of potential economic and other opportunities for Russia in the BRICS countries, and a plan to work on them. Apart from economics, student exchange programs should be expanded, and Russian tourism encouraged to move east, and south. The Russian media would be right to increase coverage of developments in the key non-Western nations, educating the Russian elite and the broader public about the economic realities, politics, and culture of those nations.

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Monkeypox Outbreak DOUBLES in NYC . . . One Week After “Gay Pride” Parade

The number of confirmed monkeypox cases in New York City has doubled in the past week, according to data from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.  This increase in cases comes after the NYC “Gay Pride” Parade on June 26.

The department said in a tweet on Tuesday that 111 people had tested positive in New York City so far, up from 55 a week prior. The tweet states that the city is expecting to receive additional doses of the monkeypox vaccine in the coming days and will make appointments available soon.

The department announced last month that men who have sex with men and have had sex with multiple partners or anonymous partners in the past two weeks would be eligible to receive the vaccine. The vaccine, the Jynneos smallpox vaccine, is administered in two doses four weeks apart from each other.

The city’s health department website states that most people infected with monkeypox in New York City have had mild illness, have not been hospitalized and have recovered on their own.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that monkeypox cases have been confirmed in 33 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

When it became blatantly obvious around the world that this outbreak was taking place in the Gay community, because 99% of cases have been Gay men, the CDC was asked if people should avoid Gay Events and the CDC said “no.”   So here we are, on July 6, just ten days after the NYC Gay Pride Parade . . . and the outbreak has doubled.

It’s not that Gay people can’t control their behaviors . . .  it’s that they won’t.

Why the West has failed to get the rest of the world on board to support its confrontation with Russia

The US-led bloc no longer offers the only viable model for development, which means its ability to impose its will is fading.

By Fyodor Lukyanov

The recent festival of big Western politics – which began with a meeting of the European Council, continued with the G7 Summit, and ended with a major NATO gathering – provides plenty of food for thought about the fate of the world.

On the surface, what we have seen is impressive: The West is showing unprecedented unity in the face of the Russian campaign in Ukraine.

America has gathered almost all of its allies. Right now, from Australia to Norway, from Singapore to Portugal, and from Japan to Iceland, the agenda is the same – to prevent the success of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who represents a rejection of the so-called ‘rules-based order’.

The brutality and irreversibility of what is happening in Ukraine gives the situation the character of a moral choice. Almost all statements from Western leaders refer to a confrontation between “civilization and barbarism”. Accordingly, they believe, there should be no doubt about which side to take.

The Western community has now reached maximum capacity – its European flank (EU and NATO members plus Ukraine and Moldova), its Asian club (South Korea, Japan, and Singapore stopped wavering and took the ‘right’ side), the Oceania pairing, and of course, North America. The ‘free world’ has never been so vast.

This raises a serious question, however. Has the West reached its natural limit beyond which expansion is no longer possible? And if so, what does it mean?

In fact, the topic of the limits of Western influence stems from the notorious concept of the ‘end of history’, which is already so worn out that it is even inconvenient to bring it up. Nevertheless, it is appropriate in this context. Francis Fukuyama’s reflections (he was recently banned from entering Russia, as it happens) led him to conclude that with the collapse of the communist alternative, the only question that remained was how soon and how painlessly the Western economic and socio–political model – which had proved its virtues in the showdown with the USSR – would spread to the rest of the world. The author admitted that it would not be without snags, but in general, the direction was determined once and for all.

How things actually played out after the collapse of the USSR is well known, and despite the fact that numerous crises in developed countries have dimmed the view of the expected path of development, the system has been preserved – and no one has yet come close to the Western world in terms of well-being and comfort. And the Western media still has a near-monopoly on determining the picture of what is happening on a global scale. This means it has a huge head start. But the limit seems to have been reached.

Perhaps the main surprise resulting from the events of recent months is that the West has failed to engage so much of the world in a united front against Russia – the exceptions being those who are already part of the West and a few who passionately want to join the club.

This is unexpected, since few people approve of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Moscow is dealing with problems that are seemingly irrelevant to anyone but itself, and the harsh methods and humanitarian consequences of the conflict do not elicit much sympathy from outside. In other words, objectively, the West has an excellent chance to win over most of the rest of the world by taking the line that its cause here is about opposition to barbarism.

But this is not happening. Why? There are perhaps three main reasons.

Firstly, the non-Western world knows perfectly well that wars on the planet have never stopped, including in the last 30 years, and statements from the EU states about the era of ‘harmony and prosperity’ that Putin interrupted are perceived as both selfishness and hypocrisy. Telling people in the Middle East, for example, that Russia has violated every conceivable moral standard is, to put it mildly, difficult in light of what the region has experienced since the Cold War ended.

Secondly, most in the former third world see the current events as the culmination of a long-standing conflict related to the assertive policies of the US and its allies regarding the territories directly adjacent to Russia. Their attitude is something like: ‘What did you expect would happen when you provoked the tiger?’

Finally, the reaction of the majority of the planet illustrates their irritation with the West as a whole. It is perceived as a hegemon with a colonial history which is always abusing its powers. The reason is not support for Russia’s actions, but opposition to the West’s attempts to impose its will on others, which often harms their own interests. Also, schadenfreude over America’s failed attempts to impose its will compensates for any doubts about the legitimacy of Moscow’s actions.

In other words, it’s not about sympathy for Russia, but antipathy to the West.

Western leaders are both surprised and alarmed by this situation. If the initial calls to join the boycott of Russia amounted to orders, now the demands have been replaced by exhortations and attempts to promise something in return. The selection of the G7 Summit guests – the presidents of India, Indonesia, Senegal, Argentina, and South Africa – is indicative.

The invited parties were warmly welcomed. Everyone was in a hurry to tap Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the shoulder and give him attention. But apart from general statements, nothing happened. And almost in parallel with the events in Europe, Modi participated in a virtual BRICS summit, and Argentina, it seems, together with Iran, has applied to join this emerging association.

The position of non-Western states is dictated not only by anti-colonial instincts, although they do exist. More importantly, in the new conditions, it is difficult for the West to offer the leading countries of the rest of the world anything that would force them to radically change their positions. There are now alternative sources of resources for development – ​​a number of members of the former third world today have money, skills, and to some extent, technology. The West is still ahead of them in many ways, but – and this is fundamentally important – it has now completely lost the desire to share its advantages.

Simply because it now fears competition from them – the experience of American support for the development of China is considered a mistake by the current elites.

Developing countries are of course interested in Western investment, but the nature of interaction is also changing. To put it mildly, the former third world is becoming more demanding and picky, and the West’s ability to impose its own conditions has weakened amid large-scale global changes.

The series of meetings in Europe was intended to show that the West is still the undisputed vanguard of the world, which has both the right and responsibility to lead others. For instance, NATO is once again attempting to become a global organization rather than regional.

The bloc’s most recent experience of this kind – in Afghanistan – ended in embarrassment. But now the approach is more natural – opposition to Russia.

As they see it, Russia is a threat to Western European security (as it was in the glory days of NATO), but it is also a dangerous pariah for all mankind, so opposing it will help expand the US-led club globally. Moreover, the specter of China looms – a systemic competitor to the West and, even better, an accomplice of ‘the Russians’.

How much the Western world itself is united for the full implementation of such a mission is a topic for another article. There are a lot of nuances here. However, even assuming that this is the case, there is no reason to think that NATO’s ambition will meet with understanding beyond its borders.

As a consequence, the broad refusal to recognize the right of the West to lead means there will no longer be a world order based on Western rules.

So People Are Buying Inflatable Jesus Now…

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In today’s epizode of “Weird stuff people buy” we have Inflatable Jesus blow-up doll that people are actually buying (for some strange reason). Maybe they choosing to have Jesus in their lives in a more literal way…

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Easy to inflate, Jesus is 50cm (19.6 inches) tall, looks super lifelike with long locks, hipster beard and flowing white robe. He promises not to punish you with flood or famine if you do something remiss.

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He’s very friendly and will serve as a reminder to go out and do good in the world. If you need proof that he’s the messiah he even floats (walks) on water! This Jesus also deflates for easy storage when you need a break from the Lord.

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This might be a pretty good gag gift for someone who is not afraid to burn in hell, or for your Christian friend you wish to piss off. As you can see from the Instagram posts below, people are really spending their hard-earned money on this thing, and hanging out with it:

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U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve Being EXPORTED – We are Being Sold-Out

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More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a U.S. emergency oil reserves release aimed at lowering domestic fuel prices . . . were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices touched record highs.

The export of crude and fuel is blunting the impact of the moves by U.S. President Joe Biden designed to lower record pump prices. Biden on Saturday renewed a call for gasoline suppliers to cut their prices, drawing criticism from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

About 1 million barrels per day is being released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) through October. The flow is draining the SPR, which last month fell to the lowest since 1986.

U.S. crude futures are above $105 per barrel and gasoline and diesel prices above $5 a gallon in one-fifth of the nation https://gasprices.aaa.com/. U.S. officials have said oil prices could be higher if the SPR had not been tapped.

The fourth-largest U.S. oil refiner, Phillips 66, shipped about 470,000 barrels of sour crude from the Big Hill SPR storage site in Texas to Trieste, Italy, according to U.S. Customs data. Trieste is home to a pipeline that sends oil to refineries in central Europe.

Atlantic Trading & Marketing (ATMI), an arm of French oil major TotalEnergies, exported 2 cargoes of 560,000 barrels each, the data showed.

Phillips 66 declined to comment on trading activity. ATMI did not respond to a request for comment.

Cargoes of SPR crude were also headed to the Netherlands and to a Reliance refinery in India, an industry source said. A third cargo headed to China, another source said — even though China is buying oil directly from Russia and ignoring US Sanctions upon Russia!

At least one cargo of crude from the West Hackberry SPR site in Louisiana was set to be exported in July, a shipping source added.

“Crude and fuel prices would likely be higher if (the SPR releases) hadn’t happened, but at the same time, it isn’t really having the effect that was assumed,” said Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler.

The latest exports follow three vessels that carried SPR crude to Europe in April helping replace Russian crude supplies.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

The United States of America is being intentionally weakened and drained of resources vital to our survival and to our national security.

Almost one-third of our military weaponry/ ammunition, and armor, has been exported to either Europe (for NATO) or donated to Ukraine.

Now we find that OUR emergency oil reserves are not being used here in the USA, but instead, being shipped OUT OF THE COUNTRY.

If the U.S. is attacked or, God forbid, invaded, we won’t have enough weapons or ammunition, and now, we won’t even have enough of OUR OWN OIL!

This is an intentional weakening of the nation; perhaps to make us ripe for takeover.

Remember who the people are in charge, who are doing these things, so they can be held personally accountable.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to media questions at a joint news conference with Foreign Minister of Belarus Vladimir Makei following talks, Minsk, June 30, 2022

Esteemed Mr Makei,
Ladies and gentlemen,
As my colleague and friend has just said, our talks took place in a truly friendly atmosphere of trust and were very substantial, as they should be between allies and strategic partners. First, I would like to thank our Belarusian friends once again for their traditional hospitality in the wonderful city of Minsk and for the brilliant, streamlined organisation of our work.

The visit is timed to an important historical date – 30 years of diplomatic relations (June 25). Of course, this is just one more, albeit important, landmark in the centuries-old history of our truly fraternal nations. To mark this occasion, we have just cancelled postal envelopes specially issued for this date and signed an anniversary joint statement that I hope you will read. It is worth it.

We emphasised that in the past few years we have traversed a long road in developing our integration. The foreign ministries of Russia and Belarus provide diplomatic support for implementing 28 union economic integration programmes endorsed by the Supreme State Council of the Union State in November 2021.

Today, we reviewed topical bilateral issues. We also discussed the schedule of forthcoming contacts, including preparations for a joint meeting of the foreign ministry collegiums of Russia and Belarus, scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year. We reviewed implementation of the plan for foreign ministry consultations in 2022-2023.

We believe we have managed to achieve remarkable success in trade, and economic and investment cooperation. Last year, bilateral trade reached about $40 billion. Major joint projects, such as, for example, the construction of the Belarusian nuclear power plant, are underway. Industrial cooperation is on the up and up, paving the way for new industrial and logistics chains.

We have a high opinion of the vigorous and broad development of interregional ties. Today, the 9th Forum of Russian and Belarusian Regions is to kick off in Grodno, where contracts worth an estimated $1 billion, a record-high amount, are expected to be signed.

We spoke at length about regional and international matters and agreed to continue enhancing foreign policy coordination and stand up together for the interests of our two countries in the world arena, in keeping with the two-year programmes on coordinating our actions in foreign policy.

We supported further steps towards more active cooperation in multilateral associations, primarily, in the EAEU, CSTO and the CIS. We have almost identical views on how Eurasian cooperation should develop in the future.

We agreed that we would also continue to coordinate our approaches in other multilateral formats, first and foremost, at the UN and the OSCE. We discussed the progress on the projects that are being carried out in Belarus under the auspices of the United Nations, many of which are being funded by the Russian side. We will vigorously continue to oppose any attempts to politicise human rights issues. We see hopeless attempts like this being made at the UN and the OSCE. The West keeps making them with enviable persistence.

We are seriously concerned about NATO’s activities in close vicinity to our borders, primarily in the Baltic states and Poland. We share the opinion that these activities are openly confrontational and tend to lead to more tensions, as well as the division of the European security and cooperation space, that is, they are producing the results which the establishment of the OSCE was supposed to help prevent. Now they are dismantling all this with their own hands, waiving, among other things, the principle of indivisible security, which was publicly declared at the highest level in the OSCE in the late 1990s and in 2010, when it was said that no country should enhance its security at the expense of others. The West’s actions have buried this principle.

In the light of the manifestly unfriendly steps taken by the United States and its satellites towards our countries, we reaffirmed that we are firmly determined to further preclude any attempts by the West to interfere in our domestic affairs. We agreed to continue to join efforts to oppose illegitimate unilateral actions by Washington, Brussels and their allies in the international arena.

We advised our colleagues of our assessments of the special military operation in Ukraine. We maintain regular dialogue on these issues. Our presidents discussed this topic at a top-level meeting in St Petersburg on June 25.

We are grateful to our Belarusian allies for completely understanding the causes, goals and tasks of the special military operation. President Vladimir Putin discussed these issues in his remarks yesterday concerning the results of the Caspian Five Summit in Ashgabat.

We focused on biological security, while exchanging opinions on strategic stability and arms control. We agree that US activities on post-Soviet space are quite dangerous and non-transparent. The activities of Pentagon’s biolabs in Ukraine highlight the risks they bear. We exposed these facts but failed to obtain a US response. So, we initiated a process, stipulated by the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, in full compliance with its Article 5. We sent inquiries to countries, parties to this important international treaty. We perceive threats to the national security of Russia and Belarus, the reluctance of the United States to ensure the transparency of its military-biological activities in many countries on post-Soviet space, primarily those around Russia and Belarus. We have an agreement, within the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, to establish close and transparent interaction on these issues, in order to counter attempts to advance such projects (that cause concern in our countries) behind the scenes and without due transparency.

We are also cooperating in order to counter the dirty information war unleashed by the collective West against our countries. We agreed to expand and upgrade Russian-Belarusian media cooperation, and you should be particularly interested in this issue.

We are satisfied with the results of the talks. They help advance our foreign policy coordination still further on the basis of allied and strategic partnership for the benefit of our countries and fraternal nations.

Question:  A risky redivision of the world’s energy sector is taking place. What are the United States and the EU counting on, while renouncing Russian imports?

Sergey Lavrov: I believe that everyone understands what they are counting on. They have no misgivings about openly discussing this issue. They noted this once again yesterday, at the NATO summit in Madrid. They are expecting all other states to unfailingly obey their will, reflecting their selfish interests, primarily those of the United States. We have repeatedly been convinced that modern Europe, in the form of the EU, is losing its independence or even the signs of independence that it once had. Europe completely obeys positions that the United States imposes on it, including those in the sphere of economic sanctions. It is renouncing Russian imports and demolishing logistic and financial chains that had taken decades to create.

Look at the current list of sanctions. I suggest that you conduct this interesting analysis. Compare restrictions that European countries are imposing on Russia and Belarus with the relevant US restrictions. The United States is sparing itself and is trying not to encroach on various spheres that could seriously damage its own economy. Yes, the United States is also experiencing negative effects from this activity, but Europe is suffering much more. I believe that, apart from “punishing” our countries, the United States wants to weaken the European Union as its rival.

Question: At the Madrid summit, NATO stated that Russia was the main threat to the Alliance according to its new strategic concept. Following this statement and their decision to fortify the eastern flank, does Moscow consider itself bound by its commitments under the Russia-NATO Founding Act, or has this document lost its validity?

Sergey Lavrov: In the legal sense, the Founding Act continues to exist. We did not initiate the procedure for terminating this agreement. In the run-up to the summit, NATO had lengthy and vocal discussions about whether they still needed the Act or whether they would be better off abandoning it. As a result, they decided to let this matter be, but their decisions grossly violate the Founding Act, primarily with regard to NATO’s commitment not to permanently deploy significant combat forces on the territory of new (Eastern European) Alliance members.

We will analyse the situation and decide on our further moves depending on how and in what form NATO will move forward with the decisions it adopted and announced.

Question: Will it be possible to restore more or less acceptable political and diplomatic relations with EU countries in the future? Will there be another Iron Curtain? Do we have a bloc like NATO or the EU?

Sergey Lavrov (adding after Vladimir Makei): I agree with almost all of that. As for our relations with the EU, Russia has not had them since 2014. Brussels swallowed the humiliating move by the opposition forces which perpetrated a coup in Ukraine in defiance of EU guarantees. In response, the Crimea residents refused to live in a neo-Nazi state. Ukraine’s eastern regions did the same, and the European Union failed to muster enough courage to talk sense into the putschists who carried out an illegal power grab, and in fact began to support them in their attack, including physical, on the people of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. When the referendum took place in Crimea and the DPR and the LPR were proclaimed, the European Union, instead of pushing for compliance with the agreements between President Yanukovych and the opposition it had co-sponsored, sided with the ultranationalist and deep down neo-Nazi regime which proclaimed fighting the Russian language and culture as its goal. In the years that followed, the regimes led by Poroshenko and Zelensky proved Kiev’s loyalty to this particular course.

In 2014, when it all happened, the EU, feeling powerless and aware of its own inability to enforce implementation of its own proposals, said the Russian Federation was to blame. It imposed sanctions on our country and cancelled the Russia-EU summit planned for June 2014, destroyed every other mechanism that it took us decades to create, such as biannual summits, annual meetings between the Russian Government and the European Commission, four common spaces that underlay four road maps, 20 sector-specific dialogues, including a dialogue on visa-free travel and much more. All of that was ruined overnight. Relations have been non-existent since then. There were occasional technical contacts, but nothing major. No wonder there are no relations now, but we never close ourselves off. From now on, we will never trust the Americans or the EU. We are doing our best not to depend on them in the sectors that are critically important for survival of the state, the people and our security. When and if they get over their obsession and come back with some kind of a proposal, we will see what exactly it is about. We will not play along with their self-serving plans. If it comes to resuming the dialogue, we will push for a level playing field for everyone and a focus on balancing the interests of all participants on an equal footing.

With regard to the Iron Curtain, it is already on its way down. They should make sure they don’t get anything caught in it as it goes down. In all other matters, we have a straightforward position: we are for things being fair.

In 2014, our “partners” refused to hold a summit amid serious events, including a coup, a referendum in Crimea, and a radical change in the situation in the Black Sea region. If you were serious about searching for solutions, this meeting was the way forward. It could have been used to have a candid discussion about the complaints and the counter questions the partners in the Russian Federation had for the EU. The withdrawal from all contacts that took place after March 2014 only goes to show that the EU is not interested in a dialogue, and does not want to understand our interests or listen to what we have to say. What it wants is for everyone to agree with the Brussels’ decisions which are a carbon copy of the decisions made in Washington. We have been able to see that in recent years.

Question: Norway has refused to allow Russian cargo, including food, medicines, and necessary equipment, to Spitsbergen. What steps will be taken to resolve this issue? What might our response be, if any?

Sergey Lavrov: First, we want to see Norway respond to our reaction that immediately followed the incident. We sent an official request demanding clarification as to how this move aligns with Norway’s commitments under the Spitsbergen Treaty of 1920. I hope they will respond promptly. Then, we will analyse the situation. And we will act quickly.

Russia Demands Israel Stop Sovereignty-Violating Airstrikes on Syria

Russia issued a statement Monday, warning such attacks are “categorically unacceptable.”

By Jason Ditz

Over the weekend, Israel carried out attacks against a poultry farm on the Syrian coast, wounding two civilians. Russia issued a statement Monday, warning such attacks are “categorically unacceptable.”

Russia has positions on the Syrian coast, and has warned Israel away from the area before. The latest attack came from the coast, and conspicuously Russia didn’t comment when it happened.

The Russians say it violates Syrian sovereignty, and is against international norms. Those are plainly true things, but have never stopped Israel before.

Israel has shown time and again they’re willing to keep attacking over objections. If Russia decides to flat out stop them militarily, they clearly could, but so far that’s not been the case.

Instead Russia has tried to deter further attacks with air defenses. That’s allowed Syria to intercept more Israeli missiles, but not stop them outright. This warning sounds serious, but so did the last few without any action to stop the attacks.

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EURO CURRENCY PLUNGING AGAINST U.S. DOLLAR

The EURO currency is plunging in value against the U.S. Dollar all day Tuesday, as the world realizes what absolutely must happen as a result of Russia’s announcement they will no longer sell vital commodities to “unfriendly nations.”

At the start of currency trading in the world Tuesday, it took 92 “EURO cents” to buy one U.S. Dollar.    As the day wore on, the value of the EURO plunged so that it now takes 105.552 EURO cents to buy one U.S. dollar.   That’s a plunge in value of 14.47% in one day!

The chart below shows the plunge of the EURO in trading today:

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The reason this is happening has to do with a Decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, July 4.   In that Decree, Russia declared it will no longer sell vital commodities to “unfriendly nations.”

Since March, Russia decided that they would allow European countries to deposit EUROS into Russia’s GAZPROM Bank, the bank would convert the money into Rubles (Russia’s national currency) and those Rubles would be sent into Russia to pay for goods and services.

The reason Russia did that was because Europe SEIZED / CONFISCATED upwards of $285 BILLION in Russian Sovereign Wealth Funds that had been held on deposit in European Banks.   The money was grabbed by Europe as “Sanctions” against Russia for entering Ukraine militarily.

Put simply, Europe stole Russia’s money.

The Russians, unwilling to be robbed again, then established the trade policy outlined above, depositing EUROS in GAZPROM Bank branches IN EUROPE, having them converted into Rubles, and then sending the Rubles into Russia to pay.   Through this method, Europe was unable to seize any more Russian money.

In the ensuing months, the Europeans have literally doubled-down on Sanctions, grabbing the yachts of Russian wealthy oligarchs, cutting off transit of goods from Russia into its exclave state (oblast) of Kaliningrad.

So now, Russia has decreed that they will no longer sell vital commodities — at all — to unfriendly nations.

This means, among other things, no gas, no oil, no wheat, no barley, no chemical neon gas, etc.

Well, Europe NEEDS those things to exist.   Without Russian oil and gas, European industry won’t be able to operate.  Plants will shut down.  Jobs will be abolished.  Products won’t be manufactured.

Without gas, European power plants won’t be able to generate enough electricity to keep businesses running.  There also won’t be enough gas for common citizens in Europe to heat their homes this coming winter.

Without Russian Wheat and other agriculture, Europeans will go hungry.

This is the future of Europe: Cold, hungry, no jobs, no industry.

Europe thought they could literally break Russia’s economy with Sanctions over Ukraine.  Instead, what actually happened was Russia’s economy got through a tough hit and survived, but now Europe’s economy is the one being actually destroyed; by their own Sanctions.

Because the money class sees that Europe cannot survive economically, or agriculturally, they realize the European Currency will likely collapse and be worthless.  So they’re SELLING EUROS to get rid of them while they still have value.

The chart below show the gains by the U.S. Dollar against the EURO today:

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Thus, today’s plunge in value of the EURO versus the U.S. Dollar.

Trouble is, as Europe goes . . .  so goes the United States about two or three weeks later.

Of course, the US has it’s own oil and natural gas, so while it will be amazingly expensive, we’ll still be able to get it.

And the US is a large producer of Agriculture, despite the fed Gov doing it’s best to order farmers to plow-under their fields due to greenhouse gases, carbon emissions, and environmental concerns.  So while food will get stunningly expensive, there will still be food in America.

There may not be, in Europe.

The real impact upon the U.S. will come as European industry closes.  THAT is what will hit U.S. industry very hard, and whether it survives . . . is a real question.

As of today, what Europe absolutely, positively, without doubt and without fail, WILL SUFFER, can only be compared to the Great Depression and conditions during World War 2.

They WILL suffer this, by the end of 2022.  No way to avoid it.  At all.

What the U.S. will end up suffering will be somewhere between the great depression and the 2008 financial crisis.   Closer, though, to the Great Depression.  Because without products and services from Europe, the US will see wide swaths of its industry, crippled.

Thank all those people who pushed “free trade” in the 1990’s and early 2000’s.  They are personally to blame for what’s coming because they outsourced so much production to foreign entities, so they could personally pocket the money saved by reduced labor costs of foreign lands, while keeping prices for goods the same as they had previously been.

They sold out America to line their own pockets.  THAT is what the “free trade” crowd did.

The Question of Ancient Kings: Cerdic of Wessex, First Saxon King of England?

Historians of the ancient world face a myriad of challenges when studying the past. Centuries of legends and myths become intertwined with recorded facts, leaving behind a complex web of mystery. Such is the case with Cerdic of Wessex. Was he an ancient Saxon conqueror, or a British ealdorman? Did he do battle with King Arthur, or was he the legendary wielder of Excalibur himself? Did Cerdic of Wessex even exist?

Cerdic of Wessex and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , Cerdic of Wessex did, indeed, exist. The Chronicle was the first attempt at an official record of English history, written around 890 AD and edited up until 1100 AD. It tells us that Cerdic was a Saxon (referring to people of Germanic descent who occupied central and northern Germany) chieftain who landed at modern-day Hampshire in 495 with five ships full of warriors.

By 519, Cerdic and his son, Cynric, had laid claim to swathes of land through a series of battles with the Britons. After his victory at the Battle of Cerdic’s Ford, Cerdic established the Kingdom of the West Saxons (Wessex) with himself as king.

Cerdic is thought to have died in 534, yet his influence lasted for centuries. Some genealogies of the English monarchy claim that every monarch of England except for Canute, Hardecanute, the Harolds, and William the Conqueror descended from Cerdic.

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South Britain in the early 6th century, which more or less corresponds to when Cerdic of Wessex lived. (my work / CC BY-SA 3.0 )

Cerdic of Wessex: King or Ealdorman?

Here is where the historical record becomes complicated. First, scholars have noted that “Cerdic” is a British name , not Saxon. Additionally, the Chronicle refers to Cerdic and Cynric as ealdormen, not kings. If they were leaders of an invading party from the continent, why the title of ealdormen, which suggests they were appointed officials in some capacity?

Finally, ancient sources differ and conflict in their account of Cerdic’s life, reign, and lineage, and the Chronicle, our primary source of evidence regarding Cerdic, was written 350 years after the events described.

Still, while the accuracy of the record cannot be completely trusted, Cerdic is referenced in numerous works. Additionally, three locations in England bear his name: Cerdicesford, Cerdicesleaga, and Cerdicesbeorg. We can presume that these places were named after an influential person, and that that person was Cerdic.

Theories Regarding Cerdic’s Name

Rodney Castleden, author of numerous well-respected history books, posits that Cerdic may have been a Briton whose family was entrusted by the late Roman Empire to defend a portion of the Saxon Shore (a series of fortifications put in place along both sides of the English Channel). Cerdic may have decided to expand his territory and initiated his invasion from his family’s holding. This would explain the title of ealdormen as well as the British etymology of the name and is supported by the lack of Saxon architecture in the area.

Castleden further argues that Cerdic may have been neither Germanic nor a local of what would later be called Wessex; he may have come from Sussex as an advance party. Cerdic’s arrival along the Southampton coast in 495 coincides with Aelle’s (King of the South Saxons) consolidation of his kingdom and would be a logical strategic maneuver. The name “Cerdic” may have been a nickname given by other residents of Sussex and adopted by Cerdic, as Saxons taking on British names was not unprecedented (Castleden points to Caedbaed, an Anglo-Saxon king who took a British name). But while these are historically logical explanations of some aspects of Cerdic’s aura of mystery, what of his relation to King Arthur ?

Arthurian Legend and Cerdic, King of Wessex

First, historical consensus is that there is no evidence King Arthur was a real person. The two primary descriptions of Arthur, Nennius’ history of Arthur’s 12 battles and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the King’s of Britain, are based primarily on poetry or a long-lost manuscript that Monmouth supposedly had access to. Each presents a series of physical impossibilities. For example, Nennius’ 12 battles were so geographically widespread it is unlikely Arthur could have participated in all of them. Additionally, the only surviving contemporary historic record of a battle between the Saxons and Britons (Badon Hills) does not describe Arthur at all. How, then, did Cerdic become involved in the myth and legend of Arthur?

Details regarding the life and exploits of Cerdic are hardly available, which likely lead to historians “filling in the blanks” over centuries of writing. In his 1862 book, The Manual of Dates, George H. Townsend references a battle fought in 520 between Cerdic and Arthur. Yet, if Arthur, who supposedly never lost a fight, won a resounding victory over Cerdic of Wessex, why was Cerdic allowed to conquer so much territory and establish a kingdom? While much of Arthur’s supposed life is shrouded in total mystery, at least portions of Cerdic’s are accepted as fact, including his successful invasion of the Isle of Wight in 530, just a few years after he was supposed to have been defeated by Arthur. Thus, even if Arthur existed, it seems highly unlikely the two ever met on the battlefield.

Silent Hill Promotional Event In Tokyo

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Models dressed as bandaged nurses take part in a promotional event for the film “Silent Hill” on June 22, 2006 in Tokyo, Japan.

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Are Cerdic and King Arthur One in the Same?

Historians John and Joseph Rudmin noted a number of similarities between the Arthur of legend and the Cerdic of history (who they posit was also known as Ceredig Vreichvras). They examined several writings regarding both figures and created a table comparing them side-by-side, revealing striking parallels. The paper makes for fascinating reading and argues that King Arthur and Cerdic were actually the same person, which the authors claim resolves a number of the problems surrounding Arthur’s potential presence in history. Others, however, have pointed out that these conclusions rest on the shaky foundations of assumption and lack the kind of hard historical evidence necessary to draw a firm conclusion.

Ultimately, modern historians must grapple with the fact that history has often been used as a political tool. For centuries (and yes, even today) historical narratives served to bolster nationalism, to push political ideals, to boost the reputation of leaders, or to minimize dark deeds.

This fact, when combined with the often ill-recorded details of the ancient world, leads to figures like King Arthur and Cerdic of Wessex, people shrouded in mystery whose lives were mythologized by successive chroniclers of history weaving stories to suit their needs.

We may never know the actual truth of who Cerdic was, why he was so influential, or whether he may have inspired Arthurian legend, but to be honest, the mysteries of history are half the fun.

This is what “Diversity” Actually Is . . .

The politically-correct, and the weak-minded have, for years, told us that “Diversity is our strength” when reality shows it is just the opposite.  Want proof? Watch the two minute video of “Diversity” attacking in New York City . . .

The video below is from Bel Fries in New York City.   The three women were told that the fries they ordered would cost $1.75 more for the extra sauce they wanted.   The women didn’t want to pay the $1,75 . . . . so they did this:

THIS is what “Diversity” actually is:

The New York City Police Department has confirmed the arrests of the three women: Pearl Ozaria , 27, Chitara Plasencia , 25, and Tatiyanna Johnson , 23.”

Ahhhhhh “Diversity.”   Had enough yet?

The U.S. is welcoming Finland and Sweden to NATO. That’s a mistake.

Instead of lowering the chances of war, the membership of the two Nordic countries increases the risk for the entire alliance.
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When NATO alliance members meet in Madrid this week, one of the featured agenda items is Finland and Sweden’s request to officially join the alliance. The NATO leadership has welcomed their ascension, with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg saying the two countries’ “membership in NATO would increase our shared security.” Though member state Turkey originally signaled it objected to the idea, it lifted its opposition after a breakthrough on Tuesday that clears the way for the Nordic states.

While enlarging NATO might seem like a wise thing to do in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it doesn’t take much sober analysis to conclude that adding yet more NATO members is likely to have the opposite effect of what the secretary general hopes.

Instead of lowering the chances of war, the membership of Finland and Sweden would increase the risk of future conflict for the entire alliance; adding two more triggers for Article 5 — the provision in the NATO charter that stipulates that an attack on one is an attack on all — would add to the risk of war for the entire alliance. That would be an unwise course in any case, but it’s particularly ill-advised given that it would make Finland and Sweden more vulnerable, as well.

But there is an even more fundamental reason to oppose expanding the alliance at present: It isn’t needed. Russia has exposed itself as being shockingly weak in conventional military power, and it is now clear, beyond any question, that Russian ground forces don’t even possess the capacity to invade the NATO alliance. It isn’t entirely clear that Moscow will be able to capture the entirety of the Donbas region, in the single country of Ukraine, directly on its border. Russia is constrained in its ability to project power beyond its country by systemic flaws in its logistics system. It is very difficult to get supplies beyond more than 180 miles away and virtually impossible beyond that without dedicated rail links.

It is understandable that people who live near Russia would be afraid that one day Russia might invade them as it invaded Ukraine, and that, no doubt, led Sweden and Finland to make a sudden U-turn on their long-held preferences for neutrality. But an unemotional evaluation of their neighborhood shows their fears are misplaced. Sweden and Finland are at no clearer risk of an attack from Moscow than they have been for the past 70 years.

Though the U.S. has also recently shown itself eager to expand the alliance to these countries, the accession of Sweden and, especially, Finland could hardly be said to further the American national interest. Finland shares a roughly 800-mile border with Russia that NATO would be committed to defend, and this defense — or the stationing of NATO military infrastructure in Finland — would risk antagonizing Russia.

Washington should at least be clear that if Finland becomes a NATO member, it expects that the Europeans would be tasked with defending Finland’s border, as the U.S. itself is already doing too much for the defense of wealthy and capable European countries.

None of this is to say that Russia doesn’t pose a danger to Europe, however. It does.

But the nature of the threat isn’t conventional military power; it’s the massive Russian nuclear arsenal that could nearly wipe out the U.S. and Europe in an Armageddon-type scenario.

Have Breakfast Ready in 60 Seconds Each Morning with these Freezer Friendly Breakfast Burritos

This is a SUPER IMPORTANT video. Check it out.

“Partnership in Blue Pacific” to Turn Pacific Islands into Anti-China War Zone

If world war III in Europe isn’t enough, they want it to also occur in the Pacific.

Finland and Sweden’s joining NATO is the ‘opposite of what President Putin wanted,’ says former Ambassador Bill Taylor

June 29, 202200:42

Russia poses no realistic threat to Sweden or Finland. Since World War II, Russia hasn’t exhibited the slightest interest in territorial acquisition in either country, and in fact, Finland and Russia were on friendly terms during the Cold War. In contrast, Russia was consistently and emphatically clear for 15 years that it regarded any NATO expansion along its border in either Ukraine or Georgia as an existential threat that it would use force to prevent — and in fact has done so twice (Georgia 2008 and Ukraine 2014). Thus Georgia and Ukraine had reason to fear a Russian attack. Finland and Sweden don’t.

Extending NATO membership to these two countries wouldn’t only burden the U.S., which would be expected to go to war on behalf of these two Nordic states if they are attacked. It would saddle Helsinki and Stockholm with troubles, as well. Up to now, if a war ever broke out between NATO and Russia, both Finland and Sweden would have been protected by their neutral status. If membership were extended to both, that protection would be gone.

If the two became NATO members and the alliance went to war with Russia in the future, both countries would be thrust almost immediately into an armed conflict whether they wanted to be or not — and even if their national interests weren’t otherwise threatened. Given their status as NATO members, the Kremlin would almost certainly attack airfields and ports in both countries to prevent other allies from using their facilities to stage attacks against Russia.

Federal Agents Personally Delivering “Cease and Desist” Letters for Social Media Postings about Gov’t

It's American "freedom" don't you know!

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Four (4) federal Agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, paid a personal visit to Madeline Walker of Texas, to warn her, in writing, that her “harassing and threatening” social media posts about government ” are unnecessary and unwelcome” and if she doesn’t stop, they will arrest her under 18 USC 115.

Now, Ms. Walker is a radical leftist, pro-abortion person.   In a recent social media post on Twitter about the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, she wrote:

“Burn every fucking government building down right the fuck now.  Slaughter them all. Fuck you god damn pigs.”

Ms. Walker then found four federal agents banging on her Texas home’s front door early this morning.   Among those agents was:

Joshua H. Henry, Special Agent, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, National Protection and Programs Directorate, Federal Protective Service  out of Houston, TX, who questioned her about her posting and handed her this letter:

For what it’s worth, the Statute they cite is the precise statute under which I was personally convicted, after THREE trials in US District Court back in 2009 and 2010.

First trial in December, 2009, resulted in a Hung Jury.  Second trial in March, 2010 also resulted in a Hung Jury.   By the third trial, I was Bankrupt from having been held without Bail for writing an Editorial they didn’t like, filed bankruptcy because I could no longer afford to pay my attorneys – or anyone else- having been held in jail for 119 days without bail, and was given a  public Defender.  He did such a poor job that, at trial three in August, 2010, I was convicted.

I was Sentenced to 33 months in federal prison, for including in my Editorial about a Gun Control case in Chicago, my opinion that “these judges deserve to be killed.”

I was held in the Communications Management Unit (Terrorist Unit) at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Tighter security and fewer privileges than Super Max!

So, in short, I said someone “deserves” to be killed and got 33 months federal terrorist prison.  She told the world: ““Burn every fucking government building down right the fuck now.  Slaughter them all. Fuck you god damn pigs.” and she got a hand delivered cease and desist letter.

So right-wing conservatives like me get prison, while left-wing maniacs get a cease and desist letter.   Same criminal statute!  How’s THAT for “equal protection of the law?”

Oh and about the letter above, this is how they intend to intimidate Americans into shutting up.   Calling protected speech “Harassment/threats” is deliberate intimidation by them.

Such is the state of “liberty” in the USA.

Pathetic.

Rationing Has Already Started In Europe As The Entire Globe Plunges Into A Horrific Economic Nightmare

If countries in Europe are already beginning to ration certain things due to “supply problems”, how long will it be before it starts happening in the United States?  Up until the past couple of years, many of us in the western world always considered shortages to be something that only “unsophisticated” poor countries on the other side of the planet had to deal with.  But the last couple of years have shown us that painful shortages can happen to wealthy countries in the western world too.  At first we were told that they were “just temporary”, but the months went by and we just kept having more shortages.  In fact, in 2022 “supply problems” have become so serious that many supermarkets in Europe have been forced to strictly ration essential items at various times.  For example, it was being reported that due to the war in Ukraine flour, sunflower oil and sugar were all being rationed by stores in Greece

After limiting the sale of some flours and sunflower oil online, Greek supermarkets are turning to rationing the sale of sugar as well, now including in their stores, over supply problems.

The AB Vassilopoulos is setting a maximum limit on the purchase of all brands of corn and sunflower oil and of flour per customer while Mymarket put a ceiling on sunflower oil purchases and Sklavenitis has added sugar to the rationed sales of corn oil through its online store, with a maximum of four packs, the products in high demand from restaurants, some of which said they have to stop selling french fries and other fried foods.

Over the past few months we have seen similar measures implemented in other major European nations as well.  For example, the war in Ukraine prompted some pretty severe rationing in Spain

Sporadic shortages of products like eggs, milk, and other dairy products also hit Spain since the war in Ukraine began. And major supermarkets including Mercadona and Makro began rationing sunflower oil earlier this month.

Now, stores will temporarily be allowed to limit “the number of goods that can be bought by a client,” according to information in the Official State Gazette published on Wednesday.

Looking forward, natural gas rationing is the next big thing that many people in Europe are talking about.  The flow of Russian natural gas into Europe has been cut back, and it appears that this may soon cause widespread rationing in Italy

Italy may start rationing natural-gas consumption to certain industrial giants, after Russia’s Gazprom halved supplies on Friday.

On the weekend, the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that the Italian government and energy industry would meet Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the crisis, with the likely outcome being the introduction of a state of alert under the country’s gas emergency protocol.

And CNN is reporting that Germany is “one step closer to rationing supplies” now that Russia has decided to reduce the flow of natural gas going to that country…

Europe’s biggest economy is now officially running short of natural gas and is escalating a crisis plan to preserve supplies as Russia turns off the taps.

Germany on Thursday activated the second phase of its three-stage gas emergency program, taking it one step closer to rationing supplies to industry — a step that would deliver a huge blow to the manufacturing heart of its economy.

Of course there are other parts of the globe that are dealing with problems that are far, far more serious than what Europe is facing right now.

As I discussed in an article that I posted earlier this week, significant numbers of people are starting to literally drop dead from starvation in portions of eastern Africa.  Global food supplies just keep getting tighter, and the head of the UN is openly telling us that the world is heading into an “unprecedented global hunger crisis”.

So if you have plenty of food to eat tonight, you should be thankful.

Here in the United States, economic conditions are deteriorating fairly rapidly, and most Americans are completely and totally unprepared for any sort of a major economic downturn.  Earlier today, I came across yet another survey that shows that about 60 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck

“We find that consumers in all income brackets — including those who make more than $100,000 annually — are living paycheck to paycheck. PYMNTS’ research finds that 61% of U.S. consumers were living paycheck to paycheck in April 2022, marking a 9 percentage point increase from 52% in April 2021, meaning that approximately three in five U.S. consumers devote nearly all of their salaries to expenses with little to nothing left over at the end of the month.”

So what is going to happen when those people start losing their jobs in large numbers?

Already, we have seen the number of tech layoffs greatly accelerate over the last couple of months.

Sadly, the layoffs will get much worse in the months ahead.

And as inflation continues to systematically eat away at our standard of living, Americans are turning to credit cards at a record pace

As Americans grapple with the highest inflation in 40 years, the number of new credit cards have surged as more Americans rely on them to keep up with high prices. According to a recent report from the Federal Reserve, revolving credit (credit cards and lines of credit) increased by 19.6% from the previous year to $1.103 trillion.

Going into credit card debt is not a solution.

At best, it can buy you a little bit of time.

And it is especially a bad idea to go into credit card debt as we plunge into a recession.

At this point, almost everyone realizes that things are going to get bad.  According to one recent poll, a whopping 85 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. is “headed in the wrong direction”

The national dissatisfaction is bipartisan. Most Americans, 85%, say the country is headed in the wrong direction. A majority of Republicans have been unhappy with the direction of the country since Biden’s election. Democrats had been positive about how things were going, but now 78% say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

I was astounded to see that 78 percent of Democrats believe that the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction with a Democrat in the White House.

I have never seen a number like that ever before.

But this is just another indication that the hour is late and that things are about to start getting really crazy out there.

For the moment, life is still at least somewhat normal in the western world.

Sadly, it won’t stay that way for long, and so I would recommend using your time wisely.

Neil Oliver: This supposed utopia we’re having rammed down our throats isn’t working

Well said. I really like Neil.

Pfizer fraud admitted

In an interview with The Defender, the lawyer representing whistleblower Brook Jackson said Pfizer is arguing the court should dismiss Jackson’s lawsuit alleging fraud in Pfizer’s COVID-19 clinical trials because the U.S. government knew about the wrongdoings but continued to do business with the vaccine maker.

lawsuit filed by whistleblower Brook Jackson alleging Pfizer and two of its contractors manipulated data and committed other acts of fraud during Pfizer’s COVID-19 clinical trials is paused following a motion by the defendants to dismiss the case.

In an interview with The Defender, Jackson’s lawyer said Pfizer argued the lawsuit, which was filed under the False Claims Act, should be dismissed because the U.S. government knew of the wrongdoings in the clinical trials but continued to do business with the vaccine maker.

Under the False Claims Act, whistleblowers can be rewarded for confidentially disclosing fraud that results in a financial loss to the federal government.

However, a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision that expanded the scope of a legal principle known as “materiality” resulted in a series of federal court decisions in which fraud cases brought under the False Claims Act were dismissed.

As interpreted by the Supreme Court, if the government continued paying a contractor despite the contractor’s fraudulent activity, the fraud was not considered “material” to the contract.

Pfizer is a federal contractor because it signed multiple contracts with the U.S. government to provide COVID-19 vaccines and Paxlovid, a pill used to treat the virus.

“Pfizer claims they can get away with fraud as long as the government would write them a check despite knowing about the fraud,” attorney Robert Barnes said.

The other two defendants in the case are Ventavia Research Group, which conducted vaccine trials on behalf of Pfizer, and ICON PLC, also a Pfizer contractor.

In an attempt to strengthen the False Claims Act’s anti-retaliation provisions and install new safeguards against industry-level blacklisting of whistleblowers seeking employment, Congress in July 2021 introduced the False Claims Amendments Act of 2021.

In December 2021, Pfizer hired a well-connected lobbyist, Hazen Marshall, and the law firm Williams & Jensen to lobby against the bill.

Pfizer previously was heavily fined in connection with the False Claims Act. As part of a 2009 settlement, the company paid $2.3 billion in fines — the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice — stemming from allegations of illegal marketing of off-label products not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“Pfizer, one of the most criminally fined drug companies in the world, wants to weaken the laws that hold them accountable,” Barnes told The Defender.

Congress has taken no action on the False Claims Amendments Act since November 2021, when the bill was added to the Senate’s legislative calendar.

Barnes said the outcome of Jackson’s case against Pfizer is significant not just for his client, but also for the American public.

“This case will determine if Big Pharma can rip off the American people using a dangerous drug that harms millions without any legal remedy because they claim the government was in on the scam.”

Jackson was a regional director for Ventavia for a brief period in 2020 but was fired after she notified the FDA about issues with Pfizer’s vaccine trials.

After she was fired, she gave The BMJ a cache of internal company documents, photos and recordings highlighting the alleged wrongdoing by Ventavia.

The documents she provided contained evidence of falsified data, blind trial failures and awareness on the part of at least one Ventavia executive that members of the company’s staff were “falsifying data.”

Jackson’s documents also provided evidence of administrators who had “no training” or medical certifications, or who provided “very little oversight” during the trials.

Jackson filed her complaint in August 2021, in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas, Beaumont Division, alleging Pfizer, Ventavia and ICON “deliberately withheld crucial information from the United States that calls the safety and efficacy of their vaccine into question.”

A district court judge in February unsealed Jackson’s complaint, which included 400 pages of exhibits.

According to the complaint, Jackson, who had more than 15 years of experience working with clinical trials, “repeatedly informed her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns and data integrity issues” during the approximately two weeks she was employed by Ventavia.

“Brook [Jackson] brought a Qui Tam action and a retaliatory discharge case against Pfizer and others for fraud on the people concerning Pfizer’s false certifications to the U.S. Department of Defense about the safety and efficacy of their COVID-19 vaccine,” Barnes said.

A Qui Tam case refers to a provision under the False Claims Act that allows individuals and entities with evidence of fraud against federal programs or contracts to sue the wrongdoer on behalf of the U.S. government

“She was part of the clinical trials, witnessed extraordinary malfeasance, blew the whistle, and was quickly fired after she blew the whistle.”

Barnes said his legal team will in August file its opposition brief to Pfizer’s motion to dismiss, and the judge may rule on the motion to dismiss by fall 2022.

Full article HERE

We Are Witnessing A Stunning Breakdown Of Law And Order, And The Overwhelmed Police Seem Powerless To Stop It

Violent crimes are on the rise in six of America’s major cities and set to outpace the already historic levels of 2021 violent crime.

Baltimore, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and New York City are all on pace to break their 2021 levels of violent crime halfway through this year, with the nation’s largest city leading the group, according to crime data reviewed by Fox News.

At this point, violent crime is up 25.8 percent in New York City compared to the first half of last year.

That is staggering.

Of course New York City still has a way to go before it gets as bad as Chicago.

In the Windy City, there are hundreds of thousands of “high-priority emergency service calls” each year, and last year there were no police available to respond to those calls 52 percent of the time

New data uncovered by Wirepoints through public records requests to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) reveal that in 2021 there were 406,829 incidents of high-priority emergency service calls for which there were no police available to respond.

That was 52 percent of the 788,000 high-priority 911 service calls dispatched in 2021.

So if you are the victim of a violent crime in Chicago, your odds of having a police officer available to help you are about the same as guessing a coin flip correctly.

The following is a partial list of “high-priority emergency service calls” for which no police officer was available in 2021…

  • 14,955 – assaults in progress.
  • 17,828 – batteries in progress.
  • 16,350 – person with a gun.
  • 5,210 – person with a knife.
  • 12,787 – shots fired (reports from people, not the city’s automated “Shotspotter”)
  • 1,352 – person shot.
  • 887 – person stabbed.
  • 14,265 – domestic battery.

Despite numbers such as these, there are lots of people out there that are relentlessly calling for the police to be “defunded”.

Do they want total anarchy?

Because that is what would happen.

Our streets are already bad enough.  As you can see from this video, police in Chicago are having a really difficult time even protecting themselves at this point.

But Chicago actually doesn’t have the highest murder rate in the nation.

That honor goes to New Orleans

It’s no secret that New Orleans struggles with violent crime, but new statistics paint a grim picture of the Crescent City being on pace to be the murder capital of the United States if trends don’t change in 2022.

According to data from AH Datalytics, compiled using the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, New Orleans has a per capita year-to-date homicide rate of 72 per 100,000 residents. The next three U.S. cities behind New Orleans are Birmingham with a per capita homicide rate of 59 per 100,000 residents and Baltimore and St. Louis, each with a per capita homicide rate of 58 per 100,000 residents.

So far this year, the murder rate in New Orleans is up 44 percent.

But the corporate media is trying to convince us that all of this is perfectly “normal”, aren’t they?

Do you believe them?

One man that will never be fooled is World War II veteran Carl Spurlin Deke.  He just turned 100 years old on June 29th, and when he was interviewed by a local news outlet he boldly declared that the U.S. “is going to hell in a handbasket”

Deke’s gratitude for his life quickly turned into an emotional confession about his concern about the entitlement and ungrateful grievance erupting from younger generations saying, “People don’t realize what they have. They b*tch about it. And then nowadays, I am so upset because the things we did, the things we fought for, and the boys that died for it, it’s all going down the drain.” Deke began weeping as he added “Our country is going to hell in a handbasket. We haven’t got the country we had when I was raised, not at all.”

The 100-year-old WWII vet cried for those growing up in America today saying, “Nobody will have the opportunity I had. It’s just not the same. That’s not what our boys, that’s not what they died for.”

Sadly, he is 100 percent correct.

We are in an advanced state of decline, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

If things are this bad now, what will this country look like once economic conditions deteriorate quite a bit more?

Previous generations of young Americans were equipped to handle adversity.

This generation of young Americans is not.

The thin veneer of civilization that we all used to be able to take for granted is steadily disappearing, and our society is evolving into a horror show that would have been unrecognizable to previous generations.

If we would have done things differently, we could have gotten much different results.

Our choices have consequences, and now most of our major cities are being transformed into crime-infested hellholes right in front of our eyes.

Are there any old “Mad Magazine” fans out there?

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Buying FLOODED Supercars at Salvage Auction for CHEAP!

Oh My God! Don’t ejaculate on your screen!

U.S. Generals Have Been Wrong on Ukraine. We Shouldn’t Be Shocked

Frederick B. Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army-Europe, claimed last month that Ukraine’s forces would soon slow Russia’s advance and, the New York Times reported, begin “to roll back its gains by late summer.” Hodges said his confidence was based on his belief that “the Ukrainian logistical situation getting better each week while the Russian logistical situation will slowly degrade.”

Such claims, however, are in contradiction to observable reality on the battlefield – and continue a disturbing, decades-long trend of poor and misleading advice given by America’s top military officers.

Listening over the past four months to what America’s retired generals and admirals have said on TV, one would be forgiven for believing that Ukraine is winning its war with Russia, that Putin’s troops and leaders are incompetent, and that soon Ukrainian troops will begin rolling the Russians back.

Such belief, however, would be badly misplaced, as substantial evidence indicates virtually the opposite.

A Rosy Look at the Brutal Battle in Ukraine

Rosy, optimistic – and inaccurate – assessments from U.S. flag officers have unfortunately become the norm over the past few decades. While some current and former generals give excellent and accurate assessments, there are far too many that don’t. The consequence to American policy has often been severe. It is time to reassess how much credibility we should place with American generals and admirals.

As I have chronicled on these pages, the conditions and military fundamentals clearly evident for years have strongly suggested that Ukraine could not win a war with Russia, and that both Kyiv and Washington should have made different policy choices based on that reality, both before and since Russia’s illegal invasion. But as graphically detailed below, active and retired flag officers have continually claimed that – ignoring clear evidence to the contrary – Ukraine has a chance to win the war.

Encouraging Ukraine to Keep Up the Fight

Such unwarranted assertions have led policymakers and the American public to believe, improperly, that we should continue encouraging Ukraine to maintain its fight against Russia. American official policy has been to provide Kyiv with substantial armaments to defend itself and overwhelming emotional support.

If the generals were right, if Ukraine were indeed close to winning the war, and if the aid we have offered could tip the scales in Kyiv’s favor, then our policy might make sense. But it doesn’t. Ukraine isn’t winning the war and isn’t even close to parity, much less superiority, to Russian forces.

In my most recent piece at 19FortyFive, I detail many of the practical, military reasons Ukraine is losing the war and is likely to continue losing. In my assessment, if Kyiv continues refusing to seek a negotiated settlement with Russia – something that is understandably repugnant to many Ukrainian citizens and government – they are in danger not merely of sliding into a long-term stalemate, but of outright losing the war.

I do not hesitate to admit that I can’t guarantee an outcome in this war. There are too many variables and information I don’t have, and do not have access to the secret council of either the Russian or Ukrainian general staff, or that of the western NATO leaders. A number of things could change the dynamics and trajectory of the war, which are not publicly known. Of course events that have yet to happen could result in major course changes.

But as I have laid out in detail, the current trends and military fundamentals reveal Ukraine is unquestionably losing this war. For the conditions to change dramatically enough to make an eventual Ukrainian military victory possible, as many generals continue to claim, would require a radical shift from today’s realities. Beyond mere rhetoric, there is no evidence such a radical shift is forthcoming. It is therefore irresponsible, I argue, to tell the American people that the desired outcome is possible when all evidence screams that it’s not – and downright cruel to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and civilian population, to foster a belief that they have a chance.

Should Washington Change Course?

To have the best chance to protect America’s vital national interests and save as many Ukrainian people as possible from being killed, Washington must change course and begin to form policy based on a frank and honest assessment of the combat, economic, and diplomatic realities of this war. It will be hard to get to that rational place, however, unless we first recognize the consistently rosy pictures painted by America’s flag officers over the past few decades have been atrocious.

My 21 years of active service in the U.S. Army, including four combat deployments, has put me in a position to personally observe many of the mistakes and bad judgments of both active and retired generals. The cumulative result of their frequently flawed advice has been uniformly bad for our country, resulting in some of the worst military and foreign policy decisions our country has made.

Whether it was routine claims, made over a 20-year period, of success in the Afghan War when events conclusively proved it was always a disastrous failure, or perpetual claims of success during and after the 2003 Iraq war – before the Iraqi Security Forces the U.S. trained melted away at the first contact with the Islamic State – senior American military leaders have consistently misled the American public on the true state of affairs.

Since virtually the beginning of the Ukraine-Russian war, American active and retired generals have consistently claimed that Russian troops were incompetent, that their troops were ill-disciplined, arrogant, unmotivated, and sometimes rebelled against their leaders and refused to fight. The Russians, many generals claimed, could not win, with Gen. Hodges claiming that Ukraine would begin rolling back Putin’s troops before the end of this summer.

Yet Russia controls more than 20 percent of Ukrainian territory and continues conquering urban center after urban center in the Donbas, killing upwards of 200 troops per day, wounding another 500 in the process.

Russia outguns Ukraine 20-1 in howitzers, 40-1 in artillery shells and Rockets, and has a significant advantage in air power. There is no rational basis upon which to claim that Ukraine can stop the Russians, much less roll them back.

 

It is appropriate, in light of the awful record active and retired general officers have amassed over the past few decades, that both the media and public should give more scrutiny to future claims made by generals. It is understandable why many would give blanket trust to the word of a senior commander: they typically have 30-plus years of experience and have served at the highest levels. But evidence confirms that this trust has been misplaced and it is up to the generals to earn that trust back. Telling the truth and giving honest assessments would be a good place to start.

Unboxing & Testing My Chinese “$2,000” ELECTRIC Truck!

A great fun and interesting video.

Some important Jeff Brown transcripts

TRANSCRIPT: USDems + Ukraine + BW + BigRx + BLPM = Evil squared.
HERE

TRANSCRIPT: Evidence in Ukraine is piling up against Westerners for the anticipated Moscow War Crime Trials. HERE

TRANSCRIPT: Does Ukraine equal Taiwan? Do they mean World War III?HERE

TRANSCRIPT: More war crimes uncovered in NATO’s Ukraine: organ harvesting behind the Red Cross.
HERE

TRANSCRIPT: $40 billion to arm Ukraine? It couldn’t happen before 1950. How the military-industrial complex took over the USA. HERE

TRANSCRIPT: Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh – Why they won. HERE

How to make French Baguettes at home

So very inspirational!!!!

Conversation with American Mercenary, DPR POW: “Be Better Informed”

NEW YORK, JUNE 28TH, 2022- Last week, two Americans who came to fight for the Ukrainian International Legion were widely reported as having been captured by the forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the breakaway republic in Eastern Ukraine which is allied with Russia in the ongoing conflict in the region. Alexander John-Robert Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, both residents of Alabama, were apparently captured amidst fighting in the outskirts of Kharkov, and to this point, had not had any contact with American press.

This afternoon, my phone rang as I was driving home out in Eastern Long Island, and a Russian number appeared on my Caller ID. It was a number that had previously been used by British POW Aiden Aslin to contact me, as the DPR administration had my information from my time reporting in Donbass. Mr. Aslin, a British national who had been living with a family in Ukraine and was a regular in the Ukrainian marines, was sentenced to death in the DPR, for the crimes of being a mercenary and killing civilians, and is currently waiting to see if a prisoner exchange can be facilitated for his release, though current reports do not look good for him. The DPR, unlike the Russian Federation, has not banned capital punishment, and per my discussions with Mr. Aslin, the lack of footwork on his behalf on the part of Ukrainian and British authorities is the reason his exchange has not been prioritized.

This time, however, when I answered, the caller identified himself as Alexander John-Robert Drueke, accompanied by his DPR state-provided lawyer, from his captivity site in Donetsk, DPR. Alexander is from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and served 12 years in the U.S. army reserve, including two deployments to Iraq, though neither put him into active combat. Above all, he is similarly seeking a prisoner exchange, but he described to me in relative detail how he ended up in his current predicament, and some of his perspective on the situation.

He said that early this year, he had extensively watched American and other western news reports on the developing conflict in Ukraine, and was particularly affected by images of Ukrainians fleeing their homes. He is retired, was living on VA benefits, and he said that he felt that he “had to do something to help, not necessarily fighting, but whatever I could do.” He had no prior arrangements with the Ukrainian Armed Forces or the regime in Kiev, before flying to Warsaw, Poland from Atlanta, GA on April 12th of this year, hoping to find his way to Ukraine.

On the 15th of April, he rode by bus over the border into Lvov, Ukraine without incident. There, he was quickly interviewed by the Ukrainian International Legion, who signed a contract with him to work in a training role with a unit in Lvov, an arrangement which only lasted 8 days. Alexander said he was “dissatisfied” with this unit, for reasons he’s not at liberty to share, due to a Non-Disclosure Agreement he signed in his contract, and by early June, he had signed paperwork to transfer to a recon unit across the country, in Kharkov. This unit was presumably overseen by the SBU, the primary Ukrainian Intelligence agency. Alexander and his friend, Mr. Huynh, arrived in Kharkov on June 7th, and on June 9th, they were sent into a combat mission, something Alexander said he didn’t expect to happen, and separated from the rest of their unit. They were both apprehended by a DPR patrol, and brought back to Donetsk for detainment; they have not been officially charged as of yet, but Alexander understands they are to be charged with being mercenaries, and presumably eligible to face the death penalty, though their charges are likely to be less severe than their British counterparts.

Mr. Drueke’s captivity, as he described it, has been calm, and he has been well-treated, given the obviously uncomfortable broader context. He says he has been provided with food and water regularly, is in a cell by himself, and has not had any contact with his fellow American POW or any other prisoners, though for over a week now he has had access to phone calls, including to his mother, Lois Drueke, and has been contact with his lawyer every other day. He maintains a very close relationship with his mother, and she appears to be working tirelessly on his case; I have reached out to her for her comment, and have yet to hear back.

The DPR authorities, per Alexander, are extremely willing to negotiate for his release in a prisoner exchange, and are generally motivated to secure safe return for their own people. While he has been in contact with the U.S. State Department (he named one Michael Abbott as his contact; I was not able to track this person down), and while the U.S. government has told Alexander and his mother that they are “doing what they can,” he told me that “the U.S. is not technically a combatant in this fight, and they have no one to exchange with the DPR, so what they can do is limited to pressuring Kiev.” Whether the Ukrainian authorities were working on his case was not clear to him, and he has had no contact since his capture with anyone in the Kiev government.

When I asked him about his perspectives on the conflict now, versus when he made the decision to come over, his repeated emphasis was that he had been “extremely uninformed” when he was still in Alabama and relying on the narrative being spun by western media. “I can tell you that I was very surprised to see most women and children still at home and living normally in all the major Ukrainian cities I went to, and when I was detained here in Donestk, it was the first time I had been able to speak to any Russians or Russian-speakers from Donbass. There’s a side of the story that we’re not getting in America.” He noted that even from his cell in Donetsk, he had been hearing constant explosions, every day, coming from Ukrainian shelling of the city, something he had never anticipated, adding that “nothing in the western media shows you that this is a Civil War, and one that’s been going on a long time.” He didn’t go as far as disavowing the Ukrainian state, or endorsing the Russian Special Operation, but he repeatedly said to me, “if I had known the truth about what was going on over here, I would never have made the decision to come. I regret it.”

While feelings of sympathy for a man in a life-and-death predicament, who at face value seems to have been duped into his decision, above all else, are completely understandable, some on the Donestk side of the conflict aren’t shedding many tears for him, or similar detainees. Russell “Texas” Bentley, an American-born veteran of the DPR armed forces since 2014, and a resident of Donetsk, shared with me his thoughts on Mr. Drueke and those like him: “Yeah, a lot of these punks were just too big for their britches, and that’s almost forgivable, but what they wanted to do was come here to kill, and if the shoe had been on the other foot, they wouldn’t have hesitated. I was behind Ukrop [Ukrainian] lines twice, and didn’t fire a shot either time. Every single battle I was ever in was defensive. We held a position, and the Ukrops came to attack us, and they’d have killed us all if they could have. So, it will be an educational experience for them, hopefully give them a bit of a head start in their next life.”

My inquiries to the U.S. State Department and Ukrainian Military press contacts have yet to yield any responses; Alexander remains adamant that the DPR is eager to arrange his release, and hopeful that his government is trying to facilitate that, but says that “time is starting to run out.” Portuguese journalist Bruno Carvalho, with whom I worked in Donetsk, and who remains there on assignment, suggested that one of the hold-ups in these prisoner exchanges with DPR may be that a foreign government, such as the UK or US, agreeing to negotiate such an exchange might be tantamount to a recognition of the Republic, which on a diplomatic level, could have major ripple effects. After all, Russian President Putin’s recognition of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics proved to be the great harbinger of the recent escalation in what many see as a western proxy war against Russia.

Before we hung up, I assured Alexander that I would at the very least write about our conversation, and I asked him what he might say to others who were caught in the fever of U.S. propaganda, and might have the same instincts to fly across the ocean and sign-up to fight for Ukraine.

“As I said, I did not have a full understanding of what was going on, and if I had, I wouldn’t have made the decision that I did. What would I say to someone else? Do your research, look at sources outside of the West—be better informed.”

Are You Willing To Suffer Through A Recession For The Good Of “The Liberal World Order”?

How much are you willing to sacrifice for “the future of the liberal world order”?  As you will see below, the Biden administration is trying to convince us that supporting the “liberal world order” is far more important than any short-term economic pain that we are experiencing right now.  So are you willing to pay ridiculously high gas prices for the foreseeable future and suffer through a very serious economic downturn in order to put pressure on Vladimir Putin and Russia?  Some Americans would be willing to do that, but most would not.

On Friday, we learned that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction a lot quicker than most of the “experts” had anticipated.  The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model is currently projecting that economic growth for the second quarter of 2022 will be negative 2.1 percent

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2022 is -2.1 percent on July 1, down from -1.0 percent on June 30. After this morning’s Manufacturing ISM Report On Business from the Institute for Supply Management and the construction report from the US Census Bureau, the nowcasts of second-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real gross private domestic investment growth decreased from 1.7 percent and -13.2 percent, respectively, to 0.8 percent and -15.2 percent, respectively.

U.S. GDP growth was negative during the first quarter, and if U.S. GDP growth is negative again in the second quarter that will mean that we are already in a recession right now.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model should be taken very seriously, because it has a very strong track record of accuracy…

“GDPNow has a strong track record, and the closer we get to July 28th’s release [of the initial Q2 GDP estimate] the more accurate it becomes,” wrote Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research.

If it is confirmed later this month that we are already in a recession, it won’t exactly be a surprise, but the good news is that so far this new economic downturn is not that severe.

Unfortunately, we continue to see more signs that things will soon get much worse.

The pace of layoffs is really starting to accelerate and this is especially true in the tech industry.

At this point, even Facebook is looking to thin the ranks

In addition to the hiring freeze, Zuckerberg also noted the company was leaving some vacant positions at the company unfilled and “turning up the heat” on performance management to weed out staffers who are unable to meet certain KPIs.

“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said, adding, “Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me.”

Meanwhile, we are seeing Americans cut back on their spending at a frightening pace.

In fact, one recent survey discovered that a whopping 83 percent of all Americans have “slashed personal spending due to soaring prices”

Provident Bank, based in New Jersey, found that 83% of respondents slashed personal spending due to soaring prices of food and gasoline, with 23% indicating they had to make “drastic changes” to their spending for financial survival. 

According to the survey results of 600 adults, 10.5% of respondents eliminated all non-essential purchases, and nearly 72% said they made at least some changes to personal travel habits.

And Wall Street seems to have finally gotten the message that very hard times are ahead.

The first half of 2022 was the worst first half of a year for the S&P 500 since 1970, and the index has now plunged into bear market territory

This all came a day after the S&P 500 posted a more than 16% quarterly loss – its biggest one-quarter fall since March 2020. For the first half, the broader market index dropped 20.6% for its largest first-half decline since 1970. It also tumbled into bear market territory, down more than 21% from a record high set early January.

The Biden administration is openly admitting that more economic suffering is on the way, but we are being told that it is necessary.

On Wednesday, CNN interviewed a key economic adviser to Joe Biden named Brian Deese, and what Deese said during that interview is making headlines all over the globe

CNN anchor Victor Blackwell interviewed Deese on Thursday and cited that Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said on Wednesday the war between Russia and Ukraine could be a “grinding struggle” for years.

Blackwell said, “I think everybody understands why this is happening, but is it sustainable? What do you say to those families who say, listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years? This is not sustainable.”

Deese – who was formerly the global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock – replied, “What we heard from the president today was about the stakes. This is about the future of the liberal world order, and we have to stand firm.”

No thank you.

I don’t want anything to do with a “liberal world order”, and I am sure that most of you don’t either.

In the old days they called it a “new world order”, but that phrase now has so many negative connotations to it that they decided to come up with something new.

Will someone please tell them that “liberal world order” is even worse?

These guys really stink at branding.

Why do we even need to have a “world order” in the first place?

Why can’t we just try to get along with everyone instead of trying to force our twisted values on the entire planet?

I really wish that the U.S. and Russia would have just left Ukraine alone and would have allowed them to determine their own fate.

Needless to say, that was never going to happen, and now the U.S. and Russia are engaged in a horrifying proxy war and countless Ukrainians are being sacrificed like pawns on a chessboard.

If both sides continue to escalate this conflict, it could ultimately bring us to the brink of nuclear war.

But at least we will be supporting “the future of the liberal world order”, and isn’t that what is really important?

Many of us have been relentlessly warning about where all of this foolishness will eventually lead us, but most of the population doesn’t want to listen.

Sadly, many will just continue to support “the current thing” no matter what the consequences are.

The first half of 2022 has been full of surprises, but I am expecting global events to accelerate even more during the second half of this year.

So hold on to your hats, because I believe that things are about to start getting really, really crazy out there.

BOOM! Nordstream One Gas Pipeline Being Shut Down by Russia in 6 Days

BREAKING NEWS: In exactly six (6) days, Germany will be completely cut-off from Russian natural gas.

The Nordstream One pipeline will cease all natural gas flows into Germany in Six days.

By Presidential Decree signed by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, Russia will no longer sell any “vital commodities” to “unfriendly nations.”

Without natural gas from Russia, the German economy will . . .  stop.

When Germany’s economy stops, the economies of other European countries, which also got their natural gas via the Nordstream One pipeline, will also . . .  stop.

About two weeks after the European economy stops, the U.S. economy will be forced to shut down for lack of goods and services.

The West has reached “The End” thanks to its own Sanctions against Russia.

The only thing left for the West to do either lift all Sanctions from Russia and HOPE they respond favorably; or go to war against Russia.

The economies of western nations cannot now be saved from collapse without cheap Russian energy.

Lift the Sanctions or declare war.  There are no other options.

Oh, and by the way . . . how would the west wage war without cheap energy to power it?

DUUUUHHHHHH.

The Sanctions imposed by the West against Russia have now backfired massively.  They have destroyed the economy of the West.

Russia has won.

The west has lost.

The facts are not in dispute.

Brilliant Cross Stitches

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When you think of cross stitch, you probably thing of Bible quotes hanging off the walls at your grandma’s house. There’s nothing wrong with that, but for those of you who want a little more from your embroidery, check out these hilariously brilliant examples.

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The West is a Man with no Plan

They are just not serious.

For as long as I can remember (and that’s quite a while now) there’s always been a country or countries poised to eat the lunch of the Anglo-Saxons, and more recently of the West generally. And with Covid and Ukraine, we are now finding out that, apart from a few crumbs, the West has nothing much left worth eating. Why is that? How did it happen?

Let’s start with Italy. Yes, Italy. In the 1960s, there was excitement everywhere about what the Italians called Il Sorpasso: the overtaking of British GDP by Italy, according to some measures at least. Italy was admired then not just for its art, its history, its style, its cooking and its fashion, but for its engineering and industrial design. Above all, the Italians were rapidly modernising their country, with the new autostrade and train systems, while the British were just getting round to thinking about it. Later, it was the French, with their space-age TGVs and their prototype Internet, the Minitel. After the Oil Crisis, the French took a look around, and said, merde, we’d better go nuclear. The state-owned energy industry was just told to Do It, and reactors started coming on line every quickly, while the British regarded actually setting up a public enquiry into one as an achievement in itself.

Then, of course, the Japanese – they of the High Speed Trains – came along and effortlessly obliterated the European and American consumer electronics and motor industries, followed by shipbuilding and heavy engineering. In the nineties, the Koreans started to challenge the Japanese in some areas, and now, of course, just about everything is made in China, while western publics were stunned to discover that paracetamol and medical masks have to be imported from Asia. And just look: in Ukraine, western military technology and doctrine is being shredded by the Russians even as I write. Even organised crime is dominated by non-western groups these days. Can’t we do anything right?

It’s tempting, if not very intelligent, to try to relate this to the outcome of some Grand Plan. Films have been made over the last forty years about sinister asiatic conspiracies, although rather fewer these days, given where most of the world’s cinema-going population lives. But it’s actually a lot simpler than that, and in the simplicity actually lies the problem. The West has forgotten how to do simple things well, and has inevitably lost out to those who can. At bottom, economic and political success is about relative, not absolute, qualities. Just as wars are won by the side which makes fewest  mistakes, so economic struggles and often won by those who are least inefficient.

But to succeed, you need some idea of what you want, and how to get there, and it’s at that point that western thinking has increasingly broken down. There’s nothing magical about it: mostly, it’s just applied common sense, and a willingness to do a bit of forward planning. So after 1945, the French looked at the wreckage of their country, and a ruined industry that had no incentive to invest, and said, right, what are the priorities? We need steel, so for that we need iron ore and coal, so let’s go and sort that out first. Other things can take their turn. The Japanese, with a culture of attention to detail and the most demanding consumers in the world, realised they could export quality products, some of them taken and improved from foreign models. From cameras to mopeds (where Honda started), to motor bikes, to small cars, to large cars, to luxury cars to heavy engineering equipment and trains, every step building off the previous one. They were devious and subtle enough to offer western consumers things that worked well, at prices they were prepared to pay. Then there were the Koreans (as I was once proudly told by a civil engineer in Seoul many years ago), wanting to get into the construction industry. First they sent unskilled workmen abroad who came back and trained others. Then they sent skilled workers abroad, who came back and trained others. Then they sent people abroad to study at university. Well, you get the idea.

So why couldn’t Anglo-Saxons ever do this? Why have most western countries stopped being able to do this? There isn’t a single, simple, answer unfortunately, but there are a few pointers. One is simply being first, or early, and not having to struggle. Britain was built on coal and iron ore, and had a banking and credit system before most other nations. The Industrial Revolution wasn’t inevitable, but it was easy. The United States had every natural resource you could ask for, effectively unlimited space, and a constantly growing population. It would be hard not to become a major industrial power in the circumstances.  But the problem was precisely that all this was easy. In Japan, on the other hand, there were few resources, and there was barely enough food to go round. Britain was an island, and the United States was effectively one, as well. Neither was at any serious risk of invasion, or even interference. The Japanese, on the other hand, for all that they were islands too, realised in a sickening moment of clarity that unless they got themselves organised pretty sharply, they would become another western colony. So they got themselves organised.  As did others. Prussia had no natural resources except coal, and no effective natural borders. It had to work hard to survive, and did so: by the time of the Great Exhibition off 1851, the British were already finding the Prussians snapping at their heels industrially.

In Britain, and later in the United States, survival was never an issue, except perhaps at certain moments in the two Wars of the Twentieth Century. So a national consensus around a need to survive, plan and implement never formed because it wasn’t necessary. The Empire and the Royal Navy kept Britain’s problems at arms length. After the Second World War, the United States wound  up dominating much of the world, not because it was strong or clever, but because most of the rest of the world was in pieces. If you’ve never really had to work for something, you inevitably lose out to those who know what hard work is.

This consensus has to involve the elites, or it’s not going to be effective. And in Britain, which famously never had a revolution, elites never took any interest in planning, unless it was planning the family inheritance. As in any aristocratic society, social status came precisely from not working, because you had no need to. You could employ people to do actual physical tasks, while living off rents and dividends, and doing whatever it was that such elites actually did to pass the time. This attitude persisted right up to modern times: scientists enjoyed a certain wary tolerance, but engineers and craftsmen were distrusted and not allowed into polite company. To become an engineer as late as the 1960s in Britain was to accept a permanently lower status than that of, say, an accountant. (There are no more engineers today, of course, so the problem has solved itself).

If your income comes from land or inherited wealth, then planning is really a question of financial optimisation, and you can pay people to do that for you. Other than general political stability, which often means obstructing change, you have no real political objectives at all. In Britain, and then in the United States after a few generations, this was the mentality that triumphed. Planning, designing, building, maintaining … all this was difficult and complicated, took years and required specialist training. If you could generate the same profits by some clever financial engineering, why not do so?

What’s depressing is that this attitude has spread to countries where engineers and technology had a high social status. France is an especially bad case: the country’s finest engineers were trained at the Polytechnique , established by Napoleon (a very long-term thinker). These days they all seem to go into politics, like the current Prime Minister. Nobody makes things any more.

The result is a culture common to large parts of the western world which is ultimately Not Serious. Now by “serious,” I don’t mean the opposite of “frivolous”: or perhaps I do mean that as well, because the attitudes of the ruling classes of most western countries towards the problems of the present, never mind the future, could be described reasonably as “frivolous.” That’s to say the belief that they are not real problems, but essentially problems of news management and internal politicking, and don’t require actual practical solutions. But there’s also the more serious sense of “serious,” used as a compliment. Seriousness means taking the time to research and think about issues, and then deciding what to do and carry it through. No serious political system, for example, would have lurched into Brexit as the British did, without any thought for even the short-term consequences. No serious political system would have dealt with Covid as western ones did. For all the emotional attractiveness of conspiracy theories, it seems rather to be the case that most western governments hadn’t realised that medicines aren’t produced here any more. They hadn’t understood that the government capability to manage such crises no longer existed. Nobody told them that running down health services could lead to bad outcomes. And no serious political system, individually or collectively, could have staggered like a drunk into the mess that is Ukraine.

Ah yes, Ukraine. My point here is simple enough. The West was surprised because it never had a long-term plan for its relations with Russia, and didn’t realise that Russia had a long-term plan to reset those relations.

Let’s take those in order.

The Cold War ended too quickly for the West to understand what was happening, and to even begin to adapt to it. Not only did the strategic landscape change overnight, it also threw up a whole set of massive unexpected problems, and then became enmeshed with a whole variety of other issues, from the former Yugoslavia to Iraq to the future of Europe. The result was that there was never the time, or really the inclination, to develop a proper policy and think through the consequences. And too many actors and too many institutions were involved. Throughout the nineties, policy was entirely improvised, usually responding to the evanescent needs of the moment. NATO enlargement, one of the triggers of the current conflict, was never a real strategic plan: each case seemed to be individual, and had a different set of arguments. Same for the EU. So in typical fashion, we arrive somewhere we don’t like, and think: how did we get here?

The Russians know how we got here. But then they do unsporting things like develop long-term strategies, with the necessary economic and military components. They integrate these with a political strategy, and with clearly defined objectives. None of this is particularly difficult: it’s not they who are strange, it is us, for not thinking that way. And really, if you don’t understand Russian military-strategic thinking, or how they approach the operational level of warfare, then it’s a good idea to refrain from hopping between TV stations telling the world who’s winning and who’s losing.

The final irony is that most of the world actually doesn’t realise how unserious the West is. I can’t remember how many times, in Africa, in the Arab world or in parts of Eastern Europe, educated professional people have excitedly harangued me about the Master Plan of the West (sometimes just the US) to remake the world, destroy China or Russia, recolonise Africa or whatever. “Don’t you realise” they will say urgently, thrusting into my hand a poor photocopy of an obscure journal article from twenty years ago “it was all planned.” If only it was. If only we could.

10 unmistakable signs your cat really loves you

I hope this puts a smile on your face.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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Greek fire paradox, delicious food, and breath-taking read from an Egyptian who studied China

The Western “news” continues the same kinds of bullshit, but there has been a very significant slide into a new kind of reality that the rest of the world recognizes. It’s a different world; a Chinese world, and the West is just simply dying.

What’s going on?

Well, for one thing, the “Greek Fire Paradox” is. And that involves the combined strength and developments of both Russia and China together against the “might” of the unified West (led by the United States).

“Greek Fire Paradox”.

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The Greek Fire was a substance created by the Byzantine Empire. Nobody knows exactly what it is about: it is considered the best kept military secret of all time. It is speculated that, during those ages, only two people knew its formula at the same time. In some cases, only a father and his son would know how to make it.

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It was a liquid stored in a kind of giant syringe, which ignited on contact with air; basically, a primitive type of flamethrower that worked more or less like the illustration above.

The paradox is this: although the Byzantines managed to keep the secret for hundreds of years, this super-weapon had a curious and unexpected side effect: messing with the enemy’s mind. Because of that Greek Fire, the enemies of Byzantium had to look for more powerful weapons. Eventually, they would discover gunpowder (which later would evolve into the cannon, and so on).

What the history tell us is that, even if a country or entity holds a very powerful weapon, in the long run, your enemies will come up with much better and more efficient war technology, and eventually use it against you. And vice-versa.

Once the Pandora’s Box is open, there is no way to close it.

The funny thing is that, until now, nuclear weapons have functioned more as an instrument of peace rather than war, thanks to the MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction. This doctrine ensures that if one country uses nuclear weapons against another, that other country will respond with its entire nuclear arsenal, and so on, until all belligerents (or human kind) are destroyed.

Of course, nobody wants that. MAD therefore ensured a more peaceful world: without this doctrine, the world would probably have seen more bloody conventional wars. This is true for almost every nation in the world.

The current (and future) problem is that the older a particular technology becomes, the more accessible it becomes. And thus the greater it’s risk of use.

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It becomes necessary for those “other” nations to come up with new, novel methods, technologies and techniques to render the strength of the old “power weapon” useless.

Florida Man Charged In $1 Billion Fraud Scheme Of Counterfeit Cisco Devices

Saturday, Jul 09, 2022 – 07:20 AM

A federal grand jury indicted a Florida man for trafficking over $1 billion in counterfeit Cisco networking equipment on Amazon and eBay stores between 2014 and 2022.

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According to the Department of Justice (DoJ), Onur Aksoy, aka “Ron Aksoy” and “Dave Durden,” 38, of Miami, operated at least 19 companies formed in New Jersey and Florida that sold counterfeit Cisco networking equipment through 15 Amazon storefronts and ten eBay storefronts and multiple other entities (collectively, the “Pro Network Entities”).

Attorney for the US Vikas Khanna, District of New Jersey, and Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite said Aksoy’s scheme worked by importing network devices from China and Hong Kong (HK is de facto China) that were older models but modified to appear to be authentic versions of new, enhanced, and more expensive ones.

"The fraudulent and counterfeit products sold by the Pro Network Entities suffered from numerous performance, functionality, and safety problems. Often, they would simply fail or otherwise malfunction, causing significant damage to their users' networks and operations – in some cases, costing users tens of thousands of dollars. Customers of Aksoy's fraudulent and counterfeit devices included hospitals, schools, government agencies, and the military," the DoJ wrote in a media release Friday morning.

Aksoy generated over $100 million in revenue after selling more than $1 billion in fake networking equipment. The government alleges the Florida man “received millions of dollars for his personal gain” from the scheme.

DOJ has charged Aksoy with conspiracy to traffic counterfeit goods and mail and wire fraud, and both carry hefty sentencing times and fines.

This indictment sheds light on an entire underground economy devoted to scamming consumers on Amazon and eBay.

Terrifyingly, the counterfeit Cisco networking equipment could’ve been installed in critical systems for companies and or even government agencies, making them more vulnerable to a ransomware attack or unexpected performance issues.

FOX News Media presentation

Please check out the dress color coordination, the seat positioning, and the diversity presentation.

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Country Captain (Southern-Style Stewed Turkey with Curry, Dried Fruit, and Almonds)

This colonial dish speaks to North America’s deep historical ties to the Indian Subcontinent.

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Country Captain is an iconic Southern, Low Country dish with direct, unadulterated link to India.

It traces its roots to a time when Savannah, Charleston, and other Southeastern ports were the North American gateways for spice trade with the East Indies.

These towns were the entry points for black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cardamon, sugar, and other ingredients that would eventually make their way into the cuisine of the American South.

Many of the dishes that use these flavorings are more “Western” in inflection—the spices are subtle with little connection to the dishes of their mother lands.

Not so with the Country Captain.

Even in its most Southern avatar, this is clearly an Indian American dish. I am forever grateful to Chef Currence for introducing me to this historical recipe, for every time I make it I am reminded that we have much in common—we need only to look at what we are cooking.

*This recipe is often made using chicken; feel free to swap out the turkey for other poultry, or even pork chops or veal cutlets.

Featured in: “On Curry Powder and Colonialism.”

Yield: serves 6
Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 12 turkey cutlets* (about 3 oz. each), about ½-in. thick
  • ¼ cups ghee
  • 2 tbsp. unsalted butter
  • 1 strip thick-cut bacon, finely chopped (¼ cup)
  • 2 large yellow onions, finely chopped (2 cups)
  • 4 medium carrots, peeled and finely chopped (1⅓ cups)
  • 1 large red bell pepper, finely chopped (1 cup)
  • 1 large yellow bell pepper, finely chopped (1 cup)
  • 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 2 tbsp. minced fresh ginger
  • 2¼ cups canned crushed tomatoes
  • 2 medium tomatoes, finely chopped (1⅓ cup)
  • ½ cups dried currants (or substitute dried cranberries or raisins)
  • 2 small dried red chilies (such as árbol) stemmed and broken in half
  • 2 tsp. Madras curry powder
  • 1½ tsp. garam masala
  • ½ tsp. Kashmiri chili powder
  • ½ cups chicken stock
  • 2 tbsp. finely chopped parsley
  • ¼ cups toasted silvered almonds
  • Steamed white rice or grits upma, for serving

Instructions

  1. Line a large rimmed baking sheet or platter with paper towels and set it by the stove.
  2. In a large, shallow bowl, season the flour to taste with salt and black pepper, stir, and set aside.
  3. To a large, high-sided skillet over medium-high heat, add the ghee. Working in batches, lightly dust the turkey cutlets in the seasoned flour and, when the ghee is hot, sear lightly, about 20–30 seconds on each side. Transfer the cutlets to the lined baking sheet and set aside.
  4. Using paper towels, wipe the skillet clean and set over medium heat. Add the butter and bacon and cook, stirring frequently until bacon begins to brown, about 3 minutes. Add the onions and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until they’re translucent and very soft, 6–8 minutes. Add the carrots, bell peppers, garlic, and ginger, season lightly with salt and black pepper, and cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are tender, 6–8 minutes. Stir in the canned and fresh tomatoes and another pinch of salt and black pepper, lower heat to medium-low, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes start to break down and thicken, about 20 minutes.
  5. Stir in the dried currants, dried chiles, curry powder, garam masala, and chile powder, then add the stock. Turn the heat up to medium to bring the mixture back up to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the currants are plump, about 5 minutes. Slide the reserved turkey cutlets back into the skillet and cook until the meat is heated and cooked through, 4–6 minutes.
  6. Garnish with chopped parsley and toasted slivered almonds and serve hot, with steamed white rice or grits upma.

The Idea MUST be to weaponize the world!

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on July 5 that the cumulative amount of weapons and equipment provided by the West to Ukraine has reached 28,000 tons, and many of these military materials have flowed to the Middle East and even the black market for trading. In a program broadcast on Russia Today TV a few days ago, Russian media reporters found that weapons provided by some Western countries to Ukraine were sold at low prices on the “dark web”.

Article HERE

United States “pledges” to “shut down” Chinese IC manufacture

The US Secretary of Commerce recently repeated the remarks, naming SMIC for “shutting down” China’s largest chip manufacturer if it ignores US sanctions and supplies chips to Russia.

SMIC responded today that “there has never been a Russian customer.”

On June 28, the U.S. government blacklisted five Chinese companies for allegedly supporting Russian military and defense industrial bases.

This is the first time since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War in February that the US side has taken action against Chinese enterprises.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on June 29 that U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo would shut down China’s largest chipmaker, SMIC or other Chinese semiconductor companies, IF they were found supplying chips to Russia, according to central news agencies today.

She pointed out that since the United States and allies imposed export controls on Russia because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global chip exports to Russia have plummeted by 90%.

According to the it of the land media IT home, some investors asked SMIC whether there were Russian customers on the e interactive platform today, and SMIC replied: “The company has always adhered to compliance operations and has never had Russian customers.” ”

Article HERE

Banana lore from Indonesia

Never ever go to the local market and say that you just want to buy “Banana” ( Pisang in their local language).

The seller will be confused and will ask for the details of what kind banana you want?

Its different if you go to the Super Market. You will meet only the Cavendish Banana or the Western known Banana.

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Cavendish Banana

BUT… in the local market, especially the fruit stall, there are so many kinds of Bananas. In Indonesia it depends on what you need to do with that Banana.

These are a variety of the famous banana that you can find in the local market.

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Banana Stall

  1. Horn Banana (Plantain) / Pisang Tanduk

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Horn Banana (Plantain) / Pisang Tanduk

This massive banana is not sweet and the texture is hard. It tastes good when fried and the local also add chili sauce or sweet sauce.

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Fried Plantain

2. Kepok Banana / Pisang Kepok

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Kepok Banana

These look like pressed fat bananas, they’re sweet but very hard if they aren’t ripe. The local use it to feed their pet birds and mainly to eat in a sweet soup dish, Kolak.

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Kolak sweet soup

3. King Banana / Pisang Raja

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King Banana / Pisang Raja

They’re big. This banana is mainly eaten raw; it’s big, sweet and has a soft texture.

4. Milk Banana / Pisang Susu

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Milk Banana / Pisang Susu

The size is medium. This sweet banana is good to eat raw. This banana’s skin is rather thin when compared to the other bananas.

5. Ambon Banana / Pisang Ambon

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Ambon Banana / Pisang Ambon

They’re big. This banana can be found in two colors. The taste is medium sweet.

6. Lady Finger Banana – Gold Banana / Pisang Mas

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Lady Finger Banana – Gold Banana / Pisang Mas

 

This banana is so small and the taste is sweet.

All of the bananas have their own unique taste and texture. Just buying a banana in Indonesia can make you stressed.

Oh… and have I mention that there are some jungle bananas that you can rarely find too? Like the Red Banana or the Crazy Big Musa Ingens Banana?

Happy Eating Bananas in Indonesia 😀

China Holds War Drills Around Taiwan “Directed” At US Senator’s Visit To Island

Saturday, Jul 09, 2022 – 11:20 AM

China is again conducting major military exercises in waters around Taiwan, according to state media reports, which further decried US support to Taiwan separatist forces as “futile”.

China’s Defense Ministry was cited in Reuters as describing the drills as a warning aimed at the visit of a US senator. It said “China firmly opposes the visit by a US senator to Taiwan which severely damages the relationship of the two countries and two militaries, while it added that the drill near Taiwan is directed at US and Taiwan provocation.”

US Senator Rick Scott of Florida arrived in Taiwan on Thursday afternoon for a two-day visit. Importantly, his visit marks no less than the seventh US senator to visit the democratic-run island this year alone. This after a group of six senators made an unannounced visit in April led by chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Menendez, which Beijing also vehemently denounced.

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Sen. Scott visited Taiwanese envoy to Lithuania in April. Image: Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania

“Scott is scheduled to meet with President Tsai Ying-wen and Premier Su Tseng-chang during his visit, the ministry said, adding that Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu was to host a banquet to welcome him,” regional sources detailed of his trip.

Meanwhile a top China official who overseas cross-strait affairs on Thursday declared that “reunification” of the island remains at the center of national rejuvenation plans.

According to The South China Post:

In an article published in People's Daily on Thursday, Liu Jieyi, head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, said one focus of the strategy would be preventing and resolving major risks and hidden dangers in the Taiwan Strait, creating a "favorable environment" for national rejuvenation.

"Our growing comprehensive strength and significant institutional advantages continue to be transformed into efficiency in work related to Taiwan issues and push forward the process of national reunification," Liu said.

The concept of “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan has been pushed by Beijing for decades; however, Liu in his op-ed reiterated that China has never ruled out the option of using force.

Top Beijing officials have also recently gone on record to say that US stoking “independence forces” remains a bright red line which could result in war. But in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine over the last more than four months, the Biden administration has been wary that President Xi could borrow from Putin’s playbook and stage a ‘shock’ blitz of the island.

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Prior PLA exercise, via Chinamil.com.cn

Taiwan has condemned the fresh PLA military drills as a “provocation” and has put its forces on high alert, as China sends fighter jets across the strait as part of its typical messaging. Taiwan’s air force in turn scrambled fighters to intercept and warn off the Chinese aircraft.

Indonesian Artist Dhany Pramata Creates Comics That Most 80s-90s Kids Will Relate To

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Indonesian artist Dhany Pramata creates comics that most 80s/90s kids will relate to. Dhany Pramata, an Indonesian artist reflects upon his childhood days with nostalgic and funny illustrations. I find some of these comics extremely relatable and if you are an 80s/90s kid, you might find them relatable too.

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Don’t Make Assumptions

We have the tendency to make assumptions about everything. The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. We could swear they are real. We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking — we take it personally — then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison with our word. That is why whenever we make assumptions, we’re asking for problems. We make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.

Making assumptions in our relationships is really asking for problems. Often we make the assumption that our partners know what we think and that we don’t have to say what we want. We assume they are going to do what we want, because they know us so well. If they don’t do what we assume they should do, we feel so hurt and say, “You should have known.”

Another example: You decide to get married, and you make the assumption that your partner sees marriage the same way that you do. Then you live together and you find out this is not true. This creates a lot of conflict, but you still don’t try to clarify your feelings about marriage. The husband comes home from work and the wife is mad, and the husband doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s because the wife made an assumption. Without telling him what she wants, she makes an assumption that he knows her so well, that he knows what she wants, as if he can read her mind. She gets so upset because he fails to meet her expectations. Making assumptions in relationships leads to a lot of fights, a lot of difficulties, a lot of misunderstandings with people we supposedly love.

In any kind of relationship we can make the assumption that others know what we think, and we don’t have to say what we want. They are going to do what we want because they know us so well. If they don’t do what we want, what we assume they should do, we feel hurt and think, “How could you do that? You should know.” Again, we make the assumption that the other person knows what we want. A whole drama is created because we make this assumption and then put more assumptions on top of it.

China rallies support for Kylin Linux in war on Windows • The Register

Good thing that I am running Limus Mint. -MM

China’s efforts to end its reliance on Microsoft Windows got a boost with the launch of the openKylin project.

The initiative aims to accelerate development of the country’s home-grown Kylin Linux distro by opening the project up to a broader community of developers, colleges, and universities to contribute code.

Launched in 2001, Kylin was based on a FreeBSD kernel and was intended for use in government and military offices, where Chinese authorities have repeatedly attempted to eliminate foreign operating systems.

In 2010, the operating system made the switch to the Linux kernel, and in 2014 an Ubuntu-based version of the OS was introduced after Canonical reached an agreement with Chinese authorities to develop the software.

The openKylin project appears to be the latest phase of that project, and is focused on version planning, platform development, and establishing a community charter. To date, the project has garnered support from nearly two dozen Chinese firms and institutions, including China’s Advanced Operating System Innovation Center.

These industry partners will contribute to several special interest groups to improve various aspects of the operating system over time. Examples include optimizations for the latest generation of Intel and AMD processors, where available; support for emerging RISC-V CPUs; development of an x86-to-RISC-V translation layer; and improvements to the Ubuntu Kylin User Interface (UKUI) window manager for tablet and convertible devices.

Simple Minds – Hypnotised

A great classic and great fun too!

China’s love-hate relationship with Microsoft

China’s efforts to rid itself of Redmond are by no means new. As far back as 2000, Chinese authorities ordered government offices to remove Windows in favor of Red Flag Linux.

However, in the case of Red Flag Linux, those efforts ultimately went nowhere after the project failed to catch on. The org was ultimately dissolved, and the team terminated in 2014. Despite its collapse, the project appears to have been rebooted, with a release slated to launch later this year.

This is a story that would repeat on a regular cadence, fueled by periodic spats between Uncle Sam and software vendors.

It’s safe to say the Chinese government has something of a love-hate relationship with Redmond. In 2013, Chinese authorities urged Microsoft to extend support for Windows XP, on which the country still relied heavily.

However, a year later, the Chinese government banned Windows 8 in much of the public sector, just months after Microsoft ended support for Windows XP.

Today, Microsoft controls roughly 85 percent of the desktop operating system market as of June 2022, according to Statcounter.

Some of this can be attributed to the launch of Windows 10 China Government Edition in 2017, which was developed in collaboration with the China Electronics Technology Group.

It doesn’t appear those efforts bought Microsoft’s American partners much in terms of goodwill, with Chinese authorities directing government agencies to throw out all foreign-made personal computers this spring.

Article HERE

Hiroshima – One Wish

Some nice 1980s jazz.

Australian bank Volt collapses urging 6000 customers to withdraw funds; 140 jobs lost

An Australian bank that collapsed has urged its 6000 customers to withdraw $100 million worth of deposits before it starts closing accounts from next Tuesday.

Volt, a digital bank called a neobank which was launched in 2017, announced it was handing back its banking licence to the regulator on Wednesday.

It was the first start up to gain the banking licence in January 2019 after the government sought to increase competition in the sector.

The bank’s demise means 140 staff have lost their jobs after the board made the decision to close the business. It said it failed to raise enough funds to support its plans to write mortgages.

Article HERE

are particularly sad, particularly because they shed away all the myths of “noble savages” and the wishful thinking of “war as a result of the power struggles of unequal civilizations”, and thus they reinforce the ever stronger conclusion that human societies have been brutal and insanely competitive since a very long time ago. It gives us a terrifying glimpse on what the “demographic changes”, “genetic replacements” and “ethnic shifts” that we often hear about as we study the history of a given place really meant back then, in the raw reality (of course this is not the whole story, but it’s surely an awful part of it).

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So what’s it about? Around 5,000 years ago, in Poland, 15 people were carefully buried together in a mass grave. Most of them belonged to the same extended family, part of a closely knit patrilineal clan, and there were four nuclear families related to each other. All of them had died by heavy blows onto their head, killed simultaneously in the same way.

The individuals who buried them certainly knew them pretty well, because they placed the bodies together with their closest relatives: women with their respective children, siblings close to each other, wives with their husbands.

The slaughtered victims are mainly adult women (one of them was 50–60 years old) and their young children, including children, teenagers and two babies, one aged 1.5 years, and the other 2.0–2.5 years (whose parents were not buried in the mass grave). They were certainly not a major “threat” to any neighboring tribe or clan.

Apart from those with familial relationships to each other, there was also one young woman who had no genetic relationship with anyone else in the extended family, but was buried close to a young man with no children, so she might’ve been his girlfriend or just married wife.

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Intriguingly, with the exception of one male adult interred alongside his wife and son, no older men were found in the tomb, which points to several possibilities, but one of them is particularly sad to me: perhaps most of the adult men were away in their herding activities, in a hunting expedition, or maybe in a war campaign, and some rival tribe took advantage of that moment to wipe all the inhabitants of a small family farm/village. As the scientists concluded, “the nature of the injuries and the near absence of parry fractures (i.e. injuries sustained to the upper limbs) suggest that the individuals were captured and executed, rather than killed in hand-to-hand combat”. In other words, they had no chance to defend themselves and counter-attack, so they were murdered gratuitously. How shameful and cowardly is that!?

That would explain why, after such a violent death, the villagers were buried with such care. Maybe the men came back only to find their entire family, all the cherished ones they had left behind murdered cowardly in their absence, including the youngest among them.

Cruel though as that was, other archaeological evidences found to date suggest that such things were far from unusual and shocking in ancient warfare, even well before the stakes became much more complex, like conflicts over big empires and vast riches.

That family wasn’t even taken captive, enslaved or anything else. It was like they were “clearing the land” for their own people: nobody should be spared. The adult males probably survived just because they weren’t present when the slaughter took place, otherwise we wouldn’t expect the burial to have been made by someone who clearly took the care to make sure the dead relatives would have their eternal rest together with their most loved ones. I wonder what those males did after they saw what their enemies had done to their family, but I’ll assume it wasn’t pretty.

Unfortunately much of human history, even very recently, even now, is made up of really sad and very often appalling events like that one. What’s particularly worrisome is that, as archaeologists do their work, they increasingly find out that the despicable things that humans make when they’re in conflict were ubiquitous in all places, in all ages, in all sorts of different social and economic organizations. To me what that might tell us about humankind is what’s saddest in this story.

Wang Yi Talks About China’s Six Measures to Benefit Mekong in the Next Stage

Unlike the crusaders lip service, when China talk about assistance, the detail is clear with timeline, objectives, and targets.

Wang Yi Talks About China’s Six Measures to Benefit Mekong in the Next Stage

July 05, 2022 05:38 | Source: Xinhuanet

  Xinhua News Agency, Bagan, Myanmar, July 4 (Reporter Zhang Dongqiang) On July 4, 2022 local time, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced when chairing the seventh Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Bagan, Myanmar, that China will We have launched six major Mekong-benefiting measures to share cooperation dividends with Mekong countries and increase development momentum.

  The first is to implement the "Million-Ten Thousand Action Plan for Lancang-Mekong Agricultural Cooperation". Carry out 100 agricultural technology extension projects for Mekong countries, train 1,000 leaders of agricultural prosperity, and build 10,000 hectares of demonstration fertile land.

  The second is the implementation of the "Lancang-Mekong Water Rejuvenation Program". Strengthen the sharing of hydrological information, build hydrological and meteorological forecasting stations, speed up the construction of photovoltaic water-lifting irrigation, rural water supply demonstration, and small watershed management demonstration construction, provide safety examinations for 20 reservoirs and dams, and ensure flood control, food, water supply and ecological security for 70 million people in the basin .

  The third is to implement the "Lancang-Mekong Digital Economy Cooperation Plan". Build cloud computing innovation centers in Mekong countries, promote digital TV R&D demonstrations, develop modern information technology systems, and carry out digital economy skills upgrading cooperation.。。。

Article from HERE

Manipur: Kuki: Indians who claim to be Chinese, refuse to marry with Indian, and do not learn Hindi, Indian festivals

Population 30 million. Their flag is like China but with 6 stars. Not five.
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From HERE

when i was in darjeeling, what i noticed, at least this was my perception
the people overwhelmingly resembled more so chinese. and hardly at all indians to the south.

-Kim
There are dozens of tribes in Manipur living peacefully with each other. That part of the world right next to China has got nothing to deal with India.

The bloody English crusader occupied a large area surrounding India and later simply classified them as India. That is the problem China and many countries across the world are having after the crusader withdrawal.

Anyway, Manipur people blocked India access to their region, and live independently from the India government. Actually there are other part of India with their own armies blocking access by the Indian government. If china behave like the Anglo-Saxon crusaders, China would have funded and armed those forces inside India to split the country.

-Chua

Rodney Dangerfield Has Dom DeLuise Rolling On the Floor Laughing (1974)

This guy is great!

Iranian-flagged tanker moves to recoup cargo seized in Greece

Looting gets harder, in a multipolar world, the victims fight back:
An Iran-flag aframax tanker released from detention in Greece last month is now moving into position to take its seized cargo back.

If it succeeds, the way will be open to resolve an acrimonious stand-off between Iran and Greece in which about 70 seafarers have been caught up in tit-for-tat tanker seizures over the past three months.

According to vessel trackers and sources familiar with the issue, the 115,400-dwt Lana (built 2003) was towed last weekend from its former arrest location at Karystos in the Aegean, to the Piraeus anchorage.

Article HERE

Jeffrey Sachs: Covid-19 may have originated in US biolabs

An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calls for an independent investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that could shed light on the origins of Covid.

JEA: VT has published numerous articles pointing out that there is strong evidence that suggests that Covid 19 could have originated in US biolabs. Now we have enough evidence which confirms this theory.

By Sharon Lerner

IN AN ARTICLE published Thursday, economist Jeffrey Sachs called for an independent investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that could shed light on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sachs and his co-author, Neil Harrison, a Columbia University professor of molecular pharmacology and therapeutics, said that federal agencies and universities possess evidence that has not been adequately reviewed, including virus databases, biological samples, viral sequences, email communications, and laboratory notebooks.

Sachs and Harrison also highlighted a tantalizing scientific detail that may be an indication that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, originated in a laboratory: a sequence of eight amino acids on a critical part of the virus’s spike protein that is identical to an amino acid sequence found in cells that line human airways.

Sachs and Harrison are hardly the first to suggest that SARS-CoV-2 might have been created in a lab. Since its genetic sequence was first published in February 2020, scientists have puzzled over the furin cleavage site, an area on the virus’s spike that allows it to be cleaved by a protein on the membrane of human cells and makes the coronavirus particularly dangerous to people.

Once split, the virus releases its genetic material into the cell and reproduces. While attaching to cells and spike cleavage is part of how all coronaviruses work, SARS-CoV-2 is the only one of its class, sarbecoviruses, that can use furin for the cleavage.

As with past discussion of a possible lab origin of SARS-CoV-2, this latest theory has already been met with considerable pushback. Even some scientists who are open to the idea that a lab accident could have sparked the pandemic remain unconvinced by the particular trail of evidence laid out by Sachs and Harrison.

The journal article offers a scientific road map for how this unusual sequence of amino acids could have made its way into the furin cleavage site, or FCS, of the virus. Sachs and Harrison acknowledge that the sequence could have arisen naturally. But they also lay out another possibility: that scientists might have purposefully inserted this particular string of amino acids into a bat coronavirus in the course of their work. They focus particularly on scientists who submitted an unfunded grant proposal to a division of the Defense Department called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, laying out plans to insert a furin cleavage site into a bat coronavirus.

“We do not know whether the insertion of the FCS was the result of natural evolution — perhaps via a recombination event in an intermediate mammal or a human — or was the result of a deliberate introduction of the FCS into a SARS-like virus as part of a laboratory experiment,” Sachs and Harrison write. “We do know that the insertion of such FCS sequences into SARS-like viruses was a specific goal of work proposed by the EHA-WIV-UNC partnership within a 2018 grant proposal (“DEFUSE”) that was submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA).”

EHA is a reference to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research group based in New York City that has received more than $118 million in grants and contracts from federal agencies. WIV, or the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is a Chinese research organization that collaborated with EcoHealth Alliance in the past and was listed as a subcontractor on the DARPA grant. UNC is mentioned because Ralph Baric, a molecular biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was to have conducted part of the work pitched to DARPA. The grant proposal touted Baric’s “two-decade track record of reverse engineering [coronavirus] and other virus spike proteins.”

The intent of the DARPA proposal was to prevent emerging pathogenic threats, but the work, if conducted, could have created a novel virus capable of infecting humans. “We will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in [a type of mammalian cell commonly used in microbiology] and [human airway epithelial cell] cultures,” the proposal stated.

Several scientists interviewed about the DARPA proposal in September told The Intercept that scientists often begin research before seeking funding and thus that some of the experiments described in the proposal could have already been completed. But when asked about that possibility in an interview, Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, rejected it: “The DARPA proposal was not funded. Therefore, the work was not done. Simple.”

A Rational Choice

s Sachs and Harrison note, the part of a protein on the cell membrane that shares its amino acid sequence with the bat coronavirus is critical for lung function. Known as an epithelial sodium channel-alpha, or ENaC-alpha, it is found in human airway cells, as well as in human kidneys and colons. Intriguingly, like SARS-CoV-2, ENaC-alpha, which facilitates the absorption of fluid in cells, is also activated by the unusual furin cleavage site. Harrison, a physiologist affiliated with Columbia’s Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics, studies ion channels, the larger category to which ENaC-alpha belongs.

Other scientists have already pointed out the match between the amino acid series in the furin cleavage site of SARS-CoV-2 and the ENaC-alpha found in human airways. In 2020, a team from the biomedical company Nference suggested that the overlap between the virus and the sequence found in human lungs is part of the reason that Covid-19 is so damaging to the respiratory system. Those scientists described the sequence as having evolved naturally.

Sachs and Harrison, in contrast, suggest that researchers may have inserted the string of amino acids into a bat coronavirus precisely because of its known importance to lung function. “For a research team assessing the pandemic potential of SARS-related coronaviruses, the FCS of human ENaC — an FCS known to be efficiently cleaved by host furin present in the target location (epithelial cells) of an important target organ (lung), of the target organism (human) — might be a rational, if not obvious, choice of FCS to introduce into a virus in order to alter its infectivity, in line with other work performed previously,” they write.

Such a choice, they point out, would have been in keeping with another viral research project on which EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and UNC’s Baric collaborated: a 2014 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases that involved increasing the transmissibility and pathogenicity of bat coronaviruses.

Growing List of Coincidences

The intriguing theory of viral engineering hinges on two observations: that the amino acid sequences match and that experts in both the ENaC-alpha furin cleavage site and the insertion of genetic sequences into bat coronaviruses happen to work at the same academic institution: the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Baric, whose work aims to prevent and create treatments for viral outbreaks, has previously inserted segments of DNA and RNA into viruses and created an infectious clone of SARS using his own patented “No See’m” method of inserting genetic materials without a trace. He has also collaborated on coronavirus research with scientists from a center for lung studies at UNC-Chapel Hill who are knowledgeable about ENaC-alpha. In one 2016 study, the scientists created a new virus using the spike of a bat coronavirus that had been isolated and characterized by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The experiment found that the new virus “replicated efficiently” in human airway cells that were cultured in a lab.

In another paper, published a year earlier, Baric, along with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli and a lung expert at UNC-Chapel Hill’s lung institute, described creating a hybrid virus using a SARS-like virus from a bat and a “mouse-adapted” coronavirus. The new virus caused mice to get sicker than those exposed to the original virus. The goal of these experiments was to prepare for the possibility that a virus might jump naturally from animals to humans, as SARS had in 2003. But even before the pandemic, the experiment drew criticism from other scientists, who were concerned because the researchers had created a virus that was able to spread in humans.

Sachs and Harrison note that the scientists who co-authored the DARPA grant proposal would have been aware of research on coronavirus furin cleavage sites, including one 2006 experiment in which a furin cleavage site was inserted into a coronavirus. “The research team would also have some familiarity with the FCS sequence and the FCS-dependent activation mechanism of human ENaC, which was extensively characterized at UNC,” they write.

Still, both the overlap in the amino acid sequence and the fact that experts in the furin cleavage site of the ENaC-alpha and insertion of genetic material into bat coronaviruses work at the same university could be coincidental, as Harrison and Sachs acknowledge. Some virologists, though, say that the coincidence strains credulity.

“Could be,” Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, wrote in an email to The Intercept when asked about the possibility that these things are both chance occurrences. “But the list of coincidences is getting verrrrrrrrrrry long.”

Ebright, a proponent of investigating the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and of investigating both natural-spillover and research-related-spillover, whom Harrison and Sachs thank “for helpful commentary on the manuscript,” spelled out some of the other Covid coincidences that he considers questionable, including its initial outbreak in a city that, well before 2019, had already been pegged as a biosafety risk. Ebright also noted Wuhan’s 1,000-mile distance from the nearest wild bats that carry the type of SARS-related coronaviruses that caused the pandemic. And he pointed to the particular coding of the amino acids in the furin cleavage site of SARS-CoV2.

“The sequence encoding the FCS of the pandemic virus contained two consecutive CGG arginine codons,” Ebright explained in his email. (A codon, or a combination of three nucleotides, supplies the genetic code for a single amino acid, though most amino acids can be represented by multiple different codons. Each nucleotide is represented by a letter — for RNA, either A, C, U, or G.) “This codon usage is unusual for a natural bat SARS-related coronaviruses (for which fewer than 1 in 30 arginine codons are CGG) but is optimal for humans (for which most arginine codons are CGG codons).”

Still, Ebright said that at first he didn’t see the identical amino acid sequences as particularly suspicious. “I had known for more than a year that there was a perfect match to an eight-amino acid sequence present in human ENaC. What I had not known was that the sequence was known to be a functional furin cleavage site and that it was a sequence extensively studied at UNC,” he said. “The crucial point that the ENaC sequence was a known functional site, not just that there happens to be a match to a protein that happens to be in humans. … That suddenly turned it from what I thought to be largely irrelevant to being a logical and obvious choice to proceed.”

Ralph Baric and the University of North Carolina did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Name Calling

Other scientists dismiss the idea that the ENaC sequence might have been purposefully inserted into a coronavirus. Scientists who are already convinced that the new coronavirus emerged naturally are unlikely to be persuaded by Sachs and Harrison’s article, which appears in the opinion section of the esteemed journal. Over the past year, many scientists involved in the debate over the origins of the pandemic have settled into an increasingly acrimonious, coarse, and unyielding opposition.

Some proponents of the natural origin theory became particularly dismissive of those open to the possibility of a lab leak after the February release of two pre-print studies mapping the early spread of the virus at the Huanan market in Wuhan. Angela Rasmussen, one of a team of virologists who worked on the project, described it on Twitter as “dispositive evidence of a zoonotic origin” that will “drive those with personal interest in the lab leak hypothesis out of their goddam minds.” In another tweet, Rasmussen referred to proponents of the lab-leak theory as a “pack of ghouls, who through gullibility, stupidity, & conspiracist thinking have decided this is their thing despite zero expertise.”

Although the pre-prints had not been peer-reviewed and may have simply illustrated the spread of the virus rather than its original outbreak, the New York Times ran a front-page story about them that quoted an epidemiologist as saying that the origins debate “has been settled with a very high degree of evidence.” The story, which was announced by a push notification from the paper, also noted a lack of direct evidence for a lab leak.

Meanwhile, Kristian Andersen, another co-author of the pre-prints and a virologist at the well-regarded Scripps Research Institute, used the “poop” emoji to criticize a deeply researched article by Katherine Eban about EcoHealth Alliance. On Twitter, Andersen tarred Eban, New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci, and others reporting on biosafety issues that could have led to the release of SARS-CoV-2 as “deep in conspiracy theories” and on the other side of “a clear split” from journalists who dismiss the possibility of a lab origin, whom Andersen referred to as “science-based.”

Even some scientists who have been vocal about the possibility that the pandemic may have been sparked by research have expressed skepticism about the theory suggested by Harrison and Sachs. “The pandemic virus might have been genetically engineered. However, this could have been done in various ways not limited to the specific theory by Harrison and Sachs. I’m not convinced that their hypothesis is the most plausible one,” said Alina Chan, a scientist who laid out a number of possible routes for how the coronavirus might have emerged through research-related incidents in her recent book “Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.”

While she is open to the possibility that the furin cleavage site might have been purposefully inserted into the coronavirus, Chan said there was no reason to think that researchers would mine humans for such material. “These scientists literally had access to hundreds of SARS-like viruses and sequences,” said Chan, referring to the vast collection of coronaviruses from bats and other animals that researchers amassed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “There’s no need for them to go hunting inside the human protein catalogue to look for cleavage sites to put into viruses.”

Jack Nunberg, a virologist at the University of Montana, was also not immediately persuaded by the theory of engineering suggested by Sachs and Harrison. “It’s possible,” Nunberg said of the idea that the ENaC segment was inserted into a bat coronavirus as part of research designed to gauge the pandemic potential of a virus. “But I don’t find their evidence on ENaC compelling because furin cleavage sites have a lot of common amino acids, and therefore it may just have happened by chance.”

Others say that the article adds noteworthy information to the public conversation about the origins of the pandemic. “The defenders of the natural origin indicate that the virus on which this type of experiment could have been done — the backbone — has never been published and that specialists in the furin cleavage sites would have chosen a more commonly used furin cleavage site like RARR rather than PRRAR. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article contradicts this argument and indicates that specialists knew that the RRAR’SVAS site was efficiently cleaved by furin,” Etienne Decroly, director of virology research at the Aix-Marseille Université in France, wrote in an email to The Intercept.

Decroly added, “It is impossible to decide on the basis of the information currently available and it is urgent that the WHO Special Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens investigate this question.”

On the suggestion of an investigation, Nunberg is in agreement. “You can’t argue with that,” he told The Intercept. “Who’s going to argue for burying one’s head in the sand?”

For their part, Sachs and Harrison emphasize that they’re not saying laboratory manipulation was involved in the emergence of the pandemic virus, only “that it could have been.” They also give a nod to other possibilities, including that an airborne virus might have infected a laboratory worker. Rather than argue that any of these conceivable scenarios happened, they present the clues of the matching amino acid sequences to argue for an independent and transparent scientific investigation of the U.S.-based evidence related to the origins of the virus.

Among the institutions that Sachs and Harrison list as possibly having “knowledge of the detailed activities that were underway in Wuhan and in the United States” are the National Institutes of Health; the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which has provided grant funding to EcoHealth Alliance; the Department of Homeland Security; DARPA; the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded the $200 million PREDICT program that catalogued potential pandemic viruses; and the University of California, Davis, which participated in that program.

The authors suggest that EcoHealth Alliance and UNC may have particularly important untapped resources. “The exact details of the fieldwork and laboratory work of the EHA-WIV-UNC partnership, and the engagement of other institutions in the US and China, has not been disclosed for independent analysis,” they write. “The precise nature of the experiments that were conducted, including the full array of viruses collected from the field and the subsequent sequencing and manipulation of those viruses, remains unknown.”

A Reversal

The publication in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences marks a reversal of sorts for Sachs, the chair of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission who, in November 2020, appointed Daszak, the EcoHealth Alliance president, to lead a task force to investigate the origins of the pandemic. Earlier that year, Daszak had signed on to a public statement published in The Lancet on behalf of scientists who said they “condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

Yet that early certainty about the pandemic’s origins — and the sense of shared civic responsibility among members of the Lancet task force — soon disintegrated. In February 2021, emails revealed that Daszak coordinated the public statement in The Lancet tamping down suspicions of a lab leak. And by June 2021, Sachs was expressing his openness to the possibility of a lab origin, writing that NIH-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology “deserves scrutiny under the hypothesis of a laboratory-related release of the virus.” Three months later, he disbanded the task force that had been organized to “carefully scrutinize the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus” in the hopes of preventing future disease outbreaks, explaining that he had concerns that several members of the commission had conflicts of interest because of their ties to EcoHealth Alliance.

After leading the mainstream scientific inquiry into the origins of the pandemic, Sachs is now skewering it. “A steady trickle of disquieting information has cast a darkening cloud over the agency,” he and Harrison write of the NIH, going on to accuse the entire federal government of not doing enough to explore the possible role of its grantees in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 and investigate “overlooked details” such as the matching amino acid sequences.

Noting that the NIH has insisted that “the pandemic virus could not have resulted from the work sponsored by” the agency, Sachs and Harrison write that “blanket denials from the NIH are no longer good enough.”

Arrested in Japan

I was arrested in Japan after only being there for 42 hours. I thought I was there for a wedding, turns out my traveling companion had other plans.

My travel companion had decided it would be a ‘fantastic idea’ to mail drugs to our hotel room (without my knowledge). When I got the call from the front desk that there was ‘luggage’ for us at the front desk, I assumed he had forgotten something downstairs. I was unaware of what was going on when he instead brought up a small envelope package. He opened it immediately, and it included drugs (I won’t go into specifics, but let’s just say they were the bad kind).

Five minutes later 10 Japanese police officers burst into the room and went through all our luggage, took our passports and put us both in handcuffs. The entire time I had a horrified look on my face, and kept saying ‘What is going on??’. No one answered me. *Interesting side note: when they plopped me down in front of an investigator who spoke English (while I was handcuffed to the chair), she asked if I had any questions for her. My brain was in such a state of shock all I could think to ask was “Do you think I’ll miss the wedding?” She answered “Yes, I think you will”. Then I started crying.

I was unable to contact any family or friends after being arrested. This is applied to everyone, no matter what the charge.

Then began the worst travel experience of my life. And it lasted for 35 days. I will make a long story short in saying that it took 35 days, 2 high powered lawyers from Tokyo and becoming semi-fluent in Japanese to be released without charge. The same cannot be said for my traveling companion, who ended up in jail for much, much longer.

The biggest takeaway here (this should be a no-brainer, but just in case!): never, EVER EVER bring, or smuggle, or mail, or otherwise bring drugs into a foreign country!!! Research the country you are going to be visiting!!

Although I had nothing to do with this case of smuggling, it still took a very long time for me to prove I was innocent. And believe you me, they left absolutely no stone unturned in their investigation. Japan has a 99.5% conviction rate. The fact that I was released without charge further proved my innocence.

I lost 25 lbs, and when I returned home I lost most of my hair from the sudden weight loss and stress.

I have not let this hinder my love of travel though! Not even a year after the incident, I went back to Japan (without the companion) to explore what I did not get to experience the first time. I will keep traveling till the day I die, and I will tell this story to my grandchildren, along with all the other amazing stories I have collected along the way 🙂

Here is a picture of me enjoying tea ceremony at Hikone castle near Osaka (with no thoughts of the jail cell I spent so much time in)

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Edit: this is my most prized document, received from my lawyers after I returned home – my Notice of non-prosecution! I started planning my return trip to Japan the day I received this.

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Edit #2/Update: So many many thanks to Graham Healey for his wonderful translation of my document above – my first translation was a badly computer generated version.

Chiba District Prosecutor’s Office Number 2

Notice of Non-prosecution

9 January 2014

[To] Ms Krysta Lee Storer

[From] Public Prosecutor [name removed], Office of Public Prosecutions, Chiba District

At the request of Defence Attorney [name removed], I [hereby] notify you as follows:

With regard to the matter of your having been detained on suspicion of (a) infringement of the Law Relating to Special Cases Under the Control of Narcotic and Psychotropic Drugs Law Aimed at the Prevention of Actions Abetting Illegal Actions relating to Controlled Drugs under International Cooperation, (b) infringement of the Cannabis Control Law, (c) infringement of the Narcotic and Psychotropic Drugs Control Law and (d) infringement of the Tax Law, I disposed of this matter on 25 December 2013 with a decision not to initiate a prosecution because of insufficient evidence.

I was released on Christmas Day, 2013. Best Christmas Ever.

If you are interested in reading more about my experience in jail, please see my Quora space: Krysta’s Misadventures. Thank you for reading!

Falco – Rock Me Amadeus (Official Video), Full HD (Digitally Remastered and Upscaled)

Another great BLAST FROM THE PAST!

The reign of Pertinax

The reign of Pertinax was perhaps the biggest “oh sh%t” moment in Roman history thus far. It’s a ridiculous saga that’s almost hard to believe.

Let me set the stage. You all know who Commodus was right? The Emperor in the movie “Gladiator”?

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Well, Commodus was a bad Emperor, perhaps even the worst Emperor. He drove the Empire to bankruptcy by throwing near-constant gladiator games where he himself fought as a gladiator and was the main attraction. Sometimes he showed off bow skills and killed animals, other times he killed people.

His reign saw famine, economic decline, inflation, and political instability. Eventually, he was assassinated and replaced as usually happens with bad Emperors.

The new Emperor was the opposite of Commodus. His name was Pertinax and he was an old wise politician who actually cared about the Empire.

Pertinax took over and immediately realized how screwed Rome was. Simply put, the treasury was nearing empty and Rome’s spending habits were out of control.

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Now when an Emperor took the throne it was customary to give a “donative” (basically a bonus) to the Praetorian Guard. This was a huge sum of money- something like hundreds of millions of dollars in modern money.

Pertinax realized that the Empire lacked the funds for a large donative. So, Pertinax paid out a smaller donative than was customary.

The Praetorians were livid and brought their case to Pertinax, demanding more money. Pertinax said no and moved on with his reign.

The Praetorians responded like this.

  1. They killed Pertinax with no heir in place.
  2. The Senate was upset but afraid and couldn’t appoint a new Emperor
  3. The Praetorians decided to give the throne to whoever could pay them the most. There was a bidding war between 2 rich men named Sulpicianus and Didius Julianus. Didius promised 25,000 sesterces to every Praetorian and thus won the auction for the throne.

Think about how INSANE this is. The throne of the largest Empire on earth was literally auctioned off so that the bodyguards could cash in a big payday. Can you imagine the Secret Service auctioning off the US Presidency after murdering the prior President over the size of their bonus?

The Praetorians were pleased with themselves but nobody else was. This action was so far over the line it’s hard to fathom. Romans were shocked, dismayed, and horrified by what had happened.

When Didius Took the throne he went to the Senate and reminded them he had served with them for years and was actually a good choice. Nobody in the Senate house said a word and moved a muscle- Didius would find no friends there.

So Didius got his throne and the support of the Praetorians. The Senate and People of Rome hated him but oh well.


Off on the Rhine River at this time was Septimius Severus- commander of the Rhine legions.

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Now the Rhine legions saw the most action and they were hardened warriors- serious badasses. The Rhine Legions were the crack troops of the Roman Empire at this time.

When Septimius heard about Didius buying the throne and demanding his submission he laughed hard, had his men proclaim him Emperor, and marched to Rome.

The Praetorians tried to march out and put up a fight but they were not suicidal. They realized they would be slaughtered and just opened the gates to Severus.

Didius was then killed without ceremony. His last words were

“But what evil have I done? Whom have I killed”

The Senate and People of Rome proclaimed Septimius their Emperor and damned the memory of Didius Julianus.

Gotta feel bad for the guy- he really wasn’t a bad dude.

Septimius then got rid of the Praetorian Guard…. kinda. Every member of the guard was stripped of their rank and position and exiled from Rome itself. Then Septimius formed a new Praetorian Guard made up of his veterans from the Rhine legions.

Septimius honored Pertinax for various logical reasons.

  1. He was the rightful Emperor that had been viciously and illegally murdered by greedy Praetorian Guards. This was Septimius’s justification for marching on Rome after all.
  2. Pertinax was a decent Emperor who had the right idea. He just lacked political IQ.

Septimius was politically savvy. He was trying to frame himself as the savior of Rome, who had marched on the city to overthrow a tyrant and the murderers that had killed the rightful Emperor.

Was this true?

Yes- mostly it was. Septimius would actually go down as one of the better Emperors in Roman history and the Praetorians really were murderous thugs.

American ICBM Test Rocket Exploded Seconds After Launch, Briefly Setting Fire To California Base

Imagine that! I wonder... -MM
Friday, Jul 08, 2022 – 12:45 AM

A late night ICBM missile test in California ended in disaster, as it exploded just seconds after lift-off on Wednesday.

Officials with the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Lompoc, California confirmed that “The Minotaur II space launch vehicle exploded approximately 11 seconds after launching off the test pad at 11:01 p.m. local time, Vandenberg,” which was announced Thursday morning.

The incident resulted in a fire on base, though officials noted that debris from the blast didn’t stray outside of the “immediate vicinity” of the launch bad. The local Vandenberg Fire Department responded and was able to put out the fire before it threatened other areas of the base. No injuries were reported.

A cause of the failed test was not immediately clear, and it’s under investigation. Local reports, citing military press releases, say the test was originally slated for Thursday morning but was moved up to late Wednesday night for unknown reasons.

“The military base was testing the U.S. Air Force’s new missile rocket, which is expected to be used with the future LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile,” one area report details.

“Both are being developed by the Air Force’s Nuclear Weapons Center to will replace the aging Minuteman missiles that have previously been tested at the Central Coast base, located near Lompoc,” the reported added.

According to a defense journal the launch was intended to demonstrate the vehicle’s “preliminary design concepts and relevant payload technologies in operationally realistic environments,” based on an Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center statement.

The precious comments from this article…

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The biggest shame for ancient Rome was the loss of the “Eagle Standard”

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Every legion had an eagle standard and it was the embodiment of Roman power and might. The Roman legions and Roman citizens nearly worshipped the standard.

When Crassus marched off to fight the Parthians he lost the standards. This was a horrible humiliation for Rome. To lose so many standards to an enemy was an insult to Rome itself.

Decades later Augustus became the first emperor of Rome.

Augustus wanted a big win against the Parthians and he sent his right hand man and greatest general of the age Agrippa to deliver.

So what did Agrippa and Augustus want? To conquer Parthia? To take the capital? No

They merely wanted the legion standards back.

Agrippa did what Agrippa does and found a way to negotiate for the standards back.

When they were returned to Rome it was a party. The Romans flooded the streets and partied like Rome had won some grand victory. To them getting the standards back was a victory.

Losing a battle was never great- but losing the standards was a true defeat. As long as the eagle stood strong Rome stood strong.

The Shot President

On October 14, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was planning on giving a speech.

He started by saying, “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.”

He was then shot.

“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot,” Roosevelt continues.

Much to the crowd’s shock, Roosevelt unbuttons his bloodstained shirt.

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“It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” Roosevelt assures the crowd.

Roosevelt takes his speech papers out of his coat pocket. There was a bullet hole straight through all fifty pages. The papers had saved his life.

Luckily for his speech, Roosevelt had a self-claimed photographic memory. He went on to give a ninety minute speech even though his aides insisted that he go to a hospital. Only with the speech completed did he agree to visit the hospital.

He was fifty-three at the time.

What a bad-ass.

Roosevelt’s face later that day:

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Why Are Girls Attracted To Assholes?

From elsewhere. I did not write this piece. -MM

The first time I fell in love, I was 13. I wanted her to like me back so much I was prepared to do anything. I did my best to be nice, kind and giving – but none of it worked.

So I spent 2 years watching my first crush date asshole after asshole. She’d fall for the cheaters, the jerks and the guys who disrespected her. Every time, I was the one she cried to when things went wrong for the Nth time.

I didn’t get it.

Here I was, giving her so much and ready to give more; we’d be great together… But she kept choosing them over me. She wasn’t the only one; over the years, many of the girls I liked ended up with assholes.

So when I finally decided to get with women, the first thing I wanted to know was, “why do girls like assholes so much?” – and whether I had to become one to be loved.

Here are the answers to those questions.

1. Girls Like Assholes because They’re Strong

Assholes have tough, dominant personalities. They’re not afraid to assert themselves over other people – in fact, they rarely show fear at all. They take what they want from life and don’t care what anyone thinks of them.

This is incredibly attractive because girls want to be with men who make them feel safe and protected. They like strong guys who know what they want and aren’t afraid to take it. Assholes have all those qualities – and so women choose them.

2. Girls Like Assholes because They Have Other Priorities

Women like successful, accomplished men. Just look at how they act around rockstars, actors, etc; success is an incredibly powerful aphrodisiac.

As an extension of that, girls are also attracted to guys who’ll be successful in the future. And what kind of man has the capacity to succeed? One who feels passionate and ambitious about his life’s goals, of course.

On the other hand, a man who puts his woman first is unattractive. There’s no challenge to him, his life has no great purpose: nothing sexy or interesting there.

By putting their women second, assholes project the potential for success. This is the second quality that makes them so attractive to women.

3. Assholes Create Emotional Ups & Downs, a.k.a. Chick Crack

A girl can talk to her friends for hours, whining about a guy who keeps being hot & cold; complaining how she can’t figure him out. (Some even make funky songs).

But at the end of the day, she’s talking about him, isn’t she?

Women are attracted to drama, mystery and challenges. They might not enjoy emotional ups and downs, but they’re attracted to the men who create them. Assholes are real good at that, which is the third reason chicks dig them.

4. Assholes are Direct

One of the most unattractive things about “nice guys” is how murky they are about what they want. They’re so busy trying to protect themselves from rejection that they don’t show the girl what they want from her.

This is extremely confusing to a woman. Try to put yourself in her position – imagine someone is being nice to you for no reason at all.

A stranger starts being nice to you on the street. You suspect he wants something – maybe money, maybe to sell you something – and so his niceness comes across as an act. You don’t know his intentions, which puts you on guard.

That’s how women feel about men who aren’t clear about what they want.

Assholes are always direct. They may not be nice, but at least they’re real – which is infinitely more attractive. This is the fourth and final reason women like them so much.

5. Main Point… You don’t have to be an asshole to be ANY of these things.

I spent so many years thinking girls like assholes… But I was wrong. After spending years talking to thousands of women, I can tell you that much for sure.

Look back at the previous four points. Do you really have to be a bad person to have any of those qualities?

You can be strong; you can have things going on in your life; you can learn to know when it’s time to keep your distance; you can be direct… And still be a great guy.

All the most attractive men I know are incredibly kind and generous. Being an asshole isn’t sexy or manly; when given a choice between a good guy and a bad guy with all of the above qualities, women will always pick the good guy.

Girls don’t like assholes. They like strong, challenging men with exciting lives. You don’t have to be a jerk to have all those attractive qualities – great news if you’re like me and enjoy being nice to people.

Yes, a very small minority of women confuses cruelty with strength. They’ll always be attracted to men who mistreat them – but you don’t want those girls anyway.

The ones you do want will appreciate your niceness and love you for it. Find them, attract them with your awesomeness and don’t be an asshole!

by George P.H.

A contract killing in China

I don’t know if it is true, but it makes a great story…

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A businessman hired an assassin to kill an enemy. He gave her two million yuan to do the job (just over $280,000). The killer decided it was better to keep half the money, and give the other half to someone else to kill him. Repeat the operation a few times, and you have five contract killers.

The killer at the bottom of the pyramid was given 100,000 yuan and decided it wasn’t enough money to kill someone, so he decided to contact the target and told him to fake his death.

Days later, the victim reported the incident to the police, and the five killers and the businessman ended up in jail.

Big Tech Isn’t Woke… It’s Totalitarian

Friday, Jul 08, 2022 – 03:30 PM

Authored by Michael Senger via ‘The New Normal’ Substack,

In the mid-18th century, a secretive political group began spreading dangerous conspiracy theories throughout Britain’s colonies. British subjects had long enjoyed the freedom of expression, but these radicals abused novel communication platforms to churn out seditious literature not often grounded in fact, even resorting to threats and violence that endangered those around them.

According to their wild theories, a series of modest taxes levied by Parliament actually represented an incremental process to strip away their rights. They had no evidence to back their claims. After they arranged one of the costliest acts of vandalism in the history of the Empire, Parliament very reasonably invoked a state of emergency to protect the public. Yet, characteristically, rather than raising their objections through proper legal channels, these extremists co-signed a document penned by one of their most wily and manipulative agitators, falsely claiming to speak for all the colonists in declaring themselves above the law.

In a helpful rebuttal, Governor Thomas Hutchinson thoroughly debunked the document, outlining the many “false and frivolous” claims in this “list of imaginary grievances,” its signatories relying on spurious overtures to “what they called the natural rights of mankind” to evade substantive argument. Hutchinson noted the signers’ racism, “depriving more than a hundred thousand Africans of their rights to liberty,” discrediting their appeals to so-called “natural rights,” as well as “the absurdity of making the governed to be governors,” a laughable contradiction. Moreover, the document was misleading. “The real design was to reconcile the people of America to that Independence.” The signers even referred to their sovereign as a “tyrant,” a profanity for which “indignant resentment must seize the breast of every loyal subject.” The Empire had always been about saving lives, after all—even if it occasionally fell a bit short.

In this story, most readers now recognize the birth of the world’s oldest democracy and the modern constitutional republic. But perhaps those who presently govern the mega-platforms collectively referred to as “Big Tech,” on which most online discourse now takes place, take it as a warning of what can go wrong if citizens are permitted to freely express their beliefs.

As strangely low an ethical standard as it was, the days of “Don’t be evil” appear to have been left far behind. Big Tech platforms now routinely side with raw state and corporate power, showing a disregard bordering on outright disdain for the rights and welfare of the human beings whom their actions affect. The recent history of Big Tech is a history of repeated usurpations, all demonstrating as their direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the people.

Big Tech platforms openly disavow any role in abiding by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, to which all American citizens owe a duty and to which any person who chooses to become an American citizen must swear an oath to uphold and defend. They censor centuries-old news organizations for publishing true, factual, and timely information.

Big Tech platforms routinely censor the legal speech of citizens, concealing the rationale behind their decisions and applying their terms of service selectively, if at all. They mislead the public as to the scale and scope of this censorship, systematically silencing the most articulate voices on one side of any given debate unbeknownst to the vast majority of the public.

Big Tech platforms openly collude with governments to suppress the speech of their own people, while overtly abusing the legal system and paying massive settlements to conceal the evidence of their collusion. They craft the false illusion of consensus on political issues of their own choosing, a power unprecedented in our democracy and historically held only by the most despotic regimes, promising in every instance to wield it for good, but falling short every time.

Big Tech platforms deploy artificial intelligence to censor and de-boost citizens and opposing viewpoints with increasingly inhuman detachment and efficiency. They retain as leading AI experts—on their boards of directors—personnel with deep and well-documented ties to the militaries of the world’s worst dictatorships.

Big Tech platforms routinely apply fact-check labels to true stories and information based on unrelated contextual issues, manipulating political narratives by deceiving the public into believing that the pertinent information is itself false. Meanwhile, they ignore large-scale bot and astroturf campaigns affecting political outcomes all over the world—despite harrowing accounts from whistleblowers—while misleading the public as to the frequency, scale, and purpose of these bot and astroturf campaigns.

Big Tech platforms censor the voices of the most well-qualified citizens under the Orwellian pretext of combatting “misinformation,” drowning out their views with those of disinformation agents and bots. Meanwhile, they anoint as “experts” those who hold no relevant qualifications in the designated field other than a groveling deference to the viewpoints of Big Tech, who then regularly publish falsehoods without retribution.

Big Tech platforms employ managers who accept bribes to censor political dissidents fighting against the world’s deadliest regimes, to whom they show obsequious deference. They bear a growing resemblance to organized crime syndicates, submitting false statements to the highest courts of law while hiding behind an unlimited legal budget and cutesy PR campaigns replete with amorphous birds and round, lower-case letters to escape legal scrutiny.

This is no far-off dystopia. As rapidly as they’ve transpired, these things are already happening, and this is the reality of the world that Big Tech has created today. Given their systematic suppression of dissent against lockdowns, which ultimately killed over 170,000 Americans and countless millions more around the world, it’s hard to think of any ostensibly-private enterprise since the British East India Company that’s been responsible for more widespread human suffering. Much of this behavior is surely being coerced by the federal government, just as the East India Company was largely doing the bidding of the British Government. But Big Tech might want to ask how well “just following orders” worked as a defense in 1945.

I conclude with the words of another individual who ultimately came to sign that radical 18th-century document, but other than whom no man ever fought harder for peace.

“Look upon your Hands! They are stained with the Blood of your Relations! You and I were long Friends. You are now my Enemy—and I am Yours.”

The Simpsons – Planet Of The Apes Musical – Dr. Zaius

Now have some fun!

Russia’s Medvedev Warns US Trying To Punish A Nuclear Power ‘Risks Existence Of Humanity’

Thursday, Jul 07, 2022 – 11:15 PM

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday warned the US against trying to punish Russia for its war in Ukraine, saying that doing so would risk humanity since Moscow has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

“The idea of punishing a country that has one of the largest nuclear potentials is absurd. And potentially poses a threat to the existence of humanity,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram.

Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy of Russia’s Security Council, had warned earlier in the war that if the US destabilizes Russia like it did Iraq and other countries, it could lead to a nuclear “dystopia.” As of 2020, Russia was estimated to have 6,375 nuclear warheads, and the US said it possessed 5,750 warheads.

Even though it’s widely believed that a direct conflict between the US and Russia could quickly turn nuclear, it doesn’t appear to be a factor in the Biden administration’s response to the war in Ukraine. Instead, the US is pouring billions of dollars in weapons into the country and continues to escalate its involvement in the war.

In his Telegram post, Medvedev also called out the US for hypocrisy for trying to put Russia on trial for war crimes, citing the millions killed by the US since World War II in countries like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many others.

“So who’s going to give us a show trial? Those who kill people and commit war crimes with impunity, but do not meet real condemnation in the international structures financed by them?” Medvedev said, according to a Google translation of his Telegram post.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland recently visited Ukraine and pledged support for international efforts to investigate alleged Russian war crimes. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened an investigation in Ukraine, but the US is not a party to the court and has impeded its effort to investigate alleged war crimes committed by the US and Israel.

The lost bag

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It’s 1989. I am nineteen working as a tour guide in Tokyo. It’s my first job.

The bus stops at the large service area parking lot filled with cars and people overlooking beautiful mountains.

I rush to the nearest phone booth to make a phone call to our next stop: lunch at a traditional Japanese restaurant. My job is to report the exact number of the guests, and estimate time of arrival. I only had five minutes before all the guests come back to the bus.

“We have 45, arriving at 12:15 pm,” I say over the phone.

“I got it,” the manager responds to me.

Relieved, I walk back to the bus and wait for all the guests to come back.

After confirming everyone hops onto the bus, we leave the service area and head for the restaurant.

The traffic is smooth on the highway considering it’s “Golden Week.” Everything is going smooth.

I open my bag to check the schedule for the rest of the trip.

Wait.

The bag feels light. Too light.

Then, I realize I am missing something: Cash bag.

It has ¥100,000 (roughly US$700) in cash, and some voucher for the restaurant.

I must have left the bag in the phone booth.

My heart almost stop. I am screaming inside “Stop. Turn around the bus and go back to the service area now!” But, I couldn’t tell it to anyone. I have to pretend as if everything is going OK.

The voucher is for the lunch to pay to the restaurant. What would I tell them? The cash is for the emergency use, so didn’t have to have it to complete the trip, but then, if lose, how would I pay back?

All these questions are circling in my head until we arrive at the restaurant.

I want to run to the phone at the restaurant, but have to greet our guest first. Then, grab the phone and made a quick call to my company office.

“I think I left my bag at the last stop,” I tell my boss. “Cash and voucher was in.”

“Ok, relax,” my boss says. “First, apologize and tell the restaurant manager we will mail the voucher later. Tell them you forgot to bring. As for the cash, call the police and tell them you left at the service area.”

I realize it’s not as bad as I thought. Not definitely the end of the world.

I call the police and file a lost and found report. Obviously, it’s too early for my bag to be turned in, but I am not yet giving up the hope.

I finish the trip without cash and voucher.

Three days, later, I receive a phone call from a police.

“A gentleman found and turned in your bag.”

“Really?” I yell over the phone.

“How much was in the bag?”

“¥100,000” I reply.

“Looks like it’s all in there,” the policeman says.

A few days later, I go to the police station near the service area to pick up the bag. I meet the man who found my bag.

“Thank you,” I say to him and hand him an envelope containing some cash as a token of appreciation.


Postscript

I suppose the moral of this story is, “Do onto others what you’ve have them done to you,” or “What goes around, comes around.”

The story illustrates a custom, a simple teaching embedded in the Japanese culture. I was taught this growing up in Japan. After this experience, it is embedded in me more than ever.

I’ve been living in the US for over past 30 years now. Every time I see a “lost” object in any public places – streets, cafes, public transportation, offices, I turn it in. I do this regardless of where I am. I’ve done it in Japan. I will continue to do so.

My hope is that everyone reads this story will do the same and by doing so, perhaps, the world will be a better place.

Charles Joughin

As everything was going to shit, Charles Joughin was remarkably calm.

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When the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg on April 14, 1912, even the ship’s staff was in a state of panic. No one stepped up to the plate to take charge. In fact, most of the staff were running around just as frantically as the passengers.

So, our boy Charles stepped in.

Charles was head baker and fittingly, his first order of business was sending loaves of bread to the lifeboats so people would have food to last until they were rescued.

He continued by helping others onto their boats until he reached his own. Only instead of hopping on, he forced a group of women and children on, saving their lives.

The icy water filled the ship quickly and Charles was fully aware that his chance of survival was slim at best, so he did what any person would do: get drunk out of their mind.

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He went to his cabin and got as much whiskey as he could. On his way, he threw chairs into the ocean for people to use as flotation devices.

And then he jumped off the ship, into the freezing water.

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He spent hours in the unforgiving Atlantic ocean.

Most died in minutes.

The alcohol coursing through his body fought off the cold and kept him alive.

“I was just paddling and treading water,” he said.

As dawn broke, he found a lifeboat and swam towards it, only to find that there was no space for him.

Luckily, another nearby boat had room and he managed to climb on. They were rescued soon after and there was no illness or injury to even prove he’d been in the water.

Charles would go on to join the Navy and died at 78, living a full life thanks to some whiskey.

China Dominates The Antibiotics Market

Of course. Antibiotics are not a highly profitable product. So they are ignored by Wall Street, but the Chinese think differently that the self-centered capitalists. -MM
Friday, Jul 08, 2022 – 10:40 AM

Global exports of antibiotics originate predominantly from China – as Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic below based on data from the International Trade Center (ITC).

China currently accounts for 42.4 percent of global antibiotic exports by value. Italy, India and Switzerland follow far behind.

For years, experts have been warning of the EU’s dependence on antibiotic supplies from abroad, especially China and India.

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Statista

This dependence is not only limited to antibiotics, but affects – also for many years – a wide range of pharmaceutical products, including cortisone, for example.

In addition, the world is facing another, increasingly significant problem: More and more bacteria are developing resistance to common antibiotics.

As a result, there is now a pressing need for drugs that are specifically effective against resistant germs. Most of the antibiotic classes introduced in the 21st century do just that. However, research into these active substances is often not profitable and risky for the industry; because drugs that specifically act against resistant germs are not used across the board, but only as so-called “second-line” or “last-line” antibiotics (reserve antibiotics) – as a last resort when the established drugs are no longer effective.

Russia: New Weapons Based on New Physics; U.S./NATO Missiles Would Never Leave Their Silos

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The government of Russia has developed new weapons technology, based on new physics principles, that if used, would prevent U.S. and NATO Nuclear Missiles from ever leaving their launch silos.  Russia has nothing to fear from US nuclear weapons.

BY:  Military expert Kulikov D. V.

“Russia has come close to creating weapons based on new physical principles” – V. V. Putin, 2018.

These were not empty words and cartoons, as the United States tried to convince the whole world. In 2022, the Russian Federation put on display the laser systems, which we wrote about earlier.

It’s time to reveal a conceptually new weapon based on new physical principles that only science fiction writers dreamed of in their works!

The ALABUGA complex is a high-frequency high-power electro-magnetic generator (EMP), capable, in the truest sense of the word, of burning all electronics within a radius of 4 kilometers.

“In modern warfare, the one who first blinds and destroys the enemy’s electronic eyes wins.”

All data on this complex is classified as Top Secret! But today we will reveal a little the veil of secrecy.

Russian designers managed to create a compact EMR – a generator that can be easily placed in the body of any Russian missile, in the place of the warhead (“Caliber”, “Zircon”, “Onyx”, “Dagger”, “Iskander”, “Petrel” and others ).

It is assumed that the rocket, being at the right height and above the right place, produces an explosion, forming an electromagnetic impulse as a shock wave, while the manpower and buildings remain intact.

“Alabuga” – disables any enemy electronics, such as a tank platoon, an airfield with aircraft, and even simple mobile phones, computers and other household appliances. After that, the enemy will simply have no choice but to surrender and give all their weapons to the advancing units of the Russian army as trophies” – A high-ranking specialist of the Rostec concern, who wished to remain anonymous.

And if EMP “Alabuga” are placed on the missiles “Petrel”, which have an infinite range, and “land” this missile somewhere in the United States, next to the launch silos of nuclear ballistic missiles, the coordinates of which are known, then it is possible to activate the generator at the right time, thereby disable the “atomic fist” of the United States.

The very idea of an Electro-Magnetic weapon is not new, and arose during the first Nuclear tests, because the EMP Wave is one of the damaging factors. For example, in 1962, when testing atomic weapons, the United States blew up at an altitude of 400 kilometers, a charge with a capacity of only 1.4 megatons.
The result was amazing. Unexpectedly for themselves, they disabled 2 Soviet satellites and 4 of their own.

Knowing these facts, the Alabuga complex looks like a more than realistic project.

There are many more surprises waiting and someday we will be able to tell about it!

Black Forest Cake

This German-born dessert is an exercise in seeing how many ways you can infuse one cake with cherry flavor.

It’s composed of layers of chocolate cake that have been thoroughly soaked with kirsch (a clear cherry spirit) and topped with maraschino cherries, while some versions even have sour cherries stuffed between the layers.

Though it was first invented in 1915, its popularity soared stateside in the 1970s.

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What is Black Forest Cake?

This is my rendition of the traditional German black forest cake aka Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. Today’s towering beauty has 4 parts:

  1. My go-to chocolate layer cake
  2. Dark sweet cherries
  3. Fluffy vanilla whipped cream
  4. Dark chocolate ganache

Chocolate Cake

The cake recipe comes from this tuxedo cake, which was adapted from my favorite chocolate cake. It has a cake crumb so moist and chocolate-y, it sticks to your fork and melts on your tongue.

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Curious about the ingredients used? Hop on over to that recipe for detail. One thing I’ll mention because it’s worth repeating: hot liquid is a must in this cake batter. Why? The hot liquid encourages the cocoa powder to bloom and dissolve instead of just sitting there. For the hot liquid, I recommend coffee which will deepen the chocolate flavor. The cake will not taste like coffee, I promise! Or you can use hot water.

Cherries & Whipped Cream

Grab a couple cans of dark sweet cherries that are soaked in heavy syrup (the can is sold as such). Reduce the syrup down on the stove as the cakes bake. Have any cherry liquor around? Add a splash and brush the mixture all over the cakes while they’re still warm. This cherry soaking syrup guarantees the moistest, most flavorful chocolate cake you will EVER taste. Think of the best chocolate cake you’ve ever eaten. This one’s better and we have the cherry- soaking syrup to thank.

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Those cherries from the can? They’ll be layered right into the cake, seeping their magenta juices into the vanilla whipped cream. Swirled pink, the whipped cream is light, billowy, and doesn’t weigh down the cake. While this black forest cake is certainly decadent, it’s not overly heavy. A breath of fresh air considering most chocolate cakes are dense as bricks!

Most of vanilla whipped cream is layered inside the cake, but be sure to reserve some to lightly spread on top and around the cake. This seals in the cake’s moisture. Have I mentioned this cake is moist?

How to Make Chocolate Ganache

Black forest cake is traditionally finished with chocolate shavings, but I took it a step further and opted for chocolate ganache. The crowning glory is a layer of dazzling chocolate ganache that gently drapes over the sides for mega drama. (Because when it comes to chocolate cake, there’s gotta be drama!) Made from heavy cream and pure chocolate, there’s no garnish more appropriate for this cake masterpiece.

I’m so excited for you to try this black forest cake, a recipe that came to life from the one who inspired me to get in the kitchen.

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Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Grease three 9-inch cake pans, line with parchment paper, then grease the parchment paper. Parchment paper helps the cakes seamlessly release from the pans.
  2. Make the chocolate cake: Whisk the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and espresso powder (if using) together in a large bowl. Set aside. Using a KitchenAid stand mixer fitted with a flat beater, beat the oil, eggs, sour cream, buttermilk, and vanilla together until combined. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, add the hot water or coffee, and beat it all until the batter is completely combined.
  3. Divide batter evenly between 3 pans. Bake for 21-25 minutes. Baking times vary, so keep an eye on yours. The cakes are done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove the cakes from the oven and set on a wire rack. Allow to cool for 30 minutes in the pans, then remove cakes from pans and set on a cooling rack. Be careful and use two hands when handling the cakes.
  4. After the cakes have cooled, use a large serrated knife or cake leveler to slice a thin layer off the tops of the cakes to create a flat surface. Discard (or crumble over ice cream!).
  5. Prepare the syrup: Drain the cherries, reserving 3/4 cup (180ml) of the heavy syrup. Set cherries aside. Simmer syrup and cherry liquor in a small saucepan over low heat until reduced down to 1/4 cup (60ml). Brush reduced syrup all over the cakes, reserving any leftover syrup.
  6. Slice the cherries in half, leaving a few whole cherries for garnish. Set aside.
  7. Make the ganache: Place chopped chocolate and corn syrup, if using, in a medium bowl. Heat the cream in a small saucepan until it begins to gently simmer. (Do not let it come to a rapid boil– that’s too hot!) Pour over chocolate and let it sit for 2-3 minutes to gently soften the chocolate. Slowly stir until completely combined and chocolate has melted. Set aside to cool for 10 minutes as you prepare the whipped cream.
  8. Make the whipped cream: Using a KitchenAid stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, whip the heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla extract on medium-high speed until soft peaks form, about 3 minutes.
  9. Assemble the cake: Place 1 cake layer on your cake stand, cake turntable, or serving plate. Spread 1 heaping cup of whipped cream evenly on top. Dot with half of the halved cherries and drizzle with a spoonful of reduced syrup. Top with 2nd cake layer and evenly cover the top with 1 heaping cup whipped cream, the remaining halved cherries, and another drizzle of reduced syrup. Top with the 3rd cake layer. Spread the remaining whipped cream on top and all around the sides in a thin layer using an icing spatula. Use a bench scraper to smooth out the whipped cream on the sides of the cake.
  10. Pour chocolate ganache on top of the cake. Spread to the edges of cake allowing it to gently drip down the sides. Top with whole cherries. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before slicing and serving.
  11. Cover and store leftover cake at room temperature for 1-2 days or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Notes

  1. Make Ahead Instructions: The cake layers can be baked, cooled, and covered tightly at room temperature overnight. For the cherry syrup, cool then cover and refrigerate overnight. The whipped cream can be prepared, covered tightly, and refrigerated overnight. Chocolate ganache can be prepared, covered tightly, and refrigerated for up to 3 days before using. Let ganache sit at room temperature to soften or microwave for 5-10 seconds before using. The assembled cake can be refrigerated for up to 1 day before slicing and serving. The frosted cake can also be frozen up to 2-3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and bring to room temperature before serving.
  2. Why Room Temperature Ingredients? All refrigerated items should be at room temperature so the batter mixes together easily and evenly. Read here for more information. Instead of sour cream, try using plain yogurt. The cake won’t taste as rich, but it’s a fine substitution.
  3. Cocoa Powder: Use natural cocoa in the cake, not dutch-process. Here’s the difference between natural cocoa powder and dutch-process cocoa powder.
  4. Espresso Powder: Espresso powder and coffee will not make the chocolate taste like coffee. Rather, they deepen the chocolate flavor. I highly recommend them both. If coffee isn’t your thing, you can leave out the espresso powder and use boiling hot water instead of the hot coffee.
  5. Buttermilk: Buttermilk is required for this recipe. You can make your own DIY version of buttermilk if needed. Add 1 teaspoon of white vinegar or lemon juice to a liquid measuring cup. Then add enough whole milk to the same measuring cup until it reaches 1/2 cup. (In a pinch, lower fat or nondairy milks work for this soured milk, but the cake won’t taste as moist or rich.) Stir it around and let sit for 5 minutes. The homemade “buttermilk” will be somewhat curdled and ready to use in the recipe.
  6. Cherries: Canned dark sweet cherries in heavy syrup (they are sold as such) are imperative to the recipe. The syrup will be reduced down. Do not use fresh dark sweet cherries, sour cherries, or maraschino cherries.
  7. Cherry Liquor: The cherry liquor is optional, but really gives the soaking syrup (step 4) that over-the-top delicious flavor setting this black forest cake apart from others. You can also add a splash to the whipped cream!
  8. Corn Syrup: I like to add a touch of light corn syrup to the ganache to give it some glistening shine. This is an optional ingredient.

Pretty Anime Girls by The Artist Little Thunder

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Little Thunder is an artist from Hong Kong who draws illustrations with adorable anime girls. She works in digital as well, but she mostly draws in watercolor – it gives the pictures an incredible tenderness, but without losing the richness of the colors. Watching Little Thunder’s work is like lying on a huge soft marshmallow. It’s a real pleasure.

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An important and breath-taking read from an Egyptian who studied China

Amazing insight and conclusions for someone who only studied China for one year. But in the end, he doesn’t know how China does it. He doesn’t know why everyone else fails while China succeeds. Do you know the answer? Read on.

AS an Egyptian, I have been studying China intensely for the past year — its government, society, history, and transformation.

I’ve spoken to hundreds of Chinese and China-haters and heard everything they had to say. By now I’ve learned roughly as much about China as anyone can learn without knowing the language or living in the country, and I’ve reached my conclusion. China attracts a lot of haters, know-nothings and armchair experts.

The truth is that China is the greatest country on the face of the earth. It makes all other countries look insignificant and contemptible. It is the most brilliant, most industrious, most ambitious, most educated, meritocratic and technocratic, most modern, sophisticated, and civilised, and best-governed by far.

It is the first nonwhite, non-Western country to reach this status since the 1600s. The determination of this country is indescribable. Supernatural. There is no force that can stop it from accomplishing anything it wants to do.

Forty years ago a flush toilet in China was a luxury. Today it has its own Space Station. This is a tiny example of China’s capabilities.

It doesn’t matter who we are. Egyptians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Indians, Africans, even Americans. Next to the Chinese, we are pathetic. We can’t do what they do. We would have a mountain, an Everest of changes to make, and we would whine and bicker and fail at every one of them. China’s story since the 1980s has been one of an almost divine metamorphosis.

Next to China the entire Western world from Alaska to New Zealand has stagnated. Next to China the entire developing world from Brazil to Madagascar has progressed only at a crawl.

China is the mother of all gargantuan bullet trains. Every day it manages to create something new and astonishing. And unlike the United States, unlike the British Empire, unlike the French, Dutch, Germans, Spanish, Portuguese or any other Western nation that had its turn at being a superpower in the past four centuries, China doesn’t need to run anybody over or take something from somebody else, to rise majestically.

China is also standing up to the West all by herself. The West can’t believe their four-hundred-year-old global supremacy is being challenged. They hoped that the more China developed, the more it would submit to their influence, interests, and leadership. That didn’t happen. So now they will do anything possible, short of a nuclear war, to make China end.

Their goal is to destroy this country. That’s why, although the United States has killed several million people and turned several regions of the earth into hellscapes.

China is the worst fear of our planet’s Western masters. They want you to despise and dread a country that’s done nothing to you, that hasn’t invaded anyone, bombed or sanctioned anyone, that hasn’t overthrown any foreign government, or used its military on anything since 1979.

China is the only major country in the nonwhite developing world, to stand up to the West. To look it in the eye when challenged or threatened.

The Global South are simply Western puppets who submitted long ago. Even the most powerful ones. Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India.

The 1500s—1000s BC were Egypt’s time. Antiquity belonged to the Greeks and Romans. The 1700s belonged to France, and the 1800s to Britain. From 1945 to the present, the world has been under American overlordship. And they call it the Pax Americana but there isn’t much Pax in it.

There’s plenty of Pax if you’re in Europe or Australia. But the Middle East? Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and Yemen in the past 20 years. Latin America? They’ve destroyed that part of the world beyond any hope of recovery. Africa? It’s only been spared because of disinterest. The US sees Africa as nothing. The whole West does.

But in the twenty-first century, we are witnessing the rise of China. We are decades away from China becoming the greatest power on earth. This will be China’s time, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Attack China all you want, curse her and monger rumours and hysteria — but the truth is that none of your accusations are backed up by evidence. The Western press is under the thumb of Western governments that want to stay on top of the world for eternity. And the truth is that China is not affected by the noise and maneuvers of her enemies.

For her first thirty years, from 1949 to 1979, China was basically blockaded and isolated economically and politically by the West. It didn’t even have a seat in the UN General Assembly. And it was dirt-poor in those days, barely a speck of the global economy, a tiny fraction of Japan’s or Germany’s GDP — not even able to prevent famine. And it still didn’t submit to pressure or take any orders. Why on earth would it do that now?

China will be the next global power. There’s nothing that can be done about that. The first stage is that its economy only needs to grow at 4.7 percent per year to become the world’s largest by 2035. That means the usual, historical bare-minimum of 6 percent is already overkill. The US can build as many bases as it wants, slap as many sanctions as it wants, recognise whatever bogus genocides it wants. That’s what it’s been doing all along. Has any of it made a difference? China can adapt to any situation. It took China a mere ten years to go from being barred by the US Congress from participating in the “International” Space Station, to building its own Space Station from zero.

See, the US has an $800-billion war budget, 800 military bases, 13,000 aircraft, 500 warships, 6,000 nukes — but it doesn’t have what China has: invincible national resolve. It takes the US about 5 years to renovate a bridge, and it takes China 43 hours. There’s simply no competing with that.

China doesn’t need to be a military superpower or empire. That was never part of the plan. US troops, God bless their souls, will continue sitting in their bases, scratching their balls, costing their government $800 billion a year to do nothing. Meanwhile, China will continue to actually develop.

That’s the part of the equation that America totally missed, because it has barely developed since Reagan’s day. China is a better place to live today than at any time in its previous 5,000 years; Americans saw their highest standard of living in the 1960s and those days will never come back.

So yes, China will be the next global power, and the Chinese are vastly superior to us in every way. This is a fact that everyone can attack but that nobody can change, like the theory of evolution.

Look at you silly buggers, talking about China like it’s going to be the next Nazi Germany. Even many Middle Easterners I know fit in this foolish category. Did you notice when the US invaded or overthrew the governments of 20 countries in the past 32 years (my lifetime)? Did you even know? You think just because you’re ready to forget all that because of Beyoncé and Game of Thrones and Snapchat and other US cultural exports, it didn’t happen.

The US is feeding me terror-bytes about Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen Square, Great Leap Forward! I don’t see any dead bodies, I can’t show you one invasion or one example of Chinese regime change, I can’t even find Hong Kong on a map or tell you one factual detail about Tiananmen Square, but the US State Department and all its media are telling me CHINA BAD!

Aren’t you at least curious to see what a world with a nonwhite, non-Western leader might look like, after 400 years? Because God knows that leader won’t be us. It won’t be Brazil or Africa, or the Middle East or India or Indonesia or Nigeria or Pakistan. We’re a mess.

China was a mess too. But we remain a mess many decades after we achieved independence, and the Chinese went their own way, disentangled their mess and created their destiny. We’re not made of what the Chinese are made of.

I see China as hope. Hope that a colonised, brutalised, primitive and humiliated country, can rise above its past — refuse to be weak any longer — rebuild itself from nothing, with iron resolve, and become too strong to be overrun by the West again!

Hope that a nonwhite, non-Western country can look deep within itself and find its own solutions to its problems — proving that (foolishly) trusting the West to guide us isn’t necessary! Proof that if we can do what the Chinese did, there will be no limits for us.

Imagine a world where the US, France, Britain, Australia, are no more important than Uzbekistan or Paraguay.

A world where the World Court might be headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, the World Bank in New Delhi, the United Nations in Jakarta, the IMF in Cairo.

A world liberated from the US banking system and the dollar as its reserve currency, so that Washington can no longer tell 200 other countries who they can and can’t trade with.

A world where an American can be tried for war crimes at the Hague, not just an Iraqi or Liberian or Serb.

A world where we don’t hear about a non-Western-made vaccine and grunt to ourselves, Oh, it must be poison. A world where we don’t have to immigrate to the same countries that turned ours into hellholes, to work as sales clerks or taxi drivers, or even if we’re brilliantly employed — to drain our brains from our homelands in the best of cases, and use them to reinforce Western riches and supremacy in exchange for a fat paycheck, instead of using them to make our own countries semi-habitable.

When I hear that China has built its own Space Station, landed a rover on Mars, ended extreme poverty, built the Earth’s biggest city, dam, telescope, 5G network, highway, air purifier, or whatever the heck it is that will come tomorrow — I feel the same pride as if I were Chinese.

It’s not happening for all of us, but it’s happening for one of us and that’s a start. There’s got to be such a thing as developing-country nationalism — a common nationalism for all the countries that were colonised and plundered, and remain economically and politically captured by their ex-rulers.

A nationalism for the Global South. We are too divided, too brainwashed, too fooled and weak — most of us still worship the countries that destroyed us, are non-Western on the outside and Western on the inside, are hating and fearing and buying all the lies about the only one of us that’s made it, and are leaving our countries in droves to let them burn while we “make a better life for ourselves” in the West.

Do you want to live on a Western-dominated Earth for another 400 years? If you do, keep doing what you’re doing. But I don’t!

You know what’ll happen for all of us if America’s sick wishes come true and its global thuggery does make China collapse? Nothing. Eternal repetition of the status quo. More enslavement, hijacking of our resources and weak corrupt governments, neo-colonialism, invasion, regime change, sanctions, MISERY.

Haven’t we already seen this? Libya, Cuba, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Belarus, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, the Soviet Union. Rest in peace. Even FRANCE and JAPAN for God’s sake. What does the United States do when any other country says NO, or simply becomes too powerful, too good at honest competition?

Japan was a Western-style democracy crawling with US troops, with a US-authored pacifist constitution and almost no military and an extremely pro-US government and populace, and it STILL got crushed when it looked like it would become the #1 economy in the 80s.

I remember 10–15 years ago when China was still relatively poor and impotent, and Bush and Obama would talk about China as sweetly as swans. Obama happily had dinner with Xi Jinping in late 2015, called China a crucial partner of the United States, and said the US welcomed China’s rise; it was all horseshit. Today Biden, who was there with Obama in late 2015 as Vice-President, angrily rebukes a reporter who merely said that Biden and Xi were old friends.

America has taken off its mask.

China made it, it wasn’t supposed to make it, so now it must die. What a difference 5 years can make. China went from “crucial partner” to “number one threat.”

We should be helping and supporting China to keep climbing to the top, and giving her some serious solidarity as she withstands the new Cold War of Western imperialism. It’s been a long 400 years. China is the first non-Western country to even come close to reaching a status of ultimate global importance. She is akin to the the first member of an impoverished family to go to university. That is our family of nations.

And when China gets to the top, believe me, it won’t be a repeat of the French, British, or American Empire. Not a single developing country on earth will be worse-off because of China becoming #1. There will be something good in this for all of us, so let’s wake up.

– Ismail Bashmori is an Egyptian China watcher

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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Shooting in Japan, Russia ready to flatten Lithuania, America resembling the fall of Rome and some delicious High School Pizza

There’s a bunch of “news” going on, but it’s pretty obvious (to the world) that the collective West are just crazed, corrupt appointees that are running their nations to the ground. So while we will cover some of the news events, we will focus, rather, on the human experience throughout history. And take a particular note of what happened during the collapse of the Roman empire. Enjoy and have fun.

We start with this….

BREAKING NEWS: Russia Issues Final Warning to Lithuania: They have only a “few days” to stop blocking rail traffic to Kaliningrad

Russia has completed its preparations and is ready to respond to the Lithuanian blockade of Kaliningrad if something does not change in the next few days, said Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry.

She did not specify what Russia has planned, but one thing is certain: When Russia tells another country they are going to do something, Russia does what it says.

Lithuania is a NATO member.

This could get very ugly, very fast.

The Myth of Persephone and Hades

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When Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, gave birth to her first child, Persephone, she looked into her baby’s face and realized she would grow up to be beautiful.

This was a problem. As a beautiful woman herself, Demeter knew from experience that beauty brought trouble. And so, holding the crying Persephone against her chest, Demeter vowed to protect her daughter at all costs.

Years went by, and, just as Demeter had feared, Persephone grew up to be a lovely young woman. This made Demeter even more determined to keep her daughter safe. She would bring Persephone with her everywhere she went, whether she was producing a fruitful harvest to a group of villagers, or making plants flourish across the countryside.

But as Persephone grew older, the girl became curious about the world beyond her mother’s watchful gaze.

“Why don’t you let me go out on my own?” she asked Demeter one afternoon, after a long day of watching her mother bring pomegranate trees to bloom. “I’m old enough to do things by myself.”

But Demeter disagreed.

“Darling,” she said chidingly, plucking a pomegranate from the tree and handing it to her daughter. “The world is a dangerous place. You’re so much safer here with me.”

Persephone was doubtful, but took the pomegranate from her mother and munched on the seeds. Pomegranates were, after all, her favorite fruit.

But as they headed home that afternoon, they didn’t notice that someone was watching them from the shadows of the mountains.

It was Hades, the God of the Underworld, on a rare trip up into the world of the living. He had been traveling through the shadows when he looked up and froze in his tracks. Out in the dimming sunshine was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. But while the girl’s face shone with vitality, her head was lowered, obediently trailing after a woman Hades immediately recognized as Demeter.

Hades watched the pair from his safe place in the shadows, feeling his heart sink in his chest. He realized that the beautiful girl had to be Demeter’s daughter, Persephone, meaning there was no way he would be able to meet her. Demeter had grown a reputation among the gods as being highly protective of her daughter.

But as the days went by, Hades couldn’t stop thinking about Persephone. He found himself going up into the world of the living again and again, seeking out the beautiful girl, fascinated by her zest for life, her laughter, the flowers that grew in her hair.

Finally, Hades couldn’t wait any longer. He went up to Olympus to find Zeus, the King of the Gods, and asked him for his permission to marry Persephone.

Zeus was doubtful. While he thought it would be a good match, he knew Demeter would not be happy with the idea of her daughter leaving her. But, ultimately, he agreed.

That was all Hades needed. He got on his chariot and went searching for Persephone, and when he finally found her, he couldn’t believe his luck. Persephone had finally convinced her mother to let her go off on her own, and she was relaxing in a field with only a few attendants present.

Seeing his chance, Hades swooped in on his chariot, grabbed Persephone, and pulled her down into the Underworld. It all took place so quickly, none of the attendants saw what happened.

Persephone was horrified. One minute, she was picking flowers in the sunshine. The next, she was in the arms of a strange man, being brought down into an unfamiliar place that was dark and cold.

When the chariot finally arrived at Hades’s palace, Persephone pulled away from him.

“Who are you?” she cried. “Why did you take me here?”

Hades tried to explain to Persephone that he was in love with her and wanted to marry her, but Persephone wasn’t having it. She ran away from him, looking desperately for a way out of this strange world that was full of darkness and the dead.

While this was happening, Demeter learned from Persephone’s tearful attendants that their mistress had gone missing. She immediately went into a panic, scouring the surface of the earth in search of her daughter. Because Demeter was so filled with grief and worry, she neglected her duties as the goddess of the harvest, and plants all around the world began to wither and die.

Back in the Underworld, Hades had been trying desperately to win Persephone over. He showered her with gifts: wreaths of dead flowers, gems that were frigid to the touch. But Persephone spent most of her time sitting alone in his palace garden, silently wiping the tears from her eyes.

Finally, Hades had an idea. He knew Persephone was intelligent, and capable of more than being the meek daughter of Demeter. And so, he offered Persephone a throne of her own to rule beside him as an equal over the Underworld.

At first, Persephone was hesitant. She had barely been allowed to make decisions over her own life when she was living with Demeter. But as the months went by, Persephone realized she enjoyed her new responsibilities. She even created Elysium, the place where the best of mortals could go after death.

But above in the world of the living, things were still going terribly. Humans, without the help of Demeter, were beginning to starve without their crops. Even when Helios, the Sun God, confessed to Demeter that he had seen Hades take Persephone, she refused to allow plants to bloom until she was reunited with her daughter.

Zeus saw all of this, and immediately sought out Hermes, the messenger of the Gods. He told him to fetch Persephone and bring her to his palace on Olympus.

Hermes went down into the Underworld and found Persephone soon enough, standing alone in the palace garden beside a pomegranate tree. He told her Zeus had given him orders to take her away, and Persephone reluctantly got on his chariot to soar out of the Underworld and up to Olympus.

When they finally arrived, Persephone saw her mother waiting for her in the palace hall, and the two embraced with cries of delight. But as Demeter hugged her daughter, she looked down and saw Persephone was holding a pomegranate. Immediately, she stiffened.

“What’s wrong?” Persephone said with a laugh, drawing back to regard her mother.

But Demeter couldn’t speak. The pomegranate in her daughter’s hand was missing several seeds. And as she looked back up into her daughter’s face, she heard Hades come up from behind them.

“She can’t leave,” Hades said calmly. “She’s eaten from my palace garden.”

This was true. Once one ate anything from the Underworld, they were forced to stay there forever.

Demeter felt her face flush with anger. Immediately, she accused Hades of tricking her daughter, even as Persephone tried to convince Demeter that she was in love with Hades, and was happy living as the Queen of the Underworld.

Suddenly, Zeus entered the room. He listened to Demeter and Hades argue, and then silenced them so he could hear Persephone’s side of the story.

In the end, Zeus made a decision for all of them.

Persephone, because she had eaten three seeds from the pomegranate, would stay in the Underworld for three months out of the year. For the other nine months, she would live with her mother.

While everyone accepted the deal as only fair, Demeter wasn’t as pleased with the agreement as Persephone and Hades.

Therefore, during the three months when Persephone is away from her mother, ruling alongside Hades as the Queen of the Underworld, Demeter allows the plants on Earth to weaken and die. That’s why we have winters.

But when the snow melts and the flowers bloom, know that it’s because Persephone and Demeter are, once again, together.

Elon Musk TERMINATES Twitter Deal

Elon Musk has announced he has TERMINATED his deal to purchase Twitter.

Long story short: Musk says Twitter is in material breach of the Merger Agreement by failing to disclose vast amounts of information concerning phony accounts, bots and more.   Here is the official Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Notice of termination of the deal:

Official Notice found HERE

Rectangle Cafeteria Pizza

A High School “copycat”. Make it for some fine memories.

From HERE. Please enjoy!

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My early school years took place primarily in the 90’s, and I remember the cafeteria serving up super cheesy rectangles of pizza on a thin crust every Friday. Everyone looked forward to Pizza Friday! As I grew older, I realized that “rectangle pizza” was a more widespread thing that existed in many schools other than my small lil’ educational establishment in East Tennessee.

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While I’m sure school cafeterias had their own standardized way of preparing these pizzas on endless, massive sheet pans to be sold to hungry kiddos, you can create a very close substitute of school cafeteria pizza at home to help relive some childhood memories.

To keep things easy, I used a ball of premade dough that I found at my regular grocery store (Kroger). I recommend you do the same if you don’t want to make a homemade dough. You technically could use the canned pizza dough, but because this pizza is made in a large 10×15″ baking sheet, the dough from the cans will be very, very thin when pressed into the pan.

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As far as toppings, I remember my school mostly serving the plain cheese variety, though on some days there were meat varieties offered. You can stick to those basic options for your homemade school lunch pizza, but you can also load it up with any of your favorite protein or veggie toppings.

To me, one key feature of classic school rectangle pizza is the fact that there is very little visible crust around the outside. To achieve an authentic look, spread the sauce and toppings allll the way to the edge of the crust.

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Want to make things a little healthier? Consider a whole wheat crust to increase the fiber and complex carbohydrate content. Use a part-skim mozzarella and use a lean protein such as cooked chicken or lean ground turkey.

Even if you’re not seeking a hit of nostalgia with this meal, it’s also just an easy way to make a big and simple pizza for the family for your own at-home Pizza Fridays. Enjoy this school pizza recipe!!

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Vladimir Putin: They want to defeat us on the battlefield. Let them try!

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Vladimir Putin: They want to defeat us on the battlefield. Let them try!
After the end of the spring session of parliament, Vladimir Putin met with the heads of the Duma factions. The president, in the best traditions, flashed his eloquence. Here are his main phrases:

- We have many parties, but one homeland.

- Yes, they (the authors of Western sanctions - Ed.) create difficulties for us. But not the kind that the initiators of the economic blitzkrieg counted on.

- They tell us: we started a war. Not! It was unleashed by the collective West, supporting the coup in Ukraine.

- Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield , well, what can I say, let them try!

- The beginning of the special operation is the demolition of the American world order. It is the beginning of a multipolar world.

- Today the West is degenerating into totalitarianism, censorship and the closure of the media.

- The war to the last Ukraine, which is being waged by the West , is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people. But that seems to be where it all comes from. But we haven't really started anything yet.

- We did not refuse peace negotiations , but the further, the more difficult it will be to conduct them.

- The idea of ​​integrating Russia into NATO seemed absurd to the members of the alliance. And why? Because they do not need such a Russia.

- The sanctions had a goal : to sow discord, but it did not work and will not work!

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The Death Of A Capable Revisionist

From MoA

Last night some man with a self build gun killed the former prime minister of Japan Shinzo Abe.

Adhering to family tradition Shinzo Abe has been an Japanese imperialist. As Peter Lee wrote about him back in 2013:

Myth: Shinzo Abe is a leading member of the team of world and Asian democracies standing up to China in the name of universal values like “freedom of navigation” and to help ensure the shared peace and prosperity of Asia.

Reality: Shinzo Abe is a revisionist nationalist using friction with China to pursue Japanese national interests, put Japan on the right side of a zero-sum economic equation opposite the PRC, maximize Japan’s independence of action as a regional hegemon, hopefully peacefully, but if not...

Mission for the Western media: Manage the cognitive dissonance between comforting myth and disturbing reality for the sake of its faithful readers.

Challenge: Explain away Prime Minister Abe’s Boxing Day visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

Some of the most monstrous Class A war criminals of the second word war, which include Abe’s grandfather, were buried at the Yasukuni Shrine. The shrine and its attached museum are off-limits for most Japanese politicians. But Shinzo Abe prominently visited it because he carried the ideology of those who are buried there:

The core of Abe’s historical revisionism is not just that the bandit-infested territories of China and Korea demanded Japanese tutelage in the 1930s and 1940s, but also that the Japanese Empire was leading the fight of the oppressed peoples of Asia against British colonialism and American imperialism—in other words, the real war crime of World War II was U.S. aggression against Japan. The United States, and its pretensions to moral superiority over Japan, as well as China and Korea’s presumptuous claims to virtuous victimhood, were a target of Abe’s Yasukuni visit.

His policies of furthering militarism and conflict, especially with China and both Koreas, while making nice with Russia were born out of that ideology.Shinzo Abe’s last stint as prime minister lasted eight years. That was astonishing long as prime ministers in Japan only rarely serve longer than one year. It requires special qualities to politically survive as long as Shinzo Abe did.Gun crimes in Japan are extremely rare. Of the dozen a year that actually happen most are between rivaling groups of the Japanese mafia, the Jakuza.The Japanese police will likely find that the gunman was a ‘lone individual’. That may well be, but there are certainly others who will gain from the incident. As William Pesek writes in Asia Times:

Though the motives and longer-term implications of this attack are impossible to assess, one political dynamic may have been altered: Prime Minister Fumio Kishida may now have greater latitude to stay on past his one-year mark in office come October.

Even though the Abe camp denied it, Tokyo was abuzz with chatter that Abe, who stepped down in September 2020, might toss his hat in the ring for a third stint as leader. Abe first served as premier from 2006 to 2007, then from 2012 to 2020.

Abe had been playing a behind-the-scenes kingmaker role since resigning. Speculation was rife that he was unhappy seeing Kishida walk back Abe’s signature efforts at detente with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Abe also reportedly disliked the optics of Kishida pledging to reform, at long last, Asia’s No 2 economy, the implication being that so-called “Abenomics” failed to put Japan on a more vibrant path.

Japanese prime ministers don’t tend to last more than 12 months. Abe’s eight-year run was a stark outlier. Suffice to say, Kishida will not need to be looking over his shoulder at Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) powerbroker Abe. This Sunday’s upper house elections are likely to give Kishida a firmer grip over his factional party, allowing him to emerge from the shadow of leaders past.

Kishida’s policies are otherwise mostly in line with Abe’s. He wants a strong militaristic Japan that can project power abroad. The U.S. is furthering that as it helps with its anti-China policies. But it should be careful what it wishes for.

Japan is a latent nuclear power as it has stored quite a bit of uranium and plutonium:

Japan has 47.8 tons of high sensitive separated plutonium., 10.8 tons of which are stored in Japan, enough to make 1350 nuclear warheads. In addition, Japan also has about 1.2 tons of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) for research reactors.
The country has the knowhow to handle such material. In a crisis situation it could quickly build nuclear bombs. Japan has long range delivery vehicles due to its space program. Once unleashed a revisionist Japan would be a danger, not only for its immediate neighbors, but for the U.S. itself.Chian and both Koreas will be relieved that Shinzo Abe, the capable revisionist, is gone.I wonder at which shrine his ashes will be buried.

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TSA Orders Employees to Undergo “C.O.G” Training “Immediately”

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The US Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration has ordered any Employees who have NOT already undergone the “Continuity of Government (COG)” and “Devolution” training, to “Do so immediately.”

The TSA COG program was created in the year 2012, and most TSA employees hired during and after 2012 have already gone through the program.  But as with all new training programs, quite a number of existing TSA employees did NOT go through it when the program came out.

This week, TSA began contacting each employee who has NOT yet undergone the COG program, and ordered them to “do so immediately.”

The Continuity of Government program exists so that government operations can continue even though some massive disaster, catastrophe, or attack, has taken out most government functions.  the “Devolution” aspect of COG is that important decisions no longer MUST be made by Washington.  Regions can make their own decisions.  Authority devolves to lower levels when the upper levels are either cut-off, or destroyed.

It is sort of a Doomsday Plan to try to keep a government running even when much of it – or much of the country – has been destroyed.

Now, **WHY** would the TSA insist that any employee who has not yet taken the training, “do so immediately?”

What does government think is coming, that might cause their employees to NEED TO KNOW THIS?

War with Russia, perhaps?

Nuclear war with Russia, perhaps?

You’re a smart person . . . put two and two together.

Confessions of a Man Who Shot Himself In The Head And Survived

What pushed you to do it?

A lot. Losing my girlfriend, the savings account we worked at for years, the business we created. Just exacerbated my anxiety and depression.

My ex really pushed me to get help in the times where I wasn’t struggling, so I became defensive and put it off. I shouldn’t have, because it would have given me the skills to get through the times I was struggling. Therapy is a bitch. I keep learning things about myself that I’m not proud of. Things I could have managed better for years. The more I learn, the more confident I become that I can better myself.

How long did you take to decide that you were ready to end it?

I decided the night before. It took about 12 hours for me to finalize it.

Did you think about your girlfriend before you did it?

She was in the house. I yelled that I loved her. Then I said Im sorry to my mom, and that I loved her (she wasn’t in the house). But yeah. For years, she was/is constantly my first thought.

What did it feel like when you shot yourself?

Nobody prepares you for what getting shot feels like. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t sting. It doesn’t ache. It just burns. Like fire in my head. And blood pouring from my mouth.

I think I was still in shock when I arrived at the hospital, but when they pushed the fentanyl, all that burning went away and I could recognize how much burning pain I was in.

I remember not being able to talk because my tongue hurt.

My pain the first month in the hospital got progressively worse, but high amounts of painkillers will trick you into that.

How did the shot not kill you? How did it “miss”?

I don’t fucking know. It went in by the corner of my left jaw, and came out above my forehead on the right side, taking most of the orbit of my eye with it. I fucked up.

What caliber did you use?

9mm Luger.

Maybe it wasn’t your time?

I wish. I don’t really believe in that mentality. Someone close to me said something along the lines of, “God wasn’t ready for you yet.” And my first thought was, “thousands of years of medicine research and a team of excellent doctors is the reason I’m here, but ok.”

I’ve read stories about how people who jumped off bridges (and survived) immediately regretted doing so and wanted to live more than anything as they were falling. Right after the moment, did you have regrets about doing it with a desire to live or maybe have disappointments that it didn’t work? Or maybe no feelings at all right after?

I woke up with a “what the fuck?” Mentality. I was more confused that I woke up. I didn’t really have feelings about it until a few months later when the drugs wore off.

What was the first thing your mom said to you afterwards?

I’m not sure what my mom said. I woke up post surgery and my whole family was there (they all had to fly in). I was very confused. (Now I know I was in surgery for 10 hours).

What was the road to recovery like for you?

It’s still ongoing. 2 months in the hospital/rehab, lots of follow up appointments, physical therapy, mental/emotional therapy.

Legal battles for custody and household items.

Lots of reintegration with my parents and immediate family, which has been great. It fortunately brought us all closer.

Before I did it, I can’t remember the last time my brother and I spoke on the phone even. It really shook my brother the most. I’m super grateful for his presence in my life now.

Physically, what are the long term consequences to your face and skull from shooting your self?

Physically, I lost my right eye. And I have a plate in my jaw forever. And my forehead is missing a piece of bone they took out during a bifrontal craniotomy. Beyond that, I’m pretty healthy.

Is your face messed up?

Pretty normal for a dude with one eye.

Are you dealing with chronic pain, nerve damage, headaches, etc.?

It’s alright. Headaches suck, mostly because only morphine is enough to dull them. Nerve damage is only in my jaw/tongue/cheek, which is frustrating, but I started vaping because it makes my tongue tingle, and I don’t bite it accidentally anymore.

Is she okay?

Probably not. But she won’t talk to me. I truly hope she is. Of all the negativity between us, I only hope that she’s doing well and that someday, sooner than later, we can sit down and have an honest discussion about it.

What’s something you would want to say to your ex-girlfriend?

This is something I think about all the time. Previously, I was very concerned with myself, and put myself into context when I didn’t need to. That’s something I’d change if I had an hour to sit down with her.

I’d really like her to know that I love her. To this day, nothing has changed. I’d like to have the conversation that I don’t hold anything against her, except for the fact that she knew and didn’t drag me to get help and stand by me, in ways I did for her, and leaving me in the worst of times.

I’d really like the opportunity to listen to her. I don’t know what she has to say, and I don’t need to hear anything. I wasn’t a very effective communicator during our relationship, and I’d like the opportunity to really hear her out, and share those emotions.

Do you still harbor thoughts about suicide?

They’ve mostly gone away. There are times I ponder it, but it’s more the idea of, whereas previously I was fantasizing the roadmap.

Did anything change about your personality or preferences on things as a result of the trauma? Something you would never expect that would change?

Not particularly in personality or preferences. I became a hell of a lot more forgiving and patient, which wasn’t much existent (except with my kids) before.

I think the thing that changed the most was having my emotional brain available. I wasn’t very capable of connecting with my emotions before, I genuinely thought I was broken. I really got down on myself when it came to my ex, because I couldn’t empathize with her when she experienced heightened emotions, and it put a wedge between us, or I did. Now I’m empathizing with commercials, and it’s really bizarre when I become mindful of it, even still.

Do you regret doing it?

I think a lot about regret. I don’t regret shooting myself. I regret the way I proposed to my ex. I regret the way I treated her and other people when they needed me. I regret losing sight of myself because I wanted to be someone else. I regret spending so much time looking for escape instead of looking inward. But I don’t regret shooting myself. It changed my world.

How are things going for you now?

It’s not really going better. I spent years developing a family and life. It’s going about exactly as I predicted before putting a gun to my head. But! On the other side of that, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about love, myself, and bettering myself mentally that I never could have without experiencing tragedy in my previous lifestyle.

And I get to share my story and hopefully help others, which is something I never cared much about.

Ukraine Soldiers SOLD U.S. HIMARS to Chechens . . . who were Russian Army Intel

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Reports are coming in CLAIMING (not yet verified) that Ukrainian Armed Forces members SOLD a United States “HIMARS” Multiple Rocket Launcher System (MLRS) to men they thought were “Chechens” for one million dollars.

The “Chechens” turned out to be Russian military intelligence.

According to the CLAIMS, the money was delivered to the families of the soldiers and when the families told the soldiers that strange men had come and dropped off money, the soldiers turned the HIMARS over to the “Chechens.”

According to unverified reports, the Russian Army is now studying the HIMARS system to be able to either duplicate it, or defeat it on a battlefield.

More details if I get them, but I emphasize that these claims are, as yet, UNVERIFIED.

How HIMARS works

Nice graphic.

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Ignoring China’s infrastructure assistance, Brazil insisted on cooperating with Japan, but the bridge collapsed before it was used

Another sign of a dying Japan. 

In recent years, Made in Japan is increasingly symbolized inferior quality. From car safety scandal to bridge collapsed , train breakdown... The scandals keep coming: Ignoring China's infrastructure assistance, Brazil insisted on cooperating with Japan, but the bridge collapsed before it was used - iNEWS

Article HERE

I’ve Seen The Saucers – Elton John (1974)

A trip down memory lane, and a well done you-tube video. I really love the way the vintage 1950s science fiction video was used.

NATIONWIDE CANADA OUTAGE OF ALL CREDIT/DEBIT CARDS

As of 9:35 AM EDT Friday. reports are now flooding-in that ALL credit and Debit card processing in Canada is OFFLINE.   Also receiving reports that numerous Cellphone carriers are suffering service outages NATIONWIDE.

More details as I get them.  (This is why I so often encourage readers and listeners to my radio show, to HAVE CASH MONEY.)

 

UPDATE 9:51 AM EDT —

APPARENTLY IT’S NOT JUST CREDIT/DEBIT CARDS AND SOME CELLULAR CARRIERS . . . . IT’S EVERYTHING.  ALL COMMS SEEM TO BE AFFECTED.  LOOK:

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ROGERS Canada confirms it is having massive network issues and is working on it.

Brazilian wandering spider

Seen here is a Brazilian wandering spider nursing its young under a bed.

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Its Latin name is Phoneutria fera. This spider is aggressive and highly poisonous.

It appeared in the 2007 Guinness Book of World Records for being the most poisonous animal.

It is one of the few really dangerous spiders for us.

The spider itself reaches 5 cm in size, but the legs can be 15 cm long.

Wandering spiders are hairy and have eight eyes, two of which are large.

And they move very fast.

It is called a wandering spider because it moves on the tropical forest floor and not in a burrow or web.

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This makes it so dangerous.

Because it looks for dark shelters that can be houses, clothes, cars, boots, boxes and piles of logs.

You could accidentally disturb him and this is not a good idea.

He can also be found in a bunch of bananas, because he likes them.

But in general he likes meat. Crickets, mice or even lizards are part of their prey.

If this spider bites you, you may see and feel something like two pricks.

Or you may feel strongly poisoned.

But in both cases you have to seek the help of doctors, because you are in serious danger.

The spider has a powerful neurotoxin, which means it attacks your nervous system.

But its venom is also the most painful and excruciating of all spiders due to its high concentration of serotonin.

And these spiders are among the ones that bite humans the most.

There are certain countries, where it is better not to move too much alone, without a guide, in nature.

Europe is doing quite well in this regard.

That’s good.

Photographer Asked some Artists To Draw His Portrait Photos In Their Own Style, And The Result Is Fabulous!

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Mathieu Sten is an experimental portrait photographer who asked 16 artists to draw his portrait photos in their style. The results are fabulous. It never ceases to amaze me how artists nowadays always strive to find different and unique ways of expressing their art. Some of these portraits are super realistic, some are cartoon-ish, some look like out of a Korean comics series, a fantasy series or super-digitalized movie animation, while others are digitally painted or completely illustrated from scratch. You should take a look below, but first, let’s share some information about the initiator of this artistic collaboration.

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Mathieu Stern is himself an artist who uses vintage lenses, DIY lenses and other techniques which might seem a little strange, to create images that help you look at the world in new and extraordinary ways. Mathieu also likes to go on YouTube and explain his artistic experiments and discoveries. You can look him up on YouTube if you want to find out more. So far, we’ll concentrate on his collaboration with 16 artists who redid his portrait photos in their way.

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“I decided to first contact an illustrator asking if they wanted to redraw one of my portraits in their own style. I told her that I would create a YouTube video about the process and create the first episode with a team of my favorite artists. She said yes and the result she sent me was so amazing that I started to contact every illustrator I liked on Instagram. One month later, I had 16 participants and I had a great looking video of their processes,”

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US Hypersonic Missile Test Fails For A Second Time

The missile prototype, known as "Conventional Prompt Strike," has never even got off the launchpad back in October 2021.  When it failed to launch mere days after China completed a hypersonic missile test so successful that it literally traveled all the way around the Earth.

In 2019, Russia became the first country to successfully complete a launch of these next-generation missiles that can reportedly travel up to a whopping 27 times faster than the speed of sound and dodge whatever defense systems attempt to block their way.

Though the American military has had setbacks when it comes to these dystopian missiles, it have successfully launched at least one hypersonic weapon, DARPA's Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept — though as reports at the time indicated, that one "only" goes five times the speed of sound. Not the 25 times the speed as sound like China's and Russian missiles.

Article HERE

The Killing Has Begun: Former Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ASSASSINATED

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The scam of COVID, the damage and death of the COVID vaccines, and the plummeting economy have finally prompted someone to KILL a political leader.  Former Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and killed last night while on the campaign trail in Nara, Japan.

Former Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated in Nara on Friday while campaigning for the upcoming election.  The 67-year-old world leader was rushed to hospital in grave condition, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in an address to the nation. A suspect has been taken into custody.

The Nara city fire department said that Abe was in cardiopulmonary arrest before he was taken to the hospital.

Photographs published by the Japanese agency Kyodo showed Abe lying face-up on the street by a guardrail, blood on his white shirt. Some showed people crowding around him as he lay unconscious.

Nara city’s emergency services said he had been wounded on the right side of his neck and left clavicle.

The incident occurred at around 11.30 am (8 am IST). Abe was making a campaign speech on a street outside the train station ahead of Sunday’s election to the upper house of Japan’s parliament.

Two witnesses — an NHK reporter and a female attendee — told NHK that they heard two gunshots. The woman said that though the first gunshot was loud, she did not see anyone fall. But after the second shot, she saw ex-PM Abe collapse to the ground.

The alleged shooter was tackled and taken under arrest as seen in the social media posting below:

 

 

 

He is believed to be an ex-military member — a former maritime self-defense force member, reported Fuji TV.

A witness to the attack told NHK that the apparent shooter did not attempt to escape after the shooting. He instead laid down the gun and remained on the spot as he was caught by security personnel.

Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, was known for his hawkish foreign policy and a signature economic strategy that popularly came to be known as “Abenomics”.

A conservative nationalist by most descriptions, the 67-year-old Abe led the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to victory twice.

His first stint as prime minister was brief – for a little over a year starting in 2006 – and controversial. But he made a surprising political comeback in 2012, and stayed in power until 2020 when he resigned for health reasons.

Japan was in a recession when he began his second term and his economic policy – built on monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reforms – was credited with helping growth return to a faltering economy.

He also oversaw Japan’s recovery from a massive earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku in 2011, which killed nearly 20,000 people and led to a meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactors.

UPDATE 10:01 AM EDT —

Video of the actual shooting has surfaced on Social Media.  In the video below, notice how the crowd just stands there after two apparently shotgun-type blasts.   This type of crime is so rare in Japan, the people there didn’t react the way you would see in places like the USA.

In the USA, people would be stampeding to safety.

 

NATO admits it’s been preparing for conflict with Russia since 2014

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that increases in deployments and military spending were done with Russia in mind.

By Russia Today

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Wednesday that increases in military spending and rising numbers of troop deployments in Eastern Europe since 2014 were carried out in anticipation of a conflict with Russia.

Speaking after a meeting of NATO members and partner states in Madrid, Stoltenberg accused Russia of “using force in the eastern Donbass since 2014,” despite the fact that Kiev’s forces have shelled cities in the region ever since the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics declared independence from Ukraine that year.

Nevertheless, Stoltenberg said that the US-led military bloc decided in 2014 to start beefing up its forces in Eastern Europe.

“The reality is also that we have been preparing for this since 2014,” he stated. “That is the reason that we have increased our presence in the eastern part of the alliance, why NATO allies have started to invest more in defense, and why we have increased [our] readiness.”

According to NATO figures, the alliance’s European members and Canada have increased their military expenditure by between 1.2% and 5.9% every year since 2014. However, only 10 out of 30 NATO states currently meet the bloc’s target of spending 2% of GDP on defense.

The increase in expenditure has been most noticeable in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, with Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania all meeting the target for the first time in 2022.

Earlier on Wednesday, NATO members agreed to adopt a new Strategic Concept. This policy blueprint sets out the alliance’s stance toward partners, non-members, and adversaries, with the 2022 iteration naming Russia as the “most significant and direct threat” to the bloc.

On the other hand, Moscow has labeled NATO’s expansion into former Soviet states since the end of the Cold War – which Western leaders explicitly promised in the early 1990s would not happen – as a threat against its own security. NATO’s official position on Ukraine, set out in the 2008 Bucharest Declaration, is that it and Georgia “will become members of NATO” at an unspecified future date. Russia has cited Ukraine’s pursuit of NATO membership as a key factor behind the current conflict.

Despite the alliance’s post-Cold War march into the former Eastern Bloc, Stoltenberg claimed on Wednesday that “NATO has strived for a better relationship with Russia for decades.”

7 Confessions That Will Take You On A Rollercoaster Of Emotions

1. A dying wife

Me and my wife were having serious issues and then she got sick with cancer.

That came like a mack truck. She said a lot of the grief she gave me was because she knew she was sick and was ashamed of burdening me and leaving me as a widow dad of four kids under 13.

I took care of that woman like she was one of my boys. That experience took 10 years off my life.

Her death was easy compared to the aftermath…

I was going through her computer and saw that she had a separate email account which was odd.

That was on purpose.

This bitch was planning on blindsiding with a divorce and was going back and forth with different lawyers about making me a weekend dad, throwing me out of my house and even seeing if I’d pay her legal bills.

This went on, for months up until a week before she saw the doctor and found out that she had terminal cancer.

This slag used me to take care of her in her final days because no one else would.

I won’t tell my kids…yet.

2. Manager for OnlyFans

I was working for a company (out of many like this) dedicated to entirely manage OnlyFans accounts for girls. Basically these girls never did anything else than just taking the pictures and videos for us.

80% of workers were guys, 20% were girls, but it’s all fake. Even when you think that the person is real and is actually talking to you, she is not.

Even when the account is verified, it could be fake.

I feel bad because I talked to MANY guys who fell in love for a girl who doesn’t even know they exist and we had to take as much money as we could from everyone, that was the goal.

We were so good at it that our standards were 700-1000 USD per day with each account, and each worker had to manage 6 accounts, so imagine the amount of money we made monthly.

So my advice: only pay OnlyFans girls when they give you a live proof that they are real, like making an specific gesture with their hand on a selfie. Don’t trust videos where they say they are real, don’t trust audios, don’t trust pictures that seem taken at the same time… Or just watch porn.

Also: it’s a PPV site and therefore it’s just a business, so don’t be the guy who just wants free content, it’s annoying af, real or not 🙂

3. Growing up from a bad childhood

So I’m not sure exactly where to put this so I thought here would be an okay place. Lately I’ve been seeing in a lot more liberal groups especially, that saying poor people shouldn’t have children is eugenics and it’s wrong blah blah blah. But I feel like a lot of people saying this haven’t had to experience growing up poor. In poverty, and homelessness.

My parent’s were poor and could barley take care of themselves, they lived in a motel when they got pregnant with me.

My entire childhood was a horrible experience having to grow up and not knowing if you were going to get fed, or have a roof over your head, it fucking sucked.

It hurt even more since I lived in a town where everyone was well off, so as a kid I never got to experience things a lot of other kids do, like going to camp, taking summer trips to Disneyland, or playing their games on their nice TVs.

Growing up being the oldest girl I raised both of my little brothers since my parents couldn’t afford childcare, which led to me missing out on opportunities with my peers, I was so socially awkward for not being around people my age enough that even to this day.

I am 21 years old and all my friends are in their early 30s late 20s because I feel like I cannot relate to people my age.

I feel like I was forced to grow up way to fast and I would be lying if part of me said I didn’t resent my parents for having me knowing they couldn’t afford to.

I dont know, if you’re someone who can barley take care of themselves, do yourself and your future child a favor and just put off having children until you can afford them.

I think a lot of people see having children as a right, instead of seeing a child as a human being that has rights.

And sorry if I hurt anyone’s feelings by saying this, but yes I truly believe if you’re poor you shouldn’t be having children, it’s not you who suffers, it’s the child.

4. Short Guys

Gave the short guy a chance and it was totally worth it

I started seeing this shorter guy, 5’5, and I really like him. I myself am 5’11, so there’s already a huge difference. He carries himself with so much confidence, he doesn’t even care if I wear heels which I have when we go out. Phew, the sex is amazing too. Definitely the best I’ve ever had. I’ve never had someone fit between my legs so perfectly before. Now whenever I see a shorter man, I wonder what they’re like in bed and I feel an instant attraction. Go short kings! Shoot your shot at the tall girls!

5. Imagine Dragons

I unironically love Imagine Dragons

I get it. It’s “corporate rock.” They’re “sellouts.” It’s “fake” music.

But the surge of emotion I feel listening to “Birds”, and the way I bop my head with confidence to “Enemy” is very real.

Guys, we are ALL being manipulated by all forms of media, all of the time. Marvel is designed to be cinematic brain candy. Pop music is the same. We crave distraction and bursts of dopamine first, and meaning and profundity second.

And while I do love GOOD music too, I’m finally ready to stand up and say this. It feels like a weight has been lifted off me.

6. Prostitute from my kid brother

I’m 30 and my little brother is 24. He’s honestly the best brother I could have asked for. I still remember the day he was born and holding my newborn baby brother when I was a kid. As we grew up I always knew he was different but he’s my brother and I love him and I wouldn’t change him. He’s honestly one of my best friends and having a brother with downs syndrome, especially one like him has made me a better person.

Last month my parents went out of town for a few days and they asked if I’d stay with my brother and take care of the house. While he might have downs syndrome he’s not entirely helpless he just can’t really be on his own like that. So of course I agreed and brought my PS5 over and some games, snacks and beers, I called out of work for a few days and figured we’d have some fun just like when we were kids.

We were having a great time and were talking the first day while taking turns playing Elden Ring and my bro started the game and got to the part where the guy calls you “maidenless” and I said something like “Ooooo he called you maidenless bro…daaaaaaamn.” and my brother got super sad looking and I asked him what was wrong and he said, “I am maidenless. I’ll never have a girlfriend.” So we talked about that for a bit and he was actually feeling super depressed because he’s never had a girlfriend and didn’t think he ever would. We kind of talked it out and he was really sad and I decided fuck it we can find him a girl.

I called a couple people I knew who were into that sort of thing to see if they knew anyone. Well one of my buddies had a number of this girl so I gave her a call. She was actually super sweet and understanding about the situation and she said she’d be glad to show my brother a good time for her usual rate. She had a cousin with downs so she was very sympathetic.

I told my brother I’d pay a girl to come over and show him some fun on the condition that our parents will die without knowing I hired a prostitute to come to their house. He agreed.

So I made plans for her to come over, got my brother shaved and showered for his date. She showed up dressed up super nice she was also super hot. I’m no chef but I had picked up some food from Olive Garden for them. She was a genuinely nice person and was really good with him and I just left them to do their thing while I played the playstation in the livingroom. Eventually they passed by going upstairs to his room. I put my headphones on and kept playing.

Eventually they came back down and both had big smiles on their faces. She hung out with us a bit then it was time for her to go. I handed her the cash plus some extra as a bonus. She said my brother was a sweetheart and that I was a good brother to do something like that for him and that she had a good time. She handed me half the cash back.

Eventually my parents came back and thankfully are none the wiser as my mother especially would probably kill me. My brother is super appreciative and said it was the most fun he’d ever had. I have no regrets.

7. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. Girl.

I can’t really say this out loud to anyone in my personal life because it would hurt my family members and my friends would try to console me because they love me but honestly, my life has been ruined due to my ugliness.

I’m not overweight, I dress well and I do my best to treat others well but none of this matters because I simply have a very ugly face. No men have ever approached me or wanted to date me because why would any man want to date a hideous woman who doesn’t even look like a woman? I don’t blame them, I mean I could be dressed in the most feminine clothing and i would still not look like a real woman because of my face

My entire life, a lot of people have been mean to me (including some relatives) because of how ugly I am – it’s so sad but true that even little kids who are perceived as “unattractive” get treated worse by adults

I’m only in my 20s but it’s so painful to know that I’m never going to get married or have my own children with a spouse who loves me.

I understand that it’s not any one else’s job to try and make me feel better about the fact that I am ugly because it’s not like anyone intentionally did this to me.

I have siblings who are actually reasonably attractive people so it’s not even like my parents genetics are necessarily bad but I just ended up with the worst combination of their genes and honestly, what is the point of living like this.

I feel so alone in this experience because I’ve barely ever met any other women who are naturally unattractive. Every woman I know gets hit on by men and approached for dating. I wish I knew what it was like to have a man want me sexually

In Ancient China, after the emperor died, he needed a group of people to follow him to another world and continue to serve him, so there would be some people buried alive with him.

Most of his entourage were concubines.

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When the grave was excavated, the discovery shocked the entire Chinese archaeological community. A total of 186 people were buried with the emperor!

Many people believe that the 186 martyrs who were in the Qin Cemetery were buried alive for Duke Mu of Qin.

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In fact, according to archaeologists, 160 of them died voluntarily. The rest were probably prisoners of war or concubines.

2. Chinese archaeologists found an ancient tomb. There are about 80 corpses of grave robbers (those who dig graves to steal artifacts or personal objects in tombs) inside.

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These are called quicksand graves, which the ancients used to deter grave robbers.

This mechanism takes advantage of the instability of the sand. The craftsmen poured some quicksand over the tomb chamber. Once the grave robbers entered the grave through the hole, quicksand mixed with sharp stones would plug the hole quickly, and then kill the tomb robbers or trap them in it.

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Archaeologists sent excavators to clear the sand, and the next discovery shocked everyone.

At the bottom of the tomb chamber, there were 80 corpses inside.

According to research by experts, 80 people who died in the graves were grave robbers. They are trapped in a tomb that is always filled with quicksand. The tragedy at the tomb cannot be forgotten.

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While the quicksand grave mechanism seems cruel (uh), stealing the contents of the grave itself is also wrong.

Such tombs could protect the owner of the tomb from outside disturbances, and at the same time, they could also preserve the cultural heritage contained in the tomb, which made one admire how wise the people of that time were.

Real data about the possible spread of Bio-warfare agents

Russia currently has some 6,000 or more Ukrainian war prisoners. Many of
these men are wounded, and all of them have had health checks. This
comes from the Russian MOD, at the end of a long article on Telegram
about the bio-labs. (I did not absorb the total article.) But this
conclusion is interesting:

I would like to present real data on the health condition of the
voluntarily surrendered Ukrainian servicemen. This dispositive presents
the data on presence of antibodies to contagious disease agents without
mentioning personal data of these servicemen.

The results are as follows: 33% of the examined servicemen had had
hepatitis A, over 4% had renal syndrome fever and 20% had West Nile
fever. The figures are significantly higher than the statistical
averages. In view of active research of these diseases held by the
Pentagon within the Ukrainian projects, there is reason to believe that
servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) were involved as
volunteers in experiments to assess the tolerance of dangerous
infectious diseases.

The current lack of therapeutic effect of antibacterial medication has
been reported during in-patient treatment of AFU servicemen in medical
facilities. High concentrations of antibiotics, including sulphonyl
amides and fluoroquinolones, have been detected in their blood.

This fact may indicate preventive use of antibiotics and preparation of
personnel for operating in conditions of biological contamination, such
as cholera agent, that indirectly proves the information of the Russian
Defense Ministry that Ukrainian special units were planning to use
biological agents.

The data will be included in the U.S. military-biological dossier and we
will continue to examine it and keep you informed.

It is the western media which is blaming them for everything that goes wrong on our planet.

You must remember that in the US, the for-profit corporate media is owned by only six corporations, and they are dependent on several major advertisers for most of their income. These advertisers are all American, and they want to weave a narrative about the US and the world which they and the American government can support:

  • “America is the greatest country in the world, and you should be proud to live in it because you have freedom and democracy!”
  • “Freedom and democracy are under threat in the rest of the world from Russia and China who want to spread dictatorships all over the world, and are against everything Americans stand for!”
  • “You must support everything the US stands for without question because if you don’t, you are a bad person who supports Russia and China and what they are trying to do!”
  • “Don’t ask any awkward questions. We have told you everything you need to know, so just shut up!”

Now, these corporate media types hang out with their billionaire globalist buddies and their government minions at Davos and other venues, where they make deals and pat each other on the back about what a good job the West is doing running the world.

Or was doing running the world because things are going pear-shaped pretty fast in 2022.

So the problem is that while most Americans and Europeans have no trouble buying into this narrative, many other countries are not. Example: Many governments are not supporting or enforcing the Western sanctions against Russia. Some of them are significant countries like China, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Argentina and Saudi Arabia.

They have decided to stay neutral over the Ukraine matter and continue to do business with Russia while most of NATO Europe does not do business with Russia.

This should make you, dear reader, ask the question “Why am I getting such a different view of Russia in the west from those other countries and governments?”

The answer is simple: Those countries do not rely only on the Western media to tell them what to think. In those countries, their governments usually have control of the media, not private for-profit media corporations. Their governments want their people to have a very different worldview than what Americans have.

So, instead of seeing Russia and China as nation-states which do not deserve to exist, they see Russia and China as having governments which are no longer content to have the west dictate the terms of world affairs unilaterally.

Which is why Russia and China founded BRICS. They have now positioned BRICS as an alternative to G7 and are asking other nations which share their views to join it.

That is what is going on.

I remember my first night before battle.

The Croats in Bosnia had assembled almost 20.000 troops, which was about half their army, to make a decisive attack against the positions of the Bosnian army. My unit was right in the middle. Preparations had already started days before the attack. Nobody told us that there would be an attack, but this wasn’t necessary, we saw the signs everywhere.

At first a reconnaissance unit from Croatia came to our base and started to observe the territory with some big binoculars. The next day some high ranking officers arrived and were discussing their plans over maps and aerial fotos.

Two days before day zero a mortar unit set up a dozen of 82 mm mortars in our backyard. And finally, when there was only one day to go, a complete mechanized infantry brigade from Croatia arrived. As my unit was our brigade’s intervention unit, the freshly arrived Croats sent their intervention unit to join us. We would attack together with them.

It was all very busy and crowded at our camp during these days. People coming and going. Trucks bringing ammunitions and weapons.

Finally all preparations came to an end and the support and logistics troops left us in the afternoon. Dusk settled in and everybody knew that the next morning would be the day. Some alcohol was served and we were reminded not to drink too much of it. One of my comrades didn’t listen and passed out somewhere. Another one started vomiting, not from the alcohol, but from stress and anxiety.

Most soldiers were busy preparing their gear, cleaning their rifles and getting ammo for their guns.

Around midnight a blue cotton ribbon was given to each soldier. We were told to put them on our uniforms to easily recognize each other as friendly troops. This was necessary as our enemy had very similar uniforms to ours.

After midnight an eerie quiet settled in. All weapons were cleaned, checked and double checked. Everybody was prepared and there was nothing left to do then wait. You can clean your weapon only that many times and puke your guts out only once.

In these last moments most soldiers preferred not to talk to each other, but to stay for themselves. I saw some of them praying. Others tried to sleep, but most of us were just laying down on our flak jackets, staring holes into the night sky and smoking one cigarette after another.

This moment reminded me of all the soldiers and armies in history who found themselves in the same situation. From ancient Germanic tribes , the French in Dien Bien Phu to our own enemy who was just a couple of hundred meters away. They must have felt the same thing. Being part of a big army going into combat you feel big and tiny at the same time. Fate is out of your hands and you can just hope and pray that tomorrow at the same time you will still be alive. You look around and watch your comrades. To see how they cope and to remember their faces. Some of them won’t come back.

My squad leader interrupted my thinking. We were called to pick up our gear and to advance to our starting positions. As our base was practically in the center of the attack, we just had to sit there and watch the other units to leave, wondering what will happen to them.

Then came our turn. We walked a few meters to our trenches to await the final signal for the attack from there. It was now absolutely quiet and dark. No talk, no cigarettes. Everybody’s eyes were directed towards enemy territory.

Then a small “blop” sound behind us, seconds later a sound over our heads, like a gush of wind or a swarm of wild geese flying over us and finally a big explosion in front of us, right in the middle of the enemy’s positions.

The waiting was over and the game was on…

What happened next?

We left the trench in small groups of five or six soldiers. I was the last soldier to get out. This was my first “big” battle and I decided to take it slowly. We were walking in single file, because the first soldier had to keep us clear of the mines. We had mined the whole area around our base just a couple of weeks before and although nobody had made any maps that could show us where the mines were, the guy we had put to walk in front had a good memory and knew which places to avoid.

Our own artillery now started a massive barrage. As we advanced so did our artillery fire, constantly hitting targets about two or three hundred meters in front of us.

After about two hundred meters we came to the first buildings of an enemy village. There was nobody there. We had expected some resistance, but not a single shot was fired at us. There were not even the unavoidable dogs around to bark at us. The village was totally dead, so we thought. We slowly passed through it and nothing happened.

Behind the village were several railroad tracks. We were about to enter a big industrial area. In the upcoming light of dawn I could make out warehouses, an oil refinery with several huge oil storage tanks and a lot of smaller buildings, like pump stations and office buildings. There were plenty of railroad tracks going in every direction and on them were dozens of railroad wagons of all kinds.

While we navigated ourselves towards the oil refinery a bullet zipped over our heads. Used to getting shot at we continued our way without even looking up. After a minute a second bullet hit a nearby railway wagon. The more we approached the refinery the more shots were fired at us. They seemed to come from all directions, even from the village that we had left behind. Every time a bullet hit a railway car it was ricocheting from the metal surface with a nasty “pling” sound. From somewhere somebody with a megaphone started yelling : Allah u Akhbar! “

We ran the last meters to the refinery. The bullets were now raining at us. We hunkered down in a trench near a giant oil storage tank which luckily seemed to be empty. Every time a bullet hit this storage tank it made a resonating sound like a drum. Soon it was like a thousand drums were playing all at once.

Now the first enemy grenades were hitting nearby. Mortar and RPG grenades, which could be fired only from a close distance. Although by now we had complete daylight, we still couldn’t figure out from where the enemy was shooting at us. We encountered another small group from our unit nearby. They had made out an enemy position at the far end of the refinery and decided to attack it. I saw one of the guys fixing his bayonet to his AK rifle. Then they disappeared. We also decided to move, but in another direction, towards a big warehouse building next to the refinery.

The building was half empty and we used its cover to take a break from the bullets and grenades, smoke a cigarette and wait for orders coming over the radio. This was a warehouse from a tea factory: There were thousands of teabags everywhere around us: Chamomile tea. The smell of it became soon intolerable.

By listening to the radio communication we got a clearer image about what was going on : Obviously there were still enemy troops in the village we had marched through earlier on. They either hadn’t seen us when we sneaked through or they had decided to let us pass. Either way, the enemy was now between us and our base. They were in well camouflaged positions and we were an easy target for them. Furthermore, the group of soldiers we had encountered earlier on near the refinery was now in serious trouble and had suffered its first casualties.

We were ordered to retreat. Now we just had to find a way back. We decided to try our luck by following the railway line in one direction to get around the enemy village and then to cut through open ground and reach our own lines. This was easier said than done: We left the warehouse on the opposite side from where we’ve entered it and met two more groups of our unit. It seemed that by retreating from the enemy’s fire most of our unit had ended up right in this spot. We all took cover in a long trench which ran along the side of the building.

Now snipers were starting to aim at us while mortar and RPG grenades were hitting the trench. It was clear that if we would stay there any longer we would all be doomed.

The only way out was a small road, but there was absolutely no cover for at least 400 meters. We started to leave the trench in small groups of 2 or 3 while the remaining soldiers shot cover fire.

I was in the last group to leave. When I jumped out of the trench I ran over the first dead body just a couple of feet away. I ran maybe 10 meters before I fell to the ground and started crawling. There were bullets everywhere. A friend of mine crawled just in front of me and I saw how some tracer bullets were hitting the tarmac just inches away from him. Another soldier behind me got hit in the leg and started screaming.

We managed to crawl down the road until we were stopped by a big wire fence. It was too high to climb over it: All the soldiers who escaped the trench were piled up in front of this fence and were attracting enemy fire.

Finally we managed to cut through the wire of the fence by connecting an AK bayonet with its scabbard. This makes a perfect wire cutter. On the other side of the fence we continued crawling.

About 100 meters further down the road I reached the first of our own defense positions. I entered a small bunker, its floor was covered in blood. A wounded Croatian soldier was getting first aid there.

Meanwhile a Croatian T-55 tank was approaching to cover our retreat. Under its protection we started to evacuate some of the wounded soldiers along the road.

In the evening we took count: From 18 soldiers of our platoon six were killed during that day. Another two were missing. The next day we learned that they also got killed. The guy that I saw planting his bayonet on his AK was also dead. Another comrade was heavily injured by a head shot and died later in a hospital. Three days later two more soldiers of our platoon were killed when their car was hit by a mortar grenade.

The following week we buried our dead comrades. During one of the funerals we came under heavy artillery fire, but luckily nobody died.

And I don’t drink Chamomile tea anymore.

New Zealand Will Not Join the US Coalition Against China

Wellington’s deeply ingrained tradition of foreign policy independence and robust economic ties to China serve as a considerable constraint on major policy change.
...That said, a combination of countervailing imperatives, including New Zealand’s deeply ingrained tradition of foreign policy independence and robust economic ties to China serve as a considerable constraint on major policy change. New Zealand will not take lightly a decision to join a coalition against China.

Foreign policy independence is the practical expression of contemporary nationalism in New Zealand. It has two interlinked sources: geography and anti-nuclear sentiment. New Zealand’s geography epitomizes a low threat environment, which makes relative independence both an appealing and achievable goal. The country is located deep in the southern hemisphere. Its neighbors are either a close ally with near identical values and interests (Australia) or relatively small island states.

And then there is New Zealand’s anti-nuclear sentiment, which manifested itself in public aversion to the docking of nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed U.S. naval vessels in the 1970s. This was buttressed by then-Prime Minister David Lange’s widely endorsed statement in a March 1985 debate at Oxford University that “nuclear weapons are morally indefensible.” The back story is important to understand the clash of interests that broke the New Zealand-U.S. leg of the ANZUS alliance.

In February 1985, a crisis broke out in the alliance when the Reagan administration stuck to longstanding U.S. policy of not revealing whether its naval vessels were armed with nuclear weapons while transiting New Zealand’s territorial waters. Faced with this uncertainty, Wellington refused to allow a U.S. naval vessel access to New Zealand ports. When the Lange administration refused to change course, the United States suspended its ANZUS security obligations to New Zealand in August 1986.

Wellington then passed the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act in 1987, banning both nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed vessels from its ports. Congress responded immediately with the Broomfield Act, downgrading New Zealand’s status as a formal ally. To be sure, both sides have since sought to improve ties, as shown by the signing of the 2010 Wellington Declaration and the 2012 Washington Declaration. In February 2013, then-Prime Minister John Key even stated in an interview that “the relationship between New Zealand and the United States has never been better.” Nevertheless, Secretary of State George Shultz’s 1986 statement at the time of the ANZUS break, that “we remain friends, but we are no longer allies,” holds true.

Hard economic interests, exemplified in the contemporary China-New Zealand relationship, reinforce the imperative not to align with Washington against Beijing. Since signing a free trade agreement in 2008, China has become New Zealand’s top trade partner, with total trade exceeding US$33 billion in 2020. In the first quarter of 2022, New Zealand government figures reveal that China is the destination for more than 25 percent of New Zealand’s exports and the source for just under 20 percent of imports. Economic interdependence has a political effect. Like many states in the Indo-Pacific, there is a deep reluctance in New Zealand to get on the wrong side of China.

There is a clear record here. As far as possible, the New Zealand government’s formal statements of disagreement on China-related issues are expressed in as non-provocative a manner as possible. When China’s treatment of its Uyghur population in Xinjiang was heavily criticized in a non-binding resolution in parliament in 2021, the Ardern administration rejected any formal designation that genocide was occurring.

Truth be told, New Zealand’s engagement with China has been challenged as Beijing’s internal political sensitivities and problems are increasingly being projected abroad. Events in Auckland in June and July 2019 exemplify the point...

Full article HERE

The Bombardier Beetle

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Meet the Bombardier Beetle, named so because it expels from its rear a highly combustible spray. It only smokes visually at this scale,, but make no mistake this is deadly!

This weapon, which is primarily used for defense, as with everything in the insect world, can fry everything within range. Ants, worms, other beetles, a spider, it all gets burns. The spray reaches temperatures of up to 100 degrees Celsius, most of it vaporizes from the heat. This bug likes its food charbroiled, apparently.

A letter…

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If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich? Turns Out It’s Just Chance.

The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment.

The distribution of wealth follows a well-known pattern sometimes called an 80:20 rule: 80 percent of the wealth is owned by 20 percent of the people. Indeed, a report in 2017 concluded that just eight men had a total wealth equivalent to that of the world’s poorest 3.8 billion people.

This seems to occur in all societies at all scales. It is a well-studied pattern called a power law that crops up in a wide range of social phenomena. But the distribution of wealth is among the most controversial because of the issues it raises about fairness and merit. Why should so few people have so much wealth?

The conventional answer is that we live in a meritocracy in which people are rewarded for their talent, intelligence, effort, and so on. Over time, many people think, this translates into the wealth distribution that we observe, although a healthy dose of luck can play a role.

But there is a problem with this idea: while wealth distribution follows a power law, the distribution of human skills generally follows a normal distribution that is symmetric about an average value. For example, intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern. Average IQ is 100, but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000.

The same is true of effort, as measured by hours worked. Some people work more hours than average and some work less, but nobody works a billion times more hours than anybody else.

And yet when it comes to the rewards for this work, some people do have billions of times more wealth than other people. What’s more, numerous studies have shown that the wealthiest people are generally not the most talented by other measures.

What factors, then, determine how individuals become wealthy? Could it be that chance plays a bigger role than anybody expected? And how can these factors, whatever they are, be exploited to make the world a better and fairer place?

We finally get an answer thanks to the work of Alessandro Pluchino at the University of Catania in Italy and a couple of colleagues. These guys have created a computer model of human talent and the way people use it to exploit opportunities in life. The model allows the team to study the role of chance in this process.

The results are something of an eye-opener. Their simulations accurately reproduce the wealth distribution in the real world. But the wealthiest individuals are not the most talented (although they must have a certain level of talent). They are the luckiest. And this has significant implications for the way societies can optimize the returns they get for investments in everything from business to science.

Pluchino and co’s model is straightforward. It consists of N people, each with a certain level of talent (skill, intelligence, ability, and so on). This talent is distributed normally around some average level, with some standard deviation. So some people are more talented than average and some are less so, but nobody is orders of magnitude more talented than anybody else.

This is the same kind of distribution seen for various human skills, or even characteristics like height or weight. Some people are taller or smaller than average, but nobody is the size of an ant or a skyscraper. Indeed, we are all quite similar.

The computer model charts each individual through a working life of 40 years. During this time, the individuals experience lucky events that they can exploit to increase their wealth if they are talented enough.

However, they also experience unlucky events that reduce their wealth. These events occur at random.

At the end of the 40 years, Pluchino and co rank the individuals by wealth and study the characteristics of the most successful. They also calculate the wealth distribution. They then repeat the simulation many times to check the robustness of the outcome.

When the team rank individuals by wealth, the distribution is exactly like that seen in real-world societies. “The ‘80-20’ rule is respected, since 80 percent of the population owns only 20 percent of the total capital, while the remaining 20 percent owns 80 percent of the same capital,” report Pluchino and co.

That may not be surprising or unfair if the wealthiest 20 percent turn out to be the most talented. But that isn’t what happens. The wealthiest individuals are typically not the most talented or anywhere near it. “The maximum success never coincides with the maximum talent, and vice-versa,” say the researchers.

So if not talent, what other factor causes this skewed wealth distribution? “Our simulation clearly shows that such a factor is just pure luck,” say Pluchino and co.

The team shows this by ranking individuals according to the number of lucky and unlucky events they experience throughout their 40-year careers. “It is evident that the most successful individuals are also the luckiest ones,” they say. “And the less successful individuals are also the unluckiest ones.”

That has significant implications for society. What is the most effective strategy for exploiting the role luck plays in success?

Pluchino and co study this from the point of view of science research funding, an issue clearly close to their hearts. Funding agencies the world over are interested in maximizing their return on investment in the scientific world. Indeed, the European Research Council invested $1.7 million in a program to study serendipity—the role of luck in scientific discovery—and how it can be exploited to improve funding outcomes.

It turns out that Pluchino and co are well set to answer this question. They use their model to explore different kinds of funding models to see which produce the best returns when luck is taken into account.

The team studied three models, in which research funding is distributed equally to all scientists; distributed randomly to a subset of scientists; or given preferentially to those who have been most successful in the past. Which of these is the best strategy?

The strategy that delivers the best returns, it turns out, is to divide the funding equally among all researchers. And the second- and third-best strategies involve distributing it at random to 10 or 20 percent of scientists.

In these cases, the researchers are best able to take advantage of the serendipitous discoveries they make from time to time. In hindsight, it is obvious that the fact a scientist has made an important chance discovery in the past does not mean he or she is more likely to make one in the future.

A similar approach could also be applied to investment in other kinds of enterprises, such as small or large businesses, tech startups, education that increases talent, or even the creation of random lucky events.

Clearly, more work is needed here. What are we waiting for?

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068 : Talent vs. Luck: The Role of Randomness in Success and Failure

Noteworthy “news”

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What happened after the death of Caeser

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In all, the group of conspirators that plotted against Caesar was large- with 60 men at least. However many of these men merely dipped their hands in Caesar’s blood and tried to take credit.

The actual killers are as follows

  1. Tillius Cimber: He initiated the assassination
  2. Publius Servilius Casca: The first to attack Caesar, cutting his shoulder
  3. Gaius Cassius Longinus: This was the first man to stab Caesar
  4. Titiedius Servilius Casca: This was the second man to stab Caesar
  5. Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus: The third to stab Caesar, he stabbed him in the thigh
  6. Marcus Junius Brutus: Brutus delivered the final blow, killing Caesar by stabbing him in the groin

These 6 men were the main guys that actually killed Caesar. There were lots of other conspirators that helped but these are the actual assassins.

So what happened to them? Nothing good.

After the assassination, Mark Antony met with these men and Cicero to strike a deal. You see the assassins had made an error.

The murder of Caesar could be justified legally by being tyrannicide. In Rome, the murder of a tyrant was legal. However, if Caesar was declared a Tyrant all of his decisions were voided. It turns out that all of these assassins were appointed to their positions by Caesar.

So the deal was that Caesar’s laws and appointments would stand and that they would conduct a public funeral as a sign of unity.

During this funeral, Mark Antony rose to speak. He first talked about how much Caesar loved the people and how he had donated his wealth to them. He read Caesar’s will which stipulated that every citizen be given the equivariant of 3 months’ wages. Then, he brought out a wax statue of Caesar that depicted the stab wounds graphically.

The crowd went nuts and began to attack the conspirators. They flew into a frenzy and all of Caesar’s assassins were forced to flee.

These men would head East and raise a large army to march on Rome. Meanwhile, Caesar’s heir and Antony got their own Army together. There was a battle and Caesar’s assassins lost.

  • Brutus, Casca, Titiedius, and Cassius killed themselves after being defeated
  • Decimus was killed by Antony early on in a small Civil War
  • Cimber died in combat during the battle with Octavian and Antony

As for the other plotters that helped- they were all killed by Octavian and Antony. When Octavian began Consul he purged Rome of everyone who was anti-Caesar including even Cicero.

The Most Amazing Lasagna

This is a great video. Inspirational!

Emperor Honorius was an idiot

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Honorius was one of the last “major” emperors of the Western Roman Empire. He ruled for a long time from 393 – 423, which is much longer than the average 7 years emperors reigned for.

He oversaw the collapse of his Empire. He witnessed it slowly decline into a failed shell of its former self. Worse yet – he did nothing to stop it.

Flavius Stilicho was the last great Roman leader (or one of the last). He was a brilliant general who saved Italy 2 times at least. He personally saved Honorius twice and negotiated a decades-long peace with the Sassanid Persians.

Stilicho really tried to save the empire. He wasn’t out for wealth or fame – he just really wanted to save Rome. He had limited resources, limited time, and was one of the only capable men in all of the Empire. Yet again and again he desperately tried to save the empire.

Whenever things seemed doomed, when armies were at the gates of the capital, Stilicho would raise an army, taking garrisons where he could and hiring barbarians to serve him and rush down to save Italy.

Alaric – the man who sacked Rome and one of the most brilliant generals of the age – was defeated by Stilicho twice.

As stated, Honorius was an idiot and a child. He allowed everyone to manipulate him and cared nothing for Rome so long as he got to live in luxury. Luckily for Rome, Stilicho dominated him and was the de facto ruler of the empire.

Eventually, Stilicho found himself in a hard space. He relied on barbarians to fill the ranks of his army. The Senate and Nobles hated this, but he couldn’t do anything else as they refused to allow Stilicho to recruit from their estates.

Stilicho wanted to eventually reunite East and West, but for now, he wanted Illyria back, hoping to use it as recruitment grounds. Illyria meanwhile was in the hands of the Eastern Roman Empire and Emperor Arcadius (Honorius’s just-as-stupid brother) refused to give it back.

When Arcadius died, Stilicho had a choice. He could go down to Constantinople and influence the process of crowning a new emperor. Maybe he could get Illyria back and help unite East and West. But by doing so he would be leaving Italy and Honorius would be alone – surrounded by Stilicho’s enemies. What if they turned Honorius against him?

Stilicho chose to head to Constantinople and press Honorius’s claims. It was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Before he even left the Western Empire, Honorius fell under the sway of Olympius – an anti-barbarian racist who hated Stilicho. Olympius turned Honorius against Stilicho with ease and that was it.

Stilicho’s army revolted against him. His loyal officers were executed along with their families, and the Roman elements turned against their general. Stilicho heard and turned back. He was hoping to get a chance to speak with Honorius and fix this. He knew the risk but made for Ravenna anyway. Soon he was found and captured at a church by Honorius’s men.

He was taken away to be executed. When his bodyguards protested, Stilicho waved them off and allowed himself to be executed. In the end, he knew that a civil war would cost the empire too dearly and so he allowed himself to be killed.

A true man of Rome until the end. He was 10 times the man that ruled over the Western Roman Empire and had Stilicho been serving a capable emperor maybe the empire could have been saved.

With Stilicho gone, Rome lost maybe its last real hope of survival. Even with Stilicho alive the odds of Rome surviving were practically 0. However with Stilicho gone, everything came crashing down around the empty uncaring head of Honorius.

I guess nobody realized exactly how much of the Empire Stilicho was alone holding together. They soon would.


Bear with me a moment – this all comes full circle.

You see Rome at this time faced 3 really serious issues:

  1. Millions of barbarians pouring into the Empire. They had all been displaced by the Huns
  2. No money to raise a large army to resist this migration
  3. No recruits to fill the ranks even if they had enough money

This is what Stilicho was dealing with as well.

In response, Rome had a decent idea. They gave the barbarians pieces of the Empire under the condition they fight for Rome. This could have worked too. Rome’s great strength was their ability to assimilate new peoples into the Empire. After all, they had been doing it for 1000 years well enough.

In fact, the Roman Republic had a similar set up in Italy. They left everyone their independence if they just sent men to fight.

With this move, Rome hoped to bolster its ranks for cheap while also keeping the barbarian on their side. It’s actually not a bad idea at all and may have worked.

So where does Stilicho fit in?

Well, Stilicho was not a Roman or at least not ethnically. He was half Vandal, which made him almost a barbarian in the eyes of the Romans.

But for Stilicho, this was an advantage. He was able to easily work with the Goths and Vandals and Franks, because in a way he was one of them. He wasn’t some uppity Italian Noble looking down his nose at everyone – he was one of the boys.

In a way, this made Stilicho the symbol of this new Roman world. He was a Roman by choice – a full-blooded die-hard Roman that really believed in the Empire and the eternal city. But he was also a barbarian. He should have been a symbol of the future – but it was never so.

Stilicho thus carefully cultivated a large army of barbarian auxiliaries to reinforce his dwindling numbers.

Over the decades, this army became rather formidable. It was an army that tasted victory after victory and never knew defeat. It was an army of veterans led by a brilliant tactician – it was exactly what Rome needed.

When anti-barbarian racist Olympius took over as Honorius’s new master, he basically sent these barbarians packing. Just like that, the veteran backbone of the Roman army was gone. Worse yet – this hardened army of veterans was now hungry, far from home, and a bit angry.

Naturally, Alaric was there to take them in. Suddenly Alaric went from recently defeated and on the ropes – to flush with hardened warriors. Just as suddenly Rome had no army and no good generals.

I’m sure this won’t lead to a legendary sack of a famous city or anything.


Speaking of sacking and cities, let’s talk about another stupid thing Honorius did.

So Alaric is looking good. The only man who could ever stop him, Stilicho, is dead. Even better, Stilicho’s army is now his army. So Alaric decides he is going to make a move for power.

Alaric invades Italy and Rome has literally no army to do anything about it. Alaric doesn’t want to conquer Italy though. He just wants to blockade Rome, have the Senate pay him off, and leave.

The Senate pays him and he honors his deal and leaves Rome. He then heads up to Ravenna to meet with Honorius and negotiate a long term peace deal.

Alaric makes the following demands

  1. A spot as a Roman general
  2. A yearly stipend of gold for his people
  3. Grain shipments to keep his people fed
  4. Land in Illyria and independence

The Senate comes up from Rome to meet with Honorius. They tell him to take the deal – Alaric is strong and there is nothing they can do.

Honorius agrees to everything except making Alaric a general.

Alaric then changes his tune. He suddenly drops all his demands. He simply demands land along the Danube and regular food shipments and in exchange, he would defend the Roman border.

We need to stop here and talk about this. Alaric has an army – the ONLY army in the area. Rome can literally do nothing to stop him. All he wants is some food and useless land along the Danube river and in return, he is willing to defend the Roman border from the coming barbarian hordes. This is an amazing deal. This is like someone holding a gun to your head and demanding you take their cash.

A lot of historians question why Alaric offered this deal. Most, including myself, think that he was planning ahead. He knew Rome was 1 good emperor away from being on top of the world and that he was positioning himself as a friend of Rome when that day came.

Either way, it doesn’t matter, because Honorius is an idiot.

HE TURNED DOWN THE DEAL AND BROKE OFF NEGOTIATIONS.

(Yeah. No shit!)

Alaric then sacked Rome……

Rome, the eternal city, a city that had not been taken for 800 years was sacked. 800 years…. think about that. The USA is 250 years old. So go way back to George Washington, then do that 3 times. That’s how long Rome remained safe.

This was really the true ending of Rome.

From here, the barbarians would continue to sack Rome. They made a few efforts to stay alive, but they lacked the funds, manpower, and resources to do anything at all.

Imagine how much a skilled general like Alaric with 40,000 veteran soldiers could have helped turn things around. And again – they were doing it for free.

So no matter how dumb you are, you will NEVER be as dumb as Honorius.

To be clear he

  1. Killed the best general Rome had seen in perhaps a century
  2. Then allowed his only decent army to go over to his enemies’ side
  3. When his enemy offered to fight for him he REFUSED
  4. He allowed Rome to be sacked

I mean if you tried to suck at life you still couldn’t be this bad.

EDIT: I am deleting comments about Trump. This question and answer couldn’t have less to do with Trump. No – Honorius is not Donald Trump. Honorius was a child that watched his empire burn while feeding chickens.

Artist Imagines How Pop Culture Characters Would Look If They Were Saints

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Digital artist Gedo, better known as @gedogfx to his followers on his Instagram account, recently created an amazing project where he transformed famous characters from pop culture into holy figures.

All of these figures have halos and majestic religious clothes to portray them as saints and unique symbols that represent their characters best. If you look closely, you will see that the Mother of Dragons Daenerys Targaryen, from the famous American fantasy drama series Game of Thrones, is portrayed with a little dragon resting on her shoulder. Or Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction, the American crime film by Quentin Tarantino, is shown with a needle in her heart as a reference to the scene where she almost dies after overdosing on heroin, but is saved by Vincent, who stabs her in the heart with a syringe full of adrenaline.

So if you’re wondering how famous pop culture characters would look as saints with a little bit of dark humor, you’ll surely love these illustrations.

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Death trap for the USA, Greek fire under the ocean, some delicious sweet potato pie and the Funniest Raccoon Memes

I like to think that there are some really great things here. I hope you enjoy this post.

Smile for the day…

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Norway and Russia settle cargo dispute

Norway and Russia have found a way to deliver goods to Russian settlements on Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.

The statement comes after a week of tension between Moscow and Oslo, after Norway halted two cargo containers destined for Russian miners living on the archipelago on June 15, citing sanctions imposed on Moscow over its conflict with Ukraine.

Russia insisted that Norway’s “unacceptable” ban on supply deliveries was depriving Russian miners of “critical” goods, including food, medical equipment, building materials, and spare parts. Moscow threatened “appropriate retaliatory measures” if the issue was not resolved.

The Norwegian Foreign Ministry now claims that the containers were blocked because they were being transported on Russian vehicles, which were banned from bringing cargo over the Russian-Norwegian border. However, it noted that there would be no issue if these containers were brought to the miners using Norwegian vehicles instead.

Dad Recycles Old Crayons Into New Ones for Schools, Hospitals and Art Programs

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No young artist can resist the crisp, new box of crayons that back-to-school season so often brings, but not every little artist has access to them.

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He now extends their useful life through his nonprofit startup, The Crayon Initiative, boiling them down and repurposing them into new boxes of crayons for kids in need.

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It’s changing the shape of the crayons themselves, too, making them easier for special-needs children to hold. It all started about four years ago, when the Danville, California dad was out to eat with his family one evening, and the waitress brought crayons for the kids.

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“He was fiddling with a crayon and said, ‘I wonder what happens to these when we leave,’” his wife, Marissa Ware, told Contra Costa Times.

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More than 100,000 boxes, donated from all over the U.S., have already been transformed into 800,000 thicker, triangular-bodied crayons, while towering bags of old crayons, sorted by color still await their turn in the melting pot.

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Bryan Ware estimates he has invested nearly $30,000 of his own money into the startup. He partnered with a physical therapist to create the new crayons’ easy-grip design, then arranged for the manufacture of the metal molds needed to transform old crayons into the new shape.

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With the old crayons piling up in his garage, what he needs now is the corporate funding to scale up and move the operation out of his family’s home and into a proper production facility, complete with warehouse.

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But for now, with or without other family members’ help, he’ll go on spending 30 to 40 hours a week at the kitchen stove, stirring two big stainless-steel pots full of melting crayons.

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To learn more or to donate to the Crayon Initiative, go to thecrayoninitiative.org. Old crayons can be sent to 540 Glasgow Circle, Danville, CA, 94526.

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NASA to build a nuclear base in the moon before Russia and China


According to recent reports, NASA and the U.S Department of Energy (DOE), announced on June 21, that they are jointly advancing space nuclear technology. They have planned three design concept proposals for The Fission Surface Power Project. Russia and China already have similar concepts.

The project plans to build a 40 kilowatt-class nuclear fission power system on the moon. According to NASA, this power system can power 30 homes for 10 years, the equivalent of a small nuclear power plant. The design proposals came from US aerospace companies Lockheed Martin Space Systems, and Electrical Companies Westinghouse and IX. The latter is a joint venture between autonomous driving systems company Intuitive Machines and nuclear reactor designer X-Energy. These companies will each receive a 12-month contract worth $5 million.

NASA and DOE want to explore nuclear technology in space. After all, electricity is not available on the moon or beyond, and other methods aren’t viable. When astronauts get to the moon and then to Mars, they will need a reliable and portable power system. The power system should also be able to operate in different places and in different environmental and weather conditions. Nuclear Fission Power generation systems meet these criteria.

Until the end of the century, NASA and DOE hopes to test a 40 kW class nuclear fission system on the moon. This power system will pave the way for long-term human missions to the moon and Mars.

“The nuclear fission surface energy project is a practical first step toward building a nuclear power plant on the moon for the United States,” John Wagner, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, said in a statement.”

To recall, NASA had already tested another space nuclear power project. The KiloPower Project was launched in 2015, as the new generation of space nuclear reactors. In May 2018, the project completed all major surface tastes. Last year, DOE and NASA collaborated on a request for comments asking the U.S. companies to provide design concepts for nuclear fission surface energy systems.

The goal is clearly to build solid energy stations between the Moon and other planets. For now, everything sounds like a big brainstorm, but we can’t say that this is impossible. Worth noting that China, Russia, and other aerospace powers have also begun to explore the application of nuclear energy in space. We are curious to see if this will be the start of another technological race. Aerospace exploration, once again, will be a center of discussion in the next few years. The cold way between Russia and the United States accelerated space exploration several years ago. Now, we’re living in an era of tensions between these three countries. Will this lead to a second cold war? Time will tell.

Katharina Detzel

Katharina was admitted to an asylum after sabotaging the rails of a train so that it crashed, for stealing, and many other crimes.

The curious thing about this woman is that when she arrived at the asylum, Katharina made a life-size doll with the straw from her bed. She hit him when she was angry, and when she was happy she danced with him. This doll, she gave her the surrogate love that she needed so badly while inside the mental institution.

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As you can see, the doll has three key features, a beard, glasses and a penis.

During her stay, she tried to escape from the institution numerous times, and after almost 20 years trying, she succeeded, after which she was taken to another mental institution where she was never known what became of her.

From HERE

In her desire for freedom she made a whole series of runners and keys out of wood. She made figurines from bread dough (e.g. Shakespeare). Detzel also worked on a human figure with wings and made the photographed life-size male, which she hanged in her single cell. With the help of this figure (which exuded a certain authority with glasses, penis and beard, it reminds us of the ideal type of a scientist or physician of that time) Detzel tried to be relocated from the cell to the dormitory, from where she could escape. She explained to the doctors that she would soon be like this doll: should she continue to be isolated, then she too would soon be lifeless in the cell. Detzel was unsuccessful: The doctors did not respond to her threat, but removed almost all items from the cell: mattress, canvas, clothes (even her shirt) was taken from the patient, she has only chaff in the cell.

Detzel continued to vigorously opposing the suppression of patients by staff and sanctions (e.g. prolonged baths). In her struggle against social injustice, she wanted to establish a home for infants, compiled a pamphlet against prostitution and wrote a play entitled “The Extramarital Child or the Child Bed of Righteousness”.

After 19 years, she finally managed to escape from the institution. She moved out with her daughter. In 1939 Detzel was arrested again. This time because of theft and forgery. She was soon institutionalized, this time in Andernach. In 1941 she moved to another institution, Johannestal in Süchteln. It is uncertain if she survived the war and the Nazi Euthanasia Program.

The photograph above is part of the Prinzhorn Collection. The collection (on display in the University of Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic) is made up of approximately 6,000 works, all created by inmates of psychiatric institutions between 1840 and 1940. It ranges from water-colors, drawings, paintings and sculptures to textile works and texts. The major part of it was collected by art historian and psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn (1886–1933) while he worked as assistant physician at the Psychiatric Hospital of Heidelberg University.

US asked Russia to reconsider mercenaries’ status – Moscow — RT World News

Washington has requested that captured American mercenaries be treated as combatants, according to Deputy FM.

The United States has requested the recognition by Russia of American fighters captured during the Ukraine conflict as combatants, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Friday.

“There was a certain signal from the American side, mainly focused on the fact that these individuals should be considered combatants under the definition of the Geneva convention and should be subject to the relevant protections,” he told reporters.

The deputy FM added, however, that the topic of American mercenaries had not been explicitly discussed between Russia and the US.

According to Ryabkov, the presence of foreign mercenaries аnd their actions “on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and nationalist battalions” is now one of the most “serious and problematic moments” in Russia’s relations with the US and other Western countries.

He said that the actions of captured foreign mercenaries are being investigated to determine the circumstances of “their appearance in the combat zone and the role they played there.”

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“We have repeatedly warned the citizens of countries that are unfriendly to Russia to refrain from adventurous plans to ‘prove themselves’ on the battlefield in Ukraine,” Ryabkov pointed out. “But those who do not take these warnings into account are reaping the fruits of their own misanthropy and unwillingness to accept the reality of the situation that has unfolded in the region.”

On Tuesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced that some 170 foreign mercenaries had been killed in Ukraine “over the past 10 days” and that 99 had “refused to participate in combat and left the territory of Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, two American fighters – Alexander John-Robert Drueke and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh – are currently awaiting trial in the Donetsk People’s Republic where three foreign fighters from the UK and Morocco were handed out death sentences last month over their “illegal activities.” The death sentences, however, have yet to be carried out as all three foreigners have appealed the Donetsk court’s verdict.

Article HERE

The tomb of Liu He

When archaeologists opened the tomb of Liu He, Lord of Haihun of the Han Dynasty, they found a pile of money. This includes 5,330,000 ancient copper coins, weighing about 10 tons, and 358 gold cakes.

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As a distant relative of the royal family, Liu He was the emperor of the Han Dynasty for 27 days.

However, he couldn’t do the job. He liked music and chess, but didn’t really know how to become an emperor.

Unsurprisingly, he was quickly overthrown, and transferred south with his treasures.

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He died in his 30s from eating too much cantaloupe.

New South Korea president may be a nail in the coffin for North Korea engagement

Soon after elected (with strong US support), His popularity dropped drastically.

He immediately followed 100% American establishment policy: he openly saluted the US flag, he completely destroyed relations with North Korea and (of course) Korea's largest revenue partner, China.

He openly endorsed Asian NATO, Japan, and is against Russia. 

Since he came to office he has done nothing that helped to revive the Korean economy. In fact, through his actions, he is in the process of destroying the foundation of the Korean economy. And already Korea is starting to economically collapse just like the rest of the collective West are.

He may be the next Abe and Zelensky

Full article HERE

Withdrawing from China failed. Apple turned to Chinese manufacturers for help.

Back ground info:
My personal knowledge and understanding is:

1) Apple is exploiting its suppliers via its volume and keep pressing their margin year on year;

2) to support apple volume, these apple supply chains have to expand their plant, production lines, and stock up materials to meet apple demand ;

3) however, Apple with the crusader DNAs showing no mercy to its supply chain partners, once apple failed in pressing down the prices the following years, Apply will look for alternative suppliers and suddenly cut off the existing one, resulting in the other party running a lost or without profit after years of hardwork supplying Apple.

4) my understanding is Apple seeking profit increment of 11% year on year by selling higher prices to retailers and squesting supply chains;

5) as such apple without any factory enjoying 70% profit while the rest of apple partners sharing the other 30%

6) so, there are many Chinese supply chains decided not to deal with apple anymore.

7) so, Apple openly announced to move supply chain elsewhere, particularly Vietnam. But Vietnam doesn't has the support industry like China, and the workers productivity is not as efficient as China. In addition, Vietnam infrastructure is not up to the Chinese standard to support mass industry expansion.

So, now Apple finally forced to return to China for help.
Thank you Putin the Great and Xi the great, the de-imperialism process has speeded up.
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US Boeing already in deep trouble.
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The US chip industry is another disaster in the making.
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Apple 5G investment is already a failure (meaning for the first time, Apple is behind its competitors) , now Apple has a big supply chain problem…
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Don’t be surprised with how fast the world most ruthless crusader will crumble within the next few years.
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I am preparing more volka to celebrate…

SpaceX Poised To Downgrade “Starbase” R&D Facility

“As far as anything being launched directly to space to the moon or Mars, that’s more than likely not going to happen here.”

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The real reason for this is the fact that SpaceX requires Chinese and Russian components and these are no longer available. -MM

As the current testing grounds and launch site of SpaceX’s massive Starship — a fully reusable rocket that very well may be the most powerful in the world — “Starbase” near Brownsville in South Texas, attracts plenty of space enthusiasts that want to catch a glimpse of the titanic rocket in action.

But to their dismay, that privilege could soon end, National Geographic reports, with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hinting that the space company could eventually move operations to the Florida Space Coast.

“Everybody down here, Brownsville and the whole valley, was expecting to see that this was going to be the Gateway to Mars,” Louis Baldera, a local resident known to his tens of thousands of online followers as LabPadre, and who has closely been following SpaceX’s operations, told the publication.

“As far as anything being launched directly to space to the moon or Mars, that’s more than likely not going to happen here,” he added. “I think that’s going to bum some people out.”

Employees at the facility, who chose to remain anonymous, also told Dallas Express News this week that they no longer believe that Starbase will be the “Gateway.”

That’s in large part because SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration have been embroiled in an ugly battle over granting approval for orbital test flights for Starship, with the FAA citing environmental concerns and delaying their decision on multiple occasions.

“I guess our worst-case scenario is that we would be delayed for six to eight months to build up the Cape launch tower and launch from there,” Musk said at a February press conference, when asked what would happen if the FAA required a more extensive environmental review.

Permission was eventually granted last month to carry out the inaugural orbital test flight — as long as SpaceX complies with over 75 environmental provisions.

If operations were to move to Florida, that’s not a prospect that’s likely to sit well with Brownsville residents, especially given the potential consequences on the local economy such a decision could have.

After all, SpaceX is the biggest employer in the city.

“I didn’t know any of those plans beforehand,” Jessica Tetreau, the Brownsville city commissioner, told National Geographic. “What startled us was when we heard the timeline and how they would have to start moving things to Florida.”

SpaceX already started building a Starship launch tower in Florida last December and more recently added its second segment in June.

With the FAA breathing down their neck and dismay from local environmental groups growing, Starbase could be losing its desirability as a launch location.

Of course, that wouldn’t mean a complete pull-out. The facility would most likely be used for less glamorous research and development purposes, as Musk stated at the February conference.

While it’s still mostly speculation at this point — it’s still not a given that SpaceX will move operations — hopefully it won’t have too much of an economic impact on the region.

From HERE

Sweet Potato Pie

The perfect Sweet Potato Pie recipe! Made with a tender and flaky, buttery pie crust and a lightly spiced, perfectly sweetened, browned butter sweet potato pie filling.

Then you have your choice to top with sweetened whipped cream or a toasted homemade marshmallow topping!

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Sweet Potato Pie

If you like pumpkin pie you’ll love sweet potato pie. They’re very similar in taste but this recipe is made with fresh, baked sweet potatoes (instead of canned pumpkin) and it includes browned butter so you know it’s going to be good!

There are a few steps to the process of making it but it’s worth every step once you get to taste this luscious pie.

So What Makes the Best Sweet Potato Pie Recipe?

So I learned a few things in testing and creating this recipe:

  • Blind baking the crust will keep you from ending up with a soft and gooey pie crust.
  • Using baked sweet potatoes instead of boiled sweet potatoes concentrates their flavor rather then ending up with water logged boiled sweet potatoes.
  • Browning the salted butter adds adds some depth of flavor to the pie filling. Salted browned butter and sweet potato were made to go together (have you tried my browned butter mashed sweet potatoes yet?)
  • Keeping it light on the spices lets the sweet potato flavor shine.
  • I personally preferred the classic texture of using mashed by hand sweet potatoes vs. those pureed in a food processor.
  • The lightly caramelized flavor of evaporated milk was preferred to the flavor of milk or cream.
  • Tent pie crust edges with foil to prevent over-browning.
  • And being careful not to over-bake the pie prevented deep cracks from happening (but if they do no big deal, just cover with the topping).

This is easily my favorite sweet potato pie recipe! And I prefer the marshmallow topping for that nostalgic flavor combination, plus I feel that’s what will really set it apart from pumpkin pie but feel free to use either whipped cream or marshmallow topping.

If you use the marshmallow topping you’ll want to prepare and toast it when it’s time to serve (which is the only drawback), so it’s nice and fluffy.

Sweet Potato Pie Ingredients:

  • Unbleached all-purpose flour – this is used to make the base of the pie crust. Standard bleached flour will work too if that’s what you have, unbleached just has better flavor.
  • Granulated sugar and brown sugar – the white sugar is used in the pie crust to add a faint sweetness and the brown sugar is used for the filling. The added molasses of the brown sugar pairs perfectly with the sweet potato flavor.
  • Salt – this brings out the flavors of the pie crust and filling so it doesn’t taste flat.
  • Unsalted and salted butter – unsalted butter is used in the pie crust (unsalted butter stays cold better), and salted butter for the filling. Salted browned butter tastes so much better than unsalted.
  • Ice water – be sure to add lots of ice to the water, stir and rest before you use it. This helps the butter stay cold so you end up with a flaky crust.
  • Sweet potatoes – I like to use red garnet variety. Other orange varieties work as well but don’t use white or purple sweet potatoes.
  • Evaporated milk – I like to use the small 5 oz. can so I don’t have leftover but if you only have a larger can that will work but be sure to measure amount listed.
  • Eggs – this helps bind the pie filling together and make a custard type filling. They are crucial to the recipe.
  • Cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger – with the ratios here I recommend sticking with each separate spice rather than using a spice blend.
  • Vanilla extract – this adds another faint background flavor in the pie. Use real vanilla for best flavor.

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How to Make Sweet Potato Pie Filling:

  • Prepare pie crust dough. Chill, roll, shape and chill. Blind bake.
  • Bake sweet potatoes until soft.
  • Brown butter.
  • Prepare filling and pour into crust.

How Long to Bake Sweet Potato Pie?

  • Bake until pie edges are set and center just wiggles slightly, this will take about 40 – 50 minutes at 350 degrees.
  • Let cool at room temperature 2 hours. Serve or chill (I prefer it served cold).

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Can I Make It in Advance?

This pie can be made 1 day before serving. Store in the refrigerator. Wait until the day of serving to prepare topping.

Can I Use Canned Sweet Potatoes or Yams?

For best flavor and pie consistency I recommend using fresh sweet potatoes. It’s almost just as easy, just baking and scooping out the flesh – no peeling and chopping.

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TSMC Wins Legal Battle Against Employee Who Violated Contract & Moved To China

This is NORMAL in the industry. You routinely sign Non-Compete agreements locking you out of a job with a competitor once you leave the firm. These contracts are rarely enforced, however, but for a high visibility industry, it could be problematic. I dare say that the Taiwanese laws do not apply to Chinese residents. And this might sound frightening, but really, it's just a bunch of "hot air". 

This happened in 2016. Since them, entire busloads of engineers left for China.-MM

A former procurement manager for the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has been fined NT$2.5 million as part of a violation of his non-compete agreement with the chipmaker. The former employee, Xue Zongzhi, had left his role at TSMC to take up a similar position at a Chinese wafer supplier, which violated his agreement with TSMC the company had argued. In response, Mr. Zongzhi retorted that his experience in procurement was not subject to a non-compete agreement and by taking up a role at his new employer, he had leveraged his skills acquired through time spent in the industry.

The report comes courtesy of the Taiwanese publication United Daily News (UDN) and it states that Mr. Zongzhi’s appeals against the Taiwanese court’s decision have been rejected. The controversy surrounding his departure started in 2016 when he left TSMC to join a Chinese wafer company within months of his departure.

Mr. Zongzhi had been managing TSMC’s purchasing department since 2011 and chose to leave the role in July 2016. As per the UDN, his contract with the company prohibited him from taking up similar roles at competing firms which were defined as companies that are engaged in “semiconductor wafer manufacturing and services.” However, in December of the same year, the executive took up a role as the vice president of procurement at the Yangtze River Storage Company which is a part of the Continental Ziguang Group and owned in it entirety by the Wuhan Xinxin Integrated Circuit Company.

The Wuhan Xinxin Integrated Circuit Company (XMC) is a direct competitor of TSMC, argued the company, since it also manufactures and sells semiconductors. As a result, the Taiwanese fab sent a legal notice to Mr. Zongzhi, asking him to resign from his new position, but failed to receive a response.

Subsequently, TSMC sent him a notice to pay damages equal to NT$15.5 million in a lawsuit. The suit also claimed that the former manager had leaked TSMC’s trade secrets such as its order contracts, bids and product prices as part of his new position.

However, Mr. Zonghzi insisted that prices and bids were not proprietary information and TSMC does not use them to compete with other companies. He also outlined that his experience over the years is not TSMC’s intellectual property and that XMC is a small fish compared to TSMC, which is the world’s largest contract manufacturer of semiconductors and chips.

As the UDN reports, the court sided with TSMC in the affair, and it ruled that contracts, bids and prices are sensitive information which is indeed used by the chipmaker to compete with rivals. It also held that Mr. Zhongzhi’s contract with TSMC did prevent him from working for other chip manufacturers, but that he was free to work with non-chip manufacturers. Finally, the court also rejected the manager’s claim that XMC is not TSMC’s rival, as it stated that the reality is to the contrary as both engage in manufacturing semiconductors.

However, it reduced the damages owed to TSMC since the company was unable to prove how Zongzhi’s departure led to losses. TSMC’s share price has grown consistently since the former manager left the company, and its profits have also grown significantly. Subsequently, Zhongxi was sentenced to pay NT$2.5 million in damages to his former employer.

The revolution industry and how the Hong Kong police were targeted

From HERE
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Professional destabilisers worked with activists for years to distort reality in Hong Kong, writes Phill Hynes. And there’s a specific reason why the destruction of the reputation of the city’s police became a key target.

When the protests in Hong Kong broke out in 2019, they became the focus for sustained and intense international media attention.

The saturation-level coverage of Hong Kong blanked out other major events elsewhere in the world—even though the other stories were often far more newsworthy, involving larger events with far more fatalities. Populism and right-wing politics were moving center stage in Europe, the Middle East was on fire, as was South America.

In other riots around the world, the military were called out and many protesters’ lives were lost. In contrast, Hong Kong police killed not one protester in six months of violent protest.

Yet the city received the sustained glare of the global media circus—and unrelenting coverage which was reprehensibly biased, particularly against the police.

In particular, not one mainstream media outlet reported the quickly obvious fact that the protests were organised, well-funded, and clearly using a long list of specialised techniques associated with a shadowy sector known as “the revolution industry”. It’s worth setting that right.

Doing the army’s job

In particular, one key fact was rarely acknowledged: Under-prepared, under-experienced Hong Kong police officers found themselves forced to do an incredibly difficult job that was done everywhere else by fully equipped armies with military vehicles and an bottomless supply of lethal weaponry.

Who was standing in the shadows, stirring up the protests? No one, apparently. Just try and find a single mainstream media article that mentioned the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI) and/ or the Center for Applied Non-Violent Actions and Strategy, (CANVAS). Who are they?

This topic will be considered in three parts. First, we’ll look at some of the players in the revolution industry. Second, we’ll look at the strategy and tactics used in Hong Kong. Third, we’ll look at their focus on delegitimising authority, and particularly the city’s police force.

Part 1: The revolution industry

There have been many civil disobedience movements, uprisings, colour revolutions and protest movements in the past 20 years—and several organisations that have had direct involvement in the majority of these movements. The AEI, founded by Gene Sharp in 1983 in the US, has been at the forefront of inspiring hybrid wars. CANVAS was created in 2004 in Serbia by Srđa Popović and the CEO of Orion Telecom, Slobodan Đinović, former founding members of Otpor, the precursor to CANVAS, the group that toppled Serbian president Milosevic. There are a number of other groups in this area, such as the Oslo Freedom Foundation (which, despite the name, is headquartered in New York). The Azov Battalion from Ukraine sent a team from its Gonor Group to Hong Kong in 2019.

The revolution industry developed techniques now associated with various terms, including “psyops”, “colour revolution”, “hybrid war”, and so on. In simple terms, the western powers trigger a battle in which conventional physical fighting is supplemented with an underhand media saturation campaign to humanise one side and demonise the other. This causes the general public to take the pro-US side and enables politicians to easily syphon public funds to the coffers of arms-makers.

No conspiracy theory

It is no conspiracy theory to talk about their involvement in the Hong Kong protests. In a 2014 BBC report from an Oslo Freedom Foundation meeting, street protest specialists admitted they had been working to prepare Hong Kong activists for almost two years, and had distributed materials to a thousand activist leaders in the city.

Furthermore, Hong Kong protesters have been widely observed using revolution industry techniques (such as marginal violence) and even admitted to it.

The Albert Einstein Institute (which has no direct connection with the scientist of that name) was founded by Gene Sharp, a US academic specialising in street protest strategies and regime change. In 1993, he published the book From Dictatorship to Democracy. Updated versions of the book are accompanied by a tactical training manual with 198 meticulously thought-out steps within structured sections.

Make it seem home-grown

AEI and CANVAS both encourage localisation by activists: indigenous elements are seen as a key component of success. The protests need to look home-grown and spontaneous, but this can be superficial. As we have seen, journalists will not dig a centimetre below the surface to check.

The CANVAS organisation has its own publications designed for social movements and revolutionaries, including:

  • Canvas Core Curriculum: A Guide to Effective Non-violent Struggle
  • Making Oppression Backfire
  • Non-violent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points

CANVAS has merged its tactical guidelines with those of the AEI to create a “manual of chaos” for protest movements that is shared freely among interested parties. Moreover, a plethora of US sponsored NGOs offer training to organisations, leaders and movements on the techniques featured in the manuals, and on how to set up, fund, recruit, manage, and run protest movements and revolutions. This is now happening on an industrial scale. CANVAS grew out of the Serbian protests.

CANVAS played a different role to AEI in Hong Kong. If AEI was the inspiration, providing a philosophical and strategic basis for the orientation of a movement, then CANVAS was the tactical source or engine to drive the movement’s objectives. (The initial creation and formation of such movements rests with other NGOs – a topic for another time.)

Part 2: Strategy and tactics

In Hong Kong, which has a very complex political landscape, the protest movement benefited significantly from CANVAS tactical know-how, but CANVAS and their sponsors also benefited from the protesters. Sharp wrote: “Movements adapt the core principles and localise them to their particular circumstances on the ground.” In Hong Kong, protesters were very adaptive, refining techniques, and adding new ones.

As a result, the Hong Kong protest movement, working with a supportive western media, was hugely successful in distorting reality. Out of all the protests around the world at that time, the authorities in Hong Kong were least violent, and most likely to continue to hand out protest permits – yet the impression given was the opposite, with the Hong Kong police painted as brutal and the authorities being characterised as unwilling to allow public demonstrations.

This level of success in news manipulation meant that Hong Kong became a benchmark for tactical developments for other revolutionary movements globally, and an incubator for enhanced tactical learning, with new and modified tactics being visibly exported to other countries. The revolution specialists could add to their list of techniques.

Six stage escalation

In the now combined AEI and CANVAS chaos manual, there are six distinct stages to achieve the movement’s objectives. They start from the final objective and work back in a system known as “Inverse Planning”. (This is critically important to understand the Hong Kong protest movement, as they had a clearly established timeframe for attainment of their objectives.)

The six key stages are:

  1. Non-violent Protest and Persuasion
  2. Social Non-cooperation
  3. Economic Non-cooperation – Boycott
  4. Economic Non-cooperation – Strike
  5. Political Non-cooperation
  6. Non-violent Intervention

Why were the Umbrella Movement techniques cast aside for an alternative system? Evolution, baby! Not to mention a revised agenda. These changes were not in any way spontaneous, or reactionary. The new techniques were planned and designed to take control of the messaging and control the communications, assisting in building a movement.

Long term planning 

Indeed, the evidence points to the 2014 Umbrella Movement being a stepping stone in a much larger game plan. The architects knew in 2012 when they were planning for Occupy Central that it had a limited possibility of success in achieving the ultimate objectives. The time was not right for a bigger assault. Using their own inverse model, the target now looks to have always been for a bigger event between 2019 and 2022. As Dr. Simon Shen put it in November 2019 in the publication Think China: “Hong Kongers need to be in it for the long game.”

Alignment of conditions

What 2019 presented was the alignment of conditions, circumstances and events that lead to the escalation and implementation of the next phase of the program.

According to the CANVAS model of non-violent protest communications, control of communications, harmonising messaging, security and delivery are critical to success. Tactically, it does not matter how strong you are. If your control of communications is flawed, you will lose. The Hong Kong government was surely in the right to clamp down on the huge amount of violence and destruction of public facilities – but with no communications skill of its own, and the media arraigned against them, the constructed narrative portrayed them as the bad guys, and continues to do so.

Part 3: Removing a pillar

Gene Sharp’s theory of power identified the pillars on which governments retain their authority. These became strategic targets for attack, so that governments can be undermined, toppled, removed and ultimately replaced. See the image below for reference.

The process of undermining the government in Hong Kong had been started long ago using precisely this strategy. Civil society, education, media, and religion, had long since been penetrated and compromised. However, the city presented a unique opportunity to undermine one of the most important pillars of support – number one in the diagram is the military.

Hong Kong does not have a military. Thus it was a weak point.

In theory, the People’s Liberation Army provides military defence. But leaders in both Hong Kong and mainland China chose not to use them, showing an unexpected level of patience.

For that reason, attacking and destroying the Hong Kong police force’s legitimacy became an imperative. Once such an important pillar starts to crumble, the others will be weakened, and the whole structure will fall. Hong Kong will descend into chaos—or so the powers behind the scenes hoped.

Demonising the police

Thus, there was a clear strategy to demonise and dehumanise the Hong Kong Police Force. When the protests started, activists had but one demand, the abandonment of the extradition bill. However, that was quickly achieved, so the protest continued with its infamous “five demands, not one less” chant.

Even supporters of the protests admitted that the five demands made little sense (and were hard to remember), but the second of the five became the focus. It was the anti-police clause. Initially, it called for an independent body to be set up to review police behaviour. In fact, such a body had already existed for years, and was well trusted by the Hong Kong public.

Nevertheless, this demand was repeated ad nauseam and evolved to call for the jailing of officers and then the complete defunding of the police force itself.

Unexpected onslaught

From the first moment of the first outburst of violence on the evening of 9 June 2019, the police were the direct target of aggression. The police had been expecting large numbers of protesters—but were not expecting the level of violence that came with them, nor the media onslaught that turned attacks on police into attacks by police.

Shocked, the police reacted largely in self-defence and continued to act in this way for the next few weeks, or until it started to become apparent that the protests were not spontaneous and were coordinated and well-planned. The protest architects had a hidden objective: the Hong Kong police force had one of the best reputations of any regional police force in Asia. This had to be attacked, undermined and discredited as a matter of urgency.

‘Get the police to hit you’

One method was the use of Marginal Violence Theory. Protesters use aggression to provoke the police into any type of response, which the media could then present as police attacks on peaceful protesters. This created escalating hostility to the authorities. One protester, Fred Chan Ho-fai, even described the strategy in a 2019 New York Times article called “A Hong Kong Protester’s Tactic: Get the Police to Hit You.”

Chan wrote: “Such actions are a way to make noise and gain attention. And if they prompt the police to respond with unnecessary force, as happened on June 12, then the public will feel disapproval and disgust for the authorities. The protesters should thoughtfully escalate nonviolence, maybe even resort to mild force, to push the government to the edge.”

Creating hate (“disapproval and disgust”) for ordinary men and women trying to do their job became the deliberate intention of large bands of masked protesters carrying petrol bombs for many months, with the media eager to play their part in the process. Protesters were directed to provoke confrontation with the police at every available opportunity. To further blacken the name of the force, they brought in school pupils, young people, mothers with children, and the elderly, for photo-opportunities.

Police not blameless

But let’s be fair. It is inevitable in such a long and sustained conflict that individuals in the police force did likely respond on occasion more aggressively than perhaps they should have. Tear gas was used at times when it was not necessary, and sometimes they seemed to have forgotten that it was not an offensive weapon, but a tool for crowd control. Rubber or plastic bullets were used incorrectly on too many occasions, firing directly at targets as opposed to ricocheting off the ground. Some individual officers behaved deplorably in the conduct of their duty.

However, it is all too easy for the layman to judge them harshly from the comfort of a secure, remote perspective.

The present writer has served front and centre in such situations, while bricks, bottles, Molotov cocktails and all manner of improvised objects rain downed upon us. But of course, as an officer of the authorities, you have to stay within the limits of professionalism and discipline. The throwers of petrol bombs have no such constraints.

By comparison, restrained

Hong Kong soon descended into months of sustained protests, rioting, arson attacks, destruction of property and businesses owned or associated with mainland Chinese. Protesters threw thousands of Molotov cocktails, committed vicious assaults against civilians, and there were undeniable attempts to harm or kill members of the police force. Compared to how other countries’ police forces would have behaved, the Hong Kong contingent were, by and large, remarkably restrained.

The media played an irresponsible role in the nurturing and cultivation of this narrative. “Citizen Journalists” (some as young as 12 years old) would at times insert themselves between the police and rioters, thereby making themselves willing victims of police actions. This would be duly reported as police brutality. Video footage was carefully edited to show the police as the aggressors. Rarely did the truth of a particular situation make it into the mainstream media. The wanton violence of the rioters would be omitted, leaving only the apparent brutality of the police. Even photographs of an innocuous interaction between public and police would be misrepresented as evidence of barbarity.

Police become focus

Since it was plainly ludicrous for that level of destruction to be justified as a call for the abandonment of a bill that had long been abandoned, the chorus of calls for the disbandment of the Hong Kong police became the main theme of the protests. However, when protest leaders were questioned on how to proceed with this, there were no answers.

None of this made any sense. But it didn’t have to. The protesters had taken the strategic objective of removing a key pillar of support from the government. The Hong Kong police force was not merely collateral damage: destroying their legitimacy was one of the objectives of the protests.

Ultimately, it failed

Ultimately, the campaign to cause Hong Kong to descend into chaos, goading the PLA into take control, and killing the “one country two systems” policy, failed. The Chinese government was too patient.

No matter. The Western media still blamed China for everything that went wrong, and refused to acknowledge any involvement by outsiders. But in Hong Kong itself, people on all sides of the debate did become more fully aware that there were underhand forces at play, and realised that their home was being used as a political football. For them, the national security law makes much more sense than the international media will acknowledge. You have to have tools to deal with wrongdoing when the games are being played below the surface of dark waters.

And the people of Hong Kong have a continuing concern, too. The game, they worry, may not be over. For the international media, the revolution industry doesn’t exist at all. For many traumatised citizens of Hong Kong, it is very real indeed. And the forces behind it are still very much at work.

Phill Hynes is a geopolitical analyst based in Hong Kong and specialising in Asian affairs.

Reposted from https://www.fridayeveryday.com/

Japan’s “chip giant” Sakamoto Yukio: was collapsed by the United States and South Korea, and went to China for revenge at the age of 72

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In Chinese, From HERE

The Sistine Chapel of the ancients.

This latest stunning archaeological discovery from deep in the Amazon Rainforest has been referred to as The Sistine Chapel of the ancients.

Nestled between towering limestone table-top mountains that ring the horizon and dotted with immense limestone outcrops is a sheltered natural basin in the Amazon Rainforest, this isolated paradise is crisscrossed by rivers and amongst the most biodiverse places on Earth.

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For centuries this strange sheltered basin was a contested landscape, since 1960 FARC guerrillas have controlled the region and much of the surrounding Columbian countryside.

Then in 2020, a team of Archaeologists from the University of Essex in the UK, and the National University of Colombia, carried out an expedition to the depths of this mysterious basin and what they discovered was so unbelievable that it was kept secret and only announced in 2021.

Impatient readers start grumbling - ‘What the heck Henrey, tell us what they found, damnit.’

Patience my young padawans, anyway, roughly 13-thousand-years-ago, a mind-bogglingly long time ago, some ancient humans reached this sheltered paradise that is guarded by immense walls of limestone mountains and rich with life.

These ancient humans settled down claiming this region for themselves and built yet to be discovered settlements that today lay buried beneath the dense Amazon Rainforest.

However, these Ancients did leave us something utterly incredible, and it was finally found in 2020, after 12,500 years of waiting, humans have once again found The Sistine Chapel of the ancients.

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What these Ancients created would have taken generations of continuous work, I suppose what I’m saying is this wasn’t just some random caveman painting his willy on a wall or sketching a few doodles of animals or stick people.

What the Archaeologists found was an eight-mile-long wall of tens of thousands of prehistoric paintings, that include everything from extinct Ice Age animals, humans hunting and dancing, detailed depictions of edible plants, intricate shapes and flowing complex patterns.

“One of the most fascinating things was seeing ice age megafauna because that’s a marker of time. I don’t think people realise that the Amazon has shifted in the way it looks. It hasn’t always been this rainforest. When you look at a horse or mastodon in these paintings, of course, they weren’t going to live in a forest. They’re too big. Not only are they giving clues about when they were painted by some of the earliest people – that in itself is just mind-boggling – but they are also giving clues about what this very spot might have looked like: more savannah-like.” - Al-Shamahi.

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Ice-Age megafauna displayed in the pictographs of the Serranía La Lindosa including: (a) giant sloth, (b) mastodon, (c) camelid, (d, e) horse, (f) long-neck, three-toed ungulate with a trunk.

Honestly, just thinking that there is this 8-mile long cliff face in the depths of the Amazon rainforest that was painted by ancient humans more than 12,500 years ago, and it is all still there, is simply bonkers.

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Bonkers, no other words, just bonkers, the age of exploration and new discoveries is still alive.

The below image is one of my favourites, I had to zoom in and crop the original, so I know it doesn’t show all the paintings on this section of the wall, but just take a moment, it’s fascinating.

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This single image shows the Ice Age megafauna these ancient humans would have hunted, two van-sized Mastodon dominate the top left of the image, while near the middle left is what looks like a large wooden tower, which was likely built to enable these ancient people to paint 20 foot off the ground and undertake this monumental generational endeavour, mile after mile.

There is another wooden tower clearly depicted to the middle right, honestly, so far we only have a handful of images and the entire 8-mile-long wall is covered with complex paintings, it will literally take the next decade to fully document and photograph the paintings along the entire wall.

Personally, I believe it is very likely there could be ancient stories depicted on this wall or lessons, because these ancient people spent generations over hundreds of years painting an 8-mile long wall in detail, creating giant wooden towers to paint every itty little bit of their canvas, I highly doubt it was all just meaningless doodles.

Q&A: Indonesia’s defence minister on security in the Asia-Pacific

At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Indonesia’s Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto tells Al Jazeera he is confident the leaders of the US and China will be ‘wise’.

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Singapore – As defence chiefs from around the Asia-Pacific gather in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, much of the focus has been on growing tensions between the United States and China.

The three-day security summit organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies is considered the most important defence-related conference in the region. This year, more than a dozen defence chiefs from around the world, including the US, China, and more, are attending.

After a two-year hiatus, the event has returned and attracted high-profile guests, including the Indonesian defence chief and former presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto.

The former lieutenant general met with Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington during the Shangri-La Dialogue, sharing his thoughts on the war in Ukraine, and modernising Indonesia’s military arsenal.

Al Jazeera: In your speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, you spoke about the “Asian way”. Where does Indonesia fit into that idea?

Subianto: That is our culture that we always try to resolve problems with negotiations, with interactions, with engagement, and we keep on engaging, we keep on discussing until we come to an amicable, mutually beneficial solution. That is the Asian way.

And it is the Indonesian way. We call it musyawarah mufakat (discussion to reach a solution) and we call it gotong royong (working together). We look for common interests; if we always talk about the differences, we might not even meet.

Al Jazeera: A big focus during this summit has been on US-China tensions. What do you see as Indonesia’s role in dealing with those tensions?

Subianto: We are in the real and actual position that we respect and we are friendly, and we are good friends. We have good cooperation with both powers — I have said that many times. The United States has helped us many times, in our critical moments. But China has also helped us. China has also defended us and China is now a very close partner with Indonesia. And actually, China has always been the leading civilization in Asia. Many of our sultans, kings, our princes in those days, they would marry princesses from China. We have hundreds of years of relationship.

So it’s natural. So, you asked me, what is our position, as good friends we try to be, maybe a good common bridge. If not, then we maintain the good relationships.

And we are convinced that both powers will have wise leadership. I’m optimistic on that front, many people, of course, understandably are concerned, and yes there are dangers. But I believe the leader of China will be wise, and the leader of the US also. They are great powers. The world will expect them to give us good leadership.

Al Jazeera: What about some of the aspects of Indonesia-China relationships, where there are differences of opinions… for example the South China Sea. How do you navigate those challenges?

Subianto: As I said with good relations, good communication with direct contacts, we can come to an amicable understanding that’s mutually beneficial.

Al Jazeera: The US Secretary of Defense, earlier in the speech mentioned Indonesia, specifically the naval exercise called Garuda Shield…

Subianto: Garuda Shield has been going on for 14-15 years, but we have also exercises with other countries. We also plan to have exercises with China.

Al Jazeera: The US Secretary talked about the situation in Ukraine, and you mentioned in your speech, you said it is a very sad situation. Do you have anything else to say on that?

Subianto: Historically, geopolitically, there are always two versions to a story. Indonesia, as you know we voted with the many western countries in opposing the invasion of Ukraine — that’s our position on the invasion.

But once again, I would like to say that Russia has been a very good friend to Indonesia all these years. We have good relations with Russia, they helped us also when we were having difficulties and as I mentioned, a friend in need is a friend indeed. Never forget friends who helped you. That’s our position.

We say all the great powers must be respected, and their concerns must be respected.

Al Jazeera: You have made it your priority to modernise Indonesia’s defence capabilities, how is that going?

Subianto: It is going well, of course, everything needs what I call an incubation period, we can’t go to the supermarket and buy defence equipment. I would say it’s going well, of course, I’m pretty impatient, I wish it could go faster, maybe if I have a magic wand.

Al Jazeera: Following your speech, you were asked about the region and you said each country can make their own decisions. Anything further to say on that?

Subianto: Basically that’s the right of every country to assess their own security needs. So I cannot tell the Australians or the British what they should do. I also don’t want them to tell us what to do. We respect each other.

Al Jazeera: Can I ask for your views on the situation in Myanmar?

Subianto: I think Indonesia’s position is very clearly do not recognize the regime in Myanmar

Al Jazeera: Let’s look at a domestic issue in Indonesia. There is discussion about the plan to create new provinces in Papua and some international human rights groups have raised concerns about security implications and the impact on human rights.

Subianto: There’s always this, I would say double standards or triple standard, anything countries like Indonesia do. They always try to emphasise the possibility of human rights abuses. I think our needs, we have vast areas and that has been in discussion and planning for many years.

Al Jazeera: Indonesia’s foreign policy has long been guided by the phrase ‘free and active’. Do you see Indonesia as having a leadership role among countries that take a neutral stance?

Subianto: Leadership is not something that we can award to ourselves. I think the best form of statecraft in my opinion is to get your own house in order. If we take care of our own house in good order, people will look to us.

Al Jazeera: Speaking of leadership, your plans for 2024 — Are you planning to run for the presidency?

If I am needed, if there is strong support for me, then I have to put myself at the service of my people and my country.

U.S. Wants China’s SMIC to Stop Making 14nm Chips

When the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) restricted access of China’s largest contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) to fab equipment used to make10nm-class chips, it was considered a tough but not too severe move. Now the U.S. government is mulling restricting China from producing logic chips using a 14nm-class fabrication process.

The DOC is examining the possibility of prohibiting the exportation of chipmaking tools to companies in China that can make logic chips using 14nm-class manufacturing nodes and thinner, according to a Reuters report that cites five people familiar with the matter. The only company in China currently producing chips using its 14nm fabrication process is SMIC, which has been doing so since late 2019.

What is not completely clear from the report is whether the DOC wants to ban SMIC from getting tools used to make semiconductors on its 14nm node and thinner, or if it wants to ban SMIC from getting any tools at all because it is capable of making chips using its 14nm technology.

Currently, American companies can sell equipment good enough to build 14nm chips to SMIC without any export licenses from the DOC and other agencies. If the U.S. government decides to restrict SMIC’s access to advanced chipmaking tools, companies like Applied Materials and Lam Research will have to apply for an export license every time they deal with SMIC. The application will be reviewed with a presumption of denial.

An official for the U.S. DOC did not confirm that the department was discussing 14nm-related export restrictions for SMIC but confirmed that it was continuously reviewing the ongoing situation.

“With respect to semiconductor-related export license applications in particular, (Commerce) and the other reviewing agencies … consider a variety of factors in making licensing decisions, including the technology node for the proposed export,” the spokesperson for the Department of Commerce is reported to have said.

Because SMIC could not access extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography tools due to the Wassenaar Arrangement, the firm began the development of its 12nm, N+1, and N+2 process technologies that relied purely on deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography and were aimed primarily at inexpensive chips that did not require a high transistor density. Now, both N+1 and N+2 nodes are considered sub-10nm fabrication processes, so SMIC had to cancel their development.

When SMIC was barred from manufacturing tools advanced enough to make chips using its 10nm-class (and sub-10nm-class) nodes in late 2020, the company said it would focus on developing advanced packaging technologies to make sophisticated multi-chiplet designs out of tiles produced on 14nm and thicker nodes. That would enable Chinese chip designers to build sophisticated and capable processors with tens of billions of transistors even without using an advanced process technology. In addition, the company announced multi-billion dollar expansion plans that would triple the output of chips made on advanced nodes.

To a large degree, advanced packaging technologies could be SMIC’s way to work around the U.S. export restrictions. As a result, China would gain access to advanced computing capabilities that could be used for military purposes.

The U.S. administration certainly understands SMIC’s options and risks that it brings to America and its allies, so it wants to further crackdown China’s access to sophisticated chipmaking tools.

Article from HERE

PM Anthony Albanese issues warning to China at Quad meeting

The new PM has told China it must remove its sanctions on Australian products if the two countries are ever to improve relations.

Ellen Ransley

So the New Prime Minister of Australia attended the United States QUAD meeting. The QUAD was set up by Mike Pompeo as a Pacific NATO as a military block to "counter" China militarily. During the meeting, the new Prime Minister got up on the podium and listed demands and warnings to China. Here, in this article, the local Australian media reports on his "warnings" and the Chinese retort. -MM

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The QUAD showing the United States military bases.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has warned China the only way to improve its relationship with Australia is by removing trade bans.

After years of strained diplomatic relations between the two countries, the incoming Prime Minister told the Quad meeting his government, on behalf of Australia, would seek good relations with all countries – but would not be soft on China.

In his address, Mr Albanese urged Beijing to lift trade tariffs it imposed on Australian goods such as barley, wine, coal and seafood.

“Australia seeks good relations with all countries,” Mr Albanese said in Tokyo.

“But it’s not Australia that’s changed, China has. It is China that has placed sanctions on Australia.

There is no justification for doing that. And that’s why they should be removed.”

Oh really? Eh? China just up and decided to do that without justification.  Hum...-MM

Mr Albanese’s first comments as Prime Minister about China comes as he confirmed he had received a letter of congratulations from Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

The Quad leaders, which include US President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, reaffirmed their commitment to a secure and peaceful Indo-Pacific at the meeting on Tuesday.

In a joint statement, the four leaders directly referenced China’s military expansion in the South China Sea and its claims over Taiwan.

“We strongly oppose any coercive, provocative, or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo and increase tensions in the area, such as the militarisation of disputed features,” the statement read.

Earlier this week, Mr Biden confirmed the US was prepared to “get involved militarily” to defend Taiwan if China did make good on its threats to invade.

Mr Albanese said there was no change in Australia’s position that there should be “no unilateral change to the status quo” but would not explicitly detail the issue of a military response.

The incoming Prime Minister’s demands of China, and the Quad meeting as a whole – comes as Chinese officials travel to the Solomon Islands to make further security plans.

The security arrangement was also a topic of conversation at the Quad.

From HERE

China lists four criteria to get the Australian-Chinese relationship on track…

China’s Foreign Ministry also said there were four requirements for Australia to improve the relationship.
They included the following demands:
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  • Australia must treat China as a “partner rather than a rival”,
  • the two countries must seek “common ground while shelving differences,
  • Australia must reject “manipulation by a third party”, a clear reference to the United States and finally
  • both countries must build “public support featuring positiveness and pragmatism”.
Chinese media has reported that Foreign Minister Penny Wong and her Chinese counterpart agreed to remove obstacles to get the China-Australia relationship back on track.
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These four criteria ENRAGED the new Prime Minister…

Anthony Albanese hits back on China’s four demands to rebuild relationship

Anthony Albanese has warned China he won’t be taking orders after Beijing issued four demands to “get the relationship on track”.

Anthony Albanese has warned China he won’t be taking orders over Beijing’s four demands to “get the relationship on track” including not treating it as an adversary.

Over the weekend, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi issued Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong with a four-point list of demands to repair the relationship and

Foreign Minister Wang Yi blamed the Morrison government’s “irresponsible” words and deeds for the difficulties in the relationship.

“The root cause of the difficulties in bilateral relations over the past few years was the former Australian government’s insisting on regarding China as a rival or even a threat, allowing its words and deeds being irresponsible against China,” he said.

“It is hoped that the Australian side will seize the current opportunity and take concrete actions to reshape its correct understanding of China, reduce negative assets and accumulate positive energy for the improvement of China-Australia relations.”

It followed a meeting in Bali on Friday between the pair that ended a diplomatic freeze that has dragged on for three years.”

Speaking in Canberra, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia will continue to co-operate with China where it can but won’t shy away from standing up for the national interest.

“Look, Australia doesn’t respond to demands. We respond to our own national interest,’’ Mr Albanese said.

“I’ll say this. We will co-operate with China where we can. I want to build good relations with all countries. But we will stand up for Australia’s interests when we must.”

China’s Foreign Ministry also said there were four requirements for Australia to improve the relationship.

They included the following demands: Australia must treat China as a “partner rather than a rival”, the two countries must seek “common ground while shelving difference, Australia must reject “manipulation by a third party”, a clear reference to the United States and finally both countries must build “public support featuring positiveness and pragmatism”.

Chinese media has reported that Foreign Minister Penny Wong and her Chinese counterpart agreed to remove obstacles to get the China-Australia relationship back on track.

Asked what obstacles the Foreign Minister agreed to move, Mr Albanese said: “I’m not in a position to listen to what the Chinese media says. I’ll listen to what Penny Wong says about the meeting.”

“It was a constructive meeting. It was just a step forward,’’ the Prime Minister said.

“Australia has not changed our position on any issues. We’ll continue to be constructive.”

“We are engaging in the lead-up to the Pacific island forum, and indeed, ministers (Penny) Wong and (Pat) Conroy are leaving for the Pacific island forum today. This is an important meeting. We know that Australia hadn’t, in my view – we said it very publicly. It’s obvious that we had dropped the ball.

“The deal that occurred with Solomon Islands represents Australia not so much as having a step up in the Pacific, as a stuff-up in the Pacific.”

The Morrison government’s call for a full investigation into the origins of Covid-19 was one flashpoint in recent years as the ban on China’s Huawei from participating in Australia’s 5G rollout and foreign interference laws.

On Sunday, the Coalition’s foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said China should have taken a stronger position over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

”China’s muted response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and war on Ukraine has been a shameful thing to see,” Senator Birmingham told Sky News Australia.

”We would wish to see China take a stronger response in that regard.

”What the world would no doubt love to see in relation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is for China to show leadership. It would be an enormous opportunity for China to do so and one I’m sure many would encourage them to do.”

From HERE

Funniest Raccoon Memes by Nocturnal Trash Posts

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Who doesn’t like a good raccoon meme? Who doesn’t like a good raccoon? Wait, who doesn’t like a good raccoon anything? Trash pandas are awesome and no, there can’t be any other way. And speaking of raccoon memes, there is a dedicated Instagram page that celebrates raccoonhood with existential, funny, and straight up nonsensical memes.

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US’s global WMD bioweapons are not “Russian-Chinese lies”. Demand war crime trials now.

Bombshell documentary! By Dilyana Gaytandzhieva..

Full video and transcript HERE.

Biscuits and Gravy

This CLASSIC Biscuits and Gravy recipe is one everyone knows and loves! Delicious buttery biscuits smothered in a homemade sausage gravy! It only takes a few simple ingredients and is perfect for breakfast (dinner) or a holiday morning!

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Homemade Biscuits and Gravy

When you think of good home cooking, do you have certain recipes that come to mind? I’m talking the ultimate comfort food that mom or grandma used to make. Biscuits and Gravy is one of those recipes that comes to mind for me!

Homemade Biscuits and Gravy is a classic breakfast recipe that has become a staple in our home (we even have a Biscuits & Gravy Casserole we love). What’s crazy is that I didn’t realize how simple it is to put together until I finally got brave enough to try it for myself!

You can make homemade biscuits to go with your sausage gravy, but for simplicity sake, I oftentimes use the refrigerated biscuits that come in a can. Especially if we’re doing a big family breakfast during the holidays, or even just throwing together ‘breakfast for dinner‘ on a busy weeknight, it’s easier to whip out the pre-made stuff.

Now, I’m not above using generic brands on most things. However, I must warn you… I have tried other sausages and nothing has compared to Jimmy Dean. My family loves the Hot Sausage Roll, but if you’re not a fan of spice, stick with the regular. Or if you’re making it for big crowd, do one of each and it’s the perfect combination.

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How to Make Sausage Gravy

As delicious as buttermilk biscuits are, let’s be honest – the gravy is the real star of the show. The best part? The sausage gravy recipe only takes THREE ingredients to make! And chances are, you already have 2 of them on hand.

COOK SAUSAGE. To make the sausage gravy, cook the sausage on medium high heat, breaking it up with a spatula as you go.

MAKE GRAVY. Once sausage is cooked through, carefully stir in flour, ½ cup at a time, until sausage has a nice coating. Slowly add your milk, until you’ve reached your desired consistency. (For a soupier gravy, add more milk. If you like the sauce to be thicker, add less milk. If you find you have added too much milk, add flour to thicken it up.)

SEASON. Season this with salt and pepper and enjoy your super simple and delicious biscuits and gray,

You’ll be blown away by how much flavor can be created with such few ingredients in so little time. And then when you pour it over some freshly baked buttermilk biscuits? Match made in heaven!

SAUSAGE GRAVY TIP: Remember, do not drain the excess fat from the sausage after cooking it. The sausage drippings will help bring the flour and milk together. Completely stir the flour and allow it to cook with the sausage and drippings for 1-2 minutes, then slowly add the milk.

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biscuits And gravy Variations & FAQ:

Here are some ideas for changing up your classic B & G!

  • Replace the biscuits with rice, corn bread, toast, or mashed potatoes.
  • Try using ground turkey (plus 2 tbsp of butter) or ground beef in place of the sausage.
  • Replace regular milk with buttermilk.
  • Add some spice with chili flakes or tabasco sauce.
  • Try adding Mushrooms or bell peppers, or cooked bacon bits to change up the flavor.
  • Make a casserole version to easily feed a crowd

Can biscuits and gravy be frozen? Unfortunately cream/milk based gravies do not freeze well. The cream/milk will separate during the thawing process. You can precook your sausage and freeze it (along with all of the drippings) in an airtight container for up to 3 months.

When you’re ready to make the gravy thaw the sausage and follow the recipe as written. Cooked biscuits can also be stored in their own airtight freezer container for up to 3 months until ready to use.

Reheat. Leftover biscuits and gravy can be stored in the fridge for 3-4 days. Reheat the gravy in the microwave or in a saucepan in the stove top until it reaches your desired temperature.

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Nothing beats some homemade biscuits and gravy! Whether it’s for breakfast or dinner or a holiday party, we hope you enjoy this simple recipe.

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Being Poor in Africa

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That most Africans are poor, not because they really are poor, but because someone decides to describe them as such.

My grandfather is ‘poor’. He certainly lives on “less than a dollar a day”. He is now 95 years old. In his nine and a half decades on earth, he has never lacked, and he has never begged. He only attended one year at a mission school in the 1930s and learnt how to read and write. This is how he pulls it off:

When he wants food, he goes to the banana plantation, looks at tens of bunches of matooke (banana) and decides which to harvest for the day’s dinner. Adjacent to the plantation is a sweet potato garden, cassava garden, yams and finger millet. To the south of the banana plantation are beans, cow peas or peanuts gardens. Down the valley is grazing land with tens of Frisian and cross-breed cattle. They provide him with milk daily, 365 days a year.

He also has about 20 goats. In Uganda, goat milk was generally not considered palatable, possibly due to the abundance of cow milk, so we never milked goats. He would sell a couple of them to supplement income from other produce to send his children to school. He also reared a couple of chickens, more as a hobby.

The farm produces more than he can consume. He sells the surplus to afford such essential services as kerosene (recently upgraded to solar), soap, sugar (at his age he no longer takes sugar, he uses honey — doctor’s orders).

Scattered across the farm are sugarcane (for eating, not for making sugar) and fruit trees (guava, mango, pawpaw, avocado, orange, passion fruit, pineapple). He drinks fresh juice from mangoes and passion fruit. As is evident, everything here is on a subsistence basis, but very organic. He has done this for the past 75 years.

He had eleven children, my mother being his first born. He sent all of them to school, saw eight of them through college. He sold at least two cows, some goats and some produce each school term to send his children to school.

I went to live at grandfather’s place when I was 5 years old. I left when I was 14 (my family lived in an urban area). I learnt how to farm, milk cows, tether goats, harvest fruits (by climbing the fruit tree) and harvesting honey (at night using smoke).

Why the long story?

My grandfather, just like millions of other Africans that live like him, is considered poor. He rarely holds money, and he rarely needs it. He produces most of what he needs. But using the standard World Bank/IMF description of ‘poor’, my grandfather is poor. I live in the city and earn about USD 12,000 a year after tax, which in Uganda is a decent salary. But I can hardly match my grandfather in terms of providing for my family with fresh milk, fresh food and fresh fruits.

This is one thing most people that watch International media do not know about Africa: not all Africans are poor, many simply live differently than you.

Russian Navy Takes Delivery of First “Nuclear Tsunami” Submarine

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Yesterday, July 8, 2022, the Russian Navy took delivery of the first submarine capable of firing the “Poseidon” nuclear tsunami drone torpedo.  No other submarine on earth has such capability and there is no defense at all against its “Poseidon” drone nuclear torpedo.

The Russian Navy submarine armed with a strategic nuclear torpedo the size of a school bus was delivered to the Kremlin this week, according to an announcement from the shipyard.

Project 09852 Belgorod is based on a Russian Oscar-class guided-cruise missile submarine that has been altered to accommodate six Poseidon nuclear torpedoes that could each be armed with a warhead of up to 100 megatons.

The submarine was delivered to the Russian Navy in a ceremony in at the Northern Fleet’s headquarters in Severodvinsk on Friday.

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“The Belgorod submarine opens up new opportunities for Russia in conducting various research, allows conducting diverse scientific expeditions and rescue operations in the most remote areas of the world ocean,” according to a statement from Russian Navy chief Adm. Nikolai Anatolyevich Yevmenov.
“The ship is designed to solve diverse scientific problems, conduct search and rescue operations, and can also be used as a carrier of rescue deep-sea and autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles.”

The cut-away shown below provides readers with an understanding of the vast capabilities of this new vessel:

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Mini or Midget submarines for deep sea operations – including cutting communications cables on the sea floor – are carried aboard or beneath this new sub.

Yet the most fearsome aspect of this vessel is its new “Poseidon” autonomous, nuclear drone torpedo. Take a look:

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Length: 24 meters (79 ft) (estimate)
Diameter: 2m (6.5 ft) (estimate)
Speed: 70 knots (Reports that Poseidon can travel at very high speeds and/or uses super-caitation have been debunked).
Range:
Operating depth: >1,000 meters (3,280 ft) (reported)
Propulsion: nuclear

In 2019, the Russian Navy put out a video on Youtube, showing the torpedo being LAUNCH tested (not exploding).  Here’s the video:

 

 

The torpedo is carried to maybe 100 miles offshore of a target city.  It could be launched much farther out to sea as well.

It is launched and commences autonomous operation.  The sub which launches it does not have to remain anywhere near it.

The torpedo travels to it’s programmed location at a deep depth of maybe 1 kilometer, then waits as long as it is programmed to wait . . .  could be days or even weeks, allowing the sub that launched it to be safely far away, then detonates at a depth of about 1 kilometer.

At that depth, there is so much water, that even the heat of the nuclear blast will not turn ALL of the water to steam which vents harmlessly upwards.   A massive amount of the water will be “pushed” by the expanding blast force and that “push” will create a Tsunami wave, traveling toward the target coastline.

As the depth of water gets shallow approaching the coastline, the water piles-up on itself, reaching a projected height of up to FIVE HUNDRED METERS (1500 feet) above the typical ocean surface- and slams ashore at about 600 MPH, smashing absolutely everything in its path.

Entire cities would be knocked down and totally flooded by such a wave.

Worse, because the wave was caused by a thermonuclear explosion, all the water is radioactive.  Once that water comes ashore, the radiation levels from the flooding will be so high, that nothing will be able to survive and nothing will be able to enter into the flooded area for hundreds of years.

So ferocious is this new weapons system, that, if detonated off the Atlantic coast of the United Kingdom, it could submerge the entire British Isles, wiping out every living thing, and making the entire UK uninhabitable for hundreds of years.

With the ongoing troubles between Russia and Ukraine, and with the US and UK using NATO to supply weapons to Ukraine to kill Russians, the Russians are getting aggravated to the point where, on Russian Television, they told their citizens that just one Poseidon drone torpedo could sink the UK into the sea, killing every living thing.  Here is that video from Russian TV:

 

 

Now, imagine they detonated one of these off Washington, DC, or New York City, or Boston . . . or all of them?

Imagine if they detonated one of these off Los Angeles, or San Francisco . . .  or both?

There is no defense against this type of weapon.  And there would be no surviving its effects.

Now that Russia actually has an operational submarine capable of launching this now-tested and operations nuclear drone torpedo, maybe picking a fight with Russia over Ukraine is not such a good idea for the Untied States.

The US has clearly fallen in the arms race.  Yes, we have about 6200 nuclear warheads, but Russia has hypersonic missiles and we do not.  Russia has this nuclear drone torpedo and we do not.

Looks to many people that if war breaks out, Russia survives . . .  and we . . . . do not.

Ancient Romans were a lot like contemporaneous Americans

You see the Romans are a lot like modern Americans

  1. They considered themselves the peak of civilizations
  2. They were litigious and placed extreme importance on legalism
  3. They loved to drink and overeat
  4. They loved a good party
  5. They loved sport- from gladiators to races
  6. They were materialistic
  7. They were quick to evolve and adopt aspects of other cultures
  8. They were extremely diverse culturally and racially

If you envision Romans as Americans without all this technology you’ll often be spot on.

The one big difference was Christianity. The Romans lacked the moral issues with sex that Christianity would foster. Thus Rome was far more sexually liberated than the modern United States is.

Now in Roman marriage monogamy was expected and cheating was definitely taboo. But the Romans had very few hang-ups. Divorcing your pregnant wife so she can marry your political ally was not such a big deal- and this happened multiple times.

The Romans loved origins and they loved prostitutes. Sex was super common and it was a BIG part of Roman life.

Now Rome was patriarchal. A wife cheating was a HUGE deal while a husband cheating was a much smaller deal. But it was always bad.

I’ve recently seen this meme (below) so I would like to explain further as to why this was the case.

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The Chinese do NOT FUCKING play.

In one short sentence: because ancient Chinese always practiced total war.

By definition, a total war was a war where all assets of state would be managed to prioritize war effort, including civilian citizens. This differs from the kinds of “rules based” wars conducted by the Western Europeans and Americans.

There were a lot of practices in ancient wars that would be considered completely inhumane by modern standards. Let me list out a few:

  • Pillaging a captured city for loot, kept by either the soldiers themselves or their superiors. Of course some modern armies still do this, but the list gets worse.
  • Forced conscription. Many civilians were literally dragged out of their homes and force to fight. I heard a lot of old Taiwanese veterans recount this; they were usually the most pro-unify people in Taiwan with some requesting in their will to be buried back in their mainland hometown.
  • Mass execution of surrendered POW. Most notably, Bai Qi did so at the Battle of Changping. Cao Cao and Tuoba Gui had also done this (that’s just off the top of my head). This was due to logistics problems of keeping them fed, or to prevent them from rejoining the enemy army.
  • Destruction of entire cities or natural terrain to better defend or prevent resources entering enemy control. Sometimes people were forcefully migrated, other times they were left to die.
  • Intentionally killing civilians but reporting it as enemy combatants; this was for promotion or false victories. Some deathtolls of war combatants were not necessarily real combantants.
  • Rise of rebel warlords and bandits when government control was lost. If the government’s army did not commit atrocities, they would. Imagine a Walking Dead apocalypse, and how a lot of people suddenly awakened their inner psychopath.

One particular film I recommend is The Warlords starring Jet Li, Andy Lau, and Takeshi Kaneshiro (3 legendary actors!). It was a fictional account of the Taiping Rebellion, but outlined the cruelty and deeper motivations behind atrocities committed in the war.

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The cruelty of war was in fact a huge shock for some of the Westerners who set foot in China. In the Taiping Rebellion, there was an incident where several Taiping generals surrendered to Charles George Gordon, commander of the Ever Victorious Army, who promised to spare their lives.

When they were delivered to Li Hongzhang, he instead had them all summary executed.

Westerner Charles George Gordon was very angry because Li Hongzhang made him lose face with a dishonored promise and threatened to leave with his army, ultimately getting an apology from Li.

Meanwhile, Zeng Guofan (infamous for his cruelty towards the rebels) gave him a pat on the back saying he did the right thing.

The Chinese population have always feared the cruelty of war, to have such idioms:

宁做太平犬 不做乱世人 
I'd rather be a dog in peacetime than a man in wartime.

一将功成万骨枯 
One general’s success lied on tens of thousands of rotten bones.

Some final notes…

  • Wars of such magnitude usually only happened once every 200–300 years and the collapse of the central government would usually follow. Atrocities did not always happen in every single war, but usually many of these atrocities did.
  • While Sun Zi did advocate that a war of attrition with significant deaths was non-beneficial, there was never a formal code similar to the International Laws of War. Most of these wars happened obviously before such a concept even existed.
  • As I commented, it was not just government army committing atrocities, some rebels and warlords did it worse. And when one side committed war crimes, the other side followed in revenge. Take my listed example: although Charles Gordon promised to spare the Taiping rebels out of goodwill, he was a British with no previous ties to them. Most of the Chinese militia recruited had lost family members to the rebels, so they’d kill any Taiping soldiers they’d see because it was their motivation to fight (and Zeng Guofan was clever to utilize this).

Death trap for the USA

Jeff Brown

[COMMENT: New York Times citing US officials on 24/7/2022 reported that US & European allies will not be able to maintain current level of support for Kiev for a prolonged period of time.

Despite the fact that President Biden has vowed to stand with Ukraine for “as long as it takes”, no one expects more billions of support for Ukraine when the currently authorised aid package of $54 billion in military & other assistance runs out by second quarter of 2023.] 

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Russian commentary [24/7/2022:

Death trap for the USA

The tactics of unhurried military operations in Ukraine are still bewildering the best Pentagon analysts, and only a few have begun to guess that the main goal of the operation is not at all the surrender of Kyiv.

The fall of the Kyiv regime is undoubtedly spelled out in the plans for a special military operation, but not at all as the culmination of Russia’s actions, but only as an intermediate stage. The war is actually being waged at a much higher level.

American politicians and generals firmly believe that the United States is using Ukraine as a weapon to deplete Russia. In fact, everything is exactly the opposite — the Anglo-Saxons were lured to this battlefield in order to put an end to the dubious and extremely dirty hegemony.

Some in Washington began to suspect something, but it was already too late, as the deadly trap for the United States was slammed, and the Americans themselves did the most to achieve this.

The main trick of the special operation of the Russian Federation was revealed by the Ukrainian politician and journalist Dmitry Vasilets, noting that with their unhurried advancement, the (Russian) allied forces most effectively implement the process of demilitarisation not only of Ukraine, but of the entire collective West. He said:

“The Russian army took some tactical pause to regroup before the attack on Slavyansk. Even in the West, many have already concluded that this is far from a traditional war. In fact, the Russian army could long ago destroy all the bridges across the Dnieper and stop the transfer of equipment and personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the Donbass.

“We see a slow advance in the Donbass and near Kharkov, which is due to the fact that the army saves its forces as much as possible, giving the enemy even time and the opportunity to bring up reserves and thus destroying the entire military potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“It is already clear that Russia is planning a long-term war with the West in Ukraine. Most of the territory of Ukraine is becoming a financial yoke for Europe and the United States. As they say, politics is a concentrated economy, and war is an even more concentrated economy. The West has fallen into a deadly trap.

“For many years, Kyiv’s “partners” exported all its resources out of the country, but  now they are only forced to inject huge amounts of money without receiving anything in return. This is a death trap for the US and its satellites.”

“Most likely, this is why Russia operates in Ukraine with a limited contingent and does not rush things at all, ”Vasilets explained.

The journalist noted that one should not believe in fairy tales about the unlimited resources of the United States, which, they say, can cover any costs by running the printing press at full capacity.

The sanctions war is hurting the American economy. At the same time, the United States needs to fully support Ukraine, even paying the salaries of the entire state apparatus, and soon it will also need to support the declining economy of the European Union in order to keep the already shaky anti-Russian coalition under control.

The Americans simply will not pull out a long war in such conditions, but, in theory, they also cannot retreat, at least without serious geopolitical losses. The trap has really slammed shut and in Ukraine they (Russians) are now grinding not only the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but the entire collective West.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Is China blah blah blah?

Yeah. The anti-China media is off the charts. But why focus on China while the West, led by the United States is burning?

  • Is China collapsing?
  • Is China undergoing famine?
  • Is China facing chaos?
  • Is China’s yuan failing?

Yeah. Same narrative, spewed forth over and over and over again.

Here’s some real news, some cats, a tad bit of interesting stuff, some food, and some fun.

Car Production by Country 2022

2022 report: China car production is more than US, Japan, and Germany combined
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Article HERE

Real news about Russia and China trade

Real news:
China-Russia trade up 28.9% in Jan-May; further growth expected - Global Times

Article HERE
China's alumina exports to Russia surge after Ukraine invasion — Quartz

Article HERE

China’s trade with Russia up by 12% in March from a year earlier | China | The Guardian

Article HERE

POLL: 25% of All Americans Open to “Taking-up arms against government”

More than one quarter of US residents feel so estranged from their government that they feel it might “soon be necessary to take up arms” against it, a poll released on Thursday claimed.

This survey of 1,000 registered US voters, published by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics (IOP), also revealed that most Americans agree the government is “corrupt and rigged against everyday people like me”.

The data suggests that extreme polarization in US politics – and its impact on Americans’ relationships with each other – remain strong.

The survey indicates that distrust in government varies among party lines. While 56% of participants said they “generally trust elections to be conducted fairly and counted accurately”, Republicans, Democrats and independents were dramatically split on this point. Nearly 80% of Democrats voiced overall trust in elections, but that number dipped to 51% among independents and a mere 33% of Republicans.

Per the poll, 49% of Americans concurred that they “more and more feel like a stranger in my own country”. Again, this number reflected sharp political divisions: the sentiment was held by 69% of self-described “strong Republicans”, 65% of self-described “very conservative” persons, and 38% of “strong Democrats”.

Of the 28% of voters who felt it might soon be necessary “to take up arms against the government,” 37% had guns in their homes, according to the data.

One-third of Republicans – including 45% of “strong Republicans – hold this belief about taking up arms. 35% of independent voters, and 20% of Democrats, also agreed, the poll said.

Meanwhile, those polled voiced negative sentiments about persons from opposing political parties. Seventy-three per cent of self-described Republican voters agreed that “Democrats are generally bullies who want to impose their political beliefs on those who disagree,” and “an almost identical percentage of Democrats (74%) express that view of Republicans”.

“While we’ve documented for years the partisan polarization in the country, these poll results are perhaps the starkest evidence of the deep divisions in partisan attitudes rippling through the country,” said the Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who conducted the survey in May with and Democratic pollster Joel Benenson.

The survey also stated that almost half of respondents expressed averting political talk with other people “because I don’t know where they stand”. One-quarter described losing friends, and a similar proportion claimed to have avoided relatives and friends, due to politics, per the survey.

Biden’s Sanctions Are a Windfall For Russia!

Joe Biden: “The reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia.”

By Ron Paul

It’s easy to see why, according to a new Harris poll, 71 percent of Americans said they do not want Joe Biden to run for re-election. As Americans face record gas prices and the highest inflation in 40 years, President Biden admits he could not care less. His Administration is committed to fight a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine and Americans just need to suck it up.

Last week a New York Times reporter asked Biden how long he expects Americans to pay record gasoline prices over his Administration’s Ukraine policy. “As long as it takes,” replied the president without hesitation.

“Russia cannot defeat Ukraine,” added Biden as justification for his Administration’s pro-pain policy toward Americans. The president has repeatedly tried to deflect blame for the growing economic crisis by claiming Russia is solely behind recent inflation. “The reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia,” he said in the same press conference.

But Biden has a big problem: Americans do not believe him. According to a Rasmussen poll earlier this month, only eleven percent of Americans believe Biden’s claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin is to blame for high prices.

When it comes to disdain for the average American hurt by higher prices, there is more than enough in the Biden Administration to go around.

Brian Deese, Director of President Biden’s National Economic Council, was asked in a recent CNN interview, “What do you say to those families that say, listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years?”

His answer? “This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm.”

Has there ever been an Administration more out of touch with the American people? If you asked working Americans whether they’d be happy to suffer poverty for the “liberal world order,” how many would say “that sounds like a great idea”?

President Biden’s attempts to bring down gasoline prices are bound to fail because he does not understand the problem. He can beg the Saudis to pump more oil, he can even threaten the US oil companies as he did in a Tweet yesterday. He can buy and sell from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in attempt to give the impression that prices are lowing. None of it will work.

The strangest part of this idea that Americans must suffer to hurt the Russians is that these policies aren’t even hurting Russia! On the contrary: Russia has been seen record profits from its oil and gas exports since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

According to a recent New York Times article, increasing global oil and gas prices have enabled Russia to finance its war on Ukraine. US sanctions did not bring the Russian economy to its knees, as Biden promised. They actually brought the American economy to its knees while Russian profits soared.

As Newsweek noted last week, Russian television pundits are joking that with the financial windfall Russia has seen since sanctions were imposed, “Biden is of course our agent.”

Washington’s bi-partisan foreign policy of wasting trillions on endless wars overseas has finally come home. Biden is clearly out of touch, but there is plenty of blame to go around. The only question is whether we will see an extended recession…or worse.

NASA chief warns: China was able to enter the space race by stealing American technology

Yeah. Sure…

Bill Nelson, the director of NASA, warned that China joined the space race by stealing other people's technology and is now going to occupy the moon. 

The remarks provoked resentment in Beijing. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused Nelson of smearing.

China has accelerated its space program over the past decade, with one of its priorities being exploring the moon. 

In an interview published in the German newspaper Bild on Saturday (July 2), NASA Administrator Nielsen said: 

"We have to pay very much attention to china's landing on the moon and say, 'Now (the moon) is ours, don't come.'" ’。 

Nelson also said that China's space program is a military program. 

He further denounced China for relying on technology theft to enter the space race.

From HERE

Zero.

That is Bank of America’s latest forecast for the growth of the U.S. economy in the second quarter.

The second largest American bank by assets on Friday revised down its estimate for GDP growth in the April through June period from 1.5 percent to 0.0 percent, citing weaker than expected consumer spending reported by the Department of Commerce on Thursday.

“This was the first fall in consumer spending this year amid high inflation and hawkish hikes by the Fed, indicating a slightly weaker economy than previously assumed,” the bank’s economists said in a note to clients.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDP tracker, GDP NOW on Friday plunged to minus 2.1 percent growth for the second quarter, down from the one percent reading on Thursday.

The Commerce Department’s Personal Consumption Expenditure data released for the first quarter and the month of May indicated that consumer spending has been more or less flat since January. Inflation-adjusted household earnings have fallen, with wage gains swamped by rising prices. PCE inflation, the Fed’s favored measure of price changes, remained at 6.3 percent in May, defying predictions that it would come down as the Fed imposed the biggest rate hike in this century.

The Institute of Supply Management said on Friday that its barometer of manufacturing activity fell to the lowest level since May 2020, when the economy was staggering from the onset of the pandemic and lockdowns.

Bank of America expects the economy to grow 2.3 for the full year this year. It expects just 1.4 percent next year and 0.8 percent in the year after that as the “lagged impact of tighter financial conditions cools the economy.” The bank estimates a 40 percent chance of a recession next year.

Boeing takes issue with massive Chinese Airbus order

Boeing has expressed dismay with China’s ‘Big Three’ carriers placing an order for 292 A320neo family jets on 1 July.
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The US company points to its long history in China’s aerospace market, and feels the joint order by the three state-owned carriers – Air China, China Eastern Airlines, and China Southern Airlines – was affected by geopolitical tensions.

Article HERE

Interview with American Fighters Who Surrendered in Donbass

Claiming disorganization and incompetence in Ukrainian military, the two US veterans have told fellow foreigners to stay at home

Two American nationals have told RT that they surrendered to Russian forces after being abandoned by their Ukrainian commanders. The pair told veterans like them to “think twice” before making the trip to Ukraine.

Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh spoke to RT from a detention center in the Donbass People’s Republic, a day after The Daily Telegraph reported that they had been taken prisoner. The British newspaper described them as being the first American citizens captured while fighting for Ukraine, and Washington has vowed to secure their return.

The two veterans – Drueke served two tours with the US Army in Iraq while Huynh worked in logistics for the Marine Corps in Okinawa, Japan – were captured just hours after being sent to the front lines near Kharkov last week. Under the command of Ukraine’s secret police, the SBU, Huynh said that the pair were sent to cover a Ukrainian retreat.

“We were told to post up on a little overlook,” Huynh recalled, describing how he was armed with a Czech CZ rifle and a Rocket-Propelled Grenade (RPG) launcher. Columns of Ukrainans retreated past their point, followed by armored vehicles and a tank belonging to either Russia or the DPR.

“When [the tank] shot the first time, I was readying my RPG,” Huynh said. He claimed that the tank shot at a different position moments later, and thinking it was firing upon him, Huynh shouldered his weapon and fired a rocket at the vehicle, but missed. With the Ukrainian troops gone, Huynh and Drueke “ran away and hid in a fighting hole,” as Russian vehicles and foot patrols passed by.

“We were initially supposed to do [reconnaissance] with drones,” Drueke told RT, “but when we got to our location there was already a battle of sorts in progress. Our plans changed…and one teammate and I were left in the woods.”

When the coast was clear, the Americans set off walking through a forest for several hours before Drueke said that they “took a wrong turn or a misstep and made it into a village. We were approached by a Russian patrol and immediately surrendered to them.”

Currently in captivity, the stakes for Drueke and Huynh are high. Last week, the Russia-allied Donetsk People’s Republic sentenced to death three foreign fighters captured during the battle for Mariupol, including two Britons. The republic’s top court ruled that they were mercenaries and thus not granted privileges that regular prisoners of war would enjoy under international law.

Both men described fair treatment at the hands of their Russian captors, describing how Russian troops gave them food, warm blankets and cigarettes. However, Drueke said that he has heard rumors that the pair could potentially be sentenced to death.

Drueke, who left the US military in 2014, initially set out for Ukraine without a clear plan. Flying to Poland with the intention of doing humanitarian work, he nevertheless brought military gear and said that he was prepared to fight, even if military service “was not the be-all and end-all.” He said that while he was distrustful of American news coverage, he believed that Ukraine’s struggle was being portrayed in a way that “would appeal to veterans like myself.”

Now, with Ukrainian shells falling on civilian targets in the majority-Russian speaking city of Donetsk, he told RT that he realized “there are two sides to this story and I was not getting one of them.”

Huynh said that he’d traveled to Ukraine in April and contacted a Polish priest overseeing humanitarian relief, but soon made contacts in Ukraine’s ‘International Legion.’ After joining the legion, he left shortly afterwards, citing corruption and disorganization within the ranks.

“Commanders were very corrupt and troops were very ill-prepared and supplied,” he said. Drueke also began his duty in Ukraine with the legion, where he said he was “dissatisfied with the caliber of person they had there.”

Both men traveled the country looking for a more competent unit to join, before ending up in the so-called ‘Task Force Baguette’ in eastern Ukraine, a foreign mercenary unit consisting mainly of American and French veterans. The unit confirmed on Wednesday that Drueke and Huynh – referred to by their nicknames ‘Bama’ and ‘Hate’ – had been captured.

“Watching the propaganda from the West, it says how glorious all Ukraine is, and when I came here I saw how not true that was,” Huynh told RT. “The Ukrainians say they’re the best, but from what I’ve seen, I’ve seen a lot of corruption.”

Drueke ended his interview with a warning. “Fellow veterans like me who are thinking of coming: don’t.”

“Think really long and hard about why you’re doing it and what can happen, and if this is really your fight,” he said. “If I make it out of this situation, I have a lot of things to think about.”

At time of writing, the US has not officially acknowledged the capture of Drueke and Huynh. According to Russian figures, 6,956 foreign citizens from 64 countries have arrived in Ukraine since February to fight for Kiev. Some 1,956 of those have been killed, while 1,779 have left the country, the Russian Defense Ministry stated on Friday.

French Household bills soar by €64 a month in a year, new French study shows

Household bills soar by €64 a month in a year, new French study shows. This is based on DATA COMPILED BEFORE the ware in Ukraine.
15 Dec 2021 — The average cost of household fuel bills in France has risen by €64 per month from December 2020 to October 2021, a new official

Article HERE

Bulgaria Ejects 70 Russian Diplomatic Staff; Russia may cut ties

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Bulgaria has turned down Russia’s request to alter its decision about the expulsion of 70 Russian diplomats (espionage concerns) from the country.

The Russian ambassador declared she intends to discuss the issue of closing the embassy in Bulgaria with the Russian leadership.  This would cut Diplomatic ties between Russia and Bulgaria.

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

Bulgaria says they’ve done this over “espionage concerns.”  This is such utter nonsense.

What, in God’s name, does Bulgaria have, make, invent, or do, that anyone would even bother to spy on them?

I mean, in my 60 years of life on this planet, I cannot recall __any__ mention of __any__ invention, technology, product or service that even originated in Bulgaria, never mind be worth spying on!

What we have here is a little “nothing” of a country, posturing on the world stage to gain attention, by manufacturing a Russian bogeyman over nothing.

This is nothing more than deliberate antagonizing of Russia, o the world stage, to demean and insult the Russians, just for the sake of doing so.

Apparently, the people running Bulgaria are another set of spoiled brat children with nothing better to do than stir up trouble . . . for themselves.

All Natural Gas Flow on Yamal-Europe Pipeline Halted

Stuff going on…

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Russia has completely shut off all flows of natural gas in the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

After President Putin’s Decree on July 4,  which ordered no vital commodity shipments – at any price or in any currency – can be made to “unfriendly countries,” the gas flow to much of Europe has now been completely shut off.

Europe was striving over the past month or so to build up its tanks-storage-reserves and at last look, some countries had fifty-seven percent (57%) of their winter tank storage already filled.

It is not known how much more than 57% they may have accumulated in the past month, and it is not yet known how long such tanked reserves might last if they are drawn upon to supply countries now.

 

More info if I get it.

 

UPDATE 8:17 PM EDT–

As of May 5, 2022, Poland’s natural gas storage tanks were at 81% capacity, and RUMOR has it that as of today, those storage tanks are at 98% capacity.   I have not yet verified that they are at 98%.

I __have__ been able to verify that Gas Storage Poland, is responsible for operating gas storage tanks. The company’s seven LNG storage tanks have a total capacity of 3.18 bln cubic meters.   In May, we can confirm those tanks were at 81% or 2.58 bln cubic meters. Poland’s consumption of natural gas amounted to just above 21 bln cubic meters in 2021, most of which is consumed in the colder months of autumn and winter.

So presuming those tanks are full . . . Poland has seventeen percent of its ANNUAL ACTUAL USAGE, stored up.  That’s about two months worth.

Yet, bear in mind that although they can store 3.18 billion cubic meters for winter excess needs, those winter excess needs have always been IN ADDITION TO the regular amount of gas coming into Poland via pipeline.  Now, those regular flows have halted.   So . . .  less than two months natural gas for the whole country???

I am also told that wood-burning stoves have SOLD OUT in Germany.   Allegedly NONE to be had, at any price, anywhere in the country.

 

UPDATE 8:28 PM EDT —

Germany has by far the largest storage volume for natural gas in central and western Europe (24 billion m3), which CAN supply Germany for two- to-three average temperature winter months.  But as of March, 2022, the German storage tanks were at less than 60% full.   Still trying to get more current data, but again the storage for two to three months of average winter temperatures exists while regular pipeline service continues 24/7.   Now that Yamal-Europe is offline, Germany must rely on Nordstream One, which last month, dropped from 130 million cubic meters per day down to 100 million cubic meters per day, and dropped again TODAY from 100 million to only 58 million cubic meters per day.  So Germany may, realistically, only have two months gas supply for their whole country!

World War 3 is already underway as EUROPE does the unthinkable

He’s right.

What me worry?

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VIDEO: Missile/Projectile Hits Belgorod Russia

Stuff going ON.

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Some type of projectile or missile has struck in Belgorod, Russia, presumably launched from Ukraine.

The ten second EXCERPT video below, taken from a longer video by a person on an apartment terrace who was outside videoing the city at night, shows the hit and detonation:

 

 

If this turns out to be a U.S.-supplied HIMAARS, then real trouble has just exploded.

UPDATE 3:19 PM EDT —

Now able to report 3 people were killed and 4 injured after the explosion in Belgorod in Russia. All together, 11 apartments and 39 houses were destroyed.

Ukraine Armed Forces are DENYING an attack.  They claim a Russian Defensive Missile malfunctioned and hit the neighborhood.

But if Russia fired a “defensive missile” then doesn’t it stand to reason they were firing at incoming Ukrainian fire?

Additional source inside Russia now reports “Ukrainian Ground Forces fired a pair of 9M79-1 short-range ballistic missiles by Tochka-U systems at city of Belgorod in Russia. One hit a military site while the second failed and hit a building.”

 

UPDATE 9:52 PM EDT —

The tail section of a Ukrainian Tochka-U missile has been found in Belogorod, Russia.

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This is proof that the attack video seen above was, in fact, a Ukrainian missile attack and also proves the Ukrainian Armed Forces LIED when they told the world it was a Russian defensive missile that failed. Once again, the Ukrainians are shown to be flat-out, deliberate, liars.

Louis XI Enjoyed an Abominable Orchestra of Squealing Pigs – the Piganino

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Believe it or not, but it appears that the ruthless 15th century King Louis XI of France, nicknamed the Spider King or l’universelle araignée , took pleasure in the torture of animals. One particular story tells of a pig organ, a.k.a. a hog harmonium, piganino, pigano, or even the porko forte, which created music using the squeals of a selection of carefully chosen pigs.

Looking at the date, however, this should come as no surprise. According to Lisa Kiser, in A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age , it was common practice in Europe to use animals for entertainment between 1000 and 1400. From royal menageries to animal performances, including anything from juggling apes, talking bears or even a rooster dancing on stilts, animal cruelty and sadism was an everyday affair during the so-called Dark Ages. Bear-baiting, where a chained bear was made to fight against dogs, was a popular blood sport in Britain until the 19th century, while France was home to a lovely game known as getter au cochon , where four blindfolded players would enter an enclosure and beat a pig to death. The more well-known cockfights and cat burning were also par for the course.

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Cover illustration for the piece of sheet music entitled La Piganino, illustrating the porko forte. ( Public domain )

The story of Louis XI and his piganino comes from Nathaniel Wanley’s 1678 The Wonders of the Little World . It appears that he made a comment to the Abbot of Baigné, known to be an amateur inventor, about the musical nature of pigs. Taking this as a challenge, the Abbott proceeded to invent one of the more sadistic musical instruments on record, whereby a keyboard was connected to a series of cages containing pigs categorized by the sound of their voices. On pressing a key, the poor creatures would be poked with metal spikes, creating “ music” made up of their fear and pain-driven grunts and squeals. All this to the delight of the king.

This is not the only time that an unbelievably bizarre musical instrument is said to have been created using live animals. Musurgia Universalis , the 1650 music-related compendium by Athanasius Kircher, mentioned the katzenklavier, or cat organ, created to “raise the spirits of an Italian prince burdened by the cares of his position.” The concept was pretty much identical to that of the piganino, with eight cats in cages, tails pulled taught and, on pressing a key, slammed with a nail to produce “a melody of meows.” While some believe the cat organ to be mere myth, it was also reported by historian Juan Calvete de Estrella, in a description of the procession of King Phillip II in Brussels. This time the cat organ was being played by a bear.

Top image: A man playing a fantastic pig organ, or piganino, composed of screaming pigs. Source: British Museum / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Patrice Rushen – Forget Me Nots (12″ Version)

Ah. Please enjoy this batch of funk.

Father’s Game Guides Are Amazing

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When you play games, you most likely make notes – in your mind. It is unlikely that you write down everything in diaries. Or maybe you write down who knows you.

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Twitter user Ishikoro18 published images of guides for the passage of various games that were written by her father. Among them are titles such as Final Fantasy X-2, Siren, Ico, Silent Hill 3, Kingdom Hearts and others.

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On the pages you can find sketches, maps, solved puzzles and passwords. Maybe you also need to start a diary to pass on to the next generation?

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America in a World of Limits

In truth, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not change the fact that America’s global power position is constrained.

by Dan Caldwell in The National Interest. A Neocon publication.
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RUSSIA’S VILE war of aggression against the people of Ukraine has accelerated discussion about the future of U.S. foreign policy. However, the terms of the debate have done more to confound than clarify. While foreign policy elites declare that the Russian invasion “changes everything,” their resounding chorus offers a familiar refrain, namely, the vindication and perpetuation of U.S. global primacy. In truth, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not change the fact that America’s global power position is constrained. The heady days of unipolarity are over. Policymakers who fail to acknowledge those realities when dealing with the fallout from the war in Ukraine will only make America less safe and threaten the conditions of our prosperity.

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To be sure, the United States retains a powerful economy and military. But unlike in the early 1990s, the United States faces real global competitors—in particular China—along with domestic challenges that will require better prioritization and trade-offs.

While far from guaranteed, there is a reasonable chance that China’s total economic power will overtake the United States within the next few years. China’s economy now comprises 18 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (in terms of purchasing power parity) compared to 16 percent for the United States. Additionally, future American economic growth is threatened by record levels of inflation and a $30 trillion national debt.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has spent the last two decades bogged down in a handful of endless wars across the Middle East and Africa. The price of these conflicts has been steep. Thousands of American lives were lost and more than $8 trillion squandered. These conflicts also wore down important strategic assets like our B-1 bomber fleet, incentivized investments in platforms like the Littoral Combat Ship that are not suited for combat against near-peer adversaries, and forced cuts to the U.S. Air Force and Navy to build an Army designed to fight counterinsurgency conflicts in strategic backwaters.

Moreover, these wars were unpopular—both at home and abroad—and their pernicious effects have eroded the power of American leadership. The challenges facing America have not gone unnoticed. Many countries have refused to join the American and European-led sanctions regime imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. These nations are clearly hedging their bets in a world where American dominance is less certain. This even includes countries that have benefitted from the American security umbrella. Take the United Arab Emirates for example, which has enabled Russian oligarchs to escape targeted sanctions on their assets. The Emirati crown prince doubled down on this bad behavior when he refused a call from President Joe Biden to discuss energy market distress.

The United States should not tolerate a delusional foreign policymaking elite that ignores real constraints on American power. Instead, our leaders should adopt a sober and realistic approach to the current state of the world that recognizes our limits so that America can remain safe and prosperous.

In Eastern Europe, the United States must make it clear to our wealthy European partners that they are primarily responsible for the security of their own continent. Russia’s failures in Ukraine have revealed that its conventional armed forces are not a threat to well-funded and well-trained European armies—even without significant American support. A Russian Army that cannot take Kharkiv certainly cannot take Warsaw, Berlin, or Paris.

Accordingly, the United States should encourage the strengthening and development of non-NATO security architectures in Europe, like the European Union’s Common Defence and Security Policy. To effectively facilitate this, the United States must avoid taking actions that encourage free-riding under the American security umbrella. This would include short-sighted policies like more permanent deployments of U.S. troops to Europe, or NATO expansion to countries such as Finland and Sweden.

In the Middle East, the United States should resist efforts by authoritarian petrostates such as Saudi Arabia to exploit the current energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine to extract more security commitments from the United States. Instead, the United States should draw down from this increasingly less important region—especially from the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria—in order to free up resources for other priorities.

Real U.S. interests are at stake in East Asia, and this region will require careful navigation of perilous waters. China is a rising competitor that poses challenges that U.S. policymakers must take seriously. To deal with this, the United States should continue to develop defensive systems and technologies that enable partners in the region to deter Chinese aggression. Future defense budgets should prioritize funding for the Air Force and Navy over other branches since these two services would be at the forefront of any potential conflict in the Pacific. Additionally, the U.S. intelligence community should confront China’s malign economic and military espionage activities more aggressively.

But U.S. leaders should avoid overinflating the threat posed by China. Indeed, China has its own domestic and international constraints that may hinder its rise. Accordingly, policymakers should deal with the challenges posed by China without resurrecting the Cold War or raising the likelihood of direct conflict.

The acknowledgment that the United States faces real limits on its power does not mean accepting American decline or forlorn resignation that our best days are behind us. To the contrary, prudent foreign policy tradeoffs will better husband our power and provide the means to attend to our domestic economic and fiscal challenges thus ensuring future American safety and prosperity.

However, those who continue to deny reality and advocate the same failed policies that led us to where we are today will only guarantee American decline—not greatness. In the interest of American security and the American people, we must demand better.

Dan Caldwell is the vice president of foreign policy for Stand Together. He is a former congressional staffer and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.

Ok… so let’s see what The Duran has to say about this…

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NATO calls China “systemic challenge,” then asks China to enforce oil price cap

Listen. This is the reality.

So how ready is Europe and the USA ready to take on Asia?

NATO BASE EQUIPPED WITH U.S. NUKES RAIDED BY POLICE – METH LAB BUSTED

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Belgium Police officials conducted a raid of Kleine-Brogel Air base, a NATO Joint base where U.S. nuclear bombs are stored, and busted a drug lab making Crystal Methamphetamine.  It gets worse: At least two individual arrested had to be let go because of “Diplomatic Immunity.”

Kleine Brogel Air Base (ICAO: EBBL) is a Belgian Air Component military airfield located 0.8 nautical miles (1.5 km; 0.92 mi) east of Kleine-Brogel, in the municipality Peer, Belgium. It is home to the Belgian 10th Tactical Wing, operating F-16 Fighting Falcons, which are capable, among other capabilities, of delivering B61 nuclear bombs.

The base has been subject to much political controversy, because of American nuclear weapons allegedly being stored in the facility by the United States Air Force (USAF), but never recognized officially by the Belgian government.

Under the NATO nuclear sharing arrangement, these nuclear bombs would require an actual dual key system, which would imply the simultaneous authorizations of Belgium and the United States, before any action is taken. Should that be the case, Kleine Brogel Air Base would be the only location in Belgium with nuclear weapons.

According to the press, Eastern European Member States of NATO resisted the withdrawal of the shared nuclear bombs in Europe, fearing that it would show a weakening of the American commitment to defend the European Union against Russian aggression.

None of the five NATO member states, whose air forces allegedly might share its premises, have ever provided an official confirmation of the bombs existence. However, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga declared that the Aeronautica Militare hosted or shared American nuclear bombs, just as other NATO member states do. In an interview he talked about French weapons. In the same way, on 10 June 2013, former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers confirmed the existence of 22 shared nuclear bombs at Volkel Air Base.

Kleine Brogel Air Base is also the home of the United States Air Force’s 701st Munitions Support Squadron which allegedly is the unit in charge of looking after the shared nuclear bombs.

Belgium police raided the base just hours ago.  Several persons were taken under arrest, but there’s a massive twist; at least two persons arrested had to be let go because they have “Diplomatic immunity.”

The Source who provided this information to the Hal Turner Radio Show was quite explicit with this detail.  The source pointed out that had U.S. military been arrested, they would have remained under arrest and, if nothing else, would have been transferred to the custody of the US military and treated in accordance with the Status of Forces agreements that exist between countries.  But that is NOT “Diplomatic Immunity” which only applies to credentialed Diplomats and their staffers.

The source repeated this several times — those let go had “Diplomatic Immunity.”

It is not known yet if they were American diplomats / staff  or were from some other country . . . and right now a lid is being clamped down on information.

I expect more information soon.

The big takeaway for the time being is: What was a drug lab doing on a military base where US nuclear weapons are stored, and; who were the Diplomats invoilved?

HOMEMADE RUSSIAN STYLE SAUERKRAUT FROM START TO FINISH

Like my mother used to make.

Bill introduced in Russia To Give Emergency Powers to Putin; Puts Defense Industry in “State of War”

A Bill has been introduced in the Russia legislature which will give President Vladimir Putin emergency powers, will put the Russian Defense industry on 24/7 “state of war’ and lays the groundwork for a GENERAL MOBILIZATION conscription of the Russian people, for war.

The Bill makes reference to “military operations abroad” while also mentioning Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk.

Clearly, the intent of the Bill is to give President Putin legal authority to expand Russian military operations to outside of Ukraine, likely in response to hostile acts by Lithuania’s blockading the Russian exclave state of Kaliningrad, and now Norway’s blockage of food and supplies to Russian miners on the Svalbard Archipelago.

Lithuania announced yesterday they will be implementing a total blockade of Kaliningrad from July 10.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė said the country would continue to implement the terms of the EU’s fourth package of sanctions against Russia and stop the transit of other goods through the Kaliningrad region from July 10, when the restrictions are due to take effect.

Knowing this would cause war-type trouble a Lithuanian Member of Parliament was brazen enough to warn Moscow – twice – not to abrogate the Treaty recognizing the independence of Lithuania in 1991!  The member of the Seimas (Parliament) of Lithuania, Matas Maldeikis, asked Moscow to return to Vilnius “the ancestral lands of Smolensk”.

In fact, he asked for it twice in June!

He said “If Russia revokes its recognition of Lithuania’s independence in 1991, Lithuania will revoke the Polyanovka Treaty of 1634 and demand that Russia return all occupied territories to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Smolensk is Lithuania!’

The situation with external countries now making land claims against Russia while at the same time blockading the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, has caused Russia lawmakers and the Russian leadership to see this as an organized Nato project, both in the Baltic and in the case of Norway, and is prepared to respond militarily if Lithuania doesn’t remove the exclusions against Kaliningrad and Norway doesn’t remove the blockade of food against Svalbard.

According to information, the Russian government has submitted a draft law in order for the executive branch, that is, the president of Russia and the Russian government, to receive special powers.

The bill was submitted to the State Duma.

Amendments to the Defense Law are proposed. The Russian government supplements the law with the article on “Ensuring the conduct of anti-terrorist and other operations by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, other troops, military formations and bodies outside the territory of the Russian Federation “.

The explanatory note states that this includes, among other things, a “special military operation in the territories of Lugansk, Donetsk and Ukraine”.

“Georgia Guide Stones” Blown-up

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The famous “Georgia Guidestones” which promoted a human population under 500 million worldwide (The world’s population is 7 billion; or 14 times more than that) so as to sustain the earth, were blown up around 4:00 this morning.

Nearby residents say they heard a loud explosion but didn’t know what it was.  At sunrise, the guide stones were found reduced to a pile of rubble.

“Known as America’s Stonehenge, this 19-foot-high monument displays a 10-part message espousing the conservation of mankind and future generations in 12 languages,” according to a description on the state of Georgia’s tourism website.

Erected in 1980 in Elbert County, Georgia, in the United States. A set of ten guidelines is inscribed on the structure in eight modern languages and a shorter message is inscribed at the top of the structure in four ancient language scripts.

The monument stands at an approximate elevation of 750 feet (230 m) above sea level, about 90 miles (140 km) east of Atlanta, 45 miles (72 km) from Athens, Georgia and 9 miles (14 km) north of the center of the city of Elberton.

One slab stands in the center, with four arranged around it. A capstone lies on top of the five slabs, which are astronomically aligned. An additional stone tablet, which is set in the ground a short distance to the west of the structure, provides some notes on the history and purpose of the guidestones. The structure is sometimes referred to as an “American Stonehenge”.

The monument is 19 feet 3 inches (5.87 m) tall, made from six granite slabs weighing 237,746 pounds (107,840 kg) in all.The anonymity of the guidestones’ authors and their apparent advocacy of population control, eugenics, and internationalism have made them an object of controversy and . . . conspiracy theories.

 

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

Well, it appears that someone decided to make a statement about the current ongoing nonsense plaguing our country and our world.  When it comes to population control, global Communism (You will own nothing and be happy) and Internationalism, perhaps the message sent today was a bold “No thanks.”

The so-called “elite” seem to think THEY know what’s best for the rest of us, and they attacked the general public with the bio-weapon “COVID-19” to start killing us off in pursuit of their grand plans.

Then they came at us with their phony mRNA “vaccines” which are killing-off millions more of us around the world.  They thought they got away with it.

Then they came at us with “supply-chain disruption” which they initially blamed on COVID.  Now that COVID is over, and the supply chain issues are getting worse, it is becoming clear to even the village idiots that this is all being done deliberately.  Surreptitiously.

Trouble is, no one asked The People whether any of __us__ wanted these grand plans. No one asked us if we wanted to “own nothing and be happy.” The “Elite” just went and started DOING what THEY wanted with the rest of us.  THEY started adversely affecting OUR lives. They didn’t ask. They didn’t care what we thought or what we want; they just implemented THEIR plans and the rest of us be damned.

Sorry Mr. & Mrs. “Elite” but, that dog don ‘t hunt.

Last night, someone apparently decided to send them a message that their plans are over.   Someone blew up the Georgia Guidestones.

Do you think the “Elite” will take the hint, or will their arrogance over-ride reason, and cause them to push even harder?

My bet: Their ego and arrogance will come unglued and they’ll go balls-to-the-wall now.

You see, with the destruction of the Georgia Guidestones, THEY know, that WE know.  All the nonsense going on with COVID, the vax, the supply chain troubles . . . are all deliberate.  They are all part of the plan to destroy our way of life so THEY can . . . what phrase are they all using . . . . Oh, yes . . . . “Build Back Better.”

Sorry Mr. & Mrs. “Elite” we do not consent.

With today’s explosion, they NOW know that “The People” are not only ABLE to fight them off, but The People have now become WILLING to fight them off; kinetically.  By force.

I have a feeling things are going to get very ugly.  I have a feeling these “Elites” are not gonna stop until they ARE stopped.

In my opinion, if they’re smart, they will now realize that people are WILLING to blow-up their symbols, their plans, and maybe even them!  I certainly don’t advocate that and I absolutely have no plans whatsoever to engage in any such behavior personally.  Neither should anyone else.

But since the Elite have already taken to actually killing us with COVID and their phony “vax” they drew first blood.

If the explosions continue, or get personal for the “Elite,” it seems to me they will have brought it upon themselves.

BRICS

A World War III Win is a Bridge Too Far for 21st Century Globalist America

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Is USA able to fight and Win a World War 3?  VT has Questions!

You have to wonder why the U.S. and NATO keep pouring billions upon billions of dollars into a Ukrainian/Russo war that could very well be won by the Russian military regardless. This is despite what you hear from the mainstream media about the Ukraine military successfully advancing on the Russians.

They’re not.

With funding and support also coming from pro-Globalist billionaires like George Soros and an America that recently witnessed a humiliating military defeat in Afghanistan despite superior U.S. union-made products and state-of-the-art weaponry (much of which was left in the hands of the enemy), the U.S. in conjunction with NATO seem all too willing to prolong a war which, if financed and weaponized for too long, just might bring us to the brink of the nuclear annihilation.

That’s a war no one wins.

According to a new article by author John Carter, he sees no scenario in which a Globalist American Empire can possibly win World War III. Here are some of his reasons.

Point [1] The USA is a Global Hyperpower

Most conventionally minded Americans believe that the U.S. could win a new world war is because of the U.S.’s “global hyperpower.”

Its military budget actually dwarfs the rest of the world’s militaries combined. The U.S. currently has in play a dozen carrier groups, nuclear-powered submarines that can make around-the-world dives twice over without surfacing, subs called “Boomers” equipped with nukes that in theory can wipe out coastlines in mere moments.

The U.S. also maintains bases just about everywhere along with the ability to defend them. Satellites in space can surveil something as small as your hand, while predator drone fleets can rain down destruction anywhere in the world from a desktop in downtown Atlanta, Georgia.

This is, of course, a very impressive show of military might. Says Carter, “no one out there wants to pick a fight with that.” He goes on to say that no one in their right mind doubts that a “direct confrontation between great powers” would inevitably result in horrible and terrific devastation.

Point [2] Radioactive Bubble

With that in mind, Carter contends that whichever powers are able to emerge victoriously from a “radioactive bubble,” it will likely not be the U.S. or more specifically, Washington, DC.

Not going to be the United States.

One of the main problems begins with the GAE (Government, Administration, and Elections) war machine. The situation today is similar to that of World War II.

At the beginning of the war in 1939, Germany’s military was bigger, better trained, and more technologically sophisticated than its competitors. They had adapted “war-fighting doctrines” which would account for every advance in military high tech that had occurred after World War I.

But Germany’s problem came in the form of natural resources of which they had little. On the other hand, the U.S. which enjoyed many resources were able to put their vast made-in-the-U.S. industrial complex to work and was able to manufacture Sherman tanks inside retrofitted Model-T factories, by the dozens.

Says Carter, the U.S. was able to bury the Reich with a “sheer mass of stuff.”

Point [3] Today’s American Industry

Over the course of the past several decades, America’s industrial base has become a rusted-out relic of what it once was.

Today, the U.S. relies almost completely on imported goods, from microchips to antibiotics. This remains true when it comes to critical wartime necessities for both the maintenance and replenishment of munitions for a supply chain that would be crushed by global hostilities.

A shortage of essential components would be a crippling blow to the U.S. and our adversaries know that.

The reliance on an over-extended supply chain might not seem all that important in the short run, but when you consider that the U.S. is supplied with much of its electronics from China while semiconductors come from Taiwan, you begin to see the bleak picture. And in a time of global conflict, China would likely snatch Taiwan up rather quickly.

Point [4] U.S. Poisoning

Rather than rely on natural remedies for the problems that ail them like good food and exercise, Carter claims that Americans have been “extensively poisoned with toxic foodstuffs.”

Approximately one-tenth of the U.S. population is reliant on psychiatric meds, while at the same time, “potent recreational drugs” such as methamphetamine, fentanyl (which comes largely from China), and legalized pot, now run rampant.

Plus, the average American is overweight.

As well as a substantive percentage are clinically depressed.

Point [5] The U.S. Global Strategic Situation

Presently, the U.S.’s “global strategic situation” is standing in the abyss of a “great power war.”

Like Eisenhower warned decades ago, the GAE will eventually have no friends that will want to come to its aid in a global conflict. After all, they are in it for the money.

The U.S. population, according to Cater, is somewhat “sick” in body and mind and has been “deliberately sickened” to make the population more controllable.

What’s more, there is almost no social capital or cohesion to tap into, while the economy continues to falter in every way.

Point [6] American “Leadership”

While the political divide hasn’t been this wide since the Civil War, the political leadership is largely corrupt and publicly despised.

The “for-profit” mainstream media is not trusted.

Military training standards have suffered greatly due to the injection of an “ideological madness” that seems to have destroyed everything in its path as Western society as a whole continues to decay.

Summary

Despite owning a large military-industrial complex, the Globalist friendly U.S. is in no position to fight World War III, much less be in it to win it.

Qatar to Demand EU Sign Long-Term LNG Deals If It Wants More Gas

I guess that it doesn’t trust the Euro-weenie. -MM

I just came across in the Chinese media: “Qatar demands [1] a 20 years contract and [2]  “must pay first” as the conditions for them to invest in an increased production to supply EU gas.
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Ah. By taking Russian reserve money in EU banks and confiscating Russian private property at will, they have effectively damaged world trust towards Western nations.
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So I do a search in English and found this, unfortunately pay wall:
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  • Bloomberg pay wall. From HERE. 
  • Flying carpet link. Flies you over the paywall. HERE

Largest Maine Coon

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Guinness World Records undated handout photo of Ludo the Maine Coon from Wakefield in South Yorkshire with owner Kelsey as they appear in this year’s Guinness World Records. Issue date: Thursday September 8, 2016. (Photo by Paul Michael Hughes/Guinness World Records/PA Wire)

Lukashenko Says Ukraine Fired Missiles At Belarus

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Saturday said his army had shot down missiles fired into their territory from Ukraine and vowed to respond “instantly” to any enemy strike.

“We are being provoked,” Lukashenko was quoted as saying by state news agency Belta. “I must tell you that around three days ago, maybe more, they also tried to strike military targets in Belarus from Ukraine.

“Thank God, our Pantsir anti-air systems intercepted all the missiles fired by the Ukrainian forces.”

Ukraine last week said missiles fired from Belarus had struck a border region inside its territory.

Lukashenko on Saturday denied his country was seeking to intervene in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but issued a warning aimed at Kiev and its Western allies.

“As I said more than a year ago, we do not intend to fight in Ukraine,” he said

“We will only fight in one case. If you… enter our land, if you kill our people, then we will respond,” he added, warning that Belarus would reply “instantly” to an enemy strike on its soil.

Long-term Kremlin ally Belarus has supported Russia’s military operation in Ukraine since February 24 by acting as a rear base for Moscow’s forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last week that Moscow would deliver Iskander-M missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons to Belarus “in the coming months”.

“Less than a month ago, I ordered our armed forces to put in our sights the decision centers in Western capitals,” Lukashenko said on Saturday, citing the missiles promised by Putin and the Belarusian rocket-launcher Polonez.

Interesting Quote

I wonder if the fellows at Fort Detrick who designed and disseminated the SARS-CoV-2 bioweapon, thinking that China was an easy target, knew that it would ultimately herald the fall of the collective West? The brilliance of American arrogance shines so bright it is blinding. Well, no need to fret about that, for historical reflection is for losers; the United States' newly concocted recipe, an indomitable mixture of seething anger, rising unemployment, mass gun availability, and prevalent mental illness, all served on itself, will definitely turn out well.

Posted by: Bill | Jul 3 2022 15:36 utc | 9

100 Year Old Veteran U.S. Marine Breaks Down Crying “this isn’t the country we fought for”

Video below says it all . . .

Maja Säfström’s Illustrations Are Witty And Relatable

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Illustrator and author Maja Säfström is known for her playful style of illustration based on her witty observations of the world around her. Based in Stockholm, she works full-time as an illustrator and runs her own shop in central Stockholm.

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Having earned a tremendous international following on social media, as well as widespread critical acclaim and multiple awards, it’s surprising to learn that Säfström’s background actually lies in architecture. “I have been drawing for as long as I can remember,” she shared in an interview with Lake. “I drew a lot when I was a kid. I had a few years in high school where I thought I was really bad. Then I started studying architecture at university and found myself drawing the scenes around the buildings with MUCH more enthusiasm than the actual houses. Well, one thing led to another!”

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Indeed one thing led to another. “I used to work as an architect and illustrating was something I did in my time off work,” she says. “Now that it is my full-time job, I realize, it is much less meditative. Because now the drawings are often commissioned, which is a bit different from just drawing whatever you feel like. It is the best job in the world though. Being an illustrator! My new hobby is taking care of my plants at home.”

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Each of her illustrated pieces is made by first drawing a thin outline with a pencil, after which the final drawing is made with a fineliner. Her comic-like illustrations often include speech bubbles. “I think the speech bubbles are a very important part of my work,” says Säfström. “I love combining text with drawings. I often experience something in life and make a drawing of that.”

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Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster

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If Europe has any insight, it will separate itself from these U.S. foreign policy debacles, writes Jeffrey D. Sachs.
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The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement.  The Biden administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the U.S. wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons. As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the U.S. and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle. If Europe has any insight, it will separate itself from these U.S. foreign policy debacles.

The neocon movement emerged in the 1970s around a group of public intellectuals, several of whom were influenced by University of Chicago political scientist Leo Strauss and Yale University classicist Donald Kagan. Neocon leaders included Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan (son of Donald), Frederick Kagan (son of Donald), Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert), Elliott Cohen, Elliott Abrams and Kimberley Allen Kagan (wife of Frederick).

The main message of the neocons is that the U.S. must predominate in military power in every region of the world and must confront rising regional powers that could someday challenge U.S. global or regional dominance, most important Russia and China.  For this purpose, U.S. military force should be pre-positioned in hundreds of military bases around the world and the U.S. should be prepared to lead wars of choice as necessary. The United Nations is to be used by the U.S. only when useful for U.S. purposes.

Wolfowitz Spelled It Out 

This approach was spelled out first by Paul Wolfowitz in his draft Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) written for the Department of Defense in 2002. The draft called for extending the U.S.-led security network to Central and Eastern Europe despite the explicit promise by German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in 1990 that German unification would not be followed by NATO’s eastward enlargement.

[Related: The New York Times’ Shift on Victory in Ukraine]

Wolfowitz also made the case for American wars of choice, defending America’s right to act independently, even alone, in response to crises of concern to the U.S.  According to General Wesley Clark, Wolfowitz already made clear to Clark in May 1991 that the U.S. would lead regime-change operations in Iraq, Syria and other former Soviet allies.

The neocons championed NATO enlargement to Ukraine even before that became official U.S. policy under President George W. Bush, Jr. in 2008. They viewed Ukraine’s NATO membership as key to U.S. regional and global dominance. Robert Kagan spelled out the neocon case for NATO enlargement in April 2006:

“[T]he Russians and Chinese see nothing natural in [the ‘color revolutions’ of the former Soviet Union], only Western-backed coups designed to advance Western influence in strategically vital parts of the world.  Are they so wrong? Might not the successful liberalization of Ukraine, urged and supported by the Western democracies, be but the prelude to the incorporation of that nation into NATO and the European Union — in short, the expansion of Western liberal hegemony?”

Kagan acknowledged the dire implication of NATO enlargement. He quotes one expert as saying, “the Kremlin is getting ready for the ‘battle for Ukraine’ in all seriousness.”

The neocons sought this battle. After the fall of the Soviet Union, both the U.S. and Russia should have sought a neutral Ukraine, as a prudent buffer and safety valve.  Instead, the neocons wanted U.S. “hegemony” while the Russians took up the battle partly in defense and partly out of their own imperial pretensions as well.  Shades of the Crimean War (1853-6), when Britain and France sought to weaken Russia in the Black Sea following Russian pressures on the Ottoman empire.

Kagan penned the article as a private citizen while his wife Victoria Nuland was the U.S. ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush, Jr.

Nuland has been the neocon operative par excellence.  In addition to serving as Bush’s ambassador to NATO, Nuland was President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs during 2013-17, when she participated in the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and now serves as Biden’s undersecretary of state guiding U.S. policy vis-à-vis the war in Ukraine.

The neocon outlook is based on an overriding false premise: that the U.S. military, financial, technological, and economic superiority enables it to dictate terms in all regions of the world.  It is a position of both remarkable hubris and remarkable disdain of evidence.

Since the 1950s, the U.S. has been stymied or defeated in nearly every regional conflict in which it has participated. Yet in the “battle for Ukraine,” the neocons were ready to provoke a military confrontation with Russia by expanding NATO over Russia’s vehement objections because they fervently believe that Russia will be defeated by U.S. financial sanctions and NATO weaponry.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a neocon think-tank led by Kimberley Allen Kagan (and backed by a who’s who of defense contractors such as General Dynamics and Raytheon), continues to promise a Ukrainian victory.

Regarding Russia’s advances, the ISW offered a typical comment:

“[R]egardless of which side holds the city [of Sievierodonetsk], the Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will probably have culminated, giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push Russian forces back.” 

The facts on the ground, however, suggest otherwise. The West’s economic sanctions have had little adverse impact on Russia, while their “boomerang” effect on the rest of the world has been large.

Moreover, the U.S. capacity to resupply Ukraine with ammunition and weaponry is seriously hamstrung by America’s limited production capacity and broken supply chains. Russia’s industrial capacity of course dwarfs that of Ukraine’s.  Russia’s GDP was roughly 10X that of Ukraine before the war and Ukraine has now lost much of its industrial capacity in the war.

The most likely outcome of the current fighting is that Russia will conquer a large swath of Ukraine, perhaps leaving Ukraine landlocked or nearly so. Frustration will rise in Europe and the U.S. with the military losses and the stagflationary consequences of war and sanctions.

The knock-on effects could be devastating, if a right-wing demagogue in the U.S. rises to power (or in the case of Trump, returns to power) promising to restore America’s faded military glory through dangerous escalation.

Instead of risking this disaster, the real solution is to end the neocon fantasies of the past 30 years and for Ukraine and Russia to return to the negotiating table, with NATO committing to end its commitment to the eastward enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia in return for a viable peace that respects and protects Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the U.N. Broadband Commission for Development. He has been adviser to three United Nations secretaries-general and currently serves as an SDG advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020). Other books include: Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable (2017) and The Age of Sustainable Development, (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.

This article is from  Common Dreams.

Lama High Jump record

Why?

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Caspa – Highest Jump By A Llama Guinness World Records 2016. Location: Porthmadog, Wales. Photo by Paul Michael Hughes/Guinness World Records)

Why English will lost its influence? Re: Imperial English language

When I was sent to set up a business in Eastern Europe based in Hungary in 1991, I notice that, there are more people who can speak Russian and German than English in that part of Europe. The Hungarian trade office in Singapore at the time also told me Russian and German language are more widely spoken in most part of the Eastern Europe than English.

The power and influence of a language very much dependence on the commercial and political power of a nation.

The anglo-Saxon crusaders have done too many evil things across the world, once they are down, the memory of what they did will re-emerged across the world, and many world leaders pressured and bullied by them will begin to speak and act openly against them. hated across the world will begin to reduce the influence of their language. Schools across the world will slowly replace English with another more important commercial language.

About a decade ago, an Australian friend on the Gold Coast went to Shanghai, thinking to travel the city on his own, he expressed his disappointment to me that most people he met on the streets in Shanghai cannot speak English. I than told him he should not expect the world to know his language, and begin to tell him a story:

In 1992, I took a train from Istanbul back to Hungary with a few Chinese friends, when the train briefly stop at Bulgaria capital, a Bulgarian speaking staff came to our session using his language asking us to move to the other train, we cannot understand what he said, so, after anxiously using his language trying to explain again and again, he later simply move on, there are 2 young American ladies in our session, spoke to each other and laughed: “he is so stupid, he cannot even speak English “.

I went out my train session asking other passengers leaving the train what’s going on, one told me I have to get off this train now to another train heading to Budapest. So, I use Chinese language to tell my friends to get off the train immediately. I would have told the Americans if they were not such arrogant fools.

The minute we got off the train, the train moved on to somewhere else. I decided to let the Americans learn a real life lesson that they should learn people language when they are in other countries.

Language is something that one need to regularly used to be able to speak fluently, once the Anglo Saxon empires gone, their countries disintegrated, the language will lost its commercial values. The number of people using the language will reduce.

If you went to Japan, you will notice that most Japanese despite learning English as second language in school, cannot speak English. That is because, English is not widely used among the average Japanese. Unless your job requires you to get in touch with foreigners, whatever other language you learn in school as second language, you will forget soon after you left school.

Ask those western countries students who learn Japanese in school, they will end up only able to say Ali Gato and nothing else.

I self learning Russian for a year before going to Moscow in 2002 to source for new suppliers for my Russian arts and crafts wholesales business in Australia. At that time, I at least know how to make bargain in Russian language. However, after my import business destroyed by the quarantine department, I moved on to restart another business, and now, I have forgotten even how to read the Russian alphabet despite still having a Russian English dictionary, and a Russian English electronic translator at home.

I used to growth up speaking fluently 2 Chinese dialects in Singapore (teo chew 潮州话and Hokkien 福建话), but after working in Hungary for 3 years, and living on the Gold Coast for 27 years, I can no longer speak the 2 languages beside using some swearing words to scold people. However, I learned Cantonese in Western Australia in my finally year after moving in an accommodation living with 8 Hong Kong students and later married one of them. I later work in Hong Kong briefly.

I think China has remove English as a Compulsory subject in school recently. It has become a selective subject just like any other language for higher education. The policy rationale is that, most students won’t need to use the language in real life, and most will end up wasting their life learning a language they will not be using in real life. China gov want them to use their limited time to learn something more useful such as a new skill, more in-depth learning of Chinese culture, etc.

I am sure, English will decline once the Anglo Saxon crusader empire lost its economic power. The France never like the English, and there is a widely known speculation that if you talk to a France in English in French, you will get no where. So, you rather talk to them in any other language, and they will than try to speak to you in English.

Cheers

Chua

LUHANSK LIBERATED! Russia Routes last of Ukraine Army

LEADER DECLARES THE FULL LIBERATION OF LUHANSK PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC – JULY 3, 2022.

“Dear compatriots! Citizens of the Luhansk People’s Republic! Today, July 3, is a great day, which will forever enter the red date in the calendar of our Fatherland. Today is the day we have accomplished what we have been striving to for eight long years. Today our troops, with the support of the Russian armed forces, liberated the town of Lysychansk, thus completing the liberation of the Republic within its historic borders.

The Ukrainian neo-Nazis, who came to our land to kill and plunder, have been defeated. They used sneaky tactics, using civilians as human shields. Therefore, our military had to carefully recapture literally every house, every street, every settlement. And now, finally, such big cities of Luhansk region as Rubizhne and Severodonetsk were also taken, and today Lisichansk was completely liberated!

I sincerely congratulate us all on this new Great Victory Day! This holiday, just like in the distant 1945, also with tears in my eyes – the battles were hard and bloody. And Victory is ours again, it will always be so!

How To Prepare A Big Batch Of Breakfast Sandwiches (English Muffins, Sausages, Eggs & Cheese Slices)

A good video that is easy to use. Check it out.

Bearded woman

Harnaam Kaur – Youngest Female With A Full Beard Guinness World Records 2016. Location: The Ottoman Crew, London. (Photo by Paul Michael Hughes/Guinness World Records)

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After the Cavalry Didn’t Charge.

What are we going to do when Ukraine is over?

As I pointed out last week, the war in Ukraine is exactly the kind of crisis that NATO was originally created to deal with, yet militarily, the alliance did effectively nothing. But let’s suppose the rhetoric about increasing defence budgets and expanding the militaries of western states was seriously pursued as a policy. How easy would it be? Not very. In fact, there’s a good argument that it’s scarcely feasible at all. Here’s why.

For the forty years of the Cold War, NATO members retained large, powerful conventional forces with an elaborate command and control system, in case there was a major war with the Soviet Union and its allies. Although a war like that was never regarded as likely, it was still thought possible, not least because the longer the Cold War lasted, the more deeply ingrained became the mutual suspicion  of the two blocs. Exercise scenarios in those days often began with a political crisis over a third country: Yugoslavia was a favourite.

Well, that scenario has now more or less come to pass. A political crisis in Eastern Europe has turned nasty, and the Russians have invaded a country supported by the West. And the reaction? NATO wants you to know that it is really, really cross, and it’s sending some equipment and imposing some sanctions as an indication of just how cross it is. Which is odd behaviour for a military alliance specifically founded to counter Russia, but quite explicable in term of the changes in the underlying balance of forces that I discussed last week.

But let’s go beyond that. Let’s assume a serious effort by western states to re-build their military capability to something like the level of the Cold War. What would that entail? Would it be even possible?

The first question is just one of the concept. In the Cold War, the two sides both believed  that any war between them would be the Big One, an existential struggle for survival which would be fought out to the end. NATO hoped, but didn’t necessarily expect, that the conflict could be contained to the conventional level: it’s less clear that the Warsaw Pact did. This was why the use of nuclear weapons was expected, and planned for by both sides. The assumption of the Big One dictated strategies and force structures, and produced militaries on a high state of readiness for a short, brutal war of unprecedented violence, at the end of which the combatants would be largely disarmed and their economies in ruins. By contrast, it’s not obvious what any serious conflict between Russia and the West today would actually be about, in the absence of  the kind of apocalyptic stakes that existed during the Cold War. What are the differences between Russia and the West that might justify blowing up the world? NATO’s exclusively non-militarily reaction to Ukraine is not just a sign of relative weakness, it’s more importantly a recognition that vital interests aren’t involved. So what would vital interests be, then? I don’t think anyone knows.

For that reason, it’s probably best to leave nuclear weapons out of the argument. Their main utility is political, after all, and a threat to use them would only ever be taken seriously if the very survival of a nuclear power were at stake. It’s honestly hard to imagine how we could arrive there, no matter how stupid you may think your least-favourite politicians of the moment are. So, let’s start from the hypothesis of a conventional war between Russia and some or all western nations. Where would that be, exactly?

If you look at a map it’s not obvious. Taking the most likely outcome of the current war—the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine as independent republics with close ties to Russia—then Russian forces would only be on the borders of the Baltic states and Norway, as now. If the Finns and Swedes were to join NATO formally (and the Swedes have been informal members for generations) then there would be an expanded northern zone of contact between the Russians and some NATO states. But assuming that neither Russia nor NATO set out to provoke another crisis, then there is no obvious reason why there should be conflict in that area. If there were a general crisis between Russia and the West leading to war, then there would be little point in attacking only in those areas. The Russians would want to ensure their unrestricted use of the Murmansk naval base, especially to get their nuclear missile submarines to sea, but that would be a subsidiary part of any general offensive.

So if you were a political leader, and your military came to ask what threat they should actually plan, train and exercise against, then the only one that makes any sense would be a main advance through Belarus towards Poland, with a southward thrust towards Ukraine and Romania/Bulgaria. Now the first question is whether the Russians would actually be capable of doing that. Let’s stipulate that for some reason they just have to be able to take Warsaw as a minimum objective, while neutralising Ukraine and Romania, and let’s start with distance.

Well, assuming you concentrate your forces around Minsk, the distance to Warsaw is then about 600 km, comparable to the sort of distances covered by the Allied armies from the Normandy beach-heads in June 1944 to the surrender of Germany a year later. It’s about as far as the Red Army advanced in one of its final offensives in January-February 1945, where the Russians could field two million men against an exhausted and massively inferior German Army. And that only gets you as far as Warsaw. By then, you’ve already got lines of communication and supply extending hundreds of kilometres through hostile territory, and a presumably unhappy Ukraine to worry about, as well as the threat of NATO forces in Slovakia and Hungary to the South, and the Baltic States to the North.

Oh yes, manpower. The total strength of the Russian military is about one million, including all the branches, with about two million reservists. That sounds a lot, but of course only a fraction of those are combat troops who can be used in a modern high-technology ground war. The Russians seem to be employing about a 100,000 troops in current operations in the Ukraine, and that’s probably close to the maximum effort they can make in any one operation outside the country, particularly as about two-thirds of their total strength is conscripts. By contrast, the old group of Soviet forces in the GDR alone had a strength of some 350,000 men. Overrunning Europe would be problematic, therefore.

And where would the battles take place, and how? In the Cold War, the two forces were actually facing each other in essentially in the positions they occupied in 1945. The British, French and American forces, like the Soviets, were repurposed versions of the occupying armies at the end of WW2. Over several decades, a huge infrastructure of barracks, training areas and airfields was added to what remained of the historical infrastructure in Germany. The only comparable area today is Poland. So are we going to deploy our shiny new armies along the Polish-Belarusian border? Has anybody asked the Poles what they think about turning their country into an armed camp, as Germany used to be? Who’s going to pay for all that?

But let’s say that some, at least, of the wilder promises of military expansion and rearmament are maintained, rather than being quietly forgotten. Lots more money is voted, and some kind of future NATO concept is finally agreed. That’s the easy bit, though. The first problem is time, and history may help a bit here. You don’t build up and equip armed forces overnight. So the British, and French governments all started rearming after 1934. Even at 1930s levels of technology,  though, neither was fully ready by 1939. Radar, like the Spitfires and Hurricanes, only just arrived in time for the Battle of Britain. At least the British had some government-owned arms factories: in France, successive governments found that the private sector simply wasn’t that interested in producing complex military systems where there was no guarantee of long term orders. These days, of course, it’s a lot worse. The western armaments industry is small, heavily concentrated and internationalised. It makes small numbers —often just a handful each month—of highly sophisticated and complex platforms. So the first thing you would need to do is set up a lot more factories, as the British did in the 1930s. For that, you need many more skilled engineers and a highly qualified workforce, and the time and materials to build the factories. You need raw materials and components to make the weapons and equipment, many of which come from far away, quite a few from China. And you’ll be competing with everyone else for the same raw materials and components.

You’ll need more personnel, of course. For a start, there’s an obvious limit to the number of people in any country who can be high-tech military specialists: not just fast jet pilots, but also officers or at least senior NCOs in a modern high-technology Army or Air Force. For most of those  who can, it won’t be an attractive career.  Few military personnel just carry a rifle around these days, and the militaries of most countries struggle to retain the technical specialists they do have, in the face of better salaries and conditions of work elsewhere. Modern militaries today are very small by the standards of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Take the Bundeswehr, for example. At the height of the Cold War, it had half a million active personnel, and millions of reservists. It now has less than a third of the active strength it had then , and only handfuls of reservists. Its once mighty Army has shrunk to 60,000 personnel, and it is also badly weakened by many years of underfunding. But it still has trouble attracting enough technical specialists, even at its present size.

This problem is insoluble without the return of military service. It doesn’t need to be universal: it can be highly selective, as in Russia, while maintaining an expanded permanent professional cadre. But is that even remotely politically feasible in most countries? By the end of the Cold War, military service had often dropped to token levels (typically six months)  but it was still generally accepted politically: after all, Soviet forces were not that far away. But a selective military service scheme, where often the better educated and more technically skilled receive the call, isn’t going to be popular, especially if it means Belgian conscripts spending six months in a barracks on the Polish/Belorussian frontier. And if you double or triple the size of the military, you need to double or triple the number of officers and senior NCOs, since someone has to lead, train and administer them. You can’t just magically find people with perhaps two years’ initial training and 10-15 years of experience. And of course you need a large auxiliary workforce of administrators, educators, cooks, domestic staff, security guards, medical personnel, and half a hundred other specialities.

Where are you going to train them? For a hundred years until the end of the Cold War, western nations set up a huge infrastructure to house, feed and train large numbers of conscripts every year. Almost all of that has been sold off: there are often luxury flats today where the flagpoles once stood. You couldn’t even think of returning to the sort of militaries the West had a generation ago without massive programmes of land purchase (or seizure) and new building construction.  And that’s only individual basic training. You then need to set up new establishments, with new instructors and support staff, for the technical and specialist training. After which comes collective training, for which you need ranges and exercise areas. And of course there will be a lot more flying training, which is notoriously noisy and disruptive. There are some things you can’t do by Zoom.

But let’s assume you’ve done this. Over ten difficult years,  you have doubled or tripled the size of your forces at huge expense and with enormous disruption, reintroduced selective national service, and fielded your shiny new military. What do you do with it? Where do you put it? In the Cold War, there were permanent British, Dutch, German, Belgian and US forces stationed in Germany itself, with French forces ready to move in. So are we going to do the same thing in Poland? Will Italian and Croatian forces be stationed in Romania? If not, are the Dutch going to set up and maintain a transport and logistic infrastructure enabling them to deploy a distance of perhaps 1500km to the Polish border?

I could go on. But the answer to all these question is self-evidently “no.” There will be token measures, ritual chest-beating, some rebuilding of capability and quite a lot of extra money, often wasted. But for severely practical reasons, anything resembling the size and type of the NATO deployments in the Cold War simply isn’t going to happen. What, then?

Well, we wind up with a very curious situation. The Russians will secure their frontiers and develop a protective glacis against western incursions. But the nearest Russian soldier will still be perhaps 6-700 kilometres away from the nearest NATO frontier. And the Russians will have neither the capability not the intention to go much further west, without being provoked by some catastrophic political crisis which for the moment we can’t even imagine.

So at first sight, things should settle down, and in the end not change very much. The West glowering at Russia, Russia glowering at the West, with perhaps a few Russian troops in Belarus and a few NATO troops in Poland. Can we go back to where we were before? Not so fast. As I explained in the previous essay, the underlying economic and military situation has been changing for a while. It just hasn’t been consciously registered by western leaders.  Europe will continue to be dependent on Russia for natural gas and a whole range of other raw materials, while Russia doesn’t really depend on the West for much except luxuries. Ambitious plans to replace Russian natural gas may succeed over a long enough time and with enough investment, but no amount of investment can mine scare metals that were not in the ground in the first place. (The West can’t supply its own needs for titanium, for example: Russia can.) There will be repercussions, though for the moment it’s not clear how things will turn out.

But on the military side, the position will be starker. Russia will be able to use force to keep any foreign military presence away from its borders. It can stop any western attempt to expand into Belarus, and it can keep Ukraine disarmed, by force if necessary. And there will be nothing the West can do about it. (As I’ve explained, nuclear weapons are simply not relevant here.) As a result, Europe will have to get used to living with a Russia which, whilst not a super-power,  is militarily superior to any reasonable combination of European states, assuming they could operate together, and which can defeat any plausible US force despatched to Europe.

One reason for this is precisely the lack of a common frontier. The only way that Europe and Russia can directly threaten or strike each other is by air, and there, Russia has a massive advantage. Now, this is not in manned aircraft. Individually, NATO air-superiority aircraft and pilots are almost certainly superior to their Russian equivalents. But that’s soccer, and the Russians are playing rugby. Their air defence system is effectively impenetrable by Western aircraft without horrific casualties, which would risk ultimately disarming the nations sending the aircraft. If, say, NATO sent a hundred strike aircraft against Russia in one mission, and the Russians used a thousand missiles to destroy them, their infrastructure and support, on the ground or in the air, Russia could replace those missiles in months, whereas NATO would take perhaps five years to regenerate the same capability with trained pilots and support personnel. And with conventional bomb-loads, how much damage could the aircraft and missiles actually reaching the target manage to do? The Russians have spent decades building on the impressive old Soviet Air Defence system, to produce a capability to stop the vast majority of attacks on their territory by aircraft and missiles, and with NATO’s current inventory, the alliance is simply not able to threaten enough damage. The Russians, on the other hand, have invested a great deal of money in high-precision, long-range conventional missiles, which are difficult or even impossible to stop, in spite of laborious efforts by NATO over the last twenty years to develop anti-missile defence. These are not super-weapons, and there may not be many of them, but they change the strategic landscape entirely. The West can’t hurt Russia very much, but Russia can hurt the West a lot more.

As I’ve suggested before, the political and media classes are often slow to appreciate the consequences of changes in the underlying economic and strategic realities, and tend to coast along like bicycles going downhill. This new situation will take some getting used to, but may, in the end, turn out to be stabilising. Neither Russia nor the West has any real reason to attack the other. Neither can launch a major ground attack against the others’ vital interests, and neither has any reason to resort to nuclear weapons. All we have to hope for is a minimum amount of common sense and rationality: you know, the kind of thing that hasn’t been much in evidence recently.

Finland “Seizes” Almost 1000 Russian Rail Cars

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Finland has seized nearly a thousand Russian freight cars as a result of EU sanctions.  On its face, this appears to be outright THEFT.

After the EU sanctioned Russian coal in April, Finland’s state-owned rail operator VR moved to reduce railway traffic from Russia. According to a June 6 letter from Russian Railways to the Ministry of Transport, 865 Russian freight cars have been seized by Finnish bailiffs.

VR officials confirmed that about 800 sanctioned Russian freight cars were in Finland at the moment and that the company wishes to return any that have not been seized. VR’s head of logistics said there were around 5,000 Russian cars when it decided to reduce traffic, and that bailiff authorities ordered some to be seized.

The seized railway cars belong to Russian companies either targeted by EU sanctions or dealing with indirect consequences of sanctions. Russian companies impacted by the freight car seizure have denounced the move as “unlawful.”

Finnish bailiff authorities say that Finland had frozen the assets of dozens of Russian and Belarusian individuals and legal entities, including transportation firms. In total, the frozen assets are worth about $84 million.

This week at a conference in Switzerland, Ukrainian officials said they wanted seized Russian assets and Russia’s frozen foreign currency reserves to be used to pay for Ukraine’s future reconstruction. But Western officials have yet to agree to the plan, as such a move would be outright theft.

Dollar Vs Yuan: Central Banks Increasingly Want to Hold China’s Currency

Central banks are increasingly keen to hold China’s yuan as a reserve currency, according to a new survey.
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Some 85% of central bank reserve managers said they already hold or are interested in owning the yuan.
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More than 80% said a shift to a more “multipolar” world, where the US no longer reigns supreme, would benefit the currency.

Article HERE

Oil From US Reserves Went to Asia, Europe As Refineries Near Full Tilt

This is good news. A nation without oil, is a nation that is unable to conduct war. -MM

More than 5 million barrels of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve were exported to Asia and Europe last month, Reuters first reported.

Among the shipments were two cargo ships carrying 560,000 barrels each from Atlantic Trading & Marketing, part of France’s TotalEnergies, according to Reuters. And Phillips 66, the fourth-largest oil supplier in the US, sent about 470,000 barrels from a storage facility in Texas to Trieste, Italy, where a pipeline feeds refineries in central Europe.

The exports follow similar shipments of Strategic Petroleum Reserve crude in April, when three ships went to Europe to replace Russian oil.

Overall, US oil exports have been surging since Russia invaded Ukraine in February as Western countries and companies turn away from Russian supplies.

While gas prices typically follow oil prices, which are set by global markets, US refineries have been a key bottleneck. Because of earlier shutdowns and limited investment in recent years, capacity has shrunk and refineries have been running nearly at full tilt.

With little extra scope for refining more volumes of fuel, additional supplies of crude, including from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, have been going overseas. In fact, oil exports from the US Gulf Coast hit a record rate in the second quarter, according to Rystad Energy.

The Biden administration has been releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to lower fuel prices. Releases are at a record pace of roughly 1 million barrels a day, bringing the stockpile to the lowest level since 1986 in June.

Full article HERE

Russian army converts Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant into a military base

Genius. -MM

Russian forces are transforming Europe’s largest nuclear power plant into a military base on the front lines of surveillance, exacerbating months-long security crises at the giant nuclear power plant and its thousands of workers.

More than 500 Russian soldiers occupied the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine in March, Wall Street Journal signature Drew Hinshaw/Joe Parkinson reported today. According to workers, residents, Ukrainian officials and diplomats, the Russian soldiers have deployed heavy artillery batteries and laid lethal mines in recent weeks along the coast of the reservoir used to cool the plant’s six reactors. Ukrainian troops control several towns scattered across the river, about 3 miles (about 5 kilometers), but they don’t think it’s easy to attack the plant because of the dangers of artillery battles around the reactors in use.

The newly deployed armaments allowed the plant to be virtually immune to a counterattack by the Ukrainian military, creating an unprecedented situation for the heavily regulated atomic energy industry: the slow transformation of a nuclear power plant into a military fortress. A lesser-publicized aspect of Russia’s war strategy, the country’s military deploys weapons every day around the world’s largest nuclear power plant to tighten its grip on the front line as the Russian approach to southern Ukraine comes to a standstill.

The rest of the article HERE

Done in the name of “democracy”The Airbus sales to Chinese airlines is causing upset in the Empire no doubt:

Boeing Disappointed

In the article, it cited potential loss of Boeing sales in the Chinese market of $38Billion to $51Billion per year and said this equates to loss of job for 167K to 225K workers. So, in the aircraft industry worker salaries average $225K/annum per worker??? Wow, this is higher than I thought. Salary figures usually only include wage+ benefit costs. On top of that one needs to add other loading of costs such as travel/per diem/office/factory, etc. etc. This is one well-paying labor field.

Russia Adds Wheat to “Rubles Only” Payment

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The Russian government has added grain, sunflower oil, and extracted meal to the list of exports that must be paid for in rubles. A resolution giving effect to the decision was adopted on Friday and published on the official portal of legal information.

It also provides for a one-year extension of duties to be paid in the national currency in respect of exported sunflower oil and sunflower meal until August 31, 2023.

As part of the new payment mechanism, the base price for calculating the export duty on wheat will be 15,000 rubles (over $267) per ton.

Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter and a major supplier of sunflower seeds. Russian Minister for Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev said this month that the country would export agricultural products to “friendly countries” only.

According to the minister, Russia’s grain harvest could reach 130 million tons this year, which would be enough to cover both domestic needs and ensure export potential.

RUSSIA, CHINA, IRAN, VENEZUELA WAR GAMES MID AUGUST – Target: USA

Normally, this story would be COVERT INTEL for subscribers only, but this is too important: In Mid-August, Russia, China, Iran, and ten other nations will join Venezuela in “War Games” off the US from Latin America . . .  and the Caribbean.

This is just a little too coincidental given the depletion of our Ammunition and Weapons supplies sent to Ukraine, and the draining of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve which now has only 27 days of oil left in it.

Its the perfect setup for an Invader to attack us, here, in the USA.

It’s almost as though the U.S. is being intentionally weakened by our own government, to make us ripe to be invaded and taken over.

The information about this enormous “war game” fits just a little too neatly into a pattern of events that seem all designed to lead the USA to a fall.

I do not yet have the exact date for this war game BUT . . .

The nations involved will “pre-position forward-deployed military assets in Latin America and in the Caribbean.”   So they are already moving troops into place.

Maybe I’m paranoid, but maybe I can see the writing on the wall as plain as day.

How To Make DIY Cat Toys! (Super Easy)

Why not do some DIY? It’s easy and fun!

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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I’m so tired of the geopolitical stress, let’s go through the news with a laugh, a smile and a cat

Who’s running the West right now?

It’s the Fu Er Dai. Or the adult version the Guan Er Dai. Which is a Chinese name for “spoiled rich kid from a super-billionaire”. These children are so used to being pampered and treated like royalty that they become arrogant bastards or the female equivalent.

Daddy will always “bail them out” of trouble. So they have NEVER seen the consequences of their actions. They believe that they are untouchable, and that this factor comes direct from God.

The term "Fuerdai" literally translates to 'rich second generation'. It describes Chinese people born into families of high socioeconomic status, who inherited their wealth but did not create it.

The term is often used in a derogatory manner, with emphasis on their overindulgent lifestyles and materialistic attitudes.

The term has also seen limited use as a general label for anyone with rich parents and who enjoyed a privileged upbringing as a result. Non-Chinese figures, such as Fidel Castro and Donald Trump, have been described by Chinese media as Fuerdais.

-Wikipedia

Who are these people running the USA, and what is going on?

When a civilization achieves its primary goal (namely being self-sufficient) it stops striving. This is because once having attained its goal, it no longer NEEDS to strive.

Older civilizations realize that once the primary initial goals are achieved, a series of subsequent long-term goals must be implemented. Otherwise a long-duration malaise would seep into the society.

But young nations, well, they don’t realize this. And you know, the United States is a very young nation.

Such is the nature of life.

When you do a task well, you move it aside and, behold! there is another one right behind it.

Fix the stove so you can find the problem in the gas line; replace a clogged pipe in the garden and watch the new stronger water pressure blow up a few corroded sprinkler heads.

As a society ages, it moves from a calling to a job. The calling consists of survival, and you get perhaps not immediate feedback, but at least it’s “concrete”  feedback. You are either cold, wet, and hungry surrounded by predators or you are not; you are warm, dry, and fed.

When a calling becomes a job, it moves from ends-over-means to means-over-ends.

In a calling, you set up an objective and do it however you have to, based on the situation and what works. In a job, you stick to methods prescribed by those above you for the “optics” of working hard, obeying, and helping others.

With any job, we see the problem of success. If one person uses a certain method and succeeds, it becomes de facto obligatory for the rest of the group to emulate that. Therefore, you get an impassable groupthink, and that spurs on a contrarian, ironist, and novelty-based movement.

This group turns on the idea of success itself.

They do not want to emulate what others have done, and they instead seek to declare reality unreal so that they can pursue what makes others around them feel good, which gives these anti-success people more social popularity and therefore power.

People of this nature aim to always be seen as the good guy in a social situation because they know it keeps others from attacking while building their own control over others. This makes them feel safe from attack, although since it is never certain this power is weak and like a dictator, they must constantly reinforce it.

The interesting thing here is that they no longer care about whether their ideas work in reality.

The idea — the symbol, the feelings, the theory — replaces reality.

This is because the symbol is being used to manipulate others by creating joyful feelings in them.

This mirrors how control-based civilizations work, namely that they exclude all methods which scare the group or debunk the dominant paradigm.

By choosing from among what is left, people unconsciously reinforce the system and therefore, feelings of safety, pacifism, and relevance.

In other words, people choose political opinions for the social benefit of having those opinions.

And they have become entirely disconnected from the effects of those opinions.

This is a type of mandated narcissism which quickly influences all levels of the society and individual behavior.

Manipulation also forces you to scorn those you manipulate and see them as lesser even when saying to their faces how equal and good they are. The point is to benefit yourself by manipulating these marks and rubes, not to help them. They help you.

In this way, the late stage society becomes a pathological place where everyone lies to each other in the hopes of swaying enough others to have power. How do people enslave themselves? They adopt a system of manipulation, at which point no sanity will be tolerated.

Such a society breaks down into two mirror-image groups, the “do the stuff that always works” party and the “do anything but the stuff that always works” party. The latter has better symbols but no goal except not the other goal, so they have no consistency; forever rationalization, they seek reasons to justify what they want, and have no actual reasons for what they do.

Sure, some decent ones get caught up in it too, the true believers. They believe the message of pacifism, which is that if we remove the differences in situation, people can get along and actually like each other. It is a pleasant dream.

Saner people simply opt for fairness, but realize that it has nothing to do with redistribution wealth, status, and power. Instead it means accepting people as they are and rewarding the ones who do good so that the others know what they must do.

Roots conservatives such as your scribe here see things even more simply: reward only the good, and remove the bad each generation, so that the next season you have people who are inherently and inwardly better, instead of trying to force bad people to behave as if they are good.

Better than tolerance, this is acceptance. You recognize the good as what they are, and also recognize the bad as what they are, and you send the bad away because they are incompatible with what you want. You take them as what they are and do not pretend, which is more honorable than manipulation.

This process of decay has no masters; it occurs naturally in human groups because, unless guided by kings who push the group to new heights, every group falls back on dividing up the spoils and pursuing the individualistic as a moral good.

For this reason it proves hard to fight. You are not fighting against people, but their illusions. You defeat them only by revealing the emptiness of those illusions. Otherwise, you are just killing your own people for another pointless war over symbols.

Well, with that on to the way… where is the collective West in Late Stage Democracy today?

In America, it seems the Supreme Court has pushed back on abortion, the States are gaining power, and the federal government has doubled down on its Carter-style pursuit of ideologically-symbolic actions on environmentalism, diversity, poverty, and sexual liberation.

But America is not the world.

The bigger factor will probably be the global currency market. US dollars are in high demand when we drop interest rates because the dollar becomes like BitCoin, an easy way to acquire relatively untraceable cash in many countries for quick business deals.

As time goes on however it has become quite clear that the dollar is losing actual value because we have too many in circulation that are not backed by anything tangible. They are simply paper of a value that is no longer tangible.

The rest of the world realizes this.

The markets realize that FAANG stocks are not worth nearly what the label says; there is distrust of the American economy because of our heavy debt public and private, our instability arising from diversity, and our complete political inconsistency.

In the meantime, all of the problems that the West has blown off for generations are coming home to roost. Climate change is nonsense, but the Ecocide is real. Water and food supplies are declining. Pollution is in everything. Affirmative action, unions, globalist treaties, a surplus of laws and regulations, and high taxes have killed quality of life.

This means that change is on the wind.

The American Left is fighting a rearguard action now, trying to make their retreat as devastating as possible while keeping their networks in place. However, they have lost the middle of the voting population, and as the Great Replacement becomes clear, they are going to lose many of the others.

When change comes it is first met with [1] panic, then [2] denial, then [3] tantrums, and finally [4] acceptance, after which point people start to see the potential bright side.

America is somewhere in the first two steps. And right now, the West is starting it’s plummet towards the third step. It’s an exciting step as global democracy, worldwide Leftism, fiat currency, multicultural diversity, and international finance begin their graceful arc of descent…

… accelerating as they go…

…until they reach ballistic conditions …

…where steering is no longer possible…

…and impact …

…an absolute certainty.

Man denied giving blood after refusing to answer if he was pregnant

Sinclair, of Stirling in central Scotland, was told to complete a form asking whether he was with child or had been pregnant in the last six months, prompting him to reply that the question did not apply to a man in his late 60s.

Sinclair told a staffer at the Albert Halls clinic in Stirling it was “impossible” for him to be pregnant, but soon learned that he needed to answer the query in order to give blood. He now has no plans on returning to the donation center.

The secret to the West is careerism.

Someone got promoted for writing that “stunning and brave” question into the script. This gave the bosses bragging rights at the club about how progressive they were and satisfied the insurers, politicians, and lawyers, who wanted to make sure that no one would be sued for discrimination.

Only when those same people get their careers wrecked and end up working at Tesco will the insanity stop.

In the meantime, institutions like this run on the goodwill of decent, normal people and more of them will stay away, so the voters (who have slept through all of this) will wake up when they find out that the only blood available at hospitals is being bought from teenage drug addicts who need the money.

Texas Could Vote to Secede From U.S. in 2023 as GOP Pushes for Referendum

Under a section titled “State Sovereignty,” the platform states: “Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.

“Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.”

Texas has a solid argument for secession: the fraudulent 2020 election.

If Texas is being manipulated by fraudulent votes, it can consider its agreement with the United States to provide fair and balanced elections to be in breach, and therefore make a solid legal argument — going back to English common law — for secession.

If Texas were to break away and roll back its policies to 1980s America levels, it would quickly become a home for most of the business in North America if not the world.

If it scrapped the majority of rules and entitlements, it would dominate the world economy. And, unlike Ukraine, it would most likely retain its nuclear weapons.

What is Japan doing buying Chinese used cigarette butts?

2022-06-29 17:19 HKT From HERE

Japan has always had cooperative companies in Qingdao, Chengdu and other places to acquire the business of cigarette butts, which will be exported to Japan after the acquisition. So what exactly does Japan need these cigarette butts for?

First of all, the main component of cigarette butts is acetate fiber. In addition to being used in cigarette butts filtering, it is widely used in medical and clothing industries because of its various characteristics. Japan is an island country with scarce resources and strong demand. Under the promotion, Japan also changed from military plunder during World War II to commercial recycling.

In China, acetate fiber currently needs to be imported, and the import price of one ton can reach about 20,000 yuan. Some people say why China does not collect and process it, and we have so many smokers. Part of the reason is that the cost of collecting cigarette butts is too high. China has only started sorting waste in recent years. As far as cigarette butts are concerned, it is also difficult to recycle. Overall, it is not as cost-effective as imported from abroad.

Therefore, China still has a long way to go in the field of recycling. Japan has started the use of recycling in the recent Tokyo Olympics. Although most people complain, it is also an attempt. I hope China can also gradually In this regard, there are some inclinations in resource research and development. After all, China has such a large population and various wastes brought about by consumption. If useful materials can be classified in it, then China’s energy will also have an independent path. In the future, the earth’s resources In the continuous consumption, solar energy, wind energy, hydrogen, and recyclable materials have become the top priorities of future energy use.

Holy Mackerel, the Confederacy Just Won

Thoughts by an American on the latest rulings by the Supreme Court. -MM

Back in the 1860s, America fought a civil war over states rights. While the touchstone issue for the North was slavery, for the South it was tariffs and other laws favoring the northeastern factories that mostly employed Irish people.

Naturally Abraham Lincoln, a student of the modern State in the European sense, found it easy to unite these new Irish voters against the mostly-Anglo South, and to use that to centralize government control with a Civil Rights Act which passed shortly after his 2500 fps lobotomy and death.

The sense in America — already divided by Irish diversity — was that if we did not force everyone into a false unity and conformity of action, the same methods at the same time, we would disintegrate and not be able to compete with modern nations.

Consequently law after the Civil War and during the world wars followed the same goal: strengthen federal authority, enforce it on the states, standardize everything, and therefore, create a sensation and sentiment of unity among the people of the nation.

Fighting dictators like Stalin and Hitler gave us a false view of what we were attempting to avoid. We assumed that the founding fathers tried to warn us off of dictatorship, but they were really trying to warn us away from infectious groupthink.

Infectious groupthink occurs when an idea becomes popular because it is lowest common denominator, after which point no one will refrain from emulating it because they want to be competitive with others who are using that idea. If something succeeds, everyone does it, even if not really relevant.

You can see infectious groupthink in America today. Even companies that make sump pumps and oil filters are advertising how they support LGBT gay pride month, BLM racial shakedowns, and other goodthinker topics.

Consequently, the Supreme Court is pushing back with a few momentous decisions, all of which favor resisting the herd and granting more power to local communities and states:

  • Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization: this ruling removes a federal right to abortion, justified by the 14A, and instead throws the issue back to the states. This does not automatically make abortion legal or illegal; most states, having had time to prepare, have laws in place to either grant abortion rights or criminalize abortion. This ruling in effect gives the states the power of a nation-state, namely that they are for themselves deciding what defines murder, the onset of human life, and the degree to which they want legal sexual liberation.
  • New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n Inc. v. Bruen: argued on the basis of the 14A in defense of the Second Amendment, the Court holds that New York violated the rights of its citizens by imposing costs and regulations on the ability to carrry a firearm. This would have been stronger had it been a straight 2A case, but it sets up the Left to take aim at the 14A, which would great help us to get it reinterpreted or removed. This case essentially blocks not just local but federal action to impose gun control.
  • Vega v. Tekoh: on the surface, the Court holds that a citizen may not sue the state for having failed to give him a full Miranda warning, but in the process, the Court redefined the Miranda warning as “protections of rights” and not rights themselves. In other words, the expansion of human rights hit an upward limit, and Miranda failures may in the future not be grounds for overturning convictions. This also throws the question back to the states.

These cases came about for the most part in reaction to the seizure of the federal government by the Left and the rapid pace with which it has used presidential executive orders, unelected bureaucrat written regulations, and hastily assembled bills rocketed through a compliant House.

The Court exists to protect the Constitution. Therefore, when it sees federal overreach, it tends to pare it back by removing the crutches it uses to justify such power. Almost universally these have been 14A and § 1980 cases which enforce individual rights over state or local decisions via federal law.

However, as justices have hinted in the past, many of these laws were designed to fix perceived wrongs, not become eternal justifications for whatever power and money government wants to seize. By kicking these back to the states, the Court makes the voters choose on these hot-button issues.

This allows the Court to fulfill one of the purposes of the Constitution: it is designed to allow people to escape from being forced to comply with the latest trend of infectious groupthink. It allows states and individuals to break away from the herd.

Lincoln destroyed that, as did his party in subsequent years, with the Civil Rights act, much as the 1913 income tax obliterated what was left, since now people were required to fund all sorts of infectious groupthink programs that they would otherwise want to escape.

The Court has now affirmed that the Confederacy was indeed right about states rights. In order to avoid groupthink and socialist-style entitlements programs turned coercive, such as diversity, EMTALA, and the need to fund the diversity abyss, states need to make these decisions, not the fedgov.

If we are lucky, the Court will take aim at the expansion of civil rights as a blank cheque for abolishing all standards. If the next big case involves affirmative action, we could see a different America emerge quite shortly as people flee diversity and socialism.

Suspicious about military content, Nepal rejects US disaster mitigation programme

2022/06/23
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Gen. Charles A.Flynn with Nepalese PM Sher Bahadur Deuba
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Nepal does not want to jeopardize relations with China
By P.K. Balachandran
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Colombo, June 21: Fearing that the US State Partnership Programme (SPP) is a trap to involve it in an anti-China military alliance, the Sher Bahadur Deuba government in Nepal has rejected the programme.
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The Deuba government (like predecessor governments in 2015, 2017 and 2019) was initially impressed with the SPP for its disaster mitigation content, but it had to reject it eventually, because the mood in Nepal is unambiguously against foreign programs which smack of a military alliance.
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Nepalese governments have generally not wanted any trans-national agreements which could jeopardize their delicately balanced relationship between India and the US on the on hand and China on the other.
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Article HERE

NATO claims Vladimir Putin and Xi Jingping collude to subvert the global order

June 30, 2022 – 8.21am
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Madrid | NATO has accused Beijing of conspiring with Moscow to subvert the international rules-based order...

... as part of a new 10-year blueprint that identifies China for the first time as a global threat...

... and brands Russia the most significant and direct threat to security, peace and stability in Europe.

Beijing reacted angrily to the new NATO Strategic Concept, agreed to at its summit in Madrid, accusing the 32-member alliance of trying to launch a new cold war.

Full article HERE

Homemade Potato Chips

Forget buying a bag of potato chips at the grocery store when you can make these at home. This quick and easy recipe will delight everyone in the family. —Taste of Home Test Kitchen

Ingredients

  • 7 unpeeled medium potatoes (about 2 pounds)
  • 2 quarts ice water
  • 5 teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoons garlic powder
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons celery salt
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons pepper
  • Oil for deep-fat frying

Directions

  1. Using a vegetable peeler or metal cheese slicer, cut potatoes into very thin slices. Place in a large bowl; add ice water and salt. Soak for 30 minutes.
  2. Drain potatoes; place on paper towels and pat dry. In a small bowl, combine the garlic powder, celery salt and pepper; set aside.
  3. In a cast-iron or other heavy skillet, heat 1-1/2 in. oil to 375°. Fry potatoes in batches until golden brown, 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently.
  4. Remove with a slotted spoon; drain on paper towels. Immediately sprinkle with seasoning mixture.

Manfred Mann – Blinded by the Light

I hope you all appreciate this little tune.

Beijing Slams NATO For ‘Maliciously Smearing’ China As A Security Threat

Friday, Jul 01, 2022 – 09:50 AM

Authored by Kenny Stancil via Common Dreams, 

Beijing criticized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Thursday after the U.S.-led military alliance asserted that China poses “serious challenges” to global stability.

NATO listed China as one of its priorities in the so-called 2022 Strategic Concept that leaders approved Wednesday at a summit in Madrid. This marked a first, as the alliance’s previous blueprint, published in 2010, made no mention of the East Asian country. According to NATO, Beijing’s “coercive policies” threaten the Western bloc’s “interests, security, and values.”

Addressing the “systemic challenges posed by the People’s Republic of China to Euro-Atlantic security” and the “deepening strategic partnership” between China and Russia is now a NATO priority, the bloc declared.

Beijing responded with indignation. “Who’s challenging global security and undermining world peace?” China’s mission to the European Union asked Thursday in a statement. “Are there any wars or conflicts over the years where NATO is not involved?”

“NATO’s so-called Strategic Concept, filled with Cold War thinking and ideological bias, is maliciously attacking and smearing China. We firmly oppose it,” the statement said. “When it comes to acts that undermine China’s interests, we will make firm and strong responses.”

As The Guardian reported:

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China has been pointing its finger at the U.S. and NATO on multiple occasions. But NATO's attention to the China-Russia partnership began even before Moscow's military operations in its neighbor. It has also been openly talking about China for some time.

In its annual summit in Brussels last June, the traditionally Russia-focused military alliance asserted, for the first time, that it needed to respond to Beijing's growing power. The language the bloc used at the time also echoed the E.U.'s phrase of "systemic rival," and the U.K.'s "systemic competitor" when describing China.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Wednesday that “China is substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbors, threatening Taiwan… monitoring and controlling its own citizens through advanced technology, and spreading Russian lies and disinformation.”

“China is not our adversary,” said Stoltenberg, “but we must be clear-eyed about the serious challenges it represents.” In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Thursday that NATO’s latest policy document “disregards facts, confuses black and white… [and] smears China’s foreign policy.”

China, Zhao added, does not pose “the systemic challenge imagined.” Instead, he argued, it is NATO that is a “systemic challenge to world peace and stability” and its “hands are stained with the blood of the world’s people.”

While Stoltenberg claimed that NATO is still “open to constructive engagement” with Beijing, the trans-Atlantic military alliance is moving to expand its reach across the Pacific. This is due in part to fears that Russia’s military assault on Ukraine could embolden China to invade Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing considers its province, and concerns about possible military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing on Russia’s Pacific coast.

As Al Jazeera reported:

Highlighting NATO's new focus on China, the gathering of world leaders in Madrid, both inside the bloc's summit and on its sidelines, included many from Asian nations.

It was the first time that the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand were invited to a NATO summit. They participated in a NATO session on new global challenges after holding a side meeting outside of the summit.

On Wednesday, Zhao encouraged NATO to abandon its “zero-sum game and the practice of creating enemies, and not try to mess up Asia and the whole world after disrupting Europe.” Referring to NATO’s response to the war in Ukraine, Zhao said that “sanctions are not a way out of conflicts, and the continued delivery of weapons will not help realize peace.”

During this week’s summit, Stoltenberg announced that “thousands of new troops would be deployed in eight countries on NATO’s eastern flank,” the New York Times reported Thursday. Biden, for his part, said that “Washington would deploy an Army garrison headquarters and a field support battalion in Poland, the first U.S. forces permanently located on NATO’s eastern flank.”

Just before issuing its strategic blueprint, NATO also extended formal membership invitations to Finland and Sweden. Peace advocates have warned that the incorporation of the two previously neutral Nordic countries, one of which shares an 830-mile border with Russia, into NATO increases the likelihood of a direct confrontation that could spiral into a nuclear war.

The Time of Our Time

We have not been so ripe for regime change since 1776. A ruling Party of Chaos is doing absolutely everything to disorder our lives and there really is no generous interpretation for its motives.

Let’s face it: most people will not read Justice Alito’s carefully crafted arguments about what the constitution says or doesn’t say about abortion, or the meaning of “ordered liberty” through our history.

We do not live in history. We live in the time of our time.

And, until just recently, this has been a time that discarded former modes of conduct between men, women, and children as inconvenient to the presumably greater project of self-actualization.

To be-all-that-you-can-be is a stirring notion, and it seemed to work nicely within the colossal techno-industrial armature of the past century, with all its inducements to thrive personally, at least for the comfortable elites who pulled the levers of that system — though not so much for those below caught in the gears, who produced children despite all the novel means for avoiding it.

For the fortunate, motherhood became just another “no” box to check off, while fatherhood merged into the odious mists of obsolete patriarchy.

History is made up of things that seem like good ideas at the time. The hard part now is moving out of a familiar time into the undiscovered country of a new time.

The support system for all that is going, going, gone and in the ensuing flux all that rousing self-actualization starts to look more like Thomas Hobbes’s war of all against all, a savage and pre-human state of nature. As this occurs, all human beings have to fall back on are modes of conduct that include a moral and ethical dimension, which is to say, what is right and what is wrong, not just what is allowed at a given moment.

Which is also to say: maybe the time of smashing boundaries is over. As that scaffold of techno-industrial comfort and safety disintegrates, and all the dazzling promises of becoming transhuman dissolve — sorry, Klaus Schwab — we will likely have to settle for being human again, and in the best way, not the worst way. That includes a certain reverence for our nature and for each other. That suggests not killing children.

These days, this place on the planet that used to be a nation groans under a tribulation of bad ideas, bad choices, bad conduct, bad management, and bad faith. We have not been so ripe for regime change since 1776.

A ruling Party of Chaos is doing absolutely everything to disorder our lives and there really is no generous interpretation for its motives.

Everything it touches breaks, wilts, withers, splinters, rots, poisons, and infects the body politic, driving it deeper into derangement. It doesn’t even pretend to make sense because that would require making distinctions between what is true and what’s not true. We follow-the-science into pure evil.

What awaits is the abandoned scaffold of the family and the community as opposed to the brute hierarchies of mere lonely, forsaken persons under the leviathan state and the behemoth corporation, which have produced mainly new kinds of cruelties, such as: the deadly “vaccine” mandates, the no-knock FBI visitations, the surveillance cameras, the robotic phone trees with their interminable holds, the obtuse insults of the HR departments, the drag queens twerking in your children’s faces, and much more.

You might not know it from the news — what is the news now, anyway, except mercenary shuck-and-jive — but these giant governments and corporations are thrashing in their death throes.

Get out of their way if you possibly can.

Form the bonds you can with people and cherish them. For many, they will be all you’ll have for a while.

You can’t overstate the havoc that we’ll have to live with in the months ahead, short of blowing up the whole joint, one can hope.

And it will happen just as a gigantic set of pretenses to a New Order of things rolls out to thumping failure. Forget about central bank digital currencies. Don’t believe that the very people who have severed the relationship between actual capital and money can just magically conjure a new order of money that they propose to control and you don’t.

Meanwhile, the old-school money they created too much of is headed for the biggest gaping black hole imaginable because that’s what happens when money based on debt is not paid back. So, for a while, there will be too much money and then there will be not enough, and then nobody will have money.

All that happens as the supply of every kind of stuff in the world stops moving from Point A to Point B, including replacement parts for every sort of machine, distribution of petroleum and its products, and food.

And at the same time, it finally becomes too obvious to ignore the fact that many millions are dying or becoming disabled from the effects of the mRNA vaccines foisted on the public, especially in the USA and Europe.

Out of all that suffering will eventually come a new respect for human life and reconstructed relations between men and women, with all the abstruse ambiguities, pretensions, and nebulosities about sex put aside for some future age of decadence.

It won’t require further agonizing reappraisals by any high courts to figure it out. Children are the consequence of sex. Children are required to carry on the human project.


American Chip Makers Stall On Building New Semiconductor Plants As Subsidies Bill Languishes

Friday, Jul 01, 2022 – 12:10 AM

The Biden administration is laser-focused on sending Ukraine billions of dollars in weapons, including the latest round of anti-ship systems, artillery rockets, and rounds of 105 mm ammo for howitzer cannons that it has entirely lost focus on reshoring efforts to boost semiconductor production Stateside.

Multiple manufacturers of semiconductor wafers have announced plans for new multi-billion dollar factories across the U.S. but are contingent on Congress allocating funds to aid in building facilities under the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act. 

Congress passed the CHIPS Act in January 2021 as part of last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which proposed $52 billion in funding for increasing the domestic capacity of chip production, though the House and Senate have come to a standstill over disagreements on certain parts of the bill that have sparked so much uncertainty among companies set to build new factories.

In a letter on June 15, dozens of technology executives from IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Analog Devices, Micron, Amazon, and Alphabet called on Congress to move quickly on the CHIPS Act. They wrote, “the rest of the world is not waiting for the U.S. to act,” and funding for new chip factories must be achieved immediately.

The uncertainty around Congress not formally allocating any budget to finance the CHIPS Act is causing concern among top chipmakers planning to build massive factories that might have to delay expansion plans.

Unfortunately, CHIPS Act funding has moved more slowly than we expected, and we still don’t know when it will get done. It is time for Congress to act so we can move forward at the speed and scale we have long envisioned for Ohio and our other projects to help restore U.S. semiconductor manufacturing leadership and build a more resilient semiconductor supply chain,” an Intel spokesperson recently said in a statement. 

Taiwan’s GlobalWafers announced a new $5 billion factory in the U.S. on Monday, but contingent on subsidies from the federal government.

"This investment that they're making is contingent upon Congress passing the CHIPS Act. The [GlobalWafers] CEO told me that herself, and they reiterated that today," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told CNBC, the same day GlobalWafers announced its development plan.

In 2020, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. announced a new $12 billion plant in Phoenix, Arizona, and said some of the building costs would have to be picked up by the U.S. and Taiwan.

The Biden administration has hailed the president’s efforts to increase chip manufacturing capacity, but Congress appears to be holding things up, which may result in delays for planned expansion projects this fall.

Currently, the U.S. only accounts for 12% of the world’s chip supplies, a 40% reduction since the 1990s. The CHIPS Act is supposed to restore America’s dominance in chipmaking — but expansion plans appear to be on hold as funding Ukraine seems to be the top priority in Washington.

Asian herbal‐tobacco cigarettes: “not medicine but less harmful”?

From HERE

Introduction

Smoking in Asia has become a public health crisis, with East Asian countries having 38% of the world’s smokers.1 The high smoking prevalence is complicated by the fact that many countries have state‐run tobacco monopolies, including China, with 360 million smokers.2 Japan Tobacco International is the world’s 3rd largest transnational tobacco company and is 2/3 owned by the Ministry of Finance.3 Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand all have had tobacco monopolies as well.4,5,6 The entry of transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) into the Asian markets in the 1980s has led to higher rates of cigarette consumption than would have been otherwise expected with the native tobacco monopolies alone;7 the TTCs are now particularly interested in entering the large Chinese market.8,9

Asian herbs have been used for medicinal purposes for centuries10 and, beginning in 2000, several Asian countries started producing cigarettes that combine these herbs with tobacco. (The herbs used in Western herbal cigarettes, in contrast, use ingredients such as hazel and rose petals that are not considered medicinal nor are mixed with tobacco.11,12) Asian herbal‐tobacco cigarettes may appeal to Asian smokers who believe they are deriving a health benefit from smoking these products. Correspondingly, the TTCs and a 2001 Institute of Medicine report have encouraged the creation of potentially reduced exposure products (PREPs), which may deliver fewer toxins to smokers who are unwilling or unable to quit.13 The strategy of product modification as a form of tobacco control has been criticised by some public health groups and researchers, however, because there is no evidence of a public health benefit at the population level14,15 and this strategy may discourage current smokers from quitting.16

Little is known about Asian herbal‐tobacco cigarettes, so we sought to describe their development and product characteristics by examining international news accounts and internet sites for product descriptions and health claims. We also used the TTCs documents to determine the level of awareness and interest in the development of these products. Asian herbal‐tobacco cigarettes that claim to reduce the harms of smoking have been developed in China since the 1970s and the TTCs have been tracking these products since the 1980s. In 2000, other Asian countries tried to develop similar products, which coincides with efforts by the TTCs17 to work with Asian tobacco companies in promoting their “harm reduction” strategy in Asia.

Methods

Analysis of international news sources, company websites, and the transnational tobacco companies’ (TTC) documents. PubMed searches of herbs and brands.

Results

Twenty‐three brands were identified, mainly from China. Many products claimed to relieve respiratory symptoms and reduce toxins, with four herb‐only products advertised for smoking cessation. No literature was found to verify the health claims, except one Korean trial of an herb‐only product. Asian herbal‐tobacco cigarettes were initially produced by China by the 1970s and introduced to Japan in the 1980s. Despite initial news about research demonstrating a safer cigarette, the TTC analyses of these cigarettes suggest that these early products were not palatable and had potentially toxic cardiovascular effects. By the late 1990s, China began producing more herbal‐tobacco cigarettes in a renewed effort to reduce harmful constituents in cigarettes. After 2000, tobacco companies from Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand began producing similar products. Tobacco control groups in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand voiced concern over the health claims of herbal‐tobacco products. In 2005, China designated two herbal‐tobacco brands as key for development.

Conclusion

Asian herbal‐tobacco cigarettes claim to reduce harm, but no published literature is available to verify these claims or investigate unidentified toxicities.

The increase in Asian herbal‐tobacco cigarette production by 2000 coincides with the Asian tobacco companies’ regular scientific meetings with TTCs and their interest in harm reduction. Asia faces additional challenges in tobacco control with these culturally concordant products that may discourage smokers from quitting.

Rationing Has Already Started In Europe As The Entire Globe The West Plunges Into A Horrific Economic Nightmare

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If countries in Europe are already beginning to ration certain things due to “supply problems”, how long will it be before it starts happening in the United States?

Up until the past couple of years, many of us in the western world always considered shortages to be something that only “unsophisticated” poor countries on the other side of the planet had to deal with.

But the last couple of years have shown us that painful shortages can happen to wealthy countries in the western world too.

At first we were told that they were “just temporary”, but the months went by and we just kept having more shortages.

In fact, in 2022 “supply problems” have become so serious that many supermarkets in Europe have been forced to strictly ration essential items at various times.  For example, it was being reported that due to the war in Ukraine flour, sunflower oil and sugar were all being rationed by stores in Greece

After limiting the sale of some flours and sunflower oil online, Greek supermarkets are turning to rationing the sale of sugar as well, now including in their stores, over supply problems.

The AB Vassilopoulos is setting a maximum limit on the purchase of all brands of corn and sunflower oil and of flour per customer while Mymarket put a ceiling on sunflower oil purchases and Sklavenitis has added sugar to the rationed sales of corn oil through its online store, with a maximum of four packs, the products in high demand from restaurants, some of which said they have to stop selling french fries and other fried foods.

Over the past few months we have seen similar measures implemented in other major European nations as well.  For example, the war in Ukraine prompted some pretty severe rationing in Spain

Sporadic shortages of products like eggs, milk, and other dairy products also hit Spain since the war in Ukraine began. And major supermarkets including Mercadona and Makro began rationing sunflower oil earlier this month.

Now, stores will temporarily be allowed to limit “the number of goods that can be bought by a client,” according to information in the Official State Gazette published on Wednesday.

Looking forward, natural gas rationing is the next big thing that many people in Europe are talking about.  The flow of Russian natural gas into Europe has been cut back, and it appears that this may soon cause widespread rationing in Italy

Italy may start rationing natural-gas consumption to certain industrial giants, after Russia’s Gazprom halved supplies on Friday.

On the weekend, the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that the Italian government and energy industry would meet Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the crisis, with the likely outcome being the introduction of a state of alert under the country’s gas emergency protocol.

And CNN is reporting that Germany is “one step closer to rationing supplies” now that Russia has decided to reduce the flow of natural gas going to that country…

Europe’s biggest economy is now officially running short of natural gas and is escalating a crisis plan to preserve supplies as Russia turns off the taps.

Germany on Thursday activated the second phase of its three-stage gas emergency program, taking it one step closer to rationing supplies to industry — a step that would deliver a huge blow to the manufacturing heart of its economy.

Of course there are other parts of the globe that are dealing with problems that are far, far more serious than what Europe is facing right now.

As I discussed in an article that I posted earlier this week, significant numbers of people are starting to literally drop dead from starvation in portions of eastern Africa.  Global food supplies just keep getting tighter, and the head of the UN is openly telling us that the world is heading into an “unprecedented global hunger crisis”.

So if you have plenty of food to eat tonight, you should be thankful.

Here in the United States, economic conditions are deteriorating fairly rapidly, and most Americans are completely and totally unprepared for any sort of a major economic downturn.

Earlier today, I came across yet another survey that shows that about 60 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck

“We find that consumers in all income brackets — including those who make more than $100,000 annually — are living paycheck to paycheck. PYMNTS’ research finds that 61% of U.S. consumers were living paycheck to paycheck in April 2022, marking a 9 percentage point increase from 52% in April 2021, meaning that approximately three in five U.S. consumers devote nearly all of their salaries to expenses with little to nothing left over at the end of the month.”

So what is going to happen when those people start losing their jobs in large numbers?

Already, we have seen the number of tech layoffs greatly accelerate over the last couple of months.

Sadly, the layoffs will get much worse in the months ahead.

And as inflation continues to systematically eat away at our standard of living, Americans are turning to credit cards at a record pace

As Americans grapple with the highest inflation in 40 years, the number of new credit cards have surged as more Americans rely on them to keep up with high prices. According to a recent report from the Federal Reserve, revolving credit (credit cards and lines of credit) increased by 19.6% from the previous year to $1.103 trillion.

Going into credit card debt is not a solution.

At best, it can buy you a little bit of time.

And it is especially a bad idea to go into credit card debt as we plunge into a recession.

At this point, almost everyone realizes that things are going to get bad.  According to one recent poll, a whopping 85 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. is “headed in the wrong direction”

The national dissatisfaction is bipartisan. Most Americans, 85%, say the country is headed in the wrong direction. A majority of Republicans have been unhappy with the direction of the country since Biden’s election. Democrats had been positive about how things were going, but now 78% say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

I was astounded to see that 78 percent of Democrats believe that the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction with a Democrat in the White House.

I have never seen a number like that ever before.

But this is just another indication that the hour is late and that things are about to start getting really crazy out there.

For the moment, life is still at least somewhat normal in the western world.

Sadly, it won’t stay that way for long, and so I would recommend using your time wisely.

European road connectivity has been completely cut from Russian GPS maps

NATO sanctioned the world into self isolation. It is time for the civilized world to work and trade exclusively with each other without the crusader nations. 

By taking away Russian foreign reserve money and private assets at will, the crusaders alerted the civilized world that their currencies are untrustworthy. 

So, it is time for the civilized world to follow Putin the Great policy to stop accepting $, £, € as trading currencies as these currencies can become worthless anytime the looting civilization decided to take away from you. 

In Chinese language, the term currency is called 货币,货 is goods, 币 is money. The meaning is, only when a money able to established it trust worthiness and values in a market in exchange for goods and services, can be called currency. 

Apparently, putin the Great policy has effectively reduced the image of the crusaders currencies into its true form: untrustworthy, can become worthless anytime. The outcome is:

When The crusaders make a few hundred billions fast money from robbing the Russian reserved currency and private assets inside their countries, they alerted the world that their so-called currency are untrustworthy. So, in a foreseeable future, the crusaders will become more and more isolated from the rest of the world. Their economy will drastically reduced in size, and that they can no longer relying on printing money to maintain their economy. 

As a result , the money they print will turn into currency depreciation and domestic inflation as the civilized world no longer trust their currency. 

The speed of the crusader nations internal chaos and disintegration will be so fast that beyond most people expectations. 

The risk of the crusaders starting another world war is at all time high. However, my assessment is that, they have already lost the capability to win, so the chances of them starting another world war is reduced. Their economy will collapse sooner than they could start another war. 

Z: the number of days the crusaders live on looting the world is coming to an end:

Record numbers leaving Germany’s churches

Hundreds of thousands of people have resigned their memberships in Germany’s Protestant and Catholic churches. Fifteen years ago, 61% of Germans belonged to churches, a number that has now dropped below 50%.
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An important development toward the makeup of a new, new world order.
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Full article HERE

Chinese And Russian Navies Circle Japan In “Show Of Force”

This article is curious in that it displays the absolute ignorance of the writer. -MM

In yet another example of the increasingly close alliance between Russia and China, the Chinese Navy and Russia’s Pacific Fleet have been engaging in war game operations, seemingly in tandem around Japan, according to the Japanese Defense Ministry.

Reports of coordinated military exercises have not been officially acknowledged by Russia or China, though Japan continues to post regular updates on ship movements.  The naval exercises were apparently focused around the islands of Miyako and Okinawa, which hold 50,000 US forces, as well as a 70-mile wide corridor between the island of Yonaguni and Taiwan.

While not unheard of, military cooperation in the Pacific between Russia and China has grown in frequency, with naval exercises increasing over the past month.  While Japan calls these movements a “show of force,” they may very well be practice for a conflict planned in the near future.

After the recent BRICS summit in Beijing and the reaffirmation of China’s economic support of Russia during its war with Ukraine and NATO sanctions, it only makes sense that the economic relationship would evolve into at least a loose military agreement.  The latest decision on the induction of Sweden and Finland into NATO as well as naval escalation in the South Pacific are only going to drive Eastern interests closer together over time.

China is nursing a compulsive obsession when it comes to absorbing Taiwan into the CCP, and with the West overly focused on Russia and Ukraine, they may act soon.  If an invasion of Taiwan is planned it would have to take place sometime in September/October when weather conditions in the region are favorable to naval operations.  Leaked reports from Russian intel in March seem to indicate that a fall invasion of Taiwan was indeed in the works.  Some believe that the Russian war with Ukraine will force China to scuttle such plans, but there is also a chance that Ukraine will provide excellent cover for an action against Taiwan; forcing western governments to split their efforts and focus on two fronts instead of one.

The bigger question is:  Will Russia and China form an official military alliance?  There is no debate now over their trade alliance, but the notion of military cooperation between the two countries will lead many people to scoff.  Keep in mind, however, that there were numerous skeptics that argued only a week ago that the Turkish government under Erdogen would “never” agree to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, and yet that is exactly what they did.

The geopolitical landscape is changing fast and the old rules no longer seem to apply.

The Most Optimistic Woman On Wall Street Now Says That The U.S. Economy Has Entered A Recession

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Even the most wild optimists are starting to sound like “doom and gloomers”.  In fact, even the most optimistic woman on Wall Street is now telling us that the U.S. economy is in a recession right now.

At one time, Cathie Wood seemed like she could do no wrong.  Many of her wildly optimistic stock predictions kept coming true, and she gained hordes of Internet followers that hung on her every word.

In 2020, her ARK Innovation fund outperformed the S&P 500 by a very wide margin, and pundits such as Jim Cramer were calling her a “genius”

In 2020, Wood’s predictions appeared to be on their way to coming true. She was riding high atop the Fed-driven bull market: Her ARK Innovation fund, often known by its ticker as ARKK, returned some 157 percent during that first year of the pandemic, compared to just 18 percent for the S&P 500 as a whole. It was a legendary performance that drew accolades from various market watchers, including CNBC’s Jim Cramer, who in February of last year tweeted, “Cathie Wood is a genius.”

But these days Cathie Wood sounds like she could be writing for The Economic Collapse Blog.  The value of her ARK Innovation fund is down 67 percent over the past year, and she just did an interview with CNBC in which she stated that she believes that the U.S. economy has already plunged into a recession…

Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood said Tuesday that the U.S. is already in an economic downturn, and she admitted that she underestimated the severity and lasting power of inflation.

“We think we are in a recession,” Wood said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday. “We think a big problem out there is inventories… the increase of which I’ve never seen this large in my career. I’ve been around for 45 years.”

Of course she is far from alone.

Economist Stephen Moore also believes that the U.S. economy has entered a recessionary period…

Economist Stephen Moore warned on Monday that the United States is already in a “soft recession,” noting that the “real question” is now whether the Federal Reserve can achieve a soft landing.

Moore, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, provided the insight on “Varney & Co.” Monday, reacting to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers contradicting President Biden on Sunday by saying that a recession was “almost inevitable” in the next two years.

Peter Schiff is even more pessimistic.

In fact, he is using the word “crash” to describe what is ahead for our economy…

Stockbroker Peter Schiff, the chief economist and global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, went a step further a couple of weeks ago by tweeting that most citizens have given up on the thought of a soft landing for the economy after the Fed’s interest rate hikes and now expect a harder fall.

“The only landing possible is a crash, where everyone on board dies,” Schiff tweeted. “That’s why the Fed won’t even attempt to land and give up its pretend inflation fight.”

Sadly, all three of them are correct.

At the moment, what we are currently experiencing could definitely be described as a “soft recession”, and it will inevitably get a whole lot worse.

And U.S. consumers certainly are not hopeful about the future at this point.  On Friday, we learned that U.S. consumer confidence has now dropped to the lowest level ever recorded

A closely followed University of Michigan survey released Friday found that US consumer sentiment hit a new record low in June -— the lowest recorded level since the university started collecting the data 70 years ago.

The June index saw a 14.4% drop since May as consumers became increasingly alarmed about inflation. About 79% of those consumers said they expected bad times for business conditions in the upcoming year, the highest level for that metric since 2009.

Just think about that for a moment.

In 70 years, U.S. consumers have never been more pessimistic than they are right now.

That is incredible.

Unfortunately, most consumers are also highly vulnerable.

One recent survey found that 58 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  So when harder times come and many start losing their jobs, a lot of them are going to be in financial trouble very rapidly.

The pace at which things are now changing really is breathtaking.

Exactly one year ago, it seemed like the U.S. economy was riding high and stock prices would keep going up forever.

But now it appears that the first half of 2022 will end up being the worst first half of a year for the stock market since 1970

Stocks are about to turn in the worst first half in fifty years when the second quarter wraps on Thursday as inflation sits at a 40-year high.

The S&P 500, the broadest measure of stocks, is down nearly 18% this year the worst since 1970, as tracked by Dow Jones Market Data Group. That makes 2022 the fifth-worst half performance on record.

Trillions upon trillions of dollars of paper wealth has already been wiped out, and we continue to get more bad economic news with each passing day.

And now that the Federal Reserve has decided to foolishly raise rates just as an economic downturn is picking up speed, there is no hope that things will turn around any time soon.

The reckless optimists on Wall Street didn’t see this coming in advance.  If Cathie Wood had understood which direction things were about to go, her fund would not be down 67 percent over the past year.

But of course there are countless others on Wall Street that have been hit extremely hard as well.

The end of a party can often come very abruptly.  In this case, many investors that didn’t get out in time are now feeling an extraordinary amount of pain.

Unfortunately, a lot more pain is coming for Wall Street and for the economy as a whole.

Irrelevance

People from the first world get weirded out when they go to the third world (and its enclaves in the first world) and see people kill each other over even the mildest slight. If you disrespect someone, meaning do not acknowledge their relevance, you have basically ranked them as worthless.

It is easy to make fun of these incidents until you understand why two pieces of chicken are worth killing for:

The 57-year-old victim said he took two pieces of chicken from another resident and ate them. Akron police said the other man became upset, grabbing the victim by the throat and throwing him to the floor.

Keeping with the chicken theme:

In a Monday, June 27, Facebook statement an MPD spokesperson added: “Officers were advised by the staff that a customer was upset about $2 worth of change and chicken sandwiches.”

“The suspect made threats to do bodily harm to the female employees, and knocked the cash registers off their stands onto the floor, causing $10,000 worth of damage.”

Chicken is serious business. If you get in a dispute over it, you may end up getting shot:

Around 8:30 p.m., two men pulled into the drive-thru lane of the KFC at 6301 15th Street E. in Sarasota and got into an argument with the restaurant’s employees at the window about the food they ordered, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

Minutes later, two employees left the restaurant and met the customers in the parking lot, where the argument escalated. During the dispute, one of the employees was shot, the sheriff’s office said.

These barbecue-related slayings seem to form a trope:

“He said the food was too cold and he just started getting a real bad attitude about it so we were like OK, OK, if you don’t want it, we will give your money back to you. So that’s what we did,” said Bautista.

“We started walking away and something told me to turn around. When I turned around he had gone inside the house and then comes back out and he had a gun,” said Bautista.

You want more chicken-related violence?

Bountiful Police say Suliafu’s father returned home with food for Suliafu. When he discovered the wings were not the variety he liked, Suliafu became upset and began arguing with his father. During the argument, police say Suliafu went into another room, retrieved a firearm from his father’s bag, and pointed the gun at his father.

The chicken-related carnage continues:

A female passenger in a car was reportedly involved in an altercation with employees over a spicy chicken sandwich.

After the altercation, the pair left then returned in the car, firing multiple shots from the road into the parking lot, the affidavit said.

And the stunner of chicken redrum:

That’s when police say Munn’s mother got into a heated argument over “guests getting too many pieces of chicken” with another family member, according to court documents.

The family continued the argument outside in the front yard, where police say Rogers pulled out two guns and shot Dandridge seven times.

If you are following the mainstream narrative, you should pretend to be shocked here. These are seemingly pointless crimes over things of low value, so a modern citizen sees them as laughably absurd risk of jail for almost no gain.

That is because modern societies do not understand our primitive origins as a human species.

In those egalitarian or communal hunter-gatherer societies that Leftist praise in the science magazines, in theory when there is a hunt or harvest the people who found the food bring it back and share it equally with everyone in the tribe.

But in reality, no food goes to those who are disrespected and irrelevant. At the very least, they stand in the back of the line because their social status is low. When food is scarce, they may simply die in the bush if they cannot snag some bush meat, pick fruit, or dig up edible roots.

Under ideal conditions, this process works to gradually exclude those who are incompetent. They are after all “useless eaters” who want part of the profits of the hunt or harvest, but are unable to provide anything of value on their own.

Some duck out of the process by being submissive. Homosexuals, for example, seem to exist in every society as a type of domestic help and source of labor for occupations shunned by aggressive males, like interior decorating and hair cutting.

Other males accept their low status and form a gang around someone more powerful. Their loyalty and henchman status buys them some of the food, although they are usually angling for more whenever their boss starts looking weak, old, or confused.

In this way the egalitarian tribe preserves hierarchy without formally doing so, which would offend its pretense of egalitarianism, which is how it keeps the tribe together. It is a soup line with a few added conditions, essentially, namely loyalty in time of attack.

But because this society handles redistribution, your public image matters more than reality. The reality is that you do not really care about chicken that much, but if someone disrespect you, your status will get lowered if you do not fight back right away.

Even if you lose and end up in the hospital, you retain your status as someone not to be messed with. If you walk away from a fight, everyone assumes that you were going to lose, and so they see you as a loser. Only those who enforce their status through pointless violence keep rising in the public eye.

In primitive hunter-gatherer societies and many tropical societies today, you become irrelevant unless you are willing to step up over even a mildly symbolic slight. Like superstition, symbolism manipulates human minds with the belief that the symbol can be a universal, absolute cause like magic or divinity.

In other words, you are the symbol. When your symbol ceases to mean a willingness to fight over trivial displays of status, you lose ground and are on your way toward irrelevance, starvation, and death. It was never about the fried chicken; it is about your standing in the community.

The third world manages image by violence generally because this is understandable by even lower-IQ populations like we see in the third world and underclasses of the first world. The top quarter of the Bell Curve in the first world uses a different quantum of measurement.

Where in the third world, individuals preserve status through violence, in the first world they manage their rank in the hierarchy by maintaining a group mental state of cooperation. When you make others feel hopeful about our ballistic trajectory, paranoid and superstitious egalitarianism, and inflated defensive sense of self-worth, then you gain status in the middle class West.

To do that is to be seen as relevant, where those who oppose the current System are seen as irrelevant because nothing that they say or do helps anyone get ahead in the current regime. If you instill good feelings in everyone, they quiet down and do the obvious necessary things, which makes you a hero of the Party or local equivalent.

When you exist in an egalitarian society, whether first world or third world, you have nothing permanent. Your role is subject to your obedience. Non-egalitarian societies do not have this problem because you exist in a niche and level of a hierarchy, so you always have a role and place.

Relevance in nature comes from structural overlap. Different species in an ecosystem are relevant to each other; ideas which form continuous thoughts addressing some aspect of reality show relevance. Ideas unrelated to reality connect to nothing enduring and are irrelevant.

When social pressures take over from thinking, a market for importance is created, as measured in popularity, media attention, wealth, and power, all of which combine to form a factor known as status. Unless you constantly generate status, you become irrelevant.

Egalitarian societies therefore tend to be narcissistic and shape people to be narcissists. Since everyone must manipulate others in order to have status, manipulation becomes the psychology of that society and everyone follows that lead because it succeeds in the System.

Eventually they become solipsists, or those who are entirely atomized and isolated from everything else. This makes them irrelevant, except in the eyes of others, so they become pathological manipulators who care nothing for those they manipulate or the results that are achieved.

In this way, society in its end stages divides into two groups. The solipsists want to avoid inner change, and they will demand any amount of power for others to give them meaning through external influences like politics, pop culture, ideology, and symbolic religions.

The other group, realists, want to escape all of the noise and get back to what is true and real in not just the world but their inner selves. Realism, since it forces thinking about consequences and end states, leads to an exploration of intuition to find what is good.

Most people simply want jobs. There they are told what to do, and if something goes wrong, no real consequences come their way, like starving on a farm because of a failure to produce food. They succeed by being narcissistic and manipulating others but this is easy and does not require inner change.

When enough people who simply want jobs appear in a society, which happens when it reaches success and also simultaneously loses sight of any objective because it has succeeded in its first objectives, it goes down the path to egalitarianism and narcissism.

At that point, relevance contradicts reality, and so you get this silly End of Rome type stuff where people stunt and try to be as outlandish as possible in order to draw attention to themselves. It is the same impulse as killing a man over fried chicken, just buried in layers of abstraction and neurosis.

Apple in-house 5G chip for iPhones fails – to continue with Qualcomm

Earlier today, well-known Apple analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple’s 5G chip development may have failed. This means that the 2023 iPhones will still use Qualcomm chips. In fact, the American chip maker will still get 100% of Apple’s orders. According to previous reports from Kuo, Apple’s 2023 iPhones would use Apple-designed modem chips instead of Qualcomm chips. Furthermore, Otakara, citing sources from the industry chain claims that Apple has actually been developing its own baseband. However, this is a very long project. The source did not entirely describe it as a failure because it needs more time. The original plan is to use this chip in 2023 but this did not survive. Otakara claims that this is a delay in the production process.

According to Apple’s plan, it will use self-developed baseband chips next year, while TSMC is still their exclusive foundry. The chip will use the 5nm process with an annual production capacity of 120,000 pieces. In fact, Qualcomm hints that Apple’s in-house baseband will soon be put into use. The company also hints that its share of iPhone baseband orders will drop to about 20% in 2023.

Why is iPhone 5G baseband delaying

Regarding the reason for the delay, people in the industry chain claim that the baseband is different from other chips. Since the design and production are not direct, there is a need for testing in a full range of different operators. This process is long, and the pandemic did not help matters. All these are slowing down Apple’s progress.

In addition, the testing of Apple’s baseband by many operators around the world is also slower than Cook expected, so it will be postponed. At the close of U.S. stocks on March 29, Qualcomm (QCOM) shares rose 3.48% to $131.6 per share, with a total market value of $147.39 billion. One-day market capitalization increased by $4.95 billion. Apple (AAPL) fell 2.98% to $137.44 per share, with a total market value of $2.2 trillion, and a single-day market value of $68.3 billion evaporated.

Article HERE

Happy Cats, Coffee Shops And Carefree Times In TAO’s Cheerful, Detailed And Nostalgic Illustrations

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As she explains on her Tumblr profile, Sapporo-based illustrator TAO is particularly fond of cats, Showa Era things, and sneakers. With their cheerful tone and kawaii characters enjoying relaxing moments, coffee mug in hand, her artwork will surely put a smile on your face or dispel any clouds hanging over your head.

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Her most recent illustration perfectly encapsulates the feel-good, relaxing mood and Showa Era nostalgia that characterizes much of her work.

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The happy, relaxed mood and the cute cats are an obvious plus, but the nostalgia factor can largely be attributed to the cocktail table mahjong video game. Previously a fixture in most Japanese coffee shops, they’re all but extinct.

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Behind the Tin Curtain: BRICS+ vs NATO/G7

Slow-Cooker Baked Ziti

I don’t know one family that doesn’t have some crazy, hectic weeknights. This slow-cooker baked ziti recipe was a delicious, easy fix for a busy weeknight dinner for our family. —Christina Addison, Blanchester, Ohio

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Ingredients

  • 1 container (15 ounces) whole-milk ricotta cheese
  • 1 large egg, beaten
  • 1 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, optional
  • 1 jar (24 ounces) meatless pasta sauce
  • 2 cups uncooked ziti
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 1/4 cup minced fresh basil
  • Grated Parmesan cheese, optional

Directions

  1. In a small bowl, stir together ricotta cheese, egg, basil, and if desired, red pepper flakes; set aside. Pour pasta sauce into a 5-qt. slow cooker. Evenly top sauce with pasta; pour water over top. Drop heaping tablespoons of ricotta cheese mixture over pasta. Sprinkle with mozzarella cheese.
  2. Cover; cook on high until heated through and pasta is tender, 2 to 2-1/2 hours. Top with fresh basil and if desired, Parmesan cheese and additional red pepper flakes; serve immediately.

Chinese PLA Navy transport aircraft hold simulated landing on carrier, ‘indicate 3rd carrier to be equipped with cargo planes’

First in aircraft carrier history: Only deep thinker could come up with strategic deployment ideas beyond simply attack, bombing, and killing!

The crusaders simply cannot comprehend ideas beyond killing, bullying and looting…

China and Russia will change the currently unequal and brutal world controls by the crusaders within the next decade

Full article HERE

Poverty Rate in the United States

U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (CPS), Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC), Report P60-273: Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020-Current Population Reports (September 14, 2021):

Highlights, Poverty:

  • The official poverty rate in 2020 was 11.4 percent, up 1.0 percentage point from 10.5 percent in 2019. This is the first increase in poverty after five consecutive annual declines.
  • In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019 .
  • Between 2019 and 2020, the poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanics. Among non-Hispanic Whites, 8.2 percent were in poverty in 2020, while Hispanics had a poverty rate of 17.0 percent. Among the major racial groups examined in this report, Blacks had the highest poverty rate (19.5 percent), but did not experience a significant change from 2019. The poverty rate for Asians (8.1 percent) in 2020 was not statistically different from 2019.
  • Poverty rates for people under the age of 18 increased from 14.4 percent in 2019 to 16.1 percent in 2020. Poverty rates also increased for people aged 18 to 64 from 9.4 percent in 2019 to 10.4 percent in 2020. The poverty rate for people aged 65 and older was 9.0 percent in 2020, not statistically different from 2019.
  • Between 2019 and 2020, poverty rates increased for married-couple families and families with a female householder.
  • The poverty rate for married-couple families increased from 4.0 percent in 2019 to 4.7 percent in 2020.
  • families with a female householder, the poverty rate increased from 22.2 percent to 23.4 percent. The poverty rate for families with a male householder was 11.4 percent in 2020, not statistically different from 2019.

NYT equates China’s health workers with Adolf Eichmann

A twisted narrative by a paper unhinged by China’s success with Covid-19

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In a article on the front page of The New York Times on January 13, reporter Li Yuan equated the public health and medical personnel behind China’s successful battle against Covid-19 in the city of Xian to Adolf Eichmann, a principal architect of the Holocaust. The article’s opening sentence views these personnel as typical of “the millions of people who work diligently toward” containing Covid-19 in China.

The anti-Covid campaign in Xian, a city of 13 million, has terminated the spread of Covid-19 without a single death and limited its spread to about 2,000 cases. The Nazi Holocaust designed and managed by Eichmann resulted in the extermination of millions of Jews.

The piece takes aim at the millions of Chinese who have worked tirelessly to do the rapid mass testing, tracing, quarantining and vaccinations and to staffing the lockdowns including ensuring that those under lockdown were supplied with necessities of life.

As a result of their work China has reported about 100,000 cases Covid-19 and fewer than 5,000 deaths. The mortality count has been verified by a count of excess deaths in a peer-reviewed article by a team from Oxford University and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the prestigious British Medical Journal; it is summarized here for the layman.

Peter Hessler, who was living and teaching in Chengdu, Sichuan, during the first of the lockdowns, described these workers as follows in a New Yorker piece in March 2020:

“When I asked if there had been much resistance to the new policies, he [the Communist Party official in charge of the lockdown in Hessler’s neighborhood in Chengdu] shook his head. ‘Ninety percent of the population agrees,’ he said. ‘We have some people who think it’s not convenient, and they want to go out and play mah-jongg or something. But most people follow the rules.’

“From what I had seen, he wasn’t exaggerating. The overwhelming compliance was one of the most impressive features of the lockdown, along with the dedication of grassroots officials. In Wuhan, the government had sent 1,800 teams of epidemiologists, each consisting of at least five people, to trace the contacts of infected citizens. The WHO report noted that the containment effort had been possible because of ‘the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action.’” (Emphasis added.)

Contrast that with this from Wikipedia’s entry on Eichmann:

“Eichmann and his staff became responsible for Jewish deportations to extermination camps, where the victims were gassedGermany invaded Hungary in March 1944, and Eichmann oversaw the deportation of much of the Jewish population. Most of the victims were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, where about 75% were murdered upon arrival.

“By the time the transports were stopped in July 1944, 437,000 of Hungary’s 725,000 Jews had been killed. Dieter Wisliceny testified at Nuremberg that Eichmann told him he would ‘leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had 5 million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction.'”

How can the NYT’s Li Yuan equate the two? The polemic used to justify the equation deserves examination, because it demonstrates how the paper’s construction of the narrative of the day often works.

The tone and target are set by the online headline, which reads ominously, “The Army of Millions Who Enforce China’s Zero-Covid Policy, at All Costs.” (Emphasis added.) Later the case for the Eichmann equation begins as follows:

“The government has the help of a vast army of community workers who carry out the policy [of dynamic zero Covid] with zeal…. The tragedies in Xian have prompted some Chinese people to question how those enforcing the quarantine rules can behave like this.”

What are these tragedies? The author comes up with three presented near the very beginning of the piece.

First was a man with chest pains whose hospital admission was delayed by six hours and later died of a heart attack; the bureaucratic delay related to his living in a medium-risk district.

Second, a pregnant woman whose admission was also delayed because her Covid test appeared invalid; after admission she miscarried.

Third, a young man who was violating a curfew and got into an altercation with security guards.

Certainly, each of the first two these events is a tragic and unacceptable error. The third is hard to judge – if it is true. But in a city of many millions threatened with a deadly outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid, there were bound to be some mistakes. And if these are the worst of them, then it would seem that praise should be heaped on Xian’s hospital and public health workers.

Nevertheless, the first two of these incidents caused an outcry far and wide over the Internet, leading officials to take action. (Note that the disclosure and widespread discussion online belie the idea that there is no opening for criticism in China.)

The mass complaints led to the temporary closure of the hospitals to examine their procedures and ultimately to the punishing of those in charge. A national declaration made it clear that no patient was to be turned away from a hospital under any circumstances.

Building on these three anecdotes and neglecting any context up to this point, reporter Li continues:

“‘The banality of evil’ is a concept Chinese intellectuals often invoke in moments like Xian. It was coined by the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who wrote that Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, was an ordinary man who was motivated by ‘an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement.’

“Chinese intellectuals are struck by how many officials and civilians – often driven by professional ambition or obedience – are willing to be the enablers of authoritarian policies.” 

Who are these unnamed “intellectuals”? That is not clear. Certainly, there are a good many Chinese intellectuals in the country and abroad who are proud of China’s handling of the pandemic.

In summary, the anatomy of the article is a headline, then a cherry-picked set of anecdotes to set the tone. It is important that this mood be set as arrestingly and strikingly as possible. The most outrageous exceptions to the rule must be presented as though they are the norm. Finally based on these anecdotes, far-fetched conclusions are drawn based on the assumption that the anecdotes are representative.

Later on, buried deep in the article some context may be slipped in as a way to cover the writer’s derriere. Noam Chomsky many years ago suggested reading the NYT’s articles beginning with the end, since that is where the real information may lie. Often, any such qualifications are left out, resulting in a giant lie of omission.

That is how it is done.

There is a bright spot, however. Many if not most of the comments posted online, at least at the time of my reading, found Li’s polemic to be baseless, even downright absurd. Americans are not so easily deceived as the NYT editors may think. This is heartening, because the daily demonization of China in the US mass media, relentlessly and prominently so in the NYT, is a prelude to conflict and war.

As author Caitlin Johnstone tells us, “Before they drop the bombs, they drop the narrative.”

The NYT is carpet-bombing us Americans with an anti-China narrative these days.

One must ask in the end, what is the animus that drives this anti-China diatribe? Is it fear of the loss of the US role as global hegemon? Is it the self-righteousness and arrogance of the Exceptionalists? Or is it simply careerism in the service of an evil agenda, the very thing Hannah Arendt deplored?

Istanbul connectivity the new Russia-EU transit hub

By Chris Devonshire-Ellis
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European road connectivity has been completely cut from Russian GPS maps in an illustration of how serious Moscow views the EU’s perspective of the Ukraine conflict, and further evidence that Russia views the EU import and export markets as ‘dead.’
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This of course has significant and long-term implications for all EU businesses conducting trade with Russia and vice-versa, and has made Istanbul (shown as a red dot) the new central point for EU-Russian trade. It is also the nearest and fastest access point between Russia and Europe. It is a 3.5 hour flight between Moscow and Istanbul, coupled with the required connecting flights between Istanbul and all European destinations.
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2021 EU-Russia bilateral trade had reached €257.5 billion, with nearly all of that now looking to be sourced from new routes. Dezan Shira & Associates Chairman, Chris Devonshire-Ellis, is currently in Turkiye looking at facilitation opportunities.
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Article HERE

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RADIOACTIVITY – KRAFTWERK – HD Live

Enjoy the stage show. LOL!

Iran, Argentina apply to join BRICS bloc after recent summit

China and Russia friendship circle continues to grow bigger and bigger.  Whereas the US and Europe friendship circle shrinks and thus, as we have observed, in the process of internal disintegration.

Article HERE

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Australia’s leading wine authority to close office in China as exports plunge

Australia’s leading wine authority to close office in China as exports plunge.
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Good riddance.

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Here’s proof of how fast the state of Florida is growing these days. Just wow.

Here is what is going on inside of Florida.

Vladimir Putin ally warns London ‘will be bombed first’ if World War 3 breaks out

Vladimir Putin ally warns London ‘will be bombed first’ if World War 3 breaks out. ‘It’s crystal clear that the threat to the world comes from the Anglo-Saxons,’ Andrey Gurulyov said.
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Emily Atkinson
5 days ago
London will be the first strategic Nato target to be hit by Russian missiles should a third world war erupt, a close ally of president Vladimir Putin has claimed.

Speaking on Russian state TV, Andrey Gurulyov, an MP who sits on Moscow’s defence committee, described how a possible full-scale invasion of Nato’s Baltic state members would work.

Paywall Article HERE

China’s colonial past is reflected in Semantics

For example, publicist Sima Nan, referring to the publications of a
famous mathematical scientist who appears on social networks under the
pseudonym Shanzhen Azhi, suggests that China’s colonial and
semi-colonial past is reflected in the way some Western countries are
referred to in modern Chinese. In a recent video posted on Chinese
social networks, Sima Nan, discussing China’s history, points out that
“once the Chinese sagged under Western pressure and consciously or
unconsciously began to praise overseas oppressors” and chose
semantically positive characters to name conquering countries. Without
going into the hieroglyphics and phonetic features of the Chinese
language, let us explain that, for example, the two hieroglyphs used to
write down the United States are translated as “Wonderful State”,
England as “Outstanding State”, France as “State of Law”, Germany,
respectively, as “State of Virtue”. The pious names of some European
powers and the United States, which once subjugated the decrepit
imperial China, were reflected in the minds of the Chinese.

According to Shanzhen Achzhi, England, which imposed the opium trade on
China, was called Outstanding, whereas it should have been called Opium,
leaving the sound, only changing the character. Virtuous Germany should
be renamed the Land of Knives, based on the crimes committed by the
“mustachioed artist” in the mid-20th century. We must discard the
incorrectly attributed “legitimacy” of French statehood, which until
very recently took part in the bombing of Libya, Iraq and Yugoslavia,
and assign it the homonymic character “fu” – which has an emotionally
colored negative meaning.

“American statehood, built on land taken from the native population,
would also do well to start writing it differently,” argues Sima Nan,
who questions the “beauty” of American history and the virtues of all
Western civilization. Of course, the above said is difficult to
understand for a foreigner not experienced in the wisdom of Chinese
hieroglyphics, but for the Chinese it all has deep meanings, i.e.,
speaking in a more understandable way – “as you call a boat, so it will
float” – the change of names of some European countries and the USA may
be followed by a revaluation of the whole Western civilization by the
Chinese.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, with the defeat in the Opium
Wars, China became politically, economically and, consequently,
culturally dependent on the West. Global changes in the political map of
the world at the end of the twentieth century expanded China’s economic
ties with the West, but again forced it to maneuver politically. All
this, coupled with the increased mobility of the population and the
advent of the Internet, had by the beginning of this century only
increased the foreign influence on Chinese culture, which seems to have
recently begun to cause open concern among thinking and patriotic
people. Examples of China’s reassessment of values and purging its
national culture of foreign influences abound.

At the end of May, the Chinese segment of the Internet posted about
teaching materials released by the People’s Education publishing house
in 2013 and reprinted many times in the following years. The mother
tongue textbooks used by Chinese schoolchildren for nearly 10 years
appeared to contain a lot of “ideological subversion,” in short: Asian
children in the textbook pictures have clear signs of Down syndrome,
while the blond children are cheerful, red-cheeked, and dressed nicely
and neatly. In the textbooks, the positive heroes have foreign names,
while the bad kids are called by Chinese names. Heroic deeds are done in
stories that took place in the West, and everything bad is given
explicit references to China, etc. As many believe, the “harmful
textbook” scandal is a manifestation of a fierce struggle between
feuding forces in China itself and foreign forces interested in a change
of power in the country.

15 Exquisite Illustrations Which Sum Up Perfectly How Much We Love Our Pets

Pets always fill our home with a carefree, cheerful, and joyful atmosphere, and they don’t expect anything in return. They’re quite simply devoted to us, every day, all day. If you’ve ever been luck enough to own one, then you understand what unconditional love means. You know this feeling from all those times when you waited the whole day to come back home and stroke your cat or pet your dog.

So, we collected the 15 sweetest illustrations we could find which we think really show the incredible depth of love we have for our feline and canine friends. Go and hug your cat or dog right now! They deserve it.

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F-35 Stealth Fighters ‘Suppressed’ By Russian Electronic Warfare; Missiles Fail To Hit Target

Unverified reports and videos by local Russian media claim that Israeli F-35 stealth fighters missed hitting their target due to electronic interference.

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The reports claim that Israeli jets missed their target because of robust electronic suppression, which disrupted the weapon systems of the Lockheed Martin F-35 jets. According to reports, neither aircraft could strike the target during the military drills, which Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett attended.

At the same time, the report notes that this demonstrates the severe vulnerability of the fifth-generation F-35 fighters to electronic countermeasures.

Parth Satam, a defense analyst at the EurAsian Times, says: the video shows an air-to-ground munition, reportedly fired from an F-35, missing its target, which the website claims are owing to Electronic Warfare (EW) interference from Russian systems.

While it certainly is true that Russian EW systems like the Krasukha-4 have been highly effective in jamming even US drones, Russia’s interference in Israeli military exercises within its territory seems highly unlikely.

The only situation where Russia would interfere in Israeli air operations is in Syria, where they have a deconfliction mechanism to allow IAF to strike Iranian targets. They also helped shoot down Israeli AGMs with the Buk-M2/3 supplied to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) a few months ago.

But Russia would softly retaliate by electronically interfering in Israeli air operations only around its interests in Ukraine or Syria. The AviaPro report might be valid to the extent that GPS signal disruption has been observed in the Eastern Mediterranean since Russia specifically installed anti-drone and EW systems at its Khmeimem air base in Syria to protect from air and space surveillance.

Russian electronic jammers can disrupt signals from GLONASS, American GPS, European Galileo, and Chinese BieDou satellite navigation systems. Thus aircraft, drones, or missiles will see their GPS receivers go awry.

Even in March 2021, interference was reported on the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite, which some OSINT experts and telecommunications specialists concluded was radar interference. It was over the Black Sea region.

But assuming Russia did directly interfere in the Israeli domestic military drills, it could be because it calculated that the current tensions with Iran where Israel is trying to ramp up a regional coalition against it, conducting cyber attacks within the country and assassinating its military officers and nuclear scientists have gone out of hand.

Article HERE

Hiroshima ● 1985 ● Another Place (FULL ALBUM)

Enjoy this great background music…

NATO adopts tough line on China at Biden’s debut summit with alliance | Reuters

BRUSSELS, June 14 (Reuters) – NATO leaders warned on Monday that China presents “systemic challenges,” taking a forceful stance towards Beijing in a communique at Joe Biden’s first summit with an alliance that Donald Trump openly disparaged.

The new U.S. president has urged his fellow NATO leaders to stand up to China’s authoritarianism and growing military might, a change of focus for an alliance created to defend Europe from the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The language in the summit’s final communique, which will set the path for alliance policy, came a day after the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations issued a statement on human rights in China and Taiwan that Beijing said slandered its reputation.

“China’s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to alliance security,” NATO leaders said in the communique.

Biden also told European allies that the alliance’s mutual defence pact was a “sacred obligation” for the United States – a marked shift in tone from his predecessor, Trump, who had threatened to withdraw from the alliance and accused Europeans of contributing too little to their own defence.

“I want all Europe to know that the United States is there,” said Biden. “NATO is critically important to us.”

Full Article HERE

G7 Leaders’ Communiqué on June 28. The word “China” appears 14 times

From HERE

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s Regular Press Conference on June 29, 2022

2022-06-29 23:52

CCTV: The 48th G7 Summit released a Leaders’ Communiqué on June 28. The word “China” appears 14 times in the text, which is largely critical of China on matters concerning Hong Kong, Xinjiang, human rights, the East China Sea, the South China Sea, peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, etc. What’s China’s comment?

Zhao Lijian: Despite China’s solemn position and firm opposition, the G7 used the Leaders’ Communiqué to peddle the “democracy versus authoritarianism” narrative, interfere in China’s internal affairs, attack and smear China, and incite confrontational sentiments. This shows that the G7 has no intention of having dialogue and cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual respect, that the G7 remains entrenched in its Cold War mentality and ideological bias, and that the G7 prefers bloc politics that serves the group’s own interests.

Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs. Today, 25 years after Hong Kong’s return to the motherland, the democratic rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents guaranteed by law are fully protected. The Chinese government governs Hong Kong in accordance with the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR. On human rights, the G7 countries, with their own record being far from perfect, have no authority to lecture others or use human rights issues as a political tool to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. By attacking and smearing China on topics such as Xinjiang and Tibet, they are simply showing the world their hegemonic nature and hypocrisy. There is but one China in the world and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory. The Taiwan authorities are pushing the “Taiwan independence” separatist agenda, and the US and a few other Western countries are using Taiwan to contain China. This is the greatest threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. China has the right to take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard our sovereignty and security. China has been firmly committed to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and a staunch defender of world peace and development and regional security and stability. This stands in sharp contrast with the US, a warmonger and wielder of illegal unilateral sanctions.

The G7 members have benefited the most from globalization. As such, they have a special responsibility to promote globalization, boost world economic growth and tackle global economic and financial challenges. However, at a critical juncture in the global pandemic response and economic recovery, the G7, rather than committing to solidarity and cooperation, is preoccupied with stoking division and confrontation and has shown absolutely no sense of responsibility or moral authority. I must also point out that for a group which accounts for about one tenth only of the world’s population, the G7 has no authority to speak for the whole world, still less to present its own values and standards as universal values and standards.

We urge the G7 to earnestly step up to its responsibility and due international obligations, uphold true multilateralism, and stop applying double or even multiple standards, stop causing confrontation and division, stop discrediting and slandering China, and stop all forms of meddling in China’s domestic affairs.

China Daily: French writer Maxime Vivas recently published his new book Les Divagations des Antichinois en France, or The Ramblings of Anti-China Forces in France. In this book, he has unmasked anti-China organizations like the World Uyghur Congress, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Human Rights Watch and wrote about how they made and spread lies against China with funding from the CIA. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: I have seen relevant reports and noticed that Mr. Vivas said in an interview that he has faced repeated attacks, threats and slanders for his work on debunking the lies of Western anti-China forces.

Over the years, the US and some Western countries have sought to manipulate international public opinion through propaganda machines and made up numerous lies on Xinjiang-related issues. These countries have not only been oblivious to the authoritative facts made available to the public by China, but also jointly attacked people like Mr. Vivas who speak the truth, and launched political witch-hunts against them. Is this what they call “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press”? No, this is 21st-century McCarthyism.

No matter what the anti-China forces do, nothing can hide the truth and reality from the world. Recently, Australian scholar Jaqueline James released reports on Xinjiang-related anti-China propaganda materials published by ASPI, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. She debunked and questioned the numerous lies and fallacies in those articles with detailed analysis. She asked these organizations to answer honestly whether their donors are paying for human rights advocacy or a “China bad” story?

More people have now joined the effort to expose the fact that individuals and organizations like ASPI are funded by the US and Australian governments to falsely accuse and smear China. We believe that more and more thoughtful people will see through the dishonorable action of the US and some Western countries, who use Xinjiang to contain China and spread rumor and lies about China. We believe people will choose to stand on the side of justice and truth.

MASTV: US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that NATO’s Strategic Concept will speak very directly and in a clear-eyed way to the multifaceted challenge posed by China. The number-one priority with respect to China, when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, is that China not become militarily supportive of Russia through the provision of equipment. Number two is that they not engage in undermining or evasion of US sanctions. He added that China has the responsibility to urge Russia to cease fire. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: We have made our position clear on the developments concerning China with regard to NATO’s Strategic Concept. NATO has publicly stated on many occasions that it will remain a regional alliance, it does not seek a geopolitical breakthrough and it does not seek to expand to other regions. However, in recent years, NATO has repeatedly made forays into the Asia-Pacific region. Some NATO member states keep sending aircraft and warships to carry out military exercises in China’s nearby waters, creating tensions and fanning up disputes. NATO has sought to make advances into new areas and domains and clamored for bloc confrontation. The world needs to keep its vigilance and firmly reject it. NATO should stop drawing ideological lines, stoking political confrontation, or seeking to start a new Cold War. It should discard the Cold War mentality and zero-sum game mindset and stop making enemies. NATO has already disrupted Europe. It should not seek to destabilize Asia and the world.

I want to stress that China consistently opposes unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdictions that have no basis in international law or mandate from the Security Council. Reality has shown that toughening sanctions is not an effective way to resolve conflict, nor can a continuous supply of weapons bring peace. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has taken a heavy toll on Europe politically, economically and socially, while the US benefits from it, with arms-dealers popping champagne and American grain and energy industries making exorbitant profits.

As the one who started the Ukraine crisis and the biggest factor fueling it, the US needs to reflect on its disreputable role it has played in the Ukraine crisis and stop smearing China.

CRI: We noticed that a report from the US Department of the Interior last month said a large number of Native American children died at Indian boarding schools. After that, more and more survivors and their descendants have spoken out and accused the US government of genocide against American Indians. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: We are deeply sympathetic to the tragic experience of the Native American children. Those so-called boarding schools that carried the motto “Kill the Indian, save the man” were in essence crime scenes of the US cultural genocide against Native Americans. What happened at these schools is also important evidence of the racial genocide committed by the US against Native Americans. More and more facts have come to light and shown that the US committed systemic genocide against Native Americans in three dimensions, which has lasted hundreds of years and continues to this day.

First, the US has committed physical genocide against the Native American population. Statistics show that since its independence in 1776, the US government has launched over 1,500 attacks on Indian tribes to slaughter the Indians. Before the arrival of white settlers in 1492, there were five million Indians, yet the number plummeted to 600,000 by 1800 and only 237,000 in 1900. Among them, more than a dozen tribes, such as the Pequot, Mohegan, and Massachusetts, were completely extinct. The US government also applied forced sterilization to Indians. Between 1930 and 1976, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs forcibly sterilized approximately 70,000 Indian women through the “Indian Health Service program”. In early 1970s, more than 42% of Indian women of childbearing age were sterilized.

Second, the US has committed spiritual and cultural genocide against Native Americans. They have long suffered hostility, discrimination and oblivion. The inter-generational inheritance of indigenous spirits and culture of Native Americans have long been hindered. In the 1870s and ’80s, the US government adopted a policy of “forced assimilation” to obliterate the social fabric and culture of Indian tribes and destroy the ethnic and tribal identity of the Indians. To attain the dual goal of cultural assimilation and taking Indian lands for itself, the US government began with forcing Native American children into the Indian boarding schools, banning them from speaking their native language, wearing their traditional clothes, or carrying out traditional activities. The children also suffered serious abuse and torment. US-based scholar Preston McBride estimates that the total number of deaths could be as high as 40,000, adding that “basically every school had a graveyard.” Even today, the US is still trying to deliberately obliterate the historical memory and information of the indigenous people in education and media reports. According to a report by National Indian Education Association, 87% of state-level US history textbooks do not mention the post-1900 history of indigenous people.

Third, the US has committed deprivation of the rights of Native Americans. The US has systematically deprived Native Americans and other ethnic minorities of a wide range of their rights, leaving them mired in a crisis of survival and scarcity of rights. A report by the Indian Health Service shows that Native Americans born today have a life expectancy that is 5.5 years less than the national average, and they have the highest infant mortality rate. The suicide rate of Native American adolescents is 1.9 times that of the national average. By June 2022, the COVID-19 mortality rate among Native Americans is about 2.1 times that of the White population. From 1969 to 2009, the US government conducted 928 nuclear tests in the Shoshone tribal region, resulting in nuclear fallout of around 620 kilotons. Cancer incidence rate in Native Americans’ reservations is far higher than other areas. High levels of radioactive substance has been detected in the systems of about a quarter of Navajo women and infants. According to 2018 US Census Data, the poverty rate among Native Americans was 25.4%, far higher than 8.1% among the White population.

Genocide against Native Americans is an original sin of the US that can never be erased. The untold tragedies of Native Americans should never be forgotten. The US government has every reason to admit its crimes of genocide against Native Americans, and offer sincere apologies and repentance to the victims and their descendants. The US government should also credibly make up for the trauma Native Americans are suffering, and seriously face up to grave human rights issues and crimes of racism that exist within the US.

Reuters: On the topic of NATO, leaders of South Korea and Japan will attend NATO Summit as observers for the first time. North Korean media said that this is a dangerous prelude to the creation of an Asian version of NATO. Does China share this view?

Zhao Lijian: I have just restated China’s position on NATO. For years, NATO has sought to make advances into new areas and domains and clamored for bloc confrontation. The world needs to keep its vigilance and firmly reject it.

Peace, development and cooperation represents the trend of the times and the shared aspiration of people around the world. Anyone who clings to the Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice, encourages bloc confrontation and form small circles or blocs will receive no support and will not succeed.

CCTV: According to reports, at least 50 illegal migrants were found dead in San Antonio, Texas on June 27 local time. UN Secretary-General’s press office expressed sadness on this. Do you have any comment? 

Zhao Lijian: I have noted the reports. The tragedy is heartrending. What is even more regrettable is that such tragic deaths of migrants did not happen by accident in the US.

According to statistics, US law enforcement authorities arrested about 1.7 million migrants at the US southern border with Mexico for fiscal year 2021, a record high for 20 years. That included roughly 145,000 minors. The US locks up migrants in detention centers with dreadful living conditions, where migrants are often subject to abuse, violence and other types of inhumane treatment. The US’s brutal law enforcement led to 557 migrant deaths during fiscal year 2021, more than doubling the figure for fiscal year 2020. Amid COVID-19, the US speeded up the repatriation of tens of thousands of COVID-infected illegal migrants despite international opposition. This directly worsened the pandemic situation in many Latin American countries.

The US needs to seriously reflect on and address its poor track record on migrant issues, take concrete actions to protect human rights and other basic rights of migrants, and prevent such tragedies from happening again.

CNR: Newsweek recently cited a study published by the Denmark-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation and Germany-based Latana data tracking firm, which shows that in the US, only 49% of those asked said their country was a democracy and some 63% said their government mainly serves the interests of a minority. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: The results show that in the eyes of the majority of the American people, the US-style democracy equals democracy for the minority and money-based democracy. What ties the minority to the government is nothing else but money.

Mark Hanna, a US Senator, hit the nail on the head over a century ago when he said, “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.” Today, the US is spending increasingly larger sums on money-based democracy. The amount of money spent on presidential and congressional campaigns in the 2020 election reached $14 billion, more than doubling that of 2016. American writer Roxane Gay once said that in the US, “policy is sold to the highest bidder”. Obviously, in the game of money-based democracy, it is the politicians and those holding the purse strings who are the true beneficiaries of elections while the general public is merely the background.

The big money the US spends on election campaigns stands in sharp contrast to the country’s yawning wealth chasm. According to statistics from the Federal Reserve, last year, the wealth of America’s top 1% hit $45.9 trillion, more than that of the bottom 90% combined. Between 1990 and 2021, the combined wealth of US billionaires increased 19-fold, while US median wealth only increased by 5.37%. More than 40 million people live in poverty in the US. Nearly 20% of all US households say they lost all their savings during the COVID-19 outbreak and more than 60,000 people had to live on the streets after losing their homes.

When people are only allowed to get involved during elections and get brushed aside after casting their ballots, when people are showered with tantalizing promises on the campaign trail and completely lose their voice after the vote, when people are courted before elections and ignored afterwards, it’s not true democracy. US elections may appear to follow the “one person, one vote” rule, but in reality it’s more like “one dollar, one vote”, “one post, one vote”, and “one advertisement, one vote”. No wonder it has been said that the US-style democracy is fake democracy. The US government is now of, by and for only 1% of the US population. Such a government would eventually lose the trust of its people.

Xinhua News Agency: We have learned that the Taiwan authorities failed to sneak into the UN Ocean Conference by trying to become part of the Tuvalu delegation. What is your comment?

Zhao Lijian: We have stated our position on the issue yesterday. I would like to reiterate that there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is part of China. The one-China principle is a basic norm in international relations and the shared understanding of the international community. It is also a fundamental principle affirmed in UNGA Resolution 2758. Certain country ignored the one-China principle and the overriding trend in the world. It facilitated the personnel of the Taiwan authorities to wedge into the conference, and deliberately hyped up this matter. China is firmly opposed to this. China practices true multilateralism and supports parties in attending the UN Ocean Conference in accordance with relevant laws and rules. We welcome the steps taken by the party concerned to correct the mistake and return to the conference. It is important that the conference focuses on the sustainable development of the ocean.

I also want to say that the Taiwan authorities will only bring disgrace to itself when it stoops to joining a foreign entourage in order to tag along and wedge into international conferences.

Dragon TV: According to reports, when talking about China’s COVID response in a recent interview with German media, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that unlike authoritarian state, it takes a while for democracy to respond to major issues, but by the end, they will get resolved. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: China follows the dynamic zero-COVID approach. We have curbed the spread of the virus at top speed and with minimum cost. We have provided maximum protection to people’s lives and health and minimized COVID’s impact on socioeconomic development. This is the responsible thing to do for the Chinese people and for the world. For over two years since COVID first hit, the infection rate and mortality rate in China have remained the lowest in the world. At the same time, China’s economy has maintained steady growth on the whole. That’s why we say China’s epidemic prevention and control policy is science-based, correct and effective, and it has been a responsible choice for the Chinese people.

The UK is among the first countries in the world to opt for “herd immunity”. But the cost for that is 22.61 million infections and 180,000 deaths. I noticed that according to media reports, a report published following an inquiry by two parliamentary committees last year found that the UK’s apparent decision to allow COVID to spread throughout the population in a bid to achieve “herd immunity” is a big mistake, which also delayed a comprehensive lockdown and could be called one of the country’s worst ever public health failures.

Countries may differ in their national realities, but that should not stop governments from taking a responsible approach to fighting COVID-19. China has no intention to compare or compete with any country in terms of the way we deal with the virus, but we hope the UK side will put China’s approach to COVID-19 into proper perspective. To propagate the narrative of “democracy vs. authoritarianism” in the context of COVID-19 would only lead to more mistakes and could take an even heavier toll on the people.

Bloomberg: Reuters has reported that China wants to host the video meeting with the ten nations of the Pacific Islands Forum during their gathering next month. Do you have any details to provide on this and have the specific islands nations agreed to this request?

Zhao Lijian: I answered this question yesterday. China-Pacific Island Countries relations enjoy sound development. We have maintained close exchanges and cooperation between government departments, legislatures, political parties, civil groups and local governments. As for the specific event you mentioned, I would refer you to the competent authorities.

MASTV: Following the inauguration ceremony of the Padma Multipurpose Bridge on June 25 in Bangladesh, Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming said in an interview that the project is a milestone of China-Bangladesh cooperation. It will connect with other projects under the Belt and Road Initiative and serve as an important link between China and the Trans-Asian Railway. Could you share more details with us?

Zhao Lijian: We congratulate Bangladesh on the opening of the Padma Multipurpose Bridge. In recent years, under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh has focused on economic and social development and improving people’s livelihood, and continues to strengthen infrastructure construction. It is on track to graduate from the UN’s Least Developed Countries list soon with remarkable achievements. The Padma Bridge is funded by the Bangladeshi government and constructed by a Chinese company. Having been inaugurated, the bridge will now further connect Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, with the southern and southwestern parts of the country and inject new impetus into Bangladesh’s economic development.

Reuters: The United States added five Chinese companies to a trade blacklist for allegedly supporting Russia’s military. Has China made checks into these five companies to verify whether they had sold goods to Russia’s military? 

Zhao Lijian: The US sanctioned and blacklisted Chinese companies for alleged support to Russia’s military and defense industrial base. This has no basis in international law, nor is there a mandate of the UN Security Council allowing such moves. This is another example of US unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction. China firmly opposes that and has lodged a strong demarche to the US side.

China and Russia conduct normal economic and trade cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit. This should not become the target of any intervention or restriction by a third party. In handling its relations with Russia, the US must in no way undermine China’s legitimate rights and interests.

We urge the US to rectify these measures at once, revoke the sanctions and stop imposing long-arm jurisdiction and unilateral sanctions on Chinese businesses. China will take all necessary measures to resolutely protect lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies.

Follow-up: Is China willing to let independent auditors check these companies to ascertain whether they had sold goods to Russia? Is it China’s position that even if the companies had sold goods to Russia’s military, they should not be sanctioned?

Zhao Lijian: I have stated China’s full position on this just now. What the US needs to do is to revoke the sanctions and stop imposing long-arm jurisdiction and unilateral sanctions on Chinese businesses. There is no basis for the US to slap sanctions on Chinese companies by citing domestic laws. China firmly opposes this.

Phoenix TV: The White House on June 28 released the fact sheet titled The United States Continues to Strengthen Cooperation with G7 on 21st Century Challenges, including those Posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It reads that the G7 will include a commitment that represents their values as G7 partners compete with China and calls on G7 to remove all forms of forced labor from global supply chains, such as in Xinjiang. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: The international community is now at a crucial juncture of combating COVID-19 and striving for economic recovery. The G7 needs to be open and inclusive, strengthen solidarity and cooperation with other parties, and take due responsibility to respond to global challenges, uphold true multilateralism and promote world economic recovery. The world needs the G7 to make positive contribution to world peace and development, instead of clinging to the Cold War mentality and ideological bias, or drawing ideological lines and forming small circles and blocs to promote bloc politics, antagonism and confrontation.

I also want to stress that the so-called “forced labor” in Xinjiang is a huge lie made by anti-China forces to smear China. Their allegations do not stand up to scrutiny given the reality that the labor rights and interests of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are duly protected. For some time, to use Xinjiang to contain China, the US has been rehashing the false narrative of “forced labor” and seeking to engender forced unemployment in Xinjiang and make the world decouple with China. It is clear enough that the US is a hegemonic power that tramples human rights and rules in the name of protecting them. The US chooses to ignore facts and seeks to curb the development of Xinjiang and China as a whole. It has deliberately damaged international economic and trade rules, and disrupted international industrial and supply chains. China firmly opposes this. We will resolutely defend the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies and citizens. None of these US attempts will succeed.

Phoenix TV: Nepali President Bidya Devi Bhandari has appointed Bishnu Pukar Shrestha as the new ambassador to China. What is China’s comment?

Zhao Lijian: China welcomes the new Nepali ambassador to China, and looks forward to his assumption of the post at an early date. China and Nepal are connected by mountains and rivers, and enjoy an ever-lasting friendship. China is ready to work with Nepal to follow through on the important consensus of the leaders of the two countries, deepen political mutual trust, promote mutually beneficial cooperation, and elevate the strategic partnership of cooperation featuring ever-lasting friendship for development and prosperity to new heights.

China News Service: An official of the US National Security Council said on June 29 that the US isn’t asking countries in Latin America to pick between working with the US or China. The US is putting forward support that China and Russia can’t offer. It is committed to supporting democracy and reforming multilateral development banks, which contrasts with a lack of transparency in Chinese investments, as well as Chinese vaccines that were sold rather than donated. He also drew a distinction between the US practice and China’s focus on buying commodities from the region. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: China has always pursued cooperation in a wide range of areas with Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries in line with the principles of mutual respect, equality, mutual benefit, openness and inclusiveness and on the basis of respecting each other’s needs and interests. We do not attach any political strings to such cooperation, nor do we make empty promises to these countries. We have honored our words and brought tangible benefits to the people of both sides.

Since the US official tried to make a comparison between the practices of China and the US, perhaps I should reciprocate. In the case of COVID response cooperation, for instance, there is indeed a distinction between China and the US. While busy dealing with the COVID situation at home, the US did the opposite of helping Latin America by prohibiting some companies from exporting N95 masks to countries in Latin America and seizing or intercepting ventilators and other medical supplies purchased by Latin American countries during their transit in the US. By stark contrast, China overcame its own difficulties and took the lead in providing vaccines to Latin America and other developing countries. For many countries in the region, Chinese vaccines are the first vaccines they received, and the only vaccines they could obtain for many months that followed.

China believes that different countries can carry out cooperation with LAC countries in a mutually non-exclusive, complementary and reinforcing way. If the US truly cares about the opinion of the region, it should abandon the Monroe Doctrine and hegemonic practice as soon as possible, and act upon what it has said about not asking LAC countries to pick between China and the US, instead of saying one thing and doing another, still less publicly or privately attacking and smearing China or sowing discord between China and LAC countries and hampering China-LAC cooperation.

NATO invites Finland, Sweden to join and eyes ‘direct threat’ from Putin amid Ukraine war

NATO has now officially invited Finland and Sweden to join the alliance, a sign of just how dramatically the Kremlin's war has upended the previous military landscape in Europe.

Earlier in the day, at the start of a summit in Madrid, President Joe Biden announced an increased U.S. military presence in Europe headlined by the first permanent American forces on NATO’s eastern flank and more rotating troops in the Baltic states.

The Western alliance also called Russia its "most significant and direct threat" in a joint statement, a notable shift from its description of Moscow as a "strategic partner" a decade ago.

Article HERE

Putin condemns NATO’s ‘imperial ambitions’, warns Finland, Sweden

Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned NATO’s “imperial ambitions”, accusing the military alliance of seeking to assert its “supremacy” through the Ukraine conflict.

The Russian leader also said on Wednesday that he would respond in kind if NATO deployed troops and infrastructure in Finland and Sweden after the two Nordic countries join the military alliance.

Putin made his comment a day after NATO member Turkey lifted its veto over the bid by Finland and Sweden to join the alliance when the three nations agreed to protect each other’s security.

Helsinki and Stockholm joining NATO marks one of the biggest shifts in European security in decades.

“With Sweden and Finland, we don’t have the problems that we have with Ukraine. They want to join NATO, go ahead,” Putin told Russian state television after talks with regional leaders in the central Asian ex-Soviet state of Turkmenistan.

“But they must understand there was no threat before, while now, if military contingents and infrastructure are deployed there, we will have to respond in kind and create the same threats for the territories from which threats towards us are created,” he said.

Moscow’s relations with Helsinki and Stockholm would inevitably sour over their NATO membership, he added.

“Everything was fine between us, but now there might be some tensions, there certainly will,” Putin said.

“It’s inevitable if there is a threat to us.”

Article HERE

India Cement Maker Pays For $26m Russian Coal Cargo in Yuan

Dollar as world reserve currency is built on trust, however, the moment the crusaders looted Russian foreign currency reserve in their banks, the trust is gone. When trust is gone , the world will begin to turn away from the dollar and the Euro. The RMB will replace the dollar as the world number one reserve currency sooner than people can imagine.
India’s biggest cement producer is to pay for a $26 million cargo of Russian coal with Chinese yuan.

In what could be a groundbreaking move, UltraTech Cement’s purchase could help insulate Moscow from the effects of western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine if others follow its lead.

It could also bolster Beijing’s push to further internationalise its currency and chip away at the dominance of the US dollar in global trade.
US economy is in big trouble.

Full article HERE

Stealth Killer! Russia’s Rezonans-NE Radar That Can Track F-35 Jets Deep Inside Finland & Norway Begins Construction — Reports

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Russia has reportedly begun constructing a Rezonans-NE VHF radar on the hilltop of Korzunova air base, presumably to counter the F-35 fighter jets of the United States and its allies.  

The location for installing the Rozonans-NE radar was first announced in 2020. According to the most recent claims, the construction work has been going on since July 2021, as seen in the latest satellite images.

The facility is located near the Zapolyarny, a mining town about 10 kilometers from Russia’s border with Norway. The facility comprises four radar modules covering 90 degrees and can scan an entire circular area.

According to reports, the complex is without rotating antennas and has a transmit antenna-feeder and elevation antenna-feeder devices, as well as radar data receiving and processing systems. 

Once finished, the radar will have a sufficient field of operation to keep an eye on the skies above Rovaniemi in Finland and Evenes airport in Norway. These two places are current and future bases for the F-35.

NATO already has a pair of F-35 fighter jets at Evenes. These jets are assigned for Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) missions to intercept Russian aircraft flying out of the Kola Peninsula. The first of Finland’s F-35s, scheduled to enter service in 2025, will be based in Rovaniemi.

In 2020, a Rozonans-NE radar system sold to Iran, according to the Russian state-affiliated news agency TASS, had effectively located and tracked American F-35 fighter jets just outside the country’s borders.

The new radar is one of at least six similar systems that have already been installed or will soon be installed along Russia’s Arctic coastline, from the Kola Peninsula in the west to the Bering Strait in the east. 

Rozonans-NE Radar

The radar system can identify and follow even the most complicated air targets. The Rezonans-NE is a high frequency [VHF] early warning phased-array radar.

It is intended to detect various present and potential air targets, including low-observable cruise and ballistic missiles, hypersonic aircraft, and stealth aircraft, in environments with strong electronic countermeasures (ECM) and clutter.

The radar can run in a predetermined sector or circular scan mode. In addition to tasks for peacetime, it can provide information support for air and air defense warfare operations as well as an early warning of an air attack. 

The Rezonans-NE has four radar modules, each of which can operate independently and offers control in an azimuth sector of 90 degrees. The radar module includes transmit, azimuth, elevation antenna feeders, and the power amplifier. 

The radar’s data reception and processing system collects and processes data in the four modules. The radar data receiving and processing apparatus, as well as the probe signal generator, are digital devices controlled by specialized processors. The four-module radar, which covers a 100 x 100-meter area, scans a 360-degree sector.

Yuri Knutov, a Russian military expert, previously stated that Rezonans-NE is a highly effective radar system that incorporates artificial intelligence components. This technology enables the station to simulate an electronic image of a target and precisely identify its type with flight parameters.

The Resonance-N radar’s technical capabilities enable it to identify and designate targets at distances up to 600 km for aerodynamic air targets and up to 1,200 kilometers for ballistic targets. The system finds targets at up to 100 kilometers in altitude simultaneously.

The “Resonance-N” radar is being developed in modules. It significantly lowers the cost of its production because all of the station’s nodes are assembled into special containers afterward. The station has a friend-or-foe target recognition system and can function reliably in winds up to 50 m/s at the lowest and highest air temperatures.

During combat operations, the radar is said to be able to track more than 500 targets simultaneously, giving early warning of an air attack and informing aviation and anti-aircraft defense systems about the air situation. The system does not have rotating antennas, typically used to provide all-around visibility. 

Rezonans-NE is typically set up on the ground as a square of four modules. However, the radar can be built in one-module, two-module, or three variants with viewing segments of 90°, 180°, and 270°, respectively, upon the customer’s request.

This system is also exported to a few countries. Presently, the system has already been acquired by Egypt and Iran. Algeria is also said to be a user of this system. It is assumed that the Egyptian Resonance-NE radar monitors all objects in the airspace over Israel, Syria, and other countries besides Egypt.

In Huawei Battle, China Threatens Germany ‘Where It Hurts’: with German Automakers

It’s no longer possible to hurt China without being hurt BADLY in retaliation.

VW, Daimler and BMW sell more cars in China than anywhere else and many already cooperate with Huawei — a dependency Beijing is not shy to exploit.

NYT Paywall. Article HERE

China Orders Government, State Firms to Replace Foreign Computers – Bloomberg

China has ordered central government agencies and state-backed corporations to replace foreign-branded personal computers with domestic alternatives within two years, marking one of Beijing’s most aggressive efforts so far to eradicate key overseas technology from within its most sensitive organs.

Staff were asked after the week-long May break to turn in foreign PCs for local alternatives that run on operating software developed domestically, people familiar with the plan said. The exercise, which was mandated by central government authorities, is likely to eventually replace at least 50 million PCs on a central-government level alone, they said, asking to remain anonymous discussing a sensitive matter.

Article HERE

RCMP admits they hack Canadians’ devices to spy on them

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In a breathtaking admission, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) say they’ve secretly used spyware on Canadians’ devices to get audio and visual recordings of Canadians without their knowledge.

According to sources, the RCMP claim they only use such spyware in the most “serious cases,” such as when there are national security concerns. However, this is the first time the RCMP has openly admitted that they infiltrate mobile devices to collect data, despite having access to the technology for years.

Their admission came after a Conservative MP questioned what government programs are used to gather data on Canadians last week.

“This is a kind of capability that they have done everything possible to keep incredibly quiet,” said UofT senior research associate Christopher Parsons.

“This is a remarkable finding and, for the first time, publicly reveals that the RCMP is using spyware to infiltrate mobile devices, as well as the broad capabilities of their spyware.” Parsons continues, saying that many security experts have been aware of these capabilities but that this is the first time the RCMP has admitted it. He added that this “is the cleanest, most straightforward explanation of what they’re capable of doing that I’m aware of.”

The RCMP claims it only used this technology in 10 investigations between 2018 and 2020.

According to the submitted RCMP document, the decision to use spyware to infiltrate Canadians’ personal devices is in response to new encryption services that make it difficult for officers to conduct court-authorized electronic surveillance.

“In less than a generation, a high number of Canadians migrated their daily communications from a small number of large telecommunication service providers, all of which provided limited and centrally controlled services to customers, to countless organizations in Canada and elsewhere that provide a myriad of digital services to customers,” the document reads.

“That decentralization, combined with the widespread use of end-to-end encrypted voice and text-based messaging services, make it exponentially more difficult for the RCMP to conduct court-authorized electronic surveillance.”

As for the scope of the spyware used, the technology can gather pictures, videos, calendar entries, financial records, audio recordings, text messages, private communications, and “photographic images of persons, places and activities viewable by the camera(s) built into the targeted device.”

What is not being said is that [1] the technology to spy was obtained from the United States, and [2] none of the Huawei systems and towers could be "backdoored". -MM

The Economist rephrases controversial article comparing the amount of food consumption by Chinese with pigs

By GT staff reporters
Published: Jun 30, 2022 04:02 PM
The Economist rephrases controversial article, clarifies it never intended to cause offense amid accusations of racism - Global Times

Full article HERE

The Economist magazine has rephrased the controversial comparison featured in one of their articles that compares pigs to Chinese people and clarified that it was not intended to cause offense, which, however, failed to convince Chinese netizens outraged by such racist and dehumanizing language.

On Thursday, in an email reply to the Global Times, the magazine writes: "As our intention was never to cause offence, we have rephrased the article to make our meaning absolutely clear."

"In a Graphic setting out how most of the world's grain is fed to animals or used to make biofuel, we observed that 431m tonnes of grain is eaten by pigs and that, if it were a stand-alone country, this would rank at the very top of the league tables for grain consumption. By way of comparison, we pointed out that this is 45% more than the real-life country that consumes the most rice and wheat, which is China," The Economist explained in the email. 

The Economist said it had rephrased the article and attached a note at the bottom after being "contacted by Chinese readers, who object to the comparison."

 

The now-deleted content was part of an article titled "Most of the world's grain is not eaten by humans" published on June 23. 

"In 2019 pigs ate 432m tonnes of grain, 45% more than the people of China did," it read.

On Thursday, the Global Times found that the comparison has been rephrased to "According to our calculations, if the world's pig population were a stand-alone country, it would rank at the very top of grain-consumption league tables, chomping through as much grain as 2bn people."

In a clarification note attached at the bottom of the article on Wednesday, The Economist said "An earlier version of this article compared the grain-consumption rate of pigs with that of the people of China. We selected China solely because it is the world's leading consumer of both wheat and rice."

However, the rephrase and clarification seemingly still failed to convince the outraged Chinese netizens, as The Economist did not make any apology for the mistake.

"Spitting in our face and then 'rephrasing things,' what's the point??" said a user of China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo.

The previous comparison triggered backlash among Chinese readers as well as overseas netizens after The Economist used it in a Tweet to promote the article on Tuesday.

Although the article mainly focuses on analyzing data of food consumption per country, area, and year, the inappropriate comparison between pigs and the Chinese people was widely criticized for being "awful," "racist" and "dehumanizing."

The Tweet has also been deleted as of Wednesday.
On Thursday, the Global Times found that the comparison has been rephrased to “According to our calculations, if the world’s pig population were a stand-alone country, it would rank at the very top of grain-consumption league tables, chomping through as much grain as 2bn people.”.
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California Just Leaked The Name, Address Of Every Concealed Carry Licensee In The State

Friday, Jul 01, 2022 – 06:10 AM

The California government has leaked an enormous volume of personal data on the state’s gun owners—including the name and address of every concealed carry permit holder in the stateThe data was posted to the internet on Monday—when the California Department of Justice launched its “2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal.”

The readily-downloadable information included

"names, birthdays, addresses, ages, the purchase date and type of firearm permit they possessed, and their Criminal Identification Index numbers, which are used to track state and federal criminal records,"

according to GizmodoABC30 reports that gender and driver’s license numbers were also exposed.

The state’s assault weapon registry and Dealer Record of Sale (DROS) data were also affected, but the DOJ has not yet determined to what extent associated personal data was compromised.

The personal data was available for downloading with the click of a button on the site’s mapping feature, according to The Reload. The portal was accessible from Monday afternoon until sometime Tuesday morning.

The breach potentially opened a Pandora’s box of harms for law-abiding Californians who acquired firearms and permits for self-protection. Those perils extend far beyond merely being ostracized by liberal coworkers and neighbors. For example:

  • A list of gun owners and their addresses is a treasure map for thieves seeking to steal firearms
  • Knowledge of an individual’s gun ownership can be used against them via the filing of spurious “red flag” complaints pursuant to the state’s Gun Violence Restraining Order system
  • Someone who obtained a firearm for protection from an abusive partner or ex-partner could be endangered if knowledge of that weapon acquisition sends the partner into a rage

The leaked data identified who among the concealed carry permit holders is a police officer or a judge. The Reload studied the posted data for Los Angeles County and found 244 judge permits complete with addresses and other personal data. Another 2,891 ordinary concealed carry permit-holders in the county were also exposed.

California issued 40,000 concealed carry permits in 2021, well off the 2016 peak of 100,000.

In light of the state’s dangerous mass violation of gun owners’ privacy, Monday’s press release promoting the portal’s debut now reads like dark comedy. In it, state attorney general Rob Bonta said,

“Transparency is key to increasing public trust between law enforcement and the communities we serve...Today’s announcement puts power and information into the hands of our communities."

After the leak was discovered, Bonta said,

“This unauthorized release of personal information is unacceptable and falls far short of my expectations for this department.”

As this article is written, those attempting to access the portal are presented with a notice:

"Website temporarily unavailable. Please try again in a few minutes."

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California Rifle & Pistol Association (CRPA) president Chuck Michel told The Reload that …

"vindictive sore loser bureaucrats have endangered people’s lives and invited conflict by illegally releasing confidential private information. CRPA is working with several legislators and sheriffs to determine the extent of the damage caused by DOJ’s doxing of law abiding gun owners. Litigation is likely.” 

The portal is meant to provide data on dealer record of sales, Gun Violence Restraining Orders, concealed carry permits, firearms safety certificates, “assault weapons,” and a roster of “certified handguns.”

The mass data dump was discovered by two California sheriffs who were using the new dashboard.

This Japanese Artist Imagined What Cats Would Look Like As Anime Girls

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Japanese artist known as DHK recreated funny cat pictures in an anime style, turning the kittens into girls. The recreations are cute and professional. The artist manages to keep the resemblance to the original picture while creating stylish and beautiful characters that will probably make you wonder how your pets would look as humans.

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The Crisis Of Competence

One of the subtexts to the current war in the Ukraine is the fact that the West has been wrong about every aspect of the conflict. None of the predictions about the actual fighting have been correct. Even the propaganda has been hilariously wrong, often making the West look foolish. The economic response, which was supposed to be a fatal blow to Russia, has gone horribly wrong. Europe now faces an unprecedented energy shortage this fall and winter.

The bulk of the blame lies at the feet of the neoconservatives running foreign policy for the Global American Empire. The same cast of characters who were horrifically wrong about Iraq and Afghanistan in the Bush years have managed to turn a regional issue into a global disaster. London and Brussels, along with the provincials occupying legacy positions in national government share blame as well. They enthusiastically went along with a war plan that had no chance to succeed.

The degree of wrongness is a thing of beauty, when you can look at it from a purely objective point of view. Rolling dice, flipping coins or pulling policy ideas out of a hat would have had a better result. One could be forgiven for thinking that maybe this series of errors is somehow deliberate. Maybe that ridiculous bald guy from the World Economic Forum really is a super villain. The masters of the universe are setting the West ablaze so they can build back better.

The question that should be pondered is why has everything gone so terribly long for the collective West? One reason is competence. The Global American Empire is led by a man who barely knows where he is most of the time. In his prime, Joe Biden was known as an affable moron. In his dotage, he is a confused and incompetent old man unable to perform his duties. His handlers give him stage instructions for basic things like where and when to sit.

Biden is the bit of the iceberg we see. There is a whole apparatus around him that was instrumental in getting him into office. The Washington political community thought a dementia patient was better than Trump. That says nothing about Trump and everything about the people who engineered Biden’s ascension. People forget that the Democratic Party had to rig its own primary to get Biden the nomination. They never stopped to think what this would mean after the election.

Of course, this degree of incompetence is made possible by a political culture that is defensive, isolated and insulated. They picked Biden because he was the safest option to get rid of Trump. Biden’s primary appeal to the political class was that he was a vegetable they could move around however they pleased. Biden and his family were simply happy to fill the role and play their part. He also provided the best chance of liberating the city from the scourge of Trump people.

That decision gets to the insularity of the political class, not just in Washington, but across the collective West. These are people without any understanding of the societies over which they rule. When you look at the resumes of these people, the common feature is no experience in the dreaded private sector. Politics has been their life since they were adults. In fact, we have reached a point where private sector experience raises suspicion in the political class.

These are people who simply have no idea how things work. They just take for granted that things work. Like the heirs of a family business, the political class has spent their life in a system without ever having to think about how it came into being. The system of power they command is a permanent feature of life. The only variable is who will have control of the institutions of power. That is politics, the game of verbal chess which picks the winners and losers in the system.

Therein lies the other cause of this unfolding disaster. The West is a collection of people who deal in words exclusively. They have never done anything, other than talk about making other people do things. Nancy Pelosi has been in Washington for eighty years and there is no single physical thing she can point to, other than her ten-thousand-dollar freezer, as a product of her political career. When she is dead, the next wave will wash away her footprints in the sand and she will be forgotten.

On the other side of this fight is a different system, one that is the result of people doing things and rising in the ranks as a consequence. Putin is a man who had to navigate a world where failure meant prison or death. When that world collapsed, he had to navigate a world of chaos. When he gained power, he then had to impose order, often taking on powerful oligarchs backed by Western interests. Putin and his ruling circle are a collection of men who do things, not just talk about things.

Six months ago, the West was prepared to give the Russians a good tongue lashing, cancel her from the internet and de-platform her from the financial system. On the other side, the Russians prepared to fight a war against a well-armed and prepared enemy in Ukraine and a well-armed and prepared West on the world stage. One side was ready for a battle of words while the other side was ready for a battle of actions. It turns out that words count for a lot less than actions.

All civilizations have periods of incompetence. The Russians suffered through the Gorbachev and Yeltsin periods. The difference for the West is that the system has been selecting for bourgeois obsequiousness for a long time. The reason Washington is run by fossils is the next in line is much worse than the geezers. Mitch McConnell knows something about running the party. Kevin McCarthy was selected because no one in power worried that he would be a challenge.

The crisis of the West is that it is now run by a managerial class that was selected for being the teacher’s pet, ticking the right box on a form and making sure to never utter a discouraging word around the boss. It is why presidents have been increasingly ridiculous since the Cold War. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and now Biden are all mileposts in the decline of competence. Next up is Kamala Harris, an absurd manifestation of a system that selects against competence.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Some witty single panel comics, the genius of Mortensen, coffee cakes, and global geopolitics

So much change.

The United States is disintegrating before our eyes.  Society has collapsed, the government is frail, ineffective, bloated, and acting insanely.

Internal domestic conflict is in process as it is trying to “right the sinking ship” somewhat.

Roe's demise marks new phase in state-by-state battle over abortion...
The Court giveth and the Court taketh away!
Ruling Highlights Diverging Paths of Roberts, Alito...
Critics fear Thomas 'extreme' position on contraception...
LGBTQ community braces for rollback of rights...
Next big fight looms over pills...
Biden confronts bombshell that could define presidency...
Condemns But Has Few Powers...
Trump Publicly Credits God -- Privately Says 'Bad'...
Kavanaugh Gave Assurances. Collins Says He 'Misled' Her...
World leaders call decision horrific...
Corporations scramble to determine what will cover...
Prosecutors vow not to go after women seeking procedures...

However, it is ultimately going to fail. Simply because the United States is in such dept that if you sell everything, in the United States… EVERYTHING, the people would be still in trillions of dollars in debt.

Historically, the only solution is to enslave the civilian survivors and have them work off their debts as serf / slaves to a conquering power.

That’s clear as day.

American “allies” and proxy militarized forces are all weak, yet still believing in their unwavering power (from God).

Meanwhile, there is a massive ray of hope; BRICS has organized, planned, and implemented a structure that is being built upon the collapsing embers and rubble of the collapsing West.

It is a superior structure.

It is a long lasting one, and it is and will continue to be, a fair one.

It’s an exciting time for those who are aware.

Yet, this period is fraught with peril.

"The US has at least two Soviet era nuclear weapons recovered by the CIA from submarine K-129 in "Operation Azorian" in 1974."

The implication is a nuclear false flag. Big yikes.

Let’s go through today’s article posting…

Chicken Fricassee – quick French Chicken Stew

Quick, simple and delicious. What’s not to love?

CSIS

The CSIS, funded by the American Military-Industrial Complex, advises the United States government on what to do. Obviously, that’s one (major) reason why nothing goes right.

Here’s and example from the “brilliant advice” from CSIS:

From Seth Jones, June 2022. Senior Vice President; Harold Brown Chair; and Director, International Security Program. Subject:  Russia’s Ill-Fated Invasion of Ukraine

Lessons in Modern Warfare

Russia has failed to achieve most of its objectives in Ukraine because of poor military planning, significant logistical problems, low combat readiness, and other deficiencies, which undermined Russian military effectiveness. 

These and other challenges—including Ukrainian military efforts and Western aid—severely impacted Russian air, ground, cyber, and maritime operations. 

Russia’s failures will force the Russian military to fundamentally rethink its training practices, organizational structure, culture, logistics, recruitment and retention policies, and planning efforts. 

Nevertheless, Russia is still attempting a de facto annexation of parts of eastern and southern Ukraine that it controls. here

Senior diplomat says relations with Japan at important juncture

By MO JINGXI | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2022-06-08 07:10 

China-Japan relations involve a number of old and new problems, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Tuesday, adding that the difficulties and challenges faced by bilateral ties should not be ignored.

Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, made the remark in a phone conversation with Takeo Akiba, secretary-general of Japan’s National Security Secretariat.

Noting that China-Japan relations have reached an important point in history, with this year marking the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties between the two countries, Yang said China and Japan must stay on the right track, adhere to win-win cooperation, take a long-term perspective and enhance mutual trust on security.

Stable ties

He called on Tokyo to work with Beijing to ensure stable, healthy and resilient China-Japan relations over the next 50 years and jointly safeguard regional peace and prosperity.

According to a statement on the Foreign Ministry’s website, Akiba told Wang that Japan stands ready to deepen cooperation with China, and appropriately handle differences and strengthen communications on sensitive bilateral issues and international hot spot issues in order to jointly build a constructive and stable Japan-China relationship.

Yang also elaborated on China’s principled positions on the Taiwan question and issues related to Hong Kong and the Diaoyu Islands, among others, during the meeting.

Experts said that the meeting came at a time when Japan has been closely following the United States’ “Indo-Pacific” strategy and is actively engaged in containing China and stirring up confrontation in the Asia-Pacific region.

By doing so, Tokyo is also attempting to regain its status in Asia. However, such a practice is not conducive to regional peace, stability and the healthy development of China-Japan relations, and Japan will inevitably have to pay the price for this, they added.

Last month, as US President Joe Biden made his first trip to Asia, Tokyo hosted the leaders’ meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, an anti-China grouping consisting of the US, Japan, India and Australia. Japan also endorsed the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework launched by Biden in Tokyo.

Irresponsible remarks

During Biden’s visit, Japan and the US made irresponsible remarks and groundless accusations on a series of issues related to China’s domestic affairs, including on the Taiwan question.

Wang Junsheng, a researcher of East Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that Japan is joining with the US to counter China as Tokyo is Washington’s close ally, and also because it misjudges China’s development.

“Japan is unwilling to see a rising China because it mistakenly assumes that China’s development will harm its own interests,” Wang said. “However, the fact is that as close neighbors, both China and Japan will benefit from their good relationship in various areas including trade and the economy, regional cooperation and tackling climate change.”

Xiang Haoyu, a distinguished research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, said in an article in Global Times that hyping up or creating so-called external threats for specific political purposes will not make Japan great again or bring it absolute security.

Instead, it will only get Japan into greater security dilemmas, Xiang said.

Artist Creates Witty Single-Panel Comics Depicting Odd And Absurd Situations In A Slightly Different Everyday Life

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Let us introduce you to Jim Shoenbill, an illustrator who is on a mission to brighten people’s days with positive humor. He creates witty single-panel comics depicting weird and absurd situations in a slightly different everyday life.

In this universe made by Jim, a deer can be a stand-up comedian, Jesus is no longer a miracle worker, but an optician, beverages can talk and more. As the artist described himself, he just channels his distractions and odd thoughts into funny cartoons “to make the world a better place”.

Jim’s illustrations and writing have appeared in magazines such as The Oldie, Alta, Women’s World, American Legion Magazine and more. So, without further ado, scroll down to immerse yourself in the sea of humor and puns.

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PCR’s latest. He says we are headed to war now:

Source article HERE

“War With the Russian Federation
June 24, 2022

Dear Readers, this website, the Institute for Political Economy is a 501c3 tax-exempt public foundation. For it to continue to exist, public support must comprise one-third of its operating costs. Currently, this is the case. However, public support has been falling. The backbone of the website are the monthly donors. But the response to the quarterly requests are weakening. The response in September is always weak, but this June the response is weak as well.

Is this the situation — when truth is most needed, support for it is running out? Once the ruling elites control the narratives, liberty, freedom, life as Americans knew it is dead.

It is increasingly difficult to tell the truth as Americans are punished for doing so. If you do not support those few of us who are addicted to truth, truth will die.

War With the Russian Federation

Paul Craig Roberts

I remember when others tooted my horn. The French government of President Francois Mitterrand bestowed upon me the French Legion of Honor for the restoration of economic science. President Reagan sent his Budget Director, Jim Miller, to the award ceremony with a letter from Reagan giving me credit for Reagan’s successful economic policy that cured stagflation.

The US Department of the Treasury gave me its Silver Medal for “outstanding contributions to US economic policy.” Who’s Who in America gave me the Lifetime Achievements Award. The Press Club of Mexico gave me its International Journalism Award. When my children were born congratulatory letters arrived from such luminaries as the Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And so on.

Today, my horn is not tooted unless I do it myself, which I have not done but now will. I have ruined myself by telling the truth, and I don’t even get credit for that.

Yesterday (June 23, 2022) The Saker (Andrei Raevsky) wrote that it has become undeniable that what began as a Russian limited military operation in Ukraine has turned into an open and full-scale war between Russia and the West.

I was the first person to put into print that the “limited” aspect of Russia’s intervention in Donbass was a delusion.

Washington, I said, would never allow it to be limited.

For this obviously correct insight, Andrei denounced me as anti-Russian. Dmitry Orlov dismissed me as a crank who wanted nuclear war. In other words, my pointing out a Kremlin miscalculation that would result in a wider war was unwelcome despite its obvious truthfulness.

Well, as Andrei now acknowledges, the wider war I predicted is upon us.

The Kremlin’s receptivity to provocations have brought them to the situation where an insignificant country, certainly militarily, but in all respects, has blocked Russia’s provision of part of Russia — Kaliningrad. If the Kremlin, ever tolerant of provocations, accepts this, Russia is finished. If the Kremlin doesn’t accept it, Lithuania is finished.

As Lithuania is a NATO member–stupid decision–NATO will have to go to war or back down. The Jewish neoconservatives who control US foreign policy will not let them back down. Washington pays a lot for obedience and will expect NATO to comply.

In other words, Europe’s “leaders” are likely soon to be faced with a decision: Do we destroy Europe or do we give up our American payments?

They will take the money and run, but to where?

As a former Cold Warrior, as a former member of a presidential investigatory committee to assess the CIA’s views of Soviet economic and military capability, I can say, with confidence, that there is nowhere to run.

Unless the hegemony over US, and thereby the West’s, foreign policy that is held by the Jewish neoconservatives is broken, the West and Russia are headed into nuclear war.

The war will be nuclear, because the West is too weak conventionally to confront Russia.

The West is NOT aware of this, because the Russian Donbass intervention involves few Russian troops who are moving slowly using encirclement.

Normally, an invasion force relies on a 3 to 1 superiority in manpower, but in the Donbass conflict the Ukrainians probably outnumbered the Russians, with the mass of the Russian Army waiting on the sidelines for any NATO troop intervention.

There is no doubt whatsoever that Russia will clear Donbass of Ukrainian military forces. That job is almost over. But not the wider conflict.

EU and NATO forming coalition ‘for war against Russia’ – Lavrov

The Russian Foreign Minister said today: “Hitler rallied a significant part, if not most, of the European nations under his banner for a war against the Soviet Union,” adding that “now, the EU together with NATO are forming another – modern – coalition for a standoff and, ultimately, war with the Russian Federation.”

Streusel Coffee Cake

Everyone needs a classic coffee cake recipe. Simple to make and a treat to eat, this is it! Our cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake recipe is the perfect one to wake up and create for a holiday brunch. It only takes 10 minutes of prep time and is made easy with Bisquick™ Original Pancake & Baking Mix.

Streusel Coffee Cake
Streusel Coffee Cake

What you need.

How to make it.

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Tips and tricks.

Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say

US miliatary fighting Russian military. And not a thought to the implications of what this means. -MM

A secretive operation involving U.S. Special Operations forces hints at the scale of the effort to assist Ukraine’s still outgunned military.

WASHINGTON — As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.

Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.

At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine. The United States withdrew its own 150 military instructors before the war began in February, but commandos from these allies either remained or have gone in and out of the country since then, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid, three U.S. officials said. . .here

This Stray Cat Ask To Be Let Inside To Keep Her Kittens Safe | The Dodo

A heartwarming kitty cat video.

Ukraine SINKS Russian Rescue Ship on Black Sea

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The Russian Black Sea Fleet Rescue Tug “Vasily Bekh” has been hit by Ukrainian-launched missiles and SUNK.

Russian Black Sea Fleet Rescue Tug "Vasily Bekh"
Russian Black Sea Fleet Rescue Tug “Vasily Bekh”

The vessel was struck by two Harpoon anti ship missiles, a U.S. produced weapons system, manufactured by McDonnell Douglas.

The 187 foot long ship sank within 18 seconds of being hit.

At least ten (10) Russian sailors are dead, 23 others are wounded.

Video, below, was taken by a Bayraktar Drone operated by the Ukraine military, shows the two missiles striking from the left, and the ship going under almost immediately after the explosions.

The assault on the Vasily Bekh Rescue tugboat was first announced on the official Twitter account of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, and a few minutes later a video showing the assault was posted on social media.

Nicaragua approves Russian troop access to country, defies US objection

Hum. Interesting. The article seems to be blocked.

Screenshot.

Article HERE

China ready to supply components for aircraft to Russia

There are no restrictions from the Chinese side, Zhang Hanhui noted…
MOSCOW, June 17. /TASS/. China is ready to supply components for aircraft to Russian airlines, Chinese Ambassador to Moscow Zhang Hanhui told TASS.

"We are ready to supply components to Russia, we are organizing such cooperation," he said. "[Airlines] are currently addressing [it], they have certain channels, there are no restrictions from the Chinese side," the diplomat added.

On February 26, the European Union prohibited sale and supply, including leasing, of aircraft and components to it for Russian air carriers, as well as provision of any insurance and reinsurance services to its aircraft, as well as repairs, over the situation in Ukraine. The Russian authorities responded by taking a number actions, particularly allowing local carriers to continue exploiting aircraft leased or rented from foreign companies.

Full article from Tass HERE

Decoupling from China is not a serious option – Google Search

Of course.

If the Empire could do it, they would already have done it. 

I have a hunch that the powers that be in China are way ahead of the game before us mere mortals are aware of it. Perhaps the election of Xi to lead China is not an accident. Perhaps Xi's actions reining in the party and the PLA are not coincidences. Maybe his cleaning up of rampant corruption, strengthening of national defense, putting a lid on corporate malfeasance, and making term extensions possible are all for conducting a long and unspoken war. I await that moment when China finally is in firm possession of much needed technologies and resources, and then it can do what Russia has done, which is to demand payment in RMB for trade, stop measuring wealth or economics in USD, and sell 90% of USD reserves. 

China to this day is still one of the strongest supporters of the USD, which provides the hege-money that makes the empire possible. Take that away and the house of cards will fall. Maybe a better system and more responsible government will emerge. That will of course be up to the American people. Much better for the world is that America will not be able to afford its military adventurism, flooding the world with weapons, and creating havoc all over the world. Hence we will have peace. Only by attacking the empire's foundation, the dollar hege-money, that the house of cards will buckle and collapse.

PM

Stunning Autochrome Portraits of Women Taken by Alfonse Van Besten From the Early 20th Century

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Alfonse Van Besten (1865–1926) was a painter and took full advantage of the possibilities of the new color process. One can see that many of his autochromes were taken with a “painterly eye” e.g. Musing (Mrs.Van Besten) and Symphony in white. It was evident that he had a very good sense of composition.

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During the First World War he was a refugee in Holland. Together with his friend A. Van Son, another Belgian autochromist and refugee, they gave countless lectures at Dutch photography societies. They were praised for their excellent autochrome work, e.g. on the 16th of April 1915 the photographic society “Meer Licht” from Nymegen paid an homage to Van Besten for his outstanding autochrome plates.

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I could easily paint from these images. They are perfect to use as figurative guides.

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Chinese tunnel boring machine shipped to Portugal

Remark: Previously to this, Germany sold similar machinery to China at a very exorbitant expensive price. They included a super expensive repair cost structure, warranties and insurance that provided a very nice yearly income to the German manufacturers. Meanwhile, the Germans would also block any Chinese on-site efforts while they would repair the machinery.
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Today China produces much more sophisticated and advanced TBM tunneling machinery. And, thus, it is winning business in Europe.
Just wait and see. 

The west always claimed that China steals their technology. But I know from very beginning that the West is using self deception. 

I was a manager for four years in a village collectively owned factory of 175 years before I went to college. 

The factory started in 1966, with less than thirty yuan investment with five workers. 

By 1973 when I joined the factory as a fresh high school graduate, the factory had over 100 workers, with three lathes, two planers, three 60 ton presses, five big drills, more than thirty electric welders and two gas welders. 

I started as a lathe operator, and then became the manager at the beginning of next year. 

By the time I went to college in the spring of 1978, the factory had 175 people with a gross revenue of more than one million a year. 

Most of the workers had very little technical background but everybody worked together to solve technical problems. 

One time, we took an order which required technical standards that we did not have the equipment to do. 

No factory in the Qingdao Areas had the equipment to do it. 

But one of our old workers came up with a brilliant idea and told me that we could do the work without the necessary equipment.

We eventually did the job, making two huge ventilation machines for a big textile factory in Qingdao, and made a lot of money out of it. 

When the engineers came to see how we made it, they were shocked by the primitive ideas and technology we used to produce the parts and assembled the machines in the end. 

The workers in my factory were all paid the same amount of work points. 

Management and workers worked together to solve the problems. 

If we needed to work ten hours, twelve hours, even sixteen hours a day, we would do it. The shared objective was to get things done as quickly, efficiently and economically as possible. Exactly because the manager did not get more pay than the workers, it was much easier to be a leader at that time.

I left China to study in Singapore, then the U.S. and eventually stayed in the U.S. 

After I came to the U.S. and learned how the system worked here, I was convinced that the West would never be able to compete with China if China stayed its track. 

I have been teaching under five (college) presidents in the current university. 

From my experience, except the first one who was a good leader. All the last four presidents were disasters. 

They got paid five or six times more than the faculty, but did nothing good for the college and they were either left themselves or asked to leave after they did enough damages. 

But most faculty and staff tolerated them until the last minutes. Our college has been going down hill because of their poor leadership. 

I think my college's situation is very reflective of the whole country in the U.S. 

The lack of good leadership with a big gap in the pay of the workers and management. 

It would be fine for them when there was no competition. 

But now China is a serious competition, and the U.S. and the west are still doing their business as usual. It will not be long when China leads the world in every aspect.

Dongping
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Journey – Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’ (Official Video – 1979)

Time machine time…

Member of Russian Parliament Says “London will be Bombed first”

A Russian Member of Parliament, Andrey Gurulyov, has said that “London will be the first city to be bombed by Russia if the blockade of Kaliningrad leads to a war with NATO.”

MP Andrey Gurulyov, 54, a member of Russian parliament’s defense committee, advocated the Russian invasion of the NATO Baltic countries.

On state TV’s Channel 1 he said there was no other way to prevent the West blockading Russian exclave Kaliningrad.

Such a move would trigger the NATO Treaty “Article five” which says “an attack upon one member of NATO is an attack upon all members” and spark World War Three.

“We’ll destroy the entire group of enemy’s space satellites during the first air operation,” said Lt-Gen Gurulyov, a senior commander in the Russian Army who now represents United Russia, the main political party.

“No-one will care if they are American or British, we would see them all as NATO.

“Second, we’ll mitigate the entire system of anti-missile defense, everywhere and 100 per cent.

“Third, we certainly won’t start from Warsaw, Paris or Berlin.

“The first to be hit will be London.

“It’s crystal clear that the threat to the world comes from the Anglo-Saxons.”

Like other Moscow hardliners, he believes the West – especially on continental Europe – has no stomach for a real war.

“As part of the operation to destroy critically important sites, Western Europe will be cut off from power supplies and immobilized.

“All power supply sites will be destroyed.

“And in the third stage, I shall see what the USA will tell Western Europe on continuing their fight in the cold, without food and electricity.

“I wonder how they (the US) will manage to stay aside.

“This is the rough plan, and I deliberately leave out certain moments because they are not to be discussed on TV.”

Gurulyov is a former deputy commander of Russia’s southern military district.

He served with Russian forces in Syria.

He has been sanctioned by the US for his close links to Putin.

Pineapple-Banana Coffee Cake

Aloha! Your taste buds will welcome this tropical delight of banana coffee cake loaded with pineapple and topped with a pineapple glaze.

Pineapple-Banana Coffee Cake
Pineapple-Banana Coffee Cake

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Pineapple-Banana Coffee Cake

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Pineapple-Banana Coffee Cake

RUSSIANS CONQUER SEVERODONETSK; NEXT STOP: LYSYCHANSK

Russia’s army has “fully occupied” the key Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk after weeks of fighting, its mayor said Saturday.

The capture of the industrial hub of Severodonetsk is an important strategic win for Moscow as it seeks to gain full control over the east of the country.
It has been the scene of weeks of running battles, but the Ukrainian army said Friday that its outgunned forces would withdraw to better defend the neighboring city of Lysychansk.

“The city has been fully occupied by the Russians,” mayor Oleksandr Striuk said on Saturday.

A few hours earlier, pro-Moscow separatists said Russian troops and their allies had entered Lysychansk, which faces Severodonetsk across the river.

“Street fighting is currently taking place,” a representative of the separatists, Andrei Marochko, said on Telegram, in a claim that could not be independently verified at that time.   Now, however, the city is confirmed to have been conquered by the Russian Army.

Grotesque, Occult, and Bizarre Images by William Mortensen, the Forgotten Hollywood Photographer

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Photographer Ansel Adams, whose beautiful black and white landscapes full of mountains still grace both museum and office walls, called fellow photographer William Mortensen “the Anti-Christ” for what he did to the art of photography.

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In a roll call of the pioneers of modern photography, one name is never invoked. From the late 1920s to the 1950s, William Mortensen was one of the most famous and celebrated photographers in America. However, his subject matter – which veered towards the savage, indecorous, gothic and grotesque – as well as his use of montage and illustration, made him a pariah among the puritanical new guard in photography, led by Ansel Adams, who tried to write him out of history.

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Mortensen was the last of the great pictorialist photographers, the movement that dominated early 20th-century photography. Working in Hollywood, he shot many of the leading stars of his day: Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow and Peter Lorre all submitted themselves to the gaze of his lens.

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Cat Trapped In A Sewer For 70 Days Is Almost Drowned From Heavy Rain

Save the kitty! Hurry!

Reality Check: Falsehoods in US perceptions of China

fmprc.gov.cn | Updated: 2022-06-19 19:40 
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has recently delivered a speech at Asia Society outlining the US administration’s approach to China.

With a carefully calibrated language, he sought [1] to promote the “China threat” narrative, [2] continue American interference in China’s internal affairs, and  [3] smear China’s domestic and foreign policy, all in a continuing effort aimed at [4] full-blown containment and suppression of China.

The following is the CHINESE RESPONSE.

It is printed in FULL.

You will NOT see this anywhere in American, or Western media.

In what is to follow, we will use facts and figures to show to the world how deceptive, hypocritical and dangerous the US’s China policy is.

Falsehood 1: China poses the most serious long-term challenge to the international order and is undermining it. The US will defend the international law, agreements, principles, and institutions that maintain peace and security, and protect the rights of individuals and sovereign nations.

Reality Check: What the US has constantly vowed to preserve is a so-called international order designed to serve the US’s own interests and perpetuate its hegemony. The US itself is the largest source of disruption to the actual world order.

◆ China has been and always will be a defender of the international order. China is a founding member of the United Nations (UN) and the first country to put its signature on the UN Charter. China is committed to upholding the UN-centered international system, the international order underpinned by international law, and the basic norms governing international relations built on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence jointly championed by China, India and Myanmar have been widely recognized by the international community and have become the basic norms guiding state-to-state relations.

China upholds true multilateralism and global strategic stability. China is the largest contributor of peacekeepers among the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the second largest contributor among all countries to the UN peacekeeping budget. China has taken an active part in international arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation processes. It has signed or acceded to more than 20 multilateral arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation treaties, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). China is against arms race.

In the wake of the international financial crisis of 2008, China adopted a responsible macro policy, remained a “stabilizer” for the world economy and made important contribution to global recovery. China actively provides international public goods to various countries, and has signed BRI cooperation agreements with 149 countries and 32 international organizations.

◆ In recent years, President Xi Jinping’s vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind has been warmly received by the international community. It has been written into multiple important documents issued by the UN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and other multilateral institutions. UN Secretary-General António Guterres hailed China as an important pillar for multilateralism, noting that the purpose for practicing multilateralism is to build a community with a shared future for mankind. Peter Thomson, president of the 71st Session of the UN General Assembly, said the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind advocated by China is the only future for humanity on this planet.

In response to various new global challenges, President Xi Jinping put forward the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and the Global Security Initiative (GSI). They represent China’s proposals for making the global governance system fairer and more equitable, and have received positive response and wide support from the international community.

◆ The US has blatantly violated the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and the norms governing international relations. With its military might, the US has launched wars in numerous parts of the world, stoking divisions and conflicts and bringing huge turmoil and disaster to the world. Throughout the 240-plus-year history of the US, there were only 16 years in which the US was not at war. The US might as well be called the most belligerent country in the history of the world. US magazine The National Interest quoted Dakota Wood, senior research fellow for defense programs at the Heritage Foundation, who wrote that the US consistently needed to deploy military force every 15 years or so.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has either launched or participated in many wars overseas, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghan War and the Iraq War. Those wars caused extremely severe civilian casualties and property losses, and lead to colossal humanitarian disasters. Since 2001, US wars and military operations in the name of counterterrorism have killed more than 900,000 people, about 335,000 of whom were civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions.

◆ The US habitually puts its domestic law above the international law, and selectively applies international rules as it sees fit. Since the 1980s, the US had once withdrawn from 17 international organizations and treaties, including the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Paris Agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies.

Although the current US administration declared that “America is back” and the US has rejoined some international organizations and agreements, the administration has in essence not abandoned the “America First” policy, and is advancing “selective multilateralism”. The current administration has stayed out of institutions and agreements considered harmful to US interests such as the Treaty on Open Skies. European media have described it as “America First 2.0”.

◆ The US has abused its financial hegemony and technological clout and engaged in economic coercion in the name of protecting national security. The US has enacted some domestic laws, such as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and issued a series of executive orders to target and sanction specific countries, entities or individuals. The ambiguous rules contained in these acts and executive orders, such as the “minimum contacts principle” and “doctrine of effects”, are a willful expansion of the jurisdiction of US domestic laws. The US also abuses its domestic channels of prosecution to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over entities and individuals in other countries.

For more than 60 years, in total disregard of the many resolutions of the UN General Assembly, the US has continued its comprehensive blockade against Cuba based on its embargo policies and domestic laws such as the Torricelli Act and the Helms-Burton Act. The Cuba blockade is the longest and cruelest systemic trade embargo, economic blockade and financial sanctions in modern history. The blockade has been gravely detrimental to Cuba’s economic and social development, causing over 100 billion US dollars of direct losses to Cuba’s economy.

The US has carried out blockade and sanctions against Iran since late 1970s. In May 2018, the US government announced its unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA, and soon after resumed and expanded sanctions against Iran. Many countries and relevant entities have been forced to give up their cooperation with Iran. A large number of foreign oil enterprises left the country. Iran’s manufacturing industry can hardly sustain normal operation. The country has suffered economic slowdown, coupled with heightened inflation and massive currency depreciation.

The US has imposed unilateral sanctions on Belarus, Syria and Zimbabwe, among others, over the years, and ratcheted up ”maximum pressure” against the DPRK, Venezuela, etc.

◆ Statistics show that the previous US administration had imposed over 3,900 sanction measures, which means it wielded its “big stick” three times a day on average. As of fiscal year 2021, the entities and individuals on US sanction lists topped 9,421, which was 933 percent higher compared to the fiscal year 2000.

The US’s illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction have gravely undermined the sovereignty and security of other countries and severely impacted their economic development and people’s wellbeing. The sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction also constitute a gross violation of international law and basic norms of international relations.

In an article published in the September/October 2021 issue of Foreign Affairs, Daniel Drezner, Professor at Tufts University and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, criticizes successive US administrations for using “sanctions as the go-to solution for nearly every foreign policy problem.” He notes that sanctions not only are ineffective, but also “exert a humanitarian toll”, and that the United States of America has become the “United States of Sanctions”.

◆ The “rules-based international order” championed by the US is in fact another version of power politics. This is an attempt to impose one’s own will and standards on others, and to replace the commonly accepted international laws and norms with the house rules of a few countries.

In the world, there is only one international system, i.e. the international system with the UN at its core. There is only one international order, i.e. the international order underpinned by international law. And there is only one set of rules, i.e. the basic norms governing international relations underpinned by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.

Before wanting to discuss rules and order, the US should first pay up its arrears of one billion US dollars for the UN’s regular budget and 1.4 billion US dollars peacekeeping assessments, ratify in a timely manner the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, stop single-handedly blocking the negotiations on a verification protocol under the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), lift illegal unilateral sanctions, earnestly fulfill its international obligations and set a good example for others in respecting laws and norms.

Falsehood 2: The US is not looking for conflict or a new Cold War. It doesn’t seek to block China from its role as a major power, nor to stop China from growing its economy or advancing the interests of its people.

Reality Check: Despite its claims that it doesn’t seek to block China from its role as a major power, nor to stop it from growing its economy, the US is actually deploying its domestic and external resources to unscrupulously contain and suppress China.

◆ Without producing any credible evidence, the US government uses national security as a catch-all pretext and all its apparatus to wantonly suppress and sanction Huawei, restricting its products’ entry into the US market, cutting off its access to chips and operating system, and coercing countries around the world into banning Huawei from their 5G rollout. The US also orchestrated and pressured Canada to hold Huawei’s CFO for nearly three years without cause.

◆ In violation of the principle of fair competition and market economy and international trading rules, the US seeks to hamstring competitive Chinese hi-tech companies under all kinds of trumped-up charges. To date, it has placed over 1,000 Chinese companies on various sanctions lists, subjected biotechnology and artificial intelligence technologies to enhanced export controls and stringent investment review, and sought to ban Chinese social media platforms including TikTok and WeChat.

◆ Under the pretext of protecting human rights, the US has fabricated misinformation and disinformation concerning Xinjiang such as the existence of ”forced labor” and, on the basis of those unfounded stories, has adopted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act which maliciously targets Xinjiang’s competitive cotton, tomatoes and solar photovoltaic sectors to contain China’s growth. This has disrupted the international trade order and destabilized global industrial and supply chains.

◆ The previous US administration, in grave violation of WTO rules, waged a massive trade war on China. Based on its own Section 301 investigation, it imposed three rounds of steep tariffs on about 360 billion US dollars’ worth of Chinese imports. In September 2021, the current US administration initiated a Section 232 investigation to determine the effects on US national security from imports of neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets at a time when global commodity prices were hovering at elevated levels.

◆ The US has a record of grossly interfering in China’s domestic affairs on issues concerning China’s core interests, including Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. It seeks to undermine China’s security and stability by, both overtly and covertly, condoning and supporting separatist activities.

◆ The bipartisan innovation bills being debated in the US Congress, while professing to enhance US competitiveness, see China as a perceived rival. “China” appears more than 800 times in the text, which is packed with provisions detrimental to China’s interests.

◆ In a bid to maintain its power and predominance in international institutions, the US has attempted to smear and block the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind and the initiative of advancing Belt and Road cooperation, among others, in multilateral fora and also to remove references to them in UN and other international documents.

◆ Clinging to a Cold War mentality and the hegemon’s logic, the US pursues bloc politics, concocts the “democracy versus authoritarianism” narrative, cajoles other countries into forming exclusive cliques, strengthens the Five Eyes, peddles the Quad mechanism, puts together AUKUS with the UK and Australia and ramps up bilateral military alliances, in a clear attempt at countering China.

◆ The US pushes NATO to insert itself in Asia-Pacific affairs, fan the “China threat” narrative in the bloc’s new strategic concept, and include in its Madrid Summit such US allies in the Asia-Pacific as Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Australia, in a bid to build an “Asia-Pacific version of NATO”, which would disrupt security and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

◆ The development of state-to-state relations should be based on equality, mutual respect and win-win results. China-US relations have reached an important crossroads. The US should stop viewing this relationship through a Cold War, zero-sum mindset, follow the three principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, and reflect in its action the five assurances it has made to China (i.e. the US does not seek a new Cold War with China, the US does not seek to change China’s system, the revitalization of US alliances is not against China, the US does not support “Taiwan independence”, and the US is not looking for conflict with China) .

Falsehood 3: Our diplomacy is based on partnership and respect for each other’s interests, while China practices coercive diplomacy against other countries and retaliates recklessly. Our task is to prove once again that all countries will be free to chart their own paths without coercion.

Reality Check: It is the US that invented “coercive diplomacy” and excels at coercing countries. Over the years, by imposing economic blockade, unilateral sanctions and other means, the US has practiced coercive diplomacy around the world with textbook examples.

◆ In 1971, American scholar Alexander George first put forward the concept of “coercive diplomacy” to summarize the US policy toward Laos, Cuba and Vietnam at that time. The US government forced the military government of Haiti to step down in 1994, and referred to that as “a textbook example of coercive diplomacy”. In 2003, it explicitly characterized 30.3 billion US dollars additional military expenses for “coercive diplomacy” as incurred expenses.

The US government froze seven billion US dollars assets of the Afghan central bank on the grounds of punishing the Afghan Taliban and even claimed the “life-saving money” of the Afghan people as its own, which resulted in the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. Mohammad Naeem, spokesman of the Taliban Political Office in Doha, said the seizure is “indicative of the lowest level of human and moral decay of a country and a nation”.

In order to force the Nepalese parliament to approve the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) agreement, the US openly issued an “ultimatum”, saying that the US will review its ties with Nepal if it fails to ratify the compact.

After the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, the US Justice Department established the “Task Force KleptoCapture” to find, freeze and seize the yachts, apartments, private jets and huge deposits of Russian citizens in the US and Europe. This fully shows that the US-touted “inviolable and sacred right to property” is just a lie. The US has forced other countries to pick sides and pressured them to join sanctions against Russia. And those who refuse to do so will pay a “price”.

After China and the Solomon Islands had signed a framework agreement on bilateral security cooperation, the US sent senior officials of the National Security Council to the country, doing whatever it can to obstruct the legitimate cooperation between China and Solomon Islands. A Solomn Star article pointed out, “Washington DC, which has literally forgotten Solomon Islands since World War II, has finally woken up and is applying the heat on the Solomon Islands to abandon the security pact.”

In May 2022, on the eve of the High-Level Virtual Meeting of the Group of Friends of the GDI, the US exerted pressure on multiple UN development agencies to obstruct their attendance and threatened to “cut funding”.

◆ The “Clean Network” program launched by the previous administration is another textbook example of US coercive diplomacy. Under the pretext of upholding US national security and citizens’ privacy, the program explicitly requires that Chinese companies such as Huawei, Baidu and Alibaba to be purged from five areas: telecom operators, mobile app stores, mobile apps, cloud services and submarine optical cables. The then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other US politicians lobbied all around the world, coercing countries and regions to join its so-called “Network”. A US senior official even threatened Cyprus and other countries not to work with Chinese 5G suppliers, or they would bear the consequence. Former UK Business and Industry Minister Vince Cable said the government’s decision to ban Huawei’s 5G equipment and services “had nothing to do with national security”, and was because “the Americans told us we should do it”.

◆ The US shows no mercy in coercing its allies. Out of its geopolitical and energy interests considerations, the US has imposed sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project since December 2019. Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the US has imposed new sanctions on related companies and personnel even though Germany had announced the suspension of the certification process for the project.

◆ A US scholar pointed out that American foreign policy since World War II has been based on a simple idea: “Either you are with us or against us. America should lead, allies should follow, and woe be to countries that oppose its primacy”. His words lay bare the nature of US coercive diplomacy.

◆ China never engages in coercive diplomacy and firmly opposes coercive diplomacy by other countries. China never threatens other countries with force, never creates military alliance, never exports ideology, never meddles in others’ domestic affairs, never seeks a trade war, and never imposes unjustified oppression on foreign enterprises. That said, however, China has the right to make necessary and legitimate responses to actions that undermine China’s sovereignty, security and development rights and interests.

Falsehood 4: The US democracy is one of the most powerful assets in this contest. Our task is to prove once again that democracy can meet urgent challenges and that the future belongs to those who believe in freedom.

Reality Check: The US sets standards for democracy after its own system, does not allow other systems, paths and models to exist, and gangs up with others to wantonly interfere in other countries’ internal affairs in the name of democracy. This not just contravenes the spirit of democracy, but also spells disaster for democracy.

◆ The American-style democracy is a rich men’s game based on capital. Money politics penetrates the entire process of election, legislation and administration in the US. People in fact only have a restricted right to political participation. The inequality in economic status has turned into inequality in political status. According to statistics, winners of 91 percent of US congressional elections are the candidates with greater financial support. Big companies, a small group of rich people, and interest groups are more generous to offer financial support and have become the main source of electoral funding. The so-called representatives of people’s will, once elected, often serve the interests of their financial backers, and speak for vested interests rather than the ordinary people. A US Senator had a sharp observation, “Congress does not regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress.”

US Republican congressman from Alabama Mo Brooks publicly denounced ”corruption” of the US Congress in a video on social media. “If you want to be chairman of a major committee, you have to purchase it.” The purchase price depends on how important the committee is, with the minimum bid for a major committee being one million US dollars. Those who cannot afford it have to accept the contributions of special interest groups and then give ”quid pro quos” to the lobbyists. “Special interest groups run Washington. I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean that literally.”

◆ According to a scholar in Singapore, the United States is clearly not functioning as a democracy. It is functioning as a plutocracy. A democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. A plutocracy is a government of the one percent, by the one percent, for the one percent.

◆ The US presidential election follows the Electoral College system, where the president and vice president are elected by the Electoral College. The flaws of such an electoral system are self-evident. First, as the president-elect may not be the winner of the national popular vote, there is a lack of broad representation. Second, as each state gets to decide its own electoral rules, confusion and disorder often occur. Third, the winner-takes-all system exacerbates inequality among states and between political parties. It leads to a huge waste of votes and discourages voter turnout. Voters in deep blue and deep red states are often neglected, while swing states become disproportionately more important where both parties seek to woo more supporters. There have been five presidential elections in US history in which the winner of nationwide popular vote was not elected the president.

The gerrymandering is widely recognized by the US public as a flaw of the electoral system. It refers to an unfair division of electoral districts in favor of a particular party to win as many seats as possible and cement its advantage. The US conducts a census every ten years. Following the completion of the census, redistricting or the redrawing of electoral district boundaries will take place under the principle of maintaining roughly equal population in every voting district while considering demographic shifts. Under the US Constitution, each state legislature has the power to redistrict. This leaves room for gerrymandering by the majority party in a state legislature. According to a YouGov poll in 2021, only 16 percent of US adult citizens say they think their states’ congressional maps would be drawn fairly, while 44 percent say they think the maps would be drawn unfairly and another 40 percent of adults say they are unsure if the maps will be fair.

◆ The American-style democracy is ”one person one vote” in name, yet “rule of a dominant minority” in reality. Political pluralism is only a facade. A small number of elites dominate the political, economic and military affairs. They control the state apparatus and policy-making process, manipulate public opinion, dominate the business community and enjoy all kinds of privileges.

According to the Associated Press, 18.8 million people were missed in the 2020 US census. The black population had a net undercount of 3.3 percent, while it was almost five percent for Hispanics and 5.6 percent for American Indians and Native Alaskans living on reservations. The undercount robs them of their equal share of federal resources including in education, health care and housing and puts them in an unfavorable condition as to congressional apportionment. It reveals the hypocrisy in the US democracy and its “perpetuating systemic racism”.

Noam Chomsky, a political commentator and social activist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points out that the US is a “really existing capitalist democracy”, where there is a positive correlation between people’s wealth and their influence on policy-making. For the lower 70 percent on the wealth/income scale, they have no influence on policy whatsoever. They are effectively disenfranchised.

Wertheimer, President of the non-profit US organization Democracy 21, says that corruption in the US is systemic corruption of the process itself. “When you are dealing with billions and billions of dollars, much of that focused on buying influence, it overwhelms the system, and it is much harder to defend against and maintain representation for ordinary Americans.”

Danny Haiphong, an independent journalist in the US, believes that Western-style democracy views the election itself as the highest achievement. The question of whether this system serves the needs of the broad masses of people is generally ignored in order to obscure the fact that powerful corporate interests set the policy agenda well before votes are cast.

◆ The checks and balances in the American-style democracy have resulted in a “vetocracy”. American political scientist Francis Fukuyama points out in his book Political Order and Political Decay that there is an entrenched political paralysis in the US. The US political system has far too many checks and balances, raising the cost of collective action and in some cases making it impossible altogether. The US democratic process is fragmented and lengthy, with a lot of veto points where individual veto players can block action by the whole body. The function of “checks and balances”, which was purportedly designed to prevent abuse of power, has been distorted in American political practice. Politicians in Washington, D.C. are preoccupied with securing their own partisan interests and no longer care about national development. The two parties are addicted to vetoing and caught in a vicious circle. The government efficacy is inevitably weakened, law and justice trampled upon, development and progress stalled, and social division widened.

According to a Pew Research Center report in October 2021 based on a survey of 17 advanced economies including the US, Germany and the ROK, the US is more politically divided than the other economies surveyed. Nine in ten US respondents believe there are strong conflicts between people who support different political parties, and nearly 60 percent of Americans surveyed think their fellow citizens no longer disagree simply over policies, but also over basic facts.

As political and partisan polarization continues to grow, more “opposition for opposition’s sake” is seen among Democrats and Republicans. Under its influence, voters of the two parties are increasingly antagonized over gun policy. Among Republican voters, 76 percent support the right to possess guns, while 81 percent of Democratic voters see gun control as more important. Hijacked by interest, partisan conflict and the public opinion, the legislation and law enforcement process of gun control is fraught with difficulties. For the past ten years, Democratic congressmen put forward dozens of bills on gun violence and gun control every year, but due to the continued obstruction from the Republican Party, only a handful of them successfully entered the plenary deliberation and debate stage at the Senate or the House of Representatives.

The US National Rifle Association (NRA) has five million members and spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising and lobbying every year. Its tentacles penetrate deep into the fabric of the American society. The NRA is an important funder of the Republican Party. Since its establishment in 1871, the NRA has successfully attracted nine US presidents to join it. According to CNN statistics in 2018, 307 of the 535 US congressmen have received either direct campaign contributions from the NRA and its affiliates or benefited from independent NRA spending like advertising supporting their campaigns. In the face of huge profits, all kinds of gun control efforts have ended up in vain.

◆ The US is not a straight A student when it comes to democracy. Its practice of democracy has been messy and chaotic. On 6 January 2021, thousands of Americans gathered on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. and stormed the Capitol building in a bid to stop the joint session of the Congress from certifying the newly-elected president. The incident interrupted the transfer of US presidential power, leaving five dead and over 140 injured. It is the worst act of violence in Washington, D.C. since 1814 when the British troops set fire to the White House, and it sent shock waves throughout the international community. The US Senate Republican leader described it as a “failed insurrection”.

A scholar from the US Council on Foreign Relations says that the US is not nearly as unique as many Americans believe, and that the Capitol riot should put an end to the notion of American exceptionalism, of an eternal shining city on a hill.

An American expert on international issues wrote in The New York Times that while the US leader has reunited the West, he may not be able to reunite America. Trump and his supporters would be willing to depart from established constitutional rules and norms with his Big Lie. This may undermine the ability of the US government to transfer power peacefully and legitimately. Consequently none of the institutions will work for long, and the people will be thrust into political and financial chaos.

◆ The dysfunctional American-style democracy has triggered a trust crisis. Public commitments to the people come with behind-the-scene deals. Political infighting, money politics, and vetocracy make it virtually impossible for quality governance to be delivered as aspired by the general public. Americans are increasingly disillusioned with the US politics and pessimistic about the American-style democracy.

A Gallup survey in October 2020 shows that only 19 percent of the Americans surveyed are “very confident” about the presidential election, a record low since the survey was first conducted in 2004. According to a poll conducted by The Wall Street Journal in June 2022, six out of 10 Americans feel pessimistic about achieving the American dream.

A Pew Research in 2021 shows that 65 percent of Americans see a need for major reform to the American democracy. People’s confidence in the American democracy dropped in 16 developed countries, and 57 percent of respondents think that the American democracy is no longer a good example to follow.

The Democracy Perception Index released in 2021 by a German polling agency reveals that 44 percent of respondents in the 53 countries surveyed are concerned that the US threatens democracy in their country.

◆ Over the years, despite the structural flaws and problematic practice of its democratic system, the US has been touting the “alliance of democracies” and hyping up the narrative of “democracy versus autocracy”. It is in essence attacking those who hold different views under the banner of democracy, using ideology and values as a tool to suppress others and advance its own geopolitical strategies. This is hegemony in the guise of democracy. A former CIA official openly stated: “We will intervene whenever we decide it’s in our national security interest to intervene. If you don’t like it, lump it.”

The US has pushed for the neo-Monroe Doctrine in Latin America under the pretext of promoting democracy, incited color revolutions in Eurasia, and remotely controlled the Arab Spring in West Asia and North Africa. These moves have brought chaos and disasters to many countries, gravely undermining world peace, stability and development. As suggested by the French website Le Grand Soir, democracy has long become a weapon of massive destruction for the US to attack countries with different views.

◆ Whether a country is democratic or not depends on whether its people are truly the masters of the country. It depends on whether the people have the right to vote, and more importantly, the right to participate; what promises they are given during elections, and more importantly, how many of these promises are delivered after elections; what kind of political procedures and rules are set through state systems and laws, and more importantly, whether these systems and laws are truly enforced; and whether the rules and procedures for the exercise of power are democratic, and more importantly, whether the exercise of power is genuinely subject to public oversight and checks.

◆ The Communist Party of China (CPC) leads the Chinese people in carrying out the whole-process people’s democracy in China. It has not only a complete set of institutions and procedures, but also full-fledged civil participation. A comprehensive, extensive, and well-coordinated system of institutions has been formed to ensure that the people run the country, and diverse, open, and orderly channels for democracy are put into place. This allows the entire people to engage in law-based democratic elections, consultations, decision-making, management, and oversight and to manage state as well as economic, cultural, and social affairs in various ways and forms and in accordance with the law. The whole-process people’s democracy integrates process-oriented democracy with results-oriented democracy, procedural democracy with substantive democracy, direct democracy with indirect democracy, and people’s democracy with the will of the state. It is a model of socialist democracy that covers all aspects of the democratic process and all sectors of society. It is a true democracy that works. China’s whole-process people’s democracy is gaining wider recognition and acclaim from the international community.

A British scholar says that electoral democracy does not breed a close relationship with the people and government, because the people are only called upon to be involved whenever to make elections take place. The Chinese approach is different in that there is a very important consultative component in the way China operates.

◆ Democracy is a concrete phenomenon that is constantly evolving. Rooted in history, culture and tradition, it takes diverse forms and develops along the paths chosen by different peoples based on their exploration and innovation. China stays committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, uphold non-interference in internal affairs, and respect the independent choices of development paths and social systems made by people in different countries. China has no intention to engage in systemic rivalry or ideological confrontation with the US. China never exports ideology, never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs, and never seeks to change the system of the US.

Falsehood 5: The US has profound differences with the CPC and the Chinese Government. But those differences are between governments and systems – not between our people.

Reality check: The CPC’s leadership is the choice of history and of the people. The CPC and the Chinese government enjoy the wholehearted support and endorsement of the Chinese people. The US’s attempt to drive wedges between the CPC and the Chinese people only serves to reveal its animosity against China’s system and path.

◆ The CPC has deep roots among and close ties with the Chinese people. This is what has kept the CPC full of vigor and vitality. By the end of 2021, the CPC had over 95 million members. The CPC is the largest party in the world that has exercised long-term governance in the world’s most populous country. Under the leadership of the CPC, China has created the two miracles of rapid economic development and long-term social stability. Over 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty and 1.4 billion people are moving toward modernization. Over the course of just several decades, China has accomplished what took western developed countries hundreds of years.

A Harvard University survey among the Chinese people spanning 13 years found that more than 90 percent of respondents are satisfied with the Party and their government, the highest rate among countries for years running. A trust and credibility survey released in 2022 by Edelman, a renowned US public relations consultancy firm, shows that as many as 91 percent Chinese citizens trust their government in 2021, the highest among all surveyed countries.

◆ The previous US administration, in a McCarthyism-style campaign, went all out to attack and discredit the CPC. It has attacked Chinese leaders and China’s domestic and foreign policies, sown discord between the CPC and the Chinese people, flagrantly challenged the leadership and governing position of the CPC, incited anti-China and anti-CPC sentiment, and imposed visa restrictions on CPC members and their families.

The current administration, since its inauguration, has made no substantive changes to those policies. In June 2021, the US Senate passed the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, which is more than 2,000 pages long. It regarded China as a strategic competitor and the main challenge to the US, slandered China’s development path and domestic and foreign policies, and malignantly urged actions to counter the “influence and malign activities” of the CPC. It asked for more than 200 billion US dollars of public funding to ensure US advantages in key technology sectors over China, and advocated mobilizing US resources in strategic, diplomatic, economic, and technological realms to engage in comprehensive strategic competition with China. The US Senate also proposed an appropriation of 300 million US dollars for each of the fiscal years 2022 through 2026 to “counter the malign influence” of the CPC and designated the US Department of State and Agency for International Development to train journalists on investigative techniques necessary to ensure public accountability related to the Belt and Road Initiative, including “supporting civil society and independent media”.

The US continues to use the CPC background as a pretext for cracking down on normal people-to-people exchanges and cooperation. For some time, Chinese students and visiting scholars going to the US have been harassed and suppressed by the US. Most of them were asked whether they or their parents are CPC members. Some were repatriated on inconceivable grounds, such as being suspected of military connections simply because they had photos in their mobile phones of military training at college. These stop-and-search activities go far beyond what the US claims as “normal law enforcement”.

◆ The CPC, the Chinese government and the Chinese people share an inseparable bond. The US says it respects the Chinese people, then it should respect the development path and political system chosen by the Chinese people and respect the CPC that represents the fundamental interests of the Chinese people. By targeting the CPC and the Chinese government, the US is in effect targeting the Chinese people. Anything done to separate the CPC, the Chinese government and the Chinese people and pit the Chinese people against the CPC and the Chinese government will surely be met with the unanimous opposition and resolute response of the over 1.4 billion Chinese people.

Falsehood 6: The United States raises human rights issues and calls for change – not to stand against China, but to stand up for peace, security, and human dignity.

Reality Check: The human rights of the Chinese people are guaranteed like never before, with a notable increase in their sense of fulfillment, happiness and security. In contrast, the US has been engaged in grave human rights violations both at home and abroad, and its shocking track record makes it the biggest human rights abuser in the world.

◆ China always puts people’s right to subsistence on top of its agenda, prioritizes the work to enhance their right to development, regards the protection of citizens’ lawful rights and interests as its basic task, has made the safeguarding of the rights of ethnic groups an important part of its work, and considers the protection of people’s safety its long-term goal.

Guided by a people-centered philosophy, since the day when it was founded, the CPC has made seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation its mission. For the past 100 years, the Party has been working tirelessly for the interest of the people, and has dedicated itself to realizing people’s aspirations for a better life. China has been advancing whole-process people’s democracy, promoting legal safeguard for human rights, and upholding social equity and justice. The Chinese people now enjoy fuller and more extensive and comprehensive democratic rights.

◆ China has created the miracle of eliminating absolute poverty. By the end of 2020, China has lifted all 98.99 million rural residents living below the current poverty line out of poverty. In 2021, China completed the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and historically resolved the problem of absolute poverty. Since the launch of reform and opening-up, 770 million impoverished rural residents have shaken off poverty as currently defined. Based on the international poverty line of the World Bank, China accounts for 70 percent of global poverty reduction over the same period. China met the poverty reduction goal of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ten years ahead of schedule, making major contributions to global poverty reduction and human rights progress. China has also put in place the world’s largest education system, the largest social security system and the largest health care system.

◆ Since COVID-19 started, China has been acting on the principle of putting the people and their lives first. Based on China’s national conditions, it has formulated and implemented a dynamic zero-COVID guideline, and has been constantly fine-tuning its response measures in light of the evolving situation, to best protect people’s life and health and at the same time, ensure sustained, sound and steady socioeconomic development with the pandemic under effective control. Both the infection rate and mortality rate of China are the lowest in the world.

◆ As an active participant in global human rights governance, China has made its contribution to and offered its initiatives on world human rights development. In recent years, the concept of “building a community of shared future” has been written into the resolutions of the UN Human Rights Council, and China-sponsored resolutions on “the contribution of development to the enjoyment of all human rights” and on “Promoting Mutually Beneficial Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights” were adopted multiple times at the Human Rights Council. China also made joint statements on behalf of developing countries on the implementation of the right to development, the promotion of human rights by poverty alleviation, equitable distribution of vaccines, among other subjects, contributing its share to safeguarding the basic human rights of developing countries, which has won it wide recognition and support from the international community.

◆ China has been an advocate and a doer in advancing the international human rights cause. A World Bank study estimates, if implemented fully, the Belt and Road Initiative could lift 32 million people out of moderate poverty — those who live on less than $3.2 a day. It shows how participating in Belt and Road cooperation can advance human rights in more countries. In the face of the pandemic, China launched its largest global humanitarian operation since the founding of the People’s Republic, and championed the building of a global community of health for all. To address the global development deficit, China proposed the Global Development Initiative (GDI) which sees improving people’s welfare and achieving well-rounded human development as the fundamental purpose and goal. The GDI has been echoed and supported by more than 100 countries and many international organizations including the UN. The Initiative galvanizes extensive international consensus for accelerated implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and builds up international synergy for coordinated development, thus providing a strong underpinning for the advancement of the international human rights cause.

◆ The right to life is of utmost importance, as survival is the basis of all human rights. Endowed with the world’s most advanced medical equipment and technologies, the US has registered the world’s largest number of COVID-19 infections and deaths. Pandemic response has been extremely politicized, and become a tool and lever to attack, undercut and oppose each other between the Republicans and the Democrats. Politicians only focus on political gains, with no regard to the life and health of the ordinary people. Its pandemic control, which has been unscientific, unequal and irresponsible, has gravely undermined American people’s right to life and health.

So far, the COVID-19 death toll in the US has surpassed one million. The deaths are, according to The Atlantic, “unexpected, untimely, particularly painful, and, in many cases, preventable”. Some politician even suggested that old people may sacrifice themselves for the country and that saving the country’s economy is more important than old people’s lives. Data of the US Center for Disease Prevention and Control shows that most COVID victims are aged 65 years and above. USC and Princeton researchers project that due to the pandemic deaths last year, life expectancy at birth for Americans will shorten by 1.13 years, the sharpest decline since World War II. ”For Blacks, the life expectancy would shorten by 2.10 years, and for Latinos, by 3.05 years. Whites are also impacted, but their projected decline is much smaller – 0.68 years.”

The Washington Post points to a far greater number behind the one million death toll: That number is 9 million – the number of Americans who have lost spouses, parents, grandparents, siblings and children to COVID. A study by the Imperial College London estimates that more than 250,000 US children had lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19 by 23 May 2020. Figures released by the US Government Accountability Office in March 2022 show that up to 23 million people in the US may have developed “long COVID”, and an estimated one million people suffering from the symptoms may be pushed out of work.

The US is the country most rampant with gun violence. Its population, totaling 333 million or 4 percent of the world’s total, own more than 400 million guns or 46 percent of all the private guns in the world. It tops the world in terms of gun ownership, and shooting incidents every now and then in the US takes away more than 110 lives on a daily average. Many people say it is easier to buy a gun than baby formula in the US.

Data of the US website Gun Violence Archive show about 45,000 Americans are killed in gun violence incidents in 2021. On 24 May 2022, the Robb elementary school shooting in Texas claimed 21 lives, including 19 children. By US media counts, it is the 39th campus shooting this year. According to The Washington Post tally, 202 mass shootings took place in the US in the first five and half months this year. For decades, no substantive measures have been taken by the US government to address such problems. In the past 25 years, the US federal government fails to introduce any gun control act. The New York Times observed, “The United States has become ungovernable not because of political differences or protest or a lack of civility, but because this is a country unwilling to protect and care for its citizens – its women, its racial minorities and especially its children.”

Despite the claim by US founding fathers that “All men are created equal”, slavery was preserved in its Constitution of 1789. Although the US has abolished segregation on the surface, white supremacy continues to wreak havoc, and systemic discrimination against racial minorities still exists even to this day. The entrenched racism, compounded by the coronavirus, has fueled a new spike of hate crimes against Asian-Americans. At the same time, racial persecution of the indigenous people persists, discrimination against the Muslim community worsens, racial economic divide yawns, and racial inequality aggravates day by day. Nearly 60 years on since Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, people still see a brutal reality as reflected in George Floyd’s “I can’t breathe” plea.

◆ Through slaughter, expulsion, sterilization and forced assimilation, the US committed a genocide against Native Americans, resulting in a sharp drop in their population from five million in 1492 to 250,000 in the early 20th century. The Native American community has long been neglected and discriminated against. The indigenous culture was fundamentally crushed, and the inter-generational inheritance of indigenous lives and spirits was under severe threats. Many US government statistical programs either leave them out completely or simply classify them as “others”.

Shannon Keller O’Loughlin, Chief Executive and Attorney of the Association on American Indian Affairs, said that Native Americans have diverse cultures and languages, but are often seen not as an ethnic group, but as a political stratum with limited autonomy based on treaties with the federal government. The Atlantic commented that from the expulsion, slaughter and forced assimilation back in history to the current widespread poverty and neglect, the American Indians, once the owner of this continent, now have a very weak voice in American society.

The US government enforced the system of boarding schools in Native American areas to impose English and Christian education on Native American children. It also enacted laws prohibiting Native Americans from performing religious rituals which have been passed down through generations. An article titled “The United States Must Reckon With Its Own Genocides” carried by Foreign Policy website on 11 October 2021 noted that over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, there were more than 350 government funded indigenous boarding schools across the US. Hundreds of thousands of indigenous children passed through, or died in, these schools. The purpose of Indian boarding schools was to culturally assimilate indigenous children by forcibly relocating them from their families and communities to distant residential facilities where their American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian identities, languages, and beliefs were to be forcibly suppressed. The US was not just morally, but also legally responsible for the crime of genocide against its own people.

Native American writer Rebecca Nagle believes that information about Native Americans has been systematically removed from mainstream media and popular culture. According to a report by National Indian Education Association, 87 percent of state-level US history textbooks do not mention the post-1900 history of indigenous people. According to the Smithsonian Institution, things taught about Native Americans in American schools are full of inaccurate information and fail to present the real picture of the sufferings of indigenous people. Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator, said publicly at the Young America’s Foundation that “We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here … but candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

◆ Islamphobia and the discrimination against and suppression of Muslims and Islam in US mainstream society has become more pronounced. A Bloomberg report on 9 September 2021 observed that discrimination against Muslims in the US increased in the two decades after 9/11. On the same day, the Associated Press cited a survey which found that 53 percent of Americans have negative views toward Islam. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in its 2021 report that it receives an increasing number of complaints each year about bullying and hate speech against Muslims.

According to the survey findings released by the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley on 29 October 2021, 67.5 percent of Muslim respondents said they had experienced Islamophobia, and an even larger percent of those surveyed, 93.7 percent, said that anti-Muslim hatred had affected their mental or emotional well-being to some degree.

◆ The US has serious problems of human trafficking and forced labor. It still has not ratified the Forced Labour Convention (1930), the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Every year, nearly 100,000 people are smuggled into the US for forced labor. Today, there are at least half a million people enslaved in the US; roughly 240,000 to 325,000 women and children are victims of sexual slavery.

◆ Immigrants and refugees have become a tool of partisan feuding and political rivalry in the US. The government changes its rules and regulations capriciously, enforces laws violently, and immigrants have been subjected to inhuman treatment such as prolonged detention, torture and forced labor. Data released by US Border Patrol shows that in fiscal year 2021, as many as 557 migrants died on the southern border of the US, more than double the previous fiscal year, hitting the highest number since records began in 1998. That same year, the US detained more than 1.7 million immigrants at the southern border, including 45,000 children. In September 2021, more than 15,000 asylum seekers from Haiti crowded under a bridge in the Texas border town of Del Rio, sleeping in squalid tents or dirt in the sweltering heat, and surrounded by trash under dire living conditions. US border patrol authorities brutalized the asylum seekers, with patrols on horseback, brandishing horsewhips and charging toward the crowds to expel them into the river. CNN commented that this scene is reminiscent of the dark era in American history when slave patrols were used to control black slaves.

◆ Turning a blind eye to the systematic violation of the human rights of its own people, the US government has wilfully attacked other countries and interfered in their internal affairs in the name of human rights, challenging right with might and trampling on justice out of selfish interest.

Since 2001, the US has waged war or conducted military operations in about 80 countries in the name of “war on terror”, resulting in the deaths of more than 900,000 people, including 300,000 civilians. The 20-year-long war waged by the US has left Afghanistan devastated and impoverished. A total of 47,245 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers unrelated to 9/11 have been killed and more than 10 million displaced as a result of US operations. The War in Afghanistan has destroyed the foundation of economic development and impoverished the Afghan people. When the US withdrew from Afghanistan, it immediately froze billions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves at the Afghan central bank, pushing the Afghan economy to the brink of collapse and making things worse for the Afghan people.

At the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, many countries denounced the US as “the biggest destroyer of human rights in the world” and urged it to address its own gross human rights problems.

◆ The US has been an expert in arbitrary detention and torture. Under the pretext of “war on terror”, the CIA has set up black sites in at least 54 countries and regions over the years, where more than 100,000 people are detained. A group of independent human rights experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council said in a statement released on 10 January 2022 that the US has arbitrarily detained people without trial and subjected them to torture or ill-treatment in Guantanamo Bay for 20 years in violation of international human rights law, calling this “a stain on the US Government’s commitment to the rule of law”. The US should face up to and resolve its own systemic and chronic human rights problems, reflect on the humanitarian disasters and crimes it has caused around the world, and give a responsible account of itself to the international community.

Falsehood 7: The US remains committed to its ”one China” policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiques, the Six Assurances. Its policy on Taiwan has not changed.

Reality Check: The one-China principle is an established norm of international relations and a universal consensus of the international community. The US has acted faithlessly, kept regressing from its own commitments and the consensus it reached with China, and attempted to weaken and undermine the one-China principle and use Taiwan to contain China. This is a major threat to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

◆ In October 1971, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted, with an overwhelming majority, Resolution 2758, which decided to restore the lawful seat of the People’s Republic of China in the UN, and has solved once and for all the issue of China’s representation in the UN in political, legal and procedural terms. The official legal opinions of the Office of Legal Affairs of the UN Secretariat pointed out explicitly that “the United Nations considers ‘Taiwan’ as a province of China with no separate status”, the “‘authorities’ in ‘Taipei’ are not considered to … enjoy any form of governmental status”, and “Reference to ‘Taiwan’ … should read ‘Taiwan, Province of China'”.

On the basis of the one-China principle, China has established diplomatic relations with 181 countries, including the US.

◆ The US made the following commitments to China regarding the one-China principle in the three China-US joint communiqués.

In the Shanghai Communiqué released in 1972, the US explicitly stated that “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position”.

In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations released in 1978, the US clearly stated that “The United States of America recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China”; ”The Government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China”.

In the August 17 Communiqué released in 1982, the US unequivocally stated that “In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations on January 1, 1979, issued by the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the United States of America, the United States of America recognized the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China, and it acknowledged the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China”, and that “it has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity, or interfering in China’s internal affairs, or pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan'”.

According to this Communiqué, “the United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution. In so stating, the United States acknowledges China’s consistent position regarding the thorough settlement of this issue”.

◆ Rather than faithfully abiding by its commitments on Taiwan, the US has kept backpedaling on history.

On the political front, the US has added the so-called “Taiwan Relations Act” and the “Six Assurances” to the expression of its one-China policy, with a growing list of such prefixes. Both prefixes are unilaterally made by the US side in breach of its commitments in the three China-US joint communiqués as well as the one-China principle affirmed in the UNGA Resolution 2758 and widely observed by the international community. They are illegal, null and void from the very beginning, and China has never acknowledged and has firmly rejected them from the outset. The US has also violated its commitment of maintaining unofficial relations only with Taiwan and kept upgrading the level of engagement. In recent years, senior US officials including the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Under Secretary of State as well as members of Congress have visited Taiwan. US ambassadors overseas have also met with Taiwan’s so-called “representatives” in their host countries.

In the military field, the US has reneged on its commitment “that it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution”. Instead of ceasing the arms sales, it has sold weapons at a larger scale and with enhanced capability including assault weaponries such as anti-radiation missiles, heavy weight torpedoes, and F-16V fighter jets. To date, the total volume of US arms sales to Taiwan has exceeded 70 billion US dollars. According to reports by Reuters and other new agencies, US special operations forces have been rotating into Taiwan on a temporary basis to train with Taiwanese forces.

Since 2021, the US leader has stated publicly on three occasions that the US would help defend Taiwan in case of a war in the Taiwan Strait.

On the international stage, the US has been assisting Taiwan in expanding its so-called “international space”. Recently, the US has been spreading globally the fallacy that UNGA Resolution 2758 did not determine the status of Taiwan, and that each country should be able to determine the contours of its own “one China” policy. It has vigorously advocated support for Taiwan’s participation as an observer in the 75th session of the World Health Assembly, and even blatantly helped to consolidate Taiwan’s “diplomatic relations”.

◆ These US acts have breached its commitment that “it has no intention of … pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan'”. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2022, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said, “my understanding of the agreement (China and the US reached upon the establishment of diplomatic relations) has been that the United States would uphold the principle of one China … it is essential that these principles be maintained, and the United States should not by subterfuge or a gradual process, develop something of a two-China solution”.

◆ The DPP authorities have been stubbornly advancing its “Taiwan independence” separatist agenda, and the US has been encouraging and supporting “Taiwan independence” forces overtly and covertly. This is the root cause of current tensions across the Taiwan Strait. To defend peace across the Taiwan Strait and beyond, we must forestall the growing tendency of “Taiwan independence” and the collusion between the US and Taiwan. The one-China principle must not be challenged. China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must not be infringed upon. And the red line that no one should pursue a policy of “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan” must not be crossed. China is fully confident, capable and prepared to resolutely curb “Taiwan independence” separatist activities, resolutely foil all external interferences, and firmly safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The US should abide by the provisions in the three China-US joint communiqués, follow a true one-China policy, and act on its commitments including on not supporting “Taiwan independence”. The US needs to genuinely reflect on and redress its regressive and erroneous behavior, and stop playing with fire on the Taiwan question. Otherwise, it would gravely jeopardize peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, undermine China-US relations and incur an unbearable cost on itself.

Falsehood 8: The United States stands with countries and people around the world against the genocide and crimes against humanity happening in the Xinjiang region, where more than a million people have been placed in detention camps because of their ethnic and religious identity.

Reality Check: The human rights of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are fully protected. There is no “genocide” or “crimes against humanity” in Xinjiang. The US has been spreading disinformation about Xinjiang simply to create an excuse for discrediting and attacking China.

◆ Xinjiang-related issues are not about human rights, but about fighting violence, terrorism and separatism. According to figures available, between 1990 and the end of 2016, there were several thousand incidents of violent and terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, killing large numbers of innocent people and hundreds of police officers, and causing immeasurable property damage.

In response to such real threats, Xinjiang has acted resolutely to fight terrorism and extremism in accordance with law. At the same time, a series of supporting measures have been taken, like improving people’s livelihoods, raising public awareness about law, and offering help through vocational education and training centers. The trend of frequent terrorist activities has thus been effectively curbed. There has been no violent act of terrorism in Xinjiang for five consecutive years and more. The region has enjoyed security, social stability and good development. The safety and security of people of all ethnic groups have been effectively protected.

◆ ”Genocide” in Xinjiang is a complete “lie of the century”. Over the past 60 years and more, the Uyghur population has increased from 2.2 million to about 12 million, and their average life expectancy has grown from 30 to 75 years.

With stability prevailing in Xinjiang, local people live and work in peace and happiness. The region has made unprecedented progress in delivering economic and social development and in bettering people’s lives. Between 2014 and 2019, GDP in Xinjiang rose from 919.59 billion yuan to 1.36 trillion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 7.2 percent, while per capita disposable income grew by an average annual rate of 9.1 percent. Remarkable achievements have been made in eliminating extreme poverty. All 3.09 million impoverished people by current standards have been lifted out of poverty, making absolute poverty a thing of the past in Xinjiang.

The lawful rights and interests of the people of all ethnicities in Xinjiang have been protected effectively. All ethnic groups, regardless of their populations, have equal legal status and enjoy freedom of religious belief and various rights in accordance with law, including participating in the management of state affairs, receiving education, using their own languages, and preserving their traditional culture.

◆ In July 2019, permanent representatives of more than 50 countries in Geneva sent a joint letter to the President of the UN Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, praising China’s achievements in fighting terrorism, deradicalization and human rights protection. In October 2019, more than 60 countries spoke at the Third Committee of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, commending the tremendous human rights advancement in Xinjiang. In June 2021, more than 90 countries made joint or separate statements at the Human Rights Council in support of China. In the meantime, Canada took the lead in attacking China on issues related to Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet. Just a little over 40 countries echoed Canada’s criticism, and none of them are from the Muslim world.

◆ In recent years, over 2,000 people from more than 100 countries, including experts, scholars, journalists, diplomats and religious figures, have visited Xinjiang, witnessing the unity, harmony and happiness of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

◆ The so-called “genocide” in Xinjiang is a lie cooked up by anti-China forces represented by the anti-China German scholar Adrian Zenz. He is a member of the far-right group “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation” sponsored by the US government, and a key figure in an anti-China organization set up by US intelligence agencies. He is also a racist. His “research” is full of inconsistencies, fabrications and data manipulation. It does not have any academic credibility and cannot be cleared for academic publication. For example, a chart in Zenz’s “paper” claims that new IUD placements in Xinjiang average between 800 and 1,400 per person each year, which means each woman in the region would have to undergo four to eight such insertion surgeries every day. This is totally against common sense.

◆ On 29 June 2020, the Jamestown Foundation of the US published a “research report” by Adrian Zenz, in which he falsely accused the Chinese government of committing “genocide” against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

Upon the release of the report, US politicians including then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, Senator Marco Rubio and House Representative Jim McGovern immediately pitched in to whip up the “genocide” accusation. Rubio, McGovern, Senator John Cornyn and Senator Robert Menendez went on to urge the administration to make a genocide determination of China’s policy on Xinjiang. Contradicting the conclusion reached by lawyers at the State Department Office of the Legal Adviser, Pompeo announced that ”I have determined that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, targeting Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups” on 19 January 2021, the last day of the previous administration. The current administration has followed the same position and continued to allege “genocide” in Xinjiang. This further exposes the US’s real intention of political manipulation in the name of human rights.

◆ The World Uyghur Congress, an anti-China separatist organization, hired people like Sayragul Sauytbay and Tursunay Ziawudun to make false statements and spread all kinds of lies about ”persecution”. In the 70-plus press conferences held so far by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, falsehoods spread by anti-China forces have been debunked with solid facts. For instance, some “performers” who claimed to be the victims of forced sterilization in vocational education and training centers have never been to one. The family members or friends reported by some “performers” as missing are actually living a normal life in Xinjiang.

◆ The false claim about ”millions of Uyghurs detained” in education and training centers was initiated and spread by “Chinese Human Rights Defenders”, an NGO supported by the US government. Based on interviews with eight Uyghurs and rough estimation, the organization came to the preposterous conclusion that at least 10 percent of the 20 million people in Xinjiang are detained in “reeducation camps”.

The education and training centers in Xinjiang are no different in nature from deradicalization centers or community correction and desistance and disengagement programs in many other countries. It has been proven to be a successful exploration in preventative counter-terrorism and deradicalization, consistent with the principle and spirit of counter-terrorism resolutions including the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and the UN Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism. At the centers, trainees acquire greater proficiency in standard spoken and written Chinese language and employability, and gain a stronger sense of national identity, citizenship and rule of law. By October 2019, all trainees had graduated from the centers. Most of them have steady employment after finding jobs by themselves or with the help of the government, or starting up their own businesses.

◆ The US and some other Western countries have been making an issue of human rights in Xinjiang in total disregard of the basic reality of human rights protection and development there. It has become a means for them to achieve their strategic objective of using Xinjiang as a pretext to contain China. Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army Colonel and chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said publicly in August 2018 that one of the three-fold purpose of the US military’s presence in Afghanistan is the containment of China — “If the CIA would want to destabilize China, that would be the best way to do it – to form an unrest, and join with those Uyghurs in pushing … Beijing from internal places rather than external”.

Falsehood 9: The CPC has imposed harsh anti-democratic measures in Hong Kong under the guise of national security. Beijing’s quashing of freedom in Hong Kong violates its handover commitments, enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

Reality Check: By attacking and smearing the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), what the US is really up to is to meddle in Hong Kong affairs and make Hong Kong a “bridgehead” for infiltration and interference against the mainland. Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong. Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs that brook no interference from the US.

◆ For a long time, the US has colluded with the anti-China, destabilizing forces in Hong Kong, interfered in Hong Kong’s political agenda, stoked up social tensions, and even directly intervened in Hong Kong affairs. The US Consul-General in Hong Kong publicly criticized the Hong Kong SAR government for the proposed legislative amendments in 2019 and the One Country, Two Systems. Officials from the US Consulate-General in Hong Kong also met with the so-called leaders of the rioters. The rioters openly admitted that they had discussed with the US the legislative process of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 and urged the US to stop exporting tear gas and rubber bullets to the Hong Kong police.

◆ Funded and incited by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other US government’s “white gloves”, anti-China rioters in Hong Kong committed vandalizing, looting and arson in the name of the so-called fight for “democracy” and “freedom”, and violently stormed the building of the Legislative Council (LegCo) of Hong Kong. NED even appeared publicly on the street to direct relevant activities, attempting to stage a “color revolution” in Hong Kong. NED contacted opposition parties, groups and organizations in Hong Kong through its affiliating National Democratic Institute for International Affairs or the National Democratic Institute (NDI). NDI funded the “1 July marches” orchestrated by the opposition to obstruct legislation on Article 23, funded the participation of opposition parties and groups at workshops and seminars, and provided personal counseling on campaigning skills for their leaders, ran a so-called “young political leaders program” to support emerging political groups in confronting the government, plotted, together with opposition members of LegCo, a “five-district referendum”, and directed and funded the opposition and young radicals in orchestrating the illegal “Occupy Central” movement.

According to the NED website, two million US dollars were spent on 11 Hong Kong-related projects in 2020, with a particular focus on disrupting LegCo elections. Key projects include: “Strengthening Citizen Election Observation”, which offered technical and financial assistance to newly formed destabilizing groups in Hong Kong, and encouraged them to obstruct LegCo elections by means of election monitoring, get-out-the-vote methods, etc.; “Amplifying Citizens’ Perspectives on Political Participation”, which collected and disseminated survey findings on democratic development, and induced young Hong Kongers to share their political participation experiences on the Internet; “Supporting Unity Among Student Activists”, which called for better coordination among Hong Kong student groups prior to LegCo elections, and instructed and trained them to build capacity for “democratic change” and international communication and to play a role in disrupting electoral order; and “Building Regional Solidarity and Empowering the Hong Kong Movement”, which sought to strengthen Hong Kong’s “democratic movement” through network building, cultivate next-generation “leading activists” in Hong Kong, and set up a network of “democratic movement” in Asia.

◆ US officials used “violence” and “shame” to describe the storming of the Capitol building by protesters, but labeled the violent, criminal activities in Hong Kong that assaulted residents and damaged public facilities as “a beautiful sight to behold”. The US police used armored vehicles to disperse demonstrators, abused their force to beat and drive away sit-in demonstrators, and arrested demonstrators after deliberately inducing them to walk on vehicle lanes which constitutes violation of the law, while discrediting the Hong Kong SAR government’s law-based actions to protect people’s rights and the public order as “violation” of human rights. This is another display of US-style hypocritical double standards and exposes its intention to undermine prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and contain China under the pretext of human rights and democracy.

◆ During the 150-plus years of British colonial rule, there was no democracy in Hong Kong whatsoever. None of the governors was democratically elected by Hong Kong residents. For most of the time, Legco members were directly appointed by the governor. In stark contrast, after the return of Hong Kong, pursuant to the Basic Law, Hong Kong has come to enjoy the executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication. Its residents are masters of the SAR as provided by law who manage their own affairs within the scope of the high degree of autonomy. They enjoy a wide range of democratic rights and freedoms like never before. This is a fact that every fair-minded person would recognize.

◆ The purpose of enacting the National Security Law in Hong Kong is to close the legal loopholes in safeguarding national security in the SAR. It is a legitimate and necessary move to respond to violent terrorist activities and illegal external interference in Hong Kong. Constitutions of more than 100 countries have stipulations that the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms shall not endanger national security. According to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the rights to freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and public trial may be subject to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety and order. The European Convention on Human Rights has similar provisions.

The national security law specifically targets four categories of crimes: secession, subversion, terrorist activities, and collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security. It seeks to punish a tiny number of criminals who seriously endanger national security and protect the vast majority of law-abiding Hong Kong citizens. It provides better protection for the rights and freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents and the high degree of autonomy of Hong Kong enshrined in law. It creates the conditions needed for addressing the deep-seated problems in the economy and concerning people’s livelihood. It also helps maintain the rule of law and business environment in Hong Kong, ease the concerns of the business community about social disorder, and offer better conditions for people from around the world who want to work, invest and live in Hong Kong.

Over the past two years or so since the National Security Law was enacted, the rule of law in Hong Kong has been strengthened and better guaranteed. Hong Kong’s rule of law index continues to stay among the top in the world. Foreign investors have stronger confidence in the city. Hong Kong is seeing a bright prospect transitioning from chaos to order and to prosperity. According to the 2022 AmCham Hong Kong Business Sentiment Survey released early this year, the number of businesses in Hong Kong optimistic about Hong Kong’s business outlook increased by 18 percent from the previous year, while the number of businesses that are pessimistic was down by 17 percent.

◆ The legal basis for the Chinese government to govern Hong Kong is the Chinese Constitution and the Basic Law of the HKSAR. The Sino-British Joint Declaration is not relevant in this regard. As China resumed the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, all provisions concerning the UK under the Joint Declaration had been fulfilled. The basic policies regarding Hong Kong stated by China in the Joint Declaration are China’s declaration of its policies, which have since been fully embodied in the Basic Law enacted by the National People’s Congress. These policies have not changed; they will continue to be upheld by China. The Joint Declaration does not assign the UK any responsibility over Hong Kong nor give it any right to intervene in Hong Kong affairs after the return of Hong Kong. The UK has no sovereignty, jurisdiction or “right of supervision” over Hong Kong after its return. The Joint Declaration is a bilateral instrument between China and the UK; it does not involve any other country or has anything to do with a third country. Sovereign equality and non-interference are enshrined in international law and are basic norms of international relations. Other countries and organizations have no right to meddle in Hong Kong affairs on the grounds of the Joint Declaration.

The Central Government of China has unswervingly implemented the policy of One Country, Two Systems. Since Hong Kong’s return, the policy of One Country, Two Systems under which the people of Hong Kong administer Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy has been earnestly implemented with widely recognized achievements. Practice has fully proven that One Country, Two Systems is the best institutional arrangement for Hong Kong’s long-term prosperity and stability. The Central Government will continue to ensure that the policy of One Country, Two Systems remains unchanged, is unwaveringly upheld, and in practice is not bent or distorted.

◆ Turning a blind eye to the fact that Hong Kong’s democracy has improved in ways unseen before its return, the US has acted against Hong Kong’s mainstream public opinion for unity and progress and made irresponsible remarks on Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, human rights and freedom as the “preacher” of democracy. This only exposes its hypocritical double standards and the agenda to destabilize Hong Kong and contain China.

Falsehood 10: China purports to champion sovereignty and territorial integrity while standing with and defending the Russian government that brazenly violate them.

Reality Check: On the Ukraine issue, China has always adhered to an objective and just position, a position shared by most countries. The Cold War mentality and power politics is the root cause of the Ukraine crisis. The US should earnestly shoulder its due responsibilities and take concrete actions to ease the situation and solve the problems.

◆ The US has betrayed its own promises and kept pushing for the eastward expansion of NATO,creating the Ukraine crisis.

When meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, the then US Secretary of State James Baker gave clear assurances that “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east”. However, the US has led five rounds of NATO eastward expansion since 1999, increasing its membership from 16 to 30, and advancing NATO more than 1,000 kilometers eastward to the Russian border, forming a C-shaped encirclement of the Black Sea.

In 1997, former US diplomat and observer on the Soviet Union George Kennan wrote in his New York Times Op-Ed that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”

In 2014, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in the Washington Post that if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it should not join NATO, and that it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.

At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022 in Davos, Kissinger said that Ukraine should have been a bridge between Europe and Russia, but that opportunity does not now exist in the same manner. Russia has been for 400 years an essential part of Europe, and on a number of occasions as the guarantor by which the European balance could be re-established. Current policy should keep in mind the restoration of this role is important to develop.

An American expert on international affairs points out in an article that the US government should bear considerable responsibility for the deterioration of relations with Russia caused by its major mistake of greenlighting the NATO expansion. Noting that “America and NATO aren’t innocent bystanders”, he also believed that it is “the height of folly” for some US officials to brag in public about leaks or even intelligence sharing between the US and Ukraine. He warned that such instigation on the US side could dangerously widen the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

According to Clare Daly, Member of the European Parliament, the US has been adding fuel to the fire on Ukraine because they want to weaken Russia and benefit from the crisis, for which Europe will pay a heavy price. These is still no hope of peace in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, mainly because the US does not want Russia and Ukraine to reach a peace agreement.

Former US Senator Bill Bradley said that “the fundamental blunder that the United States made in the late 80s, early 90s was the expansion of NATO”.

Former US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said in an interview if Joe Biden simply promised not to include Ukraine into NATO, the war would have been prevented.

Over the years, the US has pursued interventionism and grossly violated the sovereignty of Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Syria and other countries. Alfred de Zayas, a senior UN expert, said in an exclusive interview that from the perspective of international law, Russia’s military actions in Ukraine violated the UN Charter, but the United States and NATO have broken international law so often over the years that “precedents of permissibility” have therefore been set for Russia’s current actions in terms of customary international law.

◆ The US has been fanning the flames on the Ukraine issue. Instead of promoting peace talks, the US continued to provide weapons to Ukraine, escalating tensions and expanding the conflict, making it more prolonged and complicated. This has sufficiently exposed the selfish nature of the US.

On 25 April 2022, US Defense Secretary Austin said after a visit to Ukraine that the US wants to use the war to “see Russia weakened”.

In late May 2022, on top of the original 13.6 billion dollars aid, the US Congress voted to approve another over 40 billion dollars in military and economic aid to Ukraine. The total assistance has exceeded 70 percent of the combined military expenditure of Russia and Ukraine in 2021.

The ongoing crisis has cost Europe heavily in political, economic and social aspects, but the US is reaping dividends, with its arms dealers, food and energy companies gaining huge profits. For example, the market value of US military industrial giants has surged by hundreds of billions, and the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exported to Europe is more than 10 times higher than a year ago.

As the result of the conflict, more than 6.5 million Ukrainians have fled into neighboring European countries, posing an unprecedented refugee crisis. But the US admitted only 12 refugees from Ukraine in March 2022. Thousands of Ukrainian refugees remain stranded on the US-Mexico border, and many were in US custody. Even when the UN and the international community are calling for an early end to the conflict, some in the US are still claiming that they would “fight to the last Ukrainian”.

◆ The relationship between China and Russia features non-alliance, non-confrontation and non-targeting at any third party. It is essentially different from the practice of the US and a small number of other Western countries, where they still stick to the Cold War mentality and a friend-or-foe dichotomy to draw ideological lines, form so-called “alliances” and “cliques”, pursue bloc politics and create confrontation and division.

In the joint statement issued on 4 February 2022, China and Russia call on all to champion humanity’s common values of peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, respect the rights of all peoples to independently determine the development paths of their countries, and the sovereignty, security and development interests of all countries, protect the UN-centered international system, and the international order based on international law, seek true multilateralism with the UN and its Security Council playing a central and coordinating role, promote more democratic international relations, and ensure peace, stability and sustainable development across the world.

◆ As a responsible major country, China’s decisions and judgments on the Ukraine issue are made independently based on the merits of the matter. China has made great efforts to safeguard international peace and security, and has been committed to promoting talks for peace and deescalating tensions. China maintains that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected, that the purposes and principles of the UN Charter should be upheld, that legitimate security concerns of all countries should be taken seriously, and that all efforts conducive to a peaceful resolution of the crisis should be supported. China’s position is objective, fair and consistent with the aspirations of most countries.

◆ Of the 233 sovereign countries and regions in the world, 185 are not involved in sanctions on Russia. Among the more than 190 members of the UN, more than 140 countries, including NATO member state Turkey, have refused to impose sanctions on Russia. The combined population of countries and regions participating in sanctions against Russia and those not is 6.5 billion versus 1.1 billion. Among them, those openly oppose sanctions have a combined population of 4.8 billion.

About two-thirds of the world’s population does not support Western positions on Ukraine, according to a report by the British Economist magazine.

Falsehood 11: The US is setting up new coalitions in the Indo-Pacific for regional peace and stability, and has launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), as it “shares the vision that the regional countries and people across the region hold: one of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Reality Check: The so-called US vision of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” is essentially a strategy to divide others, incite confrontation and undermine peace. It runs counter to the trend of the times in the Asia-Pacific, i.e., the trend of peaceful development and win-win cooperation.

◆ The US administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy is self-contradictory: the US claims to promote the region’s “freedom and openness” as its goal, while in reality co-opting with allies to forge a “five-four-three-two-one” formation made up of the Five Eyes, the Quad, AUKUS, bilateral alliances and IPEF, forming exclusive “small circles” and forcing countries in the region to take sides.

AUKUS helps Australia build nuclear-powered submarines and develops hypersonic weapons, pushing up the risk for a regional arms race. Under the pretext of fighting illegal fishing and keeping supply chains resilient, the Quad has vigorously pursued military cooperation and intelligence sharing. The US has also encouraged NATO’s involvement in the Asia-Pacific. These are all attempts to materialize an “Asia-Pacific version of NATO” and promote “integrated deterrence” against China.

◆ The Indo-Pacific strategy has raised increasing alarm and concern of many countries, especially those in the Asia-Pacific. As BBC reported, in April 2021, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta expressed New Zealand’s discomfort with expanding the Five Eyes’ remit by putting pressure on China in this way, and New Zealand still prefers to pursue bilateral relations with China. At the US-ASEAN Special Summit, ASEAN countries stressed their aspiration for peace and cooperation, not for taking sides, division or confrontation.

◆ The US has made clear that IPEF is to enable it to win the contest in the 21st century. This means that the IPEF is designed to serve the US economy. The US has shelved the development of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) for a long time, left the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and refused to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). This exposes the self-serving nature of the US and its selective approach to international institutions. It is all about the US’ self-interests, nothing mutually beneficial.

IPEF is a political instrument of the US in propping up its hegemony in the regional economy. The essence is to dominate the supply chains, value chains and new economic sectors, and marginalize specific countries. The US has chosen to weaponize economic issues as political and ideological ones, using economy to coerce regional countries into taking sides between China and the US.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai publicly stated that IPEF is a standalone arrangement independent from China. US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said IPEF marks the US’s restoration of economic leadership in the region and presents Indo-Pacific countries an alternative to China’s approach. Previously, she also expressed that IPEF may harmonize export controls and other “poison pills”, such as limiting sensitive products export to China.

IPEF seeks to establish US-led trade rules, restructure the industrial chain system and economically and scientifically “decouple” regional countries from China. Many countries in the region get concerned, and believe that the cost of such “decoupling” will be huge. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad noted that any trade alliance that excludes the world’s second largest economy is not conducive to closer, multilateral trade cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. The US’s exclusion of China is not an economic issue but a political one.

◆ Hailed as “menu approach” cooperation, IPEF actually pays little regard to the development level and real needs of the regional countries. It barely gives concessions to developing countries on tariff reduction and market access, but forces participating countries to accept the so-called high standards of the US and its unilateral agenda. IPEF focuses solely on the US’s self-interests and cares little about the needs of other parties. There is no such thing as mutual benefit in IPEF.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) pointed out in its report “Regional Perspectives on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” that IPEF has little more to offer than enlarging the US economic presence in the region. It fails to address the issues of the greater interests of regional countries. There is widespread concern that IPEF will only benefit the US, while saddling participating regional countries with a heavy burden.

Falsehood 12: China has announced its ambition to create a sphere of influence in the Pacific region. It is advancing unlawful maritime claims in the South China Sea, undermining peace and security, freedom of navigation and commerce. The US will continue to oppose Beijing’s aggressive and unlawful activities in the South and East China Seas. It will support the region’s coastal states in upholding their maritime rights, work with allies and partners to uphold freedom of navigation and overflight, and will continue to fly and sail wherever international law allows.

Reality Check: China is committed to the path of peaceful development, the five principles of peaceful coexistence and opposes the practice of the big and strong bullying the small and weak. The US, by painting China as a threat and using “freedom of navigation” as a pretext to undermine China’s sovereignty, security and maritime rights and interests, is actually the real threat to regional peace and security.

◆ China stands for equality among all countries irrespective of their size, respects every country’s choice of development path suited to its national condition, and does not seek any sphere of influence. China pursues a defense policy that is defensive in nature and a military strategy of active defense. In developing its defense capabilities, China aims to safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests, and does not target any other country. The growth of China’s defense capabilities amplifies the force for peace in the world.

◆ China is the first to have discovered, named, and explored and exploited Nanhai Zhudao and relevant waters, and the first to have exercised sovereignty and jurisdiction over them continuously, peacefully and effectively. China’s sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao and its relevant rights and interests in the South China Sea have been established in the long course of history. They are solidly grounded in history and law, and have been upheld by successive Chinese governments and recognized by the international community. Pursuant to the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation, China recovered territories illegally occupied by Japan including Xisha Qundao and Nansha Qundao after WWII, and has since affirmed sovereignty and strengthened jurisdiction by establishing official names, publishing maps, creating administrative units and stationing troops. China’s resuming its exercise of sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao is a legitimate and lawful act to inherit China’s rights established over the course of history. It is also part of the post-WWII international order, and has been recognized by countries around the world including the US.

◆ With the joint efforts of China and ASEAN countries, the overall situation in the South China Sea remains stable. With the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), the parties have increased dialogue, properly handled differences, deepened cooperation and enhanced mutual trust, and have made active progress in advancing consultations on the Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea, in an effort to jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea and inject positive dynamics into regional and global security, stability and prosperity. Despite COVID-19, the parties have held offline Senior Officials’ Meetings on the implementation of the DOC and 10 joint working group meetings via video link to advance consultations on the COC text. Last month, the first face-to-face COC consultations since COVID-19 was held in Cambodia. Such positive progress speaks volumes about the resolve and commitment of regional countries to steadfastly advance consultations toward a COC.

◆ China respects and supports all countries’ freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea in accordance with international law, and actively safeguards the security of and unimpeded passage through international shipping lanes. In fact, the South China Sea is one of the world’s safest and freest sea lanes. Fifty percent of merchant vessels in the world and one-third of international maritime trade pass through it, and more than 100,000 merchant ships sail through it annually. Freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea has never been an issue.

◆ Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islands are China’s inherent territory. China’s patrol and law enforcement missions in waters off the Diaoyu Dao are legitimate measures taken by China to exercise its sovereignty in accordance with law and are necessary responses to Japanese provocations in violation of China’s sovereignty. No country or force should misjudge the strong resolve of the Chinese government to safeguard sovereignty and territorial integrity. At the same time, China stays committed to properly handling and resolving issues through dialogue and consultation, and has made great efforts to maintain maritime stability. In 2014, a four-point principled consensus was reached between China and Japan to handle and improve China-Japan relations, which includes a clear understanding on managing the situation surrounding Diaoyu Dao and the East China Sea.

◆ Acting under the logic of the Monroe Doctrine, the US often uses power politics and hegemonic and bullying acts to flagrantly undermine the international maritime order, with a view to sustaining its maritime predominance. In the 240-plus-year history of the US, there were only 16 years when the country was not at war with others. The US operates over 800 military bases in 80 countries and regions. Its military expenditure, which has topped the world for many years in a row, accounts for one-fourth of the global total and is equivalent to the combined military spending of the next nine countries. Recently, the US has proposed a national defense budget request of about 813 billion US dollars for fiscal year 2023. Such massive military spending makes the US the real “pacing challenge” to the world.

◆ The US disregards the history and facts surrounding the South China Sea issue, deliberately stokes disputes on territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and sows discord among regional countries. It has become the biggest force undermining stability and fueling militarization in the South China Sea. Data from relevant organizations show that the number of US close-in reconnaissance activities targeting China has more than doubled over the past decade and more. Right now, an average of five US naval vessels cruise near China’s shore every day. This year, US naval vessels have been sailing through the Taiwan Strait about once a month, and large US reconnaissance planes have flown over 800 times close to China and repeatedly violated China’s airspace. Eager to stir up trouble in the South China Sea, the US has also encouraged its allies and partners to sail their naval vessels into the South China Sea.

On 2 October 2021, USS Connecticut, a nuclear submarine, had an underwater collision in the South China Sea. It was not until a week later that the US issued a vague statement, claiming that the submarine hit an unknown object. One month after, it said that the submarine “grounded on an uncharted seamount”. A final report on the accident was eventually released by the US Navy on 23 May 2022, yet no clear explanation has been offered in response to the grave concerns and questions raised by many, including the intent of the submarine, the specific location of the accident, whether the submarine had entered exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and even territorial sea of other countries, and whether the accident had caused a nuclear leak or damaged marine environment.

◆ The US began its Freedom of Navigation (FON) Program in 1979 ahead of the signing of the UNCLOS. Challenging the new maritime order, the move sought to maximize the freedom of the US military to rampage through the oceans. The FON Program is not consistent with the universally recognized international law, disregards the sovereignty, security and maritime rights and interests of the many littoral countries, and seriously jeopardizes regional peace and stability. Its goal is to advance American maritime supremacy under the pretext of “freedom of navigation”. The FON Program has been firmly opposed by many members of the international community, especially the developing countries.

Falsehood 13: Chinese government officials spread disinformation.

Reality Check: China is the top victim of disinformation, while the US is the biggest source of spreading disinformation.

◆ With sharp confrontation between the Republicans and Democrats, habitual lying, finger-pointing and blame-shifting among politicians have become part of the US political ecology. A poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Pearson Institute at the University of Chicago reveals that nearly half of the respondents blame the US government for the spread of misinformation.

◆ The US has used disinformation to launch multiple wars across the globe in pursuit of its hegemonic agenda. Colin Powell, the then US Secretary of State accused Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction with a test tube of “laundry powder”. The US blamed the Syrian government for using bio-chemical weapons against its own people with fake videos by the White Helmets.

In 2019, the then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly claimed that “we lied, we cheated, we stole … we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

On 4 May 2022, Republican Senator Rand Paul spoke bluntly at a Senate hearing, “Do you know who the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world is? The US government.”

◆ Manipulation by US politicians has seriously undercut the media’s credibility. A Gallup poll in 2020 shows that 60 percent of Americans remain largely distrustful of the media, among whom 33 percent have no trust at all, which is 5 percentage points higher than that of 2019.

◆ The US has on multiple occasions fabricated numerous lies and rumors on issues concerning origins-tracing, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, democracy and human rights, including the so-called “lab-leak theory”, “genocide” and “forced labor”, which have all been defeated by facts.

Since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, the US has kept spreading disinformation on China and made unfounded accusations against it, in order to shirk its responsibilities for triggering the conflict with NATO’s eastward expansion. The New York Times quoted from anonymous US senior officials who claimed that China had prior knowledge of Russian military operation in Ukraine. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Representative to the UN, said at a Security Council meeting that China had been spreading disinformation in support of Russia. This is sheer fabrication and slandering. Meanwhile, as part of the fierce hunt of voices different from its own, the US has added special labels to Tweets sharing links of Chinese media reports, while turning a blind eye to the Western media that are actually telling the lies.

◆ The US has used disinformation as a political tool to attack and suppress China, and formed a supply chain of anti-China rhetoric combining dirty funding, fact-twisting stories and massive smear campaigns. On the surface, these anti-China rhetoric come from certain media outlets and politicians, but what lies underneath is a massive capital-driven supply chain — some institutions and organizations from the US and other Western countries provide dirty funding for political purposes to anti-China groups and individuals; some think-tanks and academic institutions make up fact-twisting stories to fuel anti-China rhetoric around the world through Western hegemony on public opinion; and politicians and media act as mouthpieces propagating lies and falsehoods about China in massive smear campaigns.

Adrian Zenz and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), both fabricated numerous Xinjiang-related lies, are typical examples of such “lies manufacturers”.

Adrian Zenz is a member of a far-right group founded by the US government and a key member of an anti-China research institute set up and manipulated by the US intelligence agency. His so-called reports on Xinjiang reflect no credibility, intellectual merit or academic integrity at all.

As disclosed by the media, the US State Department and arms manufacturers are the primary foreign sponsors for the ASPI. Funding from the US State Department alone reached nearly 1.4 million Australian dollars a year, all directed to research projects attacking China. The ASPI disseminated a series of lies and disinformation on issues concerning origins-tracing, Xinjiang and data security.

◆ In addition to constantly spreading disinformation on China, the US has also rolled out measures to suppress and contain China based on such disinformation, including China-related bills and sanctions. In December 2021, under the pretext of its so-called concerns on “forced labor”, the US signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law, imposing a full ban on imports from Xinjiang. This is a malicious move to denigrate human rights situation in Xinjiang, and a serious violation of international law and basic norms of international relations.

◆ China has used facts and figures to tell the truth and refute the lies and rumors created and propagated by the US. It is aimed at making truth heard, not spreading disinformation. Instead of observing basic facts, the US has acted in its own interests and labeled all views different from its own as “disinformation”. This is, in essence, hegemony and bullying in the field of public opinion.

Falsehood 14: China is circumventing or breaking trade rules and its economic manipulations have cost American workers millions of jobs, harming workers and companies in the United States but also around the world. The United States will push back on market-distorting policies and practices, like subsidies and market access barriers, which China’s government has used for years to gain competitive advantage.

Reality Check: China has faithfully delivered on its commitments made upon accession to the WTO. China upholds, builds and contributes to the multilateral trading system. China-US economic and trade relations are mutually beneficial in nature. However, US’ wanton suppression of China in trade and investment areas has been the root cause of trade frictions between the two countries, which hurts others without benefiting oneself.

◆ Over the past 20-plus years since joining the WTO, China has earnestly fulfilled its commitments upon accession. It has rolled out nationwide the management system of pre-establishment national treatment plus a negative list, kept expanding market access, brought down overall tariff level from 15.3% to 7.4%, and opened up nearly 120 sectors in the service industry.

In October 2021, the WTO conducted the eighth review of trade policies and practices of China. The report of the review fully recognized China’s efforts in upholding the multilateral trading system and its active role in the WTO. It spoke highly of China’s achievements in such areas as trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, greater opening-up and progress under the Belt and Road Initiative.

A leading official of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development pointed out that, over the past two decades, China has steadfastly supported the rules-based multilateral trading system, practiced true multilateralism, participated fully in WTO negotiations, steered negotiations in areas such as investment facilitation and e-commerce, and worked for WTO rules keeping pace with the times.

◆ Embracing the trend of regional and global economic integration, China has deepened economic and trade ties with countries around the world, signing free trade agreements and stepping up the building of free trade zones. As of now, China has signed 19 free trade agreements with 26 countries and regions.

◆ China has actively deepened supply-side structural reform. It has met the target of phasing out 150 million tons of overcapacity in the steel industry set out in the 13th Five-Year Plan two years ahead of schedule, 1.14 times of the global total in slashing overcapacity of steels. The process involved the reemployment of 280,000 Chinese steel workers, more than the total number of steel workers in the US, Europe and Japan.

◆ China and the US have highly complementary economies, deeply integrated interests, and mutually beneficial economic and trade ties. In 2021, bilateral trade topped record-breaking 750 billion US dollars. The US Export Report 2022 issued by the US-China Business Council showed that, in 2021, goods exports to China grew by 21 percent to 149 billion US dollars, supporting 858,000 jobs in the US. The 2020 Annual Business Survey Report on Chinese Enterprises in the United States released by the China General Chamber of Commerce-USA indicated that, as of 2019, CGCC’s Chinese member companies cumulatively invested over 123 billion US dollars, employed more than 220,000 people, and supported over one million jobs throughout the United States. Research of the US-China Business Council showed that Chinese exports have helped bring down US consumer price by 1 to 1.5 percent, saving each US household 850 US dollars per year.

◆ By blaming China for its own economic problems, the US started a trade war and tariff war against China, which only backfired for itself. US tariffs against China have cost American companies more than 1.7 trillion US dollars in market capitalization and increased average household expenditure by 1,300 US dollars per year. A 2021 report by the US-China Business Council pointed out that the trade war with China has resulted in a loss of 245,000 jobs in the US. A report from Moody’s Investor Service was cited as saying that American consumers bear 92.4 percent of the cost of imposing tariffs on Chinese goods. Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize laureate in economics, incisively pointed out that US trade policy toward China has failed and tariffs harm the US more than their intended targets.

On 18 May 2022, the National Retail Federation (NRF) wrote to President Biden, calling for eliminating tariffs, which, as pointed out in the letter, could reduce consumer prices by as much as 1.3 percent. Janet Yellen, the US Treasury Secretary, said that some tariffs on China hurt American consumers and businesses, and that cutting tariffs was worth considering in order to lower US inflation.

The obstacles to China-US economic and trade cooperation are mainly from the US side. Over 1,000 Chinese companies have been put on its lists for unfair suppression or sanction. The US Congress has put forth more than 300 negative China-related bills. The proposed Bipartisan Innovation Act, which is still being developed, essentially aims to hold back China’s economic growth.

◆ The US arbitrarily accuses China of its industrial subsidy policies, but the country itself was among the first to develop such policies, including subsidies and so on. Successive US administrations have rolled out plans to support emerging industries. Through tax relief, government procurement and other means, the US administrations have interfered in the market to push forward cooperation between government and enterprises and advance technology transfers. In the 1950s and 1960s, the US undertook special programs to promote the development of its aerospace and military industries. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration supported the growth of hi-tech industries with the Information Superhighway plan. Such industrial policies are still being practiced in the US today. A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that the US and its allies and partners in Europe and Asia have increased subsidies to industries such as semiconductors, electric-car batteries and pharmaceuticals to shore up support for domestic companies.

◆ The US poses the biggest challenge to the global trading system. Following “America First” policy, the US has refused to shoulder its due obligations under multilateral trading agreements, and withdrawn from international treaties and organizations, taking a heavy toll on the development and functioning of the global trading system. A WTO dispute settlement report has identified the US as the biggest rule-breaker, responsible for two-thirds of violations of WTO rules. The US also blocked the appointment of new judges in the WTO Appellate Body, leading to an impasse in the Appellate Body since December 2019.

Falsehood 15: The US will give countries an alternative choice, so that they can be free from opaque investments that leave them in debt.

Reality Check: In providing foreign assistance, China always respects the sovereignty of recipient countries, attaches no strings whatsoever and pursues win-win outcomes. Chinese assistance has delivered real benefits to the relevant developing countries and received their acclaim and appreciation.

◆ The so-called Chinese “debt trap” is a narrative trap that the US and some other Western countries use to defame and smear China and disrupt China’s cooperation with other developing countries. As a 2021 article in The Atlantic points out, the debt-trap narrative is just a lie fabricated by some Western politicians, and a powerful one.

Western capital constitutes the largest creditor of developing countries. According to the 2022 statistics of the World Bank on international debt, 28.8 percent of Africa’s outstanding external debt is owed to multilateral financial institutions and 41.8 percent to commercial creditors mainly composed of Western financial institutions. These two types of institutions together hold nearly three-quarters of the debt, making them the primary creditors of Africa’s debt.

According to the director of the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University of the US, after scrutinizing thousands of Chinese loan documents, mostly for projects in Africa, CARI has not found any evidence that China deliberately pushes poor countries into debt as a way of seizing their assets or gaining a greater say in their internal affairs. CARI’s figures show that China holds 17 percent of Africa’s overall external debt, far less than that of the West.

Not a single African country has been forced to use its strategic resources such as ports or mines as collateral for financing cooperation with China. DW points out that the default of African countries does not give China the right to use the relevant infrastructure.

◆ The debt issue is, in essence, a development issue. The key to resolving this issue lies in ensuring that the loans deliver real benefits.

Take Africa as an example. Western countries’ financing for Africa is mainly concentrated in non-production fields, and most loans come with political strings attached, such as human rights and judicial reform. They have failed to truly promote economic development, boost government tax revenue and improve balance of payments. Rather, they have served as instruments for controlling and causing harm in Africa.

China always respects the will of the African people and bears in mind the actual needs of African countries. Chinese investment in and financing for Africa are mainly in infrastructure building and production-related fields. Entering the 21st century, China has worked actively to support Africa’s economic development and provided an alternative to the traditional financing channels of the Paris Club. This  has helped Africa to strengthen its capacity of self-generated and self-reliant development and to usher in a golden age of high-speed economic growth for 20 years straight.

Professor Deborah Brautigam of Johns Hopkins University noted the diversification of Chinese investment. In 2014 alone, Chinese companies signed over 70 billion US dollars in construction contracts in Africa that will yield vital infrastructure, including hospitals, oil and gas pipelines, and airports.

According to preliminary statistics, between 2000 and 2020, China helped African countries build more than 13,000 kilometers of roads and railway and more than 80 large-scale power facilities, funded more than 130 medical facilities, 45 sports venues and more than 170 schools, and trained more than 160,000 professionals across various fields for Africa.

The Nairobi Expressway project built by Chinese companies in Kenya through public-private partnership has created more than 6,000 local jobs and benefited more than 200 subcontractors and several hundred local suppliers. The Kenyan government speaks highly of the project, commending it as an important manifestation of the mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation between Kenya and China.

Nigeria’s Lekki Deep Sea Port project, built with Chinese participation, has provided more than 1,200 local jobs and is expected to create, directly and indirectly, 170,000 more upon completion.

A study conducted by Hong Kong scholars finds that more than 80 percent of the employees of Chinese companies in Africa surveyed are local Africans.

A team at the London School of Economics and Political Science finds that Chinese investment in Africa has produced “significant and persistently positive long-term effects”.

A study by RAND Corporation indicates that in the BRI region, having a rail connection between trading partners has improved total exports by 2.8 percent.

◆ China attaches high importance to the debt sustainability of projects. Back in 2017, it signed the Guiding Principles on Financing the Development of the Belt and Road with 26 countries participating in the BRI. In 2019, China released the Debt Sustainability Framework for Participating Countries of the Belt and Road Initiative. Based on the debt situation and repayment ability of debtor countries, and following the principles of equal-footed consultation, compliance with laws and regulations, openness and transparency, the framework aims to strengthen monitoring and assessment of the economic, social and livelihood benefits of the projects, and channels sovereign loans into areas with high yields, with a view to ensuring the long-term returns of the projects. China has also made proactive efforts to lessen the burden of debtor countries.

According to the World Bank, between 2008 and 2021, China provided 71 debt restructurings for low-income countries. In 2020, China actively responded to the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) by suspending the payment of more than 1.3 billion US dollars of debt that year alone, or nearly 30 percent of the G20’s total, making it the largest contributor among G20 members. China has signed debt suspension agreements or reached mutual understanding on debt suspension with 19 African countries, and actively participated in the case-based debt settlement for Chad and Ethiopia under the G20’s Common Framework.

◆ The US and some other Western countries, rather than taking actions themselves, point fingers at China for providing assistance. This has caused much displeasure among countries in the wider developing world.

Professor Samita Hattige, adviser to the National Education Commission of Sri Lanka, said in an interview with Global Times that Chinese loans are based on the needs of the Sri Lankan government and for the purpose of improving Sri Lankan infrastructure. The loans have brought major changes to Sri Lanka’s economy and people’s livelihood, and there is no such thing as a “debt trap”. China’s share in Sri Lanka’s external debt is around a mere 10 percent. Apparently, some media have chosen to ignore this fact. While the “Chinese debt trap” hyped up by Western media seems apprehensible at a glance, it has deliberately evaded the huge economic values that infrastructure improvement has created, such as economic development and more jobs and investment.

The article “Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal Need China for Development” published by Sri Lanka’s Daily News on 17 January 2022 says, “South Asia needs China in its development process because China is synonymous with the term ‘Development’. China’s … Belt and Road Initiative provides benefits for almost all South Asian countries.” “In the case of Sri Lanka,” the article writes, ”Sri Lanka is a beneficiary of Chinese projects. Many say only about the Chinese debt trap in this regard but no one mentions Chinese developmental activities in Sri Lanka.” “They have invested heavily in seaports, airports, … national highways, and power distribution centers. ”

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni stated in an interview with Nikkei in 2022 that “Africa has been having (debt) problems for the last 600 years due to the slave trade, colonialism, neocolonialism — and none of it was from China.” “China supported Africans’ fight against colonialism before starting economic activity on the continent.”

Rwandan President Paul Kagame pointed out that China’s presence in Africa is different from that of other countries — “I don’t think China has forced any country in Africa to take their money to accumulate the kind of debt you may find with some countries.”

Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama stated that Nigeria had chosen Chinese companies for infrastructure projects because they were experienced and provide competitive rates. “So the issue of Chinese influence really doesn’t come in.

Falsehood 16: For too long, Chinese companies have enjoyed far greater access to our markets than our companies have in China. American companies operating in China have been subject to systematic forced technology transfer, while Chinese companies in America have been protected by our rule of law.

Reality Check: China is committed to fostering an enabling business environment that is based on market principles, governed by law and up to international standard. While China’s business environment keeps improving, the business environment for Chinese companies operating in the US continues to deteriorate.

◆ China has seen the most substantial improvement in business environment among all economies. In recent years, China has made continuous efforts to shorten the negative list on foreign investment, improved the institutions for investment promotion and protection and for information reporting, and stepped up intellectual property protection, becoming one of the most-improved economies for ease of doing business. With the continuous improvement in business environment and its super-sized domestic market, China is a strong magnet for cross-border investment from around the world. The number of newly established foreign-invested enterprises is on a steady rise in China. From 2012 to 2021, the number of foreign-invested enterprises in China increased from 441,000 to 664,000, up by over 50 percent. According to the Doing Business 2020 report released by the World Bank Group, China ranked 31st on ease of doing business, moving up by 47 spots in two years. The European Business in China Business Confidence Survey 2021 released by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China (EUCCC) shows that a majority of the European companies surveyed found intellectual property rights enforcement to be “adequate” or “excellent” in China, marking a record high in satisfaction levels.

◆ It is the foreign companies, including the US companies operating in China, that can best tell whether China’s business environment is good or not. The 2022 China Business Climate Survey Report of the American Chamber of Commerce in China (AmCham China) shows that 58 percent of the US companies in China saw their operating revenue growing in 2021; 66 percent of the companies plan to increase their investment in China this year; and China remains a top-three priority of the global investment planning for 60 percent of the companies. The recently released USCBC 2021 Member Survey shows that 95 percent of the respondents remained profitable in their China operations; and 74 percent of the companies took China as a top priority or a top-five priority market in their business strategy. In the first four months of 2022, the actual US investment in China rose by 53.2 percent year on year. These figures speak volume about the optimism of foreign companies in China’s economic prospects, as well as their recognition of China’s sound business environment and confidence in building a long-term business in the Chinese market.

◆ To preserve its hegemony and economic interests, the US has abused its national power in violation of the principles of market economy and international trade rules, and resorted to every possible means to suppress and contain Chinese enterprises. The US government has fabricated all sorts of lies including “forced labor” in an attempt to bring down Xinjiang’s cotton, tomato and solar photovoltaic industries. According to preliminary statistics, in 2021, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued seven Withhold Release Orders (WROs) on the exports of goods made with “forced labor” to the US, including apparel, textiles, tomato seeds, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, and other goods made with cotton or tomatoes, silica-based products and electronic products produced in Xinjiang, and detained or confiscated 485 million US dollars worth of goods, which are notably larger in both quantity and value compared to 2020. The current US administration has already outperformed its predecessor in terms of the scale and magnitude of sanctions imposed on China for Xinjiang-related issues.

◆ The US has imposed sweeping restrictions on the financing and operation of Chinese enterprises in the US through non-transparent and unfair administrative means. According to official US statistics, the US has up to now put 1,055 Chinese entities and individuals (overseas affiliated entities excluded) on various types of sanctions lists, including 467 on the Entity List, 306 on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN), 201 on the Unverified List (UVL), 68 on the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies (NS-CMIC) List, and a few other entities. Last February, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) put WeChat and AliExpress on its latest Notorious Markets List, while Pinduoduo and other Chinese companies as well as nine physical markets located within China remained on the list.

Falsehood 17: China takes advantage of the openness of the US economies to spy, to hack, to steal technology and know-how to advance China’s military innovation, entrench its surveillance state and increase other countries’ technological dependence. The US should make sure that technologies are rooted in democratic values.

Reality check: China’s technological innovation and development is based on its own investment and efforts. The US is drawing ideological lines in scientific and technological exchanges and cooperation, and this embodies its Cold War mentality.

◆ China is a big innovator in the world with leading input and growth rate in innovation. According to statistics, China’s social R&D investment in 2021 reached 2.7864 trillion yuan, an increase of 14.2 percent over the previous year. A total of 696,000 invention patents were authorized in 2021, up by 31.3 percent year-on-year. The Global Innovation Index (GII) 2021 published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) shows that China’s world innovation performance ranking has moved up from the 35th place to the 12th. China is now home to 19 of the top 100 science and technology clusters worldwide, ranking the second globally. Chinese applicants submitted 69,500 international patent applications, making China the first in the world for three consecutive years. The European Patent Office (EPO) recorded 16,665 applications from China in 2021, registering a year-on-year increase of 24 percent and the biggest surge among leading patent filing countries.

◆ In recent years, China has been actively integrating into the global science and technology innovation network, and has enjoyed fruitful results in technological and people-to-people exchanges under the BRI. In addition, China has also actively worked to join the Hague Agreement and the Marrakesh Treaty, contributing its share to the global governance of intellectual property rights. The Business Confidence Survey 2021 published by the EUCCC shows that over half of interviewed companies view intellectual property rights enforcement in China as ”adequate” or “excellent”.

◆ Throughout history, the US has repeatedly stolen intellectual properties and reaped dividends from technological developments through various means, including prying out information, offering immigration status and monopolizing patents.

After World War II, the US launched Operation Paperclip to plunder Germany of its technology patents, including those on advanced aircraft and guided missile control. Nearly all German government agencies, research and development institutes and large companies were looted, and German scientists were forced to immigrate to the US.

In the 1990s, US intelligence agencies installed eavesdropping devices in the cars of Japanese negotiators during automobile trade talks to intercept internal information and gain the upper hand in the negotiations.

In 2001, the European company Airbus sued the American company Boeing for tracking Airbus employees’ telephone, fax, and e-mails for business espionage using the electronic surveillance system named Echelon developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

In 2013, the US DOJ detained four Alstom executives to force the French company into a fire sale of its core business, power and grid, to the US company General Electric.

In 2021, Danish media exposed that the US NSA wiretapped senior officials and business leaders in European countries using internet facilities located in Denmark.

In addition, using “chip shortages” as an excuse, the US has also set deadlines to force leading chip makers from different countries to submit key information, including orders, clients and inventory, in an effort to turn the table in the chip sector.

◆ While claiming to uphold “peace” and “openness”, the US has been wantonly setting up technological barriers, piecing together the so-called “democratic technology alliance”, politicizing science and technology and turning them into ideological issues, and forming exclusive small circles. Identifying nearly 20 categories as controlled critical technologies, including biotechnology and artificial intelligence, the US has tightened up export control and investment scrutiny. It has also overstretched the concept of national security to contain and even stranglehold the development of high-tech industries in other countries, which severely violates the rights of developing countries in pursuing science and technology advancement.

Falsehood 18: Climate is not about ideology. It’s about math. If China sticks with its current plan and does not peak its emissions until 2030, then the rest of the world must go to zero by 2035. And that’s simply not possible.

Reality Check: The US holds undeniable responsibilities for climate change and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction. It shouldn’t shift responsibilities onto others, nor should it practice “double standards”.

◆ Developed countries, due to their unconstrained emissions over more than two centuries of industrialization, bear undeniable historical responsibilities for climate change. From 1850 to 2011, developed countries contributed to 79 percent of global carbon emissions. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement all require developed countries to repay their historical debts.

◆ From a historical perspective, developing countries are not the primary emitters of GHG, but the victims of climate change. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities is the cornerstone of global climate governance. As developed and developing countries do not bear the same historical responsibilities for climate change, and have different development needs and capabilities, it would be both inappropriate and unfair to apply the same restrictions on them. Wera Mori, Minister for Environment Conservation and Climate Change of Papua New Guinea (PNG) said on the sidelines of COP26 that countries like PNG have become victims of climate change caused by the industrialization of developed countries and are now bearing the consequences of their actions, which is absolutely unfair.

◆ In tackling climate change, China is not just a responsible participant, but also a serious doer. President Xi Jinping committed explicitly that China will strive to peak CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. That means China will move from carbon peak to neutrality in only 30 years, while the time the EU, the US and Japan give themselves is respectively 2.4, 1.4 and 1.2 times of China’s.

China has made notable contribution to the global efforts in energy conservation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, transport and building, which are all in the range of 30 to 50 percent. By the end of 2020, China’s CO2 emissions per unit of GDP had dropped by 48.4 percent relative to the 2005 level. The proportion of coal in total energy consumption fell from 67 percent in 2005 to 56.8 percent in 2020. The cumulative installed capacity of renewable power generation exceeded 1 billion kilowatts, accounting for 43.5 percent of the national total. Chinese companies have taken 15 spots in the world’s top 20 PV companies list, including all the top five spots, and seven spots in the top 10 wind power companies list. In the past ten years, China phased out 120 million kilowatts of coal-fired power generation capacity, which is larger than the total installed power capacity of the UK. By the end of 2021, China’s new energy vehicle ownership had exceeded 7.84 million units, and 2.95 million units were newly registered in 2021, accounting for 11.25 percent of all newly registered vehicles that year.

The share of renewable energy in China’s energy mix has already exceeded that of the US. By the end of 2019, the total installed capacity of China’s hydro, wind and solar power generation had reached 756 million kilowatts, 2.8 times that of the US. Renewable energy accounts for 12.7 percent of China’s primary energy consumption, approximately 1.4 times that of the US.

◆ The US is the world’s largest GHG emitter in cumulative terms, and its per capita carbon emissions are 3.3 times that of the global average. In the 270 years from 1750 to 2019, the US emitted a cumulative 412.5 billion tons of GHG, accounting for about 1/4 of the global total. The US has produced the world’s largest cumulative emissions, which are almost twice that of China’s. Here are some statistics: the historical peak of US per capita GHG emissions was 23.44 tons; in 2018, US per capita emissions were 16.85 tons, while China’s were 7.56 tons. Despite its status as a major manufacturing nation, China’s current per capita carbon emissions are not even half that of the US, and its per capita cumulative emissions are only around 1/8 that of the US. Even by the time of 2030, when China’s carbon emissions will have peaked, the country’s per capita carbon emissions will still just be around 7-8 tons. In comparison, when the US had its carbon peak in 2005, its per capita carbon emissions had already reached 14 tons.

◆ In June 2017, the US announced its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, and in November 2020, it officially pulled out of the accord. Such a move seriously undermined the equity, efficiency and efficacy of global climate governance. The US had stayed outside the Paris Agreement until February 2021. Despite the improvement in political posture, the GHG emissions generated simply cannot be rolled back. Instead of cutting emissions, the US produced more emissions in 2021 than 2020, drifting further away from the course set by the Paris Agreement. With its flip-flopping on such an existential issue, the US has fully exposed its utilitarian approach to major issues of principles and lost its credibility in the family of nations.

◆ It is the unshirkable moral responsibility of developed countries to provide funding for developing countries to help them better cope with climate change. At Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancún in 2010, developed countries committed to a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion US dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. More than ten years have passed, developed countries have never truly delivered on their commitment. Report by a well-known international think tank shows that not only did developed countries fall short of their collective climate financing target every year, they also juggled the figures, providing far less funds than officially released figures. Most notably, the US only fulfilled less than 20 percent of its due contribution.

◆ For years, the US has been saying publicly that it wants to work with China on climate change, but its actions say otherwise. While demanding China to consume less coal, it asks China to continue buying coal from it; while appealing for the development of renewable energies, it imposes sanctions on Chinese PV businesses. Take PV products as an example, starting from 2012, the US has imposed anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese PV products, with rates as high as 34 to 47 percent. In December 2014, the US conducted anti-dumping and countervailing investigations on Chinese PV manufacturers. In January 2018, the previous US administration decided to slap global safeguard tariffs on 8.5 billion US dollars’ worth of solar panel imports. In late 2021, the so-called “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” was signed into law by the US, which is yet another attempt to hobble the PV industry in Xinjiang under the disguise of human rights. Relevant US measures have not only impeded normal trade in PV products and disrupted normal supply chains, but also undermined global efforts in countering climate change. The US should correct its wrong practices in order to create an enabling environment for climate cooperation with China.

◆ Climate change has caused serious challenges to human survival and development, and must be tackled through global cooperation. Developed countries, the US included, should honor the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and follow the requirements of the Paris Agreement. They need to face up to their historical responsibilities, and level up their ambitions and actions. They need to take the lead in making substantial reductions of emissions and strive to achieve carbon neutrality before 2050. In the meantime, they need to give developing countries due space for development and emission, and deliver on their commitments of providing developing countries with adequate finance, technology and capacity-building support. On the basis of meeting financing pledges and leveraging public funds, efforts can be made to promote the development of green finance and bring private investment into low-carbon sectors. It is also important to build national, regional and global carbon markets and carbon pricing mechanisms, bring down the costs and raise the level of emissions reductions, promote technological innovation and sustainable development, and provide developing countries with stable sources of funding for mitigation and capacity-building through the benefit sharing mechanism of carbon markets.

Falsehood 19: To counter illegal and illicit narcotics, especially synthetic opioids like fentanyl, we want to work with China to stop international drug trafficking organizations from getting precursor chemicals, many of which originate in China.

Reality Check: The US has itself to blame for the root cause of fentanyl abuse in the country.

◆ Narcotics abuse, a chronic malaise plaguing the US, has deep historical and social roots.

With five percent of the world’s population, the US consumes 80 percent of opioids in the world, making the country the world’s biggest market for narcotics. There is a prevalent tradition of prescription painkiller abuse in the US, undergirded by a complete chain of pharmaceutical companies, medical representatives and doctors. All-out marketing by pharmaceutical companies, over-prescription by doctors, ineffective government crackdowns and the negative implications of marijuana legalization are among the combination of factors behind an ever-growing market for narcotics. Opioid abuse in the US and its rising toll started with OxyContin, an opioid painkiller made by Purdue Pharma and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1995. When it comes to discouraging demand and curbing production, the US should have done a lot more.

While the US has the most acute fentanyl challenge in the world, it is also the biggest producer and consumer of fentanyl and has yet to officially schedule fentanyl-related substances as a class. Nevertheless, it kept demanding other countries to take actions. This is a typical example of “forcing others to take medicine for one’s own illness”.

◆The Chinese government takes a zero-tolerance approach to narcotics and strictly regulates anesthetics, psychotropic substances and their precursors. By the end of 2021, China has added 37 drug precursors and ephedrine-related substances to its control list, which became even longer than the UN list. China strictly regulates import and export of chemicals pursuant to international rules and its domestic laws, and its efforts and achievements in this regard are visible to all.

On 1 May 2019, the Chinese government became the first country in the world to class schedule fentanyl-related substances, although there was no large-scale fentanyl abuse or immediate hazard in China. This is an important follow-up to the common understandings reached between the presidents of China and the US, and a concrete example of how China, keeping in mind the health, safety and well-being of humanity, actively responds to the US concern and helps it tackle its domestic opioid crisis.

On 1 July 2021, China class scheduled all synthetic cannabinoids and another 18 psychoactive substances including fluoroketamine. On 20 September of the same year, another six chemicals, including methyl alpha-phenylacetoacetate (MAPA), were added as drug precursors. China is making continuous efforts to regulate precursors in accordance with law.

China has taken a host of measures to crack down on the trafficking of fentanyl and other scheduled chemicals, like introducing real-name registration of senders and receivers, parcel examination and X-ray screening in the express delivery sector, and stepping up examination of cross-border parcels to certain destinations including the US. These measures have paid off.

After class scheduling fentanyl-related substances, China’s National Narcotics Control Commission and Ministry of Public Security have maintained close, candid and in-depth coordination with their US counterparts including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the State Department Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Since September 2019, the US has not seized any fentanyl-related substances coming from China. The US has expressed appreciation to China on many occasions and noted drug control as a highlight in bilateral law enforcement cooperation.

As is known to all, the responsibility to prevent the entry of non-scheduled chemicals and their use in illicit drug-making falls on the import country. The US, however, would neither officially schedule fentanyl nor address the issue of domestic consumption. Instead, it chose to shift the blame by falsely claiming that “fentanyl precursors used by drug trafficking organizations originate in China” and making an issue out of non-scheduled chemicals. This reflects an ulterior motive and an extreme lack of responsibility for the life and health of its own people.

◆ In May 2020, without producing any evidence, the US added the Institute of Forensic Science of China’s Ministry of Public Security and the National Narcotics Laboratory to its “Entity List”. Such a practice of seeking China’s cooperation on the one hand while imposing sanctions on China’s narcotics control authorities has seriously hindered the operation of China’s fentanyl monitoring system and undermined the counter-narcotics cooperation between China and the US.

While China and the rest of the world are tightening control over fentanyl-related substances, fentanyl-related problems are deteriorating in the US, causing a mounting death toll. It lays bare the US’s failure to get to the crux of the fentanyl abuse problem. China has acted out of goodwill and repeatedly advised the US to follow effective practices widely recognized by the international community, like stepping up regulation on fentanyl prescription and promoting public awareness

Falsehood 20: As a global food crisis threatens people worldwide, we look to China — a country that’s achieved great things in agriculture — to help with a global response.

Reality Check: The US has long been restricting grain exports and monopolizing grain trade. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the US expanded its arms assistance and abused unilateral sanctions, further aggravating the global food shortage. It bears unshirkable responsibility for the global food crisis.

◆ The US-driven deglobalization, its grain-for-energy production policies and food oligopolies are the root causes of global food crisis.

Using its status as a major grain-producer, the US has been restricting its grain exports to other countries, causing disruptions to normal global grain trade. The 12 major grain producers such as the US, Canada and the European Union accounts for 70percent of the world’s total grain production and exportation. In global trade relations, the US and other Western countries weigh heavily on whether developing countries can buy grain and at what price.

The US consumes grain to produce biofuels, straining global food supply, especially the supply of subsistence crops. Nearly one-third of the corn produced in the US is used for biofuels. Using grain as substitute for energy leads to fewer grain for global food supply, creating a vicious circle of food and energy prices pushing up each other.

The four major grain suppliers —ADM, Bunge and Cargill and Louis Dreyfus — monopolize more than 80percent of the world’s grain trade, and control global agricultural raw materials as well as grain production, processing and supply. These four grain suppliers, three from the US, manipulate the international prices of grain and earn extra profits from global food price volatility. Since 2021, their net income has increased by 53 percent, 80 percent, 64 percent and 47.7 percent respectively, and the stock prices of ADM and Bunge have nearly tripled. These international food oligopolies are profit-seeking, and they won’t miss any opportunity to stir up food security issues and inflate food supply shortage to make bigger profits.

◆ The US has been stoking the flames in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and abusing economic sanctions. These have exacerbated global food shortage.

The protracted conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a direct consequence of the constant instigation by the US and other Western countries. US military and arms assistance to Ukraine has increased to 53.6 billion US dollars, more than 70 percent of the combined military spending of Russia and Ukraine in 2021. The longer and bigger the conflict is, the greater its impact on global food production and supply will be, and the food crisis will further intensify.

In the face of a global food crisis, major grain-producing countries such as the US have instead kept their “grain bags” tight. According to the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report released by the US Department of Agriculture this May, US wheat exports in 2021/22 will be 18.9 percent lower than the previous year. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the total amount of food exports affected by the restrictions has increased significantly, which now represents about 17 percent of total calories traded in the world

The US food security initiative is more of empty words than concrete actions, only to fragment global food security governance. Russia is a major exporter of subsistence crops and the world’s largest exporter of fertilizers. Since the US and other Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia, the price index of various fertilizers has risen by more than 30 percent, which has seriously affected agricultural production. From 2021 to 2022, wheat and barley exports from Russia account for 16 percent and 12.9 percent of the world’s total respectively. Statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) show that since the US imposed sanctions on Russia, the Food Price Index in May this year has risen by 14 percent compared with February.

◆ Serious food waste in the US has worsened the global food shortage.

First, the amount of food waste is astounding. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the US, 30 to 40 percent of the food supply and 38 percent of grain products are never eaten each year. In 2018, the US had 103 million tons of its food wasted, worth 161 billion US dollars. In 2020, the country’s food waste per capita was 59 kilograms.

Second, distribution is uneven. About 38 million people are food insecure in the US in 2020, and the majority of them are African Americans, Latin Americans and Native Americans. According to National Geographic, more than one-third of the low-income households do not have access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program introduced by the US government, and its benefits fall short of helping many families in high-cost areas enjoy a healthy and adequate diet.

Third, secondary problems are prominent. Every year, the overproduction of food in the US puts a staggering burden on the environment and wastes numerous resources, including over 9.3 million hectares of arable land, 22 trillion liters of water, 350 million kilograms of pesticides, and 6.35 million tons of chemical fertilizers.

◆ China has made significant contributions to global food security. It has supported one-fifth of the world’s population with a quarter of the world’s total food, on less than 9 percent of the world’s arable land. The Global Development Initiative put forward by China has identified food security as one of the eight priority areas of cooperation. China will mobilize efforts from all parties across the globe to draw on each other’s strength, and form the greatest synergy to meet all sustainable development goals including food security. This initiative has received positive response from more than 100 countries around the world and international organizations such as the UN.

◆ The Chinese people cherish food and keep to the traditional virtue of thrift. President Xi Jinping attaches great importance to food security. He has called for thriftiness and opposes squandering, stressing on multiple occasions the need to stop food waste. Since the launch of the nationwide “Clear Your Plate” campaign in 2013, consumer food waste in China has been significantly reduced. According to the Nature magazine, the amount of food discarded by Chinese restaurants and eateries has decreased by 40 percent. In 2021, the International Conference on Food Loss and Waste hosted by China was well received by the international community, including members of the G20.

◆ China is an important strategic partner of FAO in South-South cooperation. In recent years, China has donated 130 million US dollars to the FAO South-South Cooperation Trust Fund. China has sent more than 1,100 agricultural experts and technical personnel to and trained nearly 100,000 farmers in more than 40 countries and regions. Under the framework of the FAO’s South-South Cooperation Programme, China has donated the largest amount of fund, sent the most experts, and undertaken the most projects among all developing countries.

◆ China has provided its own solutions to global food shortage. Chinese hybrid rice is being grown in dozens of countries and regions in Asia, Africa and the Americas, with an annual growth area of eight million hectares. This increased the world’s total grain output by 150 million tons, enough to feed 400 to 500 million more people. Yuan Longping, known as the “Father of Chinese Hybrid Rice”, and other Chinese researchers have offered advice and counsel in India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bangladesh and many other countries. Through international training courses, China has trained over 14,000 hybrid rice technicians for more than 80 developing countries.

Falsehood 21: Beijing has perfected mass surveillance and exported that technology to more than 80 countries.

Reality Check: The US is the biggest empire of hacking.

◆ The use of video surveillance and big data technology is an important step taken by the Chinese government to improve social governance, and also a common practice across the world. It is necessary, legal and justified. Tianwang (Skynet), which is composed of video surveillance systems, effectively eliminates potential risks to public security and ensures the high percentage of solved criminal cases in China. With the increasingly digitized crime prevention and control system, 98.6 percent of the people in China felt safe in 2021, and China is widely recognized as one of the safest countries in the world. China ranked the third in the law and order index published by Gallup, a US consulting company, while the US 36th.

◆ Statistics show that there were some 70 million cameras installed in the US in 2018, one for every 4.6 people. For the US to accuse China of mass surveillance, it’s just double standard at work.

◆ For a long time, the US has carried out large-scale, organized and indiscriminate cyber espionage, surveillance and attacks on foreign governments, enterprises and individuals in violation of international law and the basic norms governing international relations. In June 2013, the Guardian and the Washington Post reported that NSA has been running PRISM, a clandestine electronic surveillance program, since 2007, whose targets include even its own allies. Der Spiegel reported that the US intelligence may have been monitoring the German Chancellor’s mobile phone communications for nearly a decade.

◆ In 2020, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) demanded Facebook to stop sending data of EU users to the US. The report comes just a few months after the European Court of Justice ruled the data transfer standard between the EU and the US doesn’t adequately protect European citizen’s privacy and concluded that EU citizens had no effective way to challenge US government surveillance. It is reported that US agencies such as NSA can theoretically ask internet companies like Facebook and Google to hand over data on an EU citizen and that EU citizen would be none-the-wiser.

◆ In December 2020, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) of France stated that google.fr and amazon.fr websites violated relevant French regulations by placing tracking cookies on their users’ computers without obtaining prior consent and without providing adequate information.

◆ In 2021, Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) reported that between 2012 and 2014, NSA used information cables of Denmark to wiretap (spy on) senior officials of Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, including many political dignitaries such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The US apparently broke its promise that it would stop wiretapping Merkel.

◆ The US abuses its leading position in internet and communication technology and is truly an empire of hacking, tapping and theft of secrets. From PRISM, the Irritant Horn project, and Stellar Wind, to Operation Telescreen, the Hive platform and the QUANTUM attack system, the US has violated the freedom of communication and speech of its citizens through digital surveillance, and has engaged in cyber attacks, surveillance and thefts of secrets across the world. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden of the Stateroom program show that the US has covertly installed eavesdropping devices in nearly 100 of its embassies and consulates to steal secrets from their host countries.

◆ A report on APT-C-39 released by Chinese cybersecurity company 360 in 2020 reveals that APT-C-39, a hacking group under the CIA, has conducted cyber infiltration attacks on China for 11 years targeting critical sectors including aviation and aerospace, research institutions, oil industry, large internet companies, and government agencies. Such attacks have seriously undermined China’s national security and the security of its economy, critical infrastructure as well as personal information of the general public.

According to a report on the indiscriminate worldwide cyber attacks by NSA’s APT-C-40 over the past decade released by 360 in 2022, NSA has attacked, using cyber weapons, 403 targets in 47 countries and regions worldwide, including China, the UK, Germany, France, Poland, Japan, India, the ROK, the UAE, South Africa and Brazil.

On 19 April 2022, China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) issued an alert on cyber attacks by the US government against other countries and released a related report. It brings to light “Hive”, a lightweight cyber weapon used exclusively by the US government, and the fact that the US has deployed cyber attack platforms worldwide and has jumper servers and VPN channels in countries like France, Germany, Canada, Turkey and Malaysia.

Putin: Russia Will Provide Modern Missiles to Belarus, Capable of Carrying Nuclear Warheads

Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin announced this evening in Moscow, that Russia will be providing modern missiles to Belarus.  Such missiles will be capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

President Putin also claimed that, according to Russian Covert Intelligence, America has prepared 257 planes in Europe for possible use of nuclear weapons.  Clearly those planes are meant to hit Russia.

He went on to say that this is one, non-Diplomatic step in response to the European Embargo against the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Specifically, Putin stated:

– Russia will upgrade Belarus aircraft to carry nuclear weapons.
– Russia will provide Belarus with Iskander-M missile systems (they can carry either conventional, or nuclear warhead).
– Russia will train Belarus to use nuclear weapons.

For his part, the President of Belarus added today “The policy pursued by our neighbors from Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia is causing us concern.”

To that, Putin responded “the new missiles will be installed within months.”

(HT REMARK:  Spreading-out the potential targets for NATO?)

UPDATE 4:23 PM EDT —

The Ukrainian Army is reporting missiles have been fired from BELARUS into Ukraine’s Chernigiv border region

We Haven’t Seen Carnage Like This Since 2008

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Trillions of dollars in market wealth has already been wiped out, and investors are bracing for a chaotic second half of 2022.  We truly haven’t seen anything like this since the financial crisis of 2008.  The early months of 2020 were volatile due to the eruption of the COVID pandemic, but the Federal Reserve quickly rushed to the rescue.  The Fed poured trillions of dollars into the system, and that spurred a rally that was absolutely breathtaking.  But this time around the Fed isn’t going to be riding to the rescue any time soon.  The Fed is committed to raising interest rates in a desperate attempt to get inflation under control, and the size of the Fed balance sheet is now being reduced.  So there will be no artificial life support for the financial markets for the foreseeable future, and that is really bad news for those that are seeing their portfolios get absolutely monkey-hammered.

Things have been particularly brutal for crypto investors.

Last November, the total global market cap for all cryptocurrencies peaked out at about 3.1 trillion dollars.

Over the weekend, the total global market cap for all cryptocurrencies actually dipped below 850 billion dollars

The crypto market suffered one of its most dramatic selloffs in years this week as the prices of top cryptocurrencies declined as much as 35% week-over-week as fears of a broad economic recession intensified.

On Saturday, the total global market cap of cryptocurrencies sank below $850 billion as top tokens tumbled.

Poof.

More than two-thirds of all “crypto wealth” is already gone.

CNBC is using the word “carnage” to describe what we have been witnessing in the crypto industry, and I think that fits the nightmare that is currently unfolding quite well…

Carnage in the crypto market won’t let up, as token prices plummet, companies lay off employees in waves, and some of the most popular names in the industry go belly up. The chaos has spooked investors, erasing more than $2 trillion in value in a matter of months — and wiping out the life savings of retail traders who bet big on crypto projects billed as safe investments.

It has been estimated that 16 percent of all U.S. adults either own or have owned a cryptocurrency.

So a whole lot of people out there are really hurting right now.

Bitcoin

Last November, the price of Bitcoin peaked at $68,789.63.

As I write this article, it is sitting at $20,170.10.

Ethereum

Last November, the price of Ethereum peaked at $4,891.70.

As I write this article, it is sitting at $1,093.40.

I feel really sorry for those that decided to pour their money into cryptos near the peak.

Stock investors are also getting pummeled these days.

In fact, U.S. retirement accounts have already declined in value by almost three trillion dollars thanks to rapidly falling stock prices…

The U.S. stock market rout that has put U.S. equities in a bear market isn’t just reducing the net worth of billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It’s also taking a toll on Americans’ retirement savings, wiping out trillions of dollars in value.

The selloff has erased nearly $3 trillion from U.S. retirement accounts, according to Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. By her calculations, 401(k) plan participants have lost about $1.4 trillion from their accounts since the end of 2021. People with IRAs — most of which are 401(k) rollovers — have lost $2 trillion this year.

Stocks have just kept falling and falling and falling.

In fact, the S&P 500 has fallen for 10 of the last 11 weeks

The S&P 500 posted its 10th down week in the last 11, and is now well into a bear market. On Thursday, all 11 of its sectors closed more than 10% below their recent highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 30,000 for the first time since January 2021 this past week.

Cryptos have already collapsed, but stocks theoretically still have a ton of room to keep falling.

There are some that are speculating about what will happen if the Dow drops all the way to 20,000, and that would definitely be a crash of historic proportions.

Of course the housing market is much larger than the stock market, and that is starting to implode too.

If you can believe it, the total value of the U.S. housing market was valued at 43.4 trillion dollars earlier this year.

Unfortunately, mortgage rates are absolutely skyrocketing and that is going to change everything.

According to Redfin, home sellers are already dropping their prices at a rate that we have never seen before…

The highest share of sellers on record dropped their list price during the four weeks ending June 12 as mortgage rates shot up to levels not seen since 2008, dwindling the pool of home shoppers.

It is being reported that in some areas of the country home prices have already been reduced by as much as 20 percent.

And this implosion is likely to accelerate as the Federal Reserve just pushes interest rates higher and higher and higher.

How long will it be before millions upon millions of U.S. homeowners are underwater on their mortgages just like we saw in 2008?

As I warned last week, those that do not learn from history are likely to end up repeating it.

The U.S. economy was almost certainly heading into a recession anyway, but now a crypto crash, a stock market crash and a housing crash all at the same time will accelerate matters greatly.

According to one recent survey, 60 percent of corporate executives expect a recession to begin “in the next 12 to 18 months”

More than 60% of executives expect a recession in the next 12 to 18 months, according to a survey of CEOs and other C-suite executives conducted by the Conference Board, a business research firm. That’s a stunning increase from the end of 2021, when just 22% of executives forecast a recession.

Sadly, we aren’t going to have to wait that long.

As I detailed last week, there are lots of numbers that indicate that a major economic downturn is already here.

It is time to batten down the hatches, because a “perfect storm” has arrived.

Global events are accelerating at a frightening pace, and the months ahead are not going to be pleasant.

US warned over ‘illusions’ about Taiwan

By CAO DESHENG | China Daily | Updated: 2022-06-15 07:24

Senior diplomat stresses China’s stand on safeguarding national sovereignty

Beijing has warned Washington not to make any “misjudgments” or have “illusions” in playing the “Taiwan card” to contain China, saying that the nation is determined and capable of defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In a meeting with United States National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Luxembourg on Monday, senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi reiterated that the Taiwan question concerns the political foundation of China-US relations which, unless handled properly, will have a subversive impact.

“The risk does not only exist, but will escalate as the United States attempts to contain China with the Taiwan question, and as the Taiwan authorities rely on the United States to seek its ‘independence’,” said Yang, who is a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee.

Yang stressed that China takes an unambiguous and steadfast stand in safeguarding its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

China’s internal affairs brook no interference by other countries, and any attempts to thwart or undermine China’s national unity are doomed to fail, he said.

Yang also stated China’s solemn position on issues concerning the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Tibet autonomous region, and the South China Sea, as well as human rights and religion.

The meeting between Yang and Sullivan came three days after State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe met with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

During that meeting, Wei also slammed the US for its wrongdoing on the Taiwan question, which is the most sensitive matter in China-US relations, saying that “the People’s Liberation Army will relentlessly safeguard China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and if anyone dares to separate Taiwan from the motherland, the Chinese military will definitely smash such attempts at any cost, even by going to war”.

A statement issued by the White House said that the meeting between Sullivan and Yang included candid, substantive and productive discussion of a number of regional and global security issues, as well as key issues in US-China relations.

Both sides agreed at the Luxembourg meeting that maintaining unimpeded channels for communication between the two sides is necessary and beneficial, Xinhua News Agency reported.

During his meeting with Sullivan, Yang urged the US to correct its strategic perception about China, make the right choices, and translate US President Joe Biden’s commitments to President Xi Jinping during their virtual meeting in November into concrete actions.

In November, Biden had promised Xi that the US does not seek a new Cold War with China, does not aim to change China’s system, does not target China with its alliances, does not support “Taiwan independence” and has no intention of seeking a conflict with China.

However, the US administration has been insisting on further containing and suppressing China in an all-around way. It has kept using the Taiwan question to provoke China by selling arms to Taiwan or elevating “official” relations with the island while urging its allies and partners to contain China.

Noting that China firmly opposes using competition to define bilateral ties, Yang said “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation” are the correct approaches for China and the US to get along with each other.

Analysts said that in the light of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, the interactions between the world’s two largest economies are necessary and beneficial for them to avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation and properly handle their differences, and their communication about the regional and international issues is also conducive to promoting global stability.

However, they said that the US should keep in mind that the Taiwan question is a red line for China, and Washington needs to refrain from meddling in China’s domestic affairs and rationally view China’s development in order to ensure that the growing competition between them would not escalate into a much bigger conflict.

Zhou Wenxing, an assistant professor at the School of International Studies at Nanjing University, said that while trying to establish new guardrails in terms of its relations with Beijing, Washington is simultaneously dismantling existing and other more important guardrails.

“If Washington seeks to de-escalate rising tensions, and get its sour relations with China back to normal, it should preserve rather than destroy the guardrails they both share. The one-China principle is and will be a very significant guardrail guiding China-US ties,” Zhou said.

Rabi Sankar Bosu, an Indian contributor to Chinese media outlets, said that the US, with the aim of preserving its own hegemony across the world, openly described China as a rival.

There is no doubt that the US and China bear heavy responsibilities not only to their own people but to the world at large, so the China-US relationship should still be led by mutually beneficial cooperation, and feature healthy competition and avoid confrontation, Bosu wrote in an opinion article published on the website of China Global Television Network.

Things They Don’t Tell You: Honest Guide To Life Brought To You By Cartoonist Winston Rowntree

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Cartoonist Winston Rowntree created an honest guide to life about all those things that they don’t tell you (but should), all brought to you by adorable animals who try to deal with the harsh reality.

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UPDATED 9:04 PM EDT — VIDEO: Russian President URGENTLY Brought to Kremlin 11:00 PM Moscow Time

A motorcade carrying Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin was seen moving swiftly into the Kremlin late Saturday night.

The specific reason for the sudden, late-night move to the Kremlin is described over Intel Channels as “A serious matter requiring Presidential decision.”

Video of the Presidential motorcade arriving at the Kremlin, appears below.

Video LINK

 

UPDATE 8:19 PM EDT —

Intel circuits saying “Something really serious has happened.”

UPDATE 8:50 PM EDT —

Russian Air Force strategic bomber voice net active 5648 Kilohertz USB and 6552 Kilohertz USB

NOT CERTAIN IF THIS SUDDEN ACTIVITY ON RUSSIAN STRATEGIC BOMBER FREQUENCIES IS RELATED AT ALL TO PUTIN’S RETURN TO KREMLIN.  JUST REPORTING IT AS IT IS __IS__ UNUSUAL AT THIS HOUR ON A SATURDAY.

8:53 PM EDT —

CAN NOW CONFIRM RUSSIAN LONG-RANGE STRATEGIC BOMBERS ARE UP IN THE SKIES.

UPDATE 9:04 PM EDT —

Second video emerged of Putin Motorcade “hauling ass” to the Kremlin late Saturday night in Moscow.   Moving quite fast, as if an Emergency.

Video HERE

Abandoned Cat Was Antisocial Until A Tiny Kitten Forced Him To Play With Her

A nice cute video

China Just KILLED Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse

Big, big, HUGE changes to the world are coming. Here’s just a little tiny taste of what China is doing RIGHT NOW! Jeeze!

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
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BRICS is organizing, and it’s putting its collective power behind changing the world’s currency

Some time ago, Lavrov stated the anglo west had launched (hybrid) war on Russia. He said we accept the challenge. 

To me, the main result from the recent BRICS meeting was the announcement of a new international currency being formed based on a basket of commodities. 

A large chunk of world GDP in BRICS. 

Countries have already began trade with national currencies. 
Many US dollars will be going home to roost. 

US will be lucky if it does not break into several sections with the economic destruction and resulting political destruction that is heading its way.

-Peter AU1

Big stuff going on right now. BRICS is organizing, and it’s putting its collective power behind changing the world’s currency, and thus the economic balance of power in the world. The preamble to the meeting is further down in this article. It’s a must read. This is what is REALLY going on.

But today, aside from this geopolitical stuff, I want to squeeze in some humanity. And nothing quite points to our shared humanity is how we treat other species. As such, I have placed a number of (hopefully) positive videos about cats, and dogs that I hope will help explore our sense of humanity, and why it is so very important to be a STO sentience.

As well as a mix of other things…

From Bad to Worse

Jack Whittaker didn’t need to win the lottery; the West Virginian was a wealthy and successful businessman in the construction industry. But, in 2002, he won the then-largest jackpot in the Powerball multi-state lottery. His prize was worth around $315 million, but he opted to take the one-off cash payment option that left him with over $113 million after taxes.

Whittaker was kind-hearted and well-meaning as he pledged 10% of his winnings to Christian charities and set up the Jack Whittaker Foundation to distribute food and clothing to the needy in rural West Virginia. He also rewarded the man who worked in the store where Whittaker had bought the winning ticket and threw handfuls of cash from his new sports car around the neighborhood.

Then things started to go bad. In 2003, someone stole over $500,000 that Whittaker had left in his car in the parking lot of a strip club. Not a good look Whittaker, but things kept going from bad to worse.

Next, his teenage granddaughter, Brandi, was lavished with cash and gifts, but in 2004, the body of Brandi’s eighteen-year-old boyfriend was found in Whittaker’s home. The boy had taken a cocktail of drugs leading to his death. Later that year, Brandi went missing, and her body turned up dumped on a friend’s property. She had been taking drugs, but the cause of death wasn’t clear, and authorities filed no charges.

Unfortunately, Jack had problems with gambling, and his uninsured house burned to the ground. He died in 2020.

Little Kittens Found Underneath The Floor But A Foul Odor Fills The Room..?

We begin with this little story about a foul odor beneath the floorboards in a kindergarten.

Did Obama really say that “the Earth can’t substain 1.4 billion Chinese having the same living standard as American and Australian, so we can’t allow China to be rich”, as many Chinese claimed?

Yes, it’s possible.

I didn’t find it on google, so had to search in Baidu. Here is what I tracked and finally found:

“If over a billion Chinese citizens have the same living patterns as Australians and Americans do right now, then all of us are in for a very miserable time. The planet just can’t sustain it…”

It is said this happened on an interview in an Australian TV program “The 7.30 Report”, April 14th, 2010.

Keep in mind that really no one wants to have a life that like Americans have, except the ignorant, the destitute, and of course, Americans.

Wine and other funny comix…

There’s some real truths here.

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Inaccurate, but funny as hell.

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Yup. Accurate

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Exile on Main Street: the Sound of the Unipolar World Fading Away

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The future world order, already in progress, will be formed by strong sovereign states. The ship has sailed. There’s no turning back.

Let’s cut to the chase and roll in the Putin Top Ten of the New Era, announced by the Russian President live at the St. Petersburg forum for both the Global North and South.

The era of the unipolar world is over.

The rupture with the West is irreversible and definitive. No pressure from the West will change it.

Russia has renewed its sovereignty. Reinforcement of political and economic sovereignty is an absolute priority.

The EU has completely lost its political sovereignty. The current crisis shows the EU is not ready to play the role of an independent, sovereign actor. It’s just en ensemble of American vassals deprived of any politico-military sovereignty.

Sovereignty cannot be partial. Either you’re a sovereign or a colony.

Hunger in the poorest nations will be on the conscience of the West and euro-democracy.

Russia will supply grains to the poorer nations in Africa and the Middle East.

Russia will invest in internal economic development and reorientation of trade towards nations independent of the U.S.

The future world order, already in progress, will be formed by strong sovereign states.

The ship has sailed. There’s no turning back.

How does it feel, for the collective West, to be caught in such a crossfire hurricane? Well, it gets more devastating when we add to the new roadmap the latest on the energy front.

Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, in St. Petersburg, stressed that the global economic crisis is gaining momentum not because of sanctions, but exacerbated by them; Europe “commits energy suicide” by sanctioning Russia; sanctions against Russia have done away with the much lauded “green transition”, as that is no longer needed to manipulate markets; and Russia, with its vast energy potential, “is the Noah’s Ark of the world economy.”

For his part Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller could not be more scathing on the sharp decline in the gas flow to the EU due to Siemens’ refusal and/or incapacity to repair the Nord Stream 1 pumping engine: “Well, of course, Gazprom was forced to reduce the volume of gas supplies to Europe by 20%+. But you know, prices have increased not by 20%+, but by several times! Therefore, I’m sorry if I say that we don’t feel offended by anyone, we are not particularly concerned by this situation.”

If this pain dial overdrive was not enough to hurl the collective West – or NATOstan – into Terminal Hysteria, then Putin’s sharp comment on possibly allowing Mr. Sarmat to present his business card to “decision-making centers in Kiev”, those that are ordering the current shelling and killing of civilians in Donetsk, definitely did the trick:

“As for the red lines, let me keep them to myself, because this will mean quite tough actions on the decision-making centers. But this is an area that shouldn’t be disclosed to people outside the military-political leadership of the country. Those who deserve appropriate actions on our part should draw a conclusion for themselves – what they may face if they cross the line.”

Baby please, stop breaking down

Alastair Crooke has masterfully outlined how the collective West’s zugzwang leaves it lumbering around, dazed and confused. Now let’s examine the state of play on the opposite side of the chessboard, focusing on the BRICS summit this Thursday in Beijing.

As much as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and ASEAN, now it’s time for a reinvigorated BRICS to step up its game. In conjunction, these are the key organizations/instruments that will be carving the pathways towards the post-unipolar era.

Both China and India (which between them were the largest economies in the world for centuries before the brief Western colonial interregnum) are already close and getting closer to “the Noah’s Ark of the world economy”.

The G20 – hostages of the Michael Hudson-defined FIRE scam that is the core of the financialized neoliberal casino – is slowly fading away, while a potential new G8 ramps up: and that is directly connected to BRICS expansion, one of the key themes of this week’s summit. An expanded BRICS with a parallel G8 configuration is bound to easily overtake the Western-centric one in importance as well as GDP by purchasing power parity (PPP).

BRICS in 2021 already added Bangladesh, Egypt, the UAE and Uruguay to its New Development Bank (NDB). In May, at Foreign Ministry-level debates, Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Thailand were added to the 5 BRICS members. Leaders of some of these nations will be connected to the Beijing summit.

BRICS plays a completely different game from the G20. They aim for the grassroots, and it’s all about slowly “building trust” – a very Chinese concept. They are creating an independent Credit Rating Agency – away from the Anglo-American racket – and deepening a Currency Reserves Arrangement. The NDB – including its regional offices in India and South Africa – has been involved in hundreds of projects. Time will tell: one day the NDB will make the World Bank superfluous.

Comparisons between BRICS and the Quad, a U.S. concoction, are silly. Quad is just another crude mechanism to contain China. Yet there’s no question India treads on tightrope walker territory, as it’s a member of both BRICS and Quad, and made a vastly misguided decision to walk out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the largest free trade deal on the planet – opting instead to adhere to the American pie-in-the-sky Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).

Yet India, long term, skillfully guided by Russia, is being steered to find essential common ground with China in several key issues.

BRICS, especially in its expanded BRICS+ version, is bound to increase cooperation on building truly stable supply chains, and a settlement mechanism for resources and raw material trade, which inevitably has to be based in local currencies. Then the path will be open for the Holy Grail: a BRICS payment system as a credible alternative to the weaponized U.S. dollar and SWIFT.

Meanwhile, a torrent of bilateral investments from both China and India in the manufacturing and services sector around their neighbors is bound to lift up smaller players in both Southeast Asia and South Asia: think Cambodia and Bangladesh as important cogs in a vast supply wheel.

Yaroslav Lissovolik had already proposed a BEAMS concept as the core of this BRICS integration drive, uniting “the key regional integration initiatives of BRICS economies such as BIMSTEC, EAEU, the ASEAN-China free trade agreement, Mercosur and SADC/SACU.”

It’s only (BRICS) rock’n roll

Now Beijing seems eager to promote “an inclusive format for dialogue spanning all the main regions of the Global South via aggregating the regional integration platforms in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America. Going forward this format may be further expanded to include other regional integration blocks from Eurasia, such as the GCC, EAEU and others.”

Lissovolik notes how the ideal path from now on should be “the greater inclusivity of BRICS via the BRICS+ framework that allows smaller economies that are the regional partners of BRICS to have a say in the new global governance framework.”

Before he addressed the St. Petersburg forum on video, President Xi called Putin personally to say, among other things, that he’s got China’s back on all “sovereignty and security” themes. They also, inevitably, discussed the relevance of BRICS as a key platform towards the multipolar world.

Meanwhile, the collective West plunges deeper into the maelstrom. A massive national demonstration of trade unions this past Monday paralyzed Brussels – the capital of the EU and NATO – as 80,000 people expressed their anger at the rising and rising cost of living; called for elites to “spend money on salaries, not on weapons”; and yelled in unison “Stop NATO.”

It’s zugzwang all over again. The EU’s “direct losses”, as Putin stressed, provoked by the sanctions hysteria, “could exceed $400 billion a year”. Russia’s energy earnings have hit record levels. The ruble is at a 7-year high against the euro.

It’s a blast that arguably the most powerful cultural artifact of the entire Cold War – and Western supremacy – era, the perennial Rolling Stones, is currently on tour across a “caught in a crossfire hurricane” EU. On every show they play, for the first time live, one of their early classics: ‘Out of Time’.

Sounds much like a requiem. So let’s all sing, “Baby baby baby / you’re out of time”, as one Vladimir “it’s a gas, gas, gas” Putin and his sidekick Dmitry “Under My Thumb” Medvedev seem to be the guys really getting their rocks off. It’s only (BRICS) rock’n roll, but we like it.

Chili Mac and Cheese

This almost-instant main dish combines the flavors of two favorite comfort foods. Taco-flavored cheese and mild chilis add an extra kick without too much spice.

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Sky High to Rock Bottom

We can’t know what would have happened if Edwards had won just enough money to turn his life around, but he won a lot.

David Lee Edwards was a connected armed robber who had spent one-third of his 46 years in prison. Broke and unemployed, he borrowed some cash from a friend to pay a utility bill. Unfortunately, Edwards had some change left over that he spent on a pizza and a couple of lottery tickets. He won $27 million.

At a press conference, Edwards swore that he would turn his life around and look after his daughter. Yet, he immediately began spending money left and right. His mansion in Florida was full of expensive gadgets, and his body was full of expensive drugs.

Edwards supported his and his wife’s increasing dependence on drugs. He also paid for his friend’s drugs and funerals if they overdosed. Edwards did spoil his daughter, but by 2006, he and his wife were living in a storage unit surrounded by drug paraphernalia and their own body waste.

Mrs. Edwards left him; he died penniless in a hospice in Kentucky. He was 58.

Cute Cat Enjoys 60°C Sauna Everyday

A nice cute little video to put a smile on your face.

So accurate

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Maureen O’Connor

Maureen O’Connor, a native of San Diego, California, rose through the local political ranks to become the city’s first female mayor from 1986 to 1992. At the time, she was married to Robert O. Peterson—the founder of the Jack in the Box fast-food chain.

When her husband died in 1994, O’Connor’s personal fortune stood somewhere between $40 and $50 million. In the cutthroat world of politics, all successful politicians are big risk-takers. O’Connor was a political winner, but she was a loser when she began to gamble in casinos.

O’Connor lost around $13 million in casinos.

She misappropriated over $2 million from her husband’s charitable foundation, which she immediately spent playing video poker.

To raise more cash to fund her gambling, she liquidated all her savings and took out second and third mortgages on her home. She attempted to pay off her debts but found herself charged with wire fraud.

She attributed her gambling addiction to a brain tumor. In 2015, a judge formally dropped all charges against her.

Consider how the American media treats China

All in process…

1. Classification: People divided into “us & them”
2. Symbolization: People FORCED to identify themselves
3. Discrimination: People begin to face systemic discrimination
4. Dehumanization: People are equated with animals, vermin or diseases
5. Organization: Gov’t creates specific groups (police/military) to enforce policies
6. Polarization: Gov’t creates propaganda to turn public against target group
7. Preparation: Official action to remove/relocate people
8. Persecution: Beginning of murders, theft of property, trial massacres
9. Extermination: Wholesale elimination of target group. It’s not considered “extermination” or murder because target group are NOT considered human
10. Denial: Gov’t denies it has committed any crime

Norway

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Supreme Court Overturns NY’s Concealed Carry Law, Expanding Gun Rights

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a New York law that regulated who is allowed to carry a concealed weapon in public, expanding gun rights nationwide.

In a 6-3 decision by the court’s conservative majority, the justices ruled that requiring people to demonstrate a particular need for carrying a gun in order to get a license to carry one in public violated the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority that the Constitution protects “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”

In a dissent joined by his liberal colleagues, Justice Stephen Breyer focused on the toll taken by gun violence. “Since the start of this year alone (2022), there have already been 277 reported mass shootings—an average of more than one per day,“ Breyer wrote.

The decision expected to ultimately allow more people to legally carry guns on the streets of the nation’s largest cities — including New York, Los Angeles and Boston — and elsewhere. About a quarter of the U.S. population lives in states expected to be affected by the ruling, the high court’s first major gun decision in more than a decade.

Bat Cat

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Abandoned Cat Became A Monk And Promised Buddha She Won’t Eat Meat

Another cute kitty video.

WTF?

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Moderna and Pfizer Vaccines more dangerous than Covid

The numbers are coming in.

Stanford, UCLA, Louisiana study says that serious adverse effects from Moderna and Pfizer Vaccines exceed the risk reduction of serious adverse effects from Covid.

The excess risk of serious adverse events of special interest surpassed the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization relative to the placebo group in both Pfizer and Moderna trials (2.3 and 6.4 per 10,000 participants, respectively).

Full paper HERE

SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS “ROE V. WADE” – No federal constitutional Right to Abortion

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, holding that there is no federal constitutional right to an abortion.   Widespread protests, maybe even riots and social upheaval, are expected beginning today, as the supporters of the right to kill babies, go on a rampage.

The opinion is the most consequential Supreme Court decision in decades and will transform the landscape of women’s reproductive health in America.

Going forward, abortion rights will be determined by states, unless Congress acts.

Already, nearly half of the states have or will pass laws that ban abortion while others have enacted strict measures regulating the procedure.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion. “Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”

A Fall from Grace

Eike Batista is not a rags-to-riches story since Batista’s father had been the Minister of Mines and Energy in two previous Brazilian governments. It was natural that Eike Batista made his living in mining, gas, and oil with his family background. It was then a logical step to finance large-scale infrastructure projects that would support his other concerns.

At the beginning of 2012, Batista had a net worth of around $35 billion—this meant that he was the seventh wealthiest person in the world. Unfortunately, he didn’t last long in the world’s top ten. By the summer of 2013, his wealth stood at $200 million and, a year later, had fallen to minus $1 billion.

There were various reasons for this dramatic drop, but not all of them were Batista’s fault. A general downturn in the precious metals industry, underperforming assets, and poor decisions played a part. But the biggest fall from grace may be that Batista is facing 30 years in jail for bribing the governor of Rio de Janeiro.

So why should Batista never have become rich? The answer is simple. A capitalist economy relies on the operation of free markets that depend on trust. Someone who builds a business empire built on sand warps the economy, destroys confidence, and wipes out the investments that pay people’s pensions.

Supreme Court Overturns NY’s Concealed Carry Law, Expanding Gun Rights

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a New York law that regulated who is allowed to carry a concealed weapon in public, expanding gun rights nationwide.

In a 6-3 decision by the court’s conservative majority, the justices ruled that requiring people to demonstrate a particular need for carrying a gun in order to get a license to carry one in public violated the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority that the Constitution protects “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”

In a dissent joined by his liberal colleagues, Justice Stephen Breyer focused on the toll taken by gun violence. “Since the start of this year alone (2022), there have already been 277 reported mass shootings—an average of more than one per day,“ Breyer wrote.

The decision expected to ultimately allow more people to legally carry guns on the streets of the nation’s largest cities — including New York, Los Angeles and Boston — and elsewhere. About a quarter of the U.S. population lives in states expected to be affected by the ruling, the high court’s first major gun decision in more than a decade.

Harvey Norman declares bankruptcy after going whole month without government handout

Australia biggest electronic retailer giants. They pretty much have been sourcing from China, and can no longer compete with the Australian tariffs and restrictions.
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Wonder how long the new government will still want to act tough against (Australians biggest trading country) China like the Morrison’s government has?

A Warning About The Coming Shortages Of Diesel Fuel, Diesel Exhaust Fluid And Diesel Engine Oil

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What I am about to share with you is a developing situation, and I hope to share more once the facts become clearer.  It appears that a very serious diesel crisis is coming in the months ahead, and that will have a dramatic impact on our economy.  As you will see below, we are being warned that there will be shortages of diesel fuel, diesel exhaust fluid and diesel engine oil.  Most diesel vehicles require all three in order to run, and so a serious shortage of any of them would be a major disaster.  Needless to say, simultaneous shortages of all three could potentially be catastrophic.  Most Americans don’t spend much time thinking about diesel, but without it our supply chains collapse and we don’t have a functioning economy.  In a recent Time Magazine article discussing the coming diesel fuel shortage, we are told that “the U.S. economy runs on diesel”…

Though most consumers shake their heads at the cost of gasoline and complain about the cost of filling up their car tanks, what they really should be worried about is the price of diesel. The U.S. economy runs on diesel. It’s what powers the container ships that bring goods from Asia and the trucks that collect goods from the ports and bring them to warehouses and then to your home. The farmers who grow the food you eat put diesel in their tractors to plow the fields, and the workers that bring construction equipment to build your home put diesel in their trucks.

Since January, supplies of diesel fuel have been steadily getting tighter.

As supplies have gotten tighter, prices have skyrocketed.  The average price of a gallon of diesel fuel hit $5.50 a gallon in early May, and it has remained above that level ever since.

One of the biggest reasons for the supply crunch is a serious lack of refining capacity.  Back in 1980, the U.S. had twice as many refineries

There are also fewer refineries, which process crude oil into diesel and other products, in the U.S. than were just a few years ago. There are just 124 now operating, down from twice as many in 1980, and down from 139 in 2016, according to the U.S. Energy Information Association. The northeast region is particularly spare, with just seven refineries today, down from 27 in 1982.

There have already been some temporary outages of diesel fuel at a few locations around the country, and we are being warned that disruptions are likely to intensify during the summer months.

But the good news is that we aren’t going to run out of diesel fuel.  It may become a lot more expensive, and there may be painful temporary shortages, but we won’t run out of it.

Unfortunately, the crisis that we are facing with diesel exhaust fluid is potentially much more serious.

If you have just been skimming this article, this is the part where you need to start really paying attention.

Newsweek is telling us that the United States “could soon experience a severe shortage of diesel exhaust fluid”…

The U.S. could soon experience a severe shortage of diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), impacting U.S. drivers already hit with soaring fuel prices.

DEF is a solution made up of urea and de-ionized water that is needed for almost everything that runs on diesel. It reduces harmful gases being released into the atmosphere and works by converting nitrogen oxide produced by diesel engines into nitrogen and steam.

If you have a diesel vehicle that was sold in the United States after 2010, your vehicle could technically run without DEF, but in most cases your vehicle will simply not let you start it if the DEF tank is dry

Can we call it a DEF jam? Everything is in short supply as supply chains continue to unlink. The latest commodity reportedly hit is DEF, or the blue diesel exhaust fluid that every diesel sold in the U.S. after 2010 needs to cut emissions. This means that every diesel truck, diesel RV, SUV, and car owner will likely have to look harder, and pay more for, DEF. A diesel engine can technically run without DEF, but your diesel vehicle likely won’t let you start it if the DEF tank is empty.

A lack of urea is the biggest reason for the growing shortage of DEF.

The United States is one of the largest importers of urea in the world, and Russia and China are two of the largest exporters.  In previous years that wasn’t a problem, but now the war in Ukraine has dramatically changed things

A major portion of our urea comes from Europe, and because of the war in Ukraine we’re seeing a shortage of it, according to Newsweek. Russia is one of the world’s major exporters of it. China, too, is a major exporter of it, and it has suspended exports. Weather, too, has caused supply chain disruptions. Since it’s also a major component in fertilizers, there’s intense competition for urea.

Without enough DEF, our economy is going to be in for a world of hurt.

Meanwhile, Mike Adams is reporting on the growing shortages of diesel engine oil that are starting to happen all over the nation…

Retailers, customers and distributors are all reporting shortages in diesel engine oil. This is not an imaginary problem, it is a real problem that is so far entirely ignored by the corporate media.

Apparently there are some diesel engine oil additives that are in extremely short supply, and one industry insider is telling us that this problem isn’t going to be resolved any time soon.

So what this means is that people are going to start running out of diesel engine oil.

In fact, it is already being reported that the trains in Sri Lanka will soon have to completely shut down because of a lack of diesel engine oil…

Sri Lanka Railways said that it will NOT be possible to operate trains in the future due to the lack of engine oil. A senior official at Sri Lanka Railways said that the current level of engine oil would only last for another two months.

That’s in line with the warning we’re hearing in the states: About 8 weeks of diesel engine oil remaining in the pipeline.

Just solving one of the shortages that I have described in this article will not be enough.

As I noted in the opening paragraph, a diesel vehicle requires diesel fuel, diesel exhaust fluid and diesel engine oil in order to operate.

You need all three.

This is a story that I will be following very closely.  Needless to say, there are enormous implications for our supply chains and for our economy as a whole if solutions cannot be found.

XIV BRICS Summit Beijing Declaration

This is a VERY IMPORTANT document. This is the preamble. It defines the new, new world order; a unipolar world. - MM

Preamble

1. We,the Leaders of the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Russian  Federation, the Republic of India, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of South Africa held the XIV BRICS Summit under the theme “Foster High-quality BRICS Partnership, Usher in a New Era for Global Development” on 23-24 June 2022.

2. We recall that in the past 16 years, upholding the BRICS spirit featuring  mutual respect and understanding, equality, solidarity, openness, inclusiveness, and consensus, BRICS countries have strengthened mutual trust,deepened intra-BRICS mutually beneficial cooperation,and closer  people-to-people exchanges, which has led to a series of significant  outcomes. We reiterate the importance of further enhancing BRICS  solidarity and cooperation based on our common interests and key priorities, to further strengthen our strategic partnership.

3. We are glad to note that despite the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenges, BRICS countries in 2022 have jointly continued enhancing solidarity and  deepening cooperation on, inter alia, economy, peace and security, people-to-people exchanges, public health, and sustainable development  by holding a series of meetings and activities, and contributed to tangible outcomes of BRICS cooperation.

4. We welcome the High-level Dialogue on Global Development at this Summit as  a testimony to the open and inclusive nature of BRICS Partnership including BRICS Outreach/BRICS Plus cooperation. We look forward to the Dialogue injecting new impetus to strengthen international cooperation and solidarity on implementing the 2030 Agenda  for Sustainable Development.

Strengthening and Reforming Global Governance

5. We reiterate our commitment to multilateralism through upholding  international law, including the purposes and principles enshrined in  the Charter of the United Nations as its indispensable cornerstone, and  to the central role of the United Nations in an international system in  which sovereign states cooperate to maintain peace and security, advance  sustainable development, ensure the promotion and protection of  democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, and promoting  cooperation based on the spirit of mutual respect, justice and equality.

6. Recalling the BRICS Joint Statement on Strengthening and Reforming the Multilateral System adopted by our Foreign Ministers in 2021 and the  principles outlined therein, we agree that the task of strengthening and  reforming multilateral system encompasses the following:

    • Making instruments of global governance more inclusive, representative and  participatory to facilitate greater and more meaningful participation of  developing and least developed countries, especially in Africa, in global decision-making processes and structures and make it better attuned to contemporary realities;
    • Being based on inclusive consultation and collaboration for the benefit of all, while respecting sovereign independence, equality, mutual  legitimate interests and concerns to make the multilateral organizations more responsive,effective,transparent and credible;
    • Making multilateral organizations more responsive, effective, transparent,  democratic, objective, action-oriented, solution-oriented and credible,  so as to  promote cooperation in building international relations based  on the  norms and principles of international law, and the spirit of  mutual  respect, justice, equality, mutual beneficial cooperation and  realities  of  the  contemporary  world;
    • Using  innovative  and inclusive solutions, including digital and technological  tools to  promote sustainable development and facilitate affordable and  equitable  access to global public goods for all;
    • Strengthening  capacities  of individual States and international organizations to  better respond  to new and emerging, traditional and non-traditional  challenges,  including those emanating from terrorism, money  laundering,  cyber-realm, infodemics and fake news;
    • Promoting  international  and regional peace and security, social and economic  development, and  preserve nature’s balance with people-centered  international cooperation at its core.

7. We recall the UNGA Resolution 75/1 and reiterate the call for reforms of the principal  organs of the United Nations. We recommit to instill new life in the  discussions on reform of the UN Security Council and continue the work  to revitalize the General Assembly and strengthen the Economic and  Social Council. We recall the 2005 World Summit Outcome document and  reaffirm the need for a comprehensive reform of the UN, including its  Security Council, with a view to making it more representative,  effective and efficient, and to increase the representation of the  developing countries so that it can adequately respond to global  challenges. China and Russia reiterated the importance they attach to  the status and role of Brazil, India and South Africa in international  affairs and supported their aspiration to play a greater role in the UN. 

8. We appreciate the role of India and Brazil as members of the UN Security Council for 2021-2022 and  2022-2023 respectively. The presence of four BRICS countries in the UN  Security Council provides an opportunity to further enhance the weight  of our dialogue on issue of international peace and security and for  continued cooperation in areas of mutual interest, including through regular exchanges amongst our permanent Mission to the United Nations and in other international fora.

9. We  reiterate the need for all countries to cooperate in promoting and  protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms under the principles of  equality and mutual respect. We agree to continue to treat all human  rights including the right to development in a fair and equal manner, on  the same footing and with the same emphasis. We agree to strengthen  cooperation on issues of common interests both within BRICS and in  multilateral fora including the United Nations General Assembly and  Human Rights Council, taking into account the necessity to promote,  protect and fulfil human rights in a non-selective, non-politicised and  constructive manner and without double standards. We call for the  respect of democracy and human rights. In this regard, we underline that  they should be implemented on the level of global governance as well as  at national level. We reaffirm our commitment to ensuring the promotion  and protection of democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms for  all with the aim to build a brighter shared future for the international  community based on mutually beneficial cooperation.

10. We  stress that global economic governance is of critical importance for  countries to ensure sustainable development and recall further our  support for broadening and strengthening the participation of emerging  markets and developing countries (EMDCs) in the international economic  decision-making and norm-setting processes. We reiterate our support for  G20’s leading role in global economic governance and underline that G20  shall remain intact and respond to current global challenges. We call  upon the international community to foster partnerships while  underlining that it is imperative to strengthen macro-policy  coordination in driving the world economy out of the crisis and shaping a  strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive post-pandemic economic  recovery. We urge major developed countries to adopt responsible  economic policies, while managing policy spillovers, to avoid severe  impacts on developing countries.

11. We reaffirm our support for an open, transparent, inclusive,  non-discriminatory and rules-based multilateral trading system,as embodied in the World Trade Organization(WTO). We will engage  constructively to pursue the necessary WTO reform to build an open world  economy that supports trade and development, preserve the pre-eminent  role of the WTO for setting global trade rules and governance,  supporting inclusive development and promoting the rights and interests  of its members, including developing members and LDCs. We recognize that  special and differential treatment as established in WTO rules is a  tool to facilitate the achievement of WTO objectives with respect to  economic growth and development. We call upon all WTO members to avoid  unilateral and protectionist measures that run counter to the spirit and  rules of the WTO. We emphasize the top priority and urgency of  launching the selection process of the Appellate Body members to restore  the binding two-tier multilateral dispute settlement mechanism. We  agree that the Appellate Body crisis should be resolved without further  delay and should not be linked with other issues. We endorse BRICS  Statement on Strengthening the Multilateral Trading System and Reforming  the WTO. We commend the successful conclusion of MC12 that underscores  the value of multilateralism. We encourage WTO members to sustain  momentum and achieve further meaningful outcomes by MC13.

12. We  reaffirm our commitment to maintaining a strong and effective Global  Financial Safety Net with a quota-based and adequately resourced IMF at  its center. We call for the timely and successful completion of the 16th  General Review of Quotas by 15 December 2023, to reduce the IMF’s  reliance on temporary resources, to address under-representation of  emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs) for their meaningful  engagement in the governance of IMF and protect the voice and quota  shares of the poorest and smallest members. We welcome progress on  voluntary channeling of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from countries  with strong external positions to support countries most in need, as  well as the IMF’s decision to establish the Resilience and  Sustainability Trust (RST). We look forward to early operationalization of the RST.

13. We note that the  COVID-19 pandemic has caused serious shock and hardship to humanity,  unbalanced recovery is aggravating inequality across the world, the  global growth momentum has weakened, and the economic prospects have  declined. We are concerned that global development is suffering from  severe disruption, including the widening North-South development gap,  divergent recovery trajectories, pre-existing developmental fault-lines  and a technological divide. This is posing huge challenges to the  implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as  economic and health scarring, particularly for EMDCs, is projected to  persist beyond the current pandemic. We urge major developed countries  to adopt responsible economic policies, while managing policy  spillovers, to avoid severe impacts on developing countries. We  encourage multilateral financial institutions and international  organizations to play a constructive role in building global consensus  on economic policies and preventing systemic risks of economic  disruption and financial fragmentation. We welcome the actions to  accelerate the progress towards achieving the 2030 Agenda for  Sustainable Development.

Working in Solidarity to Combat COVID-19

14. We  reiterate that it was imperative to ensure the availability of safe,  efficacious, accessible and affordable diagnostics, medicines, vaccines  and essential medical products to people from different countries  especially developing countries, and equitable distribution of vaccines  and expeditious vaccination, to fill the immunization gap globally. We  support the leading role of the WHO in combating the pandemic, as well  as acknowledge initiatives such as the COVAX and the ACT-A. We recognize  the importance of the discussions in the WTO on relevant IP waiver  proposals, as well as capacity building and strengthening local  production of vaccines and other health tools, especially in developing  countries. We stress the need to continue to strengthen the cooperation  on testing methods, therapeutic, research, production and recognition of  vaccines, the research on their efficacy and safety in light of new  variants of COVID-19 virus and recognition of national document of  vaccination against COVID-19 and respective testing, especially for  purpose of international travel. 

15. We  reaffirm our commitment to multilateralism and continue to support  World Health Organization (WHO) to play the leading role in the global  health governance, while supporting other UN relevant agencies’  activities. The BRICS countries will strengthen technical multilateral  cooperation aimed at enhancing capacities in the fields of responding to  major public health emergencies, Universal Health Coverage (UHC),  vaccine research and development, prevention & therapeutic health  care and digital health systems. We agree to deepen existing cooperation  through establishing closer cooperation ties among BRICS health  institutions and exploring opportunities for joint collaborative  projects in the health sector. 

16. We welcome the convening of the BRICS High-Level Forum on Traditional Medicine.

17. We  stress that BRICS countries should be better prepared for COVID-19 and  future public health emergencies, and enhance exchanges and cooperation  on public health emergency alert, pandemic prevention preparedness and  response, and best practices in medical treatment. We welcome the  virtual launch of the BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Center and  commend the “Initiative on Strengthening Vaccine Cooperation and Jointly  Building a Defensive Line against Pandemic”. We welcome  the participation of other countries, especially EMDCs, in the Center to  upgrade capacity for controlling and preventing infectious diseases. We  support and emphasize the urgent need for the establishment of the  BRICS Integrated Early Warning System for preventing mass infectious  diseases risks in accordance with the International Health  Regulations (2005) and the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response  Network, and emphasize that BRICS countries should jointly take  proactive and effective measures to prevent and reduce the risk of  cross-border transmission of infectious diseases and contribute to  improving global health.

18. We support  continuing to hold the BRICS TB Research Network Meetings, which will  contribute to achieving the WHO goal of ending TB by 2030. We support  the early signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in  the Field of Regulation of Medical Products for Human Use among our drug  regulatory authorities and welcome the holding of a BRICS Seminar of  Officials and Experts in Population Development in the second half of  2022. 

19. We call on international  agencies and philanthropists to procure vaccines and boosters from  manufacturers in developing countries, including in Africa, to ensure  that the manufacturing capabilities being developed are retained. This  is critical to build health system resilience and preparedness for  emerging variants and any future health emergencies including  pandemics. In this context access to diagnostics and therapeutics is  essential to adopt quality and affordable medical countermeasures  and develop overall surveillance capabilities. 

Safeguarding Peace and Security

20. We  welcome the BRICS Joint Statement on “Strengthen BRICS Solidarity and  Cooperation, Respond to New Features and Challenges in International  Situation” adopted by our Foreign Ministers on 19 May 2022, and the 12th  Meeting of BRICS National Security Advisers and High Representatives on  National Security, held on 15 June 2022, and commend their fruitful  discussions on various strategic issues. 

21. We commit to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all  States, stress our commitment to the peaceful resolution of differences  and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation,  support all efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of crises.

22. We  have discussed the situation in Ukraine and recall our national  positions as expressed at the appropriate fora, namely the UNSC and  UNGA. We support talks between Russia and Ukraine. We have also  discussed our concerns over the humanitarian situation in and around  Ukraine and expressed our support to efforts of the UN  Secretary-General, UN Agencies and ICRC to provide humanitarian  assistance in accordance with the basic principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality established in UN General Assembly  resolution 46/182.

23. We strongly  support a peaceful, secure and stable Afghanistan while emphasizing the  respect for its sovereignty, independence, territorial  integrity, national unity and non-interference in its internal affairs.  We emphasize the need for all sides to encourage the  Afghanistan authorities to achieve national reconciliation through  dialogue and negotiation, and to establish a broad-based and inclusive  and representative political structure. We reaffirm the significance of  relevant UNSC resolutions. We emphasize that the Afghan territory not to  be used to threaten or attack any country or to shelter or train  terrorists, or to plan to finance terrorist acts, and reiterate the  importance of combating terrorism in Afghanistan. We call on the  Afghanistan authorities to work towards combating drug-related crime to  free Afghanistan from the scourge of drugs. We stress the need to  provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people and to  safeguard the fundamental rights of all Afghans, including women, children, and different ethnic groups. 

24. We  reiterate the need to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through  peaceful and diplomatic means in accordance with the international law,  and stress the importance of preserving the JCPOA and the UNSCR 2231 to  international non-proliferation as well as wider peace and stability and  hope for success of diplomatic efforts towards the resumption of  the JCPOA.

25. We express our support  for negotiations in bilateral and multilateral formats to resolve all  issues pertaining to the Korean Peninsula, including its complete  denuclearization, and maintaining peace and stability in Northeast Asia. We reaffirm the commitment to a comprehensive peaceful, diplomatic and  political solution to the situation.

26. We  reaffirm our commitment to a peaceful and prosperous Middle East and  North Africa. We stress the importance of addressing development and  security challenges in the region. We call on the international  community to support efforts aimed at the stability and peace in the region.

27. We commend efforts of  African countries, the African Union and sub-regional organizations to  address regional challenges, including maintaining peace and security,  post conflict reconstruction as well as development efforts, and call  for continued support by the international community to them. We  emphasize the collaboration of AU and UN in accordance with the UN Charter.

28. We call for continued efforts to strengthen the system of arms control, disarmament and  non-proliferation treaties and agreements and to preserve its integrity  for maintaining global stability and international peace and security,  and stressed further the need to maintain the effectiveness and  efficiency as well as the consensus-based nature of the relevant  multilateral instruments in the field of disarmament, non-proliferation  and arms control.

29. We call for  strengthening the system of arms control, disarmament and  non-proliferation, including the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological)  and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BTWC) and the Convention on  the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of  Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction (CWC), and for preserving  their integrity and effectiveness to maintain global stability and  international peace and security. We underline the need to comply with  and strengthen the BTWC, including by adopting a legally binding  Protocol to the Convention that provides for, inter alia, an efficient  verification mechanism. We reassert our support for ensuring the  long-term sustainability of outer space activities and prevention of an  arms race in outer space (PAROS) and of its weaponization, including  through negotiations to adopt a relevant legally binding multilateral  instrument. We recognize the value of the updated Draft Treaty on the  Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use  of Force against Outer Space Objects (PPWT) submitted to the Conference  on Disarmament in 2014. We stress that practical Transparency and  Confidence-Building Measures (TCBMs), may also contribute to PAROS.

30. We  reaffirm our commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons and stress  our strong commitment to nuclear disarmament and our support to the work  on this subject during the session of 2022 of the Conference on  Disarmament. We note the Joint Statement of the Leaders of the People’s  Republic of China, the French Republic, the Russian Federation, the  United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United  States on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races on 3 January  2022, in particular the affirmation that a nuclear war cannot be won and  must never be fought.

31. We reaffirm  our commitment to the promotion of an open, secure, stable, accessible  and peaceful ICT-environment, underscored the importance of enhancing  common understandings and intensifying cooperation in the use of ICTs  and Internet. We support the leading role of the United Nations in  promoting constructive dialogue on ensuring ICT-security, including  within the UN Open-Ended Working Group on security of and in the use of  ICTs 2021-2025, and developing a universal legal framework in this  realm. We call for a comprehensive, balanced, objective approach to the  development and security of ICT products and systems. We underscore the  importance of establishing legal frameworks of cooperation among BRICS  countries on ensuring security in the use of ICTs. We also acknowledge  the need to advance practical intra-BRICS cooperation through  implementation of the BRICS Roadmap of Practical Cooperation on ensuring  security in the use of ICTs and the activities of the BRICS Working  Group on security in the use of ICTs.

32. We,  while emphasizing the formidable potential of the ICTs for growth and  development, recognize new associated possibilities they bring for  criminal activities and threats, and expressed concern over the rising  level and complexity of criminal misuse of ICTs. We welcome the ongoing  work in the UN Open-Ended Ad Hoc Committee of Experts to elaborate a  comprehensive international convention on countering the use of ICTs for  criminal purposes and reaffirm our commitment to cooperating in the  implementation of the mandate adopted by the UN General Assembly resolution 75/282.

33. We express strong  condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations whenever,  wherever and by whomsoever committed. We recognize the threat emanating  from terrorism, extremism conducive to terrorism and radicalization. We  are committed to combating terrorism in all its forms and  manifestations, including the cross-border movement of terrorists, and  terrorism financing networks and safe havens. We reiterate that  terrorism should not be associated with any religion, nationality,  civilization or ethnic group. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to  contribute further to the global efforts of preventing and countering  the threat of terrorism on the basis of respect for international law,  in particular the Charter of the United Nations, and human rights,  emphasizing that States have the primary responsibility in combating  terrorism with the United Nations continuing to play central and  coordinating role in this area. We also stress the need for a  comprehensive and balanced approach of the whole international community  to effectively curb the terrorist activities, which pose a serious  threat, including in the present-day pandemic environment. We reject  double standards in countering terrorism and extremism conducive to  terrorism. We call for an expeditious finalization and adoption of the  Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism within the UN  framework and for launching multilateral negotiations on an  international convention for the suppression of acts of chemical and  biological terrorism, at the Conference of Disarmament. We welcome the  outcomes of the Seventh BRICS Counter-Terrorism Working Group Plenary  Meeting and its five Subgroup Meetings. We commend the Chair for hosting  the Seminar on Targeted Financial Sanctions Related to Terrorism and  Terrorist Financing, and look forward to organization of the Seminar on  Strengthening Counter-Terrorism Capacity Building in Developing  Countries, and the BRICS Police Training Program. We also look forward  to further deepening counter-terrorism cooperation.

34. We  look forward to further deepening counter-terrorism cooperation and  reaffirm the sole authority of the UN Security Council for imposing  sanctions and call for further consolidation and strengthening of the  working methods of UN Security Council Sanctions Committees to ensure  their effectiveness, responsiveness and transparency, while avoiding  politicization of any of their proceedings including listing proposals  objectively on evidence-based criteria.

35. We  reaffirm our commitment to strengthening international cooperation  against corruption. While respecting the legal systems of our respective  countries, we are committed to strengthening experience sharing and  practical cooperation on issues related to anti-corruption law  enforcement, including on pursuit of economic and corruption offenders,  on mutual legal assistance in civil and administrative matters, and on  asset recovery. We welcome the BRICS Initiative on Denial of Safe Haven  to Corruption. We will further strengthen anti-corruption capacity  building through education and training programs and enhance  anti-corruption exchanges and cooperation within multilateral  frameworks. We welcome the first BRICS Anti-corruption Ministerial  Meeting. 

36. We are concerned about the  serious drug situation in the world and reiterate our commitment to the  existing international drug control mechanism underpinned by the three  United Nations Drug Control Conventions and the various political  commitments. We appreciate BRICS Anti-Drug Working Group’s active role  in combating transnational drug trafficking and promoting global drug  governance and will further strengthen drug control cooperation.

Promoting Economic Recovery

37. We  recognize the important role of BRICS countries working together to  deal with risks and challenges to the world economy in achieving global  recovery and sustainable development. We reaffirm our commitment to  continuing to enhance macro-economic policy coordination, deepen  economic practical cooperation, and work to realize strong, sustainable,  balanced and inclusive post-COVID economic recovery. We emphasize the  importance of continued implementation of the Strategy for BRICS  Economic Partnership 2025 in all relevant ministerial tracks and working  groups.

38. We recognize the dynamism  of the digital economy in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 and enabling  global economic recovery. We also recognize the positive role that  trade and investment can play in promoting sustainable development,  national and regional industrialization, the transition towards  sustainable consumption and production patterns. We take note of China’s  hosting the “Buy BRICS” online promotion event and endorse the BRICS  Digital Economy Partnership Framework, BRICS Initiative on Trade and  Investment for Sustainable Development and BRICS Initiative on Enhancing  Cooperation on Supply Chains. We recognize the challenges facing trade  and investment development in the digital era and acknowledge that BRICS  members are at different levels of digital development, and thus  recognize the need to address respective challenges including the  digital divide. We welcome the establishment of the Digital Economy  Working Group by upgrading the E-commerce Working Group. We also agree  to promote consumer protection in e-commerce by advancing the  implementation of BRICS Framework for Consumer Protection in  E-commerce. We reaffirm that openness, efficiency, stability,  transparency, reliability and resilience of the global, regional and  national production and supply chains are crucial in combating the  COVID-19 pandemic, tackling economic recovery challenges and boosting  international trade and investment. We encourage cooperation among BRICS  countries to enhance the interconnectivity of supply chains and promote  trade and investment flows. We agree to strengthen exchanges and  cooperation in trade in services and engagement of BRICS national focal  points, as established in the BRICS Framework for Cooperation on Trade  in Services, with the BRICS Business Council with the aim to promote  implementation of BRICS Trade in Services Cooperation Roadmap and  relevant documents including the BRICS Framework for cooperation in  Trade in Professional Services. We take note of the proposal of the  Chair to establish the BRICS Trade in Services Network (BTSN) and will  continue discussions. 

39. We  congratulate New Development Bank (NDB) on its relocation to its  permanent headquarters building in Shanghai as well as the opening of  NDB’s regional office in India. We welcome the decisions on admission of  four new members to the NDB and look forward to further membership  expansion in a gradual and balanced manner in terms of geographic  representation and comprising of both developed and developing  countries, to enhance the NDB’s international influence as well as the  representation and voice of EMDCs in global governance. We support the  NDB’s goals of attaining the highest possible credit rating and  institutional development. We appreciate the vital role of the NDB in  addressing the impact of the pandemic and assisting in the economic  recovery in member countries. We note the second General Strategy  approved by the Board of Governors at its annual meeting and look  forward to its smooth implementation. We encourage the Bank to follow  the member-led and demand-driven principle, mobilize financing from  diversified sources, enhance innovation and knowledge exchange, assist  member countries in achieving sustainable development goals and further  improve efficiency and effectiveness to fulfill its mandate, aiming to  be a premier multilateral development institution.

40. We  welcome the decision to establish the BRICS Think Tank Network for  Finance. We expect it to work independently and provide intellectual  support, as and when tasked, for knowledge sharing, exchange of  experiences and practices and cooperation on finance issues amongst  BRICS countries, aiming at addressing global challenges and serving the  interests of the EMDCs.

41. We recognize  the key role that infrastructure investment can play in facilitating  sustainable development. We reaffirm our understanding that PPPs are an  effective approach to leveraging the private sector to address  infrastructure gaps, and scaling up infrastructure assets. We endorse  the Technical Report on Public Private Partnerships for Sustainable  Development. We welcome the exchange and sharing of good practices and  experiences, and encourage further cooperation on infrastructure  investment and PPPs. We look forward to resuming technical  engagements with the NDB and the BRICS Task Force on PPP and  Infrastructure on the Integrated Digital Platform on infrastructure  investment projects and call for intensification of work in this area.

42. We  acknowledge the importance of strengthening the Contingent Reserve  Arrangement (CRA) mechanism, which contributes to strengthening the  global financial safety net and complements existing international  monetary and financial arrangements. We support the amendments to the  CRA Treaty, and welcome the progress in amending other relevant CRA  documents. We look forward to the finalization of the amendments which  would enhance the flexibility and responsiveness of the CRA mechanism.  We look forward to the successful completion of the fifth CRA test run  later in 2022. We support the work to improve the framework for  coordination between the CRA and the IMF. We welcome the progress in  developing the BRICS Economic Bulletin 2022 as part of our streamlined  CRA research program.

43. We underscore  the importance of continued work under the existing work streams,  including information security in the financial sector, and the BRICS  Payments Task Force (BPTF) as a platform for exchanging experience and  knowledge, and welcome the central banks’ further cooperation on the  payments track. 

44. We commit to  strengthening intra-BRICS cooperation to intensify the BRICS Partnership  on New Industrial Revolution (PartNIR) and collectively create new  opportunities for development. We encourage intra-BRICS cooperation in  human resource development through BRICS Centre for Industrial  Competences, BRICS PartNIR Innovation Centre (BPIC), BRICS Start-up  Events and collaboration with other relevant BRICS mechanisms, to carry  out training programmes to address challenges of NIR for inclusive and  sustainable industrialization. We support the BRICS PartNIR projects to  explore cooperation mechanisms with New Development Bank (NDB) and other  financial institutions based on market-driven principles. We recognize  the importance of BRICS Startup Events including BRICS Innovation  Launchpad and BRICS Startup Forum Meeting, aimed to promote networking,  interaction, mentorship among Startups in BRICS countries. We welcome  the events hosted by the BPIC including the 4th BRICS Forum on PartNIR,  the BRICS Industrial Innovation Contest 2022, and the BPIC training  programme, which are aimed at translating the vision of PartNIR into  real actions and benefits for all BRICS members. We welcome the BRICS  Forum on Development of Industrial Internet and Digital Manufacturing,  during which representatives from BRICS governments, industry and  academia participated and discussed the development of digital  manufacturing. We also welcome the release of the BRICS Initiative for  Cooperation on Digitalization of Manufacturing.

45. We  acknowledge the progress of BRICS cooperation on STI, including  outcomes of BRICS STI Steering Committee, inter alia, on advancement of  flagship projects initiative aiming to find effective STI solutions to  global challenges. We encourage further work on proposals regarding the  polycentric BRICS Technology Transfer Center Network, iBRICS Network,  joint research projects including flagship projects, BRICS Young  Scientist Forum and Young Innovation Prize.

46. We  commend the progress of cooperation in the field of ICTs, including the  adoption of the terms of reference of the Digital BRICS Task Force  (DBTF) and the decision to hold the Digital BRICS Forum in 2022. We  encourage the BRICS Institute of Future Networks and the DBTF to make  suitable working plans at an early date, and carry out cooperation on  R&D and application of new and emerging technologies. We look  forward to a fruitful and productive meeting of BRICS Communication  Ministers in July 2022. We support the coordination and interaction  among the Digital Economy Working Group and the Working Group on ICT  Cooperation, as well as the workstreams established within this track,  namely the DBTF and the BIFN as practicable to avoid any duplication for  advancing the BRICS digital economy in accordance with respective  advantages, and within respective domestic legal frameworks.

47. We  commend our Customs authorities for the Agreement Between the  Governments of BRICS Countries on Cooperation and Mutual Administrative  Assistance in Customs Matters, and the progress made in areas of mutual  administrative assistance, capacity building and law enforcement  cooperation. We recognize the importance of BRICS customs enforcement  cooperation and will work together to further strengthen it. We support  our Customs authorities in holding the BRICS Workshop on Customs  Strategy and Capacity Building and the BRICS Workshop on Customs  Enforcement Cooperation, for smart cooperation and smart practice  sharing, as also for promoting partnership in customs under the theme of  “Smart Cooperation for a High-quality Partnership among BRICS Customs”.

48. We  emphasize the fundamental role of energy security in achieving  sustainable development goals. While recognizing that the energy  transition of each country is unique according to national  circumstances, we underscore the prime importance of securing universal  access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy in line  with Sustainable Development Goal 7. We welcome the BRICS Energy Report  2022, support joint research and technical cooperation within the BRICS  Energy Research Cooperation Platform, and commend the holding of the  BRICS Youth Energy Summit and other related activities.

49. We  encourage the BRICS Interbank Cooperation Mechanism to continue playing  an important role in supporting BRICS economic and trade cooperation,  and appreciate the renewal of the Memorandum of Understanding between  the Member Development Banks of BRICS Interbank Cooperation Mechanism  and the New Development Bank. We welcome the seventh edition of the  BRICS Economic Research Award to encourage and stimulate advanced  doctoral research by nationals of the BRICS countries on topics of  relevance to the BRICS nations.

50. We reiterate the commitments to promote employment for sustainable  development, including to develop skills to ensure resilient recovery,  gender-responsive employment and social protection policies including  workers’ rights. We welcome research by the BRICS Network of Labour  Research Institutes on employment and income support in the context of  COVID-19 crisis outlining impact of the pandemic, response measures and  post-COVID-19 changes.

51. We recognize  the crucial role that MSMEs play in the BRICS economies and reaffirm the  importance of their participation in production networks and value  chains. We agree to continue to deepen cooperation on competition  amongst BRICS countries and create a fair competition market environment  for international economic and trade cooperation. We agree to enhance  exchanges and cooperation in the field of standardization and make full  use of standards to advance sustainable development. We commit to  strengthen cooperation and coordination in areas of tax information  exchange, capacity building and innovation in tax administration, and  create a signature knowledge product called ‘the Best Tax Practices from  BRICS’ to serve as reference for other developing countries. We support  deepening IPR cooperation and promoting exchanges and mutual learning  on IPR protection system, and look forward to more practical outcomes in  such fields as patent, trademark, and industrial design. We support  enhancing BRICS statistical cooperation and continuing to release the  BRICS Joint Statistical Publication 2022.

Expediting Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

52. We  note with concern that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted efforts to  achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and reversed years  of progress on poverty, hunger, health care, education, climate change,  access to clean water, and environmental protection. We reaffirm our  commitment to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in all its three  dimensions – economic, social and environmental – in a balanced and  integrated manner. We stress that the international community should  attach more importance to development, revitalize global development  partnerships and push for realization of all sustainable development  goals by pooling the necessary resources to instill fresh momentum into  implementing the 2030 Agenda. We urge donor countries to honour their  Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments and to facilitate  capacity building and the transfer of technology along with additional  development resources to developing countries, in line with the national  policy objectives of recipients. We stress the importance of dialogue  between the relevant development agencies from the BRICS countries.

53. We  commemorate the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Framework  Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and call on all parties to adhere  to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and  respective capabilities, in the light of different national  circumstances and in accordance with the institutional arrangement of  nationally determined contributions, and to implement the UNFCCC and its  Paris Agreement in an accurate, balanced and comprehensive way, based  on existing consensus. We recall relevant provisions of the Paris  Agreement, emphasizing that the Paris Agreement aims to strengthen  global response to the threat of climate change in the context of  sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, and that  peaking of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions will take longer for  developing countries. We underline that the developed countries have  historical responsibilities for global climate change, and should take  the lead in scaling up mitigation actions and scale up indispensable  support to developing countries on finance, technology and  capacity-building. We express our support to the incoming Egyptian  Presidency of COP27, working towards the success of COP27, and promote  COP27 to prioritize implementation and highlight the reinforcement of  adaptation and delivery and enhancement of developed countries’  commitments to provide financial support and technology transfer to  developing countries.

54. We oppose  green trade barriers and reiterate our commitment to enhancing  coordination on these issues. We underline that all measures taken to  tackle climate change and bio-diversity loss must be designed, adopted  and implemented in full conformity with the WTO agreements and must not  constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a  disguised restriction on international trade and must not create  unnecessary obstacles to international trade. We express our concern at  any discriminatory measure that will distort international trade, risk  new trade frictions and shift burden of addressing climate change to  other trading partners, developing countries and BRICS members. 

55. We  acknowledge the positive outcomes of the first phase of the 15th  Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological  Diversity (COP15) and its Kunming Declaration. We welcome and support  China’s hosting of the second phase of COP15 and call on all parties to  jointly adopt an ambitious, balanced and practical Post-2020 Global  Biodiversity Framework.

56. As BRICS  countries produce around 1/3 of the world’s food, we stress our  commitment to furthering agricultural cooperation and driving  sustainable agricultural and rural development of BRICS countries aimed  at safeguarding food security of BRICS countries and the world. We  emphasize the strategic importance of agriculture inputs, including,  inter alia, fertilizers, on ensuring global food security. We reiterate  the importance of implementing the Action Plan 2021-2024 for  Agricultural Cooperation of BRICS Countries, and welcome the Strategy on  Food Security Cooperation of the BRICS Countries.

57. We  take note that the breakthroughs in the applications of digital  technologies, such as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) may play  an important role towards sustainable development. We take note of the  BRICS Forum on Big Data for Sustainable Development. We support  information exchanges and technical cooperation on AI technology. We  recall the declaration of the 7th BRICS Communications Ministers meeting  recognizing the rapid developments and huge potential of Artificial  Intelligence technologies and its value to economic growth. We  acknowledge the need to cooperate with each other to build trust,  confidence and security, as well as transparency and accountability in  promoting trustworthy AI to maximize its potential for the benefit of  society and humanity as whole with specific emphasis on marginalized and  vulnerable groups of population. We express our concerns on the risk,  and ethical dilemma related to Artificial Intelligence, such as privacy,  manipulation, bias, human-robot interaction, employment, effects and  singularity among others. We encourage BRICS members to work together to  deal with such concerns, sharing best practices, conduct comparative  study on the subject toward developing a common governance approach  which would guide BRICS members on Ethical and responsible use of  Artificial Intelligence while facilitating the development of AI. 

58. We  welcome the establishment of the BRICS Joint Committee on Space  Cooperation in line with the Agreement on Cooperation on BRICS Remote  Sensing Satellite Constellation and the convening of the first joint  committee meeting. We are satisfied with the formulation of working  procedures for data exchange and joint observation of the BRICS Remote  Sensing Satellite Constellation and appreciate the commissioning of data  sharing and exchange of the constellation. We encourage BRICS space  authorities to continue to effectively utilize the capacity of the  Constellation, and to widely promote application with data of the  Constellation, aimed at facilitating the sustainable development of  BRICS countries.

59. We commend the  proposal to organize the BRICS High-level Forum on Sustainable  Development. Taking it as an opportunity, we look forward to deepening  cooperation on, inter alia, the fight against COVID-19, digital  transformation, resilience and stability of industrial and supply  chains and low-carbon development.

60. We  reiterate the importance of exchanges and dialogues among BRICS  disaster management authorities. We encourage cooperation in key areas  including comprehensive disaster reduction capacity, disaster resilient  infrastructure and emergency rescue and response, with a view to  improving the global and regional disaster management response.

61. We  express our support to the African Union Agenda 2063 and to Africa´s  efforts towards integration through the development of the African  Continental Free Trade Area and other means. We stress the importance of  issues including industrialization, infrastructure development, food  security, health-care, and tackling climate change for the sustainable  development of Africa. We support Africa in attaining economic recovery  and sustainable development in the post pandemic era.

Deepening People-to-People Exchanges

62. We  reaffirm the importance of BRICS people-to-people exchanges in  enhancing mutual understanding, friendship and cooperation amongst our  nations and people. We appreciate the progress made under China’s  Chairship in 2022, including in the fields of governance, culture,  education, sports, arts, films, media, youth and academic exchanges, and  look forward to further exchanges and cooperation in these areas. 

63. We  appreciate the signing of the Action Plan for the Implementation of the  Agreement between the Governments of the BRICS States on cooperation in  the Field of Culture (2022-2026), encourage the BRICS countries to  promote the development of digitalization in the field of culture,  continue to deepen cooperation in the fields of, inter alia, arts and  culture, cultural heritage, cultural industry and cultural alliances  under the framework of the action plan, and establish a cultural  partnership featuring inclusiveness and mutual learning. 

64. We  acknowledge the urgent need for tourism industry recovery and the  importance of increasing mutual tourist flows and will work towards  further strengthening the BRICS Alliance for Green Tourism to promote  measures, which can shape a more resilient, sustainable and inclusive tourism sector. 

65. We appreciate the  progress on education and Technical and Vocational Education and  Training (TVET) cooperation, especially the establishment of the BRICS  TVET Cooperation Alliance which focuses on strengthening communication  and dialogue in TVET, promoting substantial cooperation in TVET,  integrating TVET with industry, enhancing research collaboration and  supporting recognition of TVET standards. Also, the launch of the BRICS  Skills Competition will strengthen exchanges and cooperation among the  nations. We support the digital transformation in education and  TVET space, and commit to ensure education accessibility and equity, and  promote the development of quality education. We reiterate the  importance of digitalization in education and development of a  sustainable education by strengthening the cooperation within BRICS  Network University and BRICS University League.

66. We  commend the successful holding of the BRICS Business Forum and  welcome the Beijing Initiative of BRICS Business community. We encourage  the BRICS Business Council to strengthen cooperation, including in the  fields of agri-business, aviation, deregulation, digital economy, energy  and green economy, financial services, infrastructure, manufacturing,  and skills development. We appreciate contributions and activities of  the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance (WBA) to deepening BRICS economic  and trade cooperation. We welcome the holding of the second BRICS  Women’s Innovation Contest by the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance  towards empowering women’s innovation and entrepreneurship. 

67. We commend the progress in sports exchanges and the role it plays in the  development of our athletes in a fair, inclusive and non-discriminatory  fashion. We look forward to the successful holding of BRICS Sports  Ministers Meeting in 2022.

68. We  appreciate the holding of the fora pertaining to political parties,  think tanks, and civil society organizations. We also acknowledge the  proposal for institutionalization of the BRICS Civil Society  Organizations Forum.

69. We support the  convening of the fifth BRICS Media Forum and the continuation of the  BRICS International Journalism Training Program within the framework of the Forum.

70. We look forward to the  BRICS Youth Summit, support youth development as a priority and  encourage strengthened exchanges among BRICS youth. We welcome the BRICS  Film Festival in Shanghai and look forward to enhancing exchanges and  cooperation in the field of film. We commend the progress made by BRICS  countries in promoting urban development, and appreciate the  contribution of mechanisms including BRICS Urbanization Forum, BRICS  Friendship Cities and Local Governments Cooperation Forum and BRICS  International Municipal Forum to facilitating the building of more  friendship city relations among BRICS countries and promoting the  implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Institutional Development

71. We  note with satisfaction the progress made in BRICS institutional  development and stress that BRICS cooperation needs to embrace changes  and keep abreast with the times. We shall continue to set clear  priorities in our wide-ranging cooperation, on the basis of consensus,  and make our strategic partnership more efficient, practical  and results-oriented. 

72. We emphasize  the BRICS efforts of extending its cooperation to other EMDCs and  support further promoting the BRICS Outreach and BRICS Plus  Cooperation in line with the updated Terms of Reference adopted by the  BRICS Sherpas in 2021 through inclusive and equal-footed and flexible  practices and initiatives. We commend China’s Chairship for hosting the  Dialogue session under the theme ‘Increased Role of Emerging Markets and  Developing Countries in Global Governance’ during the Meeting of BRICS  Ministers of Foreign Affairs/International Relations on 19 May 2022. 

73. We support promoting discussions among BRICS members on BRICS expansion  process. We stress the need to clarify the guiding principles,  standards, criteria and procedures for this expansion process through  Sherpas’ channel on the basis of full consultation and consensus.

74. South Africa, Brazil, Russia and India commend China’s BRICS Chairship in  2022 and express their gratitude to the government and people of China  for holding the XIV BRICS Summit.

75. Brazil, Russia, India and China extend full support to South Africa for its  BRICS Chairship in 2023 and the holding of the XV BRICS Summit.

(Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China)

Chinese ambassador hits out at Morrison’s ‘nonsense’ COVID inquiry

China listed 14 graviences. All committed by Australia. And now we have the  Wuhan “smear campaign” by Morrison. Yeah. Sure, it’s only 1 of the 14 greviances, but the media continued to use their selective wording to continue to smear China.

Article HERE

Creamy Chicken Soup (THE BEST Chicken Soup Recipe)

WOW! I’m going to try this tomorrow! Wow, oh wow oh wow!

South Korea exposed the US military laboratory secretly made “biochemical weapons”? What do you intend to be so close to China?

The zombie movie “Travel to Busan” was shown in the world a few years ago. In the film, the virus leaked by the Busan Biopharmaceutical Company in South Korea triggered a terrible zombie crisis. Now, with the exposure of the biochemical laboratory hidden by the United States in South Korea, Koreans have begun to chant that “Travel to Busan” is not a fiction, but a preview of reality.

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Travel to Busan

Recently, the United States has repeatedly sent biological warfare reagents to the Korean peninsula through the US military stationed in South Korea. After the incident was exposed, South Korean people and media investigations discovered that the US military had secretly established four biochemical laboratories in South Korea, one of which was in Busan. The sinister behavior of the United States has triggered many demonstrations by South Koreans.

So, what secret weapon is the U.S. Biochemical Warfare Laboratory making? Is it related to the coronavirus pandemic that WHO is tracing? What does the US military intend to build the laboratory on the doorstep of China?

Today, Xiaota will talk to everyone about the conspiracy of the United States in overseas biochemical laboratories.

As early as last year, South Korea’s “Tong Shimbun” published an article that broke the news: “The U.S. Army in South Korea has set up Bacillus anthracis biological laboratories at four bases in Yongsan, Busan, Gunsan and Pyeongtaek.” Bacillus anthracis is a species that can pass through the skin and mucous membranes. The bacteria spread by the respiratory tract and the digestive tract, German and Japanese fascists, have tried to make it into biochemical weapons, but now, the U.S. military, which has inherited the Japanese biochemical warfare technology and experience, has vigorously developed this extermination weapon, even It has been made “more terrible than coronavirus”. This virus can not only kill people and animals, but can even survive and reproduce in the soil. As long as it is contaminated with Bacillus anthracis, the soil must be completely removed, otherwise it will always be a forbidden zone for life.

The U.S. military has built extremely dangerous laboratories overseas, obviously not willing to allow its own country to bear unexpected risks. The United States’ wishful thinking is brilliant. Judging from the information that has been released so far, from 2009 to 2014, the US military conducted at least 15 anthrax experiments in South Korea, and there have indeed been at least one virus leak.

It happened in May 2015. The bacillus anthracis was accidentally leaked at the U.S. Air Force Base in Osan, South Korea. 5 U.S. Air Force personnel, 10 U.S. Army personnel, 3 U.S. military members, and 4 Koreans who may be exposed to the virus He was treated in isolation, and his later situation is unknown.

It was this leak that exposed the news of the US military at the Korean Biochemical Laboratory, which caused a violent shock in Korean society. Countless South Korean citizens took to the streets to launch protest marches, demanding a reply from the US, and disclosure of laboratory information, and the laboratory was immediately cancelled. Many South Korean civil organizations gathered to call for a comprehensive revision of the “Status of Forces Agreement in South Korea” to limit the privileges of US troops in South Korea. There are also calls for the South Korean government to conduct independent investigations to find out the truth of the incident.

What the Americans say is better than what they sing. The United States says that “the American system is very safe”, but I’m sorry, the system cannot be built in the United States. The United States engages in biochemical experiments, but does not aim at biochemical experiments. The U.S. states that it will alert in time when it finds danger, but what is the use of such alert? It may be for the United States to block South Korea in time and prevent the virus from spreading to the United States. The United States says that the purpose of developing chemical weapons is to defend against biological and chemical threats, but the biggest threat in the world is the United States. The United States should still find a way to defend itself.

Even more frightening is that in the surrounding area of ​​the US military laboratory, there have been outbreaks of uncommon local diseases many times. According to a 2019 report by the U.S. Audit Office, in the past 10 years, there have been 400 accidents in U.S. biosafety tertiary laboratories. Although the victims of these accidents are mainly confined to the staff in contact, the number of accidents Leakage, the harm will be to all mankind.

Article HERE

Dog’s Reaction After Seeing The Owner Who’s Abandoned Her Years Later

So many people are without compassion and humanity. The owner couldn’t even pet her when she was jumping in happiness seeing him. How humans could be so calloused and cruel like this?  It’s so painful seeing animals waiting for their owners who abandoned them yet still wagging their tails upon seeing them. These people don’t deserve these kind of pure love from these animals. It’s so sad.

My heart broke when I saw her jumping around her owner’s legs and he completely ignored her. It broke my heart and she walked back to that abandoned old house and looked over her shoulder to see if he was following her and I cried when I saw her hiding in the dry grass looking so frightened and lonely. How could anyone do that to such a sweet loving animal as her. Extremely heartbreaking….but so glad she was adopted.

Hope she has a wonderful life now.

A name?

When Jason Sadler’s mom told him his stepfather was filing for divorce, Sadler responded to the news with a joke. Sadler told his mom he’d just have to sell off his last name to avoid being stuck with the family name of a third divorced dad.

That joke became reality half a year later when Jason Sadler created a website called buymylastname.com. Sadler offered to change his last name to an advertising billboard for any company willing to pay for the privilege. What would happen if Nike wanted to change Jason’s name to Jason JustDoIt? Jason would just do it indeed, as long as the dubbing was for the highest price offered.

Within 24 hours of the auction opening, his name’s selling price skyrocketed to thirty thousand dollars. Forty days later, Jason was paid forty-five thousand dollars to legally become Jason Headsetsdotcom.

While “Mr. Headsetsdotcom” may be a memorable title, Jason decided he would not settle on that last name either. Headsetsdotcom did not go back to calling himself Jason Sadler. Instead, he auctioned off his last name again, and for fifty-thousand dollars Jason was now Jason Sufrapp.

What is in a name? Almost one hundred thousand dollars, apparently.

The United States- the Pacific bully

Jun 24, 2022

The US dominates the Pacific Islands to an extent China can never hope to achieve. With Australia’s support, the US is now engaged in an arms build-up in its Pacific territories and de-facto colonies in a little known boost to its containment of China.

The US has three self-governing territories in the Pacific: Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. Guam hosts some of the US’s most important bases the world. After a large scale military expansion on one of the main islands in the Northern Marianas, Tinian is expected to rival Guam in importance in coming years.

The US also has Compacts of Free Association with three countries covering thousands of islands in the Pacific – the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands. The compacts are a de-facto form of colonialism which gives the US exclusive military access to these countries’ land and maritime surrounds in return for defence guarantees and financial assistance.

The Federated States of Micronesia has a population of around 100,000. It has a land area of 702  square km on 607 islands amid 2,600,000 square km of ocean. The US will build a new base there. The residents are concerned about the impact of the base as their islands are often tiny and the landscape important to their identity. The US is also establishing a new military base on Palau, which has 340 islands and a total population of just over 18,000. The Marshall Islands landmass is 181 square km amid 466,000 square km of ocean. Although the Kwajalein atoll is only 15 square km, it is exclusively a military base with an extraordinary array of US activities; including a key role in US testing interceptors aimed ballistic missiles.

The Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi recently visited seven South Pacific countries and signed various agreements in some, including the provision of infrastructure and police training , but he failed to get support for a 10-country trade agreement. He did not seek permission to build a navy base in the Solomon Island or anywhere else. Nevertheless, some saw the visit as an act of Chinese aggression. It is an odd view of aggression compared to the damage done by US, British and French testing of thermonuclear (also called hydrogen) bombs on Pacific islands, or when Australia helped invade Iraq.

The US conducted 105 nuclear tests in the Pacific, mainly in the Marshall islands, between 1946 and 1962, as part oftits program to develop thermonuclear bombs. Operational weapons were sometimes tested, including a submarine-launched war head. One test in 1952 completely vaporised the island of Eluglab. In 1954, a thermonuclear bomb tested on Bikini atoll exploded with force of 15 megatons – over 1,000 times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The radioactive cloud engulfed a Japanese fishing boat about 80 miles away in a white powder that poisoned the crew. One died from the exposure seven months later and 15 more in following years.

The radioactivity affected the drinking water and food. Children played in the ash-like powder. Some ate it. Marshall Islanders over a wide area were subject to abnormal radiological doses. In 2005, the US National Cancer Institute reported that the risk of contracting cancer for those exposed to the fallout was over one in three.

Nevertheless, in 1946, a US Navy Commodore had asked 167 people living on Bikini atoll to re-locate so their home could be used use “for the good of mankind”. They were resettled in 1969, but had to be evacuated again after high radiation levels were detected.

There has been some increase in the pathetically low initial compensation. But it is hard to compensate for the environmental damage and loss of cultural heritage, traditional customs and skills. In 2014, the Marshall Islands attempted to sue the US and eight other nuclear armed nations, for failing to move towards nuclear disarmament as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. A US Court dismissed the suit in 2017.

Britain tested 40 thermonuclear bombs on an islands in the Kiribati group between 1957 and 1962. Troops from Britain , Fiji (then a British colony), and New Zealand worked on the tests. Many were harmed by radiation and other causes. As usual, the locals were treated badly and their water and lands polluted.

France conducted 41 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1966 and 1974 in French Polynesia. It then conducted 140 underground, primarily of thermonuclear bombs, until 1996. One of the islands used was subject to cracking. In an act of state terrorism, French secret service frogman killed a photographer when they bombed a Green Peace protest ship in Auckland harbour on its way to the French nuclear testing area.

Labor’s defence minister, Richard Marles now refers to France as a Pacific county, despite the fact that it is a European country with a tenuous justification for holding onto its colonial possessions in the Pacific – New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Labor used to oppose colonialism. Now it seems it’s good if the colonial power opposes China.

The South Pacific Forum comprises 18 members: Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Not all are normally considered to be in the South Pacific. The inclusion of three countries with Compacts of Free Association with the US and two French possessions basically guarantees they will vote for what the US or France wants.

However, the legacy of the contemptuous disregard for the indigenous residents during massive hydrogen bomb tests ensures that  nuclear issues, including the passage of nuclear submarines, remain sensitive.

At the time of the negotiation of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty in 1985 Paul Malone wrote that it was for a “partial nuclear free zone”, as it did not prohibit the “passage of nuclear-armed ships or aircraft through the region”. Malone reported that some Pacific Island countries wanted to be Treaty to prohibit access to nuclear-armed warships. The then Prime Minister Bob Hawke insisted on that omission which reflected the wishes of the US. However, nuclear issues have been revived by the creation of the 2021AUKUS pact in which Australia is committed to buying nuclear powered submarines.

A journalist and researcher based in the Pacific, Nic Maclellan says, “Any hope that Australia’s island neighbours will welcome further nuclearisation of the region is folly. Within days of the UKUS announcement, statements from Pacific leaders, community elders and media organisations highlighted the persistence of the deep antinuclear sentiment.

The general secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, Reverend James Bhagwa tweeted

“Shame Australia, Shame.” The Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare told the UN General Assembly his nation “would like to keep our region nuclear-free . . . We do not support any form of militarisation in our region that could threaten regional and international peace and stability.”

The Kiribati President Taneti Maamau told the ABC, “Our people are victims of nuclear testing. We still have trauma. With anything to do with nuclear, we thought it would be a courtesy to discuss it with your neighbours”. He said he was especially concerned about Australia developing nuclear powered submarines which he said “puts the region at risk”

Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama tweeted that his father was among the Fijian soldiers the British sent to help with their nuclear bomb tests. He said, “To honour the sacrifice of all those who have suffered due to these weapons, Fiji will never stop working towards a global nuclear ban.”

The New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern repeated that nuclear submarines “can’t come into our internal waters”. New Zealand and nine South Pacific Forum countries have ratified the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Australia hasn’t. The Samoa Observer wrote, “It is a relief seeing Prime Minister Ardern continuing to maintain the tradition of her predecessors by promoting a nuclear-free Pacific; probably she is the only true friend of the Pacific Islands.”

Contemporary Art Paintings By Stanislav Plutenko

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The artist Stanislav Plutenko plays on colour contrasts, his painting is very vigorous, illustrative and imbued through by sarcasm on the reality.

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In spite of the fact that the characters of his pictures are fattened and absolutely earthly ones, they are always astir – running, fluttering and flying somewhere. Having awkward bodies and unprepossessing faces they feel themselves angels and we are sympathetic towards them with their naivete.

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With an identical acuteness he presents images of the people and visual psychological surroundings. In each genre stage with elements of grotesque style we can find the small history of life with symbolical underlying theme. His pictures stimulate in the spectators the scale of feelings, down to the protest, but not the indifference.

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“Save My Baby Who Fell Into A 10m-long Pipe” Mom Cat Cries Out For Help

Be the Rufus! Help and save the poor trapped kitten!

Summer Preview: Rolling Blackouts, Higher Gas Prices, Natural Gas Rationing In Europe And A Historic Diesel Crisis

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Almost everyone has heard about the rapidly growing global energy crisis by now, but most people assume that this crisis will eventually go away because they think that authorities have everything under control.  Unfortunately, that is not true at all.  This crisis has taken our leaders by surprise, and now many of them have shifted into panic mode because they realize that there will be no easy fixes.  Decades of neglect and foolish decisions have brought us to the precipice of a nightmare, and many of us are going to be absolutely astonished by some of the things that happen in the months ahead.

Here in the United States, we have neglected to properly invest in our power grids for a very long time, and now they are at a breaking point.

We are being warned that there could be widespread “rolling blackouts” this summer, and the situation is particularly dire in Midwest states such as Michigan

The Lansing Board of Water and Light, or BWL, warned in a press release on Tuesday that the company is preparing for potential ‘rolling black-outs’ this summer.

The Mid-Continent Independent System Operator, or MISO, is Michigan’s power grid regulator. MISO will have to ‘load-shed’ if they see expected energy shortages during peak usage times due to hot weather. Load-shedding is purposefully shutting down electric power in some areas of a power-distribution system to prevent the entire system from failing when it is strained by high demand.

Meanwhile, the price of gasoline is likely to continue to go up.

For quite some time, the amount of oil that is being produced around the world each day has been lower than the amount of oil that is being used around the world each day, and as a result supplies have been getting tighter and tighter

Fast forward to today, and where are we? Intrinsic demand is thought to be around 103 million barrels a day now, owing to 1% per year global population growth, plus increased wealth–and demand should keep growing at roughly that pace. But supplies aren’t nearly keeping up. We’re currently producing around 100.6 million barrels (reflecting the loss of about a million barrels from Russia), and the resulting spike in prices is already constraining demand to around 101 million barrels, according to Majcher.

When demand is greater than supply, either prices go up or eventually you have shortages.

And sometimes both things happen.

Bank of America is telling us that oil inventories have reached a “dangerously low point”, and until that changes prices are likely to continue to rise…

The result is a market that for the second straight year is under-supplied, and drawing down inventories as a result–on top of the drawdown in strategic reserves approved by political leaders to try and lower prices. Bank of America is already warning that global oil inventories have fallen to a “dangerously low point,” with certain gasoline and diesel supplies in particular at “precarious levels” as we head into peak U.S. driving season. U.S. oil inventories are already 14% below their five-year average, BofA notes, while distillates (like diesel) are 22% below.

I wish that I could tell you that there is hope that things will turn around eventually.

But at this point the CEO of Exxon is actually warning us to expect “up to five years of turbulent oil markets”

Consumers must be prepared to endure up to five years of turbulent oil markets, the head of ExxonMobil said Tuesday, citing under-investment and the coronavirus pandemic.

Energy markets have been roiled by the Ukraine war as Russia has reduced some exports and faced sanctions while Europe has announced plans to wean itself off dependency on Russian fossil fuels in coming years.

If you think that things are bad now, just wait until you see what happens after a major war erupts in the Middle East.

Then things will really start getting crazy.

Speaking of war, over in Europe a looming natural gas shortage due to the war in Ukraine is likely to cause immense economic problems in the months ahead.

Now that Russia has significantly reduced the flow of natural gas to Germany, it looks like the Germans will soon be forced to ration it, and the Wall Street Journal is telling us that authorities expect “a gas shortage by December”…

The German government moved closer to rationing natural gas on Thursday after Russia cut deliveries to the country last week in an escalation of the economic war triggered by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Berlin triggered the second of its three-step plan to deal with gas shortages after the Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom, the country’s biggest gas exporter, throttled delivery via the Nordstream pipeline by around 60% last week. Germany’s gas reserves are at 58% capacity, and the government now expects a gas shortage by December if supplies don’t pick up, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said.

It would be difficult for me to overstate the seriousness of this problem.  Energy prices have already gone completely nuts in Europe, and one German official is actually comparing this crisis to the collapse of Lehman Brothers

With energy suppliers piling up losses by being forced to cover volumes at high prices, there’s a danger of a spillover effect for local utilities and their customers, including consumers and businesses, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said Thursday after raising the country’s gas risk level to the second-highest “alarm” phase.

“If this minus gets so big that they can’t carry it anymore, the whole market is in danger of collapsing at some point,” Habeck said at a news conference in Berlin, “so a Lehman effect in the energy system.”

Needless to say, it isn’t just Germany that is being affected

The crisis has spilled far beyond Germany, with 12 European Union member states affected and 10 issuing an early warning under gas security regulation, Frans Timmermans, the European Union’s climate chief, said in a speech to the European Parliament.

“The risk of a full gas disruption is now more real than ever before,” he said. “All this is part of Russia’s strategy to undermine our unity.”

If the war in Ukraine could be brought to a peaceful resolution, that would greatly help matters.

But we all know that isn’t going to happen any time soon.

On top of everything else, global supplies of diesel fuel get squeezed a little bit more with each passing day.  The price of diesel fuel is 75 percent higher than it was a year ago, and here in the United States we have been warned that the Northeast “is quietly running out of diesel”

The upward pressure on diesel and jet fuel prices in particular is getting attention in the White House, Amrita Sen of Energy Aspects told Squawk Box yesterday. Diesel prices are up a whopping 75% from a year ago, and the spread between diesel and gasoline prices has also widened considerably. The high cost is creating huge strains on truckers and the supply chain; the Northeast “is quietly running out of diesel,” FreightWaves warned two weeks ago.

Even though there could be a historic supply crunch, we won’t completely run out of diesel fuel.

However, as I detailed in an article that has gone extremely viral, we are potentially facing really severe shortages of both diesel exhaust fluid and diesel engine oil if solutions cannot be found.

Urea is required to produce diesel exhaust fluid, and the U.S. doesn’t produce enough.  We are normally one of the largest importers of urea in the entire world, and Russia and China are two of the largest exporters.  Our leaders have decided that we don’t want urea from Russia, and China has restricted exports.

So that puts us in a really tough position.  If you have a diesel vehicle, I would highly recommend stocking up on diesel exhaust fluid while you still can.

As for diesel engine oil, there are several key additives that are in short supply right now due to major problems at several manufacturers.  An article that Mike Adams just posted goes into the details.  This is a very serious situation that is not going to be resolved any time in the near future.

The bottom line is that supplies of diesel fuel are going to get very tight, and there may be times when diesel exhaust fluid and diesel engine oil are not available at all.

All three are required in order for diesel vehicles to operate, and as I explained yesterday, the U.S. economy runs on diesel.

If we were suddenly unable to use our diesel vehicles, all of our supply chains would collapse and we would no longer have a functioning economy.

So hopefully our leaders are working really hard to find some solutions.

Because it looks like this summer could be quite difficult, and the outlook for the months beyond is even less promising.

Millions to Manslaughter

Ibi Roncaioli was Hungarian by birth but moved to Canada, where she married a successful gynecologist. She was not short of money but bought a ticket for a lotto game with a friend. In 1991, the two won $10 million and split the money.

Roncaioli started spending her winnings without telling her husband, but she didn’t spend much of it on herself. Mainly, the money went to her three sons. One of these was the son that she had had with her husband, one from before she married, and the third was a child that even her husband of thirty years knew nothing about.

Most people who knew the Roncaiolis described them as a happy, devoted older couple. However, in 2003, Ibi died. The authorities assumed that she had died from natural causes. Still, after careful examination, they found a toxic level of painkillers and alcohol in her body, and there were needle marks on her legs and feet.

The court found her husband guilty of manslaughter. The couple’s net worth was just $300,000 despite Ibi’s winnings and her husband’s considerable earnings. Her 72-year-old husband was sentenced to seven years.

Stranded Cat Cries In Despair As Her Last Canned Food Drops Down

How to rescue this stranded little kitty?

Too Much of a Good Thing

Gerald Muswagon was not a well-educated man but was friendly and well-liked by his family and friends. Yet, he had had brushes with the law in his native Canada since 1981.

In 1998, he bought a two-dollar lottery ticket that won him $10 million. He spent a lot of it on luxuries and gifts but did try to invest in his own lumber business. Unfortunately, his business lost money because of low sales. Muswagon was surrounded by hangers-on who were only interested in his money and never got the guidance that he needed about how to handle such a large sum.

He continued to have problems with the police, and things got worse when his wife died suddenly in 2002. Muswagon hanged himself in his parent’s garage.

“FORCE MAJEURE” DECLARED – Oil For Diesel Engines Gone in 8 Weeks

A potentially catastrophic situation is emerging that threatens to wipe out the entire supply of diesel engine oil across the United States, leaving the country with no diesel engine oil until 2023.

Chemical manufacturers of diesel engine oil additives have declared “force majeure” ( a force they cannot control)  and have ceased supply operations to the diesel engine oil manufacturers. Those manufacturers combine base oils with “additive packages” to create diesel engine oil.

(This story is referring to the OIL that goes inside a diesel engine, and NOT Diesel “fuel.”)
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Antioxidants, anti-corrosion agents, dispersing additives, antirust mechanisms, friction modifiers, EP additives, antifoaming agents, antioxidants, are all chemicals that must be added to the oil for diesel engines so they can operate.  Without these additives, diesel engine oil manufacturers cannot produce the final oil products that lubricate diesel engines.

Because key manufacturers of these additives have ceased operations, diesel engine oil can apparently no longer be produced in the USA, at least not until these necessary chemicals are restored to full supply, which may not be until the year 2023.

If trucks have to shut down because their engine oil is exhausted, ALL COMMERCE will cease, because everything in the country, except electricity and natural gas, MUST – at some point – be transported by truck.    No trucks means no products.   No products means no commerce.

Full, complete, collapse.

The TRUTH is coming out

Great discussion. Tying together BRICS, inflation, and the American leadership.

To the Bitter End

John Werner Kluge (1914–2010) was a successful businessman who became a television mogul. At one time, he was the richest person in the United States. A hard-working philanthropist, he also found time to indulge in his hobby of getting married. He married four times, and Patricia was the third of his wives.

When the couple divorced in 1990, Patricia kept the Albemarle estate near Charlottesville, Virginia. The couple had built a 45-room mansion on the property that hosted parties for the rich and famous. With her new husband, Patricia Kluge opened the Kluge Estate Winery in 1999. This was an excellent place for growing vines, and their ambition was to create a world-renowned winery that would produce some of the finest vintages in the world. To an extent, they succeeded.

However, they had enough money to launch the project and were rich by most people’s standards, but their plans called for much more money than they had available. Patricia took out $65 million in loans but found that she was over-extended. When the economy crashed in 2008, she put the estate up for sale. Donald Trump eventually bought it for a fraction of the asking price. It is now known as the Trump Winery.

It is possible to be rich but not quite rich enough. This is the trap that Patricia fell into.

Kitten Trapped Inside A Pillar Wishes To Hold Mom’s Hand Before She Dies

Save the little kitten!

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Americans remain misinformed. They think China will collapse when the United States Empire stops buying their products

Americans remain misinformed. They think China will collapse when the United States Empire stops buying their products. 

In truth, only 3% of China's GDP is derived from exports to the USA. 

Exports worldwide only make up 18.5% of China's GDP.

In this light, it seems to me that Xi JP has the patience of a saint. If I were in his shoes, would just label all my products as having origins in Xinjiang. Then sit back and watch the riots happen when Americans can't afford not just their gasoline in their cars, but also that toaster in Walmart when they finally manage to walk there.

It would be a Russian and Chinese one-two punch for the obnoxious teenage bully.

-littlereddot

Let’s plow on though this most crazy period of time. I do hope that you enjoy my collection of “news” insanity, and various contextual snippets. Have fun.

The NGO “Hong Kong Watch” has FINALLY admitted to being funded by UK government

It took them bloody long enough.

For decades they were critical of the Hong Kong government, and were active in “uncovering crimes and human rights abuses” in China. Well, after a few of their members were decloaked as CIA assets, participants and organizers of the “pro-democracy” movements, rounded up and sent into prison, the “dust has settled”. And now the UK government admits that they were behind the organization that was instrumental in the “color revolution(s)” in Hong Kong.

Video HERE

Ukraine, Taiwan – Battle for US Hegemony Continues

A pretty good video.

Alexander Selkirk

Alexander Selkirk is one of history’s most famous missing persons, but there’s a good chance you don’t recognize his name. That’s because his story became famous only after it was fictionalized and he was rebranded “Robinson Crusoe.”

According to Smithsonian, Selkirk was really only sort-of missing. There were plenty of people who knew where he was, notably the 21-year-old ship captain who deliberately stranded him on an island 418 miles off the coast of Chile. At first, Selkirk was all, “Cool, just leave me here. I don’t like you and I don’t want to be on your leaky ship.” (Note: not an actual historical quote). When Selkirk realized no one else was going to join him on his 3-hour tour, though, he begged the captain to reconsider. And because 21-year-olds who have too much responsibility aren’t exactly known for their empathy, the captain rather predictably refused to take him back.

The ship sailed away and Selkirk was left to fend for himself for four years and four months. Fortunately, the island was populated by feral animals, so he survived on a well-balanced diet of seafood, goats, watercress, and turnips. When he was finally picked up by a passing ship, his rescuers noted that he was so wild in appearance and mannerisms that he seemed to have “forgot his language for want of use, we could scarce understand him, for he seem’d to speak his words by halves.”

Today’s propaganda of the day…

It’s from UK “Intelligence experts”. Found on Drudge.

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Yuppur. More examples of Russia “losing big” in Ukraine.

Favorite Potato Salad

Every home cook should have one go-to classic potato salad recipe on hand. It’s the perfect dish to bring to summer picnics, serve at grill-outs and take along to potluck suppers. But don’t just limit this simple potato salad to warm-weather months—this dish can be served year-round. The next time someone samples your delicious side dish and asks you how to make potato salad, just hand them this easy potato salad recipe.

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Five possible strikes on Lithuania as a response to the blockade of Kaliningrad

Is Russia being dragged into a war with NATO?

From HERE

Lithuania has decided to stop the transit of certain types of goods from the EU sanctions list by rail from June 18. Transit stopped. Now politicians and political scientists are busy thinking about how Moscow can respond to the transport blockade of one of the subjects of the Russian Federation – the Kaliningrad region. And if earlier the talk about the war with NATO was of an abstract nature within the framework of the discussion of an unlikely prospect, then Lithuania, by its actions, brought this probability closer.

If cargo transit is not restored, Russia reserves the right to take action to protect its national interests, Maria Zakharova said.

Russian Chargé d’Affaires in Lithuania Sergey Ryabokon said on the Russia-24 TV channel :

“When the sanctions actions of the European Union began, they found the most fertile ground here in Lithuania. And Lithuania began to offer itself what could be done to inflict maximum damage on us .

Ryabokon noted that this measure was developed by the European Union a month and a half ago, but it was not specified, and now Lithuania has moved forward. Lithuanian politicians have been saying for thirty years that they have a lever of pressure on Russia – transit to Kaliningrad. And on the night of June 17-18, this lever was activated. Among other things, the import of fertilizers, the need for which is very high, is prohibited.

Commenting on the situation, the State Duma noted that the transport blockade could give serious grounds for the start of hostilities, but the Russian Federation would not use them. Another way of solving the problem is proposed – to speed up the procedure for canceling the decision of Lithuania to secede from the USSR and cease its existence as a subject of international law. It is assumed that in this case, the NATO protection regime will cease to operate on the territory of Lithuania.

Blocking transit to the Russian region, Vilnius did not calculate the consequences. How Russia might respond, Alexander Nosovich, a political scientist based in Kaliningrad , explained :

withdrawal of recognition of Lithuanian independence. The idea to recognize as illegitimate the secession of the Baltic republics from the USSR has been in the air since September 5, 1991, when this illegal secession took place;

withdrawal from the agreements with the European Union on Lithuania. Russia recognized the borders of Lithuania in exchange for guarantees for the transit of Russian citizens and goods from Kaliningrad and to Kaliningrad. Thanks to this recognition, Lithuania was able to join the EU and NATO.

“I would like to remind you that an integral part of the package of joint EU-RF-Lithuania decisions of 2002-2003 on guaranteed transit of Russian goods and, of course, citizens of the Russian Federation to/from the Kaliningrad region was a counter obligation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation to ratify the State Border Treaty with the Republic of Lithuania. I remember this very well, because then I headed the State Duma Committee on International Affairs and was the special representative of the President of Russia at these negotiations , ”

writes the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin. –

If Brussels and Vilnius initiatively and treacherously destroy the package of agreements they signed on the Kaliningrad transit, which entered into force on July 1, 2003, then the EU must understand the consequences of their suicidal decision for the legitimacy of their own eastern border .

The measures are as follows:

Russia’s demand to return Klaipeda. The current borders of Lithuania were established by the Soviet Union, and they have nothing to do with the Republic of Lithuania, which declares itself the legal successor of pre-Soviet Lithuania and rejects the Lithuanian SSR as a “Soviet occupation”. In fact, the only official successor of the USSR is the Russian Federation. This means that Moscow has the right to reconsider the ownership of the territories annexed to Lithuania during the Soviet period, in particular the ownership of the Klaipeda region;

disconnection of Lithuania from the BRELL energy system (an energy ring that unites Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). This would be Moscow’s most painful economic response to Vilnius’ hostile move. So far, Lithuania is strenuously pretending that it does not need to be connected to BRELL, but it is not known how it will feel after a real shutdown and a rise in the price of everything from goods to fuel;

creation of the Suwalki corridor. This is a land passage between Lithuania and Poland, which could connect the territory of Belarus with the Kaliningrad region of Russia.

“As for gas, we have the Marshal Vasilevsky LNG terminal, which has already been tested in case Lithuania cuts off gas pipeline gas ,” says Nosovich. - Regarding transit, I talked with high officials of our region and representatives of the center, and they assure that the Russian civilian fleet in the Baltic Sea is quite enough to supply all the volumes of goods that Lithuania can block us by rail. The question is how quickly we can do it all. But I am sure that we will not have interruptions in supplies, empty shelves in stores . ”

According to the governor of the region Anton Alikhanov, the ferries of the Kaliningrad region will cope with the new cargo. The transportation of oil products to the Kaliningrad region through Lithuania continues until August 10:

“According to our preliminary estimates - we have not yet completed the analysis  - this is from 40% to 50% of the cargo that was transported between the Kaliningrad region and other regions of the Russian Federation. These are cargoes, including building materials, cement, metals. A range of other materials important for construction and manufacturing. Finished products that were exported from our territory. This will require us to urgently put new ships on the Ust-Luga-Baltiysk line , ”

explained the head of the region.

State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin suggested that with all these difficulties – violation of agreements, disregard for diplomatic norms, bombing of peaceful quarters of Donetsk and oil platforms – Russia is being tested and, possibly, provoked to open a second front in the Baltics, that is, they are being drawn into a war with NATO.

Cynthia Ann Parker

By the early to mid-1800s, European occupation was taking a toll on native villages. As their populations fell, some indigenous people turned to kidnapping as a way to increase their numbers. Sometimes, kidnapped white children were adopted by indigenous families who had lost their own children to diseases like cholera or smallpox (via HistoryNet). One of these children was Cynthia Ann Parker, who was abducted from her family farm in Texas when she was just nine years old (via Humanities Texas).

Parker was missing for 24 years, though there were occasional sightings of her living among the Comanche. She eventually married and had three children, and probably would have stayed with the Comanche until her death, except some Texas Rangers decided to “rescue” her and her infant daughter. Her reunion with her white family was not a happy one, and Parker never adjusted to life in the white settlements. Despite being a grown woman capable of making her own choices, she was also not permitted to return to the Comanche and her two sons, one of whom — Quanah Parker — became one of the most influential Comanche leaders in history.

There are some conflicting accounts about her eventual death sometime between 1864 and 1871. According to Texas Monthly, she is said to have starved herself to death.

A little common sense about proxy war

The question is: why does one person initiate confrontation with another person in an aggressive way?

Isn’t it obvious? They think that they are going to win.

Or they think that they will gain some advantage by it, and still survive. (I am not talking about defending yourself from real or imagined threats.)

But you say; there are millions of examples where apparently weaker entities challenge an obviously stronger adversary. Are they just foolhardy to take on this risk? No, they still think that they are going to win, or gain some advantage. How so? Because they have “an uncle” at their back. I’ll just get Uncle to come in and save me. Or maybe Uncle wants to hobble that other entity, and they hired me to do it for them, (with certain guarantees for me of course).

In the modern day of international relations, this is called the “Proxy War”. It is the most insidious activity on the planet, to hire different factions of poor people to kill each other. It is a kind of Cock-Fighting, and the sideline bets are enormous. For as long as I can remember, America is the unavowed champion at this game. They have these magic words “Plausible Deniability”, which they think is a garment that covers their naked aggression. They even brag about how good they are at it. I find it a dead give-away, and not plausible at all.

Well, America has at least 800 military bases around the world, so there are at least 800 of these chickens (at various levels of readiness for cock fighting), those that are hosting these bases. Of course, they are paid to do this, but who is getting paid? Dictators are enriched, or Vassal type leaders, Criminal regimes and Gangster billionaires. Does any advantage filter down to the populations? Is threatening a bigger power in their interest in any way?

Let’s look at the Ukraine, where average people live on $10/day, the below average people, (you can calculate that). That’s right, the GDP/capita is $3,500/year. Surely now it will be half of that, if not less.

Ukraine does have an Uncle, actually many of them. They gave guarantees too, but what was Ukraine’s obligation with those guarantees? They had to win some battles; then everything could progress as planned. But it seems it is not happening that way, and the guarantees are getting thinner and thinner.

I don’t have to make any claims about it, since it is moving so fast that we’ll all know very soon.

So, what is the situation with their transaction at this time? Ukraine has managed the destruction of its infrastructure, Russia has started softly on some things. Can it be rebuilt, even in a generation? For one Trillion dollars? And for how many generations will the debts have to be paid off? They are also combining the death of one generation of men, it may soon arrive to that level of carnage if they don’t put on the brakes soon. To obtain such a result took 30 years of building the whole country on a foundation of HATE.

It is based on the philosophy of Dmytro Dontsov, 1883 – 1973, author of the dogma behind Stepan Bandera. His two INITIAL postulates, without which “Ukrainian integral nationalism” is impossible, are namely the cultural opposition to “Moscow” and the social opposition to “socialism”. He built a philosophy where everything nationalistic is against Russia and against Jews. He has 24 books and they can be downloaded free from web sources. But they are all in Ukrainian, so I didn’t pursue it. Maybe Yandex could translate them.

The reading of his works is mandatory for all nationalist Ukrainian soldiers, particularly for those of the Azov regiment. He is the guiding intellectual behind the Ukrainian regime and he’s been one of the best-selling authors in Ukraine these recent years.

What the Ukraine must be hoping for is that their leaders would all become billionaires. Then after the ethnic cleansing of the Russian population, they would have all the mines, energy, minerals, farmland and industry of the Donbas, to divide among themselves. If they could get the Crimea, they would get an enormous rent from NATO for the Sevastopol Naval Base.

Would they operate all these assets, or have land reform to include the common people? Highly unlikely, they would sell these assets on the cheap to westerners and to Monsanto, to further make the Ukrainian billionaires into multi-billionaires.

The main product that they WOULD produce is terrorism and insurgency, which they would deliver across the Russian border. It’s exactly the same job Stepan Bandera was hired for 70 years ago by MI6 and the CIA. (Not a conspiracy theory, but it is proudly stated in the reports of MI5 and MI6, the British handlers of Bandera.)

And NATO bases would be right next to them to supply and train the chickens.

1965 Buick Riviera Gran Sport

1965 Buick Riviera Gran Sport
1965 Buick Riviera Gran Sport

China says it’s ready to co-operate with Australia in the Pacific

Wang told Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa that China was not seeking “exclusive rights” to help develop the area.

“China is willing to enhance communication with all countries that care about Pacific Island Countries, especially Australia and New Zealand, and give full play to respective strengths to carry out more trilateral co-operation on the basis of respecting Pacific Island Countries’ wishes,” he said.

Article HERE
China says it is willing to co-operate with Australia in the Pacific, signalling a rhetorical and diplomatic shift following the election of the Labor government.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday failed to get consensus from 10 Pacific nations to sign up for Beijing’s “Common Development Vision,” a regional security deal in exchange for trade and economic co-operation that sparked fears of China’s economic and military ambitions in Washington and Canberra. But at least half-a-dozen countries including Samoa, Kiribati and Niue have signed up for enhanced co-operation in Beijing’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure investment program.

Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who hosted Wang for the Pacific foreign ministers meeting in Suva, said the region had to work together to face existential threats before signing up for any major multilateral deals.

“We put consensus first,” said Bainimarama. “Geopolitical point scoring means less than little to anyone whose community is slipping beneath the rising seas, whose job has been lost to a pandemic.”

The leak of China’s proposal to Reuters and a warning by David Panuelo, the President of the Federated States of Micronesia that it would shift the region “into Beijing’s orbit” put hopes of a deal being signed on Monday in peril. The region, which has found itself in the middle of a geopolitical contest between the United States, Australia and China, puts a high value on unity in its negotiations through the Pacific Islands Forum. Instead, Wang said that China would now pursue a policy position paper in the region as it looks to build multinational support for its vision of “common development, sovereignty and territorial integrity

“Some have been questioning ‘why China has been so active in supporting Pacific countries’?” said Wang, who did not take any questions from reporters at the press conference.

“China is a major developing country, and we do this with a great sense of responsibility.”

Wang presented a message from President Xi Jinping stating China was willing to work with Pacific Island nations to build a “community with a shared future” – highlighting Beijing’s growing diplomatic investment in the region after signing a landmark security and trade deal with Solomon Islands in April.

In his first direct mention of Australia during his 10-day, eight-country tour, Wang told Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa that China was not seeking “exclusive rights” to help develop the area.

“China is willing to enhance communication with all countries that care about Pacific Island Countries, especially Australia and New Zealand, and give full play to respective strengths to carry out more trilateral co-operation on the basis of respecting Pacific Island Countries’ wishes,” he said.

Wang’s comments followed a diplomatic blitz by Foreign Minister Penny Wong last week. Wong said it was up to individual nations to make sovereign decisions about their future but warned them that a region-wide deal with Beijing could sacrifice their independence, lead to unsustainable debt levels and endanger the Pacific’s security. The countries visited by Wang sit on a key strategic route between the United States, Australia and Asia and less than 2000 kilometres off the coast of Queensland that could block supply lines in the event of a conflict.

Wang failed to get consensus on the Pacific-mega deal but halfway through his 10-day tour has signed dozens of bilateral agreements including police training in Samoa, COVID-19 economic recovery plans with Fiji, radio and television co-operation with Niue and climate change and marine protection programs with Kiribati

Beijing’s top diplomat has positioned China in meetings with his Pacific counterparts as the leader of a growing group of developing countries that feel left out of the US-led international order that he argues is fuelled by Western geopolitical aims.

“Developing countries need to strengthen solidarity,” Wang said on Sunday.

“As the largest developing country, we have always stood by developing countries and stood firm for fairness and justice for small and medium-sized countries.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has yet to publicly respond to a message from Chinese Premier Li Keqiang congratulating him on his election. Beijing’s tone since the Labor victory on May 20 has been trending softer but $20 billion in trade sanctions on Australian exports remain in place and Albanese has maintained that Australia would not begin negotiations until trade restrictions were lifted.

Ukrainian soldiers take documents and things from the bodies of the dead, by which they can be identified

MOSCOW, June 22 - RIA Novosti. Ukrainian troops opposing the allied forces in the LPR have been instructed to depersonalize the bodies of servicemen - all documents are taken from them, making it more difficult to identify foreign mercenaries, Lieutenant Colonel of the People's Militia of the LPR Andrey Marochko said on Wednesday. 

"Instructions were given to Ukrainian servicemen to depersonalize the corpses of servicemen. They simply take away all identity documents so that they cannot be identified," Marochko said on the air of Rossiya 24, commenting on the issue of the origin of foreign mercenaries previously liquidated in the Gorsky area and Golden. 

He added that the identification of the destroyed mercenaries is now underway.
Article HERE

World War III

Most friends at this group may already know that I hold abnormal opinions. Here is my not very traditional view on World War III.

1. Volunteers will not cause a World War. If they do, then Russia is already fighting one.

2. People who are truly afraid of World War III are actually people who already own the world by virtue of their hege-money. If you have 100 billion dollars by which you can get whatever you want and do whatever you want with impunity, would you rather get into something that will turn your "wealth" and power into nothing and kill you and your family at the same time? If the powerless and enslaved people like us are afraid of World War III, then let us target the miscreants, not sing kumbaya and let the warmongers continue to murder, pillage, and rape with impunity. This is what the criminals want us to believe and how they want us to act. Never do what your enemy wants you to do. Why 99% are slaves of the 1%? Because 99% are craven and stupid, that's why.

3. Don't be afraid of bullies. They will threaten fire and brimstone, including suicidal world destruction. Don't believe in their lies and don't be cowed. Bullies are usually cowards. They love living because their lives are good. Know your target, learn his weakness, have an objective, make a plan, strengthen yourself, bide your time, and the bully will be defeated. 

4. I have many personal experiences with bullies. In grade five, I was the runt of the schoolyard wearing glasses. The school bully who had already beaten everyone up decided that he wanted to beat me up after school because I ignored him and he was running out of targets. Not only did he never lay a finger on me, but I was the only victim to have laid the bully flat on his back in front of all the other kids. It took me one and half years of planning and biding my time to get there. He never bullied anyone at school again. I have also stories of facing down the Chinese mafia, but maybe another time.

5. How do we stop war then? It's not by being peaceful and throwing flowers at the warmongers. If the target is the 1%, why should anyone threaten to kill the 99% who have nothing? The whole kabuki show of suicidal world destruction by nuclear war by the 1% who controls the nuclear weapons is a farce meant to keep the stupified 99% in a stupor. Know your target. The 1% is not hard to find, their wealth and properties are no secret, and their loved ones are usually going around town in expensive cars with chauffeurs and bodyguards. But the 99% are too busy working at soul-crushing jobs, rallying for minimum wage to pay for the wars, and voting for more lying miscreants to defend their freedom.

"Niemand ist hoffnungsloser versklavt als jene, die fälschlicherweise glauben, frei  zu sein." -- Goethe (None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free) Thanks to Frans for the more elegant German original.

PM

Another propaganda of the day…

It’s just too delicious. LOL!

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It’s going to be installed in kitchen appliances that are shipped to the United States!

‘Nothing Will Be As Before’

By Batiushka for the Saker Blog

Western Europe and North America are now in dire economic straits. Four EU leaders, from Germany, France, Italy and Romania, have just been to Kiev to plead with Zelensky to start negotiating again and make territorial concessions. The Western media did not much report on the fourth Romanian/German leader, Klaus Iohannis, and showed few photograph of him; possibly because the racists who work in the Western media despise Romania (https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=Romanian+Leader+In+Kiev&qpvt=romanian+leader+in+kiev&FORM=EWRE). What they all forgot to mention is that Russia has no need to negotiate and, given the way that it has been treated since 2014 (indeed, since 1991), it is not going to make concessions.

The EU leaders once more made the illusory promise that the Ukraine might soon become a candidate for EU membership (despite the Dutch veto), if it restarts negotiations. This old carrot dangled before the Ukrainian donkey is irrelevant. The EU has more than four countries and four leaders, whatever promise that the Ukraine may become an EU member in 20 years time. Long before that, there will be no Ukraine and probably no EU. The day after their visit, the Johnson clown went to Kiev too, though we do not know what he spoke of. Presumably, he just wanted to show that the UK is a ‘Great Power’ – like the EU?

It is all too late. Negotiations on the Donbass failed for eight years because the West forbade them. They failed again last March in Belarus and Istanbul, for the same reason. The West in its arrogance believed that it could crush Russia using its Ukrainian cannonfodder. This has been displayed for nearly four months now by the reports of State propaganda mouthpieces like CNN, the BBC etc. with their nonsense that President Putin is dying and that Russia is running out of fuel and ammunition! Wishful thinking all the time. Originally Russia just wanted to liberate the Donbass. However, pig-headedness in Kiev means that they will now be forced to take control of the whole country – and perhaps more, if aggression from outside the Ukraine continues. It was all so unnecessary…

The West cannot go on with its suicidal and illegal sanctions against Russia – or rather against itself. The lack of oil, gas, fertilisers and essential raw materials is biting. Inflation is taking off all over the West. In the UK a wave of strikes is threatened. The incredibly unpopular Johnson’s days are numbered. The only problem for Russia is that the rouble keeps rising. Despite interest rate cuts from 15% to 8.5%, the rouble is again at 56 to the dollar. Clearly, further Russian interest rate cuts are, forgive the pun, in the pipeline. Meanwhile, African and Asian leaders have told Zelensky to stop fighting. They want grain (https://news.mail.ru/politics/ 51814770/ ?frommail=1).

Of course, it is true that many of the West’s woes began well before this year, not least with the absurd and totalitarian ‘covid’ restrictions from 2020 on, which bankrupted many companies and led to it printing ever more money and to ever higher and unpayable debts. The West is desperate for the conflict in the Ukraine to end before the autumn cold sets in. Otherwise there are going to be popular revolts in Western countries, with scenes of looting on the streets.

Western arms, usually third-rate from stocks anyway, are making hardly any difference in the Ukraine. Most, together with munitions, get destroyed before they can be used. Much that has been promised cannot be used because it will take months to instruct Ukrainians on how to use them. The rate of attrition of the Kiev Army, up to 1,000 a day according to Kuleba, the Kiev Interior Minister, is simply unsustainable. Once the fortifications in the Donbass, built by Kiev and NATO over the last eight years, have been overwhelmed, there will be a clear run to Odessa, Transdnestria, Kharkov and Kiev or indeed anywhere that Russia wants. This could happen soon.

Yesterday, the Russian Ministry of Defence released figures on mercenaries (https://news.mail.ru/incident/51803470/?frommail=1). The picture is dismal for the Ukraine. Of some 6,000 mercenaries in the Ukraine from 64 different countries, some 2,000 have been killed and some 2,000 have fled. Perhaps they thought that they were going to fight in a Third World country, where the enemy just had Kalashnikovs and not world-beating hypersonic missiles? How long the remaining 2,000 or so will remain alive remains to be seen.

Poland supplied the greatest number of mercenaries, with 1,831. Presumably as with other countries like Canada (601 mercenaries), USA (530), Romania (504), Germany and France, the majority of these were actually Ukrainians who have lived outside the Ukraine for some years, rather than native people. In third place for mercenaries from Europe comes the UK with 422, of whom 102 have been killed and 98 have fled. According to General Konashenkov who released the figures, the number of mercenaries coming has stopped and indeed been reversed. It is too dangerous to stay and get killed in the Ukraine.

This leaves the two foolish British mercenaries, not killed in action with the 102 others, but taken prisoner. And also it leaves two captured US mercenaries. There is speculation that the British might plea for their release in exchange for Julian Assange. That would upset the Americans. On the other hand, the British mercenaries, Eslin and Pinner, have already been sentenced to death. If that sentenced is carried out, it is going to make Johnson even more unpopular than he already is. Perhaps that is why Johnson went to Kiev to plead.

Thus, the first or military stage is coming to an end and should be over later this summer. However, this is only the start. The New Ukraine has to be formed. Then there is the demilitarisation and denazification of the rest of Eastern Europe. And there is the economic war, declared by the West, to be finished. On 17June at the International Economic Forum in his native Saint Petersburg, President Putin said:

‘After the Cold War the USA declared itself to be the emissaries of God on Earth, without any responsibility, only with interests….Today’s changes in economics and in international politics are tectonic and revolutionary. The Western elites are in a state of delusion, clinging on to the shadow of the past and denying changing reality…Nothing will be as before…The EU has definitively lost its political sovereignty. The current situation in Europe will lead to an outburst of radicalism and in the probable future a change of elites’.

Here is the future.

’72 Mach 1 Mustang

’72 Mach 1 Mustang
’72 Mach 1 Mustang

Russia Overtakes Saudi Arabia As China’s Top Oil Supplier

Wednesday, Jun 22, 2022 – 09:00 AM

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

  • Chinese imports of Russian crude surged by 55 percent in May as the world’s biggest importer of oil took advantage of major discounts.
  • Russia has now overtaken Saudi Arabia as China’s top oil supplier.
  • While Russia is sending lots more crude to Asia, it is unlikely that the Asian market can absorb all 4 million barrels that were going to Europe.

China imported a record volume of Russian crude in May, with arrivals surging by 55 percent to nearly 2 million barrels per day (bpd). This has made Russia the top oil supplier to the world’s leading crude importer—putting it ahead of Saudi Arabia for the first time in a year and a half.

A record volume of cheap Russian oil, which sells at steep discounts to crude from other countries, made its way to Chinese refiners last month, according to figures from China’s General Administration of Customs cited by Reuters.

China imported 1.98 million bpd of Russian crude oil in May, up by 55 percent from May last year and up from 1.59 million bpd of Russian oil imported in April 2022, the data showed.

The high purchases of Russian oil outstripped supply from Saudi Arabia, Russia’s partner in the OPEC+ deal. Chinese imports of Saudi crude averaged 1.84 million bpd in May, up by 9 percent compared to May 2021, but down from 2.17 million bpd imported in April, according to the data cited by Reuters.

Thanks to the increased shipments of cheap crude to China, Russia became the top supplier to the world’s biggest oil importer for the first time in 19 months, per Reuters estimates.

Russia has been increasingly selling its crude to China and India after Western buyers shun Russian oil and the EU—Russia’s top oil customer before the war in Ukraine—prepares to launch a phased-out embargo on seaborne imports from Russia by the end of the year.

Russia is also estimated to have overtaken Saudi Arabia to become India’s second-largest supplier of crude oil in May. The average daily rate of Russian oil exports to India stood at 819,000 barrels last month, compared with 277,000 bpd in April.

Half of Russia’s crude is headed east to Asia. This compares to 75 percent of Russia’s oil exports which were being shipped to Europe earlier this year, Alexander Dyukov, chief executive of Gazprom Neft, said last week.

Still, analysts doubt that the Asian market can absorb all 4 million bpd of oil that Russia was sending to Europe before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

1967 Chevrolet Camaro RS LS3 6.2L V8

1967 Chevrolet Camaro RS LS3 6.2L V8
1967 Chevrolet Camaro RS LS3 6.2L V8

Russia’s ‘Satan 2’ missile changes little for U.S., scholars say

Summary;

Russia has successfully tests the RS-28 Sarmat. This is a very large, heavy-duty ICBM, that carries [1] large nuclear weapon payloads, [2] shoots them using hyper-velocity missiles, and [3] the collective West has no defense for.

The United States government says that this is of no concern. The US has nuclear weapons also.

“This truly unique weapon will strengthen the combat potential of our armed forces, reliably ensure Russia’s security in the face of external threats, and will provide food for thought to those who in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric try to threaten our country,” Putin said in televised remarks.

The RS-28 Sarmat, which NATO has dubbed “Satan 2,” is considered Russia’s most powerful ICBM: a super-heavy, thermonuclear-armed intercontinental-range ballistic missile.

The missile that was introduced during a 2018 Russian state-of-the-nation address was the “next generation” of weaponry that could breach “any missile defense” system, Putin claimed at the time.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Wednesday that the United States did not consider the weapon a threat to Washington or its allies.

The Sarmat was intended to replace the Soviet-designed Voevoda, which was designed in 1962 with the capability to carry three warheads. The Sarmat weighs 200 metric tons (220 tons) and has a longer range, allowing it to fly over the North or South poles and strike targets anywhere in the world, Putin said in 2018. He added that the Sarmat carries a larger number of more powerful nuclear warheads. The Pentagon minimized the features of the weapon and said that “the American people should rest assured that we are fully prepared.”

Russia initially planned to finish Sarmat trials in 2021 and begin deploying it to the army soon after, but several test launches, considered late-stage trials in arms development, were postponed until 2022, the state-run Tass news agency reported last year.

“Sarmat is the most powerful missile with the longest range of destruction of targets in the world, which will significantly increase the combat power of our country’s strategic nuclear forces,” the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday, announcing a successful test launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region.

Putin praised the Sarmat engineers in his speech Wednesday for creating a purely “domestic” product. Rounds of economic sanctions imposed on Russia over the years, most recently for its invasion of Ukraine, have essentially barred Russia from importing any dual-purpose goods that could help advance its military complex and have left many key industries that rely heavily on imports, such as aviation, vulnerable to production and maintenance disruptions.

1966 Chevrolet Corvette 327ci

1966 Chevrolet Corvette 327ci
1966 Chevrolet Corvette 327ci

China defiant on Australian trade sanctions

China has defended its trade sanctions on $20 billion worth of Australian exports as “beyond reproach” in a rebuff to Anthony Albanese’s call for it to drop the tariffs as a precursor to repairing bilateral relations.
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Unfortunately, this “Australian leader” is not very good in math. He is simply unable to workout who has the upper hand :

Abstract Seinfeld Oil Paintings Are Perfect For Any Man Cave

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If you’re looking to add something special to your man cave then you might want to think about getting one of these abstract Seinfeld paintings. Artist Morgan Blair is obsessed with the show and she’s found a way to turn her passion into art.

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70 Shelby GT-500

70 Shelby GT-500
70 Shelby GT-500

Cat Who Lost Her Kittens Cries When Embracing An Abandoned Kitten

Show understanding. Show humanity.

’71 Barracuda

 

’71 Barracuda
’71 Barracuda

Brazil: trade with China more than double that of the USA

China’s Peaceful rise through a win-win trade relationship with the world.  Successful without firing a shot. Unprecedented in human history.
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Look at what other civilizations do to become great power: Portuguese, Spain, Holland, France, UK, Germany, Japan, USSR, USA!
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Should the CCP be awarded a noble prize for this effort?
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China used to focus her relation with the “me-only” crusader nations such as US, EU, Australia etc as being the most important relationships to keep peace
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However, these warmongering, unethical , greedy, lack of appreciative morale, looting civilizations have proven themselves,  time after time, to be unable to accept any kind of win-win trade relation.
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Thus, since Xi came into power, he focused on developing strong relations with all other nations.
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Trump’s effort to initiate an all-out trade and technological war against China has helped free up China’s market capacity. And this is benefiting the rest of the world.
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The People’s Republic of China has traditionally regarded Latin America as a zone for US interests and influence and has tended to tread carefully with countries in the region. But with the issuance in 2008 of the first ever State Council White Paper in Beijing on relations with Latin American countries, this attitude started to change. As a sign of acceleration, in 2016, a second paper came out, updating and enhancing what had gone before. This has been complemented by the number of visits to the region by Chinese President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping since his appointment in 2012–13.

Of all the places in Latin America, for China, Brazil is among the most important. As this paper makes clear with plentiful data, in terms of exports and trade, Chinese–Brazilian relations are very strong. This is particularly the case with raw materials such as iron

ore and agricultural products. Even during the pandemic, from 2020, flows of meat, soybeans and oils have been maintained, meaning that Brazil ranks as China’s largest supplier in these areas.

The paper also argues how, with China’s economic transition to a more service- sector-dominated structure, Brazil’s export pattern will need to evolve and change. China’s intensive manufacturing and high use of imported raw materials is still important, but there are new developments. The ‘dual circulation’ idea of 2020 issued from Beijing stressed the need for the government to develop Chinese consumption. It also showed how much China wished to become more autonomous in terms of research, development and technology.

Full detailed report HERE

’72 Datsun Fairlady 240z

’72 Datsun Fairlady 240z
’72 Datsun Fairlady 240z

How Russia responded to the Ukrainian strike on drilling rigs in the Black Sea

The Ministry of Defense told in detail what the plan of Zelensky’s Nazis was when they hit civilian targets and what they got in return.

Retaliation on our part was [1] the destroyed hangar with Bayraktar drones at the Shkolny airfield near Odessa. And, [2]  two more platoons of NATO howitzers M-777 on Kubansky Island, as well as [3] two launchers of the S-300 system in the Ochakovo and Tuzla regions of the Odessa region.

This was stated by the official representative of the Ministry of Defense Igor Konashenkov.

By the way, according to Konashenkov, the Chornomorneftegaz platforms were not the targets of the Ukrainian raid.

They were hit rather out of desperation – they needed a bright picture for a TV show. The main task was Serpent’s Island, which the Ukrainians lost at the very beginning of the special operation and cannot get it back.

Here’s how it was:

According to the plan of the Ukrainian command, their forces were to first deliver massive air strikes and artillery on Serpent Island and then land troops there.

Serious forces were thrown – 15 attack and reconnaissance drones, the gunner of which was two Bayraktars, the US Air Force Global Hawk RQ-4 strategic reconnaissance aircraft circling nearby, and all this under the cover of the S-300.

Attacks on Serpentine were carried out by Tochka-U ballistic missiles, Uragan multiple launch rocket systems and M-777 howitzers.

Russian troops were defended by anti-aircraft complexes “Pantsir” and “Tor”.

Everything that flew in the direction of Zmeinoye – 4 Tochka-U and 21 Hurricane shells – was shot down, as were 13 drones.

When the Ukrainians realized that they had achieved nothing, they abandoned the landing on the island and hit civilian drilling rigs. 7 of those who were on them are still considered missing.

Read article HERE.

Explain It to Me, Please

If you want a war with Iran, Russia, China and Venezuela tell me why and how it would benefit Americans

Lost Cat Found With Brain Damage Dying Alone In The Cement Room

Tear jerker, but the cat recovered. The story is very interesting and tells us quite a bit about ourselves, and our humanity.

How problem solving became the problem in the west

by Denis A. Conroy for the Saker Blog

Awoke this morning and thought it was time to review my political convictions as it had become apparent that the war in Ukraine was beholden to the usual ‘us-and-them’ arrangements that stood in for enlightened insight… Another day wherein the propaganda-controlled media confronted me with the power of its’ nuclear-ballistic narrative (based on fire power), to assure me that our ace-in-the hole superior mediation could slam dunk those who refused to acknowledge Western exceptionality-a clear sign that the Pentagon was in bed with The Chicago School of economics.

My ruminations continued as I set about preparing breakfast…I found time for coffee despite the chaos beyond my boundaries. What was wrong with our market-oriented economy? Was our model up shit creek?

We in the West have a problem it seems? People of the lesser than white pigmentation are no longer accepting the fact that we, the descendants of the first European industrial revolution, can be trusted. We, who colonized great swathes of the non-industrialized world are no longer being viewed as magnanimous partners in any sharing sense.

The neo-conservative West tried exporting its’ Globalization (WTO) rules-based business-school mentality that underpins the theories of the Chicago School of Economics to the entire planet. The white man’s burden should be applied and set… and reset… according to the rules of the inchoate modernist unilateralist and utility-minded who eschew democracy over money.

The dream; to regroup in order to grow the capitalist vision of capturing Eurasia in a muscular web of 800 military bases put there to inhibit the development of peer modelling, meant full spectrum dominance.

On hearing the news that Washington was giving Ukraine a 64 billion super-duper military handout, the inner consultant took over from the inner muse and my mind went into equative overdrive.

Do the righteous amongst us choose formulaic thinking over science-based deductive observation? Well, the answer to that seems to be a big yes!

Shall we start with the Jewish controlled media? The Jewish ability to trade themselves to the center of power is impressive, but does it contain the seed of a truly universal outlook, or is it anchored in ethnic moorings that have succeeded in pulling off a coup par excellence that has taken the West by storm! The question is, does it require an arcane narrative in order to occupy the high moral ground? And, having acquired the moral high ground vis a vis alliance with power brokers, does this give them the right to LORD it over those who are told that they are checkmated vis a vis 800 military bases in Eurasia or the iron rim of the Gaza strip. All of this is precisely what Mainstreet Media is conniving at. Accept our ‘truth’ or we will execute great vengeance upon our enemies with furious rebukes (and Palestine and America are not the only counties that have an Anglo-Zionist problem). Think of what America and Israel have in common; exemption from the injurious consequences of their actions (what’s that line again about actions speaking louder than words and why are their cinematic art forms so bereft of human dignity?).

PART 2

For instance, PULP FICTION, released in 1994 as an American black comedy neo-noir crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, is from a story by Tarantino and Roger Avery. It was, and continues to be a cultural watershed…a great piece of cinematic art capturing the myopia within American culture. Samuel Jacksons treatment of Ezekiel’ passage 25:17 “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them” is quintessentially, American hubris.

Pulp Fiction grafts contemporary narrative on arcane roots in antiquity to create a novel way of resolving the delusions of myopic grandeur that beset Jules Winnfield, a thug in need of redemption. The society Tarantino presents to the public is one where hype and entertainment paralyse the human spirit as the market economy goes about its business shredding the wellbeing of its’ citizens…the sense that an intractable appetite for personal gratification has become America’s raison d’etre is all pervasive.

Marsellus Wallace is a gang boss and husband to Mia Wallace. He is the boss of Vincent Vega, Jules Winnfield, Butch Coolidge and many other unknown gangsters. He famously states that the business he’s in “is filled with unrealistic motherfuckers” when addressing Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), a pugilist being forced to “throw” a fight. The term motherfucker here implies the existence of somebody of indeterminate status and inevitably applies to all who get in the way of any dominant actor seeking power…hegemony…over others in a rat-race to the top. The three stories capture the ineluctable spread of corruption that seeps through to every nook and cranny of society…leaving Hollywood to capitalize on one unholy mess.

So before leaving part two, a thought: Does Volodymyr Zelensky realize what the tide of neo-conservatism lapping at the shores of Ukraine would bring to that hapless country?

PART 3

When propaganda took control of macro-America, the media went along with the process of shoving Americas’ Foreign Policy ‘down the throat of all and sundry. It happened when America found itself the sole superpower on the planet. What followed was the marshaling of Anglo/Zionist forces to downplay the role of government in economics. With the help of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, governments throughout the West became separated from governance. The Chicago School was libertarian and laissez-faire at its core, rejecting Keynesian notions of governments managing aggregate economic demand to promote growth. It was a 1930s form of economic unilateralism that succeeded in keeping finance out of the hands of the so-called ‘turbulent’ masses. It also became the political incarnation of colonial interference, aided and abetted by military overkill forever available to induct or vamoose main-street–ness.

“MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” became the clarion call of muscular America in the service of promoting the United States of Americas’ dream of empire. But was anybody listening? When Biden said “America is back”, was anybody listening? When Putin said enough is enough, quit the provocation, was he or anybody in Bidens’ administration listening? When the nonaligned nations of the world rejected Americas sanctioning of Russia, was anybody in the West listening? Isn’t it time Americans consulted their inner jerks and gave a thought to the suffering their imperial obsession has wrought on Afghanistan and Palestine, to mention but two examples of the arcane mindset.

Hollywood, the dream machine always gets it right. Life in America is about coupling in one way or another…couples struggling with their destinies are at the hub of the three stories that did it for Pulp Fiction in an extremely fractious way. Hollywood became Hollywood because it succeeded in identifying the American existential narrative as a drama belonging to couples or individuals compelled, by external social conditions, to trade their way through a dog-eat-dog system designed to produce winners and losers from within its protean boundaries.

PART 4

America and Palestine are not the only countries…nations…with an Anglo-Zionist problem!!

As Europe squishes under the yoke of the pulpy Atlantic Alliance, there is little reason to believe that hope might spring eternally from the minds of its’ generally mediocre neo-conservative leadership.

An Independent Inquiry Into the American Origins of Covid?

As most are surely aware, for more than two years I have been pointing to the strong perhaps even overwhelming evidence that the Covid outbreak that devastated our own country and the world was very likely the result of an exceptionally reckless American biowarfare attack against China (and Iran).

Under my analysis, the million American deaths and massive social disruption we have suffered would constitute the most disastrous blowback of any military operation in the history of the world, and if it became widely accepted, the domestic political consequences would be monumental.

My suggestion of a central American role in the creation of this global epidemic has been excluded not only from the mainstream media but from virtually all of the alternative media as well, presumably because the possibility is simply too horrific to contemplate. However, this situation may now be starting to change.

Last month, the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences carried an opinion article authored by prominent Columbia University economist Jeffrey D. Sachs and a medical colleague suggesting an American role in the creation of the virus and arguing for an independent inquiry into that possibility.

Their paper also presented some of the very considerable evidence that the virus had been artificially engineered in a laboratory, providing a comparison chart noting the striking difference in structure between Covid and all of its closest natural relatives. Indeed, the former seems to have the sort of human-insert sequence that American researchers had been exploring in their scientific papers.

Sachs and his co-author also emphasized that the Eco-Health Alliance, heavily funded by our own Department of Defense, had been very active in organizing the collection of SARS-like bat-viruses from China, exactly the sort of viruses that probably would have constituted the precursor stock to a genetically-engineered Covid virus.

These sorts of implications are hardly surprising to those who have been following my own writings of the last couple of years, but they obviously have vastly greater impact when made by top mainstream scholars writing in one of America’s most influential academic journals. Although the two authors are careful to avoid touching upon the central thesis of my own articles, their analysis is entirely consistent with that framework.

So far, this potentially important paper seems to have received relatively little media coverage, but it may have already contributed to some renewed interest in my own work.

In February I had presented my ideas at length in several video interviews, including Kevin Barrett’s Truth Jihad, Geopolitics & Empire, and Red Ice TV, totaling nearly four hours of discussion. During the last ten days or so, these videos have attracted a great deal of new interest, adding another 60,000 total views, and are now rapidly approaching the half-million mark. Shortly after my interview with Kevin Barrett, he told me he hoped that the viewership might eventually break 100,000, a possibility I considered wildly optimistic at the time, but that video is now actually at the verge of reaching 200,000 views. If these trends continue, at some point media outlets may finally be forced to recognize the likely reality of what befell America and the rest of the world a couple of years ago.

Video Link

Video Link

Video Link

 

Meanwhile, I have recently been preoccupied with different matters. In June 2018 I resumed my writing, and during the last four years I have published more than a half-million words of articles and columns, the bulk of them in my American Pravda series. That lengthy collection of essays, focusing on the lapses and lacunae in our mainstream coverage of important past events has gradually grown into a comprehensive historical counter-narrative of the last one hundred years of Western history.

Back in early 2016 I had collected my previous articles, mostly on racial and ethnic issues, and published them as a 700 page hardcover book entitled The Myth of American Meritocracy and Other Essays. Although that volume had been partially intended as an adjunct to our unsuccessful Free Harvard/Fair Harvard political campaign for the university’s Board of Overseers, I was very pleased to have my book available in hard copy on Amazon. However, the publication project had involved a great deal of time and effort while sales soon dwindled away to scarcely even a trickle.

Then last year I began collecting all my writings into a series of freely downloadable eBooks, available in both the ePub and Mobi/Kindle formats, and this seemed a much more cost-effective means of distribution.

Since their release, these eBooks have been downloaded roughly 70,000 times, a total roughly 70,000 larger than my total print sales during that same time period. As a consequence, I had never considered investing the time and effort to produce any new hard copy editions of my work.

However, while writing my recent retrospective survey on the Harvard campaign, I was reminded of the particular advantages of having a print book available for distribution, and I began reconsidering the idea, especially since various people over the years had expressed interest in obtaining my recent writings in print form.

Obviously, a collection running 400,000 or 500,000 words would be completely unmanageable as a single text, but I discovered that Amazon’s KDP system provides a relatively easy means of creating professional-quality books using Print On Demand technology. So I decided to produce an series of shorter, more narrowly focused collections, with each generally running 50,000 to 100,000 words.

Over the last few years my reading, research, and writing efforts have absorbed an enormous amount of my time, so applying another 1% or less to make this same material available in print editions seems a very cost-effective decision. A book that you can hold in your hand may often have considerably greater weight and impact than something merely read online or in some other electronic format.

Two books in this new series are now available, each running less than 200 pages and reasonably priced at under $10 in paperback. They constitute short collections of essays that can easily be read in just a day or two, and over the next few weeks, I’m planning to release several additional ones.

The first volume is entitled Encountering American Pravda, and represents something of a short introduction to my American Pravda series, with most of the essays coming from 2016 or earlier and the book priced at just $8.99. I think this particular collection would be an ideally effective means of introducing others to the material, while doing so in a relatively non-threatening manner.

I have also now published Our Covid-19 Catastrophe, priced at $9.99. This contains my major Covid articles, presenting the American biowarfare hypothesis that has been the main focus of my writing and research efforts over the last two years.

Busy individuals are continually bombarded with emails and links and hence tend to disregard nearly all of them. However, I think that someone who receives an attractively printed book in the mail is much more likely to examine it rather than just throw it into the trash. So purchasing these hard copy editions for friends and acquaintances may be effective and relatively inexpensive means of getting this important information into much wider circulation.

I’m obviously eager to promote this material in reviews or podcasts. Therefore, I would be glad to provide complementary copies of my books to any bloggers or podcasters who think they would be interested in writing reviews or interviewing me. Just drop me an email with a link to your website or podcast and your mailing address, and I’ll have the copies sent right out.

As an example of this, I was interviewed a few days ago by Edward Dutton on his Jolly Heretics podcast. Prof. Dutton had initially been quite skeptical of my Covid biowarfare hypothesis, but the information provided in my eBook greatly surprised him, and he decided to interview me as a consequence. The 90m session is available on the Odysee platform, and I’ve also reposted it on Rumble:

Video Link

In addition, I had another hour-long radio interview with Kevin Barrett, with a copy of the transcript now available in transcript form.

Edward Curtin: Why is Everything Broken?

Unfortunately, all these people, westerners, most of them Americans, are writing about all the disaster and trouble in the USA and elsewhere. And indeed, they’re right, there’s a bad moon rising in America. But none of them is aware of the fact that there’s another much bigger nation at the other side of the world; that the population of the USA is just a small fraction of the global population. That the economy and power of the USA is over, that they should prepare for third world situations in the USA.

Are they, in spite of their vitriol on the American system, suffering from American exceptionalism ?

What I dearly miss, is the broader viewpoint, the viewpoint from the rest of the globe. None of these writers realize that there is hope for humanity at the other side of the globe. -Frans

Edward Curtin

June 9, 2022

“Begin then with a fracture, a cesura, a rent; 
opening a crack in this fallen world, a shaft of light.”

Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body

Being sick for the past few weeks has had its advantages. It has forced me to take a break from writing since I could not concentrate enough to do so. It has gifted me with a deeper sympathy for the vast numbers of the seriously ill around the world, those suffering souls without succor except for desperate prayers for relief.

And it has allowed thoughts to think me as I relinquished all efforts at control for a few miserable weeks of “doing nothing” except napping, reading short paragraphs in books, watching some sports and a documentary, and being receptive to the light coming through the cracks in my consciousness.

I suppose you could say that my temporary illness forced me, as José Ortega Y Gasset described it, virtually and provisionally to withdraw myself from the world and take a stand inside myself – “or, to use a magnificent word which exists only in Spanish, that man can ensimismarse (‘be inside himself’).”

But as I learned, being “inside myself” doesn’t mean the outside world doesn’t come visiting, both in its present and past manifestations. When you are sick, you feel most vulnerable; this sense of frailty breaks you open to strange and familiar thoughts, feelings, dreams and memories that you must catch on the fly, pin with words if you are quick enough. I’ve pinned some over these weeks as they came to me through the cracks.

“Broken flesh, broken mind, broken speech,” wrote Norman Brown when he argued for aphoristic truth as opposed to methods or systematic form. These days the feeling that everything is broken is the norm, that madness reigns, that truth is being strangled and all we have are lies and more lies.

Carefully constructed arguments fall on deaf ears as dissociation of the personality, post-modern attention-disorder, gender confusion, and corporate/intelligence mass media propaganda techniques are used daily to sow confusion. In simple colloquial language, people are badly fucked up.

Much of the world is suffering from megrims.  Bob Dylan puts it simply:

Who can disagree?  Everyone’s mind seems to be at the end of its tether.

Why? There are obvious answers, and while so many are true, they are insufficient, for they usually scratch the surface of a worldwide crisis that has been developing for at least a century and a half.

That crisis is spiritual. Many can feel it rumbling beneath the surface of world events. It’s a rumbling in the bowels. It’s unspoken. It’s something very dark, sinister, and satanic. It seems to be a form of systemic evil almost with a will of its own that is sweeping the world.

For many decades I have studied, written, and taught in an effort to grasp the essence of what has been happening in our world. My tools have been philosophy, theology, literature, art, and sociology – all the disciplines really, including a careful study of popular culture. It was always a personal quest, for my “career” has been my vocation.

Being trained in the classics from high school through college, and then the scientific method and textual analysis, I adhered for the most part to logical analyses in the classical style. Such an approach, while possessed of a certain elegance and balance, has serious limitations since it suggests the world follows a neat Aristotelian logic and that there is a method to the world’s madness that is easy to capture in logical argumentation.

Romanticism and existentialism, to name two reactions to such thinking, arose in opposition. Each offered a needed corrective to the reductive, materialist nature of a scientific method that became deified while dismissing God, freedom, and the spiritual as leftover superstitions from olden times.

But I have no sustained argument to offer here, just some scraps I gathered while enduring weeks in the doldrums. I sense these bits of seemingly digressive little flashes in the dark were telling me something about what I have been trying to understand for many years: the grasp the demonic has on our world today.

It is easy to dismiss the use of such a word, for it sounds hyperbolic, and it easily plays into the ridiculous themes of popular Hollywood and tabloid entertainment, which have also become staples of the formerly “serious” media as well.

It’s all entertainment now, life the movie, the unreality of endless propaganda, sick, sordid, and what can only be termed “The Weirdness,” a term my friend the writer and playwright Joe Green has suggested to me.

I think it would be a serious mistake to dismiss the demonic nature of the forces at work in our world today:

  • Like Rip Van Winkle, I awoke one recent day, a few weeks after I wrote my last article before I got sick, to see that the corporate media/intelligence narrative on the war in Ukraine had taken an abrupt turn. I had written on May 13, 2022, that certain leftists were parroting the official U.S. propaganda that Russia was losing its battle with the Ukrainian forces.  Noam Chomsky had claimed the U.S. media were doing a good job reporting Russian war crimes in Ukraine and Chris Hedges had said that Russia had suffered “nine weeks of humiliating military failures.”  Now The New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. – mirabile dictu – have suddenly changed their tune and the Russians are winning after all.
    Who was asleep?  Or was it sleep that prompted such obviously false reporting?  For the Russians were clearly winning from the start. Yet we can be assured the authoritative voices will continue to flip the switch and play mind games, for shock and confusion are keys to effective propaganda, and American exceptionalism with its divine mission, its manifest destiny, is to demonically try to destroy Russia.
  • The slogan that I learned when I was a Marine before becoming a conscientious objector came to me when I was feverish. “My rifle is my life.”  I never thought so, but I did recall how when I was ten years old my cousin killed his brother with a rifle, and how I heard the news on the radio while talking with my father.  The New York Times reported: “A 9-year-old boy was fatally wounded last night by his brother, 7, while the two were playing with a rifle in a neighbour’s apartment in the northeast Bronx….[the rifle] “was secreted in a bedroom” [under the bed] and was loaded.
  • Report: Don McLean cancels his singing performance at the National Riffle Association’s convention following the Uvalde school shooting. What an act of moral courage! Ah, Don, “Now I understand/What you tried to say to me/And how you suffered for your sanity/And how you tried to set them free/They would not listen, they did not know how/Perhaps they’ll listen now.”
    Let’s hope not to you.
  • Watched the new documentary about George Carlin – “George Carlin’s American Dream.” I have always had a soft spot for George, a fellow New Yorker with a Catholic upbringing, and a good-hearted guy who generously offered to help me years ago when I was fired from a teaching position for ostensibly playing a recording of his seven words that you can never say on television.  The real reasons for my firing were that I was organizing a teacher’s union and had brought well-known anti-war activists to speak at the school.  But what struck me in this interesting documentary was George’s facile dismissal of God – “the God bullshit,” as he put it.  Funny, of course, and correct in certain ways, it was also jejune in significant ways and threw God out with the bathwater.
    It was something I had not previously noticed about his routine, but this time around it hit me as unworthy of his scathing critiques of American life.  It got laughs at the expense of deeper and important truths and probably has had deleterious effects on generations who have been beguiled and besotted by how George’s God critique consonantly fits with the shallow arguments of the new atheists.  George was overreacting to the ignorance of his superficial religious training and not distinguishing God from institutional religion.
  • Half-awake on the couch one day, I somehow remembered that when I was teaching at another school and involved in anti-war activities, a fellow teacher stopped me on a staircase on a late Friday afternoon when no one was around and tried to get me to join Army Intelligence. “You are exactly the type we could use,” he said, “since you are so outspoken in your anti-war positions.”  I will spare you my reply, which involved words you once could never say on TV.  But the encounter taught me an early lesson about distinguishing friend from foe; how treachery is real, and evil often wears a smiley face. The man who approached me was the head of social studies curricula for the Roman Catholic Brooklyn Diocese of New York.
  • Al Capone, while speaking to Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. in 1931: “People respect nothing nowadays….It is undermining the country. Virtue, honour, truth, and the law have all vanished from our life.”
  • I also read this from Literature and the Gods by Roberto Calasso: “… all the mythologies now pass a largely indolent life in a no-man’s-land haunted by gods and vagrant simulacra, by ghosts and Gypsy caravans in constant movement. They learn only to tell their stories again …. Yet it is precisely this ability that is so obviously lacking in the world around us. Behind the trembling curtains of what passes for ‘reality,’ the voices throng. If no one listens, they steal the costume of the first person they can grab and burst onto the stage in ways that can be devastating.  Violence is the expedient of what has been refused an audience.”
  • Lying in bed after a feverish night early on in my sickness, I looked up at the ceiling where a fly was buzzing. I remembered how years ago, when my father was in the hospital after a terrible car accident in which he smashed his head, he told me he was seeing monkeys all over the ceiling of the hospital room.  Later, when I was out of bed, I heard the news reports about monkeypox and thought I was also hallucinating.  I started laughing, a sardonic laughter brought to a feverish pitch after more than two years of Covid propaganda.  These are the same people who hope to create a transhuman future – mechanical monkeys.
  • On a table lay the third volume of a trilogy of books – Sinister Forces – by Peter Levenda. I opened it to a bookmarked page.  Anyone who has read these books with a half-way open mind will be shocked by the amount of documented history they contain, history so bizarre and disturbing that reading them is not advisable before bedtime.  Sinister forces that run through American history, indeed, but Levenda presents his material in a most reasonable and fair-minded way.  I read these paragraphs:
“The historical model I am proposing in these volumes should be obvious by now. By tracing the darker elements of the American experience from the earliest days of the Adena and Hopewell cultures through the discovery by Columbus, the English settlers in Massachusetts and the Salem witchcraft episode, the rise of Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Mormons via ceremonial magic and Freemasonry, up to the twentieth century and the support of Nazism by American financiers and politicians before, during, and after World War II, and the UFO phenomenon coming on the heels of that war, we can see the outline of a political ectoplasm taking shape in this historical séance: politics as a continuation of religion by other means. 

The ancillary events of the Charles Manson murders, the serial killer phenomenon, Jonestown, and the assassinations of Jack Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Marilyn Monroe are all the result of the demonic possession of the American psyche, like the obscenities spat out by little Regan [The Exorcist], tied to her bed and shrieking at the exorcists. It is said that demonic possession is a way of testing us, and making us aware of the real conflict taking place within us every day….

The more I looked, however, the more I found men with bizarre beliefs and involved in questionable, occult practices at the highest levels of the American government, and buried deep within government agencies. I also discovered that occultism was embraced by the American military and intelligence establishments as a weapon to be used in the Cold War; and as they did so, they unleashed forces upon the American populace that cannot be called back….

One inevitably was forced back to the CIA and the mind-control experiments that began in the late 1940s and extended nearly to the present day [no, to the present day]. Coincidence piled upon coincidence, indicating the existence of a powerful, subliminal force working at the level of chaos – at the quantum level – and struggling to manifest itself in our reality, our consciousness, our political agenda.”


If that all sounds too bizarre for words, unbelievable really, I suggest that one read these books, for if only a minority of Levenda’s claims are true, we are in the grip of evil forces so depraved that fiction writers couldn’t imagine such reality.

As I finish these notes, I am sitting outside on a small porch, watching the rain subside. The sun has just emerged. It is 5:30 P.M. and across the driveway and a lawn of grass, eight foxes have come through the bushes. The parents watch as the six kits jump and scamper around the ground-level porch of a cottage that is unoccupied.

Interesting too?  Chris Hedges: America’s Death March

The foxes have a den under the porch, and every day for a few months we have been privileged to watch them perform their antics in the mornings and evenings. Cute would be an appropriate word for the kits, especially when they were smaller. But they are growing fast and suddenly one sees and seizes a squirrel and worries it to death by shaking it in its mouth.

Soon they are ripping it to pieces. Cute has turned deadly.  But as the aforementioned Ortega Y Gasset says, while people can be inside themselves, “The animal is pure alteraciόn. It cannot be within itself.”  This is because it has no self, “no chez soi, where it can withdraw and rest.”

Foxes always live in pure exteriority, unlike me, who is sitting here with a small glass of wine and thinking about them and the various thoughts that have come to me over these past few weeks.

Before I came outside, I read this from a powerful new article by Naomi Wolf – “Dear Friends, Sorry to Announce a Genocide” – “It is a time of demons sauntering around in human spaces, though they look human enough themselves, smug in their Italian suits on panels at the World Economic Forum.”

In this piece, she writes about what is in the 55,000 internal Pfizer documents which the FDA had asked a court to keep under wraps for 75 years, but which a court has released as a result of outside pressure.

These documents reveal evil so depraved that words would fail her if not for her moral conscience and her growing awareness – that I share – that we are dealing with a phenomenon that demands an analysis that is theological, not sociological. She writes:

“Knowing as I now do, that Pfizer and the FDA knew that babies were dying and mothers’ milk discoloring by just looking at their own internal records; knowing as I do that they did not alert anyone let alone stop what they were doing, and that to this day Pfizer, the FDA and other demonic “public health” entities are pushing to MRNA-vaccinate more and more pregnant women; now that they are about to force this on women in Africa and other lower income nations who are not seeking the MRNA vaccines, per Pfizer CEO Bourla this past week at the WEF, and knowing that Pfizer is pushing and may even receive a US EUA for babies to five year olds — I must conclude that we are looking into an abyss of evil not seen since 1945.

So I don’t know about you, but I must switch gears with this kind of unspeakable knowledge to another kind of discourse.”

That discourse is religious, for Naomi has realized that our world is in satanic hands, and that only a recognition of that fact offers a way out. That those who wield weapons both medical and military can only be defeated by those who realize that a key part of the killers’ propaganda has been a long campaign to convince people, not only that God does not exist, but that Satan doesn’t either.

Interesting too?  Forskellen mellem beskyldninger om dis- og misinformation er afgørende
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This, while they assume the mantle of the evil one.

She says:

“This time could really be the last time; these monsters in the labs, on the transnational panels, are so very skilful; and so powerful; and their dark work is so extensive.

If God is there — again — after all the times that we have tried his patience — and who indeed knows? – will we reach out a hand to him in return, will we take hold in the last moment out of this abyss, and simply find a way somehow to walk alongside him?”

We will, but only if we also recognize the deeper forces informing our hidden history and haunting our present days. Sometimes an illness can crack you open to being receptive to shafts of light that can lead the way.

Yet to do so we must go deep into very dark places.

And since everyone and everything seems broken now – let’s say everyone is just sick in some way – maybe courage is what we need, the simple courage to open ourselves to the voices of the hungry ghosts that haunt this country.

Norman O. Brown referred to them and our stage set this way:

“Ancestral voices prophesying war; ancestral spirits in the danse macabre or war dance; Valhalla, ghostly warriors who kill each other and are reborn to fight again. All warfare is ghostly, every army an exercitus feralis (army of ghosts), every soldier a living corpse.”

The U.S.A. and its allies are waging war on many fronts. It is a form of total war – cold, hot, medical, military, mind-control, spiritual, etc. – that demands a total response from us.

None of us is completely innocent; we are all part of the deep evil that is happening all around us. But if we listen carefully, we might hear God asking for our help. For we need each other.

I watch in horror as the cute foxes kill their prey. I must remind myself that that is their nature. As for my fellow humans, I know that it isn’t nature that drives them to kill, maim, hurt, lie, etc.

Everything is truly broken, and I’m not joking.

But someone is laughing.

It’s not God.

Two kinds of people

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Jaycee Dugard

When adolescent girls are abducted by strangers, there’s almost never a happy ending. Most of the time they turn up dead, if they turn up at all. When 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard disappeared while walking to the bus stop, police feared the worst, and they didn’t get any more hopeful when days turned into weeks, then into years.

But Dugard was alive and living in a shed in Phillip and Nancy Garrido’s backyard in Antioch, California (via Biography). For 18 years, she was kept prisoner by the Garridos, who told her that her family didn’t love her and wasn’t looking for her.

While in captivity she gave birth to two of Phillip Garrido’s children and eventually gave up hope of escaping.

Then, Garrido got cocky.

He brought Dugard’s two daughters with him to see the special events coordinator at the UC Berkeley campus, where he was hoping to stage a religious event of some kind. The special events manager thought something was off about Garrido and the girls and called his parole officer, and after that everything started to unravel for the Garridos.

Dugard revealed her identity during a parole meeting and her long ordeal was over.

Dugard was reunited with her family in 2009. Her family got a $20 million award from the State of California as an acknowledgment that Garrido’s parole supervision had maybe not been as thorough as it should have been.

BRICS summit: Xi Jinping criticizes Western sanctions, analysis says China helped Putin return to the world

In Chinese. Needs to be translated. Article HERE.

US sanctions helping China supercharge its chip-making industry

China has 19 of the world’s 20 fastest-growing chip industry firms over the past four quarters
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Article HERE

Jun 21, 2022 – 4.45pm
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Hong Kong | China’s chip industry is growing faster than anywhere else in the world, after US sanctions on local champions from Huawei Technologies to Hikvision spurred appetite for home-grown components.
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Nineteen of the world’s 20 fastest-growing chip industry firms over the past four quarters, on average, hail from the world’s second-biggest economy, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compared with just eight at the same point last year.
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Those China-based suppliers of design software, processors and gear vital to chip making are expanding revenue at several times the likes of global leaders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing or ASML Holding.
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That supercharged growth underscores how tensions between Washington and Beijing are transforming the global $US550 billion ($789 billion) semiconductor industry – a sector that plays an outsized role in everything from defence to the advent of future technologies like AI and autonomous cars.
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In 2020, the US began restricting sales of American technology to companies like Semiconductor Manufacturing International and Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, successfully containing their growth – but also fuelling a boom in Chinese chip-making and supply.
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Nineteen of the world’s 20 fastest-growing chip industry firms over the past four quarters, on average, hail from the world’s second-biggest economy, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compared with just eight at the same point last year.
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Those China-based suppliers of design software, processors and gear vital to chip making are expanding revenue at several times the likes of global leaders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing or ASML Holding.
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That supercharged growth underscores how tensions between Washington and Beijing are transforming the global $US550 billion ($789 billion) semiconductor industry – a sector that plays an outsized role in everything from defence to the advent of future technologies like AI and autonomous cars.
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In 2020, the US began restricting sales of American technology to companies like Semiconductor Manufacturing International and Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, successfully containing their growth – but also fuelling a boom in Chinese chip-making and supply.
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Beijing is expected to orchestrate billions of dollars of investment in the sector under ambitious programs such as its “Little Giants” blueprint to endorse and bankroll national tech champions, and encourage “buy China” tactics to sidestep US sanctions. The rise of indigenous names has caught the attention of some of the pickiest clients: Apple was said to consider Yangtze Memory Technologies as its latest supplier of iPhone flash memory.
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“The biggest underlying trend is China’s quest for self-sufficiency in the supply chain, catalysed by COVID-related lockdowns,” Morningstar analyst Phelix Lee wrote in an email responding to inquiries from Bloomberg.
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“Amid lockdowns, Chinese customers who mostly use imported semiconductors need to source homegrown alternatives to ensure smooth operations.”
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At the heart of Beijing’s ambitions is the impetus to wean itself off a geopolitical rival and more than $US430 billion worth of imported chipsets in 2021. Orders for chip-manufacturing equipment from overseas suppliers rose 58 per cent last year as local plants expanded capacity, data provided by industry body Semi show.
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That in turn is driving local business. Total sales from Chinese-based chipmakers and designers jumped 18 per cent in 2021 to a record of more than 1 trillion yuan ($215 billion), according to the China Semiconductor Industry Association.
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A persistent chip shortage that’s curtailing output at the world’s largest makers of cars and consumer electronics is also working in local chipmakers’ favour, helping Chinese suppliers more easily access the international market – sometimes with premiums tacked onto the best-selling products, such as auto and PC chips.
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SMIC and Hua Hong Semiconductor, the biggest contract chip-makers, have kept their Shanghai-based plants operating at almost full capacity even as the worst COVID-19 outbreak since 2020 paralyses factories and logistics across China.
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Shanghai Fullhan Microelectronics’ revenue grew 37 per cent on average because of high demand for surveillance products. The video chip designer has pledged to expand into electric vehicles and AI after winning its “Little Giant” designation.
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And design tool developer Primarius Technologies doubled sales on average over the past four quarters, saying it’s developed software that can be used in making 3-nanometer chips.
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Putting aside long-term profitability concerns, Morningstar’s Mr Lee said the aggressive capacity build-up from Chinese players will elevate their presence globally.
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“There’s little doubt Chinese chipmakers can achieve revenue growth over the next few years from cars, consumer electronics and other devices,” he said.

The Empire Is Slipping. Get Ready for the Big Win-Win.

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The American media is throwing a hissy-fit after two “Americans” (one of them is a Korean for some reason) have been captured while working as mercenaries in the Ukraine.

Previously, two British mercenaries were sentenced to death by the Russians, and that will almost certainly happen to the Americans. This is totally in line with international law.

Legally, there is no difference between a random American murdering or attempting to murder Russian civilians.

NBC News interviewed Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov about this, and he implied they would likely be sentenced to death, as they are not lawful combatants and they are not protected by the Geneva Conventions.

CNBC:

 It’s a tense week for Ukraine as it awaits to see whether it will be granted the status of a candidate country for the European Union.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that he expects Russia to intensify its attacks on his country while it awaits the EU’s decision. Russia’s ground and tactical air operations continued to focus on the Donbas in eastern Ukraine over the weekend and more villages around the twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk were pummeled by Russian artillery on Monday.

Elsewhere, there are growing concerns over the fate of two U.S. military veterans captured in Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said Moscow wouldn’t guarantee that they won’t face the death penalty.

“It depends on the investigation,” Dmitry Peskov told NBC News senior international correspondent Keir Simmons when he was asked whether Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh would “face the same fate” as two British citizens and a Moroccan who were sentenced to death in a pro-Russian separatist “court” (widely seen as a kangaroo court) in eastern Ukraine this month. 

“Widely seen” by whom?

They are following the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war. No one is claiming that these people are not mercenaries. Actually, the nervous and ridiculous Jew Antony Blinken claimed earlier this month that the Brits who were sentenced to death were somehow “lawful combatants.”

 

But what does that mean? They are literally mercenaries, and no one anywhere claims that mercenaries are “lawful combatants.” So these are just ridiculous nonsense statements that the Jew Blinken can feel safe his kinsmen in the media are not going to analyze.

Peskov is really good. His English is good and he acts like an adult in the way no American does. Imagine that his official role is the same as that of… Karine Frenchman.

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Everyone around President Putin is very competent, and really makes America look ridiculous.

I’m getting pretty tired of schizo theories about how there is some secret competent elite running America, and this is all part of the plan. It’s not part of the plan. They had a plan, and it is failing everywhere you look. This should be good news for everyone.

Somehow, the schizo stuff is increasing across the internet.

I think this is probably part of a conspiracy. Schizos view the Western elite as literal gods in any version of their stupid theories, and they are basically shilling for the American regime by claiming that all of its enormous, obvious mistakes are part of a secret plan.

If you call them out, they just pretend to be retarded (I’m not sure if they’re actually pretending) and start talking about the World Economic Forum, and claiming that I’m denying that there is a plan at all.

I am not denying that there is a plan.

I am denying that this plan is working.

It is obvious to everyone with a brain at this point, and not even a secret at all, that there is a plan to establish a one world government ruled by a tiny elite minority where a mass of peasants are treated like slaves and their population drastically reduced.

Acknowledging that this plan exists does not somehow equal believing that it is infallible.

Part of it is obviously just stupidity.

When people find out about the World Economic Forum, or the Bilderberg Group, or the Club of Rome, or the Trilateral Commission, or the Council on Foreign Relations, or any of these globalist institutions that created a plan for a global government, they apparently assume that the fact they didn’t know about that plan before means it is ultra-competent.

I’ve known about that plan for twenty years.

I was myself accused of being schizophrenic by friends and family, because I started reading all of these books from all of these high-level technocrats and finding that it was all real.

I didn’t “wake up” during Covid.

I had to work my way through the sludge of fifty million tons of garbage theories to get to my current level of understanding, and I’m explaining it in the simplest terms I am able.

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If people think that there is a secret agreement between Washington and Beijing, or that Jews secretly run the Bank of China, or that China is soon going to collapse, or any of these other theories that somehow explain why the West would be failing on purpose, they need to present some kind of counter-argument to what I’ve put forward that takes into account everything that I’ve argued.

I’m not claiming to be God, I’m not claiming infallibility, but every single schizo just ignores every reply I give and comes back at me with “what if the Jews already infiltrated China though???” or “maybe the Chinese economy is going to collapse and the CIA will stage a revolution and install people from Taipei????”

It all ultimately hinges on China.

At this point, Russia is a de facto proxy state of China. China is the peer competitor for the United States. And all of these schizo theories about Jews infiltrating China, or a secret agreement with China, or an imminent collapse of China – none of them are backed with any facts at all.

The simplest and most logical explanation, which takes into account all data, is that the Americans thought the Chinese were stupid and that if they gave them all of this free wealth in the form of exporting industry to China, China would become another “human rights anal democracy” vassal state.

Instead, China became an ultranationalist superpower.

The globalist agenda had no contingency plan for this eventuality, because they made these decisions about China without any real understanding of the Orient.

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Stop idolizing Jewish power.

By claiming it is infallible, you’re just saying the same thing the Jews are saying – that they are gods on earth, destined to rule you.

They’ve screwed everything up, because God is real and God is not going to allow them to take over the world.

We are in a pretty good spot.

When the US is no longer the seat of global power, these people in Washington are no longer going to have the resources to force their will on us.

If you go to any third world country, you will find that [1] people have a lot more personal freedom, that [2] families are much healthier, that [3] people are just generally doing better.

The biggest reason for that is that a third world country simply doesn’t have any resources to micromanage people’s individual lives.

When Washington falls, a strongman will rise from the ashes, and through blood and fire, we will begin to see the changes we want to see.

There will be no security.

Many will die. Many will die horribly. Your comfort zone will no longer exist, and you will never be able to return to it. But these things must come to pass and they will come to pass.

We’re right on course here.

Everything is fine, everything is exactly how it is supposed to be.

No one man can understand the Golden Path until it shows itself, and yet, the Golden Path is always there, always moving the enemies of God into places where their actions will lead to their own demise.

Chin up.

(Republished from The Daily Stormer by permission of author or representative)

Petra Pazsitka

In 1984, a 24-year-old college student from Braunschweig, Germany, went to the dentist and never returned. Just in case that’s just giving you new reasons to be irrationally afraid of dental work, Petra Pazsitka didn’t die in a root canal gone wrong, she just never came home.

As is often the case when a young woman disappears, police suspected murder. A massive search ensued, and Pazsitka was even featured on the German true-crime show “Aktenzeichen XY.” For a while there was a suspect — in 1987, a man identified only as Gunter K. said he’d killed Pazsitka (via The Telegraph), and since he’d also confessed to killing a 14-year-old girl in the same part of Germany, police had no reason to disbelieve him. He later withdrew his confession (via Independent), which didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t the killer.

Pazsitka was declared dead in 1989, and that was that — until 2015, when a woman in Dusseldorf named “Mrs. Scheider” called police to say her apartment had been burgled (via News.com.au). When unable to produce ID, she confessed to being the missing woman. Evidently, she’d managed to evade discovery by never opening a bank account or attempting to get a driver’s license or social security card. She also couldn’t be charged with a crime, because she’d never tried to use false documents. The reasons for Pazsitka’s disappearance are still not clear. She told police she was neither interested in discussing the matter publicly nor reuniting with her family.

Disaster In The Heartland: Wheat Crops In Kansas Are Failing On A Massive Scale

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Did you know that Kansas is known as “the Wheat State”?  In 2021, it produced nearly one-fourth of all wheat that was harvested in the United States.  Needless to say, we really need Kansas to come up big again this year because the war in Ukraine and a number of other factors have combined to bring us to the precipice of an absolutely horrifying global food crisis.  Unfortunately, things are not going well in Kansas this year.  In fact, wheat crops in much of the state are failing on a massive scale

This time of year, the wheat growing in this part of western Kansas should be thigh-high and lush green.

But as a months-long drought continues to parch the region, many fields tell a different story.

“There’s nothing out there. It’s dead,” farmer Vance Ehmke said, surveying a wheat field near his land in Lane County. “It’s just ankle-high straw.”

At this point, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is telling us that 41 percent of all wheat in Kansas is in “poor” or “very poor” condition.

The situation is particularly dire in the western portion of the state.  It is being reported that many fields of wheat in western Kansas now resemble “barren wastelands”

Across western Kansas, many fields planted with wheat months ago now look like barren wastelands. The gaping spaces between rows of brown, shriveled plants reveal hardened dirt that’s scarred with deep cracks from baking in the sun.

Of all the years for drought to hit western Kansas wheat farmers, it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Even though the price of wheat has soared to crazy levels, it is being estimated that somewhere around 10 percent of all wheat fields in Kansas will not even grow enough crops to bother harvesting them.

That is really bad news, but the truth is that things are even worse in Colorado and Texas

To the west in Colorado, projections say nearly one-third of wheat fields won’t produce enough to bother harvesting. In Texas, around three-quarters of the crop will likely be abandoned.

Please read that again.

This is enormous news, and it is going to deeply affect all of us in the months ahead.

At the worst possible time, wheat crops are failing on a massive scale all over the western half of the nation.

We have been stuck in a pattern of drought that resembles the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s for many years now, and things are starting to happen which would have once been unthinkable.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell have both dropped to all-time record lows, and the drinking water for tens of millions of Americans is now in jeopardy.

 

I wish that more people would understand the gravity of what we are potentially facing.

Down in Mexico, residents of Monterrey are already being limited to six hours of water a day because shortages have already become so severe…

In the sprawling metropolitan area of Monterrey, home to some 5.3 million people, the drought and years of below-average rainfall have led to citywide water shortages.

“We’re in an extreme climate crisis,” Nuevo Leon Governor Samuel Garcia said at a news conference last week. “Today, we’re all living it and suffering.”

The city in June began limiting water access to six hours a day, forcing schools to adjust class schedules and sparking panic buying of bottled water that emptied supermarket shelves.

The western half of North America is in the midst of the worst multi-year drought that it has experienced in 1,200 years, and experts are telling us that it isn’t going to end any time soon.

Meanwhile, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed is warning us that the planet is potentially facing “a food crisis of global proportions” in 2023…

First, time is short to prevent a food crisis of global proportions next year. We must stabilize global markets, reduce volatility and tackle the uncertainty of commodity prices. There can be no effective solution to the global food crisis without reintegrating Ukraine’s food production, as well as the food and fertilizer produced by the Russian Federation into world markets — despite the war. To avert a food availability crisis in 2023, we must restore fertilizer availability, especially for smallholder farmers now.

Global food production is going to be way below expectations all over the world this year, and we really are heading into a nightmarish worldwide food crisis.

I hope that you are preparing accordingly.

Before I end this article, there is one more thing that I wanted to mention.

Authorities are telling us that an absolutely massive sunspot known as AR3038 “is now facing Earth”

An enormous sunspot that has doubled in size in only 24 hours is now facing Earth—meaning it could send a solar flare our way.

This particular sunspot has actually doubled in size for each of the past three days, and at this point it is approximately 2.5 times the size of our entire planet.

And we are being warned that it could “potentially send an M-class solar flare” directly at us…

“Yesterday, sunspot AR3038 was big. Today, it’s enormous,” reads the SpaceWeather.com website. “The fast-growing sunspot has doubled in size in only 24 hours.”

The magnetic field associated with the sunspot means it could potentially send an M-class solar flare at Earth—the second-strongest type. However, it is not known whether this will be the case.

Scientists are assuring us that we probably don’t have anything to be concerned about, and hopefully they are correct.

But let’s keep a close eye on this sunspot anyway.

As I have always warned, it is just a matter of time before another Carrington Event comes along.

We live during such unusual times, and things seem to be getting crazier with each passing week.

The “perfect storm” that so many have been warning about is now here, and the months ahead will be filled with chaos and uncertainty.

Russia and China back together again

Some vintage posters.

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This is what Putin REALLY wants, pay attention

Talking about BRICS. This is super important news. It’s about the demise of the USD.

’69 Road Runner

’69 Road Runner
’69 Road Runner

Cat Cries For Help To Save Her Kittens Stuck Inside The Cement Ground

You must save the kittens!

Make-Ahead Chicken and Dumplings

We’ve devised a clever and no-fail way to make classic chicken and dumplings into a freezer-friendly meal. Make the chicken stew ahead of time, and when you’re ready to cook, simply add easy Bisquick™ dumplings, and dinner’s ready!

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Toyota 2000GT

Toyota 2000GT
Toyota 2000GT

World War 3 for dummies

A brilliant piece. -MM

By Gaius Baltar for the Saker Blog

Some knowledgeable people, apparently including the Pope, are beginning to suspect that there may be more going on in the world than just the war in the Ukraine. They say that World War 3 has already started and things will get worse from now on. This can be difficult to determine while we are participating in the unfolding events and do not have the benefit of the historical perspective. It is doubtful that people back in 1939 realized that they were looking at the start of a major worldwide conflict, although some may have suspected it.

The current global situation is in many ways like a giant jigsaw puzzle where the general public only sees a tiny part of the complete picture. Most don’t even realize that there may be more pieces and don’t even ask these simple questions: Why is all this happening and why is it happening now?

Things are more complicated than most people realize. What they see is the evil wizard Vladimir Saruman Putin invading innocent Ukraine with his orc army – for absolutely no reason. This is a simplistic view, to say the least because nothing happens without a reason. Let’s put things in perspective and see what is really going on – and why the world is going crazy before our eyes. Let’s see what World War 3 is all about.

The pressure cooker

The West (which we can define here as the US and the EU and a few more) has been maintaining pressure on the entire world for decades. This does not only apply to countries outside the West, but also to Western countries which strayed from the diktats of the West’s rulers. This pressure has been discussed widely and attributed to all kinds of motives, including neocolonialism, forced financial hegemony, and so forth. What is interesting, particularly during the last 20 years, is which countries have been pressured and what they do not have in common.

Among the pressured countries we find Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, Serbia, Thailand, and Iran to mention a few. There have also been recent additions, including India and Hungary. In order to understand why they have been pressured, we need to find out what they have in common. That’s not easy since they are extremely different in most ways. There are democracies and non-democracies, conservative and communist governments, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist countries, and so on. Still, many of them are very clearly allied. One must ask why conservative and religious countries such as Russia or Iran would ally themselves with Godless communists in Cuba and Venezuela.

What all these countries have in common is their desire to run their own affairs; to be independent countries. This is unforgivable in the eyes of the West and must be tackled by any means necessary, including economic sanctions, color revolutions, and outright military aggression.

The West and its NATO military arm had surrounded Russia with hostile countries and military bases, armed and manipulated Ukraine to be used as a hammer against it, and employed sanctions and threats. The same thing was and is happening in Asia where China is being surrounded by all means available. The same applies to all the Independents mentioned above to some extent. In the past 10 years or so the pressure has increased massively on the Independents and it reached almost a fever pitch in the year before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

During the year before the Ukraine war, the US sent its diplomats around the world to tune up the pressure. They were like a traveling circus or a rock band on a tour, but instead of entertainment, they delivered threats: buy this from us and do what we tell you or there will be consequences. The urgency was absolute and palpable, but then came the Ukraine war and the pressure went up to 11. During the first month of the war, the entire West’s diplomatic corps was fully engaged in threats against the ‘rest of the world’ to engineer the isolation of Russia. This didn’t work, which resulted in panic in political and diplomatic circles in the US and Europe.

All this pressure through the years, and all the fear and panic when it didn’t work, are clearly related to the events in the Ukraine. They are a part of the same ‘syndrome’ and have the same cause.

The debt dimension

There have been many explanations for what is going on and the most common is the fight between two possible futures; a multipolar world where there are several power centers in the world, and a unipolar world where the West governs the world. This is correct as far as it goes, but there is another reason which explains why this is happening now and all the urgency and panic in the West.

Recently the New Zealand tech guru Kim Dotcom tweeted a thread about the debt situation in the US. According to him all debt and unfunded liabilities of the US exceed the total value of the entire country, including the land. This situation is not unique to the US. Most countries in the West have debt that can only be paid back by selling the entire country and everything it contains. On top of that, most non-western countries are buried in dollar-denominated debt and are practically owned by the same financiers who own the West.

During the last few decades, the economy of the US and Europe has been falsified on a level that is difficult to believe. We in the West have been living far beyond our means and our currencies have been massively overvalued. We have been able to do this through two mechanisms:

  1. The first one is the reserve status of the dollar and the semi-reserve status of the euro which have enabled the West to export digital money and receive goods in return. This has created enormous financial power for the West and enabled it to function as a parasite on the world economy. We have been getting a lot of goods for free, to put it mildly.
  2. The second falsification mechanism is the increase in debt to a level where we have essentially pawned everything we own, including our houses and lands, to keep up our living standards. We own nothing now when the debt has been subtracted. The debt has long since become unserviceable – far beyond our ability to pay interests on – which explains why the interest rates in the West are in the neighborhood of zero. Any increase would make the debt unserviceable and we would all go formally bankrupt in a day.

On top of all this, the falsification has created artificially strong currencies in the West which has boosted their purchasing power for goods priced in non-western currencies. These mechanisms have also enabled the West to run bloated and dysfunctional service economies where inefficiencies are beyond belief. We have giant groups of people in our economies that not only create no value but destroy value systematically. What maintains the West’s standard of living now is a small minority of productive people, constant debt increase, and parasitism of the rest of the world.

The people who own all this debt actually own everything we think we own. We in the West own nothing at this point – we only think we do. But who are our real owners? We know more or less who they are because they meet every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos along with the western political elites who they also happen to own.

It is clear that our owners have been getting increasingly worried, and their worries have been increasing in sync with the increased pressure applied by the West on the rest of the world, particularly the Independents. During the last Davos meeting, the mood was bleak and panicked at the same time, much like the panic among the western political elites when the isolation of Russia failed.

What is about to happen

The panic of our owners and their politicians is understandable because we have come to the end of the line. We can no longer keep up our living standards by debt increase and parasitism. The debt is reaching beyond what we own as collateral and our currencies are about to become worthless. We will no longer be able to get free stuff from the rest of the world, or pay back our debt – let alone pay interest on it. The entire West is about to go bankrupt and our standard of living is about to go down by a massive percentage. This is what has our owners panicked and they see only two scenarios:

  1. In the first scenario most countries in the West, and everything and everyone within them, declare bankruptcy and erase the debt by diktat – which sovereign states are able to do. This will also erase the wealth and political power of our owners.
  2. In the second scenario, our owners take over the collateral during the bankruptcy. The collateral is us and everything we own.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which scenario was chosen. The plan for the second scenario is ready and being implemented as we speak. It is called ‘The Great Reset’ and was constructed by the people behind the World Economic Forum. This plan is not a secret and can be examined to a certain degree on the WEF website.

The Great Reset is a mechanism for the seizing of all debt collateral which includes your assets, the assets of your city or municipality, the assets of your state, and most corporate assets not already held by our owners.

This asset seizure mechanism has several components, but the most important are the following four:

  1. Abolishment of sovereignty: A sovereign (independent) country is a dangerous country because it can choose to default on its debt. The decrease in sovereignty has been a priority for our owners and various schemes have been attempted such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The most successful scheme is undoubtedly the European Union itself.
  2. The down-tuning of the economy: The western economy (and indeed the global economy) must be tuned down by a very significant percentage. This down-tuning is necessary because the western economy is massively falsified now and must be taken down to its real level – which may be as low as half of what it is now – or more. The slow takedown has also the purpose of avoiding a sudden crash that would cause massive social unrest which would be a threat to our owners. A controlled takedown is therefore preferable to an uncontrolled crash. This controlled takedown is already happening and has been going on for quite some time. Many examples can be mentioned of this takedown, including the EU and US energy policy which is designed to sabotage the western economy, and the obvious attempts at demand destruction during and after the epidemic, including the fairly bizarre logistical problems which suddenly came out of nowhere.
  3. Asset harvesting (you will own nothing and be ‘happy’): All assets that can be considered to be collateral to our private and collective/public debt will be taken over. This is a clearly stated aim of the Great Reset but it is less clear how this would be carried out. Total control of western governments (and indeed all governments) would seem to be necessary for this. That precondition is closer than one might think because most western governments seem to be beholden to Davos at this point. The process will be sold as necessary social restructuring because of an economic crisis and global warming and will result in a massive decrease in living standards for regular people, although not the elites.
  4. Oppression: A great many people will not like this and an uprising is a likely response, even if the takedown is done gradually. To prevent this from happening, a social control mechanism is being implemented which will erase personal freedom, the freedom of speech, and privacy. It will also create absolute dependence of the individual on the state. This must be done before the economic takedown can be completed or there will be a revolution. This mechanism is already being implemented enthusiastically in the West as anybody with eyes and ears can see.

Russia, China, and other Independents

How do Russia and China, and the war in Ukraine, factor into all of this? Why all the pressure from the West throughout the years and why all this panic now? Part of the reason for the pressure on the Independents, particularly Russia and China, is simply that they have resisted western hegemony. That is enough for getting on the West’s naughty list. But why the increased pressure in recent years?

The reason is that Russia and China cannot be subjugated through bankruptcy and their assets harvested. They do not have much debt in western currencies which means that the people who own the West through debt do not currently own Russia and China (like they own the West and the indebted ‘third world’) and cannot acquire them through debt. The only way to acquire them is through regime change. Their governments must be weakened by any means, including economic sanctions and military means if necessary -thus the use of Ukraine as a battering ram for Russia and Taiwan for China.

Subjugating Russia and China is an existential issue for our Davos owners because when they take the western economy down, everything else must go down too. If the western economy is taken down and a large economic block doesn’t participate in the downfall, it will be a disaster for the West. The new block will gain massive economic power, and possibly unipolar hegemony of sorts, while the West descends into a feudal Dark Age and irrelevance. Therefore the entire world must go down for the Great Reset to work. Russia and China must be subjugated by any means, as well as India and other stubborn nations.

This is what has fueled the situation we now find ourselves in and will fuel the continuation of World War 3. The western owner-elites are going to war to keep their wealth and power. Everyone who resists must be subjugated so they can follow the West into the planned Great Reset Dark Age.

The reason for the current panic among western elites is that the Ukraine project isn’t going as planned. Instead of Russia being bled on the battlefield, it is Ukraine and the West that bleed. Instead of the Russian economy crashing resulting in Putin’s replacement by a Davos-compatible leader, it is the West’s economy that is crashing. Instead of Russia being isolated, it is the West that is being increasingly isolated. Noting is working, and to top it all off, Europe has given the Russians the means and motive to destroy the European economy by partly shutting down its industry. Without Russian resources, there is no European industry, and without industry, there are no taxes for paying for unemployment benefits, pensions, all the refugees, and pretty much everything else which holds European societies together. The Russians now have the ability to engineer an uncontrolled crash in Europe which is not what Davos planned. An uncontrolled crash might see Davos’s heads roll, literally, and that is causing fear and panic in elite circles. The only solution for them is to move on with World War 3 and hope for the best.

What to do

The Great Reset of the world economy is the direct cause of World War 3 – assuming that is what is going on. What can be done about this? From inside the West, little can be done. The only way is to somehow remove Davos from the equation, but that is most likely not going to happen for two reasons: The first one is that the Davos great resetters are too entwined in the western economy and politics. Davos is like an octopus with its arms and suckers inside every country’s elite circles, media, and government. They are too entrenched to be easily removed. The second reason is that the western population is too brainwashed and ignorant. The level of their brainwashing is such that a large part of them actually want to become poor – although they use the word ‘green’ for ‘poor’ because it sounds better. There are, however, some indications that there may be divisions within western elites. Some of them, particularly within the US, may be resisting the primarily Europe-designed Great Reset – but whether this opposition is real or effective remains to be seen.

However, outside the West, there are certain measures that can be taken and must be taken. Some of those measures are drastic and some of them are being done as we speak. Among the measures are the following:

  1. The Independents, led by Russia, China, and India, must create a block to isolate themselves from the radioactive West. This isolation must not only be economic, but also political and social. Their economic systems must be divorced from the West and made autonomous. Their cultures and history must be defended against western influences and revisionism. This process appears to be underway.
  2. The Independents must immediately ban all western sponsored institutions and NGOs in their countries, regardless of whether they are sponsored by western states or individuals. Furthermore, they must ban all media receiving western sponsorship and strip every school and university of western sponsorship and influence.
  3. They must leave all international institutions up to and possibly including the United Nations because all international bodies are controlled by the West. They must then replace them with new institutions within their block.
  4. They must, at some point, declare the dollar and the euro currencies non grata. That means that they should declare default on all debts denominated in these currencies, but not other debts. This will most likely come at a later stage but is inevitable.

This will create a situation where the West will descend into darkness without pulling others down with it – if we manage to escape the nuclear fire.

Tired Of Being Asked To Work For Free, This Artist Started Drawing These Client Requests

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@forexposure_txt is a Twitter account dedicated to compiling quotes from artists who were expected to work for free. It was created by artist and writer Ryan Estrada. An artist has decided to take some of those quotes and use them to inspire various portraits of what she imagines those people look like. They’re part of a series titled “For Exposure,” and they were created for Format Magazine by Emmie Tsumura, a Toronto-based illustrator and graphic designer. Check out some of our favorites below. If you’re an artist then chances are that more than a few of them will resonate with you!

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Russian Anthrax, Texas Secession from the USA, Undersea submarine war near Taiwan, NATO and UK arming up for nuclear war with Russia

Jesus! Shit the world seems to be a crumbling fast. Many changes. Many new ideas, and a collapse of the old. Things going on, but most are not being reported on. But we will touch on the items here.

Let’s begin with a plea for help investing 27 million dollars. All she needs is a tiny retainer.

Don’t you know…

I am sending my greetings to you from the Sultanate of Oman, In the capital city of Muscat.

May i use this medium to open a mutual communication with you, and seeking your acceptance towards investing in your country under your management as my partner, My name is Aisha Gaddafi and presently living in Oman, i am a Widow and single Mother with three Children, the only biological Daughter of late Libyan President (Late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi) and presently i am under political asylum protection by the Omani Government.

I have funds worth "Twenty Seven Million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars" -$27.500.000.00 US Dollars which i want to entrust on you for investment project in your country.If you are willing to handle this project on my behalf, kindly reply urgent to enable me provide you more details to start the transfer process.

Thanks
Yours Truly Aisha

China is involved in a massive undersea operation off the South Coast of Taiwan

The flight paths are identical to the flight paths that were involved in…

  • The American Submarine “collision with a undersea mountain”.
  • The American “recovery effort” of a F-35 fighter jet in the ocean.

The flight path of the military aircraft is shown below:

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The type of aircraft that are involved included:  (All images are file photos, and NOT from today’s flights)

1x Y-9 EW

Starting from the 1980s, based on a Chinese cargo plane Y-8 (a localized version of the Soviet An-12 production Shaanxi Aircraft Industry Corporation) and its radically improved version of Y-9 was created 19 different versions of special aircraft, including 11 types of aircraft series “Gaoxin” (GX, 高新) for the Air Force and Air Force PLA Navy.

“Gaoxin” – a designation for the aircraft carriers of special electronic equipment, in this family include aircraft EW, AWACS, electronic intelligence, psychological warfare and basic patrol.

Older types of patrol and other special aircraft, which were created in the 1980s – 1990s, as well as the test platform used in the aviation industry, this designation does not carry.

Also, refer to “Gaoxin” have no special plane on the basis of other platforms, such as AWACS aircraft KJ-2000 and electronic reconnaissance aircraft based on the Tu-154 (Tu-154D).

From the bottom up: Airplane EW GX-1 (Y-8CB), electronic intelligence aircraft GX-2 (Y-8JB), jammer GX-3 (Y-8G)
From the bottom up: Airplane EW GX-1 (Y-8CB), electronic intelligence aircraft GX-2 (Y-8JB), jammer GX-3 (Y-8G)

From the bottom up: Airplane communication and control GX-4 (Y-8T). AWACS aircraft GX-5 (Y-8W, KJ-200), base patrol aircraft GX-6 (Y-8Q)
From the bottom up: Airplane communication and control GX-4 (Y-8T). AWACS aircraft GX-5 (Y-8W, KJ-200), base patrol aircraft GX-6 (Y-8Q)

From the bottom up: GX-7 (Y-8XZ) psychological warfare aircraft, functionally close to the US EC-130J Commando Solo, capable of performing radio and television broadcasting in the territory controlled by the enemy; GX-8 (Y-9JB) - air complex electronic warfare for the Navy; GX-9 (Y-9W, KJ-500) - AWACS aircraft of the new generation.
From the bottom up: GX-7 (Y-8XZ) psychological warfare aircraft, functionally close to the US EC-130J Commando Solo, capable of performing radio and television broadcasting in the territory controlled by the enemy; GX-8 (Y-9JB) – air complex electronic warfare for the Navy; GX-9 (Y-9W, KJ-500) – AWACS aircraft of the new generation.

From the bottom up: GX-10 (Y-9XZ) - psychological warfare aircraft of the second generation; GX-11 (Y-9G) - electronic reconnaissance aircraft the Air Force of the second generation.
From the bottom up: GX-10 (Y-9XZ) – psychological warfare aircraft of the second generation; GX-11 (Y-9G) – electronic reconnaissance aircraft the Air Force of the second generation.

All of the variants.

All of the variants.
All of the variants.

1x Y-8 ELINT

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 6x H-6

This is a bomber equipped with missiles that are designed to sink submarines.

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1x Y-20 (tanker variant)

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 2x KJ-500 AEW&C

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 1x Y-8 ASW

Anti-submarine hunter-killer aircraft.

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All aircraft were supported by a strong presence of military aircraft in support. They included…

 8x J-16

It’s sort of like a Chinese F-14 clone. Think the movie “Topgun” starring Tom Cruse.

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 4x Su-30

This is sort of like the Chinese version of the American F-18. Think of the second Tom Cruse movie “Topgun: Maverick”.

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 5x J-11

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Australia’s leading wine authority to close office in China as exports plunge

Australia’s leading wine industry body Wine Australia will be closing its only physical office in China after sales to the greater China succumb to Beijing’s prohibitive duties.

“Wine Australia has made the difficult decision to close our physical office in Shanghai. This decision follows extensive consultation with the Australian grape and wine sector and is based on the current environment and market opportunity,” a Wine Australia spokeswoman said.

“Wine Australia will continue to maintain our brand presence in China via our wine trade and consumer facing social media channels, and will continue to work closely with in-market trade representatives on brand building and marketing campaigns.”

The once 1.2 billion Australian dollar-a-year trade ($830 million) has whittled down to just over AU$200 million at the end of March, an alleged casualty of the tension between the two countries.

Wine Australia said it will continue to operate in China as it does in other markets, through “relationships with key in-market agency and marketing partners, trade show organizers and education networks,” a format that tends to be used for smaller trading markets.

The rest of the article HERE

UKRAINE ATTACKS RUSSIAN DRILLING PLATFORM IN BLACK SEA OFF CRIMEA

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The Ukrainian armed forces have attacked an Oil & Gas Drilling platform in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea.

A reported missile strike by Ukraine, blew up the Chernomorneftegaz drilling platforms.

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The platforms of Chernomorneftegaz were hit this early morning, the head of the Crimea, Sergei Aksenov, says.

“This morning, the drilling platforms of Chornomorneftegaz were attacked. I am in touch with colleagues from the Ministry of Defense and the FSB, we are working on saving people. Five people were rescued with three of them reported injured. The search for the rest of them continues. The Ministry of Defense ensures the conduct of a rescue operation with the involvement of patrol ships and aviation. We will provide updates on the events,” 

The head of the Crimea said in his post.

Chernomorneftegaz is an enterprise that independently carries out exploration and development of oil and gas fields in the Crimean sector of the Black and Azov Seas."

Word on Intel Circuits is that Russia will launch retaliatory strikes on “Ukrainian decision making centers.”

‘Stop NATO,’ protesters chant at massive rally in heart of EU

70,000 to 80,000 demonstrators packed the streets of Brussels on Monday, bringing the city to a standstill. In addition to expressing anger at the rising cost of living in Belgium, many condemned the US-led NATO alliance and its involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.

Article HERE

*****BULLETIN ***** COVERT INTEL – “The Decision has been taken . . .”

This content is for Subscribers only —

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Artist Imitators Thrive in China’s Famous Oil Painting Village

When I lived in Shenzhen, I used to visit this village perhaps twice a year. It’s just awesome.

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An artist working on his painting outside a gallery at the artist village on June 12, 2014 in Shenzhen, China. The Dafen Artist Village in Guangdong province, China, is home to thousands of artists who reproduce some of the world’s most iconic paintings as well as create their own works. The village, on the outskirts of Shenzhen, is becoming a major center for original Chinese art. (Photo by Palani Mohan/Getty images)

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***** BULLETIN ***** Covert Intel – “Attack against broad swaths of NATO”

This content is for subscribers only —

Morocco To Receive New Vaccine Production Equipment From China

Morocco aims to position itself as a regional manufacturing hub for COVID-19 vaccines, supporting the continental vaccination campaign.

Poroshenko: Minsk Agreement Was Only To Buy Time for Ukraine

Former Ukraine President Poroshenko admitted on television that the Minsk Agreement was a complete deception; was only signed to buy time for Ukraine to build its army and economy.   He looked directly in the faces of Hollande of France, Merkel of Germany, and Putin of Russia,  and lied to them as he shook their hands.

The Minsk Agreement of 2015 was a heartfelt and earnest effort by French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and representatives from Luhansk and Donetsk, to make a peace deal to stop the battles between Ukraine and the Donbass (Luhansk and Donetsk) which had already killed thousands of civilians.

It is now revealed that the Ukraine delegation, headed by Poroshenko, was there with the express intent to deceive.  They had no intention whatsoever of negotiating a true and lasting peace, they were only there to buy time to build Ukraine’s military.

In the video below, Poroshenko, interviewed this past weekend, June 18-19, 2022, admits on TV the entire negotiation was to “buy time to build Ukraine’s army and buy time to build Ukraine’s economy.”   The entire presence of Ukraine at the peace negotiations was a complete, planned, deliberate, fraud.

Ukraine did not implement even ONE aspect of the Minsk Agreement for eight years after it was signed.   Now, they wonder why there is war on their soil?

VIDEO:

Slow-Cooker Barbecue Bacon Cheeseburger Meatballs

Who needs a bun? These barbecue bacon cheeseburger meatballs simmer away in the slow cooker while you get the rest of your party prepped, then team up with pickles for a pretty presentation.

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Ukraine SitRep – Lysichansk Cauldron – Sinking Morale – More Provocations

From MoA

The former CIA and intelligence bigwig Graham Fuller predicts a gloomy outcome of the U.S-Russia proxy war in Ukraine. Gloomy for Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe:

Contrary to Washington’s triumphalist pronouncements, Russia is winning the war, Ukraine has lost the war. Any longer-term damage to Russia is open to debate.

American sanctions against Russia have turned out to be far more devastating to Europe than to Russia. The global economy has slowed and many developing nations face serious food shortages and risk of broad starvation.

There are already deep cracks in the European façade of so-called “NATO unity.” Western Europe will increasingly rue the day that it blindly followed the American Pied Piper to war against Russia. Indeed, this is not a Ukrainian-Russian war but an American-Russian war fought by proxy to the last Ukrainian.

Contrary to optimistic declarations, NATO may in fact ultimately emerge weakened. Western Europeans will think long and hard about the wisdom and deep costs of provoking deeper long term confrontations with Russia or other “competitors”of the US.

Europe will sooner or later return to the purchase of inexpensive Russian energy. Russia lies on the doorstep and a natural economic relationship with Russia will possess overwhelming logic in the end.

Europe already perceives the US as a declining power with an erratic and hypocritical foreign policy “vision” premised upon the desperate need to preserve “American leadership” in the world. America’s willingness to go to war to this end is increasingly dangerous to others.

All the above had already been said on this website in late February and March. But it is good to see that seasoned intelligence people are now coming to similar conclusions.

Two weeks ago I wrote that the Ukrainians will soon reach a breaking point. Today’s ‘clobber list’ by the Russia Ministry of Defense has an additional part about Ukrainian troop loses that supports that take:

Since May 19, during the month, only the 14th Mechanised Brigade of the AFU has lost 2,100 persons who resulted dead and wounded. Due to low moral and psychological conditions, 800 persons destined for replenishing the losses of this unit, refused to go to the operational area and accused officers of incompetence, bribery and cronyism in paying money allowance.

About 100 servicemen of a reconnaissance unit of the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade have been relieved of combat duty and transported to Kremenchug for investigation.

A considerable part of the commanders of the 30th Mechanised Brigade of the AFU have abstracted themselves from managing their units and refuse to fulfil combat tasks. All kinds of pretexts are used for simulating illness. The majority of units have already been left without any officers.

A mechanized brigade has about 3,500 soldiers. In one month the Ukrainian 14th lost two third of its people. The replacements are not trained on mechanized equipment (tanks, APCs) that likely no longer exists and can only be used as unprotected infantry. It is no wonder that they reject to be send into a hopeless situation.

Finland: NATO = “No Deal”

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Finland could not reach an agreement with Turkey, over what the Turks want in order to approve Finland’s membership in NATO.  For now, it looks as though Finland will NOT be able to join NATO.

Details are sketchy at this time.

The information above comes from an Intel source in the Office of the President of Finland.

More info as I get it.

Texas is building up to leave the United States

Oh, yes it is.

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Throughout this document are strongly worded sentences and directions on how to leave the United States.

A very interesting discussion on “Redacted”. It’s TEXAS SECESSION. The discussion starts at point 1:31:40 and well worth a listen to.

Surface View: A Wallcovering with a Difference

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Surface View is quite simple. It’s where images and your imagination come together to create stunning interiors. Surface View’s workshops are based in Reading, England, where they make every print to order. From sourcing, reproduction and design, to individually made prints and installation, here’s how it works. Surface View is all about combining cutting-edge technology with the curator’s eye, and skilled experts are the embodiment of that process.

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MoA continues…

The Russian side reported yesterday that it had killed 50 generals and higher officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a missile strike. The group was meeting to plan the further fight in the southern region of Odessa and Kherson. This now seems to have been confirmed:

Management Impact Solutions Consulting, LP - @MiExecSearch - 15:10 UTC · Jun 20, 2022

Russian Armed Forces beat out AFU generals, who were holed up in the rear. The military-civilian administration of Zaporozhye region confirmed results of a missile strike on AFU command post near the village of Shirokaya Dacha, 57 top-level officers were killed.

Last night, probably in response to the strike on the officers, the Ukrainians fired a missile against a gas and oil production platform in the waters near Crimea. The installation was damaged. Russia considers that to be a direct attack on valuable infrastructure within Russian territory and will likely give a strong response.

Yesterday Lithuania announced that it would immediately prohibit Russian goods under EU sanctions to cross from Belarus to the Kaliningrad enclave at the Baltic seas which is Russian territory. That is in breach of several international agreements which guarantee unhindered Russian access to the city. Russia has yet to announce a response to this new provocation.

Social Class Identity

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This project is concerned with our social class system operating within society and in particular the ‘1’ percent of our global population. A response to NextByDesign‘s call for posters relating to the Occupy movements worldwide, in which we are entering a year polarised by the ’99’ and ‘1’ percent inequalities.

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An interesting discussion

There must be some sane people at the Pentagon ...

-Eighthman 


Any sane people there who haven't already fled have no doubt been driven mad by all the lunatics in charge of their own military now protecting and defending what has become the world's first official Pathocracy.

-Scorpion

Anthrax Case in Russia

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In the Stavropol region of southwest Russia, a local resident is confirmed to be infected with anthrax.

Initial information out of the area says there’s no need for public alarm, but no one is saying how this person became infected or if anyone else is infected.

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Illustrator Shows The Cultural Difference Between The East And The West

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Berlin-based designer Yang Liu creates illustrations that show the cultural difference between the East and the West. Yang Liu was born in 1976 in Beijing. After studying at the University of Arts Berlin, she worked as a designer in Singapore, London, Berlin, and New York.

Drawing on her own experiences of China and Europe, Yang Liu explores a rich range of differences between Eastern and Western experience, from sleeping patterns to the role of senior citizens, from leisure activities to attitudes towards beauty, property, and public space. With their clarity, insight, and fundamental fondness towards both cultures, Yang Liu’s work has become not only a social media and magazine darling, but also a favorite with professional training programs around the world.

Blue = West, Red = East

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Lithuania Warned – in Writing!

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Russia has explicitly WARNED Lithuania that unless unrestricted rail passage is restored to the Russian state of Kaliningrad, immediately, “Russia will take action” against Lithuania.

These words were written and handed to the charge d’ affaires of Lithuania, who was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry to receive the written warning today.

The last time Russia warned a country they had “X” time to do something, was Ukraine.   Seven hours after being given that five hour deadline, the Russian Army entered Ukraine by force.

Russia means business. No more "fun and games". This is exactly the kind of things that Got Germany, and Poland into war in 1939. -MM

‘HELP!’ Stray Cat Pleads For Helping His Friend Be Treated

It’s important for us to be guardians for others. Whether animals or humans. Be the Rufus!

Panic Buying in Kaliningrad as Lithuania “Sanctions” Russian Railroad

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Video below shows panic-buying by Russians living in Kaliningrad, a portion of Russia detached from the mainland, nestled between Lithuania and Poland. The buying began because Lithuania cut-off Russian railroad shipments to the oblast (state).

For more than thirty years, there has been an understanding between Russia and Lithuania that the oblast (state) of Kaliningrad would be supplied via the Russian railroad through a narrow strip of land called the Suwalki Gap, that runs from Russia, along the southeastern border of Lithuania.  The agreement held that the trains would be left alone, and act as a supply tunnel of sorts to the Russians living in Kaliningrad.

All that ended 48 hours ago, when Lithuania took it upon itself, to say Sanctions against Russia (over its Ukraine special military operation) would be applied to trains to/from Kaliningrad.

This means that virtually no transit can take place between Russia and its western-most state.

People in Kaliningrad fear they may starve to death having been cut-off from Supplies.  That fear caused panic, and panic-buying took place yesterday and last night.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

It appears that Lithuania is trying to CAUSE Russia to attack them militarily over this new embargo.  They want this to take place because Lithuania is a member of NATO and once an attack takes place, Lithuania will invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty, collective self defense.

That would instantly place ALL the countries of NATO, at war with Russia, which is exactly what NATO wants, so as to be able to engage Russia directly to stop its operation in Ukraine.

The trouble with this thinking is that the President of Russia made clear “it will be a war that nobody will win.”   That’s a euphemism for nuclear war.

President Putin, commenting publicly at the start of Russia’s “special military operation” into Ukraine, made clear that Russia’s conventional forces are no match for NATO Conventional forces.   But, he said, “Russia is also a nuclear power.  And our technology is superior to everyone else’s.  So if NATO invokes Article 5, it will be a war no one will win.”

Knowing this, Lithuania STILL enacted a sanctions embargo against Kaliningrad.

They want nuclear war.

UPDATE 8:58 AM EDT —

“The UN needs to rectify the situation with the blockade of Kaliningrad, or Russia will be free to resolve the issue of transit in any way– the head of the Russian Federation Commission for the Protection of Sovereignty Klimov.

(HT REMARK: This is almost identical to the wording used by Russia about resolving Security Guarantees, before it entered Ukraine.  Clearly, this remark is meant to warn Lithuania (and the world) that Russia will resort to armed force to open the Kaliningrad embargo.)

UPDATE 10:27 AM EDT —

Senator Klimov: the blockade of Kaliningrad by Lithuania can be regarded as direct aggression

If the European Union does not correct the “impudent trick” of Lithuania, which banned the transit of almost half of the cargo to the Kaliningrad region, then Brussels itself will disavow the legitimacy of the documents on Lithuanian membership in the EU for Russia and thus “untie its hands” to solve the problem of Kaliningrad transit “by any means.” 

Brief Recap with historical notes:

Kaliningrad’s governor Alikhanov has already called on Russian federal authorities to prepare tit-for-tat measures against Lithuania in wake of the transit ban.

Alikhanov cited a key condition in the 2004 agreement that was part of Lithuania’s accession to the EU:

"that the Baltic state will apply in practice the principle of freedom of transit of goods, including energy, between the  Kaliningrad Region and the rest of Russian territory."

"In particular, we confirm that there shall be freedom of such transit, and that the goods in such transit shall not be subject to unnecessary delays or restrictions and shall be exempt from customs duties and transit duties or other charges related to transit,"

Then, in April…
When the EU first proposed the blockage of goods as part of the last major sanctions package in early April, Kremlin officials warned of war given Moscow would have to “break the blockade” for the sake if its citizens.

"I think that for now, this is a game, testing the waters <…>.

In case of a blockade, as they are saying, the Soviet Union knows how to break the blockades, we (Russia as the successor of the Soviet Union – TASS) have vast experience,” the senator said.

"If they want to go to the length of making us break this blockade to save the lives of our people, who live there, we can do this,"

Ahead of the new Lithuanian transit ban taking effect, the state railways service was reportedly ‘awaiting final word’ from the European Commission.

Then Brussels ruled that:

"sanctioned goods and cargo should still be prohibited even if they travel from one part of Russia to another but through EU territory,"

In Moscow’s eyes, this is tantamount to laying economic siege to part of Russia’s sovereign territory and one million of its citizens.

What Is Your Plan To Make It Through The Worst Global Food Crisis In Any Of Our Lifetimes?

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We are being warned well ahead of time that it is coming.  Joe Biden has publicly admitted that the coming food shortages are “going to be real”, and the head of the UN World Food Program is now telling us that we could soon see “hell on Earth” because the lack of food will be so severe.

Food prices are already escalating dramatically all over the globe, and food riots have already erupted in Sri Lanka and elsewhere.  But most people in the western world are treating this crisis as if it is no big deal.  Many seem to assume that our leaders have everything under control and that things will work out just fine somehow.

Unfortunately, the truth is that everything is not going to be okay.

So far this year, the number of hungry people around the globe has risen to more than 800 million

Currently around 811 million people are experiencing hunger. Levels of food insecurity have doubled from 2019, increasing from 135 million to 276 million. Of this total around 48.9 million people are facing acute or emergency levels of food insecurity that require humanitarian intervention.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Much worse is ahead, and David Beasley is openly warning that “hell on Earth” is coming…

The UN has warned that there could be “hell on earth” due to the global economic impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Guardian reports that David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), has said that the war has been “devastating” in conjunction with various other factors.

He said, “Even before the Ukraine crisis, we were facing an unprecedented global food crisis because of Covid and fuel price increases. Then, we thought it couldn’t get any worse, but this war has been devastating.”

According to Beasley, we will soon see “frightening” shortages of food, and those shortages could potentially spark civil unrest in literally dozens of different nations…

Dozens of countries risk protests, riots and political violence this year as food prices surge around the world, the head of the food-aid branch of the United Nations has warned.

Speaking in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday, David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said the world faced “frightening” shortages that could destabilise countries that depend on wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia.

But most Americans are not paying much attention to this rapidly growing crisis because they don’t think that it will really impact them personally.

For the vast majority of us, a lack of food is something that we have never had to be concerned about before.

During “normal” times, we could always go to the grocery store and fill up our carts with mountains of super cheap food whenever we wanted.

Unfortunately, things have changed.  Food production in the U.S. is going to be way below expectations this year, and the head of the National Black Farmers Association claims that we will soon see “a lot of empty shelves and a lot more high food prices”

Three weeks ago John Boyd Jr., the President of the National Black Farmers Association, said “We are in a crisis right now as far as the food chain goes with the farmer in this country,” adding “We’re going to see a lot of empty shelves and a lot more high food prices.” 

In his forty-year career as a farmer, Boyd said he never imagined he would be “paying $5.63 for a gallon of diesel fuel, $900 a ton for fertilizer, and all-time high prices for soybean seeds.” All of the prices he mentioned are at record highs, pressuring farmers’ margins.

Of course we are already seeing widespread shortages of certain products around the country.

For example, Fox Business is reporting on the serious shortage of tampons that has recently started making headlines…

A spokesperson for Tampax, which is owned by P&G, told FOX Business in a statement that this is “a temporary situation, and the Tampax team is producing tampons 24/7 to meet the increased demand for our products.”

Meanwhile, the ongoing shortage of baby formula just keeps getting even worse...

Parents aren’t getting much of a break as the out-of-stock rate for baby formula rose to 73% nationwide for the week ending May 29, according to the most recent data by retail data firm Datasembly. It’s a significant increase from earlier in the month, when the national out-of-stock rate for baby formula stood at 45%.

On top of everything else, we are now facing a shortage of hot sauce

In April, Huy Fong Foods, Inc., the nation’s leading sriracha sauce manufacturer, sent a letter to customers about an impending shortage, which would directly impact retailers and restaurants.

“Unfortunately, we can confirm that there is an unprecedented shortage of our products,” Huy Fong Foods told Fox News Digital in an email.

These shortages are just a very small preview of what is approaching.

As I have been warning on my website throughout 2022, conditions are going to deteriorate quite a bit more in the months ahead.

So what is your plan to make it through the worst global food crisis in any of our lifetimes?

Have you been stocking up?

Earlier this year, I published a list of 50 basic items that I would recommend having on hand.  The following list is certainly not exhaustive, but it will help you cover many of the essentials…

  • #1 A Generator
  • #2 A Berkey Water Filter
  • #3 A Rainwater Collection System If You Do Not Have A Natural Supply Of Water Near Your Home
  • #4 An Emergency Medical Kit (Equipped with major medicines.)
  • #5 Rice
  • #6 Pasta
  • #7 Canned Soup
  • #8 Canned Vegetables
  • #9 Canned Fruit
  • #10 Canned Chicken
  • #11 Jars Of Peanut Butter
  • #12 Salt
  • #13 Sugar
  • #14 Powdered Milk
  • #15 Bags Of Flour
  • #16 Yeast
  • #17 Lots Of Extra Coffee (If You Drink It)
  • #18 Buckets Of Long-Term Storable Food
  • #19 Extra Vitamins
  • #20 Lighters Or Matches
  • #21 Candles
  • #22 Flashlights Or Lanterns
  • #23 Plenty Of Wood To Burn
  • #24 Extra Blankets
  • #25 Extra Sleeping Bags
  • #26 A Sun Oven
  • #27 An Extra Fan If You Live In A Hot Climate
  • #28 Hand Sanitizer
  • #29 Toilet Paper
  • #30 Extra Soap And Shampoo
  • #31 Extra Toothpaste
  • #32 Extra Razors
  • #33 Bottles Of Bleach
  • #34 A Battery-Powered Radio
  • #35 Extra Batteries
  • #36 Solar Chargers
  • #37 Trash Bags
  • #38 Tarps
  • #39 A Pocket Knife
  • #40 A Hammer
  • #41 An Axe
  • #42 A Shovel
  • #43 Work Gloves
  • #44 N95 Masks
  • #45 Seeds For A Garden
  • #46 Canning Jars
  • #47 Extra Supplies For Your Pets
  • #48 An Emergency Supply Of Cash
  • #49 Bibles For Every Member Of Your Family
  • #50 A “Bug Out Bag” For Every Member Of Your Family

Many of the items on this list are now much more expensive than they were earlier this year.

And if you wait, many of them will continue to become much more expensive.

If you don’t like my list, come up with your own.

The important thing is to have a plan.

Global events are really starting to spiral out of control, and I expect the second half of this year to be even more chaotic than the first half of this year has been.

Kyle Hilton’s Paper Dolls

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A series of paper dolls, based on tv shows/characters, created by illustrator Kyle Hilton.

This New Import Law Will Hurt U.S. Consumers

Today the the U.S., suffering from high inflation caused by a lack of supplies, is launching the dumbest sanction regime ever:

A new law, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, goes into effect in the United States on Tuesday and will bar products that were made in Xinjiang or have ties to the work programs there from entering the country. It requires importers with any ties to Xinjiang to produce documentation showing that their products, and every raw material they are made with, are free of forced labor — a tricky undertaking given the complexity and opacity of Chinese supply chains.
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In theory, the new U.S. law should block all goods made with any raw materials that are associated with Xinjiang until they are proven to be free of slavery or coercive labor practices. But it remains to be seen if the U.S. government is willing or able to turn away such an array of foreign goods.

The 12 million Uighurs live predominantly in the south of China’s Xinjiang province. The area is arid and there is not enough water for the growing population. Over the years this had led to poverty, social unrest and, with the help of some Saudi educated Wahhabi preachers, to terrorism against non-Wahhabis.

The Chinese government had launched a large scale program to solve the problem once and for all.

It subsidized companies to move production facilities to Xinjiang. For geographic reasons these are now mostly in the northern part of Xinjiang. The government also organized large camps for vocational and language training. After people went through those they were offered jobs in the new factories where they work in exchange for normal wages.

The U.S. anti-China propaganda campaign claims that these Uighur people were forced to take up their new jobs and calls that ‘forced labor’. It is not.

Working in some industry far from home is normal in China. It is the reason why each year during the Spring Festival season 300 million  people in China travel to reunite with their families.

Real forced labor is what one sees in the U.S. prison industry where prisoner have no choice but to work for a few pennies which the prison will in the end regain due to absurd prices for small necessities prisoners have to pay for.

It is doubtful that the Biden administration will not apply the new law to many more products.

Domestic producers competing with Chinese products can complain to the commerce department which would then have to detain imports at the border, launch an investigation and could eventually seize the products.

Auxin, a small U.S. producer of solar panels, did exactly that in a tariff case causing chaos in the industry:

The investigation will cut expected solar installations by 46 percent for 2022 and 2023 and could cost more than 100,000 solar jobs should the department impose the tariffs, according to an analysis released yesterday by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), which organized the congressional meetings.

The probe is “already having a pretty devastating impact,” SEIA President and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper told The Climate 202.

The new law will replace a Withhold Release Order (WRO) which the U.S. Custom and Border Protection (CBP) issued under the Trump administration in January 2021. The WRO applied to cotton products sourced from Xinjiang and has led to some chaos in the apparels industry.

The new UFLPA law is much wider and will hit many more products. Many commodities like lithium and nickel are produced in Xinjiang and flow into many downstream products:

Xinjiang Nonferrous and its subsidiaries have partnered with the Chinese authorities to take in hundreds of such [Uyghur] workers in recent years, according to articles displayed proudly in Chinese on the company’s social media account. These workers were eventually sent to work in the conglomerate’s mines, a smelter and factories that produce some of the most highly sought minerals on earth, including lithium, nickel, manganese, beryllium, copper and gold.

It is difficult to trace precisely where the metals produced by Xinjiang Nonferrous go. But some have been exported to the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and India, according to company statements and customs records. And some have gone to large Chinese battery makers, who in turn, directly or indirectly, supply major American entities, including automakers, energy companies and the U.S. military, according to Chinese news reports.

The bureaucratic effort importers in the solar and other industry will have to make to avoid getting punished under the new law is extensive:

CBP released UFLPA guidelines last week that includes a section on polysilicon imports. In order to comply with the UFLPA, CBP said solar companies must:

[1]   Provide complete supply chain documentation that lists all entities involved in the exported good.

[2]   Provide a flow chart mapping each step in production and identify the region where each material originated.

[3]   Provide a list of all entities associated with each step of production, even if the exporting company did not directly work with them.

The CBP guidelines also state that solar companies that source polysilicon both from within Xinjiang and outside the region risk being subject to detention, as it may be more difficult to verify the products did not co-mingle with Xinjiang polysilicon at any point in the manufacturing process.

For small importers it will be impossible to do the above. Only big companies can afford to research and provide all that data and to take the risk of importing products that may get confiscated at the border. They will of course ask their customers to pay for all that.

For the U.S. consumer this does not only mean higher prices but likely less access to products they need or want. The U.S. industry is not in state where it can provide on the scale that China can.

To avoid the scrutiny Chinese producers may eventually move their factories. But they will move to countries in South Asia and not to the United States.

Why the ‘green agenda’ Biden administration thought that this is a smart move is beyond me.

Posted by b on June 21, 2022 at 17:09 UTC | Permalink

Classic Album Covers Reimagined With Kittens

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These copycats are feline in the mood for rock… Legendary albums from a world dominated by kittens! All kitteny album parodies by Alfra Martini of aymvisuals.

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Kitten Reaches Out His Hand For People, Hoping They’d Save Him

A fine kitten rescue story. All because a big adult cat led people to the trapped kitten. A Rufus cat!

How to Make French Toast

What’s not to love about battered and fried bread? Especially when there are so many ways to make it! Here’s everything you need to know to whip up fabulous French toast for just about any meal.

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Types of French Toast

As far back as the 15th century, Europeans were following recipes for French toast—a.k.a. pain perdu (French for “lost bread”)—a simple dish consisting of stale bread that’s soaked in an egg-and-milk mixture and cooked to a golden brown. That recipe isn’t too far from the French toast we know and love today.

Nowadays, there are myriad ways to prepare this simple dish—and it doesn’t have to be relegated to the breakfast table either. Savory French toast variations, like stuffing it with ham and cheese, are perfect for cozy breakfasts, brunches, lunches, desserts or those special nights when breakfast for dinner is on the menu (hello, brinner!).

What You Need to Make French Toast

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Making French toast is simple; in fact, you probably already have everything you need!

  • Bread: Fantastic French toast starts with the right bread. Select bread that is thick enough to stand up to the egg mixture, such as Texas-toast style. The thicker cut allows the bread to soak up the egg without falling apart or becoming too mushy.
    • Many people prefer day-old bread, as stale bread will soak up more of the egg mixture without falling apart.
    • Try mixing things up with French or Italian bread, brioche, sourdough, cinnamon-raisin or banana bread, or whole-grain versions.
    • If you are gluten free or Celiac, there’s no reason you can’t get in on the French toast fun! Experiment with your favorite gluten-free bread varieties.
  • Eggs: Choose medium-size eggs that are nice and fresh. If you are vegan or don’t eat eggs, try some of these vegan egg substitutes. There is also a new product on the market called VeganEgg that is mixed with water to form an egg substitute.
  • Milk or cream: The liquid thins out the egg, allowing it to coat the bread and making it less “eggy.” If you’re allergic to milk or prefer milk alternatives, try soymilk, coconut milk or nut milks such as almond or cashew.
  • Batter extras: Many recipes, especially for classic French toast, call for additions such as nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar or vanilla (see below for more ideas). • Toppings: This is the really fun part! See below for creative topping ideas.
  • Something to grease the griddle: Use butter (watch it closely so it doesn’t burn!), cooking spray or a high heat-friendly oil like vegetable or canola. If you are using a nonstick surface, this step is optional.
  • Equipment: A mixing bowl for batter, cutting board and knife for bread if it’s not already sliced and either an electric skillet or large skillet.
  • Utensils: Whisk or fork to mix batter, heat-safe spatula for flipping the bread.

How to Make French Toast Batter

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Making the egg mixture doesn’t stop at beating a few eggs. This is where you add flavor that will infuse the French toast. Make your batter in a mixing bowl that is large enough for you to dip slices of bread in. Make sure the bread is coated on all sides before cooking it so it soaks up the batter and develops a nice crust as it cooks.

For basic French toast, use one egg, ¼ to 1/3 cup milk (depending on desired thickness) and ½ teaspoon vanilla extract for every 2 slices of bread. So, if you were making French toast for four, you would whisk together 4 eggs, 1 to 1/3 cups milk, and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.

How to Cook French Toast in a Skillet or Griddle

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Cooking French toast in a skillet or griddle can get messy, but it’s worth it! Preheat a nonstick griddle to 375° on your stovetop (or heat skillet over medium heat), lightly oiling or buttering if desired. Once the pan is good and hot, dip the bread in the egg mixture on both sides, make sure it’s coated, and place onto the skillet. Cook until golden brown (2-4 minutes, depending on the size and thickness of the bread) on both sides. Remove from the griddle and repeat the process until all of the bread has been cooked.

To make the process less messy, place your batter bowl near the pan, and quickly move the bread from bowl to skillet. You’ll want to flip the toast carefully—batter can splash up and burn you if you do it too fast. Keep slices warm in the oven until you’re ready to serve them up.

Other Ways to Make French Toast

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Overnight French Toast: Soaking bread overnight infuses even more flavor and makes French toast extra soft and heavenly. To do this, dip the bread like normal, then place slices in an ungreased pan. Pour any remaining batter over the bread, cover loosely and refrigerate at least 8 hours but no longer than 24 hours before cooking the bread. Remember: There are raw eggs in the batter, so ensure that it’s covered and refrigerated properly!

Coated French Toast: Dredge your bread in something crunchy after dipping it in the batter—like crushed French Toast Crunch cereal (um, yum!)—for extra flavor and texture.

Baked French Toast: To avoid slaving over a hot stove or griddle while your guests await their brunch, try making French toast for a crowd in the oven as a bake or casserole!

Slow-Cooker French Toast: Put your slow cooker to use on holidays, or whenever you want an easy French toast recipe for a crowd. Cooking it low and slow lets the bread soak up even more flavor.

Stuffed French Toast: Chocolate, fruit, cream cheese or savory ingredients can all be stuffed inside French toast for extra flavor.

China’s comprehensive, systematic and elaborate response to Secretary Antony Blinken’s China policy speech

This is a comprehensive take down of Blinkens blunders about China and the US in general.  Full text on the Chinese Embassy of the USA website

It is long, very long, as any list of US problems, and dishonesty must be.

Please keep as a reference. The Chinese sound peeved, very very peeved.

Reality Check: Falsehoods in US Perceptions of China

2022/06/19 10:52

Introduction

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has recently delivered a speech at Asia Society outlining the US administration’s approach to China. With carefully calibrated language, he sought to promote the “China threat” narrative, interfere in China’s internal affairs, and smear China’s domestic and foreign policy, all in an attempt at full-blown containment and suppression of China.

In what is to follow, we will use facts and figures to show to the world how deceptive, hypocritical and dangerous the US’s China policy is.

Falsehood 1: China poses the most serious long-term challenge to the international order and is undermining it. The US will defend the international law, agreements, principles, and institutions that maintain peace and security, and protect the rights of individuals and sovereign nations.

Reality Check: What the US has constantly vowed to preserve is a so-called international order designed to serve the US’s own interests and perpetuate its hegemony. The US itself is the largest source of disruption to the actual world order.

◆ China has been and always will be a defender of the international order. China is a founding member of the United Nations (UN) and the first country to put its signature on the UN Charter. China is committed to upholding the UN-centered international system, the international order underpinned by international law, and the basic norms governing international relations built on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence jointly championed by China, India and Myanmar have been widely recognized by the international community and have become the basic norms guiding state-to-state relations.

China upholds true multilateralism and global strategic stability. China is the largest contributor of peacekeepers among the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the second largest contributor among all countries to the UN peacekeeping budget. China has taken an active part in international arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation processes. It has signed or acceded to more than 20 multilateral arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation treaties, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). China is against arms race.

In the wake of the international financial crisis of 2008, China adopted a responsible macro policy, remained a “stabilizer” for the world economy and made important contribution to global recovery. China actively provides international public goods to various countries, and has signed BRI cooperation agreements with 149 countries and 32 international organizations.

◆ In recent years, President Xi Jinping’s vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind has been warmly received by the international community. It has been written into multiple important documents issued by the UN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and other multilateral institutions. UN Secretary-General António Guterres hailed China as an important pillar for multilateralism, noting that the purpose for practicing multilateralism is to build a community with a shared future for mankind. Peter Thomson, president of the 71st Session of the UN General Assembly, said the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind advocated by China is the only future for humanity on this planet.

In response to various new global challenges, President Xi Jinping put forward the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and the Global Security Initiative (GSI). They represent China’s proposals for making the global governance system fairer and more equitable, and have received positive response and wide support from the international community.

◆ The US has blatantly violated the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and the norms governing international relations. With its military might, the US has launched wars in numerous parts of the world, stoking divisions and conflicts and bringing huge turmoil and disaster to the world. Throughout the 240-plus-year history of the US, there were only 16 years in which the US was not at war. The US might as well be called the most belligerent country in the history of the world. US magazine The National Interest quoted Dakota Wood, senior research fellow for defense programs at the Heritage Foundation, who wrote that the US consistently needed to deploy military force every 15 years or so.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has either launched or participated in many wars overseas, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghan War and the Iraq War. Those wars caused extremely severe civilian casualties and property losses, and lead to colossal humanitarian disasters. Since 2001, US wars and military operations in the name of counterterrorism have killed more than 900,000 people, about 335,000 of whom were civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions.

◆ The US habitually puts its domestic law above the international law, and selectively applies international rules as it sees fit. Since the 1980s, the US had once withdrawn from 17 international organizations and treaties, including the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Paris Agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies.

Although the current US administration declared that “America is back” and the US has rejoined some international organizations and agreements, the administration has in essence not abandoned the “America First” policy, and is advancing “selective multilateralism”. The current administration has stayed out of institutions and agreements considered harmful to US interests such as the Treaty on Open Skies. European media have described it as “America First 2.0”.

◆ The US has abused its financial hegemony and technological clout and engaged in economic coercion in the name of protecting national security. The US has enacted some domestic laws, such as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and issued a series of executive orders to target and sanction specific countries, entities or individuals. The ambiguous rules contained in these acts and executive orders, such as the “minimum contacts principle” and “doctrine of effects”, are a willful expansion of the jurisdiction of US domestic laws. The US also abuses its domestic channels of prosecution to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over entities and individuals in other countries.

For more than 60 years, in total disregard of the many resolutions of the UN General Assembly, the US has continued its comprehensive blockade against Cuba based on its embargo policies and domestic laws such as the Torricelli Act and the Helms-Burton Act. The Cuba blockade is the longest and cruelest systemic trade embargo, economic blockade and financial sanctions in modern history. The blockade has been gravely detrimental to Cuba’s economic and social development, causing over 100 billion US dollars of direct losses to Cuba’s economy.

The US has carried out blockade and sanctions against Iran since late 1970s. In May 2018, the US government announced its unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA, and soon after resumed and expanded sanctions against Iran. Many countries and relevant entities have been forced to give up their cooperation with Iran. A large number of foreign oil enterprises left the country. Iran’s manufacturing industry can hardly sustain normal operation. The country has suffered economic slowdown, coupled with heightened inflation and massive currency depreciation.

The US has imposed unilateral sanctions on Belarus, Syria and Zimbabwe, among others, over the years, and ratcheted up “maximum pressure” against the DPRK, Venezuela, etc.

◆ Statistics show that the previous US administration had imposed over 3,900 sanction measures, which means it wielded its “big stick” three times a day on average. As of fiscal year 2021, the entities and individuals on US sanction lists topped 9,421, which was 933 percent higher compared to the fiscal year 2000.

The US’s illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction have gravely undermined the sovereignty and security of other countries and severely impacted their economic development and people’s wellbeing. The sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction also constitute a gross violation of international law and basic norms of international relations.

In an article published in the September/October 2021 issue of Foreign Affairs, Daniel Drezner, Professor at Tufts University and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, criticizes successive US administrations for using “sanctions as the go-to solution for nearly every foreign policy problem.” He notes that sanctions not only are ineffective, but also “exert a humanitarian toll”, and that the United States of America has become the “United States of Sanctions”.

◆ The “rules-based international order” championed by the US is in fact another version of power politics. This is an attempt to impose one’s own will and standards on others, and to replace the commonly accepted international laws and norms with the house rules of a few countries.

In the world, there is only one international system, i.e. the international system with the UN at its core. There is only one international order, i.e. the international order underpinned by international law. And there is only one set of rules, i.e. the basic norms governing international relations underpinned by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.

Before wanting to discuss rules and order, the US should first pay up its arrears of one billion US dollars for the UN’s regular budget and 1.4 billion US dollars peacekeeping assessments, ratify in a timely manner the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, stop single-handedly blocking the negotiations on a verification protocol under the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), lift illegal unilateral sanctions, earnestly fulfill its international obligations and set a good example for others in respecting laws and norms.

Falsehood 2: The US is not looking for conflict or a new Cold War. It doesn’t seek to block China from its role as a major power, nor to stop China from growing its economy or advancing the interests of its people.

Reality Check: Despite its claims that it doesn’t seek to block China from its role as a major power, nor to stop it from growing its economy, the US is actually deploying its domestic and external resources to unscrupulously contain and suppress China .

◆ Without producing any credible evidence, the US government uses national security as a catch-all pretext and all its apparatus to wantonly suppress and sanction Huawei, restricting its products’ entry into the US market, cutting off its access to chips and operating system, and coercing countries around the world into banning Huawei from their 5G rollout. The US also orchestrated and pressured Canada to hold Huawei’s CFO for nearly three years without cause.

◆ In violation of the principle of fair competition and market economy and international trading rules, the US seeks to hamstring competitive Chinese hi-tech companies under all kinds of trumped-up charges. To date, it has placed over 1,000 Chinese companies on various sanctions lists, subjected biotechnology and artificial intelligence technologies to enhanced export controls and stringent investment review, and sought to ban Chinese social media platforms including TikTok and WeChat.

◆ Under the pretext of protecting human rights, the US has fabricated misinformation and disinformation concerning Xinjiang such as the existence of “forced labor” and, on the basis of those unfounded stories, has adopted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act which maliciously targets Xinjiang’s competitive cotton, tomatoes and solar photovoltaic sectors to contain China’s growth. This has disrupted the international trade order and destabilized global industrial and supply chains.

◆ The previous US administration, in grave violation of WTO rules, waged a massive trade war on China. Based on its own Section 301 investigation, it imposed three rounds of steep tariffs on about 360 billion US dollars’ worth of Chinese imports. In September 2021, the current US administration initiated a Section 232 investigation to determine the effects on US national security from imports of neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets at a time when global commodity prices were hovering at elevated levels.

◆ The US has a record of grossly interfering in China’s domestic affairs on issues concerning China’s core interests, including Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. It seeks to undermine China’s security and stability by, both overtly and covertly, condoning and supporting separatist activities.

◆ The bipartisan innovation bills being debated in the US Congress, while professing to enhance US competitiveness, see China as a perceived rival. “China” appears more than 800 times in the text, which is packed with provisions detrimental to China’s interests.

◆ In a bid to maintain its power and predominance in international institutions, the US has attempted to smear and block the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind and the initiative of advancing Belt and Road cooperation, among others, in multilateral fora and also to remove references to them in UN and other international documents.

◆ Clinging to a Cold War mentality and the hegemon’s logic, the US pursues bloc politics, concocts the “democracy versus authoritarianism” narrative, cajoles other countries into forming exclusive cliques, strengthens the Five Eyes, peddles the Quad mechanism, puts together AUKUS with the UK and Australia and ramps up bilateral military alliances, in a clear attempt at countering China.

◆ The US pushes NATO to insert itself in Asia-Pacific affairs, fan the “China threat” narrative in the bloc’s new strategic concept, and include in its Madrid Summit such US allies in the Asia-Pacific as Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Australia, in a bid to build an “Asia-Pacific version of NATO”, which would disrupt security and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

◆ The development of state-to-state relations should be based on equality, mutual respect and win-win results. China-US relations have reached an important crossroads. The US should stop viewing this relationship through a Cold War, zero-sum mindset, follow the three principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, and reflect in its action the five assurances it has made to China (i.e. the US does not seek a new Cold War with China, the US does not seek to change China’s system, the revitalization of US alliances is not against China, the US does not support “Taiwan independence”, and the US is not looking for conflict with China) .

Falsehood 3: Our diplomacy is based on partnership and respect for each other’s interests, while China practices coercive diplomacy against other countries and retaliates recklessly. Our task is to prove once again that all countries will be free to chart their own paths without coercion.

Reality Check: It is the US that invented “coercive diplomacy” and excels at coercing countries. Over the years, by imposing economic blockade, unilateral sanctions and other means, the US has practiced coercive diplomacy around the world with textbook examples.

◆ In 1971, American scholar Alexander George first put forward the concept of “coercive diplomacy” to summarize the US policy toward Laos, Cuba and Vietnam at that time. The US government forced the military government of Haiti to step down in 1994, and referred to that as “a textbook example of coercive diplomacy”. In 2003, it explicitly characterized 30.3 billion US dollars additional military expenses for “coercive diplomacy” as incurred expenses.

The US government froze seven billion US dollars assets of the Afghan central bank on the grounds of punishing the Afghan Taliban and even claimed the “life-saving money” of the Afghan people as its own, which resulted in the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. Mohammad Naeem, spokesman of the Taliban Political Office in Doha, said the seizure is “indicative of the lowest level of human and moral decay of a country and a nation”.

In order to force the Nepalese parliament to approve the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) agreement, the US openly issued an “ultimatum”, saying that the US will review its ties with Nepal if it fails to ratify the compact.

After the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, the US Justice Department established the “Task Force KleptoCapture” to find, freeze and seize the yachts, apartments, private jets and huge deposits of Russian citizens in the US and Europe. This fully shows that the US-touted “inviolable and sacred right to property” is just a lie. The US has forced other countries to pick sides and pressured them to join sanctions against Russia. And those who refuse to do so will pay a “price”.

After China and the Solomon Islands had signed a framework agreement on bilateral security cooperation, the US sent senior officials of the National Security Council to the country, doing whatever it can to obstruct the legitimate cooperation between China and Solomon Islands. A Solomn Star article pointed out, “Washington DC, which has literally forgotten Solomon Islands since World War II, has finally woken up and is applying the heat on the Solomon Islands to abandon the security pact.”

In May 2022, on the eve of the High-Level Virtual Meeting of the Group of Friends of the GDI, the US exerted pressure on multiple UN development agencies to obstruct their attendance and threatened to “cut funding”.

◆ The “Clean Network” program launched by the previous administration is another textbook example of US coercive diplomacy. Under the pretext of upholding US national security and citizens’ privacy, the program explicitly requires that Chinese companies such as Huawei, Baidu and Alibaba to be purged from five areas: telecom operators, mobile app stores, mobile apps, cloud services and submarine optical cables. The then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other US politicians lobbied all around the world, coercing countries and regions to join its so-called “Network”. A US senior official even threatened Cyprus and other countries not to work with Chinese 5G suppliers, or they would bear the consequence. Former UK Business and Industry Minister Vince Cable said the government’s decision to ban Huawei’s 5G equipment and services “had nothing to do with national security”, and was because “the Americans told us we should do it”.

◆ The US shows no mercy in coercing its allies. Out of its geopolitical and energy interests considerations, the US has imposed sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project since December 2019. Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the US has imposed new sanctions on related companies and personnel even though Germany had announced the suspension of the certification process for the project.

◆ A US scholar pointed out that American foreign policy since World War II has been based on a simple idea: “Either you are with us or against us. America should lead, allies should follow, and woe be to countries that oppose its primacy”. His words lay bare the nature of US coercive diplomacy.

◆ China never engages in coercive diplomacy and firmly opposes coercive diplomacy by other countries. China never threatens other countries with force, never creates military alliance, never exports ideology, never meddles in others’ domestic affairs, never seeks a trade war, and never imposes unjustified oppression on foreign enterprises. That said, however, China has the right to make necessary and legitimate responses to actions that undermine China’s sovereignty, security and development rights and interests.

Falsehood 4: The US democracy is one of the most powerful assets in this contest. Our task is to prove once again that democracy can meet urgent challenges and that the future belongs to those who believe in freedom.

Reality Check: The US sets standards for democracy after its own system, does not allow other systems, paths and models to exist, and gangs up with others to wantonly interfere in other countries’ internal affairs in the name of democracy. This not just contravenes the spirit of democracy, but also spells disaster for democracy.

◆ The American-style democracy is a rich men’s game based on capital. Money politics penetrates the entire process of election, legislation and administration in the US. People in fact only have a restricted right to political participation. The inequality in economic status has turned into inequality in political status. According to statistics, winners of 91 percent of US congressional elections are the candidates with greater financial support. Big companies, a small group of rich people, and interest groups are more generous to offer financial support and have become the main source of electoral funding. The so-called representatives of people’s will, once elected, often serve the interests of their financial backers, and speak for vested interests rather than the ordinary people. A US Senator had a sharp observation, “Congress does not regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress.”

US Republican congressman from Alabama Mo Brooks publicly denounced “corruption” of the US Congress in a video on social media. “If you want to be chairman of a major committee, you have to purchase it.” The purchase price depends on how important the committee is, with the minimum bid for a major committee being one million US dollars. Those who cannot afford it have to accept the contributions of special interest groups and then give “quid pro quos” to the lobbyists. “Special interest groups run Washington. I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean that literally.”

◆ According to a scholar in Singapore, the United States is clearly not functioning as a democracy. It is functioning as a plutocracy. A democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. A plutocracy is a government of the one percent, by the one percent, for the one percent.

◆ The US presidential election follows the Electoral College system, where the president and vice president are elected by the Electoral College. The flaws of such an electoral system are self-evident. First, as the president-elect may not be the winner of the national popular vote, there is a lack of broad representation. Second, as each state gets to decide its own electoral rules, confusion and disorder often occur. Third, the winner-takes-all system exacerbates inequality among states and between political parties. It leads to a huge waste of votes and discourages voter turnout. Voters in deep blue and deep red states are often neglected, while swing states become disproportionately more important where both parties seek to woo more supporters. There have been five presidential elections in US history in which the winner of nationwide popular vote was not elected the president.

The gerrymandering is widely recognized by the US public as a flaw of the electoral system. It refers to an unfair division of electoral districts in favor of a particular party to win as many seats as possible and cement its advantage. The US conducts a census every ten years. Following the completion of the census, redistricting or the redrawing of electoral district boundaries will take place under the principle of maintaining roughly equal population in every voting district while considering demographic shifts. Under the US Constitution, each state legislature has the power to redistrict. This leaves room for gerrymandering by the majority party in a state legislature. According to a YouGov poll in 2021, only 16 percent of US adult citizens say they think their states’ congressional maps would be drawn fairly, while 44 percent say they think the maps would be drawn unfairly and another 40 percent of adults say they are unsure if the maps will be fair.

◆ The American-style democracy is “one person one vote” in name, yet “rule of a dominant minority” in reality. Political pluralism is only a facade. A small number of elites dominate the political, economic and military affairs. They control the state apparatus and policy-making process, manipulate public opinion, dominate the business community and enjoy all kinds of privileges.

According to the Associated Press, 18.8 million people were missed in the 2020 US census. The black population had a net undercount of 3.3 percent, while it was almost five percent for Hispanics and 5.6 percent for American Indians and Native Alaskans living on reservations. The undercount robs them of their equal share of federal resources including in education, health care and housing and puts them in an unfavorable condition as to congressional apportionment. It reveals the hypocrisy in the US democracy and its “perpetuating systemic racism”.

Noam Chomsky, a political commentator and social activist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points out that the US is a “really existing capitalist democracy”, where there is a positive correlation between people’s wealth and their influence on policy-making. For the lower 70 percent on the wealth/income scale, they have no influence on policy whatsoever. They are effectively disenfranchised.

Wertheimer, President of the non-profit US organization Democracy 21, says that corruption in the US is systemic corruption of the process itself. “When you are dealing with billions and billions of dollars, much of that focused on buying influence, it overwhelms the system, and it is much harder to defend against and maintain representation for ordinary Americans.”

Danny Haiphong, an independent journalist in the US, believes that Western-style democracy views the election itself as the highest achievement. The question of whether this system serves the needs of the broad masses of people is generally ignored in order to obscure the fact that powerful corporate interests set the policy agenda well before votes are cast.

◆ The checks and balances in the American-style democracy have resulted in a “vetocracy”. American political scientist Francis Fukuyama points out in his book Political Order and Political Decay that there is an entrenched political paralysis in the US. The US political system has far too many checks and balances, raising the cost of collective action and in some cases making it impossible altogether. The US democratic process is fragmented and lengthy, with a lot of veto points where individual veto players can block action by the whole body. The function of “checks and balances”, which was purportedly designed to prevent abuse of power, has been distorted in American political practice. Politicians in Washington, D.C. are preoccupied with securing their own partisan interests and no longer care about national development. The two parties are addicted to vetoing and caught in a vicious circle. The government efficacy is inevitably weakened, law and justice trampled upon, development and progress stalled, and social division widened.

According to a Pew Research Center report in October 2021 based on a survey of 17 advanced economies including the US, Germany and the ROK, the US is more politically divided than the other economies surveyed. Nine in ten US respondents believe there are strong conflicts between people who support different political parties, and nearly 60 percent of Americans surveyed think their fellow citizens no longer disagree simply over policies, but also over basic facts.

As political and partisan polarization continues to grow, more “opposition for opposition’s sake” is seen among Democrats and Republicans. Under its influence, voters of the two parties are increasingly antagonized over gun policy. Among Republican voters, 76 percent support the right to possess guns, while 81 percent of Democratic voters see gun control as more important. Hijacked by interest, partisan conflict and the public opinion, the legislation and law enforcement process of gun control is fraught with difficulties. For the past ten years, Democratic congressmen put forward dozens of bills on gun violence and gun control every year, but due to the continued obstruction from the Republican Party, only a handful of them successfully entered the plenary deliberation and debate stage at the Senate or the House of Representatives.

The US National Rifle Association (NRA) has five million members and spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising and lobbying every year. Its tentacles penetrate deep into the fabric of the American society. The NRA is an important funder of the Republican Party. Since its establishment in 1871, the NRA has successfully attracted nine US presidents to join it. According to CNN statistics in 2018, 307 of the 535 US congressmen have received either direct campaign contributions from the NRA and its affiliates or benefited from independent NRA spending like advertising supporting their campaigns. In the face of huge profits, all kinds of gun control efforts have ended up in vain.

◆ The US is not a straight A student when it comes to democracy. Its practice of democracy has been messy and chaotic. On 6 January 2021, thousands of Americans gathered on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. and stormed the Capitol building in a bid to stop the joint session of the Congress from certifying the newly-elected president. The incident interrupted the transfer of US presidential power, leaving five dead and over 140 injured. It is the worst act of violence in Washington, D.C. since 1814 when the British troops set fire to the White House, and it sent shock waves throughout the international community. The US Senate Republican leader described it as a “failed insurrection”.

A scholar from the US Council on Foreign Relations says that the US is not nearly as unique as many Americans believe, and that the Capitol riot should put an end to the notion of American exceptionalism, of an eternal shining city on a hill.

An American expert on international issues wrote in The New York Times that while the US leader has reunited the West, he may not be able to reunite America. Trump and his supporters would be willing to depart from established constitutional rules and norms with his Big Lie. This may undermine the ability of the US government to transfer power peacefully and legitimately. Consequently none of the institutions will work for long, and the people will be thrust into political and financial chaos.

◆ The dysfunctional American-style democracy has triggered a trust crisis. Public commitments to the people come with behind-the-scene deals. Political infighting, money politics, and vetocracy make it virtually impossible for quality governance to be delivered as aspired by the general public. Americans are increasingly disillusioned with the US politics and pessimistic about the American-style democracy.

A Gallup survey in October 2020 shows that only 19 percent of the Americans surveyed are “very confident” about the presidential election, a record low since the survey was first conducted in 2004. According to a poll conducted by The Wall Street Journal in June 2022, six out of 10 Americans feel pessimistic about achieving the American dream.

A Pew Research in 2021 shows that 65 percent of Americans see a need for major reform to the American democracy. People’s confidence in the American democracy dropped in 16 developed countries, and 57 percent of respondents think that the American democracy is no longer a good example to follow.

The Democracy Perception Index released in 2021 by a German polling agency reveals that 44 percent of respondents in the 53 countries surveyed are concerned that the US threatens democracy in their country.

◆ Over the years, despite the structural flaws and problematic practice of its democratic system, the US has been touting the “alliance of democracies” and hyping up the narrative of “democracy versus autocracy”. It is in essence attacking those who hold different views under the banner of democracy, using ideology and values as a tool to suppress others and advance its own geopolitical strategies. This is hegemony in the guise of democracy. A former CIA official openly stated: “We will intervene whenever we decide it’s in our national security interest to intervene. If you don’t like it, lump it.”

The US has pushed for the neo-Monroe Doctrine in Latin America under the pretext of promoting democracy, incited color revolutions in Eurasia, and remotely controlled the Arab Spring in West Asia and North Africa. These moves have brought chaos and disasters to many countries, gravely undermining world peace, stability and development. As suggested by the French website Le Grand Soir, democracy has long become a weapon of massive destruction for the US to attack countries with different views.

◆ Whether a country is democratic or not depends on whether its people are truly the masters of the country. It depends on whether the people have the right to vote, and more importantly, the right to participate; what promises they are given during elections, and more importantly, how many of these promises are delivered after elections; what kind of political procedures and rules are set through state systems and laws, and more importantly, whether these systems and laws are truly enforced; and whether the rules and procedures for the exercise of power are democratic, and more importantly, whether the exercise of power is genuinely subject to public oversight and checks.

◆ The Communist Party of China (CPC) leads the Chinese people in carrying out the whole-process people’s democracy in China. It has not only a complete set of institutions and procedures, but also full-fledged civil participation. A comprehensive, extensive, and well-coordinated system of institutions has been formed to ensure that the people run the country, and diverse, open, and orderly channels for democracy are put into place. This allows the entire people to engage in law-based democratic elections, consultations, decision-making, management, and oversight and to manage state as well as economic, cultural, and social affairs in various ways and forms and in accordance with the law. The whole-process people’s democracy integrates process-oriented democracy with results-oriented democracy, procedural democracy with substantive democracy, direct democracy with indirect democracy, and people’s democracy with the will of the state. It is a model of socialist democracy that covers all aspects of the democratic process and all sectors of society. It is a true democracy that works. China’s whole-process people’s democracy is gaining wider recognition and acclaim from the international community.

A British scholar says that electoral democracy does not breed a close relationship with the people and government, because the people are only called upon to be involved whenever to make elections take place. The Chinese approach is different in that there is a very important consultative component in the way China operates.

◆ Democracy is a concrete phenomenon that is constantly evolving. Rooted in history, culture and tradition, it takes diverse forms and develops along the paths chosen by different peoples based on their exploration and innovation. China stays committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, uphold non-interference in internal affairs, and respect the independent choices of development paths and social systems made by people in different countries. China has no intention to engage in systemic rivalry or ideological confrontation with the US. China never exports ideology, never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs, and never seeks to change the system of the US.

Falsehood 5: The US has profound differences with the CPC and the Chinese Government. But those differences are between governments and systems – not between our people.

Reality check: The CPC’s leadership is the choice of history and of the people. The CPC and the Chinese government enjoy the wholehearted support and endorsement of the Chinese people. The US’s attempt to drive wedges between the CPC and the Chinese people only serves to reveal its animosity against China’s system and path.

◆ The CPC has deep roots among and close ties with the Chinese people. This is what has kept the CPC full of vigor and vitality. By the end of 2021, the CPC had over 95 million members. The CPC is the largest party in the world that has exercised long-term governance in the world’s most populous country. Under the leadership of the CPC, China has created the two miracles of rapid economic development and long-term social stability. Over 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty and 1.4 billion people are moving toward modernization. Over the course of just several decades, China has accomplished what took western developed countries hundreds of years.

A Harvard University survey among the Chinese people spanning 13 years found that more than 90 percent of respondents are satisfied with the Party and their government, the highest rate among countries for years running. A trust and credibility survey released in 2022 by Edelman, a renowned US public relations consultancy firm, shows that as many as 91 percent Chinese citizens trust their government in 2021, the highest among all surveyed countries.

◆ The previous US administration, in a McCarthyism-style campaign, went all out to attack and discredit the CPC. It has attacked Chinese leaders and China’s domestic and foreign policies, sown discord between the CPC and the Chinese people, flagrantly challenged the leadership and governing position of the CPC, incited anti-China and anti-CPC sentiment, and imposed visa restrictions on CPC members and their families.

The current administration, since its inauguration, has made no substantive changes to those policies. In June 2021, the US Senate passed the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, which is more than 2,000 pages long. It regarded China as a strategic competitor and the main challenge to the US, slandered China’s development path and domestic and foreign policies, and malignantly urged actions to counter the “influence and malign activities” of the CPC. It asked for more than 200 billion US dollars of public funding to ensure US advantages in key technology sectors over China, and advocated mobilizing US resources in strategic, diplomatic, economic, and technological realms to engage in comprehensive strategic competition with China. The US Senate also proposed an appropriation of 300 million US dollars for each of the fiscal years 2022 through 2026 to “counter the malign influence” of the CPC and designated the US Department of State and Agency for International Development to train journalists on investigative techniques necessary to ensure public accountability related to the Belt and Road Initiative, including “supporting civil society and independent media”.

The US continues to use the CPC background as a pretext for cracking down on normal people-to-people exchanges and cooperation. For some time, Chinese students and visiting scholars going to the US have been harassed and suppressed by the US. Most of them were asked whether they or their parents are CPC members. Some were repatriated on inconceivable grounds, such as being suspected of military connections simply because they had photos in their mobile phones of military training at college. These stop-and-search activities go far beyond what the US claims as “normal law enforcement”.

◆ The CPC, the Chinese government and the Chinese people share an inseparable bond. The US says it respects the Chinese people, then it should respect the development path and political system chosen by the Chinese people and respect the CPC that represents the fundamental interests of the Chinese people. By targeting the CPC and the Chinese government, the US is in effect targeting the Chinese people. Anything done to separate the CPC, the Chinese government and the Chinese people and pit the Chinese people against the CPC and the Chinese government will surely be met with the unanimous opposition and resolute response of the over 1.4 billion Chinese people.

Falsehood 6: The United States raises human rights issues and calls for change – not to stand against China, but to stand up for peace, security, and human dignity.

Reality Check: The human rights of the Chinese people are guaranteed like never before, with a notable increase in their sense of fulfillment, happiness and security. In contrast, the US has been engaged in grave human rights violations both at home and abroad, and its shocking track record makes it the biggest human rights abuser in the world.

◆ China always puts people’s right to subsistence on top of its agenda, prioritizes the work to enhance their right to development, regards the protection of citizens’ lawful rights and interests as its basic task, has made the safeguarding of the rights of ethnic groups an important part of its work, and considers the protection of people’s safety its long-term goal.

Guided by a people-centered philosophy, since the day when it was founded, the CPC has made seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation its mission. For the past 100 years, the Party has been working tirelessly for the interest of the people, and has dedicated itself to realizing people’s aspirations for a better life. China has been advancing whole-process people’s democracy, promoting legal safeguard for human rights, and upholding social equity and justice. The Chinese people now enjoy fuller and more extensive and comprehensive democratic rights.

◆ China has created the miracle of eliminating absolute poverty. By the end of 2020, China has lifted all 98.99 million rural residents living below the current poverty line out of poverty. In 2021, China completed the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and historically resolved the problem of absolute poverty. Since the launch of reform and opening-up, 770 million impoverished rural residents have shaken off poverty as currently defined. Based on the international poverty line of the World Bank, China accounts for 70 percent of global poverty reduction over the same period. China met the poverty reduction goal of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ten years ahead of schedule, making major contributions to global poverty reduction and human rights progress. China has also put in place the world’s largest education system, the largest social security system and the largest health care system.

◆ Since COVID-19 started, China has been acting on the principle of putting the people and their lives first. Based on China’s national conditions, it has formulated and implemented a dynamic zero-COVID guideline, and has been constantly fine-tuning its response measures in light of the evolving situation, to best protect people’s life and health and at the same time, ensure sustained, sound and steady socioeconomic development with the pandemic under effective control. Both the infection rate and mortality rate of China are the lowest in the world.

◆ As an active participant in global human rights governance, China has made its contribution to and offered its initiatives on world human rights development. In recent years, the concept of “building a community of shared future” has been written into the resolutions of the UN Human Rights Council, and China-sponsored resolutions on “the contribution of development to the enjoyment of all human rights” and on “Promoting Mutually Beneficial Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights” were adopted multiple times at the Human Rights Council. China also made joint statements on behalf of developing countries on the implementation of the right to development, the promotion of human rights by poverty alleviation, equitable distribution of vaccines, among other subjects, contributing its share to safeguarding the basic human rights of developing countries, which has won it wide recognition and support from the international community.

◆ China has been an advocate and a doer in advancing the international human rights cause. A World Bank study estimates, if implemented fully, the Belt and Road Initiative could lift 32 million people out of moderate poverty — those who live on less than $3.2 a day. It shows how participating in Belt and Road cooperation can advance human rights in more countries. In the face of the pandemic, China launched its largest global humanitarian operation since the founding of the People’s Republic, and championed the building of a global community of health for all. To address the global development deficit, China proposed the Global Development Initiative (GDI) which sees improving people’s welfare and achieving well-rounded human development as the fundamental purpose and goal. The GDI has been echoed and supported by more than 100 countries and many international organizations including the UN. The Initiative galvanizes extensive international consensus for accelerated implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and builds up international synergy for coordinated development, thus providing a strong underpinning for the advancement of the international human rights cause.

◆ The right to life is of utmost importance, as survival is the basis of all human rights. Endowed with the world’s most advanced medical equipment and technologies, the US has registered the world’s largest number of COVID-19 infections and deaths. Pandemic response has been extremely politicized, and become a tool and lever to attack, undercut and oppose each other between the Republicans and the Democrats. Politicians only focus on political gains, with no regard to the life and health of the ordinary people. Its pandemic control, which has been unscientific, unequal and irresponsible, has gravely undermined American people’s right to life and health.

So far, the COVID-19 death toll in the US has surpassed one million. The deaths are, according to The Atlantic, “unexpected, untimely, particularly painful, and, in many cases, preventable”. Some politician even suggested that old people may sacrifice themselves for the country and that saving the country’s economy is more important than old people’s lives. Data of the US Center for Disease Prevention and Control shows that most COVID victims are aged 65 years and above. USC and Princeton researchers project that due to the pandemic deaths last year, life expectancy at birth for Americans will shorten by 1.13 years, the sharpest decline since World War II. “For Blacks, the life expectancy would shorten by 2.10 years, and for Latinos, by 3.05 years. Whites are also impacted, but their projected decline is much smaller – 0.68 years.”

The Washington Post points to a far greater number behind the one million death toll: That number is 9 million – the number of Americans who have lost spouses, parents, grandparents, siblings and children to COVID. A study by the Imperial College London estimates that more than 250,000 US children had lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19 by 23 May 2020. Figures released by the US Government Accountability Office in March 2022 show that up to 23 million people in the US may have developed “long COVID”, and an estimated one million people suffering from the symptoms may be pushed out of work.

The US is the country most rampant with gun violence. Its population, totaling 333 million or 4 percent of the world’s total, own more than 400 million guns or 46 percent of all the private guns in the world. It tops the world in terms of gun ownership, and shooting incidents every now and then in the US takes away more than 110 lives on a daily average. Many people say it is easier to buy a gun than baby formula in the US.

Data of the US website Gun Violence Archive show about 45,000 Americans are killed in gun violence incidents in 2021. On 24 May 2022, the Robb elementary school shooting in Texas claimed 21 lives, including 19 children. By US media counts, it is the 39th campus shooting this year. According to The Washington Post tally, 202 mass shootings took place in the US in the first five and half months this year. For decades, no substantive measures have been taken by the US government to address such problems. In the past 25 years, the US federal government fails to introduce any gun control act. The New York Times observed, “The United States has become ungovernable not because of political differences or protest or a lack of civility, but because this is a country unwilling to protect and care for its citizens – its women, its racial minorities and especially its children.”

Despite the claim by US founding fathers that “All men are created equal”, slavery was preserved in its Constitution of 1789. Although the US has abolished segregation on the surface, white supremacy continues to wreak havoc, and systemic discrimination against racial minorities still exists even to this day. The entrenched racism, compounded by the coronavirus, has fueled a new spike of hate crimes against Asian-Americans. At the same time, racial persecution of the indigenous people persists, discrimination against the Muslim community worsens, racial economic divide yawns, and racial inequality aggravates day by day. Nearly 60 years on since Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, people still see a brutal reality as reflected in George Floyd’s “I can’t breathe” plea.

◆ Through slaughter, expulsion, sterilization and forced assimilation, the US committed a genocide against Native Americans, resulting in a sharp drop in their population from five million in 1492 to 250,000 in the early 20th century. The Native American community has long been neglected and discriminated against. The indigenous culture was fundamentally crushed, and the inter-generational inheritance of indigenous lives and spirits was under severe threats. Many US government statistical programs either leave them out completely or simply classify them as “others”.

Shannon Keller O’Loughlin, Chief Executive and Attorney of the Association on American Indian Affairs, said that Native Americans have diverse cultures and languages, but are often seen not as an ethnic group, but as a political stratum with limited autonomy based on treaties with the federal government. The Atlantic commented that from the expulsion, slaughter and forced assimilation back in history to the current widespread poverty and neglect, the American Indians, once the owner of this continent, now have a very weak voice in American society.

The US government enforced the system of boarding schools in Native American areas to impose English and Christian education on Native American children. It also enacted laws prohibiting Native Americans from performing religious rituals which have been passed down through generations. An article titled “The United States Must Reckon With Its Own Genocides” carried by Foreign Policy website on 11 October 2021 noted that over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, there were more than 350 government funded indigenous boarding schools across the US. Hundreds of thousands of indigenous children passed through, or died in, these schools. The purpose of Indian boarding schools was to culturally assimilate indigenous children by forcibly relocating them from their families and communities to distant residential facilities where their American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian identities, languages, and beliefs were to be forcibly suppressed. The US was not just morally, but also legally responsible for the crime of genocide against its own people.

Native American writer Rebecca Nagle believes that information about Native Americans has been systematically removed from mainstream media and popular culture. According to a report by National Indian Education Association, 87 percent of state-level US history textbooks do not mention the post-1900 history of indigenous people. According to the Smithsonian Institution, things taught about Native Americans in American schools are full of inaccurate information and fail to present the real picture of the sufferings of indigenous people. Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator, said publicly at the Young America’s Foundation that “We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here … but candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

◆ Islamphobia and the discrimination against and suppression of Muslims and Islam in US mainstream society has become more pronounced. A Bloomberg report on 9 September 2021 observed that discrimination against Muslims in the US increased in the two decades after 9/11. On the same day, the Associated Press cited a survey which found that 53 percent of Americans have negative views toward Islam. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in its 2021 report that it receives an increasing number of complaints each year about bullying and hate speech against Muslims.

According to the survey findings released by the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley on 29 October 2021, 67.5 percent of Muslim respondents said they had experienced Islamophobia, and an even larger percent of those surveyed, 93.7 percent, said that anti-Muslim hatred had affected their mental or emotional well-being to some degree.

◆ The US has serious problems of human trafficking and forced labor. It still has not ratified the Forced Labour Convention (1930), the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Every year, nearly 100,000 people are smuggled into the US for forced labor. Today, there are at least half a million people enslaved in the US; roughly 240,000 to 325,000 women and children are victims of sexual slavery.

◆ Immigrants and refugees have become a tool of partisan feuding and political rivalry in the US. The government changes its rules and regulations capriciously, enforces laws violently, and immigrants have been subjected to inhuman treatment such as prolonged detention, torture and forced labor. Data released by US Border Patrol shows that in fiscal year 2021, as many as 557 migrants died on the southern border of the US, more than double the previous fiscal year, hitting the highest number since records began in 1998. That same year, the US detained more than 1.7 million immigrants at the southern border, including 45,000 children. In September 2021, more than 15,000 asylum seekers from Haiti crowded under a bridge in the Texas border town of Del Rio, sleeping in squalid tents or dirt in the sweltering heat, and surrounded by trash under dire living conditions. US border patrol authorities brutalized the asylum seekers, with patrols on horseback, brandishing horsewhips and charging toward the crowds to expel them into the river. CNN commented that this scene is reminiscent of the dark era in American history when slave patrols were used to control black slaves.

◆ Turning a blind eye to the systematic violation of the human rights of its own people, the US government has wilfully attacked other countries and interfered in their internal affairs in the name of human rights, challenging right with might and trampling on justice out of selfish interest.

Since 2001, the US has waged war or conducted military operations in about 80 countries in the name of “war on terror”, resulting in the deaths of more than 900,000 people, including 300,000 civilians. The 20-year-long war waged by the US has left Afghanistan devastated and impoverished. A total of 47,245 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers unrelated to 9/11 have been killed and more than 10 million displaced as a result of US operations. The War in Afghanistan has destroyed the foundation of economic development and impoverished the Afghan people. When the US withdrew from Afghanistan, it immediately froze billions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves at the Afghan central bank, pushing the Afghan economy to the brink of collapse and making things worse for the Afghan people.

At the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, many countries denounced the US as “the biggest destroyer of human rights in the world” and urged it to address its own gross human rights problems.

◆ The US has been an expert in arbitrary detention and torture. Under the pretext of “war on terror”, the CIA has set up black sites in at least 54 countries and regions over the years, where more than 100,000 people are detained. A group of independent human rights experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council said in a statement released on 10 January 2022 that the US has arbitrarily detained people without trial and subjected them to torture or ill-treatment in Guantanamo Bay for 20 years in violation of international human rights law, calling this “a stain on the US Government’s commitment to the rule of law”. The US should face up to and resolve its own systemic and chronic human rights problems, reflect on the humanitarian disasters and crimes it has caused around the world, and give a responsible account of itself to the international community.

Falsehood 7: The US remains committed to its “one China” policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiques, the Six Assurances. Its policy on Taiwan has not changed. 

Reality Check: The one-China principle is an established norm of international relations and a universal consensus of the international community. The US has acted faithlessly, kept regressing from its own commitments and the consensus it reached with China, and attempted to weaken and undermine the one-China principle and use Taiwan to contain China. This is a major threat to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

◆ In October 1971, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted, with an overwhelming majority, Resolution 2758, which decided to restore the lawful seat of the People’s Republic of China in the UN, and has solved once and for all the issue of China’s representation in the UN in political, legal and procedural terms. The official legal opinions of the Office of Legal Affairs of the UN Secretariat pointed out explicitly that “the United Nations considers ‘Taiwan’ as a province of China with no separate status”, the “‘authorities’ in ‘Taipei’ are not considered to … enjoy any form of governmental status”, and “Reference to ‘Taiwan’ … should read ‘Taiwan, Province of China’”.

On the basis of the one-China principle, China has established diplomatic relations with 181 countries, including the US.

◆ The US made the following commitments to China regarding the one-China principle in the three China-US joint communiqués.

In the Shanghai Communiqué released in 1972, the US explicitly stated that “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position”.

In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations released in 1978, the US clearly stated that “The United States of America recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China”; “The Government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China”.

In the August 17 Communiqué released in 1982, the US unequivocally stated that “In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations on January 1, 1979, issued by the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the United States of America, the United States of America recognized the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China, and it acknowledged the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China”, and that “it has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity, or interfering in China’s internal affairs, or pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan’”.

According to this Communiqué, “the United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution. In so stating, the United States acknowledges China’s consistent position regarding the thorough settlement of this issue”.

◆ Rather than faithfully abiding by its commitments on Taiwan, the US has kept backpedaling on history.

On the political front, the US has added the so-called “Taiwan Relations Act” and the “Six Assurances” to the expression of its one-China policy, with a growing list of such prefixes. Both prefixes are unilaterally made by the US side in breach of its commitments in the three China-US joint communiqués as well as the one-China principle affirmed in the UNGA Resolution 2758 and widely observed by the international community. They are illegal, null and void from the very beginning, and China has never acknowledged and has firmly rejected them from the outset. The US has also violated its commitment of maintaining unofficial relations only with Taiwan and kept upgrading the level of engagement. In recent years, senior US officials including the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Under Secretary of State as well as members of Congress have visited Taiwan. US ambassadors overseas have also met with Taiwan’s so-called “representatives” in their host countries.

In the military field, the US has reneged on its commitment “that it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution”. Instead of ceasing the arms sales, it has sold weapons at a larger scale and with enhanced capability including assault weaponries such as anti-radiation missiles, heavy weight torpedoes, and F-16V fighter jets. To date, the total volume of US arms sales to Taiwan has exceeded 70 billion US dollars. According to reports by Reuters and other new agencies, US special operations forces have been rotating into Taiwan on a temporary basis to train with Taiwanese forces.

Since 2021, the US leader has stated publicly on three occasions that the US would help defend Taiwan in case of a war in the Taiwan Strait.

On the international stage, the US has been assisting Taiwan in expanding its so-called “international space”. Recently, the US has been spreading globally the fallacy that UNGA Resolution 2758 did not determine the status of Taiwan, and that each country should be able to determine the contours of its own “one China” policy. It has vigorously advocated support for Taiwan’s participation as an observer in the 75th session of the World Health Assembly, and even blatantly helped to consolidate Taiwan’s “diplomatic relations”.

◆ These US acts have breached its commitment that “it has no intention of … pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan’”. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2022, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said, “my understanding of the agreement (China and the US reached upon the establishment of diplomatic relations) has been that the United States would uphold the principle of one China … it is essential that these principles be maintained, and the United States should not by subterfuge or a gradual process, develop something of a two-China solution”.

◆ The DPP authorities have been stubbornly advancing its “Taiwan independence” separatist agenda, and the US has been encouraging and supporting “Taiwan independence” forces overtly and covertly. This is the root cause of current tensions across the Taiwan Strait. To defend peace across the Taiwan Strait and beyond, we must forestall the growing tendency of “Taiwan independence” and the collusion between the US and Taiwan. The one-China principle must not be challenged. China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must not be infringed upon. And the red line that no one should pursue a policy of “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan” must not be crossed. China is fully confident, capable and prepared to resolutely curb “Taiwan independence” separatist activities, resolutely foil all external interferences, and firmly safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The US should abide by the provisions in the three China-US joint communiqués, follow a true one-China policy, and act on its commitments including on not supporting “Taiwan independence”. The US needs to genuinely reflect on and redress its regressive and erroneous behavior, and stop playing with fire on the Taiwan question. Otherwise, it would gravely jeopardize peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, undermine China-US relations and incur an unbearable cost on itself.

Falsehood 8: The United States stands with countries and people around the world against the genocide and crimes against humanity happening in the Xinjiang region, where more than a million people have been placed in detention camps because of their ethnic and religious identity.

Reality Check: The human rights of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are fully protected. There is no “genocide” or “crimes against humanity” in Xinjiang. The US has been spreading disinformation about Xinjiang simply to create an excuse for discrediting and attacking China.

◆ Xinjiang-related issues are not about human rights, but about fighting violence, terrorism and separatism. According to figures available, between 1990 and the end of 2016, there were several thousand incidents of violent and terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, killing large numbers of innocent people and hundreds of police officers, and causing immeasurable property damage.

In response to such real threats, Xinjiang has acted resolutely to fight terrorism and extremism in accordance with law. At the same time, a series of supporting measures have been taken, like improving people’s livelihoods, raising public awareness about law, and offering help through vocational education and training centers. The trend of frequent terrorist activities has thus been effectively curbed. There has been no violent act of terrorism in Xinjiang for five consecutive years and more. The region has enjoyed security, social stability and good development. The safety and security of people of all ethnic groups have been effectively protected.

◆ “Genocide” in Xinjiang is a complete “lie of the century”. Over the past 60 years and more, the Uyghur population has increased from 2.2 million to about 12 million, and their average life expectancy has grown from 30 to 75 years.

With stability prevailing in Xinjiang, local people live and work in peace and happiness. The region has made unprecedented progress in delivering economic and social development and in bettering people’s lives. Between 2014 and 2019, GDP in Xinjiang rose from 919.59 billion yuan to 1.36 trillion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 7.2 percent, while per capita disposable income grew by an average annual rate of 9.1 percent. Remarkable achievements have been made in eliminating extreme poverty. All 3.09 million impoverished people by current standards have been lifted out of poverty, making absolute poverty a thing of the past in Xinjiang.

The lawful rights and interests of the people of all ethnicities in Xinjiang have been protected effectively. All ethnic groups, regardless of their populations, have equal legal status and enjoy freedom of religious belief and various rights in accordance with law, including participating in the management of state affairs, receiving education, using their own languages, and preserving their traditional culture.

◆ In July 2019, permanent representatives of more than 50 countries in Geneva sent a joint letter to the President of the UN Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, praising China’s achievements in fighting terrorism, deradicalization and human rights protection. In October 2019, more than 60 countries spoke at the Third Committee of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, commending the tremendous human rights advancement in Xinjiang. In June 2021, more than 90 countries made joint or separate statements at the Human Rights Council in support of China. In the meantime, Canada took the lead in attacking China on issues related to Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet. Just a little over 40 countries echoed Canada’s criticism, and none of them are from the Muslim world.

◆ In recent years, over 2,000 people from more than 100 countries, including experts, scholars, journalists, diplomats and religious figures, have visited Xinjiang, witnessing the unity, harmony and happiness of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

◆ The so-called “genocide” in Xinjiang is a lie cooked up by anti-China forces represented by the anti-China German scholar Adrian Zenz. He is a member of the far-right group “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation” sponsored by the US government, and a key figure in an anti-China organization set up by US intelligence agencies. He is also a racist. His “research” is full of inconsistencies, fabrications and data manipulation. It does not have any academic credibility and cannot be cleared for academic publication. For example, a chart in Zenz’s “paper” claims that new IUD placements in Xinjiang average between 800 and 1,400 per person each year, which means each woman in the region would have to undergo four to eight such insertion surgeries every day. This is totally against common sense.

◆ On 29 June 2020, the Jamestown Foundation of the US published a “research report” by Adrian Zenz, in which he falsely accused the Chinese government of committing “genocide” against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

Upon the release of the report, US politicians including then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, Senator Marco Rubio and House Representative Jim McGovern immediately pitched in to whip up the “genocide” accusation. Rubio, McGovern, Senator John Cornyn and Senator Robert Menendez went on to urge the administration to make a genocide determination of China’s policy on Xinjiang. Contradicting the conclusion reached by lawyers at the State Department Office of the Legal Adviser, Pompeo announced that “I have determined that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, targeting Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups” on 19 January 2021, the last day of the previous administration. The current administration has followed the same position and continued to allege “genocide” in Xinjiang. This further exposes the US’s real intention of political manipulation in the name of human rights.

◆ The World Uyghur Congress, an anti-China separatist organization, hired people like Sayragul Sauytbay and Tursunay Ziawudun to make false statements and spread all kinds of lies about “persecution”. In the 70-plus press conferences held so far by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, falsehoods spread by anti-China forces have been debunked with solid facts. For instance, some “performers” who claimed to be the victims of forced sterilization in vocational education and training centers have never been to one. The family members or friends reported by some “performers” as missing are actually living a normal life in Xinjiang.

◆ The false claim about “millions of Uyghurs detained” in education and training centers was initiated and spread by “Chinese Human Rights Defenders”, an NGO supported by the US government. Based on interviews with eight Uyghurs and rough estimation, the organization came to the preposterous conclusion that at least 10 percent of the 20 million people in Xinjiang are detained in “reeducation camps”.

The education and training centers in Xinjiang are no different in nature from deradicalization centers or community correction and desistance and disengagement programs in many other countries. It has been proven to be a successful exploration in preventative counter-terrorism and deradicalization, consistent with the principle and spirit of counter-terrorism resolutions including the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and the UN Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism. At the centers, trainees acquire greater proficiency in standard spoken and written Chinese language and employability, and gain a stronger sense of national identity, citizenship and rule of law. By October 2019, all trainees had graduated from the centers. Most of them have steady employment after finding jobs by themselves or with the help of the government, or starting up their own businesses.

◆ The US and some other Western countries have been making an issue of human rights in Xinjiang in total disregard of the basic reality of human rights protection and development there. It has become a means for them to achieve their strategic objective of using Xinjiang as a pretext to contain China. Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army Colonel and chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said publicly in August 2018 that one of the three-fold purpose of the US military’s presence in Afghanistan is the containment of China — “If the CIA would want to destabilize China, that would be the best way to do it – to form an unrest, and join with those Uyghurs in pushing … Beijing from internal places rather than external”.

Falsehood 9: The CPC has imposed harsh anti-democratic measures in Hong Kong under the guise of national security. Beijing’s quashing of freedom in Hong Kong violates its handover commitments, enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. 

Reality Check: By attacking and smearing the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), what the US is really up to is to meddle in Hong Kong affairs and make Hong Kong a “bridgehead” for infiltration and interference against the mainland. Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong. Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs that brook no interference from the US.

◆ For a long time, the US has colluded with the anti-China, destabilizing forces in Hong Kong, interfered in Hong Kong’s political agenda, stoked up social tensions, and even directly intervened in Hong Kong affairs. The US Consul-General in Hong Kong publicly criticized the Hong Kong SAR government for the proposed legislative amendments in 2019 and the One Country, Two Systems. Officials from the US Consulate-General in Hong Kong also met with the so-called leaders of the rioters. The rioters openly admitted that they had discussed with the US the legislative process of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 and urged the US to stop exporting tear gas and rubber bullets to the Hong Kong police.

◆ Funded and incited by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other US government’s “white gloves”, anti-China rioters in Hong Kong committed vandalizing, looting and arson in the name of the so-called fight for “democracy” and “freedom”, and violently stormed the building of the Legislative Council (LegCo) of Hong Kong. NED even appeared publicly on the street to direct relevant activities, attempting to stage a “color revolution” in Hong Kong. NED contacted opposition parties, groups and organizations in Hong Kong through its affiliating National Democratic Institute for International Affairs or the National Democratic Institute (NDI). NDI funded the “1 July marches” orchestrated by the opposition to obstruct legislation on Article 23, funded the participation of opposition parties and groups at workshops and seminars, and provided personal counseling on campaigning skills for their leaders, ran a so-called “young political leaders program” to support emerging political groups in confronting the government, plotted, together with opposition members of LegCo, a “five-district referendum”, and directed and funded the opposition and young radicals in orchestrating the illegal “Occupy Central” movement.

According to the NED website, two million US dollars were spent on 11 Hong Kong-related projects in 2020, with a particular focus on disrupting LegCo elections. Key projects include: “Strengthening Citizen Election Observation”, which offered technical and financial assistance to newly formed destabilizing groups in Hong Kong, and encouraged them to obstruct LegCo elections by means of election monitoring, get-out-the-vote methods, etc.; “Amplifying Citizens’ Perspectives on Political Participation”, which collected and disseminated survey findings on democratic development, and induced young Hong Kongers to share their political participation experiences on the Internet; “Supporting Unity Among Student Activists”, which called for better coordination among Hong Kong student groups prior to LegCo elections, and instructed and trained them to build capacity for “democratic change” and international communication and to play a role in disrupting electoral order; and “Building Regional Solidarity and Empowering the Hong Kong Movement”, which sought to strengthen Hong Kong’s “democratic movement” through network building, cultivate next-generation “leading activists” in Hong Kong, and set up a network of “democratic movement” in Asia.

◆ US officials used “violence” and “shame” to describe the storming of the Capitol building by protesters, but labeled the violent, criminal activities in Hong Kong that assaulted residents and damaged public facilities as “a beautiful sight to behold”. The US police used armored vehicles to disperse demonstrators, abused their force to beat and drive away sit-in demonstrators, and arrested demonstrators after deliberately inducing them to walk on vehicle lanes which constitutes violation of the law, while discrediting the Hong Kong SAR government’s law-based actions to protect people’s rights and the public order as “violation” of human rights. This is another display of US-style hypocritical double standards and exposes its intention to undermine prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and contain China under the pretext of human rights and democracy.

◆ During the 150-plus years of British colonial rule, there was no democracy in Hong Kong whatsoever. None of the governors was democratically elected by Hong Kong residents. For most of the time, Legco members were directly appointed by the governor. In stark contrast, after the return of Hong Kong, pursuant to the Basic Law, Hong Kong has come to enjoy the executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication. Its residents are masters of the SAR as provided by law who manage their own affairs within the scope of the high degree of autonomy. They enjoy a wide range of democratic rights and freedoms like never before. This is a fact that every fair-minded person would recognize.

◆ The purpose of enacting the National Security Law in Hong Kong is to close the legal loopholes in safeguarding national security in the SAR. It is a legitimate and necessary move to respond to violent terrorist activities and illegal external interference in Hong Kong. Constitutions of more than 100 countries have stipulations that the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms shall not endanger national security. According to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the rights to freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and public trial may be subject to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety and order. The European Convention on Human Rights has similar provisions.

The national security law specifically targets four categories of crimes: secession, subversion, terrorist activities, and collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security. It seeks to punish a tiny number of criminals who seriously endanger national security and protect the vast majority of law-abiding Hong Kong citizens. It provides better protection for the rights and freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents and the high degree of autonomy of Hong Kong enshrined in law. It creates the conditions needed for addressing the deep-seated problems in the economy and concerning people’s livelihood. It also helps maintain the rule of law and business environment in Hong Kong, ease the concerns of the business community about social disorder, and offer better conditions for people from around the world who want to work, invest and live in Hong Kong.

Over the past two years or so since the National Security Law was enacted, the rule of law in Hong Kong has been strengthened and better guaranteed. Hong Kong’s rule of law index continues to stay among the top in the world. Foreign investors have stronger confidence in the city. Hong Kong is seeing a bright prospect transitioning from chaos to order and to prosperity. According to the 2022 AmCham Hong Kong Business Sentiment Survey released early this year, the number of businesses in Hong Kong optimistic about Hong Kong’s business outlook increased by 18 percent from the previous year, while the number of businesses that are pessimistic was down by 17 percent.

◆ The legal basis for the Chinese government to govern Hong Kong is the Chinese Constitution and the Basic Law of the HKSAR. The Sino-British Joint Declaration is not relevant in this regard. As China resumed the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, all provisions concerning the UK under the Joint Declaration had been fulfilled. The basic policies regarding Hong Kong stated by China in the Joint Declaration are China’s declaration of its policies, which have since been fully embodied in the Basic Law enacted by the National People’s Congress. These policies have not changed; they will continue to be upheld by China. The Joint Declaration does not assign the UK any responsibility over Hong Kong nor give it any right to intervene in Hong Kong affairs after the return of Hong Kong. The UK has no sovereignty, jurisdiction or “right of supervision” over Hong Kong after its return. The Joint Declaration is a bilateral instrument between China and the UK; it does not involve any other country or has anything to do with a third country. Sovereign equality and non-interference are enshrined in international law and are basic norms of international relations. Other countries and organizations have no right to meddle in Hong Kong affairs on the grounds of the Joint Declaration.

The Central Government of China has unswervingly implemented the policy of One Country, Two Systems. Since Hong Kong’s return, the policy of One Country, Two Systems under which the people of Hong Kong administer Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy has been earnestly implemented with widely recognized achievements. Practice has fully proven that One Country, Two Systems is the best institutional arrangement for Hong Kong’s long-term prosperity and stability. The Central Government will continue to ensure that the policy of One Country, Two Systems remains unchanged, is unwaveringly upheld, and in practice is not bent or distorted.

◆ Turning a blind eye to the fact that Hong Kong’s democracy has improved in ways unseen before its return, the US has acted against Hong Kong’s mainstream public opinion for unity and progress and made irresponsible remarks on Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, human rights and freedom as the “preacher” of democracy. This only exposes its hypocritical double standards and the agenda to destabilize Hong Kong and contain China.

Falsehood 10: China purports to champion sovereignty and territorial integrity while standing with and defending the Russian government that brazenly violate them.

Reality Check: On the Ukraine issue, China has always adhered to an objective and just position, a position shared by most countries. The Cold War mentality and power politics is the root cause of the Ukraine crisis. The US should earnestly shoulder its due responsibilities and take concrete actions to ease the situation and solve the problems.

◆ The US has betrayed its own promises and kept pushing for the eastward expansion of NATO,creating the Ukraine crisis.

When meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, the then US Secretary of State James Baker gave clear assurances that “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east”. However, the US has led five rounds of NATO eastward expansion since 1999, increasing its membership from 16 to 30, and advancing NATO more than 1,000 kilometers eastward to the Russian border, forming a C-shaped encirclement of the Black Sea.

In 1997, former US diplomat and observer on the Soviet Union George Kennan wrote in his New York Times Op-Ed that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”

In 2014, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in the Washington Post that if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it should not join NATO, and that it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.

At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022 in Davos, Kissinger said that Ukraine should have been a bridge between Europe and Russia, but that opportunity does not now exist in the same manner. Russia has been for 400 years an essential part of Europe, and on a number of occasions as the guarantor by which the European balance could be re-established. Current policy should keep in mind the restoration of this role is important to develop.

An American expert on international affairs points out in an article that the US government should bear considerable responsibility for the deterioration of relations with Russia caused by its major mistake of greenlighting the NATO expansion. Noting that “America and NATO aren’t innocent bystanders”, he also believed that it is “the height of folly” for some US officials to brag in public about leaks or even intelligence sharing between the US and Ukraine. He warned that such instigation on the US side could dangerously widen the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

According to Clare Daly, Member of the European Parliament, the US has been adding fuel to the fire on Ukraine because they want to weaken Russia and benefit from the crisis, for which Europe will pay a heavy price. These is still no hope of peace in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, mainly because the US does not want Russia and Ukraine to reach a peace agreement.

Former US Senator Bill Bradley said that “the fundamental blunder that the United States made in the late 80s, early 90s was the expansion of NATO”.

Former US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said in an interview if Joe Biden simply promised not to include Ukraine into NATO, the war would have been prevented.

Over the years, the US has pursued interventionism and grossly violated the sovereignty of Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Syria and other countries. Alfred de Zayas, a senior UN expert, said in an exclusive interview that from the perspective of international law, Russia’s military actions in Ukraine violated the UN Charter, but the United States and NATO have broken international law so often over the years that “precedents of permissibility” have therefore been set for Russia’s current actions in terms of customary international law.

◆ The US has been fanning the flames on the Ukraine issue. Instead of promoting peace talks, the US continued to provide weapons to Ukraine, escalating tensions and expanding the conflict, making it more prolonged and complicated. This has sufficiently exposed the selfish nature of the US.

On 25 April 2022, US Defense Secretary Austin said after a visit to Ukraine that the US wants to use the war to “see Russia weakened”.

In late May 2022, on top of the original 13.6 billion dollars aid, the US Congress voted to approve another over 40 billion dollars in military and economic aid to Ukraine. The total assistance has exceeded 70 percent of the combined military expenditure of Russia and Ukraine in 2021.

The ongoing crisis has cost Europe heavily in political, economic and social aspects, but the US is reaping dividends, with its arms dealers, food and energy companies gaining huge profits. For example, the market value of US military industrial giants has surged by hundreds of billions, and the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exported to Europe is more than 10 times higher than a year ago.

As the result of the conflict, more than 6.5 million Ukrainians have fled into neighboring European countries, posing an unprecedented refugee crisis. But the US admitted only 12 refugees from Ukraine in March 2022. Thousands of Ukrainian refugees remain stranded on the US-Mexico border, and many were in US custody. Even when the UN and the international community are calling for an early end to the conflict, some in the US are still claiming that they would “fight to the last Ukrainian”.

◆ The relationship between China and Russia features non-alliance, non-confrontation and non-targeting at any third party. It is essentially different from the practice of the US and a small number of other Western countries, where they still stick to the Cold War mentality and a friend-or-foe dichotomy to draw ideological lines, form so-called “alliances” and “cliques”, pursue bloc politics and create confrontation and division.

In the joint statement issued on 4 February 2022, China and Russia call on all to champion humanity’s common values of peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, respect the rights of all peoples to independently determine the development paths of their countries, and the sovereignty, security and development interests of all countries, protect the UN-centered international system, and the international order based on international law, seek true multilateralism with the UN and its Security Council playing a central and coordinating role, promote more democratic international relations, and ensure peace, stability and sustainable development across the world.

◆ As a responsible major country, China’s decisions and judgments on the Ukraine issue are made independently based on the merits of the matter. China has made great efforts to safeguard international peace and security, and has been committed to promoting talks for peace and deescalating tensions. China maintains that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected, that the purposes and principles of the UN Charter should be upheld, that legitimate security concerns of all countries should be taken seriously, and that all efforts conducive to a peaceful resolution of the crisis should be supported. China’s position is objective, fair and consistent with the aspirations of most countries.

◆ Of the 233 sovereign countries and regions in the world, 185 are not involved in sanctions on Russia. Among the more than 190 members of the UN, more than 140 countries, including NATO member state Turkey, have refused to impose sanctions on Russia. The combined population of countries and regions participating in sanctions against Russia and those not is 6.5 billion versus 1.1 billion. Among them, those openly oppose sanctions have a combined population of 4.8 billion.

About two-thirds of the world’s population does not support Western positions on Ukraine, according to a report by the British Economist magazine.

Falsehood 11: The US is setting up new coalitions in the Indo-Pacific for regional peace and stability, and has launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), as it “shares the vision that the regional countries and people across the region hold: one of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Reality Check: The so-called US vision of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” is essentially a strategy to divide others, incite confrontation and undermine peace. It runs counter to the trend of the times in the Asia-Pacific, i.e., the trend of peaceful development and win-win cooperation.

◆ The US administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy is self-contradictory: the US claims to promote the region’s “freedom and openness” as its goal, while in reality co-opting with allies to forge a “five-four-three-two-one” formation made up of the Five Eyes, the Quad, AUKUS, bilateral alliances and IPEF, forming exclusive “small circles” and forcing countries in the region to take sides.

AUKUS helps Australia build nuclear-powered submarines and develops hypersonic weapons, pushing up the risk for a regional arms race. Under the pretext of fighting illegal fishing and keeping supply chains resilient, the Quad has vigorously pursued military cooperation and intelligence sharing. The US has also encouraged NATO’s involvement in the Asia-Pacific. These are all attempts to materialize an “Asia-Pacific version of NATO” and promote “integrated deterrence” against China.

◆ The Indo-Pacific strategy has raised increasing alarm and concern of many countries, especially those in the Asia-Pacific. As BBC reported, in April 2021, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta expressed New Zealand’s discomfort with expanding the Five Eyes’ remit by putting pressure on China in this way, and New Zealand still prefers to pursue bilateral relations with China. At the US-ASEAN Special Summit, ASEAN countries stressed their aspiration for peace and cooperation, not for taking sides, division or confrontation.

◆ The US has made clear that IPEF is to enable it to win the contest in the 21st century. This means that the IPEF is designed to serve the US economy. The US has shelved the development of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) for a long time, left the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and refused to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). This exposes the self-serving nature of the US and its selective approach to international institutions. It is all about the US’ self-interests, nothing mutually beneficial.

IPEF is a political instrument of the US in propping up its hegemony in the regional economy. The essence is to dominate the supply chains, value chains and new economic sectors, and marginalize specific countries. The US has chosen to weaponize economic issues as political and ideological ones, using economy to coerce regional countries into taking sides between China and the US.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai publicly stated that IPEF is a standalone arrangement independent from China. US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said IPEF marks the US’s restoration of economic leadership in the region and presents Indo-Pacific countries an alternative to China’s approach. Previously, she also expressed that IPEF may harmonize export controls and other “poison pills”, such as limiting sensitive products export to China.

IPEF seeks to establish US-led trade rules, restructure the industrial chain system and economically and scientifically “decouple” regional countries from China. Many countries in the region get concerned, and believe that the cost of such “decoupling” will be huge. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad noted that any trade alliance that excludes the world’s second largest economy is not conducive to closer, multilateral trade cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. The US’s exclusion of China is not an economic issue but a political one.

◆ Hailed as “menu approach” cooperation, IPEF actually pays little regard to the development level and real needs of the regional countries. It barely gives concessions to developing countries on tariff reduction and market access, but forces participating countries to accept the so-called high standards of the US and its unilateral agenda. IPEF focuses solely on the US’s self-interests and cares little about the needs of other parties. There is no such thing as mutual benefit in IPEF.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) pointed out in its report “Regional Perspectives on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” that IPEF has little more to offer than enlarging the US economic presence in the region. It fails to address the issues of the greater interests of regional countries. There is widespread concern that IPEF will only benefit the US, while saddling participating regional countries with a heavy burden.

Falsehood 12: China has announced its ambition to create a sphere of influence in the Pacific region. It is advancing unlawful maritime claims in the South China Sea, undermining peace and security, freedom of navigation and commerce. The US will continue to oppose Beijing’s aggressive and unlawful activities in the South and East China Seas. It will support the region’s coastal states in upholding their maritime rights, work with allies and partners to uphold freedom of navigation and overflight, and will continue to fly and sail wherever international law allows.

Reality Check: China is committed to the path of peaceful development, the five principles of peaceful coexistence and opposes the practice of the big and strong bullying the small and weak. The US, by painting China as a threat and using “freedom of navigation” as a pretext to undermine China’s sovereignty, security and maritime rights and interests, is actually the real threat to regional peace and security.

◆ China stands for equality among all countries irrespective of their size, respects every country’s choice of development path suited to its national condition, and does not seek any sphere of influence. China pursues a defense policy that is defensive in nature and a military strategy of active defense. In developing its defense capabilities, China aims to safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests, and does not target any other country. The growth of China’s defense capabilities amplifies the force for peace in the world.

◆ China is the first to have discovered, named, and explored and exploited Nanhai Zhudao and relevant waters, and the first to have exercised sovereignty and jurisdiction over them continuously, peacefully and effectively. China’s sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao and its relevant rights and interests in the South China Sea have been established in the long course of history. They are solidly grounded in history and law, and have been upheld by successive Chinese governments and recognized by the international community. Pursuant to the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation, China recovered territories illegally occupied by Japan including Xisha Qundao and Nansha Qundao after WWII, and has since affirmed sovereignty and strengthened jurisdiction by establishing official names, publishing maps, creating administrative units and stationing troops. China’s resuming its exercise of sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao is a legitimate and lawful act to inherit China’s rights established over the course of history. It is also part of the post-WWII international order, and has been recognized by countries around the world including the US.

◆ With the joint efforts of China and ASEAN countries, the overall situation in the South China Sea remains stable. With the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), the parties have increased dialogue, properly handled differences, deepened cooperation and enhanced mutual trust, and have made active progress in advancing consultations on the Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea, in an effort to jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea and inject positive dynamics into regional and global security, stability and prosperity. Despite COVID-19, the parties have held offline Senior Officials’ Meetings on the implementation of the DOC and 10 joint working group meetings via video link to advance consultations on the COC text. Last month, the first face-to-face COC consultations since COVID-19 was held in Cambodia. Such positive progress speaks volumes about the resolve and commitment of regional countries to steadfastly advance consultations toward a COC.

◆ China respects and supports all countries’ freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea in accordance with international law, and actively safeguards the security of and unimpeded passage through international shipping lanes. In fact, the South China Sea is one of the world’s safest and freest sea lanes. Fifty percent of merchant vessels in the world and one-third of international maritime trade pass through it, and more than 100,000 merchant ships sail through it annually. Freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea has never been an issue.

◆ Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islands are China’s inherent territory. China’s patrol and law enforcement missions in waters off the Diaoyu Dao are legitimate measures taken by China to exercise its sovereignty in accordance with law and are necessary responses to Japanese provocations in violation of China’s sovereignty. No country or force should misjudge the strong resolve of the Chinese government to safeguard sovereignty and territorial integrity. At the same time, China stays committed to properly handling and resolving issues through dialogue and consultation, and has made great efforts to maintain maritime stability. In 2014, a four-point principled consensus was reached between China and Japan to handle and improve China-Japan relations, which includes a clear understanding on managing the situation surrounding Diaoyu Dao and the East China Sea.

◆ Acting under the logic of the Monroe Doctrine, the US often uses power politics and hegemonic and bullying acts to flagrantly undermine the international maritime order, with a view to sustaining its maritime predominance. In the 240-plus-year history of the US, there were only 16 years when the country was not at war with others. The US operates over 800 military bases in 80 countries and regions. Its military expenditure, which has topped the world for many years in a row, accounts for one-fourth of the global total and is equivalent to the combined military spending of the next nine countries. Recently, the US has proposed a national defense budget request of about 813 billion US dollars for fiscal year 2023. Such massive military spending makes the US the real “pacing challenge” to the world.

◆ The US disregards the history and facts surrounding the South China Sea issue, deliberately stokes disputes on territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and sows discord among regional countries. It has become the biggest force undermining stability and fueling militarization in the South China Sea. Data from relevant organizations show that the number of US close-in reconnaissance activities targeting China has more than doubled over the past decade and more. Right now, an average of five US naval vessels cruise near China’s shore every day. This year, US naval vessels have been sailing through the Taiwan Strait about once a month, and large US reconnaissance planes have flown over 800 times close to China and repeatedly violated China’s airspace. Eager to stir up trouble in the South China Sea, the US has also encouraged its allies and partners to sail their naval vessels into the South China Sea.

On 2 October 2021, USS Connecticut, a nuclear submarine, had an underwater collision in the South China Sea. It was not until a week later that the US issued a vague statement, claiming that the submarine hit an unknown object. One month after, it said that the submarine “grounded on an uncharted seamount”. A final report on the accident was eventually released by the US Navy on 23 May 2022, yet no clear explanation has been offered in response to the grave concerns and questions raised by many, including the intent of the submarine, the specific location of the accident, whether the submarine had entered exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and even territorial sea of other countries, and whether the accident had caused a nuclear leak or damaged marine environment.

◆ The US began its Freedom of Navigation (FON) Program in 1979 ahead of the signing of the UNCLOS. Challenging the new maritime order, the move sought to maximize the freedom of the US military to rampage through the oceans. The FON Program is not consistent with the universally recognized international law, disregards the sovereignty, security and maritime rights and interests of the many littoral countries, and seriously jeopardizes regional peace and stability. Its goal is to advance American maritime supremacy under the pretext of “freedom of navigation”. The FON Program has been firmly opposed by many members of the international community, especially the developing countries.

Falsehood 13: Chinese government officials spread disinformation.

Reality Check: China is the top victim of disinformation, while the US is the biggest source of spreading disinformation.

◆ With sharp confrontation between the Republicans and Democrats, habitual lying, finger-pointing and blame-shifting among politicians have become part of the US political ecology. A poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Pearson Institute at the University of Chicago reveals that nearly half of the respondents blame the US government for the spread of misinformation.

◆ The US has used disinformation to launch multiple wars across the globe in pursuit of its hegemonic agenda. Colin Powell, the then US Secretary of State accused Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction with a test tube of “laundry powder”. The US blamed the Syrian government for using bio-chemical weapons against its own people with fake videos by the White Helmets.

In 2019, the then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly claimed that “we lied, we cheated, we stole … we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

On 4 May 2022, Republican Senator Rand Paul spoke bluntly at a Senate hearing, “Do you know who the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world is? The US government.”

◆ Manipulation by US politicians has seriously undercut the media’s credibility. A Gallup poll in 2020 shows that 60 percent of Americans remain largely distrustful of the media, among whom 33 percent have no trust at all, which is 5 percentage points higher than that of 2019.

◆ The US has on multiple occasions fabricated numerous lies and rumors on issues concerning origins-tracing, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, democracy and human rights, including the so-called “lab-leak theory”, “genocide” and “forced labor”, which have all been defeated by facts.

Since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, the US has kept spreading disinformation on China and made unfounded accusations against it, in order to shirk its responsibilities for triggering the conflict with NATO’s eastward expansion. The New York Times quoted from anonymous US senior officials who claimed that China had prior knowledge of Russian military operation in Ukraine. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Representative to the UN, said at a Security Council meeting that China had been spreading disinformation in support of Russia. This is sheer fabrication and slandering. Meanwhile, as part of the fierce hunt of voices different from its own, the US has added special labels to Tweets sharing links of Chinese media reports, while turning a blind eye to the Western media that are actually telling the lies.

◆ The US has used disinformation as a political tool to attack and suppress China, and formed a supply chain of anti-China rhetoric combining dirty funding, fact-twisting stories and massive smear campaigns. On the surface, these anti-China rhetoric come from certain media outlets and politicians, but what lies underneath is a massive capital-driven supply chain — some institutions and organizations from the US and other Western countries provide dirty funding for political purposes to anti-China groups and individuals; some think-tanks and academic institutions make up fact-twisting stories to fuel anti-China rhetoric around the world through Western hegemony on public opinion; and politicians and media act as mouthpieces propagating lies and falsehoods about China in massive smear campaigns.

Adrian Zenz and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), both fabricated numerous Xinjiang-related lies, are typical examples of such “lies manufacturers”.

Adrian Zenz is a member of a far-right group founded by the US government and a key member of an anti-China research institute set up and manipulated by the US intelligence agency. His so-called reports on Xinjiang reflect no credibility, intellectual merit or academic integrity at all.

As disclosed by the media, the US State Department and arms manufacturers are the primary foreign sponsors for the ASPI. Funding from the US State Department alone reached nearly 1.4 million Australian dollars a year, all directed to research projects attacking China. The ASPI disseminated a series of lies and disinformation on issues concerning origins-tracing, Xinjiang and data security.

◆ In addition to constantly spreading disinformation on China, the US has also rolled out measures to suppress and contain China based on such disinformation, including China-related bills and sanctions. In December 2021, under the pretext of its so-called concerns on “forced labor”, the US signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law, imposing a full ban on imports from Xinjiang. This is a malicious move to denigrate human rights situation in Xinjiang, and a serious violation of international law and basic norms of international relations.

◆ China has used facts and figures to tell the truth and refute the lies and rumors created and propagated by the US. It is aimed at making truth heard, not spreading disinformation. Instead of observing basic facts, the US has acted in its own interests and labeled all views different from its own as “disinformation”. This is, in essence, hegemony and bullying in the field of public opinion.

Falsehood 14: China is circumventing or breaking trade rules and its economic manipulations have cost American workers millions of jobs, harming workers and companies in the United States but also around the world. The United States will push back on market-distorting policies and practices, like subsidies and market access barriers, which China’s government has used for years to gain competitive advantage.

Reality Check: China has faithfully delivered on its commitments made upon accession to the WTO. China upholds, builds and contributes to the multilateral trading system. China-US economic and trade relations are mutually beneficial in nature. However, US’ wanton suppression of China in trade and investment areas has been the root cause of trade frictions between the two countries, which hurts others without benefiting oneself.

◆ Over the past 20-plus years since joining the WTO, China has earnestly fulfilled its commitments upon accession. It has rolled out nationwide the management system of pre-establishment national treatment plus a negative list, kept expanding market access, brought down overall tariff level from 15.3% to 7.4%, and opened up nearly 120 sectors in the service industry.

In October 2021, the WTO conducted the eighth review of trade policies and practices of China. The report of the review fully recognized China’s efforts in upholding the multilateral trading system and its active role in the WTO. It spoke highly of China’s achievements in such areas as trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, greater opening-up and progress under the Belt and Road Initiative.

A leading official of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development pointed out that, over the past two decades, China has steadfastly supported the rules-based multilateral trading system, practiced true multilateralism, participated fully in WTO negotiations, steered negotiations in areas such as investment facilitation and e-commerce, and worked for WTO rules keeping pace with the times.

◆ Embracing the trend of regional and global economic integration, China has deepened economic and trade ties with countries around the world, signing free trade agreements and stepping up the building of free trade zones. As of now, China has signed 19 free trade agreements with 26 countries and regions.

◆ China has actively deepened supply-side structural reform. It has met the target of phasing out 150 million tons of overcapacity in the steel industry set out in the 13th Five-Year Plan two years ahead of schedule, 1.14 times of the global total in slashing overcapacity of steels. The process involved the reemployment of 280,000 Chinese steel workers, more than the total number of steel workers in the US, Europe and Japan.

◆ China and the US have highly complementary economies, deeply integrated interests, and mutually beneficial economic and trade ties. In 2021, bilateral trade topped record-breaking 750 billion US dollars. The US Export Report 2022 issued by the US-China Business Council showed that, in 2021, goods exports to China grew by 21 percent to 149 billion US dollars, supporting 858,000 jobs in the US. The 2020 Annual Business Survey Report on Chinese Enterprises in the United States released by the China General Chamber of Commerce-USA indicated that, as of 2019, CGCC’s Chinese member companies cumulatively invested over 123 billion US dollars, employed more than 220,000 people, and supported over one million jobs throughout the United States. Research of the US-China Business Council showed that Chinese exports have helped bring down US consumer price by 1 to 1.5 percent, saving each US household 850 US dollars per year.

◆ By blaming China for its own economic problems, the US started a trade war and tariff war against China, which only backfired for itself. US tariffs against China have cost American companies more than 1.7 trillion US dollars in market capitalization and increased average household expenditure by 1,300 US dollars per year. A 2021 report by the US-China Business Council pointed out that the trade war with China has resulted in a loss of 245,000 jobs in the US. A report from Moody’s Investor Service was cited as saying that American consumers bear 92.4 percent of the cost of imposing tariffs on Chinese goods. Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize laureate in economics, incisively pointed out that US trade policy toward China has failed and tariffs harm the US more than their intended targets.

On 18 May 2022, the National Retail Federation (NRF) wrote to President Biden, calling for eliminating tariffs, which, as pointed out in the letter, could reduce consumer prices by as much as 1.3 percent. Janet Yellen, the US Treasury Secretary, said that some tariffs on China hurt American consumers and businesses, and that cutting tariffs was worth considering in order to lower US inflation.

The obstacles to China-US economic and trade cooperation are mainly from the US side. Over 1,000 Chinese companies have been put on its lists for unfair suppression or sanction. The US Congress has put forth more than 300 negative China-related bills. The proposed Bipartisan Innovation Act, which is still being developed, essentially aims to hold back China’s economic growth.

◆ The US arbitrarily accuses China of its industrial subsidy policies, but the country itself was among the first to develop such policies, including subsidies and so on. Successive US administrations have rolled out plans to support emerging industries. Through tax relief, government procurement and other means, the US administrations have interfered in the market to push forward cooperation between government and enterprises and advance technology transfers. In the 1950s and 1960s, the US undertook special programs to promote the development of its aerospace and military industries. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration supported the growth of hi-tech industries with the Information Superhighway plan. Such industrial policies are still being practiced in the US today. A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that the US and its allies and partners in Europe and Asia have increased subsidies to industries such as semiconductors, electric-car batteries and pharmaceuticals to shore up support for domestic companies.

◆ The US poses the biggest challenge to the global trading system. Following “America First” policy, the US has refused to shoulder its due obligations under multilateral trading agreements, and withdrawn from international treaties and organizations, taking a heavy toll on the development and functioning of the global trading system. A WTO dispute settlement report has identified the US as the biggest rule-breaker, responsible for two-thirds of violations of WTO rules. The US also blocked the appointment of new judges in the WTO Appellate Body, leading to an impasse in the Appellate Body since December 2019.

Falsehood 15: The US will give countries an alternative choice, so that they can be free from opaque investments that leave them in debt.

Reality Check: In providing foreign assistance, China always respects the sovereignty of recipient countries, attaches no strings whatsoever and pursues win-win outcomes. Chinese assistance has delivered real benefits to the relevant developing countries and received their acclaim and appreciation.

◆ The so-called Chinese “debt trap” is a narrative trap that the US and some other Western countries use to defame and smear China and disrupt China’s cooperation with other developing countries. As a 2021 article in The Atlantic points out, the debt-trap narrative is just a lie fabricated by some Western politicians, and a powerful one.

Western capital constitutes the largest creditor of developing countries. According to the 2022 statistics of the World Bank on international debt, 28.8 percent of Africa’s outstanding external debt is owed to multilateral financial institutions and 41.8 percent to commercial creditors mainly composed of Western financial institutions. These two types of institutions together hold nearly three-quarters of the debt, making them the primary creditors of Africa’s debt.

According to the director of the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University of the US, after scrutinizing thousands of Chinese loan documents, mostly for projects in Africa, CARI has not found any evidence that China deliberately pushes poor countries into debt as a way of seizing their assets or gaining a greater say in their internal affairs. CARI’s figures show that China holds 17 percent of Africa’s overall external debt, far less than that of the West.

Not a single African country has been forced to use its strategic resources such as ports or mines as collateral for financing cooperation with China. DW points out that the default of African countries does not give China the right to use the relevant infrastructure.

◆ The debt issue is, in essence, a development issue. The key to resolving this issue lies in ensuring that the loans deliver real benefits.

Take Africa as an example. Western countries’ financing for Africa is mainly concentrated in non-production fields, and most loans come with political strings attached, such as human rights and judicial reform. They have failed to truly promote economic development, boost government tax revenue and improve balance of payments. Rather, they have served as instruments for controlling and causing harm in Africa.

China always respects the will of the African people and bears in mind the actual needs of African countries. Chinese investment in and financing for Africa are mainly in infrastructure building and production-related fields. Entering the 21st century, China has worked actively to support Africa’s economic development and provided an alternative to the traditional financing channels of the Paris Club. This  has helped Africa to strengthen its capacity of self-generated and self-reliant development and to usher in a golden age of high-speed economic growth for 20 years straight.

Professor Deborah Brautigam of Johns Hopkins University noted the diversification of Chinese investment. In 2014 alone, Chinese companies signed over 70 billion US dollars in construction contracts in Africa that will yield vital infrastructure, including hospitals, oil and gas pipelines, and airports.

According to preliminary statistics, between 2000 and 2020, China helped African countries build more than 13,000 kilometers of roads and railway and more than 80 large-scale power facilities, funded more than 130 medical facilities, 45 sports venues and more than 170 schools, and trained more than 160,000 professionals across various fields for Africa.

The Nairobi Expressway project built by Chinese companies in Kenya through public-private partnership has created more than 6,000 local jobs and benefited more than 200 subcontractors and several hundred local suppliers. The Kenyan government speaks highly of the project, commending it as an important manifestation of the mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation between Kenya and China.

Nigeria’s Lekki Deep Sea Port project, built with Chinese participation, has provided more than 1,200 local jobs and is expected to create, directly and indirectly, 170,000 more upon completion.

A study conducted by Hong Kong scholars finds that more than 80 percent of the employees of Chinese companies in Africa surveyed are local Africans.

A team at the London School of Economics and Political Science finds that Chinese investment in Africa has produced “significant and persistently positive long-term effects”.

A study by RAND Corporation indicates that in the BRI region, having a rail connection between trading partners has improved total exports by 2.8 percent.

◆ China attaches high importance to the debt sustainability of projects. Back in 2017, it signed the Guiding Principles on Financing the Development of the Belt and Road with 26 countries participating in the BRI. In 2019, China released the Debt Sustainability Framework for Participating Countries of the Belt and Road Initiative. Based on the debt situation and repayment ability of debtor countries, and following the principles of equal-footed consultation, compliance with laws and regulations, openness and transparency, the framework aims to strengthen monitoring and assessment of the economic, social and livelihood benefits of the projects, and channels sovereign loans into areas with high yields, with a view to ensuring the long-term returns of the projects. China has also made proactive efforts to lessen the burden of debtor countries.

According to the World Bank, between 2008 and 2021, China provided 71 debt restructurings for low-income countries. In 2020, China actively responded to the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) by suspending the payment of more than 1.3 billion US dollars of debt that year alone, or nearly 30 percent of the G20’s total, making it the largest contributor among G20 members. China has signed debt suspension agreements or reached mutual understanding on debt suspension with 19 African countries, and actively participated in the case-based debt settlement for Chad and Ethiopia under the G20’s Common Framework.

◆ The US and some other Western countries, rather than taking actions themselves, point fingers at China for providing assistance. This has caused much displeasure among countries in the wider developing world.

Professor Samita Hattige, adviser to the National Education Commission of Sri Lanka, said in an interview with Global Times that Chinese loans are based on the needs of the Sri Lankan government and for the purpose of improving Sri Lankan infrastructure. The loans have brought major changes to Sri Lanka’s economy and people’s livelihood, and there is no such thing as a “debt trap”. China’s share in Sri Lanka’s external debt is around a mere 10 percent. Apparently, some media have chosen to ignore this fact. While the “Chinese debt trap” hyped up by Western media seems apprehensible at a glance, it has deliberately evaded the huge economic values that infrastructure improvement has created, such as economic development and more jobs and investment.

The article “Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal Need China for Development” published by Sri Lanka’s Daily News on 17 January 2022 says, “South Asia needs China in its development process because China is synonymous with the term ‘Development’. China’s … Belt and Road Initiative provides benefits for almost all South Asian countries.” “In the case of Sri Lanka,” the article writes, “Sri Lanka is a beneficiary of Chinese projects. Many say only about the Chinese debt trap in this regard but no one mentions Chinese developmental activities in Sri Lanka.” “They have invested heavily in seaports, airports, … national highways, and power distribution centers. ”

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni stated in an interview with Nikkei in 2022 that “Africa has been having (debt) problems for the last 600 years due to the slave trade, colonialism, neocolonialism — and none of it was from China.” “China supported Africans’ fight against colonialism before starting economic activity on the continent.”

Rwandan President Paul Kagame pointed out that China’s presence in Africa is different from that of other countries — “I don’t think China has forced any country in Africa to take their money to accumulate the kind of debt you may find with some countries.”

Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama stated that Nigeria had chosen Chinese companies for infrastructure projects because they were experienced and provide competitive rates. “So the issue of Chinese influence really doesn’t come in.

Falsehood 16: For too long, Chinese companies have enjoyed far greater access to our markets than our companies have in China. American companies operating in China have been subject to systematic forced technology transfer, while Chinese companies in America have been protected by our rule of law.

Reality Check: China is committed to fostering an enabling business environment that is based on market principles, governed by law and up to international standard. While China’s business environment keeps improving, the business environment for Chinese companies operating in the US continues to deteriorate.

◆ China has seen the most substantial improvement in business environment among all economies. In recent years, China has made continuous efforts to shorten the negative list on foreign investment, improved the institutions for investment promotion and protection and for information reporting, and stepped up intellectual property protection, becoming one of the most-improved economies for ease of doing business. With the continuous improvement in business environment and its super-sized domestic market, China is a strong magnet for cross-border investment from around the world. The number of newly established foreign-invested enterprises is on a steady rise in China. From 2012 to 2021, the number of foreign-invested enterprises in China increased from 441,000 to 664,000, up by over 50 percent. According to the Doing Business 2020 report released by the World Bank Group, China ranked 31st on ease of doing business, moving up by 47 spots in two years. The European Business in China Business Confidence Survey 2021 released by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China (EUCCC) shows that a majority of the European companies surveyed found intellectual property rights enforcement to be “adequate” or “excellent” in China, marking a record high in satisfaction levels.

◆ It is the foreign companies, including the US companies operating in China, that can best tell whether China’s business environment is good or not. The 2022 China Business Climate Survey Report of the American Chamber of Commerce in China (AmCham China) shows that 58 percent of the US companies in China saw their operating revenue growing in 2021; 66 percent of the companies plan to increase their investment in China this year; and China remains a top-three priority of the global investment planning for 60 percent of the companies. The recently released USCBC 2021 Member Survey shows that 95 percent of the respondents remained profitable in their China operations; and 74 percent of the companies took China as a top priority or a top-five priority market in their business strategy. In the first four months of 2022, the actual US investment in China rose by 53.2 percent year on year. These figures speak volume about the optimism of foreign companies in China’s economic prospects, as well as their recognition of China’s sound business environment and confidence in building a long-term business in the Chinese market.

◆ To preserve its hegemony and economic interests, the US has abused its national power in violation of the principles of market economy and international trade rules, and resorted to every possible means to suppress and contain Chinese enterprises. The US government has fabricated all sorts of lies including “forced labor” in an attempt to bring down Xinjiang’s cotton, tomato and solar photovoltaic industries. According to preliminary statistics, in 2021, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued seven Withhold Release Orders (WROs) on the exports of goods made with “forced labor” to the US, including apparel, textiles, tomato seeds, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, and other goods made with cotton or tomatoes, silica-based products and electronic products produced in Xinjiang, and detained or confiscated 485 million US dollars worth of goods, which are notably larger in both quantity and value compared to 2020. The current US administration has already outperformed its predecessor in terms of the scale and magnitude of sanctions imposed on China for Xinjiang-related issues.

◆ The US has imposed sweeping restrictions on the financing and operation of Chinese enterprises in the US through non-transparent and unfair administrative means. According to official US statistics, the US has up to now put 1,055 Chinese entities and individuals (overseas affiliated entities excluded) on various types of sanctions lists, including 467 on the Entity List, 306 on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN), 201 on the Unverified List (UVL), 68 on the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies (NS-CMIC) List, and a few other entities. Last February, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) put WeChat and AliExpress on its latest Notorious Markets List, while Pinduoduo and other Chinese companies as well as nine physical markets located within China remained on the list.

Falsehood 17: China takes advantage of the openness of the US economies to spy, to hack, to steal technology and know-how to advance China’s military innovation, entrench its surveillance state and increase other countries’ technological dependence. The US should make sure that technologies are rooted in democratic values.

Reality check: China’s technological innovation and development is based on its own investment and efforts. The US is drawing ideological lines in scientific and technological exchanges and cooperation, and this embodies its Cold War mentality.

◆ China is a big innovator in the world with leading input and growth rate in innovation. According to statistics, China’s social R&D investment in 2021 reached 2.7864 trillion yuan, an increase of 14.2 percent over the previous year. A total of 696,000 invention patents were authorized in 2021, up by 31.3 percent year-on-year. The Global Innovation Index (GII) 2021 published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) shows that China’s world innovation performance ranking has moved up from the 35th place to the 12th. China is now home to 19 of the top 100 science and technology clusters worldwide, ranking the second globally. Chinese applicants submitted 69,500 international patent applications, making China the first in the world for three consecutive years. The European Patent Office (EPO) recorded 16,665 applications from China in 2021, registering a year-on-year increase of 24 percent and the biggest surge among leading patent filing countries.

◆ In recent years, China has been actively integrating into the global science and technology innovation network, and has enjoyed fruitful results in technological and people-to-people exchanges under the BRI. In addition, China has also actively worked to join the Hague Agreement and the Marrakesh Treaty, contributing its share to the global governance of intellectual property rights. The Business Confidence Survey 2021 published by the EUCCC shows that over half of interviewed companies view intellectual property rights enforcement in China as “adequate” or “excellent”.

◆ Throughout history, the US has repeatedly stolen intellectual properties and reaped dividends from technological developments through various means, including prying out information, offering immigration status and monopolizing patents.

After World War II, the US launched Operation Paperclip to plunder Germany of its technology patents, including those on advanced aircraft and guided missile control. Nearly all German government agencies, research and development institutes and large companies were looted, and German scientists were forced to immigrate to the US.

In the 1990s, US intelligence agencies installed eavesdropping devices in the cars of Japanese negotiators during automobile trade talks to intercept internal information and gain the upper hand in the negotiations.

In 2001, the European company Airbus sued the American company Boeing for tracking Airbus employees’ telephone, fax, and e-mails for business espionage using the electronic surveillance system named Echelon developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

In 2013, the US DOJ detained four Alstom executives to force the French company into a fire sale of its core business, power and grid, to the US company General Electric.

In 2021, Danish media exposed that the US NSA wiretapped senior officials and business leaders in European countries using internet facilities located in Denmark.

In addition, using “chip shortages” as an excuse, the US has also set deadlines to force leading chip makers from different countries to submit key information, including orders, clients and inventory, in an effort to turn the table in the chip sector.

◆ While claiming to uphold “peace” and “openness”, the US has been wantonly setting up technological barriers, piecing together the so-called “democratic technology alliance”, politicizing science and technology and turning them into ideological issues, and forming exclusive small circles. Identifying nearly 20 categories as controlled critical technologies, including biotechnology and artificial intelligence, the US has tightened up export control and investment scrutiny. It has also overstretched the concept of national security to contain and even stranglehold the development of high-tech industries in other countries, which severely violates the rights of developing countries in pursuing science and technology advancement.

Falsehood 18: Climate is not about ideology. It’s about math. If China sticks with its current plan and does not peak its emissions until 2030, then the rest of the world must go to zero by 2035. And that’s simply not possible.

Reality Check: The US holds undeniable responsibilities for climate change and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction. It shouldn’t shift responsibilities onto others, nor should it practice “double standards”.

◆ Developed countries, due to their unconstrained emissions over more than two centuries of industrialization, bear undeniable historical responsibilities for climate change. From 1850 to 2011, developed countries contributed to 79 percent of global carbon emissions. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement all require developed countries to repay their historical debts.

◆ From a historical perspective, developing countries are not the primary emitters of GHG, but the victims of climate change. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities is the cornerstone of global climate governance. As developed and developing countries do not bear the same historical responsibilities for climate change, and have different development needs and capabilities, it would be both inappropriate and unfair to apply the same restrictions on them. Wera Mori, Minister for Environment Conservation and Climate Change of Papua New Guinea (PNG) said on the sidelines of COP26 that countries like PNG have become victims of climate change caused by the industrialization of developed countries and are now bearing the consequences of their actions, which is absolutely unfair.

◆ In tackling climate change, China is not just a responsible participant, but also a serious doer. President Xi Jinping committed explicitly that China will strive to peak CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. That means China will move from carbon peak to neutrality in only 30 years, while the time the EU, the US and Japan give themselves is respectively 2.4, 1.4 and 1.2 times of China’s.

China has made notable contribution to the global efforts in energy conservation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, transport and building, which are all in the range of 30 to 50 percent. By the end of 2020, China’s CO2 emissions per unit of GDP had dropped by 48.4 percent relative to the 2005 level. The proportion of coal in total energy consumption fell from 67 percent in 2005 to 56.8 percent in 2020. The cumulative installed capacity of renewable power generation exceeded 1 billion kilowatts, accounting for 43.5 percent of the national total. Chinese companies have taken 15 spots in the world’s top 20 PV companies list, including all the top five spots, and seven spots in the top 10 wind power companies list. In the past ten years, China phased out 120 million kilowatts of coal-fired power generation capacity, which is larger than the total installed power capacity of the UK. By the end of 2021, China’s new energy vehicle ownership had exceeded 7.84 million units, and 2.95 million units were newly registered in 2021, accounting for 11.25 percent of all newly registered vehicles that year.

The share of renewable energy in China’s energy mix has already exceeded that of the US. By the end of 2019, the total installed capacity of China’s hydro, wind and solar power generation had reached 756 million kilowatts, 2.8 times that of the US. Renewable energy accounts for 12.7 percent of China’s primary energy consumption, approximately 1.4 times that of the US.

◆ The US is the world’s largest GHG emitter in cumulative terms, and its per capita carbon emissions are 3.3 times that of the global average. In the 270 years from 1750 to 2019, the US emitted a cumulative 412.5 billion tons of GHG, accounting for about 1/4 of the global total. The US has produced the world’s largest cumulative emissions, which are almost twice that of China’s. Here are some statistics: the historical peak of US per capita GHG emissions was 23.44 tons; in 2018, US per capita emissions were 16.85 tons, while China’s were 7.56 tons. Despite its status as a major manufacturing nation, China’s current per capita carbon emissions are not even half that of the US, and its per capita cumulative emissions are only around 1/8 that of the US. Even by the time of 2030, when China’s carbon emissions will have peaked, the country’s per capita carbon emissions will still just be around 7-8 tons. In comparison, when the US had its carbon peak in 2005, its per capita carbon emissions had already reached 14 tons.

◆ In June 2017, the US announced its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, and in November 2020, it officially pulled out of the accord. Such a move seriously undermined the equity, efficiency and efficacy of global climate governance. The US had stayed outside the Paris Agreement until February 2021. Despite the improvement in political posture, the GHG emissions generated simply cannot be rolled back. Instead of cutting emissions, the US produced more emissions in 2021 than 2020, drifting further away from the course set by the Paris Agreement. With its flip-flopping on such an existential issue, the US has fully exposed its utilitarian approach to major issues of principles and lost its credibility in the family of nations.

◆ It is the unshirkable moral responsibility of developed countries to provide funding for developing countries to help them better cope with climate change. At Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancún in 2010, developed countries committed to a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion US dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. More than ten years have passed, developed countries have never truly delivered on their commitment. Report by a well-known international think tank shows that not only did developed countries fall short of their collective climate financing target every year, they also juggled the figures, providing far less funds than officially released figures. Most notably, the US only fulfilled less than 20 percent of its due contribution.

◆ For years, the US has been saying publicly that it wants to work with China on climate change, but its actions say otherwise. While demanding China to consume less coal, it asks China to continue buying coal from it; while appealing for the development of renewable energies, it imposes sanctions on Chinese PV businesses. Take PV products as an example, starting from 2012, the US has imposed anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese PV products, with rates as high as 34 to 47 percent. In December 2014, the US conducted anti-dumping and countervailing investigations on Chinese PV manufacturers. In January 2018, the previous US administration decided to slap global safeguard tariffs on 8.5 billion US dollars’ worth of solar panel imports. In late 2021, the so-called “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” was signed into law by the US, which is yet another attempt to hobble the PV industry in Xinjiang under the disguise of human rights. Relevant US measures have not only impeded normal trade in PV products and disrupted normal supply chains, but also undermined global efforts in countering climate change. The US should correct its wrong practices in order to create an enabling environment for climate cooperation with China.

◆ Climate change has caused serious challenges to human survival and development, and must be tackled through global cooperation. Developed countries, the US included, should honor the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and follow the requirements of the Paris Agreement. They need to face up to their historical responsibilities, and level up their ambitions and actions. They need to take the lead in making substantial reductions of emissions and strive to achieve carbon neutrality before 2050. In the meantime, they need to give developing countries due space for development and emission, and deliver on their commitments of providing developing countries with adequate finance, technology and capacity-building support. On the basis of meeting financing pledges and leveraging public funds, efforts can be made to promote the development of green finance and bring private investment into low-carbon sectors. It is also important to build national, regional and global carbon markets and carbon pricing mechanisms, bring down the costs and raise the level of emissions reductions, promote technological innovation and sustainable development, and provide developing countries with stable sources of funding for mitigation and capacity-building through the benefit sharing mechanism of carbon markets.

Falsehood 19: To counter illegal and illicit narcotics, especially synthetic opioids like fentanyl, we want to work with China to stop international drug trafficking organizations from getting precursor chemicals, many of which originate in China.

Reality Check: The US has itself to blame for the root cause of fentanyl abuse in the country.

◆ Narcotics abuse, a chronic malaise plaguing the US, has deep historical and social roots.

With five percent of the world’s population, the US consumes 80 percent of opioids in the world, making the country the world’s biggest market for narcotics. There is a prevalent tradition of prescription painkiller abuse in the US, undergirded by a complete chain of pharmaceutical companies, medical representatives and doctors. All-out marketing by pharmaceutical companies, over-prescription by doctors, ineffective government crackdowns and the negative implications of marijuana legalization are among the combination of factors behind an ever-growing market for narcotics. Opioid abuse in the US and its rising toll started with OxyContin, an opioid painkiller made by Purdue Pharma and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1995. When it comes to discouraging demand and curbing production, the US should have done a lot more.

While the US has the most acute fentanyl challenge in the world, it is also the biggest producer and consumer of fentanyl and has yet to officially schedule fentanyl-related substances as a class. Nevertheless, it kept demanding other countries to take actions. This is a typical example of “forcing others to take medicine for one’s own illness”.

◆The Chinese government takes a zero-tolerance approach to narcotics and strictly regulates anesthetics, psychotropic substances and their precursors. By the end of 2021, China has added 37 drug precursors and ephedrine-related substances to its control list, which became even longer than the UN list. China strictly regulates import and export of chemicals pursuant to international rules and its domestic laws, and its efforts and achievements in this regard are visible to all.

On 1 May 2019, the Chinese government became the first country in the world to class schedule fentanyl-related substances, although there was no large-scale fentanyl abuse or immediate hazard in China. This is an important follow-up to the common understandings reached between the presidents of China and the US, and a concrete example of how China, keeping in mind the health, safety and well-being of humanity, actively responds to the US concern and helps it tackle its domestic opioid crisis.

On 1 July 2021, China class scheduled all synthetic cannabinoids and another 18 psychoactive substances including fluoroketamine. On 20 September of the same year, another six chemicals, including methyl alpha-phenylacetoacetate (MAPA), were added as drug precursors. China is making continuous efforts to regulate precursors in accordance with law.

China has taken a host of measures to crack down on the trafficking of fentanyl and other scheduled chemicals, like introducing real-name registration of senders and receivers, parcel examination and X-ray screening in the express delivery sector, and stepping up examination of cross-border parcels to certain destinations including the US. These measures have paid off.

After class scheduling fentanyl-related substances, China’s National Narcotics Control Commission and Ministry of Public Security have maintained close, candid and in-depth coordination with their US counterparts including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the State Department Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Since September 2019, the US has not seized any fentanyl-related substances coming from China. The US has expressed appreciation to China on many occasions and noted drug control as a highlight in bilateral law enforcement cooperation.

As is known to all, the responsibility to prevent the entry of non-scheduled chemicals and their use in illicit drug-making falls on the import country. The US, however, would neither officially schedule fentanyl nor address the issue of domestic consumption. Instead, it chose to shift the blame by falsely claiming that “fentanyl precursors used by drug trafficking organizations originate in China” and making an issue out of non-scheduled chemicals. This reflects an ulterior motive and an extreme lack of responsibility for the life and health of its own people.

◆ In May 2020, without producing any evidence, the US added the Institute of Forensic Science of China’s Ministry of Public Security and the National Narcotics Laboratory to its “Entity List”. Such a practice of seeking China’s cooperation on the one hand while imposing sanctions on China’s narcotics control authorities has seriously hindered the operation of China’s fentanyl monitoring system and undermined the counter-narcotics cooperation between China and the US.

While China and the rest of the world are tightening control over fentanyl-related substances, fentanyl-related problems are deteriorating in the US, causing a mounting death toll. It lays bare the US’s failure to get to the crux of the fentanyl abuse problem. China has acted out of goodwill and repeatedly advised the US to follow effective practices widely recognized by the international community, like stepping up regulation on fentanyl prescription and promoting public awareness

Falsehood 20: As a global food crisis threatens people worldwide, we look to China — a country that’s achieved great things in agriculture — to help with a global response. 

Reality Check: The US has long been restricting grain exports and monopolizing grain trade. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the US expanded its arms assistance and abused unilateral sanctions, further aggravating the global food shortage. It bears unshirkable responsibility for the global food crisis.

◆ The US-driven deglobalization, its grain-for-energy production policies and food oligopolies are the root causes of global food crisis.

Using its status as a major grain-producer, the US has been restricting its grain exports to other countries, causing disruptions to normal global grain trade. The 12 major grain producers such as the US, Canada and the European Union accounts for 70percent of the world’s total grain production and exportation. In global trade relations, the US and other Western countries weigh heavily on whether developing countries can buy grain and at what price.

The US consumes grain to produce biofuels, straining global food supply, especially the supply of subsistence crops. Nearly one-third of the corn produced in the US is used for biofuels. Using grain as substitute for energy leads to fewer grain for global food supply, creating a vicious circle of food and energy prices pushing up each other.

The four major grain suppliers —ADM, Bunge and Cargill and Louis Dreyfus — monopolize more than 80percent of the world’s grain trade, and control global agricultural raw materials as well as grain production, processing and supply. These four grain suppliers, three from the US, manipulate the international prices of grain and earn extra profits from global food price volatility. Since 2021, their net income has increased by 53 percent, 80 percent, 64 percent and 47.7 percent respectively, and the stock prices of ADM and Bunge have nearly tripled. These international food oligopolies are profit-seeking, and they won’t miss any opportunity to stir up food security issues and inflate food supply shortage to make bigger profits.

◆ The US has been stoking the flames in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and abusing economic sanctions. These have exacerbated global food shortage.

The protracted conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a direct consequence of the constant instigation by the US and other Western countries. US military and arms assistance to Ukraine has increased to 53.6 billion US dollars, more than 70 percent of the combined military spending of Russia and Ukraine in 2021. The longer and bigger the conflict is, the greater its impact on global food production and supply will be, and the food crisis will further intensify.

In the face of a global food crisis, major grain-producing countries such as the US have instead kept their “grain bags” tight. According to the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report released by the US Department of Agriculture this May, US wheat exports in 2021/22 will be 18.9 percent lower than the previous year. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the total amount of food exports affected by the restrictions has increased significantly, which now represents about 17 percent of total calories traded in the world

The US food security initiative is more of empty words than concrete actions, only to fragment global food security governance. Russia is a major exporter of subsistence crops and the world’s largest exporter of fertilizers. Since the US and other Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia, the price index of various fertilizers has risen by more than 30 percent, which has seriously affected agricultural production. From 2021 to 2022, wheat and barley exports from Russia account for 16 percent and 12.9 percent of the world’s total respectively. Statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) show that since the US imposed sanctions on Russia, the Food Price Index in May this year has risen by 14 percent compared with February.

◆ Serious food waste in the US has worsened the global food shortage.

First, the amount of food waste is astounding. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the US, 30 to 40 percent of the food supply and 38 percent of grain products are never eaten each year. In 2018, the US had 103 million tons of its food wasted, worth 161 billion US dollars. In 2020, the country’s food waste per capita was 59 kilograms.

Second, distribution is uneven. About 38 million people are food insecure in the US in 2020, and the majority of them are African Americans, Latin Americans and Native Americans. According to National Geographic, more than one-third of the low-income households do not have access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program introduced by the US government, and its benefits fall short of helping many families in high-cost areas enjoy a healthy and adequate diet.

Third, secondary problems are prominent. Every year, the overproduction of food in the US puts a staggering burden on the environment and wastes numerous resources, including over 9.3 million hectares of arable land, 22 trillion liters of water, 350 million kilograms of pesticides, and 6.35 million tons of chemical fertilizers.

◆ China has made significant contributions to global food security. It has supported one-fifth of the world’s population with a quarter of the world’s total food, on less than 9 percent of the world’s arable land. The Global Development Initiative put forward by China has identified food security as one of the eight priority areas of cooperation. China will mobilize efforts from all parties across the globe to draw on each other’s strength, and form the greatest synergy to meet all sustainable development goals including food security. This initiative has received positive response from more than 100 countries around the world and international organizations such as the UN.

◆ The Chinese people cherish food and keep to the traditional virtue of thrift. President Xi Jinping attaches great importance to food security. He has called for thriftiness and opposes squandering, stressing on multiple occasions the need to stop food waste. Since the launch of the nationwide “Clear Your Plate” campaign in 2013, consumer food waste in China has been significantly reduced. According to the Nature magazine, the amount of food discarded by Chinese restaurants and eateries has decreased by 40 percent. In 2021, the International Conference on Food Loss and Waste hosted by China was well received by the international community, including members of the G20.

◆ China is an important strategic partner of FAO in South-South cooperation. In recent years, China has donated 130 million US dollars to the FAO South-South Cooperation Trust Fund. China has sent more than 1,100 agricultural experts and technical personnel to and trained nearly 100,000 farmers in more than 40 countries and regions. Under the framework of the FAO’s South-South Cooperation Programme, China has donated the largest amount of fund, sent the most experts, and undertaken the most projects among all developing countries.

◆ China has provided its own solutions to global food shortage. Chinese hybrid rice is being grown in dozens of countries and regions in Asia, Africa and the Americas, with an annual growth area of eight million hectares. This increased the world’s total grain output by 150 million tons, enough to feed 400 to 500 million more people. Yuan Longping, known as the “Father of Chinese Hybrid Rice”, and other Chinese researchers have offered advice and counsel in India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bangladesh and many other countries. Through international training courses, China has trained over 14,000 hybrid rice technicians for more than 80 developing countries.

Falsehood 21: Beijing has perfected mass surveillance and exported that technology to more than 80 countries.

Reality Check: The US is the biggest empire of hacking.

◆ The use of video surveillance and big data technology is an important step taken by the Chinese government to improve social governance, and also a common practice across the world. It is necessary, legal and justified. Tianwang (Skynet), which is composed of video surveillance systems, effectively eliminates potential risks to public security and ensures the high percentage of solved criminal cases in China. With the increasingly digitized crime prevention and control system, 98.6 percent of the people in China felt safe in 2021, and China is widely recognized as one of the safest countries in the world. China ranked the third in the law and order index published by Gallup, a US consulting company, while the US 36th.

◆ Statistics show that there were some 70 million cameras installed in the US in 2018, one for every 4.6 people. For the US to accuse China of mass surveillance, it’s just double standard at work.

◆ For a long time, the US has carried out large-scale, organized and indiscriminate cyber espionage, surveillance and attacks on foreign governments, enterprises and individuals in violation of international law and the basic norms governing international relations. In June 2013, the Guardian and the Washington Post reported that NSA has been running PRISM, a clandestine electronic surveillance program, since 2007, whose targets include even its own allies. Der Spiegel reported that the US intelligence may have been monitoring the German Chancellor’s mobile phone communications for nearly a decade.

◆ In 2020, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) demanded Facebook to stop sending data of EU users to the US. The report comes just a few months after the European Court of Justice ruled the data transfer standard between the EU and the US doesn’t adequately protect European citizen’s privacy and concluded that EU citizens had no effective way to challenge US government surveillance. It is reported that US agencies such as NSA can theoretically ask internet companies like Facebook and Google to hand over data on an EU citizen and that EU citizen would be none-the-wiser.

◆ In December 2020, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) of France stated that google.fr and amazon.fr websites violated relevant French regulations by placing tracking cookies on their users’ computers without obtaining prior consent and without providing adequate information.

◆ In 2021, Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) reported that between 2012 and 2014, NSA used information cables of Denmark to wiretap (spy on) senior officials of Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, including many political dignitaries such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The US apparently broke its promise that it would stop wiretapping Merkel.

◆ The US abuses its leading position in internet and communication technology and is truly an empire of hacking, tapping and theft of secrets. From PRISM, the Irritant Horn project, and Stellar Wind, to Operation Telescreen, the Hive platform and the QUANTUM attack system, the US has violated the freedom of communication and speech of its citizens through digital surveillance, and has engaged in cyber attacks, surveillance and thefts of secrets across the world. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden of the Stateroom program show that the US has covertly installed eavesdropping devices in nearly 100 of its embassies and consulates to steal secrets from their host countries.

◆ A report on APT-C-39 released by Chinese cybersecurity company 360 in 2020 reveals that APT-C-39, a hacking group under the CIA, has conducted cyber infiltration attacks on China for 11 years targeting critical sectors including aviation and aerospace, research institutions, oil industry, large internet companies, and government agencies. Such attacks have seriously undermined China’s national security and the security of its economy, critical infrastructure as well as personal information of the general public.

According to a report on the indiscriminate worldwide cyber attacks by NSA’s APT-C-40 over the past decade released by 360 in 2022, NSA has attacked, using cyber weapons, 403 targets in 47 countries and regions worldwide, including China, the UK, Germany, France, Poland, Japan, India, the ROK, the UAE, South Africa and Brazil.

On 19 April 2022, China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) issued an alert on cyber attacks by the US government against other countries and released a related report. It brings to light “Hive”, a lightweight cyber weapon used exclusively by the US government, and the fact that the US has deployed cyber attack platforms worldwide and has jumper servers and VPN channels in countries like France, Germany, Canada, Turkey and Malaysia.

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We are entering a peak transition period geopolitically

What I like about China is that it points not to the superiority of its ideology but to RESULTS!  

The US wants to make an argument based not on results, since it has little to offer in that regard, but on ideology which is infinitely flexible and demands only a control over the playing field, that is, the media.

The Chinese approach is also better at winning over the people of the world.  

-John V. Walsh

We are entering a peak transition period geopolitically. This is coinciding with the makings of an American civil war – now that the United States society has collapsed. The drivers for all of these changes are (of course) the actions decided upon by the Oligarchy that controls the United States “leadership”. This is understood and expected by the Asian powers. The changes are going to (ultimately) be stunning, but during this period of change will appear to be “out of control”. Don’t worry, it’s not. It’s just that the entire “shebang” is simply not being reported on.

Hang on tight. Don’t get too upset.

In the eyes of others, the US is not the benign power it thinks it is

  • America’s foreign policy goals are often self-serving, while its designs for a rules-based international order primarily reflect the interests of its business and policy elites
  • What’s good for the US may not be good for the world. The sooner Washington recognises that, the better

When I started teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School in the mid-1980s, competition with Japan was the dominant preoccupation of US economic policy. The book Japan as Number One by Harvard’s premier Japan expert at the time, Ezra Vogel, set the tone of the debate.

I remember being struck back then by the degree to which the discussion, even among academics, was tinged by a certain sense of American entitlement to international pre-eminence. The United States could not let Japan dominate key industries and had to respond with its own industrial and trade policies – not just because these might help the US economy, but also because the US simply could not be No 2.

Until then, I had thought that aggressive nationalism was a feature of the Old World – insecure societies ill at ease with their international standing and reeling from real or perceived historical injustices. American elites, rich and secure, may have valued patriotism, but their global outlook tended towards cosmopolitanism.

But zero-sum nationalism was not far from the surface, which became clear once America’s place atop the global economic totem pole was threatened.

After three decades of US triumphalism following the fall of the Berlin Wall, a similar process is now playing out on a vastly greater scale. It is driven both by China’s rise – which represents a more significant economic challenge to America than Japan did in the 1980s and is also a geopolitical risk – and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The US has responded to these developments by seeking to reassert its global primacy – a goal American policymakers readily conflate with that of establishing a more secure and prosperous world. They regard US leadership as central to the promotion of democracy, open markets and a rules-based international order.

What could be more conducive to peace and prosperity than that? The view that US foreign policy goals are fundamentally benign underpins the myth of American exceptionalism: what is good for the US is good for the world.

While this is undoubtedly true at times, the myth too often blinds American policymakers to the reality of how they exercise power. The US undermines other democracies when it suits its interests and has a long record of meddling in sovereign countries’ domestic politics. Its 2003 invasion of Iraq was as clear a violation of the United Nations Charter as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.

US designs for “open markets” and a “rules-based international order” often primarily reflect the interests of US business and policy elites rather than smaller countries’ aspirations. And when international rules diverge from those interests, the US simply stays away (as with the International Criminal Court, or most of the core International Labour Organization conventions).

Many of these tensions were evident in a recent speech by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on America’s approach to China. Blinken described China as “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order”, arguing that “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress”.

Blinken is correct that many of the elements of the post-World-War-II order, such as the UN Charter, are not purely American or Western. But it is far from certain that China poses a greater threat to those truly universal constructs than the US does. For example, much of the trouble that US policymakers have with Chinese economic practices relates to domains – especially trade, investment and technology – where universal rules hardly prevail.

According to Blinken, the US “will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system”. Again, who could possibly oppose such a vision?

But China and many others worry that US intentions are much less benign. To them, Blinken’s statement sounds like a threat to contain China and limit its options, while bullying other countries into siding with America.

None of this is to claim an equivalence between current US actions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s gross human rights violations in Xinjiang and land grabs in the Himalayas and South China Sea.

For all its faults, the US is a democracy where critics can openly criticise and oppose the government’s foreign policy. But that makes little difference to countries treated as pawns in America’s geopolitical competition with China, which often struggle to distinguish between the global actions of major powers.

Blinken drew a clear link between China’s authoritarian practices and the country’s presumed threat to global order. This is a mirror-image projection of America’s belief in its own benign exceptionalism. But just as democracy at home does not imply goodwill abroad, domestic repression need not inevitably lead to external aggression. China also claims to be interested in a stable, prosperous global order – just not one arranged exclusively on US terms.

The irony is that the more the US treats China as a threat and attempts to isolate it, the more China’s responses will seem to validate America’s fears.

With the US seeking to convene a club of democracies openly opposing China, it is not surprising that President Xi Jinping cosied up to Putin just as Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine. As the journalist Robert Wright notes, countries excluded from such groupings will band together.

To those who wonder why we should care about the decline of America’s relative power, US foreign policy elites respond with a rhetorical question: would you rather live in a world dominated by the US or by China?

In truth, other countries would rather live in a world without domination, where smaller states retain a fair degree of autonomy, have good relations with all others, are not forced to choose sides, and do not become collateral damage when major powers fight it out.

The sooner US leaders recognise that others do not view America’s global ambitions through the same rose-tinted glasses, the better it will be for everyone.

Dani Rodrik is professor of international political economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Copyright: Project Syndicate

“Sic Transit Gloria Mundi”: Thus Passes The Glory Of The World

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Standing nearly 20-feet-high, 43 U.S. Presidential busts rest on April 9, 2019 in Croaker, Virginia (previously). From George Washington to George W. Bush., these remnants of bankrupted Presidents Park are stored on the property of Howard Hankins.

He has recently partnered with historian and photographer John Plashal to provide legal tour of the busts. According to multiple media reports, Hankins has said he is seeking to restore and transport the massive sculptures, but needs to fund more than $1.5 million in order to do so.

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Alice In Chains – Down in a Hole (MTV Unplugged – HD Video)

FINLAND Having Second Thoughts about Joining NATO

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The President of Finland, Sauli Niinisto, said today “Finland will not join NATO without Sweden.” Looks like Finland is having second thoughts.

Sweden is having serious trouble when it comes to joining NATO. It seems the Swedes took-in a whole slew of Middle East Refugees years back and among them are people that the nation of Turkey feels are a terrorist threat: PKK. a.k.a. “Kurds.”

Turkey is invading parts of Syria for the past two years, trying to clear all Kurds out of northern Syria along the Turkish border because Turkey perceives the Kurds and their political movement called “PKK” within Turkey, as a terrorist threat.

So Turkey will not vote to approve Sweden (or Finland) until those alleged “terrorists” are somehow purged from Sweden (and perhaps Finland).

In order for a country to join NATO, the vote by existing NATO members must be unanimous. If Turkey holds to its position, that it will not vote to admit Sweden (or Finland) then neither of those two countries will be able to join NATO.

Since Sweden seems to be in the most jeopardy from a Turkish “No” vote, the President of Finland took this opportunity to say “Finland will not join NATO without Sweden.”

But his comment is likely not related AT ALL to Sweden. You see, it appears to many keen observers, that Finland now realizes it has made a series of very bad decisions about its large neighbor to the east, Russia.

Those bad decisions included applying economic sanctions against Russia over the ongoing Ukraine Special Military Operation, and Finland refused to pay for Russian natural gas and oil in Rubles, which resulted in Russia cutting off energy supplies to Finland. Finland thought they could make it without Russian natural gas, and now it appears they cannot.

Without Russian natural gas and oil, the Finland economy is starting to keel-over. As in other western countries that Sanctioned Russia, fuel prices in Finland are now skyrocketing. That is causing prices for things like food, to skyrocket because all the food has to be transported by truck, and fuel costs for trucks have skyrocketed.

Moreover, Russia has begun moving considerable military hardware toward the border of Finland. The Russians say they have to make certain that their border is protected from NATO and if Finland is going to join NATO, then Russia has to increase its security along the Finland border.

While the movement of Russian troops is not really a concern; there are no hostile issues between Russia and Finland, the move takes place as the Russian Army is literally chewing-up and spitting-out the much larger army of Ukraine.

Neither NATO nor non-NATO countries like Finland and Sweden, ever thought that Russia was as powerful as they clearly are. Moreover, NATO trained the Ukraine Army for eight full years before hostilities broke out between Ukraine and Russia. And with all that high-tech, modern, NATO training . . . . Ukraine is getting its butt kicked.

So whatever representations NATO made to Finland and Sweden about how NATO could protect them from Russia, are all starting to ring hollow at this point.

Perhaps the President of Finland sees this as a very convenient chance to walk-back his nation’s effort to join NATO. After all, things between Russia and Finland are not bad at all. But life in Finland without Russian gas and oil, is not good at all. Maybe the Finnish President sees the obvious writing on the wall, and realizes it would be far better for Finland to walk away from NATO, and stay away . . . far away.

Iran’s Khamenei on tanker seizures: ‘You stole our oil, we took it back from you’ | TradeWinds

Supreme Leader makes plain the nation’s retaliatory motives in detaining two Greek suez-maxes.
No longer looting without consequences. Long live 21st century :

Full article HERE

Awesome!

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tYKHjAq

Oil and Gas prices

Found in a comment section on MoA. American Gasoline prices actually hit $5 yesterday.

For gasoline

  • Current Avg. $5.010
  • Yesterday Avg. $5.004
  • Week Ago Avg. $4.848
  • Month Ago Avg. $4.418
  • Year Ago Avg. $3.077

For diesel

  • Current Avg. $5.771
  • Yesterday Avg. $5.765
  • Week Ago Avg. $5.636
  • Month Ago Avg. $5.557
  • Year Ago Avg. $3.211

Again, the US uses about 100 billion gallons of gasoline and 40 billion gallons of diesel – so the delta in prices from today vs. last year can be multiplied by the above numbers to arrive at just how much more money people are paying for transportation.

China to use Civilian Cargo Ships to Stealth Invade Taiwan

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    LOL. The actual situation is something else. -MM
  • ChinaCargoShips StealthInvasion large
    ChinaCargoShips StealthInvasion large
  • Preparations for what China is now calling “the de-americanization of Taiwan” are in full swing.

    Diversion and reconnaissance teams of one of the marine brigades of the 72nd Army Group of the Eastern Zone of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)  Combat Command (the operational area of responsibility includes Taiwan) conducted exercises on covert penetration and seizure of a beachhead on the coast of a conventional enemy using civilian dry cargo ships.

    Video Below:

Awesome!

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xkglgn1sd3191

Awesome!

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SFk05Dr

カネコアヤノ – ロマンス宣言 / Kaneko Ayano – Romance sengen

Recommended by an influencer. Well worth the video. Check it out. She sure is cute.

Awesome!

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ompdaotpomx81

Awesome!

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A list of American Amendments that were never approved

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f6fdx996pmu71

Awesome!

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Is China MORE Democratic than America Now? Poll Results will SHOCK You

Another very outstanding and great video.

Awesome!

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The best video about America today…

“How To Tell Your Husband You Accidentally Shrank His Favorite Wool Sweater”

husbands sharing their wife fails 640 high 04
husbands sharing their wife fails 640 high 04

NASA is complaining that the Chinese Space organization is not sharing it’s technology

Complaining that China Aerospace is not cooperating, the director forgot the Wolff clause? NASA is actually crying wolfe!
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NASA administrator Nielsen borrowed the saying “it takes two people to dance the tango”, saying that China Aerospace does not offer cooperation and lacks transparency.
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What? Have they forgot the 2011 Wolfe Clause?
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From HERE

None of the funds made available by this Act may be used for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) or the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement, or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China[1]

——Public Law 112-55, SEC. 539

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This Chinese mall has a “husband depository” with massage chairs and phone chargers

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l745hjk6eaa81

Mountain Dew

Racing fuel, Mountain Dew cocktail blamed in teens’ deaths
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While the Mountain Dew we know today comes in 35 different flavors and is synonymous with “gamer fuel,” it was created for a much different purpose. Brothers Barney and Alley Hartman began bottling their lemon-lime creation in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1932. Its name was originally a slang term for mountain-made moonshine, and it was created to be a whiskey chaser.

In order to make moonshine, a fermentation process is needed, which creates alcohol in two forms: ethanol and methanol. Ethanol is the drinkable version, but methanol is toxic. The human body converts methanol into formaldehyde. The formaldehyde is then converted into formic acid, which essentially poisons the body’s cells. Racing fuel contains almost 100% methanol, creating the same inebriated feeling that ethanol gives through alcohol consumption. While methanol is extremely poisonous, it is cheap and easy to access in the form of racing fuel, which makes it luring to underage drinkers.

Four teenage boys at a party in January of 2016 created a deadly concoction called “Dewshine,” a mix of Mountain Dew and racing fuel. The teens created the mixture on purpose and drank it. Authorities were called to the home of sixteen-year-old Logan Stephenson on January 21, 2016, after he was found dead in his bed. Just a few minutes later, they were called to the home of his best friend, J.D. Byram, because he had begun having seizures. Byram died the following Monday.

Concepts for polymer US dollars

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kqvl6tx6uw091

Denmark Inflation

Inflation, its not just the US

Food and Energy prices in Denmark hit 40 year high

Prices for consumers have increased in Denmark by 6.7 percent across the last 12 months.

So now the Danish can get high food and energy prices to go along with their highest electricity price in Europe distinction:

Electricity prices, household in Denmark

Denmark, the country with the most expensive electricity in Europe

The average price of electricity in Denmark, in December of 2021, has been 0.3448€ per kilowatt hour. Electricity price has increased € 0.0548 kWh, 18.9% since the previous semester. Meanwhile, the average price of electricity without taxes in Denmark in that period was € 0.1485 per kilowatt hour, compared to € 0.104 kWh in the previous semester. The price of electricity excluding taxes increased by 42.79%.

In the last twelve months the price of electricity in Denmark has increased by 63.55%.

In Denmark, the price of electricity reached its maximum price, € 0.3448kWh, in December of 2021. Its minimum price was €0.2401 kWh, corresponding to December of 2007.

Denmark is the country in Europe with the most expensive electricity.

When looking at the difference between the price of electricity with and without taxes, we see that households in Denmark paid € 0.1963 in taxes for each kilowatt hour, which means that 56.92% of what consumers pay for electricity is in concept taxes.

“My 39-Week Pregnant Wife Went To The Store To “Get Stuff For Dinner”. This Is What She Came Home With”

husbands sharing their wife fails 640 03
husbands sharing their wife fails 640 03

A pretty interesting article

How Amish use technology – wired.com

Pretty interesting article, but the conclusion I drew was far removed from what the author was clearly trying to promote.

Throughout the industrial age and now in the information age, the Amish have adhered to the long-standing tradition of making as a primary form of work.

The fact that the Amish have also begun making digital technologies, such as the black-box phone that worked as an intended replacement for cell phones, should come as no surprise. The black-box phone, however, is just one of many examples of an increasing number of communication technologies developed for Amish people by Amish people. These devices are crafted to most precisely complete professional goals, while limiting the negative impacts that come with digital communication today. The Amish recognize that this most certainly has political implications. Making in general, and making of digital technologies in particular, further enables the Amish to exercise their creativity, resist surveillance, and control and sustain their way of life in the digital age.

The manner in which the Amish put technologies to use reveals a great deal about the relationship that they want to have to the larger society. In addition to the black-box phone, I have observed an array of Amish workarounds that reflect local values and are determined by social context. The particular assemblage that comprises a workaround can also signal one’s Amishness or shared group identity.

In particular, the capability to withstand technology is only possible with extremely tightly bound communities – and even then, it is quite clear that the “fence straddlers” that are the focus of this story are far more like those selling organic produce to rich non-believers than some progressive Amish variant.

Awesome!

3Ckanoe
3Ckanoe

US policies led to ‘new G8’ – China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, Turkey

Imagine that!

China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, Turkey – in terms of GDP at PPP is 24.4% ahead of the old group,”

US policies led to ‘new G8’ – Moscow — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union The United States “with its own hands” pushed the countries that are not participating in “sanctions wars” to form a “new Big Eight” group with Russia, the Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Saturday.

Following the launch of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine in late February, the US, EU, UK and many other countries imposed hard-hitting restrictions on Moscow, making Russia the most sanctioned country in the world.

In a Telegram post, Volodin included a table with IMF data on GDP based on purchasing power parity of countries he calls the “new G8” and of countries forming the current G7 (after Russia’s participation in the bloc was suspended over Crimea’s vote to join the country in 2014, the G8 effectively turned into the G7).

The group of eight countries not participating in the sanctions wars – China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, Turkey – in terms of GDP at PPP is 24.4% ahead of the old group,” Volodin wrote.

In his opinion, the economies of the G7 members – the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada – continue “to crack under the weight of sanctions imposed against Russia.”

Full article HERE

Daddy Jack’s Sicilian Pasta

"Daddy Jack has been a favorite of mine for 2-3 years. I was aware of my affection for his personality and respect for his cooking, but I was NOT prepared for how hard his passing hit me. I'm still surprised at the well of emotion when I watch certain videos, and this one might be the one that gets me the most, other than the last ones made at home with Lakisha, Titus, and Axle. I also love the ones where he speaks so lovingly about his mom, and those where he shares with the people in his life. What other chef on Youtube gave us this much? Think about it. Most just don't let us in. But Daddy Jack was happy to do it. Not making the trek to New London to meet this man and taste his food will always be a regret of mine. RIP Daddy Jack. You gave SO much more than you had to. THANK YOU."

Kremlin Responds After Polish EU Official Says West Should Give Ukraine Nukes

Monday, Jun 13, 2022 – 06:00 AM

Starting in April, dangerous rhetoric related to regional nuclear aspirations began coming out of Poland – apparently directed as a ‘threat’ to Russia amid the invasion of Ukraine. Early that month, for example, ruling Polish party leader, Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski suggested that a “tougher” anti-Russian defense posture would include Poland being “open” to having nuclear weapons stationed in the country.

But this weekend has seen the rhetoric heighten even further, eliciting a fierce response from Moscow, when Poland’s European Parliament Deputy and former Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski suggested that the West give nukes to Kiev. “The West has the right to give Ukraine nuclear warheads so that it can protect its independence,” Sikorski said according to regional sources.

As also detailed in a Yahoo News/Ukrayinska Pravda report, “He argued that Russia broke the terms of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances by refusing to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and integrity, so nuclear weapons should be returned to Kyiv, even though Ukrainians voluntarily disposed of them.”

In response, a top Russian Duma official warned that such a scenario would mean central Europe would in effect “cease to exist” as it would surely trigger nuclear war:

The Head of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Viacheslav Volodin, threatens that if the suggestion by the former Foreign Minister of Poland Radoslaw Sikorski to provide Ukraine with nuclear weapons is fulfilled, then the possible nuclear conflict will destroy the European continent.

Volodin said specifically in response to the Polish EU official: “Sikorski is provoking a nuclear conflict in the center of Europe. He doesn’t think neither about the future of Ukraine nor about the future of Poland. In case his suggestions are fulfilled, these countries will cease to exist, as will Europe as well.”

Since 1994, Ukraine has voluntarily been a ‘nuclear-arms-free’ country based on being a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, which marked its accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

In the days ahead of Russia’s Feb.24 invasion, President Vladimir Putin accused the Ukrainian government of seeking to revive nuclear capabilities based on Soviet technology still in its possession.

“There have already been statements that Ukraine is going to create its own nuclear weapons… Ukraine does indeed still have Soviet nuclear technologies and [the] means of delivering such weapons,” Putin had said in televised address just days before the war against Ukraine started, listing it as a justification for Moscow’s actions to come.

“Therefore, it would be much easier for Ukraine to obtain nuclear weapons than to some other states – I won’t name them now – who effectively carry out such research. Especially in case of technological support from abroad, and we must not rule this out as well,” Putin added in his speech at the time.

Grape Soda Homicide

This is one of the reasons why children MUST stay with their biological parents. There is a reason why "evil stepmother" meme's exist. My stepmother was a real fucking witch. Read what the fuck this step mother did... -MM

Something about the term “forbidden” or “off-limits” seems to promote an insatiable desire to explore, especially as children. Whether it’s a particular room in the house, an area in the neighborhood, or simply an adult’s favorite treat, we’ve all been guilty at one point or another of letting our curiosity get the better of us. However, for five-year-old Alexa Linboom, stealing her stepmother’s grape soda would cost her her life.

On January 1, 2012, Alexa stole “one or two grape drinks” from her stepmother Mary Vaughn and was forced to drink more than two liters of grape soda and water within a two-hour time frame as her punishment. The excessive amounts of fluid she ingested caused her sodium levels to drop and her brain to swell. Alexa began screaming in pain, and she later fell unconscious, but her father and stepmother waited several more hours before taking her to the hospital.

She was declared brain dead and removed from life support just two short days later. Her death was declared a homicide due to acute fluid/water intoxication. Both her father, Randall Vaughn, and her stepmother were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

“We’re Moving. This Is How My Wife Packed The Kid’s Dolls”

husbands sharing their wife fails 640 07
husbands sharing their wife fails 640 07

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UPDATED: China Tells U.S. “Will not Hesitate to Start a War”

FLASH– 7:31 PM EDT  Friday, June 10, 2022 — The Defense Ministry of the People’s Republic of China told their U.S. counterparts this evening “Beijing will not hesitate to start a war over Taiwan.”

They used those exact words.

UPDATE 6:32 AM EDT SATURDAY –

Now they’re saying it in gentler words, but PUBLICLY:

China will ‘smash to smithereens any Taiwan independence plot and resolutely uphold the unification of the motherland’ Chinese Defense Minister Fenghe told U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore on Friday.

‘If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost’, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Wu Qian quoted the Fenghe as saying during the meeting, in what is a escalating of tension, not least of which in the type of language being used.

Austin met with his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe who bemoaned new American arms sales to Taiwan announced this week, saying it ‘seriously undermined China’s sovereignty and security interests.’

 

Awesome!

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    8y5n2geit0091

Google Will Declare Bankruptcy In Russia, Says Russian Authorities Seized Bank Account

The Russian subsidiary of Alphabet’s Google plans to file for bankruptcy after authorities seized its bank account, the company said Wednesday, in an apparent escalation of the Kremlin’s drive to cut Russians off from information about the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Key Facts

Google Russia filed an intention to declare bankruptcy after the seizure of its bank account made it “untenable” to meet its financial obligations, a Google spokesperson said in a statement to Forbes and other outlets.

Google’s intention to file for bankruptcy is already on Russia’s Fedresurs financial registry website, according to Reuters and Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

A company spokesperson said Google will continue to operate free services including its search engine, YouTube and Gmail.

Key Background

Google has been arguably Russia’s greatest foe in challenging the war narrative advanced by Kremlin-controlled media within the country since Russia invaded Ukraine February 24.

Google suspended all advertising in Russia in March, banned state-run Russian media YouTube channels worldwide and most critically has refused to remove information on the war deemed illegal from Youtube.

The Russian communications regulator has repeatedly threatened to punish Google for not deleting certain content, and Russia banned Google News in the country last month for publishing “inauthentic” information on the war.

Crucial Quote

“People in Russia rely on our services to access quality information,” the Google spokesperson said in a statement explaining the company’s intention to keep YouTube and other services running.

Tangent

In addition to YouTube, the Russian government has another U.S.-based information foe: Wikipedia. The online encyclopedia has refused to delete information on the war, including information from the Ukrainian government on civilian and troop death tolls, causing the Russian government to threaten fines against Wikipedia. Russian President Vladimir Putin chimed in on the Kremlin’s war against Wikipedia earlier this month, telling Russians not to trust the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia in an interview with state media.

MM Comments

Forbes is a CIA mouthpiece, funded indirectly from the CIA via the NED organization. This is all well-known.

Google, also, is indirectly funded by the NED, and thus the CIA out of the Pentagon. This is all well-known.

Google was operating inside of Russia during a time of war, and promoting the Western “narrative” which is a mixture of lies, distortions and manipulations.

Russia seized all of it’s funding.

Google will be forced to stop operations inside of Russia.

This runs counter to the desires of the United States Pentagon.

The Verve Pipe – The Freshmen [Original Acoustic Version] [I’ve Suffered A Head Injury] [Track #10]

[I’ve Suffered A Head Injury] [Track #10]”]

“I’ve Accidentally Shrunk My Husband’s Jacket. Husband For Scale”

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Zelensky: Ukraine is fine with China’s position on war with Russia

Article HERE

President Volodymyr Zelensky has stated that China has chosen the policy of staying away from the Russian-Ukrainian war and Ukraine is currently satisfied with this policy.
“China has chosen the policy of staying away. At the moment, Ukraine is satisfied with this policy. It is better than helping the Russian Federation in any case. And I want to believe that China will not pursue another policy. We are satisfied with this status quo, to be honest,” President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said at a video link during the Davos Ukrainian Breakfast, Ukrinform reports.
Before the war with Russia, China was Ukraine’s largest trading partner, he added. And now, according to Zelensky, no China’s steps against Ukraine are observed. At the same time, the President admits that China has not taken any steps to support Ukraine.
“Although there is a rather good and long history between the countries. Therefore, I would like to have an advantage in these relations compared to Russia,” he said
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“My Wife Likes To Keep Dog Food Beside Coffee Beans. Guess What I Did At 5:30 Am This Morning”

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husbands sharing their wife fails 640 high 17

ASML’s growth in China a rebuttal to US interference in global chip sector

Wang Yi23:12 Jun 07 2022

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Dutch chip lithography leader ASML said Monday that all of its projects in China are progressing as scheduled, and it plans to recruit more than 200 employees this year to expand business in the market, according to Chinese news outlet The Paper.

Against the backdrop of the US is trying every means to recklessly stop ASML from shipping any of its most cutting edge lithography systems to China, the company’s increasing investment in the market fully demonstrates that no matter how reluctant the US to see, global giants in the semiconductor sector like ASML are seeing business expansion in China, the world’s largest consumer of semiconductors.

Business is business. From a return on investment point of view, it’s a perfectly reasonable choice for ASML to expand business in China. ASML’s sales in Chinese mainland took up 34 percent of its total lithography system sales in the first quarter of this year, according to media reports.

China and the US are indeed in a fierce technological competition, and the semiconductor industry is bearing the brunt of that pressure. The US government has never bothered to hide its plans to stifle the development of China’s chip sector. Yet, the US chip hegemony has become the culprit in disrupting the global industrial chain. The arbitrary political interference of the US government in the industry has clearly become the biggest concern for many companies. The US chip hegemony has caused and escalated the global chip supply chain crunch.

While former US President Donald Trump’s arbitrary sanctions on major Chinese tech giants like Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) have dealt heavy blows to the global chip industry chain, the Biden administration’s political interference in companies’ operation have also stirred strong backlashes.

Last November, the Biden’s administration obstructed SK Hynix’s plan to import the advanced equipment to its chip factory in East China’s Jiangsu Province. The US’ move that put SK Hynix’s chip factory’s renovation plans in jeopardy has caused strong backlash from South Korean media outlets. If the US continues to intervene in this way, South Korean companies will suffer more losses. The purpose of an economic alliance is to promote mutual economic interests, but the US coerces its allies to suffer economic losses for its own political interests, some South Korean media outlets questioned.

The US government’s political coercion and interference in attempting to split the global semiconductor sector will not stop China’s semiconductor sector from development, but only serve to further escalate the current chip shortage and stresses throughout the global industrial chain. What the US does may block US companies and other international companies from the Chinese market, and these companies are unwilling to bear the losses and pay for this kind of political scheming orchestrated by the US.

Those politicians in Washington who are calling for tougher semiconductor export controls, secondary sanctions, and research blockades against China have clearly underestimated the costs of US-China semiconductor decoupling. According to estimates from the US Department of Commerce, if American business with China on semiconductors is cut off completely, it will probably cost anywhere between $80 to $100 billion in sales and 125,000 jobs in the US.

China’s chip market occupies a large share of global industry value and has huge potential. It is increasingly regarded as an important market by related companies in the global chip industry chain and has strong manufacturing advantages. The Chinese market will continue to expand opening up, and concrete measures are being taken to improve the market’s business environment. Foreign companies like ASML are welcome to achieve mutual beneficial development in China.

FADING FAST: UKRAINE RUNNING OUT OF AMMUNITION

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The Russian Army, using its overwhelming firepower, is smashing the Ukraine army, sending Ukraine troops fleeing for their lives.  Now, things have gotten much worse because Ukraine is simply running out of ammunition.

Newly promised Western weapons systems are arriving, but too slowly and in insufficient quantities to prevent incremental but inexorable Russian gains in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, which is now the focus of the fight.

Around 200 Ukrainian soldiers are now being killed every day, up from 100 late last month, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC on Friday — meaning that as many as 1,000 Ukrainians are being taken out of the fight every day, including those who are injured.

To the shock and dismay of Ukraine supporters, the overall trajectory of the war has unmistakably shifted away from one of unexpectedly dismal Russian failures and tilted in favor of Russia as the demonstrably stronger force.

The odds against the Ukrainians are starting to look overwhelming, said Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, an adviser to the Ukrainian government on defense and intelligence issues.

“The Russians are using long-range artillery against us, often without any response, because we don’t have the means,” he said. “They can attack from dozens of kilometers away and we can’t fire back. We know all the coordinates for all their important targets, but we don’t have the means to attack.”

“The strategies and tactics of the Russians are completely different right now. They are being much more successful,” he said. “They have more resources than us and they are not in a rush.”

“There’s much less space for optimism right now,” he added.

Ukraine has now almost completely run out of ammunition for the Soviet-era weapons systems that were the mainstay of its arsenal, and the Eastern European countries that maintained the same systems have run out of surplus supplies to donate, Danylyuk said. Ukraine urgently needs to shift to longer-range and more sophisticated Western systems, but those have only recently been committed, and in insufficient quantities to match Russia’s immense firepower, he said.

Russia is firing as many as 50,000 artillery rounds a day into Ukrainian positions, and the Ukrainians can only hit back with around 5,000 to 6,000 rounds a day, he said. The United States has committed to deliver 220,000 rounds of ammunition — enough to match Russian firepower for around four days.

The Russians have meanwhile adapted their tactics in ways that have let them take full advantage of their firepower by remaining at a distance from Ukrainian positions, pounding them relentlessly, then taking territory once the Ukrainians have been forced to retreat.

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

When this conflict erupted in February, I told listeners to my radio show, and readers of this web site, “Ukraine doesn’t stand a chance.”

Of course at the time, I had no idea the west (NATO) would pour so much weaponry into Ukraine, which, at first thought, would dramatically change the equation in Ukraine’s favor.

Then the ugly reality of American and NATO “smart weapons” struck:  Our advanced weaponry, is very, VERY, fragile.   Yes, it is sophisticated, and when it works, it is devastatingly effective, but quite often, our high tech gizmos DON’T work.   The electronics that make the weapons so smart, are not suited for the rough and tumble realities of the battlefield.

That became evident when, after killing or capturing a number of Ukrainian regiments, the Russian Army found Ukrainian troop cell phones.  One the screens of those phones: Google Searches with the search terms “Why isn’t javelin working” “javelin won’t shoot” “javelin making noises”   

Here, look at one of the phones from the Battle field:

UkrainianArmyPhone GoogleSearches
UkrainianArmyPhone GoogleSearches

The equipment failures aside, there is another far more important reason Ukraine is losing, and losing badly: history.

I am a sort of student of history and I know full well that it was the Russian Army that stormed Berlin in WW2. Not the Americans, not the British, not the French. It was the Russians that totally crushed Hitler, and at a staggering cost to the Russian nation and its people. But they DID IT.

They paid the price, and won.

The youngsters handling military strategy and intelligence analysis in the US and our NATO vasal states these days, seem to have ZERO knowledge of history. They game-out scenarios on their computers, and to them, they think they know how things will turn out. But it is blazingly clear they did not (and do not) factor-in historical realities. In this instance, the one historical reality they failed to consider is that the Russian Army is one of the two most fearsome fighting forces on planet earth.

The other is China.

As such, Ukraine never stood a chance. This was over the moment the Russian Army crossed the border into Ukraine.

Ukraine’s best hope right now is to unconditionally surrender. To do anything else, will merely delay the inevitable, and cause the deaths of hundreds-of-thousands more Ukrainians, fighting against a force they have zero chance of defeating.

Sadly, Ukraine cannot even NEGOTIATE a peace deal, because they’ve shown their word (in negotiations) is worthless. Ukraine negotiated the Minsk Agreement, then reneged and didn’t implement even ONE of the terms it agreed to. They did this for over five years!

Moreover, when the fighting initially began, Ukraine announced they would not abide by the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, they signed back in the 1940’s. So now, nobody can believe anything Ukraine says because they’ve proven their word is useless. Surrender is their only option.

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Shelly West – Flight 309 To Tennessee

“”It’s Always So Cold In Our House. Our Furnace Sucks” – Wife, Jan 2020, -32C”

husbands sharing their wife fails 640 high 20
husbands sharing their wife fails 640 high 20

China’s PLAN Leaked — A Fleet Of VTOL Drones Spotted On Chinese PLA Navy’s Shandong Aircraft Carrier

 

In a first, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been spotted on the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) aircraft carrier, Shandong. According to reports in Chinese state media, Shangdong is currently at the Dalian Shipyard for maintenance and repairs.

On June 1, Andreas Rupprecht, an expert on Chinese military aviation, shared an image of UAVs on Shandong’s deck suggesting that it could be the first time, drones have been spotted on board the aircraft carrier.

In late April, the Chinese state-owned Global Times reported that Shandong was undergoing “its first scheduled maintenance and refurbishment” at the Dalian Shipyard after two years of service “to enhance the flattop’s usability”.

Before that, in March, the aircraft carrier was reported to have sailed through the Taiwan Straits, near Taiwan’s Kinmen island opposite the Chinese mainland city of Xiamen. Reports at the time also noted that there were no aircraft on Shangdong’s flight deck.

 

One of the UAVs spotted onboard Shangdong, has an inverted V-shaped tail and it bears resemblance to a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) UAV that was reportedly seen onboard the PLAN’s Type 075 LHD amphibious assault ship in December, last year.

According to Chinese media reports, it was the CW-40 dual-purpose UAV, designed and developed by the Chinese company JOUAV, which made its first appearance during the 2021 edition of the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition, also known as Zhuhai Airshow.

The UAV was also showcased in March this year at the DSA 2022 defense exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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2022 06 03 17 40

“My Lovely Wife Bought A New Screen And A Cat Door To Go In It. Took A Few Hours And She Was So So Proud Of Herself”

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husbands sharing their wife fails 640 high 44

Chris Isaak – Wicked Game (MTV Unplugged) [HD]

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The CW-40 UAV 

The CW-40 is designed to conduct reconnaissance, search and surveillance, participate in rescue operations, ensure security, monitor the environment, prevent forest fires and protect important facilities.

The drone has a fuselage length of 2.3m and a wingspan of 4.6m. It can fly at an altitude of 4000m, has a take-off weight of 45kg, and carries a maximum payload of 10kg.

According to the Chairman of JOUAV, Ren Bin, the CW-40 adopts a domestically made four-stroke EFI engine.

The UAV is equipped with three light photo-electric pods for large areas, and long-distance video surveillance. The full CW-40 system can be assembled and disassembled in 15 minutes, according to claims by JOUAV.

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2022 06 03 17 41

The PLA has been actively advancing its employment of UAVs into its force structure for various purposes, such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, attack purposes, or even as target drones to simulate anti-aircraft combat scenarios.

If the UAV spotted onboard the Shandong is CW-40, then it could fulfill a role similar to the ASN-209 medium-altitude, medium-endurance (MAME) UAV, known as the ‘Silver Eagle’ which has a range of 200km and a maximum endurance of 10 hours, just like the CW-40.

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2022 06 03 17 42

The Sky Eagle is capable of Target Designation, Electronic Intelligence (ELINT), and Electronic Warfare (EW), and can even be used for guiding missiles to the target.

Experts also suggest that PLAN might use this UAV, as a communications relay for accompanying surface or aerial forces in case the satellite communications are compromised.

Life Is Worth Losing – Dumb Americans – George Carlin

Don Bacon Logic

General Austin in Singapore: “Do rules matter? Does sovereignty matter? Does the system that we have built together matter? I am here because I believe that it does. And I am here because the rules-based international order matters just as much in the Indo-Pacific as it does in Europe.”

“We’re determined to uphold the status quo that has served this region so well for so long,” he said. “So let me be clear: We remain firmly committed to our longstanding one-China policy — guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances. We categorically oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. We do not support Taiwan independence.

UN Charter Article 2(1)
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.

So Taiwan is a domestic affair! China’s sovereignty matters!

-Don Bacon

Chinese PLA Navy Goes Unmanned?

In addition to UAVs, the PLAN is known to have incorporated a wide array of unmanned systems such as unmanned surface and underwater vehicles.

Moreover, the advancements in artificial intelligence in recent years have led China to envision a greater role for unmanned platforms in maritime security and competition for control of sea lanes and marine resources.

Last month, China launched an unmanned ship, named Zhu Hai Yun that can be controlled remotely and navigate autonomously in open water and carry dozens of drones, submersibles, and other vessels for conducting ocean research.

Also, China is currently working on a next-generation assault carrier, known as Type 076 LHD which is being developed as a successor to the Type 075 LHD. It is said to be capable of carrying Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs).

Reports suggest that China’s stealthy GJ-11 Sharp Sword UCAV may be one of the drones being planned to board the Type 076 LHD, based on a CG simulation released last year by the China Aviation Industry Group at the Zhuhai Airshow.

The GJ-11 UAV is 12.2m long, with a wingspan of 14.4m and a height of 2.7m, and has a maximum takeoff weight of over 10 tons with an estimated payload estimated of around 1.9 tons, and a combat radius of over 1,500km with an endurance of six hours.

  • U.S. gas prices hit $5 per gallon

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    2022 06 12 11 50

    This is the 31st “record high” in 33 days!   Way to go, Brandon!

    Stolen elections have consequences.

    But to those of you are were foolish enough to vote Democrat, if you keep voting how you’ve voted, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.

    Wise-up.   Fast.  Before they make you choose between eating and driving to work or heating your house.

    7-up poisoning

    The Dominican Republic is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean and has become a popular tourist destination due to its beautiful beaches, endless recreational options, and rich culture. Surrounded by the Caribbean Sea on the south and the Atlantic Ocean on the north, it seems like the perfect place for a family vacation, romantic getaway, or beachfront wedding.

    Awilda Montes had planned a romantic getaway to the Dominican Republic with her boyfriend in October of 2018. However, their stay at the Luxury Bahia Principe Bouganville Resort quickly became anything but romantic. Montes had only been at the resort for a few hours when she decided to grab a bottle of 7-Up from the mini bar. Upon opening the bottle, she noticed there was no “fizz” but carefully proceeded to take a sip. She immediately tasted bleach which caused her entire mouth and tongue to burn, and she began spitting up blood.

    While the resort claimed the incident was an “accidental mix-up” and tried to make things right with apology dinners, free nights, and couples massages, those “apologies” came with a price. The resort staff asked Montes to sign a disclaimer, which she refused. More disturbing is the fact that the three other Americans have also died at the same resort. A 41-year-old woman, Miranda Schaup-Werner, also died after drinking a beverage from the mini bar, and an engaged couple from Maryland were found dead in their room.

    Rodney Dangerfield Almost Makes Carson Fall Out of His Chair Laughing

    The Past can show us so much!

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    Adelaide Springett, Who Was So Ashamed At The State Of Her Boots She Took Them Off, Stand For A Photograph In London, 1901. Photo By Horace Warner

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    Isaac And Rosa, Emancipated Slave Children From New Orleans, 1863

     

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China Won’t “Hesitate To Start A War” Over Taiwan As Series Of Private Warnings Conveyed To US

Monday, Jun 13, 2022 – 11:00 AM

A new report by Bloomberg on Sunday has detailed a series of instances that Chinese officials have privately conveyed to their American counterparts that the Taiwan Strait does not constitute international waters, upping tensions given the Biden administration has been sailing navy warships through the contested waters on a monthly basis.

“The statement disputing the US view of international law has been delivered to the American government by Chinese officials on multiple occasions and at multiple levels, the person said,” Bloomberg writes. “The US and key allies say much of the strait constitutes international waters, and they routinely send naval vessels through the waterway as part of freedom of navigation exercises.”

The Biden administration is said to be “alarmed” by the private warnings, given that “It’s not clear whether the recent assertions indicate that China will take more steps to confront naval vessels that enter transit the Taiwan Strait,” according to the report. This also suggests China could take a more assertive stance in the South China Sea, where US warships have also been conducting freedom of navigation exercises.

On Friday during the first ever face-to-face meeting between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and China’s defense minister Wei Fenghe, the latter warned his American counterpart that Beijing will “not hesitate to start a war” if Taiwan declares independence.

Wei had warned Austin that “if anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost“, defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian quoted the minister as saying during the meeting.

Further Wei vowed that China woujld “smash to smithereens any ‘Taiwan independence’ plot and resolutely uphold the unification of the motherland,” as emphasized in a defense ministry statement issued following the conclusion of the meeting. He “stressed that Taiwan is China’s Taiwan… Using Taiwan to contain China will never prevail,” further according to the statement.

For the US side, Defense Secretary Austin warned the Chinese defense minister in the Friday meeting to “refrain from further destabilizing actions” on Taiwan.

“The Secretary reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability across the Strait, opposition to unilateral changes to the status quo, and called on the PRC to refrain from further destabilizing actions toward Taiwan,” according to the readout.

The key takeways here:

[1] China is treating the Taiwan strait as Chinese territory, not international waters.

[2] China will "smash to smithereens" any attempts to get involved with a Chinese domestic dispute. This sounds like normal American political rhetoric, but it is NOT. In Chinese, these are very, very serious and nasty words, phrases and terms. This is serious, serious talk.

Soldier From Germany (NATO) — Bearing Arms — Caught on TV in Severodonetsk, Ukraine

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FlagOfGermany large
FlagOfGermany large

It has long been rumored that NATO already has active duty military troops from NATO countries, inside Ukraine ACTUALLY ENGAGED IN COMBAT against Russia.  NATO says they are only “training” Ukrainian forces.  So why is this German soldier bearing arms in Severodonetsk?

Below is a still image taken from a FOX NEWS CHANNEL broadcast on Saturday, June 11, 2022 at 8:29 PM eastern U.S. time. (h/t to HTRS Reader/Listener “Rick” for providing this image) 

The image clearly shows a soldier, wearing the uniform flag patch of Germany on his arm, in battle gear, carrying a launch tube for some type of weapon, in Severodonetsk, Ukraine, where utterly intense military battles have been taking place for the past week, between Ukraine and Russia.

GermanSoldierOnSeverodonetskBattlefield armed
GermanSoldierOnSeverodonetskBattlefield armed

What is this German soldier doing there, carrying arms?

He certainly isn’t training anyone given the gear he is seen wearing.

This seems to be the first conclusive proof that NATO is covertly engaged in actual combat against Russia.

Undeclared war?  By NATO?  Against Russia?

World War 3 now appears closer than any of us knew.

"My Wife Worked For An Hour On This Peach Crisp And Burst Into Tears Right Before My Parents Showed Up To Our House"

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husbands sharing their wife fails 640 high 42

Facebook fiasco
Below is a quote from a posting at The Register
Facebook and Instagram's parent biz, Meta, was hit with not one, not two, but eight different lawsuits accusing its social media algorithm of causing real harm to young users across the US.




The complaints filed over the last week claim Meta's social media platforms have been designed to be dangerously addictive, driving children and teenagers to view content that increases the risk of eating disorders, suicide, depression, and sleep disorders.

"Social media use among young people should be viewed as a major contributor to the mental health crisis we face in the country," said Andy Birchfield, an attorney representing the Beasley Allen Law Firm, leading the cases, in a statement.

"These applications could have been designed to minimize any potential harm, but instead, a decision was made to aggressively addict adolescents in the name of corporate profits. It's time for this company to acknowledge the growing concerns around the impact of social media on the mental health and well-being of this most vulnerable portion of our society and alter the algorithms and business objectives that have caused so much damage."

The lawsuits have been filed in federal courts in Texas, Tennessee, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Missouri, according to Bloomberg.

So, how long before social media is reigned in within the West?

Will these lawsuits get anywhere? Is there any limit on what might be done for profit?

Filipinos urged ‘to take heart all the learnings from the past’

The Philippines emphasis has prioritized friendship with China while celebrating the coming independence day from Spain and US.

Article HERE

Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte has urged Filipinos to “take heart all the learnings from the past” in a speech ahead of the celebration of the 124th Philippine Independence Day.

He delivered his speech during the virtual celebration of Independence Day and the 21st Filipino-Chinese Friendship Day organized by the Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (FFCCCII).

In his speech, Duterte reminded Filipinos about the importance of celebrating Independence Day on June 12 as a testament to how the country’s forefathers fought for the freedoms that Filipinos enjoy today.

“May it inspire us to take after the courage of our heroes as well as encourage us to use our ability, skills and knowledge for the benefit of our community,” Duterte said.

He also urged the public to “take heart all the learnings from the past”, especially the countless hardships that Filipinos had to endure as a nation.

“Let our rich histories move to translate our love for this country into real acts of goodwill for all our fellow men. Let us also work together so that we could realize our vision of a more harmonious and progressive Philippines. May we have a meaningful commemoration,” he added.

The country’s first president, Emilio Aguinaldo, proclaimed the Philippines’ independence from the Spanish colonial rule in Kawit, Cavite on June 12, 1898.

From July 4, 1946, the Philippines celebrated Independence Day every July 4. However, the celebration was moved to June 12 by virtue of Proclamation 4166, issued by President Diosdado Macapagal.
PH-China friendship
Incoming President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., for his part, expressed hope that the centuries-old relationship and friendship between the Philippines and China will continue to be of great mutual benefit to their respective people.

“From trade, arts, culture, athletics to regional peace and stability to the employment of opportunities for our people, and all the significantly generous efforts extended to us during the pandemic, the cooperative partnership of our nations continues to reach new heights,” he said.

He said he looked forward to more years of not just diplomatic relations but of continuous, fruitful engagements between China and the Philippines.

The Philippines and China established their diplomatic relations on June 9, 1975.

June 9 of every year is also declared as Filipino-Chinese Friendship Day, by virtue of Proclamation 148 issued by former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2002.

Aside from Duterte and Marcos, also in attendance were Vice-President-elect Sara Duterte, Macapagal-Arroyo, lawmakers, and other guests.

The FFCCCII is the umbrella organization of Filipino Chinese entrepreneurs, which brings together over 170 business and trade associations from all over the Philippines. (PNA)

Russia and China connected: first road bridge (2020 04) and first cross river railway bridge (2021 08)

China’s endless infrastructure projects vs US endless wars, sanctions, military exercises, and verbal threats….
Historic $307 million road link across the Amur River - known in China as the Heilongjiang River - will open in April 2020.

Article HERE

First cross-river railway bridge between China and Russia completed - UCLG-ASPAC BRLC . A new bridge that will link Russia and China’s railway systems was completed on August 17, 2021, seven years after its much-heralded groundbreaking.

Mongolia wants to fuel Russia and China by rail – Business News

The Belt and Road keeps connecting more and more parts of the world everyday without any participation from the “West”.
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After a turbulent and conflicting politics around the potential security implications of expanding its freight logistics in China, Mongolia hopes to complete three important rail lines by the end of this year. These developments will have a massive impact on commodity markets, allowing China and Russia to look inland for trade, particularly in bulk commodities like coal and metals – making both countries more energy secure and less subject to sanctions pressure.
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Article HERE

Ukrainian Official Threatens THE WEST; Ukraine Could “Switch Sides”

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ARESTOVICH THREATENS WEST; READY TO SWITCH SIDES!

Oleksiy Mykolaiovych Arestovych is a Ukrainian presidential adviser and military columnist.  He is deep within the inner circle of Ukrainian President VOlodimir Zelensky.

During a televised interview Arestovych said this:

Machine translation: “If Putin wins, 500 thousand Ukrainians will fight for Russia and no one will be able to stop this force.”

Zelensky’s representative explained why the West should supply more weapons and prevent Putin from winning.

“…If Putin wins. And the 1.5 million Russian army will be joined by another 500,000 Ukrainian army. Everyone has seen how we can fight. And then where will the amusing American/NATO troops be able to stop this united force, plus Belarus?”

The BEST Vietnamese PHO Recipe

Outstanding! Look at how it cooks it! WOW!!!!!

"I've never made pho before and I just made this recipe. The broth is incredible. The charring of the onions and ginger provides a subtle smokey flavor and the fish sauce and dried shrimp packs an umami punch that I looove. I was worried it would just taste fishy with these 2 ingredients but it didn't! Thank you for sharing with us, and shout out to the person in the comments who transcribed the recipe from the video! <3"

The Benefits Of Economic Collapse

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

I first began to predict a major economic collapse back in 1999. Although I understood that it was at least fifteen years off and possibly more, I believed that it would be wise to begin to prepare for it then, as the actual date of collapse could not be predicted. (Better to be a few years early than even one day too late.)

Not surprisingly, back then, this prediction appeared to most people to not only be unlikely, but laughable.

Today, we’re a good bit closer to the onset of an economic crisis and it now not only seems possible, but quite likely to an increasing number of those people who are paying attention.

And not surprisingly, as so many people are now realising the inevitability of such a crisis, they’re also realising that they should have been preparing for it. Preparation for a major event such as this requires a fair bit of time and many people are belatedly coming to realise that they may be caught with their pants down when the initial crashes begin.

Whenever the inevitability of such a debacle is first recognized, the first reaction for most people is to dive into denial, saying, “It simply can’t happen. Nobody would let it happen, because nobody benefits.”

But that’s just it. Not only does someone benefit, they’ll benefit on a grand scale.

The controllers of an economy always benefit from a collapse

In 1814, Napoleon’s army went into battle at Waterloo, Belgium. The investment moguls at Capel Court in the City of London were biting their nails with worry, as the outcome of the battle would determine stock prices. If the French won, stock prices would drop dramatically. If Britain won, prices would rise dramatically.

In those days, communication was slow. it would take considerable time for the official envoy to travel from the battlefield in Belgium to London with the news of the outcome of the battle.

England’s foremost banker, Nathan Rothschild, had sent his own messenger to Waterloo with instructions to return by the fastest possible means with the news. Consequently, Mister Rothschild received the news many hours ahead of the return by official messenger.

He then was seen at the stock exchange selling as much as he could as quickly as he could. The word went out: “Rothschild knows.” This elicited a panic and others sold as quickly as they could.

Prices plummeted quickly; then, as the official envoy from Waterloo came up the Thames, Rothschild suddenly bought heavily at a rock-bottom price. Within the hour, the envoy provided the news that Britain had won the battle and prices shot through the roof, making enormous profits for Rothschild, all within one trading day.

He later called it, “The best business I ever did.”

The above tale is one that should be committed to memory, as it informs us that those who know of an economic event will most certainly capitalise on it.

Those who pull the strings make tremendous profits by manipulating an economy over the length of prosperous times, but they make just as much in crisis periods. They simply wait until an economic collapse has been completed and the dust has settled, then they buy up the remaining companies at rock-bottom prices at a time when the average investor has been wiped out. Then, when the economy begins its recovery, they ride the next wave of prosperity.

For this reason, anyone who’s in the economic driver’s seat understands that he’s best-served by creating false prosperity, then triggering its collapse, then cashing in on the collapse.

When this realisation occurs to the average investor, he more often than not declares, “Well, if that’s true, I’m toast either way.”

But this is only true if he takes a passive role in his economic future.

You can benefit from a collapse

The Mandarin word for “crisis” also means “opportunity.”

Those who are able to understand this Chinese concept have a tremendous opportunity in terms of investment. They can recognise that the coming crisis is also an opportunity.

Yes, there will be a collapse in the stock and bond markets. These will unquestionably be deflationary events, causing asset prices to crater.

But this need not spell disaster. The game is not over, but the crisis is unquestionably a game-changer.

It’s important to bear in mind that real wealth never disappears; it merely changes hands.

To prepare for the new game, the objective would be to liquidate all or most stocks, bonds and hard assets such as real estate, in advance of a crash.

Next you would wish to expatriate the proceeds to a jurisdiction that’s less likely to be a casualty of the crisis and, hopefully, would be a net-gainer at such a time.

Like those who actually pull the strings, you’d not only avoid becoming a casualty of the economic collapse, you’d stand to gain from it.

Rescue a drowning kitten waiting to die by the lake. miracle of god

Gosh! He looks dead to me! But he’s alive!

Mark Levin: We are staring tyranny in the face

Meanwhile in America, it appears that a civil war is going to happen soon. This is HISTORIC TIMES.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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Super delicious Greek food, Zombie Gnomes, American freak-outs, Chinese moon bases, HST and other adventures

We continue on our quest to find some sanity in the rapidly collapsing world. The easiest way to do so is to turn off news from USA, UK, Australia and Korea. Then everything becomes so peaceful. Don’t you know…

Let’s continue down our stroll through the “news” at this point in time.

BMW Group strengthens partnership in China: Extension of Joint Venture Contract until 2040 enters into force

Another smart German company in defiance of the USA gov order to disconnect with China.

From HERE

Volkswagen going all-in on China’s EV future — 200EV manufacturer in china

Not only BMW.

“everyone agrees there are too many electric vehicle brands in China.” Officials in Beijing claim there are as many as 200

VW act-locally-to-succeed-globally approach. That, it’s hoped, will win the trust and loyalty of Chinese motorists leaning toward supporting local job creation, much the way Japanese carmakers operate in the US.

In the past, our approach was to develop in Germany and localize in China,” Brandstaetter told Nikkei Asia. “But this approach will be changed significantly by setting up more local resources for R&D, especially for software, to be faster, to be more independent in China.”

Brandstaetter adds that “we’re also using these technology trends for the rest of the globe and our other entities.” That means a strong focus on the internet-connected vehicles preferred on the mainland and EV offerings with self-driving functions.

The joint venture that’s majority-owned by Volkswagen will operate from a new plant in Anhui Province. By 2023, the facility hopes to churn out 300,000 vehicles annually

Add in joint ventures with FAW Group and SAIC Motor and that puts Volkswagen at the 1 million cars-per-year mark. That will raise China to a 20% share of Volkswagen’s global production....

Article HERE

We face a global economic crisis. And no one knows what to do about it | Economics | The Guardian

Ah. If the USA, and the UK, and Australia are experiencing it, it MUST be global. Eh? LOL. Hey! The World is not the UK / America, just like China is not Shanghai.  -MM

Back in February, plenty of investors were betting that the buildup of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border was no more than an elaborate bluff.

The Russian and Ukrainian currencies appreciated in value as hedge funds and private equity firms, signalling their faith in some form of peace deal emerging, confidently bought roubles and the Ukrainian hryvnia.

Today there is a war going on that has effectively locked up the raw materials and food usually exported by both nations, and no one knows when the conflict will end.

It is clear from the collapse in global stock markets and sliding cryptocurrency values that investors are panicked by the uncertainty. Shares in the US, where the S&P 500 index is down by almost a quarter since January, have suffered their worst start to a year for 60 years.

We have seen panics before, notably after the 2008 crash. Investment firms, despite their reputations as the clever custodians of pension fund money, always press the sell button at the first sign of trouble. Collectively, it leads to a rout.

Seasoned policymakers know how to react in such uncertain times, and that is to do whatever it takes to reassure investors that their money is safe. Western governments have dipped into their reserves, and when that well of cash has run dry, borrowed heavily to maintain a stable outlook for their economies. Vital support has arrived in the form of cheap borrowing from central banks. With low interest rates acting like the cavalry in a John Wayne film, everyone has been able to rest assured the panic will be shortlived.

Not any more. This time there is a real war, not just a financial one, and no one quite knows what to do. The major powers cannot agree about how to fight it and policymakers cannot agree about how to handle the fallout, especially the shortages of raw materials and food from Ukraine and Russia that are pushing inflation to 10% and beyond.

In particular, central banks have lost their nerve. Instead of being a reassuring presence, they are adding to the sense of panic by increasing the cost of borrowing. As one analyst said about the US central bank’s decision to raise interest rates by 0.75 percentage points last week: “The Federal Reserve is going to hike interest rates until policymakers break inflation, but the risk is that they also break the economy.”

On Thursday, the Bank of England pushed its base rate to 1.25% after a period of more than a decade during which it had never climbed higher than 0.75%. Some analysts believe the base rate will increase to 3% by the end of next year after Threadneedle Street put tackling inflation above sustaining growth.

Inflation is an affliction caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and to a lesser but important extent by China’s difficulties with Covid

WTF?

Inflation is Russia's fault.
Inflation is also China's fault.

And there you have the narrative! -MM

We know that an increase in the cost of borrowing in the UK, the eurozone and the US, which is what we are now witnessing, will do nothing to bring down prices.

Inflation is an affliction caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and to a lesser but important extent by China’s difficulties with Covid after its vaccine development failures, which have caused repeated lockdowns and holdups at ports. In the UK, Brexit adds a further big twist because it has damaged trade and cut the number of available workers.

The justification for higher interest rates, then, must lie elsewhere, and central banks, to justify their spasm of action, argue they must go ahead to avert a wages spiral – one where pay exceeds inflation.

In Britain, this argument presumes that the average worker, to prevent a fall in personal living standards, will be able to negotiate a pay deal that beats the Bank of England’s latest forecast for peak inflation later this year of 11%.

When the government is expected to limit public sector pay rises to between 0% and 3% this year, that means private sector increases would have to be even higher – about 12% or 13% on average. These levels of pay rise are a fiction. Worker power, apart from in some discrete pockets of the labour market, is a mirage.

Yet the Bank looks likely to press ahead anyway, which leaves anyone looking for reasons to remain confident turning to Rishi Sunak.

The chancellor has made it clear he values fiscal rectitude above the “whatever it takes” open-ended commitments needed to foster confidence. He has warm words for investors about low business taxes, special visas for foreign entrepreneurs and a reheated Thatcherite plan to increase the number of workers by compelling more of those on benefits to look for work.

That is a feeble collection of micro-policies that will do little to improve the mood of companies looking to invest in the UK. No wonder the pound has tumbled. Few investors want to buy British at the moment, and who can blame them?

… as you’re joining us today from Japan, we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s fearless journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million supporters, from 180 countries, now power us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.

Unlike many others, the Guardian has no shareholders and no billionaire owner. Just the determination and passion to deliver high-impact global reporting, always free from commercial or political influence. Reporting like this is vital for democracy, for fairness and to demand better from the powerful.

And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of the global events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it.

From HERE

Ukrainian leaders integrated Ukrainians into Europe “piece by piece”. Transplantation center discovered in Mariupol.

This issue was resolved in the office of the “International Red Cross” (Sweden), which was equipped as a bunker and stored everything mined behind heavy armored doors on the basement and basement floors.. Recently, Ukraine has been considered in Europe as its own transplantation base. In Mariupol, in the abandoned office of this organization, medical records of children were found, in which not their illnesses were indicated, but their healthy organs not affected by any diseases, as well as the addresses and contacts of their parents. The bunker was not left in a big hurry, but, one might say, “planned”, since a lot of equipment and documents were burned and deliberately destroyed. Bearing in mind the seriousness of the structures, one can rightfully assume that the organs extracted from these children were also stored there. On what grounds was the “International Red Cross” engaged in this activity in Mariupol?

The fact is that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in December 2019 adopted the draft law No. 2457 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine, which simplifies the transplantation of anatomical materials to humans.” Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Dmytro Kuleba welcomed him, calling him “an important step for our country towards European practice.” In March of the same year, this law “On the transplantation of human anatomical materials” came into force.

As noted by Ukrainian specialists interviewed by Life at that time, who studied the law “On the transplantation of human anatomical materials” that had entered into Ukraine, there is an interesting clause in it – “If there are no recipients for anatomical materials in Ukraine, they can be offered to other states with which relevant international treaties. “There is no need for risk and smuggling: you just need to declare that there is no suitable recipient for a particular organ in Ukraine, and then send organs to other countries for a separate fee,” experts say. – And most importantly – everything is according to the law.

At that time, the main volunteer of Ukraine, Miroslav Gai, even at that time suggested sending prisoners “for organs”: “I know why the Rada legalized the trade in human organs. We have many Russian prisoners, and the Russians slow down exchanges all the time. Their prisoners, like Lusvargi, accumulate and give burden on the budget. Otherwise, it will be of any use. From a black sheep, even kidneys … sorry, tufts of wool. ”

According to the Ukrainian businessmen interviewed by Life, who earn on intermediary services, they bring together a potential donor – kidney, liver, etc. – with those foreign cliques in Europe and America, whose clients are ready to pay for “new” organs, for example, by selling a kidney, for example, you can earn up to 50 thousand dollars, part of the liver – 35-40 thousand dollars, a lung – up to 100 thousand dollars, and here the bone marrow is not very valued – from 5 to 10 thousand dollars

According to Life’s interlocutors, who are familiar with the shadow business of selling human organs, most potential donors in Ukraine place ads on the Internet on specialized sites.

This bill can be considered a continuation of law No. 2386a-1, which allows organ transplantation, which the Verkhovna Rada adopted on May 17, 2018, and  Petro Poroshenko  signed on June 19 of the same year. However, it did not work due to certain legal conflicts, the solution of which required the adoption of a new bill by the Servants of the People.

“These idiots in the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law on transplantation. In a country at war, in a country of chaos and lawlessness, where they do not trust either the courts or the law enforcement system, they allowed organ transplantation, ”  Vadim Rabinovich , co-chairman of the Opposition Platform – For Life faction, said about the law .

Although in Ukrainian society the attitude towards this law was mostly negative, but in the Ministry of Health, under the leadership of Ulyana Suprun, they decided to “adjust” society to the opinion of Europe. “The opinion of Europe, the opinion of the leading countries on transplantation is diametrically different from the opinion of our society. Therefore, society must come to the conclusion that this is good, ”  Konstantin Rudenko , an expert from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, commented on the law .

As Ukrainian observers noted at the time, “many people do need organ transplants, but in poor and corrupt countries there are huge risks associated with organ trafficking or the deliberate killing of a person in order to seize expensive “spare parts.” In the poorest countries, organ sales often become way to pay off debts or earn money at the cost of a threat to one’s own life or health. In this context, it should be noted that the simplification of the procedure for organ transplantation takes place against the backdrop of massive impoverishment of Ukrainians, many of whom have nothing to pay their utility bills.”

Vadim Rabinovich also focused attention on this, commenting on the new bill: “Dear Ukrainians, I want to congratulate you on the fact that today for the first time the issues that need to be resolved by the new government have been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada session hall, the main of which will be the simplification of the procedure for organ transplantation. In a country where people have no money, where the tariffs are exorbitant, where land is sold, it is very important that you can sell your organs in order to pay for the “communal”. It was this law that was put first on the agenda of the work of deputies. Why not bring our tariff reduction bill to the floor? This simple law, which has already been voted on in the committee, can reduce tariffs for people tomorrow,” Rabinovich said. Why not bring our tariff reduction bill to the floor? This simple law, which has already been voted on in the committee, can reduce tariffs for people tomorrow,” Rabinovich said. Why not bring our tariff reduction bill to the floor? This simple law, which has already been voted on in the committee, can reduce tariffs for people tomorrow,” Rabinovich said.

Ukrainian journalist  Irina Zaslavets  said on ObozTV that black transplants are very active in Ukraine precisely because of the poverty of many Ukrainians who are looking for buyers for their organs themselves.

“Just yesterday, I saw a letter that came to the Shalimov Institute [National Institute of Surgery and Transplantology – Auth.] – “I am such and such a woman, buy a kidney from me, I really need money …” Such letters constantly come to the Shalimov Institute, and Ukrainians are looking for an opportunity to sell the organ. Periodically, such criminal cases are heard in the courts, ”said Zaslavets.

In fact, as the Ukrainians themselves admitted, “such a legal conflict was created intentionally for the adoption of a new law that will work primarily for wealthy Western patients.”

In contrast to the 1999 law “On the Transplantation of Organs and Other Anatomical Materials”, according to which only state institutions could perform organ harvesting, private clinics also received such a right. The same law specifically spells out the possibility of transferring these organs abroad. According to political scientist  Kirill Molchanov  , under Poroshenko, the law on transplantation was deliberately pushed through by groups of deputies who were vitally interested in the export of organs.

“Fights went on for a long time in the Rada, who will control this rather profitable market for the sale of organs. The organs will be sold not only in Ukraine, but also for export. Certain groups of people’s deputies, after the adoption of this law, will simply divide all the cash flows among themselves, ”Molchanov argued.

The same observers stated that, in fact, this law is the legalization of “black transplantation”.

In general, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 10,000 organs are sold annually on the black market. Globally, about 10% of kidney transplants are due to international smuggling, and the leaders of the black market in organs are Kosovo, Mozambique, Israel, India, Pakistan, Egypt, China, Ukraine and Moldova. Globally, the illicit organ transplant business is estimated at between $1.5 billion and $8 billion a year. Human organs flow massively from poor countries to rich ones, and from poor people to rich ones.

According to the international organization Organs Watch, which is trying to stop the illegal business, a typical kidney donor looks like this: a 28-29-year-old male from countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Ukraine, Romania, Afghanistan, the Philippines or India with an annual income of about $480.

“The buying or selling of organs is illegal in most countries, including the United States, but a chronic shortage of organs for transplants has led to a thriving international black market. Typically, poor donors (usually from third world countries) are paid several thousand dollars for organs, which are then resold for more than $100,000 to wealthy recipients, usually from first world countries.

Often, the financial interest of doctors in transplantation leads to cases when the life of a patient who is “suitable” according to the database for the role of a donor is simply not fought for, especially in cases of head injury only (a frequent result of an accident). The patient can be declared dead with a still beating heart, since surgical removal of still living organs is required, in which the survival rate is many times higher than that of organs removed from a corpse. Judicial proceedings and evidence in such cases are very problematic.

Oleg Panasenko , chairman of the Free Trade Union of Medical Workers of Ukraine   , said that the inefficiency of law enforcement agencies in Ukraine and the poverty of ordinary citizens create a huge field for manipulation and criminal schemes in organ transplantation.

“In order for there to be no “black” transplantation and people were not allowed to have organs, the law enforcement system should work at a high level in the country and there should be a good economic situation. What is not present in Ukraine today. Accordingly, there remains a field for manipulation, ”Panasenko said. According to the leader of the medical trade union, the purpose of the bill was initially to legalize “black transplantation”.

Previously, they tried to fight against these facts in Ukraine.

So, on October 18, 2019, the Kyiv police announced the exposure of a private clinic that was engaged in organ transplantation. In 2017, the press service of the prosecutor’s office of the Kyiv region also reported the arrest of four people who were taking Ukrainian citizens abroad, where they were seized for kidney transplantation.

“Two citizens of Turkey and two citizens of Ukraine from September 2015 to April 2017, through the Internet, searched for victims with a difficult financial situation and persuaded the latter to sell their organ for a monetary reward,” the official statement said.

According to the press service, people were not warned about the negative consequences of kidney deprivation, and organ donors were promised to pay from $10 to $15 thousand for a kidney, but after the removal of the organ they were given much less money. The price of a donor kidney on the world transplantation market ranges from $40,000 to $60,000. As a result, many Ukrainians integrated into Europe posthumously and by no means entirely. – said in an official statement. According to the press service, people were not warned about the negative consequences of kidney deprivation, and organ donors were promised to pay from $10 to $15 thousand for a kidney, but after the removal of the organ they were given much less money.

The price of a donor kidney on the world transplantation market ranges from $40,000 to $60,000. As a result, many Ukrainians integrated into Europe posthumously and by no means entirely. – said in an official statement. According to the press service, people were not warned about the negative consequences of kidney deprivation, and organ donors were promised to pay from $10 to $15 thousand for a kidney, but after the removal of the organ they were given much less money. The price of a donor kidney on the world transplantation market ranges from $40,000 to $60,000. As a result, many Ukrainians integrated into Europe posthumously and by no means entirely.

Full article HERE.

Abandoned at 17 – new beginning for an elderly cat

What a story…

Zombie Gnomes Are A Perfect Way To Keep Everyone From Your Lawn

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Getting sick and tired of trespassers destroying your beautiful lawn? Well, maybe it’s time you taught them a lesson. And what better way to do it than by scaring the bejeezus out of them!

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For that, the Canadian group of artists RevenantFX, have created a perfect solution – zombie gnomes. These creepy undead garden decorations will make sure your Halloween-ready yard will be protected from unwanted visitors and may even turn some heads in your neighborhood.

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Scott Ritter & Ray on Ukraine, Russia, China

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Scott and I focused initially on President Biden’s just-completed Excellent Adventure in the Far East and the U.S. effort to woo countries away from China or, at least, pre-empt closer bilateral ties.

I again posed the question (see my brief talk Thursday, embedded in Article HERE ), Why must China’s “win-win” approach be dismissed out of hand — especially when it was so mutually beneficial 50 years ago in reducing tension and keeping the peace?

Recent developments, including talks with Chinese officials, have fortified Scott’s view that China remains extremely reluctant to go to war over Taiwan. Nevertheless, China will do so “in a heartbeat” if Taiwan declares independence and develops a more substantial military relationship with the U.S.

Bottom line: Scott predicts that the U.S. will be at war with China within six months to a year — and will lose. This could be avoided if the U.S. takes the military aspect out of the equation in confronting China and does the sensible thing in limiting the competition to the economic sphere.

Ray discussed the lemming-like bloc heads now leading the NATO bloc and compared them to statesmen and stateswomen of the past — the German Social Democratic Party’s Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr, for example; and Angela Merkel (no Socialist she), who told President Obama to his face that Germany would not join any effort to send offensive arms to Ukraine. Sadly, serious leaders of the past, experienced in foreign affairs as well as politics, have been replaced by political hacks with little or no experience (or even interest) in Ostpolitik, which yielded a peaceful, mutually beneficial detente in the 1970-80s.

The economic sanctions are already making themselves felt, however, in Germany and elsewhere. And there are preliminary signs that even some bloc-head lemmings may be having serious second thoughts. Fissures are cracking open and expanding among the NATO countries — particularly among those most affected by the sanctions.

Scott reiterated his longstanding view that Russian forces will prevail on the ground in Ukraine, adding that recently they have been performing in a very impressive, professional way. This, despite what the NY Times and Washington Post has been saying, (and even their narrative of Russian “blundering” has begun to change under the force of circumstances). One major question: If Establishment media find themselves forced to acknowledge strong Russian advances in the coming weeks, will they turn on the Biden administration as the mid-term November elections draw near? Snippets of truth have begun to appear in the likes of the NY Times and Washington Post.

The way things have evolved on the ground, serious embarrassment may be unavoidable. Will Biden cut his loses? I suggest the answer to that is No. Rather, with no adults in the room, Biden may instead be persuaded to up the ante (see below). I do hope someone tells the president that the Russians will not back down in the face of escalatory steps they are capable of neutralizing, and that this includes what they call “offensive strike missiles” capable of reaching Russia.

UPDATE

In this context, the trial-balloon-type media reports yesterday afternoon, after our interview, that the U.S. is preparing to send long-range rocket systems to Ukraine, takes on added importance. A final decision by the White House is expected as early as next week. (See: Article HERE )

One key weapons system under discussion is the U.S.-made Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) capable of firing a torrent of rockets 180 miles or more. This is much farther than the systems currently in Ukraine’s inventory, and could put Russia itself within range. This system has been sitting atop the long list of requests from Ukrainian officials, who say it is needed to curb advancing Russian forces in the Donbas. U.S. officials reportedly “have concerns” that Ukrainian forces might end up firing into Russian territory, causing major escalation.

Meanwhile, CNN reports (See: Article HERE ) that Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, who was part of a congressional delegation trip to Kyiv earlier this month, told CNN he believes the systems could help Ukraine gain significant momentum against Russia.

Crowing About the MLRS

“I think it could be a game-changer”, Crow** said, not only for offensive attacks but also for defense. He explained that Russian conventional artillery, which has a range of about 50km, “would not get close” to Ukrainian urban centers if MLRS systems were positioned there. “So it would take away their siege tactics,” he said of the Russians.

The Kremlin has warned that any country providing advanced weaponry to Ukraine will face harsh repercussions. Yesterday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the West has “declared total war” against Russia. The Russians would see any attempt to provide MLRS to Ukraine as additional proof of the West’s intent.

I would expect any MLRS that make it into Ukraine to be neutralized as soon as they are detected.  And then Lockheed Martin (poor thing) would have to manufacture and sell still more! The money is there; the only problem is how fast it can be spent down.  And so it goes.

** Jason Crow styles himself as something of a specialist on Russia. He has asserted that: “Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure out how to destroy American democracy.”

UN Rights Chief Is Urged to Resign After China Visit

Well, under the urging of the United States, the UN sent inspectors to visit China, and investigate the claims of “human rights violations”. They analyzed the situation, made  up a full report, and stated that they couldn’t find anything.

The United States went into hysterics and a tizzy!

Following her long-anticipated trip to China, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet's statement concerning the treatment of minority groups in Xinjiang prompted strong criticism from commenters on social media and in Western governments.
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These Zoom Backgrounds Turn Your House Into the Cover of An IKEA Catalog

The Swedish retailer has released a series of video-conference backgrounds pulled from the covers of Ikea catalogs of yesteryear. The backgrounds will make it look like you live in a house worthy of a catalog, even if it’s decidedly not.

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HandG ikea cat 1987 2

The 10 backgrounds capture a time before millennial pink: the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s. A time of rolled-arm couches with cream-colored slipcovers, glass and metal armoires, and aquamarine and tangerine accents. One background from a 2000 cover shows a mom and her son smiling over a Game Boy while sitting on one such cream-colored couch. Another from 2003 suggests you “Go Cubic!” much like the boxy TV featured in the lightly colored living room with a cherry-red and fuchsia abstract rug and green-apple accents.

HandG ikea cat 1997 2
HandG ikea cat 1997 2

HandG ikea cat 1992 2
HandG ikea cat 1992 2

HandG ikea cat 1988 2
HandG ikea cat 1988 2

Greek chicken souvlaki | Akis Petretzikis

Lunar Research Station: Russia, China Almost Ready To Ink Pact On ‘Moon Base’ That Will Rival Artemis Accords – Rogozin

Russian space chief Dmitry Rogozin recently said that Moscow and Beijing were very close to signing the agreement on creating the joint Lunar Station.

“We are now almost ready to sign an intergovernmental agreement on creating a lunar research base with China,” Rogozin said in an interview with the state-owned Rossiya 24 TV channel.

The Artemis Accords

As EurAsian Times has reported earlier, China and Russia are leading the opposition to the US-led space block, called the Artemis Accords.

It consists of 19 countries, all of which include the United States and it’s proxy surrogates.

The overall aim is to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2025.

As well as establishing a governing framework for exploring and mining for natural resources, on Moon, Mars, and beyond.

The mission intends (some day) to build a research station on the Moon’s south pole.

The rough plans are also to have a supporting research station orbiting the Moon, called the Lunar Gateway.

As part of that program, an uncrewed mission to Moon, Artemis 1, is planned to be launched as early as July 2022.

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China and Russia are promoting their own International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) as an alternative to the US-led Artemis program.

This joint Sino-Russian mission aims to build a Moon base and install a space station in the lunar orbit. The station is planned to be a state-of-art experimental research facility created on the surface or in the orbit of the Moon.

Roadmap For the IIRS; International Lunar Research Station

Last June, Roscosmos and China National Space Administration (CNSA) presented a roadmap for the ILRS during the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2021).

According to the roadmap, divided into three phases, five facilities and nine modules are planned for the station to support long and short missions to the Moon’s surface and orbit. The construction of the station is expected to be completed by 2035.

These facilities include a CisLunar Transport Facility to support round-trip transfer between Earth and the Moon, lunar orbiting, soft landing, a take-off on the lunar surface, and re-entry to Earth.

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On the surface, a long-term support facility will feature a command center, energy and supply modules, and thermal management. The lunar transport and operation facility will help modules move the surface and support excavation or sampling.

The other two are the lunar scientific facility for in-orbit and surface experiments and the ground support and application facility.

As for the modules, the designs reportedly include a “hopping robot” and smart mini-rovers that would move around the Moon’s surface.

First Phase Of ILRS Construction

The station is planned to be built in three phases, with the first phase involving six missions, including China’s Chang’e-4, 6, and 7 missions and Russia’s Luna 25, 26, and 27. The first phase involves gathering data and verifying high-precision soft-landings which is supposed to last till 2025.

The Chang’e-4 (CE-4) mission delivered a landing platform and a rover named Yutu-2 to the Moon’s far side in January 2019, marking the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon by any country.

Yutu-2 landed in Von Kármán crater, in the Moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin, in January 2019. The CE-4’s purpose is to explore the area’s geology. The CE-6 and CE-7 are expected to be launched around 2025.

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The CE-6 is supposed to bring back to Earth lunar samples with a mass of up to 2 kilograms, and CE-7 will be tasked with landing on the lunar South Pole and detecting local natural resources.

CE-7 is comprised of five separate spacecraft, namely an orbiter, lander, rover, hopping probe, and a polar relay satellite.

Meanwhile, Russia also plans to launch its Luna-25 mission in August 2022, thereby reactivating the Soviet-era series of robotic lunar missions that ended decades ago. The last in the series was Luna 24, which sent about 6 ounces (170 grams) of moon material back to Earth in 1976.

The Luna-25 moon probe will launch atop a Soyuz-2.1b rocket with a Fregat upper stage from the Vostochny spaceport in the far eastern region of Amur. The probe’s primary destination for landing is the Moon’s South Polar region, specifically, a spot north of the Boguslavsky Crater.

According to Russia’s rocket design bureau, NPO Lavochkin has constructed the Luna 25’s lander. There are three main tasks for this mission: to develop soft-landing technology; study the internal structure and exploration of natural resources, including water, in the circumpolar region of the Moon; and investigate the effects of cosmic rays and electromagnetic radiation on the Moon’s surface.

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In addition, Luna 25 is also supposed to use a suite of sensors onboard to study the lunar topside and dust particles in the Moon’s exosphere.

Luna 25 also had a camera called Pilot-D, a demonstrator terrain relative navigation system, developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). However, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ESA announced its decision in April to discontinue cooperation on Russia’s Luna series of robotic moon missions. Now Pilot-D will not be a part of the Luna 25 mission.

While the Luna 26 and Luna 27, which were earlier scheduled to launch in 2024 and 2025, respectively, will also be postponed, announced chief of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, shortly after ESA discontinued its cooperation.

Second And Third Phases Of ILRS

Following the completion of the first phase in 2025, which may get delayed considering the possible postponement of Luna 26 and Luna 27, phase two called the ‘construction’ phase, will begin in 2026, and this is supposed to go on till 2035.

The construction phase will be divided into two sub-stages, the initial one from 2026 to 2030, which will involve technology verification, sample return, massive cargo delivery, and the start of joint operations. Two missions are planned during this period, the Chinese CE-8 and the Russian Luna-28.

Stage two of the second phase will take place from 2030 to 2035 and involve completing the in-orbit and lunar surface infrastructure for energy, communication, actual resource utilization, and other technologies.

Five joint missions are planned for this sub-stage, named ILRS-1 through 5 and Russian super heavy-lift launch vehicles are listed to launch the mission.

Phase three will see the start of crewed landings after 2036, when the ILRS has been mostly completed and humans can conduct research and exploration.

Meanwhile, China and Russia are looking to add more nations to ILRS and there have been reports of negotiations with the ESA, Thailand, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. However, as the ESA has backed out of Russia’s Luna series of moon missions over the Ukraine war.

Artemis Accords: why many countries are refusing to sign Moon exploration agreement

So why so few nations want to join with the USA in their "moon exploration" effort? Well, this UK-centrist article tries to attempt explaining why all the other space-faring nations won't participate in it, and intends to go their own way. -MM

Eight countries have signed the Artemis Accords, a set of guidelines surrounding the Artemis Program for crewed exploration of the Moon. The United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates and the US are now all participants in the project, which aims to return humans to the moon by 2024 and establish a crewed lunar base by 2030.

This may sound like progress. Nations have for a number of years struggled with the issue of how to govern a human settlement on the Moon and deal with the management of any resources. But a number of key countries have serious concerns about the accords and have so far refused to sign them.

Previous attempts to govern space have been through painstakingly negotiated international treaties. The Outer Space Treaty 1967 laid down the foundational principles for human space exploration – it should be peaceful and benefit all mankind, not just one country. But the treaty has little in the way of detail. The Moon Agreement of 1979 attempted to prevent commercial exploitation of outer-space resources, but only a small number of states have ratified it – the US, China and Russia haven’t.

Now that the US is pursuing the Artemis Program, the question of how states will behave in exploring the Moon and using its resources has come to a head. The signing of the accords represents a significant political attempt to codify key principles of space law and apply them to the programme. You can hear more about some of the governance issues facing nations who want to explore the Moon in the podcast To the moon and beyond, see link below.

The accords are bilateral agreements and not binding instruments of international law. But by establishing practice in the area, they could have a significant influence on any subsequent governance framework for human settlements on Mars and beyond.

Natural allies

All seven partners who have agreed to the accords with the US are natural collaborators on the Artemis Program and will easily adhere to the stated principles.

Japan is keen to engage in lunar exploration.

Luxembourg has dedicated legislation allowing for space mining and has also signed an additional collaborative agreement with the US.

The UAE and Australia are both actively trying to establish collaborative links with the broader space industry, so this represents a perfect opportunity for them to build up capacity.

Italy, the UK and Canada all have ambitions to develop their space manufacturing industries and will see this as a chance to grow their economies.

The contents of the accords are relatively uncontentious.

  • Be subject to American laws, rules and regulations.
  • Pay a large fee for participation.
  • Host American Space Military forces.

Throughout, there is reference to the existing Outer Space Treaty framework, so they are tied closely to existing norms of American space law.

There is an explicit statement that the mining of space resources is in accordance with international law. This follows on from the controversial passing of the Space Act 2015, which put the right to use and trade space resources into American domestic law.

But section 10(4) of the accords also commits to ongoing discussions at the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space as to how the legal framework should develop.

The rest of the accords focus on safety in space operations, transparency and interoperability (which refers to the ability of space systems to work in conjunction with each other) under American law.

Controversial issues

If the substance is reassuring, the US promotion of the accords outside of the “normal” channels of international space law – such as the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space – will be a cause of consternation for some states.

Duh!

By requiring potential collaborators to sign bilateral agreements on behaviour instead, some nations will see the US as trying to impose their own quasi-legal rules.

This is clearly seen as the US leveraging partnership agreements and lucrative financial contracts to reinforce its own dominant leadership position.

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2022 06 04 13 48

Non Participants

Russia has already stated that the Artemis Program is too “US-centric” to sign it in its present form.

China’s absence is explained by the US congressional prohibition on collaboration with the country.

Concerns that this is a power grab by the US and its allies are fuelled by the lack of any African or South American countries amongst the founding partner states.

Intriguingly Germany, France and India are also absent.

These are countries with well developed space programmes that would surely have benefited from being involved in Project Artemis. Their opposition may be down to a preference for the Moon Agreement and a desire to see a properly negotiated treaty governing lunar exploration.

The European Space Agency (ESA) as an organisation has not signed on to the accords either, but a number of ESA member states have. This is unsurprising. The ambitious US deadline for the project will clash with the lengthy consultation of the 17 member states required for the ESA to sign on as a whole.

Summary

Ultimately, the Artemis Accords are revolutionary in the field of space exploration. Using bilateral agreements that dictate norms of behaviour as a condition of involvement in a programme is a significant change in space governance. With Russia and China opposing them, the accords are sure to meet diplomatic resistance and their very existence may provoke antagonism in traditional UN forums.

Questions also remain about the impact that the looming US election and the COVID-19 pandemic will have on the programme. We already know that President Trump is keen to see astronauts on the Moon by 2024. The approach of his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, is a lot less clear. He may well be less wedded to the 2024 deadline and instead aim for broader diplomatic consensus on behaviour through engagement at the UN.

While broader international acceptance may be desirable, the US believes that the lure of the opportunities afforded by the Artemis Program will bring other partners on board soon enough.

  • Obey USA laws.
  • Be subject to USA regulations.
  • Be offered protection by the USA Space Force.

Space-active states now face a stark choice: miss out on being the first to use the resources of the Moon, or accept the price of doing business and sign up to the Artemis Accords.

Well, of course the writer ASSUMES that NASA will actually achieve it's goals of being the first to create a base on the moon. I have my doubts, as a long time observer of this issue. Which is why most of the rest of the world has decided to side up with China and Russia. -MM

 

By Larry Romanoff

Introduction

China has the world’s longest high-speed rail (HSR) network with some 38,000 kilometers in operation,[1] which comprises nearly 70% of all the world’s high-speed lines[2] and more than three times that of the entire European Union.[3] China has more than 2,500 high-speed trains in operation, more than all the rest of the world combined,[4] and it also has the fastest trains in operation anywhere,[5] with several generations now operating at speeds between 350 Km/h and 400 Km/h. Shanghai’s Maglev is still the fastest operating train in the world,[6]
with sustained speeds of 430 Km/h. China’s rail system carries about 3.5 billion passengers per year, nearly 70% of these on high-speed trains. During the 40 days of China’s Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), passenger volume reached a peak of more than 400 million.

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2022 06 08 14 59

The Chinese government planned the HSR program in part to compress passenger travel on these dedicated tracks and free much of the slower existing rail system for freight, to remove trucks from the nation’s highways, thus lowering costs and in turn making highways safer for automobiles. The Shanghai-Nanjing route for example has 38 trains each way each day – carrying perhaps 150,000 passengers, which frees a huge amount of track time for freight. China’s high-speed trains have dramatically reduced the travel time between most major centers. Shanghai-Beijing is down from 12 hours to 4; Shanghai-Nanjing from 4 hours to 1; Wuhan to Guangzhou from 14 hours to only 3 hours.

There are always potential difficulties establishing routes due to the number of communities to serve and the consequent number of stops – which negate the advantage of high-speed trains. China seems to have arrived at an excellent solution. As an example, the 275 Km. route from Shanghai to Nanjing serves 6 communities between the two terminal stations, with some trains on this route travelling on an express basis and making no stops (1 hour), with others stopping at one or several cities on route, with different trains making different combinations of stops (1.5 hours). This has proven to be a convenient method to serve all cities on the route while still maintaining low average travel times.

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2022 06 08 15 00

Many of the statistics and other information available online on China’s (and other) train travel are inaccurate at best, one website claiming China in 2019 had 1.4 trillion train passengers. Even Statista is quite inaccurate, confusing test runs of experimental trains with regular operating speeds of scheduled rail.[7]

 France’s TGV is listed at its maximum one-time test speed of 575 Km/h, when it operates at only 300 Km/h. Statista has operating speeds wrong too, listing China’s Fuxing at 418 Km and Hexie at 486 Km/h, which normally operate at only 300 and 350 Km/h although they have proven capable of operating at these higher sustained speeds.

Train and Passenger Classes

China has three generations of high-speed trains in operation: G, D, and C. The G-trains are the fastest commercial-use high-speed trains in the world with speeds of 350 Km/h to 400 Km/h. The D-trains operate at 250 Km/h and the first-generation C at 200 Km/h. Below this, there are still the ‘normal’ trains with designations of Z, T, K, N and more. The Z, T and K trains run at 160 Km/h, 140 and 120. Slower trains are used for short rural trips where time is not so important.

These train alphabets are not nothing. I once took a G-train from Shanghai to Haining (the world-famous leather market), a trip of maybe 30 minutes if I recall correctly. I didn’t have a return ticket since I wasn’t certain of my return time, so I simply asked the wicket lady to put me on “the next train to Shanghai”. That was a big mistake. N-train. Ten kilometers per hour on the flat, much less uphill. That train stopped at every town, village, pig farm and strawberry patch on its way to Shanghai, and many times we had to pull off the track to permit a faster train to go by. Two and half hours to return home. I wondered why the ticket was so cheap. The kind of mistake you make only once.

I would note too that punctuality is a hallmark of Chinese transportation generally, this certainly applying to the HSR network. If the schedule states the departure time as 11:02, then at 11:02 the doors silently close and the train is moving. I’ve experienced a few departure delays, typically due to an arrival that is late, but usually by only 5 or 10 minutes. I don’t have available the percentage of on-time departures and arrivals but it must be in the high 90s.

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2022 06 08 15 02

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These high-speed trains typically have cars that are First-Class, Second-Class and Business Class, and trains not dedicated to short runs have sleeper cars which are very clean and perfectly comfortable even in older trains, the later generations offering lovely duvets, a separate TV for each bunk, electrical outlets, lights, Wi-Fi. Regular sleepers have four bunks to a room while the highest grade has only two berths to a compartment, suitable for couples, and equipped with a sofa, a wardrobe, and private bathroom. Sleepers typically carry a 25% or 30% cost premium over regular seats.

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2022 06 08 15 03

Business Class

These offer a pleasant alternative to air travel for the typically rushed and pressurised one-day business trips, for example from Shanghai to Guangzhou or Hong Kong. We board our train in the evening after dinner, do a bit of work or watch TV, and awake at 7:00 AM downtown at our destination, with enough time for breakfast before our first meeting. On the return trip, we have a leisurely dinner with friends, board the train across the street, and awake at 7:00 AM back in Shanghai. With two full nights’ sleep, there is no jet lag and no residual fatigue.

Here are some typical ticket prices:

G-train

  • Beijing-Shanghai, 1,350 Kms; 350 Km/h (4 hours)
  • 2nd Class, 550 RMB ($80)
  • 1st Class, 900 RMB ($135)
  • Business Class, 1,700 ($250)

D-Train

  • Kunming-Lijiang, 500 Kms; 250 Km/h (2 hours)
  • 2nd Class, 220 RMB ($30)
  • 1st Class, 350 RMB ($50)

C-Train

  • Beijing-Tianjin, 125 Kms; 200 Km/h (1 hour+)
  • 2nd Class, 55 RMB ($8)
  • 1st Class, 90 RMB ($13)

It’s almost impossible to compare train fares with the US because in China the fares vary only by distance and train type. Amtrak has a fare schedule that on first approach appears occult, apparently following the convoluted airline model of changing fares by time of departure and other secret paranormal factors, so a particular price could be almost anywhere. On some routes, twice the distance costs half the price. Still, they appear to be much higher than in China by a factor of perhaps 5 or more.

China’s Maglev Trains

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2022 06 08 15 0r3

The first Maglev train in China was a Siemens design installed in Shanghai, with service beginning in 2004. It was until recently the world’s only regularly-scheduled operating Maglev (at 430 Km/h), but now they are becoming common in China. Maglev technology is simple in principle at low speeds, but smoothness and stability at high speed are exceptionally complicated. Maglevs have a higher level of safety in that they cannot be derailed since they ‘wrap around’ the track, and maintenance costs are low compared to rail trains because there is no wear on the track bed and few moving parts to degrade or require maintenance and replacement.

Chinese engineers initially produced quite successful low-speed Maglevs (200 Km/h) entirely on their own IP, for use throughout China as city trains, done to gain experience and develop their own proprietary designs and technology. These trains are now operating in Beijing, Changsha, and other cities, running on short local routes. There are few other Maglev trains in existence. Korea built a Maglev track to shuttle visitors at the Daejeon Expo, which still runs the few kilometers between the Expo Park and the National Science Museum, but it is very slow, and another in 2016 that runs only a few kilometers between the airport and a subway station, also very slow. Japan built its first “commercial maglev line” in 2005, with a route less than 10 kilometers and a maximum speed of only 100 Km/h – about the same as Shanghai’s new subway lines.

China’s 600 Km/h Maglev

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2022 06 08 15 04

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In addition to billions poured into R&D for regular HSR trains, Chinese engineers continued their Maglev research at a brisk pace, and have pushed Maglev technology to the point where China is now beginning commercial production of a fabulous 600 Km/h (nearly 400 Mph) Maglev which will replace traditional high-speed rail on many routes.[8]

[9]

Engineers spent much time on wind tunnel testing of the design of the locomotives and cars to reduce air resistance to a minimum, greatly assisting both high speed and stability. Chinese engineers have managed, again on their own IP, to bring down the cost for this very fast train to only two-thirds that of regular high-speed trains. This new Maglev will help to fill the gap between regular HSR and airplanes that fly at 900 Km/h or more, and it is likely that this gap will be closed further.

The Changes

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It is now legendary that when the Chinese government set its mind to an objective, it doesn’t waste time. Everything you have read above has happened in only the past 16 years. “At the beginning of the 21st century China had no high-speed railways. Slow and often uncomfortable trains plodded across this vast country, with low average speeds making journeys such as Shanghai-Beijing a test of travel endurance. Today, it’s a completely different picture. [China] has . . . the world’s largest network of high-speed railways, and all have been completed since 2008.”[10]

An aside: A Brief Note on Subways

Subways are not exactly high-speed rail, although China’s new trains are pushing the envelope in this area as well, at least up to 100 Km/h (almost as fast as American high-speed trains). However, another example of the Chinese not wasting time when they decide to do something. Shanghai and other major cities have set an objective that every place within the inner cities is within about 5 city blocks of a subway station. Here is a list of a few major cities with the current length of subway track and the time required to reach that level:[11]

  • London 131 years, 400 Kms.
  • Paris 122 years, 225 Kms.
  • Berlin 119 years, 148 Kms.
  • New York 113 years, 399 Kms.
  • Shanghai 28 years, 900 Kms.

The Pleasures of Train Travel

One of the great advantages of HSR (High-Speed Rail) train travel compared to flying is the saving in wasted time. A flight in most any country normally involves a one-hour trip to the airport with a requirement to arrive at least 1.5 hours prior to departure which is frequently subject to delays. At the arrival end, there is always the seemingly long wait to deplane, the long walk to the baggage carousels and the exits, then the one hour or more trip downtown.

When we take into account the commute and the necessary pre-departure allowance for check-in and security clearance and the 2-Km walk to the departure gate, then the post-arrival delays and the commute downtown at our destination, trains are equal to flying in trips up to 1,500 Kms, and much faster than flying for shorter trips while also being less expensive. The frequency of departures, at least between major centers in China is astonishing, the Shanghai-Beijing route having some 75 or 80 HSR trains each way each day, often leaving less than 10 minutes apart with as many as 2,000 passengers (two trains linked into 16 cars). Many other routes are similar. The same is true with airlines in China, with flights seemingly departing from everywhere to everywhere every 30 minutes or so.

In China (and in most cities everywhere), the railway stations are downtown so the commute is minimal, one arriving at the station with luggage in hand only 20 or 30 minutes before departure. There is no ‘check-in’ process as with the airlines, only the usual security check and luggage scanners when entering the station where you can spend time in comfortable waiting rooms or simply find the correct platform and board your train. Even though many stations are huge, walking distances are normally much shorter than in most airports. At the destination, since that station is also downtown, taxis and subways are conveniently at hand. Also, in many cities airports and train stations are next door to each other, conveniently facilitating travel continuation.

Another advantage of train travel is the considerable convenience and comfort, trains being much superior in both categories with an absence of pressure and time apprehension. Trains eliminate most unpleasant elements of air travel, with the attraction of being able to see the countryside. On a plane, we are forced to adhere to a rigid schedule: the time for coffee or a meal, the time to close the window curtains and darken the cabin so the staff can rest. If the food cart is out, you cannot get up to walk around or go to the bathroom. Everything seems regulated and under pressure. Leaving your seat is often a major inconvenience. By contrast, on a train you are free to do as you please. Your luggage is accessible at any time, the food carts come by regularly, the dining car is always there, seats have twice the leg room, the aisles are wide enough to accommodate passengers; everything much more relaxed, pleasant, and enjoyable. And you have the advantage of constant Wi-Fi and GPS signals, with AC power and USB outlets usually available at your seat.

China’s high-speed trains are very quiet, without wind noise, and mercifully free of the incessant hum of aircraft engines and, with the flawlessly-welded rails, even the soft clacking of the rails is gone (I rather miss that). The seats are as wide or wider than airline business class, they recline partially (recline fully in business class) and, with the comfort and silence, it is very easy to sleep on a train. I would add that you are more alert (and healthier) on a train because aircraft are pressurised to 8,000 feet; you don’t normally go above 10,000 feet without supplementary oxygen.

They are also very steady. China has the highest standards for stabilising high-speed trains in their longitudinal, lateral and vertical dimensions, a rail expert stating “It is no exaggeration to say the Beijing-Shanghai rail lines were built with the highest standards in the modern world. China leads the world in rail stability.” Here is a Xinhua video of one of China’s high-speed trains where a coin rests on its edge on a windowsill for more than 8 minutes before it finally falls over – this at 350 Kms per hour. (12)

A Bit of Background

“High-speed rail” emerged first in Japan in the early 1960s with the construction of the Shinkansen ‘bullet train’ which wasn’t really all that fast at only 160 Km/h, but such speeds were unheard of in those days and the train was a world marvel. The European countries, led by Germany (Siemens) and France (Alstom), followed in the 1980s, with Canada’s Bombardier joining the group at about the same time. Nothing much was done outside of Europe, though the Europeans did embrace high-speed train travel and made good design progress.

It was widely assumed initially that there was no market for train travel, that the world would follow the North American model and rely primarily on the auto with the airlines as long-distance backup. But more than 40 years ago Chinese government officials saw the potential and disagreed, and began planning what would become the world’s largest HSR network, with enormous sums invested in the project. One expert wrote, “Chinese engineers have exhibited enormous ingenuity and creativity and are still aggressively pushing the rail technology envelope.” It is generally agreed that China’s success in high-speed rail development and its cost reduction, has resulted in “validating the feasibility of widespread adoption and greater affordability. Developing countries are particularly grateful that China has brought the cost of HSR to affordable levels.” One expert wrote, “It appears now that China will dominate the HSR market for the foreseeable future.”

And indeed, developing countries are increasingly attracted to the prospect of China’s affordable HSR trains as an impetus for their own economic development. At the time of writing, Chinese railway firms were building a high-speed line in Turkey linking Ankara and Istanbul, another project in Venezuela, and expecting contracts in Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Poland. Railway routes in China are expanding to mesh with new routes in Vietnam and Thailand, and there are plans to extend a route all the way to Singapore. Chinese rail officials are in the planning stages of a high-speed rail route passing through Xinjiang Province in Western China, through Kyrgyzstan and other ‘Stans’, connecting with lines in Turkey and proceeding Westward into Europe. It may soon be possible to travel by HSR all the way from Shanghai to London – at a fraction of the cost of flying, and with far more comfort and the ability to see maybe 15 countries on route.

Chinese engineers have said it is well within the limits of today’s technology to build a high-speed rail line between China and North America, the line passing through Siberia, with a tunnel under the 55-mile Bering strait separating Russia from Alaska, then down the West Coast of Canada and the US. It would then be possible to take a fast train from San Diego to Paris and London. However, politics will make such a development impossible.

Technology Transfer is not Free

Whenever the subject of technology transfer arises, there seems to always surface a flurry of accusations about copying or stealing. Readers should carefully note that China did not “steal” anyone’s rail technology; instead, it was all purchased. China paid billions of dollars for that transfer of technology. It is the same in all important industries today. China has the money, and is willing to pay handsomely for technology it needs to further its development.

To compensate for a late start, the Chinese government began (in only 2004) by purchasing rail technology abroad, signing agreements with Alstom and Kawasaki to build HSR train sets for China in cooperation with local firms. Kawasaki, who designed the original Hayate bullet train, signed a deal with the Chinese ministry of Railways for the transfer of a full spectrum of HSR technology. They began with Kawasaki manufacturing 50 HSR train sets in Japan and exporting these to China fully-assembled, then progressed to establishing factories in China where Kawasaki helped the Chinese manufacturers to produce another 50 train sets locally. China also paid Kawasaki for the training of manufacturing staff first in Japan and then at the factories in China. This process carried a heavy price; the arrangement with Kawasaki cost China around $800 million, plus countless millions for training and many technology updates. The contract with Kawasaki included “the transfer of the whole spectrum of technology and know-how for the bullet train”, so that these trains became in fact Chinese-owned IP.

With this experience under its belt, China then duplicated the process with Siemens, Alstom and Bombardier, in similar deals for a full transfer of technology and IP rights so that China could freely manufacture these train sets domestically and sell them internationally. Similar to the procedure with Kawasaki, Chinese engineers were sent to Europe for extended periods of study and also had these firms assist China in establishing domestic manufacturing facilities. All the firms trained Chinese engineers while helping the country develop its own supply chain for train components, and all of this involved several billions of dollars in fees.

But it wasn’t all gravy because the Chinese rail companies paid billions of dollars for was in fact old technology from those four companies. Knowing the Chinese wanted to produce trains based entirely on their own IP and technology, Kawasaki and Siemens in particular refused to sell their more advanced products and would sell China only rail technology that was already two or even three generations old. These foreign companies were actually planning to take full control of China’s vast market for HSR transportation, expecting to fully supply the “the most ambitious rapid rail system in history”, with rewards in the billions.

That did not deter the Chinese. As a first step they disassembled, evaluated, and combined all those technologies into one train, combining the best features of each. Then, they applied their formidable R&D abilities to improve and enhance those features and create entirely new trains built exclusively on Chinese-owned IP. The result was trains that were faster, smoother, quieter, and less expensive than the newest generation of their former suppliers. To say that the foreign firms underestimated the power of Chinese innovation and the speed and quality of R&D in China, is an understatement of some magnitude, with both Kawasaki and Siemens finding themselves left at the starting gate only a few years later.

“The Western firms confused their head start with their R&D capacity, attributing both to natural superiority, confidently assuming they were more innovative rather than simply having begun earlier. The assumption was that Japanese and German R&D capability coupled with their huge lead would maintain an impassable gap and permit them to capture the entire Chinese market.” Their willingness to sell their technology was from an expectation that the Chinese would need at least 30 years to absorb and implement it before being ready to proceed on their own. The reality was somewhat different: they found themselves having to compete with Chinese firms who adapted and improved their technology and produced superior products only three years later.

And Some Sellers Remorse

When China proved its ability to combine technologies from all firms and create a new, superior product, the Japanese appeared quite bitter, Kawasaki going so far as to claim that China’s trains were just ‘tweaked versions’ of its original bullet train with minor variations to the exterior paint scheme and interior trim. Even nastier, Japan’s Ministry of Transportation was quoted as saying that Japanese trains could be just as fast, but China’s trains were faster only because the Chinese ignored safety and didn’t care how many people died.

Of course, the real problem was that it was impossible for Japan to compete with China on international markets since they hoarded their technology for too long and, by the time they changed their attitude, the world had passed them by and their technology was old, with Chinese trains much nicer, 100 Km/h faster, and considerably less expensive. As someone wrote, “Marketing is difficult when your only selling point is that the other guy’s fast and affordable trains are copies of your slow and expensive ones”. Something similar occurred with Shanghai’s Maglev train. Due to pride of authorship as with the Japanese, Siemens also refused to consider a sale of technology, preferring to hold out for astonishingly high prices of the finished product. The result was that Chinese engineers turned their full R&D attention to Maglevs and Siemens now finds itself permanently sidelined in the market.

World Leader in Construction Quality

China’s HSR system is built to an intense high quality. Chinese high-speed trains run on special dedicated, often elevated tracks laid on deep and heavily-reinforced beds of high-density concrete with vertical and horizontal deviations measured in millimeters, these tracks supported by massive columns of high-strength concrete spaced very closely. With high-speed trains there is no chugging uphill and racing downhill; HSR tracks are, insofar as is humanly and technologically possible, a straight and level line. Typically, a horizontal elevation is selected for a particular route, with the rail bed maintaining this throughout the route. Depressions and valleys are filled in with bridges, and mountains and hills are met with tunnels.

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2022 06 08 15 52

This can be more difficult than appears at first glance. China has some astonishingly-beautiful landscapes that are perfect for tourist admiration but not so attractive to railway engineers. One such route is a line running through beautiful but challenging mountainous terrain from Wuhan and Yichang (the site of the Three Gorges Dam), to Wanzhou City, just East of Chongqing. This was China’s most difficult railway to build and is the world’s most expensive railway, costing 60 million RMB (roughly US$10 million) for each kilometer. It took a staggering seven years and 50,000 workers to complete. Of the route’s total length of 380 Kms, 75% percent or 280 Kms, consists of 253 bridges and 159 tunnels. Each and every kilometer of the railway contains at least one bridge or one tunnel, most often one of each, leading the locals to refer to the railway as the “tunnel and bridge museum”. It is ironic that this railway was meant to operate at the highest speeds of the day, but the terrain proved so difficult and consumed so much construction time that when completed the system was two generations old. And, given the immense difficulties, there is nobody interested in starting again to update the track and systems. But still, this railway reduced the Yichang-Wanzhou travel time from 22 hours to just five hours, bringing new opportunities for residents who live in the steep and remote Wuling mountains. One local resident said, “We used to pay 100 Yuan (US$15) for a one-day bus trip to Yichang before. Now, 30 Yuan can get us there in two hours.” I covered this in a brief article which you may enjoy reading.[13]

A Note on Train Safety

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2022 06 08 15 53

Chinese high-speed trains are often completely separated from the landscape, running on dedicated tracks elevated well above roadways, with no level crossings or cross-traffic, and thus no possibility of the common variety of vehicle accidents. These high-speed trains descend from their elevated perch only when approaching a station, utilising regular trackage for this purpose but only at very low speeds, thus permitting transportation literally from city center to city center. You can see the elevation and extreme support in the photo. There are of course sections of trackage at grade level in areas where safety is assured, but extreme precautions have been taken to avoid roadway crossings which are usually handled by either elevations or tunnels.

As with every country, China does of course have its share of train accidents, with older trains derailing from landslides or other causes but, given the country’s massive rail network, the number of trains operating and the sheer number of trips taken, the country’s accident record is actually remarkably low, as are the fatalities.

China’s railway system has dozens of installations across the country where every high-speed train is constantly monitored for many metrics like speed, axle temperatures, weather conditions, and obviously also for precise location and track position of every train. Their focus on safety is extreme. The country’s high-speed system has had only one accident since inception (at Wenzhou in 2011), one that was eerily reminiscent of Boeing’s 737 Max, where a major programming change was not covered in the operating manuals for the Japanese signaling systems. The Japanese, apparently feeling a concern that the Chinese could reverse-engineer the systems code, deliberately omitted some of the operating functions from the manuals, and so provided faulty documentation that left the Chinese operators with an imperfect and incomplete understanding of the signals systems.

In this case, a train was hit by lightning and was stalled on the track. When this occurred, Chinese engineers immediately knew something was wrong and followed the operating manual, but they had no way of knowing the system was telling them that a train was stalled on the same track, because the manual was incomplete. This was the actual cause of the crash. It was true that local officials in Wenzhou panicked and stupidly tried to cover up the fact of the crash, but that doesn’t change the cause. I would note further that this was by no means the first time Chinese engineers had been deliberately misled on either the function or operation of IP they had bought and paid for. There are many tales of foreign engineers telling outright lies about the purpose or function of various components, leaving the Chinese to either figure it out for themselves or discover through adverse events the actual purpose.

This accident was widely-reported in the Western media, but only to gloat at China’s misfortune. Forbes and the WSJ (and of course the NYT) ran articles that were particularly nasty, with the Carnegie Endowment publishing what seemed a very stupid political article claiming the train accident “Shows the Dangers of China’s Nuclear Power Ambitions”.[14]

 The point appeared to be that, since China had one rail accident, they could not be trusted to ever build anything. The child-writers at the Economist gleefully ran an article with the cute title of “Whoops!” and, in another context, the Economist wrote, “To err is human. To gloat, divinely satisfying.” Exactly.

I would also add that on the event of that accident, the US media were so delirious with schadenfreude that few bothered to report the actual cause. It happens that most every opportunity to criticise China will be transformed into a proven failure of China’s one-party government. In reporting on this train accident, the entire Western media eagerly pinned the blame not on a Japanese signals failure but on China’s one-party system. But Wikipedia lists 70 pages of rail accidents for the US alone, having several major and a bunch of minor ones every year. Since theology must be universal to be credible, it seems clear where the fault lies for all these terrible disasters: democracy causes train crashes.

The topic of rail safely seems heavily politicised. For some unknown reason, the Western news media persist in promulgating a fiction that Japan (unlike China) has a perfect train safety record, but the truth is that Japan’s bullet trains derail and crash with some regularity. Wikipedia obligingly provides a full listing of train accidents in China all on one page, but one must work very hard to find a similar convenient listing for Japan.

Kawasaki Meets Godzilla

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Rail Infrastructure is a Public Good, not a Private Benefit

Due to its unique government structure, China is able to plan and amend its entire travel infrastructure as a whole, considering air, rail and road, taking into account only the benefits to the entire country rather than having to appease a multitude of private interests. HSR trains have cut travel time so dramatically that airline services on many routes have been suspended in whole or in part. The airlines may not always be pleased, but China’s transportation system is designed for the maximum overall benefit to the nation, not to serve specific private interests or friends of the Administration.

China has not succumbed to the sometimes-intense privatisation pressure from Western bankers and has retained control of its infrastructure, an enormous blessing for rapid and efficient development. Chinese leaders recognised from the beginning that economic development follows transportation, and thus maintaining control of the transportation infrastructure derives from a determination to distribute the benefits of development to the entire nation. The reality is that not all infrastructure is destined to be financially profitable – profitability being the only measure by Western standards. A privately-developed railway system would be built only on the most profitable routes, those likely to amass billions for their owners but that would leave perhaps half the nation destitute for transportation and sentenced to perpetual poverty. Thus, railway privatisation would saddle China’s central government with the costs of building and supporting all the unprofitable routes without benefitting from the profitable segments. This is one of Western capitalism’s main mantras: privatise the profits and socialise the losses. If you’re interested in this topic, here is an essay you might enjoy reading: Private Enterprise and the National Good.[15]

In the absence of competing interests, a nationwide plan can be conceived, examined, discussed and approved in a much shorter time than in countries with a different system, and implementation times much reduced as well. China’s new HSR line from Shanghai to Beijing, a distance of about 1,300 Kms was a masterpiece of unobstructed planning and execution. For construction, the government hired almost 140,000 workers to build multiple sections simultaneously, the entire project completed in two years at a cost of less than $20 billion. By contrast, in the US, the cost of an HSR line along the Eastern seaboard, a distance only half as long, has been estimated at $120 billion and might require 20 years to complete. The province of Alberta in Canada is considering an HSR line of only 300 Kms connecting the two major cities, yet the planning stage is expected to take 5 years and cost $50 million; if approved, the subsequent construction process is projected to require another 5 years at least. The interim negotiations for right of way, the bidding processes, the dealing with all the various private interests as well as the cities involved, are expected to add 5 years to the process.

It is critical to note that economic development follows transportation. Countries like Canada and the US would never have developed without the cross-country transportation systems being in place. But it is almost certainly too late for both Canada and the US with high-speed rail, too many decades of auto-dependent development condemning both countries to irreversible transport deficiencies. In the US, General Motors (aided by a few others) managed to convince the individual states to abandon all investment (and maintenance!) in railways and other public transport, and instead make huge public expenditures on highways that were useful only to those who owned private automobiles, effectively stranding all other citizens at home with no way to go anywhere and virtually forcing everyone to buy a car. This is not trivial, but instead a critical historical narrative. One observer wrote that “A theme likely to be emphasised in history will be the enormous strategic error made by both the US and Canada in enslaving themselves to individual motorized transportation.” Here is an article I strongly urge you to read:[16]

As with most other subjects, the Internet is not lacking uninformed nonsense on HSR trains. One US source tells us, “The United States has no HSR corridors because high‐​speed rail is an obsolete technology that requires expensive and dedicated infrastructure that will serve no purpose other than moving passengers who could more economically travel by highway or air.” The preceding comment is incorrect in too many ways to count, ignoring the political factors that are actually responsible for the absence of HSR in the US. Rail is inevitably the least expensive form of land travel (except for bicycles), is provably less expensive than driving (sometimes much less), and generally less expensive than air travel.

The American Experience

In 2012 and 2013 the US wallowed in an anguish created by envy of China’s high-speed rail network, America’s rickety and accident-prone rail system suffering badly in comparison. When it became apparent that the Americans could never duplicate China’s success and, confronted with the imminent failure of their ambition to join the world of high-speed rail, the Americans revised the definition of high-speed trains from 400 Km/h to 250 and then 150, before abandoning their quest altogether. Then, rationalisation through the uniquely American moral lens of politics and religion: “Our slow rail network is the price we pay for the great things about America like our democratic political system and our freedom of religion.”

An internet reader commented:

“The American failure to realise an HSR system is not because China has better leadership, vision, planning and execution, and the wisdom to sacrifice short-term benefits and minority interests for the long-term gain and the greater good; it’s because Americans have democracy and love freedom. The bickering and indecision, the squabbling, the vacillation and eventual paralysis of all levels of US government on this issue, an impossibility in any sane country, are actually a badge of merit in America, evidence of their virtuous freedom. So, let China build its high-speed trains. The more trains they have, the less free they become. Americans would never be so foolish as to sacrifice freedom for good transportation or democracy for roads and bridges.”

I don’t know the author of this brief passage below, but I want to share the quote with you because he captured perfectly the American situation:

“At the end of 2013, California was still hoping to build the nation’s first high-speed rail line, an 830 Kms track from Los Angeles to San Francisco, that would be scheduled for completion in 2029 (more than 16 years) and would cost about $70 billion not including the inevitable cost over-runs. By contrast, China built its 1,320 Kms Shanghai-Beijing HSR line in only three years at a cost of 200 billion Yuan – about $32 billion. So, the US high-speed train – if it’s ever actually built – will be 60% slower than China’s, will take five times as long to build and cost almost five times as much for an equivalent distance. Of course, the Americans could just ask China to build their HSR in only 18 months at a cost of only $20 billion, but that would mean admitting Chinese superiority, and that means the US will never have high-speed rail.”

Amtrak is the only intercity passenger rail in the US that operates at speeds higher than freight trains, but hasn’t been very popular, with its highest passenger numbers at around 30 million in a year compared to China’s nearly 4 billion. And Amtrak has never made a profit, requiring government subsidisation of about $1 billion per year. I have no explanation for the lack of popularity of train travel in the US. It isn’t primarily a love affair with the auto, since Europeans also love to drive but also love train travel. At least some US rail facilities are acceptable, so it would seem the problem is due to a sum of other factors.

Amtrak

2022 06 08 16 07
2022 06 08 16 07

Amtrak is a very strange duck, a high-speed wannabe that seems determined to get most of the important things wrong and, if I can use an analogy, is too busy reading to take the time to learn to speed-read. It is difficult to make positive statements about the company because the underlying negatives make positive statements seem almost surreal.

Recent media reports that the introduction of Amtrak’s new Avelia Liberty trains (If it’s America, it’s always ‘liberty’ or ‘freedom’) manufactured by France’s Alstom are facing yet another delay of 18 months, pushing the total delay to more than three years. The cause? Surprising, to say the least. To begin, under new instructions to ban everything Chinese, the company had to turn to France to purchase their rolling stock, but what Amtrak has purchased is 3 generations old in China, at the very bottom of anything that today would be termed “high-speed rail”, and is old in France as well. Reading between the lines, it seems Alstom agreed to reproduce some older-technology equipment to match America’s abilities, but things haven’t gone so well.

According to Amtrak executives, the need for more testing is the cause of things being behind schedule, with Amtrak citing “rigorous” testing “required by federal regulations”, somehow implying American safety standards of exceptional rigor, but the details seem to tell a different story. In fact, a review of the details reveals that the real cause was “the discovery of compatibility problems with the Northeast Corridor tracks that prompted modifications to the train design”, as well as “an incompatibility with . . . its catenary system” – which is the overhead electrical source that provides power to the trains.[17]

If this isn’t clear, Amtrak executives discovered, no doubt to their complete amazement, that the trains they purchased didn’t fit the tracks on which those trains would run, nor could they connect with the available overhead power sources. The spin placed on this by Amtrak executives was that “The train had to be modified to work harmoniously with the infrastructure.” However, it wasn’t an issue of ‘working harmoniously’, but of working at all. Amtrak provided to Alstom the design necessities for 30 new train sets, which were manufactured to those specifications but, when delivered, the company discovered their design was so badly flawed that the new trains didn’t match the trackage or the power supply, and had to be modified. This sounds like a Three Stooges episode or a Jackie Gleason comedy. How is it possible for thinking persons to design and manufacture trains that can’t fit their own tracks?

According to media reports these new Avelia trains are built under an FRA rule that establishes “new safety standards for high-speed trains, . . . to allow for operation at the highest speeds on shared tracks”. The intended insinuation is that these new so-called safety standards are more rigid, but it seems they are actually more relaxed, to accommodate Amtrak’s inability (or unwillingness) to comply. Part of the problem is that Amtrak runs almost exclusively on what they euphemistically call “shared tracks”, which means running on 60 year-old rail beds that are used primarily by slow freight trains, and that Amtrak wants to run its trains at speeds much higher than are safe. Hence the “new safety standards” created by the FRA “to allow for operation at the highest speeds”.

Amtrak Also Meets Godzilla

2022 06 08 16 08
2022 06 08 16 08

“Most American (rail) infrastructure was built in the early to mid-20th century (1920-1950), the continent having been simultaneously wired for electricity and phone service while constructing the interstate highway system along with thousands of bridges, tunnels and more. But the US has spent almost no money on maintenance and repairs on any of this infrastructure for almost 60 years now. The situation today is dire and, in many instances, critical, but money is no longer available (except for Israel and Ukraine). Derailments and other accidents occur almost daily on America’s dilapidated and unsafe rail network which, like the highways, has received only urgent patching rather than proper maintenance and repair.”[18]
[19]
[20]

“In June of 2013 an Interstate bridge on a main commercial corridor between Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, Canada, collapsed and fell into the river below after being hit by a truck. This was not a high-speed collision; the truck simply bumped one of the main support pillars at low speed, but the weakened and dilapidated pillar broke from the strain and, without that extra bit of support, the entire bridge immediately collapsed. In prior examinations, the heavily-travelled bridge had not only been rated as functionally obsolete but structurally deficient and requiring replacement. This is only one of thousands; the great majority of the physical infrastructure of the US is in a similar condition, involving railroads, highways, dams, bridges and more. More than 160,000 bridges in the US are officially categorized as dangerous, at risk of collapse, with such collapses now regularly occurring.[21][22][23]

The same is true for subways and elevated inner-city rail systems like that in New York City; rickety, dirty, dangerous, and looking for a reason to collapse.”[24]

Welcome to New York

2022 06 08 16 09
2022 06 08 16 09

.

Back to Amtrak, the delivery delay “hiccups” will force the company to keep its “legacy fleet” in service, with this in turn causing severe revenue losses from the oddly-unexpected need for extra “mechanical investments” to “reduce train malfunctioning”. In non-propaganda English, this means that Amtrak’s old, one-foot-in-the-grave, trains needing badly to be scrapped before an imminent fatal collapse, will now require substantial maintenance and repair to hold out until executives can accurately measure the width of their tracks and modify the new trains they’ve purchased.

This is not nothing. Amtrak experiences operating difficulties we don’t even read about in comic books. One Amtrak passenger train in Maryland recently broke apart while traveling, with some of the passenger cars separating from the rest of the train at 125 mph and going on their own merry way.[25]

 Until this, I thought I’d heard everything. Amtrak executives said, “We are currently investigating the cause of the car separation.” I guess I would be doing that, too.

Would you like to travel at 250 Km/h on this track? Amtrak wants to.

2022 06 08 16 11
2022 06 08 16 11

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But the most important issue is that no one in the US, neither the government nor the railways, seems prepared to maintain and repair rail tracks and beds to an acceptable standard, much less having the foresight to build dedicated trackage meant for high-speed trains. Attempting to run trains at speeds of 200 mph on 60 year-old un-maintained tracks that were built for freight trains at a maximum of 50 mph, is not only reckless but downright stupid. Yet, this is where we are. And Amtrak’s legacy of accidents and crashes is all the evidence necessary.

Train speeds are constantly an issue with Amtrak. We can read much hype about Amtrak trains traveling at 200 or even 250 Km/h (150 mph), but in real life they barely average 75 or 80 mph, and this is the fastest train in America. This is partly the fault of the tracks, since Amtrak operates almost exclusively on freight train tracks and ‘shares’ the tracks with these freight trains, and is often held up by them. I’m told it is quite common for an Amtrak train to get stuck behind a slow freight train.[26]

 But even with all of this, very few of Amtrak’s locomotives have the ability to exceed 110 mph or 175 Km/h, which is well below anything considered as high-speed rail today.

DC to Boston is roughly 700 Kms or 435 miles. Amtrak’s Acela Express Train 2150 takes nearly 7 hours, for an average speed of only 100 Km/h, or 60 miles per hour, not exactly high-speed. That’s not entirely the fault of the train, since it makes ten stops on the route, a case of bad planning if I ever saw one. As mentioned above, China’s solution to this is to have some trains run on an express basis with no stops between the two terminals while others make several different stops each, thus still serving all the communities but with a much higher average travel time.

Similarly, Amtrak’s record of on-time arrivals is abysmal. According to Amtrak’s 2020 Annual Report, little more than 55% of trains arrived on time, and this can be blamed almost entirely on poor management. If China and many European countries can have on-time rates of up to 98%, so can anyone who knows how to plan.

Richard Branson’s Brightline

2022 06 08 16 13
2022 06 08 16 13

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However, unknown to the world at large, America does indeed have a “high-speed train”, Richard Branson’s new ‘Brightline’, that runs 100 Kms from Miami to West Palm Beach in Florida. According to the promotions, these are “sleek, neon-yellow trains, which travel at speeds of up to 127 Kms/hr (!!!)”.

To be fair to the Americans, they initially promoted this as a “higher-speed train”, a small but worthy concession to reality that quickly disappeared. To be fair to the sleek, neon-yellow train, it is quite unable to reach its advertised top speed and in fact seldom reaches even 100 Km/h, faster than a freight train, but not by very much.

Also unknown to the world, this American version of HSR has, in its first few years since inauguration, had numerous derailments, scores of accidents, and caused well over 100 deaths. In what should have been a surprising development, several of the accidents and deaths occurred during the train’s initial test run, after which it was inexplicably cleared for service. But perhaps no matter because Brightline assured us that “safety remains the company’s top priority”. Interestingly, the US Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) data show 60% fewer deaths than the media reports of actual fatalities because (if you can believe this) they inexplicably (and almost certainly unjustifiably) classify most of the deaths as “possible suicides”, and then sanctimoniously impose “reporting restrictions intended to safeguard privacy”.[27]

 If this isn’t clear, the FRA is claiming that 60% of Brightline train accident deaths were from motorists deliberately stopping on the tracks in order to kill themselves. Given all the options for committing suicide, this would not be my first choice. How can American authorities fabricate such preposterous lies and why would the media support them?

Another Brightline “Assisted Suicide”

2022 06 08 16 14
2022 06 08 16 14

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Also, according to the FRA, “a Brightline locomotive derailed … at four miles per hour …”. The report continued that this was the second derailment within two months, the main cause being that this US “high-speed train” is using tracks and rail beds built more than 60 years ago, intended only for slow-moving freight trains, and have not been maintained. In an astonishing display of arrogance and defiance, Brightline refused to confirm the accident for nearly six months, even during sworn testimony to a Senate Committee, then called the derailment “minor”, and dismissed the critics’ concern as a “baseless fear tactic”.[28]

 These issues are noteworthy in several ways: Running “higher-speed” trains through level crossings (at ground level), is reckless in the extreme and begging for fatalities. Even more, running passenger trains on dilapidated trackage and freight-rail beds that haven’t been maintained for 60 years, is worse.

A second item is so illustrative of a pathological quirk that appears to exist only in the US. From Brightline’s home webpage:

“Hand-stitched leather seats. Sit 2 or 4 together at a table. Relax pre-departure in our first-class SELECT lounge with an ever-changing lineup of enticing bites and beverages. Lounge business services including iPads, a scanner & printer. Access to conference rooms in our stations (a $50/hr value). Complimentary onboard Wi-Fi.[29]

Hand-stitched leather seats and an ever-changing lineup of enticing bites on a train that derails at 4 miles per hour and has already killed more than 100 people. This is the way Americans design their cars. Appearance is everything and substance is nothing.

American auto designers hold frequent market tests where they introduce citizens to new automobiles, the purpose being to see if the new degradations in quality and safety can pass these public tests undetected. A so-called high-speed train running on rickety tracks and derailing at 4 mph is glossed over for leather seats and Wi-Fi. Only in America. One internet commenter wrote, “This proves that Americans are too stupid for high-speed rail.”

“How many more deaths do we need to read about before something is done.”

Another news report stated that – according to the same FRA – this train has had “the most fatalities along the corridor in that time period”.[30][31] The situation is so bad that there are at least two Florida law firms now specialising in Brightline accident victim litigation.[32]

A recent article in the Orlando Weekly called “almost-high-speed Brightline the deadliest train line mile-for-mile in the U.S.”,[33]

 because it apparently has the worst death rate of all 821 train lines in the US. Yet Branson plans to extend the line to Disneyworld and has obtained billions in tax-free bonds for the expansion, but there are current lawsuits to prevent this, determined “to ensure it never reaches Orlando”.[34]
 Nevertheless, and again, “the service intends to use existing freight lines that have not handled regular passenger service in nearly a half-century” and which haven’t been maintained for 60 years.[35]

[36]

Only in America.

Does This Look Like a High-Speed Train to You?

2022 06 08 16 16
2022 06 08 16 16

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This last item may contain research worthy of a Master’s thesis, this being a newspaper headline on one of the derailments: “Brightline accidents tragic, but is railway really to blame?”[37] The article stated that this “innovative high-speed passenger rail service has been in operation for only about a week and a half, and already people have died”, then went on to say that “most readers” put the blame not on the railway but on “the decision-making of people”. There was an almost irresistible poignancy about this claim. In reading the reports, I could not shake the feeling of listening to a small child, disappointed at some failure but lacking the maturity to see reality as it was, and making an excuse typical of an 8 year-old mind. I believe we could argue this to be the consciousness level of the typical adult American.

Epilogue

There was a sadness in my heart while writing much of this article. Putting aside any fleeting pleasure in criticising Americans, there was a kind of despondent cheerlessness in a realisation of what might have been but can never be. Today, not only Chinese and Europeans are enjoying the manifold benefits and pleasures of high-speed train travel, but also citizens of Vietnam, Turkey, Venezuela, Brazil, Singapore, Thailand, Poland, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia and many more. American citizens surely deserve this fine mode of travel as much as anyone else, and yet their own heavily-politicised and corrupt society prevents it, and there is no solution.

The American government could easily make friends with China and have genuine high-speed trains (400 and 600 Km/h) everywhere, but Captain America doesn’t want to make friends. He would rather be the bully on the block and knock someone down, rather than building himself up.

The US sacrificed real 5G communications for its entire population for the pleasure of hurting China and trashing Huawei, and to protect the continuing freedom to spy on them. This is happening in so many areas, all with the same cause. It has been partly comical but mostly painful to watch the US during the past 8 or so years, agonising over the prospect of high-speed railways and seeing so many efforts collapse due solely to petty political ideology. It is astonishing that such a large and important nation could have such immature and even infantile politicians – at every level.

In only one or two decades, China has become a world leader or at least a peer in so many areas – IT, telecommunications, high-speed trains, quantum communications, DNA synthesising and mapping, green energy sources, space exploration, astronomy, mind-machine interfaces, small drones, aircraft production, 3-D printing.

The Chinese have built their own space station, photographed every square meter of the moon, launched their own GPS system, built the deepest deep-sea submersibles, and much more, to say nothing of all the massive engineering projects. None of this was an accident and none of it happened overnight; all were the result of planning begun 20, 30, and even 40 years ago, the results only now becoming evident.

The Americans especially, but really all Western countries, could never accomplish such speedy and successful development due primarily to the political system which prevents long-term planning and which is so indebted to a small group of elites that the common good and the welfare of the nation are lost.

The only proposals that survive are those permitting a small group of bankers and industrialists to feed at the public trough, while all those benefiting the public are stillborn. Planning cannot be done for projects beyond the life of the current government, which might be only 4 years and often less, because the opposing party would most likely kill any project, either on ideological principles or to prevent credit being given to “the opposition”.

And, on the high-speed trains themselves, it seems that no one in American government or industry has the good sense and political will to say not only “Let’s do it” but “Let’s do it right.” And that means a serious commitment to long-term adult-level planning of high-speed travel and the investment required to build a dedicated support infrastructure that can handle it. The continued pretense of having so-called “high-speed trains” running on dilapidated 60 year-old freight tracks, will lead to nothing but disaster.

This entire process of Americans so desperate to “save face” is founded on a delusion of superficiality we seem to find only in America: I paint my Pinto red and pretend it’s a Ferrari.

Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons). He often writes for Unz review where this article was first published.

His full archive can be seen at

https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ and https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at:

2186604556@qq.com

Notes

[1] https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202101/10/content_WS5ffa36f3c6d0f725769438ad.html

China’s high-speed rail lines top 37,900 km at end of 2020

[2] https://www.theb1m.com/video/the-unstoppable-growth-of-chinas-high-speed-rail-network

The Unstoppable Growth of China’s High-Speed Rail Network

[3] https://www.statista.com/topics/7534/high-speed-rail-in-china/

High-speed railway in China – statistics & facts

[4] https://www.chinadiscovery.com/china-high-speed-train-tours/high-speed-train-facts.html

China High Speed Train Facts – Longest, Fastest & Craziest

[5] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/worlds-high-speed-trains-railways/

These are the fastest trains in the world

[6] https://www.chinahighlights.com/shanghai/transportation/maglev-train.htm

Shanghai Maglev Train — The Fastest Train in the World

[7] https://www.statista.com/statistics/557186/high-speed-trains-maxmimum-speed/

World’s fastest trains in 2021, ranked by record speed

[8] https://youtu.be/cuc03kxeHQs

China’s 600 Maglev Train; CCTV

[9] https://youtu.be/a7VjaEUFWxk

China’s 600 Maglev Train Rolled off the Production Line; CCTV 1:24

[10] https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_5eed36d754a03637b1ec2f3074f2e805

Past, present and future: The evolution of China’s incredible high-speed rail network

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems

List of Metro Systems

[12] https://youtu.be/fumYdO9XknE

Coin on Windowsill of Chinese High-Speed Train

[13] https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/3586/

From Shanghai to Chongqing: The World’s Most Expensive Railway

[14] https://carnegieendowment.org/2011/07/29/wenzhou-crash-shows-dangers-of-china-s-nuclear-power-ambitions-pub-45213

Wenzhou Crash Shows the Dangers of China’s Nuclear Power Ambitions

[15] https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/5652/

Private Enterprise and the National Good

[16] https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/the-american-love-affair-with-the-automobile-the-unspoken-history-of-the-electric-car-december-09-2019/

The American Love Affair with the Automobile

[17] https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/04/13/amtrak-acela-trains-delay/

Amtrak’s faster, higher-tech Acela trains are delayed again

[18] https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/7172/

Subscribe to New Columns

The Crumbling of America

[19] https://www.american-rails.com/1950s.html

1950s Railroads, The Industry In Decline;

[20] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_railroad_accidents

American Railroad Accidents

[21] Deadliest bridge collapses in the US in the last 50 yearshttps://www.cnn.com/2018/03/15/us/bridge-collapse-history-trnd

[22] https://news.yahoo.com/government-keeps-american-bridges-collapsing-162153121.html

[23] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thousands-of-us-bridges-vulnerable-to-collapse

[24] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-system-failure-delays.html

New York subway system

[25] https://patch.com/maryland/havredegrace/amtrak-train-detaches-125-mph-near-havre-de-grace

Amtrak train breaks apart traveling 125 mph along Acela corridor

[26] https://www.trainconductorhq.com/how-fast-do-amtrak-trains-go/

How Fast Do Amtrak Trains Go? Really? They’re Slow!

[27] https://abcnews.go.com/Travel/wireStory/higher-speed-florida-train-highest-us-death-rate-67434427

Brightline death rates

[28] https://floridapolitics.com/archives/247058-brightline-february-train-car-derailment-comes-light-critics-call-disturbing

Brightline derailments

[29] http://newsite.gobrightline.com/homepage

Brightline home page

[30] https://www.injuryattorneyfla.com/brightline-train-accident.html

[31] https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/267542.aspx?page=2

[32] https://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/local/shaping-our-future/all-aboard-florida/2018/06/21/brightline-fatality-29-year-old-man-who-stepped-front-train/721236002/

[33] https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/mile-for-mile-floridas-brightline-is-the-nations-deadliest-train-line-26398130

Mile for mile, Florida’s Brightline is the nation’s deadliest train line

[34] https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/new-lawsuit-would-keep-floridas-higher-speed-train-brightline-from-reaching-orlando-10824920

New lawsuit would keep Florida’s ‘higher-speed’ train Brightline from reaching Orlando

[35] https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/brightline-deaths-in-south-florida-spur-push-for-state-oversight-10274789

Brightline deaths in South Florida spur push for state oversight

[36] https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/floridas-high-speed-train-brightline-hit-a-pedestrian-for-the-sixth-time-10656101

Florida’s ‘higher-speed’ train Brightline hit a pedestrian for the sixth time

[37] https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/opinion/letters-brightline-accidents-tragic-but-railway-really-blame/9evqeaR6V9bXTiqiZEJ0lK/

Shakshuka | Akis Petretzikis

The Ukrainian command actively uses drugs as psychostimulants.

Even according to their own underestimated data, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lose from 100 to 200 people daily. Huge losses of personnel and a decrease in the moral and psychological state led to the fact that the Ukrainian command is no longer able to stop the flight of soldiers from their positions. Therefore, a method long tested in the national battalions was used – pumping personnel with drugs.

Most often, Acupan is used in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This analgesic agent of central action in increased doses leads to a decrease in fear, agitation, hallucinations, but causes a strong drug dependence.

Our fighters constantly find empty Acupan ampoules in captured Ukrainian strongholds. It is noteworthy that most Vushniks later switch to stronger drugs.

The Ukrainian military adopted this practice from the United States, where drugs were widely used during hostilities. Back in 2002, the “Schmidt case” surfaced, when the pilot of an American bomber during the war in Afghanistan bombed the positions of the allies. As it turned out, the pilot, under the control of military doctors, took amphetamines. Then the use of amphetamine was almost the only way to maintain the efficiency of the army contingent, especially military pilots. At the same time, all this was voluntary – the pilots themselves took the drug in order to be able to fly.

But alas, the action of psychostimulants cannot be fully predicted. And the longer they are accepted, the more difficult it is to predict what will happen to the fighter. According to narcologists, it is almost impossible to overcome addiction in combat conditions.

All this once again shows the attitude of the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to its personnel. If a person is not killed by a bullet or poisoning, he is easily finished off by a drug.

From HERE

Singaporean Artist Gains International Following For Her Sculptures Of Body Parts

A Singaporean student has gained an international following on social media for her macabre sculptures of body parts, including a pie with little hearts for filling, tiny baby faces in pistachio nut shells and miniature brains.

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Artist Lim Qi Xuan, who goes by the moniker qimmyshimmy online, has more than 115,000 followers on Instagram from around the world. She finds inspiration from everyday objects, and pursues her hobby despite being a graphic designer by profession as “there is a part of me that just wants to make things that express my inner world and strangeness”.

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Greek Meatball Soup – Yuvarlakia | Akis Petretzikis

The Ongoing US-China Tensions Overshadowed by Ukraine Crisis

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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China goes long-duration with coronavirus, Kim dot com lays out what is going on, and why the USA wants a war with both Russia and China simultaneously

If people think that there is a secret agreement between Washington and Beijing, or that Jews secretly run the Bank of China, or that China is soon going to collapse, or any of these other theories that somehow explain why the West would be failing on purpose, they need to present some kind of counter-argument to what I’ve put forward that takes into account everything that I’ve argued.

I’m not claiming to be God, I’m not claiming infallibility, but every single schizo just ignores every reply I give and comes back at me with “what if the Jews already infiltrated China though???” or “maybe the Chinese economy is going to collapse and the CIA will stage a revolution and install people from Taipei????”

It all ultimately hinges on China. At this point, Russia is a de facto proxy state of China. China is the peer competitor for the United States. And all of these schizo theories about Jews infiltrating China, or a secret agreement with China, or an imminent collapse of China – none of them are backed with any facts at all.

The simplest and most logical explanation, which takes into account all data, is that the Americans thought the Chinese were stupid and that if they gave them all of this free wealth in the form of exporting industry to China, China would become another “human rights anal democracy” vassal state. Instead, China became an ultranationalist superpower. The globalist agenda had no contingency plan for this eventuality, because they made these decisions about China without any real understanding of the Orient.

-UNZ

Yah. It’s a big mystery why the United States “leadership” are acting so crazy. No one has any idea, though all agree that it seems to be some kind of mass insanity.

Here, in this article, we will mosey down the various discussion trails, and end up exactly where we want to be. We with show you WHY, WHEN and HOW the plans by those in American leadership will “right the capsized boat” and reestablish American supremacy in the world on the global scene.

I doubt that it will happen, but those in the leadership positions have other ideas.

As always, we will mix other articles, subject and topics to throw off the troll armies, the spam ‘bots, and other robotic denizens of the powerful elite.

China will normalize epidemic prevention and control as a long-term facet of Chinese life

Cai Qi made a report to the party congress: Beijing will persevere in normalizing epidemic prevention and control
2022-06-27 Source: Client of Beijing Daily Author: Gao Zhi
This morning, the 13th Beijing Municipal Congress of the Communist Party of China opened. Comrade Cai Qi made a report to the Party Congress.
Beijing will make unremitting efforts to normalize epidemic prevention and control. Unswervingly adhere to the general strategy of 

[1] "foreign import, internal rebound". 

[2] The general policy of "dynamic clearing". 

[3] Compact the "four parties' responsibilities". 

[4] Implement the "four early" requirements. 

[5] Adopt fast, flexible, scientific and accurate comprehensive prevention and control measures. 

[6] Fight the active battle of epidemic prevention and control. 

[7] Give full play to the role of the capital’s strict entry into Beijing to manage the joint prevention and control coordination mechanism and the emergency response mechanism for epidemic-related risks.

[8] Comprehensively improve the quality and efficiency of all links such as flow transfer, transfer, isolation, management and control, and respond quickly to new outbreaks. 

[9] Control quickly and resolutely block the transmission channels of the epidemic. 

[10] High-quality promotion of normalized nucleic acid testing.

[11] Maintain key screening.

[12] Maintain strict inspection of community (village), units and public places.

[13] Maintain strict social prevention and control.

[14] Maintain strict management of entry and exit from Beijing.

[15] Build a strong barrier for epidemic prevention and control in the capital. 

[16] Strengthen the construction of the public health emergency management system.

[17] Implement the special plan for epidemic prevention facilities in the capital.

[18] Promote the reform of the disease control system and the standardization of disease control institutions.

[19] Continue to strengthen the reserve of epidemic prevention and emergency response capabilities. 

[20] Intensify efforts to tackle scientific and technological problems in epidemic prevention and control and transform achievements. 

[21] Carry out in-depth patriotic health campaigns, and ...

[22] ...do a good job in creating "epidemic-free communities (village)".
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Covid death toll vs China’s puts US to shame

‘History should judge us,’ opined one commentary – and it will
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In May and June two milestones were passed in the world’s battle with Covid-19 and were widely noted in the press, one in the US and one in China. They invite a comparison between the two countries and their approach to combating the pandemic.

The first milestone was passed on May 12 when the United States registered more than 1 million total deaths (1,008,377 as of June 19, 2022, when this article was written) due to Covid, the highest of any country in the world. Web MD expressed its sentiment in a piece headlined: “US Covid Deaths Hit 1 Million: ‘History Should Judge Us.’”

Second, on June 1, China emerged from its 60-day lockdown in Shanghai in response to an outbreak there, the most serious since the Wuhan outbreak at the onset of the pandemic.  The total number of deaths in mainland China since the beginning of the epidemic in January 2020 now stands at 5.226 as of June 19, 2022.

To put that in perspective, that is 3,042 deaths per million population in the US versus 3.7 deaths in China due to Covid: 3,042 vs 3.7! Had China followed the same course as the US, it would have experienced at least 4 million deaths. Had the US followed China’s course it would have had only 1,306 deaths total.

The European Union did not fare not much better than the US. with 2,434 deaths per million as of June 19.

When confronted with these numbers, the response of the Western media has all too often been denial that China’s numbers were valid. But China’s data have been backed by counts of excess deaths during the period of the pandemic, as The New York Times illustrated in a recent article.

Actually this is old news. The validity of China’s numbers, as shown by counts of excess deaths, was validated long ago in a February 2021 study by a group at Oxford University and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. This was published in the prestigious British Medical Journal and is discussed in detail here.

What about the economy?

Clearly China put the saving of lives above the advance of the economy with its “dynamic zero-Covid policy.” But contrary to what was believed in the West at the time, saving lives also turned out to be better for the economy, as shown in the following data from the World Bank:

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During the first year of the pandemic, 2020, China’s economy continued to grow, albeit at a slower rate. In contrast, the US economy contracted dramatically, dropping all the way back not simply to 2019 levels, but to pre-2018 levels.

Interestingly, the plot also shows the year that the Chinese GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) surpassed that of the United States in 2017, heralding a new era for the Global South.

The World Bank has not yet released data for 2021, but the International Monetary Fund has PPP-GDP data for 2021, shown here. The US economy grew at 5.97% and China’s at 8.02%.

Unlike the World Bank data shown in the graph above for the years up to 2020, these data for 2021 are not corrected for inflation, which for 2021 ran at 4.7% in the US, whereas China’s was 0.85%. So China’s growth would be even greater in comparison to the US, were inflation taken into account.

The bottom line is that for the first two years of the pandemic through 2021, China’s growth was always positive and greater than that of the US. China’s policy not only saved lives but protected the economy. Win-win, one might say.

Is China’s dynamic zero Covid policy “sustainable”in the face of the Omicron variant?

The Shanghai lockdown

The period of the recent Shanghai lockdown, which we can date from April 1, 2022, ended on June 1, and followed the second-largest outbreak in China since the original outbreak in January 2020 in Wuhan. Each resulted in major lockdowns; the first in Wuhan lasted about 76 days and the second in Shanghai about 60 days. The first in Wuhan was due to the original variant and the second was due to the much more infectious Omicron.

During the recent lockdown in Shanghai, the Western press was awash with proclamations, all too many laced with an unseemly Schadenfreude, that China’s dynamic zero-Covid policy was not sustainable.

This is all too reminiscent of decades of predictions that China’s extraordinary success in developing its economy to number one in the world in terms of PPP-GDP was a passing phase, a Ponzi scheme that was – what else – “not sustainable.”

Recently the same press has gone silent, always a sign that China has met with success. So what are the results?

The Shanghai lockdown ended on June 1 and from that day until the day of this writing, June 19, there have been no deaths due to Covid on the Chinese mainland. Cases nationwide are also way down to 183 per day from the peak of 26,000 on April 15. That was the largest number of cases in a single day for the entire period of the pandemic in China.  For comparison, the peak in the US was 800,000 in a single day.

Both the Wuhan and Shanghai lockdowns demanded sacrifices and patience over the roughly two-month period for each. However, these difficulties are generally exaggerated in the West and based on anecdotes of the worst of the difficulties encountered. Such sordid journalism reached rock bottom in a New York Times piece equating China’s hard-working health-care workers to Adolf Eichmann.

As an antidote to this kind of hit piece and to gain a feeling of life in the cities that were under lockdown during the Wuhan outbreak, Peter Hessler’s March 2020 account in The New Yorker, “Life on Lockdown in China,” is enlightening and will dispel many misconceptions. Hessler was living and teaching in Chengdu, Sichuan, at the time.

For the moment China’s approach has succeeded, although we cannot say what the future holds. But the public health measures that have worked so well in mainland China should not be lightly dismissed let alone be the subject of mean-spirited attacks. Such measures may be a means of saving millions of lives when the next variant or the next pandemic strikes.

US needs a people’s tribunal

Turning again to the US, what does it say when one of the richest nations in the world, spending more than $1 trillion a year on its “national security” budget, could not muster the means to deal with Covid-19 and ended up with more deaths than any other nation on Earth? China’s handling of the pandemic certainly shows a completely different outcome was possible. The US death toll was not an inescapable act of nature.

That being so, should there not be a people’s gribunal to investigate those in charge in the US government over the course of three administrations? That that, and not an official whitewash, is certainly needed? And should not punishment appropriate for a crime against humanity be meted out? The 1 million dead deserve no less.

“Free Like the Wind”: Sensual Illustrations Filled with Sunshine and Youth by Peijin Yang

This art, not my preferred venue, speaks to me in soft breezes…

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“Hi there! I’m Peijin, a self-taught freelancer illustrator based in Munich, Germany. Two years ago I gave up my engineering career and started my art journey. Drawing is my true love. I believe a lot of you feel the same way.”

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Attemps to infringe upon Crimea could lead to WWIII: Former Russian President Medvedev

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that any attempt to infringe upon Crimea by a NATO country would mean a declaration of war on Russia, which could lead to World War III, agencies quoted him as saying.

Russia will be strengthening its border if Finland and Sweden join NATO, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, according to the agencies.

Medvedev also added that any attempt to infringe upon Crimea by a NATO country would mean a declaration of war on Russia, which could lead to World War III, agencies quoted him as saying.

“For us, Crimea is a part of Russia. And that means forever. Any attempt to encroach on Crimea is a declaration of war against our country,” Medvedev told the news website Argumenty i Fakty.

“And if this is done by a NATO member-state, this means conflict with the entire North Atlantic alliance; a World War Three. A complete catastrophe.”

Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, also said that if Finland and Sweden joined NATO, Russia would strengthen its borders and would be “ready for retaliatory steps,” and that could include the prospect of installing Iskander hypersonic missiles “on their threshold.”

Grilled Bacon-Cheeseburgers (Crowd Size)

Crispy bacon and tangy blue cheese dressing add their distinctive flavor to burgers cooked on the grill.

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Crispy bacon and tangy blue cheese dressing add their distinctive flavor to burgers cooked on the grill.

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Sitrep: International reserve currency based on a basket of BRICS currencies.

This news just out – MAJOR!

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that banks from BRICS nations can freely connect to the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS), Russia’s alternative to SWIFT.

While addressing a BRICS business forum, Putin said that together with its BRICS partners – Brazil, India, China and South Africa – Russia is developing reliable alternatives for international payments.

“The Russian system for transmitting financial messages is open to connecting banks from the five countries,” he said, adding: “The geography of the use of the Russian payment system Mir is expanding.”

The Russian president also noted that work is underway to create an international reserve currency based on a basket of BRICS currencies.

From HERE

Some thoughts

If you go to any third world country, you will find that people have a lot more personal freedom, that families are much healthier, that people are just generally doing better. The biggest reason for that is that a third world country simply doesn’t have any resources to micromanage people’s individual lives.

-UNZ

NATO Announces Increase in “High-Readiness Troops” from 40,000 to 300,000

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has announced that they are increasing the number of troops on “High Readiness” from 40,000 to 300,000 given the situation in Ukraine.

NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg made the announcement Monday morning in Brussels, adding “Extensive dialogue between NATO and Russia is no longer possible.”

Units deployed across eight eastern and southeastern NATO countries to deter Russia hostilities will rise in size from 1,000-strong battlegroups to brigades, which comprise around 3,000-5,000 troops with more war-fighting equipment in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

“We will transform the NATO Response Force and increase the number of our high readiness forces to well over 300,000,” the NATO chief said.

The NATO Response Force – which are kept at varying degrees of readiness to mobilize, from two days’ notice to six months – is currently around 40,000 soldiers, sailors and air personnel.

In addition to the increase in High-Readiness troops, the U.S. Air Force has deployed F-35 Stealth Fighter jets to the region, with the flight path of at least one such jet allowed to be visible on FlightRadar24:

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Day by day the situation between NATO and Russia grows worse, almost as though NATO is TRYING to find a reason to get into direct war with Russia, over the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine.

Trouble is, there is no NATO or U.S. national security interest in Ukraine. So it seems to many observers that NATO is sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong, and literally TRYING to start World War 3.

At the end of this article

I describe why the United States proxy nations are so fucking Hell-bent on getting in a war with Russia at the very end of this article. Just continue reading on…

Here is a guy that does a great job on what is going on in the front lines in Ukraine

Blackberry Cobbler

Celebrate summer with a homemade cobbler filled with delicious blackberries! If you’re lucky enough to have access to fresh fruit, be sure to use it in this Blackberry Cobbler recipe. Otherwise, frozen berries will work just as well. Top off this delicious, easy Blackberry Cobbler dessert with homemade vanilla ice cream or even whipped cream for a special touch.

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Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen (thawed and drained) blackberries (do not use blueberries)
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup Gold Medal™ All-Purpose Flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • Cream, whipped cream or ice cream, if desired

Steps

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    In medium bowl, stir together blackberries and sugar. Let stand about 20 minutes or until fruit syrup forms. Heat oven to 375°F.
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    In large bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, salt and milk. Stir in melted butter until blended. Spread in ungreased 8-inch square pan. Spoon blackberry mixture over batter.
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    Bake 45 to 55 minutes or until dough rises and is golden. Serve warm with cream.

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Global impact of the first year of COVID-19 vaccination: a mathematical modelling study

Article HERE

But, there is something missing from the study.

With all due respect, I think you miss a major point here.

Before the vaccines were rolled out, there were only public health measures throughout almost all of 2020. (It was only in December,2020, that vaccination began in China and the West.

During that year, there were about half a million deaths in the US and about 5000 in China. 

Most all those deaths occurred during the period of 76 days when the virus struck Wuhan and China after some confusion (always happens when an epidemic breaks out) responded with public health measures.

There were essentially no deaths after April in China! And in the next year up until the Shanghai outbreak there were no deaths. (5 deaths in all from the end of the Wuhan lockdown in 2020 until the onset of the Shanghai outbreak in March 2022!). 

The vaccines no doubt helped but the public health measures were so good that they made little difference until Shanghai when I suspect that they saved many lives. 

And in the next pandemic again it will take time to get a vaccine rolled out. Until then there will be only public health measures. And the West has little interest in them. 

They require a people's war on the virus and the West does not have the will, the values or the social organization provided by the CPC neighborhood committees and government funding to make it possible.

Yes. This is correct.

Exactly.
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It are the neighborhood communities who saved millions of lives in China, not the vaccines.
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It was these local communities who organized the massive testing, and put in place the tight mandatory lock-downs.
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Chinese Propaganda Posters From The Cultural Revolution Ages, 1960s-1970s

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In 1966 Mao Zedong, the Communist leader of China, started a political campaign that became known as the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Mao called on China’s youth to help him purge capitalist influences and bourgeois thinking in government, teaching, the media and arts, and to reinvigorate the revolutionary spirit.

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Calling themselves The Red Guards, radical students set out to destroy the “four olds”: old ideas, customs, habits and culture. They spearheaded the interrogation, humiliation and beatings of teachers and intellectuals, and traveled the country destroying cultural heritage. During the Cultural Revolution traditional artists were condemned as counter-revolutionaries and their work destroyed. A new style of art was required that supported the Maoist line and served the worker, peasant and soldier.

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The decade was marked by purges and power struggles at the upper echelons of government, and the mobilization of masses of young people to enforce Maoist thought. One of the primary vessels for disseminating instructions and models of behavior was propaganda art. Vivid posters were created to inspire citizens to put forth their labor towards agriculture, industry and national defense, as well as concerns such as hygiene and family planning.

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Slogans are often used alongside imagery in posters, usually written in bold, Chinese script. They include pro-revolution messages about “working hard”, “uniting for victory” and “working towards the general communist goal. “Bright” colors are used in many of the posters and red appears a lot as it is the color of communism and revolution. Much of the work that came out of the Cultural Revolution is attributed to committees or groups, rather than individuals. Thousands of copies of the posters were printed and sold cheaply as the establishment at the time wanted the posters to be something that everyone should have on their walls at home. Many of the posters were painted by hand and then printed as lithographs, a process involving using stone, oil and chemicals to create prints.

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Ukrainian military destroy foreign instructors, fearing the disclosure of secret data

From HERE
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Ukrainian military destroy foreign instructors, fearing the disclosure of classified REUTERS data.
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Groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine remaining in Lysychansk and Severodonetsk have begun to liquidate foreign mercenaries.

"Ukrainian militants received a command to eliminate foreign instructors in Lisichansk and Severodonetsk, since they have certain information about the activities of foreign special services in the Donbass so that they would not be captured and would not tell this information,"

He said.  TASS source close to the People’s Militia of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR).

According to him, the LPR military has already discovered the burned bodies of several dead mercenaries.

On the Eve of NATO Summit, Russian Space Agency Published Coordinates of “Decision-Making centers”

On the eve of the NATO meeting in Madrid, at which Russia is expected to be declared the most dangerous threat in the world, the Russian Space Agency made an interesting post to their web site: The GPS Coordinates of certain “decision-making centers” around the world.

While at the upcoming summit of the alliance, representatives of 30 participating countries and their sympathizers will declare Russia the number one evil, Roskosmos published entertaining satellite images – those same “decision centers” — or rather, their coordinates — just in case . . .

⠀⠀🇺🇸 38.897542, -77.036505
⠀⠀🇺🇸 38.870960, -77.055935
⠀⠀🇬🇧 51.503049, -0.127727
⠀⠀🇫🇷 48.870433, 2.316842
⠀⠀🇩🇪 52.519903, 13.368921
⠀⠀🇧🇪 50.879986, 4.425771

The coordinates are for:

  • The White House in Washington, DC
  • The Pentagon
  • #10 Downing Street in London, England
  • Le Palais d’ Le Elysee in Paris, France
  • The German Chancellery (Bundeskanzleramt) in Berlin, Germany
  • NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium

Now, most reasonable people would view this as a terse reminder that Russia can reach out and touch anyone they want; especially folks who are being intentionally “unfriendly” or even hostile.

Of course, the political weaklings of the West will likely start whining that this is some sort of threat, while in actual fact, it is merely a statement of reality.

Before the west goes and declares Russia to be the most evil one, perhaps they should look in the mirror at their own actions: Financing, inciting and fomenting the overthrow of the Ukraine government in 2014.   Installing a puppet regime in Ukraine.   Moving to bring Ukraine into NATO for the purpose of placing US missiles (aimed at Russia) on to Ukraine soil with a flight time of only about 5 minutes to Moscow.  Telling Ukraine to “ignore” Russia’s pre-special military operation ultimatum, and now, supplying deadly weapons to Ukraine, to be used to kill Russians.

It is the West that has done all these things.

It is the West who is the aggressor.

Russia is reminding the West that Russia isn’t some backwards, third-world country like Iraq they’re playing around with.

Russia isn’t playing.

Oh Now They‘re Banning China Spreading Chinese In The UK!

There is a concerted effort by the Western powers to contain the spread of Chinese and to prevent China from teaching Mandarin in the West

By Thorsten J. Pattberg for the Saker Blog

Much of the global media attention is on the sabotaging of everything ‘Russian’ in the West. However, at the same time there is a concerted Western attack on everything ‘Chinese’.

The UK now is basically saying: ‘Chinese’ is the property of the West, and China has no business in teaching Chinese in the West. Something like that. It is definitely spooky.

A British Member of Parliament (MP), Alicia Kearns, recently delivered a strong message to China at the Palace of Westminster, which was attended by maybe 20 of her social mores:

“Our students, our kids, our under-18-years olds are taught Mandarin by the Confucius Institutes which are the arm of the Chinese state.”

She goes on and bashes a 1.4 billion Chinese state just like that, for click-bait and going viral. So we believe MP Kearns is what the UK deserves, and want to promote her. She calls China “a genocidal regime” and demands the 30 UK Confucius Institutes to be punished or “banned.” Wow.

 

Not knowing Mandarin, many British elites fear Chinese. Fear is a German concept: Angst. And Angst leads to Ohnmacht. Ohnmacht means “without power.”

Did I just use a foreign language and it sounded like a political statement?

The MP knows the effect a foreign language has on fearful natives. To her, language is of course always politics. Therefore, China must not spread Chinese, because it‘s all politics.

She continued: “We recently discovered that Edinburgh University‘s Confucius Institute has representatives of the Chinese Communist Party‘s embassy on its board.“

Oh there are Chinese on the board of the Confucius Institute for Scotland—is that it?!

But the director is a German woman, trained and funded all her life by the powers in Berlin, and Berlin wants Scotland to break off from the UK and join the EU. Think about that, MP Kearns.

 

British China Studies is heavy stuff, compared to German China Studies, I mean.

This has to do with the British having bombarded Chinese ports in Guangzhou in 1839, the capture of Hong Kong in 1842, the burning down of the Summer Palace in 1860, and the drugging of 30 million Chinese with heavy narcotics.

During the last 150 years of “exchange,” the British meddled in Tibet, Taiwan, Peking, Shanghai and Canton, but never learned Chinese. Call it an “import ban.”

So the past is the past, and now ‘Global Britain’—the official UK slogan under MP Kearns—has this huge pent-up demand for Chinese culture, concepts and terms, right?

Those Confucius Institutes our British MP wants to ban are providing the most authentic, accredited and prestigious Chinese language training there is.

China has the best China Studies universities in the world, and the Confucius Institutes are the best places for learning Chinese outside of China. Period.

I know that many British imperialists still believe No we British are China. But sorry, you are not—China is!

Mastering Chinese requires thousands of hours of hard recitation, rote learning and love for China. Before the arrival of the Confucius Institutes in Europe in 2004, Western professors could not read or write Mandarin. Now they have to.

And the MP continued, that China is “undermining the integrity of the Mandarin education in our country.”

Mandarin education in your country can keep up with China precisely because it cooperates with China, for instance the London School of Economics or the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Read the latter school’s slogan—’SOAS, the world’s leading institution for the study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East’.

Well, SOAS wasn’t the world’s leading institution in any of these things, and certainly not China. China has the world’s leading institutions for the study of China. But now SOAS has a real Confucius Institute and things look much better.

Back to our MP’s politics fear. She went on about how China’s Ministry of Education is a threat to freedom because it only selects qualified teachers.

Think, what she is indirectly saying about UK teachers. She is saying that the UK does not vet its teachers! Just like that German director at Edinburgh University, got it? And just like MP Kearns, who doesn‘t know Chinese but wants to ban it.

 

The British MP must know that the Confucius Institutes are partly funded by China and partly funded by the host university, and that they generate tuition fees and partner up with British culture makers. All this is transparent, so MP Kearns demands more transparency. She could also have demanded more weather.

There are 100 million Mandarin learners in the world, and most will achieve proficiency when they visit China eventually. About 40% of them study Chinese not in China, and the best place for them to do that is with an accredited Confucius Institute. Britain has no expertness in teaching Chinese, China is best at that. Britain can teach… I don’t know, Irish best?

British educators also fear its name—Confucius. Confucius lived some 2500 years ago, and this could indeed cause misunderstanding. We don’t name European institutes the “Jesus Christ Institutes.” Just saying.

Last, a fair criticism is spies. Britain indeed has a James Bond agent 007 obsession with spies, which is a fiction. Here is how it really works. Before 2003, there were at most 300 China Studies masters graduates in the UK, and MI6, MI5 and DI intelligence services recruited from those because they could read Mandarin, also in Edinburgh.

On the other hand, there were years with 100,000 Chinese students in the UK who could all read English, so everyone is paranoid now.

Well done, if the British MP succeeds in keeping China out of China Studies, this could cancel ‘Global Britain’ once and for all. And Scotland is probably on its way out too.

End.


Shakedown Successful? Turkey To Green Light Sweden & Finland Entry into NATO

Reports are coming in that a deal has been struck whereby the country of Turkey will agree to vote in favor or both Sweden and Finland joining NATO.  The Turks previously said they would never agree; seemingly dooming the entry of both countries.

Turkey, Sweden and Finland signed a tripartite memorandum on the NATO membership processes of Finland and Sweden.

A photo released from the meeting wherein the deal was allegedly struck, shows lots of outright frowns on the faces of attendees.

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None of the attendees look happy . . . at all.

One wonders who got how much, and from whom, to make THIS deal happen?

Latest Twitter Alert when you click on “like” on sources link to China websites!!!

From my in-box. -MM

Latest Fascinating discovery on Twitter:

I just posted this on twitter: https://twitter.com/OcastJournalist/status/1541228260595404800 (See the warning on the tweet)

If you cannot access above link, simply go to: https://twitter.com/OcastJournalist (see 1st tweet)

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When I clicked on like, there is this warning dialogue box pop up (see below or attached screenshot). Note the statement:

“This Tweet links to a China state-affiliated media website. Help keep Twitter a place for reliable info. Find out more before liking this Tweet.”

Welcome to the free world so afraid of real news!!!

2 x news: Vladimir Putin says Russia’s trade with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa has jumped 38% amid sanctions and war in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin says Russia’s trade with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa has jumped 38% amid sanctions and war in Ukraine.
China and India now account for about 50% of Russia’s seaborne oil exports, as Asian demand props up Moscow’s energy revenues

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A nice discussion on the USA going to war against Russia and China

A good video.

The Musket and the Noodle Stall: A Strategic Comparison

By Fred Reed for the Saker Blog

In big-chunk terms, in the world today we see a contest between the Chinese economy and the American military.

It is between Chinese dynamism and American coercion.

Sure, China has a military and the US has an economy. Yet the emphasis, and spirit are as described.

    • The United States gives priority to the military over civilian economy, with military spending increasing at the expense of internal infrastructure and social needs.
    • By contrast, China focuses on infrastructure within and trade without.

I wonder whether Americans are aware of the extent of this. And its likely consequences.

To read the Asian-based press—Asia Times, Nikkei Asia, the South China Morning Post, the Global Times, and various tech sites—is to see a constant stream of infrastructure projects in China and advancing trade outside.

As perhaps many know China promotes the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive program to connect all of Eurasia, as well as Africa and Latin America in a huge trade zone connected by rail, highways, fiber optics, maritime links, and commercial treaties.

If completed it will DWARF the United States.

China, a rising technological center, leads the world in civil engineering, manufacturing, Five G, trade, and clearly intends to maintain the lead.

All power ultimately rests on economic power.

Below a few news stories more or less randomly chosen from around the web. Can you think of American equivalents?

China Mandalay Rail Line

“New international railway route from Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality to Mandalay, southern Myanmar, has officially started operation, with the first freight train departing from Chongqing on Monday, which will arrive in Mandalay about 20 days earlier than what it takes on traditional routes.”

The port will also further connectivity under the Belt and Road Initiative and increase Chinese influence in Myanmar.

Key word: Trade

America leads in phenomenally expensive aircraft carriers with serious developmental problems and no particular purpose. Google “Ford class carriers.”

China’s High Speed Rail

China’s high-speed rail network hit the 40,000-kilometer mark by the end of 2021, reaching out to 93 percent of domestic cities with a population of over 500,000, An Lusheng, deputy head of National Railway Administration, said on Friday. This comes as the country ramps up a push to build itself into a transportation power.”

Fast, pervasive transportation greatly facilitates almost everything. Beijing has said it will have 30,000 miles in a few years.

Key words: manufacturing, trade, connectivity.

Russia – China Connections

The first China-Russia highway bridge, which stretches from Heihe, a border city in Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, to the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk spanning the Heilongjiang River, opened to traffic on Friday, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported. It will open a new international highway that will boost the connectivity between cities in China and Russia.“

A few days ago. Here we have more of China’s program to tie all of Eurasia into one interconnected web. Note that it says the “first” bridge.

Key words: Trade, connectivity.

China plans new high-volume space-launch facility

“The new Ningbo spaceport, the nation’s fifth such facility, will give a crucial lift to Beijing’s new space programs as its rivalry with the United States reaches space. The spaceport is said to be tailor-made for Chinese commercial aerospace manufacturers and service providers to one day wrest business and foreign orders from US rivals.”

Typical China. Planning five years in advance. If this follows the country’s pattern, construction will begin and continue without interruption until completed.

Keyword: Commercial.

America leads the world in overpriced fighter aircraft with a history of unending engineering problems. Google “F-35.”

Cargo carried via New Land-Sea Corridor in western China grows 38% in Jan-May”

“With the RCEP coming into effect, the corridor has played a bigger role in boosting trade between China and ASEAN. On April 8, four trains left Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, carrying aluminum products, agricultural equipment, industrial equipment, chemicals and food to Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia

The RCEP, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, is a vast commercial agreement among whose members are all of ASEAN, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and China.”

Key word: Trade.

Seabed Trencher

Multi-functional modular seabed trencher developed by a Chinese firm has recently completed 100 kilometers of pipelines construction in “Bangladesh’s first marine pipeline project, setting two world records in directional drilling and deep trenching.”

My knowledge of pipeline trenching would be zero even after three cups of coffee and a hearty breakfast. I note, though that it is in Bangladesh: More connection of China and everywhere else. It also sounds like good engineering.

Key words: Trade, connectivity.

CKU Rail

The CKU Railways will create significant trade opportunities for Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan while linking China directly to the Middle East via Rail, with spin off benefits throughout the region.”

China, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan will be tied more into the Central Asian ecosystem. Construction begins next year.

Key words: Trade, connectivity.

America is unchallenged in funny-looking Batplane intercontinental nuclear bomber costing, says Aviation Week, $640 million a copy as America prepares to fill intense world demand for nuclear war. Google “B-21.”

The China-Laos Railway: Yunnan to Vientiane by Bullet Train

On December 3rd 2021, the 1,035-km (643-mile) China-Laos Railway was fully opened making possible a bullet train journey of only 10 hours from Kunming to Vientiane, capital of Laos.

Key word: Trade.

China-Europe freight train trips top 50,000, yearly growth of 55% from 2016 to 2021

“The value of goods transported by the cargo service skyrocketed to $74.9 billion in 2021, up from $8 billion dollars in 2016, and its share in total trade between China and Europe has increased from 1.5 to 8 percent, according to the release China State Railway Group sent to the Global Times.” 

America will probably try to block this traffic because it goes through Russia. Again, coercion over competition.

Key word: Trade, connectivity.

Proposed US military budget: $857 billion.

Keywords: Profits, stupidity.

China Hosts over Sixty Percent of World’s Five G Base Stations

“China had set up a total of nearly 1.43 million 5G base stations as of the end of 2021….”

And many more this year. As can be found by browsing tech sites, China leads in Five G patents, installed base, technology, and manufacturing capacity.

Keywords: Trade, manufacturing.

Many millions of Americans can’t read, a hundred thousand a year die of opioid overdoses, the economy is a trainwreck, and despair grows, but the Pentagon has Space Command to give America “Total Spectrum Dominance,” which presumably will pay our mortgages.

China’s digital yuan extends usage into finance scenarios

“SHANGHAI, June 17 (Reuters) – China’s digital yuan can now be used to buy wealth management products, pay for insurance policies, and extend bank loans, as the central bank further expands e-CNY’s application beyond retail shopping, though still only in pilot schemes.”

China is the world’s leading major country in digital currency. Beijing is low-key about it but implications for global finance worry the US.

Keywords: Money, connectivity.

US leads world in pricey, unnecessary but glamorous and profitable nuclear-missile submarines. Google “Columbia class submarines.”

China moves toward STEM leadership

Worth reading.

“American” prowess in technology increasingly rests on East Asian and Indian scientists and engineers as the US destroys its schools to further inclusiveness.

Keywords: Abject, stupidity.

Value of China-Vietnam Cross-border Freight Trains More Than Triples in Q1”

US holds world lead in ratio of money given to the Ukraine to number of citizens living on sidewalks.

China leader in supercomputers:

“As of June 2021, 188 of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers were located in China, a figure which is a third more than that of its nearest competitor, the United States, which accounted for an additional 122 supercomputers. Together, the two nations account for around 60 percent of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.”

This needs to be read with caution.

How the two stack up in aggregate computing power, whatever that means, I don’t know. The US just announced the first exascale computer at Oak Ridge. The Sunway Oceanlight from China is on many websites said to be exascale, but isn’t quite.

The important point is that it is entirely of Chinese design from architecture to chips, using silicon of Chinese design and manufacture. It is remarkable that China can manage this in the face of American attempts to strangle the country technologically.

China Launches World’s Largest container Ship

A gorgeous monster. Check photo. China also has seven of the world’s largest cargo ports.

Keyword: Trade

Trade deficit with China.

Boring but worth a glance.

“During 2021, the United States exported $151,065,200,000 in products to China, but then imported $506,366,900,000 in products from China, resulting in $657,432,100,000 in total trade between the two countries–and a $355,301,700,000 deficit for the United States.” 

Keyword: Can you guess?

Kim Dotcom Breaks Down the True Scale of US Government Debt

New Zealand tech CEO, Kim Dotcom did the math on the United States’ sovereign debt and he tweeted a thread about it, saying it may the most important thread that he may ever make.

Kim explains that US spending and debt have spiraled out of control and the Government can only raise the money it needs by printing more of it, which means that hyperinflation is guaranteed.

He says this has been going on for decades and there’s no way to fix it and that the US got away with this for so long, because US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. When the US Government prints trillions, it is thereby robbing Americans and the entire world in what he calls the biggest theft in history.

He says the total US debt is at $90 trillion, which together with $169 trillion in US unfunded liabilities totals $259 trillion, which is $778,000 per US citizen or $2,067,000 per US Taxpayer.

Now, the value of all US assets combined: every piece of land, real estate, all savings, all companies, everything that all citizens, businesses, entities and the state own is worth $193 trillion.

Our total debt, $259 trillion minus our total net worth, $193 trillion equals negative $66 trillion of debt and liabilities after every asset in the US has been sold off.

So even if the US could sell all assets at the current value, which is impossible, it would still be broke.

This is where the ‘Great Reset’ comes in and he asks, “Is it a controlled demolition of the global markets, economies and the world as we know it? A shift into a new dystopian future where the elites are the masters of the slaves without the cosmetics of democracy?”

He notes how the world has changed so much in recent years and how nothing seems to make sense anymore. He sees the blatant corruption and the obvious gaslighting propaganda media and the erosion of our rights but he doesn’t know where it’s all going and he finishes the thread asking, “What’s the end game?”

As Harrison Smith from the American Journal says, “It’s a pyramid scheme. The people perpetrating the pyramid scheme are in charge of everything…they’re going to sacrifice humanity in order to maintain their system…

“The world economy is being collapsed, the food supply system is being destroyed, the energy that we rely on to maintain civilization is being curtailed and eliminated and we’ll be forced into the Great Reset where we will own nothing.”

Former BlackRock stockpicker, Ed Dowd believes that the entire COVID sham was created as a cover for the financial collapse and that new lockdowns are coming, to try mitigate the inevitable violence and chaos that we can expect to be witnessing in the streets.

We also saw how Dr Mike Yeadon, former Pfizer VP also believes that COVID and the death shot are an elaborate hoax to engineer a collapse of sovereign currencies to bring in the Great Reset and the introduction of programmable central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), for a wholly-controlled population, in which people will not be able to buy food, etc. unless the algorithms permit and the undesirables can basically be starved to death via artificial intelligence.

Kim Dotcom June 5, 2022 Thread

This may be the most important thread I ever make. Big picture stuff about the major global collapse that is coming.

I will try to help you understand why the future is not what we’re hoping for. It’s worse than most can imagine.

Our leaders know.
But what are they planning?

The United States did not have a surplus or a balanced budget since 2001. In the last 50 years the US only had 4 years of profit. In fact all the profit the US had would not be enough to pay for 6 months of the current yearly deficit. So how did the US pay for things?

US spending and debt have spiraled out of control and the Govt can only raise the money it needs by printing it. That causes inflation. It’s like taxing you extra because you pay more for the things you need and all your assets decline in value.

See the US money printing frenzy:

The reason why the US got away with it for so long is because USD is the worlds reserve currency. Nations everywhere hold USD as a secure asset. So when the US Govt prints trillions it’s robbing Americans and the entire world. The biggest theft in history.

The problem is that this has been going for decades and there’s now no way to fix it. The reality is that the US has been bankrupt for some time and what’s coming is a nightmare: Mass poverty and a new system of control. Let me explain why this isn’t just doom and gloom talk.

Total US debt is at $90 trillion. US unfunded liabilities are at $169 trillion. Combined that’s $778,000 per US citizen or $2,067,000 per US tax payer 

Remember, the only way the US Government can operate now is by printing more money. Which means hyperinflation is inevitable.

The total value of ALL companies listed on the US stock market is $53 trillion. The real value is much lower because the US has been printing trillions to provide interest free loans to investment banks to pump up the stock market. It’s a scam.

Most of the $53 trillion is air.

The value of all US assets combined, every piece of land, real estate, all savings, all companies, everything that all citizens, businesses, entities and the state own is worth $193 trillion.

That number is also full of air just like the US stock market.

US total debt
$90 trillion

US unfunded liabilities
$169 trillion

Total
$259 trillion

Minus all US assets
$193 trillion

Balance
$66 trillion

That’s $66 trillion of debt and liabilities after every asset in the US has been sold off.

Do you understand?

So even if the US could sell all assets at the current value, which is impossible, it would still be broke.

The US is beyond bankrupt.
This patient is already dead.
This patient is now a zombie.

You probably wonder why are things still going? Why didn’t everything collapse yet.

It’s all perception, denial and dependency.

The perception is that the US has the largest economy and the strongest military in the world. But in reality the US is broke and can’t afford its army.

The denial is that all nations depend on a strong USD or global markets collapse.

The reason why the US zombie keeps going is because the end of the US is the end of western prosperity and an admission that the current system failed as a model for the world. It doesn’t change the reality. The collapse is inevitable and coming.

What are our leaders planning?

You may have heard about the ‘great reset’ or the ‘new world order’. Is it a controlled demolition of the global markets, economies and the world as we know it?

A shift into a new dystopian future where the elites are the masters of the slaves without the cosmetics of democracy?

Without a controlled demolition the world will collapse for all, including the elites. The world has changed so much and nothing seems to make sense anymore, the blatant corruption is out in the open, the obvious propaganda media, the erosion of our rights.

What’s the end game?

MM explains the “End Game”

The United States, were it to sell EVERYTHING in the United States, it would still owe $66 Trillion dollars.

However…

The complete net value of everything in Russia is $ 3.4 Trillion dollars. HERE.

It’s not enough to “make a dent” in America’s debt. But China is a big “juicy” target that can “do the job”. America needs to have a war with China, take it over, and sell it off so that it can become a stable nation again.

The complete net value of everything in China is $ 510 Trillion dollars HERE.

But the first step is to disarm Russia. By taking over Russia, it can break it up and disarm it so that it cannot assist China in defense.

The wealth obtained from Russia (in the meantime) can be used to make payments on American debt while forces and pieces are moved into place for a “death blow” that will destroy China and make it easy to absorb and disassemble.

  • Destroy Russia, break it up. Use the wealth to continue to make interest payments on USA debt.

Then, use the time to build up an enormous military force to…

  • Destroy China. Break it up. Loot it. Pay off the Debt and rebuild America!

Now that you know the “end game”, doesn’t everything look clearer right now?

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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The truth about the Tiananmen square massacre and how the USA and planning to create more narratives in support of a hot war in the Pacific

Black operations have been very busy as of late prepping the ground work for a long duration “hot war” centered on American proxy nations to engage China, while Russia is too preoccupied with NATO.

I have covered this in great detail over the last few years.

Here, in this article we will review the rewriting of history and how black operatives (out of the United States and the UK) are busy getting the world ready for a full onslaught engagement with China on proxy nation land. We will also include the anti-troll articles, the anti-shadow banning articles, and other techniques used to successfully throw-off the ‘bots that haunt the internet and search for targets.

This includes, food, cats, social issues, stories, and other issues.

We begin here…

Tiananmen lies and such

How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning • Wenyahonline Journal.

An outstanding article.

1) NED In 1988, an office was set up in China by a relatively new organization with an innocent name – the National Endowment for Democracy.

At that time, we reporters HAD NO IDEA it was a CIA spin-off, designed to build relationships with anti-government activists overseas for the purpose of spreading disinformation and destabilising communities in the interests of the US.

2) CIA In the following months, CIA agents helped Chinese student activists form an anti-government movement, and even provided typewriters, fax machines and other equipment to help them spread their message—this information came from a US official.

And it continues…

3) The Pentagon. A key player was Colonel Robert Helvey, a 30-year Pentagon veteran of destabilization operations in Asia. He “trained, in Hong Kong, the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques, which they were to subsequently use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989,” according to a highly detailed academic paper by B. Raman, the former director of India’s foreign intelligence agency.

4) A cry for more socialism. When protests broke out in China in April 1989, demonstrators were not calling for democracy, but purer socialism, free of corruption and inequality, which were endemic at the time. Students carried pictures of Chairman Mao and sang the Chinese national anthem repeatedly.

Western hybrid warfare includes two key principles:

     a) Locate and amplify GENUINE local grievances, and
     b) Rebrand them as calls for western liberal democracy and freedom.

5) Contact people rotated. The US State Department withdrew US ambassador Winston Lord, and replaced him with James Lilley, a veteran CIA agent who had run operations smuggling people in and out of China.

6) Rebranding. The Chinese protesters were advised by persons unknown to add the word “democracy” in English to their banners, and say they were calling for “freedom”, rather than their actual goal, a purer form of communism.

Such a great article. With loads of photos and quotes in the main article.

7) Image creation. The protesters were advised to create a statue and began work on May 27. But, as good communists, students chose to make it as unlike the Statue of Liberty as possible, basing their statue (replica on the right) on the work of Russian revolutionary communist sculptor Vera Mukhina (above). The students were not at all a homogenous group, but they were socialists.

8) American specialists called in. On May 28th, 1989, Gene Sharp, America’s top undercover street protest strategist, flew into Beijing with his assistant Bruce Jenkins to offer help. “The students in the square were operating with great commitment and bravery but they didn’t know what the hell they were doing,” Sharp later wrote.

9) Injection of hate. As May turned into June, the energy level dropped and there was need to bring things to a head. Student leader Chai Ling gave her infamous talk, where she warned of a massacre “which would spill blood like a river through Tiananmen Square”. She added that she expected to die shortly – but confusingly also said that she no longer intended to stay in China, but wanted to move to the United States. What did that mean? It was baffling at the time, but it would all make sense later.

We now know that student leaders were promised [1] US passports, [2] CIA-run safe passage out of China, and [3] enrollment in top US universities.

10) China is patient. But there was a problem. Things were not coming to a head. The Chinese government was remaining remarkably restrained, as was the army. Because the main body of the protesters were asking for purer communism, people were politically on the same page – students and soldiers had good relationships, and even shared food and sang together.

Violence finally started when a mysterious group of thugs, some from ethnic minorities, triggered a fight in Muxidi, five kilometers away, attacking army buses with petrol bombs and setting them alight, burning the occupants to death. This was unexpected, because gasoline was rationed and hard for ordinary people to obtain. Soldiers who managed to escape the burning buses were beaten to death. The word “massacre” could be used for this atrocity—although that doesn’t fit the western narrative, since it was soldiers who died. Other military men arrived in Muxidi and, infuriated at the sight of their slaughtered colleagues, shot at protesters (mostly unionists rather than students): there were many more tragic deaths, this time of civilians.

11) Things ended peacefully. Back in Tiananmen Square, in the early hours of June 4, soldiers arrived and called on students to leave. Student leader Feng Congde worked to gauge protesters opinions, and concluded that the majority wanted to leave. “So I announced the decision to leave,” he said. Students left peacefully.

12) A killing. At a different location on the periphery of the square, a fight broke out in which a soldier was killed, leading to some violence, according to a declassified report from the US Embassy.

13) More killings. One student protester, a friend of the present writer, watched one man lose his life. In the following skirmishes, several lives were lost. But in the square itself, the only gunfire came from bullets used to silence the sound system.

14) The lies begin. In contrast to this, a BBC reporter said he watched, from the Beijing Hotel, soldiers shooting at students in the center of the square. All eyewitness sources say this did not happen. It was also against the laws of physics – that location is not visible from the hotel.

15) The lies turn outrageous. Now this is where it gets strange. Over the following hours and days, a very different story was circulated, saying that the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in China had come to a violent and bloody end. A cable from the British Embassy said the students in the square had been massacred with machine guns, their bodies pushed into piles with bulldozers, and then incinerated by troops with flamethrowers.

16) More outrageous lies. A report was also sent out by the Australian Embassy delivering almost exactly the same information. “When all those who had not managed to get away were either dead or wounded, foot soldiers went through the square bayoneting or shooting anybody who was still alive,” said the report, read out loud by then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. “They had orders that nobody in the square be spared, and children and young girls were slaughtered, anti-personnel carriers and tanks then ran backwards and forwards over the bodies of the slain until they were reduced to pulp, after which, bulldozers moved in to push the remains into piles which were then incinerated by troops with flamethrowers.”

17) The lies grow exponentially. An unknown (at the time) source was distributing related news “a minimum of 10,000 people had been massacred.” One document about this horrific (but fictional) massacre was sent to the Hong Kong office of the Wen Wei Po newspaper, from an anonymous source. In Beijing, a student, Wu’er Kaixi, said he could confirm that the story was true – he had watched it happen, he claimed.

18) Lies become super-funded. Then came an astonishing split. The main newsrooms of the international media chose to canonize the fictional “Tiananmen Square massacre” story as fact. We ran it at great length (and came to ritually repeat it every year since). But individual reporters at the scene, often working for the same media companies, took a very different line over the days, weeks, months and years that followed.

19) Truth is suppressed. The massacre story was quite wrong, said Jay Mathews, former Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post.  “A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully.”

20) The famous parrot the lies. New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, a bitter critic of China, wrote: “There is no massacre in Tiananmen Square, for example, although there is plenty of killing elsewhere.”

21) The truth comes out 30 years later. Some told the truth years later. In 2009, James Miles, a senior BBC correspondent in Beijing at the time, admitted that he had “conveyed the wrong impression” and that “there was no massacre on Tiananmen Square.”

22) More truths in small drips and dabs. Graham Earnshaw of Reuters, who was in the square, wrote a detailed report in his memoir explaining how the military came, negotiated with the students and made everyone, including himself, leave peacefully.

23) Debunking the narrative is well known. Even the student protesters debunked the story. Wu’er Kaixi, who claimed to have seen the massacre with his own eyes, wasn’t even there, they said. He had left the Square hours earlier. It was later revealed that Wu’er was a Xinjiang Uyghur named Örkesh Dölet. He was spirited out of China through the Hong Kong-based “Operation Yellowbird” and taken to the US, where he was given a place at Harvard University.

More recently, Wu’er Kaixi/ Örkesh Dölet drew parallels between the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Hong Kong 2019 riots—perhaps more accurately than he realized, both being heavily misreported using the exact same techniques, by the exact same unholy alliance of behind the scenes manipulators and anti-Chinese journalists.

24) The true has been suppressed. Madrid’s ambassador to Eugenio Bregolat was filled with righteous anger. He noted that western journalists were reporting the massacre as fact from their hotel guestrooms, while Spain’s TVE channel had a television crew physically in the square that evening and knew it was false.

25) Diplomats knew. In fact, most diplomats knew the Tiananmen Square massacre story was fake. “Within a few days, certainly within a week, it was clear that the information about what happened in the square itself was incorrect,” Professor Richard Rigby, a staff member at the Australian Embassy in 1989, told reporters on an ABC news show.

26) The US completely knew. US Embassy officials interviewed a Chilean diplomat who had been present in the Square at the time of the alleged massacre. He confirmed that no such thing happened. The officials kept the information secret – until it was exposed by Julian Assange’s Wikileaks operation in 2011.

27) Black Operations. Many diplomats strongly suspected that the Tiananmen Square fiction was “a black op”. Australia’s Professor Rigby later said: “I cannot entirely rule out the possibility that we were being fed some sort of a ‘line’.”

28) USA and UK involvement. That, of course, was exactly what had happened. “The mystery report was very likely the work of the US and UK black information authorities ever keen to plant anti-Beijing stories in unsuspecting or cooperative media,” said Gregory Clark, a British-born Australian diplomat.

29) History has been changed. A pair of human rights campaigners, again, harsh critics of the Chinese government, were also uncompromising. In a book, George Black and Robin Munro wrote: “The phrase ‘Tiananmen Square massacre’ is now fixed firmly in the political vocabulary of the late twentieth century. Yet it is inaccurate. There was no massacre in Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3.”

30) Mainstream media. Still, almost all the mainstream media clung tightly to their fiction. On air, Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet the Press recalled the machine gun deaths of “ten thousand students”.

31) Nothing to report. A group called the June Fourth victims’ network decided to gather the names of the ten thousand dead for publication by a New York group called Human Rights in China. After ten years of research, the list of victims was just 155 names long, one source said. The story seems to have disappeared.

32) All debunked. In 2017, diplomatic papers quietly declassified by the British government showed that it was British Ambassador Sir Alan Donald in Beijing who had spread the debunked news that that a minimum of 10,000 citizens died. The BBC and other media continues to present this as if was a credible fact from a credible source, rather than a piece of discredited fiction almost certainly from a “black op”.

The BBC newsroom gives credence to the story of 10,000 deaths in the square, even though it has been has been widely debunked, including by its own staff

33) The lies live on. Western publishers of many types continue to present the massacre story as fact. The Lonely Planet series, one of the world’s best-selling travel books, includes this line in its volume on China: “Eyewitness accounts have indicated that hundreds died in the square alone, and it’s likely fighting in the streets around the square led to another several thousand casualties.”

34) The lies get worse and worse with time. The “Encyclopedia of the World” (Houghton Mifflin Co, 2001) tells the children of the world, in shocked capital letters, a version of the tale even more extreme that the black op version: “June 3-4: PLA TROOPS ENTERED TIANANMEN SQUARE DURING THE NIGHT AND FIRED DIRECTLY INTO THE SLEEPING CROWD.”

35) What to do? It appears there’s nothing that can be done. Western media simply swallows disinformation about mainland China or Hong Kong and spits it out as fact, and continues to do so on a daily basis. Gregory Clark notes the incalculable harm to humanity done by “CIA/MI6 black information massacre myths and Western media gullibility”. They have prevented, and continue to prevent, any sort of accurate understanding of the recent history of the most populous community on earth.

“A major lesson from all this is the need to control our Western black information operations. Few seem to realize the depth of their penetration in Western media,” he wrote.


GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE

Now there are going to be some people who will not accept that the story we so long believed, that peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in China came to a violent and bloody end, was a “psy-ops” operation by US disinformation specialists.

To those people, I would point to a recruitment video by US military disinformation specialists released this year. It aims to introduce viewers to the world of international disinformation techniques. Called Ghosts in the Machine, it begins with black and white cartoonish images and words, and then we hear a newscaster speaking the following sentence:

“As the world watches and listens in horror, the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in China come to a violent and bloody end.”

Article HERE

A kitty rescue

Let’s begin on a positive note with this video about rescuing this beautiful feral kitten.

New Reuters Survey Finds That Trust In Mainstream News Is Rapidly Declining

Saturday, Jun 18, 2022 – 09:55 PM

It probably does not come as much of a surprise to most people today, but it is now confirmed by the mainstream media’s own surveys – They are rapidly losing their audience and their influence.

The Reuters Institute For The Study Of Journalism runs a yearly project designed to gauge public perceptions of media, specifically corporate media, and how much trust the MSM has garnered.  Spoiler Alert:  They haven’t garnered any.  In fact, over the course of the past two years establishment journalists have alienated a large portion of the general public.

The latest survey finds that globally, 38% of people are avoiding most news altogether, indicating that coverage of specific subjects such as covid had become ‘repetitive’ and depressing.  This is an increase of almost 10% from 2017.  The more vital statistic, though, is the number of people that do not trust the media at all.

Globally, only 42% of people said they trust the media most of the time.  In the US, only 26% said they trust the media, a three point dip from 2021.  This is reinforced by the exponential decline in mainstream news ratings in the past few years.

CNN lost approximately 70% of its audience in key demographics this year, and the network recently suffered one of the smallest weekly audience ratings since 2015.  The collapse of the CNN+ paid membership program before it ever got off the ground also indicates a complete lack of public interest in the extreme leftist ideology pumped out by the network.

MSNBC’s audience numbers were also down 32% this month as their prime time shows struggle to maintain a viewership of 1 million people.  Even the Jan 6th hearings, touted as a historic event for the US that would supposedly present “proof” of a planned “insurrection” of the federal government, only pulled in 20 million viewers across 12 networks; that’s around 6% of the American population that bothered to watch.  Fox New is the only corporate network that appears to be holding a steady audience.

Is it any wonder that the establishment media has been working so closely with social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube to artificially push their content into top search results?  With the population thoroughly disgusted with the media’s constantly biased coverage of the pandemic event, the BLM riots, the Hunter Biden Laptop issue, the Ukraine war as well as the ongoing economic crisis, the only way the MSM can get people to watch them is when they work with Big Tech to force people to watch them.

It’s simple, when you constantly lie to the public eventually they will ignore you.

SWIFT dollar decline

Lots of hyperlinks in this articles, good sources for citation

Full article HERE

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR: U.S.-led sanctions are inadvertently undermining the dollar’s post-Second World War dominance. The growing number of countries threatened by U.S. and allied actions is forcing victims and potential targets to respond pro-actively.

SWIFT strengthened dollar

The instant messaging system of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) informs users, both payers and payees, of payments made. Thus, it enables the smooth and rapid transfer of funds across borders.

Created in 1973, and launched in 1977, SWIFT is headquartered in Belgium. It links 11,000 banks and financial institutions (BFIs) in more than 200 countries. The system sends over 40 million messages daily, as trillions of U.S. dollars (USD) change hands worldwide.

Co-owned by more than 2,000 BFIs, it is run by the National Bank of Belgium, together with the G-10 central banks of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the U.S.. Joint ownership was supposed to avoid involvement in geopolitical disputes.

Many parties use USD accounts to settle dollar-denominated transactions. Otherwise, banks of importing and exporting countries would need accounts in each other’s currencies in their respective countries in order to settle payments.

SWIFT abuse

U.S. and allied–including European Union (EU)–sanctions against Russia and Belarus followed their illegal invasion of Ukraine. Created during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, SWIFT remains firmly under Western control. It is now used to block payments for Russian energy and agriculture exports

But besides stopping income flows, it inadvertently erodes USD dominance. As sanctions are increasingly imposed, such actions intimidate others as well. While intimidation may work, it also prompts other actions.

This includes preparing for contingencies, e.g., by joining other payments arrangements. Such alternatives may ensure not only smoother, but also more secure cross-border financial transfers.

As part of U.S.-led sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the EU stopped SWIFT services to Iranian banks from 2012. This blocked foreign funds transfers to Iran until a compromise was struck in 2016.

U.S. financial hegemony

Based in Brussels, with a data centre in the U.S., SWIFT is a ‘financial panopticon’ for surveillance of cross-border financial flows. About 95% of world USD payments are settled through the private New York-based Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS), involving 43 financial institutions.

About 40% of worldwide cross-border payments are in USD. CHIPS settles U.S.$1.8 trillion in claims daily. As all CHIPS members maintain U.S. offices, they are subject to U.S. law regardless of headquarters location or ownership.

Hence, over nearly two decades, CHIPS members like BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered and others have paid nearly U.S.$13 billion in fines for Iran-related sanctions violations under U.S. law!

Exorbitant privilege

The USD remains the currency of choice for international trade and foreign reserve holdings. Hence, the U.S. has enjoyed an “exorbitant privilege” since World War Two after the 1944 Bretton Woods conference created the gold-based ‘dollar standard’–set at U.S.$35 for an ounce of gold.

With the USD remaining the international currency of choice, the U.S. Treasury could pay low interest rates for bonds that other countries hold as reserves. It thus borrows cheaply to finance deficits and debt. Hence, it is able to spend more, e.g., on its military, while collecting less taxes.

Due to USD popularity, the U.S. also profits from seigniorage, namely, the difference between the cost of printing dollar notes and their face value, i.e., the price one pays to obtain them.

In August 1971, President Nixon unilaterally ‘ended’ U.S. obligations under the Bretton Woods international monetary system, e.g., to redeem gold for USD, as agreed. Soon, the fixed USD exchange rates of the old order–determining other currencies’ relative values–became flexible in the new ‘non-system’.

In the ensuing uncertainty, the U.S. ‘persuaded’ Saudi King Feisal to ensure all oil and gas transactions are settled in USD. Thus, OPEC’s 1974 ‘petrodollar’ deal strengthened the USD following the uncertainties after the Nixon shock.

Nevertheless, countries began diversifying their reserve portfolios, especially after the euro’s launch in 1999. Thus, the USD share of foreign currency reserves worldwide declined from 71% in 1999 to 59% in 2021.

With U.S. rhetoric more belligerent, dollar apprehension has been spreading. On 20 April 2022, Israel–a staunch U.S. ally–decided to diversify its reserves, replacing part of its USD share with other major trading partners’ currencies, including China’s renminbi.

Sanction reaction

The EU decision to bar Iranian banks from SWIFT prompted China to develop its Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS). Operational since 2015, CIPS is administered by China’s central bank. By 2021, CIPS had 80 financial institutions as members, including 23 Russian banks.

At the end of 2021, Russia held nearly a third of world renminbi reserves. Some view the recent Russian sanctions as a turning point, as those not entrenched in the U.S. camp now have more reason to consider using other currencies instead.

After all, before seizing about U.S.$300 billion in Russian assets, the U.S. had confiscated about U.S.$9.5 billion in Afghan reserves and U.S.$342 million of Venezuelan assets.

Threatened with exclusion from SWIFT following the 2014 Crimea crisis, Russia developed its own SPFS (Financial Message Transfer System) messaging system. Launched in 2017, SPFS uses technology similar to SWIFT’s and CIPS’s.

Both CIPS and SPFS are still developing, largely serving domestic BFIs. By April 2022, most Russian banks and 52 foreign institutions from 12 countries had access to SPFS. Ongoing developments may accelerate their progress or merger.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has its own domestic payments systems, RuPay. It clears millions of daily transactions among domestic BFIs, and can be used for cross-border transactions.

Sanctions cut both ways

Unsurprisingly, those not allied to the U.S. want to change the system. Following the 2008-9 global financial crisis, China’s central bank head called for “an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations”.

Meanwhile, China’s USD assets have declined from 79% in 2005 to 58% in 2014, presumably falling further since then. More recently, China’s central bank has been progressively expanding use of its digital yuan or renminbi, e-CNY.

With over 260 million users, its app is now ‘technically ready’ for cross-border use as no Western bank is needed to move funds across borders. Such payments for imports from China using e-CNY will bypass SWIFT, and CHIPS will not need to clear them.

Russia has long complained of U.S. abuse of dollar hegemony. Moscow has tried to ‘de-dollarize’ by avoiding USD use in trade with other BRICS–i.e., Brazil, India, China and South Africa–and in its National Wealth Fund holdings.

Last year, Vladimir Putin warned the U.S. is biting the hand feeding it, by undermining confidence in the U.S.-centric system. He warned, “the U.S. makes a huge mistake in using dollar as the sanction instrument”.

The scope of U.S. financial payments surveillance and USD payments will decline, although not immediately. Thus, Western sanctions have unwittingly accelerated erosion of U.S. financial hegemony.

Besides worsening stagflationary trends, such actions have prompted its targets–current and prospective–to take pre-emptive, defensive measures, with yet unknown consequences.

Here’s The Best Combined Explanation For Surging Inflation: Cascading Idiocy

Sunday, Jun 19, 2022 – 04:30 AM

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Cascading Policy Errors

1: Covid hit. Lockdowns that were arguably excusable in the beginning, lingered far too long, affecting far too many businesses. Policy error one.

2: The Fed reacted with QE far to excessive and far too long, continuing all the way until March 2022. Policy error two.

3. Free Money from Congress. Again excusable in the beginning, but the second round by Trump was excessive and the third by Biden was preposterous. Policy errors three and four with Biden getting far more of the blame.

4. Demand shift to goods away from services as a result of the above three items.

5. The demand shift to goods happened when there were fewer workers due to continuing lockdowns.

6. The US meddled in Ukraine in 2014 setting the stage for war. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy kept insisting to the bitter end it wanted to be in the EU and NATO, both red flags to Putin. Accurately label Zelenskyy’s statements a policy error. And blame Putin for the war, so that makes policy errors five, six, and seven counting US meddling in 2014.

7: Let’s not leave Angela Merkel out of this. Kowtowing to the Greens, Merkel mothballed Germany’s nuclear plants creating greater dependence on energy from Russia. This is policy error number eight.

8. And what about Biden and the US Greens telling Big Oil it wanted to put them out of business. Guess what? Energy investment plunged. Policy error number 9.

9. Inane sanctions in response to the war busted supply chains in energy. Policy errors ten and eleven by the US and EU.

10. Finally, please consider Biden’s stupid energy policy to rising oil price. Instead of taking actions to increase oil supply, Biden blamed oil companies, threated tax hikes, threated FTC involvement, blamed gouging, then with refinery capacity already crippled demanded more ethanol from corn. The ethanol demand will increase need for fertilizer, increase summer smog, and drive more small refiners out of business.

I am not sure how many policy errors there are in point ten. Pick a number.

Passing the Buck 

Putin Tax

Search for Enemies 

Paul Krugman, No Policy Errors?!

No, it’s not all Biden’s fault. It’s Biden, the Fed, Congress, Merkel, Putin, Trump, the EU, and Zelenskyy.

Please apportion the blame, but here’s a simple way to start:

    • It’s mostly Progressive free money policies by Biden and Congress coupled with inane responses to to the war with the Fed providing excess stimulus all the way to March of 2022.
    • Key policy errors by Merkel and the US in 2014 set the stage for compounding everything that followed.

Putin: “Previous World Order, Won’t Return”

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Those who believe that things will go back to the way they were before the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine are wrong, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

“It is a mistake to suggest that the times of turbulent changes can be waited out and that things will return to normal; that everything will be as it was. It won’t,” Putin insisted during his speech at the the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday.

The changes that the world is going through at the moment are fundamental, radical, and irreversible, he added.

However, the ruling elites of some Western countries refuse to notice this obvious shift and choose to “cling to the shadows of the past,” he added.

For example, they believe that the dominance of the West in global politics and economy is a constant, eternal value,” Putin said. But “nothing is eternal,” he reminded everyone.

Since claiming victory in the Cold War in the early 1990s, the US has “declared itself the messenger of God on Earth, who has no obligations, but only interests, and those interests are pronounced to be sacred,” the president said.

However, the idea of a unipolar world is flawed at its core, according to the Russian leader, as the norms of international relations can’t always be interpreted in favor of a single nation, “even if it’s a strong one.”

It seems as if Washington refuses to see the new centers of power that have emerged in recent decades and which have every right to “protect their interests and ensure their national sovereignty,” he said.

Putin’s June 2022 Speech

I’m slowly moving through Putin’s speech pulling out gems to further illuminate and discuss them. Here’s yet another where he provides an interesting description of Neoliberalism:

"Of course, perhaps we would be pleased to hear that we are so powerful and omnipotent: inflation is blown to the skies in the West, in the United States, in Europe, and we are doing something else that makes everyone nervous. 

Maybe it would be nice for us to feel such power, but this is not true. 

The situation has matured for years, spurred on by the short-sighted actions of those who are accustomed to solving their problems at someone else's expense, who relied and still rely on the mechanism of financial emission to buy, pull on trade flows and thereby exacerbate deficits and provoke humanitarian disasters in certain regions of the world. 

I would like to add that this is essentially the same predatory and colonial policy, but, of course, in a new form, in a new edition, it is much more subtle and sophisticated. 

You won't know what's going on right away."

Yes, it’s been well hidden for decades; and in reality, for well over a century–since the 1880s. IMO, there’s only one method of slaying it: Proper education that leads to political then policy change. There’s hope that as usual economic pain will help remove the political blinders that keep the masses enslaved.

Peach Crisp

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What you need.
What you need.

What you need.
What you need.

Tips
Tips

MoA has something interesting to say…

Today, without any announcement, the British prime minister Boris Johnson, undoubtedly on order of Biden, appeared in Kiev to lobby for more war just like he did at the end of March when he told Ukraine’s president Zelensky to ditch the negotiations with Russia.

That is why I fear that Michael Brenner is right and that Biden will escalate the war by attacking somewhere else:

Necessity is the mother of invention — or so it is said. However, grasping what is “necessary” can be a very slippery business. An actual recasting of how one views a problematic situation normally is a last resort. Experience and history tell us that, as do behavioral experiments. 
...
So, you are stuck with the albatross of a truncated, bankrupt Ukraine hung around your neck. There is nothing that you can do to cancel these givens — except a direct, perhaps suicidal test of force with Russia. Or, perhaps, a retaliatory challenge elsewhere. The latter is not readily available — for geographic reasons and because the West already has expended its arsenal of economic and political weaponry.

Over the past year, the U.S. attempted to foment Maiden style regime changes in Belarus and Kazakhstan. Both were foiled. The latter was with the connivance of Turkey, which deployed a contingent of bashi bazouks from the stock of Syrian jihadis it keeps on call in Idlib (to be deployed as President Recep Erdogan did more successfully in Libya and Azerbaijan).

There remains one conceivable sensitive target: Syria. There, the Israelis have become increasingly audacious in goading the Russians by airstrikes against Syrian infrastructure as well as military facilities.

Now, we see signs that Moscow’s tolerance is wearing thin, suggesting that further provocations could spark retaliation which Washington then could exploit to ratchet up tensions. To what avail? Not obvious — unless the ultras in the Biden administration are looking for the kind of direct confrontation that they’ve avoided in Ukraine, until now.

The implication is that the denial option and the incremental adjustment option are foreclosed. Serious rethinking is in order — logically speaking.

The most worrisome scenario sees the frustration and anger and anxiety building in Washington to the point where it encourages a reckless impulse to demonstrate American prowess. That could take the form of an attack on Iran in the company of Israel and Saudi Arabia — the region’s new odd couple.

Another, even grimmer prospect would be a contrived test of wills with China. Already we see growing evidence of that in the bellicose rhetoric of American leaders from U.S. President Joe Biden on down.

The Pentagon is not ready for a war on China. Iran is too strong and would respond to an attack by launching its huge missile arsenal on Israel and U.S. allies in the Gulf. This leaves Syria. It is unlikely by chance that the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the U.S. is coordinating Israeli airstrikes in that country:

WASHINGTON—Israel secretly coordinates with the U.S. on many of the airstrikes it carries out in Syria as the allies face a battlefield crowded with militant groups, Iranian-backed militias and foreign militaries, according to current and former U.S. officials.

I expect those airstrikes, like last week’s attack on the airport of Damascus, to intensify with the hope to divert Russian attention from Ukraine.

Russia is of course 100% prepared for that but U.S. miscalculations that led to this are many and I do not expect that tendency to change anytime soon.

In his latest talk about The causes and consequences of the Ukraine war (vid) John Mearsheimer also speaks of why he thinks that an escalation is likely, and what the potential results might be. Without the Q&A it is only one hour long and well worth your time.

Posted by b on June 17, 2022 at 16:35 UTC | Permalink

FRANCE CUT-OFF COMPLETELY FROM RUSSIAN NATURAL GAS

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All flows of natural gas from Russia to France have suddenly HALTED via the Nord Stream Pipeline.

France gets around 17 percent of its gas from Russia through network connections with Germany, which relies heavily on Russian supplies and has criticized Gazprom’s move as “political.”

Gazprom said the supply reductions via the Nord Stream pipeline are the result of repair work, but EU officials believe Moscow is punishing allies of Ukraine, where Russian forces launched an invasion in February.

Our American Economy In A Nutshell

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The economy has reached an inflection point where everything that is unsustainable finally starts unraveling.

Our economy is in a crisis that’s been brewing for decades. The Chinese characters for the English word crisis are famously–and incorrectly–translated as danger and opportunity. The more accurate translation is precarious plus critical juncture or inflection point.

Beneath its surface stability, our economy is precarious because the foundation of the global economy– cheap energy–has reached an inflection point: from now on, energy will become more expensive.

The cost will be too low for energy producers to make enough money to invest in future energy production, and too high for consumers to have enough money left after paying for the essentials of energy, food, shelter, etc., to spend freely.

For the hundred years that resources were cheap and abundant, we could waste everything and call it growth: when an appliance went to the landfill because it was designed to fail (planned obsolescence) so a new one would have to be purchased, that waste was called growth because the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) went up when the replacement was purchased.

A million vehicles idling in a traffic jam was also called growth because more gasoline was consumed, even though the gasoline was wasted.

This is why the global economy is a “waste is growth” Landfill Economy. The faster something ends up in the landfill, the higher the growth.

Now that we’ve consumed all the easy-to-get resources, all that’s left is hard to get and expensive. For example, minerals buried in mountains hundreds of miles from paved roads and harbors require enormous investments in infrastructure just to reach the deposits, extract, process and ship them to distant mills and refineries. Oil deposits that are deep beneath the ocean floor are not cheap to get.

Does it really make sense to expect that the human population can triple and our consumption of energy increase ten-fold and there will always be enough resources to keep supplies abundant and prices low? No, it doesn’t.

Many people believe that nuclear power (fusion, thorium reactors, mini-reactors, etc.) will provide cheap, safe electricity that will replace hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas). But nuclear power is inherently costly, and there are presently no full-scale fusion or thorium reactors providing cheap electricity to thousands of households.

Reactors take many years to construct and are costly to build and maintain. Cost over-runs are common. A new reactor in Finland, for example, is nine years behind schedule and costs have tripled.

The U.S. has built only two new reactors in the past 25 years.

The world’s 440 reactors supply about 10% of global electricity. There are currently 55 new reactors under construction in 19 countries, but it will take many years before they produce electricity. We would have to build a new reactor a week for many years to replace hydrocarbon-generated electricity. This scale of construction simply isn’t practical.

Supplying all energy consumption globally–for all transportation, heating of buildings, etc.) would require over 10,000 reactors by some estimates–over 20 times the current number of reactors in service.

Many believe so-called renewable energy such as solar and wind will replace hydrocarbons. But as analysts Nate Hagens has explained, these sources are not truly renewable, they are replaceable; all solar panels and wind turbines must be replaced at great expense every 20 to 25 years. These sources are less than 5% of all energy we consume, and it will take many decades of expansion to replace even half of the hydrocarbon fuels we currently consume.

To double the energy generated by wind/solar in 25 years, we’ll need to build three for each one in service today: one to replace the existing one and two more to double the energy being produced.

All these replacements for hydrocarbons require vast amounts of resources: diesel fuel for transport, materials for fabricating turbines, panels, concrete foundations, and so on.

Humans are wired to want to believe that whatever we have now will still be ours in the future. We don’t like being told we’ll have less of anything in the future.

The current solution is to create more money out of thin air in the belief that if we create more money, then more oil, copper, iron, etc. will be found and extracted.

But this isn’t really a solution. What happens if we add a zero to all our currency? If we add a zero to a $10 bill so it becomes $100, do we suddenly get ten times more food, gasoline, etc. with the new bill? No.

Prices quickly rise ten-fold so the new $100 bill buys the same amount as the old $10.

Adding zeroes to our money (hyper-financialization) doesn’t make everything that’s scarce, expensive and hard to get suddenly cheap. It’s still scarce, expensive and hard to get no matter how many zeroes we add to our money.

Many people feel good about recycling a small part of what we consume. But recycling is not cost-free, and the majority of what we consume is not recycled.

The percentage of lithium batteries that are recycled, for example, is very low, less than 5%. We have to mine vast quantities of lithium because we dump 95% of lithium-ion batteries in the landfill. There are many reasons for this, one being that the batteries aren’t designed to be recycled because this would cost more money.

The majority of all manufactured goods–goods that required immense amounts of hydrocarbons to make–are tossed in the landfill.

Goods and services are commoditized and sourced from all over the world in long dependency chains (hyper-globalization): if one link breaks, the entire supply chain breaks.

Our economy is precarious because it’s in a lose-lose dilemma: resource prices can’t stay high enough for producers to make a profit without impoverishing consumers. Prices can’t stay low enough to allow consumers to spend freely without producers losing money and shutting down, depriving the economy of essential resources.

Playing hyper-financialized games–creating money out of thin air, borrowing from tomorrow to spend more today and inflating speculative bubbles in stocks, housing, etc.–won’t actually create more of what’s scarce. All these games make wealth inequality worse (hyper-inequality), undermining social stability.

The economy has reached an inflection point where everything that is unsustainable finally starts unraveling. Each of these systems is dependent on all the other systems (what we call a tightly bound system), so when one critical system unravels, the crisis quickly spreads to the entire economic system: one domino falling knocks down all the dominoes snaking through the global economy.

Those who understand how tightly interconnected, unsustainable systems are basically designed to unravel can prepare themselves by becoming antifragile: flexible, adaptable and open to the opportunities that arise when things are disorderly and unpredictable.

20,000 Women and 100,000 Castrated Men to Serve the Emperor: The Imperial Harem of China

In Imperial China, one of the important tasks that the emperor needed to do was to ensure the continuation of the dynasty, which was achieved by the production of a male heir. For this purpose, the emperors of Imperial China kept an enormous harem of women. There was a hierarchy in the emperor’s harem, and whilst the exact classes changed over the millennia, it may be said that in general there were three ranks – the empress, consorts, and concubines. In addition, the eunuchs who served these imperial women may be considered to be a part of this harem as well.

Hierarchy in the Harem

At the top of the hierarchy of the Imperial Chinese harem was the empress, who was the Emperor’s one ‘official wife’. The empress was the most venerated and revered figurehead for women in China, as she was considered to be the ‘mother of the world’. In the harem, only the emperor and the mother of the emperor were above the empress, all other individuals had to obey her orders. In addition to empresses, there was also the rank of empress dowager. Empresses who outlived their husbands were promoted to this rank. Some famous empress dowagers include Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty (who later became China’s first female emperor) and Cixi of the Qing Dynasty.

Consorts in the Imperial Chinese Harem

Underneath the empress were the consorts. The number and ranks of these consorts differed according to the ruling dynasty. During the Qing Dynasty, for example, an imperial harem would have had one Imperial Noble Consort, two Noble Consorts, and four Consorts. Below these consorts were the concubines, and this number varied according to each emperor. According to the Rites of Zhou , an emperor could have up to 9 high ranking concubines, 27 mid ranking ones and 81 low ranking ones. However, during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), there were no limits set for the number of consorts an Emperor could have, and during the reigns of Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling, there were more than 20,000 women living in the Forbidden City.

Selection of Concubines

During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD), there was an official system for selecting concubines to join the emperor’s harem. The selection process would take place inside the Forbidden City every three years. Candidates ranged from 14 to 16 years of age and were chosen based on their background, virtues, behavior, character, appearance and body condition.

Eunuchs – The Only Males Allowed in the Harem

To ensure that any child born in the harem was fathered by the emperor, males were not allowed to serve the women of the emperor’s harem.

The only exceptions to this rule were the eunuchs, men who had been castrated, thus rendering them impotent. Throughout the history of Imperial China, eunuchs have served the imperial family, including as servants in the harem. Far from being mere servants, however, these eunuchs could aspire to positions of power and wealth by involving themselves in the politics of the harem. During the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), there was an eye-opening 100,000 eunuchs serving the emperor and his harem.

Rivalries in the Harem

With so many women in the harem, it was inevitable that rivalries amongst the emperor’s women would arise, as they competed for the emperor’s attention. The most coveted position was, of course, that of the empress, and to bear a son for the emperor would certainly be a big bonus to a woman in the harem. At times, ambitious women in the harem who plotted against their rivals would form alliances with eunuchs. If an intrigue was successful, a woman in the harem could rise through the ranks. She, in turn, would reward the eunuchs who supported her by placing them in positions of authority.

Such harem intrigues have happened often in Chinese history. For example, during the Tang Dynasty, one of the Emperor Gaozong’s consorts was Wu Zetian. According to popular belief, Wu Zetian had her new born child murdered, and placed the blame on the Empress Wang. As a result of this, the empress was demoted, and Wu Zetian became the new empress. Nevertheless, not all imperial harems were hotbeds of conspiracy. The semi-mythical Huangdi, for example, had four concubines, who were not chosen based on their looks, but on their competence. One of his secondary concubines, for instance, is regarded as the inventor of cooking and of the chopsticks, whilst another is believed to have invented the comb. Together, these concubines assisted Huangdi in ruling the country.

Many concubines met a sad fate when their emperor died. They were sacrificed, often buried alive, to join their master in the afterlife.

Dan Bongino: The Biden administration is slowly dying

A decent enough FOX video.

“Red Flag” laws as a way to abolish Habius Corpus

Yeah. I know. “Democrats are gonna get  and ban guns”. Well, right now, it’s the uni-party; both Republicans and Democrats that want to do this.

What this means, of course is that the USA is RIPE for a civil war. Look at the ingredients…

  • Ballistic inflation.
  • Banning gun ownership.
  • Disastrous international policies
  • Out of touch leadership
"Let them drive electric cars!"
  • No domestic spending.
  • Insane levels of foreign spending.
  • Threat of nuclear war with Russia and China simultaneously.

Third American captured in Ukraine fighting with the Nazis.

A third former U.S. serviceman who has gone missing in Ukraine has been identified, but his whereabouts remain unknown.

Family and friends of Grady Kurpasi, who served in the Marine Corps for 20 years, last heard from the veteran on April 24, according to a report. Kurpasi arrived in Ukraine to volunteer alongside Ukrainian forces on March 7. His last known location was in the Kherson region, in southeastern Ukraine, where he manned an observation post in late April. Kherson is occupied by Russian forces.

“For him personally, he has a skill set that he feels he can give back,” George Heath, a family friend of Kurpasi’s, told CNN on Thursday. “He wanted to go and help the Ukrainian people. He wasn’t really planning on fighting.”

State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Thursday that the department is aware of the third missing American in Ukraine and is “in touch with the family.”

On Wednesday, reports emerged that two other former U.S. servicemen had been captured by Russian forces in Ukraine.

A photo purportedly of the two volunteers, Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh, was posted on the social media platform Telegram on Thursday by a Russian blogger. The image purported to show the two in the back of a Russian military truck with their hands apparently tied behind their backs.

“We are aware of unconfirmed reports of two U.S. citizens captured in Ukraine,” a State Department official told reporters on Wednesday. “We are closely monitoring the situation and are in contact with Ukrainian authorities.”

Article HERE

Slow-Cooker Apple Butter

All you need are Gala apples, brown sugar, salt and a cinnamon stick to make our yummy slow-cooker apple butter. Great for gifting!

Apple butter.
Apple butter.

Apple butter.
Apple butter.

Apple butter.
Apple butter.

US to send heavy guided missiles to Ukraine

Why not?

.

The USA is sending them anyways.
The USA is sending them anyways.

The US is sending Ukraine heavy guided missiles with a range of 70km for use with the HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl revealed on Tuesday. The White House previously said that HIMARS launchers would be provided with “battlefield munitions,” widely understood to be unguided rockets with a shorter range.

The high-mobility artillery rocket system will come with GMLRS guided rockets, Kahl said on Tuesday, speaking at a conference hosted by the Center for New American Security (CNAS), a Democrat-linked think tank for which he used to work.

“Sometimes when you see images of MLRS firing off, it’s like salvos of multiple rockets going off at the same time. That’s really not how this system is meant to operate,” Kahl said.

“The GMLRS is a precision guided munition, and a big one – a 500 pound munition,” he added. “Think of GMLRS more like the effect of an airstrike rather than launching off whole salvos. So, in other words, you can do a lot with a little, or you don’t need a lot to have a significant effect.”

When the White House first announced it was sending HIMARS launchers to Ukraine on June 1, it said they would be armed with “battlefield munitions,” which was widely taken to mean barrage rockets with a range of between 32km and 60km, considering that HIMARS is also capable of launching ballistic projectiles with a range of up to 300km.

“The range does not depend on the system itself, but on the missiles that are used,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a TV interview earlier this month, adding that if the US sends long-range rockets Russia will “draw the appropriate conclusions and use our weapons, which we have enough of, in order to strike at those objects that we have not yet struck.”

Even though the US initially promised four launchers and said they had been “pre-positioned” in Europe, they have yet to reach Ukraine, according to the Pentagon. The first group of Ukrainian artillerists are currently finishing their training on the launchers, Kahl said.

The HIMARS launcher is equipped with one pod that can carry six GMLRS rockets, according to their maker, Lockheed Martin. The M270 launcher, which the UK has promised to Ukraine, carries two pods for double the payload. Kahl did not say how many rockets the US was sending.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, since the start of the conflict Ukraine has lost over 500 multiple rocket launch systems and more than 1,900 pieces of artillery. Kiev has beseeched its allies in the West to provide more weapons and ammunition.

“We’re going to provide the Ukrainians what they need to prosecute the targets inside Ukrainian territory that they’re looking to go after,” Kahl said at the end of his remarks about the HIMARS.

On Monday, the authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic reported the heaviest Ukrainian shelling since 2015, with “indiscriminate” strikes on the city of Donetsk resulting in five fatalities and almost 40 civilian injuries. Among the incoming shells were 155mm munitions used by howitzers provided to Ukraine by the US and other NATO allies, authorities in the Donbass republic said, requesting additional military assistance from Russia.

Moscow has condemned the shelling of Donbass civilians as “absolutely barbaric.” A spokesman for the UN secretary-general called the shelling of a maternity hospital in Donetsk “an obvious breach of international humanitarian law.”

The USA is "doubling down" and "going for broke" totally and completely ignorant of the resultant consequences. -MM

House Democrats Propose 1,000% Tax On AR-15s

If you cannot ban something, you can place a large tax on it making it prohibitive to own. -MM

If Congress won’t ban AR-15s, Democratic Rep. Don Beyer (VA) wants to slap a 1,000% tax on them – which would of course mean only people with lots of money, such as drug dealers and rich people, could afford them, while punishing lower-income Americans.

AR-15
AR-15

Introduced last week, Beyer’s Assault Weapons Excise Act has 36 Democratic co-sponsors, according to the Washington Post. The group hopes the idea might bypass the Senate filibuster, which would require the support of at least 10 Republicans.

According to Beyer, the idea is to increase the price to such a degree that it significantly limits who’s able to buy them. The tax would also apply to high-capacity magazines.

Wants to ban.
Wants to make ownership prohibitive.
 

“It’s trying to hit the sweet spot, where it’s not an all-out ban, but people’s independent purchasing decisions would be much more ‘no’ than ‘yes,’” Beyer told the Post, adding. “You want to shift the demand curve pretty significantly.”

Beyer said part of the thinking behind the 1,000 percent figure was to have a high-enough fiscal impact that the Senate parliamentarian would find it qualifies for inclusion in a reconciliation package, meaning it could pass the Senate with a simple majority. -WaPo

“In a nation crying out for progress on gun safety, we would present a plausible way forward in this Senate,” he said.

The tax would only apply to newly purchased guns, and would not apply to government buyers. The proceeds would go into the general fund.

As the Epoch Times notes, in an attempt to define what would be taxed, the bill says it would apply to “semiautomatic assault weapon[s],” which are semiautomatic rifles that have the capacity to use a magazine that isn’t a fixed magazine, a pistol grip, a forward grip, and a folding, telescoping, or detachable stock. Other items that fall under that definition include a semiautomatic rifle with a barrel shroud, a threaded barrel, and a “functional grenade launcher.”

The excise tax would also apply to “a semiautomatic rifle that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds, except for an attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition,” as well as certain semiautomatic pistols, all belt-fed semiautomatic rifles, shotguns with revolving cylinders, and more.

“Congress must take action to stem the flood of weapons of war into American communities, which have taken a terrible toll in Uvalde, Buffalo, Tulsa, and too many other places,” Beyer said in reference to widely reported mass shootings in recent weeks.

About half of all rifles manufactured in the United States or imported in 2018 were AR-15-style weapons, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation trade group. The group said there are about 20 million of those firearms in circulation as of 2020.

United States rent costs are exploding!

Median rents in the US crossed the $2000 mark this past month for the first time ever, while rental markets surged 15% – 20% in a single year depending on the region.

This is yet another trend which supports the position that official CPI is inaccurate and overall inflation is actually much higher than the central bank and the Biden White House reports.

The latest CPI print indicates an “official” inflation rate of 8.6%, while REAL inflation is closer 17% according to pre-1990s calculations.  The continued denial of real inflation rates is causing confusion among Americans who are facing vastly larger price increases than are often reported by the government.

Inflation apologists can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that the Fed and government use creative accounting to soften data and misrepresent the economic threat.

  • Rent prices jumped over 20% in Orange County, CA.
  • They are up 19.3% in the greater Cleveland area.
  • They are up 15.5% in the Cincinnati area.
  • Nashville and Seattle saw prices rise over 30%.
  • And, Austin, TX is witnessing epic rental inflation of over 50%.
  • New York’s median rent cost climbed to $4000 per month despite the fact that vast numbers of people have left the city in the course of the past two years.

Officials including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have only just recently admitted that inflation is not transitory as they had insisted a year ago.  However, the public seems to be learning that establishment economic predictions cannot be trusted and they are already preparing for more pain in the near future.  A George Mason University poll indicates that the majority of Americans are cutting back on spending to adapt to higher prices.  Over 66% of participants polled expect inflation to climb even more this year.

Inflation worries have continued to soar over the past several months while the populace has dealt with constant gaslighting from the media telling them that the economic instability they are facing is “not something they should be concerned about.”

The relentless expansion of prices suggests that the Federal Reserve will enact sweeping interest rate hikes in the coming months, though there are many economists that continue to disbelieve the possibility.  Even with moderate hikes and slower spending, it is likely that inflation will climb unabated well beyond 2022.  Central bank stimulus printing has triggered an avalanche of too many dollars chasing too few goods and now prices are evolving to meet the supply crunch.

The rent inflation issue is partially influenced by a number of factors including the mass migration of millions of Americans from blue states where covid restrictions and high taxes were strangling residents.  But, with that migration now over, prices remain high due to dollar devaluation pressures.

The greatest danger is that this will translate to increased poverty and homelessness by 2023.

It is unlikely that Fed actions on interest rates will affect any change in the current trend, at least not until rates are adjusted much higher than mainstream economists expect.

FCC Says Most Requests for Funds to Replace Chinese Telecom Equipment Are Deficient

Nothing better to do? Too much money no where to spend? 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) told Congress on Wednesday it had found deficiencies in two-thirds of applications to reimburse U.S. carriers for removing equipment from Chinese companies deemed national security threats.

FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said of 181 applications filed by mostly rural carriers under a $1.9 billion program, 122 were found to be "initially materially deficient."

The FCC told applicants they have 15 days to fix their applications, and it "expects to complete this process by July 15."

The FCC currently estimates the cost estimate to remove the equipment from companies like Huawei and ZTE Corp from the "rip and replace" program is $5.3 billion, much higher than what Congress set aside.

In July 2021, the FCC voted to finalize the program that had been funded by Congress in December 2020.

The FCC designated Huawei and ZTE as national security threats to communications networks in July 2020 - a declaration that barred U.S. firms from tapping an $8.3 billion government fund to purchase equipment from the companies.

The FCC in December 2020 adopted rules requiring carriers with ZTE or Huawei equipment to "rip and replace" that equipment.

The issue is a big one for rural carriers that face high costs and difficulty finding workers to remove and replace equipment.

Huawei said last year the "FCC initiative only creates extraordinary challenges for carriers in the most rural/remote areas of the U.S. to maintain the same high level and quality of service they provide to their customers without disruption."

Rosenworcel's letter noted the FCC "will allocate funding first to approved applications that have 2 million or fewer customers."

She said to date "all but one of the eligible applicants falls within the first prioritization group, and the collective demand of these applicants exceeds available funds for the program."

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Leslie Adler and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Full article found HERE

How China is Winning Its Battle Against Air Pollution

Not at all reported in the Western media. -MM

National air pollution action plans devised by China have seen significant reductions in pollution levels and associated health risks.

China has lifted millions out of poverty like no other country on the planet. The price of that economic progress is demonstrated in the air pollution that has caused a public health crisis, killing more than 1.1 million people every year. It has also proved costly for the nation as the economy suffers an annual loss of $37 billion due to pollution-induced crop failure.

China Air Pollution Solutions

After Beijing’s ‘airpocalypse’ sparked a mass outpouring of anger and frustration among citizens, China set out to clean up the air quality of its cities. The government prohibited new coal-fired power plants and shut down a number of old plants in the most polluted regions including city clusters of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and the Pearl and Yangtze Deltas. Large cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou restricted the number of cars on the road and started introducing all-electric bus fleets. The country reduced its iron-and steel-making capacity and shut down coal mines. …

Full article HERE

Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

Ya think? -MM

Read paywall article HERE

New Hong Kong school textbooks say city was not a British colony

A fine neocon, anti-China publication. -MM

New textbooks sent to Hong Kong secondary schools teach that the city was not a British colony, but rather an occupied territory.  Described (in the article) as a “recasting of history that is part of Beijing’s ideological clampdown in the city“.

Full article found HERE

Omm Sety – A British Woman Whose Life Was Lined by Reincarnation and Connected to a Pharaoh

When Dorothy Eady arrived to Egypt for the first time, it was obvious to her that she had been there before. But her last visit near the Nile may have taken place thousands of years earlier.

Dorothy was born on January 16, 1904 in the London suburb of Blackhearth. Doctors believed that she would not survive a terrible fall when she was three years old. However, it seems that the accident she faced was the beginning of her unbelievable life – a moment of opening the gate to the memories of a past life. Over the years, many skeptics tried to disprove Eady’s mystifying tale, but nobody could ever fully negate that she was one of pharaoh Seti I’s (c. 1290 – 1279 BC) lovers.

An Ancient King’s Lover?

Dorothy grew up in a Christian family and she attended church regularly when she was young. One day, her parents took her to the British Museum. While looking at the photograph of the temple of Seti I, a pharaoh of the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom Period (and the father of Rameses II), she said that it was her home. She couldn’t understand why there were no gardens and trees around the temple, but she recognized the monuments and other artifacts in the rooms of the Egyptian collection. She kissed the feet of the statues, and very soon after, decided to study ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

One of her teachers was the famous E.A. Wallis Budge, who encouraged her to study the history of ancient Egypt. Dorothy was 15 years old when she described the first dream “meeting” she had with the mummy of Pharaoh Seti I. She claimed that he made her remember her past life. With time, she turned more and more to the ancient religion and stopped feeling attached to Christianity.

Dorothy married the Egyptian Eman Abdel Meguid in 1931. This marriage was like a ticket to her beloved Egypt, where she became an English teacher. When her feet touched Egypt’s land for the first time she kissed the ground and felt like she was welcomed by her old home. She had a son who she called Sety. In this period, she reported having visions related to Hor-Ra. She also discovered her ancient Egyptian name – Bentreshyt meaning ‘Harp of Joy.’ In her visions she also saw her ancient family.

Dorothy said that she was a daughter of one of Seti I’s soldiers and a woman who sold vegetables. Her mother died when she was three years old, and she was given to the temple in Abydos, where she grew up and became a priestess. At 12 years old, she claimed she became a consecrated virgin, but a few years later she met ‘a living god’ – pharaoh Seti I. They became lovers, and Bentreshyt got pregnant. Unfortunately, the lovers’ fate was not a happy one. The High Priest of the temple told her that the situation was a huge offense against Isis and would cause many problems for pharaoh, so she decided to commit suicide.

The Eternal City of Abydos

After 19 years of living in Cairo, Dorothy Eady decided to move to Abydos. She was 52 years old, and she set up a home near the mountain Pega-the-Gap. According to ancient beliefs, it was a mountain which was the road to the afterlife. At this stage of life, she started to be called Omm Sety , meaning ”mother of Sety”.

Omm Sety believed she was finally back home. During one of her visits to the temple, the chief inspector from the Antiquities Department decided to check her knowledge. He was curious how realistic her explanations were. Dorothy was asked to stand next to the wall paintings in the darkness. She was then asked to identify them with what she remembered from her past life.

When Eady accomplished the task without any mistakes, many people stopped doubting her story. Her life in Abydos was full of collaborations with Egyptologists who asked her for support. She published several books on her own, but also joined the works of other researchers. The most important subject of her works was, of course, the Temple of Seti I at Abydos. She helped to discover the garden, where she believed she met Seti I for the first time. The excavations uncovered the space, which would have looked exactly as she described during ancient times.

Eady also told other researchers what the prayers and traditional rituals looked like. She knew the plot of many religious papyri even before she read them. Her descriptions of the monuments, reliefs, and other things she saw during her previous life were repeatedly confirmed by excavations.

Researchers Couldn’t Believe it

Moreover, many Egyptologists couldn’t negate her words. Eady had knowledge which was not available to specialists who had worked in Egypt for many years.

One of them is famous British Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen. Although he did not want to openly admit it, written resources suggest that he believed her.

Nicholas Reeves also took her visions into account while searching for Nefertiti. According to Eady, the tomb is in the Valley of the Kings. She said:

''I did once ask His Majesty where it was, and he told me. He said, `Why do you want to know’? I said I would like to have it excavated, and he said, `No, you must not. We don’t want anything more of this family known`. But he did tell me where it was, and I can tell you this much. 

It’s in the Valley of the Kings, and it’s quite near to the Tutankhamun tomb. But it’s in a place where nobody would ever think of looking for it," she laughed. "And apparently it is still intact" ... '' 

For decades, Eady was an inspiration to many researchers. Her stories about life and death in the times of Seti I touched many hearts as well. Many discoveries were made based on her words. Following her information, researchers led by Otto Schaden discovered tomb KV63 in the Valley of the Kings, which is located near the tomb of Tutankhamun and contained burials of women from the times of the 18th dynasty.

A Reunion of Two Souls

Dorothy Eady died at age 81 and was buried in the Coptic cemetery in Abydos. She believed that death would allow her to reconnect with her beloved. Even now, researchers are still trying to prove that she was she a liar, who had somehow gotten access to the newest literature and had great acting skills. But others say that she was one of the most fascinating people they have ever met.

Russia Cuts Natural Gas by 40% to Germany and Italy – Pump failures

.

Russia’s state-owned natural gas company, GAZPROM has been forced to reduce pumping of natural gas through the Nord Stream pipeline into German and Italy by 40% because Canada will NOT return a remanufactured gas compressor pump from Montreal, on account of economic sanctions.

The remaining pumps on the Nord Stream pipeline cannot continue to handle the full load of 167 million cubic meters of gas per day, and must be scaled back to have continued service life.

Siemans Energy said a gas turbine which powers a compressor station on the Nord Stream pipeline, had been in service for more than ten years.  It had been taken to Montreal for a scheduled overhaul.

Because of economic sanctions imposed by Canada, the company has been unable to return the overhauled turbine to the customer, GAZPROM.

Thus, Europe as a whole will only be able to get 100 million cubic meters of natural gas per day, instead of its needed 167 million per day.

The price for European natural gas is surging this morning because of the forty percent cut by Russia.

Russian gas supply to Europe fell further on Thursday, sparking concerns about refilling storage for winter….
diplomatic tussle as Gazprom blames Western sanctions for hampering maintenance work…
►Supply via Nord Stream 1 to Germany cut to 40% capacity
►Europe’s benchmark gas price jumps 25% in morning trade

Gazprom cutting supply to Germany is a warning signal that could cause problems for Europe’s biggest economy this winter.
“It would significantly worsen our situation,” Klaus Mueller told the Rheinische Post daily. “We could perhaps get through the summer as the heating season is over. But it is imperative that we fill the storage facilities to get through the winter.”

The cuts come as Nord Stream 1 is set to undergo annual maintenance on July 11-21 when supply will be cut off completely.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

Once again, western economic sanctions imposed against Russia, backfire and harm only the west.

It should be noted that recently, German Chancellor Scholz publicly stated Germany was going to rebuild its army into the largest army in Europe; something that hasn’t happened since the time of Hitler.

One wonders how Germany plans to build that army when it doesn’t have enough natural gas supply to even run the country?

The people imposing these economic sanctions against Russia really do seem to me,  to be a special kind of stupid.

U.S. Army Engineers Are Racing to Build Hypersonic Weapons

A fine neocon, anti-China publication. -MM

Hypersonic weapons are now being fired from U.S. Air Force planes and U.S. Army ground launchers while also being fast-tracked to fire from U.S. Navy destroyers by 2025 and submarines by 2028. These technological breakthroughs are already reshaping warfare tactics and concepts of operation.

Projectiles that skip along the upper boundary of the earth’s atmosphere and descend upon targets at more than five times the speed of sound are no longer a “concept” for the future. The U.S. military is already in the process of arming major platforms with them. The U.S. Air Force, for example, has already fired its Air-Launched Rapid Response hypersonic weapon from a B-52 Stratofortress.

What about hypersonic weapons ten or twenty years from now? What will they consist of? How fast will they fire? Will they maneuver in flight, perhaps traveling at now unimagined speeds?

These questions are now being explored through cutting-edge basic research efforts at the Army Research Laboratory, where teams of engineers and scientists are experimenting with mixtures of ceramic, metal, polymer, and composite materials at the microscopic level to uncover better performing materials to engineer the weapons of the future. While the work could yield near-term applications in the event of breakthrough testing, much of the exploration is aimed at uncovering “disruptive” or paradigm-changing scientific breakthroughs.

Specific materials built into weapons systems bring distinct properties such as being lighter in weight, more resistant to penetration or better equipped to maneuver and manage accurate flight at previously unimaginable temperatures.

Nicholas Ku, a materials engineer working for the Ceramic and Transparent Materials Branch at DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory spends his time mixing, testing, heating, and experimenting with different combinations of materials in search of breakthrough discoverings.

“Ceramics are of interest for hypersonics applications, through the way additive manufacturing has an ability to create complex shapes, decrease manufacturing costs as well as increase the design space in making new components,” Ku said.

Ku was clear that much of the work involves simply creating different combinations and layers of materials. The process is called “additive manufacturing,” and Ku and other ARL scientists use it to uncover new materials for armored vehicles, body armor, and projectiles such as hypersonics. Ku explained that traditional methods of manufacturing greatly limit the complexity of the design when compared with options made available through additive manufacturing, a circumstance that introduces new dimensions of possibility.

“By enabling additive manufacturing of these materials, we can increase the design space,” Ku said.

The shape and composition of a hypersonic projectile determine key aerodynamic and performance variables of great consequence. Will yet-to-be-discovered materials will enable new hypersonic structures to travel as much as two or three times as fast as existing hypersonic projectiles? Perhaps new materials can enable a hypersonic weapon to achieve previously unprecedented precision flight path and targeting.

The rest of the Article HERE in this Neocon publication

Slow-Cooker Pork Chops with Apple Chutney

Pork and apples have long been perfect partners. Dried cranberries add color and tartness.

Pork and apples.
Pork and apples.

Pork and apples.
Pork and apples.

The ‘New G8’ Meets China’s ‘Three Rings’

The G7 is falling into dust, while a new group; the G8 rises. -MM

The coming of the new G8 points to the inevitable advent of BRICS +, one of the key themes to be discussed in the upcoming BRICS summit in China.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

The speaker of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, may have created the defining acronym for the emerging multipolar world: “the new G8”.

As Volodin noted, “the United States has created conditions with its own hands so that countries wishing to build an equal dialogue and mutually beneficial relations will actually form a ‘new G8’ together with Russia.”

This non Russia-sanctioning G8, he added, is 24.4% ahead of the old one, which is in fact the G7, in terms of GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP), as G7 economies are on the verge of collapsing and the U.S. registers record inflation.

The power of the acronym was confirmed by one of the researchers on Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergei Fedorov: three BRICS members (Brazil, China and India) alongside Russia, plus Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and Mexico, all non adherents to the all-out Western economic war against Russia, will soon dominate global markets.

Fedorov stressed the power of the new G8 in population as well as economically: “If the West, which restricted all international organizations, follows its own policies, and pressures everyone, then why are these organizations necessary? Russia does not follow these rules.”

The new G8, instead, “does not impose anything on anyone, but tries to find common solutions.”

The coming of the new G8 points to the inevitable advent of BRICS +, one of the key themes to be discussed in the upcoming BRICS summit in China. Argentina is very much interested in becoming part of the extended BRICS and those (informal) members of the new G8 – Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, Mexico – are all likely candidates.

The intersection of the new G8 and BRICS + will lead Beijing to turbo-charge what has already been conceptualized as the Three Rings strategy by Cheng Yawen, from the Institute of International Relations and Public Affairs at the Shanghai International Studies University.

Cheng argues that since the beginning of the 2018 U.S.-China trade war the Empire of Lies and its vassals have aimed to “decouple”; thus the Middle Kingdom should strategically downgrade its relations with the West and promote a new international system based on South-South cooperation.

Looks like if it walks and talks like the new G8, that’s because it’s the real deal.

The revolution reaches the “global countryside”

Cheng stresses how “the center-periphery hierarchy of the West has been perpetuated as an implicit rule” in international relations; and how China and Russia, “because of their strict capital controls, are the last two obstacles to further U.S. control of the global periphery”.

So how would the Three Rings – in fact a new global system – be deployed?

The first ring “is China’s neighboring countries in East Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East; the second ring is the vast number of developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; and the third ring extends to the traditional industrialized countries, mainly Europe and the United States.”

The basis for building the Three Rings is deeper Global South integration. Cheng notes how “between 1980-2021, the economic volume of developing countries rose from 21 to 42.2 percent of the world’s total output.”

And yet “current trade flows and mutual investments of developing countries are still heavily dependent on the financial and monetary institutions/networks controlled by the West. In order to break their dependence on the West and further enhance economic and political autonomy, a broader financial and monetary cooperation, and new sets of instruments among developing countries should be constructed”.

This is a veiled reference to the current discussions inside the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), with Chinese participation, designing an alternative financial-monetary system not only for Eurasia but for the Global South – bypassing possible American attempts to enforce a sort of Bretton Woods 3.0.

Cheng uses a Maoist metaphor to illustrate his point – referring to ‘the revolutionary path of ‘encircling the cities from the countryside’”. What is needed now, he argues, is for China and the Global South to “overcome the West’s preventive measures and cooperate with the ‘global countryside’ – the peripheral countries – in the same way.”

So what seems to be in the horizon, as conceptualized by Chinese academia, is a “new G8/BRICS+” interaction as the revolutionary vanguard of the emerging multipolar world, designed to expand to the whole Global South.

That of course will mean a deepened internationalization of Chinese geopolitical and geoeconomic power, including its currency. Cheng qualifies the creation of a “three ring “ international system as essential to “break through the [American] siege”.

It’s more than evident that the Empire won’t take that lying down.

The siege will continue. Enter the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), spun as yet another proverbial “effort” to – what else – contain China, but this time all the way from Northeast Asia to Southeast Asia, with Oceania thrown in as a bonus.

The American spin on IPEF is heavy on “economic engagement”: fog of (hybrid) war disguising the real intent to divert as much trade as possible from China – which produces virtually everything – to the U.S. – which produces very little.

The Americans give away the game by heavily focusing their strategy on 7 of the 10 ASEAN nations – as part of yet another desperate dash to control the American-denominated “Indo-Pacific”. Their logic: ASEAN after all needs a “stable partner”; the American economy is “comparatively stable”; thus ASEAN must subject itself to American geopolitical aims.

IPEF, under the cover of trade and economics, plays the same old tune, with the U.S. going after China from three different angles.

  • – The South China Sea, instrumentalizing ASEAN.
  • – The Yellow and East China Seas, instrumentalizing Japan and South Korea to prevent direct Chinese access to the Pacific.
  • – The larger “Indo-Pacific” (that’s were India as a member of the Quad comes in).

It’s all labeled as a sweet apple pie of “stronger and more resilient Indo-Pacific with diversified trade.”

BRI corridors are back

Beijing is hardly losing any sleep thinking about IPEF: after all most of its multiple trade connections across ASEAN are rock solid. Taiwan though is a completely different story.

At the annual Shangri-La dialogue this past weekend in Singapore, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe went straight to the point, actually defining Beijing’s vision for an East Asia order (not “rules-based”, of course).

Taiwan independence is a “dead end”, said General Wei, as he asserted Beijing’s peaceful aims while vigorously slamming assorted U.S. “threats against China”. At any attempt at interference, “we will fight at all costs, and we will fight to the very end”. Wei also handily dismissed the U.S. drive to “hijack” Indo-Pacific nations, without even mentioning IPEF.

China at it stands is firmly concentrated on stabilizing its western borders – which will allow it to devote more time to the South China Sea and the “Indo-Pacific” further on down the road.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi went on a crucial trip to Kazakhstan – a full member of both BRI and the EAEU – where he met President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and all his counterparts from the Central Asian “stans” in a summit in Nur-Sultan. The group – billed as C+C5 – discussed everything from security, energy and transportation to Afghanistan and vaccines.

In sum, this was all about developing much-needed corridors of BRI/ New Silk Roads – in sharp contrast to the proverbial Western lamentations about BRI reaching a dead end.

Two BRI-to-the-bone projects will go on overdrive: the China-Central Asia Gas Pipeline Line D, and the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway. Both have been years in the making, but now have become absolutely essential, and will be the flagship BRI projects in the Central Asian corridor.

The China-Central Asia Gas Pipeline Line D will link Turkmenistan’s gas fields to Xinjiang via Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. That was the main theme of the discussions when Turkmen President Berdimuhamedow visited Beijing for the Winter Olympics.

The 523 km China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway for its part will crucially link the two Central Asian “stans” to the China-Europe freight rail network, via the existing rail networks in Turkmenistan.

Considering the current incandescent geopolitical scenario in Ukraine, this is a bombshell in itself, because it will enable freight from China to travel via Iran or via Caspian ports, bypassing sanctioned Russia. No hard feelings, in terms of the Russia-China strategic partnership: just business.

The Kyrgyz, predictably, were ecstatic. Construction begins next year. According to Kyrgyz President Zhaparov, “there will be jobs. Our economy will boom.”

Talk about China acting decisively in its “first ring”, in Central Asia. Don’t expect anything of such geoeconomic breadth and scope being “offered” by IPEF anywhere in ASEAN.

European Central Bank Calls Emergency Meeting; EURO Headed to valuation less than $1

These are "leaders"?
These are “leaders”?

The European Central Bank has called an Emergency meeting because the value of the EURO is sliding downward (fast) and looks to be worth less than one US Dollar very soon.

Countries around the world have begun unloading their supplies of EUROS because decisions made by Europe against Russia, show that Europe will not have much of a manufacturing base, or be able to sustain value of their currency much longer.

Europe’s reliance upon Russian gas and oil, and subsequent embargo of its own energy supplies in an effort to “sanction” Russia, is backfiring on Europe in an extraordinary way.

Put simply, Europe is cutting its own throat economically by embargoing Russian gas and oil.   Without cheap and plentiful energy, Europe cannot have industry.  Without industry, Europe cannot pay its bills and will collapse.

Rather than wait, countries around the world are lessening their supplies of EUROS, causing the value of that currency to drop against the US dollar.

Wells Fargo Bank in the U.S. made clear yesterday, they believe the EURO will fall to a value less than one US Dollar within a month:

Strawberry Streusel Bars

This sweet streusel-topped strawberry cookie bar is the perfect treat for summertime.

If The Streets Of America Are This Chaotic Now, What Will They Be Like When Things Really Start Hitting The Fan?

Sunday, Jun 19, 2022 – 03:30 AM

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

If you are not alarmed by what is happening to our largest cities, you should check to see if you still have a pulse.  Once upon a time, the beautiful new cities that our forefathers constructed were the envy of the entire planet, but now many of them have degenerated into crime-infested hellholes that are absolutely teeming with violent predators.  Shoplifting has essentially become a national pastime, open air drug markets operate freely right under the noses of indifferent authorities, and addicts pull down their pants and take a dump whenever and wherever they feel like doing so.  Thanks to record levels of illegal immigration, gang membership is absolutely exploding, and human trafficking has reached truly frightening levels.  Of course our steadily thinning police forces are overwhelmed at this point.  In fact, police in Seattle are stretched so thin that they often are not able “to take reports from rape victims”.  And if you are the victim of a non-violent crime in Seattle, good luck ever getting a police officer to pay attention to your case.  From coast to coast, communities are descending into a state of utter lawlessness.  So if things are this bad already, what will conditions be like when things really start hitting the fan?

Continuing a trend that we have seen for the last couple of years, crime rates all over the nation just keep going higher and higher.

For example, auto theft, grand larceny and transit crime are all up by more than 50 percent in New York City so far this year…

Data released by the New York City Police Department showed Grand Larceny Auto increased by 51.1% with 5,420 incidents as of June 5 compared to just 3,587 incidents by the same time in 2021.

That category had one of the largest upticks during the most recent crime statistic report covering May 30 to June 5. Grand larceny incidents spiked by 50.1% from 20,659 incidents reported to NYPD as of June 5, compared to the 13,713 reported during the same period last year.

Meanwhile, overall transit crime surged by 53.6% so far this year.

I thought that the new mayor was elected to end the crime wave.

Instead, it appears that it has been supersized.

One way to hide the rapid rise in crime is to decriminalize things that used to be major offenses.

In Portland, voters decided to decriminalize hard drugs, but that just turned the city into an “open air drug market”

The streets of Portland resemble an ‘open air drug market’ after state officials’ scheme to decriminalize hard drugs led to a surge in overdose deaths, critics claim.

Law enforcement agents say that the streets of Portland are full of homeless addicts openly buying and selling drugs and that signs of drug addiction are actually increasing statewide, Fox News reported.

Photos show the desperate situation in the liberal Pacific Northwest city, where people can be seen shooting up drugs or passed out in broad daylight.

At one time, Portland was one of the most magnificent cities in the entire world.

Now it is a horror show.

On top of all the ordinary crime that is going on, now we are witnessing a very alarming rise in politically-motivated violence.

The Supreme Court decision that will overturn Roe v. Wade is expected to be released this month, and a group known as “Jane’s Revenge” has announced that it is “open season” on those with pro-life views…

The pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge is declaring it “open season” on pro-life groups and crisis pregnancy centers.

The group has a history of damaging property during their protests, and they took credit for the vandalization of a pregnancy resource center in Des Moines, Iowa earlier this month. In a message posted to social media, the group said they broke windows and left graffiti political messages all over the clinic. “It was easy and fun,” the message read.

Sadly, even though the official Supreme Court decision has not even been released yet, there has already been quite a bit of violence.

In fact, it is being reported that there have been more than three dozen attacks on pro-life groups, churches and crisis pregnancy centers in recent weeks…

An armed would-be assassin’s alleged attempt on the life of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last week is part of a wave of violence, arson, vandalism, and intimidation targeting pro-life groups and government officials since the leak last month of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

There have been more than three dozen such incidents directed at crisis pregnancy centers and churches in at least 20 states and Washington, D.C., according to a tally maintained by LifeNews.com, an anti-abortion site.

The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is rapidly dissipating, and our streets are becoming more uncivilized with each passing day.

If this is happening while economic conditions are still relatively stable, what will happen once things start getting really crazy out there?

In some parts of the world, the food crisis has already reached critical levels.  For example, the government of Sri Lanka has actually shortened the work week so that workers will have more time to grow their own food

Sri Lanka’s federal government on Monday approved a proposal that would shorten the work week of most public sector staff to four days so that workers will have time to farm their own crops, Reuters reported Tuesday, noting the measure aims to combat Sri Lanka’s worsening food shortages caused by a recent economic crisis.

“Sri Lanka’s Cabinet late on Monday approved a proposal for public sector workers to be given leave every Friday for the next three months, partly because the fuel shortage made commuting difficult and also to encourage them to farm,” Reuters reported on June 14.

Over in Africa, the United Nations has stopped feeding approximately 1.7 million citizens of South Sudan because they simply do not have enough funding to feed the rapidly growing throngs of desperately hungry people…

The World Food Programme has been forced to stop providing food aid to around 1.7 million people in South Sudan, because of a lack of funding. The UN-run organization will still reach 4.5 million people, but many will miss out on vital resources.

According to BBC News, over half the population of South Sudan is currently facing hunger due to floods, localized drought, continuing conflict, and rising food prices. Marwa Awad is from the World Food Programme and is in the northern town of Bentiu in South Sudan, where she has been talking to people about the effects the cuts to aid are having.

All of the experts are telling us that the global food crisis is going to get a lot worse as the months roll along.

If the UN has already reached the limit of what they are able to do, who is going to help the millions upon millions of hungry people that will soon need help in order to survive?

Here in the U.S., food production has been affected by a bizarre series of disasters, and we are being warned that much less will be produced this year than originally anticipated.  I think that one expert summed up the current situation very well when he warned that “we are teetering on the edge right now”

Pennsylvania farmers are being “crushed” by the record cost of diesel – so much so, that questions about a food crisis are starting to loom, the Morning Call reported.

One farmer in Lehigh County is quoted as saying: “I’ve got a tractor hooked up to my corn planter out here, no diesel fuel, and I can’t afford to get any.”

That farmer was airing his gripes to Kyle Kotzmoyer, a legislative affairs specialist for the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau. Kotzmoyer then turned around and testified to state lawmakers: “We have reached that point to where it is very close to being a sinking ship. We are teetering on the edge right now.”

If we eventually get to a point where food prices spiral completely out of control and there are widespread shortages, do you think that those living in our core urban areas will respond with grace and patience?

Of course not.

Instead, people will go absolutely nuts.

We got a small preview of what is to come during the Arab Spring of 2011.  There were serious food shortages around the world that year, and that resulted in tremendous civil unrest.

Here in the United States, most people do not have large amounts of food stored up, and that is especially true in our largest cities.

So we better hope that the rapidly growing global food crisis does not affect us too severely, because the truth is that we are definitely not equipped to handle such a scenario.

An American “Green Revolution”

This is out of Australia.They are discussing the outrageous costs that are going ballistic inside the United States.

USA
Outrageous costs.

Everyone can see…

The Engineered Stagflationary Collapse Has Arrived – Here’s What Happens Next

Saturday, Jun 18, 2022 – 11:40 AM

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

In my 16 years as an alternative economist and political writer I have spent around half that time warning that the ultimate outcome of the Federal Reserve’s stimulus model would be a stagflationary collapse. Not a deflationary collapse, or an inflationary collapse, but a stagflationary collapse. The reasons for this were very specific – Mass debt creation was being countered with MORE debt creation while many central banks have been simultaneously devaluing their currencies through QE measures. On top of that, the US is in the unique position of relying on the world reserve status of the dollar and that status is diminishing.

It was only a matter of time before the to forces of deflation and inflation met in the middle to create stagflation. In my article ‘Infrastructure Bills Do Not Lead To Recovery, Only Increased Federal Control’, published in April of 2021, I stated that:

Production of fiat money is not the same as real production within the economy… Trillions of dollars in public works programs might create more jobs, but it will also inflate prices as the dollar goes into decline. So, unless wages are adjusted constantly according to price increases, people will have jobs, but still won’t be able to afford a comfortable standard of living. This leads to stagflation, in which prices continue to rise while wages and consumption stagnate.

Another Catch-22 to consider is that if inflation becomes rampant, the Federal Reserve may be compelled (or claim they are compelled) to raise interest rates significantly in a short span of time. This means an immediate slowdown in the flow of overnight loans to major banks, an immediate slowdown in loans to large and small businesses, an immediate crash in credit options for consumers, and an overall crash in consumer spending. You might recognize this as the recipe that created the 1981-1982 recession, the third-worst in the 20th century.

In other words, the choice is stagflation, or deflationary depression.”

It’s clear today what the Fed has chosen. It’s important to remember that throughout 2020 and 2021 the mainstream media, the central bank and most government officials were telling the public that inflation was “transitory.” Suddenly in the past few months this has changed and now even Janet Yellen has admitted that she was “wrong” on inflation. This is a misdirection, however, because the Fed knows exactly what it is doing and always has. Yellen denied reality, but she knew she was denying reality. In other words, she was not mistaken about the economic crisis, she lied about it.

As I outlined last December in my article ‘The Fed’s Catch-22 Taper Is A Weapon, Not A Policy Error’:

‘First and foremost, no, the Fed is not motivated by profits, at least not primarily. The Fed is able to print wealth at will, they don’t care about profits – They care about power and centralization. Would they sacrifice “the golden goose” of US markets in order to gain more power and full bore globalism? Absolutely. Would central bankers sacrifice the dollar and blow up the Fed as an institution in order to force a global currency system on the masses? There is no doubt; they’ve put the US economy at risk in the past in order to get more centralization.’

The Fed has known for years that the current path would lead to inflation and then market destruction, and here’s the proof – Fed Chairman Jerome Powell actually warned about this exact outcome in October of 2012:

“I have concerns about more purchases. As others have pointed out, the dealer community is now assuming close to a $4 trillion balance sheet and purchases through the first quarter of 2014. I admit that is a much stronger reaction than I anticipated, and I am uncomfortable with it for a couple of reasons.First, the question, why stop at $4 trillion? The market in most cases will cheer us for doing more. It will never be enough for the market. Our models will always tell us that we are helping the economy, and I will probably always feel that those benefits are overestimated. And we will be able to tell ourselves that market function is not impaired and that inflation expectations are under control. What is to stop us, other than much faster economic growth, which it is probably not in our power to produce?

When it is time for us to sell, or even to stop buying, the response could be quite strong; there is every reason to expect a strong response. So there are a couple of ways to look at it. It is about $1.2 trillion in sales; you take 60 months, you get about $20 billion a month. That is a very doable thing, it sounds like, in a market where the norm by the middle of next year is $80 billion a month. Another way to look at it, though, is that it’s not so much the sale, the duration; it’s also unloading our short volatility position.”

As we all now know, the Fed waited until their balance sheet was far larger and until the economy was MUCH weaker than it was in 2012 to unleash tightening measures. They KNEW the whole time exactly what was going to happen.

It is no coincidence that the culmination of the Fed’s stimulus bonanza has arrived right after the incredible damage done to the economy and the global supply chain by the covid lockdowns. It is no coincidence that these two events work together to create the perfect stagflationary scenario. And, it’s no coincidence that the only people who benefit from these conditions are proponents of the “Great Reset” ideology at the World Economic Forum and other globalist institutions. This is an engineered collapse that has been in the works for many years.

The goal is to “reset” the world, to erase what’s left of free market systems, and to establish what they call the “Shared Economy” system. This system is one in which the people who survive the crash will be made utterly dependent on government through Universal Basic Income and one that will restrict all resource usage in the name of “carbon reduction.” According to the WEF, you will own nothing and you will like it.

The collapse is engineered to create crisis conditions so frightening that they expect the majority of the public to submit to a collectivist hive mind lifestyle with greatly reduced standards. This would be accomplished through UBI, digital currency models, carbon taxation, population reduction, rationing of all commodities and a social credit system. The goal, in other words, is complete control through technocratic authoritarianism.

All of this is dependent on the exploitation of crisis events to create fear in the population. Now that economic destabilization has arrived, what happens next? Here are my predictions…

The Fed Will Hike Interest Rates More Than Expected, But Not Enough To Stop Inflation

Today, we are witnessing the poisonous fruits of a decade-plus of massive fiat money creation and we are now at the stage where the Fed will reveal its true plan. Hiking interest rates fast, or hiking them slow. Fast hikes will mean an almost immediate crash in markets (beyond what we have already seen), slow hikes will mean a drawn out process of price inflation and general uncertainty.

I believe the Fed will hike more than expected, but not enough to actually slow inflation in necessities. There will be an overall decline in luxury items, recreation commerce and non-essentials, but most other goods will continue to climb in cost. It is to the advantage of globalists to keep the inflation train running for another year or longer.

In the end, though, the central bank WILL declare that the pace of interest rates is not enough to stop inflation and they will revert to a Volcker-like strategy, pushing rates up so high that the economy simply stops functioning altogether.

Markets Will Crash And Unemployment Will Abruptly Spike

Stock markets are utterly dependent on Fed stimulus and easy money through low interest rate loans – This is a fact. Without low rates and QE, corporations cannot engage in stock buybacks. Meaning, the tools for artificially inflating equities are disappearing. We are already seeing the effects of this now with markets dropping 20% or more.

The Fed will not capitulate. They will continue to hike regardless of the market reaction.

As far as jobs are concerned, Biden and many mainstream economists constantly applaud the low unemployment rate as proof that the American economy is “strong,” but this is an illusion. Covid stimulus measures temporarily created a dynamic in which businesses needed increased staff to deal with excess retail spending. Now, the covid checks have stopped and Americans have maxed out their credit cards. There is nothing left to keep the system afloat.

Businesses will start making large job cuts throughout the last half of 2022.

Price Controls

I have no doubt that Joe Biden and Democrats will seek to enforce price controls on many goods as inflation continues, and there will be a handful of Republicans that will support the tactic. Price controls actually lead to a reduction in supply because they remove all profits and thus all incentive for manufacturers to keep producing goods. What usually happens at that point is government steps in to nationalize manufacturing, but this will be substandard production and at a much lower yield.

In the end, supplies are reduced even further and prices go even higher on the black market because no one can get their hands on most goods anyway.

Rationing

Yes, rationing at the manufacturing and distribution level is going to happen, so be sure to buy what you need now before it does. Rationing occurs in the wake of price controls or supply chain disruptions, and usually this coincides with a government propaganda campaign against “hoarders.”

They will hold up a few exaggerated examples of people who buy truckloads of merchandise to scalp prices on the black market. Then, not long after, they will accuse preppers and anyone who bought goods BEFORE the crisis of “hoarding” simply because they planned ahead.

Rationing is not only about controlling the supply of necessities and thus controlling the population by proxy; it is also about creating an atmosphere of blame and suspicion within the public and getting them to snitch on or attack anyone that is prepared. Prepared people represent a threat to the establishment, so expect to be demonized in the media and organize with other prepared people to protect yourself.

Be Ready, It Only Gets Worse From Here On

It might sound like I am predicting success of the Great Reset program, but I actually believe the globalists will fail in the end. That’s not going to stop them from making the attempt. Also, the above scenarios are only predictions for the near term (within the next couple of years). There will be many other problems that stem from these situations.

Naturally, food riots and other mob actions will become more commonplace, perhaps not this year, but by the end of 2023 they will definitely be a problem. This will coincide with the return of political unrest in the US as leftist factions, encouraged by globalist foundations, demand more government intervention in poverty. At the same time, conservatives will demand less government interference and less tyranny.

At bottom, the people who are prepared might be called a lot of mean names, but as long as we organize and work together, we will survive. Many unprepared people will NOT survive. Understand that the economic conditions ahead of us are historically destructive; there is no way that serious consequences can be avoided for a large part of the population, if only because they refuse to listen and to take proper steps to protect themselves.

The denial is over. The crash is here. Time to take action if you have not done so already.

Japan to attend NATO summit for first time

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has said he will attend this month’s NATO summit in Madrid, becoming the country’s first leader to join a top meeting of the transatlantic group.

The announcement on Wednesday comes ahead of a June 28-30 gathering of the military alliance that is seen as a crunch moment for its 30 members, four months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sweden and Finland, which have applied to join NATO, are sending delegations to the summit, and South Korea’s new President Yoon Suk-yeol will also be the first leader from his country to attend.

Japan, a key United States ally and not a NATO member, has delivered defensive supplies to Ukraine and imposed tough sanctions on Russia in tandem with the other Group of Seven (G7) countries.

“As the only Asian country in the G7, Japan’s diplomatic capabilities are being tested,” Kishida told reporters.

His attendance at the NATO summit will be “the first time for a Japanese prime minister”, he said, adding that he intends to highlight the link between security concerns in Europe and Asia.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

Is it me, or is there something very wrong with this picture?

The last time I checked, “NATO” stood for “North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”    Emphasis on “Atlantic.”

In that same vein, the last time I checked, Japan was in the PACIFIC.

How is there a “fit” for Japan and NATO, unless of course, Russia is 100% correct that NATO is simply an aggressive military alliance designed to encircle Russia?

As if what NATO is doing with Ukraine isn’t aggressive enough, now they’ve moving to bring Japan into the fold?

Clearly these people are not going to stop until they ARE stopped.

When the move comes to put a stop to NATO, I hope Americans and Europeans understand, we brought this upon ourselves by allowing our public servants (in NATO and at home) to run wild and create an existential threat to Russia.

We are in the wrong and we are setting the stage for a comeuppance for OURSELVES the likes of which humanity itself will be lucky to survive.

A warning to Americans

This following video is being passed forward through all the alternative websites. Gonzalo Lira has a warning, and while he is just repeating stuff that you all realize, this new “wrinkle” is actually frightening.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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Cool animal miniatures, Ukraine geopolitics, crazy America, and Ghana Dancing Pallbearers Figurines

If you don't know what you're doing, neither does your enemy.
- Joe Tzu

The one thing that seems to me to be obvious is that Russia means it when they say the US is incapable of negotiation, and the Russians are not in any hurry because they are draining the west. They know that no promise is any more important than it is meaningless.

So, I keep learning more by watching only what Russia does. Everyone else (except Turkey) are running around like recently decapitated chickens.

They also appear to know (like China) that the only way to break the US/NATO is to be patient and watch them do it by themselves. Russia knows there is limited support for the governments of many of the “enemies of Russia” type nations. These same that have openly displayed their own form of Nazi behavior, some for many decades.

The EU volunteered to be destroyed. The US also negatively affected everyone in Europe and Asia, Africa as well as the two America’s. These nations don’t make friends.

A slow going, fewest casualties, most protecting the environment and housing, assisting in delivery of wheat to the world, clearing out a nest of Nazi’s out of control, rebuilding cities, controlling the nuclear plants to deliver electricity…

This sounds more like the complaint about the Romans from “The Life of Brian” (what have the Romans ever done for us)

The western nations that are being unfriendly are losing their shit watching Russia become what the US has ceased to be.

HIMARS

010 HIMARS in Jordan DVIDS 1170x610 1
010 HIMARS in Jordan DVIDS 1170×610 1

Do you all remember those HIMARS that the US has sent to Ukraine? The US wasn’t going to send the long range ammo so they couldn’t be used for terror bombing of Russian cities. Some of us have been cynical enough to suggest that the long range ammo would get there anyhow (in a plausibly deniable way of course) now look….

Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak has announced that the country will acquire 500 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to support its military modernization efforts.

In a social media post, the minister revealed that he has signed a letter of request (LOR) to acquire US-made M142 HIMARS launchers.

Poland-based factories will reportedly produce some significant components of the system to ensure a “high level of Polonization.”

The country also seeks to ensure that the weapon system can easily be integrated with its battlefield management system.

“We are increasing the capabilities of our rocket and artillery forces,” Błaszczak said. “I have signed an LOR related to the acquisition of about 500 M142 HIMARS launchers for more than 80 batteries of the Homar system.”

Polish armaments agency spokesperson Lt. Col. Krzysztof Płatek said that the technology transfer for the production of HIMARS’ local components would go into a Polish domestic effort called HOMAR...

From HERE

Melt In Your Mouth Pork Belly That Makes U Go Mmm! Dong Po Rou 东坡肉 Chinese Braised Pork Belly Recipe

Go ahead and eat like MM! Yum!

Biden’s Foreign Policy Is One Big Mess

"If you have two friends, better to make them both your enemies. 

Then, in the future, you will be able to control your own people better by saying, "There are mean people over there. That is why we need your guns." 

-Joe Tzu

Over the last months I have written little about other U.S. foreign policy issues than the war in Ukraine.

A short review shows that there is little that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken or his president could count as a success.

Last month Biden traveled to Asia where he had meetings with the QUAD (Australia, Japan, India and the U.S.) as well as with South Asian leaders.

The QUAD meeting was a failure as India showed no sign of joining the other three in their condemnation of Russia. Instead of sanctioning  Russia it is buying more oil from Russia which offers decent rebates. Such disunity does not look good for a U.S. designed anti-China coalition.

Most noted though was that Biden came to Asia with empty hands:

Months after U.S. President Joe Biden first indicated that his administration would launch a new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) that would signal strengthened U.S. engagement with Asian economies, the president, together with the leaders of a dozen countries from across Asia, announced the launch of the IPEF in Tokyo on May 23. 
...
The slow process of determining what will be in the four “pillars” of the IPEF, how negotiations will be handled due to a division of labor between the U.S. trade representative and the commerce secretary, and uncertainty about which governments would sign up have deepened the ambivalence.

As a result of this ambivalence, the joint statement launching the framework referred to “collective discussions toward future negotiations,” indicating that there is more work to do to flesh out the initiative.

Asian governments are not wrong to have mixed feelings about the IPEF. U.S. trade officials plan to seek higher labor and environmental performances from negotiating partners, but they have also indicated that they are not prepared to offer access to the U.S. market—let alone pursue a TPP-style free trade agreement.

Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad said that the new US-led trade group IPEF is intended to ‘isolate China’. It will be unsuccessful doing that as it the whole idea is likely to fail.

As a writer for the Lowy Institute in Sydney opined in the New York Times:

Mr. Biden huddled last week with leaders of the four-nation “Quad” group formed to counter Beijing, vowed to defend Taiwan against China and introduced a new economic pact involving a dozen nations to shore up U.S. economic influence in the region.

Yet China is already winning throughout much of Asia on both the economic and diplomatic fronts, and nothing the United States is doing seems likely to change that. 
...
The Biden administration’s answer, unveiled last week in Tokyo, is its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. It falls far short.

The plan calls for cooperation on trade, supply chains, infrastructure and fighting corruption. But it does not include better access to the huge U.S. import market, a crucial carrot that normally underpins trade agreements. 
...
Meanwhile, China has forged ahead. State-owned companies have locked up big projects around the region, often under the umbrella of China’s sprawling Belt and Road Initiative.

China also practices persistent diplomacy. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s travels in Southeast Asia and the Pacific have far outstripped the pace of his U.S. counterpart, Antony Blinken. Despite the fanfare of Mr. Biden’s recent trip to Asia, it was his first to the region since taking office 16 months ago and included visits only to close allies South Korea and Japan. 
...
Competing with China in Asia will not be easy. But it starts with recognizing that right now the United States is losing.

Those words, coming from a staunch U.S. ally, are pretty harsh.

Another area where current U.S. foreign policy is failing is in the Americas. Biden is currently hosting the ‘summit’ of the Organization of American States. The head of states of at least 7 of the 34 OAS member states were not invited or declined to come:

Mr. Biden’s insistence that the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela not attend the summit was seen in many capitals as a sign of U.S. imperialism and an unwillingness to address in an honest way the complex issues in the region.

The three Central American nations known as the Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — which along with Mexico are the source of about 66 percent of the illegal migration at the U.S. border, decided to send their foreign ministers to the summit as a signal of their displeasure.

Biden’s (or Blinken’s) ideological argument that Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are ‘dictatorships’ does not make much sense when one learns that the unelected acting president of Haiti, Ariel Henry, was invited even though he is under suspicion of having ordered the murder of his predecessor Jovenel Moïse.

Biden again came with empty hands:

Administration officials said that Mr. Biden would propose reforms to the Inter-American Development Bank to encourage more private investment in the region and investments of $300 million by the United States to combat food insecurity. On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced pledges of $1.9 billion in investments by private companies over the next several years.

But it is not clear that the investments will be robust enough to prevent those countries from turning to China for help, a key goal for Mr. Biden.

The foreign policy establishment is not happy with this:

Richard N. Haass @RichardHaass - 11:44 UTC · Jun 7, 2022

The Summit of the Americas looks to be a debacle, a diplomatic own goal. The US has no trade proposal, no immigration policy, & no infrastructure package. Instead, the focus is on who will & will not be there. Unclear is why we pressed for it to happen.

U.S. policy in the Middle East is stuck. The nuclear agreement with Iran is unlikely to be revived under Biden as he has rejected to lift Trump’s terror designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. His planned visit to Saudi Arabia, to beg for more and cheaper oil, has been moved to some uncertain future date. The leader of Saudi Arabia is still miffed about Biden previously snubbing him. He also wants to continue his OPEC+ agreement with Russia and others oil producer to prevent lower oil prices.

It does not help that the Democratic leaning retired General John R. Allen is under investigation for having lobbied for Qatar, the arch rival of Saudi Arabia. Allen is leading the equally Democratic leaning Brookings Institute which has received major donations from Qatar.

On its anti-China policy the Biden administration had two other setbacks. It had banned solar modules from China over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang where the raw materials for making these modules is coming from. This, and a minor trade dispute, led to supply crisis for solar panels and stopped some major ‘green energy’ projects. Biden reacted to that by signing an emergency authorization to lift tariffs on solar modules from southeast Asian ‘producers’ which are in fact reselling Chinese produced ones.

The State Department also seems confused about its own anti-China policy:

The U.S. State Department has updated its fact sheet on Taiwan again, to reinstate a line about not supporting formal independence for the Chinese-claimed, democratically-governed island.

One might argue that Biden’s plan to lure Russia into a war in Ukraine has worked well. NATO is at least temporarily united and the EU under strict U.S. control. But the monetary assault on Russia via sanctions has turned out to be a total failure with the ruble gaining new heights. The effects of the sanctions have instead created another supply shock with prices for oil, fertilizer and wheat going through the roof.

The World Bank has downgraded its global growth predictions and is warning of stagflation. The average gasoline price in the U.S. has hit $5 per gallon and is likely to increase further. General inflation has markedly increased thought the causes get misidentified. This while the stock and house markets are more or less in free fall.

It does not look good at all for the Democrats in the upcoming mid-term election or a reelection of Biden in 2024.

Morale in the White House is down:

President Joe Biden and his aides have grown increasingly frustrated by their inability to turn the tide against a cascade of challenges threatening to overwhelm the administration.

Soaring global inflation. Rising fuel prices. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A Supreme Court poised to take away a constitutional right. A potentially resurgent pandemic. A Congress too deadlocked to tackle sweeping gun safety legislation even amid an onslaught of mass shootings.

In crisis after crisis, the White House has found itself either limited or helpless in its efforts to combat the forces pummeling them. Morale inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is plummeting amid growing fears that the parallels to Jimmy Carter, another first-term Democrat plagued by soaring prices and a foreign policy morass, will stick.

Biden could still save his bacon by replacing his ideological minded secretary of state and national security advisor with capable realists. The above list includes enough reasons to do so.

He also needs to shut down the war in Ukraine. He could tell Zelensky to end the senseless fighting and to submit to Russia’s demands. Sanctions against Russia could then be lifted and a further oil price increase prevented. (As the war has already moved off the front pages this is likely doable.)

Biden though has never shown the necessary flexibility to do either.

Posted by b on June 8, 2022 at 16:24 UTC | Permalink

A comment

Yesterday, I posted a comment aimed at proving the Outlaw US Empire misgoverns because it lives within a fantasy land of its own creation that ignores reality. 

Today's article by b serves to prove and reinforce that contention. What's happening isn't just a result of Biden's misgovernance as it's been ongoing for decades. 

The first manifestation of Fantasy Land was the creeping falsification of everything that began with WW2 censorship followed by the creation of an agency--CIA--whose activities had to be lied about as well as the actual thrust of US foreign--Imperial--policy. 

And the federal government and the two major political parties were able to get away with their lies. Indeed, the 1948 lie of a War Scare was needed to keep Wallace from ousting Truman as president with Wallace splitting the D-Party vote. That's how long the crap's been ongoing. The lies were then escalated massively with the falsification of economic figures that really took-off at the behest of CIA-VEEP GHW Bush in 1981--Something had to be done to show "Voodoo Economics" was viable. Then Greenspan was brought in to further accelerate Neoliberal economic policies and the regulatory agencies were turned over to Wall Street for it to run and thus further ruin the USA's real economy.

Real economic growth within the Outlaw US Empire ceased in the late 1990s with the bursting of the Dot.com bubble. Prior to that it was recognized that the Rentier Empire needed to increase the value of the collateral backing the dollar while a certain clique wanted to use that need as cover for executing the Zionist dream of expansion within Southwest Asia, but to do that a powerful justification needed to be supplied. Enter 911 and by 2003 the theft of Iraq's resource base. And the fantasy domestic economy seemed to boom, until 2007-8 when it went bust. There was a joke during Clinton's reign about the surge in the number of jobs, the quip being: Yeah, I have three of them. A long-term indicator of all that at the real economy level is displayed in this employment chart, the blue line being the real line that measures real unemployment prior to its falsification. From 2000 onward, that chart shows you why elections needed to be manipulated and the Duopoly solidified. The aberration, or perhaps better would be the hubristic overconfidence of Neoliberal Ds, was Trump's upset victory which in many respected threw off the Neoliberal timetable it planned to pursue. Trump's overt pointing out of the huge damage incurred by the real economy was excellent politics that attracted many voters, particularly many voters who usually don't vote, and that reality had to be quashed. Thus Russiagate, which provided proof of the great depth of corruption within the US Federal government.

With H. Clinton damaged beyond repair, the Ds were left with Biden as their only malleable figurehead. It could be argued the pandemic was unleashed to discredit Trump and to provide the needed cover for the required 2020 election manipulations since Trump's mishandling of the pandemic couldn't be counted on to overcome his still very strong real economy popularity, although his policies there were just as bad as Biden's have proven. Currently, the politicos misgoverning are all ancient and beyond retirement. But who is out there that can replace them that isn't already a Deep State tool? The answer to that question requires new commentary.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 8 2022 18:08 utc | 32

I think I love You (2021 Version) by The Partridge Family

A time machine to the late 1960s.

China says all IAEA member states must agree before Aukus nuclear sub project begins

  • Chinese foreign ministry says IAEA decided to establish formal agenda to discuss issues that could affect Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
  • Australia could become the first non-nuclear weapon state to field a nuclear-powered submarine, absolutely creating a loophole in the IAEA inspection system
The nuclear submarine project between Australia, the United States and Britain should not begin until ALL International Atomic Energy Agency members agree, China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that at China’s request, the IAEA had for the third time decided to establish a special formal agenda to discuss issues around the Aukus group’s nuclear submarine cooperation regarding the transfer, safeguarding and supervision of nuclear materials, which could affect the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“China has repeatedly stressed that the cooperation between the United States, Britain and Australia on nuclear submarines poses a serious nuclear proliferation risk, affects the international nuclear non-proliferation system, intensifies the arms race and undermines regional peace and stability,” Zhao said in Beijing.
More HERE

Giant Skull Armchair Designed By Gregory Besson

"Never interrupt my nap while my State Department is in the middle of making a mistake." -Joe Tzu

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Parisian designer Gregory Besson imagined an armchair that takes the shape of a skull, a theme that has been treated many times in the design area. Conceived with fiberglass and provided with a high quality leather seat, each creation is unique and will be made on demand.

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Mazzy Star – Flowers in December (Live on 2 Meter Sessions)

"The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them."

- Julius Nyerere

Haunting and sweet. She has such a unique sound.

A fine Joe Tzu quote

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US imports from China rose to an all-time record after seasonal adjustment in April, despite the Shanghai lockdown and other Covid-related blockages

The unrelenting and repeated efforts to talk down the Chinese economy has once again dismissed by the monthly, quarterly, or yearly raw data.

China exports to US jump, contrary to press reports

By David P. Goldman
US imports from China rose to an all-time record after seasonal adjustment in April, despite the Shanghai lockdown and other Covid-related blockages in the Chinese economy. That isn’t what you read in Bloomberg News, whose 30 economists and 100 full-time economics reporters apparently haven’t learned the difference between seasonally adjusted and unadjusted data.

From HERE

Artist’s Stunning and Spooky Abandoned Movie Theater Diorama Is Too Real Not to Believe In

When climbing stairs, better to fall repeatedly and make yourself look weak. That way, people will never be able to tell how weak you actually are."

~ Joe Tzu

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Japanese model artist Takatsu breathtaking diorama is one that is taking us down memory lane with a bit of nostalgia–and also one that is so breathtakingly realistic we can’t believe they’re not photographs!

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A Comment

We say 'NATO' because it sounds a lot more impressive than "America and a pack of poodles."

-Eugene Debs

“Fix a knife”: US diplomats admit to deliberately hyping human rights in Xinjiang and the US counterattacks

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China’s Qiantu K20 Two-Seater EV Costs Just $13,000 Yet Is Really Quick

Andrei Nedelea – Tuesday

Its top version has a dual-motor setup with 214 horsepower and it can sprint to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 4.7 seconds.

Quiantu made quite a splash back in 2015 when it unveiled its fully-electric K50 sports car that went into production in 2018 and was later also made available as a drop-top. However, costing well over $100,000 to buy in its native China, it only found a few hundred buyers before being discontinued in 2020.。。。read more

You Can Now Buy Ghana Dancing Pallbearers Figurines

"We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we kmow they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying."

 -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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JMG 1/64 Miniatures, a Hong Kong based figurine workshop has released the “Funeral Coffin Dance” figurines. Dancing with the coffin is an ancient tradition common in Ghana. The inhabitants of this country hire special dancers for the funeral to cheerfully send the dead to the next world.

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There are two sets. Set A has 7 people with a coffin. Set B has 5 people, with 4 of them crawling on the floor with the coffin on their back.

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Set A costs US$49 while set B costs US$40. They are available for preorder til April 24. The shop supports international shipping.

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It Appears the Decision Has Been Made: There won’t be a “Ukraine” Anymore

A small announcement made today inside Ukraine carries utterly enormous implications,  It now appears a decision may have been made that there won’t be a “Ukraine” anymore . . .

The announcement of a small change was made by the head of the military-civilian administration of the region, Volodymyr Saldo.  He said quite simply “Residents of all Ukraine, regardless of the place of registration, will now be able to apply for a Russian passport in the Kherson region.”

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

Yet the implications of this seemingly trivial announcement, are staggering:  If residents of “all Ukraine, regardless of the place of registration” can now apply for Russian Passports, then they would all be “Russian” and not “Ukrainian” anymore.

If there is still to be in existence a “Ukraine” how will that be if their citizens are now all Russians?

Looks as though there ISN’T going to be a “Ukraine” anymore.

Life-Size 1964 Ford Mustang Recreated In Lego

Damn! That’s a shit-load of legos!

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Business Cards of German and Canadian Government Officials Found in Abandoned Azov Battalion Headquarters in Mariupol

By Sonja Van den Ende on Jun 08, 2022 07:56 pm. LINK

Points to wider western involvement in Ukraine war and association with Neo-Nazi Battalion

[This article presents a Russian view of the war, based on first hand reporting by a journalist whose investigation was made possible by DPR and Russian military protection.—Editors]

Left amidst the ruins of the Azov battalion’s headquarters in Mariupol were the business cards from the German embassy. One was of an attaché named Michael Faul, a Canadian colonel named Colonel Brian Irwin and the French Embassy staff member in Kyiv, First Secretary Christophe Boursin.

According to the following information, Faul now works in the UK: "Michael Faul works at German Embassy London and Consulate General Edinburgh, which is a Federal company with an estimated 766 employees." So he has been relocated or has always been working there, probably for MI6, the UK Secret Service. Last Update: 3/10/2022 5:43 PM (move March 3 to UK), EMAIL: m***@london.diplo.de.

Colonel Robert Brian Irwin, whose bio is interesting: From Ontario, Canada; Decorations for Meritorious Service - Military Division; Meritorious Service Cross; Issued: October 16, 2019; Invested on: May 27, 2021; Rank: Colonel...

As Canada's Defense Attaché to Ukraine from August 2016 to July 2019, Colonel Irwin proved instrumental in achieving Canada's foreign policy goals. He quickly became an influential and important member of the [Canadian] mission [in Ukraine], where he advised successive commanders of the joint task force, promoted security sector reform and actively contributed to military cooperation between the two nations. Known for his professionalism and diplomacy, he has had an undeniable influence on the operations of the Canadian Forces in Ukraine.

The likely authenticity of the documents is enhanced by the fact that in 2018, Irwin had been photographed shaking hands with a member of the Azov Battalion, indicating Canadian government support for the neo-Nazi outfit. […]

The post Business Cards of German and Canadian Government Officials Found in Abandoned Azov Battalion Headquarters in Mariupolappeared first on CovertAction Magazine.

Read in browser »

An interesting observation…

"Chinese ambassador to Moscow has said US hegemony must be ended. US now buying near double the oil from Russia compared to what it was buying prior to banning Russian oil... I suspect it would take very little to send US economy into a very fast death spiral."

Artist Kerri Pajutee Creates Incredibly Realistic Miniature Animal Sculptures

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Artist Kerri Pajutee creates incredibly beautiful, real-looking animal sculptures that are to 1:12 to actual size. Pajutee’s remarkable attention to detail imbues each of her miniatures with distinct personality and feeling, particularly when the animal appears to be in motion, with another animal or if something else is happening, such as a haircut. While Pajutee is self-taught, she has found great success in doing something she loves.

“As a self-taught artist, I revel in the creative process. Sculpting has afforded me a means of expression and provided me with over four decades of never-ending trial and fascination. Inspired by the animals I have come to know, my art is motivated by my desire to capture and express that ‘spark’ of personality, while reflecting a personal encounter or endearing memory that will delight the heart and bring a smile to the face of the observer.”

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Meanwhile…

With so much happening, this announcement during Zakharova’s weekly briefing, here’s some stuff important enough to pass along:

"On June 9-10, 2022, the XX International Likhachev Scientific Readings will be held in St. Petersburg. They are held in accordance with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin "On Perpetuating the Memory of D.S. Likhachev" No. 587 of May 23, 2001. The readings are held with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.

"From year to year, this authoritative forum gathers in the city on the Neva River representatives of the scientific and creative intelligentsia, prominent public figures, politicians and experts from different countries for a constructive exchange of views on a wide range of issues. For two decades, the International Likhachev Readings have established themselves as an authoritative discussion platform. In the current situation, such a format is more than in demand, a non-politicized discussion of trends in modern international relations and the development of world processes in various fields are more relevant than ever.

"This year's Readings will be devoted to the important theme for the entire world community "Global conflict and the contours of the new world order"."

Also there’s this important announcement:

"As we reported at the last briefing, the XXV St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) will be held on June 15-18.

"Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is scheduled to take part in the Forum's events. The relevant formats and bilateral talks between the Russian Foreign Minister are currently being worked out.

"On June 16, as part of the business program, a panel discussion on the topic "The dictatorship of neoliberalism through the eyes of Russian compatriots abroad" will be organized by the Russian Foreign Ministry together with the Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency.

"It is planned to discuss the devaluation of the values of the Western model of liberal democracy on specific examples, in order to talk not only about theory, but also based on practice. We will talk about gross violations of human rights, Russian citizens and our compatriots, but also in principle in the breakdown of all that the West takes credit for itself and what is the basis of the democratic development of the state. There will be interesting participants, experts. I invite everyone."

COVERT INTEL; American Tactical Nukes SHIPPED!

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PAYWALL. Article HERE.
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Homeless cat sits by the road and waits for help

A great story.

A fine Joe Tzu quote

JoeTzu2
JoeTzu2

Such a tiny man, but what a great voice!

Ronnie James Dio singing Heaven & Hell Heaven and Hell -FHD.

Kung Pao Chicken, how to make authentic Kung Pao sauce 宫保鸡丁

Eat like MM! Yummy!

American “Javelin” Anti-Tank Missiles Sent to Ukraine, Are Now FOR SALE on the Dark Web

Javelin with checkout equipment large
Javelin with checkout equipment large

People from Ukraine have posted several American made FGM-148 “Javelins” (photo above) for sale on the Dark Web Marketplace, and on Thief Marketplace.

One posting was made less than three hours ago and the seller advertised “shipping available from Ukraine, specifically Kyiv.”

The seller is charging $30,000 USD for what seems to be just the tube. Unseen is the command Launch Unit, and it is unclear if there is a missile in the tube.

The Sale photos posted with the offering are shown below:

JavelinSalePhoto
JavelinSalePhoto

JavelinSalePhoto 2
JavelinSalePhoto 2

 

A full ensemble of the “Javelin” usually goes for $206,000 USD, with the Command Launch Unit valued at around  $120,000 USD and each missile at about 80K USD, so this posting is “a steal.”  I am not publishing the web address of this sale because I do NOT want these weapons out in public.

Listeners to the Hal Turner Radio Show were told WEEKS AGO, that weapons shipped from the USA to Ukraine as “aid” for Ukraine’s war with Russia, were ending up on the Black Market inside Serbia.  The weapons are being STOLEN by Ukrainians when they arrive in the country, and those Ukrainians are offering the weapons for sale on the Dark Web, then pocketing the money.

Listeners to the show were also told that a full TWO-THIRDS of the weapons being sent to Ukraine, were being stolen and sold on the black market.

Hey America, where do you think your $40 BILLION in “aid” is actually going???   Yes, an awful lot of it is being outright stolen.

In case any of you feel like calling your members of Congress to let them know what you think of what’s going on!

UPDATE 5:24 PM EDT —

The seller also has several other American weapon systems ranging from Stinger MANPADS, Phoenix Ghost Drones, and smalls arms and ammunition.

The United States has reportedly sent 5,500 Javelin tubes to Ukraine, and an unspecified number of command launch units which are needed for firing. The United States has reportedly sent 1/3 of its Javelin inventory to Ukraine in order to combat Russian tanks and other ground vehicles since the February 24th invasion.

COVERT INTEL – Central American Nation Gets Russian Troops & Planes

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PAYWALL. Article HERE.
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The Wallflowers – One Headlight (Official Music Video)

I still enjoy this song over all these years.

A fine Joe Tzu quote

JoeTzu3
JoeTzu3

Not Good Enough! US Could Sell Its ‘Lousy Warships’ To Allies That Were Designed To Fight China In SCS

Earlier this month, US Naval Chief Admiral Michael Gilday advised the House Armed Services Committee that nine Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), some of which were recently commissioned, should be decommissioned owing to unsatisfactory performance.

Despite attempting to outmatch China’s naval fleet, Admiral Gilday had justified plans to get rid of these vessels in the fiscal year 2023.

“I refuse to put an additional dollar against a system that would not be able to track a high-end submarine in today’s environment,” he had told the Committee.

Now, Admiral Gilday has suggested that the Navy can sell some of the vessels to friendly countries and allies, including countries in South America. He made these comments while testifying before the Defense Sub-Committee of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations while responding to an alternative.

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2022 06 03 20 00
The Navy’s budget request for the Fiscal Year 2023 discloses that nine Freedom-class LCSs will be decommissioned by the end of 2024. Furthermore, two Independence-class LCS will also be decommissioned roughly around the same time, as per the long-term force plan.

The Navy’s estimated FY23 budget has noted that decommissioning the ships will save the service $391 million. This, however, would only fund a fraction of the $3.2 billion costs of the nine littoral combat ships.

This is probably where the idea of selling these ships to friendly countries comes into the picture. Though Admiral Gilday suggested that the ships could be sold, he offered little insight into how that process would take place.

Admiral Gilday stated during the hearing that the decision to decommission the nine Freedom-class LCS — which are fairly young ships and cost billions to develop — was made to “stratify” the Navy’s range of capabilities. He contended, however, that the ships may prove to be beneficial to the navies of US allies and partners.

 

“There are countries in South America which would be able to use these ships that have small crews. Instead of just considering scrapping them as a single option, I think there are others we can look at.”

With high stakes for the US in any conflict that could erupt in the Indo Pacific region (against China), US Navy understandably wants to focus more on the quality of operations that its vessels are designed to undertake. Admiral Gilday admits that the LCS has failed in anti-submarine ops.

Since the LCS was built to operate in shallow areas like the South China Sea, they were welcomed and lauded as part of the US deterrence against China. However, the decommissioning of so many in such a short time is an admission that the costly surface combatants have fallen far short of expectations, reported CNN.

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Littoral Combat Ship USS Gabrielle Giffords operated in the southern South China Sea near the drillship WestCapella in 2020- US Pacific Fleet

The US Navy plans to decommission the vessels to free up funds for a more capable and combat-ready fleet in the face of the growing Chinese threats, especially in the wake of US President Joe Biden’s promise to counter China’s military if it were to attack Taiwan.

A US congressional report has already admitted that the single biggest threat to its security at sea, China, has the largest Navy in the world by size. The millions of dollars spent on building these less than useful Littoral Combat Ships could thus be recovered by selling them to allies with limited offensive objectives than those of the US Navy.

Why Decommission The Freedom-Class LCS?

Admiral Gilday’s suggestion about selling the ships to friendly countries came as a response to Senator Jerry Moran requesting clarity on why the Navy wanted to decommission the Freedom-class LCS.

The Senator questioned whether “other uses” for the ships could be figured out given their previous role in combating drug smuggling.

Moran backed his argument by citing collaborative activities in 2021 between the Dominican Republic’s Navy and the USS Sioux City (LCS-11) in the busting narcotics trade.

“One of the nine Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships was involved in joint exercises with the Dominican Republic Navy, those exercises, as I understand, were successful and they interdicted drug smugglers.”

 

Those navies that would be interested in acquiring Freedom-class LCS would want to make sure that they are combat-ready. However, Admiral Gilday made no pitch to potential buyers based on the vessel’s capabilities.

He explained that the Navy’s decision to decommission the Freedom-class LCSs was based on a review of their “warfighting value,” or lack thereof, in the context of the fleet as a whole.

Admiral Gilday went on to elaborate on the shortcomings of the vessel and its non-utility for the US Navy — a precedent that has been widely known and acknowledged by the service and politicians alike over the last few years.

The Freedom-class LCSs’ “warfighting value” was eventually determined by concerns with its long-in-development anti-submarine warfare (ASW) suite, according to Admiral Gilday. He said that the ASW equipment designed to ‘plug into’ Freedom-class ships is “just ineffective.”

Furthermore, the LCS program has been a non-starter in several ways apart from its inability to counter hostile submarines. There have been several recorded instances of the ship breaking down, one of the most famous ones occurring in 2020 when the USS Detroit broke down in South American waters due to a propulsion system failure.

 

The Freedom-class has suffered several well-publicized mechanical breakdowns, including problems with the propulsion system and the highly complicated “combining gear,” according to The War Zone. In the case of the propulsion system, the US Navy stated last year that it would take years to remedy the problem across the Freedom-class ships, with accompanying costs in the tens of millions of dollars per ship.

 

 

Furthermore, the over-the-horizon anti-ship missile that served as its “main battery” for surface combat was retired a decade ago.

Who Will Buy The ‘Disappointing’ LCS From The US?

Taiwan has been considering the acquisition of the soon-to-be-retired littoral combat ships (LCS) from the US Navy, Deputy Defense Minister Alex Poe had said in April this year. Besides, it had also expressed interest in buying the decommissioned US Warship USS Independence, an LCS with just 11 years of service record.

Taiwan requires hulls to compete with China’s significant fleet size advantage, which continues to expand. The Littoral Combat Ships could be a good fit for the littoral warfighting environment that it is likely to experience. Taiwan has already made it known that it intends to employ asymmetric warfare against China.

Taiwan is already testing anti-ship missiles on several of its high-speed Coast Guard ships. Compared to the ships used by Taiwan for the purpose, the Freedom-class would be a significant improvement. It’s feasible that they could become useful assets for Taiwan if the price was appropriate, especially since they’d be deployed on shorter missions close to home.

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2022 06 03 20 0ju2

However, all of this is contingent on the reliability of the ship, which has been abysmal. Furthermore, potential buyers of Freedom-class LCS in South America or elsewhere would be required to cover the exorbitant costs of simply operating these ships, which are, by any measure, exceedingly costly to operate.

Furthermore, with no capacity to deploy anti-submarine capabilities, other mission packages in limbo, and a lack of capabilities in other core mission areas, the Freedom-class LCS delivers low operational value relative to the high operating expenses.

So, while the Navy Chief’s suggestion to the Committee could be worth pondering over, there needs to be a detailed plan chalked out by the Navy Chief to make the vessel’s purchase seem like a profitable venture even to already interested buyers.

Chicago Saturday In The Park / 25 Or 6 To 4 Live at Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Ah. What great memories.

Now You Can Touch A Niceballs To Relieve The Stress At Work

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Neil Young – Harvest Moon (unplugged)

I am a long-time Neil Young fan from way, way back.

Europol and CIA operate data mining in the SWIFT system

European data from the SWIFT financial transaction system has been supplied in bulk by Europol to the US Treasury Department for data mining for years. This data ended up with the CIA.

By Erich Moechel

The plans of the EU Commission and the Council of Ministers for Europol to use data mining to monitor mass chats, online forums and e-mail boxes have caused an enormous stir. The fact that became known at the same time that Europol is constantly supplying massive data sets from the European SWIFT financial transaction system to the CIA for data mining has so far gone unnoticed by the public.

Two official reports to the US Congress, available to ORF.at, reveal the amount of data that flows into the USA and the rules governing this transatlantic data mining partnership.

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The first document on the subject from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) dates from November 2020. The PCLOB is an independent body in the US Congress that examines new laws and the implementation of projects already passed for possible violations of fundamental and civil rights. At the time of writing this report, the PCLOB was also unaware of the existence of a parallel CIA data mining program for European financial data.

The SWIFT scandal and its aftermath

The data transfers from Europol to the USA are based on the so-called “Terrorist Finance Tracking” agreement between the EU and the USA from 2009. Before that, the CIA had been systematically dealing with huge amounts of data from the SWIFT data center in Culpeper since 2001 , Virginia Self Serviced. Until then, all European transactions had also been mirrored at the SWIFT location in Culpeper. After this scandal broke out in 2006, the European SWIFT data was only processed and stored in the data center in Zoeterwoude (Netherlands) and since 2013 also at the new location in Diessenhofen (Switzerland).

Since the signing of the TFTP agreement in 2009, data from the European SWIFT system has been supplied to the US by Europol, officially to the US Treasury, the US Treasury Department. The algorithms of the same AI applications that the US authorities use to sift through their own foreign payment transactions at SWIFT’s US headquarters in Culpeper were then unleashed on these data volumes from Europe. The results were then also sent to the customer, Europol, and in some cases also to national authorities in the EU area. That was the state of affairs until November 2020, and even the PCLOB, as the responsible supervisory authority, was not yet aware that copies of these massive amounts of data from Europe had been sent to the Central Intelligence Agency since 2016 at the latest.

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2022 06 09 09 29

“More than 40 percent of all searches under the TFTP program are based on inquiries from Europol or EU member states, according to the PCLOB report from the end of 2020. Since the start of the program, 2,750 reports have been sent to Europe, in addition to the report It also includes all datasets that are in any way related to the report.”As far as European data is concerned, the Treasury Department is acting as a de facto outsourced provider to the EU and its governments,” the PCLOB said.

The ominous data sets from third countries

Because Europol itself did not have the license for data mining, European financial transactions in third countries were delivered in bulk to the US Treasury Department for data mining. That should be different now, because at the end of January the European data protection officer ordered that Europol had to delete petabytes of stored data sets. Some of this “bulk data” comes from the national police data collections, since Europol is a service provider for European police authorities in the field of databases and information systems. However, this is a long way from reaching volumes in the petabyte range.

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2022 06 09 09 2c9

So most of it must come from third parties that constantly produce huge amounts of data, and the SWIFT system is of course the first candidate. The ominous “data records from third countries”, which are expressly mentioned several times in the documents accompanying the new Europol regulation and make up a large part of the data, should therefore largely be the transfers from foreign banks to accounts in the EU area. The entire SWIFT system processes 40 million such transactions every day, but these are not individual transfers but bulk interbank accounts that include all such individual transfers of funds or securities.

More HERE

Zero Fucks Coins Allow You To Literally Give Zero Fucks

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2022 06 09 10 35

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What Russia Has To Do After Russia Wins

One of the best from Gonzalo Lira.
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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 5

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Global Mercy, Lagash, the Lost City of Mesopotamia, Ukraine, Western madness, and lots and lots of cats

I am pretty well convinced that the alternative media, and their viewers are completely convinced that the Western “leadership” are bat-shit crazy. And the sad things about this, is that the “leadership” doesn’t have a single clue as to how insane they are. Well, today we will skim through the “news” and take a view of other marginal subjects to put a smile on our collective faces, and cause us to muse about our shared pasts.

Have fun, you all.

Earliest Social Drinking Evidence in the Middle East Found in Israel

Israeli
Israeli

Israeli archaeologists working at the Tel Tsaf site in the Jordan valley have discovered the earliest evidence of social drinking in the Middle East, dating to 5000 BC. Source:  Nejron Photo  / Adobe Stock

Social drinking history in the Middle East has been rewritten with finds at Tel Tsaf, Israel. According to the  Times of Israel  , Israeli archaeologists have found the first evidence of social drinking in the Middle East from a 7,000-year-old settlement site in Jordan Valley. Archaeologists from the University of Haifa came to this conclusion after finding the remains of cereal grains used to produce alcohol in ancient pottery at the ancient site located in the central Jordan Valley.

According to Rosenberg, the Tel Tsaf find is very exciting because it is one of the few known  Chalcolithic sites  in the region, a period of transition from small, undifferentiated agricultural communities to larger, more complex ones that became urban settlements.

“We can imagine Tsaf’s developing community holding largescale events in which large quantities of food and beer are consumed in a social context — and not just in a ceremonial context, ” said Rosenberg.

Read more HERE

Baby Lion Playing With Autumn Leaves

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An adorable 11-week old lion cub named Karis had a very exciting day playing in a pile of autumn leaves that her keeper swept into her enclosure at the Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park in Scotland. This proved to be a very wise decision on her keeper’s part, as she seems to have had the time of her life frolicking around in the pile of leaves.

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​​​​​​​Axon Halts Stun-Gun Drone Project After Exodus Of Ethics Board

Tuesday, Jun 07, 2022 – 10:40 AM

Taser-maker Axon Enterprise Inc. says it will “pause” stun-gun-equipped drone development for schools after some members of its ethics advisory board resigned.

Last Thursday, Axon announced stun-gun-equipped drones and artificial intelligence-powered surveillance systems for schools following the tragic May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Hours after the release, the company’s AI Ethics Advisory Board released a statement specifying it instructed the company to limit a pilot program for the taser drone, only to be used by police. The board said a majority voted against moving forward with the project.

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“However, in light of feedback, we are pausing work on this project and refocusing to further engage with key constituencies to fully explore the best path forward,” Chief Executive Rick Smith said in a press release on Sunday.

"It is unfortunate that some members of Axon's ethics advisory panel have chosen to withdraw from directly engaging on these issues before we heard or had a chance to address their technical questions. We respect their choice and will continue to seek diverse perspectives to challenge our thinking and help guide other technology options that we should be considering," Smith continued.

One of the ethics board members, Wael Abd-Almageed, told Reuters he and eight members resigned from the 12-member panel. He said many on the board had significant concerns the drone could be used beyond schools and “exacerbate racial injustice, undermine privacy through surveillance and become more lethal if other weapons were added.”

"What we have right now is just dangerous and irresponsible, and it's not very well thought of and it will have negative societal consequences," he said.

Axon, formerly known as Taser, sells body-worn cameras and policing software to most police departments across the country.

As for now, Axon appears to have shelved the taser drone but shows the dystopic technology coming down the pipe that could be misused by law enforcement and or government agencies against the American people.

Birch Bark Letters Found in Russia are an Ancient Time Capsule

Birch 0
Birch 0

Birch bark letter no. 497, (c. 1340 – 1390 AD) also discovered in Veliky Novgorod . (  Public domain  )

Researchers excavating an estate dating back to the 12th and 15th century, have discovered a complete birch bark letter in the historic city center of Veliky Novgorod in north-western Russia. The letter was well-preserved thanks to the waterlogged clay soil in which it lay since the 12th century and adds to previous knowledge garnered from other birch bark letters found in the area.

More than 1,000 birch bark texts written on bark between 11 th and 15 th centuries have been found to date. They have been immensely significant in changing traditional ideas about literacy rates in ancient Russia, opening a new page in the study of the Russian language, and shedding light on early northern  Russian culture.

Most of the  letters deal with everyday usage, business and personal correspondence, such as instructions, complaints, contracts, news, reminders, and study exercises. They touch on family life and household management, trade and finance, crimes and legal proceedings, travel, military expeditions, and various other types of material, all of which reveal an enormous amount of details of medieval northern Russian life.

Read more HERE

Siberian Farm Cats Are Waiting For Spring To Come In Marvelous Photos By Alla Lebedeva

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Alla loves nothing more than taking pictures of her beloved pets – and it seems the world can’t get enough of them either.

Siberian farmer Alla Lebedeva loves seeing pictures of her pet cats, but it seems the world does too. Unbeknown to her, photographs she has taken of her litter have been reproduced on social media websites with some turned into humorous jokes.

“A couple of years ago I noticed that my pictures had gone viral,” said Alla. “At first I spotted my photos on some website about Norwegian cats – they used my pics twice, without any credit – and now they are going around the world as ‘Norwegian cats’.”

Alla lives with her husband Sergey on a farm in the settlement of Prigorodny, on the outskirts of Barnaul in western Siberia.

They have raised cats for more than a decade, with their first pet, Babushka, becoming the ancestress for the rest of the ever-growing litter. She gave birth to five ginger kittens in 2004 and now the couple’s home is overrun with their furry friends.

Even Alla herself jokes that they live in a Koshlandia (land of cats).

She said: “How many do we have now? To such a question I usually answer ‘a million, maybe more’. They live in the henhouse, and sleep on the polati, and they have three ‘little bedrooms’ there where can they sleep according to how they feel. Our cats protect the chickens and rabbits from rats and mice.”

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Ukrainian military: “Our enemy is not Russia, but Zelensky!”

Ukrainian military: “Our enemy is not Russia, but Zelensky!”

Soldiers and officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who were captured sent a video message to their "commander in chief"

Igor Yakunin

...

Immediately, dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war recorded a video message to Vladimir Zelensky (see our website KP.RU ). A one-minute video in which each of the recaptured Ukrainian soldiers says only one phrase. But the words add up to an accusation against the President of Ukraine.

This, of course, must be seen - young and old, well-fed and exhausted, with bruises and with the faces of rested models. Various. But to the camera they say in unison:

- Volodymyr Zelensky. People are turning to you. Soldiers and officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Who you left to die Like cannon fodder. You tricked us into fighting. Fight against your own people. You filled our homeland with corpses. You bombed schools and churches. You took a peaceful life from the Ukrainians. You left us without food. Without clothing. No connection.

Zelensky appears in the frame for a moment and asks:

- Who am I?

The prisoners answer him:

You are a murderer and a rapist. Marauder. Murderer. And a fascist.

The only girl among the male choir says:

- You have no forgiveness. You have ruined our country.

Others echo her:

- You will answer for it. Russia is not our enemy. Our enemy is you!

The good actor Volodymyr Zelensky, who, by the will of fate and the oligarchs, became the leader of Ukraine, had a great chance in life to play the film role he had already played - the president. It was enough for him to give Ukraine a neutral status and implement the Minsk agreements. And guaranteed to avoid war. Yes, by doing so he would have doomed himself to the curse of the nationalists. And he could have lost his chair if he couldn't handle them.

But he would have saved the country, including even the autonomous Donbass in its composition. And most importantly - thousands of lives.

But Zelensky was more expensive chair.

As a result, he reached the pinnacle of his acting career - he is a superstar, opens festivals in Cannes and makes speeches in a khaki T-shirt in front of the European Parliament.

But Ukraine is on fire, millions of refugees, thousands of soldiers are dying and being taken prisoner. At the same time, the neutral status of the country (if it remains) will still have to be accepted - this is already recognized even by Kyiv's allies. And Donbass will never be part of Ukraine. Like, very similar, and a few more regions.

Is it worth all the chairs and applause of Cannes?

No, this is worth the curses of their own soldiers, their own people.

Watch video

Ukrainian military: “Our enemy is not Russia, but Zelensky!”
Read on WWW.KP.RU: HERE
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Your Show of Shows

At least half the public is already onto the extravagant damage inflicted on our national life by the beneficiaries of the 2020 election….

Clusterfuck Nation
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The unravelling of the USA gets its summer steroid booster shot this Thursday when the political twerk-fest known as the January 6th Select Committee commences prime-time televising of its inquiry into the so-called “insurrection” the day that Congress met to tally the 2020 electoral college vote when hundreds of protesters entered the US Capitol illegally, egged on and enabled by a squad of FBI plants larded through the crowd, and by shadowy figures inside the building who unlocked the doors for them.

The objectives of this extravaganza are A) to soften up the remaining “purple” voters before the midterm election, B) to paint former president Donald Trump as an instigator of the uproar and an enemy-of-the-people so he won’t be able to run for office again, and C) to punish former White House employees and Trump partisans with onerous legal fees so as to knock them off the political game board.

The Party of Chaos certainly doesn’t need to reinforce the mass formation psychosis of its base who maintain that the 2020 election was the fairest-and-squarest in US history. The committee members will chant the talismanic phrase “The Big Lie” ad nauseam to ward off reasonable suspicions that they are the ones doing the lying. Since a kind of maniacal stupidity attends all the party’s doings these days, it could easily backfire on them. Even two years later probes are still pending in several swing states, and only a few weeks ago, the documentary 2000 Mules released time-stamped videocam footage of blatant wholesale drop-box ballot-stuffing around the country.

Lawsuits filed lately also claim the committee itself is illegally constituted, since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disallowed (against the rules) the minority Republicans from appointing their own chosen members. Instead, she did it for them, planting the vehemently hostile rogues Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger on it, meaning no witnesses will be called who might refute pertinent details of the “insurrection” narrative already constructed. Much of the testimony presented will be videotaped interviews with Trump White House officials and there will be no accounting for what may be edited out. In other words, you have an obvious setup for a star chamber, a device for disregarding individual rights and fair procedure.

The context, of course, as I aver above, is a country that is imploding six ways to Sunday — to paraphrase Chuck Schumer, the Party of Chaos’s Senate leader. At least half the public is already onto the extravagant damage inflicted upon our national life by the beneficiaries of the 2020 election. Thanks to “Joe Biden,” the dollar is hemorrhaging value, we instigated a war in Ukraine that will lead to global famine and mass refugee events, oil and natgas are unaffordable thanks to our destabilizing of global distribution networks, spare parts are unavailable for every imaginable machine in the land, the business model for farming is broken, real estate is groaning under rising mortgage interest rates, the CDC is still pushing Covid vaccines despite proof that they are ineffective and harmful, cities are overwhelmed with criminal violence and psychotic homeless drug fiends, and, as a final indignity — actually, an advertisement to the world of our depraved weakness — the US military is hosting drag queen shows at our European air bases.

Are these the circumstances that American voters are expected to endorse in the November election when all these conditions are liable to get a lot worse? Apparently, the Party of Chaos thinks so, since they’re delivering exactly what they stand for. And yet, they’re clearly nervous about it, as if they suffer fugitive doubts that we-the-people are avid for cultural and economic collapse.

My advice, then, is to take the televised January 6th hearings for the grand entertainment it’s intended to be. Enjoy the sob stories of the Capitol Police officers pretending to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Behold the terrible “threat to our Democracy” of the bare-chested interloper in a horned helmet chatting-up security guards in the Senate chamber. Note the “insurrectionists” taking seditious selfies in statuary hall and trying to fob off with souvenir furnishings. See Rep. Liz Cheney fulminate with scorn and disgust against her orange nemesis. Sympathize with committee Chair Bennie G. Thompson as he bangs his gavel and cries for order when any live witness utters the name Ashli Babbitt. Watch Rep. Adam Kinzinger turn on the waterworks. Take it all in and ask yourself: who exactly seeks to subvert this republic of ours?

4,000 Years Ago, Chinese Advances Were Fueled By Mass Beer Production!

mass beer production
mass beer production

What were the important forces and factors that led to notable evolutionary leaps in Chinese culture more than 4,000 years ago? New research identifies one major cultural development that helped initiate high-level civilizational change, and it is an eye-opener. These researchers claim that a significant innovation in brewing technology, which created the possibility for mass beer production, had a profound impact on ancient Chinese peoples, who truly enjoyed the chance to consume this fermented beverage at large-scale public events.

Red rice beer would have been considered desirable for its flavor, its mind-altering effects, and its “sacred” red tint. A team of scientists from China and the United States published their study in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences and it revealed that mass beer production technology led to vigorous trading activity and knowledge exchanges between Neolithic peoples in ancient China, the scientists write in their journal article, and it was this shared excitement about a fermented alcohol product that ultimately helped trigger the birth of dynastic Chinese civilization.

New social linkages produced by certain cultural practices are the seeds from which larger, more advanced, and more ambitious civilizations can emerge. And mass beer production in China thousands of years ago provided a key ingredient for big gatherings and thus bigger social networks. The ancient Chinese civilization began to grow more cohesive and united starting around the fourth millennium BC, as previous divisions were countered by various centralizing forces and factors.

These circumstances set the stage for the ascension of China’s first ruling dynasty, the Xia Dynasty founded by Yu the Great around 2070 BC. Xia Dynasty leaders were able to rule effectively in a country that was now sharing a stronger sense of unified purpose and identity. And mass beer production was instrumental in this evolutionary leap forward in China about 4,000 years ago.

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2022 06 07 16 30

Dakougang vessels examined in the study, which led to the conclusion that mass beer production capabilities had a profound effect on Chinese development starting about 4,000 years ago. ( Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences )

From Mass Beer Production to Unifying New Feast Networks

Alcohol fermentation as a science was discovered in China at least 9,000 years ago. A Dartmouth College study published in 2021 showed that ceremonial drinking vessels excavated from an ancient burial site at Qiaotou in China’s Zhejiang province contained the preserved traces of red rice beer, confirming that this drink in particular had been consumed for a very long time.

It took a few thousand years for the knowledge of how to make alcohol to spread more widely. The influence of mass beer production and consumption in ancient China created the conditions for meaningful “mass” cultural exchange and knowledge transfer to evolve rapidly.

The Chinese Dawenkou culture , which was built by settlers in the area of modern-day Shandong province in eastern China between 4,600 and 6,700 years ago, created the fermentation recipe and methodology that facilitated mass beer production. They made their distinctive red rice beer in large clay basins known as dakougangs, which represented a major leap forward in alcohol-making technology. It was this technology that was the focus of the new study, which attempted to learn exactly how the dakougangs had been used and for how long.

“Dakougangs were not made in every settlement but were mainly found in large elite burials ,” study co-author Li Liu, a professor in Chinese archaeology at Stanford University, told the South China Morning Post . “It is not clear exactly where dakougangs were made, how they were distributed or if they were traded as commercial items.”

At that time, elites competed for recognition in part by throwing gigantic community feasts. Red rice beer, a specialized product believed to have sacred qualities, would have been highly coveted at such feasts, And consequently dakougang-style fermentation technology would have been in high demand as knowledge of it spread rapidly westward along growing trade networks.

“Individuals who could provide large quantities of such beverages would have been more competitive for status and prestige in the community,” the authors wrote in their Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences article. “Particularly if the drinks were of an exotic type.”

The dakougangs would have been placed out in the open during feasts and other public events. They would have been filled with enough red rice beer to keep the good spirits flowing all day long.

“Feasts could have fostered an element of solidarity among participants, signaled various kinds of information to participants and the broader community, and enhanced prestige of the hosts,” Professor Liu wrote in a separate article on the subject in 2021.

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2022 06 07 16 31

These vessels found at the Yuchisi site, Anhui province, China were analyzed in the mass beer production technology study . ( Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences )

New Study Proves Chinese Dakougangs Held Fermented Elixir

Chinese civilization six thousand years ago was altered by the development of what scholars refer to as an “interaction sphere.” The term was coined by archaeology professor Kwang—chih Chang in the 1980s, and it described a unique period where formerly separate societies were becoming more complex, layered, and interactive as they began to gradually form a more collective mindset.

In their Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences study, the scientists identify the interaction sphere as a period starting in the fourth millennium BC when Neolithic cultures in China “experienced increased transregional interactions, characterized by artifacts with striking similarities being distributed over an unprecedentedly large area, including certain forms of ceramic vessels .” These vessels were the dakougangs, which had been unearthed during excavations of elite burials in all parts of the country.

Previous to this new study, the actual purpose of the 16-28-inch (40-70-centimeter) tall dakougangs had eluded scholars. To determine how they were actually used, the scientists analyzed microfossil remains of fungi, starch, and phytoliths found in recovered dakougangs and from jars and cups removed during excavations at the late Dawenkou culture site of Yuchisi in Anhui province .

These tests revealed the large basins and the drinking vessels had in fact contained a fermented beverage. This beverage was eventually identified as red rice beer, which would have been manufactured from an eclectic mixture of rice, millet, Job’s tears, Triticeae and snake’s gourd root. A fermentation starter named qu would have been created from a mold known as monascus, and this substance is still used to make this type of drink today.

It was the monascus that gave the potent alcoholic beverage its red tint. This tint was seen as metaphysically important because of its resemblance to the color of blood.

“The symbolic implication of red color associated with the seemingly magical transformation from cereal to alcohol, as well as the psychoactive effect of the beverage, may have contributed to the importance of red rice beer, which probably was regarded as a sacred substance,” the paper co-authors wrote.

This would have been yet another reason why status-conscious elites across the country would have been interested in learning the secrets of mass beer production.

China’s Elite-Centered Culture Was Strengthened by Beer!

Ultimately, a shared interest in this beverage helped forge culturally unifying links between different peoples. But within the context of these broader alliances social stratification remained a very real thing, as the privilege of making this sacred drink was reserved by the elites.

The community could enjoy mass produced alcohol during feasts. But common citizens wouldn’t have been granted the right to brew it on their own. People would have enjoyed attending the celebratory feasts of local elites, but they would not have been in a position to sponsor such feasts themselves.

Mass beer production would have been useful as a way to increase power among the already powerful, and as a result monopolies over its mass production would have been zealously sought by the wealthy and the status-conscious in every region of the country.

Americans ‘Deeply Pessimistic’ About US Economy, Inflation

Tuesday, Jun 07, 2022 – 09:20 AM

Last week President Biden insisted that “more Americans feel financially comfortable” since he took office.

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2022 06 07 15 21

Yet, according to a new poll, 83% of Americans are pessimistic about the US economy – describing it as “poor or not so good,” while 35% say they aren’t satisfied with their financial situation – the highest level of dissatisfaction in the 50 years since the Wall Street Journal-NORC (University of Chicago) poll began.

The survey found Americans in a sour mood and registering some of the highest levels of economic dissatisfaction in years. The pessimism extended beyond the current economy to include doubts about the nation’s political system, its role as a global leader and its ability to help most people achieve the American dream. -WSJ

The Journal frames sentiment as “deeply pessimistic,” and says Americans view the nation as sharply divided over its most important values.

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2022 06 07 15 22

Only 27% of the 1,071 adults polled say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living – a 20% drop from last year, while 46% said they don’t.

Meanwhile, 38% said their financial situation had gotten worse in the past few years – marking the second time since the 2007-2009 recession that more than 30% of respondents said their finances were worse off, according to 50 years of data.

Some 60% said they were pessimistic about the ability for most people to achieve the American dream.

“The promise was this was a place where what you were born into did not determine who you could be. But I think we’ve failed deeply at that,” said Julie Olsen Edwards, an 83-year-old Soquel, Calif., retired community college teacher. “I find myself choking up saying it.”

What’s driving the results? Inflation, of course.

The survey results show that high inflation in particular is driving the dim economic outlook, said Jennifer Benz, vice president of public affairs and media research at NORC. Inflation is running at close to its fastest pace in four decades, at an 8.3% annual rate in April, one of several factors weighing on consumers. Households are digging into savings to support their spending, the Commerce Department has said, and the S&P 500 nearly closed in bear territory recently. -WSJ

The poll does have a bright spot – namely the labor market, with the unemployment rate close to a multi-decade low at 3.6%. Around 2/3 of those polled said it would be ‘somewhat or very easy’ to find a new job with around the same income and benefits – the highest % since 1977.

That said, the overall results of the poll suggest that Democrats ‘face a dispirited electorate heading into November’s elections,’ as respondents’ despondent view of things suggests that ‘a connective tissue of pessimism underlies Americans’ economic and social attitudes.”

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2022 06 07 15 23

According to the poll, 86% said that Americans are ‘greatly divided’ when it comes to key values, while over half said they expect the divisions to worsen over the next five years.

“I’m angry,” said Robert Benda, a 69-year-old retired telecommunications worker who lives in Berthoud, Colo., who says freedom is the most important American value, which Democrats controlling Washington are trying to take away.

Our government is doing what’s right for their special-interest groups, and everybody else be damned.”

A Great White Shark Preserved In Formaldehyde In An Abandoned Wildlife Park

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Rosie the Shark is a Great White Shark that was preserved in a tank filled with formaldehyde originally on display at the wildlife park called Wildlife Wonderland in Bass, Victoria which ceased business in 2012 due to animal welfare concerns and operating without appropriate licences.

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Crystal World & Prehistoric Journeys director Tom Kapitany moved the shark to Crystal World in 2019 in response to trespassers of the derelict wildlife park vandalising the sharks vitrine, raising concerns of a potential biohazard.

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The great white shark was humanely killed after becoming caught in the Lukin family’s tuna fishing nets on the coasts of South Australia in 1998. Seal Rocks Sea Life Centre initially showed interest in purchasing the shark from the Lukin family, but later decided against the purchase with Wildlife Wonderland purchasing the great white.

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As the shark was being transported to Wildlife Wonderland in Victoria, frozen in a refrigerated truck, it was impounded by the Government of South Australia because a woman had been reported missing, requiring an autopsy of the shark at the South Australian Museum. Following the autopsy, the great white shark was stuffed with dacron and preserved in a formaldehyde solution in a custom built tank.

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Founder of Wildlife Wonderland John Matthews recalled the operation of ownership as “It was a huge logistical operation, working with Melbourne Museum, and all up cost us about $500,000,” and further stating “We had to build a purpose-built room and the roof had to be removed and the shark craned in and put into a new, sealed tank.”

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In 2012, Wildlife Wonderland were reported to have been operating their business without appropriate licenses, forcing the wildlife park to cease business and surrender all animals to RSPCA Australia and the Department of Sustainability and Environment Victoria.

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In November 2018, a video released on Youtube by urban explorer Luke McPherson showed inside the decaying wildlife park and later stumbling upon the shark tank. Months after, the Youtube video gained millions of views, prompting a rise in trespassing into the property to view the shark, with vandals also damaging and graffitiing the tank and its surroundings.

1,000-Year-Old Chamber Burial on Polish Island Reveals Rare Treasures

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Rare 0

Rare amber ring found in a 1,000-year-old grave in Poland. Source:  Jerzy Sikora

A 1,000-year-old grave on a remote island in northern Poland has been found to be richly furnished with grave goods, some of them extremely rare. Two amber rings, a bronze bowl, an iron knife in a leather holder and bronze buckles were found in the grave of a man near the village of Ostrowite, who lived between the 11th and 12th centuries, reports  The First News  .

This is not the first time that ancient burials have been unearthed at the site at Ostrowite, which lies in Poland’s Pomeranian Voivodeship. Two burials with bronze bowls were found earlier, one in 2007 by a farmer working in his field and another by archaeologists in 2010. As fragments of bronze bowls continued to be found throughout the site, archaeologists decided to work with volunteer teams with metal detectors to pinpoint where to dig for other graves in 2020 and 2021.

Dr. Jerzy Sikora from the University of Łódź, who has been leading the excavations at Ostrowite for years, said: “The deceased was most likely a representative of one of the  local Pomeranian elites.”

Read more HERE

Ukrainians, retreating, burn wheat

Ukrainians, retreating, burn wheat
Yan Gagin, an adviser to the head of the government of the DPR, said that Ukrainian troops burned tons of grain during the fighting, which was in the storage facilities of the Mariupol seaport. 

As Gagin stated, “the enemy, retreating from the port, set fire to the granaries so that this grain would not go to the forces of the DPR.” 

Moreover, "they extinguished it for several days, but to no avail." 

And now wheat and corn are scattered in large quantities over the territory near the granaries, the smell of rot and burning is in the air. 

When fully loaded, the storage could hold 57,000 tons. Bread show off, senseless and merciless. 
Read on WWW.KP.RU: HERE

NATO Countries Surrounding Serbia Blocked Russian FM’s Plane In “Hostile Action”

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Tuesday, Jun 07, 2022 – 01:24 AM

The Kremlin has denounced fresh airspace closures by three eastern European countries which blocked a top level Russian diplomatic flight as a “hostile action” in Monday statements.

Russian Foreign Ministry Sergey Lavrov was set to fly Sunday for an official trip to Serbia, but his plane was blocked by the countries surrounding Serbia, which includes Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro. All three countries, including the tiny Serb breakaway nation of Montenegro, are NATO members.

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2022 06 07 15 36

IL-96 plane of the Russian presidential administration’s airline. Via Reuters

Lavrov in follow-up called the move “unprecedented” and “unthinkable” – with a separate statement from Putin’s office saying such actions thwart essential diplomatic communications and contacts.

“There were a lot of questions from the media last night and this morning regarding our reaction to the unprecedented decisions taken by some NATO member states and the decisions that prevented the Russian Foreign Minister from visiting the Republic of Serbia. The unthinkable has happened, of course; I understand the interest you are showing in our assessment of these outrageous actions,” Lavrov stated.

“What has happened is basically a deprivation of a sovereign state’s right to conduct foreign policy. Serbia’s international activity is blocked, at least for the moment in the direction of Russia,” the top Russian diplomat emphasized.

He added: “We are not going to beat around the bush here. This is another very clear and instructive demonstration of the extent to which NATO and the EU can go to use the most lowbrow ways to influence those who are guided by national interests and not ready to sacrifice their principles, their dignity in favor of the very rules that the West imposes instead of international law,” according to TASS.

And separately a statement from Dmitry Peskov said “such actions could cause problems with the timing of high-level diplomatic meetings. But they would not prevent Moscow from maintaining contacts with friendly countries.”

Additionally, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed the move as “another closed channel of communication” – in reference to ongoing tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats between Russia and the EU particularly.

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2022 06 07 15 37

But perhaps the most interesting comments came from Serbia. It should be recalled that during NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign of Yugoslavia under then US President Bill Clinton, Russia was Belgrade’s foremost ally in condemning the US-Western action. In response to Lavrov’s plane being blocked,  Serbia’s interior minister, Aleksandar Vulin, called it an “obstruction” of “a great and proven friend of Serbia.”

“A world in which diplomats cannot seek peace is a world in which there is no peace. Those who prevented the arrival of Sergei Lavrov do not want peace, they dream of defeating Russia,” Vulin said. He added: “Serbia is proud that it is not part of the anti-Russian hysteria, and the countries that are, will have time to be ashamed.”

The Kremlin later confirmed the trip has been canceled after the overnight airspace blockage. Within the first week of the Feb.24 Russian invasion of Ukraine, a number of European countries moved to preemptively close airspace to all Russian flights, including commercial traffic.

Kitty Cat video of the day

A nice rescue story.

Slow-Cooker Italian Shredded Beef Hoagies

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905c4cda 715d 45fb 8c36 e77454e8b9d6

Ingredients

  • 2-lb beef boneless arm roast, trimmed of fat
  • 2 medium onions, sliced
  • 1 can (14.5 oz) Italian-seasoned diced tomatoes, undrained
  • 1/4 cup tomato paste
  • 8 hoagie buns, toasted if desired
  • 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (8 oz)

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2022 06 04 14 50

Japanese Art Student’s Graduation Project Is A Lineup Of Cats Adorably Asking You For High Fives

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Japanese sculptor Sakura Hanafusa expertly crafted one that all cat lovers would love in their home. A lineup of seven cats extending their paws to high five you after you come home.

Hanafusa made the sculptures as her graduation project from art university in 2016, and writes on Twitter that she “wanted to make a piece that people not only looked at and enjoyed, but could have fun interacting with.” She certainly did that with the project, titled “High-Seven” (seven cats, seven high fives, of course). Each cat is carved individually from camphor wood and oil painted, and in an interview with Yahoo News, Hanafusa says she modeled the individual expressions of 6 of the cats after a her family cats, and 1 after a friend’s.

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The United States Moves To Seize 2 Luxury Jets From Roman Abramovich Valued North Of $400 Million

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Tuesday, Jun 07, 2022 – 08:00 AM

On Monday the US moved to seize two luxury private jets from Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. It marks one of the greatest single attempted seizures of a Russian oligarch’s personal assets in the wake of the Putin-ordered military invasion of Ukraine, at a total value north of $400 million.

“U.S. authorities moved Monday to seize two luxury jets — a $60 million Gulfstream and a $350 million aircraft believed to be one of the world’s most expensive private airplanes — after linking both to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich,” The Associated Press reports. One of the planes reportedly has an elaborate paper trail which attempted to shield and obscure Abramovich’s ownership, the DOJ investigators uncovered.

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2022 06 07 15 27

Illustrative: example of an interior room on a custom Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Before it underwent lavish upgrades and customizations, the initial value of his giant Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, currently believed to be parked in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was less than $100 million. While it perhaps could be easier for the much smaller Gulfstream to evade the long arm of US law, the Boeing Dreamliner is without doubt too big to hide, unless it makes its way to Russia.

The warrant, signed by a federal magistrate judge Monday, indicates the aircraft are in violation of US sanctions given they were moved within a designated time period after sanctions took effect but without a US exemption license.

“In explaining the move to seize the planes, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit that the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft and the Gulfstream G650ER plane are subject to seizure because they have been moved between March 4 and March 15 without licenses being obtained in violation of sanctions placed against Russia,” AP explains.

“According to the affidavit, Abramovich controlled the Gulfstream through a series of shell companies. The plane, it said, is believed to have been in Moscow since March 15,” the report added.

And according to a profile last year of Abramovich’s huge Dreamliner in Forbes Russia, “For personal needs, such huge aircraft are used very rarely” and often the aviation industries of entire countries don’t have one.

The Dec.2021 profile detailed:

The Dreamliner, which Abramovich bought, was built in June 2015 for private Swiss airline Privateair but was never handed over to him. In 2019, its equipment began in accordance with the requests of the Russian billionaire. The plane reportedly can to carry up to 50 passengers: 10 seats are provided for security, 10 for staff and 30 for guests, says a Forbes source in the aviation market. 

The flight range of the "dreamliner" is 18,418 km (with 25 passengers on board), the cabin area is 224.4 sq.m. The operator of the new vessel is the same as the previous one, owned by Abramovich - Global Jet Concept. At the same time, unlike its previous Boeing 767 aircraft, which received the code name "Bandit" due to the black "mask" on the cockpit windows, the new vessel is painted with extreme restraint. “It’s fashionable now – it helps to attract less attention,” the source explains.

Given his high visibility in the West, it’s perhaps not a surprise that Abramovich’s assets (which, until very recently, included Chelsea Football Club, the popular English Premier League team which he recently placed in the hands of a trust ahead of a sale) have been the focus of particular attention.

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2022 06 07 15 28

According to a recent FT report, he has at least five mega-yachts worth a combined total of about $1 billion. Two of the most expensive ones ended up in Turkey after fleeing European sanctions. At least one is believed to be in Montenegro.

World’s Largest Floating Hospital, Built In China & Designed By European Contractors, Makes African Debut

Even as geopolitical fault lines become stark due to tensions between China and the Western world, their noble collaboration in building the world’s largest civilian hospital ship aimed at helping the poor is nothing short of a silver lining.

The ship ‘Global Mercy,’ the largest civilian hospital ship in the world, made its African debut on May 27 in Dakar, where it will train health personnel for four weeks, Chinese media CGTN reported.

It is the latest entrant to the Mercy Ship Charity program that operates the largest non-governmental hospital ship in the world.

The massive ship, constructed at the Tianjin Xingang shipyard of China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) in northern China, had many sub-contractors involved in the project, including from Europe, America, and the wider Asian region.

The ship is 174 meters long and 28.6 meters broad and has about 12 decks. It will remain in Senegal’s capital until June end before returning in 2023 to serve disadvantaged and poor people with surgical care.

Global Mercy is Mercy Ships’ second vessel of its kind, set to join Africa Mercy serving in Africa since 2007.

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2022 06 03 18 55
Senegalese President Macky Sall welcomed the Global Mercy on May 30 at a ceremony attended by Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo and Comoros President Azali Assoumani.

The arrival of the giant ship coincides with the latest tragedy that has rocked the country and exposed the flaws in the tits health care system, crushed under the weight of pandemic-induced distress.

On May 25, eleven newborns were charred to death in a fire at a public hospital in Tivaouane noted Africa News.

The crew onboard the ship plans to train 260 Senegalese health professionals during their stay in Senegal, alongside the crew of the Africa Mercy, which has been at the port of Dakar since February and plans to stay at least till November, performing surgeries on board.

The Global Mercy will then return to the Canary Islands at the end of June for a “complete and final dressing of the ship.”

Mercy Ships will make a come-back in early 2023 to provide training and surgery in areas such as maxillofacial and reconstructive surgery, tumor removal, cleft lip and palate repair, obstetric fistula repair, and more.

Global Mercy — A Feather In CSSC’s Cap

The complex vessel’s design, contracting, and construction oversight have all been handled by Stena RoRo, a company based out of Sweden.

“We have applied one of our concepts on a ship from the RoPax-class, which are passenger and freighter vessels for international voyages, and modified her into a pure passenger ship with hospital capabilities,” said Per Westling, CEO of Stena RoRo AB.

“Instead of a card deck, we’ve built operating rooms and hospital wards. The ship will have space for about 950 persons with everything needed for both patients and those who work onboard, including grade schools and nursery schools for the children of staff.”

The role of the Chinese Ship Building Industry also comes into the focus, which was the ‘chosen one’ for building the world’s largest civilian hospital ship, despite the involvement of other subcontractors.

China’s commercial shipbuilding industry — the largest in the world — has been engaged in the construction of ships along its shoreline for years. It has also acquired the capital and technological know-how to construct increasingly sophisticated models of all types of naval ships through foreign contracts over the years that it has been engaged in expanding its industry.

“For a few years now, our team has consisted of up to 16 members, stationed at the Tianjin Xingang shipyard,” said Stena project leader and site manager Rikard Olsson, who has been working on the project in China since 2016.

“For this shipyard, this is the first time this kind of ship, which can be compared to a cruise ship, has been built. We have worked hard to meet the required standard and everything has gone very well”, Maritime Executive reported.

After several years of construction in Xinjiang, the mammoth ship completed its sea trials in May last year. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 93 percent of the population lacks access to quality surgical treatment, and the coronavirus pandemic has put local resources under strain. A civilian hospital ship with advanced features could thus fill the vacuum tremendously.

Global Mercy

The Global Mercy hospital covers about 7,000 square meters and includes “six operating theatres, 102 acute care beds, seven intensive care beds, and 90 convalescent beds,” according to a statement from Mercy Ships, which works relentlessly to improve access to health care in developing countries in Africa.

The project began in 2013 with Stena RoRo, a Swedish shipping company, in charge of the project’s design, contracting, and execution.

The broker was French Barry Rogliano Salles, BRS, the detailed design was done by Finnish Deltamarin, and the ship was built in China at the Tianjin Xingang shipyard. The Global Mercy will sail under the Maltese flag and operate along the African coast.

Six operating theaters, 200 hospital beds, a laboratory, a patient clinic, and an eye and dental clinic are all available at the Global Mercy. The ship will have a total capacity of 950 persons, including 640 crew members.

The ventilation system has been specifically tailored, with an emphasis on reducing vibration and noise. Since the ship would be in port for long periods, enormous cranes have been installed to allow it to take on containers containing provisions, vehicles, and other equipment. Four Wärtsilä 32 engines will power the vessel.

Amid news of global animosity flooding the internet every day, an international collaboration for providing health care to the needy is a rather welcome development.

Lagash, the Lost City of Mesopotamia

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Eagle 1

‘Eagle of Lagash’ symbol found on votive bas relief of Dudu in the Louvre Museum. Source: Louvre Museum /   CC BY-SA 2.0

The historic region of Mesopotamia has been long regarded as one of the original cradles of civilization. Defined by the bountiful Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Mesopotamia gave birth to some truly prosperous and groundbreaking early civilizations. The foremost of these was the civilization of Sumer, well remembered for its revolutionary inventions, such as the early writing system. Sumerians were truly unique, and were defined by their powerful city-states that often competed for power and wealth. One of the most prominent of these city states was centered on the town of  Lagash, a major and influential player in the politics and economy of Sumer.

Lagash had a long and diverse history, but eventually was lost to the passing of time. What little of it remains today is a true Pandora’s box for archaeologists. Excavations have yielded numerous significant finds and an important insight into the rich history of both Lagash, and the Sumerian civilization on the whole.

Read more HERE

MEDVEDEV TELLS UKRAINE TO CUT BACK ON COCAINE AND TO NEGOTIATE BEFORE IT LOSES SOVEREIGNTY

Dmitry Medvedev has become one of the most hardcore Russian politicians.  The former President of Russia and now Deputy Chairman of the National Security Council told Ukraine leaders to stop using Cocaine and start negotiating.

In the brief video below, Medvedev says: Ukraine risks losing its sovereignty if it continues refusing to negotiate on Moscow’s terms. He also advised authorities in Kiev to cut back on cocaine use and approach key decisions with a sober mind.

Super-Easy Chicken Manicotti

Super easy! No precooked noodles, just five ingredients and only three easy steps.

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b010db92 5e8e 488c 9ca5 321a672f968a

Ingredients

  • 1 jar (25.5 oz) Muir Glen™ organic pasta sauce (any variety)
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 1 teaspoon garlic salt
  • 1 1/2 lb uncooked chicken breast tenders (not breaded)
  • 14 uncooked manicotti shells (8 oz)
  • 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (8 oz)
  • Chopped fresh basil leaves, if desired

2022 06 07 15 40
2022 06 07 15 40

4 Really Big Names That Are Warning That Major Economic Disaster Is Ahead

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I hope that you are enjoying these beautiful summer weekends while you still can, because it appears that very troubled times are dead ahead.  Simultaneously, inflation continues to spiral out of control even as economic activity in the U.S. dramatically slows down.  Many have compared what we are currently experiencing to the “stagflation” of the 1970s, but the truth is that what we are facing will eventually be so much worse than anything that we went through back then.  A meltdown of historic proportions is here, and as you will see below, some of the biggest names in the entire country are talking about it.

On Monday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States set another all-time record high

The gas price spike keeps getting worse.

The national average jumped to $4.87 a gallon on Monday, according to AAA. That’s up 25 cents in the past week and 59 cents in the past month.

There are now 10 states where the average price of gasoline is $5 a gallon or higher, with the latest being Michigan and Indiana. Washington, DC, is also above $5, according to CNN.

A 25 cent increase in one week is just insane.

If we continue on this trajectory, the price of gasoline would go up about a dollar a month.

I can’t imagine that will be the case, but stranger things have happened.

Overall, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has now more than doubled since Joe Biden entered the White House.

How high will it be a year from now?

For a long time I warned my readers that the price of gasoline would eventually hit ten dollars a gallon, but now we have learned that it is already almost there at one gas station in California.

Meanwhile, U.S. economic activity is really slowing down and we are being warned to brace ourselves for the worst.

In fact, at this point some of the most prominent people in the entire country are starting to sound like they could be writing for The Economic Collapse Blog.  The following are four really big names that are warning that major economic disaster is ahead…

#1 If you have a “bad feeling” about the U.S. economy, you are not alone.  Elon Musk says that he has a “super bad feeling” about where the U.S. economy is heading, and so he intends to reduce the Tesla workforce by approximately 10 percent…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a “super bad feeling” about the economy and wants to cut about 10% of jobs at the electric carmaker, he said in an email to executives on Thursday seen by Reuters.

The message came two days after the world’s richest man told employees to return to the workplace or leave the company.

#2 I never imagined that I would write about something that rapper Cardi B said on this website, but that is precisely what I am about to do.  At one time she was a huge Biden supporter, but on Sunday she publicly suggested that the U.S. economy is about to enter a recession

Rapper and Joe Biden supporter Cardi B took to Twitter on Sunday to ask when “they going to announce” that the United States is “going into a recession.”

“When y’all think they going to announce that we going into a recession?” Cardi B wrote Sunday in a tweet, which has since garnered more than 120,000 likes, and over 16,000 retweets.

Actually, the U.S. economy contracted during the first quarter of 2022, and if it contracts again in the second quarter then we are actually already in a recession right now.

#3 I really admire author Robert Kiyosaki, and his advice has helped millions of people all over the globe.  In the past he was known for his relentless optimism, but now he is almost as pessimistic about our economic future as I am.  For example, he tweeted out the following back on March 8th

DO YOU HAVE a PLAN “B”? We are in BIGGEST BUBBLE in world history. Bubbles in stocks, real estate, commodities & oil. FUTURE? Possible DEPRESSION with HYPER-INFLATION. My PLAN B: be an entrepreneur, stay out of stock market, create own assets, use debt as $, save G,S, BC, guns.

Then he followed that up with this gem on March 13th

BRANDON & FED want INFLATION to pay off trillions in debt. BEST INVESTMENT may be stocking products you will always use such as toilette paper, trash bags, canned goods, frozen foods, gold, silver, Bitcoin. I do not trust Brandon or Fed. They are Marxists. End the Fed & Brandon.

And then on April 15th he boldly declared that a “hyper-inflation depression” has arrived…

Wiley COYOTE moment coming. Biggest Bubble Bust coming. Baby Boomer’s retirements to be stolen. $10 trillion in fake money spending ending. Government, Wall Street & Fed are thieves. Hyper-inflation Depression here. Buy gold, silver, Bitcoin before the coyote wakes up. Take care

Of course he is dead on accurate about where the economy is heading.  I don’t share his optimism about Bitcoin, but otherwise I think that the things that he has shared are very wise.

#4 The crisis that we are now dealing with did not arrive overnight.  For years, many of us have been relentlessly warning about debt levels, the destruction of our currency, and the foolish decisions that our leaders were making.  Now we are facing the largest debt bubble in all of human history, and there is no easy way out.  On Monday, some thoughts that Kim Dotcom shared on Twitter went viral all over the Internet

Let’s do the math:

US total debt
$90 trillion

US unfunded liabilities
$169 trillion

Total
$259 trillion

Minus all US assets
$193 trillion

Balance
– $66 trillion

That’s $66 trillion of debt and liabilities after every asset in the US has been sold off.

I might quibble with the precise numbers that he used a little bit, but overall Kim Dotcom is right on target.

And I really like how he summarized the nightmare that is in front of us

So even if the US could sell all assets at the current value, which is impossible, it would still be broke.

The US is beyond bankrupt.
This patient is already dead.
This patient is now a zombie.

You probably wonder why are things still going? Why didn’t everything collapse yet.

It’s all perception, denial and dependency.

Our leaders have tried to keep the party going for as long as they possibly could, and for a while that actually worked.

But now a day of reckoning has arrived, and a horrifying economic meltdown has begun.

We are NOT talking about a “recession” that will be here for a while followed by a return to the way that things used to be.

No, NOT AT ALL. Instead, what we are heading for is the sort of immense economic nightmare that I have been warning about for years.

Many Americans will be greatly surprised by how rapidly things totally fall apart, but the real surprise has been that it has taken us so long to get to this point.

You can’t defy the laws of economics forever, and we are about to see the greatest debt pyramid that the planet has ever seen come crashing down all around us.

A word to the wise…

…leave the United States as fast as you can.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 5

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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China so outclasses the United States its just crazy insane

China so outclasses the US which is accustomed to putting so little thought into its policies since it has not had to do so since WWII by virtue of its overwhelming power in 1945, a power no longer based on its accomplishments but based on the destruction of its competitors and potential competitors in that conflict.

-John Walsh

The American Public has been held behind a nearly airtight Iron Curtain of media falsehoods for some time now. Fortunately, Americans have stopped watching the endless stream of lies emanating from “newrooms”. Sadly, for the average person this means there is no place to turn to for an accurate picture of the world.

Simply put, the American People are being held hostage by the swarms of sociopaths that breed in DC’s fetid swamps

Let’s avoid swimming in these boggy pools of shit and turn elsewhere…

Daryl Hall & John Oates – Rich Girl • TopPop

Top of the charts in 1976. Yeah. I had this album.

CIA man’s ‘tell-all’ book reveals more about internal agency incompetence than Russian malfeasance

In ‘The Fourth Man’, former CIA officer Robert Baer crafts a narrative full of speculation and short on facts
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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. 

In 1984, the CIA and the FBI were riding high. Each of these powerful organizations were managing portfolios of Soviet agents who were ostensibly doing their bidding, spying against the USSR, and providing the United States with troves of secret information about the inner workings of the former superpower.

Then, between 1985 and 1986, the walls came tumbling down. Thanks to three American traitors, the entire portfolio of spies being run by the CIA and FBI were rounded up by Soviet authorities. Responsibility for this intelligence disaster would ultimately be assigned to two CIA officers (Edward Lee Howard, who gave away Adolf Tolkachev, the “billion dollar spy,” so named because the information he provided on Moscow’s military capabilities saved the US a billion dollars in research and development costs, and Aldrich Ames, who betrayed 25 Soviet moles, 10 of whom were allegedly arrested and subsequently executed for their crimes) and one FBI man (Robert Hansen, who betrayed scores of Soviet agents, along with the names of so-called double agents – Americans recruited by the Soviets to spy, but who were really working for either the CIA or FBI).

The CIA never fully recovered from the impact of the betrayals inflicted by the trio of traitors – Howard, Ames, and Hansen – all of whom spied for the Soviets and together were responsible for the literal annihilation of the CIA’s human intelligence networks operating in the USSR during the mid-1980s.

Instead of accepting responsibility for its failures, however, the CIA sought to blame a ghost who became known as the so-called “fourth man”, a spy that existed only in the imagination of those who spent years scouring the shadows for evidence of his existence and turning up nothing. It is the hunt for this mythical “fourth man” that is the subject of Robert Baer’s eponymously named book.

Baer, himself a former CIA operations officer, has tapped into his former life, prying open the memories of his former colleagues at the CIA to breathe life into a tale of betrayal and deception-driven paranoia that does not cast a positive light on his former employer.

The Fourth Man, supposedly an “explosive, never-before-told story of the thrilling hunt for a KGB spy in the top ranks of the CIA,” has been likened to a real-life version of John LeCarre’s classic tale of espionage and betrayal, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier…Spy. After reading it, I instead felt like I had experienced a Jerry Seinfeld-inspired tale from The Twighlight Zone – a tiresome story that promised much but, in the end, was about nothing.

One disturbing aspect of Baer’s book is that he puts a name to the “fourth man” – Paul Redmond, a retired CIA counterintelligence officer whose job was to ostensibly hunt down the very spy Baer has tried to bring to life in his narrative. After reading Baer’s book, I walked away very uncomfortable about his assertion that Redmond – the man former CIA Director James Woolsey called “a voice crying out in the wilderness” regarding the existence of a Soviet “mole” inside the CIA who turned out to be Aldrich Ames – was himself not just a spy, but the spy.

The one Baer claims was responsible not only for the inability of the CIA to reconstitute its human intelligence networks in Russia, but also the CIA’s inability to predict the rise of Vladimir Putin, and get a source close enough to Putin to better inform US policy makers about the Russian leader’s intentions. In short, according to Baer, Redmond is singularly responsible for the absolute failure of the CIA when it comes to producing quality intelligence about post-Soviet Russia.

While Baer is open about the many failures of the CIA and the FBI when it came to allowing Howard, Ames, and Hanson to inflict such harm on US intelligence operations, the story he weaves about why the CIA was never able to regain its lost position in Russia – namely that the “fourth man,” a person whom Baer calls “the perfect spy,” was able to tip the Russians off about everything the CIA was doing and thinking of doing regarding Russia – comes off as too contrived, too speculative, and too incomplete to ever capture the imagination of the reader.

For a layperson, Baer’s foray into the world of LeCarre-like quasi-intellectualism might be believable. But Baer – himself an experienced CIA case officer with experience in the former Soviet Union – provides too many clues as to the real reason behind the CIA’s failures, namely the incompetence of the people it tasked with penetrating targets in Moscow. Baer, perhaps unwittingly, regales his audience with two incidents that he was personally involved in – the unauthorized testing of a secret CIA satellite communications system in the Russian capital, and when he and other CIA agents in transit passed through a metal detector in Moscow on their way to destinations south, only to be casually waived through by the Russian customs officer – that together shed a light on the true reasons for the CIA’s many failures.

Given what I know, and what Baer begrudgingly acknowledges, about the professionalism of the Russian security services, it is highly unlikely that either incident escaped the attention of Baer’s Russian hosts, guaranteeing that Baer and his fellow travelers were completely compromised. Simply put, if Baer’s actions were indicative of the lax tradecraft used by the CIA in post-Soviet Russia, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a crack CIA counterintelligence squad to understand that the “fourth man” was the agency itself – a fabrication derived from the collective imaginations of the amalgam of egotists, drunks, and schizophrenics that populated the CIA and who had been so unnerved by the consequences of the Howard, Ames, and Hansen betrayals that they allowed themselves to become paralyzed by fear, afraid to undertake any meaningful action against Russia target lest they fall victim to their own collective incompetence.

The “fourth man,” Baer claims, was “more senior and better placed than [Aldrich Ames],” someone who spied for “the game” and not money, and who was never caught, let alone charged, with spying – the “Holy Grail” of American counterintelligence “who knew how to play the game to win.”

I remain unconvinced. I look at the CIA’s abysmal track record in post-Soviet Russia, and I see an agency trapped by mediocrity and a lack of imagination, a Russia Department staffed by second-tier players (the first team was off fighting terrorists) and guided by erstwhile post-Soviet Russian “experts” who comprehended the rise of Vladimir Putin even less than they understood post-Soviet Russia as a whole, and who were more than willing to allow the fiction of the “fourth man” to be promulgated in order to absolve them of their utter incompetence.

2022 06 14 18 00
2022 06 14 18 00

Stray Kitten Waits Outside Home of Family He Befriended, Asking for Help

Russian report

⚡️ From the very beginning of the special operation in Ukraine, military experts undertook to analyze the tactics and further strategy of the RF Armed Forces. The guesses turned out to be wrong due to the dynamic development of events and the fact that our army tried different models of warfare. Today it is already possible to conduct an intermediate analysis of the situation that is developing within the framework of the NWO. In my estimation, everything is going as it should.

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have completely switched to the tactics of mobile assault groups and complex fire engagement, shifting the focus from high speed of advance to minimizing losses while maintaining damage to the enemy.

Now an approximate algorithm of actions looks like this: Ukrainian positions are opened by UAVs and reconnaissance groups, then artillery and aircraft hit at the identified objects, after critical damage to the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, assault groups consisting of several tanks, other armored vehicles and infantry platoons are advanced in the direction of key objects. Point support is provided by artillery forces and mortars. If Ukraine tries to counterattack, or the offensive of our troops is slowed down, and the enemy’s points are again “polished” by artillery and fighters. Such tactics are systematically squeezing the Armed Forces of Ukraine out of cities, villages and fortified areas.

❗️In general, the Russian troops adopted a strategy to deplete the enemy’s resources. After the final retirement of the combat-ready backbone of the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as the deprivation of the Ukrainian troops of the minimum number of heavy weapons, repair and fuel and lubricant resources, things will go faster.

At the moment, the actions of Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups have been almost completely neutralized. First of all, due to the counter-ambush actions of our special forces. In addition, extensive work is being carried out in the rear of the RF Armed Forces to identify and capture / destroy Ukrainian DRGs. Additionally, there is a checkpoint system.

As for the losses of Ukraine as a whole. With a change in tactics, the effectiveness of the liquidation of the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine increased. On average, it is 300-500 people per day. The total amount of Ukrainian combat losses today is, in my opinion, up to 100,000 people. Of these, approximately 25-30 thousand were killed and up to 70 thousand were wounded and surrendered. To these 100 thousand one can add several tens of thousands more deserters.

Russian long-range aviation and the Navy continue to regularly strike with long-range cruise missiles at enemy military targets, including deep in the rear. The calculation of Kyiv and the Western side that the Russian Armed Forces would run out of missiles did not materialize – our military industry provides a sufficient rate of production of these products.

Speaking of aviation, our Air Force has now achieved operational air supremacy. It eliminates the possibility for any effective actions of Ukrainian aviation over the territories controlled by the Russian Federation, and also allows Russian pilots to operate effectively. At the same time, pockets of Ukrainian air defense remain, creating a high danger for our aircraft. The air defense system of the Ukraine was created according to Soviet principles, with deep separation, extensive use of maneuver and camouflage, and the use of anti-aircraft ambush tactics. In the history of wars, such a powerful and diverse air defense system operates for the first time.

With regards to the supply of Western weapons. They turned out to be a tangible help for the Ukrainian troops, but not enough. There are few foreign weapons, ensuring their operation suffers due to the extremely short training period for Ukrainian combat crews. There is an ammunition shortage. In addition, a number of European countries are sabotaging supplies initiated by the United States, which leads to a low density of heavy equipment per kilometer of front and does not have a significant impact on hostilities.

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation use the theater of operations within the framework of the NMD to develop the latest weapons. At a minimum, the use of BMPTs, the Tornado-G and Tornado-S MLRS systems, and a flight of Su-57 fighters was noticed. For the first time, the Buk-M3 air defense system is used in combat conditions.

– Colonel Khodarenok
(machine translation)

COLOMBIAN ARROZ CON POLLO (Rice with chicken)

Today’s main meal entree hails from Columbia. It’s a very flavorful rice and chicken meal. Very delicious!

“Top Gun: Maverick” is Military Propaganda. Official Documents Prove It

BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF – “Top Gun: Maverick” is a box-office smash, a massive hit with both critics and the public alike. Navy and Air Force units across the country have set up recruitment stalls inside movie halls, hoping to sign up individuals buzzed after watching the high-paced aviation action. But documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the movie was made only after an agreement was signed between Hollywood and the Pentagon, with the Navy insisting on “weav[ing] in” their “key talking points” in exchange for granting the production company extensive access to military hardware.

Investigative journalist Tom Secker, author of “National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood,” was one of those who obtained the documents. Secker explained that “Top Gun: Maverick” was made with an explicit agenda behind it, telling MintPress:

It’s about rehabilitation of the military’s image in the wake of numerous failed wars. The film also helps foreground human pilots flying an actual combat mission – something very rare in these days of high-altitude airstrikes and drone warfare. It helps distract from all the drone pilots who’ve spoken out about the misery and horror inherent in that job.”

The sequel to the hit 1980s movie “Top Gun,” the new film follows the story of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell over 30 years later, as the renegade pilot who does not play by the rules is brought in to train the Navy’s best young pilots for a secret mission to blow up a uranium enrichment facility [a site implied to be in Iran]. Maverick instead shows that he is still the best pilot and is selected for the mission himself.

The production agreement between the Department of Defense (DoD) and Paramount Pictures is an explicit quid pro quo. In exchange for all manner of technical support and access to military equipment and personnel, the Pentagon was allowed to “[a]ssign a senior staff, post-command Officer to review with public affairs the script’s thematics and weave in key talking points relevant to the aviation community.”

Full Article HERE

These 15 Maps Hilariously Explain the United States of America.

Funny, but really good.

Foreign English teachers requested to swear allegiance to Basic Law, ‘part of HK revamp plan’

Published: Jun 13, 2022 09:11 PM
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2022 06 14 14 46
2022 06 14 14 46

The Education Bureau (EDB) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) told the Global Times on Monday that the requirement for native-speaking English teachers (NETs) working in Hong Kong government schools to swear allegiance to the city accords with the law and would ensure effective governance, rebutting some foreign media hype of the city’s “increasing restrictions” and doubts over Hong Kong’s ability to retain educators.

EDB on Saturday said NETs and advisors working in government-run schools whose contracts begin in the coming school year were recently informed of the declaration requirement and that they were required to return the signed declaration on or before June 21, Hong Kong media reported.

EDB confirmed the latest requirement to the Global Times through an email on Monday, saying all government staff, including civil servants and staff appointed on non-civil service terms (non-civil service government staff) are required to declare that they will uphold the Basic Law, bear allegiance to the HKSAR, be dedicated to their duty, and be responsible to the HKSAR government.

NETs currently employed by the EDB on non-civil service terms should sign the declaration, EDB explained, noting the requirement accords with Article 6 of the national security law for Hong Kong.

The requirement is an open acknowledgement of the acceptance and a genuine manifestation of the responsibilities of and expectations on them, which will further safeguard and promote the core values that should be upheld by all government employees, and ensure the effective governance of the HKSAR Government.

The authority also noted that “neglect, refusal or failure to sign and return the declaration by the deadline without a reasonable excuse” would lead to a contract termination.

Since the waning of the social uproar and the enactment of the national security law for the HKSAR in 2020, oath-taking has been applied to the public sector like district councilors, civil servants and government staff.

Hong Kong society wasn’t that satisfied with the ethics of some teachers, who exposed the students to hazardous ideas and remarks during the past social unrest, Tang Fei, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers, told the Global Times on Monday. Liberal teaching materials in Hong Kong have also been criticized for containing obsolete and biased content that tarnishes the Chinese mainland.

The requirement for NETs to swear allegiance is part of the Hong Kong government’s education revamp plan, as it hopes to prompt teachers to reflect on professional ethics, Tang said. “And it is natural for NETs in Hong Kong to abide by local laws and regulations.”

Hong Kong started to recruit English teachers from abroad under the NETs scheme in 1997 to better improve children’s English language skills. The monthly salary of a foreign educator under NETs program exceeds HK$30,000 ($3,800).

As for foreign media hype that “13% of NETs in secondary schools left in the 2020-21 school year,” analysts said this is not a big problem and that the HKSAR can further open up its education links with the Chinese mainland.

Schools in Hong Kong can give priority to hiring foreign teachers from international schools and public schools in the mainland, as they are more familiar with all aspects of China and the oath-taking is unlikely to pose obstacles for them.

NETs’ monthly salary is similar to that of local teachers, but the Hong Kong government needs to provide foreigners with additional housing allowance, which is of a high cost, Tang said.

The distribution of NETs in Hong Kong is also uneven and not necessary for some schools, such as those focusing on Chinese language education, Tang said.

Is this the Collapse of the Great American Empire?

Another very good video. Please check it out. I’m a lovin’ this channel.

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Was up all night working on the house

Great personal story by Hal Turner. -MM

So for the past week, I have been working on cleaning up (permanently) the cat damage to my mom’s house in Pennsylvania, that I am inheriting now that she’s gone.  Last night everything came to a head . . .

When my mom died in November, I was to inherit the house in rural Pennsylvania.   I’ve been up here doing my radio show from here for a couple weeks now.

I needed to do that because there’s lots of work that needed doing inside the house.  Chief among that work was ridding the house of cat pee smell.  Of course the gutters all had to be cleaned, they were all clogged.  The roof had moss/lichen growing on it, the vinyl siding had all manner of dead . . . bug . . . thingys. . .  Bore bees have eaten into the framing along the roof, the landscaping was a total disaster . . . lots to do.

For some reason, known only to God, my mom (much to my chagrin) became an old cat lady.   She had at least four cats in the house, then started feeding strays outside, which brought another five or six hanging around the property.

Before mom’s funeral, I let it be known that once I went back to New Jersey, there would be no one at the house to take care of the four cats, and they needed a new home right now.

By the day mom was laid to rest,  we had arranged new homes for all four.

Three of the four went into cat-carriers with little trouble.  The fourth proved to be the psycho-cat-from-hell.   Hissing, biting, clawing.  Drew blood from my neighbors hand even though he was wearing heavy leather gloves.  Long story short, the cat jumped onto a window sill and went out through the screen into the wild.  It was November 28 or 29 and it was cold up here.  The cat had only a house cat fur, so I doubt it survived the weather.

Moreover, it was the nastiest cat imaginable.  Loved my mom; hated everyone and everything else.   So I figured with a disposition like that, even if it survived the cold, it wasn’t likely to survive an encounter with the actual wild animals out in the woods here.   A fox, or Bobcat, or even a Raccoon or two, would make short work of this little psycho-cat.

After the cats were gone, I did the typical clearing out of old stuff.  Clothing, shoes, files.  OMG, how is it that people keep paper files for dozens of years, in drawers all over the house????  Then there are the knick-knacks.  Trivial little things that mean nothing, are worth nothing, but were apparently from some trip or event that gave mom some joy in her life.  And ALL those little knick-knacks, accumulated dust.  Lots of dust.   Oh, and nicotine.  Mom smoked and everything is covered with nicotine, too.

All of it has to be either thrown out or washed.   The dishwasher has gotten an amazing and sustained workout!  It did a great job too.  All those little knick-knacks, all came out shiny clean.

Then the kitchen cabinets.   OHHHHHHHHHH.   What a job those pots and pans.   It turned out that mice got into the kitchen cabinets at some point – don’t know when, but there was mouse pee and crap throughout the cabinets.  ARRRRGHHH, had to clean all that out, too.

Anyway, this latest trip up here to Pennsylvania had to deal with the remaining ugliness of the cats:  specifically, the cat pee smell permeating the house.

Just after mom died, I hired Stanley Steamer to come clean EVERYTING.  Floors, carpets, furniture.   It looked great and smelled great.  Until a few weeks later when that cat pee smell came roaring back.

Tracking it down became an important task.

Remember that psycho cat from hell?   It peed on mom’s queen size mattress, and lived under the box spring in her bedroom, where it peed in there too.  It had torn the underside of the box spring and was living up inside it!

That mattress and box spring had to be burned.  Literally.   Took it out to the burn pit on the property and set it ablaze.

Pillows from various parts of the house also had to go.

But the smell persisted.

So early last week, a neighbor of mine up here came and helped remove ALL the carpeting and padding beneath it.  We cut it out in strips so as to reduce the need to move the heavy furniture.  The only place we couldn’t cut it out was under loaded book cases in the living room.

Once the carpeting and padding was gone, we could see massive stains in the wood subfloor, where the urine (and other waste) had penetrated both the carpeting and the padding.

I have tried every known remedy for cat pee smell.   Cold water and dish soap.  Didn’t work.    Hydrogen peroxide. Fizzed like mad, over and over again, but didn’t work once it dried.  OxyClean, did an amazing job, but in the end, the smell remained.   White vinegar. Stunk the house up with a wretched smell, and when that cleared, the cat pee was back.   OMG there were moments that I thought I should hire a contractor and just bulldoze the house out of existence!

I finally got told by two other people who went through similar things is that the ONLY thing that will work is a product called KILZ Original oil-based primer-sealer.  I kept that in mind as life went on.

Now, there are several levels to what’s been going on and they all came to an apex last night.

I ordered new carpeting a couple months ago from a local carpeting/flooring store.  I wanted to keep the colors and patterns close to – but not precisely as – what my mom had.   It’s a pretty little house in the country.  It’s for relaxing and not for putting on airs or social status.  Mom’s choice of colors and such was nice.  Comfortable.  Rural.  Country-esque, not gawdy or loud.

While the carpeting for the bedrooms and hallway was common and easy to get, the carpet in the living room was special order.  Had to wait 6 weeks for it to be made.

That was fine because an Appraisal had to be done on the house and I didn’t want all new everything in it – that I paid for – affecting the price.

So the Appraisal gets done on May 13 and I then call the carpet vendor to schedule install.  He says, (today) June 13.,

Well, there’s no sense in putting brand new carpeting over cat-pee-stained/smelling sub flooring.  So I had to deal with the stains and such THIS WEEKEND before the carpet guys came.

But I also had to cut the grass and do this web site, and the radio show, and I get tired a lot faster than I used to, so I put it off and put it off and put it off until I couldn’t anymore.

I got the KILZ Original oil-based primer sealer, and then had to move the furniture to actually do the work.

Remember I mentioned book cases in the corner of the living room? They were absolutely LOADED with books.  So I had to give those away in order to move the book cases.  Thankfully, a local couple, long-time friends of my mom, stopped by each night and took a couple bags full.   By Saturday, the book cases were empty.

I moved the book cases, pulled out the last remaining strip of carpeting and padding and found . . . . . . completely rotten plywood sub-flooring, damaged by years of water coming into the house from the rear deck.   The deck is at the same level where the wood frame of the house meets the cinder block foundation, and the water seeped into the house there.

Oh, and when I tell you the wood was rotted, I mean it.  It was literally breaking apart.  I wondered why the book cases were leaning backwards . . . the floor was giving way.

Well, THAT had to be fixed right now.  Couldn’t wait.  So all day Saturday was tear-out the rotted sub-floor, install a new 2″ x 10″ structural beam beneath it to augment the partially rotted one that was in there, seal the holes that developed in the exterior wall, re-install the insulation, and new plywood sub-flooring.

That surprise repair set me back a full day.  The carpet guys were still coming this morning.

Now, I liked the furniture that mom had in the house, but recently I took a nap on the couch.  Comfy cozy.  In my sleep, I rolled from facing the TV in the living room, to facing the rear of the couch.  WHAM.  Cat pee smell in the back cushions.  So I move to the love seat.  WHAM, cat pee smell.   OMG, this is horrifying.  So I move to the over-stuffed chair and ottoman, WHAM, cat pee smell.

These “effin” cats, ruined all the furniture too!   While Stanley Steamer got the stains out of the fabric, it did nothing about what got into the inner cushioning.

So I went to Raymour & Flannigan to order new furniture.  It won’t be in stock until mid-July, but I had to get rid of the existing furniture.

The neighbor that helped me with the carpet said he’d take it.   I made it VERY CLEAR to him about the cat pee smell, and he said, no problem, he thought he could take care of that.   He has grand kids who have basically worn out HIS furniture, so this furniture, he said, would be an improvement.

We loaded the couch, loveseat, overstuffed chair and ottoman into his pick-up truck late Saturday and off he went.

He called me Sunday.   He parked the truck in an outdoor carport at his house, that has doors to keep out the weather.  When he went back into the carport later, it stunk of cat pee! 

I reminded him that I had warned him about this.   I didn’t SELL the furniture, I GAVE it . . . and I don’t want it back.  So if he can’t get rid of the smell, I told him to throw the furniture in a dump.

Sunday, with the rotted sub-floor fixed, I could begin moving the remaining furniture (end tables, coffee table, the thing the TV/Stereo/DVR/DVD player etc. sits on) to do the KILZ Primer Sealer.   This furniture is all Bassett.  Good stuff.  HEAVY stuff!

What a job moving it.  I’m up here for weeks all alone.  I am not the spry young guy I used to be.  This physical work takes a toll on me very fast.  I did it nonetheless.

Well, I started sealing the living room flooring.  The vapors given off by this oil-based primer sealer are God awful.  So I open all the windows to get fresh sir . . . . it starts raining.  Raining IN.  So I had to close the windows.

Finished around 3:48 AM this morning.   Whacked from the vapors, and bone tired, I hit the bed,.   But I had to be up for the carpet guys. I  grabbed three hours sleep and was up around 6.

The carpet guys arrived about 9:30.   They start installing new tack-strip around the perimeter of the living room and we’re having casual conversation, when I mention that the Forest green carpeting goes in the living room first, and the beige goes in the hallway, foyer, and three bedrooms second.  This way we can move the furniture from the two remaining bedrooms into the living room to allow install of the carpet into those bedrooms

The guy says to me, “No one gave us any forest green carpeting, we only have the beige.”

What?

Yep.  Turns out the guy at the warehouse only gave them the rolls needed for the bedrooms, hallway and foyer; NOT the living room.  They LEAVE!   Will be back tomorrow to do the whole house in one shot.

Which is actually a good thing for me because now, I can use the KILZ primer-sealer in the foyer and the two upstairs bedrooms.   I’ll have to do those tonight after my radio show.

So if I’m a little off my game while on the air tonight, you know why!

The Ghost Town of THURMOND, WV – A Good Town Gone Bad

A very good video. It’s about typical America and what has happened to it.

New York spent big on drag shows for kids – media

Parents say they weren’t given the chance to excuse their kids from the performances

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2022 06 14 16 37

New York City Council has spent more than $200,000 in taxpayers money on drag queen shows at city schools since 2018, the New York Post reported on Saturday. The shows featured cross-dressing performers interacting with kids as young as three, and some parents are furious they weren’t given a chance to request an opt-out for their children.

Since January, Drag Story Hour NYC has organized 49 events in 34 public elementary, middle and high schools in the city, the Post reported, noting that the group earned $46,000 last month alone. Since 2018, the group has received $207,000 from New York State and from the city’s departments of education, cultural affairs, youth, and even transportation.

Most of this cash came from the discretionary budgets of city council members, and a further $80,000 has been set aside to bring cross-dressing men into classrooms and libraries this year.

Drag Story Hour NYC shows are described by New York Public Libraries as “inclusive, gender-affirming programs,” in which colorfully-dressed men in women’s clothes give children a sample of “LGBTQ reads … with lots of songs and glitter along the way.” The group has put on shows at public libraries in the city since 2017.

While some parents told the Post that they welcomed such shows in schools, others were furious. “I didn’t get any notice,” one parent told the paper. “My daughter actually came home and told me that a drag queen came to the school … I feel like it would have been better for that conversation to happen at home.”

“Exposing children to drag queens in school is none other than an abuse of authority for the purpose of sexualizing children,” activist Dr. Elana Fishbein told the Post, calling the program “a flagrant disregard for the real needs of the students.” The Department of Education did not comment when asked by the outlet if performers had to pass background checks before interacting with children.

Footage from a “child-friendly” drag show at a Texas gay bar last weekend went viral after children were seen waving dollar bills at performers and joining the queens on stage beneath a sign reading “it’s not gonna lick itself.” The footage prompted Republican lawmakers to introduce legislation banning such events, and follow-up shows at the same bar have been picketed by conservative protesters accusing the organizers of “grooming” children.

Meanwhile in Washington, DC, footage showing children and toddlers marching in a ‘Pride’ parade behind a topless man with breasts caused outrage online over the weekend.

Last year, the CEO of an LGBT advocacy group responsible for funding drag queen story hour events in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was arrested and charged with seven counts of child pornography. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.

How To Make Aborrajados, A Colombian Street Food Snack

A really DIFFERENT taste treat. You cannot use regular bananas on this you have to use their related fruit the plantain.

Arctic Expedition Discover Mysterious Hole Cut Into The Ice

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Looks uncannily like a scene from the movie “The Thing” but in fact this gigantic hole was recently been discovered by an Arctic expedition in Siberia.

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This recently discovered Bermuda triangle type phenomenon is currently being inspected by a team of scientists who believe the huge gas explosions in the frozen Artic oceans although they admit that it is still too early to come to any conclusive facts about this and other similar holes found in the same area.

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This huge hole in the ice with sheer sides looking like it was cute with a mechanical device was found in the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia.

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The large team of scientists do not all agree on what has caused this strange event to happen or even how old it is and how common these holes are, currently they are studying satellite images going back to the 19080’s to just how many other holes they can find and how old the holes are.

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The Cuban Sandwich – How to Make a Cubano Sandwich

Yes. This is a very special sandwich. And yes, it is truly unique. OMG! Watch this video. Don’t you feel inspired to go ahead and make one RIGHT now?

Monetary Madness

A half century ago, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window. American citizens had been prohibited from owning gold since the early 1930s, but foreign governments could exchange their extra dollars for gold. France tried to make a run on the US gold supply so the American government was forced to break the final link between the dollar and gold, thus ending the gold standard. This set off a chain of events that eventually led to what has been known as the petro-dollar.

Nixon was forced to break the gold peg because it was a fiction. In theory, the amount of dollars in circulation reflected the amount of gold held by the United States, but in reality, the American government had been printing as much money as they thought they needed. The reason the French were racing to redeem their dollars for gold was that they knew the peg was a lie. Once that lie was fully understood, a run on the dollar and global monetary collapse was possible.

It is a good lesson about the reality of the gold standard.

It was an example of the old adage that if you need a gold standard to control a corrupt government, that government is corrupt enough to find a way around it. Much of the good living of the post-war years was due to expansionary monetary policy. The cost of that was paid in the 1970’s with spasm of inflation and finally a recession in the early 1980’s that supposedly put monetary policy back in order.

The thing is the money printing after the war was not a problem because those extra dollars could find a home in the expanding American economy and most especially in the rebuilding of Europe. The dollar was the world reserve currency so everyone in the world was willing to take dollars for payment. Europe was in rubble and needed rebuilding, so the demand for dollars seemed endless. As a result, the United States supplied as many dollars as was needed.

The monetary crisis on the 1970’s was due in large part to the fact that Europe had recovered and no longer needed a flood of dollars. The trouble was the American economy was dependent on the expansion of the money supply. The subsequent negotiations that ended with the petro-dollar and the Louvre Accords was supposed to solve this problem. Instead, it merely shifted the target for extra dollars to low labor cost areas like Asia and South America.

That has been the story of the last thirty years. American manufacturing, technology and services have been shifted to low cost areas. The extra dollars followed them in the form of investment, thus keeping inflation in the United States low. The dollars not soaked up in these countries came back in the form of investments in treasuries, equities and real estate. The system let the government expand and asset values to mushroom, without creating retail inflation.

Like the 1970’s, the place for the extra dollars is drying up. That means they are flowing back in the form of inflation. China is no longer the cheap labor economy desperate for investments, so they are not soaking up extra dollars. In fact, China is a maturing economy determined to shift from exports to domestic consumption. It is also not willing to accept inflation from the United States and Europe. The result is too much money in the West creating an inflation spiral.

It is not the only reason for inflation. Stimulus policies aimed at sustaining the standard of living against economic reality are a big driver. The supply chain crisis that is the result of decades of outsourcing is another driver. Then you have the berserk response to the crisis in Ukraine, which is creating havoc in fuel and energy markets. In a complex system like the global economy, there are always many contributing factors to the things we see in the marketplace.

One way to look at the current economic crisis is as a consequence of the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War. The half century long state of war in the United States and the West resulted in an economic system designed to wage global war without operating a war economy. When the war ended, there was no great demobilization and normalization. The cost was seen as too high, so American leaders found what looked like a cheap way to avoid it.

Unlike the 1970’s, the short term solution for the present inflation is not a contraction of the money supply. The Federal Reserve is carrying trillions of assets on its balance sheet which it has to unload. It will now be selling those into a rapidly declining market, as asset prices have been artificially sustained with the combination of free credit and the flows of extra dollars into assets. The Fed could easily set off a collapse in asset values and a global credit crisis if it is not cautious.

The biggest problem facing the country is the lack of competence in the decision making areas of the ruling class.

  • The economic side is dominated by monetarists, who think an economy is just the sum of it money.
  • The political class is full of carny weirdos selected for their entertainment value.
  • Of course, the senior generation has been conditioned to seek good times, rather than make sacrifices.
  • America lacks the human capital to tackle the problems we face.

The situation facing America is not unlike that which faced the Russians after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The cost of terrible governance over seventy years came home all at once and they lacked the political leaders to manage it. The Russians not only faced an economic catastrophe, but a political one as well. They went through a decade of chaos followed by a decade of slow recovery.

That is what most likely awaits the United States and its European dependents.

Pilot – It’s Magic • TopPop

"Magic" is a 1974 song by Scottish pop rock band Pilot, and was the first hit single for the group. 

It was written by band members David Paton and Billy Lyall for their debut album, From the Album of the Same Name. 

Pilot were a Scottish rock group, formed in 1973 in Edinburgh by David Paton and Billy Lyall. 

They are best known for their songs "January", "Magic", "Just A Smile" and "Call Me Round". 

Both Paton and Lyall had briefly been substitute members of the Bay City Rollers before that band's breakthrough. 

Joined by drummer Stuart Tosh, the band recorded several demos during 1972 and 1974. 

They were signed to a management contract with Nick Heath and Tim Heath, sons of British bandleader Ted Heath, and John Cavanagh. In due course they signed to a worldwide recording deal with EMI Records. 

After the recording of their debut album, From the Album of the Same Name, guitarist Ian Bairnson (who had played on the album as a session musician) joined the band permanently. 

The 1974 single "Magic" from their first album, produced by Alan Parsons and written by Lyall and Paton, was a No. 11 UK and No. 5 US success. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in August 1975.

Xi signs outlines that direct China’s military operations other than (for) war

Liu XuanzunPublished: Jun 13, 2022 10:40 PM Updated: Jun 13, 2022 10:32 PM
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Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, recently signed an order to promulgate a set of trial outlines on military operations other than war, which will take effect on Wednesday.

The outlines will standardize, and provide the legal basis for Chinese troops to carry out, missions like disaster relief, humanitarian aid, escort, and peacekeeping, and safeguard China’s national sovereignty, security and development interests, experts said.

The outlines aim to prevent and neutralize risks and challenges, handle emergencies, protect people and property, and safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, and world peace and regional stability, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday.

The outlines have important meanings for the Chinese armed forces to carry out their duties and missions in the new era, as they will make innovations in ways military forces are used and standardize the organization and implementation of the armed forces’ military operations other than war, Xinhua said.

Military operations other than war refer to operations that do not involve war, like disaster relief and humanitarian aid, as well as operations that limit the scale of the use of force like maritime escorts and peacekeeping, a Chinese military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times on Monday.

The Chinese armed forces have been engaged in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020. They also played a vital role in saving the people from natural disasters like earthquakes and floods, which often took place in China over the past years, the expert said, noting that the recipients of disaster relief and humanitarian aid from the Chinese armed forces have also expanded to other countries, including many that received medical equipment and vaccines against COVID-19, and Tonga that was heavily hit by a volcanic eruption and tsunami earlier this year.

The Chinese armed forces are also responsible for counter-terrorism, anti-pirate and peacekeeping missions, including regular escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia as well as UN peacekeeping missions, providing public security goods to the international community, the expert said.

By carrying out these operations overseas, in some cases, the Chinese troops can prevent spillover effects of regional instabilities from affecting China, secure vital transport routes for strategic materials like oil, or safeguard China’s overseas investments, projects and personnel, analysts said, noting that this is likely why Xinhua described the outlines as being capable of safeguarding China’s national sovereignty, security and development interests.

With six chapters and 59 chapters, the outlines summarize experiences accumulated from past missions and practices, draw results from both military and civilian research, and standardize the basic principles, organization and command, types of activities, activity support and political work, providing the legal basis for the troops to carry out military operations other than war, according to Xinhua.

Kittens Tied Up In Trash Bag Cry For Dear Life, Hoping People’d Save Them

Jeeze!

Soviet Mystery Amphibious Vehicle Has Been Discovered In Chelyabinsk

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One local man, Ivan Ivanov, discovered the odd vehicle and shared it over VK, the Russian social network.

He claim it weights around 600kg with a length of 4530mm, a width of 1900mm and a height of 1490mm. Aluminium chassis, slick james-bond design, amphibious, this is like real super hero vehicle. A mysterious amphibious vehicle created back in 1950’s by the Design Bureau of the Chelyabinsk tractor hydraulics plant.

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China trains with its new security partner in Pacific

Chinese police officers have begun training their Solomon Islands colleagues, the island nation has announced

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2022 06 14 16 39

Chinese police have started training their Solomon Islands counterparts, the island nation announced on Sunday. The first round of exercises took place at the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) headquarters in Rove, a western suburb of the capital city of Honiara, between June 7 and 11.

“The security challenges are evolving and still out there threatening this nation and therefore RSIPF must be well prepared to tackle these threats. That is why these trainings are critical and must be delivered to reach all RSIPF officers in Honiara and the provinces,” Deputy Commissioner Ian Vaevaso said during the opening ceremony ahead of the exercise.

The training involved practicing “basic equipment handling skills, basic survive skills, self-defense and counterattack, posture and movement,” the Solomon Islands government said in a statement. The exercise was conducted by instructors with the China Police Liaison Team, it added.

The drills come following a security pact inked by Beijing and Honiara in late April. The agreement further soured the already strained ties between Australia and China, alarming Canberra’s Western allies as well. The West accused Beijing of seeking to create a military base in the Solomon Islands, while then-Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described such prospects as a “red line” for Canberra. US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink warned that Washington would have “significant concerns, and we would very naturally respond to those concerns” should such an outpost emerge.

China, however, rejected the criticism, stating that it distorted “facts and slanders China’s regular cooperation with the countries of Oceania,” while denying harboring any plans to set up a military base in the Solomon Islands. In late May, Western media leaked a draft document suggesting that Beijing was planning to offer economic and security cooperation deals to 10 additional small island nations in the Pacific. The potential deals appeared to be very similar in nature to the pact inked with the Solomon Islands.

Beijing maintains it will continue building ties with the Pacific nations despite the overseas pressure. The agreement with the Solomon Islands has become an example of “open” and “transparent” cooperation, China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Feng said on Saturday.

“The Pacific should be a stage of international cooperation, not an arena for geopolitical games,” Xie told China Media Group in an interview.

Descend Into A Tomb Of Imprisoned Vehicles Frozen In Time

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Nobody likes a visit to the car pound. It probably as one of my least favourite places to be on earth, but you wouldn’t have a hard time convincing me to pay a visit to this particular car pound, hidden 150ft below a piazza in the city of Naples, sealed off after WWII and forgotten about for more than 60 years.

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The place is filled with vintage cars, motorcycles and scooters dating back to the 40s and 50s, but the walls and tunnels they’re entombed in look ancient. And they almost are. Built in 1853 by Ferdinand II of Bourbon, the multilevel subterranean network was conceived as a sort of emergency escape route for the unpopular monarch who feared revolution. The vast underground tunnels would serve as a passageway large enough for his troops and horses to escape the palace and make it to the military barracks. The revolution never came, at least not before Ferdinand’s death in 1859, and the network was never completed.

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Chinese and Pakistani officials have agreed to increase their cooperation in countering terrorism and other security concerns, deepening their cooperation amid efforts by “outside forces” to divide the two countries.

“Pakistan and China reaffirmed their strategic partnership in challenging times and agreed to continue regular exchange of perspectives on issues of mutual interest,” Islamabad’s military said in a statement on Sunday. The countries also vowed to enhance their ties on training, technology, and counterterrorism.

The agreement followed talks during a four-day visit to Beijing by a Pakistani military delegation, headed by Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Their Chinese hosts were led by General Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission.

The delegations discussed their perspectives on international and regional security. Beijing reportedly called on Bajwa to stop attacks in the Balochistan region against Chinese nationals who are working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a collection of infrastructure projects valued at more than $60 billion.

US officials have repeatedly criticized the CPEC, arguing that it will burden Pakistan with high-cost Chinese loans. Pakistani National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf last week said the CPEC was the target of a “malicious disinformation campaign” and that the initiative was Pakistan’s best opportunity to address its infrastructure woes and become a regional geo-economic hub.

China’s top diplomat in Pakistan, Pang Chunxue, said earlier this month that the CPEC was threatened by a “Cold War mentality.”

“Hostile forces are trying to undermine the development of CPEC as well as the unity and mutual trust between the two countries,” she told reporters in Islamabad.

Baloch insurgents have reportedly targeted CPEC projects, including natural gas pipelines and electricity transmission towers, because they consider China an imperialist power that seeks to plunder the province’s natural resources.

China seeks stronger security ties with Pakistan

Beijing has reaffirmed its strategic partnership with Islamabad and agreed to enhance defense cooperation.

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Senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi warns US not to have miscalculation or illusion on Taiwan question

Published: Jun 14, 2022 10:18 AM Updated: Jun 14, 2022 10:03 AM

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In talks with National Security Advisor of the US Jake Sullivan in Luxembourg, senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi said the US shouldn’t have miscalculation or illusion on the Taiwan question and warned that the Taiwan question, if inappropriately handled, will have a disruptive impact.

The two held “frank, deep and constructive” dialogue and communication on questions that concern both, agreeing to strengthen communication and dialogue, reduce misunderstanding and miscalculation, and properly manage differences. Both of them said it is necessary and beneficial to keep communication channels open.

Yang noted that US President Joe Biden had repeatedly stated that the US has no intention to seek a new Cold War or change China’s system, that the revitalization of US alliances is not anti-China, that the US does not support “Taiwan independence,” and that it is not looking for conflict or confrontation with China.

However, the reality is that the US has been determined to step up all-round containment and repression against China for some time now. It doesn’t solve US’ domestic problems, but plunged China-US relations into a very difficult situation, greatly damaging bilateral exchanges and cooperation.

Such a situation is not in the interests of China, the US and the rest of the world, Yang noted.

Yang is a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee.

China-US relations are at a critical crossroads, Yang said, noting that China is willing to approach China-US relations based on mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation.

China firmly opposes defining China-US relations as competition.

The senior Chinese diplomat said the US should correct its strategic perception of China to make the right choice, and adopt concrete actions to meet China half-way.

In their talks,Yang stressed the Taiwan question concerns political foundation of China-US relations. It will have disruptive impacts if it is inappropriately handled.

The US shouldn’t have miscalculation or illusion on this. It must abide by the One-China principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiques, and handle Taiwan related questions carefully and properly.

China’s position on safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity is unequivocal and firm. China’s internal affairs brook no interference from other countries. Any attempt to obstruct or undermine China’s national unity will be doomed to fail, Yang said.

The US should have positive interactions with China and make joint efforts for the prosperity, stability and development of the Asia-Pacific region.

In their talks, Yang also expressed China’s solemn position on Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Xizang, the South China Sea, human rights, religion and other issues. They exchanged views on Ukraine and the nuclear issues on Korean Peninsula.

Global Times

Chris Hedges: No Way Out but War

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY (Scheerpost) — The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.

The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.

Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d’état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.

There were three restraints to the avarice and bloodlust of the permanent war economy that no longer exist. The first was the old liberal wing of the Democratic Party, led by politicians such as Senator George McGovern, Senator Eugene McCarthy, and Senator J. William Fulbright, who wrote The Pentagon Propaganda Machine. The self-identified progressives, a pitiful minority, in Congress today, from Barbara Lee, who was the single vote in the House and the Senate opposing a broad, open-ended authorization allowing the president to wage war in Afghanistan or anywhere else, to Ilhan Omar now dutifully line up to fund the latest proxy war. The second restraint was an independent media and academia, including journalists such as I.F Stone and Neil Sheehan along with scholars such as Seymour Melman, author of The Permanent War Economy and Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War. Third, and perhaps most important, was an organized anti-war movement, led by religious leaders such as Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr. and Phil and Dan Berrigan as well as groups such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They understood that unchecked militarism was a fatal disease.

None of these opposition forces, which did not reverse the permanent war economy but curbed its excesses, now exist. The two ruling parties have been bought by corporations, especially military contractors. The press is anemic and obsequious to the war industry. Propagandists for permanent war, largely from right-wing think tanks lavishly funded by the war industry, along with former military and intelligence officials, are exclusively quoted or interviewed as military experts. NBC’s “Meet the Press” aired a segment May 13 where officials from Center for a New American Security (CNAS) simulated what a war with China over Taiwan might look like. The co-founder of CNAS, Michèle Flournoy, who appeared in the “Meet the Press” war games segment and was considered by Biden to run the Pentagon, wrote in 2020 in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. needs to develop “the capability to credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours.”

The handful of anti-militarists and critics of empire from the left, such as Noam Chomsky, and the right, such as Ron Paul, have been declared persona non grata by a compliant media. The liberal class has retreated into boutique activism where issues of class, capitalism and militarism are jettisoned for “cancel culture,” multiculturalism and identity politics. Liberals are cheerleading the war in Ukraine. At least the inception of the war with Iraq saw them join significant street protests. Ukraine is embraced as the latest crusade for freedom and democracy against the new Hitler. There is little hope, I fear, of rolling back or restraining the disasters being orchestrated on a national and global level.  The neoconservatives and liberal interventionists chant in unison for war. Biden has appointed these war mongers, whose attitude to nuclear war is terrifyingly cavalier, to run the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the State Department.

Since all we do is war, all proposed solutions are military. This military adventurism accelerates the decline, as the defeat in Vietnam and the squandering of $8 trillion in the futile wars in the Middle East illustrate. War and sanctions, it is believed, will cripple Russia, rich in gas and natural resources. War, or the threat of war, will curb the growing economic and military clout of China.

These are demented and dangerous fantasies, perpetrated by a ruling class that has severed itself from reality. No longer able to salvage their own society and economy, they seek to destroy those of their global competitors, especially Russia and China. Once the militarists cripple Russia, the plan goes, they will focus military aggression on the Indo-Pacific, dominating what Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, referring to the Pacific, called “the American Sea.”

You cannot talk about war without talking about markets. The U.S., whose growth rate has fallen to below 2 percent, while China’s growth rate is 8.1 percent, has turned to military aggression to bolster its sagging economy. If the U.S. can sever Russian gas supplies to Europe, it will force Europeans to buy from the United States. U.S. firms, at the same time, would be happy to replace the Chinese Communist Party, even if they must do it through the threat of war, to open unfettered access to Chinese markets. War, if it did break out with China, would devastate the Chinese, American, and global economies, destroying free trade between countries as in World War I. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

Washington is desperately trying to build military and economic alliances to ward off a rising China, whose economy is expected by 2028 to overtake that of the United States, according to the UK’s Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The White House has said Biden’s current visit to Asia is about sending a “powerful message” to Beijing and others about what the world could look like if democracies “stand together to shape the rules of the road.” The Biden administration has invited South Korea and Japan to attend the NATO summit in Madrid.

But fewer and fewer nations, even among European allies, are willing to be dominated by the United States. Washington’s veneer of democracy and supposed respect for human rights and civil liberties is so badly tarnished as to be irrecoverable. Its economic decline, with China’s manufacturing 70 percent higher than that of the U.S., is irreversible. War is a desperate Hail Mary, one employed by dying empires throughout history with catastrophic consequences. “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable,” Thucydides noted in the History of the Peloponnesian War.

A key component to the sustenance of the permanent war state was the creation of the All-Volunteer Force. Without conscripts, the burden of fighting wars falls to the poor, the working class, and military families. This All-Volunteer Force allows the children of the middle class, who led the Vietnam anti-war movement, to avoid service. It protects the military from internal revolts, carried out by troops during the Vietnam War, which jeopardized the cohesion of the armed forces.

The All-Volunteer Force, by limiting the pool of available troops, also makes the global ambitions of the militarists impossible. Desperate to maintain or increase troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military instituted the stop-loss policy that arbitrarily extended active-duty contracts. Its slang term was the backdoor draft. The effort to bolster the number of troops by hiring private military contractors, as well, had a negligible effect. Increased troop levels would not have won the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but the tiny percentage of those willing to serve in the military (only 7 percent of the U.S. population are veterans) is an unacknowledged Achilles heel for the militarists.

“As a consequence, the problem of too much war and too few soldiers eludes serious scrutiny,” writes historian and retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich in After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. “Expectations of technology bridging that gap provide an excuse to avoid asking the most fundamental questions: Does the United States possess the military wherewithal to oblige adversaries to endorse its claim of being history’s indispensable nation? And if the answer is no, as the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq suggest, wouldn’t it make sense for Washington to temper its ambitions accordingly?”

This question, as Bacevich points out, is “anathema.” The military strategists work from the supposition that the coming wars won’t look anything like past wars. They invest in imaginary theories of future wars that ignore the lessons of the past, ensuring more fiascos.

The political class is as self-deluded as the generals. It refuses to accept the emergence of a multi-polar world and the palpable decline of American power. It speaks in the outdated language of American exceptionalism and triumphalism, believing it has the right to impose its will as the leader of the “free world.” In his 1992 Defense Planning Guidance memorandum, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz argued that the U.S. must ensure no rival superpower again arises. The U.S. should project its military strength to dominate a unipolar world in perpetuity. On February 19, 1998, on NBC’s “Today Show”, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave the Democratic version of this doctrine of unipolarity. “If we have to use force it is because we are Americans; we are the indispensable nation,” she said. “We stand tall, and we see further than other countries into the future.”

This demented vision of unrivaled U.S. global supremacy, not to mention unrivaled goodness and virtue, blinds the establishment Republicans and Democrats. The military strikes they casually used to assert the doctrine of unipolarity, especially in the Middle East, swiftly spawned jihadist terror and prolonged warfare. None of them saw it coming until the hijacked jets slammed into the World Trade Center twin towers. That they cling to this absurd hallucination is the triumph of hope over experience.

There is a deep loathing among the public for these elitist Ivy League architects of American imperialism. Imperialism was tolerated when it was able to project power abroad and produce rising living standards at home. It was tolerated when it restrained itself to covert interventions in countries such as Iran, Guatemala, and Indonesia. It went off the rails in Vietnam. The military defeats that followed accompanied a steady decline in living standards, wage stagnation, a crumbling infrastructure and eventually a series of economic policies and trade deals, orchestrated by the same ruling class, which deindustrialized and impoverished the country.

The establishment oligarchs, now united in the Democratic Party, distrust Donald Trump. He commits the heresy of questioning the sanctity of the American empire. Trump derided the invasion of Iraq as a “big, fat mistake.” He promised “to keep us out of endless war.” Trump was repeatedly questioned about his relationship with Vladimir Putin. Putin was “a killer,” one interviewer told him. “There are a lot of killers,” Trump retorted. “You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump dared to speak a truth that was to be forever unspoken, the militarists had sold out the American people.

Noam Chomsky took some heat for pointing out, correctly, that Trump is the “one statesman” who has laid out a “sensible” proposition to resolve the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The proposed solution included “facilitating negotiations instead of undermining them and moving toward establishing some kind of accommodation in Europe…in which there are no military alliances but just mutual accommodation.”

Trump is too unfocused and mercurial to offer serious policy solutions. He did set a timetable to withdraw from Afghanistan, but he also ratcheted up the economic war against Venezuela and reinstituted crushing sanctions against Cuba and Iran, which the Obama administration had ended. He increased the military budget. He apparently flirted with carrying out a missile strike on Mexico to “destroy the drug labs.” But he acknowledges a distaste for imperial mismanagement that resonates with the public, one that has every right to loath the smug mandarins that plunge us into one war after another. Trump lies like he breathes. But so do they.

The 57 Republicans who refused to support the $40 billion aid package to Ukraine, along with many of the 19 bills that included an earlier $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine, come out of the kooky conspiratorial world of Trump. They, like Trump, repeat this heresy. They too are attacked and censored. But the longer Biden and the ruling class continue to pour resources into war at our expense, the more these proto fascists, already set to wipe out Democratic gains in the House and the Senate this fall, will be ascendant. Marjorie Taylor Greene, during the debate on the aid package to Ukraine, which most members were not given time to closely examine, said: “$40 billion dollars but there’s no baby formula for American mothers and babies.”

“An unknown amount of money to the CIA and Ukraine supplemental bill but there’s no formula for American babies,” she added. “Stop funding regime change and money laundering scams. A US politician covers up their crimes in countries like Ukraine.”

Democrat Jamie Raskin immediately attacked Greene for parroting the propaganda of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Greene, like Trump, spoke a truth that resonates with a beleaguered public. The opposition to permanent war should have come from the tiny progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which unfortunately sold out to the craven Democratic Party leadership to save their political careers. Greene is demented, but Raskin and the Democrats peddle their own brand of lunacy. We are going to pay a very steep price for this burlesque.

MoA steals the show with REAL news…

Now on towards real news: U.S. president Joe Biden has told NATO to end the proxy war in Ukraine as soon as possible.

Dr. David Lütke @DrLuetke - 20:33 UTC · Jun 12, 2022

Today #NATO's #Stoltenberg stated that #negotiations are needed for #peace in #Ukraine.

Quote:
"Peace is possible. The question is how much territory, how much independence...are [Ukraine] willing to sacrifice for peace."

Rhetoric is changing:
What happened to Ukraine winning?
video

This is the same Stoltenberg who in early April said that NATO must prepare for a ‘long haul’ in Ukraine. Who then said that the war could drag on for years. Jens Stoltenberg, who told us in May that we must put values over profits, is now talking about peace for territorial and sovereignty concessions.

It seems that someone has told Biden that there is zero chance for the Democrats to win in the midterm elections if gas prices stay beyond 5 dollar per gallon. Or maybe this Saturday NYT piece really got under his skin:

Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise.

In interviews, dozens of frustrated Democratic officials, members of Congress and voters expressed doubts about the president’s ability to rescue his reeling party and take the fight to Republicans.

Whatever.

Russia is winning the war. The Ukraine has lost the war and will also lose a large chunk of its territory. Its western fueled ‘resistance’ against the inevitable has seen to that. The U.S. and NATO now acknowledge that much.

Unfortunately some of Zelenski’s advisors are still unable to recognize that:

Михайло Подоляк @Podolyak_M - 7:12 UTC · Jun 13, 2022

Being straightforward – to end the war we need heavy weapons parity:
1000 howitzers caliber 155 mm;
300 MLRS;
500 tanks;
2000 armored vehicles;
1000 drones.

Contact Group of Defense Ministers meeting is held in #Brussels on June 15. We are waiting for a decision.

“To end the war” … Ukraine needs as many weapons as it had when the war started? What happened to those weapons? Will it also need 50 pink unicorns?

It is over. How much territory Ukraine will have to give will be decided by Russia.

The Windover Bog Bodies, Among the Greatest Archeological Discoveries Ever Unearthed in the United States

burial 0
burial 0

It was only after the bones were declared very old and not the product of a mass murder that the 167 bodies found in a pond in Windover, Florida began to stir up excitement in the archeological world. Researchers from Florida State University came to the site, thinking some more Native American bones had been unearthed in the swamplands. They were guessing the bones were 500-600 years old. But then the bones were radiocarbon dated. It turns out the corpses ranged from 6,990 to 8,120 years old. It was then that the academic community became incredibly excited. The Windover Bog has proven to be one of the most important archeological finds in the United States.

In 1982, Steve Vanderjagt, the man who made the find, was using a backhoe to demuck the pond for the development of a new subdivision located about halfway between Disney World and Cape Canaveral. Vanderjagt was confused by the large number of rocks in the pond as that area of Florida was not known to be particularly rocky. Getting out of his backhoe, Vanderjagt went to investigate and almost immediately realized that he had unearthed a huge pile of bones. He called the authorities right away. It was only thanks to his natural curiosity that the site was preserved. After the medical examiners declared them ancient, the specialists from Florida State University were summoned (another brilliant move by Vanderjagt- too often sites are ruined because experts are not called). Deeply intrigued, EKS Corporation, the developers of the site, financed the radiocarbon dating. Once the striking dates were revealed, the State of Florida providing a grant for the excavation.

2022 06 14 18 29
2022 06 14 18 29

Unlike the human remains found in European bogs, the Florida bodies are only skeletons – no flesh remains on the bones. But this does not negate their significance. Nearly half of the skulls contained brain matter. The majority of the skeletons were found lying on their left sides with their heads pointing westward, perhaps toward the setting sun, and their faces pointing to the north. Most had their legs tucked up, as in the fetal position, however three were lying straight. Interestingly, each corpse had a stake thrust through the loose fabric that enshrouded them, presumably to prevent them from floating to the surface of the water as decomposition filled them with air. This practical step was what ultimately protected the bodies from scavengers (animals and grave robbers) and kept them in their intended positions.

people digging
people digging

The find provides unparalleled insight into a hunter-gather community that existed 3,500 years before the Pyramids were built in Egypt. The skeletons and the artifacts found with them have been studied almost continuously in the decades since their discovery. The research paints a picture of a hard but good life in pre-Columbian Florida. Though living mainly off what they could hunt and gather, the community was sedentary, indicating that whatever hardships they may have faced were small compared with the benefits of the area they chose to settle in.

Theirs was an incredibly caring society. Children’s bodies were almost all found to have small toys in their arms. One older woman, perhaps 50, showed signs of having several broken bones. The fractures occurred several years before her death, meaning that despite her handicap the other villagers cared for her and helped her even when she could no longer contribute significantly to the workload. Another body, that of a 15-year-old boy, showed that he was a victim of spina bifida, a crippling birth defect where the vertebrae do not grow together properly around the spinal cord. Despite his many deformed bones, evidence suggests he was loved and cared for throughout his life. These discoveries are mind boggling when one considers how many ancient (and even a few modern) societies abandon the weak and deformed.

2022 06 14 18 30
2022 06 14 18 30

Contents found within the corpses’ as well as other organic remains found in the bog reveal an ecosystem rich in diversity. 30 species of edible and/or medicinal plants were identified by paleobotanists; berries and small fruits were particularly important to the community’s diet. One woman, perhaps 35 years old, was found with a concoction of elderberry, nightshade, and holly in the area where her stomach would have been, suggesting that she was eating medicinal herbs to try and combat an illness. Unfortunately, the combination did not work and whatever afflicted the woman ultimately took her life. Interestingly, the elderberry woman was one of the few bodies stretched out, as opposed to curled up, with her face pointing downward. In other Native American traditions, elderberries were used to fight viral infections.

Another striking difference between the Windover bog people and their European counterparts is that none of the Floridians suffered violent deaths. The bodies include men, women, and children. Roughly half of the bodies were younger than 20 years old when they died but some were well over 70 years old. This was fairly good mortality rate for the place and time. The presence of brain matter in 91 of the bodies suggests that they were buried quickly, within 48 hours of death. Scientists know this because, given the hot humid climate of Florida, brains would have liquefied in bodies not buried quickly.

Somewhat amazingly, DNA analysis of the remains show that these bodies share no biological affiliation with the more modern Native American groups known to have lived in the area. Recognizing the limitations of modern technology, about half of the Windover site was left intact, as a protected National Historic Landmark, so that in 50 or 100 years’ researchers could return to the bog and excavate untouched remains.

A War on Homelessness

Filmed in 2013 but seriously accurate today. A much watch!

Cat Purrs Non-stop When She Finds a Quiet Home for Her Kittens and a Better Life for Them All

French Amazing Food Dish! OMG!

We finish up with this amazing dish which is local to France…

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2022 06 14 17 37

I never heard of this, but if I lived in France, I would hike over and get this dish at some local restaurant or make it myself. It looks so very super delicious.

Kitten Takes Care Of Her Mom’s Corpse

Another cat story…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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American media is reporting on (what looks like) a collapse of the Chinese banking system, but I’m not seeing any of it

I’ve been dealing with a major website crash. I’ve thus been spending a heck of a lot of time trying to get it up and running. This has thus taken away from my video time, my patreon time, and my article generation time. Not to mention my time in regards to my life, my work, my career and my family… as well as my retirement time. Sheech!

So if you noticed some holes in the daily output, now you know why they are there. I’m way to busy trying to “patch things up”

It will take me quite some time to regain full daily functionality. There are many issues and holes that were electronically “punched” into my operations. In the meantime, I will continue on and adapt.

I’m going to be wrapping up all this geopolitical stuff and going back to the standard MM fare. Right now, most are on Patreon videos, but I will have a transition period so that all may benefit.

Moving on…

Hal Turner has an article out that paints a very gloomy picture inside of China. He has no love for China, and his is part of the Intel community, no matter how he might appear otherwise. But that does not mean that he doesn’t have something good to say. It only means that he tends to color his “reporting” with a strong bias.

Today he had an article that seems like an American Depression “bank run” inside of China. And he named a number of my banks that I hold accounts with. So after I read his article I went down the street, to my Bank of China (BOC) and talked to the manager there. They didn’t know what I was talking about. There just isn’t any runs in the banks at all here in the Guangzhou corridor.

BANK RUNS IN PROGRESS WITHIN CHINA

2022 06 15 18 43
2022 06 15 18 43

All banks in Shanghai have just restricted depositors from withdrawing money, causing people to line-up in panic at bank branches.  Banks in rural China have been delaying customer withdrawals for 60 Days, and media have been warned not to publish stories about this or risk prosecution for contributing to additional Bank runs!

Multiple sources  have confirmed deposits at the following six banks have been frozen:

  • Yuzhou Xinminsheng Village Bank (located in Xuchang City, Henan Province)
  • Zhecheng Huanghuai Bank (City of Shangqui, Henan Province)
  • Shangcai Huimin Rural Bank (Zhumadian City, Henan Province)
  • New Oriental Village Bank (City of Kaifeng, Henan Province)
  • Huaihe River Village Bank (Bengbu City, Anhui Province)
  • Yixian County Village Bank (Huangshan City, Anhui Province)

It’s understood the banks with branches across the Henan and Anhui Provinces successively issued announcements in April, stating they would suspend online banking and mobile banking services due to a system upgrade.

At the same time, clients reported their electronic deposits in online accounts, mobile apps and third-party platforms could not be withdrawn.

This led to depositors rushing to local bank branches, only to be told they were unable to withdraw funds.

By late May, images emerged on Chinese social media of demonstrations at the front of numerous bank branches.

According to one user on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, the protests are ongoing but are rarely mentioned in Chinese press.

“It has caused widespread concern on the internet but the media attention is not high, the highest degree of concern is the four banks in Henan.”

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has responded to the rural bank run. It issued a statement on April 25.

“The People’s Bank of China is highly concerned… At present relevant departments have launched an investigation, the People’s Bank of China will cooperate with the relevant departments, to protect the rights of financial consumers.”

Fraud scheme blamed

Following the public protests and the PBOC statement, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission revealed it is investigating fraudulent activity carried out by the Henan New Fortune Group – the largest shareholder of the four banks listed above in the Henan Province. It’s understood the commission is working with police to investigate allegations that the Group colluded with bank insiders to misappropriate bank funds.

Anti-CCP group, bannedbook.org, reported the following:

“According to a call recording between depositors and police officers, a company named Henan New Fortune Group Investment Holdings Co., Ltd. is suspected of illegally absorbing public deposits, and the amount is huge.”

Bank run contagion to “sweep across China”

Regardless of the cause, the developments raise serious questions about the health of China’s banks and its regulatory oversight. The more immediate concern, however, is the prospect of contagion, which is now seeing bank runs spread to bigger cities.

There’s evidence this is already happening.

In one of the only mainstream international media articles to report on the unfolding situation, local residents highlighted the seriousness of the situation and the likelihood of contagion.

From the Financial Times on June 9:

Some depositors such as Xu have already lost trust in the system. The 39-year-old said he had withdrawn all of his deposits from 10 other small banks that had promised him an annualised yield of more than 4 per cent.

“Another depositor, a 30-year-old father, said he had placed more than Rmb900,000 in his village’s banks since 2020 at a return of 4.1 per cent. “I felt like being slaughtered,” he said, declining to give his name. He drove overnight to negotiate with the banking regulator in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, in mid-May. “This is the money my wife and I have saved together since we got married. I had to lie to her that I was away for work.”

On Twitter, a video of a large line at an ICBC Bank in China (one of China’s largest state-owned banks) posted on Tuesday, June 9, suggest contagion is in progress.

Translated to English, the tweet reads “The bank card system is locked, and these people are here to unlock it. Massive runs are coming.”

 

 

Blogger, Jennifer Zeng, has reported major issues with withdrawing cash from banks in Shanghai in recent days. The uncertainty no doubt exacerbated by the prospect of more lockdowns as COVID cases again spike.

All banks in Shanghai have restricted depositors from withdrawing money… A bank run is about to sweep China,” she said.

The lack of reporting about the clear signs of a bank run in China is somewhat surprising.

As HSBC China’s Xuefang Liu puts it, “The rise of China as a global economic power has caused concern that a crisis in Chinese banking could lead to a worldwide downturn similar to the Global Financial Crisis.”

While many analysts believed China’s banking system was widely immune to the Evergrande Crisis, cracks are beginning to emerge and should this bank run intensify, already volatile global markets could be faced with a black swan event even more significant than Evergrande.

 

 

 

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

In the anatomy of an economic crisis, a bank run is the point of no return.  China has just reached that point . . .

Bank runs occur when people scramble to withdraw cash from banks in fear of collapse. In the worst cases, banks’ liquid cash reserves are exhausted, not everyone gets their money and the bank defaults.

It’s a grim scenario which, fortunately, has occurred rarely in history.

The most significant bank runs in the United States took place during the 1930’s Great Depression. More recently, there were runs on numerous U.S. banks during the Financial Crisis in 2008.

In Asia, bank runs have also been rare. A run on Japanese banks in 1927 led to the collapse of dozens of institutions across the country. There was a banking crisis in Myanmar in 2003 which the country has never really fully recovered from.

But perhaps since the Great Depression, none has been as significant compared to what is seemingly unfolding in China right now.

The fact that some con artists scammed some small village banks into going broke would not ordinarily be a big deal, except in this case, the fear such revelations caused triggered mass withdrawal efforts at other small banks . . . which then had to DENY WITHDRAWALS to stay afloat.

Word of these denials spread and people started panicking, going to still more banks to get THEIR money out.   Then, more denied withdrawals.

Instead of containing this in the rural areas, China Regulatory Agencies “opened investigations” but did nothing to restore depositor money . . . which lead to more withdrawals from a wider geographic area.

Now, Banks in Shanghai are denying withdrawals.  That’s it.  That’s the “big one.”

I am told the Shanghai situation is deteriorating very rapidly today.    I was awoken at 3:03 this morning with Covert Intel sources saying there is panic in the streets in Shanghai over this.

Shanghai means banks on other nations ***may*** be affected.   It would likely go first to Banks in eastern Europe, already flummoxed by the Russia-Ukraine hostilities, then move west to London, then to New York.

It could all spread THIS WEEK.

Having proper cash on hand for yourself and your family to get by for a month or two, is now highly advisable . . . just in case.   Remember, cash is NOT for paying bills; it is for SURVIVAL.   Buying food and fuel to get to/from work.  That’s it.

A ding on your credit report is nothing compared to going hungry.   Don’t go hungry.  Have cash.

MM Opinion

This might be happening regionally. But it is not happening where I live, nor where my extended family lives. One of whom lives in Shanghai.

If it IS HAPPENING…

Don't be so sure that it is a random event that is the result of malfeasance. Instead consider the potential that it might be part of a grand "chess move" actuated by the Chinese government intentionally.

If it is NOT happening…

Then consider that this is just more of the same out of the American-controlled "news" media operation. It's an effort to generate fear, and to create the illusion that China is collapsing.

Now a great opinion from Jeff Brown…

A run on Chinese banks? Don’t believe the West’s Big Lie Propaganda Machine. It can’t happen, since the citizens own them all. China Rising Radio Sinoland 220622

A must read HERE

People with eyes with x-ray abilities

Natasha Demkina has something unique, namely eyes with x-ray abilities. Her abilities began to manifest at the age of 10. “I was at home with my mother, and suddenly I had a vision. I could see inside my mother’s body, and I started telling her about the organs I could see. Now, I have to switch from ordinary vision to ‘medical vision.’ I see a colorful picture inside the person for a split second, and then I analyze it,” said Demkina.

After describing her mother’s internal organs to her, Demkina’s story spread by word of mouth among the locals. People began to gather outside her door seeking medical consultation. This discovery attracted the interest of groups from London, New York, and Tokyo, all of whom invited Demkina to demonstrate her abilities.

Demkina’s ability is super powerful. That said, many people and experts doubt her ability. Instead, they believed that Natasha was utilizing “cold reading,” a deceptively simple yet effective method commonly used by astrologers, psychics, and fortune-tellers.

Regardless, Demkina claims she could see that one of her subjects had a prosthetic knee. She was also able to determine that another person has asymmetrical internal organ positions. She can also see the early stages of pregnancy and even the fetus in pregnant women. Remarkable, isn’t it?

Another Cataclysmic Error Threatens To Plunge The U.S. Economy Into A Bottomless Abyss Of Pain And Suffering

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I can’t believe that they actually did it.  Even though it is painfully obvious that the U.S. economy is slowing down dramatically and that we are heading into an excruciating repeat of the housing crash of 2008, the Federal Reserve decided to go ahead with the largest interest rate hike in 28 years anyway.

History has shown us that raising rates just as an economy is entering a recession is an exceedingly foolish move, and many of us have been pleading with the Fed not to do it.  But of course if the Fed actually listened to people like us, we would not be facing such a dire crisis in the first place.

Essentially, the Fed just killed any hopes of avoiding a recession.  The rate hike that was announced on Wednesday was the largest that we have seen since 1994

The Fed raised its key short-term interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point Wednesday – its largest hike since 1994 – to a range of 1.5% to 1.75. It also downgraded its economic forecast.

And it signaled that more big moves may be coming. Fed officials forecast the federal funds rate will end 2022 at a range of 3.25% to 3.5% and next year at close to 4%, according to their median estimate.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell insists that substantially raising rates will tame inflation.

That worked in the early 1980s, but I am skeptical that the same playbook will work again for a couple of reasons.

First of all, in the early 1980s the U.S. was one trillion dollars in debt.  Today, we are 30 trillion dollars in debt.  Our politicians have been on the greatest borrowing and spending binge in the history of the world during the last couple of years, and hiking interest rates cannot erase the trillions upon trillions of new dollars that have entered the economy.

In addition, the Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of dollars that they created out of thin air into the system in recent years.  Hiking interest rates is not a “magic bullet” that can erase that colossal mistake either.

But the Fed feels like it has been forced to do something to address the current crisis, because prices continue to spiral out of control.

For example, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States hit a new record high for the 18th day in a row on Wednesday…

Gas prices on Wednesday reached a record high for the eighteenth consecutive day.

The national average price of gas reached $5.039, according to GasBuddy. On Tuesday, gas prices were around $5.02 per gallon.

And survey after survey has shown that the American people are rapidly losing faith in the Federal Reserve…

Even more concerning are new signs that families have lost faith in the Fed’s policies. Consumer sentiment in June sank to a low not seen since the 1980 recession, according to a University of Michigan survey. Similarly, a poll by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government found that most Americans expect inflation to worsen and are adjusting their spending habits, a mind-set that can make the surge in prices even worse.

So I can understand why Powell and his minions felt a need to raise rates.

But you simply can’t raise rates as the economy enters a recession.  That is suicidal.

At this point, even the Fed’s own numbers show that the economy is really slowing down…

After a week of rampant jawboning to adjust the market’s expectation for The Fed’s actions later today (after last Friday’s unexpected resurgence in CPI), the continued erosion in economic data (most notably retail sales this morning) has prompted The Atlanta Fed to slash its forecast for Q2 GDP growth from +0.9% to 0.0%, meaning the US is now right on the verge of a technical recession (after Q1’s contraction).

If U.S. GDP goes negative again in the second quarter, then we are already officially in a recession right now.

And what the Fed just did is going to make it much worse, because it is about to become a lot more expensive to borrow money…

Every time the Fed raises rates, it becomes more expensive to borrow. That means higher interest costs for mortgages, home equity lines of credit, credit cards, student debt and car loans. Business loans will also get pricier, for businesses large and small.

The most tangible way this is playing out is with mortgages, where rate hikes have already driven up rates and slowed down sales activity.

In particular, higher rates are going to absolutely eviscerate the housing market.  In fact, yesterday I discussed the fact that another housing crash has already begun.  Right now there is a tremendous amount of panic out there as those that work in the industry come to grips with what is now taking place.

 

A year ago, the housing market in the U.S. was red hot, but now the environment has completely changed.

Compared to the same period a year ago, total mortgage application volume was down a whopping 52.7 percent last week…

Total mortgage application volume was 52.7% lower last week than the same week one year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Sharply rising interest rates are decimating refinance volume, and those rates, along with sky-high home prices and a shortage of houses for sale, are hitting demand from potential buyers.

In 2008, the Federal Reserve played a major role in bursting the most epic housing bubble in the history of our country.

Now it is happening again, only this time the housing bubble is even larger than the one that imploded over a decade ago.

Most Americans may not realize it, but this is truly a very sad day for the United States.

An immensely painful economic crisis has essentially been guaranteed, and beyond that we are going to see things happen that once would have been unthinkable.

But things didn’t have to turn out this way.

If we would have made better decisions, we could have had much different results.

Unfortunately, the Fed has come up with an endless series of colossal errors in recent years, and this latest error is one of the biggest of them all.

MidJourney Neural Algorythm Sharpens Style of AI Art

MidJourney is a new art-making tool in closed beta. Though both mysterious and obvious—the output suggests AI-powered generative networks trained to perform style transfer—the resulting art is breathtaking.

As test participants write, invitations come much more often compared to DALL-E 2, because the neural network is more focused on creating amateur art.

Art 1
Art 1

Art 2
Art 2

Art 3
Art 3

Stunning and disturbing "hands" 1
Stunning and disturbing “hands” 1

Stunning and disturbing "hands" 2
Stunning and disturbing “hands” 2

Stunning and disturbing "hands" 3
Stunning and disturbing “hands” 3

Art 4
Art 4

Art 5
Art 5

Art 6
Art 6

Art 7
Art 7

Art 8
Art 8

Art 9
Art 9

Witch
Witch

China’s top trade official fails to meet Australia minister at WTO conference | The Straits Times

The heading should actually be “China refused meeting with the self indulgence arrogant Aussie minister”.

GENEVA (BLOOMBERG) - China's Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao was not available to meet Australia's new Trade Minister Don Farrell during a visit to Geneva, potentially delaying a reset in relations between the two countries.

Canberra and Beijing ended a diplomatic deep freeze lasting more than two years on Sunday (June 12), when Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Defence Minister Wei Fenghe met in Singapore during an international summit.

Full article HERE

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Superior canal dehiscence syndrome (SCDS)

Pam Gilbert began to hear things that others couldn’t. The noises then seized control of her life. Pam Gilbert’s hearing appeared to be a superpower ability at first. When she was on the second story of her house, she could hear the faucet in the basement trickling or her kids turning over in the next room. But it rapidly became a nightmare when she realized she could hear the noises of her own body—her heart pounding in her ears and even her eyeballs shifting from side to side.

Superior canal dehiscence syndrome (SCDS) is a devastating and rare inner ear condition that impairs Gilbert’s hearing and balance. Gilbert describes the sounds she’s hearing as “unshakable noises.”

“They never went away, and there was no way to turn them down. The bones in my neck were breaking like sandpaper, and I could hear it. I could hear my eyeballs moving at one point,” Pam Gilbert detailed the situation. Gilbert confesses that her sanity is eroding as a result of her condition.

Gilbert, fortunately, had surgery on March 4th, 2011. The operation went well. Gilbert felt a sensation of serenity and that her hearing had returned to normal.

How US ‘debt-trap’ diplomacy backfired in Cambodia | South China Morning Post

Both sides could have settled on long-standing loans made to the corrupt regime of Lon Nol in the early 1970s. Instead, US intransigence pushed Phnom Penh further into the embrace of Beijing at a time of intensifying rivalry between the two superpowers

Article HERE

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Confessions Of A Woman In A Polygamous Marriage

How did you end up in a polygamous marriage?

I was born and was raised in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh. A few months before my seventeenth birthday, my father, due to the Guardian System, told me that he had arranged a marriage for me to a foreign businessman in Dubai, and that I would be married within a few weeks.

At the beginning of 2017, I was married to my new husband in Dubai, and became his second wife. I didn’t ever realize that I wouldn’t be his first wife until a few days before the wedding, and I can only remember crying for an entire afternoon the day I found out I would be his second wife. It would not be until the end of last year that our husband took his 3rd and most recent wife.

How old is your husband?

Early 50s

How soon before the wedding did you meet him? What would have happened if you didn’t like him/he didn’t like you?

I met him about a week before the wedding for the first time. If he hadn’t like me, it’s not likely anything would happen since he had already talked to my father, but if i hadn’t liked him there was not much I could have done about it. At that point I was such a mess of nervous teenage anxiety and emotion that there wasn’t much I could have even thought or said.

Why did he marry you?

I’m not sure why exactly, it could have been for my looks or age, since his first wife is quite a bit older than i am, but I’m sure it was also due to the social connections between him and my father that would be forged because of the marriage.

Has your husband mentioned how many wives he plans on having?

He legally can’t marry more than 4 according to Sharia Law, but I can’t imagine he would marry someone else, especially at this point in his life. But who knows, he certainly could. I hope not, but it is a possibility.

Do you have a good relationship with him?

We have a fairly good relationship. Although he doesn’t spend as much time with me as his new wife, he’s very polite and nice to me, and doesn’t mistreat me at all.

Do you love him? Does he love you?

In a way I think I love him; even though I don’t think he married me for love, and I didn’t have much of a choice, I’ve learned to love him for what he is. I know he cares for me in his own way, and I know he wants me to be happy and provided for, which I am very thankful for.

Do you guys have children?

Yes, we have one child, a beautiful two-year old baby girl!

How does your husband treat you? Does he treat all his wives equally or is he biased?

It depends; he treats his first wife and I pretty much the same, or at least spends the same amount of time with us, but ever since his third marriage he’s spent most nights with his new wife. I try not to feel jealous, but it is hard not to resent him and her for it.

How old are his first and third wife?

His first wife is 36, and his most recent wife is only 16. Even though 18 is legally the marriable age in the UAE, a judge can approve a younger marriage, and our husband is wealthy enough to ensure that it happens.

What do you think of a man in his early 50s marrying a girl of 16?

I personally don’t think it’s right for such a marriage to take place. Even though legally it was allowed, the odds are she’ll be widowed before she even turns 40, which is really tragic for her.

Why are you more concerned for her after he dies than what might happen during the marriage?

I don’t think it’s right for him to marry someone so young, but at least this way she is provided for. Once he dies, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to any of us once he dies.

What typically happens to the wives once their husband dies? Say you are 50. Do you get an inheritance?

I would most likely be sent to live with a male relative, and perhaps receive an inheritance or something similar. I would have to follow ‘Iddah’ under Shariah Law and wait before remarrying though. If I an widowed while still young, I could probably remarry, but if I was older I might just live as a widow with my relatives.

He must be very rich to afford 3 wives, 3 households. Are you allowed to spend any money?

He is, as far as I know, fairly wealthy, even though he never talks about business or finances with us. Each of us gets a monthly allowance for groceries, clothes, shopping, and anything else we might need, but it’s never enough to make any really extravagant purchases; for anything like that, like jewelry or really nice clothes; anything really expensive, we have to ask him for permission.

What do you enjoy spending your allowance on?

Well, its usually not enough to buy anything more than the essentials, but I love cooking and buying new ingredients, and i always put a little aside to buy paints and art supplies with.

Are you allowed to work?

No, we aren’t allowed to work, or at least not for money. I love painting and art, so I do work on that a lot, but my husband would never let me sell them or earn a living myself. For the most part I have to rely on my husband to provide for me and our daughter.

How are mealtimes? Do you cook? Do you all eat together?

I usually cook meals for myself and daughter, and maybe a few friends, but we usually I don’t eat with our sister wives, except for on Friday, when we usually eat a meal together with our husband.

When it comes to sex, is it only ever you and him? Or is part of it that the four of you have sexual relations?

It is always only him and one of us, he has never asked any of us to have relations with him at the same time. It’s a very private affair.

Do you spend time with the other wives? Are they your friends? Or do you keep separate lives?

For the most part we are like separate families, we each have our own apartment, cook our own meals, and have our own beds, but fortunately his first wife and I do get along very well; since I left Saudi Arabia she’s been almost like a sister to me. His third wife though, she is very rude to us, since she is the youngest, and we definitely don’t get along.

How is she rude to you?

It feels like since our husband spends more time with her than the rest of us, she has a more privileged relationship with him than we do. She can get him to do things to us that he wouldn’t do otherwise, like punish us for doing innocent things, like going out without his permission, he is usually fine with, but if his youngest wife convinced him to, he will get angry and even hit us, even very softly. It’s more of symbolic than anything, but it still makes me feel awful. She also doesn’t miss an opportunity to bring me down or insult me.

What’s the best thing about your marriage?

Probably having such a good relationship with his first wife. It’s almost like having another sister, and it definitely helps make up for some of the worse parts of my marriage. Either that or being provided for so well. I’m not mistreated or neglected, and it gives me a chance to raise our daughter.

If he were to die soon, would you still be friends with the first wife?

I think we would. Even if we didn’t share a husband, I think we would have been friends anyway, and I think we would stay friends even if we weren’t married to the same man.

What is the worst part about living in such a relationship?

The worst part of my relationship is probably just the stress it brings. For instance, he spends most nights with his new wife, and she knows she is his favorite right now and uses that to treat his first wife and I very badly. I try not to hold it against her or our husband, but it’s hard not to.

Do you feel any resentment towards your father for putting you in a situation you may not have necessarily chosen for yourself?

I do sometimes. He never really gave me a choice in the matter, so I do sometimes feel resentful towards him for putting me into this situation, but it’s the culture he knew growing up, and i know he had my best interests at heart. He wanted to be sure I would be provided for, and I know that despite everything he loves me and wants what’s best for me. But it’s not easy to forgive him.

If you were given a chance to, would you get out of the marriage?

Although under Sharia Law divorce is allowed, the only way it could realistically happen for me is if my husband wanted a divorce as well, which he does not. And if I did divorce him, I don’t know what I would do or where I would go, especially since I would have trouble finding anyone willing to marry a divorced single mother. But honestly, I really don’t want to leave, although I wish it hadn’t happened at all, now that I’m married, I’m fairly well off and happy, and although it’s hard, it’s something I have to live with, and I am alright with that.

Would you prefer a different future for your daughter?

Absolutely. I would never want anyone, least of all my daughter, to be in the same relationship as me.

I would like to see the attitudes towards marriage become more western, and allow women more of a say in who they marry. I also pray that plural marriage continues to become more and more rare as time goes on.

Did you have a childhood sweetheart/relationship before your marriage?

I did have a sweetheart before I got married, he was a family friend, and I thought I was going to marry him for the longest time. I was actually looking forward to it, and I stroll sometimes regret not being able to spend my life with him. But I never had a choice in the matter, so I’ve learned to live with it.

How do you feel about the fact that a lot of the world (at least a lot of the Western world) looks down upon plural marriages. Do you ever question your own lifestyle?

I definitely question my lifestyle, and if I had the choice, I don’t think I would want to be in a plural marriage. Since I do live in Dubai, I do get exposed to more western culture than I did before, and I generally think that the west is right about the negative aspects of polygamy. Despite this, I’ve lived my whole life this way, and I’m not unhappy like many people in the west think. It’s not ideal, and certainly causes more stress and emotional strain on everyone, but it’s not all bad.

How has your life changed because of the marriage?

Before I was married, I lived with my family, and, because of the laws in Saudi Arabia, I had very little freedom of movement, and had to ask permission to do or go anywhere. Even while I was at home my parents, and especially my father, had absolute control over what I did.

Now that I’m married, I don’t have to ask permission to go out, as long as I am accompanied by another woman or male guardian, and I have more control over how I spend the small allowance I get. I also have more freedom at home, to raise our child and to talk and spend time with female friends. Despite this, if he wanted to, or if I made him unhappy with me, my husband could control me just like my father, did and monitor my every move, but fortunately he allows his wives to be fairly independent as long as we obey.

Russia may withdraw recognition of the independence of the Baltic republics and Ukraine

Article HERE

Russian State Duma deputy Yevgeny Fedorov, in an interview with the Sputnik Latvia news agency, said that Russia could withdraw recognition of the independence of Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine in the future. Earlier, Fedorov submitted to the State Duma a draft law on the abolition of the resolution of the USSR State Council of September 6, 1991 - "On the recognition of the independence of the Republic of Lithuania." The explanatory note to the document states that the decision is illegal, since it was adopted by an unconstitutional body in violation of the requirements of several articles of the Constitution of the Soviet Union.

The MP also noted that after Lithuania, such a scenario is possible for Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine. “ We just started with Lithuania. And it is clear why - Lithuania is more dangerous for the Russian Federation in terms of the situation related to the Kaliningrad region, and in the confrontation with NATO and the United States. Therefore, Lithuania is now more important, but this does not mean that we will stop there ,” Fedorov said.

In an interview with the International Affairs magazine, Fedorov spoke about the consequences of the withdrawal of recognition of the independence of Lithuania by the Russian Federation:

"First, Lithuania, in accordance with international law, will automatically cease to be a nation like Kosovo. Someone recognizes Kosovo, someone does not, but Kosovo is not in the UN. It's not a nation, it's a disputed territory. The status of a disputed territory means that this territory cannot be part of NATO, because there is paragraph five there, which states that disputed states and territories cannot be part of NATO. In this case, we proceed from the fact that NATO did not know about this, we did not raise the issue of the dispute, but either after this law or a court decision, by the way, there is such a procedure for canceling the decision of the State Council to recognize the independence of Lithuania, NATO will be obliged to return to this issue due to newly discovered circumstances. In the process of our negotiations with NATO, there will be a legitimate basis for excluding Lithuania from the Alliance in accordance with the fifth paragraph of the NATO Charter.

We are in a constant cycle of conflicts. The operation on the territory of Ukraine is already the hundredth military conflict in thirty years, and the basis for this is the violation of the law in 1990-1991. It was then that territorial international law was violated following the results of the Second World War,” Yevgeny Fedoro said .

From the material of the information portal of the Izvestia newspaper - IZ.RU:

“ Similar measures should also be applied to other countries of the post-Soviet space, in respect of which there are questions about the legal grounds for their withdrawal from the Soviet Union and which show hostility towards Russia. At the same time, Fedorov emphasized, this is not about the return of territories, but about “eliminating threats” for the Russian Federation.

Director General of the Center for the Study of Integration Prospects Sergey Rekeda commented on Fedorov's initiative, calling it a signal to Lithuania and other Baltic countries about their political inferiority. He also added that the decisions to divide the territory of the USSR were not flawless from a legal point of view. In them, according to Rekeda, the factual rather than the formal side prevailed, later consolidated by the consensus between the elites in Moscow and the former Soviet republics, which was violated.

On June 14, the head of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, in an interview with Foreign Policy, expressed Vilnius' concerns about the bill introduced by Fedorov. According to him, despite the fact that the initiative to revoke the recognition of Lithuanian independence does not come from top Russian officials, the Lithuanian authorities perceive it as a direct threat to the country .”

A Nightmare On Wall Street

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This is bad.

This is really, really bad.

Investors loved the ride up, but now the Federal Reserve is helping to destroy the bubble that it once so eagerly created, and trillions of dollars in paper wealth is being wiped out in the process.  Unfortunately, our system is not really designed to handle this sort of carnage.

So many in the financial world live right on the edge, and when things go really, really bad the dominoes can start falling at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking.  We witnessed this back in 2008, and it could soon happen again.

On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 880 points, and many were deeply concerned about what Monday would bring.

Well, the pessimists turned out to be correct, because the Dow plunged another 876 points on Monday.

Overall, the Dow is now down approximately 17 percent from its record high, and so it has almost reached bear market territory.

Of course the S&P 500 is already there

The S&P 500 fell 3.88% to 3,749.63, marking its lowest level since March 2021 and bringing its losses from its January record to more than 21%. The benchmark closed in bear market territory (down more than 20% from its high) after trading there briefly on an intraday basis about three weeks ago. Some on Wall Street say it’s not an official bear market until the index closes there and that’s what happened on Monday. The last time stocks were in a bear market was in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.

Needless to say, the Nasdaq has them both beat.  Tech stocks were on the cutting edge on the way up, and now they are on the bleeding edge on the way down.  The Nasdaq dropped another 4.68% on Monday, and at this point it has already dropped over 33 percent from the all-time high.

Just think about that.

A third of the value of the Nasdaq has already been obliterated.

Wow.

As I write this article, investors are extremely concerned that the Fed could raise rates by 75 basis points on Wednesday…

Major averages hit their lows of the session in the final 30 minutes after a Wall Street Journal report suggested the Fed would consider raising rates by 0.75% on Wednesday, more than the half-point increase currently expected.

And Fox Business is reporting that some traders believe that we could actually see a 100 basis point increase in July….

While market consensus is for a half-point interest rate hike at the Fed’s policy-setting meeting this week, the odds for a larger increase next month are surging, with a potential 75-basis point or 100-basis point jump on the table in July. About 16% of traders are penciling in a 100-basis point jump next month, compared to 53% forecasting a 75-basis point increase, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, which tracks trading.

Of course the Fed should not be raising rates at all.

The U.S. economy is clearly heading into a very painful recession, and you don’t raise rates as a recession is starting.

Unfortunately, Fed officials feel like their hands are tied because inflation is completely out of control.  Last week we learned that the consumer price index has risen to 8.6 percent, and we were told that was the highest that it has been since December 1981.

But if the inflation rate was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would actually be well over 15 percent at this point.

So the Fed is going to bring down the hammer, and that is going to continue to roil financial markets.

And right now cryptocurrencies are being hit harder than anything else.

In fact, the price of Bitcoin plunged 15 percent in just 24 hours…

Bitcoin, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency, has lost 15% in the last 24 hours — putting it about 66% below its all-time high in November last year, when it traded around $69,000, according to data from Coinbase. Bitcoin fell below $24,000 Monday, sending the crypto to its lowest level since December 2020.

Ether, the second-most-valuable digital coin, plunged 17%, and has now lost about 75% of its value since November.

At the peak, just about every Bitcoin investor was in the green.

But as I have warned my readers over and over again, you only make money in the financial markets if you get out in time.

There was quite a bit of panic among crypto investors after the Celsius Network announced that it was being forced to temporarily pause “withdrawals, swaps and transfers”

Celsius Network Ltd., one of the biggest lenders in crypto and a key player in the world of decentralized finance, said late Sunday that it was pausing withdrawals, swaps and transfers following weeks of speculation over its ability to make good on the outsize returns it offered on certain of its products, including yields as high as 17%. The move effectively halted a platform with registered entities across the globe and billions of dollars worth of digital coins under management, accelerating a selloff in the broader market that was already in progress on concern over prospects for tightening monetary policy ahead of a Federal Reserve meeting this week.

We should watch some of these big players in the cryptocurrency industry very carefully.

In the end, I have a feeling that some people that thought that they were “crypto millionaires” will actually walk away with nothing or next to nothing.

Of course it isn’t just crypto investors that are going to get eviscerated.

In recent years our financial markets have been transformed into the biggest casino in the history of the world.

And a lot of investors had become convinced that the Federal Reserve had decided to permanently rig the game in their favor.

Now the rug is being pulled out from under them, and the losses are piling up fast.

Hopefully the markets will stabilize after the Fed decision comes out.

But the outlook for the months ahead is terrible, and my regular readers already know what I believe is coming beyond that.

It took years to get to the top of the rollercoaster, but the ride down will go much, much faster.

Russian Spares for Airbus and Boeing aircraft – Airline Ratings

Russia plans to manufacture unauthorized and unapproved spare parts for Airbus and Boeing aircraft, as their supply lines have been cut by economic sanctions.

This could further deteriorate the value of leased western aircraft operating in Russia, as the use of unauthorized Russian spares would render the aircraft not airworthy in western countries.

The Russian aviation authority, Rostaviatsia, has issued developer certificates to five companies that authorize them to perform modification, certification of minor changes, and issuance of technical documentation, including approval of repair documentation and changes. The five companies include the State Civil Aviation Research Institute, S7 Technics, the Ural Civil Aviation plant, Aviation Engineering Solutions, and the Navigator Institute of Aeronautical Instrumentation. This certification will enable them to manufacture Russian spares. However, those spares would not be recognized as airworthy outside Russia.

Article HERE

Propaganda award of the day…

Yeah. Just add the word “possibly” and include a statement by an “unnamed expert”. LOL!

By the way, the Chinese don’t brew coffee at home. No one owns coffee makers. They drink tea. And if they want a cup of coffee they go to McDonald’s, KFC, or Starbucks for one.

This is just silly…

Can you believve this?
Lies. Lies. Lies.

UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet says will not seek second term | United Nations News | Al Jazeera

The cost of telling the truth!

Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations human rights chief, has said she will not seek a second four-year term after her current one expires at the end of August, ending weeks of speculation.

The 70-year-old made a trip to China last month for which she was criticised by rights groups as well as some Western governments for not doing enough to act against alleged abuses against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the western region of Xinjiang.

Full article HERE

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China’s hostile environment for Western tech pushed out Amazon and Airbnb, but competition remains the biggest challenge | South China Morning Post

On platforms like Airbnb, Amazon and Uber were out competed by local Chinese rivals.
China’s hostile environment for Western tech pushed out Amazon and Airbnb, but competition remains the biggest challenge

An increasing number of Western internet firms are calling it quits in the world’s second largest economy, citing Covid-19 and a tougher regulatory environment

More recent challenges just tell part of the story, according to analysts, who say platforms like Airbnb, Amazon and Uber were outcompeted by local rivals

Full article HERE

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Setback For Airbus-Led Consortium: After 20 Years Of Frustration, Norway Goes The Australia Way & Dumps Its Rotorcraft

Not a lot of countries able to develop their own high tech industry, eg. AUSTRALIA; a TOTAL FAILURE AGAIN AND AGAIN TO BUILD IT OWN SUBMARINE :
Norway has terminated its two-decade-old contract with an Airbus-led consortium of European aircraft and defense manufacturers, NATO Helicopter Industries (NHI), to acquire 14 NH90 medium-lift helicopters, citing 20 years of frustration with the delays, errors, and time-consuming maintenance.

“Regrettably we have reached the conclusion that no matter how many hours our technicians work, and how many parts we order, it will never make the NH90 capable of meeting the requirements of the Norwegian Armed Forces,” said Norwegian Minister of Defence, Bjørn Arild Gram, in a statement released on June 10.

“Based on a joint recommendation by the Armed Forces and associated departments and agencies, the Norwegian Government has therefore decided to end the introduction of the NH90 and has authorized the Norwegian Defence Material Agency to terminate the contract.”

Article HERE

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Ukraine latest updates: Moscow ‘destroys’ Western weapons depot | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

Of course.

Ukraine latest updates: Moscow ‘destroys’ Western weapons depot full of high-technology, expensive, weapons systems.

Full Article HERE

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U.S. paid 2 bln in rubles for astronaut’s trip via Russian spacecraft – CGTN

Russian Space Agency official said U.S. has already paid in ruble for its astronaut's flight on Russian spacecraft in an interview on Saturday, according to China Media Group.

Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos, said the U.S. has paid the full amount of the cost of the flight to the International Space Station for the crewmate Mark Vande Hei on the Russia "Soyuz" spacecraft in an interview with the Russia 24 news channel.

NASA has chosen the Axiom Space Corporation as a middle man to purchase a seat for the American astronaut under pressure from Congress.

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei returned to Earth with two Russian cosmonauts aboard Russia's Soyuz MS-19 Spacecraft in the end of March.

The payment was a month later than planned, according to Rogozin. He said Axiom Space is the direct payer who made the payment of 2 billion rubles, not NASA.

In March, Rogozin said Roscosmos will switch to ruble-denominated contracts with other countries, according to TASS state news agency.

The move came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia will seek payment in rubles for gas sales from "unfriendly" countries as part of countermeasures against Western countries freezing Russia's overseas assets.

Article HERE

Two Culinary Students Made Gigantic, Chocolate Covered Rock Candy Geodes

At the Culinary Institute of America, two students—Alex Yeatts and Abby Lee Wilcox—have spent the last six months creating a collection of chocolate-covered, rock candy geodes and they look absolutely amazing.

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2022 06 15 19 35

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Taiwan

Recently, China starts to make it clear that Taiwan straight is NOT the so-called international water. Chinese MFA spokeperson said as follows on 2022/06/13 (source).

Bloomberg: We reported that Chinese military officials have repeatedly asserted that the Taiwan Strait is not international waters in recent months during meetings with US counterparts. Does the foreign ministry have any comment on this?
Wang Wenbin: Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory. The Taiwan Strait ranges in width from about 70 nautical miles at its narrowest and 220 nautical miles at its widest. According to UNCLOS and Chinese laws, the waters of the Taiwan Strait, extending from both shores toward the middle of the Strait, are divided into several zones including internal waters, territorial sea, contiguous zone, and the Exclusive Economic Zone. China has sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait. At the same time, it respects the lawful rights of other countries in relevant waters.
There is no legal basis of “international waters” in the international law of the sea. It is a false claim when certain countries call the Taiwan Strait “international waters” in order to find a pretext for manipulating issues related to Taiwan and threatening China’s sovereignty and security. China is firmly against this.

This QnA was 2 days ago but I didn’t see this in any western media, especially in anglo sphere. It seems to me that China has put Taiwan reunification on schedule.

China’s President Signs Decree: “Special Military Operations”

World Hal Turner

President Xi Jinping of China signed an order on the right to conduct a “special military operation” without declaring war.  It seems clear, he has Taiwan in mind.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, recently signed an order to promulgate a set of trial outlines on military operations other than war, which will take effect on Wednesday.

The outlines will standardize, and provide the legal basis for Chinese troops to carry out, missions like disaster relief, humanitarian aid, escort, peacekeeping, and safeguarding China’s national sovereignty, security and development interests, experts said.

The outlines aim to prevent and neutralize risks and challenges, handle emergencies, protect people and property.  They also deal with safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests, world peace and regional stability.

The outlines have important meanings for the Chinese armed forces to carry out their duties and missions in the new era, as they will make innovations in ways military forces are used and standardize the organization and implementation of the armed forces’ military operations other than war, sources say.

Military operations other than war refer to operations that do not involve war, like disaster relief and humanitarian aid, as well as operations that limit the scale of the use of force like maritime escorts and peacekeeping, a Chinese military expert who requested anonymity said today.

The Chinese armed forces have been engaged in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020. They also played a vital role in saving the people from natural disasters like earthquakes and floods, which often took place in China over the past years, the expert said.

The Chinese armed forces are also responsible for counter-terrorism, anti-pirate and peacekeeping missions, including regular escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia as well as UN peacekeeping missions, providing public security goods to the international community, the expert said.

By carrying out these operations overseas, in some cases, the Chinese troops can prevent spillover effects of regional instabilities from affecting China, secure vital transport routes for strategic materials like oil, or safeguard China’s overseas investments, projects and personnel, analysts said.

With six chapters and 59 pages, the outlines summarize experiences accumulated from past missions and practices, draw results from both military and civilian research, and standardize the basic principles, organization and command, types of activities, activity support and political work, providing the legal basis for the troops to carry out military operations other than war.

Atop all those matters, the issue of Taiwan seems to be the real focus of the President’s new Decree.

In the same way that Russia is now engaged in a Special Military Operation in Ukraine, China now has the legal basis for it to do the same with Taiwan.

A Conflict inside of China

The main actions of the world conflict will take place around China—expert (EurAsia Daily, Alan Pukhaev, June 13, 2022 — in Russian)

It is practically no secret to anyone anymore that the big game started by the West in the context of the ongoing geopolitical confrontation is pursuing global goals. The fate of the world order is at stake. At the same time, the West, which is defending its hegemony, in its usual manner, is trying to act by proxy, creating problems along the perimeter of its geopolitical enemies—Russia and China.

East and South Asia

Outwardly, this looks rather confusing, but not for those who developed the ingenious schemes used today.

Today, the main direction of the front of the geopolitical struggle is the Ukraine, where Russia is conducting a special military operation, and where the collective West is investing huge financial resources. In this situation, it may seem that Russia is acting alone and China has taken a wait-and-see attitude.

However, according to the renowned sinologist Nikolay Vavilov, this is by no means the case. China is acting. Moreover, it is actively, conscientiously fulfilling the part of the tasks assigned to it.

The aggravation of the situation in the Taiwan Strait can serve as evidence of this. Despite U.S. dissatisfaction, Chinese Air Force planes are flying into the island zone more and more frequently, getting on the nerves of the Taiwanese administration and irritating the United States. This does not allow Washington to fully focus on the Ukraine, which is an obvious help for Russia.

At the same time, it can be noted that today, along the entire perimeter of the Chinese border, the hot phase of the Cold War unleashed by the U.S. against China has unfolded.

“Imran Khan flew to the opening of the Olympics in Beijing. After that, he flew to Moscow. In response, the United States initiated the overthrow of Imran Khan, bringing the pro-American opposition to power. And now a civil war is flaring up in Pakistan,” Nikolay Vavilov wrote in his Telegram channel. “Pakistan is China’s most important ally. The route from western China through Pakistan and on to the Persian Gulf is a strategic hydrocarbon supply route. Basically, a territory bordering China was struck.”

The sinologist draws attention to the fact that quite recently the pro-Chinese regime in the state of Sri Lanka was swept away with the support of the U.S. A government crisis is brewing in Nepal, which directly borders China.

“There was an active struggle for the President in the Philippines as well,” the expert continued. “The winner is a politician associated with Chinese monopolies. But the Philippine military department is pursuing its own pro-U.S. policy. Recently, the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, visited there. During his visit, a framework agreement on maritime security was signed between the Philippines and the U.S. In addition, the United States is trying to draw Vietnam into the anti-Chinese coalition, taking advantage of the fact that it has territorial disputes with China.”

He recalls that Biden has visited South Korea and Japan in May. These are the closest allies of the U.S. And many analysts believe that during his visit a proposal was made to expand Washington’s military cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo with the possibility of transforming Japan into a nuclear power and deploying tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of South Korea.

“We see that Biden is flying not to the Ukraine, but to East Asia,” continues Vavilov. “Meeting with leaders of Southeast Asian countries, focusing efforts in that region.”

The sinologist points out that nearly at the same time there was a coup attempt in the Solomon Islands, where China basically helped the government to stay in power by signing a bilateral security agreement. In addition, according to U.S. media reports, China intends to sign similar agreements with Kiribati and Vanuatu. This is how, according to the expert, Beijing is responding to Washington’s actions—by creating a security belt in the Pacific Ocean.

In addition, it is worth paying attention to NATO’s intentions to grant membership the countries of East Asia. Obviously, this is solely an anti-Chinese measure.

Central Asia

As a confirmation of the expert’s opinion, we can also recall the situation in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan, which also directly borders China. Recall that on May 17–18 this year, the Tajik security forces carried out an anti-terrorist operation there against organized armed gangs.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic has officially stated that the actions of the militants were coordinated from abroad via extremists wanted by the state, the main figure among whom is the leader of the National Alliance and the Islamic Renaissance Party (banned in Tajikistan) Muhiddin Kabiri.

Also bordering China, Kyrgyzstan was visited last month by British representative Richard Chalk (Richard Edward Oliver Chalk. Since 2011, he was heading UK special unit RICU—Research, Information and Communication—a secret service that is part of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism under the UK Home Office. He is now running UK NGO REOC Communications — EurAsia Daily). According to Kyrgyz sources, the main purpose of his visit was to convince the Kyrgyz authorities to start accepting Afghan refugees.

Of course, one cannot ignore the January events in Kazakhstan, which brought the country to the brink of civil war.

Thus, as Nikolay Vavilov noted, destabilization is taking place along the entire perimeter of the Chinese border, with the exception of Mongolia. At the same time, the weakest links, in his opinion, are Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Myanmar. Therefore, it can’t be said that China is sitting on the sidelines. It is fighting a cold war against the U.S.

“Another thing is that this war is still being waged via proxies, via allied political forces, but it is no less fierce,” Nikolay Vavilov continues. “Entire regimes are being demolished, governments are being replaced, and preparations are underway for a large-scale conflict.”

In view of the foregoing, there are reasons to believe that the main actions of the current world conflict will unfold in the Asia-Pacific region. And the Ukraine is a maneuver to distracts Russia.

In Germany

Sanctions going really well: 1 in 6 Germans skipping meals due to inflation price increases on food

Nearly one in six Germans (16 percent) have been forced to go without regular meals to make ends meet, and another 13 percent may face a similar situation if food prices continue to rise, a new survey by the Institute for New Social Answers (INSA) for Germany’s Bild newspaper has found.

Electricity in Australia

Sydney suburbs plunged into darkness as more power outages

Entire suburbs in Sydney were sent into darkness on Monday night, with concerns more power outages could hit areas of both New South Wales and Queensland over the next 24 hours.

It appears at least part of the problem is price controls imposed on electricity suppliers such that some are turning off generation rather than lose money on every kWh generated.

Remember 2008? Another Terrifying Housing Crash Is Now In Progress

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It is often said that those that refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  More than a decade ago, the Federal Reserve created the most epic housing bubble in American history and everyone was happy until 2008 came along.

The economy slowed down, home prices crashed and the ensuing chaos on Wall Street spawned an endless series of movies, television specials and documentaries.

But instead of learning our lessons, we did it again.

The Federal Reserve created an even larger housing bubble, and I have been relentlessly warning that it would inevitably burst.  Now home sales have fallen for six months in a row and prices are crashing again.  In fact, in some parts of the country we have already seen prices plunge by as much as 20 percent

Property prices have fallen by up to 20 percent across parts of the US as buyers shun the market amid ‘Bidenflation’ and spiking interest rates.

Asking prices have plummeted by up to $400,000 in wealthy areas while poorer neighborhoods have seen house values nosedive by as much as $115,000.

Do you remember last time around when millions of homeowners ended up “underwater” on their mortgages?

If we continue on this current trajectory, it is going to happen again.

Last year at this time, the housing market was extremely hot, but now a new report from Redfin is telling us that things have dramatically changed

A May study by Redfin found that about 19 percent of sellers dropped the prices on their homes in a four week period between April and May. The outlet said that the report indicated an end to the country’s pandemic-era housing boom.

Their report found that Google searches for ‘homes for sale’ were down 13 percent from the same time last year.

It also found that requests for home tours were down 12 percent, and that mortgage applications dropped 16 percent from a year prior.

And the higher mortgage rates go, the worse things are going to get.

Unfortunately, mortgage rates are spiking at a rate that is absolutely breathtaking this month

Mortgage rates jumped sharply this week, as fears of a potentially more aggressive rate hike from the Federal Reserve upset financial markets.

The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage rose 10 basis points to 6.28% Tuesday, according to Mortgage News Daily. That followed a 33 basis point jump Monday. The rate was 5.55% one week ago.

The last time we saw mortgage rates this high was during the last housing crash.

Unfortunately, they are only going to go higher because the Federal Reserve wants interest rates throughout our economy to rise in order to fight inflation.

But as I have warned repeatedly in recent months, a high rate environment is going to absolutely eviscerate the housing market.  Already, higher rates have had a colossal impact on home affordability…

Higher home prices and rates have crushed home affordability.

For instance, on a $400,000 home, with a 20% down payment, the monthly mortgage payment went from $1,399 at the start of January to $1,976 today, a difference of $577. That does not include homeowners insurance nor property taxes.

It also does not include the fact that the home is about 20% more expensive than it was a year ago.

Vast multitudes of potential home buyers will be forced out of the market until home prices comes down dramatically.

If you are one of those people, you could try to rent a place while you wait, but apartment rents are 15 percent higher than they were a year ago…

A new report from Redfin shows that nationally listed rents for available apartments rose 15% from a year ago. And the median listed rent for an available apartment rose above $2,000 a month for the first time.

Rents are up more than 30% in Austin, Seattle, and Cincinnati. In Los Angeles the median asking rent is $3,400. Even in formerly affordable cities such as Nashville it’s now $2,140, up 32% from last year.

I am so thankful that Redfin gives us these numbers, but it turns out that Redfin is in deep trouble too.

In fact, Redfin just announced that they will be laying off 8 percent of their workers…

Real estate firms Redfin and Compass are laying off workers, as mortgage rates rise sharply and home sales drop.

In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Compass announced a 10% cut to its workforce, and Redfin announced an 8% cut.

Shares of both companies fell Tuesday. Redfin’s stock touched a new 52-week low.

So many of the exact same things that we witnessed back in 2008 are happening again.

The economy is slowing down.

Big corporations are starting to lay off workers.

Home prices are starting to collapse.

And there is a tremendous amount of pessimism about what is ahead.  In fact, one new survey has found that small business owners are “feeling their gloomiest in nearly five decades”

Small business owners in America are feeling their gloomiest in nearly five decades, a survey released Tuesday morning showed.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said its gauge of businesses expecting better business conditions over the next six months fell to the worst reading in the 48-year history of the survey.

When things got really bad in 2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve responded by pushing interest rates all the way to the floor, and that certainly helped.

But now the Federal Reserve doesn’t have that option.

In fact, the Federal Reserve seems quite determined to dramatically raise rates in a desperate attempt to fight the inflation monster that they had a major role in helping to create.

And the higher that rates go, the worse things will get for the housing market and for the economy as a whole.

If we would have learned some lessons from the last crisis, all of this could have been avoided.  But instead we are now moving into a future which is going to be extraordinarily painful.

At this point, the Federal Reserve is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

If they don’t raise rates, inflation will continue to spiral out of control.

But if they do raise rates, they will crush the housing market and make the coming recession far worse.

For years, they assured all of us that they had everything under control and that they knew exactly what they were doing.

Now everyone can see the truth, but unfortunately it is too late to reverse course.

Tetrachromacy

The majority of us can only perceive a limited number of hues or colors from our surroundings, which may number in the millions. If you think that is already a lot, consider someone who can see 99 million more colors than you. Concetta Antico, the world’s only tetrachromatic artist, is an example.

Tetrachromacy is a hereditary condition in which a small percentage of the global population has more receptors in their eyes than a normal person, allowing them to detect more colors.

Concetta Antico perceives more than green in a tree leaf, stating, “around the rim, I see orange, crimson, or purple; in the shadow, you may see dark green, but I see violet, turquoise, or blue.”

Antoci’s tetrachromacy translates to her vibrant and colorful paintings, and you can see them on her website, concettaantico.com. The crazy part is that her parents first mistook her for color blind or daltonic since she detailed hundreds of hues that only she could see!

Q&A: Indonesia’s defence minister on China in the Asia-Pacific

China has always been the leading civilization in Asia. Many of our sultans, kings, our princes in those days, they would marry princesses from China. We have hundreds of years of relationship.

Al Jazeera: In your speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, you spoke about the “Asian way”. Where does Indonesia fit into that idea?

Subianto: That is our culture that we always try to resolve problems with negotiations, with interactions, with engagement, and we keep on engaging, we keep on discussing until we come to an amicable, mutually beneficial solution. That is the Asian way.

And it is the Indonesian way. We call it musyawarah mufakat (discussion to reach a solution) and we call it gotong royong (working together). We look for common interests; if we always talk about the differences, we might not even meet.

Al Jazeera: A big focus during this summit has been on US-China tensions. What do you see as Indonesia’s role in dealing with those tensions?

Subianto: We are in the real and actual position that we respect and we are friendly, and we are good friends. We have good cooperation with both powers — I have said that many times. The United States has helped us many times, in our critical moments. But China has also helped us. China has also defended us and China is now a very close partner with Indonesia. And actually, China has always been the leading civilization in Asia. Many of our sultans, kings, our princes in those days, they would marry princesses from China. We have hundreds of years of relationship.

So it’s natural. So, you asked me, what is our position, as good friends we try to be, maybe a good common bridge. If not, then we maintain the good relationships

And we are convinced that both powers will have wise leadership. I’m optimistic on that front, many people, of course, understandably are concerned, and yes there are dangers. But I believe the leader of China will be wise, and the leader of the US also. They are great powers. The world will expect them to give us good leadership.

Al Jazeera: What about some of the aspects of Indonesia-China relationships, where there are differences of opinions… for example the South China Sea. How do you navigate those challenges?

Subianto: As I said with good relations, good communication with direct contacts, we can come to an amicable understanding that’s mutually beneficial.

Q&A: Indonesia’s defence minister on security in the Asia-Pacific

Article HERE

Strawberry Shortcake Poke Bundt Cake

This fun poke bundt cake puts a whole new spin on strawberry shortcake!

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Ingredients

Cake

Strawberry Poke Mixture

  • 1 1/2 cups sliced fresh strawberries
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons lemon juice

Cream Cheese Glaze

  • 3/4 cups powdered sugar
  • 2 tablespoons butter, softened
  • 1 oz cream cheese, softened
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons milk
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Garnish

  • 1 cup sliced fresh strawberries

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Russia, Ukraine, China, Taiwan, NATO w/Gonzalo Lira (Live)

"A conflict with China is a catastrophe."

An outstanding, but very long (4 hours) talk about geopolitics including Russia and China. The China section starts around 1:40:00. A must listen to. Listen to the the entire broadcast if you are able to.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 5

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Jus primae noctis, household treasures, Elvis Presley and his love mobile, China lays the line, 1970s tunes, and delicious food

The accusation of Xinjiang genocide is so ludicrous as to insult the intelligence of the audiences being preached to, yet highly placed scholars/politicians/scientists/journalists of the west would still echo every silly comment coming from State Department, or MI6, or that propaganda outfit in Mid-town Manhattan. 

-Oriental Voice

It is CLEAR that the United States want to “pull an Iraq WMD” excuse to invade / do battle with China. They are pushing, pushing and pushing about the “Xinjiang genocide”. And they are not going to stop, as they seem to have invested much in this avenue to attack China.

What am I talking about? HERE, and here…

Fury at UN human rights chief over ‘whitewash’ of Uyghur repression

Dozens of scholars have accused the UN human rights chief of having ignored or contradicted academic findings on abuses in Xinjiang with her statements on the region.

In an open letter published this week, 39 academics from across Europe, the US and Australia called on Michelle Bachelet to release a long-awaited UN report on human rights abuses in China.

The letter, published online, included some academics with whom Bachelet had consulted prior to her visit to Xinjiang. The letter’s signatories expressed gratitude for this, but said they were “deeply disturbed” by her official statement, delivered at a press conference in Guangzhou at the end of her six-day tour.

Set the tone for this article.

The Band! Need I say more?

Dilbert

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China puts it’s foot down.

China will fight to prevent any effort to split Taiwan from China. Splitting is yet precisely defined. It would be at China's discretion. It could even mean the sale of offensive weapons to China's traitors.

Xi Jinping has recently elevated the irritable antics of Japan to very high profile.

It has defined the air surveillance zones including the Diaoyutai, and unfriendly entities will be fended off; China is holding high profile memoriam for Nanjing Massacre; China is explicitly pointing finger at Japan's emperor during WW2 as the number 1 war criminal, and ask for accountability.

China will perpetuate these, and perhaps even increase the frequency.

Afterall, there was 731 biolab issue and the 3-burn/kill/plunder war crimes yet to be addressed as yet. Take Russia's strategy: demilitarization; denazification, indemnification, on Japan!!!

First Japan. Then Uncle Sam next.

- Oriental Voice

Fresh Berry Cobbler

Don’t forget the ice cream.

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Pssst, for an impressive dessert that guests will love and is simple to make, try our easy berry cobbler. It’s ready in a snap and tastes like summer. In our berry cobbler recipe, we love using Bisquick™ to achieve the perfect tender top layer. Top your warm Bisquick™ berry cobbler with whipped topping, homemade whipped cream—it’s super easy to make—or ice cream.

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Steps

  • 1
    Heat the oven to 425°F.
  • 2
    In 2-quart saucepan, mix 1/2 cup sugar and cornstarch. Stir in raspberries, water and lemon juice. Heat to boiling over medium heat, stirring constantly. Continue boiling 1 minute, stirring constantly. Pour berry mixture into 8- or 9-inch (2 quart) glass baking dish.
  • 3
    In medium bowl, stir Bisquick™ mix, milk, 1 tablespoon sugar and melted butter just until blended and a dough forms. Drop dough by 6 spoonfuls onto hot berry mixture.
  • 4
    Bake about 15 minutes or until berry mixture is bubbly and topping is light brown.
  • 5
    Place baking dish on a wire cooling rack. Cool slightly. Serve warm.

China draws security red line to US at defense ministers’ longer-than-expected first meeting

Published: Jun 10, 2022 10:46 PM Updated: Jun 10, 2022 11:17 PM
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The Chinese military won’t hesitate to fight anyone who dares to separate the island of Taiwan from China, China’s State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe told US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during their first meeting in Singapore at the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ (IISS) 19th Shangri-La Dialogue on Friday.

With the purpose to use Taiwan island and topics on the South China Sea to hype “China threat,” the US seeks to build an iron curtain between China and other Asian countries and to implement its “Indo-Pacific Strategy” by rallying allies, analysts said, noting that China is drawing a bottom line by reiterating its firm stance on the Taiwan question.

After being canceled for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the IISS 19th Shangri-La Dialogue is taking place in Singapore from Friday to Sunday. The talks between Wei and Austin on Friday were the first meeting between Chinese and US defense ministers since Austin took office in January 2021.

Topics on the island of Taiwan, South China Sea, and the Ukraine crisis had been discussed at the defense ministers’ meeting.

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Two Su-35 fighter jets and a H-6K bomber fly in formation on May 11, 2018. Photo:China Military

There is only one China, and Taiwan is a sacred, inalienable part of China’s territory, Wei told Austin, noting that if anyone dares to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese military will not hesitate to fight, and will resolutely crush any “Taiwan independence” attempts at all cost to firmly safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, senior Colonel Wu Qian, a spokesperson at China’s Ministry of National Defense, said at a press conference after the meeting.

Austin reiterated to Wei that the US remains committed to its longstanding one-China policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three US-China Joint Communiqués, and the Six Assurances. However, he also “reaffirmed” opposition to “unilateral changes to the status quo,” according to a press release from the US Department of Defense.

The Chinese defense minister’s remarks stressed China’s bottom line for the US as Washington has ramped up efforts to link the Russia-Ukraine conflict with the Taiwan question and create tensions in the region, analysts said. They lashed out at the US for taking “a sausage cutting” strategy to hollow out its one-China policy gradually and intensify the situation at the Taiwan Straits.

Analysts said the US is attempting to shift its EU allies’ focus to the Asia-Pacific region and also consolidate its alliance in Asia.

Japan is the one that closely follows the US in using the current Russia-Ukraine crisis to hype the Chinese mainland’s “threat” to the island of Taiwan. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida used the Russia-Ukraine conflict as an example to oppose “unilateral changes” to the status quo by force and unveil a plan to raise Japan’s defense budget

The US and its allies have stepped up efforts to promote the implementation of the “Indo-Pacific Strategy” this year, as it is trying to build an iron curtain between China and others in the Asia-Pacific region, Yang Xiyu, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times on Friday.

Yang said that the biggest difference in this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue is that the Asia-Pacific region is now facing an unprecedented strategic instability. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has spilled over to the world. NATO is going global, and Western countries have deliberately added fuel to the fire by linking Ukraine with Taiwan, which are irrelevant.

The US had built QUAD, AUKUS, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, but China decided to confidently face them or integrate into them, Yang said, pointing out that China’s choice to send its top defense official this year at this sensitive time shows China’s confidence and strategic focus, as well as China’s strategic sincerity of pushing the Asia-Pacific to integration and cooperation standing at the crossroads.

Frank exchangesWei and Austin’s meeting on Friday is of significance to implementing the important consensus between the two countries’ top leaders and pushing forward the development of the two countries’ military ties, said Senior Colonel Wu, noting the conversation was a frank, positive and constructive strategic communication.

Both sides agreed that the two militaries should carefully implement the key consensus reached by the two countries’ top leaders, keep frequent communication and manage risks and crises, Wu noted.

The meeting between Chinese and US defense ministers is an exchange of views at this historic moment, as China pushes the region toward integration and cooperation and away from separation and Cold War, Yang said.

The significance of the meeting is that it proved the two countries’ high-level conversation is sustainable. Even if the two sides crossed swords with words, being able to exchange views in a frank manner means both sides are willing to implement the consensus reached by the two countries’ top leaders, Yang said.

The conversation between the Chinese and US defense ministers has a positive meaning to the deepening of strategic communication, the exploration in the construction of a “guardrail” for China-US relations, as well as the management of risk, Cao Yanzhong, a research fellow at the Academy of Military Sciences of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), told the Global Times on Friday.

When it comes to the “guardrail” for  China-US relations the US wants to build, China has already drawn three bottom lines the US should not cross during the two countries’ meetings in Anchorage and Tianjin. The US should keep its promises, stop making provocations on the Taiwan question, stop expanding and enhancing military alliances and partnerships in its attempt to “shape security environment of China,” and stop trade sanctions and technology blockades, and take real actions to stabilize China-US relations and promote peace, Cao said.

However, as the US insists on defining the bilateral relations with major power competition, there are two options for such competition to evolve: it can escalate to conflict, or it can pave the way for cooperation, Zhang Yingli, former professor at the International College of Defense Studies at the PLA’s National Defense University, told the Global Times on Friday.

The US military frequently carries out close-in reconnaissance and make provocations on China, and China’s frontline troops have garnered rich experience and skills as they deal with them. This means Chinese troops can carry out their duties in safeguarding national sovereignty very professionally and avoid possible accidents that could lead to crises from happening as much as possible, Zhang said.

Analysts noted the US should also immediately stop arms sales to and military cooperation with the island of Taiwan, stop the highly frequent close-in reconnaissance on China as well as stop stirring up regional confrontation and security tensions in the Indo-Pacific region.

How this is reported in the West...

FLASH: China Tells U.S. “Will not Hesitate to Start a War”

FLASH– 7:31 PM EDT  Friday, June 10, 2022 — The Defense Ministry of the People’s Republic of China told their U.S. counterparts this evening “Beijing will not hesitate to start a war over Taiwan.”

They used those exact words.

Developing  . . .

Neocons warn American leadership that you cannot take what China says at “face value”

“The US doesn’t have to believe anything China says, but it doesn’t have to pick a fight with China either.”

From HERE

Dilbert

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NEWS ALERT! China Will Not Hesitate To Start A War If US Does Not Follow One-China Policy — Beijing

Ah. For those of you who have not been paying attention. -MM

China will not hesitate to start a war if Taiwan is pulled away from China, Chinese Defense Ministry Spokesperson Wu Qian said on Friday.

“If anyone dares to rip Taiwan away from our country, the People’s Liberation Army of China will not hesitate to start a war,” Wu Qian was quoted by the CCTV as saying after a meeting between Defense Minister Wei Fenghe and his US counterpart Lloyd Austin in Singapore.

“We will firmly defend our country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Meanwhile, Austin and Wei discussed the need to responsibly manage competition and maintain open lines of communication, the Pentagon said.

“Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met today with the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) Minister of National Defense General Wei Fenghe on the margins of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Secretary Austin and General Wei discussed US-PRC defense relations and regional security issues,” the statement said.

According to the Pentagon, Austin focused on “the need to responsibly manage competition and maintain open lines of communication.”

“The Secretary underscored the importance of the People’s Liberation Army engaging in substantive dialogue on improving crisis communications and reducing strategic risk,” it added.

The two also discussed North Korea and the Russia-Ukraine crisis. During the talks, the Pentagon chief reaffirmed US commitment to “our longstanding One-China policy,” according to the statement.

The meeting was the first in-person meeting between Austin and Wei, who last spoke with each other over the phone on April 20, which was itself the first such call since the Biden administration took office.

China, last month, in response to a US congressional delegation visit to Taiwan, sent 30 warplanes near the island and urged the US to avoid sending signals of Taiwanese independence.

The Shangri-La Dialogue is an annual event designed to allow heads of state and top defense officials to meet in person to discuss security challenges. The event did not take place in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Urban Exploration Photographer Reveals Abandoned Ferrari & MG Sports Car. Bonus: Lamborghini Diablo Goat Edition

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Dibert

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A comment

Marie-Antoinette, 1770: "Let them eat cake!"
Von der Leyen, 2022: "Let them drive electric!"

-Passerby

CIA spycraft

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Developed by CIA’s Office of Research and Development in the 1970s, this micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was the first flight of an insect-sized aerial vehicle (Insectothopter). It was an initiative to explore the concept of intelligence collection by miniaturized platforms. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

Dilbert

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US Navy aircraft carriers may be useless in a war with China

“The days of the carrier on the modern battlefield may be numbered.”

Aircraft carriers such as the $13 billion USS Gerald R. Ford are floating symbols of the United States’ military power. They are built to dissuade adversaries from attacking American interests, reassure allies in times of crisis, and provide lifesaving close air support to U.S. troops in combat.

Yet these capital ships are also large and tempting targets for anti-ship missiles. Now China, which has missiles that can strike ships up to 2,500 miles away, has reportedly found a way to track U.S. aircraft carriers in real-time.

Last June, a Chinese satellite equipped with artificial intelligence detected the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman during naval exercises off the coast of Long Island, New York, allowing China’s military to follow the ship’s movements, The South China Morning Post first revealed.

Task & Purpose has not independently verified the claim made by Chinese space scientists that they had spotted the Harry S. Truman. The Navy referred questions about the possible implications of this claim to the Pentagon, which did not provide a comment for this story.

If this reporting is accurate, it could indicate the Navy would be unable to dispatch aircraft carriers to Taiwan in response to a Chinese invasion, said Timothy Heath, a senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.

“Given China’s long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles, the only hope that a U.S. carrier has for surviving a battle near Taiwan is to hide from Chinese sensors,” Heath told Task & Purpose. “If this report is true, then the carriers’ last defense against anti-ship ballistic missiles is now gone. The carrier can be found, identified, and tracked, and that data undoubtedly can be passed to Chinese targeteers who could then target the warship.”

In the past, Chinese analysts have had to pore over a massive number of satellite images to locate U.S. aircraft carriers, Heath said. By using artificial intelligence, the Chinese military could greatly accelerate that process.

Even if this particular story about how China tracked the Harry S. Truman turns out not to be true, military analysts have long expected that artificial intelligence would make it much easier for China and other adversaries to sift through satellite images and identify targets, he said.

“I think there is an understanding that the future battlefield is going to be highly transparent in the sense that the proliferation of satellites and AI [artificial intelligence] will make it increasingly difficult for major combatant ships like a carrier to hide. In fact, it’s almost a given that the days of the carrier on the modern battlefield may be numbered.”

China already has a variety of ground-based radars, airborne sensors, and satellites that have made U.S. military planners apprehensive about sending aircraft carriers anywhere near Taiwan, Heath said.

“The military officers I’ve talked to said they have been planning for years to deploy carriers so far away from Taiwan that they’re out of range of the [Chinese] missiles, but frankly, also irrelevant to the combat,” Heath said. “The bottom line is if the U.S. is relying on carriers to save Taiwan, that’s a lost cause. It’s just not viable.”

Retired Navy. Capt. Jerry Hendrix said he has been worried about how U.S. aircraft carriers can be detected from space. Hendrix is a Navy expert who spent 26 years on active duty, during which he served on aircraft carriers and as a strategist on the Chief of Naval Operations staff.

Hendrix recounted to Task & Purpose how he read a news story years ago about an astronaut who spotted his former carrier while he was serving on a space station. From far above the Earth, the astronaut was still able to see the ship’s hull number through one of the station’s telescopes.

“It occurred to me that if a human astronaut in the space station was able to do this, that it probably is not that hard to look for aircraft carriers,” Hendrix said.

Indeed, there are not that many ships in the world that are as large, as fast, or that displace as much water as U.S. aircraft carriers, so Chinese satellites have plenty of clues to look for, Hendrix said. Even though super tankers are larger than aircraft carriers, they do not turn into the wind to launch aircraft.

“If you’re programming in through AI-specific attributes of an aircraft carrier that an aircraft carrier would do but a merchant ship of a similar size would not, then you’re able to make that detection from overhead imagery more quickly,” Hendrix said.

Artificial intelligence would also allow Chinese satellites to quickly distinguish an aircraft carrier’s electronic signature from background noise on the electromagnetic spectrum, he said.

To keep aircraft carriers relevant in future wars, the Navy needs to invest in carrier-based aircraft that can fly much further without refueling than F-35C Joint Strike Fighters, Hendrix said.

Hendrix said he estimates the F-35C can fly up to 650 nautical miles before it needs to be refueled. While the Navy is developing the MQ-25 drone to refuel carrier-based aircraft, not enough of those drones will be on individual aircraft carriers to refuel a lot of F-35Cs for a large strike, he said.

The Navy really needs an unmanned combat aircraft, Hendrix said. The service had been developing such a drone, the X-47B, but decided to move forward with the MQ-25 program first.

There’s no doubt that threats against aircraft carriers are growing, but it’s also worth noting that experts have been writing the aircraft carrier’s obituary for a century. Indeed, the U.S. Naval Institute has compiled a list of articles from its “Proceedings” magazine going back to 1922 that debate the carrier’s worth.

One naysayer argued in 1925 that the Navy should use large dirigibles instead of ships to carry aircraft because airships can fly over both sea and land. A 1959 commentary questioned whether the Navy would get better use out of its money if it built more submarines instead of carrier strike groups. And one author wrote in 1999 that the cruise missile attacks on Al Qaeda in Sudan and Afghanistan the previous year marked the beginning of the end for aircraft carriers.

“As we enter the new millennium it will become more and more obvious, however, that technology that earlier favored the aircraft carrier will dictate its demise,” wrote the author, whose name was not included in the USNI list.

Retired Navy Capt. Brent Sadler said he does not believe the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers are so vulnerable to detection that they could not take part in a military response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

“These Chinese kill chains are long and carrier strike groups are hard targets,” said Sadler, the senior fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C. “They can and will operate within threat ranges.”

In other words: Just because Chinese satellites detect U.S. aircraft carriers does not mean that the Chinese military can get the ships’ location in time to successfully hit them with missiles.

In 1981, the U.S. Navy exercise Ocean Venture demonstrated that American aircraft carriers could avoid being detected by Soviet satellites, thus disproving that the carriers had to stay far away from Soviet territory to survive, said Sadler,  the senior fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C.

“Same is true today, but we just have not really demonstrated this in a way like Ocean Venture did,” Sadler told Task & Purpose.

With that said, the U.S. military has a lot of work in preparation for a possible war with China triggered by an invasion of Taiwan, Salder said That includes practicing how it would fight such a war, expanding the defense industrial base, and investing in more ships to be able to wage a long war.

“Bottom line – carrier strike groups, long-range aircraft and submarines will all be active if such a war occurs,” Sadler said.

Stunning Photos Of The Installation Process For Chinese 5G Network Equipment On  Mount Everest

Not reported in “The West”.

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China Mobile Hong Kong and Huawei have jointly taken 5G connectivity to the highest-altitude base station to the north of Mount Everest. Built at an altitude of 6,500 meters, the highest 5G antenna installation in the world will enable China Mobile to run its dual Gigabit network.

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The base station, along with previously built stations at altitudes of 5300 meters and 5800 meters, is designed to provide full coverage of 5G signals on the North Ridge as well as the Summit of Mount Everest. The network is being maintained by network specialists stationed 24/7 at the altitudes of 5,300 meters and above.

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Apart from this, Zhou Min, general manager of Tibet branch of China Mobile, told the media that the trio of basecamps would ensure telecommunication for the activities of mountain climbing, scientific research, environmental monitoring, and high-definition live streaming by providing download speeds that top 1.66 Gbps and upload speeds higher than 215 Mbps.

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China Mobile Hong Kong revealed the project last month and recently announced its completion via a Facebook post. The team consisted of 150 engineers, network analysts, construction workers, and a couple of Yaks who lugged the 8-ton equipment to the highest base camp. They also plan to use the network in order to properly measure the true height of Mount Everest.

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Approximately 25 km of fiber optic cables were laid as part of the project on top of the 177 km transmission trunk line and the route along with Everest.

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Chinese 5G is everywhere, except inside the USA and their western proxy nations.

A-10 pilot explains how the Air Force can outfit the beloved ‘Warthog’ to take on China

The most delusional article of the day.-MM

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"In order to survive, the A-10 Warthog must adapt and overcome."

Throughout my 10-year flying career in the United States Air Force, the A-10C Thunderbolt II, affectionately dubbed the Warthog, has been the subject of divestment. There is a joke amongst the A-10 community that discussions of getting rid of the A-10 started 2.5 minutes after the last one rolled off the Fairchild-Republic assembly line in 1984. Despite such quips, there is one resounding fact that defines our community; the mission comes before the plane. Now don’t get me wrong, with more than 2,000 hours and two deployments in the A-10, I love the jet with all my heart. But the mission will always come first. So herein lies the paradox: how does a jet under constant threat of divestment adapt and evolve to support the ever-changing mission?

In August of 2020 Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown published a white paper titled “Accelerate Change or Lose,” wherein he asserts that for the Air Force to retain the ability to project power and establish air supremacy anywhere in the world, we must embrace rapid growth and adaptability. Gen. Brown followed his white paper up with action orders, published in December 2020 and revised in February 2022. The action orders were a charge to Air Force leaders to embrace the ideas laid out in the paper, stating “these action orders provide the what. It’s the way we address these action orders that will provide the how. It is all of us … our talented airmen … that are key to cutting unnecessary bureaucracy, recognizing and understanding our competition, and thinking of creative ways we can reshape the design of our Air Force.” With Brown’s charge in mind, the A-10 community set out to analyze and identify how to support the Air Force’s strategic, operational, and tactical goals.

The notion of integrating stand-off weapons (SOWs) on the A-10 was first hatched 10 years ago, but never gained traction due to the threat of divestment. Now, a decade later, and congressionally mandated to remain in service despite divestment efforts in each of the last 10 budget requests, the idea of integrating SOWs on the A-10 was revisited. In July 2021, a group of A-10 tactical experts gathered ‘round the infamous Hog Trough — an informal gathering area where A-10 pilots and crew have mission-related discussions — and postulated on how the A-10C could better help our 4th, 5th, and soon to be 6th-gen brothers and sisters win in the air. The first proposal was the ADM-160 Miniature Air-Launched Decoy, also known as MALD. Carried by the F-16 and B-52, the MALD is a low-cost combat capability that offers mission and combatant commanders the opportunity to saturate an air defense picture and increase the survivability of our 5th-gen assets. When planned and utilized properly, a few dozen decoys can wreak havoc on the defenses of a sophisticated potential enemy like Russia or China.

The A-10C has up to 10 weapons stations available. In today’s Air Force, where new fighters have fewer weapons stations in order to prioritize internal carriage and stealth, the A-10’s sheer volume of available weapons stations is a force multiplier. The MALD weighs about 300 pounds and has a range of approximately 500 miles. It is programmable and aims to duplicate the signatures and flight profiles of combat aircraft, inducing confusion and noise into the enemy air defense picture and complicating their tactical decision-making. A single MALD can be loaded directly onto a station, or two MALD can be loaded on a triple-ejector rack. This enables a single A-10 to carry up to 16 MALD, which is as many as a B-52 can hold and 12 more than an F-16 can. To further break it down, a four-ship formation of A-10s could bring up to 64 MALD to a fight. The A-10’s robust, agile combat employment capabilities (low maintenance footprint and ability to operate from unimproved or makeshift runway surfaces) combined with the ability to carry 16 MALD per aircraft, provides combatant commanders the ability to create multi-axis problems, target saturation, and horizontal escalation options for adversaries. No software integration with the jet’s central computer is required. Carriage and separation testing is the only cost to consider.

After about seven months of research, building a roadmap, rallying A-10 community support and being told ‘no’ at least 50 times, the 127th Wing from Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Michigan, borrowed some load-training versions of the MALD and ground fit checked the ADM-160 on the A-10C at Volk Field Air National Guard Base, Wisconsin. This happened the same day the A-10 chief engineer signed off on the project. The motivation, creativity, and perseverance of our airmen, paired with a mission-oriented community proved that we can accelerate change. Hopefully, the effort will gain the support of Air Combat Command (ACC) and Headquarters Air Force (HAF). With their support, the MALD can go through separation testing and complete its integration on the A-10 in the next few months. Integration of the MALD on the A-10C provides a unique method to use the austere capabilities of the airframe to increase the survivability of every aircraft in the fight.

The second proposal, the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile or JASSM, is the next step in the A-10’s evolution of mission support. The JASSM is a low-observable, air-launched cruise missile, which has become so strategically important to combatant commanders, that it has been integrated onto the F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-35, B-1, B-52, and even the B-2. Initial assessments and theorizing suggests that the A-10 could potentially carry four to five of the missiles. For comparison, the F-15E is the only fighter that can carry more than two JASSM (the Strike Eagle can carry up to five JASSM), while the bomber fleet can carry between 12 and 24 of the munitions, depending on the platform. Although this may not have the same sticker shock associated with the MALD, the A-10 can offer combatant commanders an additional four to five JASSM per sortie, and leverage integrated combat turns (ICTs) to increase sortie production. Risk mitigation demands more SOWs employment, and the carriage capacity combined with the quick-turn capability of the A-10C should be considered as a means to increase the Mass the USAF can provide to a combatant commander. This is not about taking the JASSM away from bombers and other fighters. This is about bringing more weapons to bear in a shorter span of time, which is a critical component of massing fires.

The A-10 is not a nuclear-capable asset, so deployment should not carry the same level of strategic threat as assets that are nuclear-capable. This provides an opportunity for combatant commanders to forward stage long range fires without potentially triggering a change in strategic posture. Unlike the MALD, the JASSM will require software integration in addition to ground fitting and separation testing, however, given the fact that the A-10 and the JASSM are currently available, with support, the timeline could encourage rapid capability offerings to combatant commanders to integrate into plans right away.

Imagine a rapidly-deployable force of non-nuclear fighters that can operate from the most austere locations with a minimal footprint while providing long range fires, decoys, electronic attack, and mission support. That vision is achievable at minimal cost by using assets and capabilities that the Air Force already has, but simply needs to integrate. That is what stand-off weapon integration on the A-10 can provide to combatant commanders.

In the end, should we be called to militarily defend democracy and the freedoms we hold dear, we are going to fight with the force we have, not the force we want. Without a suitable replacement aircraft, the A-10 is likely to remain a congressionally-mandated part of the Air Force, as noted in Gen. Brown’s “4+1” fighter force structure. The integration of the MALD and the JASSM are merely two ways the A-10 community is evolving to best support the Air Force in future fights. Gen. Brown charged airmen with embracing the idea of thinking outside the box and working to counter our adversaries with new and unique methods. The innovative spirit and “get it done” attitude of the A-10 community is an example of accelerating change to not lose. Good luck to our adversaries trying to sort and pick through the 64 MALD delivered by a four-ship flight of A-10s.

CIA operations inside of China

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Dru Blair, Mixed Media on Illustration Board, 2010, Donated Courtesy of Alan Seigrist.

November 1950 marked the entry of Chinese Communist military forces into the Korean War.

The Truman Administration tasked CIA to conduct covert-action programs on the Chinese mainland.

One particularly sensitive and dangerous one involved CIA’s Civil Air Transport (CAT) flying agent-exfiltration missions in which low-altitude, slow-moving planes hoisted agents from the ground.

The painting depicts an ill-fated flight on November 29, 1952 when Norman A. Schwartz and C flew such a mission into Manchuria, unaware that Chinese Communist units had been tipped off about the flight and were waiting in ambush.

Their plane was shot down, and they were killed.

Their two crewmen, John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau, however, were not seriously hurt.They were captured by the PLA.

They were convicted of espionage and imprisoned.

Fecteau was eventually released nearly a year shy of his 20-year sentence, and Downey was released after serving just over 20 years of his life sentence.

(Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

Steve Winwood Dear Mr. Fantasy Live-Crossroads 2007 (High Quality)

I’m jamming to 1970s tunes…

‘Assume you can be jammed’ — What US troops are learning about electronic warfare in Ukraine

“We are really not prepared for that level of electronic warfare.”

Russia’s use of electronic warfare in eastern Ukraine provides a preview to U.S. troops about what it will be like to fight an adversary that can intercept and jam their communications, sever all links to their drones flying overhead, and blind their radars and other sensors.

“Electronic warfare is almost by definition one of the hardest things to discern on the battlefield,” Russian military analyst Michael Kofman told Task & Purpose. “It seems early on Russia was not well prepared to employ these capabilities, but now there are numerous stories of localized jamming and disabling of drones.”

Open source analysts such as Oryx Blog suggest the Ukrainians have destroyed several Russian jammers and deception systems, including the Krasukha mobile electronic warfare system, which is meant to jam drones and other weapons systems guided by radar, said Kofman, director of the Russia Studies Program at CNA, a federally funded research and development center.

However, the Russians have still been able to jam Ukraine’s military communications as well as the Global Positioning Receivers on the drones that the Ukrainians use as artillery spotters, the Associated Press recently reported.

“They are jamming everything their systems can reach,” an unnamed official with a civilian organization that provides the Ukrainian military with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance told the Associated Press. “We can’t say they dominate, but they hinder us greatly.”

The ongoing battle in Eastern Ukraine shows that electronic warfare does not distinguish between inside and outside of the wire. Russia’s tactics in Ukraine may indicate that the days when U.S. troops could comfortably sit in a tactical operations center with perfect communications are coming to an end.

Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran would likely try to jam and intercept U.S. troops’ communications and block or deceive navigation systems in a war, said Lt. Col. Tyson Wetzel, senior Air Force fellow with the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, D.C.

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Under an electronic attack, American service members may need to resort to seemingly anachronistic forms of communications. For example, the Ukrainians use analog landline field phones because they cannot be jammed by the Russians, Coffee or Die reporter Nolan Peterson revealed.

A contested electronic environment could also make it more difficult for U.S. military aircraft to strike their targets. In 2018, Army Gen. Tony Thomas, who led U.S. Special Operations Command, said during a speech that an AC-130 gunship over Syria had been temporarily disabled by an electronic warfare attack.

Thomas told Task & Purpose on Monday that the AC-130 was still able to carry out its mission despite the electronic jamming. It is unclear whether the electronic attack was launched by Syria, Russia, or the Islamic State group.

“But we had to work around in a ‘dirty’ battlefield as opposed to some of the areas in which we had been operating in previous years,” Thomas said, referring to the contested electromagnetic environment.  “It also reminded us that our peer adversaries have that capability in large quantities.”

The threat of electronic warfare remains “an ever-present reality” for U.S. troops in Syria, said Air Force Lt. Col. Gina McKeen, a spokeswoman for Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve.

“U.S. troops and coalition partners are working together to minimize the electronic warfare threat to operations in the Levant in order to ensure the enduring defeat of Daesh [ISIS],” McKeen told Task & Purpose.

In October 2020, the Defense Department released its “Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy,” which calls for investing in “revolutionary, leap-ahead technologies” to combat electronic warfare.

“Recognizing U.S. reliance on the EMS [electromagnetic spectrum], our adversaries have spent 30 years studying, investing, and implementing policies, capabilities, and procedures with the single focus of gaining military advantage over U.S. forces,” the strategy says. “These adversaries are developing and fielding advanced technology that targets U.S. capabilities across the EMS.”

For junior enlisted U.S. service members and noncommissioned officers, Russia’s use of electronic warfare in Ukraine is a reminder that they have an electronic signature – just as they have heat and visual signatures – that can be detected, targeted, and hit, said retired Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe.

“We should expect that the Russians will jam/intercept our communications,” Hodges told Task & Purpose. “They already do this occasionally. That’s why it’s important we train on this at our training centers and home station so that soldiers are disciplined to minimize Russian EW [electronic warfare] effects.”

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U.S. troops must also continue to practice proper procedures to make sure that they are always clear and concise whenever they communicate in a contested electronic warfare environment, he said.

“Assume that you can be jammed and/or intercepted and thus targeted, no matter what system you are using,” Hodges said.

The Russians have learned that lesson the hard way by using cell phones when their communications systems failed. That has made it easy for the Ukainians to find, target, and strike Russian troops, including general officers.

Right now, the Russians have effectively put their jammers on blast so that regions of Eastern Ukraine are electromagnetic dead zones, where neither the Ukrainians nor Russians have access to communications, radars, and other sensors, said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Glenn “Powder” Carlson, president of the Association of Old Crows, a professional organization for electronic and cyber warfare professionals.

Carlson compared the situation to a scene in the movie “The Hunt for Red October,” in which a Navy officer describes how the Soviet fleet was moving too quickly to detect anything on active sonar: “They could run over my daughter’s stereo and not hear it.”

If U.S. troops had to fight in such an environment, they would likely need to use High, Very High, and Ultra High Frequency radios to communicate with each other, Carlson told Task & Purpose.

“EW [electronic warfare] is very much a chess match,” Carlson said. “There’s always moves and counter moves. When I came into it, it was called ‘electronic countermeasures.’ And then you had electronic counter-countermeasures. From those terms, we’ve changed to ‘electronic support,’ ‘electronic attack,’ ‘electronic protect,’ because otherwise we end up with too many ‘counters’ in there.”

The Russians have long been known for their prowess in electronic warfare. Philip Karber, a Marine veteran and national security analyst, has made 39 trips to Ukraine since March 2014, spending a total of 189 days with Ukrainian combat troops. He remembers one incident years ago when the Ukrainians he was with not only came under Russian artillery fire, but the Russians also called the Ukrainian commander on his cell phone to taunt him.

However, even though Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine began in late February, it has only been recently that Russian electronic warfare efforts have become increasingly effective, said Karber, president of the Potomac Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

That is partially because the Russian forces that took part in the initial assault on Kyiv may not have been properly trained how to use electronic warfare systems, Karber told Task & Purpose. Those forces may have also been too dispersed and moving too quickly to launch effective electronic warfare attacks. And it is possible that the Russians found they were inadvertently jamming their own systems.

One lesson of the war in Ukraine is that American troops are vulnerable to electronic warfare attacks, said Karber, who argued the U.S. military is too narrowly focused on countering cyber threats.

“We have not addressed the vulnerability – particularly of our command posts – that are dependent on communication, which has grown exponentially,” Karber said. “We have not gotten used to operating without electronic communication, either using land wires or runners, which both the Russians and Ukrainians have learned to adapt to as well. We are really not prepared for that level of electronic warfare, in my opinion.”

Well then…

I posted this in another article and a software update somehow erased the content. So here it is again. I hope that you enjoy it.

Airmen with Comic Sans name tapes are testing the limits of Air Force regulations

This is the modern United States military. It's what is going on throughout the military, and is clear and complete evidence for a wholesale rot and decay of all pillars of American structure. -MM

“First sergeants everywhere just sensed a disturbance in the Force.”

The Air Force has a long tradition of defying the odds and pushing the envelope. Take Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager, a hero of World War II who became the first human to fly at supersonic speeds; or Col. John Boyd, who defied his own service to create the F-16 fighter jet. And now, in an era where Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr. is encouraging his branch to “accelerate change or lose,” airmen are taking up the challenge by printing out their uniform name tape in Comic Sans, Wingdings and Old English instead of the standard block sans serif lettering used by everyone else in the service.

Why stand out from the herd like this? Well, airmen argue that Air Force Instruction 36-2903, which regulates uniforms and appearance, does not technically prohibit them from doing so.

“Most airmen are familiar with AFI 36-2903 (Dress and appearance), but I had a good amount of time to read over it while in training,” said an anonymous cyber warfare officer who posted to Reddit last month an image of his name tape in Comic Sans. “I noticed that the [operational camouflage pattern] name tapes lacked the descriptions that the other tapes had.”

Indeed, while AFI 36-2903 states that name tapes for the outdated airman battle uniform must be “dark blue block lettering,” for the current operational camouflage pattern, it states only that the name tape must be “stitched in Spice Brown block lettering, centered on an OCP background tape and affixed over the right chest pocket with velcro fastener,” for the airman’s last name, and that a separate name tape saying “U.S. Air Force” must be affixed over the left chest pocket. It does not specifically mention which font or typeface that lettering must be in. It specifies only that it must be “block,” where each letter is uniform and distinct and disconnected from others.

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The Air Force disagrees with that interpretation, however. Tech Sgt. Deana Heitzman, an Air Force spokesperson, pointed out that Figure 5.2 in AFI 36-2903 clearly shows an example of the operational camouflage pattern uniform top with standard block lettering for the name tapes. And “the omission of a specific item or appearance standard does not automatically permit its wear,” Heitzman said, referring to section 1.5.1.2, which also says “any item not mentioned in this Air Force Instruction (AFI) is not authorized for wear.”

When asked about those points, the cyber officer said that there is often some type of catch-all like that in the regulations.

“These situations usually boil down to commander’s intent, which I predict precludes Comic Sans in this scenario,” he said. “Ultimately, it is of course up to [Air Force Headquarters] whether or not something will fly, and we all respect that decision.”

Still, last month it was worth giving Comic Sans a shot. The officer said the catalyst came when he waited two weeks for new name tapes to arrive from the Army & Air Force Exchange Service only for them to spell his name wrong. That made him want to take the Comic Sans typeface, which has long been mocked for looking juvenile, for a spin. The airman asked a buddy with an embroidery machine to make a set of Comic Sans typeface name tapes for him. He then posted a shot of it to the unofficial Air Force reddit, and it received far more attention than he had expected.

“I thought it might get a few dozen comments, but then I woke up to thousands of upvotes and comments,” the airman told Task & Purpose. “It actually sparked some good discussion on regulations and professional image.”

Like he said, some commenters took the opportunity to discuss the subjectivity of what counts as professional military image. One pointed out that the five elements of the Air Force’s dress and appearance standards are “neatness, cleanliness, safety, uniformity and military image.” While the first four are “absolutely, objective criteria,” the fifth “is subjective, but necessary,” the regulation says.

While “military image” is subjective, one commenter argued that Comic Sans is actually more legible than the usual typeface. There is also a claim among Comic Sans fans that the typeface is easier for people with dyslexia to read, though there does not appear to be any solid scientific evidence supporting that claim.

Of course, there were plenty of joke comments too, and solicitations from others who wanted special name tapes too.

“First sergeants everywhere just sensed a disturbance in the Force,” wrote one reader.

“Papyrus for me!” wrote another.

For his part, the officer said he did not encounter much resistance to his new name tape on base during the one day he wore it.

“Nobody noticed unless I brought it up,” he said, adding that he was not chewed out for the style choice because “Thankfully I have really good leadership.”

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2022 06 11 09 49

The cyber warfare officer actually kicked off a small trend, as other airmen inspired by his post made custom name tapes of their own.

“I see your Comic Sans and raise you Old English,” said one anonymous senior airman who posted a shot of his ye olde-style name tape to Reddit last week. Turns out, many of his fellow airmen did not have a problem with it.

“My immediate peers and leadership liked them and didn’t have anything negative to say only ‘of course you would’ (I’ve read 36-2903 for various uniform things and new updates, more than I would like to admit),” he wrote to Task & Purpose.

The only negative response the Old English airman received was from his senior leadership, who asked if he was making some kind of a joke. The senior airman pointed out that the AFI did not specify the typeface, but he was told that he could not wear the name tape because he did not buy it from an Army & Air Force Exchange Service or an authorized military clothing store.

“So the reign of the Old English tapes ended after 3/4 of the day,” after which he switched back to the normal ones, the airman said. However, he later checked with the Army & Air Force Exchange Service and found that they could in fact make the name tape in Old English. The airman said he plans to bring it back once he makes sure he can barracks lawyer his way out of similar encounters in the future.

“I didn’t intend to come off as making a joke or being one,” he said. “My intentions were to do something that was unique and within the given guidance. And if I made some people smile and laugh on the way even better.”

Old English may have been short-lived, but Wingdings, the 1990s predecessor to emojis, received a warm welcome in name tape form.

“Most people when they saw them said ‘ha! I saw some of those on Reddit. Wait. Was that your post?!’” said Tech Sgt. Tom Burright, a cyber warfare operator who posted a picture to Reddit last week of his name tape with U.S. Air Force written in Wingdings.

“Most people didn’t even notice,” Burright said. “We were at a group lunch at a restaurant and it took about 20 mins for the guy across from me to say “oh my god I didn’t even notice your name tapes!”

Even the higher ranks above Burright laughed and said they loved it, and it was only one fellow tech sergeant who “didn’t really like it but also accepted that it wasn’t breaking any rules and shrugged it off,” he said. One of the highlights of Burright’s time wearing it was a personnel worker looking at his name tape to get his last name and saying “oh my god,” he recalled.

Some of the warm reception might be due to cyber warfare’s unique culture in the Air Force. Like the Old English airman, Burright was inspired by the original Comic Sans Reddit poster, whose uniform and Reddit username sports a cyber warfare badge.

“[Of course] it’s cyber too [laughing my ass off],” one commenter wrote about the original post.

“Typical cyber airman,” wrote another..

“Definitely some wiggle room in there, so I got a martial arts ‘karate’ type black belt, purchased some black reflective fabric on Amazon, and took it to uniform alterations on the base to have them wrap the entire black belt in the black fabric,” he said. “The result was a belt that was completely reflective and worn comfortably around my waist.”

Burright wore the karate belt every day, and while some higher-ranked individuals tried to argue with him about it, a quick citation of the AFIs convinced them to “just accept it and move on with their life,” he said.

Most folks Burright encountered got a good laugh from it, including Iraqi civilians who were initially confused, but then would call the airman Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee and show off their best karate moves. Burright said his Wingdings name tape is in the same spirit of harmless fun.

“I’m still smart about it and don’t want to make the Air Force look bad or reflect badly on my unit,” said the airman, who wears the usual name tapes at public or off-base events.

There could soon be more airmen following in Burright’s and the other Reddit users’ footsteps. The airman said he had received several messages from other airmen asking how they could make special typeface name tapes too. He has thought about making name tapes in elvish, the language of elves in “The Lord of the Rings,” or hieroglyphics. Hopefully the Reddit posts about those will be just as fun as Wingdings.

A common saying in the military is that regulations are written in blood, meaning that every regulation in the book came from a prior service member’s suffering or, in some cases, their intentional trolling. While the regulation on name tapes does not seem to be written in blood or in Wingdings, many commenters on Reddit anticipated it may be in the near future.

“We are seeing the birth of those rules and it’s beautiful,” said one commenter. “Some airman is going to read the AFI one day and it’s going to say ‘US Air Force name tapes must be in English and in (font name). Examples of unacceptable fonts are wingdings, comic sans, papyrus, etc.’ Then they’re going to wonder what someone did to make that get added to the reg.”

Yet those rules may take longer to emerge than service members might expect. Tech Sgt. Deana Heitzman, the Air Force spokesperson, said the Air Force directorate for manpower, personnel and services had not heard of airmen wearing name tapes with unusual typefaces before, but it does not plan on developing any new language about the issue, considering the existing language she pointed out earlier.

“No, we are not currently developing any language to specify a typeface,” she said. “Nametapes are developed primarily by Military Clothing Sales Stores using manufacturer drawings developed by the Institute of Heraldry and the drawings utilize blocked lettering as required.”

Airmen who hope to sport Papyrus, Baskerville, Press Start 2P and other silly typefaces may get the book thrown at them in the future, but for now, viva la Comic Sans.

“It was a nice little laugh,” Burright said. “Work continued as usual.”

Steely Dan – Aja {Remastered} [Full Album]

This takes me back to the late 1970’s. My GTO. Cleaning out the stems , twigs and seeds, from the “nickel bag” on the open album.  I had these HUGE “Technique®” speakers that stood maybe a meter (a yard) tall, and were two feet thick. I also had a “Panasonic®” stereo equalizer. And we would gather… smoke, drink whiskey sours, play chess and jam out…

”]

CIA in French Indo-China

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Jeffrey W. Bass, Oil on Canvas, 2006, Donated by the Fairchild Corporation. This painting commemorates air operations of Civil Air Transport (CAT, an Agency proprietary) and its CIA contract pilots in support of French forces at Dien Bien Phu during the final days of the conflict between the French and Viet Minh in 1954.

In Fairchild C-119s with US Air Force markings hurriedly painted over with French Air Force roundels, 37 CAT pilots volunteered to fly supplies from the French airbase at Haiphong to the battlefield near Vietnam’s border with Laos. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

How will history remember you?

By your photos or by your deeds?

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America can beat those terrible Chinese commies…

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How the Army once got its own soldiers stoned out of their minds

Talk about a bad trip.

During the Cold War, an Army sergeant with a Combat Infantry Badge on his uniform stumbled through the woods and was apparently unable to comprehend a tree branch in front of him while being led around an obstacle course.

“No, I’m not cold at all,” said another soldier who was, to put it mildly, tweaking out of his mind while speaking to a couple of Army doctors, despite not seeming to know where he was. “I could run 100 miles right now.”

These were some of the test subjects from medical experiments conducted for two decades at the Edgewood Arsenal, a section of Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. And by “medical experiments” we mean that the Army spent years getting its soldiers high.

The study is the subject of the new documentary “Doctor Delirium and the Edgewood Experiments,” debuting this week on Discovery+.

The question at the heart of these experiments was, bluntly, can you fight a war if you are on a drug trip? Or, if you want to put it in language that’ll pass muster at a closed session in Congress: can psychochemical warfare be used to incapacitate enemy troops?

And in trying to figure that out, thousands of soldiers were used as test subjects while knowingly and unknowingly given a variety of substances, from tear gas to Phencyclidine (PCP) to psychoactive drugs including lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate, known as “BZ.”

“This was the Cold War, and I was assigned to the Cold War at its height,” says Dr. James Ketchum, an Army psychiatrist who oversaw many of the experiments, in archival footage.

Beginning in the early 1960s, BZ became a central focus of testing.

“It’s more like psychosis or delirium,” says one researcher of the effects of the drug.

In one test, four soldiers were given varying doses of the drug and spent the next several days trying — and generally failing — to perform basic tasks like donning a gas mask. One man stayed awake and suffered hallucinations the entire time, completely unable to function.

BZ was eventually weaponized, although it was never employed in combat and the military destroyed all stockpiles at the end of the Cold War. The testing continued until 1975 when the program was shut down amid congressional investigations.

The soldiers were generally recruited by being told that they would mostly be testing equipment for the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. Coupled with the promise of no guard shifts or weekend duty, it might seem like a nice way to spend a couple of months in the Army. While assigned to the temporary duty, as one soldier described it, certain names would be called for that day’s experiments. Because of the classified nature of the program, however, they were rarely told exactly what they were being exposed to.

This also meant that years later, these soldiers found it difficult or impossible to file medical claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs for the after-effects of the experiments.

At the time, the Feres Doctrine also prohibited service members from suing the government for negligence or wrongdoing.

In 2009, though, several of the Edgewood veterans filed a lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency, citing the government’s failure to follow the Nuremberg Code, a set of ethical guidelines for medical testing developed following the discovery of Nazi experiments conducted during World War II.

The court ultimately ruled in favor of the veterans, saying that they were eligible for full medical benefits and that the government had a duty to continue warning them of any potential side effects of the tests.

However, many of the test subjects interviewed in the documentary, say that it has still been difficult to get a clear picture of what was done to them. Many have likely never been contacted by the government, while others in the film showed consent forms with dates that don’t even match their service records.

In the archival interviews, Ketchum, who passed away in 2019, is more sanguine about the tests.

“I’ve got regrets about a number of things I’ve done,” says Ketchum. “But that would not apply to the work I did at Edgewood.”

Inside A 1947 Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, The Largest And Fastest Aircraft In Commercial Service

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After World War II, Boeing reentered the commercial market with a new long-range airliner, the Stratocruiser (Model 377). It was the first Boeing commercial transport since the Stratoliner, and like its military counterpart, the C-97, was based on the B-29 Bomber. It possessed all the speed and technical improvements available to bombers at the end of the war.

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The Stratocruiser’s first flight was on July 8, 1947. Its design was advanced for its day; its innovative features included two passenger decks and a pressurized cabin, a relatively new feature on transport aircraft. It could carry up to 100 passengers on the main deck plus 14 in the lower deck lounge; typical seating was for 63 or 84 passengers or 28 berthed and five seated passengers.

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Separate men’s and women’s dressing rooms provided a place for passengers to prepare for sleep or the dawning day.

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During the early 1960s, Aero Space Lines ballooned the Stratocruiser’s fuselage into a whale-like shape to carry spacecraft sections. Nine of the variants were assembled. The first was called the “Pregnant Guppy,” followed by five larger “Superguppies” and three smaller “Miniguppies.”

A unique feature of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was its lower-level lounge and bar, reached via a spiral staircase.

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Aboard the double decker Boeing 377, passengers could descend the spiral staircase from the main deck to a fabulous lounge. This was the most deluxe feature of the luxurious Stratocruiser. Here passengers could socialize and enjoy an after-dinner drink and perhaps a game of cards. Although other aircraft of the era had these, none were as large and opulent as the lounge aboard the Pan American World Airways Stratocruiser.

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A Pan Am Boeing 377 Stratocruiser at Honolulu International Airport.

 

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This drawing shows the Boeing 377’s sleeping berths, dressing rooms, galley, lower-deck lounge, and private luxury compartment.

Get Your Monkeypox On

It’s a dangerous game trying to beat down the population this way, and to what end, exactly?
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The made-for-TV January 6th Capitol Riot hearings kicked off last night with tribute video of a whole lot of pissed-off ordinary Americans marching on the stately building where, that fateful day, the final certification ceremony of a blatantly dishonest election was underway after, mind you, four years of seditious machinations by a weaponized bureaucracy aimed at disabling and destroying the sitting chief executive — in case it’s unclear why the huge crowd flocked to the capital city in the first place.

The Party of Chaos is playing its hand: a select committee of seven deuces and two jokers. Do they look like they’re going to get through this extravaganza without humiliating themselves? You never know what might come out of some witness’s mouth, despite the orchestrations of former ABC’s Good Morning America producer James Goldston, brought in to cement the narrative in the collective public brain, pre-softened with years of manifold media mind-fuckeries.

It’s the centerpiece of their midterm campaign. And I submit that it may be just a little premature as it becomes increasingly clear that the Party of Chaos, led by the “winner” of the 2020 election, “Joe Biden” and unseen handlers, have nearly completed their mission of destroying the USA as an ongoing enterprise. Broken economy, broken health, broken military, broken law enforcement, broken culture, broken morale. They sure got’er done. Do they think nobody noticed?

If the January 6th Committee show is short-and-sweet, say a few weeks, it will be quickly forgotten in the welling summertime heat as the great masses of America groan under $5… $7… maybe $10-a-gallon gasoline prices (or maybe no gas at all) while diesel prices at $6.50 today are already destroying the trucking industry — and thus the entire system for delivering all goods around the country. The zeitgeist is quivering with intimations of food shortages and the philosopher reminds us that any given body politic is just nine missed meals away from bloody rebellion. Have another look at that motley January 6th committee group photo and consider the lampposts along Pennsylvania Avenue.

It’s a dangerous game trying to beat down the population this way, and to what end, exactly? I doubt that even the Blue Team could articulate it… or would dare to… because at this point their sole aim, really, is to hide their many acts of criminality over a span of the past six years and escape prosecution, a compelling motive. And it’s getting harder and harder to conceal all that, especially their campaign to physically harm over 200-million people with mRNA “vaccines.” The body-count is rising — way higher even than deaths from the hypothetical “pandemic” that the “vaccines” were supposedly concocted to vanquish, and spectacularly failed to.

And was this Covid-19 “pandemic” itself cooked up tacitly to disorder the 2020 election with mail-in ballots so easily replicated, harvested, and stuffed by the bale into drop-boxes under cover of night? Kind of looks like it, more and more. And now, the Party of Chaos is so keenly desperate to stay out of prison that they apparently seek to repeat the trick in the fall midterm, which is otherwise quite certain to sweep them ignominiously off the game board like so many misplayed quoits.

Thus: monkeypox, the visitation of weeping pustules far more visually horrifying than was Covid-19 in all its spikey iterations, if actually hardly lethal. The hopelessly corrupt CDC has already gotten into the act with its guidance to mask-up on airplanes against this new plague. Perhaps travelers would do better wearing condoms on their noses. Apparently, monkeypox spreads by means of intensely intimate flesh-to-flesh contact. The current outbreak popped up following a giant sex rave in the Canary Islands, men having rough sex with other men. Suspicions abound that this monkeypox bears the earmarks of something engineered in a lab. Jeez, d’ya think?

If there is a God, when judgment is at hand, a jury in the court of the angels will bum-rush this Party of Chaos into a special hell of an eternal drag queen story hour, featuring Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) reading Uncle Remus to an assembled multitude of howling Jacobins, Bolsheviks, and Maoist Red Guards. Refreshments will not be served. Ever.

Jus primae noctis: Did Medieval Lords Really Sleep With Serf Brides First?

The jus primae noctis , droit du seigneur , or “right of the first night,” is an alleged medieval custom which permitted lords to engage in sexual intercourse with the brides of their male subjects on the first night after marriage.

Spanning centuries, this seedy exercise of male domination has been referenced across the eons, yet the reality of its existence remains unclear.

It is a topic that has been hotly discussed by anthropologists and historians, who have debated whether the jus primae noctis is a custom, a law, or a simply a sordid myth.

Ancient and Medieval References to jus primae noctis

Jus primae noctis is a phenomenon that has been documented throughout history, stretching back nearly 2,000 years. The earliest textual reference can be found in the Epic of Gilgamesh , written in 1900 BC, where Gilgamesh, who was king of Uruk, enjoyed many privileges over his male subordinates and their newlyweds:

“He cohabits with the betrothed bride–He first, The husband afterwards.” (Epic of Gilgamesh as cited in Wettlaufer, p. 112.) 

In 450 BC, the same practice was reported by the Greek historian Herodotus in his Historiae, who wrote of a similar power dynamic in the society of the Adrymachidae, a Lybian tribe. Before virgins were married, he chronicled how the king had the right to deflower them before their husbands could “have” them.

The Greek scholar Herakleides Pontikos, writing in 400 BC, outlined the same benefits for the ruler of the Greek island of Kepahlonia. Next, during a slave revolt at Volsinii, an ancient Italian city, Valerius Maximus in 20 AD would note how free men were unable to marry a women who had not been deflowered by a slave first.

Several centuries later, in 300 AD, this sexual entitlement privilege was attributed to Emperor Maximin. In the Middle East, the Romans and Greeks, both occupiers at various times, were said to engage in the practice, according to the Talmud, an ancient Jewish text.

The tradition would purportedly continue into the early medieval age. The Annals of Clonmacnosie in Ireland from the 8th century AD, for instance, recorded how the Vikings believed they were entitled to jus primae noctis with Christian brides:

“The cheefe Gouvernour of them should have the bestowinge of any woman in the k’dom the first night after her marriage, so before her own husband should have carnal knowledge of her, to whom he pleased or keep her to himself by night, to satisfy his lust.” (Annals of Clonmacnosie as cited in Wettlauger, p. 112.) 

The idea of jus primae noctis would be maintained into the 14th century, when a French tale, called Baudouin de Sebourc mentioned it as a lord’s right if the bride couldn’t provide a sufficient dowry to his male serf. By the 16th century, evidence suggested a widespread belief in the existence of jus primae noctis , with many European lords using the notion to legitimize customs of sexual harassment. In 1543, a charter in a Swiss village outside of Zurich read:

“…and when the wedding starts, the bridegroom shall allow the sergeant to lie with his bride for the first night, or he shall buy her off with 5 pounds and 4 pennies.” (Staatsarchiv des Kantons Zürich as cited in Wettlaufer, p. 115.) 

Sometimes, however, the lord would go too far, and peasants would be forced to act. At the end the 15th century, in the only successful peasant revolt of the Middle Ages, the serfs of Catalonia in Spain rose up against their abusive liege lords. The lords had introduced various coercive acts on the wedding nights of their serfs, including climbing into the bed of the bride for their own sexual gratification. In a similarly perverted manner, landed aristocrats in France permitted themselves to place their bare leg on the bride’s bed.

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In this 1874 AD painting by Vasily Polenov, Le droit du Seigneur, a synonym for Jus primae noctis, shows an old man is bringing his young daughters to his feudal lord. (Vasily Polenov / Public domain )

Ritual Defloration and the Anthropologists’ View

In prehistoric times, the ritual defloration of virgins by elites, such as priests or kings, was a common occurrence. In Indian and South American tribes , taking the virginity of young women and girls before marriage was a recurrent practice, and was viewed not as a privilege but as a duty, as primeval peoples remained very superstitious about hymenal blood. In the primordial tribes of Hawaii, it was usually the chief who had to perform what was seen as a sacred duty:

“With many of the families, who were admitted to the royal court because of blood relationship, the virginity of the daughters was strictly guarded and when a girl became of a marriageable age and was spoken for as a wife, she was taken to the chief who would remove her virginity.” (The Polynesian Family System in Ka'u Hawai'i, Tokio, Rutland as cited in Wettlaufer, p. 117.) 

Any baby that was produced as a result of this action was often celebrated by the husband, who found great honor in knowing that his wife bore the child of his chief.

The holy priests of India, the Brahmins, were said to offer the same service. Hamilton, an early modern traveler, outlined the details and motivations of such a ceremony in the tribes of the Zamorin:

“When the Zamorin marries, he must not cohabit with his bride till the Nambudri, or chief priest, has enjoyed her, and he, if he pleases, may have three nights of her company, because the first fruits of her nuptials must be a holy oblation to the god she worships.” (A New Account of the East Indies as cited in Wettlaufer, p. 117.) 

In 1903, German anthropologist German Wilutsky stressed that:

“Every link in the chain of evidence must be followed in order to understand the most recent form of a custom.” (Vorgeschichte des Rechts as cited in Howarth, p. 294.) 

Consequently, anthropologists believe that jus primae noctis and its reported episodes in the ancient and medieval eras originated from these early ritual defloration ceremonies.

Comparing them to jus primae noctis , they point to the fact that both feature the sexual exploitation of subservient virgins under the dominion of a powerful master.

As a result, anthropologists tend to believe in the existence of jus primae noctis because it supports their view that humans gradually shifted from polygamous to monogamous societies. To them, jus primae noctis in ancient and medieval society appears as one of the last vestiges of this ancient tradition.

The Historian’s View

In contrast to anthropologists, historians, who have scoured the archival records of the human race, postulate that the jus primae noctis is simply a myth and a gratuitous misinterpretation of two documented medieval systems of obligation in Europe.

The first, known by various names including culagium, jambage, cuissage, and drench de pernada , stipulated that if a slave wanted to marry a free woman, he was required to pay a fee, called a dowry, which he would often acquire through a loan from his lord.

Legal codas state that the lord, after the lending of money, would simply gain the right to have the amount repaid.

This customary payment was erroneously connected with a right given to the lord which permitted him to have intercourse first with the new bride in exchange for his help in securing the dowry payment for his serf.

In practice, however, this unusual right was simply symbolic, and in reality, copulation never occurred and was not part of the written legal directives.

The second involved the Church and its procedures relating to marriage. At the Council of Carthage in 298, an ecclesiastical ban was issued ordering couples to refrain from consummating the marriage for the first three days. The prohibition stemmed from passage in the Book of Tobit, in which Tobias married his wife Sarah. The holy scripture relates how Sarah had been married 7 times previously, and that all her husbands had been killed by the Devil before their marriage could be consummated. To fend off the advances of the Devil, it was instructed that the newlyweds should engage in prayer and other such holy activities for up to three days after the marriage before confirming the union.

However, many husbands, impatient at waiting for three days, would often bribe ecclesiastical authorities for the privilege of copulating with their wife on the first night, which was subsequently misconstrued as the fabled jus primae noctis of the lord. It is unclear how widespread this practice was in medieval times, although in the 14th century it is reported that this became such a problem for the King Phillip IV and Charles VI in France that they demanded the Bishop of Amiens revoke such illicit payments.

In fact, in their search for the existence of the jus primae noctis , historians have found no strong evidence to suggest the practice was legally codified. The only example that even touches on the subject, and which is obviously fabricated, come from the Chronicle of Boece , a fictional history of the early kings of Scotland published in 1526 by Hector Boece. It reports how a King Ewen III of Scotland, in 875, legally sanctioned the right of the first night:

“And othir law he maid, that wiffs of the commonis sal be fre to nobilis; and the lord of the ground sal have the maidinheid of all v dwelling on the same.” (Chronicle of Boece as cited in Bullough, p. 164.) 

The author goes on to state that the practice remained in existence until 1061, when it was repealed by King Malcom Canmore. Despite being an obvious invention, the Chronicle of Boece remains the most traceable source for later references to the custom in early modern works, where it is repeated multiple times. In 1666, Sir John Skene would reiterate this piece of fake history in his Exposition:

“King Evenus did wicked lie ordaine, that the Lord or maister of the ground, or land, suld have the first nicht of ilk maried woman within the samin. The quhilk ordinance was after abrogate be King Malcolme the Thrid; quha ordained, that the Bride-groome sulde have the use of his awin wife.” (Exposition of the termes and difficill mordes, conteined in the foure Buikes of Regiam Majestatem as cited in Howarth p. 298.) 

In a later story from 1773 tome The Journey to the Western Islands , Johnson and Boswell would conveniently re-discover traces of this ancient tradition on their travels around Scotland, this time referenced as the “ mercheta mulierum ”:

“M’Quarrie insisted that the Mercheta Mulierum, mentioned in our old charters, did really mean the privilege which the lord of a manor, or a baron, had, to have the first night of all his vassals’ wives.” (Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides as cited in Howarth p. 299.)

The Myth of jus primae noctis

The propagation of the jus primae noctis myth was aided by its mention in many famous literary works, where it became a staple by authors searching for a sensationalist plot-line or a literary device as a convenient obstruction to marriage. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II, Jack Cade uses the right to try and discourage rebellion:

“The proudest peer in the realm shall not wear a head on his shoulders, unless he pay me tribute; there shall not maid be married, but she shall pay to me her maidenhead ere they shall have it.” (Henry IV, Part II as cited in Howarth p. 300.) 

Although being a regular literary device, the historical basis for the jus primae noctis , a term that only started appearing in the 18th century, remains very weak, and implies that it was likely a myth stemming from a depraved misinterpretation of the obligations of peasants to their lords and the fake history of Scotland written by Hector Boece in 1526.

In reality, the unsavory implication of the “right of the first night” was probably a medieval joke that went too far and was grounded in the traditional superiority that lords exercised over their subjects, especially if they were female.

The very few references to customs or laws that involved the sexual exploitation of women vassals were not legally enforceable mandates, but simply sleazy exercises in male power displays over the less powerful classes.

Thus, anthropologists are correct to identify jus primae noctis as more of a custom, rather than a law, which has sadly occurred repeatedly in human history.

CIA Blood Chit in flights in and around China

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This silk blood chit was issued for use by the Office of Strategic Services in the China-Burma-India Theater.

Written in several native languages, it reads, “This foreign person (American) has come to China to help the war effort. Soldiers and civilians, one and all, should save and protect him”. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

CIA “alterations” to building codes

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What looked like a concrete ball was actually a “gap-jumping antenna” removed from one of the preformed concrete columns in the embassy office building. US investigators called it “gap-jumping” because it coupled magnetically with a matching antenna in the adjacent column. This allowed data to be transmitted without a physical electrical connection. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

Automatic Man 1977

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OMG! I had this album when in High School and I must have played it until the grooves were worn out on the platter.

"Remnants of both Steely Dan and Earth Wind & Fire! So much more vocal based than their debut album..."

CIA extraction plans

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To rescue six American diplomats who evaded capture during the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran, Iran, on 4 November 1979, CIA technical specialists created a fake movie-production company in Hollywood and delivered disguises and documents that made possible the diplomats’ escape from Iran in 1980.

The team set up “Studio Six Productions” and titled its new production “Argo”. This document includes an Introduction, Story Treatment & Locations, and Visuals. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

Stunning Photos of Elvis Presley’s 1960 Luxury Gold Cadillac

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And finally, here is “The King” with some of his (rotating) travel companions. I’m sure that every trip was an enjoyable one in this massive vehicle.

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Grilled Three-Cheese Bacon Sandwiches

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Grilled cheese goes gourmet with this elevated take on the classic sandwich. Made with Gruyère, cheddar and American cheeses, this three-cheese grilled cheese sandwich with bacon takes a childhood favorite to new, delicious levels.

Ingredients

  • 8 teaspoons mayonnaise
  • 4 slices sourdough sandwich bread
  • 2 slices deli sliced American cheese (2 oz)
  • 4 slices cooked bacon
  • 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese (2 oz)
  • 1/2 cup shredded Gruyère cheese (2 oz)

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Dilbert

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Uh Oh! Bank of England Says Top Banks “No Longer Too Big To Fail”

The Bank of England (BoE) said on Friday it was satisfied that Britain’s top banks could be shut down without putting at risk the stability of the financial system or disrupting customers . . . as it found “shortcomings” at three major lenders.

In its first public assessment of how failing lenders could be dismantled in a crisis without taxpayer handouts, the BoE said it had also identified “areas or further enhancement” for six firms.

The three banks found to have shortcomings were Lloyds, Standard Chartered,  and HSBC. All three banks said in separate statements on Friday they were improving their so-called resolution plans.

The BoE is aiming to stop banks from being “too big to fail,” potentially requiring taxpayers to bail them out as happened in the 2007-09 global financial crisis.

The other lenders included in the review were Barclays, NatWest, Nationwide, Santander UK and Virgin Money UK.

The Bank of England said it would repeat its assessment in 2024 and review progress made by the lenders every two years after that.

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

Sooooooo . . . BoE says their top banks are no longer “too Big to Fail.”     OK.  Who asked them?

I mean, who asked the BoE about this, that they issue a statement of this nature late on a Friday afternoon?

The mere existence of this public statement raised the hair on the the back of my neck.

It says to me . . . and it’s just my hunch . . .  they know something gigantic is coming, and they’re already “setting the narrative” for when it hits.

The real problem is that the whole world is financially inter-connected.  What happens in Beijing Affects London.  What happens in London, affects New York.  What happens in New York affects . . . . . everyone!

Whatever their motivation for issuing this statement today, we little guys need to pay close attention.  In the end, it is us that gets the shaft.

Dilbert

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Kitten Can’t Let Go Of His Dead Father, Kneading Him Until He Wakes Up (Part 1) | Animal in Crisis

A very heartwarming story.

Defeating the oligarchs

Consortium News has an article by Chris Hedges about Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant.

How to Defeat the Billionaire Class

Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and the Socialist Alternative (SA) party have, for nearly a decade, waged one of the most effective battles against the city’s moneyed elites. She and the SA have adopted a series of unorthodox methods to fight the ruling oligarchs and, in that confrontation, exposed the Democratic Party leadership as craven tools of the billionaire class. Her success is one that should be closely studied and replicated in city after city if we are to dismantle corporate tyranny.

 

Sawant, who lives on $40,000 of her $140,000 salary and places the rest into a political fund that she uses for social justice campaigns, helped lead the fight in 2014 that made Seattle the first major American city to mandate a $15 an hour minimum wage.

Following a three-year struggle against Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, she and her allies pushed through a tax on big business that increased city revenues by an estimated $231 million a year.

“The way to run a strong electoral campaign is to, as I said, completely reject personality politics, completely reject careerism, and build political organizations like Socialist Alternative. Except we need far bigger organizations where we can hold our elected representatives and other leaders in the organization accountable in the program of demands that we are fighting around. This becomes the central focus, not those individuals who could then use those positions to build their own careers by making themselves useful to the ruling class. That’s what we need to reject.”

Excellent reporting, and the piece emphasizes her stance that the Democratic Party is not an ally of the people. It also touches on other successful grassroots movements including the successful unionization of a Staten Island Amazon workplace, which won a $30 minimum wage and the right to work fulltime, which is a win against the common strategy to leave workers without healthcare and other benefits by classifying them as part time workers.

CIA reading your personal letters

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In this “flaps and seals” kit for advanced users, tools handmade of ivory in a travel roll were used for the surreptitious opening of letters and packages during the 1960s. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

Dilbert

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The Death of the QUAD

This article informs us AUKUS was called out for its violations of the NPT. So, we have the Outlaw US Empire violating the Biological Weapons Treaty and the Non Proliferation Treaty along with its continual violations of the UN Charter.

“The three countries cannot repeatedly stick heads in the sand and must earnestly fulfill their legal obligations on non-proliferation. As a nonnuclear weapon state under the NPT, Australia must promptly and comprehensively declare its nuclear weapons materials and related facilities at all stages, Wang said, noting paper cannot wrap up fire.”

IMO, this isn’t a case of sticking heads in sand; rather, it’s a case of thumbing their noses to the entire world–Fuck You!! We’ll do whatever we want!! is the message as usual.

CIA in China

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An essential part of the survival kit for American forces in the Philippines, China and Burma, this knife was ideal for cutting through jungle brush.

It also had potential as a combat knife – its manufacturer provided instructions on how to use the Woodsman’s Pal to defeat a Japanese soldier armed with a samurai sword. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

Central Asia

Putin met today with the President of Turkmenistan, which some may not know is a declared Neutral Nation. For years, the Outlaw US Empire has tried to pry it away from its very longstanding close affiliation with Russia. Fortunately, its attempts have failed while relations between Russia and Turkmenistan continue to deepen. At the top of the transcript of their talks are links to the two sets of documents, the most important being the Declaration on Deepening the Strategic Partnership between the Russian Federation and Turkmenistan. Of greater interest is Putin’s statement to the press after their meeting. Putin’s opening remarks:

“This year is significant for Russian-Turkmen relations. April marked the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties, as well as the 20th anniversary of the signing of the fundamental Treaty between the Russian Federation and Turkmenistan on Friendship and Cooperation, which serves as a solid foundation for the entire complex of multifaceted interaction between our countries.

“The Declaration on Deepening Strategic Partnership, which we have just signed, sets out the priorities for joint work for the future in the political, trade, investment, cultural and humanitarian fields, and in the field of security, including biological and informational.”

IMO, Russia’s Central Asian “soft underside” is more secure than at anytime since 1991. Russia’s economic development is being shared with all Central Asian nations and also stimulated by China’s BRI.

CIA communications equipment

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US Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan used the AN/PEQ-1A SOFLAM to direct exact delivery of ordnance. The SOFLAM was an important tool in the battle for Tora Bora where a CIA US Special Forces team directed 72 hours of unrelenting air strikes – sometimes dangerously close to their own position – killing hundreds of al Qa’ida terrorists. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

World’s 1st Anti-Hypersonic System? China Says It Is Ready With An AI-Powered Defense Against Mach 5+ Missiles

While Beijing has repeatedly demonstrated its hypersonic offensive capabilities, it is now time for a ‘Chinese defense system’ against hypersonic missiles.

Chinese military researchers claim to have developed Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that can predict the trajectory of a hypersonic glide missile as it approaches a target at speeds exceeding five times that of sound, South China Morning Post reported.

A rocket is used to launch a hypersonic glide vehicle to hit a target. The glide vehicle subsequently separates from the rocket and moves toward its target at a speed of at least Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.

It is extremely difficult to track a hypersonic glide missile due to its unpredictable trajectory and the ability to enter space and re-enter the atmosphere in a very short period. Countries like the US are also relentlessly working on developing air missile defense against hypersonic missiles.

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Artist rendering of a hypersonic missile.

The Chinese researchers, however, seem to be several steps ahead of their American counterparts. According to them, a Chinese AI-powered air defense system can predict the potential kill trajectory of an incoming weapon and launch a swift counterattack with a three-minute advance time.

The typical missile stays within an 8-kilometer (5-mile) target zone, which is quite small for a weapon that can travel that distance in under two seconds.

“The world’s military powers are currently engaging in a fierce arms race around the development of hypersonic glide vehicles, bringing new and severe challenges to air and space safety,” said Zhang Junbiao, a computer scientist from the early warning intelligence department of the Air Force Early Warning Academy in Wuhan.

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The trajectory of Ballistic vs. Hypersonic missile- US Government Accountability Office (GAO)

“Trajectory prediction is of great significance to combat intent assessment and aerospace defense interception,” wrote Zhang and his team in the Journal of Astronautics, a peer-reviewed publication run by the Chinese Society of Astronautics.

These Chinese claims come at the heel of a dedicated effort in the United States to build and test a hypersonic weapon system to match the capabilities of its adversaries, China and Russia.

Meanwhile, the US recently carried out a successful test of an Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) hypersonic missile, a few days after it had successfully tested its Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC).

Though efforts in the US are ongoing, there could be some time before a weapon is fielded. However, that has not deterred China’s quest to develop a defense against it in advance.

China, S.Korea defense chiefs agree to enhance exchanges, as a peaceful peninsula is in their interests

Should manage risks, overcome external noise and cooperate on regional security

Published: Jun 10, 2022 04:54 PM Updated: Jun 10, 2022 11:15 PM
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Chinese and South Korea defense ministers exchanged views on Friday at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, which observers saw as an important and timely occasion for the two to have a comprehensive communication to better understand each other and jointly work toward regional peace and security which is facing great challenges amid external interference. 

Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup's meeting, the first since November 2019, came as tensions rise on the Korean Peninsula. Wei reiterated China's stance to maintain peace on the Korean Peninsula and hopes China and South Korea will cooperate on realizing the denuclearization of the peninsula.

2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of China-South Korea diplomatic relations, and Wei and Lee noted both sides should enhance practical cooperation based on mutual respect and shared interests, Yonhap reported.

Wei hopes exchanges will be deepened between the defense authorities and militaries of the two countries. They also agreed to push forward mutual visits of defense ministers, strategic dialogue and other exchange activities. 

On June 2, the two countries set two new military hotlines, bringing the total number to five. 

The same day, China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi had a phone conversation with South Korea's Head of the Office of National Security Kim Sung-han, noting bilateral relations are off to a good start since the new South Korean government took office. 

Wei and Lee's meeting, with the Korean Peninsula issue on top of the agenda, also provided an opportunity for China and the Yoon government to have comprehensive communication to better understand each other's policies and avoid unilateral moves that could bring obstacles to hard-fought bilateral friendliness or further shaken regional security, Lü Chao, an expert on the Korean Peninsula issue at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday. 

The latest peninsula tension was sparked by combined military exercises of South Korea and the US last week involving an American aircraft carrier, the first in more than four years, after which North Korea launched missiles on Sunday in response. 

As the Korean Peninsula issue enters a dangerous downward spiral, Chinese observers stressed that any party should be restrained to prevent further tensions. 

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, believes there is an important message China wants to deliver — a peaceful peninsula is consistent with both China and South Korea's interests and the issue should be handled in a peaceful way rather than "setting the wolf to keep the sheep" and allow the US to exert maximum pressure on North Korea. 

As a non-regional power, the US won't care about playing out of the tensions and the costs to China, South and North Korea when conflicts over the Peninsula issue get out of control, experts said, citing the Russia-Ukraine crisis. 

China, upholding the principle of pushing for dialogue and political solution to the peninsula issue, vetoed a US-backed resolution to impose more sanctions against North Korea at the UN Security Council. 

Blindly adding sanctions will not help solve the problem and it's inhumane. Dialogue is the only feasible way, Xing Haiming, Chinese Ambassador to South Korea, explained China's decision during a TV interview with South Korean media on Thursday.

China respects South Korea's traditional alliance with the US, and is happy to see regional countries develop bilateral and multilateral relations based on friendly cooperation, but only if such relations do not target China, Xing said, stressing that "the Asia-Pacific should be a high ground for peaceful development, not a geopolitical arena."

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol had pledged to deploy an additional THAAD battery in South Korea during the election campaign. According to Korea Times on Friday, Seoul is thinking of enabling the full-fledged operation of a THAAD anti-missile unit, which has been in "temporary installation" pending an environmental impact assessment.

South Korea has been claiming the THAAD is defensive. However, Song said the system is equipped with radar that can effectively detect China's objectives of strategic depth. It is not only an interception system, but also a monitoring and early warning system, posing a serious threat to China's national security, the expert said.

Such a system will break the power balance in Northeast and East Asia, seed unrest and threaten China's security environment, and add fuel to the current tensions, even risking a military conflict on the Korean Peninsula, Song warned.

Xing said in the televised interview that on the THAAD issue, the most sensitive topic in China-South Korea relations, China understands South Korea's security demand but South Korea should also understand China's concerns.

Xing said the lessons from the past must be learned and the two sides should properly manage the issue and avoid making it a prominent point or impact the hard-fought friendliness in bilateral relations.

According to Yonhap, Wei raised concerns over South Korea's engagement with the US' Indo-Pacific Strategy to contain China, and the deployment of THAAD.

The meeting lasted 75 minutes, longer than the scheduled 40 minutes and Lee told reporters the talks "were very useful, and it was such a good opportunity for the two sides to understand each other."

How Does AI Defend Against Hypersonic Missile?

A hypersonic glide weapon, unlike a normal ballistic missile, may move through the atmosphere like a stone skipping across water and bank to the left or right, making it more difficult to detect and intercept, according to SCMP.

At Mach 5 or higher speed, there is little time for an air defense system to respond to the threat, and it is widely assumed that current technology will be unable to intercept a hypersonic glide missile.

Zhang, on the other hand, believes Artificial Intelligence is capable of handling such unpredictable tasks and develops a defense against an unpredictable trajectory and incredibly high speed.

The defending side normally has no idea about the mass, size, shape, aerodynamic control system, or purpose of hostile weapons, but by analyzing observed flight data, the AI may make a fairly accurate assumption. According to the researchers, every move a missile makes will give off some modest but useful signals about its design, capabilities, and mission, regardless of how advanced or fast it is.

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As a result, a machine learning system may learn from data collected during the early phases of a hypersonic flight and utilize that information to forecast the most likely trajectory during the flight’s later stages.

Zhang and his colleagues acknowledged that translating this idea into a working model was difficult. They claim that the raw data collected by an early warning system contains a lot of noise that might confuse AI and that too much data can also overload the computer.

To combat the problem of unwanted and overwhelming noise that could mislead the AI, the Chinese researchers devised a novel deep learning method that could automatically eliminate noise from observed signals. The algorithm similarly simulates the human brain’s activity by focusing just on the most recent, most important data to save calculation resources.

The new system can run on a laptop computer and produce a result in 15 seconds, according to the study, despite being more advanced than any previous AI for hypersonic trajectory prediction. Simulated experiments indicated that the system is still effective against a wide spectrum of weapons traveling at up to Mach 12 speeds.

Earlier in March, China’s Aerospace Defense industry had claimed that Beijing had made significant progress in building an AI (artificial intelligence) system that could even design new hypersonic weapons autonomously.

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2022 06 03 17 49

Type 055 ‘Lhasa’ Destroyer

CIA doing “fishy things”

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CIA’s Office of Advanced Technologies and Programs developed the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) fish to study aquatic robot technology. The UUV fish contains a pressure hull, ballast system, and communications system in the body and a propulsion system in the tail. It is controlled by a wireless line-of-sight radio handset. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

Double Whammy For The US?

As tensions continue to rise between the US and China in the Indo-Pacific region with an aggressive Beijing practicing dangerous military maneuvers, policymakers and military are alive to the challenges posed by the Chinese hypersonic missiles.

The US is currently reworking the defenses of its strategic assets in the Indo-Pacific against a Chinese offense. The EurAsian Times recently reported how the US was putting in place a dedicated layered missile defense system in Guam to protect its territory and valuable military assets against Chinese missile strikes in the event of hostility.

 

Chinese Researchers had earlier claimed that its hypersonic missile with advanced infrared homing capability would allow it to hunt down a stealth fighter like the F-22 and even a moving car on the street with precision.

Therefore, these advanced would be able to destroy a target in an adversarial country over super long distances with absolute precision.

If the Chinese claims are anything to go by, it’s double trouble for the US, which lags far behind China in the hypersonic weapons race. As of now, the US neither has an operational hypersonic missile nor a workable defense against hypersonic missiles.

China, on the other hand, claims that it has both!

Stunning and Rare Images of The 1935 Adler Diplomat 8 Wheels

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The Adler Diplomat is a substantial six-cylinder “limousine” built by the Frankfurt auto-maker, Adler. It was introduced in March 1934 as a direct replacement for the manufacturer’s Standard 6. Less directly the six-cylinder Diplomat also replaced the Adler Standard 8 since Adler’s large eight-cylinder car was discontinued in 1934 without a direct replacement of its own.

The Diplomat initially, in 1934, took over the body from the previous year’s Adler Standard 6. However, the Standard Six had received an all new body for its final year of production, and for keen eyed observers the final year’s Standard Six was differentiated from the first year’s Diplomat by redesigned fender aprons. The chassis which had been a defining feature of the 1933 Standard 6 had been of an underslung design whereby the axles emerged directly above the principal chassis members: this allowed for a lower centre of gravity and a lower-bodied car than the overslung chassis, with axles mounted directly below the chassis, which had left the earlier Standard Six looking unfashionably high-bodied in the early 1930s.

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‘The State is no longer working to serve us and to protect our shared heritage’: Neil Oliver

A very great video. It’s most certainly worth a view.

More pictures from the past…

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High school class.

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The 1970’s it’s how we rolled!

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American CIA in Taiwan

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CAT travelers received flight bags as complementary gifts. Once a Chinese Nationalists Airline, was owned by the CIA for covert operations. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

Americans Will Never Forget The Historic Economic Collapse During Joe Biden’s Presidency

We have faced a lot of significant challenges in modern American history, but nobody will ever forget the economic horror that is breaking loose during Joe Biden’s time in the White House.  For years, we were warned that the policies that our leaders were pursuing would destroy the value of our currency and unleash rampant inflation.  Now it has happened.  For years, we were warned of a looming global energy crisis that would inevitably hit us.  Now it is here.  But what we have been through already is just the beginning.  The shortages that we are experiencing now will get worse.  Many of the ridiculously high prices that we are seeing now will seem like bargains by the end of the year.  And right now the U.S. economy appears to be rapidly slowing down at the exact same moment that economies all over the globe are moving in the wrong direction.  The CEO of Goldman Sachs just told us that “there’s going to be tougher economic times ahead”, and he is not exaggerating one bit.

On Thursday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States reached yet another brand new all-time record high

US gas prices have hit a new high of $4.71, just a day after hitting the record as seven states top off at $5 a gallon as inflation soars.

The national average jumped four cents overnight, leaving drivers in even more despair as gas prices continue to skyrocket emptying their wallets.

If Americans don’t like paying about five bucks a gallon, how are they going to feel when it takes about 10 bucks to buy a gallon of gas?

Fortunately, we did just get a bit of good news that should provide some temporary relief

OPEC and its oil-producing allies agreed on Thursday to hike output in July and August by a larger-than-expected amount as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine wreaks havoc on global energy markets.

OPEC+ will increase production by 648,000 barrels per day in both July and August, bringing forward the end of the historic output cuts OPEC+ implemented during the throes of the Covid pandemic.

Unfortunately, this isn’t really going to change the trajectory of where we are heading.

In fact, one energy expert says that this is essentially just a symbolic gesture

Robert McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group and a former energy adviser to President George W. Bush, said prices rallied Thursday because the OPEC move was “more symbolic than fundamentally significant.”

“I wouldn’t call it a drop in the bucket. It’s basically a gesture… an important one symbolically,” he told CNN Business.

What we really need are long-term solutions, and there aren’t any on the horizon.

And the truth is that we aren’t just facing an oil crisis.  At this stage, the balance between supply and demand has reached a crisis point for all traditional forms of energy simultaneously

“Now we have an oil crisis, a gas crisis and an electricity crisis at the same time,” Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency watchdog group, told Der Spiegel in an interview published this week. “This energy crisis is much bigger than the oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s. And it will probably last longer.”

The global economy has largely been able to withstand surging energy prices so far. But prices could continue to rise to unsustainable levels as Europe attempts to wean itself off Russian oil and, potentially, gas. Supply shortages could lead to some difficult choices in Europe, including rationing.

What do you think the European economy will look like when there is widespread rationing of natural gas six months from now?

Can anyone out there answer that question?

We have never faced anything like this before, and one industry insider is referring to this as a “perfect storm”

Joe McMonigle, secretary general of the International Energy Forum, said he agrees with this depressing forecast from the IEA.

“We have a serious problem around the world that I think policymakers are just waking up to. It’s kind of a perfect storm,” McMonigle, whose group serves as a go-between for energy producing and consuming nations, told CNN in a phone interview.

Isn’t it funny how that term keeps popping up?

For years, I warned that a “perfect storm” was coming over and over again, and now that term has constantly been in the news throughout this year.

Another element of the “perfect storm” that we are facing is the rapidly growing global food crisis.

Here in the United States, the bird flu pandemic that has erupted in 2022 has resulted in 38 million chickens and turkeys being wiped out.

As a consequence, the price of eggs has been soaring to unprecedented levels

The price of eggs increased 10.3% in April. The UDSA predicts an increase between 19.5% and 20.5% year over year in 2022. That could mean $1.00 an egg. Poultry prices will rise as much as 9.5%.

Did you ever imagine that you would be paying a dollar for a single egg?

I still remember when you could get an entire carton of eggs for one dollar.

Chicken meat and turkey meat will be getting more expensive too, and now we are being warned that shortages are coming.

In fact, the CEO of Hormel Foods is openly telling us that “large supply gaps in the Jennie-O Turkey Store will begin in the third quarter”

A top US food processing company warned of an upcoming shortage of its turkey products at supermarkets following one of the worst bird flu outbreaks.

“Our Jennie-O Turkey Store team is facing an uncertain period ahead,” Hormel Foods Corporation CEO Jim Snee told investors in an earnings call. “Similar to what we experienced in 2015, (avian influenza) is expected to have a meaningful impact on poultry supplies over the coming months.”

Snee said the “large supply gaps in the Jennie-O Turkey Store will begin in the third quarter.” He said highly pathogenic avian influenza was confirmed in “our supply chain” in March.

In case you didn’t get the point of what he was saying, “large supply gaps” is a politically correct way of saying “widespread shortages”.

Speaking of shortages, the baby formula shortage in the United States is now worse than ever

But, as Bloomberg reports, out-of-stock rates climbed to 74% nationally for the week ending May 28, according to data on 130,000 stores followed by Datasembly. The increase comes after rates spiked to 70% for the week ending May 21 from 45% the week prior.

Even more stunningly, ten states now have shortage rates at 90% or greater, with Georgia hardest hit at 94%.

The Biden administration made a really big deal out of the fact that they were flying in baby formula from Europe, but once again that turned out to mostly be a symbolic gesture.

As economic conditions continue to deteriorate, an increasing number of Americans will fall into poverty and hunger.  In fact, according to NPR “demand at food banks is way up again”, and many of those food banks are already at a crisis point

Fitzgerald, of Feeding America, says providers around the country are dipping into emergency reserves, switching to cheaper products, limiting how often people can visit or how much food they can get, and “stretching their inventory to be able to meet more people’s needs.”

If our food banks are in such distress now, what will things be like six months or a year from today?

Because the truth is that food supplies are only going to get tighter.

The winter wheat harvest in the U.S. is going to come in way, way below original expectations.  In fact, we are being told that the winter wheat harvest in Kansas could be down “by more than 25%”

The U.S. winter wheat harvest potential in Kansas has dipped by more than 25% because of severe drought, and farmers in the state may leave thousands of acres of wheat in fields this year instead of paying to harvest the grain hit by the dry winter.

Looking ahead, a lot less wheat is being planted for the coming growing season because of extremely bizarre weather patterns in some areas.

For example, the amount of wheat that is currently being planted in North Dakota is expected to be the smallest ever recorded

Some farmers in North Dakota are unable to plant as much wheat as they normally would because of heavy rain across the state.

Government data shows the state is expected to plant wheat over the smallest recorded share of its farmland.

For much more on why U.S. food production is going to continue to shrink in the months ahead, please see this article.

The bottom line is that we are facing really severe problems that are not going to go away any time soon.

And if you are waiting for Joe Biden to come to the rescue, you are going to be waiting for a very long time

The president of the United States says he understands that inflation is impacting family budgets. But on Wednesday, he said he’s not “aware” of any “immediate action” that would reduce food and fuel prices.

“[W]e can’t take immediate action, that I’m aware of yet, to figure out how we bring down the price of gasoline back to three dollars a gallon. And we can’t do that immediately with regard to food prices, either,” Biden said.

A historic economic nightmare is here, and the guy in the White House is all out of answers.

So buckle up and try to enjoy the ride.

The months ahead are going to be quite chaotic, and you probably don’t even want to think about what is coming after that.

The illegal transfer of nuclear weapons materials involved in AUKUS cannot be denied: Chinese envoy

Published: Jun 10, 2022 10:04 AM
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The Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) trilateral nuclear submarine cooperation violated…

[1] the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),

[2] the comprehensive safeguards agreement of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

[3] and additional protocol signed between Australia and the IAEA,

China’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Vienna Wang Qun said on Thursday, noting the US, the UK and Australia must give an account to the international community.

No matter what name the three countries give to the AUKUS and how they handle relevant nuclear weapon materials, the essence of the illegal transfer of nuclear weapon materials involved in AUKUS cannot be denied, Wang said.

Wang made the remarks when addressing a meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors, which deliberated the issue of the transfer of nuclear materials in the context of AUKUS and its safeguards in all aspects under the NPT.

The Chinese envoy said the AUKUS has a far-reaching negative impact on global strategic stability, security order and regional peace and stability, which should be politically responded to by relevant international and regional security mechanisms.

The three countries cannot repeatedly stick heads in the sand and must earnestly fulfill their legal obligations on non-proliferation. As a nonnuclear weapon state under the NPT, Australia must promptly and comprehensively declare its nuclear weapons materials and related facilities at all stages, Wang said, noting paper cannot wrap up fire.

The US and the UK have applied double standards on nuclear proliferation issues, as they imposed unilateral sanctions on civilian nuclear programs of some nonnuclear weapon states, while at the same time blatantly transferred nuclear weapon material to Australia, Wang said.

Such double standards have a disastrous impact on the international non-proliferation regime and the resolution of hotspot issues, including the Iran nuclear issue and the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear issue, the Chinese envoy said.

Some countries insist on “centralism” and “exceptionalism,” Cold War mentality and hegemony and pursue bloc politics, which goes against the trend of history and will only trigger conflicts and split the international community, Wang said.

In September 2021, the US, the UK and Australia announced the establishment of AUKUS, under which the US and the UK will assist Australia in its acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines.

CIA in Laos

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Keith Woodcock, 2008, Oil on Canvas, Donated Courtesy of the Air America Association Board.

When President Kennedy decided in 1961 to forcefully resist rising Communist aggression against the remote but strategically located Kingdom of Laos, the CIA – and its proprietary airline Air America – were ready.

Flying in a mountainous land-locked country with few roads, continually shifting weather conditions, and virtually no navigational aids, Air America crews routinely conducted hazardous resupply missions to hundreds of government outposts.

This aerial lifeline provided essential assistance to Royal Lao and US-directed forces battling North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao Communist troops. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

Showing ‘not hesitant to fight’ attitude helps peace across Taiwan Straits: Global Times editorial

Published: Jun 11, 2022 12:44 AM

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This year’s Shangri-La Dialogue kicked off on Friday and will run through Sunday. Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe will deliver an address on Sunday. On Friday, Wei held talks with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Senior Colonel Wu Qian, a spokesperson of China’s Ministry of National Defense, said at a press conference after the meeting that the meeting was not long but yielded positive effect. Overall, it was a frank, positive and constructive strategic communication.

During the meeting, Wei reiterated China’s firm stance on the Taiwan question, stressing if anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese military will not hesitate to fight, and will resolutely crush any “Taiwan independence” attempts to firmly safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity at any cost.

Austin reiterated that the US “remains committed to our longstanding one-China policy.”

The two sides believe that the two militaries should maintain high-level strategic communication, enhance their strategic mutual trust, manage and control conflicts and differences, and not turn conflicts and differences into confrontations.

Objectively speaking, against the background in which China-US tensions continue and the two countries have conflicts in many fields, effective face-to-face exchanges between the defense ministers of China and the US are of great significance for managing differences and stabilizing ties between the two militaries.

What needs to be underlined in particular is that Wei has drawn a red line on the Taiwan question and once again showed China’s attitude and will, which will help avoid dangerous misjudgments by the US and other relevant parties. This is the genuine safeguard of peace across the Taiwan Straits.

Taiwan is part of China.

This is a universally recognized international consensus, which is generally accepted and clearly bolstered by the majority of countries and people across the world, except for some forces pretending to be deaf and blind and deliberately distorting its meaning.

Any deceptive rhetoric under the banner of peace that puts aside or distorts this international consensus is a breach of regional peace and a misjudgment of China’s determination. China has repeatedly emphasized that “relying on the US to seek independence” and “exploiting Taiwan island to control China” is playing with fire. If the Taiwan question is not properly handled, it will have a “subversive impact” on China-US relations. All these serious remarks are purposely oriented.

We noticed that the US announced a $120 million arms sale to Taiwan before Austin’s trip, while US public opinion is keen to hype the People’s Liberation Army’s legitimate response to the provocation of the Australian military aircraft, confusing right and wrong and claiming that China’s “provocative behavior” in the Asia-Pacific region has exacerbated the tension. At the same time, US Defense Department officials told media that one of the main goals for Washington this time is to set “guardrails” on the relationship between the two militaries to manage crises and ensure the competition between the two countries doesn’t escalate into conflict. But the fact is that it is the US’ moves that have constantly increased the risk of military conflict in the Asia-Pacific region.

Washington now puts a lot of emphasis on the so-called guardrails and crisis management between the two militaries, but not to realize long-term peace and stability. It wants to implement its salami slicing strategy so it won’t choke while enjoying the slices.

The US has no intention to stop manipulating the Taiwan question or creating divisions in the Asia-Pacific region.

Instead, it is becoming increasingly imperious.

While taking a confrontational stance that it must subjugate China, the US doesn’t want to pay the high cost to defeat its opponent. This could be the genuine intent behind Washington’s rhetoric about “guardrails” and “preventing competition from escalating.”

It is important to note that the risks in the Asia-Pacific region have reached a point where they must be managed. But this can never be achieved by forcing China to give up its core interests.

Washington has always proclaimed itself an Asia-Pacific country and considers itself responsible for the region’s security. If that is the case, it should be its responsibility to eliminate the origin of the crises and abandon its Cold War mentality and sense of a zero-sum game.

The US should truly fulfill its commitment: The US does not seek to have a new Cold War with China, to change China’s system, or to revitalize alliances against China, and that the US does not support “Taiwan independence” or intend to seek a conflict with China. It should also become a constructive force in the Asia-Pacific region. In this case, is there any need for a “guardrail?”

The Shangri-La Dialogue focuses on military security agenda, the most sensitive area in relations between countries. This US-Western-dominated forum has left a deep impression on people that it has been targeting China. China sent its defense minister to this dialogue, demonstrating Beijing’s sincerity in managing differences and its role as a responsible power for regional security.

It is hoped that Wei’s solemn statement of “smashing it even at any price, including war” can make some forces restrain their impulse and enable some countries to stay sober.

CIA in Vietnam / Cambodia

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CIA technicians invented and used this unusual device in the 1960s to keep track of the enemy in Southeast Asia.

The mission was to count people and supplies moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam to South Vietnam along the borders of Laos and Cambodia.

Many of the Laotian trail watchers whom CIA recruited could not read or write, let alone understand English. And so the device featured “pictograms,” such as symbols representing troops, trucks, motorcycles, carts, bicycles, tanks, cannons, small artillery, missiles, donkeys, and yes, occasionally elephants, a common beast of burden in Laos.

Alongside each pictogram was a knob that could be set to a number, and then the data could be transmitted to an airplane by activating a toggle switch. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

GT Voice: Why do Chinese prices remain stable amid global inflation?

Yeah. My food and gas prices inside of China hasn't bulged at all. The stories about inflation in the West seen so odd =, strange and far away. -MM
Published: Jun 09, 2022 10:09 PM
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China’s major commodities imports were generally characterized by declined volume and a sharp price increases in the first five months of this year, according to the latest data released by the General Administration of Customs on Thursday.

Specifically, Chinese imports of crude oil, coal, natural gas, and soybeans in the January-May period were down by 1.7 percent, 13.6 percent, 9.3 percent, and 0.4 percent year-on-year in terms of import volume, with their average import prices rising 55.6 percent, 105.3 percent, 70.3 percent, and 23.3 percent, respectively.

To a certain extent, the considerable rise in commodities prices shows that China has been facing much imported inflationary pressure from overseas markets in recent months. Nevertheless, despite the global high inflation, Chinese goods prices have remained within a reasonable range.

The country’s consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.1 percent year-on-year in April, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which is due to release the May CPI data on Friday.

Why can China keep domestic prices basically stable amid soaring global inflation?

For starters, the disruption of global supply chains caused by COVID-19 is a reason for high inflation. However, since the early days of the pandemic, China has effectively brought the epidemic under control, ensuring the normal operation of domestic industrial chains and leading to relatively small shocks to China’s supply chains compared with other countries.

Moreover, developed economies, led by the US, adopted expansionary monetary and fiscal policies, and the huge liquidity they injected into the market is another important cause of global inflation. By comparison, China has been pursuing relatively modest monetary and fiscal policies.

Even though the current COVID-19 epidemic resurgence has caused some difficulties for the Chinese economy, the government still appears relatively cautious in choosing the right stimulus tools, indicating its reluctance to see some long-term economic problem exacerbated due to improper short-term policies.

The difference between China and the US in terms of inflation and monetary policy underscores the different cycle and trend of economic development in the world’s two largest economies. For instance, taming inflation has become the top priority of the US at the moment, while rate hikes have led to concerns over the growing risk of a recession in the US economy. In China, with relatively low inflation, the most important economic priority now is to stabilize growth.

Of course, there is no denying that China will continue to face great inflationary pressure from overseas, which will be challenge to China’s economic policy choice in the future. The country needs to take precautions when it comes to the continuing issue of global inflation.

It needs to be pointed out that some Western media outlets have accused of China of adding to global inflation fears, citing its soaring factory prices. China’s producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, went up 8 percent year-on-year in April. But the PPI increase was due in large part to the surge in global raw materials prices.

In fact, China has actually played an active role in stabilizing global prices in recent months. This is because China has, to a certain extent, absorbed some of the imported inflationary pressure thanks to the massive industrial scale and complete industrial systems of its manufacturing sector.

This is also the unique advantage of Chinese exports, which has not only ensured the country’s export growth, but also strengthened the status of Chinese manufacturing throughout the global industrial chain.

This is why the US cannot really decouple from China, and why the US must rely on Chinese manufacturing when it comes to reining in its elevated inflation.

Man Develops 120-Year-Old Photos Of Cats Discovered Inside A Time Capsule

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Mathieu later colored the photo using Photoshop.

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He repeated the process for the second negative.

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And produced another cat photo!

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This time it revealed one more kitten along with an adorable puppy.

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The SOS Band Live Studio A5621

Wow! They got so much better as they aged. They all look great, and their sound takes me back to the early 1980’s. Just an awesome experience!

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Kitty control and a global situation that has the Western elite all in disarray, an American presidential idiot, and some delicious food

Today’s mix of news and pleasures reflect this strange point in time. I hope that you all enjoy it. Things are shaping up nicely, and we are beginning to see some form take shape, and that defines clarity to what will happen next. I hope that you enjoy this article.

Indian FM Jaishankar Calls Out West Again

Highlights (7 minutes): HERE

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BUT sadly, it also shows at the very end that India will deal with the devil himself, US imperialism, in its differences with China.  I hope that this was just a point of diplomacy – it was not spoken with the same indignation that the FM reserved for the rather ugly comments of the interviewer.  So maybe it is a passing phase.  Let’s hope so.

India should be concerned about the US.  The Wolfowitz Doctrine dictates that any country that grows too powerful will be targeted and brought down by the US.  Right now India has the number three PPP- GDP in the world.  If China is brought down, India will be the next target for the US.  Bank on it.

The longer version is revealing in that it shows the blindness of the West to the Global South in the snarky neocolonial attitude of the interviewer and of the questioner from the Baltics.

US-China trade war: ‘all options’ on table in tariff review, Washington seeking ‘structure that makes sense’

Deputy US Trade Representative Sarah Bianchi says Washington is seeking to address long-term challenges from China and ‘getting a tariff structure that really makes sense’ US President Joe Biden has said he is considering removing some of the tariffs imposed on Chinese goods by predecessor Donald

Article HERE

UKRAINE FIRING MLRS AT DOWNTOWN DONETSK – TOTAL CIVILIAN AREA!

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6:45 PM EDT — BOUT FOUR HOURS AGO, The Ukraine Armed Forces launched a horrifying attack with Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) against ALL CIVILIAN TARGETS in downtown Donetsk, the city center!   Large explosions in rapid succession seen on video below.

There are no Russian forces operating inside the city and there have been no outbound firing of weapons from that city.   Today’s attack was deliberate targeting of a completely civilian area.   Here, look:

 

This is precisely what Ukraine was doing from the year 2014 until 2016, paused when President Trump was sworn in, but resumed when Biden stole the US presidency.

They are attacking civilians because those civilians speak Russian, and want to be independent of Ukraine.

This is a war crime – again – by Ukraine . . . . again.

Funny

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How Russia, And Putin, Are Weaponizing, Losing And Running Out Of … Everything

The Western "news" is so silly. -MM

Moon of Alabama earlier explored how Russia was weaponizing everything. This after Donald Trump had done so many good things for Russia. Then Putin lost everything he ever might have had.

It has been getting worse since.

Now Russia, and Putin himself, are ‘running out’ of whatever may have been left.

Posted by b on June 3, 2022 at 7:46 UTC | Permalink

RUMORS: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Face “No Confidence” Vote

United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister Boris Jonson is RUMORED to be on his way out of power, as 65 letters of “No Confidence” have allegedly been filed in Parliament.   Under UK rules, 54 such letters are required to force a vote.

If the tally of letters has reached 65, then Johnson could be ejected as Prime Minster.

Sir Graham Stuart Brady is RUMORED to be ready to announce the tally of letters on Monday.

Brady is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament for Altrincham and Sale West since 1997.

A member of the Conservative Party, he has been Chairman of the 1922 Committee since 2020, previously holding the position from 2010 to 2019.

It is that Committee that has the power to call a “No Confidence” vote within the Party.

Roman Abramovich’s UK Telecoms Firm to Be Sold for $1: Report

New form of looting. Singapore tiger Air was sold for A$1 after Australia abuse airsafety regulation to damage the airline reputation in Australia to kill an Asian competition. Now UK did the same to Russian investment:
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  • Roman Abramovich’s Truphone is being sold for about $1 to two European entrepreneurs, a report says.
  • The company had been worth $512 million in 2020, according to The Times.
  • Abramovich is among the individuals sanctioned by the west following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A British telecoms company owned by Roman Abramovich is being sold to two European tech entrepreneurs for about $1, The Times reported.
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Truphone, valued at $512 million ($410 million) in 2020, has received almost $375 million of investment from Abramovich and two business partners, Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov. According to the newspaper, Abramovich owns 23% of the company.
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Truphone hired the advisory firm FRP in April to review its “strategic options” following the sanctions imposed on the former owner of Chelsea FC.
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Hakan Koc is one of the two entrepreneurs who has emerged as one of the preferred bidders for Truphone, according to The Times…. More
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Full article HERE

Very Interesting Video

Rare video of the Russian TOS-1 MRLS system in use at shorter range. The launch and impact sites are both visible and about 1 km apart. You can see why Ukrainian fighters are terrified of the 220mm fuel-air explosive rockets. A trench is not sufficient to shield soldiers from the long thermobaric blast wave produced – lethal (in this video) at least to the extent of the shockwave ‘fog’ front. The visible shockwave is a function of the relatively low temperature and high humidity – it’s not normally visible in most situations.

View the Video here

Javelin ATGM missiles have an effective range of 2.5 km, so the TOS-1 launcher in the above video is easily close enough to be counter-attacked. You have to be able to see the Javelin target to fire on it, so the launcher is probably positioned behind trees or terrain. The TOS-1 rockets are ballistic and able to arc over such cover even at very low trajectories.

Cake Mix Gooey Butter Lemon Cookies

Lemony, soft cookies topped with a sweet citrus glaze using a genius shortcut — cake mix!

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Ingredients

Cookies

  • 1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 2 tablespoons finely grated lemon peel
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 1 box Betty Crocker™ Super Moist™ lemon cake mix

Glaze

  • 1 3/4 cups powdered sugar
  • 3 to 4 tablespoons lemon juice

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North Korea Fires Missiles into Sea of Japan

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At about 1:00 AM eastern US time Sunday, North Korea fired at least one, and perhaps multiple, ballistic missiles.  The missile(s) were fired from the east coast of North Korea toward the Sea of Japan.

UPDATE 8:00 AM EDT —

North Korea fired eight (8) short range ballistic missile from Sunan, near Pyongyang.   The missiles flew at various altitudes and distances, presumably to test targeting and range.  Missiles flew 110-670 km at top altitude of 25-90 km.

It now appears that North Korea did this IN RESPONSE TO South Korea and the United States staging their first combined military exercises involving an American aircraft carrier in more than four years.

Grief days with changes in Narrative… or why Trolls are Doomed

By F(unny) MAN for the Saker Blog

In the last days we have been observing some important developments:

The MSM defecators (1) are changing the Narrative from:

  • Weeeeeeeeee, we are the best of the best.
  • 404 Super-army of Call-of-duty soldiers are defeating the Russian Zombie hordes.
  • Russian Army is losing millions of men, thousands of tanks, hundredths of aircrafts.
  • Russia has no more men, ammo, missiles, whatever, and they will have to stop the offensive
  • United we will win (Ha! this, a very good one)

To admit that, something is happening (or could happen) that is closer to the reality that is developing in the Real World and on the ground (You know what I mean…) such as:

  • The “Diplomatic Solutions to the conflict that, 404 can and should find (from a position of Force) with Russia”
  • The “Shocking Victory that Putin the magician is about to pull off his hat”
  • The (at minimum) “600 daily casualties of the 404 army in the Donbass”
  • The “We will never pay in Rubles! But please, can we open an account in Gazprombank“
  • Et cetera…

As my grandpa always said; when you enter into conflict with reality, no matter how your wishes, your paranoia, or your narcissistic self-appreciation and wokeism are… you are in for a hard punch in the face.

We are slowly but surely seeing some kind of collective grief at play, because you can observe all phases developing (2) in front of you. You only have to look carefully at their, now serious, faces (not happy and cheering anymore) and declarations. Be they politicians in the zone A, MSM hosts, opinion makers, general analysts, vassals and puppets, or any other fauna of this political and informational ecosystem (3).

Every time I hear or read the reports about 404, I do have the feeling that what they are just bitterly saying can be resumed in this sentence: United we fight against Russia, from Victory to Victory till the final Defeat.

I suppose their days should be terrible because looks like the Russian have a never-ending supply of Tanks, Men, Talent, Aircraft, and Missiles. But what should you expect? The incredible hat of Putin the magician has no bottom end.

But let me tell you that, this grief, is also found in the troll scene. What many people might have been noticing lately is that the level of trolling has been reduced significantly in the last weeks. I have been observing a decline in the quantity and quality of troll commenting on those websites and Alternative Media (4) that some people use to look for real (I mean REAL) information, opinion, and analyses. I have the feeling that many of the trolls should also be in (or close to) the Depression phase of the grief.

I have contacted some of my troll-friends that, unfortunately, have to work as troll-commentators(5) fundamentally in well-known 3-letter-agencies such as CENSORED, CENSORED or CENSORED, and made a little bit of research and interviews… their words were stunning.

They speak about unhealthy conditions, miserable and delayed payment, alienation, abusive and violent working atmosphere, overworking hours, lack of respect at work, anxiety, psychological trauma, and ptsd (the answer to their trolling comments is terrible to their self-esteem) high incidence of suicide, high incidence of divorce, obesity, stress, sleep deprivation, fatigue, anxiety (again) and other problems. They openly state that they cannot work much longer under such pressure conditions. One of them even claimed to need more than 36 hours of psychological treatment after realizing he started to believe that the answers to their trolling comments seemed to be quite reasonable and articulated, and more likely truth worthy that the official narrative they have to push (as that it is obviously impossible).

One of my (closest) troll-friends is also considering leaving his Job in CENSORED after more than 25 years of trolling. With his experience and qualifications, he can always find a high-skilled job somewhere as a Self-Storage Manager or as Restroom Attendant.

I have to inform you that no trolls were harmed or exposed to light in the investigative research that was conducted to the writing of this article.

In the time you invested in reading this article, 26 trolls have died, 96 have quit, 238 have to get a two-week sick leave due to due to the problems, hardness, and complications related to their job.

1.) It is quite a gross definition, but… they defecate through one of the orifices in their body, just not the traditional one (6)

2.) The five stages of grief:

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Bargaining
  • Depression
  • Paying in Rubles

3.) To get more information about these Fauna and Ecosystem, you just have to switch on your Television, there is a 24/7 documentary going on, all the time, nonstop… geeeez! do it at your own risk.

4.) Websites like this one CENSORED you are reading, or those of Mr. Martyanov CENSORED or Mr. Bernhard CENSORED just to mention some.

5.) They say you have to have friends even in Hell, and Hey! Trolls do have to eat too. They have Families, Troll-Wives and Troll-Kids. So long they do not work in the light of the day (with you-know-what-consequences) they have to make something productive of their lives and provide for those they are responsible for. Also, garden dwarves are not that abundant anymore.

6.) I know, self-referencing is not a good idea, but… I just Wonder… if they defecate through the mouth… they should get the Feed through the…

Show Your Feline The Respect It Deserves With A “Game of Thrones” Cat Bed

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Your cat rules your life and only lets you live because you feed it, empty its litter tray, and sometimes you can be quite amusing. So isn’t it time you just admit who’s boss in your household?

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The First Financial Domino Just Fell; China’s EVERGRANDE is now OFFICIALLY in “Default”

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At Midnight U.S. east coast time Friday night-into-Saturday, China’s second largest Real Estate developer, EVERGRANDE, officially entered “DEFAULT” status on its massive global debt.  This is the first Domino in the coming financial collapse, and it has just fallen, hard.

The China Evergrande Group is the second largest property developer in China by sales.

It is ranked 122nd on the Fortune Global 500.

It is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, a British Overseas Territory, and headquartered in the Houhai Financial Center in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China.

According to Citibank as of Saturday June 4th, EVERGRANDE is more than 30 days past due on interest payments.

This means that hundreds of billions of Dollars will get removed from market makers and banks on Monday  6th June.

Most G20 nation banks, Money Market  funds, some State pension funds will have direct or secondary counterparty exposure to this.

China Will only bail out China…by CCP takeover of Evergrande companies.

Foreigners are left holding the bag.

More or less the same thing happened in Ireland not too long ago and MANY Irish banks went bust overnight because of it.

A full 2/3rds of China’s domestic wealth and economy is tied up in residential and commercial real estate.  It is the largest single asset class of any nation in the world.

As China Evergrande reportedly begins negotiating creative ways to repay billions owed to offshore bondholders, a paying agent of one of the embattled property giant’s USD-denominated bonds has sent a letter to investors officially confirming default.

Dr Marco Meltzer, a respected German financial analysts and outspoken critic of the handling of Evergrande’s debt crisis, says he received a letter from Citi earlier this week all but confirming the company is broke.

Citigroup serves as a paying agent for a number of Evergrande’s offshore bonds. Paying agents are intermediaries which accept payments from bond issuers and distribute the funds among the bond holders.

“Just this week, I received an official letter from the agent Citibank that Evergrande has defaulted on our bond and I will never see my money again,” said Dr Meltzer.

“I had bought bonds last year in November to see if the media coverage of the real estate giant was accurate, as they repeatedly reported that Evergrande was doing well.

“Unfortunately, it appears this media coverage is taking its course.”

Meltzer shared a copy of the letter (published in the feature image of this article) which states Evergrande and its Subsidiaries “have not made payment of interest that was due and payable on April 11, 2022”.

Last year, an Asia Markets’ investigation highlighted a litany of examples in which missed Evergrande offshore bond payments were sugar-coated in the financial press through anonymous sources claiming that default had been avoided, thus leading to many investors overlooking the risk the crisis poses to global financial markets.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

All the stories in the media about Evergrande negotiating its way out of default and paying bond holders were lies . . .  from or through, the media.

You see, its cheaper to pay the media to run a bs story than it is to pay $300 Billion worth of debt.

So here we see that media PROPAGANDA lured people into investing money, which they have now lost.

Think about that the next time you watch any so-called “main stream” media outlet.  It is no longer the exception to the rule to have media outright lie.  Many of you found that out with COVID.   Now investors are finding out the hard way.

The Takeaway: DON’T TRUST THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA.

Now, we all get to see what kind of rhetorical “blood-bath” takes place in Asian markets when they re-open later tonight (Sunday).   If it is as bad as I think it will be, the contagion will spread rapidly to Europe and to the US.   This could be quite a week.

WARNING SIGNS on JUNE 2

There was a major, red flag warning sign, that something wicked was coming when Fitch Rating Service announced on June 2 they would cease rating Evergrande and its subsidiaries.

They announced “Fitch Ratings has decided to withdraw the credit rating for Communist China’s real estate Evergrande and its two subsidiaries on June 2nd, as there is not enough information to maintain the rating.

Foreign media reported that the rating agencies downgraded China Evergrande Group and its subsidiaries, Hengda Real Estate Group Co Ltd, and Tianji Holding Ltd to “restricted default” last December, saying the companies’ offshore bonds, including loans and private placement, had defaulted. However, as there is not enough information to maintain these ratings anymore, Fitch said. “No further ratings or analysis will be provided to Evergrande and its subsidiaries.” they added.

 BANK CRASH?

When Ireland saw similar major crash, MANY banks in Ireland found themselves book-broke overnight.

Ireland is tiny.  China is gigantic.

The amount of Evergrande debt is at least $300 Billion.   How many banks globally may now be tipped-over into being book-broke?   We start to see tomorrow.

Worst case, global bank runs.

The Numerology people will be going nuts over the date:  06-06-2022 . . . but when they add the 2’s  in the year, it becomes 6-6-6.   Just sayin . . .

What Australia Looks Like In The Winter

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Australia turns white in the winter time but not from the snow. Some places still turn white due to creatures that spin massive webs around that time of year and they look like this.

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VIDEO: University of Minnesota Being “Culturally-Enriched” by “Diversity”

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Students and others on University Avenue near the University of Minnesota got “culturally enriched” last night as “Diversity” opened-fire.  Video below:

 

Ain’t “Diversity” grand?!?!?!?

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Bilderberg does China

When Davos and Bilderberg messenger boys look at The Grand Chessboard, they realize that their era of perpetual free lunch is over.

By Pepe Escobar posted with his permission and widely cross-posted. 

Discreetly, as under the radar as a looming virus, the 68th Bilderberg meeting  is currently underway in Washington, D.C. Nothing to see here. No conspiracy theories about a “secret cabal”, please. This is just a docile, “diverse group of political leaders and experts” having a chat, a laugh, and a bubbly.

Still, one cannot but notice that the choice of venue speaks more volumes than the entire – burned to the ground – Library of Alexandria. In the year heralding the explosion of a much-awaited NATO vs. Russia proxy war, discussing its myriad ramifications does suit the capital of the Empire of Lies, much more than Davos a few weeks ago, where one Henry Kissinger sent them into a frenzy by advancing the necessity of a toxic compromise named “diplomacy”.

The list of Bilderberg 2022 participants is a joy to peruse. Here are just some of the stalwarts:

James Baker, Consigliere extraordinaire, now a mere Director of the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon.

José Manuel Barroso, former head of the European Commission, later the recipient of a golden parachute in the form of Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.

Albert Bourla, the Pfizer Big Guy.

William Burns, CIA director.

Kurt Campbell, the guy who invented the Obama/Hillary “pivot to Asia”, now White House Coordinator for Indo-Pacific.

Mark Carney, former Bank of England, one of the designers of the Great Reset, now Vice Chair of Brookfield Asset Management.

Henry Kissinger, The Establishment’s Voice (or a war criminal: take your pick).

Charles Michel, President of the European Council.

Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, which will duly relay all major Bilderberg directives in the magazine’s upcoming cover stories.

David Petraeus, certified loser of endless surges and Chairman of KKR Global Institute.

Mark Rutte, hawkish Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO top parrot, sorry, secretary-general.

Jake Sullivan, Director of the National Security Council.

The ideological and geopolitical affiliations of these members of the “diverse group” need no further elaboration. It gets positively sexier when we see what they will be discussing.

Among other issues we find “NATO challenges”;

  • “Indo-Pacific realignment”;
  • “continuity of government and economy” (Conspirationists: continuity in case of nuclear war?);
  • “disruption of global financial system” (already on);
  • “post-pandemic health” (Conspirationists: how to engineer the next pandemic?);
  • “trade and deglobalization”; and of course, the choice wagyu beef steaks:
  • Russia and China.

As Bilderberg follows Chatham House Rules, mere mortals won’t have a clue of what they actually “proposed” or approved, and none of the participants will be allowed to talk about it with anyone else.

One of my top New York sources, with direct access to most of the Masters of the Universe, loves to quip that Davos and Bilderberg are just for the messenger boys: the guys who really run the show don’t even bother to show up, ensconced in their uber-private meetings in uber-private clubs, where the real decisions are made.

Still, anyone following in some detail the rotten state of the “rules-based international order” will have a pretty good idea about the 2022 Bilderberg chatter.

The statements and position postures…

Secretary of State Little Blinken – Sullivan’s sidekick in the ongoing Crash Test Dummy administration’s Dumb and Dumber remake – has recently claimed that China “supports” Russia on Ukraine instead of remaining neutral.

What really matters here is that Little Blinken is implying that Beijing wants to destabilize Asia-Pacific – which is a notorious absurdity. Yet that’s the master narrative that must pave the way for the US to muscle up its “Indo-Pacific” concoction. And that’s the briefing Sullivan and Kurt Campbell will be delivering to the “diverse group”.

Davos – with its new self-billed mantra, “The Great Narrative” – completely excluded Russia.

Bilderberg is mostly about containment of China – which after all is the number one existential threat to the Empire of Lies and its satrapies.

Rather than wait for Bilderberg morsels dispensed by The Economist, it’s much more productive to check out what a cross-section of fact-based Chinese intelligentsia thinks about the new “collective West” racket.

What the Chinese say

Let’s start with Justin Lin Yifu, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and now Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University, and Sheng Songcheng, former head of the Financial Survey and Statistic Dept. a the Bank of China.

They advance that if China achieves “dynamic zero infection” on Covid-19 by the end of May (that actually happened: see the end of the Shanghai lockdown), China’s economy may grow by 5.5% in 2022.

They dismiss the imperial attempt to establish an “Asian version of NATO”: “As long as China continues to grow at a higher rate and to open up, European and ASEAN countries would not participate in the US’s decoupling trap so as to ensure their economic growth and job creation.”

Three academics from the Shanghai Institute of International Studies and Fudan University touch on the same point: the American-announced “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework”, supposed to be the economic pillar of the Indo-Pacific strategy, is nothing but a cumbersome attempt to “weaken the internal cohesion and regional autonomy of ASEAN.”

Liu Zongyi stresses that China’s position at the heart of the vastly inter-connected Asian supply chains “has been consolidated”, especially now with the onset of the largest trade deal on the planet, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Chen Wengling, Chief Economist of a think tank under the key National Development and Reform Commission, notes  the “comprehensive ideological and technological war against China” launched by the Americans.

But he’s keen to stress how they are “not ready for a hot war as the US and Chinese economies are so closely linked.” The crucial vector is that “the US has not yet made substantial progress in strengthening its supply chain focusing on four key fields including semiconductors.”

Chen worries about “China’s energy security”; “China’s silence” on US sanctions on Russia, which “may result in US retaliation”; and crucially, how “China’s plan of building the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with Ukraine and EU countries will be affected.” What will happen in practice is BRI will be privileging economic corridors across Iran and West Asia, as well as the Maritime Silk Road, instead of the Trans-Siberian corridor across Russia.

It’s up to Yu Yongding, from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank, to go for the jugular, noting how” the global financial system and the US dollar have been weaponized into geopolitical tools. The nefarious behavior of the US in freezing foreign exchange reserves has not only seriously damaged the international credibility of the US but has also shaken the credit foundation of the dominant international financial system in the West.”

He expresses the consensus among Chinese intel, that “if there is a geopolitical conflict between the US and China, then China’s overseas assets will be seriously threatened, especially its huge reserves. Therefore, the composition of China’s external financial assets and liabilities urgently needs to be adjusted and the portion of US dollar denominated assets in its reserves portfolio should be reduced.”

This chessboard sucks

A serious debate is raging across virtually all sectors of Chinese society on the American weaponization of the world financial casino. The conclusions are inevitable: get rid of US Treasuries, fast, by any means necessary; more imports of commodities and strategic materials (thus the importance of the Russia-China strategic partnership); and firmly secure overseas assets, especially those foreign currency reserves.

Meanwhile Bilderberg’s “diverse group”, on the other side of the pond, is discussing, among other things, what will really happen in case they force the IMF racket to blow up (a key plan to implement The Great Reset, or “Great Narrative”).

They are starting to literally freak out with the slowly but surely emergence of an alternative, resource-based monetary/financial system: exactly what the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) is currently discussing and designing, with Chinese input.

Imagine a counter-Bilderberg system where a basket of Global South actors, resource-rich but economically poor, are able to issue their own currencies backed by commodities, and finally get rid of their status of IMF hostages. They are all paying close attention to the Russia gas-for-rubles experiment.

And in China’s particular case, what will always matter is loads of productive capital underpinning a massive, extremely deep industrial and civil infrastructure.

No wonder Davos and Bilderberg messenger boys, when they look at The Grand Chessboard, are filled with dread: their era of perpetual free lunch is over. What would delight cynics, skeptics, neoplatonists and Taoists galore is that it was Davos-Bilderberg Men (and Women) who actually boxed themselves into zugzwang.

All dressed up – with nowhere to go. Even JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon – who didn’t even bother to go to Bilderberg – is scared, saying an economic “hurricane” is coming. And overturning the chessboard is no remedy: at best that may invite a ceremonious tuxedo visit by Mr. Sarmat and Mr. Zircon carrying some hypersonic bubbly.

‘Demonic’ AI generating its own secret written language that nobody can understand

An image AI called DALL-E has sparked debate among AI experts who claim it is creating a secret language to categorise images – the words look like gibberish but have a hidden meaning.

From HERE

A popular AI tool that turns text into images appears to be creating its ‘own language’ of indecipherable gibberish and using it to categorise different pictures.

The DALL-E tool, which uses AI to generate images from text, is seemingly generating nonsense text when instructed to create images featuring printed words.

Computer science PhD student Giannis Daras took to Twitter to share examples of the ‘language’, including phrases the AI had created to identify birds and insects.

“Apoploe vesrreaitais” means ‘birds’, while “Contarra ccetnxniams luryca tanniounons” means insects.

Daras claimed in the viral thread that if you enter the gibberish words created by the AI back into the system, it will generate images linked to those phrases.

In a research paper which is yet to be peer-reviewed, Daras and his colleague Alexandros G. Dimakis said: ““[T]ext prompts such as: ‘An image of the word airplane’ often lead to generated images that depict gibberish text.

“We discover that this produced text is not random, but rather reveals a hidden vocabulary that the model seems to have developed internally.

“For example, when fed with this gibberish text, the model frequently produces airplanes.”

The academics believe that the AI generates its own words to make sense of the images it creates, and can then understand these words when they are read back to it.

The claims sparked debate on Twitter. One user, Dmitriy Mandel, said: “Hmm, time to brush up on signs of demonic possession.”

Another person said :”Is this an actual LANGUAGE? With grammar and stuff?”

However, other AI experts remain highly sceptical of the claims.

Thomas Woodside said: “I do not believe this is accurate. At the very least, it is a lot more complicated than this thread / paper makes it out to be,” before sharing a thread where he explained issues with the claims.

Another user went further, saying: “This is not science, this nonsense is **tarot card reading**… trying to find meaning in random noise.”

DALL-E is a machine learning system that allows you to generate images just by typing short descriptions into a text box. You can find out more about it here.

No Chinese Engines Please! Thailand ‘Rejects’ To Buy Yuan-Class Submarines From Beijing Sans German Tech

Amid concerns about the missing German engines in Chinese submarines, Thailand’s Prime Minister, Prayut Chan-o-cha had warned in April that the planned procurement deal with China could be shelved if Beijing was unable to fit the engines specified in the original purchase agreement.

The EurAsian Times had reported that the German engine manufacturing company Motoren- und Turbinen-Union (MTU) had refused to supply MTU396 diesel engines to China to be fitted into the S26T Yuan-class submarine being built for the Royal Thai Navy (RTN).

To resolve the issue, the Royal Thai Navy and China Shipbuilding & Offshore International Co (CSOC) have scheduled a meeting on June 9 to settle the dispute, Thai media outlet Pattaya Mail reported.

The vice president of CSOC is due to meet with Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Tharoengsak Sirisawat to discuss the situation.

The Chinese firm has asked the Royal Thai Navy to change the contract to allow it to employ a Chinese-made alternative, such as the MWM 620, which it claims is of comparable quality.

The Royal Thai Navy, on the other hand, is sticking to the contract’s original provisions, which it feels are non-negotiable.

 

Negotiations on the issue were initially set to take place in May but were repeatedly postponed due to the Covid-19 situation in China. According to observers, CSOC may give the Navy revised terms to complete the contract.

However, if no headway is made, the agreement could even be terminated.

“What do we do with a submarine with no engines? Why should we purchase it?” Prayut had told journalists in April. The submarine that China wants to outfit with its home-grown engines is expected to be delivered in 2024.

Under the terms of the agreement, China Shipbuilding & Offshore International Co (CSOC), a state-owned shipbuilding conglomerate, is supposed to build and sell three advanced export variants of Type 039B Yuan-class submarine – to be called the S26T – for a total cost of 36 billion baht (1.16 billion) to be paid in 11 annual installments.

Will The Deal Fall Through?

The Thai government approved the purchase of three Yuan-class submarines from China for $1.05 billion in April 2017. However, due to budget constraints, the purchase of only one submarine was allowed — valued at $403 million, while the other two were shelved.

While Germany bypassed the terms of the European Union embargo by taking advantage of some loopholes, it had to terminate the dealing after an investigation exposed how Germany was violating a comprehensive EU arms embargo and benefiting China, a common European adversary that has been challenging its power.

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After the abrupt suspension of German engine delivery, China reportedly offered reverse-engineered Chinese-made engines certified by German MTU to the Thai Navy.

However, the Thailand officials rejected the offer, insisting that the Chinese side adheres to the original terms of the agreement. They also turned down the Chinese offer to transfer two of its decommissioned submarines, according to Thai PBS World.

The Chinese have demonstrated well-known capabilities in reverse engineering technology obtained by foreign countries to develop their system. However, the dearth of examples of home-grown propulsion technology could be understood as the object of Thailand’s doubt regarding Chinese engines.

Even though Thailand has indicated that terminating the purchase will not affect bilateral relations, China’s inability to equip the submarine with the original engine could risk future submarine sales. The explanation for this is simple: German engines are not coming and new Chinese engines are not trustworthy yet.

Will Thailand Accept China’s Offer? 

While China has made significant advances in engine manufacture for fighter jets such as the J-20 and wind tunnels for hypersonic technologies, it lags far behind in submarine propulsion.

Since the majority of engines used in Chinese submarines are foreign-made, propulsion engineering is one of the military industry’s most serious weaknesses.

The Song and Yuan-class attack submarines, for instance, which account for the majority of China’s conventional submarine fleet, are powered by MTU 396 SE84 series diesel engines manufactured in Germany.

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Professor Andrew Erickson of the US Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) said at a 2015 conference on the Chinese Navy’s capabilities that propulsion engineering in the PLAN’s [People’s Liberation Army Navy’s] underwater force is still a work in progress.

Due to diesel engines that are specifically designed to minimize vibration and noise to avoid sonar detection, diesel-electric submarines are far stealthier than nuclear submarines. MTU Friedrichshafen GmbH of Friedrichshafen, Germany’s 396 SE84 series of state-of-the-art diesel engines, for example, power both the Song– and Yuan–class attack submarines.

According to The Diplomat, each Song and Yuan–class battleship has three of these engines, which have been built under license by Chinese defense contractors since 1986.

The Yuan-class submarines are also thought to be equipped with Stirling air-independent propulsion and quieting technologies from Russian-designed submarines.

It has made some advancements in reverse engineering in the past few years; however, the Chinese engine has been rejected by the Thailand authorities despite the certification received by MTU. As of now, the deal hangs in the balance, and so does China’s standing as a regional exporter of arms.

More Pictures from the Past

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“Sits Down Spotted”- Crow Nation, Fort Keogh, Montana, 1881. Photo By L.A. Huffman

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Another Lira: What Happens To Europe When Russia Wins

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I invite you to compare this with Batiuska’s article newly posted.  Other video HERE

Same thing .. very differently expressed.  Is it the end of the imbeciles?

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 5

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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Murder hornets, US and Britain in a tussle over weapon technology, Penis Pendants, Tiananmen Square, and the Grave of Scotia

Life is crazy and the idiots running the West are the craziest of them all. I hope that you all are being prudent and collecting firewood, having a wood stove, riding a bicycle, and learning how to can and tend to your gardens. The madness from above will trickle down and saturate your life in a flood. Do not be caught “flat footed”.

Here’s some articles, art, fun, and amusements for today. have fun. -MM

Wearing Futuristic Protective Suits, Washington State Crews Destroy First US Murder Hornet Nest

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Heavily protected crews worked in Washington state on Saturday to destroy the first nest of so-called murder hornets discovered in the United States.

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Race Against Time to Save the 33,000-Year-Old Underwater Cosquer Cave

During glacial Pleistocene, the entry to the famous Cosquer Cave was 100 meters (330 ft) above sea level, but the Holocene sea level rise, propelled lately by climate change, has meant that the entrance to the cave is now 37 meters (121 ft) below sea level. Renowned for being the only place in the world where prehistoric underwater marine art can be found, scientists are now racing against time to save the art from climate change and pollution, reports  Agence France-Presse (AFP) .

Over 30,000 years old and created over 15 millennia, the spectacular cave art at Cosquer Cave is in grave danger, with a 12 cm (almost 5 in) rise in sea level in 2011 alone. With sea levels rising a few millimeters every year, and the combination of water and plastic pollution is doing more and more damage to the art, archaeologist and diver Luc Vanrell and his colleagues have taken matters into their own hands.

Cosquer Cave: A Fortuitous Discovery and an Artistic Language

Discovered by Henri Cosquer in 1985, Cosquer Cave was only revealed to the public in 1991. In that interim six-year period dozens of interested explorers, divers and amateur enthusiasts tried to visit the cave, with three divers losing their lives in the process. It was after this tragic incident that the entrance to the cave was made public. Luc Vanrell explored the cave in 1994, and by 1995 had taken on all the scientific and technical work related to the preservation of this Upper Palaeolithic marvel.

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While in use, Cosquer Cave was 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) away from the coast. “At the time we were in the middle of an ice age and the sea was 135 meters [443 ft] lower” than it is today, highlighted archaeologist Michel Olive in  AFP. “The entrance to the cave was on a little promontory facing south over grassland protected by cliffs. It was an extremely good place for prehistoric man.” Olive has been put in charge of the academic research and study of the cave.

Though four-fifths of the cave has inadvertently been lost or submerged due to the passage of time, 229  rock art  figures depicting 13 species remain on the wall. An added bonus is 69 red or black  hand prints , including three that have been left by mistake, some of these made by  children. In total, 600 signs, images and rock carvings, which include aquatic life never seen before in  cave paintings  have been found. The cave was occupied between 33,000 and 18,500 years ago, but no traces or evidence of people having lived there have been found, reports  The Daily Mail .

To access the cave, visitors first need to dive to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of southern France, at the gorgeous Calanques inlets east of  Marseille. After that, they have to navigate a 137 meter (450 ft) tunnel, before arriving at a submerged cavern. The cavern leads to the 2,500 square meter (27,000 sq. ft.) Cosquer Cave.

On 4 June 2022 a life-sized replica cave, known as  Cosquer Méditerranée , is being opened up a few kilometers away in Marseille. The replica will confirm the bountiful coastal wildlife that must have once graced the Mediterranean – horses, deer,  bison, ibex, prehistoric auroch cows, saiga antelopes, seals, fish, penguins, and even a cat and a  bear. There are also hundreds of geometric signs, and eight depictions of male and female body parts.

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Digital Mapping and Preservation at Cosquer Cave

As of now, Vanrell and his team are rushing to beat the clock to prepare a 3D reconstruction of the cave through digital mapping. “We fantasized about bringing the cave to the surface. When it is finished, our virtual Cosquer cavern—which is accurate to within millimeters—will be indispensable for researchers and archaeologists who will not be able to physically get inside,” said diver Bertrand Chazaly, who is in charge of the operation to digitalize what has come to be known as the “underwater Lascaux” cave. The  replica cave , slightly smaller than the original, has cost a whopping $24 million.

In fact, in terms of importance and size Cosquer Cave is right up there with  Lascaux, Altamira, and  Chauvet, three of the largest cave sites in the world. “And because the cave walls that are today  underwater were probably also once decorated, nothing else in Europe compares to its size,” says Vanrell.

Having said that, the alarming rise in sea levels, exacerbated by the pace of anthropocenic activity in the past few decades, has caused the walls to rinse and be leeched out. It has also finally gained the attention of the French government, who have launched a major push to record all available data before it’s too late.

In the meantime, Vanrell and his team are hoping to discover what the purpose of the cave was, in order to understand the ways of our ancestors and their artistic pursuits. After all, examples of Palaeolithic  cave art  have been located across all continents, including cave art created as far back as  45,000 years ago in Indonesia . Clearly, cave art, which predates human language, is the first form of symbolic visual communication that developed into more complex forms of language much later on.

“The peace dividend has ended, and it is time for China to prepare for a complete decoupling”

No more illusions exist in China.  The "barbarians" will NOT accept coexistence and win-win situations with the rest of the world.

Full article is found HERE

"The peace dividend is over, it's time for China to have to prepare for a full decoupling"

School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Shanghai International Studies University

[Introduction] Since the change between China and the United States in 2018, the world situation has been in turmoil, and various "decoupling theories" at home and abroad have become popular. Especially since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the international situation has shown a clear camp-like pattern, and the United States has targeted China from all aspects of its domestic and foreign affairs. Although many people believe that globalization is irreversible and do not believe that there will be a day of complete decoupling, if there is a complete decoupling in the future, how should we deal with it?

This article argues that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is a symbolic event in the end of the globalization tide led by the United States, which means that China no longer has the peaceful external development environment of the past 40 years. The author points out that the current seemingly "rule-based order" is actually a center-periphery hierarchical international order dominated by Western countries. Because of their strong ability to manage and control capital, China and Russia have become the last two obstacles for the United States to further control the global periphery, and it is inevitable that they will be fully suppressed by the West. Therefore, China must re-examine the past tradition of multilateralism, adjust the spatial priority of foreign exchanges, and reshape a new international environment that is conducive to China's national security and long-term development.

The author believes that in the future, China will promote the construction of a new global system, that is, a "three-ring" international system to ensure China's national security and development : the first ring is East Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East around China. Form a system of close industrial division of labor, and obtain stable energy supply and reliable security barriers through them; the second ring is the developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, with which China exchanges raw materials and industrial products, and assists their development; the third ring is Expand to traditional industrialized countries dominated by Europe and the United States. Among them, the "first ring" is the key to China's construction of the "new third ring" international system. In recent decades, developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have formed a new global system. The solid foundations of developing countries in terms of economic volume, trade exchanges, and economic cooperation are not what they used to be. To further enhance economic and political autonomy, we must get rid of financial and monetary dependence on Western countries. Therefore, to build the "new three-ring" international system, a higher level and wider range of financial and monetary cooperation should be developed among developing countries

This article was originally published in the 3rd issue of "Cultural Landscape" in 2022 (June issue), with the original title "Constructing the "New Three Rings": Facing the Possible China's Choice for Comprehensive Decoupling" , which only represents the author's point of view for everyone to think about.

Building the "New Three Rings": China's Choice in the Face of a Possible Comprehensive Decoupling

Russia's "special military operation" against Ukraine, and the ensuing full-scale confrontation between Western countries and Russia, is a landmark event in the end of the globalization tide since the 1980s. The United States has hijacked its allies to impose deadly sanctions on Russia, and coerced other countries in the world to choose sides between Western countries and Russia. The world is reappearing the scene of life-and-death battles a hundred years ago, and it also brings huge challenges to China. The "end of globalization" makes China no longer have the external development environment of the past 40 years to use. The United States promotes the process of rebuilding the international system dominated by it and "decoupling" from China and Russia, which is very likely to be further strengthened in the future. The characteristics of the times in today's world have undergone a paradigm change. Faced with the possibility of passive and comprehensive decoupling, China needs to actively adjust its foreign strategic arrangements and make a new choice on the priority of state exchanges, so as to shape a new type of international system that is conducive to hedging the negative impact of Western countries' decoupling from China.

▍The unspoken rule of the international order is the center-periphery power structure

In the 30 years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia has moved from actively moving toward the United States and Western countries at first, to gradually alienating them, and even now fighting fiercely, highlighting the political limits of globalization. Contrary to people's romantic imagination of globalization, the latest round of globalization was originally an investment of American hegemony, partially serving the purpose of dismantling the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, which made it impossible to expand indefinitely. From the perspective of the relationship between the leading countries and following countries of globalization, or the developed countries and developing countries, there is a limit of equality in international politics: when globalization backfires on the initiators and threatens their power advantages, the global The transformation will inevitably be "reversed", and the operating path will be redesigned. The process of globalization in recent decades and America's pursuit of power advantage are two sides of the same coin. The two are mutually conditional and mutually advanced. Russia's "special military operation" against Ukraine is the result of this round of globalization that has completely exposed its power and brought an end to the globalization led by the United States

The eastward expansion of NATO is the main reason for Russia to take the initiative. This appears to be a security issue, but in fact it is also an economic issue in the process of globalization. Peripheralizing the Soviet Union in the global system is the goal of the globalization process initiated by the United States. Russia’s desire to use globalization to achieve national rejuvenation and become a central country is obviously contrary to the logic of its occurrence and evolution. Global capital, especially financial capital's interest in Russia, is more concentrated in energy, food and minerals, which are areas where financial capital can make huge profits. However, since Putin came to power, Russia has strengthened its control over key industries related to national security and basic people's livelihood, and is committed to building the Eurasian Economic Union and creating an economic development space suitable for itself, which is not welcome by external capital. The eastward expansion of NATO is the embodiment of capital’s influence on politics to achieve market expansion. It constantly squeezes Russia’s development space and aggravates Russia’s externalization. If no effective response is made, Russia will be further fixed in the position of primary product provider and lose its position as a primary product provider. The ability to participate in great power politics, and even a domestic crisis. This is what the Russian elite does not want to see.

The eastward expansion of NATO and the current frenzied sanctions against Russia by Western countries have revealed the power structure of the contemporary world. After the end of World War II, the European colonial system gradually disintegrated. Since the second half of the 20th century, the clear rules of the international order have been centered on the United Nations and international law, and embody the principle of sovereign equality of states. However, the center-periphery hierarchical international order under the European colonial system has not really disappeared, but has continued to this day as an unspoken rule and an implicit order, but the absolute hierarchical power relations characterized by direct drive in the past no longer exist. It is based on the "common but differentiated" international order, that is, all countries have equal sovereignty on the surface, but there are still power differences in actual operation. "Rule-based order" is the main expression of this order, all countries need to abide by the same rules, but the real connotation of this rule is not centered on the United Nations and international law, but centered on Western countries.

U.S. hegemony since the postwar period and the G7 established after the 1970s are the main manifestations of the contemporary version of the global center-periphery order. The annual meeting of the G7 discusses more than just seven countries. The matter is also the matter of the whole world, and they are negotiated and then pushed to be transformed into global rules. The "rule-based order" is actually "the rule-based order established by Western countries", and who is the rule maker is the key. In the global division of labor system, rule-making, money supply and industrial product production are the affairs of a few countries in the center. If other countries want to join in, they may disintegrate the dominant position of a few countries. This is the mastery of the rules. Countries that have the right to formulate and dominate the currency and maintain a technological advantage with intellectual property do not want to see it. China's unexpected economic growth in recent decades has broken the center-periphery international order since the postwar period, threatening the unspoken rules centered on Western countries. In recent years, the United States has defined China as a major "strategic competitor" "The main reason is that China's development has touched the cheese of the United States and other Western countries. The latter never imagined that China can also "enter the center of the world stage", even now It's actually just "getting closer".

Whether it is the eastward expansion of NATO or the US's selection of China as a key target of suppression, it all reflects that the US and Western countries want to maintain and strengthen their own power advantages. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the Ukrainian sanctions against Russia are further highlighted by the fact that most countries in the world are in the "rural areas" in the periphery, a few countries are in the "cities" in the center, and the United States is the "Downtown", "city" in the global "urban center" does not want to see "rural" become "urban" like them. The hindrance of China and Russia to the global "city center" lies not only in their strong ability to control capital, making them the last two largest undisciplined places of capitalist globalization; much greater national power, and become an obstacle for the "urban center" to gain further control over the "rural" fringes of the world. In the process of this round of globalization, China, with its strong economic growth and comprehensive national strength, has shown a trend of moving from "rural" to "urban". In recent years, it has become the leader of "de-globalization", which has exposed the "common" limits of the post-war international order. China has also become a member of the "city" that the heartland countries cannot tolerate.

▍The basic plate of China's multilateral cooperation lies in non-Western countries

In "An Analysis of All Classes in Chinese Society", the first chapter of "Selected Works of Mao Zedong", the opening question asks: "Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This question is the primary question of the revolution." In the past few years, the reform and opening up, and the proposal to build a community with a shared future for mankind in recent years, no longer deliberately emphasize the distinction between enemies and friends in international exchanges, but hope to promote "the beauty of the United States and the beauty of the world" in the "beauty of each, and the beauty of the beautiful". ". But whether the world can achieve "Great Harmony" is not determined by the wishes of the Chinese family. With the US-led Western countries showing an all-round confrontation with Russia and China, the characteristics of the contemporary world can no longer be regarded as "peace and development" mechanically, but "competition" and even "war" need to be seriously considered ——Even if the war can be ruled out, it is impossible to achieve better development in the globalization system dominated by Western countries as always. China has to rethink the "primary question" in its foreign exchanges: who are the possible partners of China at present and in the future, and who are the partners that China cannot hold?

Birds of a feather flock together. The same is true of countries. Countries with similar experiences, situations and demands are more likely to form long-term cooperative relationships. In the contemporary discourse system of international relations, Western countries vs non-Western countries, developed countries vs developing countries, northern countries vs southern countries are common distinctions between countries. Developed countries and northern countries are mostly Western countries, while southern countries and developing countries are mostly Western countries. The countries are all non-Western countries. Unlike the distinction between developed countries and developing countries, and northern countries and southern countries, which is biased toward the economic level, the distinction between Western countries and non-Western countries also points to the political and cultural level, which implies global power relations. Since the 19th century, under the influence of three key elements, industrialization, rational state building and "progressive ideology", the world has undergone a "Global Transformation" : a "centerless and pluralistic world" that used to be in a discrete state. , turned to a highly interconnected and hierarchical "center-periphery" global international system, with the West at the center of this order. In the revolutionary era from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, the frequently discussed "imperialism" was the description and characterization of this order relationship. Imperialism and globalization in the middle and late 19th century to the early 20th century are two sides of the same body. Imperialism comes with globalization, while globalization strengthens imperialism. Barrel array", trying to escape from it is not easy. Western countries used to be the center of the global system and the birthplace of imperialism. The colonial order in the modern world and the hegemony of the United States since the mid-to-late 20th century have all come from this; at the same time, many revolutions in modern times, including the 20 What the anti-colonial movement in the mid-to-late century was trying to break was this center-periphery power structure of inequality and injustice.

In the center-periphery global power structure, it is impossible for the countries in the heartland to truly help the revolution of the countries in the peripheral regions, nor would they welcome the countries in the peripheral regions to join the countries in the central region in an equal manner. The fate of being deprived can only rely on the grouping of countries in the peripheral areas to keep warm, and in occasional situations, the gaps between the countries in the central area must be used to strive for cooperation with the latter in the struggle. During the Chinese revolution in the first half of the 20th century and the consolidation of the regime in the second half of the 20th century, the main external forces that China relied on came from the periphery of the global system. The Communist International network, which the Communist Party of China once participated in, was an alliance between the non-regime forces of the colonized and oppressed nations at that time; during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, China took the opportunity of participating in the World Anti-Fascist War to continue the "anti-imperialist" demands of the previous Chinese revolution. , to further promote the abolition of the various unequal rights imposed on China by imperialist countries; after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China attached great importance to cooperation with "Third World" countries, and supported anti-colonial movements and anti-colonial movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The country building after independence, especially the active participation in the Bandung Conference in 1955 and the proposal of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, has been well echoed by the Asian, African and Latin American countries, and has also become an important node in the virtuous circle of relations between China and the Asian, African and Latin American countries. With the support of the latter, China returned to the United Nations in 1971 and became a permanent member of the Security Council.

The mutual solidarity and assistance between China and the Asian, African and Latin American countries in resisting colonial rule and in national construction has laid a key feature of China's multilateralism since modern times, that is, attaching great importance to cooperation with non-Western developing countries and building a common resistance against central countries. Defend national independence and development and progress in the unequal and unjust international order. In its all-round diplomacy based on non-Western developing countries, China does not exclude exchanges and even the development of friendly and cooperative relations with Western developed countries and other major powers. However, it should also be noted that in the past, China's exchanges and cooperation with countries in the heartland have always had two preconditions: First, from the perspective of China, China insists on developing its foreign relations on the basis of independence, equality and mutual benefit, and opposes the development of foreign relations in international relations. Power hierarchy; second, from the perspective of countries in the center, they always have a ceiling in cooperation with China, that is, they cannot shake the global power structure centered on Western countries. When either of these two premises changes, it will be difficult for China, as a developing country, to continue to develop in-depth cooperative relations, especially political cooperative relations, with Western countries.

▍Adjusting the spatial priority of China's foreign exchanges

In the past 40 years, China has abandoned ideological differences and avoided differences in national systems, and has been committed to cooperation with all countries, gradually forming a foreign exchange in which "big powers are the key, neighboring countries are the primary, developing countries are the foundation, and multilateralism is an important stage". pattern. But this pattern has encountered many obstacles at the time of the "end of globalization". The "decoupling" initiated by the United States coercing other Western countries with China in terms of economy, technology, knowledge, and personnel exchanges is unlikely to be withdrawn due to the war between Russia and Ukraine. On the contrary, it may intensify.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, it has experienced many changes in the direction of its diplomacy, from the "one-sidedness" at the time of the founding of the People's Republic of China, to the division of "one line, one large area" and "three worlds" in the 1970s, to the division of "three worlds" after 1978. Turning to reform and opening up, focusing on development and cooperation with Western countries, all responded to the situation at that time. At the time of the current "big changes unseen in a century", Western countries have shown a stronger and stronger intention to suppress potential challengers. Especially after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, groups of Western countries have assembled to suppress non-Western countries in all aspects. The situation is fully exposed and will become the structural presence of international relations for a long time to come. China cannot but be highly vigilant that Western countries' all-encompassing sanctions and suppression measures against Russia will be imitated on China in the future. Therefore, it is urgent to re-examine China's past tradition of multilateralism, adjust the spatial pattern of foreign exchanges, and strengthen cooperation with non-Western developing countries, so as to create a new international environment conducive to safeguarding China's national security and long-term development.

In 1974, Mao Zedong proposed the division of "three worlds", and made a distinction and analysis of the three types of countries in the world at that time and the ways China could interact with them. It is also a member of the "Third World" countries. The Chinese government and people firmly support the just struggle of all oppressed people and nations. The "Three Worlds" theory inherits the previous experience of China's foreign exchanges and ranks the spatial priority of China's foreign exchanges at that time. It is also an important ideological guide for China's participation in South-South cooperation in the past. The spatial priority still has strong instructive significance. Compared with the fact that China has attached more importance to cooperation with Western countries since the reform and opening up, China will put the promotion of South-South cooperation in a prominent position in the future. Whether it is seeking diplomatic breakthrough, long-term development or national rejuvenation, for a long time to come, China's foreign strategic arrangements will focus on promoting the construction of a new global system based on Asia and its surrounding regions. The final result is to form a "three-ring" international system to ensure China's national security and development: the first ring is East Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East around China. East Asia connects the world's financial resources, and China and countries in this region have formed close industries. The division of labor system, Central Asia and the Middle East connect the world's resources, China must rely on the countries in this region to obtain stable energy supply and reliable security barriers; the second link is the vast developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, with which China supplies raw materials and industrial products. China's foreign aid should also be mainly aimed at these countries; the third ring extends to traditional industrialized countries dominated by Europe and the United States, with which China exchanges industrial products, technologies and knowledge. Based on this "three-ring" structure, we should arrange the priorities and front and back of external exchanges, and re-plan the direction and content of external exchanges.
The first and the 。。。。。Read more…
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Home Natural Gas Price DOUBLED in last 6 months

As regular readers to this web site know, I inherited my mother’s house in northeastern, rural, Pennsylvania when she died last November.   I’ve been spending time up here doing clean-up and maintenance work because this house can be a fall-back (Bug-Out) location if needed due to economic collapse, social upheaval, or war.

There is no Municipal water supply, or sewer, or natural gas supply up here; everyone has to take care of such things on their own.

As such, the house has Well water, a Septic system and tanks to hold natural gas/propane for heating and cooking.

The local gas supply company knows how large the tanks are at each customer home.  Their computers monitor “Degree Days” which are days where the temperature outside is such that a typical family would be using a furnace, and they automatically send a delivery truck, similar to the generic one shown above, to come refill the tanks as the Degree Days warrant.  Of course, you can call for a delivery if you feel you need one, but they track all this stuff pretty good, and we have yet to ever run out of gas.

Based on actual, annual, gas use, the company projects the use for each coming year, projects the future cost of gas,  and sets up a budget plan for each customer so they pay the same amount each month, and at the end of the year, it all pretty much averages out to a zero balance.  Sometime you owe a little, other times they owe you.

The budget for this house for the past few years, based upon ACTUAL usage was $180 a month.

I got a letter from the gas company yesterday.  Based on this house’s actual use, and more importantly, the projected future price of gas, this year’s budget jumped to $345. a month! ! !

Folks, that’s almost DOUBLE . . .  and get this: “Due to the volatile nature of the natural gas markets, this price may DOUBLE AGAIN OR MORE ! ! ! ! “

Joe Biden and Democrats did this.   Just a reminder.

Germany to change constitution to enable $110 billion defense fund

Only 70+ years after committed war crimes, Germany is back… Should the world worry?
BERLIN, May 29 (Reuters) - Germany has agreed to change its constitution to allow for a credit-based special defense fund of 100 billion euros ($107.35 billion) proposed after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the German finance ministry announced on Sunday.  read more 
Germany's centre-right opposition and ruling coalition with centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) said they reached the required two-thirds majority to exempt the defense fund from a constitutional debt brake.

According to sources familiar with the matter, the negotiations were led by FDP leader Christian Lindner, SPD's Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, Greens leader Annalena Baerbock and the opposition's vice whip Mathias Middelberg.

The money is to be used over several years to increase Germany's regular defense budget of around 50 billion euros and enable the country to meet the NATO target of spending 2% of its economic output on defense each year.

Article HERE

Japan has yet to change constitution but their military already on the way back…
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HISTORIC: NYC Cancer Treatment Results in “Complete Remission” of Colon Cancer

A small NYC-led cancer trial has achieved a result reportedly never before seen – the total remission of cancer in all of its patients.

To be sure, the trial — led by doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering and backed by drug maker GlaxoSmithKline — has only completed treatment of 12 patients, with a specific cancer in its early stages and with a rare mutation as well.

But the results, reported Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine and the New York Times, were still striking enough to prompt multiple physicians to tell the paper they were believed to be unprecedented.

One cancer specialist told the Times it was an “unheard-of” result.

According to the NEJM paper and the Times report, all 12 patients had rectal cancer that had not spread beyond the local area, and their tumors all exhibited a mutation affecting the ability of cells to repair damage to DNA.

After being treated with the drug, dostarlimab, all 12 are now in complete remission, with no surgery or chemotherapy, no severe side effects — and no trace of cancer whatsoever anywhere in their body.

Doctors quoted by the Times said that while the results were promising, they would need to be replicated and expanded – nor was it clear if the medication in question would be useful beyond this specific application.

Japanese Artist’s Maddeningly Realistic Food Illustrations Have Our Mouths Watering

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This Japanese artist says that he gets a lot of joy from hearing that his work looks tasty, and it’s a compliment he receives often. Yoshinobu Saito worked previously as a character designer, but recently it was his artistic forays into the world of gastronomy which have gained him attention online.

And it’s easy to see why. His work is almost maddeningly realistic. In particular, he seems to specialise in the tantalising glisten that many delicious foods have, the one that relentlessly and unforgivingly triggers our hunger pangs.

11 4w7
11 4w7

1 w85
1 w85

2 w82
2 w82

3 8w2
3 8w2

4 78w
4 78w

6 w67
6 w67

Tiananmen Square: The Failure of an American-instigated 1989 Color Revolution

Article HERE

By Larry Romanoff

There are few places in China that seem more burned into the consciousness of typical Westerners than Tiananmen Square, and few events more commonly mentioned than the student protests of 1989. But the stories are wrong on several levels. It was never reported in the Western media that there were two separate events that occurred in Beijing on June 4, 1989. One was a student protest that culminated in a sit-in in Tiananmen Square by several thousand university students, which had lasted for several weeks and finally terminated on June 4. The other was a one-day worker strike that occurred (perhaps not by chance) also on June 4, when a group of workers unhappy with their lot in life, organised their own protest independently of the students, and in a different place. For reasons that will become apparent, the workers’ protest is the necessary focus for understanding the events of that date, so I will begin there.

The Workers’ Revolt

A group of workers gathered, and barricaded several streets in Muxidi, an area in Beijing five or six kilometers from Tiananmen Square, the barricades attended by several hundred mostly adult workers, with an undetermined few young people. However, there was a third quite large group present that to my knowledge has never been clearly identified, though it is obvious from the photos they were not workers and certainly not young students. (1) Thugs or anarchists might be an appropriate adjective, but the facts seem to support the conclusion (and my own personal judgment) that they were mercenaries. (2)

The government sent in busloads of soldiers, accompanied by a few APCs to clear the barricades and re-open the streets to traffic. (3) The violence began when the third group attacked the young men attempting to clear the barricades. They were well-prepared, armed with at least hundreds and perhaps thousands of gasoline bombs, and immediately torched dozens of buses and the few APCs – with the soldiers still inside. Many soldiers in both types of vehicles escaped, but many others did not, and many burned to death. There are countless photos of dead soldiers burned to a crisp, some hung by the thugs from lampposts, others lying in the street or on stairs or sidewalks where they died, others hanging out of bus windows or the APCs, having only partially escaped before being overcome by the flames. There are documented reports and photos showing that the group of thugs managed to get control of one APC, and drove it through the streets while firing the machine guns on the turret. (4) It was only then that the government sent in armed soldiers and military equipment.

Government reports and independent media personnel generally claim a total of 250 to 300 civilian deaths before the violence subsided, but a similar number of soldiers had already been killed. When police or military are attacked in this way, they will surely use force to defend themselves and cannot be faulted for that. If you or I were the military commander on the scene, watching our men being attacked and burned to death, we would have done the same. From everything I know, I can find no fault here.

Here is an eyewitness report from someone who was there, an excerpt from the book ‘Tiananmen Moon’: (5)

“There was a new element I hadn’t noticed much of before, young punks decidedly less than student-like in appearance. In the place of headbands and signed shirts with university pins they wore cheap, ill-fitting polyester clothes and loose windbreakers. Under our lights, their eyes gleaming with mischief, they brazenly revealed hidden Molotov cocktails. Who were these punks in shorts and sandals, carrying petrol bombs? Gasoline is tightly rationed, so they could not have come up with these things spontaneously. Who taught them to make bottle bombs and for whom were the incendiary devices intended?

Someone shouted that another APC was heading our way. My pace quickened as I approached the stalled vehicle, infected by the toxic glee of the mob, but then I caught myself. Why was I rushing towards trouble? Because everyone else was? I slowed down to a trot in the wake of a thundering herd of one mass mind. Breaking with the pack, I stopped running. Someone tossed a Molotov cocktail, setting the APC on fire. Flames spread quickly over the top of the vehicle and spilled onto the pavement. I thought, there’s somebody still inside of that, it’s not just a machine! There must be people inside.

Someone protectively pulled me away to join a handful of head-banded students who sought to exert some control. Expending what little moral capital his hunger strike signature saturated shirt still exerted, he spoke up for the soldier. “Let the man out,” he cried. “Help the soldier, help him get out!” The agitated congregation was in no mood for mercy. Angry, blood-curdling voices ricocheted around us. “Kill the mother fucker!” one said. Then another voice, even more chilling than the first screamed, “He is not human, he is a thing.” “Kill it, kill it!” shouted bystanders, bloody enthusiasm now whipped up to a high pitch. “Stop! Don’t hurt him!” Meng pleaded, leaving me behind as he tried to reason with the vigilantes. “Stop, he is just a soldier!” “He is not human, kill him, kill him!” said a voice. “Get back, get back!” someone screamed at the top of his lungs. “Leave him alone, the soldiers are not our enemy!” After the limp bodies of the soldiers were put into an ambulance, the thugs attacked the ambulance, almost ripping off the rear doors in an attempt to remove the burned soldier and finish him off. After that, charred bodies of soldiers were hung from a lamp post, and a large amount of ammunition was taken from the APC.” (6)

From a Government Report on the Worker’s Riot:

“Rioters blocked military and other vehicles before they smashed and burned them. They also seized guns, ammunition and transceivers. Several rioters seized an armored car and fired its guns as they drove it along the street. Rioters also assaulted civilian installations and public buildings. Several rioters even drove a public bus loaded with gasoline drums towards the Tiananmen gatetower in an attempt to set fire to it. When a military vehicle suddenly broke down on Chang’An Avenue, rioters surrounded it and crushed the driver with bricks. The rioters savagely beat and killed many soldiers and officers. At Chongwenmen, a soldier was thrown down from the flyover and burned alive. At Fuchengmen, a soldier’s body was hung upside down on the overpass balustrade after he had been killed. Near a cinema, an officer was beaten to death, and his body strung up on a burning bus.

Over 1,280 vehicles were burned or damaged in the rebellion, including over 1,000 military trucks, more than 60 armored cars, over 30 police cars, over 120 public buses and trolley buses and over 70 motor vehicles of other kinds. The martial law troops, having suffered heavy casualties before being forced to fire into the air to clear the way forward. During the counter-attack, some rioters were killed, some onlookers were hit by stray bullets and some wounded or killed by armed ruffians. According to reliable statistics, more than 3,000 civilians were wounded and over 200, including 36 college students, were killed. As well, more than 6,000 law officers and soldiers were injured and scores of them killed.” (Cables from the US Embassy in Beijing confirmed the basics of this report as well as the casualty estimates). (4)

Though conclusive direct evidence is still thin, it appears a certainty the revolt had considerable outside help. In addition to the curious timing, there is too much evidence of advance preparation for violence and supply of the weaponry used. Gasoline was tightly rationed at the time, and unavailable in the volume required for this event. Black hands arranged the supply lines and provided instructions for the manufacture and use of the gasoline bombs which were almost unheard of in China before that time.

There are also too many signs of external incitement in the still-unidentified third group, whose violent actions in no way represented the sentiment of the attending public. The enormity of violence unleashed at Muxidi requires considerable prior emotional programming and could not possibly have originated spontaneously from a simple workers’ strike, almost a guarantee of external interference. Disaffected citizens in any country may parade and protest from real or imagined grievances, but burning young soldiers to death and stringing their charred bodies from lampposts, are not the acts of naive students wanting “democracy” or of workers protesting an inadequate social contract. (7) They are almost always the result of substantial programmed incitement from behind the scenes, usually directed to regime change.

The Student Protest

Briefly, the students congregated in the Square and waited for an opportunity to present various petitions dealing with social policy, perceived corruption, idealism, in fact the same things that we as students all had on our list of changes we wanted to make in the world. Since the government did not immediately respond, the students camped in the square and waited. Government officials held talks with the students for several weeks, and finally set a June 4 deadline for evacuation of the Square. Soldiers were sent to the Square on the day prior, but they were unarmed and carried only billy sticks. By all reports, there was no animosity between the students and the soldiers. Neither had a philosophical dispute with the other, nor did they see each other as enemies. In fact, photos and reports show the students protecting the soldiers from angry bystanders.

Discussions were held between the students and the soldiers at repeated times during the evening and throughout the night. Almost all of the students were persuaded to leave the Square during the evening, and the small remainder left the following morning. Tanks and bulldozers did enter the Square the following morning, flattening all the tents and rubbish that had piled up during the previous three weeks, pushing the garbage into huge piles and setting them afire. This was the apparent origin of claims that “thousands of students” were crushed by tanks streaming through the Square, but this was just the clean-up crew and the students were long gone when the bulldozers and heavy machinery arrived. There is overwhelming documented evidence from a multitude of reputable sources (8-15) that no violence occurred in the Square, that no students were killed, and that there never was any “Tiananmen Square Massacre”. Gunfire was apparently heard in the distance, but the few reports of gunfire from within the Square itself were later quickly discredited and, as mentioned above, the soldiers in the Square were not armed. (16)

VIDEO

Clearance of the Tiananmen Square on June 4 1989 – EN from Roberto Petitpas on Vimeo.

Subtitled in CH, DE, EN, FI, FR, HZ, NL, PT, RO, SI, SP, RU

The Ever-Present Black Hand

It seems plausible that the student movement in China during the late 1980s may, at its origin, have generated spontaneously, but there is no shortage of evidence that the entire movement was quickly hijacked by agencies of the US government long before the students gathered at Tiananmen Square. It has taken some time to open locked doors and ferret out details, but it is no longer in dispute that the leaders of China’s student movement were trained in Hong Kong and Guangdong by Col. Robert Helvey, an officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency of the Pentagon, who spent 30 years instigating revolutions throughout Asia on behalf of the military and the CIA. (17)

There is little reason to question the assertion that a major part of US foreign policy then, as today, lay in attempts to destabilise China and perhaps instigate a massive revolution that would open the door to US influence and control. It is increasingly clear today that the student movement in 1989 was a major part of that strategy, orchestrated by the US State Department with the full approval of then President George Bush. (18)

I live in China and was for many years the editor of a widely-read newsletter that gave me trusted access to about 2,500 middle and high-level corporate executives who were university students in China during the period in question, many of whom were involved in the student movement, and more than a few of whom were at Tiananmen Square. I’ve spoken to many of them at length about the student movement and the events of the time. In addition to confirming my observations and conclusions, their comments and testimony strongly suggest that the very idea of a mass confrontation with the government, and the selection of Tiananmen Square as the venue, did not originate with them but were orchestrated ”from somewhere outside”.

It is necessary to understand that the student movement in China in 1989 was categorically not a “pro-democracy movement”. At its origin the student protest was primarily pragmatic civics, and secondly Chinese cultural. The students visioned themselves intellectual protesters, not political activists, with no thought of their government replicating the political structure of the West. From my discussions with many former students, the references to ‘democracy’ were imposed upon them by their CIA handlers as the best method of realising their practical and cultural ends. And these cultural ends were not necessarily very deep. Wu’er Kaixi, one of the student leaders, responded to questions about his participation by saying (in different words) “Because we want to wear Western brands and take our girlfriends to bars like the Americans do.”

Many of the students with whom I spoke, particularly those who were actually present at the Square, have told me of the supplies provided for them by various US government sources. They especially mentioned the countless hundreds of Coleman camp stoves – which at the time were far too expensive for students in China to acquire, and many commented on the well-established supply lines of these and other items. Adding to the student supplies were manuals, instructions, training, strategy and tactics, and the patiently inflammatory rhetoric of the VOA broadcasts from Hong Kong. It is not possible to sensibly challenge the assertion that the puppet-masters were American.

According to a government report, many Americans were active in stage-managing the student leaders, in violation of the martial law decrees operative in parts of Beijing at the time. John Pomfret, now of the Washington Post, was an AP correspondent in Beijing, and an important information conduit for the ringleaders, and Alan Pessin, a VOA correspondent in Beijing at the time, violated the restrictions by his illegal VOA news coverage, and repeatedly dispatched distorted reports, spreading false rumors and encouraging both rebellion and violence among the students. (19)

What Really Happened in Tiananmen Square 25 Years Ago

Most university students of that day will tell you of the influence of the VOA and the picture it painted of “freedom and democracy”. They tell of listening to the VOA in their dorms late into the night, building in their imaginations a happy world of freedom and light. The Voice of America:

“The world’s most trusted source for news and information from the United States and around the world.”

They also confirm that the VOA was broadcasting to the students 24 hours a day from their Hong Kong station during the weeks of the sit-in at Tiananmen Square, offering provocative encouragement and giving advice on strategy and tactics.

One of the original participants in the student sit-in wrote this:

“We settled down and continued with our study. We dated, found our loved ones, and many sought to go abroad. By the time we graduated there was almost no discussion about the student movement and we no longer listened to the VOA. One thing I have been kept thinking was the role of the VOA. Many students were the fans of the radio station before, during and shortly after the student movement. Even when we were on the square many students were listening to their programs as if only they could tell us what was going on. I remember at one stage . . . I realized how stupid I was . . .”

Another student made these comments:

“But it was true that the 1989 student movement was being manipulated by someone, wasn’t it? The students had nothing but emotions and superficial knowledge of politics. We started only demanding the cleaning up of corruption by officials, yet the slogans were somehow led through a transformation into ones “demanding democracy”.

There is a huge difference in political implication between these two classes of demands. So what was democracy? What kind of democracy was practiced in the west? What kind of democracy would befit China? Frankly, I (we) didn’t have clue. In other words, I didn’t know what I really wanted. I simply had this … resulting impulse to go onto the street and shout slogans. It was as if I participated just to participate and I was moved by the simple fact of experiencing a students movement. And then things got out of control. But because the student leaders refused to change stance, the students wouldn’t back off. So the whole thing dragged on. Yet a miracle happened, those “leaders” somehow managed to escape unharmed. For many years since 1989, I had been reluctant to accept that I and the other students were actually so stupid and naive to be truly manipulated by others behind the scene.”

The perception in the West, and also in China, has always been that the student congregation in Tiananmen Square was spontaneous, idealistic and, above all, peaceful. It may at its origin have been idealistic, but it was in no way spontaneous and, by May and June, the underlying peacefulness was rapidly coming to an end. In 1995, two American filmmakers at the Longbow Group, Dr. Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon, released a now-famous documentary on Tiananmen Square titled “The Gate of Heavenly Peace”. (20) Chai Ling, the Tiananmen students’ self-proclaimed “Supreme Commander”, for years pursued lawsuits against the film company (21), primarily because the documentary included incriminating video dated May 28, 1989, of her in an interview with American journalist Philip Cunningham:

“The students kept asking, ‘What should we do next? What can we accomplish?’ I feel so sad, because how can I tell them that what we are actually hoping for is bloodshed, for the moment when the government has no choice but to brazenly butcher the people (i.e. the students: Ed.). Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes. Only then will they really be united. But how can I explain this to my fellow students? I can’t say all this to my fellow students. I can’t tell them straight out that we must use our blood and our lives to call on the people to rise up. Of course, the students will be willing. But they are still such young children! And what is truly sad is that some students, and famous well-connected people, are working hard to help the government, to prevent it from taking such measures. For the sake of their selfish interests and their private dealings they are trying to cause our movement to collapse and get us out of the Square before the government becomes so desperate that it takes action.”

If this isn’t clear, Chai Ling is openly stating her intention to provoke the government to a violent military solution, filling Tiananmen Square with the blood of the students – for the express purpose of “uniting the people” to incite a widespread political revolution. She then laments that (1) she cannot reveal to the students that their lives are meant to be sacrificed for this cause, and (2) “what is truly sad” is that some people, “for the sake of their selfish interests” are seeking to avoid bloodshed by preventing the government from resorting to violent measures, and seeking to disband the student protests before they themselves turn violent.

Cunningham then asked, “Are you going to stay in the Square yourself?” “No, I won’t.” “Why?” Chai replied, “Because my situation is different. I want to live. . . . I believe that others have to continue the work I have started. A democracy movement can’t succeed with only one person!” And finally, “I might as well say it – you, the Chinese, you are not worth my struggle! You are not worth my sacrifice!”

In the video there is a damning reference to American cold-bloodedness in directing the student protests, a literal confession by Chai Ling that, after the students had already voted to end their protest and leave the Square, her Hong Kong handlers still pushed her and the students to remain in the square and continue to agitate until they provoked their own bloodshed, encouraging them to sacrifice their lives as the only way to attract the world attention and sympathy which had somehow now become crucial to their cause. Transcripts and video of her entire interview along with reader comments are available online. (22)

The American plan was to incite the students to not only irritate but eventually enrage the Chinese government sufficiently to provoke a violent crackdown against the students, with the expectation this would in turn provoke the general population into a ‘color revolution’ resulting in the overthrow of the government and the collapse of China. In accord with this plan, the students were pushed to begin demanding “democracy”, quickly followed by insistent and intractable demands that the government step down. As part of the process, the students were given details on the construction of a huge papier-mâché “goddess of democracy” statue in the Square. In an intelligence summary prepared for then US Secretary of State James A. Baker dated June 2, 1989, the hope was noted that the statue would “anger top leaders and prompt a response”, stating that the students (or, factually more likely, the US government) hoped the erection of the statue would provoke “an overreaction by authorities (and) breathe new life into their flagging movement.” (23) In all cases in all countries, students and young people are co-opted into a US attempt at regime change. Westerners may not easily appreciate that Beijing in 1989 was not different in any material aspect.

After the Government declared martial law, Chai Ling’s American puppet-masters rapidly escalated their offensive by having her distribute leaflets inciting armed rebellion against the Government, calling upon the students and the general public to “organize armed forces and oppose the Communist Party and its government”, going so far as to actually make a list of names of government officials they planned to kill, encouraging the students to obtain firearms for the purpose. She claimed they would never yield and “would fight to the finish” with the government, scheming until past the end to provoke a bloody incident in Tiananmen Square.

China was spared a national catastrophe primarily by the patient and non-threatening stance of the government which served to dampen the inflammatory rhetoric emerging from the VOA and their handlers in Beijing and the urging toward bloodshed by their stage managers in Hong Kong. The result was that when the deadline approached for the evacuation of the Square, the students abandoned their “Supreme Commander” and agreed to leave peacefully, meaning that the Americans simply ran out of time. My feeling is that China was protected by Providence, because the specter of violence and bloodshed may have been very near indeed. (24)

Intricate plans had been made in advance to spirit the student leaders out of China when the hoped-for bloodshed began. Operation Yellowbird (25)was a Hong Kong-based CIA scheme to help the leaders of the student protests and of the violence at Muxidi to escape arrest under the diplomatic protection of the American Embassy, by offering political sanctuary, by the advance issue of US passports, and by arranging their escape from China. The CIA was central in this, but the UK MI6 and the French intelligence agencies were also involved. When the protests failed and the students dispersed, the primary leaders fled first to Hong Kong, then to the US. (26) Some of the leaders of the violence in Muxidi were helped to flee, while others where sheltered in the American Embassy in Beijing, the Americans refusing to surrender them to the Chinese authorities. (27)

As well, for their efforts to destroy their own country, these student leaders were handsomely rewarded by the Americans with prestigious university degrees, good jobs, and CIA salaries for continuing to incite political instability in China. Chai Ling was given an honorary degree in political science from Princeton university and a job with the management consultancy of Bain & Co., as well as being the salaried head of an NGO especially created for her and tasked with condemning China’s then one-child policy. Wu’er Kaixi, who was actually a troublesome and unstable Uigur named Uerkesh Daolet, was rewarded with a free pass to Harvard university. Liu Xiaobo remained in China on a CIA stipend of $30,000 per year, tasked with irritating the Chinese government under direction from the US State Department.

The Path Forward

The Americans succeeded, perhaps beyond their wildest expectations, with the inflamed violence in Muxidi, but failed miserably in their main effort which was the provocation of bloodshed in Tiananmen Square, which offered the possible prize of a revolution and the overthrow of the government.

The most immediate problem faced by the US State Department was that their success in Muxidi was not a particularly useful victory from a political standpoint since it had no long-term propaganda value. Nobody in the West, especially when seeing photos of the carnage produced, would have much sympathy for a workers’ revolt in a far-away country, and it would have ceased being news within a day or two. What the Americans wanted, and badly needed, the prize they were hoping for, was photos of dead student bodies and student blood in thestreets since these infallibly draw universal condemnation. But, with the peaceful resolution in Tiananmen Square, these didn’t exist, so they gathered the photos of the carnage and dead bodies from Muxidi and presented those to the world as evidence of a student massacre in Tiananmen Square by the Chinese government, a totally fabricated story.

By the time the students voted to evacuate the Square and even before the violence in Muxidi had subsided, plans were already well in place for more than the evacuation of the leaders. Without exception, the Western media in all countries immediately published identical claims and photos, consistently omitting all the contradictory evidence. Every photographer who took photos at Muxidi knew where he took them, and he and the media editors knew full well those photos were not taken in Tiananmen Square. It is not possible that more than 200 newspaper editors and more than 100 TV station news managers in more than 30 countries mis-captioned the same photos in the same way by carelessness or accident. This is why the Western media suppressed entirely the facts of the violence in Muxidi, and unanimously refused to publish photos of the soldiers burned to a crisp and hanging from lamp posts. They needed the facts and photos for their already-planned “Tiananmen Square Student Massacre” story.

It has been 30 years since the June 4, 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square. In spite of all the categorical documentation proving there was never any student massacre in China, the US Government and its handlers refuse to let go of their prize because of its powerful political propaganda value, having enabled the West for decades to define China as being “ruled by the jackboot, the rifle, and the thought police”. This has been unquestionably one of the greatest propaganda victories in history, turning a US State Department-sponsored color revolution, albeit a failed one, into a whip that could lash China non-stop for 30 years. It was so successful that the Western media, led by the NYT but followed by nearly everyone, publish in June of every year a kind of “anniversary story” to continue to milk it for its residual propaganda value. This false story has been hammered into the consciousness of Westerners for 30 years, to the point where it is nearly impossible to discuss Tiananmen Square due to the enormous emotional baggage it carries.

Some missing pieces of this story began to fall into place when, in 2011, Wikileaks released all the cables sent to Washington from the US Embassy in Beijing on June 4, 1989, confirming that the student movement ended peacefully and that there had been no violence, no student massacre in Tiananmen Square and, importantly, confirming some important basics of the violence at Muxidi. As well, some highly-respected international journalists, as well as foreign camera crews, and some foreign diplomats, who were present in Tiananmen Square at the time of the student dispersal, have written books and articles testifying that the student sit-in ended peacefully and that the stories of a student massacre at Tiananmen Square are pure fiction.

Faced with this release of evidence, Western media editors and prominent columnists are attempting to prolong this myth by fabricating an entirely new one, this being that it was the students who rigged and manned the barricades at Muxidi to prevent the military from proceeding to Tiananmen Square to kill the students there,so the Chinese government instead massacred the students at Muxidi. (28) There is no evidence whatever to support those claims, and it should be obvious from the above narrative that they are false on all counts. (29) (30)

If there were a massacre in Beijing on June. 4, 1989, it was at Muxidi, not at Tiananmen Square, and the massacre was of soldiers, not students, with all evidence indicating it was engineered by the US Department of State and the CIA. While the American government deserves to take the blame for orchestrating these events, the blame must be shared since the Americans were themselves puppets. The conspiracy against China was wider and deeper than I’ve indicated here.

Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. His writing has been translated into more than 20 languages and is available on more than 100 foreign-language websites around the world.  He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com.

Notes:

(1) From the photos, some appear to be Xinjiang Uigurs, of which there are five distinct groups, four being eminently sociable, the last seeming genetically predisposed to almost any kind of crime.

(2) To produce a unit of this kind would normally involve prior training and cash payment. One reason the US Consulates in China insist on cash-only payments for US visa applications from Chinese citizens (1,000 RMB each) is that this money bypasses the banking system and is freely available for black operations, today producing more than 800 million RMB per year that leaves no paper trail.

(3) Military use for civilian purposes is a normal operation in China for typhoon and flood evacuations, landslide and earthquake rescues, and other similar emergencies. These are not armed soldiers in military vehicles, but simply able-bodied men available on command in the large numbers often required for such occasions. In Muxidi, these were all young men, most appearing from the photos to be perhaps in their early 20s. They were not armed, and arrived at the scene in ordinary city buses. 

(4) The Morning Intelligence Summary for June 4, 1989, for US Secretary of State Baker, described the violence in Muxidi, and referred to how civilians “swarmed around military vehicles. APCs were set on fire, and demonstrators besieged troops with rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails.”

(5) I haven’t a link for the availability of this book. I believe it is out of print but may be obtainable as a download from secondary or tertiary websites. 

(6) If we read carefully, it is evident from even this minuscule report that the third group, the ‘mercenaries’, were not acting in concert with either the workers or the students but were unknown outsiders acting against and above the public wishes and pursuing their own agenda of violence for which they had come prepared, and functioning as a team in the carnage they unleashed.

(7) The strikingly similar pattern of uncontrolled violence by China’s Xinjiang Uigurs several years ago, where they bombed police stations, randomly burned hundreds of cars and buses, and killed indiscriminately hundreds of people (mostly police), were not, as the Western media claimed, spontaneous rebellions against intolerance by Beijing, but the result of a deliberate process of emotional programming. After the rebellion was put down, the government found in the hands of these people thousands of foreign-supplied “Otpor” manuals, inflammatory DVDs, instructions on bomb-making, and more, all clearly part of a planned program. The rioting in Hong Kong today exhibits the same fundamentals.

(8) A mere glance at any of the published photos displaying violence or mayhem, will permit anyone with even a passing familiarity with Beijing to see instantly that none of those photos were taken in Tiananmen Square. It was only the world’s lack of knowledge of China that permitted the US government and the international media to perpetrate this enormous fraud. 

(9) One cable sent on June 22, 1989 from the US Embassy in Beijing to the US Department of State in Washington, was a document that, in the words of its authors, “attempts to set the record straight” about the events of the night of June 3-4. It claims that, contrary to the reports in the Western media, any deaths did not occur in Tiananmen Square, but elsewhere. It also confirmed the casualty estimates. The contents of this cable were suppressed for more than 20 years until Wikileaks released it.

(10) In addition to the reports and chronicles from the Chinese government, the cables from the US Embassy in Beijing, and the written testimony of a number of respected journalists and diplomats who were present at the Square, a Spanish News camera crew took live video, which I believe is still available, of the peaceful clearing of the square. The video has never been shown.

(11) The Spanish Ambassador to China, Eugenio Bregolat, was present at the Square with the camera crew and wrote a book on the event, in which he vents his anger at the Western media for fabricating the massacre story. Publishers in English-speaking countries unanimously refuse to print a translation, and Amazon refuses to carry the original.

(12) The Columbia Journalism Review conducted a detailed study in 1998, and published an article written by Jay Matthews, titled “The Myth of Tiananmen And the Price of a Passive Press”; the Columbia Journalism Review; June 4, 2010; https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php?page=all

(13) In 2009, James Miles, who was the BBC correspondent in Beijing at the time, admitted he had “conveyed the wrong impression” and that “there was no massacre on Tiananmen Square”, claiming “we got the main story right, but some of the details wrong”.

(14) New York Times, June 05, 1989. Article by Nicholas Kristoff confirming a peaceful end to the student sit-in.

(15) Birth of a Massacre Myth; How the West Manufactured an Event that Never Occurred; Japan Times; Monday, July 21, 2008, By Gregory Clark; https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2008/07/21/commentary/birth-of-a-massacre-myth/

(16) “Live Reports” were published from some Western reporters detailing the view from their windows of the Beijing hotel of hundreds of students being mowed down by machine guns. Their reports were ridiculed and condemned by others who revealed that the Square cannot be seen from the Beijing Hotel. Similar claims were made by Wu’er Kaixi, the Uigur student leader, also discredited when foreign reporters stated that he was seen in a far side of Beijing at the time he claimed to have seen those events.

(17) Helvey organised student revolutions in Vietnam and Myanmar, along with Otpor! in Serbia, Kmara! in Georgia, Pora! in Ukraine, Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet revolution” in 1989, then spreading his talents to Africa and South America. Helvey was associated with Gene Sharp in the George Soros-funded Einstein Institute, formed in 1983 as an offshoot of Harvard University to specialise in organising student political protests as a form of US colonial warfare. It was Sharp and Helvey who created the Otpor manuals that began the process of the destruction of Jugoslavia. 

(18) Near the end of May, 1989, Wan Li, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, was in Washington for a meeting with then President George Bush, in which Wan raised the issue of the student protest in Beijing. The record of the meeting is too heavily redacted to create much understanding or draw conclusions but, after the meeting, Wan abruptly cut short his US visit, returned home, and publicly supported the dire necessity for the government’s prior declaration of martial law. 

(19) The VOA is operated by the NED – the National Endowment for Democracy – a front company funded by the CIA that does much of that agency’s dirty work not involving actual killing – although sometimes it does that, too. The VOA is funded for its public activities by the US State Department, and by the CIA for its participation in black ops.

(20)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen _(documentary) 

(21) Longbow lawsuit: The New Yorker; May 7, 2009 The American Dream: The Lawsuit

(22) TAM Transcript Index; Chai Ling; http://www.tsquare.tv/film/transcript_complete.php

(23) Tiananmen Square, 1989: The Declassified History; Edited By Jeffrey T. Richelson and Michael L. Evans; National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 16; Published – June 1, 1999; http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html 

(24) For the potential showdown in Tiananmen Square, the workers’ protest, and the mercenary violence in Muxidi, it is difficult to believe the simultaneity was accidental. The theory that appears to fit all the known facts is that the workers’ revolt, with the mercenary violence separately coordinated and injected into the picture, was timed to coincide with the hoped-for Tiananmen bloodshed with the intent of reducing much of Beijing to violence and anarchy, resulting in a range of unpleasant possibilities. It nearly happened just this way.

(25) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird

(26) In those days, travel to Hong Kong was not quick and easy as today, so some clever logistics were necessary, Chai Ling claiming to have been shipped to Hong Kong in a suitcase.

(27) Many diplomatic problems resulted from the US government’s interference in China’s internal affairs at the time. In addition to stoking revolutionary fires in the students and fueling the violence at Muxidi, the US government was condemned for providing sanctuary in the US Embassy for several of the Chinese riot leaders, and on June 11 a US Embassy cable reported that Chinese radio and TV stations read official letters on the air, accusing the US government of not only actively supporting political rebels but providing refuge for the “criminals who created the violence” at Muxidi. (18) The Western media entirely censored all such news.

(28) US Embassy confirms China’s version of Tiananmen Square events; Cables obtained by Wikileaks confirm China’s account. UK Telegraph, By Malcolm Moore, Shanghai; 04 Jun 2011;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html 

(29) Students were not involved in arranging the protest at Muxidi though a few may have been in attendance. The square already had a contingent of soldiers and was in no need of reinforcement, the military may have entered Muxidi with guns firing, but students were not the target, and in any case the students had already voted to clear the square before the violence erupted at Muxidi.

(30) It should be noted that the truncated version of the famous “tank man” photo, which was taken a day or two later, of a single young man apparently defying several military tanks, was used to embellish the hoax. The wide-angle view of that photo shows a long string of military vehicles on a totally unrelated passage down Chang’An Avenue and through the Square and, in any case, they were clearly leaving, not arriving.

Interview with Juan Restrepo – RTVE correspondent for more than three decades and a direct witness to the events in Tiananmen Square.

ROLL the page until you find the interview

The original source of this article is Global Research

Larry Romanoff is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new COVID-19 anthology ”When China Sneezes”.

This article is republished with permission from the author- Copyright © Larry RomanoffMoon of Shanghai, 2020

Latvia Selling “Insect Protein” Bars

Many people know the so-called “Elite” want us to “own nothing and be happy.”  Apparently, they also want us to eat bugs instead of, you know, meat.

In Latvia, stores have begun selling the “Better Bar”

OIP.Il4 yCnX8IdPFtaxjzu5fQHaD4
OIP.Il4 yCnX8IdPFtaxjzu5fQHaD4

On the label, prominently displayed, is one ingredient:  INSECT PROTEIN.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

Still think the so-called “Elite” aren’t crazy?

These people have to be stopped.  Scorned.  Rejected.  If need be, coerced.

Their agenda is mentally sick.  I will not partake.

US slaps new sanctions on Bosnia and Herzegovina officials

The United States has imposed sanctions on the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Bosniak-Croat federation and an official of the Bosnian-Serb entity, accusing them of threatening the country’s democratic institutions. In a statement on Monday, the US Department of the Treasury said it was blacklisting Marinko Cavara, a member of a nationalist Bosnian-Croat party, and Alen Seranic, the Serb Republic’s minister of health and social welfare.

Article HERE

US suspends tariffs on some solar panel imports for two years, but leaves China out

Waivers are issued for Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam but not China. Which is odd, as China has indeed, the largest manufacturer of solar panels and related systems.

Article HERE

Finland Wants to Join NATO — But LOOK at Finland’s Military Swastika Flags!

Much ado has been made of late that Finland and Sweden seek to join NATO after Russia began its Special Military Operation to de-militarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.

Now, as we look harder into Finland, we see SWASTIKA Flags of their military units . . .  just like in Ukraine!

The images below tell the story far better than can be written.  This is the Finland Military of today:

fINLAND nAZI uNIT mARCHING
fINLAND nAZI uNIT mARCHING

So what’s with the Swastika and why would NATO even consider accepting Finland given its current, official, endorsement of literal Nazi ideology?

fINLAND nAZImILITARYgRADUATION
fINLAND nAZImILITARYgRADUATION

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

I thought Nazis were the bad guys.   I thought tens of millions of people DIED fighting the Nazis in World War 2.

Yet here we are, in the year 2022, and what do we see in Ukraine  and now, in Finland?  Nazis!

From at least 2014 through 2022, we watched the AZOV Regiment of the Ukraine Armed Forces, wearing Waffen SS lightning logos on their government issued uniforms, wearing helmets with Swastikas emblazoned on them, and doing so much harm and damage, that Russia realized the need to enter Ukraine to protect Russian-Speaking people in Luhansk and Donetsk, from these Nazi units in Ukraine.

Once Russia entered Ukraine, what did the west do?  We sided with Ukraine.   An odd thing to do given that government embraces Nazi ideology and symbolism in its army, in its police and in its government officials.

Then, Finland and Sweden got spooked by Russia entering Ukraine, and both Finland and Sweden want to join NATO.

Now, we see that in Finland too, their official military units openly march with Swastika flags!

Again, I thought Nazis were the bad guys.  What am I missing here?

Was World War 2 not dispositive of Nazis?   Was that war, which killed 90-100 Million people, merely a battle in some kind of never-ending war?

Because as I sit here on June 7, 2022, what I see is the rise of Nazi ideology, embraced by sitting governments, and marching under Nazi symbols in public.  First in Ukraine, now in Finland.

If Nazis are the bad guys, why are we associating with them?  Why would we even consider bringing Finland or Ukraine into NATO?

Quest for the Grave of Scotia, the Pharaoh’s Daughter Who Founded Scotland and Ireland

A short distance from the bustling Irish town of Tralee in County Kerry there is an otherworldly looking glen which is known as Scotia’s Grave. According to Irish folklore, the glen was the location of a battle known as Sliabh Mish which took place between the Celtic Milesians and a supernatural race called the Tuatha Dé Danann (tribe of the gods).

Although it was the Milesians who were victorious in battle it was a triumph at the expense of their queen, Scotia, who is reputed to have been buried in the glen.

Who Was Queen Scotia?

Queen Scotia appears in a chronical called the Book of Leinster , a medieval Irish manuscript which was compiled in around 1160 AD. The book was compiled by an abbot named Áed Ua Crimthainn who deeply respected the traditions and history of Ireland, even when they were at odds with his views as a Christian or his reasonable beliefs as a well-educated man.

She is described as the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh, the wife of a Greek king, and a contemporary of the Biblical Moses who allegedly cured her husband after he was bitten by a venomous snake.

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2022 06 07 20 50

Queen Scotia was the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh. (Rama / CC BY-SA 3.0 )

Both Scotia and her husband King Gaythelos were exiled from Egypt for unspecified reasons during a time of great upheaval, and it is after this that they traveled to Europe where they founded both the Scots in modern day Scotland and the Gaels in Ireland. Scotia gave her name to the Scots and to Scotland and Gaythelos gave his name to the Gaels.

Scotia’s death in battle was supposedly the result of the pregnant woman attempting to jump a bank on horseback.

A Traditional Interpretation of the Myth of Scotia

The myth of Queen Scotia has traditionally been regarded by historians as entirely fictitious. It was recorded by an abbot at a time where people in Christian countries wanted to assert their ancient roots, and links to important Biblical figures. It is particularly noteworthy that Scotia’s husband was said to have been healed by Moses.

The site of Scotia’s Grave itself could be a way for a place so remote from the original locations in the Bible to steak a believable claim to having Biblical links. ‘Burial place of the wife of a man who once met Moses’ is vague enough to be believable and unremarkable enough that it does not warrant extensive investigation to verify it, while still referencing one of the more important figures in the Old Testament .

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2022 06 07 20 51

The glen where Queen Scotia’s grave is said to be. (John M / CC BY-SA 2.0 )

Although the myth of Queen Scotia (also Scota) is fantastical it is not out of the realms of possibility and controversial historian Ralph Ellis believes he has found evidence that Scotia really did exist.

The History of Egypt

Ellis claims the myth of Scotia does not originate in the Book of Leinster but far earlier, in a text called The History of Egypt ( Aegyptiaca) written in 300 BC by a Greco-Egyptian author called Manetho. Evidence in Aegyptiaca may point to Scotia being an identity of Ankhesenamun, a daughter of Akhenaton and Nefertiti, and both half-sister and widow of Tutankhamen

According to Ellis, Ankhesenamun went on to marry a Pharaoh named Ay, whom he claims is actually Gaythelos. After Ay’s reign was cut short, the couple were sent in to exile where they made their way to Europe and settled in Iberia. Rather than Scotia herself making the journey to Ireland, Ellis believes it was her descendants who migrated, four generations after she settled in Iberia. Of course, this interpretation does not explain the existence of Scotia’s Grave or the references to Queen Scotia in Medieval Irish literature .

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2022 06 07 20 52

“Queen Scotia unfurls the sacred banner”, illustration from an 1867 book of Irish history. (Nicknack009 / Public Domain )

Archaeological Evidence?

Although Ellis’ bold claims are extremely controversial, he is not the only one to find evidence the myth may be at least partially true. Lorraine Evans, who studied Egyptology at one of the world’s top universities, also believes the myth of Queen Scotia cannot be entirely debunked.

She points to the remains of an ancient boat found in Yorkshire, which is of a type found in the Mediterranean at around the time the myth is set, as just one piece of archaeological evidence proving a link between Egypt and ancient Britain and Ireland.

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2022 06 07 20 53

Signpost of Scotia’s grave by-road, south of Tralee. (Fenitharbour / Public Domain )

It is often the case that myths and legends have a kernel of truth at their core and there is no reason the story of Scotia should be any different. The legend may have grown up around the desire to find links to Biblical figures but if you strip back the layers it becomes more plausible. Maybe Scotia didn’t ever meet Moses and maybe she was not an exiled Egyptian queen. Perhaps, if she was real, she was just an extraordinary woman who made an exceptional journey across continents almost 4000 years ago.

Slow-Cooker Tangy Italian Beef Sandwiches

Take just 10 minutes to prep this recipe. You’ll not only get great sandwiches but if you’re lucky, you’ll have leftovers, too.

e9adacd4 a705 4192 b7ec ad57be6b97c2
e9adacd4 a705 4192 b7ec ad57be6b97c2

Ingredients

  • 1 boneless beef sirloin tip roast (3 to 4 lb), trimmed of fat
  • 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 bottle (16 oz) Italian dressing
  • 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
  • 12 burger buns, split

2022 06 04 14 30
2022 06 04 14 30

Kitty Cat video of the day

A couple abandons a cat as they move away. And a neighbor rescues the cat. A great video.

Disturbing Red Painted Curse Discovered In Jerusalem Catacomb

painted curse Jerusalem
painted curse Jerusalem

An ancient painted curse has been discovered in a tomb in Beit She’arim. Representing the first such discovery in 65 years, the timeworn Greek text warns thieves that Yaakov (Jacob) “the Proselyte” will curse them.

Yaakov lived about 1,800 years ago. His title, “the Proselyte,” means he converted to Judaism. After having died at around 60 years of age Jacob was interred in a cave at Beit She’arim, the ancient Jewish town and necropolis in Lower Galilee during the Roman period. The park-like area around the necropolis is about 100 kilometers or 62 miles northwest of Tel Aviv and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2015.

After Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 AD the Sanhedrin Jewish council moved to Beit She’arim, and it became the new Jewish center of education and learning. Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority ( IAA) and University of Haifa revealed on Wednesday that the curse was found painted in a catacomb in the Beit She’arim necropolis that was only discovered last year.

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2022 06 08 10 37

The Red Painted Curse or Hex Was Written in Greek

According to a report in Haaretz, it was Jonathan Price, professor of ancient history at Tel Aviv University, who discovered the two Greek inscriptions inside the innermost chamber of an unexplored tomb. The painted curse, or hex, was written in Greek, in red paint, on a wall near the burial lodge. It was specifically designed to deter grave robbers , and as such it says: “Jacob the Proselyte vows to curse anybody who would open this grave, so nobody will open it. He was 60.”

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2022 06 08 10 38

The curse, written in red paint on stone at an ancient grave in Beit She’arim. It reads “Jacob the Proselyte vows to curse anybody who would open this grave, so nobody will open it. He was 60.” As translated by Jonathan Price, professor of ancient history at Tel Aviv University. (יבגני אוסטרובסקי/ IAA)

The researchers suspect his age, 60, was written by someone after Jacob had died. Prof. Adi Erlich of the Zinman Institute of Archeology at the University of Haifa, who leads the excavations at Beit She’arim, said the inscription dates to the Late Roman or Early Byzantine period (i.e. circa 390-400 AD). Prof. Erlich also explains that Jacob, or Yaakov the Proselyte, was probably a Christian, or had belonged to one of the popular cults of Isis or Mithra.

The “Life-changing” Conversion of Jacob To Judaism

What exactly did Jacob have to do to convert to Judaism? Firstly, according to an article in the BBC, converting to Judaism “is not easy” and involves many serious lifestyle changes. After about a year of studying Jewish law converts not only have to wholeheartedly accept the Jewish faith, but they become a member of the Jewish People, and they must embrace the totality of Jewish history , and the culture that grows from it.

Even when a prospective candidate’s heart is in the right place, the process of conversion to Judaism is governed by Jewish religious law in a religious court. And while many changes must be made in diet and lifestyle, perhaps the hardest is that male converts must undergo circumcision. And even if a man is already circumcised, this is all about ritual, and blood must again be drawn, as the whole ordeal is symbolic of the covenant between God and Abraham described in the Old Testament.

From Ancient to Contemporary Grave Robbers in Israel

Jacob’s curse was aimed directly at tomb robbers over 1,500 years ago, but looting is still a problem in Israel today. In 2012, the Times of Israel reported on a small squad from the Israel Antiquities Authority “who rappelled to the bottom of an ancient well, crawled through a narrow entrance into a 2,000-year-old horizontal tunnel and surprised two Palestinian men scouring the passageway for artifacts.”

A stolen and recovered Greek vase painted in the red-figure style, looted from Israel, with Head of the Anti-Theft Unit at the IAA Amir Ganor. (Yuli Schwartz / IAA)

A stolen and recovered Greek vase painted in the red-figure style, looted from Israel, with Head of the Anti-Theft Unit at the IAA Amir Ganor. (Yuli Schwartz / IAA)

Only last year Amir Ganor, Head of the Anti-Theft Unit at the IAA, told the Jerusalem Post about “one of the most significant operations undertaken in the history of the country to fight the unlawful trade in artifacts .” A criminal ring had stolen ceramic pottery, coins, jewels and protomas (representation of the head and neck of an animal) of Roman deities “valued at roughly tens of millions of shekels.” Ganor said many of the objects were “left in tombs as offerings to the dead and were meant to serve the departed in the life beyond.”

It seems that as the age of science progresses, curse effectiveness diminishes and grave robbing increases.

US Threatens Britain (UK) With Curtailed Military Cooperation As ‘War Of Word’ Erupts Over Submarine Tech

In a dispute between staunch allies – the US & UK over the supplier of classified technology to nuclear submarines, US authorities have warned to curtail defense cooperation with Britain, reported the UK-based Telegraph.

Intelligence sources told the media outlet that if the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, blocks the £2.6 billion ($3.28) deal of Ultra Electronics to Boston-based private equity firm Advent International, it would undermine the future collaboration between the two countries, the report said.

Last year, Kwarteng directed regulators to probe the acquisition of British defense contractor Ultra Electronics by a US private equity firm on national security concerns. The takeover bid is lodged by another UK-based firm, Cobham, owned by the American private equity group Advent.

The US-based sources accused Kwarteng of intentionally discriminating against US corporations after ordering a national security probe into a buyout of Ultra.

The acquisition has caused quite a stir in the United Kingdom because the firm manufactures key military communications technology, including the highly classified Trident nuclear submarine kit.

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A senior US Congressional intelligence source said: “At a time when allies like the US and the UK are looking to deepen defense cooperation, we need to remove obstacles, not create them.”

“Congress has already taken action to ease some of the restrictions on British defense companies operating in the US,” the source added, referring to recently lifted limitations on British companies such as BAE Systems and Rolls Royce. This allows them to conduct more freely across the Atlantic.

“But instead of adopting a similar approach, it seems the British government is determined to impose unnecessary obstacles that make it harder for American defense firms to operate in the UK.”

Meanwhile, Kwarteng obtained an initial report on the deal last month and decided to continue negotiations with Advent in order to find a compromise that would allow it to proceed.

If these negotiations fail, the Business Secretary is expected to urge the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to conduct a rare in-depth phase two examination, which would make it difficult to meet Advent’s August 4 target for completion of the deal and might ultimately prevent the takeover from taking place.

Is The UK Being Fussy? 

The British government already had the right to engage in mergers and acquisitions on national security grounds. However, the new National Security and Investment Act, adopted on January 4, gave the business secretary wide-ranging powers to interfere in such deals.

According to previous reports, the UK government has already indicated that they may ban China’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation from developing a nuclear reactor in the UK, citing national security concerns.

Boris Johnson’s administration has begun to adopt a tougher stance on foreign ownership of critical defense and nuclear assets.

Officials from the United States claim that the British government is exploiting powers enacted in January to restrict hostile states’ ability to acquire companies with connections to British security services.

They argue that these powers should not be extended to close allies such as the United States because the UK and the US already have intelligence-sharing agreements as part of the Five Eyes alliance.

Furthermore, the two countries work closely together to preserve the British nuclear deterrent. Last year, the United States signed the AUKUS, a trilateral security pact with the United Kingdom and Australia, to collaborate on the development of a new generation of nuclear submarines.

Other military research initiatives, such as the development of hypersonic weapons, are also being discussed as part of the agreement’s expansion.

A senior US official said: “We do not distinguish between a British investor in a US company for reasons of national security. “It’s not fair that the British government treats American firms this way.”

US officials are concerned that any prolonged delay may exacerbate the Ultra takeover. According to officials from the Department of Trade, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, the deal may still be authorized if Advent is willing to make commitments to resolve national security concerns.

Ultra’s representative said the company was preparing an “appropriate undertaking to protect British national security interests” in cooperation with British officials.

Nevertheless, it appears to be challenging at times to find a middle ground between the UK’s aim to oversee a “global Britain” that is open to global investment while also attempting to protect British industries.

Goats Take Over Empty Streets Of Seaside Town In Wales During The Coronavirus Outbrake

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A herd of goats has taken over a deserted town centre, eating hedges and flowers from gardens. Usually, the wild herd of about 122 Kashmiri goats venture from the Great Orme into Llandudno, Wales, England during bad weather. But town councillor Carol Marubbi believes the lack of people around because of coronavirus has drawn them down.

“They are curious, goats are, and I think they are wondering what’s going on like everybody else,” she said.

The goats – some of which have recently had kids – have been spotted nibbling flowers. She said everyone in Llandudno was “very proud” of the animals and they had been providing “free entertainment” to people from their windows.

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Roman Penis Pendant Found in Britain Declared a “National Treasure”

“Only in England”.

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A Roman “penis pendant,” or more accurately a phallic amulet, found in England 18 months ago, has been declared a national treasure. Described as a first-of-its-kind find, it was discovered by metal detectorist Wendy Thompson on December 31st, 2020 while searching a farm in Higham, near Gravesend and Strood, in Kent, reports The Sun UK . It is believed to date back to between 43 AD and 410 AD, when Britain was occupied by the Romans.

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Wendy Thompson found the penis pendant while metal-detecting. (Wendy Thompson)

First-of-It’s-Kind Penis Pendant Find for Britain

“The rarity of it is that it’s a silver example of a penis pendant,” explained Thompson. “I’ve got other bronze ones that I have found in the past but they’re nowhere near as significant.” The 73-year-old added that she was going about her job, scouring the field end to end rather meticulously with her metal detector , when she found it wedged 8 inches (20.32 cm) into the earth.

“The last person to hold it was back in that era,” said Thompson excitedly. “It’s a long, long time it’s been lying in the ground waiting for me to come along and find it.” She instantly dated it to 2,000 years old, which was verified later by the coroner’s report from the British Museum, though the exact date is difficult to ascertain.

The penis pendant measures 1.2 inches (3 cm) and weighs 0.3 ounces (9.7 g), and is complete with a detailed “foreskin, shaft, and pubes,” according to Coroner Roger Hatch, though it conspicuously lacks testicles. In the same report, he classified it as a “ national treasure .” For an item to be classified as a “treasure” in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as per the British Museum, it can be a metallic object, other than a coin, whose weight is at least 10 percent precious metal, and is at least 300 years old when found.

Hatch also added that the Roman Empire is renowned for its “large corpus of phallic imagery”. In fact, there are 451 phallic objects recorded in Roman Britain alone. As per a report published in The Daily Mail , experts at the British Museum described the artifact as having a reverse triangular top section with “ribbed decoration, presumably pubic hair, narrowing to a tapering shaft and terminating in a raised band foreskin.”

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Greco-Roman Obsession with the Phallus

In Greco-Roman culture the phallus or the penis had virile regenerative powers, enabling fertility and domination. To an empire that was preoccupied with territorial expansion, sex was conceptually seen as an unequal exchange led by a man who would dominate an “inferior” or “weaker” being – women, girls, boys, male slaves, to name a few. The phallic symbol was so common that it was associated with the worship of male gods like Dionysus and Hephaestus. It was also a good luck charm used to ward off evil, seen on mosaics and tiles all across the empire.

In ancient Roman religion and magic, the fascinus or fascinum was the embodiment of the divine phallus. The fascinum was worn by children around their necks to ward off illnesses. They were sometimes used to indicate the social standing of the wearer as well. “Infants are under the especial guardianship of the god Fascinus, the protector, not of infants only, but of generals as well,” wrote legendary Roman philosopher and historian, Pliny the Elder .

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The fascinum, or penis pendants, were worn by children to ward off illness. (David Perez / CC BY 4.0 )

When Roman generals entered battle, the penis was the symbol used to announce a grand and powerful entry. “It is the image of this divinity that is attached beneath the triumphant car of the victorious general, protecting him, like some attendant physician, against the effects of envy,” added Pliny on the mythical phalluses that represented domination.

“It is likely that this pendant is depicting a flaccid macrophallus, rather than an erect one, with the possibility that, rather than representing the ability to target and defeat the evil eye , a lack of control and an almost barbaric sexuality is suggested,” stated a report by the British Museum which confirms this phallocentric Roman obsession. “The archaeological contexts of stratified examples, along with phallic wall carvings, such as at Hadrian’s wall , suggest a close association with military sites.”

Human Builds A Dragon-Shaped Cardboard House For His Cat In Order To Please His Master

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One creative guy named Sam just took cardboard cat houses to the next level. Inspired by his beloved kitty Denni, the entire thing is made out of cardboard and held by hot glue. “I love making things, especially out of cardboard. My cat also loves cardboard and I love my cat,” Sam writes on his website.

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The structure is actually more advanced than one may think.

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“I designed this new cardboard cat tower with moving parts, giving Dinni alternative movement around the tower: some stepping planks that can be pulled out, ramps, sliding windows and some storage draws for his toys”.

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Sam’s other passions include DIY cat toys and homemade feline food, so if you’re a cat’s person, Sam is definitely someone to follow.

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Now they’re starting a war with China right before our eyes

Very accurate. A must watch video.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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The United States continues with dangerous provocations.

China seems not to be mincing words as of late, calling out US dastardly deeds as they see them. 

I suspect that when the bluffs begin getting called in the Pacific theater, Uncle Sam & Friends are going to take a beating.

It comes back to the notion that the bully manipulator sociopath will never listen to reason or be "agreement capable".

They will back away only when hurt.

Mother Nature has seen to this for millions of years and domesticated primates merely amplify this principle with their technological toys.

Much like the Russian resolve in Ukraine, I'll bet China will clearly state their aims, warn a few times and when the US stumbles over the red line, simply sink a carrier or vaporize Diego Garcia.


-Chevrus

The United States continues with it’s never ending, dangerous, and serious,  provocations against China. These latest events are obviously probing events. Perhaps a look at a map might clarify what is going on, eh?

Map
Where the American made P3, led by American generals inside of Korea, was probing Chinese airspace.

Bernard has a very good write up on this…

Canadian Spy Plane Air Patrols Near China Are Not On ‘UN Mission’

Canada falsely claims that it is implementing international law when its airplanes are in fact spying on China.

On June 2 the Canadian Globe & Mail reported of a Chinese interdiction of a Canadian reconnaissance aircraft:

Canadian military accuses Chinese warplanes of harassing its patrol aircraft on North Korea sanctions mission

Canada’s military has accused Chinese warplanes of harassing its patrol aircraft as they monitor North Korea sanction evasions, sometimes forcing Canadian planes to divert from their flight paths.

On several occasions from April 26 to May 26, aircraft of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) approached a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft, the Canadian Armed Forces said in a statement on Wednesday.
...
Such interactions are of concern and of increasing frequency, the Canadian military said, noting that the missions occur during United Nations-approved operations to implement sanctions on North Korea.

The Canadian aircraft were part of Ottawa’s “Operation NEON”, which sees military ships, aircraft and personnel deployed to identify suspected sanctions evasions at sea, including ship-to-ship transfers of fuel and other supplies banned by United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Did the United Nations really give Canada a mission or even a right to identify sanction evasions at high sea or near North Korea? I would find that astonishing.

Four days later the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked about the incidents. His answers came after China had explained its position:

China’s foreign ministry is warning Canada that provoking Beijing could bring “grave consequences” after the Canadian military last week accused Chinese warplanes of harassing its aircraft, which are monitoring North Korea’s compliance with United Nations sanctions.

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian suggested during a media briefing in Beijing on Monday that these patrols by Canadian and allied aircraft are illegal.

“The UN Security Council has never authorized any country to carry out military surveillance in the seas and airspace of other countries in the name of enforcing sanctions,” he told reporters.

Trudeau’s response to that is somewhat muddled:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in response, defended the patrols, which he said are part of a multinational effort to enforce UN sanctions. He warned Beijing that pilots on both sides are in danger of behind hurt or killed by China’s behaviour.

“China’s actions are irresponsible and provocative in this case, and we will continue to register strongly that they are putting people at risk while at the same time not respecting decisions by the UN to enforce UN sanctions on North Korea,” he told reporters during a press conference in Ottawa with Chile’s President on Monday.

Chinese fighter pilots have recently stepped up aggressive behaviour against Canadian military aircraft flying in international airspace near North Korea.

A “a multinational effort to enforce UN sanctions” is something different than a “United Nations-approved operations to implement sanctions on North Korea” which the Canadian military claimed.

Since 2019, Canada has from time to time dispatched a naval frigate or long-range patrol aircraft to help monitor ocean approaches to North Korea as part of a multinational approach, with the United States and other allies, to enforce sanctions against Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program. The area under patrol includes the contested East China Sea, above which China established an aircraft defence identification zone in 2013.

The ‘multinational’ behind the effort are the U.S. and its usual proxies. But if that were a UN or UN approved mission China and Russia must have agreed to it at the UN Security Council. They never did.

Still Trudeau insists on the UN smoke screen:

“Canada is participating in a UN mission designed to interdict and intercept and ensure the respect of sanctions on North Korea’s murderous regime,” the Prime Minister said. “Canada continues to stand up for the rule of law. We continue to stand up for multilateralism. We continue to stand up for the principles of the UN Charter.”

I find no news of formal paper that says the UN has ever designed or asked for any such mission.

There are a total of nine UN Security Council resolutions against North Korea. The relevant here is UNSCR 1718 from 2006. In paragraph 8 it asks member countries to implement certain sanctions:

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, and taking measures under its Article 41 ... 
...
8. Decides that:

(a) All Member States shall prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the DPRK, through their territories or by their nationals, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, and whether or not originating in their territories, of:

[... a list of certain weapon systems and materials.]

That paragraph restricts any measure countries can take with UNSC agreement to territory, nationals or vessels under their control. It does not authorize to do anything to other territories, nationals or to foreign flagged vessels or to act against such vessels at high sea.

Paragraph 8d, which is about financial sanctions, has similar restrictions:

d) All Member States shall, in accordance with their respective legal processes, freeze immediately the funds, other financial assets and economic resources which are on their territories at the date of the adoption of this resolution or at any time thereafter, ...

UNSC resolution 2094 from 2013 added additional sanctions but included the same territorial restrictions:

11. Decides that Member States shall, in addition to implementing their obligations pursuant to paragraphs 8 (d) and (e) of resolution 1718 (2006), prevent the provision of financial services or the transfer to, through, or from their territory, or to or by their nationals or entities organized under their laws (including branches abroad), or persons or financial institutions in their territory, ...

In fact all UNSC resolutions I am aware of, except those few which directly allow for a war, have similar restrictions. Orders or request to UN member countries for implementing sanctions or to take other measure are always restricted to those things or persons the country legally controls. The reasons for that are obvious. It would breach the rights of other countries if the UN would allow Canada or anyone else to interfere outside of their own legal realm.

The Canadian military’s claim that its planes are on a “United Nations-approved operations” is false. There is no UN approval for such operations.

The Canadian Prime Minister’s claim of participating in a “UN mission” is false. There is no such mission with regard to the DPRK.

The Canadian spy planes flying near the Chinese border are not implementing international law. That is simply a subterfuge of their real mission which is in fact spying on China.

Trudeau should be reminded of the 2001 incident near Hainan Island where a Chinese jet collided with a U.S. spy plane which then had to make an emergency landing in China:

The 24 crew members (21 men and 3 women) were detained for 10 days in total, and were released shortly after the U.S. issued the "letter of the two sorries" to the Chinese. 

The crew was only partially successful in their destruction of classified material, and some of the material they failed to destroy included cryptographic keys, signals intelligence manuals, and the names of National Security Agency employees.

Some of the captured computers contained detailed information for processing PROFORMA communications from North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, China and other countries.

The plane also carried information on the emitter parameters for U.S.-allied radar systems worldwide. The fact that the United States could track PLAN submarines via signal transmission was also revealed to China.

The U.S. now largely avoids such missions. It instead ordered Canada (and Australia) to do these, passing the risk to them. Pissing off China by making false claims of flying these in support of international law will only up the risk for another serious incident.

Posted by b on June 16, 2022 at 12:28 UTC | Permalink

In Australia

I don't know if you are aware, that's what an Australian Surveillance plane did in the South China Sea and the Chinese did a flight interdiction and Australia went mental about it here in Australia. For all concerned not in Australia the "New" Labor Government is no different from the former Conservative ratbags because the US has them by the short and curly's! The difference is the Australian Labor Government portrays themselves as "More Caring"? 

- William Edward Kiera

This is just a long string of probing incidents that are attempting to locate Chinese air defenses…

Australian Spy Plane Engines Ingested Chinese Chaff During Intercept in South China Sea, Canberra Claims

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The allegation comes on the heels of grievances by the Canadian Armed Forces earlier this week that People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) jets were “buzzing” a Canadian maritime patrol aircraft enforcing sanctions against North Korea and approaching close enough to give the plane’s crew the finger.
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A Chinese fighter jet drew up near an Australian Royal Air Force Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft operating in the South China Sea and released aluminum-based countermeasures which got sucked into the plane’s engines, the Defence Ministry reported Sunday.
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“Defence advises that on 26 May 2022, a RAAF P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft was intercepted by a Chinese J-16 fighter aircraft during a routine maritime surveillance activity in international airspace in the South China Sea region. The intercept resulted in a dangerous manoeuvre which posed a safety threat to the P-8 aircraft and its crew,” the ministry said in a statement.
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Later in the day, Defence Minister Richard Marles provided additional details on the suspected incident, saying that after approaching the Australian aircraft and firing flares, “the J-16 then accelerated and cut across the nose of the P-8, settling in front of the P-8 at very close distance” and releasing a “bundle of chaff, which contains small pieces of aluminum.” Some of these pieces “were ingested into the engine of the P-8 aircraft,” he said.
Marles vowed that the incident “will not deter” Canberra from continuing its maritime surveillance activities in the South China Sea, saying that “freedom of navigation” in the maritime region was “fundamentally in our nation’s interest.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed that he had been briefed on the incident, and that Canberra had “raised” its concerns with Beijing.
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Chinese officials have not commented on Australia’s allegations. The People’s Republic is also yet to respond to Canadian accusations made earlier this week that PLAAF fighter pilots were regularly giving a Canadian spy plane operating near North Korea the finger while performing what Ottawa called “unsafe and unprofessional” intercepts.
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China lays claim to wide swathes of the South China Sea, with Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and the Philippines making their own claims to parts of the strategic shipping artery, which also happens to be rich in hydrocarbons and fishing resources. The United States and its allies, including Australia and Britain, have challenged Beijing’s claims, and have spent more than a decade conducting “freedom of navigation” missions in the body of water and forging bilateral security agreements with other claimants.
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China has repeatedly slammed the US and its allies over these activities, urging them to mind their own business and moving to negotiate with South China Sea-adjacent nations on the creation of a regional maritime “code of conduct.”
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Occasionally, Chinese warships and aircraft are directed to challenge US and allied planes’ and navy vessels’ ‘freedom of navigation’ jaunts. In October 2018, a Chinese warship nearly collided with a US Navy ship while chasing it through the body of water. Chinese military pilots have also been accused of trolling their US counterparts by “meowing” at US spy planes patrolling in disputed areas.

Science

Science
Science

US Department of Defense Finally Comes Clean – Admits in Public Document that There Are 46 US Military-Funded Biolabs in Ukraine

“There are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release and spread deadly pathogens to US/world.” Gabbard said on Sunday.

“We must take action now to prevent disaster. US/Russia/Ukraine/NATO/UN/EU must implement a ceasefire now around these labs until they’re secured and pathogens destroyed,” she added.

 

VIDEO:

 

Tulsi Gabbard made her statement based on testimony from the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in Eurasia, Victoria Nuland.

Victoria Nuland admitted during testimony before a US Senate committee the existence of biological research labs in Ukraine.

Less than 24 hours later, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that reports of biolabs in Ukraine were fake news propagated by Russia.

The Democrat-fake news-media complex then attacked anyone who brought up the biolabs in Ukraine.

Mitt Romney lashed out at Tulsi Gabbard, saying, “Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.”

Then this happened– Russia released alleged captured documents from Ukraine exposing evidence of US Military Biolabs in Ukraine.

Russia made the accusations in front of the United Nations General Assembly.

Now this–

The Pentagon on Thursday finally admitted in a public statement that there are 46 US-funded biolabs in Ukraine.

This is after months of lies and denials by Democrats, the Biden regime and their fake news mainstream media!

The Pentagon FINALLY came clean.

The United States has also worked collaboratively to improve Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and disease surveillance for both human and animal health, providing support to 46 peaceful Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and disease diagnostic sites over the last two decades. The collaborative programs have focused on improving public health and agricultural safety measures at the nexus of nonproliferation.

Here is a screengrab from the US Department of Defense website.

 

Not good.
Not good.

 

Monkeypox will be renamed, says World Health Organization

Is the WHO trying to help erase the idea that a US lab monkey escaped in Pennsylvania? (Article HERE ) and the spread of monkeypox?
 
The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is working with experts to officially rename monkeypox, amid concerns over stigma and racism around the "discriminatory" name of the virus.

Key points:

WHO says it will rename "monkeypox virus, its clades and the disease it causes"

More than 30 scientists last week alerted health officials to the need for a name that was neither discriminatory nor stigmatising

Director-General of the WHO made the announcement during an emergency committee that was held after "unusual" recent behaviour of the virus

Article HERE

Galaxy Quest images

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Xi Pledges China Will Keep Backing Russian “Sovereignty, Security” In Putin Call

China has once again issued a pledge of verbal support to Moscow amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. A Wednesday phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin included Xi saying China backs Russia on “sovereignty and security”.

China is “willing to continue to offer mutual support (to Russia) on issues concerning core interests and major concerns such as sovereignty and security,” Chinese state broadcaster CCTV quoted Xi as saying.

Significantly, it was the second such ‘positive’ call between the two leaders since the Ukraine invasion began on Feb.24. Over the past years the two have become obviously closer amid increasing US economic measures intent on isolating both countries.

The Moscow Times reports the following on the contents of the call:

According to CCTV, Xi praised the "good momentum of development" in bilateral relations since the start of the year "in the face of global turmoil and changes."

Beijing was willing to "intensify strategic coordination between the two countries," Xi reportedly said.

China was ready to "strengthen communication and coordination" with Russia in international organizations and "push the international order and global governance towards more just and reasonable development," he added.

And noticeably absent in the state media readout was apparently any explicit mention Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the resultant global crises unleashed such as the impact on global wheat and food supply, as well as fuel prices. However, the wording of Xi’s support for Russian “sovereignty and security” has clear enough implications, and certainly sends a message to the West.

The huge economies of China and India not only have refused to jump on board the West’s retaliatory measures targeting Moscow, but have sought to siphon more cheap Russian oil, which has helped Russia blunt Western sanctions.

Additionally, Beijing has at every turn refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while also denying earlier Biden administration charges that it’s helping thwart anti-Russia sanctions, or the more inflammatory accusation of supplying replenishing weapons and munitions related to Ukraine operations.

Witchcraft? Tributes to Murder Victims? The Uncertain Origins of 17 Miniature Coffins in Scotland

17 miniature coffins were discovered in a small cave on the mystical Arthur’s Seat outside of Edinburgh, Scotland in 1836. Today, only eight remain and are now on display at the National Museum of Scotland. Despite the passage of 181 years, researchers are no closer to ascertaining the creator or the purpose of the coffins, each of which contains a tiny, carefully dressed human figure.

Some say that it is witchcraft. Others claim it is a symbolic burial of men lost at sea. One of the most intriguing theories is that the coffins were made in a kindly attempt to quiet the wandering souls of 17 people who were murdered for the dissection table by the notorious serial killers Burke and Hare.

According to The Scotsman , the first paper to write about the story, “a number [of the coffins] were destroyed by the boys pelting them at each other as unmeaning and contemptible trifles” (Dash, 2013). As described by The Scotsman , each of the coffins “contained a miniature figure of the human form cut out in wood, the faces in particular being pretty well executed. They were dressed from head to foot in cotton clothes, and decently laid out with a mimic representation of all the funeral trappings which usually form the last habiliments of the dead.

The coffins are about three or four inches in length, regularly shaped, and cut out from a single piece of wood, with the exception of the lids, which are nailed down with wire sprigs or common brass pins. The lid and sides of each are profusely studded with ornaments, formed with small pieces of tin, and inserted in the wood with great care and regularity” (Dash, 2013).

 

 

New Insights on the Creators

Since that description was written in the 19th century, further research has determined that the figures were most likely made by the same craftsman and the coffins were made by two different people. In addition, “the materials and tools used – wood, iron embellishments, nails, a sharp, hooked knife – indicate the coffins could have been fashioned by a shoemaker” (Scottish History and Archeology, 2017). Moreover, “the figures seem to form a set, and their upright bearing, flat feet, and swinging arms suggest they may have been toy soldiers. Their eyes are open, making it unlikely they were originally designed as corpses” (Scottish History and Archeology, 2017).

Finally, a closer examination of the cotton used in the figures’ dressing dates their creation to the early 1830s. This means that they could not have been buried for long before being discovered by the school children. Yet such close scrutiny has not brought people any closer to understanding the effigies’ purpose. According to the Museum of Scotland, to understand why these coffins were made, one must examine what was happening at the time.

An Unexpected Discovery – 17 Miniature Coffins

In June of 1836, a group of local school children was roaming the hills of Arthur’s Seat in search of rabbits. In a secluded area on the northeast side, they found a small cave (or possibly a large hole) hidden behind three slabs of slate. Inside were 17 little coffins, each nailed shut, arranged neatly in two rows of eight, with the 17th resting on top as if to start a third row.

Body Snatchers and Murderers

In the 1820s and 30s, Edinburgh was a cultural center renowned for its medical prowess. The city’s medical schools turned out some of the best doctors and each year more and more students enrolled. This influx created a problem. In the 19th century, the key to the healing arts was to understand human anatomy.

And the only way this was possible was through dissection. Yet, as Edinburgh progressed, there were fewer criminals being sent to death at the gallows (the typical source of cadavers). Thus, the infamous practices of body snatching and grave robbing came into vogue.

While highly profitable, the crime scandalized the Scottish public. It was conventional wisdom at the time that in order for one to rise again to life on the day of the Last Judgment, a person must have his or her body intact. This prevailing sentiment led to a number of innovations to prevent robbers from making off with corpses, such as iron clad coffins and all night vigils. This is important to bear in mind because it may also have contributed to why somebody would make the tiny surrogate bodies.

Among the most devious body snatchers in history were William Burke and William Hare , both Irish immigrants, as well as the famous Edinburgh anatomist and scholar Dr. Robert Knox. As a once-popular children’s rhyme retells, “Up the close and doun the stair/ But and ben wi’ Burke and Hare. Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief/ Knox the boy that buys the beef” (Scottish History and Archeology, 2017).

Burke and Hare’s first transaction with Dr. Knox occurred when an elderly tenant at Hare’s boarding house died before paying off a debt to Hare. In order to recoup his losses, Burke and Hare sold the man’s body to the doctor’s anatomy school in Surgeon’s Square. It was such easy money.

“But with no-one else in the boarding house prepared to drop dead of their own accord, the pair thought they’d hurry the process along a bit. And so began a vicious killing spree that lasted 10 months, during which Burke and Hare dispatched at least 16 victims [12 of whom were female] and earned around £150 (roughly £12,000 now – no mean sum)” (Scottish History and Archeology, 2017).

On the offset, they only killed vagrants who they believed would not be missed. But then they grew careless and began to kill local residents who were not only missed but also recognized at the school.

 

 

In November 1928, the men were arrested. Hare agreed to testify against Burke and was therefore granted immunity. On January 28, 1828, Burke was hanged before a crowd of thousands. His body was then sent to be dissected at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, who (on the orders of the court) preserved Burke’s skeleton as a testament to his atrocious crimes.

Dr. Knox was cleared of any wrongdoing; however, the incident ruined his illustrious career. Hare was never heard from again. Most likely he went back to Ireland but there is a folk legend that says he made off to London where he fell into a lime pit and was permanently blinded.

17 Coffins for the Victims?

A popular theory holds that the 17 coffins were buried for the 17 victims. “It just seems like a particularly Edinburgh kind of thing, to try and lay these ghosts to rest by creating a symbolic image of the victims to place and give a proper burial to. Even if nobody every learned about it, it just seemed like something somebody who had known somebody who had disappeared in Edinburgh might have done to give their friend a bit of peace” (Henderson quoted in Scottish History and Archeology, 2017).

Today, the remaining eight little coffins still have a grip on the popular imagination and have been on display to the public consistently since their donation to the Museum in 1901.

An Alternative Explanation

According to The Scotsman , author and amateur historian Jeff Nisbet believes the miniature coffins were created to keep the “flames of rebellion lit” following the Radical war of 1820.

He suggests the coffins were meant to serve as a memorial honoring the Radicals who were killed.

The Scotsman explains the background for the situation:

“many poorly paid workers and weavers from the area were arrested following a series of protests and strikes aimed at improving their working conditions and securing better pay. Many of those arrested were exiled to Australia, while several of the ring leaders were executed. Following the event, many of those who agreed with the movement were put to work building a path that would become known as the ‘Radical Road’ around Arthur’s seat.” 

The mystery of the meaning behind the miniature coffins continues to draw in curious researchers.

Italian Baked Pasta

Italian Baked Pasta
Italian Baked Pasta

A very nice old cottage

UKRAINE ARMY DEATHS: 70,000 Plus 210,000 Wounded!

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Collecting the dead.
Collecting the dead.

The magnitude of Ukraine’s losses in its fight against Russia have now been exposed as staggering. Based on actual cemetery grave count: Seventy-Thousand Ukraine troops are dead, According to numerous other reporting, another 210,000 Ukraine troops have been wounded.

Currently Russia is holding 8,500 Ukrainian POWs. Most are in POW camps in Donbass. Ukraine is holding 325 Russian POWs at this time

US shoe company Skechers forced to prove ‘no forced labor’ ahead of US discriminative act on Xinjiang – Global Times

"The crusaders run their country based on political agenda, politicking, and fake news against others without any basic sense of ethics and honesty. They engage in single way thinking without doing the math and often suffer from boomerang effects:"
US shoe company Skechers has had a batch of its products manufactured in China seized by US customs, which cited the so-called Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the Global Times learned from sources.
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In order to appeal to the US customs, Skechers organized an independent investigation conducted by a third party, which found no evidence to support so-called forced labor allegations.
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In December, 2021, US President Joe Biden signed a legislation titled the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act,” which bans products made in China’s Xinjiang, citing “oppression” of the Uygur and other minority populations.
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The new law creates a “rebuttable presumption” that all goods partially or wholly produced in the Xinjiang region are “tainted by forced labor.” It also requires corporations to prove with “clear and convincing evidence” that imports from the region are not made by forced labor.
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Article found HERE

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Harry Nilsson – Me and My Arrow

1971. Extracted from the cartoon called “The Point”. It became a hit ten years or so later.

Serious Development in Ukraine: DPR Leader Says Will March to Lviv

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A very serious development has taken place regarding ongoing hostilities in Ukraine.  The Leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, says the decision has been made to fight all the way to Lviv; there may not BE a “Ukraine” anymore.

Pushilin is the elected leader of the now-independent Donetsk People’s Republic, which was formerly a state (Oblast) of Ukraine.   The people there voted in the year 2014, to leave Ukraine and join Russia.  They did this after the European Union (EU) and the United States fomented, incited, and financed the forcible overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected President, Viktor Yanukovich, and installed a puppet regime in Kiev, favorable to the West.

Rather than allow Donetsk (and its northern neighbor, Luhansk) to peacefully leave Ukraine, Kiev sent troops to force those two states to remain in Ukraine.  War began.

From 2014 to 2022, more than fourteen thousand (14,000) civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk, were killed by Ukraine army troops.   Russia intervened on February 24, 2022, to stop that killing, and to protect the Russian-speaking population of those two states, which had, in the interim, declared their Independence from Ukraine.

Pushilin says the DPR will continue pushing on; they will not stop at DPR’s borders!   The Denazification of Ukraine will continue to Dnipro, Kiev, and Lviv!

Pushilin hopes to complete the special operation in Ukraine by the end of the year.

The head of the DPR gave an interview to @rian_ru on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). The main point:
Ukraine as a state may simply not be, in the foreseeable future.

The supply of new weapons by the West to Ukraine Pshilin says, has forced the decision that DPR troops not stop at the border of the republic.

The decision on the referendum on the accession of the DPR to Russia will be made after the completion of the special operation.

Pushilin also said it is planned to ship about one million tons of cargo through the Mariupol port by the end of the year, now that Mariupol is cleared of Nazis and Ukraine military.

The DPR Embassy in Russia will be opened in late June – early July.

A very nice house

Oh. Yes it is.

Dozens more Australians banned from entering Russia over Ukrainian invasion sanctions

The list of 121 names, which includes billionaires, newspaper bosses, chief executives, professors and military officers, builds on the 228 Australians including then leader Scott Morrison and current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese banned from Russia in April.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed the banned people formed part of Australia's "Russophobic" agenda and warned more would be added to the country's "stop list".

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The B-52’s – Rock Lobster

THE song that was played at every college party at university.

Explosion Rocks Russia’s Largest Natural Gas Field. Sabotage?

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A massive explosion tore through a 1400mm natural gas pipeline at Russia’s largest natural gas field in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Siberia today.   The fire is presently burning out of control.

A source reports the fire is burning in the area of GP 8, skip 8832 which is in the Gazprom Dobycha Urengoy section, between gas fields 7-8.

The cause of the explosion is being investigated, but a source says it appears this was a DELIBERATE ACT of Sabotage.  Investigators are already saying someone is trying to send a message to Russia, that infrastructure even deep inside their country “can be gotten to.”  The trouble with sending a message to Russia, is that the Russian then need to send a message back.

The Urengoy field is one of the largest fields in the world,  with the only two larger gas fields being the North/South Pars (Qatar/Iran) in terms of reserves. The recoverable reserves of this Russian gas field amount to 10 trillion cubic meters of gas.

Last August, a large-scale fire at Gazprom’s gas chemical complex in Novy Urengoi reduced gas deliveries via the Yamal-Europe pipeline. This caused prices on the European market to jump by 6%.

With Europe now trying to embargo Russian natural gas, the Yamal Pipeline is already shut down to several countries in Europe, but today’s explosion and fire could still result in market driven price increases.

Youdao does a good job of translating Wei’s speech

From HERE

Full text of speech by Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe in Shangri-La Forum in Singapore

Wei expounded his position on the Taiwan issue in his speech, saying that the Taiwan issue bears on China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. No country in the world will tolerate national division. When I visited the United States last year, My American friends told me that Lincoln is the greatest president in The history of the United States because he led and won the Civil War and prevented the division of the United States. The United States is indivisible, and China is indivisible. China must and will be reunified. Why not?

'If anyone dares to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese military has no choice but to fight at all costs and resolutely safeguard the reunification of the motherland,' Wei said. "I want to warn the DPP authorities and external interfering forces: First, any attempt to split China will never succeed. Second, any attempt to interfere in the Taiwan question is doomed to failure. Third, any underestimation of the Chinese military's resolve is extremely dangerous. We are willing to strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification with utmost sincerity and utmost efforts, but we will never promise to renounce the use of force. It is the sacred duty of the armed forces to safeguard national unity. If the PLA cannot safeguard the reunification of the motherland, what is the PLA for? !"

With regard to the recent economic and trade frictions launched by the United States against China, Wei fenghe said in his speech that the Chinese people are now talking about nine words: talk, yes; Fight, accompany; Deceit, delusion!

He said China has always maintained that all countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community and should respect and accommodate each other's legitimate security concerns. China always understands and respects the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries, and supports the social system and development path independently chosen by all countries. China cannot develop in isolation from the world, and the world cannot develop in isolation from China. China does not covet other countries' interests or envy their development, but we will never give up our legitimate rights and interests. No country should expect us to swallow the bitter fruit of undermining China's sovereignty, security and development interests. Just as the US recently launched economic and trade frictions against China, the door is open for negotiations. If you fight, you fight to the end. The nine words that have become popular among the Chinese people are: talk, yes; Fight, accompany; Deceit, delusion!

Full text of speech by Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe

It gives me great pleasure to attend the 18th Shangri-La Dialogue. I would like to thank Dr. David Chipman, Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, for the invitation and the Singapore Government and the Ministry of Defence for their warm hospitality. I also wish to congratulate Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on his wonderful speech. This is my first time to attend the incense gathering as Defense Minister. I have come here for exchanges and mutual trust, cooperation and peace. Next, I would like to speak on China’s cooperation with international security.

First, human society is at a crossroads. Building a community with a shared future for mankind is the right path and the trend of The Times

The world today is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, with increasing uncertainties, destabilizing factors and challenges. President Xi Jinping’s vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind is simple. It is the right choice for the people of the world to live together in harmony and effectively solve global issues. It is the right way to achieve world peace and stability and prosperity and development of mankind. We have noted that the US side talked about its vision on regional affairs in its speech to the CONFERENCE yesterday. We believe that any proposal should fully take into account the common security and interests of countries in the region, and should not be in the nature of a military alliance or undermine the interests of other countries. We have different views on some of the views of the US side. We firmly oppose the wrong words and deeds of the US side on the Taiwan and South China Sea issues. Now, LET me talk about a few questions to think about with you.

What choice should we make between peaceful development and conflict and confrontation? Peace and development are the theme of our times and the trend of history. At present, hotspot issues in the world and in the region keep flaring up, and there is always the risk of conflict or even war. How are wars and conflicts in regional countries, rampant terrorism, chaos in the Middle East and the Refugee crisis in Europe caused? Who caused it? Where are the roots? It is worth reflecting on. Whose interests are these acts of dividing camps, deliberately creating confrontation, meddling in and stirring up troubles, wanton interference in other countries’ internal affairs and even wanton resort to force? At the expense of whose interests?

What choice should we make between openness, inclusiveness and exclusion? We should approach the world with an open and inclusive mind and be full of friends and partners. Seeing the world through a narrow and exclusive lens, filled with enemies and adversaries, is called “self-fulfilling prophecy.” At present, anti-globalization and protectionism are on the rise. Some countries are resorting to unilateralism, putting themselves first and ignoring the interests of others. They have either broken contracts or withdrawn from groups.

What choice should we make between win-win cooperation and a zero-sum game? Win-win cooperation will make the pie bigger and bring more benefits to all. A zero-sum game can only hurt both sides. More than 150 countries and international organizations have taken an active part in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Not long ago, more than 6,000 delegates from 150 countries and 92 international organizations came to China to attend the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. The axioms are self-evident.

What choice should we make between mutual learning among civilizations and arrogance and prejudice? A few days ago, China successfully hosted the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations. Civilizations are colorful, equal, inclusive and learn from each other. No one civilization should be singled out or disparaged. The slavery of the Black people, the expulsion of the Indians, the colonization of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and the mutilation of the Jews in history are all irremediable wounds and tragedies in the history of human civilization. At present, some people are reviving the “clash of civilizations” argument, viewing other civilizations in a narrow view and reeking of decadent racism. This is quite wrong. How can history allow such a retreat?

Ii. In the face of complex and volatile international security situation, the Chinese government and military are firmly committed to safeguarding regional and global prosperity and stability

Anyone familiar with China’s modern history knows that the poor and weak Old China suffered a lot of sufferings. The Chinese people know better than anyone the essence of peace and the cruelty and disaster of war. Over the years, some people have deliberately hyped up and exaggerated the “China threat theory”. This may be out of ignorance of China’s history, culture and current policies, but most of it is out of misunderstanding and prejudice, or even out of their ulterior motives.

China is committed to the path of peaceful development.

China’s nature as a socialist country, its independent foreign policy of peace and the Chinese cultural tradition that “peace is most precious” have determined that China will always follow the path of peaceful development. This is a solemn commitment made to the Chinese people and the people of the world. It has been explicitly written into the Constitution of the COMMUNIST Party of China and the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. This is the will of our Party and country. If someone can’t believe that, what can they believe? Over the past 70 years, China has never initiated a single war or conflict, invaded any country, or occupied an inch of other people’s land. No matter how developed it may become, China will never threaten anyone, seek hegemony or hegemony, or seek to establish spheres of influence. History has proved and will continue to prove that China will not follow the beaten path of “a strong country will seek hegemony”. Seeking hegemony is not in line with China’s values and national interests.

China has always pursued a military strategy of active defense.

China’s military strategy has always adhered to the principle of defense, self-defense and post-strike strike, emphasizing that “we will not attack unless attacked, but we will certainly attack if attacked.” The development of the Chinese armed forces is purely for self-defense, to protect national security and the peaceful work of the Chinese people, so that the Chinese people can avoid the scourge of war and live a better life. China has never bullied, pillaged or invaded anyone. Of course, We will not allow anyone to bully, pillage or invade us. The development of China’s military is in response to security threats, just as we were forced to develop nuclear forces when we were threatened by nuclear weapons. China’s defense spending is reasonable and moderate. China’s national defense construction and development has always been based on the legitimate need to safeguard its own security and contribute to the growth of the force for world peace.

The Chinese armed forces resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests.

The PLA is a people’s army under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. In the face of aggression, might and difficulties, the Chinese military has always been courageous and moved from victory to victory. The Chinese people grow stronger and stronger under pressure. They grow stronger and stronger under setbacks. In times of adversity, they become more united and break out into amazing strength. In the face of complex and severe security threats, the Chinese armed forces always bear in mind that not a single inch of the sacred territory of the motherland should be lost, and not even a penny of others’ possessions should be taken away. The Chinese military does not make troubles, but it is not afraid of them either. If anyone dares to take risks and cross our bottom line, the Chinese military will definitely strike decisively and defeat all intruders.

The Chinese military is firmly committed to safeguarding regional and global security and stability.

China has actively supported UN peacekeeping operations. It is the largest troop contributor among the permanent members of the UN Security Council and a major contributor of funds. For a long time, China actively participates in bilateral and multilateral security cooperation and high level of comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Russia, China and the United States military relations remained stable after twists and turns and difficult but overall, we were positively correlated with asean countries, and India, and south Asian countries, such as traditional friendship deepened, and the surrounding countries remain peaceful coexistence and good-neighborly friendship for a long time, It has maintained good relations with the armed forces of African and Latin American countries. This October, China will host the 9th Beijing Xiangshan Forum. Military leaders and scholars from all countries are welcome to attend the forum.

In the historical process of achieving common prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region, the core interests and security concerns of all countries must be respected and safeguarded

China always maintains that all countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community and should respect and accommodate each other’s legitimate security concerns. China always understands and respects the sovereignty, independence and integrity of all countries, and supports the social system and development path independently chosen by all countries. China cannot develop in isolation from the world, and the world cannot develop in isolation from China. China does not covet other countries’ interests or envy their development. But we will never give up our legitimate rights and interests. No country should expect us to swallow the bitter fruit of undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests. Just as the US recently launched economic and trade frictions against China, the door is open for negotiations. If you fight, you fight to the end. What the Chinese people are now saying is: Talk, yes; Fight, accompany; Deceit, delusion. Now, I would like to clarify China’s position on several issues of common concern.

On the Taiwan Question.

The Taiwan question concerns China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. No country in the world will tolerate national division. When I visited the United States last year, My American friends told me that Lincoln is the greatest president in The history of the United States because he led and won the Civil War and prevented the division of the United States.

The United States is indivisible, and China is indivisible.

China must and will be reunified.

Why not? If anyone dares to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese military will have no choice but to fight war and resolutely safeguard national reunification at all costs.

Here, I want to warn the DPP authorities and external interference forces;

First, any attempt to split China will never succeed.

Second, any attempt to interfere in the Taiwan question is doomed to failure.

I have noted the remarks made by the US side. Does the Taiwan Relations Law belong to Taiwan? American law? Is it Chinese law? Or the law of the world? Or the LAW of the United Nations?

The US is using its domestic law to interfere in China’s internal affairs.

Third, any underestimation of the Chinese military’s resolve is extremely dangerous. We are willing to strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification with utmost sincerity and utmost efforts, but we will never promise to renounce the use of force. It is the sacred duty of the armed forces to safeguard national unity. If the PLA cannot safeguard the reunification of the motherland, what is the PLA for? !

On the South China Sea issue. The situation in the South China Sea is on the whole stable and improving. This is thanks to the efforts of all of us, especially countries in the region. But there are always those who want to make waves in the South China Sea for their own profit. Here I’d like to discuss a few issues with you.

First, who is threatening security and stability in the South China Sea?

More than 100,000 ships pass through the South China Sea every year, and no one has ever faced any threat. On the contrary, in recent years, some countries outside the region have flexing their muscles in the South China Sea under the pretext of safeguarding “freedom of navigation”.

This rampage of massive military forces in the South China Sea is the biggest destabilizing and uncertain factor in the South China Sea.

Second, who will be hurt and who will benefit from the turmoil in the South China Sea?

Once chaos breaks out in the South China Sea, of course, it is the countries in the South China Sea that will suffer. What is the purpose of some countries sending warships and fighter jets to the South China Sea from afar?

Are there too few cases in which a major country interferes in regional affairs, creates chaos and eventually leaves a mess behind?

Third, does stability in the South China Sea depend on countries within or outside the region?

We hope relevant parties will not underestimate the wisdom and capability of the neighboring countries in the South China Sea to properly handle differences and maintain peace. We also welcome constructive suggestions from all countries.

Fourth, is China’s construction on islands and reefs in the South China Sea militarized?

China’s construction on its own territory is the legitimate right of a sovereign state. China has built some defensive facilities on the islands and reefs for self-defense. Where there is a threat, there is self-defense. In the face of super armed military aircraft and ships, how can we not build some defense facilities?

On the Korean Nuclear issue.

China is committed to achieving denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, maintaining peace and stability on the Peninsula, and resolving issues through dialogue and consultation. China is committed to promoting peace talks and has played an irreplaceable constructive role. We hope that the US and the DPRK can be rational and patient, accommodate each other’s legitimate concerns, meet each other halfway and restart dialogue as soon as possible. The US and the DPRK should follow the dual-track approach and combine denuclearization with the establishment of a peace regime. We hope that the international community will actively respond to the DPRK’s legitimate concerns, activate the reversible provisions of the UN Security Council sanctions resolution at an appropriate time, promote the issuance of a declaration on the end of the war and actively build mutual trust among all parties.

On China-Us relations.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States. Over the past 40 years, our relations have gone through ups and downs, but overall progress has been made.

The biggest lesson we have learned is that cooperation benefits both sides while confrontation hurts both.

Look ahead.

The two sides should jointly advance china-us relations based on coordination, cooperation and stability in accordance with the consensus reached by the two heads of state. At present, the two militaries maintain continuous communication and reach consensus on many major issues.

First, on implementing the consensus reached by the two heads of state. It is to make the military-to-military relationship a stabilizer of bilateral relations.

Second, to maintain regular strategic communication. The day before yesterday, I had a candid and pragmatic exchange with Acting Secretary Shanahan. Both sides agreed to maintain communication and develop constructive military-to-military relations.

Third, managing risks and crises and preventing conflicts and frictions. We are all aware that a conflict or even a war between China and the US would be disastrous for both countries and the whole world. Cooperation requires the joint efforts of both sides, and the struggle begins as long as one side initiates it. China hopes that the United States will work with us towards the same direction, with no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, so as to push forward China-Us relations along the right track.

China’s great achievements in the past 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic did not come from heaven, nor did they depend on the handout of others, nor did they depend on military expansion or colonial plunder.

They are the result of the hard work, wisdom and courage of the Chinese people.

They are also the result of China’s reform and opening-up and win-win cooperation with the rest of the world.

At present, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, China enjoys political stability, social stability and steady economic development. It is fair to say that the country enjoys peace, people enjoy harmony, and all industries are thriving. The Chinese people are working hard to realize the Chinese dream of great national renewal.

What Life Is Like Before And After You Get A Dog

If you decide to get a dog or any other animal as a pet, experienced owners have something to tell you. The owner of a golden retriever, John, shows how his life has changed after getting his pup Maimai — whom he describes as ’’a cute little furry devil’’.

As pup’s owner explains, everyone who has a dog soon starts feeling guilty that they don’t share their food or buy new toys for it. And you can forget about having a tidy apartment — ever again. But it’s all worth it. Because there’s no one else who’s happier than the person who sees their dog greeting them every evening in the hallway.

Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.
Life with a dog.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin’s Regular Press Conference on June 15, 2022

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin

The 12th Meeting of BRICS National Security Advisers and High Representatives on National Security will be held virtually on June 15. Yang Jiechi, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, will chair the meeting in Beijing. National security advisers and high representatives on national security of South Africa, Brazil, Russia and India will attend the event.

Al Jazeera: It is reported that the US Air Force’s RC-135V reconnaissance aircraft today conducted what was suspected to be reconnaissance on China over the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: For quite some time, the US side has frequently sent aircraft and vessels to conduct close-in reconnaissance on China. Such acts cause serious danger to China’s defense security. China urges the US to immediately stop such dangerous acts of provocation. We will continue to take necessary measures to firmly safeguard our sovereignty and security interests.

People’s Daily: Could you share with us China’s expectations for the 12th Meeting of BRICS National Security Advisers and High Representatives on National Security? 

Wang Wenbin: The Meeting of BRICS National Security Advisers and High Representatives on National Security is an important platform for BRICS countries to enhance political and security cooperation. At the upcoming meeting, national security advisers and high representatives on national security of the five BRICS countries will have an in-depth exchange of views, coordinate positions and build consensus on a range of issues including multilateralism and global governance, new threats and challenges to national security, and governance in new domains.

With profound changes in the international landscape interwoven with a pandemic unseen in a century, our world has entered a new phase of turbulence and transformation. As the current BRICS chair, China looks forward to working with fellow BRICS members to achieve positive results through this meeting, further consolidate political mutual trust, deepen political and security cooperation, uphold the five countries’ security and development interests, and contribute to world peace and stability.

Associated Press of Pakistan: The seventh China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Media Forum was recently held offline and online. Leaders and officials from China and Pakistan attended the forum. Do you have any comment on that?

Wang Wenbin: The seventh CPEC Media Forum was recently hosted by the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan and sponsored by China Economic Net and Pakistan-China Institute in an online plus offline format. Around 200 people from various sectors in China and Pakistan including senior officials, diplomats, media practitioners and think tank representatives attended the forum virtually. The theme of this forum is “Enhance New Media Cooperation to Depict the Multidimensional and Comprehensive CPEC”. In-depth exchange and discussion was held on such topics as “Pakistan, Global Development Initiative, and the Role of Media”, the latest update on the Belt and Road Initiative and CPEC development, and “Give Scope to Media to Objectively and Fairly Report CPEC”. A ceremony was held to present the book “China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: Stories Behind” and the “CPEC Communication Award”. The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan has put out a press release on the event.

We hope Chinese and Pakistani media will continue to be a bridge connecting the two countries, do a good job in telling the story of China-Pakistan cooperation, jointly reject disinformation, and contribute more to CPEC development, socioeconomic progress in both countries and closer people-to-people exchange.

Formal Questions.
Formal Questions.

 

Reuters: Officials in Taiwan have complained to organizers of the 2022 Qatar World Cup about the fact that football fans for the World Cup currently have to select an option saying that they are part of Taiwan as a province of China. And there’s no option for Taiwan being a separate option when they buy their tickets. And they have asked the Qatar World Cup organizers to rectify this. Does the Chinese foreign ministry have a comment?

Wang Wenbin: I am not aware of what you mentioned. I would like to reiterate that Taiwan is part of China and adhering to the one-China principle is a basic norm governing international relations and shared consensus of the international community. 

CCTV: According to US media reports, during the US troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan last August, at least two Afghans fell to their deaths from a US C-17 cargo airplane which hastily took off from Kabul airport. Nearly 10 months later, the US military announced the conclusion of investigations of the incident which said that the aircrew was in compliance with applicable rules. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: Impunity of US military personnel over wrongdoings is nothing new. There have been too many cases where the US shields and exonerates the military from its crimes. 

On August 29, 2021, the US military stationed in Afghanistan launched a drone attack on a civilian residence in Kabul on counter-terrorism grounds which killed 10 civilians, the youngest of whom were only two years old. However, the US announced that US military personnel involved in this drone attack in Kabul would not face any form of punishment. 

In September 2020, in retaliation to the International Criminal Court’s investigation into the US military’s war crimes in Afghanistan, the US announced sanctions against two ICC high-ranking officials. 

In November 2019, the US granted clemency to three US service members who had committed war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

These cold, ruthless cases are evidence that the US couldn’t care less about lives in other countries and their people’s human rights. The reality seems to suggest that the US military can enjoy impunity over wrong killings simply because the US is a mighty power, while people in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq are wrongly killed and yet cannot receive justice just because their countries are weaker. This is what the US’s rules are really about — a 21st-century law of the jungle. 

However, hegemony will not last and justice will prevail. People across the world have now seen through the hypocrisy of the US on “protecting human rights”. The US must and will be held accountable and duly punished for the harm it has done to the human rights of people in other countries. 

Bloomberg: Do you have any comment on the recent Sheffield Hallam University report that polyvinyl chloride factories in Xinjiang are employing forced labor?

Wang Wenbin: The so-called “forced labor” in Xinjiang is a big lie made by anti-China forces. It is a lie against logic, against facts and against legal principles.

No one have been forced to become “transferred laborers” in Xinjiang. Workers of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang choose their professions according to their own will. Labor contracts are signed between workers and companies on an equal and voluntary basis in accordance with laws and regulations, including the Labour Law of the People’s Republic of China, and the workers are paid accordingly. They are free to choose where they want to work. Their right to obtain remunerations for labor, take rests, have holidays and leaves, receive labor safety and sanitation protection and enjoy social insurance and welfare treatment are protected in accordance with law.

For many months, anti-China forces have falsely alleged that the cotton industry in Xinjiang uses “forced labor”. The fact, however, is that large-scale mechanized and industrialized production has become the norm in Xinjiang. In cotton production for example, more than 98 percent of seed-sowing is done through comprehensive mechanized methods in most areas. In some places, BeiDou Navigation and auto pilot technologies have been applied to sowing machines. Cotton farming has evolved from using primitive methods such as irrigation ditches and manual harvesting in the early days to today’s modern methods of efficient drip irrigation and mechanical harvesters. It is absurd to create the false impression that today’s Xinjiang is like the US in the 19th century where plantation owners forced black slaves to pick cotton. Are those responsible for the allegations indicating that mechanical labor is also a type of forced labor?

As we have seen, some people have lately come up with new lies about “forced labor” in the building material industry in Xinjiang. Although the script keeps changing, their approach and narratives are similarly clumsy. 

I must point out that the term “forced labor” has a clear legal definition. It is stipulated in the International Labour Organization’s Forced Labour Convention (1930). According to the convention, “the term forced or compulsory labour shall mean all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”. The Chinese government has ratified 28 ILO conventions including the Forced Labour Convention (1930) and is in faithful compliance with the obligations of international conventions. China applies international labor and human rights standards in its legislation, policymaking and policy implementation, to effectively safeguard workers’ rights. China opposes forced labor. Article 29 in the Regulations of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on the Protection of Labor Rights and Interests explicitly prohibits employers and management personnel from forcing employees to work with violence, threats and by other illegal means. It is a far cry from facts to say that there is “forced labor” in Xinjiang. 

I noticed that the report you cited also mentioned the US’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The so-called act is not based on facts at all. Under the legislation, importers are required to provide evidence that demonstrates that relevant goods do not involve forced labor. Such acts of presumption of guilt runs counter to the basic legal principle of presumption of innocence. This only serves to prove that the allegation of “forced labor” is nothing but a pretext used by the US side in an effort to seek political manipulation for the sheer purpose of destabilizing Xinjiang and containing China’s development. 

The fact is, forced labor exists not in Xinjiang, but in the US. The US still has not ratified the Forced Labour Convention (1930). In the US’s immigration detention system, over 70 percent of detainees are held in private detention centers, where they are required to participate in labor through the so-called “voluntary work programs”. Voluntary in name, the program is in fact about forced labor, as inmates who do not take part will be deprived of the access to necessities and put in solitary confinement as criminals. And those who comply are only paid one dollar for every eight hours of intensive labor. The US is also the only country in the world that has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. And still about 500,000 child farmworkers are toiling in the fields. The Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations of ILO has criticized child labor and forced labor in the US for many years running. And the Committee on the Application of Standards of ILO examined the US among individual country cases related to the observance of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention at the 103rd Session of the International Labour Conference.

We urge the international community to look into the crimes of forced labor in the US so that justice can be upheld.

Wang Wenbin
Wang Wenbin

 

Shenzhen TV: We have noticed that the International Forum for Trilateral Cooperation 2022 was held in the Republic of Korea (ROK) on June 14. Foreign ministers of China, Japan and the ROK sent congratulatory messages to the Forum. Can you share more information on that? What’s China’s expectations for the trilateral cooperation?

Wang Wenbin: The International Forum for Trilateral Cooperation 2022 was held in the ROK on June 14 in an online and offline format. China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the ROK’s Foreign Minister Park Jin and Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi sent congratulatory messages to the Forum. The three foreign ministers agreed that as permanent close neighbors and important cooperation partners, China, Japan and the ROK need to enhance mutual trust, work in solidarity and coordination, jointly inject more positive energy into regional peace and economic recovery and friendship between the peoples, and continuously move forward the trilateral cooperation. Renowned representatives in the political, business and academic sectors attended the Forum and former Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Zhang Ping attended the opening ceremony via video link and delivered a keynote speech. Participants of the three countries had in-depth discussions under the theme “Future-Oriented Trilateral Cooperation: Lasting Peace, Common Prosperity, Shared Culture” and put forward suggestions for improving the cooperation mechanism, promoting inclusive growth and stepping up cultural exchanges. 

China, Japan and the ROK are close neighbors and important development partners. Since its inception more than 20 years ago, the trilateral cooperation has played a positive role in maintaining peace and stability in Northeast Asia, guiding regional economic cooperation and promoting world development and prosperity. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and the ROK and the 50th anniversary of the normalization of China-Japan relations. As important countries in the region and major economies in the world, the three countries need to enhance mutual trust, actively conduct positive interactions and release useful messages of long-term peace, friendship and cooperation among the three countries. We need to expand common interests and make the pie of cooperation bigger in digital economy, green development and public health. We need to promote closer people-to-people ties, guide people of the three countries, especially young people, to enhance mutual understanding and friendship, and create a positive, steady and healthy social atmosphere. 

China is ready to work with the ROK and Japan to advance the trilateral cooperation with an eye on the fundamental and long-term interests of the people in the three countries and the region and in the spirit of partnership, and help build a more secure, stable, open and prosperous Northeast Asia.

Reuters: Comments have emerged from the White House suggesting that the US is considering changing some of what it calls “irresponsible tariffs on Chinese goods”. What’s Chinese foreign ministry’s comment?

Wang Wenbin: I would like to refer you to competent authorities for these specific questions. 

To reiterate our principled position, China-US economic and trade cooperation is mutually beneficial and win-win in nature. No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war or tariff war. With inflation rates running high across the globe, the US needs to lift all the additional tariffs imposed on China, as this will serve the interests of businesses and consumers and benefit both countries and the world at large. 

Beijing Youth Daily: It is reported that in its latest report, Anzer, a cybersecurity information platform, revealed that the Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), a unit under the US National Security Agency (NSA), has indiscriminately “grabbed” data from internet users around the world and that the US uses submarines to tap undersea fiber-optic cables and cables. TAO has handed cyber weapons over to the US and other “Five Eyes” countries, and the British government has engaged in cyber theft against the EU headquarters through infiltration into its telecommunications provider. Besides, the US government has also asked American Internet companies to work with them in the research and development of cyber weapons, including those targeting Chinese telecommunications equipment. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: We’ve noted the report. It shows once again that the US has become the primary threat to cybersecurity for not only China, but also the world at large. 

The information revealed by the report demonstrates that the cyber agencies of the UK and other “Five Eyes” countries as well as some European countries have assisted and participated in the US’s cyber theft operations around the globe. This indicates that the US has been building an “axis of cyber theft” with the US at its center.

It is worth noticing that the report pointed out that some US-based software and hardware companies have been involved in almost each and every stage of the US’s cyber weapons research and development. A report released by China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center not long ago points out that for the existing international internet backbone network and critical information infrastructure that contain software or hardware provided by US companies, it is highly likely that various types of backdoor could be installed, making them targets of US government cyberattacks wherever they are. It’s obvious that the US’s attack and smear against China citing national security grounds is aimed for nothing but facilitating its irresponsible cyber theft.

China urges the US to immediately stop malicious cyber activities around the world and be responsible in cyberspace.

Questions.
Questions being asked.

 

China News Service: At the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council on June 14, Cuba delivered a joint statement on behalf of nearly 70 countries to voice support for China’s position on issues related to Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet and to express opposition to interference in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of human rights. Do you have any comment on this? 

Wang Wenbin: On June 14, Cuba delivered a joint statement on behalf of nearly 70 countries at the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council. The joint statement stressed that Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibetan affairs are China’s internal affairs; we oppose politicization of human rights and double standards, or interference in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of human rights; we maintain that all parties should abide by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respect the right of the people of each state to choose independently the path for development in accordance with their national conditions; the international community should uphold multilateralism, strengthen solidarity and coordination, respond jointly to global challenges, advance world peace and development, and promote and protect human rights. Dozens more countries either have voiced or are ready to voice their support to China’s justified position in their separate statements or by sending joint letters.

As an old Chinese saying goes, “A virtuous mind is not alone. It can always find company.” Once again, nearly a hundred countries at the Human Rights Council spoke up for justice. And once again, the attempt of a handful of Western countries to attack and smear China on Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet has been thwarted. This fully shows that political manipulation through human rights issues and interference in other countries’ internal affairs will find no support and will never succeed. For those very few Western countries, desperately repeating the lies and rumors only further exposes their hidden political agenda and malicious intention. Whatever stunt they pull, they would never stop the Chinese people’s solid steps toward development and progress. China will not waver in its resolve to uphold its sovereignty, security and development interests. 

There is a Chinese proverb, “A thief crying ‘stop the thief’.” Facts show that it is those few Western countries that ignore and trample upon human rights. Oblivious to the serious human rights problems at home, they often criticize and lecture other countries condescendingly on human rights. They have waged numerous wars to invade other countries that killed nearly a million people and displaced tens of thousands. They are the No.1 origin of human rights tragedies in the world. A word of advice for these Western countries: Please keep your hypocrisy, arrogance and prejudice to yourselves and stop using human rights as a pretext to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and hold back their development. The days are over for you to ride roughshod over the developing countries. 

Phoenix TV: According to a Bloomberg report, a study by the University of Chicago found that “China has reduced air pollution nearly as much in seven years as the US did in three decades, helping to bring down average global smog levels in the process”. This “would add about two years to average life expectancy if sustained”in China. It is “a strong indication of the opportunities that could lie ahead for other nations if they were to impose strong pollution policies”. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: The report provides evidence of the good progress China has achieved in reducing its air pollution and its significant contribution to global environmental governance. For those of you who are posted here foreign journalists, I’m sure you have also seen and felt the improvement in China’s air quality. We are seeing fewer hazy days, more clear blue skies, cleaner waters and greener hills. People are benefiting tangibly from the conservation efforts. I would like to share with you some figures. In 2021, across 339 cities at or above the prefecture level, the air quality was either good or excellent on 87.5 percent of the days, 0.5 percentage point higher than 2020; Up to 64.3 percent of Chinese cities met the national air quality standard; The average PM2.5 concentration was 30 micrograms per cubic meter, down 9.1 percent year-on-year. 

I would like to take this opportunity to say that this week is the 32nd National Energy Conservation Week in China. Today, June 15, is this year’s national low-carbon day with the theme of “actions toward carbon peak and carbon neutrality to jointly build a beautiful homeland”. Improving the awareness and capacity of the whole society in energy conservation, promoting a green way of living and production, and encouraging the whole society to take part in low-carbon actions is a vital part of the efforts to build an ecological civilization and build a beautiful China. China upholds the vision to build a community of life for man and Nature, and follows a development path that prioritizes ecological conservation and pursues green and low-carbon growth. A clean, beautiful and green planet is an ideal shared by people of all countries. We will join this common effort, start by making personal contribution and start with small things in our daily life to raise the awareness of energy conservation and emission reduction and lead a green and low-carbon lifestyle. Let’s each play our part in protecting the planet we all call home and promoting sustainable development.

Reuters: The British government has decided to buy 20 percent stake in the Sizewell nuclear power plant, which would mean that it no longer requires the funding from the China General Nuclear Power. What’s the Chinese foreign ministry’s comment?

Wang Wenbin: I am not aware of what you mentioned. We hope the UK will provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies. 

Italian Sausage Lasagna

Italian Sausage Lasagna
Italian Sausage Lasagna

Dear Friends, Sorry to Announce a Genocide: Dr. Naomi Wolf on the Pfizer “Confidential Report”

It’s Really True: They Know they are Killing the Babies

First published by Global Research on May 31, 2022

I’ve been silent for some weeks. Forgive me.

The truth is: I’ve been rendered almost speechless — or the literary equivalent of that — because recently I’ve had the unenviable task of trying to announce to the world that indeed, a genocide — or what I’ve called, clumsily but urgently, a “baby die-off” — is underway.

The WarRoom/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers, a group of 3000 highly credentialled doctors, RNs, biostatisticians, medical fraud investigators, lab clinicians and research scientists, have been turning out report after report, as you may know, to tell the world what is in the 55,000 internal Pfizer documents which the FDA had asked a court to keep under wraps for 75 years.

By court order, these documents were forcibly disclosed. And our experts are serving humanity by reading through these documents and explaining them in lay terms. You can find all of the Volunteers’ reports on DailyClout.io.

The lies revealed are stunning.

The WarRoom/DailyClout Volunteers have confirmed:

that Pfizer (and thus the FDA) knew by December 2020 that the MRNA vaccines did not work — that they “waned in efficacy” and presented “vaccine failure.” One side effect of getting vaccinated, as they knew by one month after the mass 2020 rollout, was “COVID.”

Pfizer knew in May of 2021 that 35 minors’ hearts had been damaged a week after MRNA injection — but the FDA rolled out the EUA for teens a month later anyway, and parents did not get a press release from the US government about heart harms til August of 2021, after thousands of teens were vaccinated. [See this]

Pfizer (and thus the FDA; many of the documents say “FDA: CONFIDENTIAL” at the lower boundary) knew that, contrary to what the highly paid spokesmodels and bought-off physicians were assuring people, the MRNA, spike protein and lipid nanoparticles did not stay in the injection site in the deltoid, but rather went, within 48 hours, into the bloodstream, from there to lodge in the liver, spleen, adrenals, lymph nodes, and, if you are a woman, in the ovaries. [See this]

Pfizer (and thus the FDA) knew that the Moderna vaccine had 100 mcg of MRNA, lipid nanoparticles and spike protein, which was more than three times the 30 mcg of the adult Pfizer dose; the company’s internal documents show a higher rate of adverse events with the 100 mcg dose, so they stopped experimenting with that amount internally due to its “reactogenicity” — Pfizer’s words — but no one told all of the millions of Americans who all got the first and second 100 mcg Moderna dose, and the boosters.

Pfizer skewed the trial subjects so that almost three quarters were female — a gender that is less prone to cardiac damage. Pfizer lost the records of what became of hundreds of their trial subjects.

In the internal trials, there were over 42,000 adverse events and more than 1200 people died. Four of the people who died, died on the day they were injected.

Adverse events tallied up in the internal Pfizer documents are completely different from those reported on the CDC website or announced by corrupted physicians and medical organizations and hospitals. These include vast columns of joint pain, muscle pain (myalgia), masses of neurological effects include MS, Guillain Barre and Bell’s Palsy, encephaly, every iteration possible of blood clotting, thrombocytopenia at scale, strokes, hemorrhages, and many kinds of ruptures of membranes throughout the human body.

The side effects about which Pfizer and the FDA knew but you did not, include blistering problems, rashes, shingles, and herpetic conditions (indeed, a range of blistering conditions oddly foreshadowing the symptoms of monkeypox).

The internal documents show that Pfizer (and thus the FDA) knew that angry red welts or hives were a common reaction to the PEG, a petroleum-derived allergen in the vaccine ingredients — one that you are certainly not supposed to ingest. Indeed, PEG is an allergen so severe that many people can go into anaphylactic shock if they are exposed to it. But people with a PEG allergy were not warned away from the vaccines or even carefully watched by their doctors, EpiPen in hand. They were left to their shock.

Pfizer knew that “exposure” to the vaccine was defined — in their own words – as sexual contact (especially at time of conception), skin contact, inhalation or lactation. [See this]. ‘Fact-checkers’ can deny this all they want. The documents speak for themselves.

Of course, people who have tried to raise any of these issues have been deplatformed, scolded by the President, called insane, and roundly punished.

Athletes and college students and teenagers are collapsing on football and soccer fields. Doctors wring their hands and express mystification. But BioNTech’s SEC filing shows a fact about which the CDC and the AMA breathe not a word: fainting so violently that you may hurt yourself is one of the side effects important enough for BioNTech to highlight to the SEC.

But not to highlight to you and me.

I was able to process all of this and keep simply reporting. But in the last few weeks the horror overcame me. Because now, the Volunteers, under the excellent leadership of Program Manager Amy Kelly, have confirmed that there is a genocide underway, intentionally driven or not. And Israeli journalist Etana Hecht has added her own superb analysis. Here is Ms Hecht’s summary of the Volunteers’ findings:

It seems that there can indeed be a happenstance genocide. Reproduction itself is targeted, intentionally or not, by the mRNA vaccines. And if you know that reproduction is harmed, and babies and fetuses are harmed, and you know that this is at scale, which everyone at Pfizer and at the FDA who read these documents, knew —and if you do not stop — then does that not ultimately become a genocide?

The WarRoom/DailyClout volunteers have confirmed that lipid nanoparticles, the tiny hard fatty casings that contain the MRNA, traverse the amniotic membrane. That means that they enter the fetal environment, of course. (They also traverse the blood-brain barrier, which may help explain the post-MRNA vaccination strokes and cognitive issues we are seeing). The Volunteers have drilled deep into the Pfizer documents’ reports about pregnancy and found that the assurance that the vaccine is “safe and effective” for pregnant women, was based on a study of 44 French rats, followed for 42 days (the scientists who ran the study are shareholders or employees of BioNTech). [See this]

The Volunteers found that while pregnant women were excluded from the internal studies, and thus from the EUA on which basis all pregnant women were assured the vaccine was “safe and effective”, nonetheless about 270 women got pregnant during the study. More than 230 of them were lost somehow to history. But of the 36 pregnant women whose outcomes were followed – 28 lost their babies.

The Volunteers found that a baby died after nursing from a vaccinated lactating mother, and was found to have had an inflamed liver. Many babies nursing from vaccinated mothers showed agitation, gastrointestinal distress, and failure to thrive (to grow), and were inconsolable.

I am hearing anecdotal reports of these symptoms in babies nursing from vaccinated mothers, now, from across the country.

The Pfizer documents also show that some vaccinated mothers had suppressed lactation, or could produce no milk at all.

Doctors, of course, are stumped by all this. Stumped.

The NIH database has a preprint study making the case that there are negligible amounts of PEG in the breast milk of vaccinated women. [See this]

But what is a negligible amount of a petroleum product in mother’s milk, when you are a tiny newborn with no immunities, just arriving in the world? The NIH preprint itself reported higher levels of GI distress and sleeplessness in the infants studied, and one mother had elevated PEG levels in breast milk, and the fine print concludes that more study is needed:

“Larger studies are needed to increase our understanding of transfer of PEG into human milk, and potential effects after ingestion by the infant. Although expert consensus states there is minimal or no potential risk for the infant from maternal COVID-19 vaccination(20,21), the minor symptoms that were reported (sleep changes and gastrointestinal symptoms) could be further investigated in future studies to determine if they are related to vaccination.”

Since no babies died in the brief time frame of the tiny study, the study concluded that nursing babies suffered no real ill effects from vaccinated mothers. But the study did not follow these poor babies, with their acknowledged sleeplessness and their confirmed GI distress, to see if they actually “thrived” — gained weight and developed normally.

On such faulty science were women assured that the vaccines were “safe and effective” for them and their nursing babies.

But — four of the lactating vaccinated women in the Pfizer documents reported “blue-green” breast milk. I am not making this up. And the nursing baby who died, with an inflamed liver — the case has been buried; has not made headlines.

Coincidentally — or not — the SAME FDA that turned a blind eye to vast harms to humans, and to the subcategory of moms and babies, in the Pfizer documents, declared that Abbot, a major producer of baby formula in the US, had to close its factory. [See this]

Coincidentally, with little formula available and with some or many (we don’t know) vaccinated moms having compromised breast milk, it turns out that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Mark Zuckerberg have all invested in a startup called “BioMilq” — which produces lab grown breast milk from mammary cells. [See this]. Reports of this startup include this Frankenstein-like language as if this is normal:

“The BIOMILQ team creates its product from cells taken from human breast tissue and milk, donated by women in the local community, who get a Target giftcard in return.” [See this]

As if all of this is not horrific enough, Ms Hecht drew studies from three countries — Canada, Scotland and now Israel – -to show that babies are dying disproportionately, during and after 2021, in highly vaccinated countries, and that newborns are dying disproportionately if they have vaccinated mothers versus unvaccinated mothers.

In highly vaccinated Scotland, almost twice the number of babies died in 2021 as died in baseline numbers. 

In Ontario, Canada, 86 babies died in 2021, versus a baseline of four or five; this was a baby die-off so severe that a brave Parliamentarian brought the issue to Parliament. [See this].

In Israel, at RamBam Hospital in Haifa, there were 34% more spontaneous abortions and stillbirths to vaccinated women as to unvaccinated women.

Ms Hecht also notes that menstrual dysregulation in vaccinated women is fully confirmed now by many studies, with an average of one extra day of bleeding a month (a side effect about which I warned about in March of 2021, which in turn got me called names by a CNN commentator and permanently deplatformed from Twitter).

You don’t have to know more than eighth grade biology to know that a dysregulated menstrual cycle, not to mention spike protein accumulating in the ovaries, not to mention the traversing of the bodies’ membranes, including the amniotic sac, by tiny hard fatty lipid nanoparticles, not to mention PEG in breast milk, is all going to affect fertility, fetal health, childbirth, and babies’ GI wellbeing or distress, and thus their ability or failure to thrive (let alone to bond).

And now, the babies are dying. Now scale the data from Canada, Scotland and Israel to all the vaccinated nations in the world.

What do we do with all of this?

Knowing as I now do, that Pfizer and the FDA knew that babies were dying and mothers’ milk discoloring by just looking at their own internal records; knowing as I do that they did not alert anyone let alone stop what they were doing, and that to this day Pfizer, the FDA and other demonic “public health” entities are pushing to MRNA-vaccinate more and more pregnant women; now that they are about to force this on women in Africa and other lower income nations who are not seeking the MRNA vaccines, per Pfizer CEO Bourla this past week at the WEF, and knowing that Pfizer is pushing and may even receive a US EUA for babies to five year olds — I must conclude that we are looking into an abyss of evil not seen since 1945.

So I don’t know about you, but I must switch gears with this kind of unspeakable knowledge to another kind of discourse.

I am not saying that this is exactly like finding evidence of Dr Mengele’s experiments; but I am saying, with these findings, that now the comparison may not be that excessive.

These anti-humans at Pfizer, speaking at the WEF; these anti-humans at the FDA; knowing what they know; are targeting the miraculous female body, with its ability to conceive, gestate, birth and nurture life. They are targeting the female body’s ability to sustain a newborn human being with nothing but itself. They are targeting the amniotic membrane, the ovaries that release the ovum, they are targeting the lymph and blood that help support the building up of mother’s milk, they are targeting the fetus in utero, helpless.

They are targeting the human fetus’ very environment, one of the most sacred spaces on this earth, if not the most sacred.

And they know it.

I don’t know about you, and I am not proselytizing, but as you may know if you read me here, these apocalyptic days, I turn to prayer. I have started to say in public, once I had to face the fact of the die-off of the babies, that this is a Biblical time; and I mean Old Testament Biblical.

It is a time like that of the construction of the Tower of Babel — of massive arrogance against divine plans. Men such Bill Gates tamper with and seek to outdo God’s best works in lab after lab, and Tech Bros “disrupt” the human competition for their unsought-after goods and services, by targeting human processes and by ruining the bodies made in the image of God.

It is a time like that when the ten plagues assailed the Egyptians in Exodus 11:4-6:

“4 So Moses said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt.Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. 7”

This was the worst plague of all, the slaying of the firstborn.

It is a time of ha-Satan — Satan — “going to and fro in the earth, and […] walking up and down in it”, as Job 2 describes him.

It is a time of demons sauntering around in human spaces, though they look human enough themselves, smug in their Italian suits on panels at the World Economic Forum.

Ha-Satan – and his armies: ruining the conception, the milk, the menses, the touch, the cradling of the infant by its mother, ruining the feeding of the infant; ruining the babies themselves.

I read the Prophets a lot these days — because how could I not? I am looking for what writer Annie Lamott called “Operating Instructions.” What do you do when humanity itself is threatened? When there are professional battalions and bureaucratic departments of people who act with anathema toward the human race?

Surely there must be a clue.

So I reread the story of Noah, and the Book of Esther, a lot these days; I reread Jeremiah.

We’ve been here before. Embarrassingly often, when it comes to that.

The story is always the same, at least in the Hebrew Bible (in the New Testament, of course, God skips to the end and upends the plot).

At least in the Hebrew Bible, God is always trying to get our attention, always, it seems, simply asking us just to walk alongside him; simply asking us to keep his not–too-challenging commandments; not, indeed, asking a lot.

Jeremiah 1:13:

The word of the Lord came to me again: “What do you see?”

“I see a pot that is boiling,” I answered. “It is tilting toward us from the north.”

14 The Lord said to me, “From the north disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land. 15 I am about to summon all the peoples of the northern kingdoms,” declares the Lord.

“Their kings will come and set up their thrones
in the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem;
they will come against all her surrounding walls
and against all the towns of Judah.
16 I will pronounce my judgments on my people
because of their wickedness in forsaking me,
in burning incense to other gods
and in worshiping what their hands have made.”

In the Hebrew Bible, anyway, the math is simple. We turn, we listen, and we are saved; or we carry on heedlessly, worshipping what our own hands have made, sluts to other gods — to “the science,” to media lies; to the narcissism of convention, these days, one might say — and thus we are lost.

We have been nearly lost, time after time after time.

This time could really be the last time; these monsters in the labs, on the transnational panels, are so very skillful; and so powerful; and their dark work is so extensive.

If God is there — again — after all the times that we have tried his patience — and who indeed knows? – will we reach out a hand to him in return, will we take hold in the last moment out of this abyss, and simply find a way somehow to walk alongside him?

Or will we this time, in losing the babies, and heedlessly carrying on nonetheless — be truly lost ourselves?

Enigma MCMXC a.d (Full Album)

I’ve been a fan from 1990. One of a kind of music! And it never gets old! It’s just timeless! Still listening and will ’till the end of days…

How to Make Blueberry Pie Filling

A fine inspiration for some delicious blueberry pie to charm your family and surprise your friends with. Oh, and don’t forget to have some quality ice cream in the freezer. -MM

Quick and easy blueberry pie filling recipe that’s made with only 5 ingredients: blueberries, sugar, vanilla, lemon, cornstarch. It can be used as topping or filling in many desserts.

For the longest time, I used to be intimidated by making HOMEMADE blueberry pie filling or any fillings, whatsoever. However, after a bit of practice and my mom guiding me along, I really enjoy making pie fillings from scratch now.

They taste so much BETTER than canned fillings and you can ADJUST the flavors and extracts, based on your preference.

They also always have a wonderful FRESH flavor and aroma that’s intoxicating in desserts.

How do you make blueberry pie filling with frozen blueberries?

Add blueberries in a nonstick saucepan and cook until they release their juices. Separately, whisk together sugar and cornstarch and add this into the saucepan. Continue mixing until mixture thickens. Remove from heat and add vanilla extract and lemon juice.

How do you make blueberry sauce?

It’s made the same way as blueberry pie filling but it is sweeter and more sugar should be added to this recipe. Many people also believe that both are the same and there is no difference.

How do you make a blueberry pie?

  1. Bake a pie crust (store-bought or homemade).
  2. Fill it with this blueberry pie filling.
  3. Top it off with whipped cream.
  4. Decorate with chocolate shavings.

What thickens pie filling?

There are many options:

  1. Use CORNSTARCH as a thickener. It’s best to dissolve it in some water first so there are no lumps.
  2. Make blueberry pie filling with TAPIOCA FLOUR.
  3. Use regular ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR. I have noticed that this leaves a subtle after-taste and makes the filling a bit cloudy.
  4. Use CLERAR JEL/CLEAR GEL, which thickens very well and also prevents the cloudy appearance.

If you are planning on making blueberry pie filling without cornstarch because of allergies or intolerances, tapioca flour, all-purpose flour and Clear Jel would all be good choices.

Tips for homemade blueberry pie filling:

  • If you are knowledgable on canning, you can easily follow those techniques to make canned blueberry pie filling and enjoy it for months.
  • I used cornstarch to thicken this pie filling but you can also use tapioca flour, all-purpose flour or Clear Jel.
  • This FROZEN blueberry pie filling can also be made with FRESH blueberries.
  • ADJUST the amount of sugar, based on your preference. More sugar makes a sweet pie filling. less sugar makes a slightly tart pie filling.
  • Add a little lemon zest, lime zest or even orange zest to give this filling a slight citrus kick.
  • Add a little cinnamon powder to add a little spice to this filling.
  • You must use a NON-STICK saucepan to prevent the filling from burning or sticking.
  • This filling will THICKEN a bit more as it cools down.
  • This filling is enough for a 9 inch pie.

Blueberry pie filling uses:

There are MANY recipes using blueberry pie filling and below are some blueberry pie filling desserts that I have tried and enjoyed.

  • Blueberry pie filling crisp: Use your family’s no fail crisp recipe and replace the canned filling with this homemade blueberry version.
  • Blueberry pie filling bread: Use it as a topping on the bread or slice the bread in half and use it as a filling.
  • Blueberry pie filling bars: Use your favorite bars recipe and replace whatever fruit filling you are using with this one.
  • Blueberry pie filling muffins: After your muffins have baked, make a hole in teh center and fill it with a spoonful of this filling. It would be a nice fruity surprise to bite into.
  • Blueberry pie filling coffee cake: Use your favorite fruit coffee cake and replace the fruit filling with this blueberry one.
  • Blueberry pie filling cobbler: Use your family’s no fail crisp recipe and replace the canned filling with this homemade blueberry version.
  • Blueberry pie filling dump cake: This is a very easy cake that’s usually made it the slow cooker with a cake mix and canned filling. Just replace the canned filling with my recipe.
  • Crepe, waffle or pancake filling or topping
  • Cake filling
  • Cupcake filling
  • Scone topping
  • Ice cream topping
  • Trifles
  • Yogurt topping
  • Cheesecake topping

 

How to make it happen.

VIDEO: Miami Shootout Looks Like War Zone (Jesus H. Christ!)

One minute surveillance video (below) from a private home doorbell camera portrays some of the nearly 200 shots fired in NW Miami-Dade, Florida.

The shooters killed one and wounded several others near 99th St and 21st Ct.

Police have made arrests. Those arrested are linked to other high-profile crimes in Miami-Dade.

 

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

If this is how things are now, here in parts of the U.S., just TRY to imagine how ferocious they will be when everything falls apart economically, and with the food supply.

To say we’re in for a “shit storm” is a massive understatement.

Look at how fast this started and stopped.

A quiet residential neighborhood.  Presumably a reasonably safe area.

In come the hoodlums.  They get out of their car and within seconds. war zone.

This is how fast it can happen where YOU live.

And I fear that, for very many of us, this is exactly how fast, and how ferocious, it will be.

I’m not certain how you can “prepare” for this level of violence happening so quickly.

I guess it’s a state of mind, more than anything.  You know, having it down pat that if you hear gunshots you will get to whatever firearm you have, where ever you have it, and try to defend.

But seeing how fast this began and ended, and knowing the sheer terror that a human being feels when he’s being shot at, with bullets teraing holes in walls, debris flying all over, the noise, the smell of gunpowder . . . its instant chaos on an emotional level.

I am of the personal opinion that in many areas of the U.S., this is what will come when the food runs out, or the economy finally falls-over, dead.

These people want what they want and are willing to take it by force.

Will YOU be the one they do this too?  Will I be the one?

None of us know.

But at least with the video above, you get a real glimpse of how fast, and how ferocious, it can be.

Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus (Official Video)

Enjoy.

FIRST TWO AMERICANS CAPTURED IN UKRAINE

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Americans Robert Drueke, 39, and Andy Huynh, 27.
Americans Robert Drueke, 39, and Andy Huynh, 27.

Americans Robert Drueke, 39, and Andy Huynh, 27, have been captured by the Russian Army, fightng inside Ukraine.   Word is out they were captured last week.

The pair were part of a ten-men squad which encountered Russian forces in Kharkiv.

They disabled a Russian tank but then were lost in the fog of return fire and disappeared, comrades say.

Drueke served in Iraq in the US Army but Huynh, a former Marine, has never been in active combat before.

He gave an interview before he ventured to the region in which he said he was prepared to die.

Developing . . .

Two American Fighters Are Believed Captured By Russia In Ukraine

wo American citizens and military veterans who were fighting alongside Ukraine forces against the Russian invasion are feared captured, CNN and other major media are reporting Thursday.

Alexander John-Robert Drueke, 39, from Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, from Hartselle, Alabama are currently “missing” from the battlefield, however, their precise fate is as yet unconfirmed, according to a State Department official. 

If their capture by the Russian army is confirmed, it would mark the first known instance that American volunteers have been taken into custody by Russia, raising the stakes and tensions significantly between Washington and Moscow.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby didn’t confirm the reports, but strongly hinted that it’s the administration’s belief they were likely captured, given he stated to reporters the US government “will do everything we can” to get Huynh and Drueke back.

The men’s families have sounded the alarm over their likely capture, describing that they lost all contact with the pair a week ago. Further CNN in a fresh report has revealed the following details of their last known whereabouts as follows

A man who is acting as the team’s sergeant, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, provided CNN with photos of both men’s passports and their entry stamps into Ukraine. The man said that their unit was fighting under the command of Ukraine’s 92nd mechanized brigade on June 9, near the town of Izbytske.

Drueke and Huynh, he said, went missing during the battle and subsequent search missions failed to find any remains. A post on a Russian propaganda channel on Telegram the following day claimed that two Americans had been captured near Kharkiv. “It was absolute chaos,” he told CNN. “There was about a hundred plus infantry advancing on our positions. We had a T72 firing on people from 30, 40 meters away.”

Drueke’s modter said to CNN that “they are presumed to be prisoners of war, but that has not been confirmed.”

Throughout Thursday morning the reports received such international attention that the Kremlin formally addressed the allegations of American foreign fighters in its custody:

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on June 16 in a televised program that Washington had not contacted Moscow regarding the two U.S. citizens.

Huynh is a Marine veteran, while Drueke is an Army veteran – though little has as yet been revealed by the respective branches about their service record at this point.

The US State Dept. now says the US is “closely monitoring the situation” and are “in contact with Ukrainian authorities” – but issued no further details based on “privacy considerations”. Likely if US officials had anything to make them believe that the Russian Telegram reports and claims are false, they would deny it.

Last week there was shock and outrage in the West after a pair of British fighters that were in the Ukrainian army were handed death sentences after their capture during battles in the Donbas region by a pro-Russian Donetsk court. 28-year old Aiden Aslin and 48-year old Shaun Pinner were charged with “terrorism” and “being a mercenary”. A third foreigner, a Moroccan, was also tried alongside them and given the same sentence.

Proud of Yourselves?

Five-year-old children generally have no idea what adult sexuality is about….

America has an eating disorder — have you noticed? — and a touch of the old sexual dysphoria — am I a boy or a girl? — and has been caught in its room playing with razor blades. Ergo: America is a thirteen-year-old girl in need of some therapeutic assistance. Who will answer the call for help?

Here we are in the fat middle of Pride Month. Why is it, then, that the authorities have sent squadrons of drag queens out across the land like so many flying monkeys, flapping and shrieking from the candy-colored forests of Oz, to conduct “story hours” for children? Is America not sufficiently confused these days? Are drag queens really the best interlocutors for the doctrine of Diversity and Inclusion? Have we nothing better on offer to occupy childrens’ minds, say, learning to bake bread or build a bird-house? Practical skills they will need when the economy of Western Civ completes its disorienting descent out of Modern Times into the New Medieval?

Does anyone actually know what children think about a drag queen reading, say, My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis to a roomful of five-year-old boys and girls? I mean, apart from what the parents who take them there tell us their children think. (“They were enchanted!”) We know that the parents are pretending that this is a wholesome developmental exercise. And yet, let’s face it: is it not the whole point of being a drag queen to present a horrifying parody of an adult female human? Something like women-as-monsters?

A new progressive America.

Do any of the mommies who bring their children to the drag queen story hour present themselves in public as women the way the drag queens do? As, above all, sexually super-available? Would, say, the Palo Alto mommy of a five-year-old pause to twerk in the frozen food section of the supermarket on any given afternoon? In that context, what might be the reaction of other mommies shopping for hot pockets and Ben and Jerry’s Chubby Hubby?

Five-year-old children generally have no idea what adult sexuality is about. Should perhaps their first exposure to a realm so fraught and complex that many adults do not understand it be the presentation of women as monsters? And why are the mommies so avid for their children to be introduced to sexuality this way? Are some of the children perceptive and astute enough to suspect that drag queens on display are not really women? That, for instance, they might be… men? (A beard can be a give-away.) And might they take that thought a step or two further and ask themselves: why does this man want to pretend to be a monster-woman? Why doesn’t he want to be a daddy? Are mommies monsters? Can they turn into something like this when I’m not around? Are daddies who try to act like mommies monsters?

How exactly is a child supposed to process all of this? All on its own, without any inversions, distortions, and misconstructions, sex is difficult for some young humans to process. By the time they reach the threshold of puberty — say, age thirteen for girls — the onset of sexual development is so alarming that they attempt to starve their way out of it and cut themselves up.

Of course, we have not begun to probe what might animate a man to present himself to the world as a monstrous parody of a woman. Suffice it to say that such behavior suggests some complicated psychodynamics. And why, exactly, are they suddenly on-display so extravagantly now across the country, supposedly for the edification of children? I’ll tell you why: It’s not actually for the sake of the children. The children are just pawns in what is actually a national political psychodrama. Or rather, they are hostages.

What you’re seeing is the Party of Chaos sending a message to the rest of us — those who are not members of the Party of Chaos. The message is: we will take your children and destroy their minds, and pretend that it’s just another module of their education… and you will know, and we will know, and you will know that we know that this is just a malicious shuck-and-jive to humiliate you while we wreck the machinery of civilization, which we hate because it requires boundaries and norms to function.

And think of it: just days ago the FDA announced that it accepted Pfizer’s application for a Covid-19 vaccine for children between six months and five years old. That’s the same “safe and effective” vaccine they have been giving to the rest of you for over a year, which has produced adverse reactions and illnesses in rather striking numbers. Do you know why they did that? I’ll tell you why: to extend the emergency use authorization that shields Pfizer from legal liability for their mRNA vaccines. They are not content with wrecking civilization. They want to kill you and your children too.

“The Economy Is Going To Collapse” – Here Are 18 Signs That The Economic Meltdown We Have Been Waiting For Has Already Begun

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In all my years of writing, I have never seen more economic pessimism than I am seeing right now.  Over the past couple of months there has been a monumental shift in public sentiment, and now just about everyone realizes that we are heading into very troubled economic times. 

Of course there were still a few economic optimists that were searching for a ray of hope, but the Federal Reserve left no room for optimism when it announced the largest interest rate hike in 28 years on Wednesday.  When the Fed aggressively raised rates in the early 1980s, it resulted in one of the most painful recessions in American history.  Unfortunately, many believe that what is ahead of us is going to be even worse.

For example, legendary Wall Street investor Michael Novogratz is openly warning that “the economy is going to collapse”

“The economy is going to collapse,” he told MarketWatch. “We are going to go into a really fast recession, and you can see that in lots of ways,” he added.

“Housing is starting to roll over,” he said. “Inventories have exploded. There are layoffs in multiple industries, and the Fed is stuck [with a position of having to] hike [interest rates] until inflation rolls over.”

Novogratz is correct, but I think that it would be more accurate to say that “the economy is already starting to collapse”.  The following are 18 signs that the economic meltdown we have been waiting for has already begun…

#1 Stock prices have been plummeting in recent weeks, and that has resulted in almost 3 trillion dollars being erased from retirement accounts in the United States…

The U.S. stock market rout that has put U.S. equities in a bear market isn’t just reducing the net worth of billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It’s also taking a toll on Americans’ retirement savings, wiping out trillions of dollars in value.

The selloff has erased nearly $3 trillion from U.S. retirement accounts, according to Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. By her calculations, 401(k) plan participants have lost about $1.4 trillion from their accounts since the end of 2021. People with IRAs — most of which are 401(k) rollovers — have lost $2 trillion this year.

#2 The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell beneath the psychologically important 30,000 barrier for the first time in more than a year on Thursday.  If it cannot return to that level within the next few trading sessions, a lot of investors are really going to start to panic.

#3 The Dow is now down 19 percent from the all-time high.

#4 The S&P 500 is now down 24 percent from the all-time high.

#5 The Nasdaq is now down 34 percent from the all-time high.  Just think about that for a moment.  A third of the value of the Nasdaq has already been wiped out.

#6 Two-thirds of the value of all cryptocurrencies has already been wiped out since the peak of the market.  Last November, the total value of all cryptocurrencies had soared past the three trillion dollar mark.  As I write this article, that number has fallen to less than a trillion.

#7 This week we witnessed the fastest rise in mortgage rates since 1987.  Needless to say, this is going to absolutely devastate the housing market…

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on the 30-year loan this week rose to 5.78% from 5.23%, the latest in a series of rapid increases and the biggest one-week jump since 1987. The rate is well above the 2.93% recorded just one year ago and marks the steepest level since November 2008.

#8 The largest percentage of sellers ever recorded reduced the list price on their homes during the four week period ending June 12th.

#9 In some parts of the nation, home prices have already fallen by as much as 20 percent.

#10 Compared to the same period a year ago, the total number of mortgage applications was down 52.7 percent last week.

#11 We just learned that housing starts in the U.S. fell 14.4 percent in May.

#12 The number of permits for the construction of new homes was down 7 percent in May.

#13 Wholesale prices continue to accelerate at a very alarming pace

Wholesale prices rose at a brisk pace in May as inflation pressures mounted on the U.S. economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.

The producer price index, a measure of the prices paid to producers of goods and services, rose 0.8% for the month and 10.8% over the past year. The monthly rise was in line with Dow Jones estimates and a doubling of the 0.4% pace in April.

#14 The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker is now projecting that economic growth during the second quarter will be 0 percent.

#15 The Philadelphia Fed Business Index came in at a negative 3.3 reading for the month of June.  This represents the first contraction since the early days of the COVID pandemic.

#16 One recent survey discovered that small business owners are “feeling their gloomiest in nearly five decades”.

#17 At this point, 59 percent of manufacturers in the United States believe that a recession is coming.

#18 Bloomberg is projecting that the probability of a recession during the next 24 months is 98.5 percent.

But this was not supposed to happen.

Last year, the talking heads on television assured us that a golden new age of prosperity was just around the corner and that the stock market could just keep going up indefinitely.

In fact, many of those talking heads were telling us things that now look completely and utterly ridiculous in retrospect.

Our leaders thought that they could defy the laws of economics, and for a while their “economic voodoo” seemed to be working.

But the truth is that every time they kicked the can down the road they just made our long-term problems even worse.

Now we have reached a point where the immediate future looks extremely bleak, and the outlook for our long-term future is absolutely nightmarish.

If we would have made much different decisions along the way, we would not be facing such a horrifying crisis today.

Unfortunately, what is done is done, and now we get to reap the consequences for the very foolish decisions that our leaders have been making.

Deep Forest 1992 (Sound Enhanced) High Quality

This fantastic Album is the first musical sensation from French duo Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez. The album mixes New Age electronics with UNESCO field recordings of music from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Solomon Islands, Burundi, Tibesti, and the Sahel.

Some profits from this album go to the Pygmy Fund, a California-based organisation committed to helping the natives of central Africa cope with environmental threats to their homeland.

Wherein I Use Greek Mythology To Show How Screwed We Are

“Would Homer cut away from Odysseus’s journey just as he was being enticed by the siren’s song?” – BoJack Horseman

We’ve reached the Scylla and Charybdis stage of our economy.

Scylla was, in Greek mythology, a six-headed monster that was probably less scary than the average half-dozen Congresscritters, and certainly less dangerous.

Charybdis was a whirlpool that sucked inside everything that got close to it three times a day, so it was pretty much exactly like Kamala Harris.

The idea is that if you’re between Scylla and Charybdis, life is on the edge because there are dangers on either side. When Odysseus tried to sneak between the two, he lost six crewmembers, one to each head of Scylla. Thankfully they didn’t go too close to Charybdis, since Kamala has a mean-looking canker sore, and some gifts last forever.

Trying to thread the fine line between Scylla and Charybdis: that’s where our economy is now.

Could it be that the Odyssey is just a made-up excuse by a husband as to why he’s ten years late?

As inflation rages through the system, every minute that we have an interest rate well below the rate of inflation, inflation is being fed.  To quote Joe Biden from January 24, 2022, “It’s a great asset – more inflation.  What a stupid son of a bitch.”  You can tell he’s excited to Build Back Better!

Oddly, it’s not inflation in everything.  Some items are starting to deflate now.  Houses, for instance.  The price of a house is tied to the interest rate – the more interest wrapped into a monthly payment, the fewer the number of buyers that can afford or qualify for a loan.  And in Biden’s America® people have to qualify for more important things, like a Quarter Pounder™ or a tank of gas.

But back to home loans:  fewer people qualify?  Less demand.  Less demand?  Lower home prices.

When we moved to Modern Mayberry in the middle of the Great Recession, some houses had been on the market for longer than 350 days.  These were decent houses, but there just wasn’t any demand.  Recently, as people began to take my advice and flee the cities, houses disappeared off the market in days here in Modern Mayberry.  With all the city folk moving in, at least I know what a hipster weighs:  an Instagram®.

One hipster I knew poured water from an ice tray into his beverage.  He liked ice before it was cool.

Now?  Interest rates for mortgages are going up, so demand for houses will be going down.  Eventually, the market for houses will go back to where it was when I got here.  That’s okay, I never expected to walk away from Stately Wilder Mansion with a single dime of profit.  For me, a house is where I live, not an investment.

So, interest rates up, housing prices down.  Simple.

Also, interest rates up, stock prices down.  For the last decade, stocks have been just about the only game for people who were trying to keep up with inflation.  This was a continual pressure upwards on stocks.  Now as interest rates go up, there are other options.

Traditionally, there was (this was something I read in an article a long time ago) a formula showing the value of a stock in relation to the interest rate:  Maximum P/E=20-Prime Rate.  That meant, with an interest rate of 0%, a stock was at fair value with a Price to Earnings ratio of 20.  Likewise, if the interest rate was 10%, the fair market P/E would be about 10.

Obviously, it’s such a one-dimensional analysis that it was made back when “digital computing” meant counting on your fingers.  There’s no way I’d suggest anyone use it to pick stocks (nor would I suggest taking the advice of an Internet humorist on any investment advice no matter how witty, charming, and handsome he might be), but it does show how the relationship between interest rates and stock prices and earnings was thought about once upon a time.  But it summarizes the same idea – interest rates up, stocks down.

Heck, it even led me to a never-fail way to manipulate individual stocks: if I buy a stock, it goes down.

There are other impacts, too. For instance, it makes debt harder to pay back for people around the planet. If Egypt owes money to ChaseAmericanFargo™ Bank and the interest rate is variable, that means that Egypt will have to start selling items to pay back New York, or London, or Beijing. Heck, the British would already have the Pyramids, but they wouldn’t fit in the British Museum

More money to the banking centers? Less money for chow for the Egyptians. We saw this exact scenario play out in the Arab Spring in 2012. Expensive stuff caused people to go hungry and then hungry people with no hope do what they always do when they can’t watch Netflix™ and buy Twinkies©.

They swap out the government. The new boss looks a lot like the old boss in Egypt, and it’s exactly the same boss as it was in Syria. Some things don’t change. If it’s bad enough, it also craters the economies in South America and, even Canada might have its assets frozen. Or, more frozen.

But when the interest rates go up, it’s not just the government in Egypt that gets squeezed.  The current debt in the United States is $30.5 trillion.  The total US debt, including personal debt, student loans, credit cards, and I.O.U.s to me from that one guy that owes me $20 is about $91 trillion.  (All numbers from usdebtclock.org)

When the interest rates go up, the payments on interest go up.  That means less money available for everything else.  When last I looked, the mandatory payments the Federal government were as much as or more than the amount of money that they took in.  That means that printing more money is now the only way the system can work.  It’s like having a tobacco cessation class with a two-cigar minimum.

That leads to the difficult bit – the hall of mirrors.  If we don’t raise interest rates, and raise them quickly and raise them high enough, inflation will devastate the economy.  If we do raise them, interest payments will freeze the economy and dry up all the PEZ®, pantyhose, and elephant rides the government buys daily.  We are in a classic trap, but it is a trap entirely devised by the Fed® and the politicians working long-term problems on short-term incentives.

By attempting to push back the moment of financial reckoning by any means possible, we’ve created a failure that is much, much larger.  If we would have let financial companies fail in 2000 and 2008, and fixed the structural problems with Medicare, perhaps, just perhaps we wouldn’t be here today.

But we are.

How bad are things?

Again, people have been trying to gauge when things in the stock market are out of whack – Gregory Mannarino came up with a market risk index that he called the Mannarino Market Risk Index, which was modified by Nobody Special Finance into the Modified Mannarino Market Risk Index.  You can watch the video on what makes it up here (LINK).  It’s only twelve minutes, and it’s pretty simple.  The MMMRI is simple, but it’s still quite a bit more sophisticated than the 20=P/E-Interest rate formula from back in the Stone Age.  The summary is of selected past MMMRIs is:

  • Black Monday (1987),              MMMRI    234
  • Dotcom Bubble Pop (2000),    MMMRI    208
  • Great Recession (2008),           MMMRI    169

Right now?

Yup. MMMRI is screaming loudly that the stock market is really, really messed up. But you knew that. Things are broken, and they’re breaking faster as things go downhill.

So, whatever you do, don’t buy canned goods and storage food and precious metals and PEZ® and ammo.

Nope.

I’m sure that the team of Biden and Harris along with Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary, (who had no idea that inflation was even a problem) or Jennifer Granholm, Energy Secretary, (who said that high gas prices are “a very compelling case” to buy an electric car) will be here to help us charter a safe course between Scylla and Charybdis.

Oh, wait, Biden and Harris are Scylla and Charybdis.

Golden Earring – “When The Bullet Hits The Bone” (Twilight Zone) Live at Rockpalast, 1982

Appropriate. Welcome to mid-year 2022.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

 

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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A Gorgeous Colossal Millennium Falcon, Graphic Motifs, pulled beef Arepas, and daddy fanny packs for beer transport

I hope and trust that you all are also visiting my Metallicman You-Tube, and considering my Metallicman Patreon site . As well as this (here) MM site.

The You-tube Metallicman is (of course) all free. Videos discuss various subjects ranging from Geopolitical issues, to China, to cats, and social issues of the day.

And the Metallicman Patreon focuses on the world-line travel, souls, extraterrestrials, mysteries, the Domain, Prayer Affirmations, and OOPARTS aspects of Metallicman. While many of the videos and content provided there are for subscribers, not all are.

All in all, I hope that you will gain some benefit in visiting this trio of web-sites.

We continue on our daily briefing of the crazy discord that is flooding and saturating the world right now.

Daegon Magus

First up; DM was interviewed on You-Tube. He’s still “alive and kicking”, and doing well. He is embroiled in a ton load of changes (and of course, I associate that they are tied to his affirmation campaigns of the last year or so). But he’s doing well. So go ahead and watch his interview…

Pabellon Criollo – Venezuela’s National Dish

"...My take on the national dish with lots of variations. Tender, stewed cumin flavored beef with bacon-y black beans, caramelised plantain and rice. to mop up the juices. Cook this up next Independence Day!"

Expectations

I fully expect an almost exact repeat of the Ukraine debacle in Taiwan. Before the next U.S. Presidential election, the Neocon idiots in the Biden administration will deliberately or accidentally trigger a proxy war with China, which the U.S. will lose. 

Until the toxic Neocon ideology of the Washington Blob is exorcised, the U.S. will face an unending series of foreign policy disasters.

-HH

Jeff and his Hemi-Sync / Self-Hypnosis explorations

I like Jeff and he writes on a great number of Go-Political issues. I have linked to him on numerous occasions. He has taken advice on the self-hypnosis, and mind centering techniques that I promote and he has told me that he doesn’t really know whats going on, but that he feels far better using the techniques.

Today, I got this from him…

Really fascinating. My Huawei watch analyzes sleep. Check out the right side of the attached graph, starting at 6:02, when I started my self-hypnosis.

It is impossible for me to sleep on my back, yet my hypnosis mimics deep/light sleep and I even have REM! Don’t know where the semi-consciousness periods happen, but I am clearly not in an awakened state.

Thought you might find this interesting.

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2022 06 10 07 55

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LEGO’s Gorgeous Colossal Millennium Falcon Set Is A Mind-Numbing 7,541 Pieces

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Lego has released a new Millennium Falcon set that’s bound to impress any Star Wars fan. This was released a few years back, but gosh! What a kit!

Coming in at 7,541 pieces, Lego said that it’s the biggest Millennium Falcon set it’s ever released—the second-largest set, which was released in 2007, had 5,195 pieces—and when built will measure 8 inches high, 33 inches long, and 22 inches wide. Even before you build it, it’s big enough that Lego has suggested rolling it out on wheels. (In comparison, the Lego Millennium Falcon set released ahead of The Force Awakens had a respectable 1,329 pieces.)

The Millennium Falcon has touches of its roots in the original Star Wars trilogy as well as the newer one. It comes with both the circular and rectangular dishes that go on top of the ship, 11 buildable characters including two different Han Solo’s, Leia Organa, Chewbacca, Rey, Finn, BB-8, and two porgs, and plenty of the touches that are essential to the Falcon’s interior decorations. There’s even a few new additions made to the Falcon that may end up in The Last Jedi.

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4 Really Big Names That Are Warning That Major Economic Disaster Is Ahead

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I hope that you are enjoying these beautiful summer weekends while you still can, because it appears that very troubled times are dead ahead.  Simultaneously, inflation continues to spiral out of control even as economic activity in the U.S. dramatically slows down.  Many have compared what we are currently experiencing to the “stagflation” of the 1970s, but the truth is that what we are facing will eventually be so much worse than anything that we went through back then.  A meltdown of historic proportions is here, and as you will see below, some of the biggest names in the entire country are talking about it.

On Monday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States set another all-time record high

The gas price spike keeps getting worse.

The national average jumped to $4.87 a gallon on Monday, according to AAA. That’s up 25 cents in the past week and 59 cents in the past month.

There are now 10 states where the average price of gasoline is $5 a gallon or higher, with the latest being Michigan and Indiana. Washington, DC, is also above $5, according to CNN.

A 25 cent increase in one week is just insane.

If we continue on this trajectory, the price of gasoline would go up about a dollar a month.

I can’t imagine that will be the case, but stranger things have happened.

Overall, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has now more than doubled since Joe Biden entered the White House.

How high will it be a year from now?

For a long time I warned my readers that the price of gasoline would eventually hit ten dollars a gallon, but now we have learned that it is already almost there at one gas station in California.

Meanwhile, U.S. economic activity is really slowing down and we are being warned to brace ourselves for the worst.

In fact, at this point some of the most prominent people in the entire country are starting to sound like they could be writing for The Economic Collapse Blog.  The following are four really big names that are warning that major economic disaster is ahead…

#1 If you have a “bad feeling” about the U.S. economy, you are not alone.  Elon Musk says that he has a “super bad feeling” about where the U.S. economy is heading, and so he intends to reduce the Tesla workforce by approximately 10 percent…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a “super bad feeling” about the economy and wants to cut about 10% of jobs at the electric carmaker, he said in an email to executives on Thursday seen by Reuters.

The message came two days after the world’s richest man told employees to return to the workplace or leave the company.

#2 I never imagined that I would write about something that rapper Cardi B said on this website, but that is precisely what I am about to do.  At one time she was a huge Biden supporter, but on Sunday she publicly suggested that the U.S. economy is about to enter a recession

Rapper and Joe Biden supporter Cardi B took to Twitter on Sunday to ask when “they going to announce” that the United States is “going into a recession.”

“When y’all think they going to announce that we going into a recession?” Cardi B wrote Sunday in a tweet, which has since garnered more than 120,000 likes, and over 16,000 retweets.

Actually, the U.S. economy contracted during the first quarter of 2022, and if it contracts again in the second quarter then we are actually already in a recession right now.

#3 I really admire author Robert Kiyosaki, and his advice has helped millions of people all over the globe.  In the past he was known for his relentless optimism, but now he is almost as pessimistic about our economic future as I am.  For example, he tweeted out the following back on March 8th

DO YOU HAVE a PLAN “B”? We are in BIGGEST BUBBLE in world history. Bubbles in stocks, real estate, commodities & oil. FUTURE? Possible DEPRESSION with HYPER-INFLATION. My PLAN B: be an entrepreneur, stay out of stock market, create own assets, use debt as $, save G,S, BC, guns.

Then he followed that up with this gem on March 13th

BRANDON & FED want INFLATION to pay off trillions in debt. BEST INVESTMENT may be stocking products you will always use such as toilette paper, trash bags, canned goods, frozen foods, gold, silver, Bitcoin. I do not trust Brandon or Fed. They are Marxists. End the Fed & Brandon.

And then on April 15th he boldly declared that a “hyper-inflation depression” has arrived…

Wiley COYOTE moment coming. Biggest Bubble Bust coming. Baby Boomer’s retirements to be stolen. $10 trillion in fake money spending ending. Government, Wall Street & Fed are thieves. Hyper-inflation Depression here. Buy gold, silver, Bitcoin before the coyote wakes up. Take care

Of course he is dead on accurate about where the economy is heading.  I don’t share his optimism about Bitcoin, but otherwise I think that the things that he has shared are very wise.

#4 The crisis that we are now dealing with did not arrive overnight.  For years, many of us have been relentlessly warning about debt levels, the destruction of our currency, and the foolish decisions that our leaders were making.  Now we are facing the largest debt bubble in all of human history, and there is no easy way out.  On Monday, some thoughts that Kim Dotcom shared on Twitter went viral all over the Internet

Let’s do the math:

US total debt
$90 trillion

US unfunded liabilities
$169 trillion

Total
$259 trillion

Minus all US assets
$193 trillion

Balance
– $66 trillion

That’s $66 trillion of debt and liabilities after every asset in the US has been sold off.

I might quibble with the precise numbers that he used a little bit, but overall Kim Dotcom is right on target.

And I really like how he summarized the nightmare that is in front of us

So even if the US could sell all assets at the current value, which is impossible, it would still be broke.

The US is beyond bankrupt.
This patient is already dead.
This patient is now a zombie.

You probably wonder why are things still going? Why didn’t everything collapse yet.

It’s all perception, denial and dependency.

Our leaders have tried to keep the party going for as long as they possibly could, and for a while that actually worked.

But now a day of reckoning has arrived, and a horrifying economic meltdown has begun.

We aren’t talking about a “recession” that will be here for a while followed by a return to the way that things used to be.

No, what we are heading for is the sort of immense economic nightmare that I have been warning about for years.

Many Americans will be greatly surprised by how rapidly things totally fall apart, but the real surprise has been that it has taken us so long to get to this point.

You can’t defy the laws of economics forever, and we are about to see the greatest debt pyramid that the planet has ever seen come crashing down all around us.

Barflies bantering about Ukraine…

Biden's best bet now is to topple Zelensky, say there's been a coup then head off to try his luck with China. :) 

Who knows, Perhaps the Biden admin and the Euro twits will be foolish enough to sanction China as well.

-Peter AU1

US imports from China rose to an all-time record after seasonal adjustment in April, despite the Shanghai lockdown

China exports to US jump, contrary to press reports

By David P. Goldman 

US imports from China rose to an all-time record after seasonal adjustment in April, despite the Shanghai lockdown and other Covid-related blockages in the Chinese economy. That isn’t what you read in Bloomberg News, whose 30 economists and 100 full-time economics reporters apparently haven’t learned the difference between seasonally adjusted and unadjusted data.

Found HERE

This Modern Japanese Fishing Boat Designed With Graphic Motifs

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Have you ever seen a fishing boat with so much style? Nendo design studio has transformed the Japanese fishing boat Shofukumaru into a true work of art.

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The crew of such a ship usually stays at sea for about ten months, a heavy ordeal both physically and mentally. Most of the young crew members do not come back on a second mission. It was therefore asked to create a ship that would attract young members and reduce their stress.

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The ship was covered by a linear pattern that emphasizes the curve of the hull. The rest was decorated with Japanese patterns from the hull to the interior of the ship.

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The design has a lot of straight lines, a shape that could remind of life ashore (straight lines of buildings, windows, screens…) which could then comfort the crew. A beautiful story proving that art is an element that can improve the comfort at work.

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Military aircraft crashes in California

A military aircraft, originally reported to be carrying nuclear material, but subsequently reported to NOT be carrying nuclear material, has crashed in California, leaving officials to believe all five passengers are dead.

The plane crashed in Imperial County near Highway 78, preliminary reports indicate.

Officials believe at least five people were aboard at the time of the crash.

Investigators have presumed all passengers are dead.

It is unknown what caused the crash.

Original reports claimed the plane was carrying  nuclear material.  The military now says that is false.  They now say the plane DID NOT have any nuclear material onboard.

Military officials are currently at the scene of the crash and an investigation is underway.

The crash happened near Highway 78 and Coachella Canal Road.

I don't know what to think. But disinformation; contel is normal with the United States today. -MM

Long term consequences…

Europe and Russia are natural trading partners, so the U.S. has accomplished, at great expense, a gross distortion of trade relationships that is inflicting major damage on the EU economy. This is likely to result in political turmoil in EU states as economic conditions worsen. When Europeans awaken to the fact that they have been played by the U.S., the blowback may result in the disbanding of NATO.

The U.S. oligarchs who backed the Neocon project of global liberal hegemony will eventually realize that they have created an ideological monster that will seriously damage the U.S. economy. The toxic Neocon foreign policy that benefits only the defense sector (5% of the U.S. economy) will increasingly disrupt the global commerce on which much of the rest of the U.S. economy depends. The only question is how much damage the U.S. sustains before the Neocons are finally driven out of power.

- HH

ASML looks to expand China operations in Beijing and Shanghai

What’s all this United States nonsense about keeping high end chip fabricators out of the hands of the Chinese?

BEIJING — ASM Lithography of the Netherlands is expanding its presence in China by setting up its first direct sales office in Tianjin, and the Dutch company is also working on plans for locations in Beijing and Shanghai, according to ASML officials.

In the port city of Tianjin, ASML has a significant installed base of exposure tools at Motorola Inc.'s new MOS17 fab. This month, Motorola is expected to begin processing its first 8-inch (200-mm wafers in MOS17, which is being prepared for chip processing with 0.35- and eventually 0.25-micron technology.

ASML is also in the hunt for new business in Shanghai and Beijing. “The China market looks good for us,” said Rodney Chisholm, technical sales support manager for Asia at ASML, in an interview at last week's Semicon China 2001 trade show in Beijing.
Found HERE

Ukraine President’s Inner Circle Buying Multi-Million $ Mansions in Switzerland!

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If Ukraine is winning the war with Russia, then why are key people in President Zelensky’s inner circle buying houses in Switzerland? Oh, and how are they affording $9 million for those houses? Is U.S. “foreign aid” being stolen so they can buy multi-million dollar mansions?

Like most countries, Switzerland has land registry records showing who owns a particular property, how much it sold for, and what taxes are paid on it. Extracts from those land registries can be accessed by the general public.

Among the owners of luxury real estate in the country of banks and alpine meadows, are high-ranking officials from Zelensky’s entourage.

We begin with Dmitry Razumkov, a Ukrainian politician and former Chairman of the Verkhovna (Legislature).

According to land registry extract Mr. Razumkov seems to have bought himself a luxurious home for 8,954,621.00 Swiss Francs, which are about equal to the value of a U.S. Dollar. His name is at the bottom of the property sale record:

SwitzerlandTaxData Razumkov
SwitzerlandTaxData Razumkov

Next is Oleksandr Danyliuk (Daniljuk) former Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine. His name appears as the buyer of the 9,126,538.00 CHF home shown on the record below:

SwitzerlandTaxData 2
SwitzerlandTaxData 2

Next is the record for Lyudmila Denisova, the same ombudsman who was fired because of false reports about the atrocities of the Russian army against children.

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SwitzerlandTaxData 1

The cost of each home is about 9 million Swiss francs. The franc is currently almost equivalent to the dollar.

They love Ukraine so much that they decided not to live in it.

Not only that, where did these “public servants” come up with about $9 million to get themselves mansions in Switzerland?

Most of these homes were purchased just BEFORE Russia began its Special Military Operation into Ukraine.

Were these homes some sort of Bribe or Payoff to these public officials to get them to sell-out Ukraine by stoking the fires until war broke out? Were these public officials paid-off by someone to get them to help start a war?

Or worse, did foreign aid to Ukraine get stolen so these people could buy luxurious mansions for themselves, far away from the war they helped start?

Inquiring minds want to know.

The Dadbag, A Fanny Pack That Looks Like An Exposed Daddy’s Belly

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This is the Dadbag, the brainchild of designer Albert Pukies, which I did just a little bit in my mouth right now. Each bag looks like the exposed stomach of a man, and come in a variety of skin tones, hairiness, and plumpness.

At the time of this writing, the Dadbag isn’t commercially available yet (Pukies is still looking for production partners), which is a shame for everybody who saw this and thought, “I must have one of those,” and a real blessing to everyone who didn’t.

Keep going for several more shots including the different options.

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David Cross: Why America Sucks at Everything

The video resonates with me. Sorry.

Healthy young people are dying suddenly and unexpectedly from a mysterious syndrome – as doctors seek answers through a new national register

  • People aged under the age of 40 being urged to go and get their hearts checked
  • May potentially be at risk of having Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS)
  • SADS is an ‘umbrella term to describe unexpected deaths in young people’
  • A 31-year-old woman who died in her sleep last year may have had SADs

People aged under 40 are being urged to have their hearts checked because they may potentially be at risk of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.

The syndrome, known as SADS, has been fatal for all kinds of people regardless of whether they maintain a fit and healthy lifestyle.

SADS is an ‘umbrella term to describe unexpected deaths in young people’, said The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, most commonly occurring in people under 40 years of age.

Article HERE

Russia Deploys S-400 Air Defense on “Snake Island”

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SnakeIslandMap large

Snake Island, also known as Serpent Island or Zmiinyi Island, is an island located in the Black Sea off the coast of (what used to be) Ukraine, near the Danube Delta, with an important role in delimiting what (used to be) Ukrainian territorial waters. It is now Russian and Russia means to keep it.

The island has been known since classical antiquity, and during that era hosted a Greek temple to Achilles.

In the Special Military Operation that Russia began in February to de-militarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, the island became the focus of storied battles; with Ukraine claiming their soldiers bravely faced-off against Russian naval vessels, which allegedly killed all the Ukrainian defenders.

Of course, that story proved false, when Russia released unharmed, all the soldiers from Ukraine they had taken prisoner when Russia conquered the island.

During the ongoing hostilities between Ukraine and Russia, several high profile attempts were made by Ukraine to retake the island. All failed.

This week, Russia deployed its famous S-400 air defense system on the island. The S-400 is widely known as the most accurate and deadliest air defense system in the world.

Looks as though Russia means to keep what it has, and the S-400 seems perfectly able to make sure it does.

India-US to hold high-altitude military exercise amid China’s ‘alarming’ build-up along LAC

This REEKS of CIA disinformation. -MM

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2022 06 10 10 43

New Delhi: Noting that the Chinese military’s infrastructure build-up under its Western Theatre Command — that looks after India — was “eye-opening and alarming”, a top visiting US Army officer Wednesday said the Indian and American Army will train together this year at 9,000-10,000 feet to increase interoperability for high-altitude warfare.

Pitching for a strong operational bond between the two armies in the Indo-Pacific region instead of only focusing on the naval interoperability, US Army Pacific Commanding General Charles Flynn termed China’s build-up near Ladakh and strengthening of its military infrastructure as part of Beijing’s “corrosive and destabilising behaviour”.

Pointing out that he has been part of the Pacific Command since 2014 under various ranks, Gen Flynn said, “When I sort of look back on what the CPC (Communist Party of China) and the PRC (People’s Republic of China) were doing, compared to what they are doing today, they have taken an incremental and insidious path and destabilizing and corrosive behaviours that they project into the region are simply not helpful”.

Interacting with a select group of journalists, the senior US Army officer who will be visiting the crucial Eastern Command tomorrow also spoke on the Ladakh situation.

When asked about the Chinese buildup along the Line of Control (LAC) and construction of villages in Bhutan, the officer said he believed “that activity level is eye-opening”.

“Some of the infrastructures that is being created in Western Theatre Command (WTC) is alarming. And so much like across all of their military arsenal, one has to ask the question why. I don’t have a crystal ball to say how it is going to end or where it will be but I will say, it is worthy of asking that question and trying to get a response as to what their intentions are,” he said.

Talking about the ongoing military and diplomatic talks between India and China to resolve the Ladakh crisis that has entered its third year, he said it is helpful but Chinese actions and words don’t match.

“I think the talks that are going on are helpful but behaviour matters here as well. I think my understanding is that what they are saying is one thing but the way they are acting and behaving in a way of build-up is concerning and it is concerning to everyone. Obviously, there has been tension and we have to pay attention to that,” he said.

Article HERE

The Worst Economic Gloom In 50 Years

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We haven’t seen anything like this in decades.  Energy prices are soaring to unprecedented heights.  Food shortages in some parts of the world are starting to become quite severe.  Rampant inflation is out of control all over the globe.  Meanwhile, economic activity is slowing down everywhere that you look.  Some are comparing this current crisis to the “stagflation” of the 1970s, but I believe that is a far too optimistic assessment.  Just about everyone can see that economic conditions are rapidly deteriorating, and there is a tremendous amount of alarm about what the months ahead will bring.

According to a brand new Wall Street Journal-NORC survey that was just released, the percentage of Americans that believe that the state of the U.S. economy is “poor or not so good” is 83 times larger than the percentage of Americans that believe that the state of the U.S. economy is “excellent”…

A severe pessimism grips the U.S. economy and Americans report the highest level of dissatisfaction with their financial situation in at least half a century, poll results released Monday show.

Eighty-three percent of Americans describe the state of the economy as poor or not so good, according to a Wall Street Journal-NORC Poll. Only one percent describe the economy as “excellent.”

I would like to talk to someone from the one percent of Americans that still believe that the U.S. economy is in “excellent shape”.

To me, it is always fascinating to find someone that can completely deny reality even when all of the evidence points in the other direction.

The same survey found that the percentage of Americans that are “not at all satisfied with their financial condition” is the highest in at least 50 years

Thirty-five percent said they are not at all satisfied with their financial condition, the highest level of dissatisfaction since NORC began asking the question every few years starting in 1972.

Sixty-three percent of Americans say they are extremely or very concerned about the price of gas. Fifty-four percent say they are extremely or very concerned about the impact of high grocery prices on their household’s financial situation. Just 13 percent say they not very or not at all concerned about gas prices and 19 percent about grocery prices.

In other words, this is the gloomiest that Americans have been about their own personal finances in at least five decades.

Wow.

One of the big reasons why people feel this way is because the price of just about everything is going up.

In particular, the price of gasoline has been making national headlines just about every day.  On Tuesday, it set another brand new record

The national average price of gas is now $4.955, reflecting an over three-cent jump overnight, 28-cent rise in the last week, and nearly 64-cent rise in the last month. Diesel also hit another record on Tuesday, reaching $5.719.

Currently, 16 states are experiencing an average price of gas of $5.00 or more. That includes Maine ($5.023), Massachusetts ($5.21), New Jersey ($5.032), Pennsylvania ($5.031), Michigan ($5.214), Ohio ($5.061), Indiana ($5.234), Illinois ($5.532), Idaho ($5.025), Alaska ($5.469), Hawaii ($5.493), Washington ($5.489), Oregon ($5.485), Nevada ($5.564), Arizona ($5.181), and California ($6.390). California’s Mono County appears to be reporting the highest gas price average in the Golden State — $7.213.

Unfortunately, there is a growing consensus among the experts that this is just the beginning.  Here is one example

With the summer travel season just getting underway, demand for gasoline, coupled with the cut-off of Russian oil shipments due to the war in Ukraine, is sending oil prices higher on global markets.

The national average for gasoline could be close to $6 by later this summer according to Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the OPIS, which tracks gas prices for AAA.

And here is another example

GasBuddy head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan provided insight into record-high gas prices, warning on Wednesday that “we’re going to be swimming in these high prices for a while.”

Speaking on “Varney & Co.” on Wednesday, De Haan also revealed his forecasts for how high prices at the pump will climb, arguing that they could reach a national average of $6 a gallon in the coming months, but “what seems like more of a guarantee is that $5 mark.”

Others are even more pessimistic.  In fact, the head of commodity trading giant Trafigura just warned that the price of oil could actually make a “parabolic ” move in the months ahead.

Needless to say, energy prices have a domino effect throughout the entire economy.  When commentator Anthony B. Sanders contacted moving companies about his coming move out of state, he could hardly believe the quotes that he was given

As I line up my move from Fairfax VA to Columbus OH, I am getting a variety of quotes from moving companies. And wow! The cost of moving using a national moving company for a 4 bedroom house is $15,000 to $20,500. That includes International, North American and Bekins.

One of the reasons for the high cost of moving is the massive increase in diesel fuel used for trucking. Diesel fuel under Biden has risen 117%. And since it was revealed that natural gas often is used for electric charging stations, and NATGAS is up 281% under Biden (but there aren’t many electric moving trucks yet).

Could you imagine paying $20,000 to move from Virginia to Ohio?

In the old days, you could purchase your own new vehicle for that much money.

In this crazy environment, some companies are attempting to hide inflation by shrinking their package sizes

“Joining the parade of downsized products is cereal stalwart Honey Bunches of Oats, which has seen the weight of its standard box, previously 14.5 ounces, lessen to 12 ounces — a reduction of roughly 17 percent,” the U.K. paper said.

Angel Soft toilet paper has also reduced its size from 425 sheets per roll to 320, while Bounty paper towels have cut their rolls from 165 sheets per roll to 147 late last year. Gatorade also cut its bottle size from 32 ounces to 28 ounces.

Do they actually believe that we will not notice that the packages have changed?

And this isn’t just happening here in the United States.  At this point, this is taking place all over the globe

In the U.S., a small box of Kleenex now has 60 tissues; a few months ago, it had 65. Chobani Flips yogurts have shrunk from 5.3 ounces to 4.5 ounces. In the U.K., Nestle slimmed down its Nescafe Azera Americano coffee tins from 100 grams to 90 grams. In India, a bar of Vim dish soap has shrunk from 155 grams to 135 grams.

Our standard of living is falling with each passing day, and that process is only going to accelerate during the second half of this year.

In a desperate attempt to keep living the way that they always have, many Americans are turning to their credit cards at an alarming rate.

Needless to say, that is only a short-term solution.

And at the same time, overall economic activity continues to slow down

A closely followed measurement from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank suggests the economy could be headed for a second-quarter decline in gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in a country. The GDPNow tracker shows the economy grew at an annualized pace of just 0.9% in the spring, a steep decline from its previous estimate of 1.3% on June 1.

If U.S. GDP is actually negative for the second quarter, that will be two quarters in a row, and that will mean that we are officially in a recession right now.

But what we are heading into in 2023 and beyond is not going to be just a “recession”.

Ultimately, we are heading into the sort of “nightmare scenario” that I have warned about for years.

It took decades of very foolish decisions for us to reach this point, and our leaders in Washington continue to make very foolish decisions.

So the truth is that there are no long-term solutions in sight.

Only pain.

So if the American people are this upset about the economy now, how will they be feeling six months down the road?

China deployment of missiles system in Cambodia

Tiktok video HERE.

Venezuelan Arepas | The Frugal Chef

This is easy to make and a great unique taste!

BRITISH MERCENARIES IN UKRAINE SENTENCED TO DEATH

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BritsSentencedToDeath large

Two British mercenaries, Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, who went to assist Ukraine in the attacks against Luhansk and Donetsk, have been found guilty of “trying to seize power” and have been sentenced to DEATH by the Supreme Court of Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

“We have said continually that prisoners of war shouldn’t be exploited for political purposes,” a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

“Under the Geneva Convention prisoners of war are entitled to combatant immunity and they should not be prosecuted for participation in hostilities.

“So we will continue to work with the Ukrainian authorities to try to secure the release of any British nationals who were serving in the Ukrainian armed forces and who are being held as prisoners of war.”

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the court verdict was a “sham judgment with absolutely no legitimacy”.

Aslin, 28, and Pinner, 48, and Moroccan national Saaudun Brahim, have been found guilty of being mercenaries and taking action towards violent seizure of power.

They were sentenced in a court in the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic that is not internationally recognized.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

I bet when they’re executed, they will be just as dead as if the Donetsk People’s Republic WAS “internationally recognized.”

This is what happens when people stick their nose into the affairs of others.   Aslin and Pinner are not Ukrainian; they’re British.   Both men went to Ukraine with the express intent to side with Ukraine in a war zone, yet neither man joined the Ukraine military.  As such, they are not covered by the Geneva Convention because they were not members of a sovereign military engaged in war.

Put simply, these two guys thought it would be cool to live action role play (LARP) and now they’re going to be executed for what they did.

Clearly, had they minded their own business, none of this would be happening.   This is what can happen to people who don’t mind their own business.

Venezuelan Pulled Beef Recipe – Easy Arepa Recipe

To go with the delicious Arepas presented earlier.

Why?

Well people… This is why.

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2022 06 10 13 31

Execution for war crimes: Ukrainian foreign mercenaries sentenced to death

From HERE
They have a month to appeal the verdict, and then the lawyers can still apply for a pardon.
The trial of British and Moroccan mercenaries in Donetsk turned out to be very quick.

The trial of British and Moroccan mercenaries in Donetsk turned out to be very quick. It took the Supreme Court of the DPR just a few days to sentence two subjects of the British crown - 48-year-old Sean Pinner and 27-year-old Aiden Eslin - and a citizen of the Kingdom of Morocco to capital punishment - the death penalty. 

Recall that it exists in the DPR (and in the LPR) in wartime. Apparently, the reason for such efficiency lies in the good work of the investigation at the preliminary stage. Moreover, the investigators had a very rich evidence base.

All three mercenaries surrendered in Mariupol as part of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, leaving the cellars of Azovstal. And with them, thousands of witnesses of their service surrendered. It was their testimony that made it possible to establish that Sean Pinner, who spoke about his work as an instructor, was on the staff list as a sniper.

No one was touched by the lyrical story of Aiden Eslin, who ended up in Ukraine after he fell in love with a girl from Ukrainian Nikolaev and decided to join his life with her. For which he could not think of anything better than to serve as a mercenary and kill the tribesmen of his beloved.

The Moroccan Saadoun Brahim, as his father said, came to study as an astronaut, but, due to the absence of an astronaut in Ukraine as such, and training in this profession, he also became a mercenary. The Moroccan had no luck with space, but it seems that the earth called him to her. By the way, all of them admitted partially their guilt in committing the charges brought against them.

According to the legislation of the DPR, all those sentenced must be shot. At the same time, it is clear that this will not happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. The convicts have a month to appeal the verdict, then it will take some time to consider the complaint, then they will be given the right to file a request for pardon. And only after all these procedures are completed, the sentence will be carried out.

NATO JUST GOT THE BAD NEWS: EUROPEAN TANK PRODUCTION HALTED, LACK OF TITANIUM – FROM RUSSIA

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The NATO Military alliance just got the rug pulled out from beneath its entire operation.  It seems that Europe no longer has any Titanium, which is essential for the armor of tanks.  In years past, Europe bought its Titanium from . . .  Russia.   They can’t buy it anymore. As such, tank production – in Germany – has stopped.

Yes, you read that correctly, Tank building in Germany, has stopped.

Hints that there was some type of undisclosed problem with European militaries started being visible when Ukraine asked for tanks, Armored Personnel Carriers and more from Europe and the United States, to fight Russia.

Germany refused to donate tanks to Ukraine, or to augment Poland, which did donate tanks to Ukraine.

Germany’s refusal to supply its heavy tanks to Poland was not at all caused by Berlin’s attempt to deceive Warsaw, but by the fact that Germany simply does not have titanium to build new tanks.

Some of my former colleagues in the Intelligence Community from my years working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) tell me “due to the lack of titanium supplies from Russia, it is extremely problematic to establish the production of tanks in any required quantity today.”

Tanks require a fairly large amount of titanium, which is a component of the armor. However, due to the lack of supplies from Russia, this caused an almost complete halt in German tank building.

Moreover, a similar situation will soon occur in the UK, France, and other European countries.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

Bottom line: If Russia were to engage NATO in actual war, then NATO would be completely unable to build _any_ replacement tanks, once existing tanks were destroyed in battle.

The short and sweet of it: NATO cannot afford to fight Russia because NATO countries don’t have Titanium to use for armor in tanks and without tanks, NATO would flatly lose the war.

Period.  Full stop.

This is kinda funny. Almost all of NATO is out there screeching like an old wash woman that “Russia baaaad.”

Then they all realized “Uh oh they supplied the materials we need to go kill them.”

Bahaha.  The governments of the west: Fucking morons.

An outstanding discussion

You all must watch this lecture.

National Guard Placed on Ready-Go Alert for Supreme Court Abortion Ruling

The National Guard in all fifty (50) U.S. states has been told to adopt a “Ready-Go” posture for deployment in preparation for the soon-to-be-released US Supreme Court ruling on Abortion.

The Court is expected to overturn the precedent of Roe v. Wade” which made Abortion legal.

If and when such a ruling comes out, it is widely speculated that the pro-abortion, kill-the-babies-on-demand crowd of spoiled brats. will take to the streets and riot, nationwide.

While overturning Roe v. Wade will NOT make Abortion automatically ILLEGAL, it will put the issue back under state control, instead of the federal government, so individual state legislators can craft laws their citizens deem appropriate.

Developing . . . .

Russia’s nuclear threat has worked | The Strategist

The war in Ukraine has reasserted the relevance of nuclear weapons as a major deterrent in global conflicts. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, a great power has publicly threatened to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. And the threat worked: the West has been carefully calibrating its arms supply to Ukraine in order to avoid giving Russia reason to resort to nuclear escalation. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine wouldn’t have happened had Ukraine not surrendered its nuclear arsenal under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, which included American and Russian guarantees to respect and defend its territorial integrity.

Revolutionary powers such as North Korea and Iran have watched these developments closely. For Iran, a rising Shia power, its nuclear program represents an insurance policy against the surrounding Sunni powers, all allies of Israel and the United States. North Korea’s nuclear logic isn’t much different.

There are few realistic options for stemming the trend towards nuclear proliferation. One development that would make a difference would be for the five big nuclear powers to lead by example and start reducing their arsenals drastically. The obstacle here arises from the disparity between American conventional military might and that of China and Russia. For France and Britain, meanwhile, maintaining nuclear weapons is an issue of status.

If leaders of the calibre of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev—capable of overruling their respective security establishments—re-emerged, they could potentially lead such a non-proliferation movement. But such leadership doesn’t seem to be imminent.

Another possibility would be to establish a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. But that could happen only if agreements were reached on the major conflicts in the region, and Israel surrendered its supposed nuclear capabilities.

I’m not optimistic about any of these scenarios. Ultimately, however, whether a regime has nuclear weapons isn’t the main issue. It’s the nature of the regime that counts.

Ukraine made a mistake in entering negotiations with Russia at a very early stage of the war, when the impression was still that Russia’s military was unstoppable. A mutually harmful deadlock offers a better opportunity to reach a peace agreement. Unless Russia introduces nuclear weapons into the equation, we may be nearing such a deadlock, owing partly to the fact that the US and its allies have wisely calibrated their arms supply to prevent a Ukrainian defeat while not provoking Russia to escalate.

The Ukrainians should not enter negotiations if the price of admission is accepting Russia’s demand that they not join NATO. This should be a concession in a negotiating process, not a precondition to it.

That said, as I’ve argued recently, peace is about equilibrium and stability, not justice. The just outcome—Russia’s full withdrawal from Ukraine and reversal of its annexation of Crimea—would be political suicide for Putin and a tremendous setback for Russia’s international standing. Far from being a cooperative participant in a European security system, a defeated Russia, as a humiliated nuclear-armed superpower, would pose an enduring threat to it.

Western powers should be part of the peace process, not only because they are part of the conflict, but also because they are the ones with the power to compensate Russia for any concessions it makes. That compensation should come in the form of a European security system that addresses key Russian concerns and upholds the neutrality and territorial integrity of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. Finally, to deal with Ukraine’s dual identity, the ethnic Russian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk would have to enjoy significant autonomy within a federal state, as was stipulated by the 2015 Minsk II settlement.

For far too long, Europe has remained comfortably embedded in a ‘post-historical’ world, while outsourcing its security to American taxpayers. The war in Ukraine marks the end of the myth that history ‘ended’ with the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It also vindicates the Latin adage, Si vis pacem, para bellum (‘If you want peace, prepare for war’). A strong and united NATO would help secure peace.

But any European security architecture that emerges from the Ukraine war must include buffer areas between Russia and NATO. Ukraine, which will probably have to abandon its aspirations for NATO membership as part of any peace settlement, should be one such zone. Sweden and Finland, with its 1,340-kilometre border with Russia, should be two more. The alternative is a long border in a permanent state of friction, war or the imminent threat of war.

For the foreseeable future, peace must be based on disengagement. The end of Europe’s dependence on Russian energy would contribute to peace, as it would force Russia to diversify its economic model, increase Russia’s stake in global stability, and drive the country to become a more active participant in the global economy.

Article HERE

US Threatens China With ‘Military Action’ If It Breaches The Red Line; Can US Navy Fight PLA On Its Home Turf?

Here's an "armchair warrior" analysis out of an anti-China publication out of India. Pretty pro-USA. Worth a read, and then a vomit. 

After all, since WHEN is Chinese territory a "Red Line"?  

As to the question being raised; "can the USN fight the PL"? Well, this was answered in 1950. Then the USA fought China in Korea. And the USA lost. And lost terribly. -MM

US President Joe Biden has said twice over the last year that Washington will militarily defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion attempt. His latest explicit security guarantee to Taiwan was made in Tokyo last week.

But does America have the military superiority over China in this part of the world to deliver what President Biden pledged?

This is a question that many security analysts in the US are asking, given the fact that the US Navy, which has to play the most important role in case China attacks Taiwan, is undergoing structural changes because of budgetary constraints that many consider will weaken both its capacity and capability in the near term.

Critics are pointing out that given the current threat, the fleet is not growing fast enough to meet the potential challenge of fighting competitors like China and Russia.

The US Navy recently released its long-awaited 30-year shipbuilding blueprint, providing three options for future fleet force structure.

The first option would yield an inventory of 316 ships by FY 2052, the second would yield 327 ships by FY 2052 and the third would yield 367 ships by FY 2052. However, the document of the blueprint notes that “the ability of the industrial base to support” the third option with the largest fleet size “has not been independently assessed,” this has worried the analysts.

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Big Changes On The Anvil

The new shipbuilding plans show the Navy decommissioning two Independence-class LCS – USS Jackson (LCS-6) and USS Montgomery (LCS-8) – in FY 2024. Jackson entered the fleet in 2015, while Montgomery was commissioned in 2016. Both ships were built by Austal USA.

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2022 06 03 19 55

The Navy also wants to continue decommissioning its aging Ticonderoga-class cruiser fleet, starting with USS Antietam (CG-54), USS Leyte Gulf (CG-55), and USS Shiloh (CG-67) in FY 2024. Under the proposal, the Navy would decommission the entire cruiser fleet by the end of FY 2027, including the ones that are currently in the cruiser modernization program.

The blueprint shows the Navy decommissioning USS Nimitz (CVN-68) in FY 2025 and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) in FY 2027, which aligns with the 50-year service lives for the Nimitz-class carriers.

According to the blueprint, the first two options would be for “a budget with no real growth,” while the third option “represents an additional $75 billion real growth beyond the [Future Years Defense Program] in FY2022 constant dollars.”

The document says that “The increased procurement level, informed by industrial base capacity and on-time and on-budget performance, achieves 326 manned battle force ships in the mid-2030s, and ultimately achieves 363 manned battle force ships in FY2045.”

Overall, the long-range plan shows the Navy decommissioning 13 ships in FY 2024, another 13 in FY 2025, 14 ships in FY 2026, and 13 in FY 2027. FY 2027 would also see the service decommission of USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51), the lead ship of the class.

Fresh Procurement Schemes

The three procurement schemes show what ships the Navy could purchase between FY 2028 and FY 2032, a time frame the service is calling a “transition” period after the FY 2023 five-year spending plan, and between FY 2033 and FY 2052, which the Navy is calling the “future force design” time frame.

While the first two options only show the Navy buying one Ford-class aircraft carrier between FY 2028 and FY 2032, the third option shows the service purchasing one in FY 2028 and another in FY 2032.

“A decision on CVN 82/83 two-ship buy is required no later than FY25 and will be evaluated during upcoming force structure and industrial base studies,” the document reads. “The Department is reviewing Large and Small Surface Combatant and Attack Submarine procurement quantities in FY 2028-2032.”

The blueprint makes it clear that the US Navy is “prioritizing readiness before capacity”. It says, “Assuming no real budget growth, the two low ranges of the plan do not procure all platforms at the desired rate (e.g., DDGs, SSNs, and FFGs at two ships per year), which industry needs to demonstrate the ability to achieve, but do maximize capability within projected resources, industrial factors, and technology constraints to build the most capable force. Overall, this approach accepts risk in capacity to field a more capable and ready force.”

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2022 06 03 19 5n5

The 30-year blueprint talks of the US Navy having 327 ships by FY 2052. The Navy has always planned a goal of having more than 300 ships. But then the fact remains that the fleet has never achieved that goal since 2003.

China’s Massive Strength

In the year 2018, it had been said that with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) adding more than 120 battle-force ships, the US should have at least 355 ships of which it was short of 57.

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2022 06 03 19 5mm5

Over the last four years, the PLAN has further increased its strength. The Chinese have built a large fleet including aircraft carriers, cruise missile-armed surface ships, and several submarines. The PLAN is supported by land-based missiles and aircraft.

And that prompted the Trump administration in its final days to encourage the Navy to have a fresh force structure assessment. The Navy said accordingly that given the rising profile of the PLAN, it should have a figure between 382 and 446 manned ships and an additional 143 to 242 unmanned ships.

But within two years, the Navy seems to have changed its assessment. The US is driving down fleet numbers and ship production, the critics point out. They say that the average gap between ordered and achieved battle fleet size over the last five years was roughly 10 ships.

“Integrating the precipitous drop from 2022 to 2023 and loosely projecting that magnitude of 50 ships over five years shows a battle force of 275 ships or smaller”. It may be noted that at the moment the US Navy has 298 ships.

Major Gaps

Further, buried within the FY23 capacity gap is a lethality gap. As Congresswoman Elaine Luria (Democrat), who represents Coastal Virginia, home to the world’s largest naval base and who before running for Congress had served two decades in the US Navy, points out, “the U.S. Navy is suffering a clear disadvantage in anti-ship weapons concerning China, which is fielding supersonic anti-ship weapons across its surface forces, bombers, land-based forces, and undersea forces in high numbers.

By comparison, almost all the anti-ship capability of the US armed forces reside in a limited number of surface and air-launched Harpoon missiles, whose fundamental design is 45 years old.

The surface fleet’s launch cells are mostly filled with defensive anti-air weapons, but newer weapons such as Naval Strike Missile, Long-Range Anti-Surface Missiles, Maritime Strike Tomahawks (MST), and SM-6 missiles”. Only procuring them in higher numbers in the near term could close the gap that currently exists between the PLAN and US Navy, she argues.

Of course, the fate of the latest blueprint for the next 30 years, that is, which ships to purchase and which ships to retire, rests ultimately with the members of US  Congress like  Elaine  Luria. Many in Congress, incidentally, have repeatedly criticized the service for decommissioning ships at a faster rate than it can build new ones. 

It seems that for adversaries like China, the Biden administration prefers the theory of “deterrence by punishment” to the theory of “deterrence by denial” that the Trump regime pursued. In a denial strategy, the adversary is deterred from aggression by introducing significant doubt in its mind about whether its ultimate military objective can be achieved.

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2022 06 03 19 56

Need For A Fresh Strategy

This doubt is based on the threat of overwhelming military force being brought to bear at a time early in the conflict that will make the goals of the aggressor unachievable. A denial strategy requires the will of the defending nation to back up its rhetoric with action when necessary.

This strategy is believed to be more expensive because it requires more ready deployed forces, and it may also require the will to potentially use these forces in pre-aggression phases of conflict.

On the other hand, a punishment strategy seeks to deter an aggressor by the threat of pain if they take aggressive action. This strategy does not reveal one’s strength fully and keeps the adversary guessing.

This strategy implies that a nation will not or cannot decisively foreclose objectives to the adversary, and instead hopes that an adversary’s pain threshold can be overwhelmed into submission.

In a sense, it is an ambiguous proposition. But this is said to be cheaper because it requires fewer forward-deployed forces, thus less force structure. It is also politically more palatable because popular support will be more forthcoming after adversaries initiate aggression.

Most importantly, this strategy facilitates what Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Mike Gilday says “divest to invest” so that the US navy is more capable and more lethal. But the issue is that its eventual success rests on many “assumptions”, which the US Congress wants to be clarified.

Nanking Cargo: Riches From the Orient

Article HERE

It’s the kingdom of power and awe where the winds wail, the gulls cry and the sea surges. Only the bold will brave it. Gales may blast it, rains may flood it and tides may churn it, but it is and always will be…the South China Sea.

Ask Michael Hatcher and he’ll tell you about raging storms, dark waters and pirates that he faced in an unforgiving environment unwilling to give up its treasure even to the bravest of souls. Hatcher never considered himself brave. Lucky perhaps, but not the daring swashbuckler portrayed in Hollywood productions. His demeanor, quiet, cordial and determined, was a perfect match for his line of work: Professional Treasure Hunter.

The South China Sea wasn’t unfamiliar to the Yorkshire, UK, orphan who grew up on a farm in the Australian outback. He picked up various jobs on land until age 27 when he bought his first boat. It took a lot of time and hard work, but by 1977 he had formed his own company and was salvaging scrap metal from sunken WWII vessels. Avoiding monsoons and standing up to modern-day pirates was standard operating procedure for the adventurer called “Hatch” by friends and crew.

Hatch greeted Lady Luck with a smile in 1983 when he stumbled upon a 17th century Chinese junk that went down on Admiral Stellingwerf Reef in the South China Sea. He and his crew salvaged more than 20,000 pieces of late Ming and Traditional Period Chinese porcelain that netted $2 million at Christie’s Auction House in Amsterdam. Hatch was ecstatic. Money to operate the boat, pay the crew and purchase high tech equipment was always a concern, but now he had the resources. Now he could make a mighty push in trying to locate the big “G.”

The Geldermalsen, a Dutch East India company merchant vessel, sank in a storm in 1752. The 1,150 ton vessel was on a return voyage from Canton to Amsterdam laden with Chinese porcelain, tea, raw silk and gold. Accounts from the survivors verified the shipment along with records in Holland whose trade with Asia for two centuries was dubbed the Golden Age. Along with his partner, Max de Rham—an engineer skilled in high technology and marine surveys—Hatch researched the merchantman. Both agreed to begin the search in the area where the Chinese junk was found. Using satellite navigation, proton magnetometers and side-scan sonar, they swept a five mile perimeter, but came up empty handed. After two months of fruitless effort, Hatcher wanted to quit, but de Rham begged for one more day. Bingo! The very next day, May 11, 1985, the prize appeared on sonar—an image of a shipwreck showing mastheads, cannons and deck contours.

Hatch and de Rham were the first down and right off the bat found shards with the luster of cobalt blue beneath a ceramic glaze. Their expectations soared as pairs of dive teams uncovered crate upon crate of blue and white teacups, bowls, butter tubs, dinner plates, teapots and more. Serendipity kicked in when the divers realized the crates of porcelain had been cushioned upon impact by the bags of tea. More good fortune emerged when they recovered 127 gold bars in the captain’s cabin.

Diving conditions were hazardous. Silt swirled around as cargo was removed, forcing divers to work by feel. Large bags of tea leaves broke free from their containers prompting Hatch to declare, “It was like swimming around in a giant black teapot.” The 132-foot depth and dark waters were ominous. Using surface air supply, hoses had to be monitored and bottom time computed. Getting the bends was always possible, but the salvors were experienced divers who stressed safety first. Divers entered a decompression chamber after each turn on the wreck. Storms delayed progress and lookouts packing guns stood guard against interlopers. After 10 weeks of long hours and intense labor, a container ship arrived to haul off 1,400 cartons of the Hatch’s cache. Upon arrival in Holland, it took six people, working steadily for one month, to unpack, clean and stack more than 170,000 pieces of china.

The payoff came in April, 1986, when Christie’s of Amsterdam opened a five day auction of the “Nanking Cargo.” An official from Christie’s coined the name, Nanking, the main distribution center for Chinese porcelain shipped to Europe throughout the years. It had an appealing ring to it and helped prices soar beyond auction forecasts. More than 20,000 people attended the auction, many harboring a desperate desire to own a memento from this romantic treasure trove. An anonymous bidder paid $332,786 for a 144-place dinner setting, while a Swiss banker bought a pair of butter tubs for $15,275. A small stoneware jug went for $5,251. In all, the sale brought in $15.3 million, double the pre-auction estimates. Gold soared as well, netting a Midas touch that bordered on $2 million.

As for Hatch, the 45-year-old salvage entrepreneur, this was a happy moment, but one he never looked back upon. Like all steadfast adventurers, he went off searching for another wreck in the untamed South China Sea. When asked by a reporter to give up one of his secrets to success, he responded with one word: “experience.” His mantra throughout all of his exploits has been, “Experience is the best teacher.” That being the case, Hatch, the student, continues to earn straight A’s.

China and Singapore to resume military exercises, cooperate on defence education

Article HERE

  • Analysts say the developments are a ‘natural progression’ of warming defence ties between China and the city state, which also has strong strategic ties with the US
  • A question that will be raised is ‘the level of exposure both sides would have to each other’s doctrine and equipment’, one observer says

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2022 06 10 10 54

China and Singapore’s defence ministers on Thursday said joint military exercises suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic were set to resume, and pledged to deepen defence ties in their first face-to-face meeting since 2019.

Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe and his Singaporean counterpart Ng Eng Hen held talks at the inaugural Singapore-China Defence Ministers’ Dialogue, where they discussed global security issues, a statement from the city’s defence ministry said.

The two defence ministers also shared their respective views on bolstering defence exchanges between China and Asean, the statement said.

A Survey Of Corporate Financial Officers Found That 100 Percent Of Them Expect A Recession To Start In The Months Ahead

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Have you ever heard of a survey where 100 percent of the respondents agree?  I can’t ever recall seeing one like that, but as you will see below, 100 percent of the corporate CFOs that were just surveyed by CNBC believe that a recession is coming by the end of next year.  At this point, our economic troubles are growing so rapidly that you would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see what is happening.  A meltdown of historic proportions has already begun, and there is economic gloom just about everywhere that you look.

But even though the U.S. economy is clearly moving in one direction, I still didn’t expect to see this sort of a consensus among corporate financial executives…

According to the majority (68%) of CFOs responding to the survey, a recession will occur during the first half of 2023. No CFO forecast a recession any later than the second half of next year, and no CFO thinks the economy will avoid a recession.

The CNBC CFO Council Q2 survey is a sample of the current outlook among top financial officers. It was conducted among 22 chief financial officers at major organizations between May 12-June 6.

Of course they are right on target.

The months ahead are going to be very difficult.

And with each passing day we continue to get more evidence that the economic slowdown is accelerating.  For example, it appears that a “transportation recession” has already begun

A downturn, if not a full-on recession, is clear in the transportation world. While the rest of the economy debates whether things are that bad, it’s been clear for months to logistics providers that the situation has worsened — and the velocity of that change is still stunning.

The cost to move a container from Asia to a major port in North America or Europe has sunk by 23% since the beginning of this year, according to maritime research firm Drewry. Spot rates have plummeted even faster; marketplace Freightos said rates from China to the West Coast are down 38% month-over-month. FreightWaves forecast this week that ocean shipping volumes will “drop off a cliff” by this summer, based on slumping bookings out of China.

Meanwhile, the most absurd housing bubble in the history of our country is clearly starting to burst.  Compared to a year ago, mortgage applications were down a whopping 21 percent last week…

This just keeps getting worse: Applications for mortgages to purchase a home dropped 7% for the week, and were down 21% from a year ago, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported today. An indicator of future home sales: Potential homebuyers try to get pre-approved for a mortgage, lock in a mortgage rate, and then start house-hunting.

Mortgage rates have soared this year, and home prices have soared for years to ridiculous levels, causing layers and layers of potential buyers to abandon the market, amid “worsening affordability challenges,” as the MBA called it.

On top of everything else, jobless claims just shot up to their highest level in almost six months

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits unexpectedly jumped last week, spiking to the highest level since mid-January in a sign the hot labor market could be starting to cool.

Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show that applications for the week ended June 4 rose to 229,000 from an upwardly revised 202,000 a week earlier, missing the 210,000 forecast by Refinitiv analysts. It marked the biggest one-week increase since last July. The four-week average of new claims, which smooths volatility in the weekly figures, also increased slightly to 215,000 last week.

But even though all of these numbers clearly indicate that a “recession” is coming, a potential “recession” is not the number one economic concern for most Americans.

That is because the worst inflation crisis in modern American history is hitting all of us extremely hard.

According to a FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll that was just released, 52 percent of Americans believe that inflation is “the most important issue facing the country” right now…

At this point, the answer to what Americans are most worried about is pretty straightforward: inflation. In the first FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, 52 percent of Americans said the most important issue facing the country was inflation. We asked Americans this question in a variety of ways, but regardless of how we asked it, the top answer was always the same: inflation.

Other surveys have come up with similar results.  For example, just check out these numbers from the Pew Research Center…

Seven-in-ten Americans view inflation as a very big problem for the country, followed by the affordability of health care (55%) and violent crime (54%).

About half say gun violence and the federal budget deficit are very big problems (51% each), according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted April 25-May 1 among 5,074 U.S. adults.

Inflation is something that the American people can see on a daily basis.

On Thursday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States hit five dollars a gallon for the first time ever.

And as I pointed out the other day, experts are warning that it will soon cross the six dollar threshold.

The grocery store is another place where all of us can clearly see the rampant inflation that is happening.  A single shopping cart of food can easily cost $300 these days, and that is absolutely insane.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning, and most Americans realize this.  In fact, one survey just discovered that approximately two-thirds of us expect inflation to get even worse over the next year

The Federal Reserve, the Biden administration, and Wall Street’s economists are confident that inflation will be brought down over the coming year. The American public disagrees.

Two-thirds of Americans say they expect inflation to get worse over the next year, according to a poll conducted by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government.

Some of us have been warning for years that the decisions that our leaders were making would destroy the stability of our currency.

Now nightmarish inflation is officially here.

And some of us have been warning for years that our rapidly growing long-term economic problems would eventually result in a meltdown of epic proportions.

Now that meltdown has begun.

Our fate could have been very different if we would have chosen a much different path while we still had the chance.

But now it is too late, and the pain that is ahead is going to be greater than many Americans will be able to handle.

1957 America. Some Say This Time Was Paradise.

A great look at what once was…
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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 5

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Cats, nuclear bombs, robot mice, and incredible hulk hamsters

It’s an awful strange time that we are living though. Indeed, the entire world seems to be upside down. The United States is arming Nazis with nuclear delivery systems for freedom, and is willing to risk global world war 3 over transgender queer rights while at the same time President Biden plans on allowing the second amendment to be enforced but not allowing anyone to buy or sell anything related to a firearm.  I calls it the Canadian influence. Perhaps it’s time to play with the kitties and turn off the “news” for a change. Eh? What do you think?

The tanker fallout from impending Russian insurance ban

The likely insurance ban that both the UK and the European Union are looking to put on any tankers carrying Russian oil anywhere in the world is expected to create a huge further shake-up in tanker fortunes. The insurance ban follows swiftly on from news the EU is to stop taking seaborne imports of Russian oil this year.
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Crunching the numbers on what the outcome could be is Poten & Partners, the New York-based tanker brokers, which has predicted that all the sanctions, especially with the extra pressure of the insurance ban, could see Russia cut its exports from the Black Sea and the Baltic by 50% to 1m barrels per day each.
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Aframaxes and suezmaxes are the preferred tankers to export crude from the Baltic and the Black Sea. If an insurance ban takes most of the international tanker fleet out the equation, Russia, China and India will have to use domestically owned or controlled tonnage to move the crude, Poten pointed out in its latest weekly report.
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For the Baltic exports, Poten reckons。。。
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Article HERE

US-China relations: East Timor isn’t ‘taking sides’ but it wants Beijing’s help, says president

Note: anyone aware that Australia bullied and looted East Timor 18 years of oil in their joint venture in the East Timor part of the seas, until East Timor successfully make the case to UN in recent years. During that period, East Timor entered failed state listing.
Independence hero Jose Ramos-Horta has his sights set on expanding cooperation with China via the ‘extraordinary vision’ of the Belt and Road Initiative.  The 72-year-old hero maintains his country won’t get involved in any US-China rivalry, but analysts say it’s going to be a tough balancing act to pull off.
...that the aim was to maintain an equal distance from all major powers, while still keeping the door open to trade and investment.

“What we want is the best for our own national interests. In my case, I will make decisions that are in the best interests of the people of Timor Leste,” Ramos-Horta said, using the country’s official name. “We welcome strong ties with all, the US, China, Australia, Indonesia and … [other] Asean countries, we are not going to say we are taking anyone’s side.”

Article HERE

This Fuffy Cat Has A Better Life Than Most Of Us

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Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur. Very hot photo series by the Vietnamese photographer Lữ Phúc Anh Dũng. Purr-lease…

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Ukraine war: FOUR UK squaddies go AWOL to fight Putin’s forces including 19-year-old Queen’s Guard

AWOL? Apparently, UK dare not official admit it directly involved in war against the Russians in Ukraine.
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FOUR UK squaddies go AWOL to fight in Ukraine: MoD launches desperate hunt to find 19-year-old Queen’s Guard last heard of on the Polish border and three colleagues amid fears Putin could claim Britain has entered the war if they are captured

Article HERE

VW defends Xinjiang operations amid alleged rights abuses

Ignored all the agenda based language, the reality of this report is, western companies voted for China:

The German car giant has claimed its presence in Xinjiang has a positive impact despite reports of ongoing human rights abuses. VW is also facing accusations of using slave labor in Brazil under the former dictatorship.

The CEO of German car manufacturer Volkswagenhas defended the presence of a Volkwagen factory in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, where Beijing has been accused of carrying out human rights abuses, during an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt.

While several major corporations ended their operations in Xinjiang following US claims that China is committing "genocide" against the Muslim Uyghur minority, VW boss Herbert Diess said that the joint-venture partner SAIC Volkswagen would not close its factory there.

In comments published Monday, he said the company had been active in Xinjiang for years, but that the "small factory" there was economically "insignificant."

Asked whether VW would end operations in protest, Diess told Handelsblatt: "We could do that. But we won't, because we believe that our presence has a positive impact."

Article HERE

The United States continues to poke and taunt Russia

People! This is NOT how you diffuse a dangerous situation.

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2022 06 05 11 47

Hong-Kong Based Company Makes Cat ‘LEGOS’ For People Who Love All Things Cat

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If Lego and cats are among your favorite things in this world, now you can order a playful statue made of ‘Legos’ to liven up even the dullest office space or a living room. Hong-Kong-based company Jekca offers mini Lego sculptures for ‘kidults’ that come around 1.6 ft each – and their variety will surprise even the pickiest of customers.

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Available in a variety of colours and patterns the 1.6 ft high cats aren’t available in different breeds however they do come in various positions, whether that’s perched on a table top or playfully stretching on the sofa. The good news is that the LEGO sculptures won’t fall part either –

“These cats are like real sculptures and will not collapse or break apart,” the company writes over on its Facebook page. So there you have it – purrfect if you love all things ‘cat’.”

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Creamy Ground Beef Noodle Casserole

“Comfort” is the key word for this creamy ground beef and noodle casserole that makes a memorable meal out of simple ingredients.

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fe6e9467 247e 4b3d 9694 973a818eeab1

Ingredients

  • 8 oz uncooked farfalle pasta (about 2 1/2 cups)
  • 1 lb ground beef
  • 1 can (15 oz) Muir Glen™ organic tomato sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 cup cottage cheese
  • 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
  • 3/4 cup sliced green onions
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese (12 oz)

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2022 06 03 20 35

‘Shooting themselves in the foot’: Western sanctions on Russia

Moscow has diversified its commodities exports as the EU faces the difficult task of replacing Russia as its energy supplier, analysts say.

Article HERE

New UK Gov. report confirms COVID Vaccination significantly increases the risk of Death and kills hundreds of thousands after five months

I don’t normally post about the mRNA stuff, but jeeze!

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2022 06 05 20 06

This is not a conspiracy theory. Even the UK government admits that mRNA injections are deadly.

On the 17th May, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its latest dataset on deaths by vaccination status in England, and it has revealed a whole host of shocking findings.

For example we now know that according to the ONS, 70,000 people have died within 28 days of Covid-19 vaccination in England, and 179,000 people have died within 60 days.

We also now know that Covid-19 vaccination increases children’s risk of death between 8,100% and 30,200%.

But it turns out that once you dig a little deeper into data, you find that Covid-19 vaccination actually increases the mortality rate of everyone within approximately 5 months.

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2022 06 05 20 07

Article HERE

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Capable Of Striking Any Part Of US, Russia Conducts ‘Massive Drills’ With Nuclear-Capable Yars 24 Missile

Russia’s forces are conducting nuclear drills in the Ivanovo province, northeast of Moscow, involving some 1,000 servicemen and over 100 vehicles, including Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, the Russian defense ministry has said.

“In the Ivanovo region, autonomous launchers of the Yars mobile ground-based missile system of the Strategic Missile Forces (Teikovsky formation) are performing intensive maneuvering actions on combat patrol routes as part of the exercises,” the Russian Defense Ministry was cited as saying by the Interfax news agency.

The Strategic Missile Forces are the main component of Russia’s nuclear forces, whose purpose is nuclear deterrence.

The equipment used by Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) included the ‘RS-24 Yars’ an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range of up to 11,000 km (6,500 miles), equipped with multiple warheads having individual guidance units.

Such a range can enable Russia to strike any target in the US.

In addition, the drill also involves the use of new Typhoon-M Combat anti-sabotage vehicles to detect, block and destroy threats to Yars.

It is said to be equipped with the latest reconnaissance technology as well as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and is supposed to destroy subversion and reconnaissance groups of the enemy.

During the maneuvers, the MDR Listva remote demining vehicle was used to escort the Yars mobile ground-based missile system on combat patrol routes. The MDR neutralized the remotely controlled explosive devices planted along the route of the column by conditional saboteurs.

Reports suggest that one of the top priorities of this exercise was to simulate a wide array of scenarios relating to searching and destroying conditional sabotage and reconnaissance formations of the enemy in the daytime and at night.

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2022 06 03 20 15

“The exercise makes it possible to improve the level of training of personnel, the coherence of formations and military units of the Strategic Missile Forces,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said.

Japanese Company Releases Line Of ‘Crotch Charms’ For Women To Dangle From Their Swimsuits Between Their Legs

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A Japanese company is selling what might be one of the most uncomfortable and impracticable pieces of jewelry ever dreamed up.

BoDivas, based in Tokyo, is offering the strange item, which they call the ‘Beachtail’ and describe as ‘sexy charms for bikini crotch’. The metallic charms are meant to be worn through the crotch of bikini bottoms, so the decorations dangle between a woman’s legs.

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Russia’s Nuclear Threat To NATO Countries

Russian nuclear forces have been on a high alert since the onset of the Ukraine war and some of the top Kremlin officials and state-owned media have repeatedly threatened nuclear strikes on NATO countries.

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2022 06 03 20 16

In late May, the head of Russia’s space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, warned that Russia would have about 50 Sarmat missiles by autumn 2022, capable of reducing all enemies to a “nuclear crater.”

Earlier, a Russian state-backed television channel had simulated a terrifying nuclear attack on Europe and issued a warning that there would be “no survivors”.

“One Sarmat missile and the British Isles will be no more,” nationalist politician Aleksey Zhuravlyov told Channel One’s ’60 Minutes, a show hosted by Evgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva, also known as the ‘Iron Doll of Putin TV’.

The show presented a diagram of how the missiles could be launched from Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave sandwiched between Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic Sea. It stated that a nuclear strike could destroy Berlin in 106 seconds, Paris in 200 seconds, and London in 202 seconds.

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Mystery Orbs and Wobbulating Beams

The following is an excerpt from Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius

On one occasion, Bill Moore and Paul Bennewitz were on the deck of Bennewitz’s condo when he instructed Moore to set the shutter speed of his camera to 1000 and snap some random photos of the general landscape which encompassed Kirtland AFB and Manzano Mountain. When Moore later developed these photos, several shots revealed a curious tube of light that was only visible at this 1000th of a second setting. By using this shutter setting, Bennewitz had presumably employed a method of photographing images otherwise unseen by the naked eye.

Another oddity Bennewitz observed were orange orbs that frequently materialized in his home. Bill Moore later confirmed seeing one of these softball-sized orbs, which he described as three dimensional and self-illuminating, hovering near the ceiling. According to film maker Mark Pilkington:

“Others had noticed the orbs too. On one of his many trips out to the Bennewitz home to check up on things when the family was out (i.e., break-ins) Doty and two NSA operatives had disconnected the alarm system and were just about to start snooping around when they noticed one of the balls floating underneath a central stairway in the large entry room. “It was orange and had sparkles in it,” said Doty. “I asked the other guys: ‘Is it one of yours?’” But the NSA men were mystified as well, and the trio tried to see if the phenomenon was projected from outside of the house somewhere. No dice. ‘We never did figure out what that was,’ said Doty. Perhaps the NSA was in fact responsible, but if so, they never admitted this to anyone outside their circle.” 1 

Orbs weren’t the only weird things buzzing about Bennewitz. National Security Agency (NSA) operatives had moved into a vacant building across the street from Bennewitz’s home in an attempt to monitor his activities. Although Bennewitz didn’t know if the strangers across the street were actually government agents, or aliens in disguise, he somehow determined that they were scanning him with high tech equipment. Bennewitz said he could “sense their sweep” and that it caused a stinging sensation on his body. Over time, Bennewitz grew to suspect that this “sweep” had been performed by an ET beam. On one occasion, Bill Moore was visiting Bennewitz and also experienced this sensation, describing it as a beam that scanned his body.

To combat this perceived ET beam, Bennewitz constructed his very own spacegun. “The speed of my weapon exceeds that of their weapons and in its most sophisticated form can be readily computer controlled to allow extremely rapid tracking and lock-on regardless of speed along with electronic wobbulation of the beam.” 2 Bennewitz further claimed that: “Two small prototypes have been funded and constructed by my Company. Tests conducted to date indicate they do work and work rather well considering their small size…” 3

The beam or “scan” that Bennewitz and Moore experienced could have conceivably been a form of directed-energy weapon that was first reported in development during the late 1990s by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Kirtland Air Force Base. According to researcher Christian Lambright:

“In 2001, the AFRL publicly revealed the existence of Active Denial Technology (ADT), which was referred to, behind closed doors, as the ‘pain beam,’ a science fiction sounding “microwave beam that heats the water in the surface layer of the skin where the pain-sensing nerves are, and can do so from a considerable distance…By all accounts, the sudden and intense pain is enough to cause virtual panic as people desperately try to get away from the beam. Research into such ‘non-lethal’ weapons has reportedly been going on since the mid-1980s, though it is an outgrowth of research into radar and electromagnetic pulse technology.” 4

During the ADT’s 2001 public roll-out, a contraption called the Active Denial System (ADS) was demonstrated, which consisted of a large antenna mounted atop a military transport. In 2003, Eric Adams—an associate editor with Popular Science Magazine—volunteered himself, guinea pig style, to test the effects of this technology. According to Lambright:

“[Adams] had the system fired at him from a half mile away with the directed-energy beam controlled to hit him only in the middle of his back. In less than two seconds, he experienced a warm sensation that quickly grew to feel like an ‘electric burner.’ Though in this demonstration the purpose was to show that the ADS could generate only enough pain to motivate someone to leave the area, in a 2007 accident at Moody AFB, Georgia, an exposure of four seconds at 100% power injured one person seriously enough to require being flown to a local burn center. However, at lower power levels the beam can produce only a mild feeling of warmth and, as the above demonstration showed, it can be focused on a relatively small area even over a substantial distance…” 5

Lambright notes the existence of “man-portable” ADS-like systems in development as far back as the early 1970s. A 1972 Time Magazine article entitled “The Death Ray” described “a portable chemically-powered laser” that could “silently burn a fatal, quarter-inch-wide hole in the body of an enemy soldier up to five miles away…Much of the Pentagon’s laser weaponry research is being conducted in great secrecy at Kirtland Air Force Base, outside Albuquerque.” Lambright goes on to say:

“The above Time Magazine article was written forty years ago, and we are left to wonder how the research may have developed since then. Perhaps it melded into the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Directed Energy Directorate and a little-known research group located at Kirtland Air Force Base…Even more interesting, is word of the Portable Efficient Laser Testbed (PELT), which was described in the above New Scientist article…as the ‘first man-portable heat compliance weapon of its kind.’ Cursory information on this weapon appeared in a Department of Defense (DoD) document titled Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Exercise Reference Book published in 2003, which listed the PELT laser rifle as a classified program. Included in the document is an illustration of this decidedly futuristic looking weapon and, if you look closely, it sports the unique logo of the ScorpWorks…

“What about the choice of the unusual name ‘ScorpWorks’? It was one of the questions I addressed to the AFRL Public Relations Office and, as expected, they acknowledged that the name is a play on the infamous Skunkworks, the secretive advanced aircraft division of Lockheed. The reference to a scorpion is supposed to reflect the Southwest flavor of their New Mexico location. But a scorpion being selected to symbolize the types of weapons the ScorpWorks develops, directed energy beam weapons with painful effects, also brought to mind what Paul Bennewitz complained about. It is what scorpions do. When a scorpion strikes… it stings… “ 6 

ADS was subsequently deployed to Afghanistan during the 2010 Iraq War, but never used due to “ethical and safety concerns” and was “deemed too unpredictable to use in war zones.” 7 However, as recently as the Summer of 2020, the Trump administration was toying with the idea of using ADS on its own citizenry. According to a National Public Radio (NPR) article dated September 16, 2020:

“… Joint Forces Headquarters Command in Washington, D.C., confirmed to NPR that hours before federal police officers cleared a crowded park near the White House with smoke and tear gas on June 1, a military police staff officer asked if the D.C. National Guard had a kind of ‘heat ray’ weapon that might be deployed against demonstrators in the nation’s capital.” The command “inquired informally about capabilities across the full-spectrum of non-lethal systems, to include the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) and Active Denial System (ADS)…” 8 

Soon after, The Washington Post matched NPR’s reporting citing the congressional testimony of Major Adam D. DeMarco, the senior-most D.C. National Guard officer on the ground when the hammer went down in Lafayette Square. Not only did DeMarco contradict White House denials that they hadn’t used tear gas on protestors, but DeMarco also provided an email from June 1, 2020 that stated:

“…the Defense Department’s top military police officer in the Washington region… asked whether the unit had a Long Range Acoustic Device, also known as an LRAD, or a microwave-like weapon called the Active Denial System, which was designed by the military to make people feel as if their skin is burning when in range of its invisible rays…”

The email went on to describe ADS in glowing terms:

“ …the ability to reach out and engage potential adversaries at distances well beyond small arms range, and in a safe, effective, and nonlethal manner…The ADS can immediately compel an individual to cease threatening behavior or depart through application of a directed energy beam that provides a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin. The effect is overwhelming, causing an immediate repel response by the targeted individual.”

Ultimately, federal officials were unable to get their hands on an ADS device and instead opted for tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd from Lafayette Square so that President Trump could stage a photo op of himself holding a bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

The former guy, preparing to burst into flames, after placing his tiny fingers on a Bible.
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Apparently, this wasn’t the first such instance in which the Trump admin contemplated using ADS on civilians. According to reporter Michael D. Shear in the August 26, 2020 edition of The New York Times:

“Fifteen days before the 2018 midterm elections, as President Trump sought to motivate Republicans with dark warnings about caravans heading to the U.S. border, he gathered his homeland security secretary and White House staff to deliver a message: “extreme action” was needed to stop the migrants….That afternoon, at a separate meeting with top leaders of the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection officials suggested deploying a microwave weapon — a “heat ray” designed by the military to make people’s skin feel as if it is burning when they get within range of its invisible beams… Two former officials who attended the afternoon meeting at the Department of Homeland Security on Oct. 22, 2018, said the suggestion that the device be installed at the border shocked attendees, even if it would have satisfied the president…”

The Most Expensive Cat Toy That Your Cat Might Actually Play With

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Mousr is the only toy designed from the wheels up to play the way your cat wants. Mousr’s variety of tail attachments means he’s customizable to match just about any cat’s play style. With a switch of his tail, it’ll be like your cat is meeting Mousr for the very first time!

Bring the excitement of a cartoon cat and mouse chase right into your living room! Mousr’s suite of sensors and built-in artificial intelligence make him the most sophisticated cat toy on the market. Can your cat outsmart Mousr?

Started from $149.99 USD.

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New Milestone For China – World’s ‘Largest’ Amphibious Aircraft AG600 Conducts Its First Flight With New Configuration

On May 31, a new-configuration variant of China’s AG600 large amphibious aircraft flew for the first time over Zhuhai, South China’s Guangdong Province, reported state-run media, CGTN. 

The AG600, codenamed “Kunlong,” took off from Zhuhai Jinwan Airport at 10:55 am and conducted a series of test flight missions. It flew for 20 minutes before landing safely, with its entire control system functioning normally.

According to the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the successful flight heralds a new milestone for the AG600 project and a substantial breakthrough in improving the large amphibious aircraft’s firefighting functional model.

With a maximum take-off weight of 60 tones and a maximum water-storage capacity of up to 12 tones, this new configuration AG600 aircraft is specifically designed for firefighting missions. It meets China’s need for a large firefighting plane.

The aircraft is equipped with a pressure cabin, fly-by-wire flight control system, integrated avionics system, and systems for its future firefighting missions.

Key Part Of China’s Emergency-Rescue System

The AG600, along with the Y-20 heavy transporter and the C919 single-aisle passenger plane, is part of China’s major initiative to build a “large aircraft family” independently.

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2022 06 03 17 55

The aircraft is a critical piece of aviation equipment in China’s emergency-rescue system. According to the AVIC, it is also the first Chinese-made large specialized aircraft built under civil-aircraft airworthiness requirements.

This new-configuration AG600 amphibious aircraft conducted a successful maiden flight on Tuesday, according to the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). Due to the sophisticated nature of the aircraft’s future operations, it will require a variety of testing and must meet stringent standards.

It can operate in complex weather and environmental circumstances and rescue up to 50 people in a single mission.

The plane is expected to perform firefighting duties and enter service in 2023. The firefighting and rescue variants of the AG600 will be certified by the Civil Aviation Administration of China and delivered in 2024 and 2025, respectively.

AVIC said that it would aid in the development of the Chinese domestic air-emergency-rescue-product system, with the AG600 project serving as the driving force.

Capable of supporting China’s Ambitions  

China’s most recent five-year plan, spanning the years 2021 to 2025, recognized the AG600 as a vital program due to the country’s pressing need for an emergency rescue aircraft, as well as the strategic necessity for equipment that can support its bases in the South China Sea.

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2022 06 03 17 56
The AG600 is a hybrid aircraft that can take off and land on both land and water. It is intended for use in suppressing forest fires, maritime patrols, and search and rescue missions. It might also be used to observe the oceanic environment, explore resources, and transport people between islands.

The aircraft, if stationed in the southern island province of Hainan, will be likely to reach anywhere in the South China Sea in four hours. It might potentially operate as a cargo or passenger carrier between the region’s Chinese-controlled islands.

The propeller-driven plane, once finished, will be the world’s largest amphibious aircraft, surpassing Japan’s US-2 and Russia’s BE-200.

Another movie personality runs for office..

In a backwards run nation under mob-rule, only the television personalities stand a chance at “joining the club” of wealthy power elite. Like the head of Ukraine, and Donald Trump, these actors play roles that they script out and pretend to occupy. It’s the future of the West manifesting here and now.

Pennsylvania Republicans have rallied behind a celebrity former TV host and political neophyte, choosing a charismatic convert to conservatism over a rival who espoused a purer form of the party’s modern doctrine.

The above sentence could have been written in 2016, when Donald Trump defeated Senator Ted Cruz in Pennsylvania’s presidential primary on his way to receiving the GOP nomination. But tonight it’s a description of Mehmet Oz, America’s favorite living-room M.D., who has finally won the Keystone State’s Republican nomination for Senate with help from the former president. Oz narrowly topped the financier David McCormick after McCormick unexpectedly conceded in the middle of a statewide recount.

From HERE

Four B-1B Bone Bombers Have Arrived At Andersen AFB In Guam

Tyler Rogoway
Article HERE

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2022 06 05 11 45

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A quartet of B-1B Bone bombers just arrived at Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam today. It isn’t clear if the bombers will be staying as part of the now sporadic bomber presence deployments to the Indo-Pacific region or if they are there to take part in a major exercise, or both. Valiant Shield, a series of large multi-domain wargames is getting underway in the region. There have also been some rumors that a B-1 deployment was imminent as a deterrent and hedge against North Korean actions, including a potential nuclear test.

In 2020, it was announced that after 16 years of fulfilling the Continous Bomber Presence mission to Guam, the Pentagon would opt for a far less predictable deployment plan to the region for its bombers.

What came after was a flurry of extremely long-range bomber patrols, many from the continental United States, to Russia’s eastern borders and the tumultuous South China Sea, as well as shorter deployments to Guam or Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean by the USAF’s B-1, B-52, and B-2 bomber force.

More pictures from the past…

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A “dream kitchen”…

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You know…

The “news” has become silly.

Scientists accidentally create super-vicious HAMSTERS in a lab after gene editing experiment goes wrong and makes aggressive rodents chase, bite and pin each other down

  • Gene editing lab test inadvertently makes horde of rage-fuelled hamsters
  • Scientists removed key hormone in the hope it would boost animals’ cooperation
  • But it turned them wild, prompting chasing, biting and pinning among hamsters
  • ‘We [thought] it would reduce aggression. But the opposite happened’: test chief
  • ‘We don’t understand this system as well as we thought we did’, Professor added 

Scientists inadvertently bred a horde of unusually aggressive hamsters after a gene editing experiment to ‘reduce aggression’ went wrong.

Researchers at Georgia State University produced new rodents without hormone vasopressin in an effort to raise ‘social communication’ between the rodents.

Yet the chemical change turned the Syrian hamsters wild, prompting fights inside cages.

The ultra-vicious hamsters were pictured pinning, biting and chasing each other.

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2022 06 05 11 38

Lead researcher Professor Elliott Albers said: ‘We anticipated […] we would reduce both aggression and social communication — but the opposite happened.’

They key hormone Avpr1a was thought to regulate friendship and bonding, with its removal expected to increase harmony between the animals.

Instead, the lab experiment recorded ‘high levels of aggression towards other same-sex individuals’.

Professor Albers said: ‘We were really surprised at the results.’

It was thought that vasopressin affects the social behaviours of hamsters including aggression and communication.

To investigate further, scientists deactivated Avpr1a, removing a receptor that interacts with vasopressin in key regions of the brain.

Now immune to the hormone, it was thought the rodents would become friendlier.

The results were anything but, with a heightened frequency of fighting, biting, chasing and pinning down among the hamsters in their cages.

The study’s striking conclusions challenge scientists’ understanding of the relationship between biology and behaviour.

The professor added: We don’t understand this system as well as we thought we did.

‘The counterintuitive findings tell us we need to start thinking about the actions of these receptors across entire circuits of the brain, not just in specific brain regions.

‘Developing gene-edited hamsters was not easy. But it is important to understand that the neurocircuitry involved in human social behaviour and our model has […] relevance for human health.’

Professor Albers said the gene editing tests are intended to help find solutions to neuropsychiatric disorders including autism and depression.

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2022 06 05 11 40

The West’s Big Lie Propaganda Machine never rests.

Unfortunately, brainwashed citizens in Eurangloland accept it as fact…

Russia Will Strike Decision-Making Centers – Not in Kiev — if U.S. Arms to Ukraine hit Russia

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The Deputy Chairman of Russia’s National Security Council (Their equivalent of a Senate) has warned that the Kremlin could target western cities if Ukraine uses rockets supplied by the US to carry out strikes on Russia.

President Joe Biden announced this week that his administration was sending long-range missiles to Ukraine, backtracking on an earlier statement that the US would not be giving the war-torn country advanced weaponry.

Dmitry Medvedev, a former President of Russia and current chairman of the national security council, warned there would be consequences if these were used against Russian soil.

He told Al Jazeera: ‘If, God forbid, these weapons are used against Russian territory then our armed forces will have no other choice but to strike decision-making centers. ‘Of course, it needs to be understood that the final decision-making centers in this case, unfortunately, are not located on the territory of Kyiv.’

The rocket systems being sent over to Ukraine will be able to strike enemy targets about 50 miles away.

Biden said it would help Ukraine on the battlefield as fighting intensifies in the east of the country.

The White House said it had agreed to provide Ukraine with the new missiles after receiving assurances from President Zelensky that they would not be used to hit targets inside Russia.

However, the Kremlin said it did not believe Zelensky.

‘The United States is directly and intentionally adding fuel to the fire,’ Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said.

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Silly, as the USA makes all the decisions for Ukraine. It's a puppet. 

When the USA sends missile systems that are nuclear capable, and range capable, and it's puppet promises not to use them... how fucking stupid do you think we are? -MM
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Meanwhile in the United States…

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Are You Upset About Inflation? If So, You Aren’t Alone.

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All of a sudden, just about everyone is upset about inflation.  It would have been nice if everyone would have been this upset back when our leaders were making the exceedingly foolish decisions that resulted in this crisis.  In May 2012, the federal government was 15 trillion dollars in debt.  Now we are 30 trillion dollars in debt, but our politicians continue to spend money as if tomorrow will never come.  Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of dollars that they created out of thin air into the financial system in recent years.  For a very long time, I passionately denounced what our leaders were doing, because I knew what would happen.  Now a day of reckoning has arrived, and millions upon millions of Americans are absolutely desperate for things to return to normal.  Unfortunately, that simply is not going to happen.

In May 2020, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was less than two dollars.

Today, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States reached a brand new record high of $4.62, and we are being warned that it could soon go to “$5 a gallon or more”

The national average for unleaded gas hit another new high of $4.62 per gallon Tuesday, according to AAA data. Prices are up more than 50% compared with last year.

Analysts say gasoline prices usually peak by mid-May, but this year prices at the pump could continue to rise into July and reach about $5 a gallon or more.

Most of the time, the vast majority of the population doesn’t pay much attention to economics.

But this is where the rubber meets the road, and two recent polls show very clearly that Americans are becoming increasingly frustrated…

An NBC News poll released earlier this month found that 33 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, while 23 percent approve of his handling of the cost of living.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll in early May found that more than 9 in 10 Americans are concerned, at a minimum, about the rate of inflation, which has been at a 40-year high for months. That included 44 percent who say they are “upset” about the problem.

In addition, Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index has now fallen to the lowest reading that we have seen since the end of the Great Recession

Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index measured -45 in May, down from -39 in each of the previous two months. It is the lowest reading in Gallup’s trend during the coronavirus pandemic, and likely the lowest confidence has been since the tail end of the Great Recession in early 2009.

When things go bad, who are people going to blame?

More than anyone else, people are going to blame the guy in the White House.

And right now the Biden administration is absolutely desperate “to contain the political damage caused by inflation”

The White House launched a new push Tuesday to contain the political damage caused by inflation after President Biden complained for weeks to aides that his administration was not doing enough to publicly explain the fastest price increases in roughly four decades.

Aiming to demonstrate to the public that it is responding to its concerns, Biden met with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell in the Oval Office, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about inflation and sent top aides across major networks to push the administration’s economic message.

What is Biden’s “economic message” exactly?

I have been sitting here pondering that question, and I honestly cannot answer it.

Every day, the story seems to change.  A while back, Biden promised to do all that he could to lower gasoline prices, and he foolishly released a million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

That didn’t work.

So what now?

One insider told Politico that high gasoline prices are “a really difficult issue to message around”, because “you can’t deny the reality”

The White House’s focus on gas prices is bred from two sobering political conclusions top officials have made. The first is that they have little control over the problem. The second is that as prices rise at the pump, so do Democrats’ odds of a midterm wipeout — especially as the average U.S. gallon of gas hits fresh record highs.

“There really isn’t one silver bullet,” said one person familiar with the discussions. “It’s a really difficult issue to message around when you can’t deny the reality.”

If Joe Biden asked me what he should do in order to reduce gasoline prices, the first thing I would say would be to stop doing things that are counterproductive.  The following comes from a recent editorial by Marc A. Thiessen

If the Biden administration cared about high gas prices, they would be doing everything in their power to increase domestic production. After a federal judge invalidated an offshore oil and gas lease sale in January, the administration chose not to appeal and has since canceled three transactions in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska — taking millions of acres off the auction block. The Post called the move “a victory for climate activists intent on curbing U.S. fossil fuel leasing,” which “effectively ends the possibility of the federal government holding a lease sale in coastal waters this year.” Worse, the administration is about to let the nationwide offshore drilling program expire next month without a new plan in place.

Moving forward, we need to remove mountains of regulations that have made it extremely difficult to build and operate new refineries in the United States.

And we need far more exploration and far more drilling as soon as possible.

Of course the truth is that this isn’t just a U.S. problem.

Energy prices are out of control all over the world, and they are actually much higher in Europe than they are here.

In fact, soaring energy prices are a big reason why inflation in the European Union just hit a brand new record high

Following Germany’s post-Weimar record high inflation print, the European Union’s consumer price inflation data this morning surged to a record high at +8.1% YoY (notably hotter than the +7.8% YoY expected).

Most Americans don’t realize this, but Europe is actually much closer to a full-blown economic meltdown than we are.

I expect the euro to fall below parity with the dollar in the not too distant future.

And I expect a nightmarish energy crunch in Europe as supplies from Russia are restricted or cut off completely.  Unless something changes, next winter is going to be a really challenging time for many European nations.

We have entered the worst energy crisis in modern history, but what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

Much worse is ahead, and the American people will become increasingly frustrated as prices just keep going higher and higher.

BBC offers a classic case of “smooth propaganda”. Can you spot the lies and layers of deception?

Elegant and devious, punctuated with half-truths, their brand of insidious “journalism” is a textbook of effective disinformation.

The BBC (like the New York Times) excels at disinformation with an authoritative touch. 

These media engines do not shout. 

Who wants to use a vulgar ax when innuendo, used as a stiletto, can accomplish so much more? 

Not surprising, then, that their "facts" and "arguments" —calibrated for a refined audience, and slyly embedded in many layers of deception not liable to be spotted by the untrained eye—are couched in what appears to be established truths and impeccable reasoning. 

Yet, as this piece so efficiently illustrates, almost every paragraph is tainted with a lie. 

Can you identify the lies? 

We'll give you a hint: the article uses one major stratagem to inject its poison—reality inversion. 

Almost everything in it is upside down. 

The people attacked are actually the truthtellers; the lonely few pushing against the vileness of tyrannical plutocratic elites masquerading as zealous champions of peace, freedom, and democracy. 

The people defended—like the notorious White Helmets, long exposed as a creation of British intelligence to facilitate regime change ops—are vectors for the lies upholding the Western imperialist order. 

For good measure, the pain of the "victims" is also exaggerated. 

And it doesn't help any that, by design, the discourse is also conducted in a contextual miasma in which some witnesses—like Dr Schlosberg—is seen loftily casting a curse on both warring houses. 

(Progressives of this type, who always end up carrying water for the Empire, are a regular fixture in Western political debates). 

It's also ironic but to be expected for these avatars of priggish "journalistic integrity", that while they are quick to mention in ominous tones that Dr Schlosberg (in connection with the largely debunked Bucha story) has been using some "Russian state media", they conveniently forget that the BBC itself is a huge media and propaganda instrument of the British state, an aggressive participant in many of the topics and events discussed in this story.

So give it a try. We'd like to hear what you have to say.

From HERE

Three-Cheese Beef Pasta Shells

These Three-Cheese Beef Pasta Shells can be ready to impress in no time at all. Perfect for company and cozy nights at home, this hearty dish only looks like you spent all day in the kitchen. In fact, you can pull stuffed pasta shells with ground beef together with just 25 minutes of prep time, then get the rest of the meal ready while it bakes. These stuffed shells with cream cheese, ground beef, melty cheese and pasta sauce bring a whole new meaning to the term “comfort food.” No matter the occasion, nothing satisfies quite like a warm dish of Three-Cheese Beef Pasta Shells.

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3526ddd5 fc58 4b9d 871e ca902621a15f

Ingredients

  • 24 uncooked jumbo pasta shells
  • 1 lb ground beef (at least 80% lean)
  • 1 jar (25.5 oz) Muir Glen™ organic chunky tomato & herb pasta sauce
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1 container (8 oz) chive and onion cream cheese spread
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded Italian cheese blend (6 oz)
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 egg
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, if desired

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2022 06 03 20 32

Killdozer

Out of the dust-bin, one of my long forgotten articles has gotten legs; The Tale of the Killdozer. My guess is that this is because it is approaching the anniversary of the event. In any event, I have got more than a random flood of visitors to the article.

Perhaps you all might want to mozy on over and check out this post; indeed, it is one of my better posts. It’s probably associated with the domestic insanity of the Biden Administration. Maybe that’s why so many people are visiting that article.

The Tale of the Killdozer.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 5

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are galloping ahead

Yah. The West is in collapse. It is obvious to everyone (except the deluded). And everyone is now “hunkering down”. Everyone has their “heads down”, and watching their actions, internet footprint, and activity. It’s the calm before the storm. It’s gathering. It’s gonna be nasty.

Watch out!

Uh Oh! Medvedev: “The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are galloping ahead”

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In a TV interview with Al Jazeera Television, Dimitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, said “This is not a forecast, but what’s already in play.  The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are galloping ahead, and we can only look towards God.”

Here is the video:

 

 

Medvedev was elected president of Russia in the 2008 election. He was regarded as more liberal than his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, who was also appointed prime minister during Medvedev’s presidency.

Medvedev’s top agenda as president was a wide-ranging modernization program, aiming at modernizing Russia’s economy and society, and lessening the country’s reliance on oil and gas.

During Medvedev’s tenure, the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty was signed by Russia and the United States, Russia emerged victorious in the Russo-Georgian War, and recovered from the Great Recession. Medvedev also launched an anti-corruption campaign, despite later being accused of corruption himself.

He served a single term in office and was succeeded by Putin following the 2012 presidential election. Medvedev was then appointed by Putin as prime minister. He resigned along with the rest of the government on 15 January 2020 to allow Putin to make sweeping constitutional changes; he was succeeded by Mikhail Mishustin on 16 January 2020. On the same day, Putin appointed Medvedev to the new office of deputy chairman of the Security Council.

The fact that Medvedev made direct reference to the “Horsemen of the Apocalypse” is utterly stunning to may observers because it signals how the leadership of Russia sees actual developments in the world.  Medvedev made clear “This is not a forecast, but what’s already in play.”

The Horsemen of the Apocalypse

(From Wikipedia) 

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (often referred to as the Four Horsemen) are figures in the Christian religion, first appearing in the Old Testament's prophetic Book of Zechariah and in the Book of Ezekiel, where they are named as punishments from God. They later appear in the New Testament's final book, Revelation, an apocalypse written by John of Patmos.

Revelation 6 tells of a book or scroll in God's right hand that is sealed with seven seals. The Lamb of God/Lion of Judah opens the first four of the seven seals, which summons four beings that ride out on white, red, black, and pale horses. Zechariah describes them as "the ones whom the Lord has sent to patrol the earth," causing it to rest quietly. Ezekiel lists them as "sword, famine, wild beasts, and plague".

In John's revelation, the first horseman rides on a white horse, carries a bow, and is given a crown – he rides forward as a figure of Conquest,[1][2] perhaps invoking PestilenceChrist, or the Antichrist. The second horseman carries a sword and rides a red horse and is the creator of (civil) War.[3] The third horseman, a food-merchant riding upon a black horse, symbolizes Famine. He carries The Scales.[4] The fourth and final horse is pale, and upon it rides Death.[5] "They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth."[6]
Apocalyptic Christianity sometimes interprets the Four Horsemen as a vision of harbingers of the Last Judgment, setting a divine end-time upon the world.[7][8]

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

Given the “wars and rumors of war from the east” as well as the ongoing pestilence of COVID and now, Monkeypox, as well as “signs in the Heavens and upon the earth” in the form of earthquakes, entire bodies of water turning blood red without explanation, and similar strange events,  it is not hard to see why Medvedev said what he said.

While the U.S. and its NATO vasal partners view things as mere “strategy” and “political positioning,” the leaders of Russia are viewing things from the perspective of the literal end of the world.  This  variance in the approach of national leadership may explain why the sides aren’t stopping the craziness going on over the special military operation to de-Nazify and de-militarize Ukraine.  Instead of de-escalating, pausing, or even taking a step back to reconsider, mankind is moving ahead toward the frightening reality of Armageddon.

Circumstances seem to keep pushing the United States and Russia closer and closer to a horrifying showdown.

If I was in the White House, I would be doing all that I could to try to find a way out of this mess.

Unfortunately, the guy currently leading our nation is a hothead in an advanced state of mental decline, and he is surrounded by the worst foreign policy team in U.S. history.  That is a recipe for disaster, but most Americans seem to be entirely convinced that a full-blown war with Russia is extremely unlikely.  Most of us seem to think that we can keep escalating the conflict in Ukraine without ever suffering any serious consequences.

Unfortunately, the Russians see things very differently.

On Russian television, there is constant discussion about how the conflict in Ukraine is really a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

On the state TV show 60 Minutes, host Olga Skabeeva announced: “I have some unpleasant news… Even though we are methodically destroying the weapons that are being delivered [to Ukraine], but the quantities in which the United States are sending them force us to come up with some global conclusions. Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that maybe Russia’s special operation in Ukraine has come to an end, in a sense that a real war had started: WWIII. We’re forced to conduct the demilitarization not only of Ukraine, but of the entire NATO alliance.”

Sadly, she is quite correct that World War III has now begun.

Let us hope that a way to stop it can be found before it goes nuclear.

Nuclear war is NOT a topic that is brought up much on American news channels, but in Russia it is regularly proposed as a potential option…

Vladimir Avatkov, from the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: “You mentioned WWIII and the way Americans and Poles are acting on the territory of Ukraine—indeed, we need to remember the words of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who said that anyone who tries to interfere in the special military operation will pay a heavy price.” Skabeeva interrupted: “We never forget about these words of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, but a great number of people are already standing in line, trying to interfere in Russia’s special operation on the territory of Ukraine. Turns out, we have to act—but we’re yet to figure out how we can act without conducting a nuclear strike.”

Reading something like that should chill you to the core.

When Russian journalists and politicians say stuff like this, why won’t we take them seriously?

Just the other day, one prominent Russian politician openly talked about destroying both coasts of the United States with Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles…

The politician, Alexie Zhuravlev, was joined on the talk show by fellow MP and Russian-state mouthpiece Yevgeny Popov, the host of the Rossiya 1 channel show.

The lawmaker claimed that two of Russia’s Sarmat  missiles would destroy the entirety of America’s east coast – before adding it would take just “two missiles for the west coast” as well.

“Four missiles and there’ll be nothing left.”

Russia’s Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles are far superior to anything that we have, and we have no defense against them.

If push comes to shove, I believe that the Russians will not hesitate to use their nuclear weapons.

Our leaders should be trying to find a peaceful way out of this crisis, but instead both sides just continue to escalate matters.

In fact, for the very first time Joe Biden has just promised to give long-range rocket systems that are capable of hitting targets inside Russia to Ukraine…

U.S. President Joe Biden has agreed to provide Ukraine with advanced rocket systems that can strike with precision at long-range Russian targets as part of a $700 million weapons package expected to be unveiled on Wednesday.

The United States is providing Ukraine with high mobility artillery rocket systems that can accurately hit targets as far away as 80 km (50 miles) after Ukraine gave “assurances” they will not use the missiles to strike inside Russia, senior administration officials said.

What an incredibly foolish move.

Has Biden gone completely insane?

In response, the Russians are holding missile drills…

The nuclear forces of Russia are holding drills in a region just northeast of Moscow.

The decision to begin these drills comes just one day after President Joe Biden announced his decision to send advanced missile system to Ukraine, the New York Post reported.

According to an independent news agency in Russia, around 1,000 Russian soldiers are taking part in intense maneuvers using more than 100 military vehicles, including Yars intercontinental missile launchers.

Yikes!

At this point, the U.S. is providing most of the new military equipment for the war in Ukraine, most of the intelligence for the war in Ukraine, and U.S. Secretary of State Lloyd Austin has publicly admitted that we are actually bringing Ukrainians into the United States to train them to go back and fight in the war.

And now we have learned that the U.S. has actually been conducting “offensive hacking operations” against Russia…

General Nakasone confirmed for the first time that the US was conducting offensive hacking operations in support of Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion.
He told Sky News: “We’ve conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum; offensive, defensive, [and] information operations.”

What are we thinking?

Have our leaders really become this reckless?

Once a full-blown war with Russia starts, there will be no going back.

But right now many Americans are so self-obsessed that they don’t even realize that our leaders in Washington have brought us to the brink of the unthinkable.

We have become a country full of self-destructive degenerates that are so out of it that we don’t even realize what we are doing to ourselves.

There is a small minority of the population that is awake, but most Americans are in a deep state of sleep.  I am doing my best to try to wake them up, but most of the population simply does not want to listen.

The corporate media is telling them to hate Russia, and so most of them are going to keep cheering for more escalation until it is far too late to reverse course.

If we keep escalating the conflict in Ukraine, the Russians could eventually be put into a position where they feel like they are forced to make a very difficult decision.

And when that day finally arrives, you better hope that they don’t decide to pull the trigger.

Economic fiasco, nuclear fiasco, societal fiasco, the truth is clear…

The American (and western) societies have collapsed. Their governments are on “zombie autopilot”, and those in (functional) control are hard-line religious technocrat zealots. You all should be in your “life boat” right now. The fight for life-preservers will be on-going over the next few months. -MM

We start with what will happen on a day to day basis…

Pay for play for the rest of us

You know how “pay-to-play” works: contribute a couple of million dollars to key political players, and then get your tax break, subsidy, no-bid contract, etc., slipped into some nook or cranny of the legislative process that few (if any) will notice because the legislation is hundreds of pages long or a “gut and replace” magic wand was wielded at the last minute.

As the essential systems of everyday life break down and become increasingly dysfunctional, I predict the rise of what I’m calling “pay-to-play” for the rest of us: if you pay for expedited service, concierge service, etc., you will get the kind of service everyone used to get, i.e. functional, prompt and efficient.

As I detailed in Who’s Going to Fix What’s Broken?, systems such as vehicle registration and tax collection are becoming kafkaesque quagmires where the expected (or promised) services are not provided or are botched.

Waiting for services at the DMV, IRS, et al. and the county welfare office are identical experiences. Poor people have no choice but to put up with long waits and bureaucratic quagmires, but the top 10% who earn almost half of all income and are responsible for roughly half the consumer spending are not amused by services that are equivalent to what the bottom 10% must tolerate out of necessity.

Since nobody in power is truly interested in fixing these large-scale, complex systems, then it’s easy to predict the rise of “pay-to-play” for the rest of us: pay an extra fee, get much better service.

There are already examples of this trend. For example, if you want expedited processing of your U.S. passport renewal, that will cost you $60. Given my previous experience with passport renewals, I was happy to pay the extra $60 just to have some additional assurance I was actually going to receive the new passport in a timely manner.

Would I have paid an extra $100 for “expedited processing” of my DMV registration to avoid a 7-month descent into bureaucratic Heck? Yes, with no hesitation whatsoever. Would I have paid $200 for “expedited processing” of my federal tax return to bypass that 7-month kafkaesque quagmire? Gladly, without hesitation.

How about a $500 “expedited processing” of your building permit? Given that those long months of slogging through the quagmire cost real money, a $500 “concierge service” fee to get your permit in 8 weeks rather than 8 months would be a bargain.

“Pay-to-play” is inherently unfair: the wealthy get their interests served, the rest of us tax donkeys and debt-serfs slog through kafkaesque quagmires. “Pay-to-play” for the rest of us will also be inherently unfair, but at least it will democratize “pay-to-play” to the degree that a couple hundred bucks will actually buy better service, and that’s within reach of many more households than the million dollars required to access political “pay-to-play.”

If systems can’t or won’t be fixed, then having access to the 10% which still functions is worth a great deal. The more kafkaesque quagmires you’ve slogged through, the more you hope “pay-to-play” for the rest of us becomes ubiquitous.

How much would you pay for expedited emergency services?

Ponder that thought as you check out some funny cartoons…

What Would Animals Say If They Could Speak?

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All of us have already wondered what animals think and what they would say to us if they could talk. Jimmy Craig tried to answer this question with these amusing comics which are part of a series called “They Can Talk.”

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Amusing, huh?Consider that Hunter Biden is a multi-millionaire. that he makes a living for “being in the club” and arranging the mass deaths of “enemies of the Untied States” by WMD. Now consider how others “in the club” get by.Nope. You can never aspire to be part of this club…

Top-Paid LA Lifeguards Earned Up To $510,283 In 2022

Wednesday, Jun 01, 2022 – 05:00 AM

By Adam Andrzejewski of Open The Books substack

Who knew that LA lifeguards – who work in the sun, ocean surf, and golden sands of California – could reap such unbelievable financial rewards?

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2022 06 04 10 24

It’s time we put Baywatch on pay watch. In 2019, we found top-paid lifeguards made up to $392,000.

Unfortunately, today, the pay and benefits are even more lucrative.

Daniel Douglas was the most highly paid and earned $510,283, an increase from $442,712 in 2020. As the “lifeguard captain,” he out-earned 1,000 of his peers: salary ($150,054), perks ($28,661), benefits ($85,508), and a whopping $246,060 in overtime pay.

The second highest paid, lifeguard chief Fernando Boiteux, pulled down $463,517 – up from $393,137 last year.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found 98 LA lifeguards earned at least $200,000 including benefits last year, and 20 made between $300,000 and $510,283. Thirty-seven lifeguards made between $50,000 and $247,000 in overtime alone.

And it’s not only about the cash compensation. After 30 years of service, LA lifeguards can retire as young as 55 on 79-percent of their pay.

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2022 06 04 10 25

Furthermore, we found that most of the top-paid lifeguards were men. In fact, only two of the top 20 high-earners were women: Virginia Rupe ($307,664; 16th highest paid), a lifeguard captain, and Lauren Dale ($303,518; 19th highest paid), an ocean lifeguard specialist.

Overtime pay drove earnings into the corporate executive range.

Last year alone, 37 lifeguards made overtime in amounts between $50,000 and $247,000. For example, Daniel Douglas (overtime: $246,060); James Orr (overtime: 146,506); Patrick O’Neil (overtime: $133,235); and five others each made six-figures plus.

However, in a six-year period, between 2016 and 2021, the LA lifeguard corps made a fortune in overtime. The top three high earners made between $505,579 and $980,007 in overtime alone: Daniel Douglas ($980,007); Jaro Spopek ($513,365); and James Orr ($505,579).

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2022 06 04 10 27

Some high-earning lifeguards also win awards for heroism. However, we found many lifeguards winning Valor Awards failed to crack the top of the payroll.

In 2020, the Medal of Valor winner, Edward “Nick” Macko (salary: $134,144), an ocean lifeguard, jumped into the rough waters in a remote Palos Verdes gorge and pulled a man to safety through potentially skull-crushing swells and over razor-sharp rocks.

In 2021, the Exemplary Service Award for EMS went to lifeguards Todd Ribera (comp: $184,676); Stephen Leon Jr. (comp: $36,597); Max Malamed (comp: $130,952); and Blake Hubbell (comp: $170,956).

Also winning Exemplary Service Awards were high-earners: ocean lifeguard specialist Lauren Dale ($303,518), the 19th highest paid lifeguard, and lifeguard captain Roque Roque ($319,566), the sixth highest paid in 2020.

Beach lifeguard pay dwarfs that of their colleagues at the pools. The highest paid “pool lifeguard” made $45,030, including pay and benefits.

During the pandemic, lifeguards continued to work and took additional precautions doing water rescues. Many traded their trunks and sunscreen for masks and scrubs at Covid testing sites. In some cases, lifeguards acted as police, enforcing stay-at-home orders, keeping people off the beaches and out of the water.

Why beach lifeguards earn so much money is an open question the L.A. taxpayer might start asking.

A lifeguard’s job can be dangerous, but it’s unclear why they are now paid up to a half million dollars a year.

Really?

Consider the payment rates of “diversity officers”.

How much does a Director, Diversity & Inclusion make in the United States? 

The average Director, Diversity & Inclusion salary in the United States is $106,958 as of , but the salary range typically falls between $91,540 and $123,411. 

Salary ranges can vary widely depending on many important factors, including education, certifications, additional skills, the number of years you have spent in your profession. 

With more online, real-time compensation data than any other website, Salary.com helps you determine your exact pay target.

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2022 06 04 11 46

Ugh. Makes me sick.

Here, enjoy a nice unique burger flavor…

Grilled Italian Sausage Burgers

Inject come spice into your next barbecue with quick and easy Italian sausage burgers, fresh off the grill. Thick slices of mozzarella and sun-dried tomato mayo make simple, savory finishing touches.

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db5bc70d 726d 4741 b728 86d8495b4a5d

Ingredients

  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 1/2 pound bulk mild or hot Italian sausage
  • 2 tablespoons Progresso™ Italian-style bread crumbs
  • 6 slices (3/4 ounce each) mozzarella cheese
  • 12 slices Italian bread, 1/2 inch thick
  • 1/2 cup sun-dried tomato mayonnaise
  • 1 cup shredded lettuce
  • 1 medium tomato, thinly sliced

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2022 06 03 20 49

Why America Decays: The Tyranny Of Self-Interest

Wednesday, Jun 01, 2022 – 04:30 AM

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Only those societies which still have a functional public interest / common good will survive; those ruled by the tyranny of self-interest will fall.

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2022 06 04 10 30

I’ve discussed the moral rot consuming the American Project in blog posts and my books. This moral rot–perhaps better described as civic decay–is so pervasive and ubiquitous that we are forgiven for assuming “this is the way it’s always been.”

This inability to discern the rot is the result of the gradualness of the decay. There are many analogies: the slowly boiled frog, the way in which weight gain creeps up on us, and so on. This is the result of humanity’s finely tuned knack to habituate to any new environment and normalize what would have been intolerable in the recent past.

We adapt to changing expectations, incentives, values and realities over time and forget the way our world functioned in previous eras.

There are many examples of this. Many of the changes in our society, politics and economy can be traced back to the early 1980s, when financialization (and its offspring, regulatory capture and pay-to-play) began its rise to supremacy.

Forty years ago, student loans were unknown and healthcare costs did not bankrupt households. Forty years ago, relatively few Americans were obese. Go back a decade further, prior to the explosion of fast-food outlets, and a small percentage of the money Americans spent on food went to eating out / away from home, i.e. fast-food and restaurants. Eating out was a treat reserved for special occasions, not a daily ritual / birthright.

In the post-Vietnam era, Americans were wary of foreign entanglements. The Presidency wasn’t quite as Imperial as it is today. Congress still held some modest power over foreign entanglements. This is no longer the case.

The most insightful way to grasp the pervasive moral rot is to examine the tyranny of self-interest: in the past, the public interest / common good still had a foothold in the nation’s values, incentives and expectations. Now the public interest / common good are nothing but paper-thin PR cover for maximizing private gains by any means available, i.e. the supremacy of self-interest.

Our ability to discern the difference between serving the public interest / common good and making a modest profit doing so and harming the common good to maximize private gains has been lost. There are many such examples. The financialized self-interest behind student loans, healthcare, national defense, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Everything–i.e. cartels and monopolies–is visible in every nook and cranny of the U.S. economy, political structure and economy.

Synthetic opioids offer a good example. Under the preposterously false guise of “serving the common good” with painkillers, Big Pharma caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands more via the devastation of addiction– addiction which Big Pharma was pleased to promote as non-addictive because this served to maximize profits.

As is now the norm, no one is held personally responsible for this completely needless public health catastrophe. A few wrist-slap fines are administered and life in America goes back to the relentless urgency to maximize private gains by any means available: fraud, deception, overbilling, embezzlement, regulatory capture, pay-to-play, and so on.

The phony PR cover for the the tyranny of self-interest is that the pursuit of maximizing profits by any means available magically benefits the public. The apologists trot out various example of planned obsolescence as “proof” that the supremacy of self-interest is the golden road to a glorious society, but all this careful cherry-picking doesn’t make the moral rot and civic decay go away.

America is doomed to decay as long as we can’t tell the difference between the public interest / common good and self-interest. The two are not the same, but we’ve lost the ability to discern the difference. Only those societies which still have a functional public interest / common good will survive; those ruled by the tyranny of self-interest will fall.

China’s J-20, Russia’s Su-57 Stealth Fighters Ready For Joint ‘Combat Patrols’ To Challenge US Hegemony – State Media

At a time when Russia is facing isolation from the West, its Iron Brother’ China, has been cementing closer ties with Moscow. In the latest revelation, the Chinese PLA Air Force (PLAAF) has said that its J-20 and Russia’s Su-57, both stealth fighter jets, could participate in a joint combat patrol.

Helpless Against Hypersonic Missile! US To Boost Its Military Base That China Is ‘Practicing To Obliterate’ With Deadly Missiles

Last week, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced that the Air Forces of China and Russia conducted a joint strategic patrol above the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea, and the West Pacific Ocean as part of their annual military cooperation plan.

While the Chinese PLA Air Force sent its advanced H-6K strategic bombers, the Russian Aerospace Forces dispatched its Tu-95MS strategic missile carriers for the joint strategic patrol.

However, in a startling development, Chinese military experts have indicated that the stealth fighters of the two Air Forces, the J-20 and the Su-57, could soon be leading these joint patrols.

The development gains significance in the light of unhindered Chinese-Russian cooperation, which has been perceived as a security threat by the US.

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2022 06 03 11 37

File Image: J-20 Stealth Aircraft

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times recently that to deal with the constantly changing battlefield environment and to improve combat capability, China needs enough fighter jets to ensure that strategic aerial patrols can be carried out reliably, effectively, and safely.

He indicated that more advanced equipment, such as China’s J-20 stealth fighter jet and Russia’s Su-57 stealth fighter jet, could participate in the next joint patrol. According to Song, this would result in a significant increase in the fleet’s overall combat capability.

Though heavy bombers are formidable assets, fighter jets are often required to escort these bombers as they are not designed for air to air combat. However, on the other hand, a stealth fighter jet could effectively engage in air combat with far great success due to its ability to evade radars.

 

The threat of J-20 patrolling with Su-57 becomes even more perilous as the PLAAF J-20 stealth fighter was already deployed for training patrols in the East China Sea and the South China Sea in April.

The move was aimed at countering the presence of American stealth fighters making an appearance in the contested region, as previously reported by the EurAsian Times.

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Geopolitical commentary by the Indian-based journalist...

The presence of stealth fighters in the same region where the Chinese and Russian bombers flew last week could lead to an escalation in tensions especially as both Beijing and Moscow remain locked in a tussle with Japan.

China’s consistent belligerence against Taiwan and a spate of military drills that took place in April also paint a rather dangerous picture.

President Joe Biden had recently stated that the US would intervene militarily in case China was to launch an invasion of Taiwan. The stealth fighters of the adversarial Air Force patrolling the region inhabited by staunch US allies could escalate tensions manifold at a time when the region has become a major flashpoint.

Additionally, the Global Times report also revealed that the Chinese bombers on their recent joint patrol were not alone in their voyage. The PLAAF J-16 fighter jet, which is the most frequent visitor to Taiwan’s ADIZ, escorted the H-6K bombers.

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China should give up ‘illusion’ of avoiding US rivalry, Beijing think tank says

The US behavior against China, after the Chinese helped get the US out of the 2008 GFC, has reminded the Chinese people what the USA is; and what it represents.

It has no appreciative culture, and can NEVER be trusted. 

So, since Xi took over China leadership, he has been active preparing the PLA for war, as well as, seeking bilateral cooperation to avoid war. 

Ukraine war fallout has heightened risks of all out US-China military confrontation, Renmin University think tank warns.  China should prepare for the worst, but seek bilateral cooperation to avoid it, institute urges in recent report.

J-16 Cover For Bombers 

China’s J-16 fighter jets were observed participating in a China-Russia joint patrol for the first time on Sunday, according to China Central Television (CCTV), which showed a photo of two J-16s flying alongside a Chinese H-6K bomber and a Russian Tu-95MS bomber.

According to Chinese military experts, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it dispatched Su-30SM fighter jets as an escort, implying that China’s J-16 deployment was deployed as a reciprocal arrangement.

 

Since the strategic bombers are not designed to participate in air-to-air combat, observers stated that having fighter jets as escorts is also battle-oriented, noting that both China’s J-16 and Russia’s Su-30 are heavy fighter jets that may contribute to the joint patrol’s overall combat readiness.

As seen in the photo, each J-16 was equipped with two PL-10 close-range combat missiles; however, the J-16 can also carry long-range air-to-air missiles, as the unnamed expert pointed out.

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2022 06 03 11 3b9

The J-16’s high range, dual engines, twin seats, enormous fuel capacity, and in-flight refueling capability make it ideal for long-range escort operations, according to the expert.

The Japan Air Self-Defense Force had been monitoring the China-Russia joint patrol, according to the Ministry of Defense Joint Staff, although the presence of the J-16s and Su-30s was not mentioned in the press statement.

Analysts speculated that the Chinese and Russian fighter jets may have only partially escorted the bombers and did not reach close enough to Japan’s identification zone or that Japan simply missed them.

More pictures from the past…

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Russia imposed retaliatory sanctions. It’ll be a knockout right from the first pack

From HERE

Many of our fellow citizens, in a thirst for universal justice, asked Putin to impose retaliatory sanctions against the West. Are you Vladimir Putin or Leo Tolstoy? How long can one or the other cheek be turned under the sixth package of sanctions already in a row? When will we finally bang something – so much so that the whole West is in dust? And finally, our answer followed.

No, Russia did not launch Sarmats in the US, as some recommended – apparently those who have a personal bunker in their dacha. And she did not turn off the gas valve to Europe, as others loudly demanded, probably very rich people who are not dependent on social obligations from the state and have a lot of currency to buy everything for themselves.

You don’t know Putin well if you thought that he would become like Western leaders, shooting himself in the foot and attacking the interests of Russian citizens, just to harm the West, and still achieve nothing.

This is how Western sanctions can be characterized. They have already introduced six packages, but they did not achieve the desired effect, they only disgraced themselves, dispersed record inflation and ruined the lives of their own fellow citizens.

And Russia continues to go its own way, the sanctions did not stop us. Which means one thing – European politicians have publicly got into a puddle with their sanctions packages. Of course, it is foolish to deny that these sanctions hit us. Nobody denies. The irony here is that these sanctions hit them no less. And the big question is who suffered more.

I don’t know what kind of style of martial art it is when the enemy hits his head so hard that your ears start to ring, but our president is engaged in more traditional and effective martial arts.

Our authorities quietly and calmly, without unnecessary pathos and PR, decided to knock out the Western economy with just one sanctions package – they banned the export of inert gases from Russia. What are these gases and why is it deadly for the West – now I will try to explain everything.

Inert gases include neon, xenon, krypton, argon and others. Neon is used for the production of microcircuits, xenon in headlights, and krypton is used to fill double-glazed windows. And this is only a part of the scope of these gases. But even this small part is enough to understand that without these gases it is impossible to produce modern technological goods.

Whether it’s at least a whole car or just an ordinary electric kettle. Because almost every modern household appliance has microcircuits. And in fact, almost the entire Western economy is based on the production of electronics. And a shortage of one component is enough to stop huge production there.

For us, the price of the issue of these sanctions is a penny. The revenue of our companies from the sale of these gases amounted to literally tens of millions of dollars. This is not even close to the billions from the sale of oil and gas. That is why I said at the beginning that Putin did not shoot the Russian economy in the foot, but dealt a more measured blow.

Let’s say the West will be able to produce a conditional car – the body itself and the seats. But he can’t sell it if it doesn’t have the necessary chips or headlights to make it work. And they will not be, because in their production inert gases are used, the export of which has been banned by Russia.

Yes, Russia does not have a complete monopoly on these gases. For example, in neon we have a market share of approximately 50%. However, the Chinese have about 30% more, and they will not share with the West, they themselves will not have enough. By the way, that is why there is such a comment in the text of the decree:

Russia decided to remind unfriendly countries of their import dependence. Now the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade will determine who will have access to neon, krypton, xenon – key and critical gases for the production of semiconductors.

We’re talking about the Chinese here. We will sell to them, and to the West – shish. And this is not out of love for the Chinese, but simply so that when production crashes in the West, we ourselves will not be left without goods. China will supply them to us, receiving from us the supplies of these gases necessary for production.

And the Western economy, meanwhile, will really crash. About 75% of our neon went to Taiwan – to TSMC and South Korean Samsung, i.e. in companies producing products for Western brands. And without neon and other important components from Russia, they will soon be unable to produce it. And it is important here that all gases go “in one package”.

If we were talking about one more gas, then it would be possible to replace it, and even then not immediately. For example, in the USA, the terms for replacing neon are estimated to be anywhere from a year to two. And then, if someone invests in it. But for this you need to be sure that Russia will not return to the world market, otherwise the new capacities will simply be superfluous.

And our authorities acted quite cunningly, saying that the ban is valid until “the end of 2022”, and then it is not known, maybe we will resume it, maybe not. This creates a sense of insecurity among potential investors and a reluctance to risk money by investing it in a potentially losing business.

How this uncertainty works in practice, we saw in 2020, when Russia and Saudi Arabia discouraged investors from investing in shale oil production in the United States, because at prices in the region of $20 per barrel, many shale companies then went bankrupt.

And now the risk that we will repeat this number is scaring off investors. But the problem isn’t just finding replacement investors.

Given that we banned all types of inert gases at once, the situation for the West is even more difficult – to replace such a large number of industries at once, it will take not one or two years, but about ten years. But the Western economy simply does not have this time. On the account of months at most.

There are certainly some stocks of components necessary for the production in warehouses. They will last for several months. But what’s next? During this time, it is impossible to build your own production of such gases. And no one will buy “semi-finished” products – do you need a non-working iPhone or a car that will stand in the garage waiting for the chip?

And people at the enterprises need to pay salaries. You also have to pay for the energy consumed by this enterprise. And how to pay if the products are not fully assembled, which means they cannot be sold? And where to store such “semi-finished products”? All warehouses will quickly fill up.

Let me put the question even a little broader: what money can we use to buy gas and oil from Russia if the West has nothing to sell in return? Putin warned in advance that there would be no free gas, and all kinds of joke bank tickets – euros and dollars – we will no longer accept this.

So it turns out such an interesting situation, when a conditional European, to whom the enterprise will stop paying wages, will not even have anything to pay for gas in an apartment, not to mention refueling a car and other excesses. No one has rubles hidden under a mattress.

Therefore, the further development of the situation is something like this – the West spends the last components in warehouses over the coming months and sells off the remnants of finished products. And then, if he wants to eat, warm up and fill up the car, he will have to pay in kind – various kinds of machine tools and other valuable equipment.

It’s time for us to raise the national economy. And the Western machine tools of Russia will come in handy in this matter. We will gladly exchange them for rubles. And in Gazprombank, Chancellor Scholz will be able to hand these rubles to the cashier with his trembling hand from the cold so that Gazprom will supply gas to the Germans.

Massive Fire Breaks Out At Poultry Farm That Supplies Eggs To Major Supermarkets

Wednesday, Jun 01, 2022 – 02:00 AM

A poultry farm in Howard Lake, Minnesota, that supplies the nation’s largest supermarkets with three million eggs per day experienced a devastating fire over the weekend.

Forsman Farms spokesperson Jon Austin told local media outlet KARE that estimates aren’t firm yet, but anywhere between “tens of thousands of chickens were killed, up to a couple hundreds of thousands.” The spokesperson continued and said chickens in adjacent barns were affected by smoke inhalation.

Video posted on YouTube by Eddie Olson shows massive flames lighting up the night sky on Saturday.

“It’s a lot of chickens. It’s a hit to the egg market, it’s people’s jobs, it’s a local community. So any time anything big like that happens, it’s not good,” Olson said.

It’s unclear exactly how the fire started though impacts could be felt at supermarkets. This year alone, retail egg prices have soared 41% because of the deadly bird flu wreaking havoc on the country’s egg-laying hen flock.

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Since January, the outbreak has spread to 32 states, killing more than 37 million chickens and turkeys. Of that, 29 million egg-laying hens have died, or about 10% of the U.S.’ total flock of 300 million. Bloomberg recently reported the bird flu is “shaping up to be the worst outbreak of its kind.”

The blaze at the commercial egg farm in Minnesota comes as dozens of food processing facilities across Canada and the U.S. have experienced mystery fires and explosions over the past year, helping to strain the North American food supply chain.

A Black Cat Interrupted A Football Match And Unsurprisingly Refused To Leave

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Over the weekend, the Premier League match between Everton and Wolverhampton Wanderers had a short delay as a black cat had wandered onto the pitch – and refused to leave.

The game, which took place at Goodison Park in Liverpool, saw the four-legged spectator wandering around the goal and sidelines. The crowd looked on in delight as none of the players or officials even tried to chase away the feline. Perhaps they all forgot their laser pointers and balls of yarn?

Thankfully, the cat eventually got bored and scampered to the sideline. Everton, however, eventually lost the match, going down 3-1, to the visiting team.

Sorry lads, better luck next time.

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Putin’s war on the West is only just beginning

By unleashing brutal force against Kyiv, the Russian president essentially announced a de facto divorce from Western civilization. And as many divorces tend to go it is likely to be a messy, costly and drawn-out affair...

Two assumptions keep driving the debate since the start of the invasion back in late February 2022.

First, Vladimir Putin's army is technologically backward, comprising poorly trained and lowly-motivated deserters who are only capable of pillaging and drinking.

As a result, Russia's detractors say it is about to run out of capacity to fight and has no chance of winning the war.

Second, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is gravely ill, has no sense of reality or the capacity to lead, and will transit into a different world in due course.

Both of these assumptions continue to dominate the Western information media space. (note: like US funded NGOs and individuals unrelenting smeared campaign against China, and decades of Golden Chiang prediction of the collapsed of China economy, the Russia's money driven western funded traitors also did a good job in helping to hide the real strength of Russia till the day, when the west realised, it is too late for the crusaders to do anything.)

They also resonate well across the West and beyond as the majority of the free world look at Russia now as a shameless aggressor and an immediate threat to Western liberal values and freedoms.

As a result, we tend to treat the Russia-Ukraine war as our war, in which we naturally want the aggressor to lose.

However, our expectations of the outcome of this war should not be based on just hopes and wishes but on the detailed analysis of the cold-hearted battlefield reality, which should not give the Western allies sufficient grounds for unconditional optimism.

Being a different kind of Dr, I cannot comment on Putin’s state of health. But the battlefield analysis comes to a similar conclusion.

After a vital strategic win over the battle for Mariupol, which resulted in the unconditional surrender of the elite Ukrainian units, the Russian forces have systematically stepped up their offensive across the Donbass region.

What seemed initially to be a slow advance was in reality the reflection of two key factors.

Firstly, the continuous ferocious resistance of the Ukrainian defenders. Their will to push the Russian invaders back despite taking very heavy losses deserves full recognition.

There was also a vast and sophisticated fortifications network - which has been gradually extended by the Ukrainian military along the lines of confrontation in eastern Ukraine since 2015.

Breaking through these layered defensive barriers was a massive challenge for the Russians, even with their overwhelming firepower and tactical air dominance.

Still, the Russian military is slowly gaining pace.

Since the launch of their proper offensive in Donbass on 19 April, they have seized control of some of the most important military nerve centres that make up that massive defensive barrier... Read more...

From HERE

Now Even The Elite Are Openly Admitting That America Is Facing An Absolutely Enormous Economic Crisis

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Not too long ago, the elite were trying to put a happy face on our growing economic problems.  It was obvious that things were trending in a very alarming direction, but they kept assuring us that any bumps in the road were just temporary and that a new golden age of prosperity was just around the corner.  Needless to say, there were dead wrong, and now some of them are publicly admitting the truth.  For example, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon just publicly stated that an economic “hurricane” is rapidly approaching…

Jamie Dimon is no meteorologist, but the JPMorgan Chase CEO is predicting an economic “hurricane” caused by the war in Ukraine, rising inflation pressures and interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.

“Right now it’s kind of sunny, things are doing fine. Everyone thinks the Fed can handle this,” Dimon said at a Bernstein conference. “That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way.”

JPMorgan Chase is one of the most important financial institutions in the entire world.

So it is a really big thing for Dimon to make a statement like this.

Of course he is right on target.  An economic hurricane is coming, and it is going to be far more horrible than most Americans could possibly imagine right now.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also just said something that is making a lot of headlines.

Last year she insisted that high inflation would just be “transitory”, but now she is openly admitting that she “was wrong”

“I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take. As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy […] that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand.”

 

It isn’t exactly a surprise that she turned out to be completely wrong about high inflation being transitory.

We knew that she was wrong when she said it.

But I will give her credit for publicly admitting a mistake.  Many in Washington will never do such a thing under any circumstances.

At this point, it should be obvious to everyone that we are in the midst of an absolutely horrifying inflation crisis.

On Wednesday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States jumped another nickel to $4.67.  But the real story is the crazy prices that we are starting to see out on the west coast.  For instance, one gas station in Los Angeles is now charging more than 8 dollars a gallon for regular gasoline…

A Chevron station in downtown Los Angeles on the corner of Alameda Street and Cesar E. Chavez Avenue is charging customers over $8 for regular gasoline causing some locals to complain about price gouging, KTTV Los Angeles reported on Tuesday.

In a statement to KTTV, Chevron pointed out that the majority of its California branded stations are independently owned and that “unique” factors are contributing to gas prices in the Golden State.

How soon will we see someone break the 10 dollar a gallon threshold?

Will it be by the end of the summer?

In some cities, the price of a gallon of gasoline is already higher than the hourly minimum wage.

That is nuts!

Of course diesel prices have been rising even faster, and this is putting a tremendous amount of financial strain on America’s farmers.  If you doubt this, just check out what Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller just told Maria Bartiromo

When Bartiromo noted “filling a tractor daily now costs farmers $1,000 – twice what it was a year ago,” Miller responded, “it’s through the roof, but it’s not just diesel.”

“It’s fertilizer prices. It’s parts. We can’t get new tractors, new combines. We can’t get new tillage equipment,” he stressed. “So we have to keep running our older equipment, which we can’t get parts for. And so it’s just a whole comedy of errors, and it just multiplies on top of itself.”

When costs go up for farmers, they inevitably get passed on to consumers.

And we have already been seeing food prices spike dramatically.  Just check out these numbers from April

Food grains—including corn and wheat—were up 2.8 percent for the month and 45 percent compared with a year ago. Feed grain prices increased 7.8 percent from the prior month and 33 percent from a year ago.

The poultry and egg index jumped 22 percent from March and 94 percent from a year earlier. The April market egg price, at $2.21 per dozen, is 81.0 cents higher than March and $1.64 higher than April 2021. The price of chickens raised for meat, at $1.05 per pound, is 15.3 cents higher than March and 49.7 cents higher than a year ago. At 95.3 cents per pound, the April turkey price is 2.5 cents higher than the previous month and 18.5 cents higher than April 2021.

Milk prices climbed 4.12 percent in April and are up 47 percent compared with a year earlier.

In the entire history of our nation, we have never seen anything like this.

But as I keep warning my readers, this is just the beginning.

In fact, one prominent Texas farmer is warning that food prices “are going to double”

“People don’t realize what’s fixing to hit them,” said Texas farmer Lynn “Bugsy” Allen.

“They think it’s tough right now, you give it until October. Food prices are going to double.”

Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine what it will do to our country if food prices double from their already extremely inflated levels?

People will go absolutely bananas.

But this is exactly the type of scenario that I have been warning about for years.

Eventually, food will become such a prime target for thieves that we will actually see armed guards escorting grocery store delivery trucks.

And civil unrest will erupt all over the planet as millions upon millions of poor people get hungrier and hungrier.

Unfortunately, even though so many are now sounding the alarm, the vast majority of the population still has no idea what is coming our way.

Lemon-Garlic Shrimp Orzo Skillet

You know that phrase, “a little goes a long way?” Well, that absolutely applies to this dish, which tastes rich and buttery but actually only includes 2 tablespoons of butter!

The trick is waiting until the end to add the butter when it can enrich the orzo, which has already been flavored by cooking in broth, and the zucchini, which has a naturally buttery taste when sautéed.

The shrimp, also added at the end, gets infused with all the flavors already in the pan, so the whole dish is redolent of garlic and butter and only needs a squeeze of lemon and sprinkle of fresh herbs for contrast. Garnishing with a bit of nutty Parmesan takes it all over the top.

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Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1 large zucchini, cut in half lengthwise and into 1/4-inch slices (about 2 cups)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped (about 4 teaspoons)
  • 3/4 cup uncooked orzo pasta (about 5 oz)
  • 1 1/2 cups Progresso™ reduced sodium chicken broth (from 32-oz carton)
  • 1 lb uncooked large shrimp (21 to 30 ct), peeled, deveined, tail shells removed
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

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The Algonquin Hotel In NYC Has A Kitty Concierge Named Matilda

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The Algonquin Hotel in New York City offers a unique amenity in the form of Matilda, a cat concierge whose main outpost is laying above the luxury hotel’s welcome desk. The experience is aimed at replicating the comforts of home and the Algonquin Hotel is one of many incorporating such mascots or concierges.

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For those looking to spend a bit more time with Matilda than a hangout in the lobby, guests have the option of booking the ‘Friends of Matilda’ package. The ‘Friends of Matilda’ package includes a plush toy replica of Matilda, a personalized welcome letter from the feline herself and a book containing health and beauty secrets for the pampered kitty.

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Why separations between humans and guardian angels are necessary

This following video is one of the early Patrion videos. Subscription has been  necessary to watch it. However, it is presented here for all MM “followers” to watch for free.I hope that you gain some insight, as well as to see the benefits on contributing to MM via the Patrion page.

Please check it out…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Lemon-Dijon Chicken, Russian Oil, 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Lungo Touring Berlinetta, and lots of old pictures.

I have to tell youse guys that I am having a drop-off in participation once I switched my format. I have been spending much of my time on the geopolitical stuff and mixed it all up with food, pictures and odd and ends. I have since supplemented the written content with videos. The videos cover china, world-line travel, souls, the nature of the universe and all sorts of other things. I hope that you all don’t give up on MM during this period. Please have some faith.

Let’s start off with something delicious. Seriously easy to make, and certainly one of the many, many reasons why “home cooked” meals for your family and loved-ones are important.

Lemon-Dijon Chicken Skillet

This tender chicken in a luscious lemon-Dijon sauce might look like it came from a nice restaurant, but it’s a dish you can cook up in your own kitchen, while staying within budget (and under 400 calories!).

The trick is using the cooking juices as the base of the rich-tasting sauce and upping its flavor further with a couple of impactful ingredients, like Dijon, rosemary and lemon.

While we often like cooking with boneless chicken thighs for the sake of convenience, bone-in chicken ensures extra flavor in this recipe.

Remember to remove the chicken from the pan, so it doesn’t overcook while you finish the sauce. Keep the chicken warm, and then plate it all up beautifully.

When you serve up this meal, your dinner companions will be impressed, and you can congratulate yourself on pulling off such a nice meal without any extra fuss.

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6532e17c 982d 4036 a125 d5bd63e6339d

Ingredients

  • 3 teaspoons Dijon mustard
  • 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary plus 2 sprigs rosemary
  • 2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
  • 2 teaspoons lemon juice
  • 6 bone-in chicken thighs, skin removed (about 1 1/2 lb)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
  • 1/2 cup dry white wine (such as Sauvignon Blanc)
  • 1 1/2 cups Progresso™ reduced sodium chicken broth (from 32-oz carton)
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 tablespoon Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon chopped Italian (flat-leaf) parsley

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Europe Bans Insuring any Oil Tankers Carrying Russian Oil; Russia Responds with Inert Gas cut-off (Argon, Neon, etc.)

Europe has enacted another round of Sanctions against Russia; these forbid insuring tanker ships carrying Russian Oil.   Ship owners will be unwilling to risk an uninsured vessel simply because of its cargo, so this will likely have a massive effect upon Russia.

In response, Russia announced Thursday they are restricting supplies of neon, argon, helium and other inert gases to foreign markets. 

A Decree by the Government restricts the export of inert gases from Russia until the end of this year.

These gases are used for the production of semiconductors, from which microchips are made. Microchips are needed for electronics in many types of products: for the manufacture of gadgets, cars, navigation systems, etc.

Thirty percent (30%) of the world’s neon is provided by Russia. Now, its export will be available only by the decision of the Government.

According to experts, this may be very sensitive for the countries that imposed sanctions against  Russia.

Put simply, with their new Sanctions against insuring vessels carrying Russian Oil, Europe just fucked their entire industrial base, which now will not be able to get semiconductors to run their machinery and businesses.   In this one small step, Europe has wiped out its own manufacturing sector.

Brutal 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Lungo Touring Berlinetta

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First shown at the 1935 London Motor Show, the 8C 2900A was a sports racer targeted to the gentleman driver, powered by a supercharged 2.9-liter inline eight-cylinder engine rated at 220 horsepower.

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In the hands of Scuderia Ferrari, Alfa Romeo 8C 2900A models swept the podium at the 1936 Mille Miglia, backing up this performance by finishing 1-2 in the 1937 race. Not every buyer needed (or wanted) a car with this level of performance, so in response Alfa Romeo created the the slightly more relaxed 8C 2900B in 1937.

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The 8C 2900B was detuned for greater reliability, producing 180 horsepower thanks in part to a drop in compression from 6.5:1 to 5.75:1. Though the eight-cylinder engine retained its 2.9-liter displacement and Roots-type supercharger, aluminum was substituted for magnesium on certain engine castings and the wheelbase was lengthened slightly from 2.75 meters (roughly 108 inches) to 2.8 meters (roughly 110 inches) on corto (short) chassis examples. The 8C 2900B also debuted a new lungo chassis variant, which utilized a wheelbase of 3.0 meters (roughly 118 inches).

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Just 10 lungo chassis 8C 2900B models were ever built, including the five aforementioned examples wearing enclosed Berlinetta bodywork from Carrozzeria Touring. Chassis 412020 was the first completed, and displayed at motor shows across Europe in late 1937 and early 1938.

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Israel simulates massive strike against Iran with hundreds of aircraft

Hundreds of Israel Air Force (IAF) aircraft, including fighter jets and refueling planes, took off overnight Wednesday from various bases to simulate striking targets far from Israel’s borders, including in Iran.

The exercise, part of the IDF’s monthlong Chariots of Fire drill, saw fighter jets, transport planes and refueling aircraft take off from several bases in Israel for Cyprus.

Israel has significantly increased its readiness level and has taken steps throughout the past year to prepare a credible military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The IDF, which is planning several military options against Iran should the nuclear talks between the West and the Islamic Republic fail, is carrying out its largest drill ever with thousands of soldiers and reservists.

One of the possible military options has been simulated during the exercise.

IAF platforms, Israeli naval units and troops from the elite Shayetet 13, Yahalom special combat engineering unit, Oketz canine unit, Intelligence Corps and the C4I and Cyber Defense Directorate are also taking part in the drill, which will end on Friday.

USAF’s New Stealth Bomber “Strides Toward Flight Readiness” After Successful Load Test

Saturday, May 28, 2022 – 10:40 AM

Northrop Grumman tweeted Wednesday that its new stealth bomber “made strides toward flight readiness with a successful loads calibration test.”

A press release from Northrop Grumman described how the B-21 Raider “completed the first — and most critical — loads calibration test.” The first of three ground test before the aircraft takes to the skies in 2023.

The next two tests will be engine testing and low-speed and high-speed taxi tests. Air Force Magazine noted the B-21 was initially supposed to take flight in the second half of this year, though Northrop Grumman has pushed that back to 2023 (cause of delays weren’t cited).

"The B-21 test aircraft is the most production-representative aircraft, both structurally and in its mission systems, at this point in a program, that I've observed in my career," Randy Walden, director of the Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office and program executive officer of the B-21 Raider program, recently said. 

Northrop Grumman said the stealth bomber would be unveiled later this year.

KALIBR CRUISE MISSILES HAVE DESTROYED BESKYDY RAIL TUNNEL – MAJOR NATO WEAPONS ROUTE!!

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BeskydyRailTunnel large

Kalibr cruise missiles fired from a Russian naval vessel in the Black Sea, entered into – and flew deeply inside – the Beskydy Railway Tunnel near Lviv, Ukraine, and detonated, destroying the tunnel.   It was a key rail route for NATO weapons being shipped into Ukraine.

The 1.8km long tunnel, travels beneath the Carpathian Mountains.  It is the second longest (after Lutuginsky ). It is part of the Lviv railway .

A historic single-track tunnel was built in 1886 during the Austro-Hungarian period . In 2007, due to the emergency condition of the old tunnel, it was decided to build a new, double-track tunnel, which was laid 22 meters south of the old one and parallel to it.

The official opening of the new tunnel took place on May 24, 2018 with the participation of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko; train traffic on it began on May 25.

For Ukraine, the new Beskydy Tunnel is of strategic importance, since this route transports goods towards the western border of the country, as well as more than 60% of transit cargo towards Western and Central Europe .

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2022 06 03 10 26

Its construction was a magnificent feat of engineering.

One month ago, on May 2, Ukraine strengthened the security of the Beskydy Tunnel, which provides railroad deliveries of weapons, equipment, fuels, and lubricants, from Central Europe to Ukraine. In Kyiv, they feared that Russia would strike at the facility to cut-off NATO weapon shipments.

“The goal is to try to disrupt the railway and stop the supply of fuel and weapons from our allies,” said Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukraine’s Interior Minister

Now, the tunnel has, in fact, been destroyed.

Sweet City Woman

It was a different time, don’t you know.

Thanks to Climate-Change Fanatics and Green-Energy Whackos, 2/3rds of US Faces blackouts this Summer

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2022 06 03 10 28

Tough news keeps coming for Americans struggling with high energy prices. Not only have gas prices broken records for the past several weeks, now a good portion of the country is being told they should expect rolling blackouts, as we enter the hot summer months.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) officially released its summer report last week and almost two-thirds of the country should prepare for a possible blackout.

The report from NERC includes a harrowing map that shows most of the nation should stand ready for possible blackouts this summer.

The reason for these coming blackouts is clear: a mandated transition to clean energy. The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes:

“Welcome to the “green energy transition.” We’ve been warning for years that climate policies would make the grid more vulnerable to vacillations in supply and demand. And here we are. Some of the mainstream press are belatedly catching on that blackouts are coming, but they still don’t grasp the real problem: The forced transition to green energy is distorting energy markets and destabilizing the grid.”

One of the chief proponents of forcing a transition to clean energy has been Richard Glick, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In February, he and the other Democrat commissioners at FERC tried to force through a policy that would have made building new natural gas pipelines and infrastructure almost impossible. Thankfully, the leadership of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee blasted the move. Senators Joe Manchin and John Barrasso made clear they wouldn’t stand for it. FERC pulled back the rule, for now.

Glick has been renominated as the chair of FERC. The Journal editorial board continues: “His re-nomination is a clear and present danger to the U.S. electricity supply.

The war in Ukraine and surging energy prices haven’t deterred Democrats from their anti-fossil fuels campaign. Will widespread power outages finally make them realize they’re harming all of us?”

The Biden administration’s policies are resulting in a hot, dark summer for millions of Americans. With the summer heat just getting started, there is no relief in sight.

People Are Sharing Pics Of Life 50-100 Years Ago And They Might Put Things In A New Perspective

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“My Grandfather And His Horse, Ruby. 1940’s”

How would you describe normal, everyday life? Well, for a modern person, it’s anything from brushing their teeth to… commuting to work. Oh wait, not anymore. Coronavirus has shaken up quite a few things, and made us work from home, stay in more, keep distances and whatnot. The change is dramatic and it’s only been like two years (almost three!, o-m-g) since it first started in late 2019.

So yep, time is flying like a hadron collider, changing things beyond recognition on the way. But today would look nothing like a day 20, 50, or even 100 years ago. And we mean it. Thanks to the miscellaneous corner of Reddit “The Way We Were,” which is home to a stunning collection of old photos, scanned documents, articles, and personal anecdotes, we can all secure our seat belts and travel to the past.

The community was created back in 2012, and will celebrate its ten-year anniversary in less than a month.

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“My Grandma And Uncle In Iran, April 1971”

Nancy Darling is a professor and chair at the Department of Psychology at Oberlin College and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Adolescence and she happily shared some very interesting insights.

It turns out that people tend to judge the passage of time as a function of how many things happen. In that sense, our perception of time is purely subjective. “I find it interesting that when my days are packed, I feel time passes both very fast and very slow.” For example: “During a busy week, events a week ago seem in the far, distant past because so many things have intervened since.” Simultaneously, we feel like time is flying by because so many things are happening every hour.

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“Cairo Mary,” Bouncer At Shanghai Reds (5th And Beacon In San Pedro, Ca) Escorts A Customer To The Door. 1953

Interestingly, as we get older, the way we perceive time may change as well. It has to do with the usual things, “like cooking a meal or grocery shopping, that start taking longer for you to do.”Most importantly, “the passage of time just marks age and accomplishment,” according to Nancy. “I just got an email this morning reminding me I’d promised to do something in July. That seems both forever ago (I’ve done a thousand things since) and very close (every day, I keep saying I’ll do it ’tomorrow.’)”

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4 11

Interestingly, we can do that with life as well. Just think of your kids being tiny and dependent, urges the professor. “How can my son be living in Manhattan and getting ready to teach in the public schools? Time flies,” she said. At the same time, Nancy said that she feels like “there are many things I’d always planned to do, but haven’t gotten to (yet).” And she added: “I am too old now?”

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“This Is My Great Aunt In Front Of Their House In Boston, 1964. The House Was Bought On A Milkman’s Salary”

The key challenge is to keep time on our side, and don’t let yourself fall into the trap of one day turning into the whole year. According to Nancy, there are things that can be done about it. “If you regularly review what your priorities are and focus on those, you feel like a lot has gotten done and you don’t regret the fact that you’ve wasted your days,” she suggested.

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6 9

The sense of accomplishment, whether big or small, creates invisible gaps in time that makes it feel like time stretches. “Days when I accomplish a lot are full and satisfying, but also feel long. A productive week feels like it’s lasted forever. It also feels good,” Nancy concluded.

TSMC And Intel Are In A Mad Dash To Hire Semiconductor Technicians For Their New Plants In Arizona

Saturday, May 28, 2022 – 09:20 AM

To solve the semiconductor shortage, companies now have to deal with a labor shortage…

We have extensively covered how major semiconductor companies have been responding to the global chip shortage over the last couple of years. One of the most notable companies to take action has been TSMC, who is in the process of building a $12 billion chip fab in Arizona, not far from where Intel is expanding their campus.

TSMC’s project is racing to come online by 2024, but there remains a major obstacle for both companies: securing labor. “Simply finding enough workers to build the facilities has already proved a challenge,” according to a new report from Nikkei.

Over 6,000 workers are currently on site trying to get the facility up and running by its targeted 2024 timeline, the report says. While it was tough to find construction workers, finding the skilled technicians necessary to work at a chip plant is proving even tougher.

Kweilin Waller, deputy human services director at the Phoenix Business and Workforce Development Board, commented: “You say ‘semiconductor manufacturing’ [to potential recruits], people look at you like you have two heads. It’s just unfamiliar.”

“I think those students that we are trying to recruit to ultimately become employees don’t know what they don’t know. So even before we give consideration to the seven semiconductor manufacturers that they could work with, they need to understand, ‘What is a semiconductor technician?'” added Daniel Barajas, a careers director at the Maricopa County Community Colleges District.

Intel is trying to tackle the problem by creating a close relationship with The Schools of Engineering at ASU, which have about 27,000 students enrolled.

TSMC doesn’t have the history that Intel does with the university to attract such talent as easily.

Kyle Squires, the school’s dean, said: “Indeed, it’s more of a challenge [for TSMC to attract students]. The informal networking [among students] starts to really grab on.”

One associate professor at ASU said: “TSMC recruiters have been very heavily present on campus. TSMC is presently negotiating with the university for some extended collaborations, both in research and in workforce development, and broader training programs.”

TSMC only had plans of hiring in the U.S. before sending employees to train in Taiwan, but now the company is considering hiring directly from Taiwan, the Nikkei report says. “TSMC is focused on hiring employees, including technicians, locally in the U.S. for our Arizona fab,” a spokesperson said.

Jennifer Mellor, chief innovation officer at the Greater Phoenix Chamber, concluded: “I think TSMC is really trying to get their name known in the market, and they’re actually doing a really good job of trying to connect with different education partners.”

LOL. They should look at China. That's where they all went, you fucking stupid jackasses. -MM

Rare And Amazing Color Photographs Of Behind The Scenes From The Set Of ‘Alien’, 1979

An iconic film which shaped generations of sci-fi / horror films to come. Alien is a masterpiece and a film that can still invoke fear and wonder even after repeated viewings.

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Alien received both critical acclaim and box office success, receiving an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, along with numerous other award nominations. It has remained highly praised in subsequent decades, being considered one of the greatest films of all time.

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The success of Alien spawned a media franchise of novels, comic books, video games, and toys. It also launched Sigourney Weaver’s acting career by providing her with her first lead role, and the story of her character Ellen Ripley’s encounters with the Alien creatures became the thematic thread that ran through the sequels Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992) and Alien: Resurrection (1997).

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US Seizes Russia-Flagged Tanker Full Of Iranian Oil Near Greece

Friday, May 27, 2022 – 06:30 PM

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

Fresh off of the US targeting a series of companies involved in an Iran-linked oil smuggling network, the US has now seized an oil tanker near Greece, taking the Iranian oil within to be sent to the US.

The oil was on a Russian-operated ship, which had been singled out for US targeting in February. It was then called the Pegas. The company renamed the ship the Lana and was Russian flagged. Greece had impounded the Pegas and its Russian crew last month over the invasion of Ukraine, but ultimately released it.

The Russian-flagged oil tanker Pegas previously shown off Turkey, via Reuters

Neither the US nor Russia is commenting. Greece says the US informed them the oil was Iranian, and that the US hired a different ship to take the oil to America. Iran has summoned the Greek charges d’affaires and called the incident a “clear example of piracy.”

The US accused the tanker of loading 700,000 Bbls of oil from Iran in August 2021. The tanker mostly sent oil to China.

Earlier in the week The Maritime Executive detailed that “The story of a shadowy Russian oil tanker took a new turn… as the U.S. Department of Justice seized the oil aboard the vessel and according to reports is in the process of transferring the oil to the United States on a chartered tanker.”

“The vessel was detained nearly seven weeks ago in Greece when authorities thought it was covered by the European Union sanctions on Russian assets, but later held for mechanical deficiencies while watchdog groups announced that it was actually smuggling sanctioned Iranian oil.”

The report continued: “The Aframax tanker arrived off Greece early in April with reports of a possible mechanical failure and indications that they were looking for assistance to make repairs to continue their voyage. When she anchored south of the Greek island of Evia the 115,520 dwt tanker was being identified as the Russian-flagged Pegas.” And the initial “assumption at the time was that it was laden with a Russian crude oil cargo,” according to the report.

The seizure of the tanker, and oil, comes amid tensions on the ongoing nuclear talks. Iran believes, and not unfairly, that the oil was just stolen from them, and the US position, while yet to be public, is that the oil is now theirs.

It’s not a great precedent, but generally Iran can’t do much about it, and the US is keen to have the oil.

Iran Seizes 2 Greek Tankers In Gulf As Retaliation For US Taking Oil

Saturday, May 28, 2022 – 12:36 AM
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Iranian military operatives have seized two Greek oil tankers in the Persian Gulf on Friday. The Associated Press initially reported that the US Navy is “looking into” the reports. The tankers were boarded in international waters in the gulf, with the AP in follow-up saying that IRGC operatives now have control of the ships.

The IRGC has announced it is in possession of the seized vessels, with Bloomberg reporting, “The Guard’s announcement comes as tensions remain high between Iran and the West over stalled negotiations regarding its rapidly advancing nuclear program.” And more according to the AP:

The Guard issued a statement on its website, accusing the unnamed tankers of unspecified violations.

Greece’s Foreign Ministry said Iranian authorities “violently took over” the two ships in an “act of piracy.”
Delta Poseidon, via Lloyd’s List

Industry monitor Lloyd’s List maritime intelligence describes that its “sources confirmed that in two seemingly similar operations the suezmaxes Delta Poseidon (IMO: 9468671) and Prudent Warrior (IMO: 9753545), both under Greek flag, were approached by Iranian helicopters on Friday afternoon.”

“They were both boarded by military personnel and later escorted by naval vessels from international traffic lanes to Iranian waters a few miles off the coast,” the report continues.

Earlier in the day Tehran threated “punitive measures” after the United States seized a Russian flagged tanker transporting Iranian oil off Greece.

Iranian sources stated following the tanker seizure in the Mediterranean, “The Islamic Republic has decided to take punitive measures against Greece after it seized an Iranian tanker and let the US government confiscate its crude oil, Nour News, affiliated to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reports.

Russian senator urges missile strikes on U.S. bases in Europe

A Russian senator has suggested that his country should attack U.S. military bases in Europe in response to the Biden administration’s decision to send rocket systems to Ukraine.

Senator Frants Klintsevich told Russian state TV that Russia should “wreck” American bases using the country’s “high-precision long-range weapons” after the U.S. announced it will send Ukraine the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).

A clip of Klintsevich’s remarks was shared by Francis Scarr of BBC Monitoring on Thursday, who monitors Russian state TV. The senator’s comments come ahead of the 100th day of the invasion of Ukraine on Friday.

 

 

Klintsevich was part of a panel discussing the Biden administration’s decision to send HIMARS to Ukraine and said it was “complete nonsense” for Ukraine to claim the rocket system would only be used in defense.

He argued that it was “impossible to talk to the Americans and Ukrainians in these conditions.”

The senator said that Russia was speaking to the West “from a position of tolerance” and “giving signals when we say that line cannot be crossed.”

“But unfortunately, they view our tolerance and integrity as weakness,” Klintsevich said. “And now, the places where the arms shipments are arriving, in particular in Europe, taking into consideration Russia’s high precision long-range weaponry, it’s about time we took steps to warn them.”

Klintsevich said that Russia had shot down U.S. aircraft during the Korean War in the early 1950s. It’s likely he was referring to Soviet pilots who flew in planes bearing Chinese and North Korean markings during the conflict. The U.S. and the former Soviet Union were not officially at war at the time.

The senator said that when the Soviets shot down American planes “the world didn’t end.”

“It’s time to wreck American bases, for now, the ones in Europe,” Klintsevich went on.

“Unfortunately, that’s just my personal opinion,” he said,

More pictures from the past…

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Russia’s Necessary and Legal Military Response to US/ NATO Aggression in Ukraine

Easily the best summation of the Russian operation’s moral logic.

Evidence shows that Russia’s special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine is a legally justified, critically necessary, and predictable response to the US’ recent escalation of its decades-long aggression against Russia in Ukraine–militarily, in the international corporate media, in cyberspace, and in the political-economic arena.  The US’ hostile actions against Russia were summarized in a 2019 US-Army funded RAND Corporation blueprint for “Over Extending and Unbalancing Russia.”  Underlying US actions is its aim is to dismember and asset-strip Russia–to appropriate its coveted oil, gas, and mineral resources and vast agricultural lands–and to enable US investors’ access to Russia’s economy. This is a step towards the US’ overarching goals of controlling Central Asia and achieving full spectrum dominance or global hegemony. Although the US war against Russia in Ukraine started years ago, US aggression escalated under the Biden administration and created conditions that posed an immediate existential threat to Russia and necessitated its military response.

In 2014, the US initiated a proxy war against Russia by engineering the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected president. This ignited a bloody civil war on Russia’s border in which the US-installed and US-armed Kiev regime attacked the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk whose largely ethnically Russian residents opposed the US coup. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) documented the Kiev regime’s attacks that killed thousands of civilians and terrorized the populace. In 2015, the US-installed then-president, Petro Poroshenko, publicly articulated Kiev’s anti-Russia stance and its policy for the Donbass:

“We will have jobs—they will not. We will have pensions—they will not. [….] Our children will go to schools and kindergartens—theirs will hide in the basements.”  Popular Ukraine pundits openly called for Donbas residents’ extermination. In 2015, Congress lifted its ban on funding Ukraine’s neo Nazi militias and placed US military trainers on the ground inside Ukraine. NATO and the CIA also began training Ukraine regime forces–effectively establishing Ukraine as a de facto US/NATO mercenary state. During the past eight years, Russia exhibited enormous restraint as the US and Ukraine violated the Minsk Protocols and rejected requests for diplomacy. In 2021, US aggression against Russia increased dramatically once Biden took office–in Ukraine and in the Black Sea. US actions and Ukraine President Zelensky’s public statements generated immediate threats to the survival of the Russian nation-state.

Russia’s Military Response Was Over-Determined By Four Existential Threats 

The US government and the corporate media falsely characterize Russia’s special operation as entirely ‘unprovoked’ and an ‘illegal invasion’. These allegations ignore four conditions which each independently compelled President Putin and the Duma to initiate Russia’s denazification and demilitarization operation and which establish this intervention as consistent with international legal norms.

Chief among the factors necessitating Russia’s immediate military response were indications of an imminent new massacre as 125,000 Ukraine forces amassed along the border of Donbass in December of 2021. This was never reported in the US corporate press.  Instead, the US government and corporate media repeatedly stated that Russian troops were gathering on Ukraine’s border (inside Russia) and predicted an impending Russian invasion. In hindsight, US intelligence could make this accurate claim because it was aware of the menacing buildup of Ukraine forces. Anticipating an imminent massacre, Russia was obligated to intervene militarily because it had a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) the citizens of Donbass.  R2P is a political commitment to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity; it was endorsed by the United Nations at its 2005 world summit.

Second, on February 19, 2022, Ukraine President Zelensky announced that Ukraine would seek to acquire nuclear weapons, saying, “I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum.” Zelensky’s expressed desire to acquire nuclear weapons represented a dangerous threat to Moscow and signaled that the window of opportunity for conventional military intervention was closing.  It is unlikely that Zelensky operates completely autonomously; Biden publicly bragged about his control over Ukraine government policies and has remunerated Zelensky following Zelensky’s implementation of anti-Russia policies and actions.

Third, Zelensky’s repudiation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was a reminder of Ukraine’s intent to join NATO. For years, US President Biden advocated NATO membership for Ukraine, assuring Zelensky as recently as December 11, 2021 that this was in Ukraine’s own hands. NATO membership would entail NATO nuclear missiles inside Ukraine, aimed at Moscow. Ukraine’s geographic proximity to Russia eliminates the crucial minutes in which Moscow could verify and respond to an attack and would effectively place Russia and the US at DEFCON Level Two. The US dismissed Russia’s December 17, 2021 verbal and written requests for a diplomatic response to its security concerns. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken deliberately rejected Russia’s entreaties and ignored the predictable consequences of Ukraine’s potential NATO membership. Renowned international relations scholars, diplomats and politicians, including John Mearsheimer, Jack Matlock, George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, and William Perry warned that NATO membership for Ukraine was a dangerous provocation which would trigger Russia’s military response.

A fourth threat requiring Russia’s intervention was the presence of US Department of Defense-operated biolabs inside Ukraine. Russia’s concerns were validated on March 11, 2022 when Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted during Congressional questioning that the Ukraine biolabs contained ‘biological materials’ which the US ‘did not want to fall into Russian hands’. While the pathogenic biological agents in these biolabs do not technically constitute bioweapons, they can become bioweapons once there is a ‘mechanism for spreading the agent.’ A delivery mechanism need not be sophisticated to be effective.  Bioweapons researcher, Jeffrey Kaye, described the extreme level of US secrecy surrounding the biolabs. Kaye noted that the Director of the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, Robert Pope, did not reassure when he stated that, “the Ukraine biolabs currently did not have the ability to manufacture bioweapons.”

Russia’s Intervention Is Consistent with International Law

These four US-generated conditions represented urgent existential threats to the Donbas and to the Russian nation-state and contradict US claims that Russia ‘illegally invaded Ukraine’ and that Russia’s intervention was unprovoked. Russia was compelled to intervene militarily to neutralize these threats and its response is consistent with the United Nations Charter of 1945 concerning international rules governing a state’s use of military force. The United Nations allows two exceptions to its prohibition of the use of force in international law: “self-defence under Article 51, and military measures authorised by the Security Council in response to “any threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression.” In particular, the UN Charter notes, “there is no problem – and never has been – with that state, without first seeking Security Council approval, using military force ‘preemptively’.’ Both exceptions apply to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine: Russia perceived an imminent threat to the Donbas and an imminent threat to the Russian nation-state.  The immediacy of these threats obviated any requirement that Russia seek prior UN Security Council approval. Seeking UN approval would be futile, in any case, because the United States, a permanent UN Security Council member, is the principal combatant generating the hostilities.


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2022 06 03 10 43


Under the Biden administration, what began in 2014 as a US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine transformed into the US’ direct war against Russia. The US’ covert and overt military actions establish it as a legal “co-belligerent.” Now, the US continues to flood Ukraine with billions of dollars of heavy weapons and provides intelligence to guide Ukraine’s attacks on Russian forces. The US blatantly states that it wants to “weaken” Russia and that Russia must be defeated.  This is the US whose regime change wars in the Middle East killed 5 million; whose 1955-1975 war against Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia cost 3.4 million military and civilian lives. This is the US CIA whose coups and illegal interventions around the globe since its 1947 inception left a trail of bloodshed and chaos. Russia is legally and crucially defending the Donbas and the Russian nation-state against the US quest for global domination. The US generated four existential threats to the Donbas and to the Russian nation-state that necessitated Russia’s immediate intervention. The US—not Russia—is the illegal aggressor in Ukraine.

Never Been Any Reason

This song was playing about the time when I was entering the US Navy.

Tears For Fears – Everybody Wants To Rule The World (Official Music Video)

This song was used in an awesome 1980’s movie. Do you remember it?

New York street interviews are frightening…

These New Yorkers don’t know how many states there are in the US, who fought in the Civil War, who the Vice President is, and much much worse!

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2022 05 23 21 36

Horrific. You MUST check out this video…

Hold Your Head Up

This song carries me back to seventh grade. LOL.

Roasted Sweet Potato Pie

When it comes to bringing smooth and silky flavor to the table, our Roasted Sweet Potato Pie should be at the top of your list. This incredibly effortless dessert is brought together with the help of a pre-made pie crust and loaded with bourbon or vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, roasted sweet potatoes, butter, brown sugar and whipping cream. No matter the occasion, you can’t go wrong with a cozy dessert bursting with flavor.

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e74e56f1 c580 430c bc0e 93450f9eddd2

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 lb dark-orange sweet potatoes (about 2 medium-large)
  • 1 crust from 1 box (14.1 oz) refrigerated Pillsbury™ Pie Crusts (2 Count), softened as directed on box
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup whipping cream
  • 2 tablespoons bourbon or 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs

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2022 05 23 21 32

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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No efforts are being made by the USA to calm things down. They act like they WANT a global nuclear war!

Where are diplomats when you need them? The USA have given up on any pretense of controlling the world and avoiding war. It’s all obvious to everyone. Check out all the flashing warning signs. Sheech!

Historic times.

Official Warning: “Direct US-Russia Conflict”

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Russia today officially warned the United States it is now risking “direct conflict with Russia” after the US announced it is sending still heavier, longer-range weapons to Ukraine.

Washington’s arming of Ukraine with heavier weapons increases the risk of direct US-Russia confrontation regardless of American statements about mitigating such a possibility, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Wednesday.

The diplomat was commenting on the news that the US has decided to supply HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine. Washington has insisted that the weapons system will not allow Ukrainian forces to attack Russia and argues it prevents a scenario in which Moscow would consider the US a party to the conflict.

“We’re not providing any weapons that will allow the Ukrainians to attack Russia from inside of Ukraine, and President [Joe] Biden has been very clear on that,” US representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said of the deliveries. “We’re not going to become [a] party to the war.”

Ryabkov disagreed with the rationale, saying the US was making the conflict more dangerous.

“Any arms supplies, which continue and escalate, increase the risk of such a development,” Ryabkov told journalists, referring to the possibility of a direct confrontation between Russia and the US.

The diplomat added that the US for years has done nothing to prevent an escalation of tensions with Russia over Ukraine. It stonewalled Moscow’s last-ditch attempts to negotiate a legally binding deal that would have addressed Russian concerns over NATO expansion in Europe, he pointed out. After open hostilities broke out in February, “the remnants of a healthy attitude to the situation were shattered,” he said.

Washington “maintains its course of what we characterized many times as an intention to wage war to the last Ukrainian, which reflects the goal of inflicting – as they say themselves – the strategic defeat of Russia. This is unprecedented. This is dangerous,” Ryabkov said.

The latest ramping up of arms supplies to Ukraine does not fundamentally alter the situation, only raises the risks, he stated.

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2022 06 02 12 28

Cat Found in a Carrier with Her Kittens on Sidewalk, Is So Happy to Be Helped by Kind Neighbors

Europe beefs up trade armoury for long-term fight with China

Suicidal Europe: It will be ruined by politicians who know no consequences. :

Europe beefs up trade armoury for a long-term fight with China.

The "Trade weapons"  in the works will tackle everything from market access to forced labour, but getting them through will be ‘the litmus test’...

It’s being driven by [1] a geopolitical shift amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, [2] frustration with the WTO and [3] hardening attitudes towards Beijing driving by American industrial-military / neocon interests.

Article (paywall)  HERE

Freezer Breakfast Sandwiches

Weekday breakfasts will be no problem with these make-ahead freezer-friendly breakfast sandwiches.

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b058e479 e314 415c be75 5e44f596a0d1

Ingredients

  • 6 eggs
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 6 English muffins, split
  • Butter, softened
  • 6 slices Cheddar cheese
  • 12 slices Canadian bacon

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2022 06 02 14 20

Russian Foreign Minister Says 3rd Country “Could Become Involved” in Ukraine Conflict

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly stated late this evening (Moscow time) that “A third country could become involved in the Ukraine conflict, now that the U.S. is sending long-range missiles to Ukraine.”

Lavrov did NOT expand on his meaning.

The possibilities being SPECULATED over this remark are:

1) Another country, like Belarus, might join the fight against Ukraine to assist Russia against the onslaught of NATO weaponry being sent into Ukraine, OR;

2) The country SUPPLYING the new long-range missiles to Ukraine, could become involved by being ATTACKED for sending the weapons.  If this is the possibility, then the U.S. might be the one “becoming involved” or a European nation trans-shipping US missiles to Ukraine could be the third country Lavrov speaks about.

Lavrov’s remarks are not clear about what he means, and this type of ambiguity is very unusual for Lavrov and for Russia.

Perhaps that’s the point; within the ambiguity are severe escalation possibilities. Perhaps Russia is allowing that ambiguity to sink-in before letting on what they actually mean.

Either way, Lavrov’s remarks clearly mean one solid thing: escalation.

Again.

Yakuza

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A real life photo story by the photographer Anton Kusters.

YAKUZA is a personal visual account of the life inside an inaccessible subculture: a traditional Japanese crime family that controls the streets of Kabukicho, in the heart of Tokyo, Japan. Through 10 months of negotiations with the Shinseikai, my brother Malik and I became one of the only westerners ever to be granted this kind of access to the closed world of Japanese organized crime.

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Russia threatens to wipe out the entire US with just four Satan II missiles in chilling warning over Ukraine

From HERE

A chilling moment on Russian state TV on Monday saw hosts issue the latest in a long line of threats, this time warning Putin could “destroy the entire east cost of the US” with just two missiles.

In footage from Russia’s flagship propaganda show, a member of Russia’s parliament boasts about the nation’s military might, before also labelling 2 million Ukrainians as “incurable.”

The politician, Alexie Zhuravlev, was joined on the talk show by fellow MP and Russian-state mouthpiece Yevgeny Popov, the host of the Rossiya 1 channel show.

The lawmaker claimed that two of Russia’s Sarmat ‘Satan 2’ missiles would destroy the entirety of America’s east coast – before adding it would take just “two missiles for the west coast” as well.

“Four missiles and there’ll be nothing left.

“They think the mushroom cloud will be taller than a high rise. That mushroom cloud will be visible from Mexico” said Zhuravlev.

Standing at the colossal height of a 14-storey tower block, the 208 ton RS-28 Sarmat missile, also known as the ‘Satan 2’, is capable of striking targets at almost 16,000mph.

The world-ending nuke can also carry 15 warheads and has the potential to obliterate an area the size of the UK in a single blast.

Putin-cronies have claimed the Russian military could have as many as 50 Sarmat missiles in their arsenal, and have even bizarrely threatened to use them to drown the UK in a radioactive tsunami.

Each of the Sarmat missile’s 15 nuclear warheads are over 100 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War 2.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has also said that his Satan 2 missiles “can break through all modern anti-missile defences.”

However, while these kinds of threats have become increasingly common on Russian propaganda shows since the invasion of Ukraine, the risk of mutually assured destruction undercuts much of the danger.

As well as threatening to wipe out the United States with their nuclear capabilities, the unsettling conversation also covered the crisis in Ukraine, as the hosts repeated the ‘nazification’ theme of Russia’s invasion.

Describing them as “incurable,” Zhuralev stated that two million Ukrainians should “be de-nazified, which means to be destroyed.”

The talk show discussed a study that found 40% of Ukrainians do not support tearing down Soviet era statues in the nation, which is being carried out in some areas.

Zhuralev claimed that the 36% with “no opinion” on the matter were too afraid to share their opinion, making the case that: “three quarters of Ukrainians are against tearing down monuments, only 19 per cent support it.”

“If we re-install their brains correctly, 12-15 per cent will also believe it shouldn’t be done. So the maximum of 5 per cent are incurable,” said the Russian lawmaker, arguing that they must be “destroyed.”

Bizarre Hospital Images From A Very Strange Cache Of Japanese Stock Photos

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There’s a website called “Sukima Nurse” that offers pictures of a Japanese nurse holding unusual objects in a hospital and similar locales. The pictures fall generally into the stock photo category, although with a very, very narrow focus.

It’s difficult to imagine anyone having any reason to use a picture of a Japanese nurse blowing through a conch shell, but that is the very thing that makes the pictures so hilarious.

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Russian Members of Parliament Say On TV “Four Sarmat Missiles Could Wipe Out Entire USA”

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Politician, Alexie Zhuravlev, was joined on a talk show by fellow Member of Parliament Yevgeny Popov, the host of a popular Rossiya 1 TV channel show, and made clear Russia can “wipe out” the US with just four (4) of their new, nuclear, missiles.

The lawmaker claimed that two of Russia’s Sarmat ‘Satan 2’ missiles would destroy the entirety of America’s east coast – before adding it would take just “two missiles for the west coast” as well.

“Four missiles and there’ll be nothing left.

The discussion centered on U.S. interference in the Russia-Ukraine special military operation to de-Nazify and de-militarize Ukraine, and what Russia may have to do to stop that interference.

The U.S. has interfered severely by supplying money and weapons to Ukraine, even though the U.S. has no national interest in that country whatsoever.

The US weapons are enabling the KILLING of Russian soldiers, and the Russian government is getting more and more aggravated by the interference from the U.S. and its NATO vasal state partners.

Standing at the colossal height of a 14-storey tower block, the 208 ton RS-28 Sarmat missile, also known as the ‘Satan 2’, is capable of striking targets at almost 16,000mph.

The world-ending missiles can carry 15 warheads and have the potential to obliterate an area the size of the United Kingdom in a single strike.

Each of the Sarmat missile’s 15 nuclear warheads are over 100 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War 2.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also said that his missiles “can break through all modern anti-missile defenses.”

They achieve this not only through the speed at which they travel, but also by being able to maneuver in-flight specifically to avoid incoming missile defenses, which cannot change course and cannot fly as fast as the Sarmat. Quite simply, there is presently no protection and no defense against such missiles. The US and NATO could literally be wiped-out by them.

Experienced observers say while these kinds of threats have become increasingly common on Russian TV news shows since the invasion of Ukraine, the risk of mutually assured destruction undercuts much of the danger. Those experienced observers, however, turned out to be wrong.

Russia has a national system of nuclear bomb shelters for its population. The US does not.

Russia’s blast shelters are stocked with food, water, medicine, tools, and have emergency generators for electric, with fuel to run those generators. The US does not.

Russia performs regular nuclear attack drills with its civilian population, and has successfully seen forty million (40,000,000) of their citizens arrive at shelters within minutes, to survive a US or NATO nuclear attack. Neither the US not any of its NATO partners ever conduct such drills.

These facts kind of take the “mutual” out of of “mutual assured destruction.” Put simply, the US and NATO would be wiped out, while Russia and its citizens will survive in great numbers, with food, electric, and tools, to rebuild afterwards. The US and NATO would not survive or be able to rebuild.

The Russian politicians know this and they are going to great lengths to make clear what the world faces.

Why the US and NATO continue to interfere, when there is no national security interest at all with Ukraine, seems to many, to be suicidal.

Yet the mass-media in the US and its NATO vasal partner states in Europe, conceal this information from the general public; leaving citizens blissfully unaware that western governments are sleepwalking them into nuclear Armageddon.

Lovely Vintage Photos of Rock Stars Posing With Their Kitty Cats

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Johnny Ramone

Who doesn’t like rock stars and cute kitty cats?

Though their contributions rarely receive credit, pets have played their part across pop history. An animal’s presence can offer comfort, laughter, inspiration, or annoyance, and earning a pet’s affection can be one of the most rewarding experiences in life. Naturally, those emotions can’t help but bleed into an artist’s work.

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Patti Smith

But owning a pet is also a great responsibility, and for musicians who spend much of their time on the road, bringing a furry friend into the family can lead to difficulties. What do you do with the little critter while on tour? Can it come along? If so, how? Will it be forced to stay in the car or bus?…

Behind many great musicians exists a great pet… Here’s a collection of a few  adorable vintage photos of rock stars posing with their beloved cats:

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Debbie Harry

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John Lennon

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Janis Joplin

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Tom Waits

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Brian Eno

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Joey Ramone

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Johnny Cash

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Frank Zappa

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Bob Dylan

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Phil Collins

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George Harrison

YELLEN: “large shocks to the economy […] that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand.”

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The Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, said today that the so-called “transitory” inflation, may not be so transitory . . . signaling things will get very much worse.

Appearing on TV, Yellen finally admitted in an interview on Tuesday that she was “wrong” about “the path that inflation would take,” as the lagging COVID-19 pandemic and economic sanctions imposed against Russia for its special military operation in Ukraine, have kept prices persistently high.

During an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, the network played a clip of previous comments she made in 2021, in which she said inflation would be a “small risk” and added that she didn’t “anticipate that inflation is going to be a problem.”

“Well, look, I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take,”

the Treasury secretary said when asked about her previous comments.

“As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that I didn’t — at the time didn’t fully understand. But we recognize that now.”
“The Federal Reserve is taking the steps that it needs to take. It’s up to them to decide what to do. And, for our part, President Biden is focused on supplementing what the Fed does with actions we can take to lower the cost that Americans face for important expenditures they have in their budgets,”

she added.

We’ll see.

 

 

David Gilmour – Raise My Rent

My university days. I hope this transporter takes you to happy places…

Russia’s Necessary and Legal Military Response to US/ NATO Aggression in Ukraine

Easily the best summation of the Russian operation's moral logic.
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Evidence shows that Russia’s special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine is a legally justified, critically necessary, and predictable response to the US’ recent escalation of its decades-long aggression against Russia in Ukraine–militarily, in the international corporate media, in cyberspace, and in the political-economic arena.  The US’ hostile actions against Russia were summarized in a 2019 US-Army funded RAND Corporation blueprint for “Over Extending and Unbalancing Russia.”  Underlying US actions is its aim is to dismember and asset-strip Russia–to appropriate its coveted oil, gas, and mineral resources and vast agricultural lands–and to enable US investors’ access to Russia’s economy. This is a step towards the US’ overarching goals of controlling Central Asia and achieving full spectrum dominance or global hegemony. Although the US war against Russia in Ukraine started years ago, US aggression escalated under the Biden administration and created conditions that posed an immediate existential threat to Russia and necessitated its military response.

In 2014, the US initiated a proxy war against Russia by engineering the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected president. This ignited a bloody civil war on Russia’s border in which the US-installed and US-armed Kiev regime attacked the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk whose largely ethnically Russian residents opposed the US coup. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) documented the Kiev regime’s attacks that killed thousands of civilians and terrorized the populace. In 2015, the US-installed then-president, Petro Poroshenko, publicly articulated Kiev’s anti-Russia stance and its policy for the Donbass:

“We will have jobs—they will not. We will have pensions—they will not. [….] Our children will go to schools and kindergartens—theirs will hide in the basements.”  Popular Ukraine pundits openly called for Donbas residents’ extermination. In 2015, Congress lifted its ban on funding Ukraine’s neo Nazi militias and placed US military trainers on the ground inside Ukraine. NATO and the CIA also began training Ukraine regime forces–effectively establishing Ukraine as a de facto US/NATO mercenary state. During the past eight years, Russia exhibited enormous restraint as the US and Ukraine violated the Minsk Protocols and rejected requests for diplomacy. In 2021, US aggression against Russia increased dramatically once Biden took office–in Ukraine and in the Black Sea. US actions and Ukraine President Zelensky’s public statements generated immediate threats to the survival of the Russian nation-state.

Russia’s Military Response Was Over-Determined By Four Existential Threats 

The US government and the corporate media falsely characterize Russia’s special operation as entirely ‘unprovoked’ and an ‘illegal invasion’. These allegations ignore four conditions which each independently compelled President Putin and the Duma to initiate Russia’s denazification and demilitarization operation and which establish this intervention as consistent with international legal norms.

Chief among the factors necessitating Russia’s immediate military response were indications of an imminent new massacre as 125,000 Ukraine forces amassed along the border of Donbass in December of 2021. This was never reported in the US corporate press.  Instead, the US government and corporate media repeatedly stated that Russian troops were gathering on Ukraine’s border (inside Russia) and predicted an impending Russian invasion. In hindsight, US intelligence could make this accurate claim because it was aware of the menacing buildup of Ukraine forces. Anticipating an imminent massacre, Russia was obligated to intervene militarily because it had a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) the citizens of Donbass.  R2P is a political commitment to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity; it was endorsed by the United Nations at its 2005 world summit.

Second, on February 19, 2022, Ukraine President Zelensky announced that Ukraine would seek to acquire nuclear weapons, saying, “I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum.” Zelensky’s expressed desire to acquire nuclear weapons represented a dangerous threat to Moscow and signaled that the window of opportunity for conventional military intervention was closing.  It is unlikely that Zelensky operates completely autonomously; Biden publicly bragged about his control over Ukraine government policies and has remunerated Zelensky following Zelensky’s implementation of anti-Russia policies and actions.

Third, Zelensky’s repudiation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was a reminder of Ukraine’s intent to join NATO. For years, US President Biden advocated NATO membership for Ukraine, assuring Zelensky as recently as December 11, 2021 that this was in Ukraine’s own hands. NATO membership would entail NATO nuclear missiles inside Ukraine, aimed at Moscow. Ukraine’s geographic proximity to Russia eliminates the crucial minutes in which Moscow could verify and respond to an attack and would effectively place Russia and the US at DEFCON Level Two. The US dismissed Russia’s December 17, 2021 verbal and written requests for a diplomatic response to its security concerns. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken deliberately rejected Russia’s entreaties and ignored the predictable consequences of Ukraine’s potential NATO membership. Renowned international relations scholars, diplomats and politicians, including John Mearsheimer, Jack Matlock, George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, and William Perry warned that NATO membership for Ukraine was a dangerous provocation which would trigger Russia’s military response.

A fourth threat requiring Russia’s intervention was the presence of US Department of Defense-operated biolabs inside Ukraine. Russia’s concerns were validated on March 11, 2022 when Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted during Congressional questioning that the Ukraine biolabs contained ‘biological materials’ which the US ‘did not want to fall into Russian hands’. While the pathogenic biological agents in these biolabs do not technically constitute bioweapons, they can become bioweapons once there is a ‘mechanism for spreading the agent.’ A delivery mechanism need not be sophisticated to be effective.  Bioweapons researcher, Jeffrey Kaye, described the extreme level of US secrecy surrounding the biolabs. Kaye noted that the Director of the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, Robert Pope, did not reassure when he stated that, “the Ukraine biolabs currently did not have the ability to manufacture bioweapons.”

Russia’s Intervention Is Consistent with International Law

These four US-generated conditions represented urgent existential threats to the Donbas and to the Russian nation-state and contradict US claims that Russia ‘illegally invaded Ukraine’ and that Russia’s intervention was unprovoked. Russia was compelled to intervene militarily to neutralize these threats and its response is consistent with the United Nations Charter of 1945 concerning international rules governing a state’s use of military force. The United Nations allows two exceptions to its prohibition of the use of force in international law: “self-defence under Article 51, and military measures authorised by the Security Council in response to “any threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression.” In particular, the UN Charter notes, “there is no problem – and never has been – with that state, without first seeking Security Council approval, using military force ‘preemptively’.’ Both exceptions apply to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine: Russia perceived an imminent threat to the Donbas and an imminent threat to the Russian nation-state.  The immediacy of these threats obviated any requirement that Russia seek prior UN Security Council approval. Seeking UN approval would be futile, in any case, because the United States, a permanent UN Security Council member, is the principal combatant generating the hostilities.

Under the Biden administration, what began in 2014 as a US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine transformed into the US’ direct war against Russia. The US’ covert and overt military actions establish it as a legal “co-belligerent.” Now, the US continues to flood Ukraine with billions of dollars of heavy weapons and provides intelligence to guide Ukraine’s attacks on Russian forces. The US blatantly states that it wants to “weaken” Russia and that Russia must be defeated.  This is the US whose regime change wars in the Middle East killed 5 million; whose 1955-1975 war against Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia cost 3.4 million military and civilian lives. This is the US CIA whose coups and illegal interventions around the globe since its 1947 inception left a trail of bloodshed and chaos. Russia is legally and crucially defending the Donbas and the Russian nation-state against the US quest for global domination. The US generated four existential threats to the Donbas and to the Russian nation-state that necessitated Russia’s immediate intervention. The US—not Russia—is the illegal aggressor in Ukraine.

Bacon, Chile and Cream Cheese-Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Jalapeño poppers are the inspiration for these addictive, crispy baked chicken breasts.

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Ingredients

  • 2 slices bacon, chopped
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
  • 1 poblano chile, cored, seeded and diced
  • 4 oz cream cheese, softened
  • 1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese (2 oz)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (6 to 8 oz each)
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted
  • 1 cup Progresso™ plain panko crispy bread crumbs

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A document of the war

The story of a Ukrainian interpreter who was drafted into military service against the Russian attack
By Yuri Movchan*

*Name is known to the editors

I want to tell you my personal story about this war. I call them “The Adventures of Cannon Fodder” or “How I Ended Up at the Front in Jeans and a Set of Band-Aids.”

Late in the evening of March 1, I drove with my wife and child to Uzhhorod, on the border with Slovakia. In my naivety I also went along because I thought I wasn’t fit for military service. The provisional certificate issued to me as a replacement for my military ID card read “peacetime unfit, restricted military service.” When I inquired, I immediately received a summons to the draft office. I was told to call a cab and drive to the recruitment office in the middle of the night. Although I hadn’t done anything illegal—I hadn’t offered a bribe, nor attempted to sneak across the border, I was just asking—I knew from the way they spoke to me that I would never get out of there.

I kissed my son who was sleeping in the Red Cross tent, hugged my wife goodbye and went back to my homeland. “How am I going to fight with my eyesight?” I asked the man in uniform, purely rhetorically and to keep the conversation going while I waited for a cab. “There are many different jobs and roles in the army, not necessarily just shooting,” he explained.

Nobody seemed to be listening to me in the recruiting office. They told me to report to the counter, get some forms and queue for a medical exam. The kind-hearted ophthalmologist, noting that my short-sightedness had increased since the last examination, scribbled a number of medical phrases on a form, based on which the head of the commission declared me fit for duty and sent me on my way.

From interpreter to shooter

In Uzhgorod, long queues formed in front of the registration and draft office. Volunteers offered water and sandwiches, many people sat there for days and then set off in groups. I waited in line until closing time and received a new subpoena for tomorrow. On March 4th, my documents were written, I was put on a yellow shuttle along with the others who were “caught.” A priest came in to pray for us and bless us – then we drove off.

It turned out that in my group there were many people who, like me, had health problems, people who, like me, were no longer young and who, like me, had no experience of military service. “You will be something like territorial defense,” we were assured when we got to the unit, “you will stay in the Zakarpattia region and, for example, stand at roadblocks and guard some facilities.” “But,” added the soothing voice casually added, “if there is an order to that effect, you may be assigned other targets…” (Looking back after a month and a half of absurdity and criminal negligence, it can be seen that the order was already on an employee’s desk, only undated and undated ).

That’s how I ended up as a rifleman in the newly founded Fifth Rifle Battalion. I was listed as a clerk on my ID card. I had worked as an English translator for 20 years, including as an interpreter for the British military instructors of our troops in Operation Orbital. But the people organizing home defense got the impression that I would be more useful in digging trenches and shooting from AK-74s. My staff included three programmers from Kyiv. They were occasionally used to type endless lists of personal information into Excel spreadsheets. But the rest of the time they were like everyone else—lawyers, teachers, farmers, builders—learning to disassemble machine guns, dig fortifications, and throw grenades.

But it must be said that there was not much training. In the first two weeks we did various tasks: moving boxes around, getting uniforms and shoes. However, because not all sizes were available, a dozen other men and I were never outfitted with uniforms—neither “pixel” (jacket and pants) nor boots. After a month we were told to buy them for our money – “You get your wages,” remarked the company commander. Somehow I was reluctant to make these purchases (especially since the items were rarely and reluctantly given out), so I went to the front in jeans and black winter boots. But it was my own fault, as the saying goes. However, the overalls were distributed to everyone – used ones provided by the Slovak army.

The squad leader warned that there weren’t enough body armor for everyone and suggested that those who were wealthier should buy them at their own expense. But in the last few days before the hasty departure, protective vests were brought for everyone. And even old rubber gas masks and chemical protective coats OZK with holes in the seams were handed out. We had to carry this extra cargo everywhere. Shortly before marching off to the position, however, the company commander said that we could not take OZK protective coats with us (although they could also help against rain). We were also given sleeping mats and sleeping bags but they were mixed as they had all been donated by volunteers.

So for the first two weeks we arranged our way of life, mud and tobacco smoke were omnipresent as the obligatory background. The training began around the third week. The first two days were meaningful: showing how to disassemble the Kalashnikov assault rifles, then also how to use the PKM (a modernized Kalashnikov machine gun) – affectionately called “Pokemon” – and two types of grenade launchers. It wasn’t entirely clear why there were grenade launchers at the checkpoints, and why everyone in the squad was enlisted as a gunner, grenade launcher, machine gunner, communicator and medic – but extra knowledge never hurts, right?

Then it was shown how to stop heavy bleeding with a large rubber band (of the kind often attached to bicycle loads). And they explained how to move in groups with machine guns. We then spent a few more weeks “solidifying” what we had learned: walking in single file around an abandoned training ground with submachine guns, or sometimes with batons mimicking them. Or we’d just “dance” around and sunbathe when one of the so-called instructors would honestly say, “Guys, go and imitate something so your superiors don’t screw you up.” Others, more “conscientious,” insisted that we “consolidate” the “knowledge” we had acquired. They repeated meaningfully, “Guys, be careful, your life may depend on it.”

There were not enough instructors for us poor people. And those assigned to teach didn’t quite know what to do. No wonder, because almost all platoon leaders (and the company commander himself) had never served; at best they had a military department at a college. Half, if not more, of all members of our company (I’m sure it was the entire battalion) had never served.

The paramedic was a phlegmatic and indifferent guy named Anton, a former vet I think. His first lesson was, “This shit, boys, goes in this damn thing… If it’s a throat wound, there’s nothing you can do about it. Even experienced doctors can’t always help… A fractured pelvis can be recognized by a clear crunch when pressing. A special splint is used for such cases, but you won’t have one… Your job is to get the injured person to a safer ‘yellow’ area where people like me will provide assistance.’ Which was small consolation. But we weren’t too concerned about this “competence” of our medics – no one seriously believed they would be going to the battlefield any time soon. So these courses gave us the opportunity to to have fun and not get bored so much. One of the officers found combat training materials in the textbooks written in inarticulate Chancery language. I, as a man of higher education, read the general information about patrols and convoys of armored vehicles to the soldiers sleeping on the lawn.

The corporal took a more lively approach: He watched lots of videos on Youtube before the class and taught everything in simple language, with a healthy dose of swear words. But even that seemed either far removed from our duties or inaccessible without much practice. So it all turned into a friendly chat about who had heard what about mines, snipers and ambushes. When even the dense cigarette smoke couldn’t hide the tired facial expression, the foreman repeated the leitmotif: “Your life may depend on it.”

After half a month we started going to the shooting range once a week. I’ve heard that a military handbook states how many times a soldier must pull the trigger before being considered ready for action. So I’d been to the range three times and fired about 70 rounds in total (and thrown a practice grenade once – not counting the practice where we threw rocks through the windows of a landfill that used to be a tank training ground) and was done ready for active combat in April.

The three of us took turns shooting standing, kneeling and lying down. We had to remember when to release the safety, when to engage the breech, and check to see if there was a cartridge left in the gun. We got a little confused, the bosses got a little angry and yelled at the “morons”. So we tried it even faster, not caring about accuracy or aiming, just the formal smoothness of the exercise. The superior, who for some reason called himself a psychologist, was pleased and said indulgently: “There is war in the country, no time for study. So let’s go to battle!’ And right on the rainy ground we were provided with stew, apples and even chocolate from humanitarian aid supplies. That was admittedly more interesting than the sticky noodles,

Healthy is who does not fall over

In mid-March, air raid alarms apparently began to sound regularly in the distant Transcarpathian Mountains. During the alert, we had to spread out (so that one rocket didn’t kill everyone at once) and lie close to the ground (so the shrapnel would fly through without hitting us). For some reason, our unit didn’t have an air raid shelter, and we had to walk around the parade ground and sports field several times every night, crouching on the ground. Eventually we got smart and started taking pack blankets and sleeping bags, dressing warmer, and stocking up on candy and cigarettes during the alarms.

Soon almost everyone was coughing, choking on snot and running a fever. The paramedics considered any case with a fever of less than 40 degrees as a trifle. In fact, even one man who had the coronavirus was deemed immediately fit to work and sent to our overcrowded barracks. So we stoically choked back our coughs, swallowed the phlegm and prepared for the constellation ritual. We waited for the officers to confer on the sidelines and split into their platoons to convey our task ahead: ‘Anyway folks. Now we will reinforce yesterday’s lesson. Until noon. And then we’ll clean our guns.”

The stoic contempt for the mortal body in the service of a higher purpose led annoyingly to acute and chronic pain. But that didn’t stop us either. In early April, when I was already tired of swallowing every second of snot and disturbing my comrades with monstrous snoring at night, I went to see real doctors. They determined that I had chronic maxillary sinusitis and acute tracheobronchitis and prescribed antibiotics, among other things. But a march and shooting at the firing range was planned in two days, so I, along with all the other relatively healthy soldiers (since I was not on IV fluids and not getting burned in the heat), walked five kilometers to the firing range and the same distance at heavy rain back. there was no place

The first military unit, as I said, was overcrowded. The bunk beds were quickly set up, but even faster they were filled with the fresh catch from the Uzhgorod conscription office, which was sometimes brought in in the middle of the night. Once I got up in the night to go to the bathroom and had trouble making my way through the darkness between the recruits sleeping on the floor. Soon the beds filled all the rooms and closets and lined the corridors in tight rows. The glorious Fifth Rifle Battalion took full form. The soldiers had two washbasins and two showers for over 400 men of the battalion, but once a week they were given socks and trousers marked “ZSU” (Ukrainian Ground Forces, jW ).

After the rocket attacks in the Lviv region, it was decided to take the soldiers out of the easily identifiable unit and disperse them. At first they were housed in separate rooms, which were terribly cold but spacious. But after a few days we decided that it’s easier to manage the herd when it’s in the same barn, so we set up “boxes” in large rooms (apparently meeting rooms) on the ground floor. The same bunk beds were brought in, but here we had to huddle even closer—three people on two mattresses (which made our team even closer). Unfortunately, in this fraternal community there have also been unfortunate incidents: arguments over a place for a bag under the bed, or confusion about whose coat or shoes went where. But in the army you learn an important principle early on: “You don’t steal, you break it.” And it teaches personal responsibility and the careful handling of things.

Our morale was boosted not only by cheering on the formation every day, but also by the power of the art. Once Viktor Pavlik (well-known Ukrainian musician, JV) brought to the department, sang with his guitar in the lobby and took pictures with the people. The most suspicious of us thought that such exorbitant luxuries were a sign of impending departure, but that too was wrong. In general, there was a lot of rumors and speculation. ‘Well, they can’t really send us to the front, we’re zeros!’ ‘We don’t have armored vehicles, we’re deployed at checkpoints and guards.’ ‘Our people are deployed separately in other units, and only those who agree to go there.” “None of our people are trained to work with ‘javelins’ and without that they definitely won’t be sent to a combat zone,” and so on. There have been many hypotheses and conjectures, but reality has trumped them.

Three days of field exercises were on the program before Easter: digging out fortifications, building shelters, sleeping in the fresh forest air, simulated patrols and combat, and finally a day at the firing range. Everything indicated that we would spend some more time at home (or rather, out of unit) at Easter and then be sent elsewhere. There was even another cultural event that disturbed our souls: on the Sunday a week before Easter, when we had barely eaten two spoons, the conductor burst into the canteen and ordered us to form up.

We were immediately taken in pairs to the Institute for Culture and Art and took a seat in the auditorium. At first the students of this school danced in their national costumes, then other students sang patriotic songs mixing the traditional tropes “Cossacks” and “Wolf and Nightingale” with new TV jargon like “Bayraktars” and some ridiculous insults to the enemy. Then the lead singer of Shablya performed. The band, as we have learned, since the beginning of the ATO (“anti-terrorist operation” in Donbass, jW) found their niche and roams military units across the country with martial and sometimes melancholic songs to keep up the fighting spirit of the Cossacks. After the concert we were treated to cookies, pastries and coffee and then returned to our cold soup at leisure.

On the eve of the “conclusion” of the training, the administrative and economic hectic intensified: we were rushed to receive ancient OZKs, first-aid kits (only with bandages, gauze and plasters in them) and a good imported tourniquet (instead of the promised three , but thanks) that they didn’t want to give out before (“You’ll twist them and break them before you even get out!”). The military ID cards were collected again to create new lists. There are some mystical problems with these lists – no matter how many times they make them, they still issue certificates with misspelled names, mix up the dates in the accounts, forget to put stamps or signatures… I wish there were accountants and businessmen in the Army,

To the front

And so it was Tuesday, a day of lengthy training on the field. We were routinely woken up at 5am so we could patiently wait until 8am for the first group to gather and leave. On site we had already dug enviable holes, almost completed the communal shelter, built a fire and waited for the meat to cook for the Bograch when the order came to drop everything and head back. The Bograch was dumped on the ground, we made our way back to the unit. There we were lined up and told with beaming smiles: »Guys, it’s finally time that we too defend our homeland!« It was a warm evening on April 19th. “Pack up, we’re leaving tonight when the kamazes (trucks,jW ) arrive. Only take the essentials with you: OZK, gas mask, BK (ammunition set), weapons, gloves, sleeping bag, underwear and a pair of socks … Don’t take anything extra with you!«

But we couldn’t go that fast. We got bulletproof vests. Then everyone got four full magazines (120 rounds of ammunition, with no additional forms or signatures), our automatic rifles, dry rations for three days. We didn’t leave until two o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday. In two big buses. There were also two Kamaz trucks in the convoy: one with personal belongings and one with additional BKs, machine guns, shovels, saws, other infantry tools and kitchen utensils… The bosses with pistols on their belts also rode in a pickup truck.

No one told us where we were going or what the task was. “Guys, I’m not going to tell you. Because I do not know. Honestly, I don’t know,” swore the captain, a company commander who had never served.

We drove very slowly: someone fell behind the column and we had to wait for him, then one of the trucks boiled over and the other had to be repaired. Given these delays, the commander was understandably annoyed by the soldiers’ requests to use a restroom, smoke, or eat. More than once he rigorously suppressed these whims. By the end of the first day, we had barely left the Zakarpattia region. On the second day we left Ivano-Frankivsk. Everyone guessed that the route went to the Dnipro.

We were told to only take one dry meal per bus (and where else would gas masks and other items go). The food, dubbed »Palianitsa«, was made by Britain for the heroes of Ukraine: tasteless sausages, a simple stew (no side dish or at least bread), assorted nuts, dark chocolate and a good dessert of oatmeal flavored with caramel and toffee. There was also a bag of instant fruit drinks and water purification tablets.

In the following days we had to ask for help in the shops where the locals gave us many things for free and generously brought us bottled water, coffee, groceries, Easter buns, apples etc. Some people tried to give us money. “I have a son there myself,” said one of them. It was a little embarrassing to accept this undeserved participation and help.

The landscape changed. At rest stops we wiped our bare feet with wet wipes. We finally reached Dnipro on the Saturday before Easter, but passed the city and took the Donetsk highway. Every fork in the road jolted our weary brains anew. At the exit of the city we stopped and stood for a long time. After the meetings, the commanders informed us about a plan for further action. We were almost there, but the final leg of the journey would be very close to the front line in places. “We’re going to help a unit that’s waiting for us in the morning. We’ll go out in the dark, in body armor and helmets, with loaded machine guns in hand. The bus will drive slowly and with the doors open. Some of the soldiers look out the window and when they spot flashing lights, the bus stops and everyone quickly gets off and lies down in the street behind them. Don’t go to the curb. There could be mines there!”

I was so exhausted from this endless drive that I took it all with indifference and almost fell asleep. (The assignment was clear and concise, but it still raises questions like: “What if we were lying behind the bus on the tarmac? Attack the attackers from the darkness, behind the mined roadside? Go through the night and one leave the shot-up bus behind? Where? Are you waiting for backup? From who?’) I pushed these idle thoughts aside and surrendered to the warm current of sleepy apathy.
However, for some reason my comrades grew restless. The group leader, who always seemed smart and experienced, approached me. “We will speak to the commanders that we do not agree with this order.”

“And what are your arguments?” I asked. I chose my words carefully so as not to betray my amazement: I am not the only one who recognizes the absurdity of what is happening! There are sane people around me… (no cogs obeying the system). “The order seems silly to many,” explained my group leader, Sanya. ‘Is there a connection to those we ask for support? Do they know we are coming and won’t they open fire on us themselves? And one more thing: our battery (120 cartridges) is enough for only ten minutes of combat. And then what? Some are asking how can we conduct a combat mission when many of them still don’t have ID cards to assign them to their unit?”

“What do you think, should we go or not?” he finished. “I agree that we don’t have to go there,” I said and he left.

At four in the morning I went with three other guys to guard the area around our campsite. Around five o’clock the soldiers began to gather between the buses and trucks. Officials from the authorities spoke to them. We on duty were completely forgotten. I only caught snippets of sentences being said: “I know Colonel A. personally and he would never give a crazy order… He’s worried about each and every one of you… I understand you’re scared… but out there wait guys like you…” At six-thirty I realized there was no point in standing guard. “What have you decided?” Sanya asked when he saw me. “About what? I didn’t really hear what was said.” Then came the order: “If you don’t want to go, stand here on the left,

I murmured, “I don’t think it’s worth going there with my level of education,” and wandered to the left while Sanya walked to the right. I looked at both groups with amazement. There were more leftists, but not much more, by no means an overwhelming majority. The bosses told everyone to form groups of three or four and for some reason counted the gray men in the wet morning light.

Then something was said. We got on our buses and went somewhere. “Don’t worry,” Sanya leaned towards me, “you did the right thing.”

I stared in silence, struggling with an odd mix of emotions. As time went on, the mixture of anger and laughter, an unfriendly laugh, grew sharper and sharper. “What’s changed?” I asked, in my most neutral and sleepy voice, “You were against it, and now you’re for it.”

‘There was a lot of confusion, but it’s more or less settled now. The paperwork will be sorted, and no one will be sent anywhere without their military record stamped. Our task will be to cover the artillery. Nobody’s going to put us in the front row,’ Sanya explained, adding simply and without much emotion, ‘unless they screw it up’.

The bus kept going on and on. We drove to the Donetsk region and looked sullenly out of the windows. We reached the city of Pokrovsk. Here we stopped at the end of a road bridge and everyone was ordered to get out and line up under the bridge with tanks and machine guns. In front of us were the political instructors, the commanders, the lawyer and the VSP (Ukrainian Military Law Enforcement Service, jW ). The “soft” political official answered a few questions. Then someone else spoke up, “I understand it’s scary. In the beginning everyone is afraid. But you will get used to it. Before you there were groups where some people didn’t serve at all, and now nothing…”

“We’ve got half the men who didn’t serve,” rumbled someone in the crowd. “That’s okay,” the officer said calmly, “you’ll see, after the first shot, it’s all over. You will get used to it.”
Then the VSP (or just its mouthpiece) took the floor. He began by listing crimes that multiply in times of war. He began pointing out “problems” and “eyesores.” A goofy smile spread across my face and I could barely contain my laughter. “So I want to ask you once again to think about what you vote for, I want the left to make the right decision after all,” the loving political officer called out again. “If you don’t want to go, go to this side.” Nobody moved. “So everyone is ready?” he asked in a more solemn tone. “That’s right!” answered the line, drowning out my “Sure, dammit!”

Then we got back to our buses and drove on. We arrived in the Lugansk region. We drove on. Then we reached our new “apartments,” but we still seemed to be on the move. I slept comfortably on a pallet under a lathe in an abandoned factory building. We unloaded our backpacks from the kamaz, and there was a whole feast of various canned goods. I quietly pooped in the concrete ditch and looked at the factory landscape. I found that there was still water in the boiler room and used it to wash my feet and socks. I hung them in the sun. Every little thing made me happy. I even found a generator and charged my phone to the brim. I squinted at the sun-drenched concrete and the almost perfectly clear sky. only on the horizon

Postscript
The platoon commander has just informed me that we will be resting all day today and will leave for our positions in the evening. We may also get our own generator, but when we leave we turn off our phones and turn them in. They are kept in a kind of box. “Phones won’t do much good there anyway,” he remarked sensibly, sipping on his e-cigarette.

I’m leaving the text as is, although much could be added and corrections made (I typed it on my phone at night). Just now, at 10:00 am on April 26th, there was a line-up and it was officially announced that we are going to fortify our positions tonight.

So I’m sending him as he is. I want my voice to be heard in the depths of this absurdity and hell. It’s not death itself that’s scary, it’s senseless and stupid death. If I don’t come back, maybe this text will help someone solve this crime (and probably many others).

I want my voice to be heard.

Mysterious Mummified Predator Baffles Experts

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2022 06 02 16 13

Some people may not be aware, but animals have been mummified throughout history in various places, including Turkey in the Middle Ages. Niğde, Turkey is a site were researchers have recently found mummified remains of an apparent carnivore – that has defied classification so far.

“We are examining pictures of the skeleton and it seems to be a carnivore,” Aydin Topcu, Natural History professor at Niğde University, told the Daily Mail . “But we need more time to conduct further tests. After the examinations we will be able to tell what species it belongs to and of which period of time it is.”

The Daily Mail wrote in its article that it had sent photos of the find to the Zoological Society of London, the Horniman Museum, the Natural History Museum and the British Museum, the last of which refused to comment on the photos. The news agent says the creature could be a hoax, but it resembles a cat. Some experts told them it could be a prehistoric animal.

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2022 06 02 16 1v4

There is a history of cats and children being mummified in Anatolia from the 10th to the 13th centuries AD, the Daily Mail said. This particular specimen, 1 meter long (3 feet) from nose to tail tip, was found by a locksmith in an old cellar of his shop in Niğde. He has put the creature on display.

Cats were revered and mummified in ancient Egypt, and some experts think Anatolia was influenced by the practice. One reason cats were so loved in Egypt was because they could eat the rodents that threatened the grain supplies. A cat could also take on a cobra, the Daily Mail says.

Some ancient Egyptians adorned their cats with gold jewelry and allowed them to eat off their plates.

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2022 06 02 16 1b4

Millions upon millions of animal mummies have been found in the dark, carved stone tunnels beneath the location of Egypt’s earliest pyramid at Saqqara. The necropolis of Saqqara is the burial site of kings, commoners and sacred animals.

The astounding piles of preserved animal remains not only signify a cultural and religious phenomenon, but also speak to the mammoth industry that operated to maintain a source of constant tributes to the gods.

The Catacombs of Anubis at North Saqqara ,” a study published in 2015 in the archaeological journal Antiquity, examines the underground world associated with the temples dedicated to animal deities of ancient Egypt.

The Saqqara catacombs served as the burial places of animal tributes to the jackal-headed deity Anubis. Between this study, and other studies by Egyptologists from University of Manchester , it can be seen that the millions of dogs sacrificed and mummified to the canine deity were only one part of a wider practice of sacred animal cults.

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2022 06 02 16 1n4

But the Egyptians mummified many cats too, though they are not the only people in the world to have buried felines with elaborate ceremony and in recognition of status or symbolism.

In 2015, archaeologists found the remains of a bobcat in an important mound burial from 2,000 years ago. The mound was usually reserved for humans, but the feline was important enough to the Hopewell people of western Illinois to be included. The bobcat had been decorated with sea shells and bear-teeth pendants, and found with its paws placed together. It was included in the human burial mound, while dogs were buried around the village. Researchers speculate the bobcat was a beloved pet, not sacrificed or violently killed, and that it held spiritual significance to the Native Americans.

Captured according to instructions. Their commanders have already begun to agree on the surrender of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

From HERE

When there were battles for Mariupol, hundreds of soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were taken prisoner, and then thousands. After the “evacuation” (this is how Kyiv came up with the idea of ​​calling the surrender) from Azovstal, it might seem that the trickle of Ukrainian soldiers ready to lay down their arms had dried up. But it’s not. Kyiv throws new units to the front line almost daily, where the vast majority of fighters are yesterday’s civilians. The mobilized are not ready to die for no reason, and the flow of prisoners from the areas of Krasny Liman, Popasna, Severodonetsk is again stable.

Warm and satisfying

“We made a decision for ourselves not to leave, because it’s scary, but just to give up. The best option for us,” says prisoner of war Andrei Kaminsky from Lutsk. He, in a group of 16 people, was sitting in the basement of the church during the shelling, they surrendered at the first opportunity. The man tells for a long time how good it is in captivity and how well they are fed, which, according to him, was not only on the front line, but even in Lutsk at checkpoints.

There are already a lot of videos in which prisoners of war talk about the inhuman attitude of their fathers-commanders, how they are not fed and armed properly, and even about detachments that shoot those who run back and surrender. Each one is about the same thing: they were forced to fight, they are thrown to the front naked and barefoot and without heavy weapons, they call themselves cannon fodder, they call on other fighters not to sacrifice their lives and to surrender. However, the stories of military personnel are about the same.

or example, UAF Lieutenant Oleksandr Lukhanin says Ukrainian soldiers have nothing to fear from Russians unless they have committed war crimes. “Nothing will happen to them if they have not committed any actions against the civilian population,” he says. “They will figure it out for you, and you will go to your families, to your relatives – children, mom, dad.”

Sergeant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Serhiy Sidorchuk surrendered voluntarily and says that his colleagues have long wanted to do the same. “Morale has dropped. Everyone just wants to go home to the point that they are ready to lay down their arms. They were afraid of persecution, but now it doesn’t matter to them either,” he admits. Sidorchuk is sure that “it is better to go to jail than to die.” And he shares his first impressions of captivity: “How did I get here, the guys said: “That’s it, we fought back. Lucky you will live. Our conditions are normal.” The sergeant was surprised that the prisoners were not only fed, but also given warm clothes and blankets, because the room was a little cool.

Increasingly, the Ukrainian military come out to surrender in groups. As a graduate of the Kharkov Phystech Valery Grishko . He himself enlisted in the defense to avoid mobilization. He says he thought that he would “sit at the headquarters at the computer”, but he was thrown to the front line. IT specialists were instructed to scan radio frequencies and listen to the conversations of the military. The newly-minted radio intelligence understood the whole delusional nature of the task – household walkie-talkies cannot detect closed channels, and they did not show official zeal. But they quickly found the positions of the NVO troops and five of them surrendered.

We must surrender together

Among the Ukrainian soldiers, and not only on the front line, instructions on how to surrender correctly walk from hand to hand. Three rules. Advise to go en masse, entire military formations. So there is less chance that the command will write down the entire unit as deserters. But before doing this, it is better to “isolate political officers from the national battalions and the SBU.” And also unanimously record a video message led by an officer. Well, the route of capturing should be chosen carefully so as not to run into a detachment of nationalists.

In practice, especially when artillery is constantly working, it does not always work according to the instructions. But the scheme is working. How it happens in life, according to Russian servicemen fighting in the Donetsk region, military commander Alexander Kots told. At night, a Ukrainian fighter came to the checkpoint and asked to speak with the commander. “We are now being drafted only because otherwise we will go to jail, and here we can’t retreat, behind the cadre or nationalists, we will get a bullet from them,” he said. He described two weeks in the training manual, when the charters are crammed and they give 30 rounds of ammunition for everything about everything, and then immediately to the front. He said that the mood in the unit is sad – “everyone is afraid, both those who are in front and those who are behind.” And he asked to tell how to surrender: “We do not want to fight for the oligarchs sitting abroad, and our corrupt government! Why is it possible for the “Azovites”*, but not for us?” A day after the start of the next assault, the platoon of this Ukrainian commander surrendered in full force.

Forgotten and no one needs

In early May, information appeared that naive Ukrainian fighters did not follow instructions from the enemy, but sent relatives to “intermediaries” who, for money, “agreed” with the RF Armed Forces on a safe exit into captivity. Military commander Alexander Sladkov admitted that such a scheme could be quite working: “Surely there is such a “matchmaker for prisoners”. And not alone. For money.” But in reality, especially now, when Kyiv is trying to cling to a piece of land in the Donbass at any cost, you have to negotiate at your own peril and risk, without intermediaries.

However, Ukrainian prisoners of war have to take care of their own future. Without waiting for help from the Ukrainian authorities, the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who were captured a month or two ago, recorded an appeal to the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky demanding to stop ignoring their duties and return them home to their families. “We have been here for more than a month and no one is taking care of us. Everyone is puzzled only by the Azov regiment. For some reason, no one asks all the presidents of Europe, the Pope , Elon Musk to assist in our exchange. We also have families, there are children who need us very much, they say. — When there was a need for us, we honestly performed our duty, stood as a “human shield”. Why are we just forgotten and no one needs us now?

Judging by the way events are developing, this appeal is unlikely to have the desired effect on prisoners of war. So, both on the front line and in captivity, in order to save their lives and return home to their families, both the regular soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and those mobilized will have to solve problems themselves. And before that, think hard about what they are fighting for.

More Pictures from the Past

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Caprese Chicken and Orzo Skillet

One-and-done dinners are where it’s at in the summertime, and this one is particularly well suited to the season. Featuring all the flavors of a caprese salad—including tomatoes, mozzarella and fresh basil—but on a hearty bed of orzo and chicken breasts, this meal will fill up the whole family. And perhaps best of all, it’s an easy way to make a weeknight dinner extra special in under an hour!

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9774520f ad0b 42a1 b25a 81ac721c24da

Ingredients

  • 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (1 1/4 lb)
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 cup Progresso™ chicken broth (from 32-oz carton)
  • 1 can (14.5 oz) Muir Glen™ organic fire roasted diced tomatoes, undrained
  • 1 cup uncooked orzo or rosamarina pasta
  • 1 package (8 oz) fresh mozzarella pearls, drained
  • 1/4 cup shredded fresh basil leaves

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2022 05 30 15 43

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2022 05 30 15 44

Some fantastic posters from China…

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A depiction of Dong Cunrui, who sacrificed his own life in 1949 during the Chinese Civil War while detonating explosives in an enemy bunker. c. 1960.

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“Follow the Constitution to Achieve Greater Industrial Victory.” c. 1970.

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“Have the Whole Country in Mind and Have the Whole World in View.” c. 1970.

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“Win Honor For Our Socialist Country, Win Honor For Our Great Leader Chairman Mao.” c. 1970.

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“American Imperialism Must Be Driven Out of Southern Vietnam!” c. 1970.

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“Strive to Collect Scrap Metal and Other Waste Materials!” c. 1970.

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“Vigilance, Defend the Motherland!” 1968.

Are You Upset About Inflation? If So, You Aren’t Alone.

All of a sudden, just about everyone is upset about inflation.  It would have been nice if everyone would have been this upset back when our leaders were making the exceedingly foolish decisions that resulted in this crisis.  In May 2012, the federal government was 15 trillion dollars in debt.  Now we are 30 trillion dollars in debt, but our politicians continue to spend money as if tomorrow will never come.  Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of dollars that they created out of thin air into the financial system in recent years.  For a very long time, I passionately denounced what our leaders were doing, because I knew what would happen.  Now a day of reckoning has arrived, and millions upon millions of Americans are absolutely desperate for things to return to normal.  Unfortunately, that simply is not going to happen.

In May 2020, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was less than two dollars.

Today, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States reached a brand new record high of $4.62, and we are being warned that it could soon go to “$5 a gallon or more”

The national average for unleaded gas hit another new high of $4.62 per gallon Tuesday, according to AAA data. Prices are up more than 50% compared with last year.

Analysts say gasoline prices usually peak by mid-May, but this year prices at the pump could continue to rise into July and reach about $5 a gallon or more.

Most of the time, the vast majority of the population doesn’t pay much attention to economics.

But this is where the rubber meets the road, and two recent polls show very clearly that Americans are becoming increasingly frustrated…

An NBC News poll released earlier this month found that 33 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, while 23 percent approve of his handling of the cost of living.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll in early May found that more than 9 in 10 Americans are concerned, at a minimum, about the rate of inflation, which has been at a 40-year high for months. That included 44 percent who say they are “upset” about the problem.

In addition, Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index has now fallen to the lowest reading that we have seen since the end of the Great Recession

Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index measured -45 in May, down from -39 in each of the previous two months. It is the lowest reading in Gallup’s trend during the coronavirus pandemic, and likely the lowest confidence has been since the tail end of the Great Recession in early 2009.

When things go bad, who are people going to blame?

More than anyone else, people are going to blame the guy in the White House.

And right now the Biden administration is absolutely desperate “to contain the political damage caused by inflation”

The White House launched a new push Tuesday to contain the political damage caused by inflation after President Biden complained for weeks to aides that his administration was not doing enough to publicly explain the fastest price increases in roughly four decades.

Aiming to demonstrate to the public that it is responding to its concerns, Biden met with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell in the Oval Office, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about inflation and sent top aides across major networks to push the administration’s economic message.

What is Biden’s “economic message” exactly?

I have been sitting here pondering that question, and I honestly cannot answer it.

Every day, the story seems to change.  A while back, Biden promised to do all that he could to lower gasoline prices, and he foolishly released a million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

That didn’t work.

So what now?

One insider told Politico that high gasoline prices are “a really difficult issue to message around”, because “you can’t deny the reality”

The White House’s focus on gas prices is bred from two sobering political conclusions top officials have made. The first is that they have little control over the problem. The second is that as prices rise at the pump, so do Democrats’ odds of a midterm wipeout — especially as the average U.S. gallon of gas hits fresh record highs.

“There really isn’t one silver bullet,” said one person familiar with the discussions. “It’s a really difficult issue to message around when you can’t deny the reality.”

If Joe Biden asked me what he should do in order to reduce gasoline prices, the first thing I would say would be to stop doing things that are counterproductive.  The following comes from a recent editorial by Marc A. Thiessen

If the Biden administration cared about high gas prices, they would be doing everything in their power to increase domestic production. After a federal judge invalidated an offshore oil and gas lease sale in January, the administration chose not to appeal and has since canceled three transactions in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska — taking millions of acres off the auction block. The Post called the move “a victory for climate activists intent on curbing U.S. fossil fuel leasing,” which “effectively ends the possibility of the federal government holding a lease sale in coastal waters this year.” Worse, the administration is about to let the nationwide offshore drilling program expire next month without a new plan in place.

Moving forward, we need to remove mountains of regulations that have made it extremely difficult to build and operate new refineries in the United States.

And we need far more exploration and far more drilling as soon as possible.

Of course the truth is that this isn’t just a U.S. problem.

Energy prices are out of control all over the world, and they are actually much higher in Europe than they are here.

In fact, soaring energy prices are a big reason why inflation in the European Union just hit a brand new record high

Following Germany’s post-Weimar record high inflation print, the European Union’s consumer price inflation data this morning surged to a record high at +8.1% YoY (notably hotter than the +7.8% YoY expected).

Most Americans don’t realize this, but Europe is actually much closer to a full-blown economic meltdown than we are.

I expect the euro to fall below parity with the dollar in the not too distant future.

And I expect a nightmarish energy crunch in Europe as supplies from Russia are restricted or cut off completely.  Unless something changes, next winter is going to be a really challenging time for many European nations.

We have entered the worst energy crisis in modern history, but what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

Much worse is ahead, and the American people will become increasingly frustrated as prices just keep going higher and higher.

Blinken Lays out Washington’s Anti-China Agenda

It’s very well done, how he breaks down the hidden messages, and lies out of Washington DC…

Paper Models Of The Most Controversial Buildings Erected Behind The Iron Curtain

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Zupagrafika, creators of make-your-own-paper-model sets of “brut-iful” architecture in London, Paris, Warsaw, and Katowice, have released their newest set, ‘Brutal East’. The creators’ selection captures the “certainly brutal” charm of the “functionalist panelák estates and otherworldly concrete grand designs” of the Eastern Bloc. With ‘Brutal East’ you can build your own East European city.

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Russian propaganda declares ‘WW3 has started’ in terrifying Kremlin TV threat

Propaganda from a Russian TV show has claimed that the war in Ukraine is over, and that the new goal of Russian forces is to ‘demilitarise’ NATO, with a news anchor saying a ‘real war’ has started.

From HERE

A Kremlin TV propaganda piece has claimed World War Three has started, and that Russia’s horrifying task is now to “demilitarise” NATO.

Russian television anchor Olga Skabeyeva of Putin mouthpiece Rossiya-1 claimed on camera that the war in Ukraine, known in Russia as a special military operation, "is now over".

Skabeyeva argued that the West's provisions of arms to Ukraine meant that the special operation had spilled over into a global conflict as Ukraine showcased new British Wolfhound heavy tactical support vehicles.

The anchor’s tirade was broadcast on Rossiya-1, where she claimed Russia were being “forced to demilitarise” both Ukraine and NATO.

Skabayeva said: "It's time to admit, perhaps, that Russia's special operation in Ukraine is now over. In the sense that a real war has started, World War III. We are being forced to demilitarise, not just Ukraine but NATO as a whole.

"It was not only Smerch MLRS with cluster munitions that struck Donetsk. The strikes were carried out with... American M777 howitzers."

Separate claims made by Lugansk People’s Republic head Leonid Pasechnik, who alleged that Ukrainian propaganda was to blame for hatred of Russian activities.

He said: “Most people, of course, meet us as liberators, with tears in their eyes, seeking to thank the military in person. Many come outside, hug republican, Russian servicemen, saying that they were anticipating liberation.

“Hatred towards everything Russian was promoted in Ukraine: language, culture, people and Russia in general. To our great regret, Kyiv and the US were able to raise an entire generation, a nation even, a nation of nationalists, in such a short time.

“Despite that, there are tens of thousands of people in Ukraine who support the Russian world, friendship with the brotherly people of Russia.”

The Prisoner 15;  “The Girl Who Was Death”.

This is episode 15. I hope that you enjoy it.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Oh man, are we in the deep right now. Lets stroll and ponder our fates.

We continue with the historic glimpse in the great global upheavals that we are all part of. I know you all want more on the core topics of MM, but we are living though historic times. Please bear with me. In the mean time, please enjoy this article.

Here’s some truth…

Instant Pot® Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

Chopped onions, mushrooms, carrots and celery are the fresh and flavorful base of this creamy and savory soup that stars a hearty helping of wild rice and chicken. This Instant Pot® spin on classic chicken and wild rice soup will be your go-to update on a universally loved recipe.

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60c3ebda 50a7 415e 8c66 14f6c9b93034

Ingredients

  • 1 package (20 oz) boneless skinless chicken thighs, patted dry
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 cups chopped onions
  • 1 package (8 oz) white mushrooms, chopped
  • 1 carton (32 oz) Progresso™ chicken broth
  • 2 cups peeled, sliced carrots
  • 1/2 cup sliced celery
  • 1/2 cup uncooked wild rice
  • 1 cup heavy whipping cream
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • Chopped fresh thyme leaves, if desired

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2022 05 30 16 39

Elite San Francisco School Sees Record D’s And F’s After Ditching ‘Racist’ Merit-Based Admissions

Tuesday, May 31, 2022 – 07:45 AM

A record number of freshman students at San Francisco’s elite Lowell High School earned D and F grades this past fall – the first semester after the school board eliminated merit-based admissions that were deemed “racist” by former SF Board of Education Commissioner, Alison Collins – who was ousted along with two other school board members in a February recall over the admissions debate and other issues – including a series of 2016 tweets by Collins targeting Asian Americans.

Of the 620 freshman students at Lowell, 24.4% received at least one D or F during the fall semester, which compared with just 7.9% of first-year students in fall 2020 and 7.7% in fall 2019, according to internal SF Unified School District figures obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle. Overall, the number of 9th graders at Lowell with a D or F tripled from 51 in 2020 to 152 in 2021 – bringing the figures closer to those at other high schools in the city.

Lowell students in grades 10 through 12 – who were admitted under the old merit-based system, saw a “slight” drop in grades over the same time period, while other city high schools did not see similar rises in D’s and F’s. In fact, freshman receiving low grades at other schools declined citywide between fall 2019 and 2021.

The lower grades, while expected by many, are likely to become part of a fervid debate over Lowell that touches on race, equity and achievement. The grades raise questions about how students — and the school’s teachers and administrators — are adapting to the changes.

However, it’s unclear exactly how much the change in admissions policy factored into the rise in D’s and F’s among Lowell’s ninth-graders, compared with other possible factors such as the pandemic. -SF Chronicle

In 2020, Collins notably said merit-based achievement and standardized testing are “racist systems” and the “antithesis of fair” – prompting the school to change their admissions policy to a lottery system similar to all other SF city high schools, vs. test scores and grades.

After the school dropped merit-based admissions, Lowell High accepted fewer asian (-4.4%) and white students (-6.5%), and more hispanic (+10%) and black students (+2.9%).

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2022 05 31 19 29

According to outgoing Lowell High principal Joe Ryan Dominguez, there are “way too many variables that contributed” to the rise.

“Over a year of distance learning, half of our student body new to in-person instruction at the high school level and absences among students/staff for COVID all explain this dip in performance,” he said – without addressing the fact that students admitted under the merit-based system were doing better than those admitted under the lottery. “It is important not to insinuate a cause on such a sensitive topic at the risk of shaming our students and teachers who have worked very hard in a difficult year.”

Pressured by the pandemic, the school board approved a fast-tracked switch from merit- to lottery-based admissions at Lowell starting this school year, citing COVID disruptions to the tests and grades that underpin applications to the school. Lowell’s freshman class this year was the most diverse in decades, with more Black and Latino students.

Both before and since the board’s decision, Lowell’s students, parents, educators and alumni have been locked in a debate over how the school should admit its students in the future.

Lowell has long been one of the top performing public schools in the country, whose alumni include prominent figures in politics, entertainment, literature and science. It’s viewed as a high-pressure launchpad to elite colleges and has offered more advanced placement courses than other San Francisco high schools. -SF Chronicle

Those opposed to the new lottery-based system say it disproportionately hurts Asian American students, who were ‘overrepresented’ at Lowell vs. other SFUSD schools, and that it ignores the benefits of a competitive school afforded to high-achievers.

During a Tuesday school board meeting, departing district Superintendent Vincent Matthews proposed extending the lottery-based admissions system at Lowell through the 2023-2024 school year while the district launches a public process to determine a long-term solution.

Mysterious Inscription Baffles French Village, Prize Offered to Crack the Code

From HERE

A recently discovered engraving is baffling local people in the small village in north-west France. The locals have made various attempts to decipher the inscription and have enlisted the help of many local experts to no avail. Now they are offering a prize to anyone who can decipher the mysterious inscription.

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2022 06 01 11 38

The inscription is near the small village of  Plougastel-Daoulas, Brittany, on the north-west of France near the Atlantic coast . The engraving is on a rock that is as ‘high as a man’ and is only seen when the tide is low. According to Newsweek, ‘the rock is accessible via a path from the hamlet of Illien ar Gwenn just to the north of Corbeau point’.  Its remoteness and the fact that it is completely submerged at high tide mean that it only came to light four years ago. The Mayor of Plougastel-Daoulas  Dominique Cap, has stated that no one has been able to understand the meaning of the engraving, despite their best efforts.

A Baffling Set of Words

The enigmatic inscription consists of a number of letters and some symbols, one depicts a boat with sails. Not all of the inscription is legible, but the letters are definitely from the Latin alphabet, used in modern French.

Newsweek reports that it has been suggesting that it is ‘written in Basque or in an archaic version of Breton, a Celtic language still spoken in Brittany’. Some of the engraving reads “ROC AR B… DRE AR GRIO SE EVELOH AR VIRIONES BAOAVE,”  according to CNN.

The locals have become increasingly frustrated at being unable to decipher the inscription. CNN quotes Michel Paugam, a local councilor as saying, “there are a lot of words….., but we can’t read them, we can’t make them out.”

The village has enlisted the help of local linguists, academics, and epigraphers, but even these experts who are familiar with Breton history and culture have been baffled by the words and the symbols. This is despite the fact that the date of the writing is only just over two centuries old.

There are two dates in the inscription, and these are 1786 and 1787, a time just before the French Revolution. At that time the Royal government in Paris had ordered the construction of batteries and fortifications to protect the harbor at Brest. This was France’s most important Atlantic port at the time.

There is the possibility that it was a memorial left by one of the builders who worked on the project at Brest. Romantics believe that it may have been some sort of love message. Some villagers have even begun to call the inscription their ‘ Rosetta Stone ,’ reports Channel News Asia.

The Competition to Decipher the Mysterious Inscription

The local community has now decided to ask for the help of experts from beyond Brittany to help them to break the code. They have decided to launch a competition that is open to linguists, students, epigraphers, and anyone who thinks that they can solve the mystery. Both professional and amateur code breakers can enter the competition.

Those who do manage to decipher the mysterious words will receive a prize of 2000 euro (2240 USD). A local official, Veronique Martin, is managing the competition and she has assembled a team to help her.

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2022 06 01 1d1 38

The village will examine all of the entries and the proposed solution to the mystery. NDTV reports that a ‘ jury will then meet to choose the most plausible suggestion and award the prize’. How they will actually determine which is the most plausible solution has not been stated.

There is the possibility that given the nature of the inscription it may not be deciphered and the prize not awarded. It is also possible that the engraving may never be deciphered. It can be said though that the village of Plougastel-Daoulas has been put on the map thanks to the enigmatic words engraved on the rocks .

 

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2022 06 01 11 3ff8

Escobar: The Eurasian Economic Union Steps Up

Monday, May 30, 2022 – 04:00 PM

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The Eurasian Economic Forum has shown once again that this high-speed – economic integration – train has already left the station…

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2022 05 31 19 39

The first Eurasian Economic Forum, in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, took place this week at a very sensitive geopolitical juncture, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov keeps stressing that, “the West has declared total war against us, against the entire Russian world. Nobody even hides this now.”

It’s always important to remember that before Maidan in 2014, Ukraine had the option to become a full member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and even balance it with a loose association with the EU.

The EAEU comprises five full members – Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia – yet 14 nations sent delegations to the forum, including China, Vietnam and Latin American nations.

There was much rumbling that the proceedings would be jeopardized by the serial sanctions packages imposed on Russia by the collective West.

There’s no question that some EAEU members – such as Kazakhstan – seem to be more worried about the effects of the sanctions than about fine-tuning business with Russia.

Yet that’s not the point.

The crucial point is that by 2025 they have to harmonize their legislation concerning financial markets. And that’s directly connected to what the executive body of the EAEU, led by Sergey Glazyev, is working on, extensively: designing the lineaments of an alternative financial/economic system  to what the West would rather coin as Bretton Woods 3.

The Eurasian Economic Forum was established by the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council explicitly to further deepen economic cooperation between EAEU members.

No wonder the official theme of the forum was Eurasian Economic Integration in the Era of Global Shifts: New Investment Opportunities, focusing on strategic development in the industrial, energy, transport, financial, and digital areas.

So Many Converging Strategies

President Putin’s speech to the plenary session was quite revealing. To really appreciate the scope of what’s implied, it’s important to remember that the Greater Eurasian Partnership concept was presented by Putin in 2016 at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, focused on a “more extensive Eurasian partnership involving the Eurasian Economic Union” and including China, Pakistan, Iran and India.

Putin stressed how the drive for developing ties “within the framework of the Greater Eurasian Partnership” (…) “was not the political situation but global economic trends, because the centre of economic development is gradually – we are aware of this, and our businesspeople are aware of this – is gradually moving, continues to move into the Asia-Pacific Region.”

He added, “in the current international conditions when, unfortunately, traditional trade and economic links and supply chains are being disrupted”, the Greater Eurasian Partnership “is gaining a special meaning.”

Putin established a direct connection not only between the Greater Eurasian Partnership and EAEU members but also “BRICS members such as China and India”, “the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, ASEAN and other organizations.”

And that’s the core of the whole, ongoing, multi-layered process of Eurasia integration, with the China-led New Silk Roads intersecting with the Eurasia Economic Union, the SCO, BRICS+, and other converging strategies.

Lavrov this week said that Argentina and Saudi Arabia want to join BRICS, whose next summer in China is being meticulously prepared.

Not only that: Lavrov mentioned how quite a few Arab nations want to join the SCO. He was careful to describe this process of converging alliances as “not antagonistic”.

Putin for his part was careful to define the Greater Eurasian Partnership as “a big civilizational project. The main idea is to create a common space for equitable cooperation for regional organizations”, changing “the political and economic architecture on the entire continent.”

Thus, the necessity to “draft a comprehensive strategy for developing large-scale Eurasian partnership”, including “a roadmap for industrialization”. That translates in practice as developing “engineering centers and research centers. This is inevitable for any country that wants to increase its economic, financial, and ultimately political sovereignty. It is inevitable.”

Yaroslav Lissovolik  at the Valdai Club is one of the top analysts tracking how this convergence may profit the whole Global South. He stresses that among the “variability and diversity in the platforms that may be launched by Global South economies, the most sizeable and comprehensive of which could include the aggregation of CELAC (Latin America), African Union (Africa)”, and the SCO in Eurasia.

And an even more diverse set of “regional blocs that targets deeper integration could feature a BRICS+ platform that comprises the South African Development Community (SADC), MERCOSUR, BIMSTEC”, the China-ASEAN free trade agreement, and the EAEU.

The Eurasian Economic Forum has shown once again that this high-speed – economic integration – train has already left the station. It’s quite enlightening to notice the sharp contrast with the endless doom and gloom afflicting a collective West prone to inflation, energy shortages, food shortages, fictional “narratives” and the defense of neo-Nazis under the banner of liberal “democracy”.

Stunning Photographs Of The Old Cincinnati Library Before Being Demolished, 1874-1955

Built in 1874 on the site reserved for an opera house, the Old Cincinnati Library was a thing of wonder. With five levels of cast iron shelving, a fabulous foyer, checker board marble floors and an atrium lit by a skylight ceiling, the place was breathtaking. Unfortunately that magnificent maze of books is now lost forever.

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One of the large cast-iron book alcoves that lined the Main Hall.

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The Old Main in an early picture.

Patrons entered on Vine Street beneath busts of William Shakespeare, John Milton and Benjamin Franklin. A vestibule led to the cathedral-like main hall, four stories tall, topped with a massive skylight roof. The floor was checkerboard marble tile. Five levels of bookshelves jammed the walls. Shafts of sunlight cut through the windows to provide ample illumination. “The main hall is a splendid work”, The Enquirer reported at the opening. “The hollow square within the columns is lighted by an arched clear roof of prismatic glass set in iron, the light of which is broken and softened by a paneled ceiling of richly-colored glass. One is impressed not only with the magnitude and beauty of the interior, but with its adaptation to the purpose it is to serve”.

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A glimpse of the Main Hall can be seen through vestibule.

The cost of the lot and building was $383,594.53, about $7.7 million today. The Public Library contained 60,000 volumes, with an estimated capacity of 300,000. So why this building demolished? Talks for a new library building had already begun 30 years earlier when the book collection had started to outgrow the building. Books were stacked beyond reach. Ventilation was poor, the air stuffy. The paint was peeling.

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The Newspaper Room (photo circa 1899).

In January of 1955, a new contemporary library opened at 800 Vine Street. The old building was sold to Leyman Corp for about $100,000 today, and by June that year, the magnificent library was razed. The site is now a parking garage. The three heads that once guarded the main entrance of the library were the only original features of the building that were saved and placed in the new library’s garden.

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People reading books.

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Another view of the hall.

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Children inside the Old Main.

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Looking down at the reading area in the Main Hall.

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Over the years the library wasn’t able to accommodate all the readers.

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The library’s main entrance.

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The welcoming booth.

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This photo of the Main Hall was taken about a year before the building was closed.

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Readers.

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Completed in 1874, originally intended to be an opera house before the project went bankrupt, the modestly-sized building did not do justice to to the magnitude and beauty of the interior designed by architect J.W. McLaughlin.

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The Main Hall featured five tiers of cast-iron alcoves that housed over 200,000 books.

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The beautiful main hall.

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Young readers.

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Young readers.

 

The Rocks Of War

The Z-man


Wars often turn over rocks exposing truths about the age that have either been ignored or hidden from the world. Old tactics, in the case of the Great War, were exposed as obsolete by modern weapons. Sometimes it is in war that the hollowness of a great power is exposed. This was the case of the Soviets in Afghanistan. That war exposed the internal weakness of the regime. The war in Ukraine is similarly exposing problems in the collective West.

The first lesson of this war so far is that Western intelligence has been exposed as useless in understanding modern Russia. At every turn, the information provided to political leaders about what Russia is doing and planning to do has turned out to be more fantasy than reality. The West has been operating on assumptions that may have been true twenty-five years ago but are no longer true today. The result has been a total political failure in response to the invasion.

The big example of this was the claim that the Russians could only support their army in Ukraine for a couple of months. Western strategy was built on the assumption that the Ukrainians just had to hold out for a month or two. They would dig into fortified positions and wait out the Russian assault. Instead, a highly mobile and patient Russian assault is slowly decimating the Ukrainian army. Three months into the conflict and the Russians are on the cusp of victory.

This is another rock turned over in this war. The West has been preparing for a war with a Russian army than has not existed since the Cold War. The Soviet way of war was something called deep battle doctrine. This is based on a highly mobile, combined arms approach to fighting. The Russians would find a weak spot in the enemy front, concentrate forces there, break through the lines and then flood the zone with armor and infantry, creating chaos in the enemy rear.

The Soviet approach required large numbers of men. It imagined millions of men mobilized to fight in the West. This is not the new Russian way of war. The Russians, like everyone else in the West, have been living in the age of low fertility and rising standards of living. Mobilizing millions of men and throwing them into battle like Stalin did against the Nazis is no longer acceptable. Instead, the Russians have organized around reducing casualties to the minimum.

As a practical matter, what those hunkered down Ukrainians have been facing is something like what the Mongols brought to the fight. Instead of one massive army centrally controlled from the rear, it is a collection of small units, self contained and self-directed toward narrow goals. These units combine infantry, armor, mobile artillery and air support, along with the use of drones. This is combined arms warfare reduced to small units working independently.

Because these units are smaller, they are more intolerant of personnel losses, so they are more cautious. A unit that loses its tanks is no longer effective as a unit, so the premium is on reducing losses. The goal is to use speed and mobility to find weak spots in the enemy and quickly exploit them, with minimum losses. Overall, this is a much slower approach to fighting, but once a weakness is exposed, it can be exploited much faster due to the improved mobility and flexibility.

This is on display in the Donbas. The Russians used artillery and airpower to break down the Ukrainian defenses at Popasnaya, which is a strategic town in the middle of the contact line. The Russians were then able to rush units into this breech and employ the modern version of deep battle doctrine. These small units combined to turn the contact line into a series of pockets surrounded by Russian units. Now the Russians are pounding these cauldrons with artillery and air power.

The result is the West, primarily Washington, prepared the Ukrainians to fight the wrong war against the wrong army. Instead of a short defense against a Soviet siege, they are getting a war of attrition against a highly mobile and flexible army using the right weapons for such a fight. That is another aspect of this war that should be a wake up call to Western planners. The Russian weapons are better and more useful than the Western weapons supplied to the Ukrainians.

In line with the new way of fighting, the Russians have developed weapons that can be incredibly useful with small, combined arms units. They do not require a complex information grid so that commanders in the rear can direct the action. Modern technology is used to make it easy for these small units to fight effectively on their own or quickly combine with other units on the fly. The Russians have also done their homework and have evolved effective counter measures.

This is why the many “game changers” the West has sent to the Ukrainians have failed to do much damage to the Russian forces. The javelin has been a bust. The Man-portable air defense systems (ManPads) are worthless. The Russians have made these weapons obsolete. The big shock is their drone defense. The kamikaze drones and the Turkish TB2 have not been the game changer that was promised because the Russians have evolved effective jamming tools.

Probably the biggest rocks turned over in this war are economic. The assumption of the West when they instigated this war was that the Russian economy had not changed since the end of the Cold War. For a long time, the West has looked at Russia as a gas station masquerading as a country. It was a version of Venezuela, wholly dependent on selling natural resources to the West. If the sale of those resources slowed just a bit, then the Russian economy would collapse.

This has turned out to be wildly wrong. Now, part of this failure is due to the raging bigotry of the neocons behind the war. Their seething hatred for the Russian people has blinded them to many things. The economic revolution that has taken place in Russia is the biggest one. It turns out that the Russian economy is much more resilient and flexible than anyone in the West realized. As a result, the sanctions regime has turned out to be a disastrous failure.

That has turned over another economic rock. The European economy has been revealed to be a house of cards. The sanctions regime is creating havoc for the Europeans, because their economy was based on the assumption that the Russians would always supply them with cheap necessities. The EU is a mommy economy where Mother Russia makes sure her babies are warm and fed. Shortages and spirally prices are bringing this reality home to Europeans.

In total, what the war in Ukraine is revealing is that the collective West has been living in a fantasy world for the last few decades. Without a real challenge, they have been allowed to indulge in whatever fantasies they liked. Like trust fund babies raised in insular opulence, Western leaders are unprepared for a world where they have to perform their role as elites. The war is exposing them as a toxic blend of self-indulgence, stupidity and ignorance.

The truth about war is that the rocks that it turns over cannot be turned back over to hide the truth underneath. The West will now have to face this new reality, especially on the economic front. The grand schemes for creating a new world order in the image of Western elites will now have to give way to this new realty. What has been revealed is that the new world order is one in which the West must compete in a multipolar world of civilizational equals. That means a new elite for this new age.

Some posters from China …

Some great posters and fantastic art.

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“Go to the Big Ocean To Exercise.” c. 1970.

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“Let Mao’s Philosophy Be Our Strongest Weapon.” c. 1970.

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“The Cadre Should Mix With the Workers.” c. 1970.

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“Be Prepared Now.” c. 1970.

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“Be on Guard, 100 Times Alert.” c. 1970.

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“Celebrate the 9th Congress of the Industrial Union.” c. 1960.

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“Learning Dai Qi by Making More Contributions!” c. 1970.

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“Annihilate the Invading Enemy.” c. 1970.

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“Grasp Revolution, Promote Production.” 1976.

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“Enhance the Coastal Defense of the Motherland.” 1962.

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“Shipyard Industry Workers Learn From Da Qing.” 1976.

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“Pay Attention to Hygiene.” c. 1970.

Three Dog Night – One (1969)

History lesson. MM was in seventh grade. This is called a “Time Machine”. Enjoy…

Washington Floods Taiwan With Weapons

The United States treads on Beijing’s red line and continues its military supply policy in Taiwan. This is the third supply in three years. Exactly fifty years have passed since US President Richard Nixon’s visit to China. That meeting between Nixon and Mao Dse Dong paved the way for stable diplomatic relations. Since then, one of the crucial issues has been the status of Taiwan.

The administration led by Joe Biden, however, pretends to forget the past and aims to create tension between the two sides of China. It is yet another demonstration that Washington uses diplomatic agreements only when it is clearly convenient.

Thus, the Beijing government is on alert. In recent weeks, a delegation of former US officials led by Admiral Michael Glenn Mullen has arrived in Taipei. A clear sign of support for Taiwan that Beijing has described as “useless”. Now, China is contesting the US State Department’s decision to authorize the supply of military equipment to Taiwan for $ 95 million.

For Beijing, arms sales to Taipei “seriously undermine the nation’s sovereignty, interests and development”. Beijing’s position was illustrated by Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, according to which US assistance in Taiwan will end up damaging the bilateral China-US relationship and jeopardizing stability in the Strait. The spokesman thus urged Washington to cease trade with the island and to honor the commitments set out in the three joint China-US communiques.

What joint press releases is Zhao talking about? The reference is to the diplomatic correspondence that dates back to the time of Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972. In those joint communiques, which cover the period from 1972 to the early 1980s, the issue of the island’s sovereignty was first of all addressed of Taiwan.

In the Shanghai communiqué, issued at the end of Nixon’s visit, Beijing called the Taiwan question “crucial” to normalize relations with the United States. For China, Taiwan is “a province” and its “liberation” is an internal issue of China on which no interference is allowed.

In the same document, the United States recognized, however, that “all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait believe that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of China and reaffirms its interest in a” peaceful resolution. ”

“The ultimate goal,” reads the February 1972 communiqué, is the withdrawal of all US forces and military installations from the island. The second joint statement dates back to 15 December 1978, the US “recognizes the government of the People’s Republic of China as the only legal government of China”. In this context, however, “the people of the United States will maintain commercial, cultural and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan”.

The issue of arms sales to Taiwan is the main theme of thethird joint communiqué between China and the United States, that of August 17,1982, which starts from the failure to resolve the issue of arms sales to Taiwan, due to “different positions “of Beijing and Washington.

This is the diplomatic context from which one should start.

Meanwhile, the United States continues its campaign to strengthen Taiwan’s military. With the decision of the US State Department to sell weapons to Taiwan, the line of the Taiwan relations act, with which Washington ensures that military items and services are made available to Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capacity, are continued.

The new military aid package would include training, planning, deployment and maintenance services for the Island’s Patriot air defense systems, the Pentagon has notified Congress.

“This proposed sale serves the national, economic and security interests of the United States by supporting the beneficiary’s efforts to modernize its military and maintain credible defensive capability,” the Pentagon statement said referring to Taiwan.

The United States, under the Taiwan relations act, feels bound by law to provide defense assistance to Taiwan, despite the absence of formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Taipei. This is the third military aid package announced by President Joe Biden’s administration to benefit the Island.

Putting The Shanghai Lockdown Into Context: China Sees This As A Bioweapon

Written by Matthew Ehret

Over the course of the past 10 days, I have noticed that many smart folks are freaking out over the events in Shanghai.

I’m not sure why people have forgotten that the Chinese government has been in Defcon-2 since the start of the pandemic over two years ago treating this like a US bio terror attack targetting Han chinese who have been struck disproportionately by this thing from the get go for which there is ample evidence which will be treated in the following report and interview with Jesse Zurawell on TNT Radio:

The Launch of the Pandemic

Ever since the earliest days of the Coronavirus pandemic, evidence emerged that the pathogen being used to justify a complete shut down of the world economy in preparation for a supposed Great Reset was not a naturally occurring evolutionary phenomenon as asserted by the WHO, Nature Magazine, and editors at the Lancet, but had other origins.

Among the earliest of those who found themselves supporting this theory was the Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Lijian Zhao who made international waves by sharing two articles by Professor Larry Romanov on the possibility of “gene targeting” of the virus which was having a disproportionately bad effect on Iranians, Italians and various Asian genotypes.

Larry Romanoff’s work on this particular topic are of extremely high value, the most recent of which develops a conclusive study of the genetic targetting operations underlying the global Pentagon-run bioweapons complex that have had a disproportionately devastating effect on Han Chinese.

His most recent piece on this topic is found on the Canadian Patriot Review:

COVID-19 – A Biological Weapon Targeting Ethnicity and Body Systems

Zhao was soon joined by bioweapons experts like Francis Boyle, prominent virologists Luc Montagnier and Judy Mikovits, followed by a growing array of scholars, scientists and academics from around the world who all assessed that the virus’ apparent gene sequencing implied human handiwork. While all agreed that COVID appeared to have originated from a lab, it was still unclear whether that lab was Chinese or controlled by the USA.

Another obvious question arose with this lab theory: Was it an accidental leak or was it consciously deployed?

Since pandemic war game operations had become a normalized part of western geopolitical life from the early days of Dark Winter in 2000 to the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2011 Lock Step to the World Economic Forum’s Event 201 (and dozens more in between), the likelihood of conscious deployment was a very serious possibility.

Who had the motive, means and modus operandi to carry out such a global operation?

The Wuhan Theory Begins

By February 2020, the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis began to make headlines fed by evidence that Dr. Anthony Fauci had exported certain gain of function coronavirus experiments from US bioweapons laboratories to Wuhan’s Institute of Virology- one of two BSL-4 labs in China equipped to conduct this sort of research.

When Sir Richard Dearlove (former head of MI6) became a loud proponent of the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis in June 2020, something seemed amiss.

Dearlove certainly knew a thing or two about bioweapons. He knew very well of the Pentagon’s vast array of internationally extended bioweapons labs peppered across the world, and he certainly understood the art of misdirection being himself a byzantine shadow creature who operated at the highest echelons of British intelligence.

Dearlove was after all in charge of the “yellowcake” dodgy dossier that launched an Iraq war, he knew of the fallacious reports of nerve gases used by the governments of Libya and Syria sponsored by MI6, had even overseen major components of Russiagate that drove a color revolutionary process in the USA. Dearlove also knew a thing or two about the Porton Down labs that manufactured Novichok used in the Skripal Affair.

While Dearlove’s cheerleading of the Wuhan lab theory raised alarm bells, as time passed, no smoking gun evidence of an alternative lab-leak hypothesis surfaced that one could fully “take to court”. In this respect, Dearlove’s operation had the upper hand since receipts from Fauci’s NIH to the Wuhan Lab did conveniently make headlines, and acted as a “smoking gun” in the minds of many.

Before going into the next phase of the story, it is important to recall that the absence of empirical evidence is not by itself a proof of one party’s innocence, just as the existence of a piece of empirical evidence is not a proof of another party’s guilt.

Wuhan Lab Origins Go Viral Again

In recent weeks, the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis has once again become all the rage.

Rand Paul’s May 10 showdown with Fauci over this the latter’s funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology added fuel to the fire. Sky News’ May 7 reporting of public Chinese policy papers discussing covid-based bioweapons have gone viral.

On March 26, former Center of Disease Control head Robert Redfield asserted his support for the Wuhan lab leak theory. While the scanned receipts of the funds transfer from Fauci’s NIH to research in China via Eco Health Alliance ($600 thousand went to Wuhan) for coronavirus research, had been available since last February, one must wonder why it is now over a year later that this fact is being spread across the perception landscape on all levels.

Both mainstream and alternative media across the western world representing both the left and right have jumped on board the bandwagon blaming China for leaking the virus whether by accident or intent (though obviously, intent is the conclusion which anyone is expected to draw once the Wuhan lab leak theory is accepted).

But again, I must ask: In a world of misdirection, psychological warfare and perception management, do the clues that we are being given force us to conclude that the Chinese government is behind the global pandemic or is another culprit likely to be found?

Chinese Leaders Blame the CIA

Zeng Guang, a chief epidemiologist at China’s Center of Disease Control recently joined the conspiracy club on February 9, 2021 in an interview with Chinese media. While denying that the Chinese Wuhan lab is the source of the virus as so many in the west have claimed, Guang asserted that SarsCov2’s origins in a laboratory should not be discounted. Pointing to the vast globally extended US bioweapons labs littering the earth (and citing the USA’s proven track record of deploying bioweapons as part of its asymmetrical war arsenal since WWII), Guang asked:

“Why are there so many laboratories in the United States when biology labs are all over the world? What is the purpose? 

On many things, the United States requires others to be open and transparent, only to find that it is the United States itself that is often the most opaque. 

Whether or not the United States has any special fame on the issue of the new corona virus this time, it should have the courage to be open and transparent. 

The United States should take responsibility for proving itself to the world, rather than being caught up in hegemonic thinking, hiding itself from the virus and dumping others.”

Guang was himself joined by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying who had also pointed to the Pentagon’s globally extended array of bioweapons laboratories saying:

“I’d like to stress that if the United States truly respects facts, it should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its 200-plus overseas bio-labs, invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States, and respond to the concerns from the international community with real actions.”

Those who tend to avoid looking at the history and scope of Pentagon controlled bioweapon warfare tend to ignore the content of such remarks cited by those Chinese officials above for a multitude of reasons. For one: it is easy to believe that Fauci and Gates are corrupt, and this theory not only implicates both men but also ties them to a Chinese government which most westerners have been brainwashed to fear as a bastion of global debt-trappery, genocide, and communist imperialism out to destroy western values.

After conducting a short review of some of the fundamental facts of recent world history alongside certain geopolitical realities of our present world order referenced by the head of the Chinese CDC, I believe that China’s Wuhan Lab is being set up. Here are five facts to support my case…

Fact #1) Depopulation Then and Now

While many people may wish to avoid looking at this fact, depopulation is a driving factor behind international unipolar policy today as it had been during the days of WW2 when Rockefeller Foundation, Macy Foundation, City of London and Wall Street interests gave their backing to both the rise of fascism as an economic miracle solution for the economic woes of the great depression and eugenics (the science of population control) as the governing religion of a new scientific priesthood.

Today, this agenda masquerades behind a new transhumanist movement, shaped by words like “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, “decarbonized economies”, and “Great Resets”. The primary targets of this agenda remain: 1) the Institution of the sovereign nation states, and 2) the “overpopulated zones” of the world with a focus on China, India, South America and Africa.

For anyone who would find themselves instinctively inclined to brush aside such claims as “conspiracy theorizing”, I would encourage a brief review of Sir Henry Kissinger’s infamous NSSM-200 report: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests published in 1974. This declassified report went far to transform US foreign policy from a pro-development philosophy to a new paradigm of population control. In his report, Kissinger warned that…

“if future numbers are to be kept within reasonable bounds, it is urgent that measures to reduce fertility be started and made effective in the 1970s and 1980s….

(Financial) assistance will be given to other countries, considering such factors as population growth… 

Food and agricultural assistance is vital for any population sensitive development strategy… 

Allocation of scarce resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control… 

There is an alternative view that mandatory programs may be needed….”

In Kissinger’s twisted logic, US Foreign Policy doctrine had too often foolishly sought to end hunger by providing the means of industrial and scientific development to poor nations.

A true Malthusian through and through, Kissinger believed that aiding the poor to stand on their own feet would result in global disequilibrium as the new middle classes would consume more, and use the strategic resources found under their own soil, which would set the world system accelerated entropy.

This was deemed unacceptable to the mind of Kissinger and any misanthropic follower of Malthus who shared his views of humanity and government.

Kissinger’s Master-Slave Global Society

At the time of Kissinger’s ascent to power as Secretary of State under Nixon, a new grand strategy was unleashed designed to create a new “master-slave” dependency between the developed and undeveloped sectors of the world… with a special emphasis on the 13 nations targeted by NSSM 200 plus China.

China itself was only permitted to acquire western tech needed to start climbing out of abject poverty on the condition that they obeyed the Rockefeller-World Bank demands that one child policy programs were imposed to curb population growth.

Kissinger began organizing for this new set of relations in society around “Have”, post-industrial consumers and a massive “Have-Not” class of poor laborers with access to industry, but remaining stagnant, cheap and without the means of purchasing the goods they produced. The other darker skinned parts of the world would be even more worse off, having neither the means of production, nor consumption while remaining in constant states of famine, war and backwardness. These dark age zones would be largely made up of Sub Saharan Africa and would find their resource-rich lands exploited by the corporate middle men and financiers trying to run the world order above the “obsolete order” of nation states.

Kissinger’s model of a world order was absolutely static with no room for population growth or technological progress. Mao and the Gang of Four which ran the cultural revolution appeared to be highly compatible with Kissinger’s agenda. But when Mao died and the Gang of Four were rightfully imprisoned, a new long-term strategy known as the Four Modernizations shaped by Zhou Enlai and carried out by Deng Xiaoping was launched. This program was far more foresighted than Kissinger realized.

Fact #2) China is currently a leading force of pro-population growth.

While the west has been accelerating into a decaying path on every measurable level, China is quickly moving in an opposing trajectory via extending long term investments and advanced tech development into its own society as well as to its neighbors through such comprehensive projects as the Belt and Road Initiative.

While its own population has not healed from the disastrous 1979 one child policy and is far from achieving the 2.1 children per couple needed for replacement fertility, it did lift the one child limit to two in 2015 and three in 2021. Today leading Bank of China economists have called for a total elimination of all limits in the near term future. Meanwhile, the top-down national orientation of China towards increasing the free energy needed to support and grow the economy is unlike anything we have seen in the closed-system western world for many decades.

A vital fact often forgotten is that together China and India were instrumental in sabotaging the December 2009 COP-14 program in Copenhagen which had promised to establish legally binding emission target cuts to guide the de-carbonization (and de-industrialization) of much of society.

The London Guardian had reported in 2009 that

“Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. 

The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame.”

Apparently China and India, along with African governments like Sudan (which had not yet been carved up on the careful watch of Rhodes Scholar Susan Rice) did not wish to sacrifice their industry and national sovereignty on the altar of climate change models and technocrats that had only weeks earlier been publicly exposed as frauds by East Anglia University researchers during the embarrassing Climategate scandal.

While China and India should be celebrated for having sabotaged this effort 11 years ago, very few people have been able to hold this drama in their memory, and fewer still realize how this fight over sovereignty was in any way connected to China’s 2013 creation of the Belt and Road Initiative as the vital force behind the emerging Multipolar Alliance.

Fact #3) Soros at Davos 2020: The two greatest threats to Open Society: 1) Donald Trump’s USA and 2) Xi Jinping’s China.

During his January 2020 Davos speech, Soros took aim at both Trump and Xi Jinping as the two greatest threats to his Open Society who had to be stopped at all costs. In September 2019 (just as Event 201 was happening) Soros wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

“As founder of the Open Society Foundations, my interest in defeating Xi Jinping’s China goes beyond U.S. national interests. 

As I explained in a speech in Davos earlier this year, I believe that the social-credit system Beijing is building, if allowed to expand, could sound the death knell of open societies not only in China but also around the globe.”

Before becoming mired into the “China virus” narrative, Donald Trump had worked exceptionally hard to emphasize good relations with China and even managed one of the most important trade deals that had successfully moved into phase one the week Soros spoke at Davos.

This first phase involved China creating a market to purchase US finished goods as part of the program to rebuild America’s lost manufacturing sector that had been hollowed out over 5 decades of “post industrialism”.

Where Kissinger called NAFTA “the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War” Trump went far to renegotiate the anti-nation state treaty giving nation states a role to play in shaping economic policy for the first time in over 25 years.

It is important to also recall that Trump resisted the war hawks pushing a total military encirclement of China begun under Obama’s Asia Pivot which is today threating nuclear war.

He took the fuel out of the THAAD missile encirclement of China which has justified its expansion based on the “North Korean threat” for over a decade- always denying the truth that the real targets were both Russia and China.

Trump’s push to build friendly relations with Kim Jong Un had much greater ramifications in changing US Pacific military policy than many realized, although that fact was certainly not missed by the Chinese intelligentsia.

While the Soros/CIA-driven color revolutionary operations have so far failed to divide up China in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, they have been successful in the USA.

Fact #4) The Pentagon’s Global Bioweapons Complex Is a Fact

While China is the proud owner of a total of TWO BSL-4 labs (both within its own borders), a vast array of dozens of Pentagon-run bioweapons labs litter the international landscape. Exactly how many is hard to estimate as Alexei Mukhin (Director General of Russia’s Center for Political Information) stated in a May 2020 interview:

“According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, in the post-Soviet space, 65 American secret bio-laboratories operate: 

15 – in Ukraine, 
12 – in Armenia, 
15 – in Georgia, 
4 – in Kazakhstan. 

In the United States, such activity is prohibited . 

Accordingly, the Pentagon, in its own laws, is engaged in illegal activities (in spirit, not in letter). The goal is the creation of biological weapons directed against the peoples who inhabited the territory of the USSR.”

In 2018, investigative journalist Dilya Gaytandzhieva documented the Pentagon’s multibillion dollar budget that sustains bioweapons labs in 25 nations (and 11 within the USA itself) which grew exponentially since the December 2001 bioweaponized anthrax attack killed five Americans and justified a hyperbolic increase of bioweapon warfare to rise from $5 billion when Cheney’s Bioshield Act was passed in 2004 to over $50 billion today.

Additionally, an October 2000 policy document co-authored by William Kristol, John Bolton, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, and Donald Rumsfeld titled Rebuilding America’s Defenses (RAD) explicitly stated that in the new American Century, “combat will likely take place in new dimensions: In space, cyber-space and perhaps the world of microbes… advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.

Fact #5) International Pandemic War Game Scenarios Laid the groundwork for the international response to Covid. Not China

The driving force behind such bioweapon war game exercises such as the June 2000 Operation Dark Winter, the May 2010 Rockefeller Foundation report Operation Lock step, and the World Economic Forum/Gates Foundation/CIA Event 201 pandemic exercises indicate that China is not the causal nexus.

All in all, these facts have persuaded me that China is being set up and is in fact a primary target for destruction.

How China would find itself the beneficiary of such an irresponsible unleashing of a novel virus that hammered its own economy, accelerated the blow out of the world financial bubble economy and annihilated the foundations of international stability is absurd to the extreme… especially considering the fact that everything China has done for the past decades has indicated a consistent desire to create stability, long term development and win-win cooperation with the international community.

Nothing similar has been seen among members of the Five Eyes or their Trans Atlantic network of over bloated imperialists.

The oligarchy running the Trans Atlantic System certainly loves the centralized control found in the Chinese system, and they adore the behaviorist social credit stuff, but that is where their admiration ends. The Kissinger, Gates, Carney or Schwab-types hate and fear everything China has actually done for development, ending poverty, population growth, national banking, long term credit generation, building full spectrum industrial economies and defending sovereignty along with Russia whom they are tightly bonded with in the Eurasian Multipolar alliance.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and in 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation .

More pictures from the past…

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The Best Thai Coconut Soup

Authentic, bold, and delicious Thai flavors make this soup irresistible! This is the best Thai coconut soup I’ve had. You won’t be disappointed with this one! Serve over steamed rice.

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OIP.WzP8BUF BeZ1XBohiIIarQHaJQ

Ingredients

Original recipe yields 8 servings
Ingredient Checklist

Directions

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Cook and stir the ginger, lemongrass, and curry paste in the heated oil for 1 minute. Slowly pour the chicken broth over the mixture, stirring continually. Stir in the fish sauce and brown sugar; simmer for 15 minutes. Stir in the coconut milk and mushrooms; cook and stir until the mushrooms are soft, about 5 minutes. Add the shrimp; cook until no longer translucent about 5 minutes. Stir in the lime juice; season with salt; garnish with cilantro.

Locations Of US Carrier Strike Groups – May 31, 2022

This is the newest update of the ‘U.S. Carrier Strike Groups Locations Map’ exclusive series showing the approximate locations of U.S. Carrier Strike Groups. SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence tracks locations of U.S. aircraft carriers using the available open-source information. No classified information was used in production of the map.

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2022 06 01 20 06

2022 06 01 20 0v7
2022 06 01 20 0v7

The Prisoner S01E13 Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling

We continue with the series. I hope that you enjoy it.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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The United States has made one mistake too many, and the end is approaching close.

There’s a big bunch of disturbing things going on geopolitically. All of which revolves around the United States. They have openly announced complete formal war with China and Russia simultaneously to be conducted via proxy. This simply cannot end well.

I am under the impression that the “leadership” are all delusional fools who somehow believe that they will not be personally affected by the wrath and rage that they will unleash.

Chechen leader, staunch Putin ally, threatens Poland over support for Ukraine

These Chechen fighters in Ukraine (fighting as part of the Russian forces) are pissed off that Poland has decided to fight alongside the Ukraine Nazi's. Here is their warning. If you read the "news article" you wouldn't be aware of this backstory. -MM

LONDON — Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, threatened to attack Poland over its support for Ukraine.

Speaking in a video that was posted to social media on Wednesday, the warlord warned that Poland had “better take back” the weapons it supplied to its neighbor.

“The issue of Ukraine is closed,” said Kadyrov, via a translation from a BBC reporter. “I’m interested in Poland. Poland, what is it trying to achieve?”

He added: “After Ukraine, if we’re given the command, in six seconds we’ll show you what we’re capable of. You should better take back your weapons and your mercenaries and beg official forgiveness for what you did to our ambassador.”

Article HERE

Philippines president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr says Manila and Beijing to expand relationship

From HERE

Philippines president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr says his country’s ties with China will expand and “shift to a higher gear” when he takes power, signalling an intent to advance outgoing leader Rodrigo Duterte’s pro-Beijing agenda.

Key points:

  • Mr Marcos said China and the Philippines should expand their relationship in the realms of diplomacy, trade, culture, education, knowledge and health
  • He said the two countries’ current conflicts should not be allowed to “become historically important”
  • The Chinese embassy in Manila said the phone conversation focused on bilateral ties and regional development

Mr Marcos, who won last week’s election by a landslide, said he held “very substantial” talks by phone on Wednesday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who assured him of support for his “independent foreign policy”, and agreed to hold more comprehensive discussions.

The 64-year-old son and namesake of the notorious former Philippines dictator said Mr Xi also acknowledged his late father’s role in opening diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“The way forward is to expand our relationship not only diplomatic, not only trade, but also in culture, even in education, even in knowledge, even in health to address whatever minor disagreements that we have right now,” Mr Marcos said in a statement.

“I told him, we must not allow what conflicts or difficulties we have now between our two countries to become historically important.”

Mr Marcos has been in Melbourne this week, reportedly to help his youngest son settle into the University of Melbourne, where he is enrolled to study.

Several members of the Australian Filipino community on Tuesday protested outside the accommodation where Mr Marcos was believed to be staying.

A spokesman said the president-elect would fly back to Manila on Thursday.

What Filipino Australians say about the Marcos revival

This is what the Filipino community in Australia are saying about their future.

The Philippines and China have had a rocky relationship in recent years over Beijing’s vast territorial claims and actions of its coast guard and fishing fleets in the South China Sea, through which at least $4.84 trillion of annual trade passes.

Their phone conversation focused on bilateral ties and regional development, the Chinese embassy in Manila said in a separate statement.

“President Xi said the two countries should also grasp the general trend, write a grand story on the China-Philippines friendship in the new era and follow through the blueprint for bilateral friendly cooperation, so as to usher in an even brighter future for the bilateral ties,” the embassy said.

Mr Marcos won the presidency with nearly 59 per cent of the votes last week. He will take office late in June.

Many analysts expect Marcos to seek stronger ties with Beijing, but say maintaining close relations with defence ally Washington will be essential in keeping the military and the public onside in a country with historically strong links to the United States.

China was among the first to congratulate Marcos, who was the first to win a presidential election by an outright majority since a 1986 revolution that toppled his late father’s two-decade dictatorship.

Kurt Campbell, the White House coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, last week said the US would seek early engagement with the Marcos administration but said there were “historical considerations” that could pose challenges.

Mr Marcos said Mr Xi had expressed a desire to talk privately.

“We are both looking forward to having further dialogue,” Mr Marcos said.

“He said both of us should talk, without the others.”

REPORTS: Russia to Cut-Off Denmark from Natural Gas on Tuesday

Intel circuits are blazing as of 10:24 PM EDT Monday night, with reports that Russia has told Denmark all natural gas to that country will be CUT-OFF tomorrow (Tuesday, 31 May 2022) because Copenhagen refuses to pay for Russian gas in Rubles.

Denmark holds 0.57 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves as of 2017, ranking 66th in the world and accounting for about 0.008% of the world’s total natural gas reserves of 6,923 Tcf.

Denmark has proven reserves equivalent to 5.1 times its annual consumption, but they can’t get it out of the ground fast enough because most of it comes from rigs in the North Sea.  So Denmark must import about 12% of their annual natural gas usage.

Of course, Denmark is saying the Russia cut-off won’t matter much.  Finland said the same thing just before they were cut-off.  Here’s what’s actually taking place now in Finland as a direct result:

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2022 05 31 11 27

Gee, suddenly it doesn’t look like Finland is doing so well. No bread? No gas in commercial bakeries anywhere in the country to bake bread?????

HMMMMM. Seems like the politicians in Finland LIED.

Gee whiz. Ain’t that just too bad . . . .

Pay in Rubles and you can eat bread again!

Gai Pad Prik Gaeng Recipe (วิธีทำ ไก่ผัดพริกแกง)

gai pad prik gaeng recipe
gai pad prik gaeng recipe

If you love the flavor of the curry, but the stir fry cooking method, you’ll love this Thai recipe.

Along with chicken stir fried with holy basil, chicken stir fried in red curry paste, known as gai pad prik gaeng (ไก่ผัดพริกแกง) in Thai, is one of my favorite quick and easy Thai street food dishes.

The best thing about this dish is that it’s available at nearly every single Thai stir fry street food restaurant, and while it’s excellent on the streets, it’s even better when you make it at home using freshly made red curry paste.

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2022 05 30 20 43

This gai pad prik gaeng recipe (ไก่ผัดพริกแกง) is really easy to make, as long as you already have some Thai red curry paste (เครื่องแกงเผ็ด) available.

The Thai red curry paste forms the base of flavor for this gai pad prik gaeng (chicken fried with red curry paste ไก่ผัดพริกแกง).

Ingredients you’ll need:

Note: If you want to get straight to the directions of this recipe, you can scroll below to the recipe box, otherwise keep reading for a more thorough explanation of how to cook this Thai chicken stir fried curry recipe.

Note #2: Making your own red curry paste is the best option, but if you’re not able to, you can try using red curry paste in a jar, my recommendation is for Mae Ploy red curry paste, but you’ll have to alter the salt and other seasonings in the recipe depending on the flavor of the packaged curry paste.

Once you have your Thai red curry paste ready to go, either freshly made, or from a can or bottle (but fresh is of course going to taste better), you’ve just got to fry it up with some chicken and a few other ingredients, and you’re ready to go.

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2022 05 30 20 44

I used about 300 grams of chicken breast, which was 1.5 chicken breasts altogether.

First slice the chicken into small bite sizes pieces – I like to slice it pretty small because more flavor gets coated on each piece of chicken, plus it’s faster to fry.

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2022 05 30 20 45

Along with Thai red curry paste and chicken (ไก่), for this recipe I used Chinese long beans (ถั่วฝักยาว, but I think green beans will also work fine), and kaffir lime leaves.

I used about 3 strands of long beans, cut into 1 inch pieces, and it equaled out to about 1/3 of a cup of them. So if you use green beans, chop up enough for about 1/3 of a cup.

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2022 05 30 2d0 45

Since most of the amazing flavors are already taken care of the in red curry paste, you barely need any other seasoning.

Other than the paste, you’ll just need about 1 teaspoon of fish sauce (น้ำปลา taste it though, it depends on how salty your red curry paste is from the start), and normal Thais would add about 1 teaspoon of sugar, but when I make this recipe for myself I add just a pinch, if any, and that’s all.

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2022 05 30 20 46

Stir fry

Stir frying food is one of my favorite things to do in the world, it’s such a fast way to cook, and all the flavors remain in the pan and with the ingredients you fry.

For this gai pad prik gaeng recipe (ไก่ผัดพริกแกง), once all your ingredients are ready to go, turn on your stove to low heat.

Add about 1 tablespoon of oil (น้ำมัน) to your wok or pan, keeping it on low heat, and you can add in about 3 tablespoons of Thai red curry paste before the oil heats up too much.

If your pan is too hot the curry paste will burn, so keep it on low heat and just stir fry for about 30 seconds.

After your red curry paste is hot sizzling and fragrant, toss in your chicken, and season with a bit of fish sauce (red curry pastes can taste different and be of different saltiness, so make sure you taste test and see how it is before adding fish sauce), and a pinch of sugar, and fry until the chicken is all the way cooked.

Finally, at the end, toss in your long beans and kaffir lime leaves, stir fry for about 30 more seconds and your marvelous gai pad prik gaeng (ไก่ผัดพริกแกง) is ready.

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2022 05 30 20 47

You can either serve gai pad prik gaeng (ไก่ผัดพริกแกง) directly over a plate of rice, or you can put it all onto a communal plate accompanied by a separate plate of rice.

Either way tastes just as good.

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2022 05 30 20 48

In Thailand when you order a dish like gai pad prik gaeng (ไก่ผัดพริกแกง), or any other stir fry dish, you have the choice to get a fried egg on the side.

This is not a requirement, but a fried egg on top of your rice along with the red curry paste chicken sure tastes incredible.

Before we get started making this recipe, be sure to watch the video below for all the cooking instructions and details.

Gai pad prik gaeng recipe (วิธีทำ ไก่ผัดพริกแกง)

(Thai recipe for chicken stir fried with red curry paste)

Time: about 15 – 20 minutes (if you have the red curry paste already prepared)
Recipe size: 1 plate of stir fried chicken, 1 – 2 people
Cooking utensils: wok, stir fry
Flavors: salty and spicy
Eat it with: fresh steamed rice and a fried egg on the side if you’d like

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2022 05 30 20 53

 

To make your dish extra authentic, you can make a small bowl of prik nam pla, or fish sauce and chilies. Just dice up a few Thai chilies, and a clove of garlic, and add a couple tablespoons of fish sauce, and if you like, a squeeze of lime juice.

With each bite, you can scoop on a few pieces of chili and a drizzle of fish sauce – tastes especially wonderful on the egg.

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2022 05 30 20 54

Gai pad prik gaeng (ไก่ผัดพริกแกง) has such a wonderful fresh and pungent flavor. You’ll taste the dry chilies, garlic, shallots, and the lime zest from the kaffir limes leaves, and the kaffir lime peel in the paste.

It’s an extremely flavorful Thai dish.

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2022 05 30 20 55

Conclusion

Gai pad prik gaeng (ไก่ผัดพริกแกง) is a Thai dish that includes chicken stir fried in curry paste with long beans and kaffir lime leaves.

It’s one of my personal go-to Thai dishes in Bangkok, and so I’m excited to share with you this quick and simple recipe that tastes so incredibly delicious.

Eating gai pad prik gaeng (ไก่ผัดพริกแกง) is like having all the curry flavor coated onto pieces of chicken, and it’s absolutely delicious!

Chinese space centre finds jamming device weeks before launch of latest space station mission in first reported incident of its kind

Staff at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Inner Mongolia found the item in a car ahead of the launch of the Shenzhou 14 mission. It was not clear if there had been a deliberate attempt at sabotage or not.

Article HERE

GDP USA vs. China

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2022 05 31 11 06

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Childhood’s End

America has become a malfunctioning pageant without feasible roles that children can realistically project themselves into….

The phoniest trope in American life goes like this: We must find the cause of X so that it never happens again.

Of course, it will happen again.

We only pretend that the cause is a mystery. Let’s count the ways that school massacres happen.

American schools are fantastically depressing places. They are designed to look like medium security prisons and insecticide factories. They send the message: Enter here and be psychologically brutalized. They are too big, overwhelmingly alienating, ugly, devoid of visible symbolism signaling the value of being human. The interiors of the schools are designed for the convenience of janitors, hard surfaces of tile and linoleum that can be hosed down easily like the quarters of zoo animals. Children act accordingly.

The “facilities,” as we call them, are deployed in the illegible landscape of a demolition derby, separated from all the other activities of daily life, which themselves have reached a culminating state of meaninglessness: big box shopping, national chain franchise food installations, strip malls of empty storefronts, parking lot wastelands, nothing that will excite a child’s imagination with emotions other than bewilderment, anxiety, and aversion.

The “teaching” that supposedly goes on in schools is a broken remnant of preparation for an economy that no longer exists. We’re no longer a society of people who do things, but rather a society of people to whom things are done, many of them harmful, humiliating, and arbitrary. America’s demoralized teaching corps is so unhinged by their own anomie that they resort to imposing sadistic fantasies on the children in their charge.

Thus, all the inappropriate curricula around adult preoccupations with sex, such as the Drag Queen Story Hour, for which mentally ill men are invited to act-out impersonations of women-as-monsters for young people who can’t possibly be expected to make sense of the spectacle. (I suspect that even six-year-olds, hard-wired to function as successful animals in this world, understand it as some kind of affront to reality.) Otherwise, American teachers are out of ideas, and are themselves damaged by the same forces in culture that they are now asked to direct.

America has become a malfunctioning pageant without feasible roles that children can realistically project themselves into. What ten-year-old longs to become the Burger King fry-o-later boss in a brown apron and an asinine cardboard crown? Rather, they are prompted to aspire to become sports star millionaires, of which there are perhaps fewer than 5,000 positions in a land of 340-million. By age twelve, they probably comprehend the unlikelihood of that outcome, or of becoming the next Kardashian… or Spiderman. (Superheroes are supplied by the entertainment cartels to occupy the imaginative realm of children because American culture is bereft of reality-based roles worth aspiring to.)

In this tumult of cultural impoverishment, psychotic grandiosity creeps in. Be big if you can’t be anything else. Hence, one achievable role for young persons in American life is mass murderer. It is a way of becoming important, of having an effect on other people and society in general. Your name may be forgotten, but the act itself will endure in the collective memory of a people. It will be some kind of a mark in history, even better remembered, perhaps, than whoever played third-base for the Atlanta Braves in 1994… or the woman who once capered down the red carpet at the Oscars in a dress fashioned on a slaughtered swan.

The mayhem unleashed in a school shooting is just the rectified essence of the manifold derangements in our national life. Everything is out-of-whack, including our perception of what’s going on and what it means.

There is almost nothing left of childhood in this land, in the way of young, unformed creatures assisted by adults who love them into a future worth being part of.

We have forgotten how to be grateful for coming into this world at all, leaving us unworthy of being here.

The quality of virtue, meaning that some things and some doings are recognizably better than others, was deceitfully replaced by the equity of nothing being allowed to be better than anything else.

Truth and beauty have gone outlaw. Bad faith and wickedness rule, led by a Party of Chaos.

So, really, what do you expect?

And what do you deserve?

Verizon statement on Huawei litigation settlement

After 1.5 year, finally: Verizon statement on Huawei litigation settlement | About Verizon
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Article One HERE
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2019 Huawei asks Verizon to pay more than $1 billion for over 230 patents: Source
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Article Two HERE

The Best Live Perform Ever!!! Jeff Beck – A Day In The Life | HD

I had this album, and traded it for another back while in university. What was I thinking?

Australian Leader Dutton issues grim China warning in first appearance as Liberal leader

Peter Dutton urges Labor Party to stand strong against Beijing as he labels China the ‘biggest issue’ facing Australia. Newly elected Liberal leader Peter Dutton has doubled down on his strong statements towards Beijing and said China’s rise was the “biggest issue” Australia will face in the future.
“The issue of China under President Xi is the biggest issue our country will face in our lifetimes. That's the reality,” he said.

“I will support policies which help to defend our country, decisions made by the new government in relation to rolling out AUKUS … and other policies which will help keep us safe.

“I don't want interference in our electoral outcomes, I don't want there to be threats on university campuses.

“I want us to have a productive relationship with China. I want it to be restored but that is an issue for China.”

During his time as defence minister Mr Dutton came under fire for his strong stance on China and his rhetoric around war in the Pacific.

Last year, Mr Dutton said it would be “inconceivable” that Australia would not send troops in the event of US involvement in a war between China and Taiwan.

He has also said Australians should “prepare for war” during an address on Anzac Day this year, which was lashed by Labor and also Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan.

Meet Elena Deligioz, Probably The Most Beautiful Female Cosplay Soldier In The World

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Meet Elena Deligoiz from Russia. She is not really a soldier but her good looks and uncanny addiction to military equipment will make most men fall in love with her. Her followers believe that she could have been the most beautiful woman in the military had she joined the army. Elena Deligioz was dubbed the ‘world’s most famous soldier’ and she is currently breaking the internet.

Her photographs have gone viral in various social media websites around the world, making her extremely famous. Who knows maybe after this article she gets an offer from the military!

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Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s Regular Press Conference on May 30, 2022

From HERE

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Beijing Youth Daily: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement on May 28, saying that the US is concerned about the conditions China imposed on the visit to China by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and China’s efforts to restrict and manipulate the visit. What is China’s comment?

Zhao Lijian: At the invitation of the Chinese government, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet visited China from May 23 to 28. China believes that this visit has enhanced understanding and cooperation, and clarified misinformation. After meetings and talks, conversations and field trips in Guangzhou and Xinjiang, the High Commissioner had a deeper understanding and recognition of China’s path for human rights development, and had first-hand experience of Xinjiang’s reality with social security and stability, sound and sustained development and people’s well-being.

All lies and rumors related to Xinjiang have fallen apart in front of facts and truth. But as the saying goes, “You cannot wake up someone who is only pretending to be asleep.” Turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the facts and truth about Xinjiang, the US rehashed the false claims that had already been debunked countless times in an attempt to smear and attack China. Ridiculously, this time they made up new lies that China has restricted and manipulated the visit. In fact, all the activities and arrangements of High Commissioner Bachelet during her stay in China were decided in accordance with her will and based on full consultation. The High Commissioner also said at the press conference that she had unsupervised and extensive meetings during the visit. Where is restriction and manipulation to speak of? Look no further than the US to find the one trying to manipulate this visit. It is the one and the same US that was most vocal about the High Commissioner’s visit to China at first, imposed various kinds of conditions for the agreed visit, and ultimately attacked and slandered the visit after it was made. This once again proves that the US does not care about human rights conditions whatsoever. What it really wants is to use human rights as a pretext to constantly denigrate China and hold it down. Such hypocrisy and political scheme of the US has long been seen through by the whole world.

By contrast, the human rights conditions in the US are like “the emperor’s new clothes”. The recent mass shooting at a school in Texas is particularly heart-wrenching. The right to life of ordinary people, including children and teenagers, cannot be guaranteed. I’d like to share some figures with you. Since 2001, the US waged wars or conducted military operations in about 80 countries in the name of counterterrorism, which killed more than 800,000 people including about 300,000 civilians. The US set up black sites like the Guantanamo Bay prison across the world, where people are arbitrarily detained without trial for long periods of time and subject to torture and ill treatment. Racism in the US is deeply entrenched and racial minorities like African Americans and Asian Americans have to live with systemic racism. Shutting eyes to grave human rights violations at home, what rights does the US have to act like a patronizing judge and interfere in other countries’ affairs? We ask the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct investigations into and submit reports on US’ human rights problems.

Bloomberg: In relation to the press conference on Saturday evening, what’s the takeaway for China on this? There were some recommendations from the High Commissioner. For example, she talked about how anti-terrorism and deradicalization should not be in conflict with human rights. What’s your comment?

Zhao Lijian: I briefed you on High Commissioner Bachelet’s visit to China just now. She also held a press conference on that. During High Commissioner Bachelet’s visit here, especially in Xinjiang, the authorities of the Autonomous Region has made comprehensive presentation on the measures and results of counter-terrorism and deradicalization. High Commissioner Bachelet toured an exhibition on counter-terrorism and de-radicalization, learning in detail the legal and policy frameworks, practices, and results of counter-terrorism and deradicalization in Xinjiang. Violence and terrorism have inflicted the greatest harm on the human rights of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, and counter-terrorism and de-radicalization is the greatest protection for the human rights of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. I can tell you that there has been no violent terrorist attack in Xinjiang for five consecutive years and the region has enjoyed security, stability, development, and prosperity. This is the best illustration of the effectiveness of Xinjiang’s counter-terrorism and deradicalization efforts. I believe that foreign people from all walks of life who have visited Xinjiang, like the High Commissioner herself, will be able to draw objective and fair conclusions.

I also want to say that China attaches great importance to the UN human rights affairs and stands ready to contribute to advancing the international human rights cause. During the visit, the Chinese side and the OHCHR had thorough exchange on deepening cooperation and reached broad consensus. The two sides have agreed to establish an Annual Senior Strategic Meeting, to discuss national, regional and international human rights issues of common interest. And the two sides have agreed to establish a working group to facilitate human rights cooperation in such areas as development, business, poverty reduction, counter-terrorism, minority groups, digital space, and judicial safeguard. China is willing to provide greater support to the human rights work of the United Nations. Such concrete measures not only are conducive to the cooperation between China and the OHCHR, but also represent China’s new contribution to the international human rights cause.

Shenzhen TV: In his recent speech on the US administration’s approach to China, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that China poses “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order” and that the US “must defend and reform the rules-based international order”.  Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: This speech misrepresents facts with a long list of lies. The attacks on China mirror exactly what the US has been doing. It is no other than the US that poses “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order”. The “rules-based international order” it touts is actually the “US rules-based international order”, a hegemonic order to dominate the world with the house rules of its clique. Last week my colleague already responded to the speech. Today I would like to take this opportunity to further reveal the hypocrisy of the US by debunking some of its lies and fallacies with facts and figures.

To start, the US has zero reverence for the international order underpinned by the UN Charter and international law. Throughout its over two-century-long history, the country has only witnessed 16 years free from war. It is the largest source of disruption threatening the international peace and stability and the greatest destabilizing element in the international order. The US claims that it will defend “concepts like self-determination, sovereignty, the peaceful settlement of disputes” enshrined in the UN Charter. However, it always says one thing and does another. As William Blum pointed out in his book America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy, since the end of World War II, the US has attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments and grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries. According to a report by the Brown University, since 2001, the US-waged wars and military operations in the name of counter-terrorism have claimed over 800,000 lives and turned more than 20 million people into refugees in countries including Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria alone.

Second, the US is the top saboteur of the international order, who sticks to US centrism and exceptionalism and wantonly withdraws from treaties and organizations. It refuses to sign or ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, voted against the Global Compact for Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees, and remains the sole party obstructing negotiations for a verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention. Since the 1980s, the US has withdrawn from 17 international organizations or treaties, including the UN Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Paris Agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, the Arms Trade Treaty, the INF Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, among others with flip-flops regarding some of them. Such a country now shamelessly disguises itself as a referee of international rules, shining a spotlight on where others come short while turning a blind eye to its outright violations. When American politicians eloquently cite the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to criticize other countries, are they aware of the fact that the US is not even a state party to the Convention?

Third, the US is in no position whatsoever to talk about rules. In the eyes of the US, international rules must be subordinate to and serve its interests. When international rules happen to be consistent with US interests, they are cited as authority. Otherwise they are simply ignored. Here are some questions for the US to answer: when the US flagrantly waged wars on sovereign nations and instigated color revolutions, was it following rules? When the US grossly slapped illegal unilateral sanctions, plunging people in the affected countries into disaster, was it following rules? When the US refuses to pay its long overdue $1 billion assessed contributions to the UN regular budget and $1.4 billion peacekeeping assessments, is it following rules? When the US strengthens AUKUS and Quad, and attempts to build an Indo-Pacific version of NATO to mess up the Asia-Pacific and undermine the international nuclear non-proliferation system, is it following rules? When the US hosted the so-called Summit for Democracy, which divided the world into two camps by inviting half and excluding the other half, was it following rules? When the US refused to implement the WTO ruling that its tariff war against China violates global trade rules, and blocked the appointment of new judges to the WTO’s Appellate Body, was it following rules?

The US places its domestic law above international law and international rules and willfully resorts to illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Venezuela, Syria and Iran have been grappling with severe difficulties with a struggling economy and strained medical resources due to prolonged US sanctions. Under such circumstances, the US, rather than halting those sanctions, redoubled them, making things even worse for these countries. The international community sees with increasing clarity that the US only complies with the market competition principle and international trade rules it claims to champion when it suits US interests. While talking about a level playing field and free trade, US politicians actually believe in “America first” and wield a big stick of sanctions.

I also want to stress that over the 70-plus years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, we have not initiated any war or taken an inch of land from other countries. We call for resolving disputes through dialogue and negotiation, and has completely resolved all land boundary issues with 12 out of the 14 neighbors. As the second largest economy in the world, China has been contributing to over 30% to the world economic growth, ranking the top for 15 years running. China is now the second largest contributor to UN regular budget and peacekeeping assessments, actively participated in the building and reform of the global governance system, and taken real actions to honor the spirit of the UN Charter and the authority of the UN. It is fair to say that China remains a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development and a guardian of international order. We will always stand in solidarity with all peace-loving and justice-pursing countries under the UN flag, uphold real multilateralism, and continuously contribute confidence, wisdom and strength to universal prosperity of the world and common progress of the humanity.

Al Jazeera: Yesterday, Israeli extremists, protected by police, attacked Palestinians in East Jerusalem and prevented them from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Israeli Prime Minister Bennett said that the whole of Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. China has always supported the two-state solution and East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. May I ask if you condemn the Israeli Prime Minister’s remarks? Now that the Palestinian-Israeli situation is gradually deteriorating. If Israeli atrocities are not stopped in time, a serious humanitarian disaster is inevitable. Is China considering taking substantive action to protect the Palestinians and protect regional peace and stability?

Zhao Lijian: Lately there has been ongoing tension between Palestine and Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. China is deeply concerned over this. Parties concerned should act in accordance with relevant UN resolutions, respect and maintain the historical status quo of the holy sites in Jerusalem, and avoid taking any unilateral and provocative actions that change the historical status quo of the holy sites in Jerusalem. China has stressed many times that the underlying reason for the recurring conflicts between Israel and Palestine is the absence of the implementation of the “two-state solution” and long denial of the Palestinian people’s legitimate appeal of establishing an independent state. The international community should have a greater sense of urgency and work for the early resumption of peace talks between Palestine and Israel on the basis of the two-state solution, so as to achieve the comprehensive, just and lasting resolution of the Palestine question at an early date.

Hubei Media Group: May 29, 2022 was the 20th International Day of UN Peacekeepers. Could you talk about China’s participation in UN peacekeeping missions?

Zhao Lijian: UN peacekeeping missions are important means to advance international peace and security. Over the past seven decades or so, the UN has conducted over 70 missions, rallying more than one million peacekeepers under the UN flag and making outstanding contributions to safeguarding and restoring regional peace and assisting in the resolution of regional conflicts. The Blue Helmets have become a symbol of peace and hope, winning wide acclaim from the international community.

In 1990, China sent military observers to the UN, which marked the beginning of its participation in UN peacekeeping operations (UNPKOs). In 1992, China dispatched its first formed military unit of Blue Helmets to participate in UNPKOs. Over the past three decades, China has sent nearly 50,000 peacekeepers to participate in UNPKOs in more than 20 countries and regions. A total of 16 Chinese peacekeepers have made the ultimate sacrifice serving under the UN flag. China is the second largest contributor to UN peacekeeping assessments and the largest troop contributor to peacekeeping operations among the five permanent members of the Security Council. As we speak, more than 2,200 Chinese officers are working in eight peacekeeping mission areas. Chinese Blue Helmets have become a key force in the UN’s peacekeeping efforts. Chinese peacekeepers adhere to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, act in strict accordance with their mandate, and faithfully fulfill peacekeeping missions, making important contributions to safeguarding world peace and promoting common development.

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic overlapping with a host of threats including regional hotspot issues, ethnic strife and terrorism, the role and significance of UNPKOs have become more prominent. China will continue to work in close cooperation with the international community to increase the efficacy and efficiency of UNPKOs so that they can play a bigger role in safeguarding international peace and security. At the same time, UNPKOs rely on the support of all member states. We hope a certain country will pay its overdue $1.4 billion peacekeeping assessments in full without further delay and avoid hindering the normal operation of UNPKOs for selfish interests.

Associated Press of Pakistan: On May 27, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif visited Karot Hydropower project, being completed under China Pakistan Economic Corridor. Talking to engineers and workers there, he said this project will generate cheap electricity and also promote green development in Pakistan. Do you have any comment on that?

Zhao Lijian: The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a key pilot project under the Belt and Road Initiative and an important platform for all-round practical cooperation between the two countries. It is guided by the concept of green, open and clean development and committed to realizing sustainable, livelihood-oriented and high-standard growth. Since its launch, CPEC has delivered fruitful outcomes in energy cooperation, which helps Pakistan to effectively tackle energy shortage and provides reliable energy supply for its economic and industrial development.

The Karot hydropower plant is a major energy cooperation project under CPEC between China and Pakistan. Once installed and put into operation, it will not only generate steady and affordable energy supply, meet the electricity needs of approximately five million local residents, and further improve Pakistan’s energy structure, but also boost the country’s sustainable development as well as global efforts towards carbon neutrality by reducing an estimated amount of 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, thus contributing to the global response to climate change. We are looking forward to the completion of the hydropower plant and hope that it can be put into use at an early date.

Bloomberg: A question about a joint document between China and the Pacific nations, which according to news reports was not adopted. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: You’ve been closely following the situation. In fact, I just got some relevant information and would like to share with you some information briefly.

The second China-Pacific Island Countries Foreign Ministers’ Meeting was successfully held. The parties had an in-depth discussion about how to deepen cooperation between the two sides in a united and friendly manner, and reached wide new consensus. After the meeting, China will release a position paper on cooperation between China and the Pacific Island countries in response to the expectations of the latter. Please stay tuned to the relevant press release from China.

As for the joint document you mentioned, it involves an ongoing process of discussion. Not every meeting has to issue a joint document. At the foreign Ministers’ meeting this time, all parties reached new consensus on this, making an important step towards reaching the final agreement.  The parties agreed to continue to engage in active and practical discussions in order to build more consensus.

CCTV: The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP), held its 21st Summit in Havana, Cuba on May 27, 2022. The Final Declaration adopted by the alliance’s member states denounces the exclusionary and discriminatory treatment by the United States as the host country of the so-called Summit of the Americas against some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, rejects the imposition of coercive unilateral measures against Venezuela and Nicaragua, and the economic, commercial, and financial blockade against Cuba and calls on the genuine regional integration led by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) represents a useful exploration by countries in Latin America and the Caribbean for promoting regional integration. Since its founding, the organization has been committed to seeking development through solidarity among regional countries and encouraging its member states to follow a path of independent development.

Since its founding, CELAC has been committed to multilateralism and played an important role in upholding multilateralism, safeguarding regional peace and stability, promoting economic and social development and protecting the rights and interests of developing countries. China appreciates this and supports countries in the region in actively seeking a development model suited to the region and their efforts to promote integration.

Under the pretext of so-called democracy and human rights, the US has been ganging up to suppress countries that have different opinions, wantonly abused unilateral sanctions and interfered in and manipulated the internal affairs of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is typical hegemony that gravely violates the purposes of the UN Charter and the basic norms governing international relations, and seriously contravenes the sovereignty and dignity of countries in the region. China firmly rejects this. I would like to stress that Latin America is by no means a front court or backyard of a certain country, and the Summit of the Americas is not a “Summit of the United States of America”. The US scheme to interfere in regional affairs by taking advantage of its capacity as the host of the Summit of the Americas is doomed to fail.

China Daily: According to media reports, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, commenting on some negative remarks by the US side on Taiwan, stressed that Taiwan is a Chinese province and an inalienable part of China’s territory and that pushing Taiwan to declare independence is a dangerous adventure. He called on all sides to respect China’s sovereignty and avoid adding fuel to the flame. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: China highly appreciates Prime Minister Hun Sen’s remarks on Taiwan. There is but one China in the world, Taiwan is part of China, and the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China. This is a consensus of the international community. The Taiwan question is purely China’s domestic affair and brooks no foreign interference. The Chinese side’s just cause of safeguarding sovereignty and territorial integrity, opposing secession, and realizing national reunification has received and will surely continue to receive understanding and support from Cambodia and the rest of the international community.

Reuters: The World Health Organization recently organized the World Health Assembly meeting and they reached agreement on reforming global health emergency rules. Did China take part and did China also agree to this reform?

Zhao Lijian: I’m not aware of what you mentioned.

The Paper: Last week, the fourth regional security dialogue on Afghanistan was hosted by Tajikistan and the Dushanbe Statement was released. We learned that a Chinese representative attended the meeting. Can you share more information?

Zhao Lijian: The fourth regional security dialogue on Afghanistan was held in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, on May 27. Senior representatives from China, Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan attended the meeting. Cheng Guoping, External Security Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, represented China at the meeting.

Commissioner Cheng said, Afghanistan is the “Heart of Asia”. The development of the situation in Afghanistan, especially its security situation, has a major impact on regional security and stability. The Global Security Initiative, put forward by President Xi Jinping not long ago, stressed the importance of upholding the new vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, and jointly upholding world peace and security. China is ready to honor this spirit, work in concert with regional countries and support the whole system of Afghanistan in well responding to challenges.

The Dushanbe Statement released at the meeting welcomes the Tunxi Initiative of the Neighboring Countries of Afghanistan on Supporting Economic Reconstruction in and Practical Cooperation with Afghanistan adopted at the Third Foreign Ministers’ Meeting Among the Neighboring Countries of Afghanistan in late March, calls on all parties to provide more support for Afghanistan in economy, humanitarian assistance, connectivity, trade and internal capacity building. It reiterates non-interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs and the “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned” principle, urges countries bearing responsibilities for Afghanistan to seriously fulfill the commitment of economic reconstruction and future development of Afghanistan, and opposes politicization of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. The statement particularly pointed out that international terrorist organizations should never be allowed to use the Afghan territory to hide, train, plot and sponsor any terrorist activities targeting any country in the region to make sure that Afghanistan will not become a hotbed, harbor or source of terrorist forces.

Afghanistan is now at a critical stage from chaos to stability. Security is the prerequisite for development. China is ready to continue to work with regional countries to strengthen communication and coordination, build consensus and form synergy, and make relentless efforts to help Afghanistan achieve lasting peace and stability.

Bloomberg: Do you have any more details on the agreements that were signed between China and Kiribati and Samoa? Is there anything you could offer on those agreements?

Zhao Lijian: Our delegation is there on their trip. Relevant information has been released, and you can check it out.

Dragon TV: Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said at the 27th “International Conference on the Future of Asia” that the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) is not an economic but a political grouping that is intended to isolate and exclude China. China has contributed to other countries’ economic growth but has been left out in the IPEF. Economic development requires stability and no conflict. The United States seems enthusiastic about shutting out China and is sending ships to the South China Sea. This may one day cause an accident, resulting in violence or war, which is not good for the economic development of ASEAN countries. It’s necessary to avoid intensifying conflict between the United States and China and maintain regional stability. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: That’s very well put. Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad spoke the thoughts of the vast majority of countries in the region and clearly indicated what they care most about and want most. That is peace, stability and economic development in the region. It represents the overriding trend and people’s aspiration. However, the US has deviated from this direction and politicized economic issues for its own selfish ends, even at the cost of the interests of other countries and the region at large. It wins support and is doomed to fail. The key to success in the Asia-Pacific is win-win cooperation, not zero-sum confrontation. China is ready to work with other countries in the region to practice true multilateralism, build an open regional economy and make the Asia-Pacific our better home.

Reuters: According to reports in Swiss media, efforts by the Swiss government to update its free trade agreement with China have stalled as Switzerland is taking a more critical view of China’s human rights record. What’s China’s comment?

Zhao Lijian: Since its implementation in 2014, the China-Switzerland free trade agreement has brought enormous tangible benefits to both countries and peoples. To upgrade the agreement will help both sides to further tap into the potential for economic and trade cooperation and revitalize and grow the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

I would like to stress that the free trade agreement is a mutually-beneficial arrangement, not a favor bestowed by either side. The two sides have maintained close communication and active negotiation in the spirit of mutual respect and equality regarding the upgrading of the agreement. China will be delighted to have the agreement upgraded and hopes that the Swiss side could stay clear of disruptive elements and meet China halfway.

Bloomberg: Just to go back to my earlier question, I want to make sure that I was clear. Basically I was asking about agreements with Kiribati, but also with Samoa. So I was asking on the two countries. Could you give us more details on China’s agreements with the two countries?

Zhao Lijian: As I said just now, the Chinese side has issue the press release on the visit. Just before the press conference, we released information about the talks between Fijian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Frank Bainimarama and State Councilor Wang Yi. The press release can be found on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. China will soon release relevant information on the China-Pacific Island Countries Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. Please stay tuned.

Reuters: Recently, the WHO held its first in-person since the COVID-19 outbreak. Did China attend the meeting? Does China support any reform measures mentioned at this conference?

Zhao Lijian: As I just said, I am not aware of relevant situation. I may come back to you after I learn more about it. According to my initial information, China participated in relevant discussions, but I am not aware of the details.

And yet more pictures from the past

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Miniature UFO Wreckage Discovered in Science Museum Archive?

From HERE

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Wreckage from a “miniature” UFO crash in North Yorkshire sixty years ago has been rediscovered in the archives of the Science Museum in London.

Or has it?

Known as Britain’s “answer to America’s Roswell incident,” the Silpho Saucer story broke on December 9, 1957 in  The Yorkshire Post when ‘a mystery’ disc was found on Yorkshire moor. Scarborough businessman Frank Dickenson and two friends were driving up Reasty Hill, near the village of Silpho, and their car stalled as ‘a glowing object in the sky’ landed in Borax Forest.

Mr. Dickenson found the metallic saucer in a patch of bracken, but when he returned with his friend the object was gone, so he placed a classified advert in the Scarborough newspaper and eventually bought it for £10. When the artifact was cut open a tiny book was found made of “17 thin copper sheets” covered in 2000 hieroglyphs.”  Scarborough café owner, Philip Longbottom studied the disc and claimed it been sent to Earth by an alien called “Ullo” and the message warned: ‘You will improve or disappear’. Hieroglyphics were also found on the wreckage of the UFO that allegedly crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in June 1947.

Measuring 45 cm (17.72 inches) in diameter and weighing 15 kg (33.07 lbs.), for half a century, UFO enthusiasts have speculated as to the destiny of this missing artifact. Now, parts of the “wreckage” have been rediscovered inside a tin cigarette box at the  Science Museum Group ’s archive.

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The remains of the ‘Silpho Moor Object’ were sent to London for examination in 1963 and included a “fused section of the metal and plastic from the outer casing, a length of hollow copper tubing and pieces from the copper booklet discovered inside.” Gordon Claringbull of the Natural History Museum, who specialized in meteorites and explosives said in a memo to the Science Museum that he was ‘prepared to wager anything’ that the pieces of metal were made on Earth, reported the Yorkshire Post.

A BBC report  this week revealed how tests carried out at the time in Manchester University found the object’s shell “contained lead and the copper parts […] of unusual high purity.” This raised expectations in the UFO community, but a metallurgist soon concluded that because the disc had not been exposed to high temperatures it “could not have come from space.”

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According to the Yorkshire Post , UFO expert Jenny Randles believes this metallic disc ‘is the most costly and well organized hoax that has ever taken place in Britain.”

Although the scientific community was skeptical, Air Chief Marshall Lord Dowding, who led the RAF during the Battle of Britain during WW2, examined the Silpho Saucer in 1958 and believed it was “genuine.” Describing it as a ‘a miniature pilot flying saucer’ – Lord Dowding was openly convinced it was “a genuine artefact from space,” according to the report in the Yorkshire Post.

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Since the discovery, skeptics have claimed the ‘saucer’ was made from a “domestic hot water cylinder in a back-street garage and planted on the moor as an elaborate hoax.” And this wouldn’t be the first time that a shiny part from a water cylinder has grabbed the world’s headlines – in 1974 another UFO part ‘allegedly’ crashed in Florida. Antoine and Jerri Betz, accompanied by their 21-year-old son Terry, discovered ‘’a bright metal globe, about the size of a bowling ball, just sitting there in the grass.”

When Terry played his guitar the ball “strangely resonated the music” and began to “move around, all on its own.” The media stir eventually caused scientists from NASA to inspect the Betz Sphere, and even some of them were convinced it had “otherworldly” origins. However, similarly to the Silpho Saucer story, the skeptics’ evidence was much stronger and came in the form of the “sphere’s owner.”

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2022 06 01 15 3g3

A skeptiod.com article tells that after the story broke, artist James Durling-Jones in Taos, New Mexico came forward claiming that he had used similar spheres in several sculptures. He had made a trip in his Volkswagen bus collecting scrap “industrial ball valves” in two sizes: 10-inch (25.4 cm) balls weighing about 70 pounds (31.75 kg) and 8-inch (20.32 cm) balls weighing about 22 pounds (9.98 kg), exactly the same weight and dimensions as the Betz Sphere. Durling-Jones had strapped the metal balls on his luggage rack and drove through Jacksonville around Easter of 1971 when “a few of the balls rolled off the luggage rack and were lost,” until three years later when the Betzes came along.

It can be concluded that the Silpho Saucer and the Beta Sphere are unquestionably two of most famous INFOs (identified non-flying objects) in the world.

U.S. bill would bar Google, Apple from hosting apps that accept China’s digital yuan

Such insane self-defeating behavior!

Republican senators want to bar U.S. app stores including Apple and Google from hosting apps that allow payments to be made with China's digital currency, amid fears the payment system could allow Beijing to spy on Americans.

The bill, unveiled Thursday and first reported by Reuters, states that companies that own or control app stores "shall not carry or support any app in [their] app store(s) within the United States that supports or enables transactions in e-CNY." It is sponsored by Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Mike Braun.

According to Cotton's office, digital yuan could provide the Chinese government with "real-time visibility into all transactions on the network, posing privacy and security concerns for American persons who join this network."

The Center for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said in a January 2021 report that China's digital currency and electronic payments system was "likely to be a boon for CCP surveillance in the economy and for government interference in the lives of Chinese citizens," noting that "transactions will contain precise data about users and their financial activity."

Article HERE

A Winter Tour of the Hidden Corners of a Little Town in Upstate NY

“I moved here in November and have been exploring it through this weird, snowless winter of 2012.”

A look at what rural America is. This is the real deal. I can name countless towns throughout the United States that resembles this... -MM

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This is what MOST of rural and small-town America looks like. I can confirm that this is exactly how parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Mississippi looked ten years ago.

Couple that with what the cities look like today. The United States is a nation in Crisis. So, given that, can you actually believe that the leadership are so delusional that they want to take on Russia and China simultaneously?

The Prisoner 16 Once Upon a Time

I do hope that you all enjoy this episode.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
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Japan, Korea, Australia and Ukraine. The world is changing. We discuss this with some pretty Gibson girls.

An American vet, long living down under, told me, "I have heard everything about America since I lived here from: 'I hate America to I love America', now it is: 'I feel sorry for America'..."

The world is changing. Here’s a collection of videos, articles, and stuff for you all to check out and chill-out with. I hope that you enjoy this particular article.

A thought about Japan and the QUAD

Japan is an American attack dog. It's not wise to lay all the blame on the dog. When someone sets his dog on you, what will you do? You can kick the shit out of the dog, but you will suffer bites. Or you can feed the dog with its favorite food and beat the shit out of its owner. After a while, the stupid dogs will get killed and the smart dogs will stay out of the fray. 

PM

Interesting quote

Sociopaths are very concerned with maintaining control over their "inferiors" in the present moment. They don't have the cognitive ability to make long term plans. They just "go with the flow".

They will keep going with this attitude until a bigger gangster comes along and tells them to lay off, or else.

This general atmosphere of sociopathy propagates through western society, as the fish rots from the head down.

School dance in the 1950s

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As Things Fall Apart Biden May Want To Escalate

Is reality setting in? Is that why a Washington Post reporter, who has been on the frontline in Ukraine, was allowed to write this?

Ukrainian volunteer fighters in the east feel abandoned

[A]fter three months of war, this company of 120 men is down to 54 because of deaths, injuries and desertions.

The volunteers were civilians before Russia invaded on Feb. 24, and they never expected to be dispatched to one of the most dangerous front lines in eastern Ukraine. They quickly found themselves in the crosshairs of war, feeling abandoned by their military superiors and struggling to survive.

In mid February these people were still civilians in some town in west Ukraine. They then ‘volunteered’, to avoid a draft into the army, for the territorial defense forces with the hope to serve near their homes:

Lapko, built like a wrestler, was made a company commander in the 5th Separate Rifle Battalion, in charge of 120 men. The similarly burly Khrus became a platoon commander under Lapko. All of their comrades were from western Ukraine. They were handed AK-47 rifles and given training that lasted less than a half-hour.

“We shot 30 bullets and then they said, ‘You can’t get more; too expensive,’ ” Lapko said.

They were given orders to head to the western city of Lviv. When they got there, they were ordered to go south and then east into Luhansk province in Donbas, portions of which were already under the control of Moscow-backed separatists and are now occupied by Russian forces.

The men were put into a frontline ditch and have since been shelled again and again without any ability to respond. They then disregarded the orders from above and left. They have now be arrested.

The military value of such units was zero to begin with. Untrained men under command of an inexperienced civilian and with no real weapons have no chance to hold out against a professional military force like the Russian army.

That 60 or so of them got killed or wounded for no good reason is the responsibility of the servant of the corrupt (recommended), President Vlodomir Zelenski, and those ‘western’ politicians, like Boris Johnson, who egg him on.

But the biggest part of the responsibility for the life of those men falls to the Biden administration. It tried to push Zelensky to invade Donbas in early 2021.

Back then Russia started large scale maneuvers and made clear that they would intervene. Zelensky got cold feet and pulled back. As the Carnegie Endowment’s Dmitri Tretin reported at that time:

In February [2021], Zelensky ordered troops (as part of the rotation process) and heavy weapons (as a show of force) to go near to the conflict zone in Donbas. 

He did not venture out as far as Poroshenko, who dispatched small Ukrainian naval vessels through the Russian-controlled waters near the Kerch Strait in late 2018, but it was enough to get him noticed in Moscow. 

The fact of the matter is that even if Ukraine cannot seriously hope to win the war in Donbas, it can successfully provoke Russia into action. 

This, in turn, would produce a knee-jerk reaction from Ukraine’s Western supporters and further aggravate Moscow’s relations, particularly with Europe. 

One way or another, the fate of Nord Stream II will directly affect Ukraine’s interests. Being seen as a victim of Russian aggression and presenting itself as a frontline state checking Russia’s further advance toward Europe is a major asset of Kyiv’s foreign policy.

When the 2021 attempt had failed the Biden administration did not change its general plan as it is part of a larger strategy to push the ‘west’ into a new cold war with Russia and China.

After the 2021 attempt on Donbas had failed the U.S. immediately prepared for a new attempt to provoke Russia in Ukraine in spring 2022.

The first instruction that Secretary of State Antony Blinken got from President Biden was to “reset” America’s alliances and partnerships abroad so that the United States could deal with the challenges ahead. That strategy would prove decisive in combating Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Blinken and other officials gave me new details this week, describing a series of behind-the-scenes meetings over the past year that helped forge the U.S.-led coalition to support Ukraine.
 
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The Biden administration’s secret planning began in April 2021 when Russia massed about 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. The buildup turned out to be a feint, but Blinken and other officials discussed U.S. intelligence about Russia’s actions with leaders of Britain, France and Germany at a NATO meeting in Brussels that month. Their message was, “We need to get ourselves prepared,” a senior State Department official said. 

...

The Ukraine threat got red-hot in October, when the United States gathered intelligence about a renewed Russian buildup on the border, along with “some detail about what Russian plans for those forces actually were,” Blinken said. This operational detail “was really the eye opener.” The Group of 20 nations were meeting at the end of October in Rome, and Biden pulled aside the leaders of Britain, France and Germany and gave them a detailed readout on the top-secret evidence.

“It was galvanizing enough that there was an agreement … to fleshing out the consequences for Russia if it went ahead with the aggression,” Blinken said. 

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Threatening sanctions can be an empty diplomatic ritual. But in December, Blinken and his colleagues began seriously discussing with allies what steps they would take. The initial venue was a Group of Seven foreign ministers meeting in Liverpool, England, on Dec. 11. The attendees publicly committed that there would be “massive consequences and severe costs,” Blinken remembered. As a result, he said, “when the aggression actually happened, we were able to move immediately.”

NATO military planning accelerated along with the diplomacy. Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, the NATO commander, told me that his colleagues began preparing in December and January the “ground lines of communication” that would allow rapid shipment of arms into Ukraine. They studied entry points for supplies and other practical details. This weapons pipeline delivered Stinger and Javelin missiles before the invasion began Feb. 24 and has transferred huge numbers of heavier weapons since then.

That narrative is of course deeply misleading. The U.S. did not know of a ‘Russian invasion’. What it knew was that Zelensky, pushed by the U.S., would make another attempt to invade the Donbas republics with overwhelming force and that Russia’s leadership would have to react to such an assault on its compatriots.

The Ukrainian assault began on February 16 when over several days Ukrainian artillery increased its bombardment of Donbas by a factor of 40. Russia reacted to that and on February 24 preempted the planned ground assault.

The above part of Biden’s plan to provoke Russia into a war as a means to strengthen the U.S. position in Europe has worked well.

But how long will the coalition of the ‘west’ hold when inflation, energy scarcity and hunger set in? European unity is already falling apart with each country scrambling to fulfill its own energy needs.

Everyone can now see that the Ukraine, and with it the U.S., is losing the war. Meanwhile Russia is doing much better than anyone had expected.

What is Biden’s plan now as things fall apart? Escalating towards a wider war is an option but the risk of it is much higher than potential gains.

Still, for Biden it may be the only way he is willing to go.

Posted by b on May 27, 2022 at 15:36 UTC | Permalink

Huevos Rancheros Hash Brown Skillet

Crispy hash browns take center stage in this skillet breakfast topped with eggs, salsa and plenty of cheese. Who wouldn’t love this tasty take on a favorite Mexican breakfast?

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Ingredients

  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped (1 cup)
  • 1 tablespoon chili powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 6 cups frozen shredded hash brown potatoes (from 30-oz bag)
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup salsa
  • 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (4 oz)

Make it FRESH toppings, as desired

  • Sour cream
  • Sliced avocado
  • Chopped red onion
  • Cilantro leaves
  • Salsa

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It Is Worse Than We Thought

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The U.S. economy is slowing down more quickly than almost all of the experts had anticipated.  As I detailed yesterday, U.S. consumers have been getting hit extremely hard by this economic slowdown, and at this point most Americans believe that a recession is coming.

But could it be possible that a recession has already begun?

As you will see below, the numbers seem to indicate that such a scenario is quite likely.  But whether we are already officially in a recession or not, the truth is that whatever we are experiencing now is nothing compared to the pain that is eventually coming down the road.

Do you remember how painful it was for our society when the first housing bubble spectacularly imploded back in 2008?

Well, it is starting to happen again.  On Thursday we learned that pending home sales in the United States have now fallen for six months in a row

Pending home sales slipped in April, as contract activity decreased for the sixth consecutive month, the National Association of Realtors® reported. Only the Midwest region saw signings increase month-over-month, while the other three major regions reported declines. Each of the four regions registered a drop in year-over-year contract activity.

The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI),* www.nar.realtor/pending-home-sales, a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contract signings, slid 3.9% to 99.3 in April. Year-over-year, transactions fell 9.1%. An index of 100 is equal to the level of contract activity in 2001.

Earlier in the week, I discussed the fact that new home sales were 26.9 percent lower this April than they were last April.

We are clearly past the peak of the housing bubble, and now the rollercoaster is very rapidly headed in a downward direction.

Of course the economy as a whole is starting to head in a downward direction.  On Thursday we also learned that U.S. GDP for the first quarter of 2022 had been revised even lower

First-quarter gross domestic product declined at a 1.5% annual pace, according to the second estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That was worse than the 1.3% Dow Jones estimate and a write-down from the initially reported 1.4%.

Downward revisions for both private inventory and residential investment offset an upward change in consumer spending. A swelling trade deficit also subtracted from the GDP total.

Many experts are assuring us that GDP growth will bounce back into the green for the second quarter.

But it if doesn’t, that would mean that GDP has contracted for two quarters in a row, and that would officially confirm that we are in a recession right now.

Of course even if GDP does bounce back this quarter, the outlook for the months ahead is not promising at all.

In fact, a survey of 500 prominent CEOs just found that 75 percent of them expect a recession to begin by the end of next year…

At this time last year, the Fortune 500 CEOs we surveyed were breathing a collective sigh of relief as profits and revenues came roaring back from the ravages of the pandemic. This spring, that roar sounds uncomfortably loud, as companies cope with soaring inflation and the growing likelihood that sky-high prices and labor shortages will help tip the economy into recession. In all, 75% said they expected the next recession to begin by the end of 2023, though only 32% believed it would start in this calendar year.

Just about everyone can feel that economic troubles are in our future, and that will especially be true if the Federal Reserve keeps raising interest rates.

Unfortunately, the Fed feels forced to raise rates because inflation has gotten wildly out of control.

If you can believe it, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has risen by 47 cents in just the past month alone…

Gas prices have increased by over 47 cents in the last month alone as the U.S. continues to smash gas price records day by day under President Joe Biden’s leadership.

On Wednesday, May 25, the U.S. recorded yet another all-time high, as the average price of gas stands at $4.599 for regular gas. This reflects an over 47 cent rise in the last month alone. One month ago, the gas price average stood at $4.123.

That is insane!

And U.S. natural gas prices have risen almost 150 percent so far in 2022…

U.S. natural gas prices have skyrocketed nearly 150% this year while inventory levels have shrunk, signaling more consumer pain ahead of the summer season.

The Henry Hub natural gas spot price, an indicator of nationwide prices, stormed past $9.30 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) Thursday, up from its early January price of $3.74 per MMBtu and the highest level since 2008, according to government data.

Food prices continue to soar into unthinkable territory as well.

This week, a single trip to the grocery store cost me 309 dollars, and I was trying to be very frugal.

309 dollars!

I remember a time when you could buy a used vehicle for that kind of money.

For years, I have been warning that our leaders were destroying our currency and setting the stage for nightmarish inflation, and now that time has arrived.

And all of the borrowing and spending that our politicians have been doing has made our national long-term financial problems exponentially worse

Over the past two years, $4.6 trillion has been provided by Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact on inflation, particularly the timing of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act in March 2021, is subject to some debate, but what cannot be denied is the impact this spending has had on the interest paid on the national debt. 

Between 2011-2018, interest on debt held by the public averaged $272 billion annually. Between 2019-2021, annual interest on the debt averaged $389 billion, an increase of $117 billion, or 43 percent. 

The president’s fiscal 2022 budget, which is the first to project deficits of more than $1 trillion for 10 consecutive years, estimates that FY 2022 interest on debt of $26.3 trillion will be $305 billion and reach $941 billion in FY 2031, or more than triple the amount for the current fiscal year. 

By that time, interest payments will account for 59 percent of the projected $1.6 trillion deficit.

We could have avoided all of this if we had taken a different path.

But we didn’t.

Instead, we kept sending the big spenders back to Washington time after time.

We thought that we could keep kicking the can down the road and get away with it, but instead we have literally destroyed America’s financial future.

Getting a facial from an ice machine, the 1950s

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Richard Says…

The US is a kleptocracy run by the kleptomaniacal. The sum total of their activity is called GDP. 

The government has to keep things churning while simultaneously inflating the currency on a compound basis in order to finance the dollar printing presses. This is known as economics. 

Ordinary people are in a daily cat fight for survival with government always posed to seize their homes for non-payment of taxes. Economic crime is epidemic. 

What a country. The Ukraine war, with stammering Brandon at the helm, is the latest kleptocratic scam. 

Can anyone tell me I am exaggerating?

- Richard

Grace JonesI’m Not Perfect But I’m Perfect For You

Please enjoy this bit of crazy 1990’s America…

Another valuable quote…

"The various talking heads--Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, Yellen, etc.--should be ignored...

... as the actual policy aim ...

... is to reduce Russia so severely...

... so that China can then also be reduced.

This is what remains the United States genuine policy goal."


-vetinLA

Nonresident alien border ID, 1943

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Countering China’s ‘Greatest & Longest’ Hypersonic Missile – US Says Its ‘Missile Killer’ Program Just Not Ready

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The head of the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) recently said that its Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) program, designed to eliminate Hypersonic missiles, may not be ready even in the next decade.

“We’re just getting started,” said Vice Adm. Jon Hill at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The MDA is working on a wide array of missile tracking sensors and defeat capabilities to build a “layered” defense against incoming ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

The GPI is one of them which is supposed to target hypersonic missiles during the glide phase of flight (once a missile has re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and is heading toward its target), which is challenging to forecast, as the missiles travel at five times the speed of sound while making rapid evasive maneuvers.

The interceptors will be integrated into the current Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense destroyers in the US Navy which would involve the interceptor being launched from its regular Vertical Launch System (VLS), connected with the Baseline 9 Aegis Weapon System that detects, tracks, controls, and engages hypersonic threats.

Last year in November, the MDA-selected Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon to design Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI). Raytheon Missiles and Defense was granted $20.97 million, Lockheed Martin $20.94 million, and Northrop Grumman $18.95 million respectively. Each vendor is supposed to provide concept designs for prototypes by September 2022.

“We’ve got three great proposals, and we may decide to stay on three, may drop to two, may drop to one. So it just really kind of depends,” said Hill.

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Chinese, Russian Hypersonic Missile

In recent times, the US is increasingly becoming worried about the threat posed by hypersonic weapons from China and Russia.

In July of last year, China tested its hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), sparking widespread concern and panic among the US military’s brass. The glide vehicle traveled around 24,800 miles (39,911 km) in space before re-entering the atmosphere and striking the ground target, according to a report by US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

The DIA report reads that the flight test lasted more than 100 minutes, making it “the greatest distance flew and longest flight time of any Chinese land-attack weapons system to date.”

China is known to have a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM), known as Dong Feng-17 (DF-17) which is capable of carrying the DF-ZF HGV. The missile itself can travel at a speed of Mach 5-10 and carry conventional or nuclear weapons. It has a range of 1,800-2,500km and a launch weight of 15,000kgs.

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The DF-ZF HGV can travel at speeds between Mach 5-10 and is said to be capable of performing evasive maneuvers to tackle the enemy defenses. The DF-17 is a ground-launched missile; an air-launched version may be developed that can be deployed on the Xian H-6N bomber – the latest variant of the H-6 series bombers based on the Soviet Tupolev Tu-16 twin-engine jet bombers.

The H-6N has a range of 8,000 km and if armed with DF-17, its range can extend up to 10,000 – 11,000 km bringing the key enemy installations across the entire Indo-Pacific within its range.

A video surfaced in 2020 showing the H-6N bomber landing at an unknown airfield carrying a missile with a warhead and booster section on the bottom of its fuselage, which appeared to be similar to the DF-17 hypersonic missile.

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Meanwhile, Russia has also developed the Avangard HGV with a range of over 6,000 km, capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional payloads. According to a TASS report, the HGV’s nuclear warhead is “more than two megatons in TNT equivalent.”

Currently, the Avangard is carried by the SS-19 “Stiletto” (UR-100NUTTH) ballistic missile but it is slated to be replaced by the R-28 Sarmat that has just been successfully tested and planned to be deployed later this year.

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Also, MDA and the Space Development Agency are currently working on the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) that would assist the current missile warning/tracking satellites that could lose hypersonic missiles after their boost phase.

The HBTSS is supposed to be able to detect a missile launch, as well as the first, second, and third-stage separation. Once the GPI is fired by the Aegis BMD system on a Navy destroyer, it would be connected to HBTSS for updated tracking data and the interceptor would kill the threat before it got too close to its intended target.

The HBTSS is planned to be launched into orbit next year for a demonstration.

The ‘Mysterious’ Tully Monster Fossil Just Got More Mysterious

By Chris Rogers / The Conversation

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Every now and again, scientists discover fossils that are so bizarre they defy classification, their body make-up is unlike any other living animals or plants. Tullimonstrum (also known as the Tully Monster), a 300 year-old fossil discovered in the Mazon Creek fossil beds in Illinois, US, is one such creature.

At first glance, Tully looks superficially slug-like. But where you would expect its mouth to be, the creature has a long thin appendage ending in what looks like a pair of grasping claws. Then there are its eyes, which protrude outward from its body on stalks.

Tully is so strange that scientists have never been unable to agree on whether it is a vertebrate (with a backbone, like mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish) or an invertebrate (without a backbone, like insects, crustaceans, octopuses, and all other animals). In 2016, a group of scientists claimed to have solved the mystery of Tully, providing the strongest evidence yet that it was a vertebrate. But my colleagues and I have conducted a new study that calls this conclusion into question, meaning this monster is as mysterious as ever.

When Was the Tully Monster Discovered?

The Tully Monster was originally discovered in the 1950s by a fossil collector named Francis Tully. Ever since its discovery scientists have puzzled over which group of modern animals Tully belongs to. The enigma of Tully’s true evolutionary relationships has added to its popularity, ultimately leading it to become the state fossil of Illinois.

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There have been many attempts to classify the Tully Monster . The majority of these studies have focused on the appearance of some of its more prominent features. These include a linear feature in the fossil interpreted as evidence of a gut, the light and dark banding of the fossil, and the peculiar grasping claws of its mouth. The body plan of the Tully Monster is so unusual in its entirety that it will greatly expand the diversity of whatever group it ultimately belongs to, changing the way we think about that group of animals.

The 2016 research argued the animal should be grouped with vertebrates because its eyes contain pigment granules called melanosomes, which are arranged by shape and size in the same way as those in vertebrate eyes . But our research shows that the eyes of some invertebrates such as octopus and squid also contain melanosomes partitioned by shape and size in a similar way to Tully’s eyes, and that these can also be preserved in fossils.

2022 06 01 10 rr58
2022 06 01 10 rr58

Particle Accelerator Research on the Tully Monster Fossil

To do this, we used a type of particle accelerator called a synchrotron radiation lightsource located at Stanford University in California. This allowed us to explore the chemical makeup of samples from fossils and from animals living today.

The synchrotron bombards specimens with intense bursts of radiation to ‘excite’ the elements within them. When excited, each element releases X-rays with a specific signature. By detecting the emitted X-ray signatures, we can tell what elements were excited and ultimately what the specimen we are studying is made of.

First we found that melanosomes from the eyes of modern vertebrates have a higher ratio of zinc to copper than the modern invertebrates we studied. To our surprise, we then found the same pattern could be seen in fossilized vertebrates and invertebrates found at Mazon Creek.

We then analyzed the chemistry of Tully’s eyes and the ratio of zinc to copper was more similar to that of invertebrates than vertebrates. This suggests the animal may not have been a vertebrate, contradicting previous efforts to classify it.

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2022 06 01 10 58

We also found that Tully’s eyes contain different type of copper to that found in vertebrate eyes. But the copper also wasn’t identical to that in the invertebrates we studied. So, while our work adds weight to the idea that Tully is not a vertebrate, it doesn’t clearly identify it as an invertebrate either.

The Tully Monster Remains Unclassified

Where do we go from here? A broader analysis of the chemistry of melanosomes and other pigments in the eyes of a wider range of invertebrates would be a good next step. This may help to further narrow down the group of animals to which Tully belongs.

2022 06 01 10 5gh8
2022 06 01 10 5gh8

 

Futuristic car design by Bob Riley

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5 24w

The truth about American weapons in Ukraine you won’t believe | Redacted with Clayton Morris

Interesting. Check it out.

Breakfast in Bed: Extraordinary Color Photographs Revealed the First Class of Air France in the 1950s

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Air France, in full Compagnie Nationale Air France, French international airline originally formed in 1933 and today serving all parts of the globe. With British Airways, it was the first to fly the supersonic Concorde. Headquarters are in Paris.

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By 1948 Air France operated 130 aircraft, one of the largest fleets in the world. Between 1947 and 1965 the airline operated Lockheed Constellations on passenger and cargo services worldwide.

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During the mid-1950s it also operated the Vickers Viscount turboprop, with twelve entering services between May 1953 and August 1954 on the European routes. On September 26, 1953, the government instructed Air France to share long-distance routes with new private airlines. This was followed by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport’s imposition of an accord on Air France, Aigle Azur, TAI and UAT, under which some routes to Africa, Asia and the Pacific region were transferred to private carriers.

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In 1957, Eugene Louis Kammerman (1920–1961) took a series of photographs for an advertising campaign for Air France. Photographer for the United States Army, he married a French woman and decided to stay in France. A reporter for the Saturday Evening Post, he collaborated to the young newspaper L’Express, then too “poor” to pay him. He started to work on advertising campaigns and did reportages on the major fashion houses, his images were published in magazines such as Elle, Paris Match and Life…

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Made In America: Goods Exports By State

Saturday, May 28, 2022 – 08:40 AM

After China, the U.S. is the next largest exporter of goods in the world, shipping out $1.8 trillion worth of goods in 2021 – an increase of 23% over the previous year.

Of course, as Visual Capitalist’s Raul Amoros and Jennifer West detail below, that massive number doesn’t tell the whole story. The U.S. economy is multifaceted, with varying levels of trade activity taking place all across the nation.

Using the latest data on international trade from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, we’ve visualized the value of America’s goods exports by state.

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2022 05 29 12 23

Top 10 Exporter States

Here are the top 10 American states that exported the highest dollar value worth of goods during 2021. Combined, these export-leading states represent 59.4% of the nation’s total exports.

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2022 05 29 12 26

Texas has been the top exporting state in the U.S. for an incredible 20 years in a row.

Last year, Texas exported $375 billion worth of goods, which is more than California ($175 billion), New York ($85 billion), and Louisiana ($77 billion) combined. The state’s largest manufacturing export category is petroleum and coal products, but it’s also important to mention that Texas led the nation in tech exports for the ninth straight year.

California was the second highest exporter of goods in 2021 with a total value of $175 billion, an increase of 12% from the previous year. The state’s main export by value was computer and electronic product manufacturing, representing 17.8% of the total U.S. exports of that industry. California was also second among all states in exports of machinery manufacturing, accounting for 13.9% of the U.S. total.

What Type of Goods are Exported?

Here is a breakdown of the biggest U.S. export categories by value in 2021.

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2022 05 29 12 27

These top 10 export categories alone represent almost 70% of America’s total exports.

The biggest grower among this list is mineral fuels, up by 59% from last year. Pharmaceuticals saw the second biggest one-year increase (45%).

Top 10 U.S. Exports by Country of Destination

So who is buying “Made in America” products?

Unsurprisingly, neighboring countries Canada (17.5%) and Mexico (15.8%) are the two biggest buyers of American goods. Together, they purchase one-third of American exports.

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2022 05 29 12 2f8

Three Asian countries round out the top five list: China (8.6%), Japan (4.3%), and South Korea (3.7%). Together, the top five countries account for around half of all goods exports.

Atlas space station in 1958

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Gravitas: China retaliates after Biden’s Taiwan comment

Very serious.

NASA scientists pose with their board of calculations

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Is Yoon prepared for the consequences of cold-shouldering China?

South Korea elected a new President. Apparently, hearsay has it that many of the younger people were stunned that such a Pro-America "dinosaur" would be elected. 

Promptly after taking the reigns of power, he started "pulling a Ukraine" and embracing a pro-USA, and hate-China stance. Here is an editorial on this subject. -MM

From HERE

As South Korea formalizes its economic security alliance with the US and participates in the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), its trade policy stance is coming to a major turning point.

The presidential office explains this as a ramping up of the change from the existing framework of the US being Korea’s main security ally and China being its strongest economic partner to a framework of relying on the US for security and working with the world on economic matters. However, this is misleading. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Yoon administration perceives the US as Korea’s most important partner in both the fields of security and the economy.

It goes without saying that the Korean economy is highly dependent on China and market diversification is necessary. However, sudden changes without the necessary preparation will inevitably come with costs.

China accounts for about one-quarter of Korea’s total imports and exports. In particular, an interdependent division of labor structure is currently held tightly in place with intermediate goods. Intermediate goods account for 64% of Korea’s imports from China and 80% of exports.

In addition, of the items Korea considers vulnerable to supply chain disruptions — which account for more than 70% of imports from specific countries among all imported items in Korea — 2,434 are sourced from China, 601 from the US, and 565 from Japan. China’s share is overwhelmingly larger than that of other countries.

As was seen with the urea crisis late last year, Korean industries can end up paralyzed without China. The same goes for high-tech industries. Lest we forget 60% of Korea’s semiconductor exports go to China.

The IPEF is a grand plan by the US to artificially reorganize the division of labor in high-tech industries mainly in Northeast Asian countries such as Korea, China, Japan, and Taiwan. The goal is to have Southeast Asian countries and India take over the role of China. If the US’ plan becomes a reality, it’s only a matter of time before Korean industry and trade are dealt a big shock.

Companies that seize opportunities in the transition process can reap the benefits, but those that do not adapt properly will suffer damage.

Regarding Korea’s involvement in the IPEF, President Yoon Suk-yeol told CNN in an interview on Monday, “Even if we strengthen our alliances with the United States in security and technology, it does not mean that we think our economic cooperation with China is unimportant.”

Yoon also said that, since both South Korea and China depend on their mutual cooperation, he does “not believe it is reasonable for China to be overly sensitive about this matter,” revealing the very easy-going way of thinking of the president.

The IPEF is based on the US intention to exclude China from the global supply chain.

A plan is needed that puts the characteristics of the Korean industry and the ecosystem into perspective. For Korea, which heavily depends on trade to keep its economy strong, fully excluding either the US or China is far too risky.

First selfie, 1900

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Rand Paul: “Elitists Want A One World Government; It’s Not A Conspiracy Theory”

Saturday, May 28, 2022 – 05:40 AM

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Senator Rand Paul appeared on Fox News Thursday and discussed the ongoing World Economic Forum gathering in Davos Switzerland, remarking that it is not a conspiracy theory to suggest the organisation is seeking a one world government, rather it is “in their mission statement.”

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2022 05 29 12 16

Paul urged that “The real danger here that’s even more dangerous than all their phony caring about carbon footprint, the real danger is this; look how bad your government is in a country where you get to vote for these people.”

“This would be a government, a world government where you don’t get to vote on anybody. This is everybody’s worst nightmare,” Paul asserted, referring to the ‘penetration’ of the WEF, to quote its head Klaus Schwab, into national governments.

“The bureaucracy that we have trouble in our United States because we don’t get to vote on them, we vote indirectly,” Paul said, adding “Can you imagine the one-world bureaucracy of all these elitists and their private jets that would rule our country and we wouldn’t get to vote?”

The Senator continued, “So I’m dead set against this and they used to call people that talked about one-world government used to say it’s a conspiracy. We would always say no, it’s in their mission statement.”

“They say it at every meeting. That’s what they’re for,” Paul proclaimed, adding “lack of sovereignty means lack of freedom, it means lack of responsiveness and it’s completely antithetical to everything our country stands for.”

Watch:

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The Best Photos Of The Spectacular One-Off 1965 Dodge Deora Pickup Truck

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The Deora is a 1965 Dodge A100 pickup truck that was heavily customized by Mike and Larry Alexander in Detroit for the 1967 Detroit Autorama, also known as “America’s Greatest Hot Rod Show.” Believe it or not, after winning many awards, including the Ridler in 1967, it became the prototype for a Hot Wheels car, and plastic model kit.

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Based on a 1965 Dodge A100 compact pickup truck, the Deora was heavily modified by a Detroit-based custom house run by two brothers. The A100’s roofline was chopped, while the body was sectioned and channeled. One of the neat features of the Deora was the front windshield that would lift up and the lower gate would swivel, allowing the driver/passenger access into the car through the front of the cab. The result was a futuristic-looking pickup that looked like it came out of a scene from the Jetsons.

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Despite its 21st century looks, which would’ve been considered light years away in 1967, it was powered with a basically stock slant-six engine and a three-speed manual transmission, which were moved rearward 15 inches to allow for the severely customized cab. The bed was covered with a hard tonneau cover and the truck was emblazoned in gold paint complemented by chrome wheels while the interior featured some pretty trick modifications for the era.

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Because of its outrageous design, a major plastic model car company and a diecast toy manufacturer offered scaled-down versions for sale to the growing youth market. To help promote the launch of the model version, the model car company ran a naming contest, and it was a 13-year-old who came up with the name “Deora.” Loosely translated, it’s Spanish for “golden.” Other toy manufacturers quickly offered miniature versions of the Deora in plastic and metal, and soon it was one of the hottest-selling toy cars of the late 1960s.

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The Deora made its public debut at the 1967 Detroit Autorama and won the prestigious Ridler award that recognizes the skill and creativity of custom cars and their builders within the industry. It also caught the attention of the Chrysler marketing folks who really loved the look of the Deora. They leased it for two years and put it on tour going around the United States with other factory concept cars to complement the Dodge displays at the new car shows during the late 1960s.

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After its tour of duty on the show circuit, the Deora was sold and put in storage for more than 30 years. Finally, after a light restoration, the Deora reappeared and made its “second debut” at the 50th anniversary Detroit Autorama in 2002.

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In 2009 the Deora was put up for auction in California and was sold for $324,500. It was described as featuring a 101 bhp (75 kW; 102 PS) 6-cylinder 170 cu in (2,800 cc) engine.

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Watch: Mysterious South China Sea Missile Launch Came Dangerously Close To Commercial Airliner

Saturday, May 28, 2022 – 12:30 AM

An unknown foreign military in southeast Asia has reportedly test launched an SLBM, or submarine-launched ballistic missile, which appears to have endangered a nearby commercial aircraft full of people. Stunning video taken from a Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 as it flew over the South China Sea just as the unidentified submarine launched the missile shows the airliner remarkably closeThe Drive reports that it was likely a test of either the Chinese or South Korean military, but not even the precise date of the event has been confirmed at this point:

Twitter user @jchovernut, a pilot for U.S.-based airline Allegiant Air and a veteran of the U.S. Navy's submarine community, posted the video, seen below, online on Tuesday. "They were over the South China Sea & were issued a last-minute hectic call from ATC: 'turn left 90 degrees immediately!!,'" according to one Tweet accompanying the video.

That a commercial aircraft was so close to an SLBM launch that a passenger could get rare, crystal clear video of the projectile as it shot out of the submarine is unprecedented.

The pilot who posted the original clip further described, “To their bewilderment, they spotted a SLBM emerging from the sea below their previously intended flight path!! PLAN Missile Submarine launch with very little regard to Commercial Air Traffic in the area!! That would’ve been me on the ‘delivery end’ of that Missile 30 years ago!”

China in particular has been known over the years to conduct unannounced missile launches which creates last-minute flight delays.

However, The Drive admits that the location and timing of the video cannot be verified at this point, with a statement from Cathay Pacific also saying it can’t confirm any details of the event or the passenger that filmed it.

“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) did announce that it would be conducting drills in the South China Sea between May 19 and May 23, which coincided with U.S. President Joe Biden’s visits to South Korea and Japan, but did not mention any planned live-fire missile launches,” the report notes, speculating on possibilities.

A number of observers have asserted that China’s PLA Navy launched the missile…

Further, on the possibility that Pyongyang might be behind it, given the recent spate of ballistic missile launches which have caught the West’s attention: “On May 7, North Korea did test a submarine-launched ballistic missile, but in the East Sea, hundreds of miles away from the South China Sea,” The Drive writes.

“In 2017, the crew of Cathay Pacific flight flying north of Japan observed a portion of a North Korean missile test. However, it is unlikely that this video shows that previous incident, as the airline said at the time that what the aircrew saw was parts of the missile falling back to Earth, not being launched.”

Thus the above video clip could mark a significant first of an airline observing a full launch and flight path from the ocean’s surface into the atmosphere, and was able to catch it all on film at a close proximity.

Permanent Wave Machine, 1935

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SpongeWax Ecstatic (To Sell Angelina)

A great rock video, and some fish oil promise for a wonderful life, eh?

A comment…

“…today I encountered a discouraging comment from a foreign visitor (to the United States) which is really an accurate view of of a terribly faulty government …

My 50 days road trip in America is almost over (today is my last day)
It was pure fun and it was great seeing all these places, going to events and having such experience, meeting people.

It was 98% enjoyment.

I want to share some other thoughts though. Thoughts that bugged my mind for some time now. I don’t want it sound like a rant, because it isn’t.

But I think your country and people should address that ASAP.

Most of my trip went through the country, visiting nature and wild life.

But driving 7000 miles and walking 400 made me see also another picture.

What have you done to your cities people?

LA, San Francisco downtown looked like where Mad Max went to buy his water in the movies. Junkies, homeless, crazy people living on the streets. Endless tents, trash, misery, smell of urine and shit. It’s I don’t know … unbelievable. 

My friends in Europe had totally different image about LA, SF, Portland…any major west coast city I visit was like that. 

I don’t want to go to the politic side of things, because I am not local...but let me tell you. Misery on such level in the center of the cities it’s just not normal. 

It ruins business, tourism, everything.

Talking about business …every place I went, bar, eatery, restaurants, hotels …are short staffed and have “we are hiring” sign. Like almost every freaking place.

So reason for this people to be on the streets is not unemployment…

...there is work literally on every corner. 

So what is it? What’s wrong? 

These people should be like moved out of the Center of the city, crisis shelter should be build in the perimeter where this people can get like a cheap hot meal, maybe some help, shower, haircut and send to find a job…and judging by the above it should NOT be hard. 

Even if you are not qualified, those places look just for people with will you work, they will provide training.

I don’t know what’s your opinion on this…but as a foreigner visiting your country I can tell you are already on a slippery slope. If you don’t fix that somehow …it maybe not able to be reverted.

Just my 2 cents.

And because I don’t want to be off topic and to finish on a positive note, posting my top selection pictures from my travel in USA. Some of them I already posted but yeah. Enjoy. And thank you for the adventure your country unveiled for me.

Why Asia Pacific Chose China (You Won’t Believe What America Did)

A very good video…

Law-Abiding West Virginian Woman With Concealed Firearm Stops A Mass Shooting

Saturday, May 28, 2022 – 08:45 PM

Instead of waiting for the police to arrive, a woman with a concealed carry license in West Virginia acted fast to stop a crazed man with an AR-15-style rifle who was about to kill dozens of people at a graduation party.

"Instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives last night," Charleston Police Department Chief of Detectives Tony Hazelett told local news WCHSTV

The incident occurred Wednesday when Dennis Butler,37, was angered by a group of people hosting a graduation party who told him to slow down through an apartment complex in Charleston. He returned 30 minutes later, parked his vehicle, jumped in the backseat, and discharged his weapon toward the group of 30-40 people.

Unbeknownst to the shooter, a law-abiding citizen with a CCW was within the group and quickly drew her weapon and engaged Bulter with direct fire, fatally wounding him.

"There was a graduation party, a party with kids," Hazelett said at a press conference. "So obviously somebody just graduated high school and another birthday party. We could have had a casualty shooting there." He estimated between 30 to 40 people attended the parties.

There were no injuries reported besides the gunman. Police have yet to release the woman’s name, though they said she’s not part of law enforcement and is just an average law-abiding citizen.

Charleston police discuss the incident.

So a good woman with a gun prevents a bad person with evil intentions and an extensive criminal record from committing a mass shooting. Should society consider her a hero for saving the lives of dozens of people?

Gibson Girls: The Sexiest Women Of All Time

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The Gibson Girl began appearing in the 1890s and was the personification of the feminine ideal of physical attractiveness portrayed by the satirical pen-and-ink illustrations of illustrator Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period that spanned the late 19th and early 20th century in the United States and Canada. The artist saw his creation as representing the composite of “thousands of American girls.” The Gibson girl’s neck was thin and her hair piled high upon her head in the contemporary bouffant, pompadour, and chignon fashions.

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China is not in good mood…

China will take no crap from NATO’s Stoltenberg:

"Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg has been making groundless accusations and smearing attacks against China, making reckless comments on China's political system and domestic and foreign policies, and promoting a 'China-threat' theory, which China firmly opposes and strongly condemns, declared the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday.

"Wang Wenbin, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, made the remarks during a routine press conference on Thursday, responding to inquiries on the NATO chief's recent remarks calling China an 'authoritarian regime' and a threat to the alliance security during an interview on Tuesday....

"Wang also questioned that China does not use force to threaten other countries like some NATO countries do, it does not engage in military alliances, does not export ideologies, and is never the one to take the initiative in initiating trade wars, has never meddled with other country's internal affairs and has never unreasonably suppressed other countries' enterprises. So how can China threaten NATO security in any way?"

China then showed it can also diplomatically tell NATO’s chief propagandist to shut the fuck up:

"Wang urged Stoltenberg to immediately stop spreading unfounded rumors against China, and abandon the practice of drawing imaginary ideological lines. 'NATO has already messed up Europe, and it must not be allowed to do the same to Asia and the rest of the world.'"

That’s the most direct truth told to NATO that will certainly be heeded by the Global South.

Sophie B. HawkinsDamn I Wish I Was Your Lover

Do you all remember this tune?

Make-Ahead Breakfast Burritos

This best breakfast burrito is ready to go when you are! Prepare the night before, bake them in the morning, and start your family’s day the right way—with hearty, filling ingredients that come to life with a touch of salsa.

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d4176b9f e90e 496b b4bd 6441b53604a3

Ingredients

  • 1 lb bulk pork sausage
  • 2 green onions, chopped
  • 8 eggs
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 package (11 oz) Old El Paso™ flour tortillas for burritos (8 tortillas; 8 inch)
  • 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (4 oz)
  • Old El Paso™ Thick ‘n Chunky salsa
  • Sour cream

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2022 05 27 11 17

Here Are 11 Statistics That Show How U.S. Consumers Are Faring In This Rapidly Deteriorating Economy

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Prices are soaring, there are widespread shortages of certain items such as baby formula all over the nation, and at the same time U.S. economic activity appears to be really slowing down.

Considering all of that, it makes perfect sense why the American people are feeling so negative about the economy right now.

In fact, a whopping 85 percent of all Americans believe that there will be a recession within the next year.  These days, it is virtually impossible to get Americans to overwhelmingly agree about anything, and so the fact that 85 percent of us are anticipating a recession is a really big deal.

Just about everyone realizes that economic conditions are going to get worse, but for those of you that still doubt where we are headed here are 11 statistics that show how U.S. consumers are faring in this rapidly deteriorating economy…

#1 According to a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll that was recently conducted, 56 percent of Americans say that their financial situations are getting worse, and only 20 percent of Americans say that their financial situations are improving.

#2 Another new survey has just discovered that 66 percent of Americans “have avoided social events because they’ve felt embarrassed or uncomfortable” about their financial situations.

#3 The housing bubble appears to be bursting.  At this point, sales of new single family homes are falling at a very frightening pace

Sales of new single-family houses in April plunged by 16.6% from March and by 26.9% from a year ago, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000 houses, the lowest since lockdown April 2020, according to the Census Bureau today. Sales of new houses are registered when contracts are signed, not when deals close, and can serve as an early indicator of the overall housing market.

#4 After breaking the all-time national record in March, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has gone 42 cents above the old record and is now sitting at $4.59.

#5 The average age of a car on U.S. roads has reached an all-time record high of 12.2 years.  Many Americans continue to delay replacing their current vehicles because new vehicles have become so unaffordable.

#6 Millions of American families are struggling with rapidly rising food prices

The index for food away from home increased 7.2% over the last year, the Labor Department reported earlier this month. Food prices were up 9.4% in April from the same time last year — the biggest jump since April 1981, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported. And grocery store prices increased 10.8% for the year ended in April.

#7 U.S. natural gas futures just crossed the nine dollar threshold – the highest level that we have seen since the financial crisis of 2008.  That means that much higher energy costs are on the way for U.S. consumers.

#8 Multiple Fed surveys are showing that manufacturing activity in the U.S. is really slowing down

The slowdown in manufacturing activity on display in reports from the Federal Reserve banks of New York and Philadelphia was confirmed by a survey from the Richmond Fed indicating that factory activity contracted in the mid-Atlantic region in May.

The Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity index dropped 23 points from a positive reading of 14 in April to a minus nine, the lowest reading since May 2020, when much of the economy was still reeling from the onset of the pandemic and lockdowns.

#9 Zero Hedge is reporting extremely depressing news about U.S. macro data: “Other than April 2020 – when the entire economy was closed – May’s serial disappointment in US Macro data is the worst since Lehman”

#10 Thanks to plunging stock prices, approximately 20 trillion dollars in household net worth has been “wiped out” so far this year.

#11 A new CBS News/YouGov survey has found that 74 percent of Americans believe that things are going badly in this country and that 51 percent of Americans actually believe that Joe Biden is “incompetent”.

Right now, conditions are so similar to what we witnessed just before the financial crisis of 2008.

If we had addressed our long-term problems back then, perhaps we would be in a much different place at the moment.

But instead, we appear to be poised to repeat history in a lot of ways.

In fact, many experts believe that the crisis that is staring us in the face will be even worse than what we went through more than a decade ago.  For example, just check out what Peter Schiff is saying

This one is going to be even bigger because the economy has a lot more debt now than it did in 2008. And Americans are less able to pay it when interest rates rise because the balances are much greater. So, we’re in much worse shape as a result of all the bailouts and all the stimulus that papered over the last crisis. So, now the one we’re dealing with is going to be much worse because we kicked the can down the road instead of solving the problem when we had a chance.”

He makes some really great points.

Every time there has been some sort of a crisis in our society, our leaders responded by showering the system with even more money.

In 2008, the U.S. national debt crossed the 10 trillion dollar threshold.

In 2022, the U.S. national debt has crossed the 30 trillion dollar threshold.

Our politicians have been systematically destroying our future, and most Americans didn’t seem to care.

Now a day of reckoning has arrived, and it is going to be immensely painful.

There is no silver bullet that is going to cure inflation.

The Federal Reserve is going to try to tame inflation by hiking interest rates, but that will just destroy the housing bubble and dramatically slow down the economy.

And there is no silver bullet that is going to end the shortages that we are currently facing.

We are now experiencing some of the consequences of decades of mismanagement, and a lot more pain is on the way.

SpongeGiants (Lyrics On Screen)

This song played over and over in my mind when I was serving time in the ADC Brickeys.

Putin says ‘Thank God’ some foreign companies have left Russia

From HERE

LONDON (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was glad some foreign companies had left Russia because home-grown businesses could take their place, and he warned the West that Moscow would still find ways to acquire advanced technology and luxury goods.

Putin has cast the invasion of Ukraine as a turning point in Russian history: a revolt by Moscow against the United States, which he says has humiliated Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Ukraine says it is fighting for its survival.

Besides the death and horror of war, the conflict and the West’s attempt to isolate Russia as punishment have crimped global economic growth and triggered a wave of inflation as the prices of grain, cooking oil, fertiliser and energy soar.

Since the war, a host of major foreign investors – ranging from BP to McDonald’s Corp – have exited just as the Russian economy faces its worst contraction since the years following the turmoil of the Soviet collapse.

Sometimes when you look at those who leave – thank God, perhaps? We will occupy their niches: our business, our production – it has already grown, and it will safely sit on the ground prepared by our partners,” Putin said.

Speaking by video link to leaders of ex-Soviet states, Putin quipped that luxuries such as the Mercedes favoured by bandits in the chaos of post-Soviet Russia would still be available, though he admitted they might be a little more expensive.

“It will be a little more expensive for them but these are people who already drove Mercedes 600s and they will still do so. I can assure you they will bring them in from wherever, from whichever country.”

Putin said Russia still needed access to the advanced technologies of developed economies.

“We are not going to cut ourselves off from this – they want to squeeze us out a bit, but in the modern world this is simply unrealistic, impossible.”

He did not elaborate on how Russia would find ways to maintain access to western components and software.

Putin promised that Western attempts to isolate Russia would fail, saying developed economies were grappling with an inflationary spiral, broken supply chains and a food crisis just as the centre of global economic power had moved to Asia.

Western sanctions have stoked Russian inflation while snarling supply chains, though Putin said the country is coping well and that Russia is turning away from the West in favour of China, India and other powers.

“Representatives of our businesses face problems, of course, especially in the field of supply chains and transport. But nevertheless, everything can be adjusted, everything can be built in a new way,” Putin said.

Not without losses at a certain stage, but it helps us in a way to become stronger. In any case, we are definitely acquiring new competencies, we are starting to concentrate our economic, financial and administrative resources on breakthrough areas

Russia’s central bank slashed its key interest rate to 11% on Thursday and said it saw room for more cuts this year, as inflation slows from more than 20-year highs and the economy heads towards a contraction.

Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced millions more and raised fears of the most serious confrontation between Russia and the United States since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Putin says the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia through NATO enlargement and Moscow had to defend against the persecution of Russian-speaking people.

Ukraine and its Western allies reject these as baseless pretexts to invade a sovereign country.

The Prisoner S1E11 It’s Your Funeral

The latest installment of the 1960s television show The Prisoner.

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You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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The united West are drunk on power and have decided to “go for broke”. Lord help us!

Well, today I had another you-tube video censored. The video was about the town where I grew up in, and where I am now. I hoped that it was inspirational. But apparently the You-tube censors felt otherwise. They believed that comparing my town in the United States to my town in China would generate people to kill themselves. No. I am not being “funny”. I am speaking the truth…

2022 05 31 13 26
2022 05 31 13 26

It’s actually kind of funny when you think about it. Well, I will generate a second replacement video. And I will pay attention so that I don’t inspire anyone to kill themselves. Sheech!

Let’s get on with the news…

MAJOR DEVELOPMENT: NATO Says “Previous Commitments to Russia no longer valid”

BREAKING NEWS 7:48 AM EDT — Deputy Secretary-General of NATO: The alliance is free from its previous commitments with Russia not to deploy its forces in Eastern Europe.

UPDATE 8:11 AM EDT —

VILNIUS, lITHUANIA — NATO is no longer bound by past commitments to hold back from deploying its forces in eastern Europe, the US-led alliance’s deputy secretary general said Sunday.

Moscow itself has “voided of any content” the NATO-Russia Founding Act, by attacking Ukraine and halting dialogue with the alliance, Mircea Geoana told AFP.

Under the 1997 Founding Act, intended to reset the relationship between Russia and the Alliance, both sides agreed to work to “prevent any potentially threatening build-up of conventional forces in agreed regions of Europe, to include Central and Eastern Europe.”

“They took decisions, they made obligations there not to aggress neighbors, which they are doing, and to have regular consultations with NATO, which they don’t,” said Geoana, speaking in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

“So I think that in fact this founding act is basically not functioning because of Russia,” he added.

Russia, he said, had effectively moved away from the terms of the 1997 agreement.

“Now we have no restrictions to have robust posture in the eastern flank and to ensure that every square inch of NATO’s territory is protected by Article 5 and our allies.”

NATO’s article 5 is the one referring to collective defense, which says that an attack on one member is an attack on all of them.

Geoana did not give details of any such planned deployment, but said he anticipated “a robust, flexible and sustainable presence.”

In 2017, NATO had already deployed multinational tactical groups to the Baltic states and Poland as a dissuasive measure. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, it sent reinforcements there.

The Baltic states have called for a greater presence of its allies there, including for the development of brigades to replace the smaller tactical groups.

NATO defense ministers will meet in mid-June to discuss this and other questions, and the leaders of the NATO members states will meet to approve any changes at a NATO summit in Madrid at the end of June.

Texas, 1977

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Authentic Thai Basil Chicken Recipe (ผัดกระเพราไก่)

R.de80c7863ef78732fa699bd514bedf43
R.de80c7863ef78732fa699bd514bedf43

In this Thai basil chicken recipe, you’ll learn to cook an authentic Thai street version of the dish.

Thai basil chicken, better known in Thai as pad kra pao gai (ผัดกระเพราไก่ pad ka prao gai), is a contender for the most popular, and the most beloved Thai street food dish of all time.

You know sometimes when you go to a restaurant and you have no idea what to order, or even what you want to eat?

When that happens in Thailand, pad kra pao gai (ผัดกระเพราไก่, with chicken), or any type of meat stir fried with Thai holy basil, is a dish that comes to the rescue!

thai chicken basil recipe 4 X3
thai chicken basil recipe 4 X3

Ingredients you’ll need

For the fried egg (optional, but I think it’s mandatory)

  • 1 egg
  • 2 tablespoons of oil for frying

For the basil chicken

  • 1 chicken breast (or any other cut of boneless chicken, about 200 grams)
  • 5 cloves of garlic
  • 4 – 10 Thai chilies – when you fry the chilies, they aren’t as spicy
  • 1 tablespoon oil for frying
  • 1 teaspoon of oyster sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon light soy sauce
  • 1 splash of dark sweet soy sauce (you can use Indonesian kecap manis)
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 handful of Thai holy basil leaves (really try to get holy basil)

You can make your pad see ew with chicken, pork, squid, shrimp, or even tofu, but this time I’ll be making this Thai basil recipes with chicken. However, feel free to substitute chicken with whatever meat you want.

Note: To see the exact steps for making this Thai basil chicken recipe, scroll down below to the recipe box, or keep reading for more of an explanation of this amazing Thai dish and an in-depth look into some of the ingredients.

2022 05 30 20 00
2022 05 30 20 00

Let’s quickly talk about Thai basil…

There are three main types of basil used in Thai cooking: Thai sweet basil (ใบโหระพา bai horapa – this one is often just referred to as Thai basil), lemon basil (ใบแมงลัก bai maenglak), and holy basil (ใบกะเพรา bai kra prao).

This Thai basil chicken recipes uses holy basil (ใบกะเพรา).

But, can I use Thai sweet basil for this recipe?

Unfortunately it can be challenging to find holy basil outside of Thailand, and I’ve found that Thai restaurants in the United States often substitute Thai sweet basil for Thai holy basil and call it basil chicken.

However, sweet basil doesn’t have the vibrant peppery flavor that holy basil has, and so to get this dish to taste the way it tastes in Thailand, you really can’t substitute another type of basil for holy basil.

But if you simply cannot find holy basil (you could grow some yourself) and can only find Thai sweet basil, you can still make this recipe, and though it won’t have that peppery flavor, it will still probably taste good.

For a little reassurance, on my latest visit to the United States, one day at the Asian supermarket I came across a big box of holy basil, I think grown in California – so it can be found in the US.

2022 05 30 20 01
2022 05 30 20 01

Another way you can really elevate the flavor of this Thai basil chicken recipe is by using a mortar and pestle to hand grind your garlic and chilies. A garlic press would also do the job well.

Unlike mincing, grinding really releases all the juices and oils of the chilies and garlic and it brings out an extra depth of flavor, which in return makes the entire dish of chicken basil more vibrant, garlicky and spicy.

You don’t need to crush the garlic and chilies down to a curry paste, but you’re just looking for just a coarse crush, like in the photo above.

But no worries if you don’t have a mortar and pestle, mincing is still adequate.

2022 05 30 20 02
2022 05 30 20 02

Before getting started on this Thai basil chicken recipe, often my very first step is to begin by cooking a pot of rice. That way it’s finished and freshly cooked as soon as the chicken and egg are ready.

The first step is to fry the egg. Thai fried eggs are more like deep fried eggs, cooked in lots of oil. The extra oil gives them a lovely crispiness on the outside edges, and they taste so incredibly good mixed with the rice and chicken.

After the egg is finished cooking, lay it aside and get started cooking the chicken.

Finally, just like all of my Thai recipes, the ingredients listed (and the quantities) are a guide – it’s what I used – but use it loosely as a guide. Thai food is made to taste the way you want it to.

Thai basil chicken recipe

Time: About 30 minutes or less
Recipe size: 1 plate meal, and to be honest, it tastes best when cooked in a single portion. You could multiply this recipe a few times to make enough for a few people at once, or you could make individual portions.
Utensils: wok, frying pan
Flavors: Salty stir fry, complete meal deal, fragrant from the chilies, garlic, and holy basil
Eat it with: Pad kra pao gai (ผัดกระเพราไก่) is normally eaten on top of a pile of plain steamed jasmine rice with a fried egg on the side.

2022 05 30 20 04
2022 05 30 20 04

Dish out a plate of freshly steamed jasmine rice, scoop the hot Thai basil chicken (pad kra pao gai ผัดกระเพราไก่) onto one side of your rice, and nestle your fried egg on the other side of the plate.

And there you have one of the most widely loved Thai street food dishes in Thailand.

Try this recipe out, let me know if you have any questions or comments below, and if you enjoyed this recipes, I would really appreciate it if you would share this with a friend you know who loves Thai food as well – thank you!

2022 05 30 20 05
2022 05 30 20 05

Toronto, Canada, 1972

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Reality Sets-in: Europe Cracking; CANNOT agree on Russia Oil Embargo

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EDITORIAL OPINION —

Superficial European “unity” over Russia’s entry into Ukraine to De-Nazify and De-militarize” that regime, which resulted in Europe sanctioning Russia, is falling apart.

The European Union CANNOT get unanimous agreement to embargo Russian Oil or gas into Europe.   The reality, that Europe actually needs inexpensive, reliable energy, is finally taking hold.

The knee-jerk reaction by European Union countries to “sanction” Russia, was poorly thought out from its beginning.  By sanctioning Russia, Europe was actually siding WITH the Nazi-infested regime of Ukraine.

That was downright foolish on every level.

But ever-willing to contort reality, politicians in Europe chose to call their actions “defending democracy” and “defending Ukraine sovereignty.”  That flew until Ukraine outlawed opposition political parties, which is not “democracy” and was exposed as using heavy artillery against civilians in Luhansk and Donetsk, WHO THEY BURIED IN MASS GRAVES, which is not something any “sovereign” can legally do.

More directly though, Europe came to realize that their countries actually DEPEND on Russian natural gas and Russian oil.

Their economies require inexpensive, reliable energy, which Russia provides.

As the initial “sanctions” took effect, prices for petrol in Europe skyrocketed to over $10 a gallon.  Home heating oil — and natural gas — are also skyrocketing in price.

Europeans simply cannot afford it.

When winter comes this year, people in Europe will face the mind-numbing choice of heating their home to stay alive, or eating.   That’s a choice no one NEEDS to be forced into; except that “sanctions” on Russia are forcing that precise choice upon citizens.

The whole situation is untenable.

The politicians in Europe, shielded from the ugly reality of the decisions they make, actually want to make things worse by adopting a Europe-wide embargo of Russian oil.  Discussion to achieve that have been ongoing, but finally fell apart this past weekend.

Many (but not all) European nations simply cannot survive with viable, normal, societies, and thriving businesses, if Russia is embargoed.  The efforts to embargo have, finally, fallen apart.

Just today, Britain announced they expect rolling electric blackouts this coming winter.

As many as six million British households could be subjected to power cuts this winter if Russian gas supplies to Europe stop, The Times reported Sunday, citing a Whitehall document.

It said that imports of natural gas from Norway could halve next winter amid surging EU demand. Britain buys around half of its total supplies from the Nordic country.

Shipments of liquified natural gas from major producers such as the United States and Qatar could also halve this winter, the UK government warned, pointing to fierce global competition for supplies of the fuel.

Meanwhile, interconnectors from the Netherlands and Belgium could also be cut off in winter, as the two countries struggle meeting their own demand.

The UK, which has vowed to end the importation of Russian oil by the end of the year, is now seeking to bolster electricity supply by extending the life of its coal and aging nuclear power stations

This is a good thing.

The whole issue of “sanctions” upon Russia, was poorly thought out from it inception.  Russia is not in the wrong on Ukraine.   It is Ukraine that is in the wrong.

To their credit, Russia made Herculean diplomatic efforts – for years — to try to avoid what is now taking place.   Even as recently as December 2021 into January of this year, Russia put forth Diplomatic proposals for “iron-clad-legally enforceable, security guarantees” which would have avoided all the bloodshed and destruction now taking place.

Both Europe and America WILLFULLY chose to ignore/reject those Russian Diplomatic efforts.

Then the fighting began on February 24.

Politicians in Europe and America, unaccustomed to anyone daring to disagree with them, or acting with force in opposition to them, got their skirts in a twist, and tried to manhandle Russia with economic sanctions.  Worse, both the US and EU then outright STOLE Russia’s investments here in the West.  They literally seized billions in Russia’s bank reserves and sovereign wealth funds.   It was outright theft. The US Congress, Senate and US Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control are nothing more than brazen thieves.  They seem to think that stealing someone else’s money, without due process of law, is somehow “OK” when a government does it.   It’s not OK.  It’s theft.

All of it backfired.

The only nations being harmed by the Sanctions are European countries, and the USA.   Fuel costs for gasoline and diesel have skyrocketed to outright unaffordable levels.

Commerce is rapidly stopping because companies cannot afford shipping costs or even energy costs for manufacturing.

These are not “Putin Price Hikes” as the politicians love to claim; they are artificially-induced price increases because economic sanctions were imposed.  We in America and in Europe, did this to ourselves!

That reality is finally sinking in.  This past weekend, Europe could not come to unanimous agreement to embargo Russian oil.

Oh, did I mention, it gets worse for the Europeans too.

Over the weekend, Italy Army General Leonardo Tricarico publicly urged not to provoke Russia. Tricarico believes that the EU should leave the “crazy idea to win in Ukraine.”

He then went on to say publicly “If we want to reach an agreement with Putin on Ukraine, then we must avoid provocations and useless things, such as NATO expansion.”

Then, the coup de gras, when he said “We must force Ukraine to capitulate and not provoke Russia.”

FINALLY!  Someone actually stated the obvious!!!

Kudos to General Tricarico!!!!!

What has gone on here with Russia-Ukraine-Europe-US-NATO has been a travesty of mis-management and deliberate provocation of Russia by the West.

It needs to stop.

Fast.

Before the ongoing hostilities explode into a much larger, and far deadlier World War.

14 Immortal Black And White Film Scenes Tastefully Colored By Austrian Artist

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Buster Keaton in the film ‘The General’ (1926)

The exquisite and elegant beauty of monochrome film and photography is unparalleled. At the same time, it would be extremely curious and fun to see what some of the most iconic movie scenes in film history would look like in color, wouldn’t it?

If you agree with that sentiment, the works of Austrian photographer and photo editor Mario Unger (previously here, here and here) is just what the doctor prescribed to satiate that curiosity. The photo magician that he is, Mario meticulously colorized 14 of the most iconic film scenes and portraits of famous film personas, artists and musicians, and gave them new life.

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A scene from ‘Abbott And Costello Go To Mars’ (1953)

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A scene from ‘You Only Live Once’ (1937) Featuring Sylvia Sidney and Henry Fonda

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The Beautiful Grace Kelly in the film ‘Rear Window’ (1954)

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Signed Autograph of Mary Pickford (c.1914)

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A scene from ‘The Seahawk’ (1940) Featuring Errol Flynn

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The Famous Mexican Painter Frida Kahlo at the age of 11 (1919)

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A scene from the Movie ‘Their First Mistake’ (1932) with Laurel and Hardy

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Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald in 1946 by William P. Gottlieb

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A Scene from the Film ‘Stake Uncle Sam To Play Your Hand’ (1918) Featuring Mae Marsh in the Role of a Belgian Girl and A.C.Gibbons in the Role of a German Soldier

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A scene from the film ‘The Big Sleep’ (1946) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall

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Portrait of the Virtuous Fred Astaire

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Portrait of Kay Aldridge

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A scene from ‘Angel And The Badman’ (1947) with John Wayne and Gail Russel

China urges UN rights chief to look into school shootings in US

From HERE

The Global Times made the suggestion in an editorial Tuesday (May 31), a day after Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a regular briefing in Beijing that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights should produce a report on problems the US faces.

"The US system is equally incapable, or lacks interest, motivation, and courage, to address these problems thoroughly," said the Communist Party newspaper, which added that US domestic issues have "intensified its external aggression."

China has ramped up criticism of the US's human rights record around a trip to the Asian nation by UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, and the fault-finding escalated after the recent killings at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and at a school in Uvalde, Texas.

The party's flagship People's Daily ran a commentary under the headline "Racism a poison running through American body politic," that referenced the killing of Blacks in Buffalo, and the official Xinhua News Agency and English-language China Daily published similar articles.

Of course, the usual reporting trick used by “news” is to redirect the criticism away from the United States and blame the accuser…

The commentaries appear to be an effort to hit back at the US, which along with lawmakers in other nations, has accused China of carrying out genocide in Xinjiang. Beijing calls the accusations "the lie of the century."

The US has also criticised China for how it handled Ms Bachelet's recent trip.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken's press office said in a statement that authorities "did not enable a complete and independent assessment of the human rights environment" in the world's No. 2 economy and that it had reports Xinjiang residents were warned not to complain.

Human rights groups were also critical of Ms Bachelet and her six-day trip, which she repeatedly said wasn't an "investigation" of Chinese practices in Xinjiang or elsewhere.

What the U.S. just said about China is TERRIFYING | Redacted with Clayton Morris

A very, VERY good video. A must watch.

But you know... China has been at war with the USA since 2014, and China has never forgotten the bio-weapon "carpet bombing" of it's livestock. China does "tit-for-tat" actions prior to a formal war-declaration. I can only wonder what China is doing about all this... -MM

Tens Of Thousands Of Chickens Killed In 3 Million Eggs Per day Egg Farm Fire

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The united States of America is obviously under planned attack of its food supply and food distribution network.  The people doing this must be found and “stopped” by any means necessary.

Massive flames burned down a barn with tens of thousands of chickens in Wright County, Minnesota over the weekend.

The fire started late Saturday night at Forsman Farms in Howard Lake, causing major damage.

The Trebesch family thought they would spend Saturday night around their bonfire, but just after 10 p.m. they noticed massive flames across the field at Forsman Farms.

“It was unbelievable how quick it grew, it was insane,” Andy Trebesch said. “It was the whole sky, it was quite large.”

They called 911. Firefighters from multiple agencies across Wright County showed up, many volunteer firefighters. A barn housing tens of thousands of chickens was leveled, in what a farm spokesperson called a “tragic accident.”

According to Forsman Farms website, the farm started in 1918, and now the fourth-generation family farm sells more than three million eggs a day to some of the nation’s largest retailers.

“Overnight, a fire destroyed one of our barns at our Howard Lake farm. No one was injured and we are grateful that first responders were quickly on scene to put out the fire. Unfortunately, chickens were lost because of the fire. We are evaluating the extent of the damage – which appears to be confined to a single structure – as well as investigating the cause of the fire,” a Forsman Farms spokesperson said.

NUMEROUS OTHER FOOD – SUPPLY ALSO TORCHED THIS YEAR

In April, the tragic destruction by fire of the headquarters of Azure Standard in Oregon shocked millions of people, and since that news broke quite a few readers have been reaching out to me about the long string of unusual blazes that we have been witnessing from coast to coast in recent months.

I decided to look into this phenomenon for myself, and I am sharing what I have discovered so far in this article.  Dr. Benjamin Braddock and others had already been digging into this, and their research proved quite valuable as I began my investigation.

Some of the incidents that people have reported I was not able to independently verify, and others I felt were too minor to be put on this list.  With all that being said, the following is a list of 16 major fires that have occurred at key food industry facilities in the U.S. since the start of 2022…

#1 Salinas, California

As the smoke settles near Taylor Farms, questions remain on the future of the business and the roughly 1,000 people employed at the Abbott Street facility.

There is little to nothing left of the processing facility due to fire and smoke damages caused by Wednesday night’s blaze, according to Deputy Fire Chief Sam Klemek.

“About 85% to 95% of the building is a total loss,” he said.

#2 Hermiston, Oregon

Multiple workers are hospitalized following an explosion at a food processing facility that has nearby residents on alert for possible evacuation.

The explosion occurred Tuesday evening at Shearer’s Foods in Hermiston, a city in agriculturally rich eastern Oregon. No deaths have been reported from the blast, but the extent of the damage to the plant and its future were not clear. City officials are concerned what the fire could mean for the community and local economy.

#3 Conway, New Hampshire

Neighbors banded together to support crews as they battled a fire in Conway for about 16 hours Monday night.

More than 12 departments and agencies worked together to put out the fire at East Conway Beef and Pork.

#4 San Juan, Texas

On March 31, 2022, a structure fire significantly damaged a large portion of the largest fresh onion packing facilities in South Texas.

#5 Jonesboro, Arkansas

“The situation at our Jonesboro factory is under control and we are looking into the cause of the fire,” a Nestle spokesperson said. “Thankfully, no employees were injured and all are safe. We appreciate the quick response of the Jonesboro Fire Department and emergency response teams. The factory will remain closed as we assess the damage and return the factory to full operation. We plan to continue to support our employees financially during this time.”

Nestle opened the plant in 2002 and in December 2020 the company unveiled plans to invest more than $100 million to expand the frozen foods plant, including the addition of 90,000 square feet and a new production line for Hot Pockets frozen sandwiches. In addition to Hot Pockets, Nestle makes products under the Stouffer’s, Lean Cuisine, DiGiorno, Tombstone and Sweet Earth brands at the plant.

#6 Mauston, Wisconsin

A portion of Mauston’s Wisconsin River Meats burnt down during an overnight fire Feb. 2-3, with the cause of the fire still under investigation.

“The old portion of the plant is a total loss,” Wisconsin River Meats said in a Facebook post about the fire. “We humbly ask that you be patient and please give us some time to sort out the cause of the fire and for us to transition some of our business and invoicing to our warehouse.”

#7 Fayetteville, Illinois

Operating from what company officials referred to as the command center at Deli Star Corp.’s St. Louis Innovation Center, the Siegel family-led operations and executive team have spent the week scrambling to fulfill customers’ orders and work with local officials investigating a Jan. 11 fire that destroyed its 75,000-square-foot processing plant in Fayetteville, about 40 miles southeast of them.

#8 Belfast, Maine

Fire crews from several towns have been battling a fire at the Penobscot McCrum potato processing plant in Belfast. Crews were called to the scene at 28 Pierce Street around 3:30 a.m., according to Maine Department of Public Safety spokesperson Shannon Moss.

#9 Leoti, Kansas

A fire at a fertilizer company in western Kansas prompted evacuations Tuesday afternoon because hazardous materials were involved, officials said.

The Ford County Regional Hazardous Materials Team deployed to Leoti for the fire and was fighting the blaze and removing hazardous material, Wichita County Clerk Lynda Goodrich said.

#10 Claypool, Indiana

Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) said on Wednesday a fire had broken out in a bag house at its Claypool, Indiana, soybean processing and biodiesel plant on Tuesday and the affected systems had been suspended.

No employees were injured and the fire was put out by 9:15 p.m. central time on Tuesday, LDC said in a statement. LDC’s website said soybean deliveries were suspended at the plant on Wednesday. LDC says Claypool is the largest fully integrated soybean processing and biodiesel plant in the United States.

#11 Winston-Salem, Carolina

An uncontrolled fire at a fertilizer plant in North Carolina forced thousands of people to evacuate as firefighters stood back Tuesday because of the danger of a large explosion.

Authorities drove through neighborhoods and knocked on doors asking residents to leave within a one-mile radius (1.6 km) of the Winston Weaver Company fertilizer plant on the north side of Winston-Salem, where the fire started Monday night. Overnight, bright orange flames and thick plumes of smoke could be seen shooting into the sky. No injuries were reported.

#12 Sunnyside, Washington

A smoldering pile of sulfur quickly became a raging chemical fire just after 1 p.m. Monday at Nutrien Ag Solutions, 1101 Midvale Road, Sunnyside Fire Chief Ken Anderson said.

The fire destroyed one storage building on the southeast corner of the fertilizer storage facility in the Port of Sunnyside and damaged others, but adjacent Nutrien buildings and storage tanks containing hazardous chemicals were spared, Anderson said Monday evening.

#13 Lecompte, Louisiana

A fire started at the Cargill-Nutrena feed mill in Lecompte, LA in the early hours of Thursday morning and burned for 12 hours, coverage by local television news station KALB said. An explosion reportedly occurred as firefighters were working the scene.

#14 Maricopa, Arizona

It’s a long road to recovery for Maricopa Food Pantry after a fire destroyed around 50,000 lb of food. The fire happened just 15 minutes after their food bank closed on Monday morning. Smoke was still coming from the rubble 24 hours later. “It had to be 40-50 feet in the air, just pure black smoke. It engulfed the entire neighborhood,” said Maricopa Food Pantry President Mike Connelly. “The heat we could feel down at the corner.”

#15 Dufur, Oregon

The headquarters of Azure Standard, the nation’s premier independent distributor of organic and healthy food, was destroyed by fire overnight. There were no injuries. The cause of the fire is unknown and under investigation. The loss of the facility and the impact on companywide operations is being assessed and expected to be limited and temporary. No other Azure Standard facilities were affected.

#16 Planfield, Indiana

Investigators from the ATF’s National Response Team began its on-scene investigation on Friday into the massive fire at a Walmart facility in Plainfield.

The team, led by Supervisor Christopher Forkner, is working with the Plainfield Fire Territory, Indiana State Fire Marshal’s Office and the Plainfield Police Department, according to a press release. ATF special agents from the Indianapolis Offices of the Columbus Field Division will also be assisting.

Of course it is not unusual for there to be fires at food industry facilities, and fire departments are accustomed to responding to such fires and putting them out.

But in many of these cases, we are talking about absolutely uncontrollable fires that seemed to erupt very suddenly.

And in many of these cases the firefighters that responded were not able to save the structures because the fires were so enormous.

Needless to say, the collective loss of all of these facilities will make the coming food shortages quite a bit worse.

It seems to many people this string of fires is not accidental.   It seems the American people are under attack.

Whoever is perpetrating this, needs to be “ended.”

Utah state vet warns of cattle disease outbreak

From HERE

Utah is warning of a disease outbreak in cattle. The state veterinarian says that several bulls tested positive for trichomoniasis after grazing in a southern Idaho pasture last summer.

Ten herds grazed in that field and the state vet calls the discovery a concern.

Trich is a parasite that is spread through breeding. Bulls remain infected for life.

There is no treatment, and it can be economically devastating to a herd.

Biden’s New Boondoggle

A potential trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific countries threatens to further hurt the American middle class.

From HERE

Earlier this week, President Joe Biden unveiled the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), a potential new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific countries.

While the details of the deal remain murky, some have raised serious concerns based on the little information that has become public. The IPEF does not seem to focus on lifting tariff barriers like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which other countries have suggested the U.S. rejoin instead of going forward with the IPEF.

Instead, Biden’s new trade deal appears to be a handout to Big Tech, big online retailers like Amazon, and express shippers.

The U.S. and the 12 partner nations—Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—released a joint statement Monday announcing the framework.

“We share a commitment to a free, open, fair, inclusive, interconnected, resilient, secure, and prosperous Indo-Pacific region that has the potential to achieve sustainable and inclusive economic growth,” the statement read. “We acknowledge our economic policy interests in the region are intertwined, and deepening economic engagement among partners is crucial for continued growth, peace, and prosperity.”

The pandemic, the nations added, has “emphasized the importance of strengthening economic competitiveness and cooperation and securing critical supply chains,” and underscores the importance of “stimulating job growth and improving economic opportunities, including for our workers, women, medium- and small-enterprises, and our societies’ most vulnerable groups.”

Some conservatives, such as American Compass executive director Oren Cass, are uneasy about the deal.

“We should support the idea of assembling a regional economic bloc that includes U.S. allies and excludes China,” Cass told The American Conservative via email. “But it could also turn into a boondoggle that mostly just benefits multinational corporations.”

“The question,” he added, “is what everyone is intending to agree to, and what leverage the U.S. has to shape an agreement that benefits us. I worry that we are still caught in the neoliberal framework that takes access to the U.S. market as the unquestioned starting point.”

The vague language used in the nations’ joint statement suggests Cass’s fears are well-founded. For example, the signatory nations argued that, in the long run, “economic competitiveness will be largely defined by our ability to harness technology, promote innovation, participate in the digital economy, justly transition energy systems and achieve energy security, and tackle the climate crisis in a manner that produces equitable, inclusive growth and improves socio-economic welfare.”

What those platitudes will mean in practice is yet to be seen, but the deal appears to be centered around four pillars: trade, supply chains, clean energy, and anti-corruption. The White House’s fact sheet for the IPEF gives those components of the plan slightly different names, detailing the sorts of provisions that could be included under each pillar.

To foster a “connected economy,” the IPEF members “will pursue high-standard rules of the road in the digital economy, including standards on cross-border data flows and data localization.” The deal will also focus on “the region’s rapidly growing e-commerce sector, while addressing issues is [sic] such as online privacy,” and “seek strong labor and environment standards and corporate accountability provisions.”

While that language may seem benign, Charles Benoit, trade counsel at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, spots some red flags.

“Big Tech, when TPP started, wasn’t a big part of the trade scene,” Benoit said. “They very much are now, and they’ve got big trade-policy goals.” While “Big Tech sees that there’s not much appetite for tariffs to be cut, they think, ‘Why should that stop us from achieving our policy goals?’”

The biggest policy goal for Big Tech companies in the trade space, according to Benoit, “is stopping data-localization requirements, which mean you have to have a server within the country’s borders.”

The IPEF’s stated commitment to pursue multilateral standards on data flows and localization, Benoit fears, could strip away requirements to keep data security and maintenance operations on U.S. soil, and incentivize those operations to move to Asia. Removing data-localization requirements would not only be a bad deal for the American workers currently tasked with manning these facilities. It would pose a national-security risk, given China’s ambitions for regional hegemony and rapidly increasing cyber capabilities.

Benoit also expressed concerns about the fact sheet’s explanation of the second pillar, the creation of a “resilient economy,” focused on stabilizing supply chains. The IPEF’s purported focus on supply chains, paired with its enthusiasm for a growing e-commerce sector, has the makings of another push to increase the de minimis threshold, a rule that currently allows shipments with a declared value of less than $800 to enter the U.S. without undergoing tariff evaluations.

When Congress established the de minimis threshold in the 20th century, it created three separate categories of goods that could enter tariff-free under a certain value: souvenirs, bonafide gifts, and certain mail orders. De minimis standards were created, Benoit told TAC, “because we didn’t want to use regular customs officers’ judgment or discretion on what to waive through. So, Congress said, ‘We’re going to tell you what’s worth your time and what’s not.’”

“The first two categories were $10 for most of that time period,” Benoit said. “The mail-order category was originally just $1. Everything over a dollar would have to get a tariff assessment.”

But NAFTA blew the lid off of de minimis thresholds in 1995. The de minimis threshold for the mail-order category, which has become known as the e-commerce category today, increased from about $5 to $200. It was a “huge win for express shippers like FedEx and UPS,” Benoit explained.

“When I see e-commerce, I see them pushing all the other IPEF nations to have higher de minimis thresholds.” Benoit told TAC. “The express shippers love this because they’re displacing a whole business segment, what used to be traditional import wholesalers,” and “can continue displacing” other small and medium businesses.

“The Jake Sullivan types don’t care at all about competition and don’t have real antitrust concerns at all,” Benoit claimed. “A lot of what we see in this policy area is securing pathways for entrenched big business and monopolies in the name of securing access, while actually making it harder for other businesses to compete in a given field.”

The IPEF has a significant environmental component. The signatories tout future “first-of-their-kind commitments on clean energy, decarbonization, and infrastructure that promote good-paying jobs” to “accelerate efforts to tackle the climate crisis.”

If the past is prologue with respect to clean energy provisions, then the IPEF’s clean-energy chapter entail be a massive tariff cut in favor of big businesses that off-shore or outsource manufacturing.

“For a long time there was a proposed WTO environmental-goods agreement,” Benoit explained. “It’s basically an effort to cut tariffs on thousands of machine components under the rubric of making clean energy cheaper. But it’s not like these provisions are limited to wind turbines and solar panels. They cover pretty standard machine components.

“So, a lot of other goods could get their tariffs cut under an environmental-goods agreement in the IPEF,” he said, if the IPEF is styled after previous attempts to make clean energy more cost-effective via trade agreements. “We could end up cutting tariffs on thousands of goods that are only tangentially related to clean energy.”

Nevertheless, the White House says the IPEF will create a “fair economy,” by tackling bribery, money laundering, and other forms of corruption. That’s all well and good, but when Americans cry out for fair trade, their foremost concern is not money laundering; it is the propensity of multinational corporations and other countries take advantage of deals like the IPEF to undercut America’s middle and working classes. The problem isn’t limited to individual actors failing to play by the rules of the game. The larger problem is that the rules of the game themselves are rotten.

While things could change, the IPEF is looking like another rotten deal for the American worker.

Be prepared for an animal disease outbreak

Hopefully, infectious diseases don’t appear in Canada but the industry needs to have a plan in place
If there ever is a foreign animal disease outbreak in Canada, we all know it could be devastating to the industry.

Contagious pathogens such as foot and mouth in bovines, sheep and swine, or African Swine Fever (ASF) in pigs, can cost individual producers in lost production and animal deaths, as well as closing the borders to all exports.

The older farming generation might remember the British 2001 foot and mouth disease outbreak that required the destruction of more than six million animals to control the disease.

In Canada, AHEM (Animal Health Emergency Management Project) is an organization created to meet with the different production-animal groups and provide advice on how the Canadian industry can be better prepared in the event of a foreign animal disease outbreak. To read more about the four-year initiative that runs until 2023, visit https://animalhealth.ca.

If you run across AHEM information please take it seriously. This work could potentially benefit us all immensely. The COVID-19 pandemic has made us appreciate how quickly a contagious disease can spread through a population.

African Swine Fever would do the same with a tremendous mortality rate in the hog industry.

The AHEM group has already developed a producer handbook as well as a fact sheet on what to do if, for example, your herd was quarantined. It’s very good information to use if ever needed — get the producer handbook and give it a read.

Incredible Futuristic-Looking 1939 Duesenberg Coupe Simone Midnight Ghost

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1 a74

Duesenberg ceased production in 1937 after Cord’s financial empire collapsed. However, between 1937 and 1940, one automobile put the final touch to this historical marque. It it took three years to complete both the tailor-made interior and futuristic body.

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2 7s3

By command of the owner, it was to be painted in a two-tone grey paint scheme so it would look like a ghost in the night. Finished in 1939, this legendary masterpiece was christened as “Duesenberg Coupé Simone Midnight Ghost.” It was both the longest Duesenberg and the last one delivered; and finally the last one ever made.

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3 d71

Inspired by the modernist lines of the Art Deco movement, it captures all the romance of a bygone era. The graceful sweep of the fenders, the luxuriously appointed interior complete with a crystal-clear steering wheel.

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The car was made by the American car body designer Emmet-Armand on the basis of the Duesenberg Type J. They only made one of them which was ordered by the French cosmetics king Gui De LaRouche.

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5 64

Gui De LaRouche had always believed that a man must succumb to his passions. So he commissioned Emmett and Armand to create an exotic-bodied Coupé on a Duesenberg chassis. The new automobile would be a gift to his lover, a beauty called Simone.

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As the drums of war were beating and Hitler was moving into France, many automobiles were stored in hide-a-ways to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis. The “Duezy” was lost somewhere on the French countryside at the beginning of World War II. The stranger part of the story is that Emmet disappeared with it. There still is a chance that some day “Simone Midnight Ghost” will be found in a shabby old barn however it’s also possible that it was destroyed during the war.

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Nevertheless it’s probably one of the most stunning designs of the 20th century and it will be kept in our memories.

Syphilis-ridden Spanish Skeletons Found at Lima’s First Hospital

From HERE

The remains of 42 syphilis-ridden, colonial Spaniards have been unearthed at a 500-year-old hospital in Lima. But it’s suspected that beneath these poor afflicted souls, might lie the lost mummified bodies of the three last rulers of the Inca Empire.

Lima, the capital city of Peru, is located on the country’s arid Pacific coast and represents one of the largest population centers in South America. The city was founded with the building of a church on January 18, 1535, after Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro had successfully subdued the Inca population.

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2022 06 01 10 07

The city’s foundation date, January 18, 1535, marked the 16th-century Catholic ‘Epiphany’ holiday, celebrating the Three Kings visiting baby Jesus. Therefore, Lima became known as Ciudad de los Reyes, the “City of the Kings” and the capital of 16th-century Spanish Peru. It was at a site downtown that archaeologists discovered what is probably Lima’s first hospital, and the unfortunate Spanish syphilis patients.

First Spanish Hospital Built 20 Years After Pizarro Founded Lima

The Hospital Real (royal) of San Andres was founded only 20 years after Pizarro established the city of Lima. The story began when Francisco de Molina selflessly cared for poor patients through the 1530s and 40s at his home in the modern Barrios Altos area of Lima. The Peruvian hospital was formally founded in 1552 AD by Spanish viceroy , Andres Hurtado de Wildoso, after whom it was named. Today, this historic building is one of the oldest hospitals in Peru, and one of the oldest in the Americas.

Having slowly risen to the surface over five centuries, most of the 42 bodies were discovered only 30 centimeters (12 inches) beneath ground level, in a courtyard cemetery next to the 16th-century Spanish hospital. Within the sepulchral structure the researchers also discovered and mapped “a pharmacy, a psychiatric ward , a walled garden and the burial ground.” They also discovered fragments of ceramic bowls, containers, and bottles wrapped in cotton wool.

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2022 06 01 10 0v7

Syphilis from the America’s Killed European Colonialists

Héctor Walde, chief archaeologist for the Lima municipality, and his team of archaeologists discovered a copper cross on a chain around the neck of one of the male skeletons. This was a form of spiritual protection against the devilish disease that was discovered in most of the bodies: syphilis. This sexually transmitted disease is caused by the Treponema Pallidum bacterium. And while we are all taught at school that Spaniards brought syphilis to the new world, The Columbian hypothesis states that navigators in Columbus’ fleet “brought the previously unknown affliction back to Europe on their return from the New World in 1493 AD.”

Whatever the origins of syphilis, Christians in the new world rightfully associated it with sexual promiscuity, and therefore, with the devil . And with the new Spanish city of Lima awash with syphilis it is no wonder Professor Walde said “the ritual and religiosity in Lima was very strong.”

In fact, so strong were beliefs in the protective powers of the crucifixion tool of Christ that the Hospital Real de San Andrés was designed in the shape of a cross, with its altar located at the very center, a location symbolic of the heart of Christ. Therefore, this church is a wonderful example of 16th-century architectural sacred geometry in a sacred healing context.

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2022 06 01 10 0b8

Are The Three Lost Royal Inca Mummies Beneath The Spaniards?

While the story of the 42 syphilis ridden bodies is grabbing media headlines, the researchers also identified an “underground crypt containing pre-Hispanic Inca ceramics.” And while all of the bodies recovered so far belong to mostly male immigrant Spaniards, according to a Daily Mail report Walde believes the site might contain the “mummies of the last three Inca kings, Pachacutec, Huayna Capac and Tupac Yupanqui.”

Let’s get something clear here. No matter what you read out there, there were no kingdoms or “kings” in Pre-Columbian Peru. The word “king” was a European thing. The sovereign ruler of the Inca Empire was called the Sapa, which in the Quechua language of ancient Peru meant “son of the Sun.”

Héctor Walde told the Associated Press that 16th-century Spanish chroniclers noted that three mummies were sent from Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire, to Viceroy Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza in Lima.

However, Walde indicated caution, saying several archaeological research projects over the last 200 years have failed to locate these three royal mummies. It is pure speculation that the three mummies are at the Lima hospital site. However, there weren’t that many administrative buildings in the area at the time, and the thinking is that these lost three Inca Sapas are hidden somewhere beneath Lima.

 

“Accidental Fires” Continue To Happen At Food Processing Facilities All Over The United States

We are supposed to believe that what we are witnessing is just one “tragic accident” after another.  We aren’t supposed to see any sort of a pattern, and we aren’t supposed to ask any questions.  Last month, I wrote an article about 16 mysterious fires that have happened at important food industry facilities in the United States since the start of 2022.  Unfortunately, this trend has continued since that time.  In fact, there have been more “accidental fires” in recent days, and I believe that the American people deserve some answers.

On Saturday night, a “massive” fire erupted at a commercial egg farm in Minnesota.

We are being told that the structure that burned down contained “tens of thousands of chickens”

Massive flames burned down a barn with tens of thousands of chickens in Wright County.

The fire started late Saturday night at Forsman Farms in Howard Lake, causing major damage.

Like so many of the other mysterious fires that I have reported on, this fire grew to an absolutely enormous size very, very rapidly

The Trebesch family thought they would spend Saturday night around their bonfire, but just after 10 p.m. they noticed massive flames across the field at Forsman Farms.

“It was unbelievable how quick it grew, it was insane,” Andy Trebesch said. “It was the whole sky, it was quite large.”

We are being told that there was no foul play.

Just another senseless accident.

Nothing to see here.

Of course the same explanation is being given for a “dramatic fireball” that burned a grain silo to the ground in Washington state just a few days ago…

A spectacular fire demolished M & E Seed and Grain Co. in Prosser and left one person with burns.

A smoldering pile of twisted metal and charred lumber was all that remained Thursday morning after firefighters battled the blaze in downtown Prosser all night.

A few firefighters remained at the scene to monitor the fire.

They are assuring us that this sort of thing happens all the time.

So don’t try to apply common sense to any of this, because that will just confuse you.

A few days before that tragedy in Washington state, 43 rail cars that were carrying much needed potash derailed in Alberta

About 43 westbound Canadian Pacific (CP) Rail cars carrying potash derailed northeast of Fort Macleod, Alta., Sunday morning, RCMP say.

At 8:15 a.m., Mounties responded to a train derailment between Range Roads 251 and 252, near Highway 3. Fire crews and CP Rail also came to the scene, according to police.

So what are Canadian authorities telling us about this incident?

You guessed it!

Apparently it was just another “accident”.

 

People sure are getting careless these days, because “accidents” just keep happening time after time after time.

And all of this is taking place at a moment in history when we are being told that we are about to enter an absolutely horrifying global food crisis.

During recent testimony in front of the UN Security Council, the CEO of Gro Intelligence warned that “the lowest grain inventory levels the world has ever seen” are getting even lower…

Menker said estimates from official government agencies from across the world show that wheat inventories at 33% of annual consumption, but added that models created by Gro Intelligence show that the figure may actually be closer to 20%, a level not seen since 2007 and 2008.

“It is important to note that the lowest grain inventory levels the world has ever seen are now occurring while access to fertilizers is highly constrained,” she said. “And drought in wheat growing regions around the world is the most extreme it’s been in over 20 years. Similar inventory concerns also apply to corn and other grains.”

In other words, there isn’t going to be enough food for everyone.

As I noted yesterday, we are being told that one-fifth of the entire population of the globe could soon descend into poverty and hunger

For months, the specter of a global hunger crisis has been looming. The war in Ukraine is a compounding factor, blocking key value chains for food and fertilizer just as the world reckons with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global hunger.

Add the pervasive effects of climate change to the mix, and the result is what the United Nations is calling a “perfect storm” that risks one-fifth of the global population – as many as 1.7 billion people – falling into poverty and hunger.

I am not the one saying that one-fifth of the global population is heading into poverty and hunger.

It is the United Nations that is saying this.

Of course it is quite true that I have been warning that a “global famine” was coming for a very long time, and now it is here.

David Beasley, the head of the UN World Food Program, says that his organization is already taking food away from the hungry to feed the starving.

So what is he going to do when countless millions are starving all over the planet?

Global trends have been pushing us in this direction for years, but now the events of 2022 have greatly accelerated the development of the “perfect storm” that we are now facing.

We are being told that things will be far worse by the end of 2022 than they are now, and you probably don’t even want to hear about what the outlook for 2023 looks like.

You can try to ignore this growing crisis if you want, but it is not going away.

A nightmare of epic proportions has begun.  Unfortunately, this is a nightmare that is not going to end any time soon.

New Orleans, 1976

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Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers – Jeff Beck

Classic Jeff Beck. I hope you all enjoy this. Screaming guitar solos. Great stuff this.

An interesting quote

I don’t have Telegram, but someone posted this on his social media. It sounds about right to me.

"There has long been a group of NATO advisers within the staff [Ukrainian] who is planning military operations. 

Recently, a strong confrontation has started due to the attitude of American generals who consider our (Ukrainian) troops as cannon fodder sent to be slaughtered on the eastern front. 

Mr. Zaluzhny disagrees on this issue with the political leaders of the country, who support the opinion of the [NATO] advisers”, writes the Ukrainian Telegram channel “Resident”.

" As stated earlier the chain Telegram Legitimniy, a group of officers of the US armed forces were deployed in Ukraine. 

These officers have the power to issue direct orders to units and Ukrainian formations, and to cancel the orders of command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard. 

In case of disobedience to American orders, kyiv may be left without financial and military support from Washington." '

California – Early 1980’s

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10 3 1

Why denazification?

From HERE

Talking to Ukrainian friends… Each of us today is faced with this terrible and painful necessity. Because our troops are bombarding Kyiv, and this is such a monstrous darkness that none of us could even think of yesterday. And let these be strikes on military targets, but civilians are dying, ours are dying - our common ones! - Soldiers and cadets. And the chaos on the streets of Ukrainian cities, albeit aggravated by the uncontrolled distribution of weapons, would not have begun if Russia had not opened hostilities.

How to talk with Ukrainian friends, when exactly we, Russians, having crushed an abscess in Donbass, flooded vast areas of Ukrainian land from Kharkov to Odessa with pus and blood?

We are not Nazis! our friends and relatives shout to us in despair and horror. We just want to live in our own land! Why did you come to us with your denazification??

Just today, a Ukrainian friend wrote to me that there are no more than 10% of Nazis in Ukraine (yesterday it was 2%, but this is not the essence of it), and this was not a problem of society. Like, the problems started now, when you aggressively attacked Ukraine, plunging it into bloody chaos and terror. Almost everyone says that the last sympathy for the Russians is buried under this ashes, we will never be forgiven, and the Russian troops have achieved unity of Ukraine against a common enemy much more effectively than any Maidan, any Nazis and Western partners.

And all this is true. Most of the inhabitants of today’s Ukraine do not profess Nazi ideology. They are not Nazis, they often hate Nazism. So does denazification mean a lie, a fabricated pretext for invading and seizing territories?

NO.

The problem is that modern Ukraine is a passive element of the Nazi project, conceived and implemented by the new all-powerful Reich - the Western political and financial elite. And Ukrainians are modern Jews, that is, a political, economic, ideological resource and a lever.

Just as the majority of the Jewish population of the Third Reich did not profess the Nazi ideology, but passively participated in its implementation, so today’s Ukraine is a necessary cog in the cynical world order, in which the colonial system acquired precisely Nazi features and methods, albeit in a somewhat softened way.

And when Ukrainian friends tell us: “We are not Nazis! Bandera and other henchmen of Hitler are not our heroes!” – One cannot but agree with this. Yes, they are not your heroes. But they were appointed to you, and you accepted this appointment with criminal carelessness, not understanding what they were molding out of you.

And they are molding – or rather, they have already blinded – from Ukraine, of course, not a new Reich, but a completely structured, working and quite effective concentration camp for its functions, similar to the “open ghetto”, which serves as an important support for maintaining the power of the new Reich. Through long-term manipulations and a series of crises, including the last Maidan, Ukraine has turned into an absolutely manageable and controlled system that only imitates the functions of society and the state.

To clarify my idea, I will turn to the history of Jewish ghettos in the occupied territories during the Great Patriotic War.

Why did the Germans create ghettos and concentration camps? First of all, to control the rather large masses of the population, which suddenly came under German rule during the Drang nach Osten.

The process of creating a ghetto in the overwhelming majority of cases took place in two stages. At the first stage, the Nazis created a place of compact residence of a mono-ethnic minority (Jews) or a multinational people declared mono-ethnic (Ukrainians) in a specially allocated territory. In your case, national segregation was used much more sophisticatedly. Jews were declared pariahs and victims, Ukrainians were declared God’s Chosen .

Being God's Chosen is flattering, no one will refuse this mission, and the entire Ukrainian cultural elite rushed to look for and invent justifications for this new Nazi theory, the purpose of which was only to forever cut the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. I will not enumerate the heaps of lies and nonsense that fell on your heads to strengthen this primitive scam. From “Ukraine is not Russia” to “Kievan Rus is Ukraine”.

What was it for, you ask? It was for delineating the boundaries of an open concentration camp, inside which new rules for controlling the population were established. Brilliant and simple – everyone who felt falsehood and forgery felt the pressure of the rest of society, reveling in their chosenness, and were forced to either leave the country or submit to the general mood. Those who actively tried to resist were eliminated in one way or another, and a rather serious consolidation of society gradually arose around the idea of ​​a “speciality” of the Ukrainian nation, which appropriated all the heroic achievements of the Russian Empire and the USSR, while at the same time portraying itself as a victim of their machinations.

Not noticing the paradoxical nature of such a position, the Ukrainians rushed to match the hypostasis invented for them, pulling out archaic or simply sham attributes into the light of day. Vyshyvankas (shirts with national embroidery), wreaths, “mova” (the Ukrainian language), a virus separate from the despised “Rusnya” (derogatory “Russians”) and other labels of belonging to a chosen race. At the same time, no one really asked the question for what purposes she was chosen – especially since all these ‘dances in little boots’ infinitely touched Western partners, who all these years applauded Ukraine-not-Russia as passionately as they recently applauded the fake president Zelensky in European Parliament.

Why was Ukraine chosen? Of course, for entry into the European family of higher peoples. This entry began immediately after the collapse of the USSR and continues to this day, miraculously making no progress in the process. No, individual parties of Ukrainians managed to almost catch up, if not with the Anglo-Saxons, then with the Poles and Czechs, gain a foothold in the orbit of the European Union and discard the take-off stage of Ukrainianism as an unnecessary vestige. But the rest were inspired by the very promise of equal rights and opportunities with the civilized peoples of Europe and the USA.

The fact that this promise was only a means of manipulation and control occurred to only a few – and these few also had to either leave or die.

The control over the Jews in the concentration camps was carried out much more primitively, but the scheme was worked out even then. Fake self-government bodies were created – the Judenrats, absolutely controlled by the Reich, consisting of loyal Jews, imitating the protection of the rights and freedoms of the ghetto population. To maintain order, the Jewish police were created and armed, supplemented by separate brigades of declassed bastards who did not disdain any methods of intimidation, including torture, rape of children and mass murders for their own pleasure.

This rot, which unfortunately exists in any nation, self-destructs in healthy societies or is re-educated in strict regime colonies. But in the ghetto, as well as in the Reichskommisariat, Ukraine performs the necessary function of keeping the population in complete obedience and fear. Because if you know that at any moment you can come to you with weapons of the down-and-out scum, that they can mock you and your family, they can torture and kill with impunity on the basis that you did not follow certain rules and rituals imposed from the outside – you will not once again raise your voice in defense of a neighbor.

You will think “ugh, it has passed”, and then you will justify someone else’s torment with objective reasons. After all, the neighbor really refused to dance at the vyshyvanka festival or uttered the word “palyanytsia” in the Moscow language. That he should not provoke the new masters of the situation - and the masters of the situation in such a community inevitably turned out to be scum with weapons in their hands.

Who armed them? Those who appointed you, Ukrainians, new heroes and gods, new founding fathers, a new faith and new ideals.

And when the work on redrawing your image was completed – with the loyalty of the absolute majority, although not fully accepted, but not rejecting this absolutely archaic image of a Ukrainian with a forelock, in trousers and with a yellow-blue flag, the same signal and identification as yellow star, it was already possible to do anything with you.

And the new Reich, by and large, wants only one thing: to pump out other people's resources. Absolutely all resources representing at least some value.

After 2014, when the Ukrainian society and its nominal government were completely taken under the control of the United States and NATO and actually cut off from Russia, the pumping went on without any restrictions. As at all stages of the existence of the ghetto – and the Nazis did not hide that this was a temporary formation – the Jews were seized by robbery and indemnities, first cash, then hidden gold, then things and clothes, gold crowns, the last household items. In the same way, while you forced the Russians to learn the preposition “in” (in Russian, the preposition “on” is used with the word Ukraine. The word “Ukraine” means “edge of the country”, therefore “on” the edge of the country, and not “in”) and applaud the “revolution of hydness” invented personally for you (but in fact, bad swagger), national incomes and natural wealth, labor resources and brains were pumped dry from / to Ukraine , technologies and works of art, including priceless antique gold, which is rich in yours – and in fact our common Russian land.

Yes, I share the point of view that the state of Ukraine is a simulacrum assembled from different parts of our common space of Ancient Russia, the direct successor of Constantinople. But the point is not only and not so much in the heterogeneity of parts of Ukraine or in ethnic differences. The rights to certain historical territories can be claimed by any neighbors anywhere in the world, and the peaceful existence of various ethnic groups and nationalities in one country is far from uncommon. Let me remind you that 190 nationalities coexist in Russia, the American in general is all tied together with the world – and Wyoming does not bomb Texas.

This was not the cause of the Ukrainian catastrophe. Namely, that social form of existence, which was not born naturally, but was prudently and ruthlessly organized by the new Reich.

In today’s circumstances, I have no right to talk about the reasons for what happened and blame someone for this – of course, except for the inhuman machine for the destruction of countries and peoples called the United States and NATO, which adopted Nazi methods. But with a pain in my heart, I urge you to wake up! It’s too late, it was late yesterday, but there is still a chance for salvation.

I understand that this is a huge national humiliation - to understand that you were sucked out and thrown away like an empty shell, pumped up with weapons for the last use - a fratricidal war with Russia. Do not try to bleed this pain! Because those who brought your country to this state are now putting a machine gun in your hands and cynically whipping them up with slogans that all of us, originally from the USSR, have sewn into the matrix of consciousness.

This matrix is ​​assembled on the platform of the war of liberation, and it is this leverage that Western manipulators use to make us kill each other. It was as if a mirror was placed between the Russian and the Ukrainian and the same slogans were broadcast – “not an inch of their native land”, “death to the invaders”, “they fought for their homeland”. And I perfectly understand your shock, your pain and resentment from the fact that today Russia has become an enemy and occupier for you.

Our propagandists are making a terrible mistake when they press on the fact that Ukraine deserved its suffering. An even more monstrous mistake is to say that we invaded Ukraine in order to prevent a NATO strike and save ourselves .

NO! UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING!

I think I know why Putin committed this radical act, which many attribute to his madness. And why is he talking about denazification.

Ukraine is a victim of an inhuman experiment of Western intelligence agencies and financial centers. And only the dismantling of the system of its internal structure can save this country and its population. Russia went to war not with the people of Ukraine, not with a gang of local Nazis, and not with an army pumped up and infected with nationalist ideas . This is a war with the world order that made a concentration camp out of Ukraine – with a lured ruling elite and an uncomplaining population.

In some mystical way, this is understood and felt by all people in Russia - with the exception of the cultural and financial elite bred in the West, who were bred just for the same purpose.

Dear, beloved Ukrainian friends, everything that happened to you yesterday should have happened to us tomorrow, because we are just as easy to be trapped in political manipulation, and only a miracle and our huge size did not allow it to happen to Russia as quickly. and successfully, as they did to you.

The dismantling of the Nazi concentration camp, in which you were imperceptibly placed – this is the goal of denazification, and not punishment, or – God forbid – lustration, which the frenzied “patriots” are calling for here. I hope – or rather not, I see that this is the task that the Russian Army has to solve today.

When in 1943-1945 the army of the USSR liberated the cities captured by the Nazis, it also unwittingly brought with it grief, death and destruction. And people who got used to the Germans also suffered from the fact that the liberators were destroying their usual life. Sometimes, when a concentration camp is liberated, not only policemen, but also prisoners die – this is our common tragedy.

But the way your government behaves under these conditions only indicates that these bloody clowns are just a props for the mighty world forces that created the Reich Commissar of Ukraine, so that under sweet speeches about freedom and democracy it would be easier to rob you, rape you, and then destroy, erasing the traces of their crimes.

What to do with it further - I do not know. But if you continue to live in the illusion that you were almost taken to Europe, and bloody Putin prevented your free choice, as the scoundrels who gutted the country suggest to you, we will not be able to help. No army can make people realize their mistakes and change their lives. I can only say one thing - there is oriental wisdom, which personally helped me many times in my life.

No matter how far you go down the wrong path, come back. The road will be long and difficult, but sooner or later you will reach your goal. If you don’t come back, you’re going nowhere.

And the last.

While the Nazis of the Third Reich were herding Jews into ghettos and appointing fake “institutions of democracy” for them, a few residents of the occupied territories (including Jews) went into the forests and began to partisan. They blew up trains and killed Nazi chiefs. Many hated them – because after each such attack, the Nazis burned villages as punishment, hanged civilians. In the same way and for the same reason, you began to hate the LNR and the DNR, which did not submit to the concentration camp. It seemed to you – and it still seems to many now – that all your problems are because of the partisans, and if they had sat quietly, then everything would have worked out. And you can live under the Nazis. Or maybe, if it were not for the partisans, you would have been taken to Europe – as the Jews from Bremen, Hamburg and Cologne were promised that they could return and live in Germany, if only they would serve the masters of the Aryan race well. They were promised this in the Minsk ghetto in 1941. In December 1943, the Minsk ghetto with its entire population was already destroyed – the Germans so brilliantly simply solved the “Jewish question”.

What to do with the “Ukrainian issue” is up to you and me to decide. Therefore, the Western hosts have already seen you off with applause. To their pleasant surprise, you dug your own hole almost resignedly and are already standing on its edge. Fireworks for these funerals are still being delivered. And “Putin’s invasion”, which they so condemn in words, in fact suits them perfectly. Because they do NOTHING to save you except talking and pumping weapons. You are not even allowed to sign a surrender – they want to push you into the pit so that you drag us along with you.

Yes, they applaud your death. But pay attention – with what horror they exchange glances at the same time. Because the smartest ones understand that if they cannot devour Russia, tomorrow they will have to eat each other.

Personally, I really, really look forward to seeing it.

Author Olga Pogodina-Kuzmina

New Orleans, 1981

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Chicken Cordon Bleu Roll-Ups

A clever technique and a few lightened-up touches let you indulge in all the flavor of Chicken Cordon Bleu, without all the fuss or the fat. It all starts with skipping the stuffed chicken breasts. Instead, pound your chicken breasts flat and layer with Swiss cheese, ham and spinach (for an extra boost of veggies). Then, roll them up, so the flavors can melt together. Coating the outside of your chicken roll-ups with a toasty, herby panko crust and baking them, instead of frying, keeps calories down without sacrificing crispy texture. So, you end up with crunchy-on-the-outside and melty-on-the-inside chicken roll-ups packed with classic flavor and fewer than 400 calories per serving!

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c626139b b5be 40aa 9369 4670b924d387

Ingredients

Topping

  • 1/3 cup Progresso™ plain panko crispy bread crumbs
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
  • 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons vegetable oil

Chicken Rolls

  • 2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts (8 oz each)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup baby spinach
  • 4 slices (0.75 oz each) Swiss cheese
  • 4 slices (0.5 oz each) deli ham
  • 1 egg white, beaten with 1 tablespoon water

2022 05 30 16 32
2022 05 30 16 32

The Worst Energy Crisis In U.S. History Is Going To Get Even Worse In The Months Ahead

Are you ready for what is coming next?  Are you ready to pay six dollars for a gallon of gasoline?  Are you ready to pay much higher prices for everything at our major stores as the price of diesel goes haywire?  Are you ready for widespread blackouts all over the U.S. this summer?  Unfortunately, we are being warned that all of these things are coming.  The worst energy crisis in U.S. history is poised to get even worse in the months ahead, and there is no “silver bullet” on the horizon which is going to magically solve our problems.  The refineries that we need are not being built and the drilling that needs to be done is not really happening.  Of course energy supplies are getting tighter and tighter all over the globe, and things will go to an entirely new level once the next major war starts.

Needless to say, things are bad enough already.  On Sunday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States set a brand new all-time record high of $4.61 a gallon

Gas prices in the US soared to record heights again Sunday, reaching an all-time high of $4.61 per gallon.

The number is more than 50 percent higher than the cost of a gallon a year ago. It comes as gas prices have continued to climb during Joe Biden’s presidency, and as millions of Americans are poised to travel by road for Memorial Day weekend.

A 50 percent increase in just one year.

Just think about that.

To my knowledge, we have never seen anything like this before.

If you can believe it, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 25 cents over the past six weeks.

That is crazy, but we are being warned to expect significantly higher prices “by the end of the summer”

Experts say that number will likely surpass the $6 mark by the end of the summer – as pump costs in West Coast cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco already meeting that mark earlier this month.

I still remember when I could get 20 gallons of gas for 20 dollars.

Soon, 20 gallons of gas will cost all of us 120 dollars.

Who can afford that?

The price of diesel has been increasing at an even faster pace.

In fact, it has risen a staggering 75 percent since last Memorial Day…

Diesel prices are up as well – by a whopping 75 percent from Memorial Day last year – at around $5.50 a gallon, also an all-time record.

The rising cost of the fuel – commonly used by truckers for their rigs – has further hampered America’s embattled economy, driving up prices of good being transported cross-country by truckers, who are now electing for shorter routes due to the ‘unprecedented’ increase.

‘I can pretty much count on setting on fire $5-$700 a day…minimum,’ 22-wheel driver Eric Jammer told NPR Saturday of the rise in diesel costs seen over the past 12 months.

The trucks and trains that bring our goods to the stores run on diesel.

Diesel is only going to get more expensive from here, and America’s companies are going to pass those costs along to the consumers.

Yes, that will be quite painful.

Thanks to the soaring cost of fuel, airline fares are also shooting up dramatically

Domestic airline fares for summer are averaging more than $400 for a round trip, 24 percent percent higher than this time in 2019, before the pandemic, and a full 45 percent higher than a year ago, according to travel-data firm Hopper.

One survey that was conducted just a few days ago found that approximately a third of all Americans say that their travel plans for Memorial Day were affected by high energy prices.

Joe Biden promised to do all that he could to drive down gasoline prices, and in order to try to keep that promise he foolishly took enormous amounts of fuel out of our strategic reserve.

Obviously that didn’t work, and now we are being told that Biden is running out of options

President Joe Biden has vowed to do everything in his power to fight record-setting gasoline and diesel prices, but he’s up against a stark reality: There are few options for taming the surge.

While Biden has unleashed an unprecedented amount of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, other tools at the administration’s disposal would come at the expense of environmental protection and have little effect on fuel costs stoked by strained crude supplies and a global shortage of refining capacity. And the one sure-fire fix — for Americans to stop driving so much — is largely outside his control.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, Joe Biden is not going to save us from this crisis.

In the short-term, nobody is going to save us from this crisis.

We need more refineries, we need more drilling, and ultimately we are going to need some major technological breakthroughs because the way that we are currently doing things is not even close to sustainable.

On top of everything else, our rapidly aging power grids were never designed to handle so much demand.  According to CBS News, we could potentially be facing widespread outages during the summer of 2022…

In its annual summer assessment released this week, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation noted that the Upper Midwest is facing a capacity shortfall leading to a “high risk of energy emergencies.” The entire Western U.S. also could face a power outage emergency in the event of spikes in energy use.

“We’ve been doing this for close to 30 years. This is probably one of the grimmest pictures we’ve painted in a while,” John Moura, NERC’s director of reliability assessment and performance analysis, told CBS MoneyWatch.

What will you do if the power in your area goes out for an extended period of time?

We all know that California has been experiencing problems for years, but in 2022 we are being told that the middle of the nation is actually at greatest risk

In a large swath of the grid stretching from Illinois to Minnesota, the summer’s power demands are projected to exceed the grid’s capacity. That’s because this area of the grid — known as the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO — has lost about 2% of its generation capacity since last year as plants have retired; a key transmission line is also down for maintenance.

Perhaps you think that my headline is a little too dramatic.

Perhaps you do not yet believe that we are facing the worst energy crisis in U.S. history.

If that is the case, give it a few months.

By the end of the summer, I think that everyone will understand that we truly have entered a nightmare with no end in sight.

More pictures from the past…

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2022.05.30 The Crazy Policies Are Going To Get (A Lot) Worse

Good video from Gonzalo Lira.

Portland, Oregon, 1973

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Harpoon Missiles Arrive in Ukraine

The Odessa, Ukraine Regional Military Authority said Sunday “So many Harpoon missiles have been handed over to us, we can sink the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet.”

The Harpoon is an all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile developed and manufactured by McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing Defense, Space & Security). The AGM-84E Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM) and later AGM-84H/K SLAM-ER (Standoff Land Attack Missile – Expanded Response) are cruise missile variants.

The regular Harpoon uses active radar homing and flies just above the water to evade defenses. The missile can be launched from:

  • Fixed-wing aircraft (the AGM-84, without the solid-fuel rocket booster)
  • Surface ships (the RGM-84, fitted with a solid-fuel rocket booster that detaches when expended, to allow the missile’s main turbojet to maintain flight)
  • Submarines (the UGM-84, fitted with a solid-fuel rocket booster and encapsulated in a container to enable submerged launch through a torpedo tube);
  • Coastal defense batteries, from which it would be fired with a solid-fuel rocket booster.

It has not (yet) been revealed which type of Harpoon missiles have been sent to Ukraine and there is GIGANTIC RISK for NATO countries depending upon the type of Harpoon sent.  You see, at least one of the Harpoon variants has the ability to use net-enabled networking for in-flight target updating.

That updating would have to come from a NATO ship or aircraft as the missiles flew, once launched by Ukraine.

If a NATO ship or aircraft provided in-flight target updating, that would constitute active participation in the war, and would be an “act of war” against Russia.

Here are the various types of Harpoon Missile:

Harpoon Block 1D

This version featured a larger fuel tank and re-attack capability, but was not produced in large numbers because its intended mission (warfare with the Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe) was considered to be unlikely following the Dissolution of the Soviet Union. Range is 278 kilometers (173 mi). Block 1D missiles were designated RGM/AGM-84F.

SLAM ATA (Block 1G)

This version, under development, gives the SLAM a re-attack capability, as well as an image comparison capability similar to the Tomahawk cruise missile; that is, the weapon can compare the target scene in front of it with an image stored in its onboard computer during terminal phase target acquisition and lock on (this is known as DSMAC). Block 1G missiles AGM/RGM/UGM-84G; the original SLAM-ER missiles were designated AGM-84H (2000-2002) and later ones the AGM-84K (2002 onwards).

Harpoon Block 1J

Block 1J was a proposal for a further upgrade, AGM/RGM/UGM-84J Harpoon (or Harpoon 2000), for use against both ship and land targets.

Harpoon Block II

In production at Boeing facilities in Saint Charles, Missouri, is the Harpoon Block II, intended to offer an expanded engagement envelope, enhanced resistance to electronic countermeasures and improved targeting. Specifically, the Harpoon was initially designed as an open-ocean weapon. The Block II missiles continue progress begun with Block IE, and the Block II missile provides the Harpoon with a littoral-water anti-ship capability.

The key improvements of the Harpoon Block II are obtained by incorporating the inertial measurement unit from the Joint Direct Attack Munition program, and the software, computer, Global Positioning System (GPS)/inertial navigation system and GPS antenna/receiver from the SLAM Expanded Response (SLAM-ER), an upgrade to the SLAM.

The US Navy awarded a $120 million contract to Boeing in July 2011 for the production of about 60 Block II Harpoon missiles, including missiles for 6 foreign militaries.

India acquired 24 Harpoon Block II missiles to arm its maritime strike Jaguar fighters in a deal worth $170 million through the Foreign Military Sales system. In December 2010, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notified U.S. Congress of a possible sale of 21 additional AGM-84L Harpoon Block II Missiles and associated equipment, parts and logistical support for a complete package worth approximately $200 million; the Indian government intends to use these missiles on its Indian Navy P-8I Neptune maritime patrol aircraft. The Indian Navy is also planning to upgrade the fleet of four submarines – Shishumar class – with tube-launched Harpoon missiles.

Harpoon Block II missiles are designated AGM/RGM/UGM-84L.

In early 2018, the U.S. State Department approved the sale of Harpoon Block II to the Mexican Navy for use on their future Sigma-class design frigates, the first of which is being built by Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding.

Harpoon Block II+

On 18 November 2015, the U.S. Navy tested the AGM-84N Harpoon Block II+ missile against a moving ship target. The Block II+ incorporates an improved GPS guidance kit and a net-enabled data-link that allows the missile to receive in-flight targeting updates. The Block II+ is planned to enter service in 2017.

The USN intends to deploy the Harpoon Block II+ in late FY2018[24] by upgrading its existing inventory of Harpoon IC missiles.

Harpoon Block III

Harpoon Block III was intended to be an upgrade package to the existing USN Block 1C missiles and Command Launch Systems (CLS) for guided missile cruisers, guided missile destroyers, and the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter aircraft. After experiencing an increase in the scope of required government ship integration, test and evaluation, and a delay in development of a data-link, the Harpoon Block III program was canceled by the U.S. Navy in April 2009.[citation needed]

Harpoon Block II+ ER

In April 2015, Boeing unveiled a modified version of the RGM-84 it called the Harpoon Next Generation. It increases the ship-launched Harpoon missile's range from the Block II's 70 nmi (81 mi; 130 km) to 167.5 nmi (192.8 mi; 310.2 km), along with a new lighter 300 lb (140 kg) warhead and a more fuel-efficient engine with electronic fuel controls. Boeing offered the missile as the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship frigate upgrade over-the-horizon anti-ship missile as a cost-effective missile upgrade option; complete Next Gen Harpoons would cost approximately as much as a Block II at $1.2 million each, with upgrades for an existing missile costing half that. The version is also called the Harpoon Block II+ ER. Boeing claims the Block II+ ER is superior to the Naval Strike Missile through its improved turbojet giving it greater range and active radar-homing seeker for all-weather operation, as well as a lighter but "more lethal" warhead. Test shots in 2017 had been confirmed. In May 2017, Boeing revealed it was no longer offering the upgraded Harpoon for the frigate OTH missile requirement, but would continue development of it.

Radio frequencies used for the net-enabled, in-flight target updating for the Harpoon missile, ARE KNOWN to the Russians.  They can monitor those frequencies for in-flight target updates, and they WILL know if a NATO plane or ship participated in a missile strike upon a Russian Naval vessel.

Chicken Parmesan Skillet Casserole

This hearty skillet dinner is an easy, deconstructed version of chicken Parmesan that makes the classic achievable, even on the most rushed weeknight. Still cheesy, still crunchy, still saucy—just easier to assemble and made right on the stovetop!

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b3e09018 03e1 49bc 8d8d 98e958527bf5

Ingredients

  • 3 tablespoons butter
  • 1/2 cup Progresso™ Panko Italian style crispy bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
  • 1 package (16 oz) boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut in 1-inch pieces, patted dry
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
  • 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1 1/2 cups Muir Glen™ organic tomato basil pasta sauce (from 24.5-oz jar)
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (6 oz)
  • 2 tablespoons thinly shredded fresh basil leaves

2022 05 30 16 36
2022 05 30 16 36

The Prisoner 2.0 – ep14: FALL OUT [Series Finale, Part 2] (SirQ Audiovisual Restoration)

This is supposed to be the final episode of “The Prisoner”. Numerically, it should be episode 17, but this refers to an episode 14. So I am a tad confused.

This is the end of the series. I hope that you like it.

(SirQ Audiovisual Restoration)”]

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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NZBZ and American insanity, cute kitty cats, Thunder Island, and some great Quick Lasagna

I am seriously considering changing everything that represents MM here. Keeping the website up but only making bi-monthly or single articles (say) one article per week, and cutting down on the you-tube videos. Instead, focusing on my Paetron site, and posting articles on MM core subjects. Such as world-line travel, affirmation campaigns, and fate forecasting. Maybe some extraterrestrial stuff too.

I have noticed that many regular MM readers are unaware of all the MM you-tube videos. So I will post the videos as embed in separate MM articles as time moves forward. Like what I did for the missing children video that I posted yesterday.

I will accept donations to both MM and Patreon.

In general, I post one thick, juicy enormous “New Beginning” article a day, with periodic extra MM articles. I post form one to three You-Tube videos per day on You-Tube Metallicman, and one very, very juicy MM article on souls and Domain on patreon every day.

So have fun today…

Thunder Island

I had this album when I attended university and would play it on my record player while I studied. I’m surprised that I found it on you-tube.

US Military Journal Suggests Taiwan Should Destroy Its Semiconductor Industry To Deter Chinese Invasion Plan

Jeeze! Idiotic American neocons. -MM
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A new deterrence strategy proposed by American scholars has turned the argument of Chinese plans to invade Taiwan on its head.

A paper, titled ‘Broken Nest: Deterring China from Invading Taiwan’ written by Jared McKinney and co-authored by Peter Harris in US Army War College’s quarterly academic journal Parameters, has urged Taipei to follow a “scorched earth policy” and destroy its semiconductor industry if China decided to invade Taiwan.

It was the most downloaded academic paper of 2021 from Parameters, reported The Register. The authors urged that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the biggest chipmaker in the world and the largest chip supplier for Beijing, should be destroyed.

McKinney is the chair of the Department of Strategy and Security Studies at the eSchool of Graduate Professional Military Education, Air University, and co-author Peter Harris is an associate professor of political science at Colorado State University.

Article HERE

Quick Lasagna

Very terrible picture. But very delicious meal.

Looking for an Italian-inspired dinner? Then check out this ground beef lasagna packed with three types of cheese – a scrumptious meal!

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a657a870 5204 42ee 8dee 6be6de82f440

Ingredients

  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1/2 pound ground beef
  • 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
  • 1 cup spaghetti sauce
  • 6 purchased precooked or oven-ready lasagna noodles (each about 7×3 inches)
  • 1 container (12 ounces) reduced-fat cottage cheese (1 1/2 cups)
  • 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (4 ounces)
  • 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

2022 05 27 14 57
2022 05 27 14 57

Ukraine Military Situation

Meanwhile the war is progressing in Russia’s favor. I do not have time to show detailed maps of what is happening but there are two reasonable Youtube channels which provide good daily reports based on multiple sources. These are Military Summary and Defense Politics Aaaaasia.

In the north Lyman has fallen with reports of Ukrainian troops withdrawing after a short fight. In the east the Ukrainian held city Severodonetsk is mostly isolated and now under fierce attack. Several more towns around the Popasna bulge have been taken by the Russian side. South of it the city Svetlodarsk has fallen after the Ukrainian tried but failed to destroy a nearby dam. The Ukrainian troops retreated without a fight.

Instead of holding the lines by all means Ukrainian units now seem more interested in running away. That is more healthy for them and also solves their serious supply issues. Like other supply lines the Bakhmut-Lisichansk road is now under Russian fire control. This video shows what that means.

What we are seeing now are the effects of nearly three months of Russian artillery war. The Ukrainian troops at the frontline have been ground down and those who are left are moving out before being destroyed too. The front begins to move at several points. When those points merge we may next see the tactical deep battle phase of a classic Russian deep operation:

Deep battle envisaged the breaking of the enemy's forward defenses, or tactical zones, through combined arms assaults, which would be followed up by fresh uncommitted mobile operational reserves sent to exploit the strategic depth of an enemy front. The goal of a deep operation was to inflict a decisive strategic defeat on the enemy's logistical abilities and render the defence of their front more difficult, impossible, or indeed irrelevant. Unlike most other doctrines, deep battle stressed combined arms cooperation at all levels: strategic, operational, and tactical.

18may2022 Ukraine map
18may2022 Ukraine map

Blinken Lays out Washington’s Anti-China Agenda

This is a really, REALLY great video. It’s a MUST watch.

URME: Your Personal Surveillance Identity Prosthetic

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The URME Personal Surveillance Identity Prosthetic demonstrates the latest in 3D printing technology. Made from a pigmented hard resin, this mask is both a 3D scan of artist Leo Selvaggio’s face, as well as photo realistic rendering of his features, such as skin tone, texture and hair.

URME belongs to artist Leo Selvaggio and founder of URME Surveillance. As an artist Leo has been interested in identity and how it can be thought of as data: highly manipulable, editable, and corruptible. In 2013 he applied this idea to surveillance, using his own identity as a guinne pig and realized its applications for the larger public. It was then that URME was born.

People have been hiding from surveillance since the begining of networked cameras. Unfortunately wearing a ski mask in public makes you a pretty easy target. its fairly easy to track on camera, and even if the camera doesn’t see you, EVERYONE else will. “Why is that dude wearing a ski mask?” Etc, etc. In response, URME Surveillance has developed a state of the art identity replacement tech in the Personal Surveillance Identity Prosthetic. The basic gist is that rather than hide from cameras, simply give them a face other than your own to track without drawing attention to yourself in a crowd. In other words, when your out in the world doing whatever you are doing, all your actions, which are being recorded are documented as the actions of someone other than yourself, freeing you from any threat of surveillance.

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UKRAINE BIOLABS: “Illicit Ebola and Smallpox researches run by US”. Alert by Russian Lawmaker. Shadows of Gates, NATO & CIA

International Intrigue behind Pentagon’s bacteriological experiments on SARS too.

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by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio for VT Europe

VERSIONE IN ITALIANO

The US researched Ebola and smallpox viruses in Ukraine, says Irina Yarovaya, Co-Chair of the Parliamentary Commission on Investigation of US Biological Laboratories in Ukraine, according TASS Russian News Agency.

The alert is particularly disturbing for various reasons that the keenest readers of Gospa News’ WuhanGates inquiries will easily remember.

First of all, it should be noted that this report on smallpox trials comes just in the week in which numerous cases of monkeypox have been recorded which, although mild, have already led British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to relaunch the use of vaccines against smallpox produced by multinationals that often collaborate with the Pentagon, or the US Department of Defense.

But even more disturbing are other episodes. Among them is the mysterious and untimely death, just discovered the pandemic virus, of the Canadian scientist Frank Plummer who was working on experimenting with recombinant chimeric viruses, with Dual Use vaccine and military bioweapon purposes, on SARS, MERS, ancestors of SARS -Cov-2, on HIV, of which traces have been found in the Covid-19 virus, and finally on Ebola.

«In July 2019, a rare event occurred in Canada. Suspected of espionage for China, a group of Chinese virologists was forcibly evicted from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg (directed by the late Plummer – ed), where they had been running parts of the Special Pathogen Program of Canada’s public health agency. One of the procedures conducted by the team was the infection of monkeys with the most lethal viruses found on Earth. Four months prior to the Chinese team’s eviction, a shipment containing two exceptionally virulent viruses—Ebola and Nipah—was sent from the NML to China. When the shipment was traced, it was held to be improper and a “possible policy breach.” ».

The Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Dr. Dany Shoham, a microbiologist and chemical and biological warfare expert in the Middle East and formerly an Israeli Army (IDF) military intelligence analyst, wrote it on January 29, 2020. He was among the first to argue that all counterintelligence agencies in the world know of the origin of laboratory SARS-Cov-2.

INTRIGUE BETWEEN EBOLA VACCINES, GAVI ALLIANCE OF GATES AND NATO

Finally, it should not be forgotten that one of the world’s leading experts in virology and vaccines, Geert Vanden Bossche worked in the Global Health Discovery team of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle (USA) as Senior Program Officer; before moving to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization GAVI, founded by Bill Gates, as Senior Ebola Program Manager in Geneva

In 2015, he questioned the safety of the Ebola vaccine used in the ring vaccination studies conducted by the WHO in Guinea and broke off his collaboration with Gates becoming one of the staunchest supporters of the danger of anti-Covid gene serums.

It should be remembered that a former director of Gates’ Ngo GAVI, which today manages the Covax vaccination plan against Covid in poor countries, was Jens Stoltenberg, who later became NATO secretary.

This organization, in addition to fomenting the current war in Ukraine, in 2014 collaborated in the coup in Ukraine orchestrated by George Soros, an investor in Big Pharma Gilead who manages the Richard Lugar Center in Tbilisi, Georgia, on contract from the Pentagon and under supervision of the Central Intelligence Agency, the American counterintelligence.

In about twenty lines we explained why the alarm raised by the Russian parliamentarian Irina Yarovaya, co-chairman of the Parliamentary Investigation Commission on US biological laboratories in Ukraine, however biased it may appear as her nation is at war with Ukraine, must be taken absolutely with extreme attention …

Also in the light of the evidential clues on the construction of SARS-Cov-2 in the laboratory in an EU-US-China deal,through the Shanghai Gang defeated by the current leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, which would then pass through the Moderna Big Pharma funded by Gates and the Pentagon.

THE ALERT OF THE RUSSIAN LAWMAKER

“Today, we presented an analysis of which pathogens the US was particularly interested in in Ukraine,” she told reporters Friday, according TASS Russian News Agency..

“Aside from the pathogens that are territorially bound to Ukraine, [the laboratories] researched viruses and pathogens that are endemically very far from Ukraine, such as Ebola and smallpox.”

WHOLE ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE

Kitten with Big Bear Paws and Fearless Nature is So Excited to Run Around for the First Time

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2022 05 27 20 56

A kitten with big bear paws and fearless nature is so happy to run around freely for the first time.

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2022 05 27 20 58

Late last month, a polydactyl kitten with curled ears and a bobtail was brought into Friends for Life Rescue Network, an animal rescue in Los Angeles. She was four weeks old and came with an extremely bent ankle.

“She was born with the bent front leg. Polydactyl cats’ paws are too big in utero and can result in the arm being bent at an abnormal angle when there isn’t enough room,” Jacqueline DeAmor, founder of Friends for Life Rescue Network, told Love Meow.

“In her case, she came from a bigger litter so there wasn’t enough room to accommodate her paw size. This caused the tendons to be stuck over constricted.”

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2022 05 27 21 00

The kitten whom they named Indira (Indy), was walking on her forearm with limited mobility. Fortunately, she was very young and her condition could be significantly improved through physical therapy.

“Usually this can be corrected with massaging and stretching as a newborn for the first few weeks of life if noticed early. Four weeks was prime age to splint and correct the leg before her bones calcified and before the tendons became too short to be stretched,” Jacqueline shared with Love Meow.

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2022 05 27 21 02

After just one week of leg wraps, Indy was able to land on her four paws and began to walk a lot more steadily. As she built enough strength, she turned into a ball of energy with a lot of sass.

Indy adores people and loves being catered to. Adam and Margaux, foster liaisons of the rescue, syringe-fed the kitten during the day and were completely enamored with the little tabby.

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2022 05 27 21 03

“Every time I sat down to feed her, Indy would jump right into my lap and wait for food. It melted my heart,” the couple shared with Love Meow.

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2022 05 27 21 06

“I was also very impressed at how much she adapted to having her leg wrapped — it didn’t slow her down at all! And her leg straightened out so quickly that she only needed wraps for a week.”

Watch Indy and her journey in this cute video:

Kitten with big bear pawswww.youtube.com

“Now, she gets 10 minutes of leg massaging and stretching after each meal,” Adam and Margaux told Love Meow.

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2022 05 27 21 08

At almost seven weeks old, Indy can stand up completely on her paws and run around just like any other kitten.

“Now that she’s gotten so steady on her feet, you can really see her playful side coming out. She loves to jump around, chase things, and wrestle with toys. Once she’s good and tired, she comes right up for cuddles.”

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2022 05 27 21 09

Indy enjoys scampering around at full speed while trying to pounce on all the resident cats, who are much larger in size. When she is ready to take a break and recharge, she likes to put herself to bed.

“She goes here every time she feels tired,” Jacqueline shared with Love Meow.

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2022 05 27 21 10

If she finds a soft blanket, she will go to town and make (knead) the sweetest biscuits while purring up a storm.

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2022 05 27 21 11

Indy is so thrilled to be able to run around without a care in the world. She is brave, playful and adventurous, and enjoys every little thing in life.

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2022 05 27 21 12

Government meeting on stabilizing economy lifts market sentiment, with experts feeling upbeat about GDP rebound after COVID wanes

By GT staff reportersPublished: May 26, 2022 10:12 PM

China holds unprecedented meeting on stabilizing economy with focus on policy implementation

HERE 

also:

And HERE

Soon after China convened what has been seen as an unprecedented national video teleconference on stabilizing the economy, entities ranging from central departments to local governments spared no time to map out their economy-lifting missions, while the stock market also edged up after investors received a message of determination from the government to guide the economy back to normal  after a marked slowdown.

The instant reaction also mirrors the market’s eagerness for a clear policy  from the top to stimulate economic growth, as many businesspeople still feel a sense of uncertainty for future prospects after they encountered headwinds like coronavirus lockdowns and the Ukraine crisis, experts said.

At the teleconference held by China’s State Council on Wednesday and reportedly included around 100,000 participants, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stressed that the country must “grasp a time window” and strive to get the economy back to normal.

The premier stressed that stabilizing growth needs to be given a higher priority as the country focuses on ensuring market entities, employment and people’s livelihood.

Experts interpreted the meeting as marking a top-down resolution in safeguarding the momentum of the world’s second-largest economy, while presenting a unified spirit will help the country overcome the headwinds.

“It’s better early than late to map out economic work, in case the recent kind of black swan events hap-pen again in China,” said Ye Qing, former deputy head of the Hubei Provincial Statistics Bureau, adding that one major objective of the recent arrangement is to achieve positive GDP growth in the second quarter.

Market response

Along with the meeting, different entities ranging from central departments to local governments have moved to align economic-lifting work in accordance with what has been instructed in the aforementioned meeting. 

The People’s Bank of China, China’s central bank, issued a notice saying that it will push for the establishment of a long-term mechanism that makes financial institutions capable of and willing to lend loans to micro enterprises, the bank said on Thursday.

The State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission issued 27 measures to help alleviate small companies’ difficulties, including reducing web fees for small enterprises.

China also launched 13 measures to support the trade sector including safeguarding production stability and increasing fiscal support to trade firms, according to a document published by the general office of the State Council, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Local governments also took instant action. The Nanjing city government convened a meeting on Wednesday to study the allocation of work for stimulating the city’s economy. The city’s officials were requested to make clear work responsibilities and make efforts to achieve targets for the first half of this year.

China’s stock markets edged up on Thursday, with the Shanghai Composite Index rising  0.5 percent, while the Shenzhen market rose  0.57 percent.

Several companies interviewed by the Global Times applauded the government’s action to help domestic companies cope with difficulties, saying they still have confidence in a business rebound soon in spite of a business contraction recently.

A manager of a logistics company based in Shanghai surnamed Zhao told the Global Times on Thursday that the company’s business has dropped by at least 50 percent in April due to the lockdown, but he expects the company’s revenue to pick up by about 10 percent in May compared with the previous month as the city gradually lifts closed-loop management. His company engages in foreign trade.

According to Zhao, the growing complexity of the external environment including the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy, high inflation abroad and the rising interest rate of the dollar, is casting a shadow of uncer-tainty on foreign trade companies. But he still holds confidence and believes that the epidemic will be brought under control soon.

“It would take another 2-3 months or more for the industry to recover to pre-epidemic level,” Zhao said.

Liu Hongyuan, CEO of a compression socks maker and exporter Hangzhou Zhongzhi Industry Co., told the Global Times that he feels a mix of uncertainty and confidence in the future.

“I have confidence in the long-term development prospects of the sports industry (which boosts de-mands for our products), but our business pressure is heavy currently,” he said.

This feeling of uncertainty has arisen from diminishing purchasing power or willingness from overseas clients, he said, which caused the company’s exports to drop compared to last year.

He said that the company has benefited from the government’s VAT credit refund policy, and he hopes more such support from the authorities, like favorable policies on loans to medium and small companies.

Future outlook 

Although China is going through tremendous economic pressure, many economists are still upbeat about a rebound soon, as they pointed out that the fundamentals of China’s economy have not been damaged by the recent difficulties.

Cong Yi, a professor at the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Thursday that the current downward pressure is due to the sudden outbreak of the Omicron virus, rather than any fundamental problems.

“Our confidence and efforts to maintain growth comes from  stable fundamentals-backed by China’s huge market, strong production capability and domestic demand. Those will not disappear because of the temporary coronavirus resurgence,” Cong said.

Cao Heping, an economist at Peking University, also told the Global Times on Thursday that if Shanghai can gradually recover by the end of May and seize the June window, China’s economic growth can remain positive in the second quarter.

He said that in order to stabilize growth and market entities, stimulus ranging from tax cuts to other support measures have to be “extremely efficient,” “quite precise” and go to those who need them most.

A report of the Economic Daily published on Thursday noted that China should not only face up to the current pressure, but should also recognize the internal economic rules in the long term, pointing out that China’s economy is full of potential and resilience.

Experts also stressed that the government is looking to prepare for an “accurate” stimulus policy in the second quarter by mapping out and studying China’s economic indicators.

Premier Li noted that major economic indicators for the second quarter across different parts of the country would be published by national statistics departments in a  truthful manner.

“The government is attaching great importance to second quarter GDP data, being stricter about its calculations and hoping the numbers reflect China’s genuine economic situation,” Ye said.

Huo Jianguo, vice chairman of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies in Beijing, told the Global Times on Thursday that there’s no need to adjust the full-year growth target of 5.5 percent, although it means challenges for the third and fourth quarter’s economic performance.

How to Design a Nuclear Reactor – an Illustrated Rough Guide, 1956-1998

I just LOVE the line art.

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The University of New Mexico’s Centennial Science and Engineering Library hosts these images of Nuclear Engineering Wall Charts. The graphics appeared in Nuclear Engineering International magazine from it inception in 1956 to 1998. Nuclear power has had its successes and disasters – but it’s rarely looked better.

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Western Civilization at a Crossroads: Mythical Hegemony or Win-Win Paradigm?

“I was honored to discover that my recent piece co-authored by Dr Edward Lozansky was just published on The American Committee for US-Russia Accord tackling the big question of WHICH western civilization is shaping the current Neoliberal Rules Based disorder? “
As the world is moving slowly but surely to the edge of the abyss, there is a parallel crisis going within the nations that claim to exemplify the best of “western values” while undermining and violating them at every point.

Of course, the West blames all the problems of the world on the East, particularly Russia and China but there are some “dissident” voices that need to be heard at least for the sake of those who are interested in searching for ideas that might avoid Armageddon. 

Rudyard Kipling once wrote: “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat.”

In his poem, Kipling was expressing his belief that cultures of the East and West were so intrinsically different that any hope for harmony or mutual interest was little more than a delusion.

How could such a worldview possibly mesh with the cultures of Orthodox Russia, Confucian China, or the Islamic world? To the degree that those cultures maintained their ancient traditions and values, it obviously could not, as only total submission to a hegemon could resolve the conflict.

Impossibly Easy Bacon Cheeseburger Pie

Come on!

What’s stopping you from giving this dish a try-out? Eh?

Ground beef combines with bacon to add a delicious flavor to this easy cheeseburger pie – perfect when you want dinner to be ready in 50 minutes.

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a5acb451 564e 4b8a 9bbd 0bc045af4dae

Ingredients

  • 6 slices bacon
  • 1 lb lean (at least 80%) ground beef
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 large onion, chopped (1 cup)
  • 1/4 cup ketchup
  • 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (4 oz)
  • 1/2 cup Original Bisquick™ mix
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 eggs

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2022 05 23 21 29

HD】南征北戰NZBZ – 《生來倔强》巡迴演唱會_我的天空 (Live) [Official Music Video] 官方LIVE版

Enjoy a taste of contemporaneous Chinese culture…

官方LIVE版”]

The Intelligence Service Owl From Russia

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A Russian technopolis ERA presents a remotely piloted vehicle that looks like an owl. The intelligence service drone can stay in the air for forty minutes and overcome a distance up to twenty kilometers. Besides, it can recognize ground targets from a distance up to ten meters.

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2 3rrt1

The vehicle determines the cordinates of ground reconnaissance objects with use of a laser target marker ranger and the Global navigation satellite system “Glonass”. The weight of the owl is 5 kg, it can be launched by one person. The producer of the vehicle notes that it’s also possible to make similar remote-piloted vehicles that would look like falcons or other birds of prey.

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3 wwww1

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4cv 1

The Prisoner S1E2 Part 1

This is the second episode of The Prisoner. It is in two parts because it is so long. This is the first part. I hope you enjoy it. It took me forever to find.

The Prisoner S1E2 Part 2

This is the second episode of The Prisoner. This is the second part. I hope you enjoy it. It took me forever to find.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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The missing millions of children of China

This post is by request. Actually, multiple requests by a singular individual. It’s a big and important issue with him.

Why this fixation? I guess it resonates living in SE Asia.

And so when he reads these “reports” he views the reports from the lens of his own personal experience, and that makes him concerned. Any good Rufus would (of course) be enraged.

And he, I am sure, is no exception.

"Estimates vary on the number of children who go missing in China every year. Some put the number at 70,000, others say it’s closer to 200,000. Regardless, most studies agree that only a very small number — perhaps as few as 0.1% — are ever found and reunited with their families.

The country’s family planning policies and an emphasis on “continuing the family line” (and therefore the need to have children, even sometimes if they’re not actually your own) are among the root causes for such statistics, but they’re compounded by the lack of a proper system for tracking down missing children and returning them to their original families — despite China’s ever-increasing surveillance over its citizens.

“In the United States, there are ‘amber alerts’ to find missing children, but China still does not have this type of system,” says Beijing-based entrepreneur Cheng Xian. “The Ministry of Public Security is actively building a ‘reunion’ system that belongs to China, but this involves a very long data accumulation process.”"

-Radiichina

Who is this group? It was set up by a Californian entrepreneur. He grew up in Palo Alto, California. He lives and operates this NGO inside of California, USA.

RADII was founded by Brian A. Wong, former Vice President of Alibaba. 

Brian A. Wong is Founder and Chairman of RADII. He is a Chinese-American entrepreneur and his career has spanned decades, industries, and continents. But a desire to understand China kept him coming back. 

Brian wanted to create a platform that empowers the next generation to share their own stories to bridge cultural understanding between the East and West and to provide a window into the transformations shaping one of the world’s most dynamic places on earth. 

Prior to creating RADII, Brian joined Alibaba when it was an apartment start-up as its 52nd employee. 

Brian is a China Fellow with the Aspen Institute, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and a member of the Committee of 100. 

Growing up in Palo Alto, he is proud to say he also served as a technical advisor to HBO’s TV series Silicon Valley.

How is this group funded? Ah. It’s an NGO with income from various Davis associations, all who obtain massive subsidies from the United States government.

The Aspen Institute is largely funded by foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, by seminar fees, and by individual donations.

How is their information disseminated? Well, look at the “bubble cloud” from their website…

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2022 06 07 13 49

Every single one of them have an Anti-China slant to their reports. It’s an overwhelming negative slant.

The MM full report and article is here. It is found on my MM you-tube channel.  Personally, you cannot have a “totalitarian police state” and “missing children” simultaneously. The two are totally incompatible.

Please enjoy.

Fooling around, mysteries, new geopolitical alignments in the Pacific Rim, and Beef and Green Chile Enchiladas

My wife just got a cute little yellow envelope in the mail from an organization called "Project Hope". They were soliciting donations for Ukraine. Yeah right. There's a scam for everything in the USA. 

So I looked up their executive compensation. Get dafuq outta here!

1. Thomas Kenyon, M.D. $415,652
2. Alan Weil $406,419
3. Rabih Torbay $347,437

-Tom_Q_Collins

I hope youse guys are all doing well. Things are warming up here in Zhuhai. Still funky weather. That’s for certain, here in this installment of MM mixed up subjects we are going to though out numerous songs and some history with food and other fun subjects. I hope you all enjoy this edition.

But first, I want to give a “shout out” to Ohio Guy. He’s one of the handful of special contributors that have been supporting MM all these years. I feel bad that I lumped him in with the many, many who just hop in and go along “for the ride” without a kind note, a friendly wave, or a dollar in the tip jar.

I want all of you to know that I try to make this MM site free for everyone, but those that contribute in some funds, and donations, that place some comments, and that send me some private emails are THE ENGINE that keeps MM humming along.

And it’s really important.

We all have good days, and bad days, just like you do. And MM is no exception, but you know what? It’s that super kind comment that turns my day around. It’s that heart-felt email that I get that put a shine on my cheeks, and it’s that little donation that make me stand a little taller, and makes the day a little brighter.

So, with this in mind, I dedicate this entire post to “Ohio Guy”! Take a bow. My hat’s off to you!

You are the guy who dragged me back to the chair, and kept me working. You are the guy; the man, who inspired me to keep on, going on.

I salute you.

Beef and Green Chile Enchiladas

Try these easy, cheesy ground-beef enchiladas, complete with sassy sauce and mild chiles.

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2b23cf23 2d3b 48a3 93b1 912004fbe8d0

Ingredients

  • 1 lb. lean (at least 80%) ground beef
  • 1/2 cup chopped onion (1 medium)
  • 1 cup frozen corn
  • 1/2 cup sour cream
  • 1 (4.5-oz.) can Old El Paso™ Chopped Green Chiles
  • 8 oz. (2 cups) shredded colby-Monterey Jack cheese
  • 1 (10-oz.) can Old El Paso™ Enchilada Sauce
  • 6 (8-inch) flour tortillas
  • Shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes and additional sour cream, if desired

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2022 05 25 19 48

Philippines’ Marcos wants China ties to ‘shift to higher gear’ under his presidency

  • Xi, Marcos to hold more comprehensive talks
  • China will respect an “independent” foreign policy -Marcos
  • Philippines an issue in U.S.-China strategic rivalry
  • Marcos widely expected to lean towards China

MANILA, May 18 (Reuters) – Philippines president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr on Wednesday said his country’s ties with China will expand and “shift to a higher gear” when he takes power, signalling intent to advance outgoing leader Rodrigo Duterte’s pro-Beijing agenda.

Reporting by Karen Lema and Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty

The article is HERE

Elvin Bishop | Fooled Around and Fell in Love

Yousa! I love this…. It must have been awesome in concert. It was just so and so when I was growing up. But watching the live video is something else.

Vladimir Putin signs legislation allowing him to hold office until 2036 – ABC News

Long live Putin
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Key points:

  • New legislation allows Mr Putin to hold office for two additional six-year terms
  • The amendments emphasise Russian law over international norms, outlaw same-sex marriages and mention “a belief in God” as a core value
  • The opposition has criticised the legislation, arguing that it lacks transparency and hinders independent monitoring
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed legislation allowing him to hold office for two additional six-year terms — a move that means he may stay in power until 2036.

If Mr Putin remains in power until 2036, his tenure will surpass even that of Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union for 29 years, making him the country's longest-serving leader since the Russian empire.

Mr Putin has served twice as president, from 2000-08 and 2012-present, as well as serving as de facto leader while prime minister from 2008-12.

Last year, Mr Putin signed additional legislation granting former presidents a lifetime seat in the federation council or senate, a position that assured immunity from prosecution upon leaving the presidency.

The 68-year-old Russian President, who has held power for more than two decades, said he would decide later whether to run in 2024 when his current six-year term ended.

Article HERE.

Someone Found An Old Photo Album Full Of Pics Of This strange Woman And Hollywood Celebrities In A Thrift Shop

It’s a mystery.

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Bruce Willis

A thrift shop in Belgium has caused quite a stir on the Internet. People at Opnieuw & Co, a local establishment in Mortsel, discovered an old photo album where a woman posed next to the biggest stars in Hollywood.

After they shared some of the pictures, the online community immediately started their investigation.

Who was this woman hugging Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Bruce Willis, and other A-list celebrities?

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Patrick Stewart

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Lawrence Fishburn

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Harrison Ford

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Nicolas Cage

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Sam Neill and Robert Downey Jr

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Kevin Costner

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Tom Seleck

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Tom Cruise

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Richard Dreyfuss

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Kristin Davis

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Jon Bon Jovi

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Cuba Gooding Jr, Lawrence Fishburn

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Drew Barrymore

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Ed Harris

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Keanu Reeves

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Tim Roth

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Heather Locklear

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Antonio Banderas

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Johnny Depp

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Kevin Costner, find yourself someone looking at you like Kevin Costner looks at her.

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Hugh Grant

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Kevin Bacon and Tom Hanks

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Rutger Hauer

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The Cast of “The Bold & The Beautiful”.

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William Shatner

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Young Elijah Wood

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Will Smith

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Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia

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Kirk Douglas

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Luke Perry

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Andy Garcia

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Emilio Estevez

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Clarence Williams III, Kyle Maclachlan and Samuel L Jackson

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Helen Hunt

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Kate Winslett

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Liam Neeson

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Jack Nicholson

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Faye Dunaway

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Robert Duvall

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The Cast of “Melrose Place”

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Christopher Walken

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Steven Spielberg

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Walter Matthau

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Jack Lemmon and Sophia Loren

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Tommy Lee Jones

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Gerard Depardieu and Claude Berri

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Sir Anthony Hopkins and Richard Attenborough

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Julia Roberts

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Johnny Depp and Juliette Lewis

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Michael Douglas

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Andrew Shue

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Denzel Washington

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Cary Elwes

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Matt Dillon

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Danny Glover

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Nicole Kidman and Michael Keaton

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Cast of Saved By The Bell

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Cast of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Women

After a while, someone noticed a tag she had in one of the photos. Turns out, the ‘mysterious’ woman is actually Maria Snoeys-Lagler, a former member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). It’s a non-profit organization of journalists and photographers who report on the entertainment industry. The HFPA consists of about 90 members from around 55 countries, and they’re the ones conducting the annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony in Los Angeles every January.

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Looking at these pictures, it’s clear that Maria Snoeys-Lagler has met virtually everyone dominating the biggest screens and stages. Or is it the other way around? Maybe, just maybe, there’s a secret club in Hollywood of all the celebrities who have had their picture taken with Maria Snoeys-Lagler?

S O S Band Take Your Time Do It Right 1980

Gosh this girl is so darn HOT!

China is pursuing a Pacific-wide pact with 10 island nations on security, policing and data – report

Federated States of Micronesia wants deal rejected because it could spark new cold war between China and west while Australia admits ‘we’ve got a lot of work to do’

Wed 25 May 2022 18.44 AEST

China will pursue a Pacific-wide deal with almost a dozen island nations covering policing, security and data communications cooperation when the foreign minister, Wang Yi, hosts a meeting in Fiji next week, documents show.

A draft communique and five-year action plan sent by Beijing to 10 Pacific islands ahead of a foreign ministers meeting on 30 May has prompted pushback from at least one of the invited nations, which said it showed China’s intent to control the region and “threatens regional stability”.

In a letter to 21 Pacific leaders seen by Reuters, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) president, David Panuelo, said his nation would argue the “pre-determined joint communique” should be rejected because he feared it could spark a new “cold war” between China and the west.

Wang will visit eight Pacific island nations that China holds diplomatic ties with between 26 May and 4 June.

He arrives on Thursday in Solomon Islands, which recently signed a security pact with China despite objections from Australia, the US, Japan and New Zealand, which fear it could upset regional security arrangements and give China a military foothold in the Pacific.

Beijing rejects this, saying the pact is focused on domestic policing and criticism by western countries was interfering in Solomon Island’s sovereign decision-making.

China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the document.

The FSM government, which has a defence agreement with the US as well as an economic cooperation agreement with China, declined to comment on the letter.

Australia’s new foreign minister, Penny Wong, on Wednesday said: “China has made its intentions clear [but] so too are the intentions of the new Australian government.”

Wong declared the incoming Labor government had a lot of work to do to recover Australia’s status as the partner of choice in the Pacific after a “lost decade” of Coalition rule.

New vision

A region-wide agreement covering security and trade between China and Pacific islands would represent a shift in Beijing’s focus from bilateral relationships to dealing with the Pacific on a multilateral basis – and would likely increase concerns by Washington and its allies.

The China-Pacific Island Countries Common Development Vision draft document, as well as a five-year action plan, has been circulated by Beijing ahead of the meeting in Fiji.

It states China and the Pacific islands will “strengthen exchanges and cooperation in the fields of traditional and non-traditional security”.

“China will hold intermediate and high-level police training for Pacific Island countries through bilateral and multilateral means,” the document seen by Reuters states.

The action plan outlines a ministerial dialogue on law enforcement capacity and police cooperation to be held in 2022, and China providing forensic police laboratories.

The draft communique also pledges cooperation on data networks, cybersecurity, smart customs systems, and for Pacific islands to “take a balanced approach to technological progress, economic development and protection of national security”.

Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei, which is barred from 5G networks run by several US allies, has been repeatedly thwarted in attempts to build submarine cables or run mobile networks in the Pacific islands by Australia and the US offering rival bids for the sensitive infrastructure, citing national security concerns.

China’s provision of customs systems would lead to “biodata collection and mass surveillance of those residing in, entering and leaving our islands”, he added.

The letter was also critical of Australia’s lack of action on climate change, which Panuelo said was the greatest security threat to the region.

The new Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, pledged this week to increase climate financing to Pacific islands, saying climate change was the main economic and security challenge for low-lying island countries.

Tommy James + The Shondells – Crystal Blue Persuasion

Dust off this lost great…

Ukraine Propaganda – BBC Tries To Sell Telegram Rumors That Make No Sense

From MoA

Do they really think that the people are dumb enough to believe such shit?

Russian media: retired Russian major general killed in skies over Ukraine

 

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2022 05 26 15 30

Which ‘Russian media’ one might asks:

A [Russian] fighter has been shot down in the skies over Ukraine, and Kanamat Botashev, a retired Major General of the Russian Air Force, was killed.Source: Russian edition of BBC with reference to Botashov’s three former subordinates

Details: Subordinates who had kept in touch with Botashev after leaving the service agreed to comment on condition of anonymity for reasons of personal safety.

Oh, the ‘Russian media’ is in fact the Russian language site of the BBC World Service which is financed and directed by the British government’s Foreign Office. The same BBC World Service which since March has suspended its operation and which had its its website blocked in Russia.

That BBC World Service will surly have reliable sources for making such nonsense claims:

One of Botashev’s former colleagues confirmed that a retired general was carrying out missions in a Su-25 aircraft in Ukraine.In one of the Russian Telegram channels, this participant reported on Botashev’s death …

 

‘Russian Telegram channels’ are anonymous and also widely used by Ukrainians. They are often unreliable.

The picture above is somewhat curious too. Its resolution is too low to read the name patch of the pictured officer who does totally not look like 63 year old retired man.

The plane the Ukrainians allegedly shot down was a Su-25 ground attack aircraft. Why then is the ‘retired Major-General Botashev’, should he actually exist, pictured in front of an Su-34, a supersonic fighter-bomber. According to Tineye the photo was first published on May 23 by a news site in Tbilisi, Georgia. There is no metadata in the picture and I am unable to find any caption for it.

The whole story makes absolutely no sense:

It is unclear how the 63-year-old retired general found himself at the controls of the Su-25 in Ukraine.


Botashev commanded a regiment of the Guards Air Base in Voronezh. His military career came to an end in June 2012, when he was accused of crashing a Su-27 fighter near Petrozavodsk. The general asked his friend-colonel to let him fly a Su-27, a flight permit he did not have.

 

So the dude was kicked out of the military? He hasn’t flown military planes for 10 years? Somehow he steals an Su-25, which he probably did not know how to fly, and gets shot down over Ukraine? Yeah, that makes totally sense …

What will the BBC World Service editors try to sell us next? Bridges?

Posted by b on May 25, 2022 at 16:03 UTC | Permalink

Underwater Graveyard Full Of WWII Planes Is Otherworldly

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For 70 years, World War II planes have been resting in peace at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Although divers have enjoyed exploring the underwater graveyard since the 1960s, Brandi Mueller‘s photos allow us to admire these treasures without a wetsuit.

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“I find diving [to see] the airplanes really exciting,” Mueller, a scuba diving instructor and boat captain, told Mashable. “It’s a strange thing to see airplanes underwater. Shipwrecks you expect, but not airplanes.”

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The planes didn’t actually crash at this particular location near the Marshall Islands, though. They were discarded there after WWII because it was too expensive to transport them back to the United States from the Kwajalein Atoll, according to Mueller.

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The site includes Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers, F4U Corsairs, TBF/TBM Avengers, Helldivers, B-25 Mitchells, Curtiss C-46 Commandos and F4F Wildcats, which sit in the sand about 130 feet below the surface.

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Here Are 11 Statistics That Show How U.S. Consumers Are Faring In This Rapidly Deteriorating Economy

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Prices are soaring, there are widespread shortages of certain items such as baby formula all over the nation, and at the same time U.S. economic activity appears to be really slowing down.  Considering all of that, it makes perfect sense why the American people are feeling so negative about the economy right now.  In fact, a whopping 85 percent of all Americans believe that there will be a recession within the next year.

These days, it is virtually impossible to get Americans to overwhelmingly agree about anything, and so the fact that 85 percent of us are anticipating a recession is a really big deal.

Just about everyone realizes that economic conditions are going to get worse, but for those of you that still doubt where we are headed here are 11 statistics that show how U.S. consumers are faring in this rapidly deteriorating economy…

#1 According to a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll that was recently conducted, 56 percent of Americans say that their financial situations are getting worse, and only 20 percent of Americans say that their financial situations are improving.

#2 Another new survey has just discovered that 66 percent of Americans “have avoided social events because they’ve felt embarrassed or uncomfortable” about their financial situations.

#3 The housing bubble appears to be bursting.  At this point, sales of new single family homes are falling at a very frightening pace

Sales of new single-family houses in April plunged by 16.6% from March and by 26.9% from a year ago, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000 houses, the lowest since lockdown April 2020, according to the Census Bureau today. Sales of new houses are registered when contracts are signed, not when deals close, and can serve as an early indicator of the overall housing market.

#4 After breaking the all-time national record in March, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has gone 42 cents above the old record and is now sitting at $4.59.

#5 The average age of a car on U.S. roads has reached an all-time record high of 12.2 years.  Many Americans continue to delay replacing their current vehicles because new vehicles have become so unaffordable.

#6 Millions of American families are struggling with rapidly rising food prices

The index for food away from home increased 7.2% over the last year, the Labor Department reported earlier this month. Food prices were up 9.4% in April from the same time last year — the biggest jump since April 1981, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported. And grocery store prices increased 10.8% for the year ended in April.

#7 U.S. natural gas futures just crossed the nine dollar threshold – the highest level that we have seen since the financial crisis of 2008.  That means that much higher energy costs are on the way for U.S. consumers.

#8 Multiple Fed surveys are showing that manufacturing activity in the U.S. is really slowing down

The slowdown in manufacturing activity on display in reports from the Federal Reserve banks of New York and Philadelphia was confirmed by a survey from the Richmond Fed indicating that factory activity contracted in the mid-Atlantic region in May.

The Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity index dropped 23 points from a positive reading of 14 in April to a minus nine, the lowest reading since May 2020, when much of the economy was still reeling from the onset of the pandemic and lockdowns.

#9 Zero Hedge is reporting extremely depressing news about U.S. macro data: “Other than April 2020 – when the entire economy was closed – May’s serial disappointment in US Macro data is the worst since Lehman”

#10 Thanks to plunging stock prices, approximately 20 trillion dollars in household net worth has been “wiped out” so far this year.

#11 A new CBS News/YouGov survey has found that 74 percent of Americans believe that things are going badly in this country and that 51 percent of Americans actually believe that Joe Biden is “incompetent”.

Right now, conditions are so similar to what we witnessed just before the financial crisis of 2008.

If we had addressed our long-term problems back then, perhaps we would be in a much different place at the moment.

But instead, we appear to be poised to repeat history in a lot of ways.

In fact, many experts believe that the crisis that is staring us in the face will be even worse than what we went through more than a decade ago.  For example, just check out what Peter Schiff is saying

This one is going to be even bigger because the economy has a lot more debt now than it did in 2008. And Americans are less able to pay it when interest rates rise because the balances are much greater. So, we’re in much worse shape as a result of all the bailouts and all the stimulus that papered over the last crisis. So, now the one we’re dealing with is going to be much worse because we kicked the can down the road instead of solving the problem when we had a chance.”

He makes some really great points.

Every time there has been some sort of a crisis in our society, our leaders responded by showering the system with even more money.

In 2008, the U.S. national debt crossed the 10 trillion dollar threshold.

In 2022, the U.S. national debt has crossed the 30 trillion dollar threshold.

Our politicians have been systematically destroying our future, and most Americans didn’t seem to care.

Now a day of reckoning has arrived, and it is going to be immensely painful.

There is no silver bullet that is going to cure inflation.

The Federal Reserve is going to try to tame inflation by hiking interest rates, but that will just destroy the housing bubble and dramatically slow down the economy.

And there is no silver bullet that is going to end the shortages that we are currently facing.

We are now experiencing some of the consequences of decades of mismanagement, and a lot more pain is on the way.

Rita Hayworth & Fred Astaire dance to Led Zeppelin

Genius. Worth a watch.

Journey in the Search for the American Dream

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Photographer Pavel Prokopchik plans to travel across the USA trying to capture the essence of the American life today. He’d like to find out what “The American Dream” means to people in the USA today. The project he has in mind is one that will shape itself as it proceeds, and is essentially elastic, where unexpected meeting can easily deviate him from my original route.

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Chaka Khan and Rufus – Tell me something Good (RE-MASTERED) Official Video HD

Rufus! Chaka Khan is awesome!

The Level Of Evil In Our Society Is Off The Charts

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What in the world has happened to our society?  Every day I scour dozens of news websites as I do research for my articles and upcoming books, and every day I am horrified by all of the evil that I encounter.

We are a deeply, deeply sick society, and more symptoms emerge with each passing day.  For example, what would cause an 18-year-old to walk into an elementary school and start gunning down young children?

When I was growing up, I never once imagined something like that could possibly ever happen in any of the public schools that I attended.  But now this sort of thing is becoming a regular occurrence in America, and the great tragedy that we witnessed on Tuesday quickly made headlines all over the nation

A gunman opened fire at an elementary school in Uvalde on Tuesday, killing 14 students and one teacher, Gov. Greg Abbott said. The gunman, identified by law enforcement as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was also killed, Abbott said. Ramos was reportedly a student at Uvalde High School or was a former student, Abbott said. Uvalde Police Chief Pete Arredondo said it appears that Ramos acted alone.

It was not immediately clear how many people, in addition to the dead, were wounded, but Arredondo said there were “several injuries.”

It is also being reported that Ramos actually shot his own grandmother before going over to the school…

The suspect also allegedly shot his grandmother before entering the school and again opening fire, Abbott said. He did not say anything further about her condition.

Decades ago, this sort of incident would have been talked about for years.

But most Americans will forget all about this shooting a few days from now, and that is because school shootings have become incredibly common in our day and time.

In fact, this was the 27th school shooting in the United States so far this year.

How many of them can you name?

Our schools are not safe anymore, and this is one of the big reasons why so many parents are turning to homeschooling.

Of course it isn’t just our schools that have become danger zones.  At this point, major urban areas all over the country are rapidly being transformed into war zones.  According to the CDC, the number of firearm homicides jumped almost 35 percent just from 2019 to 2020…

The United States suffered 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent compared to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest data.

Sadly, getting shot and killed is not the only thing our kids have to be concerned about these days.

There is also the possibility that they could be abducted and forced into sex slavery.  This actually happened to one extremely unfortunate 15-year-old girl that attended a Dallas Mavericks game a few weeks ago

A 15-year-old Texas girl was rescued by police 10 days after she was kidnapped at a basketball game while using the bathroom, then trafficked by pedophiles.

The unidentified teenager’s father raised the alarm shortly after she left to use the restroom and didn’t return to her seat at a Dallas Maverick game in the American Airline Center on April 8.

She was one of the lucky ones.

There are countless others that are never rescued.

But at least our kids should be safe in church, right?

Wrong.

There are sexual predators there too, and sometimes they are even in the pulpit.

On Sunday, a woman named Bobi Gephart that had her virginity taken by a pastor when she was just 16 years old confronted him in front of the entire congregation

Turning to Lowe, she continued: ‘I was just 16 when you took my virginity on your office floor. Do you remember that? I know you do.

‘You did things to to my teenage body that should have never been done. If you can’t admit the truth, you have to answer to God. You are not the victim here.’

I can’t even begin to describe how evil this is.

And her husband stated that this abuse lasted for a total of nine years

Bobi’s husband Nate then added: ‘This is a lie. This is not just adultery.

‘It’s another level. It happened for nine years. When she was 15, 16, the grooming started.’

I wish that this was an isolated incident, but it isn’t.

In fact, a new report has revealed widespread sexual misconduct in one of the largest Christian denominations in the entire nation…

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention publicly apologized to victims of sexual abuse within the denomination and vowed to make public a private database of offenders in response to an explosive report detailing allegations of sexual misconduct and cover-up.

On Tuesday, SBC leaders gathered to discuss a historic investigation report from Guidepost Solutions that found that the denomination’s leadership mishandled widespread sexual abuse allegations, ignored and silenced victims and engaged in an abusive pattern of intimidation largely to avoid liability.

This shouldn’t be happening.

People go to church to find God, but in way too many instances they are encountering predators instead.

We have become a deeply, deeply wicked country, and it is getting worse with each passing year.

It is in this sort of environment that exceedingly wicked leaders can emerge.  In fact, the guy currently in the White House has been telling mammoth lie after mammoth lie for decades

 

If we lived in a just society filled with decent people, such a man could never have a career in politics.

Of course the entire world is headed in the same direction, and that has enabled someone like Klaus Schwab to become one of the most important leaders on the entire planet…

 

This week, Schwab boldly told the elite gathered at Davos that “the future is being built by us”

 

Sadly, to a very large degree he is correct.

They are trying to construct their version of “utopia”, but their plans are starting to crumble as a “perfect storm” of war, economic troubles, food shortages, energy problems and major pestilences hammers their efforts from all sides.

As I have tried to explain for many years, ultimately they will fail.

They have destroyed everything that our forefathers worked so hard to build, and in the end their efforts will be destroyed as well.

But right now just about every form of evil that you can possibly imagine is flourishing in our American society, and that should deeply sicken all of us Americans.

Strawberry Alarm Clock – Incense & Peppermints (1967)

So very groovy!

Double Cheese and Bean Nachos

It’s hard to resist a platter of crunchy, gooey nachos, especially this jalapeño-studded version loaded with cheese.

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Ingredients

  • 4 cups small round corn tortilla chips
  • 1 cup Old El Paso™ refried beans (from 16-oz can)
  • 1/2 cup Old El Paso™ Thick ‘n Chunky salsa
  • 2 tablespoons from 1 jar (12 oz) Old El Paso™ Hot Jalapeño Slices
  • 1/2 cup chopped green onions (8 medium)
  • 2 cups shredded Mexican cheese blend (8 oz)

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S1 Episode 8 Schizoid Man – Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner

We continue with this episode…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Bio-weapons, small American towns in ruin, delicious muffins, and old photos of kitty cats.

This article is much longer than what I intended, but I hope that you enjoy it. It’s got a whole bunch of good stuff, and some really hidden treats that (I hope) will have you all running back for more. When you make the muffins, please make sure that you use real butter and make sure that they are hot right out of the oven! It’s a word to the wise, eh?

The Answer is the Coming Small-Town Revival

The post-COVID recovery will be change, not restoration. We’ll be forced to rebuild where we are.

From HERE

Years ago, I moved from a somewhat larger small town (pop. 30,000) in upstate New York to a smaller small town (pop. 2,500) 15 miles east in order to establish a little homestead with gardens, fruit trees, and chickens. I found this three-acre property literally on the edge of town, a five-minute walk to the center of Main Street.

If you’ve been following this column on urban design the past year, you know I’ve said we’re entering an era of stark economic contraction that will change the terms of daily life in America, and one feature of it is that the action will shift from the big cities and sprawling suburbs back to America’s small towns.

The COVID-19 virus has accelerated this trend, actually drawing a sharp dividing line between “then” and “now” that historians will recognize—but that many contemporary observers are missing.

My little town was badly beaten down when I got here in 2011 and actually sank a bit lower over the years since.

The last Main Street shops that sold anything not previously owned shut down. The two last suppertime restaurants folded. The tiny local newspaper ceased publication, and the DOT put a concrete barrier across the tracks of the little railroad spur line, which hadn’t run trains, anyway, since the 1980s.

The several factories on the river that runs through town—a tributary of the mighty Hudson—had all shuttered in the 1970s, and only one even still stands in the form of ruins, the rest demolished, wiped off the map and out of memory.

In the century and a half previous, they’d gone through iterations of making textiles—first linen, which was grown here, then cotton, which was not—and then paper products (finally, and not without irony, toilet tissue).

What’s left in the town is a phantom armature of everyday life tuned to a bygone era with all its economic and social functionality removed, like a fine old piano with all its string cut.

The bones are still there in the form of buildings, but the activities, relationships, and institutions are gone.

The commerce is gone, the jobs are gone, the social and economic roles have no players, the places for fraternizing and public entertainment gone, the churches nearly empty.

There’s a post-1980 shopping strip on the highway leaving the west end of town.

That’s where the supermarket is (it replaced a 1960s IGA closer to the center, which replaced the various greengrocers, butchers, and dry goods establishments of yore on Main Street).

There’s a chain pharmacy, a Tractor Supply, a pizza shop and a Chinese take-out place out there, too.

The Kmart closed in 2017 and two years later a Big Lots (overstocked merch) took its place.

The local school system may be the town’s largest employer these days; it’s also the town’s leading levier of taxes.

Some people drive long distances to work in other towns, even as far as the state capital, Albany, where jobs with good pay, real medical benefits, and fat pensions still exist—though you can’t claim they produce anything of value.

Quite a few people scrambled for years with marginal small home-based businesses (making art, massage, home bakeries, etc.), but the virus creamed a lot of them.

It’s hard these days to find a plumber or a carpenter.

A few dozen farmers hang on.

There is a lively drug underground here, which some can make a living at—if they can stay off their own product—but it’s not what you’d call a plus for the common good.

Federal cash supports of one sort or other account for many of the rest who live here: social security, disability, SNAP cards, plain old family welfare payments, and COVID-19 checks (for now), adding up to a quasi-zombie economy.

In short, what appears to be a town now bears no resemblance to the rich set of social and economic relationships and modes of production that existed here a hundred years ago, a local network of complex interdependencies based on local capital and local resources—with robust connections (the railroad! The Hudson River and Champlain Canal!) to other towns that operated similarly, and even linkage to some distant big city markets.

The question I’m building up to is:

How do we get back to anything that resembles that kind of high-functioning society?

The answer is trauma, a set of circumstances that will disrupt all the easy and dishonest work-arounds which have determined the low state of our current arrangements.

You can be sure this is coming; it’s already in motion:

  • collapsing oil production due to the insupportable costs of the shale “miracle,”
  • the end of industrial growth as we’ve known it,
  • the limits of borrowing from the future to pay today’s bills (i.e., debt that will never be paid back),
  • widespread household bankruptcy and unemployment,
  • and the consequent social disorder all that will entail.

That reality will compel us to reorganize American life, starting with how we inhabit the landscape, and you can bet that three things will drive it:

  • the necessity to produce food locally,
  • the need to organize the activities that support food production locally,
  • and the need—as when starting anything—to begin at a small and manageable scale.

It will happen emergently, which is to say without any committee of experts, savants, or commissars directing it, because the need will be self-evident.

For now, the broad public remains bamboozled, distracted by the terrors of COVID-19, the uproars of race-and-gender tension, the dazzle of Federal Reserve hocus-pocus, the anxiety over climate change, and, of course, the worsening struggle of so many ordinary citizens to just keep paying the bills.

When you’re in a ditch, you don’t call the President of the United States. You need a handful of friends and neighbors with a come-along.

That’s how it’s going to work to bring our small towns back to life.

When the chain stores choke on their broken supply chains, some attentive persons will see an advantage in figuring out how to get and sell necessities by rebuilding local networks of supply and retail.

Farming will be rescued from its artificially induced senility when the trucks stop delivering pallets of frozen pizza and Captain Crunch as dependably as they used to.

And then the need for many other businesses that support farming and value-added production will find willing, earnest go-getters.

The river still runs through town and it runs year-round, powerfully enough to make some things, if there was a reason to, and a will, and a way.

And after a while, you’ll have a fully functioning town again, built on social and economic roles that give people a reason to think that life is worth living.

Wait for it.

I completely endorse this thought and prediction. -MM

What do you think? DO you think that the United States can adapt and revitalize the nation after the fiasco that the current government structure created, or do you think that massive destruction and fiasco must occur to force change?

America declares war on China

From HERE.

US secretary of state declares China the “most serious long-term challenge”

Despite the eruption of military conflict between the United States and Russia over Ukraine, the central aim of US foreign policy is to [1] cripple, [2] isolate and [3] contain China, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a major policy speech Thursday.

Blinken’s remarks, which have been delayed for months following the eruption of the war in Ukraine, represent a public presentation of the Biden administration’s internal strategy document on China, which declares that Beijing is the central target of the US military.

“Even as President Putin’s war continues, we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the international order—and that’s posed by the People’s Republic of China,” Blinken said.

He continued, “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.”

“We will defend our interests against any threat,” Blinken said.

Although he did not use the term, Blinken’s statement embraces the framework of economic “decoupling” developed under Trump. Blinken explicitly repudiated the efforts by the Nixon administration to engage with Beijing. The “China of today is very different from the China of 50 years ago, when President Nixon broke decades of strained relations to become the first US president to visit the country,” he declared.

Blinken continued, “Now, China is a global power with extraordinary reach, influence, and ambition. It’s the second largest economy… it seeks to dominate the technologies and industries of the future. It’s rapidly modernized its military and intends to become a top tier fighting force with global reach. And it has announced its ambition to create a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power.”

Blinken’s statement constitutes yet another embrace of the central foreign policy aim of the Trump administration: preparations for conflict with China. Notably, Blinken invoked the racist conspiracy theory developed by the Trump administration, that COVID-19 was a man-made virus, condemning China’s alleged efforts to block an “independent inquiry into COVID’s origin.”

Modeling his tone and delivery on the rhetoric of former President Obama, Blinken repeatedly made completely contradictory assertions with a straight face. Blinken delivered blood-curdling threats, followed immediately by a declaration that the United States is not threatening anyone.

The war declaration is treated as a “nothing burger” in the United States

From HERE.

Blinken China policy speech: Nothing new to see here

The Secretary’s remarks were a rehash of old statements and the usual mixed messages about US competition with Beijing.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a frankly underwhelming address outlining the Biden administration’s policy towards China on Thursday.

The speech at George Washington University had been scheduled for earlier in the month, but it was postponed because Blinken tested positive for COVID the day before he was set to give it. Coming on the heels of Biden’s visit to Asia and his controversial remarks committing the U.S. to intervene to defend Taiwan, Blinken’s speech offered little more than a rehashing of previous administration statements. 

Administration officials had of course emphasized to reporters in the weeks leading up to the speech that it would not contain any new announcements, and it did not. The speech served mainly as an occasion to give an overview of Biden’s China policy without providing much useful detail of how they intend to execute it. 

Biden’s China policy is modeled closely on that of the Trump administration, and it is arguably the one policy where there is the greatest continuity between Biden and his predecessor. There is good reason why Biden’s policy so far has been perceived as little more than “Trump lite”: not only are there very few substantive changes from the previous administration’s approach, but the Biden administration also fails to emphasize the differences that do exist.

It was some twenty years after the end of the Vietnam war that a security conference was held between leading military figures from both America and Vietnam. Following the conference a U.S. Air Force General approached a Vietnamese General.

The American had been a fighter pilot captain during the conflict, the Vietnamese general had been a Colonel in the N.V.A. The American asked (paraphrasing): “You have to tell me, we knew your Army was continually crossing the Mekong, we flew sorties up and down the river and could never find your bridges.” “I know,” said the Vietnamese, “we built them three feet under water.”

In that instant the American understood why America lost the war. His “Road to Damascus” moment was informed by how the different combatants approached problems. Had that been an American problem, how an Army crosses a wide, deep and fast flowing river, they would have solved the problem differently. They would have built a suspension bridge, they would have had bases on either side to protect it. They would have had Bowling alleys and Burger Kings and would have been flying in Bob Hope to entertain the troops. Why? Because they could, when you have resources they become the answer to every problem. The Vietnamese didn’t have resources, so they were resourceful.

And that, as the American realized, was why the Vietnamese won, and America lost.

The general may have learned a lesson, but if he told anyone, no one listened. Many of the same mistakes were repeated in Afghanistan, with the same results. Resources are not the answer to every problem. As with Americas war on drugs, war on crime, war on poverty, all resources do is obscure the underlying problem and present false, ineffective solutions.

War, and the threat of war is America’s solution to everything. To the man with the hammer, every problem is a nail. America does indeed have a formidable war machine. However, as with all machines it requires fuel to run it, that fuel is the U.S. dollar. Since the Bretton Woods accord at the end of WWII, America has had the privilege of possessing the world’s reserve currency. This enabled America to dictate to all countries outside the Soviet bloc how the global financial system would work. The so-called “free world” was anything but free, it was handcuffed by a system that effectively exercised control over their domestic economies.

In 1973 Richard Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, much to the chagrin of the rest of the world. Despite protests no country was in a position to do much about it. Under its proxies, the IMF and World Bank, it enslaved much of the developing world and prevented it from post-colonial development. The resentment towards America and the weaponisation of its dollar resource should not be underestimated.

Iraq had resources, mainly oil, but what should have been a blessing for the country turned into a curse. Saddam Hussein decided to break from the petrodollar system and sell his oil in other currencies, we all know how that turned out. Similarly, when Ghadafi decided to sell his oil in the newly launched gold-backed dinar, it turned out badly for him and the Libyan people too. Both countries were deliberately destroyed, Tripoli, the once vibrant capital city of Africa’s most prosperous country, now has open slave markets. None should doubt how seriously America takes the subject of the dollar. These were lessons learned by national leaders everywhere. For those curious as to why America needs 1000 foreign military bases in more than 100 countries, that’s why, so no country attempts to stray from the dollar plantation.

The trillions of foreign debt owed by America was never intended to be repaid, just rolled over indefinitely. Fair to say, most countries understand that the monies they were compelled to invest in U.S. treasuries is a sunk cost, and they are not getting it back. With every turn of the printing press the dollar further loses credibility and the asset value of their holdings diminishes further. Every country is looking for alternative ways of doing business that don’t involve the dollar. China and Russia, China and Iran and China with many of its Asian neighbours have been using reciprocal currencies for several years. This amounts to trillions in trade that the Dollar is no longer a party too. Once this is understood it can help provide a context for current events.

Russia has complete control over its central bank and minimal foreign debt. It also possesses immense gold reserves. President Putin has wisely made Russia virtually “sanction proof”. Sure, the West can sanction a few overseas oligarchs, but who cares? Not the Russian people. Removing Russia from the SWIFT payment system will result in come short-term inconvenience, but alternatives are available. Both Russia and China have developed their own interbank payment systems and are now making them available to other countries who wish to by-pass the dollar altogether.

The use of the dollar as a weapon of war has worked well for America, until now. But when a country becomes overly reliant on its resources, it becomes a “one trick pony”, see Saudi Arabia. Stripped of oil, what kind of economy would the Saudis have? They wouldn’t have one at all. America stripped of its unique resource will be in the same position.

The dollar could crash any day, the government has long known this. A government-issued digital currency is planned to replace it. That may work in America, but few countries will want to entangle themselves in another American-dominated financial system. The resource is running dry, and American leadership shows no sign of any resourcefulness.

Interesting times…

The United States is freaking out that resources, and trade are controlled by “enemies”…

From HERE

While proponents of renewables — including President Biden, top White House officials and Democratic lawmakers — have suggested that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown the foolishness of relying on fossil fuels, the crisis has also roiled green tech. Renewable technology such as wind turbines, solar panels, industrial-scale battery storage and electric vehicles require a wide range of critical minerals sourced from around the world.

Russia, China and other hostile nations control most of the global critical mineral supply chain, according to a 2021 White House report on supply chains. 

Following the invasion of Ukraine, the price of nickel surged more than 100%, reaching $100,000 per metric ton because of the threat of sanctions on Russian commodity markets.

“The media hasn’t covered the cost of nickel, cobalt, aluminum, manganese or lithium,” Kish told the DCNF. “Lithium batteries, for example — if you want to call gasoline the fuel of internal combustion engines, lithium is the fuel of electric vehicles.”

Recent volatility in commodity markets triggered by the Ukraine crisis, though, could “engender potentially long-lasting change,” according to Wood Mackenzie.

4 Minute Video of Actual TRENCH FIGHT Between Russian and Ukraine Soldiers – Brutal Bravery

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The ongoing Special Military Operation by Russia into Ukraine, is accurately described as “war.”  We’ve all seen the images and the videos, but few have ever caught the actual moments of bravery by BOTH sides.  The 4m20s video below shows it for all to see.  Russian soldiers entering a Ukrainian army TRENCH.  The bravery by both sides is stunning.  The killing is up-close and real.  This is the reality of actual war.

The video begins with an aerial drone view of a trench, which – for the purposes of this description – I will refer to as a north-south trench line.  Russian soldiers enter from the south.  Ukrainians are along the way toward the north.

As the Russian move slowly northward, Ukrainians begin to move southward.  Think about the actual bravery it takes for men on BOTH sides to do what you will see being done.  The bravery of knowing there are armed men facing you in that very trench, and either you kill them, or they will kill you . . . . and yet soldiers from BOTH sides proceed along anyway.  THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is effin bravery.

As the Russians move northward and the Ukrainians move southward, they cannot see each other for a bit.  Once they get within eye sight, oh dear God how brutal it gets.

The first two soldiers catch a glimpse of each other and shots get fired.  The Ukrainian retreats northward, to no avail.  Fractions of a second later, he goes down.  Shot.  Dead.

Other Ukrainians, in side trenches off the main trench, then one-by-one, engage the advancing Russians.  Machine gun fire hits the sides of the trench.  Grenades get hurled, but most miss.

The battle goes on.

At one point, a grenade lands within arms reach of a Ukrainian; he grabs it and throw it OUT of the trench just in time to save his own life.  Then another.

Then . . .  the grenades hit their mark.  The Ukrainians are killed.

It only last four minutes and twenty seconds.  But the sheer bravery of men on BOTH sides is amazing. While I support RUSSIA, I have an amazing respect for men on BOTH sides.  True bravery exists on BOTH sides. They know death is coming for them, yet they proceed nonetheless.  And some of them die nonetheless.

This is actual war.  Horrifying in its violence, while showing the bravery that mere mortal men, actually have inside.

WOW.

Beehive Banana Muffins

Muffin mix and Cheerios® cereal partner in an easy crunchy-topped treat.

21f7fc1f 2dab 46ce b928 51cbd04633e7
21f7fc1f 2dab 46ce b928 51cbd04633e7

Ingredients

Streusel

  • 1/4 cup Honey Nut Cheerios™ cereal
  • 2 teaspoons Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons packed light brown sugar
  • 2 teaspoons butter or margarine, softened

Muffins

  • 1 1/2 cups Honey Nut Cheerios™ cereal
  • 1 pouch (6.4 oz) Betty Crocker™ Banana Nut Muffin Mix
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1 egg

2022 05 30 21 21
2022 05 30 21 21

Lovely Snaps Capture People With Their Cats Over 100 Years Ago

Along with dogs, cats have been also close friends with humans since a long time. These vintage lovely pics will prove this.

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Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad says new US-led trade group IPEF intended to ‘isolate China’

From HERE

  • He was referring to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework set up by President Joe Biden for the US and Asian countries to work closely together
  • ‘China is a big trading partner for Malaysia, we don’t want to see any tension, any conflict,’ the former prime minister said
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad criticised a new US-led economic grouping on Friday, saying it is intended to isolate China, and will not benefit regional economic growth without Beijing.

US President Joe Biden launched the 13-nation Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) during a visit to Japan earlier this week. He said it would help the United States work more closely with Asian countries in areas including supply chains, digital trade, clean energy and anti-corruption

“The US will always want to use groupings like this in order to isolate China,” Mahathir said at an international conference in Tokyo. “Many countries recognise that this is not an economic grouping but it is truly a political grouping.”

Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd – The Wall – 4K Remastered

One of the best movie scenes / rock music combos of all time.

Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong warns against nuclear ‘arms race’ on Asian soil, isolating China during Tokyo conference

From HERE

  • Singapore’s PM Lee warned that any talk about deploying or developing nuclear weapons in Asia could lead to an unstable outcome in the region
  • Lee also urged that China remain integrated in the region, days after US President Joe Biden visited Asia to launch an Indo-Pacific plan that excludes Beijing
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has sounded the alarm over ongoing public debate on whether US treaty allies South Korea and Japan should deploy or develop their own nuclear weapons.

Speaking at Nikkei’s Future of Asia conference on Thursday, Lee questioned if public discussions would contribute to an “arms race” in the region, amid a refocus on territorial defence capabilities following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“In Japan and South Korea, sensitive issues are being raised publicly, including whether to allow nuclear weapons to be deployed on their soil, or even go a step further and build capabilities to develop such weapons,” Lee said.

The USA is in control of the South Korean military

China withdrew its military from North Korea after the Korean war. Today it has no control of North Korea in either the political or the military establishment. However, it is a completely different story for the USA :
Why US control of the South Korean military is here to stay | The Interpreter
In late October, the US and South Korea agreed to delay the issue of who would control the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) in the event of a war on the Korean Peninsula. In the argot of Korean security, this is known as the reversion of operational control or 'OPCON'. The debate on this issue has raged for a decade. It now appears over; indefinite extensions mean it is probably no longer a meaningful option.

Since the war in the 1950s, the US had maintained control over the entire South Korean military. US Forces Korea (USFK) were integrated with ROK forces into a Combined Forces Command, which was in turned integrated into the United Nations Command. All three commands are headed by the same person – a four-star US general. The current commander is Curtis Scaparotti.

This command structure is unique. Nowhere else does a US commander operate under multiple jurisdictions like this – not in Japan or NATO. (A nice review here.)

Unfortunately, this structure also implicated the US military in Korea's earlier dictatorships. When leftist critics of the US position in Korea argue that the US 'runs' Korean foreign policy or that Washington is responsible for past Korean dictatorial repressions (most notably in Kwangju), this is usually what they mean. US defenders have argued that if dictators like Park Chung-Hee or Chun Doo-Hwan had exercised full control of the South Korean military, the repressions would have been much worse.

The Full Article HERE

China’s Share of Global Chip Sales Now Surpasses Taiwan’s, Closing in on Europe’s and Japan’s

Global chip sales from Chinese companies are on the rise, largely due to increasing U.S.-China tensions and a whole-of-nation effort to advance China’s chip sector, including government subsidies, procurement preferences, and other preferential policies.

Just five years ago, China’s semiconductor device sales were $13 billion, accounting for only 3.8% of global chip sales. In 2020, however, the Chinese semiconductor industry registered an unprecedented annual growth rate of 30.6% to reach $39.8 billion in total annual sales, according to an SIA analysis [1]. The jump in growth helped China capture 9% of the global semiconductor market in 2020, surpassing Taiwan for two consecutive years (2018, and 2019) and closely following Japan and the EU, which each took 10% of market share.

Sales data for 2021 are not yet available.

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2022 05 30 21 05

If China’s semiconductor development continues its strong momentum – maintaining 30% CAGR over the next three years – and assuming growth rates of industries in other countries stay the same, the Chinese semiconductor industry could generate $116 billion in annual revenue by 2024, capturing upwards of 17.4% of global market share [2]. This would place China behind only the United States and South Korea in global market share.

2022 05 30 21 11
2022 05 30 21 11

Chinese Semiconductor Firms Post Impressive Growth

Across all four subsegments of the Chinese semiconductor supply chain – fabless, IDM, foundry, and OSAT – Chinese firms recorded rapid increases in revenue last year, representing annual growth rates of 36%, 23%, 32%, 23%, respectively, based on an SIA analysis. Leading Chinese semiconductor firms are on track to expand domestically, and even globally, in several submarkets.

2022 05 30 21 12
2022 05 30 21 12

SIA analysis further shows that in 2020, China held an impressive 16% market share in the global fabless semiconductor segment, ranking third after the U.S. and Taiwan, and up from 10% in 2015 [7]. Benefiting from China’s massive consumer and 5G market, Huawei’s HiSilicon, China’s largest chip designer, generated nearly $10 billion in revenue in 2020, despite tightened export control restrictions (largely due to significant stockpiling suggested by official Chinese trade data). Other Chinese fabless firms, such as communications chip supplier UNISOC, MCU and NOR flash designer GigaDevice, fingerprint chip firm Goodix, and image sensor designers Galaxycore and OmniVision (a U.S.-headquartered corporation acquired by China), have all reported a 20-40% annual growth rate to become China’s top fabless firms. Moreover, in addition to supplying Chinese OMEs, GigaDevice, OmniVision, and Goodix have entered top 3 global smartphone vendors’ supply chains [8].

2022 05 30 21 13
2022 05 30 21 13

Meanwhile, Chinese consumer electronics and home appliance OEMs and leading internet firms have also been ramping up efforts to expand into the semiconductor sector by designing chips in-house and making investments in established semiconductor firms, with notable progress made in designing advanced chips and building domestic supply chains over the past two years [9].

China’s Chip Manufacturing Expansion Continues

China also maintains robust growth in building out its semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, with 28 additional fab construction projects totaling $26 billion in new planned funding announced in 2021 [10]. SMIC and other Chinese semiconductor leaders have further expanded their partnerships with local governments to construct additional joint venture fabs, with a focus on mature technology nodes [11]. Wafer manufacturing startups are continuing to spring up in the trailing-edge fabrication field, backed by government incentives [12].

2022 05 30 21 15
2022 05 30 21 15

On the chip manufacturing front, due to the inclusion of Huawei and SMIC on the U.S. government’s Entity List (China’s most advanced chip designer and foundry, respectively), the Chinese semiconductor industry has largely suspended advanced logic node manufacturing development and redirected most capital to mature fabrication technology. As a result of this change, from September 2020 to November 2021, Chinese wafer manufacturers have added nearly 500K wafer per month (WPM) capacities in trailing nodes (>=14nm), and only an additional 10K in capacity for advanced nodes. China’s wafer capacity increase alone accounted for 26% of the worldwide total [13]. In 2021, China also started commercial shipments of indigenously manufactured mobile 19nm DDR4 DRAM devices, and 64-layer 3D NAND Flash chips and started 128-layer products [14]. While the Chinese memory industry is still at an early stage of development, Chinese memory firms are expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 40-50% in output and become highly competitive over the next five years [15]. Regarding backend production, China is a global leader in outsourced assembly, packaging, and testing (OSAT), with its top three OSAT players collectively holding more than 35% of the global market share [16].

All indications are that China’s rapid growth in semiconductor chip sales is likely to continue due in large part to the unwavering commitment from the central government and robust policy support in the face of deteriorating U.S-China relations. While there remains a long way to go for China to catch up with existing industry leaders – especially in advanced node foundry production, equipment, and materials – the gap is expected to narrow over the next decade as Beijing sharpens its focus on semiconductor self-reliance during the current 14th Five-Year Plan [17].

From HERE

Chinese scientists call for plan to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites

Chinese military researchers have called for the development of a “hard kill” weapon to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system if it threatens China’s national security.

The researchers drew attention to Starlink’s “huge potential for military applications” and the need for China to develop countermeasures to surveill, disable or even destroy the growing satellite megaconstellation. Their paper was published last month in the journal China’s Modern Defence Technology. A translated copy of the paper is available here.

There are ONLY 70 days left until catastrophe | Redacted with Clayton Morris

If you live in the West, you need to pay attention to this.

More Pictures from the Past

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2022 05 29 17 28
2022 05 29 17 28

A monkeypox virus particle captured via a coloured transmission electron micrograph UK HEALTH SECURITY AGENCY / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

 

The Russian military has spent over two months now detailing the extent and reach of the US military-biological research effort in Ukraine, revealing that the Pentagon has used the country as a testing ground for the study of deadly bioagents, and uncovering the tangled web of military, corporate, and political interests behind these activities.

Russian Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defence Troops chief Igor Kirillov issued a fresh briefing on Friday, providing new information on US military biological activities in Ukraine, as well as details on what his troops know about monkeypox, a smallpox cousin which has caused a global health scare in recent weeks.

 The Pentagon, he said, introduced a mandatory smallpox vaccination back in 2003, with US diplomats and medical personnel also required to be jabbed against the infectious disease.

 “This indicates that the United States considers the smallpox pathogen a priority pathogenic agent for combat use, and ongoing vaccination measures are aimed at protecting their own military contingents”, Kirillov said.

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2022 05 29 17 29

Excerpt from 2003 memorandum on Pentagon’s mandatory smallpox vaccination programme.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

 

The complete 2003 US “Army Smallpox Preparedness and Vaccination Program Implementation Plan” document can be found here.

“The Pentagon’s interest in this infection is far from accidental. The return of the causative agent of smallpox would be a global catastrophe for all of humanity”, Kirillov suggested, emphasising that smallpox is 10 times more lethal than COVID-19.

Citing seized documentation, Kirillov revealed that American instructors trained employees of biolabs in Ukraine on how to respond to an emergency smallpox outbreak. Ukrainian-language documents on this training can be found here.

Smallpox was eradicated in the late 1970s thanks to global efforts, with vaccinations against the disease subsequently halted by most countries. However, health authorities in countries around the world have recently begun expressing concerns about monkeypox, after cases began to spread earlier this month.

Banana-Chocolate Chip Muffins

All natural fat free yogurt helps make these muffins moist and delicious!

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0bd24196 5f9b 414c 9fb4 cdfc6d22027f

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 small)
  • 1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
  • 3/4 cup Yoplait® All Natural Fat Free plain yogurt (from 2-lb container)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 3/4 cups Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2/3 cup chocolate chips

2022 05 30 21 23
2022 05 30 21 23

A Secret Roswell Journal Becomes The Focus Of A New UFO Documentary

From HERE

I saw this article, and consider it interesting. I thought that I would share the article with everyone. -MM

A secret journal offers new clues about the nature of the alleged 1947 AD UFO crash at Roswell in the New Mexico desert, or does it? Before we kick off, this isn’t one of these Reddit stories that emerged from some basement decorated with posters of the Starship Enterprise and Chewbacca. Quite the opposite.

Live Science is one off the internet’s more respected academic media outlets and today they tell the story of a hitherto unknown personal diary belonging to Major Jesse Marcel, a head intelligence officer at the Roswell Army Air Field. The secret Roswell journal could change the narrative of this famous UFO event. In particular, the secret Roswell journal may contain secret coded observations that will help to “clarify” what really happened in Roswell in 1947 AD.

Marcel investigated the famous Roswell site in New Mexico where in 1947 a UFO is believed by many to have crashed. Furthermore, he claimed to have recovered some of the debris from whatever ditched in the desert that July night near the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). Newspaper photos at the time showed Marcel with pieces of metallic material and on the afternoon of July 8, 1947 AD he disclosed to the media “the crash and recovery of a flying disc.” However, the following day, an army official made a statement saying that a weather balloon had fallen to earth, “not a flying saucer.”

Will The Secret Roswell Journal Change Everything?

The Roswell story now takes a new turn since Major Marcel’s family revealed they had kept his personal secret Roswell journal which contains “hitherto unknown clues about the crash.”

The secret diary and its equally secret contents will soon be presented on History Channel´s History’s Greatest Mysteries series in an episode called Roswell: The First Witness .

The episode was released on December 12th, Saturday, 2020 AD.

The show host, Ben Smith, is a former CIA operative and the show’s lead investigator. He thinks it is very unusual that the day after the government claimed they had recovered a UFO they switched stories and maintained it was merely “a weather balloon,” Smith told Live Science .

This story is another in a long line of recent reports pertaining to UFOs. According to The Guardian in 2017 AD a former Pentagon official confirmed the existence of a federal agency that had been “secretly investigating UFOs since 2007.”

Then, in 2018, U.S. Navy pilots reported “three encounters with fast-moving UAP, or unidentified aerial phenomena” better known to us civies as UFOs.

And building up this emerging alien narrative, officially declassified videos of these occurrences were published in April of this year, as previously reported on Live Science .

Secret Roswell Journal: A Problem Of Might, May And Could

Let´s now return to Major Jesse Marcel, the author of the secret Roswell journal.

He investigated the site at Roswell and recovered what he believed to be debris from a flying saucer . In 1997 AD, Time published an article saying Marcel told an interviewer at the time that “he believed” the object that crashed in the New Mexico desert had extraterrestrial origins.

Now, a forensic analysis of Marcel´s secret Roswell journal “could reveal” coded messages that he wrote about the crash at the time that it happened, Ben Smith said.

This application of the word “could” will no doubt have skeptics raging, because they all know what’s most probably coming here. If the diary really contained any actual evidence that the Roswell incident was nothing more than a collapsed weather balloon we would certainly have heard about it by now. Unless of course thousands of unpaid interns and staff at the network have all kept quiet, doubters can argue. Perhaps the skeptics greatest argument is presented in plain sight in the newspaper photograph of Marcel on the evening of the crash. To all but the most committed believers in extraterrestrials it is perfectly clear that Marcel is holding a piece of a crumpled (crashed) weather balloon.

When the History Channel episode airs and unavoidably “no evidence” of extraterrestrials is offered, perhaps then maybe some “believers” will consider the content of the Ancient Origins news article I wrote about this only last month.

A team of Oxford University researchers recently applied statistics to the question “are we alone” and concluded that “life on earth is probably a unique universal phenomena, and that it´s ‘extremely unlikely’ that any other intelligent life exists anywhere else in the universe.” This is a profound claim that sceptics love and believers loathe.

And the same extreme opinions are likely to flood across social media channels when the details of Major Marcel’s secret Roswell journal are revealed.

US Biolabs in Nigeria

Kirillov took note of the World Health Organisation’s recent determination that the causative agent of the monkeypox virus being met today originated in Nigeria, and pointed out that this is “another state upon whose territory the United States has deployed its biological infrastructure”.

“According to available information, there are at least four US-controlled biolabs” in the African nation”, Kirillov said.

2022 05 29 17 30
2022 05 29 17 30

Cropped excerpt from Russian Defence Ministry briefing slide showing locations of suspected US-controlled biolabs in Nigeria,
including two in Abuja, one in Zaria, and one in Lagos. © Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

 

Kirillov also pointed to media reports on the 2021 Munich Security Conference-Nuclear Threat Initiative simulation modelling the outbreak of a bioengineered, highly deadly strain of monkeypox by terrorists, calling the exercise “an odd coincidence which needs additional verification by specialists”.

2022 05 29 17 33
2022 05 29 17 33

The officer emphasised that against the backdrop of repeated US violations of biosafety requirements and evidence of the careless storage of pathogenic biomaterials, including smallpox, the WHO should investigate the activities of US-funded labs in the cities of Abuja, Zaria, and Lagos, Nigeria, and inform the international community on their findings.

The RCB Defence Troops chief also expressed concerns about the safety of smallpox virus samples inside the United States itself.

“The lack of proper control and the violation of biosecurity requirements in the United States could lead to the use of this pathogen for terrorist purposes. Between 2014 and 2021, unaccounted for vials containing the virus were repeatedly found in the laboratories of the US Food and Drug Administration, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland, and the Centre for Vaccine Research in Pennsylvania”, Kirillov said.

Kirillov stressed that the work of these labs violated a 1996 resolution by the WHO, which prohibited smallpox’s causative agent from being stored in all but one US-based laboratory – the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

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2022 05 29 17 34

1996 resolution by the Forty-Ninth World Health Assembly requiring the United States and Russia to hold
smallpox virus samples at only one facility per country. © Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

New Details on Pentagon-Funded Labs in Ukraine

During Friday’s presentation, Kirillov also provided new documentation on the operation of nearly a dozen military-biological projects organised by the Pentagon in Ukraine, including deadly agents and “economically significant” infections, funded to the tune of over $8.01 million between 2008 and 2019.

The officer drew attention to a 2007 memorandum prepared by the Office of the US Secretary of Defence regarding UP-2, a project mapping dangerous pathogens in Ukraine, whose “main purpose”, in Kirillov’s words, was “to collect information on the molecular composition of pathogens characteristic to Ukraine, and to transfer strain samples”.

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2022 05 29 17 36

DTRA document on the approval of project concept UP-2 (Multi-pathogen Mapping), to be carried out in accordance with the
2005 “Policy Guidance for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program in Ukraine.”
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

 

The complete six-page “Partner Project Agreement” on UP-2 can be found here.

A similar memorandum was prepared for project UP-1, studying rickettsia and other diseases spread by arthropods, Kirillov said, pointing out that the document required for all of the dangerous pathogens collected to be transferred to the Central Reference Laboratory in Kiev, allowing them to be transferred to the US.

The “Partner Project Agreement” on project UP-1 can be found here.

2022 05 29 17 3r6
2022 05 29 17 3r6

DoD Memorandum approving project UP-1 dated 19 February, 2008.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence
The RCB Defence Troops also published documentation on UP-4, a programme investigating the possibility of spreading dangerous infections through migratory birds, which the MoD has already previously reported on at length. The “UP-4 Project Option Year 2 Quarterly Report” for the period from October 2019-January 2020 shows that a total of 991 specimens from wild birds were collected by researchers.

2022 05 29 17 37
2022 05 29 17 37

Excerpt from Defense Threat Reduction Agency report on project UP-4.

© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

 

Nine pages of the 50+ page DTRA report, prepared by Pentagon contractor Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp in collaboration with Metabiota, can be found here.

The documents released Friday by the RCB Defence Troops also included a detailed 2019 Black & Veatch report for the DTRA detailing its activities in Ukraine, including work on some 19 separate research projects, and collaboration with a host of Ukrainian and international organisations, including the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, the USDA, the CDC, several American universities, and Western pharmaceutical giants. Dozens of pages from the 63-page document, containing a goldmine of important details, can be found and downloaded here.

2022 05 29 17 39
2022 05 29 17 39

Page from 2019 report by Pentagon contractor Black & Veatch on some of the company’s many projects in Ukraine.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence
.

Chinese Propaganda Posters From The Cultural Revolution Ages, 1960s-1970s

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“Speed Up Agriculture Using Modern Machinery.” 1971.

In 1966 Mao Zedong, the Communist leader of China, started a political campaign that became known as the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Mao called on China’s youth to help him purge capitalist influences and bourgeois thinking in government, teaching, the media and arts, and to reinvigorate the revolutionary spirit.

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“Fully criticize the Chinese Khrushchev from a political, ideological, and theoretical perspective.” 1967.

Calling themselves The Red Guards, radical students set out to destroy the “four olds”: old ideas, customs, habits and culture. They spearheaded the interrogation, humiliation and beatings of teachers and intellectuals, and traveled the country destroying cultural heritage. During the Cultural Revolution traditional artists were condemned as counter-revolutionaries and their work destroyed. A new style of art was required that supported the Maoist line and served the worker, peasant and soldier.

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“Greet the 1970s with the new victories of revolution and production.” 1970.

The decade was marked by purges and power struggles at the upper echelons of government, and the mobilization of masses of young people to enforce Maoist thought. One of the primary vessels for disseminating instructions and models of behavior was propaganda art. Vivid posters were created to inspire citizens to put forth their labor towards agriculture, industry and national defense, as well as concerns such as hygiene and family planning.

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“Produce More Coal and Support the Socialist Construction.” c. 1970.

Slogans are often used alongside imagery in posters, usually written in bold, Chinese script. They include pro-revolution messages about “working hard”, “uniting for victory” and “working towards the general communist goal. “Bright” colors are used in many of the posters and red appears a lot as it is the color of communism and revolution. Much of the work that came out of the Cultural Revolution is attributed to committees or groups, rather than individuals. Thousands of copies of the posters were printed and sold cheaply as the establishment at the time wanted the posters to be something that everyone should have on their walls at home. Many of the posters were painted by hand and then printed as lithographs, a process involving using stone, oil and chemicals to create prints.

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“Never Tire of Training to Destroy The Enemy.” c. 1970.

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“Grow Strongly Under the Broad Sky and Earth.” c. 1970.

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“Protect the Forest.” c. 1970.

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“Prepare for Struggle, Prepare for Famine, Work for the People.” c. 1970.

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“If You Want to Prosper, You Must Control The Population.” c. 1970.

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“Prevent Hepatitis by Washing.” c. 1970.

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“Learn Science, Build The Country.” c. 1970.

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“Set a Good Example, Fight Corruption.” c. 1970.

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“Teach the Younger Generation.” c. 1970.

Intel: Ukraine Losing 1500 Soldiers per day to death, wounding, capture, surrender, or desertion

“Intercepted communications from the Ukrainian command reveal their aim to build a layered defense from Poltava through Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhia, Krivoy Rog, and Nikolaev – which happens to be a shield for the already fortified Odessa. None of that guarantees success against the incoming Russian onslaught.

It’s always important to remember that Operation Z started on February 24 with around 150,000 or so fighters – and definitely not Russia’s elite forces. And yet they liberated Mariupol and destroyed the elite neo-Nazi Azov battalion in a matter of only fifty days, cleaning up a city of 400,000 people with minimal casualties.

While fighting a real war on the ground – not those indiscriminate US bombings from the air – in a huge country against a large army, facing multiple technical, financial and logistical challenges, the Russians also managed to liberate Kherson, Zaporizhia and virtually the whole area of the ‘baby twins,’ the popular republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russia’s ground forces commander, General Aleksandr Dvornikov, has turbo-charged missile, artillery and air strikes to a pace five times faster than during the first phase of Operation Z, while the Ukrainians, overall, are low or very low on fuel, ammo for artillery, trained specialists, drones, and radars.

What American armchair and TV generals simply cannot comprehend is that in Russia’s view of this war – which military expert Andrei Martyanov defines as a “combined arms and police operation” – the two top targets are the destruction of all military assets of the enemy while preserving the life of its own soldiers.

So while losing tanks is not a big deal for Moscow, losing lives is. And that accounts for those massive Russian bombings; each military target must be conclusively destroyed. Precision strikes are crucial.

There is a raging debate among Russian military experts on why the Ministry of Defense does not go for a fast strategic victory. They could have reduced Ukraine to rubble – American style – in no time. That’s not going to happen. The Russians prefer to advance slowly and surely, in a sort of steamroller pattern. They only advance after sappers have fully surveilled the terrain; after all there are mines everywhere.

The overall pattern is unmistakable, whatever the NATO spin barrage. Ukrainian losses are becoming exponential – as many as 1,500 killed or wounded each day, everyday. If there are 50,000 Ukrainians in the several Donbass cauldrons, they will be gone by the end of June.

Ukraine must have lost as many as 20,000 soldiers in and around Mariupol alone. That’s a massive military defeat, largely surpassing Debaltsevo in 2015 and previously Ilovaisk in 2014. The losses near Izyum may be even higher than in Mariupol. And now come the losses in the Severodonetsk corner.

We’re talking here about the best Ukrainian forces. It doesn’t even matter that only 70 percent of Western weapons sent by NATO ever make it to the battlefield: the major problem is that the best soldiers are going…going…gone, and won’t be replaced. Azov neo-Nazis, the 24th Brigade, the 36th Brigade, various Air Assault brigades – they all suffered losses of 60+ percent or have been completely demolished.

So the key question, as several Russian military experts have stressed, is not when Kiev will ‘lose’ as a point of no return; it is how many soldiers Moscow is prepared to lose to get to this point.

The entire Ukrainian defense is based on artillery. So the key battles ahead involve long-range artillery. There will be problems, because the US is about to deliver M270 MLRS systems with precision-guided ammunition, capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 70 kilometers or more.

Russia, though, has a counterpunch: the Hermes Small Operational-Tactical Complex, using high precision munitions, possibility of laser guidance, and a range of more than 100 kilometers. And they can work in conjunction with the already mass-produced Pantsir air defense systems….

…the imminent loss of Severodonetsk and Lysichansk will ring serious alarm bells in Washington and Brussels, because that will represent the beginning of the end of the current regime in Kiev. And that, for all practical purposes – and beyond all the lofty rhetoric of ‘the west stands with you’ – means heavy players won’t be exactly encouraged to bet on a sinking ship…

…Zelensky will be fine. He’s protected by British and American special forces. The family is reportedly living in an $8 million mansion in Israel. He owns a $34 million villa in Miami Beach, and another in Tuscany. Average Ukrainians were lied to, robbed, and in many cases, murdered, by the Kiev gang he presides over – oligarchs, security service (SBU) fanatics, neo-Nazis. And those Ukrainians that remain (10 million have already fled) will continue to be treated as expendable.”

Put simply, Ukraine is losing the war.  They are losing fast. They are losing big.

Short of direct NATO intervention, there is no hope at all for Ukraine to prevail militarily.

Ukraine’s Own Security Service Warned About Dangers of Cooperation With US

Friday’s document dump also included a letter by a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer expressing concern about epidemiological threats posed by US involvement in biological activities in Ukraine.

The letter, written by Col. A.A. Lemeshov, deputy head of the SBU Directorate in the Kherson Region and addressed to Col G.I. Kuznetsov, deputy chief of the Anti-Terrorist Centre and Analytical Department head Col. S.I. Shanaida, was sent on 28 February 2017, and focused on the safety of Ukrainian laboratories and the threat of biological terrorism.

Lemeshov bluntly warned that;

"recently, the potential threat to the epidemiological and epizootic situation in our country has taken on increasing importance, due to attempts by the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency through the Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp to establish control over the operations of microbiological laboratories in Ukraine for the study of pathogens of especially dangerous infectious diseases which can be used to create new biological weapons or improve old ones".

The officer stressed that “in order to maintain the stability of biosecurity in Ukraine, and to prevent attempts to accumulate pathogen samples in its territories under the pretext of ‘studying the specifics of local strains and determining the degree of virulence of the obtained samples among the population’, it is advisable to track the activity of Black & Veatch Special Project Corp’s ‘programmes of involvement in joint biological activities'”.

The original, Ukrainian-language document can be found here. A Russian-language translation can be found here.

2022 05 29 17 41
2022 05 29 17 41

Russian Defence Ministry photograph of document by Ukrainian Security Service officer explicitly warning of the dangers
created by US military-biological activities in Ukraine to the nation’s security. © Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

 

Kirillov’s RCB Defence Troops have spent months briefing media on the extent of US military biological activities in Ukraine, citing seized documents and other materials to reveal how the Pentagon, US government agencies and corporations have cooperated with their Ukrainian counterparts to engage in dangerous research on Ukrainian territory.

Earlier this month, Russian Senator Konstantin Kosachev indicated that Moscow intends to initiate a formal probe at the United Nations into possible US violations of the Biological Weapons Convention in Ukraine.

2022 05 29 17 4d1
2022 05 29 17 4d1

 [Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya]

 

In a document-filled briefing earlier this month, Kirillov revealed that in addition to its use by the US military to study deadly pathogens, Ukraine has acted as a guinea pig for Western drug companies, including Pfizer, Battelle, Gilead, Dynaport Vaccine, AbbVie, Eli Lilly & Co, Merck, Moderna, and others, to test medicines which could not be tested in their home countries for safety reasons.

The Danger of Underestimating Russia

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When I was a wee young thing on Wall Street, I would hear a warning regularly from colleagues at Lazard, about “believing your own PR”. Interesting, this phrase was not a part of the general Wall Street lexicon. It was important at Lazard because it was a top M&A boutique (this was in the days of Felix Rohatyn) and therefore made its living off managing the abnormal psychology of CEOs. Specifically, the firm’s deal flow depended on maintaining these personal relationships. Therefore Lazard partners did what they could to prevent CEO self-destruction.

Unfortunately, it’s become painfully obvious that in just the same way the West has become hoist on its Russia sanctions petard, so too has it blinded itself with its anti-Russia propaganda. The jingoism and fabrications have become so extreme and relentless that any erstwhile realist has to go to non-mainstream, or at least non-US/non-European MSM sources. And even then, if you don’t buy what Ukraine is spinning, and is being amplified uncritically in the Western media, you must be some sort of turncoat.

Admittedly, we’re seeing some signs of cracks, such as a New York Times editorial telling Team Biden that Ukraine needs to negotiate. Similarly, at the World Economic Forum, Henry Kissinger also said negotiations needed to start in the next two months, and Italy has devised a proposal and even sent it to Russia.

But there’s massive denial about facts on the ground. The militias and Russia have cleared Mariupol, control the Donetsk oblast and are very close to taking Lugansk…and with it, thousands to as many as 20,000 of Ukraine’s best fighting forces. Russia has started shelling military targets in Zaporizhzhia, a major industrial city in the Zaporizhzhia oblast, just to the west of the Donetsk oblast on the Black Sea coast.

Kissinger proposed returning to status quo ante, when Russia’s red lines as of the end of March, at the time of the last serious negotiating session in Istanbul, were much higher than that. Russia had also made clear that the longer the war went on, the more its demands would increase. Yet Italy, which is getting unhappy about the costs of the conflict, is also now seeking a settlement and apparently put forward a proposal. I have yet to see it but it’s already been rejected by former President and deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev….of all things on Telegram. Admittedly Medvedev is speaking out of school; Lavrov said the government was studying it. Nevertheless (see starting at 6:50, courtesy Alex Christoforu):

But no, it’s just pure stream of consciousness by European graphomaniacs….One has the feeling it was prepared not by diplomats but by local political analysts who have read too many provincial newspapers and use only Ukrainian fakes.

Medvedev then goes through three of the four major points and dismisses each. For instance:

3. The full autonomy of Crimea within Ukraine

This is direct boorishness toward Russia, a threat to its territorial integrity and a pretext for starting a full-fledged war. There is not and never will be a political force in Russia that would agree even to discuss the fate of Crimea. That would be a national betrayal.

There is no point in analyzing it further. This is just an attempt to save Ukraine some face….However, Ukraine does not want to negotiate at all. They chose to forget about the Russian draft peace treaty long ago. It is as if there is no such thing at all. They are counting only on the flow of money and weapons from Western countries. War until the victorious end.

In vain.

The cognitive dissonance is impressive. German chancellor Olaf Scholz and US Defense Secretary LLoyd Austin both called Russia seeking a ceasefire. You don’t do that if you are winning. But the Western media has so inflated the position of Ukraine and its supposedly invincible military that keeps kicking Russian ass that it would take a massive change in media messaging just to get the public to accept that Ukraine would have to cede territory, let alone make other concessions like neutrality.

The US and Ukraine have both proven so “agreement incapable” that Russia has likely concluded it needs to take matters into its own hands and execute rather than negotiate demilitarization and denazification. In this blogger’s humble opinion, that means at a minimum taking Odessa, since that’s another big nest of Azovities and other nasty types. And as much as Russia’s seemingly leisurely prosecution of the war has enabled the Western press to denigrate it, it’s probably the only sound way to deal with Ukraine’s bunkers in Donbass. Plus the sanctions blowback gets ever more painful as the military campaign grinds on.

Most of this will be familiar ground to regular readers. I wanted to widen the frame a bit. The Western ‘tude towards Russia, that it should be willing to go full Emily Litella “Never mind” and simply walk away from its successes so far and its underlying security concerns, seems to be rooted in US/Anglo chauvinism and persistent underestimation of Russia. If you managed to miss it yesterday, be sure to see Dimitri Orlov’s The Secret American Plan to Make Russia Great Again.

Below are two different examples of US misappraisal. The first, embedded at the end of this post, is the latest Defense Intelligence Agency Threat Estimate. We wrote about it shortly after it was presented, in early May. What seemed noteworthy then was its pointed failure to say much about Ukraine, particularly its capabilities and prospects. This seemed like damning with faint praise. We also took note of quite a few reality-challenged claims, such as Russia wanting to challenge the US and undermine American democracy.

Reader scarnoc voiced broader concerns:

It is quite frightening to me that this is a threat assessment that is used to explain things to congress-lizards and their staffers. The assessment underplays Russian conventional and strategic military capabilities. Current capabilities (particularly strategic nuclear ones) are downplayed or explained as possible future developments instead of current realities.There is a false pretense that sanctions are slowing or harming Russian military-industrial output. There is no detailed description of Russia’s very public and oft-repeated war aims, or of their medium and long term diplomatic aims, none of which have been withdrawn or changed by Moscow. The Russians still intend to push NATO back to its 90s borders, for example. If anything, those medium/long term goals have expanded.

The special relationship between Beijing and Moscow is described as a series of formal agreements instead of an informal but very close ‘friendship’ that both sides have repeatedly called ‘better than an alliance’. A relatively uninformed reader would conclude that there is space between Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin that USA can exploit. Lizards and their staffers, being creatures who live primarily on TV news, are by definition uninformed, and they will draw all the wrong lessons from these parts of the report.

The section on Iran does not mention the depth of friendship and cooperation between Iran and Russia, nor the depth of Iran’s growing relationship with PRC.

There is little in this assessment that explains to the reader just how immense the Russian threat to American unipolarity is right now, today. Given how American congressional and executive leadership talks about Russia like it needs to be completely erased and destroyed, I don’t see any mechanism in front of us that will de-escalate this conflict. Russia will continue to act in accordance with it’s own power and sense of national destiny, stupid American elites will continue to discount and misunderstand that Russian power and overestimate their own power, until at some point we arrive at nuclear exchange. I really, dearly hope I am wrong. I’m putting curtains up in the bunker at this point.

Another example is Putin’s speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. This is an important speech and I urge you to watch it in full.

This event was in the time frame where Putin still harbored hopes of Russia being able to operate like a normal advanced economy and having cooperative relations with other countries. But those in the US/NATO defense community who hadn’t already taken a dislike to him already used this talk as an excuse. Putin had the temerity to speak directly as opposed to deferentially, pointed out the world was moving to multipolarity by virtue of the growing economic heft of countries like China and India, and worst of all, that the US was threatening the notion of international law by launching wars without getting UN approval. That in turn jeopardized stability since no country could feel safe. I am sure quite a few leaders year later took note of how Gadaffi was our friend until suddenly he wasn’t.

Putin also used the bully pulpit to call out NATO installing new bases closer to Russia even as Russia was honoring commitments as a provocation that reduced, not enhanced security. And he also called out how WTO/Western development programs for poor countries asked them to open their markets, particularly to subsidized agricultural goods, yet held back higher-tech goods:

On the one hand, financial resources are allocated for programs to help the world’s poorest countries – and at times substantial financial resources. But – and many here know this – linked with the development of the same donor country’s companies….one hand distributes charitable help and the other hand not only preserves economic backwardness but also reaps the profits thereof.

Ouch.

John McCain reportedly looked daggers at Putin the entire time. Apparently pointing out what should have been an obvious trajectory of events, as well as risks of the current course of US action, was seen as presumptuous. Countries like Russia are supposed to know their place. The reason Putin’s remarks stung was that they were on target. The US of 2007 wasn’t even secure enough to laugh off Putin’s observations as that of an arriviste who didn’t know enough of secret dealings to render judgement.

And the US and the West continue to act to our own detriment out of a distorted sense of amour propre.

The Prisoner 14

Here it is again, in case you missed it.

“Living in Harmony”.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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Jay Chou and one toke over the line with Pork Ragu, nonsense about Ukraine, and a giant strawberry

It’s pouring rain out today. I mean that it is a deluge. The weather, as of late, has been very unusual. But we are all fine. I hear that this May it snowed a few feet in Colorado. Indeed that is odd, but between the Monkey-pox, and Joe Biden deciding to start world war 3 with China and Russia simultaneously, and the lack of baby formula, I mean… what are you going to do?

Perhaps a giant strawberry is what you need right now.

Howdy. Buckle up and enjoy yourself here today.

FLASH: BELARUS PRESIDENTIAL ORDER — UKRAINE

Lukashenko large
Lukashenko large

Something very unusual, big, and serious, is happening . . .

President Viktor Lukashenko of Belarus has ordered the armed forces of Belarus to immediately create an operational command to handle “the Ukrainian direction.”

Appearing on national television in his full military uniform, Lukashenko told the nation trouble is coming.

The fact that he put on his uniform for this says it all.

UPDATE 3:11 PM EDT —

Lukashenko also saying that Belarus expects “pressure” from Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, in particular, with the help of NATO troops stationed there.

Hal Turner Remarks

As readers of this site will recall, it was just Tuesday into Wednesday of this week that the country of Hungary, enacted  a “WARTIME EMERGENCY” declaration despite no hostilities in or near Hungary.  (Story Here)

Now, we have Belarus ordering its military to stand-up a new Ukrainian Command . . . .

Something wicked this way comes . . . .

Slow-Cooker Pork Ragu

This slow-cooked pasta sauce goes well beyond the average spaghetti topper with all-day slow-cooked flavor. Pork shoulder, bacon and aromatic vegetables cook in a crushed tomato sauce and thicken to a hearty, rich consistency that pairs well with rigatoni pasta in particular. Make it a day ahead when you have some extra time, and let the flavors mellow and meld—or just be sure to save some leftovers! This take on a classic Italian sauce is sure to impress your dinner table regulars and special guests alike.

 

3750c57e 0977 4ef3 8052 46768c6e20d5 1
3750c57e 0977 4ef3 8052 46768c6e20d5 1

Ingredients

  • 8 slices applewood smoked bacon, chopped (half of a 12-oz package)
  • 1 1/2 lb boneless pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 1/2 cups chopped onions
  • 2 cups chopped carrots
  • 5 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
  • 1/2 cup Progresso™ chicken broth (from 32-oz carton)
  • 1 can (28 oz) Muir Glen™ organic fire roasted crushed tomatoes, undrained
  • 6 cups cooked rigatoni pasta (about 4 1/2 cups uncooked)
  • Shredded Parmesan cheese, if desired
  • Chopped fresh oregano leaves, basil or Italian (flat-leaf) parsley, if desired

2022 05 25 19 23
2022 05 25 19 23

One Toke Over the Line

Welcome to the 1970s.

The United States has long demonstrated to the global community its disregard for international regulations, along with its readiness to unleash a war with the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) anywhere in the world. This is what the Americans did in Japan, when they dropped nuclear bombs on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

There have subsequently been many other incidents documented and reported to the UN which involved the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons by the United States against its opponents not only in Korea, but also in other regions of the world. Thus, in the period from 1949 to 1988 the Soviet Union submitted to the UN evidence about 13 facts of large- and small-scale use of WMDs with the US involvement. Here are just some of them.

  • – In 1951-1953, the USSR forwarded to the UN the documented evidence about the US’s use of bioweapons against North Korea and China during the Korean War. Those crimes garnered broad media coverage even in the US itself, and were proved by declassified documentary information;
  • – in 1948-1960, the UN received some documented evidence of the application of “scorched earth” tactics by the British army, backed by the United States, with the use of chemical and bioweapons against civilians in Malaya;
  • – in 1961-1971, the UN received evidence of the use of the same policy by the US Armed Forces in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand;
  • – In 1982, Moscow forwarded to the UN documentary evidence of CIA’s financial support to breeding and proliferation of genetically modified malaria-carrying mosquitoes in Afghanistan. The biolabs in Pakistan were used for these R&D activities;
  • – in 1985, the USSR submitted to the UN evidence of the activities of US secret biolabs in South Africa and Israel, studying the impact of certain biological agents on certain racial (Negroid) and ethnic (Arab) groups;
  • – at the same period, the Soviet Union submitted to the UN incriminating evidence, supported by 25 countries, about the possible involvement of the US military laboratory at Fort Detrick (Maryland, USA) in the development of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), as well as in deliberate distribution of this virus in Africa;
  • – in the 1990s and 2000s, the UN agencies had already been investigating the “leak” of dangerous pathogens from the US military bases in Spain and Kenya, following which it was proved that the above “leaks” were clearly purposeful and planned.

All materials on these war crimes have been registered with the UN and are at the disposal of this organization!

Most recently, The Exposé, a British publication, published the results of its investigation into the direct involvement of the United States and Ukraine in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic…

Recently, new documentary evidence of the US criminal activities aimed at unleashing a global biological war has been obtained by the Russian Ministry of Defense during the special military operation in Ukraine.

In particular, Igor Kirillov, the Head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces of the Russian Armed Forces (RCBPF), has disclosed new information revealing the details of the Pentagon’s inhumane experiments on Ukrainian citizens in a psychiatric hospital in Kharkov region (Strelechye village). The test subjects included a group of male patients aged 40-60 with a high stage of physical exhaustion. “The received information proved the fact that the United States was launching an offensive military biological program in Ukraine, the purpose of which was to study the possibility of initiating controlled outbreaks of diseases on particular territories,” Kirillov said.

Documented evidence was received about an attempt to infect the residents of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR) with tuberculosis by means of fake banknotes contaminated with the tuberculosis causative agent. The infected notes were distributed among the minors in the village of Stepovoye in 2020. “The criminal masterminds exploited the behavior of children who are prone to tasting everything and eating without washing their hands,” Kirillov said. Aside from this, some additional information about the incidents associated with the use of bioweapons in Ukraine was obtained during the special military operation: documentary evidence was studied about the deliberate use of a multidrug-resistant tuberculosis pathogen in 2020 to infect the population of Slavyanoserbsky district in the LPR.

According to Igor Kirillov, the results of bacteriological tests proved the resistance of extracted bacteria to Tier 1 and Tier 2 anti-tuberculosis drugs. The disease caused by them would be much more difficult to treat, and the cost of such treatment would be much higher. The Lugansk Republican Sanitary and Epidemiological Service made a conclusion about the artificial nature of infection found on the banknotes, as extremely dangerous strains were found and their “concentration capable of guaranteeing infection and development of the tuberculosis process.”

Along with this, the Russian Armed Forces have discovered more than a dozen unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with tanks and nozzles for spraying bioweapon agents. In particular, on March 9, in the territory of Kherson region, three UAVs were detected with 30-liter tanks and equipment for spraying malicious agents. In late April, ten more similar UAVs were detected near the settlement of Kakhovka. At the same time, Igor Kirillov, the Head of RCBPF, added that, as a result of the special military operation in Ukraine, facts came to light evidencing the work carried out with pathogens that are potential agents of bioweapons.

At the same time, not only the United States, but also a number of its NATO allies, such as Germany, Poland and 10 other Western allies of Washington, are running their military biological projects in Ukraine. Thus, the Polish Institute of Veterinary Medicine took part in the studies of rabies virus in Ukraine together with the Battelle Institute, one of the Pentagon contractors, said the Head of the RCBPF.

According to Kirillov, the ideologists of American military biological operations in Ukraine are the leaders of the US Democratic Party who “formed the legislative framework for funding military biological research directly from the federal budget.” “Non-governmental organizations controlled by the leadership of the US Democratic Party, submitted their funds including the investment funds owned by the Clintons, Rockefellers, Soros, Biden, under the state guarantees,” the representative of the Ministry of Defense said. Major pharma companies, such as Pfizer, Moderna, Merck, as well as Gilead, a Pentagon-affiliated company, were also involved in this scheme. “US specialists are testing new medicines bypassing the international safety standards,” Kirillov added.

It should be noted that Washington has been involved in those activities for many decades, with the obvious connivance of the UN and other international organizations who were submitted incriminating evidence of the criminal use of bioweapons by the US. Instead of ensuring compliance with the international regulations and international conventions signed by the United States to combat the development and use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, Washington regularly arranges fake news campaigns accusing other countries of alleged use of prohibited WMDs. And these campaigns, unfortunately, are actively promoted and supported by the US-funded media and representatives of a number of Western political parties and governments around the world, thereby shielding official revelations of the US criminal activities.

Today, US military biolabs are located not only in Ukraine, but also in many other countries of the world that are facing a similar danger of Washington using bioweapons. And the US does not seem to be ashamed telling the global community about its “right” to make plans for changing political regimes “in authoritarian countries if they pose a threat to US security.” In particular, Henry Kissinger, one of the most respected veterans of the US politics, the former US Secretary of State and national Security Adviser to the US President, recently made this statement in his interview to the Financial Times.

Given all of the above, every country in the world should be asking one question today: Why is the United States getting away with unleashing a global biological war?

周杰倫 Jay Chou千里之外 Far Away (feat.費玉清 Fei Yu-ching)】-Official Music Video

A classic Jay Chou movie out of China. All these videos date from his first album around 2002 or so. And they are videos that tell a story. You don’t need to understand the lyrics to figure out what is happening…

Dollar is dying there is no question about it

A great talk.

Texas School Shooter May Have Been ARRESTED in 2018 for “Terror Attack Plot in 2022” at SCHOOL, Years before Shooting that Left 21 Dead!

An active shooter situation in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, left 19 children and two adults dead.   Now, however, we find the shooter may have been one of two juveniles arrested in 2018 for plotting such an attack . . . . to be carried out in the year 2022!

A hospital report from the area states that in addition to 19 kids and two adults who were killed, 14 other children and at least one other adult are being treated by hospitals in Uvalde and San Antonio.

The shooter was killed by responding police, according to Texas Governor Abbott.

The Hal Turner Radio Show has now found that in 2018 two teens were arrested for planning a mass shouting at their school in Uvalde Texas.

Their plan was to carry out the shooting in their senior year which would be 2022.

The teens were 13 and 14 years old when they were arrested. The youth were evaluated by mental health professionals and the older of the children was released to his mother. Here is the statement made by the Uvalde school system back in 2018:

Our school district is committed to the safety and education of all our students and we want to clearly communicate about safety issues when they arise. One of our Morales Junior High students was experiencing a crisis. Upon rendering aid and support, the student revealed a future plan to conduct a school shooting in the year of 2022. With the type of detailed information that was revealed by the student to law enforcement and confirmed in their investigation, the student has been arrested and will not be returning to our school. 

Our school district has a strong partnership with our local law enforcement agencies and emergency responders. They share our commitment to student safety, and we are working closely with them to ensure all information is thoroughly evaluated and our school is as safe as possible.

We ask our parents to assist us in reminding their child/children of the importance of telling a staff member if they ever become aware of a plan to harm individuals or of a weapon at school. The STOPit app may be utilized by parents or students to inform administration of any inappropriate behavior. In this way, we are all working together to keep our schools safe.

 

A press release obtained by TV Station KENS-5 thoroughly chronicles events leading up to an investigation performed by the Uvalde Police Department and the Texas Rangers.

<p”>In the press release, Uvalde Chief of Police Daniel Rodriguez said that a Morales Junior High School student,14, and a former Morales student, 13, had specifically targeted numerous students in what they described as a plan to perform a “mass casualty event against the school.”

Authorities said the students were motivated in large part by the Columbine shootings:

The investigation revealed that the students were infatuated with the Columbine High School shootings and identified themselves to the shooters. The investigation uncovered that the students even referred to themselves using the Columbine shooter’s names.”

Investigators also believe the students were planning to hold the attacks years from now during their senior year, on the anniversary of the Columbine shooting. However, one of the students began to convince the other that they should move the attacks up to this year.

“One of the students had numerous writings and drawings which depicted weapons capable of causing mass destruction. He wrote about being “God-like” and killing police and other persons. He had an academic analysis of one of the Columbine shooter’s journals,” the release stated.

According to the release, the teens were also planning on detonating IED’s before killing students from a list ‘ranked by priority.’

After that, the release states the pair were going to kill at random before eventually turning the guns on themselves.

“Any kids that had talked bad about them or said anything they did not like, basically, they said they were going to go and kill them,” one student said. You just felt unsafe. And teachers have been bringing it to our attention that you can’t be saying those things anymore. We can’t do that. It is wrong.”

“It was scary. We hear it everywhere else, but you don’t expect for it to happen in your town,” one parent said. “I am glad they were able to control the situation before anything does happen. And that they actually did something about it. Sometimes you think they’re just going to hear it, and say it won’t happen and dust it under the rug, and they actually did something.”

Both students were reportedly evaluated by mental health services on April 19, when the investigation led officials to the pair. The older of the two was released on April 23 into his mother’s care.

On April 25, the pair were taken into custody again, and this time arrested for Conspiracy to Commit Murder.

Because Juvenile Arrest records are SEALED, it is not yet known if Tuesday’s shooter in that same town, was one of the Juveniles arrested for such a plot back in 2018.

 

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

This is a tragedy of unimaginable proportions.

The children shot and killed on Tuesday, were in the Second, Third, and Fourth grade.  That would make most of them between the ages 7 and 9 years old.

What kind of a monster deliberately chooses to kill such helpless, innocent, children?  Who created this monster, and who didn’t report him before he killed so many?

If Tuesday’s gunman WAS, in fact, one of the two arrested in 2018, what was he doing out of custody and what kind of mental health “professionals” turned this beast loose?

If, however, Tuesday’s shooter was NOT one of the kids arrested back in 2018, then what the hell is going on in the schools of that town, that so many kids are having fantasies of – and now actually becoming – mass shooters?

There are an awful lot of questions to be answered here.

One such question is this:  If the threat back in 2018 was for an attack to be done in April or May of 2022, where was the extra security at schools to guard against such an attack?

Seems to me the local Board of Education has a lot of explaining to do about that.

My bet, and this is just personal opinion and conjecture: I think this shooter WAS one of the kids arrested in 2018.  After all, what are the odds it would be someone else?

I’d Love to Change the WorldAlvin Lee & Ten Years After

1970s. We all wish to return to those days; to be freed from the craziness of the 2020s.

America’s Crumbling Infrastructure | 60 Minutes Archive

This is reality.

China Builds World’s First AI-Powered Drone Carrier For Maritime Operations

The latest observation of how China aims to use artificial intelligence to conquer the Pacific is the launching of the world’s first autonomous drone carrier.

According to the South China Morning Post, the intelligent, unmanned 88-meter drone carrier named Zhu Hai Yun will bring revolutionary changes to ocean surveillance, deploying a swarm of aerial, sea, and or submersible drones.

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2022 05 26 22 17

The Zhu Hai Yun is powered by an artificial intelligence system called the Intelligent Mobile Ocean Stereo Observing System (IMOSOS). The vessel can navigate autonomously in open water and or be controlled remotely while releasing various types of drones.

"The intelligent, unmanned ship is a beautiful, new 'marine species' that will bring revolutionary changes for ocean observation," Chen Dake, director of the laboratory responsible for the ship, was quoted as saying by the Science and Technology Daily in 2021 when the shipbuilding began. 

The ship was built by Guangzhou of the Huangpu Wenchong Shipyard, a subsidiary of China’s top shipbuilding company, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation. Sea trials will happen in the second half of the year.

Aside from these civilian uses, the drone carrier could be used for military operations.

Suppose the autonomous drone carrier is transferred to the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). In that case, it could be used as a surveillance craft to patrol the country’s militarized islands in the South China Sea.

China’s primary strategy is to defeat the US by expanding its artificial intelligence military capabilities. So this could be the beginning of the world’s second-largest superpower building out a fleet of intelligent drone carriers to patrol highly contested waters.

Meanwhile, the US Navy has piloted drone ships in the Pacific, though only equipped for anti-submarine warfare.

Photos of America today

A picture tells a complete story.

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Creedence Clearwater RevivalWho’ll Stop The Rain

MelanieLay Down (Candles in the Rain (1970)

Remember this big hit from the past?

‘Go f**k yourselves’, Zelensky aide tells Western officials

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Ukrainian presidential adviser Alexey Arestovich had the nerve to cuss-out the Benefactors who have given his country over $50 BILLION; because some are now saying Ukraine must cede territory to restore peace to that region.

“Go f**k yourselves with such proposals, you dumb f**ks, to trade Ukrainian territory a little bit! Are you f**king crazy? Our children are dying, soldiers are stopping shells with their own bodies, and they are telling us how to sacrifice our territories. This will never happen,” he insisted in an interview on Wednesday.

Arestovich criticized the logic of “bleating” voices encouraging Ukraine “to curb its appetite” and to give Russia the territories it supposedly wants, as this would allow Kiev to “establish a comprehensive peace and to return to business as usual.”

Another adviser of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mikhail Podoliak, took to Telegram on Wednesday to address the “pro-Russian lobbyists in Europe.”

“We do not sell our citizens, territories or sovereignty. This is a clear red line. Ukrainian society has paid a terrible price and will not allow anyone to even take a step in this direction – no government and no country,” Podoliak said.

While no one wants a long military action or a food crisis, “the shortest way to end the war is with weapons, sanctions and financial assistance to Ukraine,” he argued.

“The Ukrainians defended Kiev, liberated three regions and are completing the liberation of the fourth. Today, the same people offer us to give Russia the east and the south. Thanks for the advice, but we'll probably take up arms,” the adviser said.

Neither man seems willing to accept the fact that Ukraine is LOSING the conflict with Russia and unless Ukraine wises-up - fast - they may not have a country left at all.

The statements from Arestovich and Podoliak come after former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Monday. Kissinger urged Ukraine to make peace quickly, warning that if the conflict is not resolved within two months, Russia may become a “permanent ally” of China in its stand-off with the US.

President Volodymyr Zelensky also criticized Kissinger, calling him out by name, while speaking in more polite terms than Arestovich, saying the American statesman “emerged” from the long gone past and spoke “as if it is 1938 and not 2022. And he thought he was talking to an audience in Munich of that time and not Davos.”

He was apparently referring to the Munich Agreement, a deal that the UK and France made with Axis powers Germany and Italy in 1938, in which the Nazis were given a free hand to invade Czechoslovakia. Comparing modern Russia with Nazi Germany is a favorite rhetorical device of many Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine has insisted that it will not agree to any peace proposals that do not respect its pre-2014 borders.

Moscow has made it clear that the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the status of Crimea as a Russian region, are not up for discussion. 

Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
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Slow-Cooker Pulled Pork

Bring out your inner BBQ master with this Slow-Cooker Pulled Pork recipe. Just 10 easy minutes of prep, and then let the slow cooker do most of the work for you. Once the pork roast is cooked and tender, shred it up and choose your level of spice by adding in your family’s favorite BBQ sauce for delicious smoky or spicy pulled pork that makes you the kitchen hero.

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China Responds to Joe Biden’s Declaration of War

周杰倫 Jay Chou青花瓷 Blue and White Porcelain】-Official Music Video

Another classic Jay Chou music video story. This shows and illustrates the Chinese belief in cycles, and reincarnation, as well as the yin / yang.

A Giant Abandoned Stawberry Is Becoming More And More Popular Among Urban Explorers In Poland

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Have you ever seen “James and the Giant Peach”? Ok, so now it’s the time for a Polish version – Alex and the Giant Strawberry. Traveling from Modlin to Warsaw you can find this amazing object. The strawberry lies next road and it’s easy to find. Actually, it’s hard not to see the strawberry, because it’s giant.

Probably you have a lot of questions now…

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Well, you know, the fruit was the symbol of a huge farm called Sadpol.

The Sadpol’s owner had a 700-hectares field and he grew there strawberries, of course. That was big business.

He sold thousands of kilograms of strawberries each year. His clients came not only from Poland but also from other European countries. It may have been the most powerful strawberry business. Unfortunately, the farm’s owner lost his employees.

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They quit their jobs and they didn’t want to return.

What happened? We don’t know.

We cannot judge him as an employer. Maybe people choose social security benefits instead of honest work. No one really knows.

The farm had to be closed and only the giant strawberry remains.

It is a relic of the glory days of Sadpol.

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Nowadays, the strawberry is abandoned so it’s a nice goal for urban explorers. It’s not a building but it’s special in its own way.

Traveling there you can have interesting urbex photos.

In the summertime, you can take colorful photos. If you prefer to have gloomy photos of the abandoned strawberry, you can visit this place in winter.

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S1E7 A B and C – Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner

We continue with the the adventure known as “The Prisoner”. This is episode 7 from series 1.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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United States is scrambling, and starting to go completely and totally mad.

I hope that you all enjoy this article of frolic, fun and “news”. Let’s try to keep things light. Truly insane people are running the West right now, and it’s best that we try to keep positive and concentrate on ourselves instead.

Some “news”…

Pfizer & Moderna Investors Run for the Exits

Wall Street investors are dumping their Moderna and Pfizer stock faster than the world can drop the mandates. Moderna is down 70 percent from its high, while Pfizer is off 19 percent. Former Blackrock Executive and investment adviser Edward Dowd calls for Moderna to go to zero and Pfizer to end under ten dollars per share.

Article

How to Cook Beef Tapa Recipe | Tapsilog Recipe

Want to try something new and tasty?

Thailand’s NGO Law vs US Meddling

A very good video. It discusses how the USA has been trying to take over Thailand.

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2022 05 29 16 11

Video here, a must watch…

Russia Conquers Severodonetsk – Then Grabs 85km west to Slovyansk!

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The Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk has been won by the Russian Army. More stunning, they moved with astonishing speed toward Slovyansk, 85km farther west.

Fighting is now raging on the outskirts of Slovyansk in a smaller city called Raihorodok, shown on the map below:

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2022 05 29 14 01

Ukraine is losing the war, very badly.

I don’t know what type of munitions Russia is using, but OMG look at just this single blast crater:

 

 

 

Roxy Music Both Ends Burning live at The Apollo London 2001

Oh, how I love those go-go cheerleader dancers. Enjoy this live performance out of the dusty files… To quote another viewer “This is so good, I cried”. It really, REALLY is great.

They are having so, so much fun on stage! It’s so darn obvious.

And those go-go girls are all wearing “go-go boots”, and doing 1960’s dances like “the monkey”, and the “mashed potato”. Seriously, it’s worth the time to watch the go-go girls alone.

Banana-Blueberry Muffins

This one is for the Banana-Blueberry Muffin lovers. Ready in 30 minutes–these perfect-for-anytime muffins will not disappoint. When whipping up a batch of blueberry and banana muffins, don’t overstir or overthink these simple muffins. Overstirring can cause little “mountain peaks” to form on your delightfully delicious Banana-Blueberry Muffins. Add these to your next at-home brunch menu for a surefire hit. Nothing beats muffins from scratch.

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Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup mashed very ripe banana (1 medium)
  • 1 egg
  • 2 cups Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 cup fresh or frozen (thawed and well drained) blueberries

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2022 05 29 13 55

Terrifying Video Shows ‘Bubble-like Clouds’ After Russia Fired Its Thermobaric Bomb On Ukraine – Watch

Phil Manzanera – Out of the Blue (en vivo en CCK)

I hope that you enjoy this video.

Horrific Footage Of ‘Chinese Sub-Launched Missile’ Flying Near A Passenger Aircraft Gets Caught On Video

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In a dramatic video circulating on social media, an airliner narrowly avoided being hit by a missile, reportedly launched from a Chinese submarine in the disputed South China Sea.

The plane was flying over the South China Sea when Air Traffic Control (ATC) issued a frantic call, “Turn left 90 degrees immediately!!.”

The gravity of the situation can be grasped by listening to unknown persons in the video discussing whether or not the missile is heading their way.

The projectile can be seen emerging from the sea’s surface and soaring to a high altitude at the front of the aircraft. The footage was shared online by Twitter user @jchovernut, a pilot for Allegiant Air and a veteran of the US Navy’s submarine community.

 

The clip was purportedly recorded from a Cathay Pacific Boeing 777, according to a subsequent post of the video on Facebook. Cathay Pacific, however, stated that no such incident had taken place.

Meanwhile, the actual date and location of the video’s shooting remain unknown. There are no noticeable Notices to Airmen (NOTAM) or other pictures linked to missile or rocket launches in the region.

The regional tensions are already high because of the intense maneuvering of the Chinese military and North Korean military. Between May 19 and May 23, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) announced that it would undertake drills in the South China Sea.

These overlapped with US President Joe Biden’s visit to South Korea and Japan. However, no live-fire missile tests were mentioned in Beijing’s announcement.

Pyongyang did conduct a submarine-launched ballistic missile test on May 7, but the site was kilometers away from the South China Sea.

In 2017, a North Korean missile launch was seen by the crew of a Cathay Pacific plane heading north of Japan. However, it’s unclear if this video depicts the past event. Yet, if it is an unannounced missile launch, such an incident might spark a major confrontation in the region and jeopardize the passenger plane’s safety.

A few odd paintings that might make your home “pop out”…

Michael Sowa (b.1945) is a German artist known for his whimsical, surreal and stunning paintings often featuring animals. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin for seven years, spent a brief time as an art teacher and then became a painter.

His art might make great conversation pieces to hang in your living rooms…

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Hindi ITO Beefsteak

Ok. I cannot understand a word he is saying, but the directions are clear, and it looks like a LOT of fun to make. A must try, you all!

Oligarchy vs. Colony for Dummies:

From ReadingJunkie…

I keep hearing that Russia is [just another] oligarchy. The main argument is that there are [VERY] rich people in Russia. True, though compared to Elon Musk or Bill Gates they are beggars. But are they oligarchs in the proper sense of the word? I don’t think so. Maybe they were proxy rulers with limited authority. I’ll try to explain.

Article HERE

This is a follow-up of my earlier post I Finally Understand Why We Hate Russia. Now I argue that under the European model of post-modern European supremacy, I mean liberalism, the enemy within is worse than the enemy outside. I am referring not to geography or borders, but to ethnicity.

Article HERE

Appreciate What You Have And Stop Comparing Yourself To Others

We live in a society in which, in one way or another, everyone compares themselves to others. This in turn gives rise to a devastating feeling — jealousy. The following comic strip really helps you think about how this feeling is actually meaningless, and how important it is to appreciate what we have.

We love the simplicity of the ideas expressed here by the author, Igor Kalashnikov, and we just had to share them with you. Take a look.

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The Truth About Michael Pompeo and China

It’s a very good video.

“Cops & Corgis”: New Russian Social Media Bot Puts Riot Police Where You Least Expect Them

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FreeOmon is a bot account based in the social network Telegram. Its sole function is to add Russian riot police to preexisting images. Any user who sends the bot an image file immediately receives a new-and-improved, highly secured version in return.

Thanks to Twitter users, the police proceeded to round up the Avengers, a group of kindhearted corgis, an extremely sad Moscow cat who has recently taken Russian social media networks by storm, and many, many other threats to public safety.

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US Biolabs created MonkeyPox

Russia: US labs in Nigeria responsible for monkey outbreak, Saturday, 28 May 2022 10:03 AM [Last Update: Saturday, 28 May 2022 10:23AM)

Article HERE, 28 May 2022 10:03 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 28 May 2022 10:23 AM ]

The world’s monkeypox outbreak apparently originated from US military bioweapons labs in Nigeria. This is not tinfoil-hat stuff. This is from the Russian MoD, summarized by Saker:

According to a WHO report, the West African strain of monkeypox originated in Nigeria, another state in which the US has deployed its biological infrastructure...

Against the backdrop of multiple US biosafety violations and the negligent storage of pathogenic biomaterials, we call on the World Health Organisation leadership to investigate the US-funded Nigerian laboratories in Abuja, Zaria, Lagos and inform the global community of the results.

The Saker article HERE

The most disturbing aspect of this report concerns a planned smallpox outbreak:

"The Pentagon’s interest in this infection is far from accidental: the return of the smallpox pathogen would be a global catastrophe for all mankind."

Beautiful Photo Session In Traditional Costume From The Region Of Łowicz In Central Poland

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When we come upon some interesting photo-shoots we are usually eager to share them with you. This was one such “nostalgia” driven photo spectacle by Polish blogger Wiktoria Nowak. She was a folk dancer for 11 years in her younger age, because of that dance has been a large part of her personality and life. You know there is a thing about these folk gatherings, or what we mean they will leave you filled with good memories such as events, dances, trips, camps and culture preserving.

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New York bearing signs of ‘societal decay’

This is what the United States is today. Painful to watch.

NYC – STAY AWAY FROM HERE; THE CITY IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN EVER

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For over a year I have been warning readers of this website and listeners to my radio show to STAY AWAY FROM NEW YORK CITY because the crime is so widespread, brazen, and violent.  Below, two videos of about one minute each, showing you the latest.

We begin with this: Just another day in New York City’s safest subway system, where innocent people are being harassed and assaulted.

But the mayor wants you to ride the subway instead of driving, to save the environment.

Then, at night, this is a neighborhood uptown.  Look at what they do when cars are caught mid-block by a traffic light, and vehicles stopped ahead of them:

THIS is what takes place each and every day in New York City.  And worse.   Armed robberies at gunpoint are taking place in the open, on crowded Manhattan streets.  Unprovoked beatings of people who are merely walking down streets.  Brazen shoot-outs between rival gangs.

New York City does not seem safe to me — at all.   I say that as someone who has lived in this region almost all my life.

AVOID NEW YORK CITY AT ALL COSTS.  It is dangerous here.

This is kind of big news.

First look at AZOV Battalion in Russian lockdown center. They are all facing 15 to life and in some cases the death penalty

Video can be found HERE

85-Year-Old Farmer Given Makeover By Grandson And Is Transformed Into Fashion Icon

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The young creative, who goes by the name XiaoYeJieXi (@小野杰西) on Weibo, dressed the octogenarian in fashionable pieces like colorful three-piece suits, felted hats, and tailored denim. XiaoYeJieXi then photographed his grandfather among a vibrant cityscape, resulting in series that looks like it’s on the pages of a glossy magazine.

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Despite the polished look of these images, XiaoYeJieXi’s intention wasn’t for commercial fame. He simply wanted to give his grandfather a makeover and take him for a tour around the city. It’s in contrast to the elderly man’s regular life in the rural Fujian Province, where he gardens and farms vegetables.

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Kaoma – Lambada (Official Video) 1989 HD

Oh my. Enjoy this great trip to Brazil…

Custard Pie

Bring back memories of Grandma’s kitchen with this traditional custard pie in a homemade pastry crust.

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9a8a63c9 959d 4565 a0f1 27bc958167d5

Ingredients

Pastry

  • 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour*
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/3 cup cold shortening
  • 3 to 5 tablespoons ice-cold water

Filling

  • 3 eggs
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 1/2 cups hot whole milk or half-and-half

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TWICE “LIKEY” M/V

I’ve mentioned this video before. This is the Korean K-pop group known as “Twice”. My daughter loves to dance to their songs. There are two great aspects of this video. First, that it is filmed in Boston… I LOVE Boston… secondly, the fantastic smiles on the pretty girls. Smiles make things happen…

…oh yeah. And the girls are all Han Chinese.

Why Taiwan is NOT the Next Ukraine

Chris made a nice video. It’s pretty good, but not the entire story. Watch it. He omits the Guangzhou corridor. And what it means to the equation.

Anti-Surveillance Fashion Designed To Trigger And Inject Junk Data In To Automated License Plate Readers

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The fabric on this garment is designed to trigger Automated License Plate Readers, adding unhelpful data to the systems used to surveil our communities. Look fabulous in an all-over printed, body-hugging crop top.

For the pattern to have a maximum effect, it’s ideal for the fabric to hang straight so that the text is not excessively warped. For this reason, you may want to consider sizing up if you intend for it to read in to ALPRs effectively.

How It Works

The patterns on this shirt were generated by testing a series of modified license plate images with commercial ALPR APIs, working to generate aesthetic fabric patterns that read in to devices and services as if they were real plates.

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The patterns are designed to trigger Automated License Plate Readers, injecting junk data in to the systems used by the State and its contractors to monitor and track civilians and their locations.

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M777

This article gives a reasonable account of twists in the M777 debacle in Ukraine: Article.

Summary:

– ammunition (U.S. and Canadian) destroyed in Ukraine ammo dumps before making it to front
– only 20km range, 40km [ed: should be ’30km’] with rocket-assisted projectiles which Ukraine does not have
– 7-man crew that normally requires nine weeks of training for basic gun skills
– months of additional training for M777 units to gain proficiency
– 80% of guns arrived in Ukraine without targeting electronics (DFCS system)
– Canadian electronics used as hasty replacement
– Canadian units fail in field due to wall of Russian electronic warfare
– Operating M777s usually located in under 30 minutes by Russian drones or counter-battery due to unique acoustic signature
– Ukriane M777s might get off four or five rounds on a good day before being destroyed or crew killed

Amazing Vintage Photos Of 1937 Cadillac V16 Series 90 Hartmann Cabriolet

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This custom Cadillac is probably the most extreme cabriolet ever built. The car was originally commissioned by wealthy playboy Philippe Barraud. He wanted a custom car constructed on a grand scale and in late 1936 ordered a 452 cu in Cadillac V16 chassis through the Edelweiss Garage in Lausanne, Switzerland.

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Cadillac shipped a bare chassis, one of only two that year, around the world to Switzerland and there it was bodied in Lausanne by Willy Hartmann. Barraud wanted to body the chassis in his own home town so he could personally supervise the work.

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After two year’s war broke out and the Cadillac was stored for ten years. It was then brought back to life and Phillipe had it repainted white over pale blue to use it over the next ten years. It was again repainted light over dark brown after a crash which destroyed the front end and its lights. New bullet lights were fitted to replace the small driving lights that did little for the grace of the design. Additionally a full width bumper was constructed.

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Abandoned by its owner in the mid-sixties, the car was “discovered” 31 years later, in derelict condition, in a field near Geneva, Switzerland. That was in the summer of 1968. It was acquired in April the following year by the 2nd owner, Mr. Jean-Jacques Belet of Lausanne, for just CHF4000 (the equivalent at that time of approximately $925).

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The car has changed hands 10 times since then. Restored four times (the last time in 2017–18) and probably owing in a large part to a “tampered” dash-mounted coachbuilder’s nameplate (added around 1985), the value of the Hartmann roadster has soared out of all normal proportions. The actual price paid by the current owner has not been disclosed but may be estimated to be around “a few million” dollars.

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The Prisoner Series 1 Episode 4

Enjoy this latest installment.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

.

Classic Blueberry Pie, CIA, Chinese and American mobile phone systems and the ugliest car in the world

Do you know the difference between poisonous and venomous? See the picture above. America has become poisonous, where China and Russia are both Venomous.

Two widely circulated reports from the UK are now demanding escalation of the confrontation with both Russia and China: The Henry Jackson Society is demanding total “decoupling” and economic warfare against China; while the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) is calling for directing the NATO-armed Ukraine to retake Crimea, forcing a nuclear showdown with Russia, arguing that “a nuclear crisis of this sort could make it easier for leaders to make difficult compromises.”

Such madness must be stopped.

But you know, the insanity has to occur and increase in measured madness until it hits a brick wall and dies.

I, and many others, are all convinced that this is the fate for the United States.

Chinese and American Mobile Phone Systems

At the risk of appearing to be a shill, I think it is safe to say that China arguably has the best mobile phone service in the world, certainly second to none, while the US and Canada have arguably the worst, surely the most fragmented and dysfunctional, and certainly the most expensive. Let’s look at some details.

I’m uncertain about the US but, so far as I am aware, in Canada and many European countries, mobile phones can be purchased only from a telecom company, one of the more clever but clearly anti-social provisions in Western communications legislation. This gives the phone companies a truly ‘captive market’ in that, if you want a particular phone, you have no choice but to submit to all that company’s policies and to pay their demanded prices. A major difference in the communications landscape is that Chinese phone companies do not have a monopoly on the sale of mobile phones and are in fact minority sellers.

To buy a mobile phone in China, you go to any one of thousands of shops in your city, each selling hundreds of different brands and models of mobile phones, and negotiate the best price you can get for the phone you want. And you CAN negotiate: “There are three shops across the street selling this same phone. Either give me a better price (or a free expensive umbrella, or a nice stuffed animal), or I’ll go there instead.” Some Americans will recognise this as “competition”.

After you buy the phone, you buy a SIM card (about $3.00), which contains your phone number, network connection authorisation, and some free air time. You insert the SIM card, turn on the phone, and begin making calls while still in the shop. That’s the whole process. Except for the SIM card, it’s the same as buying a toaster.

You can choose from various phone companies to provide service, but everything is pretty much the same and, while there are many various “usage plans”, you needn’t subscribe to them and can simply use your phone on a pay-as-you-go basis. Noteworthy is that in China you can change phone companies without changing your phone or your number. If you buy a new phone, you simply insert your old SIM card and everything is as it was. You can purchase a second (or third) SIM card and have different local numbers to use in different cities, if you want to do that.

For sure one of the best features is that the entire country is wired, even in remote locations. Some time back I was on holiday in Inner Mongolia and could happily send photos on WeChat while riding my camel in the desert. Given the extensiveness of wireless coverage, in more than 17 years in China I could count the number of dropped calls on the fingers of one hand. And it isn’t only China itself, but the entire Asian region that is seamlessly connected. I recently called a friend in Shanghai to invite him for lunch, and he said, “I can’t. I’m in Vietnam”.

If anyone from anywhere in the world calls me, the system knows where I am and my phone rings. I never have to think about service provider compatibility, roaming, and all the other restrictions that exist in Canada or the US. If I travel to Beijing, I receive a text message welcoming me and telling me my calls are now local calls. And in a sense, all mobile phone calls in China are ‘local’. The landline system still uses area codes, but the mobile phone system abandoned them decades ago and simply uses an 11-digit phone number, so calling anywhere in the country is the same. The system is so functionally useful that I cannot recall ever meeting anyone in China who had a personal or home land line.

The system also monitors abuses, presenting warning notices upon receiving a call from a number reported to belong to telemarketers or telephone scam operators. As well, the SMS system is used very effectively for some kinds of public notices like a simultaneous warning to 100 million citizens of an approaching typhoon.

Phone calls in China cost maybe $0.01 per minute, and SMS messages are the same for sending; receiving is free. The typical monthly cost for a smart phone in China, including typical internet usage, is maybe $15.00, compared to around $100.00 in the US or Canada, and sometimes as much as $200.00. Many young kids in China stream movies on their phones and can run up higher bills, but the $15.00 cost is probably typical and maybe even high. I should add that in China the ‘basic phone bill’ includes all the ancillaries which are usually sold at extra cost in the West: caller ID, call-holding, and many others.

International calls have a special provision: I first dial a 5-digit number before the phone number I’m calling and that automatically places me on some kind of heavy discount basis. Perhaps other countries have this feature now, but I can speak to a friend halfway around the world for less than $1.00 per hour.

Once on an extended trip to Canada I thought I’d buy a Canadian SIM card for my phone for the sake of convenience. That was a mistake. The phone company charged me $30 for the SIM card and another $30 as a “connection fee”. That last one rankled. In the days of land lines, the phone company had to send a man out to your house to physically connect your phone, so you paid a connection charge. But today there is no such thing as a ‘connection’. When you turn on your phone, the SIM card pings the tower and you’re connected. On my return to China, I discovered I’d lost my China SIM card; not a big deal but I didn’t want to lose my phone number. Happily, for 5 RMB (about $0.75), the nice girl at China Mobile reprogrammed a new SIM card with my old number and life was normal again.

There is one other item I would raise that seems to be primarily an American phenomenon: dirty tricks. One such was Marriott Hotels a few years back using illegal frequency jammers to block guests’ Wi-Fi hotspots and other such devices, shutting them out from the Internet entirely, then charging them between $250.00 and $1,000.00 per device to connect to the hotel’s own wireless network. A Marriott spokesperson with the unlikely name of Gaylord Opryland, claimed it was only “a security precaution” to protect hotel guests from “rogue Wi-Fi hotspots”, and that the hotel used only “FCC-authorized equipment provided by well-known, reputable manufacturers”, i.e., the CIA. The claim apparently didn’t fly with the FCC who fined the hotel chain $600,000 for the scam.[1]

[2]

I suppose it’s possible this kind of thing happens in China too, but I have never heard of it.

I once had that experience on a cruise ship traveling from Shanghai to Tokyo. As soon as we boarded the ship, even while still in port, all signals disappeared and we had no choice but to pay the cruise line’s exorbitant fees to be able to use our own phones. I refused just on principle, but I discovered there was one small portion of one lower deck where the jamming wasn’t effective, and I could still communicate with Shanghai until we were more than 300 miles out of port. No idea how the signal could carry that far, but it did.

Also, there is something unreal about the mobile phone market in North America. I don’t know if I can define it well enough to make it sensible, but it has overtones (or undertones) of what appears to be some combination of religion and ‘national security’. It suggests there exists something intrinsically mystical or inherently menacing about mobile phones and thus the rapacious practices of the phone companies are disguised as necessities to save the country from unspecified evils. Yet a mobile phone is nothing but a toaster with a SIM card (minus the toaster part). The propaganda of greed.

Of course, capitalists in China are just as greedy as capitalists everywhere, so the phone companies are usually on the lookout for a way to raise the price of something, and occasionally make attempts, furtive or otherwise, to raise rates or sneak in more charges. But if the people begin complaining, the government is not at all bashful about kicking the telecoms in the shins and telling them to roll back the price increases. And they do.

For a long time, it wasn’t possible to buy a Wi-Fi hotspot in the US, Canada, or Europe; these devices had to be rented at a cost of around $50.00 per month, and with about an equivalent monthly cost for usage. It seems they are now available for purchase, at prices ranging from around $100.00 to many hundreds, plus usage charges. In Canada, they seem to cost between about $300.00 and $650.00. Perhaps readers can update this.

In Shanghai, I have two phones and I tether them, using one as the Wi-Fi hotspot for the other and also for my laptop, so I always have my own Wi-Fi wherever I am. It’s possible to buy a dedicated Wi-Fi hotspot for $25 or $30, and pay around another $10 for usage, but my way is more convenient since my other devices connect automatically and I don’t have yet one more device to carry or one more battery to die when I need it. Plus, I have no bandwidth limitations, and never any service disruptions.

This is partially an aside, and you will no doubt hate me for telling you this, but the high-speed internet connection (DSL) for my home in Shanghai costs 500 RMB (about US$75.00) for two years, and that comes with at least 300 TV channels; I haven’t made an accurate count. On the other hand, Canada has the world’s highest internet costs at around $100 per month and showing no signs of decreasing.

The price disparities are not primarily from lower costs or wages, but that the mobile phone systems in Western (capitalist) countries were not designed for the people but for the mobile phone companies, resulting in the exclusive assigned regions, the resulting network and frequency fragmentation, à la carte menus, high costs and poor service. The few companies (with their assigned and protected markets) collaborate to keep prices high and prevent customers from escaping the trap. And US government protection of the telecom monopolies has been vicious: at least until recently, Americans would pay $500,000 and spend ten years in prison for unlocking a phone, the act represented as some kind of abhorrent immoral felony when it was merely a justifiable act of self-defense against a grossly-predatorial system.

China recognised that rapid communications and transportation were vital to increasing economic development, some estimates claiming China’s GDP is 15% higher than would otherwise have been without its current mobile phone system, and another 30% attributed to its nearly universal rapid transportation, especially the high-speed trains.

The World of 5G

China seems to have taken the lead in rolling out the new generation of mobile networks with about 2 million 5G base stations operating now, and covering 60 or 70 major urban centers, essentially all those with a population of one million or more. The country installed more than 650,000 of them in 2021 alone, and the pace is increasing if anything. The number of 5G subscribers is over 500 million and climbing quickly. Also, in 2021 5G smartphones accounted for more than 80% of all handset shipments with nearly 300 new models released.[3][4][5] Not only that, but China is already heavily into research for 6G, the next much-faster generation of mobile communications.

According to a recent article in the WSJ,[6]

“At this point, football fans have seen so many ads from AT&T and Verizon claiming to have the fastest and most reliable 5G service on the planet that those without a 5G smartphone might think they are really missing something. Don’t be misled. Unless you are traveling internationally, you won’t enjoy faster speeds with a new 5G-enabled smartphone than you’d get on a 4G phone streaming games from New York, Los Angeles or many other U.S. cities.

AT&T’s and Verizon’s new 5G networks are often significantly slower than the 4G networks they replace. America is far behind in almost every dimension of 5G while other nations – including China – race ahead. America’s average 5G mobile internet speed is roughly 75 megabits per second, which is abysmal. In China’s urban centers 5G phones get average speeds of 300 megabits per second. . . fast enough to download a high-definition movie in two minutes.”

Many MSM media articles attempt to explain why the US has fallen so far behind in this area, but this is mostly propaganda with everyone avoiding the elephant in the room. Americans have a right to be disappointed in the performance of their telecom companies whose marketing hype much exceeded their ability to deliver, but this wasn’t really their fault and the blame lies elsewhere – in the world of politics and espionage, unfortunately.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, wrote in a recent WSJ article[7]

that “The U.S. government’s “dithering” has left the country “well behind” China in the race to build out 5G technology,” but that’s a dishonest presentation. The US is indeed far behind China, but “dithering” was not the cause. I will try to explain.

The Trouble With Huawei

There are two major issues here, both political. The first involves Huawei, the Chinese IT giant. Huawei was far ahead of the rest of the world in 5G, holds a large portion of the most useful and critical patents in this area, and had the current capacity to ship almost unlimited numbers of base stations and the rest of the 5G infrastructure to the world.

The first and most obvious problem was that (in the eyes of the US Administration) China was “eating America’s lunch” in IT innovation and invention and the White House wanted to derail this by destroying Huawei and clearly made every possible effort in this regard, including bullying and threatening half the known world against using Huawei’s products. Unfortunately, the US telecom companies conducted their marketing campaigns on the expectation of installing Huawei’s equipment, which hopes were dashed by the sudden violent attacks on Huawei and the eventual banning of their equipment. This left the US telecoms with literally nothing to offer and no place to go. Ericsson and others did have equipment available, but most of it was quite inferior and with little production capacity, leaving the US telecoms with no option but to goose their 4G infrastructure and present it as “5G”, which it wasn’t. They did their best, but the results were mediocre.

Huawei was suddenly promoted as unreliable and a grave threat to US national security, and the US telecoms thus became one of the innocent victims of the trade war with China. But what was behind this? Huawei had already been in all the Western countries during 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G, and there had never been a whisper of technical issues nor any concern with data security or espionage, so what suddenly changed with 5G? As it happened, Huawei’s ‘lunch menu’ was the smallest part of the problem.[8]

The Five Eyes

The real issue was espionage, and not by China. It is so widely-known and accepted that there is no practical value in disputing the assertion that Cisco and other American hardware and software firms install back doors to all their equipment for the convenience of CIA and NSA access. There is a video on YouTube where a Microsoft executive is challenged during a speech to explain why Windows had a built-in back door specifically identified in the program code as “NSA Back Door”. The Microsoft executive did not deny the existence of this feature, nor could he have done because he knew that the man asking the question was the person who discovered it. In the event, he refused to respond and changed the subject. And it’s widely-known that as far back as 30 and 40 years ago all Xerox machines and fax machines delivered to foreign embassies and consulates in the US were “espionage-ready”.

All of Cisco’s equipment, and that of most other American manufacturers, were designed to accommodate wide-spread NSA information-gathering on Americans, as evidenced by Edward Snowden, but even this was the smaller part of the problem. The real issue was the US’ creation of the “Five Eyes” espionage network that included Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Briefly, this was set up to break every law in the book while pretending no laws were being broken. It is generally against the law for a government to spy on its own citizens, but that law doesn’t apply to a foreign government. So, Canada spies on Australian citizens and sends the information to the Australian spooks who can claim they did nothing wrong. Rinse and repeat.

According to Snowden, the Five Eyes was a “supra-national intelligence organisation that does not answer to the known laws of its own countries”, his documents clearly revealing that these five countries were “spying on one another’s citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on surveillance of citizens”.

But suddenly Huawei is replacing Cisco and those other American firms with its better and less expensive products and filling the American mobile phone landscape with Huawei equipment. This part might be troublesome but manageable, but the CIA and NSA can hardly approach Huawei and ask the company to build back doors into their equipment so the US can spy on everybody including China. There is no solution to this problem. With the installation of Huawei equipment into these five countries, Five Eyes is dead in the water, and the US government was forced to make a decision between providing world-class 5G communications for the benefit of the country or to protect the functioning espionage network. They chose the latter. And it wasn’t sufficient to ban Huawei only from the US because this company’s equipment would castrate the NSA’s effort in the other four nations. Thus, US bullying to ensure each of its five eyes is Huawei-free.

There was no way to explain this to the public. We could not have an NYT article telling the American people that they cannot have a 5G phone system because that would prevent NSA and CIA spying, so the only option was to trash Huawei’s reputation as a grave security threat, and hype that ridiculous accusation to the point where the public would accept an inferior service. And that’s the entire story, like it or not.

Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons). Archive

His full archive can be seen at: HERE and Over HERE

He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com

Notes

[1] Article
Marriott Illegally Blocked People’s Internet Access And Charged Them Up To $1,000 Instead

[2] Article
Marriott Whacked for $600,000 for War on Rogue Wi-Fi Hotspots

[3] Article

[4] Article

[5] Article

[6] Article

China’s 5G Soars Over America’s; In some U.S. cities, it’s slower than the old 4G system.

[7] Article- behind-china-in-5g-race-ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-says.html

‘Pathetic’ performance has left U.S. ‘well behind’ China in 5G race, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt says

[8] Article

Huawei, Tik-Tok and WeChat

Wartime Emergency

The country of Hungary will declare a “WARTIME EMERGENCY” at midnight tonight.

Hal Turner advises…

Prime Minister Orban says "the government will declare a state of war from midnight today" to "protect Hungary and Hungarian families by all possible means" in a video posted on Facebook.

So clearly he knows something gigantic is about to take place.   The "something" must clearly be actual "war" because they're actually saying it!

This seems to be "it" folks.   

Be prepared by tonight to BE ABLE TO bug-out at a moment's notice to any backup shelter you may have, and make sure you have food, water, medicine, and COMMS for that bugout shelter location. If this thing goes wild weasel between Russia-Ukraine/NATO, it will happen so fast people won't even have time to think.

Slow-Cooker Beef Roast with Onions and Potatoes

Onion and potatoes add Old-World flavor to a family favorite beef roast.

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59f10fa4 69bd 44ff 827e 953fbbc1d94at.

Ingredients

  • 1 large sweet onion, cut in half, then cut into thin slices
  • 3-lb boneless beef bottom round roast
  • 3 baking potatoes, cut into 1 1/2- to 2-inch cubes
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 3/4 cups Progresso™ beef flavored broth (from 32-oz carton)
  • 1 package (1 oz) onion soup mix (from 2-oz box)
  • 1/4 cup Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour

2022 05 24 15 40
2022 05 24 15 40

Lavrov Outlines Russia’s Future Geopolitical Strategy

Right now the West is “reacting furiously” to Russia defending its “absolutely legitimate, fundamental interests,” Lavrov said. Western leaders “chant spells” and declare they must “defeat Russia,” or make Russia “lose on the battlefield,”
without understanding the history or nature of Russia, “They must have done poorly in school,” said Lavrov.

“I am convinced this will eventually end. The West will eventually recognize reality on the ground. It will be forced to admit that it can’t constantly attack the vital interests of Russia – or Russians, wherever they live – with impunity,” he added.

If and when the West comes to its senses and wants to offer something in terms of resuming relations, Russia will “seriously consider whether we will need it or not,” the foreign minister told high-schoolers.

Moscow isn’t just implementing a strategy of import substitution in response to anti-Russian sanctions, but “must stop in any way being dependent on the supply of anything from the West” and rely on its own capabilities, and those of countries that have “proven their reliability” and act independently, Lavrov explained.

(HT REMARK: So clearly, the Russians are settling-in for the very long term.  This does not bode well for __any__ other countries that have wronged Russia.  It also shows the Russians are not going to back down - at all - with the Ukraine thing and as such, the only people being harmed by western Sanction . . .  are those of us in the West.

We need to immediately stop sticking our nose into what's going on between Ukraine and Russia.  Those two countries are literally like brothers.  Sometimes, brothers fight.  It's best to stay OUT of family squabbles.)

The RoAcH CoAcH: How the Designer Imagined the Cars of The Future from The 1970s

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1 20 1

The RoAcH CoAcH, originally built by RoAcH, Inc in the 70′s is alive and well and living in Dayton, OH. The brainchild of RoAcH, Inc., the custom show car was designed by Ed Newton and built by Dan Woods, Don Boeke, and a band of merry men. The car was a ISC show-car for years.

After hundreds of hours over six years, the RoAcH CoAcHwas born. The debut was a monster party during the 1978 NHRA Spring Nationals. The party celebrated the opening of RoAcH, Inc.’s new 100,000 sq ft. facility.

2 18 1
2 18 1

Designer: Ed Newton
Body: Dan Woods & Ed Newton custom fiberglass sculpture
Chassis: Granatelli Indy Car
Paint: Egyptian Body Shop
Interior: Egyptian Body Shop
Assembly: Egyptian Body Shop

7 17
7 17

6 17
6 17

5 17 1
5 17 1

Ugliest car I have ever seen. -MM

Two Front World War: Biden Says He’ll Attack China in Defense of Taiwan!

Classic Blueberry Pie

This Classic Blueberry Pie is amazingly delicious without the fuss of peeling and pitting needed for other fruit pie recipes. Plus, our blueberry pie recipe from scratch is easier than you think and a great way to celebrate summer. When selecting your blueberries, look for ones that are uniform in size with a smooth exterior. No stress if you don’t have fresh blueberries, frozen blueberries work just as well in this homemade blueberry pie. Eliminate some elbow grease and cut down on time, pick up Betty Crocker™ pie crust mix. Enjoy a slice, or two!

2022 05 23 21 20
2022 05 23 21 20

Ingredients

Pastry

  • 2 cups Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2/3 cup shortening
  • 4 to 6 tablespoons cold water

Filling

  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, if desired
  • 6 cups fresh blueberries
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1 tablespoon butter, if desired

2022 05 23 21 17
2022 05 23 21 17

2022 05 23 21 18
2022 05 23 21 18

Russian and Chinese War Planes Enter South Korea Air Defense ID Zone Without Notice

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Korea is approximately 13 hours ahead of the US East Coast Time Zone. At approximately 7:00 PM Korea Time, war planes from both Russia and China entered South Korea’s Air Defense Identification Zone without notice.

HT REMARK: This stunned the South Koreans and reminded the world that NATO is no longer the only game in town.

Details are sketchy right now, and this story will be updated as details become available.

EU Weapons Smuggling Truck Grabbed in Luhansk by Russian Allied Troops

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LPRTroops EU Truck Weapons large
LPRTroops EU Truck Weapons large

After heavy fighting around Izyum, Ukraine, soldiers of the Luhansk People’s Republic, fighting alongside Russian Army troops for the Independence and freedom of Luhansk and Donetosk, found a burned pickup truck with ammunition boxes in the bed.

The Nissan pick-up has an EU License button and  German license plate with the abbreviation MOL for Märkisch-Oderland district from the state of Brandenburg, Germany!

“The most interesting thing is that the German car number appears. Brandenburg. No idea who that was and why there are Nissans with EU numbers here”  said one of the soldiers who came upon the truck.

The vehicle tail lights, and license plate lights, were taped-over with blue painters masking tape, so the vehicle could travel unseen at night.

Clearly, this is the manner in which NATO countries have been smuggling weapons and supplies into Ukraine, to kill Russian Army troops.

One wonders how much longer Russia will sit back and allow this to go on before smashing the countries that are doing it?

The Prisoner S1E6 The General – Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner

I really hope that you enjoy this episode. Seriously, pay attention to how the media controls the prisoner. And note how everyone is controlled by the media. Written and presented in the early 1960s.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Number Six, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Asov HQ, 1959 Cadillac DeVille, and Ukraine War

Another daily dose of fun, frolic and an engagement in the geopolitical thoughts of the day. I hope that this article finds you well and that you enjoy it’s content.

Let’s start here…

Russia Rewrites the Art of Hybrid War

May 22, 2022 Pepe Escobar Original Article Here

Hybrid War is being fought predominantly in the economic/financial battleground – and the pain dial for the collective West will only go up.

The ironclad fictional “narrative” imposed all across NATOstan is that Ukraine is “winning”.

So why would weapons peddler retrofitted as Pentagon head Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin literally beg since late February to have his phone calls answered by Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, only to have his wish finally granted?

It’s now confirmed by one of my top intel sources. The call was a direct consequence of panic. The United States Government (USG) by all means wants to scotch the detailed Russian investigation – and accumulation of evidence – on the US bioweapon labs in Ukraine, as I outlined in a previous column.

This phone call happened exactly after an official Russian statement to the UN Security Council on May 13: we will use articles 5 and 6 of the Convention on the Prohibition of Bioweapons to investigate the Pentagon’s biological “experiments” in Ukraine.

That was reiterated by Under Secretary-General of the UN in charge of disarmament, Thomas Markram, even as all ambassadors of NATO member countries predictably denied the collected evidence as “Russian disinformation”.

Shoigu cold see the call coming eons away. Reuters, merely quoting the proverbial “Pentagon official”, spun that the allegedly one-hour-long call led to nothing. Nonsense. Austin, according to the Americans, demanded a “ceasefire” – which must have originated a Siberian cat smirk on Shoigu’s face.

Shoigu knows exactly which way the wind is blowing on the ground – for Ukrainian Armed Forces and UkroNazis alike. It’s not only the Azovstal debacle – and Kiev’s all-around army breakdown.

After the fall of Popasnaya – the crucial, most fortified Ukrainian stronghold in Donbass – the Russians and Donetsk/Luhansk forces have breached defenses along four different vectors to north, northwest, west and south. What’s left of the Ukrainian front is crumbling – fast, with a massive cauldron subdivided in a maze of mini-cauldrons: a military disaster the USG cannot possibly spin.

Now, in parallel, we can also expect full exposure – on overdrive – of the Pentagon bioweapons racket. The only “offer you can’t refuse” left to the USG would be to present something tangible to the Russians to avoid a full investigation.

That’s not gonna happen. Moscow is fully aware that going public with illegal work on banned biological weapons is an existential threat to the US Deep State. Especially when documents seized by the Russians show that Big Pharma – via Pfizer, Moderna, Merck and Gilead – was involved in several “experiments”. Fully exposing the whole maze, from the start, was one of Putin’s stated objectives.

More “military-technical measures”?

Three days after the UN presentation, the board of the Russian Foreign Ministry held a special session to discuss “the radically changed geopolitical realities that have developed as a result of the hybrid war against our country unleashed by the West – under the pretext of the situation in Ukraine – unprecedented in scale and ferocity, including the revival in Europe of a racist worldview in the form of cave Russophobia, an open course for the ‘abolition’ of Russia and everything Russian.”

So it’s no wonder “the aggressive revisionist course of the West requires a radical revision of Russia’s relations with unfriendly states.”

We should expect “a new edition of the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation” coming out soon.

This new Foreign Policy Concept will elaborate on what Foreign Minister Lavrov once again stressed at a meeting honoring the 30th Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy: the US has declared an all-round Hybrid War on Russia. The only thing lacking, as it stands, is a formal declaration of war.

Beyond the disinformation fog veiling the application of Finland and Sweden – call them the Dumb and Dumber Nordics – to join NATO, what really matters is another instance of declaration of war: the prospect of missiles with nuclear warheads stationed really close to Russian borders. Moscow already warned the Finns and Swedes, politely, that this would be dealt with it via “military-technical measures”. That’s exactly what Washington – and NATO minions – were told would happen before the start of Operation Z.

And of course this goes much deeper, involving Romania and Poland as well. Bucharest already has Aegis Ashore missile launchers capable of sending Tomahawks with nuclear warheads at Russia, while Warsaw is receiving the same systems. To cut to the chase, if there’s no de-escalation, they will all eventually end up receiving Mr. Khinzal’s hypersonic business card.

NATO member Turkey, meanwhile, plays a deft game, issuing its own list of demands before even considering the Nordics’ gamble. Ankara wants no more sanctions on its purchase of S-400s and on top if be re-included in the F-35 program. It will be fascinating to watch what His Master’s Voice will come up with to seduce the Sultan. The Nordics engaged in a self-correcting “clear unequivocal stance” against the PKK and the PYD is clearly not enough for the Sultan, who relished muddying the waters even more as he stressed that buying Russian energy is a “strategic” issue for Turkey.

Counteracting financial Shock’n Awe

By now it’s evidently clear that open-ended Operation Z targets unipolar Hegemon power, the infinite expansion of vassalized NATO, and the world’s financial architecture – an intertwined combo that largely transcends the Ukraine battleground.

Serial Western sanctions package hysteria ended up triggering Russia’s so far quite successful counter-financial moves. Hybrid War is being fought predominantly in the economic/financial battleground – and the pain dial for the collective West will only go up: inflation, higher commodity prices, breakdown of supply chains, exploding cost of living, impoverishment of the middle classes, and unfortunately for great swathes of the Global South, outright poverty and starvation.

In the near future, as insider evidence surfaces, a convincing case will be made that the Russian leadership even gamed the Western financial gamble/ blatant robbery of over $300 billion in Russian reserves.

This implies that already years ago – let’s say, at least from 2016, based on analyses by Sergey Glazyev – the Kremlin knew this would inevitably happen. As trust remains a rigid foundation of a monetary system, the Russian leadership may have calculated that the Americans and their vassals, driven by blind Russophobia, would play all their cards at once when push came to shove – utterly demolishing global trust on “their” system.

Because of Russia’s infinite natural resources, the Kremlin may have factored that the nation would eventually survive the financial Shock’n Awe – and even profit from it (ruble appreciation included). The reward is just too sweet: opening the way to The Doomed Dollar – without having to ask Mr. Sarmat to present his nuclear business card.

Russia could even entertain the hypothesis of getting a mighty return on those stolen funds. A great deal of Western assets – totaling as much as $500 billion – may be nationalized if the Kremlin so chooses.

So Russia is winning not only militarily but also to a large extent geopolitically – 88% of the planet does not align with NATOstan hysteria – and of course in the economic/financial sphere.

This in fact is the key Hybrid War battleground where the collective West is being checkmated. One of the next key steps will be an expanded BRICS coordinating their dollar-bypassing strategy.

None of the above should overshadow the still to be measured interconnected repercussions of the mass surrender of Azov neo-Nazis at UkroNazistan Central in Azovstal.

The mythical Western “narrative” about freedom-fighting heroes imposed since February by NATOstan media collapsed with a single blow. Cue to the thunderous silence all over the Western infowar front, where no mutts even attempted to sing that crappy, “winning” Eurovision song.

What happened, in essence, is that the creme de la creme of NATO-trained neo-Nazis, “advised” by top Western experts, weaponized to death, entrenched in deep concrete anti-nuclear bunkers in the bowels of Azovstal, was either pulverized or forced to surrender like cornered rats.

Novorossiya as a game-changer

The Russian General Staff will be adjusting their tactics for the major follow-up in Donbass – as the best Russian analysts and war correspondents incessantly debate. They will have to face an inescapable problem: as much as the Russian methodically grind down the – disaggregated – Ukrainian Army in Donbass, a new NATO army is being trained and weaponized in western Ukraine.

So there is a real danger that depending on the ultimate long-term aims of Operation Z – which are only shared by the Russian military leadership – Moscow runs the risk of encountering, in a few months, a mobile and better weaponized incarnation of the demoralized army it is now destroying. And this is exactly what the Americans mean by “weakening” Russia.

As it stands, there are several reasons why a new Novorossiya reality may turn out to be a positive game-changer for Russia. Among them:

  1. The economic/logistics complex from Kharkov to Odessa – along Donetsk, Luhansk, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Nikolaev – is intimately linked with Russian industry.
  2. By controlling the Sea of Azov – already a de facto “Russian lake” – and subsequently the Black Sea, Russia will have total control of export routes for the region’s world-class grain production. Extra bonus: total exclusion of NATO.
  3. All of the above suggests a concerted drive for the development of an integrated agro-heavy industry complex – with the extra bonus of serious tourism potential.

Under this scenario, a remaining Kiev-Lviv rump Ukraine, not incorporated to Russia, and of course not rebuilt, would be at best subjected to a no-fly zone plus selected artillery/missile/drone strikes in case NATO continues to entertain funny ideas.

This would be a logical conclusion for a Special Military Operation focused on precision strikes and a deliberate emphasis on sparing civilian lives and infrastructure while methodically disabling the Ukrainian military/logistics spectrum. All of that takes time. Yet Russia may have all the time in the world, as we all keep listening to the sound of the collective West spiraling down.

Pepe ESCOBAR is an independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist.

Journalists get their first look inside the abandoned Azov headquarters.

They had Member I.D cards and worked directly with the Ukraine Government, making Zelensky an accomplice to their hate crimes.

There are already videos of the interior of the Azovstal bunkers where the crem of the crem of the Ukrainian Marines and nazi battallions remained without knowing what a fight is..

The rooms had air conditioning, and for what it shows the collection of objects exposed, they passed the time reading books like Mein Kmapf, and the like…

Their documents show they were all linked to the Zelensky administration as official soldiers, included some Polish ones.

Then, it is calls from the people in Lvov willing to give the Russians the coordinates on the customs where trucks full of luxury cars that are entering Ukraine…

Article One HERE

Biden´s new Minsiter of Truth photographed working along into the Zelensky´s campaign HQ…

Article Two HERE

The Wallflowers – One Headlight (Official Music Video)

Subject: What Australia did to China

Professor James Laurenceson, Director,
Australia-China Relations Institute, UT Sydney.
 
Dear Dr. Laurencson,
 
In your recent ACRI newsletter you asserted, “After all, in 2020 it was Beijing’s decision and Beijing’s decision alone to respond to political disagreements by cutting off senior level dialogue and hitting Australia’s exports”.
 
A dispassionate review of our behavior, including our unprovoked invasions of four of China’s neighbors, suggests that Beijing’s response is fully justified. Let us count the ways.
 
In late 2017, the Solomon Islands featured in aggressive Australian efforts to influence the award of the contract to lay internet cable between Honiara and Sydney.  Said the Lowy Institute’s Jonathan Pryke: “This was seen as a red line that Australia would not cross and so we jumped in with a better deal providing the cable as a grant that would be implemented with a procurement partner of Australia’s choosing – that wouldn’t be Chinese.”

Our stigmatizing normal cooperation and imposing restrictions, like the revocation of Chinese scholars’ visas, caused a scandal in China, as did our intimidatory predawn searches and reckless seizures of Chinese journalists’ homes and properties without charge or explanation.

Then the CSIRO told staff it will not renew its climate research partnership with the Qingdao National Marine Laboratory, following an unsupported ASIO assertion that ocean temperature modelling could assist submarine operations against Australia–a pronouncement met with robust criticism by Australian scientists.

We targeted China with one-third of our ongoing WTO actions and two-thirds of current measures, despite our Productivity Commission finding ‘no convincing justifications for the measures,’ and imposed hefty duties on their steel (144%), aluminium, and chemicals. China consistently lowered tariffs on our products to the point that ninety-five percent of our exports enjoyed zero duties, yet we initiated one-hundred six anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations of Chinese products, complaining bitterly when Beijing finally resorted to the WTO, for the first time, with barley and wine tariffs.
When Rep. Shaoquett Moselmane repeated the WHO’s praise for China’s coronavirus response, Mark Latham MP called his approval ‘disgusting’ and, at dawn on June 26, 2020, forty police arrived at Moselmane’s home and stayed until 1:30 am the next morning. They brought sniffer dogs, took hair and dust samples from his car, searched the car engine and door rubbers, had a helicopter hovering and raided his parliamentary office, and froze the Moselmane family’s bank accounts. Despite Peter Dutton’s obvious, public allegiance to the United States, he told Ray Hadley, “You can’t have an allegiance to another country and pretend to have an allegiance to this country at the same time”.
 
Our international attack on Huawei, however, was particularly cruel, since it is China’s first international tech leader. Malcolm Turnbull loudly campaigned against its domestic adoption, contravening our trade agreements on unjustified, unstated ‘national security’ grounds, then lobbied the British Government on the specious grounds that Beijing can compel companies to provide information. This ignores identical Australian, American, European laws and the technical impossibility of so doing. We further revealed our hypocrisy by ignoring Huawei’s offer to base its network security division in Australia.
 

When China listed its concerns, Canberra concealed China’s fourteen concerns from public scrutiny, and DFAT lied: “The fourteen items identified by the Chinese embassy document are seen by the Department of Foreign Affairs as key to Australia’s national interest and non-negotiable.. the government makes sound decisions in our national interest and in accordance with our values and open democratic processes”. No democratic process was involved, of course. The points, still unanswered, are

  1. In contravention of ChAFTA, we rejected a dozen Chinese investment projects, and restricted areas like infrastructure, agriculture and animal husbandry on ambiguous, unfounded (and ludicrously insulting) “national security concerns”.
  2. We launched 107 anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations of Chinese products, more than any of China’s other trading partners. 
  3. We politicized and stigmatized normal exchanges and cooperation, created barriers, and imposed restrictions like revoking visas for Chinese scholars, in parallel with America’s identical, failed witch hunt.
  4. Though Covid-19 was endemic in Europe and the US before it reached China, PM Morrison loudly demanded a weapons-style inspection into its Chinese origins–then fell silent when the US refused to sign the UN resolution to investigate its source.
  5. We spearheaded a crusade against China in multilateral forums.
  6. We legislated against Victoria’s participation in BRI.
  7. We paid anti-China think tanks to spread false reports, and peddle unsubstantiated allegations about Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
  8. Canberra funded investigations into so-called ‘China infiltration’ designed to manipulate public opinion against the country.
  9. Our police made pre-dawn searches and conducted reckless seizures in Chinese journalists’ homes without charge, explanation, or apology.
  10. Our politicians made repeated, false allegations about Chinese cyber attacks. 
  11. We condoned and repeated government-funded NGOs’ outrageous condemnations of the governing party of China. 
  12. We shrugged off hundreds of racist attacks against Chinese and Asian people.
  13. We permitted our media to repeat unfounded reports about China and made no effort to correct them.
  14. We were the first non littoral country to condemn China’s behavior in the South China Sea at the United Nations.

The Chinese see a pattern of bad-faith dealings, discrimination, and unprovoked hostility, best illustrated by our consistent opposition to their United Nations initiatives:

I am curious as to why you have not discussed any of these matters in your newsletter. Could it be that doing so would jeopardize your job?

Sincerely,

Godfree Roberts

No response was ever returned.

Gluten-Free Fruit Swirl Coffee Cake

Glazed fruit swirl coffee cake – a delicious dessert that’s ready in 45 minutes. Serve it warm or cold – it’s a delight either ways.

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c172fd05 0600 47f7 90de 045e5c1b977e

Ingredients

Coffee Cake

  • 4 eggs
  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1 box Bisquick™ Gluten Free mix (3 cups)
  • 2/3 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 can (21 oz) fruit pie filling (any flavor)

Glaze

  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 2 tablespoons milk

2022 05 23 20 57
2022 05 23 20 57

The ASEAN-US summit: rhetoric versus reality

May 23, 2022

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ASEAN wants the U.S. to make its actions consistent with its rhetoric of supporting ASEAN centrality in regional security affairs. Image: Pixabay

When the US-ASEAN Summit was first announced, there were great expectations on both sides. However fond hopes foundered on the rocks of reality.

When the US-ASEAN Summit was first announced, there were great expectations on both sides. But after a postponement due to disagreements on dates, Kurt Campbell, czar and architect of US Asia Policy, quipped “We just hope they show up.” The leaders of Myanmar and the Philippines did not but the rest did come. However fond hopes foundered on the rocks of reality.

The U.S. wanted to win over ASEAN and its members to its side in its struggle with China for regional domination. ASEAN wanted to extract robust US commitments to its regional centrality in political and economic affairs as well as to actions that demonstrate that the US interest in it will not fade in favor of Europe.

Some had hoped that the U.S. would court ASEAN for its own merits rather than as a pawn in its strategic struggle with China for regional dominance. But the summit did little to dispel their concern.

The highlight of the meeting was an agreement to establish a US-ASEAN Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. The U.S. needed this to place its relations with ASEAN on the same level as that of ASEAN’s with China. Ironically this symbolized their intensifying competition for ASEAN’s hearts and minds. But it is unclear what this new formality will mean in practice.

The U.S. has previously made its intentions crystal clear. The goal of its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) is to prevent China’s regional hegemony by building greater coordination with allies and partners “across war-fighting domains” to ensure allies can dissuade or defeat aggression in any form_.” This means that its success depends on a US-centric network of security allies and partners and their willingness to go along with it in confronting China. The summit was part of this US effort to build a united front against China.

But ASEAN and the U.S. have fundamentally different visions for the region. The U.S. vision of an implicitly anti-China, security-oriented Free and Open Indo-Pacific contrasts with ASEAN’s inclusive [including China], more economic, less militaristic Outlook on the Indo-Pacific. ASEAN hopes the US and China can coexist and refrain from raising tensions that hurt them.

ASEAN wants the U.S. to make its actions consistent with its rhetoric of supporting ASEAN centrality in regional security affairs. ‘Centrality’ here “refers to the role of ASEAN as a regional leader or driver, convenor or facilitator, hub or key node_ _”. US President Joe Biden declared that “strengthening the US relationship with ASEAN is “at the very heart of [US] foreign policy strategy”. Perhaps that is so. But the goal of that strategy is to constrain and contain China and that is not necessarily in the interests of ASEAN or its members.

ASEAN and its members were already wary of US-driven realpolitik strategic moves like AUKUS and the Quad that have been initiated to counter what the U.S. sees as the “China threat’ to its hegemony in Asia. The U.S. and its allies went around and over ASEAN to form these pacts. In doing so ASEAN has been split and weakened.

The Joint Vision Statement issued by the meeting reflects these contradictions. It is remarkable more for what is missing or left ambiguous rather than included and clear. The parties agreed to “appropriately [emphasis added] cooperate in international and regional fora”. But what is ‘inappropriate’ cooperation? Clearly, either or both had reservations regarding certain types of cooperation . But which types and why?

They declared that they “look forward to further strengthening cooperation including through relevant initiatives or frameworks of the United States or ASEAN.” This ambiguity appears to reflect real differences or uncertainties as to which side should take the initiative on what issues. For example, the U.S. seems to want to fit ASEAN in to the ‘Quad”—the ad hoc security dialogue between India, Japan Australia and the U.S.. But ASEAN centrality means its security architecture and forums should take precedence and the Quad should take direction from them. Despite its rhetoric to the contrary, this meeting was still all about China and the U.S. effort to form a united front against it.

ASEAN wants the U.S. to place more emphasis on US-ASEAN economic relations. Indeed, the most important single thing the U.S. could do to appeal to ASEAN members would be to lead and coordinate a multinational effort of economic assistance in a strategic manner focusing on needs defined by the recipients.

Yet it missed the opportunity to announce its long awaited Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). It was not even mentioned in the Joint Vision Statement. This only reinforced the notion that “ASEAN is not a fulcrum for US economic co-operation in the Indo-Pacific”. Moreover there is concern that the IPEF will be focused on issues more important to the U.S. and its strategy to contain China rather than ASEAN members’ urgent needs. Because of the ephemeral nature of previous US commitments to Asia like the ‘pivot’, there is suspicion that the IPEF will not outlast the Biden administration. This concern was reinforced by the US announcement of a paltry US 150 million aid pledge, including 60 million for US Coast Guard assistance in training, presence and equipment to ASEAN countries. This will increase maritime domain awareness that is to the U.S. advantage in its long term struggle against China. The total is ridiculously small compared to China’s 1.5 billion aid pledge and the many US billions in aid to Ukraine.

As another example of US centrism, the US managed to insert in the Joint Vision Statement its concern with “ensuring “freedom of navigation and over flight and other lawful uses of the seas”. The latter is code for asserting what it considers to be its right to undertake provocative intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance probes against China.

Perhaps the most egregious US hypocrisy in the Joint Vision Statement is “we support ASEAN’s efforts to preserve the Southeast Asian region as a nuclear weapon free zone_ _as enshrined in the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty. In addition to frequently transporting nuclear weapons through the region, the U.S. has declined to become a party. Meanwhile China has declared that it is ready to sign—apparently in response to the AUKUS agreement which will likely bring more nuclear powered and nuclear weapon capable submarines into the region.

On the interpersonal level, Mr. Biden declined bilateral meetings with the leaders. His administration claimed this was to emphasize that he was meeting with ASEAN as an institution. Given that they had traveled half way around the world to meet him, I suspect some were miffed.

A major flaw in this approach is that ASEAN is not united on political issues. This is clearly demonstrated by its members’ diverse responses to the crisis in Myanmar and Ukraine and even to China’s behavior in the South China Sea.

They are only united in that they do not want to be forced to choose between China and the U.S..

Indeed, they do not want to become puppets or designated proxies for either one as happened during the US-Soviet Union Cold War with disastrous results for some of them—like Vietnam. But it is not clear from this summit that the U.S. will help them avoid that fate.

This piece first appeared in the Asia Times.

Italian Dressing

Why buy salad dressing, when you can make your own, and it’s cheaper and far better tasting.

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7eb7741a 6996 4abf afea 46bf9e20f2fe

Ingredients

  • 1 cup olive or vegetable oil
  • 1/4 cup white or cider vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh or 1 teaspoon dried basil leaves
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 teaspoon ground mustard
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

Steps

  • 1 Shake all ingredients in tightly covered container. Shake before serving.

They tried to escape

Ukrainian Nazi’s tried to get past the RF at the Azovstal complex dressed as civilians when the civilians were eventually released they were picked out after questioning and detained.

"Chechen special forces showed suspects of participating in hostilities against the allied forces of the Russian Federation and the DPR - according to the Russian side, the detainees tried to escape from Mariupol, dressed in civilian clothes.

Video showing the commander of the special police regiment named after Akhmata Kadyrova Zamid Chalaev conducts initial interrogation of detainees, the head of Chechnya published Ramzan Kadyrov in his Telegram channel. "Ukrainian Nazis, disguised as civilians, wanted to slip past the Russian military. My dear brother Zamid Chalaev asks simple questions, but the prisoner is so confused that he does not understand the first time," Kadyrov signed this publication. The head of the republic suggests that he is probably afraid of retribution for crimes and this point has yet to be clarified."

Article HERE

Cool Pics Of The 1959 Cadillac DeVille Series

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The 1959 Cadillac is remembered for its huge sharp tailfins with dual bullet tail lights, two distinctive rooflines and roof pillar configurations, new jewel-like grille patterns and matching deck lid beauty panels.

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D2 18

In 1959, the Series 62 were moved from the Series 62 to their own series, the Series 6200. DeVilles and 2-door Eldorados became the Series 6300 and Series 6400 respectively, though they all, including the 4-door Eldorado Brougham (which was moved from the Series 70 to Series 6900), shared the same 130 in (3,302 mm) wheelbase.

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D3 18

Engine output was an even 325 hp (242 kW) from the 390 cu in (6.4 L) engine. Standard equipment included power brakes, power steering, automatic transmission, back-up lamps, windshield wipers, two-speed wipers, wheel discs, outside rearview mirror, vanity mirror, oil filter, power windows and two-way power seats.

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D6 16

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FF16 7

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FF13 9

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FF9 11

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FF7 13

“Girded with barbed wire”: the wild atrocities of the Finns in World War II are revealed

Killed every third Red Army soldier who was captured by them

From HERE
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During World War II, Finland became one of the allies of Nazi Germany, which attacked the Soviet Union. This pastoral country managed to distinguish itself then in a very specific way. The Finns were able to surpass even the Germans in terms of creating hellish conditions for Soviet prisoners of war and civilians who found themselves in the occupied territories.

Juvenile prisoners of the camps. Photo: wikipedia@sa-kava@archives

The principles of cultural conduct of hostilities on the Eastern Front against the Red Army were “turned off” in advance not only by the leadership of the German Wehrmacht, but also by other allies of the Third Reich, who sent their troops to fight the Soviets. However, the degree of cruelty shown to the enemy by soldiers from the country of Suomi gave odds to almost all other members of the Nazi bloc.

boiled alive

Historians are unanimous: Russophobia was a policy in those years, officially approved by the leaders of the Land of a Thousand Lakes. Among the population, a hostile attitude towards the Russ was actively promoted (such a contemptuous designation was popular). Many joined the ranks of the civil guards – shutskor, which was originally created to fight those Russians who lived on the territory of Finland that separated from the Russian Empire.

The confessions given during interrogation by Lieutenant Pelkonen, the captured deputy head of the Olonets camp No. 17 for prisoners of war, are indicative: “I completely shared the fascist propaganda carried out by the Finns. In the person of the Russian nationality, I saw the primordial enemies of my country. With this opinion, I went to fight against the Russians. My boss, lieutenant Soininen, said that the Russians, even in captivity, continue to be enemies for the Finns.

However, even taking into account all the mentioned atrocities of the White Finns in relation to the captured Soviet soldiers, they are taken aback. Even their colleagues from among the German monsters with SS stripes give in to the Finnish shoulder craftsmen.

Here are just some of the evidence recorded in documents, in publications of that time.

“The Red Army soldier Sergey Pavlovich Terentyev, who escaped from the White Finnish captivity, spoke about the unbearable suffering of Soviet prisoners of war languishing in a camp near the city of Pitkyaranta. “In this camp,” said Terentiev, “wounded Red Army soldiers are kept. They are not provided with any medical care. … We were given a mug of flour stew a day. Finnish executioners came up with a terrible torture for us. They girded the prisoner with barbed wire and dragged him along the ground. Every day, the corpses of tortured Soviet soldiers are taken out of the camp.” (From the message of the Soviet Information Bureau on October 7, 1942)

“The Red Army soldier Lazarenko, who fell into the clutches of the Mannerheims, was subjected to monstrous torture. Finnish executioners drove cartridges into his nostrils, and burned a five-pointed star on his chest with a red-hot ramrod. But even this seemed not enough to vile sadists. They smashed their victim’s skull and stuffed crackers inside.” (Pravda, July 25, 1944)

“Dear comrade editor! Take a look at this photo. It shows Lieutenant of the Finnish army Olkinuorya. In his hands is the skull of a Red Army soldier tortured and killed by him. As the prisoners testified, this beast in uniform decided to keep the skull of his victim “as a keepsake” and ordered the soldiers to boil it in a cauldron and clean it. And in the suitcase of the captured Finn Saari, we found photographs like this. Saari tortured the prisoners, cut off their arms and legs, and ripped open their stomachs. He even established a system: first he cut off the feet, hands, then the shins, forearms, and only then cut off the head. (From a letter from senior lieutenant V. Andreev, published in Komsomolskaya Pravda on August 11, 1944)

“… Many of the found corpses of tortured Soviet officers and soldiers have stab wounds, many have their ears and noses cut off, their eyes gouged out, their limbs turned out of their joints, skin strips and five-pointed stars were cut out on the body. Finnish monsters practiced burning people alive at the stake…

… The act and resolution of the military investigator on the corpse of an unknown Red Army soldier found on the shore of Lake Ladoga on June 25, 1944, boiled alive on a fire in a large iron barrel, testifies to what vile, sophisticated torture Finnish sadists reach …

… A regime was established in the concentration camps, designed for the extinction of prisoners of war by a slow, painful death. They were starved. The barracks in which the prisoners were placed, as a rule, were not heated all year round. The appalling unsanitary living conditions of prisoners of war and rotten, inedible food were the cause of massive stomach and other illnesses. The most common disease, most often fatal, was general exhaustion …

… There are not isolated cases when the guards of the camps arranged vile, bloody fun, setting dogs on defenseless people.

Prisoners are used as experimental material in medical experiments. The Swedish newspaper Volksviljan wrote at the beginning of this year: “It is known among doctors in Stockholm that in Finland Russian prisoners of war are used as subjects for medical experiments. Finnish doctors use Russian prisoners of war to determine how much air can be injected into a person’s blood. This inflicts terrible torment on the victims during the “research”, after which death occurs. In experiments on Russian prisoners, they are also trying to find out how much drugs the human body can withstand. (From the Report on the atrocities of the White Finns in the temporarily occupied territory of the USSR, sent to the head of the GlavPU of the Red Army A.S. Shcherbakov by his deputy I.V. Shikin on July 28, 1944)

50,000 “extra” Russians

In the spring of 2020, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case of genocide on the death of thousands of civilians in Finnish concentration camps in the occupied part of Karelia during the Great Patriotic War

The beginning of this horror, which lasted almost four years, was laid by the Supreme Commander of the Army of Finland, Marshal Mannerheim. In his secret order No. 132, signed on July 8, 1941, he ordered the Finnish soldiers and officers: “The Russian population should be detained and sent to concentration camps.”

We talked about what happened next with the director of the Institute of History, Political and Social Sciences of Petrozavodsk State University, Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences Sergey Verigin.

– Even before the start of hostilities against the USSR, the Finnish authorities approved the concept of creating Greater Finland. It was supposed to include part of the Soviet lands – Karelia, the Kola Peninsula. Moreover, in such an expanded Finnish state, in addition to representatives of the titular nation, only their “younger brothers” — Karelians, Ingrians, Vepsians — were supposed to live. The Russians, according to the doctrine then prevailing in the country of Suomi, are for all these territories an alien people who have no place there. Therefore, the Finnish leadership decided to act on an ethnic basis. Drive the aliens to concentration camps, and after the final victory over the USSR, send them away – to the Slavic regions captured by Germany.

Entering the war, the Finns were able to occupy two-thirds of Soviet Karelia. 86,000 civilians remained in the territory they occupied. Of this number, about 36,000 turned out to be representatives of kindred peoples – Karelians, Vepsians … And the remaining 50,000 are the very “extra” Russian-speaking population.

As a result of the efforts of the Finnish military to carry out Mannerheim’s order, almost half of these people were sent to concentration camps. Thousands of them died.

Can this really qualify as genocide?

– In my opinion, that’s right. Of course, at the level of everyday consciousness, genocide is associated with mass executions, with gas chambers, executions … But in this case, we are dealing with genocide carried out virtually without the use of weapons or any special technical means.

Civilians – and mostly they were women, old people, children – were herded into concentration camps. Living conditions there were harsh. The prisoners were used for hard work, and food was provided very poorly. Weakened people were mowed down by diseases, epidemics …

The result was a terrible record. In 1942, the mortality rate in Finnish concentration camps was even higher than in German concentration camps: 13.75% versus 10%. Later, however, the conditions for campers were slightly improved. This began in 1943, when a clear turning point occurred in the course of the war. The Finnish leadership then realized that the prospects for it were sad, they were frightened. To further disguise their “sins”, they even decided to rename the concentration camps to camps for displaced persons, and a certain number of people who were there were released. But in general, such cosmetic measures did not change the situation in any way.

On the occupied territory of Karelia, the White Finns created a hundred places of detention: 14 concentration camps, 34 labor camps, 42 prisoner of war camps, 9 prisons and one colony. I even find it difficult to name any other occupied territory where such a high density of camps for its inhabitants was created during the Second World War.

What was the labor camp like?

– Those who were there, it seems, were not formally considered prisoners. But the life of these unfortunates was akin to a concentration camp. People lived in villages, although not behind barbed wire, but under constant guard and without the possibility of free movement. Fearing that the “trudoviks” might join the partisans, the Finnish soldiers forbade them even to go to the neighboring forest. In addition, adult residents of such a camp were required to travel to work daily. Moreover, the invaders prepared for them the most difficult types of it: these people paved the roads, felled the forest … Of course, many could not withstand such difficult conditions.

Facts from the past:

“Shortly after the occupation of the Karelian-Finnish SSR by the White Finnish invaders ... they drove most of the civilian population, mainly Russians, into concentration camps. The camps housed Soviet citizens of all ages, from infants to the elderly. The regime, in essence, was no different from the regime in concentration camps for Soviet prisoners of war: starvation rations, illness, dirt, beatings, abuse, executions. The regime in the Olonets camp No. 8 and in the Kutizhma camp was especially cruel. Exhausted by constant hunger, people were forced to work 12-14 hours a day. Those who were unable to move were dragged to the place of work, and at the end of the working day they were again dragged to the camp. Beatings were commonplace. The camps had a whole set of tools for torture: whips, rubber clubs, gas mask tubes filled with sand. Torture was carried out alone and in groups. For failure to comply with unbearable work norms, women and girls were cut bald. For the slightest deviation from the established order, for going beyond the fence without an escort, execution was threatened. In Camp No. 8, on average, 2–3 people died daily.

Mocking Soviet citizens, the head of Camp No. 8 ordered every week, under the pretext of fighting lice, to drive men, women and children together, stripped naked, into a very hot heated bathhouse and keep them there for 45 minutes. with tightly closed windows and doors. People were going crazy...

The doctor of the Kutizhma camp, Beino Kolykhmainen, turned the hospital into a dungeon, which the prisoners were more afraid of than the punishment cell. The sick preferred to hide their illness so as not to fall into the clutches of this beast. He used to line up the sick in a line and beat them with a stick, saying "work, work." He often poisoned patients who developed edema from exhaustion by mixing poison into the medicine.

... On March 10, 1942, a new batch of 600 prisoners was sent to Kutizhma. By July 13, 1942, only 160 people from this party remained alive.

Wild arbitrariness reigned not only in the camps, but also outside their fences. For "unauthorized absence" from the village, for walking around the city after 10 o'clock - execution. (From the Report on the atrocities of the White Finns in the temporarily occupied territory of the USSR, sent to the head of the GlavPU of the Red Army A.S. Shcherbakov by his deputy I.V. Shikin on July 28, 1944)

“In the first days of June 1944, I was in Petrozavodsk. The camp accommodated children from 5 to 15 years old. The kids were creepy to watch. They were small living skeletons, dressed in unimaginable rags. The children were so exhausted that they forgot how to cry and looked at everything with indifferent eyes. (From the testimony of a captured Finnish soldier of the 20th Infantry Brigade Toivo Arvid Laine.)

“In the village of Palalahta, Vedlozersky district, the White Finns arrested the Karelian Anna Gumbarova, “suspected of sympathy for the partisans.” The girl was thrown into prison, starved, tortured. The Soviet patriot steadfastly endured all the torment and bullying. She was locked up for 20 days in a dead room, where the corpses lay. When this did not help, Anna Gumbarova was taken to the cemetery, forced to dig her own grave and shot in front of the entire population of the village.

... The Mannerheimians created several concentration camps in the occupied areas, in which Soviet people languish. One of these camps is located in Petrozavodsk. It's in spooky mode. The police systematically arrange drunken orgies, during which the prisoners are subjected to wild abuse. Recently, a new monstrous torture has been invented here: after beating a prisoner until he loses consciousness, the police undress him, wrap the wounded body in a sheet soaked in salt, and leave him in this position for several hours, and sometimes even days. ("Red Star", November 28, 1943)

“Unusual Invaders”

– How many Soviet people – prisoners of war and civilians – passed through these Finnish “millstones”? I ask Sergei Verigin.

– According to the State Emergency Commission, which worked in 1944-1945, about 8,000 civilians, including 2,000 children, died in the Finnish concentration camps created on the territory of Soviet Karelia during the war years. To this should be added also at least 7,000 dead and killed prisoners of war held in Karelian concentration camps.

However, these are only very approximate figures. It should also be taken into account that some of the captured Red Army soldiers were sent to camps located on the territory of Finland itself. Historian Antti Kujala, associate professor at the University of Helsinki, based on the latest updated data, came to the conclusion that a total of 22,000 people died from among the prisoners of war.

Although this needs to be corrected. Indeed, as far as I know, there were frequent cases when the Finns did not send a captured Red Army soldier to their rear – to a concentration camp. They were simply afraid to organize such a convoy under shelling, bombing, and therefore resorted to a much more convenient solution to the problem: they simply shot these people right there, on the front line.

5-6 years ago, Finnish researchers provided us with a database in which information was collected about 19.5 thousand Soviet prisoners of war. However, they themselves admit that this is far from a complete list, they say: we do not know exactly how many of your prisoners and civilians died in those years. Indeed, during the war, the accounting of Russian camp inmates was carried out very carelessly. Looking through these documents, you see that some surnames are crossed out, others are entered additionally … Sometimes there are omissions in the accounts, covering whole months. Such a negligent attitude of the Finnish “owners” to the accounting of the “living souls” who ended up in their camps is quite understandable. After all, for them, Russian people – aliens – were worthless consumables.

Now the same Kuyala gives the total number of Soviet soldiers and officers who went through Finnish captivity during the war years, 67,000 people. I emphasize once again: of this number, 22,000 died. That is, every third prisoner of the concentration camp did not live to see liberation.

– What caused such a large percentage of victims?

“First of all, people died of starvation. After all, as eyewitnesses testify, the food in the concentration camps was very bad. Secondly, people could not stand the harsh working conditions. Particularly terrible memories were preserved of the forest camps in the Medvezhyegorsk region. There, sometimes the composition of prisoners was completely renewed after six months: the entire first batch of prisoners of war was mowed down, and they were replaced by others. In addition, the camp guards also did not stand on ceremony. People were beaten, even shot. There were no such mass executions as the Germans had, but they practiced demonstrative executions of those who tried to escape. The fugitives caught – five, nine people – were placed in front of the formation of campers and shot as a warning to the rest, so that they would not even try to break free.

— Why is the case about the Karelian genocide during the war years initiated right now?

– In the spring of 2020, about 4,000 documents related to those events were declassified, which were preserved in the regional department of the FSB. This event received a great response in the republic. The researchers were able to find out many hitherto unknown facts about what the Mannerheimians were doing. On the basis of the now available documentary information, we managed to find out the names of several dozen “heroes” who are guilty of mocking prisoners and in their death – these are the heads of concentration camps, commandants, guards …

In addition, at the same time, the surviving juvenile prisoners of the Finnish concentration camps turned to the Investigative Committee. The result of all these events was the decision to initiate proceedings on the grounds of genocide.

In Finland itself, the epic with the documents now declassified in our country also made a lot of noise. Many local experts published articles and gave interviews. They tried in every possible way to whitewash the military regime of the first half of the 1940s. Like, the Finns were occupiers, but “unusual occupiers”, not like the Germans: they opened schools in the villages and cities of Karelia, created medical aid points, fed and clothed children … But at the same time, the gentlemen forget to make one small clarification. All this was indeed done in the territories occupied by the Finns, but only for representatives of the Finno-Ugric nationalities “related” to them. But the “wrong” Russians instead of household goods from the invaders got only camp bunks, beatings, exhausting labor, hunger, bullying.

Not very happy with the Asov’s leadership

The head of the Nazi’s in the Azovstal taken out in armoured car as the civilians in Mariupol wanted to murder him.

“The operation to liberate the Azovstal plant in Mariupol from the militants of the nationalist formation Azov has been completed. The leader of the group Denis Prokopenko (“Radish”) was taken out in a special armored car, said May 20, the official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Major General Igor Konashenkov.

Mariupol has been completely liberated from Ukrainian militants.
“The so-called “commander” of the Nazis “Azov” because of the hatred of Mariupol residents and the desire to massacre him citizens for numerous atrocities was taken out of the territory of the plant in a special armored car,” Konashenkov said.

Konashenkov reported on the complete liberation of Azovstal Iron and Steel Works earlier in the day. On May 20, the last group of 531 militants surrendered. In total, since May 16, 2439 Azov Nazis and servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), blocked on the territory of Azovstal, have laid down their arms and surrendered.”

From HERE

Laser Grinding of SpaceX: Why the US Is Alarmed by the Abrupt Failure of Military Satellites Over Ukraine

May 20, 2022

Commercial systems remain the only channel for obtaining data for the Pentagon and the UAF, but they may soon “go out”.

Combat lasers

On May 18, Deputy Prime Minister of the government and curator of the Russian defence industry, Yury Borisov, said that the “Peresvet” combat laser system has already been serially supplied to the Russian troops. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, the laser can disable satellites in orbits up to 1,500 kilometres high. Such technologies were previously considered impossible. A significant number of experiments in this area were conducted by two superpowers of the world.

Several similar programs have been active in the US for some time. One of the most promising was considered to be the development work on the topic of the YAL-1 “flying laser” based on the Boeing 747 aircraft. As a result, $12 billion was spent on a high-energy weapons program to intercept ballistic missile warheads, but the work was completed to no avail.

In the USSR, they went the other way. Few people know, but it was the mock-up of the “Skif-DM” combat laser complex, or “Index 17F19DM”, better known as “Polyus”, that was the first “passenger” of the superheavy “Energiya” rocket back in 1987. As with modern anti-satellite weapons, its principle was based on the defeat of the optical elements of enemy satellites – visors and lenses. The second, cheaper and simpler project in this direction is the A-60 chemical laser based on the Il-76 transport aircraft.

“Peresvet” laser and secret “Zadira”

Work on the “Peresvet” combat laser complex was first announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The exact composition of the equipment inside the complex is not disclosed, however, it is known that “Peresvet” is a high-energy laser in a mobile version: a generator and a combat readiness maintenance system, a radiator and a surveillance system are located in several sections. According to some reports, the complex is effective against all surveillance means, including RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude unmanned vehicles, as well as most spacecraft of the American IMINT species reconnaissance system. According to some reports, commercial structures are also periodically connected to it. The most famous example is MAXAR, which provides high-resolution intelligence to the US military. The other two participants in this program are slightly less well known, but Planet Labs and SkyBox have the most high-tech devices.

Back in 2014, with the help of a complex optical circuit, ultra-sensitive matrices and software processing, Skybox was able to achieve outstanding performance. From a height of 600 km, their devices can film the surface of the planet with a detail of about 1 meter, while it’s not only about photos, but also about video. The project turned out to be so impressive that the entire company was bought out by the IT giant Google, and the satellites formed the basis of the Terra Bella surveillance system. Another company, Planet Labs, received the first “spy grant” back in 2016, and since then it has been commercial structures that have been spying on the most important objects of a likely enemy, including in Russia.

The capabilities of the “Peresvet” laser are designed just for such means of reconnaissance. The principle of operation of the weapon is not disclosed, however, it is known that the previous complexes, designed in the USSR and Russia, could operate in several modes. The two most important ones are the “local impact” mode on a specific vehicle flying over a restricted zone, as well as the “continuous defeat” mode, when over a certain zone (a square of several hundred kilometres) a so-called laser curtain is being put up.

There is no detailed data on the combat deployment of the “Peresvet” complexes during the special military operation in Ukraine, however, in early March, Wired reported that American satellites were “experiencing difficulties” in working when flying over the border areas of Russia and Ukraine. According to Wired, the intelligence department of the US Department of Defence could not get any pictures of the desired area at all before the start of hostilities, and the advanced units of Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine were noticed from space only a few hours after the start of “Operation Z”. Neither civilian analysts nor representatives of the Pentagon specify why this happened.

And on February 28, 4 days after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, Google satellites “fell off”. The company even had to issue a statement informing users about the “temporary shutdown” of updates for images in areas of concentration and movement of Russian troops. In total, according to Professor Todd Humphreys of the University of Texas, at least 50 different synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellites were deployed over Ukraine after the start of its military operation by the Russian Army.

It is curious that the combat protection of such objects as the “Peresvet” laser is carried out not only by electronic warfare troops and air defence units, but also by fully-fledged “Zadira” combat lasers. This complex was developed at the Russian Federal Nuclear Center (Russian Federal Nuclear Center — All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics) in Sarov. The power of the weapon is not disclosed, however, according to some reports, a few seconds of radiation is enough to “cut” a small reconnaissance drone into two parts.

Starlink to Ukraine

According to some reports, the American and Ukrainian military had several simultaneous serious problems.

Firstly, a significant part of the equipment of the US surveillance satellites “failed” in the first few days of the special operation in Ukraine. The reasons why this happened are not disclosed in the United States, just as in Russia they do not make statements on the combat use of “Peresvet” lasers capable of burning out the powerful optics of satellites in orbits up to 1,500 kilometres high.

Secondly, the transmission of data from Maxar Technologies’ WorldView-2 satellites to Ukrainian spacecraft was difficult, since the latter, as it turned out, were not designed for such a volume of information. Data overload has led to the fact that a significant part of telecommunications satellites simply failed. It is not possible to restore their functionality at the moment, so the spacecraft are just hanging out in orbit like garbage.

It is for this reason that Elon Musk was urgently brought into the arena. Starlink communications satellites, previously tested at military exercises of the US Army and the Strategic Command, turned out to be the most convenient channel for data transmission. If it were not for the data transmission network that SpaceX deployed in orbit, the UAF would have lost all intelligence — both its own and those transmitted to them by American intelligence.

Russia steps up its banning list of American’s now not allowed into Russia.

"US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and CIA chief William Burns have been banned from entry to Russia as relations between the two world powers continue a constant downward spiral over the crisis in Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Saturday published a blacklist containing 963 US nationals, including Biden, Blinken and Burns, banned from entering the country due to anti-Russian activities.

“In response to the continuously imposed anti-Russian sanctions from the US and incoming requests about the exact composition of our national ‘stop list’, the Russian Foreign Ministry has published a list of American citizens who are permanently banned from entering Russia,” the ministry announced in a statement.

Joe Biden's son, Hunter, Vice President Kamala Harris, actor Morgan Freeman and many US congressmen and journalists were named on the blacklist."

1970s Zingers! Full-Sized Toy Vehicles

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These are the Zingers!, the “hairiest, scariest fistfuls of muscle yet,” according to the ads for the line of MPC plastic models introduced in 1971.

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In the days when wild show cars reigned, legendary promoter Bob Larivee Sr. drew crowds by commissioning full-scale versions of top-selling toys. Perhaps the most well-known is the Red Baron, built in 1:1 scale in 1969 by Chuck Miller of Styline Customs based on the Tom Daniel-designed Monogram model.

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When Larivee wanted fullsize Zingers!, he called on Styline to build the VW, the van, and the Vettes shown here in these Mike Brenner photo outtakes from a story in the July ’71 HOT ROD. The dune buggy was built by show-car builder and drag-racer Steve Tansy.

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The life-size Zingers used real engines with half-scale bodies, and others on the show circuit (and in the model-car line) included a ’57 Chevy and a Super Drag dragster.

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The Asov Facility Tour

John Mark Dougan touring an Azov-facility in the vicinity of Mariupol.

And this video also…

It Is Foolish for Finland and Sweden to Join NATO and Ignore Both the Real Causes and Consequences

From HERE

By Jan OBERG

Here’s what the West is intellectually unable – in the midst of its boundlessly self-righteous, militarist mood to see:

NATO’s expansion policy created – and is responsible for – the conflict. Russia created – and is responsible for – the war. There exists no violence which is not rooted in underlying conflicts. Conflict and peace literate people, therefore, talk about both.

And if they want peace, they do not increase the symptoms – the war – they address the real cause, the conflict and ask the conflicting parties to tell what they fear and what they want and then move, step-by-step towards a sustainable solution.

But neither the mainstream media nor politicians have the civil courage to address the conflict. It’s only about the war and only about Russia/Putin who must be punished, no matter the price to be paid by future generations. If we survive.

It’s a banality to point out that it takes at least two to conflict. But that’s the intellectual and moral level decision-makers, media and much of academia operate in these dark times.

This approach has no future and can never bring peace. Period.

Decisions taken with this irrational approach and emotionalism will only make things worse. Such as Sweden and Finland joining NATO based on the hysteric panic of the moment: There simply exists no credible, realistic scenario that would lead to an isolated, out-of-the-blue Russian attack on either of them if they remained non-aligned as they’ve been for decades.

That some less knowledgeable people – or people who speak for NATO membership – have been talking about even an isolated, out-of-the-blue attack on the Swedish island of Gotland is Monty Python politics.

Why will Sweden and Finland join?

So why will Finland and Sweden now make a disastrous, tension-increasing decision to join NATO? Here are some of the possible reasons:

• Both have been under heavy pressure by NATO and the US in particular. Sweden’s prime minister, Olof Palme, was murdered – a man who stood for the UN goal of international disarmament, nuclear abolition and the intelligent concept of common security. US ambassadors have held secret meetings with Swedish MP, there are many channels, demands and rewards.

• Sweden’s single worst security challenge was the Russian submarine, U 137 Whisky on the Rocks. It was Russian, yes, but the operation was an American PSYOP – Psychological Operation – conducted by the “Navigation Expert” on board who was the only one never interviewed in Sweden and who soon after disappeared.

It was a PSYOP intended to make Sweden recognise that the Soviet Union was a threat, that its defence against the East was deficient and that it should seek protection from the West itself. This is extremely well-documented by professor emeritus, Ola Tunander’s, eminent multi-decade research, latest published in the book, “Navigations-Experten. Hur Sverige lät sig bedras av U 137” (The Navigation Expert. On how Sweden accepted to be deceived by U 137).
Step by step, Sweden was guided in the right direction. Certain Swedish politicians knew what was going on, but the media and the people didn’t.

• Both countries have moved to be wooed by the US and NATO. They have, over the last 20 years, become engaged with NATO in all kinds of ways – so, as the saying goes, why not marry now? In other words, Finland and Sweden now join because they have – incrementally – made one wrong decision after the other, painted themselves into a “no-choice-but-NATO” corner and abdicated every ounce of their historical, independent-minded creative foreign policy thinking. And stopped criticism of warfare and militarism.

That has also been possible because critical, or alternative, independent intellectual input into ministries of foreign affairs has been cut out and substituted by various types of pro-American marketing of policies. For decades, the NATO Echo Chamber has defined the national pro-NATO Groupthink. Nobody was allowed in to ask: Where on earth are we heading in, say, 25 years from now?

• Further, Sweden and Finland are now joining because elites related to the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex, MIMAC, in both countries – rather than the people – decide security and foreign policy matters. Of course, there was extremely little open public discussion; it wasn’t wanted. Decision-makers knew that NATO’s nuclear weapons foundation and its members’ contact wars, particular in the Middle East were seen as basically evil among the citizenry.

• Liberal media suggest that there cannot be a referendum because there is such a time pressure – presumably before that Russian invasion of Sweden and Finland – and, so, just make the most important foreign and security political decision since 1945 in a hurry now there is popular outrage at Russia – the beloved, necessary enemy.

The Swedish decision-makers of course know that there will never be a 75% or so majority for NATO – which is what there should be to make such a fundamental, fateful decision. So much, you may say, for democracy – but no new NATO member has held a referendum where NATO and other alternatives were freely discussed and a 75% majority came out in favour. (According to the Swedish Svenska Dagbladet daily of May 6, 2022, 48% think that Sweden shall join, but in just one week those who are not sure what to think have increased from 22 to 27%).
Finland’s pro-NATO opinion seems to have grown from 53% in February to 76% in May 2022. It was 19% in 2017 according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Ukraine has played its role.

• A further reason to join is the intellectual disarmament that decision-makers have unified around one alternative, forgotten to leave other doors open and deliberately quelled alternatives. The discourse of peace – in media, politics and research – has been disappeared. Peace has come to mean weapons, deterrence, more and more of it coupled to blind loyalty with every US/NATO war. For instance, then Social Democratic prime minister Göran Persson’s government quickly decided to disable Sweden’s weapons export prohibition legislation in 2001 in order to be able to continue exporting weapons to the US during its invasion of Iraq.

This multi-year intellectual disarmament is manifest – and always tends to favour military over civilian means as well as diplomacy. And not only in these countries, of course.

An institute such as SIPRI – Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – has decayed intellectually into something that should rather be named Stockholm International Military Security Research, SIMSI – as I have suggested years ago.

In other words, the political creativity that was needed to run an independent policy of neutrality, non-alignment and global disarmament coupled with a strong belief in international law vanished years ago.

It’s easier to follow the flock – particularly when, as it seems, the Social Democratic party today exists only by name.

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• Without exhausting all those – tragic – reasons, one final reason to mention is the role of the media. Like everywhere else, media from left to right have unified around a pro-Western, non-neutral policy. The present pro-NATO propaganda, not the least in the liberal Dagens Nyheter, is pervasive. Critical voices are marginalised and public information “explainers” are reduced to some high school-like basic facts coupled with FOSI, Fake + Omission + Source Ignorance. Sweden is able to have televised panel discussions where, de facto, all the participants are more or less pro-NATO thus leaving out a large part of public opinion. *)

What will be the consequences of Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO membership?

There are potentially so many – some more likely than others – that they cannot all be listed in a short pointed analysis like this. But let me mention:

• The Swedes and the Finns will become less secure. Why? Because there will be harder confrontation and polarisation instead of soft borders and mediating attitudes. In a serious crisis, they will, for all practical purposes, be occupied and told what to do by the US/NATO.

• To the degree that, at some point in the future, the two countries will be asked to host US bases – like Norway and Denmark now – they won’t be able to say ‘No’! Such bases will be Russia’s first-order targets in a war situation.

• From a Russian point of view, of course, their NATO membership is extremely tension-increasing and confrontational. Russia has 8% (US$ 66 billion) of the military expenditures of the 30 NATO members. Now there will be a huge re-armament throughout NATO; Germany alone plans to increase to almost twice as much as Russia’s expenditures. Ukraine will receive about US$ 50 billion. Add a re-armed Sweden and Finland and we shall see Russia rush down to 4% of NATO’s expenditures – and still be called a formidable threat.

• There will be virtually no confidence-building and conflict-resolution mechanisms left in Europe. No discussion will be possible about a new all-European peace and security system. And whether it is understood and respected or not, Russia will feel even more intimidated, isolated and – in a certain situation – become even more desperate. As does, normally, the weaker party in an a-symmetric conflict. We are living in very dangerous times and these two countries in NATO will only increase the danger, there is no way it could reduce it.

• If Finland and Sweden so strongly want to be “protected” by the United States and/or NATO, it is completely unnecessary for these two countries to join because, if there is a serious crisis, the US/NATO will under all circumstances come to “protect” or rather use their territories to be closer to the Baltic republics. That’s what the Host Nation Support agreements are about.
The only reason to join would be paragraph 5 – but the disadvantage is that paragraph 5 requires that Finland and Sweden will be expected to participate in wars that are not about their defence and perhaps even in future international law-violating wars à la those in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. So, will Finnish and Swedish young people be killed in future NATO-country wars? Are they ready for that?

• It will cost a fortune to convert their military infrastructure to full NATO membership – and when they have joined, they cannot not pay whatever the price will turn out to be. In addition, there will be much less de facto sovereign decision-making possible – here de jure is almost irrelevant. And it was already very self-limited before they joined.

• As NATO members, Finland and Sweden cannot but share the responsibility for nuclear weapons – the deterrence and possible use of them by NATO. It’s also obvious that NATO vessels may bring nuclear weapons into their ports – but they will of course not even ask – they know the arrogant US response is that “we neither confirm nor deny that sort of thing.”
This goes against every fibre of the Swedish people – and Sweden’s decision to not develop nuclear weapons dating some 70 years back.

• The days when Sweden and Finland can – in principle, at least – work for alternatives are numbered. That is, for the UN Treaty on nuclear abolition and the UN goals of general and complete disarmament, any alternative policy concepts like common security, human security, a strong UN etc. They won’t be able to serve as mediators – like, say, Austria and Switzerland. No NATO member can pay anything but lip service to such noble goals. NATO is not an organisation that encourages alternatives. Instead, it seeks monopoly as well as regional and global dominance.

• Finland and Sweden say yes to militarist thinking, to a ‘peace’ paradigm that is imbued with weapons, armament, offensiveness (long-range + large destructive capacity), deterrence and constant threatening: NATO is human history’s most militaristic organisation. Its leader, the United States of America, has been at war 225 out of 243 years since 1776. Every idea about nonviolence, the UN Charter provision of making peace by predominantly peaceful means (Article 1 in the Charter) will be out of the window.

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• The political attention, as well as funds, will tend to switch to military matters, away from contributing to solving humanity’s most urgent problems. But – we know it now – the excuse will be Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Is there any huge change that cannot be justified with reference to that?

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• While everybody knows that the Arctic is going to be a region of central security and peace concerns in the near future, this issue has hardly been discussed in relation to the two countries’ NATO membership. However, it doesn’t require much expertise to see that US/NATO access to Sweden and Finland is a clear advantage in the future confrontation with Russia and China there.

 

• As NATO members, Sweden and Finland not only accept but reinforce decades of hate of the Russian people, everything Russia including Russian-European culture. It will say yes to the West’s reckless, knee-jerk collective (illegal) punishment of everything Russia, the cancellation of Russia on all dimensions.

Once upon a time, in contrast, Finland’s President Kekkonen stood for policies of active neutrality, a go-between role and initiating the OSCE. Finland was proud that its people felt that neither the East nor the West was an enemy, various kinds of equidistance prevailing. And that was during the height of the First Cold war when the Warsaw Pact was about 10 times stronger vis-a-vis NATO than Russia is today. How and why? One reason was that policies had an intellectual foundation and leaders a consciousness about what war meant. Not so today.

• The prospect that no NATO advocates talk about is this: In all likelihood, we have only seen the hard beginning of an extremely Cold War with an ever-increasing risk of a Hot War too. It is the stated purpose of the US – and that means NATO – to weaken Russia militarily in Ukraine so it can’t rise ever again and to undermine its economy back home through history’s hardest, time-unlimited and unconditional sanctions – that is, sanctions that will not be lifted in a lifetime or more.

• And, finally, by joining NATO, the two countries will be forced to side with the larger West in the future world order change in which China, the Middle East, Africa and South America as well as huge non-Western regional associations will gain strength.

The US priority Number One is China. As NATO members, Sweden and Finland will be unable to walk on two legs in the future, a Western and a Non-Western, and will decline and fall with the West – the US Empire and NATO in particular.

If you think that’s a too daring and pessimistic scenario, you’re not following developments and trends outside the West itself. Also, please consider that a split and problem-torn US, EU and NATO have just come together for one reason: the negative policy of hating Russia and cover-up for its crystal clear co-responsibility for the conflict that brought us where we now are.
The West has no positive vision anymore – its actions are about re-armament, threats, sanctions, demonisation, the self-righteous “we-never-did-anything-wrong” and the concomitant projection of its own dark sides upon others, China in particular.

For small countries to put all their eggs in one basket when they do have alternatives and acting without a clue about the next five-to-ten years has always been a recipe for disaster, for war.

Both NATO and the EU act these days as the passengers did in the restaurant of the elegant, luxurious RMS Titanic.

There were huge problems which should have been solved for humanity to survive: climate, environment, poverty, inequality, militarism, nukes, etc. They are now forgotten. Economic crisis and disruptions followed, and then came the Corona and took a heavy toll on all kinds of resources and energies. And, finally, now this war in Europe with its underlying NATO-created conflict.

This is not the time to make decisions in a moment of historical hysteria and panic. This is indeed a moment to keep cool.

One can only regret that Sweden and Finland lack the intellectual power to see the larger picture in time and space. NATO has had the time since 1949 to prove that it can make peace. We know now that it can’t. Joining it, therefore, is one big gift to militarism and future warfare.

(*) Rest assured that an analysis like this will cause no reaction in any NATO country’s media or among decision-makers although sent to thousands of them.

How To Make Easy Stuffed Bell Peppers | Chef Jean-Pierre

Running On Empty

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Well, we definitely seem to have passed a threshold of sorts. For most of the sixteen years since I started blogging, one of the things I had to point out constantly to my readers was the slow pace of historical change.  Whenever I posted an essay on the twilight of industrial society, I could count on fielding at least one comment from a reader who expected the entire modern world to crash and burn in the next few months.  I’d have to patiently remind them that Rome wasn’t sacked in a day—that it takes years of breathtakingly moronic decisions motivated by mindless greed, vicious partisan hatred, blind ideological dogmatism, and a total unwillingness to think about the long-term consequences of short-term decisions, to bring a civilization down.

Now of course all through the years while I was telling people this, decisions of the kind I’ve just described, guided by motives of the sort I’ve just characterized, were standard operating procedure throughout the industrial world.  Those proceeded to have their usual effect. I still don’t expect modern civilization to crash to ruin in the next few months, but it’s reached the point that I no longer have to tell people that the Long Descent won’t show up as soon as they think. No, at this point it’s my ironic duty to suggest that they make whatever preparations they have in mind sooner rather than later, because the world shows no signs of waiting for them.

As I write this, the most obvious set of problems has to do with the economies of the United States and its client states. Those of my readers who follow financial media already know that signs of economic trouble are elbowing one another out of the way to get to the front pages. The cryptocurrency market has racked up gargantuan losses; the stocks listed on NASDAQ have shed something like $7 trillion in value so far this year; the massively overinflated US real estate market has sprung a leak and is showing signs of deflation, and layoffs are spreading through the economy as corporations shed jobs at a rapid pace. It’s shaping up to be a real mess.

Part of this is the ordinary rhythm of idiotic excess followed by equally idiotic panic—up with the rocket and down with the stick—that sets the beat of economic life in a neoliberal economy. That said, I think there may be more going on here than that. I don’t know how many of my readers are aware that the simmering hostility between the US government and the oil-producing nations of OPEC is coming to a brisk boil just now. The steady rise in oil prices over the last year or so has caused stark panic in the White House, since increased gas prices correlate rather nicely with the fading of Joe Biden’s last dim hopes of reelection. Repeated attempts to pressure the OPEC nations to increase oil production and drive prices down have gotten no response, not least because the Biden administration isn’t offering anything in return, and has been noticeably hostile to the interests of several leading OPEC nations.

Cue the gibbering inmates of the US Congress to draft a bill that would make it possible for plaintiffs to sue OPEC nations for price fixing in American courts. Normally there’s a thing called sovereign immunity—in plain English, the governments of other nations can’t be held accountable to US laws—but this bill, the cutely named NOPEC Act, would strip OPEC nations of sovereign immunity in US courts for any decision that some US lawyer could label price-fixing. The target of this project, of course, is the gargantuan amount of money that OPEC nations have invested in assets in the United States and its client states, which could be seized to pay off judgments under the new law. Since governments in the US and Europe have engaged in exactly that sort of piracy toward Russian assets this year, this isn’t an empty threat.

So, dear reader, if you were a high-ranking official in a petroleum-producing country, and you picked up the newspaper and read about the NOPEC Act, what would you do?

That’s right. You would start quietly cashing out of your investments in the United States and its client states, so those investments wouldn’t be available for US courts to seize. Those asset sales would of course result in a general softening of market conditions, and might well trigger a crash in asset prices, but at least you’d get some of your money back, you know.

Meanwhile there are countries outside the US sphere of influence that would be happy to provide a home for your investment money—Russia, China, and India come to mind, just for starters—and if the US and its client states get obstreperous, why, you can always do what your grandfather did in 1973, refuse to sell petroleum to the American market, and watch the price of oil soar in response.

I don’t know for a fact that this is what’s happening to asset markets in the US and Europe. Nor do I know for a fact that this is part of what’s behind the remarkable robustness of the Russian economy in the face of US sanctions:  that would make perfect sense if there was a covert flow of OPEC wealth into Russian banks and securities, but doubtless there are other factors involved.  If the OPEC nations have the brains the gods gave geese, they’re using plenty of financial shenanigans to camouflage their reallocation of assets as long as possible, and so it’ll be very difficult to tell what’s happening until a lot of money is gone.  It could just be that the markets are insanely overinflated and what went up is now on its way back down.  It could be that China is doing the same sort of asset shuffle to free up funds to deal with its imploding real estate sector and the long term costs of its Covid policies. It could be that something completely different is going on.

Still, it’s pretty clear that it has never occurred to anybody in the US Congress that OPEC nations might, you know, have their own interests in mind, and might respond to a hamfisted attempt at bullying by doing something other than groveling at Uncle Sam’s feet.

I’ve noted before that the elite classes in the US and Europe today seem incapable of understanding that the rest of the human race doesn’t consist of little automatons that will always and only do as they’re told. That failure of basic reasoning is fairly common in senile aristocracies, and it very often plays a large and colorful role in the collapse of empires. It may well play such a role in the collapse of ours.

One way or another, of course, sky-high energy prices are an important element in the fix we’re in, and that brings me circling back around to one of the themes I sketched out last week—the complex twilight of fossil fuel resources summed up in the phrase “peak oil.”

Let’s start with the basics. Petroleum is a nonrenewable resource. Yes, I’m aware that there’s a cornucopian fringe out there insisting, under the label “abiotic oil,” that the Earth is full of oil and any oil field drained of oil will promptly be replenished from further underground. Do you recall the 2008 oil spike, when old oil fields in Pennsylvania, California, and a hundred other places that had been capped decades ago were opened up again, since crude oil was worth upwards of $100 a barrel?  Not one of those fields had refilled, as the abiotic oil theory predicted.  There’s a good simple word for a theory that makes predictions that don’t pan out. That word is “wrong.”

Petroleum is a nonrenewable resource.  It provides around 40% of all energy used by human beings on this planet, including nearly all the energy for transportation. (Electric cars and trains have a negligible share worldwide.) It’s fairly rare in the Earth’s crust, all things considered, and it’s been extracted at a breakneck pace for more than a century. The rate of new discoveries has been far behind the rate of annual extraction for decades.  Do you see the problem there?

The obvious solution, if you happen to want to sustain an industrial society of the current sort, is to find some other energy source to replace petroleum. The other fossil fuels won’t cut it—they’re also being used at breakneck rates, and facing the same depletion problems as oil. More coal is being mined and burnt today, for example, than at the peak of the coal age a century and a quarter ago, and most of the coal that’s being burnt now is low-quality brown coal because all the good stuff got shoveled up and burnt decades ago.

That means that some new energy resource has to be discovered and deployed in a hurry. That’s why scientists have been hard at work on that project for well over fifty years now, and the one minor difficulty is that they haven’t found one yet.  More to the point, they’ve found any number of supposed replacements for petroleum, which have soaked up a great many investment dollars and then failed to perform as advertised. There are two primary reasons why all attempts at a substitute for petroleum have failed: scale and net energy.

Let’s start with issues of scale. To cite one example that took up a great deal of attention and investment money back in the day, you can grow corn, ferment it into ethanol—that’s spelled “corn likker” in the flyover states, and it’s great stuff if you don’t mind the hangover—and burn that in an engine along with, or instead of, gasoline.

Back when I was first blogging, there were ethanol trolls all over the peak oil end of the internet, loudly proclaiming that all us peak oil bloggers were as wrong as wrong could be, because corn-based ethanol would make up the shortfall. The one small problem with this analysis is a matter of scale. If you planted every acre of farmland in the United States with corn, leaving no room for food or anything else, and turn it into fuel ethanol, you’d replace only a small fraction of the gasoline we use every single year. (And that doesn’t even begin to deal with the need for diesel fuel, jet fuel, or any of the other fuels made from petroleum.)

Similar difficulties show up with many other proposed replacements for any of the fossil fuels, because fossil fuels are far more concentrated than any other energy resource on this planet. You get petroleum when huge accumulations of dead sea life in anoxic conditions get squeezed and roasted deep inside the earth for millions of years, a process that soaks up vast amounts of energy that no human being has to pay for. That’s why to match the energy in a single gallon of gasoline, for example, you need around one ton of fully charged auto batteries. That’s one of the problems with renewables, by the way: they depend on the diffuse and intermittent flows of energy we get from the sun right now, instead of the highly concentrated resources the earth has stashed away in her sediments over the last half billion years or so.

Issues of scale, though, are only one set of challenges that have to be faced to replace petroleum. The second is net energy. It takes energy to extract, process, and transport energy, and to build the devices that use energy. Take the total energy in a resource and subtract the energy that has to be used for all these purposes, and what’s left is net energy. It’s exactly the same, conceptually, as net income: take your gross income and subtract your expenses, and you’ve got your net, which is the amount of money you can actually do something with.

You can have a huge gross income and still go broke.  All that’s necessary is that your expenses have to be just a little bit larger than your income. (Watch the tech industry over the next few years if you want to see that assertion proved in a very colorful manner.)  In exactly the same way, your gross energy doesn’t matter two farts in a Cat-5 hurricane if the energy inputs you need are too high. The poster child here is algal biodiesel, another supposed substitute for petroleum that boomed and went bust a decade ago. On paper, it looks great: you farm vast amounts of oil-rich pond scum, process it into diesel, and away you go. In practice, the net energy ranges well into negative numbers—in other words, it makes exactly as much sense as trying to get a profit by buying dollar bills for $1.50 each.

Net energy is very difficult to calculate. Fortunately there’s a convenient proxy, which is price. The more expensive an energy resource turns out to be in practice, the worse the net energy turns out to be. Nuclear power is a great example here. Yes, I know there’s always some exciting new nuclear technology that’s sure to change that, and provide abundant, cheap electrity into the far future.  There’s always one of those on the drawing boards, or more than one, and it’s funny how reliably it turns out that every nuclear technology is affordable until it gets built. Then it turns out to be another gargantuan white elephant that can only keep going with huge and ongoing government subsidies.

The secret is that the net energy of nuclear power is very, very low. You have to process vast amounts of raw material to produce the fuel rods, and that takes energy; you have to build and maintain a huge and complex power plant, and that takes energy; you have to deal with the wastes, and that takes energy, and so on through a very long list of energy sinks. That’s another problem with renewables, by the way. Most renewable technologies yield very modest net energy, because so much energy has to go into gathering and concentrating the diffuse energy flows that power renewables. That’s why they require the same sort of constant subsidies as nuclear plants.

Keep track of the economic dimension, in fact, and you can filter out most of the nonsolutions to the accelerating depletion of conventional petroleum. Keeping track of the economic dimension, in turn, is something that cheerleaders for purported replacements for petroleum inevitably will not do. They love to talk about technical feasibility, and of course it’s quite true that you can come up with any number of technically feasible gimmicks to replace petroleum. The problem is that none of them can pay for themselves.

It’s usually about this point in a discussion of peak oil that somebody gets angry and starts yelling, “Look, there has to be some replacement for petroleum!” That’s an understandable belief. Unfortunately, it also happens to be dead wrong. No law of nature requires another cheap, abundant, highly concentrated energy source to pop up in time to save us from the consequences of wasting the one we had. Most people figure out fairly early in life that if you spend your entire paycheck on booze, no good fairy is going to come up with the rent money in time to keep your rump from landing on the street. The same rule applies to energy, but for complex reasons rooted in our collective psychology, this isn’t something that most people want to hear.

That brings us around to our current situation. Despite the crumbling economy, petroleum is running well above $100 a barrel these days, because—ahem—we’re running out:  not all at once, but slowly, one dry oil well at a time. The fracking frenzy that briefly boosted US oil production over the last decade is sputtering, because oil is a nonrenewable resource, and even if you don’t have to worry about the bottom line because the Fed is printing money hand over fist and funneling it to you, eventually you run out of shale deposits that can be fracked.

Again, this doesn’t mean that we’re going to run out suddenly. It means that oil production firms have to run faster and faster, invest more and more money and resources, and struggle harder and harder against geological reality to keep the market supplied with oil—and this means that an ever-growing share of economic output has to be funneled into the energy industry, leaving an ever-shrinking share for everything else.

That’s the future we’ve backed ourselves into. We’re running on empty, and the last gas station is somewhere back there in the blue distance.

I mentioned two weeks ago when I announced this sequence of posts that I was going to talk about what individuals, families, and community groups could do about all this. Fortunately, what to do about an energy crisis was explored in great detail half a century ago, during the oil crises of the 1970s, and before then in the severe shortages during the two world wars. The difficulty we face is very simple.  Energy—all forms of it—will become much more expensive than you expect, and everything made with energy—in other words, most goods and services, across the board—will also become much more expensive than you expect. Meanwhile jobs will become scarcer and economies will contract as energy costs bite deeper into every form of economic activity. That’s called stagflation: stagnation plus inflation. It’s what happens when the price of energy spikes, and it’s happening now.

So you have two straightforward tasks ahead of you, dear reader. The first is to use much less energy than you do right now. The second is to cut your expenditures on everything you can, to free up the money you’ll need to deal with soaring energy costs and price inflation generally.

Using less energy is easy if you’re American. It’s easy because we waste energy so profligately. Go here and you can download a set of basic energy conservation papers that were drawn up during the oil crisis of the 1970s. (They’re the lessons I studied when I was getting my Master Conservers certificate in the very early 1980s. Yes, they had Master Conserver programs back then.) If you rent, you can use weatherstripping and cheap window insulation; if you own your own home, there’s much more that you can do. You can change your habits to cut energy costs, and you can also pick up the grand old 1970s habit of doing more for yourself instead of buying things, since here again energy goes into most goods and services, and prices will rise accordingly.

If you have the chance to pick up some do-it-yourself books from back in the day,  you’ll be better off still. The self-sufficiency books listed for sale in old issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and other resources of the same era?  Worth their weight in gold.  It also helps to know people who can teach you how to do things for yourself, and to put plenty of time and effort as soon as possible into applying that fine old country saying, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”  People thought they could afford to neglect that during the heyday of the fossil fuel era. Now we get to learn better.

Oh, and make sure to have backups for anything that depends on energy you don’t produce yourself. With its usual monumental stupidity, the US Congress is already talking about price controls, and those are among the best ways known to our species to turn price hikes into actual shortages. (The US isn’t self-sufficient in energy resources, not by a long shot, and nobody will be in a hurry to sell oil to us at artificially low prices, you know.) If price controls go through, expect gas stations to run out of fuel, diesel shortages to play merry hob with product delivery to stores, and rolling blackouts if the price controls get applied to natural gas. Fun times!

One more detail. This isn’t going to last forever; energy crises never do.  My working guess at this point is that the US and Europe are facing a decade or so of economic crisis and soaring energy costs before demand destruction, sharp increases in energy efficiency, and a modest helping of new technologies bring renewed stability in energy markets. Mind you, by then we’ll have other things to worry about. I’ll discuss those in the posts ahead.

Toad the Wet Sprocket – Crazy Life – Live in San Francisco

One of my all time favorite songs, and groups. Dating way back to my years in Boston.

Aerial Photographer Created A Miniature Utopian Village And It Took Him 2 Years To Finish

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Ognyan Stefanov is an accomplished aviation photojournalist and graduate of the prestigious National Academy for Theater and Film Art in his native town of Sofia, Bulgaria. His award-winning aerial photographs have been featured at exhibitions and appeared in numerous global publications.

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Stefanov has an impressive resume of roles including an official photographer for the Bulgarian Air Force and exclusive photographer to the President of the Republic of Bulgaria. He achieved as much success with his work in miniature by winning scale modeling awards in featured competitions around the world.

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The city features lush gardens and jewel-toned landscapes with a community filled with homes, shops, a barn, and an apartment building.

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Stefanov says: “I wanted to create a self-contained utopia where people have everything they need to live, surrounded by greenery and gardens and even a local inn offering traditional hospitality.”

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A number of unique structures are interconnected by a series of multi-level paths, pulleys, stairways, and bridges that join the various areas together.

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Kate Bush /David Gilmour – ” Running Up That Hill “

A fantastic concert / stage performance. Awesome.

Former Ukrainian deputy Kiva accused Zelensky of exporting state grain reserves to Poland

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The ex-deputy of the Verkhovna Rada said that Western countries began the robbery of Ukraine, writing it off and sentencing it as a state
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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has begun exporting grain from the state reserves of Ukraine to the West. This was stated by the former Ukrainian MP Ilya Kiva, citing his own sources.
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“Zelensky urgently gathered relevant state structures and security officials to immediately organize the export of the state grain reserve to Poland,” Kiva wrote on his Telegram channel on Thursday, May 12.
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According to Kiva, the first ten thousand tons of Ukrainian grain have already been transported across the Polish border.
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The former deputy is alarmed by the fact that, according to him, Western countries have begun to plunder Ukraine.
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“Ukraine was sentenced and written off as a state – now there is a robbery of what else can be taken away, leaving with you! Leaving scorched earth, destroyed infrastructure and hungry, distraught people,” Kiva said, adding that, according to the information he received, deforestation in Ukraine and its supply to Europe has tripled over the past month.
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Earlier it was reported that the United States is looking for an opportunity to export 20 million tons of grain from Ukraine. Details.
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In response, the Chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, said that the United States wanted to arrange a famine in Ukraine. “Instead of real help, they take away the most necessary, in fact, setting up a surplus appraisal,” Volodin said.
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Earlier, Biden said that the withdrawal of Russia and Ukraine from the world grain market could provoke a total food shortage in the world. Details. At the same time, back in April, Biden promised to provide Ukraine with another $800 million in military aid. On May 9, Biden signed a law on the supply of weapons to Ukraine under Lend-Lease. The law provides for accelerated procedures for lending or leasing weapons to Ukraine.

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EU Shift Away from Russian Oil And Gas To Cost $220 Billion

By Irina Slav – May 18, 2022, 8:30 AM CDT

The European Union’s plan to reduce imports of Russian oil, gas, and coal to zero by 2027 will cost it some $220 billion (210 billion euros), according to a draft plan cited by Reuters.

The three pillars of the plan include switching to other oil and gas suppliers, expanding wind and solar generation capacity, and reducing energy consumption, the document showed

From HERE

War with China despite their immense military capabilities?

May 6, 2021

Five years ago, I would’ve said that the possibility of a “kinetic war” in the Indo-Pacific was very unlikely, now it is more likely than it was then. This is something that you and I may well have to confront in the next 5 to 10 years, Christopher Pyne.

Does Mr Pyne know that, seventy years ago, a Chinese volunteer force, lacking air cover and communicating with bugles, humiliated the US Army? That China enjoys the same advantages–shorter supply lines, higher morale, greater maneuverability, stronger popular support–now as then? That China’s neighbour and ally, Russia, can simultaneously threaten any combination of forces in Europe and Japan?

Has he forgotten that, while fleets win battles, economies win wars? That China’s economy is thirty per cent bigger than America’s, grows three times faster, has twice the manufacturing capacity, and launches a new warship every month? That, adjusted for purchasing power, China’s discretionary defence budget equals America’s?

Is Mr Pyne aware that China’s President is the son of a famous general and was himself Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for three years?

Who can blame the Chinese for being eager for a rematch with America? In 1944 the US Air Force firebombed Wuhan, killed 44,000 civilians and left the city burning for a week. In 1992, the US Navy held the Yinhe, a Chinese freighter, at gunpoint in international waters for three weeks, falsely claiming she was carrying contraband. Two years later the US sent the most powerful fleet ever assembled through the Taiwan Strait and, in 1998, the USAF dropped five precision bombs on China’s Belgrade embassy, killing three diplomats and seriously wounding twenty. CIA director George Tenet told Congress, “It was the only target we nominated”.

In 2018 the US Navy practised blocking the Malacca Strait to cut off China’s oil but, says analyst Michael Thim, the gesture was meaningless, “Even in 1996, China’s Navy had sufficient capabilities such that sending Carrier Strike Groups into the Taiwan Strait would be suicidal. The situation has only become more challenging for the Navy in recent years, not because the PLAN has acquired aircraft carriers of its own, but because China has greatly enhanced and modernized its existing anti-access/area-denial capabilities”.

China’s Maritime Militia, its first line of defence, counts 180,000 ocean-going fishing boats and 4,000 merchant freighters–some towing sonar detectors–crewed by a million experienced sailors transmitting detailed information around the clock on every warship afloat. Shore bases fuse their reports with automated Beidou transmissions and forward the data to ‘vessel management platforms’ that collate, format, and send actionable information up the PLAN command chain. Ashore, eight million coastal reservists train constantly in seamanship, emergency ship repairs, anti-air missile defence, light weapons, and naval sabotage.

The PLAN’s fleet composition is fascinating.

Commander Yang Yi, the youngest (and first female) Chief Designer in naval history, designed its eighty Type 022 missile patrol boats on Australian-designed hulls. 400 feet long, with a range of 300 miles, they carry eight C-802 anti-ship missiles tipped with 500lb. warheads that travel fifteen feet above the surface at 650 mph to targets a hundred miles away (an early version disabled an Israeli warship off Lebanon’s coast in 2006). Four of her little boats, she says, can cover the entire Taiwan Strait while sheltering behind China’s coastal islands.

Supporting them are thirty Type 056 frigates with a range of 2,500 miles, each armed with YJ-83 anti-ship missiles and six torpedo tubes, and protected by eight SAM launchers. One frigate can sink Taiwan’s entire navy without coming within range of its American-supplied weapons. Behind the frigates are 20 Type 052D Arleigh Burkeclass destroyers. Their 64 missile tubes fire–among others–unique Yu-8 anti-submarine missiles that fly 20 miles then release torpedoes into the water near unsuspecting targets.

Type 055 cruisers, the most powerful surface combatants afloat, carry 128 missile tubes armed with surface-to-air, anti-ship, land-attack and anti-submarine missiles.

Below them, 70 nuclear and conventional submarines carry YJ-12 anti-ship cruise missiles and wake-homing torpedoes that deliver 500-pound warheads at 60 mph from fifteen miles away. Their CM-401 high-supersonic ballistic missiles make precision strikes against medium-size ships, naval task forces, and offshore facilities within two hundred miles. Their CJ-10 subsonic missiles carry a half-ton payload – with a forty-foot radius of accuracy – 2,000 miles. Without leaving Chinese waters, the PLAN’s nuclear subs carry JL-3 missiles that can strike targets in the United States.

But the greatest threat to hostile fleets was born when the US Navy invited a Chinese admiral to visit the carrier Nimitz. Upon his return, he told colleagues, “I’ve just seen the world’s biggest target. If we can’t hit an aircraft carrier we can’t hit anything”.

Thrifty engineers designed novel guidance systems for existing, million-dollar rockets and created the first anti-ship, ballistic ‘carrier killer,’ the DF-21D. It lofts a half-ton warhead one thousand miles into the stratosphere, then it falls, vertically, at 7,500 mph, onto $12 billion aircraft carriers. US Navy analysts say it can destroy a carrier in one strike and that there is currently no defence against it. Its new sibling, the DF-26D, carries twice the payload twice as far.

The last US carrier to pass through the Taiwan Strait was the USS Kitty Hawk in 2007. “We are at a disadvantage with regard to China today in the sense that China’s ground-based ballistic missiles threaten our basing and our ships in the Western Pacific,” Admiral Harry Harris told the US Senate in 2018. The following year Robert Haddick warned, “China’s anti-ship missile capability exceeds America’s in terms of range, speed, and sensor performance,” and Captain James Fanell added, “We know that China has the most advanced ballistic missile force in the world. They have the capacity to overwhelm the defensive systems we are pursuing”.

US Navy officers say they risk defeat in a serious conflict off China’s coast and avoid provoking the PLAN in the ‘Three Seas,’; South China, East China, and Yellow Seas.

The Rand Corporation says that, for conflicts close to the mainland or Taiwan, the PLAAF can deploy more fifth-generation J-20 fighters than the US. The J-20 costs half as much, flies twice as far and carries twice the payload of America’s F-35C or F-22 Raptor. Its YJ-12 anti-ship cruise missiles travel 200 miles and deliver thousand-pound warheads at supersonic speed in a corkscrew trajectory. The US Navy says one strike will render any vessel inoperable and warned that, even against alerted warships, one-third of missiles score hits.

The J-20 also carries the specialized PLA-15 air-to-air missile. Propelled by novel dual pulse rocket motors on a semi-ballistic trajectory, it homes on AWACS and airborne tankers loitering behind battle lines. General Herbert Carlisle, warning Congress that his two hundred F-22 Raptors carry six missiles each while the PLAAF’s J-20s carry twelve, added, “Look at the PLA-15, at the range of that weapon. How do we counter that?” The PLA-15’s smaller sibling, the PLA-10, is no less deadly, says airpower specialist Douglas Barrie, “For the notional Western combat aircraft pilot, there is no obvious respite to be found in keeping beyond visual range of the PLA-10. The PLAAF can mount increasingly credible challenges at engagement ranges against some targets that would previously have been considered safe. As one former USAF tanker pilot drily noted, ‘That’s aimed right at me.’”

As if to prove the point, the US Air Force cancelled its E-8C AWACS recapitalization program because it would be easy prey for the PLA-15, and the Pentagon withdrew its entire strategic bomber fleet from Guam in 2020.

Chinese hyperspectral detection satellites oversee the Western Pacific battlespace and airborne lasers detect wave and temperature variations generated by moving targets. The West Pacific Surveillance and Targeting satellite, along with fifteen Yaogan-30 satellites in low-earth orbit–operating as triplets positioned in close proximity–geo-locate military platforms by measuring the angular or time difference of arrival of their intercepted electromagnetic signals. Below them, the Caihong-T4, a massive, solar-powered drone, loiters for months at a cloudless altitude of 65,000 feet, while below, the fifteen-ton, 150-foot wingspan Divine Eagle High Altitude Stealth-Hunting Drone reads electronic signals from aircraft long before they approach their targets. Below the drones AWACS, whose solid-state detectors have twice the range of the US AWACS rotating domes, relay targeting information to Russian-built S-400 anti-aircraft/anti-missile batteries. Jin Canrong, the PRC’s senior defence policy advisor, says China’s shore-based weapons can see all stealth bombers and submarines, destroy every military base in its region within minutes, and take out every aircraft carrier within two thousand miles.

China’s three-stage, solid-fuel DF-41 ICBM, with a 12,000-mile range and a top speed of 20,000 mph, far outranges its American counterpart. Road-mobile, it launches on four minutes’ warning, is faster than any American weapon, and delivers ten independently targetable nuclear warheads.

The DF-ZF Hypersonic Glide Vehicle–whose significance Russian Defence Minister Rogozin compared to the first atom bomb–is operational. Launched six miles above the earth from a missile travelling at 16,000 mph, the DF-ZF rides its own shockwave to the target.

Says RAND,

“With the ability to fly at unpredictable trajectories, these missiles will hold extremely large areas at risk throughout much of their flight”.

A Congressional report concludes,

“The very high speeds of these weapons combined with their maneuverability and ability to travel at lower, radar-evading altitudes would make them far less vulnerable to current defences than existing missiles”.

What is Mr Pyne thinking?

Scott Ritter: Live-Action Role Play in Ukraine

From HERE

Malcolm Nance, Dennis Diaz and Willy Joseph Cancel: Their experiences — one fatal — offer a sobering view of Americans in the International Legion of the Territorial Defense of Ukraine.

By Scott RITTER

It was — literally — a made-for-television moment. A former U.S. Navy chief petty officer turned cable news pundit, dressed in a fresh out-of-the-box camouflage uniform replete with body armor and magazine pouches, wearing matching camouflage helmet and gloves, and cradling an automatic rifle, stared into the camera and announced “I am here to help this country [Ukraine] fight what is essentially a war of extermination.”

With a Ukrainian flag on his left shoulder, and a U.S. flag emblazoned on his body armor, the man, Malcolm Nance, declared that “This is an existential war, and Russia has brought it to these people and is mass murdering civilians.”

A day before, Nance had tweeted a black-and-white photograph of himself, similarly clad, announcing “I’m DONE talking.”

I’m DONE talking. #JoinTheLegion #StopRussia #SlavaUkraini pic.twitter.com/ob3gL1cZ7P

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) April 19, 2022

Nance spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy as a cryptologic technician, interpretive (CTI), specializing in the Arabic language, and has turned his career into a thing of legend, so much so that when he speaks of his journey from news desk to Ukraine, it almost sounds convincing.

“Ukraine announced that there was an international force on Feb. 27,” Nance told one reporter,

“and I started looking into it on Feb. 28 … I called the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, and I said: ‘Hey, I want an appointment.’ They were a little slow, so I just went down there and put in my application. The guy asked if I had combat experience and I said ‘Yep.’ Then he looked at my application and said, ‘You’re on the team.’”

Just like that.

But the hype doesn’t match the reality. Although he sports a combat action ribbon on the lapel of his coat jacket (when not attired in full combat regalia), Nance has never actually participated in ground combat operations, according to a serviceman who served with him. His “combat” experience was limited to providing linguistic support onboard a U.S. Navy ship off the coast of Beirut in 1983. Important work, but not combat.

Despite this resume enhancement, Nance was — according to Nance — a natural for recruitment by Ukraine. In the days before the Russian invasion, Nance was in Ukraine, reporting for MSNBC.

But being Malcolm Nance, he claimed to be doing so much more. “I spent a month in Ukraine,” Nance recalled, “driving around, mapping out the Russian order of battle, driving up and down the highways and analyzing where the invasion routes would come and go. So I knew the country backward and forwards by the time of the invasion.”

(It might be time to remind the reader that Nance’s Navy specialism in Arabic gave him neither the training nor the experience to conduct the kind of battlefield intelligence preparation that he described.)

The Ukrainians know this. So why would they take on a 61-year old Arabic linguist whose physical presence on any battlefield would be seen as a detriment?

‘Not an Infantry Guy’

2022 05 17 15 30
2022 05 17 15 30

“I’m not an infantry guy,” Nance is quick to admit. However,

“combat isn’t about being a murdering, Seal Team Six assassin; it’s mainly about precision, accurate fire, selective fire, keeping people calm, getting on the line and moving forward.”

None of which are skill sets in Nance’s real-life resume.

Despite his larger-than-life televised send-off, and his proclivity for dressing and acting like an aging LARP (live action role play) warrior on a weekend airsoft reenactment, Nance’s real-world duties mimic those he was performing with MSNBC.

2022 05 17 15 31
2022 05 17 15 31

“Right now, part of my duty is to the press,” Nance admitted during a recent interview.

“They [the Ukrainians] were well aware that I was a high-level asset. So, instead of putting me out on the line, I’m in a safe house talking to people like you.”

Today, Nance is little more than a poorly paid newsroom producer (the Ukrainians pay him and other Legionnaires $600 per month). “I get up at 4 and what I do is I read, I read the news. I try to feel the battlefront based on Ukrainian news and reporting. And then I look at expert analysis from the previous night in the West.”

But he is always hopeful for some action.

“No matter where I am, no matter what I’m doing, I constantly check my gear. If I’m in a safe house on a press junket, like I am now, I go over all of my gear. I reorganize my pack. I assume that I will have to take everything, get up and run with it or move to a forward location.”

This would all be pathetic if it were not irresponsibly dangerous.

Nance fronts for the International Legion of the Territorial Defense of Ukraine, which he describes as “a branch of the Ukrainian army.”

According to Nance, the International Legion is “an organized combat element with contracts signed by the Ukrainian army. We are paid by the Ukrainian army and get a Geneva convention ID card.”

And the mission of the International Brigade? Simply put, per Nance, if a Ukrainian unit is “on the line and they need more reinforcement, they will get a legion unit to give them more manpower.”

Dennis Diaz

Dennis Diaz enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 2000. He was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, before being honorably discharged in 2004.

In early March, Diaz, an entrepreneur and former 2020 candidate for U.S. president from Waterbury, Connecticut, now 39 and the father of four, volunteered to serve in the International Legion.

“I’m ready to roll,” he told local media before leaving the U.S. “Whatever I have to bring, I’m going to pack it up and we’re going to take care of business.”

https://t.co/Cc66tuUIfm
— Dennis A. Diaz (@RealDennisDiaz) April 4, 2022

His age and obvious lack of physical conditioning did not seem to be an obstacle for the one-time combat Marine. “War,” he told the press, “is 90 percent mental, 10 percent physical.”

Diaz says he has a lot to offer Ukraine. “I have a lot of military experience,” he said, “I did go to Iraq and Afghanistan … I have some flight experience. Also, I was field artillery in the Marine Corps. Also, I’ve got some experience driving tanks. Enough to be a valuable asset to Ukraine.”

According to his Tik Tok page, Diaz spent some $2,700 of his own money purchasing uniforms and field equipment, including a flak vest and helmet, to take with him to Ukraine.

But by late March, Diaz was still in the U.S., waiting further instructions from the Ukrainian embassy. He never made the trip.

The Ukrainians, it seemed, had cooled to the idea of Americans fighting for the International Legion. Where once they were welcoming (“Foreigners willing to defend Ukraine and world order as part of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, I invite you to contact foreign diplomatic missions of Ukraine in your respective countries,” the Ukrainian foreign minister tweeted in early March), by the end of March the Ukrainian embassy stopped publicly commenting on U.S. applications.

The primary reason for this newfound publicity shyness appears to be the poor performance of the International Legion during its first combat experiences, fighting Russian troops in the Kiev suburb of Irpin in mid-March.

Haphazard Approach

The haphazard approach to recruitment was the norm, it seemed, for the entire intake and training processes associated with the legion.

Potential recruits made their own way to Poland, from where they were told to head to the western Ukrainian city of Lvov. The candidate legionnaires were then taken to Livorov, a military camp outside Lvov, where they were subjected to a rudimentary selection process that sought to separate those with and without combat experience.

Those with combat experience were issued weapons and ammunition and sent straight to the front, where they were integrated with Ukrainian Territorial Defense Units. Those without were given a rudimentary four-week basic training course.

2022 Spring Fund Drive

The first group of “combat tested” legionnaires were sent to Irpin, where they were tasked with conducting a “hasty defense” against a Russian attack.

While the Ukrainians held, the performance of the legion was “uneven,” resulting in many of the newly minted legionnaires being unceremoniously released from service and sent home. The lackluster performance of the legion had become a domestic political issue, prompting the Ukrainian government to halt recruitment due in large part to the lack of weapons and the lack of military experience.

Some legionnaires, however, were asked to stay, including a four-man team led by a veteran U.S. Army combat engineer with two deployments to Afghanistan named Cameron Van Camp.

Willy Joseph Cancel

One of the Americans under Van Camp’s charge was a 22-year-old former U.S. Marine named Willy Joseph Cancel.

Cancel had enlisted in the Maines in 2017, where he underwent basic training before being trained as an infantryman. Cancel never saw combat and was given a bad conduct discharge. In 2020 he was given a bad conduct discharge from the Marines after serving five months in jail for disobeying a direct order. Upon being discharged, Cancel got married, had a son, and gained employment as a corrections officer in Tennessee.

For whatever reason, Cancel, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, left his job and his family and, on March 12, at his own expense, flew to Warsaw, Poland, where he met up with Van Camp.

Together the two Americans travelled to Ukraine, where they were sent directly to the front lines in Kiev due to their status as “combat veterans.” though Cancel n ever served in a combat zone.)

Embellishment appeared to be the name of the game with the Americans and the legion; according to Van Camp, he and Cancel were sent to Irpin to assist the Ukrainian military in counter-battery and “sniper” operations, even though neither of them had ever been trained in these highly specialized military occupations, something that would have been painfully obvious to anyone involved.

In any event, Van Camp was able to keep his four-man team in the legion following the post-Irpin “purge” and subsequently his unit saw combat in southern Ukraine, fighting in Kherson and Nikolaev. It was here, sometime in late April, that Cancel lost his life; his remains were not recovered from the battlefield.

BREAKING: U.S. citizen Willy Joseph Cancel was killed in Ukraine while fighting alongside Ukrainian troops against invading Russian forces, his family confirms to @ABC News. https://t.co/fLWXAt2tQ0 pic.twitter.com/HaQJ8L6ksH

— ABC News (@ABC) April 29, 2022

Van Camp and the other Americans who had fought with Cancel left Ukraine in early May to bring the deceased former Marines’ belongings home and to speak with Cancel’s widow and family.

Cancel’s presence on the battlefield raises numerous questions about the screening process used by the International Legion.

One of the easiest ways to check the relevant military experience of a U.S. veteran is through an examination of his or her DD 214, or record of service, a copy of which is provided to every veteran upon discharge.

Cancel’s DD-214 would not only have shown that he lacked any combat experience, but that he had not been trained in any relevant combat arms skill set other than basic infantryman — especially sniper or counter-battery operations. Moreover, his bad conduct discharge would have been a red flag for any professional military organization.

Cancel’s death on the front line as part of the International Legion directly contradicted the legion’s own stated standards.

“What we want is for people to come that have already been in the line of fire,” a corporal in the International Legion who was responsible for training declared.

Americans, however, could apparently pass themselves as having what the corporal called “concrete combat experience,” making them “very attractive candidates” for the legion.

This inability to effectively screen genuine combat veterans from LARPers points to a lack of professionalism on the part of the International Legion.

A Canadian who had travelled to Ukraine to help train the Territorial Defense Force in urban combat said he wasn’t impressed by what he had seen; with recruits lacking experience, equipment and proper motivation. In true LARP fashion, they seemed only interested in gaining what the Canadian described as “quick combat exposure.”

“I think that the international legion was something that was conceived to be a propaganda tool to push forward the message that this is the world against [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and that they’re fighting for more than just Ukraine,” the Canadian said. “They don’t have the infrastructure, or the time, to really properly do any sort of international unit.”

This message should be heard by anyone who might be caught up in the “romance” of fighting side-by-side with the Ukrainian army against the Russian invader. It should be used to counter the propaganda being generated by over-the-hill want-to-be heroes like Nance. It would have been useful for aging veterans such as Diaz before they spent nearly $3,000 outfitting themselves for a war in which they were never going to participate.

But, most importantly, it should have been heard by Cancel and his family, so that he could have been dissuaded from embarking on his one-way journey of personal redemption.

Easy Artisan Ciabatta Bread Recipe/Rustic Italian Bread/No Knead Rustic Bread

US is having trouble finding Asian countries willing to shoot missiles at China

May 12, 2022 Bradley Blankenship

Original Article Here

What was supposed to be a satirical headline is actually just an instance of saying the quiet part out loud.

A satirical impression of a headline in the ‘Foreign Policy’ magazine, authored by one Raymond L. Bloodthirst Jr., began circulating around the internet recently. It read as follows: ‘We’re Having Trouble Finding Asian Countries Willing to Shoot Missiles at China.’ The subheading then lambasted China’s neighbors for not being “democratic enough” to potentially sacrifice thousands of lives in this endeavor.

It’s very clearly fake, although some people who shared it didn’t examine it too closely and believed it was real – and one journalist on the “disinformation” beat, who apparently works for Voice of America, made a Twitter thread about the post. Well, it may be hard to really blame users who circulated the satirical headline since it is, at least in part, based in reality.

As it turns out, a recent article by the decidedly non-satirical RAND Corporation, a highly influential American nonprofit global policy think tank, had the exact same take as the satirical headline. RAND wrote on Twitter about its report: “A U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific that relies on an ally agreeing to permanently host ground-based intermediate-range missiles risks failing because of an inability to find a willing partner.”

The section of the report outlining the key findings goes on to list US allies in the region, such as Thailand, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Australia, and discuss how each of them would be reluctant to accept US GBIRMs – either because of “historical” reluctance or opposition from China. It does, however, suggest that “the most likely strategy to succeed would be helping Japan develop an arsenal of ground-based, anti-ship missile capabilities.” This would be the first step in getting Japan to accept GBIRMs, it says.

It appears that the satire was not too far off the mark. Indeed, what it succeeded in doing was critique RAND’s position by bringing the unsaid to the fore, which is the mark of good satire. It invites us to ridicule this position because of how patently absurd it is. Yes, the idea of the US placing intermediate-range missiles in China’s neighborhood is ridiculous, and when you mention the logical conclusion of this policy then it does appear just stupid.

I am reminded of one dramatic principle, Chekhov’s gun. The idea goes that a writer must make every detail of a story or play contribute to the overall narrative. Writers should not make false promises in narrative works: details that may create misleading expectations should be omitted, whereas those that are included should ultimately be involved in the narrative’s resolution. To sum it up, you should never introduce a gun in a story that you aren’t prepared to use.

Reality doesn’t always conform to art (though we can see that actual news headlines and satire are sometimes not far apart), but one has to wonder whether these GBIRMs aren’t one of Chekhov’s guns. Why else would the US want to place such weapons near China if it isn’t prepared to actually use them?

This is why it is such a provocative move – because placing these missiles in China’s neighborhood necessarily implies that they could be used against China. If anything, just the threat of that force is inherently coercive and undermines China’s sovereignty and independence. It also necessarily implies that whichever country might choose to house such weapons would be complicit in this threat, i.e., they’d have to be “Willing to Shoot Missiles at China.”

Such a policy is extraordinarily destructive and undermines global peace. China is a nuclear-armed state that, although having a very restrained nuclear policy compared to other nuclear powers, would still use them if they are introduced into a conflict. Meanwhile, the United States would probably go to any lengths to win an outright conflict against China. The US remains, after all, the only country to have ever actually used nuclear weapons in a war, having dropped two atomic bombs on Japan at the conclusion of World War II.

We can see that provoking a conflict between these two countries could lead to a terminal nuclear war, which is an outcome that benefits no one and only endangers our existence as an organized form of life on this planet. That’s why people are excoriating this policy – because it is absolutely deranged. If no countries in China’s neighborhood end up wanting to house US intermediate-range missiles, that would be a positive development for humanity.

Canadian Patriot’s Cynthia Chung and Matt Ehret host Jeff J. Brown-The Ugly Truth of US WMD Biowarfare in Ukraine and Beyond.

Great discussion.

From HERE

NBC Fantasizes About Nuclear War With China

May 20, 2022

Jimmy Dore and The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté (Video)

It’s no secret that the various tentacles of the United States’ military industrial complex are all doing whatever they can to whip up interest in a war with China. The latest effort comes from NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, who all but openly drooled during a segment imagining what a 2027 conflict between the two powers over a Chinese invasion of Taiwan might look like.

Jimmy and The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté (https://mate.substack.com) discuss the growing fervor for war with China as some of the excitement over the Ukraine conflict begins to abate.

The prisoner Season 1 Episode 5

I do hope that you all enjoy this episode…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
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Mysterious Viking caves, Some cool vintage moms, Baked Steak Burritos. Automotive discoveries, and the war in Ukraine

Continuing on the unwinding of the world’s global situation. It’s a crazy time, but no need to freak out, eh? We will cover some selected articles, some delicious food, some vintage photos and some cool discoveries. I hope that you all enjoy this.

Mysterious Viking Era Cave Network Found in Iceland is Enormous

From HERE

Last summer, a series of man-made Viking era caves were discovered southwest of Oddi in southern Iceland dated to the 10th century AD. Excavations have now revealed a massive system of interconnected caves that are both larger and older than previously thought. Much mystery still surrounds the caves and the true purpose for their construction.

Iceland’s Latest Viking Era Caves: Vast and Challenging!

“You really have no words to describe this,” says archaeologist Kristborg Þórsdóttir about her experience of standing amongst one of the holiest and best-preserved man-made caves from the Viking era. “The size of these structures is just so vast, there hasn’t been a study of such large structures, and definitely not from this time period in Iceland,” she added. Kristborg has been leading the study and working on this site since 2020.

It was in 2018 when the man-made cave system was found in the Oddi area in southern Iceland, during a joint 3-year mission led by Kristborg and the Archaeological Institute, after the making a test ditch, reports Iceland Review . The mission had been initiated in 2017, as per a report published last year published by MBL.is. The man-made cave had an adjoining, even larger cave connected to it, which became the focus of Kristborg and her team’s research.

Securing the cave and ensuring it doesn’t collapse on people working in it has been a huge challenge for her team. The texture of the rock is prone to crumbling and the cave is deep, which can lead to dangerous outcomes.

Time is of the essence for the team, who feel any delay would result in the loss of precious artifacts and data. The entire system of man-made caves was not used for very long because they are inherently unstable.

Oddi: Ruled by the Powerful Oddverjar Viking Clan

Oddi itself is a historically and culturally relevant location that was once home to one of Iceland’s most important political seats, ruled by the powerful Oddverjar clan. The current archaeological study near Oddi has been ongoing for two years now.

So far, a historic church, farm, and vicarage have been unearthed. In fact, when Christianity came to Iceland around 1000 AD, Oddi was one of the first places to build a church.

“There was not any place that could support the making of literary works in the Middle Ages , as Oddi is believed to have done,” said Kristborg. “Although we are not looking for direct evidence of scriptwriting or writing, the study is about looking at the environment and the foundations of the center of power that was there.”

Culturally, Oddi peaked between the 11th and 12th centuries AD, with a vibrant writing culture that coincided with the rise of the Oddverjar clan. The catch is that the current man-made cave under investigation seems to have been buried before this cultural development peak, as evidenced from the study of the cave’s volcanic layers .

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2022 06 01 10 00

The most famous Oddverjar clan member was Sæmundur fróði, or Sæmundur the Learned (1056-1133 AD). Having studied in France, he was one of the earliest chroniclers of history of the Norwegian kings.

Sæmundur the Learned’s grandson, Jon Loftsson, a powerful chieftain himself, gave patronage to Snorri Sturluson, the legendary historian and poet, who is widely recognized as the man behind the chronicling of modern Norse mythology . This partly authored work is called the Prose Edda . He is also responsible for the Heimskringla, a saga of the Norwegian kings, which is likely based on the lost chronicled manuscript written by Sæmundur.

Mythological Bull’s Cave or Just A Livestock Pen?

The cave was likely used for livestock according to Kristborg. It also has a mythological mention in Bishop Þorlákur’s “Legends of Saints,” which dates to the first half of the 13th century. In this fable, it was called Nautahellir, Bull Cave, which collapsed with 12 bulls in it. One of the bulls was rescued from the rubble. Interestingly, even the fable deals with the fragility of the cave!

However, there is still a lot we don’t know about this man-made cave. It was likely used for something else before becoming a livestock pen.

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2022 06 01 09 59

Since the man-made cave network near Oddi is so big, the focus of the study has to be narrow. Kristborg has admitted to it being an almost overwhelming uphill task to deconstruct the historical usage of each cave. With further research, and a bigger crew, should the structures of the cave permit, more will be ascertained about the history of this man-made Viking era cave system. Nonetheless, a lot of information about the technology and traditions of Viking era Icelanders have been understood from this fantastic discovery.

“But then this is a longer and more complex story here in the use of these caves and we are only just beginning to see it, but it is so extensive that we can only look at a small part now. Then we would have to start a much, much larger study here with a much larger crew if we are to get to the bottom of this and trace this story completely, this use history of the caves here,” concluded Kristborg.

No More NATO Expansion

One day, the US will be called on to honor commitments that were carelessly made, and we will all come to regret that no one bothered to consider the costs.

“Mom, wearing orange chenille in July ’67”

Not my mom, but pretty exciting.

19 5
19 5

French Volunteer Outraged by Lies of Western Media, revealed truth about War Crimes in Ukraine

Boquet confirmed that the Bucha massacre was staged. He added that a lot of reporters from the US are working in Ukraine, filming the staged scenes

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Dear US/NATO officials, This is from a French TV interview with a former NATO French officer, that Southfront did a story on as part of their daily Ukraine war coverage. The source is really the officer himself, and next the TV interview itself, which made it to YouTube, but seemed to be blocked in the US when I tried to embed it here.

So I clicked off the ‘Russian source’ box in WordPress because I used some of SF’s text.

We need a US/NATO/EU official website with all the ins and outs on reporting on the war that have been cleared by free press experts so we do not have to deal with overzealous claims of aiding and abetting a participant in this nasty war simply by reporting the various views on it.

It is all just a,b,c reporting on published source material with some commentary, which I see all the time on MSM, but of course with their picking and choosing what they want to report and how, with no fears of ‘aiding or abetting’ claims.

BTW, this French veteran seemed to me to be cut from Vietnam Vets Against the War cloth, and as I remember, their critical comments about that war did not expose them to official sanction. Proof of that is their GI bill benefits rolled on just fine until the Agent Orange scandal broke and the government then became their adversary. Gordon was at Michigan State with thousands of them.. Thank you…JD.

Introduction

This is Day whatever of the Ukraine war and Western media will still not mention a word about how the Maidan Coup birthed this current crisis. The Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 failures seemed to have been swallowed by a Black Memory Hole with France and Germany acting like they know nothing about it when they were guarantors.

And the NeoNazis, some trained by the US and I suspect some other NATO countries, went to the Donbass perimeter and shelled it for eight years killing 14,000 people there, and virtuall all of Western MSM seems to think that had nothing to do with the current conflict which is claimed to be Russian aggression.

So dear readers, if you see any mention of these huge oversights published in MSM please send me to them as may folder for them is still empty. Go to the board and staff link on the font page and my email will be in my bio. Thanks.   

[ Editor’s Note: This is quite a catch, a somewhat disabled French officer who went to help out in Ukraine and was not happy with what he saw going on. Think about all the others that have gone over, and certainly seen much of the same horrors, and don’t utter a peep about it when they return.

That is a very poor reflection on Western society that I would describe as a rot. I found this on Mr. Boquet.

Adrien Boquet is a retired military officer, writer and journalist from France, and author of the book “Get Up and Walk Thanks to Science”. Several years ago he suffered a severe spinal injury.

He spent three weeks in Ukraine on a humanitarian mission, and after returning home, he gave an interview to French Sud Radio and spoke, without any cuts, about the numerous war crimes of the AFU, the neo-Nazis from AZOV and the supply of Western arms to Ukraine. He separately mentioned the events in Bucha.

The Ukrainian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Darya Herasymchuk, exposed the fakes of Ukrainian propaganda. She said that the information spread about the alleged abuse of small children by “occupants” is a fake.

The interview is in French, but subtitled so you can get the gist. It’s thirteen minutes to watch, and with Southfront’s overview text below… Jim W. Dean ]

2022 05 19 16 59
2022 05 19 16 59

First published May 12, 2022

A French volunteer Adrien Boquet told in an interview with French media about the war crimes committed by the Nazi militants of the Azov regimen in Ukraine. He described the real situation in the war-torn country which is hidden by the Western media.

Adrien Boquet is a former French serviceman, author of the book “Get Up and Walk Through Science”. He described his experience of his three-week humanitarian mission in Ukraine in an interview on Sud Radio France.

“I am fully responsible for what I say. There on the spot I witnessed war crimes. I’ve seen a lot of war crimes. I am talking only about those that I saw myself on the spot, and only those that were committed by the Ukrainian military. But not the Russian military… I do not claim that the Russians did nothing… But I confirm the war crimes committed by the Ukrainian military.” he said.

“Azov fighters are everywhere. With neo-Nazi stripes. It shocks me that Europe supplies weapons to neo-Nazis. The symbols of the SS are embroidered everywhere on their uniforms. They not hide their views. They advertise them. I worked with these people and treated them. They openly say that they are ready to destroy blacks and Jews,” he added.

The French military confirmed the war crimes of Ukrainian militants including against prisoners of war. He confirmed that the AFU militants are using civilians as a “human shield”, hiding ammunition in residential buildings at night, without even informing residents.

“I witnessed how the Ukrainian military shot through the knees of captured Russian soldiers and shot at the head of employees with a rank higher than officer.”

During the interview Boquet confirmed that the Bucha massacre was staged. He added that a lot of reporters from the US are working in Ukraine, filming the staged scenes.

“Butcha was staged. The bodies of the victims were moved from other places and deliberately placed in such a way as to produce a shocking shooting,” he stated.

Adrien Boquet emphasised that he was shocked by the fact that French TV channels invite as experts people who have not been to Ukraine and do not know anything about what is happening there. In conclusion, he assured that he would use his photos and videos taken during the humanitarian mission as evidence of Ukraine’s crimes.

Three young ladies prepare to have their pictures taken in Manhattan photo booths in April 1954.

Love that dress.

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1 91

“Mom, 1965”

Not my mom, but very nice.

17 5
17 5

MonkeyPox Outbreak Traced to GAY PRIDE FESTIVAL on Canary Islands

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The sudden and fast-spreading outbreak of MonekyPox seems to have been traced to a GAY PRIDE FESTIVAL held from May 5 to May 15, in the city of Maspalomas, on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands.  Upwards of 80,000 attended the “festival” and now that many have returned to their home countries, those countries are seeing a very sudden and significant outbreak of Monkeypox.  Exactly as the Bible warned:

Romans 1:27, CSB: The men in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.

MONKEYPOX cases in Spain and Italy have been traced to an island festival attended by 80,000 revelers.

Authorities are trying to halt an outbreak that has exploded across Europe and beyond, with 92 cases now confirmed and dozens more suspected.

Cases of monkeypox in the UK have doubled in just a week after a total of 20 cases were reported.

And doctors warned that number will rise significantly as the virus spreads through Europe and as far as the US, Canada and Australia.

Spain now has the highest number of infections, outside places in Africa where the virus is endemic, with more than 50 known cases.

Now authorities are investigating a festival in Gran Canaria after it was linked with a number of cases in Madrid, Tenerife, and Italy.

The Canaria Pride festival, held in the town of Maspalomas between May 5 and 15, has become a hotspot for the monkeypox outbreak, reports El País.

The massive party was attended by over 80,000 people, including three Italian men who later tested positive for the virus.

A health source told the newspaper: “Among the 30 or so diagnosed in Madrid, there are several who attended the event, although it is not yet possible to know if one of them is patient zero of this outbreak or if they all got infected there.”

Public health services are currently investigating whether there have been more infections during the celebrations including a suspected case detected in Tenerife.

UPDATE 7:18 PM EDT —

Here are the documented number of cases Internationally at this time:

2022 05 23 15 12
2022 05 23 15 12

Baked Steak Burritos

A spicy beef and bean filling is all bundled up in a south-of-the-border burrito.

OIP.OlYPlSIEs0eeaqsYhRl3mgHaEK
OIP.OlYPlSIEs0eeaqsYhRl3mgHaEK

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 package (1 oz) Old El Paso™ taco seasoning mix
  • 1 1/2 lb beef boneless sirloin tip steak, cut into thin bite-size strips
  • 1 can (16 oz) Old El Paso™ refried beans
  • 12 Old El Paso™ flour tortillas for soft tacos & fajitas (6 inch; from two 8.2-oz packages)
  • 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese (8 oz)
  • 3 medium green onions, thinly sliced (3 tablespoons)
  • 1 can (10 oz) Old El Paso™ enchilada sauce
  • 1 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend (4 oz)

Steps

  • 1
    Heat oven to 400°F. In 10-inch skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in taco seasoning mix. Add beef strips; cook 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until desired doneness; drain.
  • 2
    Meanwhile, place refried beans in microwavable dish. Microwave uncovered on High 2 minutes, stirring once or twice.
  • 3
    Spread each tortilla with refried beans to within 1/4 inch of edge. Top each with beef, Cheddar cheese and onions. Roll up, folding in sides. In ungreased 13×9-inch (3-quart) glass baking dish, place burritos with seam sides down. Pour enchilada sauce over burritos. Sprinkle with Mexican cheese blend.
  • 4
    Bake uncovered 7 to 12 minutes or until burritos are thoroughly heated and cheese is melted.

2022 05 17 16 57
2022 05 17 16 57

“Mom with a cat, 1968”

Not my mom, but what a nice picture.

15 10g
15 10g

BULLETIN: POLISH TROOPS HAVE ENTERED UKRAINE WAR

PolandEntersWar large
PolandEntersWar large

Staggering reports are coming in claiming two (2) battalions of Polish Army troops have entered Ukraine covertly.   Overnight, 2 battalions of Polish infantry moved out from Kyiv the day before and have already reached Pavlograd.

Two or more companies make up a battalion, which has 400 to 1,200 troops and is commanded by a lieutenant colonel. The battalion is the smallest unit to have a staff of officers (in charge of personnel, operations, intelligence, and logistics) to assist the commander.

Each battalion inside Ukraine is said to have 4 Rapira anti-tank guns, armored personnel carriers, and American armored personnel carriers.

Currently, the Polish infantry is being prepared for the transfer to the Avdeevsky front.

Whether we are talking about regular troops or mercenaries, it is difficult to say now.   Some reports are claiming the Poles are Mercenaries, who were waiting for the US $40 Billion in Ukrainian “aid” to be approved before moving into action.  That was approved formally late this past week.

MORE:

Additional reports are openly saying The British SAS has been inside Ukraine carrying out special commando ops against the Russians  as well.

WORSE, the reports now admit the US is on the ground inside eastern Ukraine doing targeting mapping and other things.

UPDATE 10:27 AM EDT —

U.S. SENATOR TELLS NATO “PREPARE FOR RUSSIAN NUCLEAR ACTION”

The US and its NATO allies should prepare a “devastating” response to potential Russian nuclear action, Sen. Mitt Romney said on Saturday.

The call to action comes on the heels of threats from the Kremlin and warnings from Russian diplomats that the country’s Ukraine invasion could lead to a nuclear strike, the Utah Republican wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.

“Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon would unarguably be a redefining, reorienting geopolitical event,” Romney, 75, wrote.

“We should imagine the unimaginable, specifically how we would respond militarily and economically to such a seismic shift in the global geopolitical terrain.”

The former presidential candidate presented several options available to western allies in addition to a nuclear response if a “cornered and delusional” Russian President Vladimir Putin deployed a nuclear weapon.

(HT REMARK: Romney is in "The Club" if he is making this warning there is definitely something behind it.  His now-public remarks are a signal - at least to me - they already KNOW what's coming.  I think guys like Romney are going to get a slew of us KILLED.   The voters of Utah would do well to get their Senator back under control before he causes a whole bunch of us to get nuked.)

The Ultimate 1980s Barn Find: This Guy Found A Lamborghini Countach Hiding In Grandma’s Garage For 20 Years

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The lucky guy is Reddit user named eriegin, who posted these photos along with the caption “Despite the rust and dust, grandma’s 1981 Lamborghini Countach is the coolest.”

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This isn’t an ordinary Countach. The images posted on Reddit suggest that we are looking at a Countach 500S, one of just 321 examples built.

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According to Carscoops, the car is powered by a naturally-aspirated 4.8-liter V12, and while the Redditor claims that it is in poor condition, it could easily be worth $300,000 – or, if restored, more than $500,000.

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The Reddit user says that the Countach was purchased by his late grandfather in 1989, “but after insurance costs became too high for him to operate the company, he kept the car (and many others including the Ferrari 308 in front of the Lambo) outside/in leaky garages for 20+ years instead of selling them,” he wrote. “Don’t ask me why, I have no clue.”

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While it’s sad to see a car as iconic as the Countach being locked up for so long, it’s refreshing to see it coming out to the real world again.

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The Daily Stormer shut down!

I guess that their acceptance of Nazi-leaning contributors was too much for the Pro-Ukraine (Asov Nazi) Progressive American liberals to accept.

“Daily Stormer” is a website that the world-shaking Buffalo shooting’s perpetrator Payton Gendron claimed had a strong influence on him. The website surprisingly had a .cn country code domain, which led some in the media and the public to accuse China of being involved in the incident and even “supporting the American far right and neo-Nazism.”

From HERE.

Meet The Globalists: Here Is The Full Roster Of Davos 2022 Attendees

The infamous World Economic Forum (WEF) will host its annual meeting in Davos this week, and Jordan Schachtel,via ‘The Dossier’ Substack, is going to make sure you know who is attending the invite-only gathering.

For those of you who are new to this nefarious organization:

The World Economic Forum (WEF), through its annual Davos conference, acts as the go-to policy and ideas shop for the ruling class. The NGO is led by a comic book villain-like character in Klaus Schwab, its megalomaniac president who articulates a truly insane, extremist political agenda for our future.

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Klaus Schwab

How about the “Great Reset?”

All of those bumper sticker political narratives were popularized by the World Economic Forum.

Have you read about the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) movement?

That’s also a WEF favorite.

Davos 2022 includes the usual components of WEF’s “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” totalitarian eco statist agenda. Topics discussed and panels at the 2022 meeting will include:

  • Experience the future of cooperation: The Global Collaboration Village
  • Staying on Course for Nature Action
  • Future-proofing Health Systems
  • Accelerating the Reskilling Revolution (for the “green transition”)
  • The ‘Net’ in Net Zero
  • The Future of Globalization
  • Unlocking Carbon Markets
  • And of course, a Special Address by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine

The American contingent will include 25 politicians and Biden Administration officials. US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo will join Climate Czar John Kerry as the White House representatives there. They will be joined by 12 democrat and 10 republican politicians, including 7 senators and two state governors

Without further delay, I’ve provided the entire list of attendees who are showing up to Davos next week. I’ll list the Americans below and the rest are linked below that in an attached document.

  • Gina Raimondo Secretary of Commerce of USA USA
  • John F. Kerry Special Presidential Envoy for Climate of the United States of America
  • Bill Keating Congressman from Massachusetts (D)
  • Daniel Meuser Congressman from Pennsylvania (R)
  • Madeleine Dean Congresswoman from Pennsylvania (D
  • Ted Lieu Congressman from California (D)
  • Ann Wagner Congresswoman from Missouri (R)
  • Christopher A. Coons Senator from Delaware (D)
  • Darrell Issa Congressman from California (R)
  • Dean Phillips Congressman from Minnesota (D)
  • Debra Fischer Senator from Nebraska (R)
  • Eric Holcomb Governor of Indiana (R)
  • Gregory W. Meeks Congressman from New York (D)
  • John W. Hickenlooper Senator from Colorado (D)
  • Larry Hogan Governor of Maryland (R)
  • Michael McCaul Congressman from Texas (R)
  • Pat Toomey Senator from Pennsylvania (R)
  • Patrick J. Leahy Senator from Vermont (D)
  • Robert Menendez Senator from New Jersey (D)
  • Roger F. Wicker Senator from Mississippi (R)
  • Seth Moulton Congressman from Massachusetts (D)
  • Sheldon Whitehouse Senator from Rhode Island (D)
  • Ted Deutch Congressman from Florida (D)
  • Francis Suarez Mayor of Miami (R)
  • Al Gore Vice-President of the United States (1993-2001) (D)

Full list of confirmed attendees of 2022 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting

Here’s the PDF File in case the link goes down.

There is one member of the ‘elites’ that is not going to be there (and never has).

As Mohamed El-Erian writes in an op-ed at Bloomberg, Davos meetings are full of potential but rarely full of solutions.

I have never taken up the opportunity to attend the Davos meeting and I will pass again this year.

That, however, does not mean that I do not follow its evolution and outcomes. I am certainly interested in what could emerge from a meeting that brings together so many leaders of governments, civil society and business.

In an ideal world, this year’s meeting would prove catalytic in two important ways. 

  • First, it would trigger greater awareness of ongoing watershed developments in the global economy and draw attention to how differently these are viewed around the world.
  • And second, it would point to ways in which an increasingly “zero-sum” view of international coordination can be reshaped to contribute to collective resilience and inclusive prosperity.

The list of ongoing watershed developments in the global economy is long, extending well beyond the horrific war in Ukraine and the associated human tragedies. Here is an example of what is on such a list:

  • Due to the convergence of food, energy, debt and growth crises, a growing number of poorer countries face a rising threat of famine — and this is but one part of the “little fires everywhere” phenomenon undermining lives and livelihoods around the world.
  • Inflation at 40-year highs in wealthier countries is undermining standards of living and growth engines, hitting the poor particularly hard, fueling political anger, eroding institutional credibility, and undermining the effectiveness of economic and financial policy.
  • The inability to deal with critical secular challenges, including climate change, is seeing short-term distractions compound what already are meaningful long-term challenges.
  • Private- and public-sector efforts to strike a better balance between highly interconnected supply chains and national/corporate resilience are complicated by a global economy that lacks sufficient momentum for this to be done in an orderly fashion.
  • The western weaponization of international finance, while effective in bringing the eleventh largest economy in the world to its knees, has been pursued without a global framework of standards, guidelines and safeguards.

I suspect that, while the vast majority of Davos participants will agree on this list (and, indeed, add a few more items), there will be quite a bit of disagreement on the causes and longer-term consequences. Such disagreement is problematic in two ways.

  • First, it undermines the shared responsibility needed to address challenges with important international dimensions;
  • and second, it erodes even more trust in the existing international order. Unless the disagreements can be resolved, the damaging effects will deepen and spread.

On paper, the upcoming Davos meeting would be perfectly suited for resolving these conflicts. History, however, does not provide much encouragement or optimism.

Time and time again, Davos has fallen victim to a lack of focus and actionable unifying vision. Individual and collective interests have remained unreconciled. Distractions abound. As a result, the output has been, at best, backward-leaning.

Given the multiple crossroads facing the global economy, this would be a particularly good time for Davos to fulfill its considerable potential — to look ahead, not back. To identify solutions instead of just problems. Otherwise, the forum will evolve even more into a network and social club that is, and is widely perceived to be, even more decoupled from the realities of many and the challenges of most.

“Mom sun bathing in backyard, 1961”

Not my mom, but still…

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It’s the War Mobilization, Stupid!

From HERE

 

Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign defeated incumbent president George HW Bush with the help of Ross Perot and an unrelenting focus on the be-all end-all of presidential campaigns: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Clinton’s slogan pithily summarized the accumulated wisdom of more than two centuries of presidential politics: Voters identify the incumbent president and incumbent party with their perception of the current state of the economy. If times are good, the president and/or his party will likely be re-relected. If not, it’s time to “throw the bums out.”

I learned this in 1979 in a course on American Economic History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. According to the professor, it was an open secret that every president tries to strong-arm the Fed into juicing up the economy prior to his re-election campaign, usually with some success.

The 2020 election provided a classic example of the power of current economic trends over national election results. As of late 2019, the US economy was booming and Donald Trump was cruising toward an easy victory. Then COVID-19 hit, the economy imploded, and suddenly Trump no longer looked like a “very stable genius” to the crucial tranches of undecided, uninformed, and/or independent voters. Also, thanks to COVID and the economic implosion, Democrats could be whipped into a much more hysterical anti-Trump frenzy than would have been otherwise possible, leading to frenetic and heavily-funded get-out-the-vote efforts. So whether or not Trump is correct about alleged vote padding in swing states, he is certainly right that absent the COVID pandemic he would have won an easy re-election.

Now that we have established the crucial connection between economic trends and incumbent parties’ prospects in national elections, it’s time to ask the million dollar question: What the @&# are the Democrats thinking?! The Biden Administration, facing very tough midterm contests this year and at least equally monumental challenges in the 2024 presidential race, has made the apparently idiotic decision to blow up the US and global economies by provoking war with Russia.

As I write this, stocks, crypto, and even the bond market aren’t just swirling around the porcelain bowl, they’re plunging through the pipes and well on their way to the sewage treatment facility. The worst inflation in 40 years, driven in part by higher food and energy costs from Biden’s war on Russia, has forced the Fed to start ratcheting interest rates upward, pushing America towards 1970s-style stagflation at best, or a 2008 or even 1929 scenario at worst. Biden’s ever-escalating giveaway of US tax dollars to Ukraine is contributing to the economic as well as military mayhem.

Is Biden senile? Is Harris an idiot? Are the Democrats suicidal? Though the answer to the first two questions is undoubtedly “yes,” I’m not sure that the Democratic Party leadership and the oligarchs who own it are entirely bent on political self-destruction. There must be some sort of method in their apparent madness. And I think I know what it is:

“It’s the war mobilization, stupid!”

The oligarchs who own the Democratic Party (who may overlap somewhat with the ones that own the Republicans) aren’t going to seek success in 2022 and 2024 by riding a strong economy. Instead, they are hoping to win by dragging us into war and pounding their chests and telling us to support our fearless wartime leaders—and if you don’t you’re a treasonous unpatriotic Russia-loving Putin-loving Trump-loving transphobic white nationalist conspiracy theorist scumbag.

If the war gets bad enough, and the propaganda gets loud enough, people will put up with just about any amount of economic devastation. Consider World War II. Even though the US didn’t enter the war until more than two years after it started, and never experienced the level of combat and losses other nations suffered, the American people were quickly convinced to endure draconian rationing, forced conscription, virtual slave labor in war factories, and various and sundry economic unpleasantness, all in the name of defeating the evil racially-inferior slanty-eyed Japs and the evil white supremacist Adolf Hitler. FDR, who had cruised to re-election in 1940 by promising to keep America out of the war, had no problem winning in 1944 despite his broken promise (and his Pearl Harbor treason). When the nation is on a total war footing, people snap to attention and salute and do what they’re told and don’t ask questions, and the incumbent party and president enjoy almost godlike status.

My parents were children during World War II, and they (and my grandparents) experienced food rationing, gasoline rationing, and the near-total unavailability of all sorts of consumer goods, from appliances to automobiles. Sounds familiar? It’s like what we’re heading into now—only in 2022 we’re merely facing de facto rationing as many people can no longer buy their customary allotments of food, gas, and goods. Fortunately the authorities probably won’t start issuing ration coupons until the war really heats up.

And heat up it will. Biden’s seemingly crazy policies, foreign as well as domestic, make sense only on the assumption that we’re heading into all-out World War III. Why would the US refuse Russia’s repeated entreaties to negotiate Ukrainian neutrality and cap NATO expansion, thereby provoking a ruinous war? Why would US leaders refuse Russia’s (and Zelensky’s) overtures for a negotiated solution? Why would they create what will soon become a 100-billion-dollar arms pipeline to Ukraine, while pushing Finland and Sweden to join NATO—a move that Russia will inevitably greet with military strikes?

The real rulers of the US empire, the neoconservatives who overthrew the Republic on 9/11/2001, are bent on world conquest. A decision has apparently been made behind the scenes to fight World War III sooner rather than later, in service to the Wolfowitz Doctrine that the US will tolerate no challenges to its global hegemony.

The neocons have made their position clear: They will either rule the planet unilaterally or destroy it. That is why the Empire and its vassals are inflicting economic devastation on their own people, and the people of the world, as they frantically mobilize for the biggest and most destructive war in human history.

If we are going to stop it, the time is now. Once NATO is officially at war with Russia, dissent will be ruthlessly quashed. And once the nukes start flying, we will spend whatever is left of our lives wishing we had done more to stop the neocon Strangeloves from pursuing their mad dream of world conquest.

2 x news: Europe olive branch to Putin

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Now, Italy begins backtracking on its promises and extending an olive branch toward Russia – TFIGlobal
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Opinion | On Ukraine, good-cop France is offering Putin a way out – The Washington Post
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Enter the good cop. In a speech shortly after Putin’s Victory Day fizzle, French President Emmanuel Macron offered an olive branch to Moscow …
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From HERE

“Mom in reflection, December 1960”

Cool mom. Not mine, though…

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Hawaiian Ham and Bacon Pasta Salad

Sweet, salty, smoky and a little bit spicy, there’s a whole lot of flavor going on here, and with surprisingly few ingredients. That’s the genius of this recipe: It combines a few complementary ingredients to scrumptious effect. Pineapple bits, ham chunks, bacon crumbles and diced jalapeño folded into the creamy pasta base make for a mouthwatering meal that you can probably pull together without running to the store.

It’s a great use of leftover ham, but also beautiful enough to feature on your Easter brunch table. Whether you’re making it for tonight’s dinner or a major holiday, prep it ahead of time and stash it in the fridge, so it’s quick to assemble when it’s time to come to the table.

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Ingredients

  • 1 box Betty Crocker™ Suddenly Salad™ classic pasta salad mix
  • 1/2 cup mayonnaise
  • 1/2 cup pineapple tidbits (from 8-oz can, drained and juice reserved)
  • 1 cup diced ham
  • 1/2 cup crumbled cooked bacon (5 slices)
  • 1 cup packed baby spinach
  • 1/4 cup sliced green onions (about 4)
  • 2 tablespoons seeded, chopped jalapeño chile (1/2 large)
  • 1/2 cup cubed block mozzarella cheese (2 oz)

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2022 05 23 16 59

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The Proliferation Of Nostalgia-Inducing LEGO Sets Indicates That They’re Far More Than Just A Child’s Toy

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LEGO FORMA is a premium LEGO experience designed for adults looking for a fun, engaging way to reconnect with their creative side. LEGO FORMA mechanical models are cleverly designed but simple to assemble. Sturdy rods and parts combine with customizable skins to create a joyful creative challenge. Taking design cues from nature, LEGO FORMA incorporates life-like movement, colors, and patterns. The result is an elegant conversation piece that’s a tasteful addition to any room.

The beauty of nature. The simple pleasure of building. A thoughtful creative challenge. These are at the core of LEGO FORMA, a premium LEGO experience for adults looking for a simple, fun way to disconnect from their screens and reconnect with their creative side. LEGO FORMA models feature beautiful, customizable skins that allow for personal expression. Choose from the Koi Skin, Shark Skin, Splash Koi Skin, or decorate your own with the Ink Koi Skin.

Two hundred and ninety four elements come together to form a dynamic model. A clever gear system generates life-like movement that’s as satisfying to put together as it is to see. The sum is a thoughtful creative challenge that’s relaxing yet creatively stimulating.

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Supply chains are never returning to ‘normal’

BeyondWords

The conventional wisdom at this time is that most of the world has moved on from the pandemic (except for China); therefore, supply chains will return to “normal.” Unfortunately, this is not the case. The world has permanently changed and supply chains are going to face continuing challenges for decades to come. Among those challenges are:

  • Supply chains will remain under constant threat of disruption for the next decade
  • Supply chains operate best when the world is peaceful and stable
  • A smoothly running supply chain requires “buffer stock,” which is challenging with declining population demographics
  • There is a conflict between environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals and supply chains optimized for cost and speed. If we prioritize ESG, we will need to contend with supply chain risks
  • Supply chain technology will become the big venture capital category winner as companies continue to make investments in technologies that can help them mitigate their supply chain challenges

In a world faced with the prospect of tightening supplies, higher energy costs, heightened geopolitical risk, and strained transportation networks, advanced supply chain technologies will become mission-critical for many more companies.

Supply chains benefit from times of peace

Anyone that has been a part of the supply chain industry can attest to the fact that supply chains have always been subject to disruptions. Natural disasters, terrorism, economic cycles, and capacity shortages have created challenges since the beginning of trade.

Since the end of the Cold War, global supply chains have benefited from peaceful trade between developed and developing countries. Many poorer and less developed countries that were previously ruled by Communist or autocratic regimes took advantage of new markets in the developed world and used global trade to move beyond subsistence economies to prosperous ones. Some of these countries developed into capitalistic and democratic countries, while other governments exploited the free market system to solely benefit those already in power, and became wealthy and powerful enough to threaten the very system that enabled their ascension.

The Eastern European countries that were formerly part of the Soviet bloc are examples of the countries that embraced capitalism and shifted toward democracy, while China did the opposite.

Labor is key in supply chains

The arbitrage between the developed and developing countries has been massive. The cost of producing goods in countries with cheap labor, lax environmental and labor regulations, and little regard for sustainable natural resources has enabled the world to enjoy unprecedented prosperity and peace.

Because the goods produced in these parts of the world were so cheap, it made sense that they would be produced in excess. This buffer stock kept inflation in check and provided supply chains with ample supplies that could fend off short-term fluctuations and disruptions. Think about how the cost of televisions and computing hardware has fallen over the past few decades, and how auto prices haven’t risen as significantly as the many improvements in product features and quality were made.

This all happened at a time when the United States was the only superpower and the only expectation that the U.S. had of other nations is that trade should be unobstructed.

Cheap labor is becoming scarcer, particularly in Asia. This is largely due to aging populations – the average age continues to increase and there are fewer people to work in these manufacturing jobs.

ESG requirements hamper the stability of supply chains

Companies have instituted ESG requirements that require disclosures and monitoring of how and where products have been sourced. This pressure means that goods that are produced in factories that don’t match Western standards for environmental controls and human rights may not be available to Western consumers. The factories that do produce goods that match Western standards will often be more expensive and therefore there will be less buffer stock in the system.

The same ESG standards also create challenges for commodity producers, as the cost of adhering to environmental and social disclosures makes it more expensive and less productive. It also discourages investment in the production of environmentally sensitive commodities – most obviously in energy.

Environmental concerns and regulations that have prevented exploration and production and killed pipeline projects are largely the reason that the world currently lacks sufficient energy resources to buffer against the consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war.

In the previous three decades, supply chains have operated relatively smoothly because companies could source from around the world and not have to worry about global military conflict or autocratic regimes shutting down manufacturing. While international trade regulations were complicated to navigate, the world overall was trending toward larger, more open trading blocs – not just in North America, but in Europe and Asia as well.

As the United States has become more insular and has pulled back from being the world’s policeman, and China has started to flex its muscles and create a global competitor to the United States, the world has become far more unstable and less peaceful. This global friction is unlikely to go away. China desires to take Taiwan as its own, risking sending the world into a geopolitical crisis that is more dangerous than at any point since World War II.

Buffer stocks of products are far less likely in the future, as the cost of producing those items continues to rise. Cheap labor, offered by large populations of young people, is largely a thing of the past. This will make it more expensive for companies to produce buffer stock and far less likely that supply chains will enjoy the ability to absorb short-term shocks that are inherent to complex global networks.

Supply chain technology will be the big winner

Companies will look closer to home for product sourcing. They will prioritize production in countries that are far more stable and friendly to the United States. The Freedom Trade movement will drive supply chain professionals to prioritize production and sourcing in the Americas.

Latin America will become a big winner, as it benefits greatly from having direct land transportation networks with North America and seas that are well protected by the U.S. Navy.

The American South and Midwest will also see an acceleration in manufacturing and production, as they can offer predictable and resilient sourcing, without the geopolitical risks of foreign suppliers or the labor unions of the Rust Belt.

Automation, including robotics, will become more important. Nearshoring manufacturers will try to offset higher production costs with robotics and other automated production systems.

Supply chain market intelligence systems, a data category that monitors developments around supply and demand, will be critical for supply chain professionals who are trying to navigate increasingly complex and opaque markets. Materials and product supplies are no longer guaranteed, so the need for constantly refreshed data models that track the balance of supply and demand will be critical to the success of companies.

FreightWaves SONAR provides near real-time market intelligence information, which has seen explosive growth in recent months as shippers have realized that supply chains are not returning to normal and the need for high-frequency data is increasingly critical for success. Historical models no longer work – as the world becomes far less predictable, peaceful, and safe – and supply chains are far more exposed to supply and demand shocks.

“Mom in 1969. Pregnant with me”

Not my mom, but very nice.

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Inflation in the United States

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2022 05 17 15 48

McDonalds Leaves Russia—Russians Gain Four Years of Life Expectancy

This is funny. Please do not take seriously. -MM

Dissociated Press

The Russian Ministry of Health announced Tuesday that McDonalds’ decision to leave Russia is expected to add more than four years to the average Russian’s life expectancy.

Studies undertaken by the University of Moscow School of Health Issues and Troubles (UMSHIT) show that when the drunken buffoon Boris Yeltsin took over Russia after the CIA coup of 1991, Russian men lost almost a decade of life expectancy. Originally it was thought that the looting of Russia by CIA-affiliated Zionist billionaire oligarchs had destroyed life-support systems for food, utilities, and other infrastructure, and that Russians were so depressed about being ruled by an evil American-owned clown like Yeltsin that they started drinking themselves to death.

But more recent research has revealed that McDonalds also played a role. “We discovered that the high-calorie, high-carb, addictive-chemical-drenched drek served by McDonalds was responsible for almost half of the massive loss of life expectancy suffered by Russia after its defeat in the Cold War,” said UMSHIT researcher Morgansky Spurlockovich. “That means that during the past three decades, McDonalds has killed nearly as many Russians as Hitler did. Expelling McDonalds from Russia will save millions of Russian lives and go a long way toward addressing our demographic deficit.”

Sources close to Vladimir Putin say that Russia will not only send McDonalds back to the US, but also covertly fund its operations there.  By spending a fraction of the vast wealth Russia is earning due to higher energy prices to open even more McDonalds franchises in America, sources say, Putin will further feminize American men, render them obese and unable to fight, and ultimate kill millions of Americans at a fraction of the cost of a single 9M730 Burevestnik radioactive-tidal-wave-causing cruise missile.

Meanwhile, rumors that the Russian Air Force has begun dropping Big Macs with fries and soda on decision-making centers in Kiev have not yet been confirmed by official sources.

“Mom & 1961 Chevy Impala, September 1961”

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General Motors’ Miraculously Surviving Electric Car Found in A Parking Lot — May Be the Last EV1 in The World

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2022 05 17 15 54

In one of Atlanta’s usual multi-level parking lots, an EV1, developed by General Motors in the late 1990s, was found in 2019. The entire run was later recalled and put under the press, but one car miraculously survived.

The General Motors EV1 was an electric car produced and leased by General Motors from 1996 to 1999. It was the first mass-produced and purpose-designed electric vehicle of the modern era from a major automaker and the first GM car designed to be an electric vehicle from the outset. The EV1 was made available through limited lease-only agreements, initially to residents of the cities of Los Angeles, California, and Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona.

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2022 05 17 15 55

While customer reaction to the EV1 was positive, GM believed that electric cars occupied an unprofitable niche of the automobile market, and ended up crushing most of the cars, regardless of protesting customers.

Furthermore, an alliance of the major automakers litigated the CARB regulation in court, resulting in a slackening of the ZEV stipulation, permitting the companies to produce super-low-emissions vehicles, natural gas vehicles, and hybrid cars in place of pure electrics. The EV1 program was subsequently discontinued in 2002, and all cars on the road were taken back by the company, under the terms of the lease. Lessees were not given the option to purchase their cars from GM, which cited parts, service, and liability regulations.

The majority of the EV1s taken back were crushed, with about 40 delivered to museums and educational institutes with their electric powertrains deactivated, under the agreement that the cars were not to be reactivated and driven on the road. The only intact EV1 was donated to the Smithsonian Institution. General Motors also allegedly gave models to research institutions with EV1s being found in the wild near universities often in states of disrepair.

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The EV1’s discontinuation remains controversial, with electric car enthusiasts, environmental interest groups and former EV1 lessees accusing GM of self-sabotaging its electric car program to avoid potential losses in spare parts sales (sales forced by government regulations), while also blaming the oil industry for conspiring to keep electric cars off the road. During the discontinuation movie director Francis Ford Coppola hid his EV1 from General Motors and was ultimately able to keep his EV1. As a result of GM taking the cars back as the leases ended and the subsequent destruction of the majority of EV1s, an intact and working EV1 is one of the rarest cars from the 1990s.

Azovstal Ukrainian fighters continue to surrender

There were over 2500 hundred AFU servicemen in the industrial zone, 404 of them were wounded, 200 corpses of dead fighters were frozen in refrigerators

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ScreenHunter 7020

On May 17, the Russian Ministry of Defence confirmed that the surrender of the militants of the nationalist Azov regiment and Ukrainian servicemen, who were blocked at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol began.

Over the past day, 265 militants have laid down their arms and surrendered, including 51 seriously wounded. All those in need of medical care were sent for treatment to the hospital in Novoazovsk, Donetsk People’s Republic. The other were transferred to the village of Elenovka in the Donetsk People’s republic.

The surrender of the “garrison of Mariupol” continues. The Ukrainian fighters are disarmed, then they are sent to Novoazovsk or Elenovka.

On May 17, a Russian military reporter in Mariupol claimed that as of May 16, there were over 2.5 thousand AFU servicemen in the industrial zone, 404 of them were wounded. 55 servicemen were seriously injured. 200 corpses of dead fighters were frozen in refrigerators.

There were also three Russian prisoners, including an officer and two soldiers.

In total, 804 members of the Azov nationalist regiment were hiding in Azovstal. The others were servicemen of the 53rd, 54th, 56th separate brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 36th separate brigade of Marines, 501st and 503 separate battalions of marines and 12 brigade The National Guard, which included “Azov”.

The military reporter added that the decision was made not to comment on the situation in Azovstal. The officials claims will be made by the Russian Ministry of Defence.

In an attempt to justify the fall of the Ukrainian fortress, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine called the surrender of the AFU remnants from Azovstal a “delicate situation.”

The Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine stated that the GUR, the AFU, the border service, the National Guard, the SBU, the National Police and Azov are carrying out a special operation to rescue defenders of Mariupol blocked on the territory of the Azovstal plant. If the operation was aimed at the transfer of the nazi fighters to the Russian military, it likely succeeded.

The Kiev regime continuesly claims that all the Ukrainian militants should be exchanged for the Russian prisoners of war. The Russian military officials have not confirmed any exchange so far.

Moreover, on May 17, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin ordered to work on the proposal of the members of the State Duma to prohibit the exchange of all Ukrainian Nazis to Ukraine. He added that this issue should be worked out jointly with the Defense and Security Committee.

“You are making the right offer. Nazi criminals should not be exchanged. These are war criminals. We must do everything to ensure that they face trial” Volodin summed up.

“Mama and us at Yosemite, California, 1963”

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4 16

Leaked Vietnam video

Leaked Vietnam video: Showing Vietnam PM cursing America saying Ukraine war created by US.
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Short Video HERE

Taiwan TVS media reported a leaked video footage showing Vietnam PM privately cursed America , saying he is not afraid of America, and that Ukraine war has been created by the Americans. This was filmed during the recent US organized ASEAN meeting.
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The Ultimate Brownie

This is Betty’s all-time favorite homemade brownie!

Ultimate Brownies 1
Ultimate Brownies 1

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup butter or margarine
  • 5 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, cut into pieces
  • 1 3/4 cups sugar
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts

Steps

  • 1
    Heat oven to 350°F. Grease bottom and sides of 9-inch square pan. In 1-quart saucepan, melt butter and chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly. Cool slightly.
  • 2
    In medium bowl, beat sugar, vanilla and eggs with electric mixer on high speed 5 minutes. Beat in chocolate mixture on low speed. Beat in flour just until blended. Stir in walnuts. Spread in pan.
  • 3
    Bake 40 to 45 minutes or just until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan. Cool completely in pan on cooling rack. For brownies, cut into 4 rows by 4 rows.

2022 05 17 17 04
2022 05 17 17 04

After the NATO War is Over

By Batiushka for the Saker Blog

Make no mistake about it: The tragic war that is currently taking place on Ukrainian battlefields is not between the Russian Federation and the Ukraine, but between the Russian Federation and the US-controlled NATO. The latter, also called ‘the collective West’, promotes an aggressive ideology of organised violence, a politically- economically- and militarily-enforced doctrine euphemistically known as ‘Globalism’. This means hegemony by the Western world, which arrogantly calls itself ‘the international community’, over the whole planet. NATO is losing that war, which uses NATO-trained Ukrainians as its proxy cannon fodder, in three spheres, political, economic and military.

Firstly, politically, the West has finally understood that it cannot execute regime change in Moscow. Its pipedream of replacing the highly popular President Putin with is CIA stooge Navalny is not going to happen. As for the West’s puppet-president in Kiev, he is only a creature of Washington and its oligarchs. A professional actor, he is unable to speak for himself, but is a spokesman for the NATO which he loves.

Secondly, economically, the West faces serious resistance to the 6,000 sanctions it has imposed on Russia and Russians. Those sanctions have backfired. In the West, we can testify to this every time we buy fuel or food. The combination of high inflation (10% +) and even higher energy prices, caused almost solely by these illegal anti-Russian sanctions, are threatening the collapse of Western economies, much more than threatening Russia or China. As a result of this reverse effect of sanctions against Russia, the rouble is at a three-year high, standing at about 64 to the US dollar and rising, though immediately after the sanctions it had briefly gone down to 150 to the dollar.

After strenuously denying that they would do it, already most countries in Europe (at least 17 for now), including Germany and Italy, have agreed to open accounts with Gazprombank, as Russia advised them to do and to pay for oil and gas in roubles. And this number is growing by the week. The problems will be even greater with food shortages, as the world food chain is highly integrated and the agricultural production of Russia and the Ukraine (now controlled by Russia) is at least 40% of the world’s grain production.  Just days ago it was announced that Russia expects record grain production this year (130 million tonnes). Russia may yet demand payment in roubles for all this as well.

The sanctions against Russia have divided Europe and are threatening to divide NATO.  President Erdogan of Turkey, a NATO member, has announced that he would veto the entry to NATO of Finland and Sweden into NATO. At the same time, Russia has announced that it will cut off Finland’s natural gas supply. Swedish leaders are re-thinking their entry to NATO.

Thirdly, militarily, it is clear that the Ukraine, with huge numbers of desertions and surrenders, has no chance of winning the war against Russia. Most of its military equipment has already been wiped out and newly-delivered and often antiquated Western equipment will make little difference, even if it is not destroyed by Russian missiles as soon as it reaches the Ukraine. The conflict could now be over within weeks, rather than months. The US ‘Defense Secretary’ (= Minister for Offense), Lloyd Austin, has desperately called the Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu to beg for a ceasefire. Would you agree to a ceasefire when in less than three months and with only 10% of your military forces you have already occupied an area greater than England inside the Ukraine, an area that produces 75% of Ukrainian GDP?

The panic of financial disaster in the West has begun to set in. As a result, the French President Macron has told President Zelensky (that is, told Washington) to give up part of Ukraine’s sovereignty and at last start serious negotiations with Russia. Macron is also trying to free French mercenaries from Azovstal in Mariupol, but the problem is much bigger than this, as the whole of Europe is facing economic meltdown. And the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, has asked President Biden to contact President Putin and ‘give peace a chance’. Note that Mario Draghi is a former president of the European Central Bank and a Goldman Sachs puppet – just as Macron is a Rothschild puppet.

There have always been empires and invasions throughout history. However, they have always been local and not been justified as the only possible global ideology, a ‘New World Order’, to be imposed by violence all over the planet. After the NATO war is over, lost by ‘the collective West’, NATO Centralism, the ideology of a ‘Unipolar World’, controlled from Washington, must end. However, Centralism must also come to an end everywhere else, like that under Soviet-period Moscow (1).

However, Nationalism must also come to an end. Here we should remember that the very word ‘Nazism’ comes from the German words for ‘National Socialism’. (Nationalism entails hatred for others, whereas Patriotism means the ability not only to love your own country, but also love the countries of others, not hate their countries). And the Ukraine has a history of Nazism, stretching back over eighty years. Moreover, today’s leading Kiev soldiery are Nazi nationalists and represent the tribalism so typical of Western Europe, responsible in the twentieth century for two huge wars which it spread worldwide. The Nazi Ukrainian cries of ‘Glory to the Ukraine’ and their slogan of ‘Ukraine above Everything’ are slogans of Nazism.

Let us move to a world that is multipolar and multicentric, which has unity in diversity and diversity in unity. If we do not move towards this, we will probably be lost. For a multipolar, multicivilisational and multicultural world, the world of seven billion human beings already, is the only civilized world, the only true international community.

Note:

1. Here anti-Semites will tell you that the Centralism of Soviet-period Moscow was founded by the Bolsheviks, of whom over 80% were Jews. Firstly, it should be pointed out that they were atheist Jews, internationalists like Bronstein/Trotsky, who supported the ‘Third International’. In other words, they were political Zionists (not religious Zionists, indeed, they were anti-religious). And let us recall that a huge number of Jews were and are anti-Zionists and a huge number of Zionists were and are not at all Jews. This is why the Saker rightly uses the term ‘Anglo-Zionism’ for these unipolar centralisers.

Streusel Coffee Cake

Everyone needs a classic coffee cake recipe. Simple to make and a treat to eat, this is it! Our cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake recipe is the perfect one to wake up and create for a holiday brunch. It only takes 10 minutes of prep time and is made easy with Bisquick™ Original Pancake & Baking Mix.

0dfa7d9b d6d8 4fe1 a13f fa5f938a1b3b
0dfa7d9b d6d8 4fe1 a13f fa5f938a1b3b

Ingredients

Cinnamon Streusel

  • 1/3 cup Bisquick™ Original pancake & baking mix
  • 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 tablespoons firm butter or margarine

Coffee Cake

  • 2 cups Bisquick™ Original pancake & baking mix
  • 2/3 cup milk or water
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 egg

2022 05 23 17 09
2022 05 23 17 09

“Mom when in Madrid, 1961”

3 20
3 20

Cambodia Demands British Museums Return Stolen Khmer Artifacts

Khmer artifacts
Khmer artifacts

It's just a beginning. -MM

Stolen Khmer artifacts from ancient Cambodian temples should be returned now. This is what Cambodian heritage authorities have told London’s Victoria & Albert and British Museum who currently profit from scores of once looted Khmer artifacts.

Until the 7th century AD, Cambodian (Khmer) arts were greatly influenced by Indian Hindu themes. By the 10th century, however, Khmer artisans had formulated their own distinct style of sculpting which scholars say is closer to the wholeness of Egyptian sculpture than it is to Indian styles. Standing sentinel among thousands of jungle temples is the massive Angkor Wat representing the largest religious complex ever built, and Banteay Srei, a comparatively tiny hospital temple.

All Khmer temples are completely covered with sculpted deities, spirits and demons. Garuda is part man and part bird, Apsaras are celestial dancing girls, Dvarapalas are demonic temple guardians with clubs and Gajasimha is a mythical animal with the body of a lion and the head of an elephant. These figures and many more were among the hundreds of sculptures smashed from their plinths, looted, and sold to British and US museums. Now Cambodia wants them back!

2022 05 19 16 41
2022 05 19 16 41

When Stolen Khmer Artifacts Become War Crimes

Cambodia’s culture minister appealed to the Victoria & Albert (V&A) and British Museums (BM) to return scores of Khmer artifacts it claims were “ stolen from its temples.” Believed to enshrine the souls of their kings and ancestors, many of these temple statues were illegally removed from Cambodia by the late Douglas Latchford.

According to the Washington Post , beginning in the 1970s, Latchford, an English explorer, arts connoisseur and author, helicoptered into remote Cambodia and amassed “one of the world’s largest private collections of Khmer treasures.” The Cambodian Ministry of Culture’s chief legal counsel and the head of its investigative team, Brad Gordon, told the BBC that trading in these items should be “considered a war crime”.

Plundering Ancient Treasures In The Fog Of Modern War

Members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge) ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 and murdered more than two million citizens. They controlled swathes of Cambodia up to the early 90s, and most of the temples were looted during these three chaotic decades. In 2012, Lachford was identified by US prosecutors in a case targeting a New York artifacts dealers , and in 2019 he was charged for smuggling stolen antiquities, but he died in 2020 before going to trial.

Phoeurng Sackona, the Cambodian Ministry of Culture, recently wrote to Nadine Dorries, her British equivalent, informing her that around 100 important cultural treasures that were stolen from sacred temples are now in two London museums. The letter reminded Dorries of the Hague Convention document signed on 14 May 1954 which protects cultural property seized during armed conflicts.

Museologists at the Victoria and Albert Museum said they “welcomed constructive dialogue” and staff at the BM said they would “consider the requests carefully and respectfully.”

2022 05 19 16 42
2022 05 19 16 42

A High Class, Low Minded, British Criminal

Brad Gordon said Lachford tried to offload his collection “right up until he went into the hospital and died.” Julia Latchford, Douglas’s daughter, says she has already transferred her entire collection to the Cambodian authorities with five major objects already repatriated. However, about 50 pieces are currently on display at the two London museums generating cash income from tourists.

Sopheap Meas, an archaeologist on the investigative team, said Cambodians believe the statues contain the “soul of a king, a god or maybe an ancestor.” Brad Gordon told the BBC that everyone in the world knew what was happening in Cambodia and that the BM and the V&A “shouldn’t have accepted these pieces.” There is little room for excuses here as Gordon added most of the hundred plus artifacts have “no export licence or permit,” therefore, the two museums are holding “stolen property that needs to come back to Cambodia,” says Gordon.

By Ashley Cowie

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Jack London, Dreamy Landscape Photographs, Muslim Lolita Fashion and New York Style Pizza

More articles, and comments as we dance and observe the world in transition. The united West (United States, the UK, and all the proxy nations) are in “free fall”, while the “global South”, the “East” are doing just fine. We will continue to report on this great period of historical change. Hopefully it should calm down and achieve stability within the next few years.

Check it out…

Chinese efforts to replenish reserves with Russian oil would not violate U.S. sanctions -White House

Imagine that.

White house: China is allowed to import oil from Russia, but not from the rest of the world.
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Apparently, there are positive outcomes from Trump all out trade assault on China. US no longer dares to start another round of an all-out trade assault against China
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From HERE

The Drive: Russia “caught by surprise” US intelligence during an unprecedented operation

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By Sergey Ignatiev

The United States organized an unprecedented reconnaissance operation with RC-135S aircraft off the Russian coast. This is reported by The Drive, an exclusive retelling of the publication of which is presented by PolitRussia.

Columnist Thomas Newdick notes that the US Air Force decided on a “highly unusual move” by arranging an “unprecedented espionage operation” off the eastern coast of Russia. We are talking about the flight in the Pacific Ocean of two strategic reconnaissance aircraft Boeing RC-135S Cobra Ball, specialized in tracking ballistic missiles.

The reason for such a mission was the test of the new RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which, according to Newdick, is one of the six superweapons announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of the message to the Federal Assembly in March 2018.

The launch of the complex was carried out at the Plesetsk cosmodrome (Arkhangelsk region) to confirm the calculated characteristics and hit the target at the Kura test site (Kamchatka Peninsula). Actually, it was the final destination that interested American intelligence.

2022 05 22 17 51
2022 05 22 17 51

Two RC-135S aircraft took off from the US Air Force Base in Alaska (Eielson) in the direction of the Far East coast of Russia.

“Flight tracking services have spotted [aircraft] near St. Matthew Island, a remote, uninhabited outpost of Alaska in the Bering Sea,” writes The Drive.

2022 05 22 17 52
2022 05 22 17 52

The aircraft, which have been known for their reconnaissance activities since the Cold War, are designed to collect information about missile systems. They are equipped with spectrometers, a camera system, antennas for intercepting telemetry data and other equipment. Newdick suggests that the planes were supposed to collect information about the flight of the Sarmat training warheads, however, apparently, something went wrong.

“Usually, Cobra Ball takes a position much closer to the Russian coast, with a focus on Klyuchi (the village in the vicinity of which the Kura test site is located – ed.). Therefore, most likely, two RC-135S aircraft were “caught by surprise”, since the arrival [of blocks in a given area] occurred before the aircraft reached their planned position, ”the publication notes.

It is noteworthy that the distance from the Keys to the island of St. Matthew is almost 1,500 kilometers. And the capabilities of the RC-135S to detect and track complexes are limited to 500-600 kilometers. It is entirely possible that the unprecedented air mission was wasted, even though the Pentagon says it was given advance notice of the Sarmat test.

2022 05 22 17 53
2022 05 22 17 53

Nevertheless, as noted by aviation historian Robert Hopkins III, who served in the Air Force for 17 years, the United States took the unprecedented step of organizing the flight of two strategic reconnaissance aircraft at once.

“The immediate takeaway from the flight seems to be that US intelligence was so desperate to collect data on this first-of-its-kind ICBM test that they sent two RC-135S aircraft to monitor it,” The Drive summarizes.

Earlier, PolitRussia told what signal the Russian Federation sent to NATO from Kaliningrad.

Red beans and rice | Southern U.S. style

The World Through Jack London’s Eyes

When most people hear the name Jack London, they think of one of the most widely read American writers who produced 50 books including Call of the Wild and The Sea Wolf; some may also know him as an adventurer or social activist.

But most don’t realize that Jack London was a prolific photographer producing nearly 12,000 photographs during his lifetime, ranging from the poignant images of the ragged homeless living in London’s East End; images of the Russo-Japanese War while he was on assignment for the Hearst Syndicate; sensitive images of the South Seas islanders during his voyage aboard the Snark to the 1906 San Francisco earth quake devastation.

In his photography, London showed his powers of perception and revealed his compassion, respect and love for humanity. Most of his photographs remained unpublished until 2010 when authors Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Sara S. Hodson and Philip Adam published Jack London Photographer with 200 images.

London lived during the first true mass-media era, when the use of photographic images ushered in a new way of covering the news. With his discerning eye, London recorded historical moments through the faces and bodies of the people who lived them, creating memorable portraits of individuals whose cultural differences pale beside their common humanity.

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White Chapel on a bank Holiday, London, 1902.

2 1
Men spending the night outdoors on the Thames embankment, London, 1902.

3 1
Homeless women sleeping in Spitalfields Garden, London, 1902.

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Salvation Army barracks in London during Sunday morning rush – men who had been given tickets during the night queuing for free breakfast, 1902.

5 1
London, 1902.

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The devastation caused by the San Francisco earthquake on Kearny Street, 1906.

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The ruins after the San Francisco earthquake, 1906.

PeeWee Herman gets High with Phill Hartman

Seven Mary Three – My My

Some thoughts on SARS and SARS-COV-2 in regards to them being bioweapons

To begin with, SARS-CoV-2 did not first appear in China. It appeared in the US and France prior to China; China was just the first to report it to the WHO. The Wuhan market appears to have been a source of transmission, cold chain transmissions being documented numerous times by Chinese scientists. Different clades appeared rapidly on different continents (Chart B), something uncharacteristic of a natural virus but obvious for one spread from those continents.





To state unequivocally COVID "was not genetically engineered" seems quite naive, given geopolitics over the past decade and the exponential rise in BSL labs worldwide this century - along with the exponential rise in diseases and "pandemics" (Chart, p 44). Logic and probability simply must be applied:  How many times during the past 100 years has China attacked another country?  Used a biological or chemical weapons against any people?  How many times during the past 100 year has the US attacked (intentional destabilization is included as an attack) another country? How many times has the US used biological or chemical weapons against any people?  How about the AngloZionist Empire (US/UK/Israel)?

Qui bono?

Sellin presents no special credentials or research to uphold opinions on COVID. Working at Ft. Detrick alone is insufficient. In the past, his opinions have gotten him kicked out of military positions due at least in part to his presenting them as fact in mainstream media rather than as his opinions in a blog.  One of his published opinions states that the third of the US' three mistakes in Afghanistan was "Misstep No. 3: Our inability to manage, let alone solve, Afghanistan’s illicit narcotics trade.”  "Solve"?  For any student of geopolitics, this would appear as direct obfuscation, since it's widely assumed that Afghanistan's poppy trade was encouraged by the US, not the Taliban (who again banned immediately upon assuming leadership this year), and that the funds were used by the CIA for global psyops, including the addicting of US and UK publics.  While Sellin's words do not convince, neither, for me, do his bio or prior publications.  His opinions regarding SARS-CoV-2 require a great deal of substantiation prior to consideration.

Caren

US Regime Change in Pakistan

The West’s war against any and all competitors to its domination seems to be in full steam now

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Part 1

Brig. General Asif Haroon Raja

This is a longer editor’s note than usual, a result of the intensely changing times we find ourselves in now where we have to see and understand clearly what is going on to avoid becoming roadkill…JD

[ Editor’s Note: General Raja from Pakistan has been a long time geopolitical writer, one of a number of Pakistani military, Intel and civilian leaders that Gordon came to know during his trips to Pakistan. He spent an evening once with Imran Khan at his campaign headquarters when he was losing one of his political races for president.

There are no social promotions in the Pakistani military, government, and diplomatic orgs. Education levels are very high, based originally on the British model. Language ability begins at three, not 3 years of age, but being able to converse fluently in three languages.

Although VT has published several articles already on the US inspired and backed coup to remove Khan as Prime Minister, Raja has compiled the saga into one read, long yes, but easier to read and get a better handle on what is going on, versus reading a half dozen of the earlier articles.

The West’s war against any and all competitors to its domination seems to be in full steam now, despite China being the only peer competitor to US hegemony. John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, has long lectured that the US should focus attention on China, with Russia being a diversion.

But it seems that the US and NATO have chosen to cull Russia from the Asian alliance, with Ukraine being the doorway to upsetting Russia’s more vulnerable economy due to the substantial trade it has with the EU in goods and services.

Before the decision to put the squeeze on Russia, due to the US wanting the EU gas market all to itself, the $100 billion in oil and gas sales to the EU balanced Russia’s imports from the EU, a flourishing level of trade that kept both sides happy.

The geopolitical gangsters have now stepped in, and those regions’ trade is now thrown to the wind just when we are all trying to come out of the Covid drain of resources, putting the future economic standing of all of us at risk; and mind you, no one asked our permission to do this.

Although it gets less publicity in the US, Biden is moving on China. Recent moves to stir up Taiwan issues are progressing to give the Navy something to do, while Hong Kong tries to emerge from a drawn out Covid debacle.

China has kept a low profile on the Ukraine-NATO-Russia war, despite highly public threats from Biden against China with his silly threats to not assist Moscow in avoiding sanctions, the modern form of Western pirate activities.

So here we are with the usual suspect ‘asset strippers’ having decided that it is time to go shopping, all paid for by more debt on the American people who were not really consulted on the new offensive plan, one being launched in the middle of an intense US political war.

I am not sure that America understands that we are being asset stripped ourselves. I hope I am wrong, but one clue that I am right is the total absence of any anti-war and anti-asset stripping factions emerging to challenge what is being rammed down our throats… Jim W. Dean ]

2022 05 22 17 58
2022 05 22 17 58

First published April 21, 2022

The US high-handed tactics

The US in its bid to keep the world under its hegemony, uses its military might, diplomatic clout and other coercive tools to terrify the third world countries and till now has been quite successful. It has managed to install puppet regimes in the developing countries and whichever ruler defied its dictates was either removed from power or assassinated.

Regimes have been changed by the US either through invasions, or fomenting insurgency or a political movement, or with the help of the military or the politicians in opposition.

Ups & downs in Pak-US relations

Pakistan has remained in the camp of the US since 1954 and had become its most allied ally. Pakistan first leaned towards China after seeing the discriminatory behavior of the US in the aftermath of Sino-India border clash in 1962, and then in the 1965 war. Pak-China friendship steadily grew stronger because the US preferred India over Pakistan.

The US tilt toward India became more pronounced after 1990 and both became strategic partners. Pakistan became the most sanctioned country due to which its robust economy dwindled and never stabilized. The US highly discriminatory policy compelled Pakistan to forge strategic relationship with China and to normalize relations with Russia.

It is in this backdrop that Pakistan under former PM Imran Khan (IK) started shedding off the magic spell of Washington by making its foreign policy independent. The change came from ‘do more to no more to absolutely not’ and refusal to give a military base to the imperious USA.

IK declined the invitation of Biden to attend the democracy summit, attended Olympics ceremony in Beijing and visited Moscow last February against the wishes of the US. Pakistan adopted a neutral policy over the issue of Ukraine and abstained from voting in the UN.

Pakistan is extending support to Afghanistan which is undergoing humanitarian crisis. All these acts coupled with IK’s inclination to make Pakistan an Islamic welfare state displeased Joe Biden and in anger he never phoned him.

In keeping with its old tradition, the US launched a regime change operation in order to replace the IK regime with a compliant regime. The regime change is a prelude to the bigger game plan, the objectives of which were framed after 9/11. Before going for Pakistan’s nuclear program, the next objective would be to separate Baluchistan.

Pakistan’s inanities and dependence upon the USA

Ever since Pakistan got wedded with the USA, it has gone through painful experiences. It has paid a heavy price for its mistake to put all its eggs in the basket of double-dealing USA. The US has used it for achieving its short term objectives and then discarded it like a used tissue paper. It has been constantly meddling into the internal affairs of Pakistan to keep it in line.

It was easy for the US to treat Pakistan as its satellite state since all the military and political leaders of Pakistan pursued a policy of appeasement to keep the imperialist USA in good humor.

The politicians and the media in Pakistan sell their souls and make compromises on national interests cheaply. Our political leaders have been seeking American help whenever in distress, or blamed the military establishment for their misfortunes. Some even sought India’s help.

PTI-PDM tussle

The 9-party Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), which later on morphed into a 13-party alliance built a narrative against the ruling PTI regime that it was a party selected by the military establishment and due to its incompetence, inflation and prices spiraled to record breaking levels in its 3 ½ years tenure, the economy slumped, and the lives of the people became wretched. The establishment was jeered over its poor selection.

Once the ruling regime failed to fulfil its tall promises and couldn’t provide any relief to the masses, the narrative of the PDM began to appeal to the senses of the disillusioned people. Their growing resentment galvanized the spirits of the PDM.

As long as the military was on one-page with the ruling party, the PDM remained weak and divided, but no sooner the military became neutral, the squabbling opposition rived in infighting parties got united.

Suspected financial support of the US to the PDM could be another reason of their boosted spirits. The two major parties PML-N and PPP used the dirty money generously on horse trading to win over the loyalties of PTI’s dissident MNAs and to entice the allies of the PTI — MQM-P, PML-Q and BAP as well as Jahangir Tareen-Aleem groups to their side.

The conspiratorial letter

Pakistan’s outgoing Ambassador in Washington Asad Majeed sent a telegraphic cable to the Foreign Office on March 7, giving details of his meeting with the US undersecretary of South Asian Affairs Donald Lu.

The latter expressed his discomfiture over IK’s visit to Moscow and Pakistan abstaining from voting in the UN to condemn Russian invasion of Ukraine. He stated that if he didn’t mend his ways, a No-Confidence Motion (NCM) would be brought against him.

He summed up by saying that any regime other than IK would be acceptable and forgivable. The threat was conveyed openly since never before any Pakistani civil or military leader had defied the dictates of Washington.

Battle for regime change

The battle for regime change started after the PDM moved a NCM on March 8. The PTI didn’t attach much importance to the ‘letter-gate’, since such threats had been a routine affair. Above all, it didn’t want to lose the support of some of its MNAs suspected of being part of the conspiracy.

Alarm bells sounded when ten dissidents of PTI took refuge in Sindh House (SH) Islamabad on March 18. The renegades were shifted to Marriott Hotel after the SH was stormed by the activists of PTI. The opposition claimed that as many as 25 PTI members had been taken on board.

The PTI after failing to win back the loyalties of the deserters, moved a case in the apex court to disqualify the floor crossers but couldn’t evoke a positive response since the accusation was based on conjectures. The other reason given was that the court didn’t want to meddle into the parliamentary affairs.

Foreign conspiracy card

Learning that loyalties of some of the PTI allies had become doubtful, it became obvious that the dice had upturned in favor of the opposition. IK and his core team decided to play the foreign conspiracy narrative as a rearguard action, which was not a concoction. This narrative was played since the military establishment and the ISI had decided to remain neutral and to stay out of politics.

IK assembled a huge crowd of his fans at Islamabad on March 27 and waved a letter stating that the US had hatched a conspiracy to remove him from power. Evidence of all the meetings of PDM leaders with the US officials in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi was collected. A campaign was launched against the floor crossers propagating that crores of Rupees had been doled out to them and the fence sitters.

Purpose was to establish a connection of the masterminds with the PDM leaders and the dissidents, to put the USA on the defensive, shame the conspirators, to put fear into the hearts of the dissidents, and build a narrative to win the sympathies of the public that he was being punished on account of pursuing an independent foreign policy.

IK didn’t explain as to why this important letter was not discussed in the right quarters from March 8 to March 29. One reason could be that he was hopeful of winning back the loyalties of his party dissidents.

The contents of the letter were eventually discussed in the National Security Council (NSC) on March 30. The participants agreed that the language of the letter was undiplomatic. Based on their inputs, the case was brought before the Parliamentary Security Committee on March 31. A demarche was given to the US charge d’ affairs in Islamabad, and also in Washington, which happened for the first time.

Foreign Minister Qureshi during his visit to Beijing brought the matter into the notice of his counterpart. China made an announcement that it will not accept another round of cold war in this region.

Last ditch effort to save the crown

Seeing the writing on the wall that the PDM had won the number game, instead of getting depressed or exercising one of the options of resigning, or dissolving the National Assembly (NA), or facing the NCM, IK remained in a fighting mood and asserted that he will fight till the last ball. He also talked of a big surprise.

No one could guess as to what surprise he could spring. Most thought that having lost the political battle, he was bluffing.

Vote of no-confidence – April 3

The session of the NA was held in the morning of April 3, but to the utter surprise of the opposition leaders who were 100% sure of victory in the voting, the deputy Speaker Qasim Suri after listening to the charge sheet of conspiracy and treason under Article 5 of the constitution by the newly appointed law minister Fawad Choudhry, read out the prepared script and rejected the NCM in a huff.

It left the 190 members of the opposition gaping in disbelief. The Speaker reconfirmed the ruling of his deputy.  Soon after, the PM dissolved the NA. The waiting President completed the last formality by issuing the dissolution notification. All this was preplanned and executed within minutes.

The opposition leaders had remained so engrossed in buying the loyalties of MNAs and in completing the numbers, and were so excited to have collected much more votes than was required that they never took into consideration this sort of a bombshell which would paralyze them.

What was intriguing was that instead of rejoicing the exit of the PTI which had become a nightmare for them, the whole lot of opposition members along with the turncoats got demoralized as if victory had been stolen from them. What was most disquieting for them was that the tag of ‘Ghadars’ (traitors) was added to the tag of ‘Thieves & Looters’. Master stroke played by IK left his opponents and their patrons aghast.

What worried the opposition was that things had gone against the script. IK had come out of the ‘do or die battle’ as a victor since he had built a strong narrative to win the empathies of his voters.

His theme of ‘victim of foreign conspiracy’, and his boldness to expose the conspirators would help him to sweep the next elections. His popularity graph had fallen considerably, shot up as was seen from the recent local body’s poll results.

Court battle

There was complete political breakdown compounded by a constitutional crisis. Finding themselves in a quandary, the legal wizards of the two mainstream opposition parties rushed to the Supreme Court (SC) and submitted petitions to declare the ruling of Qasim Suri illegal and to reincarnate the dead government.

The SC Bar Council insisted upon the SC to take suo-moto notice and take up the issue on Sunday. The 190 PDM legislators and defectors raved mad for being dubbed as traitors. They argued that if the matter was so sensitive, why such a belated action, and why only a demarche, and why not an apology was sought from the US?

The battle shifted from the parliament to the SC. It was quite strange that the SC which had rejected the petition of the PTI seeking decision over the defection clause saying that it was the internal matter of the parliament, this time agreed within an hour to assemble a bench on Sunday to discuss the verdict given by the deputy speaker duly authenticated by the speaker.

The chief justice Bandiyal called a meeting of senior judges at his house on holiday and held discussions with them. The five-member bench held sessions daily and gave the unanimous ruling on April 7.

It declared the ruling of the deputy speaker unconstitutional and against the law. It restored the NA and directed the Speaker to complete the process of voting on April 9, starting 10.30 am. It was now the turn of the opposition leaders to celebrate and for the PTI to feel dejected.

The ‘letter-gate’ bomb was not considered a serious matter by the SC. Washington denied the allegation. IK after losing the legal battle complained that the US-inspired conspiracy had been legitimized and the traitors let off the hook.

Day of high drama

April 9 was a day of high drama. The proceedings of NA started on time but the Speaker Qaiser instead of holding voting allowed the PTI legislators to resort to delaying tactics by playing up the conspiracy theory and further ratcheting the jangled nerves of the opposition and provoking them to create a ruckus.

The hide and seek play went on until near midnight. The purpose could be either to avoid the voting, which was not possible since the SC had given the date and cutout time of voting. The Speaker knew that if he didn’t comply with the court orders before 2400 hours, he would be proceeded against under the charge of contempt of court.

The only possible motive behind the inordinate delay could be to cause nervous breakdown to the dissidents, forcing them in sheer panic to revert to the treasury benches.

The jittery NCM movers contemplated approaching the apex court to arrest the obstinate Speaker. After 2300 hours, the doors of the SC and of the IHC opened up; additional security forces and prisoner buses arrived. At about 2330 hours, the COAS and the DG ISI landed in the PM House in a helicopter and held a meeting with the PM. These fast paced developments gave rise to many tantalizing rumors.

At that belated stage the Speaker after meeting the PM stated that the PM had handed him the US letter which can be read by any member in his chamber. He ended the proceedings melodramatically minutes before 2400 hours by resigning from his seat and inviting former Speaker of PML-N Ayaz Sadiq to complete the proceedings. The latter conducted the voting in which the opposition bagged 174 votes.

For the first time in Pakistan’s history an elected PM was voted out of power through NCM. IK’s premature ouster upheld the track record that no PM could complete five years tenure.

 

Regime change in Pakistan

Part 2

Asif Haroon Raja

Change of guards

On April 11, the opposition leader Shahbaz Sharif (SS) was elected as the new PM; he secured 174 votes. The PTI boycotted the voting. SS straightaway announced a relief package in the form of 10% increase in pensions and fixed Rs 25000 as minimum wage for the laborer effective from April, but soon the date was shifted from April to May.

When President Alvi regretted conducting the oath taking ceremony of the PM on April 12, the Chairman Senate Sanjrani performed this duty. Stock exchange became bullish and the Rupee value appreciated.

Oath taking ceremony of the new cabinet members numbering 34 from different coalition partners was again performed by the Senate Chairman.

People’s backlash

Responding to the call given by Imran Khan (IK), the people came out on the streets on the night of 10/11 April. Huge rallies were taken out all over the country and in western countries to record their protest against the decision of the Supreme Court (SC).

They glowed their mobile torches, carried placards and chanted slogans in favor of IK and against the army, the US and the incoming rulers. Social media launched a vicious propaganda campaign to smear the image of Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa. The BBC issued a frivolous report giving manufactured details of the happenings in the PM House on the night of April 9.

An impression has been built as if the army’s top leadership was part of the plot of regime change. Concocted stories and fake audio tapes of senior generals circulated on social media to discredit the army. Letter-gate scandal is being drummed up fiercely.

Establishment’s response

The top brass of the army took a serious note of the anti-army vilification campaign and the circulating myths and notions by some quarters to malign the institution, aimed at driving a wedge between army and the society.

They expressed their concern in the annual formation commanders conference presided by Gen Bajwa on April 12 and pledged to uphold the constitution and rule of law at all costs and to defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan against all external and external threats with full force.

DG ISPR’s Press Briefing

After the conference in GHQ, the DG ISPR Maj Gen Iftikhar Babar held a press briefing on April 14 and made an effort to put the record straight and to dispel the misperceptions. An impression has been built by the ousted PTI that Gen Bajwa was part of the conspiracy to make the vote of no confidence successful. The factor of ‘establishment’s neutrality’ has become a sour point.

He clarified that the US had never asked for a military base; there will be no martial law; Gen Bajwa didn’t seek extension in service; there is no division within the army; army stays out of politics.

Options were not given to the former PM by the army chief, but those were put forward by the government and the establishment was asked to resolve the political crisis; the PM visit to Moscow was in consultation with the GHQ; the word ‘conspiracy’ was not written in the cable sent by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington.

A demarche was sent to Washington on account of the undiplomatic language used by the US undersecretary, which was noted as interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs. Lastly, the nuclear program is in safe hands.

Veterans tilt towards Imran Khan

The briefing did help in deflecting the anti-army tirade but didn’t cool down the tempers of the PTI activists and fans inside and outside the country. A new debate over the subtle difference between the words ‘conspiracy’ and ‘interference’ has been generated. For many, it amounts to the same.

What is worrying for the army top brass is that never before the veterans openly expressed their affections for IK and their resentment against the establishment’s interference or neutrality. These feelings were discernible within a segment of serving officers as well.

Gen Bajwa’s speech at Islamabad Security Dialogue on April 17 favoring the US and condemning Russian invasion of Ukraine at a time when the alleged US conspiracy theory was the hottest topic was not well received.

Gen Bajwa’s address in Lahore

To cool down their emotions, Gen Bajwa had to address officers in Rawalpindi and Lahore garrisons. At Lahore the interaction went on for over four hours during which he had to answer hundreds of loaded questions.

The crux of his briefing was that IK had been helped in forming governments in Islamabad and in Punjab, he was guided at every step to improve his policies, and he stood committed to the one-page doctrine, ignoring the banter and accusations leveled by the opposition.

He shared his difficulties saying that IK never listened to the advice rendered, didn’t change the chief ministers of KP and Punjab, and wasted all his energies in chasing his political opponents instead of focusing on economics and governance. He candidly admitted that the tiff developed over the posting out of DG ISI Lt Gen Faiz in last August.

His concluding remarks that he will welcome IK if he gets elected in next elections which are not far and will extend full cooperation raised eyebrows. By the time the elections are held, either he would be attending farewell dinners in Oct/Nov or would have joined the retired club. The onus of cooperation or non-cooperation will be on the new chief and not him.

The PTI ex minister Fawad spilled the beans and laid to rest the conspiracy theory on April 20 by stating that his party’s ouster was the result of strained ties with the establishment which couldn’t be repaired despite concerted efforts.

Imran Khan’s backlash

Imran Khan in the meanwhile gave a call to his party activists, followers and fans to stage a protest over the ouster of his party on the night of 10/11 April. The response was overwhelming.

His narrative is that he had been punished for refusing to toe the US dictates, to meet the CIA Director and to give a base to the CIA, to condemn Russia and to make Pakistan’s foreign policy independent. He is lashing out at his political opponents and his party dissidents who had floored his party with the help of the USA. He has held public meetings in Peshawar, Karachi and Lahore in which the attendance was mammoth.

IK fiery speeches in the public meetings were emotive and provocative and amounted to incitement to violence. IK’s charisma that had peaked in Oct 2011 has once again catapulted with a big bang.

He will keep increasing the temperature and will restart politics of non-cooperation and agitation to fail the government. He is demanding early elections, or else he would block the whole country. True to his words, he is proving more dangerous to his opponents after being ousted from power.

While he abstained from ridiculing the army, he stated that neither the army nor any external power could safeguard the country and democracy but the people were the real defenders and saviors.

New Government’s challenges

For the new government, the plate is full to the brim with a plethora of compound problems. Each member has to remove the tag of ‘traitor’ for which a probe committee has been formed. Immediate challenges will be depleting foreign exchange reserves, soaring public debt, foreign debt, trade imbalance, fiscal deficit, current account deficit, and the new budget in May.

Managing the cabal of 12 political parties that were part of the PDM, each hungering for lucrative cabinet seats will be taxing for the new PM SS who took oath on April 12. He had to labor hard for a week to convince the coalition partners to accept the allotted ministries and take oaths of their offices. The PPP got the lion’s share and is still aspiring for the seats of President, Chairman Senate and at least two seats of governors.

Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir, the two leaders of PTM showed their intent by brazenly expressing their resentment over the air strikes carried out against the hideouts of the TTP in Khost and Kunar. Akhtar Mengal felt so bitter over the security forces operation against the terrorists in Chaghi that he didn’t attend the oath taking ceremony.

The BNP-M, and ANP didn’t accept any portfolios in the cabinet due to their reservations. Cooperation of BNP-M and PTM will be conditional to Pak Army’s disassociation from counter terrorism, and support of the MQM-P will be subject to meeting their 7-point demands, most important of which is reopening their offices in Karachi.

In other words, Akhtar Mengal would insist upon withdrawal of Frontier Corps and ISI/MI from interior Balochistan. The PTM would seek withdrawal of the army from former FATA, and the MQM would like the wings of Sindh Rangers to be clipped and influence of Altaf’s unit/sector commanders to return.

Both the PPP and the PML-N would be interested in defanging the NAB, and in civilianizing the ISI. The ANP is still tied to the agenda of Pashtunistan. The PTM and the ANP are likely to get close to the Taliban regime in Kabul, ignite Pakhtun nationalism, and foment misgivings between Pakistan and Afghanistan. They would thus facilitate the CIA’s job to do the rest.

While restoring the health of the sick economy is the biggest challenge, SS main worry would be how to keep the greedy allies appeased and united, and above all how to deal with the confrontational politics of PTI. The government is pinning hopes on the foreign funding case against the PTI pending in the ECP court since 2016 which is being concluded within a month. It is hoping that if the decision goes against the party, it could pave the way for its disbandment.

As a tit-for-tat, a series of corruption cases would be initiated against the PTI leaders. Unlike the last tenure of PML-N in which it was very soft towards the vandalism of the PTI, this time it would handle them more firmly. They will be dealt with the way the TLP activists were brutalized by the former regime.

The political situation in Punjab is still in choppy waters. After the physical brawl in the provincial assembly in which the Deputy Speaker and the Speaker Pervez Elahi were injured on the day of voting, the Governor Punjab Cheema belonging to PTI refused to give oath to the newly elected Chief Minister Hamza Shahbaz son of SS.

He cancelled the resignation of former chief minister Buzdar on technical grounds. The PTI’s President Alvi has so far ignored the request of the PM to de-notify Cheema. It’s a complete muddle.

Points to ponder over

Would it not have been better if the PTI was allowed to complete its tenure? There would have been no conspiracy card, horse trading, upwelling of anti-army emotions and character assassination of the army chief, IK’s popularity wouldn’t have got a shot in the arm, and Pakistan would have been saved from a national regime comprising ill-reputed parliamentarians. Barring the newcomers, almost all other cabinet ministers are on bail and court cases are pending against them.

Interestingly, the IMF wants the entire federal cabinet to declare their assets, bank accounts, tax returns and business details. This is the biggest bombshell dropped upon the plunderers.

The big question is whether fresh elections would resolve the chronic problems? Whenever elections are held, the losers will not accept the results and the tug of war will recommence. With tainted institutions, and soiled politicians and bureaucrats, no progress is possible, whether the next regime will be of PML-N or the PTI.

It will suffer a similar fate with zero results. Pakistan will continue to lurch from one crisis to another and the foreign conspirators will continue to play the game of snake and ladders with our mini mind leaders.

The only way out is to carry out electoral, judicial, bureaucratic, police, economic and education reforms. These cannot be done by a single political party or a weak coalition. The incumbent regime comprising politicians from different parties, backgrounds and ideologies, with some branded as anti-Pakistan, looters, money launderers and criminals, not much can be expected. The case is akin to the adage, “too many cooks will spoil the broth”.

SS’s speed and efficiency would be hugely hindered by the selfish coalition partners, confrontational politics of the PTI, and the tainted reputation of the judiciary and the police.

Would the conciliatory comments of Gen Qamar Bajwa and change in regime ease tensions with the US and alter the interventionist and bossy policy of Washington? The answer is a big NO. The only possible change could be that the US, IMF and the EU become helpful and a bit more generous, the FATF removes Pakistan from the grey list.

Generosity of the US will of course not be cost free. Would Pakistan cede to the US demand for a military base or airspace, and if so, what impact will it have on Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan and China?

What effects Gen Bajwa’s harsh comments will have upon Pakistan’s relations with Russia, which promised oil and grains at a cheap price, and resolving gas shortages? Vladimir Putin instead of reacting, showed grace by congratulating the new PM.

Would falling back into the magic spell of the US change the objectives of the Indo-US-Israel nexus against Pakistan? Do we still consider the trio harmless and friends of Pakistan?

So far the vibes from China are positive. Rejuvenation of CPEC at a faster pace is the only way to recover our economy and to make Pakistan self-reliant.

If the incumbent regime tries to delay elections, the PTI is likely to again repeat its old tactics of long march after Ramadhan, and this time stage sit-in at Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi and Quetta in an attempt to paralyze the state machinery. If so, will it be possible for the law enforcement agencies to block the sea of people from different directions?

Taking into consideration the exceptionally high emotions of the people, is the stage not getting set for chaos and anarchy? Will the establishment remain neutral in the face of building volcanoes?

The writer is retired Brig Gen, war veteran, defence, security & political analyst, international columnist, author of five books, Chairman Thinkers Forum Pakistan, Director Measac Research Centre, takes part in TV talk shows, and delivers talks. asifharoonraja@gmail.com  

How to Survive the First 90 Days After the Collapse

A tad gloomy, and fear-mongering. However, the content is valuable.

Have some fun, check this oldie out…

Dragnet 1967 – The Big Explosion

Hot Damn! It’s The Soggy Bottom Boys! | O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Reminds me how Morrison lost his election…

When Photos Looked Like Paintings: Dreamy Landscape Photographs Taken By Leonard Misonne

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Belgian photographer Leonard Misonne (1870-1943) trained as an engineer before discovering photography. Raised in Gilly, Belgium, the photographer traveled throughout his homeland and beyond to capture the landscape and people of Europe in the Pictorialist style.

Photographs, characterized by soft, painterly scenes, were created through alternative printing processes that utilize materials such as oil and gum bichromate. The Pictorialist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries sought to elevate photography to the level of other fine arts such as painting and sculpture.

Misonne said, “The sky is the key to the landscape.”

This philosophy is clear in many of Misonne’s images, often filled with billowing clouds, early morning fog, or rays of sunlight. The artist excelled at capturing his subjects in dramatic, directional light, illuminating figures from behind, which resulted in a halo effect. Favoring stormy weather conditions, Misonne often found his subjects navigating the streets under umbrellas or braced against the gusts of a winter blizzard.

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Survival Bugout – Survival Scenarios

EMP attack.

Why is China suddenly buying up so much Australian wheat?

Yesterday, I wrote a mention of a news article regarding “China increased wheat import from Australia by over 500%”.
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And now we know the reason…
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When searching “China aid to Afghanistan”, and you will notice that China has been delivering all types of food to Afghanistan provinces. This has been the case in every Afghanistan province ever since the Western “crusaders” (the United States and it’s proxies) left Afghanistan.
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Below is a search using China give Afghanistan rice:
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China distributes rice to Afghanistan, every person (family) 100kg, 50kg per bag.
http://greads.net/post/3085499.html
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YouTube footage:
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The US looted the entire Afghanistan bank account, but China is now helping  Afghanistan rebuild by delivering food to save lives.
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A lot of goodwill that china did and is still doing (across the world) is never reported by the Western  propaganda machine, they will only tell you that China building roads, rail, school … across the world are debt traps. You know the drill “What aobut the cost?”
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Welcome to world world order and propaganda control by the Western governments.

US Drawing Up Plans To Sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet: Ukrainian Official

Moscow has offered a diplomatic solution to the Black Sea standoff.

JEA: The US is really trying to start World War III with Russia by planning to sink Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. If they think that Russia isn’t going to respond, then they’ve got another thing coming.

By Kyle Anzalone

Shortly after Reuters published an exclusive story that the White House was looking to move advanced anti-ship missiles to Ukraine, an official in Kiev said that the US is making a plan to sink Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko tweeted, “The US is preparing a plan to destroy the [Russian] Black Sea Fleet. The effective work of the Ukrainians on [Russian] warships convinced [the US] to prepare a plan to unblock the [Ukrainian] ports. Deliveries of powerful anti-ship weapons are being discussed.”

Gerashchenko cited the Reuters report on Washington’s effort to ship Harpoon and Naval Strike Missiles to Ukraine. The missiles have a range of up to 300 km and cost $1.5 million each.

Three US officials and two Congressional sources told the outlet the White House was still working out the details for sending the advanced weapons to Ukraine. Logistical issues and the possibility the US would have to remove a launcher from one of its ships to send to Ukraine are current obstacles to completing the transfer.

Responding to a question from Newsweek, the State Department did not deny it was working on a plan to take out the Russian fleet. “As the conflict is changing, so too is our military assistance to deliver the critical capabilities Ukraine needs for today’s fight as Russia’s forces engage in a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine,” a spokesperson said.

However, the Department of Defense issued a sharp denial of the claims made by the Ukrainians official. “I can tell you definitively that that’s not true,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday afternoon. The Pentagon denial applied only to the Ukrainian official’s assertion the US was helping sink the Black Sea fleet, and did not refer to the proposed anti-ship weapons transfer.

Gerashchenko said the attack would help to open up Ukraine’s ports. Russia currently controls the Black Sea and maintains a blockade. The UN has called for an easing of restrictions in the sea to allow food exports from Ukraine to help alleviate global food shortages.

Moscow has offered a diplomatic solution to the Black Sea standoff. On Thursday, the Kremlin proposed lifting the blockage in exchange for sanctions relief. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the problem goes beyond the blockade and includes Western sanctions restricting fertilizer exports. “You have to not only appeal to the Russian Federation but also look deeply at the whole complex of reasons that caused the current food crisis. [Sanctions] interfere with normal free trade, encompassing food products including wheat, fertilizers and others,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said.

New York-style pizza at home, v2.0

A MUST watch video.

Muslim Lolita Fashion Is A New Trend Inspired By Japan

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In an awesome fashion mash-up that nobody could’ve foreseen, Muslim fans of the Japanese lolita fashion trend have begun pairing these sweet-as-candy outfits with their hijabs, creating a unique new style that Japanese lolita fans are falling in love with.

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The lolita trend, at its most basic, involves wearing modernized Victorian- or Rococo-style dresses and outfits that are heavily accessorized and painstakingly coordinated into elaborate costumes. The trend’s fans (called ‘lolitas’) then meet up at various events to spend time together and appreciate each others’ outfits (or, as they call them, ‘coords’).

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Two Muslim lolitas, Noor and Alyssa, have pioneered the combination of lolita costumes with their Muslim hijabs. While fittingly stylish and flamboyant, their costumes still fully adhere to their religious principles.

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EMP (a short film)

One Guy Changed My Pizza Game Forever

Seven Mary Three – Cumbersome (Official Video)

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Big changes in Australia, LEGO Colosseum, Northlandz, Good Charlotte, Dragnet, and Creamy Tomato and Tortellini Soup

We continue with the global geo-political changes. The world is changing, and we can see this. The entire Pacific energy balance has been or is in the process of reshaping with the loss of Morrison, but don’t hold your breath. The USA owns Australia. Never the less, depending on the new leadership, you will see a changing power alignment transform the Pracific rim.

First up…

Bye Bye Morrison

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison conceded defeat in a national election Saturday, saying, while vote counting was incomplete, the opposition Labor party looked likely to form a government.

“Tonight I have spoken to the Leader of the Opposition and the incoming Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and I’ve congratulated him on his election victory this evening,” Morrison said at a televised speech in Sydney.

Morrison added he would stand down as leader of the Liberal party.

The capitulation ends eight years and nine months in power for Morrison’s conservative coalition. Morrison became prime minister in 2018 after several leadership changes.

Lithuania To Be Cut Off From Russian Oil, Gas, and electricity, Sunday!

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The country of Lithuania will be cut-off from all Russian oil, natural gas flows, and electricity, starting Sunday morning.

Developing . . . check back.

No global grain shortage, says India, defends curbs on export

India is right. I believe that it was the 4 world major nasty western capitalist food companies running scare campaign to increase profits.

Article HERE

China’s April imports of Australian wheat surge 525.72% despite hostility from Canberra – Global Times

National food security interests and peoples well-being come before politics. Perhaps, preparing for the next United States / proxy brainless extreme move…

From HERE

Dragnet 1967 Season 3 Episode 12

Oh, what memories! You all are going to love this!

UTTER CARNAGE: The Stock Market Is Coming Apart Like A 20 Dollar Suit As Fear Sweeps Through Wall Street

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This is starting to get really bad.  By now, you have probably heard that the stock market crashed again on Wednesday.  The carnage was immense, and the big names on Wall Street are deeply concerned about what will happen next.  But this wasn’t supposed to happen.  After falling for six weeks in a row, this was supposed to be the week when stock prices finally bounced back.  Needless to say, that isn’t what we are witnessing.  In fact, we just witnessed the worst day for the Dow since the early days of the COVID pandemic

The Dow shed 1,164.52 points, or 3.57%, to 31,490.07, or the average’s biggest decline since June 2020. The S&P 500 traded 4.04% lower to 3,923.68, also the worst drop since 2020. The Nasdaq Composite slipped 4.73% to 11,418.15, which is the largest fall in the tech-heavy index since May 5. The selling was broad and intense on Wall Street with just eight members of the S&P 500 in the green.

If the Dow breaks below the all-important 30,000 psychological barrier, this steady slide in stock prices could quickly evolve into a full-blown avalanche.

There is already a tremendous amount of fear on Wall Street, and at this point it won’t take much of a push to set off a colossal wave of panic.

On Wednesday, disappointing results from two of our largest retailers were being blamed for the renewed wave of selling.  Target “reported a stunning 52% drop in profit for the first quarter”, and Walmart stock “had its worst day in 35 years” after reporting numbers that were well below expectations.

It turns out that U.S. consumers have a lot less discretionary income to spend at retailers these days because they are having to spend so much more on basics such as food and gasoline.  And we are being warned that all retailers are likely to suffer as long as this highly inflationary environment persists…

“Any company that relies on households and discretionary purchases will likely suffer this quarter because a lot of discretionary income has been funneled to food and energy prices,” said Jack Ablin, founding partner of Cresset Capital.

There is only so much money to go around, and as I explained a few days ago, this inflationary spiral is systematically destroying our standard of living.

If prices stay at their current levels, the average U.S. household will spend approximately $5,000 a year just on gasoline…

U.S. households are now spending the equivalent of $5,000 a year on gasoline, up from $2,800 a year ago, according to Yardeni Research.

Of course gasoline prices are not going to stay at their current levels.

They just keep going higher and higher and higher.

In fact, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has now hit a brand new record high for nine days in a row

Wednesday was the 9th straight day that gas prices hit an all-time record high!

9 DAYS IN A ROW–

The price at the pump is now $4.56 per a gallon of regular gas.

Diesel also hit a new record. The price of diesel is now at $5.57 per gallon.

But if you think that $4.56 is bad, just wait until we get to the end of the summer.

JPMorgan is warning that the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States could hit 6 bucks just a few months from now…

The average price for gasoline in California hit $6 a gallon Tuesday for the first time — and analysts at JPMorgan are warning that price could be the national average before the end of the summer.

The startling forecast comes as US gas prices have surged to record highs in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, casting a shadow over the economy.

“There is a real risk the price could reach $6+ a gallon by August,” Natasha Kaneva, head of global oil and commodities research at JPMorgan, told CNN in an email on Tuesday.

In a desperate attempt to get the inflationary spiral that they created under control, the Federal Reserve has started to recklessly raise interest rates.

Of course this is going to cause the housing market to crash, and we just got even more evidence that this is already starting to happen…

Homebuyer demand for mortgages tumbled last week as the average interest rate on the most popular U.S. home loan hovered near a 13-year high, a sign the red-hot housing market may be starting to cool off, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Mortgage applications to purchase a home dropped 12% on a weekly basis and are down 15% compared with the same week one year ago.

The housing bubble will not survive without low interest rates.

Neither will the stock market bubble.

But Fed Chair Jerome Powell doesn’t seem to care.

He is so spooked by inflation that he can’t seem to see any of our other rapidly growing problems.  In fact, he is now telling us that his institution may need “to consider moving more aggressively” in the months ahead…

Fed Chair Jerome Powell told a Wall Street Journal conference that the U.S. central bank will “have to consider moving more aggressively” if inflation that is running at a four-decade high fails to ease after earlier rate hikes.

In other words, Powell is openly admitting that the Fed may raise rates at an even faster pace by the end of this calendar year.

Oh boy.

The only reason why stock prices ever got so ridiculously high is because the Fed kept interest rates way too low for way too long, and because the Fed kept pumping trillions of fresh dollars into the system.

Now the Fed is taking away the punch bowl and is aggressively raising interest rates.

This is inevitably going to cause the bubble that they created to completely and utterly implode.

So if you want to know who to blame for the coming financial crisis, just look at the Federal Reserve.

Those that follow my work on a regular basis know that I have been a severe critic of the Fed for a very long time.

They got us into this mess, and now everyone is hoping that they can get us out of it.

You can put your faith in them if you want, but meanwhile I would highly advise that you brace yourself for the giant crash that has now started to happen.

In This Place (2007 Remaster)

This song takes me back to when I was 16 years old.

Slow-Cooker Creamy Tomato and Tortellini Soup

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As they say, opposites attract. That’s certainly the case with sweet, acidic tomatoes and creamy dairy—in all its many forms. After all, it’s this better-together combination that makes lasagna so luxurious, pizza so mouthwatering and grilled cheese and tomato soup so irresistible. So when we set out to make an extra-easy slow-cooker soup, we knew we wanted it to feature this combo. But hold on—dairy in the slow cooker? That’s usually a less-than-ideal combination (dairy can easily curdle in the slow cooker). That’s why the trick to this recipe is waiting until the end to add the cream and cheesy tortellini. That’s right, we decided a double-dose of dairy would be the perfect complement to the tomatoes in this soup, and the result is rich, velvety and very comforting! And that’s not all, the dollop of fresh pesto adds bright, anise-tinged notes and the sprinkle of shredded Parmesan adds nutty richness that take this simple soup to the next level!

Ingredients

  • 2 cans (28 oz each) Muir Glen™ organic fire roasted crushed tomatoes, undrained
  • 1 1/2 cups Progresso™ chicken broth (from 32-oz carton)
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped green onions, white parts only
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1 cup heavy whipping cream
  • 1 package (9 oz) refrigerated cheese tortellini
  • 1/4 cup refrigerated basil pesto
  • 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese (2 oz)

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2022 05 21 21 14

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2022 05 21 21 1b5

U.S. CREDIT CARD SYSTEMS — DOWN

This is in accordance and in coordination with the Russian hacking group that warned that they would shut down Western financial systems. -MM
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A massive problem has arisen in the past hour, nationwide, in the USA; Credit Card processor terminals are “down” all over the country.   From a supermarket in northeastern New Jersey, to gas stations in Ohio, to LOWES in Florida, and even stores in California, consumers are standing in line not knowing what to do because they cannot pay for their purchases.

The Hal Turner Radio Show is getting reports from listeners and website readers all over the country that this is taking place. Reports started coming in about 3:30 eastern US time and are continuing to come in.

This is a fast-developing story but the bottom line is simple: Cash is king.  People with cash money can get what they choose to buy, people with plastic cards cannot.

VISA and MASTERCARD are showing as having a sudden surge of problems as reported to DownDetector.com

UPDATE 6:16 PM EDT —

VISA continues to suffer severe outages

Dollar is dying there is no question about it

We are not idiots

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2022 05 21 21 00

Green Tambourine – The Lemon Pipers

Oh yeah. You just had to experience the 60’s to believe and understand what it was like.

Why were there patents on SARS and SARS-COV-2 before they were “discovered”?

Why were there patents on SARS and SARS-COV-2 before they were “discovered”?

From HERE

Ralph Baric got $46 million from Fauci & Co. to weaponize SARS-COV-2 and Wuhan got $3.7 million. It’s like saying the peanut gallery hit the grand slam. See the attached timeline.

China was happy to get its hands on the genome, to prepare for the expected US bio-attack, which they have suffered repeatedly since 1935, covered here… (Complete found HERE).

But, it cost them getting tarred with the Wuhan Virus/Kung Flu tag around the world, which Baric and Fauci started propagandizing in 2016. See the attached paper and its title. Baric is the paper’s principle author and he and Fauci thank Wuhan in the acknowledgements.

By getting their hands on SARS-COV-2 early on, the Chinese could get a jump on rapid vaccine development and were well-prepared for the 2019 Military World Games.

It possibly saved millions of Chinese lives.

12 Nightmarish Economic Trends That We Should Expect To See During The 2nd Half Of 2022

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If you thought that the economic news was crazy during the first half of 2022, just wait until we get to the second half.  So many of the problems that we are experiencing now are going to continue to intensify, and Americans are becoming more pessimistic about economic conditions with each passing day.  In fact, as you will see below, a whopping 85 percent of us believe that it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that the economy will go through a recession at some point during the next year.  Of course the truth is that if all we have to suffer through is a “recession”, we would be extremely fortunate.  Our leaders have lost control of the economy, and many of us are extremely concerned about what is coming next.  The following are 12 nightmarish economic trends that we should expect to see during the second half of 2022…

#1 Gas prices will continue to surge higher, and many Americans will be shocked by how high they eventually go.  If you can believe it, in Washington State at least one gas station has now reprogrammed their gas pumps “to make room for double-digit pricing”

At the 76 Gas Station in Auburn, Washington located at 1725 Auburn Way North, gas pumps have been reprogrammed to make room for double-digit pricing. In March, they still had single-digit programming.

A spokesperson at 76 confirmed to The Post Millennial that the gas pumps were reprogrammed to allocate for double-digit pricing. Although not confirming that they are expecting prices to increase up to $10.00 or more, the current trend suggests the possibility.

Supplies of fuel will continue to get even tighter in the months ahead.  Earlier today, I heard from a reader on the east coast and a reader in the middle of the country that both said that diesel is now being rationed where they live.  So far, I have not been able to confirm that this is happening on a widespread basis.

#2 We are being warned that there could be extended blackouts in some parts of the nation during the summer months.  It is being reported that the middle of the country is particularly at risk

About 100 million Americans face power blackouts this summer as roasting weather, overstretched powerplants and unreliable green energy sources combine to create a perfect storm of problems.

States stretching from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean which are home to tens of millions of Americans could have a hard time producing enough power for their residents this summer.

The ‘MISO’ part of America’s power grid – whose full name is the Midcontinent Independent System Operator is at greatest risk of a large-scale outage.

#3 Everyone pretty much agrees that food prices will continue to rise.  Of course they have already reached levels that are absolutely insane

Take the case of Jeff Good, who co-founded three restaurants in Jackson, Mississippi. Around 18 months ago, a 40-pound box of chicken wings cost him about $85. Now, it can go as high as roughly $150. Expenses for cooking oil and flour have nearly doubled in the past five months, he said. But it’s not just ingredient prices going up. He’s paying more for labor and services, too. Even the company that maintains his air conditioners has tacked on a $40 fuel charge per visit. To cope, he’s raised menu prices.

A 15-piece order of chicken wings, a signature dish at his Sal and Mookie’s pizzeria, went for $13.95 before Covid hit. Now, wing costs can vary so much they’re labeled at “market price,” like some restaurants do with lobster. At peaks, the menu price can be be about $27.95 — but that represents a barely-there margin — and Good estimates the “real cost” is closer to about $34. He’s trying to decide whether to keep raising prices or take wings off the menu.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever see myself paying 34 dollars for an order of chicken wings.

#4 As our supply chains endure even more stress, shortages will continue to intensify.  The extreme baby formula shortage that we are witnessing right now is just a preview of coming attractions

Two children in Memphis have been hospitalized after needing IV fluids and nutritional support due to the baby formula shortage.

The preschooler and toddler, both from different families, were rushed to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital after their parents failed to secure formula as shelves across America go bare.

#5 The UN is telling us that we are heading into the worst global food crisis since World War II.  In some parts of Africa, the number of people suffering from “extreme hunger” has already more than doubled

More than 23 million people are experiencing extreme hunger in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, according to a new report by Oxfam and Save the Children. That’s up from over 10 million last year.

The region’s worst drought in 40 years is being exacerbated by conflict and the pandemic. And the war in Ukraine has sent food prices soaring to record levels.

#6 Widespread hunger will almost certainly lead to more civil unrest.  Recent events in Sri Lanka give us an indication of what may be coming…

Protesters in Sri Lanka have burned down homes belonging to 38 politicians as the crisis-hit country plunged further into chaos, with the government ordering troops to “shoot on sight.”

Police in the island nation said Tuesday that in addition to the destroyed homes, 75 others have been damaged as angry Sri Lankans continue to defy a nationwide curfew to protest against what they say is the government’s mishandling of the country’s worst economic crisis since 1948.

#7 The Federal Reserve is likely to continue to aggressively raise interest rates.  In fact, Fed Chair Jerome Powell is openly admitting that his institution’s battle against inflation could cause “some pain” in the months ahead…

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned Tuesday the U.S. could feel “some pain” as the central bank raises interest rates to fight inflation, insisting the Fed would do whatever it takes to curb price growth.

During a live interview for The Wall Street Journal’s “Future of Everything” summit, Powell said the Fed will continue to raise interest rates until inflation starts to fall and the forces driving prices higher fade, even at the risk of a deeper economic slowdown.

#8 Higher interest rates will be devastating for the housing market in the United States.  And that is very troubling news, because home sales have already fallen for three months in a row

Home sales fell for the third consecutive month in April as rising mortgage rates and affordability challenges pushed many would-be home buyers out of the market.

#9 Defaults are likely to continue to rise higher.  Just like we saw right before the last financial crisis, defaults on subprime loans are really starting to surge

Consumers with low credit scores are falling behind on payments for car loans, personal loans and credit cards, a sign that the healthiest consumer lending environment on record in the U.S. is coming to an end.

The share of subprime credit cards and personal loans that are at least 60 days late is rising faster than normal, according to credit-reporting firm Equifax. In March, those delinquencies rose month over month for the eighth time in a row, nearing their prepandemic levels. Delinquencies on subprime car loans and leases hit an all-time high in February, based on Equifax’s tracking that goes back to 2007.

#10 As the economy slows down, we should expect layoffs to increase and jobless claims will eventually start to spike.  In fact, we just learned that they have now hit a four month high.

#11 Needless to say, all of this bad economic news is going to be really bad for stock prices.  The S&P 500 has already nearly fallen into bear market territory, and many believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.

#12 Many are warning that a recession is either already here or will arrive soon.  And Americans are increasingly becoming more pessimistic about the economy.  One survey that was recently conducted found that 85 percent of Americans believe that it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that there will be a recession at some point in the next year…

An overwhelming majority of Americans are expecting there to be a recession within the next year, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The poll found that 85 percent of Americans think it is likely for the country to go through an economic recession in the next year. Of those who responded, 45 percent said it is “very likely,” and 40 percent said “somewhat likely” for a recession.

The sort of historic economic meltdown that I have been warning about for years is rapidly approaching, and the mood of the nation will dramatically shift as conditions greatly deteriorate.

Already, we are starting to see a tremendous amount of anger out there.  Earlier today, I came across the following post on a very popular Internet discussion forum

Just want to vent. I am from middle Missouri, I am a single mom of 2 teens. My day job pays well and pays the bills well, a year ago my income would support us, bills, food, gas etc. i now have to work a second job just to feed us and put gas in my car. Eggs here went from .99 a carton to 1.99, ground beef went from 2.89 a pound to 4.99, and it goes on and on. Gas went from 1.90 to 4.29 a gallon. 

I am out of my mind scared it will only get worse. I have democrat friends that say “that’s how the economy works”. No it’s because Biden was giving out “covid” bucks to non working people taking advantage of the system, giving our money to Ukraine, shutting down gas lines in the US etc.

I can understand her anger.

Most Americans are working as hard as they can, but our standard of living is being systematically destroyed by the very foolish policies of our leaders.

Unfortunately, we are still only in the very early chapters of this crisis.

It looks like the second half of this year will be even more challenging than the first half, and that is going to have enormous implications for all of us.

Northlandz: The World’s Biggest Model Railroad

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The world’s biggest model railroad Northlandz in Flemington, New Jersey, was created by Bruce Williams Zaccagnino. (Butterworth/SplashNews)

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It boasts more than eight miles of track and features more than 100 trains, as well as almost 400 bridges. (Butterworth/SplashNews)

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The attraction, called Northlandz, in Flemington, New Jersey, contains more than 3,000 miniature buildings in cities and villages, 50,000 trees and 40-foot bridges spanning huge canyons, meaning it’s anything but small-scale. (Butterworth/SplashNew)

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The owner and creator Bruce Williams Zaccagnino, not only built the 52,000 sq ft building it is housed in but also painstakingly designed and handcrafted almost all of the scenery. (Butterworth/SplashNews)

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It has even attracted several celebrity visitors, including famed model railroad fan, rocker Rod Stewart, and rocker Neil Young, who went to the attraction in disguise. (Butterworth/SplashNews)

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The path through the exhibit, spread across 16 acres, is almost one mile long. Visitors are told it will take at least two hours to make their way through the whole thing. (Butterworth/SplashNews)

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These handcrafted soldiers highlight creator Bruce Williams Zaccagnino’s attention to detail. (Butterworth/SplashNews)

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Aeroplanes line up for take off. (Butterworth/SplashNews)

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Owner and creator Bruce Williams Zaccagnino’s vast control room. (Butterworth/SplashNews)

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An intricate city scape. (Butterworth/SplashNews)

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Good Charlotte – I Don’t Wanna Be In Love (Dance Floor Anthem) (Video)

I hope that you all appreciate this video…

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (3/10) Movie CLIP – The Hotel on Acid (1998) HD

A real classic.

Skillet Spinach Alfredo Chicken Pot Pie

With just a few ingredients and 50 minutes, you can serve up this creamy Italian riff on chicken pot pie for a skillet dinner that’s big on flavor and low on fuss.

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d85f9c82 ac94 4a5e 8dec a660a0a53f11

Ingredients

  • 1 jar (15 oz) Alfredo pasta sauce
  • 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
  • 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 3 cups chopped cooked chicken
  • 3 cups lightly packed fresh baby spinach leaves
  • 1 crust from 1 box (14.1 oz) refrigerated Pillsbury™ Pie Crusts (2 Count), softened as directed on box
  • 1 tablespoon butter, melted

2022 05 21 21 19
2022 05 21 21 19

Shanghai Lockdown

An interesting point: In fact, the Shanghai Lockdown occurred in sync with Russian SMO; Feb. 24, Feb. 28! What a coinicidence!
[Go HERE]

Thus the Chinese in effect are sabotaging NATOstan’s efforts to ramp-up their production…

Smart move 😉 Comment on the Saker’s latest publication of Pepe Escobar today:

Found HERE.

More NATO brass caught in Azovstal

Is anyone really surprised?

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2022 05 22 11 50

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2022 05 22 12 112

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2022 05 22 12 12

From HERE.

6 x news from 2022 01 to 05: Monkey on loose in Pennsylvania after crash on way to laboratory

Origin of monkeypox?
 

2022 05 21: Australia reports ‘probable’ case of monkeypox in returned traveller from Europe | 7NEWS

2022 05 20: Monkeypox cases investigated in Europe, US, Canada and Australia – BBC News

HERE

 

2022 05 20; Monkeypox confirmed in Melbourne and Sydney – ABC News

2022 05 19 US buys millions of Monkeypox vaccines after Massachusetts case
 

2022 01 26: Woman who helped after truck carrying monkeys crashed has fallen ill after monkey hissed at her | The Independent

Wednesday 26 January 2022 12:25

2022 01 22: Monkey on loose in Pennsylvania after crash on way to laboratory | Pennsylvania | The Guardian
Police advise people not to approach cynomolgus monkey believed to be on the loose near Danville after Friday crash

Staff and agencies

Sat 22 Jan 2022 11.41 EST

Residents of a Pennsylvania county were warned on Saturday not to approach a monkey still missing after a crash involving a pickup towing a trailer taking about 100 of the animals to a research laboratory.

State troopers urged people not to look for or capture the cynomolgus monkey following the Friday afternoon crash on a state highway near an Interstate 80 exit in Montour county.

“Anyone who sees or locates the monkey is asked not to approach, attempt to catch, or come in contact with the monkey. Please call 911 immediately,” a tweet said.

HERE

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In belgium, they could trace all monkeypox cases back to the Darkland festival, an international festival for homosexuals.
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LEGO Colosseum by Ryan McNaught

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There’s nothing we love more than a finely crafted LEGO project, and that’s exactly what we have here from Ryan McNaught, one of the best certified LEGO builders in the game.

McNaught has built the world’s first Colosseum built entirely from LEGOs. The project took nearly 200,000 LEGO bricks to put together, and is currently on display at the Nicholson Museum in Melbourne, Australia until January 2013. The project is displayed in a half and half form, showcasing the Colosseum in its present day form on one side along with Rome’s original Colosseum circa 80 AD on the other half.

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Sweet – Fox On The Run – 45 (OFFICIAL)

If you are old enough, you will appreciate this.

Creamy Feta, Bacon and Spinach Dip

Bacon and feta take spinach dip to a whole new level. Fair warning: Once your friends and family taste this addictive dip, you’ll be asked to make it for every get-together.

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0f2cd972 a17f 458c b400 ab37b53b12cf

Ingredients

  • 1 can (11 oz) refrigerated Pillsbury™ Original French Bread
  • 6 slices bacon, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 bag (5 oz) baby spinach
  • 1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
  • 6 oz crumbled feta cheese
  • 1/2 cup mayonnaise
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1/2 cup Progresso™ plain panko crispy bread crumbs

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2022 05 21 21 23

The leaders of the Azov Battalion* who surrendered in Mariupol are facing the death penalty

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Readovka
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May 18 at 12:50
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The leaders of the Azov Battalion* who surrendered in Mariupol are facing the death penalty. At least if they are tried according to the laws of the DPR
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The laws of the DPR do not ratify the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which provides for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. This means that if the trial takes place on the territory of the DPR and LPR, and the crimes of the Azov militants are confirmed, they will be shot.
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This is also confirmed by the statements of a number of Russian figures, including Senator Andrei Klishas, ​​who noted that all neo-Nazis from Azov should be tried for crimes committed in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. The militants committed crimes on the territory of the DPR, which is why they must be tried in accordance with the laws of the Republic, said State Duma deputy Artyom Turov. The State Duma also announced the need to judge the Azovites – today a draft resolution prohibiting the exchange of “Nazi criminals” will be considered.
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* – banned in the Russian Federation

Will The First Public UFO Hearing In Congress In 50 Years Help Set The Stage For A Great Delusion Of Epic Proportions?

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Why have they suddenly decided to reveal so much?  For decades, a very thick cloak of secrecy has surrounded what the government really knows about UFOs, but now our politicians are talking openly about such things.  In fact, Congress just held their very first public hearing about UFOs in 50 years.  So what has changed?  If anything happens in Washington, it is usually because someone has an underlying agenda.  Could it be possible that we are being prepared for some sort of a huge revelation?

To me, it is clear that something is up.

And I think that it says a lot that the power structures in our society are now treating this topic very seriously.  At this point, even CNN is admitting that UFOs are no longer being “relegated to the fringes of public policy”…

Key lawmakers warned at a House hearing on Tuesday that unidentified aerial phenomena — popularly known as UFOs — must be investigated and taken seriously as a potential threat to national security.

The event marked the first congressional public hearing on UFOs in decades, a high-profile moment for a controversial topic that has long been relegated to the fringes of public policy.

During the hearing on Tuesday, U.S. officials confessed that there have been at least 400 “unexplained sightings” by members of our military…

US SPY chiefs were grilled by lawmakers in a historic hearing on UFOs as dramatic videos of two sightings were shown.

Security officials were forced to admit there have been 400 unexplained sightings reported by the US military .

That number is very different from the number that we were given in 2021.

Late last year, the Pentagon told us that there were just 144 unexplained sightings.

But now we are being told that the real number is nearly triple the original number.

And on Tuesday we were also told that there have been “11 near misses” with U.S. military aircraft…

They also confessed there have been 11 near misses with unidentified objects and US military aircraft, and they are probing incidents where craft may have attempted “jam” US planes.

So let me get this straight.

11 different times our aircraft were almost hit by other aircraft that we simply cannot identify?

Why weren’t we told about this a long time ago?

Of course there is so much more that the Pentagon is choosing not to tell us.  According to Politico, one Defense Department official is freely admitting that there is a great deal that is not being publicly revealed…

“Without forcing peoples’ hand, it is going to be very difficult to uncover legacy ventures and programs that we know about based on oral interviews we dug up,” said a Defense Department official who is involved in the new effort but was not authorized to speak publicly. “There has to be a forcing mechanism.”

“There has to be something to hold people accountable but also give them a chance to come out clean for a period of time,” the official added, noting that in his experience the Pentagon oversight group has been “stonewalled.”

That same official went on to explain that the people that are refusing to come forward are protecting some “very interesting information”.

I would definitely like to know what that “very interesting information” is.

Wouldn’t you?

I think that most of the population would be completely floored if everything that the government knows was finally put on the table.

According to one member of Congress, our military has actually recovered physical wreckage from a UFO that crashed…

A CONGRESSMAN has claimed the US has wreckage recovered from a UFO as the phenomena takes centre stage today in Washington.

Rep. Tim Burchett – a long term advocate for disclosure – told The Sun Online he has been informed by reliable sources that “material” has been recovered from the objects or craft that have been reported in skies over the US.

So why can’t the American people know about this?

What are they trying to hide from us?

Burchett says that he can’t say more because this information was given to him in a “classified setting”

The Tennessee Republican declined to elaborate further as he said the information had been passed to him in a “classified setting”.

“I’ve been told by multiple sources we have recovered something from these [crafts or objects],” Mr Burchett told The Sun Online.

It is so frustrating to hear about this and know that we will probably never be given the specific details.

The American people deserve the truth, but so much is being purposely hidden.

Lue Elizondo, a former senior staffer at the Pentagon, says that there has been much speculation in military circles about the true source of these unidentified craft

‘People jump to speculation that it’s from the Pleiades or something like that, when in fact one of the hypothesis when I was in AATIP was this could be as natural to Earth as we are, but we are just at a point where technologically we aren’t advanced enough we can collect information on it and begin to try to figure out what it is,’ he said.

‘There’s been another hypothesis that these things are possibly from underwater and as outlandish as it may seem, there is some anecdotal evidence that supports all of these observations, so what we want to do is try to get as much data on the table as we can before we start eliminating,’ said Elizondo.

He said way too much right there, because he got way too close to details that we aren’t supposed to know about.

If he keeps talking like that, he could end up being killed.

Because even though our officials are now talking more openly about UFOs, there are still many things that they would very much prefer to keep secret.

These unidentified aircraft are very real, and every year they are spotted thousands upon thousands of times all over the globe.

Now this subject is being brought out into the spotlight, and that should make all of us very nervous.

The prisoner Episode 14

“Living in harmony.”

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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The collapse of Ukraine is not far away

The collapse of Ukraine is not far away. Soon the full-on “pivot to Asia” will begin in force. That is not going to be so nice and polite as Putin did with Ukraine. It will be harsh and in-your-face. Already the USA is lining up it’s war “chess pieces”, and last week Anthony Blinkedin made a speech that was a declaration of War in every way except formally speaking the words out loud.

Welcome to the next phase of world war three. I hope you are all ready for it…

US stock plunge has Asia bracing for a fall – Asia Times

Asian governments and investors remember all too well the carnage wrought in 2008 by US market failure and excess
TOKYO – A bloodbath in US stocks wasn’t high on Asia’s risk list for 2022. But as Wall Street’s stumble pivots from correction to death-dive territory, Asia’s markets are increasingly in harm’s way.
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The losses reverberating around the globe indicate that the biggest economy is about to go through a rough patch of unknown proportions. It’s already been through plenty, to name but a few: inflation at 40-year highs; Covid-19 traumatized consumers; a geopolitical minefield sending intensifying headwinds its way; legislative paralysis in Washington; war in Europe; a Federal Reserve behind the inflation curve.
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This last riddle — a woeful monetary response — stands out as the US flashes signals that seem ripped from the headlines of 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed, setting off the concatenation of events that led to the global financial crisis.
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Full article HERE

Brigitte Bardot on set during filming of Lady and the Puppet.

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ABC’s ‘brave and independent’ journalists seem to have vanished

It seems that those journalists who once championed the idea of brave public interest journalism have descended into a pack of fawning cheerleaders, gushing over the rule of their new leaders.

This entire sordid tale being explained away as “independent and brave reporting” would be much easier to swallow if it didn’t appear one side of politics was being targeted by such aggressive reporting.

Now that the Coalition has been turfed can we expect the same brave independence to flow through to their reporting on the actions of Anthony Albanese and his team?

If the first few days of his government are anything to go by, no.

Those journalists who enjoyed defending their activism as independent journalism are now in the process of transitioning to the role of government stenographers.

ABC’s 7.30 chief political correspondent Laura Tingle now spends her time retweeting, uncritically, messages from Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong who this week declared “we will listen because we care what the Pacific has to say”.

Favorite Potato Salad

Every home cook should have one go-to classic potato salad recipe on hand. It’s the perfect dish to bring to summer picnics, serve at grill-outs and take along to potluck suppers. But don’t just limit this simple potato salad to warm-weather months—this dish can be served year-round. The next time someone samples your delicious side dish and asks you how to make potato salad, just hand them this easy potato salad recipe.

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b4856949 30a8 42d9 bec7 e061ace4d00e

Ingredients

  • 6 medium boiling potatoes (2 pounds)
  • 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise or salad dressing
  • 1 tablespoon white or cider vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 2 medium celery stalks, chopped (1 cup)
  • 1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
  • 4 hard cooked eggs, chopped

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2022 05 27 15 11

A President Salutes Another Country’s Flag… What A Protocol Mistake Means – Kurdo

It not only appears that this new Korean "President" is a CIA plant, but also his loyalty is to the United States. Not to Korea. -MM
South Korea : an American puppet regime.
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From HERE

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A picture of President Yoon Seok-yeol appearing to be saluting the American flag at the Korea-US summit dinner on the 21st was posted on the US President’s Instagram.

The diplomatic protocol is established in the international community, and it is difficult for even the head of state to change and apply it at will. Because it is disrespectful to the other country. In order to make changes to the ceremony, it is necessary to consult with the other country in advance. However, as in this case, it is unlikely that the summit will be regarded as disrespectful for the leader to salute the flag of the other country.

But it can be disappointing to the people of the country. Most people want their president to act proudly without bowing his head no matter where he goes in the world. This applies to anyone who voted for president in an election or who didn’t. Because the president represents the country.

It is highly likely that President Yoon Seok-yeol, who cannot be unaware of this fact, saluted the American flag was a simple mistake caused by lack of experience rather than intentional.

However, this simple mistake symbolizes this summit between Korea and the United States. If the preparations were meticulous, there is a high possibility that the president’s diplomatic mistake would not have occurred. Here, it is clearly revealed that it has only been 12 days (at the time of the 21st) since President Yoon took office. It gives the impression to the other country that the new government is not yet ready. This is the reason why diplomatic protocols that seem insignificant are so important and require a lot of preparation.

Looking at the contents of the summit, from the point of view of US President Biden, there is much to be gained from this summit. He drew active participation in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and sanctions against Russia, and stipulated that cooperation with Japan as well as South Korea-US cooperation is important for North Korea. It also explicitly obtained South Korea’s commitment to investment in the US. President Yun achieved the success of making it easier for the US strategic forces to mobilize to the Korean Peninsula. However, US semiconductor technology companies’ investment in Korea and membership in the four unofficial security council quads of the US, India, Japan and Australia did not take place.

If the new government’s diplomatic and security strategy is ‘as the United States wants’, it can be said that the summit has achieved great results. If not, it is questionable whether the summit was held with a meticulous negotiating strategy in a state where a foreign and security strategy was established.

The new government emphasized that, contrary to the usual order of the US president’s East Asian tour, he visited Korea before Japan. The joint statement between the leaders of the Republic of Korea and the United States also added meaning, saying, “This summit was recorded as the earliest meeting held with the President of the United States during the term of the President of the Republic of Korea.” There was also an evaluation saying, “One president has changed, but the dignity of the Republic of Korea is rising” (Lee Jun-seok, representative of the People’s......

One Of About 50 Fiat 599 Ferves Rangers Still Around!

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Manufactured between 1967 and 1971. Approximately ten of 50 survivors are in the United States. Made by Turin-based coachbuilder Ferves (acronym of Ferrari Veicoli Speciali), where mechanical components borrowed from various models – Fiat 500F, 600D, 850, Autobianchi Primula – were assembled. This charming 4-seater flaunted four-wheel drive and “Cargo” work versions; some have described it as a small-size SUV or mini jeep… and yet today it is one of some collectors’ biggest dreams.

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China urges Indonesia to cut out ‘interference’ as host of G20 summit after calls to discuss Ukraine war

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi tells Indonesia’s Retno Marsudi the summit in November should discuss the economy, not politics.  Wang hails the arrival of the ‘Asian moment’ for global governance, suggesting Asian nations should form a tighter bond.

Roll with the Changes (REO Speedwagon) | Classic Rock Cover – Kelly and the Ding Dongs

What I really love about this is that everyone is in lock down, and through use of the internet they play the song together and sync it together. Actually really good. I cannot help but get a smile on my face.

And here they are jamming to Traffic’s Dear Mr. Fantasy…

Photographer Finds Charming Japanese Countryside Scenes that Look Right Out of an Anime

Really? Photographs? I find it difficult to believe…

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It can sometimes sound silly to pass through a place in Japan and remark that “it looks like an anime”, because after all, many anime feature intricately researched and illustrated recreations of real locations in Japan.

Talented photographer Akine Coco proves that at just the right moment, the saying has a lot of truth in it. In what appear to be particularly countryside settings in Japan, Akine writes in their Twitter profile that they “show the anime-esque world through photographs”, and their latest beautiful photography certainly does that!

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While many of Akine’s subjects are of everyday scenery and found around Japan, they seem to be able to capture them in a light and from angle that really do make them seem as if they were lifted from an anime directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli, or perhaps a Makoto Shinkai work.

That’s why Akine posts them usually with the caption “Just like a scene from an anime,” here are a few of Akine’s standout shots!

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Japan to enable fighter jet and missile exports to 12 nations – Nikkei Asia

The source is Nikkei (the mouthpiece of the CIA in the Pacific).

The Japanese government plans to allow exports of fighter jets, missiles and other arms to 12 countries, including India, Australia as well as some European and Southeast Asian nations, Nikkei has learned. Regulatory changes to allow for the exports could come by next March.

Actress Rita Hayworth looks stunning – wearing her trademark charming, nonchalant look – in a nightgown in 1941.

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China-Australia relations: ex-Australian PM Kevin Rudd tells West to offer alternatives to Pacific islands, not ‘lectures’.

Duh!

Some Western nations have criticized the Solomon Islands-China pact, claiming the move will lead to Beijing bolstering its military presence in the region. Kevin Rudd said the West must offer better and more development-friendly proposals to Pacific Island nations, rather than a ‘stern moral lecture’
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Full article HERE.

RATS FLEEING THE SINKING SHIP: FORMER UKRAINE PRESIDENT CAUGHT AT BORDER TRYING TO FLEE UKRAINE

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2022 05 28 12 20

Former President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, is at the Rava-Russkaya checkpoint of the Lvov customs and is trying to leave Ukraine for Poland in a Range Rover vehicle.

"Poroshenko is trying to escape from Ukraine!"

 - Customs Service.

MORE:

The Prosecutor General’s Office in Kiev has announced the issuance of an Arrest Warrant for the former Chairman of Ukraine’s Constitutional Court, Oleksandr Tupytskiy, on charges of . . .  Fleeing Ukraine.

The former head of Ukraine’s highest court is said to have fled the country into Poland.

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2022 05 28 12 20

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Gee, if Ukraine is actually winning the war, then why are all these top people FLEEING?

Oh, maybe this is why:

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2022 05 28 12 21

Cat Waited Her Whole Life to Be Indoors, is Now Living the Dream Life with Her Kitten

Albanese: China must remove its sanctions on Australian products to have any chance of improving relations between the two countries…

China must remove its sanctions on Australian products to have any chance of improving relations between the two countries, (the new Australian) Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared after joining the QUAD summit in Tokyo with regional leaders to endorse a firm line against the Chinese.
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Australia’s new government has urged China to lift trade sanctions if it wants to reset a bilateral relationship that plumbed new depths under the previous administration.
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As reported in America. HERE

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Penny Wong urges Pacific nations to weigh up ‘consequences’ of China security offers | Australian foreign policy | The Guardian
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Ukraine Foreign Minister Admits He Has NOW Been Told to “Negotiate” with Russia

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UKRAINIAN FOREIGN MINISTER KULEBA SAYS THEY WANT HIM TO NEGOTIATE. . .

After this morning’s news that the Ukraine Army is COLLAPSING (Story Here), we now have official confirmation from Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba himself, that he is being told to begin negotiating with Russia to end the war.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

Well, well, well . . . all the Ukraine hype about how they were winning, and beating the Russians at every turn, seems to have suddenly fallen apart.

All the TV news reports about Ukraine victories, all the videos put out by public relations firms touting Ukraine’s strength . . . all turned out to be propaganda . . . and boatloads of people in countries around the world, fell-for-it, hook, line, and sinker.

That didn’t take long!

Here is Kuleba in Ukraine language admitting he has now been told to negotiate:

Reading between the lines, though, is what’s far more interesting: all those hawks in EU are starting to capitulate after they saw what Russians did to a NATO-trained army.

Even they realize that NATO . . . is a paper tiger at this point.

NATO trained and equipped Ukraine for EIGHT FULL YEARS . . . and Ukraine was the largest standing army in all of Europe.  Yet the Ukraine Army is collapsing after only 90 (or so) days of actual war.

What does this tell Europe about NATO?    NATO Training?    NATO Tactics?   NATO equipment?

It’s not what they were told NATO was ! ! ! ! 

Now, Europe realizes they have to act fast to save face; they need to avoid a complete collapse of Ukraine in coming weeks.

Kuleba complains about the EU, which now requires Kiev to negotiate with Moscow.

“If everything is so difficult, then we need to sit down and negotiate, whatever the price of these agreements,” the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry informs Europe.

According to him, he has already heard this “very painful position” repeatedly.

Twice Baked Potatoes

You don’t have to wait for dinner at a fancy steakhouse to enjoy cheesy, gooey twice baked potatoes. They’re surprisingly easy to make at home. Once assembled, the finished potatoes are super-easy to make ahead and store in the fridge or freezer.

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Ingredients

  • 4 large unpeeled Idaho or russet baking potatoes (8 to 10 oz each)
  • 1/4 to 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup butter, softened
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • Dash pepper
  • 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (4 oz)
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives

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2022 05 27 15 13

Singapore wholesaler allegedly exported Pokka drinks to N Korea

Singapore MUST obey America or else…!

A wholesale supplier was charged on Wednesday (25 May) with exporting Pokka drinks to North Korea, in breach of United Nations sanctions.
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123 Duty Free was handed five charges under Singapore’s Regulation of Imports and Exports Regulations for importing assorted Pokka drinks worth around S$341,318 to the hermit state on five occasions between 10 April and 8 August 2018. The flavours under the brand include Melon Milk, Strawberry Milk, and Milk Coffee.
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Full article HERE

Beautiful Photos Of The 1971 DeTomaso Pantera

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The De Tomaso Pantera is a mid-engine sports car produced by Italian automobile manufacturer De Tomaso from 1971 to 1993. Italian for “Panther”, the Pantera was the automaker’s most popular model, with over 7,000 manufactured over its twenty-year production run.

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The first 1971 Pantera models were powered by a 5.8 L (351 cu in) Ford Cleveland V8 engine having a power output of 335 PS (246 kW; 330 hp). The high torque provided by the Ford engine reduced the need for excessive gear changing at low speeds: this made the car much less demanding to drive in urban conditions than many of the locally built offerings.

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The 1971 Pantera could accelerate to 97 km/h (60 mph) in 5.5 seconds according to Car and Driver.

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‘International robbery’: Greece agrees to send Iranian oil from seized aframax to the US | TradeWinds

You see, Greece acts as a proxy, and then robs ships at will… sending the products to the United States.

From HERE.

Ukraine Army COLLAPSING; Zelensky (Now) Saying “Must Face Reality . . .”

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2022 05 28 12 25

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are collapsing on the battlefield and the defeats are happening so fast, over such a wide area, that today, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky told the country “Ukraine is not eager to talk to Russia’s Vladimir Putin but that it has to face the reality that this will likely be necessary to end the war.”

Quite a turnaround from just a week ago when Zelensky said Ukraine will never give up any territory, and would “win” against the Russian Army.

Over the past two weeks, the situation for Ukraine has gotten almost dire.   Its armed forces are being decimated on almost every battlefield.  Russian long range artillery is smashing thousands of Ukraine troops, and causing those still alive to surrender.

In fact, the number of Ukraine troops surrendering has gotten so enormous, the Ukraine legislature voted on a Bill allowing military officers to SHOOT SURRENDERING TROOPS to stop the mass-surrenders!

In the brief video below, Ukraine troops who SURRENDERED, report to the world that their commanding officers DID, in fact, SHOOT THEIR OWN TROOPS IN THE BACK to prevent the surrender!

The reality on the battlefield is so dire for Ukraine troops, many seasoned observers believe the Ukrainian Army cannot survive even another two weeks.

Moreover, the opinion of the general public is taking a very significant turn; in favor of Russia.

Citizens of almost all western nations, now becoming aware that Nazis are in the Ukraine government, police, and military, are no longer so quick to support Ukraine.

And when those same Western citizens see the video of Ukraine President Zelensky admitting on TV he uses cocaine because it gives him energy all day – they realize that Ukraine is being run by a drug-addled guy who may actually be so disconnected from reality (by drugs) that he’s perhaps a madman!

Even an Archbishop speaking from the Altar in the Church of England told Parishioners  “Putin is the only one standing-up against the New World Order” and that “Russia was provoked into this war! ”

Here, listen for yourselves:

 

Judging by the speed with which the Armed Forces of Ukraine are fleeing from the cities of the Donbass, specifically from the Donetsk area, a moral breakdown has occurred.

This is certainly not the final Russian victory, but it is clearly a very serious success.

In recent history, we have not yet seen such wars in dense urban areas, with the use of all types of weapons, excluding nuclear weapons, and in which so many personnel and equipment are involved.

Ukraine is now losing the war, losing fast, and losing badly.

Below, video shows dozens of dead Ukraine troops, some with giant pieces of shrapnel protruding from their cracked open skulls — VERY GRAPHIC:

Just this morning (Friday) Zelensky Advisor Alexey Arestovich reported on TV  “THE CITY OF LYMAN HAS BEEN LOST”
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He went on to say “According to reports, the city of Liman has been lost. The way the Russian army captured it shows that there have very talented commanders, and this shows the increased level of operational management and skills of the Russian army.”
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Residents of Krasny Liman report the retreat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the southern outskirts of the city and the railway station, in the area of which fierce battles had been going on since yesterday..

Another Ukrainian battalion had to Mutiny to save their own lives.  The brief video below shows them explaining why they fled:

 

BELOW, A UKRAINIAN POW SAYS HIS COMMANDER LEFT THEM “FOR A MEETING” AND NEVER CAME BACK!

Again and again, stories are repeated about how commanders leave their subordinates on the battlefield and leave “for a meeting.” And not a single bad word about being kept in a POW camp.

Overnight, a Ukraine military cargo plane was shot down near Odessa.   All of its western-supplied military weaponry was destroyed.   Here’s the crash site:

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2022 05 28 12 28

Meanwhile, it is quickly becoming clear that western military aid into Ukraine, is being stolen and re-routed to be sold in Serbia on the Black Market!!   Upwards of TWO-THIRDS of the ManPad surface-to-air, man-portable anti-aircraft weapons, are now in Serbia for sale.

This includes American STINGER missiles!

Worse, all manner of other weapons of war are also being offered on the Black market, including mortars, rocket propelled grenades, land mines, and armor-piercing ammunition in such vast quantities, the smugglers can’t even find place to store their ill-gotten goods.   It’s like a terrorist bazaar; where anyone can go buy any weapons they want!

The Ukrainians are literally STEALING the west-supplied weapons so they can sell them on the black market and put the cash in their own pockets.

So much for the forty billion in U.S. aid approved by Congress.  It is highly likely much of that aid is already stolen.

Perhaps the facts reported above are why President Zelensky today, told his countrymen “Ukraine is not eager to talk to Russia’s Vladimir Putin but that it has to face the reality that this will likely be necessary to end the war.”

Many people are starting to realize the only words Zelensky is going to soon be able to say to Putin are “Ukraine surrenders.”

UPDATE 3:55 PM EDT —

Ukraine Foreign Minister reveals he has NOW been told to negotiate with Russia to end the war .

KC and the Sunshine Band (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty DOLLY PARTON 1976 HQ

Now watching with though my older eyes of experience, I can see it’s true face. It’s a great stage show, though at the time, I wasn’t really fond of the song. Now, I see that as being such a cultural icon.

The prisoner episode 12

Another great episode from the series.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Monkey Pox, Eli’s Coming, Doner Kebabs, Finland, Mafia boss Joe Masseria, $10 a gallon gasoline, boxing and The Doobie Brothers

Some real treats here. Please enjoy this nice stroll though the past, and a look at the present, as well as some great food to try and sample. i hope that all of you get something of benefit from this latest article. Have fun!

I’ll tell you what!

First Electricity, Now Natural Gas; Russia To Halt Gas Flow to Finland 21MAY22

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NordStream large

Russia is cutting off its supply of natural gas to Finland as of Saturday as Helsinki moves forward with its effort to join NATO in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Finnish energy company Gasum on Friday said it had been notified by the Russian energy giant Gazprom that it would shut off its supply of gas the next day.

The announcement comes as Russia demands that Finland pay for the natural gas in rubles, which Finland has refused to do.

It also adds a new layer to an escalating energy fight between Russia and much of Europe fueled by the war in Ukraine.

The European Union earlier this month proposed an oil ban on imports from Russia. This week, the EU unveiled additional details on its plan to reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas.

Russia has already cut off gas to Poland and Bulgaria.

President Biden has hailed the efforts of Finland and Sweden to join NATO after decades outside the bloc. Both countries took steps to join the military alliance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February. The leaders of Sweden and Finland met with Biden at the White House on Thursday.

Mafia boss Joe Masseria lays dead on a Brooklyn restaurant floor holding the ace of spades, 1931.

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Mafia boss Joe Masseria lays dead on a Brooklyn restaurant floor holding the ace of spades, 1931.

Insane Tyranny: EU ‘Needs’ Lockdown-like Restrictions to Curb Russian Oil Use

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Measures akin to a COVID lockdown are needed according to an apparently insane European official, in order to curb the EU’s reliance on Russian oil.

Lockdown-like measures should be implemented across the European Union to curb the bloc’s reliance on Russian oil, Luxembourg’s energy minister has said.

The demand comes as the transnational bloc prepares to publish a plan aimed at weaning the EU off of fossil fuels supplied from Russia, with some nation-states such as Germany being badly addicted to the likes of natural gas provided by the state.

According to a report by Der Spiegel, Luxembourg believes that such a plan should include the introduction of an EU-wide mandatory speed limit, a bloc-wide work-from-home mandate for at least two days of the week, and for every major EU city to ban the use of cars on the weekends.

This, the minister argues, would curb the use of oil in Europe and, in turn, lower reliance on Russian fuel imports.

“What we need at EU level is an EU-wide coordinated speed limit and two days of home office per week,” said the Luxembourgish Energy Minister Claude Turmes.

“I urge the Commission not to miss the opportunity to set Europe on this path,” he continued.

How to Make a Doner Kebab

have you ever wanted to make some “Greek food”? Here’s your chance.

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Washington state gas stations run out of fuel, prep for $10 a gallon

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Gas stations in Washington state are resetting their price boards to accommodate double digits in preparation for fuel prices potentially reaching $10 a gallon.

The move comes as several gas stations in the Evergreen State ran out of fuel.

At the 76 gas station in Auburn, about 30 miles south of Seattle, gas pumps were reprogrammed so the display could indicate a price of at least $10 a gallon.

The displays were limited to single digits as recently as March, but the surging price of gas has led to the change.

A 76 spokesperson told the Post Millennial that the change did not necessarily mean the company was predicting gas prices would reach $10 a gallon.

The station in Auburn also sells race fuel, which is more expensive than the fuel that is used by ordinary citizens.

Race fuel costs more due to the high-octane, premium fuel that is required to enable the engine to have a higher compression ratio, giving it a more energetic explosion and improving the performance of turbocharger and supercharger engines.

Washingtonians are also having to contend with gas stations that are running out of fuel.

Motorists who drive up to gas pumps in Kennewick, Pasco and West Richland are met with notes indicating that the station does not have any fuel to sell — except diesel.

On Facebook, local residents are reporting more than 10 gas stations that are out of fuel.

The average price of a gallon of gas in Washington state is $5.18 — well above the national average of $4.59 as of Thursday, according to AAA.

Jennie MacGregor, arrested by Minneapolis police on April 10, 1924 for dispensing alcoholic beverages from life-preserver flasks .

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Jennie MacGregor, arrested by Minneapolis police on April 10, 1924 for dispensing alcoholic beverages from life-preserver flasks .

The United States is no longer an accurate reflection of who and what we are

The Republican planets are beginning their alignment to leverage their political gravity to strangle our democracy

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Lawrence: Minority Rule Is Killing The ‘United’ in The United States

[ Editor’s note: Mr. O’Donnell cuts right to the chase. We need a name change, as the one we have no long fits, because the ‘minority rule’ gang has abandoned future attempts, due to its policies, to win the right to rule over the country by winning the most votes.

I knew the game was up when the Repubs broadcast their mantra, “we will win the presidency in 2024 one way or the other”. It was no subtle message, but a declaration of war. It was basically a pledge to attach limpet mines on the hull of our ship of state.

The Republican plans may strangle our democracy, because they have told us they are going to rig the President electoral count by having states legislate their ability to make the final determination on the electoral count.

The Insurrectionists, in hindsight, see this as their mistake in 2020, by not having already set up the state rigging process earlier, but they have the time now.

This includes the Congressmen that could be charged for aiding and abetting the Jan 6 sedition. This could be a ‘get out of jail card’ for them and all the Jan6’ers who might be indicted.

I cannot imagine a more dedicated campaign mob. The top Republicans constructing this new political coup strategy seem confident that they have the best Supreme Court in history to make sure they don’t have any deal killer legal issues.

The military and Intel branches stood firm on the last coup attempt, but will they on the next one? Are we on the road to becoming the biggest banana republic in history? I certainly hope not, but we will have to fight like hell, to borrow a Trump phrase, or I doubt we will have a country anymore… Jim W. Dean ]

Vaccine study of 23 million shows risk of ‘heart problems’ from Moderna or Pfizer jab

Vaccine study of 23 million shows risk of ‘heart problems’ from Moderna or Pfizer jab – Google Search
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From HERE

The Mississippi Slugburger – How to Make America’s Strangest Hamburger – Food Wishes

What do you think about this? Check out the video.

Hungarian Jews being selected by Nazis to be sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz Album May-June 1944.

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Hall & Oates – Sara Smile

In March, 2021, the “Nuclear Threat Initiative” Held a “Drill” for MonkeyPox Terror Attack — May 15, 2022 . . . now we have one

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In March 2021, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) partnered with the Munich Security Conference to conduct a “tabletop exercise” simulating a global pandemic involving an unusual strain of monkeypox caused by a terrorist attack using a pathogen engineered in a laboratory.  In the “exercise” the terror Monkey pox attack took place in May, 2022.   Well, it is now May, 2022, and we now have . . .  an outbreak of actual Monkeypox.   These “exercises” aren’t exercises, they’re plans!

The exercise was allegedly designed to examine gaps in national and international biosecurity and pandemic preparedness architectures—exploring opportunities to improve prevention and response capabilities for high-consequence biological events. Participants included 19 senior leaders and experts from across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe with decades of combined experience in public health, biotechnology industry, international security, and philanthropy.

This report, Strengthening Global Systems to Prevent and Respond to High-Consequence Biological Threats: Results from the 2021 Tabletop Exercise Conducted in Partnership with the Munich Security Conference, written by Jaime M. Yassif, Ph.D., Kevin P. O’Prey, Ph.D., and Christopher R. Isaac, M.Sc., summarizes key findings from the exercise and offers actionable recommendations for the international community.

Developed in consultation with technical and policy experts, the fictional exercise scenario portrayed a deadly, global pandemic involving an unusual strain of monkeypox virus that first emerged in the fictional nation of Brinia and spread globally over 18 months. Ultimately, the exercise scenario revealed that the initial outbreak was caused by a terrorist attack using a pathogen engineered in a laboratory with inadequate biosafety and biosecurity provisions and weak oversight. By the end of the exercise, the fictional pandemic resulted in more than three billion cases and 270 million fatalities worldwide.

Discussions throughout the tabletop exercise generated a range of valuable insights and key findings. Most significantly, exercise participants agreed that, notwithstanding improvements following the global response to COVID-19, the international system of pandemic prevention, detection, analysis, warning, and response is woefully inadequate to address current and anticipated future challenges. Gaps in the international biosecurity and pandemic preparedness architecture are extensive and fundamental, undermining the ability of the international community to prevent and mount effective responses to future biological events—including those that could match the impacts of COVID-19 or cause damage that is significantly more severe.

Report Findings and Recommendations

Discussion among exercise participants led to the following key findings:

(The full findings are available on page 14 of the report.)

  • Weak global detection, assessment, and warning of pandemic risks. The international community needs a more robust, transparent detection, evaluation, and early warning system that can rapidly communicate actionable information about pandemic risks.
  • Gaps in national-level preparedness. National governments should improve preparedness by developing national-level pandemic response plans built upon a coherent system of “triggers” that prompt anticipatory action, despite uncertainty and near-term costs—in other words, on a “no-regrets” basis.
  • Gaps in biological research governance. The international system for governing dual-use biological research is neither prepared to meet today’s security requirements, nor is it ready for significantly expanded challenges in the future. There are risk reduction needs throughout the bioscience research and development life cycle.
  • Insufficient financing of international preparedness for pandemics. Many countries around the world lack financing to make the essential national investments in pandemic preparedness.

To address these findings, the report authors developed the following recommendations:

(The full recommendations are available on page 22 of the report.)

  1. Bolster international systems for pandemic risk assessment, warning, and investigating outbreak origins
    • The WHO should establish a graded, transparent, international public health alert system.
    • The United Nations (UN) system should establish a new mechanism for investigating high-consequence biological events of unknown origin, which we refer to as a “Joint Assessment Mechanism.”
  2. Develop and institute national-level triggers for early, proactive pandemic response
    • National governments must adopt a “no-regrets” approach to pandemic response, taking anticipatory action—as opposed to reacting to mounting case counts and fatalities, which are lagging indicators.
    • To facilitate anticipatory action on a no-regrets basis, national governments should develop national-level plans that define and incorporate “triggers” for responding to high-consequence biological events.
  3. Establish an international entity dedicated to reducing emerging biological risks associated with rapid technology advances
    • The international community should establish an entity dedicated to reducing the risk of catastrophic events due to accidental misuse or deliberate abuse of bioscience and biotechnology.
    • To meaningfully reduce risk, the entity should support interventions throughout the bioscience and biotechnology research and development life cycle—from funding, through execution, and on to publication or commercialization.
  4. Develop a catalytic global health security fund to accelerate pandemic preparedness capacity building in countries around the world
    • National leaders, development banks, philanthropic donors, and the private sector should establish and resource a new financing mechanism to bolster global health security and pandemic preparedness.
    • The design and operations of the fund should be catalytic—incentivizing national governments to invest in their own preparedness over the long term.
  5. Establish a robust international process to tackle the challenge of supply chain resilience
    • The UN Secretary General should convene a high-level panel to develop recommendations for critical measures to bolster global supply chain resilience for medical and public health supplies.

Click here to learn more about the November 23, 2021 launch event for this report on the margins of the Biological Weapons Convention Meeting of States Parties.

To learn more about NTI’s previous tabletop exercises at the Munich Security Conference, see the 2019 report, “A Spreading Plague,” and our 2020 report,  “Preventing Global Catastrophic Biological Risks.”

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

It seems to me personally that these “exercises” are not “exercises” at all.  I think they are actual PLANS.

Here.  Look at this page from their own  Monkeypox “Exercise” simulation:

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MonkeypoxAttackExercise Plan

So here we are, in May, 2022, and what are the headlines?

First Case of Monkeypox CONFIRMED in USA  (May 18 Story)

and:

ALERT: MONKEY POX IN MANHATTAN, NYC (May 19 Story)

Just like the “exercise” said would happen . . . right down to the precise month and even the precise WEEK!

This is not the first time some “exercise” turned out real.

The attacks of 9/11 took place during an “exercise” which simulated the hijacking of aircraft . . .  and became the real thing.

Now,   these other “exercises” are turning out to be the same real things.

Of course, the people doing these things would have us believe its all “coincidence.”

Coincidence my ass.  I say these people are intentionally attacking us, and now, they’ve escalated from airplanes-into-buildings, to bio-weapons attacks.

COVID-19 Was An ATTACK, TOO!

I believe there is actual proof that COVID-19 was planned.  I think it was a bio-attack.  Here’s why:

Richard A. Rothschild applied for a Patent on a Test for COVID-19 on 10-13-2015 when COVID-19 didn’t exist yet.

How do you apply, in 2015, for a Patent on a testing system for a disease, almost four years before the disease had even been named?  (Full Story HERE)

But wait . . . there’s more . . .

Boxes of COVID-19 Vaccine from AstraZeneca show a Manufacture Date of July 15, 2018 . . . But “COVID-19” wasn’t discovered until 2019 and wasn’t NAMED until February 11, 2020.

How Did Astra-Zeneca Manufacture “COVID-19 Vaccine” in July of 2018 Before the Disease Was Even Discovered or Named?  (Full Story HERE)

There’s even MORE. . . .

‘The world first started to hear about a novel coronavirus in early January 2020, with reports of an alleged new pneumonia-like illness spreading across Wuhan, China. However, the world did not actually know of Covid-19 until February 2020, because it was not until the 11th of that month that the World Health Organization officially named the novel coronavirus disease “Covid-19.”

So with this being the official truth, why does United States Government data show that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) awarded a contract on the 12th November 2019 to Labyrinth Global Health INC. for ‘COVID-19 Research’, at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?  (Full Story HERE)

Moving farther along in this brief foray into inconvenient truth, I offer you this little gem:

Confidential documents surfaced in a Confidentiality Agreement between the U.S. National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Moderna showing they transferred “potential coronavirus vaccine candidates” to the University of North Carolina, on December 12, 2019

. . . which was nineteen (19) days BEFORE the outbreak of novel coronavirus in China!

How could they know they would need a Coronavirus Vaccine BEFORE the outbreak, unless they had knowledge the outbreak was going to happen?   (Full Story HERE)

Last but not least,

France Gov’t Printed “VACCINE PASSPORT” Signs 4 days BEFORE France Ever Had a Case of COVID-19. How did the French Government know there would need to be a “Vaccine Passport” for COVID four days before the disease ever hit France?

It seems to me personally that the only logical conclusion is that they knew, because they planned the whole thing.   (Full Story HERE)

So now, we have this “tabletop exercise” involving a terrorist attack using Monkeypox, and the exercise says the “attack” takes place on May 15, 2022. Lo and behold, by May 18, 2022, we have an ACTUAL outbreak of Monkeypox.

In my view, these “exercises” are, in fact, plans.

Bio-weapon attack plans.

And we . . .  you and me . . .  are the targets.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had quite enough of this shit.   I’ve had enough of the overt planning.  I’ve had enough of them actually carrying-out these attacks.  And I’ve had more than enough of law enforcement at every level, local, county, state and federal, doing absolutely nothing about any of it.

When will we collectively step-up and put and end to this shit?

Or do we sit idly-by and wait to get murdered by these psychopaths?

There’s an old axiom: “Turnabout is fair play”

And there’s another: “What’s good for the Goose, is good for the Gander.”

They attacked first.

Magical Slavic Photography From Russia Is So Impressive That It Looks Unreal

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Russia culture is just one off spring branch of greater Slavic culture that is shared by 360 million Slavs worldwide. Vibrant images filled with electric series of Slavic folklore is a colorful photography mix that comes from Moscow artistic direction study of Yakovlev & Aleeva. These pieces show a interesting mixture of traditionalism, high fashion and certain degree of modernity. These stunning Russian women models are all dressed in what is know as traditional clothing plus they are adorned in bright colored jewelry and lipstick, which fits Russian culture as we know it today.

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It’s beyond just fashion, it’s a blend of orthodoxy along with a classical love of opulence that together reveal an actual historically influenced images made for the contemporary world of ours. The eggs are also lavishly decked and share the spotlight with the gorgeous backdrops.

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Boxing match aboard the U.S.S. New York, July 3, 1899.

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Tsar Nicholas II allows his daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, to smoke.

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The Doobie Brothers – China Groove

Cool Photos of Teenage Girls in the 1970s

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Teenage girls’ fashion in the 1970s continued the “do-your-own-thing” look of the late 1960s for the early years of the decade.

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Girls’ clothing styles were dominated by the disco look during the latter half of the 1970s. Girls’ clothes transitioned from costume-like hippie garb to styles influenced by disco party dresses, evening wear and the preppie look.

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Towards the end of the decade, the decadent punk look began to catch on. Take a look at these cool photos to see what fashion styles of teenage girls looked like in the 1970s.

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Tubes – White Punks On Dope (1977 R0X M1X)

What a great show!

Gosh! I can smell the spilled bong water all the way through the years!

Bob Dylan with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at Jaggers 29th birthday party, July 1972.

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An American evacuee punches a South Vietnamese man for a place on the last chopper out of the US embassy during the evacuation of Saigon in 1975.

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Breakfast advertisement

My favorite television show in the early 1970’s.

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The Statue of Liberty under construction in Paris in 1884.

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How to Make Parmesan Cheese (Italian Hard Cheese) at Home

Crew of the Japanese carrier Zuikaku give one final banzai cheer before the ship sinks, 1944.

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All Ukraine NAZIS at Azovstal Have Now Surrendered and are in Custody

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LastAzovstalNazisSurrender large

The entire territory of the Azovstal steel mill and factory complex in Mariupol has been liberated, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Friday.

More than 2,400 people hiding inside for almost a month, including Ukrainian servicemen and members of the neo-Nazi Azov unit, have laid down their arms and surrendered.

“The last group of 531 militants surrendered today,” the Russian military spokesman, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, said in a statement.

He added that a total of “2,439 Azov Nazis” and Ukrainian servicemen had laid down their arms since May 16, and that the entire Azovstal complex is now under control of Russian armed forces.

Richard Nixon’s last meal at the White House, in 1974.

On the day that he announced his resignation, Nixon ordered cottage cheese, pineapple slices and a glass of milk.

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R-100 Airship: Inside a British “Flying Hotel”, 1929-1930

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The R100 airship was built as part of a British government programme to develop airships to provide passenger and mail transport between Britain and the countries of the British Empire, including India, Australia and Canada. Originally, it was proposed that two airships be constructed: one, R101, to be designed and constructed under the direction of the Air Ministry, and the other, R100, to be built by a private company under a fixed price contract.

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The R-100 nears completion in its hangar in Yorkshire. 1929.

The R100, designed by Barnes Wallis, was the first to be finished in Howden, Yorkshire in 1929. The airframe was made of duralumin, an early aluminum alloy, and covered with a giant 5-acre fabric coating stitched together in pieces and stretched into place. Inside the cavernous 146,000 cubic metre shell, 17 gas bags made from oxen intestines provided the all-important buoyancy.

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Passengers lounge in the grand salon of the R-100. 1930.

After the 7 successful trial flights and flights checking the outer cover ripple effect, the decision was made for a transatlantic flight or long distance proving flight by one of the two new airships. As the R101 had been put back in Shed Number 1 for further changes to the design to increase the disposable lift, the R100 was tasked with a trip to Canada, successfully crossing the Atlantic to Montreal to the newly erected mast. The ship slipped the moorings from the Cardington mast at 02.48am on the morning of 29th July 1930. The ship flew over the Atlantic and headed down the Newfoundland coast.

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Passengers admire the view from the veranda deck of the R-100. 1929.

After R101 crashed and burned in France, en route to India on 5 October 1930, the Air Ministry ordered R100 grounded. It was deflated and hung up in its shed at Cardington for a year whilst three options were considered: a complete refit of R100 and continuation of tests for the eventual construction of R102; static testing of R100 and retention of about 300 staff to keep the programme “ticking over”; or retention of staff and the scrapping of the airship. In November 1931, it was decided to sell R100 for scrap. The entire framework of the ship was flattened by steamrollers and sold for less than £600.

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Passengers pass the time in the R-100’s lounge. 1929.

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A maid prepares a dish in the airship’s galley. 1929.

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Passengers enjoying the views from above. 1929.

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A maid sets up a table for lunch in the lounge. 1929.

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A passenger looking outside the R-100 panoramic windows.

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Passengers hang around the salon and upper gallery. 1930.

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Maids set up tables in the lounge for a meal. 1929.

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The lounge is rearranged as a dining room for meals. 1929.

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R-100 airship (interior).

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Reading and playing cards in R-100’s deck.

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The R-100 leaves her mooring on her maiden voyage.

A group of men posing in front of Lynch’s Slave Market, St. Louis, Missouri, 1852.

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[ SCHOOL UNIFORM ] China, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam.

Great video. Learn something. It’s fun.

China, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam.”]

Scottish piper in a Kilt on the battlefield during World War One.

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Three Dog Night – Eli’s Coming (1969)

It makes me want to put on my old leather vest with the long fringes…

The Prisoner S01E13 Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling

A great episode of the prisoner.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
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Nazi life, hamster homes, Nord Stream gas-lines, motorcycle riding, Oklahoma Onion Burgers, and no Holy Communion for you

Today we present some fun subjects and some delicious food. Oh, yes, and we also include some geopolitical stuff too. For you all who don’t want to read that “news”, you can go ahead and gloss or jump over it. There is no shame in skim reading if that is your want. I say, go for it! If it makes your boat float!

Have some fun here. Enjoy yourself.

Europe will need Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline one day, Kremlin says

Common sense is a luxury among NATO, EU, and Anglo-Saxon countries leadership.

From HERE

A pair of kids from Ohio rest on their motorcycles after arriving at Daytona Beach in 1975.

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Oklahoma Onion Burgers are SHOCKINGLY Good

Looks delicious! Doesn’t it?

Shrimpton: Russo-Ukrainian War (6)

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The war goes on, although it hasn’t quite yet reached the intensity of the libel battle between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney in the High Court in London. I still think that ‘Russo-Ukrainian War’ is the best title. At any rate the MSM haven’t come up with anything better. It’s turned into a war of attrition with moderate to heavy casualties on both sides. Assessing just how heavy the casualties have been is very far from straightforward, although it still seems safe to divide the Ukrainian figure for Russian casualties by ten. I think that the Ukrainians will do less well in the war than in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Russia is right to complain that they are effectively fighting the whole of NATO. Aside from the British and American ground troops (special forces) deployed, crazily, inside Ukraine, NATO countries are supplying Ukraine with enormous quantities of weapons. Indeed US stocks of precision guided munitions are reported to be running low.

I expect a formal Russian declaration of war on the Ukraine in the next few months, possibly weeks, followed by general mobilisation. As Ukrainian stocks of precision anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles run low Russia is likely to regain control of the battlefield and Ukrainian airspace.

The Azov battalion continues to hold out in the Azovstal steelworks, desperate to protect its dirty secrets. Conditions are now reported to be worse than on the Beltway at rush hour, with bodies piled up everywhere. They can’t hold out for much longer. I hold no more brief for the Azov battalion than I do for the Waffen-SS but they are brave men and should be treated as such when they finally surrender. There’s been nothing like it since World War II.

NATO strategy is to get as many Ukrainians killed as possible by prolonging the war for as long as possible. So far as I can tell NATO is not trying to start World War III, but they might want to think twice about accepting Finland and Sweden into membership. If the Russian Government goes public on the intelligence yield then support for Ukraine in the West will fall away.

At the moment we are close to what NASA might term ‘Max Q’. The venom and lies being directed at Russia have understandably angered her elected president and government. Western precision weapons have dramatically increased Russian casualties. Anglo-Russian relations haven’t been this bad since the Crimean War.

Russian troops are now being accused of carrying out mass rapes, in what is undoubtedly intended to be an echo of 1945. There is no doubt that Russian soldiers raped a great many German women, sadly, at the end of the last world war, but the rapes were sanctioned by the notorious German agent Josef Stalin, who was not of course Russian.

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Stalin’s intent seems to have been to damage the reputation of the Red Army. I doubt that he was anxious to let the boys get their leg over, as it were, or desirous of getting back at the Germans for the mass rape of Russian women. Rape is wrong of course and never justified, either in peace or war.

However I sense increased scepticism about Ukrainian claims of Russian war crimes, which are starting to assume the proportions of a blood libel. Thankfully the Russophobes Boris Johnson and Simon Case aren’t likely to remain in power in London for much longer. Their resignations should pave the way for a UK climbdown on false claims about GRU officers poisoning the Skripals in 2018 in Salisbury and Lt-Colonel Litvinenko in 2006, and of Russian involvement in the murderous shoot-down of MH17 in 2014.

Revelation of the German GO2’s role in poisoning and probably murdering the Skripals would considerably ease tensions between London and Moscow. (Litvinenko poisoned himself of course, being killed by the antidote which he swallowed at the same time as the polonium.) It’s unlikely that the fanatically anti-Russian Liz Truss will continue to serve as Foreign Secretary, thankfully.

Will the Ukraine survive?

It’s now clear that when President Zelensky rejected President Putin’s fair peace terms back in March he bet the farm. There is now reporting that Poland is planning to participate in the dismemberment of the Ukraine, which would reflect the historical position, Western Ukraine being incorporated in the Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Poles of course participated in the break-up of Czechoslovakia after Munich.

I imagine that Russia will want to incorporate the whole of the Ukraine east of the Dneiper into Russia, along with a land bridge to Transnistria. Ethnic Ukrainian hatred for Russia and Russians is such that a negotiated solution is unlikely to work. Moscow will want a deep buffer zone around the Donbas.

Incorporating Western Ukraine into Poland is likely to prove more stable in the long run than having a rump Ukrainian republic endlessly plotting revenge against Russia. I fail to see how Russia could ever trust the Ukraine again.

American People In The 1950s

Here is a wonderful photograph collection of people in America taken by photographer Stevel in the 1950s.

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Atomic clocks put China’s BeiDou satnav system ahead of the rest, study finds

Of course. They learn from the United States on what NOT to do.

From HERE.

The New Disguise of the Russian Armed Forces used in Ukraine

RF Armed Forces use new radio-thermal camouflage as part of a special operation in Ukraine

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MOSCOW, April 26 – RIA NovostiThe Russian Armed Forces, as part of a special military operation in Ukraine, are using a new type of camouflage that reduces the visibility of combat vehicles in the infrared and radar ranges, an informed source told RIA Novosti.

Camouflage is a synthetic material that is worn on top of equipment in the form of covers or coatings. The material reduces the level of thermal radiation, for example, from a tank by several times, so that it practically merges with the background surface. In the radar range, it is significantly reduced detection range of equipment,” the source said.

He explained that, first of all, this disguise is intended to reduce the visibility of equipment by enemy UAVs and reconnaissance aircraft.

According to the source, the coating can also be painted in camouflage colors, reducing the visibility of military equipment in the visible optical range.

“As part of the special operation, various types of such camouflage are used on the Iskander operational-tactical missile systems, as well as on the latest T-90M Proryv tanks,” the source said.

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A pair of young women sunbathe at Coney Island in 1977.

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How to Make Italian Sausage, Peppers, and Onions | Allrecipes.com

Must listen: a very powerful speech by a former Singapore UN diplomat

Why Europe and US must change their me-only security mentality…
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From HERE

Crowds of beachgoers enjoy the sun at Deerfield Beach, Florida, 1976.

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ALERT: MONKEY POX IN MANHATTAN, NYC

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The New York City health department is investigating a possible case of monkeypox in the Big Apple.

The unnamed patient is currently being treated at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, city health officials confirmed on Thursday.

Medical officials have implemented appropriate isolation protocols and are conducted preliminary tests in an effort to confirm the diagnosis.

If positive, the tests will be sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for confirmatory testing.

The health department’s epidemiologists will also follow-up with all those who may have been in contact with the patient during their infectious period.

Monkeypox, which mostly occurs in west and central Africa, is a rare viral infection similar to smallpox, though milder. Cases of the disease have now been confirmed in seven countries outside of Africa, including the U.S., Canada, UK, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Sweden.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Wednesday confirmed a single case of monkeypox virus infection in a man who had recently traveled to Canada.

He has been hospitalized, but is in good condition, officials report.

The Massachusetts agency said it was working with the CDC and relevant local boards of health to carry out contact tracing, adding that ‘the case poses no risk to the public.’

America joins five European countries: Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK in confirmed cases. At least 13 suspected cases are also being investigated in Quebec, Canada.

U.S. officials are also probing six people who were on a place ride with a Briton that later tested positive for the virus. No deaths have been tied to the virus during this outbreak.

Monkeypox was first recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1970s. The number of cases in West Africa has increased in the last decade.

Symptoms include fever, headaches and skin rashes starting on the face and spreading to the rest of the body.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, told DailyMail.com Thursday that the virus is spreading via physical touch – and that it only spreads through respiratory droplets in the air in people that are already exhibiting symptoms.

This changes the formula for how the virus spreads compared to what Americans are typically used to after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also gives an explanation as to why many of the cases detected in Europe are among gay and bisexual men.

A group of friends take a break from roller-skating at Venice Beach, 1979.

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PELOSI FORMALLY AND PUBLICALLY EXCOMMUNICATED BY SAN FRANCISCO ARCHBISHOP

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San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone announced on Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is forbidden to receive Holy Communion because of her increasingly “extreme” pro-abortion views.

Cordileone wrote:

After numerous attempts to speak with her to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, and the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that the point has come in which I must make a public declaration that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion unless and until she publicly repudiate her support for abortion “rights” and confess and receive absolution for her cooperation in this evil in the sacrament of Penance. I have accordingly sent her a Notification to this effect, which I have now made public.

In his letter, Cordileone said he wrote to Pelosi on April 7, telling her that she must publicly disavow her pro-abortion stance “or else refrain from referring to your Catholic faith in public and receiving Holy Communion, I would have no choice but to make a declaration, in keeping with canon 915, that you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” Cordileone said since sending that letter that Pelosi has not abided by his request. He wrote:

Therefore, in light of my responsibility as the Archbishop of San Francisco to be ‘concerned for all the Christian faithful entrusted to [my] care” (Code of Canon Law, can. 383, §1), by means of this communication I am hereby notifying you that you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance.

He also said a Catholic legislator who supports abortion after knowing the teaching of the Church, “commits a manifestly grave sin which is a cause of most serious scandal to others.  Therefore, universal Church law provides that such persons ‘are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly bans both obtaining an abortion and assisting with one, saying “since the first century, the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion….”

“This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law,” the catechism says.

Cordileone wrote in his announcement that he has received many letters over the years “expressing distress over the scandal” of Catholics in public life — like Pelosi and President Joe Biden — promoting “such grievously evil practices as abortion.” He said in part:

I have responded that conversion is always better than exclusion, and before any such action can be taken it must be preceded by sincere and diligent efforts at dialogue and persuasion.  With regard to Speaker Pelosi, I have striven to follow this wise route, as delineated by then-Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) in a letter to U.S. bishops regarding Holy Communion and Catholic politicians who cooperate in the grave evils of abortion and euthanasia.

The announcement continues:

Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi’s position on abortion has become only more extreme over the years, especially in the last few months.  Just earlier this month she once again, as she has many times before, explicitly cited her Catholic faith while justifying abortion as a “choice,” this time setting herself in direct opposition to Pope Francis: “The very idea that they would be telling women the size, timing or whatever of their family, the personal nature of this is so appalling, and I say that as a devout Catholic”; “They say to me, ‘Nancy Pelosi thinks she knows more about having babies than the Pope.’  Yes I do.  Are you stupid?

Cordileone said he took “no pleasure whatsoever” in fulfilling his pastoral duty and said his action is “not political.”

It’s the War Mobilization, Stupid!

Watch the new False Flag Weekly News on Rumble or watch alongside the links to stories we’re discussing

By Kevin Barrett, Veterans Today Editor

Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign defeated incumbent president George HW Bush with the help of Ross Perot and an unrelenting focus on the be-all-end-all of presidential campaigns: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Clinton’s slogan pithily summarized the accumulated wisdom of more than two centuries of presidential politics: Voters identify the incumbent president and incumbent party with their perception of the current state of the economy. If times are good, the president and/or his party will likely be re-elected. If not, it’s time to “throw the bums out.”

I learned this in 1979 in a course on American Economic History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. According to the professor, it was an open secret that every president tries to strong-arm the Fed into juicing up the economy prior to his re-election campaign, usually with some success.

The 2020 election provided a classic example of the power of current economic trends over national election results. As of late 2019, the US economy was booming and Donald Trump was cruising toward an easy victory. Then COVID-19 hit, the economy imploded, and suddenly Trump no longer looked like a “very stable genius” to the crucial tranches of undecided, uninformed, and/or independent voters. Also, thanks to COVID and the economic implosion, Democrats could be whipped into a much more hysterical anti-Trump frenzy than would have been otherwise possible, leading to frenetic and heavily-funded get-out-the-vote efforts. So whether or not Trump is correct about alleged vote padding in swing states, he is certainly right that absent the COVID pandemic he would have won easy re-election.

Now that we have established the crucial connection between economic trends and incumbent parties’ prospects in national elections, it’s time to ask the million-dollar question: What the @&# are the Democrats thinking?! The Biden Administration, facing very tough midterm contests this year and at least equally monumental challenges in the 2024 presidential race, has made the apparently idiotic decision to blow up the US and global economies by provoking war with Russia.

As I write this, stocks, crypto, and even the bond market aren’t just swirling around the porcelain bowl, they’re plunging through the pipes and well on their way to the sewage treatment facility. The worst inflation in 40 years, driven in part by higher food and energy costs from Biden’s war on Russia, has forced the Fed to start ratcheting interest rates upward, pushing America towards 1970s-style stagflation at best, or a 2008 or even 1929 scenario at worst. Biden’s ever-escalating giveaway of US tax dollars to Ukraine is contributing to the economic as well as military mayhem.

Is Biden senile? Is Harris an idiot? Are the Democrats suicidal? Though the answer to the first two questions is undoubted “yes,” I’m not sure that the Democratic Party leadership and the oligarchs who own it are entirely bent on political self-destruction. There must be some sort of method in their apparent madness. And I think I know what it is:

“It’s the war mobilization, stupid!”

The oligarchs who own the Democratic Party (who may overlap somewhat with the ones that own the Republicans) aren’t going to seek success in 2022 and 2024 by riding a strong economy. Instead, they are hoping to win by dragging us into war and pounding their chests and telling us to support our fearless wartime leaders—and if you don’t you’re a treasonous unpatriotic Russia-loving Putin-loving Trump-loving transphobic white nationalist conspiracy theorist scumbag.

If the war gets bad enough, and the propaganda gets loud enough, people will put up with just about any amount of economic devastation. Consider World War II. Even though the US didn’t enter the war until more than two years after it started, and never experienced the level of combat and losses other nations suffered, the American people were quickly convinced to endure draconian rationing, forced conscription, virtual slave labor in war factories, and various and sundry economic unpleasantness, all in the name of defeating the evil racially-inferior slanty-eyed Japs and the evil white supremacist Adolf Hitler. FDR, who had cruised to re-election in 1940 by promising to keep America out of the war, had no problem winning in 1944 despite his broken promise (and his Pearl Harbor treason). When the nation is on a total war footing, people snap to attention and salute and do what they’re told and don’t ask questions, and the incumbent party and president enjoy almost godlike status.

My parents were children during World War II, and they (and my grandparents) experienced food rationing, gasoline rationing, and the near-total unavailability of all sorts of consumer goods, from appliances to automobiles. Sounds familiar? It’s like what we’re heading into now—only in 2022, we’re merely facing de facto rationing as many people can no longer buy their customary allotments of food, gas, and goods. Fortunately, the authorities probably won’t start issuing ration coupons until the war really heats up.

And heat up it will. Biden’s seemingly crazy policies, foreign as well as domestic, make sense only on the assumption that we’re heading into all-out World War III. Why would the US refuse Russia’s repeated entreaties to negotiate Ukrainian neutrality and cap NATO expansion, thereby provoking a ruinous war? Why would US leaders refuse Russia’s (and Zelensky’s) overtures for a negotiated solution? Why would they create what will soon become a 100-billion-dollar arms pipeline to Ukraine, while pushing Finland and Sweden to join NATO—a move that Russia will inevitably greet with military strikes?

The real rulers of the US empire, the neoconservatives who overthrew the Republic on 9/11/2001, are bent on world conquest. A decision has apparently been made behind the scenes to fight World War III sooner rather than later, in service to the Wolfowitz Doctrine that the US will tolerate no challenges to its global hegemony.

The neocons have made their position clear: They will either rule the planet unilaterally or destroy it. That is why the Empire and its vassals are inflicting economic devastation on their own people, and the people of the world, as they frantically mobilize for the biggest and most destructive war in human history.

If we are going to stop it, the time is now. Once NATO is officially at war with Russia, dissent will be ruthlessly quashed. And once the nukes start flying, we will spend whatever is left of our lives wishing we had done more to stop the neocon Strangeloves from pursuing their mad dream of world conquest.

Barry White – Just The Way You Are (Official Music Video)

Luxury Villas For Your Hamster

A design studio based in South Korea, studio ZIT, just launched a new incredible product: a miniature series of luxury villas for your hamsters! A fascinating and minutious concept that will allows you to choose a more comfy house than a simple cage for your lovely pets.

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Homemade Soft Pretzels!! How to Make Pretzels Recipe

Old Fashioned Love Song (1975) – Three Dog Night

First time I have heard this song in fifty years! LOL. Great presentation.

A woman (left) roller-skates, and a group of girls (right) get ready for a skate, at Venice Beach, California, 1979.

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Israeli media confirming CIA trained Ukrainian Nazi Paramilitary

Like a muddied spring, a ruined fountain, Is a righteous man fallen before a wicked one. Proverbs 25:26 (The Israel BibleTM)

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New evidence reveals CIA trained, armed Ukrainian Nazi paramilitary now leading the fight against Russia

…fom Israel 365 News

[ Editor’s Note: I surely couldn’t pass this up, coming from an Israeli source. No one in the US government or media would dare trash it, so here it is.

It’s a little late, but better than never. We have a long history of reporting on the neo-Nazis and Azov, going back to 2014. When this current fighting is over, there will be time to write a fuller history of it all.

The Cold War foreign intelligence agencies have always been wanting to keep a finger in the destabilization pies of countries by building ‘friendly forces’ with a combat capacity for when the big coup day comes.

When people don’t have money, but have low self esteem, it’s a big draw for them to become a player on the world stage. One just needs a suitable enemy to rage against. It took some time for NATO to grow this current Ukraine war, and here it is.

The only people who seen to be benefiting from it so far are the usual grifter types that always crawl out from under their rocks in times like these… Jim W. Dean ]

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2022 05 20 20 45

First published May 13, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s accusation that Ukraine advocated Nazism, the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion seemed proof of his claim. But further research seems to implicate the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in establishing and funding the white supremacist paramilitary.

Sputnik News, a Russian state-owned news agency that is now inaccessible in the US, reported last week that Putin’s claims of ties between the US government and the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion were true.

Formed in 2014, the Azov Special Operations Detachment is a right-wing extremist, neo-Nazi, formerly paramilitary, unit of the National Guard of Ukraine, based in Mariupol, in the Azov Sea coastal region.

2016 report issued by the Office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights details accusations against the Azov movement’s use of torture and other war crimes in the ensuing conflict after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

The battalion’s sources of funding have always been unclear but the report cited the battalion’s online claims of receiving training from foreign military forces including those of Canada, Germany, the US, and the U.K.

10 Hammer into Anvil – Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner

Episode 10 of The Prisoner.

“Music begins where the words leave off…”

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Four potential outcomes for the fourth turning and the change to a New World Order Mark Two

We continue on our stroll though the “news” as the West slowly enters it’s nose dive towards the enormous dark and damp black hole that it has created. In this installment, we enjoy the curious and the interesting as well as suggest some tasty food adventures that might well result in some fine and delicious food experiences. Experiences, mind you, that would be glorious to share with friends. Hint. Hint.

I hope you all have fun here today.

“My mother, Pat Clark, photographed by my father, Honolulu, 1965”

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“The Real President Is Whoever Controls The Teleprompter”: Musk Delivers Scathing Criticism Of Biden

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Tech billionaire Elon Musk this week warned that the United States must take steps to address inflation or it will end up like socialist Venezuela.

Musk, who is currently in the process of acquiring Twitter, told a virtual conference that he believes the government has printed too much money in recent years.

“I mean, the obvious reason for inflation is that the government printed a zillion amount of more money than it had, obviously,” Musk said, likely referring to COVID-19 relief stimulus packages worth trillions of dollars that were passed in recent years.

U.S. inflation rose by 8.3 percent in April, compared with the previous year. That’s slightly lower than the 8.5 percent spike in March, but it’s still near the 40-year high.

“So it’s like the government can’t … issue checks far in excess of revenue without there being inflation, you know, velocity of money held constant,” the Tesla CEO said. 

“If the federal government writes checks, they never bounce. So that is effectively creation of more dollars. And if there are more dollars created, then the increase in the goods and services across the economy, then you have inflation, again, velocity of money held constant.”

If governments could merely “issue massive amounts of money and deficits didn’t matter, then, well, why don’t we just make the deficit 100 times bigger,” Musk asked. “The answer is, you can’t because it will basically turn the dollar into something that is worthless.”

“Various countries have tried this experiment multiple times,” Musk said.

“Have you seen Venezuela? Like the poor, poor people of Venezuela are, you know, have been just run roughshod by their government.”

In 2018, Venezuela, a country with significant reserves of oil and gas, saw its inflation rise more than 65,000 percent amid an economic crash that included plummeting oil prices and government price controls. The regime of Nicolas Maduro then started printing money, thereby devaluing its currency, which caused prices to rapidly increase.

During the conference, Musk also said the Biden administration “doesn’t seem to get a lot done” and questioned who is actually in charge.

“The real president is whoever controls the teleprompter,” he said.

“The path to power is the path to the teleprompter.”

“The Trump administration, leaving Trump aside, there were a lot of people in the administration who were effective at getting things done,” he remarked.

And it appears that Musk has seen enough of Democratic Party politicking to know who he will vote for from now on…

Musk’s comment about the White House comes as Jeff Bezos, also one of the richest people in the world, has increasingly started to target the administration’s economic policies. Bezos, in a series of Twitter posts, said the rapid increase in federal spending is the reason why inflation is as high as it is.

“Remember the Administration tried their best to add another $3.5 TRILLION to federal spending,” Bezos wrote on Monday, drawing rebuke from several White House officials.

“They failed, but if they had succeeded, inflation would be even higher than it is today, and inflation today is at a 40-year high.”

An Artist Has Made This Badass Raven Costume Entirely By Hand

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According to Rah-Bop, an illustrator and video game artist living in Seattle: “Since I get the impression it’s acceptable to dress up as an animal person at AC I took the opportunity to make a costume out of Rue, my D&D character, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while. If you see me, please feel free to say hi.”

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Investigation Launched After ‘Mystery’ Surge In Deaths Of Newborn Babies

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Health authorities in Scotland have launched an investigation after a mystery surge in deaths of newborn babies, the second time the phenomenon has been recorded in the space of six months.

A report by the Herald newspaper highlights the “very unusual” spike in deaths of babies, with the alarm being raised after 18 infants died within four weeks of birth in March.

That same control limit was also breached in September last year, when 21 neonatal deaths were reported, the first time this had occurred since records began.

“The neonatal mortality rate was 5.1 per 1,000 live births in September and 4.6 per 1,000 in March, against an average of 1.49 per 1000 in 2019,” reports the newspaper.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) said the deaths could not have been down to chance, while the cause behind the previous spike in September also “remained a mystery.”

The report notes that vaccination uptake has increased in expectant mothers and that COVID infections during pregnancy are associated with a higher chance of premature birth, but found no “direct link” between COVID surges and the deaths.

PHS Scotland says COVID infections “did not appear to have played a role” in the September spate of deaths.

Edinburgh University’s Dr. Sarah Stock said, “The numbers are really troubling,” but admitted she didn’t know the cause of the deaths.

Impossibly Easy Banana Bread Coffee Cake (With Make-Ahead Directions)

This banana bread coffee cake is a tasty new take on breakfast! It goes wonderfully with coffee. Sliced and mashed bananas make this cake extra moist and delicious.

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Ingredients

Coffee Cake

  • 2 to 3 large ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 1/3 cups), plus 1 large banana, sliced
  • 2/3 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 2/3 cups Original Bisquick™ mix
  • 3/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Streusel

  • 1 cup Original Bisquick™ mix
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 6 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces

Serve-With, If Desired

  • Maple syrup

Steps

  • 1
    Heat oven to 350°F. Grease bottom and sides of 13×9-inch pan with shortening or cooking spray.
  • 2
    In large bowl, stir mashed bananas, granulated sugar, milk, oil, cinnamon and eggs. Stir in 2 2/3 cups Bisquick mix and 3/4 cup walnuts; fold in banana slices. Pour mixture into pan.
  • 3
    In medium bowl, mix Streusel ingredients, cutting in butter with pastry blender or fork until crumbly. Sprinkle over mixture in pan.
  • 4
    Bake 30 to 36 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Cut into 4 rows by 3 rows. Drizzle with maple syrup just before serving.
  • 5
    Make-Ahead Directions: Make as directed through step 3. Cover and refrigerate up to 12 hours. Uncover, and bake as directed in step 4.

“My mother, Ritva, 1960s”

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McConnell Says Congress Hopes To Approve Sweden’s NATO Bid By August

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has promised that approval of Sweden’s application to join NATO will be fast-tracked by Congress and could be done within months.

McConnell made the comments to reporters in Stockholm on Monday after Sweden officially announced it will apply to NATO to provide better security for the country in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sweden shares a maritime border with Russia.

“We anticipate moving this rapid—in a more rapid fashion than past applications for NATO,” McConnell told reporters in Stockholm, where the Kentucky Republican was visiting with a delegation of GOP senators in a show of support amid the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict.

“We hope to approve it before August,” he said. “We are confident it will be approved.”

McConnell also shared a statement on Monday following his visit to both Sweden and Finland where he reiterated his support for both nations joining NATO, stating that both would “bring tremendous value as new NATO members and would strengthen the alliance significantly.”

“Sweden and Finland already have long track records as two of the United States and NATO’s most capable friends and partners, even from outside the alliance,” the Senate Republican leader said.

“Both countries have massive geographic importance, professional and well-equipped armed forces, strong military industrial bases, and significant interoperability with U.S. and NATO forces. Both nations’ robust commitments to defense funding mean that their accession would directly address longstanding concerns about burden-sharing and the financial contributions of our allies,” McConnell said.

He added that he would do “everything in my power to ensure that our part of their accession process moves smoothly and expeditiously.”

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told reporters in Stockholm on Monday that the decision to join NATO was driven in part by Finland’s recent move to join the alliance.

Finnish leaders, with backing from lawmakers in the country, announced plans to officially seek NATO membership over the weekend.

“Should Sweden be the only country in the Baltic Sea region that was not a member of NATO, we would be in a very vulnerable position. We can’t rule out that Russia would then increase pressure on Sweden,” Andersson said.

The vote to approve new membership into NATO must be unanimous among all members.

However, Turkey has threatened to block the bid by Sweden and Finland, citing their alleged willingness to support terrorist organizations, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and followers of Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara accuses of being behind the 2016 attempted coup in Turkey.

“Neither of these countries has a clear, open attitude toward terrorist organizations,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a joint news conference with his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Monday. “How can we trust them?”

Erdogan also described Sweden as an “incubation center for terrorist organizations,” and claimed that some members of Sweden’s Parliament supported the PKK.

He also pointed to the fact that both Sweden and Finland imposed arms export embargoes on Turkey in 2019 after its incursion into Syria.

“First of all, we cannot say ‘yes’ to those who impose sanctions on Turkey, on joining NATO which is a security organization,” Erdogan also noted.

The Turkish president added that NATO would become “a place where representatives of terrorist organizations are concentrated” if both Sweden and Finland were to join.

Numerous other NATO members have signaled support for the two nations to join.

America the Feckless

How low can we go?

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Shireen funeral 600×400 1

There have been several particularly disturbing stories in the media over the past week even if one chooses to tune out the US Congress’s pending astonishing overwhelming approval of a grant of $39.8 billion to Ukraine to continue the war to “weaken” Russia. Even so-called progressives in the Democratic Party voted for the war. So now the United States will be at war with Russia through proxy, like it or not, and the consequences could be devastating, particularly if NATO member Poland intervenes directly, as it has been threatening, but few in Washington seem to be awake to that reality. And only Senator Rand Paul, who is asking for an inspector general to supervise the cash flow, is seriously wondering how much of the “aid” will be stolen by President Volodymyr Zelensky and his cronies. Ukraine has long been distinguished as the most corrupt country in Europe.

Another revolting story concerns the murder of a Palestinian Christian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who also happens to be an American citizen. She was shot dead by an Israeli sniper who hit her in the neck in the small gap between a protective helmet and vest. She was covering Israeli Army violence directed against protesting Palestinians in the West Bank town of Jenin for al-Jazeera and the vest was labelled “Press” in large letters. Israel initially sought to blame her death on Palestinian “gunmen” who allegedly were in the area, but that story would not wash when confronted with the eyewitness testimony of others who were on the scene and it was eventually conceded that an Israeli soldier “might have” fired the fatal shot. Last Friday, preceding Shireen’s funeral at the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin in occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli police providing “security” were seen kicking and using batons to beat mourners seeking to carry the coffin from the hospital to the church. The police also hurled stun and smoke grenades into the crowd after several plastic water bottles were allegedly thrown in their direction. Abu Akleh’s home was also searched by police and it will no doubt be claimed that she was a “terrorist,” standard Israeli practice for many of those whom they murder.

Whenever an American citizen is killed under questionable circumstances overseas it is the responsibility of the local US Embassy to demand an investigation and explanation of what occurred. To be sure, the ardently Zionist US Ambassador Thomas Nides in Jerusalem has called for an inquiry, but let’s see what happens in this case as the mainstream media conspires to make the story disappear even though a number of Democratic congressmen (and no Republicans) have called for a response. Former Israeli army spokesman Avi Benayahu has already opined that “Let’s assume Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by IDF. No need to apologize for that.” Nevertheless, some form of inquiry acceptable to Israel will no doubt take place, but the Israeli government and the country’s courts have a history of exonerating soldiers and armed settlers when they kill Palestinians. Recently, a Palestinian was sentenced to nine months in prison for slapping an armed settler who was threatening his family while Israeli soldiers and settlers who have killed non-threatening Palestinians, including children, rarely receive any punishment at all.

And being an American citizen makes no difference. History tells us that Israel can kill Americans with impunity judging from the massacre of 34 American sailors on board the USS Liberty in 1967 and the Rachel Corrie murder-by-bulldozer in 2003. A Turkish-American boy Furkan Dogan who was on an aid ship to Gaza in 2010 was also murdered by Israeli soldiers who boarded the vessel, also killing eight others. No Israeli has been punished for any of the deaths.

This has to stop but the problem is in Washington, not in Jerusalem. Israel kills and kills because it knows it can get away with it due to American enabling of the process. It is an embarrassment that a series of US Ambassadors to Israel have been little more than apologists for the Jewish state. And we have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declaring “I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.” Meanwhile President Joe Biden has self-declared as a “Zionist” while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calls himself in Hebrew the “shomer yisroel” or defender of Israel in the Senate. And then there is House Intelligence Committee head Adam Schiff’s son sporting a Mossad t-shirt. And what about the regular mass “pilgrimages” by groups of Congressmen to Israel during recesses, an exercise in obtaining the approval of whichever unindicted felon is in charge of that rogue country that pretends to pass for a “democracy”?

As much as one would like to see all the traitors in Congress and the White House who give Israel a free pass on its monstrous behavior held accountable, such an outcome is unimaginable because enough of them have been bought or intimidated to such an extent that they remain silent or chant like a chorus in a Greek tragedy that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” And there is also the Jewish dominated mainstream media: the NY Times report on this latest murder had a headline reading that Shireen Abu Akleh had somehow “Died,” not that she was murdered by the Israelis, to whom the American taxpayer gives $10 million every single day! It is shameful and disgusting!

A related tale also concerns Israel and the United States. David Brog is running for Congress from Nevada. Brog is the former executive director of Pastor John Hagee’s Texas-based Christians United For Israel even though he is Jewish. Indeed, he has made Israel the focal point of his campaign based on his contention that “he brings a lifetime of dedication and a depth of knowledge to lead on pro-Israel causes.” He has said “I don’t just want to be a friend of Israel. I want to be a leader on Israel and a champion of Israel… We have to be very quick to reach out and broaden our coalition to all people of goodwill who love Israel and hate antisemitism.”

Brog, who is not from Nevada, has not surprisingly raised considerably more money than other GOP candidates vying for the position and he has also received the backing of former Trump administration Jewish officials, including David Friedman, the ex-US Ambassador to Israel, and Elan Carr, the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. Friedman and Carr co-hosted a virtual fundraiser for Brog two weeks ago.

Brog is a one trick pony and his trick is to keep saying Israel over and over again to bring in the Shekels from the likes of Israel born Miriam Adelson, who inherited her husband’s casino fortune and lives in Las Vegas. It is disconcerting to see a politician running for national office in the United States so he can advance the interests of a foreign country, yet that is what Brog is doing openly. One would hope a lot of Nevada voters will see the issue in the same fashion, but Brog will have big bucks and the pro-Israel media supporting him. In any event, I have to wish the “malocchio” or evil eye on Brog and I hope he loses in his run and loses big. The United States does not need yet another ardent Israel booster in Congress or anywhere else in the public space!

Another tale that is developing surrounds the publication of the latest tell-all book by a survivor of the Donald Trump administration. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who was fired by Trump after the 2020 election, has described a series of catastrophic proposals by the president relating to national security and defense, including using missiles fired from the US to take on Mexican drug cartels. Another idea floated by Trump, if Esper is not lying, was to use soldiers to shoot protesters in Washington in the wake of the George Floyd death in Minneapolis in May 2020. Other former senior Trump officials have also been claiming that Trump often asked whether China had developed a top-secret hurricane gun that could be firing storms at the United States. And John Bolton, in his book, asserts that Trump asked if Finland were part of Russia.

But to my mind the most interesting revelation made by Esper is the back story, also set in the Middle East, relating to the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, which illustrates much that is wrong with the national security state that the United States has evolved into. According to Esper, Trump lied after the assassination was criticized by saying that Soleimani was actively preparing attacks on four American Embassies in the Mideast region. Esper confirms that there was no intelligence to back up that claim, but interestingly goes beyond that to make clear that there was no specific intelligence at all suggesting that such an attack was imminent or even being planned. There were only generic regional security threats that many embassies in the world respond to and make preparations to defend against.

One recalls the back story at the time, with the Iraqi government claiming that Soleimani, widely regarded as the second most powerful official in Iran after the Ayatollah, was in Baghdad to discuss peace arrangements and that the US Embassy had been informed of his planned trip and had raised no objection to it. Instead, the US used the opportunity to launch an armed drone to kill him and nine Iraqi militia members that were accompanying him from the airport. In other words, there was no imminent threat, nor even a plausible threat, and the US went ahead any way and killed a senior Iranian government official. That is unambiguously a war crime. Will anyone be held accountable? Of course not!

But finally there is also a bit of good news. The White House press secretary who is replacing Jen Psaki is Karine Jean-Pierre. She is a woman, black and lesbian, so clearly she passes the Democratic Party template for such a position but she lacks the mandatory Israel connection. It turns out that she once criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and even called for it to be boycotted. She is already being attacked by the usual groups and individuals, so let’s see how long she lasts!

Wooden Sculptures That Are So Realistic They’ll Leave Everyone With Goosebumps

“I saw the image in a piece of material, and then I just set it free.” This is how many famous sculptors describe their work. Sometimes their creations are so uncannily realistic that you might feel a little scared looking at them, yet you’re unable to drag your gaze away.

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Fwd: Interview with US Col. Richard Black (ret.)

Richard Black
Richard Black

“I found this interview of a Col. Richard Black (ret.) extremely interesting.  This guy is a US military man  who served 31 years in the Marines and in the Army, then served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998 to 2006, and in the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020.
It lasts over an hour, covers the US intervention in Syria, post-Yeltsin Russia, US political military strategy, Ukraine and US victory at all costs, and more.”
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-Irene

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Mike Billington with Executive Intelligence Review interviews Col. Richard Black (ret.).

BILLINGTON: Hi, this is this is Mike Billington with Executive Intelligence Review and the Schiller Institute. I am here today with Col. Richard Black, Sen. Richard Black, who, after serving 31 years in the Marines and in the Army, then served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998 to 2006, and in the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020. I’ll also allow Colonel Black to describe his military service himself.

So, Colonel Black, welcome. With the with the U.S. and U.K. and NATO surrogate war with Russia, which is taking place in Ukraine, and the economic warfare being carried out directly against Russia, this has been accompanied by an information war which is intended to demonize Russia and especially President Vladimir Putin. One repeated theme is that the Russian military is carrying out ruthless campaigns of murder against civilians and destruction of residential areas, often referring to the Russian military operations in Syria, claiming that they had done the same thing in Syria, especially against Aleppo. These are supposedly examples of their war crimes and crimes against humanity.

You have been a leading spokesman internationally for many years, exposing the lies about what took place in Syria and the war on Syria. So first, let me ask: How and why did Russia get involved in Syria militarily? And how does that contrast with the U.S. and NATO supposed justification for their military intervention in Syria?

BLACK: Well, let me begin, if I could, by telling our listeners that I’m very patriotic: I volunteered to join the Marines and I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I fought in the bloodiest Marine campaign of the entire war. And I was a helicopter pilot who flew 269 combat missions. My aircraft was hit by ground fire on four missions. I, then, fought on the ground with the First Marine Division, and during one of the 70 combat patrols that I made, my radioman were both killed, and I was wounded while we were attacking and trying to rescue a surrounded Marine outpost.

So I’m very pro-American. I actually was a part of NATO and was prepared to die in Germany, to defend against an attack by the Soviet Union.

But Russia is not the Soviet Union at all. People don’t understand that because the media have not made it clear. But Russia is not a communist state; the Soviet Union was a communist state.

Now, one of the things that I’ve seen claimed, that has been particularly irritating to me because of my experience with Syria: I have I have been in Aleppo city. Aleppo city is the biggest city in Syria, or it was at least before the war began. And there was a tremendous battle. Some some call it the “Stalingrad of the Syrian war,” which is not a bad comparison. It was a terribly bitter battle that went on from 2012 until 2016. In the course of urban combat, any forces that are fighting are forced to destroy buildings. Buildings are blown down on a massive scale. And this happens any time that you have urban combat. So I have walked the streets of Aleppo, while combat was still in progress. I have looked across, through a slit in the sandbags at enemy controlled territory; I’ve stood on tanks that were blown out and this type of thing.

What I do know, and I can tell you about Aleppo is that Russia was extremely reluctant to get involved in combat in Syria. The war began in 2011, when the United States landed Central Intelligence operatives to begin coordinating with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. And we had been unwavering supporters of Al Qaeda, since before the war formally began. We are supporters of Al Qaeda today, where they’re bottled up in Idlib province. The CIA supplied them under secret Operation Timber Sycamore. We gave them all of their anti-tank weapons, all of their anti air- missiles. And Al Qaeda has always been our proxy force on the ground. They, together with ISIS, have carried out the mission of the United States, together with a great number of affiliates that really are kind of interchangeable. You have the Free Syrian Army soldiers move from ISIS to Al Qaeda to Free Syrian Army, rather fluidly. And so we started that war.

But the United States has a strategic policy of using proxies to engage in war. And our objective was to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria, and in order to do that, we employed proxy soldiers who were the most vile of all terrorists. Something very similar is happening right now in in Ukraine.

But going back to Aleppo, the Syrian army, together with Hezbollah, which was very effective; there were some troops that were organized by Iran also, but it was pretty much a Syrian show, certainly directed by Syrian generals. And they had fought this bitter urban combat, very brutal, very deadly. And they had fought it for four years, before Russia ever joined the battle. So after four years, the city of Aleppo had enormous destruction. And at that point, the Russians, at the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria, entered the war. But unlike many of the media reports, they did not enter the war as a ground force.  Now, they had some small ground forces. They had military police, they had a few artillery units, a few special operations people, and quite a number of advisers and that sort of thing. But they were not a significant ground force.

On the other hand, they were a significant and very effective air force, that supplemented the Syrian Air Force. But it really was just the last year of the war, the battle for Aleppo, just the last year, that they entered and their air power was very effective. And by this time, the Syrians had pretty well worn down the terrorist forces. And the Russian assistance was able to tip the balance, and Aleppo was the grand victory of the entire Syrian war.

But to blame the Russians for the massive destruction that took place within Aleppo, it’s bizarre: Because they were not there, they were not even present when this happened. So this is simply another part of the propaganda narrative, which is which hasbeen very effective for the West, demonizing Russia, and making claims that have no substance. But people don’t remember the history of these things—they’re rather complex. So, no: Russia was not in any respect responsible for the massive destruction of the city of Aleppo.

BILLINGTON: How would you contrast the methods of warfare followed by Russia, as opposed to the U.S. and allied forces in Syria?

BLACK: Well, first of all, the American involvement, the United States war against Syria is a war of aggression. We put a highly secretive CIA special activities center—these are kind of the James Bond guys of the Central Intelligence Agency, total Machiavellian; they will do anything, there’s no it’s no holds barred with these guys. We sent them in and we started the war in Syria. The war didn’t exist until we sent the CIA to coordinate with Al Qaeda elements. So we began the war and we were not invited into Syria.

In fact, the United States has seized, two significant parts of Syria. One is a very major part, the Euphrates River, carves off about a third of the northern part of Syria: The United States invaded that portion. We actually put troops on the ground, illegal—against any standard international law of war—it was it was a just a seizure. And this was this was something that was referred to by John Kerry, who was then the Secretary of State, and he was frustrated at the tremendous victory by the Syrian Armed Forces against Al Qaeda and ISIS. And he said, well, we probably need to move to Plan B. He didn’t announce what Plan B was, but it had it unfolded over time: Plan B was the American seizure of that northern portion of Syria. The importance of taking that part of Syria is, that it is the bread basket for all of the Syrian people. That is where the wheat—Syria actually had a significant wheat surplus and the people were very well fed in Syria, before the war. We wanted to take the wheat away, to cause famine among the Syrian people.

The other thing we were able to do, is to seize the major part of the oil and natural gas fields. Those also were produced in that northern portion beyond the Euphrates River. And the idea was that, by stealing the oil and then the gas, we would be able to shut down the transportation system, and at the same time, during the Syrian winters, we could freeze to death the Syrian civilian population, which in many cases were living in rubble, where these terrorist armies, with mechanized divisions had attacked and just totally destroyed these cities, and left people just living in little pockets of rubble.

We wanted to starve and we wanted to freeze to death the people of Syria, and that was Plan B.

Now, we became frustrated at a certain point that somehow these Syrians, these darned Syrians—it’s a tiny little country, and why are these people resilient? They’re fighting against two-thirds of the entire military and industrial force of the world. How can a nation of 23 million people possibly withstand this for over a decade? And so we decided we had to take action or we were going totally lose Syria. And so the U.S. Congress imposed the Caesar sanctions. The Caesar sanctions were the most brutal sanctions ever imposed on any nation. During the Second World War, sanctions were not nearly as strict as they were on Syria.

We weren’t at war with Syria! And yet we had a naval blockade around the country. We devalued their currency through the SWIFT system for international payments, making it impossible for them to purchase medications. So you had Syrian women who would contract breast cancer, just like we have here in this country. But instead, where in this country where breast cancer has become relatively treatable, we cut off the medical supplies so that the women in Syria would die of breast cancer because they could not get the medications, because we slam their dollars through the SWIFT system.

One of the last things that we did and the evidence is vague on it, but there was a mysterious explosion in the harbor in Lebanon, and it was a massive explosion of a shipload of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It killed hundreds of Lebanese people. It wounded thousands and thousands, destroyed the economy of Lebanon. And, most importantly, it destroyed the banking system of Lebanon, which was one of the few lifelines remaining to Syria. I don’t think that explosion was accidental. I think it was orchestrated, and I suspect that the Central Intelligence Agency was aware of the nation that carried out that action to destroy Beirut Harbor.

But throughout you see this this Machiavellian approach, where we use unlimited force and violence. And at the same time, we control the global media, to where we erase all discussions of what’s truly happening. So, to the man or the woman in the street, they think things are fine. Everything is being done for altruistic reasons, but it’s not.

BILLINGTON: Part of your military service was as a JAG officer, and for a period of time, you were the Army’s head of the criminal law division at the Pentagon. And in that light, what do you see as of how these Caesar sanctions—how would you look at those from the perspective of international law and military law?

BLACK: Well, now, I was not the international law expert. I was the criminal law expert. But I would say that making war on a civilian population is a crime of grave significance in the law of war.

One of the things that we did as we as we allied ourselves with Al Qaeda, and on and off with ISIS; I mean, we fought ISIS in a very serious way, but at the same time, we often employed them to use against the Syrian government. So it’s kind of a love-hate. But we have always worked with the terrorists. They were the core.

One of the policies that was followed was that under this extreme version of Islam, this Wahhabism, there was this notion that you possess a woman that you seize with your strong right arm in battle. And this goes back to the seventh century. And so we facilitated the movement of Islamic terrorists from 100 countries, and they came and they joined ISIS, they joined Al Qaeda, they joined the Free Syrian Army, all of these different ones. And one of the things that they knew when they arrived is that they were lawfully entitled to murder the husbands—I’m not talking about military people, I’m talking about civilians—they could murder the husbands, they could kill them, and then they could possess and own their wives and their children.

And they did it in vast numbers.

And so there was there was a campaign of rape, it was an organized campaign of rape across the nation of Syria. And there actually were slave markets that that arose in certain of these rebel areas where they actually had price lists of the different women.

And interestingly, the highest prices went to the youngest children, because there were a great number of pedophiles. And the pedophiles wanted to possess small children, because under the laws that were applied, they were permitted to rape these children repeatedly. They were able to rape the widows of the slain soldiers or the slain civilians, and possess them and buy them and sell them among themselves. This went on.

I’m not saying that the CIA created this policy, but they understood that it was a widespread policy, and they condoned it. They never criticized it in any way.

This was so bad, that I spoke with President Assad, who shared with me that they were in the process—when I visited in 2016; I was in a number of battle zones, and in the capital. And I met with the President, and he said that at that time, they were working on legislation in the parliament, to change the law of citizenship. They had always followed the Islamic law, which was that that a child citizenship derived from the father. But there were so many tens, hundreds of thousands of Syrian women impregnated by these terrorists who were imported into Syria, that it was necessary to change the law, so that they would have Syrian citizenship and they wouldn’t have to be returned to their ISIS father in Saudi Arabia, or in Tunisia. They could be retained in Syria. And I checked later and that law was passed and was implemented.

But it just shows the utter cruelty. When we fight these wars, we have no limits on the cruelty and the inhumanity that we’re prepared to impose on the people, making them suffer, so that somehow that will translate into overthrowing the government, and perhaps taking their oil, taking their resources.

BILLINGTON: Clearly, the policy against Russia today, by the current administration.

BLACK: Yes. Yes. You know, Russia is, perhaps more blessed with natural resources than any other nation on Earth. They are a major producer of grain, of oil, of aluminum, of fertilizers, of an immense number of things that tie into the whole global economy. And no doubt there are people who look at this and say, “if we could somehow break up Russia itself, there will be fortunes made, to where trillionaires will be made by the dozens.” And there’s some attraction to that. Certainly you’ve seen some of this taking place already, with foreign interests taking over Ukraine, and taking their vast resources.

But, we began a drive towards Russia, almost immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Soviet Union dissolved, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. And unfortunately, one of the great tragedies of history is that we failed to dissolve NATO. The sole purpose of NATO was to defend against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer existed. NATO went toe toe with the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was gone; it no longer existed. There was no purpose in NATO’s continuing to exist. However, we retained it, and it could not exist unless it had an enemy. Russia was desperate to become part of the West.

I met with the head of Gazprom, the largest corporation in Russia, And this was shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union, and he described for me how they were struggling to have their media be as free as it was in the West. And they perceived us as being much more free and open than we were. And he said, you know, we’ve got this problem because we have this uprising in Chechnya, which is part of Russia. And he said the Chechnyan rebels send videos to Russian television and we play them on Russian television, because that’s the way freedom of speech works.

And I said, “Are you kidding me?” I said, “You’re publishing the enemy propaganda films?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “Isn’t that the way you do it in the United States?” I said, “No.  In the Second World War, we took the head of the Associated Press and we put him in charge of wartime censorship, and it was very strict.”

So but this is just an example of how they were struggling. They went from being an officially atheist country, to where they became the most Christianized major nation in Europe, by far. Not only were the people, the most Christianized people in any major country in Europe, but the government itself was very supportive of the church, of the Christian faith.

They altered their Constitution to say that marriage was the union of one man and one woman.

They became very restrictive on the practice of abortion. They ended the practice of overseas adoptions, where some people were going to Russia and adopting little boys for immoral purposes. So they became a totally different culture and.

In any event, the United States has this long-standing strategy, this political-military strategy, of expanding the empire. We did it in the Middle East, where we attempted to create a massive neocolonial empire. It’s it became rather frayed. The people did not want it. And it seems to be doomed to extinction sometime—but it may go on for another 100 years. But in any event, we are trying to do something similar, as we roll to the East, right up virtually to the Russian border.

BILLINGTON:  So, the U.S. and U.K. position on the war in Ukraine, just over these last few weeks has now become not only supporting the war, but victory at all costs. This has been declared by Defense Secretary Austin and others. And they are pumping in huge quantities of not only defensive but offensive military weaponry to the Kyiv regime. What do you see as the consequence of this policy?

BLACK: I think one thing that it will do is it will ensure that a tremendous number of innocent Ukrainian soldiers will die needlessly. A lot of Russian soldiers will die needlessly. These are kids. You know, kids go off to war. I went off to war as a kid. You think your country, right or wrong, everything they’re doing is fine. It just it breaks my heart, when I look at the faces of young Russian boys, who have been who have been gunned down—in some cases very criminally by Ukrainian forces. And likewise, I see Ukrainian young men, who are being slaughtered on the battlefield.

We don’t care!

The United States and NATO, we do not care how many Ukrainians die.

Not civilians, not women, not children, not soldiers. We do not care. It’s become a great football game. You know, we’ve got our team. They’ve got their team, rah rah. We want to get the biggest score and run it up. And, you know, we don’t care how many how many of our players get crippled on the playing field, as long as we win.

Now, we are shipping fantastic quantities of weapons, and it’s caused the stock of Raytheon, which creates missiles, and Northrop Grumman, which creates aircraft and missiles, all of these defense industries have become tremendously bloated with tax dollars. I don’t think it’s ultimately going to change the outcome.

I think that Russia will prevail.

The Ukrainians are in a very awkward strategic position in the East.

But if you look at the way that this unfolded, President Putin made a desperate effort to stop the march towards war back in December of 2021. He went so far as to put specific written proposals on the table with NATO, peace proposals to defuse what was coming about.

Because at this point, Ukraine was massing troops to attack the Donbas. And so, he was trying to head this off.

He didn’t want war.

And NATO just blew it off, just dismissed it; never took it seriously, never went into serious negotiations.

At that point, Putin seeing that armed Ukrainians, with weapons to kill Russian troops were literally on their borders, decided he had to strike first.

Now, you could see, that this was not this was not some preplanned attack. This was not like Hitler’s attack into Poland, where the standard rule of thumb, is that you always have a 3-to-1 advantage when you are the attacker. You have to mass three times as many tanks and artillery and planes and men, as the other side has. In fact, when Russia went in, they went in with what they had, what they could cobble together on short notice.

And they were outnumbered by the Ukrainian forces.

The Ukrainian forces had about 250,000.

The Russians had perhaps 160,000. So instead of having three times as many, they actually had fewer troops than the Ukrainians. But they were forced to attack, to try to preempt the battle that was looming, where the Ukrainians had massed these forces against the Donbas.

Now, the Donbas is adjacent to Russia.

It is a portion of Ukraine that did not join with the revolutionary government that conducted the coup in 2014 and overthrew the government of Ukraine. They refused to become a part of the new revolutionary government of Ukraine. And so they declared their independence.

And Ukraine had massed this enormous army to attack against the Donbas.

And so Russia was forced to go in to preempt that planned attack by Ukraine.

And you could see that Russia very much hoped that they could conduct this special operation without unduly causing casualties for the Ukrainians, because they think of the Ukrainians, or at least they did think of the Ukrainians as brother Slavs; that they wanted to have good relations.

But there is a famous picture with a Russian tank, that had been stopped by a gathering of maybe 40 civilians who just walked out in the road and blocked the road and the tank stopped.

I can tell you, in Vietnam, if we had had a bunch of people who stood in the way of an American tank, going through, that tank would not have slowed down, in the slightest!

It wouldn’t honk the horn, it wouldn’t have done anything; wouldn’t have fired a warning shot. It would have just gone on. And I think that’s more typical—I’m not I’m not criticizing the Americans. I was there and I was fighting, and I probably would have would have driven the tank straight through myself.

But what I’m saying is that the rules of engagement for the Russians were very, very cautious.

They didn’t want to create a great deal of hatred and animosity.

The Russians did not go in—they did not bomb the electrical system, the media systems, the water systems, the bridges and so forth. They tried to retain the infrastructure of Ukraine in good shape because they wanted it to get back. They just wanted this to be over with and get back to normal. It didn’t work. The Ukrainians, the resistance was unexpectedly hard. The Ukrainian soldiers fought with great, great valor, great heroism. And. And so now the game has been upped and it’s become much more serious.

But it is amazing to look and to see that Russia dominates the air. They haven’t knocked out the train systems. They haven’t knocked out power plants. They haven’t knocked out so many things. They’ve never bombed the buildings in the center of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine; they haven’t bombed the buildings where the parliament meets. They’ve been incredibly reserved about these things, hoping against hope that peace could be achieved.

But I don’t think I don’t think Ukraine has anything to do with the decision about peace or war.

I think the decision about peace or war is made in Washington, D.C. As long as we want the war to continue, we will fight that war, using Ukrainians as proxies, and we will fight it to the last Ukrainian death.

BILLINGTON: How do you project the potential of a war breaking out directly between the United States and Russia? And what would that be like?

BLACK: You know, if you go back to the First World War in 1914, you had the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. He and his wife were killed. As a result of those two people being killed, you had a domino effect of all of these alliances, and anger, and media hysteria. And before it was over, I think it was 14 million people had been killed. It’s always hard to get true numbers, but anyway, it was an enormous number of millions of people who died as a result of that.

We need to recognize the risk of playing these games of chicken. Where, for example, the Turkish media just published an article saying that at Mariupol, where there was a great siege, that the Russians ultimately won.

The one area they haven’t taken over is this tremendous steel plant.

There are a lot of Ukrainian soldiers who are holed up there. And now it has come to light that apparently there are 50 French senior officers, who are trapped in that steel plant along with the Ukrainians.

The French soldiers have been on the ground fighting, directing the battle. And this was kept under wraps, ultra-secret, because of the French elections that just occurred. Had the French people known that there were a large number of French officers trapped and probably going to die in that steel plant, the elections would have gone the other way: Marine Le Pen would have won. And so it was very important that for the entire deep state, that it not come to light that these French officers were there.

We know that there are NATO officers who are present on the ground in Ukraine as advisors and so forth. We run the risk. Now, my guess is—and this is this is a guess, I could be wrong—but the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva, was sunk as a result of being struck by anti-ship missiles.

My guess is that those missiles, I think there’s a good chance they were fired by the French. Now, I could be wrong, but those missiles are so ultra-sensitive and so dangerous to our ships, that I don’t think that NATO would trust the missiles to Ukrainians, or to anybody else. I think I think they have to be maintained under NATO control and operation.

So I think that it was probably NATO forces that actually sunk the Moskva.

And you can see we’re taking these very reckless actions, and each time we sort of up the ante—I happen to be a Republican—but we have two Republican U.S. senators who have said that, “well, we might just need to use nuclear weapons against Russia.”

That is insane.

I think it’s important that people begin to discuss what a thermonuclear war would mean.

Now, we need to understand, we think, “oh, we’re big, and we’re bad, and we have all this stuff.”

Russia is roughly comparable to the United States in nuclear power.

They have hypersonic missiles, that we do not have. They can absolutely evade any timely detection, and they can fire missiles from Russia and reach San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City.

And if you think about just Virginia, where I happen to live, if there were a nuclear war—and keep in mind, they also have a very large and effective fleet of nuclear submarines that lie off the coast of the United States.

They have a great number of nuclear-tipped missiles, and they can evade any defenses we have.

So just in Virginia, if you look at it, all of Northern Virginia would be essentially annihilated.

There would hardly be any human life remaining in Loudoun County, Prince William County, Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria. The Pentagon lies in in Arlington County:

The Pentagon would simply be a glowing mass of molten sand.

There would be no human life there.

And there would be no human life for many miles around it. Just across the Potomac, the nation’s capital, there would be no life remaining in the nation’s capital. The Capitol building would disappear forever.

All of the monuments, all of these glorious things—nothing would remain.

If you go to the coast of Virginia, you have the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, you have the Port of Norfolk. You have you have the greatest accumulation of naval power on the face of the Earth. This is where we park all of our aircraft carriers, our nuclear submarines, all of those things. There would be nothing remaining.

There would be nothing remaining of any of those shipping industries there.

And you can carry this on.

You talk about New York City, probably New York City itself, not only would everybody be killed, but it would probably be impossible for people to inhabit New York City for hundreds of years afterwards. But not only would it cease to be a place of vibrant human life, but probably going out for maybe half a millennium, it would not recover any sort of civilization.

We need to understand the gravity of what we’re doing.

Perhaps if it were a matter of life and death for the United States, what happens in Ukraine, that would be one thing. Certainly when the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba, that targeted the United States, that was worth taking the risk, because it was right on our border and it threatened us. And it was it was a battle worth fighting for and a risk worth taking.

The Russians are in this in exactly the mirror image of that situation, because for them, the life of Russia depends on stopping NATO from advancing further right into Ukraine, right to their borders.

They cannot afford not to fight this war.

They cannot afford not to win this war.

So I think, toying with this constant escalation in a war that, really, in a place that has no significance to Americans—Ukraine is meaningless to Americans; it has no impact on our day-to-day lives. And yet we’re playing this reckless game that risks the lives of all people in the United States and Western Europe for nothing! Just absolutely for nothing!

BILLINGTON: Many flag grade officers certainly understand the consequences that you just described in a rather hair-raising way. Why is it that, while there are some generals speaking out in Italy, in France, in Germany, warning that we are pursuing a course that could lead to nuclear war, why are there not such voices from flag grade officers—retired, perhaps—saying what you’re saying here today?

BLACK: You know, there’s been a tremendous deterioration in the quality of flag officers, going back to, well, certainly the 1990s.

We had very, very fine flag officers, during the time I was on active duty—I left in ‘94—just superior quality people.

But what happened is, subsequently, we had President Clinton take over, later, we had Obama. We’ve got Biden now. And they apply a very strict political screen to their military officers.

And so, we now have “yes men.”

These are not people whose principal devotion is to the United States and its people. Their principal devotion is to their careers and their ability to network with other military officers upon retirement. There’s a very strong network that can place military generals into think tanks, where they promote war, into organizations like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and all of these defense operations, where they can get on boards and things like that.

So there’s quite a personal price that you pay for saying, “Hey, stop. War is not in the interests of the American people.” If we had a better quality of individual, we would have people with the courage who would say, “I don’t care what it costs me personally.”

But it is very difficult to get into the senior ranks, if you are an individual guided by principle, and patriotism, and devotion to the people of this nation. That’s just not how it works. And at some point, we need a President who will go in and shake the tree, and bring a lot of these people falling down from it, because they’re dangerous.

They’re very dangerous to America.

BILLINGTON: Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have a petition — and we held a conference on April 9th on the same theme — that the only way to really stop this descent into hell and into potential nuclear holocaust is for a new Peace of Westphalia. In this case, an international conference to secure a new security architecture and a new development architecture, the right to development for all countries. And like the Peace of Westphalia, one in which all sides sit down together, recognize their interests, their sovereign interests, as including the sovereign interests of the others, and forgiving all past crimes. Anything short of that is going to keep this division of the world into warring blocs. Just like I asked what’s keeping the generals from speaking out, why, and what will it take, to get Americans to recognize that we can and must sit down with Russians, and with Chinese, and with all other nations and establish a true, just world based on the dignity of man and the right to development and security?

BLACK: I think, unfortunately, there’s going to have to be enormous pain to drive that, just as there was with the Peace of Westphalia. A nuclear war would do it; an economic cataclysm of unprecedented proportions, resulting from the unbridled printing of money that we’ve engaged in over the last 20 years, there are things that could bring it about.

But at this point, the media have been so totally censored and so biased that the American people really don’t have a perception of the need for anything of that sort. It’s going to be difficult.

You know, here’s something that’s interesting that has happened. Here in this country, you would think the entire world is against Russia.

It’s not.

In fact, there are major countries of the world that lean towards Russia in this war, starting with China, but then Brazil, you’ve got South Africa, Saudi Arabia—a wide array of countries. India. India is tremendously supportive of Russia.

The idea that somehow we have this enormously just cause, it doesn’t strike a great deal of the world that it is just, and much of the world does not accept the latest propaganda about war crimes: this thing about Bucha. That’s probably the most prominent of all the war crimes discussions.

And what was Bucha?

There was a film taken of a vehicle driving down the road in Bucha, which had been recaptured from the Russians. And every hundred feet or so there was some person with his hands, zip tied behind his back, and he’d been killed. It was not announced until four days after the Ukrainians had retaken Bucha.

Now, we knew almost nothing about it. We actually didn’t even have proof that people had been killed. But assuming they had, we didn’t know where they had been killed. We did not know who they were. We did not know who killed them. We did not know why they were killed. No one could provide an adequate motive for the Russians to have killed them. The Russians held Bucha for a month. If they were going to kill them, why didn’t they kill them during that month? And if you’re going to slaughter a bunch of people, wouldn’t they all be in one place and wouldn’t you gun them all down there? Why would they be distributed along a roadside, a mile along the way? It makes no sense!

What we do know is that four days after the mayor of Bucha joyously announced that the city was liberated, four days after the Ukrainian army had moved in, and their special propaganda arm of the Ukrainian military were there, all of a sudden there were these dead people on the road. How come they weren’t there when the Russians were there? How come they only appeared after the Russians were gone?

If I were looking at it as simply a standard criminal case, and I was talking to Criminal Investigation Division or the FBI, or military police or something, I’d say, “OK, the first thing, let’s take a look at the Ukrainians.” My guess would be, and you start with a hunch when you’re investigating a crime—my hunch is that the Ukrainians killed off these people after they moved in, and after they looked around, and said, “OK, who was friendly towards the Russian troops while the Russians were here? We’re going to execute them.” That would be my guess. Because I don’t see any motive for the Russians to have just killed a few people on their way out of town.

And nobody questions this, because the corporate media are so monolithic. We know for a fact, from the mouth of the head of a Ukrainian hospital, the guy who ran the hospital, he boasted that he had given strict orders to all of his doctors, that when wounded Russian POWs, when casualties were brought in, they were to be castrated. Now, this is a horrific war crime, admitted from the mouth of the hospital administrator, and the Ukrainian government said, “we’ll kind of look into that,” Like it’s no big thing.

I can’t think of a more horrific, horrific war crime, ever.

Where did you hear about it, on ABC and MSNBC and CNN and FOX News? Not a whisper. And yet the proof is undeniable. We had another clip where there was a POW gathering point, where the Ukrainians would bring POWs to a central point for processing—and this is about a seven-minute video—and the Ukrainian soldiers simply gunned them all down. And they had probably 30 of these wounded Russian soldiers lying on the ground, some of them clearly dying from their wounds. Some of them, they put plastic bags over their heads.

Now, these are these are guys who are laying there, sometimes fatally wounded with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, and they’ve got plastic bags over their heads, making it difficult to breathe. And because they can’t raise their hands, they can’t take the bags off, so that they can breathe. At the end of the video, the Ukrainians bring in a van, and there are three unwounded Russian POWs.

Without the slightest thought or hesitation, as the three come off, and their hands are bound behind their backs, they gunned down two of them, right on camera and they fall over. And the third one gets on his knees, and begs that they won’t hurt him. And then they gun him down!

These are crimes.

And these were not refuted by the Ukrainian government. But you’d never even know that they occurred! So far, I will tell you that the only proven—I’m not saying that there aren’t war crimes happening on both sides. I’m just telling you, that the only ones where I have seen, fairly irrefutable proof of war crimes, have been on the Ukrainian side.

Now, often you hear it said, well, the Russians have destroyed this or destroyed that. Well, I’ve got to tell you, you go back to the wars that we fought when we invaded Iraq, the “Shock and Awe,” we destroyed virtually everything in Iraq, everything of significance. We bombed military and civilian targets without much discrimination.

The coalition flew 100,000 sorties in 42 days. You compare that to the Russians, who have only flown 8,000 sorties in about the same period of time. 100,000 American sorties versus 8,000, in about the same time.  I think the Russians have tended to be more selective.

Whereas we went out — the philosophy of Shock and Awe is that you destroy everything that is needed to sustain human life and for a city to function. You knock out the water supply, the electrical supply, the heat, the oil, the gasoline; so that you knock out all of the major bridges. And then you just continue to destroy everything.

So it’s really ironic. And keep in mind, Iraq is a relatively small country. Ukraine is a huge country. 100,000 sorties in 42 days, 8,000 sorties in about the same time. A tremendous difference in violence between what we did in Iraq, and what they have done in Ukraine. So there’s simply no credibility when you actually get down to the facts and you look at the way that the war has been conducted.

BILLINGTON: Well. Senator Black, Colonel Black.  I think the way you have described the horror that’s already taking place, and considering that we can’t wait for a nuclear war to provoke a new a Peace of Westphalia, I would suggest that what you have described is already horrific enough. And when combined with the hyperinflationary breakdown now sweeping the Western world, with everybody being affected, we believe that we have to take that as the adequate horror, and a recognition of a descent into a dark age, to motivate citizens in Europe, in the United States.

We are finding that there is a waking up of people who have not wanted to look at their responsibility to the human race as a whole in the past, but who now are forced to consider that, which is the basis on which we’ve called for this, in this petition, for an international conference of all nations, with the U.S., Russia, China, India and so forth, sitting down to end this horror; but to also bring about a true peace for mankind and an era of peace through development.

And we thank you for giving this breath of ugly truth to a population which needs to hear it. If you have any final thoughts, I ask you to give your final greetings.

BLACK:  I’ll just add one thing, and I thank the Schiller Institute for the tremendous effort that you’ve made towards achieving world peace. It is one of the most important efforts ever made, and I certainly applaud that.

If you look at Russia, the Russian troops that went into battle in Ukraine, for the most part had never experienced combat. This is a peacetime army. Russia doesn’t fight overseas wars. Syria is the only significant overseas engagement that they have had. You compare that with the United States, where literally speaking, if a soldier retires today after a 30-year career in the military, he will not have served a single day when the United States was at peace. Kind of an amazing thing. And you contrast that with the Russian military, where, with few exceptions, the country has been at peace.

So we really need to start thinking about peace and about the limits of warfare, this idea that somehow we need a zero sum game where we take from you and that enhances us. We’re in a world where everyone can gain and prosper by peace. But I’m concerned that the hyperinflation may be the wake-up call that jolts the world into a recognition that we must have a new paradigm for the future, and I think the Peace of Westphalia at that point might become a possibility.

So thank you again for the opportunity to be here. There’s always hope and I think there’ll be good things in the future, with the blessings of God.

BILLINGTON: And thank you very much from Schiller Institute, The LaRouche Organization, and EIR.  We’ll get this posted as quickly as we possibly can, because it’s going to have a tremendous impact. Thank you.

BLACK: Thank you very much.

1981 SAAB 906 Turbo, Sweden’s 6-Wheeled Colossal With Full Variety of Gadgets

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There aren’t a lot of six-wheeled cars out there and often they’re one-of-a-kind mods like this Saab 906 Turbo. It was built by designer Leif Mellberg and it’s the biggest Saab that was ever built.

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The car started its life as a 1981 900 GLS, which he then extended by nearly two feet, giving the car a total length of 209 inches. Mellberg wasn’t content to only make his creation longer. He also made it wider, so this 906 Turbo was a beast.

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A car this impressive in size needed to have an equally impressive interior, so it’s loaded up with all sorts of features that were very high-end when the car was built back in 1984. It had a video screen, a 16-speaker stereo system, fridge/freezer/heater cabinets, a police radio, and radar detector. Probably, at the time, most well-equipped car in Sweden.

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The car did not serve as a transport vehicle such as Leif originally planned, and became a rolling advertisement for his company Mellbergs custom. Unfortunately, the car was 20 years ago ended up at the junkyard in Varberg.

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Bacon-Wrapped Barbecue Pork Tenderloin

This sure-to-please roast is quick and simple to prepare, but guaranteed to impress. Pork tenderloin is wrapped in bacon and glazed with a smoky, slightly spicy, slightly sweet barbecue sauce.

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Ingredients

  • 8 slices bacon
  • 2 pork tenderloins (about 1 lb each)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/3 cup Annie’s™ Naturals organic sweet & spicy BBQ sauce
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped chipotle chile in adobo sauce
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Steps

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    Heat oven to 425°F. Line 15x10x1-inch pan with heavy-duty foil; spray foil with cooking spray.
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    Microwave bacon between layers of microwavable paper towels on microwavable plate 3 to 4 minutes or just until edges begin to brown but are still soft and pliable. Cut each piece in half crosswise.
  • 3
    Season tenderloins with salt and pepper; place in pan. Arrange bacon pieces diagonally over top of pork, pressing bacon over sides.
  • 4
    In small bowl, mix barbecue sauce, chipotle chile and cumin. Brush tops of each tenderloin with glaze. Bake tenderloins 30 to 35 minutes or until meat thermometer inserted in center of pork reads 145°F. Let stand 10 minutes before slicing.

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Will The First Public UFO Hearing In Congress In 50 Years Help Set The Stage For A Great Delusion Of Epic Proportions?

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MM, comment: do not hold your breath. -MM

Why have they suddenly decided to reveal so much?  For decades, a very thick cloak of secrecy has surrounded what the government really knows about UFOs, but now our politicians are talking openly about such things.  In fact, Congress just held their very first public hearing about UFOs in 50 years.  So what has changed?  If anything happens in Washington, it is usually because someone has an underlying agenda.  Could it be possible that we are being prepared for some sort of a huge revelation?

To me, it is clear that something is up.

And I think that it says a lot that the power structures in our society are now treating this topic very seriously.  At this point, even CNN is admitting that UFOs are no longer being “relegated to the fringes of public policy”…

Key lawmakers warned at a House hearing on Tuesday that unidentified aerial phenomena — popularly known as UFOs — must be investigated and taken seriously as a potential threat to national security.

The event marked the first congressional public hearing on UFOs in decades, a high-profile moment for a controversial topic that has long been relegated to the fringes of public policy.

During the hearing on Tuesday, U.S. officials confessed that there have been at least 400 “unexplained sightings” by members of our military…

US SPY chiefs were grilled by lawmakers in a historic hearing on UFOs as dramatic videos of two sightings were shown.

Security officials were forced to admit there have been 400 unexplained sightings reported by the US military .

That number is very different from the number that we were given in 2021.

Late last year, the Pentagon told us that there were just 144 unexplained sightings.

But now we are being told that the real number is nearly triple the original number.

And on Tuesday we were also told that there have been “11 near misses” with U.S. military aircraft…

They also confessed there have been 11 near misses with unidentified objects and US military aircraft, and they are probing incidents where craft may have attempted “jam” US planes.

So let me get this straight.

11 different times our aircraft were almost hit by other aircraft that we simply cannot identify?

Why weren’t we told about this a long time ago?

Of course there is so much more that the Pentagon is choosing not to tell us.  According to Politico, one Defense Department official is freely admitting that there is a great deal that is not being publicly revealed…

“Without forcing peoples’ hand, it is going to be very difficult to uncover legacy ventures and programs that we know about based on oral interviews we dug up,” said a Defense Department official who is involved in the new effort but was not authorized to speak publicly. “There has to be a forcing mechanism.”

“There has to be something to hold people accountable but also give them a chance to come out clean for a period of time,” the official added, noting that in his experience the Pentagon oversight group has been “stonewalled.”

That same official went on to explain that the people that are refusing to come forward are protecting some “very interesting information”.

I would definitely like to know what that “very interesting information” is.

Wouldn’t you?

I think that most of the population would be completely floored if everything that the government knows was finally put on the table.

According to one member of Congress, our military has actually recovered physical wreckage from a UFO that crashed…

A CONGRESSMAN has claimed the US has wreckage recovered from a UFO as the phenomena takes centre stage today in Washington.

Rep. Tim Burchett – a long term advocate for disclosure – told The Sun Online he has been informed by reliable sources that “material” has been recovered from the objects or craft that have been reported in skies over the US.

So why can’t the American people know about this?

What are they trying to hide from us?

Burchett says that he can’t say more because this information was given to him in a “classified setting”

The Tennessee Republican declined to elaborate further as he said the information had been passed to him in a “classified setting”.

“I’ve been told by multiple sources we have recovered something from these [crafts or objects],” Mr Burchett told The Sun Online.

It is so frustrating to hear about this and know that we will probably never be given the specific details.

The American people deserve the truth, but so much is being purposely hidden.

Lue Elizondo, a former senior staffer at the Pentagon, says that there has been much speculation in military circles about the true source of these unidentified craft

‘People jump to speculation that it’s from the Pleiades or something like that, when in fact one of the hypothesis when I was in AATIP was this could be as natural to Earth as we are, but we are just at a point where technologically we aren’t advanced enough we can collect information on it and begin to try to figure out what it is,’ he said.

‘There’s been another hypothesis that these things are possibly from underwater and as outlandish as it may seem, there is some anecdotal evidence that supports all of these observations, so what we want to do is try to get as much data on the table as we can before we start eliminating,’ said Elizondo.

He said way too much right there, because he got way too close to details that we aren’t supposed to know about.

If he keeps talking like that, he could end up being killed.

Because even though our officials are now talking more openly about UFOs, there are still many things that they would very much prefer to keep secret.

In my latest book, I talk extensively about the great deception that I believe is coming.

These unidentified aircraft are very real, and every year they are spotted thousands upon thousands of times all over the globe.

Now this subject is being brought out into the spotlight, and that should make all of us very nervous.

Mother Creates An Amazing Cardboard Kitchen For Her Daughter

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Rodessa Villanueva-Reyes went above and beyond to create a play kitchen for her young daughter. It may look like a store-bought kitchen, but it was crafted almost entirely from cardboard boxes! It’s a beautiful DIY project that every kid would love to have, and Rodessa was kind enough to share the instructions with anyone interested in making something like this for their own child.

The first step was determining a shape and organizing the boxes accordingly.

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Then draw the outlines each box where you want to place the doors.

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A combination of vinyl stickers and paper cover the cardboard.

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Just add your children’s kitchen toys.

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Add your child’s name and they’ll have their own little restaurant!

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To install a sink, cut a circle in the cardboard and fill it with a pot. The “faucet” is just an old soap dispenser.

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Jar caps can be used for the dials on the stove.

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How cool is this?

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“Smiling mom sitting on the grass, 1960s”

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British Government Admits: COVID-19 Vaccines PERMANENTLY DAMAGE Natural Immune System

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The UK government admits that the COVID-19 Experimental mRNA “vaccine” has damaged the natural immune system of those who have been double-dosed.

The government has confessed that double-vaxxed (or more) people, will never  — ever  — be able to acquire full natural immunity to COVID variants – or possibly any other virus.

Keen observers of this COVID debacle are now saying “The real pandemic will now begin”  because all the people whose immune systems are permanently damaged, may not be able to fight-off __any__ future viral infection!

In its Week 42 “COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report,” (Direct Link HERE) the UK Department of Health admits on page 23 that:

N antibody levels appear to be lower in people who become infected after two doses of [the vax].”

It goes on to say that this drop in antibodies is essentially – get this – permanent.

What does this mean? Well, we know that the wacky vax does not prevent infection or transmission of the China virus (indeed, the report elsewhere shows that vaxxed adults are now much more likely to be infected than unvaxxed ones).

The British now find that the vax interferes with the body’s ability to make antibodies after infection not only against the spike protein but also against other parts of the virus.

In particular, vaxxed persons do not appear to form antibodies against the nucleocapsid protein – the envelope of the virus (which is a crucial part of the response in unvaccinated people).

In the long term, the vaxxed are far more susceptible to any mutations in the COVID spike protein, even if they have already been infected and cured once or more.

The unvaccinated, on the other hand, gain lasting – if not permanent – immunity to all strains of the alleged virus after being naturally infected with it even once.

A win-win for those who kept their heads, and didn’t buy-into all the COVID hype.

A no-win for those who went with the crowd, or were willfully obtuse, intellectually lazy, or arrogant.

Scott Ritter’s Switcheroo: “Why I Radically Changed My Overall Assessment”

From HERE

On Sunday, the foreign policy blogs were abuzz with the news that Scott Ritter had done “an about-face in his assessment of the war”. It appears that the ex-Marine had examined recent developments in Ukraine and concluded that it’s going to be much harder for Russia to win than he had originally thought..

Naturally, the news of Ritter’s reversal sent shockwaves across the internet, especially among the people who follow events in Ukraine closely and who greatly admire his even-handed analysis. Some of these people clearly felt betrayed by Ritter’s comments and blasted him as a “concern troll” which refers to a person who feigns sympathy while actually feeling the opposite. This is a terrible way to treat a guy who’s devoted so much of his time to informing people about an issue of which they might know very little without his research. Besides, Ritter is no hypocrite. Quite the contrary.

It’s fair to say, however, that Ritter has probably been the most outspoken proponent of the “Russia is winning” theory, a hypothesis that runs counter to everything we read in the legacy media or see on the cable news channels. Unfortunately, Ritter’s views on the matter have changed dramatically, and that’s due almost entirely to developments on the ground. As Ritter candidly admits, “The military aid the west is providing to Ukraine is changing the dynamic and if Russia doesn’t find a way to address this meaningfully… the conflict will never end.”

That’s quite a turnaround from a statement he made just weeks earlier that, “Russia is winning the war, and winning it decisively.”

So, what changed? What are the so-called developments that led to Ritter’s volte-face?

Here are a few excerpts from the interview that triggered the fracas. Ritter was joined by Ray McGovern and host Garland Nixon on Saturday Morning Live. (The quotes are copied from video. I accept blame for any mistakes.)

 Scott Ritter (start at 47:50 minute mark) — “The thing that frustrates me… is that, it was my assessment that it would be very hard for Ukraine to absorb this new equipment and material (Material– the additional lethal weapons that have recently been shipped to Ukraine) but the howitzers are already operating against Russia. (And) They are having an effect in the Kharkov region. Not all 90 of them, but they have several batteries in place that are being used.

How did this happen?

And this is why I have radically changed my overall assessment, because I had been operating on the assumption that Russia would be able to interdict the vast majority of this equipment, but Russia has shown itself unable or unwilling to do this and– as a result– the Ukrainians are having meaningful impact on the battlefield. Not in the areas of main contention, like the Donbass, but on the periphery. This is why Russia has carried out tactical withdrawals north of Kharkov, because in order to match Ukraine’s best capabilities, Russia would have to divert resources from its main effort which Russia has decided not to do. So, they are re-configuring the battlefield. (trading land in different areas)…(“Saturday Morning Live with Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, You Tube) 

So, while Ritter’s sympathies have not changed in the slightest, it’s clear that his analysis has. At first, he didn’t think that the deluge of lethal weaponry would affect the outcome of the war. Now he’s not so sure. It’s a honest mistake but, still, he needed to ‘come clean’ and explain the factors that contributed to his U-turn. Here’s more from the same interview:

 Scott Ritter– This is a transformative moment in the war, because what it means is that demilitarization is not taking place. For all the forces Russia is destroying in the east, Ukraine is rebuilding significant capability (in the west) I liken this to Moscow in December 1941, when the Germans were moving towards Moscow and the Russians just started throwing things at them., sacrificing everything to slow the German offensive. until General Winter and the combination of Siberian divisions gave them the ability to counterattack. The Germans were bled white and they were stopped and turned back. If Russia doesn’t change the calculation, then that is the trajectory we are heading on., because 200,000 troops–however capable they may be, are only capable of doing so much. And the fighting that’s taking place right now –even though it is slaughtering Ukrainians– it isn’t cost free to the Russians. They’re losing equipment, they’re losing men, they’re losing material, and unless Putin mobilizes or transfers forces in, those aren’t being replaced. So, instead of having 200,000 online, Russia might have 180,000 men. And if you don’t think removing 20,000 men doesn’t change the options available to the Russian leadership, then you don’t know anything about war.”

So, I believe Russia is going to win in the east, they are grinding them down as we speak, they are slaughtering them; the amount of death and destruction that is being dealt to the Ukrainians is unimaginable, but I believe the Ukrainians are willing to take these losses in order to buy time to reconstitute a military that will challenge Russia Because unless Russia is willing to jump across the Dnieper River and head into western Ukraine where it can eliminate the strategic depth that the Ukrainians are being gifted by the Russians, then demilitarization of Ukraine is not going to take place. It can’t take place when tens of billions of dollars of equipment is pouring in and Russia is not able to interdict it. The fact that these advanced howitzers are operating on the front lines right now, shows there’s something wrong with the Russian methodology. And–unless they alter that methodology– I think we’re in for a very long summer.” (“Saturday Morning Live with Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, You Tube) 

It’s hard to grasp what Ritter is saying here. Is he actually suggesting that Putin expand the current “special operation” into a full-blown World War? At one point, he casually opines that Russia will have to mobilize 1 and a half million men (Note: Russia currently only has 200,000 in Ukraine) if they want to prevail in Ukraine and then move on to Finland. It’s impossible to tell by Ritter’s tone whether he is simply making an objective observation of ‘what is needed’ to succeed or if he is making an explicit recommendation that he thinks Russia’s High Command should consider. I can’t answer that. Here’s more from the interview:

 Scott Ritter(5:20 mark)– “The idea that the Ukrainian military has been eliminated as an effective fighting force is a flawed concept, and unless Russia broadens its special military operation– probably to the point of changing it form a special military operation to a war which includes the totality of Ukrainian battle-space–(then) this is a conflict that is dangerously close to becoming unwinnable by Russia which means that while they can complete their objectives in the east with 200,000 troops, they aren’t able to prevent Ukraine from rearming and reequipping when Ukraine is being provided with tens of billions of dollars of equipment by NATO —Whenever you provide your enemy with “safe space” to rebuild military capability, you’re never going to win. …

Yes, Russia is winning in the east which is what they said their objective was all along. And they are accomplishing that. That is the special Military Operation. But now we’re talking about “war”, and I don’t think Russia has made that transition yet. This is a defacto proxy war between the west and Russia using Ukrainian forces as NATO’s sword. The object of this is to “bleed Russia dry”. And if Russia doesn’t change the dynamic, Russia will be bled dry.” Zelensky has indicated that he’s willing to mobilize a million people, at a time when the west is ready to provide the funding and equipment to turn those million men into a real military threat. 

So, I see what has been happening in the last few weeks as being decisive. 

The military aid the west is providing is changing the dynamic and if Russia doesn’t find a way to address this meaningfully, and to eliminate it as a military capability… then the conflict will never end.” (“Saturday Morning Live with Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, You Tube)  

There it is from the horse’s mouth. Readers will have to draw their own conclusions.

IMHO, Scott Ritter is gradually adjusting to the idea that the conflict in Ukraine is not a just regional skirmish between two quarrelsome neighbors, nor is it a proxy-war between NATO and Russia.

No.

Ukraine is the first phase of a broader plan for crushing Russia, collapsing its economy, removing its leaders, seizing its natural resources, splintering its territory, and projecting US power across Central Asia to the Pacific Rim.

Ukraine is about hegemony, empire, and pure, unalloyed power.

Most important, Ukraine is the first battle in a Third World War, a war that was concocted and launched by Washington to ensure another unchallenged century of American primacy.

Miyu Kojima Creates Miniature Replicas Of Lonely Deaths

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Twenty six-year old Miyu Kojima works for a company that cleans up after kodokushi (孤独死) or lonely deaths: a Japanese phenomenon of people dying alone and remaining undiscovered for a long period of time.

The instances first began to be reported around 2000, and are thought to be a product of increased social isolation coupled with a greying population.

Part art therapy and part public service campaign, Kojima spends a large portion of her free time recreating detailed miniature replicas of the rooms she has cleaned. A word of caution: although recreated without the corpses, some of the replicas can be quite disturbing.

“I mainly clean up these flats, apartments, houses where lonely death had happened and also organise their mementos,” says Miyu. On average, those whose homes she cleans, she says, may have been lying undiscovered for a month or two; the longest, eight months.

Sometimes, they clean the homes of people who died in hospital, were murdered or committed suicide.

At first, Miyu found the work tough. The scenes could be grotesque. Even after the body has been removed, hair and seepage from the corpse sometimes remain. The work can be physically demanding. But “what I find most difficult,” she explains, “is to talk to the family. I don’t know how much I can really ask or talk.”

To preserve and document the scene, the company always takes photographs of the rooms in case relatives want to see them. However, Kojima noticed that the photographs really don’t capture the sadness of the incident. And while she had no formal art training, she decided to go to her local craft store and buy supplies, which she used to create her replicas.

She sometimes uses color-copies of the photographs, which she then sculpts into miniature objects.

Kojima says that she spends about 1 month on each replica.

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“This is my mother before the prom. I think she looks like Jackie O in this picture, 1960s”

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Bank of England Governor Warns of “APOCALYPTIC” Food Price Increases

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The governor of the Bank of England has warned of “apocalyptic” food prices, saying he is “helpless” to thwart soaring inflation.

Andrew Bailey hit back at criticism that the Bank acted too slowly to tackle inflation, blaming a “bad situation” on a series of external shocks including the war in Ukraine and the lockdown in China.

“We can’t predict things like wars – that’s not in anybody’s power,” he said.

He said he does not think the Bank could have done anything differently to prevent soaring prices.

He said the conflict in Ukraine has pushed up energy prices, which are the biggest driver of inflation – while the lockdown in Shanghai has exacerbated increases in the cost of goods due to its effect on supply chains.

Mr. Bailey said the Bank also underestimated the number of people who would leave the labor market after the threat of the pandemic receded, which is leading to labor shortages that affect inflation.

The consumer price index (CPI) measure of inflation hit 7% in England during March and is expected to pass 10% later this year.

Americans can expect exactly the same situation.

Four Potential Outcomes

Strauss and Howe laid out four potential outcomes, which I have presented many times before in previous articles.

Three of the four are not positive. The only positive outcome is #4; the last outcome listed. In it, the United States of America is transformed into something better and greater.

The previous three are all bad, and only vary by degree…

  • The entire world is destroyed (Senario #1)
  • Humanity survives, but enters a very dark time, and regresses. (Senario #2)
  • The United States is destroyed, but the rest of the world continues on (Senario #3)

If you asked me a few years ago, I would have selected outcome three as the most likely, as the American Empire died with a whimper, much like the British Empire after World War II.

Others, fixiated on the belief that the world revolves around the United States and it’s proxy nations cannot imagine a world without the United States. But I tell you what, the entire rest of the world can.

I believe outcome three is inevitable. The United States will die in a firery end, and the rest of the world, while damaged and “dinged” will continue on. As the dominant nation (America) has chosen to take a course which will engulf the planet in a war with an unknowable outcome.

However, given [1] the enormous advantage in leadership, economies, resources, social stability and military comparatively of a unified China / Russia to that of the United States, as well as [2] the historical trends that illustrate complete destruction of the nation hosting the global reserve currency, there is no question that the United States must and will die for a new global world order to be birthed.

We can only hope that in America cooler heads will prevail, but observing what is considered Western “leadership” in this day and age, I’m not optimistic. The only real leaders are found in Russia, China, and the rest of Asia. America, and Europe are acting like drug addicted, mentally ill, evil, psychopaths, with bullying behaviors and an over-inflated ego based on reinforced ignorance.

From Strauss and Howe…

  1. This Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection, and bad luck.
  2. The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm – which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance – could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. Such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.
  3. The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of the United States as a nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. The nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, the Soviet Union only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.
  4. Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.

I’ve always preached preparedness and combining forces with like-minded people, but can you really prepare for a world where outcome one or two is the climax of this Fourth Turning? I know many bloggers make money off of doom, but I simply cannot conceive of a more American-positive outcome based on the current dynamics driving the world towards war.

I’d love to give a Knute Rockne speech to inspire the team to rally around someone who can lead us to victory. But, as far as the United States and it’s proxy nations are concerned, all I see are monkeys with matches in a room full of dynamite.

It’s only a matter of time until it explodes.

The decline of the American Military Empire is awful to watch and even worse to live through. To you Americans trapped inside the seething cauldron, watching your world crumble around you, I offer my sympathies, and wish you Godspeed in what the future may have in store for you.

So, thank you for reading my ramblings. I hope I’m wrong.

S1E9- Its Your Funeral – Patrick MxGoohan’s The Prisoner

Provided to all you “prisoners” out there, desperately trying to figure out a way off this “prison planet”…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
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A new revised direction on Geopolitics out of the United States. It’s very clear now.

Enjoy this article and be careful with the USA/Ukie propaganda. It is everywhere.

Well, today is 24MAY22 and the Chinese understands, and we all know, what the direction and the revised thinking of the United States is (Geopolitically speaking). That is crystal clear after the Biden meetings with South Korea, Japan, and Australia. We now fully understand the pans for global dominance out of the USA.

This is the manifestation and implementation of the “unipolar” (rules-based order) world.

The original plan is out. It is obsolete. It is not possible.

The original plan; to first [1] destroy Russia, and then [2] destroy China is “off the table”. That plan is not feasible.

So the plan has become to one of isolation; to isolate Russia from the rest of the world, and to isolate China from the rest of the world. Both of them together. The way to accomplish this is simple.

First by cutting off and interrupting the systems of communication, trade, and interaction… and if that fails, to place harsh embargoes on Asia and punish all those that dare disobey the Untied States.

Russia

The American plan to [1] suppress Russia, [2] invade (parts of it) and [3] topple Russian leadership though domestic discord and [4] to isolate Russia have all failed.

Ukraine

Discussions and manipulations on how to carve up Ukraine into something other than a nation is in the works. We can see this with Poland’s involvement at this time.

Iron Curtain

The USA intends to put up another “Iron Curtain” to isolate Asia (Russia and China together). One half of this curtain is already up and complete. That is the part around Russia. And, you know,  nations such as Sweden and Finland don’t want to be on the Asian side of that curtain.

All of Asia

This curtain will surround all of Asia, and that was the purpose of the Biden meeting; to set up work-around systems so that no one trades or interacts with China, Russia or any of their friends.

China

But China is trying to be peaceful. How to justify putting it behind a curtain? Certainly, of course there will need to be a “reason” to enact “Sanctions from Hell”.

Which of course, are just the first stages of a full-on military embargo. And that will involve the crossing of one or more “red lines” regarding Taiwan.

The USA will scream, and holler.  The MSM propaganda machine will be working overtime (again), but you know, the USA will start sailing up and down the Chinese coast, but will refrain from getting involved in a “Hot war”. The “Sanctions from Hell” will appear, and that will lead up to the Pacific Rim nations choosing sides.

The “Wet Dream” of the United States

If the USA gets their way, Russia and China will become isolated and alone, and will eventually collapse domestically, as the USA will continue to wage bio-warfare carpet bombing, engage in “color revolutions”, and do everything in their ability to crush Russia and China simultaneously. Eventually, within a year, a “NEW Iron Curtain” will be up and policed by the nations of the world.

Judging from past historical precedents, I do not believe that this will turn out as planned.

What probably will happen…

We do not know what will happen.

Certainly the concerns of a full-scale thermonuclear war is still possible, but I personally believe that something different, something easier, but scarier, will emerge. I don’t know what it is.

But I do know, that war or no war, isolation of no isolation, the following points will factor into the way the future will unfold…

  • The vast remaining manufacturing in the USA is in the defense industry. This requires a war, a constant and steady war to do battle with.
  • The value of the USD is going towards absolute zero.
  • The American population are corrupt, ignorant, manipulated, and armed. As the government raises the intensity level on them in regards to lies and propaganda, there will be consequences.
  • Japan’s and Korea’s manufacturing has all been off-shored to China. If isolation does occur, a great deal of discomfort will manifest in these nations.
  • Russia and China are led by merit, and they have certainly planned for this sequence of events. Do not be under the impression that they are not ready to deal with them, and retaliate.
  • Retaliation to the USA and it’s allies, whether through military or other means, will be painful for the West. I argue and suspect that the pain “dial” will be pinging red.
  • Domestic American politics will play a large role in the Geopolitical situation.

And that’s where we are today. Let’s see what unfolds.

In the meantime, let’s continue our daily mix…

Gasoline hits $7.29/Gal. in Los Angeles

Gasoline7 29Gallon LosAngeles 05 23 2022 large
Gasoline7 29Gallon LosAngeles 05 23 2022 large

Gasoline has hit a record high of $7.29 per gallon in Los Angeles, CA as of May 23, 2022.

This is what Democrats did when they stole the US Presidency in November 2020, through rampant and brazen election fraud, aided and abetted by weak-minded Republicans in states like Georgia and Arizona, who were more concerned with President Trump’s “mean tweets” than public policy.

Once the Democrats and Republicans-In-Name-Only (RINOS) ousted Trump through a stolen election, the Democrats imposed their Green Agenda to wage war against fossil fuels under the fraudulent guise of “Climate Change.”

They know that earth’s climate is changing because earth’s magnetic field is moving west, and is now farther west than it has been in about ten thousand years.

Instead, they blame Fossil fuel emissions, which is total fraud.

The war against fossil fuels resulted in canceled oil pipelines, closed oil drilling leases, and enormous regulation of existing oil-production.  Those changes reduced gasoline supplies and as such, the prices are skyrocketing.

(Hal Turner Remark: This is what politicians who are supposed to SERVE us, have done TO us. If you keep voting the way you've voted, you'll keep getting what you're now getting.  Wise-up.)

Zelensky “nationalizes” the Polish army to send it to fight under the flag of Ukraine

Zelensky “nationalizes” the Polish army to send it to fight under the flag of Ukraine
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In Ukraine , a law comes into force, according to which anyone who supports the Russian special operation, or at least agrees with it, will be deprived of all property.
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And the wording “in one way or another” in the text of the law finally unties the hands of the punitive machine. At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities do not hide their goals. For them, the main thing is to replenish the treasury at the expense of those who have an excellent opinion: the law “will allow you to quickly and effectively replenish the Ukrainian budget at the expense of enemies,” according to the website of the President of Ukraine.
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So why in Ukraine it is possible to deprive everything acquired by overwork?
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The entire list of actions is about 30 points. Among them:
  • – causing significant damage to the national security of Ukraine and its sovereignty,
  • – financing the “aggressor”, including by collecting donations,
  • – investing in securities,
  • – “glorification of persons” involved in the SVO (that is, praise – ed.),
  • – maintaining the policy of “non-recognition of the right of the Ukrainian people to self-identification and self-determination”,
  • – comparison of Ukrainian patriotism with Nazism “or other misanthropic ideologies”,
  • – “incitement of hatred towards the Ukrainian people, their culture, state language, national identity.”
This law is not about those who take a pro-Russian position, but about everyone who does not agree with Zelensky and his henchmen, said Vladimir Shapovalov, deputy director of the Institute of History and Politics of Moscow State Pedagogical University , in an interview with Radio KP .
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This is an extremely serious danger for the entire Russian, Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. Not only representatives of the business elite, not only opposition politicians like Medvedchuk, but also ordinary citizens, and representatives of various public organizations, representatives of the church, representatives of various local communities will fall under this norm. A significant part of the population of Ukraine will be declared enemies of the people.
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Another law, which will be adopted in the near future, is urgently written in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. Zelensky offered a special status to the Poles . And essentially equalize their rights with the citizens of their country.
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Under this law, Polish citizens will be able to:
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  • – to hold elected office in Ukraine;
  • – be appointed to state authorities and to the leadership of defense enterprises in Ukraine;
  • – get access to secret data of Ukraine;
  • – to be judges inside of Ukraine;
In other words, they are given every right except to vote in elections. And most importantly, the Polish police are literally equal in rights and powers with the Ukrainian police on the territory of Ukraine!
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Zelensky has one goal – to legalize Polish troops on the territory of his country and thus surrender the country to a neighbor, says Marat Bashirov, a political scientist and author of the Politjoystick telegram channel:
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Mr. Zelensky can form a new military unit from Polish citizens and appoint Poles as commanders there. It turns out that, on the one hand, this is a Ukrainian military unit, but it will be completely Polish. Of course, they will import NATO weapons, which they know how to use, unlike Ukrainian soldiers. On the territory where they will be placed, it will be such a hidden occupation.
It is worth emphasizing that the military units consisting of Polish citizens will be Ukrainian. That is, Article 5 of the NATO Charter (when an attack on one of the members of the Alliance is considered as an attack on all its members) will not work, although without a doubt the Polish command will try to draw the Alliance into hostilities in Ukraine:
The Poles, if it is hard, of course, will try to start talking with NATO member countries, - says Bashirov. - But large countries such as Germany and France, of course, will rest against the horn. If they agreed, now in Ukraine such a garden would not be fenced. And this design bypasses just the resistance of Germany and France.
The bill on the resignation of rights to Polish citizens on the territory of Ukraine is the seizure of the country, Igor Dimitriev, a political strategist, is sure.
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“At the present time, it is possible to seize countries without a military invasion. Economic and political instruments, entering the management of numerous grant structures and specialist training programs, Dimitriev writes in his Telegram channel. – Let me remind you that Turkey is doing the same when planning its Turan. This is how some states capture others in the 21st century, this is exactly what an offensive weapon is. And the army, tanks, planes and other scrap metal are defensive weapons. Which is included in order to protect their grant-eaters, political consultants and other agents-007. In those cases when they are not allowed to work by all sorts of dictators.
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Biden escalates tensions with China. One step closer to conflict in South Pacific

This is a MUST WATCH.

"All of this is extremely dangerous, and the Chinese are reacting very dangerously to this. They see this as a challenge, and one that they MUST face."

...

"What a freaking disaster if this happens. What a freaking disaster..."

This is the situation right NOW.

CEO of an insurance group , indicted for trafficking in minor human beings, rape of minors, and participation in a criminal activity

Who’s this guy ?

From HERE

INFO RTL – The CEO of an insurance group imprisoned for exploitation and rape of minors.

One of the largest fortunes in France has been placed in pre-trial detention since Saturday, indicted for trafficking in minor human beings, rape of minors, and participation in a criminal association with a view to committing kidnapping or kidnapping. organized.

He is 75 years old and is one of the 500 largest French fortunes.

This entrepreneur in the insurance field has been placed in pre-trial detention since Saturday May 21, indicted – among other things – for trafficking in minor human beings, rape of minors, and participation in a criminal association with a view to commit kidnapping or organized forcible confinement.

After a meticulous investigation which mobilized a good part of the staff of the Brigade for the Protection of Minors (BPM) of the Parisian PJ, a whole system was discovered by the police.

According to information from RTL, a 22-year-old woman presented herself to the Parisian police last March.

She explained to them that for 5 years, she had been “captive” of a very wealthy man, who lodged her in one of his apartments and raped her on several occasions.

Worse still, while according to her, she was becoming “too old for him”, the young woman would have been forced to find a “substitute” to take over.

This is how a 14-year-old girl was then housed in this apartment.

The complainant managed to film the CEO and the 14-year-old girl together in bed. This video was turned over to investigators.

Relatives also incarcerated.

The story does not end there.

While the CEO is aware of the existence of this video, he will try to silence the complainant.

Justice suspects him of having wanted to set up a team to kidnap the young woman, seize the video, and force her to leave France.

For this, the septuagenarian would have asked his wife, two employees of his company, a young woman close to the complainant, as well as a former gendarme member of the GIGN.

All five were arrested last week, and indicted on Saturday for “failure to report sexual assault on a minor, and participation in a criminal association to commit kidnapping or kidnapping in an organized gang”.

They were also placed in pre-trial detention, confirmed the Paris prosecutor’s office to RTL.

Their respective roles and objectives have yet to be determined at this stage.

A system that had been repeated for many years.

According to our information, the investigators also traced the past of this man.

They discovered the existence of at least 7 young women, minors or young adults, who succeeded each other in this apartment.

The investigation determined that they were young girls with similar profiles: unemployed or runaways, at odds with their family or society.

Always the same mechanism in place, once they reached their twenties, the CEO said he was not interested in them and asked them to find a younger girl to take their place in the apartment.

RTL has tried to reach the lawyer for the main respondent who has not yet responded to our requests.

“My mom was Homecoming Queen, 1965”

21d 5
21d 5

White House Rejects President’s Foreign Policy

From MoA

U.S. President Joe Biden apparently pursues different foreign policies than the White House.

October 23 2021:

‘Strategic Ambiguity’ on Taiwan Apparent as White House Walks Back Biden Comments

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday appeared to walk back President Joe Biden's statement on Thursday that the United States was committed to defending Taiwan should it come under Chinese attack.

"The president was not announcing any change in our policy, nor has he made a decision to change our policy," Psaki said during a White House news briefing. "Our defense relationship with Taiwan is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act."

The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act states that the U.S. will provide arms for Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability. It does not say the U.S. would intervene militarily to protect Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.

Psaki's statement stands in contradiction to Biden's comment at a CNN town hall Thursday night. When asked if the U.S. would come to the defense of Taiwan, Biden said, "Yes, we have a commitment to do that."

November 17 2021:

Biden Struggles to Stick to the Script on Taiwan

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is habit—or so the saying goes.

Amid escalating tensions with China, U.S. President Joe Biden has misspoken about U.S. policy toward the self-governed island of Taiwan at least four times since August, fueling speculation as to whether the president is subtly trying to signal an evolving U.S. policy toward Taiwan or just fumbling the details.

March 27 2022:

Biden’s Putin remark, White House walk-back faces scrutiny

President Biden’s remark that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” reverberated throughout Washington on Sunday, with some current and former officials and lawmakers scrutinizing the reported ad-lib while others slammed the White House for its subsequent walk-back.

Biden turned heads on Saturday when, at the end of a speech in Warsaw, Poland, he said, “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

The White House quickly tried to walk back the comment, claiming that Biden was referring to Putin exercising power outside of Russia, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken affirmed that the U.S. has no plans for regime change in Moscow.

May 23 2022:

US would defend Taiwan if attacked by China, says Joe Biden

Joe Biden has said the US would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan if it came under attack from China – a statement that is likely to enrage Beijing as concern grows over Chinese military activity in the region.

Speaking in Tokyo on the second day of his visit to Japan, Biden said the US’s responsibility to protect the self-ruled island – which China considers a renegade province – was “even stronger” after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in one of the most forceful statements in support of Taiwan in decades.

Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1 - 6:32 UTC · May 23, 2022
White House official: Biden’s statement that the US would get involved militarily to defend Taiwan is NOT a departure from long-standing US policy of strategic ambiguity

Quoted Tweet 
Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1 - 6:01 UTC · May 23, 2022
#BREAKING: President Biden says would be willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan from China aggression

They urgently need to shut up that warmongering idiot.

A candid moment of school girls in 1953.

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The United States and Taiwan

The reason Biden is coming out the way he has is because the US Dept. of State apparently carte blanche issued this declaration, which is essentially a declaration of war against China:

US state department updates fact sheet on Taiwan ties
A bilateral relations fact sheet on Taiwan-US relations published on the US Department of State Web site ...

...was recently updated...

...to remove statements saying that it [1] acknowledged Beijing’s “one China” position, and that [2] the US does not support Taiwanese independence.

The fact sheet is produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
My guess is that this is a pre-emptive salvo issued by the John Bolton (always the dumbest) part of the Dept of State staff.

-Pacifica Advocate

“My mother, 1967”

Not my mom, but a great picture anyways…

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Banana Bread French Toast

Turn banana bread into your favorite breakfast with this dish. The tangy Buttermilk Syrup is a perfect make-ahead touch. It goes wonderfully with a fine morning cup of coffee.

banana bread french toast 10
banana bread french toast 10

Ingredients

Buttermilk Syrup

  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 cups buttermilk
  • 1/3 cup butter
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla

French Toast

  • 1 loaf banana bread
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 cup milk

Garnish, if desired

  • 1 cup fresh berries

Steps

  • 1
    To make buttermilk syrup, in 2-quart saucepan, stir syrup ingredients until well blended. Heat to boiling. Cook 7 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; beat in vanilla with whisk. Keep warm.
  • 2
    Heat nonstick skillet or griddle over medium heat. Cut banana bread into 1-inch-thick slices. In shallow dish or pan, beat eggs and milk until well mixed. Coat bread slices on both sides with egg mixture; place in hot skillet. Cook until golden brown on each side. Serve with buttermilk syrup and garnish with berries. Enjoy!

“My mother in Florida while early in her Nursing career, 1967”

Not my mom. But I can well imagine the moment.

2ddd4 4
2ddd4 4

What “Iskander” Missiles Are & How They Differ From “Kalibr” & “Kinzhal”

May 19, 2022

Some NATO experts call these missiles Russia’s most terrifying weapon, apart from nuclear weapons. Although, “Iskander” can be equipped with a nuclear warhead, and then it really becomes a “sentence” for Europe.

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2022 05 24 11 36

Let’s start with the fact that “Iskander” is not a missile in itself (like “Kinzhal” or “Kalibr“) – it is a whole missile system. That is, in addition to the launcher, it also includes a bunch of other equipment: a loading vehicle, a command post, a repair vehicle, a life support vehicle (barracks on wheels), a reconnaissance vehicle, etc.

At the same time, this missile system is operational and tactical. What does it mean?

Traditionally, missile weapons are divided into three types.

  • First: strategic missiles. They fly directly into enemy territory thousands of kilometres from the front line. This includes, for example, the famous “Sarmat” or “Bulava”.
  • Second: tactical missiles. They are used directly at the frontline. That is, their range is small. This includes, for example, MLRS “Grad” or the same “Katyusha”, during the Great Patriotic War.
  • Third: operational-tactical missiles (OTM). They occupy an intermediate position between strategic and tactical ones. Their task is to hit behind the front line (up to about 500 km) at the rear of the enemy group’s support: railway junctions, air defence systems, warehouses, headquarters, airfields, etc.
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    2022 05 24 11 33

One of the first OTMs was, for example, the Soviet “Luna” and “Temp-S”.

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2022 05 24 11 34

“Temp-S”, adopted in 1965

They were replaced by the “Tochka” missile system, followed by a more advanced one “Tochka-U“. We often hear about this “U” now, but it is already outdated and is not in service with the Russian Federation.

It was just replaced by “Iskander” – as a new generation of operational-tactical missile systems.

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2022 05 24 11 35

Iskander is the next stage of development after Tochka-U

“Restricted Access Zone”

This term was coined by NATO and it refers to the territory on which, in the event of a war with Russia, NATO troops will not be able to stay without receiving unacceptable damage.

Well, that is, in the event of a war with the Bedouin in the desert, the United States can afford to fly and drive anywhere. With Russia, this trick will not work, because our country is able to create not just threats, but to cause catastrophic damage if the enemy is in the “Access Ban Zone”.

This zone is ensured, for example, by the most advanced S-400 air defence system in the world (as well as the latest S-500 and the promising S-550) – it covers us from the air.

From the sea, the “Bastion” coastal complex provides cover. But the “Iskander” is designed to work on enemy ground targets. In total, this trio creates extremely uncomfortable conditions for the enemy on our territory.

READ:  Poroshenko Inadvertently Helped the Modernisation of the Russian Navy

At the same time, “Iskander”, in fact, has two varieties that are absolutely opposite to each other. These are “Iskander-M” and “Iskander-K”.

Iskander-M

It fires a rocket that flies at a high altitude (up to 100 km, that is, touches space) and manoeuvres very strongly.

The maneuverability of the rocket is such that overloads of up to 30 G are created during flight! Let me remind you that:

  • when riding a roller coaster, a person experiences an overload of up to 4 G;
  • Formula 1 drivers experience up to 6 G when braking sharply;
  • cosmonauts experience up to 8 G at rocket launch;
  • in fighter planes, up to 12 G is generated during the sharpest manoeuvres.

30 G is deadly not only for humans, but also for almost any equipment. Thus, at 30 G a fighter jet can simply fall apart.

The “Iskander-M” missile can withstand such overloads. This is despite the fact that at 30 G body weight increases by 30 times. That is, for example, if you weigh 60 kg, but at 30 G your body will start to weigh 1800 kg. Naturally, even the bones can’t withstand such an overload.

The super-maneuverability of the “Iskander-M” missile is necessary so that it is not shot down. In addition, the missile has stealth technologies, throws out false targets in flight, and also conducts radio-electronic warfare with enemy air defence systems.

That is why it is considered that it is almost impossible to shoot down this missile.

Iskander-K

But this type of missile, on the contrary, flies very low – at an altitude of 6-10 meters from the earth’s surface. Naturally, skirting the terrain.

2022 05 24 11 3sd6
2022 05 24 11 3sd6

An important advantage of “Iskander” is that both types of missiles can be launched from the same launcher. That is, “Iskander” can fire two types of missiles at a target at once: one will fly high and unpredictably, and the second will fly low and extremely imperceptibly.

All this together makes the probability of hitting the target close to 100%.

The stated range of both missiles is up to 500 km. However, many experts (including those in NATO) believe that this figure is greatly underestimated. The Russian military simply declares it, so as not to fall under the terms of the treaty on the elimination of intermediate-range and short-range missiles.

The actual flight range of “Iskander” can be up to 5000 km. However, it will be possible to check this only in the conditions of a real war.

What is the difference between “Kalibr” and “Kinzhal”?

You may have noticed that the “Iskander-M” behaves roughly like “Kinzhal”, and the “Iskander-K” behaves roughly like “Kalibr”.

READ:  What Has Moscow Achieved…and Did It Fail After Imposing Two Ceasefires?

And there is not just some truth in this, but a very large amount. The fact is that the hypersonic “Kinzhal”, in fact, is an improved “Iskander-M”.

Just “Iskander-M” starts from the ground and spends a huge part of its energy on acceleration and climb. But “Kinzhal” is raised to a height in advance and accelerated by a fighter jet, so it spends most of its energy on gaining hypersonic speed.

As for the similarity of the second version of “Iskander” (“K”) with “Kalibr”, this is exactly the similarity. There is no direct relationship between the missiles, although both of them are cruise missiles.

What is “Iskander” capable of?

Flying 500 km beyond the horizon, “Iskander” is able to hit the target with an accuracy of up to 5 meters.

At the same time, the mass of the missile’s warhead is 500 kg. That is, it’s possible to cram either half a ton of explosives or a fairly decent nuclear bomb into it, and then a deviation from the target of even 50 meters will not matter much.

The speed of the high-altitude missile is 2100 m/s (over Mach 6). That is, it is hypersonic (like “Kinzhal”, whose speed is 2 times higher, up to 4000 m/s).

In the non-nuclear version, “Iskander” is capable of carrying one of three types of warheads:

  • High-explosive shrapnel. This is the most popular type for hitting most targets, from warehouses to airfields. It can be described simply as a “large grenade” (under 500 kg), which creates a powerful shock wave and scatters fragments
  • Concrete cutting. This is for breaking through underground bunkers
  • Cluster. This is for hitting large areas with shrapnel. One Iskander cluster missile covers approximately 15,000 m2 of ground with a cloud of shrapnel, which means two football fields.

In the nuclear version, “Iskander” is capable of carrying a warhead of up to 50 kilotons. This is 3 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Given that the range of “Iskander” can really reach 2-3 thousand kilometres, this weapon is not just a nightmare for Europe. This is its verdict if it comes to a large-scale conflict.

They understand this and therefore they are now acting with someone else’s hands, pushing forward naive guys who have hung their ears in front of a “bright European future”. A future in which they will not be taken in any case.

Let me remind you that “Iskander” is not called the most formidable by me, but by NATO experts. Now I want to mix military affairs with geography a little, that is, show on the map where these very Iskanders are located at all.

And so. Just as soldiers are organised into platoons, companies, battalions, and regiments, “Iskanders” have a certain organisational structure.

Much more can be found HERE.

A Photo Set of The 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix D-500, a Reflection of The Jet-Age Styling of The Late 1950s

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The 1960s opened with great promise. The Dodge Dart was a new model that year, based on a mid-sized 118-inch wheelbase unibody design adopted from Plymouth, and the Phoenix was the premium trim package for it. This special Phoenix was further equipped with the performance-oriented D500 package; indeed, this amazing motorcar features not only its original drivetrain and sheet-metal, but nearly every available option that could be added to this vehicle platform in 1960.

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Dodge created 586 Phoenix D500-optioned Darts in 1960, but few were as spectacular as this one. The car is equipped with the 383/330 HP V-8 engine with Chrysler’s special long-tube D500 ram induction, which featured dual 4-barrel carburetors mounted on sonically tuned cast manifolds that looped across each opposing valve cover. It is backed by the pushbutton-activated TorqueFlite automatic transmission.

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The car, featuring its Ghia-inspired finned-and-piped panels as executed by designer Virgil Exner, is painted red and augmented by front bumper guards, backup lights, door-edge moldings and dual side mirrors; lower-body stone shields and deluxe wheel covers complete the picture of Dodge luxury.

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Inside are red interior components, complete with rare power-swivel front seats, power windows, factory electric clock, foam-cushioned rear seat and an Astrophonic AM Radio with rear-seat speaker. Driving ease was accomplished with power steering and power brakes.

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Here is a photo set of the 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix D-500, a reflection of the jet-age styling of the late 1950s and the cataclysms that brought about the legendary Chrysler products of the 1960s.

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Chris Hedges: No Way Out but War

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY (Scheerpost) — The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.

The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.

Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d’état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.

There were three restraints to the avarice and bloodlust of the permanent war economy that no longer exist. The first was the old liberal wing of the Democratic Party, led by politicians such as Senator George McGovern, Senator Eugene McCarthy, and Senator J. William Fulbright, who wrote The Pentagon Propaganda Machine. The self-identified progressives, a pitiful minority, in Congress today, from Barbara Lee, who was the single vote in the House and the Senate opposing a broad, open-ended authorization allowing the president to wage war in Afghanistan or anywhere else, to Ilhan Omar now dutifully line up to fund the latest proxy war. The second restraint was an independent media and academia, including journalists such as I.F Stone and Neil Sheehan along with scholars such as Seymour Melman, author of The Permanent War Economy and Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War. Third, and perhaps most important, was an organized anti-war movement, led by religious leaders such as Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr. and Phil and Dan Berrigan as well as groups such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They understood that unchecked militarism was a fatal disease.

None of these opposition forces, which did not reverse the permanent war economy but curbed its excesses, now exist. The two ruling parties have been bought by corporations, especially military contractors. The press is anemic and obsequious to the war industry. Propagandists for permanent war, largely from right-wing think tanks lavishly funded by the war industry, along with former military and intelligence officials, are exclusively quoted or interviewed as military experts. NBC’s “Meet the Press” aired a segment May 13 where officials from Center for a New American Security (CNAS) simulated what a war with China over Taiwan might look like. The co-founder of CNAS, Michèle Flournoy, who appeared in the “Meet the Press” war games segment and was considered by Biden to run the Pentagon, wrote in 2020 in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. needs to develop “the capability to credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours.”

The handful of anti-militarists and critics of empire from the left, such as Noam Chomsky, and the right, such as Ron Paul, have been declared persona non grata by a compliant media. The liberal class has retreated into boutique activism where issues of class, capitalism and militarism are jettisoned for “cancel culture,” multiculturalism and identity politics. Liberals are cheerleading the war in Ukraine. At least the inception of the war with Iraq saw them join significant street protests. Ukraine is embraced as the latest crusade for freedom and democracy against the new Hitler. There is little hope, I fear, of rolling back or restraining the disasters being orchestrated on a national and global level.  The neoconservatives and liberal interventionists chant in unison for war. Biden has appointed these war mongers, whose attitude to nuclear war is terrifyingly cavalier, to run the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the State Department.

Since all we do is war, all proposed solutions are military. This military adventurism accelerates the decline, as the defeat in Vietnam and the squandering of $8 trillion in the futile wars in the Middle East illustrate. War and sanctions, it is believed, will cripple Russia, rich in gas and natural resources. War, or the threat of war, will curb the growing economic and military clout of China.

These are demented and dangerous fantasies, perpetrated by a ruling class that has severed itself from reality. No longer able to salvage their own society and economy, they seek to destroy those of their global competitors, especially Russia and China. Once the militarists cripple Russia, the plan goes, they will focus military aggression on the Indo-Pacific, dominating what Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, referring to the Pacific, called “the American Sea.”

You cannot talk about war without talking about markets. The U.S., whose growth rate has fallen to below 2 percent, while China’s growth rate is 8.1 percent, has turned to military aggression to bolster its sagging economy. If the U.S. can sever Russian gas supplies to Europe, it will force Europeans to buy from the United States. U.S. firms, at the same time, would be happy to replace the Chinese Communist Party, even if they must do it through the threat of war, to open unfettered access to Chinese markets. War, if it did break out with China, would devastate the Chinese, American, and global economies, destroying free trade between countries as in World War I. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

Washington is desperately trying to build military and economic alliances to ward off a rising China, whose economy is expected by 2028 to overtake that of the United States, according to the UK’s Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The White House has said Biden’s current visit to Asia is about sending a “powerful message” to Beijing and others about what the world could look like if democracies “stand together to shape the rules of the road.” The Biden administration has invited South Korea and Japan to attend the NATO summit in Madrid.

But fewer and fewer nations, even among European allies, are willing to be dominated by the United States. Washington’s veneer of democracy and supposed respect for human rights and civil liberties is so badly tarnished as to be irrecoverable. Its economic decline, with China’s manufacturing 70 percent higher than that of the U.S., is irreversible. War is a desperate Hail Mary, one employed by dying empires throughout history with catastrophic consequences. “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable,” Thucydides noted in the History of the Peloponnesian War.

A key component to the sustenance of the permanent war state was the creation of the All-Volunteer Force. Without conscripts, the burden of fighting wars falls to the poor, the working class, and military families. This All-Volunteer Force allows the children of the middle class, who led the Vietnam anti-war movement, to avoid service. It protects the military from internal revolts, carried out by troops during the Vietnam War, which jeopardized the cohesion of the armed forces.

The All-Volunteer Force, by limiting the pool of available troops, also makes the global ambitions of the militarists impossible. Desperate to maintain or increase troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military instituted the stop-loss policy that arbitrarily extended active-duty contracts. Its slang term was the backdoor draft. The effort to bolster the number of troops by hiring private military contractors, as well, had a negligible effect. Increased troop levels would not have won the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but the tiny percentage of those willing to serve in the military (only 7 percent of the U.S. population are veterans) is an unacknowledged Achilles heel for the militarists.

“As a consequence, the problem of too much war and too few soldiers eludes serious scrutiny,” writes historian and retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich in After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. “Expectations of technology bridging that gap provide an excuse to avoid asking the most fundamental questions: Does the United States possess the military wherewithal to oblige adversaries to endorse its claim of being history’s indispensable nation? And if the answer is no, as the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq suggest, wouldn’t it make sense for Washington to temper its ambitions accordingly?”

This question, as Bacevich points out, is “anathema.” The military strategists work from the supposition that the coming wars won’t look anything like past wars. They invest in imaginary theories of future wars that ignore the lessons of the past, ensuring more fiascos.

The political class is as self-deluded as the generals. It refuses to accept the emergence of a multi-polar world and the palpable decline of American power. It speaks in the outdated language of American exceptionalism and triumphalism, believing it has the right to impose its will as the leader of the “free world.” In his 1992 Defense Planning Guidance memorandum, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz argued that the U.S. must ensure no rival superpower again arises. The U.S. should project its military strength to dominate a unipolar world in perpetuity. On February 19, 1998, on NBC’s “Today Show”, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave the Democratic version of this doctrine of unipolarity. “If we have to use force it is because we are Americans; we are the indispensable nation,” she said. “We stand tall, and we see further than other countries into the future.”

This demented vision of unrivaled U.S. global supremacy, not to mention unrivaled goodness and virtue, blinds the establishment Republicans and Democrats. The military strikes they casually used to assert the doctrine of unipolarity, especially in the Middle East, swiftly spawned jihadist terror and prolonged warfare. None of them saw it coming until the hijacked jets slammed into the World Trade Center twin towers. That they cling to this absurd hallucination is the triumph of hope over experience.

There is a deep loathing among the public for these elitist Ivy League architects of American imperialism. Imperialism was tolerated when it was able to project power abroad and produce rising living standards at home. It was tolerated when it restrained itself to covert interventions in countries such as Iran, Guatemala, and Indonesia. It went off the rails in Vietnam. The military defeats that followed accompanied a steady decline in living standards, wage stagnation, a crumbling infrastructure and eventually a series of economic policies and trade deals, orchestrated by the same ruling class, which deindustrialized and impoverished the country.

The establishment oligarchs, now united in the Democratic Party, distrust Donald Trump. He commits the heresy of questioning the sanctity of the American empire. Trump derided the invasion of Iraq as a “big, fat mistake.” He promised “to keep us out of endless war.” Trump was repeatedly questioned about his relationship with Vladimir Putin. Putin was “a killer,” one interviewer told him. “There are a lot of killers,” Trump retorted. “You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump dared to speak a truth that was to be forever unspoken, the militarists had sold out the American people.

Noam Chomsky took some heat for pointing out, correctly, that Trump is the “one statesman” who has laid out a “sensible” proposition to resolve the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The proposed solution included “facilitating negotiations instead of undermining them and moving toward establishing some kind of accommodation in Europe…in which there are no military alliances but just mutual accommodation.”

Trump is too unfocused and mercurial to offer serious policy solutions. He did set a timetable to withdraw from Afghanistan, but he also ratcheted up the economic war against Venezuela and reinstituted crushing sanctions against Cuba and Iran, which the Obama administration had ended. He increased the military budget. He apparently flirted with carrying out a missile strike on Mexico to “destroy the drug labs.” But he acknowledges a distaste for imperial mismanagement that resonates with the public, one that has every right to loath the smug mandarins that plunge us into one war after another. Trump lies like he breathes. But so do they.

The 57 Republicans who refused to support the $40 billion aid package to Ukraine, along with many of the 19 bills that included an earlier $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine, come out of the kooky conspiratorial world of Trump. They, like Trump, repeat this heresy. They too are attacked and censored. But the longer Biden and the ruling class continue to pour resources into war at our expense, the more these proto fascists, already set to wipe out Democratic gains in the House and the Senate this fall, will be ascendant. Marjorie Taylor Greene, during the debate on the aid package to Ukraine, which most members were not given time to closely examine, said: “$40 billion dollars but there’s no baby formula for American mothers and babies.”

“An unknown amount of money to the CIA and Ukraine supplemental bill but there’s no formula for American babies,” she added. “Stop funding regime change and money laundering scams. A US politician covers up their crimes in countries like Ukraine.”

Democrat Jamie Raskin immediately attacked Greene for parroting the propaganda of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Greene, like Trump, spoke a truth that resonates with a beleaguered public. The opposition to permanent war should have come from the tiny progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which unfortunately sold out to the craven Democratic Party leadership to save their political careers. Greene is demented, but Raskin and the Democrats peddle their own brand of lunacy. We are going to pay a very steep price for this burlesque.

Wuhan Lab Did Gain of Function Research on . . . Monkeypox

WuhanMonkeypox Header large
WuhanMonkeypox Header large

The very same Biolab that performed gain of function research into Coronaviruses, and is widely believed to have spawned the outbreak of COVID-19, is now shown to have ALSO done that research on Monkeypox; which the world is seeing outbreaks of right now.

Virologica Sinica is an international journal which aims at presenting the cutting-edge research on viruses all over the world. The journal publishes peer-reviewed original research articles, reviews, and letters to the editor, to encompass the latest developments in all branches of virology.

In February 2022, Virologica Sinica published a recent gain of function research project on Monkeypox,  performed by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in August 2021 while the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging around the world.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology assembled a monkeypox virus genome, allowing the virus to be identified through PCR tests, using a method researchers flagged for potentially creating a “contagious pathogen”

The study was published in February 2022.  (Link to Study)

So now the world is seeing the SECOND outbreak of a strange and dangerous new virus, and it is also seeing this from the exact same laboratory that did Gain of Function research into both those now-in-the-wild Viruses.

Is this carelessness, or deliberate bio-warfare against the world by China?

China’s No.2 surprises Anthony Albanese with congratulations before PM’s first big test

Apparently, this is China’s New foreign policy: stop communication with any  hostile nation until they lost office, then initiate good-will with the new leadership. If the new establishment still behaves in a hostile and barbaric manner, then they will continue to stop communicating until the leadership is then replaced.
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This, in the long run, will shape the national geopolitical alignments.

Mr Albanese has been sworn in. Now he must meet his first big challenge.

James Robertson
Political Editor
7:52pm, May 23
China has ended a block on communicating officially with Australia after Premier Li Keqiang – second to President Xi Jinping – congratulated Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hours after he took office, state media reported.

The olive branch came as Mr Albanese was flying to his first major foreign policy engagement, a regional security summit formed to be a counterweight to China’s influence in the region.

State news agency Xinhua quoted Premier Li as saying he hoped that this year’s 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties would be an occasion to review relations between the two countries.

From HERE

Amazing Colorized Photos Show What Kitchens Looked Like In The First Half Of The 20th Century

An amazing set of colorized photographs from Color Me Six Ways to Sunday that show what kitchens looked like from the first half of the 20th century.

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China Insists Party Elites Shed Overseas Assets, Eyeing Western Sanctions on Russia – WSJ

An internal Communist Party directive bars senior officials from owning property abroad or stakes in overseas entities, whether directly or through spouses and children

From HERE

OSCE Satellite Phone Found in NAZI Lair Beneath Azovstal

OSCE Sat Phone ID large
OSCE Sat Phone ID large

For over a month, the Russian Army surrounded NAZIS from Ukraine at the Azovstal Steel Mill in Mariupol. The NAZIS finally surrendered last week. Now, the Russians have found a Satellite Phone from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in EUROPE (OSCE) inside the NAZI Lair. Why was OSCE facilitating the NAZIS in Ukraine?

Here’s a full image of the Satellite Phone found by the Russian Army in the catacombs of the Azovstal Steel Mill:

OSCE Sat Phone Found Beneath Azovstal Mill NAZIS used it
OSCE Sat Phone Found Beneath Azovstal Mill NAZIS used it

This phone made it possible for an actual Army Unit from Ukraine, composed of actual NAZIS who perpetrated barbaric war crimes upon innocent civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk, to maintain contact with their bosses in Kiev for further instructions and supplies.

Why would the OSCE have provided such a communications device to actual NAZIS?

OSCE cannot claim it was “lost” or “stolen” — the phone still works. The account is still active.

So again, why was OSCE facilitating actual NAZIS?

No comment has been received back to our inquiring email from OSCE.

Asian countries have good ties with US, China and other major powers, don’t need Nato-equivalent, Singapore’s PM Lee says

  • •US President Biden said on Saturday that stronger ties among like-minded nations is needed amid ‘competition between democracies and autocracies’
  • •But Singapore’s PM Lee Hsien Loong said in an interview that a ‘better configuration’ is one that does not involve countries joining opposing blocs
Updated: 10:20am, 24 May, 2022
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Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said it is in Asia’s interest to avoid forming a security bloc like Europe’s Nato, noting the region’s history and circumstances make such a military alliance unnecessary.
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Lee’s remarks in an interview with Nikkei Asia published on Monday come amid calls from US President Joe Biden for Washington’s partners in the region to shore up cooperation amid escalating rivalry against the world’s “autocracies”.
That rhetoric has largely been described by observers as aimed at getting countries aligned with the US and the West to cooperate and gird themselves against China and Russia.
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Biden, currently on his maiden Asia tour as US president, said on Saturday that stronger ties among like-minded nations were necessary amid an inevitable “competition between democracies and autocracies”.
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Asked by Nikkei’s editor Tetsuya Iguchi if Asia needed a “collective security equivalent” to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), Lee pointed out that Asia’s circumstances were not the same as Europe’s.
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The region did not have Europe’s history, where Western countries were split from Soviet Union-backing “Warsaw Pact” nations during the Cold War.
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“In Asia, the history is different. There was never a grouping in Asia which was the equivalent of Nato,” Lee said. “And countries in Asia, many of them enjoy good ties with China, as well as with the US and the US’ treaty allies,” he said, naming US treaty allies Japan, South Korea and Australia.
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“Many more are not, but are friends of the US, like Singapore – we are a major security cooperation partner. But even many of the allies maintain important relations with China,” said the Singapore prime minister.
He added: “So I think that that is a better configuration than one where countries are divided along a line and one bloc confronts another. That is the history in Europe, but it has not been the history in Asia. And I think it is better that it remains not.”
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In the interview, Iguchi said “many countries rely too much on trade with China” and that “if China stops importing from Asian countries, the effect would be devastating”.
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In response, Lee said “you cannot afford not to do business with China”.
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“The opportunities are there, the markets are there, and you want to trade with them, and soon, many countries will be welcoming their investments as well,” he said.
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While countries will want to grow their trade links with the rest of the world, “China is now a bigger part of the world economy and therefore proportionately you would expect more of your trade to go with China,” Lee added.
Russia, China seeking to ‘rewrite international rule book’: Nato chief
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“If you say China is a big part, but I do not want to trade with them, it will not only be very costly, but you are setting up for more friction and less chances of maintaining the peace.”
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In the wide-ranging interview, Lee also touched on the question of China and self-ruled Taiwan’s recent application to join the 11-nation Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade pact.
Singapore is this year’s chair of the group’s decision-making body. In September Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province, applied to join the CPTPP a week after Beijing did so.
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“We are the Chair, but we do not decide. We are the traffic police,” Lee said.
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“It is an open grouping where economies can join if they meet the standard, which are quite high, and the decision is made by consensus,” Lee said.
“That means the Chair will consult the member economies, and they will have their views, and if there is a consensus to start the accession process, it will begin,” he said.
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The consultations will “take a while” as individual economies may have different views and would have separate discussions with the nations applying to join.
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Lee said Singapore, for its part, would welcome China to the CPTPP. He said the world’s second-largest economy would need to meet the standards of the pact. “But in the end, the decision is made by the consensus of the members so the other members may well have different views,” he said.
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Possible Nato membership for Finland and Sweden sparks concern in Russia

On the US-initiated Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) launched by President Biden on Monday in Tokyo, Lee said Singapore – a participant in the initiative – was “positive” about its formation.
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So far 12 countries – Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam and the US – have signed up and account for 40 per cent of the world’s GDP, according to the White House.
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The countries said in a joint statement the framework would help them collectively “prepare our economies for the future” following disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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The IPEF, which involves supply chains, the digital economy and green economy cooperation, was an alternative to a multilateral trade pact involving the US, and reflects Washington’s “intent to cooperate on economic issues which are relevant to the region,” Lee said.

“My mom, looking gorgeous as usual, Fremont, CA, mid-1960s”

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Sitrep 180 Hot Potato : Ritter, Lira, Johnson and Martyanov

By Amarynth for the Saker Blog

Let me first give the links to the debate in question (and this is a sitrep, so it is more freewheeling than a serious article for the Saker blog).

We’ve been talking about Ritter’s 180 swing in his coverage on both the SMO-404 and the Russian capabilities.

This article, titled “Ukraine War Has No End in Sight” gives the Ritter view post his 180: HERE and there were three prior videos where this view developed.  But this written form is good enough.

Andrei Martynov weighed in and Larry Johnson weighed in on various occasions and on a professional basis.  Gonzalo Lira weighed in his casual style.  On the Saker Blog, I weighed in during discussions and even analyzed a few paragraphs of Ritter’s article.

Even Pepe Escobar had to retract a quasi ‘Ritter sentence’ that he used.  This was his short and creative retraction.  “Martyanov is right on Western Ukraine. I should have emphasized the conditionalities – as it stands a 404 “New Model Army” is American wishful thinking.”

All of these people (including myself) were 180 opposite to Ritter’s view and I for one asked for evidence of this New Scary NATO army because clearly, Wunderwaffe came to mind.

Yet, there is no discussion and Ritter did it again.  This time in an interview with Sputnik here:

Article HERE

Both Andrei Martyanov as well as Larry Johnson weighed in again.

Before I quote from their work, let’s try to answer the question of Why?  Why are we responding to Ritter in this manner?  I will give you only my personal perception.  I view Ritter’s 180 as pushing NATO talking points and even spreading Ukrainian manure.   He assumes a static position from Russia.  After his 180, his tone changed and he presents NATO as the All Powerful and backed by the US Money Machine and Weapons Machine, as Invincible.  He creates new armies out of thin air, and professes knowledge of the Russian thinking and possible future actions which he cannot possibly know.  We can then discuss whether this is pure deception of his mainly western audience, or purely disingenuous, or a project based on a think-tank or something.  I hope it is none of those, and that he will enter into discussion and debate with his peers.  (Note Johnson’s article quoted later in this report).  If not, we have to question his whole basis for pumping American Wishful Thinking, as well as the substance of his presentation.

I’ll go back to an older quote from Martyanov:  “That is why when I hear that some piece of metal and a pile of increasingly diminishing US Dollars are going to make any real tactical, operational, let alone strategic difference in 404, other than being blown up or taken as trophies, I smile. Even LDNR people today complain (in Russian) that most of the US equipment when even not-expired and up to date, often doesn’t work and breaks down.

I know, for true American patriot such as Scott it is difficult to accept this fact but in the last 20 years it goes without saying that institutional rot completely engulfed America’s strategic and operational thought and, and I wrote three books on that, US increasingly produced weapons which like Javelins or Littoral Combat Ships, or F-35 or Patriot PAC 3s are not really suited for a serious war against competent enemy who, in addition, like Russia, has all means to see the enemy and destroy it.”  Article HERE

Let’s go to Larry Johnson’s latest titled:  Debating Scott Ritter.

He deals with the new funding, western weapons supply, training and intelligence sharing.  And he posts a video of Gonzalo Lira, who in his casual format understands these matters.  Here are some points but read the whole article:

  • Money may make the world go around but it does not magically produce trained, enthusiastic troops willing and capable of using such weapons.
  • Ukraine’s problem right now is not a lack of equipment. They had combat aircraft, helicopters, tanks, artillery and drones. Russia destroyed a significant amount of that materiel and killed the soldiers and pilots who were trained to operate those systems.
  • Scott Ritter sees the training of Ukrainian troops in Poland and Germany as a critical variable that could really hurt the Russians. Training reinforcements on new technology might be a potential game-changer if the situation on the ground in Ukraine was static. It is not.
  • Scott also asserts that intelligence sharing gives the Ukrainians an edge. When you provide intelligence on Russian troop movements, locations or plans, there is an assumption that the recipients of that intelligence will be able to do something to hurt the Russians. How did that work out in Mariupol? How about fending off the Russian missile attack in Desna. In my view, sharing intelligence with Ukraine is an effort in futility. Am empty gesture that will not change anything on the ground.

How to actually understand this Hot Potato?, and it is an important one.  The Ukraine SMO is only but a small representation of what Russia means by stopping the growth of NATO, indivisibility of security, the security balance in Europe, and most important, military-technical measures.   And then, one has to bring into the calculus that China is solid behind Russia in the thinking, and further, that the US pre-amble to actual kinetic action in the Ukraine, is now being duplicated around China.  The dead give-away is that SHOULD in Biden’s sentence.  Remember the many ‘ifs’ and ‘shoulds’ that we saw in the runup to Russia entering the Ukraine.  “President Joe Biden said Washington could be directly involved in conflict should China try to take the island by force.”  They are again trying to project and create a condition that is not necessarily there.

And this is the tone change in Ritter’s work.  He is projecting a condition that is not necessarily existent and presents it as fact. 

We have to understand that NATO is now being presented as the ultimate force projection by the small collective west.  Those familiar with Martyanov’s work understand that this is but a paper tiger and the boogyman (although with destructive ability) under the bed.  This is a projection and the small collective west only has a boogyman left to threaten the world.

Here is another such projection, this time with a clown:  Klaus Schwab has just introduced President Zelensky of Ukraine to the World Economic Forum in Davos with a glowing tribute saying that all of Europe and the international order stands with him.

Lira’s view is important here, albeit not professional.  He asks the question, Why is it Absurd that the Ukraine is standing up a million man new army?  (Short, 7 minutes or so).

For comments, I remind you, that this is not a personality contest.  As Johnson says – it is a substantive matter.  So commentators, please be reasonable and kind, and don’t tell us who you like most.  At least present knowledge of the substance of this matter.  From the commentariat, let’s keep this one closely focused on the topic.

There is a bigger picture here.  From here and there in Europe, we see that everyone is now desperately scrambling for a peace plan.  A contributor sent me this one from Italy titled Now, Italy begins backtracking on its promises and extending an olive branch toward Russia.  HERE

I smiled, on two accounts.  This peace plan is Minsk redux!

And secondly, why this reach for a peace plan now?  Besides worrying about economics and gas and oil, it is another containment of Russia.  They all know Russia will win in the Ukraine, the way Russia perceives it, handsomely.   So, everyone desperately wants to devise new conditions, because the fear is that Russia will not stop.  So, they want to devise peace now, and send Russia back to Russia.  The news is that we are in a world-changing epoch, and Russia will not stop but take her full part in this world-changing epoch, preferably peacefully, but if not, military-technical.

What’s Behind Biden’s Resolve to Defend Taiwan Against Beijing?

Jeff J. Brown on Sputnik News. China Rising Radio Sinoland 220524  . It’s an audio track. Interesting stuff. Jeff’s stuff always is.

From HERE

This 19th-Century Tool Box Is Meticulously Designed To Hold 300 Tools

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The look of tool chests can tell us much about workers and workplaces. While their purpose is to organize, carry, and protect tools, this chest also suggests what a worker thinks of himself and how society measures the value of his work.

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If the workmanship in a tool chest is any indication of the maker’s talent, then the craftsmanship of Master carpenter and Freemason H. O. Studley must have been awe-inspiring. Brother Henry O. Studley (1838-1925) built this magnificent wall-hung chest while employed by the Poole Piano Company of Quincy, Massachusetts.

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In an oak clamshell box adorned with rosewood, ebony, pearl and ivory, Studley kept both tools he made and a collection of the finest hand tools made prior to 1900, including a complete set of woodworking tools as well as machinist and stonemasonry tools. To pack the 300-plus tools into a case only 19 1/2 inches wide, 39 inches long and 9 1/2 inches deep, Studley devised a jigsaw puzzle arrangement of flip-up trays, fold-out layers and hidden compartments. Maine native Pete Hardwick originally owned the chest, which had been in his family since it was bequeathed to his grandfather by Studley.

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Hardwick acquired the chest from his brother by trading a 1934 Ford sedan for it. A good trade? It would seem so: just one tool – the Stanley No. 1 plane housed in the ebony archway in the upper-left part of the chest – was appraised at $700.00 in 1993.

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This tool chest was carefully restored to its original splendor and glory, loaned to the Smithsonian Institution, then displayed in the National Museum of American History as the centerpiece of woodworking and other tradesman tool chests. Studley’s chest then changed hands again (for an undisclosed $$$ amount) to another private collector.

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The Prisoner Episode 3

Enjoy this episode. I will continue to add these episodes in the future articles.

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I warned you. It’s NOW in process. China is now on full war mobilization and red alert status.

The US Air Force has the F35, a fighter plane that is invisible to radar. The F35 is so invisible no-one in Ukraine has seen it.

-Passerby

We interrupt the normal flow of opinion, articles and news on MM for this breaking and concerning alert. But first, some background. Watch the video that I made on Saturday morning…

MM Warning on Saturday 21MAY22

This is the video that I made on Saturday morning. Watch it.

China DEFCON moves from Orange to Red Status

Update: This is FAKE NEWS. Sorry for presenting it. Sources inside of the Chiense govnerment has confirmed that the high state of readiness has not decreased since 2019. I am ashamed for being so taken in by the bullshit. Apologies all around. -MM

Hal Turner Comments…

From HERE.

The China Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee has issued a “National Mobilization Order” to switch China from peacetime to Wartime economy. This is now formal preparation to seize Taiwan and fight-off U.S. protection of that island.

Audio from a Provincial government meeting in the Province of Guangdong was recorded, making explicitly clear they have been ordered to immediately switch to a wartime operating status.

Support of frontline troops, through coordination of industrial production, is now being implemented.

We now return back to our regular programming…

Elegant Photos That Defined Edwardian Fashion Styles Of Young Women

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One of the primary changes of the Edwardian Era included the change in clothes of the women.

A typical Edwardian Woman was very fashion conscious and this era hence brought about remarkable new trends in women’s attire. Curvy hips and fuller low chests were the unique characteristics of this era because they emphasised slim and trim fits.

In short, Edwardian women’s fashion is actually a simplification from Victorian era, but pretty more creativity and innovation. These elegant photos below that defined Edwardian fashion styles of young women.

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Pepe Escobar, in “Russia Rewrites The Art of Hybrid War” at SCF:

So why would weapons peddler retrofitted as Pentagon head Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin literally beg since late February to have his phone calls answered by Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, only to have his wish finally granted?

It’s now confirmed by one of my top intel sources. The call was a direct consequence of panic. The United States Government (USG) by all means wants to scotch the detailed Russian investigation – and accumulation of evidence – on the US bioweapon labs in Ukraine, as I outlined in a previous column.

This phone call happened exactly after an official Russian statement to the UN Security Council on May 13: we will use articles 5 and 6 of the Convention on the Prohibition of Bioweapons to investigate the Pentagon’s biological “experiments” in Ukraine.

...

Shoigu cold see the call coming eons away. Reuters, merely quoting the proverbial “ Pentagon official”, spun that the allegedly one-hour-long call led to nothing. Nonsense. Austin, according to the Americans, demanded a “ ceasefire” – which must have originated a Siberian cat smirk on Shoigu’s face.

So, according to Escobar, it’s not primarily the disastrous surrender of 2,000 Azov prisoners at Avostal or the possible NATO remainders there that so terrifies the deep state, but the fact that Russia has irrefutable documentation of US war crimes against Humanity in its bioweapons labs — the 30 or so in Ukraine plus ~300 worldwide. The origin of Covid-19 as possible biowarfare against China and Iran also risks exposure.

Scandinavian Airlines Pulled Out Vintage Images Of Old Menu Cards And In-Flight Meals

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Scandinavian Airlines, usually known as SAS, is the flag carrier of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which together form Scandinavia. SAS is an abbreviation of the company’s full name, Scandinavian Airlines System. Founded on August 1, 1946. A few years ago for their seventieth anniversary they pulled out some old menu cards and and pictures of in-flight meals. Times have changed…

It all looks glorious. Of course it does. These pictures were taken to advertise the marvel of flying with SAS. What we do see are the chefs, who with flourishes of impressive blades carve slices of meat from the grinning hostesses’ well-stocked trolley. The sommelier stands by, ready to suggest the best vintage to accompany the smogasbord of mile-high delights.

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Expert says Putin’s demand for rubles is the “most serious blow” to American interests in Ukraine

From HERE

An expert has said that the demand by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s for rubles if “unfriendly countries” want gas is the “most serious blow” to American interests in Ukraine.

European countries were stunned by Russia’s demand that gas be paid in rubles as they seemingly expected the Eurasian country to be sanctioned and locked out of Western financial mechanisms without retaliation. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on March 31 that he had signed a decree forcing buyers from “unfriendly countries” to pay for Russian gas in rubles from April 1, warning that contracts would be halted if these payments were not made.

Although the companies and governments of “unfriendly countries” have rejected the move as a breach of existing contracts, which are set in euros or dollars, French economy minister Bruno Le Maire said his country and Germany were preparing for a possible scenario that Russian gas flows are halted – something that would plunge Europe into a full-blown energy and economic crisis.

Although the halt of gas supplies to Europe could see Gazprom lose about half of its profits and reduce investment, it will have an even greater negative consequence on the European energy sector. Europe will not be able to quickly replace Russian gas with LNG supplies from the United States and Qatar, and as a result, European gas prices could rise to $5,000 per 1,000 cubic meters or even higher, which will force a consumption reduction and hit the economy.

Charles Michel, head of the Council of Europe, presented the EU Programme on ensuring energy security. He stressed that eliminating dependence on Russian energy sources is at the heart of the program as, according to him, it is necessary to quickly get rid of Russian carbon hydrogen and then fossil fuels in general.

However, it is clear that even without the current global energy crisis caused by the lack of gas supplies, it would still be impossible to find a short to medium term solution to replace Russian sources. In this way, EU states, the UK, the US and other listed unfriendly countries will have no choice but to engage in rubles trade if they want to continue receiving Russian energy and not let their economic situations worsen.

Speaking about changes in the global economic system following sanctions and Russia’s responses to the financial hostilities, Serbian geopolitical analyst Borislav Korkodelovic said: “IMF and World Bank data also show that it is becoming increasingly easy for the rest of the world to reject the demands of the West because it is no longer as economically omnipotent as it once was.”

“Even when it comes to nominal GDP, the difference between the BRICS countries on the one hand, and the EU and the US on the other, is narrower (24% to 30% before the pandemic and now it is even smaller). When the GDP is calculated relative to the parity of purchasing power, the stakes have already been replaced: 45% to 44.1% in favor of BRICS.”

For his part, Serbian lawyer Branko Pavlović said that Russia, China and India had a key part in building a new global economic system that is more equitable, as it should have been after the Second World War.

“This is a fight for a whole new international relationship and a return to multilateralism with respect to the sovereignty and equality of states, as envisioned after World War II, but now with incredible economic momentum to the general benefit. Everyone around the world understands that America and the West have been exploitative so far. We are now witnessing a new internationalism of liberation,” said Pavlović.

This sentiment was shared by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov who said that BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) will be at the center of a new world order and stressed that the demand for rubles “is not a change in the terms of [energy] contracts,” but rather “a protection of Russian interests.”

It is this very drive to protect Russian interests that has forced Putin’s hand to demand rubles for energy. In fact, sanctions against Russia have only forced an accelerated change to the global economic system as de-Dollarization is being explored by nearly every major non-Western country.

Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, a Mexican political scientist, said that London, Washington and Beijing agree that there is a weakening of globalization. He stressed that “Moscow’s demand that your gas is paid in rubles” is an example of “the dismantling of the globalized model in the energy framework.”

Jalife-Rahme also explained that “the financial globalization with the predominance of the dollar generated annual profits of 1 trillion dollars for the United States, about 10% of the global GDP. The change of this paradigm may be one of the most serious blows of the Ukrainian situation to American interests.”

The West thought that it could economically collapse Russia, ignoring that sanctions failed to topple Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s Ayatollah’s, Kim Jong-Un and Nicolás Maduro. Rather, sanctions have only forced an acceleration of the de-Dollarization of the global economy. In effect, the demand for rubles for gas is pushing forward a multipolar and more equitable global economic system.

THE WARS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

I would now like to offer you some thoughts that do not commit you to this or that conflict, and even less to this or that side. I will just lift a veil and invite you to look at what it hides. What I am about to say may shock you, but we can only find peace by accepting reality.

Wars are changing. I am not talking about weapons and military strategies, but about the reasons for conflicts, about their human dimension. Just as the transition from industrial capitalism to financial globalization is transforming our societies and pulverizing the principles that organized them, so this evolution is changing wars. The problem is that we are already incapable of adapting our societies to this structural change and therefore even less capable of thinking about the evolution of war.

War always seeks to solve the problems that politics has failed to solve. It does not happen when we are ready for it, but when we have eliminated all other solutions.

This is exactly what is happening today. The US Straussians have inexorably cornered Russia in Ukraine, leaving it no option but to go to war. If the Allies insist on pushing her back, they will provoke a World War.

Thierry is always good:

From HERE

Ukraine update & Wheat for Rubles has collective west in panic mode

A Big Lie

The NY Times publishes a Big Lie,

"In the end, it is the Ukrainians who must make the hard decisions."

No, the opposite is true–all decisions are made in DC and have since 2014.

The phone calls are pathetic since they’re being made by those who lack the power to initiate negotiation. Blinken, Sullivan and Nuland are the ones killing Ukrainians since they refuse to allow any attempts at peace. And those three believe their own swill.

karlof1

Placebo – English Summer Rain [Soulmates Never Die HD]

Takes me back…

”]

May Ukraine SitRep – Russians Break Through U.S. Bolsterism

From MoA.

On May 14 I noted that the U.S. had asked Russia for a ceasefire in Ukraine:

The U.S. readout of the call says:

On May 13, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu for the first time since February 18. Secretary Austin urged an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication.

Austin initiated the call and the U.S. is seeking a ceasefire in Ukraine!!!

Yesterday the top officers of the U.S. and Russia had a call which, again, the U.S. side had initiated:

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, held a conversation that the Pentagon declined to further detail beyond acknowledging it had happened.

Thinks must be bad in Ukraine for this to have happened. Indeed if one trusts the daily ‘clobber list’ the Russian Ministry of Defense puts out all positions of the Ukrainian army are under heavy artillery fire and it is losing about 500 men per day. There are additional Russian effective strikes on training camps, weapon storage sites and transport hubs all over the country.

On top of that the tactical situation at the eastern frontline has changed after Russian forces broke through the heavily fortified frontline.

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Source: liveuamap.combigger A few days ago the Russian army went forward along the H-32 road, broke through the line in the direction of Propasna and took the town. It has since extended the bulge by taking several villages to the north, west and south.

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biggerThis breakthrough gives the chance to roll up the Ukrainian fortifications along the frontline through flank attacks or from behind. By cutting the supply lines of the Ukrainian troops to the north and south envelopes can be created which will eventual lead to cauldrons with no way out for the Ukrainian troops.

This is especially dangerous for the several thousand soldiers north of the bulge which currently defend the cities of Sieverodonetsk and Lysychansk in the north eastern part of the upper bubble.

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biggerThe Russian plan was to have another breakthrough from the north pushing to Siversk to then close the upper envelope. But after several failed attempts to cross the forest area and the Seversky Donets river that breakthrough has still to happen.

Russia is now likely to push fresh troops into the Propasna bulge to extend its reach into all directions. Reports of current actions show that the heavy fighting and bombing on the frontline continues and that bombing also continues to target traffic nodes.

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biggerOther fronts in Ukraine are currently relatively quiet with little direct fire. Still daily Russian artillery attacks hits all Ukrainian front lines and will cost daily casualties.

Some 2,000 Azov militia and Ukrainian army troops have left the catacombs of Azovstal in Mariupol. Another thousand may still be down there. The Russian army is filtering these prisoners. Members of Azov and other militia will be put to court. Ukrainian army soldiers will become prisoners of war.

The gasoline and diesel scarcity in Ukraine is currently having severe impacts. Even the Ukrainian military is now rationing its fuel. Since about six weeks ago Russia has systematically attacked refineries and fuel storage sites in Ukraine. It also disabled railroad bridges along the lines that brought fuel from Moldova and Romania.

At the same time the Ukrainian government had held up price regulations for fuel. The consumer sale prices for diesel and gasoline were fixed. The cost of fuel brought in by private trucks from Poland exceeded the price gas station owners could ask for. In consequence gas stations ran dry as their owners refrained from purchasing new fuel.

Three days ago the Zelensky regime in Kiev finally ended the fuel price control:

According to [economy minister] Svyrydenko, the government expects that the maximum prices for diesel will not exceed UAH 58 ($1.97), for gasoline — UAH 52 ($1.76) per liter, once controls are lifted.

“As soon as we feel that market operators are abusing their position, we will impose sanctions on them,” she added.

“We will monitor the situation on a daily basis”.

The expected prices are lower than what is currently asked for in Germany and that is without trucking the fuel the 600 kilometer from Poland to Kiev. The threat of sanctions also means that local wholesalers will have little incentives to actually deal in fuel. With the average wages in Ukraine being about $480 per months the real fuel prices will soon become another economic shock.

The Ukrainian government also continues its attacks on unions and labor laws:

In March, the Ukrainian parliament passed wartime legislation that severely curtailed the ability of trade unions to represent their members, introduced ‘suspension of employment’ (meaning employees are not fired, but their work and wages are suspended) and gave employers the right to unilaterally suspend collective agreements.
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But beyond this temporary measure, a group of Ukrainian MPs and officials are now aiming to further ‘liberalise’ and ‘de-Sovietise’ the country’s labour laws. Under a draft law, people who work in small and medium-sized firms – those which have up to 250 employees – would, in effect, be removed from the country’s existing labour laws and covered by individual contracts negotiated with their employer. More than 70% of the Ukrainian workforce would be affected by this change.

Against a background of concerns that Ukrainian officials are using Russia’s invasion to push through a long-awaited radical deregulation of labour laws, one expert has warned that the introduction of civil law into labour relations risks opening a “Pandora’s box” for workers.

In total the social-economic situation for Ukraine is catastrophic. The military situation is even worse. Mariupol has fallen and Russian troops working there will soon be able to go elsewhere. The Propasna bulge is threatening to envelope the whole northern frontline together with the core of the Ukrainian army.

There is no more talk of the Ukrainian army ‘winning’ like in Kiev or Karkov where the Russian troops retreated in good order after finishing their task of holding Ukrainian forces in place.

The Ukrainian command has sent several territorial brigades to the front lines. These units were supposed to defend their home towns. They consist of middle age men drafted into service. They have little fighting experience and lack heavy weapons. Several of these units have published videos saying they were giving up. They are lamenting that their commanders left them when their situation became critical.

That the Ukrainian army is now using such units as cannon fodder shows that it has only few reserves left.

Weapons that come in from the ‘west’ have difficulties reaching the front lines and had so far very little effect. They amount to drops of water on a hot plate.

All the above are the reasons why Austin and Milley have phoned up their Russian equivalents. They are also the reasons why the New York Times editors call on the Biden administration to end its bluster and to take a more realistic position:

Recent bellicose statements from Washington — President Biden’s assertion that Mr. Putin “cannot remain in power,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s comment that Russia must be “weakened” and the pledge by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that the United States would support Ukraine “until victory is won” — may be rousing proclamations of support, but they do not bring negotiations any closer.
In the end, it is the Ukrainians who must make the hard decisions: They are the ones fighting, dying and losing their homes to Russian aggression, and it is they who must decide what an end to the war might look like. If the conflict does lead to real negotiations, it will be Ukrainian leaders who will have to make the painful territorial decisions that any compromise will demand.
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[A]s the war continues, Mr. Biden should also make clear to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his people that there is a limit to how far the United States and NATO will go to confront Russia, and limits to the arms, money and political support they can muster. It is imperative that the Ukrainian government’s decisions be based on a realistic assessment of its means and how much more destruction Ukraine can sustain.

Confronting this reality may be painful, but it is not appeasement. This is what governments are duty bound to do, not chase after an illusory “win.” Russia will be feeling the pain of isolation and debilitating economic sanctions for years to come, and Mr. Putin will go down in history as a butcher. The challenge now is to shake off the euphoria, stop the taunting and focus on defining and completing the mission. America’s support for Ukraine is a test of its place in the world in the 21st century, and Mr. Biden has an opportunity and an obligation to help define what that will be.

Posted by b on May 20, 2022 at 16:49 UTC | Permalink

The Gregg Allman Band 1982 – Queen of Hearts – Saenger Theatre New Orleans

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Killer bunny rabbits, Economic Suicide, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Mariupol, and delicious home-made bagels

I’ve been spending more time than I would like on the Metallicman you-tube channel. However, it’s a venue that seems to fit me personally. I just need to work on my learning curve and improve on my presentation skills, my video editing skills, and my Marketing skills. That will come. It’s all a matter of time.

This installment concentrates on the crazy “news” that is flowing through the airwaves today, and mixed with my anti-troll, and anti-‘bot articles that really zeroes out the effectiveness of the government, and corporate entities that wish to confuse and control the narratives that MM produces. I hope you enjoy this article.

The bold and brazen truth is exposed

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov:

“Ukraine… No one wants Ukraine. They are an expendable country in this hybrid war against Russian Federation. No one has doubts anymore”.

The language from Russian sources has changed and they now say clearly that Ukraine is a tool and the fight is against Russia by the West.

How Europe Was Pushed Towards Economic Suicide

A decent piece from MoA

With the active help from Europe’s ‘leadership’ the U.S. is succeeding in ruining Europe.

As Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, wrote in early February, before Russia’s intervention in Ukraine:

America no longer has the monetary power and seemingly chronic trade and balance-of-payments surplus that enabled it to draw up the world’s trade and investment rules in 1944-45. The threat to U.S. dominance is that China, Russia and Mackinder’s Eurasian World Island heartland are offering better trade and investment opportunities than are available from the United States with its increasingly desperate demand for sacrifices from its NATO and other allies.

The most glaring example is the U.S. drive to block Germany from authorizing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to obtain Russian gas for the coming cold weather. Angela Merkel agreed with Donald Trump to spend $1 billion building a new LNG port to become more dependent on highly priced U.S. LNG. (The plan was cancelled after the U.S. and German elections changed both leaders.) But Germany has no other way of heating many of its houses and office buildings (or supplying its fertilizer companies) than with Russian gas.

The only way left for U.S. diplomats to block European purchases is to goad Russia into a military response and then claim that avenging this response outweighs any purely national economic interest. As hawkish Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, explained in a State Department press briefing on January 27: “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The problem is to create a suitably offensive incident and depict Russia as the aggressor.

In mid February OSCE observer noted that the artillery bombardment of Donbas by the Ukrainians increased from a handful to over 2,000 explosions per day. Russia reacted to these attack preparations by recognizing the Donbas republics, signing defense agreements with them and by finally coming to their help.

Shortly after the launch of the Russian military operation Professor Hudson further developed his earlier thoughts:

The recent prodding of Russia by expanding Ukrainian anti-Russian ethnic violence by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi post-2014 Maiden regime aims at forcing a showdown. It comes in response to the fear by U.S. interests that they are losing their economic and political hold on their NATO allies and other Dollar Area satellites as these countries have seen their major opportunities for gain to lie in increasing trade and investment with China and Russia. 
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As President Biden explained, the current military escalation (“Prodding the Bear”) is not really about Ukraine. Biden promised at the outset that no U.S. troops would be involved. But he has been demanding for over a year that Germany prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from supplying its industry and housing with low-priced gas and turn to the much higher-priced U.S. suppliers. 
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[T]he most pressing U.S. strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices. In addition to creating profits and stock-market gains for U.S. companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy.

In early April Professor Hudson took another look at the situation:

It is now clear that the New Cold War was planned over a year ago, with serious strategy associated with America’s perceived to block Nord Stream 2 as part of its aim of barring Western Europe (“NATO”) from seeking prosperity by mutual trade and investment with China and Russia. 
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So the Russian-speaking Donetsk and Luhansk regions were shelled with increasing intensity, and when Russia still refrained from responding, plans reportedly were drawn up for a great showdown last February – a heavy Western Ukrainian attack organized by U.S. advisors and armed by NATO.
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European trade and investment prior to the War to Create Sanctions had promised a rising mutual prosperity among Germany, France and other NATO countries vis-à-vis Russia and China. Russia was providing abundant energy at a competitive price, and this energy supply was to make a quantum leap with Nord Stream 2. Europe was to earn the foreign exchange to pay for this rising import trade by a combination of exporting more industrial manufactures to Russia and capital investment in rebuilding the Russian economy, e.g. by German auto companies, aircraft and financial investment. This bilateral trade and investment is now stopped – for many, many years, given NATO’s confiscation of Russia’s foreign reserves kept in euros and British sterling.

The European response to the U.S. proxy war against Russia was based on media driven hysteric moralizing or maybe moralizing hysteria. It was and is neither rational nor realistic.

The European ‘leadership’ decided that nothing but the economic suicide of Europe was sufficient to show Russia that Brussels was seriously miffed. Dimwit national governments, including the German one, followed that program. Should they stay on their course the result will be a complete de-industrialization of western Europe.

In the words of one serious observer:

Today, we see that for purely political reasons, driven by their own ambitions, and under pressure from their US overlord, the European countries are imposing more sanctions on the oil and gas markets which will lead to more inflation. Instead of admitting their mistakes, they are looking for a guilty party elsewhere. 
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One gets the impression that Western politicians and economists simply forget basic economic laws or just choose to ignore them. 
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[S]aying no to Russian energy means that Europe will systemically and for the long term become the world’s most costly region for energy resources. Yes, prices will rise, and resources will go to counter these price hikes, but this will not change the situation significantly. Some analysts are saying that it will seriously or even irrevocably undermine the competitiveness of a significant portion of European industry, which is already losing ground to companies from other parts of the world. Now, these processes will certainly pick up pace. Clearly, the opportunities for economic activity, with its improvements, will leave Europe for other regions, as will Russia’s energy resources.

This economic auto-da-fe… suicide is, of course, the internal affair of the European countries. 
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Now our partners’ erratic actions – this is what they are – have resulted in a de facto growth in revenue in the Russian oil-and-gas sector in addition to the damage to the European economy. 
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Understanding what steps the West will take in the near future, we must reach conclusions in advance and be proactive, turning the thoughtless chaotic steps of some of our partners to our advantage for the benefit of our country. Naturally, we should not hope for their endless mistakes. We should simply, practically proceed from current realities, as I said.

Vladimir Putin, Meeting on oil industry development, May 17 2020, Kremlin, Moscow

Posted by b on May 18, 2022 at 14:01 UTC | Permalink

Weapons arrive in Ukraine

Incoming weapons.  On the Polish-Ukrainian border, seven South African-made Mamba Mk2 EE armored vehicles transferred to Ukraine by Estonia as military assistance were seen. These vehicles were specifically produced for the Estonian army.

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We have to conclude if we can see these armored vehicles via telegram channel on the Polish border, then the Russian forces can see them too.  And ditto for all other incoming weapons.

China Eastern black box indicates 737 crash was intentional

***   The Offical Chinese government says that this article is FAKE NEWS and to ignore it.   ***

May 18, 2022.

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The crash occured within two days of Mr. Blinkedin, and President Biden WARNED China that "serious consequences" would occur unless China sanctioned Russia.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that someone intentionally put flight China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 into a nose dive killing all 132 aboard.

“Data from a black box recovered in the crash suggests inputs to the controls pushed the plane into the fatal dive,”

…the WSJ said.

The paper is quoting people familiar with US officials’ preliminary assessment of what led to the accident.

Chinese authorities, who are leading the investigation, also have not flagged any mechanical or flight control problems with the plane involved in the March 21 crash.

What is not clear is whether it was one of the pilots or a passenger.

China Eastern Flight MU 5735 crashed on March 21, 2022.

Flight MU 5735 a Boeing 737-800, of China Eastern Airlines, took off from Kunming Changshui Airport at 13:16 Beijing time and climbed to an altitude of 8900m.

At 14:20:55 Guangzhou area control radar showed a “deviation” warning, as the aircraft left the cruise altitude.

ATC called the crew but received no reply.

Haiti

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A Haitian walks by a murdered man on the sidewalk near the Catholic Cathedral, Sunday, September 18, 1994 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. An American invasion of Haiti was averted Sunday night in the most dramatic fashion as President Clinton’s negotiators reached an 11th-hour compromise with Army commander Raoul Cedras. Clinton said Haiti’s military rulers would leave power by October 15. (Photo by Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo)

Don’t ignore what’s happening in Sri Lanka, it’s coming for all of us | Redacted

Take notice of Sri Lanka.

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OIP.rptLVrzrxWSw3vbxQvt 8wHaJP

Coming to the collective West.

No Knead Crusty Rolls – Easier Than You Think!

Mariupol Liberated… Western Media Silence Amid Their Big Lie Exposure

From HERE

For anyone who has been seriously following the conflict in Ukraine it is obvious that Western governments and media have been a total travesty in what they are claiming about that country.

The Western news media were made to look like laughing stocks this week with the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the Black Sea port city in southern Ukraine.

Not just laughing stocks, but actually proponents of deceitful war propaganda. This should be a matter of excruciatingly deep shame for the Western media and indeed the basis for future prosecution over war crimes complicity.

Up to 100 civilians were released from the sprawling industrial factory and taken into care by Russian forces in conjunction with United Nations rescue officials and the International Red Cross. Their testimonies flatly contradict the claims that were being blared by Western news media for several weeks.

Amplifying the narrative of the NATO-backed Kiev regime, the Western media had been making out that the civilians were voluntarily in the Azovstal plant to help defend it along with Ukrainian soldiers. The Russian military surrounding the factory was said to be besieging the site and threatening the safety of civilians.

However, it turns out, based on their own testimonies, that the civilians were being held hostage as human shields by the Ukrainian combatants. While the Western media had been extolling the “heroic” defenders of the Azovstal factory, it has now become apparent that these “heroes” were grossly violating laws of war by systematically using non-combatants as human sandbags to deter a Russian assault.

We should not be surprised by the criminal and degenerate conduct. For the “brave defenders” at the Azovstal plant that the Western media have been eulogizing are none other than the Nazi-affiliated Azov battalion. These militants are the frontline troops of the Ukrainian armed forces. They have been trained and armed by NATO powers, including the United States, Britain, Canada, and Poland. There is speculation that there may even be NATO special forces still holed up in the steel plant along with their Azov battalion charges.

It remains to be seen what the residual 1,000 militants in the factory will do now that their siege is finally doomed. One of the fighters even put out a bizarre appeal this week to SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk to help mediate their escape. How appropriate for the weird times we live in!

Contrary to Western media claims, the Ukrainian forces have been routinely using schools, hospitals, residential apartments, and other civilian centers as cover for fighting against Russian troops.

The sudden fall-off in Western media coverage this week is in stark contrast to the near-hysterical saturation reporting in previous weeks when it was being claimed that the Ukrainian port city was cruelly besieged by Russian forces. Consumers of Western media were led to believe that Russia’s military was about to perpetrate a heinous crime of mass murder. The hysteria being generated is part of the manufacturing of consent from the public for Western governments to funnel taxpayer money and military aid to prop up the Kiev regime. This week, the Biden administration is set to send a $40 billion military aid package to the Kiev regime; this largesse is while one million Americans have died from the Covid-19 pandemic.

For anyone who has been seriously following the conflict in Ukraine it is obvious that Western governments and media have been a total travesty in what they are claiming about that country. The regime in Kiev that seized power in 2014 through a CIA-backed coup against an elected president has actually been an international disgrace only given cover by the Western media and fawning Western governments. The regime may currently have a Jewish president as a figurehead, but for eight years it has been infested with Nazis, fascists and other anti-Russian radicals. This regime and its foot soldiers in the Azov battalion and other such formations openly glorify the memory of Second World War collaborators with the Third Reich in the prosecution of its Final Solution genocide.

The Western media had previously acknowledged the “Nazi problem” in Ukraine. But since the US-led NATO bloc ramped up its war agenda against Russia over the past six months, all such pejorative mention of the Kiev regime has been expunged. The Western public is inculcated to believe that Washington and its European allies are defending democracy in Ukraine. The conflict has been completely shorn of any factual context, from the origins of the Kiev coup to the past eight years of relentless deadly aggression against the Russian-speaking people in the breakaway Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

A major reason why Moscow ordered the military intervention into Ukraine on February 24 was to defend the Russian people of the southeast Donbass region from the ravages of the NATO-backed Kiev regime forces and their Nazi hatred.

Nearly three months on, the Donbass provinces have been largely liberated by the Russian military. The Azov Nazis have been pushed back. The southern port city of Mariupol is a key strategic gain to link up the Donbass territory under the control of Russian forces in alliance with the armies of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

The Western media tell their consumers that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has been a failure; that it has involved massive war crimes; that the “brave defenders” are holding out.

The facts are that the Kiev regime has callously and cynically used its own population as cannon fodder to cling on to power and as emotive pawns to facilitate the NATO weaponizing of the country as a catspaw against Russia. That is exactly what the NATO powers want. The United States and its NATO accomplices – the ultimate architects of this conflict – are funneling tens of billions of dollars into the Ukraine, supplying covert forces and military intelligence that is recklessly risking a direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.

One can be bamboozled by the cornucopia of narratives and propaganda. The Bucha (false-flag) massacre that allegedly happened in March was a classic example of media gaslighting psyops, as was the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol – all covertly perpetrated by NATO-backed Nazis but blamed on Russia by the Western media.

But perhaps the clearest test case of lies from facts surely is the liberation of Mariupol by Russia. The city is returning to normal after weeks of heavy fighting. Humanitarian aid is being provided by Russian forces in coordination with the UN and Red Cross. As with other parts of liberated Donbass, civilians are expressing relief and gratitude for having gotten rid of militants who had been holding them under siege with their hateful Nazi ideology.

There is a vivid parallel with Syria’s northern city of Aleppo when it was liberated by Russian forces in late 2016 from jihadist militants. Recall how for weeks before Aleppo was retaken, the Western media were declaring that a bloodbath was imminent against innocent civilians and “brave rebels”.

Just like Mariupol and the rest of the Donbass, the civilian population has been liberated from a siege of terror that Western-backed proxies had imposed. In the case of Aleppo, Western media conspicuously did not follow up on their tall stories and wild claims. When did they ever visit Aleppo to find out what became of the civilians under siege?

It is therefore fitting – albeit damning – that Western media have suddenly dropped their coverage of Ukraine this week. It is truly astounding how such Western media have reacted. There is a mass denial of reality because otherwise, they are exposing themselves as the liars and purveyors of propaganda that they shamelessly are. Why aren’t the BBC and CNN and so on in Mariupol, Donetsk and Lugansk to enquire about people’s conditions and views? That’s because the Western media would be exposing themselves as witting conduits of war propaganda. It is more prudent for them to simply just shut up and pretend nothing has happened.

The dogs bark and the Western media caravan trundles on… to some other dutiful destination.

Is it any wonder that Western governments are massively censoring all critical, independent media? Searching the internet now just brings up approved Western media sources. Hardly any Russian media views are permitted and neither are critical, independent Western perspectives. This draconian suppression of free speech and information by the West is part of their war propaganda campaign aimed at giving the warmongering media free rein to spout their preposterous and pernicious lies unchecked. The implications are shocking. Western states are devolving into totalitarian regimes that at the same time have the audacity to pontificate about democracy and freedom. They largely get away with this absurd audacity because the profiteering corporate media are bought and paid for to be dutifully dumb and obsequious. There is an increasingly vicious circle of toxic Western militarism aided and abetted by so-called media that more accurately should be referred to as the “ministry of truth”.

There are many nails going into the coffin of Western corporate-controlled media as far as their public credibility and respect are concerned. Another nail just slammed in this week from the exposure of their Big Lie about Mariupol.

Vietnam

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A medic gives blood transfusion to unidentified 101st airborne brigade soldier in futile effort to save his life at An Ninh, South Viet Nam on September 18, 1965. Victim was wounded when helicopters bringing in his unit for battle against Viet Cong were hit by heavy fire. The Americans were pinned down for 24 hours, preventing evacuation of casualties. This soldier died three hours after he was wounded. (Photo by AP Photo)

The American Biolabs

Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy gives key takeaways from the last UN Security Council meeting on US biolabs in Ukraine:

  1. The US refuses to explain its engagement in military bio activities in Ukraine. Keeps shrugging off several hundred pages of evidence. “These are all lies and Russia’s propaganda, and we are good guys because it can’t be otherwise”. Not a word on the point of discussion.
  2. Western delegations are praising the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and calling on us to make use of its mechanisms. They fail to mention however that it is the US who is blocking the elaboration of BWC verification mechanism. Such a hypocricy!
  3. The US refuses to explain why it doesn’t want an effective international verification mechanism for bio weapons. Why act like this unless you are trying to conceal something? Why does Washington position itself above the international law? American exceptionalism at its best.
Main conclusion: we have definitely hit their soft spot. It’s clear for any unbiased observer that they are obscuring the issue and trying to divert attention from this uncomfortable topic trying to discourage us to raise it by repeating mantras on “Russian aggression” etc.

So stay tuned, there’s more evidence on US military biological programs to follow!

Top level headline in China’s Global Times today:  “‘Neo-Nazism’ poisons Ukraine, Europe under US, West’s connivance”.

Amazing Photographs Of Trees Growing Through Classic Cars

For unknown reasons trees seem to like the apocalypse-style of growing through abandoned vehicles. Why? Good protection for seedlings?

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Toward a Theory of Impossibility: Column Upends Science

By Fred Reed for the Saker Blog

In today’s column, we will revolutionize science, and establish that much of what we believe, at least regarding living things, is at best improbable and likely impossible. Science won’t notice, so no harm will be done.

As we explicate the Theory of Impossibility, we must begin with particle physics. This will give the column a touch of class. Specifically, the Fundamental Theorem of Quantum Mechanics states, “If a thing makes no sense at all, wait until you get used to it, and then it will.” For example, the idea that a particle can simultaneously be a wave is absurd, but is now everywhere accepted, like potatoes. The EPR effect, holding that if one of a pair of entangled photons, in Scarsdale, changes polarity, its entangled partner, in Alpha Centauri, will simultaneously change polarity, is ridiculous. How would it know? Neither of these things can happen. But they do, so we regard them as reasonable. Here we enunciate and underlying principle: A thing is not necessarily possible merely because it happens.

Unless something is going on that we do not know about.

Scientists see the universe as if it were a gigantic crossword puzzle. Crosswords are inherently solvable. While the great puzzle of life and existence has not been entirely elucidated, we assume that it can be, given time and effort. We may not know a five-letter word ending in Q that means “seventh-century Persian coin,” but we assume that it exists and can one day be found. But…is this so?

This reminds me that when I was in college, before the invention of fire, sophomores quoted Gödel’s Theorem as saying that in a logical system of sufficient complexity, there were questions that could not be answered within the system. Whether the theorem actually says this, I forget, but we said it said it, and felt very wise.

Here we come to one of my favorite clichés, by the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane, “The world is not only queerer than we think, but queerer than we can think.” Just so. Perhaps there are questions that can’t be answered, and therefore won’t be. This cannot be a comforting thought to a new-minted chemist as he rushes forth from CalTech, which may be why anything suggesting inherent unanswerability is rejected. But it may be that we just aren’t smart enough to understand everything, or maybe even much of it. Here we come to another cliché by my favorite philosopher (me): The smartest of a large number of hamsters is still a hamster.

Now, impossibility. Suppose I showed you a pair of tiny gears and said, “See? When I turn this one, it meshes with the other and makes it turn too.” You would respond with a lack of surprise. Suppose I then showed you fifty such little gears in an old-fashioned Swiss watch in which they all turned to make the hands move. You might say, “Isn’t that ingenious.” Suppose that I then told you that someone had assembled, literally, a cubic mile of such tiny gears and that they meshed perfectly for fifty years to do many complex things. You would ask me what I was smoking.

Even though each step in a cubic-mile process could be shown to be possible—gear A turns gear B, which turns gears C and D—you would sense that the entire complex wouldn’t work, however plausible each sub-process might be. You would be unconsciously applying the law that the improbability of the whole is greater than the sum of the improbabilities of the parts. The improbability is not a linear function of the number of parts but increases without limit as the number of parts goes above, say, one thousand.

Does that sound dreadfully portentous, or what? One day it will be the foundation of ponderous overpriced textbooks to extract money from sophomores. At least I hope so. I could use the money.

To a neophyte of biochemistry, the textbook description of a cell seems the mapping of a robotic Japanese factory onto a swamp. For example, in what sounds like a computer-controlled assembly line, enzymes uncoil the DNA, others unzip it, complementary nucleotides snap into place, a zipper-upper enzyme glues them together, click, click, click, whereupon the mRNA rushes purposefully off to a ribosome where, click, click, click. This is probably AP biology in decent high schools, if any, and has been verified thousands of times by biochemists. But…it sounds like mechanical engineering, not mindless undirected glop in solution.

You say, “But Fred, you don’t know anything about biochemistry.” True, but so what? You don’t have to know anything about it to know that it is impossible. Too many little wheels. You’ve got mRNA and microRNA and rRNA all rushing about, or sometimes holding still, and doing complex and purposeful things, and tRNA codons and anticodons coupling like drunken teenagers, and busybody enzymes editing this or that on the fly in the manner of bioschoolmarms or splicing this and some other thing and ribosomes and lysosomes and spliceosomes and palindromes and maybe aerodromes and really twisty long molecules with names like 2,4-diethyl-polywannacrackerene—and all of this is said to run with the efficiency of a Mexican drug cartel. All of this in a tiny space where everything ought to bang into everything else and just lie there in smoking rubble.

To us barbarians on the outside, the cell looks like a microscopic globule of goop with sticky stuff diffusing mindlessly about. I do not doubt that biochemists, whom I respect, have shown all of this to happen by careful experiments. I just don’t believe it. It’s the cubic mile of gears again. You have hundreds of reactive species in close proximity doing extraordinarily complicated things for sometimes a hundred years with what sounds like precisely coordinated purposefulness–instead of congealing immediately into a droplet of disagreeable mush. I do not doubt that lab folk have proved that it happens. I just don’t think it is possible. Unless something is going on that we don’t understand.

The foregoing is not orthodox biochemistry and may encounter initial resistance in the trade.

A problem of biology for years has been the inability of evolutionists to explain how life or many of its manifestations can have evolved, irreducible complexity and all that, the usual response being ok, we aren’t sure, but any day now we will have the answer. The check is in the mail. But in fact the inexplicability grows ever greater year on year as more and more complexity is discovered, such as epigenetics, and the more complexity, the less likelihood of coming about by chance. But we advocates of Impossibility Theory assert that not only can living things not have evolved, but also that they can’t function. Too many little gear wheels. Therefore life doesn’t exist.

Consider the retina, a very thin membrane consisting of ten distinct sublayers engaging in appallingly complex biochemistry, somehow maintaining position and function for, occasionally, a hundred years. These layers consist of millions of cells doing the impossibly tricky chemical dance mentioned above, more or less perfectly. In the rest of the eye you have the three layers of the eyeball, sclera, choroid, retina, and the five layers of the cornea, epithelium, Bowman’s membrane, stroma, Descemet’s membrane, and posterior lamina. And a lens consisting of a proteinaceous goop contained in a capsule, attached to the muscular ciliary body by suspensory ligaments, and an iris of radial and circumferential fibers innervated competitively by the sympathetic and parasympathetic subsystems of the autonomic nervous system. No way exists of explaining how this purportedly evolved—or how it works for many years without the layers of intricacy, biochemical through mechanical, collapsing. (I know this stuff because I have eye problems connected with Washington’s foreign policy.)

The intricacy of life is layered. We start with a zygote which, being a cell, is bogglingly complex. This little time bomb develops into a baby, which is impossible. If you don’t think so, try reading a textbook of embryology. The migration of cells, this control gradient, that control gradient, DGRNs, perfect inerrant specialization to form implausibly precise and complex things like incus, malleus, stapes, tympanum in the ear and (very) numerous other examples, all impossible individually and more so in aggregate.

Impossible, at least, unless we can come up with an auxiliary explanation. Magic seems a good candidate.

All of the organs of the baby are in varying degrees impossibly complicated and, even more impossible, almost always all of them are perfect at once. Everyone knows Murphy’s Law: If something can go wrong, it will. A baby should bring joy to Murphy because the opportunities of disaster are nearly infinite—yet things almost never go wrong. It is like a federal program that actually works.

The functioning of said baby is as mysterious as its formation. Babies grow. Children grow. How does this happen? For example, the baby has various small, hollow bones which grow year after year into large hollow bones. For this to work, cells (osteoclasts) eat away the bone from the inside, making the hollow larger, while other cells (osteoblasts) lay down new bone on the outside. Complex and wildly implausible communication between blast and clast purportedly makes this work. Medical researchers, honest people, no fools, assure me that this happens, and I believe them. Sort of. The idea that this evolved by random mutation is, if I may use a technical term, nuts. So, according to Impossibility Theory, is its precise, inerrant functioning. We come back to magic.

The whole baby does this sort of thing. The skull grows. Kidneys grow. The heart grows. All, with few exceptions, perfectly. Meanwhile, kidneys excrete, endocrine glands secrete, neurons weirdly but correctly link up, skin grows in perfect layers, nervous system deploys—perfectly. Do you believe this? It isn’t possible.

Unless there is something we haven’t figured out, and perhaps can’t.

I don’t know much about anything (readers delight in assuring me of this). However, I don’t know less about computers than I don’t know about biology. I want an engineering information-flow analysis of cells and a baby. Probably there are courses and books about this, and I just haven’t heard of them.

Consider a drill, perhaps in a factory, controlled by a computer. The total information involved in this transaction presumably consists of information flowing from sensors on the drill to the computer, and from the computer to the drill. Digital bits are easy to understand if you have at least two fingers. Cells are dauntingly analog.

A whole lot of things have to happen in a cell at the right time and produce the right amounts of all sorts of stuff. But to my naïve gaze, not only do processes have to produce things in correct amounts, but the systems that tell them how much to produce have to know how much that is, and these interrelationships all have to interrelate with each other. How much is that in gigabytes? Again, I am a barbarian of such things, but I wish a software engineer would reduce the whole shebang to data-flow diagrams, including how it knows when things are wearing out and the information paths needed to repair them. And why everything doesn’t just stick to everything else.

Thee you have the elements of a theory of impossibility. Doubtless it will rank with general relativity and Watson and Crick. You saw it here first.

The Astonishing Cinematic Autochrome Photography From The 1890s By Heinrich Kühn

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The rise of photography in the mid-late 19th-century began the move away from an oral and literary tradition towards one based on image. A photograph can describe a moment in time more viscerally than the written word.

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Technology dictates form. When cameras were big box brutes – heavy, unwieldy things that took an age to process an image -photography was best served by landscape, as little moved other than the trees under the breath of the wind.

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As cameras slowly changed during the 1890s, becoming lighter, more manoeuvrable, there grew a desire among photographs to create more artistic images. pictures that rivalled painting for their impressionistic beauty. One pioneer of this trend was Heinrich Kühn, a German-born amateur photographer. Back then, most photographers were amateurs. It was an expensive hobby. Only those who could afford to pay for the technology, the processing, the darkroom, and the time necessary indulge their hobby.

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Kühn was the son of successful merchants. He was born in Dresden and studied medicine and science. He gave up his studies to focus on photography. He was able to do this because of an allowance he inherited from his father. He moved to Vienna and became part of the Vienna Camera Club, where he was influenced by the city’s Secession artists who believed in creating Getsumkunstwerk or a total work of art.

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From 1890 onwards, Kühn started working on creating his “total art” photographs. His pictures were described as “painterly” and “impressionistic” but to our modern eye look more like movie stills from some great, unreleased film.

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Dressed in his linen suit, Panama hat, gold-rimmed spectacles and luxuriant moustache, Kühn directed his wife and children to perform for his camera.

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You Don’t Know Whether to Laugh or to Cry. The EU Now Has a Masterplan to Hit Putin Where It Hurts

From HERE

Hit Putin where it hurts? He’s more likely to hurt himself from laughing. Try harder, Ursula.

The EU is about to unveil its own sanctions plan to wean its own member states off Russian oil. But getting backing from all EU governments might be harder to push it through. Try not to laugh.

On the foreign policy circuit the EU doesn’t have an impressive track record. For anything. More, if anything, for leaving a trail of havoc in its wake when it dabbles in international politics. The problem is simply that the EU, while quite capable at agreeing on new directives for the size of your windscreen wipers, or the size or shape of a given piece of fruit, struggles with the big stuff. There simply isn’t the support from member states yet to hand over to Brussels how those same governments unilaterally deal with conflict around the world. The result is actually quite comical as who can forget Federica Mogherini’s offer to both President Assad of Syria and opposition fighters of cash from the EU to stop the war? Or for the same office to suggest using British frigates off the coast of Libya to literally blow out of the water smuggler boats laden with African migrants trying to get to Europe. Or that unforgettable foray into conflict resolution on the Chad border in 2001 where French officers under a so-called peacekeeping mission from the EU fled for their lives when rebels actually started firing live rounds at them? Imagine. Live rounds.

And then there was the EU police force in Afghanistan which was so terrified of the streets of Kabul that they simply decided it would be safer for them, even though they were armed, to stay in their barracks. And then the fiasco of Covid where the EU couldn’t even get an agreement from its own governments on how to proceed with a rescue plan and so did nothing, while thousands of its own citizens died. Even Brexit was a catastrophe for the EU, given that after all that drama over the negotiations and the empty threats by Brussels, Britain turns out to be not merely a survivor but a champion with economic growth the envy of the 26-member bloc.

The list just goes on and on. Someone really should write a book about the EU’s comical attempt to be a superpower and how it fails every single time.

And it will be the same with the latest escapade from the European Commission’s own President who seems to have set a new record for being especially ineffective – even for European Commission presidents. Ursula von der Leyen, an unremarkable German politician, bereft of any real dynamism and a particularly obscure foreign minister when she held the post, is grasping the nettle and facing Russia head on. Oh yes she is. Dear Ursula has a new draft directive which will ensure that all EU member states will abandon their deals with Russia oil, or at least phase them out over a period of time. We don’t know what the timeline is but the ambitious plan will have to have the support of all member states and this where it might run into some obstacles. Given that some EU member states have made it pretty clear that they don’t have the means or resources to look for alternative sources of gas, for example, it’s hard to see how an EU directive is going to make any differences. Some might argue that an EU directive is a by-product of a lack of unity in the first place and so the failed superstate needs to look to the bureaucrats to find a fix. But contrary to popular belief, the EU Commission isn’t as powerful as it likes to believe and cannot impose draft legislation on member states or the European parliament for that matter.

Realistically, the Russia move is an act of desperation following the EU’s grotesque support for U.S. and British objectives in Ukraine, i.e the toppling of Putin. The announcement shouldn’t therefore be taken seriously and given the recent Covid ordeal which lost von der Leyen considerable credibility it’s hard to see how she can galvanise opinion across 26 member states. What’s more likely is that this latest ruse will be a rod for her own back as more independently-minded EU member states who have made the headlines of late for not getting in line, will use it as a political tool to hit back at Brussels. And time is also a factor. If, say, it takes a year to be adopted – which is fast tracked – has the Commission president considered the present financial hardship that many EU citizens themselves are facing due to the Ukraine war and the political blowback that this directive would have, if adopted? While Joe Biden says remarkably stupid things like the U.S. is looking to Qatar for a solution to Europe’s energy dependency (they haven’t got any spare capacity to ship to Europe), it seems the EU is duty bound to follow the trend of talking nonsense and producing fake news. Hit Putin where it hurts? He’s more likely to hurt himself from laughing. Try harder, Ursula.

Make ANY Bagel With THIS Recipe ( Plain/Everything/Egg/Onion/Poppy/Sesame ) New York Bagels Recipe

The Luxury Apartment On Wheels: Camping In Style In A 1930s Jungle Yacht

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The Jungle Yacht was created for and used by Italian explorer Commander Attilio Gatti and his wife, who both traveled extensively to the African Congo as a deluxe apartment “for his 1937-1940 (his 10th) and 1947 (his 11th) expeditions” and “equipped them quite lavishly.”

The expedition used two streamlined trailers designed by Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky and using 1937 International Harvester D-35 chassis, and were 44 feet long and weighed 9 tons. The vehicles were built by the International Harvester company, who was evidently one of the sponsors of the expedition.

The trailers were pretty luxurious accommodations for camping out in the boonies of British East Africa. They were joined together in camp as a deluxe 5-room apartment on wheels, and served as headquarters while the expedition’s personnel sought out the secrets of the dim heart of Africa.

The camps were equipped with electricity and air conditioning and had a workshop, a photographic lab, and a ham radio station (Gatti was an enthusiastic ham radio operator). Electricity was supplied by a 110 volt generator mounted behind the cabs of the trucks. Each night a single wire 4500 volt electric fence was put up to dissuade the large specimens of the local wildlife from approaching the camp.

One of the vehicles in transit from the International Harvester factory to New York.

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Cocktails in the deepest heart of Africa.

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The living room.

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The Commander’s desk in the living room.

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The bedroom.

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An International Trucks brochure heralds the first journey of the five-room convoy.

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Major Fail, other than war. 

Washington failed to get the summit with the ASEAN countries to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

ASEAN nations are Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.

Failure in freezing Russian Money

Another failure of freezing funds:  Switzerland released $6.33 billion of Russia’s frozen funds.

US, Japan Prepare Statement Pledging To Jointly ‘Deter’ China Militarily

From the “news” outlet Zero Hedge quoting propaganda outlets Bloomberg and Nikki. Thursday, May 19, 2022 – 09:05 AM
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Tensions between Beijing and Tokyo are about to ratchet further amid widespread reports that the United States and Japan have prepared a statement calling for both to “deter and respond to” China’s aggressive military activities in the Indo-Pacific region.

The statement is expected to be released as President Joe Biden visits Tokyo to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida early next week. Biden will travel to South Korea and Japan from May 20 to May 24, the White House previously announced.

Crucially, according to Nikkei, “The statement to be released after their Monday meeting in Tokyo will also clarify America’s resolve to defend Japan if it is attacked, including with nuclear weapons.”

The meeting will mark Biden’s first face-to-face meeting with the Japanese PM Kishida, coming at a crucial moment that the anti-China stance of both countries have steadily growing over recent years.

When Biden last year met with then-Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, the two issue a joint statement calling for stability in the “Taiwan Strait” – which was viewed as a provocative term by China given it was the first joint US-Japan statement to invoke Taiwan in many decades.

Next week’s Asia trip will include Biden rolling out his administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework – which is a plan to counter China economically.

Anticipating the Tokyo meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday warned Japan, stressing that US-Japan cooperation must not “hurt China’s sovereignty, security and development interests” – as quoted in Bloomberg. “China hopes that Japan acts cautiously and learns a lesson from history,” the Chinese foreign ministry was cited further as saying.

Killer Rabbits Terrorized the Pages of Medieval Manuscripts

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2022 05 19 15 41

From HERE

In early medieval art and literature fluffy white rabbits, bunnies, and hares were typically motifs of innocence, venerability, and purity. However, more in sync with these animals’ rate of reproduction they later came to represent fertility. But as well as these classic archetypes of world mythology the rabbit was sometimes portrayed as a horrifically murderous killer.

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Entering the Medieval Magical Inverse World

Fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grail will recall the vicious killer bunny that attacked King Arthur and his valiant knights, however, only a few will know that this farcical scene has its origins in real-world medieval manuscripts. Hand-written animal skin books were first created by monks in 11th century monasteries and those with illustrations in gold and silver decorations are known as ‘Illuminated.’ A research article in a 2016 ‘ Daily Art Magazine’ explains that the ‘marginalia’ or margins of some illuminated texts feature a range of mythological creatures known as ‘the drolleries,’ the painting of which peaked between 1250 AD to the 15th century.

While rabbits began their symbolic journey in this world as markers of purity and helplessness the mythological dimension of drolleries was inverted, therefore, in illuminated texts rabbits were often depicted as armor-wearing sadistic, cruel, and unpredictably violent creatures which murdered animals and people in the most awful ways.

2022 05 19 15 41
2022 05 19 15 41

According to art historian Margaret Rickert’s 1954 book ‘ Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages ,’ medieval scribes painted ‘cocks with human heads, dogs carrying human masks, archers winding out of a fish’s mouth and bird-like dragons with an elephant’s head on the back.’ Dr. Jorn Gunther says the idea of an inverse world in which everything is upside down ‘reaches back to antiquity’ when people ritually fought the perceived evils of winter.

A more recent 2022 article in ‘ Art Magazine Daily’ suggests that in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance ‘the culture of laughter was trying to make the regular world full of mysticism, dogmatism, and seriousness more bearable.’ Furthermore, carnival celebrations and jokes ‘dramatized the comic and relative side of absolute truths and supreme authorities highlighted the ambivalence of reality, coming to represent the power of both absolute liberty and farce.’ This would suggest killer rabbits were simply medieval jokes and mirrors of culture at that time, but they are much, much more.

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2022 05 19 15 43

Rabbit Courts and Beheaded Human Hunters

An entry on ‘ Mediaeval Manuscripts Blog ‘ says that during the Harley Cataloguing Project , while re-cataloguing the ‘ Arnstein Passional ’ that was made at Arnstein Abbey in Germany around the 1170s, researchers spotted a particularly early killer bunny. Regarded as the earliest killer rabbit ever discovered, a decorated letter ‘T’ doubles as a gallows on which two rabbits have hung a human hunter. The killers in this instance are standing on their hindlegs pointing and jeering with their front paws at the murdered man.

To interpret this apparently awful scene we must think in reverse, so as to better suit the topsy-turvy environment of the magical inverse world. Rabbits in this world are fluffy and innocent prey animals so it makes perfect sense that they would become violent administrators of justice, punishing human hunters who killed rabbits, in the upside-down world.

This is certainly the case in the ‘ Smithfield Decretals’ that were illuminated in London in the 1340s AD and are currently kept at the British Library in London.

The marginal scenes in these illuminated texts depict a group of giant overweight rabbits waging hyper-violence on a human hunter and his hound. The first rabbit is an archer and it shoots the hunter in his spine before the other rabbits tie him up and haul him before a rabbit judge. After an inevitable guilty verdict, the gang of rabbits haul the hunter away and joyously behead him.

But this was only the beginning of the rabbit’s bloodlust, which after murdering the hunter set about catching his dog which was the number one enemy of rabbits in this world and a perfect motif for the violence of rabbits in the upside down world. The dog met a similar fate to its master and was beheaded after being found guilty in a rigged rabbit court.

All That is Impossible Here, Happens There

It can be concluded that the killer rabbit motif has many possible interpretations, but they all unite in that they reflect a reversal of morals in the medieval upside down world. But what exactly did ‘upside down’ and ‘inverted’ mean in the sixteenth century?

According to Vincent Robert-Nicoud ’s 2018 book ‘ Introduction The Sixteenth-Century World Upside Down’ the words ‘upside down’ and ‘inverse’ were used in the same way we might use the words ‘weird’ or ‘freaky,’ most often to describe abnormal or unnatural objects or occurrences. ‘The topos of the world upside down,’ wrote Robert-Nicoud, ‘brings to mind a world returned to its initial state of primaeval chaos, in which everything is inside-out, topsy-turvy and out of bounds.’

Now that you are aware of it, keep an eye out for this medieval ‘world upside down’ rhetorical device for it appears in hundreds of texts, poems, paintings, and adages which collectively describe a place where natural impossibilities in this world, or dimension, are everyday occurrences.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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The white flag is not going up, and so the locomotive is on the track going off towards HELL

Yup. We’ve still got the onslaught of “threats of war” and other bullshit on a railroad train straight to Hell. But you know, we don’t have to ride. So let’s just review what is going on right now, and live life on our terms instead. Ukraine; please put up the white flag and get off the American locomotive.

So yeah.

Enjoy.

Heavily promoted article on Conservative American Media

This article is popping up all over American Conservative media. Not only once or twice, but multiple times over a period of days. Someone REALLY wants to promote this particular narrative…

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2022 05 09 11 46

As I have said, over and over… Look at what is NOT being reported, and observe what is being reported heavily.

You have to ask “why?”

It all makes me hungry.

Slow-Cooker Beef Brisket

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Slow-Cooker Beef Brisket

Simple, savory and warming, this slow-cooker brisket is a traditional take on pot roast that’s as easy as it is comforting. Make it the centerpiece of a family feast, or slice and shred it for a sandwich stuffer. Either way, this brisket is true to tradition (or maybe it’s superstition), in that it tastes better the next day. So next time you’re hosting the family gathering, save some stress and get this done ahead of time.

Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 lb fresh beef brisket (not corned beef)
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoons pepper
  • 2 cups thinly sliced onions
  • 1 cup 1 1/2-inch pieces peeled carrots
  • 5 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 can (14.5 oz) Muir Glen™ organic fire roasted diced tomatoes, undrained
  • 1 cup Progresso™ beef flavored broth (from 32-oz carton)

Step 1

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f7363bc8 73b2 4664 8a59 94da3017a88a

Spray 6-quart slow cooker with cooking spray. Rub brisket with 1 tablespoon of the vegetable oil. Rub with salt and pepper. Heat 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Cook brisket in skillet 2 minutes on fattiest side, then turn and cook 2 to 3 minutes on other side, until browned. Transfer to slow cooker.

Step 2

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e66ac438 9016 4e5e ba56 5c1a37a41373

Reduce heat to medium; add remaining tablespoon of vegetable oil to skillet. Add onions; cook 5 to 8 minutes, stirring frequently, until beginning to brown. Add carrots and garlic; cook 1 minute. Stir in tomatoes and broth; heat just to simmering. Pour mixture over brisket in slow cooker. Cover and cook on Low heat setting 7 to 8 hours or until brisket is very tender.

Step 3

Transfer brisket to cutting board; cool slightly, cut into slices, and serve with vegetables and cooking juices.

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2022 05 09 11 42

Britain adds MORE nuclear warheads to Trident submarines

BRITAIN has increased the number of warheads each Trident nuclear missile carries as part of a precautionary measure in the face of growing threats from Russia.

News of the move – which follows a decision last year to increase the overall warhead stockpile – emerges ahead of tomorrow’s May 9 celebrations in Moscow, where Vladimir Putin is expected to send a “doomsday message” to the west. Britain’s continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent uses four Vanguard-class submarines, of which two are always on patrol, while a third is at operational readiness and the fourth undergoes maintenance.

Following the 2010 defense review, it was decided that each armed boat be allowed to carry a maximum of 40 warheads to be distributed unevenly among eight D5 missiles.

However, while details are classified, it is believed the V-boats have been carrying considerably fewer of both.

Last year defense secretary Ben Wallace announced a significant shift in Britain’s nuclear posture by announcing the number of nuclear warheads in Britain’s arsenal would increase by 40 per cent to 260.

Most of the warheads, which are manufactured in Britain, have a yield of 80-100 kilotons – the equivalent of TNT –five or six times greater than the “Little Boy” atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The move, announced as the Integrated Review dubbed Russia Britain’s “most acute threat”, reversed a decision which was to have seen the number of warheads reduced from 195 to 180.

But it was not until Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine that steps began to be taken to increase the nuclear payloads carried by the Trident fleet, sources have confirmed.

In a statement made just days after the February 24 invasion, the Russian leader warned that any nation that considered interfering from outside would “face consequences greater than any you have faced in history”.

He placed Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert, test fired a new Satan 2 missile which can carry 15 warheads and has a range of 11,000 miles.

Since then, prime time broadcasts on state-owned channels have continued to suggest that Russia would use nuclear weapons against countries who supported Ukraine.

MM commentary

Each of the two British Trident submarines will now carry 40 nuclear warheads of around 100 kTons in a single sub that only has 8 D5 missiles. These missiles are not MIRV.

It’s one missile, one bomb.

They fire a missile and then the ship is sunk.

The Brits and the United Stats has NOT been able to fire SLBM simultaneously, or one right after the other within 40 seconds like the Chinese and the Russians have.

Meanwhile, Russia has a single Satan two carrying 20 hyper-velocity MIRV each with multiple 240,000 KTon payload.

To me, as a weapons wonk, it looks like Britain is playing with slingshots while Russia has a twin-barreled 10 GA shotgun.

This is a dangerous “game” they are playing.

Trailer Park Boys Space Weed

Enjoy this strange Canadian comedy…

Boris Johnson – “Military aid to Ukraine is no longer enough to defend it.”

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, said Sunday “Military aid to Ukraine is no longer enough to defend it.”

Ever anxious to exercise AMERICAN military might, and shed AMERICAN Blood, this is the “go” signal to other NATO members that the UK wants a military intervention with troops into Ukraine; which will result in literal World War 3 with Russia.

Hal Turner Commentary Opinion

I get tired repeating that this war is NOT just about Ukraine.

Russia prepared for this war since 2014 when the EU and USA overthrew the Ukraine government and installed a puppet government there. NATO has been preparing as well.

Ukraine is just the first step. Ukraine as a NATO member or under NATO control, is important because it gives NATO a massive opportunity to strike Russia without exposing Western Europe, or at least this is what West is thinking.

Ukraine under Russian control is EXTREMELY important for Russia, because it is a huge buffer against NATO.

Two of the Baltic states that are NATO and border Russia are INSIGNIFICANT, so the argument that NATO already borders Russia is null. Russia can overrun them in 24 hours.

So, again, until FACTS will catch up, this war is not about Ukraine, or not just about Ukraine.

It is a war of survival for Russia, and a war of expansion for the West, aiming at dismantling Russia and stealing its resources, just like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and ~20 other countries the West invaded in the last 70 years.

Who is going to win this war? The big one, not the Ukraine war?

(It will be) The ones fighting for survival …OR NO ONE, because those fighting for survival WILL nuke the shit out of the West.

Whether we like it or not, WW3 is imminent, and WILL be nuclear.

Slowly, but surely, those of us who argued that this war was clearly in the making for a long time, are proven right.

There is no way in hell that NATO and Russia “just” happen to be on a collision course after a few months.

There is no way in hell that Russia just decided to invade Ukraine, without knowing that NATO will intervene.

There is no way in hell that both NATO and Russia did not know, since the 2008 Bucharest Summit, that war is going to be inevitable, and both sides prepared since at least that point in time.

I don’t want to see war except in documentaries. I live extremely close to an area that will see WW3 . . . New York City.  And even if this WW3 will not affect the entire world, or the entire Europe, it will 100% affect where my house is.

The U.K. is ALWAYS saying first what the U.S. will say later.   So when Boris Johnson said today “Military aid to Ukraine is no longer enough to defend it” that’s the gigantic balloon going up.

Americans would do well to remember that we threw-off the King of England because he and his minions were despicable, lying, cheating, thieving, people who did great harm to us.

The British do not call what happened between us and them “The American Revolution” they call it “The American Insurrection.”

They never got over us breaking away and never forgave us for daring to do so.

Britain wants HARM to come to the United States because Britain is a little country, with a little economy, and a little military that can’t do much of anything anymore.  But with America and Russia GONE, Britain would once have the ability to create a British Empire.

Britain wants us all dead so their little, insignificant country can rise in world stature again.

But Britain can’t defeat us, politically, economically, or militarily.   In addition, Britain cannot defeat Russia.  Soooooo, Britain is trying to get America and Russia to fight each other, and KILL EACH OTHER, so we’re all out of its way.

The advice and desires of Boris Johnson and the United Kingdom should be viewed by Americans as the deadliest of snake venom.

I had hoped that this war could be avoided, and still hope…but once the U.S. began deploying the omen of war in the area (A-10 jets), which arrived in Norway this weekend as seen in photos below, my hopes diminished to an absolute zero.

Four A-10’s arrived in Norway. Six others flew to North Macedonia on May 7th.

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2022 05 09 11 22

I spoke to a US military contact Sunday afternoon and he told me directly:

"Russia has a very large and effective fleet of nuclear submarines that lie off the coast of the U.S. They have a great number of nuclear-tipped missiles that can evade any defenses we have. If there were a nuclear war, all of northern Virginia would be essentially annihilated."

"The Pentagon would simply be a glowing mass of molten sand. There would be no human life there. There would be no human life for many miles around it. Just across the Potomac, the nation’s capital, there would be no life remaining in the nation’s capital"

"...you have the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, you have the Port of Norfolk. You have the greatest accumulation of naval power on the face of the Earth. This is where we park all of our aircraft carriers, our nuclear submarines, all of those things. There would be nothing remaining."

I would be on guard for anything within the next 24 hrs.

It doesn’t make sense why Trudeau and his ministers would be in Ukraine, along with Pelosi, Jill Biden, …Bono…

Add this to the pope saying Russia assured him it would end today, and the fact of Russia holding a parade.

The parade strikes me as a ruse.

Putin is moving his troops from Syria, and with Boris Johnson’s comment things are extremely tense right now.

It has a feeling that something is being built up to. A-10 warthogs brought in, and the only way they can be piloted is having the crews who are assigned to them and know the aircraft.  U.S. crews.

I think NATO joins in the war VERY VERY soon!

It may be a matter of hours or days, but it looks like that’s what is going to happen.

Update:

Russian State Duma Speaker:

"The declaration of the G7 not to allow Russia to achieve victory in Ukraine is evidence of the success of our military operation. Russia has smashed NATO's plans to expand eastward."

The president of the Russian Space Agency just said,

“If there is a nuclear war, we will wipe out NATO countries from the world in 30 minutes.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that

(We will not allow) "peace be accepted on Russia's terms: There should be no dictatorship of the world by Russia. The Ukrainians will not accept him, and we will not accept him either”

According to the Social Media Post below, Russia is sending GENERAL MOBILIZATION NOTICES out TONIGHT!

MORE: Russia is reportedly transferring units from Syria to Ukraine. These Russian units will cede bases to Iran and Hezbollah. Israel will be on high alert.

ICING ON THE CAKE:

From Politico…

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2022 05 09 11 28

 

On a FINAL NOTE:

Look what the Pentagon announced today in the social media posting below . . . Who asked them? . . . . and WHY do they feel the need to say this??????

2022 05 09 11 29
2022 05 09 11 29

Mama decides to run for mayor | Mama’s Family

This is the start of a very funny episode…

The Battery Boom Will Redraw Geopolitical Maps

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

  • The vulnerability of global energy markets is once again back in focus due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
  • The race for a renewable future will come with its own geopolitical issues and could lead to new conflicts as new supply chains emerge.
  • In March, President Biden introduced a plan to secure the strategic and critical materials necessary for the clean energy transition—such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and manganese.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed, once again, the vulnerability of the global energy markets and economy to the actions of petrostates with the power to weaponize their energy resources for political purposes.   In the biggest shock to oil flows since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the war in Ukraine and the hesitancy of Europe to immediately punish Putin threw into sharp relief the geopolitical power that countries with huge oil and gas resources currently hold.

The European Union’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is to wean off Russian energy as soon as possible and reduce overall fossil fuel consumption in the longer term in order to stop being beholden to malign actors for energy sources.

The mad dash to boost renewables and transport electrification, however, comes with its own set of geopolitical issues.

Countries that aren’t Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran hold vast resources of the metals and minerals that will be critical to enabling a faster energy transition. But those resource holders also include Russia, China, and a host of African and South American nations still living “the resource curse”, where conflict, forced and child labor, and critically low environmental standards are undermining the “green” credentials of the clean energy transition.

As developed economies look to lessen their dependence on fossil fuels and, by extension, on the political goals and whims of major oil and gas resource holders such as Russia and the members of OPEC, the geopolitical influence of the petrostates would likely wane over time. But a new geopolitical issue would rise—potential dependence on countries holding resources of critical minerals. And those countries include the likes of China and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example.

Oil Wars

The geopolitics of oil resources has shaped the second half of the 20th century and continues to do so in the 21st century.

“Although the threat of “resource wars” over possession of oil reserves is often exaggerated, the sum total of the political effects generated by the oil industry makes oil a leading cause of war,” Jeff D. Colgan, Assistant Professor in the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C, wrote in a policy brief in the peer-reviewed journal International Security nearly a decade ago.

Since 1973, between one-quarter and one-half of interstate wars have been connected to one or more oil-related causal mechanisms, Colgan notes, adding that “No other commodity has had such an impact on international security.”

International and energy security continue to be influenced by fossil fuel resources a decade later.

Due to the high dependence on Russian oil by some of its members, the EU is debating how to implement an oil embargo on Moscow without plunging Europe into a recession and without fracturing a united EU front against Putin and his aggression in Ukraine.

Renewables Could Hold The Key To Energy Independence…

Therefore, the EU is looking to switch to renewables faster, as a way to reduce fossil fuel consumption and reliance on Russia.

“The quicker we switch to renewables and hydrogen, combined with more energy efficiency, the quicker we will be truly independent and master our energy system,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in early March, announcing a goal to reduce EU demand for Russian gas by two-thirds before the end of this year.

“Renewables give us the freedom to choose an energy source that is clean, cheap, reliable, and ours. And instead of funding fossil fuel imports and Russian oligarchs, we can create jobs here,” European Commission Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal, Frans Timmermans, said.

The EV revolution would also help reduce the geopolitical power of petrostates.

“The ability to electrify transportation and get off combusting fossil fuels, and oil specifically, means we would solve massive geopolitical problems, which have been just a plague for the last 100 years,” Adam Scott, executive director at Toronto-based charity advocating for sustainable investing, Shift, told Andre Mayer of Canada’s CBC News.

…If Clean Energy Didn’t Need Key Metals Resources 

The war in Ukraine is accelerating the shift to increased investment in renewables as a way to lessen dependence on imports of fossil fuels, a large part of which comes from OPEC and Russia.

However, the big challenge in the energy transition will be supply chains, Simon Flowers, Chairman and Chief Analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said last week.

“Costs for solar and wind turbine components are already experiencing inflation and demand is only going to intensify. There’s also going to be a massive scramble to access the metals to build out electrification – from steel, key base metals including copper, aluminum and nickel, and battery raw materials,” Flowers noted.

Developed economies, including the United States, currently depend on imports for boosting low-carbon energy sources. The U.S. imports more than half of its annual consumption of 31 of the 35 critical minerals, the Department of Energy said at the start of President Biden’s term in office. America does not have domestic production for 14 of those critical minerals and is completely dependent on imports to supply its demand.

President Biden included in March strategic and critical materials necessary for the clean energy transition—such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and manganese for large-capacity batteries—in the Defense Production Act of 1950.

This is a step in the right direction for ensuring more domestic supply, considering that geopolitics will play a role in the energy transition, too, although the resource holders may be different.

“There is an underappreciated risk to the energy transition: the supply of clean energy depends on mined natural resources, which are steeped in geological, geopolitical, and governance challenges,” KPMG and Eurasia Group said in a report last year.

The new global energy ecosystem could shift “from OPEC to OMEC”, where OMEC is what KPMG and Eurasia Group describe as a “freshly minted acronym for ‘Organisation of Mineral Exporting Countries’ – this grouping may not yet exist, but the point remains: geopolitical power could shift from oil-dominated countries to critical metal-dominated countries.”

Family Ties – Sin Against Capitalism

A President Reagan-era sitcom… Can you catch the jokes?

Woman Snags Priceless Roman Bust For $35 At Texas Thrift Shop

Monday, May 09, 2022 – 02:35 AM

In 2018, an antique dealer with a good eye snagged a 2,200-year-old Roman bust at a Goodwill in Austin, Texas for just $35, after going into the thrift store “hoping to find something cool.”

An independent antique and vintage dealer, she told the BBC she went into the thrift store "hoping to find something cool".
On closer examination in the sunlight, the bust looked like it could be "really, really old", she said. She did a quick Google search for Roman marble busts and thought they looked similar. -BBC

It looked “really, really old” said Laura Young, who snapped a picture of the Roman bust sitting in the passenger seat of her car after the purchase.

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2022 05 09 11 53

The ancient Roman bust being taken home in the passenger seat of a car via BBC.

I’m not even sure how it’s possible to put a meaningful monetary value on something that has such an important history, but on the other hand could never, ever be sold,” Lynley McAlpine from the San Antonio Museum of Art told the BBC.

The bust may represent Roman military leader Sextus Pompey, who fought against Julius Caesar.

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2022 05 09 11 54

An attempt to trace its origin revealed that the bust was linked to a replica Roman Villa in Germany which exhibited legitimate artifacts next to replicas.

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2022 05 09 11 5d4
The Pompejanum in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg was built in the 1840s and had been severely damaged by Allied bombing during World War Two.

How the bust got from Aschaffenburg to Austin is unclear, but it seems probable that an American soldier took the statue to the US. American troops were stationed in Aschaffenburg until the end of the Cold War.

And because it was probably an item looted during war time, Ms Young could not think about selling it as an antique. -BBC

Young has loaned the bust to the San Antonio Museum of Art, after which it will eventually return to Bavaria where it will sit in the Pompejanum. While negotiations were underway, she kept the bust in her living room.

“He looked very nice. And he was just there staring at us for three plus years,” she said.

Soul Train Line Dance to Jungle Boogie (1973)

I hope that you all enjoy this glimpse into the past…

Europe´s mad ban on Russian oil

By Jorge Vilches for the Saker Blog

Ursula von der Leyen

Cognitive scientists would concur in that the current performance of European leadership could be diagnosed as either myopic ignorance or — most probably — full intellectual blindness. In the case of so far happy-go-lucky Ursula von der Leyen there is no doubt it´d be the latter… but only if we first dismiss her warm on-the-record support for Bundeswehr colonial policies and military involvement… plus her praise of Third Reich famous general Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Commander of the Führer Headquarters. But leaving that possible Nazi whiff aside, full ´intellectual blockage´ is the only kind way to dare explain a most strategic project as foolish and doomed to fail as banning Russian oil sales worldwide. Why so you may ask ?

Ref #1 Article

asymmetrical retaliation

The short answer is massive — ´Russian´ massive – unmitigated “asymmetrical non-military retaliation” through surgical and divisive optional sales of natural gas – and other key commodities – just leaving EU sanctioned Russian oil for sale to and re-sale by third parties. And, oh yes, weaponization is not limited to any particular means as various European war schools should have internalized already. War means war and pretty much anything is fair game. But apparently, it´d be as if through the centuries, uppity European leaders – most especially German, French, Swedish, British and Poles — have not learned a single thing despite the über-high costs already paid for by their nations large-caliber warfare experiences most especially with Russia. By the way, the UK also has the additional ( unsolvable? ) burden of its current Brexit ballast…

Ref # 2 Article

 

Ursula´s softball

May I call you Ursula ? Thank you. “We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion [… a phenomenal bad joke of sorts… ] in a way that allows us and our partners to secure alternative supply routes and minimises the impact on global markets” you said. Question: will the Russians just idly watch you trying to execute such enormity at the EU´s preferred speed and political and geopolitical sequencing? And the Russians would never dare to strike back with natural gas or other restrictions no? For starters, what about nickel, uranium, and lithium? Not having them would be like trying to prepare tasty food without salt, pepper or mustard. Without uranium no nuclear power is possible, did you know? [ more on that later ]. Ursula, your pink unicorn wishful thinking is unfathomable gal.

EU kelpers

This mad-ban requires EU approval with conditional support from Hungary, Greece, and others. So some special EU members will be exempted while regular EU ´kelpers´ will not. Now could that lead to serious friction ? How many years will it take all of Europe to reconvert its industry and supply chains? “This is why we will phase out Russian supply of crude oil within 6 months and refined products by the end of the year.” Okay, so Aunty Ursie you believe the Russians are dumb enough to let you phase this idea out nice and easy at your own pace and whenever you decide to act per your own special EU schedule. No market dynamics involved as Europe plays everybody else´s pieces too as grandpas would do with 3-year-old grandkids.

Ref # 3 Article

Russian DNA

No way Ursula, the Russians play world-class professional chess while you play elementary school checkers, not even being good at that either. The instant Russia perceives the initial execution of your game plan regarding banning of Russian oil, they´ll make their moves, not yours. And those Russian moves will not be nice and pretty. For one, Europe will not have anywhere nearly ready its own diesel refining capacity by the end of 2022 while the middle distillate market is ever much tighter everywhere as demand recovers from the Covid pandemic. So the EU “plan” is

to frantically search for hard-to-find or simply non-existent substitutes while investing tons of time, money, effort and risk. Well, the Russians know that already even before you start. Diesel is already in critically short supply in the EU.

Furthermore, Europe will continue buying Russian oil and distillates via third countries once it introduces any embargo only that at much higher prices than today. Such old, quick and dirty business is known as “triangulation” Ursula.

Russian hardball

The existential threat imposed on Russia by the EU with its macabre “Ukraine Plan” and sanctions has not left Russia any way out other than playing hardball for keeps. Furthermore, the Russian non-military retaliation domain is actually unlimited due to the full-scale and open-ended addiction that Europe has developed for Russian imports of different sorts including commodities of any and every imaginable type. Without such, Europe will cease to exist as we know it in a matter of a very few months, if not weeks. As Francis Fukuyama should posit, Europe´s dependency on Russian commodities is the end of its own history. The unipolar world is dying, admit it Frank. Hint: write a new book guy.

Ref # 4 Article

Ref # 5 Article

not your dog

It seems that Ursula von der Leyden has convinced the EU that feeding a refinery or a chemical plant is pretty much like feeding your dog. But nothing can be further from the truth. Chemical plants and refineries are very closely matched and subtly calibrated to very specific supply feeds very difficult to substitute. Changes can and have been made, but it requires lots of time, effort, money, dedicated facilities, experimentation, specific expertise, risk, and most important fixed, unchanging feeds always complying with specs. This means that Russia today supplies Europe with exclusive unreplaceable oil & gas grades of very specific chemical content (even coal grades) that would be impossible to get from third parties fast enough and cheap enough. So it´s a very delicate and tight matching already achieved between European facilities and Russian fuels and other inputs that cannot be altered or replaced that easily, let alone all at the same time !! Are EU countries aware of all this ?

Ref #6 Article

expensive divorce

So maybe after investing years, money, expertise, trials & errors, risk and lots of hard work Europe may possibly and eventually be able to partially switch from current to dirtier or far more inefficient options. But that would be (a) against the EU´s Green Deal compliance and (b) a very short-term non-sustainable “solution” (c) against the whole world.

So how can Europe transition to a 0% Russian supplies end-point as swiftly and safely as Chinese plate spinners?

Ref # 7 Article

No minimally informed no-nonsense mindset has thought out the foolish idea of coordinating the whole European continent in this self-destructive mission. Taking matters to an extreme, let´s assume that Europe completely weans itself – or is cut off — from Russian oil & gas imports tomorrow morning and everything else sourced in Russia. In that hypothetical case, Moscow may feel the financial problem possibly within 6 months… or maybe never. But if such event were to happen, the timing would be quite different as the EU would necessarily start imploding in 6 days and would achieve full implosion in 6 weeks. With the oil mad-ban Europe would badly need to find substitutes for Russian imports. The problem is such need cannot ever be satisfied fast enough and right enough no matter how it is diced or sliced. Triangulation means Europe will buy quality Russian imports via third countries only that at much higher prices

plug & play (not)

No, it is not anywhere near “plug & play” either. No. Several EU landlocked countries can only import nat-gas thru existing Russian pipeline unless a nightmarish and highly risky sea-land supply lines are established by different means going across complicated mountain ranges sometimes, a project which no one wants to entertain. Replacing Russian feeds & supply lines is an incommensurable task that Russia will not help out with either. Once Russia withstands the “ban Russian oil” idea, Europe will find itself in the worse of both worlds not being able to rewind back.

tit-for-tat ?

Also, the impact of the Russian reaction may most probably result to be disproportionate to the damage inflicted by an EU worldwide ban on Russian oil. Hence, ´asymmetrical´, simply because an exact ´tit-for-tat´ result is impossible to calculate for and let alone effectively achieve. If ever implemented, the unintended consequences of a haphazard decision such as proposed will necessarily mean for the EU either to (1) instantly back-pedal to square one or (2) finally suicidal Europe would follow through and achieve its goal. I kid you not. Other commodities could be included.

human food

And food for thought, as Europe would face famine in-its-face if grains from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and elsewhere are tied up or absent by Russian retaliation or impossibility to deliver. And the lack of cheap diesel and natural gas from Russia means that farmers everywhere face sharply increased costs, whereby fertilizer is either not available at all, or too expensive to use, and thus crop yields will fall worldwide increasing the price of food products. Greenhouse producers in many parts of Europe have already shut down over high energy costs as prices stand today, not even thinking of the possibility of having Russian oil banned worldwide. Banning Russian oil from Europe can only back-fire.

Ref # 8 Article

Russian leverage

It´s impossible to approach all aspects involved at once, so let´s briefly touch upon part of Russia´s bargaining power.

  1. Russia does not want, let alone need, to defeat all of Europe. Just turning Germany — or Poland for that matter — into a messy mess would be more than enough for the whole EU to focus and reason out basic stuff.
  2. No uranium from Russia means the 3 remaining German nuclear power stations cannot be re-commissioned. Not having already scheduled substitute delivery of finely-tuned Russian uranium means an adaptive retro-fit with newly-sourced feed, which technically is risky and mission almost impossible which would take years.
  3. China + India + Brazil have ´free-patent-IP´ investments plans in Russia kicking off an entirely new ball game
  4. 60% of German gas consumption is Russian. Today German industry would not survive without Russian gas.
  5. A partial or total reduction of Russian nat-gas and coal supply in retaliation for banning Russian oil would negatively and instantly impact Europe in many ways and the rest of the world with irregular market dynamics.
  6. If not delivered to the EU, the Russian nat-gas can be vented or flared at well-heads as there is plenty more.
  7. Russian oil can be sold elsewhere and/or stockpiled relatively rapidly and easily, or production can be slowed down without damaging reservoirs or wells. Russia will actually increase its “drill baby drill” policy.
  8. Paraphrasing former US Secretary of Treasury John Connally “Sorry, Russian commodities, your problem
  9. Russia´s market is 85% of the world population largely under growth and just as fed up with the US-dollar reserve currency system. The EU trade embargo on Russia does not work per parallel imports from 3rd parties
  10. The defiant Russian economy is doing just fine, the Ruble is as strong as ever. US President Biden vowed “to make sure the pain of our sanctions hits the Russian economy, not ours” as if he were getting the picture…
  11. China and others definitely back Russia while the rest of the world de-dollarizes and does not sanction Russia
  12. There are $ 500 billion worth of physical Western assets in Russia that can be confiscated at any time.

Ref # 9 Article

Ref # 10 Article

Ref # 11 Article

Ref # 12 Article

Ref # 13 Article

Ref # 14 Article

eyes wide shut

Agreed, it´s a multi-variable environment in a context of constant change with plenty of moving parts interacting on each other. But, for starters, no ( or less) Russian nat-gas and no Russian oil means many unsolvable things for the EU today. We´d also need to add the impact of having no oil, coal, or gas substitutes fast enough in large enough quantities. All of that put together means no (or less) refined products, no intermediate distillates, no heavy-duty machinery (think mining) no nickel nor aluminum, cobalt or lead or magnesium, no neon, no grains or edibles at large, wheat, corn, barley, rye, soybeans, timber, paper, titanium, rocket engines, nitrogen fertilizer, crop nutrients, potash, less petrochemicals, iron ore, minerals and rare-earths, uranium for nuclear power plants, lithium for batteries, no inputs for production of metals, plastics, fabrics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizer, chemicals, etc., no manganese, chromium, platinum, essential palladium for catalytic converters, copper, tin, mica, wolfram, bismuth, kaolin, talcum, tungsten, diamonds, phosphates, sulphur… and even no gold. By the way, as we should all know, none of these can be printed.

Russian vacations

By the way, fewer distillates such as diesel and fuel oil means that private and public transportation and freight would slow down lots, also affecting heavy-duty vehicles, industrial machinery, and airplane travel. Also far lower tourism. So might as well shut down the EU and go away on vacation to beautiful Russia right? You won´t find that much food or heating or A/C either, just new massive unheard of migrations all around you. With less Russian imports, very huge German industrial giants run the certainly serious risk of shutting down otherwise continuous year-round processes which cannot be re-started and would mean irreparable harm & negative impact on the German economy and the rest of the world. And it’s not only Russian produce that would be missing. Also from Belarus and Ukraine itself + the Stans

 

mission impossible

Only mediocre light-brained European leadership can propose such suicidal move 100% guaranteed to blowback in-their-face much harder and faster than their original strike. It´d be like poking a bear ( sound familiar ? ) with a sharply pointed pole and pretending the beast to continue munching fish unbothered by the aggression itself and the presence of the aggressor, both. Not even young unexperienced teen-aged urban Canadians would think of doing such a thing. Of course, they would know that the bear will necessarily focus attention first ( already done that… ) then would rise on his hind legs and swing his sharp deadly paw wide and fast sooner than the EU can react to what just happened.

It isn´t European David vs. Russian Goliath either. It´s a well-fed and rested Russian Goliath with hypersonic weapons under his arm vs. a worn-out underweight European David with a worn-down sling and lots of very small stones…

to “Schwedt” or not to “Schwedt

Schwedt is a key refinery for which the German government better find fast good & reliable sources of substitute Russian oil. If Schwedt does not deliver as usual, problems will be felt throughout Germany, Poland, and elsewhere.

But one problem is that Schwedt is majority-owned by Rosneft, the Russian state oil company which has control.

Now supposedly Schwedt has already dramatically reduced its dependence on Russian oil. But there´s a rub.

data laundromat

The rub is that EU member countries are very good at data laundering practices since inception of EU membership acceptance proceedings. Don´t trust me, ask Goldman Sachs they should know. So, for example, if imported Russian oil stays stationary in an EU depot for a couple of months it is “nationalized” and it is no longer considered to be ´Russian´.  Also, the official oil inflow figures cheat, as for partial mixtures of Russian oil 45%+ 55% ´oil from somewhere else´ it is considered to be non-Russian, see? So Russian oil import substitution is a topic not yet anywhere close to being solved. And if Russian oil is banned right here, well Russians might deny delivery of either Russian oil or Russian gas – or whatever — over there. They defend their interests, not the EU´s.

Ref # 15 Article

Ref # 16 Article

two to tango

Which brings us to the fact that the EU cannot dream of moving its pieces in a vacuum as if the Russian enemy were not there also playing in the same theater scenarios and moving its pieces alternatively. The instant the EU makes any headway whatsoever regarding the possible banning of Russian oil, then Russia will respond in kind or possibly before so as to carry out a pre-emptive deterrence sort of like a taste of things to come such as in Poland and Bulgaria

We have every right to take a matching decision and impose an embargo on gas pumping through the [existing] Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. So firstly, Russia may reduce or cut off its gas exports if the West goes ahead with a ban on Russian oil”. Understand? The EU attacks Russian oil and Russia counter-attacks reducing or cutting off Russian natural gas, etc. In other words, asymmetric non-military retaliation.

Ref # 17 Article

Prices

If the Russian oil ban attempt goes ahead, agreed that the first thing that Russia may do is reduce or cut off nat-gas supplies – or other key commodities — with the stroke of a keyboard.. And it would be impossible to find replacements for Russian oils fast enough also. It would take years of adaptation and readjustments and it will still be much more expensive for European consumers. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak left on record that a “rejection of Russian oil would lead to catastrophic consequences for the global market causing oil prices to more than double to $300 a barrel”…possibly up to $ 500 pundits say assertively in specialized blogs. Be it $300 or $500 does the EU actually want that ? And Russia would end up earning much more by exporting far less. Trust US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, she said it, not me. And the higher the price, the higher the inflationary pressure and the higher the prices at the supermarkets already at approx. 35% p.a.. I can´t believe having to explain all this, really…

Ref # 18 Article

Despite sanctions, Russia has almost doubled its monthly earnings from selling fossil fuels to the EU, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The EU has imported about $23 billion dollars of fossil fuels per month from Russia since March 2022 as oil and gas prices have soared, compared with an average of about $ 12 billion in 2021. Meanwhile, transfers of oil between tankers have surged as buyers take advantage of discounted Russian crude. Different crude blends shipped from Russia may also contain oil from elsewhere which would also be affected.

logistics & freight

Banning Russian oil also means a logistics major reversal from-East-to-West to from-South-to-North. Such cardinal change is costly and risky. New shipping freighters are unprepared for unknown delivery schedules and product specs. Ports and oceans are different, shipping lanes are different, climate is different, seasonal availability of product and ship size and type are also different. That also involves lots of negotiating time, coordination, money, expertise, risk, permanent costs, and new dependencies with yet unknown trade and business partners, new modus operandi, brokers, insurance companies, etc. That is why every EU government has failed to build a realistic energy strategy that does not depend on Russia. Continuity, LNG & LPG terminal bottlenecks, and processing, availability, cost, no weather restrictions when needed. Pipe delivery is safe, dependable, and cheap, sea freight is risky and cost-prohibitive

nuclear blues

Germany had 15 nuclear plants in operation. The last 3 operating nuclear plants in Germany were scheduled to be decommissioned permanently in 2022. Part of the “Green Agenda” in the EU is to eliminate nuclear plants. France does not approve this, but is having technical trouble with its nuclear plants. France has said it will shut down 50% of its nuclear plants for critical maintenance this year at the worst possible timing imaginable.

Ref # 19 Article

military impact

No readily available fuels of the right type (careful) mean no deployment no planes or other aircraft which means pretty much being stuck. Bad logistics, less food, no (or less) supplies, no heating to speak of. The European conventional military dependence on Russian fuels is beyond overwhelming, close to checkmate. Fuel imports are not anywhere near a military solution, just a way for civilians to survive if and when available and at a terribly high price.

“So the EU better be prepared to continue paying (many) billions of euros each week to Russia, supporting the Ruble and subsidizing its military in the process. It’s not just a short-term problem, either. If Germany manages over time (many years ?) to find adequate replacements for Russian natural gas, oil and coal, it will be at (tremendously) much higher prices. The era of cheap-Russian natural gas fueling the German economy is over. German energy-intensive companies, like its chemical giants, could not compete in the global market. Germany will face painful choices about the future of its industrial economy”. So without very specific and unreplaceable exclusive Russian grades of natural gas and oil and coal the European military are pretty much game-over.

Ref # 20 Article

unmanageable world finances

The camel is 990% overloaded and this one foolish decision may break its back. The world already rides on a wild $ 600+ trillion of a derivatives tiger that can only survive provided the corresponding counterparties do not fail.

“ Clearly, central banks in conjunction with their governments will have no option but to rescue their entire financial systems, which involves yet more central bank credit being provided on even greater scales than seen over Covid, supply chain chaos, and the provision of credit to pay for higher food and energy prices. It must be unlimited.”

Ref # 21 Article

So unless something dramatically favorable happens very soon, economic-financial considerations will have highly negative socio-political impact driving the crisis to a high-pitch climax with the pitchforks roaming about European streets. Per Rabobank: “ When the ´food system´ breaks down, everything will break down with it”.

Per The Guardian, “…Come October, it’s going to get horrific, truly horrific … a scale beyond what we can deal with”.

Europe´s mad ban on Russian oil is just another perfect example of sheer Anglo-Saxon European puppeteering.

Ref # 22 Article

Ref # 23 Article

Chaka Khan and Rufus – Tell me something Good (RE-MASTERED) Official Video HD

I pray… look at her! She’s got such a wonderful smile. Ugh!

Baked Ham with Brown Sugar-Orange Glaze

Makers like you know that simple ingredients can create the most delicious dishes. Our brown sugar, orange juice ham glaze is the perfect example with just 4 ingredients needed to make an orange glaze for ham. While the ham roasts uncovered, create the glaze using brown sugar, orange juice, ground mustard and grated orange peel. Brush it over the ham during the last 45 minutes of baking for a sweet, zingy and just-right tangy flavor.

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aad8dda5 de6a 4e53 b57c ef465002ac60

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Ingredients

  • 6-lb fully cooked smoked bone-in ham
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons orange or pineapple juice
  • 1 tablespoon ground mustard
  • 1 teaspoon grated orange peel

Steps

  • 1
    Heat oven to 325°F. On rack in shallow roasting pan, place ham. Insert meat thermometer in thickest part of ham. Bake uncovered 1 hour 30 minutes or until thermometer reads 135°F to 140°F.
  • 2
    Meanwhile, in small bowl, mix remaining ingredients. Brush glaze over ham during last 45 minutes of baking.
  • 3
    Remove ham from oven; cover with tent of foil and let stand 10 to 15 minutes for easier carving.

2022 05 09 14 13
2022 05 09 14 13

Trailer Park Boys – The Kittyman Sea Shanty

And let’s leave on this lite note…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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A selection of articles on what Russia and the West are sparring upon. Includes some delicious food too.

This article is heavy on the sparring between the USA and it’s European proxies and Russia. We also include food, and we discuss the strike back anti-sanction measures that Russia is throwing back to Europe. They are set to go hungry and to go cold.

Why Does Xi Jinping Still Support Putin?

German media: The article titled “‘Friendship without Ends’ or a Pragmatic Alliance? Why Does Xi Jinping Still Support Putin” ( Grenzenlose Freundschaft” oder Zweckbündnis? Warum Xi Jinping immers noch zu Putin hält ) argues that Xi Jinping remains loyal to Putin because the former has Longer-term vision:

"Reshaping the Western world order, and for that, Beijing and Moscow need each other. "

The article continued:

"This is the only explanation for the almost complete paraphrase of official Russian propaganda by Chinese state media. In propaganda to the Chinese people, the war is referred to as a 'military operation' primarily provoked by the United States."
From HERE.

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Some people are LITERALLY Too Stupid to Be Allowed To Be Free

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The three minute video below shows why, on more than one occasion, I have commented on my global talk-radio show that the world needs to bring back Slavery because some people are literally too stupid to be allowed to remain free.

I know, I know, that’s an outrageous thing to say, but it is factually true.   There are very many people walking around free today who are so devoid of common sense, so ignorant of reality, so reckless in their conduct of life, the notion they ought to be treated as “equal” to the rest of us, or as “citizens,’ or (God forbid) exercise the right to vote, is just too much.

Below is more proof.

A family videotaping their brief drive through a safari park, come across a vehicle in front of them whose occupants decided that the Cheetahs, laying on the grass under a shade tree, would be nice to see up-close.   So they parked the car, GOT OUT, then TOOK THEIR KIDS OUT, and walk over.

Now, most people know Cheetahs are apex predators and the fastest land animal on earth; capable of sprinting to 60 mph within seconds.  Even if they don’t know that, one would think that millions of years of INSTINCT might tell them “Big teeth and big claws=DANGER!”   

Nope.   Not these folks.

Thankfully, the Cheetahs couldn’t be bothered with them. So the family calmly got back in the car. But a teenage male of the family decided to text on his cellphone for a minute or two outside the car, and TURNED HIS BACK on the Cheetahs before he joined the family in the car, which shows the mentality of people you see everyday ignoring the world around them to text on their phones! They proceeded to drive . . . . to a nearby field where they parked their car again . . .

What did they do?  You guessed it; they got out of the car and carried their kids up into the field, maybe 100 feet or more away from their car, to see the other animals in the field.

At this point, a couple of the Cheetahs decided that the family might be tasty, and hustled their way over to the same field.  They approached.  Aggressively.

Apparently one or more of the family had a single, functioning brain cell and decided maybe they should head back to the car.  This time, however, it wasn’t exactly a calm thing.

The Cheetahs clearly got aggressive.

The family got away.  There’s no blood, guts, or gore.  But the level of unimaginable gross stupidity is utterly mind boggling.

THIS is an example of people who are too stupid to be free.

In my opinion, they should be put in chains and shackles and made slaves because clearly, they are too stupid to be allowed to roam free on their own without a master to take care of them.

Incidentally, the family are from France . . . which now explains (to me) how Emmanuel Macron got re-elected.  Apparently, this is the level of intellect of the majority of French people who voted!

Of course, there were signs in English, French, Spanish, and a slew of other languages at the entrance to the park, telling everyone “DO NOT GET OUT OF YOUR CAR.”  But as one might expect, the French family, aside from being painfully stupid, was typically arrogant. (Just like American liberals/progressives/Socialists/Marxists . . .)   Those signs are nuuuut for meeee.

A man with no taste

Yecch!

car tuning has to have some limits after all 1
Yeech!

Company Stuffed Pork Chops

These comforting pork chops bake to a perfect golden brown, and the stuffing is incredibly moist. It's one of my favorite dishes to serve to guests because I know they'll love it. —Lorraine Darocha, Mountain City, Tennessee

exps36074 THCA163696C03 06 3b 1
exps36074 THCA163696C03 06 3b 1

Ingredients

  • 2 celery ribs, diced
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • 9 slices white bread, cubed
  • 1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon rubbed sage
  • 1/8 teaspoon white pepper
  • 1/8 teaspoon dried marjoram
  • 1/8 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 3/4 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
  • PORK CHOPS:
  • 6 pork rib chops (7 ounces each)
  • 2 teaspoons olive oil
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions

  1. In a large skillet coated with cooking spray, saute celery and onion in 1 teaspoon oil until tender; remove from the heat. In a large bowl, combine bread and seasonings. Add celery mixture and broth; toss to coat. Set aside.
  2. Cut a pocket in each pork chop by making a horizontal slice almost to the bone. Recoat the same skillet with cooking spray. Cook chops in remaining 2 teaspoons oil in batches over medium-high heat until browned, 1-2 minutes on each side. Fill chops with bread mixture; secure with toothpicks if necessary.
  3. Transfer to a 13×9-in. baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover and bake at 350° for 15 minutes. Uncover; bake until a thermometer inserted into center of stuffing reads 165° and thermometer inserted in pork reads at least 145°, 15-20 minutes longer. Discard toothpicks and let stand 5 minutes before serving.

A very, very tiny van

Why?

car tuning has to have some limits after all 5
Tiny van.

The Assessing Xi’s Interference and Subversion Act”

The Act is unprecedented as it has named Xi Jinping in person, and could be seen as an attempt to bolster his detractors to stop his third term.
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On 27 April 2022, the US House of Representatives passed “The Assessing Xi’s Interference and Subversion Act” or the “AXIS Act” requiring the US State Department to submit ongoing reports to Congress on China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, initially within 30 days of the enactment of the law and every 90 days thereafter.
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The abbreviation of the Act is surprisingly synonymous to the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) of the World War II.
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According to the Act, “the new Axis of evil threatens the United States and the rules-based international order.”
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China’s “no limits”, “no forbidden areas” relationship with Russia pronounced weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 30-year China-Russia gas deal in Euros, China’s abstentions from the United Nations resolutions that condemned the Russian invasion, and spreading disinformation whitewashing Russia’s war crimes, are considered as “findings” and “sense” of the Congress;
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The report also includes any other material, technical, logistical and military Chinese support to Russia, and if found true the Congress recommends “swift and stringent consequences for China.”…
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Low, low rider

Really, really low…

car tuning has to have some limits after all 18
Really low.

The Third Patriotic War

A St George’s Day Contribution by Batiushka for The Saker Blog

Introduction: War

I am not a technical-military man, but I have very strong military connections and a keen interest in military history, both Russian and Western, and also in geopolitics, having lectured on it. I lived in Soviet Russia in the 1970s, experienced its weaknesses, its strengths and also its hollowness, understanding that it would eventually fall, for even then nobody believed in Communism any more. All continued by inertia. Collapse was inevitable. I also know contemporary Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics and Moldova very well. In fact, I was in Kiev only last October, being shown the SBU/CIA Secret Police building in the centre and being told to hush my voice as we walked past. No-one wanted to visit the torture-chambers in the basement.

The special operation to free the Russian Donbass from Fascist oppression which began on 24 February 2022 meant a war between the Russian Federation and the Kiev regime, which under Western pressure would refuse to back down. This would inevitably mean a war between Russia and NATO, even if the actual battleground would still be limited to the Ukraine. I firmly believe that the Russian government knew all this and foresaw the consequences, that the West would intervene with all the economic, political, military and technological might of the US/NATO military complex. This knowledge was why the Donbass had had to wait for liberation for eight long and grim years. Russia had had to get ready for the inevitable very carefully.

The Preparation

Let us recall how Soviet Russia fell through treason, ending up dissolving itself on 25 December 1991. In October 1993, 4,000 US Marines (I know one of them) were flown to a base outside Moscow. This was just in case the popular rising against ‘democracy’ and the drunkard Western puppet and traitor Yeltsin went Russia’s way and against the neocons and their privatisers’ ‘shock therapy’. The repression of the October bid for freedom left 5,000 Russian dead. The US support had been there, though it did not have to be used, as there were enough Russian traitors to do the dirty deed themselves.

Russian weakness and internal treachery was why the Russian government betrayed Serbia in the 1990s and Libya in 2011 – it was far too weak to stand up to the West. After the Crimea democratically returned to Russia after 60 years (1954-2014) with the internationally-observed referendum in 2014, the West still applied illegal sanctions to Russia. Then Moscow knew that any action to free the Ukraine from the Western junta in Kiev would have to be prepared very carefully, for the sanctions would only be multiplied. What preparations had to be made?

Firstly, there was the diplomatic and trade front. Allies had to be brought onside, in Eurasia with China, Iran, India, Turkey (Russia rescuing Erdogan from the US assassination attempt at the last moment in July 2016), Hungary, then, from Venezuela to Brazil, Latin America and then, from Egypt to South Africa, Africa. As regards the Western world, especially the EU, there was a chance to present the Russian point of view through RT, as at that time Western censorship was not yet total.

Secondly, there was the modernisation of the Russian Armed Forces to be undertaken, with new, non-nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles, drones, electronic technology, some of which would be tested out in Syria.

Thirdly, there was the policy of import substitution to be implemented in order to make Russia independent in case of further illegal Western sanctions.

Why Did It Start on 24 February 2022?

There were four triggers which sparked off the special operation on 24 February.

Firstly, the Zelensky regime wanted the Ukraine to become a NATO member. The weak post-Communist Russian Federation had already made that mistake many times, allowing Eastern Europe, notably the Baltics, Poland and Romania, to join that aggressive protection racket. In that way the post-War buffer states of Eastern Europe, providing a demilitarised zone for Russia, ended. After all, if you have been invaded from the West very regularly for 800 years, leaving 27 million of your citizens dead in the most recent invasion, would you not also want a demilitarised buffer zone to protect you? Post-War offensive NATO was the only reason why the defensive Warsaw Pact had to be set up.

Secondly, with missiles on American bases in Poland and Romania and NATO troops smugly parading at the Estonian border with Russia, the Ukraine then threatened to obtain nuclear arms. Did Zelensky, reading his American script as a true actor, really expect Russia not to react to this?

Thirdly, the US, not without the help of its local pronconsul, the cocaine-addled Hunter Biden, had set up some thirty biolabs in the Ukraine. Their target? To find genetically-concocted viruses to infect Russians. Would Russia not defend itself?

Fourthly, though possibly this may not have been discovered by Russia until a day or two after the special operation began, though possibly they knew perfectly well beforehand, the NATO-manipulated, instructed and armed Kiev Army had a plan to invade the Russian Donbass and genocide its people. Had they succeeded, it is doubtful they would have stopped at the Russian border. Truss, the supremely stupid British Foreign Secretary, let slip that NATO already had Russian Rostov and Voronezh in its sights.

After eight years of attempts to negotiate, which Russia used to buy time to prepare for the War in case of Western idiocy, it was only because there was no alternative that it sent in some troops in an initially limited military operation.

A Fight for Survival

This is now a war of attrition. Russia has to destroy all Western/NATO arms and troops that get into the Ukraine from Poland or elsewhere as soon as possible, quicker than they can be sent. And this must go on until the West caves in, because so much Western war material will have been destroyed at huge financial loss to itself.

Russia is also relying on the self-imposed economic problems that the West faces. The West, and not just the EU, is already suffering economically. There could easily be popular uprisings as a result of inflation and the incredible cost of energy. This will hit very hard next autumn and winter. And the embargos on Russian grain and fertilisers have not hit yet. Wait till food costs go up by 100% in Western countries, instead of just going up by 10% as now: then you will have rioting in the streets and looting of supermarkets. As for the Ukrainian currency, it is worthless, propped up by the IMF run by the US, which in 2014 stole the $15 billion of Ukrainian gold reserves in expectation. Otherwise, the Ukraine would long ago have defaulted.

The stakes are huge for all.

China stands behind Russia because Russia is like a shield for it. If Russia falls, then China is next and it knows that, which is why it supports Russia. The White Peril will next head towards China, making the British-imposed mass suicide of the so-called ‘Opium Wars’ look like a picnic.

There will be no taking back of Taiwan in the near future, instead there will be Harvard economists and merchant bankers taking power and grasping billions in Beijing, as in Russia after 1991. And then, amid civil wars, millions and millions of Chinese will take the path of suicide, exactly as happened in 1990s Russia.

Make no mistake, this is a battle for survival of the world’s seven billion against the one billion.

This is why today Russia remains firm, with 80% of the population behind President Putin, unlike in the Western world where it is rare to find a leader who has more than 30% of support. Why? It is simple: President Putin loves his country, he is a patriot:

Western leaders are not patriots, they are venal mercenaries, no more so than the US puppet governments in Eastern Europe. The only Russians against President Putin are the traitors, recruited by the CIA, and there are still quite a few in Moscow and elsewhere, but we will not here name names.

True, many of the fifth column of traitors in Moscow have already left or are leaving, Tel Aviv being a popular destination for them. For Russia this is not some localised conflict on its borders, as it still appears to most Western people, lulled into delusions by their Goebbels propaganda ministries (‘media’). For Russia this is just as much a fight for survival as World War Two. This is the Third Great Patriotic War. Let me explain.

For those who do not know, the 1812 invasion of Russia by Napoleon and his multinational barbarian hordes is known as the First Patriotic War. The 1941 invasion by Hitler and his multinational barbarian hordes is known as the Second Patriotic War. It is our view that just as the 1941-1945 defensive War was called the Second Patriotic War, the 2022- ? defensive War will be known as the Third Patriotic War. Warsaw and Bucharest, Berlin and Paris, pay attention.

When Did It All Begin?

When did it all begin? Actually, it was not on 24 February 2022. Some, grudgingly, will admit that it was the US-run regime change of 2014 with its $5 billion price-tag for the hapless US taxpayer. Grudgingly, some might admit that it goes back even further to November 1989, the Fall of the Wall. Some might suggest two generations before that, in September 1939, when Stalin took the poison-chalice of the western Ukraine, Galicia, from Poland and had to fight a CIA-supplied war there against Fascist partisans until 1958.

Some might suggest exactly 100 years ago in 1922, when the brain-syphilitic Lenin transferred from Russia the southern and eastern half of the present Ukraine to the Ukraine, as he wanted the pro-Communist industrial proletariat of the south and east to counterbalance the real Ukrainian agricultural north and west. But we could also go back to 1914, the invasion of the Russian Empire by Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. This is exactly 100 years before the 2014 US-orchestrated colour-revolution in Kiev, with its Lithuanian snipers on the roof of the American Embassy in Kiev murdering Ukrainian policemen and then the US blaming ‘repression’ on the democratically-elected pro-Russian government.

Conclusion: A Fight to the End

Russia must win this War against NATO. However, the last thing Russia wants is a nuclear war, however much some fools in the West talk that up. And however tempting as targets the 1,000 or so US bases around the world may be, Russia certainly does not want the war to spread outside the current Ukrainian territory.

If Russia does not win, the Russian Federation will be humiliated and dismantled and become just another group of colonies for Western asset-strippers and slavers. Then the British dream for its 1917 coup d’etat, turned into a nightmare because the stupid dream permitted Bolshevism to come to power, will become real.

After that, China will fall next and then the rest of the still free, if for the moment impoverished and exploited, world will fall just like dominos into neo-colonial Western hands. And that will be the end of the world under a US Global Dictatorship, euphemistically known as ‘the Unipolar World’.

We are not ready for that.

We prefer to fight.

As President Putin has said, a world without Russia is not one we wish to live in. As we have said before, this is our ONLY chance to work towards a Union of Sovereign (NOT Soviet) Social (NOT Socialist) Republics and an Alliance of countries which favour Prosperity and Justice, not Poverty and Injustice.

Really hard times.

Things got so hard that lester had to move out of his mobile home and into his camper…

car tuning has to have some limits after all 20
Hard times.

American Idiocy

Why the idiots who rule the US from modern day Olympus [DC] can't understand that their actions in Ukraine seriously [perhaps mortally] undermines the US empire is beyond me. 

The forced marriage of Russia to China creates a continental empire the world has never seen before. 

This vast industrial empire, with perhaps the greatest single contiguous source of raw material, food, people and weaponry in history is an enemy of making and choosing. 

What fools the political/security-state/financial-sector and their media propagandist be. 

Sad how it only takes one group of internally begotten sociopaths to bring down a great empire...very sad indeed, the blood has only began to bleed from this self-inflicted wound.

-S Brennan

Perfect for dating

Ah, take a lass out on a date in this car, and she’ll never forget you.

car tuning has to have some limits after all 29
Perfect for dating

China calibrating policy post US’ AXIS Act – The Sunday Guardian Live

An Opinion…
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.

Ukraine is the new Afghanistan… for Us.

"As for the Ukrainian side, it looks like they are a NATO-quality force rebuilt from the ground up after their serious failures in 2014-15. 

As individuals and small units, they can hold their own against their Russian and often win, especially with the added advantage of being on the defensive. 

The problem is that so far they have never demonstrated the ability to push back Russian forces and retake ground. 

And no, recapturing terrain that the enemy voluntarily abandoned doesn’t count. 

Ukrainians recapturing suburbs around Kiev was a victory in the same sense as water filling a bowl. 

Wars are won by shaping the battlefield to your advantage and forcing the enemy to conform to it. 

Flowing into channels the enemy created for you is the opposite of winning."

Article

A unique motor home

Custom comfort.

car tuning has to have some limits after all 37
A unique motor home.

U.S. Senate committee passes antitrust bill pressuring OPEC | Reuters

Busy little bees.
WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate committee passed a bill on Thursday that could expose the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners to lawsuits for collusion on boosting crude oil prices.

The No Oil Producing or Exporting Cartels (NOPEC) bill sponsored by senators, including Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Amy Klobuchar, passed 17-4 in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said the administration has concerns about the "potential implications and unintended consequences" of the legislation, particularly amid the Ukraine crisis. She said the White House is still studying the bill.
.

Russia’s economy is back on its feet

There’s a reason for its resilience
In early April we pointed to preliminary evidence that the Russian economy was defying predictions of collapse, even as Western countries introduced unprecedented sanctions. Recent data further support this view. Helped along by capital controls and high interest rates, the rouble is now as valuable as it was before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February (see top chart). Russia appears to be keeping up with payments of its foreign-currency bonds.
Sorry, pay wall…

From HERE (Paywall)

Meanwhile at the Post Office…

SHORPY 1470.preview
Here we are in circa 1953 Chicago with a Post Office employee under arrest. Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate, or else! 4×5 acetate negative from the News Photo Archive.

Latest looting of private property of Russian Citizens

Russian oligarch Suleyman Kerimov’s $300 million superyacht seized by Fiji on behalf of U.S. – The Washington Post
Article HERE

Italy orders seizure of yacht linked by media to Russian president, on behalf of the US – Daily Mail
Article HERE

HK making emergency plans for SWIFT sanctions

By Jeff Pao

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has prepared emergency plans in case Hong Kong or mainland China is eventually sanctioned by the United States for supporting Russia in its war with Ukraine. The financial regulator says it has plans to minimize risks in some extreme situations, such as the financial hub being removed from the SWIFT system.

From HERE

Note: If this happens, China may stop accepting dollars in all transactions, and declare that only RMB will be used (for unfriendly countries). Guess which country will suffer most?

Nice Hotel

SHORPY 4a23286a.preview
SHORPY 4a23286a.preview

Former Japan Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama talks about Japan subservience to US due to the US-Japan Joint committee

The CIA installed circuit breakers throughout the national electric grid, which they can control remotely. If any leader gets out of line, they can get a call, “Do you want Tokyo and Osaka to keep the lights on”?

Jeff

Former Japan Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama talks about Japan subservience to US due to the US-Japan Joint committee. Majority of Japan’s laws are passed with permission from this Committee with US officials. There’s reason he prematurely stepped down from his post…

RihitoPhysicist (@Rihito says 我的推特账户已被归还) Tweeted: Former Japan Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama talks about Japan subservience to US due to the US-Japan Joint committee.

(The) Majority of Japan’s laws are passed with permission from this Committee with US officials.

There’s a reason he prematurely stepped down from office due to Obama. From HERE

Favorite Hamburger Stew

I got this hamburger stew recipe from a woman at our church, Lois Henry, when I needed a way to use up our bounty of home-canned tomatoes. My husband loves it, and I like that it's easy to warm up for a carefree dinner in the winter months. 

—Marcia Clay, Truman, Minnesota

Favorite Hamburger Stew EXPS SBZ19 21692 B09 20 5b 2
Favorite Hamburger Stew

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 2 medium onions, chopped
  • 4 cans (14-1/2 ounces each) stewed tomatoes, undrained
  • 8 medium carrots, thinly sliced
  • 4 celery ribs, thinly sliced
  • 2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
  • 2 cups water
  • 1/2 cup uncooked long grain rice
  • 3 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon pepper

Directions

  1. In a Dutch oven, cook beef and onions over medium heat until meat is no longer pink, breaking it into crumbles; drain. Add the tomatoes, carrots, celery, potatoes, water, rice, salt and pepper; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer 30 minutes or until vegetables and rice are tender.
  2. Uncover; simmer 20-30 minutes longer or until thickened to desired consistency.

US ‘directly’ involved in Ukraine conflict – Moscow

Washington should be added to a “list of war criminals” as it is now directly participating in “hostilities” in Ukraine, Chairman of Russia’s State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin claimed on Saturday, citing media reports about alleged US intelligence-sharing with Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden has told senior intelligence officials that “counterproductive” leaks about data sharing with Ukraine should stop, NBC reported on Friday.

Though there was no official reaction to the report from the US authorities, Volodin took to Telegram to comment on it.

“The United States is taking part in hostilities in Ukraine. US President Biden, demanding to stop leaks about the exchange of intelligence information with Ukraine, admitted that Washington had been exposed,”

Volodin said that the Ukrainian government, which he described as the “Kiev Nazi regime,” not only relies on weapons from the West, but also on the “assistance of American intelligence forces.”

The Duma chairman wrote that Washington “essentially coordinates and develops military operations” in Ukraine, and is therefore directly participating in the “hostilities” against Russian forces.

“For the crimes committed in Ukraine by the Kiev Nazi regime, the US leadership should also be held accountable, adding to the list of war criminals,”

Volodin concluded.

The interior of the Orient Express, the long distance passenger train service was created in 1883

VSOE BAR 33 1
VSOE BAR 33 1

Meanwhile in Poland…

I am surprised that official declaration of Polish president went under the radar. There will be large and dangerous implication for Ukraine as a state.

Article

China Has ‘Financial Nuclear Bombs’ If West Levies Russia-Style Sanctions, Beijing Warns

Saturday, May 07, 2022 – 10:00 AM

Multiple analysts at Chinese state-linked think tanks and banks have weighed in on the Biden administration’s recent threats to punish the world’s second-largest economy over China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, and amid US charges that it could be helping Moscow evade sanctions, or even quietly resupplying Putin’s military machine (charges which at this point have remained without evidence).

“It is necessary to speed up the construction and external connection of the cross-border yuan clearing system CIPS … [But] the primary choice is to continue to strengthen cooperation with Swift,” Wang Yongli, a former vice-president with the Bank of China and a former board member for Swift, was cited as saying in a fresh South China Morning Post report this week.

However, China is taking note and studying its own preparedness and future options in the wake of the US drastic measure of freezing Russia’s central bank assets overseas. On this, Yongli underscored to the SCMP that “The huge foreign exchange reserves are hard-won, and they are China’s ‘financial nuclear bombs’ with a powerful deterrent effect. It must be used properly rather than arbitrarily, and cannot be easily slashed.”

Officials in Beijing are putting counterparts in Washington on notice – pointing out that “China is no Russia” given China’s immensely larger role in nearly every facet of the global economy. They’ve also said that any potential Taiwan reunification scenario with the mainland would not be like Russia-Ukraine, and yet it’s understood well due to the current crisis and the West’s anti-Russia sanctions constitute a “textbook warning for China”:

“The expansive economic sanctions that US-led Western countries have imposed on Russia can be seen as a textbook warning for China – on how far [the sanctions] can go,” said He Weiwen, former economic and commercial counsellor at the Chinese consulates in New York and San Francisco.

The SCMP report lists a number of short and long-term strategies being mulled in a crisis scenario with the West, predicated on geopolitical factors like a showdown over Taiwan.

For example, “China has been stepping up efforts to diversify its foreign exchange reserve assets in the past two decades, according to data from the State Administration Of Foreign Exchange.” The report recommends, “One countermeasure China can take is to expand its economic and financial opening up to the outside world, and encourage foreign investors to hold more Chinese assets, according to Chinese government advisers.”

Below are some key sections from the analysis outlining various possible scenarios

Unintended Consequences

“China and the US have a stake in each other, so for the US, China is totally different from Russia. The political calculations will inevitably be restrained by economic conditions.”

Read the Rest here in the Anti-China SCMP

“Who is to blame for the conflict?” survey conducted in several countries

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qsb7yjrqu0u81

Hamburger Steaks with Mushroom Gravy

Here's a meat-and-potatoes meal that no one will want to miss. It makes for a hearty dish the whole family will cozy up to in no time! 

—Denise Wheeler, Newaygo, Michigan

Hamburger Steaks with Mushroom Gravy EXPS CIMZ18 47843 E09 07 1b 3
Hamburger Steaks with Mushroom Gravy

Ingredients

  • 1 large egg
  • 1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
  • 1 envelope onion soup mix, divided
  • Dash pepper
  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1-3/4 cups cold water
  • 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 jar (4-1/2 ounces) whole mushrooms, drained
  • Hot cooked mashed potatoes

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine the egg, bread crumbs, 2 tablespoons soup mix and pepper. Crumble beef over mixture and mix well. Shape into four patties.
  2. In a large cast-iron or other heavy skillet, cook patties over medium heat until a thermometer reads 160°, and juices run clear, 4-5 minutes on each side. Set aside and keep warm.
  3. Combine the flour, water, Worcestershire sauce and remaining soup mix until blended; stir into skillet. Add mushrooms. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until thickened, about 5 minutes. Serve sauce with patties and mashed potatoes.

Borders Are Sacred? Solomon Islands Says They Were “Threatened with Invasion” Over China Base

download 2022 05 06T012709.098 1 600x338 1
download 2022 05 06T012709.098 1 600×338 1

The story of what is happening with the Solomon Islands and Australia is very important, given that it reflects the context of the Ukraine conflict.

The Solomon Islands has ostensibly agreed to host a Chinese military base as part of a wider-ranging security pact with China. Australia is claiming that this is unacceptable, and that despite the fact that the Solomon Islands is a sovereign country, they have no right to host Chinese troops so near to the Australian border. The United States and the entire Western world have backed up Australia’s claim that they have a right to veto a military base on their maritime border.

Meanwhile in the Ukraine, the West is claiming that the government of the Ukraine has an absolute right to join NATO and put nuclear weapons on Russia’s border.

It’s a virtually identical situation in some ways – but the Ukraine situation is much more extreme. Firstly, let’s do a little map porn.

Solomon Islands is over a thousand miles from the shores of Australia.

Interesting article. Read in FULL here.

Cool

2022 05 08 21 24
2022 05 08 21 24

Nebraska’s Stuffed Beef Sandwiches

When I moved to Nebraska, I discovered many ethnic foods that I had never heard of before. A friend introduced me to this runza recipe, a German-Russian beef sandwich, and it quickly became a family favorite. 

—Dolly Croghan, Mead, Nebraska

Nebraska s Stuffed Beef Sandwiches exps152441 CW2376963B12 20 8bC RMS 9
Nebraska s Stuffed Beef Sandwiches

Ingredients

  • 4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 packages (1/4 ounce each) active dry yeast
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup 2% milk
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 cup shortening
  • 2 large eggs, room temperature
  • FILLING:
  • 2 pounds lean ground beef (90% lean)
  • 2 medium onions, chopped
  • 4 cups chopped cabbage
  • 2 teaspoons seasoned salt
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon pepper

Directions

  1. Place 1-3/4 cups flour, sugar, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Heat the milk, water and shortening to 120°-130°. Pour over flour mixture; add the eggs. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until blended. Beat 3 additional minutes on high. Stir in the remaining flour; knead until smooth and elastic, 6-8 minutes.
  2. Place dough in a greased bowl; cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.
  3. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, cook beef and onions over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. Add the cabbage, seasoned salt, garlic powder and pepper; cook until cabbage is wilted.
  4. Punch dough down; divide into 12 portions and cover. Working with 1 piece at a time, roll into a 6-in. square. Place 3/4 cup meat mixture in the center of each square. Fold dough over filling, forming a rectangle. Pinch edges tightly to seal and place on greased baking sheets.
  5. Bake at 350° for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown. Serve hot.

Serbia turns to Russia

The Serbian leader read out a report by a Serbian pilot of the Moscow-Belgrade flight, saying that a fighter jet, presumably of a NATO country, was flying under the civilian plane’s belly
BELGRADE, April

Article

Maori tattoos

Green/blue Maori facial tattoos are invisible to wet plate photography. As a result, photos of Maori from the 1800s are often misleading…

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zqj9cf29s8u81

On Wars, Propaganda and outright Lies

By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog.

Here is a typical political offering from the British centre-left. As follows:

‘’Putin’s war on Ukraine has led to thousands of deaths, upended the world order, and intensified the global energy crisis. At home in Britain, it has led to an outpouring of support for Ukrainian refugees – if not for black and brown people fleeing war and persecution – and provided cover for Keir Starmer to further crack down on the Left of Labour, from socialist MPs to Young Labour.

In this extract of an interview from the latest Momentum political education bulletin, The Educator, David Wearing (whomever he is!- FL) discusses the geopolitical interests at stake, the reactions of Western states, especially the UK, and how the Left in Britain can meaningfully engage in anti-imperialist struggle today.

Momentum a centre-left political grouping within the British Labour Party: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused untold devastation and loss of life. Evidence of fresh atrocities seem to emerge almost daily. Why has Vladimir Putin’s regime launched this war of aggression, in your opinion?’’ (Red Pepper – leftist British publication.)

————————————————————————————————

Francis Lee (FL). You see the Russians are the really bad guys, or so we are told, and this is regarded as being axiomatic coming straight from the NATO propaganda handbook, the media, and the political elites in the west. But actually, the war against the Eastern Provinces in the Donbass in Eastern Ukraine started shortly after 2014 when the US organized the coup in Independence Square. Kiev was eager to march East and ‘deal with’ (to put it mildly) the two republics who subsequently were put under a siege by the Ukrainian army and death squads and 14000 of the two Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk were killed after being under the Ukie siege from 2014 to the present time. Of course, no mention was made of this in Mr. Wearing’s piece.

David Wearing holds forth as follows: There’s a standard imperialist mentality at work. (Agreed, but read Washington for Moscow – FL) Moscow evidently regards Ukraine with a strong sense of entitlement; part of its sphere of influence in the same way that the United States has historically treated Latin America as its ‘backyard’ under the so-called ‘Monroe Doctrine‘, and sought to dominate the Middle East more recently. Reasserting substantive control over Russia’s near abroad has been an overriding strategic priority for Moscow since the mid-1990s at least.

Indeed, the guiding principle across two decades of Putin’s presidency has essentially been ‘Make Russia Great Again‘. His revanchist, authoritarian nationalism is a product of the 1990s, when Moscow lost its grip on many of its former Tsarist and Soviet possessions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and when the Russian economy imploded under neoliberal shock therapy. The ugly machismo of Putin’s rule is a backlash against all of this.

FL – Actually, it was Putin who pulled Russia out of the grip of the oligarchs and free riders who had almost destroyed Russia. Moreover, this would of course be yet another eastern expansion in NATO’s relentless march whose object is and always has been to place an ever-tightening tourniquet around Russia’s neck. It is the West through the instrumentality of NATO which has pushed right up to Russia’s borders in a defiance of the deal in 1991 where NATO would not move ‘’one inch’’ closer to Russia’s borders with a flight time of 5 minutes to Moscow by hypersonic missile.

In fact, Russia offered a peace deal with a view to winding down the conflict which involved an implementation of the Minsk Accords, restoration of the Lugansk/Donetsk independent republics and neutrality for Ukraine. Initially the Ukrainian diplomatic delegation seemed interested in these proposals during the peace talks in Turkey. But as soon as they got back home to Ukraine the delegation was told in short order – almost certainly by the Americans – that none of these proposals were acceptable. So, according to the hard-liners and the Americans, that leaves only war as an option.

But according to Mr Wearing

So, the imperial logic is obvious (yes, but whose imperial logic? FL) but it hardly adds up to a justification for war. Certainly not one you can sell to the Russian public as good reason to sacrifice their sons and daughters on the battlefield. Hence the various pretexts for the invasion that Putin has offered in terms of defending the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine. We don’t need to detain ourselves with any of that. (sic! FL) Really, why not?

Wearing continues: Every imperial aggressor throughout history has claimed to be acting on some noble, virtuous principle.

FL – In actual fact the USSR as it was then constituted, was only too glad to get rid of these burdens, i.e., the Baltics, Georgia et cetera.

Aside from geopolitical motives, there’s been a palpable sense of hubris from Putin following previous military victories in Chechnya, Georgia (Georgia who firstly attacked South Ossetia killing a number of Russian Peacekeepers) and Syria (Presumably the writer thinks that a Russian victory in Syria was a defeat for democracy, when it was actually a defeat for the Takfiris).

But this war has proved a major miscalculation, and the danger now is that — like the US in Vietnam and Afghanistan – he (Putin) digs in for the long term rather than suffer the humiliation of accepting defeat. Given the sheer viciousness of the Russian campaign so far, this is not something that the people of Ukraine can afford.

WearingClearly, responsibility for this heinous violence lies first and foremost with Putin and the Russian state.

(F.L., I beg your pardon, but heinous violence came from the Ukrainian military and particularly from the neo-nazi units who couldn’t wait to start shelling the Donbass and continuing to do so for 8 long years killing 14000 ethnic Russians in their homes. Moreover, by 2021 Ukie army decided to take a second bite of the cherry. One hundred thousand Ukrainian troops were about to roll over the Donbass, but Putin after all the dithering stopped them in their tracks with the Russian Regular Forces and the Don Bass Militias.

Such is the policy of the British left’s framing of the situation which is one that they don’t understand and have no wish to.)

DW: There’s been a debate within the US foreign policy establishment about the wisdom of expanding NATO going back over a quarter of a century. One side (the old conservatives and Cold War veterans) argued that expanding the alliance too far into Russia’s former sphere of influence would raise tensions between Washington and Moscow to a dangerous degree. The other side (the neo-liberals and neo-conservatives of the post-Cold War era) argued that Washington’s interests lay in opening the alliance up to any state that wanted to join. At least initially, it was the latter group that got their way.

This is a debate among imperialists about the best policy for Washington to adopt Moscow in its own imperial interests. So, it’s been a little odd to see the anti-expansionist position in that debate being portrayed in recent weeks as ‘pro-Moscow’. Take the US diplomat George Kennan, who argued in 1997 that ‘expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era’, which would ‘inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion [and] restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations’. Back in the 1940s, Kennan had been one of the key intellectual architects of Washington’s entire Cold War strategy toward the USSR. It’s a sign of the depths to which the current debate has degenerated that even the sort of analysis offered by people like him is now routinely denounced as apologia for Putin.

For myself, I can see some logic in the arguments made by these old conservatives of the US foreign policy establishment. Clearly, they are attempting to explain, rather than excuse, their imperial adversary’s response to the expansion of NATO. And clearly some of their predictions have come true.

However, as socialist anti-imperialists we have our own language and frames of reference which are much more analytically useful than some of the shoddy euphemisms of the grand strategists. For example, we should dispense with talk of Russia’s ‘security concerns’ (Oh, yes Russia’s ‘paranoia’ about ‘security concerns’ regarding NATO’s inexorable moving up to the Russian border and stationing their hypersonic assets right on the Russian doorstep with 5 minutes flight time to Moscow and St. Petersburg – FL) as a ‘great power’, and instead refer more frankly and accurately to Russia’s imperial ambitions in places like Ukraine.

FL – (BS! Russia and Putin did not harbour any imperial ambitions, nor did it want a war either with any of its ex-soviet republics, or NATO’s relentless push to its western borders. It was NATO who were belligerently encouraged for exactly that eventuality, not Russia).

The term ‘security’ is one that mostly has an obfuscators effect in political discourse. Imperialists may see control over neighbouring countries as a matter of security, even ‘defence’, but the rest of us don’t have to indulge that.

We also need to think beyond how imperial powers should best manage competition over their respective spheres of interest. A better question for us might be, how can West, Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, be made into a common home rather than a geopolitical battleground? This is likely a question for a post-Putin world, but we should start thinking about it now. If we’re lucky enough at some point in the future to enjoy another historical moment of détente between the West and Russia, and another interlocutor in Moscow like Mikhail Gorbachev, then we should seize that moment to build a durable peace, rather than squander it a second time.

FL – (But Gorbachov was tricked by the US – this in the shape of Chief US negotiator, James Baker, and the Americans whom NATO had promised would not move ‘’one inch further to the East’’ who then reneged on the promise. The NATO military machine then predictably moved right up to the old Soviet borders. From the US-NATO viewpoint this was a shrewd move, which caught the Russians napping. Well Putin must have mused ‘fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.)

Momentum: So that’s the Western meta-narrative around the confrontation with Russia. What about the West’s approach to the Ukraine war itself?

DW: The fact that the Western powers find themselves on the right side (‘’the right side indeed’’! Along with, Svoboda, C14, Right Sector, the Azov Regiment! These are the shock-troops of NATO under US leadership) the Ukraine war reflects imperial interests and expediency not some high moral principle. They perceive a clear geopolitical advantage to be gained either from a Ukrainian victory or at least a Russian military failure. Support comes in the form of arms supplies to Ukraine and sanctions against Moscow, but a no-fly zone or some other direct intervention has thankfully been ruled out so far, due to the entirely rational fear that this would trigger World War Three.

There’s been no groundswell of opposition to this from the left, and rightly so. Ukraine has no option but to defend itself (sic!) militarily, (by marching east presumably and attempting to over-run the Don Bass and killing its own citizens therein? FL) and it has the right to do so (yes, apparently on a regular basis. FL ), and it has the right to seek the means of self-defence. (self-defence! But of course, shelling your own citizens in the Don Bass – a strange form of self-defence this!) from the only sources credibly able to provide it, namely Russia’s Western adversaries.

But given the nature of Western power we are understandably wary. We are wary of sanctions having a devastating effect on the Russian population, and without seriously hurting the regime. We are wary of any escalation into a direct NATO-Russia war, which would be utterly catastrophic.

Already in the past few weeks we’ve seen US President Biden announce huge additional spending on nuclear weapons. Experts have long warned that upgrading and renewing nuclear arsenals makes the world less, nor safer. We can expect a serious rise in military spending in the UK, and in Germany as well, where decades of foreign policy have been torn up. It’s really important that we stand by our anti-militarist principles in this moment. That doesn’t mean an absolutist form of pacifism, but it does mean an insistence that people recognise that arms races inflame rather than guard against the danger of military conflict.

Finally, in the prevailing atmosphere of machismo, we need to ensure people don’t forget the non-military, humanitarian dimension. That means demanding swift and safe paths to entry for Ukrainian refugees (as part of our wider demand for a complete change in UK border policy). It means aid for displaced Ukrainians wherever they might be. And it means any other economic measures that might help, such as cancelling Ukraine’s national debt to support its recovery whenever the war finally ends.’’

FL – Yes, I get it, a sort of ‘soft NATO’ approach?

OK, so let’s have another version. The Soviet Union was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1941. During the retreat the Red Army was pushed back almost to Moscow. Ukraine was occupied by Germany and also by indigenous Ukrainian fascist collaborators – still unfortunately with us – for most of WW2. Not only did Bandera’s (OUN-B) and Shukeyvich (UPA) fascist (yes, fascists!) collaborate with the Wehrmacht particularly in the massacre in Volhynia (1943-44) of Poles, Jews, and Russians, they were also lauded by the local population (and still are to this day) of the inhabitants of the western Ukraine centred around the cities of Lviv, Ternopol and Vinnytsia, et al. Not to be missed are the statues of Bandera lovingly adorned with flowers in the major cities west of the river Dnieper.

Around the period of 2013, ultra-nationalist groups (inveterate fascists) in the shape of Right Sector and Svoboda C14, and those lovely chaps of the Azov Regiment (1) began to emerge from the shadows and appear among the genuine moderate majority and joined in pitched battles in Kiev with the Berkut (riot Police) daily which the opposition forces finally won. This was, according to the UK’s Guardian ‘newspaper’ a victory for democracy (sic!) and peoples’ power. Well, it might have started like this, but it soon transmuted into something very different. Nobody should be in any doubt about the political complexion of these ultra-nationalist groups – who were and continue to be more than a marginalist political-military force – who went on to hold 6 portfolios in the new ‘government’ based in Kiev. Nor should anyone be in any doubt about both the overt and covert roles played by both the US and EU officials (not forgetting the ever-present Mr. Soros, who is always a fixture in these situations) and the formation of the future interim government.

Throughout this period the EU and high-ranking US officials were openly engaged in Ukraine’s internal affairs. The US Ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, were strolling around Independence Square reassuring the protestors that America stood behind them. Also basking in the political sunlight were US NGOs (such as the National Endowment for Democracy – NED – directly funded by the US Government) and (USAID). Also involved was the US Human Rights Watch (HRW) and not forgetting of course the ubiquitous Mr. Soros. Identified as GS in the leaked Open Society Foundation (OSF) documents, others involved in the Ukrainian coup in the planning, were the already named, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, along with the following: David Meale (Economic Counsellor to Pyatt, Lenny Benardo (Open Society Foundation – OSF) Yevhen Bystry (Executive Director International Renaissance Foundation – IRF) Oleksandr Sushko (Board Chair, IRF) Ivan Krastev (Chairman Centre for Liberal Studies, a Soros and US government-influenced operation in Sofia, Bulgaria) and Deff Barton (Director, US Agency for International Development AID – USAID – Ukraine). USAID is a conduit for the CIA.

Even right-wing thinkers such as George Freidman at Stratfor described these events as being ‘the most blatant coup in history.’

The new ‘government’ in Kiev was represented by a hotch-potch of oligarchs, Kolomoisky, Akhmetof, Pinchuk, Poroshenko, et al, and petty fuhrers including Pariuby, Yarosh, Biletsky, from the Western Ukraine with their violent armed Squadristi units (as in Italy’s period under Mussolini’s regime) terrorizing their opponents. The ultra-right Svoboda Party had a presence in the Ukrainian parliament (Rada). It was and still is a neo-nazi, ultra-right, anti-Semitic, Russophobic party with its base of support in the western Ukraine. The most important governmental post was handed to its fuhrer Andriy Parubiy who was appointed as Secretary of the Security and National Defence Committee, which supervised the defence ministry and the armed forces. The Parubiy appointment to such an important post should, alone, be cause for international outrage. He led the masked Right-Sector thugs who battled riot police in the Maidan in Kiev.

Like Svoboda, Right-Sector led by their own tin-pot fuhrer Dmitry Yarosh is an openly fascist, anti-semitic and anti-Russian organization. Most of the snipers and bomb-throwers in the crowds related to this group. Right Sector members had been participating in military training camps for the last 2 years or more in preparation for street activity of the kind witnessed in the Ukraine during the events in Independence Square in 2013-14. The Right Sector as can be seen by the appointment of Parubiy, is not able to control major appointments to the provisional government but he has succeeded in achieving his long-term goal of legalizing discrimination against Russians. What the Anglo-American left fail to understand – quite deliberately in my view – is the notion that the Ukrainian right-wing extremists are a marginal force in Ukraine. How much evidence do they need exactly? In fact, the politics of the western Ukraine is dominated by the ultras of the right, and every major city has statues of Bandera lovingly cared for and adorned with flower bouquets around his feet.

This discrimination took the forms of mass murder of the 45 people who passed out leaflets in the southern Black Sea port of Odessa when pro-Yanukovich supporters were attacked by fascist mobs and chased into a nearby building, a trade union HQ. The building was then set on fire and its exits blocked, the unfortunate people trapped inside were either burnt to death or, jumped out of the windows only to be clubbed to death when they landed. The practices of the political heirs of Bandera had apparently not been forgotten by the present generation. There is a video of the incident, but frankly, it was so horrific that I could only watch it once. (See more recently the whole murderous episode in the American publication Consortium News 2022). These barbarians were described by Luke Harding a ‘journalist’ of the Guardian as being ‘’an eccentric group of people with unpleasant right-wing views.’’ Yes, they were really nice chaps who got a little carried away!

One week later with the open support of Washington and its European allies, the regime installed by Washington and Berlin in February’s fascist-led putsch then began extending its reign of terror against all popular resistance in Ukraine. That was the significance of the events in the major eastern Ukrainian sea-port city of Mariupol less than a week after the Odessa outrage. (Mariupol has also come into the recent news for a second time around,)

After tanks, armoured personnel carriers and heavily armed troops were unleashed on unarmed civilians in the city, the Kiev regime claimed to have killed some 20 people. The Obama administration immediately blamed the violent repression on “pro-Russian separatists.’’

One week later Poroshenko, ex-Finance Minister in Yanukovich’s government, was elected as President on 29 May and duly announced that “My first presidential trip will be to Donbass where armed pro-Russian rebels had declared the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and control a large part of the region.’’ This was the beginning of the Anti-Terrorist Operation the ATO. However, things didn’t quite work out as planned. After 2 heavy defeats at Iloviask and Debaltsevo the Ukie army was stopped in its tracks and the situation has remained static to roughly this day.

Until that is things changed. Some 8 years later the Ukie army started doing what comes naturally to them: namely to start shelling the Donbass again. It should be understood that the shelling had started in 2014 immediately after the Kiev coup. During the whole period some 14000 hapless citizens of the Don Bass were killed. Moreover, a large Ukie army of some 100,000 were beginning to mass outside of the Don Bass and were preparing their move.

There was no way that Putin was going to allow this. Not only would it mean mass murder of the Don Bass, but it would also put Ukraine (qua western proxy) right on Russia’s border with NATO hypersonic missiles 5 minutes flying time from Moscow. That settled it – Putin had had enough. The Russian Army moved in. It was left with no alternative.

No great power can allow a peer competitor to mass on its borders by any other great power. The US/NATO was precisely doing this. As Putin pointed out, the flying time for hypersonic missiles from the Russian border to Moscow was 5 minutes. See the American Realist theorist John Mearsheimer in this respect.

Yet, all we get from the legacy left is the incessant virtue signalling and anti-Russian rhetoric. In truth Putin didn’t want this war, but there was pressure building up not only from the US neo-cons but also internally in Russia for a more militant approach in both the Parliament and with the Russian public. Any disinterested account of Putin’s turned on the initial attack of NATO and its proxies and Russia’s counterattack. The neo-cons should have heeded Obama’s warning that Russia had an ‘escalation dominance’ and that the US would be advised to tread carefully on Russia’s doorstep.

Russia is slowly but inexorably winning the battlefield in what has been a total defeat for the regime in Kiev, and more importantly for the US-NATO bloc. The tectonic geopolitical plates seem to be moving.

In the name of God

Neighbors of the Laneys in New Chapel Hill, Texas, thought that the family of five was stable and loving. Deanna and her husband had three boys—Joshua, 8, Luke, 6, and an infant Aaron who was 14 months old in May 2003.

One night, while her husband was asleep, Deanna smashed the heads of the two oldest boys with a rock, killing them both. She then calmly rang 911 to tell the authorities what she had done. When police arrived, they found Aaron severely injured in his crib. Deanne was not in the house, but she was still talking on her phone. Police found her in some nearby woodlands, her clothes covered in blood.

Apparently, a year before, Deanna had told fellow members of her church that God had told her that the world was coming to an end and that she should set her house in order. Her defense for the killings was that God had told her what to do.

Mental health experts agreed that Deanna suffered from psychotic delusions and wouldn’t have known right from wrong when she killed her sons. The court found her not guilty by reason of insanity. The authorities ordered her to be committed to Kerrville State Hospital. Aaron, although critically injured, survived.

Stuffed Chicken Rolls

Just thinking about this dish sparks my appetite. The ham and cheese rolled inside are a tasty surprise. Leftovers reheat well and make a perfect lunch with a green salad. —Jean Sherwood, Kenneth City, Florida

exps8126 TH163619B10 06 3b WEB 2
exps8126 TH163619B10 06 3b WEB 2

Ingredients

  • 6 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (8 ounces each)
  • 6 slices fully cooked ham
  • 6 slices Swiss cheese
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1/2 teaspoon rubbed sage
  • 1/4 teaspoon paprika
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/4 cup canola oil
  • 1 can (10-3/4 ounces) condensed cream of chicken soup, undiluted
  • 1/2 cup chicken broth
  • Chopped fresh parsley, optional

Directions

  1. Flatten each chicken breast half to 1/4-in. thickness; top with ham and cheese. Roll up and tuck in ends; secure with toothpicks.
  2. In a shallow bowl, combine the flour, cheese, sage, paprika and pepper; coat chicken on all sides. In a large skillet, brown chicken in oil over medium-high heat.
  3. Transfer to a 5-qt. slow cooker. Combine soup and broth; pour over chicken. Cover and cook on low for 4-5 hours or until chicken is tender. Remove toothpicks. Garnish with parsley if desired.

Elizabeth Smart

On June 5, 2002, Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee from her home while she slept. Mitchell and Barzee believed that Mitchell was an angel sent to Earth to battle the antichrist. To do this properly, Mitchell needed virgin brides; Smart was to be the first of many.

While captive, Smart was repeatedly raped, shackled to a tree, starved, and given a new name—Esther—among other things. All of this was done in the name of God; Mitchell even renamed himself Immanuel and wore robes, growing a long beard to resemble Jesus Christ.

Thankfully, Smart was rescued on March 13, 2003. Once in custody, Mitchell was seen by doctors to determine his mental capacity to stand trial. While doctors believed he was ill fit, the courts overruled the doctor’s opinions and continued to trial. Mitchell was sentenced to two life sentences, and Barzee was sentenced to 15 years but only served nine years.

Our World of Lies

If the inflation narrative we are being fed is true, the sanctions policy of the US government makes no sense as the worst sufferers are the American and European populations who are paying for the supply restrictions in higher prices and interest rates.

As Russia is an exporter of energy and minerals, higher prices result in more export earnings. It is Americans and Europeans hit with the high prices who are experiencing the sanctions.

Ask yourself why with supply shortages, disrupted supply chains from the mindless lockdown policy, and rising inflation the US government drove inflation higher by inhibiting supply with sanctions. Is the cause of the current inflation Federal Reserve money printing or is the cause the reduction in the supply of goods and services caused by Washington’s Covid protocol and “Russian sanctions”?

Ask yourself why the Biden regime is more concerned about gangster-state Ukraine than it is about the US inflation rate and the welfare of American citizens.

Ask yourself if the current high gasoline price is really a result of sanctions preventing oil from coming to market. As far as I can tell, Russia continues to sell oil and natural gas. It is only the small US purchases of Russian oil that have stopped. The small amount of oil involved cannot explain the price rise. Most likely it is the oil companies using the “crisis” narrative to raise prices.

Ask yourself if an interest rate rise by half a percentage point is enough to cause a 1,000 drop in the Dow Jones. Presumably, the argument is that a higher interest rate raises costs and drops earnings, thus the stock market’s decline. But if higher interest rates raise costs, how are they anti-inflationary? Most likely the stock market fell because the Federal Reserve said it is halting its policy of printing money to support stock and bond prices. Instead, the Federal Reserve is going to sell stocks and bonds from its $9 trillion dollar portfolio built by buying stocks and bonds for more than a decade in order to support the New York Banks and Wall Street. When Quantitative Easing began, the Federal Reserves portfolio was $800 billion. Today it is 11 times larger. This huge increase in the Federal Reserve’s portfolio explains the long rise in the Dow Jones and the fortunes made on Wall Street.

None of the narratives we are fed are true. The narratives serve agendas that are not disclosed to the public.

It is a fiction that “Western democracies” are self-governing. How can people self-govern when they live in a world governed by false explanations serving hidden agendas?

Left Behind

2022 05 08 21 15
2022 05 08 21 15

Megalopolis x Russia: Total War

by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

After careful evaluation, the Kremlin is rearranging the geopolitical chessboard to end the unipolar hegemony of the “indispensable nation”.

But it’s our fate / To have no place to rest, / As suffering mortals / Blindly fall and vanish / From one hour / To the next, / Like water falling / From cliff to cliff, downward / For years to uncertainty. 

Holderlin, Hyperion’s Fate Song

Operation Z is the first salvo of a titanic struggle: three decades after the fall of the USSR, and 77 years after the end of WWII, after careful evaluation, the Kremlin is rearranging the geopolitical chessboard to end the unipolar hegemony of the “indispensable nation”. No wonder the Empire of Lies has gone completely berserk, obsessed in completely expelling Russia from the West-centric system.

The U.S. and its NATO puppies cannot possibly come to grips with their perplexity when faced with a staggering loss: no more entitlement allowing exclusive geopolitical use of force to perpetuate “our values”. No more Full Spectrum Dominance.

The micro-picture is also clear. The U.S. Deep State is milking to Kingdom Come its planned Ukraine gambit to cloak a strategic attack on Russia. The “secret” was to force Moscow into an intra-Slav war in Ukraine to break Nord Stream 2 – and thus German reliance on Russian natural resources. That ends – at least for the foreseeable future – the prospect of a Bismarckian Russo-German connection that would ultimately cause the U.S. to lose control of the Eurasian landmass from the English Channel to the Pacific to an emerging China-Russia-Germany pact.

The American strategic gambit, so far, has worked wonders. But the battle is far from over. Psycho neo-con/neoliberalcon silos inside the Deep State consider Russia such a serious threat to the “rules-based international order” that they are ready to risk if not incur a “limited” nuclear war out of their gambit. What’s at stake is nothing less than the loss of Ruling the World by the Anglo-Saxons.

Mastering the Five Seas  

Russia, based on purchasing power parity (PPP), is the 6th economy in the world, right behind Germany and ahead of both the UK and France. Its “hard” economy is similar to the U.S. Steel production may be about the same, but intellectual capacity is vastly superior. Russia has roughly the same number of engineers as the U.S., but they are much better educated.

The Mossad attributes Israel’s economic miracle in creating an equivalent of Silicon Valley to a base of a million Russian immigrants. This Israeli Silicon Valley happens to be a key asset of the American MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex), as indelibly named by Ray McGovern.

NATOstan media hysterically barking that Russia’s GDP is the size of Texas is nonsense. PPP is what really counts; that and Russia’s superior engineers is why their hypersonic weapons are at least two or three generations ahead of the U.S. Just ask the indispensable Andrei Martyanov.

The Empire of Lies has no defensive missiles worthy of the name, and no equivalents to Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat. The NATOstan sphere simply cannot win a war, any war against Russia for this reason alone.

The deafening NATOstan “narrative” that Ukraine is defeating Russia does not even qualify as an innocuous joke (compare it with Russia’s “Reach Out and Touch Someone” strategy). The corrupt system of SBU fanatics intermingled with UkroNazi factions is kaput. The Pentagon knows it. The CIA cannot possibly admit it. What the Empire of Lies has sort of won, so far, is a media “victory” for the UkroNazis, not a military victory.

Gen Aleksandr Dvornikov, of Syria fame, has a clear mandate: to conquer the whole of Donbass, totally free up Crimea and prepare the advance towards Odessa and Transnistria while reducing a rump Ukraine to the status of failed state without any access to the sea.

The Sea of Azov – linked to the Caspian by the Don-Volga canal – is already a Russian lake. And the Black Sea is next, the key connection between the Heartland and the Mediterranean. The Five Seas system – Black, Azov, Caspian, Baltic, White – enshrines Russia as a de facto continental naval power. Who needs warm waters?

Moving “at the speed of war”

The pain dial, from now on, will go up non-stop. Reality – as in facts on the ground – will soon become apparent even to the NATOstan-wide LugenPresse.

The woke Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, expects Operation Z to last years. That’s nonsense. The Russian Armed Forces may afford to be quite methodical and take all the time needed to properly demilitarize Ukraine. The collective West for its part is pressed for time – because the blowback from the real economy is already on and bound to become vicious.

Defense Minister Shoigu has made it quite clear: any NATO vehicles bringing weapons to Kiev will be destroyed as “legitimate military targets”.

A report by the scientific service of the Bundestag established that training of Ukrainian soldiers on German soil may amount, under international law, to participation in war. And that gets even trickier when coupled with NATO weapons deliveries: “Only if, in addition to the supply of weapons, the instruction of the conflict party or training in such weapons were also an issue would one leave the secure area of ​​non-warfare.”

Now at least it’s irretrievably clear how the Empire of Lies “moves at the speed of war” – as described in public by weapons peddler turned Pentagon head, Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin. In Pentagonese, that was explained by the proverbial “official” as “a combination of a call center, a watch floor, meeting rooms. They execute a battle rhythm to support decision-makers.”

The Pentagonese “battle rhythm” offered to a supposedly “credible, resilient and combat-capable Ukraine military” is fed by a EUCom system that essentially moves weapons orders from Pentagon warehouses in the U.S. to branches of the Empire of Bases in Europe and then to the NATO eastern front in Poland, where they are trucked across Ukraine just in time to be duly incinerated by Russian precision strikes: the wealth of options include supersonic P-800 Onyx missiles, two types of Iskander, and Mr. Khinzal launched from Mig-31Ks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed Moscow is perfectly aware the U.S., NATO and UK are transferring not only weapons but also loads of intel. In parallel, the collective West turns everything upside down 24/7 shaping a new environment totally geared against Russia, not caring for even a semblance of partnership in any area. The collective West does not even consider the possibility of dialogue with Russia.

Hence talking to Putin is “a waste of time” unless a “Russian defeat” in Ukraine (echoing strident Kiev P.R.) would make him “more realistic”. For all his faults, Le Petit Roi Macron/McKinsey has been an exception, on the phone with Putin earlier this week.

The neo-Orwellian Hitlerization of Putin reduces him, even among the so-called Euro-intelligentzia, to the status of dictator of a nation chloroformed into its 19th century nationalism. Forget about any semblance of historical/political/cultural analysis. Putin is a late Augustus, dressing up his Imperium as a Republic.

At best the Europeans preach and pray – chihuahuas yapping to His Master’s Voice – for a hybrid strategy of “containment and engagement” to be unleashed by the U.S., clumsily parroting the scribblings of denizens of that intellectual no-fly zone, Think Tankland.

Yet in fact the Europeans would rather “isolate” Russia – as in 12% of the world’s population “isolating” 88% (of course: their Westoxified “vision” completely ignores the Global South). “Help” to Russia will only come when sanctions are effective (as in never: blowback will be the norm) or – the ultimate wet dream – there’s regime change in Moscow.

The Fall

UkroNazi P.R. agent Ursula von der Lugen presented the sixth sanction package of the Europoodle (Dis)Union.

Top of the bill is to exclude three more Russian banks from SWIFT, including Sberbank. Seven banks are already excluded. This will enforce Russia’s “total isolation”. It’s idle to comment on something that only fools the LugenPresse.

Then there’s the “progressive” embargo on oil imports. No more crude imported to the EU in six months and no more refined products before the end of 2022. As it stands, the IEA shows that 45% of Russia’s oil exports go to the EU (with 22% to China and 10% to the U.S.). His Master’s Voice continues and will continue to import Russian oil.

And of course 58 “personal” sanctions also show up, targeting very dangerous characters such as Patriarch Kirill of the Orthodox Church, and the wife, son and daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.

This stunning display of stupidity will have to be approved by all EU members. Internal revolt is guaranteed, especially from Hungary, even as so many remain willing to commit energy suicide and mess up with the lives of their citizens big time to defend a neo-Nazi regime.

Alastair Crooke called my attention to a startling, original interpretation of what’s goin’ on, offered in Russian by a Serbian analyst, Prof. Slobodan Vladusic. His main thesis, in a nutshell: “Megalopolis hates Russia because it is not Megalopolis – it has not entered the sphere of anti-humanism and that is why it remains a civilization alternative. Hence Russophobia.”

Vladusic contends that the intra-Slav war in Ukraine is “a great catastrophe for Orthodox civilization” – mirroring my recent first attempt to open a serious debate on a Clash of Christianities.

Yet the major schism is not on religion but culture: “The key difference between the former West and today’s Megalopolis is that Megalopolis programmatically renounces the humanistic heritage of the West.”

So now “it is possible to erase not only the musical canon, but also the entire European humanistic heritage: the entire literature, fine arts, philosophy” because of a “trivialization of knowledge”. What’s left is an empty space, actually a cultural black hole, “filled by promoting terms such as ‘posthumanism’ and ‘transhumanism’.”

And here Vladusic gets to the heart of the matter: Russia fiercely opposes the Great Reset concocted by the “hackable”, self-described “elites” of Megalopolis.

Sergey Glazyev, now coordinating the draft of a new financial/monetary system by the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) in partnership with the Chinese, adapts Vladusic to the facts on the ground (here in Russian, here in an imperfect English translation).

Glazyev is way more blunt than in his meticulous economic analyses. While noting the Deep State’s aims of destroying the Russian world, Iran and block China, he stresses the U.S. “will not be able to win the global hybrid war”. A key reason is that the collective West has “put all independent countries in front of the need to find new global currency instruments, risk insurance mechanisms, restore the norms of international law and create their own economic security systems.”

So yes, this is Totalen Krieg, Total War – as Glazyev spells it out with no attenuation, and how Russia denounced it this week at the UN: “Russia needs to stand up to the United States and NATO in its confrontation, bringing it to its logical conclusion, so as not to be torn between them and China, which is irrevocably becoming the leader of the world economy.”

History may eventually register, 77 years after the end of WWII, that neocon/neoliberalcon psychos in Washington silos instigating an inter-Slavic war by ordering Kiev to launch a blitzkrieg against Donbass was the spark that led to the Fall of the U.S. Empire.

Life in the slammer

2022 05 08 21 10
2022 05 08 21 10

Russian Sanctions on Europe: Gonzalo Lira II

“It is a death warrant for the European Economies…”

Gonzalo Lira : commentary on the decree that Vladimir Putin signed as follows:

Executive Order on retaliatory special economic measures in connection with unfriendly actions of certain foreign states and international organisations

The President signed the Executive Order On Imposing Retaliatory Special Economic Measures in Connection with the Unfriendly Actions of Certain Foreign States and International Organisations.

This Executive Order was signed in order to protect the national interests of the Russian Federation in response to unfriendly actions, which contradict international law, undertaken by the US, and joined by other foreign states and international organisations, and aimed at illegally depriving the Russian Federation, its citizens and legal entities of their property rights and/or restricting their property rights.

The Presidential Executive Order says federal and regional government authorities, other government authorities, local self-government bodies, and organisations and individuals under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation shall operate on the premise that special economic measures are to be applied to certain legal entities, individuals and organisations under their control, starting on the day the Executive Order comes into force.

The document introduces a ban on government authorities at all levels, as well as organisations and individuals under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation, implementing agreements (including foreign trade contracts) with legal entities, individuals and organisations under their control that are subject to the special economic measures, and on executing obligations under existing agreements (including foreign trade contracts) to individuals under the sanctions where such obligations are not satisfied or are partially satisfied.

The Executive Order also bans conducting financial operations whose beneficiaries are individuals under sanctions.

In addition, the document imposes a ban on exporting products or raw materials manufactured or extracted in Russia when they are delivered to individuals under sanctions, or by individuals under sanctions to other individuals.

The Government has been instructed to approve the list of individuals under sanctions within ten days and define additional criteria for transactions whose implementation and obligations shall be banned under the Executive Order.

Outstanding video featuring Gonzalo Lira HERE on this subject. A must visit and watch. HERE.

Australia Is The Next Ukraine

A MUST watch! Less than 10 minutes long.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Fried catfish, Chinese girls, Russia and the Ukraine, and RAND’s recommendation for a nuclear armed Japan

We continue with our documentation of this most curious time. Gonzalo Lira has a new channel, Andrei at the Saker is taking a small rest. MoA is still pumping out quality analysis, and the American and Western “news” is truly off-the-wall.  Here, we just though out some interesting tidbits for your review…

There has been no evidence of "intelligent life" in Washington DC for decades. What the world now sees emanating from USA is like a chimpanzees' tea party. It is frantic neurotic obsessional and deranged. It is the collective disintegration of a society (one cannot say "civilisation" because the US is too modern a polity to have one.

It is at war with "civilisations" whether Persian, Babylonian, Russian, Chinese, European, Indian - and seems to want to set the world on fire like some deranged teenager on drugs.

There can be no peace on this planet until the USA is dismembered and broken up into sovereign states either individually or in regional blocs. It will probably come from within as I cannot see places like Texas wishing to remain shackled to places like California

-Paul Greenwood

Pretty Chinese Girl 1

video 5MB

U.S. Pushes Fake Stories To Goad Russia Into Escalation

Does anyone get the feeling that the neocons actually feel that a nuclear exchange is acceptable if required!

There's a deranged decoupling from facts and consequences that's becoming more and more brazen.

Plus you have a senile octogenarian with a diversity box check idiot as a backup president.

There's no sane/rational individuals in authority in the US government.

This is genuinely frightening times.

1962 again.

- Jpc

The geniuses (not) at the National Security Council want to goad Russia into direct attacks on U.S. forces or interests. That would give the U.S. an excuse to further escalate the war in Ukraine into an open confrontation. It would also diverts the attention away from domestic problems.

To achieve this the NSC has pushed a number of stories to the media which claim that alleged Ukrainian successes are based on U.S. intelligence.

U.S. Intelligence Is Helping Ukraine Kill Russian Generals, Officials Say, May 4, NYT

WASHINGTON — The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials.

Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts.

The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That intelligence also includes anticipated Russian troop movements gleaned from recent American assessments of Moscow’s secret battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said. Officials declined to specify how many generals had been killed as a result of U.S. assistance.

The United States has focused on providing the location and other details about the Russian military’s mobile headquarters, which relocate frequently. Ukrainian officials have combined that geographic information with their own intelligence — including intercepted communications that alert the Ukrainian military to the presence of senior Russian officers — to conduct artillery strikes and other attacks that have killed Russian officers.

The story is obvious bullshit because there are only two Russian generals who have died so far during the Russian campaign in Ukraine.

Major General Andrey Sukhovetsky was killed on February 28 and Major General Vladimir Frolov was killed in early April. Both deaths were immediately officially acknowledged and reported in Russian media. Both men were buried with military honors.

All other ‘killed Russian generals’ are victims of the ‘ghost of Kiev’.  The Ukrainian propaganda apparatus likes such stories because it knows that ‘western’ media will pick up on them.

Russia does not hide the death of high officers. It is impossible to do so over longer periods as such men are known by many others. It would be bad for any government to get caught in such a scheme. There is also no reason to do so.

Some U.S. sources claim that a general’s death will demoralize the troops he led. The opposite is the case. Generals getting killed on or near the frontline demonstrate to frontline soldiers that they are not alone in their fighting and that their officers are doing the job while carrying the same high risk than they do.

The Pentagon denied any involvement:

The Pentagon denied Thursday that the U.S. has shared intelligence with Ukraine with the intent of targeting and killing senior Russian military leaders, stressing that the goal of U.S. intelligence is simply to allow Ukrainian forces to defend themselves against Russia's invasion.

The generals in the Pentagon are keen to not become targets for Russian reprisals.

Here is another such story:

U.S. intel helped Ukraine sink Russian flagship Moskva, officials say, May 5, NBCnews

Intelligence shared by the U.S. helped Ukraine sink the Russian cruiser Moskva, U.S. officials told NBC News, confirming an American role in perhaps the most embarrassing blow to Vladimir Putin’s troubled invasion of Ukraine.

A guided missile cruiser carrying a crew of 510, the Moskva was the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It sank on April 14 after being struck by two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles.

It is in fact still not clear what has happened to the Moskva. Russia only said that the ship had an explosion on board that ripped the hull below the waterline and caused a fire. There are other possibilities but hits by two Ukrainian anti-ship missiles seem unlikely.

The Pentagon again denied any direct involvement:

In a statement released after this story was published, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the U.S. did not provide Ukraine with "specific targeting information for the Moskva."

"We were not involved in the Ukrainians’ decision to strike the ship or in the operation they carried out," Kirby added. "We had no prior knowledge of Ukraine’s intent to target the ship. The Ukrainians have their own intelligence capabilities to track and target Russian naval vessels, as they did in this case."

The last sentence is incorrect as Russia destroyed all Ukrainian naval radars that were stupid enough to radiate.

Russia will not react to such stupid stories. It knows that the U.S. is pushing all kinds of battlefield information as well as weapons to the Ukrainians. It is also assumed that foreign generals are ‘consulting’ the general staff of the Ukrainian forces. Neither will help the Ukraine to win the war.

Over the longer term Russia may well seek revenge for the U.S. proxy war against it. But President Putin is a patient man and revenge is a dish best served cold.

Posted by b on May 6, 2022 at 15:29 UTC | Permalink

Foreign mercenaries, before and after

This war isn’t the middle east, this is ACTUAL war, combat against a enemy that in many ways are superior on the battlefield compared to Ukraine and its foreign legion.

I just want to say, I didn’t mean to make fun of the poor guys, I mean, the Brazilian guy was really lucky, the American, not so much, but still lucky all considered (it could have been much worse).

But those are people who went there by choice, to fight for an army that is not theirs, in a country far away, whose history and politics they probably don’t understand, in a war that, in America, only benefits weapon manufacturers. It just seems really stupid.

So I was reminded of that scene from Full Metal Jacket, and thought it was funny to put it together. But I don’t really think it’s funny, it’s tragic.

Another American died while fighting there as a mercenary for a Private Military Contractor, that is, just for the money. He had a pretty wife and a newborn baby. Was it worth it? I don’t think so.

Chili Mac Casserole

OIP.FpE5rnGsVvWBkRh82JqwCwHaLH
OIP.FpE5rnGsVvWBkRh82JqwCwHaLH

This cheesy casserole uses several of my family's favorite ingredients, including macaroni, kidney beans, tomatoes and cheese. Just add a leafy salad for a complete meal. 

—Marlene Wilson, Rolla, North Dakota 

Ingredients

  • 1 cup uncooked elbow macaroni
  • 2 pounds lean ground beef (90% lean)
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 can (28 ounces) diced tomatoes, undrained
  • 1 can (16 ounces) kidney beans, rinsed and drained
  • 1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste
  • 1 can (4 ounces) chopped green chiles
  • 1-1/4 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 2 cups shredded reduced-fat Mexican cheese blend
  • Thinly sliced green onions, optional

Directions

  1. Cook macaroni according to package directions. Meanwhile, in a large nonstick skillet, cook the beef, onion and garlic over medium heat until meat is no longer pink, breaking meat into crumbles; drain. Stir in the tomatoes, beans, tomato paste, chiles and seasonings. Drain macaroni; add to beef mixture.
  2. Transfer to a 13×9-in. baking dish coated with cooking spray. Cover and bake at 375° until bubbly, 25-30 minutes. Uncover; sprinkle with cheese. Bake until cheese is melted, 5-8 minutes longer. If desired, top with sliced green onions.

R.5c10498d345309441d37024e1dd58b7d
R.5c10498d345309441d37024e1dd58b7d

Disabled at sea

A Chinese electronic pulse torpedo was used on on an American cruise ship 5 miles from an American aircraft carrier west of Mexico and again on an Australian amphibious landing ship bringing supplies to that volcanic explosion in the Pacific. Both times no one got even a paper cut but the ships hit were completely disabled.

Maybe China can have the North Koreans test them out on US warships, without hurting anyone?

-Carl

Pretty Chinese Girl 2

video 4MB

The UAE imports oil from Russia

Even an oil exporter like the UAE imports oil from Putin’s Russia. Who said not many countries want Russian oil? Oh, yeah. The American “news” media…

Article HERE

WJ Comments

I think there are two possibilities.

The first is RSH's thesis that the neocon aim is to produce a kinetic war between NATO and Russia in which NATO is destroyed and yet in which, somehow, the US is not kinetically involved. This would wed Europe to the US for the next two generations, would lead to lots of $$$$ for US arms makers (who would resupply NATO), and would hopefully weaken Russia significantly in the process. What remains unclear on this view, though, is how NATO might become involved in a kinetic war against Russia WITHOUT the US becoming kinetically involved, given the command structure and force makeup of NATO. Also unclear is WHY, assuming the US does stay out of kinetic warfare, the European countries would then turn to the US for aid and arms ability, seeing as how the US just went ahead and let them get destroyed by Russia.

The other option is that there are some neoncons in State--probably Blinken and Nuland among them--who actually desire kinetic warfare between the US and Russia. They have gamed out that this warfare could be *limited* to conventional and even to tactical nuclear strikes, and they believe (somehow) that the US would come out of this warfare victorious. The problem with this thesis is that it's difficult to understand how anybody could believe that any part of this plan will work out. But then again, these are neocons, and so--ex hypothesi--very deluded people.

-WJ

Pretty Chinese Girl 3

video 2MB

M777

Scott Ritter reports on the realities related to the arms being sent to Ukraine, from quality to overall serviceability. Here's the word on the M777 155mm towed howitzer:

"Take the M777 155mm towed howitzer the US is providing to Ukraine – some 90 in total. Intended to be a lightweight, easily transportable replacement for the workhorse M198 howitzer used by the US Army and Marines from the mid-1980’s through the mid-2000’s, its design made sacrifices to reduce weight which, under combat conditions, resulted in 'serious problems with metal fatigue, instability while firing, and damage inflicted by recoil quickly became apparent,' according to a fact-sheet about the system. Many of the problems faced by the M777 revolve around the materials used in its production. 'There are many problems with using titanium instead of steel,' the fact-sheet notes, 'rooted in the fact that while it is similarly strong, titanium alloys are much less flexible (making them more prone to metal fatigue).' Moreover, the fact sheet concludes that 'this artillery piece is too light for the powerful 155 mm ammunition. The lighter a weapon is that fires a given projectile and propellant charge, the more violent its recoil is. This has resulted in the recoil-absorption mechanisms in the M777 wearing out dangerously fast in combat conditions.'"

Lighter so easier to destroy as well, the reports don't say. Ritter continues his M777 report:

"The US Army experience at the National Training Center, in Fort Irwin, California, shows that the combat effectiveness of an M777-equipped artillery unit begins to degrade around the fourth day of operations, primarily due to maintenance issues. Left unresolved, an M777-equipped unit could find itself completely combat ineffective within a week. The US Army solution—extensive field-level maintenance supported by forward-deployment of critical spare parts and highly trained personnel—is one that can only be conducted by units trained to do so, and with the logistical infrastructure in place to allow it.

"The Ukrainian Army, which is undergoing training on the M777 system at the US Army training center in Grafenwoehr, Germany, will be focused on the manpower-heavy requirements of M777 operation (which needs an eight-man crew, as opposed to the five-man crew of the M198), and not how to maintain the system in combat. But even if these weapons make it to the front lines, the complexity of the system will ensure inefficient operations which sooner rather than later will result in the M777 howitzer breaking down with no means of repairing it." [My Emphasis]

Being in the logistics part of the military when I served, Ritter's report demonstrates how badly the MIC has crippled the US Military--it replaced a very functional weapon system with one that isn't and is likely more expensive given its exotic components. And the remainder of his report is just as sad or sobering or laughable depending on your POV. Ritter ends his report on a note of bitter irony:

Biden and Pelosi are doing little more than feeding the Ukrainian military suicide pills and calling it nutrition. [My Emphasis]

Yesterday, I linked to an article that detailed the types and amounts of artillery systems being given to Ukraine by NATO. Much of what Ritter reports is valid for those as well. I've read some items proclaiming NATO arms to be superior in quality and quantity to Russia's which as we're seeing is 100% bullshit.

-karlof1

Ground-Based Intermediate-Range Missiles in the Indo-Pacific: Assessing the Positions of U.S. Allies | RAND

Key Findings

A U.S. strategy that relies on an ally agreeing to permanently host GBIRMs risks failing because of an inability to find a willing partner
  • As long as Thailand continues to have a military-backed government that pursues closer ties with China, the United States would not want Thailand to host GBIRMs — and Thailand would be highly unlikely to accept them anyway.
  • The U.S. alliance with the Philippines is in flux. As long as a president continues policies toward the United States and China similar to those of President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines is extremely unlikely to accept U.S. GBIRMs.
  • Chinese opposition to the ROK hosting a U.S. defensive missile system, the ROK’s susceptibility to Chinese pressure, and a deterioration of U.S.-ROK relations suggest that it is highly unlikely that the ROK would accept U.S. GBIRMs.
  • Although Australia’s strong historical ties with the United States means that the possibility that it would host U.S. GBIRMs cannot be ruled out, its historical reluctance to host permanent foreign bases and its distance from continental Asia make this unlikely.
  • Because of Japan’s willingness to strengthen its alliance with the United States and bolster its defense capabilities, Japan is the regional ally that appears most likely to host U.S. GBIRMs. However, that possibility remains low.
Should the United States continue to pursue GBIRMs for the Indo-Pacific, the strategy most likely to succeed would be helping Japan develop an arsenal of ground-based, anti-ship missile capabilities
  • This would be the first step in a longer-term U.S. strategy to encourage Japan to procure similar missiles with longer ranges.

Full PDF found HERE

Pretty Chinese Girl 4

video 3MB

 

Atomic Cherry’s analysis (14/4) on the Moskva “incident” seems fairly accurate.

From HERE (used Yandex translator)

...

The attack of the Moskva was not an accident or an improvisation – the cruiser was chosen as a target for both technical and propaganda reasons. On the one hand, it is the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, on the other – a deeply outdated, worn-out ship with long service and chronic underfunding.

The strike on the "Moscow" was perfectly planned and thought out: it was inflicted in stormy conditions in order to maximally complicate operations to fight for the survivability of the ship and the evacuation of the crew; moreover, it was located at a distance from other ships of the Black Sea Fleet.
According to transponders, only 5 boats of an unknown type could come to the aid of the cruiser.

As I assumed earlier, the operation was carried out in full cooperation between the Navy and the Alliance forces: for example, according to airspace monitoring data for April 12, a British RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft was actively operating in the Black Sea area, and RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV flights were recorded at various times (map attached). On this day, the Alliance's intelligence confirmed the presence of the "Moscow", verified the signatures, and received comprehensive data on the location of other ships of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation.

On April 13 (the day of the attack), some kind of military magic occurred – data on RC-135 and RQ-4 flights are simply not available. The reason for this is that air scouts flew missions with transponders turned off, and civilian means of monitoring airspace could not detect them, which in itself is more than a bright intelligence sign.

The missile strike on the cruiser was carried out using the Neptune missile system, a modern missile system made using military microelectronics manufactured in Western Europe (and, naturally, it had the ability to receive external targeting from NATO reconnaissance aircraft). Various conspiracy theories about the use of the Norwegian PKR "Penguin" are complete nonsense. This missile is intended only for aviation and naval carriers and, doubly important, it has an extremely limited range of application (34 km in mod. Mk2).

...

Judging by a number of data, Bayraktar UAVs also took part in the attack on the cruiser, acting as a means of conducting a diversionary maneuver.

Cheeseburger and Fries Casserole

Kids love this casserole because it combines two of their favorite fast foods. And I like the fact that I can whip it up with just four ingredients. 

—Karen Owen, Rising Sun, Indiana

Cheeseburger n Fries Casserole EXPS 13X9BZ19 7899 E10 05 6b 2
Cheeseburger n Fries Casserole

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds lean ground beef (90% lean)
  • 1 can (10-3/4 ounces) condensed golden mushroom soup, undiluted
  • 1 can (10-3/4 ounces) condensed cheddar cheese soup, undiluted
  • 1 package (20 ounces) frozen crinkle-cut french fries

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°. In a large skillet, cook beef over medium heat until no longer pink; drain. Stir in soups. Pour into a greased 13×9-in. baking dish.
  2. Arrange french fries on top. Bake, uncovered, until the fries are golden brown, 50-55 minutes.

The “True Way” prediction

The “True Way” or “Chen Tao” was a cult movement created by Taiwanese leader Hon Ming Chen. The religious cultivation group mixed aspects of Taiwanese religion, Buddhism, Christianity, and UFO conspiracy theories with their prophecies.

Hon Ming Chen, who was previously an atheist until joining the cult, predicted that on March 31, 1998, at exactly 12:01 am, people across North America would see God on their TVs. It didn’t matter if the person had cable service or not.

It’s no surprise that the prediction failed, leading Hon Ming Chen’s revisal of the apocalypse date to another one the following year. He predicted the end of the world in massive floods and devil spirits. He also asked his followers to buy their salvation by paying for spaceships to save them from extinction. The second prediction also failed, which led to the group’s ultimate decline.

Pretty Chinese Girl 5

video 3MB

Attack from Planet Clarion

This doomsday prediction dates back to 1954 when a Chicago housewife, Dorothy Martin, claimed to receive communication of an impending alien attack from Planet Clarion. She claimed that the aliens would cause a massive flood that would swallow the earth. Next, newspapers would run headlines warning about “A Day of Disaster.”

Despite being unfounded, her prophecies amassed her followers, who went by “Seekers.” In preparation for the D-day, seekers quit their jobs, sold their belongings, and started gathering at Dorothy’s home to sing carols. Christmas Eve of 1955, the day marked for the end of the world, went on uneventfully, to the disappointment of the seekers.

Later in the night, when the aliens and flying saucers that were supposed to save them failed to show up, Dorothy claimed to receive another message from Planet Clarion saying that God was impressed with the Seekers’ faith and instead decided to postpone the apocalypse. Nice save, Dorothy!

Pretty Chinese Girl 6

video 4MB

Austrians say no to NATO

Austrians say Nein!! to NATO:

"The vast majority of Austrians are against becoming part of NATO, a poll has revealed. In a survey conducted earlier this month by Austria’s Institute for Opinion Polls and Data Analysis and commissioned by the Austria Press Agency, 75% of respondents replied in the negative when asked if they thought their country should join NATO, with another 14% in favor of such a scenario."

So, the two core nations of what was the Hapsburg Empire are against the EU’s stance and NATO, although Hungary is a NATO member. IMO, that’s a spanner in the spokes.

The Hen who laid prophetic eggs…

In most cases, people headline apocalyptic events. But, the entire event becomes even creepier when an apocalyptic prophecy comes from a hen. This was the scene in Leeds in 1806 when a hen started laying eggs with the inscription “Christ is coming.” This sparked a religious frenzy in Leeds, with many people visiting the hen to see the eggs and repent in preparation for the coming of Jesus.

People later discovered that the hen was not laying prophetic eggs. But instead, the hen’s owner, Mary Bateman, was inscribing the eggs with ink and reinserting them in the hen for it to lay them again. The act was uncovered by a “Believer” who had come to visit the hen and see the “prophetic egg.”

More on the worldwide fertilizer shortage.

Then, two things made that worse:

China: The country, which supplies 24% of the world's phosphates, 13% of nitrogen and 2% potash, halted fertilizer exports this past summer.

War: Russia's invasion of Ukraine disrupted trading in the Black sea, putting the global food supply in peril generally (for instance, the wheat disruption). Russia and its ally Belarus also produce a lot of fertilizer. In 2020, Russia provided 14% of urea (a nitrogen fertilizer), and, with Belarus, 41% of potash, a potassium fertilizer.

From HERE

Pepe Escobar
May 6, 2022
.
After careful evaluation, the Kremlin is rearranging the geopolitical chessboard to end the unipolar hegemony of the “indispensable nation”.

But it’s our fate / To have no place to rest, / As suffering mortals / Blindly fall and vanish / From one hour / To the next, / Like water falling / From cliff to cliff, downward / For years to uncertainty. 

Holderlin, Hyperion’s Fate Song

Operation Z is the first salvo of a titanic struggle: three decades after the fall of the USSR, and 77 years after the end of WWII, after careful evaluation, the Kremlin is rearranging the geopolitical chessboard to end the unipolar hegemony of the “indispensable nation”. No wonder the Empire of Lies has gone completely berserk, obsessed in completely expelling Russia from the West-centric system.

The U.S. and its NATO puppies cannot possibly come to grips with their perplexity when faced with a staggering loss: no more entitlement allowing exclusive geopolitical use of force to perpetuate “our values”. No more Full Spectrum Dominance.

The micro-picture is also clear. The U.S. Deep State is milking to Kingdom Come its planned Ukraine gambit to cloak a strategic attack on Russia. The “secret” was to force Moscow into an intra-Slav war in Ukraine to break Nord Stream 2 – and thus German reliance on Russian natural resources. That ends – at least for the foreseeable future – the prospect of a Bismarckian Russo-German connection that would ultimately cause the U.S. to lose control of the Eurasian landmass from the English Channel to the Pacific to an emerging China-Russia-Germany pact.

The American strategic gambit, so far, has worked wonders. But the battle is far from over. Psycho neo-con/neoliberalcon silos inside the Deep State consider Russia such a serious threat to the “rules-based international order” that they are ready to risk if not incur a “limited” nuclear war out of their gambit. What’s at stake is nothing less than the loss of Ruling the World by the Anglo-Saxons.

Mastering the Five Seas  

Russia, based on purchasing power parity (PPP), is the 6th economy in the world, right behind Germany and ahead of both the UK and France. Its “hard” economy is similar to the U.S. Steel production may be about the same, but intellectual capacity is vastly superior. Russia has roughly the same number of engineers as the U.S., but they are much better educated.

The Mossad attributes Israel’s economic miracle in creating an equivalent of Silicon Valley to a base of a million Russian immigrants. This Israeli Silicon Valley happens to be a key asset of the American MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex), as indelibly named by Ray McGovern.

NATOstan media hysterically barking that Russia’s GDP is the size of Texas is nonsense. PPP is what really counts; that and Russia’s superior engineers is why their hypersonic weapons are at least two or three generations ahead of the U.S. Just ask the indispensable Andrei Martyanov.

The Empire of Lies has no defensive missiles worthy of the name, and no equivalents to Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat. The NATOstan sphere simply cannot win a war, any war against Russia for this reason alone.

The deafening NATOstan “narrative” that Ukraine is defeating Russia does not even qualify as an innocuous joke (compare it with Russia’s “Reach Out and Touch Someone” strategy). The corrupt system of SBU fanatics intermingled with UkroNazi factions is kaput. The Pentagon knows it. The CIA cannot possibly admit it. What the Empire of Lies has sort of won, so far, is a media “victory” for the UkroNazis, not a military victory.

Gen Aleksandr Dvornikov, of Syria fame, has a clear mandate: to conquer the whole of Donbass, totally free up Crimea and prepare the advance towards Odessa and Transnistria while reducing a rump Ukraine to the status of failed state without any access to the sea.

The Sea of Azov – linked to the Caspian by the Don-Volga canal – is already a Russian lake. And the Black Sea is next, the key connection between the Heartland and the Mediterranean. The Five Seas system – Black, Azov, Caspian, Baltic, White – enshrines Russia as a de facto continental naval power. Who needs warm waters?

Moving “at the speed of war”

The pain dial, from now on, will go up non-stop. Reality – as in facts on the ground – will soon become apparent even to the NATOstan-wide LugenPresse.

The woke Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, expects Operation Z to last years. That’s nonsense. The Russian Armed Forces may afford to be quite methodical and take all the time needed to properly demilitarize Ukraine. The collective West for its part is pressed for time – because the blowback from the real economy is already on and bound to become vicious.

Defense Minister Shoigu has made it quite clear: any NATO vehicles bringing weapons to Kiev will be destroyed as “legitimate military targets”.

A report by the scientific service of the Bundestag established that training of Ukrainian soldiers on German soil may amount, under international law, to participation in war. And that gets even trickier when coupled with NATO weapons deliveries: “Only if, in addition to the supply of weapons, the instruction of the conflict party or training in such weapons were also an issue would one leave the secure area of ​​non-warfare.”

Now at least it’s irretrievably clear how the Empire of Lies “moves at the speed of war” – as described in public by weapons peddler turned Pentagon head, Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin. In Pentagonese, that was explained by the proverbial “official” as “a combination of a call center, a watch floor, meeting rooms. They execute a battle rhythm to support decision-makers.”

The Pentagonese “battle rhythm” offered to a supposedly “credible, resilient and combat-capable Ukraine military” is fed by a EUCom system that essentially moves weapons orders from Pentagon warehouses in the U.S. to branches of the Empire of Bases in Europe and then to the NATO eastern front in Poland, where they are trucked across Ukraine just in time to be duly incinerated by Russian precision strikes: the wealth of options include supersonic P-800 Onyx missiles, two types of Iskander, and Mr. Khinzal launched from Mig-31Ks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed Moscow is perfectly aware the U.S., NATO and UK are transferring not only weapons but also loads of intel. In parallel, the collective West turns everything upside down 24/7 shaping a new environment totally geared against Russia, not caring for even a semblance of partnership in any area. The collective West does not even consider the possibility of dialogue with Russia.

Hence talking to Putin is “a waste of time” unless a “Russian defeat” in Ukraine (echoing strident Kiev P.R.) would make him “more realistic”. For all his faults, Le Petit Roi Macron/McKinsey has been an exception, on the phone with Putin earlier this week.

The neo-Orwellian Hitlerization of Putin reduces him, even among the so-called Euro-intelligentzia, to the status of dictator of a nation chloroformed into its 19th century nationalism. Forget about any semblance of historical/political/cultural analysis. Putin is a late Augustus, dressing up his Imperium as a Republic.

At best the Europeans preach and pray – chihuahuas yapping to His Master’s Voice – for a hybrid strategy of “containment and engagement” to be unleashed by the U.S., clumsily parroting the scribblings of denizens of that intellectual no-fly zone, Think Tankland.

Yet in fact the Europeans would rather “isolate” Russia – as in 12% of the world’s population “isolating” 88% (of course: their Westoxified “vision” completely ignores the Global South). “Help” to Russia will only come when sanctions are effective (as in never: blowback will be the norm) or – the ultimate wet dream – there’s regime change in Moscow.

The Fall

UkroNazi P.R. agent Ursula von der Lugen presented the sixth sanction package of the Europoodle (Dis)Union.

Top of the bill is to exclude three more Russian banks from SWIFT, including Sberbank. Seven banks are already excluded. This will enforce Russia’s “total isolation”. It’s idle to comment on something that only fools the LugenPresse.

Then there’s the “progressive” embargo on oil imports. No more crude imported to the EU in six months and no more refined products before the end of 2022. As it stands, the IEA shows that 45% of Russia’s oil exports go to the EU (with 22% to China and 10% to the U.S.). His Master’s Voice continues and will continue to import Russian oil.

And of course 58 “personal” sanctions also show up, targeting very dangerous characters such as Patriarch Kirill of the Orthodox Church, and the wife, son and daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.

This stunning display of stupidity will have to be approved by all EU members. Internal revolt is guaranteed, especially from Hungary, even as so many remain willing to commit energy suicide and mess up with the lives of their citizens big time to defend a neo-Nazi regime.

Alastair Crooke called my attention to a startling, original interpretation of what’s goin’ on, offered in Russian by a Serbian analyst, Prof. Slobodan Vladusic. His main thesis, in a nutshell: “Megalopolis hates Russia because it is not Megalopolis – it has not entered the sphere of anti-humanism and that is why it remains a civilization alternative. Hence Russophobia.”

Vladusic contends that the intra-Slav war in Ukraine is “a great catastrophe for Orthodox civilization” – mirroring my recent first attempt to open a serious debate on a Clash of Christianities.

Yet the major schism is not on religion but culture: “The key difference between the former West and today’s Megalopolis is that Megalopolis programmatically renounces the humanistic heritage of the West.”

So now “it is possible to erase not only the musical canon, but also the entire European humanistic heritage: the entire literature, fine arts, philosophy” because of a “trivialization of knowledge”. What’s left is an empty space, actually a cultural black hole, “filled by promoting terms such as ‘posthumanism’ and ‘transhumanism’.”

And here Vladusic gets to the heart of the matter: Russia fiercely opposes the Great Reset concocted by the “hackable”, self-described “elites” of Megalopolis.

Sergey Glazyev, now coordinating the draft of a new financial/monetary system by the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) in partnership with the Chinese, adapts Vladusic to the facts on the ground (here in Russian, here in an imperfect English translation).

Glazyev is way more blunt than in his meticulous economic analyses. While noting the Deep State’s aims of destroying the Russian world, Iran and block China, he stresses the U.S. “will not be able to win the global hybrid war”. A key reason is that the collective West has “put all independent countries in front of the need to find new global currency instruments, risk insurance mechanisms, restore the norms of international law and create their own economic security systems.”

So yes, this is Totalen Krieg, Total War – as Glazyev spells it out with no attenuation, and how Russia denounced it this week at the UN: “Russia needs to stand up to the United States and NATO in its confrontation, bringing it to its logical conclusion, so as not to be torn between them and China, which is irrevocably becoming the leader of the world economy.”

History may eventually register, 77 years after the end of WWII, that neocon/neoliberalcon psychos in Washington silos instigating an inter-Slavic war by ordering Kiev to launch a blitzkrieg against Donbass was the spark that led to the Fall of the U.S. Empire.

It doesn’t get stranger than this…

The only thing better than waiting for the apocalypse is to create the apocalypse yourself. That’s what Shoko Asahara, born Chizuo Matsumoto, did in 1995. Shoko Asahara was a Japanese doomsday prophet who became a cultic leader after his arrest for selling fake Chinese cures.

Asahara started amassing a following after establishing a yoga studio in 1984, claiming he could levitate and had reached enlightenment. In 1987, he created the Aum Shinrikyo religion, naming it after a Japanese word that means “Supreme Truth.” With an estimated following of 10,000 people in Japan and 40,000 in Russia, Asahara’s religion even had some candidates running for Japanese legislative elections in 1990.

As his popularity grew, so did his superiority and god complex. Asahara encouraged his followers to drink blood and bathwater to save them from the apocalypse. Asahara predicted that the apocalypse would happen between 1997 and 2000 through gas poisoning. Some members of Aum Shinrikyo decided to take matters into their own hands and, quite literally, create the apocalypse.

On March 20, 1995, members boarded five trains and released toxic sarin gas, killing 12 people and injuring at least 5,500 others. Asahara was later arrested by Japanese authorities and sentenced to death in February 2004.

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

These biscuits and sausage gravy is an old southern recipe that I've adapted. Homemade sausage gravy is a classic, hearty breakfast that takes you on a trip to the South every time it's served. 

—Sue Baker, Jonesboro, Arkansas

R.e19d94a1fe03d21ff7f5943f0fa76620
Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

Ingredients

  • 1/4 pound bulk pork sausage
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 to 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon pepper
  • 1-1/4 to 1-1/3 cups whole milk
  • Warm biscuits

Directions

  1. In a small skillet, cook sausage over medium heat until no longer pink, 3-5 minutes, breaking it into crumbles; drain. Add butter and heat until melted. Add the flour, salt and pepper; cook and stir until blended. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until thickened, about 2 minutes. Serve with biscuits.

Pretty Chinese Girl 7

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Heaven’s Gate

Marshall Applewhite pursued a career in education but later resigned from his position after his father’s death. His father’s demise led to Applewhite’s spell of severe depression. After a couple of years, Applewhite met Bonnie Nettles, a nurse who introduced him to mysticism. Together they formed the religious sect called Heaven’s Gate after believing they were divine messengers tasked to deliver a doomsday message to the people.

After his arrest, Applewhite’s first chance to preach his “gospel” was in jail. He was arrested for failing to return a rental car. After spending six months in prison, he had convinced a small group of people to become followers. After his release, Applewhite and Nettles traveled to Oregon and California, where they convinced another group of people to join them.

Upon acquiring a following, Applewhite started preaching about aliens that will ascend through spaceships and experience body transformation. His doomsday theories were primarily based on New Age movements and popular culture.

Applewhite’s apocalyptic predictions gained more publicity in the ’90s after the group learned of the passing of Comet Hale-Bopp. He changed his preaching to mean that the comet was the long-awaited vessel that would transport their souls. Applewhite and his followers prepared to board this spaceship by planning a mass suicide for their transformation journey.

On March 26, 1997, Applewhite’s followers killed themselves using vodka cocktails, barbiturates, and suffocation with plastic bags. Authorities found 39 bodies of the Heaven’s Gate members draped with clothes on their heads. This mass suicide is a notable reference to the consequences of religious extremism and another example of a failed apocalyptical prediction.

Blinded

It seems to me as though the West is so blinded by its own propaganda and hubris that it has lost the plot completely. Totally and utterly. 

They know Russia has won this but there isn't one Politician who has the humility to admit this openly. 

The UAF is FUBAR. 

They also have got Russia and Putin completely wrong. 

Putin and his brilliant Team no doubt are fully aware that the West/NATO are piling on the provocations to get Russia to react so the West can enter the War. 

Putin and his team are much smarter than that. 

If they have to be patient and not bite they will be. 

All I can see is the EU USA and the West are absolutely in hysterical desperation. 

People say Russia is taking things slowly and criticise them for that but, in my viewan that shows that intelligent, serious, sincere strategic thinking is taking place on the Russian side which, in a war situation, is crucial and critical to success. 

The collective players in the West however, are making hysterical decisions almost like children in a temper tantrum when they haven't got what they want. 

No critical analysis or thinking just throwing all the toys out of the pram with the baby in tow. 

Deep desperation is no substitute for calm, logical and reasoned strategic thinking. 

Russia won't react to the provocations at this stage because they are thinking straight. 

Patience is certainly a virtue in this case. 

However, when they have won this which will be sooner rather than later, then they will take the gloves oF flint in relation to these provocations. 

God bless President Putin and his Team. 

What I do know is that the West has shown its truly evil face truly evil and this evil must be eradicated from the world. 

China, India and other SCO members have enormous capacity to assist Russia if they need to but Russia doesn't need it right now. 

Common human decency will prevail.

-Jo Dominich

This reminds me of a saying I hear (quite often) recently:

"...beware the fury of a patient man".

Tulsi Gabbard says…

Tulsi Gabbard put it nicely HERE…

…We’re already in a hot war with Russia, and it’s going to get a lot hotter because the Biden Admin’s stated goal is the complete destruction of Russia’s economy & military. Russia has made it clear that if faced with this prospect they’ll have no choice but to use tactical nukes. Once the nuclear Pandora’s Box is open, it’ll be impossible to close. The path the Biden Admin has us on will lead to WWIII & nuclear Armageddon. …

.

As much as I want to believe Moskva was an accident (out of so many) or that it was a drifting mine that miraculously only struck and sank the Russian Black Sea flag ship and so far not a single random merchant vessel, the ugly reality is that this is a NATO proxy war against Russia where the goals by NATO military and officials are stated openly.

Fortunately Russia has been acting very cautiously and reserved while trying to contain the conflict geographically to Ukraine. USA and its NATO minions on the other hand are trying hard to escalate it beyond.

Peace

"There can be no peace on this planet until the USA is dismembered and broken up into sovereign states either individually or in regional blocs. It will probably come from within as I cannot see places like Texas wishing to remain shackled to places like California."

Please read Tragedy and Hope, 101, by Joseph Plummer. It’s a consolidation of the world political reality standing behind the visible governments as describe in Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope, which is 1300 pages long. Joe Plummer consolidates the key points of political manipulation and control. The US is only one of the facades and tools hiding those who actually control the world.

It is so easy to get caught up in the visible political world and assume those in position of state actually control anything. They are all puppets on a string, especially Biden, and all the rest.

-Al

Terror from Balochistan: a menacing tool to disrupt Sino-Pakistani economics

A Baloch suicide bombing targeting Chinese workers in Karachi comes a mere month after the US-backed ousting of PM Imran Khan. Pakistan is a critical BRI hub in Beijing’s vast Eurasian connectivity project, and it looks like CPEC is the ultimate target of this disruption.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and cross-posted with The Cradle

This is the concise story of how a suicide bombing may carry the potential to subvert the whole, ongoing, complex process of Eurasia integration.

Recently, the Balochistan Liberation Movement (BLA) had released an ISIS-influenced video threatening “Chinese officials and installations” in Pakistan’s vast province.

Yet what actually happened in late April was a suicide bombing outside of the University of Karachi’s Confucius Institute – not Balochistan – and targeting Chinese teachers, not “officials and installations.”

The suicide bomber was a woman, Shaari Baloch, alias Bramsh, who detonated her vest just as a van carrying Institute staff members approached the entrance. The attack was claimed by the BLA’s Majeed Brigade, which stressed that this was the first time they used a female suicide bomber.

Shaari Baloch was a schoolteacher with a Zoology degree, enrolled to pursue a second Master’s degree, married to a dentist and professor at Makran Medical College in her hometown of Turbat, in southern Balochistan. Her three brothers include a doctor, a deputy director at a government-funded project, and a civil servant. So Shaari Baloch was far from being a mere destitute online-indoctrinated Salafi-jihadi.

The Pakistani Foreign Office had to stress the obvious: this was a “direct attack on the Pakistan-China friendship and ongoing cooperation,” always qualified, by both sides, as “iron brothers.” Pakistan is an absolutely key node of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to connect the Eurasian landmass.

This was no standard terrorist attack. Its reverberations are immense – not only in one of Pakistan’s provinces and South Asia regionally, but for the whole of Eurasia. It may be a harbinger of serious turbulence ahead.

Shaari Baloch’s act of desperation should be seen, to start with, as the embodiment of a deep-seated Baloch alienation felt by the educated middle classes, from lawyers and traders to students, constantly permeating the complex relationship with a distant Islamabad. A significant part of the puzzle is that 26 Pakistani intel agencies never saw it coming.

Baloch leaders instantly made the point that the best possible reaction would be to call a Grand Jirga – modeled on the Shahi Jirga practiced at the time of the partition of the subcontinent – that would unite all tribal elders to address the most pressing local grievances.

Round up the usual suspects

Balochistan, geostrategically, is as valuable as rare earth minerals: an immense desert positioned east of Iran, south of Afghanistan, and boasting three Arabian Sea ports, including Gwadar, practically at the mouth of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Comprising nearly 48 percent of Pakistan’s area, Balochistan is rich in uranium and copper, potentially very rich in oil, produces more than one-third of Pakistan’s natural gas, and sparsely populated. The Baloch account for the majority of the population, followed by Pashtuns. Quetta, the large provincial capital, for years was considered Taliban Central by the Pentagon.

Gwadar, the port built by China on the southwestern Balochistan coast of the Arabian Sea – directly across from Oman – is the absolute key node of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and doubles as the essential link in a never-ending pipeline saga. The Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline, previously known as the “peace pipeline,” with plans to cross from Iranian to Pakistani Balochistan (India still has not made up its mind) is absolute anathema to Washington since the George W. Bush era.

CPEC remains an endless source of controversy even inside Pakistan. Beyond all the links planned between Gwadar and Xinjiang by the year 2030, most of this ambitious connectivity corridor deals with energy, industrial zones and road and rail projects in different parts of the country – an overall improvement of its lagging infrastructure. The Chinese, for years, have quipped that in fact “all of Pakistan is a corridor.”

The US security establishment, predictably, has been planning for years to instrumentalize an insurgency in Balochistan to – what else – “disrupt” first the possibility of an energy pipeline from Gwadar to Xinjiang, and then the overall CPEC project. Usual suspects like the US’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) are very much present in Balochistan. WikiLeaks had revealed a great deal of the game back in 2015.

A Carnegie Institute report noted how “many Baloch nationalist leaders now come from the urbanized districts of Kech, Panjgur, and Gwadar (and to a lesser extent from Quetta, Khuzdar, Turbat, Kharan, and Lasbela). They are well connected to Karachi and Gulf cities, where tribal structures are non-existent. In fact, while there is violence all over the province, the insurgency seems to concentrate mainly in these urbanized areas.”

Suicide bomber Shaari Baloch came from Turbat, the province’s second largest city, where the BLA is very much active. From the point of view of the usual suspects, these are choice assets, especially after the death of important tribal leaders such as Akbar Bugti. The report duly noted how “the educated and middle-class Baloch youth are in the forefront” of the insurgency.

The anti-China instrumentalization of the BLA also ties in with the regime-change parliament operation in Islamabad that recently deposed former prime minister Imran Khan, who was always a fierce adversary of the American “Forever War” in Afghanistan. Khan resolutely denied Pakistan’s use in “over the horizon” US military ops: that was one of the key reasons for him to be ousted.

Now, with a pliant, Washington-approved, new regime in town, a miracle has just happened: the Pentagon is about to clinch a formal agreement with Islamabad to use Pakistani airspace to – what else – keep interfering in Afghanistan.

Beijing, as well as other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), won’t be amused. Only weeks before the white coup, Khan had met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and once again underscored how Pakistan and China are “iron brothers.”

Imran Khan was a serious thorn in the side of the west because he kept impressing on Pakistanis that the Forever War in Afghanistan was militarily unwinnable. He knew how all the proxies – including the BLA – that destabilized both Afghanistan and Pakistan for decades were, and continue to be, part of US covert operations.

Not an Iran-India plot

Balochistan is as deeply tribal as the Pashtun tribal areas. Local tribal chiefs can be as ultra-conservative as Islamabad is neglectful (and they are not exactly paragons of human rights either). Most tribes though bow to Islamabad’s authority – except, first and foremost, the Bugti.

And then there’s the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which both Washington and London used to brand as a terrorist group, and then forgot about it. The BLA operated for years out of Kandahar in Afghanistan (only two hours away from Quetta), and already in the previous decade – simultaneous to the announcement of the New Silk Roads and CPEC – stressed it was getting ready to attack non-Balochis (code for the government in Islamabad as well as Chinese foreigners).

Balochis are inclined to consider the BLA as a resistance group. But Islamabad has always denied it, saying their support is not beyond 10 percent of the provincial population.

An ample controversy has raged in Pakistan for years on whether the BLA was totally hijacked by the CIA, the MI6 and the Mossad. During a 2006 visit to Iran, I was prevented from going to the Sistan-Balochistan province in southeast Iran because, according to Tehran’s version, infiltrated CIA from Pakistani Balochistan were involved in covert, cross-border attacks. It was no secret to anyone in the region that since 9/11 the US virtually controlled the Baloch air bases in Dalbandin and Panjgur.

In October 2001, while waiting for an opening to cross to Kandahar from Quetta, I spent quite some time with a number of BLA associates and sympathizers. They described themselves as “progressive, nationalist, anti-imperialist” (and that would make them difficult to be co-opted by the US). They were heavily critical of “Punjabi chauvinism,” and always insisted the region’s resources belong to Balochis first; that was their rationale for attacks on gas pipelines.

Stressing an atrocious, provincial literacy rate of only 16 percent (“It’s government policy to keep Balochistan backward”), they resented the fact that most people still lacked drinking water. They claimed support from at least 70 percent of the Baloch population (“Whenever the BLA fires a rocket, it’s the talk of the bazaars”). They also claimed to be united, and in coordination with Iranian Balochis. And they insisted that “Pakistan had turned Balochistan into a US cantonment, which affected a lot the relationship between the Afghan and Baloch peoples.”

Two decades later, and after the whole ISIS saga in Syria and Iraq, it’s a completely different story. BLA sympathizers may still be prepared to remain within a Pakistani confederation, although with infinitely more autonomy. But now they seem to be willing to use western imperial help to strike not only at the central government in Islamabad, but also at the “near abroad” foreign profiteer (China).

After the Karachi suicide bombing, a narrative started to emerge in some Pakistani circles that Iran and India were in cahoots to destabilize Balochistan.

That makes absolutely no sense. Both Tehran and Islamabad are tightly linked to Beijing through several nodes of the New Silk Roads. Iran would draw less than zero benefit to collude with India to destabilize an area that borders Afghanistan, especially when the SCO is fully engaged in incorporating Kabul into the Eurasia integration process. Moreover, the IPI has its best chances ever to come to fruition in the near future, consolidating an umbilical cord from Southwest Asia to South Asia.

During the late years of Barack Obama’s administration, the BLA, though still a fringe group with a political wing and a military wing, was regrouping and rearming, while the chief minister of Balochistan, Nawab Raisani, was suspected of being a CIA asset (there was no conclusive proof).

Already at the time, the fear in Islamabad was that the government had taken its eye off the Balochistan ball – and that the BLA was about to be effectively used by the US for balkanization purposes. That seems to be the picture right now. Yet the heart of the matter – glaringly expressed by the Karachi suicide bombing – is that Islamabad still remains impervious to the key Baloch grievance: we want to profit from our natural wealth, and we want autonomy.

Mississippi Delta Fried Catfish Recipe

This is Southern Fried Catfish at its best. Pair with Crispy Cole Slaw (posted) and Hushpuppies and French Fries and maybe a homegrown tomato and....Enjoy!

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Mississippi Delta Fried Catfish

Ingredients


How to make it


  • Mix dry ingredients. Fish should be moist to capture batter. Do not towel dry. Coat fish evenly and drop in hot oil (360 degrees) Fish will turn golden and float to top when done. Do not overcrowd. Immediately place on absorbent paper. A brown grocery bag topped with paper towels works great.

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Mississippi Delta Fried Catfish.

So Langley, Va has something to say…

Excerpt on the Western media’s pivot w/r/t Russia and officially calling it a “proxy war” finally. Langley must have signed off on that…

The New York Times is reporting that U.S. intelligence has helped Ukrainian forces “target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war,” citing anonymous senior U.S. officials.

This incendiary claim may or may not be true as U.S. officials have already admitted that they’ve been pouring out a deluge of disinformation about this war with the loyal facilitation of the Western press. If it is true, it would mean yet another dangerous escalation in the U.S. proxy war against Russia.

Oh, and on that note, it would appear that we are indeed allowed to refer to this as a proxy war now.

The New Yorker has come right out and declared that the U.S. is in “a full proxy war with Russia,” a claim that before this narrative pivot caused social-media users to call me a Kremlin stooge and more obscene varieties of that same slur. It’s hilarious that it was ever controversial to say that pouring billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry into a foreign nation to be used by C.I.A.-trained fighters with the direct ongoing assistance of U.S. military intelligence is a proxy war.

Speaking of the U.S. empire’s world-threatening proxy war with Russia, I would like to highlight an important new dialogue between The Socialist Program’s Brian Becker and a scientist named Greg Mello, who is the co-founder and executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group and an expert on nuclear war. The interview is just as valuable for Becker’s insightful commentary as Mello’s. Together they provide a lot of sorely needed insight into the nature of the horrifying games the empire is playing with our lives in this nuclear standoff.

Iran

For the US, if attacking Iran was a terrible idea before, it would be absolutely catastrophic now. Iran is a dangerous adversary by herself. With Russian assistance, Iran would deliver to the US the worst strategic defeat of its 250 year history.

-Lysander

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Cajun Boudin, Bioweapons, Chinese driving test, vintage photos, and geopolitical stuff related to Ukraine

Yes. I also feel like using the F word every time I read the news from the crusader media and politicians.

The crusaders have the right not to borrow or sales anything, but should not smear people once the money is transfered and investment made.

The scare thing about the crusaders is that they are non reasoning, dishonest on nature, and habitually killing and looting the world at will.

I won't sympathise if UK and US are n*k* by Putin.

Perhaps the world will be more peaceful with the F**k*r.

-Redacted

You know, when I was in prison, I was told “Hey man, you know what? You can’t lie for shit!” And I took that as a complement, though everyone else in the crowd thought that it was an insult. Try to be good. No matter what. It will offer you advantage.

Moving on…

Here, we continue with the strange, off-the wall reality that we find ourselves trapped in at this frozen moment of time; a true time of calamity and distress. It’s a time when comfort is yearns, and the insane and evil seem to be running amok.  I hope (that) you enjoy this installment.

Modern Art in a Museum

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Modern Art in a Museum.

School Setting: 1966

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Columbus, Georgia, circa 1966. One in a series of photos dealing with cosmetology or hairdressing in a school setting. The exercise here seems to be How to Straighten Yourself Out. 4×5 inch acetate negative from the Shorpy News Photo Archive.

Pretty Chinese Girl

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HOW CAJUN BOUDIN IS MADE | New Iberia, Louisiana

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Boudin.

My first wife had family in New Iberia, Louisiana, and for a spell we lived there with them. This is one of my favorite foods, and OMG! Is it delicious. There is NOTHING like it in the entire world. Absolutely nothing! I hope that this video inspires you to make your own. As it’s absolutely delicious! I’ll tell you what!

This is an intro video as to what Boudin is…

Fear-mongering from the USA

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Classic Boudin (Boudoin)

And here is how to make it…

Classic boudin with pork livers added. You MUST have pork liver, or else it is not authentic Boudin, and it will not taste at all like it should. You can get it at a butcher, as it is usually not carried in supermarkets.

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs pork meat, chopped (pork butt roast is a good choice)
  • 2 lbs pork livers
  • 3 cups rice, steamed
  • 4 onions, chopped
  • 2 bunches green onion tops, chopped
  • 3 tbsp parsley flakes
  • 3 tbsp celery flakes
  • 2 tsp salt or to taste
  • 3 tsp black pepper and 1 tsp red pepper -more or less to taste

Directions

In a large saucepan or Magnalite roaster, combine the pork, liver, and enough water to cover the meat; approximately 8 cups water. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the pork is tender, approximately 1 1/2 hours. Once meat has cooled, either de-bone, chop or grind as preferred (do not drain the liquid in the pan, you’ll use it in the next step). Set the meat aside.

Cook onions until tender in the same water the meat was cooked in. (Some cooks will add one large chopped bell pepper and two chopped celery stalks to the onion mixture). cook until the vegetables are tender.

Add meat, remaining seasonings and the green onions and cook another 15-20 minutes until most of the water is gone. Add cooked rice, stir well. Add more seasoning, if needed.

Stuff mixture into casings and boil each boudin link in hot, but not boiling, water for 12 minutes to cook casing.

The ‘Super Market’: 1940

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May 1940. “The ‘super market’ in Durham, North Carolina.” Back when self-service groceries were enough of a novelty that photographers put the name for them in quote marks. 35mm nitrate negative by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration.

China – USA meeting in Alaska

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Hilarious moment from Mama’s Family

A funny comedy, that for some strange reason, I was “addicted” to watching back in the 1980s.

Mama’s Family – “Cat’s Meow”

One of my favorite episodes “in the day”. LOL. Seriously, this is just GREAT!

Original Air Date: November 8, 1986
Directed by: Dave Powers

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains spoilers for this episode!

Synopsis: Iola (Beverly Archer) is depressed when her mean kitty Midnight passes away. Then she surprises everyone by having the animal freeze-dried.

Cat Corpse: We never see Midnight the cat before his passing, so we can’t really call a Kitty Carnage Warning here. We do hear a lot about Midnight being a mean and feisty cat; one who attacks the mailman and bites Mama (Vicki Lawrence) when she tried to pet him. The episode gets darkly crazy when Iola comes over and tells Mama she has a surprise. She then brings in the freeze-dried Midnight on a blanket in a basket. The fake black long-haired Persian prop used here looks so ludicrous it’s hard not to find the situation funny.

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mamasfamilycatsmeow01

The cat is not only preserved but has been fitted to meow when petted!

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This leads to some confusion when Vinton (Ken Berry) falls on the dead cat while carrying a locked trunk he just bought with Naomi (Dorothy Lyman) and Bubba (Allan Kayser) into the house. The cat’s electronic meow goes off and gets weak, leading Vinton to believe he killed Midnight himself. The trio bury the cat in the back yard and then end up having to dig it back up to give it to Iola. Of course she is not happy with her destroyed, dirty dead cat.

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mamasfamilycatsmeow03

Cat Burglars (Scene Stealers): Facing the prospect of having to pay Iola to fix Midnight, Vinton and the others turn to the trunk they bought. Iola wonders how they think it could hold anything valuable with a hole in the side. But when they open the trunk they find a real treasure . . . a mama cat and her kittens. Just by chance the first kitten they pull out is a black long-haired Persian. Iola falls in love and names the kitten Sunshine, since mama said “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. He took away your Midnight but he gave you a little Sunshine.”

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Mama's Family - Cat's Meow - Iola Beverly Archer holding up black Persian kitten Midnight

Bubba, Naomi and Vinton pull three more kittens out of the trunk; a white, a gray and another black Persian. They ask Mama if they can keep them and Mama says she guesses it would be okay. “I took you all in. What’s a few more strays?”

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mamasfamilycatsmeow09

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Final Mewsings: Most people would agree live cats are better than freeze-dried ones.

Pretty Chinese Girl

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Russia: The New World Order has come to an end

"The Americans are no longer the masters of planet Earth."

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Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has recently made a devastating statement about the so-called “unipolar world.” That world, he said, “has come to an end.”

He added that “the Americans are no longer the masters of planet Earth.”[1] Medvedev also talked about “the hypocritical white-toothed smiles of politicians and diplomats who said one thing and did something completely different.”[2]

With respect to Russia being a European country, Medvedev said:

“In terms of its geography and history, Russia is a European country. Also, we’re European in terms of our cultural identity, because a good part of our population represents the European civilization, which is closely linked to the Christian civilization. But we also have a lot of people that belong to the Muslim faith, as well as to Russia’s other major religions: Buddhism and Judaism.”[3] These questions and answers are from an interview that Russia Today conducted with Medvedev:

Q: Obviously, we’re not talking about geography here. Today, many Russians, including the country’s top officials – if you listen to what they are saying – feel that we setting ourselves up against Europe, as its opposite.

A: No, it’s them who are setting themselves up against us, trying to distinguish themselves from us. They don’t have a monopoly on ‘Europeanness’. The European civilization developed steadily all across the continent. Sure, we are not, in that sense, successors to the Roman Empire, unlike a number of other European countries that belong to the Germanic language group. We have our own history, but our history is just as European as theirs. So, when they say to us that we are no longer considered European, that sounds ridiculous, frankly. That’s all I have to say about our identity. That’s no reason to make any judgments – you asked me a question, and I told you that we are even more ‘European’ than they are. That’s all.

Q: The scale of anti-Russian sentiment in this situation is staggering. It’s like all of Europe, even the countries we believed were our friends and partners, are united in their deep hatred for our country, and it’s manifesting at every level.

And now Europeans, who always claimed they were so tolerant and committed to the principles of democracy, say such terrible things about Russia and Russians, about our leaders. Not to mention Biden – I don’t think we’ve ever heard any rhetoric like that from a top official of his caliber. On the other hand, if we take Poland, maybe Biden is not so bad after all.

And if I may ask a question about Poland, if we could move on for a moment from discussing the main issue – what’s your assessment of Warsaw’s position in this situation? Because it feels like Poland is not only aspiring to play a key role here, but also to have Lvov and the western parts of Ukraine as some kind of protectorate. I understand that this is two questions in one, so may ask you both?

A: The rhetoric is definitely very sharp. It’s no doubt defined by current events, and all the political forces in Europe are trying to use this situation to their advantage and achieve their own goals in terms of domestic policy. Every country has something to deal with, be it elections or a crisis, or the need to create a coalition. And so they need a target or an enemy.

In this case, Russia is the designated enemy, so I’m not surprised by the rhetoric. You’re right, though, when you say that sometimes it defies comprehension, or, as they say, goes beyond good and evil.

At an everyday level we also see this Russophobic rhetoric manifesting, although I would say it differs case by case. It also has to do with new communication methods, such as social media platforms, because the patterns that were less common before can now take root instantly.

Russophobic rhetoric is nothing new, though. Recently I quoted Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev, who talked about how the West ganged up on Russia 150 years ago and did everything in their power to turn us into outcasts and pariahs. Tyutchev noted that this witch hunt lasted for 30 years.

I can’t help but see certain similarities between those times and modern Russia. Russia in its current form is just over 30 years old, and for these 30 years we’ve been blamed for everything, especially in the last 20 years or so. They said we’ve picked up everything from the USSR, including its ideology, even though that’s not true, and they criticize us for this and that. So the Russophobic rhetoric we’re seeing from the West now is nothing new.

From time to time, we hear absolutely astonishing remarks, but we’re polite and we never get personal. No one points out that there are some people who exhibit clear signs of dementia or old-age senility. No one talks about grandpas who lose their balance while climbing the stairs to board a plane or forget which way their office is and go straight into the bushes. No one points this out, because we’re polite and we refrain from mentioning these things. But all that boils down to ethics and good manners.

As for Poland, I did have to speak on the subject recently because of the role Poland is trying to take on now.

Poland is more than just a loyal liege subject of the United States of America that seeks to prove its loyalty every step of the way, to show that it’s the United States’ rock and main ally in Europe. In essence – in this way or another – Poland has been trying to win back hundreds of years rather than decades of its failed attempts to restore the former glory of Rzeсzpоspolita. And if it can’t do that, then to at least remind the world of the fact that Poland used to be a very serious power both in Europe and globally, almost an empire in the making. Today, the country’s elite is represented by the Law and Justice party with Mr. Kaczyński at its helm, and they have been on a pro-American and aggressively anti-Russian path for the past ten years.

I can recall a different time – when Poland and Russia actively tried to restore their relationship, especially in the wake of the tragic death of the Polish president, and it looked quite doable because there were no impassable obstacles between us. But once the opposition party I just mentioned rose to power, the country’s vector changed dramatically, it became wildly rusophobic. I cannot call it anything but political imbecility since there’s nothing more to it.

They are trying to consolidate the voters that are very anti-Russian, and it’s no secret that Poland has quite a number of such people, as there are historical reasons for that, so they’re trying to take advantage of that and put their finger in Ukraine’s affairs. Especially since Poland is now hosting a fairly large number of refugees from Ukraine, and Poland is trying to use that for its own benefit.

They are adopting some measures that do not only aim to support the refugees (because naturally one can only want to help them) but also to find yet another way to punish Russia. They are proposing some new schemes, even amending the Constitution in order to be able to confiscate Russia’s property. Yesterday, they expelled a large number of Russian diplomats.

I don’t really understand what they’re trying to achieve with all that, because if Russia were to expel a matching number of diplomats, Poland would have to close down its entire embassy. Is that good? At the end of the day, it’s up to each sovereign state to decide whether to maintain diplomatic relations or not. But this kind of policy is utterly destructive.

I’d like to recap that Polish authorities are simply trying to prove their utmost loyalty to the United States and get more points for it by way of financial and economic support, as well as to get more political support domestically.

This is all sad, and it’s not going to end well. Quite naturally, they can expect a symmetrical reaction to their actions or counter-measures dictated by international law. We will simply end up in a situation where we stop talking to each other completely. Is it good for Poland? I don’t know, it’s Poland’s decision at the end of the day.

When will the Ukraine conflict end?

Q: Of course, we are not at the General Staff, and I am not a representative of the Ministry of Defense, but I will tell you honestly, my friends and acquaintances constantly ask how long the offensive will last. But as I said, we are not on Frunzenskaya Embankment, but the Security Council of the Russian Federation is here. Can I ask you what you personally think about the course of the operation and how much it actually meets the goals that were announced.

A: The operation took place primarily because the goals that the Russian state set for itself were not achieved through diplomacy. The President said this at the start.

The course of the operation, the plans for its implementation are determined by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. According to the Constitution, it is the President. The President gave his assessments. The operation is progressing according to plan. This plan was prepared and approved by the Supreme Commander. Therefore, I will not give any additional assessments now, it seems to me that this is a completely exhaustive assessment that was given by the President.

But it is obvious that the operation will continue until the goals set by the President of the country are achieved. These goals concern the future of Ukraine; the status of Ukraine as a neutral state, a state that does not pursue an anti-Russian policy, a state that is not militarized, and a state that should be our normal neighbour.

Therefore, until the results of the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine are achieved, the operation must continue – as it was conceived by the President of the country, as it was decided.

The US thinks it’s above the law

Q: The US has taken similar actions on a multiple of occasions in the past and in the regions that are in no way part of their immediate interests. These countries are not their neighbours or a threat to the US. Take Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan. But the US’s military action has never resulted in such a massive and consolidated response from the West.

No one responded to a bombed wedding party in Afghanistan by shutting down European clothes shops in the US. There were no other repercussions, either. Why? Why are we witnessing such a powerful response to Russia’s moves that you say are fully justified in terms of our security?

A: Now this is not going to sound as an insight, but clearly the US believes it is a nation outside international law, above everyone else.

Following the collapse of the USSR and an end to the bipolar world order based on the standoff between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the US saw itself as the winner and the sole beneficiary of the Soviet Union’s demise.

While in reality the Soviet Union broke up not because of NATO’s activities, but for internal reasons. And that’s why they behave accordingly: they believe they cannot be brought to justice, but they have the right to judge everyone, they are the ultimate decision-makers, they have the right to do whatever they want.

There are a number of drivers behind this behaviour. First of all, economically the US is a very strong country. Secondly, it issues the main reserve currency with vengeance, continuing to pile up its domestic debt. In fact, it is the whole world that is the US’s creditor. The entire world could be struggling, plunging into crises, while the Americans are printing dollars.

That is why they now feel completely unpunished in this respect as well. Exactly for that reason the US’s actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam a few decades ago, have never come under any legal scrutiny by the international community.

However, at the time of the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union was still alive, pushing for quite heavy debates at multilateral platforms. The Soviet Union, as you know, was helping Vietnam back then. The US pursued its policy for a long time.

We all remember the way it ended. Mind you, Vietnam is thousands of kilometers away from the US. Now, it’s a fact few people remember, even in this country, because it was a long time ago, but my Vietnamese friends said the US intervention in Vietnam throughout much of the 1960s killed over one million Vietnamese.

Just think about it. Over a million! Take a look at the map and see for yourself where the US is and where Vietnam is. Still, the US went in, and over a million people died as a result.

Even then it was never widely condemned although we had the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in place.

And after the Soviet Union disappeared from the world map, along with the Warsaw Pact, the US got absolutely out of control.

They think they can do whatever they want. Yugoslavia is a case in point. We saw utter disregard for international law, the use of the armed forces and weapons by a number of countries including depleted uranium ammunition.

Was there any uproar? No. They realized they could go ahead, concocted a justification, and got away with it. Today, some European leaders admit “Well, yes, maybe they overreacted a little”. But it does not go beyond that.

Again, the US behaves this way around the world because they think there is no longer any competition. But they are wrong. Life does not stand still, prompting new developments in international relations and new countries emerging as strong powerhouses.

It means new centers of gravity in international relations are being shaped. Take the People’s Republic of China, India, and the Russian Federation.

The unipolar world is over. The US is no longer the master of planet Earth.

Russians who left are welcome to return, but not traitors

2022 05 04 21 05
2022 05 04 21 05

 

Q: You must be aware that some Russians packed their belongings and left the country immediately after the special operation started in the Donbass. Do you think they will return, or is it a one-way ticket?

A:How should I know?

Q: What can you say to those people who decided to leave Russia?

A: Every man is the architect of his own fortune. It’s their right to make such decisions. Some people have left for the time being, as I understand. Others have left for good, fearing that the current situation may affect their lives in the future. It’s their decision. I won’t comment or criticize these people.

It’s obvious, for me personally, that a significant part of these people will return to Russia eventually. This military operation affects everyone’s psychological state, you see. People keep thinking about it. I believe this may have been one of the reasons, for some people. But that’s it.

I believe what is more important for the country is, for example, the way programmers treat current events. These businesses are international, and now they have ended up being cut off from everything – payment systems, banking operations, major foreign customers. For them the consequences are really harsh. And I can understand their motives, why they are trying to find a better place under the sun.

The government has prepared a number of proposals to this end, and the President has already signed a decree. Let’s hope that we will succeed in mitigating the negative consequences for IT specialists and keep them in the country. Let’s hope that most of them will stay in Russia. This is a real problem. And I am really sorry for these people, on a personal level, because they are in a dire situation. And although it wasn’t us who introduced these limitations, but we still have to think how to make things better for these people.

Western sanctions are uniting, not dividing Russians

2022 05 04 21 06
2022 05 04 21 06

 

Q: And if we talk about entrepreneurs, about big businessmen, do they have support amid the military offensive? Taking into account the fact that now, a huge number of measures are being taken against them. Their houses, vehicles, yachts and everything else have been taken from them. How do you feel about this, taking into account the fact that the West used to say that private property should be honored. And, in general, is it normal to block accounts and populate houses with refugees – this would be unpleasant to anyone.

A: If we talk about business, this is also a part of our society, including big business – they are, as they say, guilty without any guilt.

Let’s ask ourselves a question: in general, at least someone from this big business is – to some extent – capable of influencing a small fraction, one iota, on the position of the country’s leadership. I can tell you right away: no, no way. Because we have different tasks.

Anyone who manages the state, first of all, focuses on the interests of the whole country, on the interests of the people of Russia. One who manages his own business (this is a very important task), only does this.

Therefore, the calculations that, by limiting Russian business, they will somehow influence the authorities, are absolutely meaningless, they are simply stupid. They are also trying to influence the sectors of the economy that are behind this big business. And these are hundreds of thousands, millions of our people.

In fact, with these sanctions, the Western world is trying to influence the citizens of our country, to hurt them. And, of course, try to incite them to turn against the course of the state’s leadership, against the course of the President, in the hope that in the end, it will result in some kind of trouble, some problems for the authorities.

But it seems to me that the people who generate these decisions absolutely do not understand our mentality, they do not understand the attitude of the Russian people in the broadest sense of the word. They do not understand the incentives that when such pressure is applied (and this pressure is not on large entrepreneurs, not on big business, this is pressure on anyone and everyone), society is consolidated.

Even those who were hard done by in some way or believed that they received little support, or some wrong decisions were made, in this situation says: “Well, yes, yes, they probably made a mistake in something. But in general, in this situation, I will stand for the state”.

This, it seems to me, they are absolutely unable to understand, just as they were not able to understand 70 years ago, and 100 years ago, and during various kinds of armed campaigns that were carried out, including against our country. This kind of restrictions and deprivations – only unite people, consolidate people, but do not divide them. And this is their main miscalculation, this is the weak spot of these stupid sanctions.

The death penalty doesn’t have to come back

Q: Let’s recall that the Council of Europe tried to impose restrictions on Russia for many years. You said recently that there is not much holding us back now, particularly on the issue of the death penalty. Russia has renounced capital punishment by acceding to a number of the Council of Europe’s conventions. Since this is an important issue for our nation, here is my question: how probable is a return to the death penalty? Does Russia need it?

A: This is a very complex issue. It depends on the worldview in general. It’s a philosophical and moral dilemma. There are divergent views on the death penalty. And it is natural, it has always been the case.

There is one thing I know for sure. The Russian Constitutional Court was definitely swayed in some of its rulings by this country’s participation in the Council of Europe’s conventions. These conventions are no longer binding for us.

Nevertheless, there are legal guidelines provided by the Constitutional Court on this issue. And this is a completely sovereign decision, not a direct outcome of our membership in the Council of Europe. There is an obvious implicit connection, though.

Today, there are no restrictions in this regard. However, it is still a very thorny issue. There is not only a legal side to it but also a moral one. Even the basic, canonical sources of religions provide opposing answers to this question.

The religious view on this issue is one of the basic arguments surrounding the debate on the death penalty in any country. Europe abandoned capital punishment at some point. So did we.

Unlike the US, China, and a number of other countries. They still keep it as punishment for those who have committed particularly grave crimes, first of all, murder.

Again, today international provisions are no longer binding, but there are domestic legal provisions set out by the Constitutional Court. They reflect the current crime rate.

If it does not get out of control, I believe this legal posture could remain the same.

But legal postures are not eternal either. A shift in our society could force a revision of the legal posture. The decisions of the Constitutional Court are not sacred writ, they may change.

We’ve seen it throughout Russia’s history. The Soviet Union abolished the death penalty after the war. But it did not last long, and the death penalty was restored pretty fast. This was due to a spike in violent crimes, including murders.

I don’t know how it will pan out going forward.

 

Russians will remember the West’s hatred forever

Q: Mr. Medvedev, do you think a lot about the pressure that Russian nationals now have to deal with abroad? Often, they face real danger.

I saw a video online showing what happened to the Russian Embassy in Ireland – I lived there for a bit as a kid, my father was posted there – and it was covered in spray paint and a driver crashed his car into the gates. It’s just unimaginable. Something like this could happen to any Russian national abroad. Meanwhile, the UN says that a ceasefire in Ukraine would bring the levels of Russophobia down. What’s your take on that position and does this connection make sense?

A: I wouldn’t call it the UN position. The UN is an international organization comprised of more than 200 nation-states. If we’re talking about what the UN officials said, well, that may be so.

Let me openly say that recently the UN governing bodies, and Secretary-General Guterres as well, have made several statements that I would call questionable from the point of view of international law. The UN should be above conflicts instead of taking sides. Of course, the levels of Russophobia these days are through the roof, as we’ve already discussed. These are manifested in the form of attacks on the Russian people and pressure exerted on our diplomatic missions.

What is there to say on the subject? If we take diplomatic missions, the responsibility lies with the country where the diplomatic mission is located. This is the host country’s task. As soon as the host country becomes indifferent to the fate of an embassy, diplomatic ties are usually either suspended or severed. So the incident in Dublin that you mentioned is fully Ireland’s responsibility. They just have to take proper steps in response.

It happens to ordinary people, too – I see it and read about it, it’s clear from the online and social media content where they criticize Russia a lot. I guess it’s to do with current events. Some genuinely feel that way, some are doing it for the hype or because everyone else does it. It’s their own personal choice. Sooner or later the tide will subside, that’s how it works. But the memories will remain.

We will remember it, too, including the Russian people who got stuck abroad while on vacation or on a business trip. It will be etched in everyone’s memory. They say they don’t want Russians there, and it’s only natural that our people who happened to be abroad at the time will remember that. I doubt that they will think higher of Europeans now than they used to.

What about the hospitality, tolerance, and neutrality that you spoke of? All of it evaporated instantly, which means it never existed in the first place. It means there was no culture and no values. It was just a façade, and now all the filth has come to the surface, which we see in the behavior of every person spewing Russophobic ideas.

We will remember it too. We won’t forget anyone who did it – in their official capacity or just in personal interactions. These days, everything is recorded. We all have a digital footprint. That’s something everyone should remember when they write nasty things about Russia, our policies or our people. It will be engraved in our people’s collective memory forever. And I’m not exaggerating here.

International sports behaving in the ‘worst possible way’

Q: Let’s talk about something else. You mentioned IT specialists who have been gravely affected and who will get assistance, but I want to ask you about our athletes. What’s happening to them is unprecedented: they are not allowed to compete or they are forced to do so under a neutral flag, they are pressured into signing petitions and making statements.

We all know that in some sports, an athlete’s career is fleeting. Won’t Russia end up on the sidelines of international sports? Competition is very important – it’s crucial for athletes to go up against talented opponents. Now it seems that the doping scandal was just a trial run. 

A: Correct. Elena, Ilya, you’re right too. First, let me say that of course, it’s tough on our athletes – same as on our IT specialists. But for the latter, the challenges started fairly recently, when our ‘friends’ started trying to restrict us in every way and erect an iron curtain when it comes to finances and law. For athletes, the situation has been dire since 2014.

You’re right, our athletes train hard, but they are not allowed to compete. If they are, they have to basically compete anonymously – no Russian flag, no Russian anthem. They are forced to distance themselves from their country, saying that they only represent themselves. This is cynical and amoral, and don’t even get me started on the IOC decision regarding our Paralympic team. It’s simply incomprehensible. It’s monstrous and disgraceful.

So our main goal is to support parathletes, to make sure they feel involved in social life on par with everyone else. But they get told, “No, your government is awful and so we don’t care about you.” That goes against any moral code. I think that the IOC behaved in the worst way possible here.

Yes, it all started eight years ago with the doping scandal. We admitted that we had a doping problem in our country, we are at fault here. But saying that Russia, I mean Russian coaches and athletes were the only ones to use doping is outrageous and cynical. Other countries did it too, but it’s Russia that everyone turned on. The objective that our ‘friends’, from the Anglo-Saxon world predominantly, set was to push Russia out of international competitive sports.

What for? Again, that was to stir resentment within Russia and incite people to do something about it. So our athletes have been suffering since 2014. We will continue to support them in every way and to organize as many competitions domestically as we can. We will seek to defend their rights in all organizations, even though that’s a huge challenge these days.

These decisions were made by specific people in the IOC, the EU, the US, and the UK, which is not part of the EU anymore. It’s clear that certain people are behind these decisions, and those deprived of competitive sports will channel their bitterness in their direction.

Moscow’s rules on using nuclear weapons

Q: President Putin has often insisted that Russia only acts to defend itself against the hostile actions of the West. And in a recent interview, you said that our country has enough ‘might’ to put our enemies in their place. This implies that Russia has considered some kind of retaliation in the event of aggression. What exactly did you mean by that, Mr. Medvedev?

A: We both know exactly what I meant. Russia is not your average country – it’s a permanent member of the UN Security Council. And, as a side-note, let me say that all the ill-conceived plans to try and remove us from the Security Council are completely groundless. This would go against the UN Charter and the entirety of international law, for that matter. We are talking about the whims of individual states. This is my first point.

And my second point is, Russia is a nuclear power with the largest stockpile of strategic nuclear weapons on the planet. Naturally, no one is threatening anyone, but you mentioned the remarks made by President Putin… A few weeks ago, our country’s nuclear deterrence forces were put on high alert. It was a simple message so that any country that tries to interfere with Russia’s foreign policy would know what to expect. They heard us and said they wouldn’t try anything.

I certainly hope this has helped cool down some of the hotter heads in Poland and other US satellites. Still, they do occasionally come up with ridiculous ideas like closing the airspace over Ukraine. Luckily, there are cool-headed and reasonable analysts at the Pentagon and elsewhere who say this is absolutely out of the question as it would lead to a direct military confrontation with Russia.

I think this will be enough, for now. Although we do have a special document on nuclear deterrence which states explicitly the circumstances under which the Russian Federation has the right to use nuclear weapons. There are several such conditions, let me remind you what they are.

First is the launch of ballistic nuclear missiles to attack Russian territory. Second is the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction by an adversary against Russian territory or its allies. The third has to do with an attack on critical infrastructure resulting in the crippling of our nuclear deterrence forces. And, finally, the fourth is when an act of aggression is committed against the Russian Federation or its allies – whether with nuclear or conventional weapons – which threatens the very existence of the state.

All these conditions are listed in the document which was approved by the President’s executive order. This testifies to our determination to uphold the independence and sovereignty of Russia. Let no one have even the slightest reason to doubt that we are capable of giving a proper response to any attack or encroachment on our country, its independence, or its policies.

But keep in mind that I am saying all this because you asked the question. Obviously, our position is that however complicated, any situation must be approached using diplomatic tools. And in the case of Ukraine, negotiations remain the most constructive and reasonable course of action. We realize that diplomacy does not always result in success, but this is still the right way to go.

The US had ‘more brains’ during the Cuban Missile Crisis

Q: You just mentioned something that terrifies everyone on the planet – the prospect of a nuclear war. Another scary prospect is the military confrontation between Russia and NATO. In many ways, these two scenarios are similar – in fact, they may be one and the same. Do you believe there is a risk of such a war breaking out? Would you compare the current situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world also seemed like it was teetering on edge? Back then, we referred to this standoff as the ‘Cold War’. What would you call the current state of relations between Russia and the collective West?

A: Nobody wants war. Nuclear war is a threat to the very existence of human civilization. In this sense, those analysts who say, perhaps somewhat cynically, that the invention of nuclear weapons has prevented a huge number of conflicts in the 20th and 21st centuries, are right. This is true.

So obviously there is always a threat. As a former commander-in-chief, I am well aware of its scale. Our people know that NATO’s nuclear weapons target facilities in this country and our warheads are aimed at targets in Europe and the US. But that is life. We must always keep this in mind and act in a responsible manner. As simple as that.

As for the Cuban Missile Crisis, for obvious reasons, I don’t have any personal memories, I only know about it from history books. But I had a chance to talk to one of the witnesses, Fidel Castro.

Today, we live in another reality, in a different world. There is no Soviet Union, no Warsaw Pact, many illusions are gone.

A lot of things are not in place anymore, but the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis sank in pretty well back then. It had a sobering effect on everyone, including the leadership of the US, NATO, the Soviet Union, and the Warsaw Pact.

The world was living through a Cold War then but right now the situation is somehow worse, in my view. Back then our opponents did not try to bring the situation in the Soviet Union to a boiling point so aggressively.

True, their actions may have been disguised, but no sanctions were imposed on entire industries or agriculture, let alone personal sanctions.

It never occurred to anybody to impose sanctions on Brezhnev, Podgorny, and Kosygin. They understood, of course, that it made no sense, just as they do now, but at least they had the brains not to do it then.

Now everyone is in an awkward position. They have imposed sanctions, but it is still necessary to communicate if only to prevent all sorts of undesirable consequences, including such terrible ones as, say, a conflict between Russia and NATO. It’s like everyone is under sanctions, everyone is on some kind of list.

I signed the well-known START III, or Start Treaty, with President Obama. That treaty was extended by President Putin and President Biden. Why make it so embarrassing? The treaties were signed, but it was done by individuals who are on the sanctions list. If the Russian leadership were irresponsible in this regard, you could probably say: “If that’s the way you treat us, then that’s it, goodbye.”

There is a legal doctrine known as clausula rebus sic stantibus, which means that international treaties are valid as long as the circumstances that gave rise to them exist. Those circumstances have disappeared. You are not treating us as counterparts anymore. The persons who signed the treaty are on your sanctions list. Maybe it’s time to pull out of it? I am just trying to point out that these sanctions do not make any sense, they are absurd.

This was not the case during the Cold War. And it’s a reality now. The relationship between the Russian Federation and the West, the US-led Anglo-Saxon civilization in the broad sense of the word, is probably in a worse state than in the 1960s and 1970s. There is no doubt about that.

Fixing up Yalta for new world order talks

Q: Now, about the talks with Ukraine… how would you assess the progress? It appears that some arrangements are still possible. How will these agreements be guaranteed? Will the West need to bear some kind of responsibility in this regard? Once the special operation is over, given all the factors, would we need a new Yalta Conference to formalize the new world order, which, as you say, has ceased to be unipolar?

A: It’s an unrewarding task to comment on negotiations, and it’s wrong. Talks need silence. And it’s not without reason that the sides are negotiating via videoconference, almost daily, and not in the face-to-face format that requires more time. That is why I won’t comment on the talks. I don’t want to create problems for the negotiators or give ground to excessive hopes or emotional responses that such comments on my part could generate.

The goal of these talks is clear – to solidify the results which the Russian special operation pursues, in particular the neutral status of Ukraine, its demilitarization, and the repeal of the laws driven by Nazi ideology that were introduced by the Ukrainian government. Whatever they say about these laws, they effectively divide the people by their national identity. Some are called people of the right nationality, others are practically excluded. And there are also a number of other goals Russia is seeking to achieve.

Ukraine is pursuing its own goals, of course, and hopes to achieve them in the course of the talks. They include, primarily, retaining its sovereignty and securing further development of the country.

As for the guarantees that the negotiated terms will be implemented, there are two types. Firstly, there are guarantees provided by the signatories of the agreements. In the long run, those who will sign the documents, have the authority and responsibility to see to their implementation. And secondly, there are guarantees related to various international mechanisms. I will not overstate their importance here, of course, because there are a lot of agreements that were signed but not implemented. But, in any case, this is better than legal uncertainty or repeated attempts by Ukraine to weave its way into NATO in order to create a direct threat at Russia’s borders. In that respect, an agreement and the legal guarantees it provides are way better than no agreement. And this is the way to resolve the conflict.

You mentioned Yalta. I can only say that we will be happy to welcome foreign delegations in the Russian city of Yalta for talks. The palace that was used in the past for this purpose is not in ideal state, but it can still be used to accommodate guests.

An attack on their own economic values

Q: Mr. Medvedev, one does not need to be Fidel Castro to…

A: Fidel Castro can’t be replaced, he was unique.

Q: …to talk about the events of 1998. Let me share my observations with you. Even people who were born after 1998 keep asking me as a journalist – they seem to think that I am competent to answer this question…

A: But you are competent. Journalists know everything. They know more than politicians.

Q: Thank you. So they keep asking me if we are going back to 1998. And they mention the default. We have avoided the default scenario for now, as we were allowed to make payments on our sovereign debt. But still?

A: Do you remember 1998, personally?

Q: I remember that the ruble depreciated four times against the US dollar.

A: I see. Yes, it’s a memory that is not easily forgotten.

You cannot step into the same river twice. I was not related to state governance back in 1998 and saw everything through the lens of a common citizen, a businessman if you like. But the Russian state and society were much less protected back then.

But I remember 2008 and 2009 very well when I personally had to tackle the financial crisis. I also have an excellent recollection of 2014 and all the years that followed, when I had to address the issues as the chairman of the Russian government.

Every crisis is unique, in its way. In 2008, we created G20. They want to remove Russia from G20 now. But I remember how it was born right in front of me. The decision to create G20 was collective. First President Bush participated, then Barack Obama. Everyone was delighted that representatives from so many different countries were sitting at the same table – Russia, the US, China, India. G20 was a format that was born from consensus, based on unanimity. And now they suggest removing us from G20. No, guys, you can’t do that!

You asked us to join G7, to be the eighth-member state. That’s right. But it’s different. G7 is your private club and if don’t want us to be part of it, we will go. And we did, we were “ushered out”. But this club is not important any longer. G20 is a different story. It was G20 that helped us out of the 2008 financial crisis.

Why am I talking about this right now? Because the situation we are in is different. Back then, all of us were trying to overcome the global financial crisis, caused by the financial bubble in the United States of America. Our common goal was to stand against it. And we achieved that goal, by the way.

With varying degrees of success, we pulled the Russian and global economy out of that crisis in a relatively short period of time. What’s happening now, however, is an economic war that the West declared against Russia – to quote a French minister. They declared an economic war against Russia. And they are trying to wage this war without rules.

Why? You asked, but I didn’t get a chance to answer. What’s written on the banners of any capitalist society, any market economy? Utter respect for private property rights! This is sacred! The world may perish, but justice will prevail. Everything may perish, but the private property will remain.

And what are they doing? They are blocking the assets of our financial institutions, even the Central Bank. They are even talking about confiscating these assets, i.e. nationalizing them. Listen, this is a real war without rules. What will be the consequences of this war? Destruction of the whole global economic order. This is an attack on the economic values of our planet – ironically, these values were first formed in Europe and the United States of America, in our country, and later, at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, in Asian countries as well. Now we see how the founding principles of the market economy are being rejected. What can we say then? If they don’t value these principles, let them do whatever they plan to do, but, naturally, this will force Russia to respond with symmetric measures.

But, on the other hand, this new challenge and the reaction that must follow could be very effective. I’ve said it many times before, and this is true – had sanctions not been imposed on Russia in 2014, we would’ve had a worse situation in our agriculture right now. Everybody understands it well. We stopped their imports, and now our food security is at a very high level.

I hope that even in this situation, our colleagues in the government will be able to find adequate solutions that would foster the development of our industry, including aircraft engineering, the automotive industry, and key sectors like microelectronics and IT. We will have to deal with these issues anyway. Yes, it will be harder now, but, on the other hand, there is no one else we can count on. This time we will have to do everything ourselves.

Rubles for oil was a ‘pretty obvious’ move

Q: Let’s move to a very important issue. Ironically, the West says they will cut us off everything, but they can’t cut themselves off from our gas and oil, simply because it would backfire, they would freeze. They will now try to use less energy and come up with new proposals. Nevertheless, they have so far refrained from sanctions against our oil and gas.

But going forward they say they would like to stop using gas and oil from Russia. How realistic is it? Should we just sit and wait for that to happen, or rather take some action? The Russian president announced a move to the Russian rouble as the settlement currency. How will it work out? What will it look like in practice?

A: Well, let them buy it as long as they want. No one wants to lose money, right? This is all bravado and chest-beating.

Well, it could work for the US since they have an array of suppliers, they are isolated from Europe, they are not so dependent on our deliveries.

The US has banned our oil, though it hasn’t gone that well. The Americans will keep reminding President Biden about the price of a gallon. Ukraine is very far away and gasoline prices somewhere in the Midwest are at a record high right now. Inflation is 10 percent. It’s a mind-blowing number for the US.

So this decision will haunt the US administration. Its consumers will say a big ‘thank you’ for what their government is doing to their domestic economy as a side effect of attempts to sway the Russians.

Overall, I’m philosophical about it. It’s our natural wealth, it’s our gas and oil. We have to trade it with Europeans, with Asia. Generally, there has been a global energy shift every 50-70 years. I do not know what will be the main energy source in 2050 – hydrogen or any other technology. I simply do not know. So we have to prepare for that as well.

But right now, this is a significant part of our income, and we have to get the full compensation for it. Certainly, we are looking at Asian markets in the current environment, and are figuring out ways to diversify our supplies.

Our European friends appear to be in a big hurry to give up oil and gas supplies from Russia. But in reality, it is a very challenging task. 40 percent of their gas supplies come from Russia. Russian oil accounts for about one-third of their imports.

But in any case, it is up to them. If they want to get rid of it, they will. The only question is, when. That’s something that we also need to respond to.

As for President Putin’s decision to switch to rouble settlements, I think it is a pretty obvious move. They shut down the correspondent accounts for our commercial banks, made settlements in dollars and euros impossible, and disconnected the banks on the sanctions list from SWIFT, at least some of them. What did they think we were going to do?

The only legal tender in the Russian Federation is the rouble. So it’s a simple offer: since there is no other way, you have to pay in roubles. So let them find a way to pay.

Anyway, consultations are underway. We’ll see how it works out. But it was a very intuitive decision.

Q: What about Nord Stream? The Americans are rushing to bury it…

A: They are rushing.

Q: They call it “a hunk of metal”, using some peculiar words to describe it. Do you think this project still has some potential? And if we talk about the infrastructure, how long will it stay in shape without being used or serviced, without pumping gas?

A: I am not an expert on the subject, I can’t assess the durability of the Nord Stream infrastructure. I am sure it’s durable, but I don’t know the degree – we are not talking about months, obviously. As far as large-scale economic projects go, I tend to be optimistic – despite our current circumstances and the emotionally charged context that we are dealing with when passions run high.

The thing is, there are certain laws that can’t be ignored, even if our friends are trying to violate them right now. There have been significant financial investments, this is a very important and beneficial project, profitable for all partners. Conflicts come and go, but the economy and money stay.

I think the Nord Stream 2 project has a good future. It will happen if our partners decide to start using their heads at some point and remember that they have taxpayers and voters to answer to, that there are certain social obligations that they have to fulfill. Their responsibility is not simply to hurt Russia but to solve key problems in their economy. They need to think about helping their own people, making sure that their taxpayers’ utility bills are not through the roof.

And I have to say this. What happened right after they made their decision concerning Nord Stream 2? What we said would happen. Utility bills went up to unprecedented levels. As high as two thousand euros in some instances.

Let me remind you that just recently, a few years ago, we talked about pipeline gas, not the spot market. However, anything over 400-500 dollars or euros seemed like an outrageous price. And now we see these numbers. Is it a good situation? Of course not. That’s why I tend to be cautiously optimistic when we talk about this.

Capitalism means they’ll come back

Q: Do you think we’ll see Western companies returning to Russia at some point, I mean those companies that are withdrawing or suspending their operation in Russia now?

A: Of course, we will. It’s only a question of when they will return and what it’ll cost them in terms of losses. You see, Russia is a fairly large market, some say a premium market. So if they are willing to lose a share of their income, it’s up to them. We can do without them, but the thing is they don’t want to lose it, they keep telling us that they’re waiting and hoping for a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine. And they keep asking us not to take over or appoint external management to or nationalize their operations because they want to return.

I think one of the press secretaries, either of the United States or another country, said that the administration had nothing to do with this decision made by major businesses – that it was solely their own decision, their civic position, that they put their heads in that noose of their own will. They wanted to give up this market – I say they need to read Karl Marx. Marx explains very well that capital will never forego a chance to increase profit.

This means that unless they were under tremendous pressure from their own governments, I mean the governments of the West, none of these companies would ever even think of giving up Russia as a market. This was a political decision. And political decisions have an expiry date. The economy is, on the other hand, perpetual.

The US is the real ‘rogue state’

Q: So, the sanctions have been applied to put pressure on every sector of our economy. It feels as if now, in contrast to the situation when the Soviet Union put up the Iron Curtain to shut itself off from the West of its own will, Russia is being forced to put that curtain up and become some sort of a new North Korea. It’s like people don’t want it, no one wants it, but the big powerful machine is already working, and someone is pushing the buttons. I’m saying it’s like North Korea because North Korea was buried under the sanctions, or it’s like Cuba where people still drive cars made in the 1960s. So maybe someone wants Russians to start going through scrap metal and repairing old ZAZ “Zaporozhets” cars to drive them…

A: What a shame that I sold mine. I used to own a Zhiguli car from the 80s. I guess I could use it now.

Q: That was probably the idea. So what do you think – as a worst-case scenario – could this kind of thing happen in Russia?

A: I think everyone understands that it can’t. Even though in the course of this interview I did question the intellectual abilities of the people who come up with all these sanctions against Russia, I must say there are different people there, and some realize very well what’s going on.

You see, all of them understand that, with all due and utmost respect to our friends in Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Russia is no Cuba and no North Korea. Russia is Russia, the world’s largest country, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a huge economy, and nuclear power, which is why all these ideas that Russia can be curbed like Cuba or North Korea once were and that it could just be kept that way don’t have a leg to stand on. It’s impossible. It’s just utterly impossible. Even if some in the political circles and elites of the West would want it that way.

Yes, there are obviously challenges and we’ll have to overcome them. Unfortunately, they exist both at the governmental and everyday levels. Still, it’s nothing new for us, and it’s not catastrophic. It pales in comparison to the hardships that our country had to go through in the 20th century. I tell you what – it’s not even in the same league as the problems we faced during the coronavirus pandemic.

Back then, we really felt uneasy from time to time, because we had no idea how this virus would behave, regardless of where it came from. Could it kill off most of humanity, like in some sci-fi books? So back then things were much tenser, I’d say. The tragedy of course is that the virus caused so many deaths.

But this is a different story, and there can be no illusions here. They are trying to put us into the ‘rogue nation’ or ‘rogue country’ category. As for its etymology, I think it was Reagan who came up with the term. The Russian translation for it is ‘outcast’, but ‘rogue’ is actually closer in meaning to ‘outlaw’.

In fact, it’s the US that’s the rogue nation here. It’s not because we don’t like Americans. It’s because the US is constantly launching wars of conquest across the world. They are the outcast and the outlaw.

I’ve got cramps!

From Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!

It’s so very typical about what America was in the 1970s. The actions, the decor, and the facial expressions are… well… spot on.

China and the origins of Coronavirus

China has long established that the coronavirus originated out of the United States. This is just one of thousands of dialogs where ignorant Western “journalists” try to negate the Chinese position in this matter.

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Russian Investigators Identify US Defense Officials, Contractors Linked to Ukraine Biolabs | Farsnews Agency

Earlier in April, Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense of the Russian armed forces, said that Russian intelligence officers found three Ukrainian drones equipped with sprayers of chemical substances in the Kherson region, adding that in January 2022, Ukraine purchased more than 50 similar devices that can be used to apply biological formulations and toxic chemicals.

In March, the Russian Defense Ministry revealed that the US had spent more than $200 million on the operation of biological laboratories in Ukraine, which Moscow believes participated in the American military biological program. According to the Russian military, the investment fund of Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, was participating in financing the program.

How To Make Chinese Tomatoes and Eggs Stir Fry (番茄炒蛋)

OIP.nj 8KMXQ9D34GKhF8v2Z5AHaEK
One of my favorite dishes in China.

OMG! THis is one of my all-time favorite food dishes in China. And make no mistake, it goes great with rice! You MUST eat it with rice. So delicious!

It is NOT an egg-scramble with tomatoes. No! You MUST cook it in the order as described, and add the items as described. You will thank me later.

Hunter Biden played role in funding US bio- labs contractor in Ukraine: e-mails

Russia’s assertion that President Biden’s son Hunter was “financing . . . biological laboratories in Ukraine” was based in truth, according to e-mails reviewed by The Post.

A trove of e-mails on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — the existence of which was exclusively reported by The Post in October 2020 — found that he played a role in helping a California defense contractor analyze killer diseases and bioweapons in Ukraine.

Moscow has claimed that secret American biological-warfare labs in Ukraine were a justification for its unprovoked invasion of the neighboring country last month. It doubled down on the accusations Thursday, claiming the labs produced biochemical weapons at the Biden family’s behest.

“US President Joe Biden himself is involved in the creation of biolaboratories in Ukraine,” Russia’s State Duma speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin said, according to state media.

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Volunteers to fight the Coronavirus

I have thousands of these videos. 5MB

Pretty Chinese Girl

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The Role of Modern China in a Changing World

We are currently witnessing the greatest change in the Geo political landscape that has ever occurred in the lives of those alive today.

At the end of the Second World War there were two major powers in the world: Russia and the United States. Only one, the United States, then had the atomic bomb, which they had used in July 1945 in a live experiment on the people of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From the United States point of view, the experiment was a success. It killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Japanese.

Importantly from the United States point of view it demonstrated that they alone possessed an awful means of mass destruction. The United States retained its nuclear monopoly for a further three years until August 1948 when the Soviet Union successfully tested its first nuclear bomb at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan.

They were followed by the United Kingdom in 1952, Israel in 1963, China in 1964, France in 1968, Pakistan in 1972, India in 1974 and North Korea in 2006. To date they are the only known nuclear armed powers. It has contributed to an uneasy peace being maintained between the great powers ever since. An attack by one upon the other would result in immediate retaliation and the probable extinction of life on this planet.

It would be a mistake however, to call the past 77 years a time of peace, notwithstanding the uneasy peace that has existed between the great powers. The United States has bombed and invaded at least 31 countries since the end of World War II, none of them possessing either the means to defend themselves or to retaliate. The number of countries that have experienced United States interference in their internal affairs is at least double that number.

By comparison, China has fought border wars with Tibet, India, the USSR and Vietnam. Tibet is a special case and regarded by China as part of its own territory. China is now allied with India as common members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. It similarly now has good relations with Vietnam. Russia is a special case. The two countries are now close allies, not the least because of the unrelenting hostility of the Americans. Interference in the internal affairs of China is waged nonstop, and the American attitude to Taiwan is only one example of blatant interference in China’s internal affairs.

The beginning of the close relationship can be traced back to their formation of the Shanghai Five Mutual Security Agreement formed in 1996. In that year the five founding countries, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan signed a mutual security agreement.

Then later in June 2001 those same countries formed the basis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. It currently has eight member states, having added India and Pakistan in 2009 and Uzbekistan in 2015. There are four observer states, including Afghanistan which joined in 2012 and Iran which joined in 2005. There are six dialogue partners of whom the largest is Turkey with nearly 79,000,000 people in its population.

The existence of this organisation is almost totally invisible in Australia which maintains a remarkably ambivalent attitude towards the Asian nations that are its closest neighbours and include its most important trading partners. The recent hostility manifested by the Prime Minister and largely echoed by the leader of the Opposition toward China is a remarkable example of pursuing policies that are the antithesis of what one would expect toward its neighbours and major trading partners.

In this context it was therefore somewhat surprising that Australia joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a grouping of Asian nations plus New Zealand and including China. It remains to be seen whether Australia actually utilises that relationship or whether its antipathy to China prevents Australia from gaining full benefits from its membership.

The dominant geopolitical feature of recent years has been the growth of the economies of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation countries and their association with the other Asian regional grouping of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAAU) which consists of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Three of those five are also members of the SCO. The pattern is becoming clearer all the time. An association of Asian neighbours with a consistently growing economic relationship. They represent the powerhouse of world economic development at the present time and for the foreseeable future.

The very success of this growing economic relationship and with their social and political ties has prompted attempts to disrupt their growing strength. Last year there was a rather clumsy United States inspired bid to overthrow the government of Kazakhstan. Russia’s rapid reaction to the attempted coup in association with its EAEU Partners nipped the attempted overthrow of the Kazakhstan government in the bud.

All the while the ties between China and Russia grow progressively stronger. The visit of Mr Putin to Beijing in February this year when he met with China’s Mr Xi was clearly a watershed moment in the world’s geopolitical development. The meeting received very little coverage in the Australian media, yet it clearly marked a watershed moment in the history of the two nations and their vision as to the future.

It is clear that Russia has given up on Western Europe, a decision undoubtedly prompted by European reaction to Russia and the events in Ukraine. The western powers have seized approximately $600 billions of Russia’s foreign exchange holdings, an astonishingly brazen example of blatant theft. It undoubtably had a major influence on not only Russian but also Chinese thinking.

The Chinese government holds $3.25 trillion in foreign exchange reserves as at the end of 2021. The exact composition of China’s foreign exchange reserves is classified information, although China’s foreign exchange administration announced that at the end of 2014 that 58% of China’s foreign exchange reserves were held in United States dollars, down from 79% in 2005. It is believed to have fallen much further over the past seven years.

At their February 2022 meeting, Putin and Xi agreed on a program to accelerate their dealings with Asian, African and Latin American countries. A number of important decisions were made at that meeting, including the highly significant decision to accelerate the use of alternatives to the United States dollar. The control exerted by the world’s use of the United States dollar has been a principal factor in United States global dominance in the post-World War II period. The decision by Russia and China to move out of the dollar is of enormous significance, and its implications are again missing from Australian media discussion.

Ironically, the United States theft of Russia’s financial assets (together with that of the European powers,) has accelerated the trend for other countries, especially among the so-called developing regions, to also move their assets out of the United States dollar. One example of the major shift occurring in world trade is that China has recently agreed a major deal with Saudi Arabia to pay for the purchase of Saudi oil using the Chinese yuan. This decision reflects the deterioration of Saudi – United States relations in recent times. It sent a shockwave through the United States financial system.

The Saudis hold >15% of the world’s known oil reserves and is the largest exporter of crude oil in the world. The Saudis are the world’s second largest producer of oil, exceeded only by Russia. China has only 1.5% of the world’s oil reserves, and is ranked 14th in the world. Both Russia and Saudi Arabia are therefore crucial to China’s economy which in parity purchasing power terms is now the world’s largest economy, with the gap between itself and United States growing wider by the day.

None of this is acceptable to the United States which has used its economic and military power to pretty much do what it wanted to do to the rest of the world. This is now changing, and at an ever-increasing pace. The decision by Russia and China to create a new world financial system is going to celebrate the relative United States decline at an ever-faster rate. Again, there has been minimal discussion of this world shaking event in the Australian media.

The blunt fact is that the world economic and financial centre of gravity has moved away from Europe and the United States from where it had ruled the world for a very long time.

The United States shows no signs of accepting that reality and their reaction poses potentially the greatest threat the world has faced. Australia has willingly accepted an inferior role in this blatant bullying.

China is showing that it can lead the world in a different way, without invasions, bullying and waging war on others. The challenge for Australia is to recognise that the world has changed and to adapt to the new reality. Frankly, the signs are not encouraging.

Pretty Chinese Girl

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Jennifer Marlowe’s Greatest Hits

From WKRP (A 1970s television situation comedy). Loni ANderson was every boys fantasy. Can you blame us? Look at her hair. Funny, now as an older business man, I can so relate to this scene. LOL!

The Federal Reserve Just Made A Colossal Mistake

You don’t raise interest rates when the economy is already falling into a recession.  U.S. GDP contracted during the first quarter of 2022, and if it contracts again in the second quarter of 2022 that will officially confirm that we are already in a recession right now.  Any central banker that would choose to raise interest rates just as a new recession is starting is absolutely nuts.  But the “experts” at the Fed decided to go ahead with a 50 basis point rate hike on Wednesday anyway.  This was the largest rate hike that we have seen since the year 2000, and it appears that more rate hikes are coming later in the year.

Let me start my analysis by clearly stating that I believe that the Federal Reserve should be abolished.  A centrally managed economy is extremely odious to those of us that truly believe in free market economics, but unfortunately most of the population still fully embraces our economic overlords at the Fed even though they keep making enormous policy errors again and again.

Previously, we have seen the Fed tighten just as the U.S. economy began to slow down, and that resulted in some of the worst economic downturns in our history.

Now it is happening again, and we keep getting more confirmations that the economy has already been cooling off.  For example, the ADP employment report for the month of April was way below expectations

U.S. companies added far fewer jobs than expected in April, suggesting the tightest labor market in decades has made it difficult for businesses to fill a record number of open positions, according to the ADP National Employment Report released Wednesday morning.

Companies added 247,000 jobs in April, sharply missing the 395,000 gain that economists surveyed by Refinitiv had predicted. It also marked a big decline from March, when private employers added an upwardly revised 479,000 jobs.

The officials at the Fed can see what is happening, but they are desperate to get the inflation monster that they played a major role in creating under control.

During his post-meeting news conference, Jerome Powell conceded that inflation is causing “hardship” for the American people…

“Inflation is much too high,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters at a post-meeting news conference. “We understand the hardship it is causing, and we’re moving expeditiously to bring it back down. We have both the tools we need and the resolve that it will take to restore price stability on behalf of American families and businesses.”

It is certainly true that inflation is much too high.

But a 50 basis point hike is not going to make much of a difference on that front at all.

On the other hand, everyone agrees that the 50 basis point hike will have a substantial short-term impact on economic activity…

It’s expected to set off a domino effect through the economy, pushing up rates for credit cards, home equity lines of credit and adjustable-rate mortgages, among other loans.

In particular, this move will have enormous implications for the housing market.

Just as we have reached the peak of yet another housing bubble and foreclosures are starting to surge, Powell and his minions have decided to unleash chaos.

Do you remember 2008?  Well, if officials at the Fed keep raising interest rates we could be in for a crisis in the housing market that is even worse.

Unfortunately, it sounds like that is exactly what Powell and his minions are planning

“There is a broad consensus (among Fed policymakers) that additional (half-point) rate increases should be on the table at the next couple of meetings,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference.

Don’t do it Powell.

Please don’t do it.

Going down that road will only end in tragedy.

Incredibly, the Fed is also telling us that it is going to start reducing the size of its balance sheet

The Fed also announced that it will start reducing its massive $9 trillion balance sheet, which nearly doubled in size during the pandemic as the central bank bought mortgage-backed securities and other Treasurys to keep borrowing cheap. In a plan outlined Wednesday, the Fed indicated that it will begin winding down the balance sheet on June 1 at an initial combined monthly pace of $47.5 billion, a move that will further tighten credit for U.S. households. It will increase the run-off rate to $95 billion over three months.

Essentially, this will be “quantitative easing” in reverse.

The Fed created the unprecedented stock market bubble that we have now by pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system, and now they are threatening to burst that bubble.

And this comes at a time when stocks have already been falling precipitously.  Stocks are off to their worst start to a year in decades, and the Fed seems to think that this is a perfect time to make things even worse.

What in the world are the “experts” at the Fed thinking?

Right now, economic conditions are rapidly slowing down all over the world and the UN has warned us that we are heading into the worst global food crisis since World War II.

So this is a perfect opportunity for the Fed to depress economic activity even more?

Something doesn’t smell right about all of this.

I have been a very strong critic of the Federal Reserve for many years, but even I have a hard time believing that the officials at the Fed are this incompetent.

We are currently dealing with the largest land war in Europe since the 1940s, impending global famine, a horrifying bird flu pandemic and rapidly deteriorating economic conditions all over the planet.

And the Fed chooses this moment to tighten?

What a colossal mistake.

Pretty Chinese Girl

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Box Car: 1940

SHORPY 8a33864a.preview
May 1940. “Outside of the tobacco warehouses in Durham, North Carolina.” 35mm nitrate negative by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration.

The Neoconservatives Are Setting Up the World for Nuclear War

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Oliver Stone on Facebook writes that rabid anti-Russian propaganda has set the stage for a false flag low-yield nuclear explosion in Ukraine that the world has been trained to interpret as Russia’s doing. The success of Washington’s perception war and saturation of the CNN/Fox airwaves with condemnation of Russia could lead to hopes that a false flag nuclear event would bring down Putin’s government. A new Yeltsin installed would return Russia to Washington’s control and leave China, alone, as the next target. Such an event is not a fantasy. It is an expression of Stone’s understanding of the neoconservatives commitment to Washington’s hegemony. Biden officials have made it clear that they are at war with Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, with the goal of exhausting Russia into weakness and disposing of Putin.

A false flag event is not the only avenue to nuclear war. The expansion of NATO to Finland and Sweden is another. Washington is not only pressuring the governments to apply for NATO membership but also is bribing Swedish and Finnish government officials to do so.

Think about this expansion of NATO for a minute. One reason for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is the stark refusal of Washington and NATO to take Russia’s security concerns seriously. Ukraine’s membership in NATO is totally unacceptable to Russia, so why was it pushed? With Western intervention in Ukraine threatening to spin the conflict out of control, why pour gasoline on the fire by bringing Sweden and Finland into NATO? Currently Scandinavia and the Baltics are nuclear free. Finland’s entry into NATO would bring more NATO to Russia’s border, a development that the Kremlin has declared as unacceptable. By piling on more provocations, Washington and NATO are intentionally widening a conflict that was deliberately provoked.

Clearly, it is irresponsible for Finland and Sweden to further destabilize the situation by joining NATO. Dmitry Medvedev has made it clear that NATO membership would mean the end of the nuclear-free Baltic. More NATO on Russia’s border creates an imbalance that Russia would have to correct with deployment of hypersonic nuclear missiles. How can it be possible for the governments of Finland and Sweden to regard NATO membership as an increase in security when the result is to have their countries targeted with nuclear weapons? Finland and Sweden are in no danger of being attacked by Russia unless they join NATO. No one in their right mind would see NATO membership for Finland and Sweden as anything but a reckless act of destabilization. Like Switzerland, Finland and Sweden have benefitted from their neutrality. It is nonsensical for them to turn themselves into nuclear targets.

Everyone needs to understand that the neoconservatives’ ideology of hegemony is an expansionist ideology like original 20th century International Communism. It is the American Empire that is expanding toward Russia, not Russia expanding into the West. It is truly amazing how opposite from the truth the anti-Russian propaganda is. Sooner or later the Kremlin will comprehend that Russia’s enemies are the American neoconservatives and that the pressure point on the neoconservatives is Israel.

As my audience knows, I have been concerned for years that Russia’s low-key response to provocations brings about more and more dangerous provocations that eventually will bring Armageddon upon us. I saw recently that the Chinese government thinks similarly when a Chinese spokesman said that China can accept no provocation from Washington as the result would be more and worse provocations.

The Kremlin’s policy of relying on reason, negotiations, and good will has not been reciprocated by the West. The Kremlin’s limited military operation in Ukraine was not of sufficient ferocity to convince the West to abandon its policy of provocation. It seems Washington will continue its provocations until the fatal line is crossed.

Pretty Chinese Girl

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Neo-conservatives/list

So we find ourselves in a disastrous quagmire in a distant land, with our troops suffering fatal wounds and disabling injuries every week, even as we employ ever greater force to subdue an increasingly disgruntled people. And just when we think the numbers of casualties may finally be starting to subside, with our uniformed commanders assuring us that the corner has been turned, that the number of insurgent attacks is at last decreasing, the very lethality of the attacks may in actuality be increasing.

The neoconservatives who have taken us down this path are actually very few in number. It is a small pack of zealots whose dedication has spanned decades, and that through years of selective recruitment has become a government cult with cells in most of the national security system. Among those cells are the secretive Office of Special Plans in the Department of Defense (reportedly now disbanded) and a similar operation in the State Department that is managed in the office of Under Secretary for Disarmament John Bolton.

Pat Lang – with whom I had frequently exchanged views on Iraq policy – served his country first as an army officer, rising to the rank of colonel, then as an intelligence officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency in charge of the Middle East before retiring. He once told me about when he was recruited for possible membership in the group.

He described to me a visit, during the administration of the first George Bush, from an elderly couple who dropped in on him unannounced one afternoon at his Pentagon office. They had come, they said, at the suggestion of Paul Wolfowitz, then the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who had told them that Colonel Lang was a bright fellow. They introduced themselves as Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, professors from the University of Chicago, and they made themselves at home for a brief chat.

Albert Wohlstetter, one of the most influential strategists of nuclear weapons policy in the second half of the twentieth century until his death in 1997, was a mentor to Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In the 1970s he had been an architect of the first effort to bring outside analysts into traditional institutions like the CIA to “reassess” the Soviet threat. This “Team B” effort resulted in the Reagan administration’s use of wildly exaggerated claims about Soviet rearmament to justify huge American defense spending increases. By the end of the decade, Wohlstetter had expanded his definition of America’s strategic role to include the Middle East. He advocated that the U.S. extend its security umbrella to the Persian Gulf on the grounds that even if no Soviet hand could be seen behind the Islamic revolution in Iran of 1979, the situation there still represented a threat to American interests in the Middle East and Pakistan.

During the Wohlstetters’ conversation with Lang, they began to probe the colonel for his views and beliefs. Mrs. Wohlstetter, partner to her husband in academia and in political philosophy as well as in life, pointed out sections in books they had written and asked Lang for his views on the theories espoused in them.

It became apparent to Lang that he was being auditioned – though, as it happened, not to the satisfaction of the Wohlstetters. They soon packed up their books and left.

Lang said that in later conversations with a number of uniformed officers, he learned that many of them had been auditioned as well and, like him, had been found wanting. However, one who did pass the test was former Navy Captain William J. Luti. In the Bush administration he holds the post of Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Luti also supervised the Office of Special Plans, described in a seminal 2003 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh as “a separate intelligence unit ... in the Pentagon’s policy office.”

It was through these special offices that so many of the rumors, gossip, and unsubstantiated intelligence about Iraq were passed directly to senior White House officials, notably Vice President Cheney, and were accepted without first being subjected to the rigorous analysis of the $30-billion-a-year intelligence community. American intelligence, which routinely sees and sifts thousands of bits of information daily, has had years of experience developing an analytical capability that can assess precisely whether the information we are receiving is fact or fiction. Short-circuiting this process – or, in the vivid term Hersh adopted for the title of his disturbing article, “stovepiping” information directly into policy-makers’ hands – is dangerous. Addressing his investigation directly to Luti’s enterprise, Hersh added: “This office, which circumvented the usual procedures of vetting and transparency, stovepiped many of its findings to the highest-ranking officials” in the administration.

President Bush could fundamentally change the direction of his administration by firing fewer than fifteen senior officials, beginning with those signatories of the Project for the New American Century and those currently holding government posts who signed a 1998 letter that urged President Clinton to wage war on Iraq. They are clustered at the National Security Council (NSC), in the Defense and State Departments, and within Vice President Cheney’s own parallel national security office. That particular little-known organization – not accountable to Congress and virtually unknown to the American people – should be completely dismantled. Never in the history of our democracy has there been established such an influential and pervasive center of power with the ability to circumvent longstanding and accepted reporting structures and to skew decisionmaking practices. It has been described to me chillingly by a former senior government official as a coup d’etat within the State. That’s all it would take – firing fewer than fifteen officials, and the scuttling of Cheney’s questionable office – to alter this administration’s radical course.

-The CULT that's running the United States
Just who are these “neoconservatives” that want to start a nuclear global war so that America (protected by GOD) can take the reigns of the entire earth? Well, here’s a list.

Sartorially Correct: 1940

SHORPY 8c02462a.preview
Saturday, May 25, 1940. “Interior of general store at Stem, Granville County, North Carolina, with high school boys dressed up because it’s Election Day.” Medium format acetate negative by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration.

Pretty Chinese Girl

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Chinese Driving Test

I applied for and obtained my Chinese driver’s license back in 2013. Like everyone else, I had to memorize 1000 answers, and then take a computerized test. The computerized test randomly selects 100 questions. You sit down, and answer the questions (in English, like me) and get your score. You must score a 96 or higher to pass. And you are given three tries. I scored a 98.

To study, you use this webpage and just take question after quesiton until you repeatedly score perfectly. That is what I did. It took me three and a half months at studying two hours a night.

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A test question.

And Another…

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Sample Test Question.

And another…

2022 05 05 18 27
A test question.

I suggest everyone to try your hand here, and take the test, and check out the questions. You will see that the questions and the answers are NOT the same as American or European driving tests. have fun.

Go HERE.

The Ostrich: 1901

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Washington, D.C., circa 1901. “View of G Street N.W., south side, between 12th & 13th, looking southwest.” Where the businesses and merchants vying for our trade include Diggs & Co., dealer in Impervious Front Brick; Madame D. Dion de Paris, dyer, curler and renovator of plumes d’autruche, as well as a doer-up of lace curtains; and the Electric Parlors of Dr. Nevin B. Shade, purveyor of Eclectic Remedies (“Mostly, 25¢”). And yes, we have bananas, in addition to real estate and Fine Tailoring. 5×7 glass negative, D.C.

Pretty Chinese Girl

video 3MB

 

A final note

I could really go for a “snickers bar”. Especially one that sat in the freezer for an hour or so and is rock hard solid. Yum! Might I suggest that you all enjoy this little treat as well…

R.49f5ad41037eae59fea2c2628e1ca985
R.49f5ad41037eae59fea2c2628e1ca985

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Nuclear war, President Biden, Ukraine, Shorpy, turkey, and phone booth lies

It’s a crazy time. We continue down the path to madness with all these contemporaneous articles for your interest and amusement.

We start with a daily dose of anti-China bullshit…

This is from Vice, found HERE.

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2022 05 06 20 52

You know why this is bullshit, don’t you?

Answer: There are NO phone booths inside of mainland China. None. While there are some in Hong Kong, Mainland China phased them out back around 2001.  The few remaining were converted to Wifi hotspots in 2010.

If you do an image search for Chinese phone booths on the internet, you will find old photos, photos of booths in the USA, and Asian countries (not Chinese), and cute designer projects. But in actuality, there are no phone booths in China any longer.

Why use them when you can buy a cheap “burner phone” for under $1 USD?

Safety tested 1958

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From around 1958 comes this News Archive photo of a “Safety Tested” used Oldsmobile — a two-tone 1956 Ninety-Eight Holiday Coupé, to be specific. Low miles, only driven to church, never smoked in, must see to appreciate! 4×5 inch acetate negative.

Russia can trust China as a back to back partner:

Misreading Europe
 
Over the past months, European officials have made clear to their Chinese counterparts that active support for Russia in its war of aggression in Ukraine would have serious consequences for the EU-China relationship. 

At their virtual summit in early April, this message was delivered straight to President Xi Jinping. 

Last week, all the mainstream parties in Germany signed on to a parliamentary motion threatening Beijing with sanctions if it provided Russia with military support or helped it circumvent Western sanctions. 

And yet, more than two months after the invasion began, European diplomats are still not convinced that China has fully understood the gravity of the conflict for Europe. 

“They are still treating Ukraine as a sideshow in the EU-China relationship,” one diplomat told me...
They obviously DO NOT UNDERSTAND. China already knows what to do with any nation that sanctions it. China is the one “holding all the cards”. Not Europe.
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Back on track; 1957

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From around 1957 comes this News Archive photo of a switching locomotive getting extricated from a slight mishap just outside the Associated Metals Richmond Branch, which would put it in the Bay Area north of Oakland. Okay, kids, who left that penny on the track?

John Lovick’s famous Cajun Deep Fried Turkey (6 min!)

I know that the readership in Europe and Asia will not understand, but Turkey is a staple of life back in the United States. Here is how to make a Cajun “ddep fried” turkey. Um. Um. Good-ya!

Russia Rehearses Nuclear Attack Launched from Kaliningrad Against European/NATO Targets

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For perhaps the first time in its recent history, Russia has announced that it is simulating nuclear attacks against EU and NATO countries.

All indications are that Russia’s political and military leadership has decided to go further in Ukraine, risking the application of the “escalation for de-escalation” doctrine.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the nuclear strike was simulated by Iskander-M ballistic systems deployed in Kaliningrad.

From there, Russia could hit Poland, Sweden, the Baltic states and Berlin.

According to the statement, Russia has conducted “electronic launches” of Iskander mobile ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads near the Russian border with EU members Lithuania and Poland.

"Russian forces have exercised single and multiple strikes against targets such as missile systems, airports, defense infrastructure, military equipment and command posts," 

…the statement said. The units involved also carried out …

"actions in conditions of radioactivity and chemical contamination".

More than 100 soldiers took part in the exercises.

Yesterday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the Russian army would consider weapons shipments coming from NATO into Ukraine as…

"legitimate military targets for destruction."

The United States and NATO continue to send weapons to Ukraine.

"I want to point out that any transfer from NATO to the Ukrainian Army is a legitimate target and must be destroyed," 

…said the Russian Defense Minister.

WILL THIS “GO NUCLEAR?”

What is the possibility of escalating a Third World War that is already raging on Ukrainian soil, to nuclear?

  • On April 25, 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the threat of a nuclear war between Russia and the United States has not disappeared, is real and should not be underestimated.
  • The next day, on the air of Kremlin’s official propagandist Vladimir Soloviev’s television show, Margarita Simonyan said that in her opinion, President Putin would prefer to use nuclear weapons. in Ukraine rather than losing to it:
"In the end, all this will end with a nuclear strike," 

…he said.

  • Two days later, it was also broadcast live on Russian television how the latest generation RS-24 Sarmat ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile could hit the capitals of leading European countries in 106 to 200 seconds. The representative of the LDPR faction in the State Duma, Alexei Zhuravlev, commented:

What is the problem; A “Sarmat” rocket and the British Isles will not exist.

  • On the same day, April 28, Margarita Simonyan, in her profile on a popular social network, threatened Kyiv with a nuclear strike in response to the attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Russian territory:
"What choice do you give us, idiots?" Complete destruction of the rest of Ukraine? Nuclear strike? ” 

…he said characteristically.

  • On April 29, Sergei Mironov, leader of the Just Russia faction in parliament, spoke of the possibility of a nuclear attack in the United Kingdom:
"Someone tell Liz Truss that a Sarmat rocket is enough to destroy the island of Britain."
  • On April 30, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed concern that Ukraine might want to acquire a nuclear arsenal, which could pose a deadly threat to Russia.

In 2000, Russia developed the idea of ​​using nuclear weapons, including ” limited use ” in a large-scale non-nuclear attack. This happened in the context of the NATO bombing of Serbia and the instability in Chechnya.

In the new military doctrine of the Russian Federation, 4 types of armed conflict were identified:

  • a similar intensity to the war in Chechnya,
  • local, such as the 2008 campaign in Georgia,
  • regional, which apparently includes the operation now taking place in Ukraine
  • and global

The big difference is that Moscow has now included the limited use of nuclear weapons not only in the fourth but also in the third level of the conflict. Its aim is to force the adversary to stop hostilities that have already begun with the threat of further nuclear escalation.

This concept is called “escalation for de-escalation”.

The most shocking finding is that according to Russian dogma, the entire legal basis for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons exists in this conflict.

The question is, will he dare to use nuclear weapons and if so where will he strike.

If Russia does not formally declare war on Ukraine in order to have a legal basis for the use of nuclear weapons (you can not even regularly drop nuclear weapons on a country with which you are not at war), then there is only one option left:

To strike a NATO weapons convoy first, and in case of a counterattack to use nuclear weapons.

The No. 1 target seems to be a “European country” that helps Ukraine.

For example, it could be Poland or Romania.

Let us not forget that Russia claims that Ukrainian fighters are taking off from Romanian airports. Through its territory and neighboring Moldova, fuel and lubricants are supplied for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Romanian military may be directly involved in the sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship.

But again, in order for that to happen, Russia must formally declare war on Ukraine, only to later claim that “Romania is helping Ukraine and therefore actively engaged in the war against Moscow.”

Russia is oriented towards such a choice. This is probably why the Iskander-M simulation was chosen.

Miracle Kitchen: 1959

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“The Planning Center — this is the heart and the brain of the RCA-Whirlpool Miracle Kitchen. For example, there’s a button that turns on a built-in color television set that brings entertainment into your Miracle Kitchen of the future. Other buttons select recipes, request an inventory of food stock, select food from storage, or complete the automatic meal from the Magic Meal Maker.”

Americans Won’t Believe What China Built

A pretty decent video.

How To Make Homemade Cheese! Simple, Cheap & Delicious

This is AWESOME! You all should try it. It will save you a ton load of money!

Well Connected

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Montgomery, Alabama, circa 1906. “Commerce Street from Court Square.” Whose designer would probably be none too pleased with the telephone poles and wires sprouting from his fountain. Our second look at this bustling hub. 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.

RS-24 Sarmat ICBM

Intercontinental ballistic missile

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2022 05 06 10 28

The Yars use the same 16×16 chassis as the Topol-M, but is fitted with a much improved missile

Country of origin Russia
Entered service 2010
Basing Road mobile and silo based
Crew 3 men
Missile
Missile length 20.9 m
Missile diameter 2 m
Missile weight 49 t
Warhead weight ~ 1.2 t
Number of RVs 6-10 with 100 – 300 kT blast yield each
Range of fire 12 000 km
CEP 150-200 m
Mobility
Engine YaMZ-847 diesel
Engine power 800 hp
Maximum road speed 45 km/h
Range 500 km

 

The RS-24 Yars is a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile. It is an improved version of the previous Topol-M. It is known in the West as SS-29. It uses the same 16×16 wheeled chassis as the Topol-M. Externally it looks similar. However it carries improved missile, that is heavier.

The Yars was developed both as a road-mobile and silo-based system, that would use the same missile. It was first tested in 2007 and was adopted by Russian Strategic Missile Forces in 2010. Its production commenced during the same year. It replaced in production the previous Topol-M.

As of 2016, Russian Strategic Missile Forces deployed 63 mobile and 10 silo-based Yars ICBMs. These were fielded alongside the Topol-M systems on a 50/50 basis. It is planned that the Yars will become the mainstay of the ground-based component of Russian nuclear triad.

This solid-fuel missile is similar to that of the Topol-M. It has three stages. It has a range of 12 000 km. The main difference from the previous missile is that Yars is MIRV-equipped and can carry at least 6 independently targetable warheads with a yield of 100-300 kT. Other sources report that this missile can carry up to 10 re-entry vehicles. It is a huge improvement over the Topol-M, that carries a single 550 kT warhead. It has been reported that the Topol-M can be rapidly upgraded to carry multiple 150 kT independently-targetable warheads.

   In 2019 the Avangard re-entry vehicle was declared operational. It is launched on top of the missile, but unlike a regular warhead that follows a predictable path, the Avangard travels at hypersonic speed and can make sharp maneuvers. This makes it much harder to intercept. It was planned that in 2019 a total of 31 Yars missiles will be equipped with Avangard hypersonic gliding re-entry vehicles and will be deployed operationally.

   The Yars was designed to evade missile defense systems. This missile maneuvers during the flight and carries both active and passive decoys. It is estimated that it has at least 60-65% chance to penetrate defenses.

   The Yars is slightly more accurate than the Topol-M. It has a CEP of 150-200 m.

   A silo-based version of the Yars is compatible with silo of older Russian ICBMs, that were phased out of service. It uses complete infrastructure of the previous missiles. It only takes to load the new missile into the silo. A typical silo-based unit has 10 Yars missiles and command post.

   A road mobile Yars TEL is based on Belarusian MZKT-79221 16×16 heavy high mobility chassis. This chassis was specially designed for the Topol-M intercontinental missile. First three and last three axles are steered. So this vehicle is very maneuverable for its size. Also it has good cross-country mobility. The TEL vehicle is operated by a crew of three. The Yars mobile launcher has autonomy on roads of 500 km. It allows the vehicle to operate undetected in an area equivalent to a small European country.

   Road mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles are harder to detect and hit. The Yars has a high probability of surviving the first strike, once the country has been attacked. Once on high alert, the Yars missiles can leave their bases and operate in remote forest areas to increase their survivability.

   It takes 7 minutes to prepare the missile for launch. The Yars can launch its missile from prepared site, special garage with a sliding roof, or from unprepared position during field deployment. The TEL vehicle can leave its position once the missile is launched.

   During field deployment the Yars TEL is escorted by a number support vehicles, including support vehicle, mobile command posts, signals vehicle, fuel tanker, and a host of other military vehicles with troops to ensure security of the missile. In case of emergency the TEL vehicle can operate autonomously without its escort. A fuel tanker is based on a similar 16×16 chassis, but carries an enormous fuel tank in place of ballistic missile.

   The Yars intercontinental ballistic missile was designed for a service life of about 20 years.

 

Variants

   RS-26 Rubezh, also called the Yars-M, is a smaller and lighter version of the Yars. The missile is based on a Belarusian MZKT-79291 chassis with 12×12 configuration. It is believed that development of this ballistic missiles commenced in 2008. It was planned that the first RS-26 regiment will become operational in 2016. Although the RS-26 is legally an ICBM, it may be that the demonstrated range of 5 800 km is close to the maximum range of the missile. Essentially this missile falls into the class of Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs). Though Russia insisted that the RS-26 is an ICBM, as IRBMs with a range of up to 5 500 km were banned by a 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (or INF treaty). So the Russians found a way to field an intermediate-range ballistic missile and to fill the gap that was once covered by the RSD-10 Pioner (SS-20 Saber) IRBMs.

Princess Unplugged: 1950

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New Zealand circa 1950s. “Model with wringer washing machine.” I am Woman, see me Wash. Photo by Gordon Burt Studio.

How to make butter in 3 minutes

It’s an awesome thing to do and so simple and so quick!

Summary on the RS-24 Sarmat

Cutting through the bullshit.

  • It carries 10 hypersonic warheads.
  • Each warhead travels faster than a bullet, and cannot be shotdown.
  • Each warhead is AI controlled and maneuverable.
  • The West cannot defend against it at all.
  • Each warhead can carry a 250MT nuclear device.
For comparision, the USA dropped a nuclar bomb upon Nagasaki on August 9 – a 21-kiloton plutonium device known as "Fat Man.” Since 1MT is equal to 1000KT, the destructive power of each nuclear device is 250 x ( 1000 - 25) = 243,750 times LARGER than the city destroyer that the United States detonated in Japan.

One SINGLE RS-24 Sarmat will erase all of the islands of England, and glass over all of Europe.

Creole Belle: 1938

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938. “Petitin’s Store, Grand Coteau, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana. Building dates to ca. 1834.” While this ad-encrusted grocery might strike you as charmingly rustic, the Dr. Pepper sign seems to have so offended the photographer’s sensibilities that for the other pictures she took, she draped it with a cloth.

“It’s not about saving Ukrainian lives, it’s about saving political face here at home” Scott Ritter

Seven minutes. Priceless. Watch the entire thing.

12 Things Gone FOREVER…1960s – Life in America

See how many things that you remember…

Watch for the “Third Action” – Then We Have Only Minutes Until the Bombs Fall

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It is a foregone conclusion that the conflict in Ukraine will escalate until Putin hits NATO bases and military assets with nuclear weapons – that is the first action.

The second action will be Nato’s retaliation against Russian forces, which the west will think is a “proportionate response”. But the Russians won’t look at it in that way at all.

After the west’s response, the Russians will have a choice to hit back again to make it clear to the west they will not accept defeat or to stand down in any form.

Putin and his team of military planners have already decided on what that third action will be, and what the targets will be – they have said as much. They have repeatedly given everyone a clear indication what they will do. But few are listening or taking Putin seriously.

After the second action – which is the retaliation from Nato and the US – if Putin doesn’t hit back with a powerful enough force, his nation will be totally destroyed. But if he hits hard in the third action, he believes he can lessen the blowback and prevent Europe from over running Russia. Without the US nuclear and military power, Europe has no chance against Russia. This has been revealed by experts in the military strategy field.

That means Putin and the Russians will conclude that they MUST hit the US and Nato assets with a knock out blow IMMEDIATELY after the second action. They have no other options at that point.

However, regardless how hard Putin hits the US and Europe, Russia will still be targeted with a massive nuclear retaliation strike, with what missiles the west still has left in their arsenal. Putin and his war planners already know this, and have concluded that it is unavoidable. The third action they make against the west won’t prevent the retaliation, but they believe that a large strike against the west is still better than any other options.

Whether this is true or not will be debated for decades to come. But the bottom line is, when the Russians feel the offensive moves made at Russia are unacceptable and has crossed their red lines, they will then make the first action. That action will be of sufficient size, that the Russians feel might deter the west from further military actions.

That first action is very likely to be a tactical nuclear attack against the Nato forces that made a direct attack against Russia in Ukraine. In addition, it is also very likely that Russia will hit Nato bases and decision centers in various locations in Europe, at the same time. It won’t be attacks on urban areas, but military targets that Russia believes are a future threat against their military campaign and their homeland. In short, it will be a proportionate attack, that leaves Nato and the US a choice – to either stand down and call for a peace treaty, or escalate the war to a higher level.

At the beginning of the conflict, one offensive military move will take place by the west to instigate Russia to respond. In response, it is very likely that Russia will then hit back with tactical nukes on select targets to neutralize Nato forces as much as possible in Europe.

The second major action will then be a retaliation strike by the west. But, it is the third action that will magnify to such a level by Russia, that it will shock the west to their foundations.

Russia will feel they have no other option left, and they MUST hit the rest of Europe and the US, and all their military bases with a FULL nuclear strike. That includes an EMP attack to knock out all electrical power in Europe and the US.

It will include airports, and all Naval and Air force and Army bases. It may also conclude major bridges, rail lines and interstate highways at key areas. It may also knock out water systems in urban areas.

The historic attack would totally knock out all food distribution and fuel supplies. The nation would instantly be sent back to the 1880s, with no power, no communication and no food supplies. And it will stay that way for months if not years to come.

How long will that take? One hour after the second action by the west. One hour – or less. And there isn’t one thing the west can do to prevent it from happening.

With the nation instantly laying in smoldering ruins, the US nuclear retaliation will go into effect from bases, subs and aircraft that are left flying. Russia would then be destroyed as well and sent back to the 1880s. Millions on both sides would instantly die, and tens of millions more will die in the following months of starvation, disease and chaos. This outcome is expected by the Russians who are prepared for it, but the Europeans and the Americans have not come to terms with this reality.

The west has the false assumption that Russia “wouldn’t dare attack us, because they would be destroyed themselves”. That is dangerously naïve and lacks the understanding on how the Russians think about this conflict. Russia is already playing for keeps to defend their homeland. Thousands have died. They already believe a war is on their doorstep, and they either stop the enemy in Ukraine now or they will end up being destroyed later anyway.

Putin and the Russian leaders are looking at this conflict as a genuine aggressive action against their nation, whether it is done in increments or in one full sweep. And since they have concluded they can’t accept defeat in either case, they have concluded they must stop the attack as soon as possible. They believe there is no reason to wait and be taken over if the attack from the west is inevitable.

With the weapons they still possess, they believe that they have a chance to stop the coming attack. And that is why they would take the third action to stop the carnage as soon as possible and lessen the future destruction of their nation. The difference could be millions of Russian lives being saved.

We may not believe like the Russians; we may not accept their conclusions, and we may not believe they have no other options. But all of that doesn’t matter. If that is how they believe, and what they have concluded, they will take the third action to end the Third World War – within one hour of the attack by the west.

There is however one wild card no one has publicly considered. And that is the use of secret high-tech weapons that the US may possess that could neutralize Russia’s weapons.

Through the years I’ve heard faint rumors of special weapons that the US MAY have developed that could defend the US and Europe. Those weapons may include a space-based laser system that can knock out any incoming nuclear missiles. It may also include high tech electronic systems that could prevent missiles from being launched.

It is also possible that the US has reverse engineered alien space ships and have built their own advanced space ships that could also make a difference in a war. In fact, if this is true, it may be the reason the US politicians have been so confident when going to war with Russia, when the obvious outcome could be WW3 leading to nuclear war.

However, I have never heard of any solid evidence to feel confident in this possibility. It is possible – but has to be considered a wild card. That means we are required to look at the facts as logically and rationally as possible and make real plans to survive hard times. There are no short cuts and no silver bullet that will solve our problems or stop a war.

What we are facing right now is an escalation of a war that is coming at us like a fast-moving train. And the only way to beat a fast-moving train when you’re on the tracks, is to step off the tracks and avoid being killed. It isn’t rocket science and it isn’t complicated. The reality of the world situation is clear, we are facing a major war and a collapse of the entire system. In view of this, we are required as responsible citizens to prepare for hard times. We won’t have a second chance to gather enough food, supplies and be ready to hunker down for the coming storm. A person either prepares to survive or they’re preparing to fail and become a victim. The choice is yours.

George Eaton

Mod Cafe: 1943

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Sept. 3, 1943. “U.S.O. canteen, Penn Station, Harrisburg, Pa. Serving bar.” Our second look at this proto-Googie extravaganza, brought to you by Travelers Aid and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Gottscho-Schleisner photo.

Fishing Field | Catch Fish by Fishing Nest in River – Umbrella Fishing Net

There’s many EASY ways to catch firsh if you are relying on it for food, or to suppliment your meals. May I suggest a “fish trap”…

RECAP OF RUSSIA”S “SPECIAL MILITARY OPERATION”

Phase 1:

All objectives of the Russia Armed Forces were met with Phase 1

Fact: Many people think that Russia failed at taking Kiev but what people do not understand is that they had no plan to attack or take kiev.

The fast operation of moving into place around Kiev was to give the perception to Ukraine and NATO that Russia wanted to take the city.

This was nothing more than a “head fake” by Russia to prevent Ukraine from sending thousands of troops from Kiev to the Donbass front (Russia’s stated objective) Russia was successful in this goal.

This is the reason you saw no long Russian supply lines and support, because they were only there to cause a diversion and therefore did not need a huge logistics support chain. Thus all the claims of the media that Russia would run out of fuel and ammo…fact is…they did not need it, as they were but a short term diversion.

Once Russia had their forces in place in the east and the south the forces in the Kiev area quickly withdrew according to plan, to support the actions in Mariupol where the AZOV regiment was 14,000 strong. (now only 1,000 remain surrounded and underground)

After the capture of Mariupol by Russia the Z forces moved to the Donbass front in preparation for phase 2.

Phase 2:

Phase 2 is going very well and is right on scheduled.

The Russian forces are destroying all supply lines for the estimated 45,000 Ukrainian troops on the Donbass line. As well as hitting ammo storage, fuel supply and command centers all over Ukraine.

The Russian forces are decimating the Ukrainians with artillery and rocket fire around the clock. The losses of the Ukrainians is listed to be near 50,000 troops killed so far during the operation.

Also there are 4,000+ Ukrainian POWs being held by the DPR, LPR and Russia at this time.

The Russians put out a troop loss total last month and the number was at 5,700 at that time but is estimated to be near 7,500 currently.

Also the reason the US and NATO are in a panic to get tanks, artillery and planes into Ukraine is because the Russians have destroyed most of their military hardware.

Those numbers of destroyed Ukrainian equipment are as follows:

146 aircraft
112 helicopters,
712 unmanned aerial vehicles,
287 anti-aircraft missile systems,
2,817 tanks and other armored combat vehicles,
323 multiple launch rocket systems,
1,292 field artillery and mortars,
2,624 units of special military vehicles

The bottom line is Russia is holding right to the plan and the plan is going well.

No…Russia did not fail in Kiev. In fact they did as intended.

No Russia is not “bogged down”

Fact is…Ukraine is getting a serious ass kicking.

All the PSYOPs of the media has been very, very effective on the minds of the casual observer and to the average person on the street they are under the false impression that Ukraine is doing great and Russia is ineffective and weak.

Very Sun Tzu.

In closing know that very soon…once Russia has things weakened and cut off to their liking ,they will make moves to surround and Cauldron those trapped 45,000 Ukraine troops and it will be a blood bath like the world has not seen since WWII.

After that…they will move to the west and take Odessa,

When will that be?

When Russia is ready…could be a few days from now…could be a few hours from now.

But don’t worry…I guarantee you won’t miss it when it happens.

BFF: 1938

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1938. Stuttgart, Germany. “Von der 6. Reichstagung der Auslandsdeutschen (Hitler Youth in tent during festivities for the 6th Annual National Days of Foreign Germans).” Photo by Heinrich Hoffmann, Kochstraße 10, Berlin.

US Intel Assisted In Sinking Russian Flagship Vessel: Officials Claim Bombshell Escalation

Friday, May 06, 2022 – 07:46 AM

Less than 24 hours after The New York Times issued a provocative report citing unnamed US officials who are celebrating that American intelligence-sharing with Ukraine’s military has helped take out multiple Russian generals since the Feb.24 invasion, NBC News is out with yet another bombshell claim sourced to the deep state US intel officials.

Amid what seems escalation after escalation, and new revelations of Washington’s deepening and perhaps increasingly direct role in fighting Russia in Ukraine, NBC brings us this doozy… “Intelligence shared by the U.S. helped Ukraine sink the Russian cruiser Moskva, U.S. officials told NBC News, confirming an American role in perhaps the most embarrassing blow to Vladimir Putin’s troubled invasion of Ukraine.”

As a reminder of just how hugely significant the claim is – and just how dangerous in terms of representing a massive escalation – the Moskva was considered the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, had 510 crewmen on board before Neptune anti-cruise ship missiles scored a direct hit in mid-April, and was the most embarrassing single blow to President Putin’s war effort of the whole conflict thus far.’

“The attack happened after Ukrainian forces asked the Americans about a ship sailing in the Black Sea south of Odesa, U.S. officials told NBC News,” the report continues. “The U.S. identified it as the Moskva, officials said, and helped confirm its location, after which the Ukrainians targeted the ship.” This comes after the NY Times revealed in a report the night prior that much of the intel-sharing is focused on Russian troop and equipment movements.

From HERE.

If you grew up in the 1970s…you remember this – Life in America

Maybe you will remember some of these memories…

The Rites of Spring: 1943

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June 1943. Arlington County, Virginia. “Arlington Farms, war duration residence halls. Sunbathers on the sidewalk in the back of Idaho Hall.” Photo by Esther Bubley for the Office of War Information.

The horrifying Human Zoos: Shocking photos reveal how zoos around the world kept ‘primitive natives’ in enclosures as Westerners gawped and jeered at them just 60 years ago

  • Horrifying images show how black and Asian people were ‘displayed’ in zoo enclosures around the world
  • ‘Human zoos’ designed to emphasize cultural differences between Europeans and people deemed primitive
  • Millions visited the shocking enclosures in the early 20th century both in America and across Europe

It shows how so-called ‘human zoos’ around the world kept ‘primitive natives’ in enclosures, so Westerners could gawp and jeer at them. The horrifying images, some of which were taken as recently as 1958, show how black and Asian people were cruelly treated as exhibits that attracted millions of tourists.

Inhumane shows held across the Western world were designed to emphasize the cultural difference between Europeans and people who were deemed primitive.

A series of photos:

HERE

Switzerland Setting-up “Crisis” Centers anticipating NO ELECTRICITY after Russian Natural Gas Embargo

The Swiss government is setting up a gas sector crisis intervention group and a monitoring system for early detection of an impending electricity shortage, it said on Wednesday, as it prepares for the possibility of “severe” power shortages.

(HT REMARK: These imbeciles are intentionally not paying for Russian natural gas in Rubles, and are working on a European-wide Embargo against Russian Gass and Oil, which runs their electric power plants, and are now creating teams to deal with the electrical outages THEY THEMSELVES ARE CREATING!

If employees of a corporation did things like this, they would be immediately fired.   In government, stupidity just breeds more stupidity.

Developing, check back.

The Barge Office: 1900

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Circa 1900. “Barge Office, New York.” Meet you at the Lunch Wagon. 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company.

Stock Market DOWN 1,000 Points and Still Dropping

Panic-like behavior was starting to set in on Wall Street on Thursday, at least from a technical perspective, as the Dow industrials shed all of the previous day’s gain, and then some.

Trading in New York Stock Exchange-listed stocks at midday Thursday exhibited panic-like-selling action as bullish investors suffered a powerful reversal of fortune that appeared to be gathering steam in the wake of the Fed’s early-May policy meeting, adding to a bruising stretch for buyers, sparked by concerns about rates.

The NYSE Arms Index, a volume-weighted breadth measure that tracks the ratio of advancing stock to declining stocks over the ratio of advancing volume over declining volume, was showing a reading of 2.588 for NYSE-listed shares. Many technicians say a rise to at least 2.000 suggests panic-like selling behavior.

The reading comes as the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -3.03%  was off 3.1%, or over 1,050 points, at 33,027, looking at its sharpest one-day fall since 2020; the S&P 500 index SPX, -3.44%  was off 3.4% at around 4,150; and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -4.76%  was trading 4.7% lower at 12,365.

The American People Must Relocate Power To The States

Friday, May 06, 2022 – 11:40 AM

Authored by Richard M. Reinsch II via RealClear Books

When American citizens look to Washington, D.C., they find much to be disappointed in and even less to believe in. The fundamental problem is that the federal government has, through its regulatory and spending powers, usurped much of the governing authority for the republic.

However, for reasons both predictable and lamentable, it has failed to govern well for decades, with policy breakdowns occurring across the board. Peter Schuck observed in his book “Why Government Fails So Often” that most federal government policies cannot pass a transparent cost-benefits test. But this dysfunctional government results from size and scope – from the federal government vastly exceeding a competency scale that our Constitution attempted to establish.

There is no manifest line in the Constitution that guides the distribution of power between the federal government and the state governments. In the Federalist Papers, Publius argues that the question will be decided by citizens about where to place power, and their judgment will turn on competency in administration. This process inevitably will be a deliberative one, influenced by elections, arguments, and results.

If so, we should record that federal spending is now so large and so encompassing that it swallows the ability of the states to be self-governing and accountable to their citizens. This has occurred through ever-expanding federal grants-in-aid. These programs should be culled for the restoration of constitutional order and its commitment to a self-governing people.

As Philip Hamburger argues in his new book “Purchasing Submission,” the federal government can impose laws and rules on the states through the so-called Spending Power. The constitutional authority of the government to act in this capacity is suspect, and its consequences go beyond the mere size of the expenditures. And yet, on federal spending, we are also facing real limits on government power, with negative consequences in the form of inflation, chronic indebtedness, and lost economic growth.

Our country even faces potential catastrophic entitlement cuts, since, as a debtor nation, we continue to pay for present expenses with long-term debt instruments that we cannot afford to pay without drastic tax increases, spending cuts, or both.

Of course, most of our state governments eagerly seek federal grants and funding. Even though such money comes with strings attached to Washington, most states can’t leave well enough alone. What do they lose by taking the money – funds that enable them to claim success for services to constituents whose real costs are not actually paid for by the state’s taxpayers?

The loss is that we as citizens no longer govern ourselves in an open and competitive fashion versus other states. This crucial discipline over state governments is circumvented. However, the loss of self-government includes not only the states. Members of Congress no longer focus their undivided attention on what should be for them the more pressing objectives of national government. The federal government now gets wagged by the tail, turned on behalf of local concerns and interests that are served by grant programs.

The failure here is to assume that federal spending in the form of grants to states and localities will produce better policy results than if local priorities had been decided by the actual authorities elected by that state’s voters. Thus does the centralization of power and its enthronement of experts continue unabated as the prime mover in American government.

What must happen for the proper liberation of the states to govern themselves in full? That would entail ceasing federal grants through a constitutional amendment. This would save billions of dollars and, crucially, restore Congress to its proper function of deliberating national problems and issues.

The American people must be able to locate authority and accountability in their state governments, which should be led by officials who are fully transparent with their citizens about the costs of programs that must be borne by actual citizens in the state, not by federal taxpayers in an endless game of fiscal shapeshifting. In this way, the federal government would stick to its basic set of truly national issues. The states would become what they were meant to be: entities that govern close to the people, shaping the communities within their jurisdiction, in ways that a national government cannot.

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Martin Jay
April 27, 2022
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Gonzalo Lira’s merciless attack by the Daily Beast will be remembered for years and make many hacks think before taking a swipe at America’s finest institutions.

The disappearance of U.S. citizen journalist Gonzalo Lira looked like a new low point for the war in Ukraine. Sure, at least six western journalists so far have been killed in the conflict but the Chilean-born Lira’s case was quite special on so many levels – chiefly that in mid-April he seemed to have been taken by Ukrainian forces (or neo-Nazi brigades which they support) after being tipped off by a western media outlet. Or at least that’s what Lira claims in his last video clip he posted just hours before disappearing. Remarkably, he claims if he were to be killed, it would be down to a petulant reaction from journalists working for the Daily Beast, who he seems to have clashed with – and who took it upon themselves to tell the Ukrainian government his exact location.

Another point which made Lira’s disappearance so unique and sets him above the others who have died is the man himself. It is practically unheard of for journalists in Ukraine to “cross the line” and to report from the side of the conflict where their own sympathies do not jar. In other words, Lira, although among Ukrainian citizens in regions which were held by Ukrainian forces was, unlike the vast majority of western journalists, not at all sympathetic in any way to Zelensky and his government and was considered to be pro-Russian. This makes Lira incredibly special and perhaps a one off. He took a very critical if not cynical view of the Ukrainian elite and tried to report from a colder, more neutral position – questioning everything that he was shown by the Ukrainians – than his colleagues, and in doing so was branded a “Russian spy” which was all it took for the hysteria to be whipped up and for the dogs to be set upon him.

But his claims that it was the Daily Beast which could have been responsible for his kidnapping is worrying as it is unprecedented. At first glance, it seems far-fetched until you read the character assassination article which The Beast wrote about him, red it tooth and claw dripping with vitriol, as a childish response to Lira posting a video on social media running down the outlet. Lira claims in his last tearful video clip to his followers that if he is not heard of within 12 hours, then his certainly captured by Ukrainian security services and that it is the Daily Beast which is responsible for his capture, as, he claims, it tipped off the Ukrainians to his exact whereabouts.

If this were to be true, then the war in Ukraine has hit a new low with western media apparently playing a more intensified partisan role than ever before and taking that position to new depths never seen before in Syria, Iraq or the former Yugoslavia. It spells the end of bona fide journalism in conflict zones, where journalists themselves accept to be used as nothing more than stenographers of fictitious material produced to be a tool of war, along with soldiers themselves. Is this what is going on in Ukraine? Is the Ukrainian elite taking 100s of millions of dollars in U.S. blood money to keep the war going, while PR executives manufacture entirely faked news reports which the western journalists are dutifully replicating without even offering up the odd annoying question? Is this the real reason why Lira feared that he would be killed, because he rejected the format and the narrative and went against the grain of the popular beguiling narrative? Was his blogging, which was gaining huge amounts of traffic, becoming a problem for Washington and Zelensky and had to be stopped as it threatened to derail the bigger plan?

The hit job from the Daily Beast is beneath their journalists. It beggars belief that a respected international news publication would stoop so low to smear the reputation of a blogger. Was it merely an act of repugnant petulance between journalists, a spat which got out of hand, which resulted in the appalling slur article which painted a picture of him as being someone of low moral fibre? Or is there something darker lurching in the shadows? Is the Daily Beast really what it claims to be or are the somewhat sensational claims on social media about it being a CIA asset of some sort, true?

We are being tricked in the Ukraine and Lira is an amateur who threatened to burn the whole circus down to the ground. His merciless attack by the Daily Beast though will be remembered for years and make many hacks think before taking a swipe at America’s finest institutions. Just read what the Beast summarised.

“He also created a 22-minute-long video preemptively warning his followers not to trust anything The Daily Beast writes, concocting a fantastical narrative in which every journalist secretly knows he and his ilk are right about the things they say but chooses to print lies because “everybody who works at the mainstream media is by definition a piece of shit.” He added that he is better than the mainstream media because he can “say the truth,” and suggested this article was developed at least in part because The Daily Beast writers envy and resent his freedom”.

Ain’t that the truth?

Since writing this article, Gonzalo Lira has emerged safe and well.

Work From Home: 1912

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January 1912. “Tenement homework, New York, 309 W. 146th Street. Mrs. De Levo [?] and her 7-year-old daughter, Lorenza, embroidering ladies’ waists in their dirty kitchen-living room. Lorenza makes the stems of the flowers. Her mother said, ‘See how smart she is. I show her how and right away she makes them. She is so little because she’s been sick so much.’ She works after school. Father is out of a job. ‘They pay too cheap for lace.’ Said they make about $2 a week.” Glass nega­tive by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee.

Hate Springs Eternal

When it rains the worms come out and for the political class the steady rain is promising to become a deluge. The latest bit of bad news in the forecast is the leaked opinion from the Supreme Court regarding Roe. There have been a lot of hot takes on the implications of the ruling but lost in the media churn is the fact that this is another sign that things are getting ugly in Washington. A civilized political class run by sober-minded adults would never have allowed this to happen.

The fact is, Washington is in chaos. The Biden administration is a balkanized mess with Joe Biden as an embarrassing figurehead. His handlers are running out of patience or ability to keep him from having “senior moments” in public. In announcing some new justification for seizing Russian property, Biden slipped into confusion and struggled to say words that may or may not have been in the script. He looked like a man who should be at an assisted living facility, not the White House.

These events are becoming common, which underscores the fact that he is not actually in charge of his administration. It is a balkanized cabal that lacks coordination with the other parts and is disconnected from the party. The old neocons are running the war in Ukraine, while packs of deranged social justice warriors push through nutty ideas like the ministry of disinformation. There is no one sheepherding economic policy, which has been abandoned in the face of record inflation.

This is why Biden’s popularity is about as low as it can go. Amazingly, there is always about 30% of respondents who will say they support the president. Bush bottomed out around this number and now Biden is doing the same. It means his party is in desperate shape for the midterms. The first midterm is never good for the party of the president, as buyer’s remorse sets in at this stage. Trump was a mess, but he presided over peace and prosperity, two things lost under Biden.

Then there is the brewing disaster in Europe. The happy talk coming from the foreign policy camp is just a way to keep the politicians from asking too many questions, but everyone senses a looming disaster. The hope was this would be a great distraction from the economic mess, but that has not worked. Now the economic cost of the war is starting to bite. America is looking at a summer of record fuel and food prices and you cannot hide five dollar gas with a Ukraine lapel pin.

The recent elections tell the story. J. D. Vance staked out a non-interventionist position on Ukraine, basically telling voters he does not care about it. No one wants to admit it, but this may be what pushed him over the top. Both parties have attacked this position, but it is looking like the winning hand with voters. For Democrats, who now own the war in Ukraine, this could turn out to be Vietnam all over again. They are the party championing a very unpopular war.

This is probably why Bernie Sanders is telling people he plans to run in 2024, despite Biden people saying Biden 2024 is not a punchline. A disaster in November and more Joe Biden senior moments in public means the lid blows off the whole thing. Everyone will be talking about what comes after Joe Biden. In politics, it pays to be the first at the scene of the disaster, so Sanders is making sure his name is going to be in stories discussing the demise of Joe Biden.

This also reflects the growing anger of the fringe crazies at their party. In the Trump years, the Democrats weaponized these people against the country. The riots, murders and mayhem were part of the color revolution. The crazies and the more legitimate fringe players in mainstream politics took this to mean that they would get a seat at the table, but that was never happening. Not even the hardest thumping Trump haters want these lunatics in their political camp.

That is why Elizabeth Warren was doing the angry chicken dance outside the Supreme Court when the draft opinion was leaked. Her choreographers did not have enough time to train her for the show, so she was left to wing it and the result was a comical reminder that the 19th amendment was a mistake. Warren is a craven simpleton, but she does reflect the growing frustration of the fringe-left in Washington. They are getting nothing and they are incredibly angry about it.

They think abortion can be their vehicle back to the main stage, but in reality, abortion does not matter all that much to people. Abortion was always a middle-class white woman issue. “The woman’s right to choose” was the cover for promoting eugenic policies in the black community. Now that middle-class white women are past childbearing age, it no longer has emotional appeal. Nonwhites, of course, have been hip to the reality of abortion for a long time.

Taken together, with the looming elections, it reflects a political class that no longer has a reason to exist. It is a collection of geezers trying to relive their salad days, along with hand-picked acolytes selected for their lack of intelligence. The old baby boomer politics, like the old baby boomers in charge, is breaking down. That is the crisis we are seeing in Washington. The old framework is no longer salient and no one has a clue as to what should replace it or even if it can be replaced.

This is also why politics has descended into information war. In business, when you do not have a new product or a new version of the existing product, you roll out a new marketing campaign instead. This is what has happened with politics. They have nothing to offer, so they rollout one media campaign after another. We are bombarded with an endless series of alleged crises so that we do not notice that the people in charge have no reason to be in charge.

There are, of course, long term trends that promise to make these short term problems look like a golden age. People do not live in the long term, so the next six months will be what occupies the minds of people. Given the condition of the political leaders and the mood of the country, they may want to think about putting those razor wire barriers back up and declaring martial law in the city. Just about every constituency has a reason to storm the city and demand a redress of grievances.

Victorian Vines: 1910

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Detroit circa 1910. “Bagley Homestead — Michigan Conservatory of Music.” Former abode of Michigan Governor John Judson Bagley (1832-1881). 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.

Why the Solomon Islands Chose China (You Won’t Believe What Australia Did)

Good and discusses (in decent detail) what is actually going on.

The Latest Thing: 1924

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1924. “The latest in radio development which has been perfected by Mr. H.P. O’Reilly of Washington, D.C.” Which seems to incorporate a “Telegraphone,” the early wire recorder alluded to on the wall. Never miss another radio program again! Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative.

Russia is winning and the mainstream media will make sure the public never knows this fact.

Russia is winning, despite billions of dollars in American and NATO military support to Ukraine, the Russians have already achieved their most important strategic objectives. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not simply wake up one day and decide to send troops into Ukrainian cities, he publicly warned the West about this plan of action years in advance, yet he was ignored by most western leaders. Russia did not come into Ukraine to lose, it is undoubtably obvious that after 66 days of warfare, Russia is defeating not only the Ukrainians but NATO and the United States as well, it is quite an achievement.

Failure was not an option

There is no way Russia is going to “lose” the battle in Ukraine, those who know the Russian military are quite aware that Putin has not used the full Russian might, in the eyes of the Russian President, they have not even begun to fight a real war.  The Russians describe the conflict as a special military operation, the first phase of the Russian operation employed young officers undergoing new training methods, it was a bit of a test, despite heavy loses the Russian objective succeeded in the first month. Putin publicly addressed these young soldiers in a video a week into the conflict, he said “I know you are learning new complex methods of warfare”, despite the learning curve, the Russians have achieved their goals in much of the South and East of Ukraine.

The Russian federation has made it clear they are conducting a limited special military operation, a very specific plan to demilitarize and de-Nazi-fy Ukrainian cities. Russia still has not defined their operation as a “war” yet and if they do decide to declare war, we can expect an assault on Ukraine beyond our imagination. The Western mainstream media has sold us complete fabrications, nothing about this conflict has been based in journalistic truth, the narrative that Ukraine is “winning” is simply not accurate.  We have been told Vladimir Putin is depressed, angry, frustrated, physically ill, demented, cruel, ordering the fatality of civilians, yet not one of these accusations have been based in any verifiable evidence. The Russian President has methodically taken control of the major trade routes, essentially choking the life out of Ukraine, he is winning. Putin took little port city Mariupol while the whole world had their eyes on the capital Kyiv, it was a brilliant move. Vladimir Putin has not revealed on single thing about his military operation in terms of strategy, the West still cannot figure him out.

Why Russia wins

Everything we learn about Russia comes from former generals on American TV, MSNBC, and CNN, they are almost always wrong. Russian Foreign minister Sergi Lavrov mocked the Americans trying to analyze the Russian military operation, he said “They don’t understand us, they don’t understand the Russian mindset, they don’t understand how we work”, in essence, Lavrov was making it clear everything the Western media prints about the war is a fabrication. The average Ukrainian citizen understands Putin better than any American, British, or German news analyst, in this aspect Russia is defeating the Americans, NATO and the Ukrainians.

Who is really fighting against Russia?

So far, the Russians have documented at least 40 different countries who are engaged in battle against them, even the Ukrainians bragged about how many hired contractors are battling the Russians. In the week since President of Ukraine Zelensky announced the creation of an ‘International Legion’ to defend Ukraine, 20,000 people from 52 countries have volunteered to fight in Ukraine, the country’s, Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba said on television. On the Russian side are simply young Russians boys and Chechen (Pro Russian nationals) soldiers, that’s it.  A simple look at a map will show how Russia has taken the key areas of Ukraine. The red and light red shows how Ukraine has already lost the battle.

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2022 05 06 14 18

Russia is not only winning against the Ukrainians, but they are also defeating NATO and American money/weapons, the U.S loves funding foreign wars but they don’t know how to win them.

Britain, Germany. Italy and France want no part of war with Russia, Western Europe would never send a dollar (or any military equipment) to Ukraine without the United States coercing them to do so. Western Europeans are not in the least bit interested in engaging in war in Eastern Europe, most Westerners are worried about unemployment, food shortage and inflation, not Ukraine.

Our media is not allowed to tell you Russia is winning.

According to our biased media, cities like Mariupol and Kherson are not under Russian control, they tell the public there is “fierce resistance” to Russian attacks, this is of course a lie.

A month ago, a lifelong resident of Kherson reported that the city was in 100% Russian control, but public is not allowed to know this truth.

See video:  This would never air on American television.

The guy on camera tells the truth “Kherson is under 100% Russian control”, the reporter did not expect that answer she tries to cover the truth, she says “there are conflicting reports on who controls the city”, then he dropped the full truth again. Russia is in 100% control; this was a rare truth that slipped by Pro-Ukraine media.

 

Finding honest news is almost impossible today, the fact of the matter is that Russia is not only winning, but they are also winning relatively easily despite suffering heavy losses.

Does anyone really believe that Russia could not take all of Ukraine if they want it?  At the start of the conflict every American media pundit said Russia would take the capital city Kyiv in less than a week, yet Russia “chose” not to do so. No one can figure out Putin’s war strategy. The Ukrainian civilians are sadly being slaughtered, they are caught between the Russian military might and Zelensky’s ego. No matter how many thousands of civilians slaughtered, Washington has only one response…more weapons, more weapons, more weapons.

The United States Government does not care the least bit about Ukrainian civilians, Ukraine (which is actually a welfare state) has never stood on its own two feet; it is a beggar state. The President of Ukraine is not intelligent, but he is slick, he knows how to milk every dollar out of the United States.

It is a cruel game; Washington relies on the American mainstream media to keep showing bombed out Ukrainian children on the news to justify the billions of dollars we keep sending to Zelensky. Ukraine is one of the most corrupt states in the world, dumping billions of dollars worth of weapons into the land is lunacy, yet we will keep on doing it. The bottom line is that Russia is winning, and nothing will change this outcome, no amount of weapons dump into Ukraine is going to change the result of the war.  No one in Washington cares about the Ukrainian civilians, the United States doesn’t care, Zelensky doesn’t care and certainly NATO does not care; if they did care they would have told Ukrainians to lay down arms 2 months ago and tried to reason (negotiate) with Putin.

We are defending Ukraine as if it is one of our 50 states, we are taunting a nuclear superpower, we are encouraging the hotheaded Zelensky, all while our corrupt American media leads the drumbeats to world war 3.

Article HERE

Scenic Saginaw: 1908

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Saginaw, Michigan, circa 1908. “Hoyt Library.” With a number of hazards for the unwary pedestrian. 8×10 glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co.

Scott Ritter and Gonzalo Lira 24/7 Live on Ukraine war

Very long. Three hours. Very, very VERY good. It discusses everything going on, starting at Ukraine. A must listen.

Watch it before it is banned.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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NATO generals, eye piercing bras, gas prices, Biden, Xi Peng, Putin, inflation and chicken Parmesan stuffed shells

I’ve got someone “news” regarding the world at this point in time. Indeed, I had to cull through the great lies, and disinfo, as well as the misunderstandings of others as I compiled this. I hope you all enjoy it. Please watch the videos, none are more than a few minutes, including the You-tube videos. I also hope that one or two tries the Creole dishes. Dat good-um’ eating ya!

Passing things on to a new generation…

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Mike Rowe Says Truckers “Aren’t Buying Putin Price Hike” Spin As Diesel Hits New High

From HERE.

Baltimore native Mike Rowe became famous as the Dirty Jobs jobs guy on the Discovery Channel. Now he’s filming the second season of “How America Works” on Fox Bussiness, showcasing the many individuals that work around the clock to keep the US economy humming.

During Monday’s “Fox and Friends” show, Rowe sat down with Steve Doocy to discuss out-of-control inflation. He said the tuckers he knows aren’t buying the “Putin Price Hike” narrative.

As the national average for diesel prices at the pump jump to a record high of $5.32 a gallon, Rowe said truckers are sending him pictures and videos of them filling up, spending more than a thousand dollars at a time.

"I get video almost every day now from people who we featured on 'Dirty Jobs" and 'How America Works.'

"They're just sending me videos of them at the gas pump and some of them are filling up 18-wheelers. And, I’m not kidding you, $1,100, $1,200.

"Most people, all we can think about is the price for us at a relative terms know it's awful. 

"When you put $1,200 in your gas tank and just six months ago it was costing you $600 or 700, the exponential reality of it is starting to sink in. You just can't walk that back. It touches every single thing that matters in this country. From food production to transportation … all of it," Rowe explained. 

Doocy then asked: “Are truckers buying the ‘Putin Price Hike’?”

Rowe responded by saying, “The ones I know aren’t… A guy said to me the other day, it’s like … falling down the stairs in slow motion. We’re watching it happen. It’s happening in real-time, and it’s not just diesel. It’s not just gasoline …”

He then explains that the rising cost of energy and fertilizer has resulted in higher food prices.

"But you have to talk about fertilizer too. … There's no food without fertilizer in this country. The cost of fertilizer is hundreds, hundreds of percent higher than it was. When you combine that with the cost of energy, the average person has now really gotten the memo, but not from the gas pump, from a restaurant, a steak. The cost of a steak is almost two times what it was six, seven months ago." 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has launched an information war against the American people to persuade them President Putin was responsible for inflation.

However, most people aren’t buying the Biden narrative. A new Rasmussen poll revealed, “76% of Republicans think Biden bears most responsibility for higher fuel prices, as do 24% of Democrats and 54% of voters not affiliated with either major party.”

China begin a series of meetings and policies to United States 21st century’s daylight robbing.

The world will soon follow.

By looting Russia so openly without basic principles and ethics, the west has destroyed the world trust on all its controlled institutions such as treasury debt, swift international banking/trading system, the propaganda of respecting private investment, free market… 

The world will soon having an alternative banking/trading system, moving their investment outside of the looter nations, the petrol dollar and euro will collapse, and the Western nations are in the process of escalating inflation, speeding up economic declines, rising unemployment, mass poverty, internal discontent and chaos… 

So long as they don’t start another world war, the new world order will be a fairer and more inclusive one:
China Regulators meet banks to discuss protecting assets from US sanction
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Cnooc (883 HK) Weighs Sale of $3 Billion U.K. North Sea Portfolio – Bloomberg
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China’s biggest insurer Ping An calls for breakup of HSBC – Nikkei Asia
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Pope says NATO may have caused Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – POLITICO

Article

United States continues its slide towards insanity

Florida mom filing suit after child transitioned at school without her consent: ‘Happening all over’ US

According to Littlejohn, her daughter, who was 13 years old at the time, expressed confusion over gender during the pandemic after a group of friends transitioned to the opposite sex.

She eventually found out the school was working on a “transgender support plan” with her child, but the school initially declined to allow her involvement given she was “protected by a nondiscrimination law.”

“Eventually we did see the transgender support plan, which was a six-page document that they completed with my daughter, that was 13 at the time behind closed doors, where they asked her questions that would have absolutely impacted her safety, such as which restroom she preferred to use and which sex she preferred to room with on overnight field trips,” Littlejohn said.

Liberalization means relaxing standards so individualism can thrive. You do that by finding lots of egregious examples, claiming their right to equality has been violated, and then using that to force everyone to abandon the rules. The driving force behind liberalism is anarchy, but the motivation behind that is a desire to abolish social hierarchy so that Leftists no longer have to pretend to be good.

Kiev Receiving Intel From . . . Israeli Mossad

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Ukraine has begun to receive intelligence from the Mossad.

Kyiv claims that the Israeli intelligence service is one of the best in the world and will allow the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to receive more intelligence about the plans of the Russian Armed Forces as part of a special operation in Ukraine.

That Kiev is now boasting this does not bode well for Israeli-Russian relations.

Watch for Israeli jets over Lebanon, attacking Syria, to suddenly suffer being shot down. . . .

Bigger news than I expected. Can it be true?

"I will Veto the invitation to Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO." 

- President of Croatia Zoran Milanovic.

Tweet in FULL

I wish it was this easy…

The easy to read fun and addictive comics by Joey Alison Sayers 624c02d822167 700
Comics by Joey Alison Sayers

Ah the entire West is pitching in

Israel to increase military, civilian aid to Ukraine – report – Israel News – The Jerusalem Post.

Article

Leftists OPENLY Call for Violence Following Leaked SCOTUS Abortion Ruling

The political left-wing appears to many people to be going out of their minds over the leaked, and now verified as real, Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.  Left-wingers are now OPENLY calling for extreme political violence – and they even say “political violence works!”

They don’t mince any words either:

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And

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And

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Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

You know, in June, 2009, I was arrested by federal agents for writing an editorial about a federal court of appeals ruling which called the three judges in that case “Traitors” to the constitution.”  It went on to quote Thomas Jefferson’s “Tree of Liberty” letter, which said “The tree of liberty must be replenished from time to time, with the blood of tyrants and patriot” and then opined, These judges deserve to be killed, their blood would replenish the tree of liberty, a small price to pay to assure freedom for millions.”

I was told at the time that because “someone (who read my editorial) might take my words to heart and take action” that I was guilty of a “threat.””  I said it was nothing more than an opinion.

I was arrested, held without bail, prosecuted in December, 2009 and the trial resulted in a HUNG JURY, 9 voted “not guilty.”

The government prosecuted me again in March, 2010, and again, HUNG JURY.

The government went on to prosecute me an astonishing THIRD TIME.  By then I was bankrupt and could not afford my lawyers, so I was given a public defender.   At trial #3 on Friday, August 13, 2010, I was convicted and sent to federal prison.  . . . . Because “someone might take my words to heart.

The twitter postings above openly call for arson attacks against the United States Supreme Court.   But these people are LEFT wingers, whereas I am a right winger.   Let’s all sit back and watch as the oh-so-noble US Justice department, does absolutely NOTHING to any of these people.

Me, they put in prison.  The folks above . . . I doubt they’ll even be visited by federal agents.

Just one more example of how flamboyantly corrupt our federal government actually is.

Captain Ron – The Movie – Best Scenes

Just a three minute clip from the 1990s comedy “Captain Ron”.

Russia Member of Parliament Declares United States ” A threat to the entire world”

Russian Member of Parliament (Duma)  Mikhail Sheremet  said publicly today that the U.S. developed coronavirus as a biological weapon.

Chinese media has also begun amplifying Russia’s claims about US biolabs in Ukraine and some Russian media outlets are broadcasting the allegations to the Russian citizenry.

In a shocking public statement, Member of Parliament Sheremet now says:

RUSSIANmp ustHREATtOeNTIREwORLD
RUSSIANmp ustHREATtOeNTIREwORLD

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Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

Clearly they are now beginning to build a public case to justify destroying the United States completely.  Nuclear first-strike?

MM Editorial Opinion

Of course it was an American bioweapon. Duh!

Of course, the justification for FIRST STRIKE is in the works. Didn’t you read the joint declairation on 4FEB22?

About those Ukraine mercenaries

Comment on ColonelCassad Telegram channel on the number of mercenaries in Ukraine and where many of them come from…

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, about seven thousand mercenaries from 63 countries of the world are currently in Ukraine.

All of them are objects of denazification.

The supply of "wild geese" to Nezalezhna, among others, is carried out by well-known American PMCs BlackWater and Black Water Security Consulting (aka Academy). It is not for nothing that they are called "America's second army", about 90% of the company's revenue is government orders. The main customer is the Pentagon.

England has its own, no less large, PMC - G4S, whose branches are located in more than 100 countries.

One can imagine the scale of deliveries of "soldiers of fortune" to be sent to Ukraine. And it is worth noting that, for the most part, not only professional active or retired military men go for adrenaline, but also all kinds of asocial elements who in their homeland have the prospect of being behind bars or catching a bullet in local gang wars.

https://t.me/RtrDonetsk/5410
(https://t.me/RtrDonetsk/5410)
@epoddubny

Russia’s GAZPROM and the Yamal-Europe Pipeline – Big News

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2022 05 03 13 54
2022 05 03 13 54

Russia’s Gazprom has not booked any capacity via the Yamal pipeline for Q3 (July, August, and September).

That translates into a complete shutdown of all Russia gas shipments to Europe just as summer ends and autumn begins.  If this remains the case, Europe would have to rely upon its reserves for October, November, and December – which NOT ONE European country has enough stored natural gas to do!

As it stands right now, many Europeans will freeze to death this coming winter, and much of Europe may not even have electricity because the power plants need natural gas to generate electric.

Clearly someone sees all-out-war on the horizon and are planning accordingly to deal with the enemy.

Chicken Parmesan Stuffed Shells

When chicken Parmesan meets stuffed shells, it’s love at first bite. The texture of the chicken holds up in the deliciously creamy and cheesy mixture. —Cynthia Gerken, Naples, Florida

Chicken Parmesan Stuffed Shells EXPS SDFM18 202025 C10 06 4b 4
Chicken Parmesan Stuffed Shells EXPS SDFM18 202025 C10 06 4b 4

Ingredients

  • 1 package (12 ounces) uncooked jumbo pasta shells
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil

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FILLING:

  • 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
  • 1 teaspoon salt, divided
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper, divided
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1/3 cup seasoned bread crumbs
  • 3 cups part-skim ricotta cheese
  • 1 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1/2 cup 2% milk
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley

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Chicken Parmesan Stuffed Shells.

ASSEMBLY:

  • 4 cups meatless pasta sauce
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 8 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced and halved

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375°. Cook shells according to package directions for al dente; drain. Toss with oil; spread in an even layer on a baking sheet.
  2. For filling, toss chicken with Italian seasoning, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat; saute chicken just until lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Reduce heat to medium; stir in butter until melted. Stir in bread crumbs; cook until crumbs are slightly toasted, 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cool slightly.
  3. In a large bowl, mix cheeses, milk, parsley and the remaining salt and pepper. Fold in chicken.
  4. Spread 2 cups pasta sauce into a greased 13×9-in. baking dish. Fill each shell with 2-1/2 tablespoons cheese mixture; place over sauce. Top with remaining sauce and cheeses (dish will be full).
  5. Cover with greased foil; bake 30 minutes. Uncover; bake until heated through, 10-15 minutes.

Notes:

  • Avoid overcooking the pasta. Shells are easier to stuff when al dente.
  • To fill shells easily, spoon the filling into a plastic storage bag. Cut a 1-inch hole in the corner and pipe the filling into the shells.
  • Coating the foil with cooking spray keeps it from sticking to the cheese on top.

Azov Battalion’s True Face

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April 25, 2022

Zaur – Military serviceman of Akhmat-Khadzhi Kadyrov’s Regiment:

It’s possible that before I came here, I doubted [the stories] a little bit. But back then when we freed the first prisoners from the house, which was directly situated nearby the Azovstal’ [factory], when those prisoners and civilians came out from the basements, they hugged and kissed us. And told us that they are happy to see us. They cried with tears in their eyes! I then realized that I ended up exactly for… (holding back emotions) what was needed. And I don’t doubt one drop that it was the right idea.

I remember that moment, that fragment which laid into my head, when we stormed a house where there were a lot of civilians, and many of those very Azov fighters. (Azov is an extremist organization that is banned in the territory of the Russian Federation.) A mother with her child runs outside, and we’re looking through binoculars. We can’t storm, we can’t enter, we can’t do anything. And then they shoot the mother in the spine. The mother falls… and we scream to the child: “RUN!!! RUN!!!” from all sides. The child froze, not understanding what to do. On one hand he wants to run, but on the other he wants to help his mother. And then suddenly his head, get this, this child’s HEAD gets shot by this scum, this evil BEAST. In this very moment, we all just suddenly forgot what death means, we forgot that there could be snipers there, just as a Crowd, Broke In! We threw smoke grenades so that they couldn’t see us. We broke in and just tore up all of them [fighters] that were inside. Well we got in there, but not just got in there. In the sense that people sacrificed their lives. Many soldiers sacrificed their lives in that moment. But we entered and fulfilled our task.

We could care less about our lives when we saw the life of a child being gone. When we realized that these are not people, but are animals, nothing less than beasts, that can allow themselves to… to kill a child. These are not people. Therefore I think that I ended up here exactly for the right reason. And everything that I have done here, I have done for these people who live right here and are smiling and hugging us. They even take the coordinates of where I live, as well as of my other fellow combat comrades, they want to come to our homeland and thank us for the liberation.

Air Raid Sirens Sounding in **ALL** of Western Ukraine

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So, Poland with NATO units want to move into Western Ukraine. And there are stockpiles of equipment and munitions waiting for them. Well.... not anymore! -MM

AirRaidSirens AllWesternUkraine 05 03 2022 large
All Western Ukraine

As of 10:00 AM EDT Tuesday, air raid sirens are sounding throughout ALL of western Ukraine.

It appears that the Russian air force is targeting **EVERY** warehouse storing western-supplied weapons and ammunition.

Fierce missile strikes are said to be taking place in literally “dozens” of locations at this hour.

Today’s voluminous air strikes come just hours after a leak from inside Poland indicated “[UNCONFIRMED] The Polish Army is ready to take control of strategic facilities in both Lviv and Volyn oblasts at a moments notice.”

Bloomberg Economists Recommend You To Stop Being Poor

$5200. That’s how much money we all need to “add to our budget” a year to make up for the inflation, according to Bloomberg economists. About $2,200 of that inflation tax will come from pricier food and energy, they added. And that, ladies and gentlemen, boils down to an extra $433 per month on the same goods and services as last year. So you better stop being poor immediately!

2022 05 03 21 10
2022 05 03 21 10

As you can suspect, the headline went viral on social media and in no time, and sarcastic reactions flooded Twitter with comments like “Should that come out of my caviar budget, or should I downsize my yacht?” and ” Should I make the third home a rental property?”

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2022 05 03 21 1vv4
2022 05 03 21 1vv4

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2022 05 03 21 17

Meanwhile, another set of news broke that corporations reported record profits, making 2021 their best year since 1950…

Rory Gallagher – Garbage Man Blues – Rockpalast Essen 1977

Wonderful blues, played by Rory Gallagher…

Canadian Army Lt. General Allegedly Captured in Mariupol Ukraine

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2022 05 03 13 56
2022 05 03 13 56

Unconfirmed reports, from various sources in Ukraine and Russia, claim that Canadian Forces Lt. General Trevor Cadieu has been captured by Russian Forces in Mariupol.

His capture allegedly occurred while he was attempting to escape the encircled Azovstal steel mill facility, through a sewer pipe.

If this report is confirmed, readers should be aware this guy is no average grunt going on an adventure. He was a Brigadier General and “retired” days before being promoted to the highest role in the Army.

UPDATE 9:43 AM EDT —

Additional unconfirmed CLAIMS have now surfaced which allege Lt. General Trevor Cadieu has been taken to Moscow to stand trial. He was also ALLEGEDLY in charge of Biolab No. 1, where 18 people worked with deadly viruses.

Jesus!

And the Canadian general dragged out from Azovstal…

From HERE – Translated from Russian

Today

Whether they caught him while trying to escape, or strained him through a strainer when checking civilians who came to the surface, – it doesn’t matter!

The main thing is that the general was really hiding in the dungeons and he was dragged by the scruff of the neck into the light of God.

Intelligence was wrong.

Intelligence reports that there are more than a dozen such underground rodents of foreign origin. And they did a lot of shit in Ukraine, otherwise why leave their precious treasures with such difficulty?

An attempt to escape was made the day before yesterday.

Yet, you know, in fact, the whole idea behind having humanitarian corridors was in order to make noise and, under the guise of refugees, allow foreign specialists to flow into the traps we set.

Trevor Kadier is an unbearably fine example of a “retiree”.

The general, who was expected to take a leading position in the Canadian Armed Forces, finds himself tainted with scandal as part of the struggle for a valuable seat, and as soon as the war begins in Eastern Europe, he loudly shouts “Glory to Ukraine!”

Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?

But this story was believed, it was actively promoted, the details of the sexual scandal were savored in order to create the maximum informational noise behind which one could hide the nuances.

  • Such people just like ordinary mercenaries and even instructors, having quit the army overnight, never go anywhere to go to war.
  • The very fact of the presence of a “retired” general among some neo-Nazi unit “Azov”, elite from the point of view of the collective West, is an explosive discovery.

First of all, for the Western world. The general, aiming for the chair of the commander-in-chief of the entire Canadian Armed Forces, among neo-Nazis (if presented correctly) is a very strong and win-win PR move for a Western audience.

There is no data yet on how he was brought to Azovstal, but earlier it was repeatedly reported about the “hysterical” attempts of Kyiv to take out someone very important from Azovstal, although it was not specified who they were talking about.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also pointed out the surprisingly stubborn nature of Kyiv’s attempts to take people out of Azovstal (despite the fact that Kyiv, in principle, does not particularly protect civilians and its own fighters).

According to sources in social networks, Kadia was taken to Moscow.

In addition to Kadia, there are obviously other specialists at Azovstal. Simply because for the sake of ordinary civilians in the bomb shelter at Azovstal, the collective West would not lift a finger: no one would arrange such a dance with tambourines!

Andrei Discusses the capture of this general

Good intel.

Slow-Cooker Chicken and Dumplings

If the idea of enjoying a warm bowl of homemade chicken and dumplings with less hands-on cooking time sounds like a delicious idea, that means it’s time to get out your slow cooker! The base for this easy recipe simmers for six hours in the slow cooker, resulting in tender, irresistible chicken in a stew of Progresso™ chicken broth, cream of celery soup and cream of chicken soup. Refrigerated biscuit dough makes for easy dumplings that are then combined with vegetables in the slow cooker for an extra hour and a half. Top this classic, flavorful slow-cooker chicken and dumpling recipe with a hard-boiled egg for an extra boost of protein and flavor. 

- Betty Crocker

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cd67fc1b 173e 4e91 82ad 462e63b818a2

Ingredients

  • 1 can (10 3/4 oz) condensed cream of chicken soup
  • 1 can (10 3/4 oz) condensed cream of celery soup
  • 3 1/2 cups Progresso™ chicken broth (from 32-oz carton)
  • 1 medium onion, finely chopped (1/2 cup)
  • 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (1 1/4 lb)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, cut into pieces
  • 1 cup frozen peas and carrots, thawed
  • 1 can (16.3 oz) large refrigerated homestyle buttermilk biscuits
  • 1/3 cup chopped fresh Italian (flat-leaf) parsley
  • 1 hard-cooked egg, chopped
  • Additional freshly ground pepper

Steps

  • 1
    Spray 5- to 6-quart slow cooker with cooking spray. In slow cooker, mix both soups, broth and onion. Arrange chicken in slow cooker. Sprinkle with salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Dot with butter.
  • 2
    Cover; cook on Low heat setting 6 hours. Uncover; shred chicken, using 2 forks. Stir in peas and carrots. Increase heat setting to High. Cover; cook while preparing dumplings.
  • 3
    On work surface, roll biscuits to flatten to 1/4-inch thickness. Cut each biscuit into 4 strips. Place strips in stew, pressing gently with back of spoon to submerge in liquid. Cover; cook on High heat setting 1 hour 30 minutes or until dumplings are thoroughly cooked. Sprinkle with parsley, egg and additional pepper.

2022 05 04 14 32
2022 05 04 14 32

Bullet Bras: A Fashion Trend From The 1940s And 1950s

The iconic and quite bizarre bullet bras first showed up in the 1940s, and were explicitly meant to accentuate a woman’s figure. Bullet bras were a key part of the whole “sweater girl” look (a busty and wholesome “girl next door” whose tight-fitting outergarments accentuated her artificially enhanced curves), popularized by midcentury movie stars like Lana Turner, Jayne Mansfield, and Jane Russell.

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bullet bras6

The other thing about bullet bras is (according to this brave reporter) they forced the wearer to stand up straight, at all times. Yeah, definitely not stiff or uncomfortable at all. We have a feeling that these women knocked over lots of drinks at cocktail parties.

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bullet bras7

By the 1950s the shape of many bullets bras had become extremely exaggerated, which necessitated pads (or falsies) to keep the cone cups from looking deflated when being worn. Well into the 1960s the bullet bra was still going strong. By the late 1960s and early 1970s a more natural silhouette had come into fashion and soft cup bras were selling more readily (and they were more comfortable, too).

bullet bras1
bullet bras1

Madonna brought the bullet bra back into popular culture with the Jean Paul Gaultier-designed costumes she wore for her Blonde Ambition tour in 1990. There are few old school makers of bullet bras still churning out these bras today. There’s even a whole new crop of cone bra makers for people who love vintage silhouettes, although this is admittedly a niche market in the post-Wonderbra era.

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bullet bras2

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She cannot wait for her fine cup of coffee.

A treasure to pass on to another generation…

2022 05 04 14 44
2022 05 04 14 44

New Record for Diesel Fuel Prices

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2022 05 03 14 07
2022 05 03 14 07

A new record has been set for national truck stop retail diesel at $5.28/gallon ($.81/mile).

An owner-operator doing 7000 miles per month and getting 6.5 MPG would have seen their fuel bill jump $1800/month since the start of the year.

This staggering price for diesel fuel will result in massive price increases for . . . . everything . . . because literally E V E R Y T H I N G, except electricity and natural gas, MUST, at some point, be transported by truck.

If you think prices for food are high now, just wait until these record-breaking diesel fuel costs are factored-in.

How To Cook Pan Seared Eye Of Round Steak

I Like my steak medium well done.You can make that perfect cheap steak into a delicious steak you will never want to skip dinner next time its cooked!

Recipe

  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 Tbsp butter
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 2 sprigs thyme

Turn to Stone – Roy Buchannan

Lordy! Yeah. This is one of the tunes that we used to “jam to” when at university.

Tucker: This is why Democrats are taking us to war with Russia

A surprisingly good opinion on FOX “news”. Why are the Democrat leadership risking war with Russia, and why are they setting up the United States to be involved in a “forever war” in Ukraine? Well, it’s American centric, but you know, it’s still asking the right questions.

Things to pass on…

2022 05 04 14 45
2022 05 04 14 45

Actually, I had a fine pair of “Electrician’s Scissors”. You can get them off the internet. They are massive, well made and built to last.

35088
Electrician’s Scissors

LAVROV: “RUSSIA WILL NOT TOLERATE THE THIEVING HABITS OF WESTERN COUNTRIES; WILL NOT ALLOW THEFT OF ITS MONEY EARNED FROM OIL AND GAS EXPORT “

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued a statement early Monday to western countries that have “frozen” or “Seized” the assets of Russia:

"RUSSIA WILL NOT TOLERATE THE THIEVING HABITS OF WESTERN COUNTRIES; WILL NOT ALLOW THEFT OF ITS MONEY EARNED FROM OIL AND GAS EXPORT."

For most observers who have been paying close attention to the temper tantrums of western governments over the Ukraine situation, it appears Lavrov is talking about Poland, who announced they were stealing Russian gas infrastructure to deliver Russian gas that Poland refuses to pay for.

Of course, Russia’s statement might also apply to nations that “froze” Russia’s sovereign wealth funds, gold bullion, central bank reserves, or grabbed assets of Russian oligarchs in an effort to coerce them into ousting Russian President Putin.

Lavrov did not get specific as to what thievery by the west, Russia is referring to.

In a dramatic turn of events last week, US President Joe Biden and his NATO allies have stepped up their policy of helping to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression, with a policy of undermining its own power and influence.

In this way, some observers fear, leaving Russian President Vladimir Putin with little choice but to surrender or double his military forces, increasing the likelihood of the war extending beyond Ukraine, according to a Foreign Policy analysis.

Biden said:

"I will not." 

"Do you ever manage to dominate Ukraine? "

In addition, Biden told the White House, the new policy was aimed at “punishing Russian aggression and reducing the risk of future conflicts.”

This was followed by an equally clear statement this week from US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who, following a meeting in Kiev with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, stated that the US goal now is to reduce (Russia’s) power.

The plan against Russia in the long run in one so that it does not have the “ability to replicate” its military attack on Ukraine.

"We want to see Russia weaken to the point where it can not do what it did with the invasion of Ukraine ,"

…said Austin of Poland.

The move may have prompted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to declare that Washington and the West have entered into a “proxy” war with Russia, risking another world war, which, as Lavrov warned, it could take nuclear form.

"The danger is serious, real. We must not underestimate him,"

Lavrov said.

The new US aggressive approach has garnered praise from many quarters, especially current and former NATO officials, who insist that Russia’s nuclear counter-threats are just empty rhetoric….

Now, some observers are worried that with extra help and tougher financial sanctions, the US president is pushing Putin into a corner from which he can only fight or surrender….

George Beebe, the former head of CIA analysis, said the Biden administration was in danger of forgetting that…

"The United States' most important national interest is to avoid a nuclear conflict with Russia."

He added that …

"The Russians have the ability to ensure that everyone else loses, if they lose too. And maybe there we go. It's a dangerous turn for us."

Ginseng Woman (full album) – Eric Gale [1977 Funk / Jazz]

I picked this up and have alsways admired the melodic sounds. My favorite on the album was / is “she is my lady“. Romantic, and uplifting. Deep and rich melodic and soothing sounds.

”]

TRANSCRIPT: Word-for-Word; Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov to Italian media

In November and December 2021, when Russia offered proposed security treaties for iron-clad, legally enforceable, security guarantees, over NATO’s continued expansion, the reply Russia received was “It’s none of your business.  We will expand NATO as we wish” and “we will not ask your permission.”  Hardly a “diplomatic” response.  So Russia entered Ukraine militarily.

Below is a full and complete TRANSCRIPT of Lavrov’s interview with Italian media.   This TRANSCRIPT is offered so readers can get the full context of Lavrov’s actual remarks, without any selective editing or “fear porn” headlines, as so many of the mass-media carry out nowadays.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

Question: After your statement about the possibility of a nuclear war, of the third world war, the whole world is asking: is there a real risk of that happening?

Sergey Lavrov: It looks like by the whole world you mean Western media and politicians. This is not the first time I note how skillfully the West twists what Russia’s representatives say. I was asked about the threats that are currently growing and about how real the risk of the third world war is. I answered literally the following: Russia has never ceased its efforts to reach agreements that would guarantee the prevention of a nuclear war. In recent years, it was Russia who has persistently proposed to its American colleagues that we repeat what Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan did in 1987: adopt a statement reaffirming that there can be no winners in a nuclear war, and therefore it must never be unleashed.

We failed to convince the Trump Administration, because it had its own ideas on this issue. However, the Biden Administration agreed to our proposal. In June 2021, at a meeting between President of Russia Vladimir Putin and US President Joseph Biden in Geneva a statement was adopted on the inadmissibility of a nuclear war. Let me stress: this was done at our initiative.

In January 2022, five permanent members of the UN Security Council adopted a similar statement at the highest level, also at our initiative: there can be no winners in a nuclear war. It must never be unleashed. In order to achieve this goal, President Vladimir Putin proposed convening a summit of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. This proposal was supported by our Chinese colleagues and France. The United States and the United Kingdom, which always defers to it, are holding back this important event for the time being.

After I said this, I urged everyone to exercise utmost caution not to escalate the existing threats. I was referring to the statement made by President Vladimir Zelensky in February that it had been a mistake for Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons and it was necessary to acquire them again. There was also a statement made by the leadership of Poland about their readiness to deploy American nuclear weapons on their territory, and much more.

Somehow there were no questions from the media about the statements made by Vladimir Zelensky and Poland. Or after the statement by Foreign Minister of France Jean-Yves Le Drian, who said suddenly: Let us not forget that France also has nuclear weapons. This is what I was talking about. When Western journalists take words out of context and distort the meaning of what I or other Russian representatives actually said, this does them no credit.

Question: Several days ago, President Vladimir Putin said Russia had “unparalleled weapons.” What did he mean?

Sergey Lavrov: Everyone knows this well. Three years ago, during his Address to the Federal Assembly, President Vladimir Putin presented the latest Russian innovations. First of all, these included hypersonic weapons. He gave a frank and detailed explanation that Russia began developing them after the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Back then President George W. Bush, answering the question why his country was destroying this essential document, which ensured global stability to a large extent, told President Vladimir Putin they were going to withdraw from the treaty to create an anti-missile system that would not be aimed against Russia. He said they were concerned about North Korea and Iran, and “you can do whatever you want in response.” They will also consider this as not aimed against the United States.

We had no choice but to work on hypersonic weapons because we knew perfectly well that the US missile defense system would not be aimed at North Korea and Iran but against Russia and then China. We needed weapons that were guaranteed to overpower missile defenses. Otherwise, a country that has missile defense systems and offensive weapons may be tempted to launch the first strike thinking that a response will be suppressed by its missile defense systems.

This is how we developed these weapons. They are described in detail in specialized publications. We don’t hide that we have them. We were even ready to hold talks with the US on including a discussion on the new systems that have already been developed or will be developed in the future in the treaty on strategic stability that would replace the current New START. Today the Americans have suspended all these talks. We will rely on our own resources.

Question: When UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was visiting Kiev, the city was hit by missile strikes. What would you say in response to Western media and President Vladimir Zelensky who regard these strikes as a provocation against the UN?

Sergey Lavrov: We gave constant warnings. When he announced the launch of the special military operation, President Vladimir Putin said it will be aimed against the military infrastructure in Ukraine used to oppress civilians in the east of the country and create a threat to the security of Russia. They know very well that we are attacking military targets in order to deprive the Ukrainian radicals and the Kiev regime of the opportunity to receive reinforcements in the form of weapons and ammunition.

On the other hand, I have not heard President Vladimir Zelensky say a word about a situation that is in no way related to either a military plant (whatever it is called) or any other military facilities. I mean the Tochka-U missile strikes at the center of Donetsk over the recent weeks, or the civil railway station in Kramatorsk and several other places, including Kherson (just the day before yesterday). The reason for these strikes was clearly to terrorize civilians and prevent the people living in these regions from deciding their fate. The majority of people there are tired from the oppression they have been suffering all these years from the Kiev regime, which is increasingly becoming a tool in the hands of neo-Nazis, the United States and its closest allies.

Those who came to power after a bloody unconstitutional coup launched a war against their own people and against everything Russian, banning the Russian language, education, and media. They adopted laws promoting Nazi theories and practice. We have warned them. All our warnings met a wall of silence. As we understand now, back then the West led by the United States already intended to encourage the Ukrainian leaders (Petr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky, who came after him) in every possible way in their desire to create threats for Russia.

Our warnings issued in November and December 2021 about the need to stop NATO’s reckless expansion to the east and agree on security guarantees that that will not be related to the accession of new countries to the military-political bloc were rejected. I would even say the answer we received was not very polite: “It’s none of your business,” “we will expand NATO as we wish,” and “we won’t ask for your permission.”

At the same time, the Ukrainian regime gathered about 100,000 troops along the conflict line with Donbass and intensified strikes thus violating the Minsk agreements and the ceasefire. We had no choice but to recognize these two republics, sign an agreement on mutual assistance with them and, upon their request, defend them from the militarists and Nazis who are flourishing in today’s Ukraine.

Question: This is how you see it, while Vladimir Zelensky puts it differently. He believes denazification doesn’t make any sense. He is a Jew. The Nazis, Azov – there are very few of them (several thousand). Vladimir Zelensky refutes your view of the situation. Do you believe Vladimir Zelensky is an obstacle to peace?

Sergey Lavrov: It makes no difference to me what President Vladimir Zelensky refutes or does not refute. He is as fickle as the wind, as they say. He can change his position several times a day.

I heard him say that they would not even discuss demilitarization and denazification during peace talks. First, they are torpedoing the talks just as they did the Minsk agreements for eight years. Second, there is nazification there: the captured militants as well as members of the Azov and Aidar battalions and other units wear swastikas or symbols of Nazi Waffen-SS battalions on their clothes or have them tattooed on their bodies; they openly read and promote Mein Kampf. His argument is: How can there be Nazism in Ukraine if he is a Jew? I may be mistaken but Adolf Hitler had Jewish blood, too. This means absolutely nothing. The wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews. “Every family has its black sheep,” as we say.

As for Azov, there is evidence being published now confirming that the Americans and especially the Canadians played a leading role in training the ultra-radical and clearly neo-Nazi units in Ukraine. During all these years, the goal was to insert neo-Nazis into the regular Ukrainian troops. Thus, the Azov fighters would play a leading role in every unit (battalion or regiment). I read such reports in Western media. The fact that the Azov battalion is clearly a neo-Nazi unit was recognized by the West without any hesitation until the situation in early 2022, when they began to change their minds as if on cue. Japan even apologized to Azov recently for having listed it as a terrorist organization a few years ago because of its neo-Nazi ideology.

Journalists (from some Western media outlet) interviewed Vladimir Zelensky and asked him what he thought about Azov and the ideas that Azov preaches and puts into practice. He said there were many such battalions and “they are what they are.” I would like to emphasize that this phrase – “they are what they are” – was cut out by the journalist and it was not included in the interview that was aired. This means the journalist understands what this person says and thinks. He thinks about how the neo-Nazis can be used to fight Russia.

Question: There are several thousand or perhaps tens of thousands of neo-Nazi militants. Can their presence excuse the denazification of a country with the population of 40 million? There are such battalions as the Wagner Group, who also draw inspiration from neo-Nazi ideas, serving with the Russian troops.

Sergey Lavrov: We have discussed the Wagner Group a number of times with those who are interested in this topic. Wagner is a private military company that has nothing to do with the Russian state. We explained this to our French colleagues, too; they started to get nervous when the Wagner Group agreed with the Mali government to provide security services. Back in September 2021, my esteemed colleague Jean-Yves Le Drian, as well as Joseph Borrell, said directly that Russia had no business in Africa, neither as a state nor with private military companies because Africa is the EU and France’s zone. This is what they said to me almost word for word.

We also explained the situation in Libya, whose authorities invited this private military company to the city of Tobruk, where the Libyan parliament is situated. Italy knows the Libyan situation very well. They are there on commercial terms, like in Mali. There is nothing like that in Ukraine, which has a huge number of mercenaries from Western countries. I believe the talk about the Wagner Group’s presence in Ukraine is nothing but a trick to distract attention from what our Western colleagues are doing. The situation around the confrontation at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, as well as the stubborn, even hysterical desire of Vladimir Zelensky, his team and their Western patrons to evacuate all these people and send them to Ukraine can be explained by the fact that there are many people there who would confirm that there are mercenaries and maybe even acting officers of Western armies on the side of the Ukrainian radicals.

You have asked whether the elimination of several dozen (even thousand) Nazis’ influence is worth putting a country with a population of 40 million at risk. This question is not entirely correct. It is a matter of Russia’s fundamental security interests. We have been talking about it for several decades. Long before the coup, the West came to Ukraine (this was 20 years ago) and began to tell them that on the eve of each election they must decide whose side they are on: Europe’s or Russia’s. Later they started encouraging the initiatives that the Ukrainian leadership promoted to be as unlike the Russian Federation as possible. I have mentioned the persecution of the Russian language and the Russian media, the shutdown of Russian-language television channels, the ban on the sale of any printed products in Russian (both from Russia and those published in Ukraine), the Russian Orthodox Church, which is a sacred institution in our state and society, and the adoption of laws to promote Nazi theories and practice. These laws are not adopted for several tens of thousands of militants in radical battalions, but for the whole country.

Western Ukraine stopped celebrating the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. It happened a long time ago. The latest developments have nothing to do with it. They started destroying monuments to those who liberated Ukraine from the Nazis when they started celebrating the birthdays of those who collaborated with Hitler as national holidays (Shukhevich, Bandera and others, Waffen-SS fighters). They started to celebrate as a national holiday the day when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was created, which was found guilty of collaborating with the Nazis at the Nuremberg Tribunal. This did not happen in the last two or three months but started many years ago. Even before the coup.

The coup took place the day after the French and Polish foreign ministers guaranteed a peaceful settlement in February 2014. The following morning, when the opposition overthrew the government, declared a hunt for the president and occupied the administrative building, we asked them why they could not use the power, the influence and authority of the EU to force the opposition to cooperate. The answer was incomprehensible: Viktor Yanukovych had left Kiev. Many people left their capitals. That same year, in 2014, there was a coup in Yemen. President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi also left the capital. The difference was that Viktor Yanukovych left Kiev for another city [in Ukraine], while Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia. Since that time and until recently, for eight long years, the entire progressive humanity headed by our European liberals demanded that President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi return as the legitimate leader of Yemen. But in Ukraine, when the President went to another city, there was no need to do anything anymore. We noted that the first statement made by those who staged the coup was about abolishing the regional status of the Russian language. They called on armed militants (also ultra-radicals) to storm the Supreme Council of Crimea. This is how it all began. Nobody wants to remember this now. The EU was humiliated by the thugs who seized power in Kiev following the coup just as the EU is now humiliated by its failure to enforce its decision to create a community of Serbian municipalities in Kosovo. With the EU’s mediation, Pristina and Belgrade agreed on this back in 2013, but the EU has shown its incompetence once again.

Question: What do you think Italy’s role is now?

Sergey Lavrov: Italy is at the forefront of those who not only adopt anti-Russian sanctions, but also put forward all sorts of initiatives. It was really strange for me to see it, but now we have become accustomed to the fact that Italy can be like that. I thought Italy and the Italian people have a slightly different view of their history and justice in the world, that they can tell the difference between black and white. I don’t want to be inaccurate, but in any case some statements made by politicians, not to mention articles in the media, go beyond all diplomatic and political propriety and far beyond journalistic ethics.

Question: Could you tell us what and who you are referring to?

Sergey Lavrov: Our embassy has sent us such materials and even filed a lawsuit because there was a violation of Italian law. I don’t want to go into detail now or repeat the nasty things that are being discussed. At least I don’t associate it with the Italian people, for whom I have the warmest feelings.

Question: Let us talk about the role of the United States. Joe Biden continues to openly support Ukraine, supply it with money and weapons; he says that there is an aggressor and Ukraine is under attack.

Sergey Lavrov: I have read a lot of things in the American and European media about the connections between Joe Biden’s family and Ukraine, so his attention to the current situation comes as no surprise. However, in addition to his personal interest, I cannot rule out that it is also about the fact that Washington is aware of the failure of its long-term strategy to turn Ukraine into a real threat to the Russian Federation and to make sure that Ukraine and Russia are not united and relations between them are not friendly.

In fact, this is not just about Joe Biden. When the Soviet Union broke up, the entire American elite was guided by the “legacy” of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who said Russia without Ukraine is just a regional power, nothing serious. They were guided by this logic when they pumped Ukraine with offensive weapons, encouraging its militarization with a clear anti-Russia slant in every possible way, and drawing it into dozens of annual military exercises under the auspices of NATO. Many of those exercises were held in Ukraine. In 90 percent of cases, they were directed against Russia. We can also see now that the United States wants to bring its “anti-Russia” project (as President Vladimir Putin said) to a conclusion. We are increasingly hearing statements that “Russia must be defeated,” “we must defeat Russia,” “Ukraine must win,” and “Russia must lose.”

We agreed to the talks at the request of Vladimir Zelensky, and they started to gain momentum. In March, agreements were outlined at a negotiators’ meeting in Istanbul, based on what Vladimir Zelensky said publicly. He said Ukraine was ready to become a neutral, non-bloc, non-nuclear country if it is provided with security guarantees. We were ready to work on this foundation given the understanding that the agreement would envisage that the security guarantees do not apply to Crimea and Donbass, as the Ukrainians had themselves suggested. Immediately after this proposal of theirs, which they signed and handed over to us, they changed their position. Now they are trying to hold talks in a different way. In particular, they want to receive security guarantees from the West first, although initially these guarantees should have been agreed upon by everyone together, including Russia.

When Vladimir Zelensky said he was ready for Ukraine’s neutral non-bloc status, he made a serious step forward, which we welcomed. However, after that, his ministers and the Parliament speaker of Ukraine started saying that they should receive security guarantees but the goal of joining NATO (as stated in their constitution) will remain. Now NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the British started saying that if the Ukrainians want to preserve this goal, they have the right to do so. This is what I am talking about.

Now even NATO does not suit the Americans. They didn’t hold their last meetings within the framework of NATO (a meeting on support for Ukraine), but simply gathered delegations, because NATO decisions are made by consensus, and they need to decide on all issues quickly and single-handedly.

Question: Perhaps their behavior was affected by what happened in Mariupol and Bucha. In both cases, you spoke about a staged production, a performance. But, for example, a few days ago CNN broadcast a video recorded by a drone on March 13, which shows that there were Russian troops on those streets with the bodies. Could this have caused a change in their approach? Where is the truth regarding these war crimes?

Sergey Lavrov: There is only one truth here. On March 30, Russian troops left Bucha. The following day, on March 31, Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk proclaimed victory in front of television cameras saying that the city had returned to normal life. Only three days later they began to show photographs of these bodies. I don’t even want to go into detail, because it is so obviously fake that any serious observer can see it at a glance.

I don’t know what affected the US. When the US declares solemnly and dramatically that it is impossible to endure “all this,” no one remembers how the US decided that there was a threat to its security 10,000 kilometers away from its borders: in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Yugoslavia in 1999. No one has any doubt that the US has the right to neutralize those made-up threats (like in Iraq, where it turned out to be fake) in any way it likes.

We warned many times over the years that they are posing a threat to the Russian borders, that this is a red line; we have been saying it for many years. They just nodded. But now I believe they thought the world should only listen to the US, because NATO and the entire European Union accepted that their master sits in Washington. And Washington decided that the world should be unipolar. If you read the statements made by their Secretary of the Treasury, for example, they say so directly.

Question: Several days ago, your Ministry published a photo of your predecessor, Andrey Gromyko, meeting with Pope Paul VI. Is this a call for Pope Francis to act as mediator?

Sergey Lavrov: I think it was simply the anniversary of their meeting. The Foreign Ministry is posting photos of events from 20, 30, or 40 years ago on its social media accounts.

Question: Who can bring peace? Is there such a person, institute, or country? President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and President of France Emmanuel Macron, and Prime Minister of Italy Mario Draghi have tried. Who can get a peace process started that will result in Russia, the West and Ukraine signing a treaty?

Sergey Lavrov: It is a good question, but long overdue. All problems could have been solved peacefully by Petr Poroshenko who was elected in 2014 under the slogan “Peace in Donbass.” Then he started the war. It could have been solved by Vladimir Zelensky. During his election campaign, he presented himself as the “president of peace.” In December 2019, he promised to fulfill the Minsk agreements and adopt a law granting a special status to Donbass within the unbroken territorial integrity of Ukraine. He had every chance. All the cards and even the trump cards were in his hands.

Vladimir Zelensky chose to say publicly and arrogantly that he will never abide by the Minsk agreements because allegedly this would mean the fall of the Ukrainian nation and state. Everyone who drafted and approved the Minsk agreements at the UN Security Council kept silent. They said that he could stop implementing them if he wanted but Russia should continue to. That’s who could have brought peace.

Vladimir Zelensky can also bring peace now if he stops giving illegal orders to his neo-Nazi battalions and makes them release all civilians and stop resisting.

Question: Do you want Vladimir Zelensky to surrender? Is this the condition for peace?

Sergey Lavrov: We are not demanding that he surrender. We are demanding that he give the order to release all civilians and to stop resisting. Our goal does not include regime change in Ukraine. This is the specialty of the US. They do it all over the world.

We want to ensure the safety of people in eastern Ukraine, so that they won’t be threatened by militarization and nazification and that no threats against the Russian Federation emanate from Ukrainian territory.

Question: Italy is concerned that Russia is suspending gas supplies. What is going on?

Sergey Lavrov: A simple thing that all the critics of our actions and everyone who condemns us these days do not want to talk about for some reason. Money was stolen from us (over $300 billion). Just stolen. A large part of the sum was payment for gas and oil supplies. It was only possible because Gazprom had to keep money in accounts in Western banks (according to your rules). They wanted to punish Russia, so they stole it.

Now they suggest we continue trading as before, and the money remains in their accounts. They will steal it again when they want to. This is the reason. Somehow no one talks about it. What happened to honest journalism?

What we are now proposing is that supplies should be considered paid for not when Gazprombank receives euros or dollars but when they are converted into roubles, which cannot be stolen. That’s the entire story. Our partners know this very well. Note that nothing changes for the buyers. They still pay the sums specified in the contract in euros and dollars. It is converted after that.

We have no right to let our own people down and allow the West to keep up its thieving ways.

Question: There is a lot of speculation in the West about President Vladimir Putin’s health.

Sergey Lavrov: Please ask foreign leaders who have talked with President Putin recently, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. I think you will see what I mean.

Question: May 9 is nearing. You will be celebrating the liberation from Nazism in 1945. Moscow is holding a parade. What will happen by this time? Is the end of the “war” near?

Sergey Lavrov: There was a tradition in the Soviet Union, to do something big and loud for some holiday. Our actions in Ukraine are focused solely on the objectives I have mentioned. They were set forth by President of Russia Vladimir Putin: to protect civilians and ensure their safety, and neutralize threats to them and to Russia related to offensive weapons and nazification, which the West is trying hard to downplay.

I have seen reports on NBC and read the American magazine National Interest. Serious articles are beginning to appear there, warning and cautioning against flirting with the Nazis like in 1935-1938.

Question: Will the conflict end by May 9? Is there any reason to hope it will?

Sergey Lavrov: Our servicemen will not artificially time their actions to any date, including Victory Day.

We will solemnly observe May 9, like we always do. We will remember everyone who died to liberate Russia and other former USSR republics, to liberate Europe from the Nazi plague.

The pace of the operation in Ukraine depends first of all on the need to minimize risks for civilians and Russian military personnel.

“Barber Chair, 100 Years Old And Reconditioned!”

Imagine having this glorious chair!

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1651567873 4uqbjk30lr

America Is About To Explode With Emotion, But Overturning Roe Wouldn’t Actually Change Much

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Before you get upset with my headline, please read my analysis.  I think that overturning Roe v. Wade is long overdue, and it is an absolutely wonderful thing for our country.  But as I will explain in this article, that step alone won’t dramatically change the number of abortions that are performed in the United States.  In most blue states, the abortion industry will continue to operate normally, and in most red states the anti-abortion laws that will be implemented will not cover most abortions.

Democrats in Congress would like to “codify Roe v. Wade” on the federal level, but in this article I am going to assume that they don’t have the votes in the U.S. Senate to either get rid of the filibuster or to pass such a law with the filibuster in place.

If both of those assumptions are correct, then the individual states will get to make their own determinations about the legality of abortion once Roe v. Wade is overturned.  Some prominent news sources are running greatly exaggerated stories about what will happen if that takes place.  For example, the following comes from NBC News

Abortion rights would be up to the states if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Two-dozen states and territories would ban it immediately, and 13 have “trigger laws” waiting for the ruling.

What you just read is false.

Abortion will not be completely banned in two dozen states if Roe is overturned.  Whoever wrote that doesn’t know what they are talking about.

So let me take this one step at a time and try to explain precisely what would happen.

The states of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin have abortion laws on their books that existed before Roe v. Wade was decided.  Needless to say, not all of those states would enforce those old laws if Roe is overturned.  In particular, I know that the Democratic governors of Michigan and Wisconsin are quite determined not to enforce those old laws.

There is another group of states that have passed “trigger laws” that will go into effect after Roe v. Wade is overturned.  These are the states in that category: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.

As you can see, the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas are in both groups.

There are other states that have passed laws that partially restrict abortion in recent years, and most of those laws have been struck down by the courts.  But if Roe is overturned, those laws would theoretically become enforceable.

But none of the state laws that have been passed since Roe v. Wade was decided are designed to totally ban abortion.  Some would restrict legal abortion to the first six weeks, while other laws have deadlines of eight, fifteen or twenty weeks.  Here is how that breaks down by state…

Six weeks: Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas

Eight weeks: Missouri

Fifteen weeks: Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi

Twenty weeks: Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska and North Carolina

Some states appear multiple times, and that is because more than one law that restricts abortion was passed in those particular states in recent years.

I know that all of this can be confusing, but the bottom line is that a bunch of laws that restrict abortion will go into effect in a number of red states once Roe is overturned.

However, these laws are not going to cover most of the abortions that happen in those states.

According to the CDC, 66 percent of all abortions happen during the first eight weeks of pregnancy.

And approximately 90 percent of all abortions occur within the first 13 weeks.

So once these laws are implemented, even in the red states the abortion industry will continue to pretty much operate as normal.

Once Roe is overturned, we will desperately need state laws that completely ban abortion, and that may be attempted in a small handful of states.

But overall, women that get pregnant are still going to be able to run over to Planned Parenthood and terminate the lives of their children.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am very excited that Roe v. Wade is being overturned, but that isn’t the end of the battle.

In fact, it is just the beginning.

Ultimately, if we ever hope to end abortion in America, we have got to change millions upon millions of hearts.

Because right now most polls show that Americans want to keep Roe by about a two to one margin.  In fact, another such poll was just released

Washington Post-ABC News poll published Tuesday found that a majority of Americans support the Supreme Court upholding Roe v. Wade. The poll, conducted last week, found 54% of Americans support upholding Roe, while 28% support overturning it. The poll found 18% had no opinion.

Those numbers are extremely sad.

And unfortunately there is a tremendous amount of passion and energy on the pro-abortion side.

In the last 24 hours, there have been lots of very angry leftists on social media that have been openly threatening to start burning things down.  Here is one example.

2022 05 04 13 59
2022 05 04 13 59

Here is another…

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2022 05 04 14 0xxx0

You can see even more examples of what I am talking about here, here and here.

We are going to witness a national temper tantrum of epic proportions, but most of those that are upset actually live in blue states where access to abortion will continue on as normal.

And even in the reddest of the red states most abortions that happen now will still be permitted.

If anyone should be infuriated, it should be those on the pro-life side of the debate.  Because if we keep going down the road that we are currently on, there isn’t going to be an America.

Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, more than 60 million babies have been “terminated”.

Their blood is crying out for justice, but at this point only a small minority of Americans actually want Roe to be overturned.

Remember these?

nostalgic for the past 13
Jarts.

Authentic New Orleans Cajun Chicken Gumbo with Justin Wilson

This is a real treat. I hope that you all appreciate the tastes, flavors and cultures of the Deep, Deep South in Lousiana, USA. Authentic? You betcha!

If you cannot understand his language, it’s actually Cajun-American-English and his accents are derived from Cajun-French. When he speaks about making “roo”, hes’ referring to making a “roux”.

Roux is flour and fat cooked together and used to thicken sauces. Roux is typically made from equal parts of flour and fat by weight.

I hope you enjoy the video. Sorry about the video quality, but its awesome, anyways.

Do you remember?

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1563887966 1f6jmoztv5

They Can Print Money, But They Can’t Print Food

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

Whenever there is some sort of a major crisis, our politicians normally attempt to solve it by spending money.  But in this case, that isn’t going to work.  Our leaders can try to throw billions or even trillions of dollars at the global food crisis, and they may even convince themselves that they are making a difference.  However, the truth is that they simply cannot create food out of thin air.  As I discussed last week, we are facing a worldwide nightmare of epic proportions.  Fertilizer prices have spiked to absurd levels, extremely bizarre weather patterns are playing havoc with crop production all over the planet, and the war in Ukraine has caused a growing supply crunch that will not be resolved any time soon.

There simply is no “magic wand” that our politicians can wave that will make this problem go away.

Even before 2022 came along, global food supplies were getting really right.  In fact, it is being reported that more than 800 million people did not have enough food to eat in 2020…

The world was already rife with hunger before Covid-19 struck. In 2020, up to 811 million people – nearly one in 10 people – did not have enough food. And now the world is hurtling towards an unprecedented hunger crisis.

Global hunger increased steadily during the COVID pandemic, and now a whole host of other factors are accelerating matters.  At this point even Joe Biden is admitting that the coming food shortages are “going to be real”, and his administration just announced that a whopping 670 million dollars will be directed to nations where things have already become quite desperate

Today, the Biden Administration announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are taking the extraordinary step to draw down the full balance of the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust (BEHT) as part of an effort to provide $670 million in food assistance to countries in need as a result of Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. The world is suffering from historic levels of global food insecurity, which is being exacerbated by the impact Russia’s war on Ukraine is having on global food supplies.

When all of that money is gone, Joe Biden will inevitably ask for more.

But he can’t conjure up more food out of nothing.  All he can do is to redistribute whatever is available.

And with each passing day, this growing crisis just seems to get even worse.

Last month, I wrote a long article about the series of mysterious fires that are happening at food industry facilities all over the United States.  Since then, there have been more fires, including a fire that happened at a Perdue Farms facility in Virginia on Saturday evening

A fire took place at Perdue Farms facility in the South Norfolk area of Chesapeake Saturday evening.

The Chesapeake Fire Department is currently working on an industrial fire at the grain processing and storage facility.

Firefighters received a call at 501 Barnes Road at 8:41 p.m. after a plant operator at Perdue acknowledged and verified a fire at the location. All employees from the area were evacuated.

Why are so many important food processing facilities suddenly erupting in flames?

I think that all of us would like an answer to that question.

Meanwhile, weather conditions continue to be a massive headache for farmers in the middle of the country.  On Friday, a huge tornado ripped through an important area of rural Kansas…

Following a devastating tornado that crashed down in Andover, Kansas, 40 million Americans remain under severe storm threat as two separate weather systems move through over a dozen states.

On Friday a devastating tornado ripped through Kansas leaving the city of Andover with extensive damage as it leveled multiple homes and damaged the Capital Federal Amphitheater and the local YMCA, which saw part of its roof collapse, KWCH reported.

On the other side of the globe, extreme heat is the major problem right now.

In India, an unprecedented heat wave threatens to significantly reduce wheat production

An unusually early, record-shattering heat wave in India has reduced wheat yields, raising questions about how the country will balance its domestic needs with ambitions to increase exports and make up for shortfalls due to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Since the depths of the pandemic, the price of wheat has more than doubled, and many experts are anticipating that it will go a lot higher from here.

Of course fertilizer prices have been going up even faster.  Some fertilizer prices have more than tripled, and as a result much less fertilizer will be used all over the globe this growing season.

In Brazil, one of the largest farming companies just announced that it will be substantially reducing the amount of fertilizer that it uses in 2022…

Soaring prices for industrial fertilizer have forced one of Brazil’s largest farmers to initiate plans to reduce nutrient spreading on fields by at least a quarter in 2022-23, according to Bloomberg.

SLC Agricola SA, which manages soybeans, corn, and cotton fields in an area larger than the state of Delaware, will reduce the use of fertilizer by 20% and 25%, Chief Executive Officer Aurelio Pavinato said.

Needless to say, similar things are happening all over the planet.

Just check out these examples

Coffee farmers in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, some of the largest coffee-producing countries, are expected to spread less fertilizer because of high costs and shortages. A coffee cooperative representing 1,200 farmers in Costa Rica predicts coffee output could slip 15% next year because of soaring fertilizer costs.

The International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) warned a reduction in fertilizer use would shrink yields of rice and corn come harvest time. Farmers in China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam — the largest rice-producing countries — are spreading less fertilizer, and may result in a 10% reduction in output, equating to about 36 million tons of rice, or enough food to feed a half billion people.

When more fertilizer is used, yields are higher and more food is produced.

When less fertilizer is used, yields are smaller and less food is produced.

In 2022, global food production will be way below original expectations.

In other words, there isn’t going to be enough food for everyone.

The worldwide famine that I have been warning about for years is now here.

The way that we produce our food is not sustainable, and experts have known about this for a very long time.  It was inevitable that a day of reckoning would come, and now recent events have greatly accelerated matters.  And the truly frightening thing is that many of the factors that are causing this crisis are not going to go away any time soon.

So if you think that things are bad now, just wait until we get a couple more years down the road…

Amish Organic Farmer Faces Hefty Fine, Jail Time for Producing Clean Meat

When America used to be “free”…

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1563887978 ljwmbtwawy

Jim Capaldi – Whale Meat Again

I think I was 16 years old when I bought this album. This is the song that inspired me to purchase this album. Classic. It brings me back…

Interesting Article

Interesting post on the Rybar Telegram channel from @econopocaypse… On the consequences of Russia cutting the US off from uranium supplies…

On the situation in the world uranium market

We all remember very well the Russian-American agreement on the processing and supply of uranium, which was signed in February 1993 by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Vice President Al Gore. Russia pledged to supply the United States with low-enriched uranium (LEU) obtained from 500 tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) for 20 years. The Americans also pledged to accept, place on the market, pay for the work of separation and the natural uranium component of LEU. The first delivery of low-enriched uranium to the United States was made in May 1995, and the last on November 14, 2013. In total, 14,446 tons of LEU were exported under the Gor-Chernomyrdin deal. This far exceeds the total amount of uranium produced in the United States in history.

An agreement was also signed between the Russian Federation and the United States on processing part of weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear power plants. At the time of its conclusion, there were 125 tons of plutonium in the Russian Federation, and 100 tons in the USA. It was supposed to process 34 tons on each side. The Russian side fulfilled its part of the agreement, and the United States, in violation of the agreements, changed the technology and retained the possibility of "recovering" reprocessed plutonium into weapons-grade plutonium, in connection with which Russia withdrew from the agreement.
The situation led to huge financial losses, approximately $8 trillion. Russia lost its position in the uranium market for decades.

Sanctions have not yet affected uranium supplies from Russia. The United States continues to want to receive this raw material. If supplies stop, all US nuclear power will have to stop in a year. The consequences will be catastrophic for the States. 

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that by the end of 2020, about 90% of the uranium used in the United States is imported. Of these, 47% - for supplies from Kazakhstan, Russia and Uzbekistan. For American nuclear power plants, 48.9 million pounds of uranium oxide U3O8 were purchased. Of this volume, the United States produced only 5 million pounds on its own.

The uranium market in the US is controlled by two large groups of suppliers. Canada and Australia supply 34%. Russia and Kazakhstan 38.6%. In the state corporation Kazatomprom, controlling stakes in uranium mines in Kazakhstan belong to Rosatom. Kazakh uranium is enriched at Russian plants.

Of the 440 power units in the world, 93 are located in the United States. And the only commercial uranium enrichment facility in New Mexico was commissioned in 2010. It is owned by Urenco (https://www.urenco.com/contact) headquartered in the UK. Most of the uranium processed for industrial use in the United States is supplied by Urenco. It is impossible to quickly increase production and enrichment of uranium.

The officially explored uranium reserves in America are only 1% of the world's, although some of the reserves may not be "declared". The prospect of imposing sanctions on uranium supplies could cut off the EU and the US from nuclear fuel from Russia.

Fuel for nuclear power plants in the United States will last for about a year. What's next? Only an uncontrolled rise in the cost of uranium on the "free" market. Rosatom accounts for 35% of the world production of enriched uranium. 55 American nuclear power plants with a total capacity of 95.5 GW generate 19.7% of electricity in the United States. There is nothing to compensate for this volume, since there are no spare capacities in the USA. For the time needed to increase production and enrichment, nuclear power plants will still have to be closed. And stopping so many reactors at the same time and safely is a very difficult task.

Since a full-scale economic war is now being waged against Russia, it is necessary to consider all possibilities for protection, including cutting off uranium supplies to the US and the EU. Of course, for Russia this will mean the loss of a large market. But one should not repeat Chernomyrdin's mistakes for the sake of short-term gain. A new market will be formed on more favorable terms for Russia, among the potential participants of which are India, China and Iran.

Do you remember?

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In the day…

Slow-Cooker Pork Ragu

This slow-cooked pasta sauce goes well beyond the average spaghetti topper with all-day slow-cooked flavor. Pork shoulder, bacon and aromatic vegetables cook in a crushed tomato sauce and thicken to a hearty, rich consistency that pairs well with rigatoni pasta in particular. Make it a day ahead when you have some extra time, and let the flavors mellow and meld—or just be sure to save some leftovers! This take on a classic Italian sauce is sure to impress your dinner table regulars and special guests alike. – Betty Crocker

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Slow cooker Pork Ragu

Ingredients

  • 8 slices applewood smoked bacon, chopped (half of a 12-oz package)
  • 1 1/2 lb boneless pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 1/2 cups chopped onions
  • 2 cups chopped carrots
  • 5 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
  • 1/2 cup Progresso™ chicken broth (from 32-oz carton)
  • 1 can (28 oz) Muir Glen™ organic fire roasted crushed tomatoes, undrained
  • 6 cups cooked rigatoni pasta (about 4 1/2 cups uncooked)
  • Shredded Parmesan cheese, if desired
  • Chopped fresh oregano leaves, basil or Italian (flat-leaf) parsley, if desired

Steps

  • 1
    Spray 5-quart slow cooker with cooking spray.
  • 2
    In 5-quart Dutch oven, cook bacon over medium-high heat 10 to 12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until browned and crisp. With slotted spoon, remove bacon to small bowl.
  • 3
    Season pork with 1/2 teaspoon of the salt and 1/4 teaspoon of the pepper. Add half of the pork to bacon drippings in Dutch oven, and cook 4 to 6 minutes, turning occasionally, until browned. With slotted spoon, remove pork from Dutch oven to slow cooker. Repeat with remaining pork.
  • 4
    Add onions, carrots, remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper to Dutch oven; cook 3 to 4 minutes, stirring frequently, until softened. Stir in garlic and oregano; cook 30 seconds. Add broth; heat to simmering, stirring to remove brown bits on bottom. Transfer mixture to slow cooker with pork. Stir in tomatoes and bacon.
  • 5
    Cover; cook on Low heat setting 8 to 10 hours or until pork is tender and easily falls apart. Before serving, shred pork with two forks. Serve over cooked pasta. Garnish with Parmesan cheese and chopped fresh herbs.

2022 05 04 14 20
2022 05 04 14 20

Neil Young – Cortez the Killer (Live)

Stunning performance by Neil Young.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
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Gumbo, Girls, Ghosts, and a Heck of a thing to just have sitting around

Gosh. It’s a really crazy world right now, eh? I’ve really been shaken by some of the writings by the United States neocons. They are advocating limited nuclear strikes to “put China in line, and in its place”. Jesus. H. Christ. They have absolutely no idea of what they advocating. It’s horrific.

I’m convinced, now more than ever, that these people have NEVER actually ever been in a situation where they had to deal with blood-thirsty, dead-ass serious, lethal, killers with their back to the wall…

…they are fixing to discover what it is like.

‘Ghost of Kyiv’ hero fighter pilot was myth, Ukraine admits

Of course.

But, it’s nice to know that some one in the many thousands of writers for the big mainsteam media has dusted off their journalistic diplomas and doing some actual “reporting”, for a change.

From HERE.

Mike Pompeo advocates crossing China’s RED LINES

He’s a grandstanding idiot who is going to get many, many Americans killed.

This is an immediate trigger for war. This is a Chinese RED LINE, and will result in immediate war.

 

2022 05 02 14 12
war 2022 05 02 14 12

He must believe that he has a seat reserved inside some kind of a nuclear bunker. Eh?

Russia is under attack by Western military operating inside of Russia

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Vladimir Putin has officially declared a state of emergency in the Belgorod region for 60 days.  Reason: The Russian Federation is “under attack” from either foreign military, mercenaries of that foreign military, or terrorists.”  Key point: Russia is “under attack.”

Machine auto-translated from image, so font size and scaling is “off.”

2022 05 02 15 03
2022 05 02 15 03

It isn’t hard to see where this is leading.  If Russia is “under attack” they have a right to defend themselves, right?  A formal declaration of war, perhaps?

On the Edge of a Nuclear Abyss

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Two days after Russia attacked Ukraine and the day before Vladimir Putin put Russia on nuclear alert, I wrote a little article whose first sentence was: “Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia.”

It was an intuition based on my knowledge of U.S./Russia history, including the U.S engineered coup in Ukraine in 2014, and a reading of current events. I refer to it as intuition, yet it is based on a lifetime’s study and teaching of political sociology and writing against war. I am not a Russian scholar, simply a writer with a sociological, historical, and artistic imagination, although my first graduate academic study in the late 1960s was a thesis on nuclear weapons and why they might be someday used again.

It no longer sounds hyperbolic to me that madmen in the declining U.S. Empire might resort, like rats in a sinking ship, to first strike use of nuclear weapons, which is official U.S. policy. My stomach is churning at the thought, despite what most experts say: that the chances of a nuclear war are slight. And despite what others say about the Ukraine war: that it is an intentional diversion from the Covid propaganda and the Great Reset (although I agree it achieves that goal).

My gut tells me no; it is very real, sui generis, and very, very dangerous now.

The eminent scholar Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research agrees that we are very close to the unthinkable. In a recent historical analysis of U.S.-Russia relations and nuclear weapons, he writes the following before quoting Vladimir Putin’s recent statement on the matter. “Vladimir Putin’s statement on February 21st, 2022 was a response to U.S. threats to use nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis against Russia, despite Joe Biden’s “reassurance” that the U.S. would not be resorting to ‘A first strike’ nuclear attack against an enemy of America”:

Let me [Putin] explain that U.S. strategic planning documents contain the possibility of a so-called preemptive strike against enemy missile systems. And who is the main enemy for the U.S. and NATO? We know that too. It’s Russia. In NATO documents, our country is officially and directly declared the main threat to North Atlantic security. And Ukraine will serve as a forward springboard for the strike.” (Putin Speech, February 21, 2022, emphasis added) 

Putin is absolutely correct. It is why he put Russia’s nuclear forces on full alert. Only those ignorant of history, which sadly includes most U.S. Americans, don’t know this.

I believe that today we are in the greatest danger of a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, something I vividly remember as a teenager. The same feelings return. Dread. Anxiety. Breathlessness. I do not think these feelings are misplaced nor they are simply an emotional response. I try to continue writing on other projects that I have started but feel stymied. The possibility of nuclear war, whether intentional or accidental, obsesses me.

In order to grasp this stomach-churning possibility within the context of Ukraine, we need to put aside all talk of morality, rights, international law, and think in terms of great power politics, as John Mearsheimer has so clearly articulated. As he says, when a great power feels its existence is threatened, might makes right. You simply can’t understand world politics without thinking at this level. Doing so does not mean justifying the use of might; it is a means of clarifying the causes of wars, which start long before the first shots are fired.

In the present crisis over Ukraine, Russia clearly feels existentially threatened by U.S./NATO military moves in Ukraine and in eastern Europe where they have positioned missiles that can be very quickly converted to nuclear and are within a few minutes range of Russia. (And of course there are U.S./NATO nuclear missiles throughout western and southern Europe.) Vladimir Putin has been talking about this for many years and is factually correct. He has reiterated that this is unacceptable to Russia and must stop. He has pushed for negotiations to end this situation.

The United States, despite its own Monroe Doctrine that prohibits another great power from putting weapons or military forces close to its borders, has blocked its ears and kept upping the ante, provoking Russian fears. This fact is not in dispute but is shrugged off by U.S./NATO as of little consequence. Such an attitude is pure provocation as anyone with a smidgeon of historical awareness knows.

The world was very lucky sixty years ago this October when JFK and Nikita Khrushchev negotiated the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis before the world was incinerated. Kennedy, of course, was intensely pressured by the military and CIA to bomb Cuba, but he resisted. He also rejected the insane military desire to nuke the Soviet Union, calling such people crazy; at a National Security Council meeting on September 12, 1963, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented a report about a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union which they wanted for that fall, he said, “Preemption is not possible for us.”

Such leadership, together with the nuclear test ban treaty he negotiated with the USSR that month, inter alia (such treaties have now been abrogated by the U.S. government), assured his assassination organized by the CIA. These days, the U.S. is led by deluded men who espouse a nuclear first strike policy, which tells one all one needs to know about the danger the world is in. The U.S. has been very sick with Russia hatred for a long time.

After the terror of the Cuban Missile Crisis, many more people took the threat of nuclear war seriously. Today very few do. It has receded into the ”unimaginable.” In 1962, however, as James W. Douglass writes in JFK and the Unspeakable:

Kennedy saw that, at least outside Washington, D.C., people were living with a deeper awareness of the ultimate choice they faced. Nuclear weapons were real. So, too, was the prospect of peace. Shocked by the Cuban Missile Crisis into recognizing a real choice, people preferred peace to annihilation. 

Today the reality of nuclear annihilation has receded into unconsciousness. This despite the recent statements by U.S. generals and the U.S. Ukrainian puppet Zelensky about nuclear weapons and their use that have extremely inflamed Russia’s fears, which clearly is intentional. The game is to have some officials say it and then deny it while having a policy that contradicts your denial. Keep pushing the envelope is U.S. policy. Obama-Biden reigned over the U.S. 2014 coup in Ukraine, Trump increased weapon sales to Ukraine in 2017, and Biden has picked up the baton from his partner (not his enemy) in this most deadly game. It is a bi-partisan Cold War 2, getting very hot. And it is the reason why Russia, its back to the wall, attacked Ukraine. It is obvious that this is exactly what the U.S. wanted or it would have acted very differently in the leadup to this tragedy. All the current ringing of hands is pure hypocrisy, the nihilism of a nuclear power never for one moment threatened but whose designs were calculated to threaten Russia at its borders.

The media propaganda against Russia and Putin is the most extreme and extensive propaganda in my lifetime. Patrick Lawrence has astutely examined this in a recent essay, where he writes the same is true for him:

Many people of many different ages have remarked in recent days that they cannot recall in their lifetimes a more pervasive, suffocating barrage of propaganda than what has engulfed us since the months that preceded Russia’s intervention. In my case it has come to supersede the worst of what I remember from the Cold War decades. 

Engulfed is an appropriate word. Lawrence rightly points to this propaganda as cognitive warfare directed at the U.S. population (and the rest of the world) and notes its connection to the January 2021 final draft of a “diabolic” NATO study called “Cognitive Warfare.” He quotes it thus: “The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century,” . . . “Humans are the contested domain. Cognitive warfare’s objective is to make everyone a weapon.”

This cognitive warfare, however, has a longer history in cutting edge science. For each successive decade beginning with the 1990s and a declaration from President (and ex-Director of the CIA) George H. W. Bush that the 1990s would be the Decade of Brain Research, presidents have announced additional decades long projects involving the brain, with 2000-2010 being the Decade of Behavior Project, followed by mapping of the brain, artificial intelligence, etc. all organized and funded through the Office of Science and Technology Project (OSTP) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This medical, military, and scientific research has been part of a long range plan to extend MK-Ultra’s mind control to the population at large under the cover of medical science, and it has been simultaneously connected to the development and funding of the pharmaceutical industries research and development of new brain-altering drugs. RFK, Jr. has documented the CIA’s extensive connection to germ and mind research and promotion in his book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. It is why his book is banned from the mainstream media, who do the prime work of cognitive warfare for the government. To put it clearly: these media are the CIA. And the issue of U.S. bio-weapons research and development is central to these many matters, including in Ukraine.

In other words, the cognitive warfare we are now being subjected to has many tentacles connected to much more than today’s fanatical anti-Russian propaganda over Ukraine. All the U.S. wars of aggression have been promoted under its aegis, as have the lies about the attacks of September 11, 2001, the economic warfare by the elites, the COVID crisis, etc. It’s one piece.

Take, for example, a book written in 2010 by David Ray Griffin, a renown theologian who has written more than a dozen books about 9/11. The book is Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee’s Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory. It is a critique of law professor Cass Sunstein, appointed by Obama to be the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Sunstein had written an article with a plan for the government to prevent the spread of anti-government “conspiracy theories” in which he promoted the use of anonymous government agents to use secret “cognitive infiltration” of these groups in order to break them up; to use media plants to disparage their arguments. He was particularly referring to those who questioned the official 9/11 narrative but his point obviously extended much further. He was working in the tradition of the great propagandists. Griffin took a scalpel to this call for cognitive warfare and was of course a victim of it as well. Sunstein has since worked for the World Health Organization (WHO) on COVID psychological responses and other COVID committees. It’s all one piece.

Sunstein’s wife is Samantha Power, Obama’s Ambassador to the United Nations and war hawk extraordinaire. She gleefully promoted the U.S. destruction of Libya under the appellation of the “responsibility to protect,” a “humane” cover for imperialism. Now she is Biden’s Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an arm of the CIA throughout the world. It’s all one piece.

The merry-go-round goes round and round.

I have gone off on this slight tangent to emphasize how vast and interconnected are the players and groups on Team Cognitive Warfare. They have been leading the league for quite some time and are hoping their game plan against Team Russia will keep them there. So far they are winning, as Patrick Lawrence says:

Look at what has become of us. Most Americans seem to approve of these things, or at least are unstirred to object. We have lost all sense of decency, of ordinary morality, of proportion. Can anyone listen to the din of the past couple of weeks without wondering if we have made of ourselves a nation of grotesques?

It is common to observe that in war the enemy is always dehumanized. We are now face to face with another reality: Those who dehumanize others dehumanize themselves more profoundly. 

Perhaps people are too ignorant to see through the propaganda. To have some group to hate is always “uplifting.” But we are all responsible for the consequences of our actions, even when those actions are just buying the propaganda and hating those one is told to hate. It is very hard to accept that the leaders of your own country commit and contemplate unspeakable evil deeds and that they wish to control your mind. To contemplate that they might once again use nuclear weapons is unspeakable but necessary if we are to prevent it.

I hope my fears are unfounded. I agree with Gilbert Doctorow that the Ukraine-Russia war separates the sheep from the goats, that there is no middle ground. This is not to celebrate war and the death of innocent people, but it does demand placing the blame squarely where it belongs and not trying to have it both ways. People like him, John Mearsheimer, the late badly missed Stephen Cohen, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, Pepe Escobar, Patrick Lawrence, Jack Matlock, Ted Postol, et al. are all cutting through the propaganda and delivering truth in opposition to all the lies. They go gentile with fears of nuclear war, however, as if it is somewhat possible but highly unlikely, as if their deepest thoughts are unspeakable, for to utter them would be an act of despondency.

The consensus of the experts tends to be that the U.S. wishes to draw the Russians into a long protracted guerrilla war along the lines of its secret use of mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1979 and after. There is evidence that this is already happening. But I think the U.S. strategists know that the Russians are too smart for that; that they have learned their lesson; and that they will withdraw once they feel they have accomplished their goals. Therefore, from the U.S./NATO perspective, time is reasonably short and they must act quickly, perhaps by doing a false flag operation that will justify a drastic response, or upping the tempo in some other way that would seem to justify the use of nuclear weapons, perhaps tactical at first.

I appreciate the input of the Russia experts I mentioned above. Their expertise dwarfs mine, but I disagree. Perhaps I am an excitable sort; perhaps I am one of those Patrick Lawrence refers to, quoting Carl Jung, as too emotional and therefore incapable of clear thinking. (I will leave the issue of this long held but erroneous western philosophical belief in the division of emotions and thoughts for another day.) Perhaps I can’t see the obvious that a nuclear war will profit no one and therefore it cannot happen. Yet Ted Postol, MIT professor of technology and international security, while perhaps agreeing that an intentional nuclear war is very unlikely, has been warning of an accidental one for many years. He is surely right on that score and well worth listening to.

But either way, I am sorry to say, perhaps because my perspective is that of a generalist, not an expert, and my thinking is informed by art as much as social science and history, my antennae pick up a very disturbing message. A voice tells me that the danger is very, very real today. It says:

 Beware, we are on the edge of a nuclear abyss. 

The AXIS Act, a Step toward World War III

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The Axis powers, including Germany and Japan, were the foes of the United States and other Allied powers in World War II. Decades later, President George W. Bush chose to term some other nations — Iraq, Iran, and North Korea — as a new “axis of evil.” That was followed by a US invasion and overthrow in Iraq. Decades later, US troops remain in Iraq, and US sanctions and hostility directed at the other two nations continue.

This week, the United States House of Representatives is set to bring the Axis designation back to the big time — seeking to lump China in with Russia as the new Axis powers the US should be devoted to opposing. The movement toward a new world war — the first one with nuclear powers on both sides — grows stronger.

The House is scheduled to consider the AXIS Act (HR 7314) this week. “AXIS” in the title is the kind of ridiculous acronym that has become common in US legislation. It stands for “Assessing Xi’s Interference and Subversion.” “Xi” is Xi Jinping, the leader of China’s government.

The AXIS Act is being considered under suspension of the rules. Legislation deemed noncontroversial by House leadership can be considered under suspension of the rules in which there is usually a relatively brief House floor debate. Suspension legislation is also often passed by voice vote on a nearly empty house floor. Pressing forward toward World War III is not controversial? For many oblivious House members that probably is the case.

The AXIS Act starts off with a series of findings attempting to paint China as an aider of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The accusations included are underwhelming: China and Russia made a strategic partnership announcement a few weeks before the invasion; China abstained from voting on resolutions condemning the invasion in the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly; China has not publicly condemned the invasion.

That’s it. The resolution implicitly admits its backers cannot really tie China to supporting the invasion of Ukraine. Still the resolution proceeds, in what it states is the “sense of Congress,” to bluster that …

“the People’s Republic of China’s disinformation efforts relating to the Russian Federation’s war against Ukraine make it culpable in whitewashing Russia’s war crimes, which include the indiscriminate killing of countless Ukrainian men, women, and children.”

It is the second and final listed “sense of Congress” that is the heart of the resolution and that holds the threat of increased animosity toward China and the potential eruption of World War III. It states that it is the sense of Congress that,

“if China is found to be materially supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine, there should be swift and stringent consequences for China.”

Swift and stringent consequences have already been imposed against Russia. They amount to nearly everything short of US troops fighting against the Russian military, though, with US history as a guide, it should be suspected that US troops are engaged covertly in some military actions against Russians. The US has established expansive sanctions on Russia, extensively blocked investment in and commerce with Russia, and excluded Russia from financial systems including SWIFT that facilitate participation in international trade. The US has also been funding, supplying, and training Ukraine military forces that are fighting against Russians.

In an apparent effort to justify the US treating China similarly, the AXIS Act requires the real experts at depicting other nations as enemies — the Department of State — to…

“submit to the appropriate congressional committees” within 30 days and then every 90 days thereafter “a report on whether and how the People’s Republic of China, including the Government of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party, any Chinese state-owned enterprise, and any other Chinese entity, has provided support to the Russian Federation with respect to its unprovoked invasion of and full-scale war against Ukraine.”

These reports will provide House members keen on ramping up hostilities against China with the steady stream of pro-war propaganda they desire. And have no doubt that the executive branch will be happy to provide such. The Biden administration’s interests are in the same direction as the House members raging at China. President Joe Biden has already been out using the Ukraine War as a reason for threatening China. Indeed, the AXIS Act notes one example of this:

“In his call with Xi Jinping on March 18, 25 2022, President Joe Biden communicated that there would be ‘implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians’.”

The AXIS Act is a significant step in the effort by Congress members and the Biden administration, using the Ukraine War as an excuse, to direct against China hostilities already directed against Russia, and maybe more.

Most of the backers of this effort probably expect that such actions will not lead to World War III. Hopefully, they are correct in that assessment.

Even if they are correct that the most dire consequences will be avoided, the toll of expanding hostilities against China will still be harsh for people across the world.

For what gain? None is clear.

What is clear is that there is much potential danger ahead and that US politicians are propelling Americans and the world toward it.

Chinese brainstorming…

Think about the implications of this, big picture. The stock market and economy are shaky. China may have to dump everything they own in the US, along with Treasuries. All triggered by the sanctions on Russia from Ukraine.

Chinese state regulators held an emergency conference with major domestic and foreign banks to discuss means to protect the People’s Republic’s assets should the US impose sanctions similar to those it slapped on Russia in February, the Financial Times reports, citing people said to be familiar with the situation.

The meeting, said to have taken place on 22 April, reportedly involved officials from the People’s Bank of China, the country’s powerful central bank, as well as the Finance Ministry. Representatives from every major national bank took part, as did major foreign lenders operating in the Asian nation, such as HSBC, according to the paper’s sources.

An unnamed "senior finance ministry official" was said to have kicked off the meeting by saying Beijing had been "put on alert" of the West’s ability to seize foreign assets by observing what the US and its allies did to Russia.

In March, officials from the Russian Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance reported that the United States and its allies had seized "about $300 billion" of the country’s estimated $642 billion reserve cushion, with the US alone accounting for roughly $100 billion of that. In recent weeks, officials and lawmakers in Washington and Brussels have threatened to confiscate these assets, or transfer them to Ukraine.

Found HERE.

Yes. If China disengages from US, the US is without a prayer. 

We need them far more than they need us. 

For decades they sent us manufactured goods, we gave them pieces of paper called Treasury Bills. That is over.

Then they started taking businesses and land. If they can’t operate a business or make use of the land there is no reason for them to play with us.

In theory US could do what it used to do and make stuff. 

Before such an adjustment is made the largest part of the population would be dead. 

Only reason for China or Russia to engage with US at all is to preserve stability. 

When US policy amounts to throwing all the cards in the air and kicking over the table they can’t much help us with stability.

-oldhippie
So the Chinese have received a wake up call- they watched as the US/UK walked away with Afghani bank assets, with Venezuelan Gold (Guido seems happy), with Libyan, and Serbian Gold, with Iranian Assets, and of late with Russian bank assets to the tune of $300 Billion.

So what can be a rational game plan for the Chinese who have ? $1.5 Trillion in Assets/T bills tied up in the US. 

How does one back out of this predicament, and reclaim their value, before the US preys on them???

-AParadiseLost

Caught RED-HANDED!

China recently introduced a new law and policy that discloses the IP address of all Internet users.

Now, as a result of this, many people claiming to be inside of Shanghai and upset about the Coronavirus restrictions have been unmasked.

This policy resulted in the discovery of “Shanghai residents” who have been vocally complaining about their dissatisfaction with China, actually being outside of China, and constructing narratives that paints China in a horrible light.

There are many, many “Chinese accounts” originating out of Taiwan, a handful out of Australia and Japan, and a large group from both the UK, and Canada. All of which pretend to be Chinese residents inside of Shanghai.

This has forced Chinese social media, as well as foreign social media (operating inside of China) to suspend many of these fake accounts. As a result, many of these individuals are suddenly stopping their Internet activities using China social media.

So anyone on wechat etc, will now notice that there are suddenly less rubbish materials and postings critical of China.

One such “caught” faux-Shanghai “resident”…

An Dong, an IT support staffer for the EU delegation, often expressed candid political takes and spoke in favor of democratic principles on WeChat. His account has previously been suspended “likely as a result of his political views,” per the Wall Street Journal.

Ten countries open accounts to pay for gas from Russia, Hungary says – The Frontier Post

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti): In addition to Hungary, nine European countries have opened Russian bank accounts to pay for natural gas under the scheme proposed by Moscow, Gergely Gouyash, head of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s office, told Rádió Kossuth.
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“Hungary has opened a euro account, to which the price of gas in euros is credited, and then the bank converts it into rubles… In addition to us, nine other countries do this, but they do not say that they do the same, simply because in Europe now “being good for Europe” means that the leadership of the country does not speak honestly with its people and in international life,” he said.
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The politician once again reminded that the European Union has not adopted any sanctions that make it impossible to pay for Russian gas in rubles, this is regulated by a civil law agreement between states and companies.
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Earlier, Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjarto also emphasized that some European companies importing natural gas from Russia agreed to the payment scheme proposed by Russia, but they do not talk about it honestly and spread false information about the position of Hungary with the help of Western media.
In turn, Orban noted that the country is ready to pay for Russian gas in rubles, and Szijjártó pointed out that the cessation of supplies to Bulgaria will not affect transit to Hungary.
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On March 23, Russian President Putin announced the transfer of payment for natural gas supplies to the EU countries and other states that have introduced restrictive measures against Russia into rubles in order to abandon the use of dollars and euros in calculations. Then the president si-gned a corresponding dec-ree and said that if unfriendly countries did not pay in rubles from April 1, then Russia would consider this a default on gas contracts.
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According to the new scheme, Gazprombank will open special currency and ruble accounts for foreign buyers to pay for gas. The buyer will be able to transfer funds to the first acc-ount in the currency specified in the contract for the supply of “blue fuel”, the b-ank will sell it on the Mos-cow Exchange, after which it will credit rubles to the account of the buyer of gas and from this account settlements will be made with gas supplier – Gazprom”.ARTICLE

German energy firm Uniper ready to meet Russian pay demand – BBC News

You don’t say?

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with the Xinhua News Agency (China), April 30, 2022

From HERE

Question: What do you think is at the root of the Ukrainian crisis? What can the international community do to solve this problem?

Sergey Lavrov:  When we talk about the Ukrainian crisis, first of all we need to look at the destructive policy of the Western states conducted over many years and led by the United States, which set a course to knock together a unipolar world order after the end of the Cold War. NATO’s reckless expansion to the East was a key component of those actions, despite the political obligations to the Soviet leadership on the non-expansion of the Alliance. As you know, those promises were just empty words. All these years, NATO infrastructure has been moving closer and closer to the Russian borders.

The West was never concerned about the fact that their actions grossly violated their international obligations not to strengthen their own security at the expense of the security of others. In particular, Washington and Brussels arrogantly rejected the initiatives put forward by Russia in December 2021 to ensure our country’s security guarantees in the west: to stop the expansion of NATO, not to deploy armaments that pose a threat to Russia in Ukraine and to return the Alliance’s military infrastructure to the 1997 configuration, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed.

It is well-known that the United States and NATO member states have always viewed Ukraine as a tool to contain Russia. Over the years, they have actively fuelled anti-Russia sentiments there, forcing Kiev to make an artificial and false choice: to be either with the West or with Moscow.

It was the collective West that first provoked and then supported the anti-constitutional coup d’etat in Kiev in February 2014. Nationalists came to power in Ukraine and immediately unleashed a bloody massacre in Donbass, and set the course on the destruction of everything Russian in the rest of the country. Let me remind you that it was precisely because of this threat that the people of Crimea voted in a referendum for the reunification with Russia in 2014.

Over these past years, the United States and its allies have done nothing to stop the intra-Ukrainian conflict. Instead of encouraging Kiev to settle it politically based on the Minsk Complex of Measures, they sent weapons, trained and armed the Ukrainian army and nationalist battalions, and generally carried out the military-political development of Ukraine’s territory. They encouraged the aggressive anti-Russia course pursued by the Kiev authorities. In fact, they pushed the Ukrainian nationalists to undermine the negotiating process and resolve the Donbass issue by force.

We were deeply concerned about the undeclared biological programmes implemented in Ukraine with Pentagon’s support in close proximity to the Russian borders. And, of course, we could not disregard the Kiev leadership’s undisguised intentions to acquire a military nuclear potential, which would create an unacceptable threat to Russia’s national security.

In these conditions, we had no other choice but to recognise the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and launch the special military operation. Its aim is to protect people from genocide by the neo-Nazis, as well as to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine. I would like to stress that Russia is acting to fulfil its obligations under bilateral agreements on cooperation and mutual assistance with the DPR and LPR, at the official request of Donetsk and Lugansk under Article 51 of the UN Charter on the right to self-defence.

The special military operation launched on February 24 is progressing strictly in accordance with the plan. All its goals will be achieved in spite of our opponents’ counteractions. At the moment we are witnessing a classic case of double standards and hypocrisy of the Western establishment. By publicly supporting the Kiev regime, NATO member states are doing everything in their power to prevent the completion of the operation by reaching political agreements. Various weapons are flowing endlessly into Ukraine through Poland and other NATO countries. All of this is being done under the pretext of “fighting the invasion”, but in fact the United States and the European Union intend to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” They do not care at all about the fate of Ukraine as an independent subject of international relations.

The West is ready to jeopardise the energy and food security of entire regions of the globe to satisfy its own geopolitical ambitions.What ither explanation is there for the unrestrained flywheel of anti-Russian sanctions launched by the West with the start of the operation and which they aren’t thinking of stopping?

If the United States and NATO are truly interested in settling the Ukrainian crisis, then, first, they must come to their senses and stop supplying weapons and ammunition to Kiev. The Ukrainian people do not need Stingers and Javelins; what they need is a solution to urgent humanitarian issues.Russia has been doing this since 2014. During this time, tens of thousands of tonnes of humanitarian cargo have been delivered to Donbass, and about 15,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid have already arrived in the part of Ukraine liberated from the Kiev regime, the DPR and the LPR, since the launch of the special military operation.

Second, it is essential that the Kiev regime stops cynical provocations, including in the information space. Ukrainian armed formations are barbarically shelling cities using civilians as living shields. We saw examples of this in Donetsk and Kramatorsk. Captured Russian servicemen are being abused with animal cruelty, and these atrocities are being posted online. At the same time, they use their Western patrons and global media controlled by the West to accuse the Russian army of war crimes. As they say, laying the blame at somebody else’s door.

It is high time for the West to stop unconditionally whitewashing and covering up for Kiev. Otherwise, … Washington, Brussels and other Western capitals should consider their responsibility for complicity in the bloody crimes perpetrated by the Ukrainian nationalists.

Question: What measures has Russia taken to protect the lives and property of civilians? What efforts has it made to establish humanitarian corridors?

Sergey Lavrov: As I mentioned earlier, the special military operation is proceeding according to plan. Under this plan, the Russian military personnel are doing everything in their power to avoid victims among civilians. Blows are carried out with high-precision weapons, first of all at military infrastructure facilities and places where armoured vehicles are concentrated. Unlike the Ukrainian army and nationalist armed groups that use people as living shields, the Russian army provides the locals with all kinds of assistance and support.

Humanitarian corridors open daily from Kharkov and Mariupol to evacuate people from dangerous districts, but the Kiev regime demands that the “national battalions” in control of those areas do not release the civilians. Nevertheless, many are able to leave with the assistance of Russian, DPR and LPR servicemen. During the special military operation, the hotline of the Interdepartmental Coordination Headquarters of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine has received requests for assistance in evacuating 2.8 million people to Russia, including 16,000 foreign citizens and employees of UN and OSCE international missions. In total, 1.02 million people have been evacuated from Ukraine, the DPR and LPR, of which over 120,000 are citizens of third countries, including over 300 Chinese nationals. There are over 9,500 temporary accommodation facilities operating in Russian regions. They have space for rest and hot meals, and everything that may be necessary. Newly arrived refugees are provided with qualified medical and psychological assistance.

Russia is taking measures to ensure civilian navigation in the Black and Azov seas. A humanitarian corridor opens daily, a safe lane for ships. However, Ukraine continues to block foreign ships, creating a threat of shelling in its internal waters and territorial sea. Moreover, Ukrainian naval units have mined the shore, the ports and territorial waters. These explosive devices disconnect from their anchor lines and drift into the open sea, so they pose a serious danger to both the fleets and the port infrastructure of the Black Sea countries.

Question: Since the special military operation was launched in Ukraine, Western counties have adopted a large number of unprecedented sanctions against Moscow. How do you think these sanctions will affect Russia? What are the main countermeasures taken by Russia? Some say that a new Cold War has begun. How would you comment on that?

Sergey Lavrov: It is true that the special military operation was used by the collective West as a pretext to unleash numerous restrictions against Russia, as well as its legal entities and individuals. The United States, Great Britain, Canada and EU countries do not conceal that their goal is to strangle our economy by undermining its competitiveness and blocking Russia’s progressive development. At the same time, the Western ruling circles are not embarrassed by the fact that anti-Russian sanctions are already beginning to harm ordinary people in their own countries. I mean the declining economic trends in the United States and many European countries, including growing inflation and unemployment.

It is clear that there can be no excuse for this anti-Russian line and it has no future. As President Vladimir Putin said, Russia has withstood this unprecedented pressure. Now the situation is stabilising, though, of course, not all risks are behind us.

In any case, they will not succeed in weakening us. I am confident that we will restructure the economy and protect ourselves from our opponents’ possible illegitimate and hostile actions in the future. We will continue to give a fitting and adequate response to the imposed restrictions, guided by the goal of maintaining the stability of the Russian economy and its financial system, as well as the interests of domestic businesses and the entire nation. We will focus our efforts on de-dollarisation, de-offshorisation, import substitution, and promotion of technological independence.We will continue to adapt to external challenges and step up development programmes for promising and competitive industries.

During the period of turbulence, our retaliatory special economic measures needed to ensure the normal functioning of the Russian economy will be continued and expanded. As a responsible player on the international market, Russia intends to continue scrupulously fulfilling its obligations under international contracts on export deliveries of agricultural products, fertilisers, energy carriers and other critical products. We are deeply concerned about a possible food crisis provoked by the anti-Russian sanctions, and we are well aware how important the deliveries of essential goods, such as food, are for the socioeconomic development of Asian, African, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries.

I will be brief as regards the second part of your question. Today we are not talking about a new “cold war,” but, as I said earlier, about the persistent desire to impose a US-centric model of the world order coming from Washington and its satellites, who imagine themselves to be “arbiters of humankind’s fate.” It has reached the point where the … Western minority is trying to replace the UN-centric architecture and international law formed after World War II with their own “rule-based order.” These rules are written by Washington and its allies and then imposed on the international community as binding.

We must realise that the United States has been carrying out this destructive policy for several decades now. It is enough to recall NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia, attacks on Iraq and Libya, attempts to destroy Syria, as well as the colour revolutions that Western capitals staged in a number of countries, including Ukraine. All of this came at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and resulted in chaos in various regions of the planet.

The West tries to crudely suppress those who carry out an independent course in their domestic and foreign policy. Not just Russia. We can see how bloc thinking is being imposed in the Asian-Pacific Region. We can recall the Indo-Pacific strategy promoted by the United States, which has a pronounced anti-China tendency. The US seeks to dictate the standards according to which Latin America should live, in the spirit of the outdated Monroe Doctrine. This explains many years of the illegal trade embargo on Cuba, sanctions against Venezuela, as well as attempts to undermine stability in Nicaragua and other countries. The pressure on Belarus continues in the same context. This list can go on.

It is clear that the collective West’s efforts to oppose the natural course of history and solve its problems at the expense of others are doomed. Today the world has several decision-making centres; it is multipolar. We can see how quickly Asian, African, and Latin American countries are developing. Everyone is getting a real freedom of choice, including where it comes to choosing their development models and participation in integration projects. Our special military operation in Ukraine also contributes to the process of freeing the world from the West’s neocolonial oppression heavily mixed with racism and a complex of exceptionalism.

The faster the West accepts the new geopolitical situation, the better it will be for the West itself and for the entire international community.

As President Xi Jinping said at the Boao Forum for Asia, “We need to uphold the principle of indivisible security, build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture, and oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security.”

Question: Russian-Ukrainian talks have attracted close attention of the international community. What are the main obstacles to the talks today? How do you regard the prospects of a peace treaty between the two parties? What kind of bilateral relations does Russia intend to have with Ukraine in the future?

Sergey Lavrov: At present the Russian and Ukrainian delegations are holding discussions on the possible draft almost daily, via videoconference. This document should contain such elements of the post-conflict situation as permanent neutrality, the non-nuclear, non-bloc and demilitarised status of Ukraine, as well as guarantees of its security. The agenda of the talks also includes denazification, recognition of the new geopolitical reality, the lifting of sanctions and the status of the Russian language, among other things. Settling the situation in Ukraine will make a significant contribution to the de-escalation of the military and political tensions in Europe and the world in general. The establishment of an institution of guarantor states is envisaged as a possible option. First of all, they will be the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including Russia and China. We share information on the progress in the talks with Chinese diplomats. We are grateful to Beijing and other BRICS partners for their balanced position on the Ukrainian issue.

We are in favour of continuing the talks, although the process is difficult.

You are right to ask about the obstacles. For example, they include the militant rhetoric and incendiary actions of Kiev’s Western patrons. They are actually encouraging Kiev to “fight to the last Ukrainian,” pumping the country with weapons and sending mercenaries there. Let me note that the Ukrainian security services staged a crude bloody provocation in Bucha with the help of the West, to complicate the negotiation process among other things.

I am confident that agreements can only be reached when Kiev starts to be guided by the interests of the Ukrainian people, and not the advisors from far away.

Speaking about Russian-Ukrainian relations, Russia is interested in a peaceful, free, neutral, prosperous and friendly Ukraine. Despite the current administration’s anti-Russian course, we remember the many centuries of all-embracing cultural, spiritual, economic and family ties between Russians and Ukrainians. We will definitely restore these ties.

Simple Cajun Seasoning

Here is a simple way to make Cajun seasoning using normal kitchen spices.

seasoning mix
seasoning mix

Ingredients

Original recipe yields 20 servings
Ingredient Checklist

Directions

Instructions Checklist
  • Combine the salt, oregano, paprika, cayenne pepper, and black pepper in a plastic bag and shake to mix.

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Poland and NATO: Sneaking Troops Around; Forbids Public Photos/Videos!

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The Polish Government has announced that Large-Scale Military Exercises will be taking place across the Country beginning today involving the Polish Military and multiple NATO Member States.  Heavy Military Equipment is expected to be seen on Highways and roads around the Country.

This, the world already knew about.   What’s very different this time is as follows:

The Polish State Security Service has requested that people refrain from Photographing or Posting about Military Movements including Aircraft landings and take-offs, people who do continue to publicly document Allied Military Movements are subject to prosecution.

The Polish State Security Ministry has threatened Fines and Jail Time for posting pictures and announcing Force Movements over Social Media since the Russian Invasion of Ukraine began, though so far no Polish Citizens have been prosecuted.

There has been covert intelligence coming out of Poland which CLAIMS (not yet confirmed) that Poland and perhaps other nations are planning to put armed troops into western Ukraine as “peace keepers.”   HOWEVER, along with such rumors are other CLAIMS (also not verified) that Poland intends a land grab f western Ukraine; to reincorporate what was once actual Polish territory before World War 2, back into Poland.     These claims are Furiously DENIED by the Poland government.

Yet, given the announcement by Polish security services, that the public must not take photos, video or make troop movement postings on social media, one has to wonder why all the secrecy?  If Poland is not going to send troops into Ukraine, why the secrecy?

It is widely believed by many seasoned observers that if Poland tries to insert troops into Ukraine, they would be immediately engaged by Russian armed forces, regardless of Poland’s stated purposes.

American Georgetown professor advocates doubling the United States defense spending so as to have a war with both China and Russia simultaneously

Current spending; United States budget is…

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2022 05 02 15 09

So it’s not enough. More military spending must occur! Double the spending. Is this even possible?

Ok. I knew that the United States was run by idiots, but this is over the top.

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2022 05 02 14 16

Russia’s chip technology is backward, why is its weaponry advanced?

2022-05-02 13:08 HKT

As we all know, chips are the soul of information-based weapons and equipment. A country’s chip level directly determines the advanced level of weapons and equipment. If the ranking is based on revenue, in 2020, the United States will account for 6 of the world’s top ten semiconductor manufacturers. , South Korea accounted for 2, Japan accounted for 1, Xiaowan accounted for 1.

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2022 05 02 14 39

 

If the ranking is based on R&D expenditure, personnel size, etc., the ranking is different, but without exception, no Russian company can make the list.

From the current point of view, Russia’s chip research capabilities are not strong. Compared with the United States and Europe, its chip level is at least 10 years different.

Due to this, you can’t see any popular mobile phones, cars and household appliances in Russia. Many civilian products in Russia are subject to chip technology, and there are almost no sales in the world, and of course there is no sense of existence.

Although Russia’s chip technology is not strong, its weapons and equipment are extremely advanced. This is also an important reason why Russia’s arms trade has been ranked second in the world for many years.

According to Western media reports, in 2019, the GPS system of the United States covering the Middle East was suppressed by the interference of mysterious electromagnetic waves, and it was completely paralyzed in a period of time, which interrupted civil and military communications in Israel and other countries. reached thousands of square kilometers.

The U.S. military immediately analyzed it and believed that the electronic interference was carried out by Russia, because Russia has a Khomeimim air base in Syria, which contains the Russian electronic warfare system. The U.S. military judged the distance and believed that the interference signal was the Khomemim airbase. Sent from Memim Air Force Base.

The Russian army was able to use the electronic warfare system to effectively interfere with the GPS of the US military, causing many of the US military’s precision-guided weapons to fail under the interference of the Russian army. This also shows that the Russian military’s electronic warfare equipment is still extremely advanced.

Russian weapons and equipment have always given people the impression of being stupid and clumsy, and it is difficult to create very small and delicate electronic warfare equipment.

Chip technology is listed as a key technology by the United States. The United States and other Western countries not only block chip technology from Russia, but also impose embargoes on high-performance chips. Russia’s chip technology is backward, and Russia, which does not have high-performance chips, why is its weaponry so advanced?

To figure this out, we have to figure out why Russia’s chip technology lags behind?

Russia’s chip technology and foundation were inherited from the Soviet Union, which implemented a planned economic system, and the Soviet Union divided labor among countries and regions, such as East Germany producing precision instruments, Vietnam planting rice, Ukraine farming and raising cattle, and Kazakhstan picking cotton. Belarus-made trucks, etc.

At that time, microelectronics was an absolute high-tech, and all the republics wanted to develop. In order to balance the interests of the various republics, the Soviet Union split and distributed the production of microelectronics to the republics. This led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The electronics industry is very fragmented in various republics and cannot form a complete industrial chain.

Because the Soviet Union implemented a planned economic system, all microelectronics units and enterprises belong to the state, and of course they all eat financially, so it doesn’t matter if they make money or not. The key microelectronics products must be able to ensure national defense and security, because there is no market competition. , so the efficiency is not high.

At the beginning of the Cold War, integrated circuit technology was just emerging, and integrated circuits had two development routes, namely the transistor route and the electron tube route.

As far as electronic tubes and transistors are concerned, transistors are small in size, low in power consumption and long in service life, and have obvious advantages over electronic tubes. It can be said that transistors are a more advanced form of electronic tubes.

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2022 05 02 14 40

 

But also because transistors are small and advanced, there are many failures, and the anti-interference and anti-radiation capabilities are weak. Under the conditions of nuclear war, the anti-radiation capabilities of electron tubes are much stronger than that of transistors. At that time, in terms of volume, transistors were smaller than electron tubes, but The technology back then was not much smaller.

Although the technology of electron tubes and transistors has developed, the development of transistor technology is faster, especially the miniaturization of transistors, and later it has developed to the nanometer level, which is probably not expected by the Russians.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union has left Russia with a mess. The development of light and heavy industries is uneven, and the semiconductor industry is lagging behind, especially in chip technology. Russia wants to catch up, but it has more than enough energy.

Compared with other industries, the semiconductor industry requires continuous technological iteration. It is not only a technology-intensive industry, but also a capital-intensive industry. It not only requires a large amount of investment, but also requires a certain market scale, and requires a long period of accumulation.

When Russia was first established, shock therapy was implemented. As a result, the economy was seriously regressed, and private enterprises were even more backward. In addition to the troubles in Chechnya, Russia was forced to launch two Chechnya wars in 1994 and 1999. Although Chechnya was eventually conquered by Russia, it also cost a fortune. Russia’s treasury is empty.

After 2000, Russia’s economy began to recover, but in 2008, it fought a war in Georgia. In 2011, the economy just turned a few years ago. In 2014, the Crimea crisis occurred again. emptied the treasury.

Coupled with the constant sanctions by the United States, a large number of scientific and technological talents have been lost, and without capital injection, most of the budding private enterprises have died prematurely.

For example, there is a Yoga Devices mobile phone company in Russia, which produces the YotaPhone series of smartphones, and its YotaPhone 3 mobile phone also won the 2018 German iF Design Award.

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2022 05 02 14 4e0

But the company went bankrupt in 2019. Because the Russian domestic market is limited, mobile phones from China, the United States and South Korea are very competitive, and there is not much capital injection, the Russian mobile phone company eventually went bankrupt.

The premature death of this Russian mobile phone company is just a microcosm of the development of the Russian electronics industry.

Because Russia does not have many civilian electronic products, there is not much demand for chips. Today’s Russian civilian consumer electronics market only accounts for less than 2% of the global share.

The American Semiconductor Industry Association released a research report in which Americans estimated that Russia’s semiconductor purchases accounted for less than one thousandth of the global total.

Most of today’s consumer goods require chips, such as mobile phones, automobiles, home appliances, computers, etc. It is precisely because Russia’s chip technology is backward and the United States has imposed a strict blockade on high-performance chips, which has led to the development of civilian products that require chips in Russia. If it fails, Russia’s economy can only be supported by energy and military industries.

This creates a vicious circle, and it is expected that Russia’s economy will become increasingly difficult due to chip technology.

Russia’s chip technology is backward, but why is the military industry developed? This is related to Russia’s anti-sky system engineering capabilities.

What is systems engineering capability? To use an analogy, with the same stack of wood, ordinary people can build houses, but experts can build warships, planes, and cannons. This is the ability of systems engineering.

Anyone who has watched Romance of the Three Kingdoms knows that Zhuge Liang can use ordinary wood to create a wooden cow and a horse. This wooden cow and horse can be used to transport military rations and is a means of transportation that surpasses the level of technology at the same time. Zhuge Liang’s ability to create a wooden cow and a horse depends on the system engineering ability.

We can compare the phased array radars of the United States and Russia. The signal processing part of the American Patriot phased array radar uses advanced digital chips, so the flight speed of the detection target can be quickly calculated.

Russia does not have high-end chips at all, so it replaced the chip with an “other-excited crystal oscillator”. This “other-excited crystal oscillator” is an outdated analog circuit design. Integrated circuits are smaller.

Therefore, Russia’s air defense missile phased array radar is larger than that of the United States, and it looks a bit stupid and bulky, but from the perspective of core indicators, it is at the same level as the United States, and its anti-jamming performance is stronger than that of the United States.

Americans have specially studied the Russian S300 radar, and they are full of praise for the performance of this radar. They believe that this radar is “high-performance, low-cost, and low-power consumption”, and they evaluate the Russians’ ability to innovate independently.

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2022 05 02 14 41

 

That is to say, Americans use the most advanced components and advanced assembly technology to create advanced equipment, while Russian components are not advanced, but relying on the system engineering capabilities against the sky, they can also create advanced equipment.

Russian equipment can be said to be cheap and not beautiful, but it is very easy to use.

Some people say that if you give the Russians a pile of scrap metal, the Americans can only sell it as scrap iron, but the Russians can become a big killer that sweeps away thousands of troops.

On September 6, 1976, Belenko, a pilot of the Soviet Air Defense Air Force, flew a MiG-25 fighter through Japan’s tight air defense network and stopped at Hakodate Airport in Japan, which surprised Japan and the United States. In front of 25 fighters, Japan’s air defense system is useless.

After the Americans got the news, they immediately sent technicians to Japan to study the MiG-25 fighter plane. The plane was disassembled and transported to the Baili Air Force Base in central Japan.

As a result, the American technicians were very surprised that the material of this fighter was very common, mainly made of stainless steel, only a little titanium alloy was used for the key parts, and the welding was done by hand, and the workmanship was relatively rough.

The radar of the aircraft has a huge power of 600 kilowatts, but the main components are outdated vacuum tube components, not advanced solid-state electronic components, so the radar volume is large, but it is more suitable for extreme high temperature, and also reduces the avionics equipment compartment. cooling requirements.

Americans looked at these backward technology and rough parts, but they couldn’t figure out how the Soviets turned it into a fighter with excellent performance. The Americans adjusted the performance parameters of the next-generation heavy fighter based on the performance of the MiG-25, and finally gave birth to the F-15 fighter.

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2022 05 02 14 42

There are two main reasons why the Russians have such incredible systems engineering capabilities:

One is that Russia’s high-end manufacturing industry is underdeveloped, and it cannot make the most advanced weapons with the most advanced chips like the Americans. Instead, it can only use less advanced chips to make weapons and equipment that can compete with the West.

This dilemma of “smart women can’t cook without rice” made the Russians have to improve their systems engineering capabilities to solve the problems, and the Russians’ systems engineering capabilities were also forced out.

Today’s Russia can make low-end chips, mainly to meet the needs of the military, because the military’s demand is small and cannot be produced on a large scale, and of course it cannot be industrialized.

Practice has proved that it is feasible to solve a specific problem with super system engineering capabilities, but after all, this is not a long-term solution. For any industry, the return on investment must be considered. Can not increase R & D investment, is not conducive to long-term development.

China’s early chip development also encountered this problem. To solve this problem, marketization can only be implemented under the guidance of the state.

Second, Russia’s super-strong systems engineering capabilities benefit from Russia’s solid level of basic theoretical research, because only by mastering basic theoretical knowledge can we support the ideas and assumptions of systems engineering.

For example, the Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci, the teacher always asked him to repeat the painting of eggs. In fact, the teacher asked him to do basic skills, and Da Vinci felt very tired at first.

The teacher told Da Vinci that eggs in the world are not absolutely the same. Even if it is the same egg, standing at different angles, the projected light is different, and the drawing is also different. Therefore, painting eggs is a basic skill. Once you have mastered it, you can draw anything.

Da Vinci, who was very intelligent, listened to the teacher’s words, and began to paint eggs carefully and patiently. Eventually, he laid a good foundation for painting and became a world-renowned painter.

The author is an engineering graduate. The author has a feeling that if you want to find a paper with a certain degree of mathematical foundation, then you can find references in the paper, and then find the references in the paper. Within five steps of iteration, it must be Russian. Literature.

Don’t look at American higher education, but when it comes to basic education, especially basic mathematics education, Russia is stronger, and basic education in the United States cannot even (?) keep up with China.

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2022 05 02 14 43

If the basic theory is regarded as the starting point and the product is regarded as the end point, only by thoroughly understanding the basic theory can we design the best route from the starting point to the end point of the product.

Russia has its own unique features in this regard, which are worthy of our study and reference, and also worthy of our deep reflection.

Chinese girl with a “to die for” tummy

Look at that waist! Wow. video 3MB

America Wants War with China – Why This American is Saying No!

Pretty damn good.

Cheeseburger Buns

My mom stuffs soft homemade yeast rolls with ground beef, tomato sauce and cheese to make these tasty sandwiches. They’re great leftovers, too. My son takes them in his lunch the next day. —Nancy Holland, Morgan Hill, California

545ee1f52fcc602c7dca743d9aadb6f4
545ee1f52fcc602c7dca743d9aadb6f4

Ingredients

  • 2 packages (1/4 ounce each) active dry yeast
  • 1/2 cup warm water (110° to 115°)
  • 3/4 cup warm whole milk (110° to 115°)
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup shortening
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3-1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1-1/2 pounds ground beef
  • 1/4 cup chopped onion
  • 1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
  • 8 slices process American cheese, quartered

R.cc7773a4e60cf1ab7cd9c21b0597d775
R.cc7773a4e60cf1ab7cd9c21b0597d775

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add the milk, sugar, shortening, egg, salt and 2 cups flour; beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough.
  2. Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 4-6 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 30 minutes.
  3. In a large skillet, cook beef and onion over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. Stir in tomato sauce. Remove from the heat; set aside.
  4. Punch dough down; divide into 16 pieces. On a lightly floured surface, gently roll out and stretch each piece into a 5-in. circle. Top each circle with two pieces of cheese and about 3 tablespoons beef mixture. Bring dough over filling to center; pinch edges to seal.
  5. Place seam side down on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 20 minutes. Bake at 400° for 8-12 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm. Refrigerate leftovers.

American neocon leadership advocate nuclear war with China to “put them in their place”

That will trigger a MASSIVE bludgeoning of the United States by both Russia and China simultaneously.

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2022 05 02 14 19

An e-mail from You-Tube explaining things…

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2022 05 02 20 14

RUSSIAN TV 

Tonight (Sunday) Russian television broadcast a simulation of Russia launching a SARMAT missile, with its fifteen nuclear warheads, against Britain!  The TV commentator says the UK – their little island – will be wiped out.   Here, look:

video 7MB

BUT WAIT . . . THERE’S MORE!

Not only did the Russian Television network show this to the entire country, but they went even farther . . . finally admitting what has long been rumored about Russia having developed a 100 MEGA-ton nuclear drone torpedo.    Look at what the Russian people were told on their TV’s tonight: Plunge Britain into the sea by Tsunami from a nuclear torpedo drone!

video 9MB

In the U.S., perhaps one of the most useful idiots in Congress, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a complete political moron the best part of whom likely dripped down his father’s leg,  has introduced a Joint Resolution in Congress authorizing the Use of military force (AUMF) inside Ukraine “if Russia uses chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.”

In my opinion, that Joint Resolution would _really_ be a US declaration of war on Russia.  Let’s not fool ourselves with the diplomatic language.
By the time that law is passed, the USA will likely already be at war with Russia, everything else is diplomatic trifles.

 

A Giant Statue From Old Trash Movies Is Now Rests In Someone’s Backyard

According to a Tumblr user trulyunpleasant:

“This statue is a couple miles from where I live, just sitting in someones backyard. It was in two crappy Atlantis sword-and-sandal movies back in the 50′s/60′s. Then it sat on top of a bar (or club) for a few years, and then someone bought it for their house.”

It’s a Hell of a thing to have lying around.

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Video: Col. Richard Black: U.S. Leading World to Nuclear War

Mike Billington of the Schiller Institute interviewed  (former) Senator and Col. (ret) Richard Black, who served 31 years in the US Marines and Army.

Sen. Black talked about his military service in Syria, how and why Russia got involved in the war militarily, and how such involvement contrasts with the US’ and NATO’s justification for military intervention in the said war. 

Sen. Black also addresses the recent Russian military invasion of Ukraine and the failure to dissolve NATO.

40.12: Colonel Black focusses on the risk of World War III. 

“The decision of Peace or War is made in Washington DC,

As long as we [US government] want the war to continue, we will fight using the Ukrainians as proxies, and we will fight it to last Urainian death”

*

Good New Orleans Creole Gumbo

This is a fine Creole gumbo recipe.

"I learned to cook from my mother and grandmother who were born and raised in New Orleans and really knew how to cook. Most of the time, you could not get them to write down their recipes because they used a 'pinch' of this and 'just enough of that' and 'two fingers of water,' and so on. This recipe is a combination of both of their recipes which I have added to over the years. Serve over hot cooked rice. The gumbo can be frozen or refrigerated and many people like it better the next day. Bon appetit!"

delicious gumbo
A delicious gumbo.

New Orleans-style gumbo is a true taste of Southern tradition. This boldly flavored stew is bursting with fresh, filling ingredients like bell pepper, sausage, stewed tomatoes, and crabmeat. Hot sauce ad Cajun seasonings add a kick that makes this Lousiana dish a favorite amongst our community of home cooks. Learn how to make the best homestyle gumbo right here.

What Is Gumbo?

Gumbo is one of the most famous dishes to result from Louisiana’s shared Creole-Cajun heritage. Gumbo falls somewhere between a thick stew and a hearty soup and can contain ingredients such as chicken, sausage, ham, seafood, okra, tomatoes, and greens.

As varied as the recipes can be, there are a few ingredients that all gumbos have in common: homemade stock; the “holy trinity” of celery, onions, and green peppers; and roux.

gumbo
New Orleans Creole Gumbo

How to Make Gumbo

Boldly delicious New Orleans-style gumbo is surprisingly easy to make at home. You’ll find the full recipe below with step-by-step instructions, but here’s what you can expect when you make this top-rated recipe:

Great gumbo starts with roux, a flavorful thickening agent made from equal parts fat and flour. Once the roux is a deep golden color, add diced veggies and sausage to the mix. Then, incorporate beef bouillon, hot sauce, tomatoes, and seasonings to intensify the flavor.

Let the gumbo simmer for 45 minutes before adding file powder, okra, and seafood. The result will be a lusciously hearty stew packed with Creole spice.

What Is Gumbo File?

Gumbo file, or file powder, is made from dried sassafras leaves. This ingredient was first used by Choctaw Indians and was later adopted by Acadians (Cajuns) when they arrived in the American South.

Gumbo file has a deep, earthy flavor similar to thyme and should be added to gumbo in the last minutes of cooking — it helps to thicken and enrich the stew for an authentic taste of New Orleans.

Serving suggestions

You serve it with rice.

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New Orleans Creole Gumbo.

How to Store Leftover Gumbo

Leftover gumbo can be stored safely in the refrigerator for three to four days. Let the dish come to room temperature before placing it in an airtight container to enjoy later. Gently reheat on the stovetop for best results.

Community Tips and Praise

“This is one of the best gumbos I’ve ever had and my family is from the South so that is saying a lot — just don’t tell my mother or grandmother,” shares reviewer mellie18_99. “I added shrimp, sausage, chicken, and crab meat.”

“This recipe is the real deal,” raves home cook Pat. “Don’t forget the file gumbo at the very end, it makes a big difference. You will know when the roux is done when it has the color of a Hershey’s milk chocolate bar.”

“This was my very first time making gumbo and my guests who had come over for a King Party loved it!” says Shaw Kitty. “Some of these guests were born and raised Louisianans and they gave their approval as well!”

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R.ccacbd783423f0f2596f10f81d84d7e1

Serve with rice!

Ingredients

Original recipe yields 20 servings
Ingredient Checklist

Directions

Roux:
  • Whisk together flour and 3/4 cup bacon drippings in a large, heavy saucepan over medium-low heat until smooth. Cook roux, whisking constantly, until it turns a rich mahogany brown color. This can take 20 to 30 minutes; watch heat carefully and whisk constantly or roux will burn. Remove from heat; continue whisking until mixture stops cooking.

Gumbo:
  • Place celery, onion, green bell pepper, and garlic into the work bowl of a food processor, and pulse until all vegetables are very finely chopped. Stir vegetables into the roux, and mix in sausage. Bring mixture to a simmer over medium-low heat, and cook until vegetables are tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from heat, and set aside.

  • Combine water and beef bouillon cubes in a large Dutch oven or soup pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir until bouillon cubes dissolve, then whisk roux mixture into the boiling water.

  • Reduce heat to a simmer, and mix in sugar, salt, hot pepper sauce, Cajun seasoning, bay leaves, thyme, stewed tomatoes, and tomato sauce. Simmer soup over low heat for 1 hour; mix in 2 teaspoons of file gumbo powder at the 45-minute mark.

  • Meanwhile, melt 2 tablespoons bacon drippings in a skillet over medium heat. Add okra and vinegar and cook for 15 minutes; remove okra with a slotted spoon, and stir into the simmering gumbo.

  • Mix in crabmeat, shrimp, and Worcestershire sauce, and simmer until flavors have blended, 45 more minutes. Stir in 2 more teaspoons of file gumbo powder just before serving.

German gas contract with Russia

Even if German stop buying from Russia, German has the contracted obligation to pay $140b through to 2030 independent of Force Majure.

2022 05 03 11 30
2022 05 03 11 30

Pretty Chinese Girl

In a scooter park. video 3MB

Destroying China requires the defeat of  Russia first

Read the neocon writings. Moscow’s war in Ukraine  isn’t a distraction. It’s part of a plan. It’s part and parcel of a plan to destroy China.

Apparently, the United States neocons have targeted Russia in the belief that she is an easy target to defeat. Then, once “suppressed”, the full weight of combined efforts can then move on to China…
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That is my thought also.
Russia without China is endangered and vice versa.
I heard a saying on The Duran Channel on YouTube which has the knowledgeable and wise Alexander Mercouris as main speaker.

"Russia and China do not stand so much shoulder to shoulder but back to back."

p.s. My piece on CounterPunch and Asia Times today has drawn a lot of commentary. Many said that they felt alone and isolated in their opinion on the US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. They felt better on reading the piece, because they did not feel alone. I think these people are a little bit more likely to speak their opinions and spread them. I feel good about the essay for that reason.

-John V. Walsh

Russian TV Is Talking Very Frankly About Nuclear War (While America Stands with Ukranus)

The Americans will push until there is a disaster. 

-Leander

Again, it is just this kind of “hahahaha – LOL” attitude.

I don’t really know why Westerners are spamming these clips – “look – Russia doesn’t even care about nuclear war and they think it’s funny” does not seem like a good argument in support of pressing for war with Russia.

It’s like if you were trying to get someone to fight someone else and you were like “just go start shit talking that guy – he’s got a gun and he’s not at all afraid of dying or going to prison.”

That’s probably the purpose of these segments – to have them disseminated in the West and show that Russians are really blasé about nuclear war. Julia Davis and many others can’t help but do the thing.

Domestically, telling people “nuclear war is lolz” is just hilarious and intelligent. Having a population that responds to “we’re all going to die in a massive war” with “ikr, roflmao” is extremely advantageous. While the US is talking about “our values of who we are in a democracy rules based order of stolen yachts,” Russia is saying “well, we’re all going to die some day anyway.”

For the record, there is zero evidence or reason to believe that a nuclear war would “kill everyone on earth.” Primarily, this is because of the gibberish surrounding the idea of “nuclear fallout,” and even more goofy stuff like “nuclear winter.”

I like the Fallout video games series, but this isn’t real life. As the Russians say – and this is true – there is not even any evidence that if Russia started firing nukes, the West would even respond. They would more likely just start crying and looking for a safe space for their snowflakes.

American B61 Mini-nukes Deployed in Western Europe

From HERE.

The latest B61-12 “mini nuke” is slated to be deployed in Western Europe, aimed at Russia and the Middle East (replacing the existing of B61 nuclear bombs).

B-61-12 is portrayed as a “more usable” “low yield” “humanitarian bomb” “‘harmless to civilians”. That’s the ideology. The reality is “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD).

The B61-12 has a maximum yield of 50 kilotons which is more than three times that of a Hiroshima bomb (15 kilotons) which resulted in excess of 100,000 deaths in matter of minutes.

If a preemptive attack using a so-called mini nuke were to succeed, targeted against Russia or Iran, this could potentially lead humanity into a WW III scenario. Of course these details are not highlighted in mainstream media reports.

F-15E Eagle Strike Eagle Fighter for the Delivery of the B-61-12 

Low Yield Nukes: Humanitarian Warfare Goes Live

And when the characteristics of this “harmless” low yield nuclear bomb are inserted into the military manuals, “humanitarian warfare” goes live: “It’s low yield and safe for civilians, let’s use it” [paraphrase].

The US arsenal of B61 nuclear bombs directed against the Russian Federation are currently under the national command of 5 non-nuclear states (Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey). The command structure pertaining to the B61-12 is yet to be confirmed. The situation with regard to Turkey’s Incirlik base is unclear.

2022 05 02 14 26
2022 05 02 14 26

The Prodigal.

Yeah. This is the name of the movie that the statue comes from.

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This movie’s title is The Prodigal.

The Prodigal is a 1955 Biblical epic film made by MGM starring Edmund Purdom and Lana Turner. It was based on the New Testament parable about a selfish son who leaves his family to pursue a life of pleasure. The film also features James Mitchell, Louis Calhern, Joseph Wiseman, Cecil Kellaway and Walter Hampden. The dancer Taina Elg made her film debut.

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The story is loosely based on Jesus Christ’s parable of the prodigal son, from the Biblical New Testament Gospels, although considerable liberties are taken with the source material, chief among them being the addition of a female lead in the form of the high priestess of Astarte, Samarra.

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It’s About Time

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Isn’t it always?

With the start of World War III by the United States “declaring” war against Russia by its actions in Ukraine, we have entered a time when the end of time has become very possible. I am speaking of nuclear annihilation.

I look down at my great-uncle’s gold Elgin pocket watch from the 19th century. His name was John Patrick Whalen, an Irish immigrant to the U.S. who fled England’s colonialist created famine in Ireland. It tells me it is 5:15 PM on April 21, 2022, a date, coincidentally, with a history. No doubt John looked at his watch on this date in 1898 when the United States, after the USS Maine exploded from within in Havana harbor (a possible false flag attack), declared war on Spain in order to confiscate Spanish territories – Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. One colonial power replaced another and then proceeded over the long decades to wage war and slaughter these island peoples. Imperialism never dies. It is timeless.

One hundred-and twenty-four years go by in a flash and it’s still the same old story. In 1898 the yellow press screamed Spanish devils and today it screams Russian devils. Then and now the press called for war. If the human race is still here in another 124 years, time and the corporate media will no doubt have told the same story – war and propaganda’s lies to an insouciant and ignorant population too hypnotized by propaganda to oppose them. This despite the apocalyptic sense that permeates our lives because of demonic technology and its use to transform humans into machines who can’t think clearly enough to perceive reality and realize the threat posed by that quintessential technological invention – nuclear weapons.

This is not uplifting, but it’s true. The nuclear weapons are primed and ready to fly. The U.S. insists on its first-strike right to launch them. It openly declares it is seeking the overthrow of the Russian government. Russia says it will use nuclear weapons only if its existence is threatened, which has become increasingly so because of U.S. provocations over a long time period and its current expanding arming of Ukraine’s government and its neo-Nazi forces.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin and its Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov have just warned the U.S. that such involvement has made nuclear war a “serious” and “real” risk, in Lavrov’s words “we must not underestimate it,” which is a mild form of diplomatic speech. Putin said that Russia has made all the preparations to respond if it senses a strategic threat to Russia and that response will be “instant, it will be quick.” The U.S. response is to shrug these statements off, just as it has done so for many years with Putin’s complaints about NATO forces moving up to its border. Incredibly, Biden has said, “For God’s sake, this man (Putin) cannot remain in power.”

Despite endless media/intelligence anti-Russian propaganda – “a vast tapestry of lies,” to use Harold Pinter’s phrase – many fine writers have provided the historical details to confirm the truth that the U.S. has purposely provoked the Russian war in Ukraine by its actions there and throughout Eastern Europe, which the mainstream media avoid completely. This U.S. aggressive history against Russia is part of a much larger history of imperial hubris extending back to the 19th century. I will therefore here follow Thoreau’s advice – “If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?” – since how many times do people need to hear lies such as “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction” in order to justify wars of aggression around the world. The historical facts are very clear, but facts and history don’t seem to matter to many people. Pinter again, in his Nobel Address, bluntly told the truth about the U.S.’s history of systematic and remorseless war crimes: “Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.” Which is still the case.

So time is my focus, for the last days have arrived unless there occurs a radical awakening to the obvious truth that the U.S. government is pushing the world to the brink of disaster in full awareness of the consequences. Its actions are insane, yet insanity has become the norm. Insane leaders and a catatonic, hypnotized public lead to disaster.

I write these words with an old fountain pen, a high school graduation gift, to somehow comfort and remind myself that when we were this close once before in October 1962, Kennedy and Khrushchev miraculously found a solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis; and to find hope now, and that when my time is up and I join John Patrick in the other world, things will have changed for my children and grand-children. It is admittedly the hope of a desperado.

The last few years of the Covid-19 propaganda have served to further distort people’s sense of time, a distortion years in the making through the introduction of digital technology with its accompanying numerical time clicks and its severing of our natural sense of time that is tied to the rising and falling of the tides and the turning of the days and seasons, a feeling that is being lost. Such felt sense of time’s texture could be slow or faster, but it had limits. We now live in a world without limits, which, as the ancient Greeks knew, demands payback.

For years before Covid-19, the sense of speed time was dominant, supported by the politically-introduced state of a constant emergency after September 11, 2001 with the urgency to hurry and keep up or one would fall behind. Keep up with what was never explained. Hurry why? Fast and faster was the rule with constant busyness that served the very useful social function of leaving no time for thinking, which was the point, but it made many feel as though they were engaged. And constantly alert for “terrorists” to come knocking. Thus the long wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc., all of which continue via various subterfuges.

Then, presto, all this frenzied time sense came to a stop with the 2020 lockdowns, when time got very slow, but not slow in the natural sense but an enforced slowness. People were locked up. Not only was it stupefying but stultifying and an existential drag. This went on for two years with the prisoners allowed short respites only to be rounded back up and locked down again. Jabbed and jolted was the plan. When will it ever end? was the common cry, as despair and depression spread and scrambled minds led to suicides and mindless screen entertainment. This was planned education for a trans-human future in which the cell phone will be central to totalitarian control if people do not rebel.

Those behind the Covid-19 and war propaganda are fanatical technocrats who seek total control of the world’s population through digital technology. Now they have temporarily let the people out of one type of cell and dramatically sped up time with frantic war propaganda against Russia. The great English writer John Berger said it perfectly:

Every ruling minority needs to numb, and, if possible, to kill the time-sense of those whom it exploits. This is the authoritarian secret of all methods of imprisonment. 

Everyone is now doing time while scrolling messages on the walls of their cell phones. A twisted, convoluted, distorted, mechanical time in which it seems that there is no history and the future is an endless road of more of the same.

Some say we have all the time in the world. I say no, that we have entered a new time, perhaps the end-time, when the world’s end is a very real possibility. Hypnotized people can agree to anything, even mass-suicide, unless they snap out of it. This can only happen with a return to slowness in the old sense, when people once felt time in their hearts’ rhythms attuned to the rising and falling of nature’s reality. Time to think and contemplate the fate of the earth when nuclear war is contemplated. Yes, “We must not underestimate it.”

It’s about time.

Isn’t it always?

Chinese Style Meat Buns

char siu 1 11 750x422 1
char siu 1 11 750×422 1

If you’ve ever been to a Chinese bakery, you have seen this type of meat buns among many other delicious goodies. These buns are also called pork buns, or Char Siu Bao which basically is a barbecued pork filled bun. They can be either steamed or baked, as in this write-up.

I love both versions, and here in Southern China the steamed buns are the most common. Up North and to the West, the baked buns are very common.

These buns are pretty easy to make. You should love them and they will turn out amazing, and they were gone in no time.

The dough is quite a simple dough with simple ingredients.

In a small bowl, mix the warm water, sugar and yeast and let it sit until it starts foaming, for about 15 minutes. In a large bowl add the flour and to it add the egg, oil, salt and the yeast mixture.

char siu 1 750x422 1
char siu 1 750×422 1

Mix it all together using your hands, if you find the dough too sticky just add more flour. Knead the dough on a floured surface for a few more minutes, until it becomes elastic. Â Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and let it rise until doubled in size, in a warm spot.

char siu 1 2 750x422 1
char siu 1 2 750×422 1

While the dough is resting we can make the filling. I used one pork loin that was about 1 1/2 lb in weight. To make the marinade, is simple as well. Cut up the pork loin in small pieces and set aside. In a medium sized bowl, add the garlic and ginger paste, vegetable oil, honey, Hoisin sauce, soy sauce, wine, pepper, salt, five spice powder, and sesame oil. Whisk everything all together and add the pork to it. Let the pork marinate for about 1 hour, or until the dough is almost ready.

char siu 1 3 750x422 1
char siu 1 3 750×422 1

Heat a skillet, over medium heat and add a tablespoon of vegetable oil to it. When the oil is hot add the pork mixture including the marinade to it and cook until the pork is cooked thoroughly, for about 5 minutes. Before removing it from heat, add the green onions to it and mix well.

char siu 1 4 750x422 1
char siu 1 4 750×422 1

After all this is said and done the dough should have doubled in size nicely.

char siu 1 5 750x422 1
char siu 1 5 750×422 1

Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball.

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char siu 1 6 750×422 1

Using a rolling pin, roll out each ball into a disc, so that it’s about 4 or 5 inches in diameter. Place heaping tablespoon of the meat mixture in the middle of it.

char siu 1 7 750x422 1
char siu 1 7 750×422 1

Seal the bun by gathering up the edges of the disc.

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char siu 1 8 750×422 1

Place the sealed side down bun, on an ungreased baking sheet. Repeat with remaining balls and meat mixture.

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char siu 1 9 750×422 1

Brush the buns with egg wash and bake in a preheated oven at 350 F degrees for about 15 to 20 minutes or until the buns are nice and golden brown.

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char siu 1 10 750×422 1

They look so good and are so delicious, you will love them.

char siu 1 12 750x422 1
char siu 1 12 750×422 1

These Chinese Style Meat Buns also known as Char Siu Bao are delicious pork filled buns, made incredibly easy and so delicious!
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Ingredients

Dough

  • 1/2 cup water water
  • 2 1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 large egg beaten
  • 3 tablespoon oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Filling

  • 1 pork loin 1 1/2 lb
  • 2 teaspoon garlic and ginger paste
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 2 tablespoon honey
  • 2 tablespoon hoisin sauce
  • 2 tablespoon soy sauce low sodium
  • 1 tablespoon red wine
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper freshly ground
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon five spice powder
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 2 sprigs green onion finely chopped

Egg wash

  • 1 egg beaten

Instructions

  • In a small bowl, mix the warm water, sugar and yeast and let it sit until it starts foaming, for about 15 minutes. In a large bowl add the flour and to it add the egg, oil, salt and the yeast mixture.
  • Mix it all together using your hands, if you find the dough too sticky just add more flour. Knead the dough on a floured surface for a few more minutes, until it becomes elastic. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and let it rise until doubled in size, in a warm spot.
  • Cut up the pork loin in small pieces and set aside. In a medium sized bowl, add the garlic and ginger paste, vegetable oil, honey, Hoisin sauce, soy sauce, wine, pepper, salt, five spice powder, and sesame oil. Whisk everything all together and add the pork to it. Let the pork marinate for about 1 hour, or until the dough is almost ready.
  • eat a skillet, over medium heat and add a tablespoon of vegetable oil to it. When the oil is hot add the pork mixture including the marinade to it and cook until the pork is cooked thoroughly, for about 5 minutes. Before removing it from heat, add the green onions to it and mix well.
  • Preheat oven to 350 F degrees.
  • Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball.
  • Using a rolling pin, roll out each ball into a disc, so that it’s about 4 or 5 inches in diameter. Place heaping tablespoon of the meat mixture in the middle of it.
  • Seal the bun by gathering up the edges of the disc.
  • Place the sealed side down bun, on an ungreased baking sheet. Repeat with remaining balls and meat mixture.
  • Brush the buns with egg wash and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes or until the buns are nice and golden brown.
These were FANTASTIC and I only used ground beef, onion, red pepper flakes, salt and extra monterey jack and mozzarella cheese. The roll is very light and not heavy on the bread like other recipes I've seen. These could be stuffed with pretty much anything. Next time I'm trying chicken and mushroom. I baked an extra 5 minutes to get the right golden color. HIGHLY recommended! YUM. 

- Kristi

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Clash of Christianities: Why Europe cannot understand Russia

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the Author’s permission and cross-posted with The Cradle

Under an ubiquitous, toxic atmosphere of cognitive dissonance drenched in Russophobia, it’s absolutely impossible to have a meaningful discussion on finer points of Russian history and culture across the NATO space – a phenomenon I’m experiencing back in Paris right now, fresh from a long stint in Istanbul.

At best, in a semblance of civilized dialogue, Russia is pigeonholed in the reductionist view of a threatening, irrational, ever-expanding empire – a way more wicked version of Ancient Rome, Achaemenid Persia, Ottoman Turkey or Mughal India.

The fall of the USSR a little over three decades ago did hurl Russia back three centuries – to its borders in the 17th century. Russia, historically, had been interpreted as a secular empire – immense, multiple and multinational. This is all informed by history, very much alive even today in the Russian collective unconscious.

When Operation Z started I was in Istanbul – the Second Rome. I spent a considerable time of my late night walks around Hagia Sophia reflecting on the historical correlations of the Second Rome with the Third Rome – which happens to be Moscow, since the concept was first enounced at the start of the 16th century.

Later, back in Paris, banishment to soliloquy territory seemed inevitable until an academic pointed me to some substance, although heavily distorted by political correctness, available in the French magazine Historia.

There’s at least an attempt to discuss the Third Rome. The significance of the concept was initially religious before becoming political – encapsulating the Russian drive to become the leader of the Orthodox world in contrast with Catholicism. This has to be understood also in the context of pan-Slavic theories springing up under the first Romanov and then reaching their apogee in the 19th century.

Eurasianism – and its several declinations – treats the complex Russian identity as double-faced, between east and west. Western liberal democracies simply can’t understand that these ideas – infusing varied brands of Russian nationalism – do not imply hostility to “enlightened” Europe, but an affirmation of Difference (they could learn a bit from reading more Gilles Deleuze for that matter). Eurasianism also weighs on closer relations with Central Asia and necessary alliances, in various degrees, with China and Turkey.

A perplexed liberal west remains hostage to a vortex of Russian images which it can’t properly decode – from the two-headed eagle, which is the symbol of the Russian state since Peter the Great, to the Kremlin cathedrals, the St. Petersburg citadel, the Red Army entering Berlin in 1945, the May 9 parades (the next one will be particularly meaningful), and historical figures from Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great. At best – and we’re talking academic level ‘experts’ – they identify all of the above as “flamboyant and confused” imagery.

The Christian/Orthodox divide

The apparently monolithic liberal west itself also cannot be understood if we forget how, historically, Europe is also a two-headed beast: one head may be tracked from Charlemagne all the way to the awful Brussels Eurocrat machine; and the other one comes from Athens and Rome, and via Byzantium/Constantinople (the Second Rome) reaches all the way to Moscow (the Third Rome).

Latin Europe, for the Orthodox, is seen as a hybrid usurper, preaching a distorted Christianity which only refers to St. Augustine, practicing absurd rites and neglecting the very important Holy Ghost. The Europe of Christian Popes invented what is considered a historical hydra – Byzantium – where Byzantines were actually Greeks living under the Roman Empire.

Western Europeans for their part see the Orthodox and the Christians from the East (see how they were abandoned by the west in Syria under ISIS and Al Qaeda) as satraps and a bunch of smugglers – while the Orthodox regard the Crusaders, the Teutonic chevaliers and the Jesuits – correctly, we must say – as barbarian usurpers bent on world conquest.

In the Orthodox canon, a major trauma is the fourth Crusade in 1204 which utterly destroyed Constantinople. The Frankish chevaliers happened to eviscerate the most dazzling metropolis in the world, which congregated at the time all the riches from Asia.

That was the definition of cultural genocide. The Frankish also happened to be aligned with some notorious serial plunderers: the Venetians. No wonder, from that historical juncture onwards, a slogan was born: “Better the Sultan’s turban than the Pope’s tiara.”

So since the 8th century, Carolingian and Byzantine Europe were de facto at war across an Iron Curtain from the Baltics to the Mediterranean (compare it with the emerging New Iron Curtain of Cold War 2.0). After the barbarian invasions, they neither spoke the same language nor practiced the same writing, rites or theology.

This fracture, significantly, also trespassed Kiev. The west was Catholic – 15% of Greek catholics and 3% of Latins – and in the center and the east, 70% Orthodox, who became hegemonic in the 20th century after the elimination of Jewish minorities by mainly the Waffen-SS of the Galicia division, the precursors of Ukraine’s Azov batallion.

Constantinople, even in decline, managed to pull off a sophisticated geo-strategic game to seduce the Slavs, betting on Muscovy against the Catholic Polish-Lithuanian combo. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 allowed Muscovy to denounce the treason of Greeks and Byzantine Armenians who rallied around the Roman Pope, who badly wanted a reunified Christianity.

Afterward, Russia ends up constituting itself as the only Orthodox nation that did not fall under Ottoman domination. Moscow regards itself – as Byzantium – as a unique symphony between spiritual and temporal powers.

Third Rome becomes a political concept only in the 19th century – after Peter the Great and Catherine the Great had vastly expanded Russian power. The key concepts of Russia, Empire and Orthodoxy are fused. That always implies Russia needs a ‘near abroad’ – and that bears similarities with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vision (which, significantly, is not imperial, but cultural).

As the vast Russian space has been in constant flow for centuries, that also implies the central role of the concept of encirclement. Every Russian is very much aware of territorial vulnerability (remember, for starters, Napoleon and Hitler). Once the western borderland is trespassed, it’s an easy ride all the way to Moscow. Thus, this very unstable line must be protected; the current correlation is the real threat of Ukraine made to host NATO bases.

Onward to Odessa

With the fall of the USSR, Russia found itself in a geopolitical situation last encountered in the 17th century. The slow and painful reconstruction was spearheaded from two fronts: the KGB – later FSB – and the Orthodox church. The highest-level interaction between the Orthodox clergy and the Kremlin was conducted by Patriarch Kirill – who later became Putin’s minister of religious affairs.

Ukraine for its part had become a de facto Moscow protectorate way back in 1654 under the Treaty of Pereyaslav: much more than a strategic alliance, it was a natural fusion, in progress for ages by two Orthodox Slav nations.

Ukraine then falls under the Russian orbit. Russian domination expands until 1764, when the last Ukrainian hetman (commander-in-chief) is officially deposed by Catherine the Great: that’s when Ukraine becomes a province of the Russian empire.

As Putin made it quite clear this week: “Russia cannot allow the creation of anti-Russian territories around the country.” Operation Z will inevitably encompass Odessa, founded in 1794 by Catherine the Great.

The Russians at the time had just expelled the Ottomans from the northwest of the Black Sea, which had been successively run by Goths, Bulgars, Hungarians and then Turkish peoples – all the way to the Tatars. Odessa at the start was peopled, believe it or not, by Romanians who were encouraged to settle there after the 16th century by the Ottoman sultans.

Catherine chose a Greek name for the city – which at the start was not Slav at all. And very much like St. Petersburg, founded a century earlier by Peter the Great, Odessa never stopped flirting with the west.

Tsar Alexander I, in the early 19th century, decides to turn Odessa into a great trading port – developed by a Frenchman, the Duke of Richelieu. It was from the port of Odessa that Ukrainian wheat started to reach Europe. By the turn of the 20th century, Odessa is truly multinational – after having attracted, among others, the genius of Pushkin.

Odessa is not Ukrainian: it’s an intrinsic part of the Russian soul. And soon the trials and tribulations of history will make it so again: as an independent republic; as part of a Novorossiya confederation; or attached to the Russian Federation. The people of Odessa will decide.

Louisiana Crawfish Étouffée

In Louisiana, there’s nothing better than this classic during crawfish season. This recipe is easy and can be substituted with shrimp when crawfish are out of season. Even better when served with hot garlic French bread! Start cooking the rice first since this is a quick and easy dish.

meal
Louisiana Crawfish Étouffée.

Ingredients

Original recipe yields 6 servings
Ingredient Checklist

Directions

Instructions Checklist
  • Combine the rice and 6 cups water in a saucepan, and bring to a boil. Cover, and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, until rice is tender and water has been absorbed.

  • While the rice is cooking, melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, and saute until transparent. Stir in the garlic, and cook for a minute. Stir in the flour until well blended. Gradually stir in the tomato sauce and remaining 1 cup water, then add the crawfish tails and bring to a simmer. Add the green onions and season with salt, pepper, and Cajun seasoning. Simmer for 5 to 10 minutes over low heat, until the crawfish is cooked but not tough. Serve over hot cooked rice.

Pretty Chinese Girl

She’s advertising clothes on a a treadmill. video 3MB

 

America is Preparing for Something Bigger than Russia Ukraine…

Yes. It is VERY disturbing. Especially, as I know how China will react.

Do you want more?

I have more articles like this one in my Art Index here…

ART

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You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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MM Articles & Links

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Blackbeard the pirate, cherry pies, Ukraine, United States geopolitical insanity and Chrysta Bell

AIT Worldwide Logistics reports that Air China’s terminal is back to normal operations, but China Southern’s terminal remains closed at Guangzhou airport. In Qingdao, air imports must be stored in the terminal for 10 days following disinfection. Wuhan has a three- to four-day backlog of air cargo because truck deliveries are suspended to cities facing outbreaks. Tianjin, in north China, is also preventing truck movements to cities with rising case counts. 

- Eric Kullisch of FreightWaves.com

China continues it’s rigorous disinfection protocols, and maintains a very harsh and strict stance against all types and forms of viruses entering it’s borders.

Let’s continue on our New Beginnings discourse in regarding this crazy and uncomfortable period of change. In this article we include a host of articles, and observations  that supports the changing geopolitical climate, and turmoil present in the West.

Dangerous Crossroads: Putin Warns the US to Back Off in Ukraine

The Western narrative of the two-month old war in Ukraine imbued with the rhetoric of “democracy versus autocracy,” has dramatically changed with the assertion by the US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin at a news conference in Poland Monday following his and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Kiev, that Washington  wants to “to see Russia weakened.” 

David Sanger at the New York Times noted that Austin was “acknowledging a transformation of the conflict, from a battle over control of Ukraine to one that pits Washington more directly against Moscow.” But this is not really a transformation. Sanger’s colleague at the Washington Post, David Ignatius, had written over three months ago that the Biden Administration was working on a road map to get Russia blogged down in Ukraine and attrition it in a way that it becomes a much diminished power on the world stage.

For the Kremlin, most certainly, Austin’s remark would not have come as surprise. As recently as on Monday, President Vladimir Putin repeated at a meeting in the Kremlin that the US and its allies have sought to “split Russian society and destroy Russia from within.” Putin revisited the topic again on Wednesday pointing out that “the forces that have been historically pursuing a policy aimed at containing Russia just don’t need such an independent and large country, even enormously large, in their view. They believe that its very existence poses a threat to them.”

In fact, several perceptive Western observers had estimated that the Kremlin has effectively fallen into a trap laid by the US that is intended to bring down Putin’s regime. Come to think of it, that famous gaffe on 26 March wasn’t a gaffe after all, when President Biden, speaking in Warsaw, had blurted out the impromptu, unscripted remark: “For God’s sake, this man (Putin) cannot remain in power.”

All the same, Austin’s remark signifies that a dramatic change is taking place in the geopolitical situation, which could have positive or negative results. On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned the West that staying involved in the Russia-Ukraine war posed “serious” and “real” risks of a World War III and “we must not underestimate it.”

To be sure, the conflict is slowly but steadily turning into a new phase. Foreign fighters and soldiers from NATO regular units are increasingly beefing up the depleted Ukrainian army’s front lines.

That said, the optics also need to be understood. Austin’s war cry comes soon after Mariupol fell to the Russian forces. A couple of thousands Ukrainian nationalists and a few hundred military personnel from NATO countries are trapped in an underground labyrinth at the Azovstal complex in the city, which Russian forces have sealed off. It has been a severe blow to the US’ prestige.

The Russian special operation is on track — “grinding” the Ukrainian forces to the ground, to borrow the graphic expression from UK prime minister Boris Johnson. On Monday, Russian high-precision missiles hit at least six railway substations in Western Ukraine destroying railway facilities in Krasnoe, Zdolbunov, Zhmerinka, Berdichev, Kovel, Korosten, which were meant to be key transshipment points for the supply of Western weaponry to the Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region. Rail communication in several western regions of Ukraine is effectively blocked.

Reports from the east show that Ukrainian forces are suffering heavy losses. Russian forces have taken the city of Kremennaya and are approaching the town of Lyman, which would give them control of a direct road to Slavyansk from the east.

Austin’s hyped up rhetoric notwithstanding, Ukraine is not only not showing any signs of winning but keeps bleeding, and the territory under the actual control of the Ukrainian government is steadily shrinking. The US officials admit that Pentagon lacks the ability to track the weapons that are going in. Yet, the Biden administration has so far spent around $4 billion on Ukraine. Therein hangs a tale. Who are the real beneficiaries of the US supplies? The level of corruption in Ukraine is a legion.

The plain truth is that it will be many weeks or months before meaningful volumes of heavy weapons could be delivered to Ukrainian combat units but in the meanwhile, the Battle of Donbass will be fought almost entirely on the basis of the current strength on the ground. In a detailed analysis this week, a former colonel in the US Army and prolific media commentator Daniel Davis concluded: “It will take too long for Western governments to come up with a coherent equipping plan and then prepare, ship, and deliver the kit to its destination in a timeframe that could provide Kyiv’s troops the ability to tip the balance against Russia.”

The bottom line is this: The Biden Administration’s geopolitical agenda is to prolong the military conflict, which apart from weakening Russia militarily and diplomatically, turns Europe into a battlefield and makes the continent heavily dependent on the US leadership for a very long time to come. For Biden, the war provides a useful distraction in US politics in an election year.

Austin hosted a conference of the US’ allies on Monday at the American base in Germany to form a monthly contact group on Ukraine’s self defence to coordinate the “efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s military for the long haul.” It has the ominous look of a “coalition of the willing.” Even Israel was recruited. But the US is underestimating the steely Russian resolve to fully realise the objectives behind the special operation in Ukraine. Moscow will not brook any roadblocks, no matter what it takes.

Putin issued a stern warning today:

“If someone from outside moves to interfere in the current developments, they should know that they will indeed create strategic threats to Russia, which are unacceptable to us, and they should know that our response to encounter assaults will be instant, it will be quick.”

He was explicit that Russia has military capabilities that the US cannot match.

“We have all the tools to do it, the tools that others can’t boast of at the moment, but as for us, we won’t be boasting. We will use them if the need arises and I would like everyone to be aware of it. We have made all the necessary decisions in this regard,” Putin warned.

White House Says It Would “Strongly Support” Finland & Sweden NATO Membership

Trial balloon, or reality?

The Biden White House now appears to be going all-in on the potential for Finland and Sweden seeking formal application for NATO membership, despite Moscow's recent repeat warnings that such an action would immediately ratchet nuclear tensions in the Baltic region.

While previously issuing vague statements of positive support for the Scandinavian countries' discussions on the controversial issue - given especially that Finland shares an over 800-mile long border with Russia - on Thursday Secretary of State Antony Blinken took US support further by saying for the first time the Untied States would "strongly support" Sweden and Finland pursuing NATO membership.

From HERE.

Updates on MM you-tube videos

Of my thirty plus videos, one video was banned because I violated the rules on Medical disinformation, and two became restricted viewing inside the United States. You can come to your own conclusions as to why.

Completely deleted as in “removed”.

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2022 05 01 17 24

Cannot be viewed in the United States; indicated in yellow as “partially blocked”.

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2022 05 01 17 14

“Cause Of Death – Reality vs. Google vs. Media”

these maps are very insightful 9
these maps are very insightful 9

A Big Horse

daily picdump 23 13
daily picdump 23 13

Governmental Dysfunction Rises with Time. “US Hegemony is Constrained by Two Powers, Russia and China”

Great Costume

1650893911 8fm5zixffo
1650893911 8fm5zixffo

Land use comparison

these maps are very insightful 8
these maps are very insightful 8

Can NATO Re-Arm Ukraine?

Kiev is Losing Stuff Faster than the West can Send it

by James Tweedie for the Saker Blog

The stated aims of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine include the de-Nazification and demilitarisation of the Kiev regime.

In opposition, the NATO member states led by the US are arming the Ukraine and its Nazi battalions, while sending thousands of “volunteers”, “advisors” and other mercenaries to fight with the aim of prolonging the war for years.

The question, as always, is who is winning?

In a media briefing on March 25, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) revealed some of its estimates of Ukrainian military strength before the operation commenced on February 24, focussing on heavy equipment, along with its claims of how much had been destroyed so far.

According to the MoD, Ukraine began the war with 2,416 armoured vehicles — although it did not say how many were main battle tanks (MBTs), infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) or armoured personnel carriers (APCs). The MoD also listed 1,509 field artillery guns and mortars, 535 multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), 152 fixed-wing aircraft, 149 helicopters, 180 medium- and long-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems and 300 radars of various kinds in the Ukrainian inventory.

The MoD’s twice-daily briefings include updates on Ukrainian loses from those equipment stocks. The April 29 morning report claimed 2,638 tanks and armoured vehicles destroyed — 222 more than the ministry said the Ukraine started the war with. On top of that are the many reports of Russian troops or Donbass militia capturing Ukrainian equipment intact or repairable and putting it back into service for themselves.

Two-thirds of the Ukrainian air force’s helicopters and four-fifths of its fighter and attack jets are gone as well, according to Moscow, along with most of its anti-aircraft weapons. Even the US Department of Defence’s spokesman admitted in mid-April that the UAF had less than 20 aircraft in late March. And Ukraine does not have a navy anymore.

And most importantly to the Russian way of warfare, the MoD claims to have knocked out almost 1,200 Ukrainian artillery pieces and over 300 MLRS units. Meanwhile the Russian air and missile forces have crippled the Ukraine’s ability to replace those losses, destroying factories and repair centres.

Either the MoD under-estimated Ukrainian strength had to start with, or is over-claiming (which always happens in war) or the heavy gear sent by NATO is starting to turn up on the battlefield.

The Ukrainian government has made exaggerated claims of Russian casualties and losses but is very reticent about its own, admitting to only 3,000 soldiers killed and a handful taken prisoner so far.

Russia is also guilty of the old US sin of publishing body-counts. On April 16 the MoD claimed Ukraine had suffered 23,367 “irreplaceable” casualties. The next day it stated that of the 6,824 foreign mercenaries who came to fight for Kiev, Russian forces had “eliminated” 1,035, while 912 had fled the country and 4,877 were still hanging around like a bad smell.

Looking on the Bright Side…

Some Western “military analysts” asserted before the war that the Ukrainian forces had 820-850 tanks, mostly old T-64s left over from the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. If one assumes a ratio of three APCs or IFVs to every MBT, then the Ukraine had about 2,500 infantry carriers and 3,400 armoured vehicles in total.

NATO states were already pouring arms into the Ukraine for years before the conflict escalated, and have sped up the deliveries since then. The US says it has provided 200 M113 APCs, 100 armoured Humvee utility vehicles, 90 M777 155mm howitzers with 183,000 rounds of ammunition, 16 Mi-17 helicopters, enough parts to return 20 derelict Ukrainian aircraft to service and 7,000 Javelin anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). Canada has given four more howitzers.

The UK has sent or pledged 120 APCs, including 80 Mastiff (MRAP) and a “small number” of Alvis Stormer HVM armoured short-range SAM carriers. France is training 40 Ukrainian soldiers to man the CAESAR truck-mounted 155mm howitzers it is donating. Since each vehicle has a crew of five, we can assume that Paris is sending just eight guns. Australia is sending 20 Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles, another lightly-armoured truck.

Poland has sent over 200 Soviet-built T-72 tanks and several dozen BMP-1 IFVs, while the Czech Republic sent a mix of 40 T-72s and BMP-1s. Slovakia donated a single S-300 SAM battery. The Ukrainians actually know how to operate and maintain these things, and have the right calibre ammunition for them.

German arms giant Rheinmetall has volunteered 88 old Leopard 1 tanks and 100 Marder IFVs it has in its stocks.

But most of this stuff is useless, starting with the much-vaunted Javelin missiles which failed to penetrate the latest explosive-reactive armour (ERA) blocks fitted to Russian tanks. Many of the armoured vehicles being donated belong in museums.

The M113 APC is a design from the 1950s that first saw combat in the Vietnam War, where it immediately proved to be a deathtrap. It is a tall, boxy, slab-sided vehicle with armour made from aluminium, not steel. It was so vulnerable to the anti-tank weapons used by the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) back in the 1960s that US soldiers preferred to ride on the roof than inside it.

The Leopard 1 is another relic of the ‘60s, kind of the tank equivalent of the VW camper van. Its design was based on a prevailing belief that armour had lost the race to shaped-charge anti-tank warheads, so tanks should be made light and fast. Its 70mm-thick frontal armour is no match for modern ATGMs and that can punch through 700mm or more of solid steel.

The armoured Humvees and Mastiffs were used by US and British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are designed only to protect their occupants from rifle and machine-gun fire and home-made roadside bombs during ambushes by lightly-armed guerrillas, not to stand up to tanks.

An IFV is distinct from an APC in mounting heavy armament to support the troops it carries in combat. APCs are just “battle taxis” to get troops close to where the fighting is without taking casualties from random artillery shell fragments and stray machine gun fire on the way, then get back out of range. The Ukraine’s arms industry was already making its own vehicles like the Mastiff until Russian cruise missiles wrecked its factories.

These lightly-armoured vehicles will not prevent many casualties on the Ukrainian side, or cause any to the Russians. The weapons carried by Russian armour and attack helicopters can make mincemeat of them. Photos and videos of the war show Ukraine’s more-sophisticated Russian-made IFVs literally torn apart and incinerated by modern ATGMs or tank gun rounds.

The M777, the US Army’s main field gun, is made in Britain. The huge and legendary US arms industry of Colt, Remington and Winchester nowadays seems incapable of making a simple gun that goes bang reliably.

A Losing Battle

Even if the equipment coming in from the West was any good, there is still clearly not enough of it to keep up with the rate of attrition. The 560 tanks and APCs sent or pledged so far are just a fifth of what Russia claims to have already destroyed, and the 98 extra howitzers are less than a tenth of the artillery Ukraine has lost.

Even going by higher estimates of Ukrainian strength, Kiev has lost two-thirds of its armour and three-quarters of its air force in two months of fighting. Russia is still claiming up to 50 Ukrainian armoured vehicles destroyed every day, even though they must be getting pretty scarce on the battlefield — especially given reports that the Ukrainian army has concentrated its heavy equipment in the cities. At that rate Ukraine’s armoured and mechanised brigades will very soon be reduced to foot-slogging infantry.

The Ukrainian artillery is being whittled down at a slower pace, but once the offensive to wipe out the forces trapped in the ‘Donbass cauldron’ enters the assault phase one might expect to see a lot more guns accounted for.

But the fact is that much of NATO’s “lethal aid” will never reach the front. Russian missiles have already obliterated warehouses full of it in Lvov, the city close to the Polish border. Railway yards and electricity supply sub-stations have also been hit, along with bridges across the Dnieper river that cuts the Ukraine in two from north to south.

Russian air superiority means the Ukrainian army has to smuggle arms to the eastern front in civilian vehicles. You can’t fit a 155mm howitzer or a tank in the back of a goods van.

Meanwhile, Russia is systematically destroying Ukrainian munitions dumps and fuel storage and refining facilities. Sooner or later the troops at the front are going to run out of ammo.

What actually makes it through is being captured by the Russian and Donbass forces and fired back at its former owners. And now the US has admitted it has no idea if the arms it is sending to the notoriously-corrupt Ukraine are ending up on the black market.

What’s it all for?

Just like the series of false-flag atrocities committed against Ukrainian citizens by their own security service, the point of all this “lethal aid” seems to be to persuade President Volodymyr Zelensky to keep fighting Russia when all military and political logic says it should make peace.

Amid all the self-delusional Western media fantasies that the wheels are falling off the Russian military campaign, almost nobody is asking how Kiev plans to keep fighting beyond the next few weeks.

Zelensky could have struck a peace deal with Moscow a month ago that surrendered only that which he had already lost — the Crimea, the Donbass and NATO membership ambitions — while purging Nazis from the government and armed forces who he insists were never there to begin with.

But instead the “big fool” chose to believe his own propaganda, take advice from Washington and push on deeper into the “Big Muddy”, in the words of Pete Seeger.

“Wind Blown Patches Of Snow Cause A 3D Effect In Eastern Colorado”

these maps are very insightful 11
these maps are very insightful 11

Poland Reportedly Interested in Annexing Part of Ukrainian Territories

North Korean election results in 2019

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xe11kfhbzjm81

Johnstone: “Oh God It’s Going To Get So Much Worse”

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

Rightists have spent the last couple of days freaking out and invoking Orwell’s 1984 in response to something their political enemies are doing in America, and for once it’s for a pretty good reason.

The Department of Homeland Security has secretly set up a “Disinformation Governance Board”, only informing the public about its plans for the institution after it had already been established.

The disinformation board, which critics have understandably been calling a “Ministry of Truth”, purportedly exists to fight disinformation coming out of Russia as well as misleading messages about the US-Mexico border. We may be certain that the emphasis in the board’s establishment has been on the Russia angle, however.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in her patented “You’re such a crazy idiot for questioning me about the White House” manner, dismissed alarmed questions about what specific functions this strange new DHS entity was going to be performing and what its authority will look like.

“It sounds like the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country in a range of communities,” Psaki said.

“I’m not sure who opposes that effort.”

The answer to the question of “who opposes that effort” is of course “anyone with functioning gray matter between their ears.” No government entity has any business appointing itself the authority to sort information from disinformation on behalf of the public, because government entities are not impartial and omniscient deities who can be entrusted to serve the public as objective arbiters of absolute reality. They would with absolute certainty wind up drawing distinctions between information, misinformation and disinformation in whatever way serves their interests, regardless of what’s true, exactly as any authoritarian regime would do.

I mean, is anyone honestly more afraid of Russian disinformation than they are of their own government appointing itself the authority to decide what counts as disinformation?

This important point has gotten a bit lost in the shuffle due to the utterly hypnotic ridiculousness of the person who has been appointed to run the Disinformation Governance Board. Nina Jankowicz, a carefully groomed swamp creature who has worked in Kyiv as a communications advisor to the Ukrainian government as part of a Fulbright fellowship, is being widely criticized by pundits and social media users for her virulent Russiagating and whatever the hell this is:

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2022 05 02 12 08

Because of this person’s embarrassing cartoonishness, a lot more commentary lately has been going into discussing the fact that the Department of Homeland Security’s Ministry of Truth is run by a kooky liberal than the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has a fucking Ministry of Truth.

Which is really to miss the forest for the trees, in my opinion. Would it really be any better if the “Disinformation Governance Board” was run by a chill dude you wouldn’t mind having a beer with? Especially when we know the ideological leanings of this department are going to bounce back and forth between elections and will always act in service of US empire narrative control regardless of who is in office? I don’t think so.

The real issue at hand is the fact that this new institution will almost certainly play a role in bridging the ever-narrowing gap between government censorship and Silicon Valley censorship. The creation of the DHS disinformation board is a far more shocking and frightening development than last year’s scandalous revelation that the White House was advising social media platforms about accounts it determined were circulating censorship-worthy Covid misinformation, which was itself a drastic leap in the direction toward direct government censorship from what had previously been considered normal.

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2022 05 02 12 09

We should probably talk more about how as soon as people accepted that it was fine for government, media and Silicon Valley institutions to work together to censor misinformation and rally public support around an Official Narrative about a virus, the ruling power establishment immediately took that as license to do that with a war and a foreign government as well.

Like, immediately immediately. We went from a massive narrative control campaign about a virus, which people accepted because they wanted to contain a deadly pandemic, straight into a massive narrative control campaign about Russia and Ukraine. Without skipping a beat. Like openly manipulating everyone’s understanding of world events is just what we do now. Now we’re seeing increasingly brazen censorship of political dissent about a fucking war that could easily end up getting us all killed in a nuclear holocaust, and a portion of the Biden administration’s whopping $33 billion Ukraine package is going toward funding “independent media” (read: war propaganda).

We should probably talk more about this. We should probably talk more about how insane it is that all mainstream western institutions immediately accepted it as a given that World War II levels of censorship and propaganda must be implemented over a faraway war that our governments are not even officially a part of.

It started as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, without any public discussion whatsoever. Like the groundwork had already been laid and everyone had already agreed that that’s what would happen. The public had no say in whether we want to be propagandized and censored to help the US win some kind of weird infowar to ensure its continued unipolar domination of the planet. It just happened.

No reason was given to the public as to why this must occur, and there was no public debate as to whether it should. This was by design, because propaganda only works when you don’t know it’s happening to you.

The choice was made for us that information is too important to be left in the hands of the people. It became set in stone that we are to be a propaganda-based society rather than a truth-based society. No discussion was offered, and no debate was allowed.

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2022 05 02 12 10

And as bad as it is, it’s on track to get much, much worse. They’re already setting up “disinformation” regulation in the government which presides over Silicon Valley, the proxy war between the US and Ukraine is escalating by the day, and aggressions are ramping up against China over both the Solomon Islands and Taiwan. If you think imperial narrative management is intense now, wait until the US empire’s struggle to secure global hegemony really gets going.

Do you consent to this? Do you? It’s something you kind of have to take a position on, because its implications have a direct effect on our lives as individuals and on our trajectory as a society. How much are we willing to sacrifice to help the US win an infowar against Russia?

The question of whether we should abandon all hope of ever becoming a truth-based society and committing instead to winning propaganda wars for a globe-spanning empire is perhaps the most consequential decision we’ve ever had to make as a species. Which is why we weren’t given a choice. It’s just been foisted upon us.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. By taking our control of information out of our hands without asking our permission and determining for us that we are to be a propaganda-based civilization for the foreseeable future, they have stolen something sacred from us. Something they had no right to take.

Nothing about the state of the world tells us that the people who run things are doing a good job. Nothing about our current situation suggests they should be given more control, rather than having control taken away from them and given to the people. We are going in exactly the wrong direction.

A strange find

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2022 05 01 16 09

Outstanding and amazing photo-worthy cloud

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daily picdump 37 13

So your school will not allow Holloween costumes?

Can you guess?

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1650893865 9yoxa3bik8

Scooby dooby doo, where are you…?

(Betty Crocker) Cherry Pie

Easy, and quick to make. Perfect for us novices who want a fine slice of pie to go with our “cup of Joe” (coffee).

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(Betty Crocker) Cherry Pie.

Ingredients

Pastry

  • 2 cups Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons shortening
  • 4 to 6 tablespoons cold water

Filling

  • 1 1/3 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 6 cups sour cherries, pitted
  • 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, if desired

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Delicious Cherry Pie.

Steps

  • 1
    Heat oven to 425°F. In medium bowl, mix 2 cups flour and the salt. Cut in shortening, using pastry blender (or pulling 2 table knives through ingredients in opposite directions), until particles are size of small peas. Sprinkle with cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with fork until all flour is moistened and pastry almost leaves side of bowl (1 to 2 teaspoons more water can be added if necessary).
  • 2
    Gather pastry into a ball. Divide pastry in half; shape into 2 rounds. Wrap flattened rounds of pastry in plastic wrap; refrigerate about 45 minutes or until dough is firm and cold, yet pliable.
  • 3
    Roll pastry on lightly floured surface, using floured rolling pin, into circle 2 inches larger than upside-down 9-inch glass pie plate. Fold pastry into fourths and place in pie plate; or roll pastry loosely around rolling pin and transfer to pie plate. Unfold or unroll pastry and ease into plate, pressing firmly against bottom and side and being careful not to stretch pastry, which will cause it to shrink when baked.
  • 4
    In large bowl, mix sugar and 1/2 cup flour. Stir in cherries. Spoon into pastry-lined pie plate. Cut butter into small pieces; sprinkle over cherries. Cover with top pastry that has slits cut in it; seal and flute. Cover edge with 2- to 3-inch strip of foil to prevent excessive browning; remove foil during last 15 minutes of baking.
  • 5
    Bake 35 to 45 minutes or until crust is golden brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust. Cool on cooling rack at least 2 hours before serving.

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2022 05 01 14 51

Most Common Means of Transportation to Work by County in the United States

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dw5uoboapn381

Government Says UFOs Aren’t American Technology

The most likely root of the unexplained phenomena may be from foreign adversaries, the New York Times suggests. The Pentagon report allegedly examines more than 120 incidents that U.S. Navy pilots witnessed over the last two decades, as well as sightings from foreign militaries. Intelligence officials believe “at least some of the aerial phenomena could have been experimental technology from a rival power, most likely Russia or China,” the Times reports.

Article

“Detailed Replica Of Manhattan Carved Out In A 2.5 Tonne Block Of Marble”

these maps are very insightful 13
Interesting

DIY Liquior cabinet

Out of a retro television. You through out the electronics, and add a switch operated light, say a 15 watt bulb. Nice.

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1650893860 fl5umg8037

What’s It Like To Be A Member Of A Triad?

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Triad

My involvement began in high school. There was nothing dramatic about it, I just became friends with a bunch of people I thought were cool and one thing led to another.

High school gangs are like triad training schools. They are not part of the triads per se, they’re more of a triad Mickey Mouse fan club where a group of young wannabes strut around pretending to be something they’re not. You’d be surprised at just how many of these there are.

The leaders of these high school gangs are usually affiliated with a low ranking triad member, called a 49 in triad lexicon. These are the foot soldiers. The 49 functions as big brother whose help the boys would call on in case of trouble, but big brother is also a scout who kept an eye out for promising young talent.

I must’ve seemed like one, because I was soon introduced to the 49er’s tailou (big brother), who was also a 49er. We met a few times at a local disco, snorted cocaine, gargled ketamine, popped ecstasy, and soon he trusted me enough to put me in charge of a few high-school gangs.

The triads are structured like a MLM scheme. At the lower levels, the more followers you recruit, the more powerful you become, the higher up you climb. The people above your rank are referred to as tailou or ____ ko which means elder brother, and your followers are referred to as DauGei, or children.

It’s all about the organization. So we organized.

We recruited the same way ISIS and Al Qaeda does: by giving disaffected and disenfranchised young men a sense of belonging. We start off by convincing the kids that we were cool by bringing them alcohol, drugs and other illicit goods. Then when they have issues they’d come to us for help and we’d help them. Many of the kids I recruited were bullied in school and looking for some revenge, and we’d give the kid’s bully a thorough trashing.

Some of the kids would naively come to see us as these cool guys who were looking out for them, and they’d seek to be a part of our circle. Once we got the kids on hooked on the illusion of brotherhood and coolness, they’re ours to keep. And they’ll bring their friends as well.

We went around the schools settling petty disputes such as who stole whose girlfriend – at the high school level, everything is petty- , and we enforced pax triadica with our fists. We demanded discipline from our members, and if one of our own went out of line we’d beat him up ourselves. We were a group of young bullies with our own set of rules and standards of behaviour. My recruits unwittingly traded one bully in school, for circle of friends who bullied one another.

From petty disputes we graduated on to settling disputes between local businesses. Unlicensed bars, moneylenders and illegal gambling dens would pay us a set fee, and in return we’d step in if they have problems. The money was terrible, but for a young kid, having adults and business owners turn to you for help is a huge ego trip.

I was able to grow the organization effectively because I understood the principles of peer pressure and groupthink. So if you’re a parent, I would advise you to obsess over who your teenager is hanging out with; there are many manipulators like me out there.

I must’ve been a pretty good recruiter, because the boss took me under his wing and introduced me to his boss, Suen Ko. Suen Ko was a hung kwan, or a mid-level lieutenant in the triad hierarchy. This is where I started to get involved with the actual organization. We had a short initiation ceremony in a karaoke room, and I became a 49 under Suen Ko.

Suen Ko owned a few nightclubs and bars, and virtually every night we’d be in one of his fine establishments drinking, partying, and partaking in every drug we could get our hands on. Our sort attracted a certain sort of girl, and there were girls aplenty. The bars were a money maker, but Suen Ko’s real money came from selling bootleg CDs.

At the time, bootleg CDs and eventually DVDs were an organized crime gold rush. This was before napster and way before bittorrent, and demand was so high that we filled up entire shopping malls with outlets selling pirated movies, music and software. A common joke was that if Bill Gates ever visited our malls, he’d have a heart attack on the spot.

For about 5 cents in costs for a blank CD, we sold the end product to the consumer for 15 local bucks a pop. Not even cocaine had that kind of margin. We were selling the bootlegs as fast as we could print them, and best of all piracy was perceived by the local cops as a low-impact crime and as such wasn’t rigorously enforced. Heck, many of our regular customers were cops. At the time, you could drive up to a police checkpoint with a stash of bootleg CDs on the backseat, give cheeky grin and a thumbs up, and the cops would just wave you through.

Suen Ko made millions within his first year.

I was good with computers, and I became his IT department. I helped him organize his production, and in return he gave me a handsome cut. I made quite a bit of money in my teens, but I quickly blew it all on drugs and girls.

The biggest eye opener was during the annual company dinner. They had to construct a tent hall on an empty field to fit all 5,000 of us in, and there were local politicians and community leaders on the front row tables. That drove in the impression of just how big the tree was, and how deep the roots went.

If I made the triads sound like corporations, that’s because that’s what they are. We were even registered with the Registrar of Companies as a multimedia company and we paid our taxes. The big bosses looked just like any other middle aged Chinese uncle you’d meet at the local supermarket. The best way to avoid detection is to be in plain sight and blend into the background. The so-called gangsters you see on the street strutting their stuff are amateurs; many of them are just aping what they see in the movies. The pros keep a low profile and get on with making money.

Once you go far enough up the hierarchy, violence is actually pretty rare. For the most part, being a triad is just like working in any other corporate job.

But when violence does occur at that level, it’s freaking terrifying.

Roundabout the end of my first year, there was a war. The politician who Suen Ko worked for was at odds with another politician from the same organization. There were a few shootings, grenade attacks, and choppings, but it didn’t affect me directly at first so I didn’t give much thought to it. Then a call came one night. All hands on deck. We dropped everything and converged on the HQ.

Pardon the expletive, but it was scary as fuck. There were a hundred or so of us milling about an office block, and someone started handing out machetes and sashimi knives. Suen Ko took me up to the office, and there were hard looking fuckers at every corner. The air was so full of cigarette smoke I could barely breathe. Everyone looked grim. Apparently we were expecting an attack.

I was a skinny teenager, and I was out of my depth. Till that point, I’d been involved on the white collar side of things. The guys I saw that night had the word hard etched on their faces. I’ve never felt more scared than I did that night.

We stayed there overnight, but no attack came so we went back to our branch office. They attacked us there. A dozen or so guys rushed in and we fought back with chairs, clubs, machetes, boxes of A4 paper, everything we could get our hands on. It was a hazy frantic panicky desperate fight for survival. We were cornered and if we lost it would’ve been game over. One of theirs died in the melee.

The police arrived fairly quickly and I went to jail for a bit. It was in a cell that I resolved that this life wasn’t for me. For some miraculous reason, I got off scot-free. I went home, packed my things, and left everything behind to start a new life.

So how did it feel like? Terrible.

It’s not a healthy way to live one’s life. It got to the point where I was so paranoid that whenever I went to a restaurant I’d sit facing the entrance so I’d know who was coming in. I saw potential threats everywhere, and I carried symptoms of PTSD for a long time afterwards.

It took me a very long time to put my past behind and to learn to live again without fear like a normal human being. I had cut off all ties with everyone I knew, and have difficulty trusting people. Till today I know many, but am close with very few.

If there’s any teenager reading this who is in a similar situation as I was, know that the world is vast and there are opportunities everywhere. The cool kids you see in school are anything but.

Don’t make the same mistakes I did

– Anonymous

“A Guide To Chicago Home Styles”

these maps are very insightful 17
these maps are very insightful 17

China: “No one wants a third world war”

Foreign Ministry responds to Lavrov’s warning.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry urged that “no one wants to see a third world war” after Russia raised the prospect of the “real” threat of nuclear war.

Beijing moved to make the statement in response to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who on Monday responded to discussion about current tensions being comparable to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Lavrov warned that “the risks now are considerable” in the context of the world heading towards another world war.

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2022 05 01 18 48

He also warned the west not to downplay the “serious” and “real” risks of a nuclear conflict if the United States continues to interfere in Ukraine.

“I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it,”

Lavrov said.

As we previously highlighted, the US military is already deeply embedded in Ukraine and is playing a substantial role in the country’s response to Russia, despite official denials of boots on the ground.

According to French journalist Georges Malbrunot, who returned from Ukraine after arriving with volunteer fighters, Americans are directly “in charge” of the war on the ground.

Responding to Lavrov’s comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters today,

“No one wants to see the outbreak of a third world war.”
“We hope that relevant parties can keep cool-headed and exercise restraint, prevent escalation of tension, realize peace as soon as possible and avoid inflicting a heavier price on Europe and the world,”

he added.

As we highlighted last month, China responded to NATO’s moral exhibitionism on Ukraine by asserting, “We will never forget who bombed our embassy in Yugoslavia.”

Meanwhile in the USA…

funny picdump 28 5
funny picdump 28 5

Percentage of population with unfavourable views of China (2019 survey)

See how effective the anti-China campaign has been by the Western unipolar nations…

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7ujw1ewp1vm71

China to build space ‘defense system’ to deflect possible asteroid impact by 2025

Interesting. The technology has many applications. -MM

From HERE.

China seeks to build a system capable of effectively monitoring asteroids and potentially altering their course to protect Earth from a possible impact.

The deputy head China’s National Space Administration (CNSA), Wu Yanhua, revealed on Sunday that Beijing expects to hit an asteroid as part of an experiment at some point in 2025.

What is planned to be set up is a near-Earth asteroid monitoring and defense system that would also be potentially capable of protecting spacecraft as well, Wu told China Central Television during this year’s Space Day of China event.

The system, which would include both ground-based and space-based elements, would catalog and analyze asteroids to determine which ones pose a potential threat to Earth or humanity’s activities in space. In particular, the system would involve a computer simulation framework that would model potential asteroid impacts, he explained.

The project is still pending approval by the Chinese authorities, the Global Times has reported, adding that it requires “coordination of multiple departments.”

China is not the only nation concerned about the threat that asteroids could pose to Earth. NASA has been developing a similar project as well. In November 2021, the US Space Agency launched a probe designed to strike a small asteroid to test if altering its course through impact is possible and whether this can be an effective planetary defense against such a threat.

Mounted on one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, the probe, called DART, is supposed to strike a small space rock orbiting a larger asteroid, changing the speed of the moonlet by a fraction of a percent – but enough to be observed and measured from Earth. The probe is expected to reach its target about 10 months after launch.

No known asteroid capable of inflicting serious damage is on a collision course with Earth in the next 100 years, NASA said last October. However, the agency added that 60% of such space rock might in fact remain undiscovered.

A meteor exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk back in 2013. Although the object burned in the atmosphere and only small fragments of it reached Earth, the explosion left over 1,600 people injured, with dozens hospitalized.

Pizza Pie

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1650893897 8xw6r1j0s1

“Toto, I Don’t Think We’re In Kansas Anymore”

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

Recently, an American colleague commented to me, “We no longer live in a democracy but a dictatorship disguised as a democracy.”

Is he correct? Well, a dictatorship may be defined as “a form of government in which absolute authority is exercised by a dictator.”

The US today is not be ruled by dictatorship (although, to some, it may well feel that way.)

But, if that’s the case, what form of rule does exist in the US?

At its formation, the founding fathers argued over whether the United States should be a republic or a democracy. Those founders who later formed the Federalist Party felt that it should be a democracy – rule by representatives elected by the people. Thomas Jefferson, who created the Democratic Republican Party, argued that it should be a republic – a state in which the method of governance is democracy, but the principle of governance is that the rights of the individual are paramount.

He argued that, “Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty one percent can vote away the rights of the other forty nine.”

At that time, Benjamin Franklin has been credited as saying, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.”

Very well stated.

As Americans still legally vote, and it may well be that the voting is not altogether rigged, the US could be regarded as a democracy. Of course, to be accurate, it could also be defined as a bureaucracy – rule by officialdom, and/or a plutocracy – rule by the very rich. Both of these descriptions are undeniably accurate.

Another question that’s hotly debated is what sort of “ism” the US is living under. There’s a visible trend in new candidates to openly promote socialism. Historically, socialism has always been an excellent way to gain votes, as the socialist promises largesse to the average man that government will provide by robbing the rich. Not surprisingly, the average voter would find this prospect very attractive.

Socialist candidates in the US today base their argument for socialism on the premise that “capitalism has failed,” and that premise is providing them with great headway. They claim that prosperity for the American people is almost non-existent; that the middle class is shrinking and the small upper class is growing ever-richer.

These claims are undeniably true… but not because capitalism has failed.

Vladimir Lenin stated that “Fascism is capitalism in decay.” He was quite correct. Fascism is a slow cancer that eats away at an economy. It transfers wealth to the largest, most politically influential corporations. Yet, the concept of fascism is greatly misunderstood today. Most anyone who decries fascism will describe symptoms such as jackboots and swastikas, but fail to offer an actual definition.

For a definition, we might ask Benito Mussolini, the father of national fascism. He stated, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

By defining the term, we can conclude that the US is no longer a capitalist country and hasn’t been one for a long time. The US began its slide into fascism in a major way around the time that income tax and the Federal Reserve were created – in 1913. These measures were the brainchild of the largest bankers of the day and the Fed still remains under the power of the major banks.

Over the last century, the Deep State, which is corporatist in origin, has grown and has done a first rate job of introducing a combination of socialism and fascism, a bit at a time. This has slowly destroyed the economy, education and the national moral compass, not to mention achieving the utter corruption of the political system.

By contrast, capitalism is a free-market system, in which the economy, unfettered by the interference of governments, finds its own level at any given time. It fluctuates naturally, based upon supply and demand, each correcting the other with regularity.

But government edicts operate with force and permanence, constricting the natural flow of money, goods and services. Over time, regulations pile on top of regulations until the system becomes dysfunctional.

Socialism, by its very nature, is a central restrictive force on the free market. Its logical conclusion is very visible in Venezuela today, where government regulation has produced such a stranglehold on the economy that it’s broken down in every way, resulting in dire poverty and even starvation.

But, as stated above, in the US, the Deep State has been thorough in its presentation of the US economy as a capitalist economy. In doing so, they’ve provided the encouragement of full socialism in the political realm.

In the near future, the economy will begin to collapse under the weight of growing fascism and socialism. However, the blame will be laid at the feet of capitalism.

In my belief, the majority of Americans will be fooled into thinking that capitalism is the problem and that socialism will save the day. During the coming financial crisis, they’ll dive in with both feet.

Voters, even many of those who are moderate, will support socialist candidates. The first national election that occurs after the crisis has begun will result in an overwhelming victory for socialist and other leftist candidates. The next president will provide a plethora of socialist “solutions” to counter “the damage done by capitalism.”

But such a prediction does not require a crystal ball. This has happened many times before. The Athenian Republic ran into the same problem. The Roman Republic also deteriorated in this manner. As stated by Aristotle, “Republics decline into democracies and democracies decline into despotisms.”

Quite so. It’s a natural progression.

And so, it shouldn’t be surprising if the more imaginative American were to observe, worriedly, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

He would most certainly be correct. Like the flag in the image above, the founding principles have been turned upside down and the rights of Americans have been shredded. “America,” as a concept, no longer exists in the USA. Its vestiges remain, but soon, they too will be on the way out.

Liberty always exists somewhere in the world, but it does tend to change location from time to time.

Perhaps a final quote from late eighteenth century America would be of benefit – one from Thomas Paine.

“My country is wherever liberty lives.”

Russian Pork Roast

This is a a popular Russian recipe of roast pork stuffed with cheese and tomatoes. For best results, remove the foil to let the meat brown just before it is done.

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Russian pork roast.

Ingredients

Original recipe yields 8 servings
Ingredient Checklist

Directions

Instructions Checklist
  • Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

  • Cut pork into 1/4-inch slices lengthwise, stopping 1/2-inch from the bottom, so it can fan out like a book. Stuff tomatoes, onion, and Gouda cheese in between the slices.

  • Combine garlic and salt in a bowl, then stir in mustard and pepper. Spread mixture all over the pork. Press pork slices firmly together and wrap in aluminum foil.

  • Bake in the preheated oven for about 1 hour 30 minutes. Uncover and continue baking until nicely browned, about 30 minutes more.

Pizza Slice

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1650893831 ag68t92seg

European Countries by WWII casualties

Compare these values to the Deagel Report remote viewing numbers and percentages…

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b86m8c5e6on71

Whatever Happened to Blackbeard’s Silver-Plated Skull?

From HERE.

Blackbeard, an infamous pirate from the 1700s, was notoriously an excellent fighter and survivalist. He was so famous, in fact, that after his death his skull was rumored to have been plated in silver and used as a punch bowl for decades. This skull bowl was supposedly passed around from place to place and used for parties, rituals, and even fraternity initiations.

But how did this frightening pirate end up as a punch bowl in the first place? After years of being the most fearsome foe across the Atlantic, Blackbeard met with his final fate on Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. His head was put on a pole and used as a warning to others. It was passed around until its supposed current home in a museum in Massachusetts. Its exact whereabouts throughout the last 300 years are uncertain, though there are many theories.

2022 05 01 15 15
2022 05 01 15 15

From Teach to Blackbeard: The Making of a Legendary Pirate

Originally known as as Englishman Edward Teach (sometimes “Thatch”), Blackbeard was born around 1680 in Bristol. Unfortunately, not much is known about his young life. It is widely believed that he was educated early in life and that he had started his time on the sea as a sailor on a merchant vessel around Jamaica. At some point in the early 1700s, he decided to use his sailing and fighting skills to participate in the War of the Spanish Succession . Fighting for the British government, he fought Spanish ships in the West Indies to preserve their balance of power.

After the war, famous English pirate Benjamin Hornigold took an interest in Teach and let him join his crew. Hornigold typically operated his piracy out of New Providence, which was known as a famous safe haven for pirates. In 1716, Hornigold put Teach in command of a sloop (sailboat) he had recently captured. After preparing for nearly a year, Hornigold and Teach both set out from the safety of New Providence to find other ships and goods to capture. They were quickly successful, capturing several ships containing cargo such as flour and wine within a few months.

Teach was so successful in his piracy that he quickly caught the eye of other crews. That same year, Teach and Hornigold met Stede Bonnet, who had become a pirate a few months earlier. Bonnet confided in them that his 70-member crew was not happy with his command, and decided to let Teach take over his crew as captain of Revenge. At this point, Teach and Hornigold travelled with all three ships as part of their fleet, and even added a fourth vessel just a few months later.

It is interesting to note that there is little to no record of Teach or Hornigold engaging in violence when capturing these ships. Hornigold is reported to have only attacked old enemies that attacked him first, while there is no record of violence in relation to Teach at all. Unfortunately, Hornigold’s crews were not happy with his lack of violence, demoting him by the end of 1717. He took his original sloop and one other, leaving Teach with the other two. Teach and Hornigold never met again.

After parting ways, Teach quickly attacked a French vessel near Saint Vincent. This ship, called the Concord, was renamed Queen Anne’s Revenge and became Teach’s flagship vessel. The ship was equipped with 40 guns and a crew of over 300 men, and easily helped Teach take over a number of other ships. He used this ship for about a year before it was damaged beyond repair due to a sandbar off the coast of North Carolina, where it was left to sink.

Teach used his remaining ships to continue capturing and looting other ships. It is around this time that writers began to make note of his daunting physical appearance. They describe his long, black beard that seemed to cover his entire face, and how he cared for it by braiding it and twisting it with ribbons around his face.

Many historians believe that Blackbeard’s reputation as being ruthless and frightening is based on perception rather than actual evidence. There is currently no evidence that indicates that Blackbeard ever actually killed anyone. It is more likely that he used his powerful ships and physical appearance to intimidate others, which gave him his reputation as a vicious pirate.

2022 05 01 15 16
2022 05 01 15 16

The Infamous Downfall of Blackbeard

Teach’s downfall occurred in late 1718, when he took his ships to the coast of South Carolina and created a blockade. This blockade generated panic in the region, and also resulted in a significant amount of looting. After settling his issues with the locals, he then travelled up to North Carolina, where he asked Governor Charles Eden for a king’s pardon in return for giving up his piracy. Though some were surprised, this pardon was granted, and many believed this was the end of the infamous Blackbeard. They were unfortunately wrong.

In November 1718, Teach returned to piracy by capturing two French ships off the coast of Bermuda. These ships contained precious cargo including cocoa and sugar. When he returned with the ships to North Carolina, he convinced Governor Eden to declare one of them abandoned, which gave Teach legal access to the cargo. It is uncertain whether Eden was fully convinced the ship was simply “abandoned” at sea, or if he decided to collude with Teach in exchange for some of his loot. Regardless, this move made surrounding governors and lieutenants wary of Eden, and one decided to stop Blackbeard himself, without permission.

Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood of Williamsburg, Virginia, decided to be the one to fix the Blackbeard problem. Fearing his colony would be looted, since they had more precious valuables than North Carolina, he had to move fast. Spotswood launched a raid on North Carolina which included a British naval force instructed to advance on Teach’s ships.

Teach refused to submit to the ships, and not having any guns, the crews onboard had no choice but to fight Teach and his men with their own weapons. This was a risky move, as many had heard about Blackbeard’s skills in hand-to-hand combat, though none had seen it in person. Without cannons, though, they unfortunately had no choice.

Robert Maynard, a Virginian lieutenant leading the naval ships, decided to play a trick on Teach and his crew to give his men some leverage. During the fight, he commanded his men below deck to convince Teach that they were dead or had been thrown overboard. Once Teach fell for this and set foot on their ship to seize it, Maynard and his men rushed at Teach from below in a surprise attack.

Unprepared, Teach took several fatal blows before succumbing to his wounds and dying. It is recorded that at the time of his death, he had been shot five times and stabbed twenty. Because of the severity of his wounds, it is uncertain which of these was the final, fatal blow to Blackbeard.

Maynard had his men decapitate Blackbeard’s body and string his severed head from the bowspirit of Maynard’s ship. This display was a show of strength to the citizens of Virginia and North Carolina, especially to Governor Eden, whose reputation never fully recovered from his public relationship with Teach. After pulling into port, Maynard stuck Teach’s head on a pole at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay , at Blackbeard’s Point on Hampton Creek, to warn other pirates to stay away from the region, lest they fall to the same fate as the infamous Blackbeard. The head remained on that pole for several years, until it was little more than a decaying skull.

Blackbeard’s Skull: Lost to the Sands of Time?

There are many stories about Blackbeard’s skull, some being based on fact and others pure fiction. The mythological tales of Blackbeard’s skull include stories of Blackbeard’s ghost wandering the Chesapeake Bay searching for his lost head. Others say that after he was decapitated, his body was thrown overboard where it circled the ship seven times before sinking. Unexplained light sightings have been reported around Chesapeake Bay, with locals calling the lights “Teach’s Light.”

More legitimate reports have claimed that Blackbeard’s skull was passed around from person to person for the last several hundred years once it was removed from its pole on the beach. Many claim that it was coated in silver to become a drinking bowl, which was used at dinner parties along the coast. The use of this bowl often led to solemn discussions about pirates and their tragic, brutal fates on the eastern US coast. The skull was also reported to have been a central part of some fraternity rituals in the New England area. However, none of this has been fully confirmed.

Throughout the 1900s, the Blackbeard’s skull was supposedly in the possession of writer and collector Edward Rowe Snow, an author and historian from Massachusetts. In the 1990s, after his death, the skull was donated by his estate to the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the skull is not on display at this museum. Because there is a significant lack of evidence proving that the skull indeed belonged to Blackbeard, they cannot in good faith display it as such. Some museums, such as the San Diego Maritime Museum, have borrowed the skull for temporary display, including of course a disclaimer about its uncertain origins.

It is unknown whether the skull will someday be on permanent display, or if more evidence will arise to clarify the origin of Blackbeard’s silver-plated skull. Records of the family that donated the skull only goes back so far, and the origin of the skull remains uncertain. Those who claim it’s the genuine article explain that there would be no point in faking that it’s Blackbeard’s skull, while those claiming it’s a fake say it’s simply wishful thinking. Whether it was preserved or lost to the sands of time, we may never know what happened to Blackbeard’s skull during the last 300 years. Perhaps his ghost finally found it after a long wandering on the Chesapeake Bay.

Strange but true

2022 05 01 16 27
2022 05 01 16 27

Some things that you might find in a garage sale or thrift store…

Kitty chair.

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1649848700 10blxrk8z3

Say what?

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1573414150 66nal6bwq2

Painting of Indiana Jones kitty…

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1573414142 khd6q2g8x0

This is very American…

wtf thrift stores 11
wtf thrift stores 11

What’s it Like to Work at a Bottom-Of-The-Barrel Used Car Lot

The lot I work at is absolutely the last stop. If you’ve got 3 repos and just got out of prison last week and don’t have a driver’s license, we can still get you in a car.

And with typical gross of $3500-$6000 (on cars that are $7k or less) BEFORE products and ancillaries, we get paid very well, and we sell a lot of inventory. But we also attract a certain type of customer. We legit have those silent alarm buttons under our desks like bank tellers have.

So a couple of weeks ago we had a car get stolen. Our repo guys recovered it about 3 days later (they found it before the cops did). No big deal, we’re no stranger to having cars stolen. The only issue is that we didn’t recover the key. It was a 13 year old German-made car so we had to have a new fob programmed.

Last week someone tweaked out on meth came in and wanted to buy that freshly-recovered car. He paid in all cash, but was about $1,000 short after TT&L so we decided to just in-house finance that $1k at 0% interest and put a GPS in the car.

Dude pays in all $20’s and $1’s out of a woman’s purse despite no woman being around. Whatever, I’m just here to help finalize car deals not be a fucking cop or whatever. It was so god damn annoying to count out $8k in all 20’s and 1’s

Next red flag comes whenever I try to register the car.. the license he gave for a test drive is fake. Again, whatever, we’ll do car deals without a license, I just need to know who you are. He gives me this insanely bogus story and eventually I get a picture of his real ID and we finish the deal.

So, remember how the car was stolen and we didn’t recover the key? This dude calls us a day later and says that people are chasing him down with a key fob saying that they stole the car from a very specific location and he wants a discount or his money back or something. Here’s the thing, we never told him it was stolen and we never told him where it was stolen from.

(side note: we didn’t pay BMW or the locksmith to invalidate the other key that was floating around out there whenever they programmed the new one)

He says he had to pay these thieves $1400 to get this second key fob back and he wants us to reimburse the money to him. Come to find out, his buddy that was with him when he was buying the car was the same guy on our cameras at the lot when the key and car were stolen. What kind of idiot steals a car then comes back weeks later to buy that car?

GPS isn’t locating. We tell the customer he has to come down yesterday to finalize the deal or made some random excuse to trick him into coming so we can adjust the GPS. He refuses to let us in the car at first. The battery is in the trunk and the customer finally agrees to let us in after moving his burglar tools and machetes around.

We adjust the GPS and he’s on his way (after more yelling and arguing over stupid bullshit). So later yesterday evening we go to close the lot down and realize that we were missing keys to 3 of our cars. Obviously we know who did it. They were causing a scene and being a distraction so one of their friends could quickly swipe some keys from the board.

GM gets on the phone with the dude Motherfucker we have you on video stealing our fucking keys bring them the fuck back so we don’t have to call the cops. We just want your money we don’t want to act like fucking law enforcement just bring the shit back you piece of shit and pay your bill god damn man come on

The dude was just right around the corner waiting with his friends for us to close. He sends his friend down to bring the keys back bro if you really have cameras you can tell it wasn’t me i’m just bringing them back to you man.

We lock the lot up, I leave a little note on this guy’s account that I’m not giving him a 60-day repo time window after this. He should be in jail, but rather than call the cops I just gave him a 10-day grace period on his $1000 that he owes or we’ll repo the car. Having a car repo’d after dropping $8,000 in cash is much worse than jail. Also, as a 3-time felon myself, I’d always rather try to handle this without getting the cops involved. I mean, if the cops arrested him, then we definitely wouldn’t get the rest of what he owed.

We went home and ended our Monday.

Let’s see how Tuesday goes! I started my day today with my customer showing his 240+ stitches he got when he tried to steal some rims to put on the car we sold him a few months ago, but the owner of the rims came out and stabbed him. Hilarious story, we laughed and laughed until he said he was laughing so hard his stitches were hurting.

The Big Differences Between A Normal Friend And A Russian Friend

friends 01
friends 01

friends 02
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friends 03
friends 03

friends 04
friends 04

Chrysta Bell performs ‘Sycamore Trees’ from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Keeping with the overriding theme of this period of time… I love this. It’s a wonderful dramatic interpretation of a powerfully emotional moment, and she sings the hell out of it.

Russian Chicken

Super easy to make. Very unique taste. It’s a real pleaser.

Sweet and tangy! This easy dinner recipe has a flavorful sauce made with Russian dressing, onion soup mix and apricot jam. Serve on a bed of rice for a delicious family meal.

2022 05 01 14 58
Russian Chicken.

5 Skinless Chicken Breasts (boneless, cut into cubes)
1 teaspoon Paprika
½ teaspoon Salt
¼ teaspoon Pepper
1 cup Russian Salad Dressing
1 cup Apricot Jam
1 envelope Onion Soup Mix

russian chicken 2 1
Russian chicken

How to Make Russian Chicken

Add the cubed chicken to a 3 quart casserole dish. Season with paprika, salt and pepper and toss until the chicken is covered in the seasoning.

In a medium bowl, stir together Russian salad dressing, onion soup mix and apricot jam. Pour the sauce mixture over the chicken and stir to combine.

Bake the chicken, uncovered, at 350F for 1 hour.

South Korea exposed that the US military laboratory secretly made “biochemical weapons”?What do you intend to be close to China?

2022-05-01 17:31 HKT

The zombie movie “Travel to Busan” was shown in the world a few years ago. In the film, the virus leaked by the Busan Biopharmaceutical Company in South Korea triggered a terrible zombie crisis. Now, with the exposure of the biochemical laboratory hidden by the United States in South Korea, Koreans have begun to chant that “Travel to Busan” is not a fiction, but a preview of reality.

Recently, the United States has repeatedly sent biological warfare reagents to the Korean peninsula through the US military stationed in South Korea. After the incident was exposed, South Korean people and media investigations discovered that the US military had secretly established four biochemical laboratories in South Korea, one of which was in Busan. The sinister behavior of the United States has triggered many demonstrations by South Koreans.

So, what secret weapon is the U.S. Biochemical Warfare Laboratory making? Is it related to the coronavirus pandemic that WHO is tracing? What does the US military intend to build the laboratory on the doorstep of China?

Today, Xiaota will talk to everyone about the conspiracy of the United States in overseas biochemical laboratories.

2022 05 01 18 27
2022 05 01 18 27

As early as last year, South Korea’s “Tong Shimbun” published an article that broke the news: “The U.S. Army in South Korea has set up Bacillus anthracis biological laboratories at four bases in Yongsan, Busan, Gunsan and Pyeongtaek.” Bacillus anthracis is a species that can pass through the skin and mucous membranes. The bacteria spread by the respiratory tract and the digestive tract, German and Japanese fascists, have tried to make it into biochemical weapons, but now, the U.S. military, which has inherited the Japanese biochemical warfare technology and experience, has vigorously developed this extermination weapon, even It has been made “more terrible than coronavirus”. This virus can not only kill people and animals, but can even survive and reproduce in the soil. As long as it is contaminated with Bacillus anthracis, the soil must be completely removed, otherwise it will always be a forbidden zone for life.

The U.S. military has built extremely dangerous laboratories overseas, obviously not willing to allow its own country to bear unexpected risks. The United States’ wishful thinking is brilliant. Judging from the information that has been released so far, from 2009 to 2014, the US military conducted at least 15 anthrax experiments in South Korea, and there have indeed been at least one virus leak.

It happened in May 2015. The bacillus anthracis was accidentally leaked at the U.S. Air Force Base in Osan, South Korea. 5 U.S. Air Force personnel, 10 U.S. Army personnel, 3 U.S. military members, and 4 Koreans who may be exposed to the virus He was treated in isolation, and his later situation is unknown.

It was this leak that exposed the news of the US military at the Korean Biochemical Laboratory, which caused a violent shock in Korean society. Countless South Korean citizens took to the streets to launch protest marches, demanding a reply from the US, and disclosure of laboratory information, and the laboratory was immediately cancelled. Many South Korean civil organizations gathered to call for a comprehensive revision of the “Status of Forces Agreement in South Korea” to limit the privileges of US troops in South Korea. There are also calls for the South Korean government to conduct independent investigations to find out the truth of the incident.

2022 05 01 18 28
2022 05 01 18 28

Obviously, the South Korean people have extremely distrusted the United States. Their request is tantamount to allowing the United States to return South Korea’s sovereignty. Of course, the United States cannot agree to it. However, in order to deceive public opinion, the US military still politely gave in. After the leak was exposed, the US military in South Korea and the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed a “joint proposal” to restrict the US military’s biochemical experiments to prevent similar incidents from happening again. But in fact, not only did the United States fail to comply with the agreement and restrict testing, it has instead intensified its efforts. At the 8th terminal of Busan Port, the US military base is implementing the experimental plan code-named “Centaur”, and the scale of the biochemical laboratory established in South Korea is continuously expanding. In January 2019, the U.S. military transported three kinds of bacteria including Staphylococcus toxoid to Busan and other U.S. military bases in South Korea, and the Korean Bacteria Family Barrel ushered in a new member.

Faced with interviews by the South Korean media, the head of the US military stationed in South Korea said: “The US system is very safe. Our experiments do not aim at biochemical experiments. They are mainly for defensive experiments against the threat of biochemical weapons. In this way, if the US military When biochemical threats are detected with South Korea, we can provide timely warnings.”

What the Americans say is better than what they sing. The United States says that “the American system is very safe”, but I’m sorry, the system cannot be built in the United States. The United States engages in biochemical experiments, but does not aim at biochemical experiments. The U.S. states that it will alert in time when it finds danger, but what is the use of such alert? It may be for the United States to block South Korea in time and prevent the virus from spreading to the United States. The United States says that the purpose of developing chemical weapons is to defend against biological and chemical threats, but the biggest threat in the world is the United States. The United States should still find a way to defend itself.

Even more frightening is that in the surrounding area of ​​the US military laboratory, there have been outbreaks of uncommon local diseases many times. According to a 2019 report by the U.S. Audit Office, in the past 10 years, there have been 400 accidents in U.S. biosafety tertiary laboratories. Although the victims of these accidents are mainly confined to the staff in contact, the number of accidents Leakage, the harm will be to all mankind.

 

2022 05 01 18 29
2022 05 01 18 29

In July 2019, the Fort Detrick Biological Laboratory in the United States suddenly announced its closure, but the specific reason was not announced. In view of the subsequent occurrence of “white lung disease” and the mysterious death of elderly people in nearby nursing homes in the United States, it is highly suspected that this laboratory is related to the ongoing global coronavirus epidemic.

The United States has not only built a large number of biological laboratories overseas, but also tried its best to prevent the resumption of the Biological Weapons Convention. In 1972, the “Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons” signed by various countries stipulated that the development, production, storage and use of biological weapons are prohibited. However, the Convention lacks a mechanism for monitoring implementation, and there is no permanent enforcement agency. In response to this problem, in 1994, the Special Assembly of the States Parties to the Convention authorized an ad hoc working group to be responsible for formulating a protocol to comprehensively strengthen the effectiveness of the Convention.

However, at a meeting of the ad hoc working group in July 2001, the United States refused to accept the draft convention protocol on the grounds that “biological fields are not verifiable” and “international verification may threaten US national interests and commercial secrets.” To this day, the United States is still the only “blocker” in resuming negotiations on the verification protocol of the Biological Weapons Convention.

Therefore, the various actions of the United States have to make people doubt the United States’ motives for setting up biochemical laboratories. The so-called biochemical defense is only an excuse. Manufacturing biochemical weapons to serve the hidden purposes of the United States is the real goal of establishing these laboratories. .

With regard to the use of biological and chemical weapons, the United States has always been “severely treating others and lenient in self-discipline.” In the past, the Americans held a bottle of white powder and declared that they had the iron evidence of Iraq’s use of biological and chemical weapons. Then they launched a war of aggression, but they did not find Iraq after the war. Chemical weapons base. Putin asked, what was the white powder you took out that year? Maybe it’s washing powder. The United States still dare not answer Putin’s questions.

2022 05 01 18 30
2022 05 01 18 30

But now, it’s the irrefutable evidence that the United States uses biological and chemical weapons.

In 1945, on the eve of the Tokyo trial, the U.S. military, which had long studied biological warfare, launched an investigation into Japanese germ warfare, and secretly contacted more than 20 Unit 731 criminals, including Ishii Shiro and Kitano Masaji, in order to avoid war crimes. Obtained a large amount of data on the bacterial warfare and human experiment research of the Japanese Unit 731. For many years, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan have denied the existence of this secret exemption agreement, leading to the public’s ignorance of the consequences of Japan’s use of biological weapons. But in fact, after World War II, the US military has never stopped research on biological weapons such as bacteria and viruses.

And on the Korean battlefield, the United States used germ warfare. In early 1952, several U.S. military aircraft circled the northern area of ​​North Korea. Unlike the past, the planes did not drop bombs, they just left people’s sight after flying a few laps. After the plane left, the North Korean soldiers and civilians and the Chinese People’s Volunteers all found that there were many fleas, flies, crickets, ants and other insects around them that shouldn’t be in this season. The health department of the Volunteer Army paid great attention to this abnormal phenomenon, and quickly carried out laboratory analysis on the insects that appeared, and found that these creatures carried a large number of deadly viruses such as plague, cholera, and dysentery.

Although the Volunteers uncovered the conspiracy of the U.S. Army and took precautions, the virus dropped by the U.S. Army has spread in water sources, residential areas, positions, and farms, and it is impossible to guard against under the harsh conditions of the war. As a result, the Volunteers still have nearly forty commanders and fighters. Suffered from acute diseases such as encephalitis, meningitis, and plague.

2022 05 01 18 31
2022 05 01 18 31

The use of germ warfare by the US military has aroused strong condemnation from the international community. In June 1952, China and North Korea invited the International Scientific Committee to investigate the use of bacterial weapons on the Korean battlefield. The committee was led by Joseph Needham, a well-known biologist at the University of Cambridge. After two months of investigation, the Needham investigation team submitted a 600-page report to the international community. The report clearly pointed out that there are indeed signs of germ warfare in northeastern China and North Korea. The Chinese Volunteer Army and North Korean soldiers and civilians have indeed become targets of germ weapons. There is solid evidence that the US military is engaged in germ warfare. Moreover, the germ warfare of the US military on the Korean battlefield is very similar to the germ warfare of the Japanese army during World War II. It can be seen that the United States is the heir of the Japanese fascism that exterminated humanity in this era.

This time, South Korea’s protests once again pushed the US biochemical laboratory to the forefront, but in the words of the Americans, the protest crowd is just a group of ants lined up. The demands of the people cannot be answered by the United States. The Koreans can only target the South Korean government and criticize the government’s weakness, but the South Korean government is probably powerless.

South Korea is a country established under the control of the United States. The South Korean military obeys the command of the US military. The US military is stationed in South Korea in front of the master. The South Korean government has to pay a huge amount of military expenses to the United States every year.

2022 05 01 18 32
2022 05 01 18 32

In addition to military control, the United States is also the back controller of South Korea’s economy and politics. South Korea is a chaebol country. Driven by funds from the United States and Japan, the Korean chaebol monopolized South Korea’s economy. Several big chaebols such as Samsung accounted for more than half of the market share. The United States uses investment, exchange rate, and financial means to firmly control South Korean chaebols. When the South Korean president does not conform to the chaebol’s interests, the president will be defeated by the chaebols, because the chaebols are behind the American power. Therefore, successive South Korean governments have had to listen to the words of the United States.

The United States controls South Korea everywhere, and South Korea is their overseas base in the eyes of the Americans. So how can the United States care about South Korea’s resistance? But biochemical viruses endanger the security of all mankind, and peace-loving countries around the world should unite to fight the threat from the United States.

According to incomplete statistics, the United States has more than 200 biological laboratories in the world, covering Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. In recent years, the center of the US biochemical laboratory has gradually shifted to the Sino-Russian border. In Ukraine, close to Russia, the United States has set up 16 biological laboratories. South Korea is densely populated, and the people’s voice against biological and chemical weapons is very high. The US military does not build dangerous laboratories on remote islands without people, but in South Korea. This is obviously treating China as an imaginary enemy. Therefore, China must maintain a high degree of vigilance against such a potential enemy with no bottom line.

Russia just told truth about Ukraine and it’s SCARY | Redacted with Natali and Clayton Morris

Pretty good reporting and discussion. Sure is much better than anything in “mainstream news”.

China to tighten export controls on dual-use technology

China will require exporters of products that can have military applications to provide documentation of the intended use by the buyers in an effort to halt the militarization of sensitive technology.

Article

Ten buyers of Russian gas in Europe have opened accounts in rubles

Moscow, Apr 27 (Prensa Latina) At least ten European companies that buy natural gas from Gazprom have already opened bank accounts to pay for their supplies in rubles, a source from the Russian company reported.
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Article

Americans face mounting risk of hackers taking over brokerage accounts, regulators say

It’s not just corporations that are facing an epidemic of cyber attacks — American retail investors are also struggling to contend with a surge in hackers taking over their investment accounts, regulators warn.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the brokerage industry’s self-regulatory body, said in a recent notice that it has “received an increasing number of reports regarding customer account takeover incidents, which involve bad actors using compromised customer information, such as login credentials, to gain unauthorized entry to customers’ online brokerage accounts.”

Ari Jacoby, chief executive and co-founder of cybersecurity firm Deduce, backed up this statement with data showing that account-takeover fraud increased by roughly 250% from 2019 to 2020. He told Security.org that account-takeover prevention is a $15 billion market that is “growing significantly year-over-year. “

Article

Escobar: The Empire Of Lies, Operation Z, & The New Global Chessboard

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The only antidote to propaganda dementia is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed.

Especially since the onset of GWOT (Global War on Terror) at the start of the millennium, no one ever lost money betting against the toxic combo of hubris, arrogance and ignorance serially deployed by the Empire of Chaos and Lies.

What passes for “analysis” in the vast intellectual no-fly zone known as U.S. Think Tankland includes wishful thinking babble such as Beijing “believing” that Moscow would play a supporting role in the Chinese century just to see Russia, now, in the geopolitical driver’s seat.

This is a fitting example not only of outright Russophobic/Sinophobic paranoia about the emergence of peer competitors in Eurasia – the primeval Anglo-American nightmare – but also crass ignorance about the finer points of the complex Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.

As Operation Z methodically hits Phase 2, the Americans – with a vengeance – have also embarked on their symmetrical Phase 2, which de facto translates as an outright escalation towards Totalen Krieg, from shades of hybrid to incandescent, everything of course by proxy. Notorious Raytheon weapons peddler reconverted into Pentagon head, Lloyd Austin, gave away the game in Kiev:

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

So this is it: the Empire wants to annihilate Russia. Cue to War Inc.’s frenzy of limitless weapon cargos descending on Ukraine, the overwhelming majority on the road to be duly eviscerated by Russian precision strikes. The Americans are sharing intel 24/7 with Kiev not only on Donbass and Crimea but also Russian territory. Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of the EU’s economy, with the European Commission merrily acting as a sort of P.R. arm of NATO.

Amidst the propaganda dementia cum acute cognitive dissonance overdrive across the whole NATOstan sphere, the only antidote is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed. The West ignores them at their own collective peril.

Patrushev goes Triple-X unplugged

Let’s start with President Putin’s speech to the Council of Legislators in St. Petersburg celebrating the Day of Russian Parliamentarism.

Putin demonstrated how a hardly new “geopolitical weapon” relying on “Russophobia and neo-Nazis”, coupled with efforts of “economic strangulation”, not only failed to smother Russia, but impregnated in the collective unconscious the feeling this an existential conflict: a “Second Great Patriotic War”.

With off the charts hysteria across the spectrum, a message for an Empire that still refuses to listen, and doesn’t even understand the meaning of “indivisibility of security”, had to be inevitable:

“I would like to emphasize once again that if someone intends to interfere in the events taking place from the outside and creates threats of a strategic nature unacceptable to Russia, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning fast. We have all the tools for this. Such as no one can boast of now. And we won’t brag. We will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know about it – we have made all the decisions on this matter.”

Translation: non-stop provocations may lead Mr. Kinzhal, Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat to be forced to present their business cards in select Western latitudes, even without an official invitation.

Arguably for the first time since the start of Operation Z, Putin made a distinction between military operations in Donbass and the rest of Ukraine. This directly relates to the integration in progress of Kherson, Zaporozhye and Kharkov, and implies the Russian Armed Forces will keep going and going, establishing sovereignty not only in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics but also over Kherson, Zaporozhye, and further on down the road from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea, all the way to establishing full control of Nikolaev and Odessa.

The formula is crystal clear: “Russia cannot allow the creation of anti-Russian territories around the country.”

Now let’s move to an extremely detailed interview by Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, where Patrushev sort of went triple-X unplugged.

The key take away may be here:

“The collapse of the American-centric world is a reality in which one must live and build an optimal line of behavior.” Russia’s “optimal line of behavior” – much to the wrath of the universalist and unilateralist hegemon – features “sovereignty, cultural and spiritual identity and historical memory.”

Patrushev shows how…

“tragic scenarios of world crises, both in past years and today, are imposed by Washington in its desire to consolidate its hegemony, resisting the collapse of the unipolar world.”

The U.S. goes no holds barred…

“to ensure that other centers of the multipolar world do not even dare to raise their heads, and our country not only dared, but publicly declared that it would not play by the imposed rules.”

Patrushev could not but stress how War Inc. is literally making a killing in Ukraine:

“The American and European military-industrial complex is jubilant, because thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, it has no respite from order. It is not surprising that, unlike Russia, which is interested in the speedy completion of a special military operation and minimizing losses on all sides, the West is determined to delay it at least to the last Ukrainian.”

And that mirrors the psyche of American elites:

“You are talking about a country whose elite is not able to appreciate other people’s lives. Americans are used to walking on scorched earth. Since World War II, entire cities have been razed to the ground by bombing, including nuclear bombing. They flooded the Vietnamese jungle with poison, bombed the Serbs with radioactive munitions, burned Iraqis alive with white phosphorus, helped terrorists poison Syrians with chlorine (…) As history shows, NATO has also never been a defensive alliance, only an offensive one.”

Previously, in an interview with the delightfully named The Great Game show on Russian TV, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had once again detailed how the Americans…

“no longer insist on the implementation of international law, but on respect for the ‘rules-based world order’. 

These ‘rules’ are not deciphered in any way. 

They say that now there are few rules. 

For us, they don’t exist at all. 

There is international law. We respect it, as does the UN Charter. 

The key provision, the main principle is the sovereign equality of states. The U.S. flagrantly violates its obligations under the UN Charter when it promotes its ‘rules’”.

Lavrov had to stress, once again, that the current incandescent situation may be compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis:

“In those years, there was a channel of communication that both leaders trusted. Now there is no such channel. No one is trying to create it.”

The Empire of Lies, in its current state, does not do diplomacy.

The pace of the game in the new chessboard

In a subtle reference to the work of Sergei Glazyev, as the Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union explained in our recent interview, Patrushev hit the heart of the current geoeconomic game, with Russia now actively moving towards a gold standard:

“Experts are working on a project proposed by the scientific community to create a two-circuit monetary and financial system. In particular, it is proposed to determine the value of the ruble, which should be secured by both gold and a group of goods that are currency values, to put the ruble exchange rate in line with real purchasing power parity.”

That was inevitable after the outright theft of over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves. It may have taken a few days for Moscow to be fully certified it was facing Totalen Krieg. The corollary is that the collective West has lost any power to influence Russian decisions. The pace of the game in the new chessboard is being set by Russia.

Earlier in the week, in his meeting with the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, Putin went as far as stating that he’d be more than willing to negotiate – with only a few conditions: Ukrainian neutrality and autonomy status for Donbass. Yet now everyone knows it’s too late. For a Washington in Totalen Krieg mode negotiation is anathema – and that has been the case since the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine meeting in Istanbul in late March.

So far, on Operation Z, the Russian Armed forces have used only 12% of its soldiers,10% of its fighter jets, 7% of its tanks, 5% of its missiles, and 4% of its artillery. The pain dial is set to go substantially up – and with the total liberation of Mariupol and the resolution one way or another of the Donbass cauldron there is nothing the hysteria/propaganda/weaponizing combo deployed by the collective West can do to alter facts on the ground.

That includes desperate gambits such as the one uncovered by SVR – Russian foreign intel, which very rarely makes mistakes. SVR found out that the Empire of Lies/War Inc. axis is pushing not only for a de facto Polish invasion to annex Western Ukraine, under the banner of “historical reunification”, but also for a joint Romanian/Ukrainian invasion of Moldova/Transnistria, with Romanian “peacekeepers” already piling up near the Moldova border.

Washington, as the SVR maintains, has been plotting the Polish gambit for over a month now. It would “lead from behind” (remember Libya?), “encouraging” a “group of countries” to occupy Western Ukraine.

So partition is already on the cards. Were that ever to materialize, it will be fascinating to bet on which locations Mr. Sarmat would be inclined to distribute his business card.

Twitter’s $17 Million Per Year Censorship Czar Could Get Axe Under Musk

That’s one well-paid chick. That’s absurd. Obviously, there is something rotten for a social media company that produces ZERO products.

Twitter's censorship czar Victoria Gadde - who broke down in tears last week during a conference call to discuss Elon Musk's purchase of the company - stands to lose her job which paid $17 million last year, as Musk is reportedly planning to cut jobs and executive pay as part of the takeover.

Musk expressed "no confidence" in Twitter's current management following the announcement of his plans to buy the company.

That said, the 48-year-old Gadde - who was behind decisions such as Zero Hedge's February 2020 ban for peculating that Covid-19 may have emerged from a Wuhan Lab, and former President Trump's ongoing ban, has a reported $12.5 million severance package, according to the NY Post.

Musk shared a flowchart last week based on a 2019 appearance by Gadde on "The Joe Rogan Experience" where journalist Tim Pool absolutely wrecked her over anti-conservative bias.

From HERE.

 

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
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  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Twin peaks pie and coffee with a side of Ukraine, Taiwan, and instruments of national power

We are entering the surreal phase of the “great change”. It is a time of great uncertainty, fear, and dread. Do not get too caught up in it. Take it as it comes, and be prudent, and calm. Get yourself a fine cup of coffee and help yourself to a nice delicious pie.

It’s a surreal time.

This article is designed with this point in time in mind.

This article relies heavily on the surreal cult movie “Twin Peaks” by David Lynch. As such, we will start off with the ongoing craziness and to this particular article, with this wonderful opening.

My Twin Peaks Opening

We start this article with the surreal opening of “Twin Peaks”. It’s the theme of this strange snapshot in time. Don’t you know.

What about all the missing UK soldiers?

There’s a lot of UK servicemen missing. The government is not saying anything. But apparently, it appears that they were inside of Ukraine. And are now either dead, dying or captured.

BBC Article HERE

US Navy chief issues new China warning

Beijing is using 'all instruments' of its 'national power' to challenge the United States, the Navy’s top uniformed official said
From HERE.
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A senior US military officer has identified China as a “focal point” for the Navy, citing the “phenomenal growth” of Beijing’s military and its ambitious goals for the years ahead.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Thursday, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday called for a “whole-of-government approach to deterring China,” arguing the country is “challenging us through all instruments of their national power.”

“We certainly have a lot of respect for them based on their ability to learn and evolve,” he said. “Thinking about the facts related to China and their phenomenal growth in the military dimension, but also in the economic dimension, not just regionally but globally – they’ve exceeded every deadline they’ve ever set for themselves.”

The admiral went on to note that while Beijing had once set a deadline of 2050 to become “a global power,” it has since moved up that timeframe, first to 2035, and more recently to 2027.

“And so we take that ’27 timeframe, that President Xi [Jinping] has talked about publicly, very seriously,” Gilday said, adding that Washington therefore seeks to maintain capabilities to “fight tonight” if needed.

In terms of keeping an edge over Chinese forces, Gilday said he would like to see more funding devoted to “weapons that are going to matter in a fight,” arguing Congress should “max out domestic production lines for weapons at range, speed, lethality, and capability in 2023.” He added that the US has maintained “enduring advantages” with its submarine force, as well as in the areas of quantum computing, artificial intelligence and unmanned vehicles and vessels.

Asked about American cooperation with allied states in Asia, the Navy official noted that he had spent significant time with his counterparts in India, a nation he deemed a “huge strategic partner in the future” with respect to confronting China in the Indo-Pacific.

“If you’re concerned about China, you can’t build a navy fast enough to understand what’s going on in [the Indian Ocean],” Gilday said, summarizing his discussions with Indian officials. He noted that New Delhi had “joined the coalition maritime force in the Fifth Fleet,” a US-led multinational body active in waters near the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

Gilday’s comments are in line with similar statements from US officials in recent years, and the Biden administration has repeatedly named Beijing as Washington’s top competitor on the world stage.

Since Joe Biden took office in 2021, the military has conducted near-monthly transits of the disputed Taiwan Strait, which China considers part of its maritime territory, as well as other areas of the South and East China Seas. The Pentagon has also urged lawmakers time and again to step up funding for China-related ‘deterrence,’ including the construction of a multi-billion dollar “highly survivable, precision-strike” missile network located not far from Beijing’s shores.

Massive, Massive quantities of pie…

From Twin Peaks. A short clip from the movie. Great. I hope you enjoy this.

Russia publishes names of 100 British ‘mercenaries’, including one woman, they say are fighting for Ukraine

Russian sources have published a list of what they claim are 100 British ‘mercenaries’ fighting in Ukraine, including the name of one woman.

It comes on the news that a British father has been killed in Ukraine and a second Briton is missing after the pair apparently joined local forces fighting Russia.

Scott Sibley, a veteran of the British armed forces who served in the Commando Logistic Support Squadron in Afghanistan, has been named as the first UK casualty in Ukraine. …

Article HERE

India’s oil imports from US to rise, amid criticism for Russian purchases | Reuters

No wonder the United States suddenly stopped criticising India for buying oil from Russia.

The USA just gave Russia an excuse to seize all of Ukraine

Abraham Stein

The United States has just given Russia a valid reason to take complete control of all Ukraine.  Today, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Diplomat Anthony Blinken paid a visit to the Ukrainian president Zelensky in Kyiv, it was their first visit with Joe Biden as American President. The visit made it clear that the United States is directly involved in the conflict with the Russians, and the comments from Secretary of Defense Austin makes it abundantly clear that only a full Russian takeover of Ukraine will bring peace. A partial Russian takeover will produce more war.

Weaken Russia

Austin is the leader of the United Sates military and he made it very clear what the U.S. intends to do in Ukraine.

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said at the news conference. “So it has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

Austin’s words can be read as a direct admission of war between the United States and Russia, it is obvious there will be no peace in the region unless the Kremlin controls all of Ukraine. The United States is throwing fuel on the fire, they have given an unstable hothead (Ukraine president Zelensky) a free reign to do as he pleases. Zelensky is not seeking peace, he is an egoist demanding ever increasing ransom money from the United States and heavy weapons. No amount of money will ever satisfy Zelensky, the U.S has made the mistake of getting in bed with the Ukrainian president, now they are stuck with him. Lloyd Austin and Anthony Blinken told the American people last year that all was well in Afghanistan and that the Taliban was “no threat” to the Afghan army, they were dumbfoundedly wrong. Austin and Blinken appear to be wrong again in Ukraine.

Austin words today might be read by the Kremlin as a direct threat to Russia, in all the years of cold war between Russian President Putin and the United States, Putin has never said that he wanted to “weaken the United States militarily”. It is clear the U.S is going in for a long war, which could trigger a nuclear response from one side.

All or nothing

For 70 years Ukraine was ruled by the Soviet Union and the region was at virtual peace.

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The words today from Anthony Blinken, while not as direct as Austin, was also highly disrespectful.

He said, according to the BBC:

"The bottom line is this. We don't how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene. And our support for Ukraine going forward will continue and it will continue until we see final success."

Blinken words made it clear that the age of American-Russian diplomacy is finished, he made it clear that war will continue, and the only option is for Ukraine to win.

The meeting today left no plans hidden, it is clear the Russian federation must take all of Ukraine, it is the only way to assure peace. Ukraine was under the Soviet Union for 70 years and there was never the threat of world war, as it is today with Ukraine under NATO control.

A rogue, untamed, Western controlled Ukraine led by an erratic Zelensky makes the whole world unsafe.  Zelensky and NATO will never stop pushing for conflict, unless Russia seizes all of Ukraine there is a real threat of Zelensky triggering world war 3.

Coffee?

The movie “Twin Peaks” has some truly surreal scenes. This is a “dream scene”, and it is very interesting and highly curious. Check it out.

China v Australia government priorities and plans

Two screenshots tell the entire story…

China…

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Australia…

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Awesome taco and dip

Yum!

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Wonderful.

Ultimate Hot Fudge Milkshake Recipe

Forget choclate milkshakes. You haven’t LIVED until you have had a “hot fudge” milkshake.

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Hot Fudge Milkshake.

Ingredients

How to make it

  • Soften the ice cream and sorbet at room temperature for 5 minutes before scooping.
  • If your hot fudge sauce is refrigerated, microwave 2 tablespoons in a small dish for 5 seconds.
  • Combine all ingredients in food processor or blender and puree until smooth, scraping down sides as needed.
  • Pour into chilled glasses.
  • Top with whipped cream and shaved chocolate with a cherry on top.
  • Serve with scoopy spoon straws.

Bourbon Hot Fudge Milkshake variation

“For a little kick”…

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2022 04 30 14 0c6

11 ingredients

Condiments
  • 6 tbsp Hot fudge sauce
Baking & Spices
  • 1 Cocoa nibs or sprinkles
  • 2 tbsp Powdered sugar
  • 1/2 tsp Vanilla
  • 1 tsp Vanilla extract, pure
Dairy
  • 1/2 cup Heavy cream
  • 3/4 cup Milk
Frozen
  • 2 cups Vanilla ice cream
Desserts
  • 1 Maraschino cherries
Beer, Wine & Liquor
  • 1 tsp Bourbon
  • 2 oz Bourbon

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    2022 04 30 14 06

Making things easier for single people at a party

Great idea!

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Great idea!

American killed fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in Ukraine

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Willy Joseph Cancel, an American citizen, was killed fighting alongside Ukrainians in Ukraine.

From HERE.

An American citizen, Willy Joseph Cancel, was killed fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in Ukraine, members of Cancel's family confirmed to CNN.

The 22-year-old was working with a private military contracting company when he was killed on Monday. The company had sent him to Ukraine, and he was being paid while he was fighting there, Cancel's mother, Rebecca Cabrera, told CNN.

Cancel, a former US Marine, according to his mother, signed up to work for the private military contracting company on top of his full-time job as a corrections officer in Tennessee shortly before the war in Ukraine broke out at the end of February, Cabrera said. When the war began, the company, according to Cabrera, was searching for contractors to fight in Ukraine and Cancel agreed to go, Cabrera said.

"He wanted to go over because he believed in what Ukraine was fighting for, and he wanted to be a part of it to contain it there so it didn't come here, and that maybe our American soldiers wouldn't have to be involved in it," Cabrera told CNN in a phone interview.

Cancel flew to Poland on March 12 and crossed into Ukraine sometime over March 12 and 13, Cabrera said.

Japan Sends Ukraine Military Equipment, Shedding Pacifist Constraints – The New York Times

Japan is now officially at war with Russia. Sheech!
.
Article HERE.

Railway-resettled villagers move into new homes with new hopes

Free brand new home, with new rail way train station, connecting Laos and China.

When China built the Laos-China High Speed Train, they also provided homes for all the people who helped build the rail line, or were displaced or inconvienced by the consturction. Free houses plus wages to the workers.

Not reported in the West.

At all.

From HERE.

Russia ‘seizes NATO weapons’ from Ukrainian forces in Lugansk

Twin Peaks Georgia Coffee Commercials

Georgia Coffee in Japan made up these four funky commercials based upon the cult movei “Twin Peaks”…

US ‘whole-of-govt’ animosity against China building up with Blinken’s upcoming speech

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From HERE.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will detail a national security strategy in the coming weeks to deal with the emergence of China as a great power, which will contribute to the US’ latest “whole-of-government” propaganda of the “China threat,” jointly hyped by the government and lawmakers, along with think tanks and media.

Observers said Blinken’s upcoming address won’t be something new but rather seeks to demonstrate the US’ ability to manage foreign affairs in Europe and the Asia-Pacific at a time when the Ukraine crisis continues.

But when the all-out animosity against China reaches a new high, a US too obsessed with “China threat” is losing its capability of analyzing China in a nuanced manner, silencing domestic rational voices and risking military conflict with China over the island of Taiwan.

Blinken said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday that he would speak publicly and in detail about the strategy.

He said before the Senate appearance that China is paying a reputational cost for sitting on the fence and even possibly falling on the Russian side.

Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday that the international community will pay attention to whether the US will adjust its trade policies with China and how it keeps a balance between the traditional transatlantic alliance and its “Indo-Pacific Strategy” ambition against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Blinken on Tuesday also mentioned a US delegation to the Solomon Islands, with which China just signed a security pact. US President Joe Biden is expected to host a US-ASEAN summit in mid-May and visit South Korea and Japan following that, according to the US News.

Experts noted that Blinken’s upcoming speech may try to link the Russia-Ukraine conflict with US strategy on China and further coordinate the different mechanisms in its “Indo-Pacific Strategy,” including QUAD and AUKUS, to show US presence in the region will not decrease despite the Ukraine crisis.

A Beijing-based international relations expert who asked not to be named said Blinken has a clear goal of manipulating the Ukraine crisis and diverting European countries’ evaluation of relations with China.

The US has positioned China as a rival and will only cooperate when it has to, such as lowering certain tariffs to ease its domestic inflation, the expert said.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai has restarted an exclusion process that could lower tariffs on some Chinese goods, but has made no major moves to remove tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods, Reuters reported.

But not long ago, on March 30, Tai, in her testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, said that a good-faith effort to engage with China’s government on trade may be hitting its limits and that existing tools aren’t up to the task.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged China to use its “special relationship with Russia” to persuade Russia to end military operations in Ukraine.

Numerous bills targeting China have been approved and anti-China draft acts are piling up in the US Congress. Rational voices on China are now rarely heard from US think tanks, and the US doesn’t hesitate to use its allies to amplify the anti-China propaganda.    In an op-ed article recently published in the Los Angeles Times, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe mentioned Taiwan and Ukraine in the same breath and said the time had come for the US to make clear that it would defend Taiwan.

Franz Gayl, a retired US Marine who served as an officer for 22 years, told the Global Times in a recent interview that US professional staff, all well-attuned to political winds and opportunities, summarize the issues in ways that provide political advantage to their principals.

In the process the national security establishment and its congressional overseers have been dumbed down to embrace a China-averse groupthink. This unbridled approach to managing contemporary US-China relations is fraught with deadly risks, Gayl said, noting the current (US) groupthink is hawkish on China’s positions and policies on all matters.

The “whole-of-government” anti-China propaganda has an influence on public opinion, as Gallup’s latest annual World Affairs poll showed the American public’s opinion of China remains at a historic low.

The poll, conducted from February 1-17, found that 79 percent of respondents have an unfavorable view of China, with 41 percent answering “very unfavorable.” It also found that Americans view China as a “critical” threat to US security.

The trade imbalance, COVID-19 pandemic, and the US-concocted lies of human rights violations in Xinjiang and Hong Kong regions, are frequent excuses the US uses to smear China, and contributed to a negative impression.

A basic consensus was developed in the US to perceive China as a challenge or threat prior to the Biden administration, yet the new administration is not actively trying to adjust the perception, Da Wei, director of the Center for International Security and Strategy of the Tsinghua University in Beijing, told the Global Times.

The US government and academia have been aggressive in their rhetoric toward China, all because of the US strategic consensus on China which has been formed and increasingly consolidated, Da said.

Describing the Trump presidency as creating a “war-time like” atmosphere, Da said that at the beginning of a war, there may be anti-war opinions on all sides, but after the bullet is fired and everyone’s emotions get fierce, there will be less rational voices. The same is true between China and the US.

What we see today is that the US is equating China to Russia, two countries that have good relations but cannot be equated in any way, or repeatedly comparing the Ukraine issue with the Taiwan question, two issues that are not comparable at all. Once again, the US is losing its expertise and willingness to understand the nuances of international issues, leading to this very dangerous phenomenon, experts said.

The US is storing up trouble for the future because existing hostility will not be reversed in a snap even when the US ultimately realizes treating China as a rival doesn’t work out, experts said.

In contrast, Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang has been carrying out active exchanges with American society in order to offset a distorted understanding of China in the US, because “China sees bilateral ties in a completely different perspective and always seeks stable and constructive relations,” Lü said.

China will try its best to de-escalate tensions on the condition that its bottom line is safeguarded. Such an attitude is a responsible and decent way in major power diplomacy and will be supported by the majority of the international community, he said.

I am the FBI

Interesting.  One of the best three minutes in the history of television. Worth a view.

The constantly (and prematurely) announced death of the Chinese economy

It's clear the Western media maggots are dying to shout that China is finished. But their wishful thinking and mutually-reinforced delusions does not make it so.

They “predicted” the rapid collapse of the economy in China constantly, every single year. On average, the rate of predictions, is twice per year.

It’s three decades worth of constant predictions of the fall of China.

1990. The Economist: ‘China’s economy has come to a halt.’
1996. The Economist: ‘China’s economy will face a hard landing.
The Economist: ‘China’s economy entering a dangerous period of sluggish growth.’
Bank of Canada: ‘Likelihood of a hard landing for the Chinese economy.’
Chicago Tribune: ‘China currency move nails hard landing risk coffin.’
Wilbanks, Smith& Thomas: ‘A hard landing in China.’
West Chester University: ‘China Anxiously Seeks a Soft
Economic Landing.’
The New York Times: ‘Banking crisis imperils China.’  2004. The Economist: ‘The great fall of China?’
Nouriel Roubini: ‘The Risk of a Hard Landing in China.’
The International Economy: ‘Can China Achieve a Soft
Landing?’
TIME: ‘Is China’s Economy Overheating? Can China avoid a hard landing?’
Forbes: ‘Hard Landing in China?’
Fortune: ‘China’s hard landing. China must find a way to recover.’
Nouriel Roubini: ‘Hard landing coming in China.’
Business Insider: ‘A Chinese Hard Landing May Be Closer
Than You Think.’
The American Interest: ‘Dismal Economic News from China:
A Hard Landing.’
Zero Hedge: ‘A Hard Landing in China.’
CNBC: ‘A hard landing in China.’
Forbes: ‘You Got Yourself a Chinese Hard Landing.’
The Economist: ‘Hard landing looms for China.’
The National Interest: ‘Is China’s Economy Going to Crash?’
2018. McKinsey: ‘China faces a choice: Modernise or risk a very hard landing’
2019. Forbes: ‘The China Hard Landing Is Back on The Table’

The pattern is quite clear, isn’t it? The ‘Hard Landing’ they were hoping for, never came.

Article HERE

Binging with Babish: Twin Peaks Pancakes & Coffee (feat. Cocktail Chemistry)

A fun little video about making pancakes, a ham steak, and a fine cup of coffee.

China And Russia’s “Space War”: Where Is The US?

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

  • “Evidence of both nations’ intent to undercut the United States and allied leadership in the space domain can be seen in the growth of combined in-orbit assets of China and Russia, which grew approximately 70% in just two years.” — Kevin Ryder, senior analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for space and counterspace, Air Force Magazine April 12, 2022.
  • Space has already become the scene of an ongoing “shadow war” in which China and Russia conduct attacks against U.S. satellites with lasers, radiofrequency jammers, and cyber-attacks every day, according to General David Thompson, the U.S. Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations.
  • “The threats are really growing and expanding every single day…. We’re really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened…. Hostile action toward our space-based assets is not a question of ‘if,’ but instead, ‘when.'” — General David Thompson, Washington Post, November 30, 2021.
  • “Fifteen years after China’s ASAT strike, we still lack the ability to defeat an attack on our space systems or launch an offensive strike if circumstances warrant.” — US Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton (Ret.), former commander of U.S. Strategic Command and Air Force Space Command, The Hill, April 12, 2022.
  • “The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] will continue to integrate space services… to erode the U.S. military’s information advantage.” — Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, February 2022.
  • “If deterrence were to fail, we would face an adversary that has integrated space into all aspects of their military operations…. Space provides the foundation of everything we do as a joint force, from delivering humanitarian assistance to combat on the ground, in the air, and at sea…. We cannot afford to lose space; without it we will fail.” — General John W. Raymond, U.S. Chief of Space Operations, Space Force News, April 5, 2022.

Space has already become the scene of an ongoing “shadow war” in which China and Russia conduct attacks against U.S. satellites with lasers, radiofrequency jammers, and cyber-attacks every day, according to General David Thompson, the U.S. Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations.

Space-based threats from China and Russia have grown exponentially in recent years, according to a new report on the issue by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), published April 12.

"Evidence of both nations' intent to undercut the United States and allied leadership in the space domain can be seen in the growth of combined in-orbit assets of China and Russia, which grew approximately 70% in just two years," noted Kevin Ryder, DIA senior analyst for space and counterspace.

"This recent and continuing expansion follows a more than 200% increase between 2015 and 2018."

“Space is a warfighting domain now,” said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in April.

"China's long-standing and extensive modernization program is the greatest challenge... Although China is the Department's pacing challenge, we also regard Russia as an acute threat."

Space has already become the scene of an ongoing “shadow war” in which China and Russia conduct attacks against U.S. satellites with lasers, radio frequency jammers, and cyber-attacks every day, according to General David Thompson, the U.S. Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations. The attacks are “reversible” for now, which means that the damage to the attacked satellites is not permanent, but they amply demonstrate the intentions and abilities of the two main competitors of the United States in space.

“The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it’s really an evolution of activity that’s been happening for a long time,”

Thompson said in November 2021.

“We’re really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.”

China leads by far over Russia. “The Chinese are actually well ahead [of Russia],” according to Thompson. “They’re fielding operational systems at an incredible rate.” Some of those systems are ground-based, such as anti-satellite missiles (ASAT) and lasers intended to blind, damage, or destroy satellites. Others are space-based, such as orbiting “killer” satellites programmed to attack other satellites at a certain point in time, whether with blinding lasers, robotic arms or other means meant to destroy or incapacitate. According to the Pentagon’s 2021 report to Congress on China’s military capabilities:

"The PLA continues to acquire and develop a range of counterspace capabilities and related technologies, including kinetic-kill missiles, ground-based lasers, and orbiting space robots, as well as expanding space surveillance capabilities, which can monitor objects in space within their field of view and enable counterspace actions."

In January 2007, China tested its first successful ASAT, destroying one of its own inactive weather satellites and creating one of the world’s largest space debris incidents. According to the Pentagon’s 2021 report:

"The PRC has an operational ground-based Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missile intended to target low-Earth orbit satellites, and China probably intends to pursue additional ASAT weapons capable of destroying satellites up to geosynchronous Earth orbit".

Russia tested another ASAT in November 2021, during which it successfully destroyed one of its inactive Soviet-era satellites, creating 1,500 pieces of debris in what General Thompson has called an “incredibly dangerous and irresponsible act.” The ASAT was part of Russia’s mobile missile defense complex known as Nudol, which, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s new report, is “capable of destroying ballistic missiles and low-orbiting satellites.” Russia is reportedly also developing an air-launched ASAT weapon that could be launched from aircraft, such as the Russian MiG-31, to target spacecraft in low earth orbit.

What is concerning is that the US appears to be at a grave disadvantage countering such attacks. “Fifteen years after China’s ASAT strike, we still lack the ability to defeat an attack on our space systems or launch an offensive strike if circumstances warrant,” Retired US Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command and Air Force Space Command, noted.

"Hostile action toward our space-based assets is not a question of 'if,' but instead, 'when.' Attacks are regularly occurring at lower thresholds. Our adversaries fully understand the U.S. military's reliance upon these systems and will seek to compromise or destroy them to gain a decisive advantage in any terrestrial conflict... The goal is to develop resilient, defendable capabilities that can withstand an attack, while also developing offensive options that will deter strikes against our systems in orbit."

While China has made it a goal to become the world’s leading space power by 2045, China could overtake the United States by the end of the decade, according to General Thompson — especially because China is putting up satellites at twice the rate of the United States.

"We are still the best in the world, clearly in terms of capability. They're catching up quickly... We should be concerned by the end of this decade if we don't adapt."

In addition, China’s space station, Tinangong, is expected to become fully operational between 2022 and 2024. Three Chinese astronauts, one of them a former fighter pilot and another a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) pilot, just landed back in China after spending six months in space working on the space station. China plans to continue conducting explorations on the moon, including establishing a robotic research station, and in March 2021 signed a memorandum of understanding with Russia on a joint lunar research station.

The latest threat assessment report of the US intelligence community, published in February, also makes it clear that while both Russia and China “increasingly see space as a warfighting domain”, the greater threat comes from China. According to the report:

"The PLA will continue to integrate space services—such as satellite reconnaissance and positioning, navigation, and timing—and satellite communications into its weapons and command-and-control systems to erode the U.S. military's information advantage.

"Counterspace operations will be integral to potential military campaigns by the PLA, and China has counterspace-weapons capabilities intended to target U.S. and allied satellites. The PLA is fielding new destructive and nondestructive ground- and space-based antisatellite (ASAT) weapons."

In a recent speech, U.S. Chief of Space Operations General John W. Raymond described just how crucial space is to warfare and why it is paramount that the United States remain the preeminent space power:

"If deterrence were to fail, we would face an adversary that has integrated space into all aspects of their military operations. They use space to detect, track, and target our forces with long-range precision weapons. Space provides the foundation of everything we do as a joint force, from delivering humanitarian assistance to combat on the ground, in the air, and at sea. Our joint operational plans assume assured access to space. ... We cannot afford to lose space; without it we will fail."

NASA and it’s “fact board” on LGBT employees

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2022 04 30 13 06

Indian backdoor for Russian oil weakens calls for European ban

The South Asian nation is becoming a huge buyer of Russian oil, snapping up crude cargoes that are going unwanted by European importers. And with several European countries and oil majors self-sanctioning Russian purchases and starving themselves of fuel, India is already profiting from selling diesel onward to Europe.

Article HERE.

Empire of Lies Eager to Receive Mr. Sarmat’s Business Card

The only antidote to propaganda dementia is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Especially since the onset of GWOT (Global War on Terror) at the start of the millennium, no one ever lost money betting against the toxic combo of hubris, arrogance and ignorance serially deployed by the Empire of Chaos and Lies.

What passes for “analysis” in the vast intellectual no-fly zone known as U.S. Think Tankland includes wishful thinking babble such as Beijing “believing” that Moscow would play a supporting role in the Chinese century just to see Russia, now, in the geopolitical driver’s seat.

This is a fitting example not only of outright Russophobic/Sinophobic paranoia about the emergence of peer competitors in Eurasia – the primeval Anglo-American nightmare – but also crass ignorance about the finer points of the complex Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.

As Operation Z methodically hits Phase 2, the Americans – with a vengeance – have also embarked on their symmetrical Phase 2, which de facto translates as an outright escalation towards Totalen Krieg, from shades of hybrid to incandescent, everything of course by proxy. Notorious Raytheon weapons peddler reconverted into Pentagon head, Lloyd Austin, gave away the game in Kiev:

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

So this is it: the Empire wants to annihilate Russia. Cue to War Inc.’s frenzy of limitless weapon cargos descending on Ukraine, the overwhelming majority on the road to be duly eviscerated by Russian precision strikes. The Americans are sharing intel 24/7 with Kiev not only on Donbass and Crimea but also Russian territory. Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of the EU’s economy, with the European Commission merrily acting as a sort of P.R. arm of NATO.

Amidst the propaganda dementia cum acute cognitive dissonance overdrive across the whole NATOstan sphere, the only antidote is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed. The West ignores them at their own collective peril.

Patrushev goes Triple-X unplugged

Let’s start with President Putin’s speech to the Council of Legislators in St. Petersburg celebrating the Day of Russian Parliamentarism.

Putin demonstrated how a hardly new “geopolitical weapon” relying on “Russophobia and neo-Nazis”, coupled with efforts of “economic strangulation”, not only failed to smother Russia, but impregnated in the collective unconscious the feeling this an existential conflict: a “Second Great Patriotic War”.

With off the charts hysteria across the spectrum, a message for an Empire that still refuses to listen, and doesn’t even understand the meaning of “indivisibility of security”, had to be inevitable:

“I would like to emphasize once again that if someone intends to interfere in the events taking place from the outside and creates threats of a strategic nature unacceptable to Russia, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning fast. We have all the tools for this. Such as no one can boast of now. And we won’t brag. We will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know about it – we have made all the decisions on this matter.”

Translation: non-stop provocations may lead Mr. Kinzhal, Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat to be forced to present their business cards in select Western latitudes, even without an official invitation.

Arguably for the first time since the start of Operation Z, Putin made a distinction between military operations in Donbass and the rest of Ukraine. This directly relates to the integration in progress of Kherson, Zaporozhye and Kharkov, and implies the Russian Armed Forces will keep going and going, establishing sovereignty not only in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics but also over Kherson, Zaporozhye, and further on down the road from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea, all the way to establishing full control of Nikolaev and Odessa.

The formula is crystal clear: “Russia cannot allow the creation of anti-Russian territories around the country.”

Now let’s move to an extremely detailed interview by Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, where Patrushev sort of went triple-X unplugged.

The key take away may be here: “The collapse of the American-centric world is a reality in which one must live and build an optimal line of behavior.” Russia’s “optimal line of behavior” – much to the wrath of the universalist and unilateralist hegemon – features “sovereignty, cultural and spiritual identity and historical memory.”

Patrushev shows how “tragic scenarios of world crises, both in past years and today, are imposed by Washington in its desire to consolidate its hegemony, resisting the collapse of the unipolar world.” The U.S. goes no holds barred “to ensure that other centers of the multipolar world do not even dare to raise their heads, and our country not only dared, but publicly declared that it would not play by the imposed rules.”

Patrushev could not but stress how War Inc. is literally making a killing in Ukraine: “The American and European military-industrial complex is jubilant, because thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, it has no respite from order. It is not surprising that, unlike Russia, which is interested in the speedy completion of a special military operation and minimizing losses on all sides, the West is determined to delay it at least to the last Ukrainian.”

And that mirrors the psyche of American elites: “You are talking about a country whose elite is not able to appreciate other people’s lives. Americans are used to walking on scorched earth. Since World War II, entire cities have been razed to the ground by bombing, including nuclear bombing. They flooded the Vietnamese jungle with poison, bombed the Serbs with radioactive munitions, burned Iraqis alive with white phosphorus, helped terrorists poison Syrians with chlorine (…) As history shows, NATO has also never been a defensive alliance, only an offensive one.”

Previously, in an interview with the delightfully named The Great Game show on Russian TV, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had once again detailed how the Americans “no longer insist on the implementation of international law, but on respect for the ‘rules-based world order’. These ‘rules’ are not deciphered in any way. They say that now there are few rules. For us, they don’t exist at all. There is international law. We respect it, as does the UN Charter. The key provision, the main principle is the sovereign equality of states. The U.S. flagrantly violates its obligations under the UN Charter when it promotes its ‘rules’”.

Lavrov had to stress, once again, that the current incandescent situation may be compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis: “In those years, there was a channel of communication that both leaders trusted. Now there is no such channel. No one is trying to create it.”

The Empire of Lies, in its current state, does not do diplomacy.

The pace of the game in the new chessboard

In a subtle reference to the work of Sergei Glazyev, as the Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union explained in our recent interview, Patrushev hit the heart of the current geoeconomic game, with Russia now actively moving towards a gold standard: “Experts are working on a project proposed by the scientific community to create a two-circuit monetary and financial system. In particular, it is proposed to determine the value of the ruble, which should be secured by both gold and a group of goods that are currency values, to put the ruble exchange rate in line with real purchasing power parity.”

That was inevitable after the outright theft of over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves. It may have taken a few days for Moscow to be fully certified it was facing Totalen Krieg. The corollary is that the collective West has lost any power to influence Russian decisions. The pace of the game in the new chessboard is being set by Russia.

Earlier in the week, in his meeting with the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, Putin went as far as stating that he’d be more than willing to negotiate – with only a few conditions: Ukrainian neutrality and autonomy status for Donbass. Yet now everyone knows it’s too late. For a Washington in Totalen Krieg mode negotiation is anathema – and that has been the case since the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine meeting in Istanbul in late March.

So far, on Operation Z, the Russian Armed forces have used only 12% of its soldiers,10% of its fighter jets, 7% of its tanks, 5% of its missiles, and 4% of its artillery. The pain dial is set to go substantially up – and with the total liberation of Mariupol and the resolution one way or another of the Donbass cauldron there is nothing the hysteria/propaganda/weaponizing combo deployed by the collective West can do to alter facts on the ground.

That includes desperate gambits such as the one uncovered by SVR – Russian foreign intel, which very rarely makes mistakes. SVR found out that the Empire of Lies/War Inc. axis is pushing not only for a de facto Polish invasion to annex Western Ukraine, under the banner of “historical reunification”, but also for a joint Romanian/Ukrainian invasion of Moldova/Transnistria, with Romanian “peacekeepers” already piling up near the Moldova border.

Washington, as the SVR maintains, has been plotting the Polish gambit for over a month now. It would “lead from behind” (remember Libya?), “encouraging” a “group of countries” to occupy Western Ukraine. So partition is already on the cards. Were that ever to materialize, it will be fascinating to bet on which locations Mr. Sarmat would be inclined to distribute his business card.

(Betty Crocker) Classic Blueberry Pie

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Blueberry Pie.

This Classic Blueberry Pie is amazingly delicious without the fuss of peeling and pitting needed for other fruit pie recipes. Plus, our blueberry pie recipe from scratch is easier than you think and a great way to celebrate summer. When selecting your blueberries, look for ones that are uniform in size with a smooth exterior. No stress if you don’t have fresh blueberries, frozen blueberries work just as well in this homemade blueberry pie. Eliminate some elbow grease and cut down on time, pick up Betty Crocker™ pie crust mix. Enjoy a slice, or two!
Updated May 13, 2021

Ingredients

Pastry

  • 2 cups Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2/3 cup shortening
  • 4 to 6 tablespoons cold water

Filling

  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, if desired
  • 6 cups fresh blueberries
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1 tablespoon butter, if desired
This pie is delicious and easy to make. 

I use the prepared refrigerated pie crusts instead of making it from scratch. 

One pint of blueberries equals 2 cups, so I use 3 pints. 

The only change made was I used 1/4 1/8 cup of tapioca instead of flour. 

Mix all the dry ingredients and then fold in the blueberries carefully and let sit for 15 minutes. 

Pour blueberries into pie shell and I also sprinkle 1 tsp of vanilla extract over the mixture. 

Place top crust, flute edges and make a hole in the middle of pie crust and several slits. Makes a nice thick blueberry pie. 

-Oisie

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Blueberry Pie.

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2022 04 30 13 50

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2022 04 30 13 53

Twin Peaks – It Is Happening Again

The theme of this article continues…

This scene always moves me. 

In Twin Peaks, Cooper has always been a symbol of purity and innocence. The scene preceding this one, as we all know, is one of the most graphic and disturbing scenes in television. 

It represents a loss of innocence. 

The subtle focus on Cooper in this scene implies his helplessness. It's heartbreaking because it shows, with little words, how there's nothing we can do sometimes to stop someone losing their innocence. 

All of the main characters in this show are at the Roadhouse here, and seeing all of them hurt reflects our helplessness as an omniscient viewer. 

This show is a masterpiece.

-Evan

Four European Gas Buyers Have Paid Russia in Rubles for Supplies

Four European natural gas buyers have already paid Russia in rubles for supplies, complying with the country's demand to pay in its official currency, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. 

This development emerged as Russia halted gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria on Wednesday, spurring a 28% surge in European gas prices. 

Russia's Gazprom said the reason for the stoppage is that both countries didn't pay for supplies in rubles, an order President Vladimir Putin put forth last month.

The report didn't mention which four European buyers have made ruble payments. But Austria, which gets 80% of its gas from Russia, said Wednesday that deliveries are continuing unrestricted, according to Reuters.

Additional cutoffs — as a result of failure to meet Moscow's rubles-for-gas requirement — are unlikely until the second half of May, Bloomberg said, citing a source close to Gazprom…

Article HERE.

Twin Peaks – Cherry Pie loop (bluray menu)

Please enjoy this fine, fine, loop from “Twin Peaks” about eating pie and drinking coffee in a diner.

To avert war, US must stop viewing Taiwan island as a proxy battlefield: Pentagon whistle-blower

From HERE.

Editor’s Note:

The hysteria toward China has risen to a new peak in the US. Political climate in Washington is increasingly weird in terms of China-related topics. Why is there so much irrationality on China in the US? How to view China-US relations from a constructive perspective? The Global Times (GT) interviewed several Chinese and American observers on these topics.

Franz Gayl (Gayl), a retired Marine Corps infantry officer, believes because of a China-averse groupthink, the US’ unbridled approach to managing contemporary US-China relations is fraught with deadly risks. He said it’s highly unlikely that a major US military or political class personality might speak out against dominant narratives, because it is equivalent to a career suicide. This is the second interview in the series.

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2022 04 30 14 20

GT: You warned the Biden administration that it is “at risk of entangling America in a major war with China over the status of the island of Taiwan” last June in an open letter after you were investigated for publishing two articles in the Global Times expressing a different position from that of the US government over the Taiwan issue. Compared with last year, do you think the possibility of a military conflict between China and the US over the Taiwan question has grown bigger or smaller? Why?

Gayl: The letter was probably never read by its intended audience. As for the Global Times articles, I was flagged as a PRC propaganda mouthpiece, or a biased Sinophile. Some began viewing me with suspicion in 2006 when I interviewed Counselor Jia Xuedong at the Chinese Embassy as part of my National Defense University research. Most of my articles on the topic of Taiwan island have been rejected, likely because I was the author.

Since last year the possibility of war has grown. With both of our countries anticipating contingencies the number of military assets in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Straits and the region have certainly increased in density. The possibility that war could be triggered by accident in congested seas and airspace has also increased.

Aggravating tensions is the US’ increase in security assistance and advanced weapons sales to Taiwan island. The dangers are compounded by the flow of elected and unelected officials to-through Taiwan in their official capacities. Any neutral observer would conclude that America has unilaterally adopted a “One China, One Taiwan” policy that could culminate in Taiwan’s recognition by the US as an independent nation.

It is unlikely that US decision makers are taking the time to deeply research the issue themselves for an unvarnished appreciation of the facts, especially the historical context. Instead, their professional staffs, all well-attuned to political winds and opportunities, summarize the issues in fashions that provide their principals political advantage. In the process the national security establishment and its Congressional overseers have been dumbed down to embrace a China-averse groupthink. This unbridled approach to managing contemporary US China relations is fraught with deadly risks.

GT: It was exposed last September Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley placed two phone calls to his Chinese counterpart in the waning months of Donald Trump’s presidency to secretly reassure Beijing that the United States would not attack the country. Compared with Trump’s period, how is the atmosphere in the US military toward China now?

Gayl: Independent of divergent perspectives of our two nations, frequent, candid, and informal communications between senior military leaders should be welcomed. Such spontaneous dialogues between superpower are critical to diffusing misunderstandings and managing accidents. It was this sort of military exchange and professional and personal familiarity that helped the US and Soviet Union to avoid conflict throughout the Cold War.

All presidents should, and I believe have, encouraged their most senior subordinates to exercise informed initiative, especially when operational pictures are foggy, and time is short.

GT: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin just held a rare call with his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe. What’s the significance of such communication? How do you comment on the ability of the two militaries in controlling the situation and preventing a war in the Taiwan Straits?

Gayl: Continuous communication is critical, especially when there are such stark differences. It is always good for the Chinese to share the fundamental importance of One China unification with US contemporaries at all levels of government and in various ministries.

The greatest misunderstanding to date has been the divergent understanding of a “non-negotiable core priority” to both of our nations. I believe for the Chinese these words carry unambiguous meaning, and once uttered reliably portend consequences, whether they are positive or negative. China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty are core priorities at the heart of China’s civilizational identity.

However, whenever China asserts that Taiwan is a part of China, US decision makers are dumbfounded, and at great risk reject that reality. Bounded between two oceans the American world view is fundamentally different. Historically, as an imperialism-inclined nation, we have viewed foreign territorial sovereignty as a material attribute that is open to interpretation and subject to negotiation.

For example, the Louisiana Purchase and our acquisition of Alaska were business transactions. Those territories were treated as material commodities. Any sentimentality relating to the organic relationship of resident indigenous peoples to ancestral lands carried no value in the transactions. Similarly, Hawaii had been settled for hundreds of years and was one of only 44 sovereign nations, enjoying formal diplomatic relations with many others. The US saw things differently. Hawaii was an ideal imperial outpost and had long-demonstrated economic potential. Sovereignty meant nothing to the US when it dispatched a naval expedition, landed a contingent of Marines and overthrew the monarchy under the threat of violence. Hawaii is good business, and remains a spoil of imperialism possessed by the US.

Without continuous communication between Chinese and American military and civilian leaders that emphasizes the position on Taiwan, forgetful US elites could stumble on a sobering non-negotiable reality. To avert the outbreak of war, the US must be continually reminded that the wayward province of Taiwan is not an “unsinkable American aircraft carrier,” a proxy battlefield, or an independent sovereign nation. We must understand that the island is part of China, and stand for a moment in China’s shoes to comprehend the dire consequences of ignoring that reality.

GT: Anti-China US lawmakers have increased the frequency and intensity of stepping on the red line of the Taiwan question. From the perspective of the US military, is this in the US interests?

Gayl: This would indicate that the only two branches of US Federal Government that concern themselves with foreign policy, i.e., the Executive and Congress, have abandoned the One China policy in practice. Popular messaging confirms that the US government perceives Taiwan as a sovereign nation independent from China, and that no further historical understanding is necessary. For incoming members of Congress and bureaucrats lacking Cold War context, China’s unresolved civil war is dated and irrelevant history.

With the probability of their reelection dependent on increasingly hawkish public opinion, they are easily persuaded to join the preexistent bipartisan, bicameral political groupthink regarding Taiwan. One China is a meaningless mantra used only to appease diplomatic consumption, while the mainstream media effectively dismisses the reality by fueling Taiwan’s independence narrative. By all appearances China-averse politicians and their special interests desire that the public perceives the Taiwan Relations Act as a binding security treaty between US and sovereign Taiwan.

GT: Who is pushing the risk of a China-US showdown in the Taiwan Straits bigger and bigger? Does the US’ dangerous Taiwan policy have a brake system?

Gayl: The war in Ukraine has been a gift to those in Congress, the Executive, industry and the public who desire war with China over Taiwan to resuscitate American influence in the Western Pacific and Asia. There is ghoulish celebration of every Russian setback, and every new Ukrainian martyr. A similar war over Taiwan would be deeply satisfying for political class members of both parties if it was perceived as a sure win that perpetuates US regional hegemony.

Many US elites remain emotionally tied to the pseudo-religious belief in US exceptionalism. It is embraced as a global Manifest Destiny, not just restricted to the Western Hemisphere. Underlying their idealistic fervor is a less-mentioned regret that the temptation to profit from globalization clouded their judgement at a critical time. By permitting other willing nations to assume the hard intellectual and physical work of progress, these corporations and politicians traded away organic American productive capacity for their own leisure. A once vigorous American culture has been permitted to atrophy.

Still, some stubbornly optimistic neoconservative political calculations project that a high intensity world war will reignite dormant US patriotism and a national work ethic. With WWII as an inspiration, a war with China could lead to a new “great generation” that ideologically, technologically and physically dominates global affairs through the 21st Century.

Unfortunately, there is no effective brake system against these trends in the US. A single reality-grounded authority with emergency authorities could – perhaps temporarily – apply brakes on the opportunistic forces that propel our Byzantine construct towards war. Otherwise, the likelihood of war will continue to build.  Yet, the irony is that history has outpaced the American political class’s ability to recapture lost imperial initiative, even by force. Peaceful multi-polar parity is the best we can hope for globally.

War between the US, China and all the others who will inevitably be drawn in, will entail an unimaginable conflagration for which there is no historical precedent. Combining the strategic firebombing and nuclear devastation of Japan’s cities with the long-term radiation impacts of the modern-day Fukushima and Chernobyl accidents provide a mere glimpse of the industrial-scale horror show in store for any and all participants. This inhuman and environmental catastrophe will recognize no borders. It would be the same case with any nuclear-armed superpower that dares to threaten the core national security priorities of any other nuclear-armed superpower today, whether it be the US, China or Russia.

GT: Are those opposing a war with China over the Taiwan question the majority of the US? How are they being treated by the US political circle? Given your experiences and sufferings, do they still dare to speak up and express their concerns over the US Taiwan policy?

Gayl: If polls are to be believed, the media-manipulated public appears to be leaning strongly towards the inevitability, if not the patriotic desirability of war with China. It is very difficult to reverse a groupthink that is building momentum at the national level.

Many experts on China and the US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) theater likely have competing views on the issue of Taiwan, some for and some against US interference and intervention. But the current groupthink is hawkish on China’s positions and policies on all matters.

When it comes to Taiwan, one must assume frank contrarian views are only expressed behind closed doors, and even then, at some professional risk. Except for planned journalist ambushes, the mainstream media does not invite experts who have views that, while qualified, do not reinforce the emotional patriotic groupthink narrative.

Ever since I first studied and wrote on the Taiwan conundrum in 2005, I have naively attempted to do just that. Yet, why would anyone of elite status entertain that some stooge bureaucrat recognized something valid that the experts did not already know?

As a civil servant with no China credentials, my views would never be taken seriously. In 2005 my views were tolerated, but ultimately seen as amateurish and naïve. 17 years later the dangers are more acute. So, now I am discredited as an attention hound desperately seeking the limelight. At a minimum I must be a paid, compromised tool used to spread Chinese propaganda and talking points.

Some even consider me to be a traitor who belongs in prison; an unpatriotic narcissist unable to recognize the immorality of my actions. In the end, my contrarian views and I will be forgotten after my ignominious departure from the civil service.

But the credentialed political and intellectual elites have much more to lose if they get crossways with the patriotic US narrative that insists Taiwan is an independent, sovereign nation and militarily allied with the US. The celebrated academic careers and reputations of dissenters can be upended overnight by media voices promoting China-averse messaging on the topic.

For example, the popular and heroic, yet artificial and utopian, narrative on Ukraine serves as evidence. For an American to acknowledge any of Russia’s core national security interests or historical perspectives on the matter would be career suicide in the current climate. Likewise, to critique Ukraine’s actions or highlight the eager willingness of major US defense contractors to fuel Ukraine’s bloodshed-for-profit would be blasphemy.

The same coercive message shaping forces are at work in the media to undercut China’s position on Taiwan island. Admittedly, it’s not impossible that a major military or political class personality might speak out against dominant narratives, but it is highly unlikely.

10 People Reveal What They Love About Fishing

1. Fishing is a way of being in symbiosis with nature. Not all the materials are “natural” but I feel while i am fishing, the life around you accepts you as part of that environment.

Your body slows and your mind focuses enough to be aware of all that is happening around you. You get to experience things you can’t plan to happen; an eagle swooping for a fish, a dolphin chasing mullet, sharks free swimming; observing intimate interactions between multiple species. I love it

2. I like bass fishing and my fishing buddy likes ocean fishing, both are cool. With bass fishing, you don’t cast and wait a few hours, you cast continually. You get good at recognizing spots and putting your lure right where you think the fish is.

Really though, two things are nice. One, is all you care about is fishing. No phones, no job, no outside world. It is just you and the fish. How often are you really able to escape into your own mind like that. Before I learned how to meditate, fishing and golf were the closest I came.

Second, is fishing buddies. Do not underestimate how important it is to have activities with friends. For you and your boys to go out their and spend the day distraction free is great. Funny things will happen, stories will be made, and no one is going to get hurt. All around good time to spend

3. Fly fishing actually gets me because its not about the actual fishing, its the stalking the waiting, the nature, the escapism, the spotting, the zen of it all. (I either eat or catch and release – mainly on the rare occasions of success). It surprised me when I tried it, so I guess i can simply say, there is fishing and there is fishing

4. I live in Land Locked Canada and to me fishing has always been about connecting with the land.

I particularly have fished a lot in Kootenay lake in British Columbia. Learning your fishing spot is learning how our world works. This lake in particular was formed millions of years ago and the mountains to the east used to make up what used to be the pacific coastline. This helps inform why the fish that live in the lake exist where they do.

It can be a sobering experience knowing the native people, for thousands of years fished the same fish and how the lake has changed over the years in both the longterm and over the decades as damming in the 50s has raised the water level.

And that’s just one lake. Every lake, stream and river has its own story.

My point is when I fish I’m on a boat going up the shoreline, seeing the rock formations and cliff faces. In the Fall, seeing snowflakes in the mountains turn to rain.

Then there’s the fishing itself. Again your on a boat on a nice day seeing the beauty of the lake, and then you get to fight the fish when you get a bite.

Knowing how to tire a big fish out is really fun on its own and once you have the fish you have a delicious dinner.

5. I fish because it allows me to interact with, and have a relationship with the natural world and all of its inhabitants. The birds, waterfowl, fish, land animals, etc all going about their day searching for food while I do the same is a peaceful experience for me.

Also, it will always remind me of my grandfather and the lessons and stories he told while we were fishing together. He’s still with us, but when he’s not I will always be able to connect with him out on the water wetting a line.

6. I call it hydrotherapy. Exploring mother nature does wonders for the soul. I usually do more observing than fishing ,there’s always more to learn.

Fishing teaches patience, which is sorely lacking in today’s society.

It has taught me to be a good steward of my waters as I pick up bag after bag of trash left by selfish cretins.

My motivation is to catch a bigger fish,of course, but I’ve learned that putting the big ones back to breed feels better than eating them.

7. Just peace. Its the only way I can put work, life, stress, etc out of my mind without excessive substance abuse. Feels like I’m my whole self when I’m on the water, my instincts kick in and everything else goes away.

Granted, landing a piggie smallmouth is a fckin thrill. But it’s more about peace than anything.

8. For me getting out on the water provides peace of mind.

I like to fly fish so my lure selection is a little more nuanced and particular, but when I get out there and I’m focused on picking the right fly to convince the big brown trout holding in a pool 20 ft away from me to eat.

Everything else washes away. It provides a strange level of hyper-focus and absent minded clarity at the same time.

Often I’ve gone out fishing to decompress and get away from work for a little while and when I get back to doing important things I often find that i’m refreshed and can approach problems with a new perspective.

Being out on the water also allows your mind to wander and sometimes this has produced great ideas that i wouldn’t have realized had I stayed at my desk trying to hammer out work.

Besides all of the mental aspects of the hobby when you hook into a fish that can actually fight back and pulls on your line there is a massive adrenaline rush, it almost touches something primal in your soul.

9. Sure, I find it relaxing. It’s one of the few activities in which my mind is totally blank. When I’m in the creek, there’s no thoughts of work, bills or other life stressors.

But, to be honest, I’m not a very religious person so I try to be somewhat ‘spiritual’ and fishing and being outdoors helps me achieve the spirituality I want.

To be closer with the Earth and enjoy the beautiful world around us. I know that sounds like a very hippy thing to say but, to answer your question, relaxation to be closer to Mother Nature.

10. It’s one of the few activities I’ve found where my mind can stay focused on a singular, low pressure objective for hours on end. My job requires a lot of me, in the sense that I have to be on top of 30 different, often higher pressure situations at any given time.

I’ve never been able to achieve relaxation while “vegging out” and fishing strikes that awesome balance of requiring focus while lacking any type of competition or pressure. I also just like being on or near the water.

Beyond that, it’s an awesome community. Since I started fishing I’ve struck up so many conversations with people who are excited to talk about catches, favorite spots, lures, etc.

Twin Peaks – Every Day Give Yourself a Present

Every day give yourself a little present. Ah. What a great movie clip. Please enjoy it, and the message that it holds.

Cool Mystery item

2022 05 01 18 52
2022 05 01 18 52

Another cool mystery item…

2022 05 01 18 54
2022 05 01 18 54

Twin Peaks 2017 – Conga Line

Curious in context of what is going on in the geopolitical scene.

China warns of ‘worst consequences’ over Taiwan

Beijing says nothing will stand in the way of “national reunification” with Taipei.
From HERE.
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China has warned that no foreign powers or militaries will succeed in interfering with Taiwan, cautioning that any country attempting to offer military support to Taipei will face “consequences.”

“The Taiwan question is a purely internal affair of China,” Defense Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Tan Kefei told reporters on Friday.

“No one and no force can stop” Beijing from a “complete national reunification” with Taiwan, Tan said, adding that anyone who tries to do so, “will suffer the worst consequences in the end.” 

Tan said the Chinese military stood ready to thwart any outside interference on the matter. His statement came days after Australia’s defense minister, Peter Dutton, argued that it would be “inconceivable” for Canberra not to join with the US should Washington decide to defend Taiwan.

Kiev claims NATO will defend arms convoys to Ukraine against Russia

Dutton later softened his language, saying on Sunday that the Australian response would be based on “our country’s best interests.”

Last month, Australia accused a Chinese warship of pointing a laser at one of its surveillance planes. Beijing said the allegation was “false.” 

While the government in Beijing insists Taiwan is part of China’s territory, the US has typically taken a non-committal position, unofficially supporting Taiwanese independence and supplying weapons to Taipei, while at the same time acknowledging China’s claim to the island.

Twin Peaks – A damn fine cup of coffee

So short, but so spot on. Notice the reaction by the waitress.

The US cannot defend Taiwan, and China knows it

Scott Ritter. From HERE.

The US is playing a dangerous game of putting a public face on a policy of defending Taiwan from China, for which it has zero capability to implement.

Following a recent escalation of tensions between Beijing and Taipei, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed on Saturday to pursue “reunification” with Taiwan by peaceful means and warned foreign nations about meddling in the issue.

For the past several years, the air force of the People’s Republic of China has been flying sorties into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ, as a means of sending a signal to Taipei that China does not recognize its claims of independence and, as such, any notion of an ADIZ is null and void. These incidents, which have been escalating over the years, recently reached a crescendo: China, according to Taipei, flew 38 aircraft in two waves into Taiwan’s ADIZ on October 1, 39 more on October 2 (also in two waves), and 16 the following day.

In response, the US State Department spokesman Ned Price issued a statement. “The United States is very concerned by the People’s Republic of China’s provocative military activity near Taiwan, which is destabilizing, risks miscalculations, and undermines regional peace and stability. We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure and coercion against Taiwan.

China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying replied

Taiwan belongs to China and the US is in no position to make irresponsible remarks. The relevant remarks by the US side seriously violate the one-China principle and the stipulations of the three China-US joint communiqués and send an extremely wrong and irresponsible signal.”
China’s Xi calls Taiwan’s independence push ‘serious hidden danger’ & promises ‘peaceful reunification’ with self-governed island.
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On October 4, Taipei said that China sent its largest wave of aircraft yet into Taiwan’s ADIZ, some 56 in total, including 36 J-16 and Su-30 fighter jets, 12 nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, 2 Y-8 anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft and two KJ-500 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft.

Alarmed by these developments, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen declared thatTaiwan does not seek military confrontation. It hopes for a peaceful, stable, predictable, and mutually beneficial coexistence with its neighbors. But Taiwan will also do whatever it takes to defend its freedom and democratic way of life.

‘Whatever it takes’, however, is an infinite concept backed up by the finite reality that Taiwan has a military of about 165,000 active-duty troops and about 1.6 million reserve soldiers which has been equipped with billions of dollars of advanced American-made military equipment.

While Taiwan’s military may look good on paper, it is ill-prepared for the realities of the kind of full-scale combat that will be directed at them if China ever decides to go through with an invasion. As the world learned in Afghanistan, impressive numbers on paper do not automatically translate into an impressive fighting force on the ground. And China would be delivering violence on a scale several orders of magnitude above what the Taliban could ever contemplate.

If China ever decided to invade Taiwan, the working assumption would be that it had conducted an extensive intelligence-based assessment of its chances of victory, which would have to be near-certain in order for China to undertake an action that would bring with it the condemnation of much of the world. China would have located with pin-point precision the garrisons and deployment locations of every major Taiwanese ground combat unit. It would have done the same with every combat-capable aircraft in the Taiwanese inventory. And it would have identified the logistics bases used by Taiwan to sustain its frontline combat forces. All of these would be subjected to extensive pre-assault bombardment by the Chinese air and ballistic missile forces.

Any surviving Taiwanese units would then be faced with the daunting task of repelling a massive invasion which would likely comprise a combination of amphibious and air assault forces. Assuming enough units survived the pre-assault bombardment to put up a competent defense, they would rapidly run through their on-hand stocks of ammunition, fuel, and food. Units that were cut off from resupply would begin to surrender, and the notion of surrender would become contagious.

Pockets of die-hard defenders could survive to fight on for a period, but the reality is that Taiwan would fall in less than a week.

Much has been made about the US ability to come to Taiwan’s defense. While the US may have made great waves sailing its navy through the Taiwan Strait, such a maneuver would be suicidal in a time of conflict. The US Navy would be relegated to standing by far to the east of Taiwan, out of the range of China’s deadly ballistic missile capability, launching aircraft which would have limited combat capability given fuel and weight limitations. The same holds true for the US Air Force. The fact is, any aircraft the US dispatched to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion would be rapidly attritted, with no replacements available in a time frame that could change the course of the battle on the ground in Taiwan.

Much has been made about media reports concerning the presence of US forces in Taiwan for the purpose of training the Taiwan military. These forces are not part of any formal alliance or defense pact, but rather part of what is known as “foreign internal defense” training missions, in this case involving a few dozen US Special Forces and US Marines doing small-unit training. This is not the kind of large-scale operational training undertaken by formal alliances such as NATO, where interoperability is essential for any joint combat operations.

The best the US could hope to do when it comes to defending Taiwan would be to modify existing warplanes for the reinforcement of South Korea. This war plan, known as OPLAN-5027, has a subsection known as a Time-Phased Deployment List, or TPFDL, which has identified the forces and equipment necessary to reinforce South Korea in time of war. At one time, the TPFDL had earmarked 690,000 troops, 160 Navy ships, and 1,600 aircraft for deployment from the US to South Korea within 90 days of a war breaking out on the Korean peninsula.

Two things come to mind—by the time the US cavalry was ready to arrive in Taiwan, they would be about 83 days too late. And, more importantly, China would have consolidated its hold on Taiwan making any US effort to retake it suicidal. OPLAN-5027 envisions US forces flowing into South Korean ports that are controlled by the South Korean government. It is not an amphibious assault plan, and any effort to transform it into one would fail.

Twin Peaks – The Waiting Room

This is curious and may hold some answers to those who search.

China names US goals in Ukraine

Washington wants the conflict to drag on and to weaken Russia, Beijing claims

From HERE.

The US isn’t interested in peace in Ukraine but is instead doing everything it can for the conflict in the country to last as long as possible, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said during a briefing on Friday.

“While the international community is calling for the end to hostilities, the US keeps adding fuel to the fire and shows readiness to fight until the last Ukrainian,” Zhao insisted, referring to the ongoing financial aid and deliveries of weapons from Washington to Kiev.

“Their actual goal isn’t achieving peace, but making sure that the conflict drags on. As [the Americans] say it themselves, they’re looking to weaken Russia,” he said.

“As for whether the US brings peace or war, security or chaos – I suppose we all know the answers to those questions,” the spokesman added.

Earlier this week, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin acknowledged that, by helping Kiev, Washington wanted to see “Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden asked Congress for an additional $33 billion in funding to prop up Ukraine in its ongoing conflict with Russia.

On the same day, the US lawmakers voted in a lend-lease scheme for Kiev. If approved by President Joe Biden, it would make it easier for Washington to send arms to Ukraine, but the country would eventually have to pay for those deliveries. Moscow has already warned that the move could see Ukraine landing into a debt pit that will affect the nation for generations.

The events in Ukraine have added even more tension to the relations between Washington and Beijing. Despite all its efforts, the Biden administration has been unable to pressure China to condemn Russia and join international sanctions against it.

Beijing has called for peace in Ukraine, but blamed the outbreak of the conflict on the US and its push to expand NATO close to the Russian border.

Russia sent its troops to Ukraine in late February, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join NATO. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

Twin Peaks Dance of the Little Man

A fitting ending to this array of daily “news” on geopolitics.

US vows to help Taiwan

Top diplomat says Washington will make sure Taipei has all it needs to defend itself against Beijing

From HERE.

Washington is doing everything in its power to ensure that Taiwan can withstand any potential attack, by supporting its indigenous military industry, expediting “third-party transfers,” and helping the island boost its “asymmetric” deterrence capabilities, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said.

“When it comes to Taiwan itself, we are determined to make sure that it has all necessary means to defend itself against any potential aggression, including unilateral action by China to disrupt the status quo that’s been in place for many decades,” Blinken said on Tuesday in a testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Blinken noted that the US has made or facilitated nearly $20 billion in arms sales and $2.5 billion in direct commercial sales to Taiwan since 2017. “We’ve been expediting third-party transfers to Taiwan,” he added. “We’ve been supporting indigenous industrial defense capability. And we are focused on helping them think about how to strengthen asymmetric capabilities, again as a deterrent.”

The committee’s chairman, Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), warned that if China were to seize Taiwan, it would gain a stranglehold on the world’s high-end semiconductor market. He estimated that Taiwan produces 90 percent of all high-end semiconductors globally.

“If, in fact, China could overwhelm and take Taiwan and now have control of 90% of the world’s semiconductors, the world would be in a world of hurt,” Menendez said. He added that failing to come to Taiwan’s aid would send a message to US allies and would-be allies in the region, which would say, “‘Well, if they didn’t do it for Taiwan, they’re not going to do it for us’.”
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Blinken agreed and noted that Washington has a technological advantage over Beijing on the most advanced semiconductors. He said President Joe Biden’s administration was working with Taiwan, Japan, the Netherlands and other countries to “make sure that when it comes to the highest-end semiconductors that they are not transferred to China or China does not get the technology to manufacture them. Taiwan is integral to that.”

US relations with China have worsened since Russia launched its military offensive against Ukraine in February, as Washington has been unable to persuade Beijing to help Western powers punish and isolate Moscow. In Tuesday’s hearing, Blinken told senators that China is “paying a reputational cost,” especially in Europe, for “sitting on the fence when it comes to Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

China has blamed the US and its NATO allies for instigating the Ukraine crisis by breaking promises against expanding the alliance eastward after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and it has called for peace talks to end the conflict. With NATO members sending billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine for use against Russian forces, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin called on Tuesday for restraint and de-escalation.

“No one wants to see the outbreak of a third world war,” Wang said. He also rebuked Western powers for criticizing China’s policies, saying Washington is guilty of war crimes, economic coercion and betraying allies. “Facts have proven that the US is the biggest spreader of disinformation, culprit of coercive diplomacy and saboteur of world peace and stability,” he said.

Blinken’s latest comments on Taiwan likely won’t help mend fences with Beijing, which considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province of China. The US has maintained a ‘One China’ policy, under which it acknowledges but doesn’t endorse Beijing’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan. Chinese officials have repeatedly warned against US meddling in Taiwan, saying they will take steps to defend their nation’s territorial integrity.

Angelo Badalamenti – Heartbreaking (Twin Peaks)

Audio over a still. Still hauntingly beautiful.

Philly Cheese steak sandwich Porn

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Philly Cheese steak sandwich.

Turkish Media: “50 French Military Officers Trapped at Ukraine’s Azovstal Steel Plant;” May have FIRED Missiles that sunk Russia Flagship

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Staggering information is coming out of Turkish media outlets today claiming that at least fifty (50) senior officers of the French military, are trapped underground at the Azovstal steel mill plant in Mariupol Ukraine, surrounded by Russian troops.

The media is claiming that this information was kept ultra-secret due to the then-upcoming French presidential elections, and had the French people known that those men were in Ukraine, actually supervising Ukrainian war efforts against Russia, the French presidential election would likely have gone to Marie LePen instead of re-electing Emmanuel Macron.

Even more shocking, information is coming out claiming the Russia missile cruiser Moskva, which suffered explosions – said to be from missile hits – may have been hit thanks to those French (NATO) officers.

Retired Colonel Richard Black, US Marine Corps, tells everyone via the video below, about these amazing and very troubling developments.

2022 05 01 10 16
2022 05 01 10 16

Twin Peaks Donuts supercut

Classic.

Secret History of Twin Peaks – “Message”

“DOUGLAS MILFORD
9:50 a.m. March 15 1989”

From audiobook version of Mark Frost’s book “The Secret History of Twin Peaks”, voiced by Robert Knepper with added music and scenes. A fan edit video.

Sanctions – The Blowback

Whatever the outcome in Ukraine, one thing is for sure the economic reverberations will be felt by everyone for years to come as the world divides between the West and a rapidly reshaping Eurasia. 

Host, Ross Ashcroft met up with Economist, Michael Hudson to discuss the tectonic shifts and fractures in the world and how sanctions against Russia are likely to reshape a set of new global geopolitical realities.

Accurate. Check it out.

CONFIRMED: “U.S. and Allies Preparing for Russian Use of Nuclear Weapons”

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RussianSARMAT Launch 202 Seconds large
RussianSARMAT Launch 202 Seconds large

Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland today publicly stated “If Moscow uses nuclear weapons, it will never recover from the consequences.” She then went on to confirm: “Since the beginning of this conflict, we have already understood that the threats posed by Putin must be taken seriously. That’s why the U.S. and our allies are preparing for this development,” Nuland said.

These astonishing remarks by the U.S. Undersecretary of State come just one day after the top TV New Network in the Russian Federation, a network called Rossiya-1, broadcast to the entire nation of Russia the map shown above.

The map shows that a single Russian “SARMAT” Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, when launched from Kaliningrad, would vaporize Berlin, Germany in 106 seconds, Paris, France in 200 seconds, and London, England, in 202 seconds after launch!   All three cities would be hit from a single Russian SARMAT missile launch!!

From launch to impact, even the most distant city, London, would only have about 3 1/2 MINUTES of radar warning . . . not even enough time to ask the Prime Minister for permission to shoot back, and certainly not enough time to warn the general public even to take shelter.

The Populations of those cities are as follows:

Berlin, Germany: 3.645 million (2019)

Paris, France: 2.161 million (2019)

London, England: 8.982 million (2019)

Almost no one in any of those cities would survive.    The chart below lays out the effect of EACH blast (5 nuke-blasts per city)

NukeBlastEffects
NukeBlastEffects

The initial multi-blast shockwaves (~30,000 P.S.I.) and thermal radiation (the heat from the bright, white, flash) would vaporize everything within 1.5 miles (2.4km) of each blast. Absolutely nothing would survive.

It is hard to imagine how something like that might be possible, so we’ll give you the scientific numbers to help you TRY to grasp what takes place when just one nuclear bomb at today’s strength, detonates.

Temperatures of a nuclear explosion reach the same as in the interior of the sun, about one-hundred million degrees Celsius (100,000,000° Celsius which equals 200,000,000 Fahrenheit) and produce a brilliant fireball.

Let’s take New York City as an example because actual scientific and engineering studies have been done on this exact subject and the numbers are all peer-reviewed and accurate.  New York City is comparable in size to the land area and population of London.  What you are about to read is horrifying, so prepare yourself.  It is taken from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (Here)

The initial fireball.The warhead would probably be detonated slightly more than a mile above the city, to maximize the damage created by its blast wave. Within a few tenths of millionths of a second after detonation, the center of the warhead would reach a temperature of roughly 200 million degrees Fahrenheit (about 100 million degrees Celsius), or about four to five times the temperature at the center of the sun.

A ball of superheated air would form, initially expanding outward at millions of miles per hour. It would act like a fast-moving piston on the surrounding air, compressing it at the edge of the fireball and creating a shockwave of vast size and power.

After one second, the fireball would be roughly a mile in diameter. It would have cooled from its initial temperature of many millions of degrees to about 16,000 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly 4,000 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun.

On a clear day with average weather conditions, the enormous heat and light from the fireball would almost instantly ignite fires over a total area of about 100 square miles.

Hurricane of fire.Within seconds after the detonation, fires set within a few miles of the fireball would burn violently. These fires would force gigantic masses of heated air to rise, drawing cooler air from surrounding areas toward the center of the fire zone from all directions.

NukeEffectsOnManhattan 800kt
NukeEffectsOnManhattan 800kt

As the massive winds drove flames into areas where fires had not yet fully developed, the fires set by the detonation would begin to merge. Within tens of minutes of the detonation, fires from near and far would join to form a single, gigantic fire. The energy released by this mass fire would be 15 to 50 times greater than the energy produced by the nuclear detonation.

The mass fire, or firestorm, would quickly increase in intensity, heating enormous volumes of air that would rise at speeds approaching 300 miles per hour. This chimney effect would pull cool air from outside the fire zone towards the center of the fire at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. These superheated ground winds of more than hurricane force would further intensify the fire. At the edge of the fire zone, the winds would be powerful enough to uproot trees three feet in diameter and suck people from outside the fire into it.

The inrushing winds would drive the flames from burning buildings horizontally along the ground, filling city streets with flames and firebrands, breaking in doors and windows, and causing the fire to jump, sometimes hundreds of feet, swallowing anything not already violently combusting.

These above-hurricane-force ground winds would have average air temperatures well above the boiling point of water. The targeted area would be transformed into a huge hurricane of fire, producing a lethal environment throughout the entire fire zone.

Ground zero: Midtown Manhattan. The fireball would vaporize the structures directly below it and produce an immense blast wave and high-speed winds, crushing even heavily built concrete structures within a couple miles of ground zero. The blast would tear apart high-rise buildings and expose their contents to the solar temperatures; it would spread fires by exposing ignitable surfaces, releasing flammable materials, and dispersing burning materials.

At the Empire State Building, Grand Central Station, the Chrysler Building, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, about one half to three quarters of a mile from ground zero, light from the fireball would melt asphalt in the streets, burn paint off walls, and melt metal surfaces within a half second of the detonation. Roughly one second later, the blast wave and 750-mile-per-hour winds would arrive, flattening buildings and tossing burning cars into the air like leaves in a windstorm. Throughout Midtown, the interiors of vehicles and buildings in line of sight of the fireball would explode into flames.

Slightly more than a mile from ground zero are the neighborhoods of Chelsea, Midtown East, and Lenox Hill, as well as the United Nations; at this distance, for a split second the fireball would shine 10,000 times brighter than a desert sun at noon.  All combustible materials illuminated by the fireball would spew fire and black smoke.

Grass, vegetation, and leaves on trees would explode into flames; the surface of the ground would explode into superheated dust. Any flammable material inside buildings (paper, curtains, upholstery) that was directly exposed to the fireball would burst into flame. The surfaces of the bronze statues in front of the UN would melt; marble surfaces exposed to the fireball would crack, pop, and possibly evaporate.

At this distance from the fireball, it would take about four seconds for the blast wave to arrive. As it passed over, the blast wave would engulf all structures and crush them; it would generate ferocious winds of 400 to 500 miles per hour that would persist for a few seconds

The high winds would tear structural elements from buildings and cause them to disintegrate explosively into smaller pieces. Some of these pieces would become destructive projectiles, causing further damage. The superheated, dust-laden winds would be strong enough to overturn trucks and buses.

Two miles from ground zero, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with all its magnificent historical treasures, would be obliterated. Two and half miles from ground zero, in Lower Manhattan, the East Village, and Stuyvesant Town, the fireball would appear 2,700 times brighter than a desert sun at noon. There, thermal radiation would melt and warp aluminum surfaces, ignite the tires of autos, and turn exposed skin to charcoal, before the blast wave arrived and ripped apart the buildings.

Three to nine miles from ground zero. Midtown is bordered by the relatively wide Hudson and East rivers, and fires would start simultaneously in large areas on both sides of these waterways (that is, in Queens and Brooklyn as well as Jersey City and West New York).  Although the direction of the fiery winds in regions near the river would be modified by the water, the overall wind pattern from these huge neighboring fire zones would be similar to that of a single mass fire, with its center at Midtown, Manhattan.

Three miles from ground zero, in Union City, New Jersey, and Astoria, Queens, the fireball would be as bright as 1,900 suns and deliver more than five times the thermal energy deposited at the perimeter of the mass fire at Hiroshima. In Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and in the Civic Center of Lower Manhattan, clothes worn by people in the direct line of sight of the fireball would burst into flames or melt, and uncovered skin would be charred, causing third-degree and fourth-degree burns.

It would take 12 to 14 seconds for the blast wave to travel three miles after the fireball’s initial flash of light. At this distance, the blast wave would last for about three seconds and be accompanied by winds of 200 to 300 miles per hour. Residential structures would be destroyed; high-rises would be at least heavily damaged.

Fires would rage everywhere within five miles of ground zero. At a distance of 5.35 miles from the detonation, the light flash from the fireball would deliver twice the thermal energy experienced at the edge of the mass fire at Hiroshima. In Jersey City and Cliffside Park, and in Woodside in Queens, on Governors Island and in Harlem, the light and heat to surfaces would approximate that created by 600 desert suns at noon.

Wind speed at this distance (5 miles away) would be 70 to 100 miles per hour. Buildings of heavy construction would suffer little structural damage, but all exterior windows would be shattered, and non-supporting interior walls and doors would be severely damaged or blown down. Black smoke would effuse from wood houses as paint burned off surfaces and furnishings ignited.

Six to seven miles from ground zero, from Moonachie, New Jersey, to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, from Yankee Stadium to Corona, Queens and Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the fireball would appear 300 times brighter than the desert sun at noon. Anyone in the direct light of the fireball would suffer third degree burns to their exposed skin. The firestorm could engulf neighborhoods as far as seven miles away from ground zero, since these outlying areas would receive the same amount of heat as did the areas at the edge of the mass fire at Hiroshima.

Nine miles from ground zero, in Hackensack, Bayonne, and Englewood, New Jersey, as well as in Richmond Hill, Queens, and Flatlands, Brooklyn, the fireball would be about 100 times brighter than the sun, bright enough to cause first- and second-degree burns to those in line of sight. About 36 seconds after the fireball, the shockwave would arrive and knock out all the windows, along with many interior building walls and some doors.

No survivors. Within tens of minutes, everything within approximately five to seven miles of Midtown Manhattan would be engulfed by a gigantic firestorm. The fire zone would cover a total area of 90 to 152 square miles (230 to 389 square kilometers). The firestorm would rage for three to six hours. Air temperatures in the fire zone would likely average 400 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit (200 to 260 Celsius).

After the fire burned out, the street pavement would be so hot that even tracked vehicles could not pass over it for days. Buried, unburned material from collapsed buildings throughout the fire zone could burst into flames when exposed to air—months after the firestorm had ended.

Those who tried to escape through the streets would have been incinerated by the hurricane-force winds filled with firebrands and flames. Even those able to find shelter in the lower-level sub-basements of massive buildings would likely suffocate from fire-generated gases or be cooked alive as their shelters heated to oven-like conditions.

The fire would extinguish all life and destroy almost everything else. Tens of miles downwind of the area of immediate destruction, radioactive fallout would begin to arrive within a few hours of the detonation.

——- End of Scientific info from Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ———-

Put simply, the cities mentioned at the outset of this story (Berlin, Germany, Paris France, and London, England) literally would no longer exist.  Pretty much everyone — a total of 14.788 MILLION people — would be dead or dying, within a total time from launch to initial detonations of 202 SECONDS.

This is actually being talked about in Russia and is being broadcast on Russian TV to citizens.

Today, April 30, 2022, US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland actually said “The U.S. and its allies are preparing for this.”

Let that sink in.

Rather than stop what they’re doing with Russia over Ukraine, they are, instead, preparing for what you just read.

This seems to many people to be utterly insane and unless people take to the streets now in cities around the US and in Europe, to mount mass protests, this utterly horrific reality may become YOUR reality.

 

AMERICANS

There is much talk about how “NATO” is dealing with the Russia-Ukraine troubles.   It is vital you understand that “NATO” is . . . The United States.

We here in America are the main backbone of NATO and we call all the shots.   Even Britain, France, and Germany do not provide even ten percent of NATO capacity all together and they do not have our amount of Nuclear weapons.

So think for a moment, what Russia is facing:  a “NATO” response to help Ukraine.  But NATO is . . . . us, here in America.

Now, if you are a Russian, and you decide you have to deal with this NATO interference . . . who do you nuke first?  Berlin, Paris, and London . . . .   Or Washington DC, New York, and Los Angeles?

Because if Russia strikes Berlin, Paris, and London, they already know that the USA is going to strike back on behalf of those cities.  So does it make more sense for Russia to hit THOSE cities, or to hit us here in the USA first . . . . which will totally “gut” NATO?

Most rational people are starting to realize it makes more sense for Russia to hit the USA first.

They can.

Their SARMAT missile and its fifteen independent warheads atop each missile, can hit us here in the USA too.

While we __might__ have some additional warning time . . . . our results will still be what you read above.

If YOU live in the United States, anywhere near one of the top cities, you need to insert that city name into the story above and then use the facts laid out for what happens in areas surrounding NYC, and apply those to YOUR area.

Moreover, it’s not just the big cities; if you live near a major US military base, that base may be the target, and all the nasty stuff reported above, would then apply to THAT BASE and the Twenty-five miles around it.

The Russians are already talking about having to use nukes.  They’re telling their citizens about it.  And OUR government now says we are preparing for it.

It seems to many people though, that what government is preparing for . . . . is to save THEMSELVES once the missiles start flying.   After all, has anyone from government come to your house to talk with you about emergency preparations for YOU?

Any town meetings?

NOPE!

You and I are the poor slobs that will be blind-sided by what our government egomaniacs are setting in motion.  YOU HAVE TO PREPARE with emergency food, water, medicines, a generator, fuel for it, communications gear (CB or HAM radio) and have a plan.   If you don’t plan, then you’re planning to FAIL.

This is life and death.

Get planning. Now.

Major Eyelashes

Wow! How is that even possible? She must have sat in a salon for hours! There is no way for here to do that on her own. No friggin’ way!

awesome pictures 161
Major Eyelashes.

Twin Peaks – Jimmy Scott sings “Sycamore Trees” in the red room

A classic. It’s surreal. Just like this time is.

That moment you realize you have lost the battle and you are never going to escape the red room.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Drats! Banned again! And so I have to tone things down a bit. I guess that I am too dangerous.

I have been surprised how numerous social media accounts have been censoring me, and locking me out of my accounts. These are Western; American social media. Nothing in China or Russia. I guess that I have dangerous opinions. Sigh.

The good thing is that I still have a solid freedom on speech in Communist China, while “freedom loving” United States is crushing on my opinions and my access to data.

Let’s go through contemporaneous “news” articles…

China in Africa

video 5MB

Be the Rufus

Help others. Make the world a better place. Stop being a spectator. Be a participant. video 4MB.

Germany is playing politics while under pressure by the USA to supply weapons to Ukraine

A most excellent article on MoA by b…

Did Germany really decide to deliver tanks to the Ukraine?

The German government said Tuesday it will deliver anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine after facing strong pressure at home and abroad to abandon its reluctance to supply heavy weapons to Kyiv.

The decision to provide the “Gepard” tanks, which come from German defense industry stocks, was made at a closed-door government meeting on Monday, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht told reporters at a Ukraine security conference at a U.S. airbase in Ramstein, Germany. There was no immediate information on how many tanks Germany would deliver.

The announcement marks a notable shift for Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who as recently as last week was still ruling out sending German tanks to Ukraine, insisting it would make more sense for Eastern NATO countries to give Kyiv old Soviet-era tanks already familiar to the Ukrainian military. Scholz promised Germany would then send those countries replacement German tanks.

I find it amusing how many misunderstand this move. First off – the Gepard (Cheetah) is not a tank as the turret has very little protective armor.

Gepard
Gepard

It is a short range (5 km / 3 miles) anti-air system on a tank chassis useful against helicopters, drones and low flying planes.

That Scholz decided to offer these, instead of real tanks or armored infantry carriers as the U.S. and the camouflage-Green party demanded, is a nice way out. It guarantees that the Ukrainians will not be able to use them before the war is over.

The Gepard system with its two 35mm cannons is more than 50 years old but has been upgraded two or three times. The Germany army retired their last one of these in 2010. They have since been held in storage.

I remember them well from my time in the Bundeswehr. While my primary training was as a gunner on a real tank, the Leopard 1A3, two people I knew were trained as gunners for the Gepard. There was a huge difference though. It took 6 months of training to become a reasonably good tank gunner. It took 12 month, including hundreds of hours in a simulator, to become a gunner on a Gepard. The commander role required even more training.

The system was excellent for its time but also really complicate. The two radars have various modes for different purposes. One would better use the right one or risk to attract explosive countermeasures. The startup of the turret systems and the handling of their various error modes that could occur were not easy to handle. The tank chassis is also more complicate than the original one. It has an additional motor which powers five electric generators, two Metadyne rotary transformers and a flywheel to handle the extraordinary fast movements of the turret (2.5 sec for a 360°turn).

There are probably less than ten people in the current Bundeswehr who still know how to operate and maintain a Gepard. There is thus little chance to find German crews for them.

If the Ukrainians really want to use these outdated systems they will have to train fresh crews for at least a year. Otherwise those guns will be ineffective and of little use.

My hunch though is that none of these will ever be delivered. The Swiss, who manufactured the cannons and their ammunition, have seen to that:

Neutral Switzerland has vetoed the re-export of Swiss-made ammunition used in Gepard anti-aircraft tanks that Germany is sending to Ukraine, the government said on Tuesday.

Germany earlier announced its first delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine to help it fend off Russian attacks following weeks of pressure at home and abroad to do so.

The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) confirmed a report by broadcaster SRF that it had blocked Germany from sending munitions for the Gepard tank to Ukraine.

Chancellor Scholz likely knew all that. The offer of Gepards is a safe way to relieve the pressure put onto him to send arms to Ukraine. It is an offer of a system that can not be used within the timeframe of the war and for which he can not deliver the necessary specialized ammunition.

Are there still some Lockheed F-104 Starfighter in German storage? If so those flying coffins should be offered next.

Lockheed F 104A of the 83rd Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Taoyuan Air Base Taiwan on Sept. 15 1958 during the Quemoy Crisis Operation Jonah Able 4bf8f2b4bac845149908d79fa3d63838
Lockheed F 104A

Some snarky comments…

If that was really the intention of Chancellor Scholz than I really underestimated him.

The Gepard looks fency and powerful at first sight, like a real tank to the public audience, but in reality it is just a playtoy only capable of terrorizing civilians in a village.

Still I wonder what the purpose is for NATO countries in general to pump weapons into Ukraine?

They will never arrive in time to the battlefield, not even talking about training and tactical alignment for Ukie troops.

So either MIC is shouting loud to empty the equipment inventory of NATO states so they buy more weapons for their own army --> big business
Or NATO plans to prepare UA for a counter offensive in Autumn '22 or Spring '23 --> prolong the way dragging Russia deeper and depper into the conflict.

Posted by: Rasta | Apr 27 2022 10:45 utc | 2

LOL Is this a circus or what? Next time, send Ukraine some P-51 Mustangs. They should do wonders against an SU-35. :-)

Hey, I bet Hollywood can find some old Tiger tanks from the movie "Kelly's Heroes" to send! LMFAO

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Apr 27 2022 10:49 utc | 3

I suspect that the offloading of old and outdated weaponry, ammunition, tanks and other materiel onto Ukraine by NATO members is part of a deal or a plan in which NATO members agree to buy US replacements for ageing junk they otherwise can't get rid of for lack of space in their own territories, and that way they fulfil US demands or expectations that they spend up to 2% of their annual GDPs on armaments.

The Russians might consider this possibility and maybe pause in the use of their own weapons to shoot up old NATO junk to avoid running out of their own ammunition. Though they are probably aware that whatever replacements come from the US into European NATO countries are not likely to match their own weapons and armaments in usefulness and precision.

Posted by: Jen | Apr 27 2022 10:49 utc | 4

The Flakpanzer Gepard is very similar to the Soviet ZSU-23-4 Shilka, except it is twice as heavy and has twice the fuel consumption.

The last time I saw a ZSU-23-4 Shilka in combat was in Libya in 2011. The Balakleya ammunition depot in the Kharkov region recently captured by Russian troops had a few of them undergoing service.

The Shilka may still be useful against infantry, but that role has been taken over by Toyota ratmobiles (known as Banderamobiles in the Ukraine).

***

The Balakleya ammunition depot blew up in 2017. I now looked at satellite photos. Some 90% of the warehouses have been pulverized. I find it hard to believe that a single initial explosion could have destroyed all this. Did Petrov and Boshirov volunteer for the Ukrainian army?

Posted by: Petri Krohn | Apr 27 2022 12:24 utc | 24

The UK tells China to obey the Uni-Polar demands of the West

Citing Ukraine, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warns China that “its rise” depends on playing by the rules. Or so says the anti-China publication; South China Morning Post
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Article

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And China responds. The International rules are not the rules of a small circle of nations: Chinese FM on Truss warning China Global Times

Single way thinking has resulted in “The world’s nastiest nation” forgetting that it relies on the world’s largest manufacturer of products, and the largest consumer market on the planet: China.

Another MM You-Tube video removed

I do hope that you got a chance to watch it. It’s now GONE.

2022 04 29 16 06
2022 04 29 16 06

I accidentally misplaced this video, and all of its construction components. And thus, this video is now nowhere to be found.

Personally, I tended to rant and rave on it. And I was musing about taking it down myself.

Yet, perhaps the stuff about SAP programs, bioweapon carpet-bombing of China, and MAJestic was enough to get the video banned. I have to be very careful on what I talk about on American / United States platforms. They are not as free as they are here inside of Communist China.

Well, that’s life. Eh?

The barbarian west is going to start another world war :

Russian forces must be pushed out of “the whole of Ukraine”, the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said.
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In a keynote speech in London, Ms Truss said victory for Ukraine was now a “strategic imperative” for the West.
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This amounts to the clearest statement yet of Britain’s war aims which have, until now, been limited to stating that President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “must fail and be seen to fail”.
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She said Western allies must “double down” in their support for Ukraine.
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“We will keep going further and faster,” Ms Truss said, “to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine.”
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This implies that Russian forces must leave not just the territory occupied in recent weeks since their invasion on 24 February but also those areas they invaded and annexed eight years ago, such as Crimea in the south and parts of the eastern Donbas region…
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By James Landale
Diplomatic correspondent
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From HERE

Cool Plant

Cercis canadensis

624440410684d x6ksk3h4qnz41 700
Cercis canadensis.

Wow Russia Seizes Ukraine Weapons and taunt USA !

Interesting video.

Rocket Scientist Joke 1

spacecraftDesign
spacecraftDesign

This is a joke, but it is sadly very true. Sometimes individual subsystems designers get so focused on their subsystems they lose sight of the overall mission. Source and artist unknown.

The West Is Still Buying Russian Oil, But It’s Now Harder to Track

The West Is Still Buying Russian Oil, but It's Now Harder to Track

Russia ramped up oil shipments to key customers in recent weeks, defying its pariah status in world energy markets. One increasingly popular method for delivery: tankers marked "destination unknown."

Oil exports from Russian ports bound for European Union member states, which historically have been the biggest buyers of Russian crude, have risen to an average of 1.6 million barrels a day so far in April, according to TankerTrackers.com. Exports had dropped to 1.3 million a day in March following the Ukraine invasion. Similar data from Kpler, another commodities data provider, showed flows rose to 1.3 million a day in April from 1 million in mid-March.

But an opaque market is forming to obscure the origin of that oil. Unlike before Russia invaded Ukraine, oil buyers are worried about the reputational risk of trading crude that is financing a government that Western leaders accuse of war crimes.

Oil from Russian ports is increasingly being shipped with its destination unknown. In April so far, over 11.1 million barrels were loaded into tankers without a planned route, more than to any country, according to TankerTrackers.com. That is up from almost none before the invasion.

Energy Capital Partners Raises $3 Billion So Far to Back Energy Infrastructure

Energy Capital Partners has raised roughly $3 billion so far for its fifth flagship fund focused on investing in energy infrastructure, according to people familiar with the matter.

From HERE.

So-Easy Coq au Vin

I am sure that this isn’t going to be anything like the “real thing”, but it is a very easy recipe to give try with…

Here’s my adaptation of the beloved French dish. I substituted boneless skinless chicken breasts for a lighter, easy coq au vin that still showcases the traditional and memorable taste. —Sonya Labbe, Los Angeles, California

So Easy Coq Au Vin EXPS CHBZ19 78266 C10 23 10b 9
So Easy Coq Au Vin

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2022 04 25 19 19

Directions

  1. In large skillet, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp, stirring occasionally. Remove with a slotted spoon; drain on paper towels. Brown chicken on both sides in drippings over medium heat. Transfer chicken to a 3-qt. slow cooker.
  2. Add the mushrooms, onion and garlic to skillet; cook and stir just until tender, 1-2 minutes. Spoon over chicken; add bay leaf.
  3. In a small bowl, whisk the flour, wine, broth, thyme and pepper until smooth; pour over chicken.
  4. Cover; cook on low until chicken is tender, 5-6 hours. Discard bay leaf. If desired, serve with noodles. Top with bacon.

A Minecraft plant…

Corpuscularia lehmannii.

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Corpuscularia lehmannii

A trick you can use to avoid some or most paywalls when the paywall strikes:

1. Click out of that site
2. Click back into the site
3. IMMEDIATELY press & hold the Ctrl key then the A and C keys in succession
4. Press the Ctrl and V keys to copy onto a notepad
5. Enjoy reading the whole article. (Try to remember what the title was so you can identify it on your notepad amongst the garbage.)

Rocket Scientist Joke 2

spacecraftDesign07TB
spacecraftDesign07TB

This is a joke, but it is sadly very true. Sometimes individual subsystems designers get so focused on their subsystems they lose sight of the overall mission. Source and artist unknown.

The War in Ukraine and the Imminent Impact on Western Food Supplies… What You Need To Know

Via International Man

Everyone understands by now that Russia is a large energy producer, but what many don’t know is that when they sit down at the dinner table at night, the entire supply chain (aside from the energy required for transportation) that gets them that dinner involves Russia and Ukraine to a frightening degree.

Our current globally integrated food supply system and mass food production cannot exist without, among other things, fertilizer.

This includes three main categories: nitrogen, potash, and phosphorus fertilizers. Potash is a potassium-rich salt fertilizer that enhances plant quality and is responsible for 20% of global fertilizer demand.

Together with Belarus, Russia has a 40% market share in global production and export of potash fertilizer. What OPEC+ is to the oil market, Belarus and Russia are to the potash market. The two monopolies in this space are Uralkali and Belaruskali, with the Belarusian Potash Company being the latter’s export arm.

With 16.5% of the nitrogen fertilizer market, Russia may not appear to be that dominant until we look at the key ingredient (ammonium nitrate) and then we realize… oh, yes it is. Why? Russia holds a whopping 66% of the global market share in the production of this chemical, and without it there’s no nitrogen fertilizer.

All this matters a great deal for those of us who like to eat, because last month the Russkies imposed an export ban on the ammonium nitrate mentioned above. Their reasoning, true or not, was to ensure an affordable supply for its own farmers. This ban comes off in April 2022.

“Fine, what’s a few weeks to wait,” you might ask.

Farming isn’t like manufacturing iPhones. In the case of iPhones, if you’re missing some component of the phone you can plonk it in a month or two later and voila, it’ll all still work. Sure, your overall opex related to carrying the product for longer than anticipated is impacted but it’ll still work. Try that in farming and you miss your planting cycle. You miss your planting cycle and you can literally go bankrupt. It’s a big deal, and it’s going to have a lasting impact on anyone who needs food.

It doesn’t stop there, though. Digging into this here is what we found. According to The North Africa Post Morocco’s OCP Group is the world top exporter of phosphates

“The Moroccan state-owned OCP group has maintained its leading position as the world first exporter of phosphates although its market share decreased from 38 pc to 34 pc between January & September 2019, but in phosphoric acid, the Group remains the biggest worldwide exporter, with a 49 pc global market share.”

What does this have to do with Russia?

Through the company Uralchem, Russia provides ammonia to Morocco, and Morocco, as it turns out, is the largest phosphate fertilizer producer in the world with 75% of phosphate reserves.

How much ammonia? More than half.

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2022 04 29 16 27

Source: Worldbank. Morocco’s Imports of Ammonia

Oh, what a tangled web this all is. And we have only just begun to scratch the surface of the repercussions.

It looks like a painting…

Caladium.

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Caladium

Lobo – Me And You And A Dog Named Boo • TopPop

Here’s a blast from the past.

Yet another Rocket Scientist Joke

spacecraftDesign01
spacecraftDesign01

This is a joke, but it is sadly very true. Sometimes individual subsystems designers get so focused on their subsystems they lose sight of the overall mission. Source and artist unknown.

A cat in the fields…

Saxifraga Arendsii.

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Saxifraga Arendsii

Is The U.S. Going To Transition From Stagflation Directly Into A Full-Blown Economic Depression?

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Should the fact that the U.S. economy actually contracted during the first quarter actually surprise any of us?  Since the start of 2022, there has been crisis after crisis, and now the war in Ukraine is depressing economic activity all over the planet.  What we are facing could most definitely be described as a “perfect storm”, and the truth is that this storm isn’t going to go away any time soon.  But where do we go from here?  Will the U.S. economy bounce back, or will this new economic downturn soon become even worse?  Most economic optimists are assuming that the former will be true, while many economic realists are issuing dire warnings about what is ahead.

I was actually thinking of writing about something else today, but I knew that my regular readers would want me to talk about this

Gross domestic product unexpectedly declined at a 1.4% annualized pace in the first quarter, marking an abrupt reversal for an economy coming off its best performance since 1984, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

The negative growth rate missed even the subdued Dow Jones estimate of a 1% gain for the quarter, but the initial estimate for Q1 was the worst since the pandemic-induced recession in 2020.

We already knew that inflation had started to spiral out of control in the United States, and now the “stag” part of “stagflation” has arrived.

So what caused this “sudden” downturn?  According to CNN, there are quite a few factors that can be blamed…

A push by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and combat high inflation. Supply chain shortages. An ongoing global health crisis. And of course, the geopolitical earthquake caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is also threatening to create a world food crisis.

If the U.S. economy shrinks again in the second quarter, that will officially meet the definition of a “recession”.

But as John Williams of shadowstats.com has pointed out, if honest numbers were being used the U.S. economy would still be in a recession that started all the way back at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

Everybody pretty much realizes that economic conditions are not great right now.

So are brighter days just around the corner?  That is what some pundits seem to think

The US economy will return to growth during the second quarter, according to RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas. “Without a doubt,” he said.

“This is noise; not signal,” Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Shepherdson wrote in a report. “The economy is not falling into recession.”

Maybe they will be right.

But if the economy is so strong, then why are foreclosure filings absolutely soaring?

Last month, 33,333 properties across the U.S. faced foreclosure, a 181 percent jump from March 2021 and 29 percent pop from February, according to a report by foreclosure tracker Attom. The first quarter saw 78,271 properties with a foreclosure filing, a 39 percent from the previous quarter and 132 percent from last year.

Needless to say, there are other experts that have a much more negative view on what is ahead.

For example, Nancy Lazar is warning of a “synchronized” global recession…

Piper Sandler chief global economist Nancy Lazar warned on Monday that the world is in the early stages of a “very significant” and “synchronized” recession.

In an appearance on “Mornings with Maria” Monday, Lazar noted that a recession is expected outside of the United States.

“It’s going to be a global recession pulling down [the] Euro zone in particular,” she told host Maria Bartiromo. “It looks like China GDP [Gross domestic product] in the second quarter could also be negative.”

Actually, if all we suffer is a significant global recession that will be really good news.

Because right at this moment inflation is dramatically spiking all over the globe, we are witnessing the largest land war in Europe since World War II, and the UN is telling us that we are heading into a horrific worldwide food crisis.

An increasing number of Americans are starting to realize that things are moving in the wrong direction.  In Gallup’s April survey, only 18 percent of Americans rated economic conditions as “good”, and only 2 percent rated them as “excellent”…

The GDP news comes on the heels of newly released polling data from Gallup that suggested that economy confidence is extremely low among the American public.

More than four in ten (42%) of Americans said that economic conditions in America were “poor,” while another 38% said that they were only “fair” in Gallup’s April survey. Just 2% said economic conditions were “excellent,” while 18% said they were “good.”

Those are terrible numbers, and they have very serious implications for the Democrats in the fall.

But instead of focusing on fixing the economy, Joe Biden wants Congress to give him another 33 billion dollars for the war in Ukraine…

President Joe Biden is asking Congress for another $33 billion to help Ukraine resist Russia’s invasion and provide humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people.

The proposal, which the White House will send to lawmakers on Thursday, includes $20 billion in additional security and military assistance for Ukraine, another $8 billion for economic assistance and $3 billion in humanitarian aid.

This is complete and utter madness.

To put this in perspective, the military budget for Ukraine is normally about 6 billion dollars for an entire year.

And much of the equipment that the U.S. is sending to Ukraine is being blown up by the Russians before it can even get to the fighters on the front lines.

With each passing day it is becoming clearer to everyone that this conflict is really a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

And nuclear war is increasingly becoming one of the hottest topics on Russian television.  For example, the following is a recent exchange between two Russian television personalities that is making headlines all over the globe…

“Everything will end with a nuclear strike is more probable than the other outcome,” she continued. “This is to my horror, on one hand, but on the other hand, with the understanding that it is what it is.”

It was at that point Solovyov chimed in, “But we will go to heaven, while they will simply croak.”

“We’re all going to die someday,” Simonyan agreed.

“We’re all going to die someday”?

I certainly don’t like the sound of that.

Unfortunately, many Russians are now entirely convinced that nuclear war is coming.

But instead of pushing for peace, Joe Biden and his minions just keep escalating the conflict.

If we continue to go down this path, it will end in a nightmare.

Our current economic problems pale in comparison to the possibility of a nuclear conflict, but most Americans still don’t understand the implications of the decisions that our leaders are making.

Because if they did understand, there would be giant protests in the streets of every single major U.S. city right now.

A very cool tree…

Sterculia apetala.

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Sterculia apetala

More Than a Dozen Mysterious Carved Discs Found Near Volgograd, Russia

Time for a good laugh…

A team of investigators in Russia found more than a dozen stone discs in the Volgograd region of Russia. At the time of the discovery back in 2015, the team claimed that the discs contain tungsten, a high density metal that has applications in military technology.

While the nature of the discs remain a mystery, UFOlogists alluded to the disks being debris from an ancient spaceship.

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2022 04 29 16 37

UFO Hunters Discover Mysterious Discs in Russia

Russian news site  Bloknot Volgograd  reports that the finding was made by the Russian UFOlogy and Crytozoology group Kosmopoisk, known since 2004 as the All-Russian Scientific Organization, led by Vadim Chernobrov, during excavations in the Zhirnovsky district of the Volgograd region. The UFO hunters were investigating in the region due its fame for the occurrence of mystical phenomena.

While the team had previously discovered more than a dozen disc-shaped stones, they recently found a particularly large one. “We already found a dozen of these discs of not more than one meter (3.28 ft) in diameter and in Kuzbass a disc of about two meters (6.56 ft) in diameter,” Chernobrov told Bloknot Volgograd , adding that the newest one is unique because it is larger than all the others.

Spaceship Damaged in an Attack on Mars? Really?

“The shape… which resembles the popular image of a flying saucer , has let the imagination of the conspiracy theorists fly,” reports  International Business Times .

“Scott Waring of UFO Sightings Daily thinks this is proof that aliens exist and claims the disc is made of tungsten. Tungsten is also known as wolfram, and is used in special military technology.”

The UFO investigation team has made lavish claims about the stone discs, stating that they could be about a million years old.

When discussing the find, Waring of UFO Sightings Daily explained:

“It looks to me like the stone discs I've seen in Mars NASA photos, which leads me to conclude that this UFO is a military drone, but it was probably damaged during the Mars attack and got off course, crashing on Earth.”

Evidence of military drones damaged in an attack on Mars. My goodness!

Wow! I am speechless!

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2022 04 29 16 42

Rational Explanations for the Mysterious Disks in Russia

Earlier this year, another disc-shaped stone object was discovered in  Russia by a coal mining company, this time in Siberia’s Kuznetsk Basin.

The strange relic was found 40 meters (131 ft) underground, which suggests it is quite old. Archaeologists who examined the stone disc, which is perfectly circular with a diameter of 1.2 meters (3.93 ft), stated that it was man-made.

Fortunately, scientists at the Zhirnovsky Museum are taking a more rational approach and are studying the largest of the mysterious stone discs to determine its age and material. Some UFO skeptics even believe that the discs were not man-made, but that their shape is simply the result of erosion. The large stone disc was put on display at the Zhirnovsky Museum of Local Lore in order to undergo further testing, reported Bloknot Volgograd in 2015.

Isn’t nature strange and wonderful?

Haworthia cooperi, Cooper’s Haworthia.

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Haworthia cooperi, Cooper’s Haworthia

Chinese girl in tan

video 6.8MB

Israeli Troops Arrive in Ukraine to FIGHT RUSSIA!

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Video below from inside Ukraine, shows the arrival of Israeli Defense Force troops, to fight against Russia.  This is a gigantic stab in the back by Israel to Russia.  “Allies” and “Partners” don’t do things like this.

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2022 04 29 17 18

WHOA! U.S. Just Blinked!

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The United States, seeing all its efforts in Ukraine as now futile, has said the following:  The United States will accept a peace agreement between Kiev and Moscow, after which Ukraine will be a neutral country.

This statement was made by the American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

"Washington will respect Ukraine's decision if it enters into an agreement with Russia to renounce NATO membership to end the conflict,"

Blinken said.

Now the general American and Western public is being spoon-fed the  news:

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media

But you all must recognize that both Russia and China believe that America is “agreement incapable”; that they lie, ignore things and treaties at will, and that the United States is russing the war against Russia. The Ukraine is powerless.

This is perhaps a “punt” realizing that the situation has no advantage to the United States and cannot be reversed or changed.

The plant that looks like parrots…

Cyanotis tuberosa.

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Cyanotis tuberosa.

Cute Chinese Girl

Video 5MB

Russia warns “NUCLEAR” WORLD WAR 3 risks now ‘considerable’

Lavrov large
Lavrov large

Russia’s foreign minister told the world not to underestimate the considerable risks of nuclear conflict, and Nato’s supply of weapons to Ukraine “in essence” meant that the Western alliance was engaged in a proxy war with Russia.

Interviewed by Russian state television, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked about the importance of avoiding World War Three and whether the current situation was comparable to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

“The risks now are considerable,”

Mr Lavrov said according to a transcript of the interview on the ministry’s website.

“I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he regarded Russia’s scaremongering as a sign of weakness.

Russia had lost its…

“last hope to scare the world off supporting Ukraine,”

Mr Kuleba wrote on Twitter after Mr Lavrov’s interview.

“This only means Moscow senses defeat.”

During a visit to Kyiv on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promised more military aid for Ukraine.

The US State Department on Monday (April 25) used an emergency declaration to approve the potential sale of US$165 million worth of ammunition to Ukraine. The Pentagon said the package could include artillery ammunition for howitzers, tanks and grenade launchers.

Moscow’s ambassador to Washington told the United States to halt shipments, warning Western weapons were inflaming the conflict.

Mr Lavrov said:

“Nato, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.”

Russia’s two-month-old invasion of Ukraine, the biggest attack on a European state since 1945, has left thousands dead or injured, reduced towns and cities to rubble, and forced over 5 million people to flee abroad.  Moscow calls its actions a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists.

Ukraine and the West says this a false pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression by President Vladimir Putin.  The United States is due to host an expected gathering of more than 40 countries this week for Ukraine-related defence talks that will focus on arming Kyiv, US officials said.

Britain said all tariffs on goods coming into the country from Ukraine under an existing free trade deal will be axed and it would send new ambulances, fire engines, medical supplies and funding for health experts to help the emergency services.

Russia’s foreign ministry said on Monday that it had declared 40 German diplomatic staff “personae non gratae” in a retaliatory move after Berlin expelled the same number of Russian diplomats.

FOREIGN TROOPS FIGHTING ALREADY IN UKRAINE

Over the weekend, photos emerged of foreign troops (NATO) already deployed inside Ukraine and fighting the Russians!

Below, a British Sniper Team in Ukraine:

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British sniper team.

Below, French troops from the 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment, which is part of the Special Operations Forces, were deployed to Ukraine. The group includes instructors on the use of MILAN anti-tank systems and AT-4 grenade launchers:

FrenchTroopsInUkraine
French Troops In Ukraine.

While NATO countries may be claiming they are only sending in advisers or training troops, it is clear that ground forces from NATO countries are already inside Ukraine.

This appears, on its face, to be DeFacto war; exactly what Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov commented about above.

Meanwhile, inside Russia, near the Ukraine border, acts of war are being covertly committed.   Below, video shows fuel storage tanks inside of Bryansk, Russia, being blown up by small explosives:

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2022 04 29 17 38

Other acts of war through sabotage, are also being committed.   Below, a “mine” is shown having been placed on Russian railroad tracks.  Such mines detonate when a train rolls over them, destroying tracks and derailing and damaging trains:

MineOnRussianRailroadTracks
American made Mine Placed on Russian Railroad Tracks inside of Russia by NATO forces.

It is not likely that Ukrainian troops are perpetrating such acts as they do not have the manpower or expertise to engage in such covert activities.  NATO countries, however, do have such abilities.

HIGH-TECH NATO WEAPONS APPEARING IN UKRAINE

While NATO troops are now clearly visible in Ukraine, very new, even “Black Project” NATO weapons are also appearing inside Ukraine.

Previously unknown Western military aid to Ukraine is being unveiled – it appears that Germany delivered pretty rare PARM DM22 HEAT off-route anti-tank mines, which can strike enemy vehicles with fin stabilized rockets up 100 meters away:

GermanAntiTankMione 2
GermanAntiTankMione 2

GermanAnti Tank Mine 1
GermanAnti Tank Mine 1

 

In addition, The US Dept. of Defense (DoD) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)  are fast tracking more black project weapons like the Phoenix Ghost to assist Ukraine.

The Phoenix Ghost tactical drone, a never-before revealed system designed by the US Air Force, will now prove its mettle on the battlefields of Ukraine.

The United States will provide more than 121 Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems, which are manufactured by AEVEX Aerospace, the Pentagon announced.

A senior defense official said the new drone “was rapidly developed by the Air Force in response, specifically, to Ukrainian requirements.”

Phoenix Ghost is a low-cost, single-use suicide drone that behaves like a loitering munition — flying around an airspace before ramming itself into a target.

REGULAR WARFIGHTING GEAR TOO

Yesterday, Poland’s Prime Minister confirmed that they have supplied Ukraine with tanks but does not confirm any specifications or quantities.

Sweden (not a NATO member, but might be next month) is also donating some of its FH77 BW Archers to Ukraine…

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FH77 BW Archers.

 

UKRAINE WAR CRIMES EVIDENCE FOUND

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) abandoned its office in Mariupol Ukraine, leaving behind all the video and photo evidence of actual WAR CRIMES perpetrated inside Mariupol, BY UKRAINE FORCES!

This evidence was hidden, and the war crimes committed by Ukraine were not reported in the official OSCE reports . . .

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2022 04 29 17 46

VIDEO EVIDENCE PROVES THE CRIMES:

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2022 04 29 17 47

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

After Blinken’s /Austin’s trip to Ukraine yesterday it should be clear to everybody that NATO is now actually engaged in a FULL SCALE WAR against Russia, but is using Ukrainian Blood versus their own for the actual fighting.

Forget the distractions of small engagements … it is now clear that NATO wants to totally defeat Russia on the battlefield, and Russia now understands that, though it took a few weeks for them to realize they were actually in a full scale War with NATO.

The ONLY thing lacking in this War at the moment is the two air forces and navies going at each other tooth and nail and direct people involvement by NATO troops.

In many respects the battle shaping up for Eastern Ukraine is much like the set up for set piece battles over the last 150 years … preparation time for each army to marshal it’s forces and pre-stock the supplies they will need for the battle close to where they believe the fighting will take place BEFORE that battle begins. Definitely NOT a Rommel Style Blitzkrieg Affair Russia LOST the opportunity to pull off that type of battle off early in this War with some early serious mistakes.

“IF” Ukraine starts to seriously lose in the east, is NATO air intervention a possibility?

Truly scary times for those of us on the outside wondering how far the main actors are willing to go to RAMP UP this conflict. Nuland, Blinken, and Austin clearly WANT a full scale War to evolve out of this conflict.

WHY? I have no idea, but everything they have been doing was first geared towards getting the War started and now appears to be geared towards making the War BIGGER, not dampening it down.

Hold on tight … the ride is about to get very very wild.

Overworked Employee Quits Because He Wasn’t Getting A Fair Wage, Costs The Company $40 Million

From HERE.

Not paying your employees a fair wage can have disastrous consequences for the company’s bottom line. Some business owners realize this only when it’s far, far too late.

Redditor u/slw_motion_trainwrck opened up about how he quit his low-paying, exhausting IT job at a major multinational company… and how the day after he left work, the business lost $40 million. In three very extensive posts on r/antiwork, the redditor detailed exactly how this happened, and the read is absolutely riveting.

Scroll down for the full story and more details about why exactly the manufacturing company that makes components for the automotive industry lost as much money as it did, dear Pandas. It’s definitely worth your attention. You’ll see just how low companies go and how far from every promise is worth listening to if it’s not in writing.

Financial expert Sam Dogen, the author of ‘Buy This, Not That: How to Spend Your Way to Wealth and Freedom’ and the founder of Financial Samurai, was kind enough to share his opinion with Bored Panda on how to gauge if someone is underpaid.

“The best way to gauge if you are underpaid is to ask your colleagues and other people in your industry what they are getting paid. They might be hard-pressed to reveal their figures at first. Therefore, you can ask for a range and also volunteer your wage and ask for their guidance. Getting average wages for your job based on online websites is not too helpful given their numbers are averages and all over the place,” he told us that employees should ask around to see if they’re being paid a proper wage.

According to financial expert Sam, a good employee knows their value. “The more an employee is irreplaceable, the more valuable the employee is. Therefore, if you know that your business will run just fine without you for one month or longer, you may not be as valuable as you think,” he said. “On the other hand, if you feel your business will suffer if you’re out longer than a week, then you are considered more valuable. No manager wants to lose a valuable employee because it takes a lot of time to find and train a new employee.”

An IT specialist, who was very overworked and incredibly underpaid, decided that he wanted better work conditions.

However, the multinational company was less than friendly, and drove itself into a huge financial mess as a result. Here’s the full story

He then summed up the story in one short sentence

U.S. does not rule out military action in Solomon Islands

Hypocrisy is at an insane level.

From Intel Slave Z Telegram channel… Nice hit!

On April 26 at 11:00 a.m., a Kalibr cruise missile hit a secret neo-Nazi training center disguised on the territory of the Zaporozhye aluminum plant.

Up to 1,500 militants were trained on its territory under the leadership of 60 British mercenaries, as well as British SAS troops. The fact of the attack is carefully concealed by the Ukrainian intelligence agency.

A cyberattack carried out by our units on the servers of healthcare institutions in the Zaporozhye region made it possible to collect information on the number of those killed and wounded.

So far 523 killed and 347 wounded.

Cute Chinese girl

video 9MB

Imagine finding this in your home…

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2022 04 29 11 39

Rufus helps others no matter what

Be the Rufus. video 3MB

Russian Army BOMBS Airport Hangar Storing West-Supplied Weapons for Ukraine

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Russian missiles have struck an arms depot housing weapons from the United States and European countries donated to Ukraine.

The Russian defense ministry said its Kaliber missiles destroyed hangars in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine which contained …

"a large batch of foreign weapons and ammunition supplied to Ukrainian troops by the United States and European countries".

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Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine.

Yesterday, Russia accused the West of “pouring oil on the fire” with weapons deliveries fueling the nine-week-old conflict.

They have also repeatedly warned that such weapons donations are legitimate military targets.  The U.S. and European countries simply ignored such warnings and continued shipping weapons.

Those weapons have now been destroyed.

The United States and NATO have (officially) ruled out sending their own forces to Ukraine, but Washington and its European allies have supplied large quantities of weapons to Kyiv, including drones and anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.

And we have evidence of Western mercenaries,  UK, French, American, and Israel special forces operating in and around Ukraine.

How Chinese BBQ is made

video 5MB

Slow-Cooker Stuffed Pepper Soup

I tweaked a recipe I got from one of my best friends, and I couldn't believe how much this soup really does taste like stuffed green peppers! With beef and brown rice, it makes a hearty meal on a cold day. —Gina Baxter, Plainfield, IL

Slow Cooker Stuffed Pepper Soup EXPS SDFM17 63424 C10 05 8b 17
Slow Cooker Stuffed Pepper Soup

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2022 04 25 19 16

Directions

  1. In a large skillet, cook and crumble beef with onion over medium heat until meat is no longer pink, 5-7 minutes; transfer to a 6-qt. slow cooker. Stir in remaining ingredients.
  2. Cook, covered, on low until flavors are blended, 5-6 hours.

Cool discovery

I think finding the unexpected treasures that lie all around us is very curious and very interesting.

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2022 04 29 11 38

Rufus takes action to help others

video 4MB

Shelly West — Flight 309 to Tennessee

This was the top song on the Country Charts when I was discharged from the Navy and left to fend myself prior to my MAJestic training.

For those who cook…

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1645705014 ien39o5yay

First Spaceship on Venus

We end this installment with a classic science fiction film.

First Spaceship on Venus The Silent Star movie film sci fi astronauts
First Spaceship on Venus

The print is so sharp and crystal clear it’s like watching it for the first time! Lots of us old-timers and sci-fi geeks think the Cosmostrator is one of the most elegant spaceships in movie history. This is a real treat if you’ve got the time.

This is a very unusual sci-fi space exploration flick...the kind that will give you weird dreams after viewing it! 

I was tempted to write that this East German / Polish film was the Warsaw Pact's answer to the US' 1956 movie Forbidden Planet , but then I discovered that this film is based on a 1951 sci-fi novel titled The Astronauts written by Stanislaw Lem who later wrote the 1961 science fiction novel Solaris that later inspired two movies. 

So, it's possible that Forbidden Planet was actually inspired by Lem's first book! Both Forbidden Planet and this flick involve alien races that become victims of their own super technologies.   

What's impressive in this film are the expensive props they had to construct and the eerie post nuclear holocaust Venusian landscape. 

Vitrefied and melted structures are everywhere and there is a dense vapor that floats through the atmosphere. We learn that the Venusians were preparing to use a super nuclear beam weapon on Earth, but, somehow, it backfired and created temperatures on the surface of Venus similar to the surface of the Sun! 

All that is left of the Venusians are some Hiroshima-like "shadows" on the walls of destroyed buildings. The film does not have a happy ending, but does deliver a strong anti-war / anti-nuclear weapons message. Despite being produced in communist countries, the astronauts that head to Venus are an international team of scientific specialists. 

The film was significantly shortened from its original length to remove the "commercials" it contained for communism and it's too bad we can't see the entire film. There was some sort of previous romance between the female Japanese medical doctor and one of the male spaceship pilots that is only hinted at and we have to guess what happened between them in the past. 

Does the film "make sense" scientifically? Yes and no. But, regardless, it is visually stunning in a way and definitely worth a view for anyone who has not yet seen it.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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MM’s first ban on you-tube, Ukraine madness, Film Noir, and Beef Stroganoff

We continue walking though the changes. Change is starting to manifest. And larger changes are looming ahead of us. Don’t be afraid. Just roll with the changes. And here, we just continue on the various segments of news and culture in this particular point in time.

For those of you who are unaware, I do have a You-Tube MetallicMan. And There’s a bunch of free videos up there. Over twenty all talking about a host of subjects. You can browse over there, when you finish with this article as you wish.

Speaking of You-Tube…

My first ban on you-tube!

This sucks!

2022 04 28 15 53
2022 04 28 15 53

The video was “Chinese Medicine Stories“.

And I am at a loss as to why it was banned. So I clicked on “Review Content”…

2022 04 28 15 55
2022 04 28 15 55

So I was banned becuase I was talking about medical misinformation. And that fell under the COVID policy. WTF? Seeing that I did not talk anything about viruses, injections and vaccines at all.

So I appealed.I explained that I was talking about the joint use of traditional medicines alsongside Western medicines in Chinese hospitals and clinics, and I wasn’t talking about coronavirus at all.

I think they fixed the problem, and allowed me to continue to post the video. But I really don’t know. They haven’t sent me an email.

In the mean time, you all can watch the video yourself HERE. It is not listed on the subscription section of my channel.

I assume that you can access it by the link. If you can or cannot access it from this link, please tell me HERE –>  .

Too tired. Eh?

Humorous comic strips that every couple will identify with by Kippo New Comics 6242c79347eeb 880
Humorous comic strips that every couple will identify with by Kippo New Comics

Elon Musk bought Twitter and is making changes…

This is the latest tweet from Elon, after (of course) he bought Twitter, and banned ALL censorship there:

By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. 

I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. 

If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.

Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022

Twitter employees are still working. It’s probably a majority of staff that is going to have to be fired. The company has 7,500 employees, which is obviously absurd. Most of them work relating to censorship – which is just insane – but obviously a fair number of them do basic things to keep the site online. Elon will do the shuffle, and people will start to shuffle back on.

It’s really, really happening.

Russian Army BOMBS Airport Hangar Storing West-Supplied Weapons for Ukraine

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Russian missiles have struck an arms depot housing weapons from the United States and European countries donated to Ukraine.

The Russian defense ministry said its Kaliber missiles destroyed hangars in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine which contained “a large batch of foreign weapons and ammunition supplied to Ukrainian troops by the United States and European countries”.

Yesterday, Russia accused the West of “pouring oil on the fire” with weapons deliveries fueling the nine-week-old conflict.  They have also repeatedly warned that such weapons donations are legitimate military targets.

The U.S. and European countries simply ignored such warnings and continued shipping weapons.

Those weapons have now been destroyed.

The United States and NATO have ruled out sending their own forces to Ukraine, but Washington and its European allies have supplied large quantities of weapons to Kyiv, including drones and anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.

Easy Beef Stroganoff

I wanted to lighten up my mother-in-law's wonderful stroganoff recipe and came up with this tasty spin. In our home, we call my easy beef stroganoff "special noodles." 

—Jennifer Riordan, St. Louis, Missouri

Easy Beef Stroganoff EXPS SDFM19 39897 C10 18 2b 10
Easy Beef Stroganoff

2022 04 25 17 22
2022 04 25 17 22

Directions

  1. Cook noodles according to package directions. Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, cook the beef, mushrooms and onion over medium heat until meat is no longer pink. Add garlic; cook 1 minute longer. Drain. Remove and keep warm.
  2. In the same pan, melt butter. Stir in flour until smooth; gradually add broth and tomato paste. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until thickened, about 2 minutes.
  3. Carefully return beef mixture to the pan. Add the sour cream, salt and pepper; cook and stir until heated through (do not boil). Drain noodles; serve with beef mixture. If desired, top with chopped parsley.

South Korea exposed that the US military laboratory secretly made “biochemical weapons”?

What is the intention; being so close to China?

From HERE.

How I See the US After Living Abroad for 15 Years [CULTURE SHOCK]

A very excellent video.

”]

Alabama – Dixieland Delight (Official Video)

Alabama was a very popular Country-Pop group that was very popular in the early 1980s. This is one of their top songs.

Allow me to introduce . . . Transnistria. It’s a place you’ll be hearing a lot about shortly

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Transnistria map large
Transnistria map large

The ongoing hostilities between Ukraine and Russia are about to expand into a tiny sliver of land called Transnistria. Officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), it is an unrecognized breakaway state that is internationally recognized as part of Moldova.
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Transnistria controls most of the narrow strip of land between the Dniester river and the Moldovan–Ukrainian border, as well as some land on the other side of the river’s bank. Its capital and largest city is Tiraspol.

Transnistria has been recognized only by three other unrecognized or partially recognized breakaway states: Abkhazia, Artsakh and South Ossetia.

Transnistria is officially designated by the Republic of Moldova as the Administrative-Territorial Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester (Romanian: Unitățile Administrativ-Teritoriale din stînga Nistrului) or as Stînga Nistrului (“Left Bank of the Dniester”) under Russian military occupation.

The region’s origins can be traced to the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which was formed in 1924 within the Ukrainian SSR. During World War II, the Soviet Union took parts of the Moldavian ASSR, which was dissolved, and of the Kingdom of Romania’s Bessarabia to form the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1940.

The present history of the region dates to 1990, during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was established in hopes that it would remain within the Soviet Union should Moldova seek unification with Romania or independence, the latter occurring in August 1991.

Shortly afterwards, a military conflict between the two parties started in March 1992 and concluded with a ceasefire in July that year.

As part of the ceasefire agreement, a three-party (Russia, Moldova, Transnistria) Joint Control Commission supervises the security arrangements in the demilitarized zone, comprising 20 localities on both sides of the river. Although the ceasefire has held, the territory’s political status remains unresolved:

Transnistria is an unrecognized but de facto independent presidential republic with its own government, parliament, military, police, postal system, currency, and vehicle registration.

Its authorities have adopted a constitution, flag, national anthem, and coat of arms. After a 2005 agreement between Moldova and Ukraine, all Transnistrian companies that seek to export goods through the Ukrainian border must be registered with the Moldovan authorities. This agreement was implemented after the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM) took force in 2005. Most Transnistrians have Moldovan citizenship, but many also have Russian, Romanian, or Ukrainian citizenship. The main ethnic groups are Russians, Moldovans/Romanians, and Ukrainians.

Transnistria, along with Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Artsakh, is a post-Soviet “frozen conflict” zone. These four partially recognized states maintain friendly relations with each other and form the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations.

THE “WAR” IN UKRAINE IS NOW ENSNARING TRANSNISTRIA

Over the past few days, there have been a series of explosions in Transnistria.  Russian soldiers there are on a war footing now, Moldova is also on a war footing.

There is a gigantic arsenal of Russian military weapons stored in Transnistra; weapons that Ukraine would like to get their hands on now that Russia has smashed most of Ukraine’s military.

Those weapons supplies would vastly improve Ukraine’s ability to defend Odessa from the approaching Russian Army.

A critical bridge was taken out last night with a missile attack, cutting off a supply route from Moldova to Odessa, Ukraine.  A train full of gasoline tankers crossing that bridge was destroyed.

BridgeTransnistra
BridgeTransnistra

Civilians in Transnistra are now high-tailing-it out, trying to cross the border into nearby Moldova.   There are huge traffic jams at all border crossings.   Moldova, in the meantime, is setting-up police checkpoints to check everyone entering the country.

RUMORS (unconfirmed at the publication of this story) say Romanian Troops have entered Moldova, and been given Moldova Military uniforms to pose as Moldova troops.

Romania is now a member of NATO.

So it is beginning to look as though trouble is being deliberately started by NATO, through Moldova, against Russian-controlled Transnistra, over Ukraine.  How’s THAT for convoluted?

Incidentally, if Romania troops, pretending to be Moldova troops, attack any Russian military in Transnistra, then “NATO” will have “attacked” Russia, and “it’s on like Donkey Kong.”

UKRAINE LOOKING FOR HOSTAGES TO “TRADE” FOR AZOV NAZIS IN MARIUPOL

Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov described what’s __really__ going on:

"I am convinced that in order to save Mariupol, it is necessary to hit Transnistria.

There is only one chance left to save Mariupol."

Butosov gives 6 reasons (see above article) but the first is:

- capturing many thousands of Russian military for exchange.

HAL TURNER ANALYSIS

Seems like a pretty desperate plan but what he intends is that Ukraine must capture Russian military, in sufficient numbers that they have enough prisoners to offer an exchange for the people trapped at Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.

He envisages that Ukraine would then hand over Transnistria to Moldova.

This plan will work perfectly, so long as Russia does nothing…   except Russia is already NOT doing “nothing.”

This move against Transmistra makes crystal clear that NATO is utterly desperate to get its people out of Azovstal.

They know to an absolute certainty that If NATO troops are captured inside the Azovstal Steel Mill, having fought side-by-side with Ukraine against Russia, then Russia will have iron clad proof that NATO has literally waged actual war against Russia and it’s “game on because NATO attacked.”

Airflow…

Humorous comic strips that every couple will identify with by Kippo New Comics 6242c78da77bc 880
Humorous comic strips that every couple will identify with by Kippo New Comics

Trained Russian Navy Dolphins are Protecting Black Sea Naval Base, Satellite Photos Show

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2022 04 28 11 23
2022 04 28 11 23

Russia has deployed trained dolphins during its invasion of Ukraine to protect a Black Sea naval base, USNI News has learned.

The Russian Navy has placed two dolphin pens at the entrance to Sevastopol harbor, sheltered just inside a sea wall. The pens were moved there in February, around the time of the invasion of Ukraine, according to a review of satellite imagery.

Sevastopol is the Russian Navy’s most significant naval base in the Black Sea. The dolphins may be tasked with counter-diver operations — a traditional role both the U.S. and Russia have trained marine mammals for. This could prevent Ukrainian special operations forces from infiltrating the harbor underwater to sabotage warships.

Inside the port, many high-value Russian Navy ships are arranged out of range of Ukrainian missiles but vulnerable to undersea sabotage, according to satellite photos. During the Cold War the Soviet Navy developed several marine mammal programs, including dolphin training in the Black Sea. The unit was based at Kazachya Bukhta near Sevastopol, where it still is today.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the unit transitioned to the Ukrainian military. Although there were attempts to keep it operational, it barely stayed open. With Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the unit came under Russian Navy control. Subsequently, the marine mammal programs have been expanded and returned to operational service.

2022 04 28 11 24
2022 04 28 11 24

This is part of the Russian military’s wider reinvestment in marine mammal programs in the past 10 years. This has included the Black Sea Fleet’s unit and a separate operation in the Arctic.

In the Arctic north, Russia’s Northern Fleet uses different types of marine mammals. Beluga whales and seals, both with heavy layers of fat to keep warm, are better protected against the cold than the bottlenose dolphins used in the Black Sea.

The Arctic unit has also become more active in recent years. Beluga whale pens have now also been established at Olenya Guba, the secretive naval base of GUGI (Main Directorate Of Deep Sea Research). The intelligence organization is believed to be responsible for key undersea espionage assets of the Russian military.

On April 23, 2019, a trained beluga whale turned up in northern Norway. Nicknamed ‘Hvaldimir’ by the locals, it is believed that this whale escaped from the Russian Navy program, according to the BBC.

It’s not just the Arctic that has shown signs of increased use of Russian marine mammals. In 2018 the Black Sea Fleet’s dolphins were deployed for several months to Russia’s Mediterranean Sea naval base in Tartus, Syria, according to satellite photos. The mobile pens used for that deployment were very similar to the ones currently positioned in Sevastopol harbor.

It is unclear whether Ukraine has planned any combat-swimmer operations against Sevastopol. But dolphins are widely considered by naval analysts a considered an effective defense against divers.

A beautiful plant; Puya bromeliad.

2022 04 28 22 53
Puya bromeliad

Rufus rescues a little boy

A Rufus takes immediate action.

video 5MB

Funny scene from the movie Rush Hour

Depicts a Business KTV line up. LOL. Video 4MB

Another beautiful plant

Geum Reptans rose

2022 04 28 22 55
Geum Reptans rose

Meaningful

Humorous comic strips that every couple will identify with by Kippo New Comics 6242c80801b37 880
Humorous comic strips that every couple will identify with by Kippo New Comics

Ground Beef Wellington

Trying new recipes is one of my favorite hobbies. It’s also the most gratifying. Trying new recipes is one of my favorite hobbies. It’s also the most gratifying. What could beat the smiles and compliments of the ones you love? This recipe is easy enough for weeknights yet fancy enough to serve for special occasions.

Ground Beef Wellington EXPS GBBZ19 30284 E11 27 6b 4
Ground Beef Wellington

2022 04 25 17 19
2022 04 25 17 19

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, saute mushrooms in butter until softened. Stir in flour and 1/8 teaspoon pepper until blended. Gradually add the cream. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until thickened, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.
  2. In a bowl, combine the egg yolk, onion, 2 tablespoons mushroom sauce, salt and remaining 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Crumble beef over mixture and mix lightly but thoroughly. Shape into 2 loaves. Separate crescent dough into 2 rectangles on a baking sheet. Seal perforations. Place a meat loaf on each rectangle. Bring dough edges together and pinch to seal. If desired, brush with egg wash. Bake at 350° until golden brown and a thermometer inserted into meat loaf reads 160°, 24-28 minutes.
  3. Meanwhile, warm remaining sauce over low heat; stir in parsley. Serve sauce with Wellingtons.

Zuiyo-Maru Carcass

In April 1977, the Japanese fishing vessel Zuiyo-Maru was trawling for mackerel some 40 kilometers (25 miles) off the coast of Christchurch when a large, rotting carcass became entangled in its nets. The putrefied remains, estimated to weigh over 1,800 kilograms (3,950 pounds) and measure some 10 meters (33 feet) in length, were lifted on board.

Crew member Michihiko Yano had some training in biology and research methodology, and he sketched the peculiar stinking hulk and took several photos. Yano also had the presence of mind to take several tissue samples before the creature was thrown back into the sea in order not to spoil the catch.

The evidence was studied by a team of scientists at the Science Museum of Tokyo. They unanimously declared that the animal was a plesiosaur, a large marine reptile that lived during the Jurassic period, thought to have become extinct some 65 million years ago.

French researchers later examined the evidence and concluded that the creature was no ancient marine reptile but rather the decomposing remains of a basking shark, a species that could be found in the cooler waters further to the south. While the photos and sketch seemingly showed a creature with a long neck, small head, and no dorsal fin, they hypothesized this was due to the decomposition of the carcass and predation.

Shark or sea monster? Since the biological samples have been lost, the sea will hold onto the answer for awhile longer.

Life is full of surprises.

All you need to do is look… and participate. video 3MB

The Mystery of the Invercargill Pool Pooper

A mystery pooper dubbed “the brown bomber” struck a public pool complex in New Zealand’s southernmost city of Invercargill for six Fridays in a row in 2015.

Staff at the Splash Palace aquatic center launched an investigation into whoever could have been the pooping perpetrator of the series of weekly “code brown” evacuations of the pool complex. The worst incident saw the entire facility closed after brown bombs were found in all three pools over a three-hour period.

Unfortunately, staff was unable to find the culprit in the act because while the pool complex had cameras, they were “not high definition enough to pick up the red face of someone squinting,” explained Splash Palace spokesman Pete Thompson.

Invercargill mayor Tim Shadbolt said the international media interest generated by the serial brown bomber was not particularly good publicity for his city. “Phantom pooper in the pool isn’t the sort of headline you want,” he explained.

Rufus community.

When things go wrong, it is the strength of community that wil set things right. video 5MB

The secret lives that we live…

Humorous comic strips that every couple will identify with by Kippo New Comics 6242c7f24f6a2 880
Humorous comic strips that every couple will identify with by Kippo

Easy Authentic Si’chuan food.

Very easy to make REAL authentic Chinese chicken. Watch this sexy video! video 10MB

Stocks Are Cratering As Investors Worry About “The Perfect Storm” That Is Erupting All Over The Globe

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Is the party finally over on Wall Street?  So far this month, the Dow is down more than 4 percent, the S&P 500 is down almost 8 percent, and the Nasdaq has fallen over 12 percent.  In fact, the Nasdaq dropped almost 4 percent on Tuesday alone, and at this point it is almost 23 percent below the all-time high.  Needless to say, that puts the Nasdaq solidly into bear market territory.  Tech stocks were at the front of the long march up the mountain, and now they are leading the avalanche back down.  Hundreds of billions of dollars in paper wealth is being wiped out, and a lot of the “experts” are suddenly warning that the worst is still yet to come.

So why are investors so spooked?

Well, CNBC is blaming a number of different factors

Worries about the global economy loomed. Investors are worried about a Covid surge in China. Regarding the war in Ukraine, a top Russian official said the threat of nuclear war is real. Plus, high inflation in the U.S. is denting demand for goods from houses to sneakers.

Let’s take a look at each of those factors one at a time.

For years, I wrote article after article about how foolish it was for us to become so dependent on goods from China.  Now a fresh wave of COVID lockdowns has paralyzed economic activity in much of that nation, and that has enormous implications for those of us in the western world…

Widespread covid outbreaks in China have bought entire cities to a standstill and hobbled manufacturing and shipping hubs throughout the country. An estimated 373 million people — or about one-quarter of China’s population — have been in covid-related lockdowns in recent weeks because of what is known as the country’s zero covid policy, according to economists at Nomura Holdings. There are also fears that new lockdowns could soon take hold in the capital city, Beijing, escalating the threat to the global economic recovery.

Anxiety over new disruptions has already caused the Chinese stock market to fall sharply, weighing on U.S. stock indexes as well.

Much of what usually populates our stores shelves normally comes from factories in China.

Without a regular flow of those goods, our store shelves will become quite bare fairly rapidly.

In fact, it is being reported that the shipping time for toys from China has already risen “from 21 days to 159 days”

The shipping time for toys from China to U.S. stores has ballooned from 21 days to 159 days during the pandemic, he said.

“All holiday toys have to ship out of China by the beginning of August, but that is not going to happen,” Larian said. “The factories are having a tough time getting labor, prices are going up, China keeps closing provinces. The big picture is bad, worse than last year.”

The war in Ukraine is another factor which is frightening investors.

This week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that we should not “underestimate” the possibility that World War III could break out over this conflict…

Speaking to Russian news agencies, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticised Kyiv’s approach to floundering peace talks, saying the risk of a World War III “is serious”.

“It is real, you can’t underestimate it.”

Of course my regular readers already know that I believe that World War III has already begun.

And both sides just continue to escalate matters.  On Tuesday, we learned that the Germans have decided to send tanks to Ukraine after all…

In a major reversal following Chancellor Olaf Scholz only days ago voicing strong resistance, it appears Berlin has bowed to the mounting pressure among allies and approved new tank deliveries to Ukraine from Germany’s own stock, which Scholz had previously said was depleted.

The German Ministry of Defense announced Tuesday that delivery of Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine has been approved. As part of Scholz’s earlier rejection of sending heavy weapons systems, he had cited the potential for the West and Russia sliding into a WW3 and nuclear war scenario.

Even more alarming, a former top NATO official that is currently advising Joe Biden is suggesting that NATO troops should be sent into western Ukraine

Former NATO top commander Gen. Philip Breedlove is the latest big name to come out for putting troops on the ground in Ukraine. Breedlove, who has been angling for weeks for a more muscular policy against Russia, told The Times of London that it’s time for real action. And he may have the ear of the White House: the article says he’s named as one of “several high-ranking retired commanders advising the Biden administration on Ukraine.”

Instead of escalating the conflict, our leaders should be doing all that they can to try to bring about a negotiated resolution to this war.

Because once we get to a point where U.S. and Russian forces start shooting at each other, there will be no going back.

The third factor that CNBC mentioned was inflation.

On Tuesday, we learned that U.S. home prices in February 2022 were close to 20 percent higher than they were in February 2021…

Home prices increased 19.8% in February year over year, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index. That is up from the 19.1% annual increase in January and is the third-highest reading in the index’s 35-year history.

In other areas of the economy, price increases are even more absurd.  For instance, we are now being told that used vehicle prices are actually 35 percent higher than they were a year ago…

Used car prices are already up 35 percent from a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Beneke says he expects them to climb even higher in coming weeks as a result of new shortages and delays.

The reserve currency of the entire planet is being systematically destroyed, but our leaders in Washington continue to spend money like drunken sailors.

What we are witnessing is complete and utter madness.

Meanwhile, the World Bank is warning that the worst global food crisis since World War II threatens to get a whole lot worse in the months ahead

The World Bank commodity outlook also warned many foods are set to see steep rises in their costs. The UN food prices index already shows they are at their highest since records began 60 years ago.

Wheat is forecast to increase 42.7% and reach new record highs in dollar terms. Other notable increases will be 33.3% for barley, 20% for soybeans and 29.8% for oils and 41.8% for chicken. These increases reflect the fact that exports from Ukraine and Russia have fallen drastically.

For a long time I warned that a “perfect storm” was brewing, and now a “perfect storm” is here.

But what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

It is going to get a whole lot worse from here.

The consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions are going to come crashing down upon us all at once, and it won’t be pretty.

You all must be AWARE…

Humorous comic strips that every couple will identify with by Kippo New Comics 6242c7dc99b56 880
Humorous comic strips that every couple will identify with by Kippo New Comics

Pretty Chinese Girl

She’s a favorite. video 25MB

Uncle Sam’s Bio-Weapons Extravaganza

Question– Is the US making bio-weapons in Ukraine?

Answer– That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Unfortunately, there’s no simple “yes or no” answer. It’s more complicated than that.

Question– Can you explain what you mean?

Answer– Sure, but some people might find it a bit confusing.

First, most of what we know comes from the Russians who investigated the bio-labs that were abandoned following the invasion of Ukraine. These are the people who uncovered the pathogens and other toxic substances that were kept at the 30-or-so facilities around the country. The Russian team has also studied the documents “they received from employees of Ukrainian laboratories on the implementation of military biological programs of the United States.” In other words, the Russians have compiled evidence that the US is violating its obligations under the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention.

Second, we know that the Pentagon –through various channels– pumped $32 million into laboratories located in Kiev, Odessa, Lvov and Kharkov. These biolabs were chosen to oversee a “project aimed at studying the pathogens of the Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis and hantaviruses.” The Russians believe that interest in these pathogens is due to the fact “their use can be disguised as natural outbreaks of diseases”, which is why the project received additional funding. In other words, the Russians think that the US funding was mainly aimed at biological weapons development. The Chinese appear to agree with Russia on this matter. Here’s what China’s FM said:

“Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian … asked the US to release “relevant details as soon as possible” regarding alleged US biological laboratories in Ukraine….“The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone. It should give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification.”

“According to reports, in these facilities, large quantities of dangerous viruses are stored. Russia has found during its military operation that the US uses these facilities to conduct military plans. (“China… demands ‘full account of its biological military activities“, opindie.com) 

You can see that there’s considerable concern among many of the countries the US sees as its rivals. And, their concern is not limited to the fact that the US is fooling around with all manner of highly-contagious and lethal pathogens but, also, that these 336 bio-labs are part of an integrated network under the operational control of the Pentagon. That is the biggest red flag of all!

The Russians have been quite blunt about what they think is going on. Here’s a clip from their official statement: “We believe that components of biological weapons were created on the territory of Ukraine.”

That sums it up perfectly. And they should know, too, after all, it’s the Russians who uncovered the stockpiles of pathogens and the documentation that supports their analysis. Of course, all of this could just be more “Russian disinformation”, that’s what the media would like you to believe. But what the media fails to acknowledge is that a lot of the documents gathered by the Russians have been signed by “real officials and are certified by the seals of their organizations.” In other words, the Russians can verify their analysis with hard evidence.

Here’s another excerpt from the Russian report that helps to shed light on what’s really been going on at these Ukrainian virus factories:

 “During the implementation of these projects, six families of viruses (including coronaviruses) and three types of pathogenic bacteria (pathogens of plague, brucellosis and leptospirosis) were identified. This is due to the main characteristics of these pathogens that make them favourable for the purposes of infection: resistance to drugs, rapid speed of spread from animals to humans, etc…..

A study of the documents in the part of the P-781 project on the study of ways of transmitting diseases to humans through bats showed that the work was carried out on the basis of a laboratory in Kharkov.” (“Russia Mod: Briefing on analysis of documents related to US military and biological activities in Ukraine“, The Saker) 

Nice, eh? So, the researchers at these facilities chose the pathogens that they believed were:

  1. The most infectious
  2. The most deadly
  3. The most drug resistant

When does it become appropriate to use a term like “diabolical”? Is that too much of a stretch? Here’s more:

 “Within the framework of the FLU-FLYWAY project, the Kharkov Institute of Veterinary Medicine  studied wild birds as vectors for the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza. At the same time, the conditions under which spread processes can become unmanageable, cause economic damage and pose risks to food security have been assessed.

These documents confirm the involvement of the Kharkov Institute in the collection of avian influenza virus strains with high epidemic potential and capable of overcoming the interspecific barrier….” (“Russia Mod: Briefing on analysis of documents related to US military and biological activities in Ukraine”, The Saker) 

Do you understand what they’re saying? The researchers were looking for ways to use migratory birds to transport lethal pathogens to the territories of Washington’s enemies. This is beyond diabolical. It’s Satanic.

The Russian report goes on to explain how much of the documentary evidence of potentially-criminal activity was destroyed following Russia’s invasion. Check it out:

 “The materials that our Defense Ministry got hold of prove that all serious high-risk research in Ukrainian biolabs was directly supervised by US experts… Our Defense Ministry reports that at this moment the Kiev regime…. hastily covers up all traces so that the Russian side could not get hold of direct evidence of the US and Ukraine violating Article 1 of the BTWC. They rush to shut down all biological programs.

Ukraine’s Health Ministry ordered to eliminate biological agents deposited in biolabs starting from 24 February 2022. We infer from the instructions to lab personnel that the order of elimination of collections suggested that they should be destroyed irrevocably. Having analyzed the destruction certificates, we can say that  the Lvov lab alone destroyed 232 containers with pathogens of leptospirosis, 30 – of tularemia, 10 – of brucellosis, 5 – of plague. The total of more than 320 containers was eliminated. Pathogens’ titles and excessive amounts give reason to think that this work was done as part of military biological programs.”  (“USNC biolabs in the Ukraine”, The Saker) 

In other words, the Russian invasion triggered a mad-dash at the labs where these killer pathogens were being stored. Researchers had to quickly dispose of the evidence before the Russians arrived and figured out what was going on. The lab personnel were performing the same sketchy ritual as a serial killer who scrupulously wipes the bloody fingerprints off the murder weapon before the cops arrive. In other words, they were “covering their tracks.” At the same time, the researchers were told to blame everything on “Russian propaganda.” (But you probably knew that already.)

Question— How have these bio-labs effected the lives of the people living in Ukraine?

According to the Russian MOD: “… attention is drawn to the fact o f a sharp increase in cases of tuberculosis caused by new multi-resistant strains among citizens living in Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics in 2018. …, more than 70 cases of the disease were detected, which ended in a rapid fatal outcome. This may indicate a deliberate infection, or an accidental leakage of the pathogen from one of the biolabs located on the territory of Ukraine.” (“Russian MOD”, The Saker) 

So, a number of people who lived around these facilities mysteriously died from weird strains of tuberculosis and other oddball diseases, but we’ll never know for sure whether the deaths were deliberate or not. And, naturally, the perpetrators of these crimes will never be held accountable. It’s tragic.

Of course, it could all be a big coincidence, but I suspect not. I suspect that the Ukrainians are the unwitting lab rats in Uncle Sam’s deadly science project. And there’s more, too. Check out this blurb from Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin:

“It is also no secret to the leadership of our country that the purpose of these biological experiments conducted by the Pentagon using biomaterials obtained from Slavic subjects in Ukraine and other countries neighboring Russia  is to develop ‘ethnic weapons’ against the Russian population of Russia.” (“Rogozin: Bioweapons developed in Ukraine…”, The Saker) 

This idea that the US is developing bio-agents that selectively target particular ethnic groups is a recurrent theme among critics of America’s mysterious bio-projects. According to Chinese military expert, Song Zhongping, “The United States kept setting up biological laboratories around rival countries with the goal of developing targeted viral weapons against those countries…The US insists on developing weapons of mass destruction to seek hegemony, which is a gross violation of the Biological Weapons Convention and an assault on human civilization.” Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert.” (“US shuns UN meeting on biological security”, Global Times)

And here’s how author M.K. Bhadrakumar summed it up in a recent article titled “Migratory birds of mass destruction”:

“Russia had released a number of documents related to the biological military activities of the Pentagon, which pointed toward a worldwide project to set up biological laboratories in rival countries with the goal of developing targeted viral weapons against those countries.”…

(According to) General Igor Kirillov, chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, that Washington is creating biological laboratories in different countries and connecting them to a unified system.” (“Migratory birds of mass destruction”,  Indian Punchline) 

Finally, there is this from author Matthew Ehret who explains the probable origins of “ethnic targeting” with biological weapons. Here’s what he said in an article at the Unz Review:

 “The earlier October 2000 RAD document emphasized the importance which the neocon cabal placed on bioweapons ..stating: “Combat will likely take place in new dimensions: In space, cyber-space and perhaps the world of microbes… advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”. (“The Project for a New American Century and the Age of Bioweapons: 20 Years of Psychological Terror“, Matthew Ehret, Unz Review)
 

Further along in the article, Ehret points to evidence that researchers may have achieved their goal of “selectively targeting particular ethnic groups.” Here’s the money-quote:

 “…leading medical specialists like Dr. Shankara Chetti of South Africa, Dr. Soňa Peková of the Czech Republic) and Dr Meryl Nass of the USA having delivered bountiful evidence that the various waves of the pathogen were not only NOT naturally occurring, but ethnic specific and lab-generated.

After evaluating over 7,000 paients, Dr. Chetty observed early on that the patients who suffered the greatest during each of the four waves encountered in South Africa were ethnic specific with the first wave targeting only blacks, the second only Indians and the third Caucasians and Arabs.” (“The Project for a New American Century and the Age of Bioweapons: 20 Years of Psychological Terror“, Matthew Ehret, Unz Review) 

Is that where all this is headed: Ethnic specific bioweapons to help usher in the New World Order?

One can only wonder.

We’re also curious about the fact that these 300-plus bio-labs (around the world) are part of a “unified system” that is under the Pentagon’s control. What’s that all about? Why would the Pentagon want a unified system of biological laboratories?

I can think of one reason, although I’m sure there are many more. Let’s say, powerful elites wanted to change our democratic system to a more authoritarian model (The Great Reset) by creating a global crisis that could be used as a pretext for terminating personal freedom, enforcing mandatory vaccination and imposing martial law. If they had a network of biological labs at their disposal, they could easily release the same-identical pathogen in locations around the world creating the perception of a rapidly-spreading virus. In other words, a widespread network of bio-labs could be used to simulate a global pandemic.

Is such a thing even possible?

You bet it is, in fact, the last two years might provide us with an example of how the system actually works.

One last thing: The UN Security Council recently convened an emergency meeting to address the issue of Ukraine’s biological labs. (Arria Formula Meeting on Biological Security.) But did anyone from the Biden administration attend the confab?

Not one.

The administration boycotted the meeting entirely , which means the US was given the opportunity to make its case before the international community, but decided to pull a no-show instead. Why would that be, we wonder?

A member of the Chinese delegation said it was a sign of a “guilty conscience.”

That sounds about right to me.

Pretty Chinese Girl

Lovely. 1MB

Undertow (1949) Film noir

We end this installment with a classic film noir movie.

Personally, I love film noir. I consider it true and real art. I hope that you do as well. If you have the time, go enjoy this movie…

Undertow 1949 full movie. Scott Brady stars in this film noir crime
drama as an ex gangster from Chicago who has gone straight but ends up framed for the hit on a powerful mob boss. This crime film has a great chase scene involving a LONG corridor which should not be missed. The film hits all the standard noir plot points and is a quality picture.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
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Yah as the world unwinds we discuss work-bench adventures and food, pretty girls, arrowheads and other fun things

It’s all silent on the American mainsteam “news” about the dangers of 5G. have you noticed? Yeah. No one is talking about how 5G radiates your brain and causes cancer any longer. Maybe it’s because the USA is now marketing their own 5G. Sure it doesn’t perform at REAL 5G performance curves, but it sounds good, and it is really 4G marketed as 5G, and who’s gonna know the difference, right?

Not Americans. That’s for sure.

The freedom not to wear masks is now embedded in the American culture. Ah, yes. The great covid “hoax”, right? Now the entire West goes about their daily lives without wearing masks. Great huh?

I wonder what will happen when China and Russia give some “tit for tat” back, eh? Do you all think that the united West can fight against a full-scale bioweapon carpet bombing like China had to endure?

It’s a strange world we are now experiencing. And most of us have no clue as to how it is going about, and what the outcomes will be. yah. And now, the focus is on the evil dangerous Russia fighting the heroic Nazi innocents. And that any day now, with American money, and American weapons, and American training, Russia will collapse from the overwhelming superiority of the united West; that “bright and shining house on the hill.”

Soon, there will be a “pivot to Asia”, and China and Taiwan will be the focus.

Are you ready for the spewing of bullshit?

I am.

You don’t fight it, don’t you know. You adapt, and you tune out, and you allow the stupid to die. And stop trying to help them. You stick with what you know, and hang out with the winning side. Yah. It’s that simple.

Yvonne Elliman – If I Can’t Have You

We start out with some music from the United States in the totally cool 1970s.

British SAS special forces in Ukraine fighting Russia

Russia announced the investigation of at least two British SAS special ops groups in Lvov:

Russia warns Britain for provoking Ukraine

April 26 (Reuters) - Russia warned Britain on Tuesday that if it continued to provoke Ukraine to strike targets in Russia then there would be an immediate "proportional response".

Russia's defence ministry cited statements from Britain's armed forces minister James Heappey who told BBC radio that it was entirely legitimate for Ukraine to hunt targets in the depths of Russia to disrupt logistics and supply lines. . .here

Chinese girl in her living room

This is VERY TYPICAL. Video 5MB

Artifact Hunting Tips – Finding Arrowheads Left by Native Americans

From HERE

Hunting for ancient artifacts is something that you can do just about anywhere. In the United States there were Native American tribes in every part of the country, and they left behind stone tools and other artifacts that you can find.

arrowheads
arrowheads

The most popular thing for most people to find are arrowheads. Some can actually be quite valuable, although most artifact hunters are looking to add pieces to their collection, not to get rich.

To find valuable artifacts there is some luck involved, but more importantly you need to follow a few basic guidelines. Some places are much better than others when it comes to artifact hunting.

To help you get the best from your artifact hunting here are important tips:

Know the Laws on Arrowhead Artifact Hunting

First and foremost, we need to talk about laws regarding picking up arrowheads.

Many people start their artifact hunting on the wrong footing by ignoring the local laws and regulations that govern hunting for arrowheads and other artifacts. If you are careless regarding local laws when hunting for artifacts you are likely to risk your finds being confiscated by the authorities and even being fined or even jailed.

Now don’t let this scare you. All I am saying is that you need to understand the laws so you can avoid any issues. There are plenty of ways that you can legally hunt for artifacts.

French involvement in Ukraine

In the Ukraine fighting against Russia…

“French sources report that servicemen of the 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment, which is part of the Special Operations Forces, were deployed to Ukraine. The group includes instructors on the use of MILAN anti-tank systems and AT-4 grenade launchers”

Chinese Girl in 1970s style bell-bottom jeans

Ah. It takes me back to 1974 and “elephant bells”. video 2MB

Using Private Lands to find arrowheads

You will have no legal concerns if you are hunting on private lands with landowner permission. Just make sure you actually do get permission!

In the United States, trespassing is an offense all the 50 states. If there is a vacant piece of land that you want to hunt artifacts on the make sure you find out who the owner is and then you ask for permission. Picking up arrowheads on private property would constitute not just trespassing, but also theft.

Transnistria

Now Ukraine is stirring something up in Transnistria. Multiple sabotage attacks have occurred, including one on a military installation, destroying two radio towers and damaging others.

Transnistria now erecting barricades:

Article

There is a lot of talk and rumor now, like the following:

“Now Transnistrian telegram accounts are claiming Ukrainian military massed on their border: “According to subscribers. On the border with Transnistria, a large concentration of Ukrainian troops was noticed, in particular tanks and other armored vehicles”

And much of this rumor could be dismissed if it weren’t for the suspicious attacks that now suddenly occur on Transnistrian land, and the following statements from a prominent Ukrainian journalist and as of last year ex-advisor to the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, who reportedly said today:

“Ukraine has the legal right to demilitarize the military facilities of the Russian troops that threaten us,” the editor-in-chief of the odious publication Censor wrote on social networks. no, adviser to the head of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Yuriy Butusov. 

He said that this would make it possible to capture Russian prisoners for exchange, “eliminate the threat of a breakthrough by Russian troops”, seize large arsenals of ammunition. Release two Ukrainian brigades that are stationed on the Ukrainian-Moldovan border 

There is only one chance left to save Mariupol – a strike on Transnistria” – Advisor to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine.”

From HERE (autotranslate this article)

(Russia, by the way, has over 4000 AFU prisoners, 300 of them officers. More POWs were taken in Illych Steel Plant alone than all of RF and LPR/DPR prisoners in Ukrainian hands combined.)

When Irish Legends and History Combine: The Tomb of the Fairy Queen Maeve

Legends suggest that the green hills of Ireland have always been a place for fairy games. According to local beliefs, the forests were full of hidden settlements inhabited by supernatural creatures. Most of them have been forgotten over time, but the fairy queen Maeve received a special place in the history of the Knocknarea area and she even has a tomb that is visited by thousands of people every year. Those who visit her final resting place are searching for evidence in the mystical secrets of ancient Irish tales.

The Irish town of Sligo is famous for its stunning green hill that smells like fresh grass in the morning and covers itself with shimmering mystery at night. The name Knocknarea usually makes people think about knocking into or on something, but the truth is that ”knock” means nothing more than hill in Irish. However, the etymology of the site’s full name isn’t clear. There are at least three possible explanations behind this name. Firstly, researchers suggest that it came from Cnoc na Ré , meaning “hill of the moon”. However, some others say that it was Cnoc na Riogha , which means ”hill of the kings”. This interpretation also suggests that if the hill contains burials, they may belong to the ancient rulers of these lands. Finally, a very simple explanation for the name: Cnoc na Riabh , means simply ”hill of the stripes”.

No matter the name’s origins, it is known as the hill of the fairies and is said to be the place where their queen is buried.

The Enchanting Tomb

The greatest treasure of the smooth green hill is a grave that is located in the heart of the site. It has never been excavated, but there are at least two suspicions about what hides inside. First, it is believed that it contains a passage tomb dated to the Neolithic period. Secondly, many believe that the famous Fairy Queen is buried in a tomb inside this 327-meter (1,073 ft.) limestone hill.

The most important part of the site is called Medb’s Varin, which is about 55 meters (180 ft.) wide and 10 meters (33ft) high. It is one of the most intriguing of the unexplored archaeological sites in Ireland and is known as the tomb of Medb or Maeve. Researchers suggest that it is about 5000 years old and, due to its long history, it became a place entwined with legend and myth. As long as the site remains unexcavated, it is impossible to conclude what it may hold. Researchers suggest that it is possible that the mysterious tomb belongs to a known Neolithic religious center in this area. However, tourists from around the world come to enjoy the hill with the burial of an ancient fairy queen.

Who was this mysterious fairy queen whose remains may be hidden under the green grass of the Knocknarea?

2022 04 27 21 33
2022 04 27 21 33

The Fairy Queen of Irish Wuthering Hills

In English literature, she is known as Maeve, Maev, or Maive. However, in Old Irish, she was called Meḋḃ, Meaḋḃ and Medb. In old Irish mythology, she appears as a fairy queen and an independent female deity. There are a bunch of rich legends related to her, many of them describing her cruel behavior. She also seems to be one of the strongest warriors among the fairy-related deities. She was a wife of Ailill and had seven sons. She was murdered by Furbaide who wanted to avenge the death of his mother, who Maeve had killed.

2022 04 27 21 32
2022 04 27 21 32

The modern followers of paganism have created a beautiful vision of the goddess based on the old mythology. According to Patricia Telesco:

Maeve’s themes are fairies, magic, protection, leadership, and justice (law). Her symbols are birds and gold. As the Fairy Queen, Maeve oversees today’s merrymaking among the citizens of fey during their Fairy Gatherings. She also attends to human affairs by providing protection, wise leadership and prudent conventions. Works of art depict Maeve with golden birds on Her shoulders, whispering magical knowledge into Her ear. Near the beginning of May, the wee folk of Ireland come out of hiding for a grand celebration of spring. If you don’t want Maeve and the citizens of fey to pull pranks on you today, take precautions, as the Europeans do: avoid traveling, put a piece of clothing on inside-out, wear something red, and leave the fairy folk an offering of sweet bread, honey or ale. In some cases, this will please the fairies so much that they will offer to perform a service or leave you a gift in return!'

2022 04 27 21 31
2022 04 27 21 31

This description proves that the old religion is still alive and has become a part of life in the area around the tomb, but also across Ireland. The interest in the old Irish goddess has even spread around the world, so she became an inspiration for many artists. She is also related to another famous site in Tara, Ireland.

2022 04 27 21 30
2022 04 27 21 30

Fairyland for Hiking Tourists

News in local magazines suggests that the popularity of Knocknarea has brought the site to the edge of destruction. The devastation of the hill has become immense, so officials want to protect it by limiting the possible number of tourists who visit the fairy queen’s tomb.

Finally, if you would like to see the work of the deceased fairy queen for yourself, Patricia Telesco suggests you use a spell to call Maeve:

Take a piece of white bread and toast it until it’s golden brown. Scratch into the bread a word or phrase representing your goal (for example, if raises at work haven’t been given fairly, write the words ‘work’ and ‘raises’). Distribute the crumbs from this to the birds so they can convey your need directly to Maeve’s ears.

It is unknown if someone has really met her spirit, but many people claim that the site where she is said to be buried is perfumed with the fragrance of magic.

2022 04 27 21 29
2022 04 27 21 29

Chinese girl picking out noodles

Obviously showing off her odd taste in shoes. video 3MB

Polish involvement in Ukraine…

“Poland is secretly preparing a “liberation campaign” against Ukraine. 

For this purpose, a set of measures is being carried out – the supply of weapons, equipment and mercenaries across the Polish-Ukrainian border. Several formations of the Polish Army – the 18th motorized rifle division and the 6th airborne brigade – are preparing for a “peacekeeping mission”

The Polish Army stepped up measures to the maximum extent possible to complete the units to wartime states. The recruitment of “volunteers” is carried out through the websites of the Ministry of Defense of Poland.”

Don Williams Good Ole Boys Like Me Live

This song was my theme song after I left the Navy and was waiting for MAJestic to do whatever… I was in a state of anxious waiting…

An anthem for all us old country boys (and girls ). 

As much a state of mind as a place, this song gets a lot of people right in their soul. City dwellers too can and do have a love for nature, and all the things a "country" lifestyle represent. Things like the wind in live oaks, the smell of jasmine, the security of "family", the laid back lifestyle missing today. 

Don didn't write this song (though he did write a lot of them), But DANG did he deliver it. Takes us back to a place we knew, or just wish we had. 

I can't say unequivocally this is my favorite song of all time. But sure as night follows day it's in the top three. Thanks Don. We miss you gentle giant. RIP. 

- Tom Swinburn
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Lord. I miss Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Vladimir Putin is Crazy?

I am not sure if the media reports in the west claiming that Vladimir Putin is crazy is caused by gross ignorance or part of a desperate propaganda campaign. Just take a gander at Putin’s speech today to a gathering of the General Prosecutor’s Office (to put this in U.S. terms, it was a conference of senior Department of Justice officials and the U.S. prosecutors). Read this snippet and tell me if that sounds like a crazy paranoid:

I would like to specifically discuss the tasks facing the prosecution agencies and the entire law enforcement sphere in connection with the special military operation in Donbass and Ukraine.

The special operation has exposed multiple violations of international law by Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups as well as foreign mercenaries. We are referring to extreme atrocities such as killing civilians, using people, including children, as human shields, and other crimes. Flagrant provocations against our Armed Forces, also with the use of resources such as foreign media and social networks, also require a thorough investigation.

At the same time, it is also necessary to suppress any crimes on the territory of the Russian Federation in the most decisive manner. This morning, the Federal Security Service thwarted a terrorist group that planned to attack and assassinate a well-known Russian television journalist. They will definitely deny this now, but the facts and evidence are irrefutable.

In this regard, I would like to say the following. To our surprise, high-ranking diplomats in Europe and the United States are urging their Ukrainian satellites to use their resources to win on the battlefield. Our partners in the United States are using such strange diplomacy – diplomats are even calling for this. But as they realise that this is impossible, they try to achieve a different objective instead – to split Russian society, to destroy Russia from within. But here, too, there is a hitch; this hasn’t worked either. Our society has shown maturity and solidarity; it supports our Armed Forces and supports our efforts to ensure Russia’s ultimate security and help the people living of Donbass. This actually means support for our people living in Donbass. So when they failed to achieve their information goals – they continued to fool their citizens of course, using their monopoly position in their countries’ information space and in some other countries, but they failed here, on the territory of Russia – they switched to terror, to arranging the murder of our journalists.

In this regard, it should be noted of course that we know the names of all the Western handlers, of all members of Western services, primarily the CIA, who are working with Ukrainian security agencies. Apparently, they are giving them such advice. This is their attitude towards the rights of journalists, towards the dissemination of information; this is their attitude towards human rights in general. All they care about is their own rights, some cherishing imperial ambitions, others holding on to their colonial past in the old-fashioned way. But this will not work in Russia.

I am asking the Investigative Committee of Russia, and all investigative bodies to record such crimes in detail, to identify their masterminds and perpetrators, to initiate criminal cases and bring them to trial, as they should. Prosecutors and investigators should carefully study these and all other facts, collect the necessary evidence to make a case, which should be used in court proceedings, including at the international level. Let me emphasise that such evidence should be accumulated for all the crimes committed by neo-Nazis and their accomplices, starting with the coup d’état in Kiev in 2014, which paved the way for civil war, bloodshed and violence in Ukraine.

Next point. We should pay special attention to people arriving to Russia from Ukraine, from the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. As of today, they number nearly one million, including over 100,000 children. People who had to leave their homes are not always in possession of the documents needed to get material aid, medical support, and to enrol children in schools or kindergartens. I urge the Prosecutor General’s Office to render these people legal assistance and protect their rights, including by reviewing their applications within the shortest possible timeframes. It is hard for these people, help them.

Joe Biden is incapable of giving a speech like this even with the help of a teleprompter. One thing that captured my interest immediately was the measured tone of the speech (it was broadcast live on RT this morning). Vladimir Putin neither ranted nor raved. He was direct, concise and clear.

I found his comments regarding the CIA particularly interesting:

In this regard, it should be noted of course that we know the names of all the Western handlers, of all members of Western services, primarily the CIA, who are working with Ukrainian security agencies. 

Apparently, they are giving them such advice. 

This is their attitude towards the rights of journalists, towards the dissemination of information; this is their attitude towards human rights in general. 

All they care about is their own rights, some cherishing imperial ambitions, others holding on to their colonial past in the old-fashioned way. 

But this will not work in Russia.

I take Putin at his word.

The Russian intelligence service has compiled a list of key CIA officers working in Ukraine and will hold them accountable. Unlike the Soviet era when the United States genuinely offered disgruntled KGB and GRU officers a clear alternative to the lies that shored up the rotten Communist system, the west today has become a caricature of the old Soviet Union. We now imprison political prisoners in the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania for daring to support Donald Trump and trespassing on the U.S. Capitol. In fact, there are more political prisoners incarcerated by United States than are jailed in Russia.

How about a free press?

America is now a global joke.

The corporate media has turned into Helen Keller when it comes to investigating or even questioning the fraudulent votes that gave the 2020 Presidential election to Dementia Joe Biden. With the exception of Tucker Carlson, the mainstream media refuse to give air time to analysts like Doug MacGregor and Scott Ritter who can authoritatively challenge the Ukraine narrative that Russia is evil and Ukraine is an innocent victim. Anyone who goes on social media and tries to provide an alternative view is cancelled. The American media is now behaving as the Soviet Pravda on steroids.

The CIA, which has the mission of recruiting and managing spies in Russia that will provide crucial intelligence about the true intentions and plans of Putin and his Generals, now are fully castrated. If you were a Russian officer dissatisfied with Russia’s current course of action would you trust the CIA to protect you? I believe that answer is a firm no. Especially because the U.S. has now thrown its full support behind a Ukraine that is rife with NAZI ideology and adherents.

We know from the history of the Cold War that the CIA targeted Russian diplomats and military attaches working in foreign countries as a means to get spies into the Kremlin’s inner circle. With the United States pressing all countries in the world to punish all things Russian, not just the government, but the people, the opportunity for U.S. intelligence officers to befriend and recruit a Russian is more difficult than at any time since 1947. This means the United States will be blind in terms of being able to generate its own intelligence and will become more reliant on foreign intelligence services to provide us with their nuggets.

I pity those U.S. intelligence officers who still have some measure of integrity and have a comprehensive understanding of Russia. Any who try to offer alternative explanations for why Putin and the Russian people are engaged in Ukraine will face strong headwinds and possible accusations of being a “Russian sympathizer.”

If you believe in the maxim, “knowledge is power”, then the United States is now entering a phase of being powerless. Ignorance and ideological fanaticism in the intelligence community is a recipe for disaster.

EU and UK to Meet Russia’s Demand to Pay for Gas in Rubles

Curious. I guess this will ease up pressure on individual EU nation-states. Eh?

Article

Using Public Lands to find “arrowheads”

This is where things get a little bit trickier.

There are a wide array of different types of public land ranging from county parks all the way to federally owned land. Even federal lands have different designations such as BLM land, National Parks, Wilderness Areas, etc. You need to know the land status of the land that you are collecting artifacts, or you might find yourself in major troubles with the law.

Artifacts and antiquities are protected by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979. I suggest you read it in detail if you plan on venturing onto public lands to hunt.

I have heard a lot of people come up with various interpretations of the law and what it actually allow, and doesn’t allow you to do on public land. I have even spoken with BLM Archaeologists who say that “incidental” collecting of arrowheads is alright (meaning that you can pick up surface arrowheads while doing other activities while recreating on public lands).

Most will tell you that under no circumstance are you allowed to collect artifacts from public lands.

The “Jimmy Carter Loophole” is often referenced by artifact hunters as the reason that surface collecting is alright. However, most people who understand the writing of the law say that despite the text regarding surface collecting, you are still breaking the law if you pick up an arrowhead on public land.

I am NOT telling you what you can or can’t do on public lands regarding to arrowhead hunting. If you want to be absolutely certain, then by all means avoid public lands and only hunt on private property with permission.

I will say that there are thousands of hunters, ranchers, hikers, rockhounds and other public land users who pick up an arrowhead from time to time and the black helicopters haven’t swooped in on them yet. However, these are surface finds. Digging and sifting are taken seriously as should never be done on public lands.

My personal belief is that surface collecting of arrowheads is about as bad as jaywalking. Nonetheless, my opinion doesn’t really matter. The law is what matters.

Again, I suggest that you read the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 yourself and decide what you want to do.

First Class on Chinese High Speed Rail

Yes. This is what it is like. Not bad for 60 RMB (roughly $10 dollars US). Video 4MB

Clear messages on Gas

Message One

The Energy Ministry of Bulgaria reported that Gazprom informed Bulgargaz about the suspension of gas supplies from April 27 - Reuters

Message Two

The Polish oil and gas company PGNIG received a notification from Gazprom that from the morning of April 27, the supply of Russian natural gas will be completely stopped

Message Three

"Russian energy giant Gazprom will cease delivering gas to Bulgaria on Wednesday, the country’s energy ministry announced on Tuesday. The news comes after the Saint Petersburg firm confirmed it will also halt supplies to Poland, with both countries refusing to pay for energy supplies in rubles."

Where to Hunt for Artifacts

You don’t just wake up and start searching your backyard in the hopes of finding “arrowhhead” artifacts (although it has happened!). There are places where you can find artifacts and there are other places where there are none.

You need to know the best places to make your artifact hunt successful.

Always remember the 3 things that all people need: Food, shelter and water.

The single most important (and easiest to find) is water. Native Americans set up their camps near creeks, rivers, and lakes. The camp wasn’t necessarily right next to the water, but it was often on a nearby bluff that was still close enough that the water was easily accessible.

Other places to search are old trading centers. These are rendezvous points where tribes would meet to trade with each other, and during the past few centuries they would trade with European settlers and fur trappers. These are also good sites to metal detect because Europeans would bring metal items to trade.

It is important you study your local history to know the settlement in the area. This will help you make the right decisions in regards to areas to hunt for artifacts. Also, remember to listen to local prospecting news and news from the local construction site. You may get some important insights on where to look for.

Surface arrowheads are easier to spot in the desert where there is less ground cover. Forest can hold a lot of artifacts too, but the dirt and ground cover can make artifact hunting almost impossible. In forested areas I recommend checking river beds and dried up creeks.

Filming a Chinese movie

This is what it is like. video 4MB

NATO is shipping heavy weapons into Ukraine

And most are now destoyed and the cargo is trapped on rail cars with no where to go. Russia launched massive attacks on infrastructure last night as well, destroying many key rail lines and bridges.

A map showing all the strategic rail crossings that were hit:

word image 69
word image 69

Western weapons will now have a much harder time getting to the frontline, particularly heavy weapons like tanks/artillery which are now said to be provided soon to Ukraine. These require railways to get to the frontline.

And on that topic of heavy arms to Ukraine, something important to note: many countries are now cobbling together a Frankenstein list of “high end” heavy arms to contribute. T-72’s and M-84’s from Poland and Slovenia, Marders, Leopards, and PzH2000’s from Germany, Cesar Howitzers from France, Mastiffs, Wolfhound, and Husky vehicles from UK, Archer artillery systems from Sweden, Humvees, M113 APC’s from U.S., and M777’s from Canada, and on and on and on.

For anyone versed in military matters, this is absolutely ridiculous.

There is no way in hell the Ukraine will be able to utilize any of this stuff in any productive capacity for long. Firstly, the vast majority of it will never reach the frontlines and will be destroyed in transit. But just to play devil’s advocate, even if it were to actually reach the frontlines, any military analyst worth their salt knows that it’s a huge detriment to operate many non-interoperable systems on the frontlines due to the complete nightmare it creates in lack of parts and ability to properly maintain or repair this equipment.

In fact at the start of the SMO, Russia was heavily criticized by some military blogs because Russia uses so many different variants of each system concurrently, and this creates problems for maintenance and logistics – for instance T-72, T-72a, T-72b, T-72b3, T-72b3m, etc, etc. But of course Russia has the military infrastructure to deal with this, Ukraine doesn’t.

China reports first human case of H3N8 bird flu

From HERE.

BEIJING (REUTERS) - China has recorded the first human infection with the H3N8 strain of bird flu, the country's health authority said on Tuesday (April 26), but said the risk of it spreading among people was low.

A four-year-old boy from central Henan province was found to have been infected with the variant after developing a fever and other symptoms on April 5.

No close contacts were infected with the virus, the National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement.

The child had been in contact with chickens and crows raised at his home, it added.

The H3N8 variant has previously been detected elsewhere in the world in horses, dogs, birds and seals, but no human cases of H3N8 have been reported, said the NHC.

The commission said an initial assessment determined the variant did not yet have the ability to effectively infect humans, and the risk of a large-scale epidemic was low.

Hum. It’s a good thing that throughout China, there are mandatory “full spectrum” testing of all sorts of viruses. Depending on where you live, you need to be tested either daily or every other day.

I wonder why China is being so agressive about testing for viruses … ?

Surface Hunting Artifacts

Spotting “arrowhead” artifacts can quite difficult, especially to the untrained eye. Scan every inch of the ground in the area that you are hunting for them. Keep your eyes alert especially to items with sharp edges, flaked surfaces or shapes different from the rocks. This will help you find artifacts that most other people may fail to notice.

Take note of the type of material that the Indians used to make their arrowheads. In some areas it was black obsidian that can be easily spotted once you know what to look for. Cherts and hard jaspers can be harder to spot but you will get better as you train your eyes.

Arrowheads aren’t the only thing that you can find. Other artifacts include earrings, pottery, necklaces, stone tools and hammerheads. If you find an ancient campsite, take your time and search the area carefully for anything you can find.

If you are a beginner it is important that you are patient because it may take you time to develop your skills and get some luck.

“China calls out US ‘war crimes’”.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman went off at a presser today:

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin has lashed out at the EU and US for criticizing its domestic and foreign policies. Wang singled out the US, accusing Washington of war crimes in the Middle East, economic coercion, betraying its allies and spreading disinformation.

“The US purports to maintain the centrality of the UN Charter, but it is clear to anyone that the US is doing quite the opposite,” Wang told reporters at a press conference on Monday. Citing the US’ military interventions in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Wang stated that Washington “brushed the UN aside and waged wars on sovereign states in wanton interference.”

“The US claims to respect human rights, but the wars of aggression launched by the US and its allies … killed over 300,000 civilians and made over 26 million people refugees,” he continued. “Yet, no one is held accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US even announced sanctions on the International Criminal Court who would investigate the war crimes of the US military.”

And he didn’t end there.

Again, we know his words will be censored by the West, so his tirade was made for the benefit of the Global South, which includes China’s domestic audience.

Digging and Sifting for Arrowheads

Most people who hunt for artifacts simply search along the surface and don’t need to do any digging. Digging will often be fruitless because there will only be one piece in any particular area.

Sifting is only productive when you have located an actual site with a high concentration of artifacts.

Make sure that you manage the site of your hunting well. Often you will have to dig up the artifacts you find from deep in the ground. It is important to fill up any hole you dig up and to dispose of any trash you have in the proper manner.

Digging should ONLY be done on private lands with permission from a landowner. Digging on public land will land you in big trouble and is much more serious than casual surface collecting.

Some interesting news…

An abandoned archive was found at the OSCE headquarters in Mariupol. It contains OSCE field reports from 2014, documenting thousands of Ukrainian war crimes, which the OSCE then concealed in the official reports of the mission in Ukraine.

In addition, a warehouse of Italian-made mortar mines was found in the garage of the OSCE building. The markings on the boxes indicate that the mines were packed for shipping by sea on 2022-3-11.

Finding That First Arrowhead…

If you’ve never found an arrowhead before, it can seem like there just aren’t any to be found. For years all I ever found was chipping, and maybe an occasional broken piece. It took me years to find my first intact arrowhead.

After that, they came a bit easier. They are still hard to find though, which is why they are such a treasure!

If I can give you 3 main tips that have helped me over the years they would be:

    • 1. Water – I always find the highest concentrations arrowheads around water sources
    • 2. Remoteness – This may not have mattered 50 years ago, but nowadays I have way more success when hunt way back in, far from where everyone else goes.
    • 3. Keep Moving – too often I see beginners stuck on a spot. They spend hours in once area because it looks good. I like to move quick and scan as much ground as possible. Only when I find an artifact will I slow down and start hunting the area carefully.

Hunting for artifacts is a wonderful pastime and a great way to get out and enjoy nature. Get out of the house for a while and see what you can find in your area!

A Recap Of The War In Ukraine – by Gonzalo Lira

Gonzalo Lira just delivered a decent recap of the war in Ukraine.

Gonzalo Lira @GonzaloLira1968 - 10:28 UTC · Apr 26, 2022

Quick recap for those who haven't followed what's been going on in Ukraine but want to understand: 02/24: The Russians invaded from the south, south-east, east and north, in a lightning campaign. The Russians invaded with 190K troops—against 250K combat troops from Ukraine.

The RF put 30K troops near Kiev—nowhere near enough to capture the city—but enough to pin down some 100K AFU defenders. The RF also launched several axes of attack, with reinforcements on standby (including a famed 40km long tank column), to see where they might be needed.

Crucially—the Russian's blitz on several axes pre-empted an imminent UKRAINIAN blitzkrieg. The AFU had been about to invade the Donbas. This was the immediate motivation for Russia's invasion: To beat them to the punch and scuttle Ukraine's imminent invasion—which they did.

Also, by attacking from the north and south, the Russians disrupted weapons supply chain from NATO. Had the RF only attacked in the east to prevent the AFU invasion of Donbas, there would have been an open corridor for resupply from the West. Threatening Kiev stopped that.

So the main AFU army was left stranded in east Ukraine, with the rest of the Ukr. forces isolated and pinned down—with no easy resupply from the West. The RF then went about hitting AFU command/control and resupply links, further isolating and immobilizing Ukrainian forces.

The Russians soon nominally controlled land the size of the UK in Ukraine—but it was a tenuous control. The south of Ukraine was more fully in Russia's grip. The AFU around Kherson simply scattered. Mariupol became a clear battleground, as did the Donbas proper.

What the Russians initially wanted was to:
  • Short-circuit the imminent Donbas invasion - which they did.
  • Scare the Zelensky regime into negotiating a political settlement - which they failed to do.
Kiev had no intention of negotiating a ceasefire because of orders given to them from Washington: “Fight Russia to the last Ukrainian!” Also, the Neo-Nazi goons around Zelensky threatened him if he negotiated and surrendered because they are terrified of the Russians.

So Zelensky launched a massive PR and propaganda campaign, primarily to motivate AFU forces to fight to the death. Myths were created (Ghost of Kiev), false flags were carried out (Bucha, Kramatorsk) and relentless media stories were flogged relentlessly.

The Russians kept negotiating and trying to NOT destroy Ukraine infrastructure. In fact at first they were even trying to minimize AFU casualties. The evidence for this is overwhelming: The RF did not hit civilian infrastructure - water, electric, phone, transportation. They did not hit AFU barracks, command centers, government buildings, etc.

The Russians' initial priority was for a *negotiated settlement*. But by late March, they realized this was impossible.

This is why the RF withdrew from Kiev. There was no sense putting men near the city when they were not doing what they were supposed to do - putting political pressure on the Zelensky regime to negotiate. This withdrawal was claimed as a “victory” in the “Battle of Kiev”! lmao

Starting in late March, the Russians pulled back and solidified their control over the area they had captured, ceding to the AFU areas that were either pointless to or potentially too costly to control. The Ukraine propaganda machine called all these pull- backs “victories”.

There was still a glimmer that the war might end in a negotiated settlement but that ended in early April. After the Istanbul talks of 3/30, the Ukraine side gingerly agreed to some compromises but within a week publicly disavowed those concessions.

That's when the Russians realized the Zelensky regime was agreement-incapable: Their Washington masters, Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinken in particular, wouldn't allow a peace. They want this war to sap Russia dry. It is a classic proxy war and Ukraine will pay the price.

Something else the Russians realized: Sanctions. They hurt but Russia bounced back with remarkable speed. They didn't really hurt that bad. But the theft of Russia's $300 billion in foreign reserves by the West DID hurt - badly. The Russians realized they were in a total war with the West and since their foreign reserves were lost forever (likely to be pilfered by corrupt Western politicos), the Russians now have nothing left to lose. By stealing their reserves, the West lost all power over Russia.

This has sealed Ukraine's fate: The Russians now have no incentive to give up what they have conquered. It has cost them too much in terms of men and treasure. And they know that they can't negotiate a ceasefire. The Zelensky regime will simply break it later.

Which means:

The Russians intend to conquer and permanently annex all the south and east of Ukraine. This is why their strategy on the battlefield has dramatically shifted: Now they are carrying out a slow, methodical grinding down and destruction of the AFU.

The war in the first 30 days was speed, feints, nominally capturing vast swathes of Ukraine territory, with the aim of pressuring the Zelensky regime into a negotiated settlement. But the West's total financial and political break with Russia means they have nothing to lose. And they have a lot to gain: The Donbas is mineral rich, the really productive farmlands of Ukraine are in the east and south, Kharkov is a major industrial city, the Sea of Azov has untold natural gas reserves.

And besides - the people love them. Why would the Russians now give up this hard-won prize?

And they *have* won - make no mistake. Ask any military man who is not a system pig, he'll tell you: There is no way for the AFU to retake their country. They have no armor, no air defense, no fuel, no comms - it's over.

The great tragedy is that so many THOUSANDS of young men will die, and die NEEDLESSLY!!,  in order to postpone the inevitable. These brave boys will have fought so valiantly - and died so young, so cruelly -because of the evil of the Zelensky regime.

That's the hard truth.

And in the end, this will be the map that will remain—a bitter image of Ukraine's future. Russia will pour billions into their newly acquired territory. It will prosper and flourish. But the rump-state of Ukraine will be left poor, destroyed, forgotten.

A tragedy.

 

2022 04 27 14 03
2022 04 27 14 03

 

Mr b at MoA comments…

I concur with the above except for two minor detail. The move on Kiev was not intended to hinder resupply to Ukrainian troops in Donbas but to ‘fix’ potential reinforcement around the capital. That enabled Russian troops to open the corridor from Crimea to the Russian boarder as well as to cross the Dnieper in the south and to take Kherson. Those were the most important moves for the further development of the war.

I also do not believe that Russia will ‘annex’ the areas it is liberating from fascist control. Once librated the people in those areas will vote on becoming independent from Ukraine and the various regions, Donbas, Luhansk, Kherson, Odessa, will form states that will become part of the Federal Republic of Novorossia.

That country will be recognized and supported by Russia and its allies.

Posted by b on April 26, 2022 at 11:23 UTC | Permalink

Ukraine May Collapse Into Several Independent Countries, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The policies implemented by the West and the “Kiev regime” may result in the collapse of Ukraine into several smaller countries, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said.
"If anything today unites people living in Ukraine it is only the fear of the atrocities of the nationalist battalions. Therefore, the result of the policy of the West and the Kiev regime under its control can only be the disintegration of Ukraine into several states,"
Patrushev said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
.
Since 24 February, Russia has been conducting a special military operation Ukraine which is aimed at protecting the Russian-speaking population in the breakaway Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk amid intensified shelling by Ukrainian armed forces. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, another key goal of the operation is to “demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine”.
Since the start of the Russian operation, millions of refugees have travelled from Ukraine to Europe.
"Almost 5 million Ukrainian migrants have already arrived in Europe. In the near future, their number will grow to 10 million,"

Patrushev said.

"Most Ukrainians who came to the West believe that Europeans should support and endow them, and when they are forced to work, they begin to rebel,"
he added.
.
The official touched upon a difficult economic situation in Europe which has worsened against the backdrop of the Ukraine conflict.
"Europe is facing a deep economic and political crisis for their countries. Rising inflation and declining living standards are already affecting the wallets and moods of Europeans,"
Patrushev said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, speaking about the consequences of the situation in Ukraine.
The Russian Security Council Secretary also explained why Europe should be prepared to increasing crime rate.
"Representatives of the criminal community who have escaped from Ukraine will try to occupy niches that are profitable for them, to put local criminal groups under control, which will undoubtedly be accompanied by a complication of the criminal situation in Europe," Patrushev said. 
He stressed that the shadow market for the purchase of human organs from Ukraine for black market transplantation operations to European patients has revived.
"The West has already seen a revival of the shadow market for the purchase of human organs from socially vulnerable segments of the population of Ukraine for black market transplantation operations for European patients...Such a widespread business as trade in orphans taken out of Ukraine for subsequent illegal adoption in Europe will also get a new breath,"
Patrushev said.

Mac Davis – It’s Hard To Be Humble

Lordy! The lyrics on this 1970s Country & Western song are a hoot! I hope you enjoy it!

A Primer On Collecting Native American Arrowheads

From HERE

When someone hears the term ancient artifacts, images of Indiana Jones embarking on a dangerous adventure in search of some lost relic are usually dancing in the forefront of that person’s mind. That said, the “Indiana Jones” movie franchise is credited with having a lasting impact on at least one columnist in the antiques and collectibles trade, as I have always lamented that without having been exposed to the original “Raiders of the Lost Ark” movie at a very young age by my father, my entry into the antiques and collectibles world would have occurred much later. In fact, I place the entire “Indiana Jones” movie franchise well above the “Star Wars” movie franchise as having the most profound effect on both my youth and my upbringing.

Sadly, the field of collecting ancient artifacts is not nearly as exciting as most of the adventures of Indiana Jones. Simply stated, the field of ancient artifacts covers the gamut of rare and coveted antiquities to prehistoric fossils and even Native American artifacts. It is the last category that I will be focusing on here, more specifically Native American arrowheads, but first, a brief history lesson is in order.

Some of the first known Native American arrowheads were created thousands of years ago and were carved out of various materials such as flint, agate, jasper, and quartzite. They represent some of the earliest known remnants as to how our prehistoric ancestors lived. That said, collecting arrowheads is a somewhat esoteric hobby within the greater antiques and collectibles field. Over the years, the hobby has grown considerably, and the most sought-after artifacts are unlike most of the arrowheads that casual enthusiasts may have come into contact with through museum souvenir shops or through the possessions of a close relative who owned some specimens. Much like digging up antique bottles, arrowhead collecting was quite popular back when you could still discover less-than-stellar specimens on plots of undeveloped land.

I fondly remember my father sharing stories of his youth spent growing up around Hazleton, Pa., and him stumbling upon multiple broken arrowheads on the outskirts of undeveloped forest land.

Today, thanks to the rise of better authentication techniques and well-versed experts within the trade, the history, certification, and grading of these treasures has advanced in ways never before thought possible. Now, respected auction houses deal in these fascinating treasures. In the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, a plethora of fake Native American arrowheads engulfed the secondary market. Some of these fakes and forgeries were so well made that they continue to baffle some experts in the trade to this day.

Others were so badly made that even casual enthusiasts with no formal training can easily identify them. The field of Native American arrowhead collecting is an advanced area of study that no novice should undertake without enlisting the skills of multiple well-respected experts in the trade.

Beginning collectors and novices who wish to spend significant amounts of money purchasing authentic artifacts should begin by reading and learning about the subject of not just Native American arrowheads, but also the entire market for Native American artifacts in general. Most auction houses that cater to authentic Native American arrowheads tend to also specialize in the greater Native American artifact marketplace as well.

One book that is a must-have to any up and coming arrowhead collector is the most recent edition of “The Official Overstreet Indian Arrowheads Identification and Price Guide.” The guide gives an unprecedented listing as to what makes certain arrowheads valuable and lists tips for identifying certain artifacts from different time periods.

Another recent development that has greatly affected the marketplace for Native American artifacts is the advent of third-party certification and grading. Companies like IAGA, which is short for Indian Artifact Grading Authority, can help you not only identify and authenticate your treasures, but also grade them by condition of the overall specimen.

This can help determine a fair value on the secondary market, as prices for even the most sought-after artifacts have been volatile over the years, while also breaking new records at high-profile auctions. There seems to be a lot of wealthy collectors chasing after the most coveted specimens on the market today, but would-be speculators should take note that the middle range and lower end of the market have not been affected by this same frenzy.

Occasionally, well-vetted auction houses like Morphy Auctions will hold exclusive auctions that cater to Native American artifacts. It should be stated that even though these auctions are run by experts in the industry, collectors are still encouraged to do their own research on the items they may be interested in obtaining. Unlike the field of antique bottle collecting or modern-day collecting mainstays like vintage “Star Wars” figures and toys, the hobby of collecting ancient artifacts is much more complex.

A novice collector can easily spend decades studying some of the most stellar and valuable finds without even scratching the surface of what the overall market has to offer. Contrary to popular belief, most Native American arrowheads are not all that valuable, as some can be had for $1 to $40 each. Condition, age, and rarity are what separates a $40 arrowhead from a $500 arrowhead and a $10,000 arrowhead from a $500 one. The high-end markets of this trade are not for the casual enthusiast.

In conclusion, I own several Native American arrowheads and find the pieces to be quite impressive. I should also state that I do not trust my own judgment when identifying and buying these kinds of pieces and always enlist the help of professionals to guide me in any purchases I choose to make. Should any readers decide to dabble in this exciting field of study, I strongly urge you to do the same.

The spirit of China

This is what it is like. video 4MB

Pepe Escobar explains how it is all so simple…

Pepe Escobar, [4/26/22 9:36 AM]
WHAT’S GOIN’ ON - IN 5 MINUTES

In 1933 the Anglo-American axis backed Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg's selection of Adolf Hitler as the new Chancellor of Germany.

The plan was to rebuild Germany to balance against the growing power of Russia under Stalin.

England lent two billion gold dollars to Germany; the US lent one billion gold dollars - which was worth about 100 times what the dollar is worth now. England also opened its markets to Germany to strengthen it.

This parallels EXACTLY what the Empire of Lies and rotten Britannia are doing now supporting Ukro Neo-Nazis against Russia.

Nord Stream 2 was the last straw.

The Empire of Lies feared a Germany/Russia/China alliance - where the US would be relegated to the status of an isolated island, losing what was left of its fading control of the planet.

So the CIA ordered the Ukro neo-Nazis to prepare to launch a massive attack on the Donbass - and kill hundreds of thousands of its Russophone population by massive artillery bombardment.

Russian intel picked this up. And Operation Z became inevitable.

The immediate goal of the Empire of Lies was to force Germany to end all its natural resource imports from Russia - thus forcing Germany to remain a permanent US vassal.

The plan worked. Germany is cutting all relations with Russia and is slowly but surely preparing, alongside the Empire, for what might become a HOT - nuclear - war against Russia. Lavrov just had to issue another VERY serious warning.

The Empire of Lies easily gained control of the EU via the German poodle - and now is totally focused on bringing down Russia (“weaken”, in the language of Pentagon weapons peddler Austin and Ziocon Blinkie).

The sanction tsunami will of course backfire - already happening.

And so will the Empire of Lies supreme wet dream: to “weaken” Russia so that it may take back control - as in the Yeltsin years - via corrupt oligarchs, of ALL Russia's wealth of natural resources. That will ultimately mean control of China - because by land and sea the Americans will control all of China's natural resource inputs.

The planet was slipping out of the Empire of Lies' grip. Yet in one fell swoop they are back in the game.

Not so fast though. The only losers, so far, are poodles Germany and the EU.

The Russia-China strategic partnership excels in shadowplay.

The Story of MM’s DIY work-bench

When I moved out of Boston, I started to haul my unused items to the curb for community pickup. I quickly discovered that others decided to do the same, and within a short period of time, all sorts of old and disused furnishings were found discarded on the side.

One item was this massive heavy metal table. It was all steel, and had the gray color so often associated and common in the 1930s and 1940s. Its top was ruined. But aside for that, it was a very heavy, and super sturdy table.

il fullxfull.472881482 sg49
Sort of like this.

So I took it home. I cleaned it up, but you know, the top was a real mess.

So what I did was, I went and got a one-inch thick plywood board. I put it over ON-TOP of the table and cut it to size so that it fit. I did not replace the top, I just simply put the plywood over it.

OIP.hRkoSbvTLExwzekAdI4TagAAAA
One inch thick plywood board.

I then drilled four holes. One near each corner, oh about, a good hands-length from the two edges. The holes were big enough to slip the bolts through (duh!).

I then placed “carriage bolts”  from the top down, and tightened the board in place with a wrench underneath.

OIP.a7S MSksNlW nk4Lhr18cwHaJ9
Some carriage bolts.

That made the top of the table nice and flat, with the metal rounded part visible on the work surface.

Man, that table was huge, and super heavy, but wow! Did it ever work as a fine work bench. It was just perfect.

Later, when I was bored, I used a router to gouge out some 1/2″ deep valleys along one of the edges. You know to catch loose pencils, pens, paperclips, screws, and all the rest.

And well, that’s my story. Not as exciting as all the rest, but perfect, you know, in its simplicity. Perfect, you all, too, can one day make such a garbage discovery and turn it into something of great utility.

Ah. That’s my story. Don’t you know.

Not reported in the Western “news”…

Russia captured a huge Bulgaria commercial vessel with large quantity of western weapons including from USA.. video 4MB
.

Pepe Escobar issues mean comments… LOL

Pepe Escobar, [4/26/22 8:17 AM]
WAR IS PEACE UPDATE

Isn't it soooooo rich that the Empire of Lies is leading a "summit" of 40 or so vassals/straps/minions at one of the icons of the Empire of Bases - Ramstein - to "bolster Ukraine's defenses" (translation: keep the war going forever).

The soooo rich becomes soooooo absurd when the propaganda avalanche includes claiming NATO is not among the donors. Well, most of those at the summit are NATO minions.

The Ramstein summit follows weapons peddler Lloyd "Raytheon" Austin and Little Blinkie visiting the mediocre comedian in Kiev over the weekend and stating they want to "weaken" Russia.

It's really impossible to report about this serial tsunami of imperial excrement as if it was serious news.

Pepe Escobar, [4/26/22 8:30 AM]
AND IT GETS WORSE

You think my previous post was nasty? Baaaaah. It gets much worse.

Sitting beside weapons peddler Lloyd "Raytheon" Austin and General Woke Milley, the German Defense Minister - one Christine Lambrecht, of the von der Lugen school of mediocrity - said that Germany and the Empire of Lies are now teaching Ukrainian troops how to employ new artillery systems.

The teaching takes place in German soil.

Do these people even listen to Lavrov?

Or perhaps they want Mr. Sarmat to visit the Reichstag?

Chicken Biscuit Potpie

This hearty chicken potpie recipe with biscuits takes just 10 minutes to assemble before you can pop it in the oven. —Dorothy Smith, El Dorado, Arkansas

Chicken Biscuit Potpie EXPS FT21 10094 F 0205 1 14
Chicken Biscuit Potpie

2022 04 25 17 16
2022 04 25 17 16

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400°. In a large bowl, combine the vegetables, chicken, soup and thyme. Pour into an ungreased deep-dish 9-in. pie plate. Combine the biscuit mix, milk and egg; spoon over chicken mixture.
  2. Bake until topping is golden brown and toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 25-30 minutes.

NATO members have second thoughts

Another NATO member–Croatia–objects to adding Finland and Sweden, but the position taken will be reversed as soon as Croatia’s demands are met:

“Finland and Sweden joining NATO is ‘very dangerous charlatanry’ and amounts to provoking Russia, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said on Tuesday. Zagreb will refuse to ratify their membership until the US and EU pressure the neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina into guaranteeing ethnic Croats their basic voting rights, Milanovic added.”

There’s no notice given to any other NATO nation aping Croatia’s stance.

Polish Media: Russia Has Halted Gas Supplies To The Country


Poland announced on Tuesday that it was preparing to impose sanctions on 50 Russian oligarchs and companies, as Polish media report that Russia has stopped gas deliveries to the country, causing European gas prices to get hit with a double-digit surge. 

Poland’s One.pl online news channel reported that Russia had suspended gas supplies to Poland under the Yamal contract, citing off-the-record sources claiming that the Ministry of Climate has now gathered its crisis team to deal with the situation. . . .here

How to make a teacup bird feeder in under 5 minutes

“Give your feathered friends a pretty little place to land with this quick and easy diy teacup bird feeder. It’s so simple to make in about 5 minutes!

R.7e2bcd57d9507d53f4c70feb486e79e0
Teacup bird feeder

Supplies:

Directions:

Step 1: Make sure the teacup and saucer are clean. Put the cup on its side, then use painter’s tape to hold it in place.

Step 2: Mix up a small amount of epoxy on a paper plate using a wooden craft stick, about a teaspoon (just do it by eye.) 

Step 3: Tilt up the cup where it meets the plate and apply the epoxy, then carefully put the cup back in place to secure it. Hold for about 30 seconds. Let dry for 2 hours (or according to directions.)

Step 4: Using jute twine, hang the bird feeder by the handle of the teacup.

Step 5: Fill cup and saucer with bird feed.

Step 6: Enjoy watching the birds!

*First Time Hearing* Blackfoot | Left Turn On A Red Light | REACTION VIDEO

This was sort of my “theme song” when I was discharged from the Navy and making my life up until I was picked up by MAJestic at China Lake NWC. This is a reaction video and a rather good one, don’t you know.

Mint Lamb Stew

The lamb here isn’t just tender—it melts in your mouth! This recipe is an adaptation of a stew my mother used to make while I was growing up in England. Now I round it out with local root vegetables. 

—Maureen Evans, Rancho Cucamonga, California

Mint Lamb Stew EXPS HSCBZ19 60596 E07 18 4b 2
Mint Lamb Stew

2022 04 25 17 12
2022 04 25 17 12

Directions

  1. In a large shallow dish, combine the flour, salt and pepper. Add the meat, a few pieces at a time, and turn to coat. In a large skillet, brown meat and shallots in oil in batches.
  2. Transfer to a 5- or 6-qt. slow cooker. Add wine to the skillet, stirring to loosen browned bits from pan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 1-2 minutes. Add to slow cooker.
  3. Stir in the broth, potatoes, sweet potato, carrots, parsnips and garlic. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or until meat is tender. Stir in jelly; sprinkle with bacon. If desired, sprinkle with fresh mint before serving.

Push your inner girl

Practice, practice, practice. video 8MB

Sailboat life

Living fine and well inside of China. Video 54MB

Locations In The U.S. That You Should Avoid At All Costs If A Nuclear War With Russia Erupts

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Vladimir Putin is threatening to use nukes again.  If Russia ultimately decides to conduct a surprise first strike, are you living near a location that is likely to get nuked?  Many people assume that the vast majority of the U.S. population would immediately die if a nuclear war erupts, but that isn’t true.  It has been estimated that only about 20 percent of the U.S. population would be wiped out right away, more would die later on from radiation exposure, but the vast majority of the population would actually die from starvation during the subsequent weeks and months due to the “nuclear winter” that would stretch on for at least a couple of years.  So if a nuclear war does happen, you will need enough food for yourself, your family and everyone that will be depending upon you for as long as you plan to stay alive.

In recent weeks, our politicians and the “experts” on the cable news channels have been assuring us over and over again that the risk of nuclear war is very low and that Vladimir Putin is bluffing when he threatens to use nuclear weapons.

Of course Putin wasn’t exactly bluffing about invading Ukraine, was he?

Considering his track record, I believe that we should take Putin’s threats deadly seriously, and he just publicly threatened to use nuclear weapons against anyone that interferes in the war in Ukraine

‘If someone intends to interfere in what is going on from the outside they must know that constitutes an unacceptable strategic threat to Russia. They must know that our response to counter strikes will be lightning fast. Fast,’ he said.

‘We have all the weapons we need for this. No one else can brag about these weapons, and we won’t brag about them. But we will use them.’

Though Putin did not mention nuclear weapons directly, he was almost certainly referring to Russia’s new Sarmat 2 nuclear missile which was tested for the first time just days ago and that he boasted is unlike any other weapon in the world.

Obviously, that threat was directed at the United States, because we are intervening in the war in Ukraine more than anyone else.

As I have stated before, there are no winners in a nuclear war, but whichever side decides to strike first will have the best chance of surviving a nuclear war.

If the Russians ultimately determine that a direct military conflict with the United States is inevitable, they may decide that it is best to hit us before we can hit them.

When that day arrives, you will want to be as far away from prime strategic targets as you possibly can.

At the top of that list would be all of the military facilities where our nuclear weapons are located

  • Naval Base Kitsap (Washington)
  • Malstrom Air Force Base (Montana)
  • Nellis Air Force Base (Nevada)
  • Warren Air Force Base (Colorado and Wyoming)
  • Minot Air Force Base (North Dakota)
  • Pantex plant (Texas)
  • Whiteman Air Force Base (Missouri)
  • Barksdale Air Force Base (Louisiana)
  • Naval Submarine Base (Georgia)

In addition, there are approximately 400 active nuclear missile silos that are spread across five states.  The following comes from the Washington Post

About 400 of those missiles remain active and ready to launch at a few seconds notice in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska. They are located on bison preserves and Indian reservations. They sit across from a national forest, behind a rodeo grandstand, down the road from a one-room schoolhouse, and on dozens of private farms like the one belonging to the Butchers, who have lived for 60 years with a nuclear missile as their closest neighbor.

Secondly, you will want to be far away from any U.S. military bases, because they will be prime targets as well.

The following public domain map of major U.S. Air Force bases comes from Wikimedia Commons

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2022 04 28 10 10

And this map of major U.S. Navy bases that was originally created by a user named “Orionist” also comes from Wikimedia Commons

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2022 04 28 10 11

The list of U.S. Army bases in the United States is exceedingly long, but you can find the major ones right here.

In addition to military targets, the Russians would also likely strike major population centers, particularly those that have political or financial significance such as Washington D.C. and New York City.

Sadly, many of those that are not killed by the initial strike will wish that they were dead.

Because the nuclear winter that would follow would be absolutely horrifying.

One study that was conducted in 2019 determined that temperatures in Iowa would stay below zero degrees Celsius for 730 days in a row

subsequent study, published in 2019, looked at a comparable but slightly lower 150 Tg atmospheric soot injection following an equivalent scale nuclear war. The devastation causes so much smoke that only 30-40 percent of sunlight reaches the Earth’s surface for the subsequent six months.

A massive drop in temperature follows, with the weather staying below freezing throughout the subsequent Northern Hemisphere summer. In Iowa, for example, the model shows temperatures staying below 0°C for 730 days straight. There is no growing season. This is a true nuclear winter.

Because very little could be grown during this time, the vast majority of the population would soon be dead as a result of famine

By this time, most of Earth’s human population will be long dead. The world’s food production would crash by more than 90 percent, causing global famine that would kill billions by starvation. In most countries less than a quarter of the population survives by the end of year two in this scenario. Global fish stocks are decimated and the ozone layer collapses.

So can you understand why I am so passionate about avoiding a nuclear war?

In like Flint – 1967 (Sub Esp)

We end this installment with a 1967 James Bond spoof. This is a sequel to the first movie. If you have time on your hands, and want to go “deep” on a vacation to another time, this movie is for you.

The storyline in the second entry has to do with an offer to Flint's three female assistants to visit an Island run by an outfit's leaders calling their operation "Fabulous Face". 

As if the girls needed improving. Of course, the corporation's heads turn out to be furious women's liberation advocates bent on world domination, planning to rid themselves of male frustrations, advice and competition forever. 

Forget the plot. 

Derek Flint's girls are in danger and that leads his organization, Z.O.W.I.E., his boss Lloyd Cramden and Flint into the exotic blackmail-the-world plot involving female astronauts and nuclear Macgoffins. 

But first there are the lethal tricks the ladies have thought up; Cramden loses ninety seconds on a golf course; Flint discovers hair driers are being used for brainwashing sessions; and the island resort Fabulous Face runs in the US Virgins turns out to be replete with pretty girls and pretty dangerous ideas. 

This is a comedy, let us remembers, with an underlying satire targeting both excessive women's lib and male chauvinism thrown in. 

And in a comedy, actions speak louder than ideas. 

The film is subtle in unexpected ways unlike its satirical predecessor which was less funny and more a direct comment on gimmick-heavy spy movies. Here we have mostly guided missiles, the world's most lethal cigarette lighter and Flint. 

His comment to the board of the ladies who are trying to take over the world is exactly right--"But you can't...you're--women/ladies/females" refers to their idea that they ought to do so merely because they're female, and to the methods they are employing in the name of "liberation". Lloyd Cramden in a dress is hard to take, but this production if colorful, only occasionally cartoonish in its look and very-well constructed.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Waltzing through the ruins of what used to be an American-led world with some fine tree-house porn

My DouXing and other Chinese video, text, and chat feeds are all full of pro-Russan, pro-Putin videos and texts. Obviously there is an effort to counter the massive anti-Russia Propaganda campaign originating out of the West, and most especially the United States.

Yah. For a solid month, my English-speaking alternative media outlets have been complaining about the failure of Russia to produce pro-Russian narratives. This is apparently their response.

What is interesting is that they have completely ignored providing these messages and content to the West and to the United States. Instead they are concentrating on the East, Asia, and the world outside of the West. Here, we see videos of how the Russians fought the Nazi’s in World War two, as well as a selection of videos on Russia and Chinese relations.

Unlike the media onslaught out of the West, however, it is not full of fear-mongering, and hate, and terror. Instead, the videos are heartwarming, displays of helping others, photo ops, and other “softer” techniques.

While, I don’t like any manipulative campaigns on my social media feeds, I find this one to be pure entertainment and heartwarming. It’s therefore not so bad. I suppose it’s intention is to counter the onslaught of bullshit out of Washington DC, and London, but really it’s not all that bad. I see cute Russian chicks singing and dancing. I watch how cities, roads and bridges are being constructed in Russia by China. I watch Russian food prep, and other “soft” subjects.

Instead of Ukranain children being bayonetted by evil Russian Communists, I am watching videos of delicious steaks cooked to perfection in Moscow, Russians going into saunas and then jumping into icy pools of water, chubby baker ladies running up to Putin for photo opportunities, and Burly Russian men playing with huge Russian bears. Not all together disturbing.

Today, we will continue on our exploration into the “news” and changes during this unusual period of time.

Elite US-UK forces in Ukraine since beginning of conflict with Russia, says French daily

Obviously, the Russians have been fighting these forces from “day one”.

Quoting a French intelligence source, a reporter from leading French daily Le Figaro has revealed that the highly-trained special forces from the United Kingdom and the United States have been stationed in Ukraine since Russia launched its 'special military operation' in the region on February 24.

As the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Saturday and pledged to stand by the people of the country, Georges Malbrunot, a senior reporter for Le Figaro, highlighted the presence of elite military units in the eastern European nation.

"Boris Johnson's visit to Kyiv confirms London's place as Ukraine's first ally. “Elite SAS special forces units have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, as have the American Deltas,” confides a French intelligence source," tweeted Malbrunot.

"The Russians don't ignore it, they know what the secret war is," he added in another tweet quoting his unnamed source as the newspaper included their reporter's input in their updates on the ongoing conflict.

From HERE

A beautiful tree-house

The best tree-houses are ones that you make as a boy, and where you and your friends can “hang out” at.

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Boy-built tree-house.

The “indian punchline today” is worth a read…

From HERE

And, here is a partial quote…

"But Israel didn’t want to stick out its neck for Ukraine due to fears of jeopardizing its tacit deconfliction measures with Moscow during its operations against Iranian targets in Syria.

However, things changed dramatically in the past fortnight or so, as Israel gave up its neutrality toward Russia’s special operation and accused Moscow of committing war crimes. 

Biden’s conversation with Bennett took place as Russia-Israel relations began plummeting. Interestingly, the White House readout flagged a pointed reference by Biden to Israel’s Iron Dome system."

Ukraine – comprehensive exposé

NATO expert blows apart the mainstream narrative.

From HERE.

French special forces are supposedly trapped in the Azov steel mill.

From HERE

According to reports from Aydinlik, a Turkish media outlet the re-elected French President abandoned French soldiers to die, unacknowledged, in Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine because he did not want their existence and possible deaths to jeopardise his election campaign.

According to Aydinlik:

Russia regained control of Mariupol, Ukraine. It was learned that 50 high-ranking French officers were trapped at the Azovstal Metallurgical Plant. It was learned that Putin opened a safe corridor, and Macron sent an order to 'do not surrender' in the election rush.

As part of his victory address to a rally at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Macron vowed to “unite France” after acknowledging the drift right by a disenfranchised population.

“I know that a number of French people have voted for me today, not to support my ideas but to stop the ideas of the far right,” he said and called on supporters to be “kind and respectful” to others, because the country was riven by “so much doubt, so much division”.

He added:

“I’m not the candidate of one camp any more, but the president of all of us.”

If reports of Macron’s abandonment of French troops in Mariupol is confirmed then it is clear that “all of us” does not include those who might tarnish his election campaign. French soldiers who are to be sacrificed without the knowledge of the French public.

Sweden and Finland to Apply to NATO – May 2022

Two newspapers – one Swedish, the other Finnish – have reported the governments of Sweden and Finland have agreed to submit NATO applications at the same time and that it will happen in the middle of next month.

Finnish newspaper Iltalehti said that the Swedish government has expressed a wish to Finland that they apply together in the week starting May 22 and Swedish government sources confirmed the information to Sweden’s Expressen tabloid.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to growing support in Sweden and Finland, a Russian neighbor, for joining NATO.

Though not members, both Nordic countries closely co-operate with NATO, allowing, among other things, the alliance’s troops to carry out exercises on their soil.

Helsinki and Stockholm have also substantially intensified their bilateral defense co-operation in the past years, and there was talk earlier this month that the Nordic territories could both seek to join NATO in the coming months amid Russian aggression.

Russian officials have previously, and publicly, stated that “the only thing Finland will achieve by joining NATO is the destruction of their country.

Han style Chinese girl

Here, she is in traditional Han clothing. Quite nice, and very popular throughout China. video 3MB

Doctorow has a new post today

"..As I have noted previously, there is a firewall between what Western major media are reporting daily about the situation in the Russia-Ukraine War and more generally about Russia versus what one sees on Russian state television and reads in the Russian news agencies. 

On the advice of a colleague in Washington, I will now as occasion requires post news developments from Russia that Western audiences otherwise are not receiving despite their importance as indicators of where East-West relations are headed and whether we are all likely to survive the coming weeks.

"The top such news item in Russia today is the successful capture by the Russian state intelligence agency FSB of a gang of would-be assassins based in Moscow and acting under orders from Kiev to kill the leading Russian talk show host Vladimir Solovyov, about whom I have written these past few weeks. 

And their ‘kill list’ went on to take in other leading personalities on Russian state television: Dmitry Kiselyov (director of all Russian television news programming), Yevgeny Popov, Olga Skabeyeva and Margarita Simonian (editor-in-chief of RT).

"The gang, which appears to consist of White Power and other neo-Nazi elements, was interrogated before video cameras and the videos have been posted on the Russian internet by TASS and other state news agencies...

From HERE

Another nice tree-house

There are some awfully nice tree-houses that are out there in the world.

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Winter at a tree-house cabin.

Alternative News Sources

Orinoco Tribune carries an excellent and comprehensive article by Deborah L Armstrong: “If You Only Follow Mainstream McNews, You Have No Clue About Ukraine.”

The article includes a long list of useful, alternative websites, many of which have been disappeared by the CIA/Google

The ARTICLE

EU Agrees Online Censorship Laws

Members of the European Union have agreed on a new set of laws which will force Big Tech to take proactive action against what they call “hate speech” and, more ominously, “disinformation online.”

The new Digital Services Act now appears likely to result in even further clampdowns on free speech online, with sites with more than 45 million active users to be forced to more actively police content deemed to be either illegal or “harmful”, with “disinformation” also being a major target of the newly agreed legislation.

According to a report by Euronews, all 27 EU member-states have agreed in principle to the new measures, which will see the likes of Amazon, Twitter, and Google fined for up to six per cent of their global revenue should they go against the act once implemented.

“With the DSA we help create a safe and accountable online environment,”

…said one EU mandarin regarding the new measures, which look set to come into effect by 2024 at the earliest.

“Platforms should be transparent about their content moderation decisions, prevent dangerous disinformation from going viral and avoid unsafe products being offered on market places,”

…they continued, as another political talking head bragged that the bloc was bringing an end to the “wild west” era of the internet.

Meanwhile, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has claimed the measure will actually protect freedom of speech — though did not mention the provisional inclusion of so-called “hate speech” in her statement posted online — and that it would allow users to challenge content moderation decisions either in or outside of court.

“The DSA will upgrade the ground-rules for all online services in the EU,” the Commission president said. “It will ensure that the online environment remains a safe space, safeguarding freedom of expression and opportunities for digital businesses.”

“It gives practical effect to the principle that what is illegal offline, should be illegal online,”

…she claimed.

Breaded Pork Tenderloin

Meat is a hard sell with my teenage daughter unless I make it look like a restaurant dish. Drizzle ranch dressing or barbecue sauce on top and it’s a home run. —Donna Carney, New Lexington, Ohio

exps66333 SD153321B01 29 3b 2
Looks good, eh?

2022 04 25 17 06
2022 04 25 17 06

Directions

  1. Cut pork crosswise into 1/2-in. slices. In a shallow bowl, mix flour, cornbread mix, salt and pepper. Place egg in a separate shallow bowl. Dip pork in egg, then in flour mixture, patting to help coating adhere.
  2. In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons oil over medium heat. Add half of the pork; cook until a thermometer reads 145°, 3-4 minutes on each side. Drain on paper towels. Wipe skillet clean; repeat with remaining oil and pork. If desired, serve with sauce.

A nice tree-house

This might be a nice place to “hang out” and get away “from it all”.

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Seclusion.

Nice Quote…

In all of this, I'm merely an historian and observer whose choice is morality and the rule of law, which aligns me with Russia, China and the Multipolar World.

The frogs have been in the pot for decades while the water slowly heats. Yes, I'd say it's getting hot but most frogs don't feel the heat.

- karlof1

Is the United States eyeing Sri Lanka as another “color revolution” target?

From HERE

Sri Lankan President declares public emergency after unrest

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Friday issued an extraordinary gazette declaring a public emergency in the island nation with effect, local media reported.

The Gazette has been issued considering the prevailing situation in the country and in the interests of public security, the protection of public order and the maintenance of supplies and services essential to the life of the community, Daily Mirror reported. It further reported that Sri Lankan President has issued the gazette under the powers vested in him by Section 2 of the Public Security Ordinance (Chapter 40), as amended by Act. No. 8 of 1959. Law No. 6 of 1978 and Act, No.28 of 1988.

Moreover, Sri Lanka has also imposed a police curfew in Western Province for six hours.

"Police curfew will be in effect within the Western Province from midnight until 6.00 a.m. April 2 (tomorrow)," Police Spokesperson said, according to Daily Mirror.

Several protestors gathered outside the residence of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday as the island nation faces an unprecedented economic crisis.

The protest was staged over the government's failure to address the existing issues in the island nation. The protesters clashed with the police outside the residence of President Rajapaksa in Mirihana.

After the protest, at least ten people were injured including journalists.

Sri Lanka's economy has been in a free fall since the COVID-19 pandemic due to the crash of the tourism sector.

Sri Lanka is presently facing a foreign exchange shortage which has led to a food, fuel, power and gas shortage and has sought the assistance of friendly countries for economic assistance.

Sri Lanka is witnessing at least 10-hour daily power cuts. Sri Lanka's currency has been also devalued by almost SLR 90 against the US dollar since March 8.

King Crimson – Starless (OFFICIAL)

This was one of the top albums that I listened to in the evenings when I was a Senior in High School.

US to Deliver More Punch to Ukraine

Lloyd Austin:

“In terms of our … ehh their ability to win, is … and so they believe we could win … “.
“The first step in winning is believing that you can win.”

The US Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin says that Ukraine can triumph against the Russian invasion provided it gets …

“the right equipment and the right support”

Pentagon likely to follow through on proposals made by extremist war hawk, former NATO Commander General Breedlove …

Threatening Nuclear war is the solution to stopping Putin…

Former NATO Commander Says Western Fears Of Nuclear War Are Preventing A Proper Response To Putin | RFERL – Apr 7, 2022 |

Read the ARTICLE

Expansion to neighboring nations?

Is the conflict expanding into Transistria/Moldavia?

Looks like the crazies in Ukraine (or possibly the crazies in NATO) are trying to spread the conflict into Transnistria, the ministry of state building in Transnistria was just attacked with RPGs. Luckily no injuries, but pushing the conflict into Transistria/Moldavia is a dangerous escalation.

Chinese pretty girl

A smile is everything.

video 3MB

A nice Tree-House

Here’s another nice tree-house. This one seems suitable for a developed McMansion community.

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Tree-house for a McMansion.

“They must be out of their minds”: how the Collective West is stumbling towards nuclear Armageddon

I have in past weeks focused attention on the political talk show “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov,” calling it the best of its kind on Russian state television and a good indicator of the thinking of  Russia’s political elites.  However, it is time to admit that in terms of overall quality of presentation, level of invited panelists and screening of videos of topical developments in the West to inform the panelist discussion, Solovyov is now being outdone by Vyacheslav Nikonov’s “Great Game” talk show.

“The Great Game” in the past featured live discussion with its anchor in Washington, director of the National Interest think tank , Dmitry Simes.  Now Simes is a rare guest, and the panel format more closely resembles that of other political talk shows, with the following notable qualification:  the host, Nikonov, is an unusually gifted moderator, who does not impose his views on the panel and brings out the best from his panelists. Nikonov is a leading member of the Russian parliament from the ruling United Russia party, and has broad experience running parliamentary committees.  As the grandson of Bolshevik revolutionary Molotov, he happens also to be a member of the hereditary ruling clans and practices ‘noblesse oblige’ in his public service work.

It bears mention that alongside the Solovyov show and the widely viewed Sixty Minutes talk show of Yevgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva, ‘The Great Game’ has evolved from a once or twice weekly event to a virtually daily affair, indeed with a couple of afternoon and evening time slots as justified by fast moving current events.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, Vladimir Solovyov has at least one advantage making it worthwhile to tune in. To my knowledge, he is the only host to go outside the usual circuit of ‘talking heads’ from universities, think tanks and the Duma. Solovyov regularly feature a bona fide top manager in the arts who rubs shoulders daily with the ‘creative classes’ and shares with the audience what he hears from them.  I have in mind Mosfilm general director Karen Shakhnazarov.

Over the course of the past six weeks, I have several times pointed to the changing mood of Shakhnazarov with respect to the ‘special military operation in Ukraine.’  At first he was buoyant, then he was fearful that the operation was going badly and running out of control, and finally he appeared to be ‘all in,’ looking for ways for Russia to win decisively and quickly.

Last night, we heard from yet another mood swing.  I bring it to the attention of readers, because it has great relevance to the current complete passivity of our general public in the face of some very peculiar policy decisions with respect to Russia being made at the highest levels in the USA and in Europe, with zero public consultation so far.

To be specific, Shakhnazarov expressed amazement and deep worry that Western leaders have literally ‘lost their minds’ by pursuing measures to destabilize Russia in the hope of precipitating the overthrow of Vladimir Putin and maybe even the disintegration of Russia in a way similar to the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991.  Shakhnazarov remarked that total absence of common or any other sense in Joe Biden is to be expected because of his health (read: senility). But his jaw dropped when he heard that the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, declared a couple of days ago that “Russia must not be allowed to win this war!”    Where are his brains? Shakhnazarov asked rhetorically.

The point of Shakhnazarov’s reasoning is as follows:   Russia is the world’s leading power in terms of nuclear arms. An overthrow of Putin would lead to chaos, and very likely to genuine radicals assuming power.  Their aggressive inclinations for policy to the West would be underpinned by the vast majority of the Russian population, which, in Shakhnazarov’s view, is now overcome with pure hatred for the West brought on by the sanctions, by the rampant Russophobia that is now public policy in Europe and the USA. If the conflict should escalate to use of tactical nuclear missiles and beyond, then Russia would no longer limit its strikes to military installations but will happily target all capitals and population centers in Europe and, we may assume, in North America.   In a word, Shakhnazarov equates destabilization of Russia with nuclear Armageddon.

I repeat, these are the fears of a highly responsible and publicly visible Russian general manager in the arts.  Is anybody in the West with comparable standing even beginning to imagine the coming catastrophe let alone speak out about it?

Before closing, I redirect attention to a major newsworthy development in Russia yesterday afternoon which even our Western media have reported on this morning:  the test launch of Russia’s new Sarmat ICBM, which sets new records for speed, distance, destructive force of its MIRV warheads and, surely most important, imperviousness to all known and projected anti-missile systems in the West.  Part of the invulnerability of the Sarmat is a function of its range, which extends to every point on planet Earth.  Sarmat’s trajectory can be set as best suits its undetectability. For example, it can hit the USA by approach via the South Pole, thereby evading American tracking systems, which look to attack from the Northwest. The Sarmat’s 7 or 15 nuclear warheads can each also evade ABM systems and head for target at hypersonic speeds.

Starting in September, the Sarmat will be installed in silos till now housing the world’s most powerful ICBM, the Voevoda, which will be gradually retired and redeployed as launchers for commercial satellites.

In his words of congratulations to the designers, project developers, and manufacturers of the Sarmat, President Putin stressed the importance of the new armaments as Russia’s dissuasion directed against those in the West who would threaten the country militarily.   Is anybody listening?

Chinese wet market

With a cute girl, don’t you know. video 3MB

Slow-Cooker Stuffed Shells

There's no need to precook the shells in this simple pasta dish. It's almost like magic when you open the lid and find the deliciousness waiting in the slow cooker. Add garlic bread and you're golden! 

—Sherry Day, Pinckney, Michigan

Slow Cooker Stuffed Shells EXPS SDAM17 161032 B12 07 3b 15
Slow Cooker Stuffed Shells

2022 04 25 17 02
2022 04 25 17 02

Directions

  1. Mix first 8 ingredients (mixture will be stiff). In a greased 6-qt. slow cooker, mix 1 jar pasta sauce with water. Fill shells with ricotta mixture; layer in slow cooker. Top with remaining jar of pasta sauce.
  2. Cook, covered, on low until pasta is tender, 4-5 hours. If desired, serve with additional cheese and fresh basil.

“The ‘defactualization’ of America.”

Ukraine as mirror.

25 APRIL—It is perfectly obvious by now, to anyone who cares to look, that mainstream media in America and the other Western powers are not reporting the Ukraine crisis accurately.

Let me try that another way: The government-supervised New York Times and the rest of the corporate-owned media on both sides of the Atlantic lie routinely to their readers and viewers as to why Russia intervened in Ukraine, the progress of its military operation, the conduct of Ukrainian forces, and America’s role in purposely provoking and prolonging this crisis.

So far as I know, this is the first war in modern history with no objective, principled coverage in mainstream media of day-to-day events and their context. None. It is morn-to-night propaganda, disinformation and lies of omission—most of it fashioned by the Nazi-infested Zelensky regime in Kiev and repeated uncritically as fact.

There is one thing worse than this degenerate state of affairs. It is the extent to which the media’s malpractice is perfectly fine to most Americans. Tell us what to think and believe no matter if it is true, they say, and we will think and believe it. Show us some pictures, for images are all.

There are larger implications to consider here. Critical as it is that we understand this conflict, Ukraine is a mirror in which we see ourselves as we have become. For more Americans than I wish were so, reality forms only in images. These Americans are no longer occupants of their own lives. Risking a paradox, what they take to be reality is detached from reality.

This majority — and it is almost certainly a majority — has no thoughts or views except those first verified through the machinery of manufactured images and “facts.” Television screens, the pages of purportedly authoritative newspapers, the air waves of government-funded radio stations—NPR, the BBC—serve to certify realities that do not have to be real, truths that do not have to be true.

This leaves us in a sad and very parlous place.

Sad: Is there some state more pitiful than having no genuine connection to one’s own thoughts, perceptions, experience—altogether to one’s life? If Americans are not a profoundly sad people behind all the smiles we see in advertising, idiotic comedy shows, and on Facebook, then I must be missing something.

Parlous: Over the course of some decades—from the mid–Cold War years, I would say—Americans have been rendered highly vulnerable to the manipulations of those who control the images through which most people have come to live. Anyone who has read a history of the 20th century knows where this can lead.

The two months that have passed since the Russian intervention on 24 February have been shocking on both these counts. The derelictions of the press and broadcasters are without precedent in my lifetime, and with Vietnam, the Iraq War, and the covert operation in Syria among the wreckage in the rearview mirror, this is saying something.

I will let the American public’s enthusiasm for the sinkhole that is Ukraine, the Azov Battalion, and the ridiculous posturing of President Volodymyr Zelensky, the comedian who is no longer funny, speak for itself.

Ten days into the Russian intervention, the propaganda coming out of Kiev was already so preposterous The New York Times felt compelled to publish a piece headlined, “In Ukraine’s Information War, a Blend of Fact and Fiction.” This was a baldly rendered apologia for the many “stories of questionable veracity,” as The Times put it, then in circulation. I do love The Times for its delicate phrasing when describing indelicate matters.

There was the “Ghost of Kiev” story, featuring an heroic fighter pilot who turned out to derive from a video game. There were the Snake Island heroes, 13 Ukrainian soldiers who held out to the death on some small speck in the Black Sea, except that it turned out they surrendered, though not before Zelensky awarded them posthumous medals of honor that were not posthumous.

After railing against disinformation for years, The Times wants us to know, disinformation is O.K. in Ukraine because the Ukrainians are our side and they are simply “boosting morale.”

We cannot say we weren’t warned. The Ghost of Kiev and Snake Island turn out now to be mere prelude, opening acts in the most extensive propaganda operation of the many I can recall.

There was the maternity ward the Russians supposedly bombed in Mariupol. And then the theater, and then the art school. All filled with huddling citizens the Russian air force cynically targeted because “this is genocide,” as the ever-intemperate Zelensky does not hesitate to assert.

All of this has been reported as fact in the Times and other major dailies and, of course, by the major broadcasters. There have been pictures. There have been videos, all very persuasive to the eye.

And then, as evidence mounts that these incidents were staged as propaganda to frame the Russians and draw NATO forces directly into the war, a silence worthy of a Catholic chapel descends. We read no more of the maternity ward that turned out to be an improvised Azov base, or the theater, where citizens were herded, photographed in raggedy blankets, and sent away. Ditto the art school: Nothing more on this since the initial reports began to collapse. No body counts, no mention of the fact that Russian jets did not fly over Mariupol on the days in question.

Before proceeding to Bucha, the greatest of the outrages to date, I must reproduce a quotation from that propaganda-is-O.K. piece The Times published in its 3 March editions. It is from a Twitter user who was distressed that it became public that the Ghost of Kiev turned out to be a ghost and the Snake Island heroes didn’t do much by way of holding the fort.

“Why can’t we just let people believe some things?” this thoughtful man or woman wanted to know. What is wrong, in other words, if thinking and believing nice things that aren’t true makes people feel better?

America the beautiful, or something like that.

Bucha is a suburb of 35,000 souls a few miles north of Kiev and one of the cities Russian forces began to evacuate on 29 March as peace talks in Istanbul progressed. Two days later the mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, celebrated the city’s liberation in a selfie-speech to his citizenry. He made no mention of anything untoward in Bucha’s streets, backyards, or public spaces.

Four days later, 2 April, a special unit of the Ukrainian national police deployed to Bucha. And suddenly the place turns out to be a hellhole: bodies in the streets — 410, according to the Prosecutor General’s office in Kiev — evidence of atrocities galore, people bound and shot point blank. The whole nine, in short.

The outrage from Washington, London and Paris—“worldwide outrage,” this would be — was instant. No demand for an impartial inquiry, forensic inspections, or any such thing. No one asked why corpses left in the street for five days appeared to be fresh, or why the relatives of the dead left them there until Kiev’s commando unit arrived.

António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, was level-headed enough to state, “It is essential that an independent investigation leads to effective accountability.” This is the only sound position at this point. But we know from a long history how far SGs  at the U.N. get with this sort of talk.

In my read this is yet another of the false flags the Kiev regime flies almost by the day now. Paying-attention people will not miss the striking similarity between these incidents and the numerous put-up jobs that featured in Washington’s covert operation in Syria and the campaign of those famous “moderate rebels” who desperately wanted to draw the U.S. into the conflict.

As a matter of principle we must await evidence of what happened in Bucha, even as we know we are likely to see as much about events there as we have in Mariupol. We also know that to most people neither evidence nor its absence matters.

We have been told once again what to think and believe, and most of us will think and believe it.

We are to add this to various other “truths” now almost universally accepted: The Russian intervention had nothing to do with NATO expansion and was “unprovoked”—that favored term in the Biden regime. Ukrainian forces have pushed the Russians into retreat: not that the pressure on Kiev was a Russian diversionary tactic to keep Ukrainian forces away from Donbass where the fighting  is.

After the Pentagon Papers came out in 1971, Hannah Arendt published an essay in The New York Review of Books called “Lying in Politics.” In it she wrote of America’s slide into a sort of collective psychosis she termed “defactualization.” Facts are fragile, Arendt wrote, in that they tell no story in themselves. They can be assembled to mean whatever one wants them to mean. This leaves them vulnerable to the manipulations of storytellers.

“The deliberate falsehood deals with contingent facts,” Arendt explained in this remarkable piece of work, “that is, with matters which carry no inherent truth within themselves, no necessity to be as they are; factual truths are never compellingly true.”

A dead body in a Ukrainian street, in other words, can be assigned a meaning that, once it is established, evidence to the contrary cannot be used to erase.

It is a half-century since Arendt published “Lying in Politics.” And it is to that time, the 1960s and 1970s, that we must trace the formation of what now amounts to America’s great bubble of pretend. The world as it is has mattered less and less since Arendt’s time, the world as we have wished it to be has mattered more and more.

Nine years before Arendt published her NYRB piece, Daniel Boorstin brought out The Image: Or, What happened to the American Dream, an unjustly neglected work. “I describe the world of our making,” he wrote, “how we have used our wealth, our literacy, our technology, and our progress to create the thicket of unreality which stands between us and the facts of life.”

The press, as you can imagine, did not escape Boorstin’s scrutiny. “The reporter’s task,” he wrote memorably, “is to find a way to weave these threads of unreality into a fabric the reader will not recognize as entirely unreal.”

This is our condition. The Ukraine crisis is the mirror that reflects us as we are.

Now I will relate a peculiar coincidence, pertinent to our case.

A few weeks ago I took it upon myself to watch Marcel Ophuls’ The Sorrow and the Pity, all four hours of it. This is the famously explosive documentary that forced the French to come to terms with the extent to which they had collaborated with the Nazis during the three years and some they occupied France.

This film has a special meaning for me. It came out in 1969, just as I arrived in Paris for university studies. France was in an uproar over Ophuls’ film. It was banned from broadcast on French television until 1981. I did not understand much of this at the time.

The Sorrow and the Pity shredded to pieces, relentlessly, unblinkingly, the national myth that the French had all been heroes of the resistance, or had aided it, or had in some way stood against the collaborationist Vichy regime of Marshal Pétain, hero of Verdun in World War I, capitulationist in World War II. This was nothing like the case.

Now I understand what the young student long ago could not quite grasp. The French simply could not face Ophuls’ unyielding exposure of who they had been. Ophuls had punctured the enduring bubble of pretend within which they had lived for 25 years after the 1945 victory in Europe.

People can live in these bubbles a very long time. The unreality within them can be very persuasive. The French finally emerged from their bubble. It was painful, a passage full of angst, but they were fortunate to have escaped.

Will we have our interim of sorrow, of pity, and emerge from our bubble the better for it? May we someday be so blest.

Courtesy of Consortium News.

Caregiving for a Person with a Mental Illness

There are numerous readers that are related to, aor giving care to loved ones with mental illnesses. I, MM, did so for my wife with bipolar disorder for twenty years and it was hell. It really was. 

Here is some help and assistance for others who may still be in this situation. -MM

There are 60 million Americans who provide unpaid care to a family member, friend, or neighbor who has a physical or mental illness.  This number is expected to increase over the next few years as the baby boomer generation ages into their senior years.

Caregivers come from all walks of life and all ages.

    • The largest group of caregivers is working and is in their middle-aged adult years. They often care for a child with disabilities and/or a parent with disabilities. Those people who are taking care of both a child and parent are considered to be in the sandwich caregiver group.
    • Children ages 8-18 years make up 1.5 million of America’s caregivers. These children are typically taking care of a parent or sibling.
    • College-age students also make up a large portion of caregivers. One out of three caregivers is between the ages of 18-29 years old.
    • Grandparents are also commonly caregivers. There are about 2.7 million grandparents who care for their spouse, children, grandchildren, or friends. Many of these individuals face substantial health challenges themselves while providing care for others.

Being a caregiver comes with difficulties.

If you are a caregiver it is important to be educated not only on how to help the person you care for, but also yourself. Caregivers are more likely to have physical and mental health illnesses, a higher financial burden, and require work accommodations.

The nature of being a caregiver is to be concerned about the health and wellness of others, but it should not come at the expense of YOUR self-care.

It is important to take care of yourself by getting enough sleep, eating right, exercising, taking time out for yourself, and seeking professional help for yourself to cope with the unusual and dangerous situations you maight find yourself in..

It is common among caregivers to develop depression or anxiety. Go get a mental health screening if you are a caregiver and feel:

      • Anxious
      • Cry often
      • Lonely or detached from others
      • Angry
      • Very tired
      • Hopeless
      • Have thoughts of suicide or self-harm

External Resources

Caregiving for a Loved One with a Mental Illness
Family Caregiver Alliance
Caregivers Caring for Caregivers
Helping a Friend

Cute Chinese girl

Girl. Dog. Lots and lots of eggs. video 4MB

Read all about it: Final days of the battle for Mariupol

The Russian operation to take the port city of Mariupol is drawing to a successful conclusion.  “Success”  has to be understood today in a qualified sense, since large parts of the city now lie in ruins and as many as 4,000 civilians may have been killed in the fighting, largely victims of trigger happy Ukrainian ultra-nationalists. The Azov battalion soldiers and other irregulars holding the city from fortified positions in residential communities of this city of 460,000 shot wantonly at those who tried to escape from the basements of apartment houses to fetch water or who dared attempt to join the humanitarian corridors and exit the city. The civilian population was held hostage and constituted a “human shield.” They protected the Ukrainian forces from the full fury of Russian artillery and precision air strikes, which otherwise would have been deployed.

All of the fighting over Mariupol has gotten very little coverage in the Western media. All that we heard about was the difficulty in establishing humanitarian corridors and interviews with the few terrorized civilians who managed to get out to the West.  To be fair, the situation on the ground in Mariupol has been reported only partially by the Russians because it has been very much a work in progress that they kept under rules of secrecy in line with their entire ‘special military operation.’

Now that the capture of Mariupol is in its final phase, some information of value has been published in alternative Russian media and I propose to present that here to give readers a sense of how this war is being prosecuted and why.

Main source:  Here

In effect, most of the city proper has been taken by the Russian army and Donetsk militias, with significant assistance from a battalion of Chechens headed by their leader Kadyrov.  As the routes out of the city heading east were freed and as the snipers and other Azov forces were pushed back to provide some level of safety in the streets, large numbers of civilians have left the city in the past week. It is estimated that the civilian population remaining in Mariupol at present is about one third what it was at the start of the conflict.

The Azov fighters, other irregulars and Ukrainian army forces numbered about 4,000 at the start and now have been reduced due to casualties. They include among them “foreign mercenaries” as the Russians have said for some time.

Now from intercepted phone conversations of these belligerents, it appears that among the foreigners are NATO instructors. This means that the proxy war between Russia and the USA/NATO begins to approximate a direct confrontation, contradicting the public pronouncements coming from the Biden administration. Should the Russians succeed in taking these NATO instructors alive, which is one of their priority tasks, the next sessions of the UN Security Council could be very tense.

To be sure, the 4,000 enemy forces mentioned above were only those within the city. Ukrainian forces numbering perhaps ten times more were positioned to the west of the city at the start of hostilities. Presumably they have been pushed back to the West.

As we have known for a week or so, the remaining Azov and other Ukrainian forces have retreated from the city proper to two locations on the outskirts of Mariupol:  the port and the Azovstal industrial territory. The Russians have now entirely encircled both.

The port runs for about 3 kilometers along the sea and reaches inland about 300 meters. It is from here that in the past week, the Azov group tried to send out by helicopter a dozen or more of its top officers. The helicopter was shot down by the Russians, killing all aboard.  A relief helicopter also was destroyed by the Russians, but here one Ukrainian survived and he was interrogated about the failed operation.

The port is now being cleared of enemy forces, with the Donbas militia taking the lead.

The Azovstal industrial complex is a much tougher nut to crack. It consists of two steel works. Their specific feature is underground levels going down as much as six to eight stories, where the enemy has to be flushed out by siege methods not by artillery barrage or bombing.  As many as 3,000 nationalists and Ukrainian army soldiers may be there. The main task for the Russians is to watch all entrances and exits to the underground.

The Russians are not bombing for two reasons:

First, there is no sense in destroying the infrastructure above the ground level if the enemy is holed up below.  Moreover, there are some residential buildings in the vicinity.

Second, if you bomb and bury the nationalists underground, then there will be no witnesses to bring to court to talk about the atrocities which these people have committed in the Donbas. And there may well be in these underground bunkers still more biological laboratories which were till now very carefully kept out of view. The Russians want to get their hands on proof.

Whatever the level of destruction may be, the pending Russian victory over Ukrainian forces in Mariupol is anything but Pyrrhic.  It is a full-blooded victory with great strategic importance insofar as it gives the Russians full control of the Azov Sea littoral.

It seals the land bridge connecting the Russian Federation mainland with Crimea.

It also is a key piece in ensuring water supplies to Crimea, which had been cut off by Ukraine in order to inflict maximum pain on Russian Crimea.

With water now flowing once again from the Dnieper, there is a solid basis for resuming farming on Crimea in its traditional levels and also to support tourist inflows, a key source of income for the region. Add to that the likelihood that with some time and investment, Mariupol will reassume its important economic role as seaport and industrial town.

The Moskva Riddle

Get ready: something lethally “asymmetrical” may be about to pop up

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Neither NATO nor Russia is telling us what really happened with the Moskva, the legendary admiral ship of the Black Sea fleet.

NATO because in theory, they know. Moscow, for its part, made it clear they are not saying anything until they can be sure what happened.

One thing is certain. If the Russian Ministry of Defense finds out that NATO did it, they will let loose all the dogs from Hell on NATO, as in “asymmetrical, lethal and fast”.

On Moskva’s location: it was positioned near one of 3 drilling rigs, used for monitoring a whole sector of the Black Sea with hydrophones and NEVA-BS radar, the most westward one, BK-2 Odessa, approximately 66 km northeast from Snake Island. The whole thing was integrated in the regional monitoring systems. As in everything, literally, was monitored: ships, low flying targets, smaller echoes, even the bobbing head of an unsuspecting swimmer.

So there was a quite slim chance that anything – not to mention subsonic Neptune missiles and Bayraktar drones – could have slipped through this aerial net.

So what could have possibly happened?

It could have been some kind of underwater drone, released either from some sneaky sub, or by a SBS team, coming from the western coast, with a stopover at Snake Island. Then that drone somehow managed to drill itself through the Moskva’s hull from below – and exploded its payload inside.

What follows comes from a top source in Brussels: serious, trustworthy, proven record spanning nearly two decades. Yet he may be just spreading disinformation. Or bragging. Or that may be rock solid intel.

Before we start, we should point out it’s hard to believe the Neptune/Bayraktar fairytale angle. After all, as we’ve seen, the Russian fleet had established a multidimensional surveillance/defense layer in the direction of Odessa.

The Moskva was near Odessa, closer to Romania. A year ago, the source maintains, a new phased array locator was installed on it: the illumination range is 500 km. According to the standard Ukrainian narrative, first the Moskva was hit by a drone, and the locators and antennas were smashed. The Moskva was half blind.

Then – according to the Ukrainian narrative – they launched two Neptune cruise missiles from the shore. Guidance was carried out by NATO’s Orion, which was hanging over Romania. The missiles zoomed in on the ship with the homing heads turned off, so that the radiation beam would not be detected.

So we have guidance by NATO’s Orion, transmitting the exact coordinates, leading to two hits, and subsequent detonation of ammunition (that’s the part acknowledged by the Russian Ministry of Defense).

A strategic hit

The Moskva was on combat duty 100-120 km away from Odessa – controlling the airspace within a radius of 250-300 km. So in fact it was ensuring the overlap of the southern half of Moldova, the space from Izmail to Odessa and part of Romania (including the port of Constanta).

Its positioning could not be more strategic. Moskva was interfering with NATO’s covert transfer of military aircraft (helicopters and fighter jets) from Romania to Ukraine. It was being watched 24/7. NATO air reconnaissance was totally on it.

As the Moskva “killer”, NATO may have not chosen the Neptune, as spread by Ukrainian propaganda; the source points to the fifth-generation NSM PKR (Naval Strike Missile, with a range of 185 km, developed by Norway and the Americans.)

He describes the NSM as…

“able to reach the target along a programmed route thanks to the GPS-adjusted INS, independently find the target by flying up to it at an altitude of 3-5 meters. When reaching the target, the NSM maneuvers and deploys electronic interference. A highly sensitive thermal imager is used as a homing system, which independently determines the most vulnerable places of the target ship.”

As a direct consequence of hitting the Moskva, NATO managed to reopen an air corridor for the transfer of aircraft to the airfields of Chernivtsi, Transcarpathian and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.

In parallel, after the destruction of the Moskva, the Black Sea Fleet, according to the source,

“no longer seems to have a ship equipped with a long-range anti-aircraft missile system”.

Of course a three-band radar Sky-M system remains in play in Crimea, capable of tracking all air targets at a range of up to 600 km. One wonders whether this is enough for all Russian purposes.

So what do we really have here? Fantasy or reality? There was only one way to know.

I ran the info past the inestimable Andrei Martyanov, who knew the Moskva “as Slava in 1981 when she was afloat in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol and my class which was at first summer practice on board of old cruiser Dzerzhinsky was given an extensive introduction to her. So, she was an old lady and it is too bad that she had to finish her long life this way and at this time.”

Martyanov, once again, was the consummate professional, stressing no one, at this stage, really knows what happened. But he made some crucial points:

 “Per NSM (if we accept this version), even with its Low Observability and GPS guidance under normal (that is sea up to state 5-6) and normal radio-permeability, even the Moskva’s old frigate radar would have seen those missiles in distances of tens of kilometers, somewhere between 15-20 for sure. 

NSM, as any NATO anti-shipping missile, are subsonic, with their velocity roughly 300 meters per second. 

That leaves, even in a 15 kilometer range, 45 seconds to detect track and develop a firing solution for whatever ‘on duty’ AD complex. More than enough reaction time.”

Martyanov also stresses,

“it is impossible to hide the external impact of the anti-shipping missile – one will immediately know what hit the ship. Moreover, to hit and sink such a target as the Moskva one has to launch a salvo and not only two missiles, likely 3-4 at least. 

In this case, Russia would know who attacked Moskva. 

Does NATO know? 

I am positive this event has NATO written all over it, if it is not an internal sabotage which absolutely cannot be excluded at this stage. I am sure if Nebo was operational it would have seen the salvo.”

Which brings us to the inevitable clincher:

“If NATO was involved, I am sure we will see some retaliation, after all, as I am on record all the time, US bases in Middle East and elsewhere are nothing more than fat prestigious targets.”

So get ready: something lethally “asymmetrical” may be about to pop up.

Underline statement

One thing is certain.

If the Russian Ministry of Defense finds out that NATO did it, they will let loose all the dogs from Hell on NATO, as in “asymmetrical, lethal and fast”.

Geopolitical analysis Links

Alexander Mercouris of The Duran puts up daily reports on YouTube. He says that he is not a military analyst, but his geopolitical commentary is brilliant and he provides an excellent overview of the Ukraine conflict on a daily basis.

Russell “Texas” Bentley lives in Donetsk and has been serving alongside troops from the Donetsk People’s Republic. He provides excellent first-person coverage of the conflict. His YouTube channel was removed, allegedly for “too much violent content,” which is what happens in wars, but you can find him making appearances on other channels.

Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian journalist and geopolitical analyst who is featured in a number of publications including The NationAl Jazeera News, and many others.

John Pilger, an award-winning investigative journalist from Australia, exposes lies in the mainstream media and calls out the liars and hypocrites.

Chris Hedges is an award-winning journalist and war correspondent and was the host of “On Contact” on RT. He has also worked for The New York Times and The Washington Post in years past.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector. He lived in Russia during the Perestroika years and helped with nuclear disarmament there. He makes frequent appearances as a guest on Regis Tremblay’s YouTube channel and others. Scott is also a member of VIPS.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is a group of former intelligence professionals from agencies such as the CIA and NSA who are now calling for deep changes in those agencies and in US foreign policy. Several members of VIPS write or make appearances to discuss geopolitics. Among many others, VIPS includes:

Ray McGovern is a former 27-year veteran of the CIA who served as an analyst and prepared the President’s Daily Briefs and was a senior national security advisor to President Reagan. He co-founded VIPS in 2003 to expose how intelligence was being falsified to justify the war in Iraq. His commentary is always brilliant and often full of information that makes your jaw drop.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer who served undercover in Pakistan and later served two years in prison for exposing the CIA’s torture program.

Independent Publications
All of these are worth bookmarking and following regularly for coverage of the conflict in Ukraine as well as general geopolitics.

The Vineyard of the Saker
Moon of Alabama
CGTN
South Front
Strategic Culture
Zero Hedge
Orinoco Tribune
Consortium News
Global Research
The Grayzone
Black Agenda Report
Covert Action Magazine
The Greanville Post
Veterans Today
Pro Publica
Tom Dispatch
Oriental Review
Voltaire Network
Fort Russ
Off Guardian
Common Dreams
TeleSur
Russia Insider
World Socialist Web Site
New Eastern Outlook
Shadowproof
Mint Press News
21st Century Wire
Katehon
Signs of the Times (SOTT.NET)
Unlimited Hangout
News from Underground — Mark Crispin Miller
Clusterfuck Nation — James Howard Kunstler
Oneworld.Press — Andrew Korybko
The Corbett Report — James Corbett
Gold, Goats ‘n Guns — Tom Luongo

Geopolitical analysis from other countries
Venezuelanalysis — Venezuela
Press TV — Iran
Granma — Cuba
The Tricontinental — Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, India
UK Column — UK
Syrian-Arab News Agency (SANA) — Syria
Electronic Intifada — mostly news about Palestine
Asia Times — mostly news about China and South Asia
New Matilda — Australian independent
The Tyee — UK independent
The Expose — UK independent

The Russian perspective
Though these are not actually “indies” per se, it’s important to be aware of what is being said in Russian news. Whether or not you agree with what you hear is up to you. Most importantly, Russian news will make you aware of what you are not hearing in western news. Some of these sites are blocked in certain countries, so you might need to download a VPN to access them.

Russia Today (RT) is smeared in the west as “propaganda,” but if you actually watch RT you will realize that it provides excellent and balanced coverage. Certainly, it does have its own innate biases, as all news does, but it’s not difficult to separate the bias from the facts. RT provides excellent coverage of the conflict in Ukraine.

Sputnik Also heavily-smeared in the west, Sputnik provides excellent English-language coverage from a Russian perspective as well as a platform for many independent journalists from around the world.

TASS is a Russian news agency which has existed since Soviet times. Again, this is the Russian perspective, which is important to know.

Additional names worth following:
Caitlin Johnstone
Andrei Martyanov
Christopher C. Black
Gonzalo Lira
Michael Hudson
Garland Nixon
Richard Medhurst
Aaron Maté
George Galloway
Eva Bartlett
Giorgio Bianchi
Sonja van den Ende
Vanessa Beeley
Graham Philips
Maximilian Clarke
Patrick Lancaster
Jimmy Dore
Benjamin Norton
Lee Camp
Max Blumenthal
F. William Engdahl
Craig Murray
Earl Grey

And, though he is certainly not least, I saved him for last:

Oliver Stone, the producer of Ukraine on Fire and The Putin Interviews as well as The Untold History of the United States, all of which should be mandatory viewing for anyone delving into geopolitics. That is, if you can find them before they are scrubbed from the internet.

How to make home-made root beer

It’s a lot easier than you think.

Chinese pretty girl

video 3MB

10 Stocks US Politicians Bought Before Russia’s Attack on Ukraine

I guess they knew what they were doing…

Full article HERE

Gonzalo Lira SPEAKS OUT About His Arrest in Ukraine

Our man Flint – 1966 (Subt Esp)

We end this installment with a 1966 James Bond spoof. If you have time on your hands, and want to go “deep” on a vacation to another time; a very silly time, this movie is for you. Yes, the video quality is poor, but what do you really expect? It’s from a video tape.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Ukraine, and door porn, with delicious beef pies

Today, we continue on our “news” during the great decoupling / establishment of a new geopolitical order. In this installment, we include a host of subjects that vary from Ukraine, to delicious food, Chinese girls, and fine family meals out of America in the 1960s.

Apparently plans are already being laid to remove Zelensky once the hot war comes to a close.

From HERE

Commentry from others…

Like other FA articles by neocon/neoliberal Melinda Haring, the article begins with the same nonsensical rhetoric, war propaganda and nonsense – written to prove her neocon loyalty and to urge Congress so to keep the arms flowing because Ukraine is winning based on Ukraine’s propaganda. 

So confident in this outcome, Haring urges that planning begin now for post-war reconstruction using neoliberalism as a model. 

To promote this, she unabashedly states the "invasion may well provide an opportunity for the democratic and economic leap forward that Ukraine has never been able to realize" – just like those invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya created such opportunities. 

And apparently this post-war planning includes getting rid of Zelensky and installing Western puppets to direct their economy and Ukrainian courts. 

Sounds like 2004 Bagdad to me. 

To set the stage for installing these puppets, she begins by criticizing Zelensky without naming him: "Before the war, the country was hampered by terrible governance" then goes on to acknowledge Zelensky for “his physical courage and bravery but also for his defiant and soaring rhetoric” that his CIA handlers feed him. 

But she quickly follows this faint praise of Zelensky with: "Kyiv must avoid putting heroic but inexperienced war heroes in charge of the reconstruction process." 

Clearly she is setting up the justification for removal of Zelensky after the war. 

Furthermore, she declares that a non-Ukrainian is needed to manage the Ukraine economy, along with a private (corporate controlled) court system run by foreign judges. 

She closes her fantasy government by invoking Mikheil Saakashvili as a model politician, the gangster and corrupt con-artist who fled from Georgia and then from Ukraine followed by corruption charges.

Articles on Ukraine out of the West has entered science fiction

"Now, the situation has changed dramatically. Major Russian maneuver units have been all but destroyed, The Russians are reduced to employing second or third-rate troops and leaders as well as foreign auxiliaries acquired in earlier campaigns and outright mercenaries who are presumably the household troops of some warlord.

The objective and psychological situations cry out for a decisive assumption of the offensive by Ukraine."

From HERE.

Cute Chinese Girl

I wish that my clothes fit on me, like they do on this chick.

Video 2MB

Door Porn 1

I have this thing; this “fetish” about well-made and well-constructed doors. Doors as art…

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960936bcc85014fed18c029cc4bd50f5

Agreement between the USA and the Ukraine

It’s all in “black and white”…

agreement between usa and ukraine
agreement between usa and ukraine

Scott Morrison says Chinese military base in Solomon Islands would be ‘red line’ for Australia

Scott Morrison says Chinese military base in Solomon Islands would be ‘red line’ for Australia, US – ABC News
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Scott Morrison says China building a military base on Solomon Islands would be the “red line” for Australia and the United States, but did not say how Australia would respond if it happened.

Article here.

Lemon Pipers – Green Tambourine [5K] 1967 (Stereo)

Here’s a trip back to the groovy 1960s…

1967 (Stereo)”]

Door Porn 2

Come on! Aren’t they beautiful? This is a craftsman style front door. (Poor resolution photo. Sorry.)

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a5421b20ac779cbfbe0e8e29c8e6b056

Top American officials meeting in Honiara to discuss China pact with Solomon Islands

The United States is NOT happy.

From HERE

Top United States officials are meeting with the Solomon Islands government on Friday as Honiara's security pact with China continues to simmer.

The White House officials, who are led by Kurt Campbell, US President Joe Biden's Indo-Pacific coordinator, are on a tour of three Pacific Island countries.

 The controversial China-Solomon Islands security pact was signed this week with Australia, New Zealand, and the US all raising concerns that it will open doors for Chinese military into the Pacific.

The draft text of the deal, which was leaked online last month, says Chinese warships could stop in Honiara and China could send police and armed forces there "to assist in maintaining social order".

...

The US embassy in Port Moresby has said the US delegation has discussed the China-Solomon Islands agreement with Fiji and Papua New Guinea over the past two days.

The embassy's statement also said Campbell's delegation will also discuss "plans to open a US embassy in Honiara".

Readers should understand that Solomon’s decision to sign the security agreement with China has some historical background and practical reasons. There was a riot in 2021 in Solomon specifically targeting the Chinese and Chinese businesses. Rioters were gathering in Chinatown, destroying and setting up fire on Chinese shops and houses.

Solomon decided to switch diplomatic relationship from Taiwan to China in 2019. Usually, a foreign policy change of this type does NOT even generate much news in any country, let alone large scale protests or riots like 2021 Solomon. What happened was the works and sponsorship of foreign agents (Taiwan, US, Australia) to pressure Solomon.

US has been very unhappy that many of the dozen of countries having relationship with Taiwan want to switch side to China. Recent switches includes Nicaragua, Kiribati, etc. US put a lot of pressures on these nations – using both diplomatic/security threats as well as foreign aids as weapons.

Unsurprisingly, US is extremely furious about Solomon’s defection in 2019.

Australia, acting like a deputy henchman of a gangster, regards Solomon as the “backyard” of its own. They both sent high level teams to Solomon to warn against signing the security agreement with China.

Australia has been so ridiculously paranoid and edgy about China that even a Chinese fish processing factory in Papua New Guinea is causing “serious” security concerns in the country. Likewise, when China was helping Tonga with humanity aids after the recently volcano eruption, Australia and US expressed concerns. (FYI: Distance from Australia to Tonga: 5000 km/3000 miles, distance from Australia to Solomon 3000 km/2000 miles).

On the other hand, Australia has no problem sending navy warships to South China Sea and East China Sea, conducting jointed and live military exercises with US and Japan, patrolling spy planes and submarines in areas that were hundreds or even tens of miles from China.

Article

Aberdeen Beef Pie

When set in the middle of the table, this hearty beef pie is the center of attention. With chunks of tender beef and tasty vegetables under a flaky pastry crust, this pure comfort food will welcome your family home. 

—Peggy Goodrich, Enid, Oklahoma

Aberdeen Beef Pie EXPS TOHCA19 34092 C03 14 5B rms 2
Aberdeen Beef Pie

2022 04 25 15 19
2022 04 25 15 19

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375°. In a Dutch oven, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp. Remove to paper towels to drain. Brown the beef in drippings in batches; drain and set beef aside. Add onion to the pan; saute until crisp-tender. Add carrots, bacon and beef.
  2. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the flour, broth and Worcestershire sauce until smooth; add to beef mixture. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer until meat is tender, 1 to 1-1/2 hours. Stir in peas, salt and pepper. Transfer to an ungreased 11×7-in. baking dish.
  3. On a lightly floured surface, roll out crust into a 12×8-in. rectangle. Cut slits in crust. Place over filling; trim and seal edges. If desired, brush with beaten egg. Bake until crust is golden and filling is bubbly, 35-40 minutes. Let stand for 15 minutes before serving. Refrigerate leftovers.

Door Porn 3

Oh my. Sigh!

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5b747aae5c49a2a2a707a5327ec46e5f

Russian Capture

Russia captures an insane blockbuster stash of Ukrainian weapons left in a factory. An estimated 100,000 tons!!

Video Here

The Consequence of a NATO “false flag” using WMD in Ukraine…

Thank you for your concern over looming nuclear apocalypse -- a more imminent threat to me now than at any time in my several decades on this freaking planet. 

I think if NATO stages a nuclear false flag in Ukraine, Russia might decide the time has come to massively retaliate, directly against Western capitals.

Martynov's latest rap focuses on the same subject: what are the odds of things going nuclear? The West can only conduct narrative, not modern warfare -- so what ensues when their fragile narrative inevitably implodes? 

Some analysts (not just Martyanov) think the nuclear false flag could be fairly likely, fairly soon, depending on the whims of people like Victoria Nuland -- the lunatics running Western policy.

Martyanov presents archetypal DoD lunatic Douglas Feith -- the one who cooked up the "weapons of mass destruction" lie about Iraq -- as a template of the personality-type charged with making decisions such as this one: whether to go ahead with a nuclear false-flag. 

It was US General Tommy Franks who offered the opinion that Feith is "the fucking stupidest person on the face of the earth".

-Aleph_Null

Nazi’s will be Nazi’s

Azov battalion soldier calling for the cutting-off of the heads of the children in the Donbas, this comes on top of a Ukrainian doctor calling for the castration of Russian troops, and then there’s this, Ukrainian TV host Fahrudin Sharafman quoted Adolf Eichmann, one of the organizers of the Holocaust, and called on air for the killing of Russian civilians, including children.

From HERE

Door Porn 4

Aren’t these doors beautiful? This is in a Craftsman style home.

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bfbae6a9afd1fe0047c647219a4bf40a

War as a distraction

Maybe so, maybe not. Anyways, something to think about.

Dear friends and fellow comentators: You are being deceived. Please stop over-analyzing the little war in Ukraine and commence fighting the really big, real war that it has been exploited to ignite. Thank you.

I have become convinced that the agencies of the Western ruling eleets have been cultivating the Ukrainian NAZIs since long before the 'Maidan Revolution' took place in Ukraine in February 2014 to exterminate the de facto Russians largely in the Eastern side of that territory. The NAZI's massive attack upon the de facto Russians, in conjunction with the attempt to enrole Ukraine in NATO, forced Russia to intervene militarily. All of this was done primarily to construct a war theater in which the Russians could be accused of perpetrating atrocities and war crimes in order to poison the minds of the U.S and E.U. citizens so as to direct hatred toward Russia and President Putin.

This is necessary because the USian and EUian population must be distracted from the fortcoming Great Depression-II that is about to engulf the West. It will probably not occure in the East, so this distraction and hatred is absolutely necessary. The real war is not in the Ukraine: The real war is occurring within the minds of the subjects of the Western totalitarian dictatorship. You my friends are the real soldiers.

-blues

What Russia thinks and says…

All in variance with what is reported in the MSM “news”.

About two weeks ago, Putin said the following:

Today, the system of the unipolar world that developed after the collapse of the Soviet Union is being destroyed, that’s what is most important. The main thing is not even the tragic events taking place in the Donbas and Ukraine, because this is not the main thing. Much is said that the United States is ‘ready to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.’ And they say, and we say, in fact, this is how it is. That is the quintessence of the events taking place.” [My Emphasis]

Lavrov about the same time said the aim of the SMO is to end the Outlaw US Empire’s hegemony.

Those facts ought to have enormous influence on any analysis of the current situation. Furthermore, two other facts must be added to the scales–China/Russia’s 4 February Joint Declaration and Xi Jinping’s Boao Forum Speech–of the overall Geopolitical equation wherein our Hybrid Third World War’s centered. And all that has bearing on Guterres talks with Lavrov tomorrow:

On April 26, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will hold talks with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who will arrive in Moscow on a working visit.

The focus will be on issues related to the crisis situation in Ukraine, the DPR and the LPR, which has developed as a result of the eight-year conflict unleashed by Kiev against the population of Donbass. The interlocutor will be informed about the progress of the special military operation carried out by Russia in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. It is also planned to touch upon a number of acute issues on the international agenda, including Syria, Libya and the Middle East settlement.

Particular emphasis will be placed on our unwavering support for the work of the UN and the provisions of its Charter, as well as the central coordinating role of the world Organization in world affairs. In addition, the parties will discuss the possibility of developing productive cooperation between Russia and the UN Secretariat. [My Emphasis]

Somehow a global view of the Big Picture needs to be adopted instead of the Westerncentric POV to which most of us are subjected. However, this Western saying is very apt: Pride goeth before the storm.

American CIA & Military running Ukraine

What we're seeing is conclusive evidence that Ukraine isn't being run by Ukrainians but by CIA and State Dept flunkies who've actually been in control since 2014. 

Putin has already confirmed Outlaw US Empire/NATO policy is to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. 

Russia's clearly doing what it can to negate that policy but overcoming almost four generations of OUN genocidal Russophobia nurtured by the CIA is making that task difficult. 

There's too much evidence of intensive indoctrination of that dogma throughout Ukraine's military, not just the Nazi units, that's making it very hard for Ukrainian soldiers to save themselves.

-karlof1

We can well expect this to be the case in Taiwan.

Interesting updates in the Ukrainian conflict

As the Russians advance and seize control, many NATO troops, American, Canadian, and British leaders are killed and captured. It appears that the entire Ukraine was / is festering with Western military, forces and equipment. One can well expect that to be the case in Taiwan as well.

On the southern front of the Ukraine, no real advances but some interesting updates. Firstly there’s been a lot of troop captures, including some near Malinovka just east of Hulipole. 17 were captured, pictured here:

2022 04 25 11 28
2022 04 25 11 28

Reportedly 2 of them were Azovs, 1 a foreign instructor, and one Croat. What’s interesting is that more and more we’re seeing foreign fighters among the AFU troop compositions. There’s been 3 different new videos showing fighters with British flags, this being one of them:

Videos

I posted last time a British flag on a liquidated fighter. Now also in the north Russians recovered a chevron that is said to be of a Sergeant in the French Foreign Legion:

From HERE

Everywhere you look now on the battlefield there are foreign flags. Here’s an earlier video of the storming of Rubizhnoe, with American flags visible for some reason:

Video

Now there’s reports that a Canadian General may be one of the high value targets trapped in Azovstal:

From HERE

There is no real details about him being in Azovstal, and this appears speculation partly stemming from reports he hasn’t been “heard from” in Ukraine. However his departure to Ukraine is a 100% confirmed fact reported in Canada’s own press:

Article

In fact the general was under fire for sex crimes and appeared to have “retired” and quickly fled to Ukraine to dodge repercussions. He’d make a good bedfellow to the Azovites in Azovstal. Some have even speculated that, since the alleged ‘American general’ who was purported to be trapped in Azovstal also has a similar last name that starts with a ‘C’ (Cloutier), that perhaps a mistake was made and all this talk of a trapped general is in fact this Canadian named Cadieu.

Now, a Turkish newspaper is claiming Macron abandoned over 50 French officers who are trapped in Azovstal:

From HERE

“According to the source, these are high-rank French officers. They’re on the ground to ensure that Ukrainian military & neo-Nazis are able to use the weapons handed over by the Western countries. They are entrapped now and only way out to go through the corridor by Russian side.”

You can translate the article here:

Article

On the topic of Azovstal, some interesting updates:

Firstly, more light is being shone on the insides of it, leaked pictures showing wounded Azov fighters and some of their milieu.

View HERE

A video has also emerged showing the rotting Azov wounded festering in their subterranean dwellings:

View HERE

Some Azov fighters manage to sneak out and are caught by the allied cordon around the plant. Here’s one who points out his own dead commander to the Chechens who caught him:

See HERE

Here’s an Azov fighter captured by Chechens who begins showing them the maps of where the Azov group is hidden in the factory:

From HERE

And a video of an ex-employee of the Azovstal who was once a shift supervisor there, who has volunteered his expertise to show the likely place where the main Azov group is hiding in the complex:

Article

“An underground pedestrian tunnel passes under the plate shop, right under it the exit goes inside the shop, two exits – in the TLC itself. If the workshop is hot, then there is a powerful water supply system for cooling equipment and metal, and then there are necessarily powerful reinforced concrete sedimentation tanks there,” Chuprin said.”

As you can see, the operation to root the Azovites out still continues despite Putin’s decree to not ‘storm’ the complex. They are abiding by the decree but are simply going about it the smart way, figuring out exactly where Azov is in the complex and then finding a solution to root them out.

Door Porn 5

I just cannot help myself.

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7ccff899b89e7d5385aa18d317b5d971

Never Ending Song Of Love- Delaney And Bonnie-1971

Here’s a trip back to the earth shoes and bell bottom 1970s…

Chinese big girl

This is what a more robust, big girl looks like in China. I like the look, but that’s just me. video 4MB

Why Are So Many Mysterious Fires Happening At Food Processing Facilities All Across The United States?

.

Everyone can see that something really strange appears to be happening, and now even Tucker Carlson is talking about it on television.  For months, unusual fires have been erupting at important food industry facilities all over America.  Last Thursday, I put together a list of 16 major fires that have occurred just since the start of the year.  Unfortunately, since I wrote that article a couple more “mysterious incidents” have taken place.  Very early on Saturday, firefighters were called out to battle a fire at a General Mills facility in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

An early morning fire at General Mills led first responders to the roof of the company to attack the flames from above. The call came in around 3:45am on Saturday at the plant located at 4800 Edgewood Road SW. First responders discovered hot spots where a vent stack makes contact with the roof.

Steam and smoke were already visible. Crews reached the roof and confirmed the location of the fire below them with the help of thermal imaging. Firefighters removed roofing material and found the flames working their way through the ceiling and traveling with the vent stack.

Oddly, this fire erupted less than 48 hours after a plane crashed at a General Mills facility in Covington, Georgia

Investigators spent Friday at the General Mills plant in Covington combing through the wreckage of a deadly plane crash that happened the previous evening.

A twin-engine Cessna crashed into several semi trailers at remote part of the cereal plant on Thursday evening killing two people, the Covington Police Department said.

Is it just a “coincidence” that there were two major disasters at General Mills facilities within 48 hours of one another?

That is what some would have us believe.

Of course there have been a whole bunch of other “coincidences” happening lately too.

Less than a week ago, the headquarters of Azure Standard burned to the ground in a massive fire.  CEO David Stelzer is admitting that all Azure Market liquid products will be out of stock for the foreseeable future as a result…

He also added, “For our customers, three primary product groups are affected due to the destroyed automated liquid pour facility, fruit packing facilities and carob products facilities.” He continued, “Because of this, we will experience out-of-stock status for Azure Market oils, honey and vinegars – basically any Azure Market liquid product – as well as our carob products for the short term. We are not yet at fruit harvest, so no immediate impact will be experienced from the loss of our fruit packing facility. None of the products we distribute for our vendors will be affected,” he concluded.

And just a few days before that, a “four-alarm fire” destroyed a very important food processing facility in Salinas, California…

Authorities Thursday lifted all evacuation and shelter-in-place orders in an area of Salinas where a four-alarm fire sparked a day earlier at a food processing plant, prompting fears of a possible explosion and hazardous plume of ammonia, city officials said.

The fire was initially reported at about 7:15 p.m. Wednesday at the Taylor Farms processing facility on Abbott Street and prompted an order early Thursday for evacuations affecting an estimated 2,700 people and a shelter-in-place order affecting an estimated 35,000 people.

If these were isolated incidents, perhaps we never would have even taken notice of them.

But they aren’t isolated incidents.

In fact, fires have been mysteriously erupting at America’s food processing facilities for many months.

This is absolutely not coincidental. pic.twitter.com/6pJsOEGIjd
— Kween JosieNN+ (@KweenJosie) April 23, 2022

Strangely, the latest fires happened during the same week that the FBI admitted that America’s farmers are now being specifically targeted by ransomware attacks

A new warning right now for local farmers.

The FBI says you need to be on alert for ransomware attacks. As KDKA money editor Jon Delano explains, those attacks on farmers could impact the rest of us at the grocery store.

Whether it’s a dairy or poultry farm, a cattle farm, or a farm that grows grain, farming is a key part of Pennsylvania’s economy.

Could there be some relation between these two stories?

For now, the FBI is not saying.

And most of the talking heads on television are assuring us that there is nothing to be concerned about and that everything will be just fine.

Meanwhile, more fires continue to make the news.

On Sunday, it was being reported that “nearly a dozen wildfires” had just roared through key agricultural areas of Nebraska…

Sunday was far from a day of rest for firefighters across much of the state, as they continued to mop up nearly a dozen wildfires and remained alert for more.

By Sunday morning, the Road 702 Fire in the Cambridge area covered 50,000 acres — a much larger area than the 33,000 acres burned in the April 7-9 fire in Gosper and Furnas counties. A management team from the Rocky Mountain area took command of the battle at 7 a.m. Sunday morning.

And a total of 20 wildfires are ripping across New Mexico as I write this article…

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has signed emergency declarations as 20 wildfires continued to burn Sunday in nearly half of the state’s drought-stricken 33 counties.

I don’t know how all of the things that I have discussed in this article tie together.

But what I do know is that all of them will have an impact on our American  food supply.

As I have discussed previously, UN officials are warning that we are heading into the worst global food crisis since World War II.

Do you remember when millions of people died of starvation in the 1980s and there were endless appeals on television asking us to give to the hungry?

Well, authorities are telling us that what is coming is going to be much worse than that.

A “perfect storm” of factors is combining to create the greatest stress on global food supplies that we have seen in modern times.

But most of the talking heads on television want you to believe that everything is under control and that better times are just around the corner.

You can believe them if you want, but my recommendation is to get prepared for this crisis while you still can.

Door Porn 6

Another beauty.

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18c489a8f0feca8aa44575eb18062e85

Ten EU countries sold kit to Russia despite sanctions

Ten EU countries sold kit to Russia despite sanctions … France and Germany have exported hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of weapons to …
.

From HERE

2 x news: double head snake? India stiffens its criticism of Russia’s attack on Ukraine

2020 04 07: India stiffens its criticism of Russia’s attack on Ukraine

Article

2020 04 19: India can criticize Russia’s Ukraine invasion – The Hindu

From HERE

Girl in Han clothing

Han style clothing is popular within China. Nice. video 4MB

Swiss block German request to deliver ammo to Ukraine

Sneaky behavior: Swiss looted Russian money as well at the beginning of the US led sanctions. Now behaved differently: due to Russian success in recent war in Ukraine most armed region?
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Swiss block German request to deliver ammo to Ukraine.
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Article
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Peppercorn Beef Top Loin Roast

A red wine sauce complements the brown sugar rub on the roast in this inviting entree. You can’t go wrong with this down-home dish!—Taste of Home Test Kitchen

Peppercorn Beef Top Loin Roast EXPS GBHRHBZ18 43183 E07 18 2b 2
Peppercorn Beef Top Loin Roast

2022 04 25 15 24
2022 04 25 15 24

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 325° Trim fat from roast. If desired, tie roast with kitchen twine every 1-1/2 to 2 inches to help beef maintain shape while cooking. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, peppercorns, garlic and salt. Rub over meat. Place in a shallow roasting pan.
  2. Bake until meat reaches desired doneness (for medium-rare, a thermometer should read 135°; medium, 140°; medium-well, 145°), 1 to 1-1/2 hours. Remove from oven, tent with foil and let stand for 15 minutes before slicing.
  3. Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, saute onion in oil until tender. Stir in tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce until blended. Add wines. Bring to a boil; cook until liquid is reduced to about 1-1/2 cups. Serve with roast.

Door Porn 7

I suppose that that is the theme here. Eh?

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00401e13dc5aa03b99e0b289efbadb48

Links on reports of CIA / Nazi cross training in Ukraine

The Mighty Wurlitzer Does an About-Face on Ukrainian Nazis
Posted by: Will 198 3-22-22

MoA

It’s like all the media forgot that they themselves were reporting on the neo-Nazi’s in Ukraine as far back as eight years ago. In fact, it’s like all the MSM (*) outlets were told what to say back then, and what precisely opposite things to say now.

EUROPEAN “JUSTICE”

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ignored ALL 689 COMPLAINTS filed against Kiev for its slow motion killing of more than 14,000 civilians in the Luhansk People’s Republic in the past 8 years. 

-Luhansk ombudswoman Victoria Serdyukova

Article – https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/14/us-house-admits-nazi-role-ukraine
Article – https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-neo-nazi-question-in_b_4938747
Article – https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-heartbreaking-irony-of-winter-on-fire/tnamp/
Article – https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/06/opinion/speedie-ukraine-far-right/index.html
Article- https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/18/yes-there-are-bad-guys-in-the-ukrainian-government/
Article – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/azov-far-right-fighters-ukraine-neo-nazis
Article – https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/analysis-u-s-cozies-kiev-government-including-far-right-n66061
Article – https://www.rferl.org/a/azov-ukraine-s-most-prominent-ultranationalist-group-sets-its-sights-on-u-s-europe/29600564.html
Article – https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27173857
Article – https://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/is_the_us_backing_neo_nazis_in_ukraine_partner/
Article – https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-ukraine-commentary-idUSKBN1GV2TY
Article – https://fair.org/home/denying-the-far-right-role-in-the-ukrainian-revolution/
Article – https://www.channel4.com/news/svoboda-ministers-ukraine-new-government-far-right
Article – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpV16BQfbrQ
Article – https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/americas-collusion-with-neo-nazis/
Article – https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-ukraine-commentary-idUSKBN1GV2TY
Article – https://thehill.com/opinion/international/359609-the-reality-of-neo-nazis-in-the-ukraine-is-far-from-kremlin-propaganda
Article – https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regiment
Article – https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
Article – https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-america-training-neonazis-in-ukraine
Article – https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/10/ukraine-azov-brigade-nazis-abuses-separatists/24664937/
Article – https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russia/

And then there’s this list (some duplications)

Article – https://askeptic.substack.com/p/the-msms-ukraine-amnesia?s=r

The Hill – The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
Time – How a White-Supremacist Militia Uses Facebook to Radicalize and Train New Members
USA Today – 15,000 Ukraine nationalists march for divisive Bandera
New Republic – Fascism returns to the continent it once destroyed
NBC – German TV Shows Nazi Symbols on Helmets of Ukraine Soldiers
Foreign Policy – Yes, There Are Bad Guys in the Ukrainian Government
CNN – Rein in Ukraine’s neo-fascists
NBC – U.S. Cozies Up to Kiev Government Including Far Right
Salon – Is the US backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine?
Reuters – Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
BBC – Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist Right Sector
BBC – Ukraine conflict: ‘White power’ warrior from Sweden
Foreign Policy – Preparing for War With Ukraine’s Fascist Defenders of Freedom
The Guardian – Ultranationalism in Ukraine – a photo essay
Huffington Post – The Neo-Nazi Question in Ukraine
The Nation – The Heartbreaking Irony of ‘Winter on Fire’
The Guardian – Azov fighters are Ukraine’s greatest weapon and may be its greatest threat
The Nation – America’s Collusion With Neo-Nazis
The Nation – Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
USA Today – Volunteer Ukrainian unit includes Nazis
Foreign Policy – There’s One Far-Right Movement That Hates the Kremlin
Aljazeera – Who are Ukraine’s far-right Azov regiment?
Daily Beast – Is America Training Neonazis in Ukraine?
Radio Free Europe – In Ukraine, Ultranationalist Militia Strikes Fear In Some Quarters
Channel 4 – How the far-right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum
Radio Free Europe – Azov, Ukraine’s Most Prominent Ultranationalist Group, Sets Its Sights On U.S., Europe
NBC – Ukraine’s Hyper-Nationalist Military Summer Camp for Kids

Chinese Take Out

Good video. Video. 4MB

1788. China to Make Electric Tumbrils

By Fred Reed for the Saker Blog

We—I, and my spousal unit, Violeta—pulled into DC after a conventionally miserable flight from Guadalajara in seats apparently designed for dwarves with our feet almost in our pockets and Delta trying to sell us beer at seven dollars a can. I didn’t get it. If you can sell watery brew at seven balloonishly inflating greenbacks a can, why do you need an airline?

The occasion was a visit to a woman with whom I immediately became involved, though with Violeta’s permission. She weighs seven and a half pounds and has a smile that would make a dead man weep. This may have little geopolitical importance, though.

Anyway, the proud father celebrated having produced, or coproduced, a baby who probably deserves a world run by psychiatrically less fascinating adults, by taking about a dozen of us to Fogo da Something, a Brazilian restaurant on Pennsylvania across from the Trump Hotel. This costs $64 a head for all the meat and salad bar you could eat, desserts and drinks extra, so with tip you can crawl out, stuffed and economically depleted, for about $90. Salad bar good, desserts swell, meat tasteless. You can do better for a sixth the price at La Carreta, down the lake from us in Mexico.

The meal was a pre-guillotine experience, especially the restaurant. Or I hope so. The waiter says, “Hi! I’m Bruce and I am going to be your waitperson and do everything I can to make sure you have a wonderful, wonderful dining experience. We are orgasmically delighted to see you and….” When a waiter oozes like that, sure, he’s looking for tips, but I wonder, tips of what?

In Mexico waiters are courteous but you can tell they don’t want to sit in your lap or have a long-term relationship. In New York a waiter says, “What’ll it be?” and you say, “Eggs over medium, bacon on the side, cuppa mud,” and he says, “You got it.” Human. It gets the job done. You couldn’t write a Proust novel about it.

Anyway, the place was big, I’d guess between seventy-five and a hundred people doing the squat-and-gobble, likely disgorging on average a C-note per. This is DC, with the five richest counties in America, Montgomery, Loudoun, Fairfax, that kind of place, a city where the graft never stops, recession proof, where bribes run in freshets. Out there in Flyover Land, in Appalachia and the Rust Belt and the rural Deep South, families think going to Mickey D’s is a treat. And the swarming derelicts in the warm states increase in their medieval Ly diseased hordes.

Guillotine stocks. It’s the way to invest.

Washington is a rerun. In Paris in 1788 , creeping toward the Terror, the aristocracy was, like Washington’s upper crust, wealthy and schooled and cultured and cared not a withered farthing about the peasantry, as neither does Washington. Marie Antoinette didn’t really say, “Let them eat cake,” but they all thought it, and Hillary Antoinette, with her contempt for the Basket of Deplorables, expresses the same sentiment. There will be a price. Maybe anyway.

I spent two weeks in this diseased city wondering, “What are they thinking? The country is disintegrating internally, inflation growing like kudzu on a Georgia roadcut, living standards falling, the schools going to hell, and Washington is worried about…the Ukraine? Things crumble, resources are desperately needed domestically, and Washington buys the B-21, which Aviation Week prices at $640 million a copy of which, by design, you have probably never heard.”

It’s nuts. The racial situation is an intensifying disaster with continent-wide rioting, burning cities, ghetto kids graduating illiterate, desperate white people offing themselves with opioids, the rabble storming the Bastille—wait, this time I think it was the Capitol–but we need to raise prices by tariffs on China and Russia.

One night we went to eat with old friends from an earlier life. Like so many in DC, they were ninety-ninth percentile in intelligence, well educated, and decent people. We pondered, “Thai? Chinese? There’s a new Turkish place that’s supposed to be good.” Again, good people, though living in million-dollar houses, but…but…for much of the country Turkish, in some spiffy joint on Cap Hill or upper Connecticut Ave, would be the adventure of a lifetime. Washington has an ampleness of evil people, the Bidens, Blinkens, Victoria Newlands, Trump at one remove, but so many are just out of touch. There’s a new Turkish place in the city, and when was the last time they dined in Flint?

The media, a salt mine in which I once labored, are an embarrassment, utterly partisan, ranting and howling about Russia. OK, in war it is usual to cut the public off from information and to keep them stirred up with accounts of rape, human shield, “genocide,” chemical war, massacres, torture, a rule of television being to get a woman to cry and fill the frame. In Vietnam the media ran all over the country and actually reported what was happening, which eventually ended the war. This error is not being repeated.

{what bothers me is the apparent lack of curiosity, of doubt of official sources. Contrary to belief in some quarters, reporters are not given orders to adopt a particular point of view, though they know better than to contradict the publication’s line. No scribbler at the Washington Post will discuss racial differences in intelligence. But they are herd animals.}

Violeta, whose cynicism toward government—anybody’s government—would peel paint from a wall, watched a video clip purportedly of a Russian tank crushing a car occupied by Ukrainians. She noticed after research that the Russian tank was black without markings, like Ukrainian tanks, instead of green with markings, like all other Russian tanks. OK, maybe it was an undercover Russian tank. She also noticed in some of the Russian-destruction video, street signs are blurred out. Uh…, why dat? Anyone want to guess?

Why do reporters not pay attention? First, again, they are creatures of the pack. They live in the Beltway Terrarium, talk to each other, read each other, and so know they are right. Don’t their colleagues all say so? Second, they are painfully ignorant of matters military, knowing chiefly the bureaucracies involved in policy, contracting, and so on. This includes those for the WaPo, whom I knew—Gerge Wilson, Molly Moore, etc. As a comparison with the coverage of the Washington media, here is a piece by Scott Ritter, a former American intelligence officer stationed in, among other places, Moscow. It is long but contains the kind of knowledge that not one of the Beltways reporters, squalling, screeching, preening and yodeling has an earthworm’s grasp.

Why did Russia attack? Anyone who can read a map can see that since 1991 the US has been trying, with considerable success, to encircle Russia militarily. Russia has said over and over that it was not going to have American missiles on its border in the Ukraine any more than America would allow Chinese missiles in Tijuana. I encountered no one in DC who had even heard of this, though it has been going on for years. This is journalism?

Yes.

All things end, except those that don’t. On a cold rainy predawn morning we caught an Uber to Reagan National, returning to a country that has just left the Third World to one energetically returning to it. A stewardess aboard read the boilerplate about have a wonderful flight. She didn’t explain just how that laudable goal might be achieved. Remember, cometh the guillotine. Kachunk. Kachunk. Kachun.

“Russia & China, Together at Last”: Historian Al McCoy Predicts Ukraine War to Birth New World Order

This is something that I have been saying for years. Well worth the watch; “Push, Push, Punch”. Not long, but well worth it.

Cute Chinese girl

Going shopping. Video 5MB

The New Aim for Ukraine

Meanwhile the U.S. announced a vague new aim for its proxy war against Russia:

Austin was in Poland, answering questions from reporters after a brief trip Sunday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Kyiv, where the pair met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials.

The defense secretary was asked how he defined “America’s goals for success” in Ukraine. He first said Washington wants to see “Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country, able to protect its sovereign territory.”

Then, he said, the United States hopes Russia will be “weakened” by the war. “It has already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability,” Austin said. 
...
Speaking in a hangar in Poland filled with crates of humanitarian aid, including diapers, destined for Ukraine, the top Biden administration officials announced more than $700 million in new military aid to Ukraine and other countries, and said the United States intends to resume diplomatic operations in Ukraine this week.

All the diapers, weapons and munitions the U.S. and other countries supply to Ukraine will now mostly be stuck in west Ukraine where they will rot until some clever Ukrainian oligarch manages to sell them off to some third country.

This Island Earth

We end this installment with an old science fiction movie. If you have time on your hands, and want to go “deep” on a vacation to another time, this movie is for you.

Conclusion

When you are stable, and you have a good income, it is time to perform prudent and traditional methods of stocking your larders, building your relationships in your communities, and learning skills… as well as helping others, and being a Rufus.

This is an odd time. It’s a time of husbanding of resources.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Gonzalo Lira is alive and Ukraine continues to crumble

We continue our lives while the world spins towards a very odd, and strange point in time. It’s rather bizarre, and many, many things are in play. But yet, we all sit here, all within our various homes, with hope for a brief and a clear passage to the other side. Oh, no! We don’t want that. We want a slow train wreck. We want to side step the insanity, and carefully protect ourselves. And thus, here on MM we continue our reporting during this crazed period of time.

Crazy time?

Yeah, but that’s not your problem. You can control your reality. You have the tools. Make it happen.

Washington thinks and acts like it is the Manifest Destiny of the us to rule the world in perpetuity.

-pretzelattack

Gonzalo Lira is alive

Lira had been arrested on April 15 by the SBU, the Ukrainian Gestapo, but is now at some private place in Kharkov under a kind of house arrest. He is not allowed to leave the city. It seems that the public attention the case had caught has helped to hold back the nastier side of the Ukrainian authorities. Last night Alex Christoforou of The Duran published a short video talk with Gonzalo Lira (vid).

Russian MFA Statement on Gonzalo Lira

Russian Mission – Geneva

International concern forced the Ukrainian Security Service to show that 🇨🇱/🇺🇸 reporter Gonzalo Lira, whom the nationalists detained on April 15, is alive!

However, he doesn’t have access to his cellphone and social media accounts, gagged on what he can say publicly, and not allowed to leave Kharkov.

In a way, he got “lucky”. A number of his fellow journalists, who received “the Ukrainian treatment of the free press”, will never be seen again.

Concerning the Women who heads the EU and NATO…

"Like the sanctions from hell these woke women will be taking their countries into a self imposed nightmare that may well end in a bright flash..."

-Peter AU1

Ex-NATO analyst paints a completely different picture of Ukraine war

From HERE.

The retired Swiss Colonel Jacques Baud has written a lengthy article in which he paints a completely different picture of the war in Ukraine than portrayed in the Western media. The former NATO analyst helped Ukraine build its army for years.

Baud noted that the so-called Russian-backed separatists in Donbass were never supported in any way by Russia for the past eight years. After the Maidan coup in 2014, the Russian-speaking part of the population – civilians – were attacked by Ukrainian soldiers. In cities like Odessa, Mariupol, Luhansk and Donetsk massacres were carried out by them. Since then, a civil war has raged in the country.

Baud was working as an army analyst for NATO in 2014, when his team discovered that the rebels’ weapons were not supplied by Russia, but by Russian-speaking defectors from the Ukrainian armed forces.

How did he know this?

There was a massive exodus, after which Baud had to help to rebuild the image of the Ukrainian army. This turned out to be a long and arduous process. In the process, extremist paramilitary militias, including the Azov Battalion, sprung up.

In 2020, 40 percent of the Ukrainian army consisted of these militias, Baud said. He describes the members as cruel fanatics. They were funded, trained and armed by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France.

Baud further pointed out that President Zelensky announced last year that he intended to take Crimea and he sent his troops south to complete the task. In February, the Ukrainian army began bombing Donbass on a large scale.

The former colonel added that US President Biden announced on February 17 that Russia would attack Ukraine within days. How did he know this? Since February 16, the civilian population of Donbass has been massively bombed by the Ukrainian army. The European Union, media, NATO and Western governments nonetheless kept mum as this was happening.

Three reasons

It seems the European Union and Western countries deliberately did not say anything about the massacre in Donbass because they knew it would provoke a Russian response, the ex-NATO analyst said.

He also pointed out that in January saboteurs with Western equipment were caught in Donbass who spoke Polish. They had wanted to cause incidents with chemical substances in Gorlovka. Baud said Joe Biden knew the mass bombing and acts of sabotage would lead to a Russian invasion.

According to him, there are three reasons for this war: the expansion of NATO, refusal of the West to implement the Minsk agreements and the large-scale attacks on the civilian population of Donbass over the past eight years.

Western weapons for Ukraine find their way back to the EU

Large amounts of weapons are currently being shipped into Ukraine by the West, but these may find their way back to their countries of origin.

A huge amount of small arms and small ammunition, anti-tank weapons and handheld anti-air systems now constitute a serious, long term danger to the EU and the world at large since these fit into a car trunk and can easily be smuggled across borders.

Gangs in Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany also probably already know this much.

In the same way as former US president Barack Obama empowered terrorist networks in Syria, by describing ISIS fighters there as “moderate rebels” and arming them, religious fanatics in the EU could benefit from these arms. Ukraine has a reputation of being one the world’s most active suppliers of illegal small arms.

According to military analyst Larry Johnson, French Gendarmes have reported that small arms and surface-air missiles had already made their way via black-markets from Ukraine to France. France is also an ethnic powder keg waiting to ignite.

The CIA is in essence setting up a new al-Qaeda in Europe. “I couldn’t tell you where they are in Ukraine and whether the Ukrainians are using them at this point,” a senior defense official told reporters last week. “They’re not telling us every round of ammunition they’re firing and at who and when. We may never know exactly to what degree they’ve using the Switchblades.”

In fact, the US Defense Department has no idea who receives the weapons, according to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby.

The Cost of German made products…

London (CNN Business) The price of goods leaving German factories has passed an eye-watering milestone. German annual producer price inflation topped 30% in March, the country's Federal Statistics Office said on Wednesday. That's its highest level since the agency began collecting data 73 years ago...

Best Cream Of Broccoli Soup

This broccoli soup recipe is thick and flavorful. It is simple, delicious, and quick to make. Enjoy (I know you will).

  • Simple ingredients.
  • Easy and quick to make.

OIP.VC2iKumgLeNVMustx88hYgHaE8
Cream Of Broccoli Soup.

"Delicious and buttery," raves LoriT. "I used skim milk and it was great. Like some of the other reviews, I scooped out about a ladle of the cooked broccoli and did not puree it. Adding it back to the pureed mixture gave the soup a more hearty texture."

"This is the ultimate comfort food," according to misscarolb. "It's so simple to throw together and takes almost no time at all. I feel so great eating things that aren't full of processed ingredients, and I definitely can't wait to harvest my own vegetables this summer and make this again. This one is going straight in the recipe book."

"I make this soup a couple times a month, with the intention of freezing it for later use," says Julia Courtney. "The problem is ... we always eat it all! I drizzle mine with olive oil and sprinkle with fresh grated Parmesan cheese! SO good!"

Here’s what you’ll need to make the best cream of broccoli soup ever:

Butter
You’ll use butter twice in this recipe. Once to sauté the onions and celery (butter adds rich flavor to sautéed vegetables) and again at the end to make a roux.

Onions and Celery
Like so many great soups, this recipe starts with onions and celery. These veggies add complexity and depth of flavor.

Broth
Chicken broth is the liquid base for this cream of broccoli soup. For a vegetarian option, substitute vegetable broth.

Broccoli
You can’t have cream of broccoli soup without broccoli! Choose dark green broccoli with firm stems.

Flour, Milk, and Butter
All-purpose flour, milk, and the rest of the butter are cooked together to create a roux. When added to the soup, it creates a thick and velvety texture that’s impossible to resist.

Pepper
Ground black pepper is the perfect finishing touch. Add other spices and seasonings to taste.

How to Make Cream of Broccoli Soup

You can make this cream of broccoli soup recipe in about a half an hour, so it’s the perfect choice for busy weeknights. You’ll find the full recipe below, but here’s a brief overview of what you can expect:

Cook the Vegetables

Sauté the onions and celery in butter until they’re tender. Add the broccoli florets and the chicken broth, cover the pot, and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Then…

Blend the Ingredients

You can use a countertop blender or an immersion blender to purée the soup. Give it a few quick pulses, then blend continuously until the soup is totally smooth.

Done? Good. Now…

Thicken the Soup

Melt a few tablespoons of butter in a separate saucepan. Stir in the flour, then the milk. Cook the milk mixture until it’s thick and bubbly, then add it to the soup. Finish it off with a dash of pepper (and the other seasonings of your choosing).

And you are done!

How to Store Cream of Broccoli Soup

You’ll need to refrigerate this soup within two hours of cooking. Let it cool to room temperature, then transfer it to an airtight container and store in the refrigerator for three to four days.

Can You Freeze Cream of Broccoli Soup?

Yes! You can absolutely freeze cream of broccoli soup — and you should if you plan to keep it for more than a few days.

Ladle the soup in serving-sized portions  into zip-top freezer bags. Label the bags with the date, lay them flat in the freezer, and freeze for up to two to three months.

Thrift store find

2022 04 23 12 44
2022 04 23 12 44

Canada is shipping it’s military equipment to Ukraine

Meanwhile Canada has revealed it sent 4 new howitzers to Ukraine along with ammo from it’s own military stocks. This is just crazy. Canada is sending it’s own military equipment to Ukraine.

From HERE

Virtually all the NATO states are sending their weapon & ammo stocks to Ukraine.

Once there, Russia either destroys them, or blows them up.

Meanwhile, one of the largest Ukrainian armouries, 65th arsenal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Balakliya, containing hundreds of tons of ammo was abandoned by the Ukies, and left to the Russians to use.

Nuclear Family

February 1942. Woodville, Calif. “FSA farm workers’ community. Agricultural worker and his family in their garden house.” Photo by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Admin. View full size.

SHORPY 8c23929a.preview
February 1942. Woodville, Calif. “FSA farm workers’ community. Agricultural worker and his family in their garden house.” Photo by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Admin.

Scott Ritter Interviews

I’ve watched a few Scott Ritter interviews and he is very good because he always seems to introduce a different aspect. In this one, if you go forward to about 23 minutes in he is asked why western media is telling everyone that Ukraine is winning when he has just explained that the opposite is true …

Go HERE

I’ve watched it three times now and it seems to me he avoids the question, presumably because an honest answer would be too damning.

Pretty Chinese girl

video 10MB

United States engaging Russia

Should the US engage itself with Russia, even if it should prevail, it will not survive in a condition to take on China.

Once the realisation kicks in that it has lost superpower status it will only have two choices: Submit to the new Global Superpower, or attempt to destroy it using the only remaining force it has left: Nuclear weapons

... and we all know where that leads.


-Arch Bungle

Some British propaganda and analysis

Operation Z – The Death Throes of an Imperial Delusion - RUSI, April 22, 2022

Image caption: "A Russian soldier walks amid the rubble
in Mariupol’s eastern side, 15 April 2022.
Courtesy of SOPA Images / Alamy"

The British use special filters on photographs to make everything from Russia and China look gloomy. In all photos and videos on Russian channels Mariupol looks stunningly beautiful, even in its totally destroyed state.

Reminder: Around nine months ago Western video bloggers from China complained that BBC falsified their footage by adding a “gloom” filter to it. BBC corrected the screenshot, but never acknowledged their distortions.

They don’t just apply a filter. Someone at the BBC has to actually manipulate the photo to produce those results. Brian Berletic at The New Atlas shows just how dishonest they are:

Watch it HERE

Thrift store find

2022 04 23 12 45
2022 04 23 12 45

Interesting language map of Ukraine

2022 04 24 15 22
2022 04 24 15 22

The many different types of bread

If you have restricted yourself to one or two breads, you are really, really missing out in some of the best things in life.

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Breads

What the heck is going on?

This might be regarded as off-topic perhaps but it is lurking in the background of everything these days, namely the seeming determination of some in the United States to bring the country to the point of collapse. Dunno who, dunno why but it seems incontrovertible that's it's happening. Last year one of only two HCQ factories was burned down (in Taiwan). Then they changed the trucker permit rules in California so that only a fraction of previous trucks were allowed to pick up cargo in L.A. airport (this important factoid being rarely reported). Now we have a President trotting out with a readout about upcoming food shortages at the same time that food processing plants are suddenly burning down. In other words, we are witnessed a period of controlled economic and societal demolition.

This is part of what is happening in the asymmetrically waged world war. I believe that the Eurasian campaign right now is principally directed at collapsing the US-EU alliance along with breaking the back of the already enfeebled Republic In Name Only (Dis)United States. That being the case, I cannot help but wonder if first Obama and now Biden (who is on record already for being on the take in Ukraine and China with Obama's FBI chief Mueller having been involved in Russia-uranium shenanigans) are part of a coordinated world wide conspiracy of which the Ukraine war is merely a small, if dramatically kinetic, part.

From HERE
"Well, something odd and concerning has been happening ever since the Biden Administration made their ominous prediction. Over the past month, there has been a mysterious wave of destruction hitting the US food processing infrastructure that has seen “over a dozen” food production facilities destroyed completely or rendered inoperable.

This week alone there were TWO – yes two – separate incidents where a plane crashed into food processing plants, one in Idaho on April 13th, and the other in Georgia on the 21st at the General Mills Processing Facility.

In addition to the plane crashes, there have been numerous other incidents this month, including several fires and a sudden boiler explosion. The timing of this string of disastrous events has many people wondering what in the heck is going on?"

-Scorpion

India has chosen sides

Japan says India refused to accept cargo plane for Ukraine aid – media
India has refused to allow a Japanese military plane meant to deliver “humanitarian aid” to displaced Ukrainians to land in the country.
.
That’s according to Nikkei Asia citing Sanae Takaichi, policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, as saying, Ukrinform reports. The Government of Japan had planned to have the aircraft load supplies such as blankets at a stopover in India and transport them to Ukraine’s neighbors, including Poland and Romania. The aid was requested by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.  No further details were provided on the aid batch.
.

Takaichi criticized Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government over the matter, saying, “Clearly, the government has not done enough groundwork.”

From HERE.

Russia’s war aims

In a talk at a defense industry meeting Major General Rustam Minnekaev, Deputy Commander of the Central Military District, named areas of Ukraine which Russia wants to secure (machine translation):

"Since the beginning of the second phase of the special operation, it has already begun, literally two days ago, one of the tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over the Donbass and southern Ukraine," he said. ..."

This (control over the Donbass - TASS note) will provide a land corridor to the Crimea, as well as influence the vital facilities of the Ukrainian [military forces], Black Sea ports through which agricultural and metallurgical products are delivered to [other] countries," - said the deputy commander.

"Control over the South of Ukraine is another way out to [Transnistria], where there are also facts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population. 

Apparently, we are now at war with the whole world, as it was in the Great Patriotic War, all of Europe, the whole world was against us. And now the same thing, they never liked Russia," he added.

The Russian ambassador to the U.S. again named the political aims:

Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine is aimed at [1] demilitarization and [2] denazification of the country, and Moscow will ensure that the country has [3] a non-nuclear and neutral status, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said on Thursday.

Pretty Chinese girl

video 3MB

Song of Serbia 塞爾維亞中國之歌 — 18 H-20 transports delivered HQ-22 ABM systems to Serbia

In the eyes of the Serbs, China is extremely powerful, and they want to be as powerful as China! They wrote a song for this purpose; the name of the song is: If Serbia were as strong as China.

中國有巴鉄, 還有塞鉄.

The lyrics are as follows:

If Serbia were as strong as China, no one would dare to mess with us.

If Serbia is as strong as China, Serbia will not be ignored.

If Serbia is as strong as China,

If we had the same system and discipline,

If we also have the atomic bomb,

If weapons could be as common as dirt,

Are we not going to lose that war?”

如果塞爾維亞和中國一樣强大, 沒有人敢欺負我.

如果塞爾維亞和中國一樣强大, 沒有人會不理我.

如果我們强大有像中國的核武器, 紐約變廣島.

Serbia’s predecessor is Yugoslavia. Neither the Chinese nor the Serbs should forget 1999. One night in May 1999, five precision-guided bombs flew over Belgrade from different directions, all targeting the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. To this end, we sacrificed three reporters: Xu Xinghu, Zhu Ying, Shao Yunhuan! Yugoslavia was also divided into five countries: FRY ( Serbia and Montenegro ), Slovenia , Croatia , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Macedonia.

A very special thrift store find.

I’d buy it and most certainly place it on my wall.

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Special find.

From Colonel Cassad Telegram channel…

USA encrypted radios have been captured in Ukraine.

Good toy. By the way, Harris' Falcon 3 radios are already able to connect to satellite relay and control networks. So it would be very interesting to see the firmware of this unit 

https://t.me/anna_news/29417?single

ANNA-NEWS|News|Syria|Donbass|Nagorno-Karabakh
The American encrypted radio from the Falcon III family, supplied to Ukraine, became a trophy.

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American encrypted radio Falcon III.

Bandit’s Roost

New York, 1888. “Bandits’ roost, 59½ Mulberry Street (Mulberry Bend).” Gelatin silver print from a glass negative by the social reformer Jacob Riis (1849-1914). View full size.

SHORPY Riis Bandits Roost 2.preview
New York, 1888. “Bandits’ roost, 59½ Mulberry Street (Mulberry Bend).” Gelatin silver print from a glass negative by the social reformer Jacob Riis (1849-1914).

The EU has paid Russia $38 billion for energy since the Ukraine war began. Now it’s considering escrow accounts to freeze the Kremlin’s revenue

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the EU’s 27 member states have made energy payments totaling about 35 billion euros, or roughly $38 billion, the trading bloc’s foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell, said Wednesday, according to the Wall Street Journal.
.
But EU officials are considering the establishment of escrow accounts into which the bloc could funnel at least some of its energy payments, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.An escrow account would effectively freeze overseas Russian energy revenue. But Putin has warned that Russia would cut off its energy supply if the country can’t access payments for it.

From HERE.

Nations have a right to sovereignty and territorial integrity.

They have the freedom to set their own course and choose with whom they will associate.

The 1993 Apology Resolution by the U.S. Congress concedes that "the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and [...] the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaii or through a plebiscite or referendum".

At the very end of the nineteenth century, Cuba became a virtual colony of the United States as a result of the latter winning the so-called Spanish-American war. Initially the US gained Cuban support by promising (through the ‘Teller Amendment’) that its role was temporary and it would then ‘leave the government and control of the island to its people’.

But what should have been the final stages in Cuba’s war of independence became instead (according to Richard Gott) a four-year US military dictatorship that lasted until 1902.

When Cubans showed renewed signs of wanting the independence they thought they’d already won, it was permitted only after they were humiliated into accepting the ‘Platt Amendment’.

This effectively reneged on the earlier promises, established a permanent right for the US to intervene whenever it felt the need, and specifically required Cuba to lease land for ‘coaling or naval stations’.

On the face of it, Platt both legitimised a series of military interventions over the period until 1923 and paved the way for the Guantánamo lease.

Although it was repealed in 1934, the amendment was replaced with a new treaty that allowed the naval base to be kept indefinitely.

The US hold on Guantánamo was further tightened by the Helms-Burton Act in 1996: this effectively made the return of the base conditional on regime change in Cuba.

However, this did not make the holding of the base legitimate under international law. As Cuba has pointed out, the ‘lease’ was effectively imposed under the threat of force and would now be illegal under the Vienna Conventions. As a measure forced on the then Cuban government, it was hardly a mutually beneficial arrangement. The fact that the US only pays just over $4,000 annually for the lease (with cheques that are never cashed) is a further indicator of the scale of the injustice. It is an anomaly that cannot be sustained if normal diplomatic relations between the two countries are to be restored, 

A most interesting development.

Here we are in round two of'Cold War 2.0'.......

The Russians, have neatly evaded all western economic sanctions.
This has literally pushed all western economies into super stagflation , ouch , ouch!

The aged baby boomers are retiring. 

The key component of all western economic spending power is rapidly declining. Even the ethically driven world's largest fund in Norway. Took a big hit. So, did all the baby boomers future retirement cash investment funds too. 

Plus the bad news! 

All major western currencies have been reduced to the value of free air. The Western major corporate banks are on the verge of imploding, yet again! 

These , very unpopular Western leaders , are unable to handle reality of the new real world. Lack even the basic knowledge to control stagflation.... 

Oh well, duck and cover! I suspect all Neocons, will now go ballistic!

-Bad Deal Motors On

WMD next?

US Has Moved on to WMD Provocations After Economic Pressure Against Russia Failed, Zakharova Says – 23.04.2022, Sputnik International

From HERE.

A thrift store find

I’m very curious as to what other uses it could be put towards.

2022 04 23 12 51
2022 04 23 12 51

An article and video on the UN meeting about US bio warfare

From HERE.

A mind-boggling “discovery” that Russian forces in Ukraine stumbled upon is the use of numbered birds by the Pentagon-funded labs. This almost falls out of science fiction and Sir Alfred Hitchcock could have made an epic movie out of it where deception mixes with innocence and man’s cruelty to nature becomes unbearably grotesque. The project works like this:

To begin with, the Pentagon accesses the scientific data available with environmental specialists and zoologists after studying the migration of birds and observing them throughout the seasons, relating to the path these birds take each year on their seasonal journey from one country to another and even from one continent to others.

On the basis of this data, groups of migratory birds are caught, digitised and capsules of germs are attached to them that carry a chip to be controlled through computers. 

The birds are then released to the flock of the migratory birds in those target countries toward which the US intelligence has malevolent intentions...

... During the long flight of the birds that have been digitised in the Pentagon bio-labs, their movement is monitored step by step by means of satellites and the exact locations are determined. The idea is that if the Biden Administration (or the CIA) has a requirement to inflict harm on, say, Russia or China (or India for that matter), the chip is destroyed when the bird is in their skies.

A message from the 1980s

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1618502364 1n66wcue5t

Current Russian operations in Ukraine

Since the launch of phase two of its operation, the Russia military has not started any larger offensive but has increased its artillery fire on the frontline. Here is a part of the ‘clobber list’ from this morning’s Russian Defense Ministry briefing:

Kalibr high-precision long-range missiles destroyed up to a battalion of enemy personnel with weapons and military equipment near Miliorativnoe railway station.

High-precision air-based missiles of the Russian Aerospace Forces hit 3 military assets of Ukraine. 
...
Operational-tactical aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces hit 58 military assets of Ukraine. Among them: 4 command posts, 3 fuel depots, and 51 areas of Ukrainian manpower and military equipment concentration.

Missile troops and artillery carried out 1,285 firing missions during the night. Destroyed: 9 fuel depots, 37 command posts. 1,221 strong points, areas of enemy's manpower and military equipment were hit.

One artillery firing missions usually includes multiple guns (often 6) and multiple shells (3 to 10) fired per gun. This constant incoming artillery fire will be extremely demoralizing (and deadly) for the Ukrainian troops on the frontline.

(I have experienced only one artillery onslaught, during officer training and in a safe bunker. It was still extremely violent. Some of us literally wet their pants.)

The Ukrainian soldiers can only dig in, keep their heads down, and hope to not receive a direct hit. Their artillery is gone. They have no way left to respond to the fire. After a few days of this, the Russian troops will be able to roll them up with little difficulties.

Nuclear war is on the horizon

From HERE

Some readers have asked why Russia regards Finland’s membership in NATO as a provocation. For the same reason that Ukraine’s membership is a provocation: US missile bases on Russia’s border.

The US does not currently have hypersonic missiles, but will sooner or later. Such missiles on Russia’s borders could reach Moscow in 3 or 4 minutes, clearly an existential threat. Along with Finland, Washington wants the bases in Sweden and the Baltic states, and already has missile bases in Poland and Romania.

Whereas Washington intends Finland’s NATO membership as a new provocation, we must not forget two other existing provocations that the Kremlin has declared to be unacceptable: the existing missile bases in Poland and Romania.

It makes no sense for Russia to preemptively prevent missile bases in Ukraine and Finland while permitting existing bases to remain in Poland and Romania. Russian intervention against these two bases are likely the next self-defensive actions the Russians will take.

The West’s whore media has done its best to create worldwide indignation against Russia. People worked up into indignation do not perceive the irresponsibility of Western governments in gratuitously threatening Russia with missile bases on her borders. Instead of properly perceiving the placement of the bases as aggression against Russia, the indoctrinated people see Russia’s response to existential threats as aggression.

I have emphasized for years that these provocations of Russia will eventually cross a red line and result in nuclear war.

I have long been critical of the Kremlin for not having stopped these provocations by putting down a strong foot. Russia had that opportunity in Ukraine, but the Kremlin chose a course that failed to make the necessary impression that countries that accommodate US aggression against Russia will experience devastation.

It is less risky to make this demonstration in a non-NATO country than in a NATO one. Additionally, the Kremlin waited far too long before intervening in Ukraine, thereby giving the US 8 years to arm and train Ukrainian forces.

By pussy-footing around in Ukraine, Russia will again be confronted with the same problem in Finland or elsewhere in addition to the two existing bases in two NATO members on Russia’s border. There is no doubt whatsoever that US/NATO have set a path that leads straight to nuclear war. As nothing that is outside the narrative can be published or discussed in the Western world, nothing can be done to stop this insane drive into nuclear war. It is not even possible to discuss this threat in Western foreign policy circles. Again the world is sleepwalking into war, but this war will be nuclear and the final war.

All that the Kremlin has achieved with its restraint and reliance on negotiation with the West is to intensify the pace and level of provocations. NATO’s Stoltenberg is courting both Finland and Sweden for NATO membership promising their membership would be fast-tracked, and likely other benefits including bagfuls of money. This report should wake people up to the real situation, which is expanding conflict. At some point existential considerations will force Russia to take the initiative and cease responding to Washington’s agenda.

Russia sends Lithuanian, Estonian and Latvian diplomats packing.

"The Russian Foreign Ministry responded to the “unfriendly actions” of the three Baltic states on Thursday, by closing their consulates and declaring their staff ‘personae non grata’. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had previously announced their decision to close their Russian consulates.

The ministry summoned top representatives of the diplomatic missions of these countries to express a “strong protest” over such measures. 

During the meeting, Russia announced it would forbid the operations of all three countries’ Consulates General in Saint Petersburg, as well as of Latvia’s consulate and Estonia’s consulate in Pskov. 

The foreign ministry specified that the decision was made “on the basis of the principle of reciprocity,” as well as taking into account the military assistance that was being provided by these countries to Kiev, and “the covering up of the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists against the civilian population of the Donbass and Ukraine.”"

US Army battle manuals were used by neo-nazi “Azov” Ukrainian police unit.

It appears that all military structuring, weapons, equipment, and systems are all to US standard. In fact, there is little evidence that Ukraine has ANY unique home-grown military systems. It is a full American military operation, only using local Ukraine forces.

USA officials used to condemn “Azov” and deny cooperation

Chinese online selling on DouXing

There are a host of people on the Chinese internet platforms trying to sell their goods, their services, and their products. In China, you don’t need to be a million-dollar company to put up advertisements, and you don’t need to register with the government, nor are you told to obey specific laws regarding diversity and climate change. You just make a video and post it.

Here are some women setting the clothing that they designed themselves, and which are made in their factories, or in the factories that they work with…

video 52MB

video 21MB

video 14MB

EU and UK to Meet Russia’s Demand to Pay for Gas in Rubles

A scheme proposed by the European Commission will allow EU companies to pay for Russian gas in rubles without violating EU sanctions.

From HERE

Australian prices must be paid…

Dumb Aussies put themselves in China's crosshairs when they agreed to the idiotic AUKUS nuclear sub deal.

China's agreement with the Solomon likely came as a direct response to it. It also came as a result of Australian Defence Force's short sightedness and lack of strategic thinking (racism?) when Chinese business owners in Solomon Islands were not adequately protected and attacked in the recent unrest, prompting China with a pretext to step in.

Solomon Islands was also a planned staging ground for future deployments by the US Navy and missile launching systems, as an alternative to Guam in the second Island chain network of bases in its pivot to Asia. Not any more it seems...

-Et Tu

Americans believe that they are invincible

I have made the same exact point in conversation with many of my fellow Americans. It falls on deaf ears. They cannot begin to imagine that there is a location on the planet where US power does not utterly eclipse any possible rival or alternative. They cannot imagine that Russia has any power, or any say. America rules the waves. America rules the skies. America rules the land. End of story.

Understand that America knows no geography. It is not taught in schools. It is a point of honor for Americans to be ignorant of geography. In these latter days most cannot read a map at all. They use GPS to know where they are and how to get where they are going.

In previous post Bernhard notes that European and US leaders begin the stages of grief. At retail level consumers of news universally believe Ukraine is winning and Russia is being smashed. Which is the only possible outcome. There is no universe where Russia might win.

-oldhippie

A Swede who survived the Russian attack on a NATO training camp speaks out

From HERE

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joel

NATO denies that any of their instructors were present at the time of the Russian attack, and even the Pentagon said the last of their people had left the Yavoriv military base a few weeks ago. Swedish reporter Dan Malmquist spoke to a survivor of the bombed International Center for Peacekeeping and Security near the Polish border.

However, the attack from Russia so close to the border with NATO country Poland was called a “significant escalation” by the British government and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned that any shelling of a neighboring NATO member – even if it happens by mistake – will lead to a “full-scale response” from the military alliance.

Ukrainian authorities have confirmed that 30 rockets hit the base, citing the casualties of 35 dead and 134 wounded. The Ministry of Defense claimed that no foreigners were confirmed among the dead. British daily The Mirror reported that the number of dead probably exceeds 100 and that at least three British ex-soldiers were feared to have been killed.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that it had eliminated “up to 180 foreign mercenaries and a large number of foreign weapons” and that Russia would continue to attack foreign troops in Ukraine. They are considered illegal combatants and are not covered by the laws of war on how, among other things, prisoners are to be treated.

The attack came shortly after the Kremlin pointed out that arms deliveries from the West are legitimate targets for military attacks.

President Vladimir Zelensky reiterated his call for NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

“If you do not close the sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian rockets fall on your territory, on NATO territory,” Zelensky said in a video on the same day as the attack.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry on Thursday 17 March, still had no information about Swedes injured or killed in the attack.

Swedish mercenary survived to recount what had happened

In an interview with 26-year-old Sundsvall resident Joel Karlsson who was at the base when it was attacked, said: “That night the air siren went off at three in the morning. When we ran out to take defensive positions, we saw that there was a Russian drone above the tree line. It felt weird that they had to go around there with drones – an officer had confirmed that it was a drone – but they told us to go to bed again, and since I was so damn tired, I did not question it.

“At six o’clock in the morning it just erupted, the whole house vibrated, people screamed. I immediately realized that ‘now it’s serious’, so I put on a jacket and ran out towards the forest. When I opened the door, I saw a cruise missile coming with the naked eye. Then more came. They had damn good accuracy. In the beginning, eight missiles arrived.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a press release that the military base was attacked with “long-range precision weapons”. Our sources have not been able to independently confirm if the base was attacked by fighter jets or if it was cruise missiles. Both aircraft and cruise missiles use jet engines, so only the sound can be difficult to distinguish. The “cruise missile” that Karlsson saw may have been a missile fired from an airplane.

Ukrainian colonel Anton Mironovich, spokesman for the National Army Academy in Lviv, told Buzzfeed that “the attack was carried out by fighter jets taking off from Saratov air base in western Russia but approaching from the south, from the Black Sea and the Sea of ​​Azov”. At the same time, he stated that “All legionnaires survived. No killed, no injured,” a statement which Joel Karlsson immediately contradicted.

“We heard jets and when we ran out into the woods we heard artillery fire in the distance. I asked a sergeant or officer if it was artillery and he said it was. It was pitch black out in the woods, people started screaming and raving. Everything was on fire at the base and people were starting to shout for us to come back and help the wounded, help put out the fires and so on. Some then said outright that we can not go back to a base where it was bombed ten minutes earlier, because it will be bombed again.”

The Ukrainians led the foreign recruits into the open

“They asked us to regroup and put ourselves in large groups to wait for new orders. We did that and stood and discussed what was happening. Some had obtained weapons but most were completely unarmed. Then the Ukrainian officers started talking some propaganda shit about the Russians not daring to send in any jets over our land.”

Dan Malmquist (DM): “Just after you were bombed by jets, did they say that the Russian would not dare to send any jets?”

Joel Karlsson (JK): “Yes, they claimed that it was an ‘uncoordinated attack’ in sheer desperation. That is absolutely not true, it was a coordinated attack. Almost every missile hit where it was supposed to, they took out exactly the stuff they knew they were going to aim at. So there was someone in there who had leaked information.”

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2022 04 24 18 18

DM: Where did the missiles hit?

“The first was an ammunition depot that was located in a discreet building, an old barn or similar. Another hit a small building where there was a gym, but there were a lot of people camping and sleeping, which they apparently knew. They [the recruits] probably did not even have time to wake up before they were killed.”

DM: So they are setting you up unarmed on open ground immediately after a hostile air strike?

“Yes, exactly, on open ground… Even I understand that these are shitty decisions that were made. They asked us to walk towards some helicopter landing sites on completely open and level ground. Then there are reports that someone has seen helicopters and there is talk that there are Russian paratroopers at the entrance. Then they line up people and say that we should consolidate the positions and defend the base against the paratroopers without weapons.

“Myself and a few others immediately said that we did not intend to do that. Others started protesting and said they had no weapons. A British officer told my group that ‘those who want to go can go, those who want to stay can stay’. Then I said that I did not come there to fight without weapons, it would be suicide. Myself and about thirty others left the other way, away from where the attack was expected. A small evacuation bus arrived and we hopped on board. Later we learned that about 45 minutes after we left, 20 more missiles came and leveled everything to the ground.”

DM: Did ground troops come in too? [No Russian ground troops have been confirmed to have been used in the attack. ed.]

“I do not know. But the Ukrainians were very quick to abandon the base. It was the volunteer legionaries from other countries who were allowed to fortify the positions without weapons, while most of the Ukrainian officers and soldiers just ran away. There was a whole bunch of Ukrainians who was supposed to help us, but they jumped in cars and just ran from there.”

DM: Who then led the command in that situation?

“It was very unclear. I never even had time to grasp who were the top officers at the base after being there for several days. There were new people who came and talked all the time, some held training sessions or gave out information, often without even knowing English so they had to have interpreters with them. It was a fucking circus, everything felt frivolous from the beginning.”

DM: Who came in with the evacuation bus?

“I do not know. It was just an ordinary school bus type, with a driver who did not speak English either. He came in, we jumped on board, he drove into the base while we shout that he can not go there and must turn around. He was escorted by a small car with a military guy in it, but he was in civilian clothes.”

DM: You wrote on a group on Telegram that you thought it was a PR coup from the Ukrainians, that they wanted volunteers to be struck. But that would not make it easier for them to recruit volunteers.

“I do not really know, it can also just have been a lot of infiltrators among the officers and pure incompetence. But it was at least quite obvious that they completely ignored the fact of volunteers had died. Some of us had managed to get hold of weapons and then came Ukrainian soldiers who tore the weapons out of our hands to take them for themselves. Then they ordered us to move towards where the paratroopers would arrive while they were sitting further back with weapons, so that we would attract fire. That was just before they ran away.”

DM: You were used as cannon fodder in short?

“Yes absolutely. There was a guy who had a weapon left and they shouted that they would give him ammunition. Then they claimed that the ammunition depot was locked. So there was only one guy in our group who had a weapon but not a single cartridge, and they started shouting that we had to stay and were not be allowed to leave the base.”

“I’m probably a bit conspiratorial, but I think it may have been deliberate. I’m not saying that it is so, but it was something damn clever in any case, everything was handled so strangely from beginning to end.”

DM: How big are the losses?

“I think that the Russians’ figure of 180 dead may very well be correct. Almost my entire shooting company went to where they were told that the paratroopers would come and that was where lots of bombs fell later. If there were 300 people on the base in total and 180 had died, I do not doubt it, I rather think that there may be more. In retrospect, we have had some contact with some guys who went back to look for survivors, and from them I heard that they found two who survived the post-bombing. There are certainly more than the two who survived, but there can not be many. It was such a sick devastation.

“When we ran out into the forest, we also did not know that it was mined with our own landmines. Of course, the officers knew about it, but we recruits had not received any information at all, so it was one of our own guys who died that way when we ran into the forest.”

DM: If this had been done deliberately by the Ukrainians, who do you think ordered it in that case?

“I do not know. At first I really thought it was a PR trick considering how incredibly badly everything was handled. You would run into a forest with mines in it, stand against paratroopers unarmed, and the warning air siren had been switched off. In fact, it felt like they wanted the worst slaughter of people. There may be other explanations – a guy from some intelligence service said that it had been confirmed that there was espionage and sabotage at the base. But at the very least they used us as pure cannon fodder.”

DM: So there was no air siren warning during the attack?

“Nothing. I woke up to the first bomb that fell. And they had no bunkers, no trenches, nothing. They had not told us where we would take shelter if an attack came. It was all just weird. Afterwards, I spoke to an American soldier from the special forces who pointed out how insane it was that we were ordered to stand on open ground by the helicopter pads. He refused to obey orders and remained in the woods instead. Among our group that withdrew from there, there were several elite soldiers who said that ‘this was the sickest thing I have been through in my whole life’. They had served in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Falkland Islands, all kinds of wars, and say they have never been in such a vulnerable situation. ‘Suicide mission’, several of them said bluntly.”

DM: How were you treated before the Russian attack?

“All right, but everything was so badly controlled. Bad equipment, bad organization, bad discipline. Poor hygiene and poor food made people sick all the time. They did not seem to know anything at all. Soldiers with experience said they had never experienced anything like it. I asked for a pair of gloves that I could wear in combat and they came with a pair of blue-red Helly Hansen gloves that practically shouted ‘here I am’ if you tried to camouflage yourself. Many also did not have the right equipment, the right uniforms and so on. There were no helmets, no vests, nothing.”

DM: So what happens now, are you going home to Sweden again?

“I’ll go home to fix certain things, then I’ll go again, but now to conduct humanitarian work. I was never particularly keen on fighting to begin with and was assured that they needed all sorts of people, not just soldiers, so I had really intended to work as a welder or mechanic behind the front. But when we were there, it was ‘welcome here, you get ten days of training and then you are sent to the front’. A few days later we still did not have a weapon and it was reduced to ‘five days of training, you get a weapon on the way to Kiev and then you will go into battle’.”

DM: Were people were sent straight to their deaths?

“To say the least. There were also so many leaks on this base that the Russians always knew what was happening. There had been a bus ride to Kiev with about thirty ‘fully trained’ volunteers. It ended up in a fire attack, a single one survived and was captured by Russians. In another bus with 80 people, four survived and managed to get back to base, the other 76 were killed. So the Russians knew everything that came in or out of that base, but they just kept sending people straight to their deaths.”

DM: Where did you hear this?

“It was a guy at the base who told me. There were confirmed fire attacks on the road to Kiev.”

DM: How did you react to that?

“I got nervous. Really nervous. But I went there for a reason. I had expected this. I knew I could die. It is war. I did not go there for nothing.”

DM: Do you think there were spies and saboteurs at the base?

“Yes, there are many who claim it. That they knew exactly where to fire their missiles to cause maximum damage, that the warning air siren was turned off just when the real attack came after it had been working quite well until then.

DM: Did your friend you came with survive?

“I have a very hard time believing it. He was one of those who lined up to go to the helicopter pads, and I have not heard anything from him since. It’s possible that he’s alive somewhere on Ukrainian territory, but I do not think so.”

DM: Who was he?

“A 32-year-old guy I met in Sundsvall where we both live. We exercised together and stuff like that. Nice guy.”

DM: I’m sorry. Did you know more people at the base, and were there more Swedes there?

“I personally met at least ten Swedes and you heard Swedish a little here and there. The day after the attack, when we managed to get to Poland, we sat there in a pub and had a beer and came across several Swedes who had been on their way to the base. Otherwise, it was people from all sorts of countries and political orientations. I know two Swedes who survived besides myself, the rest I have no idea.”

More bread appreciation

How about this for some ideas to add some versitility to your daily meals…

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More Breads.

Today’s lesson: finger splints!

February 1942. Woodville, Calif. “FSA farm workers’ community. First aid class.” Today’s lesson: finger splints! Photo by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

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February 1942. Woodville, Calif. “FSA farm workers’ community. First aid class.” Today’s lesson: finger splints! Photo by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration.

Pot Roast

This is an easy oven-baked pot roast with vegetables. The aroma will make you hungry while this delicious roast bakes.

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Pot Roast

Ingredients

Ingredient Checklist

Directions

Instructions Checklist
  • Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).

  • Place roast in a large baking pan; arrange potatoes, onion, carrots, and celery around roast. Pour 3 cups water into baking pan. Season roast with salt, pepper, and garlic salt. Cover pan with aluminum foil.

  • Bake in the preheated oven until roast is browned and cooked through, about 3 hours. An instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the roast should read 145 degrees F (65 degrees C). Transfer roast to an oven-safe platter. Remove vegetables using a slotted spoon and arrange around roast.

  • Reduce oven temperature to 200 degrees F (95 degrees C). Place platter with roast and vegetables in the oven to keep warm.

  • Pour the remaining juices from the baking pan into a saucepan; bring to a boil. Stir 1/2 cup water and cornstarch together in a bowl until smooth; pour into boiling pan juices. Reduce heat to medium; cook, stirring constantly, until gravy is thick, about 5 minutes; season with salt and pepper. Stir in browning sauce.

Finance Ministers From Western Countries Walk Out Of G20 Meeting As Russian Delegates Speak

Note: 2022 G20 summit: only 3 country (UK, France, Canada) followed US walkout of G20 meeting when Russian speak. That mean 16 countries including a Germany etc, stay for Russia. The crusaders have no friends in G20.

Finance Ministers From Western Countries Walk Out Of G20 Meeting As Russian Delegates Speak

From HERE

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her Canadian and European counterparts on April 20 led a walkout of a meeting of Group of 20 finance officials in protest against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

British, French, and Canadian officials joined the walkout of the virtual meeting, which took place on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington.

Yellen told attendees she strongly disapproved of a senior Russian official’s presence at the meeting, according to two sources quoted by Reuters. The U.S. treasury secretary said earlier this week she would not take part in meetings with her global counterparts if Russian officials were included.

Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko also walked out, according to AFP, quoting a source familiar with the event.

British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak said that he, Yellen, and Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland walked out as Russian delegates spoke.

“We are united in our condemnation of Russia’s war against Ukraine and will push for stronger international coordination to punish Russia,” Sunak said on Twitter.

Freeland tweeted a picture of all the officials who left the meeting.

“The world’s democracies will not stand idly by in the face of continued Russian aggression and war crimes,” she said. “Today Canada and a number of our democratic partners walked out of the G20 plenary when Russia sought to intervene.”

Indonesia Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who chaired the meeting, said the walkout was “not a total surprise” and was not disruptive to the group’s wider discussion.

“I am confident this will not erode cooperation or the importance of the G20 forum,” Indrawati said at a press conference following the meeting.

It was the first meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion in late February.

The G20, chaired by Indonesia this year, includes major economies like the United States, China, India, Brazil, Japan, several European countries, and Russia.

Despite the friction, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said global cooperation “must and will continue,” pointing to a long list of issues that “no country can solve on its own.”

Message from the 1980s

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1618502389 s4k1zszakr

Think tank: Soros is pulling the strings in Ukraine

From HERE.

In a recent article, the Russian think tank “RUSSTRAT – Institute for Political and Economic Strategies” commented on the machinations of US speculator George Soros in Ukraine. It is believed that Soros is part of the US secret service, driving coups and the “Great Reset”. Ukraine is serving as a “torpedo against Moscow,” according to Soros himself, because Moscow is standing in the way of the New World Order clique.

In Ukraine, Soros is expected to be the main beneficiary of the selloff of Russian assets, RUSSTRAT reported. Soros, through his “viceroy” oligarch Tomasz Fiala, CEO and founder of Dragon Capital, acquired 350 000 square meters of commercial real estate in Ukraine through joint funds in 2016-2018 alone. With investments of up to $400 million, Dragon Capital has become the largest buyer of real estate and media assets on the Ukrainian market. Soros will take control of the communications system if Russia loses the war.

Putin is blocking the Great Reset

“We need Ukraine as a torpedo in the war with Russia. We don’t give a damn about the fate of the citizens of this country,” Soros once said, according to the portal. Soros told the British Guardian in 2019, when President Vladimir Zelensky was elected president, Ukraine was bound to become his best project. Ukraine had seen a number of revolutions, and none had been successful, but the last election had been “free and fair”.

“Take a country like Ukraine: it had a number of revolutions, and they each failed, and now you had a free and fair election,” the billionaire opined. Not surprisingly, Soros has become one of the biggest donors to Democrat causes and candidates in the US.

According to RUSSTRAT, the conclusion of the Russian special operation will not only be a victory over the Kiev regime, but a Russian victory would also be a blow to Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset plan.

This will wreak havoc with the globalists and Soros, because for decades he has turned the former Soviet republic into a springboard for a fight with his main enemy who does not fit into the “New World Order”.

George Soros has never concealed that “his main enemy is in Moscow“. He had already made corresponding statements in 2014.

The commentary also referenced statements by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to the 39th US President Jimmy Carter, who highlighted Ukraine as a linchpin for both US and Russian interests. “Without Ukraine, Russia is not a great power,” Brzezinski believed.

In his book, Brzezinski noted the following: “Without Ukraine, Russia is no longer a Eurasian empire […] From this perspective, Ukraine’s secession represented a key loss, drastically curtailing Russia’s geostrategic options.” Brzezinski, who died in 2017, was a strong proponent of NATO’s eastward expansion to challenge Russia’s dominant position on the Black Sea.

Playground for speculators

According to the view of RUSSTRAT, the Russian special operation in Ukraine now also thwarted the plans of the speculator and the founder of the Agency for the Modernization of Ukraine (AMU) Bernard-Henri Levy and his British co-investors, the owners of the transnational corporation producing gene-products of the Monsanto Company and many other “businessmen” whom Soros and Levy promised the grand prize – “a new Russia without Putin” in exchange for cash injections in “saving democracy in Ukraine”. Levy described the cash injections as “the Marshall plan for Ukraine” at the time, but his organization stands to lose a great deal if Russia wins the war.

According to the report, Soros also invested a lot of money in various funds operating in Ukraine – using the same tactics as in Russia in the 1990s.

Falsification of history and new curricula

In 2015, Russian scientists received $500 grants (two years’ salary) to rewrite history books and school curricula. At the time, Soros stated that it would take about 25 years, i.e. a generation, to create a project as successful as Ukraine. In addition to distorting the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations and denigrating the past and present of the Russian state, the foundation has successfully promoted “European values ​​and democracy” among young people.

AMU described their project as showing “that Ukraine and Europe are united. It is commonly discussed: Either Ukraine is in Europe or not. Ukraine was and will be in Europe. And we see at what price Ukraine reaffirms its position”.

RUSSTRAT summarized their position: “The result: the Maidan and the unleashing of the genocide in Donbass.”

The bloodthirsty investor

Soros is described as a “bloodthirsty investor” who sponsored the Yugoslav opposition that later persecuted Slobodan Milosevic (President of Yugoslavia 1987-2000). He did the same with the “Orange Revolution” and the “Euromaidan” in Ukraine and the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia.

In 2018, British politician Nigel Farage described Soros as the “primary threat to the entire western world”. According to Farage, Soros wants to fundamentally reduce Europe’s white population and end the continent’s Christian culture. In the same vein, Turkish President Erdogan accused the billionaire of wanting to destroy and divide nations. Soros is also blamed for the 2013 protests in Gezi Park in Istanbul. The Soros Foundation has since withdrawn from Turkey.

Europe must not succumb to the Soros network, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned in an English-language post on his official website in 2020. The prime minister called Soros an “economic criminal” because his financial speculation had ruined the lives of millions of people, while the financier had held national economies to ransom.

In Italy, Matteo Salvini warned that Soros wanted the country “to become a giant refugee camp because he likes slaves”.

Philanthropic mockery

The US political scientist Sergei Sudakov, corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences of the Russian Federation, is quoted in the RUSSTRAT article. Sudakov maintains that Soros is an integral part of the American secret services. He spoke of the “Soros Collective”, an axis between the speculator, the US State Department and US intelligence agencies, which provide information for the development of his plans and actions. There is not a single conflict in which the Soros Foundation has not participated. For that reason, it has been banned in Russia.

In Belarus, the activities of Soros foundations have been banned since 1997, in Russia since 2015. But in Ukraine, after the Euromaidan, Soros structures experienced a real renaissance.

According to an article published in 2020 by the Russian internet platform inoSMI, regarding the allegations that he was provoking financial crises in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and Russia, Soros said: “You are not fooling me. I only earn money there. I cannot and do not want to look at the social consequences of my actions. I try to do the right thing, but sometimes my actions lead to negative consequences, like in Russia. As a market player, I have to compete to win.”

Azerbaijani political scientist Zaur Rasulzade wrote in 2020: “Wherever his people turned up, the riots began, coups were attempted, and often succeeded”. Soros’ capital grows immeasurably as everything is geared towards controlling the highly profitable sectors of the conquered countries’ economies.

How Australia became a proxy nation under the United States and lost it’s independence.

"It would be nice if you provided an example of a coup orchestrated by the US in a country where half the population is English speaking, with not only language but cultural and ethnic links to the same United States."

Consider Australia and the events of 1975…

The Gough Whitlam coup
The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis

Australia speaks out against China

Defence Minister Peter Dutton says the “bond” between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin is “disturbing”.

Mr Duttton said the language of a speech recently given by the Chinese President is very similar to President Putin.

“It’s not our country that has changed, we still stand for the same values,” he told Sky News Australia.

“We need to open, call out bad behaviour, call out the bullying tactics and normalise the relationship and keep peace and stability in our region.”
It’s really difficult to take these people seriously.

From HERE

The Sarmat as the wake-up call to American neoconservative warmongers.

I see nothing “unfortunate” about either the launch or the timing of the new Sarmat ICBM by Russia unless, of course, one might be on the “receiving end” of its final trajectory. 

As a matter of fact, it might possibly contribute to a dampening of the enthusiasm of the war mongers inhabiting both U.S. political parties with regard to the survivability of a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the Russian Federation. 

In my view, any reduction of that ill-advised enthusiasm can only be seen as a plus.

It is a decidedly good idea for the crazies in Washington to understand that this test launch only carried the equivalent of a payload of 12 hypersonic missiles. The final version will carry twice that many, presumably Zircons. 

The R-28 is, after all, described as a ”superheavy”. Which means that only one Russian ICBM will be able to hypersonically take out every major city in a state the size of Texas, without any defense against what’s incoming.

These are realities that those aggressive folks in Washington, who are foaming at the mouth, might want to consider. 

They might be happy to use Europe as their “sanctions front” but should also comprehend that their home states and constituencies remain the ultimate target, if they miscalculate even slightly. 

The Russians are going to hit Houston, not Paris.

No. Without a doubt, the Sarmat launch has seriously puckered some anuses at the White House and at the Pentagon. 

The U.S. has absolutely no defenses against hypersonic weapons, and this is probably one of the reasons the war in Ukraine has broken out now. The U.S. is running out of time and knows it.

-GreyRaven

There is no doubt in my mind the absolute seriousness of what Russia is now embarked upon, and perhaps it was also necessary to the US political collective, running around in their DC pack sniffing each others’ asses…

Russia will increase the production of Kalibr missiles.

“This conclusion is made by the analyst “InformNapalm” Anton Pavlushko on the basis of data discoveries. He cites information that the UEC-Saturn plant in the Russian city of Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Region, is recruiting up to 500 new employees due to “increase in production volumes.” It is at this plant that engines for Caliber missiles are produced.

And then our Western friends got excited, because according to their version, Russia has long since run out of missiles, and there is nothing to produce new ones from.”

With that said there appears to be sabotage strikes aimed at stopping these efforts. As of yesterday, 22APR22,  an important military research facility in Russia suddenly burned down with 7 dead and 20-30 injured. It happened in the same day that a large chemical plant also caught fire under suspicious circumstances.

From HERE

Puzzle Pals: 1942

January 1942. Woodville, California. “FSA farm workers’ community. Games are played in the recreation room in the community building.” Medium format acetate negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

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January 1942. Woodville, California. “FSA farm workers’ community. Games are played in the recreation room in the community building.” Medium format acetate negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration.

In the Donbass a member of the OSCE was arrested for espionage.

OSCE employee detained. It seems that he was providing targeting coordinates to NATO.

From HERE

More and more reports recently have come to light showing how deviously the OSCE has been operating. One report said that OSCE officials even provided artillery fire correction for the AFU forces by leaving cameras on their cars in the vicinity which transmitted feeds to the AFU.

The organization has most certainly been exposed as a clandestine operation for the West akin to the “White Helmets” operation.

China Sells U.S. LNG to Europe at a Hefty Profit

Thank you Donald Trump for forcing China to buy US gas with fix price for 20 years and a severe penalty if the contract is not fulfilled. Now China directly ships US gas from US to Europe with super high profit:

(Bloomberg) — China resold several U.S. liquefied natural gas shipments to Europe, a rare move by the world’s top buyer that highlights how sky-high prices are rerouting trade flows.

Unipec, the trading arm of China’s state-owned Sinopec, sold at least three LNG cargoes for delivery through June to ports in Europe via a tender that closed late last week, according to traders with knowledge of the matter. The shipments will load from Venture Global LNG Inc.’s Calcasieu Pass export facility in Louisiana, where Sinopec has a deal to purchase LNG, they said, requesting anonymity to discuss private details.

European natural gas rates surged to a record high last week on fears that the war in Ukraine will curb flows from top supplier Russia. The rally prompted Unipec’s traders to turn away from the lower-priced Chinese market, even as Beijing demand its importers secure more fuel amid concerns over wartime disruptions.

European gas usually trades at a discount to LNG in North Asia, home to the top importers. But Europe’s plan to ditch Russian gas means that it will need to significantly boost LNG imports, with the continent’s prices primed to stay higher than Asian rates as it seeks to attract every last drop of fuel from the spot market.

Sakhalin Energy, which operates the Sakhalin II project in Russia’s Far East, plans to release a tender this week offering an LNG cargo for loading around April 25

South Korea’s LNG imports plunged 33% in February from a year earlier to 3.5 million tons as prices soared.

A Big Man

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A big man.

2021 05 U.S. dollar share of global central bank reserves drops to 25-year low

The value of the USD plummets.  IMF – Xinhua | English.news.cn

From HERE

2022 03 Brazil Central Bank Quadruples Exposure to Chinese Yuan

Brazil massively increases the percentages of Chinese yuan in it’s holdings. Investing News | US News

From HERE

The ‘Rules Based Order’ Knows No Distance

From MoA.

Remarks by President Biden Providing an Update on Russia and Ukraine, Feb 15 2022

Nations have a right to sovereignty and territorial integrity. They have the freedom to set their own course and choose with whom they will associate.

The distance between the U.S. (New York) and the Ukraine (Lviv) is 7,194 kilometer (4,470 miles). The distance between Russia and Ukraine is zero kilometer (zero miles). They are neighboring countries.

Readout of Senior Administration Travel to Hawaii, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands, Apr 22, 2022

The two sides engaged in substantial discussion around the recently signed security agreement between Solomon Islands and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Solomon Islands representatives indicated that the agreement had solely domestic applications, but the U.S. delegation noted there are potential regional security implications of the accord, including for the United States and its allies and partners. The U.S. delegation outlined clear areas of concern with respect to the purpose, scope, and transparency of the agreement.

If steps are taken to establish a de facto permanent military presence, power-projection capabilities, or a military installation, the delegation noted that the United States would then have significant concerns and respond accordingly.

The distance between the continental U.S. (Los Angeles) and the Solomon Islands is 9,845 kilometer (6,118 miles). The distance between the continental China (Shanghai) and the Solomon Islands is 5,901 kilometer (3,667 miles).

si s
si s

2022 04 Israel adds China’s RMB to Central Bank reserves, cuts USD holdings

The Jerusalem Post. Israel, a long-time United States partner has broke with the United States and adds Chinese RMB to it’s central bank reserves.

From HERE

The indicators of the coming collapse of the US economy, and the liberation of the world by China and Russia. All the lights are flashing on the dashboard.

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Rory Gallagher – Shadow Play 1979 Live Video

He must have been AWESOME in a concert or in a small venue.

Conclusion

Enjoy what you have.

Smile more.

Don’t get too caught up. Things are under control, even if it doesn’t seem that way.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Snapshot of geopolitical events and changes

As I have discussed on my you-tube video, the United States assaults on the united Asia continues. All you need to do is see the big picture, and look at the overviews. It’s really crystal clear.

  • The United States provoked a Russian military action in Ukraine.
  • The United States failed at a color revolution in Pakastan.
  • The United States failed at a color revolution in Kazakhstan.
  • The United States is provoking a Chinese military action in Taiwan.
  • The United States failed at a color revolution in Belarus.

This article collects a host of loose-end articles associated with this particular time event sequence. Just hop on in and wander around. I hope that you find one or two things of interest.

Updated on

Finland has seized more than 42 million euros ($46 million) worth of art en route to Russia under European Union sanctions after President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The art was being returned from museums in Italy and Japan where the works had been on loan, the Finnish Customs told reporters in Helsinki on Wednesday. They arrived in three shipments and were taken into custody at the Finnish-Russian border on April 2 and 3.

Article

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Glorious

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6233227a983b7

The World need to up it’s game

This is from London. Seriously, let the rest of the world be STS, you must be the STO Rufus.

People Acting Like Jerks 3
People Acting Like Jerks

Pretty Chinese Girl

She’s a healthy lass. Robust. Fine.

video 1MB

A Lifetime Of Regret

Heads up! Don’t be like this man.

From <redacted>

I was born into a normal family. I wasn’t abused. I wasn’t dirt poor, I didn’t grow up devoid of opportunities.

Physically I am a perfectly average man, around six feet tall, normal physique. I have all my hair still, got all my teeth and everything.

You could walk past me on the street and you wouldn’t have a clue that I’m a lonely man. You wouldn’t know I’m miserable.

You wouldn’t know I’m deathly shy, because if you talked to me, I could make some small talk, but if you never approached me, I’d never dare to speak up.

For all my life I have been so terribly scared of making mistakes, that I tried desperately to avoid making any, ever. I didn’t want to make any form of social faux pas, I didn’t want to do anything I would be ashamed of remembering.

The only times I could ever let go, was when I was intoxicated… that’s when I would feel human. It’s when I go the courage to actually make jokes, be funny, be friendly, be an actual person for a moment until I sobered up.

I’ve only approached very few women in my life with romantic intentions, and when I did, I would fail inevitably.

I did not even manage to befriend any, not really anyway… I had a female friend, once, who I drifted away from. She was married and her husband was also my friend, also briefly. He was a seaman and a great guy. We had some drinks together when both of us were in our twenties.

It now seems like a lifetime away, but I remember how I envied his life… he had a wife who was an intelligent and charming young woman, he himself was a handsome, tall, robust fellow. They had a lovely young daughter who was mildly disabled intellectually due to a lack of air at birth, but who was so sweet and wonderful and ended up largely growing over her issues.

Eventually this couple, my only two friends, moved far away. After five years of working for a foreign shipping company as an officer, my friend was able to relocate to another country where he moved his wife and daughter. We tried to meet several more times. But it never materialized. Just two days ago I received the news that my only friend has died. It’s been almost twenty-five years since we last had a beer together in his backyard… I loved that man and I miss him.

That’s my entire social life of sixty-four years right there. Besides my brother and his family, there is no one I interact with anymore. Co-workers and I were always cordial at best, distant, professional but reserved.

That’s my entire life… reserved. Controlled. Never let my emotions show.

Three decades ago my friend and I, we drank and talked of the good things in life… but we never let go of our emotions. I never shed a tear. I never gave him a manly hug. I wish I did. I wish I had shed a tear. I wish I had let go of my emotions. But I never did.

As I am writing this I am realizing that I really loved my friend. He was a great man and a wonderful man and he was sweet. He was the only one, in my life, who was truly sweet… his wife didn’t treat him right. I remember my friend would come to my apartment and bring food he had made.

He would prepare fish, meat, delicious dishes. The barbeque gatherings we had in his backyard were always wonderful. I wish on that one last night we shared in the house of his in-laws, when the other guests had left and it was just the two of us sitting there… I wish I had told him, right there and then, as he told me in tears of his father’s mistreatment of him and the rejection he felt, that I loved him. Because I realize now did I did.

I married at the age of fifty. I was a virgin when I married. And perhaps underuse of equipment causes malfunction, because I was unable to have a child with her. Which is why she decided to leave me. I understand it. I was broken, truly, and she saw it. I’ve been alone for too long to be with anyone, really.

And besides, to be completely honest, I did not love her and I am pretty sure she did not love me either. She loved the idea of me. Of what I could, in theory, have offered her. A house. Family. Stability and a future. But the family part was important, too important for her to give up on. She would have resented me had she stayed with me. So she didn’t.

I never loved my wife. She left me within two years, and I have never been with another soul since. Never tried, either. The will to try has left me long ago. The only one I think I ever truly loved was my friend. But he was a married man and he moved away to Europe.

Now I just want to die in peace. But my health is decent and I am not suicidal so I will have to wait a little while longer.

When I do, I hope I will see my friend again. I find the idea of an afterlife soothing, although I am not fully sold on it, I would love it to be true, so I could actually tell him what I have always felt and never could bring myself to say.

The fact that I never did will always haunt me forever. But if I had told him and he felt it too, what good would it have been for me to end a marriage? His daughter deserved better. She is married now and has a family. She never knew. And she never will. But now you do.

Don’t do what I did. Don’t be so scared to be yourself. Don’t be so terrified to take risks. Don’t wait endlessly for life to put something good on your path, because life won’t do any such thing.

Please do not grow old and let the years pass by uneventfully. Don’t wait for golden years to arrive without effort, without risk, without ups and downs and struggles.

I tried so hard to avoid struggles out of that crippling fear and anxiety I always felt, and it got me nowhere.

Gordon if you can read this from wherever you are now, I love you and I am sorry I was such a coward.

First grade military training

China first grade. I think the kids are enjoying it. video 9MB

The world needs people who act like Rufus’s

You must make the world a better place. Don’t allow the perpetually ill, selfish and mean to be part of your reality. You ahve the power of changing things. So make it so.

People Acting Like Jerks 8
People Acting Like Jerks

Shanghai Residents Rebel As Cases Surge, Lockdown Extended ‘Indefinitely’

This article is so typical of the lies that spew out of the West regarding China. It’s so much bullshit. It’s amazing.

"To be sure, the surge in cases is partially a factor of the latest mass-testing regime, but that hasn't stopped the CCP from imposing the most draconian lockdown since Wuhan (as we explained earlier, backing down would be an intolerable capitulation for President Xi and local authorities, whose careers are now in jeopardy due to factors that are completely out of their control).

Following an unceasing torrent of scandals, including separating COVID positive children from their parents, covering up nursing home deaths and failing to address shortages of food and medicine, the population of Shanghai has reached its breaking point."

Bullshit Article

And my rebuttal to it…

MM Rebuttal

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Pretty Chinese Girly outfit

Nice, comfortable and easy outfit. I like it. It looks fresh and clean. This video is a Chinese clothing advertisement on Douxing.

video 3MB

The Global Fertilizer Shortage Means That Far Less Food Will Be Grown All Over The Planet In 2022

From HERE.

I never imagined that I would be writing so much about fertilizer in 2022.  When I was growing up, there were only two things that I knew about fertilizer.  I knew that it helped stuff grow and I knew that it smelled bad.  But these days, experts are telling us that a global shortage of fertilizer could result in horrifying famines all over the world.  Right now, to a very large degree we are still eating food that was produced in 2021.  But by the end of the year, to a very large degree we will be eating food that was produced in 2022.  Unfortunately for all of us, it appears that a lack of fertilizer will mean that far less food is grown in 2022 than originally anticipated.

Thanks to an unprecedented explosion in energy prices, we were already facing a fertilizer crisis even before the war in Ukraine, but now that war has definitely taken things to the next level.

Under normal conditions, a great deal of the world’s fertilizer comes from either Russia, Belarus or Ukraine

A fertilizer shortage has added to growing concerns about the Ukraine war’s impact on the price and scarcity of certain basic foods.

Combined, Russia and Belarus had provided about 40% of the world’s exports of potash, according to Morgan Stanley. Russia’s exports were hit by sanctions. Further, in February, a major Belarus producer declared force majeure — a statement that it wouldn’t be able to uphold its contracts due to forces beyond its control.

Russia also exported 11% of the world’s urea, and 48% of the ammonium nitrate. Russia and Ukraine together export 28% of fertilizers made from nitrogen and phosphorous, as well as potassium, according to Morgan Stanley.

Global hunger rose significantly in both 2020 and 2021, but what we are going to be dealing with in the months ahead is going to be completely unlike anything that we have dealt with in the past.

In fact, one commodity expert that was interviewed by CNBC is extremely pessimistic about what is ahead…

“All of this is a double whammy, if not a triple whammy,” said Bart Melek, global head of commodity strategy at TD Securities. “We have geopolitical risk, higher input costs and basically shortages.”

We have never seen anything like this before.

Since the beginning of 2021, some fertilizer prices have “more than doubled”, and some fertilizer prices have more than tripled

Some fertilizers have more than doubled in price. For instance, Melek said potash traded in Vancouver was priced at about $210 per metric tons at the beginning of 2021, and it’s now valued at $565. He added that urea for delivery to the Middle East was trading at $268 per metric ton on the Chicago Board of Trade in early 2021 and was valued at $887.50 on Tuesday.

And in some parts of the globe it is even worse.

In Peru, fertilizer prices have experienced an “almost fourfold” increase

The global fertilizer squeeze exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is imperiling rice production in Peru, where the seed is a staple for tens of millions of people.

Prices of the crop nutrient urea have surged almost fourfold amid supply scarcities, adding to cost inflation for growers, according to the Peruvian Association of Rice Producers.

That same article goes on to explain that many farmers in Peru won’t be able to afford to plant crops at all this year.

If that sounds familiar, that is because this is something that I have been warning about for months.

In particular, here in the United States it simply is not going to be profitable for many farmers to grow corn this year, because corn needs a high amount of fertilizer.

All over the world, far less fertilizer will be used in 2022, and that means that far less food will be grown.

There will be famines, and one expert is even warning that food scarcity will “touch people in the lower income distribution in North America”

“We’re talking about an erosion of food security on a scale we have not seen for a long time, and I think it will touch people in the lower income distribution in North America,” he added.

But as long as you have a decent income, you will still be able to go to the store and buy food in the months ahead.

It just might cost you a lot more.

During a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, farmer Ben Riensche warned that Americans could soon be paying a thousand dollars more a month for their groceries…

“Soaring fertilizer prices are likely to bring spiked food prices. If you’re upset that gas is up a dollar or two a gallon, wait until your grocery bill is up $1,000.00 a month, and it might not just manifest itself in terms of price. It could be quantity as well. Empty Shelf syndrome may be starting.”

Can you afford to pay $1,000 more for groceries every month?

If not, you better stock up now while prices are still relatively reasonable.

Of course there are certain things that you will not be able to stock up on because they simply aren’t there.

Shortages are intensifying all over the country, and in particular we have seen an alarming shortage of pasta begin to happen in certain stores.  The following comes from an article that was just posted on All News Pipeline

First, it was Eggs and now it’s also Pasta.

The eggs have been missing for well over a week now and yesterday morning I was surprised to see the pasta was also mostly bare. Also, some of the shelves have the old COVID trick of pushing everything together and up to the front of the shelf!

This is Sioux Fall SD!

No eggs for over a week!

Very little pasta left!

Of course the shortage of eggs is related to the shortage of pasta, because eggs are used in making pasta.

I have been trying to explain to my readers that this new bird flu pandemic is going to be a really, really big deal.  As I mentioned yesterday, 28 million chickens and turkeys are already dead in less than two months, and things are already so bad that pasta is starting to disappear from our store shelves.

If things are this crazy already, what will conditions be like six months from now?

You might want to think about that.

I have been trying to sound the alarm about a coming global famine for years, and now it is here.

Global food riots have already started, but what we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

Like I said at the top of this article, for now we are still eating food that was produced last year to a large degree.

Just wait until we get to the end of this year and beyond.

It won’t be pretty.

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures, and I hope that this article will give you a sense of urgency to take action.

Unfortunately, most people still assume that everything will turn out just fine somehow, and so they won’t do anything to get prepared until it is far too late.

Behaviors of Service-to-self people

They don’t care, and they make it difficult for the rest of society. It’s all me-me-me like spoiled three year old children.

People Acting Like Jerks 12
People Acting Like Jerks

Rest stop in China

This is how China does highway Rest-stops. Pretty typical. Soak it in. video 40MB

The “Doomsday Preppers” Were Right

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For years, there was a great debate about what the future of our society would look like.  The irrational optimists kept assuring us that we would never suffer any serious consequences for decades of incredibly foolish decisions, and they kept promising that a new golden age of peace and prosperity for humanity was just around the corner.  Meanwhile, others were warning that humanity would soon be plunging into an abyss filled with endless nightmares.  Instead of a utopian new chapter in our history, we were warned that war, hunger, pestilence and relentless economic problems were on the horizon.

Prior to 2020, to a lot of people it seemed like the irrational optimists might be right after all.

Yes, there were lots of serious problems simmering in the background, but overall life seemed to be rolling along pretty good for most of the population.

But then 2020 came along, and everything started to change.

As I write this article in April 2022, war, hunger, pestilence and relentless economic problems have all materialized.  In fact, things are already so bad in Europe that rationing has now been instituted in some areas…

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has threatened the supply of critical commodities in Europe and thrown global supply chains, which were already struggling amid COVID-19, into complete chaos.

As a result, the prices of everything from wheat to oil have soared, leading to multi-decade high inflation rates in places like Germany and Spain. The supply crunch in Europe is now so bad it’s causing governments to begin laying the groundwork for rationing, with some stores already limiting supplies.

This isn’t Africa that we are talking about.

If rationing is already taking place in Europe, how bad is it going to be for the poorer nations in the months ahead?

Well, UN Secretary-General António Guterres is telling us that “the world’s most vulnerable people and countries” are heading into a “hurricane of hunger”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned urgently of the global consequences of the war as early as mid-March. The breadbasket is being bombed and a “hurricane of hunger” is threatening, he stated. Given Ukraine’s great importance as a food exporter, the invasion was “also an attack on the world’s most vulnerable people and countries.”

Sadly, he is not exaggerating one bit.

As I discussed yesterday, at this point even Joe Biden is admitting that the coming food shortages are “going to be real”.

But even though global leaders are openly telling us that things are going to get really bad, most people still don’t seem very alarmed.

This greatly frustrates me, because this is not a false alarm.

There are 45 different nations that normally get “at least one-third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia”

The world’s 45 least developed countries import at least one-third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, and 18 countries among them import more than 50 percent. These include Egypt, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. These are all countries that are already dependent on humanitarian aid and food supplies because millions of people are currently suffering from massive hunger.

How are all of those countries supposed to feed their people without that wheat?

I keep asking that question, and not a single person has been able to answer it.

Just look at the crisis that has erupted in Lebanon.  They normally get approximately 75 percent of their wheat from either Russia or Ukraine, and so far they have been unable to procure supplies from alternate sources…

Lebanon, which obtains 75 percent of its wheat from Russia and especially Ukraine, is also desperately seeking other wheat exporters, but so far without success. The government turned to the international community with a call for help. There are now fears of rationing and sharp price increases, which will hit the already hard-pressed population hard.

Meanwhile, the global bird flu plague just continues to intensify.

Here in the United States, the total death toll is now just short of 28 million

The new cases mean that across the nation, farmers have had to kill about 22 million egg-laying chickens, 1.8 million broiler chickens, 1.9 million pullet and other commercial chickens, and 1.9 million turkeys.

It has taken less than two months to go from the first confirmed case in the U.S. to nearly 28 million dead.

So what will the death toll look like six months from now?

And can you imagine what this will do to food prices?

It is being reported that the price of a dozen eggs has already risen 52 percent since the start of this new pandemic…

Egg prices are skyrocketing as a bird-flu outbreak ravages commercial chicken flocks in the U.S., with the price of a dozen large eggs spiking more than 52% in just under two months.

For much more on this crisis, please see the article that I posted yesterday entitled “20 Facts About The Emerging Global Food Shortage That Should Chill You To The Core”.  I wish that I had sufficient words to properly convey the urgency that we should all be feeling in this hour.  We are heading into a complete and total nightmare, and I wish that I could get more people to understand this.

Mike Adams is sounding the alarm too.  The following comes from an article that was published a few days ago in the Epoch Times

Food scarcity. Food vouchers. Food riots and flash mobs.

All of that’s coming—and soon, says Texas-based food scientist and “Health Ranger” podcaster Mike Adams, who sees dire events unfolding in America in the short term.

His advice: people need to get prepared now.

Of course he is right on target.

In fact, I have specifically been warning for years that all of these things were coming.

At this point, it is clear that the “great debate” is over.

The irrational optimists were wrong.  There will be no golden new era of peace and prosperity for humanity.

Instead, we have entered a “perfect storm” of pain, suffering and horror.

For many years, society laughed at the “doomsday preppers”, but they were right.

And if you plan to make it through the extremely chaotic times that are coming, I would recommend that you become a “doomsday prepper” too.

Pretty Chinese Girl

Playing Majong with her son. It’s very popular in China. video 1MB

Waynes World Window shade

Fans of the movie rejoyce! Party On!

awesome photos 13
awesome photo

Here Is How The Pentagon Comes Up With Code Words And Secret Project Nicknames

By Tim McMillan August 9, 2019 HERE

If there’s one place one can find plenty of nicknames, it’s within the sprawling landscape of the armed forces. When it comes to the greater civilian world, there’s no historical precedent or agreed upon social norm for how someone or something gains a substitute informal title. However, given the Department of Defense’s fondness of rigid structure, it should be no surprise that when it comes to nicknames, there’s a policy for them, too.

Meet NICKA

Prior to 1975, names for military operations and projects were exclusively chosen at the behest of military commanders. As a result, within the annals of American military history one can find a diverse range of interesting titles from Operation Killer—a major 1951 counter-offensive during the Korean War—to Operation Beaver Cage—a U.S. Marine Corps operation that occurred during the spring of 1967 as part of the Vietnam War.

However, shortly after the close of the Vietnam War, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) decided it was time to formalize the use of code words and nicknames by unveiling the Code Word Nickname and Exercise Term System, colloquially known as NICKA.

For the Department of Defense (DoD), NICKA is both a set of policies governing the selection of defense monikers and a military-wide computer system that archives and prevents duplication of terms.

Important to note, NICKA is primarily used for Department of Defense-related endeavors. Many operations or programs emerging from within the intelligence community use their own separate naming system.

For example, the Central Intelligence Agency uses the Cryptonym system for developing code words and names. It is also worth noting that the National Security Agency (NSA), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) all use the NICKA system

NICKA outlines three distinctive types of monikers that can be used within the DoD:

  • Code Words
  • Nicknames
  • Exercise Terms

Code Words

In NICKA, a code word is a single word that’s assigned to any program or operational plan that’s classified confidential or higher. Each component agency in the Department of Defense are assigned blocks of code words by the Joint Staff. When needed, the NICKA computer program will randomly select and assign a code word from the originating agency’s allocated block of terms.

For example, in the lead up to the Gulf War, when the Combat Aviation Brigade of the 1st Armored Division needed a code word for their forward assembly area, the NICKA computer system pulled from one of the Army’s predetermined block designations and selected the amusingly mundane code word—LARRY.

Essentially a password for entry in an exclusive club, the preeminent role of code words is to restrict access to sensitive national security information to only those who have a need to know. Assisting security, a code word itself will be safeguarded by being classified by one of the three security classifications—confidential, secret, or top secret—based on the security level of the associated program.

Virtually anything conceivably classified, including programs, projects, locations, operations, objectives, missions, or plans, can be assigned a code word. One particular area code words can be highly prevalent is with Special Access Programs (SAP). As mentioned in The War Zone’s in-depth look at Special Access Programs, multiple components, sub-components, and projects can sprawl out from a single SAP “umbrella.” In this compartmentalized system of security, each of the different appendages of one SAP can potentially be assigned their own specific code word.

Once NICKA assigns a code word, it’s considered active. An active code word will remain unchanged for the life of a program and cannot be altered by its users. The one exception being if there’s a concern a code word had been compromised. In this instance, a new code word would be issued. Equally, in certain situations, an unclassified cover term may get applied to a program for counterintelligence purposes.

In addition to the obvious security and oversight reasons, the principal reason for a code word’s permanence relates to the significant role NICKA serves as an archive of all active and inactive code words. The system uses its database of terms to prevent any potential conflicts that could arise due to similarities or duplication of previous code words.

As a Department of Defense system, NICKA will only assign single-word code words. However, in some instances, the Pentagon may take over a project or program that originated outside of the DoD, such as from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Department of Energy (DOE), commercial companies, or even foreign governments. In these instances, already assigned code words may not follow NICKA guidelines. In these occurrences, a program may be reassigned a new NICKA code word or the previous unregulated code name may be maintained.
Regardless, of whether it’s kept or not, the non-NICKA code name may still be added to the program’s database to stem off any future confusion or conflict.

For example, technically before NICKA’s time and not a DoD project, the 1960s A-12 reconnaissance plane was developed and operated under the CIA code word “OXCART”. However, Kelly Johnson and his pioneering team of engineers at Lockheed Skunk Works used the code word “ARCHANGEL” for the A-12. Furthering the spy plane’s eventual identity crisis, flight crews would nickname the A-12 “Cygnus.”

Though OXCART was the only officially assigned government code word, under NICKA, both the contract code word, “ARCHANGEL” and the A-12’s nickname “Cygnus,” would equally be archived to prevent duplicate use.

When it comes to code words. Many real-world military operations and programs, for example, “HAVE BLUE,“ “ACID GAMBIT,” “AUTUMN RETURN,” “SENIOR TREND,” or the infamous “YELLOW FRUIT,” are often reported as being the “code word” for a classified operation or program. However, per DoD and the Joint Chiefs NICKA policy, a code word always consist of just a single word. By NICKA, the above named examples would be “nicknames” and not code words.

This does not mean that multiple code words cannot apply to a certain entity. Any intelligence product that contains Top-Secret NATO information would carry the code word “COSMIC” in addition to any other applicable ones. Certain categories of sensitive activities can even involve code words that become intrinsically linked and enter common usage linked together. “TALENT,” an overarching code word for aerial intelligence-gathering assets, such as the U-2 Dragon Lady and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes, and “KEYHOLE,” which covers intelligence-gathering satellites, are no longer treated as separate from each other officially and one will routinely see documents marked “TALENT KEYHOLE,” or using the abbreviation “TK,” as a single term.

Nicknames

As we briefly mentioned, when it comes to the designation of nicknames, NICKA offers some flexibility and gives military commanders the ability to be a little more creative.

Whereas NICKA only assigns single-word code words, by policy, nicknames must be comprised of two separate words. Similar to the code word process, each DoD component agency is assigned a set of designated numerical block assignments by NICKA. In turn, the agency’s numerical block assignment will correspond to “alphabetical assignment list,” which is a range of two-letter alphabetical sets. The first word of any nickname must come from within an agency’s assigned alphabetical range.

For example, using the now obsolete and unclassified NICKA block assignments, if a program within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) needed to come up with a nickname, one would start by identifying the four numerical blocks assigned to the DIA (15, 33, 51, and 76).

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The next step would be identifying what ranges of two-letter combinations would be associated with an agency’s assigned blocks. Following along with the previous example, based on the alphabetical assignment list, the first word of a DIA program nickname would have to start with:

Block 15 – Letters DM – DR

Block 33 – Letters IA – IF

Block 51 – Letters MM-MR

Block 76 – Letters SS – SZ

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2022 04 07 15 26

Once the alphabetical block assignments are determined, for military commanders, the process then becomes a word-search of sorts in order to come up with an appropriate first word for a nickname that fits within the designated letter combinations. In our example, the words “DOOM,” “IDEAL,” “MOON,” or “STEREO” would all fit the criteria as being acceptable first words for a DIA nickname.

Below is a more specific set of examples straight from the U.S. Central Command’s (CENTCOM) regulation regarding NICKA:

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When it comes to the second portion of the two-word requirement for nicknames, military planners have the unrestricted ability to get creative, provided phrases are not “improper” or “counterproductive.”

By NICKA guidelines, improper nicknames would be terms that are:

  • Inconsistent with traditional American ideals or current foreign policy.
  • Offensive to good taste or derogatory to a particular group, sect, or creed.
  • Offensive to U.S. allies or other free world nations.

Additionally, NICKA forbids nicknames from being:

  • Any two-word combination voice call sign found in the Joint Army Navy Air Force Publication Call Sign Book (JANAP-119).
  • Include the words, “Project, Exercise, or Operation.”
  • Words that may be used correctly either as a single word or as two words, such as “moonlight.”
  • Exotic words, trite expressions or well-known commercial trademarks.

By military standards—where one can often find rules for rules—NICKA guidelines on nicknames are fairly limited and debatably common sense. Thanks to the tempered flexibility NICKA gives to nicknames, the system still affords for some bellicose poetry like “Beast Master”—a 2006 Army operation to clear the Baghdad suburb of Ghazaliya—an area itself (unofficially) nicknamed “IED Alley East,” or “Viking Snatch”—a 2007 counterinsurgency operation in Iraq. Still, especially at lower levels of command and for short-duration operations, one still often sees nicknames that do not comply with NICKA, including ones with single words.

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2022 04 07 15 28

In contrast to code words, nicknames, including their descriptions, meanings, and relationship, are also, by policy, supposed to remain unclassified, though the branches of the U.S. military still routinely classify them on the ground of national security. In addition, NICKA guidelines stipulate nicknames are not required, but can be assigned to actual real-world events, projects, or activities. One caveat to “not required” being with Special Access Programs, which are required to have an unclassified nickname assigned to them.

Exercise Terms

Rounding out NICKA’s trifecta of officially sanctioned phrases, are exercise terms. As the name implies, exercise terms are monikers assigned to tests, drills, or exercises, which are assigned for the purpose of emphasizing the event is not an actual real-world operation. That said, the military has a bad habit of not sticking to DoD rules when it comes to publicizing or describing training exercises, often describing them as “operations.”

For example, “Llama Fury” was a week-long Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) training exercise at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in late summer of 2015. By NICKA policies, Llama Fury should have carried the “exercise” moniker. However, in press releases, multiple Air Force Public Affairs Offices described the event as “Operation Llama Fury.”

Though technically their own classification, exercise terms are more or less an extension of NICKA nicknames, with their selection and regulation falling under the same agency assigned alphabetical block system as the nicknaming process.

Since some military training evolutions are regularly repeated, certain specific exercises will carry the same name with an added numerical postfix indicating the month or year the event occurs. For example, held annually from 2006 to 2018, some of the largest U.S. military war games ever performed in the Pacific Ocean were all conducted under the exercise term “Valiant Shield.” Since this training event was repeated for twelve-years, a four-digit identifier for the year training maneuvers were performed would accompany the exercise term, producing “Exercise Valiant Shield 2017,” and so on and so forth.

For exercises that occur multiple times in a fiscal year, like “Swift Response,” a large training event between the U.S. and its European allies, the second iteration of the exercise in 2017 would be called “Swift Response 17-2.”

Least ambiguous of NICKA’s trio, code words play an essential role safeguarding extremely sensitive secrets. However, when it comes to nicknames and exercise terms, this aspect of NICKA is arguably more significant.

For example, “Enduring Freedom,” (the U.S. Global War on Terrorism, though often applied solely to operations in Afghanistan), “Iraqi Freedom,” (the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation), or “Inherent Resolve,” (the U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Syria to combat ISIS), are not merely nicknames, these phrases are meant to inspire and express the overarching intent of military involvement.

More than just iconic inscriptions on military ribbons, medals, and service records, the perceptions associated with a few major military nicknames or terms become ingrained in the public’s collective conscious and often end up being enduring aspects of American history.

So, there you have it. All those cool-sounding program nicknames, secretive code words, and intense sounding military exercises you probably heard of over the years, all likely came from a highly structured, yet obscure Department of Defense system puzzlingly named NICKA.

Rufus police rescues a little baby

He helps those in need like a real Rufus. video 3MB

Perception vs. Reality

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If you only get your news from the mainstream media, you would be tempted to believe that global conditions are relatively stable right now.  Yes, there is a war between Russia and Ukraine, but the mainstream media is assuring us that Ukraine is winning that war.  Other than that, the mainstream media seems to think that everything is just fine.  Of course the truth is that our planet is facing a whole host of extremely challenging problems at the moment.  The UN has warned that we are entering the worst global food crisis since World War II, inflation has started to spiral out of control all over the world, the war in Ukraine is making our supply chain nightmares even worse and an absolutely horrifying bird flu plague is killing millions upon millions of chickens and turkeys.

But if you flip on one of the corporate news channels tonight, they will be focusing on other things.

And you probably won’t even hear them talk about the food riots that have suddenly begun erupting around the world at all.

For example, a “curfew” has just been imposed on the capital of Peru after a series of extremely passionate protests that were sparked by rapidly rising fuel and food prices…

Peruvian President Pedro Castillo announced a curfew for Tuesday in the capital Lima and neighboring port city Callao, after demonstrations across the country over fuel prices caused roadblocks and “acts of violence”.

Protests had erupted across Peru in recent days due to a hike in fuel prices and tolls, during a time of rising food prices.

Is this the first time that you have heard about this?

For many of you it will be, and that is because the mainstream media in the U.S. is largely ignoring this.

In Sri Lanka, severe shortages of “food, medicine and fuel” have caused a full-blown economic collapse and tremendous chaos in the streets…

In Sri Lanka, where an economic crisis is growing, more than 40 lawmakers walked out of the ruling coalition today. That leaves the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the minority in Parliament. There have been new calls today for both the president and prime minister to step down after the entire Cabinet resigned on Sunday. Shortages of food, medicine and fuel have sparked countrywide protests, and security forces have fired tear gas and water cannons at protesters marching on the president’s home.

Most of you have probably not heard about that either, and that is because our largest news outlets are being really quiet about it.

But USA Today wants to make sure that you know about a new promotion that McDonald’s is running: “McDonald’s brings back Spicy Chicken McNuggets to select restaurants for a limited time”.

More than ever before, our perception of the world around us is shaped by the corporate elite.  Americans get more than 90 percent of the “television news” that they consume from just five giant media corporations, and so that gives those corporations an incredible amount of influence over how our society views reality.

For example, far more Americans are talking about “the slap” at the Academy Awards than about the fact that North Korea just threatened South Korea with nuclear war

North Korea opposes war but would use nuclear weapons if South Korea attacked, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said on Tuesday, in a warning that analysts said is probably aimed at the South’s incoming conservative president.

Kim Yo Jong, a senior official in the government and ruling party, said it was a “very big mistake” for South Korea’s minister of defence to make recent remarks discussing attacks on the North, state news agency KCNA reported.

The war in Ukraine is not going to be the last war that erupts.  I believe that China is very strongly considering an invasion of Taiwan in the not too distant future, and a major war between Israel and Iran could literally start at any time.

But instead of alarming the American people about such things, CNN wants you to know that Coke has a brand new flavor: “Coke’s latest flavor is here. And it’s a weird one”.

I suppose that we should be thankful to CNN, because I probably never would have heard about that new flavor unless they ran that story.

Meanwhile, the number of poultry flocks in Minnesota that have been hit by the new bird flu pandemic just doubled

The Minnesota Board of Animal Health on Tuesday reported the latest outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in the state is now affecting a total of 15 poultry flocks — up from seven last Friday.

Minnesota is the number one state for turkey production, and so this is a really big deal.

Overall, the national death toll just continues to climb.  The first case at a commercial facility in the United States was confirmed less than two months ago, and now the death toll has risen to nearly 28 million

The new cases mean that across the nation, farmers have had to kill about 22 million egg-laying chickens, 1.8 million broiler chickens, 1.9 million pullet and other commercial chickens, and 1.9 million turkeys.

Will MSNBC lead with this story tonight?

Of course not.

But I did find the following story on MSNBC’s homepage earlier today: “Garlic cloves up your nose? What to know about the health trends taking TikTok by storm”.

What a bunch of nonsense.

I am so grateful for the alternative media, because they often cover stories that the mainstream media never talks about.

For example, our friends at Zero Hedge have informed us that the price of jet fuel in New York has risen “more than 162% since mid-March”

Wholesale jet fuel prices in New York have risen more than 162% since mid-March, as buyers at some of the world’s busiest airports, located on the US East Coast, anticipate dwindling supplies as Western sanctions shun Russian energy exports.

On Monday, jet fuel prices jumped 93 cents to $7.61 a gallon, a new record high, according to Bloomberg data going back to 1988.

That is crazy.

We are seeing so much inflation all throughout the system right now.  A few hours ago, I came across a post by a supermarket employee on a very popular Internet forum that really got my attention.  According to this employee, workers at this particular store were given 52 pages of price changes just this week…

Tyson Chicken strip jumped up $3
Eggs went up to $3.50 they were 2.25
32 pack of water went to $5.50 originally 3.75
There was 35 pages of price changes on the dry side and 17 pages in freezer and cooler they are planning to have that many pages or more next week also

A trip to the grocery store is going to become very, very painful in the months ahead.

But just be thankful that you don’t live in one of the poorest countries on the planet.

At this point, even Vladimir Putin is telling us that the food shortages that we are now witnessing are going to get even worse

Putin said higher energy prices and fertilizer shortages would mean Western nations would have to print more money to buy supplies, which would cause food shortages in poorer countries.

They will inevitably exacerbate food shortages in the poorest regions of the world, spur new waves of migration, and, in general, drive food prices even higher,” Putin said in a meeting on developing food production, Reuters reported.

A full-blown global meltdown has now begun, and it is going to go to an entirely new level in the months ahead.

But the mainstream media will try to distract you with stories about Will Smith, Kourtney Kardashian and other celebrities for as long as they can.

Personally, I don’t really care that Kourtney Kardashian just married Travis Barker in Las Vegas.  What I do care about is the fact that our society is coming apart at the seams all around us.

The news that you get from the corporate media has been carefully designed to promote certain narratives, and these days much of it is wildly inaccurate.

But most of the population will continue to blindly believe whatever they are told to believe by our “professional journalists”, and that is extremely unfortunate.

Video in front of MM office

This is what it is like on the road right in front of my office.  video 14MB

Confessions of a Woman Who Suffers From Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality)

When did you first learn or suspect that you had DID?

The first signs that something was wrong were that she was losing track of big chunks of time, people were telling her that she had said or done things that she couldn’t remember doing, people she didn’t know were acting like they knew her, and she was finding journals, poetry, and art that she didn’t recognize.

The first signs that something was wrong were that she was losing track of big chunks of time, people were telling her that she had said or done things that she couldn’t remember doing, people she didn’t know were acting like they knew her, and she was finding journals, poetry, and art that she didn’t recognize.

What causes someone to have DID?

DID is a trauma-based disorder.

The most popular explanation for the etiology of DID is that when a child experiences truly horrific trauma, they invent other identities to cope with that trauma. The child essentially says to themselves, “That didn’t happen to me. That happened to another little girl. It wasn’t me.”

Dissociation during traumatic events is fairly common. You’ll hear survivors of car crashes say that it all felt surreal, like it was in slow motion, like they remember it as if they were detached from their body or viewing it from a detached perspective. Now imagine being in a car crash over and over, every single day. If you enter that detached state over and over again at a young age when your sense of self and your concept of identity is being formed, you develop a fragmented sense of self. Being a child, you give names to those fragments. Over time, the fragments develop their own sense of self.

Have you been diagnosed by a professional? What was that process like? 

I feel really fortunate that the diagnosis process for us was shorter than most. DID is a very stigmatized disorder so it can be a slow process for most people.

At 14 we were referred to therapy because of problems at school. Our initial diagnosis was PTSD, but our therapist quickly began to suspect a dissociative disorder. Because of our young age, she chose to formally diagnose us with Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified rather than DID. She wanted to take a “wait and see” approach to diagnosis. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to continue therapy with her for long because we lost our insurance.

In college we were formally diagnosed, but by that point it was not a surprise at all. By then, we were very aware of each other and had been working on improving our communication and working together.

How do you feel about the fact that you have DID?

I guess acceptance is the best way to describe it. I don’t know anything else, so this is normal for me.

How many alters do you have? Are you comfortable describing them or any of their traits? How are they different from you?

I’ll start with myself. My name is Quin. I am not the original identity, but I think I have been around the longest. I currently do most of the fronting. I keep everyone organized and try to keep this system running smoothly.

Morgan is our original identity. Until we moved away from our family of origin, she was the one fronting most of the time. Ever since we moved away, she stopped fronting. Right now we don’t know if that’s a temporary thing or if it’s permanent, but it seems like the best decision for everyone.

Emma is a childlike alter who will tell you that she is four years old. She likes to play with toys and play Facebook games like Candy Crush.

Hailey is our other childlike alter. We think that she is emotionally about eight. She likes to watch Disney movies, but also likes to watch upsetting TV shows that are way too mature for her.

Storm has the emotional maturity of a teenager. I have previously joked about her being a little edgelord with a name to match, but that’s a bit mean. I honestly don’t know what she’s into at the moment.

Caden is a little ball of sunshine, according to one of our friends. I don’t actually know how old Caden is? He gets along with everyone. He’s silly and friendly and impossible to dislike, even when he’s being a bit of a jerk. I think he does it so that he can get away with doing whatever he wants to do.

Zoe is creative and smart. I’ve previously said she wasn’t very friendly, but that’s not very accurate. She’s not very friendly to me and she’s not very trusting, but she’s actually very social and more interested in socializing than I am. Zoe is very emotional and a little hot-headed.

Hannah is one of the most mature alters in our group. For a long time I couldn’t get a read on her and I didn’t know what was going on with her. She kept herself closed off from me for some reason, but I’ve gotten to know her more recently. She holds a lot of our memories and seems to be trying to figure out what to do with them. When she fronts, she takes care of lots of self-care type tasks and household things. She seems kind of like the mom of the group.

Carrie is an alter that I know exists, but I haven’t interacted with in a long time. I don’t really know much about her.

Arlo is one of our newest alters. They still haven’t told us if they are are a boy or a girl, but maybe they aren’t either? Arlo fronts when we are overwhelmed. They like to play video games. Arlo is extremely stubborn.

We also have an unnamed alter who exists mainly to harass and persecute us, but since they don’t front, I won’t go into detail about them.

Describe your relationship with your alters.

Our relationships with each other vary quite a bit, but I think we are a lot like a family. There’s some occasional friction and tension, but everyone has the same goal. We’re all just trying to survive.

What does it feel like to switch to another alter?

I absolutely hate answering this question every time it’s asked, so I’m going to skip it.

Do you always change clothes/hair/makeup/hats when you switch?

No, that’s really more of a media thing. I think it’s done in film and tv so that the audience can tell which alter is present. In reality, it would be exhausting to run to our closet for a wardrobe change every time there was a switch.

That said, we do have some different clothing preferences. If Zoe is planning on being in control all day long, she might dress more feminine than I would normally dress. If Arlo is fronting, they are almost always wearing their favorite hoodie. But it’s not like wearing that hoodie is a for sure indication that Arlo is currently fronting.

Do you have any abilities or skills that your alters don’t, or vice versa?

Only myself and a few others are able to do our work tasks. Hannah is a better cook than most. Only Hailey knows how to play the flute. Zoe is a creative writer.

Do different alters have different physical conditions or traits (for example, different eyesight, allergies or hand preference)?

No, and others may disagree with me on this but I personally believe that this is (for the most part) a media myth. The physical body is the physical body. The only physical differences that you can have between alters are the ones that can be impacted by emotional/psychological state, like placebo and conversion disorders. It’s not like the movie Split where one alter can be diabetic when the others aren’t. However, if the body has diabetes then different alters could have different blood sugar levels because your stress levels can cause your blood sugar to go up and down.

How frequently do you experience gaps in your memory? What is that like? How do you cope with it on a daily basis?

This really depends on how well we are coping with our current life stress. When we’re doing well, memories are shared and co-consciousness is common. When the stress level rises and we’re struggling to cope, amnesia and memory gaps become more common.

Amnesia can be really frightening, especially “waking up” some place you don’t expect to be. It’s not so bad if I’m just at home and I’ve lost a few hours, but if I’m suddenly at the grocery store and the last thing I remember is being at home in bed, it’s pretty alarming.

I cope with it by trying to stick to a schedule, journaling, using notes and calendars to keep track of everything. I try to stay really organized to compensate for everything.

How do you communicate with your alters?

This sounds ridiculous, but internal communication is as simple as “thinking at” the other alters. When internal communication breaks down, we use journals and things like Google Keep to talk to each other.

Do your alters have different relationships, i.e. friendships or romantic partners? If you’re married or in a relationship, how do your alters feel about your SO?

We basically have the same friends, but we have different relationships with those friends.

All of us have a good relationship with our SO.

Are you co-conscious with any/all of your alters? What does co-consciousness feel like?

Most of us are able to experience co-consciousness with each other. Not all of us are “drift compatible” with each other, to borrow a term from Pacific Rim.

Are you aware of an internal world or inside space?

No, we have never experienced an internal world.

Have you told friends/family about your diagnosis? Why or why not?

When we were in our early 20s we were more open about our diagnosis, but we experienced some real negative consequences because of that. People tend to see us only as our diagnosis. It’s very difficult for people to understand. It’s hard to live a normal life when people know. We much prefer that people don’t know.

What do you wish everyone without DID knew or understood better about you?

It’s nothing like (most of) the media depictions. When it’s what you’ve lived with your whole life, it just feels normal.

What is the worst or most embarrassing thing to ever happen to you as the result of an alter’s actions?

I won’t embarrass myself by going into details, but it can be hard having childlike alters. It was a bigger problem when we were younger, and things are much better controlled now, but there were some embarrassing moments.

Describe a time when one of your alters saved your ass.

I don’t give her enough credit, so I’ll use this opportunity to talk about Storm. We’ve been joking lately about how Storm is a “fire alarm” that goes off when something isn’t right, but she’s kind of a shitty fire alarm because if you don’t pay attention to her fast enough she’ll just spray gasoline in the whole building and burn the whole place down (metaphorically, of course) to make sure you are really aware of the fire.

But the truth is, Storm probably has saved my ass dozens of times and she would have saved my ass dozens more if I had just listened to her more. She’s really good at knowing when situations are unsafe and knowing when something is wrong. She’s one of the few of us who is brave enough to use her voice and really scream and stand up for herself. I’m sure that at least a few of the times she’s screamed “Get the fuck away from me!” could have turned out really badly if she hadn’t.

Has an alter ever done something illegal or immoral?

Illegal? No. Immoral? Depending on your standards of morality, absolutely. We have disagreements about moral behavior all the time. Zoe constantly does things that I find unacceptable.

Have you experienced bullying, discrimination or stigma because of your DID?

When we were open about it, yes. That’s why we have chosen not to tell most people.

Does DID interfere with your ability to have a family, a career, or to achieve the kind of life you want?

This isn’t the feel good answer people probably want, but yes.

We are childfree mostly because of DID. There are alters in our system who wanted children very badly, but we felt that having children was the wrong choice for us because of our condition.

DID also interfered with our education throughout high school and college. We were able to finish our undergraduate degree, but ultimately it did stop us from completing our masters program and working in the field that we intended to work in.

At our current level of functioning, I don’t think we could hold down a traditional 9 to 5 job. We currently work from home and are really happy with our career, but we are lucky that this is an option for us.

I don’t know if this is the case for everyone else with DID, but we choose not to drive because of the severity of our dissociation. The risk of dissociating while driving is just too much for us, so we are reliant on other people for transportation.

What are your biggest challenges living with DID?

Honestly, it’s not the DID itself, it’s working through the underlying issues that caused the DID. Unpacking all of that trauma can be exhausting and disruptive. Just when you think you’ve found homeostasis with your system, someone finds a bunch of new baggage to unpack.

What are some of the positives that have come out of having DID?

We survived.

A cat sized couch…

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2022 04 07 18 52

Places where birthright Citizenship is based on land and places where it is based on blood

Very interesting.

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iu80ec4rcx171

Pretty Chinese Girl

Very nice desert scene. China has some very large and beautiful deserts.

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Spandau Ballet – True (HD Remastered)

This should teleport you all to the 1980s. With all the shit going on in the world today, I think we all need a vacation eh?

Total News Blackout: US General Captured Leading Azov Nazis in Mariupol (confirmations coming in)

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Warning: A NATO/Internet wide National Security Letter has been issued blocking all reporting of the alleged capture of an American general in Mariupol.

Our sources on the ground report that the last two helicopters trying to evacuate foreign VIPs from Mariupol were shot down this morning. They were sent on a suicide mission to collect Lt.General Coultier, who was, we are told, hiding in a huge industrial complex with some Special Forces staffers and about 30 Ukrainian Army, not Azov, soldiers. This hours old story from Tass is below.

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2022 04 07 19 16

From KP.Ru:

On the morning of April 5, another attempt by the Kiev regime to evacuate the leaders of the Azov nationalist battalion and “others” was thwarted near Mariupol. Two Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopters, which tried to break through to the city from the sea, were shot down from man-portable anti-aircraft missile systems, Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said at a briefing.

Note that this is the third attempt by Kyiv to pull its war criminals from the crime scene. But it ended the same as the previous ones: the helicopters did not reach Mariupol.

Читайте на WWW.KP.RU: https://www.kp.ru/daily/27375/4568448/

Reports from our friends in the Pentagon say “something’s up” and panic has set in at the White House.

Minutes ago, the general showed up on his Linkdin account and we are told that the ranks of retirees and crisis actors (yes they exist) are being scoured for fat bald types that can be green-screened into a show and tell with Zelensky, believed to be hiding in Poland.

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2022 04 07 19 19

Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are busy erasing all posts tied to this, even faster than usual.  We await broader confirmation but, if Russia is holding him, they are unlikely to announce it but rather use it as a secret bargaining chip to hold over Biden’s head.

Based on this, and having seen similar issues where an Israeli general was captured in Syria (confirmed, they sent us his ID card)…and VT helped negotiate his return to his family (for millions paid to Shiite militias).

We have sources that claim Cloutier had been in and out of Syria through Turkey, working with ISIS and al Qaeda there as well and with terrorist groups in Africa.

We say “no denial can be believed…we are now in ‘new territory’”

There are numerous reports currently circulating claiming that U.S. Army Lieutenant General Roger L. Cloutier was captured by Russian forces in or near Mariupol, Ukraine, where reports claim he was assisting the Azov battalion, which is the official Nazi unit of Ukraine.

Confirmation that as early as March 7, US Lieutenant General Roger Cloutier was in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/0eiJYrAcHZ

— TheRepublic (@_TheRepublic_) April 5, 2022

According to Wikipedia, Lt. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier:

Roger L. Cloutier Jr. is a lieutenant general in the U.S. Army and commander of Allied Land Command . He previously served as commander of the United States Army in Africa.

Allied Land Command (LANDCOM) formerly Allied Land Forces South East Europe

Oh boy. US General Roger Cloutier was most definitely involved in training Ukrainian soldiers, as this photo attests.

Two days ago, a Bulgarian news source claimed he was visiting Bulgaria — pic.twitter.com/gOMBDRgmTQ
— OldGuyOnTheMove (@old_move) April 5, 2022

(LANDSOUTHEAST) is a permanent headquarters for NATO land forces that can be appointed as needed. The commander of LANDCOM is the Alliance’s chief ground warfare advisor. When directed by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, he provides the core of the headquarters responsible for ground operations.

The command is based at Shirinya (Buka), Izmir in Turkey.

Unconfirmed sources from #Russia Military:

The #Russian army captured the U.S Major General Roger L. Cloutier Jr. Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier, the #USA Africa Command HQ Chief of Staff in the besieged Ukrainian Azov camp in Mariupol !https://t.co/7Y8Jd2qU9X

— Su-57 5th Gen Fighter (@5thSu) April 5, 2022

A letter to the Pentagon sent a few hours ago went unanswered, which, from a media perspective, is very unusual. If the message had been false, the Pentagon would have denied it immediately. They did NOT deny it. But there has been no official response from the Pentagon as of 6:10 p.m. EDT on Monday.

Links:

Lieutenant General Roger L. Cloutier Jr. assumed command of Allied Land Command in August 2020. Prior to this he served as the commander of U.S. Army Africa / Southern European Task Force. https://lc.nato.int/about-us/biographies/commander


Russian Defense Ministry: two more Mi-8s sent to evacuate Azov leaders were shot down near Mariupol

According to the department, this happened on the morning of April 5.

MOSCOW, 5 April. /TASS/. Two Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopters sent to evacuate the leaders of the Azov nationalist battalion were shot down near Mariupol on Tuesday morning.

Igor Konashenkov, official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, told reporters about this.

“On the morning of April 5, another attempt by the Kiev regime to evacuate the leaders of the Azov nationalist battalion was thwarted in the Mariupol region. Two Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopters that tried to break through to the city from the sea were shot down from man-portable anti-aircraft missile systems,”

Collecting Uranium Glass

2022 04 07 19 04
2022 04 07 19 04

Rufus police helps girl.

No time to waste. Be the Rufus. video 12MB

Russia’s Unfriendly List

rnnx8yo2e0m81
rnnx8yo2e0m81

First Grade Roll Call

This is in China. Not in the United States. This is how China teaches it’s students. video 10MB

Rufus Cat protects the child on the porch

I really love this kitty. Good cat. video 2MB

The Dead Don’t die

I got a big kick when my home town; East Brady was mentioned in the movie as one of the sources of the zombie outbreaks. LOL.

awesome 1
awesome 1

Pretty Chinese Girl

Nice girl in a white top.

video 2MB

Breakfast sandwich

Oh my!

awesome photos 9
awesome photos 9

Demons exist

I worked at a Juvenile Detention Facility in New Mexico. The absolute scariest thing I ever saw was a young boy, 9 years old, booked in for murdering both of his parents. There was nothing there. I fail to call this thing even human. I looked into this child’s eyes and felt more fear than I ever have to this day. This was no child, it was a monster. Pure evil, condensed and given human form.

And to clarify: I have booked and looked after murder suspects before, it was nothing new. But this kid was different. Very different. He never broke any rules and always followed commands but never, ever spoke unless directly asked something. And then it was curt, short. Just to answer a question. He never cried, either. Which is highly unusual for a 9 year old kid in jail. He was eventually tried and transferred to mental facility. But I’ll never forget the kid’s eyes. It haunts me to this day.

High school track meet

1960s obviously. But that hair! Can you just imagine?

bnse3z2rhkq81
bnse3z2rhkq81

For those who want to contribute to their community

I always tell everyone to become part of their community. Volunteer. Smile. Contribute and to have a skill or a resource that they can contribute to the rest of the community when times get hard. Like being a handiman, or a medical tech. Well, how about a home craft beer beermeister?

That could be a great skill…

270817685 1034658263764632 3536859058856973969 n
Make your own home craft beer.

An image for inspiration

What is stopping you?

6rl4w6l2ifn81
6rl4w6l2ifn81

A Flock Of Seagulls – Space Age Love Song

The scenes are from one of my long-forgotten mid-1990s movies. Brings back a flood of memories. Jennifer Connelly was 20 years old in this video, and it’s been 30 years since. But, yes, she was absolutely stunning here. Falling in love with her would have been the easiest thing in the world. The Flock of Seagulls song was perfect.

Scenes are from the movie Career Opportunities (1991). At that time, she was one of the most beautiful young woman on the planet and this movie captures her innocence in a very beautiful manner. She mesmerizes with her raw charm and superb natural talent throughout the film.

Conclusions

There’s a higher than average prevalence of “ready to leave” this prison complex  than in the general human population. This need,; this desire, is very strong, but it is most especially difficult at this point of time of great change.

Nothing is guaranteed. Remember that the things that you desire are a function of your thoughts. COntrol your thoughts and you can control your reality. This is true whether you are in the physical reality or elsewhere.

Control your thoughts. You will control your life.

The world seems to be going down the drain. Seems to… Maybe so. Maybe not. But it’s all a perception. You must change that perception to achieve your goals.

So, just be good. Be calm. And maybe go to a yard sale or thrift store and find a treasure or two. It’s time, don’t you think?

2022 04 07 20 19
“The Perfect Yardsale Find $13.00 In Kerrville Tx .. Beetlejuice meets Mary Poppins”

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

Which nation and city shall become the home for the new United Nations?

It’s an easy question, actually. Over the last few weeks, the World has polarized into two halves.

One side “The West” is uni-polar. They want the world ruled by the United States; a “rules based order”; it’s a world where the United States makes the rules and the changes them as it sees fit. Those in this camp consist of North America, Europe, and Australia / Japan.

The other side; “The East” is multi-polar. It follows the rules set forth by the UN; the community of nations. Russia, China, India, and most of Asia, including Africa, and South America fall into this camp. They believe that all nations, and all societies are equal, and that no singular nation, or block of nations, should determine the course of human societal evolution.

This situation could well exist for some time.

The only way for it to end would be for the complete collapse and annihilation of the United States. That’s probably not going to happen. (Well, unless the American leadership are so absolutely incompetent that they allow it to happen. Which is, after all, a realistic possibility.)

So we have a world divided into two halves, and a mighty “cold war” is starting to emerge. This currently includes energy, soon to include currency. but should eventually result in trade as well. And at that, the West, will probably suffer dearly.

As everything that The West uses and consumes comes from The East.

The West, ruled by the United States, will continue to make and break rules as it deems fit. The fact is that the United States has been flaunting the resolutions by the UN for many decades. And this codification into a formalized “The West” will be the death blow to that organization; the UN. It will become superannuated by the nations of the West. For, after all, all the member states in the West are proxy nations.

Out of practicality, aside from eventual necessity, the UN will need to move in one of the geographical regions of The East. It is, after all, a most logical conclusion. In fact, the 4FEB22 joint declaration of Russia and China during the Winter Olympics precisely alluded to exactly this; a New reborn UN.

This article discusses that.

But before we get too involved here in these details, let’s throw in some contemporaneous pockets of “news”, some pretty girls, some cats, food, and other subjects as well. A fine smorgasbord of topics. They all really do a fine, fine job in messing up the computer algorithms that assign trolls, ‘bots, and attacks on the MM website. I’ve got to tell youse guys, I mean, it drops to ZERO.

My life has never been so easy.

I’ll tell you what.

Peter has some things to say…

Russia has the world’s largest land mass with all the wealth in the ground and all the water they need who can grow more food than they can ever eat and armed to the teeth to repel any brain-f*cked dickweed that thinks they can dictate their will to Mother Russia because of economic sanctions.

What a joke! Why would a country like Russia need paper lies from the Empire of Lies to prove that they have a good economy?

If China had what Russia has, China would have told the Empire to go stick their head up their butt long ago. But that day is coming sooner than later. When the Dollar Hegemony goes, the world will have peace.

By the way, I don’t see any pundits noting that the current geopolitical situation is highly favorable to China.

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1. China is “hands off”. While the fight with Russia is ongoing, no one wants to start a second front with China, empty threats notwithstanding. Hence, all quiet on the eastern front.
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2. Lies will be exposed. The lies of the Western politicians and Western mainstream media will be exposed when Putin’s boys burn the Neo-Nazis as an offering to the souls of those who had died in the struggle against the German Nazis. That’s when the lapdogs realize they better not pin their hopes on the Empire of Lies.
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3. New Economic structures. Any country with a foreign reserve needs to figure out how to protect its assets from being taken by a lawless overlord. People should learn by now if they hadn’t known before that you do not own anything you cannot defend or hide. By this time, almost everyone must realize that the USD will be going down. It’s time to get on a lifeboat. Thanks to the Empire, which is exposing its own lies.
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4. A lesson for Taiwan. The destruction of Ukraine, as unfortunate as it will be unless a surrender is forthcoming, is an object lesson for the Taiwanese authorities. While China would not want to, nor would it need to take such a drastic military action in Taiwan, the threat of doing so is very potent. Taiwan is also an island; people have nowhere to go. China is in a very advantageous position to press for unification negotiations. There are more and more people in Taiwan wanting to start unification negotiations.
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5. China and India are together. Wonders of wonders, China and India find themselves on the same front, defending Russia against the Empire of Lies. All those virulently anti-China channels from India have turned around and directed their vitriol against the Empire. Sure is fun to watch.
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6. China the peacemaker. Eventually, China will have to be a guarantor of peace for the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The Empire of Lies and its lapdogs have shot their wad. Why should anyone trust them?
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7. China will help rebuild Ukraine. The West, seeing that they won’t be selling weapons to Ukraine, will walk away. Good riddance!
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PM

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Princess Bride – Battle of Wits

This classic scene is from the 1980s movie “The Princess Bride”. It is well worth watching.

Stuffed Peppers

One of my all-time favorites. It’s also something that can only come from the household kitchens. Yum! Stuffed peppers with ground beef and rice are topped with a seasoned tomato sauce. Making classic stuffed bell peppers is easier than you think. You’ll find the full recipe below, but here’s a brief overview of what you can expect:

2022 04 15 07 12
Stuffed Peppers.

Prepare the Rice and Beef

Cook rice until tender in a covered saucepan. Meanwhile, cook ground beef in a skillet until browned and crumbly.

Stuff the Peppers

Hollow the bell peppers by cutting off the tops and scooping out the seeds and membranes. Arrange the peppers in a single layer in a baking dish. Stuff the peppers with a prepared filling of rice, ground beef, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. Top each filled pepper with a mixture of tomato sauce and Italian seasoning.

Bake

Bake until the peppers are tender, basting with sauce every 15 minutes.

How Long to Cook Stuffed Peppers

These stuffed peppers use cooked ground beef, so they should be fully baked within an hour. You’ll know they’re done when the peppers are tender. The whole recipe, including prep time, should come together in about 90 minutes.

How to Store Stuffed Peppers

Store leftover stuffed peppers in an airtight container in the fridge for three to five days. Make sure they’re completely cooled before storing to slow bacteria growth.

Can You Freeze Stuffed Pepper?

Yes! You can freeze stuffed peppers — and you should if you don’t plan to eat them within five days. Frozen stuffed peppers taste great when thawed and reheated, so this is a great way to meal prep. To freeze baked stuffed peppers: Wrap each completely-cooled stuffed pepper individually in storage wrap, then follow it with a layer of aluminum foil. Store the peppers in the freezer for up to three months.

Thaw frozen stuffed peppers in the fridge overnight. Reheat them in the oven at 350 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes, or until heated through.

2022 04 11 11 30
2022 04 11 11 30

Japan pushes India to denounce Russia — RT World News

India has come under increased Western pressure to distance itself from Moscow and sever its economic ties, after it abstained from a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Russia's military action in Ukraine, choosing instead to remain neutral alongside China, Pakistan, South Africa, and 30 other countries.

India is also facing criticism for buying Russian oil, available at discounted prices as some countries have been avoiding it in fear of retaliatory sanctions from the US. The Indian government, however, has reportedly adopted a pragmatic approach and was “exploring all possibilities” to ensure the country's own energy security.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, with a stated goal to “demilitarize and denazify” its government, ensuring that its NATO membership aspirations no longer pose a threat to either Russia or the newly recognized Donbass republics, which have suffered seven years of siege by Kiev forces. The US and its allies have accused Russia of starting an “unprovoked” invasion to occupy Ukraine.

Article

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How old are you?

outside fridge kids dont get
outside fridge kids dont get

Chinese vaccine = 100% death prevention! Must be.

Shanghai Has Recorded More Than 130,000 Covid Cases—and No Deaths – WSJ
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How old are you?

band tshirt kids dont get
band tshirt kids dont get

So where shall the new UN be located?

It should be located inside one of the major nations of The East. That goes without saying. If you look at things from this perspective, a number of candidates present themselves…

  • China (Manufacturing & Technology hub)
  • Russia (Resource hub)
  • India (Population and technology hub)
  • Iran (Oil and Energy hub)
  • Kazakhstan (BRI hub)
  • Brazil (South American hub)
  • South Africa (African hub)

Most people would “knee-jerk response that China would be the location, but I argue “not so fast”. If there was one singular location, then yes, China makes sense. However, the impression that I am getting is that United Nations Part Two might be more “mobile”. Perhaps periodically cycling between hosing nations. Much like the Olympics are today.

Yes. Indeed, it’s a new world that is evolving and manifesting. And the ways of the old are falling away to the wayside like the skin of a dinosaur-sized snake.

How old are you?

limewire laffy taffy kids dont get
limewire laffy taffy kids dont get

TWICE “SCIENTIST” Choreography Video (Moving Ver.)

Yes. The West is undergoing collapse. But the East is doing just fine. Here is the latest video that my little daughter is learning the dance moves to. It’s pretty representative of the mood in Asia these days.

China makes semi-secret delivery of missiles to Serbia

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Russian ally Serbia took the delivery of a sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system in a veiled operation this weekend, amid Western concerns that an arms buildup in the Balkans at the time of the war in Ukraine could threaten the fragile peace in the region.

Media and military experts said Sunday that six Chinese Air Force Y-20 transport planes landed at Belgrade’s civilian airport early Saturday, reportedly carrying HQ-22 surface-to-air missile systems for the Serbian military.

The Chinese cargo planes with military markings were pictured at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport. Serbia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment.

The arms delivery over the territory of at least two NATO member states, Turkey and Bulgaria, was seen by experts as a demonstration of China’s growing global reach.

“The Y-20s’ appearance raised eyebrows because they flew en masse as opposed to a series of single-aircraft flights,” wrote The Warzone online magazine. “The Y-20′s presence in Europe in any numbers is also still a fairly new development.”

Serbian military analyst Aleksandar Radic said that “the Chinese carried out their demonstration of force.”

Article

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How old are you?

myspace kids dont understand
myspace kids dont understand

The Total War to Cancel Russia

From HERE.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Vast swathes of NATOstan have been corralled into behaving like a Russophobic lynch mob. No dissent is tolerated.

By now it’s abundantly clear that the neo-Orwellian “Two Minute Hate” Russophobic campaign launched by the Empire of Lies after the start of Operation Z is actually “24/7 Hate”.

Vast swathes of NATOstan have been corralled into behaving like a Russophobic lynch mob. No dissent is tolerated. The full psyops has de facto upgraded the Empire of Lies to the status of Empire of Hate in a Total War – hybrid and otherwise – to cancel Russia.

Hate, after all, packs way more punch than mere lies, which are now veering into abject ridiculousness, as in U.S. “intelligence” resorting to – what else – lies to fight the info war against Russia.

If the propaganda overdrive has been lethally effective amidst the zombified Western masses – call it a “win” in the P.R. war – in the front where it really matters, inside Russia, it’s a major fail.

Public opinion support for both Operation Z and President Putin is unprecedented. After videos of torture of Russian POWs that caused widespread revulsion, Russian civil society is even bracing for a “Long War” lasting months, not weeks, as long as the targets of the Russian High Command – actually a military secret – are met.

The stated aims are “demilitarization” and “denazification” of a future neutral Ukraine – but geopolitically reach way beyond: the aim is to turn the post-1945 European collective security arrangement upside down, forcing NATO to understand and come to terms with the concept of “indivisible security”. This is an extremely complex process that will reach the next decade.

The NATOstan sphere simply cannot admit in public a series of facts that a military analyst of the caliber of Andrei Martyanov has been explaining for years. And that adds to their collective pain.

Russia can take on NATO and smash it to bits in 48 hours. It may employ advanced strategic deterrence systems unmatched across the West. Its southern axis – from the Caucasus and West Asia to Central Asia – is fully stabilized. And if the going gets really tough, Mr. Zircon can deliver his hypersonic nuclear business card with the other side not even knowing what hit it.

“Europe has chosen its fate”

It may be enlightening to see how these complex processes are interpreted by Russians – whose points of view are now completely blocked across NATOstan.

Let’s take two examples. The first is Lieutenant General L.P. Reshetnikov, in an analytical note examining facts of the ground war.

Some key takeaways:

– “Over Romania and Poland there are airborne early warning aircraft of NATO with experienced crews, there are U.S. intelligence satellites in the sky all the time. I remind you that just in terms of budgets for our Roscosmos we allocated $2.5 billion a year, the civil budget of NASA is $25 billion, the civil budget of SpaceX alone is equal to Roscosmos – and that is not counting the tens of billions of dollars annually for the entire U.S. feverishly unfolding the control system of the entire planet.”

– The war is unfolding according to “NATO’s eyes and brains. The Ukronazis are nothing but free controlled zombies. And the Ukrainian army is a remotely controlled zombie organism.”

– “The tactics and strategy of this war will be the subject of textbooks for military academies around the world. Once again: the Russian army is smashing a Nazi zombie organism, fully integrated with the eyes and brain of NATO.”

Now let’s switch to Oleg Makarenko, who focuses on the Big Picture.

– “The West considers itself ‘the whole world’ only because it has not yet received a sufficiently sensitive punch on the nose. It just so happened that Russia is now giving him this click: with the rear support of Asia, Africa and Latin America. And the West can do absolutely nothing with us, since it also lags behind us in terms of the number of nuclear warheads.”

– “Europe has chosen its fate. And chose fate for Russia. What you are seeing now is the death of Europe. Even if it does not come to nuclear strikes on industrial centers, Europe is doomed. In a situation where European industry is left without cheap Russian energy sources and raw materials – and China will begin to receive these same energy carriers and raw materials at a discount, there can be no talk of any real competition with China from Europe. As a result, literally everything will collapse there – after industry, agriculture will collapse, welfare and social security will collapse, hunger, banditry and chaos will begin.”

It’s fair to consider Reshetnikov and Makarenko as faithfully representing the overall Russian sentiment, which interprets the crude Bucha false flag as a cover to obscure the Ukrainian army torture of Russian POWs.

And, deeper still, Bucha allowed the disappearance of Pentagon bioweapon labs from the Western mediasphere, complete with its ramifications: evidence of a concerted American drive to ultimately deploy real weapons of mass destruction against Russia.

The multi-level Bucha hoax had to include the Brit presidency of the UN Security Council actually blocking a serious discussion, a day before the Russian Ministry of Defense struggled to present to the UN – predictably minus the U.S. and the UK – all the bioweapon facts they have unearthed in Ukraine. The Chinese were horrified by the findings.

The Russian Investigative Committee at least persists in its work, with 100 researchers unearthing evidence of war crimes across Donbass to be presented at a tribunal in the near future, most probably set up in Donetsk.

And that brings us back to the facts on the ground. There’s a lot of analytical discussion on the possible endgame of Operation Z. A fair assessment would include the liberation of all of Novorossiya and total control of the Black Sea coastline that currently is part of Ukraine.

“Ukraine” in fact was never a state; it was always an annex to another state or empire such as Poland, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and crucially Russia.

The landmark Russian state was Kievan Rus. “Ukraine”, in old Russian, means “border region”. In the past, it referred to the westernmost regions of the Russian Empire. When the Empire started expanding south, the new regions annexed mostly from Turkish rule were called Novorossiya (“New Russia”) and the northeastern regions, Malorossiya (“Little Russia”).

It was up to the USSR in the early 1920s to jumble it all together and name it “Ukraine” – adding Galicia in the west, which was historically non-Russian.

Yet the key development is when the USSR broke up in 1991. As the Empire of Lies de facto controlled post-Soviet Russia, they could never have possibly allowed the real Russian regions of the USSR – that is, Novorossiya and Malorossiya – to be again incorporated to the Russian Federation.

Russia is now re-incorporating them – in an “I Did It, My Way” manner.

Vamos a bailar in European Puerto Rico

By now it’s also quite clear to any serious geopolitical analysis that Operation Z opened a Pandora’s box. And the supreme historical victim of all the toxicity finally let loose is bound to be Europe.

The indispensable Michael Hudson, in a new essay on the U.S. dollar devouring the euro, argues half in jest that Europe might as well surrender its currency, and go on like “a somewhat larger version of Puerto Rico.”

After all, Europe “has pretty much ceased to be a politically independent state, it is beginning to look more like Panama and Liberia – ‘flag of convenience’ offshore banking centers that are not real ‘states’ because they don’t issue their own currency, but use the U.S. dollar.”

In synch with quite a few Russian, Chinese and Iranian analysts, Hudson advances that the war in Ukraine – actually in its “full-blown version as the New Cold War” – is likely to last “at least a decade, perhaps two as the U.S. extends the fight between neoliberalism and socialism [meaning the Chinese system] to encompass a worldwide conflict.”

What may be seriously in dispute is whether the U.S., after “the economic conquest of Europe”, will be able to “lock in African, South American and Asian countries”. The Eurasia integration process, rolling in earnest for 10 years now, conducted by the Russia-China strategic partnership and expanding to most of the Global South, will go no holds barred to prevent it.

There’s no question, as Hudson states, that “the world economy is being enflamed” – with the U.S. weaponizing trade. Yet on the Right Side of History we have the Rublegas, the petroyuan, the new monetary/financial system being designed in a partnership between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China.

And that’s something no puny Cancel Culture War can erase.

Let’s see how old you actually are…

cassette tape pen pencil
cassette tape pen pencil

China calls for ‘objective’ analysis of Russia’s claims about US biolabs in Ukraine

A “fair, objective and professional” assessment is needed for the materials Moscow has provided, the Chinese Foreign Ministry says

The international community should provide a “fair, objective and professional” assessment of Russia’s allegations regarding alleged US military laboratories in Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.

In March, Russia shared evidence obtained from laboratories across Ukraine that apparently confirms that Pentagon-funded labs were working on “biological weapons components,” and may have been connected to suspicious outbreaks of dirofilariasis, tuberculosis, and avian flu over the past several years.

According to the latest data revealed by military spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov on March 30, Kiev was planning to use drones to deploy pathogens against the Donbass republics, as well as Russia itself.

Speaking at a regular press briefing on Friday, Zhao said the US has still not come up with a “constructive response” to Russia’s statements, and called on the international community to give serious consideration to Moscow’s claims.

He said, as quoted by TASS, that China

would welcome a fair, objective and professional assessment by the international community of the documents provided by Russia on the basis of the UN mechanisms and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction.”

China has consistently encouraged the US to make public all information about its biolabs. Two weeks ago, China’s permanent representative to the UN, Zhang Jun, told the UN Security Council that following the revelation by Russia of the newly discovered documents,

the party concerned should respond to questions, and offer timely and comprehensive clarifications to remove the doubts of the international community.”

Several days prior to that, Beijing disclosed for the first time the alleged number of US-controlled biolabs.

Saying that laboratories in Ukraine are just the

tip of an iceberg,” Zhao revealed that the Pentagon “controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world.

Noting that the US

has been exclusively obstructing

the establishment of an independent verification mechanism, the Foreign Ministry spokesman called on the US to

publish the relevant details as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and which research has been carried out.”

The US has long claimed that allegations about military-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine are ‘Russian disinformation’.

In March, however, US diplomat Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate that

biological research laboratories in Ukraine

did exist, and that Washington was working with Kiev

to ensure that the materials of biological research do not fall into the hands of Russian forces.”

How you know you are getting old…

home alone mortgage kids dont get
home alone mortgage kids dont get

John Lear In Memoriam, 1942-2022 (80 yrs)

John Lear died this year. He was an active member of the UFO community, and was instrumental in providing substance to a story, that was up until then, was peopled with Grade B science-fiction fantasies.  He got many things wrong, but he was spot on in regards to United States involvement in the extraterrestial “issue”.

Lear passed away in his sleep Tuesday night [March 29, 2022] at his Las Vegas home, according to his daughter Allison. Lear is the son of Bill Lear, who developed the Lear Jet.

Here is an interview that he had that I was able to collect. Please enjoy.

John Lear, a distinguished pilot and ufologist, discusses specific encounters with UFOs in an interview with investigative journalist George Knapp. Lear discusses alleged abductions by UFOs and government coverups of UFO encounters. This is an episode of On The Record, a 30 minute TV show broadcast on KLAS TV in Las Vegas in 1987.

George Knapp: Hello and welcome to On The Record. Flying saucers, extraterrestrials, monsters from outer space. The government has been telling us for years that they’re not real. They’re weather balloons or swamp gas or reflections from the sun or the ravings of lunatics. But serious UFO researchers say a breakthrough may be very close. Some of the government scientists who worked on the top-secret Project Blue Book are ready to talk. What’s more, a series of revealing government documents have trickled out of the federal files, documents that paint a much different picture of the UFO phenomenon. One of the most dedicated UFO researchers lives right here in Las Vegas. His name is John Lear, and he is my guest today. Mr. Lear, thanks for being here.

John Lear: Okay George.

Knapp: To begin with, you’re a pilot, an airline pilot, captain, you have held 17 different world speed records at one time or another. You’re a member of the famous Lear family that all Nevadans are pretty much familiar with, a former State Senate candidate. You don’t sound like the kind of guy who would get hooked up in something that a lot of people would say as a bunch of nonsense.

Lear: No, it’s just by coincidence that I got really interested in this about two years ago. My father saw a UFO and my brother did, and they were very interested, but there was really no proof as far as I was concerned to really look into it until about two years ago.

Knapp: Your father and brother saw them. Can you give details?

Lear: My brother saw one when he was flying a P-38 from Phoenix to Los Angeles at night. It just appeared in front of them. He made two turns, 90 degree turns, it stayed in front of him and then disappeared, and my father was flying at night, I believe over the Arizona desert and saw one too.

Knapp: So you started, you got an interest because of the other members of your family. How did you start out?

Lear: I had an interest but there was really nothing I could put my finger on. And like I say, two years ago, a friend of mine came through town, we had flown in Southeast Asia together and he was retiring from the Air Force. He came over and we started talking about where he had been for the last 15 years and he mentioned that he had been stationed at Bentwaters (Royal Air Force Base) and I said, oh, Bentwaters, that’s where the flying saucer supposedly was in 1980. He said, “No, John, not supposedly. It was,” he said. “I don’t care if you believe me or not, it landed. I didn’t see it because we were confined to quarters. But I know people who did and I’ll give you the names and if you ever see them, tell them you know me, and they’ll tell you the whole story.” Since then, I ran into one of the security police, who was within 10 feet of the saucer and actually saw the three aliens get out and go up to General Gordon Williams, who was the Wing Commander at that time.

Knapp: There was quite a bit of documentation regarding this Bentwater incident. Why don’t you go into that a little bit?

Lear: There’s the Colonel (Charles) Halt memo that came out under the Freedom of Information Act, and it told about the mysterious lights and beaming down and everything that happened in the forest, except the actual alien landings, that wasn’t in the memo. There was also the tape Colonel Halt tape, forest tape, that he made over a period of eight hours. And there’s a 20-minute segment that we’ve been able to get a hold of that you can hear him running through the forest and, and being worried saying the thing’s after us.

Knapp: Now why do you suppose that hasn’t come out? I mean, this particular incident. Why hasn’t it come out if so many people, and you’ve told me about this before, have seen it, or seen these aliens? Why haven’t some of them come forward?

Lear: A lot of them have come forward, but they’re just not getting any press. It’s something that people just don’t want to deal with. The press doesn’t want to deal with and people aren’t going to listen to something unless Dan Rather or any of your big press people are going to tell them about it and they’re just too spooked. The Air Force has made an art form of ridiculing people who have talked about this thing. They’ve done an excellent job of covering it up for the last 40 years. George basically what we’re dealing with here is, I’ll give you the bottom line.

Knapp: Okay, I want to hear your thesis.

Lear: I’m not trying to sell a book and then trying to promote a lecture. This is based on what I’ve come across after intense research in the last year. And I have found out that the government has retrieved between 10 and 15 actual flying saucers, three of which have been in perfect condition, one of which they tried to fly. They have between 30 and 50 alien bodies in cryogenic storage. We even have the name of the person whose job it is to show these bodies to the heads of state and the people who are authorized to see them. They represent at least five different civilizations.

Knapp: I can’t imagine Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw, if that were to come to their attention, a story of that magnitude, that they wouldn’t do something with it.

Lear: Well, I can’t I can’t answer that question. I don’t know why they don’t do it. There certainly is enough evidence based on what I’ve looked at. For instance, the Linda Moulton Howe documentary in Denver for the CBS affiliate there called A Strange Harvest. Since 1975 to 1980 when she made the documentary, there’s at least 9,000 cattle mutilations. Now, the government said that the mutilations were normal, your desert predator did these. But they weren’t. They were mutilations.

Knapp: I think we have a picture of these somewhere. Maybe we can see that as you’re talking. Well, that’s the next picture. There we are.

Lear: This is the mutilation New Mexico State Police did the research, or the investigation on, and they cut out certain parts. The cut was made with a laser beam far sharper than anything we have. As a matter of fact, they were able to determine that they cut between the cells and didn’t cut the cells themselves. We presently don’t have this kind of technology.

Knapp: Well, we don’t know that we have this kind of technology, or you and I don’t know that we don’t, but that doesn’t prove necessarily that it’s ET.

Lear: No, except that there’s usually a visual sighting of a flying saucer or a light, a strange light, at each one of these sightings.

Knapp: Okay, you mentioned the saucers and the bodies. Now what kind of proof do you have that that is true? How do you know that?

Lear: Well, let me take a look. Let me read to your first what the Air Force says about the bodies. First of all, I’m going to read from the introductory space science Volume Two Department of Physics, United States Air Force. This is Chapter 13, Unidentified Flying Objects. Now this is what the Air Force has the students at the Air Force Academy read and it says, “The most commonly described alien is about three and a half feet tall, has a round head, arms reaching to or below his knees and is wearing a silvery spacesuit or coveralls. Other aliens appear to be essentially the same as Earth men, while still others have particularly wide wraparound eyes, and mouths with very thin lips. And there was a rare group reported to be about four feet tall, weight of around 35 pounds and covered with thick hair for clothing. Members of this last group are described as being extremely strong.” Now I’m not making this up. This is an Air Force, you can pick out an Air Force physics book and read this stuff. At the end of the chapter, they go on to say, this leads us to believe in the unpleasant possibility of alien visitors to our planet or at least of alien-controlled UFOs. Now the picture that we have of the big head that the Air Force describes, this picture was drawn by an army surgeon. These are one of the bodies that was recovered in the famous Roswell incident of 1947.

Knapp: Tell us about that.

Lear: It was the first flying saucer that crashed and was recovered by the Army. It was covered up. There have been several books about it, they recovered four beings, and one of the surgeons that was responsible for the autopsy drew that picture and came up with some of these interesting things in the autopsy. I’ll just read a couple lines; three and a half to four and a half feet tall, two round eyes without pupils, no ear lobes, nose is vague, neck described as being thin, arms described long and thin reaching down to the knee section, you can see that there’s a web portion in the hands, no teeth, no apparently reproductive organs. Brain capacity unknown, colorless liquid prevalent in the body without red cells, no lymphocytes. And there’s more in that particular report.

Knapp: This is an autopsy report and you said the government goes to great lengths, the Air Force in particular, to discredit this kind of stuff. Where did this come from? How did you get this?

Lear: That came in the private, that came from the private collection of Leonard Springfield, who was one of the premier researchers. He worked for the Air Force in the early ‘50s in a secret project reporting UFOs, then as a civilian he continued his private research, and this is out of his collection.

Knapp: Why does the government want to hide this? Why doesn’t the Air Force just come forward? What doesn’t, you know, why don’t they level with us if this is all true?

Lear: Well, there’s not really much they can say based on what I’ve been able to find out. George, they’re really … you know, what could they say about it? They’ve been researching it for many, many years. And based on my information, let’s say that the president decided to make an announcement. This is if he made it today, this is what I think that he would say: “My fellow Americans, I come before you tonight with an announcement of great importance. Despite all our denials, flying saucers do, in fact exist, where they come from we do not know, who is in them we do not know, where they are from we do not know, nor do we know how they got here or what they want. We are unable to duplicate any of the metals found on the several craft we have recovered, nor are we able to figure out how they are propelled. We have hidden these facts from you over the past 40 years, in hopes that we could give you more answers. Unfortunately, we are no closer to answers today than we were 40 years ago. God bless you all.”

Knapp: In other words, you find it highly unlikely that the president would ever make a statement anything like that.

Lear: No, it’s just, it’s too big, it’s massive. The problem is not only just the fact that there are five and as many as 10 different civilizations visiting us. Apparently, and this is from the research that I’ve done, at least 90% of them are hostile. And when I say hostile, if not hostile, they have a completely different set of morals than we do.

Knapp: Okay, I’ll tell you what, we’re going to come back to the president and aliens because there have been some statements made by presidents including President Reagan. We’ll be right back.

Knapp: Welcome back. UFOs, are they real? We’re talking with John Lear on the subject. Mr. Lear mentioned a couple of minutes ago about what the president might say about UFOs. Do you believe that various presidents have been informed about what you believe to be the truth on UFOs?

Lear: Each president has been informed up to and including President Reagan. I’m not sure to the extent they are informed. Privately, I don’t believe they are given the full briefing. The people that control this information is an organization that we know of as MJ-12. They’re a top group of military and scientists. I do know that when the president becomes president, it takes at least three or four months before he actually gets the clearance to know everything there is. And that doesn’t mean they tell him, but it does take three or four months to get it. Now talking the president … let’s talk about what the president has actually said, has he mentioned anything about aliens?

Knapp: President Reagan?

Lear: President Reagan on Dec. 4, 1985. This is a copy of the speech from the White House, just before he went over to Iceland. He says, “I couldn’t but one point in our discussions privately with Secretary General Gorbachev, when you stop to think that we’re all God’s children, wherever we may live in this world, I couldn’t help but say to him, just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held, if suddenly there was a threat to this world, from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We’d forget all our local differences that we have between our countries and we would find out once for all, that we really are all human beings here on this earth together.”

Knapp: He couldn’t be just making a supposition for purpose of making a point? You’re saying he’s trying to tell us something?

Lear: Well here, one week ago at the 42nd General Assembly in front of the UN, Sept. 21. He says, “In our obsession with the antagonism of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world and yet, I ask you, is not an alien force not already among us?” Now, this is right out of a White House speech. I’m not making this up.

Knapp: What did he mean by this alien force? I mean, does it say, does he go on to say something?

Lear: Yeah, he says, what could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our people than war and the threat of war. But the point is, why would he even bring up aliens? I mean, it’s pretty far out for the president of the United States to mention threats from outer space.

Knapp: Okay, what about President Carter?

Lear: President Carter, we have the quote from Carter when he was during his election campaign. If I become president, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists. I am convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one.

Knapp: Jimmy Carter says he saw one?

Lear: That’s Jimmy Carter. He saw one in 1973

Knapp: But he didn’t, he didn’t tell us, did he?

Lear: He didn’t. The pressure is enormous on these people to cover this stuff up.

Knapp: How can that be? Are they afraid of a panic, that people would panic?

Lear: There’s the panic problem and there’s also the problem that, in fact, in Cro-Magnon Man, there may have been some tinkering to make us what we are today. That’s been borne out by several researchers, that we couldn’t have developed, exactly, there’s the missing link. Something had to happen to get us going. Between 4,000 and 8,000 BC, we had just been going along and for hundreds of thousand years not doing anything. All of a sudden, bang, we started making pottery, invented the wheel, invented fire, and everything took off. What was the key that did that? I don’t know. But it causes one to think.

Knapp: You mentioned a couple of minutes ago before the break that you think 90% of these visitors are hostile. What makes you think that? That doesn’t fit with what we think of as ET, you know.

Lear: If you read some of these books that are on the newsstands, one is called Intruders, one is called Communion. They apparently come down, and when I say apparently, this is taken from 300 hypnosis cases. A friend of mine has done 140 of them. And the people are abducted, they’re taken up into a saucer, usually lasts about an hour. They do all kinds of experiments, they give them shots, they poke them, they cut them, they do all kinds of things and wipe out their memory and send them back. Only after several months of some psychological problems do they end up going to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist on trying to find out what the problem is, in the use of hypnosis, finds out that this person has been abducted.

Knapp: What’s the reason for that? What are they trying to learn?

Lear: There’s three things that they’re trying to do with these abductions. The first thing is they’re trying to monitor us. It started in the early ‘40s and they’d put a little unit, very small bb type object way up in the back side of the brain and they’d leave it there for about 18 years. They’d pick them up and put it in about 4 years old. 12 years old, they would pick them up and monitor it, then about 18, they’d take it out. The second thing they did is they put a post hypnotic suggestion, according to many of the people that have been hypnotized, and we found out what they’ve told them, apparently, within the next two to five years, there is going to be a big event, something enormous is going to happen and these people who have been abducted, and there’s probably over 100,000 of them, have been given some place to go and something to do but under our best hypnotic techniques, we cannot find out what it is.

Knapp: So how do we know that that’s true?

Lear: Because they said where they’re going to do something, they know that they’re going to do something, but under the hypnosis, they can’t find out exactly what it is. The third thing that they do is genetic experiments. They’ve been cross breeding. There’s a very good book out now called Intruders written by Budd Hopkins and it’s about a cross breeding experiment with a girl in Indianapolis. They actually, the big head, which we call the big head in research, the little three and a half foot tall with a big head. They cross breed that with this girl in Indianapolis, and there were seven children. Just last fall, before the book was published, they brought the oldest and the youngest to show to her, and they let her name all seven. Now this book has been thoroughly researched by Budd Hopkins and although it sounds strange, believe me when I tell you, you may not find out in a month, a year, five years or 10 years. But you’ll look back at what I’m telling you now, and you’ll say to yourself, “Oh, my gosh, the son of a gun was right. “

Knapp: Well, where’s this girl? Now, she’s just living?

Lear: She lives in Indianapolis. She lives in town, or just outside of town. She just got married. Budd went to her wedding. We all know who she is. She gets along, you know, just fine. It doesn’t mean just because she was abducted and gave them children doesn’t mean it was the end of the world. It was just a part of her life.

Knapp: Why don’t we see a lot of photographic evidence as many cameras and video gear. Why don’t we see a lot of that?

Lear: There are a lot of …

Knapp: Before you go on, the pictures that we showed in the beginning of this program, you say they’re baloney, they’re phony.

Lear: That’s right. The pictures you showed at the beginning were called the Meiers Incident. It’s called the visitors from Pleiades, and any ufologist worth his salt knows, and who has researched that case, knows that he cannot back it up with the negatives and the essential information to prove that something like that happened, so we look at that as suspect.

Knapp: So in other words, you run into your share phonies as well in your research.

Lear: Absolutely, there’s not that many, but there are a few out there. There are so many people that have real stories to tell that we’re just so busy with those. For instance, let’s take the November 17 Japan Airlines incident.

Knapp: I’ll tell you what, we’re going to take another break and we’ll do that when we come back. Stay with us.

Knapp: Welcome back. We have a few minutes left with John Lear. We’re talking about UFOs. You’re about to tell me about the Japanese Airline Incident. It’s probably something that’s still in the memory of our viewers.

Lear: Yeah, the Japanese Airline Incident was a cargo 747 that had taken off from Iceland flying to Anchorage. And as he passed over the United States border and the northern part of Anchorage, he was intercepted by a UFO that was twice the size of an aircraft carrier. And he was followed about 40 minutes. He made a complete 360-degree right turn, he made a descent of 5,000 feet and the thing stayed with him. Regardless of what you hear, the FAA did have him on radar and so did the Air Force. If you have a picture there. This is a 26-page document made by Bruce Maccabee who’s a physicist employed by the Naval Surface weapons laboratory and one of the most respected figures in ufology.

Knapp: I don’t think we have that picture. So go ahead.

Lear: Okay, I’m just going to hold it up here and you can see the size of the 747 to the UFO. Now the UFO was not brightly lit like that. It’s just made like that for reference. It was dark, but this is what he saw beside him.

Knapp: Whose rendition is this?

Lear: This is the captain’s. This is from the captain’s rendition when he was debriefed by the FAA. Now, certain UFO de-bunkers have said what he saw was the planet Jupiter. Well, this is an insult to all transport category captains around the world. I mean, the guy knows a difference between something that’s twice as big as an aircraft carrier and the planet Jupiter.

Knapp: I’ve also heard that it’s the reflection of his own plane.

Lear: What the, the radar?

Knapp: Yeah.

Lear: That was an attempt to describe it. You can’t imagine what pressure these people are under to cover this stuff. It’s tremendous pressure. It really is.

Knapp: Okay. You’re going to tell me that the church, did you want to go further into the JAL Incident?

Lear: No, that’s it. I just want to say it has a 26-page report, it had the captain and the ATC conversation. It had the radar plots, and it had the Air Force plots and the FAA radar plot. There was no question about it. The thing followed him.

Knapp: The church, what do they think about UFOs?

Lear: Well, here’s a copy from the London Evening News, July 21, 1987, and says, “Prepare to meet thine aliens. Vatican theologians have acknowledged that there could be life on other planets. Now they plan to train missionaries capable of working in space and meeting aliens. Jesuit scientists at the Vatican Observatory in Prescotti near Rome have reported moving lights and other identified phenomena in the sky. Starting in September, the Vatican university will have a special UFO section.”

Knapp: You’ve said before you thought that a lot of their intentions were hostile and you’ve mentioned before that a lot of the sightings around the military bases. Why don’t we see them here? Las Vegas, we’ve got a lot of military bases here.

Lear: Well, the in fact there have been a lot of a lot of reports of UFOs in around Las Vegas, not specifically over the Air Force bases. We have the Test Site and of course, we don’t know what’s going on there, and we have Nellis Air Force Base. But there have not really been a lot of sightings over there. The main Air Force sightings were in 1975. And the UFOs descended on every Strategic Air Command base guarding the perimeter of the northern United States. They hovered over the nuclear weapons storage area and they stayed there with impunity for up to two and three hours over a period of three days.

Knapp: And nobody heard about it?

Lear: Well, there were a few reports, but you really don’t, I have a I have a report 150 pages long of the F-106s that were sent out to chase them. And the helicopters, and notifying the Canadian authorities and the security patrolman that were sent down to actually see what was going on and they’d come up on these things and they’d say, “I’m not going any further.”

Knapp: You think maybe it’s a top-secret area if the Air Force actually does have them, maybe they’ve got them here?

Lear: I’m certain they do. Up at the Test Site there’s a report that of the three that they’ve got in perfectly good condition, at least one is up at the Test Site and has flown and one was being flown as of 1981.

Knapp: By us?

Lear: By us.

Knapp: We mentioned at the top of the show that perhaps a breakthrough might be coming. That some of these people from MJ-12 or from the Project Blue Book who are in on the government’s research and saw some of the stuff might be ready to talk we got about a minute left. Why don’t you tell me about that?

Lear: It’s our information that half of, part of MJ-12 wants to release it, part of it doesn’t. We’re hoping that we can do this but of course, as researchers we’re not aware of all the ramifications, we just know of what we’re looking at, so we would like to see them release it but we really don’t know if they are.

Knapp: Okay. John Lear. It’s been very interesting. You keep us posted.

Lear: Sure will.

Knapp: Thank you. We’ll see you next week with more of On The Record.

Now I know that I am getting old…

floppy disc kids dont get
floppy disc kids dont get

China ‘Decodes’ An Orbiting US Satellite

To protect its space assets, China has devised a new cyber defense.
China has developed a new cyber defense infrastructure that can automatically detect security flaws in orbiting satellites, according to military experts participating in the project
There are thousands of satellites in orbit, each with hundreds of components that could be vulnerable to hackers due to software or hardware flaws.
As launch prices have decreased, there are now more satellites rotating in low earth orbits in 2022, opening the frontier of space to big private sector launch projects. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, there were 4,852 satellites in orbit at the start of 2022.
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What it is like to be hungry

We have all felt the pangs of hunger. Going for a few hours or most of a day without food, we are aware of the keen signal that our body gives our mind that we are hungry–a sharp ache or pang that can drive out most other thoughts. But what is severe hunger like over a longer period?

This is really unknown to most of us.

Detailed information about people that have to go without food for long periods due to causes such as conflict and drought is not readily available. Yet it is important to get some idea of what long term hunger is like to help us understand people whose hunger is more acute and gone on much longer than that which we have experienced.

I can tell you that I and my wife experienced severe hunger for weeks at a time, and the longest that we went without food was five weeks.

You all have no idea how desperate and angry a hungry person can get. Do not underestimate this situation.

To help us understand hunger existing not for a day, but many weeks, we present, in abridged form, a description provided by Tony Hall (formerly a Congressman from Dayton, Ohio and ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) in his 2006 book, Changing the Face of Hunger (pp. 74–89). He undertook this fast to protest an action of Congress. He fasted from April 4 to April 26, 1993–three weeks and one day.

Being hungry for three weeks, in Hall’s words:

Physically and psychologically, the first week of the fast was the hardest. I was horribly hungry–I could say ‘in agony’ –and getting weaker by the day. I thought constantly about what I would like to eat–that last meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and Caesar salad; some future meals with some of my favorite foods, such as steak, roast beef, and key lime pie….

Family mealtimes were the worst.

I couldn’t go to the table because the food would be too tempting, and not being able to eat it would be agonizing. Janet, Matt, and Jyl would try to hide from me when they snacked between meals….. I followed Dick Gregory’s advice to fill up on water. I really poured it down. Since it was the only thing I was consuming, I paid a great deal more attention to it than I ever had before. I really noticed the difference in taste when drunk from the tap at home, the office, or someplace else. My sense of smell also heightened throughout the fast. I could tell what people had eaten because their bodies gave off aromas that I had never noticed before….

The hardest day of the fast came on Easter, which was my seventh day without eating. Janet and I had gone on a retreat in Maryland with some friends, and our friends prepared a typical big American holiday dinner–turkey, potatoes, dressing, pie, cake. It drove me nuts. I had to leave them, go outside and take a walk, to get away from those wonderful aromas. I decided that if I could get through this day, I would be over the hump.

I did, and I was.

Just as Dick Gregory said, the sensation of hunger faded in about a week. It’s as if the body gives up on getting food and stops demanding it. From then on, I could join my family at mealtimes and not be bothered a bit . It was a revelation about the poor and the hungry, to whom I came to feel exceptionally close as the fast went on. I now fully understood, in a way I never had before, a strange phenomenon I had witnessed during famines: starving children who refused to eat when food was finally offered to them.

The absence of hunger pangs did not mean I wasn’t feeling the physical effects of the fast, however. I’d wake up in the morning feeling fine. My head would be clear. I would think I had lots of energy.

But after noon, I would fade.

The energy would desert me and weakness would take over. I’d need to nap. Then, when I woke from the nap, I’d feel like I couldn’t get up because I was so tired. Lacking the fuel of food, my body temperature apparently dropped, and I felt cold all the time. It also seemed my brain slowed down in the afternoon; I felt “dull.” I thought of poor children who don’t do well in school, who fall asleep in the afternoon, who become poor students because of poor nutrition. Remarkably, some of my vital signs–blood pressure, the results of blood tests–actually improved.

[On April 26, Hall ended his fast.] Because the fast had been a very public endeavor, I thought the breaking of it should be as well. I invited some reporters to my office…and had a V-8. I hadn’t eaten for twenty-two days, and that thick, salty vegetable juice tasted exceptionally good…Unfortunately I could only sip a little bit. Because my stomach had essentially been shut down for three weeks, I would have to coax it gradually back to use, maybe not being able to enjoy a full meal till the end of the week. I had lost twenty-three pounds–dropping from a robust 180 to a gaunt 157….

Now imagine some very large urban youth with guns and a fierce hunger. How would you be able to deal with them?

Food storage tips: Stock up on foods in gallon buckets

More stuff for my friends in the United States. Now is not the time to buy a new car. Now is the time to change your eating habits, and start being more conservative; grandparent-like in the creation of a larder. -MM

In a long-term survival scenario, storing food in gallon buckets is a good way to stock up on beans and rice, which can be used to make different dishes. These ingredients also pair well with other items you may have in your stockpile, such as canned meat and vegetables.

If you don’t have buckets yet, look for five-gallon buckets that are also food grade. If you can’t find food-grade buckets in stores near your area, line the buckets with Mylar bags instead to keep the food clean.

If you prefer something lighter, ask for four-gallon buckets from the nearest bakery. These buckets will be lighter and easier to carry. As a bonus, four-gallon buckets are often free, or only a couple of bucks.

If you can’t decide between the four- and five-gallon buckets, get whatever’s easier for you to lift and move around your stockpile.

What to store in gallon buckets

While bulk foods go well with gallon buckets, other items suit different storage methods like cans or Mylar bags. These items include more expensive foods that spoil quickly with exposure to air or moisture, or items that you don’t use often.

Keep items like dehydrated and dried foods, freeze-dried foods, milk and powdered eggs in cans or their original packaging.

Foods like beans, flour, pasta, rice, sugar and wheat go well with gallon buckets. Generally, each bucket will hold about 25 pounds of food. This will vary slightly depending on the shape of the food you want to store.

Most buckets are usually 12 inches wide and are HDPE (#2) buckets. You can also use PP (#5), which also have gasketed lids like the HDPE buckets.

When filling buckets, tap the sides to help the contents settle down so that you can fit more in. You need to pack the food compactly and get as much air space out as possible so the oxygen absorbers can work properly.

You can only pack 25 pounds of food in a bucket, even if the bucket isn’t filled completely. However, it’s better to fill the bucket completely before adding the oxygen absorbers so that all the oxygen can be removed once the buckets go into storage.

For optimal long-term storage, line the buckets with Mylar bags. Next, fill the Mylar bags with food, add the appropriate number of oxygen absorbers, then seal.

You can skip the Mylar bags if you regularly rotate your food supplies, you’re using food-grade buckets and if you plan on using up your beans, oats, rice and wheat within five years. (Related: Food supply 101: How to store rice properly.)

Here are some tips on how much food you can store in five-gallon buckets and the oxygen absorber capacity needed. Note that the data below provides estimates for the amount of food that will fit in each bucket.

The actual results may vary depending on how much you are able to tap your buckets and settle the contents.

  • Black beans – 37 pounds (lbs.) of food, (3,000 oxygen absorber capacity)
  • Brown sugar – 29 lbs. (none)
  • Corn – 37 lbs. (1,500)
  • Flour – 33 lbs. (1,500)
  • Kidney beans – 37 lbs. (3,000)
  • Lima beans – 33 lbs. (3,000)
  • Macaroni – 21 lbs. (3,000)
  • Penne pasta – 15 lbs. (3,000)
  • Potato flakes – 12.5 lbs. (4,000)
  • Rice – 33 lbs. (1,500)
  • Rolled oats – 20 lbs. (4,000)
  • Sugar – 35 lbs. (none)
  • Wheat – 36 lbs. (1,500)

If you live at an altitude above 4,000 feet, you’ll need about 20 percent less oxygen absorber capacity.

Since you can’t live on beans and rice alone, you should also stock up on other items such as:

  • Canned fruit and vegetables
  • Canned meat
  • Canned soups
  • Condiments (e.g., dips, ketchup, mayo, mustard, salsa, soy sauce, spreads and Sriracha sauce)
  • Jam
  • Jelly
  • Peanut butter and other nut butters
  • Tomato sauce and paste
  • Tuna, sardines and other canned fish

How to store buckets of food in your stockpile

Once you have buckets of food, you have to figure out a way to store them in your stockpile. Since the buckets won’t last forever, you need to keep them away from sunlight.

Putting excessive weight on the buckets will deteriorate plastic buckets. Note that 5 gallon buckets should only be stacked three to four buckets high, with the heaviest buckets on the bottom.

You can stack buckets higher only if those on top contain very light items like medical supplies. At most, the buckets on top of your pile should not exceed two pounds.

While there are other ways to store bulk foods, buckets are one of the most efficient methods to use because they can keep out moths and are rodent-resistant. Buckets are also waterproof.

Note that since plastic is not completely impermeable, buckets should not be stored directly on concrete. Just place some 2×4 boards underneath the buckets so they’re above the concrete.

Get food-grade buckets and stock up on bulk foods like beans and grains before SHTF.

So… Beijing’s Dynamic Zero Policy Does Not Work Fighting Omicron Variant? Eh?

A pretty good video. Well worth watching.

High Value kitty

Just another day at the job.

Notice the guy in the orange vest. He is NOT the owner of the ship. he is the community government health official. He employs a “ratter”; a kitty cat, to go forth and secure the premises from rats and mice. China; it does not play.

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50 High Value Items To Stockpile For When SHTF

An oldie, but goodie. Placed here for my friends in the United States. These are 'round out your storage items, and most are extremely cheap. For instance, we bought a load of 100 disposible lighters for under USD $3.  -MM

Stockpiling necessary supplies is at the very core of prepping. Most of us start out by trying to build a stockpile of food to see us through an emergency and will probably still be stockpiling food when the SHTF. But stockpiling food isn’t all there is to be ready for a disaster. There are many other things we need and use on a day-to-day basis.

Stockpiling food, without bothering to stockpile these other necessary items might not guarantee our death, but it will sure make our lives more uncomfortable. Too much of that discomfort could lead to death; perhaps not directly, but by permitting weakness and disease to bring us to an end.

There are literally hundreds of things that we could use in a post-disaster world; more than can fit in this list. But the items I’ve listed below are probably the most important things to include in your stockpile, either for your own personal use or to use as barter goods.

Disposable Butane Lighters – Fire is one of the things we use the most in a survival situation. Even though it is not considered one of the top three survival needs, it is useful for all three of them. It’s much easier for people who aren’t skilled at starting fires to start them with a disposable lighter than to try and do it any other way.

Waterproof Matches – The waterproof match is the standard fire starter for use in a survival situation. While many people have switched over to butane lighters, matches are still useful. Be sure to get the strike anywhere kind.

Fire Accelerants – Commonly referred to as “fire starters,” chemical fire accelerants or tinders work to get the fire from your matches or lighter into the larger kindling, so that your fire can keep burning. Make sure you have a good stock, as this is essential with damp wood.

Water Filters Water purification is essential to survival, as water that has microscopic pathogens can spread disease and even kill us.  If you use a filter for purifying water, be sure to have plenty of them.

Firewood – Many preppers are planning on heating their homes and cook with a wood fire in a post-disaster world; but few have enough firewood to do that. It takes four to six cords of firewood to heat a home through the winter.

Salt – Salt is not only essential for survival, it’s nature’s number one food preservative. Yet it can be extremely hard to come by. if you’re going to preserve food in a post-disaster world, you’d a better plan on having plenty of salt on hand.

Canning Jar Lids – I’m assuming you have canning jars; but how many lids do you have? They’re not considered reusable, so you’d better have plenty.

Batteries – Ok, batteries aren’t really a survival necessity; but we’ve got lots of things we use every day, which are battery operated. Stocking batteries, especially AA and AAA sizes, will make your life in a post-disaster world much better.

Toilet Paper – If you want to see something that people will kill for in a post-disaster world, I think this is it… especially women. Do you have any idea how much TP your family goes through?

Personal Hygiene Supplies – While we’re talking about TP, we don’t want to forget things like soap, toothpaste, and shampoo. Cleanliness in a post-disaster world is important as a means to help combat the spread of disease.

Plastic Bags – Nobody is going to be making plastic, let alone plastic bags in a post-disaster world. Yet they are something we use all the time. If you are planning on using a bucket toilet, you’re going to need a lot of bags just for that. But you’re going to need them for a lot of other things too.

Ammunition – This is probably one you’ve already thought of, but it’s so important, it bears mentioning. Make sure you’ve got enough for all the calibers you use, as well as the most common calibers out there.  Ammo Storage Tips Every Prepper Should Know

Alcohol – Probably the best barter item there is.

Tobacco –The second-best barter item there is.

Antibiotics – If you want to keep your family healthy, I’d recommend putting in a good stock of the most common antibiotics. You can buy these over the counter in Mexico, without a prescription. Make sure you print out information on dosages and to tell you which antibiotics are the best to use in different situations.

Over the Counter Medicines – Self-diagnosis and treatment is dangerous; but sometimes it’s all we have available to us. Having a good assortment of over the counter medicines will make it possible to treat at least the symptoms of common ailments.

Prescription Medicines – If you have family members that need maintenance doses of prescription medicines for chronic conditions, you need to have a stock of those on hand for them. If you can’t get that stock, then look for natural alternatives which will keep them going.

First-aid Supplies – If you ever want to see an environment ripe for injuries, just look at any place that has been hit by a disaster. You and your family will be doing things you normally wouldn’t do, many of which can lead to serious injuries. Be prepared for more than scraped knees and cut fingers; be prepared for treating major injuries. DIY Dollar Store First Aid Kit

Seed – If the situation continues, you’re going to have to start producing your own food. That means growing a vegetable garden, amongst other things. Have lots of seed on hand, so that you can plant a big garden.

Gardening Chemicals and Fertilizer – There are a number of common chemicals used for gardening, as well as common fertilizers. You’ll need all of that if you’re hoping to get a bountiful harvest.

Fishing Gear – Fishing is probably the easiest way of harvesting food from nature. There’s just one problem with it, I have yet to meet a fisherman who doesn’t lose hooks, lures and other gear on a regular basis. So that means you’d better have plenty, so that you can keep on fishing, even after losing your favorites.

Fuel – Ok, this one is a bit tricky, as gasoline doesn’t store easily. It tends to lose its potency pretty quickly. But then, even less potent gasoline is better than no gasoline. And there are additives you can get, which will help that gasoline to last longer.

Repair Parts – If you’ve got gear that you are going to use to survive, you had better have some way of repairing it. That includes parts for just about anything you are planning on using as part of your survival. For example: If you’ve got some of those old Coleman lamps, which can burn gasoline, you should have rebuilt kits for the air pump.

Hand Tools – We are so used to using power tools for just about everything, that many people don’t have hand tools anymore. Do you have a crosscut saw? How about a hand-crank drill? You’re going to need them, if you can’t connect your power tools.

Honing Stones – To keep knives and other sharp tools sharp.

Rope – Always useful. We tend to stock paracord, which is excellent; but you might want some heavier rope as well.

Sewing Supplies – There probably won’t be any shortage of clothing lying around in a post-disaster world, but there will be of sewing supplies. You’re going to need to be able to fix clothing, as well as taking it in as you lose weight.

Sturdy Shoes – Good shoes are important, and by good I mean something that is rugged and will hold up, giving your ankles support. Most of the shoes we wear today won’t do that; they’re more decorative than anything else.

Rugged Clothing – Rugged jeans, flannel shirts and other work clothing are going to be useful as well. The stuff you wear to the office just isn’t going to make it when you’re chopping wood.

Work Gloves – This is one thing you don’t want to try sewing yourself. Nor do you want cheap work gloves to try and do hard work in. Get several pair for each member of the family, especially those who do the hard physical work of survival.

Vitamins – Your diet probably won’t be well-balanced in a post-disaster world. It will be mostly carbohydrates and fats, with a little bit of protein thrown in. The micronutrients that nutritionists tell us we need will be notoriously absent. Good vitamins can help overcome this problem, helping you to remain healthy.

Reading Glasses – Even if you don’t wear glasses now, that doesn’t mean you never will. Keeping a variety of reading glasses around, in different magnifications, may help you to be able to do things as you age, that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. (You can get a wide selection really cheap at a Dollar Store or other such bargain place.)

Antibacterial Hand Cleaner – This is a good one to help prevent the spread of disease. Clean hands aren’t going to contaminate food or contaminate other people.

Spices – One of the best ways of getting the most out of the food that you do have available to you is to change its flavor. This can be especially good when you have children, who can be notoriously difficult when it comes to unfamiliar foods. Disguising what it is and making it taste similar to something they like is one of your best ways of dealing with this.

Bullion (also known as soup stock) – Anything can be turned into a soup or a casserole, if you have soup stock to go with it. Generally speaking, having beef and chicken flavors is enough, as they go with everything else. (Stock up on lots and lots of chicken bullion.)

Flashlights – There’s no such thing as enough flashlights. They don’t last forever and you really can’t fix them.

Leather and Leather Stitching Supplies – Our ancestors used leather for a wide variety of things, like making shoes and harnesses. We’ll need it for making a variety of repairs, like resoling shoes.

Lime – This is one of those things that people forget about. Lime is used in outhouses to help keep the odors down, as well as reducing the population of insects.

Wicking – If you’re going to make candles, you’re going to need wicks for them. While just about any cotton string can be used for that, a cotton string isn’t all that common anymore. A few yards of wicking doesn’t cost all that much and it will allow you to make your own candles.

Candles – Speaking of that wicking, it would be a good idea to have a bunch of candles, already made, on hand.

Oil-burning Lamps – A good oil-burning lamp will work off of just about any flammable liquid, providing you with light. The best is oil, of any sort; but if you have something else, they’ll burn that too. Just try it outside first, to make sure it’s not going to blow up the lamp.

Insect Repellant – Nobody likes becoming the mosquito’s dinner. Yet there are more of them in the world than there are of us. Good idea to be ready to deal with them and keep them off your body.

Pest Control – Speaking of dealing with insects, it’s a good idea to be able to kill them too, as well as trapping mice and other pests. Don’t skimp, as you won’t be able to run back to the local store for more.

Cleaning Supplies – Yeah, who thinks about stockpiling cleaning supplies? But if you want to keep the cockroaches and ants out of your home, you’re going to want to have the necessary cleaning supplies to keep your home clean. This is important for fighting disease as well.

Aluminum Foil – We talk about using aluminum foil for cooking in a survival situation and most people include it in their survival kit. But how many of us have extra aluminum foil back home, to use for cooking food in the wake of a disaster?

Charcoal or Propane – Whatever fuel your barbecue grille runs on, be sure to have plenty on hand.  That grille is going to be your first alternate stove. You may move to a fire pit later; but in the first month of surviving in the post-disaster world, that grille is it.  Medicinal Uses for Activated Charcoal

Cast-iron Pots – Okay, this really isn’t a supply; it’s more like gear. But if you’re going to cook on your barbecue grille, it would be a good idea to have cast-iron cookware on hand. That grille is going to be a bit rough on your Teflon cookware.

Wind-up Mechanical Clock – Maybe you won’t care about what time it is in a post-disaster world and maybe you will. Either way, it might be a good idea to have a clock that you can count on running when there aren’t any batteries to run it.

Chlorine Bleach – Not only is bleach good for cleaning, it’s the easiest means of purifying water. Just add 8 drops of standard (non-scented, non-color safe) bleach to a gallon of water, stir it and allow it to sit for 20 minutes. That will kill all the microscopic pathogens, making it safe to drink.

Hard Candy – Everyone likes something sweet; but unless you’re keeping bees, that’s going to be pretty scarce in a post-disaster world. Hard candies will keep for a long time, can be eaten slowly, extending the enjoyment and can also be used to soothe a sore throat.

So, there you have it; my “top 50” list. However, much you think you need, try to stockpile more; lots more. If you don’t use it yourself, you can use it as barter goods, getting things that you need.

Please be the Rufus in your community

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Remember to be the Rufus

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Nuclear War Between U.S. and Russia (2019 Simulation)

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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What I love about China

This video was posted on you-tube on Wednesday 13th April 2022. I later found out that a number of nations banned viewing of this video. I guess the content is too dangerous for you all to view.

That’s really strange, as the following videos about China were allowed…

Strange.

Never, the less, this article is a workaround to the video that was selectively blocked in certain nations.

The Original video on You-Tube

We start off with the video. See if you can access it. Here is the direct link to the You-Tube video.

For those who are denied the You-Tube video…

But for those of you who are denied watching this video, do not worry. I have the video here in three parts. Please download the parts and watch it in the privacy of your own home.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my “Broken Dreams Index”.

Broken Dreams

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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The calm period before all Hell breaks loose (with a 1980s tribute)

Lately I have been playing around with the You-Tube platform. I have added a few videos and am busy learning video editing and production. I have up loaded three videos so far, and I am learning so much by my myrid of mistakes. Hopefully, I will be able to provide MM readership with a steady flow of videos to suppliment the writings herein. Well. That’s my goal anyways.

We are in a “funny time”. The main stream American media (along wiht the Western media) are still playing the nonsense, but you know… the “worm has turned“. Ah. It’s all different now. The East is now going to rule, while the West slowly fades into the background.

Oh, don’t misunderstand, it’s still a dangerous time, but the verdict is in. A new world order is emerging out of the old, and there’s very few things that the old order can do to change things.

Here, we will continue on the collection of narratives as we document this great period of change, but keep in mind (as dangerous as this time actually is) the future is a foregone conclusion. The only issue at this time is the death count, and the speed at which the collapse of the West will occur.

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Escobar: Meet The New, Resource-Based Global Reserve Currency

Saturday, Apr 02, 2022 – 04:20 AM

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

A new reality is being formed:

the unipolar world is irrevocably becoming a thing of the past,

a multipolar one is taking shape.

It was something to behold. Dmitri Medvedev, former Russian President, unrepentant Atlanticist, current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, decided to go totally unplugged in an outburst matching the combat star turn of Mr. Khinzal that delivered palpable shock and awe all across NATOstan.

Medvedev said “hellish” Western sanctions not only have failed to cripple Russia, but are instead “returning to the West like a boomerang.” Confidence in reserve currencies is “fading like the morning mist”, and ditching the US dollar and the euro is not unrealistic anymore: “The era of regional currencies is coming.”

After all, he added, “no matter if they want it or not, they’ll have to negotiate a new financial order (…) And the decisive voice will then be with those countries that have a strong and advanced economy, healthy public finances and a reliable monetary system.”

Medvedev relayed his succinct analysis even before D Day – as in the deadline this Thursday established by President Putin after which payments for Russian gas by “unfriendly nations” will only be accepted in rubles.

The G7, predictably, had struck a (collective) pose: we won’t pay. “We” means the 4 that are not large Russian gas importers. “We”, moreover, means the Empire of Lies dictating the rules. As for the 3 that will be in dire straits, not only they are major importers but also happen to be WWII losers – Germany, Italy and Japan, still de facto occupied territories. History does have a habit of playing perverted tricks.

Denial didn’t last long. Germany was the first to break – even before industrialists from Ruhr to Bavaria staged a mass revolt. Scholz, the puny Chancellor, called Putin, who had to explain the obvious:  payments are being converted into rubles because the EU froze Russia’s foreign exchange reserves – in a crass violation of international law.

With Taoist patience, Putin also expressed hope this would not represent a deterioration in contract terms for European importers. Russian and German experts should sit down together and discuss the new terms.

Moscow is working on a set of documents defining the new deal. Essentially, that spells out no rubles, no gas. Contracts become null and void once you violate trust. The US and the EU broke legally biding agreements with unilateral sanctions and on top of it confiscated foreign reserves of a – nuclear – G20 nation.

The unilateral sanctions made dollars and euros worthless to Russia. Hysteria fits won’t cut it: this will be resolved – but under Russia’s terms. Period. The Foreign Ministry had already warned that refusal to pay for gas in rubles would lead to a serious global crisis of non-payments and serial global-level bankruptcies, a hellish chain reaction of blocked transactions, freezing of collateral assets and closures of credit lines.

What will happen next is partially predictable. EU companies will receive the new set of rules. They will have time to examine the documents and make a decision. Those that say “no” will be automatically excluded from receiving direct Russian gas shipments – all politico-economic consequences included.

There will be some compromise, of course. For instance, quite a few EU nations will accept to use rubles and increase their gas acquisitions so they may resell the surplus to their neighbors and make a profit. And some may also decide to buy gas on the go on energy exchanges.

So Russia is not imposing an ultimatum on anybody. The whole thing will take time – a rolling process. With some sideway action as well. The Duma is contemplating the extension of payment in rubles to other essential products – such as oil, metals, timber, wheat. It will depend on the collective voracity of the EU chihuahuas. Everyone knows that their non-stop hysteria may translate into a colossal rupture of supply chains across the West.

Bye bye oligarchs

While the Atlanticist ruling classes have gone totally berserk but still remain focused on fighting to the last European to extract any remaining, palpable EU wealth, Russia is playing it cool. Moscow has been quite lenient in fact, brandishing the specter of no gas in Spring rather than Winter.

The Russian Central Bank nationalized foreign exchange earnings of all major exporters. There was no default. The ruble keeps rising – and is now back to roughly the same level before Operation Z.  Russia remains self-sufficient, food-wise. American hysteria over “isolated” Russia is laughable. Every actor that matters across Eurasia – not to mention the other 4 BRICS and virtually the whole Global South – did not demonize and/or sanction Russia.

As an extra bonus, arguably the last oligarch capable of influence in Moscow, Anatoly Chubais, is gone. Call it another momentous historical trickery: Western sanction hysteria de facto dismembered Russian oligarchy – Putin’s pet project since 2000. What that implies is the strengthening of the Russian state and the consolidation of Russian society.

We still don’t have all the facts, but a case can be made that after years of careful evaluation Putin opted to really go for broke and break the West’s back – using that trifecta (imminent blitzkrieg on Donbass; US bioweapon labs; Ukraine working on nuclear weapons)  as the casus belli.

The freezing of foreign reserves had to have been forecasted, especially because the Russian Central Bank had been increasing its reserves of US Treasuries since November last year. Then there’s the serious possibility of Moscow being able to access “secret” offshore foreign reserves – a complex matrix built with Chinese insider help.

The sudden switch from dollars/euros to rubles was hardcore, Olympic-level geoeconomic judo. Putin enticed the collective West to unleash its demented hysteria sanction attack – and turned it against the opponent with a single, swift move.

And here we all are now trying to absorb so many in-synch game-changing developments following the weaponization of dollar assets:  rupee-ruble with India, the Saudi petroyuan, co-badged Mir-UnionPay cards issued by Russian banks, the Russia-Iran SWIFT alternative, the EAEU-China project of an independent monetary/financial system.

Not to mention the master coup by the Russian Central Bank, pegging 1 gram of gold to 5,000 rubles – which is already around $60, and climbing.

Coupled with No Rubles No Gas, what we have here is energy de facto pegged to gold.

The EU Chihuahuas and the Japanese colony will need to buy a lot of rubles in gold or buy a lot of gold to have their gas. And it gets better. Russia may re-peg the ruble to gold in the near future. Could go to 2,000 rubles, 1,000 rubles, even 500 rubles for a gram of gold.

Time to be sovereign

The Holy Grail in the evolving discussions about a multipolar world, since the BRICS summits in the 2000s featuring Putin, Hu Jintao and Lula, has always been how to bypass dollar hegemony. It’s now right in front of the whole Global South, as a benign apparition bearing a Cheshire cat’s smile: the golden ruble, or ruble backed by oil, gas, minerals, commodity exports.

The Russian Central Bank, unlike the Fed, does not practice QE and won’t export toxic inflation to the rest of the planet. The Russian Navy not only secures all Russian sea lines, but Russian nuclear-powered submarines are capable of popping up all over the planet unannounced.

Russia is far, far ahead already implementing the concept of “continental naval power”. December 2015, in the Syrian theater, was the strategic game-changer. The Black Sea-based submarine 4th division is the star of the show.

Russian naval fleets may now employ Kalibr missiles across a space comprehending Eastern Europe, West Asia and Central Asia. The Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, linked by the Don-Volga canal, offer a space of maneuver comparable to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf combined. 6,000 km-long. And you don’t even need to access warm waters.

That covers around 30 nations: the traditional Russian sphere of influence; historical borders of the Russian empire; and current political/energy rivalry spheres.

No wonder the Beltway is berserk.

Russia guarantees shipping across Asia, the Arctic and Europe, in tandem with the Eurasia-wide BRI railway network.

And last but not least, don’t mess with a Nuclear Bear.

Essentially, this is what hardcore power politics is all about. Medvedev was not bragging when he said the era of a single reserve currency is over. The advent of a resource-based global reserve currency means, in a nutshell, that 13% of the planet will not dominate the other 87% anymore.

It’s NATOstan vs. Eurasia redux. Cold War 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and even 5.0. It doesn’t matter. All the previous Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) nations see which way the geopolitical and geo-economic winds are blowing: the time to assert their real sovereignty is at hand as the “rules-based international order” bites the dust.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in China, after meeting several counterparts from across Eurasia, could not have outlined it better:

“A new reality is being formed: the unipolar world is irrevocably becoming a thing of the past, a multipolar one is taking shape. It’s an objective process. It’s unstoppable. In this reality, more than one power will “rule” – it will be necessary to negotiate between all the key states that today have a decisive influence on the world economy and politics. At the same time, realizing their special situation, these countries ensure compliance with the basic principles of the UN Charter, including the fundamental one – the sovereign equality of states. No one on this Earth should be seen as a minor player. Everyone is equal and sovereign.”

Welcome to the birth of the new world system.

Tears For Fears – Head Over Heels (Official Music Video)

Ok. So I’m out of MAJestic on my own and waiting to be called in for “training”. At this time, we (my first wife and I) were living in the nice seaside community of San Louis Obispo in California. It was the middle to late 1980’s. We were living in a broken down van stuck in the end of a church parking lot, and I was working two jobs as a breakfast cook and janitor.

It was at that time that MAJestic tracked me down and called me into the base with work. But before that happened, we were living hand to mouth at the poverty level.

It was a special time. It was Spring and we lived in a “college town”, and the music of that time was unique. One of the songs of that time was “Head over Heels” by Tears for Fears. Here’s the MV of it. Please enjoy my flashback to the past.

What do you think of this flash back in time?

Goldman Sachs warns the dollar is at risk of losing its dominance, and could end up a lesser player like the UK pound

  • Goldman Sachs has said the US dollar faces a number of risks, and could become a lesser currency like the UK pound.
  • The US’ tough sanctions on Russia have raised concerns that countries around the world could try to move away from the dollar.
  • Goldman said the US’ foreign debts mean that foreign investors may become reluctant to hold dollar assets.

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Do you think that it is too late?

Simple Minds – Alive And Kicking (Live)

This is another one of thes songs of that particular period in time. Fast forward two years later, maybe three, and I am out of MAJestic and I am off trying to start yet again anew. Sheech! And this is the song that is playing all over the radio 24-7…

Homemade Biscuits and Gravy

Homemade Biscuits and Gravy ArticleImage CategoryPage ID 1138783
Homemade Biscuits and Gravy

This recipe will take your taste buds down South, to where good old-fashioned recipes are still king. Our Homemade Biscuits and Gravy recipe is full of so much down-home goodness, you’ll want to eat these homemade biscuits at breakfast AND dinner, which is perfectly all right by us!

What You’ll Need

  • 2 cups pancake and baking mix
  • 2/3 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter, melted, plus 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1 (16-ounce) package hot pork sausage
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

What to Do

  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
  2. In a medium bowl, stir baking mix, buttermilk, and the 1/2 stick melted butter until soft dough forms. Drop 8 equal spoonfuls of dough onto an ungreased baking sheet.
  3. Bake 14 to 16 minutes, or until golden brown.
  4. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt remaining butter; cook 1 to 1-1/2 minutes, or until browned. Add sausage and cook 6 to 8 minutes, or until no pink remains, stirring to crumble sausage. Add flour; mix well. Add Worcestershire sauce, milk, salt, and pepper; mix well. Cook 2 to 4 minutes, or until gravy thickens, stirring constantly.
  5. Cut biscuits in half and spoon sausage mixture evenly on bottom halves. Replace tops and serve.

The captured General in Ukraine is being rewritten

From an influencer, the background wikipedia on the captured American Major General Roger L. Cloutier, that I wrote about HERE, is being rewritten as we speak. Poof! New numbers. New dates. New backgrounds.

White board. That’s what the internet is today. A big white board.

Grow Alum Crystals That Resemble Simulated Diamonds

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Home-made.

Alum is found in the spices section of the grocery store. That little jar contains small white crystals that, with a bit of time and effort, grow a big alum crystal that looks a bit like a diamond. It only takes about an hour to grow small alum crystals, but getting a big crystals takes days to weeks.

All you need to grow alum crystals are alum, hot water, and a container. Choose a clear container so you can watch the crystals grow. While not strictly necessary, it helps having a way to tie and suspend a crystal in the liquid. This helps it keep an ideal shape. A coffee filter or paper towel keeps dust out of your project, while still allowing good air circulation.

  • 1/2 cups hot tap water
  • 2-1/2 tablespoons alum
  • nylon fishing line
  • pencil, ruler, or knife
  • 2 clean jars
  • spoon
  • coffee filter/paper towel

There are actually a few different kinds of alum. The edible one in the grocery store is potassium alum. It grows clear crystals. Other types of alum include sodium, ammonium, selenium, and chrome alum. Chrome alum grows deep purple crystals. If you have access to the other chemicals, feel free to combine them to see what colors you get. But, check the labels for safety information. Some types of alum are non-toxic, but others are irritants and not edible.

Grow the Crystals

    1. Pour 1/2 cup of hot tap water into a clean jar.
    2. Slowly stir in alum, a little at a time, until it stops dissolving. Don’t add the whole amount; just enough to saturate the water.
    3. Loosely cover the jar with a coffee filter or paper towel (to keep dust out) and allow the jar to sit undisturbed overnight.
    4. The next day, pour the alum solution from the first jar into the clean jar. You will see small alum crystals at the bottom of the jar. These are ‘seed’ crystals that you will use to grow a big crystal.
    5. Tie nylon fishing line around the largest, best-shaped crystal. Tie the other end to a flat object (e.g., popsicle stick, ruler, pencil, butter knife). You will hang the seed crystal by this flat object into the jar far enough so that it will be covered in liquid, but won’t touch the bottom or sides of the jar. It may take a few tries to get the length just right.
    6. When you have the right string length, hang the seed crystal in the jar with the alum solution. Cover it with the coffee filter and grow a crystal!
  1. Grow your crystal until you are satisfied with its size. If you see crystals starting to grow on the sides or bottom of your jar, carefully remove your crystal, pour the liquid into the clean jar, and put the crystal in the new jar. Other crystals in the jar will compete with your crystal for alum, so it won’t be able to get as big if you let these crystals grow.

Solving Common Problems

The most common problem people experience growing alum crystals is that crystals not growing. If you don’t see crystal growth within a day or two, there isn’t enough alum in the liquid. Gently heat the liquid over a stove or in the microwave and try adding more alum powder. Crystals only grow if the solution is saturated. This is the point where no more solid dissolves.

Crystal Growing Tips

  1. You can use sewing thread or other string instead of nylon fishing line, but crystals will grow on the entire length of the submerged string. Crystals don’t adhere to nylon, so if you use it, you can get bigger and better crystals.
  2. Alum is an ingredient used to make pickles. It makes them crispy.
  3. Don’t worry if you don’t want to bother with the string! Crystals grow just fine on the bottom of the container. Use a spoon to scrape crystals away from each other so they won’t grow together. The shape of crystals growing on a flat surface differs from the shapes that form when crystals are suspended.

From Hal Turner

I happen to be in the morbidity business; I'm the CEO of a large insurance group... Based on what it is we are seeing, the rates right now are excess mortality of 84% and excess of every kind of disease at 1100%. 

We are expecting a 5000% or so increase in excess mortality for this year (2022). 

An enormous number. 

I don't think that it's by coincidence, by the way, that Moderna has now just received licensure of their emergency use authorization HIV vaccine. So they gave everybody AIDS, and here's your salvation, another vaccine."  

-- Attorney Todd Callender

The video below is Attorney Todd Callender, whose comments are shown above.

When he says “So they gave everybody AIDS . . . ” he’s talking about the mRNA injections given out under the guise of COVID-19.

Quick investigation of the Preliminary USA mortality data for 2021 from the CDC reveals:

Total deaths – 3,447,405
Expected deaths – 2,948,273
Excess deaths – 499,132

0% increase = 1X, 100% increase = 2X, 200% increase = 3X, etc. 5000% increase = 51X.

499,132 X 51 = 25,455,732 excess deaths.  That is what Attorney Todd Callendar indicates the USA could see !

Add to that the 2.95 million expected deaths, and the result is:

28,405,732 total deaths for 2022.

At this rate all the injected will be gone by 2025, just as was forecasted by the population reduction charts posted on the Deagel web site for many years.

Deagel.com last original 2025 population forecast (before scrubbing it all) for Germany was 28 million.  For the USA, the chart that was “scrubbed” is shown below:

2022 04 06 15 51
2022 04 06 15 51

About one third of Germanys population remain unvaxxed. Today’s population is 83 million, so Deagel’s report may be quite accurate.

So the DoD guy who ran the Deagel website † 2021 knew about this “plandemic” since 2015? CIA connections huh?

Deagle has always had the forecast at the year 2025. The numbers may have fluctuated but the date never did.

Qualudes again

Well, is he right? Or is he fear-mongering? It’s hard to say. I am not a doctor, but I can read tables. I guess we will have to wait and see.

In the meantime, let’s go back to 1976. This song topped the Country and Western chart at that time. It’s about a hyptnomic sedative that was very popular at that time for recreational use. Known as the Qualude. I can tell you first hand, that it was an awesome drug.

It made you so very relaxed, but at the same time, so very lively. You just wanted to dance and have a great time. Don’t drive though. You are not safe behind the wheel of anything.

It was banned in the United States.

Pakastan thwarted a United States coup

Pakistan just narrowly thwarted the US’ regime change campaign against Prime Minister Imran Khan that was launched against him as punishment for his independent foreign policy.
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“Imran Khan claimed that Donald Lu warned the Pakistani envoy to the US, Asad Majeed, that there would be implications if the Pakistan PM survived the no-trust vote in the National Assembly.
PM Khan said that the no-confidence motion against him was a “foreign conspiracy” and he thanked Allah that it failed.”
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Why invest in diplomacy or in projects like BRI ? The return of investment is way way higher if Uncle Sam just perform regime change here and there and if successful, the interests of US will be taken care of by the puppet gov’t in place.

Article

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The Nations on Russia’s “Unfriendly List”

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1649204301750

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Voyage to the bottom of the sea: Terror

A fine throw-back to 1960s television fare. It’s well worth at least a ten minute watch. I lvoe the acting, the costumes, and the premise of a B-grade science fiction movie. Great for laughs.

Doomsday ‘Preppers’ Warn Of Hard Times Ahead As Preparedness Goes Mainstream

Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Food scarcity. Food vouchers. Food riots and flash mobs.

All of that’s coming – and soon, says Texas-based food scientist and “Health Ranger” podcaster Mike Adams, who sees dire events unfolding in America in the short term.

Texas-based food scientist Mike Adams, known online as the “Health Ranger,” sees food shortages and heightened security later in 2022. (Courtesy of Mike Adams)
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His advice: people need to get prepared now.

The thing to really watch for is the food inflation,” Adams said.

My position is we’re going to see food riots in America before the end of this year. We’re going to see flash mobs in grocery stores—especially for meat products.

“Grocery stores are going to respond with increased security and checkpoints. At some point, we’re probably going to see an attempt at price controls and rationing. 

And not on everything—certain types of things. It’s almost certain that the rationing they will attempt to enforce with a vaccine passport app that becomes a food rationing app,” Adams told The Epoch Times.

Adams is not alone in his predictions of hard times coming to America—and the world.

With food production buckling under the weight of runaway inflation, skyrocketing fuel costs, and fertilizer shortages, much of what’s in store is already “built-in.”

What Do You Want From Life?

The tubes was a group that was hitting the audiences when I was graduating out of university. They probably had one hell of a stage show. I don’t actually know, as I never watched them perform. However their album was a real hoot. As this particular song clearly indicates.

Unfertile Ground

In North America two years ago, it cost around $200 an acre to fertilize a 1,000-acre commercial farm, Adams said. Right now, with spring planting, farmers can expect to pay $1,200 to $2,000 an acre.

And consumers will pay for it in higher prices for basic necessities.

“Many farmers are deciding not to plant. In addition, the diesel fuel prices and diesel fuel scarcity is going into their equation whether they should plant,” Adams said.

The upshot, he said, is that fewer farmers are planting, which means less food to go around.

As a food scientist Adams is a big proponent of clean, organically grown food free of heavy metals, which he makes available through the online sale of “Ranger Buckets.” The demand for his products has seen extremely high since the COVID-19 lockdown began in 2020.

Adams said it takes on average six to eight weeks to produce 2,000 buckets, which typically sell out within 30 minutes to three hours.

Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the demand for survival food in the United States has been on the increase among a number of national suppliers.

“The supply chain in the United States continues to crumble. More Americans are realizing it takes four trips to different home improvement stores for parts to make home repairs, instead of all their needs being in one store,” said Lori Hunt at Practical Preppers in South Carolina.

“That is making folks realize this extends to everything: food, books, solar equipment—and considering Ukraine is a source for critical raw materials in the solar industry, this is going to get much worse in the coming months,” she told The Epoch Times.

“Many of our customers are moving toward energy independence, and this is making a greater demand and diminishing supply situation. We are urging our customers to be prepared for a 2–4 month wait to amass all parts needed for their systems. Many installers around the United States are telling us they are experiencing the same.”

Byron Walker, Founder and CEO of Survival Frog in Denver, told the Epoch Times, “We have struggled with supply chain issues and things only appear to be getting worse.”

Allied Marketing Research (AMR) reported that the global incident and emergency market, valued at $75.5 billion in 2017, is projected to reach $423 billion by 2025.

“Factors such as rise in need for safety and security solutions, owing to increase in natural calamities and terrorist attacks, implementation of regulatory policies for public safety, and the necessity for emergency preparedness drive the growth of the global incident and emergency management market,” AMR said on its website.

“In addition, the surge in smart cities is expected to drive the adoption of intelligent evacuation systems and surveillance systems, thereby fueling the incident and emergency management market growth.”

Miami Vice – IN THE AIR TONIGHT | Tribute Video

If you lived though the 1980s then you would really appreciate the television show “Miami Vice”. It defined cool. It was a mix of rock music, detective action, drugs, and fashion. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, was hooked on this show. In this this clip here, you will see so many famous actors when they were young and not yet famous. In hindsight, it’s all pretty silly. But, the video is great and well worth the three minutes to watch.

Price Hikes ‘Here to Stay’

In recent weeks YouTube survival “preppers” such as City Prepping and Alaska Prepper have been sounding the alarm that hard times are just ahead.

Matt the “Magic Prepper,” in North Dakota, said being prepared continues to go mainstream as a “financial and scarcity genre” in view of current global events.

“With food production issues, supply chain problems, a slow economic recovery from the pandemic, and the cascading effects of an overseas conflict, it seems rather clear that shortages, disruptions, and price hikes are here to stay,” Matt told The Epoch Times.

He said the situation in Ukraine has revived interest in preparedness in case of a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack.

“With the conflict creating volatile rhetoric from multiple global superpowers, we find ourselves closer to such an event than any point in recent history,” Matt said. “I operate under the assumption that there is and will likely always be more time to prepare.”

Still, the state of being prepared is “exponentially limited” by the length of time it takes to get prepared, and other factors, he said.

“Every dollar spent today is worth less in value toward preparations than a dollar you would have spent three years ago. Therefore, by waiting to begin, you’ll inherently be able to prepare less and less.

YouTube’s Matt the “Magic Prepper” in North Dakota says it’s not too late to begin preparing for difficult economic times ahead. (Courtesy of Matt the “Magic Prepper”)
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“This is most obviously apparent when you relate it to items such as ammunition. Stocking up on it now provides you with anywhere from 50 percent [to] 75 percent less ammunition for the same amount spent on it three years ago.

“Even if we find ourselves in the midst of a full-on economic collapse or hot conflict, training and learning skills will likely still be accessible,” he said.

Preparedness also requires the ability to network and communication, having supplies in sufficient quantity, a “hardened” location, and knowledge on how to survive an economic collapse.

“I have suggested to keep moving forward regardless of the events unfolding currently. If things finally fall apart to the point of relying on our preparedness efforts, we will have prepared as best as we could up to that point.

“I am making phone calls, appointments, and plans every day to try and enhance my own personal preparedness,” Matt said.

Given the economic protectionism of halting food exports from countries like Hungary, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, the world supply of grain is going to be severely limited, Adams said.

This, he said, will result in the “most extreme food shortages we’ve seen in our lifetime.”

Better Now Than Never

“It will begin about August and continue until the end of the year. A lot of this depends on [President Joe] Biden’s economic decisions on whether he allows U.S. oil companies to finish pipelines and do more drilling. If he does not we are going to see even more shortages throughout 2023.”

Out of chaos, however, Adams foresees a reawakening of freedom and self-reliance in the way we grow and produce food.

“I think this is a red pill moment for the people of the world that they need to be more self-reliant. We need decentralization of food production. I’m a big proponent of decentralization—food grown locally.”

The bad news is that only about 5 percent of people in the United State are prepared. But “the more people prepare, the less they panic when shortages appear,” Adams said.

Star Trek – Missile Alert

And here’s a nice brief section of a 1960s Star Trek show. It’s also a fun watch. Just enjoy the five minute vision of the past.

Its about “Gary 7” and his cat.

Rick Wakeman Journey to the Centre of the Earth Full Album 1974 YouTube

Oh my teenage years. This album brought my father and me together musically. He loved it due ot the classical influences, and I loved it for the blend of rock music. Not to mention the great story line.

Simple Minds – Someone Somewhere In Summertime

Another glimpse to my early years right out from the Navy after MAJestic implantation. Enjoy this look back in time.

Conclusion

Yah. It’s a funny time. Don’t get too worked up with and about it. Things are unfolding to the plans set forth. To us “peons” it seems like everything is going to shit, but if you step back, and look at the big picture, just maybe… just MAYBE the West won’t be able to turn the world into an inferno if these various indicators play out as they appear to.

Hold on but not too tightly.

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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We are in World War 3 the fight for economic dominance. It is a five (5x) front war.

The Ukraine invasion has set forth a domino effect; a chain of events that is reshaping the globe. And it is all to plan. It’s a plan made by China, Russia, India and Iran.

The (so called) petro-dollar; the USD is starting to fall apart, and with it, the economies of those that have been propped up by this fiat “currency”.

Whether or not Russia is “losing” or “winning” in the Ukraine is of no concern.

What is of concern, and what is actually happening is that a new world order has arisen from the ashes of the old. It’s an East and a West. And the West is collapsing in real time, while the East is rising.

Here, in this article we will cover a section of topics that cover these events in chunks. Not comprehensive, but enough to give you all an idea of what is actually going on.

Key Points

As you read this article, you need to keep in mind a few key points…

  • The world is undergoing a geopolitical realignment.
  • This alignment is dividing into two separate entities (East and West).

The two sides have a very different view of how the world should be.

  • The West is trying to maintain a uni-polar single world government ruled by the United States.
  • The East is trying to maintain a multi-polar world of equals of various unique social structures.

Key to this manifestation is the control of the currency of exchange.

  • The West is trying to maintain the USD, or an electronic version of it.
  • The East is trying to use commodity-based currency by labor, materials and products.

Issues about Ukraine or Taiwan are simply the desperate plans of the West in a plan to maintain a uni-polar world.

Do not get sidetracked from what is REALLY going on.

Bretton Woods III

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The technical definition of money is “something generally accepted as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, or a means of payment.”

For most people this has always meant the legal tender of their homeland.

Until fairly recently, this was a coin with the face of the king on it.

Thus, the better the reputation of the king, the more valuable his coin, because traders were more likely to accept it. A good king made sure his coins had a consistent amount of gold or silver in it.

The reason for that is precious metals like gold and silver were always the world’s reserve currency.

Everyone in the world would accept gold and silver for payment, even in places that restricted the use of the metals. You could always take the metal to the king’s mint and exchange it for his coins.

Granted, he took a fee for himself and you were charged the cost of minting the coins, but that was predictable.

In the end, all currency was measured in gold and silver.

But, we no longer use gold coin for money.

Every country in the world uses what the economist call fiat currency.

This is a government-issued currency that is not backed by a physical commodity, such as gold or silver.

Instead, it is backed by the “full faith and credit” of the issuing government.

That dollar = faith in the government issuing the paper.

Money is now an expression of the government power behind it.

The US dollar is the reserve currency of the world largely due to the fact the American government was the most trusted.

Hard money enthusiasts assume this means the United States can  print as much money as it needs, but this is not exactly true.

The international monetary system that evolved after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970’s is a framework that controls the exchange rate of the major currencies.

Every major currency is based on the dollar, just as oil and gas are priced in dollars.

The petrodollar was created in the 1970’s when the Bretton Woods system collapsed.

The dollar was replaced by the Petro-dollar.

What the current system does, in effect, is link currencies to the supply of crude oil through the dollar.

How much oil you can buy with your home currency is dependent upon how many dollars you can buy with it.

It is not a direct link, as oil production rises and falls and the supply of dollars rises and falls, relative to other major currencies like the Euro or Chinese Yuan.

In effect, America controls the world by controlling the price of commodities like crude oil and natural gas.

American dollar = global use of oil and gas commodities.

In the old days, minting coins was a profit center for the king.

A strong king would restrict the use of other coins in his domain.

His people had to take their foreign coins, gold and silver to his mint for conversion to his coin.

In addition to the cost of production, he tacked on a profit for himself. This is called seigniorage and it works the same for fiat money as it does hard money.

This profit from controlling the global currency is one way the United States has grown so rich.

The USA uses this petro-dollar as a mechanism to make debt.

One of the consequences of this system is the world has an insatiable appetite for US government debt.

Because it is denominated in dollars and considered the safest of financial bets, it makes the ideal collateral.

This has allowed the United States and other Western countries to run massive trade and spending deficits.

The world wants the debt and the world wants to sell the West their products.

US debt was 30% of GDP in 1980 and now it is 127% of GDP.

This is the subtext of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Russia and China, especially China, are tired of this arrangement.

They correctly see it as to the advantage of Washington at their expense.

This is (partially) why China is backing Russia’s play to demand rubles for its energy and agricultural products.

This would pave the way for China demanding yuan for its products and the right to pay for energy in yuan.

India is also quietly supporting what the Russians are doing for the same reasons.

This is (partially) why Washington is in no mood to strike a deal over Ukraine.

It is not the only reason, but it is a big part of the plan to protect the dollar.

It is believed that if Washington can break the Putin government through financial war, China and India will drop their plans to buck the dollar in the global economy.

A century after the Great War, the new global war is being mainly fought in finance.

The West, led by America, is now at war with the world over control of the global currency system.

It is probably a war that the West cannot win.

The reason is the same reason the king would put his face on his coins.

Money is the physical expression of power.

The strong king could enforce his monetary policy in his domain and his money had a predictable amount of gold and silver.

In effect, his money was the representation of his people and the cultural that defined them.

The legal tender of a country is the measure of that country’s wealth and power relative to the world.

The West no longer makes or invents anything useful.

The power of the West is the legacy power to control the financial system.

It is a system arranged by Mercurian people in order to control the Apollonians.

The former are the people who operate as middlemen and service providers, while the latter are the people who grow the food, make the goods and keep the gears properly lubricated.

The former operates in the West, while the latter exist in the East.

Reality is the thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it.

And reality says that growing and making things counts for more than thinking about things.

The reason Washington has not crushed the Russian economy is the world needs the stuff Russia pulled out of the earth.

In this economic war of attrition, Russian can feed itself and keep its homes warm, while Europe will have to hope America can provide the food and energy at a reasonable fee.

The most likely outcome of this global conflict is something people have suspected for quite some time.

The global currency will become a basket of commodities like natural gas and crude oil.

Maybe agricultural products will be in the mix.

The reason for this is the world runs on energy and food.

Bretton Woods III, as some are calling it, will be a new set of currency arrangements whereby money is based on its purchasing power for the agreed upon basket of products.

What this means in the short run is that the West is about to get poorer as governments are forced to cut spending and debase the currency to get out from under domestic debt obligations like pension payments.

It also means the end of globalism as has been defined by Washington for three decades.

Trade will continue, but between countries rather than independent global enterprises.

Thirty years after the Cold War the world is about to start healing and return to something close to normal.

The Emotions “Don’t Ask my Neighbor”

Yeah. By mixing up topics such as food, hobbies, movies and pretty girls in my articles I have completely ZEROED out all the trolls, ‘bots and DDos attacks. Man, I’m telling you. It friggin’ works!

About this song…

Throughout my Senior year in High School I fell in love with soul and funk. I added it alongside my love of hard rock, and it greatly shaped my absorption of the culture of the 1970s at that time.

One of my favorites (in regards to soul) at that time was this group that has passed into obscurity known as “The Emotions”. It’s a trio of three attractive ladies with real heart.

Here’s one of their classic songs.

What is a “Blue Blood”?

This term has come to define the ruling oligarchy that operate the United States from behind the veil. But from whence did this term originate?

The blue bloods... arises from eating from a silver spoon and drinking from a silver cup. Silver accumulates in the system and turns the skin blue. Literally. No doubt the blue blood class have moved to gold these days for their eating utensils though the Americans seem to like their grow light suntans.

Blue Blood

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Ukrainians to use American weapons, and American tactics.

It’s a core principle behind the RAND operational study.

"Since the US-engineered 2013-14 coup in Ukraine, American forces have taught Ukrainians, including neo-Nazi units, how to fight in urban and other civilian areas. Weaponizing Ukraine is part of Washington’s quest for what the Pentagon calls “full spectrum dominance.”

Article

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China’s ‘Laser Assault Rifle’ Can Silently Sear Flesh From a Half Mile Away

“The whole person will be set on fire.”

Frank Black – Headache

This is from sometime in the 1990s. I love it because the video is done in retro 1940s theme and the subject matter was meaningful to me back then. In those days, I worked in cubicle farms as engineering drones.

Do you remember this one?

Americans should budget an extra $5,200 this year to cover rising prices, Bloomberg economists estimate

“Americans haven’t had to worry too much about factoring inflation into their budget for the past four decades. That’s changing in 2022.

The red-hot inflation expected to last throughout the year will leave the average US household spending $5,200 more compared to the year prior, Bloomberg economists Andrew Husby and Anna Wong said in a Tuesday article. That boils down to an extra $433 per month on the same goods and services as last year.”

Uh oh!

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The S.O.S. Band | Just Be Good To Me (1983) | Extended HQ version

Another of the songs that was big right after I joined MAJestic and was set loose on the world on my own. Actually, this song was very big in the dance club scene at that time. Not so much on the music charts then, but in the clubs, well yeah.

And this singer. Well, wow! So hot! Look at her smile. Her moves. Her hair. She’s so, so chocolate fudge on waffle topped with whipped creame. And brandy. In a glass with ice. Big cubes, not little ones.

She’s such a treat.

Events Like These Only Happen Once Every Century (Sergey Glazyev)

Source: Business Online Magazine – Events Like These Only Happen Once Every Century  March 27, 2022.  Translated by Leo. Bolds and italics used for emphasise.

“Events like these only happen once every century”: Sergei Glazyev on the breaking of an epoch and the change of ways.

Is it possible to stabilize the ruble in three days? And why are the Ukrainian ‘zombies’ not giving up?

“After failing to weaken the People’s Republic of China head-on through a trade war, the Americans shifted the main blow to Russia, which they see as a weak link in world geopolitics and economics. 

The Anglo-Saxons are striving to realize their age-old Russophobic ideas of destroying our country, and at the same time weakening China, because the strategic alliance of the Russian Federation and China is too tough for the United States. 

They have neither the economic nor military power to destroy us together, and not separately,” 

- Sergey Glazyev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, former adviser to the President of the Russian Federation.

About what opportunities are now opening up for the Russian economy, whether the Central Bank panders to the enemy and whether a new world currency will replace the dollar, Glazyev spoke in an interview with BUSINESS Online.

The new world economic order is socialist in ideology

The new world economic order is socialist in ideology”

– Sergey Yuryevich, commenting on today’s tragic events.

Q: Sergey wrote in your Telegram channel that we should have read your book about the “last world war”, written about 6 years ago. How did you manage to predict everything so accurately?

A: The fact is that there are long-term patterns of economic development, the analysis and understanding of which makes it possible to predict the events that are taking place at the present time.

We are now experiencing a simultaneous change in the technological and world economic structures, while the technological basis of the economy is changing, there is a transition to fundamentally new technologies, and the management system is also changing.

Events like this happen about once a century.

However, technological structures change about once every 50 years, and their change is usually accompanied by a technological revolution, depression and an arms race.

And world economic structures change once every 100 years, and their change is accompanied by world wars and social revolutions.

This is due to the fact that the ruling elite of the countries of the core of the old world economic order impedes changes, does not take into account the emergence of more effective management systems, tries to block the development of new world leaders using them, and tries to maintain its hegemony and its monopoly position by any means, including military and revolutionary ones.

Say, 100 years ago, the British Empire was trying to maintain its hegemony in the world.

When it was already losing economically to the combined resources of the Russian Empire and Germany, the First World War, provoked by British intelligence, was unleashed, during which all three European empires self-liquidated.

I am talking about the collapse of tsarist Russia, the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, but here we can even put a fourth – the Ottoman Port.

As for Britain, for some time it retained global dominance and even became the largest empire on the planet. But due to the inexorable laws of socio-economic development, the colonial world economic structure, based in fact on slave labor, could no longer ensure economic growth.

The two fundamentally new political models that emerged – the Soviet and the American ones – demonstrated a much greater efficiency of production.

This is since they were already organized on other principles: not on private family capitalism.

They were organized on the strength of large transnational corporations with centralized structures for regulating the economy and with limitless monetary emission of credit through fiat money (paper or electronic means – ed. note).

They enabled the mass production of products much more efficiently than the administrative systems of the colonial empires of the XIX century.

The emergence of social states in the USSR and the USA with centralized control systems made it possible for a sharp jump in their economic development.

In Europe, the corporate governance system was formed, unfortunately, according to the Nazi model in Germany, and also not without the help of British intelligence.

Hitler, relying on the support of the British intelligence services and American capital, quite quickly deployed a centralized corporate management system in Germany, which allowed the Third Reich to very quickly capture the whole of Europe.

With God’s help, we defeated this German (more precisely, European – taking into account today’s realities) fascism.

After that, two models remained in the world.

Which I attribute to the imperial world economic structure: Soviet and Western (with the center in the USA).

  • Soviet model
  • Western model

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, (which could not withstand global competition due to the fact that the directive system of government was not flexible enough to meet the needs of technological progress), the United States seized global dominance for a while.

Better-Than-Ever Meatloaf

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American meatloaf.

Meatloaf is an American favorite, right up there with Mom’s freshly baked apple pie. And while we know that everyone has a favorite way they like to make their meatloaf, we think our Better-than-Ever Meatloaf is sure worth a try.

What You’ll Need

  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 1 1/2 cups fresh bread crumbs
  • 2 eggs
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 2/3 cup ketchup, divided
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

What to Do

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a large baking pan with cooking spray.
  2. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients except 1/3 cup ketchup; mix well.
  3. Place mixture into prepared baking pan and shape into a loaf. Spread remaining 1/3 cup ketchup over top.
  4. Bake 1 hour or until done.

Notes

  • If you want to cook this in the microwave, simply combine the ingredients as above, then place the mixture in a 2-quart oblong microwaveable baking dish and shape into a loaf. Microwave, uncovered, on High (full power), turning the dish occasionally, for 25 minutes or until done. Remove from the baking dish and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes before serving.
  • Want to try a lighter version of this meatloaf recipe? You can use very lean ground turkey or chicken instead of ground beef!

The end of the unipolar moment

Q: But now this period of “American unipolar loneliness” is already ending, and, probably, not only thanks to Russia, but primarily to China and the Asian regions as such. Is it not?

A: Indeed, the hierarchical vertical structures characteristic of the imperial world economy turned out to be too rigid to ensure continuous innovation processes.

They lost their comparative effectiveness in ensuring the growth of the world economy.

On its periphery, a new world economic order has been formed.

It was one, which is based on flexible management models.

As well as a network organization of production, where the state works as an integrator, uniting the interests of various social groups around achieving one goal – raising the public welfare.

The most impressive example of such an integral world economic structure today is China, which for more than 30 years has outpaced the growth rate of the American economy by three times.

At the moment, China is already surpassing the United States in terms of [1] output, [2] exports of high-tech goods, and [3] growth rates.

Another example of a model of a new world economic order, which we called integral (due to the fact that the state in it unites all social groups of different interests), is India.

It has a different political system, but it also has the primacy of public interests over private ones, and the state seeks to maximize growth rates in order to fight poverty.

In this sense, the new world economic order is socialist in ideology.

At the same time, it uses market mechanisms of competition, which makes it possible to provide the highest concentration of resources for making a technological revolution with goals to ensure economic leaps based on a new advanced technological order.

If we look at growth rates after 1995, we see that the Chinese economy has grown 10 times, while the US economy has grown by only 15 percent.

Thus, it is already obvious to everyone that at present the pace of world economic development is shifting to Asia: China, India and the countries of Southeast Asia already produce more products than the US and the EU.

If we add to them Japan or Korea, in which the management system is similar in its principles to the integration of society around the goal of increasing public welfare.

Then we can say that today this new world economic structure already dominates the world, and the center of reproduction of the world economy has moved to Southeast Asia.

Of course, the American ruling elite cannot agree with this.

Q: To come to terms with it, I would say…

A: Yes. They, like the British Empire once, seek to maintain their hegemony in the world.

The events taking place today are a manifestation of how the US financial and powerful oligarchic elite are trying to maintain world domination.

It can be said that for the past 15 years it has been waging a world hybrid war, seeking to chaoticize countries beyond its control and restrain the development of the People’s Republic of China.

But due to the already archaic system of governance, they cannot do this.

The financial crisis of 2008 was such a transitional moment when the life cycle of the outgoing technological order actually ended.

And the process of massive redistribution of capital into a new technological order began.

The core of which is a complex of nanobioengineering and information communication technologies.

All countries began to pump up their economies with money.

The simplest thing a modern government can do is to give all businesses access to cheap long-term money so they can adopt new technologies.

But, in America and Europe such funds went mainly into financial bubbles and covered the budget deficit.

While, in China this colossal money emission was completely directed to the growth of production and the development of new technologies.

There were no Chinese financial bubbles.

And the ultra-high monetization of the Chinese economy did not result in inflation either.

Instead, the growth of the money supply was accompanied by [1] an increase in the production of goods, [2] the introduction of new advanced technologies and [3] an increase in public welfare.

Today, economic competition has already led to the fact that the United States has lost its leadership.

If you remember, Donald Trump tried to contain the development of China through a trade war, but nothing came out of it.

Man-Eating Sex Queen of Great Neck, New York, Dorothea Matthews

201 Clent Rd Great Neck NY
201 Clent Rd Great Neck NY

This English Tudor house, located at 201 Clent Road, Great Neck, New York, may not look like much of a love nest. But in 1948, its chief female resident, Mrs. Dorothea Matthews turned this house into something approaching the Playboy Mansion, East. It wasn’t until Mrs. Matthews’ divorce proceedings from her husband Mark Matthews in 1948 that we began to see that wanton sexual escapades did not begin in the groovy Sixties. According to court documents, Mrs. Matthews racked up a large number of sexual partners.

Mrs. Dorothea Matthews 1948
Mrs. Dorothea Matthews 1948

As a slim, shapely 28 year-old woman with plenty of time on her hands, Dorothea had many sexual options beyond her husband Mark, and she took advantage of so many of them. Mrs. Matthews was a very forthright individual; or, to put it in the words of the New York Daily News , she was “socially minded.” Mrs. Matthews managed to bed down a good number of men and women in Great Neck, Upstate New York, trains in transit to Florida, Manhattan, and probably lots of other places.

Mrs. Dorothea Matthews January 7 1950
Mrs. Dorothea Matthews January 7 1950

Yet her taste in sexual partners was not indiscriminate. A doctor, art historian, student, actor, secretary, and her husband, who was a Ping-Pong champion and owned a messenger service, filled her sexual roster, and those are only the ones we know about. And of course, a murderer would be one of her conquests.

All in all, I would say that she lived a FULL life.

The Americans have opened a biological front of war by launching the coronavirus in China

Q: Why? Did Trump, accustomed to taking risks and going all-in, lack the determination?

A:  And even Trump (of all people) couldn’t get (the United States) out (of it’s situation), because China has a more efficient management system that allows you to concentrate the available production resources to the fullest.

At the same time, effective money management keeps money emission in the contour of expanded reproduction of the real sector of the economy, focusing on financing investments in development.

China has the highest savings rate of any country, with about 45 percent of GDP invested, compared with 20 percent in the United States or Russia. This, in fact, ensures the ultra-high growth rates of the Chinese economy.

In short, the US was doomed to lose this trade war because China could produce more efficiently and finance development cheaper.

The entire banking system in China is state-owned, it works as a single development institution, directing cash flows to expand production and master new technologies.

In the United States, the emission of money goes to finance the budget deficit and is redistributed into financial bubbles.

As a result, the efficiency of the US financial and economic system is 20 percent – there only every fifth dollar reaches the real sector, and in China almost 90 percent (that is, almost all the yuan that is created by the Central Bank of the PRC) feeds the contours of the expansion of production and ensures ultra-high economic growth.

Trump’s attempts to limit China’s development through trade war methods have failed.

At the same time, they boomeranged at the United States itself.

Then the Americans opened a biological war front by launching the coronavirus in China, hoping that the Chinese leadership would not cope with this epidemic and chaos would arise in China.

However, the epidemic has demonstrated the low efficiency of healthcare and has created chaos in the United States itself.

The Chinese system of government has shown much greater efficiency here as well.

In the Celestial Empire, the mortality rate is significantly lower, and the pandemic was dealt with much faster there.

Already in 2020, they even reached economic growth of 2 percent, while in the United States there was a decline of 10 percent of GDP (analysts noted the largest drop since the Second World War ed. note).

Now the Chinese have restored the growth rate of about 7 percent per year, and there is no doubt that the PRC will continue to develop confidently, expanding the production of a new technological order.

In parallel with the trade war against China, American intelligence services were preparing a war against Russia.

This was because the Anglo-Saxon geopolitical tradition considers our country the main obstacle to establishing world domination of the US and British power and financial elite.

It must be said that the war against the Russian Federation unfolded immediately after the annexation of Crimea and after the American special services organized a coup d’état in Ukraine.

It can be said that they tricked Russia into agreeing to the American occupation of Ukraine, considering it as a temporary phenomenon.

However, the Americans took root on ‘Ukrainian Independence’, created not only [1] strongholds, growing Nazis under their wing, but also [2]  trained the Nazi armed forces.

This gave the Nazis the opportunity to receive a military education, trained them in their academies, ‘sewed together’ all the Armed Forces of Ukraine with them.

And for 8 years they have been preparing the Armed Forces of Ukraine for the fight against the only enemy – Russia.

While the mass media, which in Ukraine are also completely controlled by the Americans, formed the image of the enemy in the public mind.

In addition, the United States used the monetary and financial front of the hybrid war against the Russian Federation.

Already in 2014, they introduced the first financial sanctions and knocked out a significant part of Western loans from the Russian economy.

Now we are witnessing the next phase, when they have actually disconnected Russia from the world monetary and financial system, which they dominate.

However, I predicted all this 10 years ago.

I did so based on the theory of changing world economic structures and the specific logic of the US ruling elite.

A logic which was focused on world domination.

Anglo-Saxon geopolitics is traditionally oriented against the Russian Empire and its successors, the USSR and the Russian Federation.

This is because, since the days of the British Empire, Russia has been seen as the main opponent of the Anglo-Saxons.

All the so-called geopolitical science that was being written in London came down, in fact, to a set of recommendations on how to destroy Russia as the dominant force in Eurasia. I mean all sorts of speculative constructions like “countries of the sea against countries of the land” and so on.

Q: How did Russia get in the way of the ‘sea countries’ that much? After all, geographically with the UK, we have never bordered.

A:  In this regard, a formula was invented: whoever controls Eurasia controls the whole world.

Actually, applied developments have already gone further.

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s theorem is known that in order to defeat Russia as a superpower, Ukraine must be torn off from it.

All this political dogma, which, it would seem, has long gone down in history, is nevertheless reproduced today in the thinking of the American political elite.

I must say that there are still courses in geopolitics of the past 19th century at Harvard and Yale University, sharpening the brains of future American politicians against Russia.

So they, in fact, jumped on this old and time-tested Russophobic stream, which has always been characteristic of Anglo-Saxon geopolitics.

And, considering Russia as the main opponent of their dominance in the world, in accordance with the proposal of Brzezinski.

Thus, they used Ukraine as an outpost, more precisely, as a tool to undermine Russia, weaken it and, in the long run, destroy it as a sovereign state.

So, what is happening today was easily predicted based on a combination of long-term patterns of economic development.

This, actually doomed the world to a hybrid war, and the traditional Russophobia of the Anglo-Saxon political elite.

After the weakening of the PRC did not work out through a trade war, the Americans transferred the main blow of their military and political power to Russia.

It was a logical step as they consider to be a weak link in world geopolitics and economics.

In addition, the Anglo-Saxons seek to establish dominance over Russia in order to realize their age-old Russophobic ideas of destroying our country, and at the same time weakening China, because the strategic alliance of the Russian Federation and China is too tough for the United States.

They have neither the economic nor the military power to destroy us together, neither separately, which is why the United States initially sought to quarrel us with China.

That didn’t work for them.

But they, using our, I would say, placidity, and seized control over Ukraine.

And thus today they are using our fraternal republic as a weapon of war to destroy Russia, and then to seize control of our resources in order.

I repeat, to strengthen their position and weaken China’s position.

In general, this is all obvious, like two plus two equals four.

Q:The Americans will not be able to win, just as the British did not succeed in their time

A:  Probably, this is obvious, but not for everyone. Among the Russian elite there are many opponents of an alliance with China. At least, before the special operation in Ukraine, it seemed to these people that American and Western culture is more understandable and closer to us than hieroglyphic Chinese wisdom, and that we will always find a common language with our “Western partners”.

You know, back in 2015 I wrote the book “The Last World War. The USA is Starting and Losing”, which you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation everything was thought out and justified there.

The United States embarked on a worldwide hybrid war.

It started with the Orange Revolutions to disrupt regions of the world it did not control.

It did this in order to strengthen its position and weaken the position of geopolitical rivals.

After the famous Munich speech of President Putin (February 2007 – ed. Note), they realized that they had lost control over Yeltsin’s Russia, and this seriously worried them.

In 2008, the financial crisis broke out and it became clear that the transition to a new technological order was beginning.

And with this, the old world economic order and the previous management system no longer ensured sustainable economic development.

China was now leading the way.

Well, then afterwards the logic of deploying of a world war happens, only not in the forms that existed 100 years ago, but on three conditional fronts

  • monetary-financial (where the United States still dominates the world),
  • trade-economic (where they have already lost superiority to China) and
  • information-cognitive (where the Americans also have technologies that are superior to ours).

They use all three of these fronts in an attempt to keep the initiative and maintain the hegemony of their corporations.

Well and finally, the fourth front is the biological one, which opened with the advent of the coronavirus from the US-Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.

Today we see that a whole network of biological laboratories existed in Ukraine.

So the United States has long been preparing to open the biological front of the world war.

The fifth, and most obvious, front is, in fact, the front of combat fighting – as the last tool for forcing the states that they control into unquestioning obedience.

Today, the situation on this front is also escalating.

That is, active operations are underway on all five fronts of the world hybrid war, and the result can be predicted.

The Americans will not be able to win, just as the British did not succeed in their time.

Although Britain formally won World War II, they lost politically and economically.

The British lost their entire empire, losing more than 90 percent of the territory and 95 percent of the population.

Two years after World War II, where they were the winners, their empire collapsed like a house of cards, because the other two winners – the USSR and the USA – did not need this empire and viewed it as an anachronism.

Now today, the world will not need American transnational corporations.

They will not need the American dollar.

They will not need the American monetary and financial technologies and financial pyramids.

All this will be a thing of the past in the near future.

Southeast Asia will become the obvious leader in world economic development, and a new world economic order will be formed before our very eyes.

Q: To paraphrase [Erich] Remarque, we can say that changes have finally come on the western front. But what signs do you see of this powerful global system soon becoming a thing of the past?

A: After the Americans seized first [1] the Venezuelan foreign exchange reserves and handed them over to the opposition, then [2] the Afghan foreign exchange reserves, before that [3] the Iranian ones, and now [4] the Russian ones, it became completely clear that the dollar ceased to be the world currency.

Following the Americans, the Europeans also committed this stupidity – the euro and the pound ceased to be world currencies.

Therefore, the old monetary and financial system is living its last days.

After American dollars that no one needs are sent back to America from Asian countries, the collapse of the world monetary and financial system based on dollars and euros is inevitable.

Leading countries are switching to national currencies, and the euro and the dollar are ceasing to be foreign exchange reserves.

Q:  How do you see the world after the disappearance of the dollar monopoly?

A:  We are currently working on a project for an international treaty on the introduction of a new world settlement currency.

It will be pegged to the national currencies of the participating countries and to exchange commodities that determine real values.

We won’t need American and European banks.

A new payment system based on modern digital technologies with blockchain is developing in the world, where banks lose their importance.

Classical capitalism based on private banks is fading away.

International law is being restored.

All key international relations, including the issuance of world currency circulation, begin to form on the basis of agreements.

At the same time, the significance of national sovereignty is being restored, because sovereign countries are coming to an agreement.

The basis of global economic cooperation is joint investment in order to improve the well-being of peoples.

Trade liberalization ceases to be some kind of priority, national priorities are respected, each state builds such a system for protecting the internal market and its economic space that it considers necessary.

That is, the era of liberal globalization is over.

Before our eyes, a new world economic structure is being formed – an integral one, in which some states and private banks lose their private monopoly on the issue of money, on the use of military force, and so on.

Pretty Chinese girl

I just cannot let a post go without a pretty Chinese girl, don’t you know. video 4MB

Sergei Lavrov: Russian FM hails China as part of emerging ‘just world order’ – The Economic Times

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovon Wednesday said Moscow and Beijing are leading the way towards a fairer world order, as he makes his first visit to the key ally since Russialaunched its invasion of Ukraine last month.

Article

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The third scenario is catastrophic. Destruction of mankind

Q: Why did you call your book “The Last World War”? What feeds your hope that this global war is really the last one?

A: I called this world war the last one, because we see that there are several scenarios of movement out of today’s crisis.

The first scenario, which I have already talked about, is calm and prosperous.

It consists in overcoming the US monopoly.

In order to do this in the financial sector, you need to abandon the dollar.

In order to overcome the monopoly in the information and cognitive sphere, it is necessary to isolate our information space from the American one and switch to our own information technologies.

Creating their own contours of the reproduction of the economy, but without the US dollar and the euro and relying on their information technologies for managing money, the countries of the new world economic order ensure high rates of economic development.

They do this while the Western world is collapsing.

There they have a situation of collapse of financial pyramids, disorganization and a growing economic crisis, aggravated by growing inflation due to the uncontrolled issue of money over the past 12 years.

The second scenario of a possible development of events is similar to the one that Hitler wanted to realize during the period of the change of previous world economic structures.

This is an attempt to create a world government with a superhuman ideology.

If Hitler conceived the German nation as superhumans, then the current ideologists of world domination impose on humanity the transition to a post-humanoid state.

In contrast to the post-humanism of the West, the core countries of the new world economic order are characterized by a socialist ideology.

This means respect for private interests, protection of private property and the use of market mechanisms.

In China, India, Japan, and Korea, socialist ideology dominates.

Or rather, a mixture of socialist ideology, national interests, and market competition.

It is this mixture that forms a fundamentally new power-political elite, focused on economic development and the growth of the well-being of nations.

It is very different for Western politicians, intellectuals and businessmen.

What we see today  in the West is an attempt to form a certain image of a new world order with a world government at the head.

And, where people are driven into an electronic concentration camp.

You can see by the example of restrictions during the pandemic how it happened: all people are given tags, access to public goods is regulated through QR codes, everyone is forced to walk in formation.

By the way, in the scenario of the Rockefeller Foundation back in 2009, the pandemic and, in fact, everything that happened in connection with it, was amazingly sorted into pieces – they actually predicted the future.

This scenario was called Lock Step, that is, “Walk in formation”, and the Western world followed it.

Sacrificing their own democratic values, they try to force people to obey commands.

International organizations, including the World Health Organization, are used as a kind of stronghold for assembling a world government that would be subordinate to private capital.

But, I must say, Donald Trump greatly interfered with these plans.

This is because he stopped the signing of agreements on Transatlantic and Trans-Pacific partnerships.

In those partnerships, where all countries participating in the agreements sacrificed national sovereignty in all disputes with big business.

And you need to understand that today any transnational corporation can act as a foreign investor, including in the United States.

According to these agreements, if there is foreign capital in the business, then in a dispute with the national government, some kind of international arbitration court is formed, it is not clear how and by whom it was drawn up.

And these unelected judges, appointed, in fact, by big international business, these disputes are resolved.

In fact, it was about the fact that the state was losing all sovereignty in regulating relations with big business.

However, Trump stopped the agreement – the United States never signed it.

Thus, the process of forming a world government was stopped.

This is the second alternative, and it is now in crisis due to the collapse of the idea of globalization and the gradual abandonment of ‘pandemic’ restrictions.

It must be understood that the option of a world government is incompatible with sovereign Russia, with our independence and role in the world.

Within the framework of the globalist scenario, the Russian Federation is viewed as a territory that is intended for exploitation by Western transnational corporations.

The “indigenous population” must serve their interests.

Under such a scenario, Russia disappears as an independent entity, just like China, by the way.

The Western world government may incorporate some of our oligarchs into its version of the future, but only in second and third-rate roles.

Another pretty Chinese Girl

They are everywhere in China, don’t you know. video 2MB

The third scenario is catastrophic. The destruction of humanity…

Q: That same apocalypse which everybody talks about?

A: Well, not everyone… But everyone, of course, is afraid.

By the way, about the American biological laboratories that are engaged in the synthesis of dangerous viruses, it was mentioned in my other book, which was published a little later: “Plague of the XXI century: how to avoid disaster and overcome the crisis?”

I remember back in 1996, when I had to work in the UN Security Council, I proposed to develop the concept of national biological security.

Because even then, almost 30 years ago, genetics was a sufficiently developed science to synthesize viruses directed against people of a certain race or a certain gender, a certain age.

This has been possible for a long time.

It is possible to make a virus that will only work against whites, or vice versa, only against blacks, only against men, or only against women.

Now the Americans are going further – you see that, data which agrees with our Ministry of Defense, they announced the day before, that American biological laboratories were developing viruses targeted against the Slavs.

Apparently, it is possible today – to make a virus against some ethnic group that has its own genetic code.

What is happening in Ukraine today is an echo of the agony of the US power elite, which cannot come to terms with the fact that they will no longer be a world leader.

This becomes clear to everyone – at least to those who are not connected with the Americans by their own interests and are not subject to their cognitive influence.

I’ll give you an example.

When the US imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014, I asked my Chinese colleagues: “Do you think the Americans can impose sanctions with regards to China?”

They were certain that they can’t.

They said that it was impossible, because the US depends on China just as strongly as China depends on the US.

That is, America will be more expensive for itself.

Two years had passed, and Trump launched a trade war against China.

And Beijing now understood that America is an enemy that will drown the Chinese economic miracle by any and all means.

Prior to this, my reasonings with my Chinese colleagues were not very convincing, just as, however, my book you mentioned did not greatly influence our political and economic elite.

My arguments were dismissed.

Although we have been saying for many, many years that the dollar should be refused.

  • Foreign exchange reserves should have been removed from dollar instruments, from the euros-to-gold.
  • It is necessary to switch to ones own monetary and financial systems.
  • Nations should have developed our own settlements in national currencies with partners.

We have been offering all this since the 2000s, when it was already clear what the world economic development was leading to. And now, finally, everyone has seen the light.

Another Pretty Chinese girl

Here we have yet another view inside of China. video 10MB

The Americans zombified Ukrainians and turned 150-200 thousand people into a fighting machine that works without thinking”

Q:  Judging by the heart-rending howl that comes from the camp of the liberals, as well as the events in Ukraine, not everyone has seen the light yet.

A: Yes, we are faced with the fact that in 8 years the Americans have managed to fool the Ukrainian people so much that the people who resist the Russian army, the so-called Armed Forces of Ukraine, look simply zombified.

They are manipulated like puppets.

It is not Zelensky who commands the Ukrainian Army, not even the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the General Staff – but the Pentagon.

It commands very effectively from the point of view in the fight of “to the last Ukrainian soldier”, because these zombie guys do not give up.

But they are in an absolutely hopeless situation.

All experts have already acknowledged that Russia won the military special operation, that the Ukraine has no chance of resistance, that the entire military infrastructure has been destroyed…

The Armed Forces of Ukraine is only left with surrendering in order to minimize human losses.

However, Ukrainian officers (and especially, of course, nationalists) act like zombies controlled from the outside – they follow instructions from the Pentagon that come to their personal computers and special tablets.

Moreover, the Americans command their marionettes from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, breaking them into the appropriate units.

Each unit is assigned a number, and every number is given artificial ‘military intelligence’ with tasks every day.

They really turned 150-200 thousand people into a fighting machine that works without thinking, only stupidly follows all their orders.

For 8 years, they have achieved that they forced a significant part of the youth of Ukraine not only to stand up against Russia, but through brainwashing made them their weak-willed tools.

Not just cannon fodder, but controlled cannon fodder.

Being in an absolutely hopeless situation, surrounded, deprived of any supply at all, they still continue the senseless war, dooming themselves to death, and dragging the surrounding civilians with them to the grave.

This is a clear example of how modern American technology works.

We must understand that in front of us, we have a very powerful force.

You know, before [the war], we have heard from Russian experts and politicians that the Ukrainians themselves will suffocate economically and then crawl to us, and in general where will Ukraine go without us?

After all, it will not be able to ensure the reproduction of the economy without our resources and cooperation with us.

Indeed, Ukraine has entered a state of economic catastrophe, as we expected, as we explained to our Ukrainian colleagues.

The Ukrainian republic has become the poorest state in Europe along with Moldova.

Due to the fact that Ukraine has terminated ties with Russia, its losses amount to more than 100 billion dollars.

Nevertheless, this did not prevent American and British political strategists and instructors from forming a 200,000-strong army of thugs and murderers who completely inadequately imagine reality and are an obedient instrument of American interests.

Q: Aren’t there equally obedient American marionettes in Russia? Is it only Ukrainians who were zombified?

A:  Yes, and here it should be noted that practically the same thing is happening with the Central Bank, but only on other issues.

Q:  Before we move on to the Central Bank, let me clarify. You said that you are working on introducing a new currency. And in what format and with what team?

A:  We have been doing this for a long time as a group of scholars. 10 years ago, at the Astana Economic Forum.

We presented the report “Toward sustainable growth through a fair world economic order” with a project for the transition to a new world financial and monetary system.

There, we proposed to reform the IMF system based on the so-called special drawing rights, and on the basis of a modified IMF system – to create a worldwide accounting currency.

By the way, this idea aroused great interest then: our project was recognized as the best international economic project.

But in a practical sense, none of the states, represented by the official monetary authorities, was interested in this project.

Although it was followed by Nursultan Nazarbayev’s publications, which proposed a new currency. If I remember correctly, he offered Altyn.

Q:  Altyn? That is interesting.

A: Yes, the publication of his article on this topic even took place in Izvestia.

But the matter did not come to negotiations and political decisions, and to this day it is rather a proposal of experts.

But I am sure that the current situation is forcing us to create new payment-settlement instruments very quickly.

This is because the dollar will practically be impossible to use.

And the ruble, due to the incompetent policy of the Central Bank, which, in fact, acts in the interests of international speculators, cannot find sustainability.

Objectively, the ruble could become a reserve currency along with the yuan and the rupee.

It would be possible to move to a multi-currency system based on national currencies.

But we still need some equivalent for pricing…

Now we are working on the concept of the exchange space of the Eurasian Economic Union, where one of the tasks is the formation of new pricing criteria.

That is, if we want metal prices to be formed not in London, but here in Russia, just like oil prices.

Then this implies the emergence of some other currency.

This is especially true if we want to act not only within the Eurasian Economic Union, and in Eurasia in a broad sense.

Were Eurasia would be at the center of a new world economic order, to which I include China, India, Indochina, Japan, Korea and Iran.

These are large countries, all of which have their own fundamental national interests.

After the current stories with the confiscation of [Russia’s] dollar reserves, I think no country will want to use another country’s currency as a reserve.

So a new tool is needed.

And from my point of view, such a tool, for a start, can become some kind of synthetic settlement currency, which would be built as such an aggregated index.

Q: Can I have some examples? What it is?

A:  Well, let’s say, ECU (European Currency Unit) – there was such an experience in the European Union.

It was built like a basket of currencies.

All countries that participate in the creation of a new accounting currency should be entitled to the presence of their national currency in this basket.

And the common currency is formed as an index, as a weighted average component of these national currencies.

Well, to this we must add, from my point of view, commodities: not only gold, but also oil, and metal, and grain, and water.

Its a sort of commodity harness, which, according to our estimates, should include about 20 goods.

They, in fact, form world price proportions and therefore must participate in the basket for the formation of a new accounting currency.

And an international treaty is needed, which will determine the rules for the circulation of this currency and create an organization like the International Monetary Fund.

By the way, 15 years ago we proposed reforming the IMF, but now it is already obvious that a new monetary financial system will have to be built without the West.

Perhaps someday Europe will join it and the US will also be forced to admit it.

But so far it is clear that we will have to build without them.

For example, on the basis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

However, these are just expert developments, which we will submit to the authorities in the coming month.

Q:  And at the level of the government or at the level of the president?

A:  We will first send it to the departments that are responsible for these issues. We will hold discussions, develop some kind of common understanding, and then go to the political level.

Russia abandons the ISS space station

Without Russian rocket engines, there is no American/EU space station. No space X. So it really doesn’t matter. My guess is an earlier than planned retirement of the space station for “fiscal reasons” (wink. Wink.)
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Another Fine and attractive Chinese woman

One of the many reasons why I love living inside of China. Beauty abounds. So sexy cooking food.  video 4MB

The Central Bank continues the policy of pandering to the enemy”

Q: In your Telegram channel, you write that all that remains is to nationalize the Bank of Russia. Why hasn’t it been done yet? For example, there is a point of view that Elvira Nabiullina remains at her post as a screen, but will no longer manages anything serious. Can you refute or confirm this?

A:  You know, I don’t want to engage in conspiracy theories.

Q:  This is a conspiracy theory?

A:  Yes, we can talk about the American Deep State in conspiracy terms.

In this case, conspiracy theories are a very appropriate direction of thought, because in America, behind the screen of presidents and congressmen, there are some deep forces – special services.

And in our Fatherland, everything is simple.

We have a president, a head of state who has built a vertical form of power.

It is absolutely clear in our country how the parliament and the judiciary are formed.

Here, no conspiracy theory, in general, can be applied.

The same goes for the Central Bank.

Let me remind you that, according to the law on the Central Bank, all its property is federal property.

Therefore, the Central Bank is a state structure, there is not the slightest doubt about it.

Q:  And they always said that the Central Bank was separated, as if on the sidelines.

A:  The Board of Directors of the Central Bank is appointed by the State Duma on the proposal of the President.

I served for many years as its representative on the national banking board, which oversees the activities of the Central Bank.

I can say that there is no doubt that the Central Bank is the state body for regulating monetary circulation, and it is also the main financial regulator in the country.

But there are nuances.

The Constitution stipulates that the Central Bank conducts its policy independently, that is, it is independent of the government.

But this does not mean that it is independent of the state.

This is a state-owned agency.

Here the judicial system in our country is also officially independent of the government.

Therefore, being an independent body, the Central Bank is nevertheless formed as a state regulatory body and must perform the tasks that are necessary for the development of our economy.

To do this, it is necessary to involve the Central Bank in strategic planning.

The classics of monetary circulation stipulates that the main goal of the monetary authorities, that is, the Central Bank, should be to create conditions for maximizing investment.

That is what the banking system should be doing – maximizing investment.

Because the more investments, the more production, the higher the technical level, the lower the costs and the lower the inflation, the more stable the economy.

It is possible to achieve macroeconomic stabilization in the modern economy only on the basis of accelerated scientific and technological progress.

Attempts to target inflation (such a buzzword), which the Central Bank has been practically imitating for the past 10 years, by manipulating the key interest rate against the backdrop of a freely floating ruble, is short-sighted, primitive and counterproductive.

Usually these measures are recommended by the IMF for underdeveloped countries that themselves do not know how to think.

What is inflation targeting in practice?

This is an extremely primitive and internally contradictory set of measures, the application of which drives the economy into a stagflation trap.

The Central Bank threw the ruble into free float, which is absurd from the point of view of inflation targeting in an open economy, where the exchange rate directly affects prices.

And we see how the devaluation of the ruble periodically accelerates prices.

In addition, they reduced monetary policy to only one absolutely primitive tool – the manipulation of the key interest rate.

But the key rate is the percentage at which the Central Bank lends money to the economy and withdraws money from the economy.

Its attempts to suppress inflation by raising the interest rate cannot succeed in today’s economy, because the higher the interest rate, the less credit, the less investment, the lower the technical level and competitiveness.

The decrease in the latter entails the devaluation of the ruble in 3-4 years, after they raise the interest rate, supposedly to fight inflation.

Having let the ruble exchange rate float freely, they, in fact, gave it at the mercy of currency speculators.

The Americans really like these politics, so they praise the leadership of our Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance in every possible way.

After all, what is important to them?

So that everything is tied to the dollar, so that the ruble is a ‘junk’ currency that is unstable.

And this is a paradox, because the amount of foreign exchange reserves of the Russian Federation has recently been 3 times more than the ruble money supply!

This means that the Central Bank could have stabilized the exchange rate at any level. But it didn’t do that.

And who are the speculators to whom the Central Bank actually threw the ruble to be torn to pieces?

The main speculators are American hedge funds, which actually shape the ruble exchange rate by manipulating the market.

But the Central Bank does not notice this, or rather, pretends to not notice.

In order to keep them in the foreign exchange market by raising the interest rate, the Central Bank kills credit and makes our economy dependent on foreign sources of credit, and the foreign exchange financial system dependent on the interests of speculators.

This is in whose interests the Central Bank works, hiding behind cool buzzwords like ‘inflation targeting’, which has shamefully failed in these past years in terms of real price dynamics.

So in our country the weakest point of the entire national security system in general is the Central Bank.

Its leadership is hit by the enemy’s cognitive-weapon, in other words, zombified by it. In fact, our monetary authorities are doing what the enemy needs.

By the way, I proved mathematically and chronologically that the first wave of sanctions was imposed against Russia only after the Central Bank prepared the ground for this.

Namely, it let the ruble exchange rate float freely and announced that it would raise the interest rate, if inflation would start in the country.

As soon as the Central Bank moved to this strange policy, the Americans immediately imposed sanctions.

Their speculators ensured the collapse of the ruble exchange rate, this caused an inflationary wave, and the Central Bank, on the instructions of the IMF, raised the interest rate, which completely paralyzed our economy.

The total damage from this policy today has already reached 50 trillion rubles of non-produced products and about 20 trillion rubles of unfinished investments.

Now you have to add to this the 300 billion dollars invested in foreign assets, which are now frozen – that’s the damage.

Therefore, when we talk about the nationalization of the Central Bank, we are not talking about formally nationalizing it (it has already been nationalized), but about bringing it into a policy of conformity with national interests.

Right now, its policy is contrary to national interests.

And there is no conspiracy here.

We see in whose interests such a policy is pursued.

The Central Bank raised interest rates to 20 percent, giving the bankers a dominant position in the economy.

Possessing the most expensive and scarce resource, money, they determine which enterprise will survive, and which enterprise will die, go bankrupt, and so on.

Rising interest rates are holding the entire Russian economy hostage to a handful of bankers.

This is the first.

Secondly, the leadership of the Central Bank allowed another collapse of the ruble exchange rate and closed the currency exchange.

As a result, today banks have become the main currency speculators: they buy currency for about 90 rubles per dollar, and sell it for 125. The difference settles down for them as excess profit.

Q: But why, in your opinion, does the Central Bank of the Russian Federation pursue a policy in the interests of the enemy?

A: As I said, it does this on the recommendation of the International Monetary Fund.

But its interests are also shared by our large banks, which objectively like this policy, as well as our monetary and financial structures, which are also involved in manipulating the ruble exchange rate.

Therefore, an influential lobby is formed around this policy, which supports this policy based on its own private interests.

These interests run counter to the interests of the country, they are directly opposite to them.

And, if you look at what the Central Bank is doing today, I have no doubts that it continues the policy of actually pandering to the enemy.

It undermines macroeconomic stability by allowing international speculators to manipulate the ruble exchange rate and does not control the foreign exchange position of banks that have become currency speculators.

Although the Central Bank could easily withdraw banks from the foreign exchange market by fixing their foreign exchange position, forbidding banks to buy foreign currency.

And secondly – by raising the interest rate, the Central Bank actually killed investments in the development of the Russian economy.

Which are very much needed right now.

Primarily for import substitution and for the restoration of economic sovereignty.

While our leadership says that we should not be afraid of sanctions, because they create conditions for economic growth, for import substitutions…

Look, about a third of EU imports have left our market. These are huge opportunities for import substitution.

If we assume that our enterprises begin to develop these markets, then we will develop at a rate of 15 percent per year.

But this requires loans.

Import substitution cannot arise without loans.

We need loans to set up production facilities, to master new technologies, to load idle production capacities.

We have long developed such a strategy of advanced development at the Academy of Sciences, and we are promoting it.

But, unfortunately, the insane, from our point of view, policy of the Central Bank has quite specific influential structures which it likes and supports. That is why the policy is so stable.

Veteran diplomat warns against Australia being a US proxy in war against China

Watch “CITIZENS INSIGHT – Veteran Australian diplomat speaks out against war danger – John Lander” on YouTube
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I really love these Chinese girls.

Here’s another fine Chinese girl. I think that pretty girls are everywhere, but you know, there are a lot of them inside of China. video 2MB

It is possible to stabilize the ruble in three days”

Q: Sergey Yuryevich, if this is not conspiracy theory, then why does the Central Bank continue to pursue such a policy? Only based on the interests of lobbyists?

A: To whom is the war, and to whom is the mother dear.

Commercial banks earn a 40% profit on currency speculation.

You bought 90 rubles per dollar – sold it for 125. 35 rubles – nothing is easier!

As a result, we have inflation, imports are becoming more expensive, everyone sees this insane rate.

Prices for all goods are rising, but the banks are making super profits.

Again, a very influential lobby has formed around this policy, and admitting the failure of such a strategy for many people means, in fact, admitting their incompetence and even sabotage.

And speculators with large banks are quite influential structures in our country that influence decision-making.

Q: Well and what, does this information not reach the first person (Putin), is it blocked?

A: When I was an adviser, I communicated this information.

Q: Were you listened to?

A:  Yes, there were discussions, discussed at the Economic Council, then it was closed so as not to irritate the officials.

Now I don’t want to comment on it.

We see today that if we do not change the monetary policy, then it will simply be impossible for us to survive in this hybrid war.

We now need to counter economic sanctions with a serious increase in domestic production.

There are production facilities for this, people, raw materials, brains – too, but there is no money.

Right now, the simplest thing that the state can give people is money.

Q: What is your feeling? Is there an understanding at the top?

A:  I think that you need to directly address this question to them.

Q: But many people call you almost the Number 1 person in the current situation – a public figure who can save Russia.

A: Thank you for this review. I try my best.

Q:  I just want to understand: if before there was no prophet in our Fatherland, now has he appeared? Is this a temporary situation with the Central Bank?

A:  It is so protracted, I would say, for 30 years.

If we had carried out a competent monetary policy in accordance with the requirements of the new world economic order, the integral system, we would have developed like China – by 10 percent a year.

There were such possibilities.

And we basically been stomping in the same spot for these past 30 years.

So the point is not even whether they listen or not, you just need to look objectively and see how China and India are developing and how we are developing.

What prevented us from developing in exactly the same way?

Moreover, the control system of the new world economic order, which I describe in my books, is universal.

She worked successfully in Japan before the Americans broke the Japanese economic growth.

And even in Ethiopia, where they also began to form this management model (and achieved growth by several times).

That is, this universal management model of the modern economy, focused on the growth of social welfare through investment in a new technological order, needs to be implemented.

At the same time, of course, the targeted use of money implies a high responsibility.

Throwing money from a helicopter – is not our thing.

Q:  It’s not our path.

A:  We are talking about targeted credit emission based on modern digital tools with a strict control system focused on investments in new technologies.

We know how to do this, how to minimize the human factor through the introduction of digital technologies, including the digital ruble.

But this is disadvantageous for those who still adhere to the old strategies.

They made a cash cow out of Russia, they sucked out 100 billion dollars from it abroad to offshore companies. But now the Americans have closed offshorization for us. There is a real opportunity, we must use it.

Q:  What would you advise people? Now the main query on the Internet search engines is where to invest money in an era of turbulence. What should people do?

A:  First of all, do not make sudden movements, I would say that.

In any case, what certainly is not necessary – to run after dollars or euros.

Because we do not know what will happen next with these currencies.

If our system is disconnected from the Western system, then our banks cannot effectively invest dollars and euros anywhere except in currency speculation.

But I hope that our authorities will still curb the foreign exchange market.

In this context, what the banks did, raising the interest rate on foreign currency deposits sharply, turned out to be a clear overkill, which spurred panic.

I think the ruble will stabilize if, of course, speculators are removed from the foreign exchange market and foreign currency is sold only for importers and people who transfer money abroad within reasonable limits to relatives or are going on a business trip in accordance with the regulations.

The rest is to block the channels of currency leakage.

Then our foreign exchange inflow will normalize again.

You know, we have a very positive trade balance.

Mandatory sale of 80% of foreign exchange earnings has been introduced.

If this revenue is sold on the stock exchange, then the amount of currency will be more than what importers need.

We will have a surplus of currency.

This means that the ruble will strengthen, that is, it will return to the old indicators – 80 or even 70 rubles per dollar.

But until the Central Bank removes speculators from the market and allows commercial banks to become such, the ruble exchange rate will not stabilize.

So, unfortunately, the monetary authorities have not yet come to their senses and have not begun to implement the correct policy of macroeconomic stabilization, I can’t give any advice other than investing in gold if possible (especially since the government removed VAT from gold).

There are no other real assets and no safe haven.

Q: So, buy gold?

A: Buy the essentials.

Or invest in real estate, in something reliable.

As for investments in dollars and euros… They have ceased to be a currency for us.

This is no longer a currency, but some obligations of other countries that may or may not be fulfilled.

So we need to look for other possibilities.

But I would like to emphasize once again that with the right policies, we can very quickly stabilize the ruble and even restore its purchasing power.

Q: And in what perspective, after all?

A: It can be done even tomorrow, you understand? The Primakov government and [Viktor] Gerashchenko did it in one week.

Q: Is the government capable of doing this?

A: Of course it can.

To do this, in general, two decisions need to be made: to fix the currency position of commercial banks and introduce the norms for the sale of foreign currency for non-trading operations, to keep the freely convertible foreign exchange market only for trading operations.

That’s all.

This can be written in 15 minutes and announced within a day, introduced within three days – and the ruble will stabilize.

Now the USA is trying to “Strong Arm” Pakastan

After a recently failed NGO backed coup.

Statecraft | Pakistan PM Imran Khan Insists on Foreign Conspiracy With Alleged Threat Letter
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US seek to overthrown Pakistan PM:
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And yet another fine Chinese girl

Fine looking lass. video 2MB

Olivia Newton John – Magic (live on the midnight special)

After I left the Navy, but before I was sent a searching, I was in this “in-between” funk. I was between two worlds and perhaps a bit lost. It was a phase that I had to grow though. And I did, don’t you know.

I believe that everyone goes through this period of “void”. Where they feel out of sorts, and without aim, direction, purpose or meaning. For me, it was a new experience, and very uncomfortable.

I was, though events, able to regroup and seek out my next phase in life. We all do. But when you are in this funk, it’s a road and path that is difficult to define and impossible to get help with.

I will tell you that this is the song that was topping the radio tops at that time, and the song that I exercised to the most. I well remember doing arm curls and sit-ups to this song. To you readers it is just an old song. But to me… well, it represents that strange period of time that I went though; a time of great uncertainity and confusion about who I was, and what my purpose in life was.

Give the song a spin…

Blinken says Russia has already seen a ‘strategic defeat’

Cinnamon-Raisin Bread Pudding

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All that I can say is yum!

Who doesn’t love making bread pudding in the slow cooker, and this Cinnamon-Raisin Bread Pudding is no exception! Butterscotch chips and pecans add an extra-special touch that’s sure to please. It’s fast. It’s easy. It’s tasty. Just why aren’t you making it?

What You’ll Need

  • 3 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup whipping cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted
  • 1 (1-pound) cinnamon-raisin bread loaf, cut into 1-inch cubes
  • 1/2 cup butterscotch chips (see Note)
  • 1/2 cup chopped pecans, toasted
  • Sweetened whipped cream (optional)

What to Do

  1. Whisk together first 3 ingredients in a large bowl; stir in milk and next 3 ingredients. Add bread cubes, stirring until moistened. Stir in butterscotch chips and pecans. Pour into a lightly greased 4-quart round slow cooker.
  2. Cover and cook on LOW setting 2 hours or until center is set. Carefully remove slow cooker insert from heat element. Let stand, covered, 30 minutes. Serve pudding warm with whipped cream, if desired.

Notes

  • For more cinnamon flavor, you can substitute an equal amount of cinnamon chips for the butterscotch chips. Cinnamon chips tend to be a seasonal item — available only during the holiday months — so, if you love ’em, stock up.

20 Facts About The Emerging Global Food Shortage That Should Chill You To The Core

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A very alarming global food shortage has already begun, and it is only going to get worse in the months ahead.  I realize that this is not good news, but I would encourage you to share the information in this article with everyone that you can.  People deserve to understand what is happening, and they deserve an opportunity to get prepared.  The pace at which things are changing around the globe right now is absolutely breathtaking, but most people assume that life will just continue to carry on as it normally does.  Unfortunately, the truth is that a very real planetary emergency is developing right in front of our eyes.  The following are 20 facts about the emerging global food shortage that should chill you to the core…

#1 One of France’s most important government officials is telling us that we should brace ourselves for an “extremely serious” global food crisis…

France’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the EU must get to grips with the prospect that the war in Ukraine could prompt an “extremely serious” global food crisis.

#2 Joe Biden recently admitted that food shortages are “going to be real”, and his administration is now openly using the word “famine” to describe what is coming…

The Biden administration is worried Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will cause famine in parts of the world, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Cecilia Rouse told CNBC on Friday.

#3 It is being reported that food prices at German supermarkets will soon go up between 20 and 50 percent

Just days after Germany reported the highest inflation in generation (with February headline CPI soaring at a 7.6% annual pace and blowing away all expectations), giving locals a distinctly unpleasant deja vu feeling even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine broke what few supply chains remained and sent prices even higher into the stratosphere…

… on Monday, Germany will take one step toward a return of the dreaded Weimar hyperinflation, when according to the German Retail Association (HDE), consumers should prepare for another wave of price hikes for everyday goods and groceries with Reuters reporting that prices at German retail chains will explode between 20 and 50%

#4 Rationing has already begun in Spain

In Spain, the country started experiencing sporadic shortages of different products like eggs, milk and other dairy products almost immediately following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. In early March, major supermarkets like Mercadona and Makro began rationing sunflower oil.

#5 Rationing has also already started in Greece

In Greece, at least four national supermarket chains have started rationing food products like flour and sunflower oil due to critically low supplies caused by the crippled supply chains coming out of Russia and Ukraine.

#6 The head of BlackRock is warning that this will be the very first time this generation “is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want”

On Tuesday, BlackRock Inc. President Rob Kapito told an audience in Austin, Texas, hosted by the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, that an entire younger generation is quickly finding out what it means to suffer from shortages, according to Bloomberg.

“For the first time, this generation is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want,” Kapito said. “And we have a very entitled generation that has never had to sacrifice.”

#7 Since this time last year, some fertilizer prices have gone up by as much as 300 percent.

#8 Many farmers in Africa will not be able to afford fertilizer at all this year, and it is being projected that this will reduce agricultural production by an amount capable of feeding “100 million people”

With prices tripling over the past 18 months, many farmers are considering whether to forgo purchases of fertilizers this year. That leaves a market long touted for its growth potential set to shrink by almost a third, according to Sebastian Nduva, program manager at researcher group AfricaFertilizer.Org.

That could potentially curb cereals output by 30 million tons, enough to feed 100 million people, he said.

#9 Russia is normally one of the biggest global exporters of fertilizer

Russia is a key global player in natural gas, a major input to fertilizer production. Higher gas prices, and supply cuts, will further drive fertilizer prices higher. Russia is one of the biggest exporters of the three major groups of fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium). Physical supply cuts could further inflate fertilizer prices.

#10 In a typical year, Russia and Ukraine collectively account for approximately 30 percent of all global wheat exports.

#11 Half of Africa’s wheat imports usually come from either Russia or Ukraine.

#12 Other nations rely on wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine even more than Africa does

Armenia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Eritrea have imported virtually all of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine and must find new sources. But they are competing against much larger buyers, including Turkey, Egypt, Bangladesh and Iran, which have obtained more than 60 percent of their wheat from the two warring countries.

#13 One Russian official is warning that his nation may soon only export food to “friendly nations”

A Russian government official has threatened that Russia will limit its vital food exports to only nations it considers “friendly”.

Dmitry Medvedev, a senior Russian security official who previously served as the nation’s president, has threatened that Russia may soon cut off the West from food exports.

#14 On Friday, it was announced that another 5 million egg-laying chickens in Iowa would have to be put down because of the bird flu.

#15 The death toll from the bird flu in Iowa alone will be pushed beyond 13 million as a result of this latest incident.

#16 Overall, this is what the total national death toll from the bird flu currently looks like: “22 million egg-laying chickens, 1.8 million broiler chickens, 1.9 million pullet and other commercial chickens, and 1.9 million turkeys”.

#17 China’s agricultural minister has announced that the winter wheat harvest in China could be “the worst in history”.

#18 We are being warned that the winter wheat harvest in the United States will be “disastrous” due to severe drought.

#19 During a recent interview, one prominent U.S. farmer stated that most Americans won’t like it when “your grocery bill is up $1,000.00 a month”.

#20 The head of the UN World Food program says that what the planet is now facing is unlike anything that we have seen since World War II

“Ukraine has only compounded a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe,” said David M. Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, the United Nations agency that feeds 125 million people a day. “There is no precedent even close to this since World War II.”

We have been warned over and over again that this day was coming, and now it is here.

Like I said at the beginning of this article, I hope that you will share this information with as many people as possible, because this crisis really is going to affect every man, woman and child on the entire planet.

In my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like this, and conditions are getting worse with each passing day.

Stomu Yamashta – Go (Full Album)

I came across this album in the discount bin at the local music store in Butler Pennsylvania when I was a Junior / Senior in High School. I think that I bought it for a dollar. Which was a good deal, as at that time a single album of maybe fifteen songs cost $20.

Crazh huh?

Aside from just loving the high quality artwork of the artists eating at a table with bread and wine, the music itself was haunting and melodic.  It really stood apart from the funk, soul, rock, and country and western music that i was getting into at that period in my life.

I suggest you all give it a spin…

Stomu Yamashta’s supergroup Go, and their self titled album. This album shows such great musicianship and I wanted to share it with everyone. This album is legendary, and I believe it should be listened to in it’s entirety.

Here’s some more info:

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Good News for the East

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Good news for the world: the United States led Western DNA countries are beginning to feel the pain after bullying, threatening, and looting Russians foreign reserve, bank account, investment, and private assets.
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There are mass protests across Europe against inflation. Germany is just an example of how sanctioning of Putin the great affect food prices:
Still dare to bully a big country like Russia?

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AXM Paper Models of Chinese spacestations

Paper models are cheap and fun. You pay perhaps a few dollars, and you down load a PDF file. Then you print out the PDF. Once printed, you cut out the patterns and glue or tape together.

62BD6C5C BFF1 442D B7E9 6C649311549A scaled 1
62BD6C5C BFF1 442D B7E9 6C649311549A scaled 1

There are all sorts of these operations on the internt. Some a just fun with silly little items, while others are quite serious and very detailed. How about a 440  automotive engine, perhaps?

This operation; AXM Paper Models, specializes in modern and contemporaneous spacecraft. They are serious with scale and detailed drawing and patterns. In this installment, I am just going to provide a gate way to their inexpensive models of Chinese space station components. It’s all pretty nice.

Tianhe Core Module

FA109B42 30BD 466C A164 58D7FFA17CA8 1024x952 1
FA109B42 30BD 466C A164 58D7FFA17CA8 1024×952 1

Tianzhou 2

9DCC8865 9E65 4C7D B87D 221C21FAD299 1024x784 1
9DCC8865 9E65 4C7D B87D 221C21FAD299 1024×784 1

Shenzhou 12

6938F639 EA67 4DF4 A4FA F6F4E8F92E7D 1024x698 1
6938F639 EA67 4DF4 A4FA F6F4E8F92E7D 1024×698 1

Tianzhou 3

4F333866 9856 4AE6 A4A4 B6F8A980F323 1024x711 1
4F333866 9856 4AE6 A4A4 B6F8A980F323 1024×711 1

Shenzhou 13

A10BD418 FC7F 4BFE AE3F 589BCE06F520 1024x599 1
A10BD418 FC7F 4BFE AE3F 589BCE06F520 1024×599 1

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Conclusion

All in all, no matter what the “news” says, you need to keep in mind a few key points…

  • The world is undergoing a geopolitical realignment.
  • This alignment is dividing into two separate entities (East and West).

The two sides have a very different view of how the world should be. That should be quite clear by now, and everyone seems to agree on these points. Including the leadership of the two sides.

  • The West is trying to maintain a uni-polar single world government ruled by the United States. It wants the work to choose sides. You are either freinds or you are enemies. There is no in-between.
  • The East is trying to maintain a multi-polar world of equals of various unique social structures. They want to strengthen the UN charter, and empower it, and cut out and gut the legacy corruption that was built internally to it.

Some people, as the articles above state, consider a five point plan. WHile others jsut consider the plan to be some kind of “hybrid war”. I argue that a war is a war, irregardless as to what you call it.

But everything, right now, boils down to the purchase of energy and how that purchase comes about. Key to this manifestation is the control of the currency of exchange.

  • The West is trying to maintain the USD, or an electronic version of it.
  • The East is trying to use commodity-based currency by labor, materials and products.

Issues about Ukraine or Taiwan are simply the desperate plans of the West in a plan to maintain a uni-polar world. Sure they are important, but nto as important as the “news” would lead you to believe.

Do not get sidetracked from what is REALLY going on.

Keep clear headed. Keep focused. Keep frosty. I believe in you.

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Tomb sweep festival in April 2022 with discussions on submarine activities, Ukraine, and whittle-marked bottles

" ...the idiots running Finland... seem to have chosen the moment before the fall of the US Empire to join up with NATO, presumably in order to enjoy the descent. Its like ski jumping for politicians." 

-MoA commenter on the decision of the Findland Leadership to join NATO after Russia used military-technical measures to secure it's borders from NATO

When I was a young boy growing up inside the United States in the 1960s it was a different time, and a different place. People all worked, and felt good about themselves. Families were almost all single-earner housholds, and everyone had hpe for the future. Sure, it was in the midst of the cold war, but we all trusted our government, and believed in our leaders. We viewed our lives as being special and exceptional and righeous. We would eat good and healthy meals with meats and fresh vegitables daily. The father, as the head of the family would sit at the head of the table. We participated in sports, and games, and we watched television shows that reflected out hopes and dreams for the future. Here is  a fine example. You don’t have to watch the entire episode, perhaps maybe the first ten minutes, but you should all get a big kick out of this episode of “Voyage to the bottom of the sea”.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea S02E13 The Monster from Outer Space

It was pretty much standard fare for me and my siblings. My brother and I would watch these shows while we played with our erector sets, our chemistry sets, and toy guns. Maybe we too would be a hero and fight those pesky communists in the jungles of far away Vietnam. Oh, you know, we needed to do it. For democracy™ don’t you know. My mom spent most of her free time in the kitchen or the laundry room. She was always washing, cleaning or cooking. She was a machine! I only wish that I could tell her now, today, how much I appreciated what she did, and how her actions really influenced my early years in school. In the early 1960s we had a station wagon. It’s sort of like a low-ceiling mini-van, for those of you who were unaware. Us kids would love to sit in the flat back. We could spread out and stretch our legs back there. It probably would have also made a great place to make out with our (ten years later) girl friends. Alas, they went out of fashion and style. For most of my elementary school years I had this terrible crush on this really thin girl named Nancy P. I thought that she was beautiful, but I was so shy and every time I tried to talk to her I froze up. My sister didn’t help either, always constantly berating me, and embarrassing me when I started to talk to the girls in school. But times change, we age, and grow and experience life. I can positively say that the life I have led, and the experiences that I have had, bore absolutely no resemblence to the news, predictions, and movies of that time and place. And with that in mind, please remember that what you read, and experience today in the media “news” probably has very little resemblance to the actual reality that will influence your life in your future. Never the less, let’s go over some articles during this most signifigant and historical time…

US Dollar Hegemony Ended Abruptly Last Wednesday

Interview with Margaret Flowers, Clearing the Fog

Homestyle Sloppy Joes

Growing up though the 1960s and 1970s was a tale of (mostly) good eating. I must admit, however, that my mother tended to over rely on canned foods, and often used prepackaged mixes to make quick and easy meals for us kids. For sloppy joes, my mother would use a can of sloppy joe mix, and that was my sole experience with home-made sloppy joe sandwiches. Then, one day, I tried some made “from scratch” at a friends house. And, I have to tell you all, things haven’t been the same since. Give this recipe a try and see what you think.

Homestyle Sloppy Joes2 ArticleImage CategoryPage ID 956085
Homestyle Sloppy Joes

This classic all-American favorite tastes so much better when made with your own fresh ingredients. This homemade or homestyle Sloppy Joes are sink-your-teeth into ’em good!

What You’ll Need

  • 2 to 2-1/2 pounds ground beef
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 green bell pepper, chopped
  • 2 (15-ounce) cans tomato sauce
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 6 sandwich rolls or hamburger buns, split, buttered, and toasted

What to Do

  1. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, brown ground beef, onion, and green bell pepper 7 to 9 minutes, or until no pink remains in beef; drain off excess liquid.
  2. Add remaining ingredients except sandwich rolls; mix well. Reduce heat to low and simmer 8 to 10 minutes, or until heated through, stirring occasionally. Serve sandwich-style spooned into buns.

This month will decide world politics for next 30+ years

"Where are all the dead Russians?"

Indeed.

What happens here (and how it happens) will determine the fate of Russia, the Ukraine, Europe, and U.S. global military hegemony (to include on the Pacific Rim) for decades to come.  

If Russia is able to complete its Donbass mission by the end of April as I have predicted, then Uncle Sam’s Ukraine project is basically over—we’ll have to find another stick to poke in Russia’s side, and to keep our military-industrial lobby in the bonbons. 

Read more… Read more... .

The old blacksmith building

When I was growing up I lived in a small town of East Brady on the Allegheny river in Western Pennsylvania.  It was a tiny town with perhaps 6000 residents. When I was in fifth grade I used to go forth and hike in the woods and along the railroad tracks. There, I would discover old trash dumps from a hundred years ago. And well, being young kids, we would go and dig in those dumps searching for old bottles to clean and collect. The most prized were whittle-marked bitters.

R C.ad858c72c891d91f4cdc1c0d8989f004
A prized treasure.
In the single ravine in the town was a viaduct, and at the bottom of that ravine was this old boarded up building. It was the size of a small house, and painted an off yellow. It’s painted letters were faded, but still readable. It was an old blacksmiths shop. And of course, being kids we would wiggle our way inside that old decrept structure to scrounge around for treasures and curiosities. Inside the walls were covered with one hundred year old newspapers, placards and advertisements. There were some old moldy leather pistol hosters on the walls, as well as a bunch of big crock-pots. Dust and stacks of old news papers lay everywhere. Oh, sure we hand picked a few “treasures”, at that time we knew it was wrong, but you see, we felt that we (collectors of old bottles) appreciated the treasures that we found. Not the actual owners of the objects. Of course, we learned over time that this was wrong. But maybe we were the exception. After all, look at who is running the United States and the rest of the West today. They obviously are unable to tell right from wrong…

Ukraine Bioweapons labs

Interesting. Now, the official U.S. semantics have changed. All references to the bio-labs in Ukraine has been revised.

  • The initial spin was firm denial that the labs produced “bioweapons” (i.e. they were public health laboratories).
  • That has now been corrected and updated with an additional qualifier (“offensive”):

Pentagon official: “I can say to you unequivocally there are no offensive biologic weapons in the Ukraine laboratories that the United States has been involved with.” US Defence Department $200 million program since 2005 for 44 labs in Ukraine. USA says... .

Speaking of the bioweapons labs, look what was found by the Russians…

Somebody may find these US patents interesting:

(both were shown on the Russian MOD slides a couple of days ago). You cannot patent an idea, but you can patent an implementation. However, as soon as you implement something like the above two, you are possibly in violation of the various international treaties. Mosquitoes carrying “smallpox / aids / coronavirus” franken-viruses… You know, now that the United States is openly advancing war against Russia and China in every way except in open kenetic fighting, what do you think would happen if Asia decides to put an end once and for all to the horrible out-of-control United States monster?

Submarine 667-A Navaga scale model

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Submarine 667-A Navaga scale model
The model is made in the scale of 50:1, with internally illuminated compartments, and breakdown view, like all previous submarine projects. Building the model took two years by 6 people, part by part (nose, aft), collection of information and photographs took about 4 months more. The model is very large, it is 2,700 mm long. It was therefore decided to make it from two parts. Otherwise, it would be impossible neither to take it out of the room, nor to transport it. The body is made of laminated fiberglass. The materials used ranged from plastic and Plexiglas to metal, paper, and (new) sewer pipes. Next, you will find many photos and little text Figures of sailors were made of sets of pilots and airfield staff made by various companies in the scale of 48:1. They show all the flaws and shortcomings, but it is sometimes useful for work. Right in the model, one can fail to see them. The model was finished in 2013. Some “boxmakers” could see the aft part of the submarine at the Championship of Russia in 2013 at the Crocus Expo in Moscow.
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All this stuff about submarines…

It appears to be a subconscious theme running though MM this 4APR22. usually when MM picks up on these subconscious patterns it means that something is going on… …. be advised.

Day 36 of the Russian SMO in the Ukraine – a look at Ukrainian military

Map on April first
Map on April first
Today, I want to comment on a topic I did not address yet: the quality of the Ukrainian armed forces. Over night, two Ukrainian helicopters flying at very low altitude and high speed flew across the Russian Ukrainian border, and in only six minutes of flight time found themselves next to a fuel storage facility near the Russian city of Belgorod.  They both fired, one missed, but the second one hit perfectly and the entire fuel storage facility ignited.  Not a big deal, the fire has been contained, but very embarrassing nonetheless 🙁 Another case: the night before yesterday a group of 5 Ukrainian helicopters took off from Nikolaev, flew 7 meters above the waves and landed in Mariupol.  Their mission  was to evacuate the leadership of the Azov force still hiding inside the Azovstal industrial facility. After they took off, two helicopters were shot down, but another three flew away, with a possible 3 helicopter ditching in the waters off the coast (unclear at this time). Why do I consider these two events very telling? Because it shows that the Ukrainian soldiers have A LOT of VERY REAL courage.  Not only that, in both of these operations, a great deal of careful planning went into the preparations of these missions.  So they are not only courageous, they are SMART. Yes, the Ukie Volkssturm is a joke, but not the entire Ukrainian military and most definitely not the Nazis of the Azov “battalion” (it is not really a battalion, but rather a regiment or a small brigade, but spread out in key sectors of the Ukrainian defenses).  Why is that so important to realize? Because a HUGE battle is preparing in the Donbass. Quick reminder: While nobody knows the true size of the Ukrainian force surrounded in the Donbass, most observers place that force at about 60-80 thousand men.  They are VERY well armed, courtesy of 7 years of mass delivery of weapons by the Empire of Lies.  Their defenses are very solid, since they have been preparing them also for seven years.  Furthermore, the Ukrainians are reportedly trying to bring in another major force from the central Ukraine to either reinforce their forces in the Donbass, or to help it to escape from their cauldron. On the other side, nobody really knows how many Russian/LDNR forces are being concentrated around the Donbass either.  There are reports of “immense” columns of Russian forces moving towards the Donbass, including some the Russian forces which were deployed near Kiev to pin down Ukrainian forces away from the Donbass. The same feint was used by the Black Sea Fleet off the coast of Odessa. There are two ways to control a road: you can stand on the road, place a roadblock, maybe lay mines and generally by physically on top of that road.  Or you can do that remotely, without stepping on the road but by being able to fire (small arms, RPG, artillery, CAS) at any vehicle driving on that road.  The Russian “encirclement” of the Ukrainian force in the Donbass into 2 small cauldrons which themselves are locked in a bigger cauldron are a mix of these two techniques.  In other words, the Ukrainians still have retained *some* ability to move on the ground.  But only at VERY high risk.  Keep in mind that the Donbass is pretty flat terrain and that the Russians have air supremacy.  But, with enough luck, immense courage and determination, some APC or cars could try to move out, or reinforcements move in.  Let’s look at these two options: Moving out: for a FEW vehicles, and with a lot of luck, that could still be doable.  But for the overwhelming majority of the Ukrainian force on the Donbass, this not an option.  Not only do they lack fuel, any big force would attract the attention of the Russians (which a 4 passenger car going at full speed in the dark might not) resulting in immediate strikes. Moving in: here the Ukrainian would still have fuel (or they would not even try, which they apparently  are), but the problem is that it is impossible to hide any significant force from the Russians which could then use their long range artillery and close air support to destroy that force.  I am personally very dubious as to the chances of any Ukrainian subunit to make it to the Donbass. And yet. The Ukrainian propaganda is beyond ridiculous, but we should NOT assume that if Ukie propagandists are clowns, so are the Ukrainian soldiers.  The fact is that the Ukrainians never had the initiative, and they still don’t, and all their counter-attacks, including the airstrike on Belgorod, only had a limited and local effect.  But that does not mean that they would not fight very hard for their lives, even when surrounded, even without air cover, with no ability to rotate forces and not enough fuel to engage in maneuver warfare. Here is what the map of the area of operations looks like today:
Map on April first
Map on April first

  • The yellow circle is roughly the area where the outcome of this battle will be decided.
  • The small black arrow represents the likely Ukrainian effort to send in reinforcements
  • The big black arrow represents the move away from Kiev and towards the Donbass by Russian forces

Speaking about maps: while they do, more or less, show the military reality on the ground, they do not show the political realities the same way.  The truth is that there are plenty of towns and cities which are blocked/surrounded by Russian forces, but which are still run by the “old”, Nazi, authorities.  Yes, the Russians could go in and denazify these town and cities manu militari, but that would take time, results in casualties on both sides and ruin the civilian infrastructure.  And the Russians sure don’t want, say, Kharkov to become a 2nd Mariupol.

[Sidebar: some of you must have heard that canard about the Russians “running out of ammo”, right?  Well, local residents near the Ukrainian positions in the Donbass report that for three days the Russian artillery has been shelling the Ukrainian positions nonstop.  In reality, anybody who has studied the Soviet and, later, Russian military knows that with the exception of some very modern systems which have just been deployed, Russia has huge stores of ammunition.  In fact, when the Russians prepare a military offensive the expenditures in ammo, POL, and any other form of logistics required are carefully calculated.  If not, then the order to attack will not be given.  And, with a few exceptions, the kind of hardware and supplies the Russians are using in the Ukraine is both modern and plentiful.  By the way, there are signs that the Ukrainian forces are running out of ammo, most of their shelling is directed at LDNR cities and result in scores of death and injured civilians on a daily basis]

One possible option would be to warn the Nazi authorities that while the Russian military won’t invade their city, the Russian can use special forces and means to target “just” these Nazi authorities.  Yes, the Nazi will set up traps, like, say, placing the cellphone of a Nazi leader right on top of a Kindergarten, so the Russian intelligence services will have to do a lot of careful preparations and planning, or just make the threat and then wait for the Nazis to freak out and wonder where the promised missile will be aimed at. All this means the following:

  • The Russians need to take the Ukrainians much more seriously and if that means having early warning aircraft and interceptors on combat air patrol 24/7 – then that is what the Russians should do.  A pair of MiG-31BM on constant high altitude CAP over the central Ukraine would be a good start.
  • While the outcome is not in doubt, the Russians need to be very careful and assume that the Ukrainians will fight with skills and courage.
  • I don’t like making predictions, even less so, time-related ones, but I think that we need to prepare ourselves for a major battle lasting several weeks, possibly even a month.
  • Have have to assume that the PSYOPs of the Empire of Lies will go in full attack mode, and since it will be very hard to make sense of what will be going on, we have to ready for a major attack on our minds.
  • Once that Ukrainian force in the Donbass is defeated this will basically mean the end of the 2nd phase of this Special Military Operation (SMO) and the very best and combat capable Ukrainian will have disappeared and a 3rd phase will begin, probably by an attack on the Nikolaev and Odessa regions.

Still, we need to remember that all wars are political in nature and that while the military “pain dial” is turned up quite high for the Ukrainians, the US PSYOPs are still telling the Ukrainians that they are winning and soon the first Ukie tanks will enter Moscow.  The de facto fall of Mariupol (as evidenced by the desperate attempts to evacuate the Azov leaders by helicopter) is already a major blow for the Ukrainian narrative.  But this blow pales in comparison to what will happen when the best forces the Ukraine has will simply disappear from the maps of the Donbass.  At that point, no amount of hot air, grand statements or other lies will make a difference – such a defeat is impossible to conceal, it will make the news. Furthermore, we need to keep another thing always present in our minds: while in actual combat the Russians are facing Ukrainians, in the war itself Russia is not fighting the Nazis in Kiev, but the US/NATO/EU and their vassal states.  It is also certain that the “Biden” administration does not want peace but, instead, they want that war to last as long as possible and to destroy as much of the Ukrainian population and civilian infrastructure as possible. And, of course, the Russians are not negotiating with the Nazis, they are negotiating with Uncle Shmuel via the Nazis.  Big difference.  Right now, some Ukrainians might be willing to look at reality and surrender just to save lives and the Ukrainian infrastructure.  But they know that the Nazis will kill them or kidnap their family members (as has happened to one Ukrainian mayor).  And these Nazis are taking orders only from many western “advisors” in Kiev who tell them “fight down to the last solider, then we will evacuate you“. You could say that the hardcore Ukronazis act like political commissars did during the Russian civil war. The Russians fought phase one of the SMO with a force which was deliberately kept smaller than the opposing Ukrainian force.  But against an elite Ukrainian force deeply dug in in the heavily fortified defenses Russia will have to to do some combination of two things: more man and more firepower.  And, by all accounts, that seems to be exactly what they are gearing up for. As many others have already pointed out, the chances of a false flag are extremely high, most likely some chemical attack, possibly in Kiev or Kharkov.  Such an attack, while fake, will result in the usual hysterics of the Empire of Lies, so we all need to prepare ourselves for this too. The Empire of lies is so desperate now, that US PSYOPs claim that the Russian generals are afraid of telling Putin the “horrible truth” and that Shoigu is preparing a coup against Putin.  Right now, the Ukronazis say that the Russians are on the run, but even the US Pentagon admits that the forces moved away from Kiev are only regrouping. Remember, in maneuver warfare you do not “hold terrain” anymore than you do in naval warfare, and that is what the first phase of the SMO was all about.  But in the Donbass, holding terrain will become much more important and since both sides are very skilled and courageous, do NOT expect big movements on the map.  Instead, expect several weeks of very severe “grinding down” of Ukrainian defenses followed by slow and deliberate movements, mostly short distance – from a few hundred meters to a few clicks. I hope that the above will be helpful once the 2nd phase is fully launched. One more thing: western military aid to the Ukraine.  Most of it is in Poland.  True, there is A LOT of western kit found in Mariupol or the Donbass, but that stuff was brought in long ago.  Just look at the map, look at where the Polish-Ukrainian border is and then look at where the yellow circle is.  In order to make a difference, western weapon systems need to get across the entire Ukraine and enter into a highly contested and dangerous area.  How can such a delivery be made?  Three options:

  • Road
  • Train
  • Air

In all three cases, if the force is tiny, say a few cars fill with MANPADs, there is a chance to make it, albeit a small one and such a “delivery” would be fantastically dangerous.  But the Ukrainians have now PROVEN that they can be very tough and very smart.  But such tiny reinforcements won’t make any difference.  Now a bigger force might, but it would be instantly detected and attacked by Russians standoff weapons, close air support and long range artillery.  So all this stuff about sending weapons to the Ukrainians really is a load of crap.  It’s just irrelevant fake news. So far the Russians did not consider such a possibility as significant, hence the fact that they did not blow up any bridges, remotely mined any roads or destroyed any train tracks (that I am aware of).  But if the risk of a significant reinforcements from the western Ukraine become a real threat, you can rest assured that the Russians will do all of the above, especially since there are very few towns and civilians in some parts of this track to the East. So far the Russian policy was to let the (covert) NATO forces to gather in an assembly area and only then hit them really hard.  This is a very effective strategy which the NATO forces have found no way to counter (if only because NATO air defenses are a joke, even against trans-sonic and subsonic missiles and drone). Finally, the Ukrainians don’t have any air force left, and no navy, but they have proven that they still can use helicopters flying very low and fast, especially at night when local air defense operators might mistake them for a Russian helicopter (friendly fire is always a major risk in warfare).  BTW – a helicopter is a hard target, not only do they fly very low, they can fly both fast (say to avoid a MANPAD) or very slow, to hide for fighters and interceptors. A slowly moving and low flying helicopter is a difficult target for fighter aircraft’s radar and infrared search and track system.  A hilly or mountainous terrain makes detection even harder. Russian attack helicopters all have air to air capabilities, both gun and missile, and so they can be very effectively used against Ukrainian helicopters (which are a full generation behind modern Russian helicopters) but you need to have them ready and you need to have them fly under air cover.  So that is doable, it just takes time.

Conclusion:

Phase one, pure maneuver warfare is over and it was a military success. Politically, it was pretty close to a failure, not only did the PSYOPS of the Empire of Lies totally crush the rather clumsy and primitive Russian counter-propaganda efforts, the Russians also failed to realize that they could not count on the local civilians authorities to simply do their job under a new flag. Which means that Russia failed to properly denazify even the towns and cities which were deep in the Russian rear.  Now that miscalculation will have to be fixed the hard way: with more men and more firepower. Phase two of this war will be the liquidation of the Donbass cauldron and it will decide the outcome of this war (not that this outcome was ever in doubt). On a personal note, I will only add that the past month has convinced me that Russia should NOT permanently occupy more of the Ukraine than the “full” LDNR plus the entire Ukrainian Black Sea coast.  But neither can Russia leave a the Ukraine like a Petri dish for Nazi toxins, so it seems to me that the optimal solution would be a breakup of the country into several successor states: neutral, with only police forces and light arms and with a clear understanding that Russia has the means to militarily intervene at any minute should the successor states attempt to violate their neutral, unarmed and denazified status. Will that happen? I don’t know, Putin has already surprised me twice with very risky operations which I would have recommended against (Syria and that “big” SMO in lieu of a “small” liberation of “just” the LDNR).  Considering that Russia has used only a small fraction of her armed forces, it is impossible for me to predict what Putin and the Russian General Staff will decide after the second phase of this SMO is over. Finally, I am going to take the next two days off, barring some major developments, of course. So until Monday, then, God willing. Andrei

Japan Blindly followed the United States to Sanction Russia ending with self infected injuries:

14 Japan Power Retailers Exiting Business as Energy Crunch Worsens . The war in Ukraine is making a bad situation worse for Japanese power providers struggling with the energy crisis, forcing more companies to quit the business. In the last month, at least four companies halted power retail operations, as a surge in wholesale electricity prices makes it challenging to procure stable supply and turn a profit. At least seven temporarily halted taking on new customer
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Read more:
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Zhao Condemns “Insane Actions” of West, Banning Russian Art and Literature, Stealing Private Property

Zhao Lijian (China) on Friday made some rather poignant statements about the behavior of the West in response to the ongoing border skirmish in the former USSR, calling it “insane.”

Zhao said:

I heard that Russian conductors were fired by orchastras in certain Western countries for refusing to condemn their motherland, and Russian movies were excluded from certain film awards. In university, the works of Dostoyevsky were banned. The display of the letter “Z” was banned in certain countries.

Western politicians often talk about how literature and art transcend borders, and the same goes for music. They also say “private property is inviolable.” So, what have these writers and musicians done wrong? Meanwhile, the private property of so many Russians has been frozen or confiscated.

Let’s hope that Western politicians will reflect on these principles they keep talking about. Their insane actions are not going to do anything good, and they’re not going to deescalate this situation. I hope that all parties can just calm down, and start working on peace talks, instead of escalating sanctions and tensions. 

Whatever you think of either side of this conflict, there cannot be any claim that the West has not consistently violated its own supposed “values,” and it’s important to point that out.

UNZ .

We seriously underestimated Russia and our own propaganda is killing us.

Remember when American analysts painted a very specific picture of the Russian armed forces, and it was proven completely wrong? The media seems to have memory-holed literally everything we’ve said about Russia for the past eight years, but I remember. The Russians (according to NATO) before Feb. 24:

  • Only capable of defensive and limited offensive operations
  • Transport limited and heavily dependent on railways
  • Logistical problems. Any large-scale offensive would need to be paused after three days due to logistical limitations.
  • A hypothetical Russian invasion could be defeated by a combination of air power and guerrilla warfare.

Here’s a [quoted] segment written by Alex Vershinin for War on the Rocks last November. This is the example I chose, and almost every other NATO analysis I read more or less matches up with this one – they were all based on the same wargames and studies by RAND. RAND. Eh? The same people who laid out the Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Taiwan “pivots”, as well as the Hong Kong, Tibet, and Uighur (Xinjiang) operations. Brilliant. They have a near perfect recod of FAILURE. Well Duh! .

Comment from “Don”

Im 61, ex military (r we eva ex?). 

Never seen so much media control, like a heavy fog, hence this site is valuable. 

My 2 cents worth. 

Never underestimate Russia, esp when run by team Putin. 

Dot points. 

Threat to north / Kiev brilliant magnet for drawing in UA resources away from South East. 

Divide and conquor, as Ceaser did, then destroy them piecemeal. 

Social meadia western armchair warriors will look more foolish as time moves on. 

Western fake news will increasingly reduce western credibility as the reality on the ground emerges. 

UA morale will fall rapidly like coming off two weeks of meth with only tabacco and vodka availiable. 

The UA is becoming a broken failed state. 

This tactic is detroying UA. 

Identify troop barracks in use, destroy with precision strikes overnight. 

Same therapy for fuel ammo, bases, supplies, defence industry transit routes i.e. railways. 

Rinse repeat. 

Let social media hype the underdog. That merely strengthens Russian resolve. 

Dont they understand Russians even a little? 

Meanwhile USA leadership weakness is a real eye opener. 

The US empire is disintegrating before it ever became civilized. 

Negotiations? 

Russia will be seen to be giving them a go. 

But UA will be broken up and lucky if it keeps Odessa. 

Biden let it out that US troops and Poland have a contingency. 

That is the west gets western UA as a neutered proxy with Nazis and Kiev. 

It will be kinda like West / East Germany. 

How this comes about I dont know. 

With Russian permission for starters and Russias security buffer intact. 

Bad ending predicted for Zel. 

Thats my take. 

Thats if we survive till then. No guarantees esp with team dementia, moron, dementia. 1,2,3 Biden Harris Pelosi. 

Prediction? 

Shit always goes down around Easter for some reason. 

We'll see...

Posted by: Dom

‘Rublegas:’ the world’s new resource-based reserve currency

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Rublegas is the commodity currency du jour and it isn’t nearly as complicated as NATO pretends. If Europe wants gas, all it needs to do is send its Euros to a Russian account inside Russia.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and cross-posted with The Cradle

Saddam, Gaddafi, Iran, Venezuela – they all tried but couldn’t do it. But Russia is on a different level altogether. The beauty of the game-changing, gas-for-rubles, geoeconomic jujitsu applied by Moscow is its stark simplicity. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s presidential decree on new payment terms for energy products, predictably, was misunderstood by the collective west. The Russian government is not exactly demanding straightforward payment for gas in rubles. What Moscow wants is to be paid at Gazprombank in Russia, in its currency of choice, and not at a Gazprom account in any banking institution in western capitals. That’s the essence of less-is-more sophistication. Gazprombank will sell the foreign currency – dollars or euros – deposited by their customers on the Moscow Stock Exchange and credit it to different accounts in rubles within Gazprombank. What this means in practice is that foreign currency should be sent directly to Russia, and not accumulated in a foreign bank – where it can easily be held hostage, or frozen, for that matter. All these transactions from now on should be transferred to a Russian jurisdiction – thus eliminating the risk of payments being interrupted or outright blocked. It’s no wonder the subservient European Union (EU) apparatus – actively engaged in destroying their own national economies on behalf of Washington’s interests – is intellectually unequipped to understand the complex matter of exchanging euros into rubles. Gazprom made things easier this Friday, sending official notifications to its counterparts in the west and Japan. Putin himself was forced to explain in writing to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz how it all works. Once again, very simple: Customers open an account with Gazprombank in Russia. Payments are made in foreign currency – dollars or euros – converted into rubles according to the current exchange rate, and transferred to different Gazprom accounts. Thus it is 100 percent guaranteed that Gazprom will be paid. That’s in stark contrast to what the United States was forcing the Europeans to do: pay for Russian gas in Gazprom accounts in Europe, which would then be instantly frozen. These accounts would only be unblocked with the end of Operation Z, Russia’s military ops in Ukraine. Yet the Americans want the war to go on indefinitely, to “bog down” Moscow as if this was Afghanistan in the 1980s, and have strictly forbidden the Ukrainian Comedian in front of a green screen somewhere – certainly not Kiev – to accept any ceasefire or peace deal. So Gazprom accounts in Europe would continue to be frozen. As Scholz was still trying to understand the obvious, his economic minions went berserk, floating the idea of nationalizing Gazprom’s subsidiaries – Gazprom Germania and Wingas – in case Russia decides to halt the gas flow. This is ridiculous. It’s as if Berlin functionaries believe that Gazprom subsidiaries produce natural gas in centrally heated offices across Germany. The new rubles-for-gas mechanism does not in any way violate existing contracts. Yet, as Putin warned, existing contracts may indeed be stopped: “If such [ruble] payments are not made, we will consider this to be the buyers’ failure to perform commitments with all ensuing implications.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov was adamant that the mechanism will not be reversed under the current, dire circumstances. Still that does not mean that the gas flow would be instantly cut off. Payment in rubles will be expected from ‘The Unfriendlies’ – a list of hostile states that includes mostly the US, Canada, Japan and the EU – in the second half of April and early May. For the overwhelming majority of the Global South, the overarching Big Picture is crystal clear: an Atlanticist oligarchy is refusing to buy the Russian gas essential to the wellbeing of the population of Europe, while fully engaged in the weaponization of toxic inflation rates against the same population. Beyond Rublegas This gas-for-rubles mechanism – call it Rublegas – is just the first concrete building block in the construction of an alternative financial/monetary system, in tandem with many other mechanisms: ruble-rupee trade; the Saudi petroyuan; the Iran-Russia SWIFT- bypassing mechanism; and the most important of all, the China-Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) design of a comprehensive financial/monetary system, with the first draft to be presented in the next few days. And all of the above is directly linked to the stunning emergence of the ruble as a new, resource-based reserve currency. After the predictable initial stages of denial, the EU – actually, Germany – must face reality. The EU depends on steady supplies of Russian gas (40 percent) and oil (25 percent). The sanction hysteria has already engineered certified blowback. Natural gas accounts for 50 percent of the needs of Germany’s chemical and pharmaceutical industries. There’s no feasible replacement, be it from Algeria, Norway, Qatar or Turkmenistan. Germany is the EU’s industrial powerhouse. Only Russian gas is capable of keeping the German – and European – industrial base humming and at very affordable prices in case of long-term contracts. Disrupt this set up and you have horrifying turbulence across the EU and beyond. The inimitable Andrei Martyanov has summed it up this way: “Only two things define the world: the actual physical economy, and military power, which is its first derivative. Everything else are derivatives but you cannot live on derivatives.” The American turbo-capitalist casino believes its own derivative “narrative” – which has nothing to do with the real economy. The EU will eventually be forced by reality to move from denial to acceptance. Meanwhile, the Global South will be fast adapting to the new paradigm: the Davos Great Reset has been shattered by the Russian Reset.

Pretty Chinese girl

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A Pretty Chinese girl

With AI generated bunny ears. Um. It’s a Chinese thing, don’t you know. video 4MB

Another Pretty Chinese girl

A fine hourglass shape. video 2MB

Is It Possible to Actually Know What Has Been and Is Going On in Ukraine?

From HERE.

Just recently I came across perhaps the clearest and most reasonable account of what has been going on in Ukraine.

Its importance comes due to the fact that its author, Jacques Baud, a retired colonel in the Swiss intelligence service, was variously a highly placed, major participant in NATO training operations in Ukraine.

Over the years, he also had extensive dealings with his Russian counterparts. His long essay first appeared (in French) at the respected Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement.

A literal translation appeared at The Postil (April 1, 2022). I have gone back to the original French and edited the article down some and rendered it, I hope, in more idiomatic English. I do not think in editing it I have damaged Baud’s fascinating account. For in a real sense, what he has done is “to let the cat out of the bag.”

In the past I’ve read accounts and reports that either confirm or in some way match the narrative that he offers. Some of these that I’ve written about or cited are by: Dr. John Mearsheimer, Archbishop Carlo Vigano, Glenn Greenwald, Sohrab Ahmari, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Mike Whitney, and others. But none of these writers has offered the first-hand, in depth, and comprehensive account as Colonel Baud, clearly and knowledgeably, has done.

It is still a bit lengthy, despite my editing.

But I urge you to read and ponder Baud’s commentary. Along with the historical accounts of historian John Mearsheimer, it should be required reading for those zealous policy hawks, both in the GOP and the Democratic Party, who are pushing us into World War III:

The Military Situation In The Ukraine

https://cf2r.org/documentation/la-situation-militaire-en-ukraine/

March 2022 BY Jacques Baud

Part One: The Road To War

For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I have worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is therefore not a question of justifying war, but of understanding what led us to it. [….]

Let’s try to examine the roots of the [Ukrainian] conflict. It starts with those who for the last eight years have been talking about “separatists” or “independentists” from Donbass. This is a misnomer. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014, were not referendums of “independence” (независимость), as some unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but referendums of “self-determination” or “autonomy” (самостоятельность). The qualifier “pro-Russian” suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term “Russian speakers” would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.

In fact, these Republics were not seeking to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language–because the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the American-sponsored overthrow of [the democratically-elected] President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian an official language in Ukraine. A bit like if German putschists decided that French and Italian would no longer be official languages in Switzerland.

This decision caused a storm in the Russian-speaking population. The result was fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk) which was carried out beginning in February 2014 and led to a militarization of the situation and some horrific massacres of the Russian population (in Odessa and Mariupol, the most notable).

At this stage, too rigid and engrossed in a doctrinaire approach to operations, the Ukrainian general staff subdued the enemy but without managing to actually prevail. The war waged by the autonomists [consisted in].… highly mobile operations conducted with light means. With a more flexible and less doctrinaire approach, the rebels were able to exploit the inertia of Ukrainian forces to repeatedly “trap” them.

In 2014, when I was at NATO, I was responsible for the fight against the proliferation of small arms, and we were trying to detect Russian arms deliveries to the rebels, to see if Moscow was involved. The information we received then came almost entirely from Polish intelligence services and did not “fit” with the information coming from the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe]—and despite rather crude allegations, there were no deliveries of weapons and military equipment from Russia.

The rebels were armed thanks to the defection of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units that went over to the rebel side. As Ukrainian failures continued, tank, artillery and anti-aircraft battalions swelled the ranks of the autonomists. This is what pushed the Ukrainians to commit to the Minsk Agreements.

But just after signing the Minsk 1 Agreements, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko launched a massive “anti-terrorist operation” (ATO/Антитерористична операція) against the Donbass. Poorly advised by NATO officers, the Ukrainians suffered a crushing defeat in Debaltsevo, which forced them to engage in the Minsk 2 Agreements.

It is essential to recall here that Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015) Agreements did not provide for the separation or independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine. Those who have read the Agreements (there are very few who actually have) will note that it is written that the status of the Republics was to be negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the Republics, for an internal solution within Ukraine.

That is why since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded the implementation of the Minsk Agreements while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter of Ukraine. On the other side, the West—led by France—systematically tried to replace Minsk Agreements with the “Normandy format,” which put Russians and Ukrainians face-to-face. However, let us remember that there were never any Russian troops in the Donbass before 23-24 February 2022. Moreover, OSCE observers have never observed the slightest trace of Russian units operating in the Donbass before then. For example, the U.S. intelligence map published by the Washington Post on December 3, 2021 does not show Russian troops in the Donbass.

In October 2015, Vasyl Hrytsak, director of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), confessed that only 56 Russian fighters had been observed in the Donbass. This was exactly comparable to the Swiss who went to fight in Bosnia on weekends, in the 1990s, or the French who go to fight in Ukraine today.

The Ukrainian army was then in a deplorable state. In October 2018, after four years of war, the chief Ukrainian military prosecutor, Anatoly Matios, stated that Ukraine had lost 2,700 men in the Donbass: 891 from illnesses, 318 from road accidents, 177 from other accidents, 175 from poisonings (alcohol, drugs), 172 from careless handling of weapons, 101 from breaches of security regulations, 228 from murders and 615 from suicides.

In fact, the Ukrainian army was undermined by the corruption of its cadres and no longer enjoyed the support of the population. According to a British Home Office report, in the March/April 2014 recall of reservists, 70 percent did not show up for the first session, 80 percent for the second, 90 percent for the third, and 95 percent for the fourth. In October/November 2017, 70% of conscripts did not show up for the “Fall 2017” recall campaign. This is not counting suicides and desertions (often over to the autonomists), which reached up to 30 percent of the workforce in the ATO area. Young Ukrainians refused to go and fight in the Donbass and preferred emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the demographic deficit of the country.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense then turned to NATO to help make its armed forces more “attractive.” Having already worked on similar projects within the framework of the United Nations, I was asked by NATO to participate in a program to restore the image of the Ukrainian armed forces. But this is a long-term process and the Ukrainians wanted to move quickly.

So, to compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias…. In 2020, they constituted about 40 percent of the Ukrainian forces and numbered about 102,000 men, according to Reuters. They were armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There were more than 19 nationalities.

These militias had been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with Western support. Even if one can argue about the term “Nazi,” the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic…[and] are composed of fanatical and brutal individuals. The best known of these is the Azov Regiment, whose emblem is reminiscent of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, which is revered in the Ukraine for liberating Kharkov from the Soviets in 1943, before carrying out the 1944 Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in France. [….]

The characterization of the Ukrainian paramilitaries as “Nazis” or “neo-Nazis” is considered Russian propaganda. But that’s not the view of the Times of Israel, or the West Point Academy’s Center for Counterterrorism. In 2014, Newsweek magazine seemed to associate them more with… the Islamic State. Take your pick!

So, the West supported and continued to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous crimes against civilian populations since 2014: rape, torture and massacres….

The integration of these paramilitary forces into the Ukrainian National Guard was not at all accompanied by a “denazification,” as some claim.

Among the many examples, that of the Azov Regiment’s insignia is instructive:

2022 04 03 11 00
2022 04 03 11 00

In 2022, very schematically, the Ukrainian armed forces fighting the Russian offensive were organized as:

  • The Army, subordinated to the Ministry of Defense. It is organized into 3 army corps and composed of maneuver formations (tanks, heavy artillery, missiles, etc.).
  • The National Guard, which depends on the Ministry of the Interior and is organized into 5 territorial commands.

The National Guard is therefore a territorial defense force that is not part of the Ukrainian army. It includes paramilitary militias, called “volunteer battalions” (добровольчі батальйоні), also known by the evocative name of “reprisal battalions,” and composed of infantry. Primarily trained for urban combat, they now defend cities such as Kharkov, Mariupol, Odessa, Kiev, etc.

Part Two: The War

As a former head of analysis of Warsaw Pact forces in the Swiss strategic intelligence service, I observe with sadness—but not astonishment—that our services are no longer able to understand the military situation in Ukraine. The self-proclaimed “experts” who parade on our TV screens tirelessly relay the same information modulated by the claim that Russia—and Vladimir Putin—is irrational. Let’s take a step back.

  1. The Outbreak Of War

Since November 2021, the Americans have been constantly threatening a Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the Ukrainians at first did not seem to agree. Why not?

We have to go back to March 24, 2021. On that day, Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the recapture of the Crimea, and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises were conducted between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border. Russia then conducted several exercises to test the operational readiness of its troops and to show that it was following the evolution of the situation.

Things calmed down until October-November with the end of the ZAPAD 21 exercises, whose troop movements were interpreted as a reinforcement for an offensive against Ukraine. However, even the Ukrainian authorities refuted the idea of Russian preparations for a war, and Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukrainian Minister of Defense, states that there had been no change on its border since the spring.

In violation of the Minsk Agreements, Ukraine was conducting air operations in Donbass using drones, including at least one strike against a fuel depot in Donetsk in October 2021. The American press noted this, but not the Europeans; and no one condemned these violations.

In February 2022, events came to a head. On February 7, during his visit to Moscow, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed to Vladimir Putin his commitment to the Minsk Agreements, a commitment he would repeat after his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky the next day. But on February 11, in Berlin, after nine hours of work, the meeting of political advisors to the leaders of the “Normandy format” ended without any concrete result: the Ukrainians still refused to apply the Minsk Agreements, apparently under pressure from the United States. Vladimir Putin noted that Macron had made empty promises and that the West was not ready to enforce the agreements, the same opposition to a settlement it had exhibited for eight years.

Ukrainian preparations in the contact zone continued. The Russian Parliament became alarmed; and on February 15 it asked Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the Republics, which he initially refused to do.

On 17 February, President Joe Biden announced that Russia would attack Ukraine in the next few days. How did he know this? It is a mystery. But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the population of Donbass had increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show. Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacted or intervened. It would be said later that this was Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries have deliberately kept silent about the massacre of the Donbass population, knowing that this would provoke a Russian intervention.

At the same time, there were reports of sabotage in the Donbass. On 18 January, Donbass fighters intercepted saboteurs, who spoke Polish and were equipped with Western equipment and who were seeking to create chemical incidents in Gorlivka. They could have been CIA mercenaries, led or “advised” by Americans and composed of Ukrainian or European fighters, to carry out sabotage actions in the Donbass Republics.

In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knew that the Ukrainians had begun intense shelling the civilian population of Donbass, forcing Vladimir Putin to make a difficult choice: to help Donbass militarily and create an international problem, or to stand by and watch the Russian-speaking people of Donbass being crushed.

If he decided to intervene, Putin could invoke the international obligation of “Responsibility To Protect” (R2P). But he knew that whatever its nature or scale, the intervention would trigger a storm of sanctions. Therefore, whether Russian intervention were limited to the Donbass or went further to put pressure on the West over the status of the Ukraine, the price to pay would be the same. This is what he explained in his speech on February 21. On that day, he agreed to the request of the Duma and recognized the independence of the two Donbass Republics and, at the same time, he signed friendship and assistance treaties with them.

The Ukrainian artillery bombardment of the Donbass population continued, and, on 23 February, the two Republics asked for military assistance from Russia. On 24 February, Vladimir Putin invoked Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which provides for mutual military assistance in the framework of a defensive alliance.

In order to make the Russian intervention seem totally illegal in the eyes of the public, Western powers deliberately hid the fact that the war actually started on February 16. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services were well aware.

In his speech of February 24, Vladimir Putin stated the two objectives of his operation: “demilitarize” and “denazify” the Ukraine. So, it was not a question of taking over Ukraine, nor even, presumably, of occupying it; and certainly not of destroying it.

From then on, our knowledge of the course of the operation is limited: the Russians have excellent security for their operations (OPSEC) and the details of their planning are not known. But fairly quickly, the course of the operation allows us to understand how the strategic objectives were translated on the operational level.

Demilitarization:

  • ground destruction of Ukrainian aviation, air defense systems and reconnaissance assets;
  • neutralization of command and intelligence structures (C3I), as well as the main logistical routes in the depth of the territory;
  • encirclement of the bulk of the Ukrainian army massed in the southeast of the country.

Denazification:

  • destruction or neutralization of volunteer battalions operating in the cities of Odessa, Kharkov, and Mariupol, as well as in various facilities in the territory.

 

  1. Demilitarization

The Russian offensive was carried out in a very “classic” manner. Initially—as the Israelis had done in 1967—with the destruction on the ground of the air force in the very first hours. Then, we witnessed a simultaneous progression along several axes according to the principle of “flowing water”: advance everywhere where resistance was weak and leave the cities (very demanding in terms of troops) for later. In the north, the Chernobyl power plant was occupied immediately to prevent acts of sabotage. The images of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers guarding the plant together are of course not shown.

The idea that Russia is trying to take over Kiev, the capital, to eliminate Zelensky, comes typically from the West…. But Vladimir Putin never intended to shoot or topple Zelensky. Instead, Russia seeks to keep him in power by pushing him to negotiate, by surrounding Kiev. The Russians want to obtain the neutrality of Ukraine.

Many Western commentators were surprised that the Russians continued to seek a negotiated solution while conducting military operations. The explanation lies in the Russian strategic outlook since the Soviet era. For the West, war begins when politics ends. However, the Russian approach follows a Clausewitzian inspiration: war is the continuity of politics and one can move fluidly from one to the other, even during combat. This allows one to create pressure on the adversary and push him to negotiate.

From an operational point of view, the Russian offensive was an example of previous military action and planning: in six days, the Russians seized a territory as large as the United Kingdom, with a speed of advance greater than what the Wehrmacht had achieved in 1940.

The bulk of the Ukrainian army was deployed in the south of the country in preparation for a major operation against the Donbass. This is why Russian forces were able to encircle it from the beginning of March in the “cauldron” between Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk, with a thrust from the East through Kharkov and another from the South from Crimea. Troops from the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) Republics are complementing the Russian forces with a push from the East.

At this stage, Russian forces are slowly tightening the noose, but are no longer under any time pressure or schedule. Their demilitarization goal is all but achieved and the remaining Ukrainian forces no longer have an operational and strategic command structure.

The “slowdown” that our “experts” attribute to poor logistics is only the consequence of having achieved their objectives. Russia does not want to engage in an occupation of the entire Ukrainian territory. In fact, it appears that Russia is trying to limit its advance to the linguistic border of the country.

Our media speak of indiscriminate bombardments against the civilian population, especially in Kharkov, and horrific images are widely broadcast. However, Gonzalo Lira, a Latin American correspondent who lives there, presents us with a calm city on March 10 and March 11. It is true that it is a large city and we do not see everything—but this seems to indicate that we are not in the total war that we are served continuously on our TV screens. As for the Donbass Republics, they have “liberated” their own territories and are fighting in the city of Mariupol.

  1. Denazification

In cities like Kharkov, Mariupol and Odessa, the Ukrainian defense is provided by the paramilitary militias. They know that the objective of “denazification” is aimed primarily at them. For an attacker in an urbanized area, civilians are a problem. This is why Russia is seeking to create humanitarian corridors to empty cities of civilians and leave only the militias, to fight them more easily.

Conversely, these militias seek to keep civilians in the cities from evacuating in order to dissuade the Russian army from fighting there. This is why they are reluctant to implement these corridors and do everything to ensure that Russian efforts are unsuccessful—they use the civilian population as “human shields.” Videos showing civilians trying to leave Mariupol and beaten up by fighters of the Azov regiment are of course carefully censored by the Western media.

On Facebook, the Azov group was considered in the same category as the Islamic State [ISIS] and subject to the platform’s “policy on dangerous individuals and organizations.” It was therefore forbidden to glorify its activities, and “posts” that were favorable to it were systematically banned. But on February 24, Facebook changed its policy and allowed posts favorable to the militia. In the same spirit, in March, the platform authorized, in the former Eastern countries, calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire our leaders.

Our media propagate a romantic image of popular resistance by the Ukrainian people. It is this image that led the European Union to finance the distribution of arms to the civilian population. In my capacity as head of peacekeeping at the UN, I worked on the issue of civilian protection. We found that violence against civilians occurred in very specific contexts. In particular, when weapons are abundant and there are no command structures.

These command structures are the essence of armies: their function is to channel the use of force towards an objective. By arming citizens in a haphazard manner, as is currently the case, the EU is turning them into combatants, with the consequential effect of making them potential targets. Moreover, without command, without operational goals, the distribution of arms leads inevitably to settling of scores, banditry and actions that are more deadly than effective. War becomes a matter of emotions. Force becomes violence. This is what happened in Tawarga (Libya) from 11 to 13 August 2011, where 30,000 black Africans were massacred with weapons parachuted (illegally) by France. By the way, the British Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (RUSI) does not see any added value in these arms deliveries.

Moreover, by delivering arms to a country at war, one exposes oneself to being considered a belligerent. The Russian strikes of March 13, 2022, against the Mykolayev air base follow Russian warnings that arms shipments would be treated as hostile targets.

The EU is repeating the disastrous experience of the Third Reich in the final hours of the Battle of Berlin. War must be left to the military and when one side has lost, it must be admitted. And if there is to be resistance, it must be led and structured. But we are doing exactly the opposite—we are pushing citizens to go and fight, and at the same time, Facebook authorizes calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire us.

Some intelligence services see this irresponsible decision as a way to use the Ukrainian population as cannon fodder to fight Vladimir Putin’s Russia…. It would have been better to engage in negotiations and thus obtain guarantees for the civilian population than to add fuel to the fire. It is easy to be combative with the blood of others.

  1. The Maternity Hospital At Mariupol

It is important to understand beforehand that it is not the Ukrainian army that is defending Mariupol, but the Azov militia, composed of foreign mercenaries.

In its March 7, 2022 summary of the situation, the Russian UN mission in New York stated that “Residents report that Ukrainian armed forces expelled staff from the Mariupol city birth hospital No. 1 and set up a firing post inside the facility.” On March 8, the independent Russian media Lenta.ru, published the testimony of civilians from Mariupol who told that the maternity hospital was taken over by the militia of the Azov regiment, and who drove out the civilian occupants by threatening them with their weapons. They confirmed the statements of the Russian ambassador a few hours earlier.

The hospital in Mariupol occupies a dominant position, perfectly suited for the installation of anti-tank weapons and for observation. On 9 March, Russian forces struck the building. According to CNN, 17 people were wounded, but the images do not show any casualties in the building and there is no evidence that the victims mentioned are related to this strike. There is talk of children, but in reality, there is nothing. This does not prevent the leaders of the EU from seeing this as a war crime. And this allows Zelensky to call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

In reality, we do not know exactly what happened. But the sequence of events tends to confirm that Russian forces struck a position of the Azov regiment and that the maternity ward was then free of civilians.

The problem is that the paramilitary militias that defend the cities are encouraged by the international community not to respect the rules of war. It seems that the Ukrainians have replayed the scenario of the Kuwait City maternity hospital in 1990, which was totally staged by the firm Hill & Knowlton for $10.7 million in order to convince the United Nations Security Council to intervene in Iraq for Operation Desert Shield/Storm.

Western politicians have accepted civilian strikes in the Donbass for eight years without adopting any sanctions against the Ukrainian government. We have long since entered a dynamic where Western politicians have agreed to sacrifice international law towards their goal of weakening Russia.

Part Three: Conclusions

As an ex-intelligence professional, the first thing that strikes me is the total absence of Western intelligence services in accurately representing the situation over the past year…. In fact, it seems that throughout the Western world intelligence services have been overwhelmed by the politicians. The problem is that it is the politicians who decide—the best intelligence service in the world is useless if the decision-maker does not listen. This is what has happened during this crisis.

That said, while a few intelligence services had a very accurate and rational picture of the situation, others clearly had the same picture as that propagated by our media… The problem is that, from experience, I have found them to be extremely bad at the analytical level—doctrinaire, they lack the intellectual and political independence necessary to assess a situation with military “quality.”

Second, it seems that in some European countries, politicians have deliberately responded ideologically to the situation. That is why this crisis has been irrational from the beginning. It should be noted that all the documents that were presented to the public during this crisis were presented by politicians based on commercial sources.

Some Western politicians obviously wanted there to be a conflict. In the United States, the attack scenarios presented by Anthony Blinken to the UN Security Council were only the product of the imagination of a Tiger Team working for him—he did exactly as Donald Rumsfeld did in 2002, who “bypassed” the CIA and other intelligence services that were much less assertive about Iraqi chemical weapons.

The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have causes that we knew about but refused to see:

  • on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with here);
  • on the political level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;
  • and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.

In other words, we can naturally deplore and condemn the Russian attack. But WE (that is: the United States, France and the European Union in the lead) have created the conditions for a conflict to break out. We show compassion for the Ukrainian people and the two million refugees. That is fine. But if we had had a modicum of compassion for the same number of refugees from the Ukrainian populations of Donbass massacred by their own government and who sought refuge in Russia for eight years, none of this would probably have happened.

[….]

Whether the term “genocide” applies to the abuses suffered by the people of Donbass is an open question. The term is generally reserved for cases of greater magnitude (Holocaust, etc.). But the definition given by the Genocide Convention is probably broad enough to apply to this case.

Clearly, this conflict has led us into hysteria. Sanctions seem to have become the preferred tool of our foreign policies. If we had insisted that Ukraine abide by the Minsk Agreements, which we had negotiated and endorsed, none of this would have happened. Vladimir Putin’s condemnation is also ours. There is no point in whining afterwards—we should have acted earlier. However, neither Emmanuel Macron (as guarantor and member of the UN Security Council), nor Olaf Scholz, nor Volodymyr Zelensky have respected their commitments. In the end, the real defeat is that of those who have no voice.

The European Union was unable to promote the implementation of the Minsk agreements—on the contrary, it did not react when Ukraine was bombing its own population in the Donbass. Had it done so, Vladimir Putin would not have needed to react. Absent from the diplomatic phase, the EU distinguished itself by fueling the conflict. On February 27, the Ukrainian government agreed to enter into negotiations with Russia. But a few hours later, the European Union voted a budget of 450 million euros to supply arms to the Ukraine, adding fuel to the fire. From then on, the Ukrainians felt that they did not need to reach an agreement. The resistance of the Azov militia in Mariupol even led to a boost of 500 million euros for weapons.

In Ukraine, with the blessing of the Western countries, those who are in favor of a negotiation have been eliminated. This is the case of Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, assassinated on March 5 by the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) because he was too favorable to Russia and was considered a traitor. The same fate befell Dmitry Demyanenko, former deputy head of the SBU’s main directorate for Kiev and its region, who was assassinated on March 10 because he was too favorable to an agreement with Russia—he was shot by the Mirotvorets (“Peacemaker”) militia. This militia is associated with the Mirotvorets website, which lists the “enemies of Ukraine,” with their personal data, addresses and telephone numbers, so that they can be harassed or even eliminated; a practice that is punishable in many countries, but not in the Ukraine. The UN and some European countries have demanded the closure of this site—but that demand was refused by the Rada [Ukrainian parliament].

In the end, the price will be high, but Vladimir Putin will likely achieve the goals he set for himself. We have pushed him into the arms of China. His ties with Beijing have solidified. China is emerging as a mediator in the conflict…. The Americans have to ask Venezuela and Iran for oil to get out of the energy impasse they have put themselves in—and the United States has to piteously backtrack on the sanctions imposed on its enemies.

Western ministers who seek to collapse the Russian economy and make the Russian people suffer, or even call for the assassination of Putin, show (even if they have partially reversed the form of their words, but not the substance!) that our leaders are no better than those we hate—sanctioning Russian athletes in the Para-Olympic Games or Russian artists has nothing to do with fighting Putin. [….]

What makes the conflict in Ukraine more blameworthy than our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya? What sanctions have we adopted against those who deliberately lied to the international community in order to wage unjust, unjustified and murderous wars?….Have we adopted a single sanction against the countries, companies or politicians who are supplying weapons to the conflict in Yemen, considered to be the “worst humanitarian disaster in the world?”

To ask the question is to answer it… and the answer is not pretty.

Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news , L’affaire Navalny . His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.

This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris.

MM shows off some Chinese food

This is General Tsos Chicken, only it’s the real deal. Not the fast food that you eat in the ‘States. It’s called Geng Pao Ji Deng. video 36MB

Some delicious pepper beef

Look at this beauty. Oh boy! video 16MB

Richie Blackmore / Ronnie James Dio “Catch the Rainbow (Live)”

Now this is a real treat. When I was in my Senior Year in High School, we must have worn down this album by playing it over, and over, and over again. Today, as an older man, with a great deal of “life experience” I have a completely different mindset, and when I listen to this music it affects me quite differently. Today, I view it as a work of art; an entertaining distraction, and one that showcases the brilliance of the singer Ronnie James Dio, the great drum work of Cozy Powell, and of course, the ease at which Richie Blackmore belted out those guitar solos. While when I was younger, it reflected struggle, passion and ambition. Ah. It’s amazing how one changes as they age. Anyways, I present it here as just that. A fine historical view and fun entertainment for youse guys to enjoy. Part 1

Part 2

Funeral Directors, Embalmers Alarmed by Unusual Blood Clots in Vaccinated Bodies

Normally I do not post these kinds of articles, but this is a mainstream America media article. It is signifigant. -MM

From HERE.

by Debra Heine

Board-certified funeral directors and embalmers are coming forward to tell tales of horror featuring vaccinated bodies with veins and arteries clogged with strange, rubbery, worm-like clots. Richard Hirschman, a funeral director and embalmer from Alabama, with over twenty years of experience in the field, has said in recent interviews that he had never seen anything like it until around the middle of 2021, after the mass injections of the experimental COVID vaccines began. He says his colleagues in the field are seeing the same thing, and the numbers are increasing. Earlier this month, Hirschman told Steve Kirsch, the Executive Director of the Vaccine Research Center, that in Jan 2022, 37 out of 57 bodies (65 percent) had these suspicious clots. Prior to the vaccines, Hirschman said blood clots in patients who died of COVID were seen, but they appeared to be more typical, and not in the alarming numbers he’s seeing now. Since Hirschman has gone public, Cary D. Watkins, a colleague from Alabama with over 50 years experience as a funeral director and embalmer, has come forward to corroborate his story, and Anna Foster, an embalmer from Missouri with 11 years of experience, has revealed in an interview that 93 percent of her last 30 cases died due to unusual clots completely filling their vascular systems. Funeral director John O’Looney of Milton Keynes, England, is also blowing the whistle on the alarming increase in number of thrombosis deaths. O’Looney said in an interview that it’s not just “a two or three-fold increase—it’s around a 500 or 600 percent increase,” and nine out of ten of these cases were vaccinated. . Much more... .

Buckets of kittens

Oh, my goodness. video 3MB

Help others in Need

You don’t drive by slowly and film people in distress, you get off your fucking ass and help them. What’s you God damn malfunction? video 4MB

Life is too short not to be a Rufus

You can be a hero, or you can be a selfish greedy psycopathic loner. It’s your choice. video 1MB

Be the Rufus and change your life

Change your thoughts, and you will change your behaviors. That in turn will change your life. Don’t be afraid. make the changes that you so very much need. video. 3MB

Be the Rufus and make the world worth living in

Sure. You have heard this over and over and over again. Yet you still come back to MM for more. Why? WHy do you visit MM instead of Fox “news”, CNN, the BBC, or any of thousands of for-profit “news”? Perhaps it is becuase you are different. Yes. Maybe you are different; and maybe you are special. So, and if so, perhaps you are here at this place at this time to make a difference. Are you up to the challenge? It doesn’t matter what your role is, or what your job is. Do it with passion; with gusto, and with a big happy smile. You WILL CHANGE the world around you. video 4MB

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future. New Beginnings 3 .

Articles & Links

Master Index .

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American general captured in Ukraine leading Nazi’s along with the influences of Robin Trower, pretty girls and chicken fried steak

Lots of stuff going on. Generally, the world feels strange. Like it’s  the “calm before the storm”, or that there is some kind of huge under-current going on that we all can feel, but cannot vocalize. Yeah. In all of this unusualness, I am throwing out some articles, thoughts, impressions and stuff that should assist one in  treading water during this great period of geopolitical upheaval.

US General

The big news is the capture of an American army general leading the Nazi Asov batallion in Ukraine. Obviously this nation was a NATO outpost in all ways and forms except “official”. We will cover this and the implications that it has for everyone later on in the body of this article.

Music, Girls, China, and other stuff

I mix up content in these articles. If I do not, then the articles and the venure is flagged for interruption, shadow banning, and other internet manipulations. Tired of trolls, add some food-related content to your articles. Watch them flee!

Trolls thwarted by content mixing

I will continue to proceed tracing the changes along with a mish-mash of other subjects. Why you might ask. Well, guys, I can positively affirm that I have 100% success in throwing off the trolls and DDOS attacks, and ‘bots since I have incorporated this methodology.

It breaks apart whatever system is in place. Whether it is a computer algorithm that matches trolls with targets, or whether it just  the simple minds of trolls, is unknown. All I know is that it works. And that is just hunky-dory for me.

I hope you enjoy this article. Have fun.

Why US’ ‘sanctions threat’ to India is counter-productive on the China front

Not just against Russia, but it’s China as well. It’s not in India’s best interests.

India says no!
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Half scale models

Large scale models are simply diabolical.  Models of any scale can play with your imagination, but you always know what’s real and what’s fake.   When that train, plane, or car model is, say, 14 inches long–normal scale model size, more or less–your mind quickly adapts to the concept because it knows this is a model.  And your mind deposits what you’re seeing into its familiar, convenient file folder called “scale models.”

But when the scale is large, your cognition wavers on the real vs. fake question.  When your logical mind and eye look at a 1:2 (or 1/2, half) scale model, it will register the model as fake–but not as rapidly as with smaller scale models.  It takes a second, and in that second your mind falls into an uncanny valley of questioning.

Half scale models of large objects like tanks, trucks, and cars are not common, as Fred Heim himself admits.  Full scale (1:1) is common, but only with small items like guns.

Check this out…

Fred Heim Scale ModelFred Heim Scale Model

This half-scale Peterbilt truck was Fred Heim’s first large scale model. Frame is aluminum, sides are powder coated mahogany. Since half-sized truck parts are in short supply (as in: non-existent), Heim had to make practically everything by scratch.

Without Heim and the garage acting as measuring devices, this Peterbilt could easily be mistaken for the real thing.

Pretty Chinese girl

Robust with an EMORMOUS and inviting smile. (I tell you over and over. It’s your SMILE that opens up opportunities for you.) What’s not to love? And her outfit is nice, eh? video 5MB

Sanctions against Russia hit a brick wall

A country with huge natural resources and agriculture sector with the military ability to deter the temptation of the United States preemptive strike will be the last man stand in this NATO expansionism saga.
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Putin should have realised by now his power to sanction the west is more powerful than western ability to sanction his country.
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2022 will be remembered as a historic turning point of the United States losing their notorious sanction power against Russia, and suffered greatly from their victim (Russia) counter sanction policy.
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Meanwhile in Mongolia

Yes. Mongolia is a very nice, if cold area. Nice people, and a beautiful landscape. video 5MB

Meet Nancy Kovack, Forgotten Siren of the Sixties

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Nancy Kovack

Nancy Kovack is long retired, no need to act anymore, and firmly married to conductor Zubin Mehta. But in her day, she graced both the big screen and the cathode ray screen with her elegantly sleek looks reminiscent of Honor Blackman.

Nancy Kovack is also the one who got away. With big-star quality looks and acting chops, she was destined for greatness. Instead, she chose a different path.

The first the world saw of Nancy Kovack was in 1955, as the 19-year-old Queen of the Romeo Peach Pie Festival, in Michigan. She was tasked with distributing 50 peach pies around the U.S. to various luminaries. One pie that she delivered went to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

After that, Kovack made the usual round of Sixties-era TV shows: Love, American Style, Bewitched, Mannix, I Spy. If a casting director ever needed a beautiful face and a refined look, Kovack led the way in their Rolodex.

To compound matters–and it’s here where the faint-of-heart should clutch their pearls and avert their gaze–Miss Kovack owned a fantastically voluptuous body.

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Nancy Kovack

Directly or indirectly, it’s Mehta we have to blame for taking Nancy off the screen and out of circulation. After her marriage to him in 1969, her filmography drops off to only five or six more credits before disappearing altogether in 1976.

While it seems crazy that Zubie would cheat on Kovack, cheat he did. In 1991, when Mehta was 55 years old (and Kovack about the same age), Mehta fathered a child in Israel.

An article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency relates the rumor of “a smattering of illegitimate children from various affairs.” Mehta admits to just that one boy.

Now 86, Nancy Kovack-Mehta and her husband Zubin Mehta live in Los Angeles, where he is Conductor Emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

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Nancy Kovack

No choice but to pay in rubber, rmb or gold.

Meanwhile on the geopolitical scene we have the USA sanctioning the entire globe (except for itself and its toadies).
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There are few options. Not many choices. German politician warns that boycotting Russian gas could lead to mass poverty.
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The right mentality is a win-win mentality. The world should move away from the United States desire to control and make easy money from being a parasites to all none western nations resources, labours, and low end economy (allowed by the crusaders) .

Everybody needs to learn to work hard, study hard and trade with each other from a win win, mutual prosperity economic model.

Life is not that difficult if capitalism with Western characteristics that allow 0.1% to control the livelihood of the 99.9% are destroyed.

Basic human rights such as housing, public transport, water, electricity, Internet, food, Medicare etc should become affordable that ensure every citizen with a job are able to enjoy.

The aging, and young, and the sick and handicap should be taken care of.

Notorious Capitalism with looting DNA is coming to an end.

-A Chinese perspective from <redacted>
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A nice Chinese girl

She’s been making the rounds on Douxing. She’s very popular becuase of her fish-shaped body and nice eyes and smile. video. 6.4MB

The East is going Chinese OS; the West “hunkers down”…

Google continues to sanction, Russia begins to test Harmony system, Huawei HarmonyOS ushered in a good opportunity for development – iNEWS
When a door is shut by the United States, the other door is opened. The United States are in the process of sanctioning the world into self isolation.
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Chinese girl with beautiful eyes

They are nice, don’t you think? video 3MB

Springtime as painted by a few unknown  Russian Painters

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This next one really appeals to me…

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And this one … well, you can just smell the fresh spring air…

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Robin Trower “Too Rolling Stoned”

Robin Trower is a blues guitarist who came into the public light in the 1970s. He’s still going strong and has many followers.

Trower is 75 and still touring. And still playin' smokin' guitar. One of the greats, and under appreciated. His original bass man James Dewar had such a great voice. Sadly he's gone. You have to check out several of his other tracks. Bridge of Sighs is so good. (Most people have no idea what the song is about.) And of course Day of the Eagle.

-Zabbo Daborba

I (MM, don’t you know) was introduced to him back in 1976 when I smoked a joint of “Thai-stick” in the High School parking lot with a friend. We got high, and my first exposure to Robin Trower was the song “Too Rolling Stoned”. I’ve been a fan ever since.

Honestly, I really don’t listen to him very much these days. As I prefer Chinese pop music, and American Country and Western music. But that’s just me.

Anyways, here’s two You-tube videos of the song “Too Rolling Stoned”.

All the theory in the world doesn’t prevent you from being schooled by one of the great masters... Robin is about the most underrated rock guitarists ever.

-Eddie

The first is the entire song observed by a music critic. He is now a Robin Trower fan. The look on his face, as he jams to the music is priceless.

The second, is a breakdown of his musical style (of the exact same song in a different video clip).  Very interesting. You do not need to know the technical details to appreciate what he has to say.  This study is done by someone who has never listened to Robin Trower before. Indeed, it seems like Michael has just turned into a fan, and Robin Trower is growing a fan base just by being alive.

Michael, Welcome to the land of Trower. 

I'm 62 years old and a guitar player. I'm self-taught and first picked up the guitar and started teaching myself from cheat books and 45 records when I was around 8 years old. 

my first live performance was 1966/67 in front of my class in 4th grade with two other friends. 

I've played in cover bands all my life. Still do. 

I've covered Trower on and off over the years since the mid-'70s when I first heard him myself. 

I learned his "Day of the Eagle" classic hit from a 33rpm album (Live from Winterland} around 1974/75. Watching and learning from guitarist is just part of my DNA. 

I love watching you and learning, watching you unpack "Too Rolling Stone" from Trower on video was a treat for me, Trower in the wild no less, (Live), this has truly made my day. 

Your expressions in this video at times are priceless. 

You kind of started with a mild approach towards the whole "Trower" thing at the beginning, and I giggled at that. and as you listened and dissected not only the song but his body movements, the Wha Wha approach, then Robin hits what I call his Jazz "Drop dead chords", modulates up a half step, then the typical shifting of gears into "Trower mode" I call it, and drops the tempo of the song to a slow blues groove that he's typically and noted for. 

Such phrasings are his signature style, the look on your face and reaction was better than that first cup of coffee I was drinking for this morning. 

I said out loud with a big belly laugh, "Welcome to the land of Trower teacher". my wife wanted to know who the heck I was talking to. hahha. 

I say all this as someone who has done the same thing while learning Trower songs, only without YouTube video's which are worth their weight in gold themselves. 

Starting and stopping a song on a vinyl record over and over is something you just have had to live through to get. 

Anyway. Thank you for staying with us and continuing in sharing your passion which is also our passion. and for exploring Robin Trower. I hope you look into other great songs of his like: "Day of the Eagle" or Bridge of Sighs". any of his tunes are worthy of time.

- Charles Harshbarger 

What do you think of Robin Trowers blues?

Vietnam girls drinking beer during a factory lunch

A common enough scene all over South-East Asia. It’s nice to see people enjoying freedom, instead of that pretend socially-acceptable corporate-system freedom™ that is so prevalent in the West.  video 5MB

Why Propaganda is Vital In Upholding The Illusion of a Democracy

Cynthia Chung

“Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion. This is the weak point of our defenses, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and the trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, the wrong the right. In a country where opinion has sway, to seize upon it, is to seize upon power. As it is a rule of humanity that the upright and well-intentioned are comparatively passive, while the designing, dishonest, and selfish are the most untiring in their efforts, the danger of public opinion’s getting a false direction is four-fold, since few men think for themselves.”

-James Fenimore Cooper

Democracy is something that has been completely taken for granted here in the West. There is an ongoing triumph over past laurels, without paying heed to the road we have strayed from.

We criticize others for failing to uphold a standard we consider ourselves the leaders of, but democracy is not something simply “acquired” and subsequently “retained,” it is not a “possession.” This is because a system of democracy is at every moment of its existence defined by the character of its citizenry. Democracy only exists if it is upheld, and if a citizenry fails to do so, it renders itself defenseless to an ever-creeping tyranny.

For such a “creeping tyranny,” control is conditional to whether the citizenry is satisfied with an ever-growing “illusion of democracy.” Such a construct needs to give its subjects the impression that they have “free choice” in what shapes their future and their way of life, including: who will be their “friends” and who will be their “foes.”

And thus, War has always depended on a reliable system to spread its propaganda.

The Arthashastra written by Chankya (350-283 BCE) who was chief advisor to the Emperor Chandragupta (the first ruler of the Mauryan Empire) discusses propaganda and how to disperse and apply it in warfare. It is one of the oldest accounts of the essentialism of propaganda in warfare.

Propaganda is vital in times of war because it is absolutely imperative that the people, who often need to make the greatest sacrifices and suffer the most, believe that such a war is justified.

Security

As such, they will believe that such a war will provide them security. To the degree that they believe this to be true, the greater the degree of sacrifice and suffering they are willing to submit themselves for said “promised security”.

Enemy is not human

It is crucial that when the people look at the “enemy” they see something sub-human, for if they recognise that said “enemy” has in fact humanity, the jig is up so to speak.

And thus we are bombarded day after day, hour after hour of reminders as to why the “enemy” is not human like us, not compassionate like us, not patient, just and wise like us.

No doubt, war has been a necessary response when tyranny has formed an army to fight for its cause, but I would put forth that most wars have been rather unnecessary and downright manipulated for the design of a small group of people.

During WWI, on Dec 25th 1914, something rather unexpected occurred and a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front took place between the French/British soldiers and the German soldiers. Some even ventured into “no man’s land”, given its name since none left it alive, to mingle with the “enemy” and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps. A game of football took place as well. It is said that these truces were not unique to the Christmas period but that they were much more widespread during the holiday season.

These fraternisations would understandably make it quite difficult to return to combat against one another…for no apparently good reason. Some units needed to be relocated since they had developed friendships with the opposing side and now refused to fight them.

The lesson was quickly learned and propaganda was heavily pumped down the throats of the Allied countries, and by the course of just a few years, they no longer viewed the Germans as human.

American infrastructure

This is not one isolated incident. It’s everywhere. The money is being used in wars, and in the wallets of the wealthy. Not on the American citizenry. video 1MB

A beautiful girl in Hong Kong

Beautiful girls are everywhere. I have to tell you that I really like how clean and crisp that this girl looks as she hangs out in Mong Kok. video 5MB

The Battle For Your Mind

“Politicians, Priests, and psychiatrists often face the same problem: how to find the most rapid and permanent means of changing a man’s belief…The problem of the doctor and his nervously ill patient, and that of the religious leader who sets out to gain and hold new converts, has now become the problem of whole groups of nations, who wish not only to confirm certain political beliefs within their boundaries, but to proselytize the outside world.”

– William Sargant “Battle of the Mind”

Mass propaganda is the very reason why in this so-called “age of information”, we are more confused and divided from each other than ever…

It had been commonly thought in the past, and not without basis, that tyranny could only exist on the condition that the people were kept illiterate and ignorant of their oppression. To recognise that one was “oppressed” meant they must first have an idea of what was “freedom”, and if one were allowed the “privilege” to learn how to read, this discovery was inevitable.

If education of the masses could turn the majority of a population literate, it was thought that the higher ideas, the sort of “dangerous ideas” that Mustapha Mond for instance expresses in “The Brave New World”, would quickly organise the masses and revolution against their “controllers” would be inevitable. In other words, knowledge is freedom, and you cannot enslave those who learn how to “think”.

However, it hasn’t exactly played out that way has it?

The greater majority of us are free to read whatever we wish to, in terms of the once “forbidden books”, such as those listed by The Index Librorum Prohibitorum. We can read any of the writings that were banned in “The Brave New World”, notably the works of Shakespeare which were named as absolutely dangerous forms of “knowledge”.

We are now very much free to “educate” ourselves on the very “ideas” that were recognised by tyrants of the past as the “antidote” to a life of slavery. And yet, today, there is a fear of that very thing, that to “know” will label you an outcast from a “healthy” society. That the simple desire to know is the beginning of rebellion.

It is recognised, albeit superficially, that who controls the past, controls the present and thereby the future. George Orwell’s book “1984”, hammers this as the essential feature that allows the Big Brother apparatus to maintain absolute control over fear, perception and loyalty to the Party cause, and yet despite its popularity, there still remains today a lack of interest in actually informing oneself about the past.

What does it matter anyway, if the past is controlled and rewritten to suit the present? As the Big Brother interrogator O’Brien states to Winston, “We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not? [And thus, are free to rewrite it as we choose…]”

Of course, we are not in the same situation as Winston…we are much better off. We can study and learn about the “past” if we so desire, unfortunately, it is a choice that many take for granted. And thus, by our failure to ask the right questions and seek the appropriate answers, we find ourselves increasingly in the unsettling position of a Winston…we are enslaved by the very lack of our own will.

In Orwell’s “1984”, there are three main super states in the world: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia that are in one combination or another constantly at war with each other and have been so for the last 25 years.

In the case of Winston, he has only known Oceania (the British commonwealths and U.S.), he knows essentially nothing of either Eurasia or Eastasia, except that sometimes Oceania is at war with Eurasia and sometimes it is at war with Eastasia. In fact, even this memory, that the enemy is not constant, is not something Winston is supposed to recollect or acknowledge. Just by doing this very thing, he is committing a “thoughtcrime”.

Winston’s experience begs the questions, if one were born into a fascist, totalitarian state would they know it? Of course, the state itself would not describe itself as such. How would you be able to compare your “freedom” with the “oppression” of the enemy, when all you were given was what the state chose to give to you?

How do you know that what has come to shape your convictions, your beliefs, your fears really belong to you, and were not placed there by another?

We are all very sensitive to this unsettling question because ironically, that has also been placed in us. It was what started this whole business of “mind control”, you see, it had to be done…for our “protection”.

 

Chinese girl inside of her apartment

Yeah. This is all pretty typical. The homes are clean cool, spotless. If they have pets, they might keep them locked up in their cages for a while while the owners are busy doing other things. And dancing in the living room is normal. video 4MB

Warfare in the 21st Century

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the pinnacle of skill.

– Sun Tzu

There are many different forms of warfare, but namely there is warfare that exists in the physical domain of aggression vs defense and warfare that exists in the mental domain of ideas.

The majority of tyrants from the ancient times to present day, have always had a network of powerful people behind them (whether they were aware of it or not) that opened up a path for them to sit on the throne so to speak. For example, we now know that there was a very direct support of Hitler coming from the Bank of England amongst other very influential institutions. That is, Hitler did not arise to power ‘naturally’ or by his mere merit.

The desperation of that economic environment in Germany was predictably formulated as a direct consequence of the Treaty of Versailles which was essentially a death sentence to the German people. And Hitler who had started to make a small name for himself was selected and endorsed as the ‘face’ of what had already been decided would be the fate of Germany.

Wars have almost always been the result of funding and organising from powerful groups with geopolitical interests, often of empire, who create an environment of disinformation and desperation amongst the people through economic and military warfare along with color revolutions.

However, once there was the creation of nuclear bombs, geopolitical warfare was changed forever.

Though we still use much of the same old strategies today, war is ever more located on the plane of ideas, and along with this the ever increasing focus on the manipulation of information and the populace’s perspective of who is good and who is bad.

The war that needs to be fought against the present tyranny is thus increasingly a mental war. In the case of the populace, all together they hold more power than they realise. The real crisis of today’s western thinking is that the people have forgotten how to think. Attention spans have gone down drastically along with a functional vocabulary. People are becoming more and more dominated by image based messages rather than content that requires more than a 10 minute attention span. Articles in the news keep getting shorter and shorter because people seemingly cannot be bothered with too much reading. Along with the serious decline in reading in replacement for quick entertainment (more successful than any book burning in history), people no longer bother to work for a comprehensive viewpoint. Information becomes an annoying barrage of ad campaigns, each yelling louder and more frequently than the other.

The solutions to our problems such as the oncoming economic collapse (in case you haven’t noticed we are doing everything the same as pre-2008), have their solutions in what Russia and China are presenting.

The initiation of war has almost always been presented as a false ‘necessity’, that is in response to the dominating geopolitical ‘balance’, which is basically meant to service the present system of empire, and the erroneous belief in zero sum game.

However, the idea that humans exist in a zero sum game, doomed to battle forever over a diminishing return of resources, was disproven time and again in modern history through the application of successful principles of national political economy. Notable examples of which include Colbert’s dirigisme of France’s 17th century (later revived during the presidency of Charles De Gaulle), the Hamiltonian system of America as exemplified by Abraham Lincoln’s Greenbacks, FDR’s New Deal, and JFK’s space program as well as its most recent expression of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

This system understands that fast money is parasitical and acts in direct opposition to the long-term investments required for projects that will revolutionise a nation’s infrastructure, including science-driver programs.

That debt for such long-term projects is not qualitatively the same as the present debt we see accruing today, and that debt towards investing for the future will always yield a higher return than the cost over time. This is why debt towards long-term investment on infrastructure and science driver projects, such as space exploration, will always be sustainable with a massive return quantitatively and qualitatively. Whereas, the gambling of fast money will very predictably lead to a collapse as was clearly indicated by the 2008 financial crisis, and which insanely has yet to be addressed with a serious bank reform.

The higher battle ground is being fought on the plane of ideas and which proposed ‘new system’ will replace the current collapsing one we are presently in. On the one side the hegemonic rule of a one world government who thinks that they can use force and oppression to rule and on the other side a multi-polar system of cooperating nation states committed to progress that will offer a real qualitative return for the future.

Little girl wants a father

Her mother is a single mom. She doesn’t have a father. She wants a photo with this stranger on the bus as she thinks that this is what her father must look like. video 5MB

Chinese girl getting ready to cook

Pretty girl. Food. Cooking…. Sheech! Oh so sexy. video 2MB

Speaking of cooking and food, let’s talk about some Chicken Fried Steak. Personally, I love it with two over-easy eggs and rye toast (with a freshly brewed cup of coffee) don’t you know…

Chicken Fried Steak with Creamy Gravy Recipe

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Chicken Fried Steak

Steaks are a familiar dish on the dining table. Some people prefer their steaks roasted, and others prefer it prepared inside the oven like the classic oven-baked steak and potatoes. However, to some, steaks are a traditional culinary staple. The Southerners in America have a secret recipe, the chicken fried steak recipe. In this Southern cuisine, the steaks are deep-fried in a pan and served with creamy gravy.

But why is it called chicken fried steak when there’s no chicken? Well, the steak is cooked in a similar way to fried chicken, hence the dish’s name. This dish is made with a piece of tender beef steak that’s breaded with eggs, pan-fried, then topped with some creamy gravy.

There is nothing like this steak. People love serving it, and everyone loves to eat it! The best chicken fried steak is the one that’s cooked to golden perfection and topped with the most flavorful and creamy gravy. Using this recipe, the only difficult thing that comes is deciding whether to prepare it for lunch or dinner.

Skip the usual roasted steak. Prepare a fried steak that’s topped with creamy and flavorful gravy instead.

Ingredients

For Steaks:

  • 4 steaks (¼ lb each), pre-tenderized, preferably cube steaks
  • cups all purpose flour
  • 2 tsp salt
  • tsp garlic powder
  • ½ tsp cayenne
  • 2 eggs beaten
  • ½ cup milk
  • oil for frying

For Gravy:

  • 3 tbsp pan drippings
  • 3 tbsp all purpose flour
  • cup whipping cream
  • cups milk
  • salt and pepper

To Serve:

  • 2 sunny side-up eggs
  • ¾ cup mixed vegetables of your choice

To Garnish:

  • 2 tsp parsley chopped

Instructions

Steaks

  • Use a meat mallet, rubber mallet, or rolling pin to flatten and thin out the steaks until they are less than ¼ inches thick. Season each steak with a pinch of salt.
  • Heat the oven to 200 degrees F.
  • Put a wire rack over a baking sheet, and set it aside. Prepare two shallow baking dishes.
  • In a bowl, whisk the eggs and milk together. In another bowl, mix the salt, garlic powder, cayenne, and flour.
  • Dredge the steak in the flour mix one by one. Using your hands, press each side of the steak onto the flour mix.
  • Shake off the excess and dip the steak in the egg wash, coating every side. Repeat the process until all sides are well covered and coated. Set aside.
  • In a large pan, pour oil until it reaches ¼ inches deep for frying. Heat the oil until the oil sizzles when flour is dropped into it.
  • Lay the prepared steak one by one into the oil and cover the steak with oil. Fry for about 2 minutes until the edges turn golden brown.
  • When done, remove the steaks using a slotted spatula, and place them on the wire rack in the oven to keep warm.
  • Strain off any excess oil to get the drippings.

Gravy

  • Turn off the heat in the pan and pour out all but 3 tablespoons of oil and fat from the pan.
  • Whisk in 3 tablespoons of flour and stir constantly on medium heat for 4 to 5 minutes, or until the mixture turns light brown.
  • Slowly add the cream and milk, whisking continuously until the desired consistency is reached.
  • Season the gravy with a pinch of salt and pepper. Adjust accordingly.
  • Serve over the steak with eggs and mixed vegetables. Garnish.

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Chicken Fried Steak

The Art of Doublethink

“WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”

George Orwell’s “1984” (Big Brother Mantra)

A truly immersive system of propaganda, which necessarily will be full of contradictions to the truth, absolutely requires that its subjects are compliant with “doublethink,” that is, the ability to accept two contradictory thoughts in your mind without acknowledging that they are in fact opposites.

Orwell identifies this under two forms of “doublethink”, which are “crimestop” and “blackwhite”. “Crimestop” meaning the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of a dangerous thought.

Orwell further states

“It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments…and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop in short, means protective stupidity.”

“Blackwhite”, is the act of contradiction of plain facts, applied to an opponent. And when applied to the Party, it is the willingness to say black is white when the Party discipline demands it so.

As Orwell describes it

“it means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past…The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons…The subsidiary reason is that…he must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off… [the precautionary reason] by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party.”

Orwell continues

“The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest.”

That is, it is the Inner Party members who are the most indoctrinated, the best at inducing “mind control” or “doublethink” on themselves, and at the same time believe that it is the best and right thing to do.

Orwell describes “doublethink” thus:

“The process has to be conscious , or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence guilt…To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink.”

What many fail to grasp when reading “1984” is that Orwell is not only the character Winston, he is also the character O’Brien. He is the Outer Party member-turned-revolutionary, and he is the Inner Party disciplinarian.

He is simultaneously the tormentor-programmer as well as the tormented-programmed.

Winston eventually breaks and releases the one thing that kept him human, his love and loyalty to Julia. In the end, an announcement is made that Oceania is ever nearer to winning the war and Winston looks up at a large poster of Big Brother and cries gin-filled tears of joy and relief, for he had finally come to love Big Brother.

He had become O’Brien.

Chinese girl in a Japanese sushi restaurant

These restaurants are very popular in China. Asian people do love their seafood. And China is no exception. You can see the little sushi dishes going round and round on the railroad tracks behind her. If you ever decide to go, might I suggest the warm saki with it. Yum! video 3MB

Thailand / Cambodia lunch time

A great view of a normal day in the rural inland areas outside of China and in the more impovershed South East Asian nations. The United States wants to give billions of dollars to the rulers of these nations to build American miltiary bases, and start importing all sort of weapons there.

These nations said “No!”.

Instead, the nations elected to go with China who are building trains, roads, hospitals, clinics, and setting up industry in these remote and tranquil rural areas. Sure, the Western propaganda is promoting the idea of “you’ll be sorry” for building those hopsitals, high speed trains, roads, tunnels, bridges, social and community centers, and communication infrastructure. But you know, it sure beats having the wealthy get wealthier while the people live in poverty next to American bases ready to shoot up villages, sheep and cabbage patches.

video 17MB

So Who is the Said “Enemy”?

The enemy is our lesser selves.

Our most base fears, desires and obsessions. The voice that whispers in our ears telling us not to believe in anything genuine or honest, that the world we live in will ultimately destroy itself and thus it is all about looking out for number one. That it is our fate to be the playthings of higher powers.

This is the voice of a prisoner of Plato’s cave, neck shackled and looking at only shadows on a wall. This is not reality. This is the voice of someone who has been enslaved for most of their life. The voice of someone who has become so disempowered that they wholly accept whatever ugly condition is imposed upon them and will even work to defend it as necessary.

There is a way out of all of this, but you will have to become an optimist in order to see the solution.

“We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Chinese girl on the street

Thin. Leggy with a nice Guicci purse. Very typical. video 3MB

Rural girls on a boat somewhere on the Laos-China border

It’s poor right now, but these times are changing. The Chinese BRI are bringing money, health and education to millions of people in South East Asia. video

China 1973

As strange as it seems, this is how many Americans and their leadership believe what China is today.

Yeah. It’s strange. But there you have it. Look at the pictures from fifty years ago, and you can easily see that this is the image that the Main Stram Media are busy promoting as to what China is. video 5MB

Rainbow – L. A. Connection (Live) HD

When I was attending university, I took a heavy course load. Seriously, 21 credits of all technical subjects is rough. Aerospace-Mechanical Engineering. And while my friends would half-heartedly attend class, and then party on, I would tromp through the Syracuse snow to go to class, and then study in the Law Library until it closed at 2am.

I had a grueling schedule. Up at six in the morning. Then, 200 push-ups, and a three-mile run, then to the house where I lived. Then it’s a nice Northern European breakfast of toast and coffee, followed by a bus ride to the campus where I would attend school. (When I wasn’t riding my motorcycle, that is.)

And even at that, I had my failures. For instance, I completely failed my “mechanics of deformable bodies” class and had to take it two times. Though, on the second time, I aced the class.

It’s called life.

You move forward, and fall on your face. Then you get up. You dust yourself off, and then try again.

If you are thick-headed like MM here, you might have to go through twenty or thirty times before you get it right.

Anyway, it was stressful. Aside from my weight-lifting, and drinking with my close group of friends, I didn’t really have much in the way of escape. I think all of us fall into this routine cycle from time to time. We work towards a goal, and we sacrifice other things to make it there. It doesn’t matter what it is, really. We push ourselves. And, you know, it’s stressful.

This video is one of the songs that I used to listen to, and do push-ups to, when I was a student attending university. I hope you enjoy my little snapshot into my life at that time.

Warning, it’s 70s era hard rock and the video is of 1970s quality. Just imagine me doing push-ups to this music, getting ready to be a Naval Aviator in a few months. Totally motivated. I had a nice body when I was in my early 20’s. I should have been using it in more sexual persuits, but at that time, I was a goal-oriented fellow, and sex with pretty girls was not on the agenda.

I missed out on a lot of fun. I’ll tell you what.

Again. Such is life.

Girl in white halter

She’s made a big impression on Douxing. Partly becuase of her following and partly for her fish shaped body. video 3MB

Be the Rufus

The answer to help you go through this period of change is to always be the Rufus. video 243MB

Western society controls us by fear

Its fear of change. It’s fear of the unknown. It’s fear of what others think. It’s fear of rejection. Don’t be afraid. Make your move. If they don’t like it, let them howl.

video 9MB

Chinese Military Swarm Drones

It’s pretty cool and the Chinese have mass produced these machines. video 2MB

NUMEROUS REPORTS: U.S. Army General CAPTURED in Mariupol with AZOV Nazis!

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Numerous reports are now circulating claiming that United States Army Major General Roger L. Cloutier has been CAPTURED by Russian forces in or around Mariupol, Ukraine where, the reports claim, he was helping the AZOV Battalion which is Ukraine’s official NAZI unit.

2022 04 05 20 14
US Army General captured leading Nazis against Russians in Ukraine.

According to Wikipedia, Major General Roger L. Cloutier:

Roger L. Cloutier Jr. is a United States Army lieutenant general who serves as the Commander of the Allied Land Command. Previously, he served as the Commander of the United States Army Africa.

Allied Land Command (LANDCOM) formerly Allied Land Forces South-Eastern Europe (LANDSOUTHEAST) is the standing headquarters for NATO land forces which may be assigned as necessary. The Commander LANDCOM is the prime land warfare advisor to the Alliance. When directed by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, it provides the core of the headquarters responsible for the conduct of land operations. The command is based at Şirinyer (Buca), İzmir in Turkey.

Email to the Pentagon sent several HOURS ago, has gone unanswered which, from a media perspective, is very unusual.  If this report was false, the Pentagon would deny it immediately.  They have NOT denied it.  But no official answer has come from the Pentagon either way as of 6:10 PM EDT Monday.

UPDATE 10:49 PM EDT, TUESDAY APRIL 5 —

I received an email tonight after my radio show, telling me that the Wikipedia page for General Roger L. Cloutier has been changed to say he DIED on March 28.  The images below were sent to me with that email:

Screenshot 20220405 004924
Screenshot 20220405 004924

And…

Screenshot 20220405 001125
Screenshot 20220405 001125

MM Notes

Everything that the Russians have dealt with in Ukraine, and all the systems that they are encountering is now present in Taiwan. Taiwan is a carbon copy of Ukraine.

All of this is going to create some very NASTY lashback from Asia.

Do not be afraid of change!

All the Western news is so filled with fear, and of course, here on MM, I also point out the various directions where the world can turn. But know this;

  • The primary driver for the world collapse are elites in the West (United States).
  • Their plans negate the influence of the collective East because their egos cannot admit that they are large, powerful, and smart.
  • This is dangerous as all their actions are now hurting the West, and we are just now collectively “watching the boat fill with water” in real time.
  • The East are lead with merit driven leaders who are determined and serious.
  • The East also has the backing of The Domain.
  • While there could be WMB detonations (keep in mind that The Domain did NOT stop any of the multiple bioweapon attacks), it will be geographically limited. It will not go full-on MAD.
  • The Deagal Report of the remote viewing of 2025 is approaching 100% validity.
  • The impression that I am getting from The Commander, is that in ten years, we all will collectively look back on this time and say “Phew! We just narrowly missed THE BIG ONE.” That’s the impression that I have, but I can be wrong.
  • And I want to tell everyone, the glimpses that I have of the future are not distopian.

It’s more like this… video 14MB. 

It will be a new start and a new beginning.

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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How Ukraine and Taiwan are similar and why both are being used as pawns to destroy Asia

It’s just not feasible to have a government, or any large institution, that is so totally based on lies as the current Western system to last very long. 

Right now, the West is running on fumes. 

A machine was built by serious people, and it is now being managed by unhinged lunatics, morons, and unrepentant fiends. 

They are crashing the ship. 

-The UNZ

No. Ukraine and Taiwan are not really identical. They are two different situations. But there actually is a similarity between the two. And that similarity is the United States.

  • The US involvement in both is identical.
  • The systems employed by the control and manipulation are identical.
  • Color revolutions took control of both at the same time, identically.
  • The ruling government is owned and controlled by the United States with the same, identical systems.
  • And both are used to “suppress” the giant nation next to them identically.

This is obvious.

Now, I am not going to go through all the background, others have. Instead, I am presenting a fine video for your review, and then we will go from there.

Yeah, unhinged America is torching what took a century to build: the global economy, global finance, international trade, international relations, international law, et al. There is no coming back from where things are now. Best case scenario is total clusterfuck. Worst is thermonuclear war and end of Western civilization. I’m better on the latter. 

-Anonymous

First the video

Short video from you-tube.  

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He’s right.

There are many, many, MANY similarities between what is going on in Taiwan and Ukraine. So let’s cut the bullshit.

The systems used to engage Russia are identical to the systems that will be used to engage China.

So, yes, the United States will cross a Chinese RED LINE and start a war

It’s not if. It’s when.

Putin looks clinical and professional.
Kim looks unsure.
And Xi should be avoided at all costs.

-<redacted>

Remember…

The United States (and it’s proxy nations) are proceeding in their plans to “suppress” Russia and then “pivot to Asia” to “suppress” China.

The United States (leading the West) are still following the same tired-old “take over the world” script written decades ago, and implementing the plans set forth. (Follow the links for the RAND plans to initiate war. When you read them, you will discover that the US government has been following them exactly, word for word, precisely to the letter.)

Russia suppression via a RED LINE tripwire event (Ukraine), and a false flag for involvement. The RAND operational plan for war via Ukraine.

Then, a “pivot to Asia” with a …

China suppression via a RED LINE tripwire event (Taiwan), and a false flag for involvement. The RAND operational plan for war via Taiwan.

These plans have been telegraphed, and well understood by the Russian and Chinese leadership. And since the United States is following that old script, they are easy to anticipate and handle.

And they will use Japan and Australia to make it happen. How do we know? Well, the RAND report on how to suppress China clearly makes this point.

Australia’s defense spending tops $500b

That’s a lot of money. Money that could end all poverty in Australia and cut the prices of food, gas and rent by 35% for everyone! But no. It’s going towards American-manufactured weapons and weapons systems. Sheech!

Dominic Giannini

More than half a trillion dollars will go towards Australia's defence forces by the end of the decade to combat "a period of profound uncertainty and disruption", according to the 2022/23 budget papers.

Almost half of the $575 billion spend will be pumped into defence capabilities, including $38 billion to boost the workforce by 18,500 personnel, $50 billion for frigates and destroyers, and $10 billion for naval infrastructure.

There is also $6.4 billion for Collins class submarines, $3.5 billion for up to 75 Abrams tanks and armoured vehicles and $1 billion for howitzers and resupply vehicles…

AUS Defense

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But the “news” is being wishy-washy on everything. There’s “no proof” don’t you know. It’s all opinion and alleged. Everything is suspect. Nothing is real, and it’s an onslaught of lies that work to avoid the simple truth of matters, and disguise them in vague terms.

Consider Russia.

Is the United States at war with Russia?

Easy question. Easy answer.

Yes it is.

It is also at war with China. Call it economic war, hybrid-war, cyber-war, social war, color-revolution war, proxy war… but a war is a war. Stop pretending that it isn’t. You all should be ashamed. Really, really ashamed of yourselves.

A war, is a war.

Stop pretending that it is not.

Finian Cunningham
March 23, 2022
The Pentagon has admitted it is providing the Ukrainian military with “actionable intelligence” in combat operations against Russian forces. If that is confirmed then the United States is at war with Russia. The implications are grave for two nuclear powers.

The admission came last week during congressional testimony by Ronald Moultrie, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. He was speaking to the House Armed Services Committee, proudly telling Congress members how the Pentagon was helping the Ukrainian military fight Russian forces: “We are making a difference in accurate, actionable, and timely intel.”

That indicates the Americans are involved in providing information to the Ukrainians for lethal targeting of Russian troops.

It is an incredibly sensitive admission. Only two weeks before Moultrie’s testimony, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee had reportedly sought to downplay any such informational exchange between American and Ukrainian forces. “We are providing some intelligence” to Ukraine, but we’re “not providing the kind of real-time targeting,” said Representative Adam Smith who chairs the committee. The downplaying is understandable because such intelligence-sharing implies that the U.S. is a direct participant in the conflict.

One possible area where the Pentagon is “making a difference” is the reported high number of senior Russian commanders who have been killed on the battlefield. Since the Russian intervention in Ukraine on February 24, it is claimed in Western media reports that up to six top-ranking officers have been killed.

The latest reported victim was the deputy commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Andrey Paliy. The governor of Sevastopol, Crimea, was quoted by Reuters as acknowledging the death of the naval chief on Sunday. He was apparently killed during the battle for the port city of Mariupol.

War is war!

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Yes, The United States is at war. It is fighting both Russia and China right now, and the battles are a raging all over. But, in this article, I want to discuss the idea that all three nations fight wars differently.

United States

It follows plans made by think-tanks. it employs figurehead puppets to seduce the people, while the actual decisions ae mde behind closed doors in corporate offices, and smoking private rooms.

In action, the United States acts as a crazed lunatic, and uses mass resources to destroy everything. It is like a plague of locusts. Destroy everything, then come in and take what you want, and salt the earth beahind.

Russia

While Russia might be strong, powerful and nuclear, they are careful and humane.They have the power to destroy the world fifteen times over, but refrain from doing so. They still hope that some day, they will be respected in the East. So they try to be proper, kind and modest. But, if they are backed in a corner, they will be absolutely ruthless. They are like hard-core bikers on meth.

China

China, on the other hand…

… are lethal and nasty. Merit driven. Work together as one singular organism, and utilize cutting edge technology in massive numbers. They are like a cat after a rat. It’ll be over in seconds.

Why?

Well, the Chinese don’t think like Europeans, Westerners, or Russians. They are different.

It was some twenty years after the end of the Vietnam war that a security conference was held between leading military figures from both America and Vietnam. Following the conference a U.S. Air Force General approached a Vietnamese General. 

The American had been a fighter pilot captain during the conflict, the Vietnamese general had been a Colonel in the N.V.A. The American asked (paraphrasing): “You have to tell me, we knew your Army was continually crossing the Mekong, we flew sorties up and down the river and could never find your bridges.” “I know,” said the Vietnamese, “we built them three feet under water.”

In that instant the American understood why America lost the war. His “Road to Damascus” moment was informed by how the different combatants approached problems. Had that been an American problem, how an Army crosses a wide, deep and fast flowing river, they would have solved the problem differently. They would have built a suspension bridge, they would have had bases on either side to protect it. They would have had Bowling alleys and Burger Kings and would have been flying in Bob Hope to entertain the troops. Why? Because they could, when you have resources they become the answer to every problem. The Vietnamese didn’t have resources, so they were resourceful.

And that, as the American realized, was why the Vietnamese won, and America lost.

The general may have learned a lesson, but if he told anyone, no one listened. Many of the same mistakes were repeated in Afghanistan, with the same results. Resources are not the answer to every problem. As with Americas war on drugs, war on crime, war on poverty, all resources do is obscure the underlying problem and present false, ineffective solutions.


-Strategic Culture

Chinese girl – Fish body

The Chinese idea of beauty is to have a body like a fish. Also known as an “S” shape. This woman shows it off.  video 1MB

Quick summary before we move on…

Both Russia and China have formed a new nation. It is a united Asia. They share trade, technology and intelligence.

Both Russia and China are being attacked by the United States.

It is on a host of levels and avenues, and as much as possible, proxy nations and entities are being used to disguise the United States from culpibility.  That’s the situation. The entire world knows this, it’s just that (for some reason) it’s taboo to speak the truth.

  • I argue that World War III is being fought right now.
  • I argue that it has been going on, at least since 2008.
  • I argue that China and Russia are aware of this.
  • I also argue that they have waited until after their 4FEB22 agreement to take the necessary actions…

So what is next?

Offensive actions.

We’ve been on the road to perdition for a long time, but we came to a peak on that highway in 2019 and the path has been straight down since, with our chariot of fire accelerating at breakneck speed towards its final destination with catastrophe and ruin. 

The rise and fall of the American Empire will be far more rapid than the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. 

With the inept and reckless leadership in place presently, I only hope we still have a nation after they successfully provoke World War 3.

-Burning Platform

Both China and Russia, are not “punching bags”. They can only take so much bullshit before they decide to “turn the tables” and go on the offensive.

No. I am not really talking about Ukraine. That’s a military-technical measure that occurred on the border of Russia. What I am talking about is offensive actions against the source of the conflict.

The source of the conflict is the United States.

And it has to be within a near-by timetable. It cannot be delayed. The United States is building a large number of Aircraft Carriers, building and setting up a Pacific-NATO known as the QUAD, and the longer this action is delayed, the greater the rist of a massive, and horrific Mutual Assured Destruction fiasco.

Both Russia and China have to be smart; be timely, and be proactive in their actions.

Bioweapons labs in the Ukraine

Russia has lost all of it’s biological weapons, research and systems upon the fall of the Soviet Union. The ONLY nation that maintains the technology, the labs, and the systems to inject them into societies is the Untied States.

And they have hundreds of these labs, and bases all around the world.

During the invasion of the Ukraine, the Russians have been able to capture, and secure a large number of the labs and study them…

Igor Kirillov, Head of the Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, explained this week the results of the analysis of documents found in Ukrainian military biolabs:

  • The U.S. funded biolabs in Kiev, Odessa, Lvov and Kharkov, awarding $32 million, in order to “study” pathogens of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis and hantaviruses. Their use can be disguised as natural disease outbreaks.
  • Six families of viruses (including coronaviruses) and three types of pathogenic bacteria (causative agents of plague, brucellosis and leptospirosis) have been identified as having characteristics suitable for infecting humans from animals. Research has even been carried out on the transmission of diseases through bats.
  • There are a number of documents confirming the transfer of biological samples taken in Ukraine to the territory of third countries, including Germany, Great Britain and Georgia.
  • The transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza by wild birds was studied at the Kharkiv Institute of Veterinary Medicine.
  • The transfer of 5,000 blood serum samples taken from Ukrainian residents to the Pentagon-supported Richard Lugar Center in Tbilisi, Georgia, was confirmed.
  • Another 773 assays were transferred to the United Kingdom, while an agreement was signed to transfer “unlimited quantities” of infectious supplies to the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, Germany’s leading animal disease center.

The findings of these biolabs cannot be ignored.

Ukraine as one of the satellite states of the United States served as a space for biological weapons to start gaining ground in the new forms of warfare against Russia (and the world, looking at it in perspective).

It is suspicious that the Ukrainian-US biolabs are located along the perimeter of the Russian border, considering that these facilities were also reported to have used samples from people of different ethnicities living in the Russian Federation and other Eurasian countries. It should be considered to be an attack vector, and very nefarious one at that.

If you were a responsible leader, you would recognize the reality of this threat vector. Obtain the materials and technology, and add it to your arsenal of weaponary.

History of using Bioweapons to “suppress” China, Russia and Iran.

I have covered this elsewhere. I have discussed this on multible levels, and in various media. Including video interviews, television, radio, and my articles on MM.

The United States waged biowarfare on China starting (maybe longer, but I did not go that far back) in 2017. This was by direction of John Bolton, and under the permission of President Donald Trump.

There were eight bioweapons (min) that were used against livestock. The goal was to create a famine inside of China. They were dispersed in a selection of ways and means, with the use of drones to contaminate and infect the widely spread out pig farms of great interest. As the drone componentry had tooling marks indicative of United States or UK manufacture.

Sloppy. Very sloppy guys.

When these did not work, three bioweapons were used to “suppress” the Chinese people. The first was COVID on CNY. I suppose you could argue that it was the “crown jewel”. As the “B strain” that hit China was particuliarly lethal and really caused a mess. While the “A strain” was released inside the United States and it’s allies six months early so that those nations would obtain “herd immunity”.

The other two bioweapons were really very bad.

They were two really nasty lethal viruses that both caused your internal organs to liquify and forced the compromised to vomit them out, or shit them out. The first was a mutiated tick virus with HIV inserts that broke out in Beijing; a city that has no ticks what so ever.  And the second a modification of a swine flu but was airborne, also had HIV inserts, and high transmissibility.

But of course, China was at DEFCON 1.

China found the bioweapons, tracked them to their sources, and went full lock-down. And as soon as they were discovered, well…

…Donald Trump was evacuated, and the USA went to DEFCON 1. As the “news” said, “as a precaution” and “the President had contacted coronavirus.”

When nothing happened by China, three days later, Donald Trump left from his bunker, and declared that he was “cured” or coronavirus within three days. And nothing was presented to the public in the “news” media.

But China… heh, heh…

…China does things on it’s own timetable, and at it’s own pace for it’s own advantage. And they never forget.

They MIGHT forgive, but they will not forget.

Lethal Chicken virus

And right now, things are still in process. The United States is all in alarm and proceeding in their attacks against China, and Russia. It’s active. It’s full-spectrum. It’s everything (except the kitchen sink) full spectrum (minus overt kintetic fighting USA to Asia) and very active on all levels.

So, if you watch the Western “news” you won’t be aware of any of this. (There’s) Thousands of articles investigating every single nuiance about how Russia is losing the war in the Ukraine, the effect of how great the sanctions against Russia are, and how evil and villainous China is.

But NOTHING about China and Russia making offensive moves against the “bright and shiny house on the Hill”; Washington DC and the United States.

But there is some UNRELATED NEWS.

News about chickens. News about Turkeys. News about Pigeons.

Odd news. Seemingly unimportant news.

From the CDC…

March 7, 2022—To date, highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) viruses (“H5N1 bird flu viruses”) have been detected in U.S. wild birds in 14 states  and in commercial and backyard poultry in 13 states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspective Service (APHIS). 

Based on available epidemiologic and virologic information about these viruses, CDC believes that the risk to the general public’s health from current H5N1 bird flu viruses is low, however some people may have job-related or recreational exposures to birds that put them at higher risk of infection. 

CDC is watching this situation closely and taking routine preparedness and prevention measures in case this virus changes to pose a greater human health risk.

Right now, the H5N1 bird flu situation is primarily an animal health issue. The U.S. Department of Interior and USDA APHIS are the lead federal agencies for this situation. 

They are respectively responsible for outbreak investigation and control of bird flu in wild birds and in domestic birds (poultry). USDA has publicly posted the genetic sequences of several of the recently detected U.S. H5N1 bird flu viruses. These viruses are from clade 2.3.4.4b, which is the most common H5N1 bird flu virus worldwide at this time. Comparing information about these newer viruses to previously circulating H5N1 bird flu viruses helps inform the human health risk assessment.

Background on H5N1

Ancestors of the H5N1 bird flu viruses infecting wild birds and poultry in the U.S. beginning in 2021 first emerged in southern China in 1996 and caused large poultry outbreaks in Hong Kong in 1997, which resulted in 18 human infections. 

The bird outbreak was controlled, but H5N1 bird flu viruses re-surfaced in 2003 to spread widely in birds throughout Asia, and later in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, causing poultry outbreaks and sporadic human infections. 

Related H5N1 bird flu viruses were even found in wild birds and poultry in the U.S. and Canada during 2014 and 2015, causing large poultry outbreaks, but then they disappeared. Since 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) external icon, has received reports from 19 countries of more than 860 human infections with H5N1 bird flu viruses, with about 53 percent of those resulting in death. CDC has spent many years studying the properties of H5N1 viruses over the years.

Once detected in polutry, the entire farm must be killed off. There is no way to stop the virus. Once infected, the entire population becomes infected and dies.

It has a very high rate of transmissibly. It is quick and infects the entire bird population within days.

The outbreak is in 13 states within the United States. The CDC says that there is nothing to be concerned about.

The death rate for those unfortunate humans who have contacted this virus is 53%

Roughly 53% of people diagnosed with H5N1 and 50% of people diagnosed with H7N9 have died.

-Avian Flu

Daegal report review

I do not know what lies in the future. But I do know that the future has been remote viewed. And the results were presented in The Deagal Report.

The Deagel corporation is a minor branch of US military intelligence, one of the many secretive organizations which collects data for high-level decision-making purposes and prepares confidential briefing documents for agencies like the National Security Agency, the United Nations, and the World Bank.

It’s a work of “love” from some retired intelligence assets, and like most of us ex-spooks, it’s hosted outside of the United States. Just like MM here. We have VERY good reasons to do so. Reasons that are far too complex to get involved in right this moment. But we DO KNOW what we are doing. Never doubt that.

Deagel is known, for example, to have contributed to a Stratfor report on North Korea. With this kind of pedigree, Deagel should be seen as a legitimate player in the intelligence community and not merely a disinformation asset.

If so, then it must be assumed that its population predictions for 2025, as well as its industrial output predictions on a nation-by-nation basis, are based on strategic assumptions which are shared and well understood by other players in the intelligence community.

Deagel predictions.

Until the start of the Covid ‘pandemic’ many commentators were perplexed by the Deagel spreadsheets.

Perhaps they were part of a psychological operation?

However, in light of recent events, we are obliged to consider a possible connection between the projected massive reduction in the population of certain countries, forecast by Deagel, and other trends going on right now.

Trends?

What trends?

  • Devaluation of the Dollar with an out of control American Congress.
  • Strange insistence in using a mRNA vaccine instead of a traditional “dead host” vaccine.
  • A global pandemic that America is just fucking up royally.
  • Desire for a war with China.
  • Desire for a war with Russia.
  • Desire for a war with Iran.
  • China, Russia and Iran forming a unified Asian block.
  • Race war in the United States.
  • Progressive onslaught and control of all electronic media.
  • Looming bubbles in just about every facet of American life.

And so on and so forth…

And then, theres the nuclear angle

Russia is on full nuclear alert. China is on full nuclear alert, and the United States is moving it’s nuclear weapons all around Asia. Just like it was depicted in the movie Threads (2.5 minutes)

”]

The Deagel scenario

The Deagel corporation was asked to explain the thinking behind its strange set of population and output figures. While we cannot take its response at face value, it nonetheless paints a picture that is very similar to the world we now see. And this is not an exaggeration at all.

Consider…

[1] A fake American GDP

In short, they argued that the US government has greatly over-stated the real level of US GDP. This means the country will be fatally exposed when the next economic crisis strikes. And an economic crisis is striking.

How can the GDP be so high that a full 61% of Americans are so poor that they do not pay Federal Income Taxes? 

It defies rational understanding.

[2] A Pandemic Scenario

They also take into account a “pandemic scenario” – their term – caused by Ebola or a similar pathogen. This, they say, would cause an exceptionally high death rate, placing extreme pressure on healthcare providers across America and greatly reducing economic output.

[3] A financial crisis with the US Dollar

This pandemic could quickly spiral out of control and create an international financial crisis:

“The collapse of the Western financial system will wipe out the standard of living of its population while ending Ponzi schemes such as the Stock Exchange and the pension funds.” 

Trying to figure it out…

They try to explain the predicted dramatic fall in the population of the US by reference to a massive outward migration of millions of Americans seeking economic relief in other countries, but this is unconvincing.

They seem to concede this themselves when they add a further explanatory factor – widespread suicide in response to economic distress. But this too is unsatisfactory.

Their primary reason for predicting a colossal drop in the population of the US by 2025 – a fall of up to 70 percent – is the scale and severity of the alleged pandemic.

As they put it,

“the death toll will be horrible.” 

Map

Here’s a map showing the predictions made in the forecast. You see that Asia is unscathed, while America and the West suffer horribly.

  • Japan will lose 1/5th of it’s population!
  • Australia will lose a full 1/3rd of it’s population!
  • Canada will lose 1/4th of it’s population!
  • The United States will lose almost 3/4ths of it’s population!

Map

Timing

By all accounts, historically, the massive drop in population at this time is validated by the “Fourth Turning” predictions. The date and timing all agree with the Strauss and Howe model for America.

This model is United States centrist, and acknowledges that different societies and different cultures have different “turnings” and generational changes.

Casualty Figures

The casualty figures are gargantuan. And they are all centered around the Western block.

      • United States
      • Europe / NATO
      • QUAD (minus India that opted out)

What a coincidence!

This 2012 remote viewing would associate such an enormous death toll with a bi-polar world, and that the East (Asia) would be unscathed, while the West (The USA) would have massive casualties.

It’s an American centered fiasco

      • USA Leadership = 70% drop in population
      • Europe / NATO = 50 – 70% drop in population
      • QUAD = 20 – 35% drop in population
Based on historical precedents, and the Deagel predictions, these kinds of numbers and figures can only be associated with an American centered disaster. Not really a global one. Because if it was a global disaster, then the causality figures would be more uniform.

.

Europe

The countries that will suffer the greatest reduction in population, according to Deagel (as per 2014), are:

Aside from massive devistation in Europe, you have to admit… the numbers are horrific. They are pretty darn specific. Don’t you know.

In 2020, Deagel revised their assessment of the 2012 forecast. They did not change the data nor the results. They reviewed the possible causes as things developed…

Deagel 2020 revision to the original 2012 Deagel Forecast

BlueNarwhal:
Forecast disclaimer revision in 2020:

In 2014 we published a disclaimer about the forecast. In six years the scenario has changed dramatically.

This new disclaimer is meant to single out the situation from 2020 on-wards.

Talking about the United States and the European Union as separated entities no longer makes sense. Both are the Western block, keep printing money and will share the same fate.

After COVID we can draw two major conclusions:

[1] The Western world success model has been built over societies with no resilience that can barely withstand any hardship, even a low intensity one. It was assumed but now we’ve got the full hard confirmation beyond any doubt.
[2] The COVID crisis will be used to extend the life of this dying economic system through the so called “Great Reset.”

The Great Reset; like the climate change, extinction rebellion, planetary crisis, green revolution, shale oil (…) hoaxes promoted by the system; is another attempt to slow down dramatically the consumption of natural resources and therefore extend the lifetime of the current system.

It can be effective for awhile but finally won’t address the bottom-line problem and will only delay the inevitable.

The core ruling elites hope to stay in power which is in effect the only thing that really worries them.

The collapse of the Western financial system – and ultimately the Western civilization – has been the major driver in the 2012 forecast along with a confluence of crisis with a devastating outcome.

As COVID has proven Western societies embracing multiculturalism and extreme liberalism are unable to deal with any real hardship.

The Spanish flu one century ago represented the death of 40-50 million people.

Today the world’s population is four times greater with air travel in full swing which is by definition a super spreader.

The death casualties in today’s World would represent 160 to 200 million in relative terms but more likely 300-400 million taking into consideration the air travel factor that did not exist one century ago.

So far, COVID death toll is roughly 1 million people.

It is quite likely that the economic crisis due to the lock-downs will cause more deaths than the virus worldwide.

The Soviet system was less able to deliver goodies to the people than the Western one. Nevertheless Soviet society was more compact and resilient under an authoritarian regime. That in mind, the collapse of the Soviet system wiped out 10 percent of the population.

The stark reality of diverse and multicultural Western societies is that a collapse will have a toll of 50 to 80 percent depending on several factors.

But in general terms the most diverse, multicultural, indebted and wealthy (highest standard of living) will suffer the highest toll.

The only glue that keeps united such aberrant collage from falling apart is over-consumption with heavy doses of bottomless degeneracy disguised as virtue.

Nevertheless the widespread censorship, hate laws and contradictory signals mean that even that glue is not working any more.

Not everybody has to die.

Migration can also play a positive role in this.

The formerly (known as) second and third world nations are an unknown at this point. Their fate will depend upon the decisions they take in the future.

Western powers are not going to take over them as they did in the past because these (Western) countries won’t be able to control their very own cities let alone those countries that are far away.

If they remain tied to the former World Order they will go down along with the Western powers. However, they won’t experience the same kind of brutal decline that the Western powers will experience so brazenly. This is partially because they are poorer and (obviously) not diverse enough. Instead they are stronger than the Western powers because they are actually quite homogeneous. This is their advantage. And that they are used to deal with some sort of hardship. Though,  not precisely the one that is coming.

If they switch to China they can get a chance to stabilize but will need to depend upon the management of their own resources.

We expected this situation to unfold and actually is unfolding right now.

With the November election triggering a major bomb if Trump is re-elected. (Did not happen.)

If Biden is elected there will very bad consequences as well.

There is a lot of bad blood in the Western societies and the protests, demonstrations, rioting and looting are only the first symptoms of what is coming.

However a new trend is taking place overshadowing this one.

The situation between the three great powers has changed dramatically.

The only relevant achievement of the Western powers during the past decade has been the formation of a strategic alliance, both military and economic, between Russia and China.

Right now the potential partnership between Russia and the European Union (EU) is dead with Russia turning definitively towards China. That was from the beginning the most likely outcome.

Airbus never tried to establish a real partnership but rather a strategy to fade away the Russian aerospace industry.

Actually Russia and China have formed a new alliance to build a long haul airliner.

Western Europe (not to mention the United States) was never interested in the development of Russia or forming anything other than a master slave relationship with Russia providing raw materials and toeing the line of the West.

It was clear then and today is a fact.

Russia has been preparing for a major war since 2008 and China has been increasing her military capabilities for the last 20 years. Today China is not a second tier power compared with the United States. Both in military and economic terms China is at the same level and in some specific areas are far ahead.

In the domain of high-tech 5G has been a success in the commercial realm but the Type 055 destroyer is also another breakthrough with the US gaining a similar capability (DDG 51 Flight IIII) by mid of this decade (more likely by 2030).

Nanchang, the lead ship of the Type 055 class, was commissioned amid the pandemic and lockdown in China.

Six years ago the likelihood of a major war was tiny.

Since then it has grown steadily and dramatically and today is by far the most likely major event in the 2020s.

The ultimate conflict can come from two ways.

[1] A conventional conflict involving at least two major powers that escalates into an open nuclear war.

[2] A second scenario is possible in the 2025-2030 time-frame. A Russian sneak first strike against the United States and its allies with the new S-500, strategic missile defenses, Yasen-M submarines, INF Zircon and Kalibr missiles and some new space asset playing the key role.

The sneaky first strike would involve all Russian missile strategic forces branches (bombers and ground-based missiles) at the different stages of such attack that would be strategic translation of what was seen in Syria in November 2015.

There was no report that the Russian had such a capability of launching a high precision, multiple, combined arms attack at targets 2,000+ kilometers away.

Western intelligence had no clue.

The irony is that since the end of the Cold War the United States has been maneuvering through NATO to achieve a position to be able to execute a first strike (nuclear) over Russia and now it seems that the first strike may still occur but the country finished would be the United States.

Another particularity of the Western system is that its individuals have been brainwashed to the point that the majority accept their moral high ground and technological edge as a given.

This has given the rise of the supremacy of the emotional arguments over the rational ones which are ignored or deprecated.

That mindset can play a key role in the upcoming catastrophic events.

At least in the Soviet system the silent majority of the people were aware of the fallacies they were fed up.

We can see the United States claims about 5G being stolen from them by China or hypersonic technology being stolen by Russia as the evidence that the Western elites are also infected by that hubris.

Over the next decade it will become obvious that the West is falling behind the Russia-China block and the malaise might grow into desperation.

Going to war might seem a quick and easy solution to restore the lost hegemony to finally find them into a France 1940 moment. Back then France did not have nuclear weapons to turn a defeat into a victory. The West might try that swap because the unpleasant prospect of not being Mars and Venus but rather a bully and his dirty bitch running away in fear while the rest of the world is laughing at them.

If there is not a dramatic change of course the world is going to witness the first nuclear war.

The Western block collapse may come before, during or after the war.

It does not matter.

A nuclear war is a game with billions of casualties and the collapse plays in the hundreds of millions.

Spinach and Cheese Stromboli

Spinach and Cheese Stromboli updated Large400 ID 3415831
Spinach and Cheese Stromboli

Need something that’s classically Italian? Try a Spinach and Cheese Stromboli. Refrigerated pizza dough is our shortcut to making this tasty meal in less than 15 minutes. It’s a quick and easy vegetarian stromboli recipe that’s guaranteed to fill you up. We’re sure you’ll agree, this simple Italian dinner is unquestionably tasty.

What You’ll Need

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 (10-ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well drained
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 cup ricotta cheese
  • 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 (13.8-ounce) package refrigerated pizza dough

What to Do

  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray.
  2. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat oil. Add spinach and garlic and sauté 3 to 5 minutes, or until garlic is golden. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.
  3. In a large bowl, combine ricotta and mozzarella cheeses, the oregano, and salt. Add spinach mixture and stir until well blended.
  4. Unroll pizza dough and with your fingertips or the heel of your hand, spread dough out to a 10- x 15-inch rectangle. Cut in half lengthwise to make two 5- x 15-inch rectangles. Spread half the spinach mixture onto each piece of dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border around the edge. Fold each piece of dough over and pinch the edges to seal securely. Place on prepared baking sheet.
  5. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown.

Statements of prediction

Including remote viewing into the calculus, and taking into account all the knowns…

  • The American leadership class does not contain diplomatic professionals. Instead there are unskilled political donors who are making life and death decisions.
  • The mRNA vaccination is a real mystery, and there HAS to be a reason behind using it instead of the traditional “Dead Host” vaccination.
  • The approved 2021 Federal budget includes an enormous military funding outlay that is obviously in preparation for a major war.
  • The American government, and their media are all talking about an upcoming major war with China.
  • American military is retreating from Afghanistan, and four bases in Korea, while making QUAD arrangements with Australia and Japan.
  • Red Line violations with Russia provoking a war in Ukraine.
  • Red Line posturing with China concerning Taiwan.
  • The end of the USD.
  • Sanction-crazy United States and threatening the entire world with “consequences”.
  • A unified Asian block to include Russia, China, India and Iran.

All of this is very disturbing, and considered alone would be cause enough to suggest that a major war is just on the horizon.

But…

America (The United States) is crumbling from rot from within…

  • Racial hate.
  • Proliferation of firearms, and the establishment of armed groups.
  • Balkanization.
  • Economic bubbles.
  • Social bubbles.
  • The wealth gap is enormous.
  • Infrastructure funding is too late.
  • Rules, regulations and laws are all off the charts.

Couple that with a failed bio-weapons attack on China, and the fiasco which was the Trump neocon administration, followed by the bumbling Biden administration… and hard-core neocon Religious extremists, and industry interests desiring of conflict, war and strife (all for various reasons), and you have a poisonous stew.

The “Genie is out of the bottle”, and I do not think that the looming “mountains” on the horizon can be avoided. The inertia associated with the clustering of world-lines is way too strong. So my guess (and I hope that I am wrong) is that the United States will sleep-walk into a war with Asia, and then before it happens, Asia will strike preemptively.

No matter what the details are, the remote viewing forecast is quite clear.

The United States Military Empire is going to start another major war. It is intended to be a distraction from the domestic failures, and regardless as to how much money President Biden is plowing into the economy, it’s not going to make any difference.

America is toast.

Burnt to a crisp; blackened, burned toast.

America today.

And it’s only a matter of time…

And then when the moron, presses the button, flicks the switch, or twists the knob, all Hell will break loose.

  • Engage Russia in warfare via proxy.
  • Engage China in warfare via proxy.

All in all, the USA will suffer horribly, and the combination of everything else will only turn a fiasco into an Hellish nightmare.

Ooey-Gooey Bacon Grilled Cheese

Ooey Gooey Bacon Grilled Cheese ArticleImage CategoryPage ID 2150599
Ooey Gooey Bacon Grilled Cheese

A classic grilled cheese sandwich is good, but a grilled cheese sandwich that’s made with three different kinds of cheeses, and a creamy, bacony dip is even better. This Ooey-Gooey Bacon Grilled Cheese is going to blow you away with its incredible taste. Once you’ve had a taste of it this way, you’ll find it hard to go back to the old way!

What You’ll Need

  • 1/2 cup refrigerated cheddar and bacon dip
  • 1 (3-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
  • 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
  • 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 8 slices homestyle white bread
  • 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, softened

Senario Flush Out

It appears, assuming that…

  • Degal remote viewing is correct (and it appears to be)
  • The USA continues on the Ukraine proxy attack. (Certainly appears that way.)
  • The USA continues with the Taiwan proxy attacks… (All evidence confirm…)

Then, we can expect a confluence of a number of calamity vectors. Economic, Medical and Military.

Economic

  • Economic; Loss of USD as a global currency.
  • Economic; Deshrouding of the fake GDP towards it’s actual value.
  • Economic; Collapse of the Western trade / logistic systems. (I hope not.)
  • Economic; Sanction blowback. (The US cannot sanction the world.)
  • Economic; Energy strangulation. (And the domino effect…)

Medical

  • Bioweapon / pandemic effects. (Not just Covid.)
  • Lack of serious quarantine and containment procedures. (It’s binary.)
  • A decrease in the access to medicines (because of trade / sanctions).
  • Overwhelmed medical care facilities. (Largest contributor.)

Military

  • Nuclear strikes. (Actual or threat vectors.)
  • Shipping blockages. (Part of the USA plan, but sanctions can enable.)
  • Regional conflicts and revolutions.

I argue that we are looking at the confluence of these three vectors and they center like a target reticle cross-hair on the United States and it’s allies. All of them can contribute synergistically towards a regional catastrophic result.

But… Keep in mind.

You can control YOUR reality. And maybe this mountain of turmoil is sitting off somewhere on your world-line template, you can still navigate around it. Remember, after all, for all the turmoil and strife during World War II, Canada, South America, and Africa was relatively left alone.

Maybe you don’t want to move to Greenland, Patagonia, or Zambia. But you don’t really need to. All you need to do is control your little bit of reality. And if you do that, then everything will work out just fine.

Some final thoughts

Keep in mind that the Deagel remote viewed the future correctly. They printed their results in 2012. 

They PREDICTED a bio-warfare induced pandemic. 
They PREDICTED an Australian military alliance with the United States.
They PREDICTED that America would start entering a period of "popping" of the various economic bubbles.
They PREDICTED a bio-polar world separated into East and West.

All of which came true by 2020.

Deagel did NOT change their forecast for 2025. It still stands. They just changed their thinking on how it would come about.

They remote viewed 2025 in great detail.

There will be [1] a massive die off of people in America, and Australia. The rest of the world will fare much better. And, most importantly, a [2] bio-weapon or pandemic figured predominantly in their calculus.

In 2012, they believed that there would be some kind of bio-weapon or pandemic that would kill off so many Americans. But they couldn’t (for the life of them) answer why Australia of all places would also have a large die-off. At that time they never could of imagined the QUAD set up by Mike Pompeo, and that the Morrison government would wholeheartedly want to declare war on China. Instead, they figured that it must be a very serious pandemic with some other mystery event that complicated things in a negative manner.

In 2020, in the midst of the (three agent) bio-weapon attacks on China, and the absolute failure of America in securing it’s homeland, as well as the strong alignment of the Australian Morrison government to the war-loving neocons in Washington DC, the revised reasoning became one of nuclear war. Thus they reasoned that since the 2020 pandemic wasn’t that bad (being in the United States, and getting the “safe” bioweapon), and the drums of war were beating so loudly, that it must be nuclear war with bio-weapons used simultaneously.

Whether there is a nuclear event, or a bio-weapon event, no matter who caused it, or who instigated it, America will be absolutely and totally devastated. A 70% kill off implies that America would indeed be thrown back to the bronze age.

My advice?

You cannot change what is going to happen. It is pretty much set in stone. The only thing that you can do is to save yourself.

Flee the United States as fast as you can.

Go to a nation with a safer rating on the Deagel scale.

Consider fleeing any nation that is allied with the United States as well. The UK, and those European nations that are part of NATO perform very poorly. Though you will probably have an easier time of it than being the United States, it will still be a very rough life in those places.

It will be a scene out of the movie “Threads“, and you all should get a copy of this movie and watch it right now.

Threads Nuclear Detonation Scene

And when you watch it, keep in mind that what it portrays is EXACTLY what Deagal predicts will happen to America and it’s allies. Watch it and realize that you have two to three short years to save yourself and your family.

Bugging out.

A final comment

Everyone is aware that nuclear war is horrible and undesirable. However, the American leadership are making ZERO efforts to deescalate tensions in the Ukraine. Instead they are throwing weapons there. They are making ZERO efforts to deescalate tensions around Taiwan.

Russia and China have formed a major block. THEY DO NOT PLAY.

I cannot predict the future.

But others have.

This is what they predicted… 10 minute video. It is well worth viewing.

.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

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Russia and China has become one nation

Not reported that way in the West, eh? But, yeah. That’s exactly what has happened.

This article is VERY IMPORTANT.

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I came across this excellent TASS article summarizing the 4 February 2022 Russia/China Joint Declaration.  It’s a helpful reminder, on  just how far-reaching the Declaration is and the principles it’s based upon.

These are some the many, many key paragraphs, although there are more:

"This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China. We have been talking a great deal about strategic interaction. This is a real embodiment of this interaction," Maslov said.

Given the rejection by the West of everything Russian and Chinese, it actually seems probable that the Declaration went unread by American “high officials”, meaning Blinken, Austin and Sullivan, since they already had formalized their escalation plans.

The American “leadership” are still following their check-lists and scripts.

But the reality is something very different. Russia and China have unified. They are as one singular nation, and they coordinate as one singular nation.

It’s not just a treaty. It is the de facto union of Russia and China together.

It is the formation of a new POWER BLOCK.

It is equivalent to when the 13 American states formed the “United States” of America in 1776. It is equivalent to when the European Union was formed, and NATO was created. It is really, really BIG news.

Yet…

The entire West is pretending, or unaware, of the reality. They still are treating Asia as separate nations. They think there’s Russia. They deal deal with Russia. Then once dealt with, they “pivot” to China. Then they deal with China. Then once, Russia and China are done with, they take on India. Then, once India is finished, the “mop up” with Iran.

That’s the plan.

And it relies on a world that does not exist any longer.

Let’s look at how important this unification of Asia is. We will do so through the lens of history.

The formation of the United States

The 13 colonies were the group of colonies that rebelled against Great Britain, fought in the Revolutionary War, and founded the United States of America. Here’s the 13 colonies list:

      • Connecticut
      • Delaware
      • Georgia
      • Maryland
      • Massachusetts Bay
      • New Hampshire
      • New Jersey
      • New York
      • North Carolina
      • Pennsylvania
      • Rhode Island
      • South Carolina
      • Virginia

In late 1774, a group of Patriot leaders at the Continental Congress meeting set up their own government to resist Great Britain, and, on April 19, 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War were fought at Lexington and Concord. During the war, each of the 13 colonies formed a Provincial Congress to lead them, now that they no longer accepted the laws of Great Britain.

On July 4, 1776, the thirteen colonies declared themselves free and independent states at the Second Continental Congress by signing the Declaration of Independence. This document unified the thirteen colonies into one nation known as “The United States of America”.

In many ways, this is exactly what has just occurred in Asia.

There are two nations;

      • Russia
      • China

On February 4, 2022, a very signifigant document was signed that unified the two nations into one solid singular nation. The treaty and agreements are tighter and stronger, and more substantive that the US Constitution that binds the United States together. The agreement if far stronger than the EU that bonds Europe together. It is a new kind of agreement. Better. Stronger. More detailed, than anything ever seen on this planet previously.

Russia-China Partnership Agreement

On February 4, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have signed a joint statement in Beijing before the Winter Olympics opening ceremony held in China.

This statement was accepted as a bold declaration of the “New World Order” and the partnership between the two states without any limitations.

The statement can be divided into four parts:

      • the manifest on the new world order,
      • Grand Eurasian Partnership,
      • the United States (US) aggression, and
      • cooperation against US aggression.

It should be noted that it is much more than just an inclusive agreement and it will change the balance of power in world politics.

The content of the contract can be summarized as in the following:

  • About the New World Order, the sides believed that a new period has started in international relations, and global society demands a new international order based on development in a multi-polar world. Also, the sides suggested that multi-lateral ties have been quite significant in foreign policy and aimed at developing global governance. In addition to that, they offered a powerful United Nations is needed to provide multi-polar in international relations. In addition to that, the G20 format was supported instead of G7 since it is much more inclusive. Also, China and Russia believed that they played and will play an active role in the WTO.
  • On Grand Eurasian Partnership, the sides have declared that the relations between the two countries are much stronger than it was in the Cold War Period. Also, China’s continuing economic and political project is known as the “Belt and Road” Initiative (BRI). In the statement, it was claimed that following the BRI, a new Grand Eurasian Partnership would be established, contributing to cultural, economic, political, and historical relations of the region.
  • Russa and China against NATO. China and Russia have declared that they are against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as it approached the Black Sea region and started to try to contain Russia in the latest Ukraine-Russia conflict. The sides believe that NATO is following the mentality of the Cold War period; however, as mentioned before, the world order is changing, as they suggested. Besides NATO, the sides indicated that the policies of the US in the India-Pacific region are dangerous and threatening the peace-building attempts in the Asia-Pacific region. They claimed that Russia and China are concerned about the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom (AUKUS), which provides for deeper cooperation between its members in areas involving strategic stability, in particular their decision to initiate collaboration in the field of nuclear-powered submarines.
  • Against the United States. On the other hand, the most crucial element of the joint declaration was the alliance against the US. The sides declared that the US could escalate the colorful revolutions in the region and stand against that. Also, the sides have put their views on contrasting against terrorism, that they will not let politicization of terrorism, and using terrorism as a tool of interrupting the domestic politics of any country. The two countries highlighted that they would stand against the sanctions of the US by struggling with economic inequality.

Responses

Some responses were given after the declaration of that Joint Statement.

United States. It says (paraphrasing) “It’s a trivial attempt to circumvent our power and influence.” The US officials stated that, with the Joint Statement, that it was of no real consequence. They said that, China’s Xi Jinping could not protect Russia from sanctions. That, in their mind, was the sole purpose of the agreement.

Australia. The Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Marise Payne criticized the Agreement. Australia stated,

“The joint statement lays out a vision of the world that differs from Australia’s and our allies’ and partners’, and I’m convinced it includes all of our Quad partners.”

Also, in an interview with the ABC on Wednesday, she claimed that the tight security situation at the Russia-Ukraine border did not overshadow the importance the US places on the Indo-Pacific region. Further, Russia and China have slammed the United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy, rejecting the establishment of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region. She said Australia is very worried about the Russian military build-up along the Ukraine border and called for a reciprocal conversation to de-escalate the situation.

United Kingdom. The chair of the UK’s parliamentary defense committee, Tobias Ellwood, also claimed that “Russia provides oil, gas and military hardware. China, in return, provides advanced technology,” he wrote, adding that:

“Today, we are seeing the birth of a potent anti-democratic alliance. It is on track to see the world shear into two spheres of competing influence. And we have let it happen.”

Which has me scratching my head. has this Bozo Tobias Ellwood actually read the document. It actually clearly states…

"The sides believe that democracy is a means of citizens' participation in the government of their country with the view to improving the well-being of population and implementing the principle of popular government."

Joint statement by Russia, China formalizes bilateral alliance — analyst

"This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China."-Maslov
In their joint statement two countries described the principles they would rely on in developing global cooperation, Alexey Maslov notes

MOSCOW, February 4. /TASS/. The joint statement Russia and China adopted on Friday outlines the principles of new global cooperation and formalizes their bilateral alliance, the director of the Moscow State University’s Asia and Africa Institute, expert of the discussion club Valdai, Alexey Maslov, told TASS on Friday.

“This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China. We have been talking a great deal about strategic interaction. This is a real embodiment of this interaction,” Maslov said.

He stressed that in their joint statement Russia and China described the principles they would rely on in developing global cooperation.

“These principles are absolutely not new ones,” he remarked. “In fact, the statement heralds a return to the original UN principles that were laid down back in the 1940s and 1950s.”

The expert believes that the document is a clear sign the countries “share common values, a common understanding of democracy and the idea of the national nature of this democracy, pool together many international projects, the EAEU and the One Belt-One Road and also discuss interaction in the Arctic.”

Maslov stressed that the security issues mentioned in the statement were the most important of all. “A whole list of new types of security was determined there, including cybersecurity, on which the countries will cooperate,” he said.

The analyst stressed that the countries respected each other’s positions. “China does not threaten the interests of Russia and avoids intervention in Russian affairs. Likewise, Russia does not meddle in China’s affairs,” Maslov said.

New era of international relations

"This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China."-Maslov

Maslov explained that the “new era” of cooperation was characterized by the need to restore trust in the broadest sense: in world trade, in the military field, in the economy and so on.

“The countries propose if not a program, then at least a declaration of principles a future world is to be based on,” he added.

The expert stressed that this statement “formalizes polarization of forces, and not a confrontation,” because the countries merely declare the principles they rely upon. Maslov stated that other countries were free to join in.

“If some other countries, not necessarily Western ones, for instance, countries in Southeast Asia are prepared for joining the statement or beginning discussions, they will find that this declaration as such is not a closed one for the simple reason other countries may pledge to adhere to the same principles,” he stated.

Maslov sees no risk this statement might cause an escalation of tensions in relations with the West, because it concerns an absolutely parallel process.

“In this respect the document will by no means trigger an escalation. On the contrary, it will rather show that the issue has another side to it. At least, the fact that Russia and China adhere to a different stance,” Maslov concluded.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday arrived in Beijing and held a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. This is Putin’s first visit to China since the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The Russian-Chinese summit level negotiations ended with the adoption of a joint statement on international relations that were entering a new era and on global sustainable development…

This massive document outlines a framework for unity between Russia and China. It does the EXACT SAME THING as what the document which unified the thirteen colonies into one nation known as “The United States of America”.

Old-Fashioned Patty Melts

Sure everyone has eaten a thousand hamburgers, but how many patty melts have you eaten?

2022 03 28 09 18
Patty Melt done properly.

Everything about these Old-Fashioned Patty Melts is perfect, from the beef patty smothered in cheesy, oniony goodness, to the toasted and buttery rye bread. This sandwich is sure to have you saying “Ooh, it’s so GOUDA!”

What You’ll Need

  • 2 tablespoons butter, divided
  • 1 small onion, thinly sliced
  • 3/4 pound ground beef
  • Salt to taste
  • Pepper to taste
  • 4 slices rye bread
  • 4 slices Gouda cheese
  • 1/4 cup Thousand Island salad dressing

What to Do

  1. In a large skillet or grill pan over medium-high heat, melt 1 tablespoon butter; saute onion 6 to 8 minutes, or until it starts to brown. Remove to a bowl and cover.
  2. Shape beef into 2 oval patties; sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.
  3. In the same skillet over medium heat, cook patties 5 to 7 minutes per side, or until no longer pink in center. Remove from skillet and keep warm.
  4. Spread remaining butter over one side of each slice of bread. Place in skillet buttered side down, and toast until lightly browned.
  5. To assemble a sandwich, place a slice of cheese on a piece of toast, top with a beef patty, half the onion slices, and half the salad dressing. Top with another slice of cheese and piece of toast; repeat with second sandwich, then serve immediately.

Notes

We love some coleslaw as a go-along to this delicious sandwich, so why not make your own by whipping up a batch of some delicious Country Coleslaw!

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Read this. This is the actual document and translated…

Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development

February 4, 2022

Background

At the invitation of President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir V. Putin visited China on 4 February 2022. The Heads of State held talks in Beijing and took part in the opening ceremony of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games.

The Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, hereinafter referred to as the sides, state as follows.

The Statement on the New Union

Today, the world is going through momentous changes, and humanity is entering a new era of rapid development and profound transformation.

It sees the development of such processes and phenomena as

  • multipolarity,
  • economic globalization,
  • the advent of information society,
  • cultural diversity,
  • transformation of the global governance architecture
  • and world order;
    • there is increasing interrelation and interdependence between the States;
    • a trend has emerged towards redistribution of power in the world;
    • and the international community is showing a growing demand for the leadership aiming at peaceful and gradual development.

At the same time, as the pandemic of the new coronavirus infection continues, the international and regional security situation is complicating and the number of global challenges and threats is growing from day to day.

Some actors representing but the minority (on the international scale) continue to advocate unilateral approaches to addressing international issues and resort to force;

  • they interfere in the internal affairs of other states,
  • infringing their legitimate rights and interests,
  • and incite contradictions, differences and confrontation,
  • thus hampering the development and progress of mankind, against the opposition from the international community.

The sides call on all States to pursue well-being for all and, with these ends, to

  • build dialogue and mutual trust,
  • strengthen mutual understanding,
  • champion such universal human values as
    • peace,
    • development,
    • equality,
    • justice,
    • democracy and freedom,
    • respect the rights of peoples to independently determine the development paths of their countries
    • and the sovereignty and the security and development interests of States,
      • to protect the United Nations-driven international architecture
      • and the international law-based world order,
      • seek genuine multipolarity with the United Nations
      • and its Security Council playing a central and coordinating role,
      • promote more democratic international relations,
      • and ensure peace, stability and sustainable development across the world.

I

The sides share the understanding that democracy is a universal human value, rather than a privilege of a limited number of States, and that its promotion and protection is a common responsibility of the entire world community.

The sides believe that democracy is a means of citizens’ participation in the government of their country with the view to improving the well-being of population and implementing the principle of popular government.

Democracy is exercised in all spheres of public life as part of a nation-wide process and reflects the interests of all the people, its will, guarantees its rights, meets its needs and protects its interests.

There is no one-size-fits-all template to guide countries in establishing democracy.

A nation can choose such forms and methods of implementing democracy that would best suit its particular state, based on

        • its social and political system,
        • its historical background,
        • traditions and unique cultural characteristics.
        • It is only up to the people of the country to decide whether their State is a democratic one.

The sides note that Russia and China as world powers with rich cultural and historical heritage have long-standing traditions of democracy, which rely on

        • thousand-years of experience of development,
        • broad popular support and
        • consideration of the needs and interests of citizens.

Russia and China guarantee their people the right to take part through various means and in various forms in the administration of the State and public life in accordance with the law.

The people of both countries are certain of the way they have chosen and respect the democratic systems and traditions of other States.

The sides note that democratic principles are implemented at the global level, as well as in administration of State.

Certain States’ attempts to impose their own ”democratic standards“ on other countries,

      • to monopolize the right to assess the level of compliance with democratic criteria,
      • to draw dividing lines based on the grounds of ideology,
        • including by establishing exclusive blocs and alliances of convenience,

prove to be nothing but flouting of democracy and go against the spirit and true values of democracy.

Such attempts at hegemony pose serious threats to global and regional peace and stability and undermine the stability of the world order.

The sides believe that the advocacy of democracy and human rights must not be used to put pressure on other countries.

      • They oppose the abuse of democratic values and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states under the pretext of protecting democracy and human rights, and any attempts to incite divisions and confrontation in the world.
      • The sides call on the international community to respect cultural and civilizational diversity and the rights of peoples of different countries to self-determination.
      • They stand ready to work together with all the interested partners to promote genuine democracy.

The sides note that the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights set noble goals in the area of universal human rights, set forth fundamental principles, which all the States must comply with and observe in deeds.

At the same time, as every nation has its own unique national features, history, culture, social system and level of social and economic development, universal nature of human rights should be seen through the prism of the real situation in every particular country, and human rights should be protected in accordance with the specific situation in each country and the needs of its population.

Promotion and protection of human rights is a shared responsibility of the international community.

The states should equally prioritize all categories of human rights and promote them in a systemic manner.

The international human rights cooperation should be carried out as a dialogue between the equals involving all countries.

All States must have equal access to the right to development. Interaction and cooperation on human rights matters should be based on the principle of equality of all countries and mutual respect for the sake of strengthening the international human rights architecture.

II

The sides believe that peace, development and cooperation lie at the core of the modern international system.

Development is a key driver in ensuring the prosperity of the nations.

The ongoing pandemic of the new coronavirus infection poses a serious challenge to the fulfilment of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

It is vital to enhance partnership relations for the sake of global development and make sure that the new stage of global development is defined by balance, harmony and inclusiveness.

The sides are seeking to advance their work to link the development plans for the Eurasian Economic Union and the Belt and Road Initiative with a view to intensifying practical cooperation between the EAEU and China in various areas and promoting greater interconnectedness between the Asia Pacific and Eurasian regions.

The sides reaffirm their focus on building the Greater Eurasian Partnership in parallel and in coordination with the Belt and Road construction to foster the development of regional associations as well as bilateral and multilateral integration processes for the benefit of the peoples on the Eurasian continent.

The sides agreed to continue consistently intensifying practical cooperation for the sustainable development of the Arctic.

The sides will strengthen cooperation within multilateral mechanisms, including the United Nations, and encourage the international community to prioritize development issues in the global macro-policy coordination.

They call on the developed countries to implement in good faith their formal commitments on

      • development assistance,
      • provide more resources to developing countries,
      • address the uneven development of States,
      • work to offset such imbalances within States, and advance global and international development cooperation.

The Russian side confirms its readiness to continue working on the China-proposed Global Development Initiative, including participation in the activities of the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative under the UN auspices.

In order to accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the sides call on the international community to take practical steps in key areas of

      • cooperation such as poverty reduction,
      • food security,
      • vaccines and epidemics control,
      • financing for development,
      • climate change,
      • sustainable development,
      • including green development,
      • industrialization,
      • digital economy, and
      • infrastructure connectivity.

The sides call on the international community to

      • create open, equal, fair and non-discriminatory conditions for scientific and technological development,
      • to step up practical implementation of scientific and technological advances in order to identify new drivers of economic growth.

The sides call upon all countries to strengthen cooperation in

      • sustainable transport,
      • actively build contacts and share knowledge in the construction of transport facilities,
      • including smart transport and sustainable transport,
      • development and use of Arctic routes,
      • as well as to develop other areas to support global post-epidemic recovery.

The sides are taking serious action and making an important contribution to the fight against climate change.

Jointly celebrating the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, they reaffirm their commitment to this Convention as well as to the goals, principles and provisions of the Paris Agreement, including the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

The sides work together to ensure the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement, remain committed to fulfilling the obligations they have undertaken and expect that developed countries will actually ensure the annual provision of $100 billion of climate finance to developing states. The sides oppose setting up new barriers in international trade under the pretext of fighting climate change.

The sides strongly support the development of international cooperation and exchanges in the field of biological diversity, actively participating in the relevant global governance process, and intend to jointly promote the harmonious development of humankind and nature as well as green transformation to ensure sustainable global development.

The Heads of State positively assess the effective interaction between Russia and China in the bilateral and multilateral formats focusing on

      • the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic,
      • protection of life and health of the population of the two countries and the peoples of the world.
      • They will further increase cooperation in the development and manufacture of vaccines against the new coronavirus infection,
      • as well as medical drugs for its treatment,
      • and enhance collaboration in public health and modern medicine.

The sides plan to strengthen coordination on epidemiological measures to ensure strong protection of health, safety and order in contacts between citizens of the two countries.

The sides have commended the work of the competent authorities and regions of the two countries on implementing quarantine measures in the border areas and ensuring the stable operation of the border crossing points, and intend to consider establishing a joint mechanism for epidemic control and prevention in the border areas to jointly plan anti-epidemic measures to be taken at the border checkpoints, share information, build infrastructure and improve the efficiency of customs clearance of goods.

The sides emphasize that ascertaining the origin of the new coronavirus infection is a matter of science.

Research on this topic must be based on global knowledge, and that requires cooperation among scientists from all over the world.

The sides oppose politicization of this issue. The Russian side welcomes the work carried out jointly by China and WHO to identify the source of the new coronavirus infection and supports the China – WHO joint report on the matter. The sides call on the global community to jointly promote a serious scientific approach to the study of the coronavirus origin.

The Russian side supports a successful hosting by the Chinese side of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2022.

The sides highly appreciate the level of bilateral cooperation in sports and the Olympic movement and express their readiness to contribute to its further progressive development.

III

The sides are gravely concerned about serious international security challenges and believe that the fates of all nations are interconnected.

No State can or should ensure its own security separately from the security of the rest of the world and at the expense of the security of other States. The international community should actively engage in global governance to ensure universal, comprehensive, indivisible and lasting security.

The sides reaffirm their strong mutual support for the protection

      • of their core interests,
      • state sovereignty and territorial integrity,
      • and oppose interference by external forces in their internal affairs.

The Russian side reaffirms its support for the One-China principle, confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan.

Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to

      • undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions,
      • intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext,
      • oppose colour revolutions, and
      • will increase cooperation in the aforementioned areas.

The sides condemn terrorism in all its manifestations, promote the idea of creating a single global anti-terrorism front, with the United Nations playing a central role, advocate stronger political coordination and constructive engagement in multilateral counterterrorism efforts.

The sides oppose politicization of the issues of combating terrorism and their use as instruments of policy of double standards, condemn the practice of interference in the internal affairs of other States for geopolitical purposes through the use of terrorist and extremist groups as well as under the guise of combating international terrorism and extremism.

The sides believe that certain States, military and political alliances and coalitions seek to obtain, directly or indirectly, unilateral military advantages to the detriment of the security of others, including

      • by employing unfair competition practices,
      • intensify geopolitical rivalry,
      • fuel antagonism and confrontation, and
      • seriously undermine the international security order and global strategic stability.

The sides oppose further enlargement of NATO and call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon its ideologized cold war approaches, to respect the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries, the diversity of their civilizational, cultural and historical backgrounds, and to exercise a fair and objective attitude towards the peaceful development of other States.

The sides stand against the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region and remain highly vigilant about the negative impact of the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy on peace and stability in the region. Russia and China have made consistent efforts to build an equitable, open and inclusive security system in the Asia-Pacific Region (APR) that is not directed against third countries and that promotes peace, stability and prosperity.

The sides welcome the Joint Statement of the Leaders of the Five Nuclear-Weapons States on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races.

And believe that all nuclear-weapons States should abandon the cold war mentality and zero-sum games, reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their national security policies, withdraw nuclear weapons deployed abroad, eliminate the unrestricted development of global anti-ballistic missile defense (ABM) system, and take effective steps to reduce the risks of nuclear wars and any armed conflicts between countries with military nuclear capabilities.

The sides reaffirm that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is the cornerstone of the international disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation system, an important part of the post-war international security system, and plays an indispensable role in world peace and development. The international community should promote the balanced implementation of the three pillars of the Treaty and work together to protect the credibility, effectiveness and the universal nature of the instrument.

The sides are seriously concerned about the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom (AUKUS), which provides for deeper cooperation between its members in areas involving strategic stability, in particular their decision to initiate cooperation in the field of nuclear-powered submarines.

Russia and China believe that such actions are

      • contrary to the objectives of security and sustainable development of the Asia-Pacific region,
      • increase the danger of an arms race in the region, and
      • pose serious risks of nuclear proliferation.

The sides strongly condemn such moves and call on AUKUS participants to fulfil their nuclear and missile non-proliferation commitments in good faith and to work together to safeguard peace, stability, and development in the region.

Japan’s plans to release nuclear contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean and the potential environmental impact of such actions are of deep concern to the sides.

The sides emphasize that the disposal of nuclear contaminated water should be handled with responsibility and carried out in a proper manner based on arrangements between the Japanese side and neighbouring States, other interested parties, and relevant international agencies while ensuring transparency, scientific reasoning, and in accordance with international law.

The sides believe that

      • the U.S. withdrawal from the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles,
      • the acceleration of research and the development of intermediate-range and shorter-range ground-based missiles
      • and the desire to deploy them in the Asia-Pacific and European regions,
      • as well as their transfer to the allies,

…entail an increase in tension and distrust, increase risks to international and regional security, lead to the weakening of international non-proliferation and arms control system, undermining global strategic stability.

The sides call on the United States to respond positively to the Russian initiative and abandon its plans to deploy intermediate-range and shorter-range ground-based missiles in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.

The sides will continue to maintain contacts and strengthen coordination on this issue.

The Chinese side is sympathetic to and supports the proposals put forward by the Russian Federation to create long-term legally binding security guarantees in Europe.

The sides note that the denunciation by the United States of a number of important international arms control agreements has an extremely negative impact on international and regional security and stability.

The sides express concern over the advancement of U.S. plans to develop global missile defence and deploy its elements in various regions of the world, combined with capacity building of high-precision non-nuclear weapons for disarming strikes and other strategic objectives.

The sides stress the importance of the peaceful uses of outer space, strongly support the central role of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in promoting international cooperation, maintaining and developing international space law and regulation in the field of space activities. Russia and China will continue to increase cooperation on such matters of mutual interest as the long-term sustainability of space activities and the development and use of space resources.

The sides oppose attempts by some States to turn outer space into an arena of armed confrontation and reiterate their intention to make all necessary efforts to prevent the weaponization of space and an arms race in outer space. They will counteract activities aimed at achieving military superiority in space and using it for combat operations.

The sides affirm the need for the early launch of negotiations to conclude a legally binding multilateral instrument based on the Russian-Chinese draft treaty on the prevention of placement of weapons in outer space and the use or threat of force against space objects that would provide fundamental and reliable guarantees against an arms race and the weaponization of outer space.

Russia and China emphasize that appropriate transparency and confidence-building measures, including an international initiative/political commitment not to be the first to place weapons in space, can also contribute to the goal of preventing an arms race in outer space, but such measures should complement and not substitute the effective legally binding regime governing space activities.

The sides reaffirm their belief that the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC) is an essential pillar of international peace and security. Russia and China underscore their determination to preserve the credibility and effectiveness of the Convention.

The sides affirm the need to fully respect and further strengthen the BWC, including by institutionalizing it, strengthening its mechanisms, and adopting a legally binding Protocol to the Convention with an effective verification mechanism, as well as through regular consultation and cooperation in addressing any issues related to the implementation of the Convention.

The sides emphasize that domestic and foreign bioweapons activities by the United States and its allies raise serious concerns and questions for the international community regarding their compliance with the BWC.

The sides share the view that such activities pose a serious threat to the national security of the Russian Federation and China and are detrimental to the security of the respective regions.

The sides call on the U.S. and its allies to act in an open, transparent, and responsible manner by properly reporting on their military biological activities conducted overseas and on their national territory, and by supporting the resumption of negotiations on a legally binding BWC Protocol with an effective verification mechanism.

The sides, reaffirming their commitment to the goal of a world free of chemical weapons, call upon all parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention to work together to uphold its credibility and effectiveness.

Russia and China are deeply concerned about the politicization of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and call on all of its members to strengthen solidarity and cooperation and protect the tradition of consensual decision-making.

Russia and China insist that the United States, as the sole State Party to the Convention that has not yet completed the process of eliminating chemical weapons, accelerate the elimination of its stockpiles of chemical weapons.

The sides emphasize the importance of balancing the non-proliferation obligations of states with the interests of legitimate international cooperation in the use of advanced technology and related materials and equipment for peaceful purposes.

The sides note the resolution entitled ”Promoting international Cooperation on Peaceful Uses in the Context of International Security“ adopted at the 76th session of the UN General Assembly on the initiative of China and co‑sponsored by Russia, and look forward to its consistent implementation in accordance with the goals set forth therein.

The sides attach great importance to the issues of governance in the field of artificial intelligence. The sides are ready to strengthen dialogue and contacts on artificial intelligence.

The sides reiterate their readiness to deepen cooperation in the field of international information security and to contribute to building an open, secure, sustainable and accessible ICT environment.

The sides emphasize that the principles of the non-use of force, respect for national sovereignty and fundamental human rights and freedoms, and non-interference in the internal affairs of other States, as enshrined in the UN Charter, are applicable to the information space.

Russia and China reaffirm the key role of the UN in responding to threats to international information security and express their support for the Organization in developing new norms of conduct of states in this area.

The sides welcome the implementation of the global negotiation process on international information security within a single mechanism and support in this context the work of the UN Open-ended Working Group on security of and in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) 2021–2025 (OEWG) and express their willingness to speak with one voice within it.

The sides consider it necessary to consolidate the efforts of the international community to develop new norms of responsible behaviour of States, including legal ones, as well as a universal international legal instrument regulating the activities of States in the field of ICT.

The sides believe that the Global Initiative on Data Security, proposed by the Chinese side and supported, in principle, by the Russian side, provides a basis for the Working Group to discuss and elaborate responses to data security threats and other threats to international information security.

The sides reiterate their support of United Nations General Assembly resolutions 74/247 and 75/282, support the work of the relevant Ad Hoc Committee of Governmental Experts, facilitate the negotiations within the United Nations for the elaboration of an international convention on countering the use of ICTs for criminal purposes.

The sides encourage constructive participation of all sides in the negotiations in order to agree as soon as possible on a credible, universal, and comprehensive convention and provide it to the United Nations General Assembly at its 78th session in strict compliance with resolution 75/282. For these purposes, Russia and China have presented a joint draft convention as a basis for negotiations.

The sides support the internationalization of Internet governance, advocate equal rights to its governance, believe that any attempts to limit their sovereign right to regulate national segments of the Internet and ensure their security are unacceptable, are interested in greater participation of the International Telecommunication Union in addressing these issues.

The sides intend to deepen bilateral cooperation in international information security on the basis of the relevant 2015 intergovernmental agreement. To this end, the sides have agreed to adopt in the near future a plan for cooperation between Russia and China in this area.

IV

The sides underline that Russia and China, as world powers and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, intend to

      • firmly adhere to moral principles and accept their responsibility,
      • strongly advocate the international system with the central coordinating role of the United Nations in international affairs,
      • defend the world order based on international law,
      • including the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,
      • advance multipolarity and
      • promote the democratization of international relations, together create an even more prospering, stable, and just world, jointly build international relations of a new type.

The Russian side notes the significance of the concept of constructing a ”community of common destiny for mankind“ proposed by the Chinese side to ensure greater solidarity of the international community and consolidation of efforts in responding to common challenges.

The Chinese side notes the significance of the efforts taken by the Russian side to establish a just multipolar system of international relations.

The sides intend to strongly uphold the outcomes of the Second World War and the existing post-war world order, defend the authority of the United Nations and justice in international relations, resist attempts to deny, distort, and falsify the history of the Second World War.

In order to prevent the recurrence of the tragedy of the world war, the sides will strongly condemn actions aimed at denying the responsibility for atrocities of Nazi aggressors, militarist invaders, and their accomplices, besmirch and tarnish the honour of the victorious countries.

The sides call for the establishment of a new kind of relationships between world powers on the basis of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation.

They reaffirm that the new inter-State relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era.

Friendship between the two States has no limits.

There are no ”forbidden“ areas of cooperation, strengthening of bilateral strategic cooperation is neither aimed against third countries nor affected by the changing international environment and circumstantial changes in third countries.

The sides reiterate the need for consolidation, not division of the international community, the need for cooperation, not confrontation.

The sides oppose the return of international relations to the state of confrontation between major powers, when the weak fall prey to the strong.

The sides intend to resist attempts to substitute universally recognized formats and mechanisms that are consistent with international law for rules elaborated in private by certain nations or blocs of nations, and are against addressing international problems indirectly and without consensus, oppose power politics, bullying, unilateral sanctions, and extraterritorial application of jurisdiction, as well as the abuse of export control policies, and support trade facilitation in line with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The sides reaffirmed their intention to strengthen foreign policy coordination, pursue true multilateralism, strengthen cooperation on multilateral platforms, defend common interests, support the international and regional balance of power, and improve global governance.

The sides support and defend the multilateral trade system based on the central role of the World Trade Organization (WTO), take an active part in the WTO reform, opposing unilateral approaches and protectionism. The sides are ready to strengthen dialogue between partners and coordinate positions on trade and economic issues of common concern, contribute to ensuring the sustainable and stable operation of global and regional value chains, promote a more open, inclusive, transparent, non-discriminatory system of international trade and economic rules.

The sides support the G20 format as an important forum for discussing international economic cooperation issues and anti-crisis response measures, jointly promote the invigorated spirit of solidarity and cooperation within the G20, support the leading role of the association in such areas as the international fight against epidemics, world economic recovery, inclusive sustainable development, improving the global economic governance system in a fair and rational manner to collectively address global challenges.

The sides support the deepened strategic partnership within BRICS, promote the expanded cooperation in three main areas: politics and security, economy and finance, and humanitarian exchanges.

In particular, Russia and China intend to encourage interaction in the fields of

      • public health,
      • digital economy,
      • science,
      • innovation and technology,
      • including artificial intelligence technologies,
      • as well as the increased coordination between BRICS countries on international platforms.

The sides strive to further strengthen the BRICS Plus/Outreach format as an effective mechanism of dialogue with regional integration associations and organizations of developing countries and States with emerging markets.

The Russian side will fully support the Chinese side chairing the association in 2022, and assist in the fruitful holding of the XIV BRICS summit.

Russia and China aim to comprehensively strengthen the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and further enhance its role in shaping a polycentric world order based on the universally recognized principles of international law, multilateralism, equal, joint, indivisible, comprehensive and sustainable security.

They consider it important to consistently implement the agreements on improved mechanisms to counter challenges and threats to the security of SCO member states and, in the context of addressing this task, advocate expanded functionality of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure.

The sides will contribute to imparting a new quality and dynamics to the economic interaction between the SCO member States in the fields of

      • trade,
      • manufacturing,
      • transport,
      • energy,
      • finance,
      • investment,
      • agriculture,
      • customs,
      • telecommunications,
      • innovation and
      • other areas of mutual interest, including through the use of advanced, resource-saving, energy efficient and ”green“ technologies.

The sides note the fruitful interaction within the SCO under the 2009 Agreement between the Governments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member States on cooperation in the field of international information security, as well as within the specialized Group of Experts. In this context, they welcome the adoption of the SCO Joint Action Plan on Ensuring International Information Security for 2022–2023 by the Council of Heads of State of SCO Member States on September 17, 2021 in Dushanbe.

Russia and China proceed from the ever-increasing importance of cultural and humanitarian cooperation for the progressive development of the SCO. In order to strengthen mutual understanding between the people of the SCO member States, they will continue to effectively foster interaction in such areas as cultural ties, education, science and technology, healthcare, environmental protection, tourism, people-to-people contacts, sports.

Russia and China will continue to work to strengthen the role of APEC as the leading platform for multilateral dialogue on economic issues in the Asia-Pacific region.

The sides intend to step up coordinated action to successfully implement the ”Putrajaya guidelines for the development of APEC until 2040“ with a focus on creating a free, open, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent and predictable trade and investment environment in the region. Particular emphasis will be placed on the fight against the novel coronavirus infection pandemic and economic recovery, digitalization of a wide range of different spheres of life, economic growth in remote territories and the establishment of interaction between APEC and other regional multilateral associations with a similar agenda.

The sides intend to develop cooperation within the ”Russia-India-China“ format, as well as to

      • strengthen interaction on such venues as the East Asia Summit,
      • ASEAN Regional Forum on Security,
      • Meeting of Defense Ministers of the ASEAN Member States and Dialogue Partners.

Russia and China support ASEAN’s central role in developing cooperation in East Asia, continue to increase coordination on deepened cooperation with ASEAN, and jointly promote cooperation in the areas of public health, sustainable development, combating terrorism and countering transnational crime.

The sides intend to continue to work in the interest of a strengthened role of ASEAN as a key element of the regional architecture.

It’s very straight-forward. This document lays out the actions and behaviors of the two nations (Russia and China), their interaction with the rest of the work, how the two nations interact with each other, and areas where they will jointly work together.

It is, a de facto. constitution for a unified Asia.

Now, let’s see how this document was presented to Americans. My guess is that they are far too stupid to understand what is going on.

  • My guess is that they will interject the article with boilerplate negatives, distortions of the text, and gloss over the actual content and meaning behind it.
  • They will also include disparaging comments, and attempt to detrail the content.

Russia and China Unveil a Pact Against America and the West

In a sweeping long-term agreement, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the two most powerful autocrats, challenge the current political and military order.

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In their matching mauve ties, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping last week declared a “new era” in the global order and, at least in the short term, endorsed their respective territorial ambitions in Ukraine and Taiwan. The world’s two most powerful autocrats unveiled a sweeping long-term agreement that also challenges the United States as a global power, NATO as a cornerstone of international security, and liberal democracy as a model for the world. “Friendship between the two States has no limits,” they vowed in the communiqué, released after the two leaders met on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics. “There are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”

Agreements between Moscow and Beijing, including the Treaty of Friendship of 2001, have traditionally been laden with lofty, if vague, rhetoric that faded into forgotten history. But the new and detailed five-thousand-word agreement is more than a collection of the usual tropes, Robert Daly, the director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, at the Wilson Center, in Washington, told me.

Although it falls short of a formal alliance, like NATO, the agreement reflects a more elaborate show of solidarity than anytime in the past. “This is a pledge to stand shoulder to shoulder against America and the West, ideologically as well as militarily,” Daly said. “This statement might be looked back on as the beginning of Cold War Two.” The timing and clarity of the communiqué—amid tensions on Russia’s border with Europe and China’s aggression around Taiwan—will “give historians the kind of specific event that they often focus on.”

Beyond security, the declaration also pledged collaboration on space, climate change, the Internet, and artificial intelligence. Politically, the document claimed that there is “no one-size-fits-all” type of democracy, and heralded both forms of authoritarian rule in Moscow and Beijing as successful democracies. “It’s a pretty striking step closer to an alliance and shows that they’re very much aligned in their vision of the world order in the twenty-first century,” Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, told me.

Putin described the broader strategic partnership with China as “unprecedented.”

Xi said that their joint strategy would have a “far-reaching influence on China, Russia, and the world.”

U.S. experts described the lengthy statement, which was riddled with false and accusatory language, as startling. “I’ve never seen a joint statement from both leaders using this kind of language.

They’ve joined forces,” Angela Stent, a Russia expert who served at the National Intelligence Council and wrote “Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest,” told me.

She described the communiqué as “quite Orwellian” and called it an “inflection point” in which Russia and China are challenging the balance of power that has defined the global order since the Cold War ended, three decades ago. “We could be at the beginning of a new era as the Russian relationship with the West deteriorates and China’s does as well.”

The agreement puts Washington and its key allies “in a terrible bind,” she added. “The fact is, whatever we do to counter what Russia is doing only reinforces its reliance on China.”

The joint statement is, at least for the moment, a diplomatic boon for Putin amid his showdown with the United States and Europe over Ukraine. For the first time in any of Russia’s recent aggressions, Putin has won the open support of China’s leader. China did not back Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, or its invasion of Ukraine in 2014, nor has it recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Now Moscow and Beijing, which both have the ability to veto any resolution at the United Nations, have declared their opposition to further enlargement of NATO and to the formation of other regional security alliances. “Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions, intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose colour revolutions, and will increase cooperation,” the often unwieldy statement declared. “This is where they pledge their troth,” Daly said.

Washington had been pressuring Beijing, including in a call last month between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in an attempt to keep China neutral or out of the Ukraine crisis. Now, at least on paper and in public voice, it has budged, Andrew Weiss, a former National Security Council official who is currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me. “Russia now has China as an endorser of the egregious and inflammatory position that Putin has staked out on Ukraine.”

Hints of China’s shift have been emerging in the past two weeks, as the Ukraine crisis began spilling over onto already tense U.S.-China relations. President Biden’s foreign policy had hoped to steer relations with Beijing toward stable and manageable competition.

Instead, China, which is normally discreet in its diplomacy, is visibly pushing back.

After his conversation with Blinken last month, the Chinese foreign minister said publicly that Russia’s security concern about NATO expansion is legitimate and must be addressed. The Biden Administration countered last week with an admonition. The State Department warned that the West has “an array of tools” to deploy against foreign companies—including in China—that help Russia evade punitive sanctions.

In the new agreement, Russia, in turn, reaffirmed its support for Beijing’s One China policy that Taiwan is “an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence.” The joint communiqué also supported Beijing’s ruthless crackdown on dissidents in Hong Kong in the past two years. The bold assertions in the joint statement follow deepening military ties between the two nations in the past decade, Weiss noted. Russia and China have conducted dozens of joint exercises and war games that have involved as many as ten thousand troops to hone tactical and operational capabilities.

Russian officials have boasted that the growing defense partnership was designed to warn the United States and NATO not to pressure Moscow. The naval operations have included mock seizures of islands, patrols by long-range bombers over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, and surface-to-air missile targeting.

Last summer, Putin and Xi both witnessed military exercises in China. In October, they held joint naval exercises off Russia’s far-eastern coast. “The frequency, complexity, and geographic scope has steadily increased, reflecting the growth in the overall bilateral defense relationship,” the U.S. Naval Institute reported last year. As two nuclear-armed countries that span Europe and Asia, the more muscular alignment between Russia and China could be a game changer militarily and diplomatically. “They want this to be as threatening as a formal alliance to the West, but don’t want to formally commit to mutual defense,” Daly said. “They don’t have to. The spectre of their mutual aid will serve as a deterrent.”

The joint announcement reflects a shift in the balance of power between Russia and China as well. “The Russians for the longest time were condescending in their view of China as an uninteresting rural society,” Weiss said. “Now China looks at Russia and says, ‘What are you good for?’

China’s ambitions do not run through Moscow.” China has become “canny” in exploiting Russia’s neediness, he said. “It uses Russia as a cat’s paw to disrupt the U.S. pivot to Asia. The fact that we have to keep coming back to Putin, as the neighborhood bully, is beneficial to China.”

Putin was the highest-profile leader to show up for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. The U.S. and other major powers opted not to send high-profile delegations, to protest China’s human-rights abuses, particularly against its Uyghur minority. Russia had received a two-year ban from officially sending teams to the Olympics after conducting a years-long, state-sponsored doping scheme. Russian athletes—who are not supposed to carry their nation’s flag, wear the Russian insignia, or play the national anthem—instead compete as part of the Russian Olympic Committee. After his meeting with Xi, Putin applauded the team during the opening ceremony’s Parade of Nations on Friday. But his visit clearly had another purpose.

The question now is how far Russia and China will take their agreement. “Words are one thing,” Vershbow, the former Ambassador, said. “We still have to see if the statement will translate into greater tangible Chinese support for Russia’s aggressive behavior—or whether they’ll say, ‘We’re with you, good luck,’ and then turn the other way.” The Chinese have different and sometimes more pragmatic interests in their relations with the U.S. and Europe, which are vital to their economy. “They don’t want to burn all bridges for the sake of a relationship with Russia.”

Oh, fine and dandy, but…

Let’s stop playing around.

  • The United States set up identical conditions for war in both Ukraine and Taiwan simultaneously.
  • This began in 2014 under President Obama.
  • This action was planned long before that. Perhaps as early as 2004.
  • The USA set up pro-United States governments in 2014 by NED sponsored activity.
  • The USA has since poured billions of dollars in weapons to those areas.
  • And has established bioweapons labs in both areas.
  • Both governments possess a hatred of their larger neighbor.
  • And both will try to provoke their neighbor according to the RAND directions.

The United States WILL create a contexual reason to drag China into a terrible and long-duration conventional war on the border of China identically to what has occurred in Ukraine.

So stop pretending.

Right now Russia is in complete control of the Ukraine situation, no matter what the Western “news” says, and a “false flag” event is scheduled to drag the USA and NATO into the conflict. With NATO being a light-weight serrogate for the USA battle forces.

Then the USA will “pivot to Asia” and take out China.

So the conflict in Taiwan will be similiar.

It is planned to be a long drawn out conventional war, and a “false flag” will be a justification for invasion by Japanese, Australian and United States forces.

Now, I’m not too swift a Geo-Political strategist. However, if I can see this, then you can well expect that China and Russia see this as well.

Do you think that they have plans, and are aware of the big and larger plans that are in place and the systems that are set in motion?

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And with that understood, please keep in mind that…

"This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China."-Maslov

With this understood, now let’s see what is going on today.

The United States demands that China sever economic ties with Russia or else!

Now, consider the reality about the domestic situation inside of America right now…

From here “Joe Biden warns Xi Jinping of ‘consequences’ if China backs Russia

A White House account of the call on Friday said that the US president “described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians”.

A senior administration official said there would be consequences “not just for China’s relationship with the United States, but for the wider world”, but would not give more details on whether Biden had gone into specifics on possible sanctions, other than to point out what had happened to Russia as an example.

There was nothing specific. Just warnings of “serious consequences” if China and Russia maintain their close relationship.

Obviously, the United States is acting like a pentulant child that is hold his ears and shutting his eyes and screaming as he tries to force the world to go away.

It appears that the United States does not recognize the agreement just forged last month between Russia and China.

Just a reminder to the reader that you now understand thngs far better than the American “leadership” does;

"This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China."-Maslov

China is READY

China and Russia are BOTH aware what is going on. They know that the United States plans to destroy both nations and then pick over the carcass like vultures. It’s very clear. It’s very plain. So let’s stop playing games. Let’s stop pretending.

The United States and its allies are getting ready to go full-spectrum war when they are ready to “pivot to Asia”.

It will begin [1] with crossing one of China’s “RED LINES”, just like the USA did with Ukraine. [2] China will react, then [3] a “False Flag” will be tripped, and (of course, to plan, [4] the United States will use it as an excuse to engage in a full war on Chinese soil. Becuase, after all, Taiwan is de facto Chinese soil. No matter what propagandized narrative the West wishes to create.

But… you know…

China is ready.

Video 1 – China knows that America wants a war. – Adults

The pretext will be Taiwan. Just like it was with Ukraine. And  China considers it an American invasion of it’s land. They will fight to the death, and employ great weapons of mass, mass, destruction.

You all had wish you were not on the recieving side of this onslaught of rage. I can tell you, and so can other expats inside of China, the Chinese are very quiet and studious, but when they get angry… when they get angry… they will unleash a rage that is indescribable. They will unleash… slaughter.

video 10MB

Video 2 -First grade military training – 5 / 6 year olds

Inside of China, very first grade, and many Kindergardens begin their day with roll-call, and reporting. Such as this. video 5 MB

Video 3 – Elementary school training – 9 year olds

Hey! Do you notice that these are not cheap AK-47 clones. They do not exist in China. REAL GUNS exist in China.

These are real deal full-auto Chinese military weapons. These are fourth grade kids. Nope. They probably couldn’t take on American SEALs or Green Berets.  But that is not the point. The point is everyone in China is trained to fight. It is the law. And they are merit driven and they work together as one. Everyone in a town or villiage acts as a fully managed army unit. Let that soak in. All 1.4 billion of them.

That’s 1,400,000,000,000,000 people.

How many military forces do you think that the United States can throw together to invade China? 60,000? 90,000? Even including Japan and Australia? Watch the video. This is all over China. video 31MB

Video 4 – EVERYONE in China has combat training  – 17 year olds

Oh, you don’t beleive me, eh?  What, you think that this is basic training, huh? No. It isn’t. It’s High School drills. High School drills. Let that sink in.

While the United States has “pepe rallies”, diversity training, ebonics, and soft subjects like fund-raising, China teaches basics, drills and trains over and over and over. They train with real weapons with real live ammo. video a must watch. Know the context. Filmed at their High School complex. video 11MB

Video 5 – Middle School exercises. 14 year old kids

Every Summer, the middle school students go on training exercises. Some resemble “Boot Camp”, while others are “actual maneuvres” and “War Games”. Here’s one such event.

Sure, they cannot take an American Green Beret one-on-one or an SAS fighter. But what about 20-to-1, or 200-to-1, or maybe 2000-to-1. How do you think the United States invasion of Taiwan will work out?

video 11MB

Video 6 – Middle school (14 year old) target practice

Using real government issued weapons, and ammo. Tell me about the firearm training that the United States, the UK, or Australia provides in middle school. I would like to hear it.

Video 6MB

Video 7 – China hasn’t forgotten, and they haven’t forgiven.

All of China remembers the “great humiliation” inflicted on them by Europe and America, and they well remember the atrocities of Japan, as this video clearly show.

I can tell you truthfully, if Japan engages China, Japan will become radioactive waste.

video 3MB

Video 8 – What the start of world war III might look like

You know, Hollywood has been glorifying war for decades. And China is always considered an enemy and an easy target. Ever watch the latest “Red Dawn” remake?

Here we see a mashup with Hollywood movies, and Chinese movies trying to suggest what the start of world war III looks like when the United States places a Naval Battle Group between the mainland and Taiwan.

video 50MB

Americans Are In So Much Trouble

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What we are witnessing is truly the beginning of the end.  In recent months I have focused a lot on the economic implosion that is now taking place, but what we are facing is so much broader than that.

Our society is literally falling to pieces all around us, and now World War 3 has begun.  Many regard the war that has erupted on the other side of the globe as just a conflict between Ukraine and Russia, but the truth is that it is really a proxy war between the United States and Russia.  And since neither side seems much interested in diplomacy at this point, this proxy war could eventually become a shooting war between the two greatest nuclear powers on the entire planet.

Before the war started, events were already starting to accelerate substantially.  Inflation was out of control, a new energy crisis had flared up, and global food supplies were getting tighter and tighter.  But now we are truly in unprecedented territory.  If you doubt this, just look at what is happening to the price of fertilizer.

2022 03 28 09 47
2022 03 28 09 47

That chart should chill you to the core, because it clearly tells us that food shortages are coming.

In fact, even Joe Biden is now publicly admitting that food shortages are coming.  On his show the other night, Tucker Carlson broke this down in a way that only Tucker Carlson can…

 

Before the war, some fertilizers had doubled in price and some had tripled in price.

In the video that you just watched, we are told that some fertilizer prices are now four to five times higher than they were a year ago.

Here in the western world, most farmers will simply bite the bullet and pay the higher prices.  In turn, we will pay higher prices for food at the grocery store.

But in poorer parts of the globe, many farmers will use a whole lot less fertilizer or none at all.  As a result, global food production will be way down in the months ahead.

To turn this crisis around, what we really need is for the proxy war in Ukraine to end.  Unfortunately, both sides just continue to escalate matters instead.

For example, on Saturday Joe Biden shocked the entire world when he stated that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”

President Joe Biden on Saturday said Russian leader Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” ratcheting up international pressure and further uniting NATO allies against Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.

“A dictator, bent on rebuilding an empire, will never erase the people’s love for liberty,” Biden said at the end of a sweeping speech in Poland. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.”

That was a call for regime change in Russia.

Russian leaders were already paranoid about western intentions before, and now their paranoia is going to be off the charts.

Biden administration officials are trying to walk back Biden’s comments, but the damage has already been done.

Meanwhile, we just learned that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have not spoken at all since February 15th

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov have not spoken since February 15over a week before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the State Department told Antiwar.com on Friday.

Earlier this week The Washington Post cited US officials who said Blinken hasn’t attempted to speak with Lavrov since the start of the conflict. When asked to confirm the story, a State Department spokesperson said, “We can confirm that the last time Secretary Blinken and Foreign Minister Lavrov spoke was on February 15.”

Even during the darkest days of the Cuban missile crisis, U.S. officials always kept talking to the Russians.

So this is something that should alarm all of us greatly.

On top of everything else, Joe Biden just told U.S. troops in Poland that they will see what conditions in Ukraine are like “when you’re there”

According to The Associated Press, Biden’s remarks were given in front of U.S. troops who “had been sent near Poland’s border [with Ukraine] to assist with the humanitarian emergency and to bolster the U.S. military presence on the eastern flank of NATO.” The words, “and you’re gonna see when you’re there,” were spoken right after the president mentioned the bravery of Ukrainian citizens. Later, the White House once again told reporters that U.S. troops would not be deployed to fight in the war in Ukraine.

Every time Biden opens his mouth, he makes things even worse.

If he isn’t careful, he could drag the entire world into a global war.  Earlier today, I was horrified to learn that Biden has decided to reaffirm “America’s right to use nukes in a first-strike scenario” at such a tense moment…

President Joe Biden is abandoning a campaign vow to alter longstanding US nuclear doctrine, and will instead embrace existing policy that reserves America’s right to use nukes in a first-strike scenario, according to multiple reports.

As Russian forces continue their bloody assault on Ukraine, Biden is under pressure from NATO allies not to abandon the right to use nuclear weapons to deter conventional attacks.

Many had thought that the war in Ukraine would help to unite America and would provide a boost to Biden’s extremely poor approval ratings.

And in the initial days of the war, that seemed to happen.

But now Biden’s approval ratings are falling once again

President Joe Biden’s job approval ratings keep falling in his second year in the White House, with just 40% of Americans approving of the job that he is doing, a new NBC News survey finds.

That is the lowest rating Biden has seen in his presidency.

We were warned that 2022 would be a very troubled year, and we are still in the very early chapters.

If the Biden administration continues with all of this insanity, things are going to get a whole lot worse.  I really like how Gerald Celente summarized matters during his recent interview with Greg Hunter

“We are headed for an economic calamity the likes of which we have never seen in our lifetime. They are getting our minds off it with the war in Ukraine. . . . You know, I wrote in the magazine in the beginning of the year, we said that the Covid war would wind down by late March and mid-April. It’s winding down. . . . So, now, as we said in the magazine, we went from the Covid war to the Ukraine war, and now to world war. We are headed to World War III. . . . There is not a peep about a cease-fire. Biden is only bragging about more weapons being sent in. Biden says we are going to defeat the Russians. We are not backing down. No one is talking about a cease-fire, and no one is talking about peace. If we don’t unite for peace, we are all going to die in war.”

A thermonuclear war with Russia would be more horrible than most people could possibly imagine, and our leaders should be doing all that they can to prevent that from happening.

But right now Biden administration officials apparently don’t even see any point in talking with the Russians.

We are steamrolling down a road that leads to nuclear war, and meanwhile the global economy is starting to implode at frightening speed.

If you are still delusional enough to believe that everything will work out “just fine” somehow, then I really feel sorry for you.

Taiwan

Keep in mind again…

Taiwan is part of China. China thinks so, The UN thinks so, and even Taiwan thinks so.

But that does not matter.

The Untied States NEEDS a war and is going to have one. They are going to “pull a Ukraine” on China, and they are almost ready. And you know what? Just like Russia, China is going to move befor the United States can “make its move”. It’s probably going to be undercover, and hidden, but I’m not sure.

One thing that we are learning right now is that the “government” of the Ukraine is just a robot entity. It is a bought-for, and paid-for actor that the Untied State put in charge of things so that it could move it’s military, and it’s forces, and it’s systems onto the border of Russia. It is NOT an independent, democratically elected, goverment. It is a proxy puppet; bought and owned by the United States.

We have to assume that that exact thing is going on in Taiwan.

There is no “government in Taiwan”. There are instead American robots who do whatever Washington DC tells them to do.

So stop all the nonsense and fact the facts.

And China knows this.

Maybe not exactly as I have described, but yeah, they get the picture. In fact, I would arge that they understand the nuiances far better than MM here.

Of course, you would NEVER hear about this in the Western “news” media. China has a military force that is peer-capable, and lethal. And if you are Japanese or a cocky Australian American-lover they will decapitate you. The Chinese DO NOT PLAY.

video 2MB

More Chinese youth

The Chinese have two things that are found nowhere else in the world; [1] Social unity. They work in groups together as one organism, and [2] They are merit-dren and always do their best.

If you take those two things, and then organize it towards military action. From an early age, then the formation of military actions; defensive actions all become automatic. That is China.

Video – More Chinese elementary schools students video 8MB

Video – Rifle disipline.

Taught with “training weapons”. Lighter, and firing a low recoil projectile instead of a full cartridge. Second and third grade students. China. video 6MB

Video -They fight for family. They fight for survival.

Unlike the American and British “soy-boys” that went to the Ukraine to plink at Russians, and ran home crying after one simple missile barriage, the youth of China are disiplined, and prepared. They will fight to the death. All for their family; their parents and their friends. video 4MB

Video – Chinese youth training

Resembles American Green Beret and SEAL training. Yeah. They get it starting in first grade.

video 2MB

Video -Why am I so fixiated on Chinese Youth?

Because the flat slobs in the West, in their easy-chairs, coffered hair, riding their nice cars, and making royal decrees like some kind of bloted evil and corrupt spoiled brat are planning on causing hardship, hurt, turmoil to THESE PEOPLE. And I am here to tell you that is will not work. Instead, it will make them very, very, VERY angry.

There is a reason why China is considered THE DRAGON. And no, it’s not just public relations. China will slice you up and spit you all out. Do not poke the dragon. video 7MB

Video – But it’s the military that China has that is peer capable and lethal

You do not want to fuck with them. All state of the art. Peer capable, or better than what the United States fields, and they love, just love their AI-guided missiles and rockets. Do NOT FUCK with them. video 3MB

Video – 2MB

Video – 3MB

Video – 3MB

Now keep in mind that if it comes down to the Chinese having to use these systems, they will do so with their enemies cites in radioactive rubble. The Chinese do not play around. They are lethal and they will go after enemies with everything they have.

You don’t want to poke the dragon.

Why does the United States want to anger the dragon?

Why?

Because the American “leadership” are psychopaths. They have no understanding of the world, and ideological monsters that are following a dangerous script that will eventually result in the absolute shredding of the Untied States, and a tumble into poverty for all the the West. video 7MB

Ok. Enough of this. Let’s calm down a tad.

Cute Chinese Girl

I think that she is pretty. Nice girl with an umbrella. Video 2MB

Fake UFO video

It’s fun to check out UFO videos. You find them all over the internet, and many are very interesting, but most have no context and thus provide zero information.

The following video is filmed near the “fisher girl” statue here in Zhuhai next to my house where I live. It takes me about seven minutes to walk to it from my front door.

I can positively tell you all that it is a fake.

video 1MB

Let’s talk about food.

Old-Fashioned Roast Beef

2022 03 28 09 20
Yummy roast beef sandwich.

Nothing beats Old-Fashioned Roast Beef the way mama used to make it!

With this roast beef recipe you can bet there’ll be lots of good eatin’. Just remember to let it rest, slice it thinly across the grain, and finish it off with the pan drippings – that’s what makes it absolutely perfect. Oh, and add some potatoes and gravy.

What You’ll Need

  • 1 (4-pound) beef bottom round roast
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

R.90f580e455ca44c8d4965c4077a28773
A beef bottom round roast.

What to Do

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Place roasting rack in large roasting pan and coat with cooking spray. Place roast on rack, fat side up.
  2. In small bowl, combine remaining ingredients; mix well. Rub spice mixture over entire roast, covering completely.
  3. Roast 30 minutes. Reduce oven to 300 degrees and continue roasting beef 70 to 75 minutes, or until a meat thermometer registers 135 degrees for medium-rare, or until desired doneness beyond that. Let stand 15 to 20 minutes before slicing.

Notes

To make a tasty sauce for your roast beef, just add 1 cup beef broth to roasting pan and heat over high heat, scraping the bottom to loosen any brown bits.

And sandwiches…

Open Faced Reuben Sandwiches

2022 03 28 09 25
It’s an awfully delicious sandwich.

Ever find yourself wondering how to make a Reuben sandwich with some style? Some of the biggest and best delis serve their Reubens open-faced, just like in this recipe that we got from a deli in Central New York. We loved these Open Faced Reuben Sandwiches  and we had to pass along the recipe for you to enjoy! There’s something about this sandwich that just makes your mouth water.

What You’ll Need

  • 1/2 cup mayonnaise
  • 2 tablespoons ketchup
  • 2 tablespoons sweet pickle relish
  • 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
  • 8 slices rye bread
  • 1 pound sliced deli corned beef
  • 2 (14-ounce) cans sauerkraut, rinsed and well drained
  • 8 slices (6 ounces) Swiss cheese

What to Do

  1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
  2. In a medium bowl, combine the mayonnaise, ketchup, relish, garlic powder, salt, and pepper; mix well.
  3. Arrange the bread on two baking sheets. Spread dressing mixture on each slice. Top each with corned beef, sauerkraut, and a slice of Swiss cheese.
  4. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes, or until heated through, and the cheese is melted. Place 2 pieces on each plate and serve open-faced.

Test Kitchen Tips

  • You might want to use only half of the Thousand Island dressing on the sandwiches before baking them. Then just top each slice with a dollop of dressing before serving. Our mouths are already watering!

China is a major force

If you are in the West, it’s easy to get overwhelmed in the lies and bullshit about China.

China is advanced, a manufacturing powerhouse, run on merit and disipline. They are successful and they “ain’t stopping for shit”. If you take them on, they WILL FUCKING SLAUGHTER YOU.

Remember that word.

Slaughter.

video. High Speed Trains. 4MB

The rest of the world appears lazy in comparison. Chinese are hard drivers. video 4MB

China military. Don’t be so sure that they would be an easy nation to conquer. video 4MB

And this fool, in Hong Kong, obviously influenced by the Pro-Democracy NED “color revolution” decided to harass the Chinese guards. The Chinese DON’T PLAY. Down and drawn in 1.5 seconds.  video 3MB

China is fighting to exist. Just like Russia. And if you think , and believe that they are not taking the THREATs from the United States seriously, you are deluded. It’s no mistake that they have a mass production of hyper-velocity nuclear missiles all with the United States targets plastered on them.

Listen up. video 25MB

Wrap up

Oh, you think that I am kidding? Oh, you think that I am being alarmist? Look at this quote out of the Kremlin directly from President Putin…

PUTIN: 

"I am now instructing our 4 combat regions that if USA and NATO dare to provoke us (around the Black Sea) and try to hit us with even ONE guided missile then you must hit them back as hard as possible. 

Hit them fiercely until they kneel down for mercy. 

If they retaliate, I command you to use nuclear weapons to hit their countries. 

No need to think about the consequences. 

I will be solely responsible. 

Your duty is just to hit them hard until they kneel down begging for mercy. 

Once the war has started I expect you to subdue Europe within 5 days. 

No need to think... just take over the 8 capitals of Europe. 

From now on our Air, Land and Navy armed forces are on full alert. 

I want the world to know who is the leader of the world. 

What is USA... I am telling them they will be trembling in front of us. 

They have been belittling and making fun of many countries but don't they dare to try us. 

Go to hell. 

My view is that if the Russians have to live under USA's mercy then what good is there left in this world!!"

-Kremlin

[This link is blocked in the usa, france, hungary, serbia, moldova, switzerland, and singapore. Heck, even the russian language website is blocked.]
.

In June 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree stating,

“The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies… 

...and also in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is put under threat.

Clearly, the United States has pushed Russia to a state where they beleive this is the case.

Clearly, though not reported in the Western media, both Russia and China are at a high state of military readiness.

  • Russia is at the highest state; DEFCON 1. (Open Warfare)
  • China is at second highest state DEFCON 2. (Full readiness; no open warfare).
  • USA is at DEFCON 3. (Alert for orders.)

No American pre-emptive nuclear strikes are possible without immediate unleashing of MAD upon the entirety of the West.

Out of necessity, Russia and China have banded together and created a new nation. It’s a United Asia. Other nations are drifiting towards it. For now, you can consider it to be similiar to the USA, or the EU in unity.

Presently, the comprehensive document is only between Russia and China. However, Iran is interested in generating similiar agreements, and India is working towards joining the block as well.

      • That’s 70% of the world’s population.
      • 85% of the world’s manufacturing.
      • 65-70% of the world’s energy resources.

All of the rest of the nations in Asia are moving towards this group.

It’s a new nation.

And the Untied States (and it’s proxy nations) are pretending that this is not the case. They are pretending that they can treat China separately from Russia, India from Russia, Iran from China, and so on and so forth.

They  cannot face the reality; the truth.

So, without plans and “expert” guidance from RAND, the United States (leading the West) are still following the same tired-old “take over the world” script written decades ago, and implementing the plans set forth. (Follow the links for the RAND plans to initiate war. When you read them, you will discover that the US government has been following them to the letter.)

Russia suppression via a RED LINE tripwire event (Ukraine), and a false flag for involvement. The RAND operational plan for war via Ukraine.

Then, a “pivot to Asia” with a …

China suppression via a RED LINE tripwire event (Taiwan), and a false flag for involvement. The RAND operational plan for war via Taiwan.

These plans have been telegraphed, and well understood by the Russian and Chinese leadership. And since the United States is following that old script, they are easy to anticipate and handle.

However, the unifed Russia and China block was unexpected, and it doesn not fit in with the plan. So the way that the United States has decided to handle this issue is to IGNORE IT and pretend that this reality does not exist.

They will continue their assaults and probing actions.

Now it’s Russia. Russia has issued strike orders, and telegraphed them to the West, but you know, eventually they will engage China, and when that happens, China WILL ENGAGE THEM RIGHT BACK. Unlike Russia, China will not telegraph any warning.

It will be on American soil, by the way. It will not be so nice.

It will be a slaughter.

Goodnight from MM

View from my home. Goodnight. video 3MB

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
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The final finishing touches and conclusion of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with a look at Tiki Culture and Bachelor pads

The Ukraine “invasion” is coming to a close.

It’s all a “mop up” exercise at this point. Contrary to what the main stream “news” media has to say, nope… Russia is not running out of bullets. Nope, Russia is not stalled. Nope, the Ukrainians are not inflicting huge casualties. Nope, it’s not going to be a long drawn-out war. But, rather it’s all coming to a conclusion. It will probably be all wrapped up by May 2022. And a new reality will manifest on the Geo-Political landscape. Here, we talk about this for a spell.

I suppose that you, the reader, might be confused.

As all the Western media is all hot and bothered about the great fiasco that Russia has got itself involved with. Of course, it’s a fiction. But, man oh, man, it’s a mighty fiction. I’ve never seen such insane levels of lies and distortions.

I will not spend too much time on the lies.

If you are unaware of the lies, then this is not the place to be. Others have devoted all sorts of time and effort to unpack all the nonsense. Personally, I consider it a waste of time. It’s like trying to dig a hole in the sand. It just keeps getting filled in.

Russia had it’s “back to the wall”, and had to stop an encroaching nuclear armed power from being on it’s borders. It waited. It asked nicely. It laid out the consequences if NATO and the United States continued to violate their treaties, and then when they said “No!”, Russia took action.

It’s all pretty simple.

Ok. Let’s check out what’s going on with the final stages of the Russian Invasion of the Ukraine….

Larry C. Johnson: “The Ukrainian Army Has Been Defeated. What’s Left Is Mop-Up”

Question 1 Can you explain to me why you think Russia is winning the war in Ukraine?

Larry C. Johnson– Within the first 24 hours of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, all Ukrainian Ground Radar Intercept capabilities were wiped out. Without those radars, the Ukrainian Air Force lost its ability to do air to air intercept.

In the intervening three weeks, Russia has established a de facto No Fly Zone over Ukraine. While still vulnerable to shoulder fired Surface to Air Missiles supplied by the U.S. and NATO to the Ukrainians, there is no evidence that Russia has had to curtail Combat Air Operations.

Russia’s arrival in Kiev within three days of the invasion also caught my attention. I recalled that the Nazi’s in Operation Barbarossa took seven weeks to reach Kiev and the required 7 more weeks to subdue the city. The Nazis had the advantage of not pulling punches to avoid civilian casualties and were eager to destroy critical infrastructure. Yet many so-called American military experts claimed that Russia was bogged down.

When a 24 mile (or 40 mile, depends on the news source) was positioned north of Kiev for more than a week, it was clear that Ukraine’s ability to launch significant military operations had been eliminated. If their artillery was intact, then that column was easy pickings for massive destruction.

That did not happen.

Alternatively, if the Ukrainian’s had a viable fixed wing or rotary wing capability they should have destroyed that column from the air.

That did not happen.

Or, if they had a viable cruise missile capability they should have rained down hell on the supposedly stalled Russian column.

That did not happen.

The Ukrainians did not even mount a significant infantry ambush of the column with their newly supplied U.S. Javelins.

The scale and scope of the Russian attack is remarkable.

They captured territory in three weeks that is larger than the land mass of the United Kingdom. They then proceeded to carry out targeted attacks on key cities and military installations. We have not seen a single instance of a Ukrainian regiment or brigade size unit attacking and defeating a comparable Russian unit. Instead, the Russians have split the Ukrainian Army into fragments and cut their lines of communication.

The Russians are consolidating their control of Mariupol and have secured all approaches on the Black Sea. Ukraine is now cut off in the South and the North.

I would note that the U.S. had a tougher time capturing this much territory in Iraq in 2003 while fighting against a far inferior, less capable military force. If anything, this Russian operation should scare the hell out of U.S. military and political leaders.

The really big news came this week with the Russian missile strikes on what are de facto NATO bases in Yavoriv and Zhytomyr.

NATO conducted cyber security training at Zhytomyr in September 2018 and described Ukraine as a “NATO partner.”

  • Zhytomyr was destroyed with hypersonic missiles on Saturday.
  • Yavoriv suffered a similar fate last Sunday.

It was the primary training and logistics center that NATO and EUCOM used to supply fighters and weapons to Ukraine. A large number of the military and civilian personnel at that base became casualties.

Not only is Russia striking and destroying bases used by NATO regularly since 2015, but there was no air raid warning and there was no shutdown of the attacking missiles.

Question 2Why is the media trying to convince the Ukrainian people that they can prevail in their war against Russia? If what you say is correct, then all the civilians that are being sent to fight the Russian army, are dying in a war they can’t win. I don’t understand why the media would want to mislead people on something so serious. What are your thoughts on the matter?

Larry C. Johnson– This is a combination of ignorance and laziness. Rather than do real reporting, the vast majority of the media (print and electronic) as well as Big Tech are supporting a massive propaganda campaign.

I remember when George W. Bush was Hitler.

I remember when Donald Trump was Hitler.

And now we have a new Hitler, Vladimir Putin.

This is a tired, failed playbook. Anyone who dares to raise legitimate questions about is immediately tarred as a Putin puppet or a Russia stooge. When you cannot argue facts the only recourse is name calling.

Question 3Last week, Colonel Douglas MacGregor was a guest on the Tucker Carlson Show. His views on the war are strikingly similar to your own. Here’s what he said in the interview:

“The war is really over for the Ukrainians. They have been ground into bits, there is no question about that despite what we hear from our mainstream media. So, the real question for us at this stage is, Tucker, are we going to live with the Russian people and their government or we going to continue to pursue this sort of regime change dressed up as a Ukrainian war? Are we going to stop using Ukraine as a battering ram against Moscow, which is effectively what we’ve done.”  

(Tucker Carlson– MacGregor Interview) 

Do you agree with MacGregor that the real purpose of goading Russia into a war in Ukraine was “regime change”?  Second, do you agree that Ukraine is being used as a staging ground for the US to carry out a proxy-war on Russia?

Larry C. Johnson– Doug is great analyst but I disagree with him—I don’t think there is anyone in the Biden Administration that is smart enough to think and plan in those strategic terms.

In my view the last 7 years have been the inertia of the NATO status quo. What I mean by that is that NATO and Washington, believed they could continue to creep east on Russia’s borders without provoking a reaction.

NATO and EUCOM regularly carried out exercises—including providing “offensive” training—and supplied equipment. I believe reports in the United States that the CIA was providing paramilitary training to Ukrainian units operating in the Donbass are credible. But I have trouble believing that after our debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, we suddenly have Sun Tzu level strategists pulling the strings in Washington.

There is an air of desperation in Washington.

Besides trying ban all things Russian, the Biden Administration is trying to bully China, India and Saudi Arabia. I do not see any of those countries falling into line. I believe the Biden crew made a fatal mistake by trying to demonize all things and all people Russian. If anything, this is uniting the Russian people behind Putin and they are ready to dig in for a long struggle.

I am shocked at the miscalculation in thinking economic sanctions on Russia would bring them to their knees. The opposite is true. Russia is self-sufficient and is not dependent on imports. Its exports are critical to the economic well-being of the West.

If they withhold wheat, potash, gas, oil, palladium, finished nickel and other key minerals from the West, the European and U.S. economies will be savaged. And this attempt to coerce Russia with sanctions has now made it very likely that the U.S. dollar’s role as the international reserve currency will show up in the dustbin of history.

Question 4 Ever since he delivered his famous speech in Munich in 2007, Putin has been complaining about the “architecture of global security”. In Ukraine we can see how these nagging security issues can evolve into a full-blown war. As you know, in December Putin made a number of demands related to Russian security, but the Biden administration shrugged them off and never responded. Putin wanted written assurances that NATO expansion would not include Ukraine (membership) and that nuclear missile systems would not be deployed to Romania or Poland. Do you think Putin’s demands are unreasonable?

Larry C. Johnson– I think Putin’s demands are quite reasonable. The problem is that 99% of Americans have no idea of the kind of military provocation that NATO and the U.S. have carried out over the last 7 years.

The public was always told the military exercises were “defensive.”

That simply is not true.

Now we have news that DTRA was funding biolabs in Ukraine. I guess Putin could agree to allow U.S. nuclear missile systems in Poland and Romania if Biden agrees to allow comparable Russian systems to be deployed in Cuba, Venezuela and Mexico. When we look at it in those terms we can begin to understand that Putin’s demands are not crazy nor unreasonable.

Question 5Russian media reports that Russian “high precision, air-launched” missiles struck a facility in west Ukraine “killing more than 100 local troops and foreign mercenaries.” Apparently, the Special Operations training center was located near the town of Ovruch which is just 15 miles from the Polish border. What can you tell us about this incident? Was Russia trying to send a message to NATO?

Larry C. Johnson– Short answer—YES!

Russian military strikes in Western Ukraine during the past week have shocked and alarmed NATO officials. The first blow came on Sunday, March 13 at Yavoriv, Ukraine. Russia hit the base with several missiles, some reportedly hypersonic. Over 200 personnel were killed, which included American and British military and intelligence personnel, and hundreds more wounded. Many suffered catastrophic wounds, such as amputations, and are in hospital.

Yet, NATO and the western media have shown little interest in reporting on this disaster.

Yavoriv was an important forward base for NATO (see here). Until February (prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), the U.S. 7th Army Training Command was operating from Yavoriv as late as mid-February.

Russia has not stopped there.

ASB Military news reports Russia hit another site, Delyatyn, which is 60 miles southeast of Yavoriv (on Thursday I believe).

Yesterday, Russia hit Zytomyr, another site where NATO previously had a presence. Putin has sent a very clear message—NATO forces in Ukraine will be viewed and treated as combatants. Period.

Question 6Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been lionized in the western media as a “wartime leader” and a modern-day “Winston Churchill”. What the media fails to tell its readers is that Zelensky has taken a number of steps to strengthen his grip on power while damaging fragile democratic institutions in Ukraine. For example, Zelensky has “banned eleven opposition-owned news organizations” and tried to bar the head of Ukraine’s largest opposition party, Viktor Medvedchuk, from running for office on a bogus “terrorist financing” charge. This is not the behavior of a leader that is seriously committed to democracy.  What’s your take on Zelensky? Is he really the “patriotic leader” the media makes him out to be?

Larry C. Johnson– Zelensky is a comedian and an actor. Not a very good one at that in my view.

The West is cynically using the fact he is Jewish as a diversion from the size-able contingent of Neo-Nazis (and I mean genuine Nazis who still celebrate the Ukrainian Waffen SS unit’s accomplishments while fighting with the Nazis in WW II).

The facts are clear—he is banning opposition political parties and shutting down opposition media. I guess that is the new definition of “democracy.”

Question 7– How does this end? There’s an excellent post at the Moon of Alabama site titled “What Will Be The Geographic End State Of The War In Ukraine“. The author of the post, Bernard, seems to think that Ukraine will eventually be partitioned along the Dnieper River “and south along the coast that holds a majority ethnic Russian population.” He also says this:

“This would eliminate Ukrainian access to the Black Sea and create a land bridge towards the Moldavian breakaway Transnistria which is under Russian protection. The rest of the Ukraine would be a land confined, mostly agricultural state, disarmed and too poor to be build up to a new threat to Russia anytime soon. Politically it would be dominated by fascists from Galicia which would then become a major problem for the European Union.” 

What do you think? Will Putin impose his own territorial settlement on Ukraine in order to reinforce Russian security and bring the hostilities to an end or is a different scenario more likely?

Larry C. Johnson– I agree with MoA. Putin’s primary objective is to secure Russia from foreign threats and effect a divorce with the West. Russia has the physical resources to be an independent sovereign and is in the process of making that vision come true.

Bio– Larry C Johnson is a veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. He is the founder and managing partner of BERG Associates, which was established in 1998. Larry provided training to the US Military’s Special Operations community for 24 years. He has been vilified by the right and the left, which means he must be doing something right. His analysis and commentary can be found at his blog, https://sonar21.com/

Russian troops are being told that war has to be over by 9 May | Ukrayinska Pravda

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are being told that the war with Ukraine has to be over by 9 May 2022. [9 May – Victory Day – is culturally very significant in Russia and is celebrated every year with a military parade, which in recent years has become more and more imposing and grand.]

Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

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A comment on the Geo-Political realities

Whew! Yes, we are in a civilization war and one side has negative morals to the point of sociopathy.

I continue to be in awe of the China/Russia axis moves that are bringing this sick form of social organization we live under to a pause/stop/surrender/capitulation or some sort of change to the social structure/contract which I have been screaming about the need for over the past 50+ years.

I hope we get there.....

-psychohistorian

Some Likely Longterm Effects Of The War In Ukraine

From MoA.

Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand - 4:44 UTC · Mar 26, 2022

What are the biggest game-changers of the Ukraine war so far?

I see three:
1) The freezing of Russia's central bank assets
2) China and India's rapprochement
3) The cementation of the EU's vassalage to the U.S.
Small 🧵

I agree with these but would add that it is also likely to lead to 4) the long term demise of NATO and 5) a shrinking role for the U.S. in the Middle East will also shrink as a consequence of the war.

1) The freezing of Russia’s (and Iran’s, Venezuela’s, Afghanistan’s) assets will have severe consequences for the U.S. dollar. The U.S. essentially defaulted by holding back Russian assets that it had the fiduciary duty to give back. China and everyone else will move its reserves to countries or into commodities that are not under U.S. control. See the Michael Hudson’s interviews here and here:

[T]hat means that other countries all of a sudden see what they thought was their flight to security, what they thought was their most secure savings, their holdings in U.S. banks, US treasury bill, all of a sudden, is holding them hostage and is a high risk. Even the Financial Times of London has been writing about this, saying, how can the United States that was getting a free ride off the dollar standard for the last 50 years, ever since 1971, when foreign countries held dollars instead of gold and basically holding dollars means you buy U.S. Treasury bonds to finance the US budget deficit and the balance of payments deficit. How can the United States kill the goose that’s giving it the free ride? Well, the answer is that other countries can only move into gold and there’s an alternative to the dollar because that’s something that all the countries of the world have agreed upon is an asset, not a liability. If you hold any foreign currency, that currency is a liability of a foreign country, and if you hold gold, it’s a pure asset.

2) China’s and India’s rapprochement has been coming for some time. The border squabble over a few thousand square meters of mountain rocks in recent years never made much sense. The Ukraine crisis has shown that India and China have common interests. Some solution for the border will be worked out and full cooperation will return. This means the end for the Quad, the U.S. made anti-China coalition of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. itself.

3) The cementation of the EU’s vassalage to the U.S. will only be temporarily. European companies have their own interests and they will press their politicians into more realist positions:

It is a long haul for Europe to dispense with Russian gas. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said yesterday: “There are gas shortages, and that is why we need to talk to Russians. Europe will move towards reducing its dependence on the Russian gas, but can this happen in the coming years? This is very difficult.”

“Europe consumes 500 billion cubic meters of gas, while America and Qatar can offer 15 billion, up to the last molecule… That is why German and Austrian politicians told me: “We cannot just destroy ourselves. If we impose sanctions on Russia in the oil and gas domain, we will destroy ourselves. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot before rushing into a fight.” This is how certain rational people in the West see it today.”

4) As for NATO: As soon as Russia has finished its operation in the Ukraine it will become clear that it has absolutely no interest in attacking any NATO country. The coming period of high inflation will lead to shrinking defense budgets. A NATO that makes promises, like it did to Ukraine, but has neither will nor means to fulfill them has lost its way and serves no serious purpose. It will wither away.

5) In the Middle East the U.S. has proven to be an unreliably ally. The Saudis and others need someone else to protect their security:

The Russian intervention in the Ukraine took Gulf governments by surprise and caused a great deal of anxiety. Here were governments that have tried in recent years to balance their primary loyalty to the U.S. with a new attempt to improve relations with China and Russia.

While Putin intervened in Syria against the wishes of Gulf regimes, which were trying to unseat the Syrian ruler, Bashar al-Asad, the Gulf acknowledged the resolve and determination of the Russian government. Brutality in Russian or American intervention in Syria is of no concern to Gulf despots. They value first and foremost the willingness of the Putin administration to stand by his ally in Damascus in comparison to what they see as a lack of resolve on the part of the U.S. towards its clients in the Gulf.

The Gulf regimes feel Putin is more loyal than the U.S., and the mischievous behavior of UAE and Saudi Arabia in the last few weeks is an expression of their frustration with U.S. role in the region. (Riyadh, for instance, is in talks with China to trade some of its oil in yuan, which would deal a blow to the U.S. dollar that is used in 80 percent of world oil sales. Until now, the Saudis have exclusively used the dollar. And Emirati and Saudi leaders have refused to take Biden’s phone calls.)

China and Russia will likely cooperate to build some new security architecture in the Middle East.

As all the above plays out it may well turn out that the U.S. policy of overextending and unbalancing Russia did not work but has created a backlash that has severely damaged its own strategic position.

  • Posted by b on March 26, 2022 at 16:52 UTC | Permalink

A Robbery

"First off I am ok. . . I was a little shaken up this morning as I was robbed at the neighborhood gas station. After my hands stopped trembling I managed to call the police. They were quick to respond and calmed me down. My money is all gone. The police asked me if I knew who did it. I said yes...It was pump number 3."

-Don Bacon

Choose your partner carefully

Darn good graphic. video 24MB

China and Solomon Islands Draft Secret Security Pact, Raising Alarm in the Pacific

A leaked document has revealed that China and the Solomon Islands are close to signing a security agreement that could open the door to Chinese troops and naval warships flowing into a Pacific Island nation that played a pivotal role in World War II.

The agreement, kept secret until now, was shared online Thursday night by opponents of the deal and verified as legitimate by the Australian government. Though it is marked as a draft and cites a need for “social order” as a justification for sending Chinese forces, it has set off alarms throughout the Pacific, where concerns about China’s intentions have been growing for years.

“This is deeply problematic for the United States and a real cause of concern for our allies and partners,” Charles Edel, the inaugural Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on Friday.

“The establishment of a base in the Solomon Islands by a strategic adversary would significantly degrade Australia and New Zealand’s security, increase the chances of local corruption and heighten the chances of resource exploitation.”

It is not clear which side initiated the agreement, but if signed, the deal would give Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare of the Solomon Islands the ability to call on China for protection of his own government while granting China a base of operations between the United States and Australia that could be used to block shipping traffic across the South Pacific.

Five months ago, protesters unhappy with Beijing’s secretive influence (CIA began a color revolution on the islands) attacked the prime minister’s residence, burned businesses in the capital’s Chinatown and left three people dead. Now the worst-case scenario some Solomon Islanders envision would be a breakdown of democracy before or during next year’s election, with more unrest and the threat of China moving in to maintain the status quo.

More…

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Sanctioning Russia to it’s knees

This young woman is skeptical of the war but she wanders thru a major mall in Russia and most shelves seem full. Some prices up, others the same.

If this is a picture of sanctioned Russia, I’d say they’re doing OK.

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Chinese military training

Everyone gets military training. It all begins in Kindergarden. Little warriors. video 177MB

Do you think that it is wrong to cram so much military training to all the school children?

Mariupol, Kadyrovites and a pregnant cat

In general, it is not welcome to give interviews to the military during this special operation. But the SP correspondent, on condition of anonymity, wrote downstory by Marine Sergei S. Contractor Sergei, along with his company, works in the western part of the besieged Mariupol.

– The work is hard. Cleaning up a city is hard, exhausting work. You’re in a wild state of tension all day long. You perfectly understand that you can become an easy prey for a sniper, so you run between the houses, bending over and putting your head on your shoulders. Such is the cat-and-mouse game of death. And you are wearing a Kevlar helmet, armor, ammunition. Each of us is thin as a washboard. And everyone’s legs are like weightlifters. You feel more or less calm under the cover of a tank or other armor. Before you cross the street, you “scan” all the skyscrapers.

Everything is shot here. There is a constant counter-sniper war going on. They have a sniper climber. Works on the fifth or sixth floors. And then he quickly descends the rope and runs away until he is covered by a tank, mortar or artillery fire. Grenade launchers from the AGS got the hang of sending grenades directly into specific windows. Address.

We have guys who acted in the Middle East. Igilovtsev * were driven. There is a million-plus city in Iraq – Mosul. ISIS made it a fortified area. So the Americans pounded him into the asphalt with artillery fire. A hundred civilians could be put on one ISIS. We are working on a targeted basis. That’s why it’s so hard. Of the tanks, we only work on identified sniper points – if we don’t hit, then we’ll bury the shooter under the rubble.

Therefore, they change their beds constantly. Several groups of Buryats and Tuvinian snipers were attached to us. There was even one Khanty from the Khanty-Mansiysk Okrug. Legacy hunters. Many have gone through Chechnya, Ossetia, Syria…

But they say that Mariupol is something special. It is extremely difficult to see a sniper in a window or attic of a destroyed high-rise building. They peer at houses for hours – both through binoculars, and through a thermal imager, and with their own eyes. After two or three days, the eyes become inflamed, the faces become red – as if from constant lack of sleep. They smear them with some kind of deer fat. SSO snipers work with them. Their rifles punch through walls. In the wall after the hit – a hole the size of a basin …

In general, a third of the boys in our platoon have Ukrainian surnames. They say that we clean our country from evil spirits. There are children of the Soviet Union – those who were born in Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan. The militias in general are completely international.

Russians, Ukrainians, Abkhazians, Dagestanis. There are many Caucasians. Fights are their element. During the war, we constantly cross paths with Kadyrov’s Chechens. Then they insure us, then we insure them. At first they showed a brave contempt for death.

Then they became more careful. The war is positional. There is no dagger fight here, dashing cavalry attacks do not work. You can become easy prey for snipers or mortars. Bandera, by the way, also have Chechens. But ours call them “Chechen-speaking shaitans.” Contacted them. Come out, they say, once at a time, we will not shoot – we will fight with daggers like men. They didn’t come out.

Among the highlanders there are age – those who fought in the first Chechen war. And now we are beating Bandera together with them. Brothers in Arms. Our hatred for Bandera is mutual and absolute. We would cover them all with artillery in an hour. But they hide behind the backs of civilians.

They do not let people out into the humanitarian corridors we have opened and scream to the whole world that civilians are suffering from the occupiers. There is no logic, no sense, no high idea in their actions. Everything is built on a lie – both for the clown Zelensky and for themselves. They constantly accuse us of doing things themselves. Lies, lies, lies.

The Chechens are also ready to break loose.

It was the Chechens who figured out the most Nazis who tried to leave the city along with the civilians along the gum corridor. They first checked the shoulders – there were bruises on them from the recoil of the butt. There could be traces of knee pads on the knees. And the helmet leaves a red stripe on the head. Some were even sniffed. If a person shoots a lot, he smells of gunpowder and gun oil. A military man who runs a lot on his feet has traces of berets. There may be a callus on the thumb from reloading the magazine with ammo. They are all, as a rule, slightly stooped.

Ammunition hangs constantly on the chest. And this is sometimes over a thousand rounds. And he rubs his shoulders too. There are many nuances. In general, the highlanders have some kind of bestial intuition for the enemy. They feel it with their skin. They glare at a person with their key and wait for him to look away. And the Bandera people do not look in the eyes. They generally do not like a direct look. And by the way he takes him away, they feel the enemy. Many were given tattoos on the shoulder. Or a trace of an acid-etched pattern.

When civilians were taken out of the city, they did not even have the strength to rejoice. Complete desolation. Almost like a zombie. The eyes of many are black, devastated. You look there, as in the abyss. It seems to me that the prisoners of the concentration camps did not have the strength when they were liberated by our people. Many are on the verge of insanity or a nervous breakdown. The old people, who had all sorts of sores, as soon as they leave the basements, die from stress. They are buried right in the city. Neighbors usually bury. Mariupol is dotted with these mass graves.

After continuous running around the city and shooting, you come to the unit just killed. You think that this bad dream is over for today. Tomorrow we will start to nightmare reptiles again.
And here we are waiting for whole flocks of abandoned dogs and cats. They will surround, sit and wait for the fighters to share their dry rations. We share. Still God’s creature.

One of these days one pregnant cat has appeared. It crawls, trembles, scratches the ground with its claws and screams. Cat food is desperately needed. I gave her stew. All the other dogs and cats who were nearby did not even budge. Though hungry no less than her. Even the beast understands that a pregnant woman cannot be offended. She “grind off” all the stew and began to lick my dusty boot. Thanks so. We made her a “prone” in a box of cartridges. The pea jacket was laid. Such is the field cat maternity hospital. Let her give birth to her kittens.

We really need support and understanding here that all of Russia is behind us. And when the guys sent us the song “We bite into Mariupol” – our wings just grew. Well done who wrote the song. This is about us. After it, a halo over my head shone right over my head. We are doing great work here. Together, with the whole world – Christians, Muslims, Buddhists. We save Russia. Only this thought keeps us in good shape and does not let us relax. The Lord respects us.

That’s how we do things here. I will die – I will remember how we took Mariupol.

* The Islamic State Movement (ISIS), by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of December 29, 2014, was recognized as a terrorist organization, its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Mariupol Story

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United States Inflation

What is your experience?

I just did our weekly shopping and whole chickens that were $1/lb are now $1.50/lb. 

18 oz pack of 5 sausages that was $4 on sale and $5 regular is now $6. 

Untrimmed tri-tip, a favorite meat cut here was $6/lb and is now $8/lb. 

30oz jug of mayonnaise was $3 is now $5, but I got some on sale at $4. 

Milk being subsidized remains cheap on sale at $.75/1/2 gal. I but my dry goods in bulk and make many staples myself and haven't needed to buy any recently. 

Fresh produce remains about the same. 

I paid $1.30/lb for broccoli and $1.47/lb for honeybee apples. 

Overall, we're seeing some food inflation that I'm sure will rise going forward. Gasoline was $4.50/gal and diesel $5/.10. Currently its Spring Break and the traffic seems about the same as in previous years. (I live on the Oregon Coast, which is a tourist mecca.)

- karlof1

Chinese are SHOCKED at the homeless in the USA

This is a great video. Read the subtitles. You have to understand that there are NO homelss people inside of China. There are NO starving people in China, and everyone in China HAS a job. Nope, it’s not what the Untied States media says, but you all do know that it is just a lie generation mechanism with little semblence to reality. This video is great as it accurately reflects the feelings and thoughts of Chinese that I meet and talk with regarding America.

Pay attention to the last part of the video. She describes how homeless are taken cared for inside of China. It is no wonder why the Chinese wonder how Americans can be so hard-hearted, evil and selfish. video 100MB

What do you think about homeless people?

Tiki Culture. The Tiki Lifestyle. Island Living. Retro Life. What is it all about?

I suppose you all are probably wondering what this Tiki stuff is all about.

Well, it’s pretty simple.

It’s all about living the good life the way the cocktail set did back in the day; listening to the sounds of Exotica music and waves crashing on an island shore while sipping an exotic cocktail under a palm tree, and taking it nice and easy, even if you’re a thousand miles away from the nearest tropical island. That’s Tiki Culture.

People who are into Tiki Culture, or the “Tiki Lifestyle” crave an escape from the fast-paced lives we live. We want to know we have a special place, whether physical or in our minds, where we can go to get away from it all.

Martin Lindsay and Di Lovely at the Headhunter San Diego.0
Martin Lindsay and Di Lovely at the Headhunter San Diego.0

For many of us, it’s our own little Tiki Bar set somewhere in the corner of our home. For some of us, it’s the Tiki Bar down town or on the beach. For a lucky few, our entire lives (including our homes and businesses) are 100% Tiki with that distinct mid-century retro look and feel.

What is Tiki?

Historically and geographically, Tiki is defined by Polynesian culture – specifically, Tiki was the first man on Earth, according to most cultures. But that’s not what 20th & 21st Century Tiki Culture in America (and most of the world) is about now. (There are a lot of great websites that can give you the history of Tiki and Moai better than I can here).

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Being in a Tiki frame of mind.

As for Tiki Culture today, you’ll get different answers depending on who you talk to, and from what part of the states they hail. Tiki purists will tell you that Tiki is the genre inspired by 1930s to 1950s Hawaiian and Polynesian pop styles, blending these cultures with specific types of drinks, food and décor.

Dark woods, thatch, rattan and bamboo make up the basic building blocks of the décor and furniture. Tropical plants, waterfalls, hand-carved Tiki gods and Moai, along with nautical accents arranged in a somewhat mysterious display reminiscent of foreign lands make up an atmosphere of true Tiki.

Dancing Hula girls and fire-eating island men provide the exotic entertainment, set to jazz-influenced, drum-heavy island music. Food is an Americanized combination of South Pacific and Asian cuisine; drinks are mostly rum-based, complex, fairly strong and are not really supposed to be sweet.

Tropical Cocktails are at the center of the movement, and are served as a ritual – not just a drink – involving chunks of exotic fruits and even real flowers as garnish, exciting swizzle sticks, and occasionally even flames.

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A home Tiki bar.

Very special drinks are served in large bowls with extra long straws for a party of four; at places like the world famous Mai-Kai in Fort Lauderdale, FL they are served by a Mystery Girl dancing seductively to a gong.

Anything made of plastic, with the exception of swizzle sticks, is taboo.

If it wasn’t in a Tiki bar in the ’50s, it’s not authentic. However unless you are a true purist, a few fun plastic Tiki cups and paper cut outs from the party store can transform any room into your own Tiki haven without blowing the kids’ college fund on bamboo furniture and ceramic mugs.

Swing down to Key West and the “Tiki Bar” takes on a whole new meaning. One of the few places in the country that welcomed Tiki bars through the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, Tiki bars in the Keys evolved with the times and took on an area-specific life of their own. Bright, vivid colors replaced the dark jungle themes.

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Vintage Tiki

Like everything else in the Keys, Tiki Bars became open-air, welcoming in the cool ocean breezes.

Shorts, bikinis and flip-flops replaced party dresses and tailored suits for the dress code, and the music swayed away from Poly pop to Caribbean Island sounds, incorporating Cuban, Reggae, Calypso, and South American styles.

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Tiki bars can be a great escape.

Eventually a laid back kat named Jimmy Buffet made his way to Key West, and his music fit in perfectly with the Island’s philosophies. A Margarita or Cuba Libre are right at home next to the Mai Tai or Singapore Sling at the Tiki Bars in the Keys, and even though you won’t usually find a carved Tiki or a Polynesian show, they can still be a hell of a lot of fun.

Today, we have a wonderful bunch of krazy kats and kittens who refer to themselves as Tikiphiles. (Hell, you might be one of them yourself if you’re reading this!) These swingers love Tiki culture, in many forms. They might be purists, they might be Parrot Heads, or they might be into the Retro Scene where Tiki can be a big part. Some of the hard-core Tikiphiles follow Tiki events across the country – mainly the Big Three  – Tiki Oasis in California, Ohana on the Lake in Lake George New York, and the Hukilau in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They find each other on the internet, at Tiki bars and Tiki events. You won’t find a kooler bunch of kids. As the saying goes, they’re money, and they don’t even know it.

Tiki Culture 101: How it all started

There are some great books and a few other websites that can give you an in-depth history of Tiki Culture in America. I’m going to give it to you in a nutshell, so you can get the basics down before you finish your Mai Tai.

Sand Bar
Sand Bar; a fine Tiki themed bar on the Ocean.

The common theory is that Tiki Bars started popping up in America after World War II, when soldiers returning from the South Pacific started spreading the word of how wonderful the beautiful tropical islands were with their hula girls and swaying palms. Well, that’s not really true; the first Tiki Bars in America, by most accounts, were started in the 1930s by a couple of guys who had spent time in the islands and thought it would be fun to theme their bars with a tropical flavor.

Don the Beachcomber (Donn Beach) is generally credited as the first swanky kat to open a specifically Tiki/Polynesian-themed restaurant and lounge in Hollywood, CA in 1934. About three years later Trader Vic’s (Vic Bergeron) opened in Oakland, CA with a similar theme, and Tikiness in America took off from there. Both proprietors got popular concocting strong but tasty cocktails, and soon became known for the exotic décor, laid back atmosphere and strong libations. Bamboo and wicker galore, hand-carved Tikis, palms, pretty girls in sarongs. Hawaiian music set the standard for the blossoming era.

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How to go Tiki.

As air travel helped bring the world closer in the ’30s and ’40s, Hawaiian and Polynesian music, food and décor became more popular in the states. WW2 brought these cultures to the forefront, and Americans – who were sick of the war – focused on the beauty of these worlds, the tropical flowers and orange sunsets, the magic, the exotic women, the cool breezes and sweet fruits.

MM meal

I filmed this video a few weeks ago. It’s some some great and delicious food. This is authentic Chinese sichuan food inside of China (duh!). The hot bubbling dish is eggplant, and man oh man, is it delicious. video 32MB

The Tiki formula

Main Tiki Bar Elements (around 50 %)

Carvings and art from Polynesia like Tiki statues, posters, mugs, weapons, masks, Tiki utensils, ashtrays, Tiki lighters, menus, matches, and other objects and art that depict Tiki (Polynesian ancestor figures). Also: Artefacts from Melanesia (Papua New Guinea) and Micronesia. Architecture like A-Frame meeting houses.
All these elements can show the influences of three additional stylistic forces. In the pie chart, you see three triangles that influence original mid-century Tiki art as well as today’s revival Tiki style.

They are: 1.) Original Pacific art 2.) Modernism & Picasso and 3.) Cartoons

Supporting Tiki Elements
(10 – 20 % each, depending on your preferences)

These are split into four categories. Exotica, Pre-Tiki, Nautical and Mid-Century Pop.

  • EXOTICA – Explorers, Headhunters, voodoo, African and Asian souvenirs.
  • PRE-TIKI – Hawaiiana, South Sea movies, Hula girls, Luau imagery, Palm trees, rattan, and tapa.
  • NAUTICAL – Trader and Beachcomber style, ship models, ship wheels, anchors, fishnet floats, shells, pufferfish, nets, travel, and adventure objects and Kon-Tiki related stuff.
  • MID-CENTURY POP – Surf, Beach, Lounge and Bar elements, Rumpus Room items.

The focus on the main elements is important, with a nice mix of the supporting ideas. On the borders, but outside of Tiki style, are personal preferences like Pirates, Shriners, Rock-a-billy, Monsters, or Star Wars décor. You find these things in modern Tiki bars, even if they are obviously not authentic. To each his own: The Tiki genre is very creative, open, and playful, yet it does have its heritage and history.

After the war, those returning soldiers did want forget the bloodshed, but they certainly wanted to remember the good times. Tiki Bars sprang up all over the states, moving from the California coast clear over to the Atlantic. New Tiki Bar owners combined elements of Hawaii, Tahiti, the Philippines and other Pacific cultures to decorate their lounges. Bamboo, thatch and carved hardwoods became the building materials of choice. Tiki idols and masks adorned the walls and bar.

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Tiki foundation

Nautical props, from fishnets to lanterns made from blowfish, found their way into the design. Chinese and Japanese cuisine infiltrated the menus. Swinging Hawaiian music was combined with jazz and exotic sounds of the far east and south Pacific to create “Exotica”, the soundtrack to Tiki. Polynesian Pop was born.

The 1950s saw an explosion in pop culture that wouldn’t be matched until the advent of the World Wide Web. Tiki bars flourished in the ’50s, giving the cocktail set a new place to mingle as well as providing a nice, close-to-home adventure for the thriving middle class.

Visiting a Tiki Bar with a live Polynesian music and dance floorshow was like taking a mini vacation.

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Dining in fine Tiki.

Drinks were served in coconuts, hollowed pineapples, and eventually artistically created ceramic Tiki mugs. Patrons could buy souvenirs to take home, just like on vacation, and soon these souvenirs became collectibles. Those who loved the themed lounges took it upon themselves to re-create the atmosphere at home, and the home Tiki Bar was born.

Although it had been hip for years with the cocktail set to have a home bar (usually anything from a hideaway bar to a corner set-up with all the frills), suddenly Tiki Bars in the home became the “in” thing.

Bachelor pads were re-worked with the Tiki Theme in mind, sporting curious Moai art sculptures and black velvet paintings of Tahitian women laying naked on the beach. Swingin’ couples transformed their mid-century modern apartments to include bamboo furniture, palm plants and floral wallpaper. Basement rec-rooms across the country were turned into little Tiki islands, with fishnets hanging from the rafters and rum-stocked bamboo bars as the focal point. America loved Tiki.

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Dancing the Hula at a Tiki Bar

Then the 1960s came along. The happy days of the ’50s began to decay under the rebellion of the hippy generation  (who of course had their own ideas of ‘cool’), the problems America faced with civil rights, assassinations, corrupt government and the Vietnam war.

Once again palm trees and thatch huts were shown on the 11 o’clock news as the center of war and death.

Even Gilligan’s Island couldn’t distract people from the darkness. America was beginning to focus more on what was “real” and less on the fantasy, and much of the fun stuff we enjoyed in the old days were abandoned, washed away by a tide of indifference.

By the 1970s, Tiki culture had been worn down to ‘kitsch’. It was no longer considered a fun, exciting escape; it was considered an old, out-dated and corny style that belonged to the old generation.  Disco took over, and Tiki Bars around the country began closing their doors for good.

But something strange happened. Something wonderful. Tiki started popping up again in the strangest places.

TV shows like “Hawaii 5-0”, “Fantasy Island” and “Magnum P.I.” brought the tropics back into our homes, in a very groovy way.

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Vintage Tiki drinks

A few of the old Tiki Bars continued to succeed, managing to push on in spite of the times. Places like Key West and San Francisco somehow managed to keep the culture quietly alive, adapting to new trends.

The Florida Keys branched out with its own Tiki culture, breaking from tradition and incorporating vivid colors, open-air bars and Parrot Head music with Jimmy Buffet at the musical wheel.

Pirate culture, which is a hairline away from Tiki Culture, gained popularity, and the two started to overlap in a wonderfully adventurous way. A couple of authentic, mid-century Tiki bars, such as the Mai Kai in Fort Lauderdale, FL managed to maintain the original, traditional Tiki Culture with Polynesian shows and exotic drinks served in original-style Tiki mugs.

They pressed on, and by the early 1990s more and more Americans started opening their eyes to the wonders of Tiki. Tiki culture was rediscovered!

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Tiki Bar in LA

Where is Tiki?

You don’t have to live in the tropics to enjoy the Tiki life, but it helps. Having year-round warm temperatures, green grass and palm trees in your back yard is something I don’t ever want to give up. But some of the best Tiki Bars I’ve been to have been in places like Portland, Oregon – so it’s really a state of mind, more than a place. You can live in Alaska, as long as you have your bamboo and thatch setup and a good heater, you’re golden.

It was guys like me (and maybe you too) who kept the Tiki torches burning through the last few decades. My uncle loved the whole Tiki thing, and built his middle son a complete Tiki Hut to play in back in the ’70s, along with a Pirate Ship and a Tiki/Pirate-themed bedroom.

By that time, Tiki Culture was making its way back into the hearts of many Americans, not just us crazy few. Books on the allure of Tiki were published. Tropical themes became “in” again. More TV shows and movies were set in tropical settings. And the Internet helped propel the good word of the Tiki good life around the world. (That’s why you’re reading this, right? Dig it!)

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Tiki bars are fun.

Now, at the beginning of the new century, we’re realizing once again the fun of Tiki and the importance of preserving the original places, ideals and philosophies that make Tiki Culture so great. From hard-core traditionalists to new-wave Parrot heads, people all over the world are enjoying tropical drinks under indoor palm trees, swaying to music by Martin Denny and The Martini Kings. There are Tikiphiles who love and live everything Tiki, and everyday people who think it’s just kinda kool to have a Tiki mask hanging in their bedroom and bamboo furniture on the lanai.

Some people prefer to stick to one era and are true to it, and that is very kool. Others are all about original Tiki, basically Poly pop of the 1950s, and won’t stray from it. That is kool too because they are the kids who keep the traditional stuff going and that is very important. And many are all about back-yard Tiki, having a luau party with the fun, colorful decorations you can pick up cheap at the party store, lighting the Tiki torches and barbecuing sweet and sour chicken kabobs while the kids do the limbo.

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Arnold’s Tiki bar

To me, it’s all fantastic. Tiki culture is all about living the good life, having fun, and enjoying the tropical splendor it offers. So sit back in your bamboo chair, sip your Piña Colada with the little paper umbrella, and dig in to the fun of living Tiki!

Wait, there’s more! Here’s a fun little thing…What is NOT Tiki…

• Carribbean, South American, Mexican or African cultures. Although elements of these cultures make their way into the Tiki lifestyle occasionally, they are their own cultures and don’t really represent Tiki.

• Anything with folk music. Oof. If there’s a guy with a guitar singing Simon and Garfunkel tunes, no matter what the joint has hanging on the walls, it ain’t a Tiki Bar.

• Art Deco, palm tree & pastel decor, i.e. Miami Modern. Just because there are palm trees doesn’t make it Tiki. That’s a whole other thing. A very kool thing, but a whole other thing.

• Chinese or other oriental decor, although Tiki borrows from those styles (especially for the food!). Chinese and Japanese elements worked into the overall Tiki theme is good.

• Friday night Beef & Beer at the American Legion Hall (unless they decorate it with Tiki stuff, of course).

• Sears.

“Idaho. I have never heard of a Tiki Bar in Idaho. If anyone knows of one, please send info right away.” Well guess what? I was just told about a Tiki Bar in Idaho! And that is amazing, and fantastic. The more Tiki bars, the better!

• People who wear Hawaiian shirts with shorts, black socks and sandals. No.

• Martini bars, even of they have a neon palm tree in the window.

• And for Tiki purists, anything made of cheap plastic and bought at the local party store, neon-colored Tiki stuff, smiling Tikis, and misuse of Tiki gods (like Ku holding up a cheese platter) are unacceptable.

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Trader Sams Enchanted Tiki Room

America is a nation of Rulers not laws

Yet after COVID-19, it’s obvious our democratic system of lawmaking is, as Winston Churchill put it, “the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Given the choice between a system resembling a Rube Goldberg cartoon (with his bizarre and overly complex contraptions designed to complete simple tasks) and one that’s streamlined and efficient, I’ll take Goldberg’s vision any day.

As we saw throughout the country but in California in particular, governors were happy to dispense with the usual checks and balances and impose rules by executive order and fiat. Some initial rules were defensible during a public-health crisis, but it wasn’t long before elected officials operated like czars—imposing illogical and contradictory restrictions that made no rhyme or reason.

They kept moving the goalposts. One day, counties were on lockdown based on such and such infection rates, but the next day standards changed. In September 2020, for instance, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a re-opening blueprint based on COVID cases per 100,000 population, but then he refused to let counties that met the standard to loosen up their rules.

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Ukraine War: “Are We Your Slaves?” Pak PM Slams Western Envoys’ Joint Letter On Russia

Pakastan is not going to be dragged into the United States “Us vs. Them” uni-polar world. But can they prevail?

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Pakastan says no

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Schools teach you to be employees not bosses

Yes they do. video

Do schools teach you to be independent thinkers, or cogs in a vast huge nameless machine?

Russian Roubles for gasoline

Yves Smith has a post up about Putin’s roubles-for-gas declaration. This is in her wheelhouse and worth a read. She also discusses the Dallas Fed’s new paper on the impacts of sanctions on the oil market. Conclusion: at least as severe an impact as OPEC in the 70s.

Roubles 4 gas

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The United States to establish “Red Lines” upon China

In the use of “Red Lines”, both Russia and China defined them as unalterable, and uncrossible events that violate their national sovereignty.

The United States is now set to define their “Red Lines”.

Only instead of American sovereignty, it is really a set of limitations placed upon China. And if China, instead, acts as an independent nation and refuses American demands, this will be considered “cossing the red lines”.

Silly and highly volatile.

These are not actual “Red Lines” on American sovereignty, but rather a list of demands and limits on what America allows China to do. If China crosses those limits, America will impose punishments.

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USA Red Lines

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Oh yes,  China backing Russia is really pissing off Uncle Shmuel. How dare China! And the noise has been a daily ritual. Additionally, the Eurolemmings are very upset:

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Angry EU

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But guys, you all know that this is an expected reaction. It has been planned and expected a long, long time ago. China and Russia are playing a very advanced game of Chess, while the United States are just infants scribbling on the walls with crayons.

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The USA has to be told over and over…

China’s bank regulator says the nation will not join Western sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine invasion – ABC News

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China says no

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Mainstream media drum-beat for war is frightening the DOD

Joe Lauria reports this morning there were two leaks by MoD providing facts to fight against the MSM hysteria.

There is currently a fight between DoD, the President, the Congress and the MSM over the next actions to take over Ukraine. Maybe I am exagerating a bit but they feel the dangers of escalating this any further.

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DOD says no

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North Korea puts the West on notice

SEOUL, March 24 (Reuters) - North Korea conducted what is thought to be its largest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test ever on Thursday, the South Korean and Japanese militaries said, marking a dramatic end to a self-imposed moratorium on long-range testing.

It would be the first full-capability launch of the nuclear-armed state's largest missiles since 2017, and represents a major step in the North's development of weapons that might be able to deliver nuclear warheads anywhere in the United States.

Read on; it’s priceless!

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USA on notice

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The difference between America and China

Compare to how the people react when there is an accident. In America, everyone sits in their car. No one gets out. No one helps anyone, and they wait until the polic eand others come. At most, they might honk their horns or film the carnage.

Inside China, a nation of Rufus, everyone leaves their car and gets out to help. It’s all about community. It’s about responsibility, and it’s about purpose. video 22MB

A reminder to the maniacs and neo-con interventionists in the West

Head of Roskosmos: 

"I want to confirm, knowing the technical side of the matter, that the Russian Federation is capable of physically destroying any aggressor or any group of aggressors at any distance, globally, in a matter of minutes,"

He said this on Channel One television.

The head of Roskosmos also expressed hope that Russia wouldn’t have to use the missiles that the state corporation builds because they are “the last resort.”

"Our machines are for the last resort, I think that’s what President [of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin] was talking about when he warned the countries that would try to intervene in this special military operation, including NATO countries, that no one should forget that Russia has a very reliable nuclear strategic potential and means of its delivery.  

The means of delivery are intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as operational-tactical missile systems, and so on,"

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Russia can kill you

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China Crash Mystery Deepens As Evidence Suggests Mid-Air Breakup

China Plane Crash: If investigators confirm that the part found 10 km away came from the jet, it could offer clues about what led to Monday's crash or at least shed light on the flight's final seconds.

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At least one piece of the Boeing Co. 737-800 that crashed in China appears to have broken loose well before impact, a finding that adds mystery to the plane’s fatal dive.

The piece suspected to have come from the China Eastern Airlines Corp. Ltd. jet was found about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the main wreckage area, Chinese officials said at a briefing Thursday.

If investigators confirm that the part came from the jet, it would indicate the plane suffered some kind of midair breakup, which could offer clues about what led to Monday’s crash or at least shed light on the flight’s final seconds.

“The questions are: exactly what piece was it and when did it come off?” said Jeff Guzzetti, the former chief of accident investigations at the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Flight 5735 from Kunming to Guangzhou went down without an emergency radio call from pilots, slamming into a forested hillside about 100 miles from its destination, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. There were 132 people aboard.

The highly unusual dive has baffled crash investigators and safety experts. Aircraft such as the 737-800 are designed not to dive so aggressively, so some kind of aircraft failure or pilot action would be required to keep its nose pointed down for so long.

A piece about 1.3 meters (4.3 feet) long and 10 centimeters (4 inches) wide believed to be from the plane was found on farmland, Zheng Xi, head of the Guangxi fire-fighting rescue team, said at a briefing.

It’s impossible to know at this early stage in the investigation whether the piece came loose as a result of stresses during the high-speed plunge or broke off before the sudden descent.

Guzzetti said it most likely occurred as the plane plummeted from a cruising altitude of about 29,000 feet in about 1 minute and 35 seconds.

“In my view, that’s the aircraft shedding parts as it’s coming down,” he said.

If that’s the case, it would provide clues about the plane’s speed and possible pilot maneuvers.

Still Transmitting

The aircraft didn’t break apart completely. It continued to transmit its position until it reached 3,225 feet, according to data collected by the Flightradar24 tracking service, suggesting the main structure remained intact.

A Bloomberg News review of Flightradar24 data showed the jet was flying well above normal speeds during the dive, possibly nearing the speed of sound.

Going that fast on a jetliner that’s not designed for such speeds could cause relatively light-weight components on wings and tail sections to break loose, according to an investigation into the Dec. 19, 1997 crash of a SilkAir 737-300 in Indonesia.

That jet was traveling close to the speed of sound as it dove into a river, investigators concluded. The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee said there wasn’t enough evidence to say what caused the crash, but the (The United States representative) NTSB dissented, saying that the captain most likely did it intentionally in a murder-suicide.

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Mid-Air breakup?

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Almost 22,000 Feet in 72 Seconds: Plunge of China Eastern Plane Puzzles Experts

Boeing 737 crash in southern China was among the fastest jetliner descents ever recorded

It was one of the fastest descents of a commercial aviation jetliner in history.

China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735 had been flying normally for just over an hour on Monday when it suddenly nosedived, plummeting more than 21,000 feet in 72 seconds. After the fall appeared to be briefly arrested, the plane stopped transmitting data, crashing into green mountains in southern China.

Video footage captured by a mining company’s surveillance camera showed the aircraft almost perpendicular to the ground in its final moments before it crashed, while attempts by air-traffic controllers and other nearby jetliners to contact the pilots after the aircraft started hurtling to the ground went unanswered.

It is “extremely unusual to see an aircraft in a full nose dive,” one industry safety official in the U.S. said. “Many of us are scratching our heads.”

The vertical speed of the descent reached almost 31,000 feet a minute at one point, according to data from tracking provider Flightradar24, mystifying experts. With very limited information available so far, it leaves open a range of possibilities as to how the Boeing 737-800 carrying 132 passengers and crew met its fate.

The Aviation Safety Network, operated by the independent safety advocacy group, the Flight Safety Foundation, and which maintains a flight accident database going back to 1919, said it identified eight examples of accidents since 1985 where a plane quickly descended in an abnormally steep way or fell out of the sky at high speed.

What do you think happened?

More…

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Puzzled

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China Eastern Airlines grounds Boeing 737-800 planes after crash

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China Eastern Airlines has grounded its entire fleet of Boeing 737-800 aircraft – a move that came after the same widely-used plane model plummeted from the sky with 132 passengers on board earlier this week.

An airline spokesperson said China Eastern and its subsidiaries have temporarily paused use of a total of 223 Boeing 737-800s. The planes will undergo safety checks and maintenance during the grounding.

China Eastern Airlines is also planning an overhaul of its plane safety protocols following the incident, CNN reported.

Authorities have yet to determine what caused China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 to crash with no apparent survivors. The plane appeared to nosedive from a cruising altitude of approximately 30,000 feet.

Flight tracking service FlightRadar24 said the plane “started to lose altitude very fast,” with a vertical descent of 31,000 feet per minute. Authorities recovered the plane’s black box from the crash site on Wednesday, which could provide clues about what happened.

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China grounds 737

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MM delicious peppers and beef

I filmed this in one of my local restaurants. Fine authentic Chinese pepper beef. It’s served on a hot platter right out of the oven. It goes great with alcohol, as that’s how all the Chinese eat it. Yum. video 23MB

Both China and Russia have declared Soros a “terrorist”.

“The Russian govt announces an arrest warrant against the billionaire Georges Soros, the main promoter of the war in Ukraine.

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Bye Bye

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Chinese girl

She’s got nice curves, and I really do like her dress. video 4MB

I think that she looks great in blue. Love the soft curves.

Germany Spokesperson: No big new sanctions package expected at EU summit on Russia

A spokesperson for the German government said on Wednesday that they were not expecting a “big new sanctions package” on Russia to be announced at the EU summit, as reported by Reuters.

So much for “European Unity”.

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Germany says no

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Germany: We will not get involved in Ukraine- Russia issue

Video on You-Tube. They don’t want to share the “concrete galoshes” with the Untied States. So they say. But who knows?

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German video

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Chinese Girl

She’s a tight little cute girl. video. 4MB

She’s one of my favorites.

Solomon Island & China Security Partnership

Solomon Islands reportedly close to signing security partnership with China. My guess it is becuse of the NGO “color revolution” activities that the CIA has been sponsoring the last few years.

A draft white paper that surfaced on social media today sets out a framework that could allow Beijing to deploy forces to "protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in the Solomon Islands."

The agreement says that the Solomon Islands can "request China to send police, armed police, military personnel and other law enforcement and military forces to the country."

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Solomon Security

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American cities becoming vacant

It’s not only the boarded-up store fronts. It’s the office space throughout the urban areas.

Blackstone walks away from Midtown Manhattan building, CMBS holders left holding the bag. Yah. This is how it is going in the US.

SF: 26% of total office space for lease. Occupancy rates still down 70%.

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Empty Cities

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Why Singapore is better than Chicago

Straightforward. video 56MB

China moving forward with 6G

There’s 6G in our future, “Nations scramble to take a lead in 6G technology”:

"The revolutionary technology, expected to be 10-100 times faster than 5G in terms of data transmission speed, will integrate with advanced computing, big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, set to make up for desired applications that fall short of expectations in the 5G era....

"In January, a high-tech lab in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province, announced a major achievement related to 6G-oriented terahertz 100/200Gbps (gigabits per second) real-time wireless communication, which led to the world's fastest real-time transmission for terahertz real-time wireless communication that's been publicly reported....

"China, the world's biggest internet and smartphone market, granted 5G licenses for commercial use and started 6G R&D in 2019. It has built the largest 5G mobile infrastructure in the industry, with 1.43 million 5G base stations rolled out as of the end of 2021, accounting for over 60 percent of the global total."

I laugh at US telecom 5G commercials touting their superiority when they’re so totally outclassed by China. China’s telecoms will dominate the Eurasian Bloc’s market and aid in the region’s rapid developmental transformation.

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Chinese 6G

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Chinese Girl with Great Hips

Chinese girl. Video 1MB

I think she has a really nice tummy and fine womanly hips. Do you think that she’s too thin, as some American friends have suggested to me?

Russians captured a Ukrainian Control Complex

LATEST NEWS FLASH YOU’LL NEVER HEAR IN THE MSM: On Monday night, Russian forces released news of their capture of a Soviet-era nuclear bunker near Kiev, which was being used by the Ukrainian army as a command complex. 60-some prisoners were taken, reportedly half of them being officers at the rank of Major or above.

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Full Capture

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In Case You Care to Know What Is Really Going On

Putin is catching on

Putin Orders Ruble Payments for Energy

But he has a way to go

When will Putin realize that Russian default on loans is the proper response to the seizure of Russian assets? Russia would have to be extremely foolish to borrow another cent from the West. Therefore, why protect access to foreign borrowing by continuing to service foreign debt? As the West has already stolen Russia’s money, Russia should walk away from the debt, which it was a strategic blunder of the highest order for Russia to have contracted. https://www.rt.com/business/552511-imf-us-dollar-reserve-currency

Lavrov is catching on

“This all is about removing the obstacle in the form of Russia on the way to building a unipolar world… This is not about Ukraine, this is about a world order in which the United States wants to be the sole sovereign and dominate.”

“Our Polish colleagues have already stated that there will be a NATO summit, and peacekeepers should be sent. I hope they understand what they are talking about. This will be the very direct clash between the Russian and NATO armed forces, which everyone wants to avoid.”

“The Americans proceed from the fact that it is unprofitable for them if this process is completed quickly. They expect to continue pumping weapons into Ukraine.”

Sanctions are destroying dollar as world currency

IMF says Washington’s illegal seizure of Russia’s reserves is causing “increasing fragmentation” in the global payments system, causing some countries to move away from the dollar.

Sanctions destroying influence of Washington’s Russian allies

Anatoly Chubais, Atlanticist Integrationist excrement, has resigned his position as presidential aide for sustainable development and fled Russia.

Good riddence says Russia.

Chubais is the Russian traitor who sold out Russia to the West during the Yeltsin years. He plunged millions into poverty while helping a few oligarchs and the West seize Russia’s assets. For reasons no one understands, Putin kept him on in lesser positions instead of having him shot.

The “Victorious Ukrainian Forces” sre trying to escape by dressing up as women

Here are the Ukrainian Nazis that, according to US Secretary of Defense, are on the verge of Defeating the Russian army. It doesn’t look that way. Not really.

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Cross dressing

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Dumbshit Americans Prefer Racial Preferences Above Justice

The Supreme Court is already a joke. Now they want to make it a laughing stock. Discrediting the court is their way of removing judicial restraint on the executive branch. Another leap into tyranny.

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SJW above all

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US Secretary of Defense Sees Russian Defeat in Ukraine

The incompetent fool Biden appointed Secretary of Defense said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was stalled by valiant Ukrainian forces and that Russia was feeding its troops into a wood chipper and would soon run out of soldiers. The Defense Secretary’s statement is 100% fantasy.

Ukraine is a no-fly zone, one established by Russia. Before Russian troops arrived, Ukrainian radar, air fields, and military infrastructure was destroyed along with the navy and air force.

The remains of the Ukrainian army are isolated and surrounded. The units have no communication and are incapable of offensive action.

The US-supported and armed neo-Nazi militias are ensconced in population centers where they are using the civilians that Putin intended to spare as shields and are blowing up the towns and cities for the Western presstitutes to blame on Russia. As the population centers are being destroyed and civilians killed by the neo-Nazis , there is no reason for the Russians to keep to their policy of avoiding the risk to civilians of heavy weapon use.

Ukraine is cut off from the Black Sea. It remains to be seen whether Putin, in another of those fruitless Russian good will gestures, will give the territory back to Ukraine. Indeed, at this time no effective Ukraine government exists. Russia is wasting its time negotiating with a non-government.

NATO bases in Western Ukraine where Russian troops are not operating have been destroyed.by precision weapons. Among the casualties are US and UK military and intelligence personnel who were training Ukrainians in the use of the weapons supplied by the West. Russia has made it clear what awaits NATO members if they get involved in the conflict.

The real puzzle is what do Western government officials and presstitute media think they are accomplishing with fantasy news reports? Has the West reached the point in George Orwell’s 1984 where victories are claimed in a war that doesn’t exist?

Only a portion of the assembled Russian troops have been committed to the conflict. The rest are on hand to deal with any NATO intervention.

In recent years, many people have become accustomed to thinking about the term “deep state” as something that only applies to the United States. While it is certainly clear that a fifth column has become increasingly embedded across all levels of America’s military, intelligence, bureaucratic, corporate, media and academic influence- very few westerners have any clear idea how this same structure has expressed itself in the nations of Eurasia.

Most relevant for the topic of this present report, we can take as an example the vast western-leaning hive of vipers, oligarchs and liberal technocrats which rose to power under the direction of the CIA during the dark years of shock therapy of the 1990s. Of course, since taking over from Yeltsin in 1999, President Vladimir Putin has gone far to purging many of those treacherous agencies that looted Russia during Perestroika, regaining control of vital institutions, bringing Russia’s military, scientific and intelligence powers back into national hands.

Speaking of this battle on December 9, 2021 at the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, Putin stated:

“In the early 2000s, I’ve cleaned all of them out, but in mid-1990s, we had Central Intelligence Agency employees as advisors and even official employees of the government of the Russian Federation, as we learned later… There were American specialists sitting at our nuclear weapons complex sites, they went to work there, from morning to late night – they had a table and an American flag. They lived there and worked there. They did not need any fine instruments to interfere in our life, because they had control over everything already.”

Putin went on to describe the new CIA-run strategy of asymmetrical warfare utilizing foreign NGOs and rabble-rousing proxies (see: Navalny) within the vast “civil society” apparatus embedded within his nation:

“As soon as Russia started claiming its interests, started to raise its sovereignty, economy and armed forces’ capability, new instruments of influence on our internal political life became needed, including rather fine instruments via various organizations, funded from abroad.”

Of course while these operations have lit many weaker nations on fire in earlier days, the color revolutionary techniques used by the CIA-funded NED, or Open Society Foundations have resulted in very limited successes in Russia where saner heads have cut off many of these operations of funding while illegalizing Soros’ entire organization in 2015 declaring them to be “threats to state security”. Although Russia was 25 years behind schedule on this matter, banning Soros put them into the special club of nations that got their acts together led by China who had the wits to ban Soros in 1989, illegalizing his Open Society operations and arresting its agents (including CPC General Secretary and Soros agent extraordinaire Zhao Ziyang).

After recapturing key strategic interests from private clutches during his early years in power, Putin established a new set of ultimatums that he expected the liberal technocrats and oligarchs to adhere to: play by the rules set out by him or face the consequences. Some went to jail, and many went to London for sanctuary (often buying mansions with their ill-begotten gains in an area that came to be known as “Moscow on the Thames”). Still others stayed behind to play by the rules. Perhaps some did adapt to this new reality, but other forces continued to act as a fifth column- often keeping their claws firmly sunk into the levers of finance in Russia’s IMF-influenced central banking architecture and local regional power centers.

It was to these fifth columnists that Putin addressed his remarks on March 15 of this year saying:

“Yes, of course they [the West] will bet on the so-called Fifth Column. Our national traitors. On those who earn money here, with us, but live there. And they live not even in the geographical sense of the word but according to their thoughts. According to their slavish consciousness… many of these people, by their very nature, are mentally located exactly there, and not here. Not with our people. Not with Russia. This is, in their opinion, a sign of belonging to a higher caste, to a higher race. Such people are ready to sell their own mothers if only they were allowed to sit in the hallway of this very highest caste… They do not understand at all that if they are needed by this so-called “higher caste”, then they are needed only as expendable material in order to use them to inflict maximum damage on our people.”

The myopic habit of looking only at the USA or European fifth columnists undermining the sovereignty of nation states over the past decades while ignoring Eurasia, has caused many well-meaning people to presume falsely that nations like Russia or China can be treated as monolithic institutions with either a “good” or “bad” label attached to them. Such oversimplifications unfortunately result in minds susceptible to much misinformation, which there is no shortage to be found amidst our age of psychological warfare operations, media spin and narrative reframing.

Ignorance of the battle currently being waged between genuine nationalists surrounding Putin vs this other western-directed fifth column will ensure fatal errors in judgement and a misdiagnosis of our current crisis. Even worse, vital opportunities for broader policy solutions requisite to empower sovereign nation states will be lost and with this loss, any capacity to engage in proper combat with an emerging totalitarian world order will be destroyed.

Chubais Jumps Ship

One of the most blatant examples of leading Fifth Columnists who “sell their own mothers to sit in the hallway of this very highest caste” has been the figure of Anatoly Chubais who has recently announced his departure from Russia (hopefully permanently) in order to seek safer terrain in Turkey. In this leap into safer sanctuary, Chubais has abandoned his role as ‘Special Representative for Relations with International Organizations to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals’ at the UN.

Chubais played one of the most destructive roles of any living politician while working with the CIA-run Yeltsin government as a “Soros-young reformer” alongside Yegor Gaidar and other western tools who were recruited by the west to run the sacking and disintegration of Russia during the 1990s. Acting as Deputy Prime Minister for Economic and Financial Policy between 1992-96, Chubais oversaw the privatization of all strategic sectors of the Russian economy alongside Harvard’s Jeffrey Sachs, Rhodes Scholar Strobe Talbott, a coterie of sociopathic oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsy, Platon Lebedev and Boris Berezovsky (many of whom formed Chubais’ ‘Group of 7’ in 1996).

Chubais and Geidar pioneered the infamous “voucher system” which underpinned the multi-phased looting operation dubbed Operation Hammer by Bush Sr’s CIA starting in 1991. William Engdahl rigorously documented this dense period of privatizations which saw over 15,000 firms privatized between 1992-1994. New oligarchs like Berezovsky were able to use these vouchers purchased from starving Russians, to buy the oil giant Sibnet (worth $3 billion) for only $100 million and Khodorkovsky bought 78% of the shares in Yukos (a $5 billion value) for only $310 million. Soros himself bragged that he dropped over two billion dollars into Russia during this looting period.

Chubais had been an early founder of Perestroika clubs in St. Petersburg alongside such figures as Yegor Gaidar (future Prime Minister), Vladimir Kogan (future St Petersburg Bank President) and Alexei Kudrin (future Finance Minister). Upon Gaidar’s death in 2009, Chubais spearheaded the creation of the Gaidar Forum which was designed to take place one week prior to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos and served as a coordinating body of the deep state between the Schwabian technocrats and their Russian soulmates.

In 2013, Putin said of Chubais and his CIA handlers:

“We learned today that officers of the United States’ CIA operated as consultants to Anatoly Chubais. But it is even funnier that upon returning to the U.S., they were prosecuted for violating their country’s laws and illegally enriching themselves in the course of privatization in the Russian Federation.”

Despite Putin having clearly identified Chubais as a CIA asset, evidence of something very powerful protecting the financier was seen as he not only avoided being purged as so many others during Putin’s tenure, but even regained a large degree of influence as chairman of the executive board of the state-run technology company Rusnano from 2008 until 2020. During this time, Chubais also found himself serving as advisory council member of JP Morgan Chase, and the leading force behind decarbonization schemes in Russia driven by green alternative energy boondoggles which serve as a major component of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.

During his 12 year tenure, Chubais used Rusnano as an instrument to fund and seed windmill and solar power development, provided $400 million to Hevek Solar (Russia’s biggest solar energy company) and created a $520 million Wind Energy Development Fund.

Although Chubais’ offices at Rusnano were raided the day following the arrest of Russian finance minister (and fellow swamp creature Alexei Ulyokaev on November 16, 2021), his protectors ensured that while his days at the company would come to an end, he would avoid arrest, and go onto new destructive endeavors. What was his next assignment?

By the end of December 2021, it was announced that Chubais was made Russian Presidential envoy to the United Nations to coordinate Sustainable Development Goals. In this position, Chubais had shamelessly called for adapting Russia’s economy to the UN’s climate market and fully submitting to the dictates of the IMF and World Bank saying on January 8, 2022:

“I am convinced that the Russian climate market will be extremely attractive for international investment. So it is necessary to facilitate the access of Russian entrepreneurs to receive funding from abroad for alternate projects. To do this, it is necessary to achieve harmonization of the basic rules of the Russian Market being created in this area with leading international organizations- the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development”.

Not only has Chubais spearheaded the “greening of Russian energy” according to the Great Reset Agenda (which unites the two-fold manufactured crises of climate change and covid-19 into one package), but Chubais also used Rusnano to fund the growth of a foreign directed pharmaceutical complex within the heart of Russia. One major scandal emerged recently as Russian pharmaceutical giant and COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Nanolek received billions of rubles from Rusnano in 2020 and 2021 enriching the husband-wife duo of Tatyana Golikova and Viktor Khristenko (whose son is a major shareholder in the company).

While much can be said about other fifth columnists still embedded within Russia’s civil service and private sector, the smell of new purges is certainly in the air.

A Sea Change Now Underway

Powerful western forces representing the “higher castes” have severed ties with Russia and with those lost ties goes lost protection for many figures who have slept soundly at night despite their treacherous hearts. The World Economic Forum broke off ties on March 8 along with a multitude of foreign WEF partner corporations like Goldman Sachs, Deutschebank, Amazon, Visa, Paypal, Mastercard, Apple, IBM, Unilever, and Pepsico (to name a few).

Moves are quickly being made to empower nationalist forces to take increased control over Russia’s economy led by Sergey Glaziev’s new project to create a China-EAEU alternative financial/monetary system with increased national controls over finance and long-term planning. Gaining control of the financial sector which has long been under the strong influence of western oligarchical interests is vital if Russia is going to be able to not only weather the coming storm but come out of it with the economic sovereignty and power to build those large-scale projects needed for Putin’s aspirations for a Far Eastern and Arctic civilizational growth paradigm.

Although Chubais only represents but one large rat who has chosen this current moment to jump ship, others will certainly follow, and perhaps a new fear of god might awaken in the hearts of others who chose this moment of crisis to walk a more noble path as patriots of Russia as the world enters a new more multipolar future.

I think it is here fitting to end with a few remarks by President Putin who stated …

“the Russian people will be able to distinguish true patriots frьфкьфеom scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a midge that accidentally flew into their mouths. I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to respond to any challenges”.

Chinese girl bouncing down the street

I really do like how these boobies bounce. It’s hypnotic. video 21MB

I happen to like bouncy boobies. Most women think it’s simply distracting, maybe silly. What do you think?

Washington Is Driving the World to Nuclear War

Since the Russian action in Ukraine began, provoked by Washington’s cold shoulder to Russian security concerns, Washington, in addition to doing all possible to keep the conflict going, has also dumped three more provocations on the Kremlin: an attempted coup or “color revolution” in the former Russian province of Kazakhstan, NATO military maneuvers currently under way in the former Russian province of Georgia which is not a NATO member, and NATO maneuvers in Poland on the Border of Belarus, a former Russian province and current Russian ally. https://avia-pro.net/news/bronetehnika-nato-zamechena-v-3-kilometrah-ot-granicy-s-belorussiey

The signal Washington consistently sends to the Kremlin is aggression. Why has no member of any government in the Western world, no presstitute in the Western media pointed this out? It is difficult to fathom the irresponsibility of Washington adding to the Ukraine provocation three more provocations simultaneously. Why provoke a country already concerned with its security with more security concerns unless you are trying to widen the war?

The US Treasury is working with Congress to prevent Russia’s use of her gold reserves that she kept in her own hands, with the bulk of Russian reserves having been seized, a theft made easy by the stupid fool that Putin keeps as head of the Russian central bank. It is extraordinary that the Russian central bank kept Russia’s reserves in Western hands while Russia intervened militarily in Ukraine. The Russian central bank must have wanted Russia to lose her reserves.

Now the remaining reserves are to be targeted by Washington in this way. Sanctions will be applied to every country that permits or facilitates Russian payments in gold or the buying and selling of gold by Russia. This, the US senator, Angus King, said, will collapse the Russian economy, leaving Russia no means of payment.

Senator King and the US Treasury are overlooking that all acts of war are not military, and what the senator is sponsoring is an act of war. Putin recognizes it as such. He declared it to be “a total undisguised aggression” and “a war waged by economic, political, and informational means.”

So what is Russia doing in response to the declared intent of the West to destroy her? She is enabling her own destruction. She distributes her foreign exchange reserves among Western banks where they can be seized. She keeps the economies of her enemies alive by continuing to supply them with energy and minerals–all because her moronic central bank thinks Russia needs foreign exchange, which will be seized regardless.

She continues with a go-slow war that gives her enemies more time to demonize Russia and create permanent hatred of Russia in the Western populations, that gives Western idiots more time to blunder into a wider war, such as the Western plan to deploy NATO peacekeepers in Ukraine.

In short, the Kremlin’s response to the sanctions is mindless. Here for example is Germany’s own assessment of the impact on Germany if Russia stops sustaining Germany’s existence with Russian energy: “A 2018 stress test run by the German civil defense agency, the BBK, found that all crucial services will be impacted by a gas supply shortage.

The two-day crisis management exercise Lukex 18, which involved several states in southern Germany, found that the shortage of gas supply will have ‘a drastic effect on public life,’ including the closure of public and private facilities. The disruption of supply will also lead to ‘far-reaching, difficult-to-predict consequences for the service sector and the production of goods,’ according to the BBK.”

If Russia turned off the energy, Germany would force an end to the sanctions on Russia or Germany would leave NATO despite Germany’s occupation by US troops. But apparently the Kremlin would rather risk Russia’s destruction than to violate a contract or forego foreign exchange earnings that it cannot use. The Kremlin seems destined to forego the opportunity to crush the sanctions and continue selling energy to Germany until Germany has had time to locate and construct the facilities for an alternative means of supply.

The West’s naked aggression and the Kremlin’s insouciance guarantee a wider war ending in world destruction. Can no one in leadership position see it coming? Do Western politicians believe Russia will allow herself to be defeated by non-military means? Does the Kremlin believe that resolving the Ukrainian situation will end the West’s attacks on Russia? As always in human affairs, stupidity prevails.

That Washington and its despicable puppet states parade around like goody two shoes, shouting accusations at Russia when it is Washington and its puppets who are provoking war, and everyone falls for it tells me that Washington has the world on the road to nuclear armageddon.

Girl black dress and ice cream

Another cute Chiense girl outside eating ice cream. Looks delicious. I think I will neet to get a scoop later on. video 2MB

What do you think? Wouldn’t you like to share a cone with this lass? Or, even not her…just a nice ice cream cone outside on a nice weekend afternoon?

Russian Foreign Minister: “All-Out War Has Been Declared Against Russia”

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An all-out war has been declared against Russia. The West does not conceal that the goals of its policy are aimed at suffocating and devastating the Russian economy, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.

“Today, a genuine hybrid war, a ‘total war’ has been declared against us. This term, which was exploited by Hitler’s Germany, is now pronounced by many European politicians when talking about what they want to do with Russia. The goals are not concealed, they are publicly announced, that is to destroy, devastate, ruin, and suffocate the Russian economy and Russia as a whole,” Lavrov stressed.

The foreign minister lashed out at this “sanctions spree”, pointing out that it is becoming clear that all values that those in the West have been preaching to Russia, like freedom of expression, a market economy, the sanctity of private property and the presumption of innocence, are not worth a red cent.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24 launched a special military operation in Ukraine in response to a request for help from the Donbass republics. He said Moscow had no plans for an occupation of Ukraine. After that the United States, the European Union and Britain, as well as a number of other countries said they were imposing sanctions on Russian individuals and legal entities.

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

I have often told readers of this website and listeners to my radio show how much I admire Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, for his precise language, his level-headedness and maturity, his mental discipline, and his candor.   He is a man, I think, worth listening to because in his words can be found the precise position of the Russian Federation.

Today, his words ought to send shivers down the spine.  He spoke the words “All-out war has been declared against Russia.”  

Lavrov is not some talk-show host, or news channel prognosticator; he is the Foreign Minister of the second most powerful nation on earth. Actually, based on their nuclear arsenal, Russia is THE most powerful nation on earth!

His words convey how Russia sees things.   And right now, they see that “all-out war has been declared against Russia.”

Stop for a moment and think about the implications of what he just said.

When a country sees/believes that “all-out war” is being waged against it, what is that country then obligated by survival instinct, to do?   It seems to me the logical answer is: Wage war back.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is where this situation is heading.  Right now.  Today.  This minute.

As we sit here at our computers, all snug and comfy at home, sipping our morning coffee, the economic sanctions imposed by the West are literally tearing Russia apart.  We sit here reading the news, watching the morning TV shows, or listening to music on the radio, and Russia is being systematically wrecked.

The damage to Russia is real.  The effects upon the Russian people, are real.

Yet we see and feel none of it because Russia has not chosen to attack back . . . yet.

I am of the opinion they will.   Not just economically, but kinetically.

Now, some of you think “they can’t” — or worse, “they wouldn’t dare.”   That judgment is in error.

I think Russia will attack back because Russia MUST.   They are being killed.  They must attack back to stop the ongoing attack against them.

So those of us in the West, would be well advised to get our heads out of our collective ass, and see things as they truly are.  The west is attacking Russia in a way that is resulting in Russia’s destruction.  Unless we cease what we’re doing, and begin negotiating with Russia for their security, (Which is what Russia sought Diplomatically in December and in January) I believe Russia will have no choice but to attack us back.

They are being destroyed.  I truly believe they will destroy us in response.

Stop the Sanctions against Russia now, before it is too late.  Return the Foreign Currency Reserves that were “seized/frozen.”  Return the Gold Bullion which was seized.  Return the assets of Russian citizens that have been (and are being) seized.

Stop this Sanctions madness before Russia comes to the decision to PUT a stop to it, by force.

Sure, a nuclear war is a war that no one can win.   But Russia is already losing everything.  Their only choice is to deprive us of everything as well.

Is that what we want?   Over Ukraine???????

I say “no.”   I say Ukraine is not worth it.

I also say, we in the West brought this trouble upon the world by breaking our promises in the 1990’s that NATO “would not move one inch east.”  We violated that promise time after time until now, NATO countries are right at Russia’s front porch.

This mess is OUR doing.  We ought to be honorable and undo it.  Before it gets undone anyway, through nuclear horror.

About the Ukraine “Invasion”

Let’s keep things clear and simple.

  • The Ukraine “issue” was planned for decades and set in motion by the United States. It’s objective has been to engage Russia in war by proxie, suppress it, and then “pivot to Asia” where a similiar event will engage China.
  • Russia, as predicted, used “military technical” means to suppress a dangerous situation in Ukraine.
  • The United States expected war, but not like what is actually going on. They expected an American-style war; full devistation, with ground forces performing policing afterwards. Instead they have an elimination of their Nazi proxy forces, destruction of their equipment, and soon, complete capture of the nation by Russia.
  • At this stage, the Western propaganda is thick with painting an illusion that Russia is losing and desperate, and that it will make dangerous and irrational moves.
  • This is a tried, and true technique that launched American involvment in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the War in Panama, The war in Kwait, and so on…
  • What follows is some kind of “False Flag” event. It will probably involve something nasty. Perhaps a nuke, biological weapons or chemical weapons. Since the “news” media are already discussing “Russia and chemical weapons” we can expect that to be the trigger.
  • Since America already has 90,000 troops inside of Poland TODAY, we can expect a “false flag” event soon, followed by a NATO assault counter-invasion.

I can tell you that both Russia and China expect this senario to occur.

How it will play out and advance is unknown, except to say that the answer to this event has been war-gamed (by Asia) for years now, and it will be brutal, far-reaching, and will absolutely not go the way the United States / NATO believe; it will NOT be a “long drawn out” conventional war slug-fest. It will be something else.

Something surprising.

Remember, the Putin has admitted that [1] Russia is unable to fight NATO and the United States in a conventional war, and that [2] Russia has publically announced that it feels trapped, that it’s back is at the wall, and that the very existence of Russia and Russians are at stake.

Keep that in mind.

Maybe (and this is MM personal opinion) something that [1] hits American and Europeans directly, [2] silently, and quietly; [3] something not reported at all, and [4] something that won’t be noticed until months afterwards. Things are about to get really UGLY.

Let’s close with some 1960s images of Bachelor pads

I will wrap up all the “news” going on with a retro look at what was once very common. Men’s bachelor pads.

2022 03 26 21 27
Playboy.

Some inspiration…

R C.0e13533a8b121e16e1e5ede069824f9d
I like how she is wearing one of his white shirts. It’s sexy.

One part “Mad Men”, and one part bad Acid Trip.

benge4 andreabauer magnum
One part “Mad Men”, and one part bad Acid Trip.

I wonder, have you ever had a bachelor pad?

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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The Third Expedition by Ray Bradbury (with thoughts on the tunnel of light)

Imagine that you died. And there, as you are leaving your body, you are welcomed with long dead friends, and relatives. They welcome you, and it is a joyous time. They take you by the hand and lead you towards the bright tunnel of light.

Would you go with them?

This is a story that ponders that question.

Without a doubt one of the Bradbury stories that has made the biggest impression on me. It’s about strategy.

And horror.

The story is taken from Bradbury’s amazing The Martian Chronicles, a collection of short stories strung together to tell the story of what happens when human beings try to colonize Mars.

In this particular tale, an expedition from Earth to Mars encounters a town that seems eerily, yet comfortingly, familiar to them. It’s even populated by long-lost relatives and family.

But, of course, it doesn’t have a happy ending.

The Third Expedition by Ray Bradbury

The ship came down from space. It came from the stars and

the black velocities, and the shining movements, and the silent

gulfs of space. It was a new ship; it had fire in its body and

men in its metal cells, and it moved with a clean silence,

fiery and warm. In it were seventeen men, induding a captain.

The crowd at the Ohio field had shouted and waved their hands

up into the sunlight, and the rocket had bloomed out great

flowers of heat and color and run away into space on the

_third_ voyage to Mars!

Now it was decelerating with metal efficiency in the

upper Martian atmospheres. It was still a thing of beauty

and strength. It had moved in the midnight waters of space like

a pale sea leviathan; it had passed the ancient moon and thrown

itself onward into one nothingness following another. The men

within it had been battered, thrown about, sickened, made well

again, each in his turn. One man had died, but now the

remaining sixteen, with their eyes clear in their heads and

their faces pressed to the thick glass ports, watched Mars

swing up under them.

“Mars!” cried Navigator Lustig.

“Good old Mars!” said Samuel Hinkston, archaeologist.

“Well,” said Captain John Black.

The rocket landed on a lawn of green grass. Outside, upon

this lawn, stood an iron deer. Further up on the green stood

a tall brown Victorian house, quiet in the sunlight, all

covered with scrolls and rococo, its windows made of blue and

pink and yellow and green colored glass. Upon the porch were

hairy geraniums and an old swing which was hooked into the

porch ceiling and which now swung back and forth, back and

forth, in a little breeze. At the summit of the house was a

cupola with diamond leaded-glass windows and a dunce-cap roof!

Through the front window you could see a piece of music

titled “Beautiful Ohio” sitting on the music rest.

Around the rocket in four directions spread the little

town, green and motionless in the Martian spring. There were

white houses and red brick ones, and tall elm trees blowing in

the wind, and tall maples and horse chestnuts. And church

steeples with golden bells silent in them.

The rocket men looked out and saw this. Then they looked

at one another and then they looked out again. They held to

each other’s elbows, suddenly unable to breathe, it seemed,

Their faces grew pale.

“I’ll be damned,” whispered Lustig, rubbing his face with

his numb fingers. “I’ll be damned.”

“It just can’t be,” said Samuel Hinkston.

“Lord,” said Captain John Black.

There was a call from the chemist. “Sir, the atmosphere

is thin for breathing. But there’s enough oxygen. It’s safe.”

“Then we’ll go out,” said Lustig.

“Hold on,” said Captain John Black. “How do we know what

this is?”

“It’s a small town with thin but breathable air in it,

sir.”

“And it’s a small town the like of Earth towns,” said

Hinkston, the archaeologist “Incredible. It can’t be, but it

_is_.”

Captain John Black looked at him idly. “Do you think that

the civilizations of two planets can progress at the same rate

and evolve in the same way, Hinkston?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, sir.”

Captain Black stood by the port. “Look out there.

The geraniums. A specialized plant. That specific variety has

only been known on Earth for fifty years. Think of the

thousands of years it takes to evolve plants. Then tell me if

it is logical that the Martians should have: one, leaded-glass

windows; two, cupolas; three, porch swings; four, an instrument

that looks like a piano and probably is a piano; and five, if

you look closely through this telescopic lens here, is it

logical that a Martian composer would have published a piece

of music titled, strangely enough, ‘Beautiful Ohio’? All of

which means that we have an Ohio River on Mars!”

“Captain Williams, of course!” cried Hinkston,

“What?”

“Captain Williams and his crew of three men! Or Nathaniel

York and his partner. That would explain it!”

“That would explain absolutely nothing. As far as we’ve

been able to figure, the York expedition exploded the day

it reached Mars, killing York and his partner. As for Williams

and his three men, their ship exploded the second day after

their arrival. At least the pulsations from their radios ceased

at that time, so we figure that if the men were alive after

that they’d have contacted us. And anyway, the York expedition

was only a year ago, while Captain Williams and his men landed

here some time during last August. Theorizing that they are

still alive, could they, even with the help of a brilliant

Martian race, have built such a town as this and _aged_ it in

so short a time? Look at that town out there; why, it’s been

standing here for the last seventy years. Look at the wood on

the porch newel; look at the trees, a century old, all of them!

No, this isn’t York’s work or Williams’. It’s something else.

I don’t like it. And I’m not leaving the ship until I know what

it is.”

“For that matter,” said Lustig, nodding, “Williams and his

men, as well as York, landed on the _opposite_ side of Mars.

We were very careful to land on _this_ side.”

“An excellent point. Just in case a hostile local tribe

of Martians killed off York and Williams, we have instructions

to land in a further region, to forestall a recurrence of such

a disaster. So here we are, as far as we know, in a land

that Williams and York never saw.”

“Damn it,” said Hinkston, “I want to get out into this

town, sir, with your permission. It may be there are similar

thought patterns, civilization graphs on every planet in our

sun system. We may be on the threshold of the greatest

psychological and metaphysical discovery of our age!”

“I’m willing to wait a moment,” said Captain John Black.

“It may be, sir, that we’re looking upon a phenomenon

that, for the first time, would absolutely prove the existence

of God, sir.”

“There are many people who are of good faith without such

proof, Mr. Hinkston.”

“I’m one myself, sir. But certainly a town like this could

not occur without divine intervention. The _detail_. It fills

me with such feelings that I don’t know whether to laugh or

cry.”

“Do neither, then, until we know what we’re up against.”

“Up against?” Lustig broke in. “Against nothing, Captain.

It’s a good, quiet green town, a lot like the old-fashioned one

I was born in. I like the looks of it.”

“When were you born, Lustig?”

“Nineteen-fifty, sir.”

“And you, Hinkston?”

“Nineteen fifty-five, sir. Grinnell, Iowa. And this looks

like home to me.”

“Hinkston, Lustig, I could be either of your fathers. I’m

just eighty years old. Born in 1920 in Illinois, and through

the grace of God and a science that, in the last fifty years,

knows how to make _some_ old men young again, here I am on

Mars, not any more tired than the rest of you, but infinitely

more suspicious. This town out here looks very peaceful and

cool, and so much like Green Bluff, Illinois, that it frightens

me. It’s too _much_ like Green Bluff.” He turned to the

radioman. “Radio Earth. Tell them we’ve landed. That’s all.

Tell them we’ll radio a full report tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

Captain Black looked out the rocket port with his face

that should have been the face of a man eighty but seemed like

the face of a man in his fortieth year. “Tell you what we’ll

do, Lustig; you and I and Hinkston’ll look the town over. The

other men’ll stay aboard. If anything happens they can get the

hell out. A loss of three men’s better than a whole ship.

If something bad happens, our crew can warn the next rocket.

That’s Captain Wilder’s rocket, I think, due to be ready to

take off next Christmas. if there’s something hostile about

Mars we certainly want the next rocket to be well armed.”

“So are we. We’ve got a regular arsenal with us.”

“Tell the men to stand by the guns then. Come on,

Lustig, Hinkston.”

The three men walked together down through the levels of

the ship.

It was a beautiful spring day. A robin sat on a blossoming

apple tree and sang continuously. Showers of petal snow sifted

down when the wind touched the green branches, and the blossom

scent drifted upon the air. Somewhere in the town someone

was playing the piano and the music came and went, came and

went, softly, drowsily. The song was “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Somewhere else a phonograph, scratchy and faded, was hissing

out a record of “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’,” sung by Harry

Lauder.

The three men stood outside the ship. They sucked and

gasped at the thin, thin air and moved slowly so as not to

tire themselves.

Now the phonograph record being played was:

“_Oh, give me a June night

The moonlight and you_ . . .”

Lustig began to tremble. Samuel Hinkston did likewise.

The sky was serene and quiet, and somewhere a stream of

water ran through the cool caverns and tree shadings of a

ravine. Somewhere a horse and wagon trotted and rolled by,

bumping.

“Sir,” said Samuel Hinkston, “it must be, it _has_ to be,

that rocket travel to Mars began in the years before the first

World War!”

“No.”

“How else can you explain these houses, the iron deer,

the pianos, the music?” Hinkston took the captain’s elbow

persuasively and looked into the captain’s face. “Say that

there were people in the year 1905 who hated war and got

together with some scientists in secret and built a rocket and

came out here to Mars–”

“No, no, Hinkston.”

“Why not? The world was a different world in 1905; they

could have kept it a secret much more easily.”

“But a complex thing like a rocket, no, you couldn’t keep

it secret.”

“And they came up here to live, and naturally the houses

they built were similar to Earth houses because they brought

the culture with them.”

“And they’ve lived here all these years?” said the

captain.

“In peace and quiet, yes. Maybe they made a few trips,

enough to bring enough people here for one small town, and

then stopped for fear of being discovered. That’s why this town

seems so old-fashioned. I don’t see a thing, myself, older than

the year 1927, do you? Or maybe, sir, rocket travel is older

than we think. Perhaps it started in some part of the world

centuries ago and was kept secret by the small number of men

who came to Mars with only occasional visits to Earth over

the centuries.”

“You make it sound almost reasonable.”

“It has to be. We’ve the proof here before us; all we have

to do is find some people and verify it.”

Their boots were deadened of all sound in the thick green

grass. It smelled from a fresh mowing. In spite of himself,

Captain John Black felt a great peace come over him. It had

been thirty years since he had been in a small town, and the

buzzing of spring bees on the air lulled and quieted him, and

the fresh look of things was a balm to the soul.

They set foot upon the porch. Hollow echoes sounded from

under the boards as they walked to the screen door. Inside they

could see a bead curtain hung across the hall entry, and a

crystal chandelier and a Maxfield Parrish painting framed on

one wall over a comfortable Morris chair. The house smelled

old, and of the attic, and infinitely comfortable. You could

hear the tinkle of ice in a lemonade pitcher. In a distant

kitchen, because of the heat of the day, someone was preparing

a cold lunch. Someone was humming under her breath, high and

sweet.

Captain John Black rang the bell.

Footsteps, dainty and thin, came along the hall, and

a kind-faced lady of some forty years, dressed in a sort of

dress you might expect in the year 1909, peered out at them.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Beg your pardon,” said Captain Black uncertainly. “But

we’re looking for–that is, could you help us–” He stopped.

She looked out at him with dark, wondering eyes.

“If you’re selling something–” she began.

“No, wait!” he cried. “What town is this?”

She looked him up and down. “What do you mean, what town

is it? How could you be in a town and not know the name?”

The captain looked as if he wanted to go sit under a shady

apple tree. “We’re strangers here. We want to know how this

town got here and how you got here.”

“Are you census takers?”

“No.”

“Everyone knows,” she said, “this town was built in 1868.

Is this a game?”

“No, not a game!” cried the captain. “We’re from Earth.”

“Out of the _ground_, do you mean?” she wondered.

“No, we came from the third planet, Earth, in a ship. And

we’ve landed here on the fourth planet, Mars–”

“This,” explained the woman, as if she were addressing

a child, “is Green Bluff, Illinois, on the continent of

America, surrounded by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, on a

place called the world, or, sometimes, the Earth. Go away

now. Goodby.”

She trotted down the hall, running her fingers through

the beaded curtains.

The three men looked at one another.

“Let’s knock the screen door in,” said Lustig.

“We can’t do that. This is private property. Good God!”

They went to sit down on the porch step.

“Did it ever strike you, Hinkston, that perhaps we

got ourselves somehow, in some way, off track, and by accident

came back and landed on Earth?”

“How could we have done that?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. Oh God, let me think.”

Hinkston said, “But we checked every mile of the way.

Our chronometers said so many miles. We went past the Moon and

out into space, and here we are. I’m _positive_ we’re on Mars.”

Lustig said, “But suppose, by accident, in space, in time,

we got lost in the dimensions and landed on an Earth that is

thirty or forty years ago.”

“Oh, go away, Lustig!”

Lustig went to the door, rang the bell, and called into

the cool dim rooms: “What year is this?”

“Nineteen twenty-six, of course,” said the lady, sitting

in a rocking chair, taking a sip of her lemonade.

“Did you hear that?” Lustig turned wildly to the others.

“Nineteen twenty-six! We _have_ gone back in time! This _is_

Earth!”

Lustig sat down, and the three men let the wonder and

terror of the thought afflict them. Their hands stirred

fitfully on their knees. The captain said, “I didn’t ask for

a thing like this. It scares the hell out of me. How can a

thing like this happen? I wish we’d brought Einstein with us.”

“Will anyone in this town believe us?” said Hinkston. “Are

we playing with something dangerous? Time, I mean. Shouldn’t

we just take off and go home?”

“No. Not until we try another house.”

They walked three houses down to a little white cottage

under an oak tree. “I like to be as logical as I can be,” said

the captain. “And I don’t believe we’ve put our finger on it

yet. Suppose, Hinkston, as you originally suggested, that

rocket travel occurred years ago? And when the Earth people

lived here a number of years they began to get homesick for

Earth. First a mild neurosis about it, then a full-fledged

psychosis. Then threatened insanity. What would you do as

a psychiatrist if faced with such a problem?”

Hinkston thought “Well, I think I’d rearrange the

civilization on Mars so it resembled Earth more and more each

day. If there was any way of reproducing every plant, every

road, and every lake, and even an ocean, I’d do so. Then by

some vast crowd hypnosis I’d convince everyone in a town this

size that this really _was_ Earth, not Mars at all.”

“Good enough, Hinkston. I think we’re on the right track

now. That woman in that house back there just _thinks_ she’s

living on Earth. It protects her sanity. She and all the others

in this town are the patients of the greatest experiment

in migration and hypnosis you will ever lay eyes on in your

life.”

“That’s _it_, sir!” cried Lustig.

“Right!” said Hinkston.

“Well.” The captain sighed. “Now we’ve got somewhere. I

feel better. It’s all a bit more logical. That talk about time

and going back and forth and traveling through time turns

my stomach upside down. But _this_ way–” The captain smiled.

“Well, well, it looks as if we’ll be fairly popular here.”

“Or will we?” said Lustig. “After all, like the Pilgrims,

these people came here to escape Earth. Maybe they won’t be

too happy to see us. Maybe they’ll try to drive us out or kill

us.”

“We have superior weapons. This next house now. Up we go.”

But they had hardly crossed the lawn when Lustig stopped

and looked off across the town, down the quiet, dreaming

afternoon street. “Sir,” he said.

“What is it, Lustig?”

“Oh, sir, _sir_, what I _see_–” said Lustig, and he began

to cry. His fingers came up, twisting and shaking, and his face

was all wonder and joy and incredulity. He sounded as if at

any moment he might go quite insane with happiness. He looked

down the street and began to run, stumbling awkwardly, falling,

picking himself up, and running on. “Look, look!”

“Don’t let him get away!” The captain broke into a run.

Now Lustig was running swiftly, shouting. He turned into

a yard halfway down the shady street and leaped up upon the

porch of a large green house with an iron rooster on the roof.

He was beating at the door, hollering and crying, when

Hinkston and the captain ran up behind him. They were all

gasping and wheezing, exhausted from their run in the thin

air. “Grandma! Grandpa!” cried Lustig.

Two old people stood in the doorway.

“David!” their voices piped, and they rushed out to

embrace and pat him on the back and move around him. “David,

oh, David, it’s been so many years! How you’ve grown, boy; how

big you are, boy. Oh, David boy, how are you?”

“Grandma, Grandpa!” sobbed David Lustig. “You look fine,

fine!” He held them, turned them, kissed them, hugged them,

cried on them, held them out again, blinking at the little

old people. The sun was in the sky, the wind blew, the grass

was green, the screen door stood wide.

“Come in, boy, come in. There’s iced tea for you, fresh,

lots of it!”

“I’ve got friends here.” Lustig turned and waved at the

captain and Hinkston frantically, laughing. “Captain, come on

up.”

“Howdy,” said the old people. “Come in. Any friends of

David’s are our friends too. Don’t stand there!”

In the living room of the old house it was cool, and

a grandfather clock ticked high and long and bronzed in one

corner. There were soft pillows on large couches and walls

filled with books and a rug cut in a thick rose pattern, and

iced tea in the hand, sweating, and cool on the thirsty tongue.

“Here’s to our health.” Grandma tipped her glass to

her porcelain teeth.

“How long you been here, Grandma?” said Lustig.

“Ever since we died,” she said tartly.

“Ever since you what?” Captain John Black set down his

glass.

“Oh yes.” Lustig nodded. “They’ve been dead thirty years.”

“And you sit there calmly!” shouted the captain.

“Tush.” The old woman winked glitteringly. “Who are you

to question what happens? Here we are. What’s life, anyway? Who

does what for why and where? All we know is here we are, alive

again, and no questions asked. A second chance.” She toddled

over and held out her thin wrist. “Feel.” The captain felt.

“Solid, ain’t it?” she asked. He nodded. “Well, then,” she

said triumphantly, “why go around questioning?”

“Well,” said the captain, “it’s simply that we never

thought we’d find a thing like this on Mars.”

“And now you’ve found it. I dare say there’s lots on every

planet that’ll show you God’s infinite ways.”

“Is this Heaven?” asked Hinkston.

“Nonsense, no. It’s a world and we get a second chance.

Nobody told us why. But then nobody told us why we were on

Earth, either. That other Earth, I mean. The one you came from.

How do we know there wasn’t _another_ before _that_ one?”

“A good question,” said the captain.

Lustig kept smiling at his grandparents. “Gosh, it’s good

to see you. Gosh, it’s good.”

The captain stood up and slapped his hand on his leg in

a casual fashion. “We’ve got to be going. Thank you for the

drinks.”

“You’ll be back, of course,” said the old people. “For

supper tonight?”

“We’ll try to make it, thanks. There’s so much to be done.

My men are waiting for me back at the rocket and–”

He stopped. He looked toward the door, startled.

Far away in the sunlight there was a sound of voices,

a shouting and a great hello.

“What’s that?” asked Hinkston,

“We’ll soon find out.” And Captain John Black was out the

front door abruptly, running across the green lawn into the

street of the Martian town.

He stood looking at the rocket. The ports were open and

his crew was streaming out, waving their hands. A crowd of

people had gathered, and in and through and among these people

the members of the crew were hurrying, talking, laughing,

shaking hands. People did little dances. People swarmed. The

rocket lay empty and abandoned.

A brass band exploded in the sunlight, flinging off a gay

tune from upraised tubas and trumpets. There was a bang of

drums and a shrill of fifes. Little girls with golden hair

jumped up and down. Little boys shouted, “Hooray!” Fat men

passed around ten-cent cigars. The town mayor made a speech.

Then each member of the crew, with a mother on one arm, a

father or sister on the other, was spirited off down the street

into little cottages or big mansions.

“Stop!” cried Captain Black.

The doors slammed shut.

The heat rose in the clear spring sky, and all was silent.

The brass band banged off around a corner, leaving the rocket

to shine and dazzle alone in the sunlight

“Abandoned!” said the captain. “They abandoned the ship,

they did! I’ll have their skins, by God! They had orders!”

“Sir,” said Lustig, “don’t be too hard on them. Those were

all old relatives and friends.”

“That’s no exuse!”

“Think how they felt, Captain, seeing familiar faces

outside the ship!”

“They had their orders, damn it!”

“But how would you have felt, Captain?”

“I would have obeyed orders–” The captain’s mouth

remained open.

Striding along the sidewalk under the Martian sun, tall,

smiling, eyes amazingly clear and blue, came a young man of

some twenty-six years. “John!” the man called out, and broke

into a trot.

“What?” Captain John Black swayed.

“John, you old son of a bitch!”

The man ran up and gripped his hand and slapped him on

the back.

“It’s you,” said Captain Black.

“Of course, who’d you _think_ it was?”

“Edward!” The captain appealed now to Lustig and Hinkston,

holding the stranger’s hand. “This is my brother Edward. Ed,

meet my men, Lustig, Hinkston! My brother!”

They tugged at each other’s hands and arms and then

finally embraced.

“Ed!”

“John, you bum, you!”

“You’re looking fine, Ed, but, Ed, what _is_ this? You

haven’t changed over the years. You died, I remember, when you

were twenty-six and I was nineteen. Good God, so many years

ago, and here you are and, Lord, what goes on?”

“Mom’s waiting,” said Edward Black, grinning.

“Mom?”

“And Dad too.”

“Dad?” The captain almost fell as if he had been hit by

a mighty weapon. He walked stiffly and without co.ordination.

“Mom and Dad alive? Where?”

“At the old house on Oak Knoll Avenue.”

“The old house.” The captain stared in delighted amaze.

“Did you hear that, Lustig, Hinkston?”

Hinkston was gone. He had seen his own house down the

street and was running for it. Lustig was laughing. “You

see, Captain, what happened to everyone on the rocket? They

couldn’t help themselves.”

“Yes. Yes.” The captain shut his eyes. “When I open my

eyes you’ll be gone.” He blinked. “You’re still there. God, Ed,

but you look _fine!_”

“Come on, lunch’s waiting. I told Mom.”

Lustig said, “Sir, I’ll be with my grandfolks if you need

me.”

“What? Oh, fine, Lustig. Later, then.”

Edward seized his arm and marched him. “There’s the

house. Remember it?”

“Hell! Bet I can beat you to the front porch!”

They ran. The trees roared over Captain Black’s head; the

earth roared under his feet. He saw the golden figure of Edward

Black pull ahead of him in the amazing dream of reality. He saw

the house rush forward, the screen door swing wide. “Beat you!”

cried Edward. “I’m an old man,” panted the captain, “and you’re

still young. But then, you _always_ beat me, I remember!”

In the doorway, Mom, pink, plump, and bright. Behind

her, pepper-gray, Dad, his pipe in his hand.

“Mom, Dad!”

He ran up the steps like a child to meet them.

It was a fine long afternoon. They finished a late lunch

and they sat in the parlor and he told them all about his

rocket and they nodded and smiled upon him and Mother was just

the same and Dad bit the end off a cigar and lighted

it thoughtfully in his old fashion. There was a big turkey

dinner at night and time flowing on. When the drumsticks were

sucked clean and lay brittle upon the plates, the captain

leaned back and exhaled his deep satisfaction, Night was in all

the trees and coloring the sky, and the lamps were halos of

pink light in the gentle house. From all the other houses down

the street came sounds of music, pianos playing, doors slammng.

Mom put a record on the victrola, and she and Captain John

Black had a dance. She was wearing the same perfume he

remembered from the summer when she and Dad had been killed in

the train accident. She was very real in his arms as they

danced lightly to the music. “It’s not every day,” she said,

“you get a second chance to live.”

“I’ll wake in the morning,” said the captain. “And I’ll be

in my rocket, in space, and all this will be gone.”

“No, don’t think that,” she cried softly. “Don’t question.

God’s good to us. Let’s be happy.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

The record ended in a circular hissing.

“You’re tired, Son.” Dad pointed with his pipe. “Your

old bedroom’s waiting for you, brass bed and all.”

“But I should report my men in.”

“Why?”

“Why? Well, I don’t know. No reason, I guess. No, none at

all. They’re all eating or in bed. A good night’s sleep won’t

hurt them.”

“Good night, Son.” Mom kissed his cheek. “It’s good to

have you home.”

“It’s good to _be_ home.”

He left the land of cigar smoke and perfume and books

and gentle light and ascended the stairs, talking, talking

with Edward. Edward pushed a door open, and there was the

yellow brass bed and the old semaphore banners from college and

a very musty raccoon coat which he stroked with muted

affection. “It’s too much,” said the captain. “I’m numb and

I’m tired. Too much has happened today. I feel as if I’d been

out in a pounding rain for forty-eight hours without an

umbrella or a coat. I’m soaked to the skin with emotion.”

Edward slapped wide the snowy linens and flounced the

pillows. He slid the window up and let the night-blooming

jasmine float in. There was moonlight and the sound of distant

dancing and whispering.

“So this is Mars,” said the captain, undressing.

“This is it.” Edward undressed in idle, leisurely moves,

drawing his shirt off over his head, revealing golden shoulders

and the good muscular neck.

The lights were out; they were in bed, side by side, as in

the days how many decades ago? The captain lolled and was

flourished by the scent of jasmine pushing the lace curtains

out upon the dark air of the room. Among the trees, upon a

lawn, someone had cranked up a portable phonograph and now it

was playing softly, “Always.”

The thought of Marilyn came to his mind.

“Is Marilyn here?”

His brother, lying straight out in the moonlight from

the window, waited and then said, “Yes. She’s out of town.

But she’ll be here in the morning.”

The captain shut his eyes. “I want to see Marilyn very

much.”

The room was square and quiet except for their breathing.

“Good night, Ed.”

A pause. “Good night, John.”

He lay peacefully, letting his thoughts float. For the

first time the stress of the day was moved aside; he could

think logically now, It had all been emotion. The bands

playing, the familiar faces. But now . . .

How? he wondered. How was all this made? And why? For

what purpose? Out of the goodness of some divine intervention?

Was God, then, really that thoughtful of his children? How and

why and what for?

He considered the various theories advanced in the first

heat of the afternoon by Hinkston and Lustig. He let all kinds

of new theories drop in lazy pebbles down through his mind,

turning, throwing out dull flashes of light. Mom. Dad. Edward.

Mars. Earth. Mars. Martians.

Who had lived here a thousand years ago on Mars? Martians?

Or had this always been the way it was today?

Martians. He repeated the word idly, inwardly.

He laughed out loud almost. He had the most ridiculous

theory quite suddenly. It gave him a kind of chill. It was

really nothing to consider, of course. Highly improbable.

Silly. Forget it. Ridiculous.

But, he thought, just _suppose_ . . . Just suppose, now,

that there were Martians living on Mars and they saw our ship

coming and saw us inside our ship and hated us, Suppose, now,

just for the hell of it, that they wanted to destroy us,

as invaders, as unwanted ones, and they wanted to do it in a

very clever way, so that we would be taken off guard. Well,

what would the best weapon be that a Martian could use against

Earth Men with atomic weapons?

The answer was interesting. Telepathy, hypnosis, memory,

and imagination.

Suppose all of these houses aren’t real at all, this bed

not real, but only figments of my own imagination, given

substance by telepathy and hypnosis through the Martians,

thought Captain John Black. Suppose these houses are really

some _other_ shape, a Martian shape, but, by playing on my

desires and wants, these Martians have made this seem like my

old home town, my old house, to lull me out of my suspicions.

What better way to fool a man, using his own mother and father

as bait?

And this town, so old, from the year 1926, long before

_any_ of my men were born. From a year when I was six years old

and there _were_ records of Harry Lauder, and Maxfield Parrish

paintings _still_ hanging, and bead curtains, and “Beautiful

Ohio,” and turn-of-the-century architecture. What if the

Martians took the memories of a town _exclusively_ from _my_

mind? They say childhood memories are the clearest. And after

they built the town from my mind, they populated it with

the most-loved people from all the minds of the people on

the rocket!

And suppose those two people in the next room, asleep, are

not my mother and father at all, But two Martians, incredibly

brilliant, with the ability to keep me under this dreaming

hypnosis all of the time.

And that brass band today? What a startlingly wonderful

plan it would be. First, fool Lustig, then Hinkston, then

gather a crowd; and all the men in the rocket, seeing mothers,

aunts, uncles, sweethearts, dead ten, twenty wears ago,

naturally, disregarding orders, rush out and abandon ship. What

more natural? What more unsuspecting? What more simple? A

man doesn’t ask too many questions when his mother is soddenly

brought back to life; he’s much too happy. And here we all

are tonight, in various houses, in various beds, with no

weapons to protect us, and the rocket lies in the moonlight,

empty. And wouldn’t it be horrible and terrifying to discover

that all of this was part of some great clever plan by the

Martians to divide and conquer us, and kill us? Sometime during

the night, perhaps, my brother here on this bed will change

form, melt, shift, and become another thing, a terrible thing,

a Martian. It would be very simple for him just to turn over in

bed and put a knife into my heart. And in all those other

houses down the street, a dozen other brothers or fathers

suddenly melting away and taking knives and doing things to

the unsuspecting, sleeping men of Earth. . . .

His hands were shaking under the covers. His body was

cold. Suddenly it was not a theory. Suddenly he was very

afraid.

He lifted himself in bed and listened. The night was very

quiet The music had stopped. The wind had died. His brother

lay sleeping beside him.

Carefully he lifted the covers, rolled them back. He

slipped from bed and was walking softly across the room when

his brother’s voice said, “Where are you going?”

“What?”

His brother’s voice was quite cold. “I said, where do you

think you’re going?”

“For a drink of water.”

“But you’re not thirsty.”

“Yes, yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

Captain John Black broke and ran across the room. He

screamed. He screamed twice.

He never reached the door.

In the morning the brass band played a mournful dirge.

From every house in the street came little solemn processions

bearing long boxes, and along the sun-filled street, weeping,

came the grandmas and mothers and sisters and brothers and

uncles and fathers, walking to the churchyard, where there were

new holes freshly dug and new tombstones installed. Sixteen

holes in all, and sixteen tombstones.

The mayor made a little sad speech, his face sometimes

looking like the mayor, sometimes looking like something else.

Mother and Father Black were there, with Brother Edward,

and they cried, their faces melting now from a familiar face

into something else.

Grandpa and Grandma Lustig were there, weeping, their

faces shifting like wax, shimmering as all things shimmer on a

hot day.

The coffins were lowered. Someone murmured about “the

unexpected and sudden deaths of sixteen fine men during the

night–”

Earth pounded down on the coffin lids.

The brass band, playing “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,”

marched and slammed back into town, and everyone took the day

off.

The End

Conclusion

And this is only the beginning.

Who knows what greatness, and strange mysteries lie in the future ahead of you?

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my Ray Bradbury Index here…

Ray Bradbury

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Grasshopper Pie, Body Snatchers, Prank Gifts, Vaxx, Nanobots, crashing planes, CIA and their Nazi Operations, American collapse and treasure. Just another day at MM land.

Meanwhile, by every single fact we are able to observe, the decadent leaders of the West are acting as though Russia and China are Iraq and Libya. 

It appears that they genuinely believe they can use brute force and threats of brute force to come out on top in this conflict. 

(It’s also worth mentioning that the West, due to the ultra-low moral character of its leaders and the utter lack of any unifying ideal beyond anal sex, has lost the ability to cooperate cohesively as a single body in the way that the Chinese do.)

-UNZ

What do all these things have in common? They all are attributes of a period of time that is going though change. Some people might refer to it as an unravelling, while others might consider it the “second coming”. I think that it’s darn uncomfortable, and bothersome. It’s a period of change and it is nearing it’s peak.

Sheech!

I need a drink.

What? I’m already drinking. Oh, well. Color me silly.

This article has a bunch of videos. Most are small, but depending on your internet connection, they may or may not load. Just click on the link and watch them open up in another window. Most are really quick.

Strange stuff guys…

Strange and unusual things going on.

In China, a passenger aircraft took a highly unusual nose dive. Engines went full throttle, and the plane dove straight into the ground. It’s almost like the plane decided to commit suicide by ramming itself into the ground at full speed.

It’s not normal airplane behavior.

Don’t you know.

The unusual nature of this crash has everyone scratching their heads, and MM is no exception. Since this is Boeing plane that openly admits that the plane’s computer can override the pilot and fly itself…

So, and I do mean it … the software can take the input, decide the pilot is in error, and take over…

… so why have a pilot then?

Hum?

It is very concerning.

The opinions sent to me privately are running near 100% that the United States government / CIA are somehow involved in this fiasco. I would not be surprised if this is the case, but the truth is that I really do not know.

But…

You do know that we are going to flush out this issue.

Right here.

Right now.

MM style.

What I do know is that this entire event has shaken the Chinese people to the core. No one. And I do mean NO ONE wants to fly. Airline prices are now less than $5 USD to fly round-trip to Beijing from Zhuahi. It’s insane.

Just like the crash of the Hindenburg completely ended commercial travel by dirigible, it seems that this even will seriously impact commercial aviation inside of China. There will be far greater use of the High Speed Trains, and far less use of domestic air transport.

I predict.

The Hindenburg

From HERE.

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The Hindenburg bursts into flames.

In 1936, the future looked bright for rigid airships, the hydrogen-filled, lighter-than-air behemoths also known as dirigibles or zeppelins.

The Hindenburg, Nazi Germany’s pride and joy, spent one glorious season ferrying passengers across the Atlantic in its luxurious belly. The following year, the airship era screeched to a spectacular halt when the Hindenburg burst into flames while landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The disaster claimed the lives of 36 people and received an unprecedented amount of media coverage.

The Hindenburg was a 245-metre- (804-foot-) long airship of conventional zeppelin design that was launched at Friedrichshafen, Germany, in March 1936. It had a maximum speed of 135 km (84 miles) per hour and a cruising speed of 126 km (78 miles) per hour. Though it was designed to be filled with helium gas, the airship was filled with highly flammable hydrogen owing to export restrictions by the United States against Nazi Germany. In 1936 the Hindenburg inaugurated commercial air service across the North Atlantic by carrying 1,002 passengers on 10 scheduled round trips between Germany and the United States.

On May 6, 1937, while landing at Lakehurst, N.J., on the first of its scheduled 1937 trans-Atlantic crossings, the Hindenburg burst into flames and was completely destroyed. Thirty-six of the 97 persons aboard were killed.

The fire was officially attributed to a discharge of atmospheric electricity in the vicinity of a hydrogen gas leak from the airship, though it was speculated that the dirigible was the victim of an anti-Nazi act of sabotage.

The Hindenburg disaster marked the end of the use of rigid airships in commercial air transportation.

Forever.

Grasshopper Pie

A staple among southern desserts in the 1950s and 1960s, this creamy mint pie sports an Oreo crust, all of which makes it strange that it hasn’t remained as popular as it once was.
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Grasshopper Pie

This American retro dessert was inspired by the popular 1950’s chocolate-mint cocktail, and it was a favorite of Southern hostesses in the 1950s and 1960s. Originally, grasshopper pie always had a crust of either cookies or graham cracker crumbs, but today it is most often made with a base of Oreos, desiccated coconut, and butter, while the gelatine-set cream filling mainly consists of heavy cream flavored with crème de menthe—a sweet, mint-flavored liqueur—and melted marshmallows.

Grasshopper pie is usually so named because of its green color, though modern recipes may omit coloring the pie green. It was likely invented in the 1950s in the United States, and may have been inspired by a drink called the grasshopper developed at about the same time. It is a chiffon pie usually made with a cookie crust.

There is an earlier grasshopper pie type dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. Some versions of this pie from the Philippines used real grasshoppers. These insects are eaten in many cultures, and they can be used in various desserts, where they may be sugared and baked, providing a crunchy, and to some very appetizing, confection. The 1950s grasshopper pie bears little resemblance to versions produced that have insects as a primary ingredient.

Chiffon pies in the 1950s were often a combination of whipping cream, gelatin, sugar, eggs, and flavoring. In the case of the grasshopper pie, common flavoring used was alcohol in the form of crème de menthe, and sometimes other alcohols like crème de cacao. 

For teetotalers, mint flavoring could be achieved by using mint extracts instead, though these might still contain a tiny amount of alcohol. Green food coloring was a frequent addition to give the pie a light green color.

Most often the cookie crust is made with chocolate wafers, so that the pie has a chocolate and mint flavor. The crust is baked for few moments and then chilled. When the chiffon is prepared, usually over a double boiler, it is chilled and then spooned over the crust. The pie tends to be served cold and many love its refreshing mint taste.

There may be very large differences between classic recipes for grasshopper pie and modern ones. Since gelatin can be somewhat annoying to work with, many people now prepare the pie by melting marshmallows and blending them with milk or whipping cream, and sometimes cream cheese. Green food coloring can be optional, and when not used the pie could be called “mint patty pie” instead. Some people may prefer using a graham cracker crust, and other recipes advocate the use of specific cookies like Oreos®.

In the US, grasshopper pie tends to be most popular in the South, but other parts of the country enjoy it too. The pie rose in popularity especially up until the 1970s, but it is now served with less frequency. Many ice cream stores capitalized on the flavor of this pie by producing their own version with mint or mint chocolate chip ice cream and a cookie crust. Some ice cream stores are particularly known for their grasshopper pie variants.

-Delighted Cooking

The pie is traditionally served well chilled, topped with dollops of whipped cream, and decorated with dark chocolate shavings.

Grasshopper Pie

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Nice Robust Chinese girl

In American terms, we would refer to this “body shape
or “Body build” as “built like a Brick House”. It’s generally a nice compliment for a fine robust woman. In this case, a Chinese woman. video. 5MB

Lavrov’s History Lesson – Germany’s Downfall – Russian Forces Develop Routine

Great writeup on MoA. b is cooking at his best.

Th Saker has reproduced the transcript of a talk Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov has given three days ago. It is quite long with a Q&A at the end but it is a very good history lesson on how we got to the point that Russia felt it had to intervene in the Ukraine.

Here are just a few graphs of it. I recommend to read it all of it:

This meeting takes place against the backdrop of events now occurring in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken at length about the origins of this crisis. I would like to briefly reiterate: this is not about Ukraine. This is the end-result of a policy that the West has carried out since the early 1990s. It was clear back then that Russia was not going to be docile and that it was going to have a say in international matters. This is not because Russia wants to be a bully. Russia has its history, its tradition, its own understanding of the history of its peoples and a vision on how it can ensure its security and interests in this world.

This became clear in the late 1990s-early 2000s. The West has repeatedly attempted to stall the independent and autonomous development of Russia. This is rather unfortunate. From the start of President Vladimir Putin’s “rule” in the early 2000s, we were open to the idea of working with the West in various ways, even in a form similar to that of an alliance, as the President has said. Sadly, we were unable to do this. We repeatedly suggested that we should conclude treaties and base our security on equal rights, rejecting the idea of strengthening one’s security at the expense of another.

Neither were we able to promote economic cooperation. The European Union, which back then showed some signs of independent decision-making, has now devolved toward being completely dependent on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the US. The story of Nord Stream 2 was the highlight of this change. Even Germany, which defended its interests in the project to the very end, was persuaded that the “project was not in its interests.” Germany and its people were told what their interests were by people on the other side of the Atlantic. Many other international areas were blocked despite our commitment to close cooperation on an equal basis.

Germany’s traitorous role towards Russia, especially under chancellor Angela Merkel, is laid out throughout the piece. The current chancellor Olaf Scholz, never a smart man, capitulated to U.S. demands to sanction Russia and thereby committed Germany to economic suicide.

 

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2022 03 23 13 14

That spells death for Germany’s machine industry. It is said to see my country come down like this.

Hey Olaf, when the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq for absolutely no good reason how many sanctions did Germany apply to it?

Russia has at least cited sound and understandable, if not fully legal, reasons for its current acts. It was by the way you, Olaf, and your predecessor who have let it come to this. Why didn’t you write a letter to Putin that declared that Germany will veto NATO membership for the Ukraine. That might have solved the whole problem.

There is some talk that Russia has screwed up its campaign and some even hope that it might be losing the war. That’s nuts.

Back when I was a military officer we ran yearly large scale ‘free running’ maneuvers. Over nearly four weeks my tank company had to switch positions several times a day and march and ‘fight’ in between. The first week was cumbersome with lots of errors made by everyone. The second week was worse. Everyone was sleep deprived and folks screamed at each other. We had several accidents and twice parts of the company missed turns and got lost at night. During the third week things became gradually better and more routine. The drivers knew where to put their tanks without much command. The camouflaging done by the loaders and gunners was fast. The food that found its way to us was still hot and maintenance was done in no time. In the fourth week it was all pure fun.

The reason behind it was that people needed to learn by doing. Before the maneuvers everyone had been ‘fully trained’. But a few days on the training range do not give the experience one needs in the real world. Driving and ‘fighting’ through real villages and cities, real camouflaging against an ‘enemy’ airforce, real dueling in the open landscape day after day are different than training range time.

Russia’s forces are now in their routine mode. They will now grind down what is left of the Ukrainian forces.

According to the Pentagon the Russian airforce yesterday flew 300 sorties over Ukraine, mostly at night. That are 50% more per day than last week. That means 300 Ukrainian weapon factories, ammunition depots, convoys and fighting position get destroyed every day, day after day. How long will it take until there are no more targets?

Andrew Milburn, a former Marine colonel, is in the Ukraine from where he reports for Task and Purpose:

The Russians are already adapting, and by doing so are narrowing the Ukrainians’ tactical edge. The one-sided culling of Russian armored columns that characterized the opening days of the war, and kept YouTube subscribers around the world happy, are a thing of the past. The Russians now lead their formations with electronic attack, drones, lasers and good-old-fashioned reconnaissance by fire. They are using cruise missiles and saboteur teams to target logistics routes, manufacturing plants, and training bases in western Ukraine. Realizing that the Ukrainians lack thermal sights for their stinger missile launchers, the Russians have switched all air operations to after dark. It may be for this same reason that Russian cruise missile strikes in western and southern Ukraine have also been at nighttime.

The Russians have learned to play to their strengths. While Ukrainian soldiers mock their Russian counterparts, they are deeply respectful of Russian artillery, an asset that the Russians are using more frequently to compensate for their infantry’s deficiencies. Several snipers I spoke with recently agreed that the Russians’ indirect fire capability was the most concerning — a result of sheer reckless mass rather than technical skill. They told some hair-raising stories to illustrate their point, and one amusing one: Ukrainian soldiers defending Kyiv commute to the battle in their own vehicles. After a recent three-day insertion, the sniper teams returned to their extraction site to find their cars all flattened by Russian artillery – a contingency apparently not covered by their insurance plans.

Overconfidence may obscure for the Ukrainians one salient fact about this conflict: Time is not on their side.

Posted by b on March 22, 2022 at 17:55 UTC | Permalink

Hilarious Prank Gift Packages To Surprise Your Friends This Christmas

How will you wrap your Christmas presents this year? Will you buy some expensive wrapping paper and then silently weep in the corner when you realize you have no idea what you’re doing? Or just give up entirely and pay someone else to do it? Lucky for you, one company out there is aiming to make gift wrapping a little more fun.

Pranko-O is a Minneapolis-based company that creates hilarious prank gifts, called Prank Packs. A fart filter or an earwax candle might sound insane at first but don’t worry – that’s where the ‘prank’ part of Prank Pack comes in. The products, sadly, don’t exist and are just gag boxes. But imagine your partner’s reaction when they were hoping to get a Pandora necklace for Christmas but receive a cheese printer instead – priceless!

Here’s a few for some inspiration. This is a Cheese printer. Surprise your friends!

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Cheese Printer. You’ll be amazed how you were ever able to live without one!

Here’s another. It’s a “must” for every pet owner.

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It’s a “must” for every pet owner.

And yet another. Fun for kids of all ages!

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Fun for kids of all ages four and older.

Confirmed: Nazis are the proxy army of the US imperialists against Russia in Ukraine

From HERE.

Couldn’t be said more clearly.

The former US secretary of defense and CIA director, Leon Panetta, admitted openly that

We are engaged in a conflict here. It's a proxy war with Russia, whether we say so or not ...”.

Referring to the Ukrainian forces, the US imperialist warhawk claimed that

"These are good fighters, they are small-unit operations, they are working well ...".

The description “small-unit operations” fits to proxy forces – mercenaries, rather than an organized national army.

As we mentioned in our previous article, for eight years, the NATO criminals and the “free” and “democratic” West, were provoking Russia by arming and training the far-right and neo-nazi militia groups who also infiltrated in the Ukrainian army and operate in East Ukraine against Russian populations. Which is something similar with what happened in the long-suffering Syria by the US proxy war against Assad. Only there, the US imperialists armed and trained some so-called “moderate rebels”, with most of the arms ending in the hands of ISIS islamofascists who spread chaos and destruction.
Panetta’s statements are essentially an official admission by the US side that this is the case.
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This also explains why the Russians are so obsessed with Mariupol, which appears that it suffered most from the war in Ukraine so far. It seems that they won’t retreat from their demand to Ukraine to surrender the besieged city. Not only because of its critical strategic importance, but mostly because it’s the base of the Azov Battalion, which is essentially the major US proxy Nazi force in the Ukrainian soil.
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Indeed: [emphasis added]
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In March 2015 Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that the Azov Regiment would be among the first units to be trained by United States Army troops in their Operation Fearless Guardian training mission. 

US training however was withdrawn on 12 June 2015, as the US House of Representatives passed an amendment blocking any aid (including arms and training) to the battalion due to its neo-Nazi background. 

However, the amendment was later removed in November 2015, with The Nation reporting that the "House Defense Appropriations Committee came under pressure from the Pentagon to remove the Conyers-Yoho amendment from the text of the bill."

Azov published a media release on its website on 20 November 2017 stating that it had met with a foreign delegation of officers from the United States Armed Forces and Canadian Armed Forces on 16 November. 

Writing for Jacobin, Branko Marcetic says that members of Azov have been pictured meeting with U.S. military and NATO officials.
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This is a particularly revealing information because it proves beyond doubt that the US imperialist apparatus was very well aware of the nazi nature of the Azov Battalion. And did everything to overcome any political actions that were aiming to block any aid to its members.
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Recall that new information – coming from the elite section of the US think tank apparatus – proved that the US imperialists wanted to drag Russia into a war with Ukraine since at least 2019.
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Everything we wrote back in 2014 turns out to be right:
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What was left to do, for the moment, is to challenge Putin in order to drag Russia in an endless attrition war in East Ukraine and this explains to a degree Putin's hesitation to act like he did in Crimea. Against Russian army, of course, the West will not risk to put an organized military force, but only teams of mercenaries of private armies, as already did. It is certain, however, that, despite that the global economic oligarchy has lost valuable time because of its wrong moves, it will not give up its plans for Russia easily ...
Mapping proxy wars of the last decades around the globe we also wrote back in 2015 that the Ukraine conflict is a proxy war against Russia by the West, next to the Russian borders. Behind the color revolutions, one can always find US financed organizations. The Western allies would not dare to face directly the Russian army. In the Ukraine conflict one could find private armies of mercenaries. The most stupid action by the Western puppets was to support neo-nazis against the local Russian populations. This was something that exposed their real intention, which is to encircle Russia through puppet regimes who would permit the Western military presence in their territories.
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By aiding the nazis in Ukraine, the US and the West generally, lost their last remnants of their alleged “superiority” on matters related with democracy, human rights, or, international law. West’s moral bankruptcy and cultural decline are now irreversible and mark the beginning of the end of its global domination.
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CIA use Nazi forces

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A fine Chinese woman in red

In China, red is considered a lucky and happy color. I like this woman in this outfit. She is pleasing to the eye and I am sure that she would be fun to be with. video 2MB

Strange coincidences

I offer up this following graph. It shows an association between belief in the mainstream media (the United States government narrative) and number of mRNA injections.

The more mRNA injections you have, the more that you believe whatever the MSM (Main Stream Media) says.

graph1
Relationship between the official government narrative and mRNA injections.

Look over the results.

It is errie.

It could be a coincidence. It might be. But, you know, there are secrets, and secrets, and the United States is run by very selfish, sick, evil people. Something is up. But what?

What is going on?

I don’t know…

It reminds me of the old 1950s movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Imagine that you and everyone else are normal. You go to work, and you play. You go drive your car, and listen to the radio.

There’s a pandemic. Everyone must get these “special” injections.

Not a vaccine, mind you. But something “new” and “special”. And so you plan on getting one, but your entire community beats you to it. Everyone is injected with the “special” formulation but you, and so when you finally go into town to get your injection, you notice something different.

Everything is the same.

Yet everything is different.

You have a difficult time trying to describe what is do different. They all look the same. They act the same. They all have absolute perfect memories. But something is missing…

…you just cannot pin it down; you just cannot put your finger on it…

Well…

Everyone is mad. They are angry. When you bring up certain subject, you know that the person you are talking to will fly into a rage. There are simply things that you just cannot talk about.

  • Face masks.
  • Racial issues.
  • Russia
  • China.
  • Vacinations.

You think “everyone is so polarized”. But it’s strange. People were never so polarized. Not before. Now they are just really upset and really on a “hair trigger”.

The movie

In 1956 the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” came out.

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The narrative’s premise is most interesting.

A peaceful town is imperceptibly taken over by an alien force: Giant plant pods, products of atomic mutation, turn themselves into replicas of people. The pods turn human beings into faceless, emotionless automatons, incapable of any feeling, be it anger or love.

Once again, the image used is that of an initially normal and ordinary town, suddenly thrown out of balance.

“At first glance, everything looked the same,” the narrator says, “It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.” The rest of the film explores that “something.”

Called back to Santa Mira from a medical conference, Doctor Miles Bonnel (Kevin McCarthy) is greeted at the train station by his nervous nurse, Sally. Looking through his clinic’s window, everything “looks” the same:

Wally Everhard is talking someone into buying insurance, Bill Bittner is taking his secretary to launch. Yet something strange is going on. In the back of his mind, Miles senses a warning bell: “Sick people who couldn’t wait to see me, suddenly were perfectly all right.”

A general practitioner, Miles believes that, “the trouble is inside you!” thus recommending that she sees a psychiatrist.

The first “solution” to the problem is psychiatric help, with the film acknowledging the increasing popularity of psychiatry in the 1950s.

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“At first glance, everything looked the same,” the narrator says, “It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.”

Miles rationalizes his advice to Wilma by saying, “you don’t have to be losing your mind to need psychiatric help.” But Wilma is firm: “It’s a waste of time, there’s nothing wrong with me.”

Like many other films of the decade, Invasion deals with three issues: [1] the definition of normal and abnormal behavior; [2] the legitimate authority to label behaviors as abnormal or deviant; and [3] the negative effects of conformity, apathy, and complacency.

The film suggests that the town’s experts and professionals are not to be trusted. The police force, an agency entrusted with the legitimate use of physical force, can’t solve the problem. In fact, when Jack’s clone is found, they refuse to call the police, because cops tend to rely too much on logic and dry laws.

Miles represents the center of the moral center.

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“At first glance, everything looked the same,” the narrator says, “It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.”

He is a professional, but a general practitioner, not a specialist, thus able to see the problem overall, in its entirety.

Even so, Miles proves that his common sense and critical faculties as a responsible individual are more important than his narrow professional skills. Thus, when Jack first describes the problem he says: “Would you be able to forget that you’re a doctor for a while” .

For the duration of the film, Miles “forgets” his occupation.

The movie advocates independent judgment, common sense, intuition, and self-reliance, and shows suspicious toward anyone in a position of power or professional expertise.

Invasion, like Capra’s movies of the Depression era, singles out the role of an exceptional individual, a charismatic leader, in preventing society from dehumanization, from gradual transformation into an aggregate of unfeeling robots.

Sleep is the metaphor used to convey mass complacency and conformity.

The pods take over human beings when they are not alert, when they are (literally or figuratively) asleep, thus passive.

Escaping from town, Miles gives Becky and himself a large dose of pills to stay awake. “We can’t close our eyes all night,” he tells her, because “we may wake up changed.” “Sooner or later,”

Kauffman tells Miles, “You’ll have to go to sleep,” i.e. you’ll have to conform and join the majority.

But Kauffman also reassures him that as soon as he falls asleep, the pods will “absorb your minds, your memories, and you’re reborn into an untroubled world.”

The new world will be without love, ambition, grief, or any emotions, “Life will be much simpler and better.”

invasion of the body snatchers 1956
invasion of the body snatchers 1956

Indeed, during their escape, chased by every member in town, Becky can’t stay awake any longer and she falls asleep. “I went to sleep and it happened,” says Becky. “A moment of sleep,” narrates Miles, and “their bodies were now hosts harboring alien forms of life.”

Santa Mira is a typical small town; there is nothing special or distinctive about I; what happened in Santa Mira couldand would–happen in other towns. In most sci-fi films, the disaster first occurs on a local level before spreads all over the country.

The catastrophe begins in a small town, then moves to bigger regional centers, and finally inflicts the entire nation.

Attempting to get assistance, Miles first calls the F.B.I. in Los Angeles, but there is no answer. His call to the governor in Sacramento also fails; the circuits are busy in both places.

Invasion differs from other sci-fi features because there is no immediate confirmation of the hero’s report of the “strange” phenomenon by other witnesses; the conflict is between one individual and the entire community.

Invasion shows that the authorities, both scientific and political, are neither trustworthy nor competent.

Other films went out of their way to reassured audiences that they were “in good hands,” that politicians (or the military) and scientists would come to the rescue when needed. In contrast, Invasion’s ending is so tentative and abrupt that it provides no such reaffirmation, instead urging its viewers to be always alert.

kevin mccarthy2
“At first glance, everything looked the same,” the narrator says, “It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.”

Puckering fish look

For some reason, the Chinese women like to make these puckering fish expressions, as they view them as being very cute. I don’t know about that. Really. I just like a nice big smile, myself. video. 3MB

Sanctions

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Western production depends on China no less, than on Russia. And once again, on the tip of my tongue there is a Russian proverb with a deep meaning – what is good for a Russian is death for a German.
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And what will happen to the West, when Russia imposes her own retaliatory sanctions?
Consider this article…
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Immediately (in several European capitals), they realized that those sanctions, (introduced by them), would return to them like a boomerang and more than once

The words of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz about the reverse effect of sanctions against Russia can be called a sensation. It seems that the West is beginning to see clearly and see what damage they inflict on the economies of their countries with their own sanctions.

After the successes of the first days on the sanctions fronts, when Western countries managed to bring down the Russian stock market and the ruble exchange rate, a process of sobering up begins in European capitals and there is an acute desire to return the situation back.

By the way, the fall of the market and the collapse of the ruble did not become catastrophic for Russia . There was no default – Russia regularly pays its bills, and the ruble is slowly, but still winning back its positions.

A funny situation can happen with the stock market. Against the backdrop of a fall in the price of shares of Russian companies, Western investors began to actively sell them for next to nothing. Now the most interesting question is:

Who bought them?

Some European experts suggest that Russian business and the Russian government took advantage of the situation and bought almost everything for next to nothing. In other words, Russian companies have become Russian again. Forever at the bottom, the shares will not be and sooner or later they will go up, but they will no longer bring dividends to Western investors. And they will no longer have levers of influence on the Russian economy.

Chancellor Scholz , of course, did not talk about these deep processes. He spoke about the need to prepare and impose sanctions very carefully. The reverse effect of them should be surmountable for Western economies. But so far everything is working out exactly the opposite.

The imposed sanctions blew up the market and the prices of absolutely everything flew up.

Inflation all over Europe

Everyone knows the situation with gas – at some point it rose in price to a completely unthinkable 3,800 dollars. Now, thanks to the efforts of Gazprom, it has been brought down to an acceptable $1,050.

  • Oil prices rose, followed by gasoline and all fuel in general.
  • Steel and cast iron, building materials. Nickel. Aluminum. Products of the petrochemical industry and fertilizers.
  • Wheat and all food products.

The list can be continued, but this is quite enough to understand what kind of “return line” has flown through the European economy.

French President Macron is already talking about the introduction of food checks in the country for the poorest. In the Czech Republic, wheat and flour more than doubled in price.

In Italy and Spain, pasta and vegetable oil disappeared from the shelves, and in Lithuania, salt and soda.

And all this at a record level of inflation. In some European countries it has already exceeded 10%.

The West was sure that by depriving Russia of income from the export of energy resources and raw materials, they would bring it to her knees, but it turned out that Russia’s participation in almost any area is so significant that it immediately affects the economies of Europe and the United States.

Britain

Britain banned the import of products, incl. food, from Russia. In addition to raising prices for communal and gasoline, the British can part with their national dish – fish and chips, in other words – potatoes with fish.

For British Prime Minister Johnson, it came as an unpleasant surprise that most of the fish eaten in Britain is Russian. Iceland and Norway will not be able to provide even half of the amount that Russia was selling.

Britain urgently needs to find new routes for the supply of fish, otherwise unrest cannot be avoided and this is not a joke. For the British , fish and chips is more than food, it is part of the culture, it is their genetic code.

That is why such a heated debate broke out in the European Union today on the issue of an embargo on the import of Russian oil. Everyone is worried about the consequences of this step. Will this be another nail in the coffin of the European economy?

Russia’s retaliatory measures

But even more Europeans should worry about Russia’s retaliatory measures. Nothing is known about them yet, and this is scary. Retaliatory sanctions can set the European economy back several decades, and the EU is very unwilling to do so.

Reverse Sanctions

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Cute Chinese girl

I really like the Chinese girls. They are sweet, cute and they take care of themselves. Here’s a nice cute girl. video 4MB

Beef Stroganoff

Let’s talk about food.

Good. Healthy. Delicious. Food.

The story goes that this beef, noodles, and cream sauce dish exploded in America after U.S. servicemen, stationed in the dish’s homeland of Russia, brought it home after World War II.
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Beef Stroganoff.

Meat. MEAT. I love it, I really do.

My recent visits to my Vegetarian Restaurant, aside, I love and yearn for meat. Good tasty meat. Beef. Mutton. Pork. Chicken. Turkey. Meat!

I grew up in the heart of the United States. Pittsburgh. The land of steel, coal. beer and perogies. There, the basic food groups consisted of potatoes, cream of [insert mushroom, chicken, or celery here] soup, butter (or Land-O-Lakes margarine), tall cold glasses of milk with every meal and…meat.

I had a recent craving for beef stroganoff.

Although I ate this dish frequently as a child, I had yet to make it myself. The beef stroganoff of my youth was a retro reflection of my Polish-American-Irish upbringing – a nostalgic combination of ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, condensed beef broth, and low-fat sour cream.

Although I (of course) I could have gone out and had my fill of some delicious steak, turtle or mutton, I wasn’t really feeling that desire. I wanted to create something myself. I wanted a taste from my childhood, and you just aren’t goign to get that inside of China. No matter how hard you try.

I wanted comfort food, and I figured that beef stroganoff would foot the bill.

This is comfort food at its finest.

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Get your beef in some sputtering, aromatic, delicious SALTED butter. Work quickly – you’re just browning and the thinness of the meat doesn’t require much time in the pan. Set beef aside. Sauté your onions and garlic in the same pan.

After making a few (regional) tweaks to the Simply Recipes version, I came up with a winner. Gather up some easy basics: butter, beef, onions, garlic, mushrooms, sour cream (be sure to read my footnote on the sour cream!). If you have tarragon, nutmeg, and Worcestershire sauce on hand, even better.

Beef Stroganoff

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Meanwhile in America

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2022 03 24 19 44

Draft is a prelude for an invasion force

Why would the United States decide to institute a draft? Well, it seems that there are decisions being made and systems put in place right now. If you are an American under 35 years of age, you should be concerned.

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Screenshot.

US Draft

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Here’s what I have been eating

Some home movies. Actually not in my home, in various eating establishments in China. Oh, China is supposed to be in famine right now! OMG. My bad. Sorry to break the narrative.

Video 1 – Dongbei salad. 43MB

Video 2 – Sichuan beef and mushrooms. 63MB

Video 3 – Gung Pao Ji Deng 82MB

Some intel to share…

A while back I recieved some intel from one of my spook-ish sources. Good or bad, right or wrong, I just filed it away for “a rainy day” (It’s a play on an American idiom. It means, it’s valuable and interesting, but you don’t need it now. You save it for later.)

It’s how I run my life.

Good or bad, right or wrong. I just take all input, and consider it. File it, and move forward. Always move forward. You just cannot drop everything and take action on some other’s time-tables. That would be like running around, from tree to tree, pissing indiscriminately.

So I took the information. Filed it both securely in my email folders, and on my hard disk. And forgot about it.

It does not mean that I agree or disagree with it. It just means that there is nothing that I can do with the information at the time that I recieved it. So I put it aside. And, instead, work on things that I can do something about.

Month pass by.

After seeing that graph that connects mRNA with thoughts and political agreement with the United States government, it triggered my memory. There was something about this dialog that really seemed to connect to the events that I was witnessing.

The (archived) intel that I was informed on was directly related to this association.

The message suggested that there were vault 7 algorithms and frequencies that worked together in association with various ingredients in the <redacted> portion of the mRNA injection “stew”.

mRNA nanobots + Vault 7 + MSM “news” = Easily manipulated serf / slave

These associations would then “hand shake” with embedded subsonic frequences transmitted along “news” messages, of all sorts. Thus making the injected person, who is exposed to the “news” messages believe them without any critical thought.

Sounds far-fetched.

Perhaps…

I filed it away, as it was something worthy of further study.

And then I saw the graph, and I sought to revisit my communication on this subject. So, like the good and investigative fellow I am, I went to dig it out of my archives.

And it’s gone.

I mean, as in GONE.

The darnest thing!

All records gone. All archives gone. All backups gone. It’s a full spectrum erase. Oh, the folder is there. But it’s empty. Even the screen shots that I took and put in a special folder… it’s gone as well.

OIP C.PUIfTNrpU5w DYrL nP9tgHaCl
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What the fuck?

It could be a slide. I could be forgetting things. It could be an accident. I don’t know…

… what a coincidence.

It’s a nagging pain in the ass, that’s what.

Some more fun gag gift boxes…

I found this one funny. Perfect for getting your children to eat. Child refuses to eat? Just plop them down and watch them eat their hearts out. Children cry for more!

Oh, and Daddy won’t mind…

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Perfect for getting your children to eat. Child refuses to eat? Just plop them down and watch them eat their hearts out. Children cry for more!

This one is unique. Everyone wants their home to fill with the aroma of sizzling bacon. Now it can be an everyday affair.

“Breakfast fresh scent”.

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Everyone wants their home to fill with the aroma of sizzling bacon. Now it can be an everyday affair.

Who thinks up these things? “Millions of satisfied customers.”

Do you want to shake up your company? Hold a meeting where you announce that the company is going to save money by stop buying toilet paper. Instead, they will install these rotowipe devices in all the stalls. Make the announcment “dead pan” and watch the reactions.

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“Millions of satisfied customers.”

A Huge Cleavage

A huge cleavage is developing between the East and West in tandem with the Ukraine ops. The US State Dept. just sanctioned some Chinese officials due to "human rights". China didn't take well to it at all. Meanwhile, India is not going along with the Western sanctions on Russia and got threatened with sanctions earlier but the US has since backed off that threat.

Victoria Nuland is in India today trying again to coerce India into getting on board the sanctions train. I dont't think it will work.

Also, it seems that China and India are making renewed efforts to bury the hatchet regarding tbeir border duspute. It really seems like a great re-alignment happening, especially taking into account all the other countries not taking part in the anti-Russia sanctions.

Russsia essentially said "fuck it" in deciding to launch into Ukraine. If the West keeps it up, China will arrive at the same point.

Interesting times.

-Woogs

Speaking of “huge cleavage”; here’s a nice Chinese girl with an impressive chest… video 1MB

Russian Foreign Minister

Here’s the entire question being used against Lavrov:

"Why was the military operation launched now and not eight years ago? At that time, a pro-Russian “anti-Maidan” movement emerged in Odessa and Kharkov, which installed the Russian flag on top of the Kharkov regional administration without firing a shot. The city supported Russia. Now these people are hiding from shelling."

I find it impossible to verify the veracity of the question. I know in Odessa the police didn’t do anything to stop the Nazis from their killing and burning. I imagine a similar performance happened in Kharkov. Russia acted to save its strategic asset, Crimea, but clearly wasn’t prepared to intervene further.

Lavrov’s initial sentence is very honest:

"A lot of factors influence developments at each specific historical moment."

I’ve read both the English and Russian transcripts, and what I see by reading between the lines is commiseration by Lavrov with the questioner, not any attempt to mislead. Lavrov says They took advantage of our nature:

"We must have trusted them because of some naivety and kindness of heart, which is something Russians are known for.

"I have no doubt that lessons will be learned."

And if you’ve watched Lavrov while speaking his recent denunciations of the West, that Russia will never again put its trust in any part of the West, you’ll see the resolve that Russia will not get fooled again as it’s now taking everything into its own hands.

IMO, some part of all Russians, especially Putin, Lavrov, Shoigu, and other leaders, was burned and died with those in Odessa and in Donbass. They pled and pled and pled some more with the Western pukes to obey the fucking law put forth in UNSCR 2022–the Minsk Agreements.

But inaction and outright refusal followed by the breaking of it all by the fucking West. And now all the rest that was uncovered with the military operation!!

I’ll bet the fucking national debt that Putin, Lavrov, et al wish they would’ve done more in 2014 but felt they couldn’t.

The Syria intervention helped to provide some solace. But it’s very clear to Russia now that the Outlaw US Empire is the #1 predator state on the planet and must be neutralized somehow without resorting to nuclear weapons.

Yes, that’s how fucking serious this is.

Lavrov knows that gravity of the situation. It’s fucking existential!

And it’s that fact the West badly wants to cover up. And just as importantly, it’s that fact that we must try to expose and broadcast.

karlof1

Steak au Poivre

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Steak au Poivre

I’m probably going to catch some flac for this, but for me – it isn’t off the BBQ. No, no, no. MY perfect steak is done on a stove top (gasp!). Classically considered a French bistro dish, Steak au Poivre is my perfect way to indulge.  If you’re a meat lover, this post is for you.

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Simple and clean.

I think a part of what appeals to me so much about this recipe is its simplicity. The steak is seasoned with two ingredients: salt and peppercorns. It might sound crazy to coat two steaks with 2 whole tablespoons of peppercorns, but when they aren’t finely ground the spice is much more subtle. Dressing the meat this way also lets it shine through. This is beef at its best.

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What appeals to me so much about this recipe is its simplicity.

Using a cast iron pan is my second secret. These pans retain heat well and are practically non-stick. Cooking the steaks on high heat, turning ~once per minute creates an even, golden crust with no burning. Depending on the thickness of your steak, you’re looking for a total of 3-4 minutes per side for rare.

If there is a side of fat on your steak, render it down for a couple minutes by propping the steak up.

In the final minutes, we add some butter for extra flavour and to start providing the base for a delicious Cognac pan sauce. When the steaks are cooked to your liking, remove to a cutting board and tent with foil. You’ll be left with something closely resembling this:

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In the final minutes…

Up last is to create a rich cognac pan sauce that sends this over the top. In your pan, we will add shallot, (more butter), Cognac, cream, thyme and parsley. After cooking and reducing the sauce, we pour it over the sliced steak. When I have this for dinner, steak is all I need. There is something ridiculous & awesome about eating just steak for dinner, I hope you try it!

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Time to EAT!

Meanwhile in China

It’s a thing. Partly due to Coronavirus. Partly due to the plans for Space, and bases on the Moon and Mars. Cute. Odd. video 23MB

Digging up the e-mail

I was able to retrieve the email concerning the connection between mRNA “vaxx” and the United States government.

Now, I do not endorse the content of this e-mail. I just provide it in it’s raw form for others to  muse over. Please take it as it is. It is raw information that could be from anyone.

Anyone at all.

I am using anonymous email because this is above top secret information. 

You are correct that the vaccines will kill an estimated 70% of the US population due to prion disease.  This is being done to avoid world problems and reconstruct world society as described by the World Economic Forum (ocean acidification, food shortages, food poisoning and job replacement by artificial intelligence).

However, what is not currently known is that the chemtrails contain a mixture of advanced nanobots along with complexed radioactive materials (germanium, indium, etc) and a shielding material that releases hard to detect bursts of radioactivity (2 sec) on the back of the spine, femoral heads, pelvis, ribs and under the chin when exposed to nanorouter EMF.  

The nanorouters are powered by electric fields and local utility companies have conspired to alter their current to emit very high EMF and magnetic fields periodically to kill and injure through direct exposure to this radiation plus the activated chemtrail dust.  

The US government has contracted stalking activities to private companies such as Replica.ai (Lucas in San francisco) and has artificial intelligence monitoring large numbers of people through Patriot Act hacked cell phone sim cards, cameras, hacked routers and PCs.  

However, they have the ability to do additional spying due to the nanobot infestation.  Nanobots around the occipital lobe allow them to steal passwords and watch vision.  They also can do voice to skull transmission of voices, start terrifying abnormal dream sequences when initiating sleep, blank memories and control people through trance to commit suicide etc.  Low intelligence and highly opinionated people are extremely susceptible and literally zone out and lose their memory while they are being manipulated.

The nanobots also have a slew of programmed harassments that can be extremely disabling-hyperurination due to stimulated hormone secretion, waking people up from sleep due to external nanobots, depression, anxiety stimulation, simulated Mernier's disease where the room shakes up and down. If they are active you'll get tinnitus.  All of the symptoms stop once you are out of Wifi range.

The nanobots are magnetized and they are being used to shake housing structures apart.  All over the US buildings are having roof collapses due to smartmeter arson from power companies plus shaking by hidden resonance frequency generators which is known as the world hum.  The nanobot programs reduce the intensity of the humming so it sounds like typical noise but it is not.  The building shaking can be measured on a linear accelerometer (Physics Accelerator Toolbox app).

The chemtrail dust is how they plan to kill uncooperative unvaccinated people.  Planed flyovers seed beds and clothing with the dust and then it is activated and the person is slowly irradiated.  Due to the short half-life of the materials it is very hard to detect however a small EMF/magnetic field detector can be used to scan the areas.  As this is dust, vaccuuming and spongebathing it off is very effective before or during activation.

Resistors are also being targeted using the vircator microwave satellite targeting program as described at targetedjustice.com. It is very hard to shield requiring 12 layers of aluminum foil at the highest setting.  Pointing an emf detector in the area of strongest magnetic field will show you where the satellites are. Active vircators will show high EMF up to 106 V/m.

The buffered radioactive nanobot dust is being sprayed all over the world and is being used along with NSA hacked servers to control political leaders without their knowledge.  

This most likely is why Vladimir Putin has now invaded Ukraine. An invasion of Ukraine will most likely lead to an EMP strike that will damage the European illuminati.  Agents I have spoke with claim that the USA is currently controlled by the US branch of the New World Order/Illuminati and they seek to damage the European branch with the EMP attack.

The nanobots are also converting prions all over the world due to NSA hacking.

You are a targeted individual and can expect all of these attacks.  You need to take appropriate precautions to shield your equipment from hacking as well as from nanobot visual access (band of 10 layers of foil around the occiput with a strap works well.  The irradiation can cause bone marrow edema syndrome, severe abdominal pain, skin burning and back pain.

We are in a bit of a tricky situation on this one.  It probably is too late to stop the prion disease and we do need to have the European illuminati, religion and black antisocial behavior weakened however I have concerns about the excessive targeting as anyone who knows about their plans is having hits put out on them (including me) and the competency of the people running this thing.  Take appropriate precautions.

Covering beds with a plastic sheet until used to shield from the dust and shielding from vircator also is important.

Given the scope of this thing I doubt there is anything anyone can do.  The US Federal government is completely taken over, people are mind controlled and the population is being attacked with weapons we have never seen before.  Also, if we don't allow it to happen we suffer all the world problems that the WEF describes.  If we do then we will most likely be slaves to elite billionaires and forced to live in a controlled society.

<redacted>

Indeed it is far-out stuff.

It’s well beyond my understanding.

But…

It is the ONLY content that I have / possess that answers the strange graphic association posted above. Take it, and use it as you see fit. Personally, it’s way, way above my head. And I have no ideas; no clue how accurate or valid it actually is.

When I asked a person whom I greatly respect on the content of this, the response was thoughtful…

Whoever sent you that - just please PLEASE listen to the content of what the implications are for China - Xi is a WEF placement. This is NOT Unknown.  It’s literally on the WEF website. He pissed off the WEF and now he is going to be removed. China has been under attack since I have been warning you. It has. A company called Blackrock - in THIS fucking world line is the muscle of the WEF.

Want to know why we did Afghanistan so quickly? BLACKROCK provided allll of the security force in Afghanistan since 2017. We drew down troops but they never left. They changed uniforms and got paid a TON of cash. Look it up. So Blackrock decides to pull alllll of the security forces outside Kabul that it paid - as a message. 

Think about that - about 85% of security force outside of Kabul - gone. Like that. And all that kept the Taliban from overrunning the country was a small force. So - Biden left rather than get slaughtered. 

But to my point - The WEF has a stake in a securities trading firm called Blackrock that hired mercenaries - tens of thousands of combat veterans that you see fighting in Ukraine.

Look it up. 

I cannot speak about the specifics of ANY of that - at all - but I’m telling you - you hit paydirt.

And we ARE pulling out when the fight gets bloody. 

Blackrock is on Chinas doorstep. And I am telling you - nothing can prevent what they are doing. THAT I know from actual friend that is IN Blackrock. As a mercenary. 

This all is online. If you can’t access it through China ask someone to look it up. Also look up “Blackrock woke”. It’s fun. 

And if that is AI that created that email - fucking bravo. THAT is a programmer I want to hang out with.

And feel free to post my shit - just please keep the name out of it. But I know some of your people that emailed me and I gave them my thoughts. Ask how accurate so far. 

Again - I wish you all peace and happiness there - because our lights are going out soon.

Much love - <redacted>

Have you ever gotten the idea that you are somehow way over your head? Yeah. I get that all the time. It’s not that I believe everything. I listen. I learn. I drink. I move forward, and I adapt.

Everyone needs to learn, and adapt as situations permit.

Each and everytime I chat with the Domain Commander, on comm, it’s just a window into how much I really don’t know. WHile I know much, there is still so much more to learn.

Sometimes I just feel like I am a little ball in one of those old pin-ball machines. I’m just being batted around like crazy.

Take what is provided and move forward.

Always move forward.

And while you are at it; eat well.

video 3MB

Crab Rangoon

Although this fried crab dumpling fits in among postwar tiki culture and is often purported to be of southeast Asian provenance, it was very likely invented in America.

OIP C.dKAUGkBEnA7cVfxeWd1PmAHaLH
Crab Rangoon

It’s easy to make. Delicious to eat, and fun to try.

Crab Rangoon

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The United States Blinked

The United States is reposturing itself. This is occuring soon after the warning from China on a package of 2nd stage sanctions regarding Russia and Taiwan.
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Did you know that China bought none of the extra $200 billion of US exports in Trump’s trade deal. Imagine that.
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The US-China trade: Washington’s review of US$300 billion in tariffs cannot be ‘half-hearted’. You either do it and suffer the consequences or abandon it completely.
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“But what about the costs?” Ah. The Total Cost of U.S. Tariffs.
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From a neocon publication. The longer Trump’s China tariffs are in place, the greater the harm to America.
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Be the Rufus

If everyone did small, little things the world would be so much nicer, and so much better. video 6MB

Downfall of the USD

From one of my feeds…

The best way to accelerate the downfall of the empire is to attack its Dollar Hegemony (not the same as attacking America). 

I said that in my Quora posts "Trade War between China and America" and "Who will win the trade war" early 2018 at the beginning of Trump's "war by any means except guns" -- euphemistically termed trade war -- against China. 

Without the Dollar hegemony, America may have to act like a more normal country. Less unilateral sanctioning, less bullying, less acting like the Mafia, less war crimes, less color revolutions, less media lies, less war budgets, less war-mongering, less bases around the world, less profligate printing of money, less plundering of other countries, etc. 

Bullied countries will have alternatives. For protection, they will have Russia and for trade they will have China. All previous vassals of America, including European countries are welcome. Then we will have some peace.

Acting like a more normal country in a more balanced world is actually good for the powerless people of America. 

They may learn to demand for guaranteed basic housing, food, healthcare, and education rather than asking for more shit-paying soul-crushing slave-wage jobs or one-time checks that eventually go to the coffers of the 1% money-changers and MIC, giving those miscreants more power to ravage America and the world, meanwhile the national debt of Americans increases to generate the checks and the rest of the world suffers inflation, which is of course borne by the common masses of the world. 

Capitalism won't solve the problems. 

The fall of the empire may help people think differently or see more clearly how some countries with so many people and so little resources can live gainfully, peacefully, and happily together in a diverse yet harmonious society.

I'll share a passage from my book under chapter title "The Dragon's Dream":

"Where is this paradise? Is it on earth or is it only in his dreams (the dreamer's name means tattoo-dragon)? Where all parents are strong and wise and capable, and all the children are happy and beloved. Where brothers and sisters neither slaughter each other, nor enslave one another, nor tell lies to everyone from morning till night, where the children love and help each other, share everything and take care of one another, and all of them live peaceful, fruitful, and happy lives. 

Where is this place? 

Is it China?"

Does this sound familiar? It comes from a Coen brothers movie, with a couple of changes and replacing Idaho with China. 

-<redacted>

Power reshuffling

China says Russia is an ‘important’ G20 member. It cannot simply be expelled by others, no matter what they might want. In short, Beijing has spoken up for Russia, describing it an “important” global member after the possibility of a major move against Vladimir Putin.
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Unfriendly Lists

Both Russia and China, and probably India (soon), have generated an “Unfriendly nation list”. These lists catagorize nations in accordance to their behaviors and put them into catagories.

  • Close relationship
  • Friendly
  • Neutral
  • Unfriendly
  • Enemy

These are not meaningless lists. They will be used to determine policy. And the policy that Asia uses against other nations is determined by where it sits upon these lists.

Today, President Putin made his first move in a chess game with the West. Gas will be sold to unfriendly countries only for rubles.

Putin wants ‘unfriendly countries’ to pay rubles for gas – ABC News
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Volunteers

In China, people; ordinary people, volunteer to help others. It is their nature to be the Rufus. They don’t ask for payment. They don’t ask for anything. They help others as it is their nature. Volunteers going to remote villiages to help others. Everyone being the Rufus. video 12MB

Cute Chinese girl

Yet another beauty. video 3MB

 

Chem-Trails

For the longest time I have dismissed the idea about “chem-trails” as just crazy “tin foil hat” conspiracy bullshit. Chem-trails are just water vapor at high altitude, don’t you know.

For the longest time. I believed this.

Then, I moved to China. It’s calm. It’s peaceful. It’s pleasant. It’s like walking slowly into a body-temperature pool of water.

And, do you know what?

There’s no “chem-trails”. None. As in zero.

So, maybe (I figured) that it was because that China has these stringent air pollution standards on all fuel. Except, well.. just how does that actually affect water vapor emissions? No clear answers.

But one thing is for certain; there are no vapor trails from aircraft of any kind, at any place, within China.

MM car ride in an industrial factory section of Guangzhou. video 43MB

None.

N-O-N-E.

Why? Why are there no Chemtrails in China? MM video 23MB

The Problem with the Nano-bots mRNA Vaxx and Vault 7

Ok, then. Let’s do a simple “sanity check”.

The big problem with this concept is that the American / Western “leadership” must be totally isolated from the effects of this control mechanism. How can you possibly isolate the leadership from Chem-trails, audio playing on the radio, media on television and movies, and the social networks on the internet.

Heck! They are addicted to them!

So, and the sanity check is clear, as brilliant and complex the system is, it will affect everyone within that society. No one will be immune. Sure, you might need to place yourself into isolation, but eventually, one way or the other, you WILL feel the influence of these systems. No one is immune.

The “leadership” might find a way to pretend getting an mRNA injection, but it’s a cut-throat world at the top. There can be all sorts of ways to place tiny nano-bots inside of your enemy to turn them into your pawn.

So, really…

No matter how hard they try, they will live within the very same, exact “echo box” that they subject their citizenry to. They will live inside an “echo chamber” of lies; lie that they ordered others to create.

Here’s a response to the lies on MSM. video 22MB

And now they are in an echo box of lies.

They are boxed in, and they believe the lies. They actually believe them.

And as leaders, they will make decisions based on those lies, and the entire nation;

They will start to say things that will sound crazy, and act in ways that will seem strange and crazy. They will act so very convinced of the strangest and most outlandish narratives.

And in doing so…

…by the leadership…

…the entire system will evenually be destroyed. Leadership needs REAL intel to make decisions upon. There is no excuse. You eaither have real intel (good and most especially bad) or you don’t. And history is clear. Bad intel results in very bad results.

We call those results; fiascos.

How can anyone possibly have a leadership that…

  • Does not take the mRNA Vaxx injection.
  • Does not read, watch or enjoy American media, social networks or media.

It cannot occur.

Maybe at some time, some radicals believed that it was possible. Maybe back in the 1960s, or 1970s they might have believed this. But in todays society. It is impossible.

Simply Impossible.

Perhaps, the reason why there is such an accelerated failure at all levels in the West is becuase the “leadership” has themselves been affected by their very own poison.

I shake my head.

How can they be so stupid?

Please ponder this thought.

Let’s take a break from this to let your mind relax. New subject. New thoughts.

Chinese respect

Boy locks himself in his bedroom. The fire station is called and they go to the house to break him out…video 2MB

Here’s yet some more gag boxes…

Now here’s a jigsaw puzzle that is suitable for the whole family. Just set aside a card table and get at it. It’s a true challenge.

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Want a challenge?

Plants cry for more! Amaze your friends!

Environmentially safe!

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Plants cry for more!

The latest in animal entertainment!

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The latest in animal entertainment!

The world needs more people skipping

If you cannot dance, try skipping. Smile. Skip as you walk down the street, and say nice things to people. While the rest of the world is on a roller coaster to Hell, you can stop that descent. Skip as you walk. video 15MB

Take care of yourself

We all might not look like this 20-something Chinese woman, but we can certainly smile and be great; we can do great things. Stop waiting. Start doing. video 3MB

Suppose you are a leader in the West

Just imagine that you are a leader of one of the major Western nations. And you best scientists come running to you; scientist that you believe and trust. And they tell you that the situation is DIRE for mankind. They tell you, convincingly that human population grown and energy depletion is unsustainable and that a major disaster lies ahead…

…and they offer senarios and solutions.

And the best one, whatever it might be, is one when a great mass of humanity dies off.

And you, as a leader believe them.

Perhaps you are an independent thinker. Perhaps you are a massive follower of social media and use twitter all the time, and are heavily influenced by Vault 7. What ever.

You believe them. In your heart; you believe them.

And their solution is to kill off 80% of the human population. ..

Insane. Unheard of. But, they present it in a clear and defined manner…

  • Intentionally cull the human race to 20% of it’s size … or…
  • Lose 100% of the human species and everyone dies.

What would you choose?

Truth or fiction

It does not matter if there’s such a real thing as “climate change”. What actually does matter is what the “leadership” believes. Because if they inherently believe that the world is going “to Hell in a handbasket”, they have the power, and ability, and the willingness to perform some really drastic actions.

Actions, mind you, that will affect you and your families directly.

Let’s eat.

Chicken Pot Pie

Likely another cost-cutting holdover of the Great Depression and World War II, this savory chicken and vegetable pie is now mostly found only in the grocery store freezer aisle. Don’t go there.
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Make up your own. It tastes better. It lasts longer. It’s easy to make, and great and easy to reheat in the microwave. Chicken Pot Pie, why didn’t we think about this sooner?
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Chicken Pot Pie.

Chicken Pot Pie

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A strange thing about that plane crash

(If) the software of the plane took over the controls from the pilot… and we con’t know that this is what happened, but if it did… why in God’s Name did it decide to aim the plane straight towards the ground at full throttle?

How the plane behaved. video. 2MB

No self-respecting engineer, or software designer would allow that kind of radical action. None.

So, we are left with two POSSIBLE causes…

  • The sensors to the plane indicated that a nose dive at full-throttle was needed. Which suggests a very complicated mash-up of sensors.
  • Someone used software to hyjack the plane and intentionally decided to ram it straight into the ground.

Who would be so evil?

Man gets word that his entire family were on the plane and died. video 16MB

And here’s what’s left of the plane. video 4MB

The black box fight recorder has been recovered. I believe investigators are considering that sabotage is involved.

Talking about evil and the United States, let’s interrupt this train of thought to explore more gag boxes…

Here’s some more gag boxes…

Have your pet treat you as a king!

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Have your pet treat you as a king!

Take a nap anywhere and at anytime.

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Take a nap anywhere and at anytime.

And what about the Ukraine?

Unlike the theoretical secret deals between the West and the Chinese (or Russia), the deals between China and Russia are very much visible and are largely committed to paper.

The West started this conflict, of course. I don’t know when they realized Russia was going to move into the Ukraine, but they had ample opportunity to prevent it by simply agreeing to the previous status quo. They appear to believe that they can create a protracted conflict in the Ukraine like they did when Russia invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s. 

That shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the situation. 

Ukraine has historically been a part of Russia. There is not really any such thing as a “Ukrainian identity” outside of being a vassal state. In the west of the country, they tend to feel closer to Poland, and there is some bad blood all around with regards to the USSR. But none of this is in any way similar to fanatical Islam. The US has backed neo-Nazism as a kind of “Ukrainian ISIS,” but you can’t rally a country around cartoonish neo-Nazism (particularly while the entire leadership of the country is Jewish).

The idea of using neo-Nazis as rebels against a Russian occupation or a Russia-backed government in the Ukraine is nonsensical, and reeks of the kind of stupid thinking that led to America’s Afghan debacle. The US government pays people to lie to them, and when people tell the truth, they get fired and end up on obscure livestream interviews answering superchats. These liars are telling the decision-makers that the Ukraine is Afghanistan and a protracted conflict can be used to drain Russia, which will ultimately result in the collapse of the Putin government.

The fact that they have no idea what they’re doing is blatant in the fact that they are sanctioning the entire Russian race. Putin’s support is going up rapidly among the people, many of whom didn’t like his policies before but now feel compelled to rally around him since they are being attacked personally for their race by the West.

-UNZ

Perfect for the busy man on the move!

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Perfect for the busy man on the move!

So what are we looking at here?

Well, as far as I can figure out, we have the following situations all moving ahead at this time…

  • The United States is pushing the world towards war.
    • They are crossing both China’s, and Russia’s red lines to provoke them.
    • They believe the myth of “American greatness”.
    • They believe that America has liberty and freedom.
    • They believe that a uni-polar world is necessary and there are no alternatives.
  • The American leadership are acting strangely.
    • President Biden seems to be senile with dementia.
    • Vice President Kamala Harris appears to be a “ding-bat, dunderhead”.
    • The US Senate are mostly radical neocon war-hawks.
  • The Coronavirus pandemic was strange.
    • All Western nations insisted in mRNA injections.
    • All Eastern nations treated it as a bio-weapon and used dead-host vaccines.
    • Western nations are all now “open”, while Eastern nations remain closed.
  • Full-scale on-going “hybrid-warfare” against the East by the West.
    • Military engagements, sanctions, trade restrictions on Russia.
    • Strange unusual events inside of China. All centering around American products, food, livestock, or systems.
  • A strong difference in the West vs. East societies.
    • Everyone in the West seem angry, agitated, and frustrated.
    • Thos in the East are calm, relaxed, happy.
    • No contrails in the East.
    • Hyper-inflation hitting the West.
    • Up-tick in some inflationary measures in the East.

But what does it all mean?

It’s not like I can just immediately agree that all Americans (and those in the west) have nano-bots, and chem-trail poisonings, and all the rest. I see strange behaviors, but I do not see any evidence that the cause is some kind of mad-scientist stew of frequency manipulation, vault 7, nano-bots, MSM algorithms, and the rest.

I have no proof.

And even if I did, I really wouldn’t know what to do about / with it.

So, in the interests of all…

We have to approach the strangeness, not with theories that suggest causes and answers but rather empirical study.

Empirical study

Empirical research is research using empirical evidence. You see evidence. You study it. You come to conclusions about it. You do not come up with theories on the causes. You just put all of the observations into one singular box.

It’s important that you put ALL of the observations in that box. Omitting one singular element can give you distorted or skiewed conclusions. So you collect all the observations…

  • An American-built plane had a highly unusual crash inside of China.
  • The plane possessed software that can override the pilot commands.
  • The plane is of the same make and model that had similiar crashes before.
  • “Conspiracy kooks” believe that this type of plane can be hyjacked remotely.
  • The crash came immediately after two warnings to Xi Peng (Blinkedin, and Biden) that there would be immediate consequences if China did not Sanction Russia.
  • It’s been one week now since the warnings. No other “immediate consequences” occurred (that the public is aware of).

You see, empirical study a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience. Here’s another example.

  • There are contrails all over the West.
  • There are no contrials in the East.

And…

  • Everyone in the West are agitated, upset, angry and frustrated.
  • Everyone in the East seems to be calm, realxed and comfortable.

And…

  • While there are exceptions, the vast bulk of injections in the West are mRNA.
  • There are no mRNA injections in China, and few in Russia.

Empiricism values some research more than other kinds.

  • A measure of “happiness” is relative.
  • While a measure of inflation is measurable.

Empirical evidence (the record of one’s direct observations or experiences) can be analyzed quantitatively or qualitatively. And from that, you can suggest what is going on…

  • Until MM mixed different subjects in the articles (food, girls, China, history), there was a near constant stream of Trolls, and hacking attemps on the site.
  • When the mixed subjects were introducted, Troll and DDOS attacks dropped to zero.

As well as come up with theories as to why it is going on…

  • Trolls and hacks use some <unknown method> to select the websites to harrass.
  • By mixing content within articles, the <unknown method> is bypassed, and the articles are no longer harassed or attacked.

About China

An interesing quote…

We are clearly facing down a world ruled by the Chinese. A lot of people are uncomfortable with that. But most of the discomfort comes from the idea that the Chinese are somehow going to rule us in the same fashion that the US has ruled the world since World War II. 

They have no such plans for us. The Chinese have a vision of conquering the world through commerce, rather than war, threats of war, and geopolitical maneuvering.

We started out on the issue of the economic dominance of the US, and that economic dominance is indeed the key to everything. However, US economic dominance was entirely a result of US military might. The reigning US philosophy for global economic dominance has been: “we will literally bomb you.” 

Conversely, the Chinese philosophy has been: “we will sell you high quality products at reasonable prices.”

When the Mongols consistently raided them, stealing their women and wealth on horseback and riding off with the booty, they said “cannot allow.” Instead of mounting an army to crush the Mongols, they built a gigantic wall, and told the Mongols that if they wanted Chinese products, they would have to buy them at the wall.

It is precisely the same logic as a Chinese immigrant family setting up a store in an all black neighborhood and covering the counter, cash register, and expensive items with bulletproof glass.

China has always been, fundamentally, a merchant empire, and that hasn’t changed. If it were not for the belligerence of the West, they wouldn’t have bothered to build up a large military at all. Historically, virtually every war the Chinese have fought has been a civil war, as they don’t look at the rest of the world as enemies or friends, but rather customers and potential customers.

-UNZ

Cream Cheese Pumpkin Pie

Although pumpkin pie and cheesecake have obviously remained popular, this hybrid, a Kraft classic, has fallen out of favor.
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This variation on pumpkin pie comes from actress and writer Mae West. It appears in a 1933 community cookbook published by the Assistance League of Southern California, alongside contributions from several other Hollywood stars such as Carole Lombard, Norma Shearer, Constance Bennet, Marion Davies, and Cary Grant.

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2022 03 24 09 50
2022 03 24 09 50

Unfortunately, Mae West doesn’t give us much information beyond the actual recipe. The pie is titled “Pumpkin Pie Robert,” but it’s unclear what the name “Robert” refers to – it could be the name of a person who gave her the recipe, or perhaps even the name of a place the recipe came from.

Mae West includes brandy in her recipe, which is pushing the boundaries just a little, since the cookbook was published in 1933 and Prohibition wasn’t repealed until the end of that year. She is far from the only contributor to this cookbook to do so, however, and finding alcohol in recipes from the Prohibition years isn’t at all uncommon.

The strangest ingredient in this recipe to me is the Nippy cheese called for in the topping. I wasn’t able to find out exactly what Nippy cheese is, although it looks like it was some type of cheese spread originally made by Kraft. It was apparently not the same as cream cheese, since Kraft made that too, but for lack of a better substitute I decided to go with cream cheese. Any kind of flavored cheese spread honestly sounds like it would be disgusting when combined with whipped cream, so I’m hoping that the original Nippy cheese was something neutrally-flavored.

2022 03 24 09 52
2022 03 24 09 52

Oh that Mae…

2022 03 24 09 53
2022 03 24 09 53

Pumpkin Pie Robert:

  • 1 1/2 cups pumpkin
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp cloves
  • 2 tsp ginger
  • 1/2 tsp salt (reduced from original)
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups milk
  • 2 oz/4 tbsp brandy
  • 2 oz cream cheese
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  1. Beat the eggs until light, then add the sugar, spices, and salt and beat until mixed.
  2. Scald the milk, then slowly add milk to the egg mixture while whisking constantly.
  3. Stir in the pumpkin and brandy.
  4. Line a pie pan with pastry (no recipe for pie crust is given in the book, so use your favorite recipe or store-bought).
  5. Pour in the filling. With a 9-inch pie pan, I ended up with some extra filling; the recipe is probably intended for a larger or deeper pan.
  6. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes, then turn down the oven to 325 degrees and bake for another 30-40 minutes. Set aside to cool.
  7. Topping: whip the cream until stiff. Mash the cream cheese with a fork, then stir into the cream. Once the pie is cold, use a piping bag to decorate it with the cream cheese mixture.

Like many pies, this one is definitely at its best the day after its made. When I tried it on day 1, the flavors were much too strong, with the brandy in particular overwhelming everything else. The flavors melded much better the second day, although it was still a strongly-flavored pie. I did end up reducing the salt, since 1 teaspoon seemed much too salty to me.

2022 03 24 09 55
A nice fun pie. Goes great with coffee.

I liked the cream-cheese topping, but I think I am more of a whipped cream purist. I also wonder whether cream cheese was a good substitute for Nippy cheese, or if the original cheese was something more savory. There are people who put cheddar cheese on apple pies, although I’ve never heard of it used on a pumpkin pie. Was Mae West a cheese-on-dessert-pie person? (I am very firmly not a cheese-on-dessert-pie person – but cream cheese is ok).

Overall, my verdict is that this was a decent pumpkin pie, but it just wasn’t quite to my taste. Sorry, Mae West, but Amelia Simmons’ Pumpkin Pie is still the top historic pumpkin pie for me!

Here’s some more fun gag boxes…

Perfect during these days of Coronavirus.

2022 03 23 11 44
Perfect during these days of Coronavirus.

For ages two and older.

2022 03 23 11 45
For ages two and older.

Now with musical Accompaniment. Choose your own theme song.

2022 03 23 11 46
Now with musical Accompaniment. Choose your own theme song.

A unique, one in a lifetime gift.

2022 03 23 11 48
A unique, one in a lifetime gift.

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China is still under lockdown

Do not believe the lies that China is reconsidering it’s hard Coronavirus restrictions. Maybe the West has relaxed it’s stance dealing with the “pandemic”, but China has not.

China is still under DEFCON 2; they still accuse the USA of launching bioweapons against it, and they are VERY VERY concerned about the biolweapons labs in Ukraine. They will stay at DEFCON 2 until there is no longer any threat of bioweapon attack from the West.

Here’s a viewo of some of the many many volunteers fighting on this front. video 7MB

Renegade interviews Michael Hudson: Sanctions, the blowback

https://www.rt.com/shows/renegade-inc/552236-michael-hudson-sanctions-ukraine/

Ross [00:00:29] Welcome to Renegade Inc. Whatever the outcome in Ukraine, one thing is for sure the economic reverberations will be felt by everyone for years to come as the world divides between the West and a rapidly reshaping Eurasia.

Ross [00:00:49] Michael Hudson, always a pleasure to have you on the programme, welcome to Renegade Inc.

Michael Hudson [00:00:53] Thank you for inviting me.

Ross [00:00:55] Michael, sanctions, sanctions, sanctions is all we hear now. We’re sanctioning people. The West sanction people back to the Stone Age. What are the unintended consequences of sanctions?

Michael Hudson [00:01:05] Well, one is to serve very much like a protective tariff on the sanctioned country. For instance, when America made sanctions on European trade with Russia, Lithuania dutifully stopped exporting cheese to Russia. Well, the result is that Russia set up its own cheese’s sector, and now it’s self-sufficient in cheese. If you sanction a country, you force it to become more self-reliant and across the board, from agriculture to dairy products to technology, Russia is forced to become more self-reliant and at the same time to depend much more on trade with China for the things that it is still not self-reliant in. So America is bringing about exactly the opposite of what it intended. It’s hopeless to somehow isolate Russia and then be able to go after China without Russia. And instead, what it’s doing is integrating the Eurasian core, Russia and China, exactly the policy that Henry Kissinger warned against going all the way back to Mackinder a century ago that said, Eurasia is the world island, Russia and China could be the whole world centre. That’s what the fight is all about. Well, American sanctions are driving Russia and China together, and America has gone to China and said, Please don’t support Russia. It most recently, on Monday, March 14, Jake Sullivan came out and told China, we will sanction countries that break our sanctions against Russia. And basically, China said, fine. You know, we’ll just break off all the trade between East and West now and the East, Eurasia is pretty much self-sufficient. The West is not self-sufficient since it began to industrialise, and it’s heavily dependent on Russia for not only oil and gas, but palladium and many raw materials. So the sanctions are ending up driving a wedge between the European countries.

Ross [00:03:31] Don’t people who apply these sanctions think this through? Are they so short-sighted they don’t understand that these sanctions are going to build further capacity within Russia, push Russia further towards China, make that economic alliance concrete and, ultimately, you’re not going to be able to keep the lights on in in Europe? All the while underestimating the fact that from a food security point of view – take the U.K., for instance, a net importer of food – not appreciating the fact that, for instance, Russia/Ukraine, they create twenty five percent, a quarter, of all wheat annually. The estimation this year is one hundred and two million tonnes Russia and Ukraine, wheat. Don’t people realise that there’s going to be a massive knock on effect?

Michael Hudson [00:04:23] Yes, they do realise it. Yes, they’ve thought it all through. I worked with these people for more than 50 years.

Ross [00:04:31] Who are these people?

Michael Hudson [00:04:32] The neocons, basically, the people who are in charge of U.S. foreign policy? Victoria Nuland and her husband, Robert Kagan, the people that President Biden has appointed all around him, from Blinken to Sullivan and right down the line. They are basically urging people around the New American Century. They’re the people who said America can run the whole world and create its own reality. And yes, they know that this is going to cause enormous problems for Germany. They know that not only will it block the energy that Germany and Italy and other countries in Europe need through their oil and gas, but also it’ll block the use of gas for fertiliser, upping their fertiliser production and decreasing their food production. They look at this and they say, How can America gain from all of this? There’s always a way of gaining what something looks to be bad. Well, one way they’ll gain is oil prices are going way up. And that benefits the United States whose foreign policy is based very largely on oil and gas. The oil industry controls most of the world’s oil trade, and that explains a lot of the US diplomacy. This is a fight to lock the world energy trade into control by U.S. companies, excluding not only Iran and Venezuela, but also excluding Russia.

Ross [00:06:16] So as Europe pushes towards more and more green and renewable energy and this for the Americans they must think it’s a dreadful scenario insofar as they can’t sell the oil as Europe becomes or wants to become more self-sufficient. So ultimately, and Britain net zero, whatever that means. But but going down the renewables path, going down the solar path takes America’s dependency or dependency on America out the game, doesn’t it?

Michael Hudson [00:06:49] This is exactly the point that the European public has not realised. While most of the European public wants to prevent global warming and prevent carbon into the atmosphere, U.S. foreign policy is based on increasing, and even accelerating, global warming, accelerating carbon emissions because that’s the oil trade. Suppose that Europe got its way. Suppose if the Greens got what they wanted and Germany and Europe were completely dependent on solar energy panels, on wind energy and to some extent, on nuclear power, perhaps? Well, if they were completely self-sufficient in energy without oil or gas or coal, America would lose the primary lever. It has over the ability to turn off the power and electricity and oil of any country that didn’t follow U.S. diplomatic direction.

Ross [00:07:48] So when we take your analysis here and we think about how the sanctions are going to build capacity, push Russia and China together, when we start to look at sort of piggy in the middle, if you like the EU, when we’re thinking about America, the EU has had a sort of abusive relationship with the Americans for quite some time now, hasn’t it?

Michael Hudson [00:08:06] Well, that’s that’s true in the sense that EU foreign policy has basically been turned over to NATO. So instead of European voters and politicians making their policy, they’ve relinquished European foreign policy to NATO, which is really an arm of the US military. So yes, Europe has had a decent relationship with the United States diplomatically by saying yes, yes, please or yes, thank you by not being independent. Of course, if it were independent, the relationship would not be so friendly and decent.

Ross [00:08:46] So for countries that are net importers of food, need to keep the lights on, need heating and need cheap oil. How does this pan out? What does it look like for the UK? What does it look like for the EU?

Michael Hudson [00:08:59] Well, Vice President, Kamala Harris the other day said to Americans, Yes, life is going to be much more expensive. Our oil prices are going up and squeezing families. But think of the poor Ukrainian babies that we’re saving. So take it on the chin for the Ukrainian babies. So basically the United States is presenting horror stories of the Ukraine and saying, if you don’t willingly suffer now by isolating Russia, then Russia is going to roll over you with tanks just like it rolled over Central Europe after World War Two. I mean, it’s waving the flag of Russian aggression, as if Russia or any country in today’s world has an army that’s able to invade any other industrial nation. All military can do today of any country is bomb and kill other populations and industrial centres. No nation is able to occupy or rollover any industrial country. And the United States keeps trying to promote this mythology that we’re still in the world of 1945. And that world ended really with the Vietnam War when the military draft ended. And no country is able to have a military draft to raise the army with necessary to fight to invade. Russia can’t do it any more than Europe or the United States could do it. So all the United States can do is wave warnings about how awful Russia is and somehow convince Europe to follow the US position. But most of all, it doesn’t really have to. Europe doesn’t really have a voice, and this is what the complaint by Putin and Foreign Secretary Lavrov have been saying. They say that Europe is just following the United States and it doesn’t matter what the European people want or what European politicians want. The United States is so deeply in control that they really don’t have much of a choice.

Ross [00:11:15] When does the consumer start to feel this? When does the European or British consumer start to feel the pinch when these sanctions are enacted? And what does that look like?

Michael Hudson [00:11:25] Well, it depends on how fast the sanctions work. The United States said Well, in another year and a half, we’ll be able to provide Europe with liquefied natural gas. Well, the problem is, first of all, they’re not the ports to handle the liquefied natural gas to go into Europe. Secondly, there are not enough ships and tankers to carry all of this gas to Europe. So unless there are very warm winters, Europe is not going to have a very easy time for the next few years. And that’s only for oil and gas. It’s dependent on raw materials that Russia produces. For instance, palladium is necessary for catalytic converters. Titanium is necessary to make the screws that are especially used on aeroplanes that are strong enough not to buckle and break when winds go up and down and when they’re full. Russia even produces the neon and the crypton that are necessary for making some kind of electronic uses and also for many components that go into computers and information technology. There’s a whole range of exports that Europe is highly dependent on, and the United States has provided Putin with a whole list of these exports, saying, Well, OK, we’re going to fight against Europe buying your oil and gas but you can certainly sell us your heavy oil that we need since we’re not buying it from Venezuela. We certainly need the following list of critical materials that we need, like helium and crypton. These are our pressure points. Please don’t press on them. Well, you can imagine what Putin and his advisers are saying. Thank you for giving us this list of the pressure points that you’re exempting from the trade sanctions. I think if you really want a break in the unilateral, unipolar world, I think we should break now and see whether you really want to get along without trading.

Ross [00:13:51] Michael Hudson, welcome back, second half, Renegade Inc. Wonderful to have you. In that first half we followed the money, if you like. We talked about sanctions and the unintended consequences. I just want to pull back a little further if we can and just talk about the sort of tectonic shifts that are going on in the world. I spoke to somebody from Russia recently and what he said was very straightforward. He said, now what we have to do is begin to learn to live without the West. Do you think that that sentiment is proliferating across Russia now? Is that the mindset?

Michael Hudson [00:14:22] Well, if you read President Putin’s speeches, that’s exactly what’s happening. And Secretary Lavrov has voiced exactly the same feeling. There’s almost a disgust with the West and a feeling from Putin, Lavrov and the other Russian spokesmen, how could we everhave hoped to have an integration with Europe after 1991? Europe really was not on our side at all, and we didn’t realise that Europe is really part of the U.S. diplomatic sphere. It’s like all of Europe is now backing the attack on Russia. The best to do is reorient our economy towards China, Asia and Eurasia and become our own self-sufficient, independent centre

Ross [00:15:15] De-dollarisation and the amassing of plenty of gold by both the Russians and the Chinese. Just talk us through that.

Michael Hudson [00:15:21] Well, Ross, you asked in the first half of this interview how has American sanctions worked against it? I should have mentioned what you just mentioned, the dollar. The United States just grabbed all of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves, just as England a few months ago grabbed all of Venezuela’s gold that was held in the Bank of England when Venezuela tried to spend this gold on buying medical supplies to cope with the COVID virus. So basically, the United States have said, if any foreign country holds its reserves in the United States or accounts in U.S. banks. If a country in the global south tries to pay its foreign debt by holding its reserves in US banks in order to be the paying agent on the interest on its foreign debt. And if that foreign country does something we don’t like, like trade with Russia or permit more labour unionisation or try to become independent in food, we’re just going to do what we did to Venezuela, what we did to Iran when we grabbed its foreign exchange reserves or what we did to Russia. And that means that other countries all of a sudden see what they thought was their flight to security, what they thought was their most secure savings, their holdings in U.S. banks, US treasury bill, all of a sudden, is holding them hostage and is a high risk. Even the Financial Times of London has been writing about this, saying, how can the United States that was getting a free ride off the dollar standard for the last 50 years, ever since 1971, when foreign countries held dollars instead of gold and basically holding dollars means you buy U.S. Treasury bonds to finance the US budget deficit and the balance of payments deficit. How can the United States kill the goose that’s giving it the free ride? Well, the answer is that other countries can only move into gold and there’s an alternative to the dollar because that’s something that all the countries of the world have agreed upon is an asset, not a liability. If you hold any foreign currency, that currency is a liability of a foreign country, and if you hold gold, it’s a pure asset. There’s no country that can cancel it, the Americans can’t cancel Russia’s gold supply that’s held in Russia, although it can grab Russian gold supply if it were to hold it in the New York Federal Reserve Bank or the Bank of England. So other countries are not only moving to gold, Germany is bringing its gold back from New York, the Federal Reserve, in aeroplanes back to Germany, so it’ll have its own gold just in case German politicians would do something the United States didn’t like and the United States would simply grab Germany’s gold. The United States sanctions, and it’s especially it’s grabbing on foreign reserve, has started a war that is dividing the world between the West and Eurasia.

Ross [00:18:40] A technical part to all of this because let’s face it, it is an information war and it’s also an economic war. Is it the FIRE sector that you point out – the financial, insurance and real estate sector. Is it that they want to continue the exorbitant privilege of credit creation, because ultimately, if you think about gold, there’s no counterparty risk. Gold is gold and it has been for millennia. Far from being a barbarous relic, by the way now, people are starting to realise the intrinsic value, especially as crypto falls apart. Can you just talk a little bit about this, the FIRE sector wanting the exorbitant privilege of creating credit?

Michael Hudson [00:19:19] This is really what the new world division and global fracture is all about. You’re right, Ross. If you look at after World War One, the American fight against Soviet communism, was basically a fight of industrial capitalism against the threat of socialism. But after 1991, and especially in the last two decades, America deindustrialised. So the fight is not by industrial capitalism against countries pushing their labour up. It’s a fight of neoliberalism against industrial capitalism or socialism abroad. It’s against industrial capitalism evolving into socialism. It’s a belief that, well, now that America’s be industrialised, how is it going to control the world economy? Well, it’ll control it through a financial means by being the creditor and foreign countries debt payments to America will enable it to make its military payments abroad and finance its trade deficit. But also, America’s purchase of key natural resources will give it natural resources when its purchase of takeover of real estate is going to essentially make the United States the landlord class and monopoly class, that mediaeval Europe had to hold the rest of the population in serfdom. That basically is the American strategy of neoliberalism fighting against countries that reject privatisation and financialization of their economy, and specifically financialization under the control of U.S. banks, U.S. private capital and allied satellite banks and capital from England or France or Germany. This is exactly the fight. Will banking and finance control the world economy or will other countries try to build up their own economies through labour and tangible capital formation?

Ross [00:21:27] Where do you stand on that? And I’m only asking you to predict the future, Michael. How do you think this plays out? Because the way you’ve depicted it is the rent seekers, the neoliberal rent seekers on one hand, and there are value creators on the other. And by the way, those two things don’t sit very well together, as we know. How does that play out?

Michael Hudson [00:21:51] Even though the United States is the largest debtor economy in the world, it’s a creditor vis-a-vis the global south and other countries and it uses its creditor position to take over their natural resources, real estate, oil and gas, mineral rights and public utilities and natural monopolies and that are being privatised in government infrastructure. It’s becoming basically the landlord monopoly class of the entire world. That’s the U.S. strategy, and that’s the key to why the world is fracturing globally. And in the past, the global south countries were unable to fight against this tendency in the 70s and 80s with the Vendome conference on. But now that China and Russia threatened to be a self-sufficient core in Eurasia, this is the great threat to the American dream of becoming a landlord and financier of the world.

Ross [00:22:50] How do you think this pans out?

Michael Hudson [00:22:52] Well, the question is whether the United States is if we can control the world, who wants to live in a world like that, let’s blow it up. The question is whether the United States will actually go to war. The only lever that it has left is to drop bombs and to destroy and make the world look like Ukraine. So from the U.S. point of view, Europe’s future and Eurasia’s future is the Ukraine. Look at what we will do to you if you don’t follow our policy. America has just moved al Qaeda very heavily in the Ukraine to sort of repeat in Ukraine and Europe what it was doing in Syria and Libya. And the United States says this is what we can do. What are you going to do about it? Do you really want to fight. But the rest of the world, certainly China and Russia says, Well, we’re ready to fight. So there is no telling what you. And it comes down to personalities. Putin has said, well, do we really want to live in a world without Russia? If the United States is to attack us, we might as well end the world. The United States says, Do we really want to live in a world that we can’t control? If we’re not completely in control, we feel very insecure and we’re going to blow up the world. So you have this countervailing position in a world where all the arms control has been dismantled by the United States in the last few years. The United States has withdrawn from all of the agreements that Russia and China have tried to promote. And Europe is standing by and apparently is willing to be the sacrificial lamb in all of this as Ukraine is being the sacrificial lamb. So the United States and Russia say, let’s fight to the last European. And Russia initially didn’t want that because it was hoping that Europe and Russia would have a mutual gain in trade and investment relationships. But now it doesn’t feel that way. And there may be a proxy war between the United States over the European economy, not necessarily bombing Europe, but trade sanctions, energy sanctions, the kind of disruption that Europe is going to be seeing in the next year is if it loses Russian oil and gas and minerals and also, I think Chinese exports.

Ross [00:25:25] Is there a moment where cooler heads prevail and suddenly the West and other places realise that they’re dependent from a food security point of view, from an energy security point of view that we are dependent? And is there a moment at that point that you can thaw a frozen conflict by saying, actually, if we both meet, we just take a step toward each other, actually, we can do something in a collaborative way? Now I get what you’ve said throughout the rest of the programme, and I give this a percentage possibility of about three percent, but isn’t there a strategy to say, actually, we’ve had all the grandstanding, we’ve had all the brinksmanship, we should now sit around the table and try and work something out?

Michael Hudson [00:26:03] I don’t see any cooler heads in the United States. The surprising thing is that here it’s the right wing channel, the Republican Fox Channel, is the only channel that’s taking the anti-war stand and is saying we shouldn’t be at war in Ukraine. It’s the only channel that’s talking about here is how Russia sees the world. Do we really want to take a one sided perspective or do we want to see the actual dynamics at work? So it was the Republicans and the right wing that is now primarily against the NATO war in the Ukraine. The left wing seems to be all for it, but the left wing of the Democratic Party is in office and I don’t see any cooler heads in the Democratic Party at all. And I’ve known many of these people for many decades, and they are willing to go to war for a death. There are still back in the world of World War Two when the fight was against the Nazis and anti-Semitism. They’re still living in a kind of mythology world, not in the real world. And the thought that the world can come to an end either doesn’t have a reality to them or as Herman Cain said, Well, somebody is going to survive.

Ross [00:27:29] Michael Hudson always a pleasure, a great insight. And, you know, it’s just refreshing to hear. Thank you very much for your time.

Michael Hudson [00:27:38] Well, thank you very much for having me, Ross.

Chinese Girl

Such a cute girl. video 3MB

More Sanctions On Russia Will Destroy Europe

From MoA.

On February 21 Russia announced that it would recognize the Donbas republics. A day later it did so. The ‘west’ immediately announced sanctions which in fact had been prepared in advance. On February 24 Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine.

The Russian ruble immediately took a big hit. It has since recovered a bit.

oday’s news will bring the ruble to a new heights.

Kommersant reports (machine translation):

Putin instructed to convert gas contracts with unfriendly countries into rubles

President Vladimir Putin instructed to issue a directive to Gazprom to convert contracts into rubles for unfriendly countries. In his opinion, supplying Russian goods to the EU, the USA and receiving payment in dollars and euros "does not make any sense for us." Against this background, the ruble moved to growth on the Moscow Exchange.

“Both the US and the EU have basically defaulted on their obligations to Russia. And now everyone in the world knows that obligations in dollars and euros may not be fulfilled. <...> It is quite obvious that in this regard, it makes no sense for us to supply our goods to both the EU and the USA and receive payment in dollars, euros and a number of other currencies. Therefore, I have decided to implement in the shortest possible time a set of measures to transfer payments for our natural gas supplied to unfriendly countries to Russian rubles,” Mr. Putin said at a meeting with the government.

The President instructed the Central Bank and the government to determine within a week the order of operations for the purchase of rubles on the domestic market by buyers of Russian gas. He claims that Russia will continue to supply gas "in accordance with the volumes and according to the pricing principles concluded in the contracts."

The dollar exchange rate on the Moscow Exchange fell below 100 rubles. for the first time since March 3rd. As of 15:37, the US currency is trading at 101.55 rubles. (-2 rubles). The euro exchange rate fell by 2.85 rubles to 111.65 rubles. The maximum dollar fell to 94.99 rubles, the euro - to 109.7 rubles.

The European Union, the United States, Great Britain and a number of other countries have imposed sanctions against Russia in response to the military operation in Ukraine, which has been carried out since February 24 on the orders of Mr. Putin. One of the measures was the freezing of about half of the Central Bank's gold and foreign exchange reserves ($300 billion).

To pay in ruble one first has to buy rubles. With higher demand for rubles and no change in supplies the price for the Russian currency will go up. As Russia is selling hydrocarbons and other resources for billions of dollars per day the ruble is likely to soon reach record heights.

On February 28 another round of sanctions hit Russia. The part of the Russian central bank reserves that were stored in the ‘west’ were frozen. The central bank immediately pushed its interest rate from 9% to 20% to prevent a flight from the ruble. This helped to lessen the damage but made credit expensive and has hit the future growth potential in Russia.

But with a high new rubles demand from the outside of Russia the central bank will soon be able to lower its interest rate to more normal levels. Credit conditions will ease and investment in Russia, to replace products that had so far been imported, will rise again.

Today’s move to demand rubles for hydrocarbons is only on of the many steps Russia can, and likely will take, to retaliate for sanctions from the ‘west’.

As I wrote previously:

All energy consumption in the U.S. and EU will now come at a premium price. This will push the EU and the U.S. into a recession. As Russia will increase the prices for exports of goods in which it has market power - gas, oil, wheat, potassium, titanium, aluminum, palladium, neon etc - the rise in inflation all around the world will become significant.

Meanwhile the New York Times writes:

As he heads to Europe, President Biden will press U.S. allies to help impose even more aggressive sanctions on Russia.

Biden demands that Europe suicides itself while he is protecting the U.S. industry. I hope that some people in the European capitals are still able to think clear enough to recognize the racket the U.S. is trying to run here:

Together with the economic devastation that U.S. and European sanctions on Russia are causing in their own economies this will end in regime-changes in several European countries. The U.S. is of course again protecting itself from as much as it can at the cost of others.

2022 03 24 10 05
2022 03 24 10 05

Tony Wood asks:

The question remains, why did all those who for so long foretold this war do so little to stop it, and so much to hasten the disaster Russia has now set in motion?

Indeed. Why didn’t the government of Germany guarantee in writing that it would veto any additional NATO membership? It would have solved at least half of the problem. Why didn’t any other NATO government do so?

And what are they doing now? Where are their initiatives for peace?

Wake up. Otherwise this will end in disaster. Not for Russia but for the rest of Europe.

Kids and cats

Ah. This is funny. Poor kitties, but they know that the big stupid humans can’t be helped. video 124MB

AGAIN! Reference to NUKES!

NATO'S STOLTENBERG SAYS ANY USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS WILL CHANGE NATURE OF CONFLICT, RUSSIA MUST UNDERSTAND THAT IT CAN NEVER WIN A NUCLEAR WAR.

UPDATE 5:10 PM EDT —

NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg said that NATO has plans in place to protect all allies from nuclear threat, and that there should be no doubt about its readiness.

MORE:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned of a “direct clash” between Moscow and NATO forces if peacekeepers from the military alliance are deployed to Ukraine.

Lavrov made the remarks on Wednesday while speaking to students and staff at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in response to Polish proposals for a NATO and international “peace mission.”

“Our Polish colleagues have already stated that there will be a NATO summit now, we need to send peacekeepers. I hope they understand what is at stake,” Lavrov said, according to Russian state-owned news agency TASS.

STILL MORE:

Russian lawmaker Alexei Zhuravlyov on state TV threatens nuclear strike on Warsaw, Poland and NATO forces or any peacekeeping contingent that might try to enter Ukraine.

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

This issue has been surfacing far too frequently of late, and there’s a very good reason for it:  The West has attacked Russia economically over the Ukraine situation, and has done it so badly that Russia is in actual danger of collapsing as a country.

The West seems to think that Russia’s only option is to sit back and take the sanctions, or change its behavior with Ukraine to abide what NATO and the west wants.

The Russian’s don’t see it that way.

The West PROMISED Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union, that they would “not move one inch eastward from the Re-unified East-West Germany” (1997).   Yet NATO did precisely that in the ensuing years, to the point were NATO nations are now directly bordering Russia.

Those NATO nations have NATO troops rotating in and out of them.  The West lies about it by saying they’re only there “temporarily” when in fact, as thousands leave after a few months duty, thousands more come to replace them.  The result: An ever-present NATO conventional force.

Then too, there’s the missiles.  US Missile Defense systems . . . now in several of the former Soviet Block nations, all aimed directly at Russia.

Ukraine was simply the latest Domino to fall in the long line of NATO expansion.  The reason NATO wanted Ukraine has to do with its proximity to Moscow and to Russia’s Strategic Nuclear missile silos.   If American missile defenses can be placed on Ukraine soil, they will have a flight time of only 5 minutes to Moscow, and less than ten minutes to Russia’s nuclear silos.  Russia cannot defend against missiles that are so close and can travel so far and fast.

Worse, the technology of missiles has evolved and now, the very same “conventional” missiles claimed to be “defensive” can be re-fitted with OFFENSIVE NUCLEAR WARHEADS within an hour.  And the re-fit can be done while the missiles remain in their launchers, so no one would know the missiles had been converted from conventional to nuclear.

These facts pose an existential threat to Russia, the very same way that Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba posed an existential threat to the USA under President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

What did Kennedy do?  He told the Soviets either those missiles had to go, or . . . .  the US would invade Cuba to destroy those missiles.   (Gee, the exact same cause for invasion that is now seeing Russia inside Ukraine!)

Yet no one screeched to President Kennedy about Cuba being a sovereign country that could align itself however they liked.  No one even questioned Kennedy’s decision that either those missiles go, or Cuba gets invaded.   The reason no one questioned it is because every RATIONAL person knew Kennedy was right.

Well, guess what?  Today, with the situation in Ukraine, Russian President Putin is . . . . right.  He is doing in Ukraine what then-US-President  Kennedy was preparing to do with Cuba.   It’s no different.

NUKES

Russia knows – and has said publicly – that its conventional military forces cannot compete against the collective force of NATO.   But Russia ALSO said (publicly) that they have the largest nuclear arsenal, and their hypersonic missile technology is far superior to all of NATO.

So the Russians, from the start, have made clear they fully understood what they were getting themselves into with Ukraine and the possibility of NATO involvement.  Russia would be forced to use nukes. Period.

They knew this.  They still know it.

NATO knows it too.

So why then, is NATO’s nitwit, Jens Stoltenberg saying today “ANY USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS WILL CHANGE NATURE OF CONFLICT, RUSSIA MUST UNDERSTAND THAT IT CAN NEVER WIN A NUCLEAR WAR.”  ?????

One possibility is that Stoltenberg knows that NATO has actual plans to get involved.   The latest iteration of those plans is for NATO countries to “enter” Ukraine as a “Peace keeping force.”   Russia has made it explicitly clear that if NATO tries such a move, Russia will engage NATO Troops in battle.  War will be the result.

Period End.

And since it is already established that Russia cannot win against NATO conventional forces, Russia would have to “go nuclear.”  Stoltenberg and the west think Russia wouldn’t dare.

Stoltenberg and the West are wrong.

Russia would.

They’ve said it publicly.

Several times.

The soyboys of the West think they can talk their way out of anything they do.  This time, they cannot.

The message from Russia seems to me to be very simple: NATO cannot have Ukraine as a member. Period.

American missile defenses cannot be placed on the territory of former Soviet Block nations. Period.

If my assessment of this Russian Position is correct, then either NATO accepts that these facts are real and stops what it has been doing since 1997 by adding former Soviet Bloc Nations and withdraws NATO troops and missiles from those nations, or NATO refuses to take “no” for an answer, enters Ukraine, and it is World War 3, with nuclear weapons, VERY VERY SOON.

Those appear to me to be the facts.

That no mass-media outlets in the West are bothering to report them to the general public, will leave their citizens blissfully ignorant, until the bright, white, flashes start.

Thankfully, YOU are not being left blissfully ignorant.  YOU have chosen to avail yourself of this web site and radio show and as such, YOU know what’s really going on.  We are being marched directly into a (NUCLEAR) World War 3.

MAYOR OF KYIV: "WORLD WAR III HAS ALREADY BEGUN AND UKRAINE IS THE BEGINNING"

Hal Turner

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A very fine and cute Chinese girl

She is very, very fine. Really nice build and look at that fantastic smile! My goodness, I could just eat her up, I’ll tell you what! video 3MB

Dream griddle and alarm clock.

Wake up on the right side of bed!

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Wake up on the right side of bed!

Joe Biden Speech

Interesting stuff…

“We’re at an inflection point [in] not just the world economy [but] the world that occurs every three or four generations,” the president said.

“[A general told me that] 60 million people died between 1900 and 1946 and since then we’ve established a liberal world order, and it hasn’t happened in a long while.”

“Now is the time when things are shifting and there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it. We’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.”

Here’s what Russia thinks…

Biden says US must lead ‘new world order’

The 46th president highlighted the role Washington would have among the “free” states.US President Joe Biden raised eyebrows on Monday after he claimed a “new world order” would soon be established and that it was up to the United States to lead it.
.

During a speech at Business Roundtable’s CEO Quarterly Meeting, Biden claimed the world was at “an inflection point” which “occurs every three or four generations” and that it was up to the US to determine the outcome.

“As one of the top military people said to me in a security meeting the other day, 60 million people died between 1900 and 1946, and since then we’ve established a liberal world order and that hadn’t happened in a long while,” the president said.

The comment raised eyebrows in both the US and around the world and resulted in ‘New World Order’ becoming one of Twitter’s trending topics on Monday.

The term ‘new world order’ has historically been used to refer to an era of great global change and has been used by politicians such as former US President George H. W. Bush, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

For decades, however, the phrase has also been the subject of a major conspiracy theory which alleges a secret, elitist plot to form an oppressive global government.

Politicians and government officials have previously received criticism for using the term – most recently Dr. Kerry Chant, the chief health officer of the Australian state of New South Wales.

“We will be looking at what contact tracing looks like in the new world order,” said Chant during a September Covid-19 press conference, prompting the term to trend on social media.

Journalists and other social media users criticized Chant for using the term, with former journalist Chris Urquhart writing that “government officials would be well advised to avoid phrases like ‘the new world order’ when they’re talking at press conferences about massive limitations on people’s freedoms.”

Some comments…

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2022 03 24 19 39

A Rufus has understanding

If you are not making the world a better place, you are contributing to it’s destruction. For God’s sake, be good, and kind. If you cannot. Then be neutral. But do not make others sad or hurtful. video 8MB

While the United States goes into hyper-inflation, China is stable

I really like how one prominent economics professor recently made this point

“They’re flying blind, and are too little, too late,” Steve Hanke says in disbelief, an Applied Economics professor of John Hopkins University. “It’s utter rubbish and nonsense” that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell sees supply chain issues as a root cause for inflation, he tells me, as we decipher the Federal Reserve’s latest official statements on the shape of the U.S. economy.

“The money supply in excess causes inflation, and the Federal Reserve appears to be almost clueless,” 

Hanke shares with me as we discuss last week’s conversation between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

“Obviously the Chinese know this,” which is why their inflation rating is less than 1%, the former Senior Economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers articulates to me.

Inflation is always destructive.

I can confirm that while prices have been rising inside of China, it is in no way resembling the kinds of inflation that is being seen in America, Europe or the rest of the West. The reason is simple. China has been managing the flow of USD for payments for decades. THis managment is intentional and it insulates China from inflationary effects of the USD due to poor management of debt by the United States.

United States Inflation Rate – February 2022

United States Inflation Rate Annual inflation rate in the US accelerated to 7.9% in February of 2022, the highest since January of 1982, matching market expectations. Energy remained the biggest contributor (25.6% vs 27% in January), with gasoline prices surging 38% (40% in January).

What happens when your QR goes orange

Everyone must take regular swab tests, and be up to date on their injections. IF you are not, your status goes from green to orange. This video shows what happens when you try to go though a tollbooth with an orange QR code in China. video 3MB

Three-Cheese Fondue

I got this easy recipe from my daughter, who lives in France. It’s become my go-to fondue, and I make it often for our family.

—Betty A. Mangas, Toledo, Ohio

What are you waiting for?

OIP C.Wqb p2vQCQp XFqMScXmtwHaC9
Three Cheese Fondue.

Crib Dribbler.

Perfect for hot soups, milkshakes, and energy drinks.

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Perfect for hot soups, milkshakes, and energy drinks.

Europe’s LARGEST Natural Gas Storage Facility: EMPTY

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Empty.

The largest natural gas storage facility in northern Europe is now EMPTY of gas.

The facility, run by (Russia’s) GAZPROM, dropped like a rock once Europe instituted economic sanctions against Russia.

With this largest facility now empty, industry will have to shut down for lack of fuel for heating and generation of electric.

With the largest storage facility now empty, the draw-down from all the smaller facilities will speed up by orders of magnitude, emptying them with ten days to two weeks.

What will Europe do when it has no gas to generate electric or to heat buildings?

Of course, all of this trouble has to do with Europe sticking its nose into the affairs of Russia-Ukraine.

Now that Europe is demonstrably running out of natural gas, watch for things between Russia-Ukraine-NATO to get VERY VERY VERY much worse, very fast.

Grandma Davidson’s Baked Apple Pudding

My savvy grandmother whipped up recipes like this homey cinnamon-scented apple pudding in the Depression years. Many of us still make them today. 

—Holly Sharp, Warren, Ontario

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Grandma Davidson’s Baked Apple Pudding

China is FAST

So President Biden thinks that it will be easy to compete against China. Americans think that it will be no problem, because America is exceptional, and great? This echo chamber in the Untied States that gives this illustion that China is dark, dingy, dirty and backwards, while America is so wonderful is a lie. It amazes me. Becuase this is what China is like… video 21MB

Chinese weddings

The Chinese have heart. Real, honest to goodness heart. video 22MB

China rebukes US as ‘world’s biggest human rights violator’

Beijing has promised “countermeasures” if Washington doesn’t revoke sanctions over Uyghurs
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Beijing has promised to respond in kind unless the US revokes the blacklisting of Chinese officials it said were guilty of human rights violations.

Speaking at a regular press conference on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused the US of “smearing China, oppressing Chinese officials for no reason, violating international law… and grossly interfering in China’s domestic affairs.”

Wang said Beijing will respond with reciprocal countermeasures if the US does not immediately revoke its sanctions.

The statement came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused the Chinese government of committing “genocide and crimes against humanity” against the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority living predominately in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Region. He added that Washington has blacklisted Chinese officials who it said were guilty of human rights violations.

Wang responded in kind, calling the US “the biggest human rights violator in the world,” whose historical treatment of Native Americans “constitutes de facto genocide.” He also criticized Washington for the “long-lasting systemic racial discrimination” of black Americans.

Multiple global human rights groups have long accused China of oppressing the Uyghurs and forcing them to work in labor camps. Beijing has denied the allegations, insisting that the Uyghurs are studying in vocational education and training centers as part of state integration and deradicalization programs.

Blankeez

Now available in classroom sized versions.

2022 03 23 11 53
Now available in classroom sizes.

Creamy Chicken Vol-au-Vent

My friends and I have been getting together for "ladies lunches" for years. These vol-au-vents are the perfect no-fuss fancy food; they look complicated, but are actually simple and fun to make. Whenever I think of good friends and good company, I think of these savory pastries. 

—Shauna Havey, Roy, Utah

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Creamy Chicken Vol-au-Vent.

China can build

OMG! It’s insane how fast and efficiently that China can build things. You all just wait and see what happens when China and Russia build their Moon and Mars cities. video 23MB

A 737 crashed in China.

A Boeing 737 carrying 132 people crashed early Monday in China. Although Boeing’s 737 has faced extraordinarily high-profile safety concerns over the past three years, the plane that crashed Monday was a different version of the aircraft than the embattled 737 Max that shook Boeing to its core.

The cause of Monday’s crash has yet to be determined. The plane had been in service since 2015. The flight, operated by China Eastern Airlines, was flying from the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming to Guangzhou when it crashed.
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It’s crash profile; being a full-throttle nose-dive directly to the ground is highly unusual.
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Evidence suggests any of the following;
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  • Intentional Pilot (and co-pilot) action to destroy the plane.
  • Software override of the pilot commands.
  • Remote operation of the software to override the pilot.

The manufacturer of the aircraft has had problems with the software. Other crashes of similiar planes has been the result of software overrides of the pilot.

We do not know (as of yet) the real cause for this crash. But one thing seems clear, somehow the plane overrode the directions of the pilot. It put the plane in a nose dive straight towards the ground and set the engines on full-throttle, full speed, as it plunged towards the ground.

Why it did so, is unknown.

Yet, the United States government black operations regarding taking control of the software should NOT be ruled out.

This reminds me of HAL in the 1969 movie; “2001; A Space odyssey”.

2001 A Space odyssey

So, Boeing makes aircraft that can override the pilot. Brilliant! Why do you need pilots? How about having full robotic planes?

Maybe it’s because no one will fly in them.

Isn’t technology wonderful. Remember when fully automatic self-driving cars were crashing left and right? Yeah, I do. Well, somehow Boeing things that this would be a good thing to implement in passenger planes. Who would doubt it?

Anyways, I have to ask the moronic question of the day…

 "Well, with fully robotic planes, then why still have pilots, when the airplane can override the pilot?"

Well, perhaps its because you keep the illusion of human control, when the truth is that the software is in full control…

… as well as the “authorized” owner of that software who can control the plane and tell it to do whatever he/it wants. Like the United States. Hum?

Let’s talk about HAL. Specifically what it did.

HAL

2022 03 23 23 08
HAL

From the 1969 movie…

HAL is a computer system. And it is built into the Discovery One spacecraft, and is in charge of maintaining all mechanical and life support systems on board.

HAL also has several “eyes” placed periodically around the spacecraft.

About three weeks into the flight, Hal picks up a fault in the AE-35 unit, the system responsible for keeping the satellite dish antenna aligned with the Earth, and states that it will go one-hundred percent failure within 72 hours.

He suggests that they go EVA and replace the faulty unit with a new one.

Dr. David Bowman goes out and retrieves the unit. But when he brings it back and runs it through diagnostics, they can find no problem with the AE-35.

They radio Mission Control about the problem, and Mission Control says that Hal is in error predicting the fault.

2022 03 23 23 16
HAL

This is a bit of a surprise, as the 9000 series has a perfect operational record.

Noting that this kind of thing has always been because of human error when it has occurred before, Hal suggests that they go out and “replace the malfunctioning unit and allow it to fail.

Then it should be a simple matter to track down the problem.”

But by this time, both Dr. Frank Poole and Bowman are becoming suspicious of Hal’s behaviour. They climb into one of the EVA pods, out of earshot of Hal. Poole states that he has “a bad feeling about him”. Bowman and Poole suggest disconnecting Hal if he is wrong about predicting the fault.

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Bowman and Poole suggest disconnecting Hal if he is wrong about predicting the fault.

Unbeknownst to them, Hal read their lips through the window of the spacepod.

Translating their lip motions, Hal learns of their plans for his disconnection; according to Clarke, “he (will) be deprived of all his inputs, and thrown into an unimaginable state of unconsciousness. To Hal, this (is) the equivalent of death. For he (has) never slept, and therefore he (does) not know that one (can) wake again.”

Poole goes out to replace the supposedly malfunctioning AE-35 unit.

As he drifts through space to the satellite dish, Hal takes control of the pod and rams it into Poole, disconnecting his oxygen hose and venting the air in his suit, killing him.

Bowman, obviously distraught by the loss of his friend, goes out to retrieve Poole’s body.

However, while Bowman is out on his excursion, Hal shuts off the life support systems on the three astronauts in hibernation, which kills them all.

2022 03 23 23 58
Bowman in a pod.

After Bowman returns to the Discovery I, Hal denies him reentry into the pod bay. So Bowman has to maneuver the pod over to the emergency airlock. Unfortunately, in his haste to retrieve his friend, Bowman had not bothered to don the helmet of his life-support suit because he had not believed he would need it, making it very difficult to enter the emergency airlock, as he would have to travel through the vacuum of space in order to do so.

This, however, does not stop Bowman.

Risking the hazards of explosive decompression, he eventually gets inside, grabs a space helmet, and goes to Hal’s logic memory center to erase his memory.

There he pulls out the memory tablets that control Hal’s higher functions.

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Disconnecting HAL.

As his memory degrades, Hal begins to give off information programmed very early in his life, such as the date he became operational. When all his logic is gone, he begins to sing the song “Daisy Bell.”

His final act of consciousness is to play a briefing that Dr. Heywood R. Floyd pre-recorded about the Tycho Monolith before their departure, and the real purpose of the Discovery One’s mission. As well that the insane idea that the owner / designers of HAL programmed it to lie.

Now…

Please consider that any systems; any devices; any mechanisms designed by man should NEVER have the capability to override human input.

This is well descried by the move, with the HAL computer system, and it seriously seems to be the case with all these Boeing aircraft crashes.

I can POSITIVELY tell you that one singular event resulting is one singular death would  ABSOLUTELY stop the adoption of that system in other industires. It doesn’t matter what industry it is.  Ceiling fans. Clothes irons. Motorcycles. Chainsaws. Rifles. One fatality, and the system is gone and will NEVER be revisited.

But somehow these systems in airplanes and automobiles are exceptions. At least in American products.

One cannot help thinking, especially if you ARE an American, that the United States is involved and WANTS the ability of the software to override the driver / pilot in the vehicle.

If you accept that notion…

…then many of the software related “accidents” of planes and automobiles with these systems are used as mechanisms of control by the United States “leadership”.

Remember boys and girls…

… REAL secrets are secret.

Every evidence is that this is exactly what is happening. While there might be some debate on the nuiances of implementation, the technologies and the systems involved, one thing is unmistakable…

The seriously ODD behaviors of the United States government is best explained by this exact senario.

Think about it.

Break.

Animal death and spirits visiting

All this talk about plunging planes, nuclear weapons, bio-weapons and everything all initiated by the Untied States government is disturbing to me. They obviously have never experienced sorry and grief.

They are not NORMAL people.

There is something wrong with them.

Here’s how normal animals act…video 34MB

Bathe and Brew

Perfect for the jet-set on the go!

2022 03 23 11 55
Perfect for the jet-set on the go!

Funny and fun cats

Here are some really great examples of how much fun you can have with your cat friends. video 100MB

Amazing Cats

Cats areally are amazing. Just some great cat adventures. They are truly very special creatures. video 16MB

Happy times

Treasure the times that you have. Make them happy and share them with your friends. Cat love video 18MB

We all need each other now

Now, more than any other time in our lives, we need others. Make friends. SHare your time. Appreciate what you have. Make your life a good one. Be a Rufus. Show friendship. Show love. Show care. video 90MB

Be the Rufus

Take part in society. Stop being a spectator, and stop thinking that everything is someone else’s problem. The future depends on YOU. Take an active role in it. In every way, every day. Be the best you can be and help others. make the world a better place to live in. I believe in your. video 11MB

Make those around you smile

You will bring happiness to your environment. Smile. Say good things. Even if they are lies. Make your environment better. It’s quantum physics 101. video 120MB

Conclusions

I cannot say that one thing or the other is happening, and the causes and reasons for them. Later, I will ask the Domain Commander for some insight. However, right now, I know nothing.

Sure there might be all sorts of reasons for the observed behaviors, the strange actions by the USA and the West, and all the craziness. There’s really no way to really know the actual causes. So don’t worry about it. And believe me, as much as I want to know, the fact is, I don’t NEED to know.

I don’t know anything about chem-trails, nano-bots, or anything like that. I do know that everyone in the United States and the West are acting really, really weird. It’s like they are all having some kind of mass insanity.

After 30 years of glue sniffing euphoria, the US is now crashing. 

And when it realizes it is cutting off its limbs to keep its jaundiced organs alive, it will have to make major, and costly, changes in living arrangements. 

Mass transit in lieu of suburban sprawl. No more bloated military. A return to local industry and farming. Far more labor intensive cooperatives that actually do things and make stuff. Regional cultural and quasi-sufficiency. The end to industrial entertainment and woke academia. A resurgence of a proletariat based religion of hard work and respect. A return to classical literature and art. 

Oh, how to pay for it all on NO budget?

America is in shambles, but the leadership doesn’t realize it yet.  It’s like a family living off maxed-out credit, the family is stunned then the credit cards no longer work at the register.

That’s where the USA, and the EU are at right now.

Oh, they still have their shopping list, and two shopping carts filled with expensive steaks, groceries and all sorts of pricy items. But the cashier is there looking impatient, stamping her foot, and ready to call her manager. Oh, you have to pay in cash. She says.

Soon, very soon, the situation will accelerate to something bad.

It’s just really, really fucked up.

FUTURE

Evidence strongly suggests that the remote viewing of the 2025 by the Deagal Report is correct. It also validates the theory of Generational Turnings and the rise and fall of nations.

You will see many more strange things occur in the future.

We are not anywhere near the peak inflection point. But it is moving forward and I hope to be out of it’s way. I hope you all are as well.

BASIC PREP

Hyper-inflation is starting to hit the West. Be prudent.

Make sure that you have a garden, and a larder with lots of basics. Rice. Flour. Canned goods. Powdered milk.

Remember that one Burger King extra value meal is the same price as a massive bag of rice. Remember that one Starbucks coffee is the same prices as a massive bag of flour; and make sure that you have the tools to strain out the flour.

Learn to fish.

Own a bicycle, and use it. If you use it to ride to work one day a week, you will cut your commute expenses by 20%.

Have a solar panel to charge your phone with.

ADVANCED PREP

Have a good supply of your medicines, and lots of antibiodics. Set up a medical kit. Tell your doctor that you are equipping a sailboat for a long sea cruse, and give him a list of medicines for the first aid box. Get the prescriptions and fill it out.

It’s never too late to start. Do not plan on trying to go to the woods and forests. Those places will be crowded with the unprepaired. Your best solution is to “bug out in place”. Be mobile within your well-established community.

If you think that you can survive being alone, I’ve got news for you; that’s a fiction. Survivors are those that band together into groups. There’s strength in community. Read your history.

FUNDAMENTALS

For God’s sakes, turn off that bullshit “news”. It’s all screeching lies.

Have a skill, asset, ability, or feature that you can provide to your community that is beneficial to the community.

If you don’t have one. Get one. Learn, make, create or establish. Volunteer. Network locally.

  • Handiman skills.
  • Welding, plumbing, machining, autorepair.
  • Medical.
  • Farming, fishing, harvesting, growing.

It doesn’t mean that you will need to endure a post-nuclear fiasco. But in whatever changes that might hit your own individual communities, you will have the skills, networking and abilites to make you locally valuable.

Don’t believe me?

Ask PL. He’s doing this, and is very busy. Maybe too busy for MM here, but it’s the future. Participate. Make a difference. Smile. Socialize. stick to the fundamental basics.

Don’t get caught up in what you cannot change. It’s stressful, don’t you know.

Don’t get all wrapped up in the causes or the reasons, or the people behind the curtains. They won’t be revealed until the history books are written.

Be kind, calm and adaptable. Do your verbal affirmations. Be the Rufus. I beleive in you all.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

More updates on the changing of the Geo-Political scene

I just spoke this morning with a Russian friend in Moscow. He is more optimistic about the future of Russia than I have ever heard him to be in the past. 

He says good riddance to all the U.S. companies, and sees this as a real opportunity for Russia to further develop their economy and restore their culture from Western cultural imperialism. 

The devaluation of the Ruble has little effect on the economy except for imported goods. 

Since 2014 Russia has been becoming self-sufficient. 

The lower Ruble will protect home industries and be a defacto tariff against imports. 

He and others are talking about a welcome return to an economy similar of the Soviet Union. 

I hope he is right because for the past 20 years that I have been going to Russia I saw a troubling trend to neoliberalism and austerity. 

Many Russians did to and were not happy about it. 

It cost Putin a lot of lost popularity including from my friend who I spoke to today. My wife and I are hearing similar stories from others inside Russia.

-David

Good news if you are Russian. Good news if you are Chinese. Bad news if you are part of the collapsing United States Empire. But you would never know this by reading the daily “news” feeds.

By gosh! The propiganda is thick.

Really. It’s thick like tar.

I need waders to trudge through the muck. It is think, stinky and relentless. And then interspersed in all the grime are the oily “experts” who have a thing or two to say about everything. You pretty much can tell from which basket of USD they are paid from. How can you sort everything out? Well, this article is my attempt.

I’m a simple guy and I look at things simply. So let’s look at the big-picture overview.

  • Major Geo-political realignments happen every 70 to 85 years.
  • This one is on time and on schedule.

It’s always the same template; the same pattern. Oh, there might be some new twists; mostly technology, but it’s pretty much a well understood process.

In this Geopolitical shake-up it’s a new beast of sorts. It has a new “twist” to the old template. And this new feature is critical to understanding what is going on.

  • Russia is not alone. It is not “isolated”.
  • China is not alone.
  • Russia and China have created a unified block; an “Asia”.
  • And now, India has joined this block officially (and distanced themselves from QUAD).

Asia = Russia + China + India.

.

So, what are we witnessing? What is all the “hubbub” on the Internet and in the “news” all about? Is it about Ukraine?

No. It’s not. It’s about something else.

Keep your focus.

It’s all about a much larger Geo-Political realignment. And the wars, color revolutions, strife, inflation, battles, wars, revolutions, and all the rest are just confusion and smoke during this period of change.

Keep focused.

  • The former global leader; The United States is collapsing.
  • A united Asia is rising (Russia plus China with India).
  • Normal expected death thrashing by the USA is in process.

The death throes are at all levels. This includes International as well as domestic. Big changes at all levels.

But, people say, “it seems so spontaneous and out of control”. To which I argue. “No it isn’t”.

Instead the collapse is being managed.

The collapse of the West is being MANAGED.

It is being managed by Russia and China, with some help by our friends (wink – wink).

None of this managment is being written about. None of it can be seen, as the dying empire has flooded all “news” with complex and detailed lies, and nonsense. And if you get caught up in the lies, and fabrications you will read about the failure of Russia to take over the Ukraine, and how Putin is on the way out, and how China is going to collapse any day now, and so on and so forth.

It’s just noise. Tune it out.

In this article, I will take some hand-picked articles to help direct the reader through the swampy muck of lies. Each article has strengths and weaknesses, and I will do my best to help describe what’s going on through them.

In these articles, read them not for the specific points that they are trying to point out, but rather for how they fit within the much larger picture. Keep in mind that larger picture.

The death of the existing world power results in…

  • High inflation resulting in money becoming worthless (within the dying empire).
  • A retraction of actual military action, but an uptick in military threatenings.
  • A change in the dominant global reserve currency.
  • Economic, social, and other “bubbles” all popping in the dying empire.
  • A confused state of Geo-political alignments as the empire dies.

We begin with some excellent stuff from MoA. In this article, “b” argues that the dying United States empire is impotent. That both Russia and China (Asia) have played the Geopolitical chess game, and has the empire “boxed in”. No matter what it does, it will make losing (no-win) moves…

[1] To Punish Russia The ‘Liberal Order’ Attempts To Suicide Itself

Two days ago we looked at why Russia is doing what it does:

Russia understood Zelensky's remark in Munich as a threat by Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons. It already has the expertise, materials and means to do that.

A fascist controlled government with nukes on Russia's border? This is not about Putin at all. No Russian government of any kind could ever condone that.

I believe that this credible threat, together with the artillery preparations for a new war on Donbas, was what convinced Russia's government to intervene by force.

The ‘west’ had failed to understand Russia’s need to act. It has failed to make the necessary commitments, and accept Russia’s reasonable demands, to avoid the struggle. In consequence it will now fall apart. The knee-jerk reaction to Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine will, as Alastair Crooke writes, lead to the end of the ‘liberal order’:

So Biden, finally, has his foreign policy ‘success’: Europe is walling itself off from Russia, China, and the emerging integrated Asian market. It has sanctioned itself from ‘dependency’ on Russian natural gas (without prospect of any immediate alternatives) and it has thrown itself in with the Biden project. Next up, the EU pivot to sanctioning China?

Will this last? It seems improbable. German industry has a long history for staging its own mercantile interests before wider geo-political ambitions – before, even, EU interests. And in Germany, the business class effectively is the political class and needs competitively-priced energy.

Whilst the rest of the world shows little or no enthusiasm to join with sanctions on Russia (China has ruled out sanctions on Russia), Europe is in hysteria. This will not fade quickly. The new ‘Iron Curtain’ erected in Brussels may last years.

But what of the unintended consequences to last Saturday’s ‘sanctions Blitzkrieg’: the ‘unknowable unknowns’ in Rumsfeld’s famous mantra? The unprecedented switch-off affecting a key part of the Globalist system did not download into a neutral, inert context – It developed into an emotionally hyper-charged atmosphere of Russophobia.

Now reality comes back to bite the inept minions who attempt to rule over us.

2022 03 14 10 49
2022 03 14 10 49

Europe can not sustain this, Russia can:

In sum, the changes set out by von der Leyen and the EU, with surging crude oil costs, could potentially tip global markets into crisis, and set off spiraling inflation. Cost inflation created by energy costs spiraling higher and food disruptions are not so easily susceptible to monetary remedies. If the daily drama of the war in Ukraine starts to fade from public view, and inflation persists, the political cost of von der Leyen’s Saturday drama is likely to be European-wide recession.

“Since well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europeans have been struggling under the weight of runaway energy bills”, OilPrice.com notes. In Germany, for some, one month’s energy costs the same as they used to pay for a whole year; in the UK the government has raised the price cap for energy bills by a whopping 54%, and in Italy a recent 40% domestic energy cost hike could now nearly double.

The New York Times describes this impact on local businesses and industries as nothing short of “frightening”, as all kinds of small businesses across Europe (prior to last week’s events) have been forced to cease their operations as energy costs outweigh profits. Large industries have not been immune to sticker shock either. “Almost two-thirds of the 28,000 companies surveyed by the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry this month rated energy prices as one of their biggest business risks … For those in the industrial sector, the figure was as high as 85 percent.”

And it is not only Europe. Energy prices are based on global markets. As are the prices for many other minerals and metals which have suddenly become rare:

 

2022 03 14 10 44
2022 03 14 10 44

The U.S. will be hit just as much as Europe. Early today oil prices in Europe hit $139 per barrel, well above last week’s market close. They will increase further. Gasoline prices in the U.S. will soon hit $6-7-8 per gallon.

The attempt by the U.S. to rush towards a new Iran deal to get Iranian oil flooding the markets has failed. Russia, together with Iran, has successfully blocked that move. Sanctions on Russia mean that Iran can not export its enriched uranium to Russia to be turned into nuclear fuel. No Iranian export of enriched uranium means no JCPOA deal. Secretary of State Blinken has failed to understand that. The supposedly ready to be signed return to the nuclear deal is now in jeopardy.

Some U.S. refineries at the south coast are designed to only process heavy oil variants. Since 2019 the U.S. has blockaded heavy oil imports from Venezuela and replaced them with imports of heavy Ural variants from Russia. It has now send too officials to Caracas to try to get Venezuela’s oil flowing again. That would of course require to lift all sanctions off Venezuela and to return all confiscated companies and the gold that is owned by that country. It is not going to happen anytime soon.

High end German cars are build with aluminum from Russia. Boeing needs Russian titanium to build planes. These manufacturers will soon start to lay off people. All this while food, heating and mobility costs will increase dramatically. A deep recession combined with strong inflation will rip social cohesion apart. I do expect strong anger in the streets of Europe and the U.S. There will be riots and in consequence a strong political move to the right. The mid-term elections will destroy the Russophobic Democrats.

Michael Hudson notes the immense strategic damage the U.S. has done to itself:

The recent escalation of U.S. sanctions blocking Europe, Asia and other countries from trade and investment with Russia, Iran and China has imposed enormous opportunity costs – the cost of lost opportunities – on U.S. allies. And the recent confiscation of the gold and foreign reserves of Venezuela, Afghanistan and now Russia, along the targeted grabbing of bank accounts of wealthy foreigners (hoping to win their hearts and minds, along with recovery of their sequestered accounts), has ended the idea that dollar holdings or those in its sterling and euro NATO satellites are a safe investment haven when world economic conditions become shaky.

So I am somewhat chagrined as I watch the speed at which this U.S.-centered financialized system has de-dollarized over the span of just a year or two. The basic theme of my Super Imperialism has been how, for the past fifty years, the U.S. Treasury-bill standard has channeled foreign savings to U.S. financial markets and banks, giving dollar diplomacy a free ride. I thought that de-dollarization would be led by China and Russia moving to take control of their economies to avoid the kind of financial polarization that is imposing austerity on the United States. But U.S. officials are forcing them to overcome whatever hesitancy they had to de-dollarize.

This will not just happen with China or Russia but the whole world will over the next years turn away from the dollarized U.S. system:

Nobody thought that the postwar 1945-2020 world order would give way this fast. A truly new international economic order is emerging, although it is not yet clear just what form it will take. But “prodding the Bear” with the U.S./NATO confrontation with Russia has passed critical-mass level. It no longer is just about Ukraine. That is merely the trigger, a catalyst for driving much of the world away from the US/NATO orbit.

The next showdown may come within Europe itself as nationalist politicians seek to lead a break-away from the over-reaching U.S. power-grab over its European and other Allies to keep them dependent on U.S.-based trade and investment. The price of their continuing obedience is to impose cost-inflation on their industry while relinquishing their democratic electoral politics to subordination to America’s NATO proconsuls.

These consequences cannot really be deemed “unintended.”

All the consequences of the ‘west’s’ reaction to Russia’s move were foreseeable. It is pure recklessness and stupidity that have allowed them to take place. The ‘west’ will now get punished for the bad movie it has launched.

Too bad that I don’t speak Russian … It is now the place to be.

Jimmy Salford @1Fubar - 7:06 UTC · Mar 6, 2022

Russia has already been cut off from CNN, Pornhub and Facebook. The US is now working on depriving Russians of MacDonalds and CocaCola. If they keep going with these sanctions, Russians will soon be among the healthiest, well adjusted and best informed people on the planet.

Next up is this piece from the UK tabloid “Dailymail.com”.

Now this tabloid is all gung-ho about how great the West is, and all of that. They have written tons of articles that are a just lies. And that includes starvation in Shenzhen, slave trade in Xinjiang and all the rest. fun reading science fiction, but not actual reporting.

This here is it’s the first “reasonable” article that isn’t full of lies and fantasies. The comments in the article are interesting, and the vast bulk of it’s readership must welcome a more “level-headed” viewpoint.

Read this article, and note the idea that Russia is managing a threat vector from the West. Not tht an evil Putin dictator is going to invade Europe. What is so surprising is that this article is from the shrill-mills of the UK.

[2] Putin is NOT crazy and the Russian invasion is NOT failing.

The West’s delusions about this war – and its failure to understand the enemy – will prevent it from saving Ukraine, writes military analyst BILL ROGGIO

Wishful thinking has the upper hand in the battle to shape Western perceptions of the war in Ukraine.

Sympathy for the outnumbered and outgunned defenders of Kyiv has led to the exaggeration of Russian setbacks, misunderstanding of Russian strategy, and even baseless claims from amateur psychoanalysts that Putin has lost his mind.

A more sober analysis shows that Russia may have sought a knockout blow, but always had well-laid plans for follow-on assaults if its initial moves proved insufficient.

The world has underestimated Putin before and those mistakes have led, in part, to this tragedy in Ukraine.

We must be clear-eyed now that the war is underway.

Yet even the professionals at the Pentagon are letting sympathy cloud their judgement.

Just two days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Department of Defense briefers were quick to claim that failing to take Kyiv in the opening days of the war amounted to a serious setback.

DoD briefers implied that Russia’s offensive was well behind schedule or had even failed because the capital had not fallen.

But U.S. leaders should have learned to restrain their hopes after their catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Once again, U.S. and Western officials are falling into the trap of failing to understand the enemy and his objectives.

2022 03 05 09 00
2022 03 05 09 00

Allegedly, Putin believed that the Ukrainian government would collapse once Russian troops crossed the frontier and pushed to Kyiv, and that the operation has failed because the Ukrainian government remains in place.

Putin certainly hoped for a swift victory, but he clearly was not relying on his opening salvo as the only plan for success.

Rather, the Russian military was prepared to take the country by force if a swift decapitation strike fell short.

This kind of plan should be familiar to Americans who remember the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In the first hours of the war, the U.S. Air Force launched its ‘shock and awe’ campaign in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and other key leaders and bring down the government. Saddam survived, but the U.S. military was fully prepared to follow up with a ground assault.

A look at the Russian military offensive demonstrates there was a plan for a full-scale invasion, which Russia is now executing.

Conventional, mechanized warfare is a time and resource consuming enterprise, and an operation of this scope isn’t cobbled together in days.

The Russian offensive is taking place on four separate fronts. On a fifth front, in eastern Ukraine, which Putin declared independent last week, Russian forces are tying down Ukrainian troops that are needed elsewhere.

The bulk of the Russian forces are advancing southward from Belarus to Kyiv.

Russian advance forces, including air, mobile and reconnaissance troops, have been engaged with Ukrainian troops outside of Kyiv since the start of the war.

A massive column of Russian troops, estimated at over 40 miles long, is just 20 miles north of Kyiv, and is likely assembling to surround the capital.

If Russian forces can take Kyiv and push southward to link up with forces on the Crimean front, thus splitting Ukraine in two, it would be a major blow to the Zelensky government.

What matters more than a handful of setbacks is that Russian forces have pushed 70 miles into contested terrain in less than a week and are on the outskirts of the capital.

2022 03 05 09 01
2022 03 05 09 01

This is not a sign of a disorganized, poorly assembled, and failed offensive.

The southward push from Belarus to Kyiv is supported by another Russian column, launched from the east in the vicinity of Kursk.

If this column can link up with Russian troops near Kyiv, it will envelop Ukrainian forces in most of Chernihiv and Sumy provinces, depriving the Ukrainian military of much needed soldiers and war material needed elsewhere, and cutting off the government from two northern provinces.

Further east, Russian forces have launched a broad offensive aimed at Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, which is now under siege.

In the south, Russian forces, supported by amphibious assaults from the Sea of Azov, have poured into Ukraine from Crimea.

On this front, Russian forces have branched out along two main axes, one northwest along the Pivdennyi Buh River, and another northeast along the coast and inland towards the Donbas region, which Russia declared independent shortly before the invasion.

If Russian columns from either southern front can link up with forces further north, they would cut off many Ukrainian troops from reinforcement—one of the two columns has already advanced roughly 160 miles.

Russian generals have often chosen to bypass towns and cities that are putting up stiff opposition and isolating them to deal with later.

There are reports that Russian forces have escalated attacks on civilians, particularly in Kharkiv.

At the moment, the artillery and rocket attacks there have been limited, perhaps to send a message to the citizens as a warning of what may come.

Putin appears to want to take Ukraine intact, but will not hesitate to increase the level of brutality if needed.

The systematic nature of the Russian assault is at odds with speculation that Putin has lost control of his senses.

Nobody knows for sure, but Putin’s actions appear to be that of a cold and calculating adversary.

Dismissing his decision to invade Ukraine as a form of madness is effectively an excuse to ignore Putin’s likely motivations and future actions.

Strategically, Putin’s advance on Ukraine began well over a decade ago, when he invaded and Balkanized Georgia by recognizing the Kremlin’s puppet regimes in the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

2022 03 05 09 05
2022 03 05 09 05

In 2014, Putin occupied and annexed the strategic Ukrainian region of Crimea, which served as a launchpad for the current invasion.

Putin paid little price for either action.

The United States and Europe imposed limited sanctions but continued to engage with him on the Iranian nuclear deal and other top issues.

Today, Putin has calculated that taking Ukraine by force is in his and Russia’s interest.

He no doubt anticipated that the West would impose diplomatic and economic sanctions, which U.S. and European leaders threatened beforehand.

Putin may have miscalculated Ukrainian resistance and the intensity of the West’s opposition, but it doesn’t mean he is crazy, or didn’t consider the possibilities and chose to invade regardless.

It remains to be seen if Putin’s plan will succeed or fail, but what is clear is that there was a plan to invade Ukraine in force, and that plan has been executed since day one.

Ukrainian troops are putting up a valiant fight facing long odds and difficult conditions. Russia holds most if not all of the advantages.

It can, and has, attacked Ukraine from three different directions. The Russian military holds a decided advantage in manpower, as well as air, naval and armor superiority.

It has vast resources to draw on. While Ukraine has the support of much of the international community, which is providing weapons, Ukraine is fighting alone.

Believing Russia’s assault is going poorly may make us feel better but is at odds with the facts.

We cannot help Ukraine if we cannot be honest about its predicament.

I suppose that the author is trying to say to his fellow journalists;

"look, guys, our propaganda must be subtle. Not so obviously false, and easily disproved. Tone it down some"...

Next up is this item. Here, we see that all the “news” onslaught is just that. Nonsense, and that the truth is that very little that the United States, and NATO does has any effect on Russia.

It’s like a screaming child having a tantrum, and the adult closes the door and locks it. Meanwhile the child has a fit.  Louder and louder it cries. But the adults, go eat a nice dinner, drink some wine. Sing, dance and have sex. And the child still has the tantrum oblivious to the reality going on…

[3] Russians don’t care what American opinions are

Source: https://expert.ru/

It would be childish to assume that ‘when we are beaten, we get stronger.’ Although we have indeed strengthened our national sovereignty in the economic sphere under the influence of American sanctions, but not to such an extent that we do not pay attention to them at all. The damage from sanctions, of course, is there and it is significantly enhanced by the passive policy of the monetary authorities.

Permanent intimidation of Russia with new ‘sanctions from hell’  has long ceased to excite Russian public opinion. I remember how in 2014, like others in the first list subjected to US sanctions, I was interviewed and we all assured journalists that we were proud of such recognition of our services to Russia. Since then, the number of individuals and legal entities sanctioned by the United States and its satellites has increased many times and has not had any noticeable impact on our country. On the contrary, the retaliatory measures introduced by our Government in terms of restricting food imports from these countries significantly contributed to the growth of domestic agricultural production, which has almost completely replaced the import of poultry and meat.

Defense and energy industry enterprises have learned to circumvent these sanctions by refusing to use the dollar, and at the same time American banks,  in favour of national currencies and banks of partner countries. The next step is the development of digital currency instruments that can be used without resorting to the services of banks which are afraid of falling under sanctions. The Russian people are following with interest the return to the country of the capital exported by the oligarchs and themselves, who are afraid of confiscation and arrest in NATO countries.

American sanctions have affected not so much Russia as third countries which have been subjected to pressure from Washington. First of all, our European neighbours, who have curtailed most of the cooperation projects in the scientific, technical and energy spheres. They also affected Chinese commercial banks operating in the dollar zone, which preferred to stop servicing Russian customers. Russia’s trade turnover with the EU and the United States has naturally decreased, while with China it has grown. In the period 2014-2020, in monetary terms, Russia’s trade turnover with China increased by 17.8% from $88.4 billion to $104.1 billion. The share of APEC [Asia Pacific Economic Conference] and SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organisation] countries in the external trade turnover of the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union] increased during this period from 29.6% to 36.4% and from 16.3% to 24.1%, respectively. The share of the EU in the external trade turnover of the EAEU, on the contrary, decreased from 46.2% in 2015 to 36.7% in 2020. Trade turnover with the United States during the period under review decreased by 18.1% from $29.1 billion to $23.9 billion.

In fact, with the help of sanctions, the United States is trying to oust Russian goods from the markets of its satellites, replacing its own. This was most clearly manifested in the European natural gas market, where the US share has increased sharply, although it has not yet been possible to displace Russia in the European natural gas market.

The main result of the US-European sanctions was a change in the geographical structure of Russian foreign economic relations in favor of China, the expansion of cooperation with which fully compensates for the curtailment of trade and economic relations with the EU. European consumers have to switch to more expensive American energy carriers, and their producers simply lose the Russian market. The total losses of the EU from anti-Russian sanctions are estimated at $ 250 billion.

Another important result of the US sanctions was the fall in the share of the dollar in international settlements. For Russia, as for other countries which have been subjected to US sanctions, the dollar has become a toxic currency. By tracing all dollar transactions, the US punitive authorities can block payments, freeze, or even confiscate assets at any time. For 8 years after the sanctions were imposed, the dollar’s share in international settlements decreased by 13.5 percentage points (from 60.2% in 2014 to 46.7% in 2020).

Sanctions have become a powerful incentive for the transition to settlements in national currencies and the development of national payment systems. Thus, in the mutual trade of the EAEU states, the share of the dollar decreased by more than 6 percentage points (from 26.3% in 2014 to 20.0% at the end of 2020).

I remember how ten years ago, when considering the risks to the Russian banking system at the National Banking Council, I asked the then head of the Central Bank: ‘Is the risk of disconnecting Russian banks from the international SWIFT banking transmission system being considered, as Western partners did in relation to Iran?’

To which I received the answer: ‘We cannot consider the risk of an atomic bomb hitting the Bank of Russia.’

However, the management of the Central Bank has taken measures — today Russia has its own system for transmitting electronic messages between banks — the Bank of Russia’s Financial Message Transmission System (SPFS), as well as its own payment system for Mir bank cards, which is interfaced with the Chinese Union Pay system and can be used for cross-border payments and transfers.

Both of them are open to foreign partners and are already widely used not only in domestic, but also in international settlements.

Disabling SWIFT is no longer seen as a large-scale threat — it will benefit the development of our payment and financial information systems.

However, it would be childish to assume that ‘when we are beaten, we get stronger.’ Although we have indeed strengthened our national sovereignty in the economic sphere under the influence of American sanctions, but not to such an extent that we do not pay attention to them at all. The damage from sanctions, of course, is there and it is significantly enhanced by the passive policy of the monetary authorities.

Since 2014, when, with the connivance of the regulator, currency speculators brought down the ruble exchange rate by manipulating the market, the latter has been used by sanctions as a fail-safe fuse of macroeconomic stability. At the same time, it was in 2014, on the eve of the already announced US sanctions, that the Bank of Russia switched to a free-floating exchange rate regime.

And only after that, the United States introduced their sanctions, being sure that speculators would multiply their negative effect.

When the ruble fell by almost half, Obama was pleased to say that ‘the Russian economy is torn to shreds.’  As a result of this manipulation of the Russian currency market, ruble incomes and savings depreciated, and speculators received over 35 billion rubles.in profit. But this happened not because of sanctions, but rather because of the complicity of the Bank of Russia, which left the exchange rate formation at the mercy of international speculators on the recommendation of Washington financial organizations.

Only very naive people can believe in the formation of an equilibrium ruble exchange rate in the free-float mode. The Bank of Russia’s exclusion of itself from ruble exchange rate regulation means that international currency speculators are engaged in this. On the rocking of the ruble exchange rate, which has become one of the most unstable currencies in the world with a threefold provision of foreign exchange reserves, international speculators receive multibillion dollar profits, and Russians, the depreciation of their ruble savings and income together with bursts of inflation. At the same time, the investment climate is hopelessly deteriorating — the instability of the ruble exchange rate creates uncertainty about the main parameters of investment projects using imported equipment and export-oriented products.

Thus, the damage caused by US financial sanctions is inextricably linked to the monetary policy of the Bank of Russia which is the ideal one for them. Its essence boils down to a tight binding of the ruble issue to export earnings, and the ruble exchange rate to the dollar. In fact, an artificial shortage of money is being created in the economy, and the strict policy of the Central Bank leads to an increase in the cost of lending, which kills business activity and hinders the development of infrastructure in the country.

Sanctions restrictions have caused an extremely high demand for corporate financing in the domestic market. Against the background of a relatively low key rate and access to cheaper funding, large banks consistently keep a net interest margin above the average market level,  5.4% to 6%; whereas for the largest banks in China, the USA, Germany, France, Great Britain and Japan, the net interest margin ranges from 0.8% to 2.3%.

However, these windfalls are not directed to financing infrastructure projects, but to the acquisition of disparate non-core businesses that are combined into ecosystems. Most of these businesses remain unprofitable even at the EBITDA [earnings] level. Despite this, billions of rubles are still spent on their development.

These figures are quite comparable to the volume of investments in a major infrastructure project in the real sector of the economy, which can bring both job growth and contribution to the development of the economy. But such projects (as well as filling the budget) are still left to the raw materials companies, while the largest financial corporations prefer to direct their income to the creation of chimeras.

In fact, it was the connivance of the Central Bank which led to the fact that Russia and its industry were drained of blood and unable to develop.

If the Central Bank fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure the stability of the ruble — and it has all the possibilities for this due to the threefold surplus of the currency reserves of the monetary base — then financial sanctions would be nothing to us. They could even be turned, as in other sectors of the economy, to the benefit of the banking sector, if the Central Bank replaced the loans withdrawn by Western partners with its own special refinancing instruments. This would increase the capacity of the Russian credit and banking system by more than 10 trillion rubles.

Also, it would fully compensate for the outflow of foreign financing of investments, preventing a decline in investment and economic activity without any inflationary consequences. Thus, it would be possible to avoid a long period of decline in real incomes of the population caused solely by the peculiarities of the monetary policy pursued in Russia, which ensured the effectiveness of sanctions in the monetary and financial sphere.

Assessing the consequences of anti-Russian sanctions, it is impossible to ignore the consequences of severing economic ties with Ukraine. The mutual abolition of the free trade regime and the imposition of an embargo on a wide range of goods led to the rupture of cooperative ties that ensured the reproduction of many types of high-tech products. Blocking the work of Russian banks led to the depreciation of multibillion-dollar Russian investments. The refusal of the Ukrainian authorities to service the debt to Russia caused several billion dollars’ more losses. In total, their volume is estimated at about $100 billion for each of the parties. This is really significant and in many ways irreparable real damage, which we ourselves have aggravated with retaliatory sanctions.

To date, the outcome of the economic consequences of anti-Russian sanctions is as follows. Ukraine suffered the biggest losses relative to GDP, in absolute terms — the European Union. Russian losses of potential GDP, since 2014, amount to about 50 trillion rubles. But only 10% of them can be explained by sanctions, while 80% of them were the result of monetary policy. The United States benefits from anti-Russian sanctions, replacing the export of Russian hydrocarbons to the EU, as well as China; replacing the import of European goods by Russia. We could completely offset the negative consequences of financial sanctions if the Bank of Russia fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure a stable ruble exchange rate, and not the recommendations of Washington financial organizations.

Consider the threats of American and European Russophobes against the new ‘sanctions from hell’.  It has already been mentioned above that the threat of disconnecting Russian banks from the SWIFT system, widely discussed in the media today, although it will interfere with international settlements at first, will benefit the Russian banking and payment system in the medium term.

The threat to ban transactions with Russian bonds will also benefit us, since their issue in a budget surplus is nothing more than a source of profit for foreign speculators.

And their profitability is overestimated three times in relation to the market assessment of their riskiness. The termination of the self-serving [самоедской] policy of the monetary authorities, who are borrowing money which is objectively unnecessary to the budget at exorbitant prices, will allow us to save billions of dollars. If the sanctioneers try to prohibit the purchase of the foreign currency bonds of Russian corporations, then it will be possible to compensate for the missing financing for the purchase of imported equipment by buying them out at the expense of part of the excess foreign exchange reserves. If foreign loans are cut off to them, then the risk of their default will fall on the European and American banks themselves.

There is also a potential risk of seizure of Russian state assets. But we can respond to this symmetrically by imposing an embargo on servicing debt obligations to Western creditors and also arresting their assets. The losses of the parties will be approximately equal.

There remains, in fact, one threat – to take away foreign assets from Russian oligarchs. For all its popularity among the common people, this will stimulate the return of capital exported from the country, which will also have a positive effect for the Russian economy.

At the same time, we need to protect ourselves as much as possible from the expected escalation of US-European sanctions.

The most vulnerable place for our economy is its excessive offshoring.

Up to half of the assets of the Russian industry belong to non-residents. There are more than a trillion dollars of capital exported from the country abroad, half of which is involved in the reproduction of the Russian economy.

The simultaneous freezing of these assets can really dramatically worsen the situation of a number of strategically important enterprises dependent on the external market.

The Americans showed how this is done using the example of Rusal, establishing their control over it under the threat of stopping foreign trade activities. We could respond to this by nationalizing at least the giant hydroelectric power plants transferred to this corporation for a song and on dubious grounds, on the operation of which the lion’s share of its profits is based. But for some reason, they did not protect this one of the structural branches of our economy from the raider seizure by the US Treasury.

So, then Russia is cautious, aware and has plans in place. The harsh slap of American sanctions fell like a wisp of a feather on a pillow. Now, let’s see how it will actually happen.

Next up… what REALLY going to happen…

[4] Follow the money: how Russia will bypass western economic warfare

The US and EU are over-reaching on Russian sanctions. The end result could be the de-dollarization of the global economy and massive commodity shortages worldwide.

March 01 2022

So a congregation of NATO’s top brass ensconced in their echo chambers target the Russian Central Bank with sanctions and expect what?

Cookies?

What they got instead was Russia’s deterrence forces bumped up to “a special regime of duty” – which means the Northern and Pacific fleets, the Long-Range Aviation Command, strategic bombers and the entire Russian nuclear apparatus on maximum alert.

One Pentagon general very quickly did the basic math on that, and mere minutes later, a Ukrainian delegation was dispatched to conduct negotiations with Russia in an undisclosed location in Gomel, Belarus.

BOOM!

Expecting to lay economic warfare with Russia's Central Bank, Russia responded with the full force of hard, physical nuclear weaponary. Oh, so you want to play "hard ball" eh? You want to deal with us? You want to see what the flash or light, and hard gooey blood on your chest looks like? Do you?

Meanwhile, in the vassal realms, the German government was busy “setting limits to warmongers like Putin” – quite a rich undertaking considering that Berlin never set any such limits for the western warmongers who bombed Yugoslavia, invaded Iraq, or destroyed Libya in complete violation of international law.

While openly proclaiming their desire to “stop the development of Russian industry,” damage its economy, and “ruin Russia” – echoing American edicts on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, Venezuela and others in the Global South – the Germans could not possibly recognize a new categorical imperative.

They were finally liberated from their WWII culpability complex by none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Germany is finally free to support and weaponize neo-Nazis out in the open all over again – now of the Ukrainian Azov battalion variety.

To get the hang of how these NATO sanctions will “ruin Russia,” I asked for the succinct analysis of one of the most competent economic minds on the planet, Michael Hudson, author, among others, of a revised edition of the must-read Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.

Hudson remarked how he is

 “simply numbed over the near-atomic escalation of the US.”

On the confiscation of Russian foreign reserves and cut-off from SWIFT, the main point is “it will take some time for Russia to put in a new system, with China.

The result will end dollarization for good, as countries threatened with ‘democracy™’ or displaying diplomatic independence will be afraid to use US banks.”

This, Hudson says, leads us to “the great question: whether Europe and the Dollar Bloc can buy Russian raw materials – cobalt, palladium, etc, and whether China will join Russia in a minerals boycott.”

Hudson is adamant that “Russia’s Central Bank, of course, has foreign bank assets in order to intervene in exchange markets to defend its currency from fluctuations.

The ruble has plunged.

There will be new exchange rates.

Yet it’s up to Russia to decide whether to sell its wheat to West Asia, that needs it; or to stop selling gas to Europe via Ukraine, now that the US can grab it.”

About the possible introduction of a new Russia-China payment system bypassing SWIFT, and combining the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) with the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), Hudson has no doubts “the Russian-China system will be implemented.

The Global South will seek to join and at the same time keep SWIFT – moving their reserves into the new system.”

I’m going to de-dollarize myself

So the US itself, in another massive strategic blunder, will speed up de-dollarization. As the managing director of Bocom International Hong Hao told the Global Times, with energy trade between Europe and Russia de-dollarized, “that will be the beginning of the disintegration of dollar hegemony.”

It’s a refrain the US administration was quietly hearing last week from some of its own largest multinational banks, including notables like JPMorgan and Citigroup.

A Bloomberg article sums up their collective fears:

“Booting Russia from the critical global system – which handles 42 million messages a day and serves as a lifeline to some of the world’s biggest financial institutions – could backfire, sending inflation higher, pushing Russia closer to China, and shielding financial transactions from scrutiny by the west. It might also encourage the development of a SWIFT alternative that could eventually damage the supremacy of the US dollar.”

Those with IQs over 50 in the European Union (EU) must have understood that Russia simply could not be totally excluded from SWIFT, but maybe only a few of its banks: after all, European traders depend on Russian energy.

From Moscow’s point of view, that’s a minor issue. A number of Russian banks are already connected to China’s CIPS system. For instance, if someone wants to buy Russian oil and gas with CIPS, payment must be in the Chinese yuan currency. CIPS is independent of SWIFT.

Additionally, Moscow already linked its SPFS payment system not only to China but also to India and member nations of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). SPFS already links to approximately 400 banks.

With more Russian companies using SPFS and CIPS, even before they merge, and other maneuvers to bypass SWIFT, such as barter trade – largely used by sanctioned Iran – and agent banks, Russia could make up for at least 50 percent in trade losses.

The key fact is that the flight from the US-dominated western financial system is now irreversible across Eurasia – and that will proceed in tandem with the internationalization of the yuan.

Russia has its own bag of tricks

Meanwhile, we’re not even talking yet about Russian retaliation for these sanctions. Former President Dmitry Medvedev already gave a hint: everything, from exiting all nuclear arms deals with the US to freezing the assets of western companies in Russia, is on the table.

So what does the “Empire of Lies” want? (Putin terminology, on Monday’s meeting in Moscow to discuss the response to sanctions.)

In an essay published this morning, deliciously titled America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century: the MIC, OGAM and FIRE conquer NATO, Michael Hudson makes a series of crucial points, starting with how

“NATO has become Europe’s foreign policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.”

He outlines the three oligarchies in control of US foreign policy:

First is the military-industrial complex, which Ray McGovern memorably coined as MICIMATT (military industrial Congressional intelligence media academia think tank). Hudson defines their economy base as

“monopoly rent, obtained above all from its arms sales to NATO, to West Asian oil exporters and to other countries with a balance-of-payments surplus.”

Second is the oil and gas sector, joined by mining (OGAM). Their aim is

“to maximize the price of energy and raw materials so as to maximize natural resource rent. Monopolizing the Dollar Area’s oil market and isolating it from Russian oil and gas has been a major US priority for over a year now, as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany threatened to link the western European and Russian economies together.”

Third is the “symbiotic” Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which Hudson defines as

“the counterpart to Europe’s old post-feudal landed aristocracy living by land rents.”

As he describes these three rentier sectors that completely dominate post-industrial finance capitalism at the heart of the western system, Hudson notes how

“Wall Street always has been closely merged with the oil and gas industry (namely, the Citigroup and Chase Manhattan banking conglomerates).”

Hudson shows how

“the most pressing US strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices. In addition to creating profits and stock market gains for US companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy.”

He warns how food prices will rise “headed by wheat.” (Russia and Ukraine account for 25 percent of world wheat exports.)

From a Global South perspective, that’s a disaster:

“This will squeeze many West Asian and Global South food-deficient countries, worsening their balance of payments and threatening foreign debt defaults.”

As for blocking Russian raw materials exports,

“this threatens to cause breaks in supply chains for key materials, including cobalt, palladium, nickel, aluminum.”

And that leads us, once again, to the heart of the matter:

“The long-term dream of the US new Cold Warriors is to break up Russia, or at least to restore its managerial kleptocracy seeking to cash in their privatizations in western stock markets.”

That’s not going to happen.

Hudson clearly sees how

“the most enormous unintended consequence of US foreign policy has been to drive Russia and China together, along with Iran, Central Asia and countries along the Belt and Road initiative.”

Let’s confiscate some technology

Now compare all of the above with the perspective of a central European business tycoon with vast interests, east and west, and who treasures his discretion.

In an email exchange, the business tycoon posed serious questions about the Russian Central Bank support for its national currency, the ruble,

“which according to US planning is being destroyed by the west through sanctions and currency wolf packs who are exposing themselves by selling rubles short. There is really almost no amount of money that can beat the dollar manipulators against the ruble. A 20 percent interest rate will kill the Russian economy unnecessarily.”

The businessman argues that the chief effect of the rate hike

“would be to support imports that should not be imported. The fall of the ruble is thus favorable to Russia in terms of self-sufficiency. As import prices rise, these goods should start to be produced domestically. I would just let the ruble fall to find its own level which will for a while be lower than natural forces would permit as the US will be driving it lower through sanctions and short selling manipulation in this form of economic war against Russia.”

But that seems to tell only part of the story.

Arguably, the lethal weapon in Russia’s arsenal of responses has been identified by the head of the Center for Economic Research of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO), Vasily Koltashov: the key is to confiscate technology – as in Russia ceasing to recognize US rights to patents.

In what he qualifies as “liberating American intellectual property,”

Koltashov calls for passing a Russian law on

“friendly and unfriendly states. If a country turns out to be on the unfriendly list, then we can start copying its technologies in pharmaceuticals, industry, manufacturing, electronics, medicine. It can be anything – from simple details to chemical compositions.”

This would require amendments to the Russian constitution.

Koltashov maintains that

“one of the foundations of success of American industry was copying of foreign patents for inventions.”

Now, Russia could use

“China’s extensive know-how with its latest technological production processes for copying western products: the release of American intellectual property will cause damage to the United States to the amount of $10 trillion, only in the first stage. It will be a disaster for them.”

As it stands, the strategic stupidity of the EU beggars belief.

China is ready to grab all Russian natural resources – with Europe left as a pitiful hostage of the oceans and of wild speculators. It looks like a total EU-Russia split is ahead – with little trade left and zero diplomacy.

Now listen to the sound of champagne popping all across the MICIMATT.

And you all must see how this collapse of the USD will fit into the big picture with what is happening inside of the United States right now…

[5] WILL THERE BE A 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION?

“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force.” George Orwell

The smell of tyranny is in the air.

The level of propaganda, disinformation, and mistruth has reached astounding heights, as the ruling oligarchy/Deep State/globalist cabal are thrashing about violently because their frauds are being exposed on a daily basis.

This shift to the tyranny of force has massive implications for everyone on the planet.

When every quote from Orwell’s 1984 applies every day to everything swirling around us, you begin to realize we are in the midst of a dystopian nightmare which gets more ghoulish by the day.

The last two years have been a fraud of epic proportions, conducted by a cadre of evil money titans, their financial, media, and medical apparatchiks, with the objective of tearing down our existing social and economic structure…

…and “resetting” the world where they own everything and you own nothing, eat bugs, and provide the slave labor needed to keep society functioning.

Of course, this will be after they dispose of tens of millions of useless eaters through their Covid/Vaxx scheme, global war, and mass starvation.

The past two weeks have denoted a remarkable transformation in the pushing of the fraudulent fearmongering narrative about a relatively non-lethal flu…

  • vaccine mandates,
  • masking and shaming those with the common sense to rely on their immune systems,
  • to trying to provoke a world war over a border dispute with absolutely no relevance or strategic value to our country, other than to further enrich the military industrial complex and
  • the parasites and leeches in government, finance, media and war making industry who live for and love war.

The shift has been effortless because the ruling Party, over the last two years, learned they could make the willfully ignorant and indoctrinated masses believe the most absurd story-lines with broadcast propaganda, social media influencing, and using highly compensated “experts” to lie, obfuscate, and say whatever they were paid to say.

And just like that, the pandemic was over and a war the U.S. and NATO provoked has shifted the focus of the willfully ignorant to a new boogeyman – Vladimir Putin (aka the unhinged madman Hitler reincarnation).

Again, the plotline is eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s Two Minutes of Hate.

The members of the Party participated in a public setting to watch the enemy of the state (Emmanuel Goldstein) on a film screen and loudly express their hate for the enemy du jour.

I can’t help but recognize the similarities to the last six years here in our very own dystopian empire of lies and propaganda.

From 2016 through 2020 the face of Trump was on that screen, with the hatred of Hillary, her Deep State coup co-conspirators, the fake news media outlets, and the brain-dead liberal sycophants reaching historic levels of vitriol.

Once Trump was eradicated, the Covid virus became the enemy on the screen, but the masses were infused with fear and incited to hate those who refused to fear this Fauci created flu.

“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. 

A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. A

nd yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.” 

 Orwell – 1984

The Party needed a human face to hate.

Once they began to rollout their Big Pharma clot shots, after falsifying their safety trial data and suppressing proven safe therapeutics like ivermectin and hydroxychloquine, the face of hate became everyone who refused to be the research in this despicable medical experiment which has been an epic failure thus far, with the long-term deadly consequences only beginning to be revealed.

The un-vaxxed (aka pure bloods) have been treated like dirt, hated, de-platformed, banned, fired, and ridiculed.

The two minutes of hate has extended for a year.

But our overlords have decided the time has come to change the channel of hate towards Putin, Russia, Alex Ovechkin, Russian vodka, Russian dressing and anyone who points out the U.S. and their NATO lapdogs have provoked this conflict by surrounding Russia with military bases and missiles.

A simple map shows why Putin felt it necessary to make a stand and confront his adversaries with a punch in the mouth.

NATOExpansion1997
NATO signed a treaty with Russia pledging NO WESTWARD expansion. They violated it 14 times, as the map clearly shows.

Thus far the sanctions are toothless because neither Europe nor the U.S. can stomach the pain of being cut-off from Russian gas and oil.

So, for the time being they will settle for their media mouthpieces conducting two minutes of hate on a grand scale until someone does something stupid and hell on earth is unleashed across the globe.

The timing of this Ukraine conflict has been impeccable for Biden, his Covidian Cultists, their hapless discredited media lapdogs, and all the authoritarian state and local politicians whose destruction of lives and businesses has been complete.

Now that everything the “conspiracy theorists” have been saying for two years has been proven right, these soulless goblins must distract from their criminal acts by using their power of media propaganda to lead the same clueless low IQ saps who believed their bullshit about masks, lockdowns, social distancing, vaccines, and vaccine mandates into believing we should go to war with Russia over an historical border dispute 5,000 miles from our shores.

The same dumbasses riding alone in the car with a mask on are the ones calling for the banning of Russia vodka as a patriotic gesture to support those brave neo-Nazi Ukrainians.

I find it endlessly amusing to see Maddow and the rest of the MSNBC left wing loonies supporting people they would classify as red neck white supremacist Trump supporters if they lived in the U.S.

They wear their hypocrisy and imbecility proudly, while foaming at the mouth at whoever they are paid to attack.

It’s as plain as the vacant look on Biden’s face during a press conference that Biden, his handlers, and his pollsters decided two weeks ago to Wag the Dog, scrap the covid farce, rally the country around the flag, and pretend their policies have not unleashed raging inflation, destroyed our economy, shattered the lives of millions, and unleashed an ongoing and long-term death sentence for the millions of trusting souls who believed their safe & effective narrative – injecting themselves with a DNA altering experimental drug which has already killed and maimed millions.

Amazingly, even though Covid cases have plummeted, they are still at the same levels as November 2021 – when mandatory masking, vaccine mandates, and heavy restrictions were in full effect, with Biden and his cronies committing un-Constitutional acts, in coordination with mega-corporations and mass media, to force supposedly free Americans to participate in their warped failed experiment.

2022 03 05 09 33
2022 03 05 09 33

 

It’s funny that Walensky and her corrupt CDC cohorts now are sure it is safe to go maskless, even though, according to their own statistics, covid deaths are now 65% higher than they were in November 2021.

If I recall, senile Joe was warning us about the dark winter ahead for the unvaccinated.

Another bogus narrative proven false.

After witnessing his brilliant prediction, I’m a little worried about his judgement on matters of nuclear war.

Fauci told us to trust the science, and he was the science.

But now he is completely on-board with rolling back everything he said was essential for society to function just a month ago.

His profile is being quickly diminished.

He has proven to be a Big Pharma hack, who sold his soul to Satan, and will go down in history as a sociopath mass murder.

Let’s face it, this was never about medical science, but political science.

  • Masks have never worked. Social distancing was a farce.
  • Lockdowns did not stop the virus.
  • The vaccines have failed on an epic scale.
  • The vaccines are killing and maiming people.
  • Vaccine mandates and passports are nothing more than a control and punishment mechanism.

The critical thinking resisters have been proven right on every front. Even the gullible masses began to realize they were lied to and manipulated for political purposes.

This is where political science overrode the faux medical science sold by Fauci and his Big Pharma puppeteers.

The polls show Biden and his party of far-left wingnuts are going to experience YUGE losses in the November midterms.

And just like that, Democrat governors and mayors are lifting mask mandates and vaccine mandates faster than the Biden vote count increase at 3:00 am.

They are reversing everything they never had the authority to implement in the first place.

They want you to forget how they destroyed the lives of millions, bankrupting hundreds of thousands of small businesses, demolishing our civil liberties, and permanently wrecking the lives of our children.

Their plan is to switch the narrative to Russia hate and expect the ignorant masses to forget what they have done and how they severely damaged the social fabric of our society.

They have supreme confidence in the foolishness and witlessness of the suckers who swallowed their scamdemic scheme, and after a week of observing the complete transformation of the fearful mask/mandate brigade to the “I Hate Putin” army, it appears the Bernays’ propaganda machine is running like a finely tuned fake news propagator for the globalist new world order cabal.

Orwell’s observation that every war needs to be sold as self-defense against a homicidal maniac has been duly noted by those pulling the strings of society, as they have enlisted Vladimir Putin to be that “homicidal maniac” in their ongoing quest to destroy the world and reinvent and reset it as a techno-gulag.

Once they can force everyone into a cashless society, we will all be wearing digital slave chains, enabling them to control our behavior by cutting us off from the ability to conduct commerce, eat, or have opinions contrary to the government narrative.

Does the daily ebb and flow of one crisis after another, requiring greater government control of every aspect of our existence, have a Truman Show feel to you?

The usurpation of our civil liberties, human rights, freedoms, and liberties had been gradual and almost undetectable to the indoctrinated sheep who have been distracted by their iGadgets, counting their likes and followers on social media, professional sports bread and circuses, and the filth that passes for Hollywood entertainment over the last couple decades.

The last two years have seen a precipitous acceleration in the lawless disregard for any and all Constitutional rights, bodily rights, and human rights.

The illegal and heavy-handed enforcement of lockdowns and vaccine mandates reveals a desperation in the actions of our globalist oligarch controllers.

The question is whether this acceleration is part of the master plan, or an acknowledgement the endgame is approaching, and they need to gamble it all in an effort to reconfigure and reset the world to make it great for oligarchs and hell on earth for the rest of us.

I’m convinced Orwell and Huxley were the two most prescient minds of the 20th Century when it came to understanding the human condition and how power-seeking psychopaths would always rise to the top of society and inflict their psychosis upon the masses.

The mass formation psychosis (aka madness of crowds), which has overtaken a large swath of the population over the last two years, did not happen naturally, but was purposely initiated by propagandists who know how to manipulate the minds of the already willfully ignorant masses using mass media, social media, and parading of paid “experts” and “influencers” to sell their narrative.

The power of groupthink is overwhelming when it is driven by fear, hatred, and the power of psychopaths like Fauci willing to lie, mislead and cover-up facts that do not support the narrative. Huxley’s description of “herd poisoning” perfectly fits how the mindless, frantic, lunacy of the Covidian Cult overrode all of the critical thinking rational non-sheep in a stampede of idiocy, engineered by those pulling the strings of society.

“Groups are capable of being as moral and intelligent as the individuals who form them; a crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own and is capable of anything except intelligent action and realistic thinking. 

Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. 

Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgment or will of their own. 

They become very ex­citable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. 

In a word, a man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant. 

He is a victim of what I have called “herd-poisoning.” Like alcohol, herd-poison is an active, extraverted drug. 

The crowd-intoxicated individual escapes from responsibility, in­telligence and morality into a kind of frantic, animal mindlessness.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

The same men who engineered the covid plandemic hysteria, are now making a segue directly into provoking a World War 3 scenario and urging the Covidian Cultists to rally around the Ukrainian flag and their brave patriot army to fight off the evil psychopath despot of Russia.

It doesn’t matter that a week ago these dupes couldn’t find Ukraine on a map, had never seen their flag, didn’t know the comedian president of Ukraine’s name, and had no idea about the CIA coup that overthrew the actual president of Ukraine in 2014.

Animal mindlessness is their specialty.

And those trying to cause global destruction in order to build back better are wallowing in the apparent success of their plan thus far.

Global disorder and chaos are proceeding with reckless abandon, as an already teetering, debt saturated, global economy was in danger of spinning out of control with raging inflation, rapidly decelerating GDP, and stock markets which peaked in early January and had begun to fall.

Now you add the first real war in Europe in 77 years into the mix and you have a combustible environment threatening to blow our modern world back to the stone age.

The world continues to spiral towards the bloody climax that mark all Fourth Turnings.

What happens between now and then is guaranteed to be tumultuous, try men’s souls, test the mettle of freedom minded patriots, push the world to the brink, and clearly demarcate the frontier between good and evil.

Current events related to this confusing conflict in the Ukraine may seem confined for now, but as the sanctions and countermeasures are inflicted by all sides, the unintended consequences will begin to rear their ugly head.

The current heads of state and their trusted advisors are not intellectually competent, morally superior, or capable of analyzing the long-term impact of their emotionally driven actions, which will lead to a much broader conflict and disastrous consequences for the citizens of this world, who are nothing more than pawns in this global game of chess being played by shadowy oligarchs attempting to checkmate our freedoms, livelihoods, and ability to live our lives free from their authoritarian mandates.

Everything we’ve been put through over the last two years has been pre-planned by Schwab, Soros, Gates, the Davos World Economic Forum crowd, and their acolytes positioned in governments across the world.

They have been testing how far they could push their citizens before getting pushback. Lockdowns, masks, vaccines, electronic vaccine passports, social credit scoring, and conspiring with Big Pharma, Big Media, and Big Corporations to force a fake vaccine into the veins of hundreds of millions has all been part of the plan.

Trudeau’s totalitarian crackdown on peaceful protestors, declaring dictatorial emergency powers, stealing their donated funds, freezing their bank accounts, beating them, imprisoning them, seizing their property, and trying to ruin their lives by publicly releasing their names and addresses, was just another test run by one of Schwab’s young global leader graduates.

The same has been done in New Zealand and Australia. These actions are a prelude to what comes next. Orwell was right.

Once they have seized power, they have no plans of relinquishing it and the object of power is power.

The next chapter in this dystopian Truman Show is how this conflict in the Ukraine will be used to further the aims of Schwab’s Great Reset.

You can be absolutely sure it will be used to further restrict our freedoms, rights, and free speech.

Anyone not participating in the daily two minutes of hate will be declared a Russian asset.

Anyone not toeing the anti-Russia narrative will be penalized financially, just as they were for not getting the jab.

Joe Biden was a low IQ angry gaffe machine as senator and vice president. He is now a dementia ridden husk, who can barely read what his handlers tell him to say on his teleprompter.

His weakness has led to emboldening Putin in pushing back against the US and NATO placing missiles on his border, by attacking Ukraine.

  • Economic sanctions are acts of war.
  • Cyber-attacks are acts of war.
  • Sending arms to participants in a conflict are acts of war.
  • It was economic sanctions which led to the rise of Hitler.
  • It was oil sanctions by FDR that created the desperation of Japan’s leadership, leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
  • If this conflict drags on, the measures and countermeasures are likely ignite a wider conflagration.

With real inflation already at 15%, GDP at 0.0%, oil now up 20% in the last two weeks, the Fed backed into a corner and about to end QE and raise rates, and the supply chain in a shambles, these economic sanctions are going to create havoc and extreme economic pain for billions across the globe.

Incompetent leaders, with mediocre minds, who have been installed because they will do as they are told by the globalist puppeteers, are steering the world into World War 3.

At this point virtually no one believes we will not have a presidential election in 2024.

Candidates are positioning themselves, pundits are calculating odds, pollsters are taking the temperature of the populace, and the media is spinning their web of lies.

But there are multiple scenarios which could result in no presidential election in 2024. With inflation already at 40-year highs, these accelerating levels of sanctions will surely give inflation a further boost, making it impossible for Powell and his cronies to pretend it is transitory.

They will be increasing rates and withdrawing liquidity as we enter recession, making the chances of a depression the highest in decades. This will absolutely cause the stock market and housing market to crash.

A large swath of the population is already outraged and irate at being abused and victimized by their leaders for the last two years and told it was for the common good.

Trucker convoys are converging on DC. to voice their displeasure. Seeing their 401ks vaporized once again and going back underwater on their recent mortgages will not be accepted without a violent reaction.

Civil unrest has been purposely generated by the controllers over the last few years but is poised to go kinetic in the near future.

The party that weaponized the flu to complete the coup they started in 2016 against a duly elected president and stole the 2020 election through mail-in ballot fraud and voting machine rigging, is not going to willingly relinquish power by losing the 2022 mid-terms and 2024 presidential election.

Will they roll-out the next variant in the fall, just in time to force mail-in voting once again, so they can steal enough seats to retain power? Seems unlikely.

If the GOP takes Congress in November, that essentially leaves Biden with executive orders to force his left-wing agenda down our throats.

An attempt at using illegal means to enforce his agenda could meet violent resistance.

They have already gated off their Swamp and posted the military to protect the vermin crawling around the halls of Congress.

They have already thrown the selfie-insurrectionists into their dungeons with no due process for their “crimes”.

What makes you think Biden and his Obama handlers will not use some excuse or false flag to declare martial law and suspend the elections?

The more likely scenario will be driven by war scenarios. As already documented, with inflation raging across the globe, the supply chain disintegrating, the world retreating into competing camps, a declining American empire desperately trying to fend off China, and a nuclear power run by a ruthless, serious, intelligent, “Russia First” dictator, the chances of the current level of global disorder to spiral out of control are high.

Politicians, when confronted with domestic issues they cannot solve by PR and throwing money at it, need a foreign confrontation to distract the masses from their failures.

Biden and his bevy of like-minded EU political hacks have gladly jumped on the anti-Russia bandwagon like a pack of rabid wolves.

Watching corporations and the media likewise go on the attack is eerily reminiscent of their extreme reaction to the un-vaxxed.

Covid has disappeared from the daily lexicon just in time for Biden’s State of the Union and the fast-approaching November elections.

Revisionist history is in process by the left-wing media. It was Trump’s fault.

Someone somewhere is bound to do something stupid, whether it be a dictator, president, prime minister, general, assassin, soldier, or just a pissed off parent, which sets off the fuse for the bloody portion of this Fourth Turning.

Once this war goes global and countries choose sides, anything can happen, and it will. Picture the domino scene in V for Vendetta.

Once it starts it can’t be contained until there are clear victors and clear winners. The difference between this Fourth Turning and previous Fourth Turnings is the ability of several countries to initiate thermonuclear war which would end life as we know it.

Even use of tactical nukes, EMPs, or cyber-attacks taking down crucial systems could transform our modern world into the 3rd world.

So, a global conflict could also create an atmosphere where our ruling junta couldn’t possibly allow Donald Trump to be re-elected president.

This, of course, would lead to civil war in the streets. It’s almost as if an orange fireball rising up above the Swamp would be preferable.

Just remember, the current scenario was placed into motion by Schwab, Soros, Gates, and the Great Reset billionaire cabal. If we get out of this alive, you know who to hang from the lampposts.

“Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.”Mahatma Gandhi

So, we now know that the United States is ripe for revolution or Civil War. It’s ready. It’s ripe, and it’s amazing to me that it hasn’t yet ignited.

All five articles so far has absolutely indicated clearly that the United States, as well as it’s “allies” are in late-stage collapse. It’s looking like any day now a switch will be flicked and a new day will begin…

Next up…

Alastair Crooke from HERE.
March 12, 2022
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Ukraine may be many things … but a ‘gospel of democracy’?

We all know that the western media’s Ukraine coverage has been highly charged, playing on western feelings of sympathy for (some) underdog ‘victims’, and directing feelings towards a moral outrage that insists – even demands – retribution and punishment for the perceived perpetrators.

David Brooks in the New York Times elevates this feeling of guilt to higher planes:

“The creed of liberalism is getting a second wind [and has] reminded us not only what it looks like to believe in democracy, the liberal order and national honour; but also to act bravely on behalf of these things. They’ve reminded us how the setbacks [may] have caused us to doubt and be passive about the gospel of democracy. But despite all our failings, the gospel is still glowingly true”.

Ukraine may be many things … but a ‘gospel of democracy’?

Every serious crisis, of course, is also an opportunity for mythopoesis – especially at a time of anomie, when a dispirited less than half of a society believes that their country is not invested in them and “that the economic and political systems (and the people who run them), are stacked against [them] – no matter what you do”.

The Anglo-American Establishment has proved adept at intuiting: that owing to such anomie and erosion of our ‘sacred canopy’, a ‘noble lie’ can be used to give a rules-based order a last gasp.

Its’ inherent power can be harnessed to generate the outrage as casus belli for global liberalism.

After all, what better unifying force than the ‘grand American project’ of war to energise one’s desire for a reappropriated national significance.

The West has taken dominance of the ‘information space’ to new heights: consolidating the media; tightening its hold on information; marginalising the few investigative journalists that remain; and nullifying scepticism as examples of appeasement, or of “Putinism”.

Freedom of online thought is disallowed; selective broadcast perspectives are removed or allowed (for example, pro neo-Nazi sympathies and politically-charged violence against Russians and Russia); and a monopoly over truth is established.

So that when caught in falsehoods, any errant intrusion simply is algorithmically ‘disappeared’.

There is no doubt that the West has refined this mode of battle-scape to the highest degree, but its very success also diffuses its own pathogens throughout the western capillaries.

Once set in motion, it possesses all the addictive power of online gaming.

Write the script for a new scenario; direct its production; and then stage it on video.

Many may disbelieve the resulting piece, but there is nothing for them to do, except to watch it in mute, frustrated silence.

Game over.

You have ‘won’.

Except you don’t.

This game generates its own momentum.

There is always another, at hand, to trump the last player’s taunt at Putin; to hail the victim’s new act of selfless bravery; to speculate about yet more foul deeds planned against him.

And so the demand for retribution and punishment is invested with unstoppable momentum. The logic to its structure makes it almost impossible for any political leader to stand against the swelling tide.

That’s where we are: Three realities that are so severed from each other that they do not touch at any point.

There is the reality of PsyOps that bears almost no resemblance to the reality of the military situation on the ground.

      • “News” of the Ukraine conflict = PsyOps
      • Actual events and battles in the conflict.

Indeed, they manifest as polar inversions of each other. PsyOps: A heroic resistance versus a failing, demoralised and hobbled Russian army.

Whereas the reality is that “Putin is NOT crazy and the Russian invasion is NOT failing”.

Then there is the clashing realities of a Europe and U.S. conjoined in ‘an economic, moral enterprise of social power and fighting morale’ (albeit at certain self-sacrifice/self-flagellation to themselves) to punish Russia.

And the other reality that a ‘world at war’ – whether kinetic or financial – will be a disaster for Europe (and America).

War is inflationary.

War is contractionary (and inflationary too).

Everything – oil, gas, metals – the lot – are going up vertically, and the whole production chain for food is under pressure from every side.

But this situation clearly is less disastrous for a super food and commodity supplier like Russia.

The third set of severed realities are, on the one hand, the contextless, exclusive focus on the Ukraine events, which effaces this moment of global political and economic inflection, and – on the other – the elephant-in-the room which is the Russia-China mega project to force a withdrawal and containment of the entire ‘rules-based’ hegemonic order.

There are other severed realities out there (such as the one about Russia isolated and shunned versus the reality that much of the planet does not support U.S. and European punitive sanctions) – but never mind that.

The point here is not just what happens when these realities collide, but what happens when one or other ‘reality’ that already holds a hyper emotional, moralising charge is forced into full consciousness as having been WRONG?

This is the pathogen inherent in taking the battle-scape of information dominance to an extreme: It begs the question: in what way will emotions turn if all the hype falls flat, and the ‘bad guy’ wins the game?

Will people turn against their present leaderships, or opt to double-down, demanding more ‘war’ as instincts rebel against any the realisation of failure inflicted upon settled quasi-religious convictions?

The outcome to this psychic dilemma may determine whether we are heading to escalation and extended war, or not.

U.S. intelligence officials claimed on Tuesday that Putin is ‘desperate’ to end the conflict over Ukraine, with some privately suggesting he could even set off a tactical nuclear weapon in a Ukrainian city to get the job done.

Fuelled by his disappointments, Putin could resort to using a small nuke:

“You know, Russian doctrine holds that you escalate to de-escalate, and so I think the risk would rise, according to the doctrine,” 

-CIA Director, and former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow

There it is … the next stage of escalation.

This now is being attributed to Putin, but the point is that it has been put ‘out there’ very publicly by the CIA.

Is this ground preparation?

An escalation to this level is likely not on the cards, so long, and only so long, as the option of sticking Russia into a Ukrainian quagmire remains firmly on the cards.

If the PsyOps narrative – on which so much hangs – doesn’t stand up to the ground reality, the public will demand answers.

Why were they led up “the Primrose Path”?

The setback to the ‘sacred canopy’ would be immense.

Biological labs have been found in Ukraine that reportedly have a U.S. connection:

When asked about them, Victoria Nuland surprisingly admitted their existence, but said “she’s worried Russia might get them and that she’s 100% sure if there is a biological attack – it’s Russia”.

On Thursday, the UK media led with the headline, “Putin plotting chemical weapons attack in Ukraine”.

Plainly, the fear factor is being ramped to sustain a long-term insurgency/quagmire strategy for Russia in western Ukraine. It is, as David Brooks hinted, the last gasp in the defence of the liberal world order.

Can all this hype – small nukes, bio and chemical weapons – really take us to war? James Carden, in his piece says it can – and has. He quotes one instance:

“In a private letter written in 1918, the recently deposed German chancellor admitted that in the run-up to the Great War, “there were special circumstances that militated in favour of war, including those in which Germany in 1870-71 entered the circle of great powers” and became “the object of vengeful envy on the part of the other Great Powers, largely though not entirely by her own fault.”

“Yet Bethmann saw another crucial factor at work: that of public opinion. “How else,” he asked, “[to] explain the senseless and impassioned zeal which allowed countries like Italy, Rumania, and even America, not originally involved in the war, no rest until they too had immersed themselves in the bloodbath? Surely this is the immediate, tangible expression of a general disposition toward war in the world.”

Against the prospect that Putin may achieve his aims, short of general war, how might Europe and America react? They might react very differently.

Firstly, we must recall that one object of this ‘war fever’ always was to bind Europe to the U.S., and into NATO, and to prevent Russia-China co-opting Europe into the Great Asian Heartland economic integration project – thus leaving the U.S. as an isolated maritime ‘island’, strategically speaking.

The hardcore Neo-cons have had positive results: Nordstream 2 is cancelled – leaving Europe without a cheap secure source of energy.

From the outset, the European project was conceived as a marriage of Russian resources to European manufacturing capacity.

This option is now over.

The EU has fully bound itself into the ‘fever’, and into U.S. sphere.

And it has erected an ‘iron curtain’ against Russia (and by extension China).

It has ‘sanctioned itself’ into a high-cost energy and commodity paradigm and made itself a captive market for the U.S. energy majors and American technology.

The EU has been fond of imagining itself as a liberal imperium.

But that surely is gone now.

Its’ Davos-style ‘re-set’, designed to steal a march on America, is defunct.

The four key ‘transitions’ on which Brussels was depending to lift its reach from the national-level, to the global supra-national level, are defunct: Global ‘green pass’ health regulations, Climate, automation and monetary regulatory frameworks – for one reason or another – have failed and are off the agenda.

The EU was counting on these transitions as the peg to print a huge amount of money.

They need it in order to liquefy an over-indebted system. Absent this peg, they are mulling a (highly inflationary) slush fund (ostensibly for defence and Russian energy substitution), financed by euro-bonds. (It will be interesting to see whether the so-called ‘frugal four’ EU states buy into this ploy for mutualised debt).

Yet inflation – already high and accelerating – is at the root of the crisis Brussels is facing. There is little to be done about this in light of the sanctions which the EU has enacted on Russia – with prices of everything going up vertically.

And as for the other lacuna, there’s no way Europe can find 200 billion cubic meters of gas anywhere else to replace Russia, be it in Algeria, Qatar or Turkmenistan – not to mention the EU’s lack of necessary LNG terminals.

Europeans face a bleak future of soaring prices and economic contraction. For now, they can offer little political dissent to the controlling élites. The frameworks for genuine (as opposed to token) opposition in Europe, largely have been dismantled in the zeal of Brussels to suppress ‘populism’. EU citizens will bear the prospect in sullen anger (until the pain becomes unbearable).

‘Populism’ in the U.S. however, is not dead. Some 30 GOP Congressmen have opted to retire at the coming midterms.

We may well witness an upsurge in the American populist sentiment in November.

The point here, is that American populism traditionally is fiscally conservative.

And it seems that Wall Street is shifting in that direction too: i.e. they may be getting ready to ditch Biden, and to support more fiscal rigour.

This potentially is huge. This week the Federal Reserve head said that whilst a part of the record U.S. inflation may be put down to Fed responsibility, Congress however was responsible too.

This translates roughly as ‘stop the Big Spend, Biden!’.

The Fed needs the space to raise interest rates. The head of Citibank spoke in a similar vein.

Will Wall Street swap horses (they backed Biden at the last election), and thus magnify the margin to the likely Republican majority in Congress? If so, with a big enough majority – anything may (politically) become possible. Republican conservatism traditionally (i.e. before the flirt with neo-con hawks) is highly cautious of foreign adventurism.

‘Whether it be BLM, Coronavirus, or now Ukraine, every single issue is talked about in apocalyptic terms and with gargantuan fear. But, as for all these frights:

“The deplorables are done”’. (paraphrased)

Next up…

[7] The Great Decoupling: How Western Sanctions Are Pushing Moscow East

Scott Ritter. From Energy Intelligence

By seeking an economic divorce from Russia, US President Joe Biden and his European allies ignored the time-tested saying, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” In doing so, they have enabled the complete economic decoupling of Russia from the West. The resulting Russian economic union with China will transform global geopolitical reality, to the detriment of those who sought these sanctions in the first place.

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has had a Jekyll and Hyde relationship with the US and the West. In the dire economic reality of post-Soviet Russia, many in the West believed the Soviet ghost could best be exorcised through a crash program of democratization, which would accompany the transformation of the ruined, centrally controlled Soviet economy into a vibrant free market built along Western capitalist lines.

The result was a disaster.

Post-Soviet Russia President Boris Yeltsin proved unsuited for the task, and what passed for democracy in Russia was quickly quashed in October 1993, when Yeltsin ordered the Russian Army to open fire on the Russian legislature. The strangulation of democracy was completed when Yeltsin won re-election in 1996 in a heavily tainted contest.

Rise of the Oligarchs

The Russian economy, meanwhile, had been taken over by Western carpetbaggers looking for a quick profit and unethical Russian entrepreneurs, who shaped domestic laws and policies that enabled them to acquire former state enterprises at rock-bottom prices.

The resulting oligarch class of billionaires began an incestuous relationship with their Western benefactors, trading access to Russian resources for help in transferring billions of dollars to offshore shelters, in the form of prime real estate, bank accounts out of reach of Russian authority, and prestige investments such as sports teams.

Left in the wake of this unscrupulous acquisition of wealth were average Russian citizens, who got only the meloch (loose change) of Russia’s experiment in capitalism, the stores and services that constitute the trappings of an ostensibly better life. Russia struggled, but survived. And the end of the 1990s, as Yeltsin turned over the sickly body of post-Soviet Russia to his hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, there was a class of people in Russia who had tied their fortune and livelihood to the promise of Western-style capitalism.

Putin undoubtedly saw the promise of a Russian economy guided by the principles of capitalism. But he faced the reality that, under Yeltsin, Russia had sold itself to outside interests which, in concert with an increasingly corrupt oligarch class, was throttling Russia’s economic potential. Putin also brought to the Russian presidency a strongly held belief that Russia needed to restore its position as a great power — not fully elevated to the status of the former Soviet Union, but at least equal to other world powers as part of a multilateral approach to global geopolitics.

All Except Russia

Putin’s efforts put him at odds with the US and Western Europe, which had taken advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites to create a new European security framework that sought to unify all of Europe under a single economic, political and military umbrella — all of Europe, that is, except Russia.

Russia’s role in this great transformation was to remain militarily weak and politically compliant. Putin’s efforts at restoring Russia as a great power threw a wrench into this plan, and Russia found itself increasingly viewed as a threat by both the US and Europe. Putin’s suppression of the oligarchs, where he allowed them to retain their wealth and assets in exchange for their retreat from politics, weakened Western access to and control of Russian domestic affairs.

Moreover, Russian pushback against the expansion of Nato into Eastern Europe, when combined with the US-initiated termination of some core Cold War arms control treaty relationships, transformed Russia from a political nuisance into a geopolitical rival.

Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008 and annexation of Crimea in 2014 opened the door to US-led economic sanctions designed to punish Russia for its actions. These sanctions, when coupled with similar US sanctioning of Iran, forced Russia to confront the reality that the era of unconstrained economic association with the West was ending.

Pivoting East

Russia, together with China, began looking for alternatives to the US dollar-dominated model of global economic interaction. In doing so, they began to find common cause in crafting a geopolitical alternative to the US-led “rules-based international order,” which had dominated the global political and economic scaffolding constructed at the end of World War II.

Any Russian pivot to the East, however, was constrained by the reality that the Russian economy remained inextricably intertwined with the West. Not only was the Russian oligarchs’ wealth squirreled away in offshore shelters, but there was an entire class of Russian citizens whose daily livelihood was woven into the fabric of an economy that had absorbed Western businesses and practices. Any attempt at a divorce from the West would transform what had been a largely pro-Western Russian middle class into a politically active constituency that, if coupled to a hobbled but still powerful oligarch class, could challenge Putin’s hold on power.

Strategic Error

But Biden and his European allies decided to drop their “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer” approach in favor of the opposite.

The mistake was to believe that bringing enough pain to bear on the Russian people would prompt a political backlash that could lead to Putin’s removal from power. But for this pain to bring meaningful domestic political change, Russia would need to retain some economic connectivity with the West. Otherwise, the pain would be intense, but short-lived.

Left to his own devices, Putin would never have been able to divorce Russia from the West, and thus insulate Russian society — and, by extension, his ability to govern — from Western sanctions. Here, the US and Europe are doing Putin a huge favor, with current sweeping sanctions giving him the ability to separate Russia from its economic association with the West without the politically fatal consequences of being seen to do this on his own volition.

Thanks to the US-led sanctions, Putin will now be able to neuter the Russian oligarch class for good. The sanctions have likewise politically neutralized that portion of the Russian middle class that was economically married to Western businesses, goods, services — and mystique.

Putin has been granted his divorce without so far paying any meaningful political price. While the US and Europe may claim that Putin brought this on by invading Ukraine, to the Russian people, US and European actions led to the divorce. The demonization of everything Russia-related by many in the West only helps the Russian government deflect blame from itself, and onto the West. The West made it personal.

“I assure you,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the press on Mar. 10, “we will overcome adversity, and we will do everything to no longer depend on the West in any strategic sectors of our life that are of decisive importance for our people.” Russia, Lavrov said, “will no longer depend on any Western companies.”

As Lavrov delivered his remarks, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitri Medvedev announced that the government was considering the possibility of nationalizing or bankrupting the property of foreign companies leaving Russia. The decoupling has begun.

What we have here are just a few of the many, many articles describing this particular snapshot in time.

What we can see from all these writings is that all the elements for late-stage collapse of the dominant United States empire are in place, and that the rising Asia (Russia, India and China combined) are more than capable in displacing it.

During the inflexion point, anything can happen…

  • American hyper-inflation
  • American civil war
  • Numerous wars throughout the globe
  • A major war, maybe nuclear or bioweapon
  • Change of the reserve currency
  • Mass famine, discord or die-offs

Note that during this period of inflexion and change, you want to stay FAR away from the strife, and be in a place where you can handle the changes adroitly. You might want to stay in a safe location in the receeding empire, or move to the growing empire. You could also move to a safe isolated third nation well out of the fray.

But what nation?

Use history as a guide.

During the last period of change, when the European Empires (a collective group) was displaced by the United States, we learned that…

  • The collapsing world power (Europe) was completely destroyed and in ruins
    • All of Germany, France, Italy, and all of Eastern Europe.
    • Much of the UKs overseas colonies; India, Africa.
    • France was a mess.
    • Poland was in rubble.
    • Western Europe, Hungary and all the rest absolutey rubbled.
  • The rising world power (The United States) remained intact
  • The emerging powers (Russia, China) were broken and in turmoil

In this current bout of change, we should take note that…

  • The collapsing world power = Is now the United States.
  • The rising world power = Is Asia (Russia, India and China together)
  • The emerging powers = Korea, Japan, Australia, Pakastan, Brazil will experience change, and possible turmoil.

Take note of history and plan accordingly.

  • Go to either a Rising World Power, or one of the Emerging Powers.
  • Try to bail out and leave the Collapsing World Power.

Remember that during a cycle-based change…

  • The collapsing world power becomes absolutely destroyed, and in ruins.
  • The rising world power is unscathed and left intact.
  • The emerging powers undergo social, economic, military, and structural change. A well prepaired family can adjust to the opportunites afforded in this changing environment and profit from them.

The destruction comes in many forms…

“In two weeks, China, Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan will reveal an independent international monetary and financial system. It will be based on a new international currency, calculated from an index of national currencies of the participating countries and international commodity prices” 

-Sputnik News, Mar. 14, 2022.

Along with the new currency, Russia and China will also reveal their Unfriendly Nation Lists.

Andrei hits it on the head.

From HERE.

The reports about the Russians losing a million tanks, soldiers, missiles and men are gradually being replaced with more sober assessments and the maps produced by western outlets are gradually starting to look more or less similar to the maps produced by the various “Putin propaganda outlets”.

I see two things coming next:

  • The much announced “Russian atrocity” false flag (several have failed over the past few days, including one chemical one which was thwarted when the wind blew in the “wrong” direction – that is away from the targeted town.
  • Poland will try to convince the USA to allow it to hide behind Uncle Shmuel’s back and conduct a “peacekeeping operation” to create a mini-Banderastan in western Ukraine.

Now there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the USA want three things:

  1. A war lasting as long as possible
  2. As many civilian victims as possible
  3. To flood the Ukraine with weapons to then direct a “stay-behind” insurgency

I am not at all convinced that the USA will go along with the Polish plan.  Why?  Because I believe that a Russian Iskander strike INSIDE POLAND (similar to the ones we saw in Iavorovo, the ammo dump in Kiev and in Novaia Liubomirka) is a quasi-certitude (remember: Russia IS ready to fight both NATO and the US together!).  BTW – the one in Iavorovo blew up a huge ammo dump which was buried under 60 meters of rock.  I have no explanation for how that was achieved.  Does anybody?

Bottom line is that if the Polaks organize another little “peacekeeping training camp” and think that the Russians won’t dare to strike a NATO country they are quite wrong.  They are probably too dumb/delusional to realize that, but the folks at the US DoD probably do and don’t need this.  Why, well precisely because NATO member or not, Article 5 or not, nobody will come to aid the Polaks against the wrath of the entire Russian military, the manpower and resources needed a not there anyway…

Unless the Russians and the US Americans agree to a partition of the Ukraine.  Not likely, but always possible.  It is going to almost certainly happen anyway, the only way to prevent that is Russian tanks at the Polish border, and not just for a quick visit, but to create something like the 201 base in Tajikistan.

Anyway, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, this is all still in the future.

What about the events on the front line?

I won’t into details here but I will offer a few bullet points

  • Very heavy combats near Avdeevka and Mariupol.
  • Combat pretty much everywhere the line of contact, which result in slow positional warfare with artillery exchanges and very careful mopping up building by building and even room by room.
  • On average Russian forces advance between 5 and 20 kilometers per day, which is rather fast against a defense in depth prepared for years.
  • The key cities of Kiev and Odessa are almost completely blocked, but not fully surrounded yet.
  • The Black Sea fleet basically controls the entire Ukie coast and all of the Black Sea itself.
  • The Black Sea fleet also prevents any resupply of Odessa from Romania.
  • Russia has full air superiority over the entire Ukie airspace
  • The Ukies are STILL firing both Tochka-U and Grad/Smrech missiles in the general direction of liberated cities just to create as many casualties as possible, but the Russians have become very skilled at not only shooting down these missiles (the destruction ratio has gone up very sharply) but also a destroying the key Ukrainian ammo dumps were they hide those missiles (this is what happened with the big building in downtown Kiev which the Russians totally vaporized with one perfectly aimed Iskander missile.  If you have not seen this amazing video, you can quickly re-watch it here:
Lordy! That is an AMAZING FUCKING Video!
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And here is a video of what the Ukies were hiding under this commercial building (photo from a local resident since disappeared by the Ukie SBU:

2022 03 23 10 19
2022 03 23 10 19

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And, finally, I want to share something very important with you: the Ukronazi forces cannot resupply or rotate themselves.  Why?

  • Because moving around when the air is full of Mi-24/35s, Mi-28Ns, and Ka-52s in “free hunting” mode requires a type of courage very few people have.
  • Because most roads are carefully monitored by multi-sensor Russian reconnaissance/intelligence capabilities
  • Because more big roads (you cannot use small dirt roads to resupply or rotate effectively) are either already physically controlled by the Russians or are “shot through”, which in Russian indicate that while Russian soldiers have reached each other and hugged they can shoot at any location from these roads from any side.

So it does not matter how motivated the Ukrainians are.  Even with we assume 100% of the Ukrainians are well trained, well-armed and would rather die than retreat or surrender, they still need many TONS of stuff (food, ammo, water, MRE, medicine, batteries, petroleum, diesel, lubricants, oil and many more things!) EVERY DAY.  Just to give you an idea, read this pretty decent discussion of some aspects of logistics by the US military.

So once the Ukies are blocked by Russians, it is essentially over for them.  Anybody with a basic understanding of modern warfare can confirm that to you.

Add to this in the very first day Russia destroyed all the Ukie communication centers and capabilities in the first few hours of the operation, and you will see that while the Ukrainian side has “brigades” and “battalions” these are all undermanned and, crucially, cannot cooperate with each other.  In other words, they cannot jointly maneuver to support each other.

To put it in the simplest terms, the Ukrainians are not able to conduct any operations, and that is why all their so-called “counter-attacks” always fail and mostly never even materialized.  At best, they can destroy a Russian checkpoint, blow up a truck or even shoot down a helicopter, but none of that solves their real problem which is that they are now mostly reduced to WWI type of warfare against a 21st-century ultra-modern military which has the total control of the situation.

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PS: found a very decent map of the situation on Telegram (the place to go for good info!).

2022 03 23 10 22
2022 03 23 10 22

The most important video of this article

All of these articles lead up to the final purpose of this article.

It is to calm the reader to see that everything that is going on is [1] being managed and [2] following a well-known and well-established  process.

Do not freak out. No matter what bullshit is present in the “news” onslaught.

The following is an exceptionally well done video that explains a theory of Geo-political cycles. This in many ways resembles the Fourth Turning theory of generational changes. It is presented simply, and brilliantly.

I personally believe that true information can be conveyed by others in simple terms, and this video is one excellent example of this.

Now, this video differs from my personal view. In that it claimed that the UK was the single dominant nation displaced by the United States in the 1940s. They view this by reserve currency only. Where I claim that it was the totality of Europe (Germany, the UK, France, Poland, and all the rest) that were displaced by the United States. Reserve currency is but one aspect of the totality of issues involved in change. But aside from this difference, it’s never the less a great video.

Here we end this article with this great video. Please watch it.

You will be glad that you did.

Video here on You-Tube.

2022 03 14 14 23
2022 03 14 14 23

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Plunging aircraft, apple cakes, treasury printing presses on overdrive, Rufus , ‘Ol Remus, GPS, and the Bi-atch of Ukraine.

Finally, signs over the weekend that US getting frustrated with Chinese offering countries who wish to be neutral, a robust alternative to the Western sanctions regime. 

After a meaninglessly polite agree-to-disagree meeting with Xi and Biden, Chinese ambassador was thoroughly disrespected on CNN yesterday. 

I'm keeping eyes open for moves by US State Dept etc to play some of its options in the department of strategic destabilization of countries adjacent to China, and/or neutral countries. 

- PTB

The obvious plan is for the United States to unify itself; a collapsing nation, by a unifying major war.

Initially, it was thought that a long, drawn out conventional war against Russia was possible, and then while Russia is preoccupied and “bled to death”, a second  one could then be “pivoted” towards a war against China.

The hot flash zones are well known.

These are the RED LINES. For Russia, And the RED LINES for China.

  • For Russia, it is nuclear weapons and NATO in Ukraine.
  • For China, it is outside involvment, independence, or nuclear weapons in Taiwan.

For the United States to initiate these long, drawn out wars, it needs to [1] cross those RED LINES, and then [2] manage the conflict on its own terms.

It’s pretty obvious. Not reported in the West, but really quite obvious.

So far, it appears that things are moving ahead according to plan.

This article collects a long series of events and reports regarding both China and Russia at this (frozen) moment of time. Most of these reports and narratives have been submerged under the enormous and spellbinding American psyops machine that has been saturating the airwaves for months now.

Here, we are going to pick though the bits and pieces (twigs and thissles) in that big gushing flood of disinformation just spewing forth from the mighty American propaganda machine.

To begin, we provide the Chinese viewpoint of why America wants China to join with it in sanctioning Russia (over the Ukraine invasion)…

Why the USA wants China to sanction Russia

This is the official point of view of the Chinese government.

2022 03 22 07 56
2022 03 22 07 56

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And here is a comment on the above tweet from the Chinese Government. It flushes it out using better English and parses the nuiances in clear language.

2022 03 22 07 5xx6
2022 03 22 07 5xx6

Today’s Mythmaking

A recurring theme in the American telling of history is that the bad guys do bad things for no reason at all. The general plot is that things were going along just fine and then all of a sudden, for no reason at all, the bad guys started doing bad things. Inevitably, the good guys, which will always be the Americans, were forced to break away from minding their own business to save the world from badness.

The Great War was probably the first run at this form of mythmaking. According to legend, America was trying hard to stay out of the war in Europe, then for no reason at all those very bad Germans started preying on American ships. Finally, those evil Germans sunk a perfectly innocent passenger ship called the Lusitania. The fact that it was stuffed with munitions is conveniently omitted from the tale.

Of course, the Second World War is the full expression of this myth. In the Pacific, the great yellow menace decided out of the blue to attack Hawaii. America was at peace and for no reason at all the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor. In Europe, America’s peace plan created by Woodrow Wilson was working perfectly, but then for no reason at all those very bad Germans declared war on the world.

“According to the myth, America has been minding its own business and for no reason at all the Russians launched this bloody war against innocent civilians.”

The important elements of the story are always the same. America is the innocent bystander, doing its best to mind its own business. The villain is not just the aggressor, but they have no justification for their actions. Whatever reasons they have are dismissed as irrational or evil. The final element is that America must reluctantly swing into action to save the world from the bad guys.

This sort of stuff makes sense after success. The winners get to tell the story of their victory and that always means mythmaking. The only example we have of the winner declaring themselves the villain and the loser being cast as the morally superior party is colonialism. In America that means the natives are the innocents and the paleface is the bad guy. This tale, however, is not written by the actual victors in the fight, but the winners in the 20th-century culture war.

This now-standard form of American mythmaking is not just a post hoc justification, but a justification for future action. The crusades against Islam were framed the same way by the neocons running foreign policy. Instead of mythmaking to explain past action, it is mythmaking to justify one of their schemes. American must reluctantly attack some country, in order to avoid being forced to do it later.

In their booklet The War Over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission, Bill Kristol and Larry Kagan used this exact framing to argue for the invasion of Iraq in the second Bush administration. Preemption is the claim that it is morally justified to attack another country if it can be argued that the target country could one day be a threat to American interests or the interests of American allies.

It is fair to say the entire crusade against Islam was framed as a reaction by America to actors suddenly doing things for no reason at all. Saudi terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center for no reason at all, so America reluctantly attacked and occupied Afghanistan. Saddam could possibly have thought about getting nukes for no reason at all, so America invaded Iraq and deposed the ruling regime. The same narrative was ready for Iran, but the clock ran out on the Bush administration.

Now we are seeing the same arguments with regards to Ukraine. America is being dragged into this conflict against its will because Russia, for no reason at all, has invaded the sacred lands of Ukraine. Members of Congress are being marched out in front of the cameras by their neocon handlers to tell us that we have no choice but to risk nuclear annihilation over Ukraine.

Of course, there is never any mention of the endless meddling by Washington or the meddling in other former Soviet republics on the Russian border. According to the myth, America has been minding its own business and for no reason at all the Russians launched this bloody war against innocent civilians. Even if they have a reason, it is Russian disinformation and only Putin puppets believe it.

It is clear from the massive public-relations campaign put on by the American media that they were sure the old myth of America would work again. Everyone dutifully started chanting “Keev” and donned the colors of Ukraine. The big social media platforms swung into action to suppress dissent. Everyone assumed this was going to work and the public would rush to support a war with Russia.

The fact that this has not happened, despite the enormous bombardment from the mass media, suggests the myth of America as reluctant warrior has run out of road. Most Americans are willing to accept Ukraine as the victim and Russia as the aggressor, but they draw the line at acting on it. Even the mouth breathers who consume conservative talk radio have started to question the flag-waving.

At the end of the Cold War, the hope was that America could go back to being a normal country again, instead of the savior of the world. Instead, it was a generation of pointless wars of choice cooked up by neoconservative nutters with an ancient grudge against humanity. Like a drug-resistant virus, they have infested the foreign-policy establishment, leading to one disaster after another.

Their final act may very well be destroying America’s image of itself as a positive force in the world. That will be a difficult thing for people to accept, especially the older generations, but it will be a small price to pay if it means the removal of this carbuncle from the face of the country. If humiliation in Ukraine means America turns back to normalcy, then the end of that myth will be worth it.

It is time for the United States Empire to die

“Our media is filled with silly lies, like Russians not having access to information from outside their country. Because that’s believable in the internet age. Or that the Russian military does evil things for no reason, like blowing up hospitals and theaters full of children (though these atrocities miraculously never leave any evidence behind, like bodies). Then why are civilian casualties from more than three weeks of heavy fighting so low? By all accounts, much lower than Russian military casualties? Isn’t that pretty compelling evidence that they’re tiptoeing through Ukraine being extraordinarily careful to not cause civilian casualties?

Well, ackshullllly that’s only because they’re too weak to use the means necessary to win! Oh, I see. That famous Russian weakness again. First off, it’s interesting that we see goodness as weakness and are proud of it. And yes, that is a true statement. Our first month in Iraq inflicted 4-7 thousand civilian deaths and that’s probably undercounted. It’s also interesting that we tell lies that obviously contradict each other and see no problem with this.

Try to have a memory span longer than a goldfish.

Remember Day 3 of the operation when a bunch of Russian armored vehicles parked near Kiev and American “experts” declared they were out of fuel? Because as we all know, Russia is famous for not having enough oil. I’m sure their tanks running out of fuel within 75 miles of their own border is a plausible thing that could happen and not total nonsense.”

It is time.

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“Russia & China, Together at Last”: Historian Al McCoy Predicts Ukraine War to Birth New World Order

YouTube. Pretty good.

Presiden Biden WARNS Xi Peng that there will be CONSEQUENCES if China provides material support to Russia. The meeting between Biden and Xi Peng was an effort by Biden to break-up the relationship between Russia and China which is catastrophically shaking up the United States led current world order. It failed. As Xi Peng will continue to stand strong with it’s next door neighbor, and not help the United States; it’s enemy.

THIS IS A MUST WATCH.

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America has something to say…

You-tube

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The last seconds of China Eastern Airlines MU5735 were caught on a CCTV camera.

Everyone is dead. This is a near vertical dive. The plain aimed for the ground and slammed into it at full speed. It’s a very unusual crash. Color me suspicious.

Crash Video

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From MM comment section;

This article below states that the crash has aviation experts puzzled because the crash “profile” was very unusual with the angle of descent essentially plunging straight down.

Was this crash an accident; another Boeing 737Max demonstrating that it is a dangerous plane; or even terrorism?

I find it curious that this crash happened after the recent attempts by America to pressure China to distance itself from Russia over the Ukraine issue.

Coincidence?

Aviation Experts Baffled By Crash Of China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735

From MM’s email…

I am sure you have seen the video by now of the Chinese plane dropping at a perfect perpendicular angle to the horizon out of the sky? Wondering your thoughts about this. Seems highly suspicious given America's little pep talk with China that ended with them having an even bigger bruised ego. Surely this is an act of war on America's part. I have never seen a plane head for the ground like that. Usually they are still upright/upside down, aren't they?

Crash of China passenger plane ‘very puzzling’

"It's unheard of that such a modern passenger plane would take such a vertical plunge and crash."

You-tube. Descent to crash is less than two minutes.

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The plane crash resembles the Nazi Ukrainian symbol

It is of a bird flying straight down to the ground.

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Ukrainian bird symbol.

Here is the aftermath of #MU5735 #crash of the #b737-800. The size of the impact is consistent with the last ADS-B data the aircraft sent – the aircraft was in a straight nosedive. We will have to wait for FDR/CVR data to know what caused the accident.pic.twitter.com/MaJoIao8B9
— The 737 Handbook (@737handbook) March 21, 2022
Strange vertical speed value during the horizontal flight.#B1791 #MU5735 #B737 #ChinaEastern #crash pic.twitter.com/gNanhEDUDx

— 🇦‌🇻‌🇮‌🇦‌🇸‌🇪‌🇷‌🇻‌🇪‌🇷‌ (@aviaserver) March 21, 2022

Why is everyone on my feeds suspecious of the plane crash?

Chinese passenger plane goes straight into the ground like a missile:
Experts: "We've never seen a plane do THAT before!"

Reminds me of MH370 ... never seen a plane do THAT before either.

Reminds me of MH17 ... another plane doing odd things.

Just around the time Uncle Sam is turning up the pressure on China ... Coincidence?

In the meantime:

Blinken: "Bend the knee, chinaman!"
Boris: "Bend the knee, chinaman!"

-Arch Bungle | Mar 22 2022 5:58 utc

What does the Chinese government think?

I don’t know.

Within the next six months keep your eyes open for another plane mishap. Only this time in the United States, or in one of the “five eye nations”.

If one happens, there’s a 90% chance it’s part of the on-going tit-for-tat fight and response actions between the USA and China.

I strongly urge American readers to MM not to take any airplane trips in the coming Spring or Summer.

Russia’s New Buk-M3 Air Defense Missile System Now Appears To Be In Ukraine

Russia no doubt hopes the latest iteration of the Buk surface-to-air missile system helps turn the tables against the Ukrainian Air Force.
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There are signs  the Kremlin is now willing to throw new and high-end surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) into the fray, including the 9K317M Buk-M3, known as the Viking in its export form, the latest iteration of the self-propelled, medium-range Buk system.
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R C.339cc2a7cea34f1516af6c01f2ef5035
9K317M Buk-M3.

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As for the latest Buk-M3, this system is significantly different enough from its predecessors to warrant a new U.S. Department of Defense designation — SA-27. In service since around 2016, the Buk-M3 employs new 9M317M missiles and electronic components to provide much-improved capabilities compared with the older Buk systems. According to the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) manual, it “outperforms even the old S-300P long-range air defense system” — the SAM that’s known in the West as the SA-10 Grumble.
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Now for some delicious food; Porcupine Meatballs

It’s a true “blast from the past”. Simple and delicious. Beef meatballs with rice, simmered in tomato soup. Not really something that you might give to guests, but a great easy meal that mixes up normally available ingredients for something unique and different for the household.

It’s really great for a fast meal on a busy schedule. Oh, and guess what? It goes great with beer.

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Porcupine Meatballs

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup of water
  • 1.5 pounds of ground beef
  • 1 cup of uncooked (instant) rice
  • I tablespoon of minced onion.
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • 1 dash of ground black pepper.

Directions

Instructions Checklist
  • In a medium mixing bowl, combine the tomato soup and the water. Mix thoroughly and set aside.

  • In a large mixing bowl, combine the ground beef, instant rice, onion, salt, pepper and 1/2 cup of the soup mixture. Mix thoroughly, and shape into 1 inch balls.

  • Place meatballs in a large skillet over medium heat. Pour in the remaining soup mixture and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until meatballs are thoroughly browned and rice is cooked.

Information/Propaganda/Psyops Theatre

On the Information/Propaganda/Psyops Theatre, today’s Global Times editorial provides a little comic relief:

"The above lies are well concocted, but without any evidence. Certainly, the problem of no evidence may be a bit of overthinking, because when does Washington need to provide evidence to smear others? Isn't it always following the logic of 'if I say so, it has to be so?' If you must ask for any 'evidence, it will again hold up a tiny vial of white powder, or produce a video of the White Helmets being instructed to pose...

"Of course, what's behind it is Washington's hegemony and ambition. Kurt Campbell, the NSC's Indo-Pacific policy coordinator, 'took the initiative' to say at the end of February that the US will keep its focus on the 'Indo-Pacific region' despite the Ukraine crisis. In order to maintain the US' hegemonic self-interests, fabricating lies has become a 'necessary means' for Washington. In the words of Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, 'The US, as usual, lies to try to achieve its political goals'....

"When looking back at his past as CIA director, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo once said publicly, 'We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.' So how does the US lie and deceive people? It is easier for Washington and the US media to quote 'anonymous officials' to spread lies as shocking 'exclusive news.' The cooperation between US propaganda machines and diplomatic and intelligence services has greatly increased the deceptiveness of those lies. Moreover, the US' alliance system and hegemony in public opinion can make sure that even though Washington is a habitual liar, it can obtain a certain amount of assentation and support. This has become the bases for the US to play politics as it wants.

"While US media maliciously falsifies the truth, Washington deliberately pretends to know nothing. These two to some extent have even formed an integral production, supply and distribution chain of fake news. This is unprofessional, immoral, and irresponsible, and will only further discredit the US in front of the world. As some comments pointed out, whenever people see the news reports that include sentences like 'anonymous officials revealed…' and 'US intelligence agencies claimed…,' they should in their minds replace everything in those sentences with 'They may be lying.'" [I'd say they're probably lying or They're lying again.]

And as if more proof was required, we again see China seconding Russia’s reasoning and explanations of what it’s doing:

"Right now, when the military conflict in Ukraine is getting increasingly serious under Washington's provocation, and when the energy and refugee crises become more and more severe in Europe, the US' smear campaign will only unmask it as the initiator. More and more people will see the true face of the US - an 'empire of lies.'" [All emphasis mine]

How many millions within the Empire agree? Polling suggests that just 30% of the public see media as credible giving us 70% who think otherwise or about 230 million, and since media is the main messenger of the Empire of Lies, we might assume that same number agrees.

But even if that number is only 50 million, I’d say the lies aren’t sinking in as hoped. Of course, this whole paragraph will be controversial as opinion polling within the Outlaw US Empire of Lies has its own credibility problems.

Phil understands

Yes he does.

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Coffee.

Republican Congressman Tiffany maps out aggression towards China

One step at a time.

GettyImages 1213959790
Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.)

An amendment under the new Consolidated Appropriations Act has banned the creation or use of maps by the Department of State and its foreign operations that depict Taiwan as part of China.

The Appropriations Act, which provides appropriations to federal agencies for the 2022 fiscal year, is a 3000-page piece of legislation that proposed $1.5 trillion spending, including military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

This amendment was introduced by Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) and other Republican representatives, first in the House bill passed on State Department and related  foreign service funding in July 2021, then again for the Consolidated Appropriations Act.  This is sneaky because it would be unwise to vote against such an enormous spending bill due to one amendment.

This amendment undermines the fundamental principle of Sino-American relations by violating the longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity and unofficial relations with Taiwan enshrined in the Shanghai Communique, a diplomatic document signed by Beijing and Washington.

Further, Tiffany said “Beijing’s bogus argument that Taiwan is part of Communist China” should be abandoned, and that the bill would “require honest maps that stop perpetuating the ‘One China’ lie.”

What it is like to fight the Chinese

Oh, you think that Russia is tough? The Chinese have heart. They have history, and if you FUCK with them they WILL FUCK you right back. Know your history. Movie dramatization of true events. video 6MB

Patrick Lawrence

Patrick Armstrong may have closed down but Patrick Lawrence is still firing on all cylinders:

“..When those purporting to serve as America’s statesmen and stateswomen think calling other world leaders names is properly part of the diplomatic repertoire — a prominent part, I’ll add — we are left with only one conclusion: The U.S. has no one capable of sailing its ship of state, no one in a position of influence worthy of the title “diplomat.”

“…Simply stated, power obviates the need for serious statecraft. The powerful nation has no need of diplomacy. A figure such as George Kennan was the exception proving the rule, and he was an exception because he saw the need to understand how the world looked to the Soviet Union. Henry Kissinger proved the rule: For all his claim to diplomatic skill, Hank K. was a wielder of American power with a calculating mind, nothing more.

“The rest follows naturally: Antony Blinken is not a serious diplomat. Samantha Power is not a serious diplomat. As a diplomat (and various other things), Hillary “He’s Hitler” Clinton is a walking calamity. Biden, who’s spent his career selling snake oil off the back of a buckwagon, is not a statesman of any kind, serious or otherwise….”

“The lineup of secretaries of state and senior diplomats prior to the attacks in New York and Washington is other than brilliant, but it was by and large accepted that talking to one’s adversaries was at least as important (and often more so) as talking to one’s friends. It was the Bush II regime, with all its kooky ideologues in positions they never should have gotten near, that declared: “We don’t negotiate with our enemies.”

“This pronouncement was advanced, if you recall, as if it were a sound, baseline rule of wise statesmanship. There were corollaries. Diplomatic contacts with those deemed enemies would “give them credibility.”….The all-but-stated assertion is America would not any longer take interest in other people and their perspectives. The American way of defining the world was the only acceptable way. Nothing else need be considered. …”

“…Diplomacy is an essential skill in the century swiftly taking shape around us. But every time Biden or another American “leader” hurls one of their playground insults at the leader of another nation, (Putin as the Beelzebub du jour) they are reminding us: There will be no diplomacy emanating from Washington because they have no idea how to conduct it.
“Power and coercion are all they know.”

P. Lawrence
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For Americans war is normal

This is dangerous. As Americans are really not ready to take on a REAL peer competator. And forget what the American “news” says. Russia is not running out of bullets, stalled or suffering massive defeats. video 8MB

I know it is a chicken and egg question.

I found this on one of my feeds. Interesting.

As a matter of interest, I have noticed a similar correlation of pro and anti war/ hate Russia opinion between the vaxxed and unvaxxed as the Canadian poll below demonstrates. My observations are anecdotal.

The question remains are vaxxed people inherently more likely to be receptive to government/MSM propaganda or do they become docile and deliberately ignorant sheep because of their vaxxed status? 

"How Covid vaccination status might predict views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Canadian poll)"...

"How vaccination status might predict views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine New poll indicates that “vaccine refusers are much more sympathetic to Russia.” 

Unvaccinated Canadians are about 12 times more likely than those who received three doses to believe Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was justified, according to a new survey by national polling firm EKOS.

The poll found 26 per cent of those who identified as unvaccinated agreed the Russian invasion is justified, with another 35 per cent not offering an opinion. This compared to only two per cent of surveyed Canadians who said they had three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and who supported the attack, and four per cent who offered no view..."

Free Republic

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The U.S. attempt to destroy the e-yuan

Great stuff from Richard Turrin.

China’s digital yuan is in the US’s crosshairs in what is likely to be the first of many proposed laws against its use!

It’s clear that the US has no love for China’s new digital yuan (e-CNY) central bank digital currency, and now a group of nine Republican senators has come up with the first Act that attempts to limit its use while stopping short of an outright ban.

The e-CNY is in the glaring hot spotlight for its ability to potentially evade sanctions imposed on Russia and sadly not for its gold medal performance at the Olympics. It is essential to clarify that China made no attempt to use the digital yuan to evade sanctions and is unlikely to do so with its new currency still undergoing domestic trials. Still, the e-CNY is deemed a potential threat to US interests, resulting in the new Act.

Senator Bill Cassidy’s (R-LA) statement clarifies the concern: “China’s Digital Yuan allows the CCP to collect personal data on their own citizens and foreign users alike.” “This bill holds China accountable as they introduce their new digital currency.”

The stated goal of the Act
From the Senator’s summary:
• Require the Department of State to issue a warning on the Digital Yuan.
• Require the Secretary of Commerce to report to relevant Congressional committees on the Blockchain- Base Service Network and provide recommendations related to the report.
• Require the Secretary of Commerce to report on trade enforcement actions with respect to the digital yuan.
• Require United States Trade Representative to report on the effect of the digital yuan on trade and investment agreements.
• Require Office of Management and Budget to develop standards and guidelines for agencies that transfer, store, or use digital yuan.
• Require that any foreign government that receives assistance through the Foreign Military Financing Program to disclose if the government uses digital yuan as a settlement or reserve currency.

U.S. targets planes inside of Russia

WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) – The U.S. Commerce Department on Friday moved to effectively ground 100 airplanes that have recently flown to Russia and are believed to violate U.S. export controls, including a plane used by Russian businessman Roman Abramovich.
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‘Unfair fight’: Foreign legion volunteers flee Ukraine after Russian missile strike on training base

Foreigners who travelled to Ukraine to fight against the Russians have fled the country after a devastating missile strike on their training base.
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Chinese girl

Many girls in China tend to be of thin build and nice chests. Here she is displaying a nice cleavage. video 2MB

U.S. warns servicing or refueling some Russian-owned planes may violate trade restrictions.

Export controls introduced in late February prohibit exporting aircraft that were made in the U.S. or use some U.S. parts to Russia, effectively grounding some international flights, the Commerce Department said.
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Perhaps the world should boycott anything linked to America. Otherwise, products you paid for will not belong to you.
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Chinese girl

She’s in a car looking really adorable. video 1.4MB

Update on the military situation in the Ukraine

There’s a lot of bullshit out there. The massive, MASSIVE psyops is so full of lies and distortions it’s mind-boggling. Just today, I saw an article on my LinkedIN feed discussing how Russia was bogged down in Ukraine, and used a map  showing the first day of action. It’s now one month later. Sheech!

The Ukraine situation is Russia following though on it’s 2014 displeasure in the USA violation of it’s treaties, as well as the non-ultimatum of January 2022. There’s many parties involved in this issue, but the psyops only tell one side of the story, and it is a stack of cards with very little actual content.

Here’s a summary from the Russian daily briefing. More sensible, and certainly more accurate.

Russia Briefing

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China’s Foreign Ministry issues dire warning to QUAD as it toughens stand on Taiwan | English News

China is WARNING the USA and the West. Listen up! Things are going on that isn’t really being well reported in the West. video on You-tube.

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This video underscores a very important point…

The QUAD is composed of;

  • The USA
  • Japan
  • Australia
  • India

And India is specifically making public statements that they are not in the QUAD as a “Pacific NATO” to counter China. They are NOT a treaty ally.

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I think India has told the US to FUCK off. 

I have been watching debates on an Indian talk show, Republic World. 

The latest one is called: India delivers diplomatic masterclass amid Russia-Ukraine-West tightrope. You can look it up on YouTube. 

India WILL NEVER abandon Russia, so strong is the mutual trust between the two nations. 

In fact, this war, as many pointed out, will bring Russia and Asia a whole lot closer. 

-Peter Schmidt

President Zelensky Phones Taiwan’s Leader Tsai Ing-wen

This is cute and funny.

Tsai: Hello Volodya. I hope you do not mind my calling you that.

Zelensky: (Sobs, wordless.)

Tsai: What is it Volodya? Calm down.

Zelensky: (Sobbing continues.) We have been left alone to defend our state. Who is ready to fight alongside us? I don’t see anyone. Who is ready to give Ukraine a guarantee of NATO membership? Everyone is afraid.*

Tsai: But the Americans have given you weapons, rifles. The Germans even gave you helmets — right away — and now they are promising more. And they also sent military advisors “little green men”– I think that is what they call them when they are Russian.

Zelensky: We are facing tanks and missiles. I am afraid what we have is pretty small potatoes. As the American politician Ron Paul said, it seems the Americans are ready to fight Russia – down to the last Ukrainian (more sobbing).

Tsai: But Volodya, you got to address the U.S. Congress and plea for help – certainly that shows support.

Zelensky: Support? The script that the Americans handed me centered on a No Fly Zone, in other words, a call for WWIII, nuclear war. I looked like a madman! (More sobbing.)

Tsai: I did not think that made you look like a madman. I admire someone who is willing to risk nuclear war for our beliefs. That shows real spine, real guts. And those Congress people applauded you. If you looked mad, would that not make them all insane too. Surely you cannot believe that.

But I know how you feel about those scripts. The Americans stuff one in my face every now and then with the “advice” that it would be good to read it. I feel I am getting an offer I cannot refuse as they say in the American movies.

But you do not have to accept the script – you are safe in hiding in Ukraine.

Zelensky: I cannot comment on where I am – if you understand what I mean.

And I do not know what kind of company you are keeping, Tsai, but most people are appalled and frightened by the prospect of nuclear war. My stance allowed Biden to look sane by turning thumbs down. I was the fall guy.

Tsai: Look Volodya. You have to get hold of yourself. The U.S. has managed to get the whole world behind you. Just like the US has got the whole world behind me. Not to worry.

Zelensky: Are you serious, Tsai? You know that not only China but also India has refused to join US sanctions on Russia – that is 35% of the world’s population right there. China is the number one economy in the world by PPP-GDP and India number three as you surely know. So two of the big three are not backing sanctions. Also refusing are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico. That is over half the world’s population! And there are many more refusenik nations including the 40 countries not in that list on which the US has sanctions – I have lost count.

And NATO is showing cracks. Macron and others are talking to Putin all the time. Sweden has refused to join NATO, saying that would be “destabilizing.”

The world is changing, Tsai.

Exactly how many countries are behind you, Tsai? You better check — carefully. I wish I had. (More sobbing.)

Tsai: (Now looks very worried) Good point, Volodya.

Zelensky: And now Germany is rearming under the influence of the crazy German Greens, the most hawkish of the Parties in the governing coalition. That of course is a dream come true for the neocons – having Germany fight Russia. Two principal competitors of the U.S. fighting one another. It will destroy Ukraine and the rest of Europe. As I have said in the past, this war will engulf Europe.

Tsai: (Now a bit shaken.) But why did you not stop all this as soon as you were elected. You ran as a peace candidate.

Zelensky: (Even more upset). I could not. The Americans would not permit it, and Russia is well aware of this as Lavrov has made clear. And America’s Neo-Nazi friends like the Azov Battalion fiercely oppose it – and together they have enough clout to stop an elected President – or even depose him as we saw back in 2014. I am keenly aware of that as is any President until the U.S. grip on this country is broken and it is “de-nazified,” if I may borrow a term.

So here I am presiding over the unnecessary destruction of my beloved country, unable to agree to the simple terms of peace that the Minsk accords established.

My place in history is not going to be a glorious one.

Tsai: But at least you have the Ukrainian people united behind you. Here on Taiwan there is considerable pro-Mainland sentiment.

Zelensky: United? I have had to ban a dozen political parties, including the main opposition one. I have had to bring all TV under control of one platform. And I have had to declare martial law. Do you think everyone here is happy that instead of implementing the Minsk accords we have brought ourselves to this point?

My advice to you, Tsai, is do not allow Taiwan to become the Ukraine of East Asia, because right now that is the plan the Americans have for you.

I have to go now. I am being called. I am not even supposed to make calls like this.

(Nervously) Keep this call between us. Good-bye.

Tsai: (Shaken) Good bye Volodya.

(Hangs up, summons her assistant.) I need to place another call. Please get President Xi on the line. He has wanted to talk. Tell him I want to discuss the One Country, Two Systems Policy.

And tell him it is the Governor of Taiwan Province calling.

* These are the exact words that Zelensky used in a midnight speech to Ukraine on February 25.

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Chinese girl reminds me of goldfinger

Nice. Love the outfit. video 2.4MB

Apple Cake

After so many decades of eating at chain restaurants, and fast food places, and then just simply making simple and quick meals, Americans have forgotten what AMERICAN FOOD actually is. Sad. So Sad.

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Apple Cake.

Apple Cake

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Current trajectory of World War III

Here’s an audio from Rense. It’s an American opinion.  It’s interesting.

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Tunnel Of Fudge

Given its name, there’s no confusion about what it is. The only confusion is as to why we stopped making this.

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Tunnel of fudge cake.

Recipe out this way…

Tunnel o' Fudge

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Caitlin Johnstone : It’s Not Okay For Grown Adults To Think This Way About Ukraine

Cute. But accurate.


It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the US is pouring weapons into a foreign nation to defend freedom and democracy. It isn’t.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe serious military conflicts consist of Good Guys fighting Bad Guys like a children’s cartoon show. That’s a fantasy that most people grow out of when they turn eleven.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the same western media institutions who’ve lied about every war are now telling the truth about this one. Liars cannot stop lying. This is learned, by most people, by the time they are seventeen years old.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe we’re seeing an unprecedented wave of censorship because the European Union, Silicon Valley megacorporations, and TV service providers want to protect everyone from “disinformation”. They instead want to protect their franchise. You are their commodity.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe Ukraine is just a scrappy little underdog acting completely independently of the dictates of the largest power structure on this planet. That a fun childhood nursery rhyme and makes a great Hollywood movie, but in the real world, nope it just doesn’t work that way.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the globe-spanning power structure centralized around the United States is merely a passive witness to this war and not a key player in creating its emergence. It’s known as cognitive dissonance, and is a mental illness.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe that governments who’d have every incentive to lie to the public about what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine are simply choosing not to do so. It’s called “denial”, and it is common feature of many mental illnesses.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the politicians who’ve demonstrated ice cold indifference to their own citizens dying of poverty and disease care passionately about the plight of the Ukrainian people. The politicians have demonstrated psychopathic personalities. It is a mental illness to randomly disassociate behaviors with habitual serial criminals.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the most powerful and murderous government in the world is orchestrating the economic collapse of a nation it has long targeted for destruction in order to defend Ukrainians. It’s called wishful thinking, and most adults grow out of this in their 20’s.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the “anti-war” position is to support pouring weapons into a foreign country and cold war brinkmanship that could lead to World War 3 while shouting down anyone who advocates de-escalation, diplomacy and detente.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe anything which doesn’t align with what the TV tells you about this war is “Russian propaganda”.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe anyone who disputes the TV narrative about this war is defending Putin or thinks he is awesome. Adults do not behave like they still are in kindergarden.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and accuse people who disagree with you of working for a foreign government. It’s lazy. Ignorant, and slothful.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and find it strange and outlandish when someone criticises the most powerful empire that has ever existed for its role in starting a war. The United States is the largest military empire in the history of the world. You cannot associate peace with Military Empires. You associate war with Military Empires. To deny that fact is a sign of being in possession of a serious mental illness.

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and be fine with only knowing one side of the story. It will cause you to made very bad decisions, and eventually contribute to getting you into very bad situations.

Be an adult

Fake News

Fabrications are rife during wars. The say, and no doubt it has validity, that the first victim of war is the truth. Here is a translation from RIA Novosti in Moscow, of some of the fake stories we in the west have been spinning.

Fake News

The United States is considering disconnecting Russia from GPS

Just like they did to China. So China built their own system.

Russia can use China’s or their own GLONASS. There are many work-arounds on this issue.

Disconnect GPS

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MM riding home in my neighborhood

Video from the other day. This is what it is like near my house. video 30MB

Capture of the “Bitch of Ukraine”

About the nazi “Taira” #14, her name is Yulia Paevskaya, and there is this Free Yulia and/or Free Taira campaign in the Nazi sections of Ukraine.

In Ukraine, Yulia is a well-known personality, she actively spoke on the Maidan and participated in military operations in the Donbass in the ranks of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment. During 8 years 14000 people died in Dobass.

Capture

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Russia caught her March 16 as she was trying to get out of Mariupol with a medical team, here’s a video after her capture (must watch)

Fein innocence

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caption:

"Captured Commander of the medical service of Azov is watching a report about the consequences of a strike on Donetsk.

She pretend now that she got no idea"

Scott Ritter comments “The trial will be interesting

Secretive American Stocks Of Soviet Air Defense Systems Are Headed To Ukraine: Report

The US has captured, snatched, or otherwise acquired various Russian-made air defense systems over the years, and now they could fight in Ukraine.

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The U.S. government is sending Soviet-era air defense systems in its possession to Ukraine, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. These systems will reportedly come from stocks of foreign materiel that elements of the U.S. military and Intelligence Community have obtained in various ways over the years for intelligence analysis and training purposes. The possibility that these so-called foreign materiel exploitation, or FME, programs could offer a useful source of additional air defense capabilities that Ukraine badly needs is exactly what that The War Zone laid out just recently.

The Journal‘s piece did say that the U.S. government has already shipped a number of systems to Ukraine that had been in storage at the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III cargo planes reportedly picked them up at an unspecified airfield in the Huntsville area. The story notes that Redstone is home to the Army’s Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM), but it also hosts the Defense Intelligence Agency‘s (DIA) Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC), which has an FME role. DIA serves as the focal point for the Department of Defense’s entire FME enterprise, as well.

The U.S. military has been very active in delivering and otherwise facilitating the shipment of military aid to Ukraine, even before Russia launched its invasion. This includes various air defense systems, especially different types of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, also known as man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS). In addition, American officials have made clear that there is a heavy emphasis on sending weapons and equipment that Ukrainian forces are already familiar with, an idea The War Zone had earlier explained the merits of. The core idea behind that philosophy is that this will make it faster and easier for Ukraine’s military to actively put what it receives to use in combat. Ukraine’s ground-based air defenses have been essential in preventing Russian forces from gaining air superiority over the country after more than three weeks of fighting.

Beyond all this, it’s still unclear what systems specifically may ultimately be transferred to Ukraine. The SA-8 Gecko is the only specific system that the Journal‘s sources named as being among the planned deliveries to Ukrainian forces. The SA-8, also known by the Russian nomenclature 9K33 Osa, is a wheeled short-range surface-to-air missile system. DIA’s MSIC is known to have at least one example of this system in its inventory.

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The SA-8.

Skullduggery

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So, the United States is planning to cross the Chinese Red Lines in the future…

Thousands of Marines deployed to Australia in preparation for a possible war with CHINA

(Natural News) Members of the U.S. Marine Corps have been deployed to Australia in preparation for China potentially invading Taiwan. The Marines will be helping their counterparts in the Australian Defense Force (ADF) to ensure preparedness for any crisis or conflict in the region.

According to 100PercentFedUp.com, a rotational force of approximately 2,200 Marines will be based in Australia’s Northern Territory until September 2022. One thousand Marines had earlier arrived in Darwin, the Australian state’s capital, to train alongside the ADF. The contingent of Marines forms

“part of an ongoing U.S. initiative in the Indo-Pacific region to prepare for a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan in coming years.”

Colonel Marcus Constable, commanding officer of ADF Northern Command, reiterated the importance of the relationship between the U.S. and Australia.

“It is a key way we increase regional cooperation with partners in the Indo-Pacific. Together, we conduct a comprehensive range of training activities including humanitarian assistance, security operations and high-end live-fire exercises,”

Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton said conflict with China “shouldn’t be discounted,” warning that the communist country may move to invade Taiwan while the world is focused on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. He emphasized that Australian forces would come to the aid of the U.S. should the latter help defend the island nation.

“It would be inconceivable that we wouldn’t support the U.S. in an action if the U.S. chose to take that action. I think we should be very frank and honest about that [and] look at all of the facts and circumstances without pre-committing. [Maybe] there are circumstances where we wouldn’t take up that option, [but] I can’t conceive of those circumstances.”

War Prep!

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Ol’ Remus Revisited

I am not the only one who misses Ol’ Remus. Remus posted some of my SHTF posts for me and brought a lot of people to MM. But it’s more than that. he was a good, genuine guy.

Here’s what my ‘buddy Phil at bustedknuckles has to say about him…

I remember when I first stumbled on The Woodpile Report, realizing that what I had found was an absolute treasure.

As future posts confirmed, I was spot on with my gut feeling.

Ol’ Remus himself was a treasure.

Filled with wisdom gathered over his many years and blessed with an insight that I have so far, been unable to find duplicated anywhere else.

Even after extensively searching.

I also realized after a few posts that what I had found was also very likely to have a limited window of new inputs. Also due to his advancing age.

Unfortunately I was correct in my assessment there, our reluctant mentor will have been gone two years here shortly.

Very, very fortunately, someone else realized what a treasure trove of wisdom and knowledge he left behind and they immediately set about gathering up into a repository, as much as they could possibly glean from what he did leave behind. Unfortunately, Ol’ Remus didn’t archive his posts.

Occasionally I get a hankering for a touch of that and off I go, searching for that font of knowledge, stashed away still on the internet.

Every time, I am very happy to see it is still there. Some day it might not be. I may try to find the time to download it all and save it on a removable hard drive for safe keeping.

I found this old post a few minutes ago, re-read it and found that it is just as applicable today as it was when he first pecked it out and shared it with us’. So I copied it and I am pasting it here, along with a link to the site that still has many of his old posts.

Simply titled, Woodpile Reports.

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THE COMING UNPLEASANTNESS – OL’ REMUS

from HERE

THE COMING UNPLEASANTNESS – OL’ REMUS

This is another post from Ol’ Remus at The Woodpile Report. I like his style of writing quite a bit, and agree with him entirely. 

He is forecasting catastrophe – and how could it be otherwise?

And yet I get the US Trust “Investment Strategy Overview” newsletter in the mail, and, of course, it is completely in opposition to Ol’ Remus – it’s bullish! 

Apparently, we are only 5 years into a bull market of 20 years! Major advances in technology are coming! Progress towards US energy independence! A manufacturing renaissance! The imbalances of the past cycle are correcting themselves! Etc.

How does one reconcile these two views?

What an absolutely bizarre time we live in, when there is such a massive disconnect between the mass media hypnosis and reality. Every day is another chapter in Cognitive Dissonance…

HERE

The Coming Unpleasantness

The guilty are sneaking away unpunished, nobody’s fixing anything, there’s an orderly-so-far devaluation of the dollar going on, the Treasury has fallen into the hands of counterfeiters and the election process has gone third-world.

The home folks are broke, or nearly so, and unemployed, or about to be.

Suddenly they understand DCisn’t on their side and now they’re debating whether DC is run by the criminally insane or the merely criminal.

Oh yeah, this will end well.

According to a new study by the Russell Sage Foundation, the inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. 

Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36% decline… it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too.

-Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com

Now the people who warned of 2008 are saying the market is running out of Greater Fools.

They say few retail investors are in equities that don’t have to be—meaning the funds, the 401ks and IRAs, the insurance companies, the compulsive gamblers. And those that don’t hate the market fear the market.

They say it’s a gas leak looking for detonation.

They say the event will arrive before the warning does.

There are usually no warnings that trouble is coming because everyone at the top of the financial food chain are highly incentivized to keep quiet about problems…

Just about every CEO from every major bank spent much of 2008 claiming that all was well…

As former banker Jean-Claude Juncker put it, “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”

-Phoenix Capital Research at zerohedge.com

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In early 2008 I noted a fairly serious decrease in online “revenue per impression” in the advertising space. 

This was not reflected in so-called “official” reports from various online ad firms, but I saw it quite-clearly across data I had available to me. 

What followed, of course, was quite clear in the markets. I am seeing the same pattern develop now.

-Karl Denninger at market-ticker.org

Due diligence and fundamentals count for nothing because the arithmetic makes no sense, successful investing amounts to insider information and front running the Fed.

The oscillations are wild and coming closer together.

But still it goes up.

One day it won’t.

The crash will be 2008 on afterburner because no one trusts anybody, no one honors anything, no one believes anything.

The flash-crash will look stately by comparison.

It’ll be like being pushed out of a tree in the dark—pain and terror every inch of the way.

Another horrific stock market crash is coming, and the next bust will be “unlike any other” we have seen.

We have never had this before.

It’s going to be very painful for investors.

-Jeremy Grantham, GMO, via moneynews.com

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Warren Buffett’s “best single measure of where valuations stand,” comparing the market value of UScompanies to the gross national product before inflation, is flashing near record bubble red. 

Still we are sure, you’ll be able to exit before everyone else when this ends.

-Tyler Durden and Bloomberg at zerohedge.com

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The most reliable valuation measures have never been higher except in the advance to the 2000 peak (and for some measures the 1929 and 2007 peaks), but they have started to treat these prior pre-crash peaks as objectives to be attained… 

Make no mistake—this is an equity bubble, and a highly advanced one. On the most historically reliable measures, it is easily beyond 1972 and 1987, beyond 1929 and 2007, and is now within about 15% of the 2000 extreme.


-John Hussman at hussmanfunds.com

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We have no right to be surprised by a severe and imminent stock market crash.

-Mark Spitznagel via moneynews.com

The market isn’t the economy, true enough, but a couple dozen trillion dollars isn’t exactly budget-dust.

The citizenry would see a yawning crater where their 401ks and IRAs used to be.

They’d notice when their checking account is gone but their debt isn’t, and when the ATM doesn’t recognize their account number, or when their bank is an empty storefront and their car loan has been sold to Vinnie, or when their insurance company doesn’t answer the phone.

As always, people don’t go nuclear until reality invites itself into their living room and defecates on the carpet.

That’s when things get interesting—when people notice, when they have to face what was formerly unthinkable and their only fallback is what good people they are.

Those who drove the financial bus off a cliff know the controls still work fine—the brakes and accelerator and steering wheel, all of ’em, but when the rubber isn’t on the road the effect just ain’t the same.

But all that “driving” stuff keeps the passengers from panicking.

We’ve seen the grandest larceny in all history.

Now, after we’ve been cleaned out, we know the wacko conspiracy guys were right.

In fact we’re worse than cleaned out, the place has been turned into a debtor’s prison from sea to shining sea.

Some would have us believe things are turning around—the market’s up and the trend is your friend.

Trend?

Trend?!

The market made gains after the Crash of 1929 too, genuine record recoveries.

“Prosperity is just around the corner” referred to those 1930-1931 upticks, not to the unstoppable plunge that followed.

As they say, it’s not the fall, it’s the sudden stop.

The fall itself can be surprisingly profitable.

But what a fall it was.

By July of 1932 the Dow had dropped from its high of 367 down to 41.

Ten years later, in April of 1942, it touched 100 or so, and that was after foreign panic-money poured in from a Europe at war.

The highs of 1929 weren’t seen again until the 1950s.

That’s a trend.

There’s always been fraud, but sometime in the recent past the market buckled in a fundamental way and the fraud poured in.

Proven reforms painfully enacted over decades were swept away.

Fundamentals no longer counted.

Creative finance counted.

Bubbles and deceit counted.

It became a criminal enterprise top to bottom.

Accounting firms and regulatory agencies went over to the dark side en masse.

As Mark Twain said, every profession is a conspiracy against the common man.

Finally the retail investor did something sensible—he ran for his life.

The players left are those who have to stay; the funds, the retirement accounts, the insurance companies, et al, and HFT piranhas are eating them alive at millions of tiny nibbles a second.

What used to be an investor’s clearing house has become a betting parlor on the Federal Reserve’s next move.

The market goes up on tiny volume and bad news, and way up on very bad news and nearly no volume.

They know dark horizons light up the printing presses.

Meanwhile, the banks don’t know what they own, or don’t know what it’s worth, but they do know they’re insolvent and so does everybody else.

So DC gives money to the banks and then pays the banks to lend it back to them.

It’s IOUs paid with IOUs and they can’t write ’em fast enough.

The bottoming is not completely done.

In fact, it has barely even gotten underway yet.

We keep propping up losers.

The result is we still need to see a repudiation of debt at a massive scale and until that happens, the Long Wave bottom won’t be here.

We’re just dancing on the front end of real economic collapse.

-George Ure at urbansurvival.com

What to do.

The demand for collateral will be ferocious when the debacle starts. Treat debt like any other roadside bomb.

Staying current isn’t enough.

Any collaterized debt is too much debt.

You can’t know which exit is the last exit.

The grace period with the trillion-dollar price tag is ending and it’s ending badly.

This disaster has been bought off for decades.

When it happens it’ll go down fast.

Exactly how and when can be sorta-kinda foreseen but not actually known.

A cascade can start from anywhere.

But this much can be said: the collateral chaos will hit the system like a weapons-grade laxative. Everything that’s been contained, covered up and denied will come spewing out looking for daddy.

It’ll take weeks, not months to come apart.

Maybe days.

Get as independent as you can while you can. There are parts of this game where the only winning move is to not play.

Doesn’t mean you have to go all Rambo and head off to some mountain valley, although that’s one way.

But it does mean putting stuff by so you can get by.

“Stuff” means food stored long-term and the wherewithal to get or grow more, uninterruptible for-sure potable water, an off-the-grid heating system, meds and medical supplies, clothing for hard times and hard work and being out in life-threatening weather because you have to be, the means to defend hearth and hoard, batteries and a way to recharge them, cash and real money—meaning gold and silver—all the things you already know but haven’t done.

Knowing isn’t doing, doing is doing.

FDR‘s bailout of the Federal government also went so far as to also issue Executive Order 6814 “Requiring the delivery of all silver to the United States for coinage.”

And what was that worth at the time?

In terms of present dollars, that works out to about $22.77 per ounce. Given that silver is trading below current dollar equivalents of the Depression confiscation prices and gold is still trading at 3.44-times Depression confiscation prices, my personal bias may be inferred.

-George Ure at peoplenomics.com

Plan B.

If you’re in a city, have a viable destination and two or three tried and proven ways to get there.

Practice and take notes.

Again, only doing is doing.

Plan as if your life depends on it.

Take a hike, go the hard way through the hills and woods, you’ll discover how long an unpaved mile can be.

Make a squirrel dinner, yes they’re cute, but there may come a day when only one of you is going to live. Besides, they’re yummy.

Mankind acquired these tastes over geological epochs, you’ve not lost them, merely misplaced them.

Everything seems obvious and predictable in retrospect.

This stuff is pretty obvious and predictable now. And there are always better reasons to not do something than to do it.

You know most people won’t get serious until after it was absolutely necessary. Too late.

They’ll fail, mostly.

Worse, they’ll needlessly fail at the easy part of the learning curve.

Prepared is prepared, you are or you aren’t. Do what you can. And as always, stay away from crowds.

The man could see what was coming from a mile away.

What he didn’t get to see, Thank God, was the Covid Hoax and The Fed dumping several TRILLION more FRN’s into the market and The Bubble having had at least two more years of expansion.

Afterburners indeed.

It is now virtually on our doorsteps.

That makes posting this again very timely.

God rest your soul sir.

I am grateful at this point that you aren’t here to see what is about to unfold on a completely unsuspecting general public.

An interesting statement

Regarding the briefing of the MOD submitted by <redacted> I found one section to be quite interesting:

"Due to hypersonic speed and ultra-high kinetic energy, the warhead of Kinzhal missile complex destroyed a protected underground arsenal located in a mountainous area, built in Soviet times to store special ammunition and missiles.

The destruction of a large fuel depot in Konstantinovka by Kinzhal hypersonic missile was due to its invisibility and invulnerability to any means of enemy air and missile defence.

Combat use of Kynzhal aviation missile system confirmed its effectiveness in destroying highly protected special enemy assets. The strikes on the military infrastructure of Ukraine by this missile system will continue within the special military operation.

I would like to emphasize that Kinzhal system is used with a conventional warhead. Although experts are well aware of the capabilities of this weapon, not only in terms of range, but also in terms of the type of charge."

This seems to be a rather clear message that “we can put a nuclear warhead on this any time we want and deliver in less than 10 minutes to any NATO base in Europe”. Or wherever else they might choose.

Cheesecake Cookies

Now here’s a great cookie. Why doesn’t anyone make these anymore?

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2022 03 22 16 57

Cheesecake Cookie

China is about HEART

No wonder that so many in the money-money-money West cannot understand China. They think with their minds. Not with their hearts. This is China, and this is why China will lead the world to a new and better existence. video 58MB

Stand up for others

Don’t be a spectator. Participate in life. Protect the week, and do your part to make the world a better place. You don’t know when the calling will be, or how you will be tested, but you will be. And when that test of who you are arrives… well be the person that would make your grandmother PROUD. video 68MB

Cleaning lady gives Hard Boiled eggs to students

She doesn’t have to. She wants to. There’s a big difference, when you are a Rufus. video. 4MB

4MB.

Be the Rufus

You do not know when the calling will strike, but it’s up to you to participate in your community. participate. Help others. Pick up trash. Help dogs and cats. Be kind. Smile. Say good things. Be the Rufus, and let the rest of the world howl! video 5MB

 

Conclusion

We are in World War III.

The agressor is the United States. Eventually all these American “pushes and shoves” will result in an Asian shotgun being pulled out. Something bigger, deadlier, and more colorful than the military-technical measures that Putin is using.

There will be blasts, blood, entails, crying and sobbing.

Asia does not want this, but it is clear that preemptive action, at some time, will be necessary. You all should be happy that MM is not making Geo-Political decisions. Everything would be resolved by now. It would be a mess, but things would be resolved.

Don’t you know.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Ukraine mercenaries, Russian hyper-velocity missiles, bioweapon labs, fishing licenses and Lasagna; how it all fits together

Comment of the day: "The wreckage would be awesome."

It’s a cool morning. Very humid. It’s a spring day and the humidity is so thick that it is like walking in a humidity milkshake. As you walk down the street you can smell the thickness of the scented flowers and trees lining the roads, and the thickly laden ocean air.

it’s really nice.

I went out this morning to get my long loaves of French / Italian crusty bread. Bagettes, actually. (I ran out at the house.) What I do is slice them, and put real salted butter on them, and pop them into the oven for a few minutes. Then, I place some slices of tomato with salt and olive oil that I lay on top of them. It’s a favorite and simple food that I enjoy.

bruschetta chopped tomatoes basil herbs grilled cru italian olive oil crusty bread italian cuisine concept close up 96050796
bruschetta chopped tomatoes basil herbs grilled cru italian olive oil crusty bread italian cuisine concept close up 96050796

Today, as I walked into the local supermarket, it was crowded. The new truck load of fresh produce came in and everyone was getting their fix of fresh vegitables. I myself, snagged a huge bag of tomatoes. Two yuan. Roughly thirty tomatoes for twenty-five cents. Whoa!

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R C.f0b785c2827b31982fb1b782ea4a8f3d

I’m smunching on the bread-tomato-pleasure right now. Good stuff. I’ll tell you what. Washing it down with a minty flower tea or some curious blend. As the “Baron Cat” says in the Japanese animated movie “The Cat Returns” (2002); “It’s my own special blend. It’s a different taste every time you drink it.

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The cat returns.

Of course, we are still in a “yellow” lockdown.

All of Zhuhai are in various stages of lockdown.

Everyone is monitored in and out of the various complexes in Zhuhai. The latest American bioweapon attack hit China hard, but China is dealing with it absolutely, and the people go about their normal lives.

Not a big deal.

You get used to it. Don’t you know.

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Zhuhai, China.

For those of you who are new to MM, this latest bioweapons attack occurred immediately after the USA-China meeting in Rome, Italy. The USA (Jake Sullivan) “warned” China of “immediate bad consequences” if China did not sanction Russia. China said no. And within hours China was hit in multiple locations with a very nasty stain of coronavirus.

Sigh.

Not reported in the Western “news”.  At all.

As an aside. Perhaps it good that the West is kept so absolutely ignorant. Let them make their strategic decisions while in a bubble of absolute lies. Let them. And if they believe the “news” and volunteer to participate as a mercenary in the “rout of the collapsing Russian invasion force” let them.

Below, I’e got three stories of the first hand experience that these mercenaries experienced. These are not third world goatherders with old AK-47s, you imbeciles. You are not going to hang out in air conditioned barracks and plink at an occasional illiterate shepard or their donkey.

You will experience real war. Real, honest to goodness, pissing in your pants war.

Nothing like the hard bitch slap of reality to perform a reset of attitude.

200 bitch slap
200 bitch slap

The very last paragraph in this article describes what it’s really like.

The base we came from was struck by rockets in the early morning hours. People we lived with for a couple days are confirmed dead. It is only a matter of time before our location is targeted. We are about to be cut off by a Russian tank column any day now.” “Food, water, and ammunition dwindle slowly. The mood is somber, people are sending their last messages to friends and family.”

Those that rely on bad intel will die.

Not just in a war zone, but in a peaceful area like I am in.

To believe that the Coronavirus is a “hoax” and that it’s not part of a very systematic and intelligent way to wage war is dangerous. It will get you killed.

So we need good and real intel.

Not lies.

Anyways, let me chat about regarding my walk from the grocery stores.

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Bag of tomatoes.

Most people do not realize just how Chinese society is laid out. They think that it’s flat and open like their home nations. Like America. Like Europe. Like Japan. Like Australia.

They think that you can just walk down the road and go into what ever suburb that you want. Go into any business complex you desire. Park where ever you want. Enter any apartment building that you want. Nope.

Not like that. At all.

Everything in China is surrounded by walls. There are buildings inside of housing complexes. That’s two sets of walls and guards. Then that sits within a city block. That’s another set of walls and guards. Those blocks sit within a “community region”. That is another set of walls and guards.

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Walls are big and popular in China.

To go forth an (say) buy some groceries, you need to pass through five or six checkpoints and guarded gates. It’s more stringent than what it was like at China Lake Naval Weapons Center.

For me to travel and get my groceries today, I passed through five walls with check points and guards. Each time scanning my three QR codes. Facial recognition, temperature checks and bioscans.

You get used to it. It’s not a big deal.

It’s like Americans are so used to the idea that they have to get a fishing license, a dog license, a motocycle license, just to be able to fish with your dog and ride the motorcycle to the local pond.

You get used to it.

And you don’t think about it being an infringement on your “Rights”. You just accept it.

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A PA fishing license.

Of course, in China’s case it’s DEFCON 2. It’s a war-situation, and the agressor is the United States. That’s the reality. And you woud be aware of this if you lived in China.

I’ll tell you when DEFCON 2 is lifted. Though, it doesn’t look like that is going to happen anyday soon.

I had a customer who contacted me and wanted me to set up a trip itinery to visit some factories. He figured that since New Zealand has lifted the coronavirus restrictions, that everyone has. Nope. Everyone in China are still wearing masks, and taking these bioweapons attacks seriously.

And NO!

There are no thoughts of lifting the restrictions or having any second thoughts about how China deals with COVID. That’s Western bullshit.

Coins

Do you know what I haven’t seen in a long time? Yeah. Coins.

A “coin” is a flat (usually round) token that is used as a currency. You can use it to buy things. In the old days before inflation, most people used coins to conduct commerce. In America, a cup of coffee cost a dime. A lunch would cost under fifty cents, and a weeks’ groceries would run a few dollars.

You don’t see them very much today though.

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Chinese currency.

China has been using QR codes and e-yuan payments systems for years now. Oh, some fo the older folk still use bills and coinage, but they are the only ones doing so.

Them and foreigners.

Not that there’s many foreign faces here any longer. We’ve got a handful of long-term expats that I see every now and then. They are in upper management positions in Western companies located in China. They have nice expat packages, live in exclusive housing complexes, and venture out from time to time.

They stick out like a sore thumb.

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Expats in China stick out like a sore thumb.

I’m one of those grizzily old expats that went to seed and gone native. I wear Chinese clothes, eat Chinese food, enjoy Chinese lifestyle, and go to local Chinese restrurants.  The foreigners see me. They look at me and automatically classify me.

Drunk in the night.

Hungover in the day.

Burping, and farting and generally being anti-social. (Well, maybe not THAT bad. Lol.)

Old grizzily long-timer. Gone native. Hopeless.

Expat Defined: 
An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence. The word comes from the Latin term expatriates from ex ("out of") and patriâ the ablative case of patria ("country, fatherland").

Background;
In its broadest sense, an expatriate is any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen. 

In common usage, the term is often used in the context of professionals sent abroad by their companies, as opposed to locally hired staff (who can also be foreigners). The differentiation found in common usage usually comes down to socio-economic factors, so skilled professionals working in another country are described as expatriates, whereas a manual labourer who has moved to another country to earn more money might be labelled an 'immigrant'. There is no set definition and usage does vary depending on context and individual preferences and prejudices.

In the 19th century, Americans, numbering perhaps in the thousands, were drawn to Europe—especially to Munich and Paris—to study the art of painting. Henry James, for instance, was a famous expatriate American writer from the 1870s, who adopted England as his home.

The term 'expatriate' in some countries also has a legal context used for tax purposes. An expatriate living in a country can receive a favorable tax treatment. In this context a person can only be an expatriate if they move to a country other than their own to work with the intent of returning to their home country within a period of no more than 5 fiscal years. This number of years can vary per tax jurisdiction, but 5 years is the most commonly used maximum period.

Unless you are an American. If you are an American, you are always an American and you are treated as someone who is trying to avoid direct taxiation laws. Under United States law, geographical location only defines your tax schedule. It does not protect you from American taxiation.

Expatriate is sometimes also spelled 'ex-patriot.'

I’m too old to look like an English teacher. Mostly those folk are in their 20s and 30s. They are on a cultural adventure, and then they will move on in their lives.

I don’t look like a traveller, a backpacker or an adventurer. Not at all.

I’m certainly not equal to the other expats. I don’t dress like them, and I’m at an age that is more compatable with the executive directors of their companies. LOL. I don’t know what they think. Maybe they don’t want to think, eh?

The teacher

This is the biggest employer of expats in China. You see them, mostly in their twenties. The older ones that used to teach have been displaced by mostly young folk, as the cut-off is at 55, and you must have demonstrated prior experience and pass a very rigorous government approval process.

Back around 2013, there were numerous crimes committed by foreign teachers that shocked the Chinese. Since then, things have mellowed out considerably.

The business expat

They got a nice gig. usually two to three years as an upper-level executive in a foreign land. They make expat salaries, plus bonus, and a full expat package. You can see them in where they eat, their kids attending foreign expat schools, and in the clothing that they dress. They keep to themselves, and rarely go “slumming” with the natives.

The digital nomad

He has a beard, a beater, a battered Apple Mac and plays songs about his new hometown at local acoustic nights. Everyone’s an entrepreneur these days and the digital nomad is making a killing coding, marketing or writing all from the comfort of a coffee shop.

Ask at your own peril how he made the step to go freelance and move abroad, he’ll direct you to his catchily named blog: ‘I work one day a year and the rest of the time I’m on the beach, here’s how you can do it too.’

It’s all a lie of course. Big words, little to show for it. In China they are shunned. Mostly they go to places like Thailand to impress others. In China, locals really don’t want to have anythign to do with them.

The NGO-er

All wise eyes and copper bracelets, the charity worker had big dreams. Always the most interesting person at the party, this guy’s seen the parts of the world no one else gets to. They are often funded one way or the others through the “five eyes”.

You won’t find them in China any longer. There was a mass round up and deportations of these folk during the Hong Kong “color revolution”. Those with direct involvement were killed. The rest were scattered elsewhere.

The pilot

Recognisable by his cock-pit pics on Tinder, this guy swipes right in every port. You’ll find him holed up in a gated expat community with imported whiskeys decorating his executive pad. He may have physically been all over the world, but it’s unlikely he’s seen it.

The retired couple

Most people do not retire to China. The rap that China gets scares the Dejesus out of most folk. Pollution, factories, communism, authorian. Yikes! The retired folk say.

Most will hit Thailand or Mexico as soon as their pensions kicked in to make the most of the hot weather, cheap massages and excellent golf facilities.

Thanks to their new cool exotic location, they’ve never been more popular with the grandkids who love to visit (if in part for the relaxed drinking laws).  You can spot them in their matching khaki shorts, nursing a Bloody Mary over lunch saying: ‘We should have done this years ago.’

So, here I am, minding my own business, carrying my groceries home. I pass some expats with their (obviously European) children in Starbucks having breakfast, and I just continue on my way. Smunching a warm baozi, groceries in my one hand, and the other (holding a baozi) ready to flash (my preset QR) to the baoans (security guards) at the various checkpoints.

All I need is my Chinese wife, my Chinese kids, my Chinese dog next to me. LOL.

But nope. Not today.

I’m on a mission alone. Sheech! It just doesn’t feel right.

And there, as I enter my “short cut” (I cross though a nearby housing complex) and go through it, I spy what appears to be a coin on the road.

A coin!

Do they still make these things in the ‘States?

A truly rare event I’ll tell you what.

The coin turned out to be a token for one of those mechanical children rides. You pay ten yuan and you get ten coins. Woo! Woo!

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Then you use the coins to ride the electro-mechanical contraptions. Just like in America. Same.

See we are not all that different.

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Amusement tokens.

I wonder if they still have these things. There used to be a few in front of Woolworths, and CVS drugs. My guess is that they were replaced by soda machines.

Bigger profits is my guess.

Let’s go and chat about the Geo-Political sitrep for the World entering April 2022. Here’s a collection of various articles. Mostly summaries and links. I hope you all like them.

In fact, if the US/NATO do decide to attack Russia, this will be the final, nuclear, end for the western civilization as such. After 1000 years of genocidal imperialism, one could be forgiven for thinking that this could be a fitting, just, end” in the “chicken coming home to roost” kind of karmic justice. Now it is in the hands of the US ruling elites. 

-The Saker

About the Russian Invasion

It’s pretty straightforward. Yet vault 7 has seized the minds of most in the West.

“We have seen 5 waves of NATO expansion. 

Now NATO is in Romania and Poland and they are deploying their missile-attack systems there. 

That’s what we are talking about. 

You need to understand, we are not threatening anyone. 

Russia did not come to the US borders or the UK borders. No. 

You came to our borders and now you are saying, ‘Ukraine will join NATO and will deploy their systems there. They will deploy their military bases and their attack-systems.’ 

We are concerned about our security. 

Do you understand what that means?” 

- Vladimir Putin, press conference, You Tube 

A Russian Hamburger Chain

Ham-bur-ger. Three syllables.

A budding burger chain in Russia called Uncle Vanya is looking to grab business that has been left on the table by McDonald’s – revealing a logo that looks strikingly similar to the Golden Arches.
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Or so they say.
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Uncle Vanya.

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Personally, anyone who are confused by the logos and cannot tell them apart is an idiot.
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A March 12 trademark filing with the Russian government showed an image that closely resembles the McDonald’s logo turned on its side. The sketchy filing shows a Cyrillic letter “B,” which references the “V” in “Uncle Vanya,” cast in yellow against a red background.
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Chinese Kindergarden

You can learn a lot about culture, society and family by looking at the education that it provides it’s children. Here is a daily flag cermony in China. This is a kindergarden. Typical. And it’s impressive as all get out. They are three and four year old children.

Everyday. Every school.

We, when I lived in the Untied States, used to “salute the flag” and say the “pledge of allegence” every day. They no longer do that in the USA. I hear that it’s becuase it is racist. video 3MB

Putin on independence from the West

"We will solve this problem so that we will never again depend on Western partners in any way, be it governments or companies that are not guided by the interests of their business, but have become instruments of political aggression, which Russia is now experiencing from the West. We will make sure that we never find ourselves in a similar situation again. And so that no uncle - neither Sam, nor anyone else - could destroy our economy" 

-Alexander Putin

Chinese girl

These are not evil nasty filthy people, like what is being portrayed in the Western “news”. They are just regular people. Like me. Like you. video 3MB

I love the kitty.

No, I am not going to make a joke about a pussy. That’s so “Low brow”.

British Ex-Army Contractor Goes to War in Ukraine, Experiences Helicopter Fire, Runs Scared Into the Woods…

…is tortured by the Ukrainians thinking he’s a Russian spy, is released, leaves for the UK immediately.

One of the first British fighters in Ukraine told yesterday of his ferocious battle with Russian troops at the Battle of Antonov.

Ex-Army medic Jason Haigh, 34, exchanged gunfire with the Red Army as it sought to seize an airport and was later beaten by guards in terrifying interrogations.

Jason, who served two tours of Iraq, told The Sun:

“The Ukrainians fought like lions and I’m proud I was alongside them. What Putin is doing is terrorism. He’s bombing kids and families for nothing. He’s a war criminal.”

He flew to Ukraine at the start of last month. He recalled:

“When I told my mates they were like, ‘What, are you mad?’. I’m a qualified combat medic and have done seven years working as a private military contractor. I wanted to go and do some good.”

He set up home in Kyiv and linked up with foreign fighters ahead of the invasion.

Jason was sleeping when a pal woke him on the morning Putin’s troops and tanks invaded.

He told The Sun:

“The world just blew up. You could hear rockets coming over the buildings.

“In the distance there were bright lights flashing all over the city from the Russian bombardment. It was completely surreal.”

Jason dashed out of his city centre flat in full body armour and carrying an AK-47.

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2022 03 20 12 46

His unit quickly joined a detachment of Ukrainian troops heading to defend Hostomel Airport.

Jason recalled:

“It was a very confusing situation. No one really knew what was going on.

“As we headed into the dark I think it’s fair to say I was scared.

“Anyone who goes into that position that isn’t scared is a liar.

“When we arrived it was very quiet. But all of a sudden the gates of hell opened up on us.”

A squadron of Russian jets fired down rockets before a fleet of attack choppers joined in.

Jason and ten soldiers from the Georgian Legion took cover in woodland. Jason, who served with the Mercian Regiment, added:

“We got very close to getting whacked. I’ve never experienced firepower like that, I don’t think anyone of this generation ever has.

“Iraq and Afghanistan was totally different. The Russians are a conventional modern army.”

Reinforcements then arrived with Stinger missiles to pick off the Russian choppers in a brave show of Ukrainian resistance.

However, Jason and an American pal were later arrested by Ukraine agents looking for Russian saboteurs. He said:

“My mate and I had a day sack with two walkie talkies and a small pistol.

“We had them for genuine reasons such as if the comms network went down but they got suspicious.”

They were taken to a security service base and interrogated for three hours. Jason said:

“My head was slammed down by one of the guards.

“A different guy came in and I could tell by his kit that he was in an elite unit. He had cable ties and two hoods and I thought ‘S***, this is real’.

“They kept shouting Russian at me but obviously I said I was English. They whacked me around eight or nine times. I had quite a bad concussion and was bleeding heavily.”

“They looked at my phone and my messages which was a really scary moment.

“I wasn’t scared of dying but I was scared about putting my family and friends through the pain of knowing I was in that situation.”

Eventually, they were released and Jason joined hundreds of thousands on trains to Lviv. He then fled to the Polish border before getting a train to Warsaw.

From there he flew to the UK and arrived home in Kidderminster last Friday. He said:

“I didn’t go there to die. I obviously thought about it but I had a job to do.”

The Battle of Antonov — also known as the Battle of Hostomel — was among the first major skirmishes of the war, with Russian attack helicopters and jets aiming to dampen early resistance.

Putin’s forces were successful but at huge cost — as Ukrainian forces downed several choppers. Jason said: “The Ukrainian people are heroes. They’re all great blokes who have the heart of lions and are defending their country.”

Source: The Sun

Russian controlled areas in Ukraine

Operation Z, the Russian name for the invasion, and identified with the big “Z” marks on all Russian vehicles, is proceeding as planned.

All those videos (from the Western "news") that show buring "Russian tanks and trucks", but that DON'T have the "Z" on them, are not Russian vehicles. They are Ukranian vehicles destroyed by the Russians.
Only an idiot would believe Western / American "news" any longer.

The map is starting to flush out and look like this. You cannot clearly make out the borders of Ukraine, as they are faint gray. You need to squint. But it is clear that Russia has substantive (not absolute) military control of around 65% to 70% of the nation.

Ah. It’s a good time for Zelenskyy to broker a peace deal. It is too bad that his American handlers will not allow him; instead desiring a long-drawn-out war.

I find it interesting,the capture of the international Airport at Lviv. See the map below. Lviv is on the Polish border.  Is this the start of full Russian capture of western Ukraine?

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Russian controlled areas in the Ukraine.

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Chinese girl

These are not evil nasty filthy people, like what is being portrayed in the Western “news”. They are just regular people. Like me. Like you. video 3MB

Exports to Russia Blocked by U.S. and Its Allies

A typical Western anti-China article.

Yes. Nations that trade in USD, and that use sealanes to trade are under the influence of the United States and the West.

But…

Most of Asia use land transports; rail. And are thus immune to the sanctions backed up with the threat and enforcement of a naval blocade.

Not at all mentioned in the article.

Exports Blocked

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The USD…

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2022 03 19 09 55

Chinese girl

These are not evil nasty filthy people, like what is being portrayed in the Western “news”. They are just regular people. Like me. Like you. video 1MB

Turn on the sound to truly appreciate this video.

Weapons Transporters May Be Declared “Military Targets” by Russia

Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov threatens that all transporters that may bring weapons to Ukraine will be declared military targets.

      • Aircraft.
      • Ships.
      • Trains.
      • Trucks / Lorries.

The wording of this announcement leaves open the very real possibility that such modes of transport MAY be in other countries.   So on its face, it appears that aircraft or ships bringing weapons into places like Poland, which **MAY** be carrying weapons for Ukraine, could be targeted.

Washington rushes to hide its ‘octopus’ NED funding in Ukraine

Many sections of the corporate media and a legion of propaganda agencies are openly and secretly funded by the US.

As Russia finally invaded Ukraine – on a rationale similar to that of the US invasion of Iraq, but with greater substance – Washington rushed to delete funding details of Ukraine groups through its Congress-funded ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ (NED). 

As US Professor John Mearsheimer said, Washington created the crisis in Ukraine, hoping to surround and fragment Russia, using NATO expansion and its Neo-Nazi allies. Instead, it seems that Russia will dismantle Ukraine. In the meantime, the U.S. in decline uses financial assets and networks to subvert most of the world.

Despite the attempt to hide this sponsorship, an 80-page document showing US government NED funding for hundreds of Ukraine groups has been leaked. Now posted on several sites this document allows us a window into some of the internal U.S. influence since the CIA orchestrated Kiev coup of 2014. Many of the allocations have to do with anti-Russian propaganda, usually in the name of ‘transparency’, human rights, ‘independent journalism’, monitoring and so on. 

For example, the list shows us that a Ukraine group ‘InformNapalm’, set up “to debunk myths and expose secrets of the Russian hybrid war” and which claims to be “a purely volunteer endeavor which does not have any financial support from any government or donor”, is actually US Government funded. The group publishes anti-Russian propaganda on its website in 31 languages.

Other sources show us that the U.S. Government funds Ukraine's Neo-Nazi linked Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (the KVPU), through its NED funded partner the AFL-CIO’s ‘Solidarity Center’. There are few sectors which the NED has not penetrated.

In Ukraine, this has meant that, especially since 2014, the anti-Russian feeling already embedded in Ukraine nationalism and ultra-nationalism, has been inflamed, setting the country on a collision source with its Russian-speaking minority and with its big eastern neighbor. The NED has culturally reinforced NATO’s drive to war.

Big data dump here…

NED funds Nazis

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Blockbuster: ‘Drag Queen’ Zelensky found a billion dollars and a villa in Miami – Veterans Today | Military Foreign Affairs Policy Journal for Clandestine Services

Zelensky $35 million Florida mansion and $1.2 billion cash in offshore Costa Rican bank account. The American deep-state pays well. All you need to do is betray your oath of office, and sacrifice your countrymen.

Hidey Hole

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China helping Africa

China is buidling high speed trains throughout Africa. While America is still discussing how to finish the first attempt in California. Still a rail line to nowhere. Not so in Africa. video. 8.2MB

Nickel Surges 90% to Record With Threat of Shortages Mounting

Nickel prices!

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All That Glitters Is Not Necessarily Russian Gold

The “rules-based international order” – as in “our way or the highway” – is unraveling much faster than anyone could have predicted.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

The Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China are starting to design a new monetary and financial system bypassing the U.S. dollar, supervised by Sergei Glazyev and intended to compete with the Bretton Woods system.

Saudi Arabia – perpetrator of bombing, famine and genocide in Yemen, weaponized by U.S., UK and EU – is advancing the coming of the petroyuan.

India – third largest importer of oil in the world – is about to sign a mega-contract to buy oil from Russia with a huge discount and using a ruble-rupee mechanism.

Riyadh’s oil exports amount to roughly $170 billion a year. China buys 17% of it, compared to 21% for Japan, 15% for the U.S., 12% for India and roughly 10% for the EU. The U.S. and its vassals – Japan, South Korea, EU – will remain within the petrodollar sphere. India, just like China, may not.

Sanction blowback is on the offense. Even a market/casino capitalism darling such as uber-nerd Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Poznar, formerly with the NY Fed, IMF and Treasury Dept., has been forced to admit, in an analytical note: “If you think that the West can develop sanctions that will maximize the pain for Russia by minimizing the risks of financial stability and price stability for the West, then you can also trust unicorns.”

Unicorns are a trademark of the massive NATOstan psyops apparatus, lavishly illustrated by the staged, completely fake “summit” in Kiev between Comedian Ze and the Prime Ministers of Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, thoroughly debunked by John Helmer and Polish sources.

Poznar, a realist, hinted in fact at the ritual burial of the financial chapter of the “rules-based international order” in place since the early Cold War years: “After the end of this war [in Ukraine], ‘money’ will ‎never be ‎the same.” Especially when the Hegemon demonstrates its “rules” by encroaching on other people’s money.

And that configures the central tenet of 21st century martial geopolitics as monetary/ideological. The world, especially the Global South, will have to decide whether “money” is represented by the virtual, turbo-charged casino privileged by the Americans or by real, tangible assets such as energy sources. A bipolar financial world – U.S. dollar vs. yuan – is at hand.

There’s no surefire evidence – yet. But the Kremlin may have certainly gamed that by using Russia’s foreign reserves as bait, likely to be frozen by sanctions, the end result could be the smashing of the petrodollar. After all the overwhelming majority of the Global South by now has fully understood that the backed-by-nothing U.S. dollar as “money” – according to Poznar – is absolutely untrustworthy.

If that’s the case, talk about a Putin ippon from hell.

It’s gold robbery time

As I outlined the emergence of the new paradigm, from the new monetary system to be designed by a cooperation between the EAEU and China to the advent of the petroyuan, a serious informed discussion  erupted about a crucial part of the puzzle: the fate of the Russian gold reserves.

Doubts swirled around the Russian Central Bank’s arguably suicidal policy of keeping assets in foreign securities or in banks vulnerable to Western sanctions.

Of course there’s always the possibility Moscow calculated that nations holding Russian reserves – such as Germany and France – have assets in Russia that can be easily nationalized. And that the total debt of the state plus Russian companies even exceeds the amount of frozen reserves.

But what about the gold?

As of February 1, three weeks before the start of Operation Z, the Russian Central Bank held $630.2 billion in reserves. Almost half –

$311.2 billion – were placed in foreign securities, and a quarter – $151.9 billion – on deposits with foreign commercial and Central Banks. Not exactly a brilliant strategy. As of June last year, strategic partner China held 13.8% of Russia’s reserves, in gold and foreign currency. 

As for the physical gold, $132.2 billion – 21% of total reserves – remains in vaults in Moscow (two-thirds) and St. Petersburg (one-third).

So no Russian gold has been frozen? Well, it’s complicated.

The key problem is that more than 75% of Russian Central Bank reserves are in foreign currency. Half of these are securities, like government bonds: they never leave the nation that issued them. Roughly 25% of the reserves are linked to foreign banks, mostly private, as well as the BIS and the IMF.

Once again it’s essential to remember Sergei Glazyev in his groundbreaking essay Sanctions and Sovereignty: “It is necessary to complete the de-dollarization of our foreign exchange reserves, replacing the dollar, euro and pound with gold. In the current conditions of the expected explosive growth in the price of gold, its mass export abroad is akin to treason and it is high time for the regulator to stop it.”

This is a powerful indictment of the Russian Central Bank – which was borrowing against gold and exporting it. For all practical purposes, the Central Bank could be accused of perpetrating an inside job. And subsequently they were caught flat-footed by the devastating American sanctions.

As a Moscow analyst puts it, the Central Bank “had delivered some volumes of gold to London in 2020-2021. This decision was motivated by a high price of gold at that time (near $2000 per ounce) and could hardly be initiated by Putin. If so, this decision can be qualified as very stupid, or even part of a diversionist tactic (…) Most of the gold delivered to London was not stored but sold and transferred into foreign currency reserves (in euro or pounds) which were frozen later.”

No wonder a lot of people in Russia are livid. A quick flashback is in order. In June last year, Putin signed a law canceling requirements for the repatriation of foreign exchange earnings from gold exports. Five months later, Russia’s gold miners were exporting like crazy. A month later, the Duma wanted to know  why the Central Bank had stopped buying gold. No wonder Russia media erupted with accusations of “an unprecedented [gold] robbery”.

Now it’s way more dramatic: RIA Novosti described the American-dictated freeze as – what else – a “robbery” and duly predicted global economic chaos.  As for the Central Bank, it’s back on the gold buying business.    

None of the above though explains some “missing” gold that de facto is not under the possession of the Russian Central Bank. And that’s where a somewhat shady character such as Herman Gref comes in.

Let’s check this out with State Duma deputy Mikhail Delyagin, who had a few things to say about the gold-exported-to-London bonanza:

“This process has been going on for the past year. Exported, according to some estimates, 600 tons. [Head of Russian Central Bank] Nabiullina said – whoever wants to sell gold to get cash, or if you mine gold and trade it, keep in mind that the state, in my person, will not buy gold from you at a market price. We will take it at a big discount. If you want to get honest money for it, please export it. The world center of gold trading is London. Accordingly, everyone began to export and sell gold there. Including Mr. [Herman] Gref. The head of the formally state-owned Sberbank sold a huge part of his gold reserves.”

Look here for fascinating details about Sberbank’s Gref shenanigans.

Watch for the gold-backed ruble

It may be a case of too little too late, but at least the Kremlin has now established a committee – with authority over the Central Bank nerds – to handle the serious stuff.

It boggles the mind that the Russian Central Bank does not answer to the Russian constitution as well as to the judicial system, but in fact is subordinated to the IMF. A case can be made that this cartel-designed financial system – implying zero sovereignty – simply cannot be tackled head on by any nation on the planet, and Putin has been trying to undermine it step by step. That includes, of course, keeping Elvira Nabiullina on the job even as she duly follows the Washington consensus to the letter.

And that brings us back to the ultra high stakes possibility that the Kremlin may have wanted from the start to go no holds barred, forcing the Atlanticists to reveal their true hand, and exposing their system in a “The King is Naked” spectacular for a worldwide audience.

And that’s where the EAEU/China new monetary/financial system comes in, under Glazyev supervision. We can certainly envision Russia, China and vast swathes of Eurasia progressively divorcing from casino capitalism; the ruble reconverted to a gold-backed currency; and Russia focused on self-sufficiency, productive domestic investment and trade connectivity with most of the Global South.

Way beyond its confiscated foreign reserves and tons of gold sold in London, what matters is that Russia remains the ultimate natural resource powerhouse. Shortages? A little austerity for a little while will take care of it: nothing as dramatic as the national impoverishment under the neoliberal 1990s. And extra boost would come from exporting natural resources at premium discount prices to other BRICS and most of Eurasia and the Global South.

The collective West has just fabricated a new, tawdry East-West divide. Russia is turning it upside down, to its own profit: after all the multipolar world is rising in the East.

The Empire of Lies won’t back down, because it does not have a Plan B. Plan A is to “cancel” Russia across the – Western – spectrum. So what? Russophobia, racism, 24/7 psyops, propaganda overdrive, cancel culture online mobs, that don’t mean a thing.

Facts matter: the Bear has enough nuclear/hypersonic hardware to shatter NATO in a few minutes before breakfast and teach a lesson to the collective West before pre-dinner cocktails. There will come a time when some exceptionalist with a decent IQ will finally understand the meaning of “indivisibility of security”.

South African president blames NATO for Russia-Ukraine war – The Jerusalem Post

SA sides w Russia

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Chinese girl

These are not evil nasty filthy people, like what is being portrayed in the Western “news”. They are just regular people. Like me. Like you. video 3MB

The Best Lasagna

It’s Spring in most of the world. That means that it’s too warm to make hot dishes, and too cold to make cold Summer dishes. But nothing quite fits the bill than a fine lasagna meal that you cook on a lazy weekend, because you don’t need to cut the grass, and you don’t need to shovel the sidewalks.

This is a great piece of inspiration. I hope that you all like it, and maybe you too will be as inspired as I am…

There’s something really great about layers of ground beef, pasta, delicious ricotta cheese mixture, a fine easy homemade marinara sauce, and more cheese in every hot and tasty bite.

There are a few classic Italian dishes that are popular with just about everyone in the ‘States. It’s a perfect sit-down dinner dish to share with family and friends. Or, just to scarf down while you are watching your favorite sitcom.

Comforting flavors of homemade tomato sauce, pasta, cheese, and beef makes every bite a delight. It’s a wonderful weekend dinner. And it’s a perfect thing to cook on the weekend as well.

This lasagna is amazing. It’s easy to make. Tastes great and really fills your belly deliciously.

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Lasagna.

Lasagna Tips:

This is just the opening salvo in moving the global "balance of power" from a Uni-polar one to a Multi-polar one.

The U$A has had it's way for decades, time for a change, and man o man, are they freaking out.

Noodles. When choosing pasta noodles, I recommend using oven-ready ones. It will be much easier and cut down on cooking steps and time.

No Cook or Instant Noodles can be used without pre-boiling (check the packet instructions first). You can assemble as normal. To ensure the pasta has enough liquid to cook through while the lasagna is baking, we normally add about 1/2 cup of water to our sauce when using INSTANT.

Pre Boil Or Pre Cook Pasta Sheets need to be boiled first before assembly. Follow the instructions on the packet. Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into the water to prevent the sheets from sticking together and stir them occasionally with a wooden spoon. Transfer each cooked lasagna sheet carefully into a large bowl or pot filled with cool water to help stop the cooking process. Leave them in there until ready to use. This helps prevent them from sticking together or drying out. You can do this while the meat sauce is gently simmering away so all elements are ready at the same time.

Layering. While layering pasta, have the sheets overlap by 1/2 to 1/4 inch. Remember, you can also break apart some pasta sheets in you need to cover small corners and gaps.

White Sauce. This is where things go from yeah, it’s okay TO oh-my-god-this-is-so-good! Some people just don’t use any ricotta cheese in their lasagna. Not because they don’t like ricotta, but because white sauce makes it so much more flavourful. You need only 4 ingredients to make this Béchamel happen:

      1. Butter
      2. Flour
      3. Milk
      4. Parmesan cheese. If you don’t like parmesan, replace it with Gruyere, Romano, Asiago, Manchego, or more Mozzarella.

Fat in the meat. Choose 85/15 meat to fat ratio of ground beef. It will result in a juicier and more tender beef layer. In the case of lasagna, the more fat the better. Let it cook long and hard. The fat will flavor the dish.

Sauce. When possible, make your own marinara sauce. It’s easy and it will make the world of difference in the taste. Marinara sauce can be made ahead of time or even frozen. Like all Italian – American dishes; make the components in batches and freeze for later use.

Oil the pan. Make sure to spray one side of aluminum foil with some spray cooking oil and cover the baking pan oiled side down. That will prevent cheese from sticking to the foil when you pull it off. I’ll tell you that it’s a real pain in the ass to scrub away cheese sticking to pans. You all don’t want that to happen.

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Delicious tasty lasagna.

From HERE. All credit. Bla-Bla.

Chinese girl

These are not evil nasty filthy people, like what is being portrayed in the Western “news”. They are just regular people. Like me. Like you. video 2MB

Can I freeze lasagna?

Yes, lasagna can absolutely be frozen and here is how to freeze lasagna.

If you are planning on freezing your lasagna, use an aluminum baking pan to prepare it. Use one 9×13 baking pan or two half the size.

Cook your ingredients and put it together in the pan right up until the baking step. Instead of baking it, freeze it.

Make sure to wrap the container as tightly as possible.

Properly stored, lasagna can last up to 6 months in the freezer.

To thaw lasagna, pull it from the freezer into the refrigerator and slow-thaw it there for 10-12 hours.

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Lasagna.

Bake as directed in the recipe but increase baking time under foil by 15-20 minutes since the lasagna will be cold going into the oven.

Ingredients

  • 4 1/2 cups marinara sauce (homemade or store-bought) divided
  • 8-10 oz oven ready lasagna sheets
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded Italian cheese mix topping
  • 1/2 tsp dry oregano topping
  • Lots and lots of mozzarella cheese.

Beef layer:

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 yellow onion diced
  • 1 1/2 lbs ground beef (85/15 or 90/10 meat to fat ratio)
  • 1/2 tsp dry oregano
  • 1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
  • salt
  • fresh cracked black pepper
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded Italian cheese mix

Ricotta layer:

  • 20 oz whole milk ricotta
  • 1 cup shredded Italian cheese mix
  • 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 tbsp minced fresh Italian parsley (or regular parsley)
  • 2 tbsp minced fresh basil
  • 1 tsp dry oregano
  • 1 egg
  • salt

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350 and grease 9×13 casserole dish.

Beef:

  • Preheat a medium cooking pan over medium heat.
  • Add oil and saute diced onion until transparent.
  • Add ground beef and cook, breaking up all the lumps, until just done. Season with salt, pepper, and oregano.
  • Once the meat is just done. Mix in 1 1/2 cups of marinara sauce and 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese. Set aside.

Ricotta:

  • Combine all ingredients for the ricotta layer in a mixing bowl and mix very well. Set aside.

Lasagna:

  • Spread 1 cup of marinara sauce over the bottom of the casserole dish. Make sure it’s spread evenly.
  • Layer lasagna noodles in one even layer. I like to overlap the pasta sheets just a little bit, 1/2 to 1/4 inch or so.
  • Spread beef mixture over the pasta sheets evenly. Spread 1 1/2 cups of shredded Italian cheese mix.
  • Layer lasagna noodles in one even layer. Again, you can overlap the pasta sheets just a little bit, 1/2 to 1/4 inch or so.
  • Spread 1 cup of marinara sauce over pasta sheets evenly.
  • Spread ricotta mixture evenly. Drop spoonfuls of ricotta mixture all over and use your hands to spread it in one even layer. (Of course, make sure your hands are clean.)
  • Layer lasagna noodles in one even layer. Overlap the pasta sheets just a little bit, 1/2 to 1/4 inch or so.
  • Spread 1 cup of marinara sauce over pasta sheets, evenly.
  • Spread 1 1/2 cups of shredded Italian cheese mix over the sauce evenly.
  • Sprinkle some oregano over the top.
  • Spray one side of aluminum foil sheet with cooking spray and cover the casserole dish with foil, oiled side down.
  • Bake covered for about 35 minutes.
  • Take off the foil and bake for another 10 minutes with it completely layered in mozzarella cheese.

Chinese girl

These are not evil nasty filthy people, like what is being portrayed in the Western “news”. They are just regular people. Like me. Like you. video 2MB

US F-35 and Chinese J-20 fighter jets had a close encounter over East China Sea: US general

F35 vs J20

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Chinese girl

These are not evil nasty filthy people, like what is being portrayed in the Western “news”. They are just regular people. Like me. Like you. video 3MB

Medvedev: Russia Has The Might To Put You In Your Place

Russia warned the United States on Thursday that Moscow had the might to put the world’s pre-eminent superpower in its place and accused the West of stoking a wild Russophobic plot to tear Russia apart.

Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said the United States had stoked “disgusting” Russophobia in an attempt to force Russia to its knees.

“It will not work – Russia has the might to put all of our brash enemies in their place,” Medvedev said.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the United States and its European and Asian allies have slapped sanctions on Russian leaders, companies and businessmen, cutting off Russia from much of the world economy.

President Vladimir Putin says that what he calls the special military operation in Ukraine was necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia and Russia had to defend against the “genocide” of Russian-speaking people by Ukraine.

Economic News

Translation from http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2022/03/this-is-important.html#disqus_thread

Translation: 

YEREVAN, March 14 – Sputnik. The member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China will develop a project for an independent international monetary and financial system. This was agreed upon by the participants in the economic dialogue “A New Stage of Monetary, Financial and Economic Cooperation between the EAEU and the PRC. Global Transformations: Challenges and Solutions”, which was held on March 11 via videoconference. It is envisaged that the system will be based on a new international currency, which will be calculated as an index of the national currencies of the participating countries and commodity prices. The first draft will be submitted for discussion by the end of March. As Sergei Glazyev, Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the EEC, emphasized, China was the first in the world to move to the stage of national economic recovery.

The background here is bigger.  This was noted by Godfree Roberts:

In two weeks, China, Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan will reveal a new, independent, international monetary and financial system.

It will be based on a new international currency, calculated from an index of national currencies of the participating countries and international commodity prices. [Mar. 14, 2022, Sputnik News].

Russia and China will also reveal their Unfriendly Nation Lists.

Reliable links are still hard to come by in general.

Tucker: The standard of living is plummeting

The buildup for civil collapse inside the United States is building. Prices are changing every three days. Americans are unhappy. Major changes in American lifestyle are happening switftly and the American government is oblivious. Their solution is to take the bus. Fine. If there were busses. Most of America is not serviced by bus lines.

This is hyper-inflation. This is what brings down nations.

Now, to be sure, inflation is a global issue, but it is ONLY the nations that rely on the USD that are building up towards an explosion. Only those nations. This includes all of the West, with America being the worst affected.

The pther nations in the world aren’t doing so bad.

Sure there’s inflation. But other nations monitor and controls the use of the USD in their global inports.There are strict laws and controls in bringing in and using the USD. Thus the rest of the world can control the adverse influences of the USD to their nations.

So hyper-inflation?

Not so in China. Not so in Russia. Not so in India.

Only in the West. And it is outrageous. It’s an excellent video. A great video. Check it out.

2022 03 19 10 04
2022 03 19 10 04

US Army veteran fighting in Ukraine says he went AWOL because it was a ‘trap’

From HERE. Exerpts…

...28-year-old Henry Hoeft, who served in the US Army Infantry before becoming a steelworker in Ohio, left earlier this month to fight in Ukraine.

...Hoeft described the situation for foreign volunteers, who are effectively used as poorly-equipped cannon fodder in order to draw Russians into ambushes carried out by Ukrainian forces.

...In addition, Russia does not consider the foreign volunteers to be lawful combatants, instead classifying them as “mercenaries.”

...Hoeft went on to discuss how his base was “f**ed up” by a Russian attack and that members of his unit were told to “get the f**k out” after they refused an order to defend Kiev with partially-filled magazines and inferior equipment.

...“Foreign mercenaries who were wounded in the #Volnovakha hospital were shot by their own before leaving the city so that they could not tell anything. 

..."All shot in the temple or the back of the head.

...According to The Intelligencer, many of the foreign volunteers are American, Canadian, and British.

Burger King in Russia will stay open

Burger King is trying to suspend its operations in Russia, but that’s proving difficult. A business partner controlling 800 restaurants has “refused” to close them, the company said.
The burger chain, owned by Restaurant Brands International (RBI), has a joint venture partnership with businessman Alexander Kolobov in Russia.

RBI controls just 15 per cent of its Russian Burger King business, and Kolobov is responsible for the "day-to-day operations and oversight" of its locations in the country.
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Nuke movement in the UK

This video is concerning. Six nukes were tracked and seen moving on open highways in Glasgow last night by people who seem to be in the intelligence loop and have been tracking them for while.

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Andrei Martyanov on “Does the US have a plan?”

He’s pretty good. He’s my go-to guy on the Russian point of view, and offer great military insight and sitrep on the Ukraine invasion. This particular video covers the Russian-China alliance, and a hard look at the United States “end game”.

The United States has NO idea what they are dealing with. It’s a great video that underlines what I have been saying for years.

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2022 03 19 08 16

Africa

Most members of the South African parliament, when asked to support NATO agaist Russia, responded by saying that they have never forgiven NATO for the bombing of Libya and killing President Ghadafi. 

They also pointed out that during Africa’s independence liberation struggle to get rid of NATO colonisers, it was the USSR (Russia) that gave African freedom fighters, unwavering support. 

Samora Macheal led a Russian supported revolt against the Portuguese in Mozambique, Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, led the Zimbabwe liberation war against the British supported by Russia, Sam Nujoma in Namibia fought against the British, Germans and USA supported by Russia and Cuba, Edwardos Do Santos fought a brutal war against Portugal supported by Russia and Cuba, Patrice Lumumba against, America, Beligian and the French supported by Russia and so did Kwame Nkuruma, Thomas Sankara, and many other examples. 

Africa cannot forsake Russia what so ever. 

I must point out that RT News which is broadcast by some government channels in Africa does not give a detailed coverage of Russia’s Special Operation. It gives scanty stories and does not counter western media propaganda. 

There is a massive support for Russia in Africa.

African leaders are scrapping around to find positive news about Russia’s progress. How can Russia not have its own communication satelite to carry its own television channels around the world?

History Lesson

History teaches that when you obliterate an enemy, they become your best friend.

The US firebombed and nuked the Japs, and they are the most enthusiastic ass-kissers of the US.

The Russians flattened Grozny, and the Chechens are their best buddies.

Just herd all the wannabe-Polak Russia-hating Ukrainians into Lvov, and the survivors–if any–will be fighting for Russia forever.

Weapons system surprises

The war has been a test of weapons systems, with some unexpected outcomes, Notably the deadly effectiveness of Swedish-designed anti-tank missiles.

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NLAWs

Ukraine Is Wrecking Russian Tanks With a Gift From Britain…

“The green tubes are called NLAWs, for Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons. They are the result of decades of weapons research dedicated to building small lightweight guided missiles that may have evened the balance of power in combat between the fearsome tank and the soldier.

“Compared to the American-made Javelin antitank weapon, which has been hailed by officials at the Pentagon and the White House and sent to Ukraine by the thousands, the NLAW weighs about half as much, costs far less, can be easily discarded, and is optimized for use in the relatively short-range fights Ukrainian soldiers are getting into with the invading Russian forces.

“The NLAW is a product of the Swedish company Saab and has been sold to a number of NATO countries — including Britain, which assembles the missiles at a factory in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the British Army. And although the British Army also has the Javelin, it began purchasing NLAWs about 10 years ago and has been sending them to Ukraine in ever greater numbers.” 

-Ukraine Is Wrecking Russian Tanks With a Gift From Britain

Boris returns from Saudi mission without pledge to boost oil supplies | Daily Mail Online

Boris Johnson visited Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia urging states to boost oil supplies to bring down prices.

The Gulf states will not increase their production to help the West.

The PM insisted he raised the issue of "human rights abuses" during talks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

UK fails

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Bulgaria said No. And citizens rallied…NATO Out” [with Videos]

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin traveled to Bulgaria on Saturday, where he met with Prime Minister Kiril Petkov to discuss the Ukrainian crisis and apparently asked Sofia to provide military aid to Kiev. The Bulgarian PM said no.

Bulgarian citizens rallied on Saturday against giving its “few remaining weapons” to Ukraine and demanded the withdrawal of NATO from the country.

Demonstrators gathered in front of the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense, where Austin and Petkov met for a joint press conference, waving Bulgarian and Russian flags. They were heard chanting,  “NATO Out.”

Similar protests took place in Rome and Piza, Italy, where activists of a major Italian trade union, USB, opposed sending weapons to Ukraine and called on the government to ditch NATO.[.]

Bulgarian NO

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Ship carrying German cars sinks off Iran

Amazing how unluckly Germans are with shipping their cars. This makes the third sinking in four weeks. What bad luck.

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2022 03 20 21 46

All carrying German expensive, high end vehicles. What a coincidence!

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2022 03 20 21 43

Foreign Desk News

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CBS News

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Action at Lvov

Russian paratroopers have seized the airport.

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2022 03 20 21 20

ASB Military News

$400 million worth of Western supplied weaponry destroyed in a single russian strike on the military base near Lvov — radio intercepted comms suggest that 267 foreign mercenaries have been killed in the strike.

50 year old Peter from Austria who fought alongside the “international legion of Ukraine” said that 800 to 1000 foreign mercenaries were present during the strike.

Around 400 mercenaries were evacuated to Poland, many of whom have suffered severe burns & torn limbs from the Kalibr strike.

There’s a high number of missing individuals still under the rubble which includes a high number of Americans, Poles and Romanians. Former NATO officers are Amongst the dead.

Lvov

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Sunday Evening SURGE in “Commercial” Air Flights OUT of Moscow and St. Petersburg Russia

From Hal Turner.

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2022 03 21 10 11

mRNA injections and premature death?

I don’t want to be a “gloomy gus” but…

Whats going on?

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Why did the war happen?

Question– Is there a justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

Answer– Yes, there is. Russia was being threatened by developments in Ukraine, so it told Ukraine to either stop what it was doing or suffer the consequences. Ukraine chose to ignore those warnings, so Russia invaded. That is basically what happened.

Chinese reaction to Russia

Chinese netizens have bought basically everthing (chocolate candies, vodka, Russian sausages and bread, etc.) out from the Russia’s official online shop on one of China’s biggest e-coomerce platforms. 

The Russian manager of the online shop has to tell the enthusiastic Chinese customers to “shop rationally”.

Interesting chat.

“Most people don’t know this. The SWIFT system when it was created was a way for you to settle things – an international protocol, secure bank to bank how you send money, AND IT WAS PROMISED AT THAT TIME, THE US SAID: “WE WILL NEVER USE THIS FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES”.

“The old world order is trembling as the Russians march across the Ukrainian border. Is Putin just another time bomb that has lost his mind, or it’s because NATO pushed the Russians too hard?

Thousands of miles away from the battlefield, some cast their sights on China, pressuring it [to contain] its neighbor in the north. Dr Charles Liu [talks to] his friend, Einar Tangen. They might have spoken softly, but the points they carry [should] never [be missed].”

They cover, inter-alia:
◉ the NATO eastward expansion despite earlier guarantees given to the contrary by Howard Baker (then Secretary of State of the US);

◉ Putin speaking in 1991 in the German language in Berlin, addressing everybody and saying Russia wants to be part of Europe, and then 6 years later in 1997, he gets up at the Munich Security Conference saying: “You’ve cheated us, you’ve humiliated us, you expanded;
◉ how Western press is parroting that “China is providing support for Russia” by buying Russian gas and oil but ignores how Germany and Europe buy it;
◉ how the US / EU has held back a big block of conditions vis-à-vis the sanctions on Russia because they need to buy the oil and gas of Russia; sanctions on 12 out of 230 banks in Russia;
◉ the Ukraine situation before the war, where in the 1990’s and in a span of less than 7 years, the country lost 60% of their GDP, corruption was rife; the hypocrisy in the democratic practices where there was interference in the election of the new government in Ukraine;
◉ how “THE US IS LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR THE NEXT ROUND, AND THE NEXT ROUND IS GOING TO BE FOCUSED ON CHINA, beating up Russia is one thing but if Russia is weakened through this conflict, the next target is of course China”
◉ China’s support for Russia stems from China’s need for energy; Russia is part of the Eurasian landmass in line with the Belt & Road Initiative and the Eurasian growth objectives; the strategic assessment of China that Putin is unlikely to bow down to America.
◉ The efforts by the US to stymy the growth of the semiconductor industry in China, how the US accuses the Chinese of being autocratic but yet it is the US that holds on to “might is right” including invading countries, etc.. – “all a matter of big your fist is”.

Click here for the VIDEO:

Video

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Fighting the crazies

From Pat…()

On Jan. 20, 2021, Joe Biden took an oath:

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

And when the issue arose as to whether he, as president and commander in chief, would transfer MiG-29s to Ukrainians fighting Russians for their independence and freedom, Joe Biden said no.

“The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand, don’t kid yourself, no matter what y’all say, that’s called World War III,” Biden told House Democrats in Philadelphia.

Biden was saying that, no matter how noble the cause or how just the war Ukrainians are fighting, his first duty is to America. And as president of the United States, he will put U.S. national interests first and not risk a war with the largest nuclear power on earth.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s reaction:

Biden runs “the most timid, cowardly and pathetic administration in modern American history.”

If our “enormous capacity” and “very competent people … were unleashed,” said Gingrich, “we would…end up defeating Putin, and he would end up being ousted from power by his own government. But instead, we are intimidated by him. We allow him to get away with war crimes.”

In this Ukraine war, Gingrich is the interventionist, and Biden is putting his own country, America, first. On this one, put me down with Joe.

GOP Sen. Marco Rubio has also spoken out for America First:

A no-fly zone “means flying AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control Systems) 24 hours a day. 

That means the willingness to shoot down and engage Russian airplanes in the sky. 

That means, frankly, you can’t put those planes up there unless they’re willing to knock out the anti-aircraft systems that the Russians have deployed, and not just in Ukraine, but in Russia and also in Belarus.

“So basically a no-fly zone … means World War III. 

It means starting World War III. 

It’s not some rule you pass that everybody has to oblige by. 

It’s the willingness to shoot down the aircrafts of the Russian Federation, which is basically the beginning of World War III.”

While the threat to the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine may be an existential one for that nation, it is no such peril to our nation.

35 percent of Americans support nuclear war with Russia…

Vault 7, or “shit for brains”?

Pew Polling

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Demand for Safe Rooms Skyrockets in Los Angeles

Amid crime concerns, wealthy homeowners seek to install panic rooms, with some steel-encased versions running up to $1 million to build while one Malibu project included a secret tunnel out to the beach. From HERE.

Our influx of inquiries has increased more than 1,000 percent over the past three months,” says Dean Cryer, vp international operations at Building Consensus/Panic Room Builders, a firm specializing in the building of safe rooms. “It’s gone insane.”

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2022 03 21 10 19

Because of the perceived increase in crime in metropolitan areas and high-profile murders and robberies in high-net-worth neighborhoods like Beverly Hills, “hidden rooms are definitely trending right now,” says Cryer.

In the L.A. area, some houses selling for as low as $4 million or $5 million are being kitted out, particularly spec homes. “I think they are not something that, in an immediate sense, increases value,” says Douglas Elliman real estate agent Greg Holcomb. “But when a buyer is interested in the house anyway, I think it does help [boost interest].”

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39037ea1 942a 47bf be09 881386a7e544 140913OMH 203

Real estate agents, though, can never tell casual buyers or appraisers the exact location of a safe room. Often, they can’t mention its existence at all until the property is under contract. “You never know who’s potentially casing a house. The last thing you want to do is show them, ‘Here’s the panic room, and here’s how you access it,’ ” says Jon Grauman of The Agency.

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2022 03 21 10 29 6

Holcomb likewise has had to keep mum. “We once had a property and an appraiser come and was measuring the home, and they could not figure out why there was this kind of dead space,” he says. “And we weren’t allowed to tell them what it was. They just had to assume it was dead space, when in fact behind a secret panel was a safe room.”

Secret lifting staircase. Right out of the television show “The Addams Family”…

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2022 03 21 10 25

In business for 25 years, Building Consensus/Panic Room (which consulted on the 2002 movie Panic Room) builds various safe spaces ranging in security levels from one through eight. Safe rooms at level three may be protected with Kevlar, while a level eight is encased in thick steel.

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2022 03 21 10 28 5

“Just the doors can be 2,000 to 3,000 pounds,” says Cryer. “And then we’re installing steel within the room. So, we’re generating up to 10,000 pounds in a room.”

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2022 03 21 10 20

Prices range greatly. “You could kit out a small closet for about $100,000, $150,000. And then it’s north of there. We’ve done one in London that had two rooms, full suites … and that was over a million dollars,” says Cryer, who says the company’s client base consists mostly of billionaires.

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2022 03 21 10 28 4

Most rooms are opened with biometrics, usually a finger or retina scan secreted behind a bookcase or hidden wall, and come equipped with panic buttons that automatically call security services.

large Covert Interiors IMG 02012
large Covert Interiors IMG 02012

Cryer says the firm collaborates with security guards and former officials in law enforcement to constantly improve impregnability.

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2022 03 21 10 21

There also is an emphasis on comfort. “It’s gone from a steel, cold room where it’s a bunch of cameras,” Cryer says. “Now it’s more of a serene feeling.

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Safe room.

We say it’s an everyday use room, which when needed can be turned into a safe haven. So, you wouldn’t know what room in the house was the safe room. You wouldn’t have a clue.”

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2022 03 21 10 24

Some safe rooms are designed with all the benefits of an upscale den. “We’ve seen some of them be fitted with a bathroom, some with outlets for cable TV [and] surround sound,” says The Agency’s Emil Hartoonian.

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Safe tent for a bioweapon attack.

Some also are used as storage rooms for valuables, and the fanciest safe rooms have toilets and HVAC systems separate from the rest of the house.

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2022 03 21 10 28 3

“Within the room itself, you could be in there for up to 24 hours. I mean, it depends where you are in the world. And in most of L.A., you could be waiting a couple of hours before the police get to you,” Cryer says.

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2022 03 21 10 22

Some panic room owners are not waiting on the police to arrive, instead taking matters into their own hands. Hartoonian recalls one house he saw in Hidden Hills. “I think there was more artillery in there than probably one of the bunkers of the U.S. Army,” he says. “There were packs of food that wouldn’t go bad for two years.

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2022 03 21 10 50

Television, microwave, small bathroom … I mean, it was like a little self-sufficient, almost studio apartment, if you will. Ready to take on the zombie apocalypse.”

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2022 03 21 10 27 2

Other buyers are not just interested in staying safe within their homes — they are intent on being able to get out. “We’ve even done bunkers and tunnels. We’ve done a project out in Malibu.

1213981 022216 panicrooms
1213981 022216 panicrooms

They wanted a secret tunnel out to the beach. So they could escape, like a secret bunker,” Cryer says.

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2022 03 21 10 23

Currently on the market in Pacific Palisades is a six-bedroom, 9,100-square-foot home, listed for $6.995 million with Farah Levi of The Agency, with a safe room that was converted into a screening room. The safe room was installed by a previous owner who was a legal arms dealer.

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2022 03 21 10 27

Says Levi, “Our current sellers are the ones who converted the safe room into the theater. My client is in the entertainment business and wanted a great theater in their home, and they felt this was the perfect solution. They spent approximately $150,000 on the theater conversion.”

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A safe room from Gaffco

The room has 3-inch-thick steel doors that can close automatically. That feature is still possible should it be necessary at some point. The Retina scan is still operational and can be used to close and open doors; it is no longer registered with the FBI.”

2022 03 21 10 2d3
2022 03 21 10 2d3

No one sees the trend in luxe safe rooms ending anytime soon, as security concerns increase and the focus on amenities becomes more important. As Grauman notes, particularly in spec development, the “name of the game is differentiation,” he says. “Panic rooms are just going to be one of those amenities that gets tacked on to every list of, ‘OK, every new home moving forward above x price point must have this.’ “

Hum.

Very interesting points of view from both the buyers, and the salespeople. No one is looking at the real SHTF, or REAL crime. You won’t be a waiting some 12 hours for the police to arrive, so much as hoping that your home isn’t burned to the ground, or that a squad of Hell Angels bikers don’t take it over.

Chinese working together

Firemen ask for help. Everyone leaves their homes and goes forth to contribute. Rufus. There is nothing like this is America. video 3MB

Shaken Foreign Volunteers Flee Ukraine After Base Hit by Russian Cruise Missiles — Ex-Marine Reports

“Bro I had fucking thirteen cruise missiles drop on me this morning. We were at the mercy of Russian warplanes.”

Money in America

From Hal Turner

For what it's worth . . .

1.) ALL pennies 1982 or older (obviously wheat, and Indian Head pennies have a greater numismatic value), but an average 1982 or older are 95% copper and 5% zinc. TRASH anything after '82 because it's close to the opposite amalgamation (copper coated zinc).

Those '82 pennies are worth $.0307 EACH! Imagine a penny being worth 3 cents! SAVE 'EM FOLKS!

2.) ALL Nickels 2014 and older, because of the increase in the price of nickel recently are worth almost TWICE their face value.
$1.00 of these are currently worth $1.73!

I find it funny that MOST stores currently have a "change shortage".

I think the government is culling as many of these coins as possible, artificially creating this "shortage" while they replace the valuable coins with worthless pieces of SHIT.

NOTE: There are only 2 US coins that are not allowed to be melted down. 1 is the penny, the other is the nickel. (I smell a rat here.)

The ONLY saving grace is you're allowed to melt them down for scientific purposes or demonstrations.

I will personally be SCIENCING the SHIT out of my neighborhood!

Hope this helps if even a bit.

Reference: www.coinflation.com (base metal melt value calculation)

China Tells US They Don’t Care About the Ukraine, Don’t Want to be Badgered with Moral Lectures

Dear Elitists: China is not Andrew Anglin, and they’re not Alex Jones.

You can’t just declare a media war against them, organize a social media moral panic against them, and have them silenced.

Sorry!

It doesn’t work that way.

Attempting to implement domestic moral shaming techniques against the Chinese government actually just makes you look pathetic and weird. I mean, the Distinguished Mr. Jones and myself both believe your moral crusades against us were pathetic and weird, but hey – they worked. You had the ability to unilaterally sanction Anglin and Jones.

But unlike Anglin and Jones, China is a global superpower. You’re going to have to do more than launch a moral shaming campaign in the media.

After weeks of badgering, China just told the US government that they don’t care about the Ukraine, and that US officials are welcome to cry about it.

RT:

 Beijing maintains an “independent” stance on the Ukraine crisis, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, said during a press conference on Friday. The remark came in response to threats made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who warned China on Thursday that Washington would “impose costs” on it should Beijing choose to support Moscow.

Lijian stated that “on the Ukraine issue, China has always acted objectively and impartially and made independent judgments based on the merits of the matter itself.” 

Most Chinese statement ever?

 The Chinese diplomat also stressed that pressure from Washington would not make Beijing change its stance. He added that some US officials were still trying to spread disinformation regarding China’s position – something Lijian described as irresponsible and not conducive to the resolution of the crisis.

In China’s view, the US ought to “seriously reflect on its role in the Ukraine crisis,” as well as “earnestly assume its due responsibilities.” Lijian also called on Washington to “take practical actions to ease the situation and solve the problem, rather than continue to add fuel to the fire.” 

Yeah.

Why did you throw that revolution in the country in 2014? Then why did you encourage leaders in the Ukraine to disregard the Minsk agreements and continue to bombard Russians living in the Ukraine?

Why did you continue to send munitions to those  neo-Nazi groups doing the bombarding?

Furthermore, to Lijian’s second point: why are you continuing to refuse to even discuss diplomacy, and instead shipping billions in weaponry to the Ukraine?

Lijian posted this to Twitter today:

#NATO Expansion pic.twitter.com/YiAQcvJvmR

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 18, 2022

A few days ago, he posted this:

"Reaping the world" with dollar hegemony? How far can the U.S. go? pic.twitter.com/oFstcrKuHZ

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 16, 2022

He posts consistently about the US bio warfare program.

What is the #US hiding in the biolabs in #Ukraine? pic.twitter.com/d6PUjOcBir

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 18, 2022

He even posts the same memes we post here.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that when the West talks about the "int'l community", they mean: pic.twitter.com/RZNOwDymX2

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 17, 2022

He’s not some dumbass writer for Salon.

The government/media have this massive censorship machine domestically, which they can use to claim that Putin invaded Ukraine because he is pure evil. They can refuse to mention the fact that Putin has offered to completely withdraw the military and let Zelensky remain in power if he agrees to neutrality. But the rest of the world is not the captive audience of CNN, Fox News, and Twitter.

 On Friday, US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will hold talks via telephone, with the Ukraine crisis high on the agenda. Biden is expected to repeat warnings made earlier by Blinken regarding any possible actions China may take to “support Russia’s aggression.”

On Thursday, China’s Commerce Ministry spokesperson, Gao Feng, made it clear that China opposed “any form of unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law.” According to the official, such punitive measures “not only fail to resolve security issues, but also harm the lives of ordinary people, disrupt global markets, and make the world’s already slowing economy even worse.” 

The Chinese are officially the adults in the room, due to their autistic like ability to simply state the obvious.

 The statement came hard on the heels of Jake Sullivan’s warning to China on Sunday, in which Joe Biden’s national security adviser cautioned that Beijing would “absolutely” face consequences should it help Moscow evade Western sanctions. 

What do these threats even mean?

Is the US going to attempt to implement the same sanctions they’ve put against Russia on China?

How does everyone think that would work out – banning all Western import of Chinese goods?

Then, according to this new Russian model, they would have to sanction every country that continues to do business with China, which is the whole world.

It is not hyperbolic to state that the current path of the US appears to be towards building an Iron Curtain around America and EU/NATO countries. Because these people in Washington believe they have the ability to totally dominate every country on earth with bullying – they think every country on earth is Iraq – they are setting the stage for them to be completely isolated on the world stage.

At some point, even EU/NATO countries are going to be looking for the exit, as it is clear that this ship is absolutely sinking.

Russia just did tit-for-tat sanctions.

This is from various press releases as the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs site is down, and so far this cannot be confirmed at source :

Appearing at the top of the 13-name list is President Biden, followed by Blinken and Austin. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, CIA Director William Burns, and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki are also named. Further down the list, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Biden’s son Hunter – whose dealings with a Ukrainian energy firm have previously been questioned and criticized – are also included.

Inclusion on the list denies any of these people entry into the Russian Federation. However, the Kremlin’s statement said that Moscow would not rule out contact with American officials “if they meet our national interests.”

More names will be added to the list “in the near future,” the statement continued, warning that “top US officials, military officials, lawmakers, businessmen, experts and media personalities who are Russophobic or contribute to inciting hatred towards Russia” will also be blacklisted.

Update on Sanctions:

Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau

and

Russia has officially withdrawn from the Council of Europe.

2nd Update on Sanctions from the Russian Foreign Ministry

 17:37

Foreign Ministry statement concerning personal sanctions on US senior officials and affiliated persons
513-15-03-2022

In response to a series of unprecedented sanctions that prohibit, among other things, entry to the United States for top officials of the Russian Federation, starting March 15, the Russian stop list includes, on the basis of reciprocity, President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, as well as several agency heads and other prominent US figures.

This step, taken as a response measure, is the inevitable result of the extreme Russophobic policy of the current US Administration.

Obviously, it is an attempt to maintain American global leadership.

As such, it has abandoned any sense of decorum and placed its bets on the head-on containment of Russia.

The list of US citizens included in the stop list is as follows:

1. Joseph Robinette Biden;

2. Antony John Blinken;

3. Lloyd James Austin III;

4. Mark Alexander Milley;

5. Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan, National Security Advisor;

6. William Joseph Burns, Director of the CIA;

7. Jennifer Rene Psaki, White House Press Secretary;

8. Daleep Singh, Deputy National Security Advisor;

9. Samantha Jane Power, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development;

10. Robert Hunter Biden, son of the US President;

11. Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, former US presidential candidate;

12. Adewale Adeyemo, US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury;

13. Reta Jo Lewis, President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.

More announcements will be made soon concerning the expansion of the sanctions list to include other top US officials, military leaders, lawmakers, business executives, experts and media personalities who promote Russophobia or contribute to inciting hatred of Russia or imposing restrictive measures.

These actions will be taken in harmony with the major decisions of the Government of the Russian Federation in finance, banking and other areas to protect the Russian economy and ensure its stable development.

US Space Foundation

A report by Elijah Magnier:

The level of idiocy is beyond any limit:

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space, has been stripped of his honours by the #US Space Foundation “in light of current world events".

Proof: The US Created and Weaponized COVID in Ukraine and Georgia as a ‘First Step’

️An analysis of the information received indicates that Ukrainian specialists are not aware of the potential risks of transferring biomaterials.

Here is a document dated March 6, 2015, confirming the Pentagon’s direct participation in the financing of military biological projects in Ukraine.

️According to established practice, American projects in the field of sanitation in third countries, including in Africa and Asia, are funded through national health authorities.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the agreement on joint biological activities was concluded between the US Military Department and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. However, the real recipient of funds are the laboratories of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence located in Kiev, Odessa, Lvov and Kharkov. The total funding amounted to $32 million.

️It is no coincidence that these biolabs were chosen by the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the contractor company Black & Veatch as the executors of the UP-8 project aimed at studying the pathogens of the Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis and hantaviruses.

USA made COVID

.

China helping Africa

Not at all reported in the Western “news”. China is helping and rebuilding Africa. Cities and ports going up full and complete. Video

Here comes China (and they don’t stop for shit!)

By Amarynth for the Saker Blog and collaborating with Godfree Roberts’ Newsletter, Here Comes China

Biden / Xi Summit.

In perfect Chinese diplomatic terms, it looks like business as usual. Taken outside of the perfect diplomatic terms, it is a true spanking.

Let’s take one paragraph only and remember a few things first:

Washington, as usual, threatened and danced something like the haka and warned Xi not to support Russia in any way or the consequences would be dire for China. 

Washington threatened with equally applied sanctions and other dire unmentionables.  

Apparently, Washington can support who it wants, but China is in some form prohibited from exactly that.  

Hypocritically they want it both ways.  That era is over.

A few hours before the ‘summit’, China had a perfectly normal sail-by through the Taiwan Straits of their aircraft carrier Shandong.  Yes, this is ‘likely routine’ says their spox.  Sure, it was highly likely just routine.  It must have been a wonderful day for the Shandong to take a little sail through the Taiwan Straits.

A few hours before the ‘summit’ Global times had an interview with an unnamed official.  (Is China playing the US game here by not naming the official?).

This is the take-away:

“The international community can fairly judge who is frank and open and who is up to something, who is easing the situation and who is aggravating tension, who is promoting peace talks and who is pouring fuel on the fire, and who is maintaining peace and stability and who is provoking confrontations between blocs.”

Xi Jinping made a pre-summit statement:

Countries should not come to the point of meeting on the battlefield. 

Conflict and confrontation are not in anyone’s interest. 

Peace and security are what the international community should treasure the most.

So, this is the milieu that Biden walked into at the online summit.  We must know by now what this is all about.

None of the boring line-up of US representatives could bend China to their will to support sanctions against Russia, so, time for a Presidential Summit to yet again attempt to split China and Russia.

This is how perfectly ridiculous this attempt is:

Can you help me fight your friend so that I can concentrate on fighting you later?

Here is how it went:

President Biden expounded on the US position and expressed readiness for communication with China to prevent the situation from exacerbating.

Simply said:

How can we make a deal so that the US/Nato alliance remains a unipolar world and all others (including you) must be subservient.

President Xi pointed out that China does not want to see the situation in Ukraine to come to this. China stands for peace and opposes war. This is embedded in China’s history and culture.

Simply said:

Hey Biden, mistake number one!  You do not know who you are talking to, but now I’m going to tell you...

[1] China makes a conclusion independently based on the merits of each matter.

[2] China advocates upholding international law and universally recognized norms governing international relations.

[3] China adheres to the UN Charter and promotes the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security. These are the major principles that underpin China’s approach to the Ukraine crisis.

[4] China has put forward a six-point initiative on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, and is ready to provide further humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and other affected countries.

[5] All sides need to jointly support Russia and Ukraine in having dialogue and negotiation that will produce results and lead to peace.

Simply stated:

 This is the crux of the matter and seemingly you are unable to grasp it!

The continue…

The US and NATO should also have dialogue with Russia to address the crux of the Ukraine crisis and ease the security concerns of both Russia and Ukraine.

Message:

Go away and take your position and money with you!  

You had your opportunity and you became a warmaker, coercing others to your will.  

Enough is enough!  

We have principles, law and morals and ethical standards.  

You hold on to ‘positions’ favorable to you only.

China is active in the EU as well and the discussion does not remain dry and diplomatically correct. 

China is playing into its strengths, saying what is correct in terms of its own national interest and it happens to co-incide with that of the non-insane world.

The spokespeople are highly educated, clear, exceptionally well-spoken, and smart.   They also mercilessly dig in the knife when opportunity shows.  In a recent press conference.  CCTV:

US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said that the US is concerned about Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure which caused civilian casualties. 

However, China has yet to state its position explicitly. 

How does the foreign ministry view such criticism from other countries on China?

Zhao Lijian:

Human lives are precious. 

Civilian casualties under all circumstances are heart-rending and lamentable. 

China has all along called for every effort to avoid civilian casualties. 

We still remember that in March 1999, the US-led NATO, without the Security Council’s mandate, flagrantly unleashed a ruthless bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for 78 days, killing at least 2,500 innocent civilians and injuring around 10,000 people, most of them civilians. 

Over the past two decades or so, the US conducted tens of thousands of air strikes in places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. 

The number of innocent civilians killed can be anywhere between 22,000 and 48,000. 

When professing its concern for the welfare of the Ukrainian people, shouldn’t the US first express concern over the civilian casualties caused by all these military operations?

I particularly enjoyed this vignette:

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that any support to Russia, military or any other type of support, would actually help Russia conduct a brutal war against an independent sovereign nation, Ukraine, and help them to continue to wage war which is causing death, suffering and an enormous amount of destruction.

This was the comment of the Chinese spokesperson:

Chinese people can fully relate to the pains and sufferings of other countries because we will never forget who bombed our embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.  

China does not need a lecture on justice from the abuser of international law. 

As a Cold War remnant and the world’s largest military alliance, NATO continues to expand its geographical scope and range of operations. 

What kind of role has it played in world peace and stability? 

NATO needs to have a good reflection.

Currency

Against this backdrop, the news filtered out about The Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China designing a new monetary and financial system bypassing the U.S. dollar.

It is being supervised by Sergei Glazyev and intended to compete with the Bretton Woods system which is now less than 50% of the currency flow in the world.

While news is still very scarce on this front, it fulfilled the purpose of telling Biden once again to go away if US/NATO cannot be a serious contender to building a peaceful and prosperous world.

Godfree Roberts, in his last newsletter, did an overview of the major historical milestones.  I am not sure if the concept of a special drawing rights fiat currency revaluated regularly against a basket of currencies will be the way this rolls out.  Stand by!  Much more incoming!  We will see.

DOLLAR’S END – Farewell, Inordinate Privilege

2022 03 20 11 54
Goodbye USD.

 

  • Credit Suisse analyst Zoltan Pozsar says Ukraine triggered a perfect storm in commodities that could weaken the Eurodollar system, contribute to inflation in Western economies, and threaten their financial stability. Pozsar said China’s central bank is uniquely placed to backstop such crisis, paving the way for a much stronger yuan. Reuters, Mar. 13, 2022.
  • Saudi Arabia Considers Accepting Yuan Instead of Dollars for Chinese Oil Sales: Talks between Riyadh and Beijing have accelerated as the Saudi unhappiness grows with Washington. WSJ, Mar. 14, 2022

–o0o–

In 2009, after helping to rescue the US from the GFC, Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the Peoples Bank of China, said,

“The world needs an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and able to remain stable in the long run, removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.”

After helping rescue America from the GFC, PBOC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan observed,

“The world needs an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and able to remain stable in the long run, removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.”

Zhou proposed SDRs, Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic reserve currency dynamically revalued against a basket of trading currencies and commodities. Broad, deep, stable, and impossible to manipulate.

Nobelists Fred Bergsten, Robert Mundell, and Joseph Stieglitz approved:

“The creation of a global currency would restore a needed coherence to the international monetary system, give the IMF a function that would help it to promote stability and be a catalyst for international harmony”.  

Here’s what’s happened since:

2012: Beijing began valuing the yuan against a currency/commodity basket

2014: The IMF issued the first SDR loan

2016: The World Bank issued the first SDR bond

2017: Standard Chartered Bank issued the first commercial SDR notes.

2019: All central banks began stating currency reserves in SDRs

Mar. 14, 2022:

“In two weeks, China and the Eurasian Economic Union – Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan – will reveal an independent international monetary and financial system. It will be based on a new international currency, calculated from an index of national currencies of the participating countries and international commodity prices”.

The currency resembles Keynes’ invention Special Drawing Rights.

SDRs are a  synthetic currency which derives its value from a global, publicly traded basket of currencies and commodities. Immense beyond imaging, and stable as the Pyramids. Everyone gets a seat at the table and a vote. It may eventually be administered by an arm of the UN.

SDRs pose a serious alternative to the US dollar, both for the EAEU, the BRI’s 145 member states, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), ASEAN, and the RCEP.

Middle East countries, including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, are keenly interested.

Less well known is that the EAEU, the BRI, the SCO, ASEAN, and the RCEP were discussing a merger before the currency news hit.

It is reasonable to expect them to join this new, cooperatively managed, stable reserve currency regime in which they can settle their trades in stable, neutral, predictable SDRs.

Biological labs

China is not losing any opportunity to bring this front and center.  This is their last list of questions:

      • If the concerns are “disinformation”, why doesn’t the U.S. release detailed materials to prove its innocence? – Question by Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine.
      • What did the U.S. spend the $200 million on? – Question by Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine.
      • What kind of research has the U.S. conducted on which pathogens? – Question by Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine.
      • What is it trying to hide when the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine deleted all relevant documents on its website? – Question by Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine.
      • Why does the U.S. insist on being the only country in the world to oppose the establishment of a multilateral verification mechanism though it claims to abide by the Biological Weapons Convention? – Question by Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine.
      • This is quite an amazing poster detailing the biolab web, which is too large to load here.  But take a look at the depiction of these US biolabs.  https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1255055.shtml

Economic goals in a nutshell

2022 03 20 12 01
2022 03 20 12 01

 

What is happening with Belt and Road?

About the data:

On January 21, 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) released its data for “China’s investments and cooperation in countries along the Belt and Road” covering the period of January to December 2021.

According to these data, Chinese enterprises invested about US$20.3 billion in non-financial direct investments in countries “along the Belt and Road”.

Furthermore, there were 560 newly signed projects with a contract value of over US$100 million.

The MOFCOM data focus on 55 countries that are “along the Belt and Road” – meaning on a corridor from China to Europe including South Asia.

For this report, the definition of BRI countries includes 142 countries that had signed a cooperation agreement with China to work under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative by the end of 2021.

To analyze investments in these countries, we base our data on the China Global Investment Tracker and our own data research at the Green Finance & Development Center affiliated with Fudan University, Shanghai. As with most data, they tend to be imperfect.

Chinese joke

On a somewhat of a lighter note:

The Chinese Netizens are in the majority siding with Russia so completely and so enthusiastically, that China’s WeChat and Douyin had to crack down on vulgar jokes and netizens were told in no uncertain terms that they cannot make fun of international news events.  The very high support for Russia is becoming a clear talking point despite the somewhat muted and correct Chinese diplomatic statements.

So, here is a joke for you.

Bear and Dragon take a walk in the gardens.  

Bear is a little overcome with his serious responsibilities in the world and presents emotionally somewhat tired and despondent.  

As the walk proceeds, Dragon says to Bear .. Out with it!  What has you so despondent?  

Bear thinks a moment and says:  We’ve been friends for a long time.  So, if I need a very large amount of money very quickly, will you give it to me?

Dragon, known for taking time to ponder the imponderables, walks on for a while and then comes to a firm stop.  

NO, says Dragon, I will not give it to you!

Bear’s shoulders fall .. but Dragon continues:  

I will lend it to you.  1.5 trillion the moment you ask for it, no interest, no repayment terms, pay me back when you can.

Another China-Russia joke

Bear walks into Dragon’s fabulous temple of goods. 

Bear is overwhelmed, and asks, timidly, 

“I need some of you wonderful items. All I have is rubles. Can you sell me some?” 

Rubles!” cries Dragon. 

“Your rubles are no good here! And I will turn my back on you for asking such an absurd thing and NOT turn around until you have left the temple. The Shopping carts are over there.”

From Russian MOD.

During a special military operation, an employee of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) Main Directorate for Donetsk and Lugansk regions voluntarily surrendered to Russian servicemen.

▫️This officer was directly involved in organizing the training of sabotage and terrorist groups to work in areas liberated from the nationalists.

▫️The SSU officer provided detailed information regarding all persons involved in conducting sabotage activities on the territory of Donbass.

▫️I bring to the attention of all persons recruited by the SSU that voluntary renunciation of criminal activity and timely notification of it to law enforcement agencies releases from criminal liability.

▫️In addition, the SSU officer reported on terrorist acts planned by militants of the nationalist Azov battalion in Lvov against employees and facilities of diplomatic missions of the United States and other Western countries.

▫️I want to emphasize that the leadership of the Kiev regime is aware of the plans of the nationalists, but does not take any action to prevent their implementation.

▫️The Kiev nationalist regime plans to present attacks on diplomatic facilities of the United States and Western countries as an alleged targeted attack by the Russian Armed Forces.

▫️The main purpose of the provocation is to increase pressure on NATO countries to introduce a no-fly zone over Ukraine and provide additional weapons.

Chinese girl

These are not evil nasty filthy people, like what is being portrayed in the Western “news”. They are just regular people. Like me. Like you. video 4MB

Bio-World War 3! Has It Already Started?

Kevin Barrett interviews Ron Unz.

Russia and China have accused the US of riddling Ukraine—and the world—with biological weapons. Both nations are echoing (between the lines) Iran’s charge that the US unleashed the COVID-19 pandemic in a botched biological attack on Wuhan and Qom. Are we already in the middle of BioWW3?!

Bio-War III

.

Russia uses a Hyper-velocity missile to destory a Ukraine warehouse

Kinzhal, which means ‘dagger’ in English, was used by the Russian military for the first time since the start of the Ukrainian conflict on February 24.

Those munitions are said to be able to penetrate any existing air defenses by traveling at a whopping speed of up to Mach 10 and constantly maneuvering during their flight.

Kinzhal missiles are carried by MiG-31K supersonic interceptor aircraft, which NATO calls ‘Foxhound’.

The hardware is one of several hypersonic systems prepared for the country’s military in recent years, together with the Avangard glider, which is fitted on silo-based ICBMs, and Zircon (Tsirkon) missiles, developed for the navy.

2022 03 20 19 35
2022 03 20 19 35

This warehouse was full of the latest high-technology weapons delivered by NATO and the United States to attack Russia.

This was a high-value target of great importance.

Because it was so well defended with American anti-aircraft and misslile defenses, the Russians used the Kinzhal aviation missile system (Hyper-velocity missile) that is immune to Western air defenses.

2022 03 20 19 33
2022 03 20 19 33

Read about it here…

The UK Sun

.

Veterns Today

.

Got a Little Surprise at 2:45 AM . . .

.

At about 2:45 this morning, nestled all comfy in bed with my wife, we were woken up by the beeping sounds of the Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) going off in the house.   The electric went out.

Now for me, it’s no big deal.  For my wife . . .  she uses an oxygen concentrator, and it was shut down.

Mind you, she was breathing just fine, but for some reason known only to God, the fact that the electric was off, and the Oxygen concentrator was off, made my wife start to get nervous.   “What if I can’t breathe????” she asked.  (Having been married 30 years, I understood this as “wife talk” meaning “do something about this right now.”)

So I stumble outta bed, grab a little flashlight from the dresser and make my way out to the kitchen/dining room, grab a lighter and light a candle on the dining room table.

At my suggestion, my mom had long ago purchased oil lanterns and I grabbed one off the mantle over the wood burning stove, and lit it.  Then I took another and lit it, placing it in the living room, which helped give a glimmer of light to all the downstairs rooms.

Next step, get dressed.   If I’m going to fix this, I __have__ to hook up the generator outside.  So I get dressed, grab the keys to the shed and a larger flashlight, and out I go.   It’s raining.  Thunderstorm.   Probably the reason the lights went out.

I get over to the shed, unlock it, and have to lug this 300+ pound Westinghouse 15KW generator, across the yard, over gravel, to the area of the house where the generator inlet is mounted.   I get there, take the cover off the generator, and see the little yellow “BATTERY” light is on.   The main switch must have tuned on when we unloaded it from my pick up truck a couple weeks ago.  I figured “Oh great, watch it has a dead battery.”

This generator is electric start ONLY, there is no pull to manually start it.

So I go in the house, turn off the main circuit breaker, and then each of all the other breakers, and then I turn ON the breaker the generator is wired into from the outside.  (The reason for shutting off the main breaker is to disconnect the whole house from the power grid.  If a person fails to do that, then tries to start the generator, it will try to power the whole power grid as it’s trying to start, and will not start.  The reason I choose to turn off all the individual circuit breakers is to ease the generator into powering the whole house.   I don’t want it subjected to everything trying to grab power at the same time.)

I go back outside and connect the big 50 amp power wire to the house then to the generator, and go inside and press the start button on the generator’s remote control.  It cranks, stops.   I press start again, it cranks, and kicks-over into running mode!   I read the gauges: 120 Volts and 240 volts at 60 hertz.  YEEEE HAAAAA!

I go back in the house and, one at a time, turn each of the individual circuit breakers (But NOT the main) back on.  Full power available to everything.

So I put my cell phone on charge.  I had failed to do that when I went to sleep and it only had 39% charge.   As I put the phone on charge I see two missed calls.  One from ADT Burglar Alarm, the other from the Pennsylvania State Police.   OH SHIT, I forgot to disarm the silent alarm when I opened the back door to go outside for the generator ! ! ! ! !     I feel like a total idiot.

So I call the State Troopers, and they said “You will have to call the alarm company and give them the pass code and they will call to cancel us.”  I call ADT and get them to cancel the cops.

I microwave a cup of coffee that was still in the pot from yesterday, and sit down at this computer to do this personal “adventure” article . . . and the generator shuts off.  The whole house goes dark.   UH OH.

It turned out that my son and I only put enough gasoline in it to test it out when the generator first arrived at my condo in North Bergen, NJ.   I never fully gassed it up.   So I grab a five gallon gas can and put the whole thing in.   I come inside, shut off all the individual circuit breakers again and  press start on the remote.  It cranks and stops.   I press it again, it cranks and stops.   Third time, it kicks-over and runs.

All is good again.

As a side note, when I went outside to fill the gas, I heard some animal in the distance screech out a death-type screech.   I thought to myself, “Wow, something just got killed.”   It was THAT type of screech.

Out there somewhere in the dark woods, one thing attacked another thing, probably to eat it.  And nothing cared.   No one came running to save it.  No other creature intervened.

Something lived and ate, while something else died suddenly and brutally, to become food for the attacker.

Nature.  It does not give a shit about me, you, or anything else.   Survival of the fittest. Period end.

And THAT . . .  that right there .  . . is why I prep. It’s why I tell my readers and my radio audience to prep.   Because in the final analysis, nature does not give a shit if ANY of us live or die.  Nature does not care if I or my family eat or go hungry.  Nature does not care if I have electric or not.   Nature does not give a shit at all.

It is up to ME to plan.  I . . . have to be ready.  If not for myself, then for my family.

Because only those who prepare for what we all see coming, will even have a CHANCE at surviving.

More movement of nukes in the UK

Nuclear convoy ‘carrying several warheads’ travels 400 miles to UK arms depot – Mirror Online

UK Nukes

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US Special Forces Veteran Discovers What War Is Like When YOU Are the Taliban

“A core group of about 30 foreign fighters remains out of around 200 people who were here just minutes ago”

From an American volunteer on the front lines outside of Kyiv:

“Sitting close to the frontline, the last safe mode of transportation leaves for greener pastures. A core group of about 30 foreign fighters remains out of around 200 people who were here just minutes ago.

 The base we came from was struck by rockets in the early morning hours. People we lived with for a couple days are confirmed dead. It is only a matter of time before our location is targeted. We are about to be cut off by a Russian tank column any day now.”

“Food, water, and ammunition dwindle slowly. The mood is somber, people are sending their last messages to friends and family.”

“Where is NATO? Where is the supposed good of western civilization?”

An important note: this American is a special ops veteran who completed combat deployments to Afghanistan. [The perfect person to tell Russians it’s wrong to occupy countries.]

He came to Ukraine before Russia’s full-scale war on Feb. 24.

He is an experienced, well-trained soldier who gave up his lucrative career in the US in order to help Ukraine

Source: Nolan Peterson

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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The United States march towards war has turned into a sprint

Jesus. American Senators are actively discussing United States military fighting one-on-one against the Russians in the Ukraine. I swear. The United States is ruled by fools, ignorant lunatics, and psychopathic evil demons. It is. Seriously. I do not know which rock these people crawled out of, but they have no fucking idea what they are dealing with.

War with Russia is not going to be anything like the US Senate assumes it will be like.

And I have to tell you all, after watching the video that I am presenting below, if you are not getting sweat on your brow then something is wrong with you.

This is a very, very dangerous situation that the United States is playing around with. They are NOT taking it seriously.

They are not listening.

The are ignoring every single warning sign.

2022 03 18 09 19
2022 03 18 09 19

No one in the United States media; it’s leadership, and it’s public is taking Russia and China seriously.

I am talking about stable, thoughtful and reasonable discussions designed to reduce tensions, and create mutually agreeable solutions for everyone involved.

That is not happening.

Asia has no problem with reducing the United States into a glowing ember.

And anyone, anyone at all who cannot see the dangerous folly in this, deserves to suffer the fate that they are creating.

Here we are going to use history to predict what will come next in the world of Geo-politics.

Washington needs to be on the front-lines. Not Ukraine.

And, if we use historical trends, then that is exactly what will happen.

2022 03 17 23 t44
2022 03 17 23 t44

We begin with this to set the pace.

Tucker seems to be the only voice of reason amongst a lot of warmongers. If the US start fighting Russian aircraft over Ukraine this act will mean WWIII, the next devastating war in Europe but this time with nuclear weapons. Tucker is the only one who sees this imminent danger and dares to speak out against it. I really do hope he will continue to do so. 

-Joe Fairdin

Please watch this video. It is critical that you watch this short video because this entire article is a reaction to this particular video.

It’s horrific.

Tucker Carlson reports that the United States Senate is completely willing to go to war against Russia. And all the neocon senators (Republican and Democrat) believe that it will be [1] conventional, and [2] limited to Ukraine.

That’s a pretty big fucking assumption.

You-Tube video. A must watch.

2022 03 17 14 12
2022 03 17 14 12

War will not be limited to the Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a televised address today, and basically spoke to the world regarding the events taking place in Ukraine and the economic fallout being blamed on it.

Putin said Moscow offered the Ukrainian authorities not to engage in hostilities, if they withdrew troops from the Donbass, but they did not want to.

He went on to say the special military operation is going well and according to plan.

Here is a machine translation from Boris Rozhin (aka Colonel Cassad): (only partial extracts from the full transcript, slight English editing by MM.)

The operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine is developing successfully, strictly in accordance with plans.

The tactics of the Russian Defense Ministry in Ukraine have fully justified themselves, everything is being done to avoid civilian casualties. 

Before the operation began, Moscow offered Kiev to withdraw troops from Donbass, but they refused. 

All the tasks necessary will certainly be solved.

If Russian troops had stopped at the borders of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, this would not have been the final solution, it would not have removed the threat to Russia.

Russia is not going to occupy Ukraine.

There was no necessitated need to storm the major cities.

The strike on Donetsk on March 14 is a bloody terrorist attack.

Russia will not allow Ukraine to remain a springboard for anti-Russian actions.

The whole planet has to pay for the ambitions of the West, the myth of the “golden billion” is collapsing.

The “golden billion” is Russian slang. золотой миллиард. It means the relatively wealthy people found in the Western nations. It refers to the “middle class” that live in nice homes, drive nice cars, and are affluent.

The West is trying to convince its citizens that their difficulties are the result of Russia’s actions, but this is a lie.

Sanctions against the Russian Federation are hitting the Europeans and Americans themselves, “it is not necessary to shift from a sick head to a healthy one.”

The Russian President pointed out that Western patrons are pushing Kyiv to continue the bloodshed, by supplying weapons, intelligence, and sending mercenaries.

Не стоит переходить от больной головы к здоровой is an idiom that translates to “it is not necessary to shift from a sick head to a healthy one.”

Many people have the bad habit of blaming others for their own faults. As a result, they do not know how to accept their own mistakes and are accustomed to blaming others for their troubles. The Russian idiom  “to fall from a sick head to a healthy one.” refers to this behavioral aberration.

The US and the EU actually defaulted on their obligations to Russia, freezing its reserves – now everyone knows that the state’s reserves can simply be stolen.

Russia – unlike Western countries – will respect the right of ownership.

Arrests of foreign assets of the Russian Federation and business – a lesson for Russian entrepreneurs, there is nothing more reliable than investments at home

We now know who cowardly betrayed their partners and failed to fulfill their obligations to employees.

Trying to “cancel” Russia, the West has torn off all the masks of decency.

I am sure that after blocking the accounts of the Russian Federation in the West, many countries will convert their reserves into goods, which will increase the deficit.

It is obvious that the current events draw a line under the global dominance of Western countries, both in politics and in the economy.

Moreover, they themselves question the economic model that has been imposed on developing countries in recent decades. Yes, in general, the whole world.

The actions of the United States are being viewed by the rest of the world. That in turn will influence their decisions on using the USD, adopting American “protections” and placing their systems under the umbrella of the United States government.

I emphasize that the sanctions obsession of the United States and its supporters is not shared by countries where more than half of the world’s population lives. It is these states that represent the fastest growing, most promising part of the global economy, including Russia.

The “empire of lies” of the West is powerless against truth and justice, Russia will continue to bring its position to the whole world

The West relies on the fifth column, national traitors, such mentally are there, in the West, and not in Russia. The West is trying to split our society, speculating on combat losses, on the consequences of sanctions.  The people will be able to distinguish patriots from scum and traitors and just spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew in. The natural self-purification of society will strengthen our country.

Most interestingly, Putin pointed out a network of a dozen laboratories operated in Ukraine, where military biological programs were carried out with the financial support of the United States Military.

These included experiments with samples of coronavirus, anthrax, cholera, African swine fever. He went on to say authorities in Ukraine are now strenuously trying to cover up traces of these programs.

Speaking to the world, he said

"I want ordinary citizens of Western states to hear me too. 

They are now trying to convince you that all your difficulties are the result of some hostile actions of Russia; That from your wallet you need to pay for the fight against the mythical Russian threat. 

It's all a lie! 

And the truth is that the problems faced by millions of people in the West are the result of years of actions by the ruling elites in the West.  

Their mistakes, myopia and ambitions. 

These elites are not thinking about how to improve the lives of their citizens, they are obsessed with their selfish interests and super profits."

Putin also spoke about his future plans for Ukraine, saying

"The appearance of Russian troops near Kiev and other Ukrainian cities is not connected with a desire to occupy Ukraine, Russia has no such goal.

All tasks assigned in the special military operation will certainly be completed;

We had no other option to ensure the security of Russia."

He laid out what is going on and why. He identified who started the war and why. He elaborated on the extent of Russian involvement and narrated the need for the West to stop now before things get bad.

In short. Russia is ready for war.

Economic. Military. Social. Financial. Scientific. In every way.

I would just add “better late than never”!

Now, let me be perfectly clear. It will NOT be limited to Ukraine. Both Putin and Xi Peng know where all the warmongering originates. They will not allow proxy wars on their borders.

The United States as a weed-filled garden

From Amerka

Many still do not understand that we are already deeply in decay. Two groups immediately spring up once we realize we are in decay: the standard lazy-stupid human “wow it’s all doomed, no point in doing anything” response, and the “we must cling to what we still have” group. The latter sort of get it, but not fully.

If you have a garden and are sent out of town for a few months, you will return to a ruin. Overgrown with weeds, ridden with rotted plants, layered in dead leaves, and possibly now inhabited by wild animals, your garden is a working model of nature (which itself models a fully complex system fairly well, so you can draw parallels to any situation of sufficient complexity via this model).

In all situations, your approach is the same: remove parasites and unwanted plants, remove the sick, clean up the mess, and nurture the health of those plants you want.

Weeding is, if viewed properly, a tragedy. Here I am on my hands and knees, yanking out grasses, clover, dandelion, and broadleaf that I would otherwise be very happy to see on the edge of a forest where I could selectively harvest them, dandelion for tea, clover for poultice, and broadleaf for salad.

And yet, if I want the tomatoes, eggplant, onions, peppers, chives, garlic, stringbeans, cabbage, and mustard to thrive, I need to yank out these otherwise functional plants — now categorized as “weeds” — and allow the plants I need to take up the sunlight, water, space, and fertilizer that otherwise would be siphoned off by the others.

Weeds, by the way, show us economics in action. Even a five percent loss of inputs — the sunlight, water, dirt, and nutrition mentioned above — to weeds or bad plant placement can reduce a crop by half. That may not matter so much for ornamental gardens, but if you plan to feed your family with those plants, it is instantly a very big deal.

Gardens separate humanity into two groups, much as society does. On one side you have the realists, who recognize that whatever must be done to make the garden grow to the maximum should be done; this is a morality of realism, or reality first.

The other side consists of both liberals and religious conservatives. They talk about what should be done, and from that list, want to select the methods that can be used in the garden. This is classic Control: exclude any methods that are unwanted, and then by managing the methods used by others, create an external situation designed to manage human inner mental state. Instead of self-control and positive motivation, you have negative motivation (political correctness, Biblical morality, social disapproval, shareholder revolt) paired to external control, with the idea that you will have no inner structure whatsoever because you have given it all up for the mental comfort of the group.

In this way, our morality comes down to two forms. The realists figure for ends-over-means, signifying that what should be done is what is functional; the humanists look toward means-over-ends, proclaiming what should be done and then trying to shoehorn function into what is left. All humanist groups eventually become narcissistic, solipsistic, and egotistic like the Communists and, by catering to every human, provide for none, and self-destruct.

Democracy just takes a slightly slower boat especially when mediated by capitalism as it has been in America. Europe has doomed itself by neutering itself; as the Russian military struggles through Ukraine, we might all reflect that this shows us Europe before Genghis Khan’s Mongols arrived: so accustomed to our own battles that we downgraded to an efficient optimum and equilibrium, we were unprepared for anyone using other tactics, even if these were widely known. Contemporary Europe, like the Russian army, has downgraded itself to meet the threats it likely faces, all of whom are sickened by the same weeds of socialism and diversity, not the Black Swan threat it should prepare for since that will be its test of survival.

This means that democracy has reached its endgame. The weeds have won; a third of the garden is growing random plants that serve none of our purposes, and the others have accepted a life of taking less and producing less, year after year, hastening our inevitable Soviet-style decline when our system can no longer produce what we need.

The result of the USA-China meeting in Italy

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, warned Beijing it would “absolutely” face consequences if it helped Moscow evade sweeping sanctions over the war in Ukraine. Unnamed US “Officials” stated that “Russia asked China for military equipment after its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine”. This report was catagorically denied by the Chinese government.

Personally, I can’t figure out (for the life of me) what military weapons that China could possibly provide Russia. Only the ignorant would believe that Russia and China use the same weapons.

But a lie, is a lie, is a lie. And since it is coming out of Washington DC, you can expect it to be a BIG lie.

Jake Sullivan (according to the United States “news” media), started mapping out the consequences and growing isolation China would face globally if it maintains its support of Russia.

OIP C.L5H5NUAXK53C9LfNLdIRxgHaEK
Jake Sullivan

Or so the media narrative went.

The purpose, supposedly, for the meeting is that the United States was to warn China not to support, help, or trade with Russia. If it does, then bad things will result.

“Bad things”.

After the meeting, the United States media hardly said a peep about what transpired. All it said is that the meeting lasted seven hours. Nothing else.

The Chinese media, however, was very clear.

China said no.

Then no again.

Then again, no, and then No, get out of my face.

Followed by no, and know who the fuck you are dealing with.

The USA failed, and China would not be intimated. Here’s the best summary that I could find on the Internet.  You-Tube. Great video.

2022 03 17 11 39
2022 03 17 11 39

Curious Coincidence

Immediately after the failed USA-China negotiations in Italy, China was hit with a very lethal strain of Coronavirus.

Shenzhen is under full and absolute lockdown.Same with a number of other cities including Shanghai, Danguang, and Wenzhou.

No one is moving. HK has hospitals overflowing, and the entire nation is swabbing the population multiple times. I myself, have already had three swabs in the last 48 hours.

It’s a good thing that China is still at DEFCON 2.

Major coronavirus outbreaks in multiple locations at ports and entry cities. All coordinated at the same time, all after failed negotiations with the United States. What a coincidence.

Imagine that!

Chinese aide to Russia

Here’s a comparison between facts, and the resulting distortions.

1 x Real news:
China has decided to send economic aid to Russia
Note: 

To China, the relations between China and Russia is absolute and necessary.

Where Russia is like the teeth. And China is like the lip.

If the lip is damaged, the teeth will be exposed to the harsh world without protection. 

Thus, the wellbeing of Russia is a life and death issue for China. 

I am in no doubt that China will stand side by side with Russia in the 21st century facing off against the dying United States military empire.
9 x propaganda :
What China Can and Cannot Do for Russia Amid Sanctions
.
China’s Goal With Russia Is to Resist U.S. Without Economic Pain
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As Russia’s isolation grows, China hints at limits of friendship
.
Russia counts on sanctions help from China; U.S. warns off Beijing
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China’s Outreach to Russian Economy Extends Only So Far
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How much can — and will — China help Russia as its economy crumbles?
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China can’t do much to help Russia’s sanction-hit economy
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Why China Won’t Rescue Russia’s Flailing Economy
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China Has Tools to Help Russia’s Economy. None Are Big Enough to Save It.

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Spokesperson for Chinese mission to the EU answers a question about NATO leader’s remarks about China

Question:

According to reports, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said yesterday that any Russian support, military support or any other support, will actually help Russia wage a brutal war. 

A war against an independent sovereign state, Ukraine, and help them continue to wage a war that brings death, suffering and great destruction. 

He also stated that China, as a member of the UN Security Council, has an obligation to actually uphold and abide by international law and join the rest of the world in condemning the Russian invasion. 

What is your comment?

Answer:

We have taken note of the relevant comments. 

The Chinese can fully understand the pain and suffering of other countries because we will never forget who blew up our embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 

We don't need lectures on justice from a violator of international law. 

As a remnant of the Cold War and the world's largest military alliance, NATO continues to expand its geography and range of operations. 

What role has it played in bringing peace and stability to the world? 

NATO needs to think carefully.

Deleted Web Page Shows Obama Plan to Build BioLab for ‘Especially Dangerous Pathogens’ in Ukraine

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Former President Barack Obama was a part of an agreement that allowed for the construction of Biolabs in Ukraine that handle “especially dangerous pathogens.”

The discovery was made after a deleted web page was discovered by The National Pulse.

This discovery comes on the same day that Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told the US Senate that the Biden Administration was worried about potential bioweapon research facilities being taken by Russian troops as the conflict in Ukraine continues to escalate following Russia’s invasion.

The article, titled “Biolab Opens in Ukraine” goes into how Obama helped negotiate the construction of a level-3 biosafety lab in Odessa, a city that has already seen conflict. Obama did so during his time serving as an Illinois Senator.

The article reads:

U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar applauded the opening of the Interim Central Reference Laboratory in Odesa, Ukraine, this week, announcing that it will be instrumental in researching dangerous pathogens used by bioterrorists.

The level-3 bio-safety lab, which is the first built under the expanded authority of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, will be used to study anthrax, tularemia and Q fever as well as other dangerous pathogens. “The continuing cooperation of Nunn-Lugar partners has improved safety for all people against weapons of mass destruction and potential terrorist use, in addition to advancements in the prevention of pandemics and public health consequences,” Lugar said.

Lugar said plans for the facility began in 2005 when he and then-Senator Barack Obama entered a partnership with Ukrainian officials. Lugar and Obama also helped coordinate efforts between the U.S and Ukrainian researchers that year in an effort to study and help prevent avian flu.

The Nunn-Lugar Act, which established the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, was established in 1991. Since that time it has provided funding and assistance to help the former Soviet Union dismantle and safeguard large stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The program has also been responsible for destroying chemical weapons in Albania, Lugar said.

Another document by the BioWeapons Prevention Project breaks down in detail which pathogens are in the bio lab. Ebola and other “viruses of pathogenicity group II by using of virology, molecular, serological and express methods” are listed.

Victoria Nuland

[1] Responsible for the bioweapons in the Ukraine. [2] Admitted that they are in the Ukraine. [3] Agrees that the Ukraine is a war zone, but any problems with them are Russias fault.

Weak-wristed loser pointing fingers at others for her very own actions.

2022 03 17 20 05
Victoria Nuland.

The Burning Platform on the madness that has gripped the United States

From Here.

When Machiavelli wrote The Prince he had Vladimir Putin in mind. The president of Russia has adroitly sought, maintained, and used power, the theme of Machiavelli’s masterpiece (see “The Black Belt Strategist,” Robert Gore. SLL, July 19, 2018). That he is an amoral snake is both true and laughable as a criticism coming from the amoral snakes who populate Western power structures. Nobody who slithers to the top of those pits is anything other than an amoral snake. Western snakes hate Putin because he’s repeatedly outsnaked them.

Call Putin a rattlesnake for he clearly rattled before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

That he was ignored is a worrisome indication of the epistemological breakdown that grips the West.

Its leaders are unable to grasp that Putin meant what he said.

That is because those in the West rarely mean what they say.

Facts are not facts and the truth is whatever narrative they’re promoting at the moment. It’s become axiomatic that power flows from control of the narrative.

Until it doesn’t.

Power flows from understanding reality and making use of what it can offer.

If narratives were power, Ukraine’s army would be in Moscow by now.

We haven’t seen this kind of excessive excrement from governments and their media minions since . . . Covid. Narratives are for simple-minded sheep and the wolves who devour them.

The propaganda is devoid of any mention of:

  • The 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup against a democratically elected government;
  • rampant corruption within the Ukrainian oligarchy;
  • Ukranian payola to American political figures (e.g., the Bidens and Clintons);
  • widespread neo-Nazi infestation of Ukraine’s military and government;
  • their eight-year war on its Russian-heritage citizens in eastern Ukraine;
  • the government’s willful failure to adhere to the Minsk accords that were meant to resolve that conflict, or the latest—
  • U.S. built, funded, and staffed, bioresearch labs in Ukraine.

Simply trying to find accurate information about the military situation in Ukraine is virtually impossible amidst the propaganda onslaught and the censoring or shutting down of Russian information sources.

Previous wars have featured regular press updates and maps that detailed the situation on the ground, that is, reality.

Not this one.

No matter how loathsome the opponents, it’s always a good idea to know what they’re doing and saying, even when its demonstrably untrue.

During the first Cold War the West had armies of analysts studying every scrap of information that came from the Soviet Union.

Now Western leaders and most of the populace are flying blind.

They’re children sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming over anyone saying anything they don’t want to hear.

It’s yet another sign of epistemological breakdown and reflects a terrifying feedback loop. Mental chaos leads to chaos in reality, which leads to more mental chaos and so on.

Trying to explain the Russian position on Ukraine, even when the explanation is festooned with disclaimers that it’s not a justification of the invasion or Putin, is as useless as trying to explain the dangers of Covid vaccines. This is true, even by doctors and scientists who have promoted vaccines their entire careers and who have had the Covid vaccines themselves. The children have their masks jabs, and boosters, they’re waving the blue and gold. You’re antivax, pro-Putin, and must be canceled immediately—that’s it, end of story.

This childishness can only lead to disaster.

Which has arrived on multiple fronts.

Russia is a net exporter of grain, minerals, metals, oil, and natural gas. The U.S. and non-Russia Europe are net exporters of debt.

The former are exchanged for the latter via the SWIFT inter-bank messaging network, fiat currency and debt’s global circulatory system.

Some Russian banks’ access has been cut off, stopping the flow of debt and the counter flow of Russian exports. Although payments for gas and oil exports have been exempted, Russian oil and gas still trades at a steep discount on fears the exemption will be lifted if the war gets worse.

The exemption reflects Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas.

However, Germany canceled approval for the completed Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia.

The energy situation in Europe was already strained, with natural gas trading at a large premium to the rest of the world.

Renewable energy is meant to replace fossil fuels and nuclear, but solar and wind are intermittent. The stopgap is coal, ironically the dirtiest fuel.

European energy’s shortages and high price hurt the competitiveness of its industries, particularly Germany’s. Stopping Nord Stream 2 exacerbates the problem.

Biden administration energy policies have shifted towards the same delusory green agenda, making the U.S. an importer again after it had achieved energy self-sufficiency during the Trump years.

Although it’s not a huge percentage of total energy used, the U.S. has been importing Russian oil, gas, and coal, giving Russia additional wherewithal to make war on Ukraine.

Recognizing that awkward fact, the administration banned those imports by executive decree (now the favored form of rule), which will put more pressure on prices from non-Russian energy sources.

Ascending gas prices are not helping the administration politically, notwithstanding its blatant lies that they are due solely to Russia’s invasion. (Prices had almost doubled prior to the invasion.)

The U.S. and Europe’s energy miscues are matched by their financial folly, which amount to children holding their breath until they suffocate and die.

Stopping Russia’s exports via the SWIFT cutoff is severe.

The price of nickel, a big Russian export, recently jumped 250 percent in one day.

Tsingshan Holding Group, a Chinese stainless steel giant whose largest creditor is J.P. Morgan Chase, has a huge short position in nickel. The London Metals Exchange, caught between its own Chinese owners, Tsingshan, and one of the world’s systemically important banks, shut itself down and is trying to undo some trades.

A tentative settlement has been reached, but this kind of mess can reverberate quickly throughout the world’s financial daisy chain, sparking globalized financial meltdown. It certainly doesn’t increase faith in financial clearinghouses.

That’s not the worst of it.

Curtailed access to SWIFT hinders Russian companies’ ability to service their debts.

As with most of the sanctions regime, this hurts Europe the most.

Several of its banks have large exposures to Russia debt, and its banking system was dangerously over-leveraged pre-Ukraine war, much more so than the U.S.’s. Bank insolvencies in Europe could also reverberate across the planet, as mortgage and mortgage-security insolvencies did in the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

Even that’s not the worst of it.

The U.S. and Europe crossed a monumentally important red line when they froze the Russian central bank’s foreign exchange reserves.

The U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status has given the U.S. what’s been called an exorbitant privilege—the world sends it goods in exchange for its fiat currency, of which it can produce unlimited amounts.

Freezing the Russian central bank’s dollar reserves tells the world the reserve currency is no longer a safe haven.

The move is not entirely unprecedented—the U.S. has frozen the Afghanistan and Venezuelan central banks’ reserves—but freezing the reserves of a nuclear power is an order of magnitude greater breach of global financial arrangements and contracts.

Joining Canadian dollar deposits, some of which Justin Trudeau recently froze, U.S. dollar deposits can now be frozen and potentially expropriated on a political whim.

Of course dollars have been stealth-expropriated on political whim via monetary inflation since the Federal Reserve was established in 1913, but this crystalizes the threat that nations who don’t toe the U.S. line will have their dollar reserves stolen.

Russia and China have been reducing their dollar holdings—which they often invested in U.S. Treasury debt—for years, switching to euros, yuan, yen, and gold.

They’ve also created alternatives to SWIFT.

Now that the U.S. government has demonstrated that holding dollar deposits is like caching stores of food in a wolves’ den, this move is sure to accelerate until their dollar holdings are the bare minimum required for international trade.

The Russians have a financial nuclear option.

As exporters of oil, gas, crucial raw materials and industrial goods, they can demand payment in gold rather than in the fiat currencies the U.S. and Europe have now rendered worthless to them.

With this one masterstroke Russia would collapse what Alasdair Macleod calls “the global fiat Ponzi scheme.”

The reserve currency will no longer be a fake money whose value is only maintained by political promises not to produce too much of it.

Gold—real money (see “Real Money,” Robert Gore, SLL, September 9, 2015)—will be restored to the place it has held for centuries as countless government-issued fiat currencies went to their ultimate value: zero.

The current crop of fiat currencies is headed to the same destination, but the Russian nuclear option would bring down the curtain on them once and for all.

Russia and China are both large producers of gold and both their governments have been stockpiling it for years.

The U.S. government reportedly owns 8,000 tons of gold (Russia has a known 2,000 tons and Macleod estimates the Chinese government has 20,000 tons), but those holdings have never been audited and calls to do so have been fiercely resisted. Unknown as well is how much of the U.S. government’s physical gold has been collateralized, leased, or is otherwise tied into derivatives in the paper gold market. Tellingly, the U.S. has discouraged other countries for whom it acts as custodian of their gold reserves from withdrawing them.

War is the ultimate chaos and the Ukraine-Russia war has sparked another upside breakout.

To say [1] that the military situation favors Russia, or that [2] the sanctions against it will end up hurting the U.S. and Europe more than Russia, or that [3] Russia can bring down the global financial system is only to say that one way or another the situation adds to the chaos.

Assuming Russia eventually achieves its military objectives in Ukraine, the U.S. will undoubtedly foment an insurgency by feeding weapons and the usual unacknowledged mix of intelligence spooks, covert military advisors, and private mercenaries into an Ukrainian resistance.

The goal is a long-running and enervating guerrilla war that drains Putin’s support and leads to his ouster.

Cheap Stinger missiles will take out expensive Russian aircraft and cheap Javelin missiles will take out expensive Russian tanks.

The template is the successful mujahideen-led and U.S.-aided war against the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989 in Afghanistan, often credited with helping bring down the Soviet government two years after its military withdrawal.

Syria may end up as the actual template, an effort by U.S.-aided jihadist groups to regime change that nation’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, which failed after Russia came to Syria’s defense.

Even were that the case, if Putin thinks he can invade Ukraine, impose his objectives, and then withdraw with the country pacified and compliant, he’s as deluded as American schemers have been with all their surgical strikes, covert operations, limited wars, and regime changes since World War II.

Insurgencies are always messy regardless of who “wins.” Ukraine has become another theater for the uncontrollable chaos engulfing the world.

It's a good thing then, that Russia has no plans to stay in the Ukraine. -MM

It’s not hard to imagine what forms further amplification of that chaos might take. Modern agriculture is dependent on energy and fertilizers are made from minerals of which Ukraine and Russia are significant suppliers. Both countries also export grains.

Skyrocketing food prices and famine in some areas loom, and food riots and other forms of civil unrest are sure to follow.

There is no limit to the pandemonium either centralized actors—governments and globalist institutions—or decentralized actors can wreak.

Infrastructure is never completely protected. Electrical grids can be short-circuited, water supplies poisoned, transport and logistics disrupted or destroyed, and the internet sabotaged.

The World Economic Forum’s Cyber Polygon “simulation” may well be an eerie harbinger of that last possibility, just as its Event 201 in October of 2019 presaged the Covid-19 pandemic.

We’re still early days in chaos’s lengthy run.

Controlling chaos requires energy, resources, and production. While there is no way to determine the mathematical relationship between chaos and control (remember Get Smart?), that it is direct and exponential seems a reasonable hypothesis. Herein lies the contradiction at the heart of the globalist design.

They are fomenting ever-increasing chaos while destroying the energy, resources, and production necessary to control it.

Alexander Putin

Not a happy man. Making hard and difficult decisions while being harrased by a lunitic, out of control, evil psychopathic United States “leadership” cabal. I know what he’s thinking.

Do you?

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Alexander Putin

You May Want To Figure Out Where You Want To Spend Your Days When World War 3 Fully Erupts

The growing desire for war that we are witnessing in Washington D.C. right now should greatly alarm all of us.

In this environment, voices of reason such as Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard are being accused of “treason” just because they are calling for peace.  Well, you can add me to that list because I am calling for peace too.

I don’t want nuclear war.

I don’t want billions of people to die.

You would think that we should all be able to agree on those things, but unfortunately the warmongers in Washington seem absolutely determined to keep escalating matters.

That is a very dangerous game, and it is going to be way too easy for someone to make a huge mistake.

Before that day arrives, you may want to figure out where you want to spend your days when global war fully erupts.

At some point, the shooting in Ukraine will end.

Either Russia will achieve total victory, or more likely there will be some sort of a ceasefire agreement.

But when the shooting in Ukraine stops, don’t be fooled into thinking that everything is okay.  The truth is that a much bigger conflict between the United States and Russia has now begun, and both sides are beginning to realize that this is ultimately a struggle for all the marbles.

World War 3 is here, and now we must hope that we can keep both parties from “going nuclear” for as long as possible.

Of course there are some that would like to see the U.S. and Russia shooting at each other very soon.  On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky begged Congress to establish a “humanitarian no-fly zone” over Ukraine…

The t-shirt-attired Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress by video on Wednesday and asked for the United States to send warplanes into the sky over Ukraine to create a “humanitarian no-fly zone” or, failing that, to provide Ukraine itself with warplanes.

“Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people,” Zelensky told Congress.

Zelensky knows very well that the establishment of a “humanitarian no-fly zone” would require U.S. forces to shoot down Russian jets.

And he also understands that this would spark a shooting war between the United States and Russia.

But you can’t blame Zelensky for trying.

He is trying to save his own skin, and the best way to do that is to drag the United States into the war.

Needless to say, the establishment media in the western world absolutely adored Zelensky’s speech.  The following example comes from CNN

Zelensky’s words are not only destined for the history books. They will likely energize support for Ukraine’s defense against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine and reverberate across the US.

When America’s top Democrats and Republicans rose side by side to give Zelensky a standing ovation, we knew the Ukrainian President had made his mark. Zelensky, reminding Americans what freedom really means after the country has spent years devaluing it in petty political battles, proves there is a new seriousness in the nation.

And most members of Congress ate it up as well.  Following the speech, Senator Jeanne Shaheen boldly declared that “more must be done to assist Ukraine”

“It is clear that more must be done to assist Ukraine and hold Putin to account,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat, said in a statement following Zelenskeyy’s virtual address. “The images we watched today underscore the horrific violence – the war crimes – being committed by Putin. He will pay for what he has done.”

And Senator Joni Ernst said that Zelensky’s speech made her want to put on a uniform and “go help”

‘It’s hurtful to see anything like, you know, thinking about if it were my child, if that were my family, that were my people. You know, I’d be doing the exact same thing that President Zelensky is,’ Ernst said.

‘I would be appealing to every nation possible to get whatever it takes to defeat the Russians and get them the heck out of my country. You know, it makes me want to throw on my uniform, you know, and go help.’

Actually, I would love to see that.

In fact, I would love to see U.S., Ukrainian and Russian politicians all flown to an island where they would resolve this conflict “Battle Royale” style.

But instead, all of the politicians are safe and warm while millions upon millions of Ukrainians deeply suffer.

One of the biggest warmongers in the U.S. Senate, Lindsey Graham, has decided that it is time to start calling Vladimir Putin “a war criminal”

“It’s time for him to go. He’s a war criminal,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an erstwhile standard bearer for the Republican Party’s Reagan-era foreign policies, told reporters shortly after Zelenskeyy’s address. “I am asking the Russian people to rise up and end his rein of terror.”

Joe Biden also referred to Putin as a “war criminal” on Wednesday, and he announced that an additional 800 million dollars in military aid would be given to the Ukrainian government.

To be honest, it is quite an impressive list that the Ukrainians will be receiving…

  • 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems
  • 2,000 Javelin, 1,000 light anti-armor weapons, and 6,000 AT-4 anti-armor systems
  • 100 Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems
  • 100 grenade launchers, 5,000 rifles, 1,000 pistols, 400 machine guns and 400 shotguns
  • Over 20 million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenade launcher and mortar rounds
  • 25,000 sets of body armor
  • 25,000 helmets

But of course this is not nearly enough for some of the warmongers in Congress.

In fact, 40 Republican senators just signed a letter “in which they strongly disagreed with the decision to not transfer aircraft and air defense systems to Ukraine from Poland”.

Biden was hesitant to take such a step because it might start a shooting war with Russia, but apparently that is a risk that most Republican senators are willing to take.

Thankfully, most Americans do not actually want a shooting war with Russia.

But according to one new survey, more than a third of all Americans “would favor military action even if it risks nuclear conflict with Russia”…

However, most Americans (62%) say they would oppose the U.S. “taking military action even if it risks a nuclear conflict with Russia.” About a third (35%) of Americans say they would favor military action in this scenario. Comparable shares in both parties (36% of Republicans, 35% of Democrats) say they would favor military action even if it risks nuclear conflict with Russia.

Those of us in the majority need to be much louder than those in the minority, because if the warmongers get their way we could eventually find ourselves in the middle of a nuclear conflict.

And if that happens, there won’t be a future for our country.

Speaking of World War 3, Joe Biden is also escalating matters with China by sending thousands of U.S. troops to Australia

The Pentagon is to deploy over two thousand troops to Australia by September to join an established rotational force of 200 in anticipation of a conflict with China, according to reports.

The Daily Mail notes that “The contingent is part of an ongoing US initiative in the Indo-Pacific region to prepare for a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan in coming years.”

The report notes that 1000 marines have already arrived in the country.

The battle lines are being drawn.

Once World War 3 fully erupts, it will be the United States on one side, and Russia and China on the other.

If Americans truly understood what was at stake, there would be massive demonstrations in the streets of every major U.S. city right now.

But the general population just doesn’t get it.

They just assume that war is something that happens on the other side of the globe and that our leaders have everything under control.

Unfortunately, our leaders most definitely do not have everything under control, and when World War 3 fully erupts the death and destruction that we will witness will be absolutely unimaginable.

Timing

Let’s talk a little about the timing for disaster.

The following is taken from a post that I wrote three years ago. I reprinted a section of it here, and made some minor alterations. 

For just about everything that I predicted has come to pass, or are developing in such an obvious way that I look like a real accurate fortune-teller.

If I made any mistakes (so far) is that my predictions were one to two years late. Or, in other words I was too optimistic. Which points to a rot, and decay far deeper than which I was aware of.

Historical records clearly point out the the United States will go through a severe and harsh change in society. This has been building up for some time. The worst and most catastrophic elements of that change has already been set in motion. Anything that will occur will occur during the ten-year span from 2020 though 2030.

The worst time should be 2023 through 2024.

With 2025 being a “harsh reality“.

By 2026, my guess is that the kenetic phase might be over, but people will still be dealing with turmoil at various levels.

Serious upheaval in America will occur from 2020 though to 2030. This is a ten year period of time. It is now the first quarter of 2022. My previous predictions were on track. I was in slight error when I predicted that the events would transpire one year later than they are now transpiring.

I predicted a major military event in 2023. It seems that it occurred in 2022 with the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and the United States Senate driving a war-machine full-throttle.

Points and information

I’m going to lay out some points and some information. I’ve covered the background elsewhere in great detail. However, here we are just going to throw it all out for purposes of review.

Generational Turnings are a historically accurate methodology for predictive behaviors.

America; the United States, will go through the following in the next ten years;

  • Domestic unrest resulting in American death(s).
  • A complete change in the Federal Government.
  • The value of the USD will collapse.
  • A very serious “Hot War” on American soil.
  • Cultural, and societal collapse.
Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings. 

Consequently, individuals underestimate the likelihood of a disaster, when it might affect them, and its potential adverse effects. 

The normalcy bias causes many people to not adequately prepare for natural disasters, pandemics, and calamities caused by human error. 

About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias during a disaster.

-Wikipedia

Let’s go one by one on these points.

[1] Domestic unrest resulting in death(s).

Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with domestic unrest. Not only that but people die. Yes. There is an entire sub-culture of Americans that believe that domestic unrest will occur. All you need to do is google SHTF and “prepper”. And you know that many Americans expect this. Gun stores are empty of guns and ammo.

Everyone is expecting societal unrest. And they plan on defending themselves and their family. In fact, for the last three months the top MM posts are those devoted to the SHTF Index.

And sure… nothing is guaranteed. This fear might just be a passing fad. Or the absolute result of American media going “off the rails”. Or some kind of mass psychosis due to being locked inside all 2020. It could be anything.

I am of the opinion …

  • Most Americans are unhappy.
  • Most Americans are locked inside of a class structure with little upward movement.
  • There are terrible and systematic problems regarding American society.
  • Government “solutions” are insufficient, meager and viewed as an insult.
  • There are groups who desire to capitalize on domestic discord to promote their own agendas.
  • There are elements inside of the Federal Government that have the power and plans to come down aggressively to any disruption of society.

None of the above should come as any surprise to most Americans. And thus I conclude…

There is a higher than average chance that there will be domestic revolt / upset. This is not a continuation of BLM, Antifa “riots”, or a Trump Supporter “frat party” style takeover of Congress.

This will be something far more serious, sinister and deadly. It will not be reported, or if it is, it will be reported in such a way as to minimize what is actually going on.

Historically, these kinds of events are preceded by the government trying to take preemptive actions. That could be [1] “false flag” events, [2] a banning of weapons or one or more Rights / freedoms, and [3] a call to fight some kind of “enemy” or “threat”.

If any of the above occurs to any serious degree, you can well expect domestic discord to follow promptly.

Historically, all Democrat Presidents have had a major "Gun-related mass-killing event" within the first nine months of their Presidency. That includes Trump who was supposed to lose to Hillary Clinton.

[2] A complete change in the Federal Government.

The United States government WILL change. And, it will not be voluntary.

Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with a serious and large change in the Government.

The current American government is an enormous behemoth, it is sluggish, inefficient, lazy, and is out of control. To believe that it is working fine or that it could be improved is to ignore the facts. Both sides of the political divide demand a restructuring.

  • Democrats are looking towards a Socialist and Marxist solution.
  • Republicans are looking for a return to the 1776 Republic.
  • Both are looking to create a major war of distraction.

The compass is all over the place on this. One thing is for certain, the wealthy oligarchy loves the status quo and do not want to change anything. To make the changes that are necessary, a real revolution must occur.

The Federal Government will change substantially. I can offer no insight into what it will change into. Needless to say, the nation is completely divided and polarized and no matter who obtains the reins of power, large segments of the population will be unhappy. The only way that I can see any kind of satisfaction is by an overwhelmingly exhausted citizenry that is ready to accept change, no matter how radical it is.

Nor can I offer insight as to how this will happen. What I do know is that unless it happens, there will be no ‘Crisis Event”.

[3] The value of the USD will collapse.

The USD is presently losing its status as a global reserve currency.

Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with economic changes. I see an exponential increase in the value of the stock market with zero connection to the lives of actual American citizenry. I also see an exponential increase in the national debt. It doesn’t take a genius to see that both of these things are not sustainable.

People have been predicting the eventual collapse of the American economy for decades. Yet it still hums along. The only way that this will change is if the international medium of exchange changes. And there is evidence that this is exactly what is going on. I do not see this as a sudden, precipitous event, but rather a trend that continues over a long swath of time before the USD stabilizes.

The USD will significantly change in value negatively. This will occur over a period of time. The end result will be generalized discomfort for Americans on many levels.

What we are seeing RIGHT NOW is a movment to the discarding of the USD as a reserve currency and the adoption of the e-yuan instead.

[4] A very serious “Hot War” on American soil.

No, there will not be another Iraq, Afganastan, Yemen, or Syria in Ukraine. There will be a major, big and very nasty short war.

It WILL result in much damages, destruction and death on American soil.

Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with “hot wars”; shooting wars that occurring using the most advanced technology available, and they always  occur on the soil of the leading economic power.

This Fourth Turning event is an American driven cycle. Not an Asian cycle.

Even if the nation stays together, its geography could be fundamentally changed, its party structure altered, its Constitution and Bill of Rights amended beyond recognition. 

History offers even more sobering warnings: Armed confrontation usually occurs around the climax of Crisis. If there is confrontation, it is likely to lead to war. This could be any kind of war—class war, sectional war, war against global anarchists or terrorists, or superpower war. 

If there is war, it is likely to culminate in total war, fought until the losing side has been rendered nil—its will broken, territory taken, and leaders captured. And if there is total war, it is likely that the most destructive weapons available will be deployed.

There is no avoiding this.

Russia will not allow a war near or on it’s borders. Anyone who thinks that they can “poke the bear” is going to be in for a rude, and horrifc shock. The same goes for China. Anyone who thinks that China will allow another Yemen, Afghanistan or Syria to occur in Taiwan, on the South China Sea is delusional.

War will happen fast and be over fast.

Within a month.

That’s FAST.

These nations do not play, are peer-capable, or superior in training and weaponry, and work together. The idea that America can take on China or Russia independently is a fantasy. Any war with either will result in a war with both simultaneously.

It’s a suicide move.

So forget the illusions that America has the biggest, the baddest, and the best military. It might get by trying twenty years to fight goat-herders with AK-47’s, but is no match for merit-based, well-trained, superior-armed, and a pissed-off Asia.

From 2017 through 2020, the United States “carpet bombed” China with bio-weapons. This effort affected Russia, and Iran. And of course, China, Iran and Russia knows who was involved, why and how.

But China, Russia and Iran didn’t take any obvious retaliatory action.

That should make every single Americans hair stand on end.

We should expect a major hot war. This war will be instigated though American actions and international activities.

Neither China, nor Russia are stupid. They will strike first. They will use full-spectrum nuclear weapons, and America will resemble one of the nations that it “bombed the shit out of” for democracy™.

[5] Cultural, and societal collapse.

Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with severe changes to society and the individuals who live inside America. In the past, Americans have been resilient enough, independent enough, and hardy enough to rebuild any collapsed society.

But today, I am not so sure.

With or without war, American society will be transformed into something different. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers' visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.

Most Americans are terribly overweight, and while many are functional with technology, during a period of societal collapse most technology will not operate in an optimal manner during a full scale Crisis Event.

During 2020 large segments of the American population failed to work together and wear masks during the pandemic. I just cannot imagine that Americans would rebuild radioactive cities, start planting vegetables in their suburban lawns, and working together for free.

Americans have been a historically resilient people, but whether or not they will be able to come together during the Crisis Event is unlikely. It is not a politically attractive position, but it is a realistic expectation.

Let’s combine everything together.

Well, there is nothing that I have said here that I have not covered elsewhere. But let’s see if we can compile some knowns to help us make a substantive predictive engine for our use.

In 2019, I created the following map which I extrapolated from Fourth Turning cycles and the Deagal (Remote Viewing) Report.

Keep in mind that this is just a predictive map. It may or may not happen.

.

Recent events suggest that things have accelerated somewhat, and are pushing the dates ahead by 1.5 years.

Uh Oh!

My argument is that the COVID-19 fiasco in the United States is not part of this collapse crisis vector. It is only a contributor.

Whether the future occurs as predicted will depend on the actions or inaction’s of the American Presidency. Any of the following events will probably unleash a particular singular element of the Crisis event.

  • Passage of restrictive laws that infringe on cherished Rights.
    • Freedom of Speech.
    • Gun control.
    • Travel / banking.
    • Ability to be employed.
  • A military action that involves either China, Russia or Iran. Perhaps all three.
  • No attempts at financial, banking or economic restructuring.
  • A trigger event being either “false flag” event of any purpose, or a major provication such as crossing a “red line”.
  • WMD (nuclear, biological, and chemical / EM) will be used.

These are all historical trendlines.

Knowing that these are exactly the same kind of modus operandi that Washington has used over the last fifty years, you can well expect that some or all of them will precipitate the Crisis event.

Year by Year expectations

The graphic above is pretty complex. Let’s look at it like you would a newspaper horoscope.

  • The key point representative of the year are in bold red.
  • Items that have been predicted correctly, that has already happened are in blue.

2021

  • The pandemic continues all year.
  • Posturing of various political and special interests organized by various oligarchies.
  • Internet freedoms curtailed.
  • Urban riots.
  • Submarines / US Naval vessels damaged or sunk.
  • Continued (minor) unrest on many levels.
  • A somewhat stabilization of the overall economic consideration.
  • An event that will force one of the major Asian powers to take action.

2022 Shit breaks out.

  • The pandemic continues.
  • Domestic unrest starts to manifest. Maybe shootings or some kind of organized behavior.
  • Asian powers threaten nuclear retaliation.
  • FEMA, NSA, FBI or other domestic agencies activated.
  • Rule by Executive Orders continue.
  • Major domestic crime.
  • Producted goods become harder and harder to obtain.
  • Some unpopular laws or regulations are implemented.
  • United States bioweapon activity starts to get public attention.
  • Inflation in the world grows to an unmanagable level.
  • Sides in a geopolitical conflict are established; Us vs. Them.
  • The mid-tem elections generate an electorial sweep.
  • The USA starts to get involved in some strong covert (not visible) international military actions.
  • American Congress start talking about fighting either Russia, China, Iran or North Korea directly.
  • Events force Russia or China to initiate hot kinetic wars.

2023 Crisis Deepens.

  • People are adapting to the Pandemic and it seems to be subsiding.
  • People refuse to mask up even when bioweapons are used in America.
  • Domestic unrest continues and gets more violent.
  • United States debt is beyond comprehension, and items become unobtainable.
  • The economy and the USD starts to falter.
  • Ambushes and attacks on American police.
  • The United States starts to have shortages in gasoline / heating fuel.
  • Economic Balloons start to “pop”.
  • The Internet starts to falter in many nations.
  • Rural communities starting to band together for protection.
  • American trade with China is decreased sharply.
  • Some states discuss leaving the Untied States.
  • The USD is no longer a major reserve currency.
  • The United States government starts seizing assets, energy, and finances from its enemies.
  • The Federal Government initiates a hot war with a major power as a desirable technique of distraction and unification.
  • The USA starts to engage in International Military Actions of some visible type. American soldiers are shooting at Asian powers and forces.
  • Risk of a HOT WAR is very high. It may or may not hit American soil.

2024 Insanity

  • Still a pandemic, but is seemingly under control.
  • Domestic unrest breaks out in open conflict in numerous areas.
  • The Federal Government starts to decentralize, or change in some significant manner.
  • The United States starts to have shortages in food.
  • The United States starts to have shortages in medicine.
  • Brown-outs roll throughout the United States.
  • The US government plans / talks about a draft and forced civilian enlistment.
  • The 2024 election is a crazy turmoil, and no one is happy with the results.
  • The economy starts a long sequence of contractions and mini-collapses.
  • The USD starts to have it’s value erode significantly.
  • SEVERE HOT WAR! Americans on American soil are affected. It’s not a “police action” in a far away land or sea.
  • The health system, inefficient and expensive, collapses completely.
  • Society is disrupted. Communication, transport, food, and electricity are all unreliable and disrupted.
  • The Election is a landslide for one political party who promises massive change.

2025 “Everything but the kitchen sink”

  • 2025 will be like 2024, only crazier, and more intense.
  • American contractions at every level continue.
  • The Federal, and the States governments show complete incompetence.
  • Bad moves, and bad decisions result in numerous fiascos for the United States.
  • Discord and disruptions are commonplace and are no longer isolated to certain geographic regions. Everyone “feels the pinch”.
  • Some states start to actually leave the Untied States and restructure themselves.
  • Americans start to hunt, fish and eat pets in certain areas.
  • May people start to die of illnesses that could have been prevented or cured.
  • New illnesses and viruses start to appear all over America. These are far worse than the COVID-19. Americans treat them like the “seasonal flu”.
  • Everyone is in “survival mode”.
  • Americans start to turn to non-American news for information.
  • Most of the Hot War is over.

2026 “The Kitchen Sink gets included”

  • Anything that was good about 2025, is now gone.
  • FIASCO!
  • Normal lifestyles are permanently disrupted.
  • Urban areas are hotbeds of contentious activity.
  • The United States starts to put people in FEMA camps.
  • The United States start to shoot fellow Americans.
  • Woods and forests are flooded with urban refugees.
  • Hot war officially ends.

2027

  • Things are still crazy, but groups of people are working together to sort out the craziness.
  • The United States is largly gone.
  • A new type of government emerges.
  • Domestic discord and fighting continues, but it’s mostly “turf wars”.
  • The USD has substantially collapsed.
  • US economy is in ruins.
  • The government begins to discuss reconstruction efforts and mobilization of work forces for a common good.

2028

  • A new normal has arrived in America.
  • There is a new government, new people, new ideas, and new systems.
  • The USA is shattered and a real mess, but people are starting to band together in small groups to make things right in their little area of control.
  • People can see the “light at the end of the tunnel”.

2029

  • Reconstruction efforts begin.
  • Rehabilitation efforts begin.
  • New policies and lifestyles start to manifest.
  • A brighter future lies ahead for everyone still left alive.

Conclusion

I wrote this article after I watched the horrific section on Tucker Carlson FOX “news”.

He’s right.

War is bad, but not as bad as having United States Senators openly advocating war with nuclear armed Russia over a flat of bland terration that has zero strategic importance for America.

It just confirms my worst fears.

Here’s pretty much the future that most everyone in the collective West can look forward to.

Historically, the rising nations pretty much survives the Fourth Turning unscathed. I don’t think that they will remain as pristine as the USA did during World War II, but they will pretty much be in far better shape than the West.

There’s a lot of bullshit on the “news” sites.

But, I can positively say the following…

  • The United States caused the Ukraine-Russia war.
  • This is becuase they violated Russian “Red Lines”.
  • Now the United States wants to get involved in it directly.
  • Russia warned that it will destroy the USA if they don’t stop.
  • Russia is now ferrying all its leadership to secure locations.

And for China, irregardless as to the absolute failure of the Italy talks…

  • The USA push towards war / sanctions with China is continuing.
  • China has repeatedly warned that it is a dragon that DOES bite.
  • The USA government is ignoring the warnings.
  • The USA government is proceeding with the violation of Chinese “Red Lines”.

2022 03 18 09 24
2022 03 18 09 24

The article describes the actions. It’s crossing the Chinese “Red Lines”.

Internally, domestically…

  • Americans are happy for no more mask mandates.
  • Mass crime continues.
  • Inflation is absurd.
  • Washington DC is oblivious.
  • Supply Lines / trade is a complete fiasco.
  • The American “news” media is on overdrive and the propaganda is outrageous.

As far as Russia is concerned…

  • Leading Russian leadership personnel have evacuated Moscow and all the major cities. This and the very wealthy in Russia…
A large exodus of private jets out of Moscow towards Dubai this morning too. Looks like the uber-rich Arab oil Billionaires are high-tailing-it out of Moscow too.
  • From a source within the Diplomatic corps . . .
    For the past three days, Russia has been pulling one of a kind, proprietary, machine dyes and templates, and putting into deep storage, along with items of cultural value.
  • On Thursday, 17MAR22, at 4:02pm EST, the formal message from Russia to the United States read…
"U.S. USED NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN JAPAN AFTER WORLD WAR II AND HAS NO RIGHT TO PREACH TO US REGARDING OUR USE OF THEM."

Please plan to avoid the high risk areas. Note that I am conservative in my predicitons, and anumerous elements are proceeding in advance to what I predicted.

Good luck.

2022 03 17 23 44
2022 03 17 23 44

This information is compiled from other sources.

To see the methodology in these other sources, please go to the Theories of Collapse Index here…

Collapse Theories

.

To check out the results of remote viewing this period of time, go to my writings on the Deagal Report here…

.

What this means is that the defense intelligence organizations represented by Deagel believe that there will be some kind of event or series of events that will result in a major population drop by 2025.

Deagel site projections.

From the chart above we can clearly see a number of conclusions or extrapolations that they have made.

I have an index that collects various observations regarding the internal collapse of the United States. That is in a sub-Index known as “Front Row Seat”.

Front Row

.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

.

 

When an American conservative warns against a war with Russia, you all had best pay attention.

The State Department is trying to get us into a war and the Pentagon is trying to keep us out. 

- Ron Paul
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War sucks. I’m not going to be nice about it. It honestly, and really sucks. People get hurt and die. Innocents are maimed. Bad things happen. The wealthy that create the conditions for war flee, and the poor that work for them are sacrificed on the alter of ideology. What ever it might be.
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There is nothing valiant about war.
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Wars are fought by young men precisely because they don’t know any better. They cannot imagine themselves spending the rest of their lives in a retirement home without arms or legs. Or having their homes blown to bits and pieces.
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And most especially for Americans. As well as for Candians, Australians and Britions. They cannot imagine it’s THEIR famies dying, and their neighborhoods being blown to smithereens and destroyed. Safe and isolated. That’s the way it’s always been.
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Right?
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And ideology… well, that’s the medium on how you can control others.
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In the United States, the ideology is democracy. In Syria the ideology is in religion. In the Ukraine, the ideology is pure Nazism. Ideology gets people killed. Or worse. Don’t you know.
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I’m really not a fan of ideologs. I know that from time to time I have moved about the political spectrum, but when you get my age, you just no longer can zip back from one point of view to the other. It makes you dizzy.
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So you just are happy with simple things.
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Simple things, like a beloved cat. A pet dog that is happy as can be to see you. A fine book, and a glass of nice tasty wine. A delicious steak, hamburger, or tasty thick soup. A roaring fire on a cold snowy night. A warm dry bedroom while it pours rain outside…
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Simple things.
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2022 03 16 15 29
Simple things.

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You know, my social media feeds are all clogged up with the mindless hordes that reguritates the NSA talking points. You don’t have to get too involved in the termonology. It’s all the same and predictable.
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The callouts are the same “stooge for Putin”, “Russia is evil”, “crushing democracy in Ukraine”. Sigh.
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You can easily replace the word “Russia” with “5G radiation”, and the meaning would be the same.
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Replace it with “China”, and the meaning would be the same.
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It could be “vaxx”, or “Swine Flue”, or “Y2K” it’s all the same.
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2022 03 16 15 39
5G and Coronavirus.

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If you do not agree with the United States official narrative, you are a traitor!
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That’s exactly how all this works. Whatever the government says, must must agree with it. When the Trump administration was at war with China over technology, it was all about “evil Huawei”, and “arrest the evil CEO”, and “5G radiation destroys brain cells”.
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I try to tell them that they are victims of Vault 7. But they are oblivious. Vault 7 is what is going on. Vault 7. If you don’t know what this is, then you are in a truly sad state indeed.
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It’s not just controling your opinions. These algorithms control your thoughts.
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As such they alter your body chemistry.
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Once altered, you will NEED to take medicine to maintain your sanity, and your health. Your body chemistry changes. You start experiencing problems. You get anxiety. You suffer aches and pains. You get eating disorders, and start having helth problems with your liver, your kidnes, your stomach, and your heart.
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Ask any one who is regurigating the American narrative if they are taking medicine. Any medicine, for any reason. Just ask.
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So far, I have found 100% of the people who I asked say “yes” in the affirmative. America has become; seriously, a nation of zombies.
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2022 03 16 16 21
Americans today.

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It’s stuff to think about.
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Once I started to carefully vet what I read and watch, my life has really, substantially calmed down. That’s a fact.
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Anyways. I tire of arguing with NPCs. So I penned this article. It winds the clock back in time to one month before the invasion of the Ukraine. By reading it, you can easily see how and why the war in the Ukraine started.
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And NO, it’s not “Putin’s fault”.
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It was planned to occur. And the planners were the United States Senate. And it’s all well known, and well understood. All you need to do is watch the historical archives from CSPAN.
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I mean, come on, it’s all very damning.
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They tell you right then and there. “America needs to start a war elsewhere. Not on American soil. And the Ukraine is the best place to have that war.”
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This clip is from 2014.
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2022 03 17 10 47
2022 03 17 10 47

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This is an absolutely great article by Paul Craig Roberts. He’s a major conservative voice in American politics. He’s pretty good, and I have been following him for a long time. He tends to discuss American domestic issues with detailed and thoughtful analysis, and takes a hard, critical look at American international issues.
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This article was written one month before Russia invaded Ukraine. And during that time, in January 2022, the big news was about how the United States refused to take Russia seriously. This is that article. It’s truly poignant now, as we see what an absolute clusterfuck the United States has created for itself. And because of the enormity of that fuck-up, this article is even more valuable.
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I am presenting it here, right now, to help us all have a better contextual understanding on what the Hell is going on in the Ukraine and in the Geo-Political circles.
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Does Russia Understand She Is Dealing with Lunatics?

In advance of the January 10 meeting, Secretary of State Blinken and NATO functionary Stoltenberg stupidly reduced Russia’s Options to Two: Surrender or Use Force.

If these idiotic accusations were not enough, Blinken accused Putin of intending to restore the Soviet Union. It is impossible to understand how a person this stupid was confirmed by the US Senate as Secretary of State.

The last thing the Kremlin wants is all the problems of all of these countries. All the Kremlin wants is that they be independent countries, not US puppet states armed against Russia.

My take on the situation is that from foolish statements such as the above by Blinken and Stoltenberg and other ill-considered remarks from the White House and media, the Kremlin has concluded prior to Monday’s meeting (January 10) that Washington will not take seriously Russia’s security concerns.

I think the Russians have come to the conclusion that the West will not take them seriously until the Kremlin demonstrates forceful action.

The Russians are just giving diplomacy one last chance before they destroy the military installations that the US has built in Ukraine.

I came across this report from pravda.ru dated about a month ago (November 26) that Russian nuclear submarines were urgently sent to sea in a state of combat readiness.

This does not mean that the Kremlin is preparing a nuclear strike.

It is meant to forestall any stupid Washington response to Russian removal of perceived threats, just as the Israelis do routinely in their attacks on Iraqi, Syrian, and Lebanese territory.

As I have reported on occasion, the Russians have had their fill of Washington and are not going to take anymore.

The Russians have concluded that only decisive action on their part has any chance of sobering up Washington from its hubris and restoring a sense of responsibility in Washington at least equal to the sense of responsibility that kept a lid on Cold War tensions. If Washington is unable to recover a sense of responsibility, the possibility of Armageddon will again hang over our heads.

My concern is that there is no one in the Biden regime or the decimated officer ranks of the US military that has five cents worth of intelligence.

The people with their hands on US foreign policy are Russophobes with delusions of American omnipotence.

Moreover, they believe their own propaganda, which prevents them from understanding the Russian view.

I don’t know if the Kremlin is capable of imagining a government as lunatic as the American one.

If the Kremlin does not understand they they are dealing with lunatics, the situation could quickly get out of hand.

And he was correct… absolutely correct.

One month later, Russia invaded the Ukraine, preventing a Ukrainian assault on the LDR and the DDR.

And the Western press were all ready with a flood of anti-Russian “news”, and sanctions, and all the rest. It was all perfectly timed and implemented.

And what became of it?

Well, let’s see what ol’ Fred has to say…

Snapshot

By Fred Reed

Everybody and his goat are talking about the Ukraine. Why not me? You might ask, But Fred, what do you know about it? To which I would respond, Look, this is journalism. You don’t need to know anything, just wing it, preferably using words you can spell. Admittedly this is more of a limitation than it used to be. Anyway, here goes:

Why did Russia invade the Ukraine?

Contrary to American media, the invasion was not unprovoked. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, America has been pushing NATO, which is a US sepoy operation, ever closer to Russian borders in what, to anyone who took fifth-grade geography, is an obvious program of military encirclement. Of the five countries other than Russia littoral to the Black Sea, three, Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, are now in NATO. America has been moving toward bringing in the Ukraine and Georgia. After Georgia would have come Azerbaijan, putting American forces on the Caspian with access to Iran and Kazakhstan. This is calculated aggression over the long term, obvious to the—what? Ten percent? Fifteen percent?—of Americans who know what the Caucasus is.

Putin has said, over and over, that Russia could not allow hostile military forces on its border any more than the US would allow Chinese military bases in Mexico and China or missile forces in Cuba. Washington kept pushing. Russia said, no more. In short, America brought on the war.

Among people who follow such things, there are two ways of looking at the invasion. First, that Washington thought Putin was bluffing, and he wasn’t. Second, that America intentionally forced Russia to choose between allowing NATO into the Ukraine, a major success for Washington’s world empire; or fighting, also a success for Washington as it would cause the results it has caused.

From the latter understanding, America pulled off, at least at first glance, an astonishing geopolitical victory over Russia. Nordstream II blocked, crippling sanctions placed on Russia, many of its banks kicked out of SWIFT, economic integration of Europe and Asia slowed or reversed, Germany to spend 113 billion on rearming (largely meaning buying American costume-jewelry weaponry), Europe forced to buy expensive American LNG, and Europe made dependent on America for energy. All this in a few days without loss of a single American soldier. This presumably at least in part engineered by Virginia Newland who, though she looks like a fireplug with leprosy, seems effectively Machiavellian.

Next victim, China.

Divide and conquer. Or at least that’s the theory. At the same time reinstate the JCPOA and use economic baubles to try to pry Iran away from Beijing.

Here we need some context. Everything Washington does internationally aims at maintaining America’s largely military near-hegemony over the world. This involves several elements:

First, military dominance.

This includes the many hundreds of bases around the world, naval supremacy, and the huge military expenditure. Thy latter will be maintained at any cost to domestic needs, and apparently it is going to be increased.

Second, control of the world’s supply of energy.

Washington is trying to starve Venezuela, with its vast reserves of petroleum, into submission. Submission means letting American-dominated oil majors exploit the country’s oil. Washington is doing the same with Iran and its enormous reserves. It has troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, has confiscated Syria’s oil lands, crushed Libya, and so on. Keeping the European vassals from buying more Russian gas through Nordstream II is part of this energy control and an important part.

Third, and crucial, keep the EU from coalescing into a vast continent-spanning trade zone.

This is exactly what China contemplates in its BRI, Belt and Road initiative. This is too much subject for a few paragraphs, but some thoughts: China is a manufacturing juggernaut in explosive growth. Economic power is the basis of all power. China has the advantage of inner lines of communication: it can build rail, fiber optics, highway,s and pipelines in Asia, where America has little access. China has money because it has a for-profit economy, and America doesn’t. The pull of China’s gigantic market and manufactures was beginning to loosen America’s control of Europe. Eurasian integration had to be stopped.

Fourth, the dollar.

Washington controls the dollar, the IMF, SWIFT, and in general the international financial system. It uses this control brutally as a weapon to impose sanctions, crippling the economies of such countries as Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and now Russia. Seeing this intimidates other countries. Washington may have gone too often to this well. Having made England, its chief bootlicker, confiscate Venezuela’s gold reserves, and now freezing Russia’s reserves, Washington has served notice that no country is secure from this treatment. Here I speculate freely, but this may prove America’s worst mistake since 1619 as it may greatly accelerate the search for other payment systems—CIPS from China, SPFS from Russia, and the upcoming digital yuan. Washington, methinks, is betting the farm.

So much for the world…

Meanwhile, America seems to be sinking into irreversible decadence that must eventually—I would say soon—affect its international position. As the world’s economic and, laggingly, technological center of gravity moves east to Asia, an internally collapsing America will be less able to maintain the empire.

Consider:

[1] Printing of money out of nothing.

Washington’s printing of money, equivalent to the debasing of the coinage characteristic of failing societies, has resulted in high inflation and a potentially catastrophic national debt. This will cause political perturbation as voters seek to find which of the two essentially identical parties will not behave like the other one. Unrest will grow. Trust abroad in the dollar will decrease.

[2] Enormous Trade Deficit.

America suffers from a massive and growing trade deficit, largely with China, about which nothing can be done, certainly not soon, because America no longer makes things it needs. Manufacturing cannot be brought back, excep perhaps in niche markets like semiconductors, because the US no longer has the necessary engineers and trained work force, and American labor costs more than Chinese, so reshoring would increase inflation. The importation of cheap Chinese products keeps inflation down,.

[3] Wall Street / Military seizing all the money.

The heavy flow of national wealth into Wall Street and the military in addition to offshoring has led to real poverty in Appalachia, the Rust Belt, and the rural Deep South. This has produced some 100,000 opioid deaths annually in despairing populations. Simultaneously large and growing homeless aggregations appear in LA, Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, St. Louis, on and on, estimated at 60,000 in LA and 50,000 in New York, making the subways dangerous. Bush world conditions presumably do not make for political stability, as neither does the governmental inattention to them.

[4] Massive Crime

Crime is out of control, not a sign of a healthy polity. Some 700 homicides annually in Chicago, 300 in Baltimore, and similar numbers elsewhere are now routine, almost all of the killers and killed being black. To countries like Japan and South Korea this must seem barbaric. The situation is not First World.

[5] Racial Problems

America’s racial problem is grave. The southern border is open, the southwestern states either majority Latino or soon to be. This is not as bad as it could be as the races seem to get along, but it imposes heavy economic and other costs. At the same time across the country cities have huge black ghettos with appalling semiliteracy, no prospects for the young, all of this apparently irremediable. Racial attacks on whites and Asians grow in number and so, almost everywhere, do racial killings, mostly by blacks. Governments at all levels fear blacks who they know will burn cities if provoked, which leads tax bases to flee from cities, making things worse.

This adds to potentially explosive resentment. There is a substantial White Nationalist movement, that wants no non-whites in America (a bit late for this), Republican Chambers of Commerce, that want more illegal Latinos for the cheap labor but won’t say so, and the high-tech sector, which wants more East Asian and Indian immigrants on which America, with a failing educational system, increasingly depends.

The Overall Prognosis is Poor

Overall, government is weak, unable to prevent crime, riots, and looting.

Washington does not control, but is controlled, being a storefront operation for special interests.

Elections do not change policy but only the division of the spoils.

Presidents perform their three essential duties, protecting Wall Street, Israel, and the military budget, but not much else.

Schooling is being dumbed down in stark contrast with China.

Excellence everywhere is discouraged in the name of equity. Native white talent dwindles in the elite schools, from high-end high schools through CalTech, as Asian majorities predominate.

Measures of talent, such as SATs and Medcats, are dropped or downplayed. English grammar and arithmetic are dropped as racist.

None of this seems likely to improve America’s future competitiveness.

Finally, the media are controlled.

This allows Washington freedom of action abroad as enough of the public will believe anything they are told by television (The Russians are coming, the Chinese are coming, the Iranians are coming, the Guatemalans….)

Internally censorship may keep the lid on, for now anyway, by keeping enough of the population from knowing what is going on.

By preventing discussion of problems, or their mention, it assures that nothing will be done.

I suspect this is having the effect of winding a spring.

Where is all of this leading?

Biden is playing as if this were 1960 and the US enjoyed rock solid military and economic superiority and the population were firmly behind him.

This is the world he remembers, being an aging cold warrior. He seems to believe that he consequently can do what he pleases with no repercussions for America. This may be true, or true enough. Perhaps he believes that Russia will collapse in domestic rebellion or simply surrender to the US.

It is not how I would bet.

But—and this is sheer speculation—it is not clear what would happen if Russia cut off gas and petroleum and wheat and such things as neon gas from Europe.

The West is accustomed to bombing remote countries, not to going without.

Would Russia collapse under privation before Europe decided it wanted to trade with Moscow after all?

If Biden and the hawks decide to play hardball with China, they may realize that America is an economic dependency of Beijing. If—again, very hypothetically—China cut off all trade with America, the US economy would die instantly.

Almost everything on American shelves is made in China.

An American public already very unhappy would explode, which it is on the point of doing for various reasons.

Reflect on the Floyd riots.

China would be hurt, but it has other markets and a nationalistic population more united than the American.

Them’s my thoughts, probably worth what you pay for them.

Speaking of China…

Declining empires and their ‘forever wars’? “As the US and NATO struggle to deal with the unfolding crisis in Ukraine, China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, has issued a warning to the Biden administration not to repeat the mistakes made in Europe by attempting to create a Pacific version of NATO to contain and constrain China.

He’s talking about the QUAD.

He’s talking about AUKUS.

Calling such plans “perverse actions” that “run counter to the common aspiration of the region for peace, development, cooperation and win-win outcomes,” Wang declared that if they were implemented by the US, “they are doomed to fail.”
https://lnkd.in/eAJKmwJG

More excerpts:

◉ The Chinese concerns are not imaginary, but rather drawn from a direct reading of the guidance published by the Biden administration in the Spring of 2021.

◉ A plain reading of that text clearly shows that the US was pursuing a NATO-like alliance in the Pacific solely focused on the issue of “holding China to account.”

It is in this light that one must view partnerships such as the “QUAD”, a military partnership between the US, Japan, India, and Australia, and the newly constituted AUKUS alliance composed of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US.

Both the QUAD, and AUKUS organizations exist solely to coordinate a military response to China’s presence in the Pacific region.

◉ “Wang also criticized the US for expanding its ties, including military cooperation and weapons sales, with Taiwan.

Such policies, Wang warned, “not only push Taiwan into a precarious situation, but will also bring unbearable consequences for the US side,”

Wang clearly stated, “Taiwan will eventually return to the embrace of the motherland.”

◉ Many experts and observers were surprised by Russia’s decision to intervene militarily in Ukraine. When it comes to China’s readiness to go to war over Taiwan, there should be no such uncertainty.

◉ “The Russian side reaffirms its support for the One-China principle, confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan,” it reads.

The fact that Russia signed on to such a statement knowing full well that China had committed to the use of military force to defend its claims regarding Taiwan underscores the seriousness of the Russian-Sino joint statement.

◉ China knows that any military action against Taiwan would bring with it economic retaliation on the part of the US and its allies.

Like Russia, however, China holds significant cards in its hand, and any Western effort to punish it with economic sanctions would bring about a response which could cripple the economies of those targeted.

China has already developed an anti-sanction law, that automatically goes into action once a sanction is imposed. It was specifically written with the United States in mind.

Moreover, any military action against Taiwan would, in and of itself, have dire economic consequences for the United States, especially in the field of semiconductor manufacturing.

Any military conflict involving Taiwan would have a crippling impact on the American military electronics market, dependent as it is on the computer chips produced by Taiwan.

This is simply becuase ALL of the American military and high-technology IC chips have been outsourced to Taiwan. It is the sole and only source of supply for American military integrated electronics.

How will a war in Taiwan affect the global consumer market? The effect would be negligible. The vast majority of IC chips are already produced in the Chinese mainland.

What about the USD?

The movement to de-dollarize will be unstoppable and one of the lasting impacts of this war, not just rogue states, but US allies will also join in.

This must-read article in Foreign Affairs is a sobering read on de-dollarization as is this supporting article on sanctions in Quartz (https://bit.ly/3pN9Rfb)

When I started writing about de-dollarization almost three years ago I was widely considered a “Cassandra.”

I now have good company believing this, but admit that I take no joy in writing about a process artificially accelerated by the inhumanity of war.

So here’s what is at risk, from FA:

“These punitive sanctions may also backfire in another way. Biden’s flexing of American economic muscle will only embolden Russia and other US rivals, notably China, to deprive the US of the very power that makes sanctions so devastating.”

“Russia and China will expedite initiatives to “de-dollarize” their economies, building alternative financial institutions and structures that both protect themselves from sanctions and threaten the US dollar’s status as the world’s dominant currency.”

What is driving this is sanction fatigue, from Quartz:

“[Sanctions are] economic warfare at an unprecedented level. It’s true that, over the past decade, the global use of sanctions has exploded to the point of making them routine.”

With sanctions now “routine” nations are questioning their commitment to the dollar. It isn’t because they bear ill-will toward America but see reducing dollar dependence as “risk management.” They also see it as a way to bolster the use of their own currencies so are creating CBDCs.

Pushing the issue will be the global impact on food and energy prices from the unprecedented size of Russian sanctions (Quartz):

“But most of the time, [sanctions] are much narrower—aimed at certain individuals, institutions, or industries—or applied over a much longer timeline, or against a much smaller economy, as in the case of Iran. The speed, scale, and sweeping nature of the Russian sanctions make them the equivalent of an economic blitzkrieg.”

Now a stunning admission from the FA:

“Deteriorating U.S.-Chinese relations incentivize Beijing to join with Moscow in building a -credible- global financial system that excludes the US. Such a system will attract countries under US sanctions. It would even appeal to major US allies who hope to promote their own currencies to the detriment of the dollar.”

And that is the part that is inevitable, this new bi-polar financial system will appeal to US allies!

It should not be seen as a litmus test of friend or foe but instead “whose money offers the better deal?”

The US cannot reverse this change, and it will lead to a weakening of its global standing.

And so it is happening

And there’s many others.

The collapse of the USD as a “reserve currency” is nearing the end. It is collapsing vry fast. And will collapse even faster once the hyper inflation of the $30 trillion dollar bubble manifests, on top of the sanctions.

This will spell out many changes to the lifestyles of those that live in the West, and the nations that maintain trade and use of the USD.

The lifestyle of those in the West is about to change…

Now, you cannot say that you have been warned. But, Jeeze! You were. You all should have listened to Mr. Putin when he said “if you put your fucking nukes on my border, I will be forced to use military-technical measures”.

Sheech!

So when you are paying your $54 / gallon of gas to drive to the fast food resturant to buy your $200 hamburger (minus cheese), don’t go a calling me a “Putin Puppet”. You all brought this fiasco upon yourselves. Suck it up with a big toothy smile, your wishes came true, you mindless oafs.

The true and real actual United States GDP is about to come crashing down, and Americans will start living like trailer park trash in the rural hills of Kentucky. And that’s just the way it is.

I stand by my belief that theres more things down the pipe. Never forget about who you are all dealing with…

Illustrations depicting society life by Stephan Schmitz 55 New Pics 60f1374e7f90e 700
America vs China.

.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

.

 

 

Russia has found the smoking gun as to why Westerners are ordered to take mRNA injections

And it happened in Ukraine. Yeah. No shit.

Let me explain.

Americans and Westerners (The United States, the EU, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Korea = the collective “West”) have been mandated to take an mRNA “vaccination” to fight Coronavirus. This, most people know.

What they don’t know is this…

  • The mRNA is not a vaccination. It’s an injection of a content-secret chemical.
  • Russia, China, and the rest of the world use traditional “dead host” vaccines.
  • Both Russia and China accused the USA of unleashing Coronavirus on the world.
  • They claim that it is a bioweapon. One of 11 total. (8 against livestock, 3 against people.)

If the reader is aware of those four points, then good for you. If you are unaware, then you REALLY need to change your “news” sources.

Now, that being said, many in the (collective) West are openly critical of these mRNA “vaccinations”. They don’t understand why they need to take it for a chest cold weaker than the seasonal flu. As such, many refuse to take it, with Americans being the most agressive about this.

To force compliance, the West have set up systems where you MUST get this mRNA injection or be “black listed”. Being “black listed” has many negative attributes, such as loss of job, income, ability to bank, financial investments and others too numerous to list.

When pressed, they (the government) argue that “the rest of the world is doing this, so we must as well”.

Not true.

Only the collective West is doing this.

Not the East.

China and Russia are very serious about this, true, but they use “dead-host” (actual) vaccines. They do not use mRNA injections becuase the studies have shown severe side effects within the injected population over time.

In fact, (unreported in the West), China is still at DEFCON 2 right now and has been at that point since 2020 when they accused the United States for unleasing the three bioweapons attacks against their civilian population.

Good luck visiting and arriving in China.

It’s still locked down. You have to apply for a visa under the “special authorizations” clause, and then endure two weeks in a quarantine hotel (with daily multiple swabs) and another two weeks at your destination under lock-down. That’s a total of four weeks under lock-down. Obviously, there aren’t many people visiting China right now.

Remember the Winter Olympics? The entire area was one big “clean room”.

So here you have the situation.

Polorized Globe

The earth is now divided into two haves.

On one side you have the “The First World”, also known as the “Collective West”. It consists of the United States led unipolar order. The nations are the United States and all of it’s toadies; it’s “allies”.

On the other side, you have a China-led order. With Russia, all of Africa, the Middle East, and most of South America.

The West vs. the East.

2022 03 10 10 06
The “West” in blue. The “East” in gray.

One side wants it all

This shouldn’t be news to anyone. The collective West demands a unipolar global order led by the United States; one that can make the rules as it moves forward, and break and ignore the rules it doesn’t like.

The East wants a world of equals working together as needed per the UN charter. They beleive that much can be gained for the bulk of humanity if everyone participates in wealth generating activities. Not just the super wealthy.

Again, this shouldn’t be news to anyone.

If you are not aware of this, then I posit that you have been living under a rock, and your “news” sources are pathetic.

How can the USA take it all, once and for all?

The West wants it all, but they are impotent.

The United States might have the largest military in the world, and bases everywhere, but they have major liabilities. Culturially, socially, physically, and substantively on every level, the West is approaching “senile, old age, riddled with dementia”.

For the last fifty years, it lost every war that it fought (with the notible exceptions of Grenada, and Panama), all the time while fighting multiple wars all over the globe. Right now it is involved in eight simultaneous hot kinetic wars, and numerous “color revolutions”. It’s been a busy, busy nation.

But the rest of the world has risen. It’s awake. And it’s aware.

Don’t piss it off.

Any war with a major Eastern nation will be collective. Meaning, if you fight China, the rest of the world will engage you. If you fight Russia, the rest of the world will engage you. As we are just now starting to witness.

Uh oh.

Nuclear weapons are out. Well for now, at least.

Yes. America (and it’s surrogates) has an enormous nuclear arsenal.  But the delivery systems have been rendered obsolete by the Eastern block. Not only does the East have very advanced hyper-velocity missiles, but they have AI, internal ability to evade, plot course changes, and stealth.

In addition, all of Asia has the ability to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles on any form or shape. America and Europe does not have this. They never saw the need. They are exceptional, the shining house on the hill; the nations where everyone wants to become part of. Don’t you know!

So, if nuclear destruction is out of the calculus, then what’s left?

Biowarfare

Now, it is well documented that the United States under Trump / John Bolton / Mike Pompeo launched a two-phase bioweapons assault on the East in 2019.

Again, if you are unaware of this, I have to shake you up with the “Rule number one of being a spook”. Look for what is NOT being reported in the “news”.

So, yeah. China was intentionally “suppressed”. It’s all part of that “hybrid-warfare” onslaught package. Don’t you know.

And it was genius.

It truly was.

The “lite” version, the one that only caused a sore thoat was given to Americans and Europeans in June 2019. This was to innoculate the population with the COVID-19A “safe” virus. You know “herd immunity”.  And it has worked.

While the nasty bad momba-jamba COVID-19B rampaged though Iran and China in December that year.

China went DEFCON 1, and full lockdown and suppressed the bioweapon attack. Irans, had some real serious dings and lost most of it’s leadership.

I argue that the attack failed. Then when the modified strains started to circle the globe, and hit the USA, everyone started running the “wear a mask” gambit, and hurry up and get inoculated…

But…

But…

Something just doesn’t add up.

The United States Bioweapon facilities

The United States is the ONLY nation developing bioweapons in the world. In fact, it has held this role for at least fourty years since the fall of the former Soviet Union.

Yet, why all the many, many, many bioweapons facilities?

There’s over 330+ of them, and they are all over the globe. Why?

Let, me spell it out to you all. Why so many development labs all regionally located thoughtout the world? These are top secret facilities. Why are there so many, and why so regional?

Think about it.

Well, let’s “cut to the chase”.  All you need to do is look at a map of human DNA variations by geographical region to see the answer.

2022 03 10 10 40
2022 03 10 10 40

They have been developing DNA targeting viruses to target specific geographical population clusters.

And it has been going on for a long time.

But, you know, there’s no way to know for certain. The facities are all locked down, with up-most secrecy. No one is ever going to discover what the United States government is up to.

Russian invasion of the Ukraine

Then the invasion of the Ukraine occured, and the Russians seized some of these bioweapons facilities, and their findings were truly worrisome.

From the Greenvillepost. Constantly being taken down…

U.S. Nailed to the Wall on Illicit Biological Weapons Labs in Ukraine

For the world to survive and have peace, US generals have to kick the imperialist addiction, and the ruling political classes of the US and EU thoroughly renovated.

A couple of days ago, when I presented a summary of the dramatic information and warnings conveyed in the latest televised briefing by the spokesman for the Russian military, Igor Konoshenkov, I received back from some readers the comment that this was all just Russian propaganda, similar to the kind of propaganda we hear regularly coming from the Pentagon and State Department. 

The allegations of biological weapons banned under international convention being produced in experimental laboratories in Kharkiv and other Ukrainian towns under programs paid for and supervised by Americans had to be fake news, these skeptics and cynics maintained. 

The same had to be true of Konoshenkov’s asserting that the Ukrainians were working on dirty nuclear bombs at their Zaporozhye nuclear power stations, which had just been captured by Russian forces.

However, yesterday the story about biological weapons labs received convincing confirmation from the U.S. State Department, when Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said publicly before microphones that the USA fears that its biological labs in Ukraine will “fall into the wrong hands.”

That is a very convoluted admission that the Russians’ allegations are perfectly true.

The U.S. is battening down the hatches against the coming storm of international indignation, at the same time trying to divert attention away from itself by suggesting that the Russians might do something dastardly with what they find.

Enter China

American evasion and attempted dissimulation were stymied however when, also yesterday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded an explanation from the United States.

He demanded what exactly Americans have been doing not only in their Ukrainian labs, which were situated in cities across the Ukraine from Kharkiv to Lviv, but also in a further 130 such labs spread out across the world.

Intense Chinese concern is understandable since one such laboratory was in Wuhan, the point of origin of Covid19.

The subtext is that the U.S. Chiefs of Staff have taken with the utmost seriousness the warnings of retaliation from Konoshenkov, against NATO, Article 5 or no Article 5 pledges of ‘one for all and all for one.’
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Meanwhile, the general public in the United States is clueless because virtually nothing about this appeared in major media.
Remember the MM spook rule #1; 
"Look for what is NOT being reported".

Leaks from these labs – Intentional or unintentional?

Still on the subject of biological weapons being prepared in Ukraine under United States funding and guidance, Russian experts were on television this morning explaining how leaks from these labs have been monitored over the past few years.

2022 03 10 11 23
2022 03 10 11 23

In one such case, 450 Ukrainian civilians were said to have died from biological agents that contaminated their residential block.

This number, you will note, is higher than the total number of civilian deaths in the ongoing “barbaric” Russian in Ukraine.

As reported in The Financial times (characterization as “barbaric” by Andrew Bacevich, Chairman of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a self-described American think tank for peace).

The Russians are now examining whether outbreaks of swine flu and avian flu that caused havoc with their livestock in farming areas close to the Ukrainian border may not have been artificially induced by saboteurs coming from Ukraine.

Work on viruses transmissible from animals to humans was also reportedly being done in the Ukrainian facilities.

And nuclear weapons too?

Let us now turn to the question of Ukraine’s program to produce nuclear weapons, which Konoshenkov also mentioned in his briefing.  Today Russian news is saying that they possess more than just documentary proof of such development, which contravenes the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, to which Ukraine is a signatory. The Russians now claim to have found sample “baby bombs” which will prove beyond doubt the nuclear ambitions of Kiev for which the United States was a guiding force.

All of the foregoing points to what may be expected when the Russians finish their demilitarization and denazification campaign in Ukraine in the next several weeks.

They may well convene an international tribunal to try the Ukrainians who were responsible for the illicit programs involving weapons of mass destruction.

We may expect the Chinese to join them in running the tribunal, as well as other closely interested countries.

It is also reasonable to expect that this tribunal will identify and seek to extradite their American handlers.

This may be difficult, because Moscow has already said today that the Americans on the ground in Ukraine overseeing the biological weapons laboratories all carried diplomatic passports.

However, the Russians, like the Americans, can be very resourceful in cases like this.

Well U.S. Biolabs in Ukraine must be true because Twitter suspended @::::war::::clandestine account. Someone out there got post on video. Here it is. pic.twitter.com/S5418JOQbj
— Secret Squirel (@cbcool2532) February 24, 2022

Geo-Political “games”

Finally, before closing today’s bulletin of latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war at the political level, I direct attention to the question of Poland’s turning over its fleet of Soviet-era MIG jet fighters to Ukraine, which has been a hot issue on Western news these past few days.

The Poles had been in discussions over this possibility with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week, and Blinken seemed to be approving.

For the Poles, the proposed “donation” to support Ukraine would be a godsend.  They would get rid of their fleet of old Soviet planes and would receive in exchange from the United States F-16 fighters, thereby better integrating Poland into the standard equipment of NATO fully at the charge of Uncle Sam.

Let us assume the transaction would come to half a billion to one billion dollars to the benefit of Warsaw and to the cost of U.S. taxpayers.

Is it any wonder that several other former Warsaw Pact countries, now NATO member states yesterday said they too were ready to help the comrades in Ukraine by turning their old MIGs over to Kiev and taking in exchange United States fighter planes.

Warsaw announced yesterday that it intended to fly its MIGs to the Ramstein airbase in southwestern Germany for the hand-over.

This news release apparently took the U.S Government by surprise.

At her testimony before the Senate a little later in the day, Victoria Nuland said she had no pre-warning of the announcement and would not comment till she got back to her office and studied the matter further.

This announcement was indeed remarkable.

Ramstein is the headquarters of the United States Air Forces in Europe and also of the NATO Allied Air Command.

If the MIGs had simply been transferred to Ukrainian pilots on Polish territory and then flown into combat in Ukraine, then they would bring down on the dispatching airport in Poland the instant retribution that General Konoshenkov stated explicitly two days ago.

Russia would bomb Poland.

By sending the planes to Ramstein for the hand-over to the Ukrainians, the Russian response, cruise or hypersonic missile attack, would go instead against the United States airbase.

Russia would bomb the United States.

Dear promoters of Poland as the defense shield of Europe in Washington:  pay close attention to what your friends would do to you.

2022 03 10 10 03
2022 03 10 10 03

However, none of this will come to pass, as we may conclude by today’s announcement from the Pentagon that the deal is unacceptable and is outside the competence of Poland to offer.

Today the Pentagon spokesmen say plainly that the issue at hand concerns all of NATO and can be taken only by NATO collectively, not by one member, Poland.

This is a nice formally correct explanation from the Pentagon.

The subtext is that the U.S. Chiefs of Staff have taken with the utmost seriousness the warnings of retaliation from Konoshenkov,  against NATO, Article 5 or no Article 5 pledges of ‘one for all and all for one.’

Meanwhile, the general public in the United States is clueless because virtually nothing about this appeared in major media.

2022 03 10 08 06
2022 03 10 08 06

When the war started, President Putin was hopeful to come to a quick understanding with the leading officers of the Ukrainian armed forces regarding capitulation and regime change.

However, in a matter of days it became clear that the Ukrainian military has been thoroughly infiltrated by radical nationalists and is unable to act in the interests of the nation independently.

It now appears that this type of analysis would be better applied to the United States of America.

Only the senior generals in the Pentagon have their eyes and ears wide open to the Russian capabilities and intentions.

The political classes, both Democrats and Republicans on The Hill, are lost in their own virtual world of unlimited United States power.

That alone explains the potentially suicidal demand from Democrats yesterday that Biden now impose a ‘no-fly zone’ over Ukraine.

It may be that the war will end when the Pentagon generals and their Russian counterparts sit down and talk about revising the European architecture of security, leaving Blinken and his associates to look on through the windows.

A real possibility.

But what about the mRNA vaccines?

Let’s back track right now and look at some bullet points…

  • The USA is the sole nation running bioweapons development.
  • The USA is leading the “West” and needs to destroy the “East” to achieve dominance.
  • The USA has located bioweapons falicilites all over the globe and evidence in  Ukraine suggests viruses that target regional populations by DNA.

And we know, from published mRNA data (far too detailed to present here)…

  • Content of the mRNA “stew” injected into Westerners is secret.
  • This is not “corporate confidential”, but rather “government military secret”.
  • All of the collective West must get the injections.

Putting the first group of bullet-points with the second group of bullet-points we see an association.

The plan

It appears (as the most obvious conclusion possible)  that [1] the United States plans (in some way) to release regionally-targeted bioweapons globally, and [2] use it’s mRNA injection protocols to protect itself.

As different bioweapons are released, booster updates will be given to the civilian population to protect them from the bioweapons.

It’s pretty fucking evil.

Yikes! It’s a new way to fight wars

Yes it is.

What had happened is that when Russia invaded the Ukraine they were able to seize these facilities. And they were able to identify what they were doing and why. And one of the most obvious tasks was to develop bioweapons for United States use that was released to civilian populations locally. Then cover up the release as an “accident”. All as a cover for the development of regional DNA-targetted bioweapons.

And the way for the United States to protect itself is to inject it’s people with a cure. This would be a mRNA “milkshake”.

And given what we know of the global situation…

It appears that the Russian invasion came just in the “nick of time”. Perhaps all the rotten chain of events could be thwarted in some way.

An hour before the Apocalypse. Growing evidence that Russia’s special operation saved much of the world

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In Ukraine, under the leadership of the United States, a real biological weapon was developed
Alexander GRISHIN
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The Russian Defense Ministry has published a new document on the intentions of the leadership and directly the military command of Ukraine in relation to the Donbass. This is the original secret order of the Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine Mykola (Nikolay) Balan, signed by him on January 22, 2022. Once again – not copies, but the original document with all the authentic signatures of those responsible.
What is special about this document?
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This is not yet an order to attack the Donbass (the time will come, and such will appear at our disposal), but an order on the preparation and combat coordination of a separate battalion-tactical group of the 4th operational brigade of the National Guard to carry out combat (special) tasks in the so-called operation Joint forces in the Donbass region.
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Coordination exercises were held in the Lviv region at the Yavoriv training ground, the very one where most of the Javelins and other modern weapons transferred from the USA to the Armed Forces of Ukraine were stored.
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The exercises were supposed to pass according to the “NATO standards” program and prepare the fighters of the group psychologically, physically, teach them combat tactics and skills in handling foreign weapons. Further, this BTG was to operate as part of the 80th separate airborne assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. From the name of which it is already clear what tasks this connection performs. At the same time, a separate paragraph of the order forbade sending those National Guardsmen who would show “unsatisfactory results of psychological testing” to perform tasks in the Donbass. “Psychological stability” is a very important indicator for punishers,
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All preparations for solving the tasks set by the command were ordered to be completed by February 28th. We throw in another week to transfer the group directly to combat positions in the Donbass, a couple of days to line up, as they say, battle formations, and we get the start of an active offensive after receiving a combat order from the command today or tomorrow.
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By all logic, by all accounts, the military-political special operation launched by Russia on February 24 to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine averted a new tragedy in Donbass. Let’s face it, it’s much bigger than anything he’s done before. Ukraine was preparing for this.
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But besides this, as it turned out, there were other reasons for precisely such actions of Moscow, which we are now observing.

“WHY WILL BATTLE VIRUSES?”

Dmitry Peskov – about biological laboratories in Ukraine: “Measures are being taken. You will know about the results in a timely manner”
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Official China asked when the US would give clarifications on the 336 biological laboratories that Washington manages and finances around the world. However, rather, not Washington, but the Pentagon, the US Department of Defense. 30 of them are in Ukraine.
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From the documents cited earlier by the same Russian Ministry of Defense, it became clear that in Ukraine, under the leadership of the United States , a real biological weapon was being developed .
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In the order received from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, the leadership of the laboratories was ordered to destroy all research materials and the viruses themselves and other pathogens as early as the day the Russian special operation began.
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The next day, February 25, they all reported on the work done and the irretrievable destruction of the pathogens of diphtheria, salmonellosis, anthrax, ulcers, plague and other deadly diseases.
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Despite a chorus of ridicule from Russian liberals about this report by the Russian Defense Ministry, the veracity of this information was confirmed not by anyone, but by the United States itself.
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"There are biological research laboratories in Ukraine. At the moment, we are concerned that the Russian military may be trying to take control of them, was forced to admit at a hearing in the US Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (the same one who gladly handed out cookies and buns on the Maidan in Kyiv). - We are working with the Ukrainian side to ensure that biological research materials do not fall into the hands of Russian forces."
This in itself is a recognition that they did not develop flu drops there. After all, if everything is harmless, then why destroy the samples and strive so hard that they “do not fall into the hands of the Russians.”
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By the way, the Americans were very interested in the Bayraktara drones in terms of whether it is technically possible to spray aerosols from them during the flight, which is also confirmed, this time by other documents.
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"They probably just wanted to help the Ukrainians with fertilizers during the farming season." 

- The head of the troops of the RKhBZ of Russia on military biological programs in Ukraine
If for someone this is not enough. Then here’s something even scarier.

“WHO SAID ‘DIRTY’ BOMB? I SWEAR CLEAN I WASHED IT MYSELF”

Let’s remember that at a security conference in Munich this year, Zelensky said that in case of refusal of assistance to ensure the security of Ukraine, Kyiv could withdraw from the Budapest Memorandum.
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Which approves the non-nuclear status of Ukraine.
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No, Ukrainian politicians have repeatedly spoken about the need to revive the nuclear program in the country, but such a promise was made by the current head of state for the first time.
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Keep in mind that the Ukraine, since the CIA backed "color revolution" in 2014 is a wholly owned and controlled serrogate state, with a puppet leader. -MM
And this, judging by a whole range of evidence, was neither a bluff nor an empty threat. As follows from a number of reliable sources, the SVR and the GRU have documented evidence that such a program has already been implemented. Moreover, two types of charges were developed: plutonium and uranium.
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The key role in the project was assigned to the National Center “Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology”, which had an experimental base, in principle, for obtaining weapons-grade plutonium from spent reactor thermal assemblies. The work was also carried out in the zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, where the increased radiation background hid their work. Both the Institute for Nuclear Research in Kyiv and the Institute of Organic Chemistry were involved in the work on the project.
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Documents from Kyiv and Kharkov are still waiting to be made available, but Zaporizhzhya NPP personnel have already confirmed that such work was carried out at the plant, and IAEA inspectors from among the recruited local personnel did not reflect them in their reports.
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According to various estimates, a nuclear explosive device could be created in Ukraine within a period of several months to a couple of years. Ukraine also has carriers that would allow the charge to be carried, if not to Moscow and St. Petersburg, but to at least Belgorod, Kursk, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, albeit in very limited quantities.
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As for the so-called “Dirty” bomb , which is used to infect the area through the explosion of a conventional munition, Ukraine already has such a possibility, given the presence of a giant repository of spent nuclear fuel and waste in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant zone. Precisely to prevent such sabotage, which can be compared with the terrorist attack on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant (where the Americans supplied plutonium), units of the National Guard were introduced, which, by the way, are on duty there together with the National Guard of Ukraine.
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In general, both the GRU and the SVR do not eat their bread in vain, since information about all this was brought to the attention of the President of Russia in a timely manner.
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Probably, it may even seem like some kind of blasphemy now, but in a good way, the world should be grateful to Russia for the fact that it launched its military operation so on time. Imagine the detonation of a nuclear warhead on the territory of Russia and what the consequences of this would be.

Conclusion

And there you have it. There is a grand scheme of massive depopulation / war initiated by the United States via bioweapons globally.

If you believe the World Economic Forum, 80% of the population of the globe must be killed off to initiate a new “utopia”. One that is led by an American unipolar world-order.

The idea is to have the globe ruled with Service-to-self entities, and serviced by servie-to-another (NPC) entities. The service-for-others sentience will be killed off.

They plan to do this within the next two years.

There is a “bump in the road with both Russia and China” not wanting to have anything to do with it. But no matter. The United States is on “autopilot”. The systems are in place and the plan is in process.

How this will evolve over time is anyone’s guess.

But at least there’s a lone voice in Ireland speaking out…

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2022 03 10 11 39

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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MM observations and thoughts about the war in the Ukraine

Ugh. It’s been an exciting last couple of days, eh?

As of the 1MAR22, the military movement map is on schedule. Anyone who says that it is going slowly is overly influenced by Western propiganda. It’s going to schedule and meeting all of its objectives. There are no problems here.

2022 03 04 14 39 1
2022 03 04 14 39 1

I am seeing pincer movements, and the creation of pockets and cauldrons (black lines.). You can observe them on the map above.

Like many of you, I have been spending a great deal of time keeping up with coverage of Russia’s  invasion of Ukraine. There’s so much bullshit out there, and much of it is in the English speaking press. It’s really awful.

I covered that elsewhere.

If you have been taking-in the Western propaganda, you might have all sorts of distorted views and illusions about what is going on. Such as this…

"I am very upset with the Russians for choosing to invade the whole country, because now a line has been crossed that will never, ever be able to be uncrossed.  From here on out, there will be endless wars and rumors of wars, and countless numbers of people are going to die.  In the future, some historians may look back and determine that the coming Chinese invasion of Taiwan was the start of World War III, and others may point to the coming conflict between Israel and Iran.  But to me, February 23rd, 2022 was the start of World War III, and nothing will ever be the same again."

Well, it’s not like that at all.

It was NATO and the United States that crossed the Russian “Red Lines”. This was the reaction that they were warned about. It’s reffered to as the “non-ultimation; ultimation by Putin“.

Google it, if you are unaware of it’s existence.

It demanded that both NATO and the United States abide to the treaties that they signed. In particular three treaties were specified. All three were in blatent violation.

The ultimation was totally ignored by the American press, and the American leadership.

Since most of you have been closely following news coverage of the war, I am not going to rehash the basic facts here.  The Russians are winning victory after victory, and it appears that the battle for Ukraine could be over in a matter of weeks.

The following are some  observations about the new World War (cold or hot, it doesn’t matter) which just started in Ukraine…

#1 The United States launched it’s long awaited World War III.

Everyone knew that this was coming in one form or the other. Whether it is via the Fourth Turning, or the Deagal Report, or any Prepper websites, it happened to schedule and on time. No surprises there.

And it was birthed directly by United States and NATO action. Make no mistake there, either.

For a roll of the die, it could have been China. In any event, it pushed Russia into a corner using the "Cuba Missile Crisis" technique, and Russia had to respond.

The United States is following the road map written decades ago and will not accept peer competitors from Asia.

#2 The propaganda is that it’s all Russia’s fault.

Of course. That's the standard American "play book". You omit any semblance of the truth, and then propagate the lie-based narrative. All the shrills and 'bots are fully mobilized. And it is outrageous.

#3 The conflict between the West and Asia will continue until one side or the other is totally defeated.

This is an all-or-nothing, winner-take-all, situation.

Certainly, the neocons in Washington, DC anticipate a long-drawn-out war of attrition; a quagmire in Ukraine, and a leashing of the EU, my personal opinion says otherwise. Once Russia suppressed the Ukraine threat, the USA will push for another military action. They will not allow things to subside.

#4 Nuclear Detonations are likely.

Both sides are armed with nuclear weapons, and it is just a matter of time before somebody decides to use them. However, the Asian leadership has gamed everything here. Nothing is unexpected.

Remember, both America and Europe are undefended. 

While both China and Russia ahve ABM technology that can shoot down any ICBM, SLBM, and cruise missiles sent to them.

#5 The stakes are well understood and public.

As he launched the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin warned other countries that he could use nuclear weapons against them if they attempted to intervene. Which is why you are not seeing any direct military movement from NATO or nearby nations right now.

The action is covert, and hybrid. But not kenetic.

#5 Everyone is lying.

The Biden administration, the Ukrainians and the Russians all lied to everyone over and over again. The matter is simple; no one is respected, no one deserves the truth, and thus the true reality is to find the nation with the highest likelihood of truthful information.

Since the United States is constantly at war, and constantly provoking wars, it is very easy to see what it actually is. This is true even though the American public has been dumbed down to the point of brainless zombie NPC.

Russia, on the other hand, is clearly in a worrisome situation. America almost got into nuclear war over a similiar situation in 1962.

And the Ukraine, is, like all the West, a puppet government doing the work desired by others. Like Australia. Like Japan. Like Canada. Mindless puppets.

#6 There are no diplomatic solutions.

The posturing by the United States, and the EU / NATO against Russia and China has been aggressive, "in-your-face", rude, arrogant, and bombastic. 

Anyone who berates Asia for not being diplomatic is an uninformed idiot. 

All you need to do is replay the Anchorage Alaska meeting in early April 2021 between the USA and China. 

Russia clearly laid down the "Red Lines". The United States and NATO decided to ignore them. What is happening is the consequece of that decision.

#7 The EU, NATO, and the United States are all conducting acts of war.

Personal sanctions against heads of state and individuals who work in government are de facto acts of war. 

Expect retaliation at some time. And remember, again, boys and girls, time is on the side of Asia. The West is on a clock that speeds up faster as energy, food, and commodities become scarse.

#8 The United States / EU are especially weak.

The West have no real defenses to handle an aggressive, peer-capable war. This is on all fronts, in every way. Whether it is cyber, bioweapon, social "color revolution", trade, financial, or military / technical.

It takes fighters; people with merit driven skills to operate and engage in real war. World War III will not be fought inside bunkers with office workers pressing buttons. It will be fought by, and won by, organized and motivated fighters who are led by experienced merit promoted generals.

#9 Russia and China can both inflict terrible pain.

Russia and China are unified. Make no mistake about that. The Russians have more than 1,000 different ways of making the West feel pain, and they are not afraid to play dirty.

#10 Ukraine is a puppet vassal state.

I think that Volodymyr Zelensky is a piss-poor head of state. However, he's not the exception, he's the rule.  He's a clone, with Scott Morrison, Joe Biden, and any of the EU clowns equally ill-infomed and technically powerless.

#11 Game over for the Ukraine.

Zelensky pushed all of his chips into the middle of the table when the Russians knew full well that he wasn’t holding any cards.  Now he is going to lose his entire country.

#12 The United States is a coward, bully.

It appears that Zelensky actually believed that the United States and other western powers would come to his aid if the Russians invaded.  After what we have witnessed over the past year, that was an incredibly foolish thing to believe. The United States cases jack-shit about the rest of the world. It only cares about it's elite. No one else.

#13 The Western push followed plan “B”.

The war against China failed. The blocking of the BRI failed. So Plan "B" was put into play; Force Russia into a war. 

The so-called "diplomatic solution" was [1] the placement of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and [2] it becomes a member of NATO. With [3] Russia backing down peacefully. [4] No one makes a big deal about the "Russian Red Lines", they are ignored and they disappear. 

That was the "diplomatic solution" that all the West are lamenting about.

Diplomatic solution = Nuclear weapons in a NATO Ukraine.
War solution = Russia ejects the minion government of Ukraine.

From the point of view of the collective West; it was a win-win. No matter what Russia did, the plan would run it's course.

#14 The isolation of Russia will fail.

At this stage, the Biden administration will try to turn the rest of the world against the Russians and will try to suffocate the life out of them economically.  

That isn’t going to work, because Russia is very self-sufficient when it comes to food, energy and other essentials, and Putin has also signed very extensive trade agreements with China.

#15 All of this is well-panned and well thought out.

Putin would have made this move if he didn’t have an understanding with China behind the scenes.  The Chinese are allowing the Russians to invade Ukraine.

This is all part of a grander plan.

The crazy United States monster is going to try to eat up Asia, one way or the other. If not Russia, it will be China. The nations have banded together for mutual protection.

#16 Taiwan

Now that the Chinese have seen how weakly the western powers have responded to the invasion of Ukraine, we can see how they might think about the reunification issue with Taiwan. 

It does NOT mean that it emboldens the Chinese to take action. They are following their own, well-thought-out timetable. And for them, Ukraine means nothing. It changes nothing.

No. Instead, it alerts the separatist political factions inside Taiwan of the hopelessness of their objectives. As well as the pitiful support that they would actually get from the United States. Now they know what will happen with an alliance with the United States.

To this end, an urgent flight with American government officials are flying (have flown) to Taiwan to assure them that “America will support them against mainland China. Now, you must realize that this is a provocation, and it is very dangerous for the United States to do this. Know your history. video 6MB

#17 Ukraine

It will be restructured, and rules will be put in place so that [1] color revolutions can never reoccur ever again, [2] NGOs / CIA are kept out, [3] and it will be a neutral and demilitarized nation.

#18 Food and minerals

The Western "leadership" have no clear idea how actual physical things work. Those cell-phones are made in China, and have batteries made from minerals mined in Russia. 

The USA placed sanctions on everything except what they need. But you know that Russia could easily say "fuck you" to them at the right moment, and not ship anything to them. 

The global food crisis has just continued to get worse as global food supplies have continued to get tighter and tighter.  Normally, Russia and Ukraine export vast quantities of food to the rest of the world, but the war is going to change that.  We really are facing a horrifying breakdown of our food and energy systems, and that is going to affect every man, woman and child in the collective West.

This war is going to make the global food crisis much worse.

#19 Energy

The global energy crisis is going to get a whole lot worse.  Russia exports a tremendous amount of energy, and European nations gobble it up like addicts.  This conflict threatens to dislocate the flow of global energy to a degree that we haven’t seen since World War II.

Already, the collective West are already facing the worst energy crisis since the 1970s before the war broke out, and Russia is one of the most important energy producers on the entire globe.  As energy markets are thrown into further turmoil, energy prices will go to unprecedented heights.

This war is going to make the global energy crisis much worse.

It will start with abnormally high energy prices, and then spiral into uncontrolable inflation. Then, it will get really bad...

#20 China & Russia financial transfers

SWIFT is going the way of the Doo-Doo Bird. And with the death of SWIFT will be a new reality where if you want things from China, you will have to pay using their system, and it requires to be backed up with gold reserves. The trouble is, the USA doesn't have any gold any longer.

#21 US Military is in sad shape.

The U.S. military is in the worst condition that I have ever seen in my entire lifetime.  At this point, the U.S. military is not at all prepared to fight the Russians or anyone else for that matter.

#22 Russians are Ruthless.

Many people out there love to criticize President Trump, but even he understood that you don’t mess with the Russians.  Unless they are messing with you, the best thing to do with the Russians is to just leave them alone.  

All throughout history, those that have chosen to pick a fight with Russia have ended up regretting it.  The Russians will do whatever it takes to win, and they are absolutely ruthless.

#23 Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is a no-show

It appears that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is either extremely courageous or he is flat out lying to us.  If he is still in Ukraine, and that is a big if, then I have to applaud his courage and bravery.  

So many others would have fled in the face of a Russian invasion, but if he has chosen to stay and fight then his people are right to regard him as a hero.  

But if he has already left Ukraine and is just acting as if he has stayed behind to fight, then that is the opposite of courage. 

It is odd that the Russians haven’t been able to find Zelensky yet, because they have definitely been hunting for him.

*Update* 

Zelensky fled to Poland. He abandoned his country and refused to negotiate with the Russians. Instead, he is staying in the United States Embassy. U.S. Embassy Warsaw Aleje Ujazdowskie 29/31 00-540 Warsaw Poland

#24 Begging for American Involvment

Zelensky is trying really hard to drag western powers into the war.  He is begging Joe Biden to establish a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine, but Biden understands that this would mean direct military conflict with the Russians.

#25 Polish and EU fighter jets

The EU has announced that they will be providing fighter jets to Ukraine.  This is an extremely dangerous thing to do, because Putin has warned that those that provide military equipment to Ukraine will be targeted as enemies.

This is a lie.

Yesterday's blazing headlines about European countries deciding to "give" fighter jets to Ukraine, to be based at an airfield in Poland, has completely fallen apart.  As of this morning, NO country will be giving ANY fighter jets to the Ukraine.  

It's official - Europe won't transfer fighter planes to Ukraine. 

Poland decided not to, and Slovakian defense ministry spokesperson confirms just now: “Slovakia will not provide fighter jets to Ukraine."  

Yesterday, shortly after the spectacular claim by Ukraine, one of the countries, Bulgaria, flatly denied it saying they don't have enough planes to defend their own country, never mind giving some to another country.

So once again, a spectacular claim by "officials" turns out to be an outright lie.

#26 NATO injection into the Ukraine

I don’t know why the EU believes that fighter jets will make much of a difference, because most of the military airfields under Ukraine’s control have already been destroyed. They would have to be based inside NATO and then fly into the Ukraine. In effect; an unofficial NATO incursion into war.

#27 Nuclear safties are OFF

The entire world was shocked when Putin put his strategic nuclear forces on alert over the weekend.  Putin definitely escalated things dramatically by making this move, but hopefully it will get people to understand that we really could end up with a nuclear war at the end of all this.

I was scratching my head with the moronic idiocy of the Western "leadership". The words "Duh!", and "Ya think!" come to mind.

#28 CIPS

Now that western powers have weaponized SWIFT, I think that there will be a mass exodus to China’s version.  Most people have not even heard of CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System) until now, but this crisis is going to make it a lot more prominent. Not just Russia, either. But most of the globe.

#29 Stalling at the “Peace Talks”

I would love it if the “peace talks” between Russia and Ukraine brought an end to the shooting.  Unfortunately, to me it appears that Ukraine is simply using those talks as a stalling tactic.  Zelensky still seems to think that western powers can be dragged into the conflict, and so he is trying to buy as much time as possible.

#30 If not NATO then, the EU.

When Zelensky signed an application for Ukraine to become a member of the European Union on Monday, that was another clear sign that he has no intention of turning Ukraine into a “neutral country” like the Russians are demanding.

#31 The Ukraine as it exists now is over

Dead man walking. If Zelensky cannot get anyone to come help Ukraine, he will lose this war.

#32 A United Asia

Russia is not isolated. China is not isolated. Together they represent the bulk of argultural products, mineral resources, technology, and manufacturing. Throw in a pro-Russia and Pro-China Africa, and you see a very mighty powerful block.

Meanwhiile, the West can play with their spreadsheets, their fianancial advisors, diversity experts and serve fast food to each other. The future of the world depends on Asia.

#33 Western Priorities

I think that Richard Moore, the chief of MI6, certainly revealed a lot when he tweeted this“With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights. So let’s resume our series of tweets to mark #LGBTHM2022.”

#34 Russia and China are as one

A major narrative being promoted out of the propaganda mills is that "Russia tricked China", and that "China is now worried". Both ideas are totally false bullshit. The Chinese media does not reflect those opinions, and the people on "the street" do not feel that way at all. Inside China the over all feeling is that Russia is defending itself against the USA / NATO alliance, and that it needs to do so.

#35 Russia eliminated all the pricy expensive weapons systems in one day

The Russian attack began, as predicted, mostly by strikes with standoff weapons.  24 hour hours later the Ukrainian air force and navy ceased to exist.  In this initial phase, few Ukrainian units were directly engaged.

All of those very expensive fighter aircraft, electonic systems, high-technology weapons provided to the Ukraine by the United States (it has been the fourth largest recipient of American weapons) became useless slag in 24 hours.

#36 The United States won the propaganda war

On the informational war, the West gave Russia a thorough thrashing: RT and Sputnik are banned everywhere, absolutely insane rumors are circulating (see example below), I know for fact that some US colleges have banned their computers from accessing any .ru or .su websites –  yes entire domain names are being shut down – Russian diplomats get assaulted (in one of the 3Bs statelets if I remember correctly).

The western PSYOP onslaught is so powerful that even some people in Russia are fearful and sincerely worry “what will happen to us next?!”.

Western IT companies are disconnecting, throttling, while “private” western crackers are unleashing DDoS attack on pretty much all the main Russian websites, not only informational ones, but also those who are used to run the civilian infrastructure of Russia.  I am not impressed by how much (or little) Russian PR people did to prepare for this which was easy to see coming.  Here, again, the West so far is winning, but a huge margin.

The western society is displaying its hatred of all things Russian in every way it can: hundereds and maybe thousands of students are summarily expelled from western colleges (which used to be bastions of freedom).  In a Swiss city a child was beat up in school for being an “evil Russian”.  Artists are expelled, others pressured to condemn their own country and president, western presstitutes and politicians unceasingly vomit at Russia, Russians and everything Russian!

I have two videos that cover this particular subject that I want to present. The first is a pretty good, and short overview of just how absurd the fake news actually is. Its from RT and its banned in the West. Imagine that! Keep Americans and Europeans ignorant. video 27MB

The second video is about how the “news” reports are presented to the American public. It’s funny, but keep in mind, this is actually what happened. Its no wonder that Americans (and Brits) have no idea about how FUCKED they actually are. video 6MB

#37 Much of the situation is hidden

All of the "armchair generals", "talking heads", and "political analyists" are working with public dialog to base their impressions upon. 

The US government controls that dialog.

Thus, as a matter of course (like an iceberg) 90% of the real issues are hidden. 

There's things going on that are not being reported. So all these "experts" are living in an echo-chamber of ignorance.

#38 Life in the West is forever changed

If you live in the West, and you believe that your life will continue on as normal because the war between Russia and Ukraine is on the other side of the globe, you should think again.

The United States and the EU are consumer-driven societies. What happens when all products are cut off, inflation goes ballistic, and raw materials foodstuffs, and energy are denied to you? 

Thos electric cars all use batteries. In two years they will need to be replaced. And Russia and China controls the materials and the manufacture of those batteries.

60% of Americans are on life-sustaining medicines. And 90% of the medicines are made in China. What then? No prosac, viagra, blood-pressure, cancer, or pain medicine...

America will become a zoo.

#39 Inside of America there is a growing division of opinion

There are cracks in the Ukraine narrative. The American Conservative websites and media are starting to question why Biden went after Russia when they view China as the threat. To this end they are posting videos and narratives in suppor that the United States intentionally decided to engage Russia in war.

The most stunning was from Hall Turner who posted a video regarding the true situation.

2022 03 03 18 03
2022 03 03 18 03

#40 The Deagel Report is still profoundly accurate

All of the events as they transpire confirm the accuracy of the remote viewing of 2025.

#41 The Generational Theory and the Fourth Turning is all on schedule

Everything as predicted is falling in place along the generational time-table. Nothing strage indicated a deviation or that this period of time will be an exception. It's all happening now.

#42 The recent American deligations to Taiwan suggest the USA is opening a second front

Anticipate a crossing of China's "Red Lines", and a harsh reaction. I suspect sometime soon. Probably this year.

China tends to perform tit-for-tat actions. You destroy their VTOL carrier, and they destory yours. Etc. But somehow, I think that China might need to just cleans the Pacific of US Naval forces and their bases completely.

#43 Germany’s economy is set for wide-scale collapse

Russia has targeted the German automotive industry. This is the largest employer in Germany. Already two ships (HERE and HERE) loaded with German automobiles have sunk in the last week. 

And the Industry itself is laying off workers due to the inability to acquire parts.

#44 Bioweapons

15 bioweapons facilities set up by the United States and run by the United States were in place on the Russian border. 

During the initial salvo, every single one was hit with large thermobaric weapons. Most of them were absolutely and completely incenerated. None of this is reported anywhere in the West.

In spook language; this means that something was up BIG TIME.

#45 In spook circles it is believed that Putin prevented a NATO attack

Speaking of spook stuff…

Not published. Just unattributed raw intel.

But apparently Putin "jumped the gun" and prevented a nuclear attack that was to launch in the Summer of 2022. 

Only one week (actually some reports say days) NATO and USA nuclear weapons would have been in position in the Ukraine by 9MAR22. 

If so, then it would have been too late for Putin to stop the West. Doing so woould mean direct confrontation with NATO and American miltiary forces inside of the Ukraine.

#46 Many in the West assume that the entire world is collapsing

It is not. That's just an illusion.

Many Americans are angry, and the over all opinion is that the entire world is going to Hell. 

That is not correct. 

Only the West is falling towards Hell. Not the East. Of course, no one knows this because the news media never reports on what the rest of the world is like.

So yeah. Energy shortages, food shortages, high inflation, and decay are going to erupt all over the United States and their proxy nations. But not inside of Russia, the breadbasket of the world, and not inside of China, the manufacturer for the world.

Of course, those in Russia and China will continue to eat well.

video 6MB

Let’s start by taking a look at the impact that this war will have on food supplies.  Even the Washington Post is admitting that the war in Ukraine will likely “push U.S. food prices even higher”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could push U.S. food prices even higher, as the region is one of the world’s largest producers of wheat and some vegetable oils. And the disruptions could drag on for months or even years, as crop production in the area could be halted and take a long time to restart.

This new inflation shock comes at a time when global markets remain extremely strained because of pandemic-related disruptions. The price changes impacted commodity prices in recent days and could flow through to higher costs at grocery stores and restaurants soon.

Food prices have already been rising very aggressively all over the world, and this has pushed millions upon millions of poor people at the bottom of the economic food chain into hunger.

But now this war threatens to push this crisis to a dangerous new level, because Russia and Ukraine typically produce “nearly a quarter of the world’s wheat”

Russia and Ukraine together produce nearly a quarter of the world’s wheat, feeding billions of people in the form of bread, pasta and packaged foods. The countries are also key suppliers of barley, sunflower seed oil and corn, among other products.

So if exports from those two warring nations are reduced or completely cut off, how is the West possibly going to replace that output?

Does anyone have an answer for that?

Collectively, Russia and Ukraine usually account for “29 percent of all wheat exports and 75 percent of global exports of sunflower oil”

Ukraine is the world’s fourth-largest exporter of both corn and wheat. It is also the world’s largest exporter of sunflower seed oil, an important component of the world’s vegetable oil supply. Together, Russia and Ukraine supply 29 percent of all wheat exports and 75 percent of global exports of sunflower oil, said Kelly Goughary, senior research analyst Gro-Intelligence, an agriculture data platform.

This isn’t just bad.

This is really bad.

The global agricultural production is going to be down all over the globe in 2022 because fertilizer prices have started to spiral out of control.  In fact, in Africa alone it is being projected that enough food to feed 100 million people will not be grown this year because of the outrageous cost of fertilizer.

Well, guess what?

It turns out that Russia is one of the biggest global exporters of fertilizer

Russia is a key global player in natural gas, a major input to fertilizer production. Higher gas prices, and supply cuts, will further drive fertilizer prices higher. Russia is one of the biggest exporters of the three major groups of fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium). Physical supply cuts could further inflate fertilizer prices.

One expert that was interviewed by the Washington Post admitted that we are “headed for a supply crunch that will be hard to resolve”.

That is one of the biggest understatements that I have heard in a long time.

Even before the war erupted, some types of fertilizer had doubled in price, some had tripled in price and some had actually quadrupled in price.

In the trade channels there’s some alarmist talk about American grown food. One industry insider told me about fertilizer prices.  He warned that many farmers all over the U.S. simply will not be able to grow corn this year because it will not be profitable due to soaring fertilizer prices.

And now fertilizer prices are likely to go much higher.

This really is a nightmare.

Six months down the road, we are likely to see food riots all over the West.

Meanwhile, the global energy crisis is entering a very alarming new chapter.

According to USA Today, 30 percent of all natural gas that Europe uses is provided by Russia

Russia accounts for more than 30% of Europe’s gas for home heating, industry and generating electricity, and other potential supply sources are not adequately prepared to bridge the gap if Russian gas is curtailed, Rystad Energy analysts say.

Europe is absolutely addicted to Russian gas, and without it normal life in many European cities would rapidly come to a grinding halt.

There are some that are suggesting that imports of liquefied natural gas from the United States could help while the war is raging…

Supplies of liquefied natural gas brought by ship from the U.S. has helped relieve some of Europe’s gas shortage this winter, but it’s expensive.

Meanwhile, natural gas prices in the U.S. are approximately 60% higher than a year ago, according to Rystad.

Sadly, natural gas prices all over the globe are going to continue to go higher.

As will propane prices.

As will coal prices.

And the price of oil will soon leave the $100 per barrel threshold in the rear view mirror for good.

Joe Biden is publicly saying that he will do all that he can to keep the price of gasoline down, but meanwhile his administration is working extremely hard “to freeze new oil and gas drilling leases”… by kingly decree.

As oil prices continue to rocket, now further helped along by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration is still fighting tooth and nail to freeze new oil and gas drilling leases – even after a court ruled against the administration for using a metric to estimate “the societal cost of carbon emissions” to justify their move.

Despite the court’s ruling, Biden’s administration has stopped new leases and permits for federal oil and gas drilling, MSN reported this week.

So when you are soon paying seventeen dollars for a gallon of gasoline, just remember who did this to you.

The United States “leadership”.

Conclusion

Everything is changing, and the months ahead are going to be extremely challenging.

I think that Mike Adams summed up the current state of affairs very well when he warned that the United States and the collective West are heading for a “total collapse”

In all, these factors combine (food, war, fuel, inflation, currency, etc.) to create a total collapse of the world we once knew. 

Forget about affordable food or just-in-time delivery of anything. 

The world is about to become extremely inconvenient, expensive and broken. 

The supply chain disruptions will get FAR worse from here forward, and crime is going to absolutely skyrocket out of sheer desperation. 

Expect to see flash mobs looting grocery stores in broad daylight. Carjackings will skyrocket. Home invasions will become commonplace, even outside the cities as looting gangs hit suburbs.

So many of the things that myself and others have been warning about for so many years are starting to come to pass right in front of our eyes.

The collective West is really heading into a nightmarish breakdown of society, and everyone (state side and in Europe) will be shaken to the core as it happens.

This is truly a sad day, because this didn’t have to happen. But, it did, just like the remote viewers of 2025 predicted, and like the Fourth Turning predicted. The United States is on a bobsled heading straight into the firey gates of Hell.

There is nothing more than can be done, because World War III has already started. And it’s really going to hurt the United States and Europe really hard. Things are set up to start getting really bad. I anticipate checking the boxes on lists that Xi Peng and Putin created.

From this point forward, global events are going to escalate rapidly.  I would encourage all of you to prepare accordingly.

The end of the world did not occur yet, and the sky is not yet falling. What you can do is enjoy what you have available to your right now.

That means, to eat well. Life is too short not to eat well.

To close this article, I would like to suggest a very nice pan-fried steak…

1 96
1 96

And it will look a little something like this…

2022 03 02 15 56
2022 03 02 15 56

And you know, it might look a little like this

MM video HERE. 52MB

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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China and Integrated Circuit Manufacture latest news

There’s a lot of talk about IC chip (integrated ciruit) chip manufacture, and the need for the United States to keep the Taiwan factories “out of the hands” of the evil vile Chinese. Now, listen to me. It’s a distraction.

It’s a fabricrated illusion.

Why?

Because most of the world IC chips are made inside of China and used on Chinese products.

The very high-end stuff, the stuff that everyone is worried about is made from a Chinese factory in Taiwan, and it exports those high-end chips to the United States, and Korea / Japan for special applications.

It does not export those chips to China. That is an export restriction placed by the United States. America wants those high end IC chips for it’s own weapons systems, tanks and weapons systems.

Shutting down the Taiwan operations will not make any difference in the production of automobiles, cell phones, televisons or computer systems. So please just keep that in mind.

Or, let me put it to you in a different way.

The Chinese lead the world in Artifical Intelligence and robotics. Yet, they do not use these “high end” IC chips. Why? Because they don’t need to. Oh, maybe sometime in the future they will need to, but not right now.

Where are these high technology chips being used?

That is where you must start to fully grasp what is going on with this particular issue.

"Challenges also come in the form of advances in brain-like neuromorphic chips and the roll-out of 5G networks enabling IoT connected devices."

My understanding, for IoT, many chips do not need advanced process technologies,” 

“For sensors, mature processes and 8-inch fabs are adequate.”

-Jackson Hu, former chief executive of UMC

Most cell phones are made in China, and they cannot use Taiwan high-end chip manufacture. (As decreed by the God-almighty United States.) So what are these chips good for?

  • Not for televisions. Most are made in China.
  • Not for automotive electronics. Most are made in China.
  • Not for AI and Robots. Most are made in China.
  • Not for IoT. Most are made in China.
  • Not for cellphones. Most are made in China.
  • Not for bitcoin mining. Most are made in China.
  • Not for computers. Most are made in China.

So what are they used in?

They are used for American missiles. They are used for American top-secret aircraft. They are used for American avionics, submarines, and warships.

And thus, if China takes over Taiwan, a MASSIVE technology resource for the American military-Industrial cabal would be eliminated, and China would gain a production capabiity, while the United States would completely lose all access.

That’s why.

Chinese girl – handsome in blue

This is a fine “handsome” woman that would make a fine wife, and I’m sure a great mother. She looks smart, intelligent, capable, and oh so very sexy. She’s in her living room, and this is all very typical, don’t you know.

video

Nice.

And, at this point, let me interject some actual news from the United States that will help put everything into clear perspective. While China (and Russia)a re capable, traditional and trying to avoid conflict; the madhouse that the United States has become is going from insane to downright evil…

  • SHOP SAFE Will Stomp Out Online Sales of Used and Homemade Goods
    SHOP SAFE would force pretty much any online service that allows people to buy and sell items to institute a draconian trademark protection system. If they don’t, they risk crushing liability for the actions of their users.

    Government wants the corporatocracy because it can use legions of Useful Idiots to report and deplatform anyone but the safe big companies which censor in order to preserve revenue.

Chinese girl with an arrow

She’s probably an employee at the factory. This is pretty much what the office gals look like in China. Only it depends on what industry that you are in. If you are in banking or hi-tech, the women would pretty much wear short-short black skirts, impossibly high heels and these cute waist jackets that opens up wide to display a nice colored top underneith.

video

Ok.

Let’s start chatting about IC chips, fabricration, use and China. We begin this exploration by article number one. In it, regardless to the efforts by both the Trump and Biden administrations, the Chinese IC chip manufacturing industry profits have soared to amazing heights.

According the the United States media, the tariffs and sanctions, and restrictions should have hurt, harmed and even destroyed the Chiense industry. It did not such thing. Not at all…

[1] China’s top chipmaker’s profits soar despite US sanctions

SMIC’s all-time high revenue came as sales were propelled by worldwide demand
From HERE.
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China’s largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), has reported record revenue and a surge in profit last year amid a global chip shortage and strong demand.

According to its annual financial report published on Thursday, sales for calendar 2021 were up 39% on the year, at a record $5.4 billion.

Profit from operations for the year stood at $1.4 billion, which is a roughly four-fold increase from 2020.

That record performance came despite SMIC being hit with US sanctions, which the company said has had a major impact on its advanced technology development.

“The global shortage of chips and the strong demand for local and indigenous manufacturing brought the Company a rare opportunity, while the restrictions of the ‘Entity List’ set many obstacles to the Company’s development,” the chipmaker said in a statement.

SMIC is a competitor to the likes of Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung, but the Chinese firm’s technology is several generations behind.

The world’s two largest economies, US and China, have been racing to dominate in key technologies, including semiconductors.

China is significantly behind the United States in chip development, with SMIC aiming to wean itself off foreign technology.

Governments across the world are making efforts to bolster domestic chip production, after a global component shortage hurt the auto and electronics industries.

So they say. China is raking in the money.

Just what is the status of Chinese IC chip manufacture of design dominance? Not from the USA Western propaganda mills, but from industry sources…

Chinese girl in a swimsuit

Personally, I think that she looks good in this snow dot print. Though, I have to tell you all, the back looks really impossible to tie up. She’d certainly need a friend or two to help her out, don’t you think?

video

Lovely.

Now compare this to the madhouse that the United States is today…

  • Biden Admin To Fund Crack Pipe Distribution To Advance ‘Racial Equity’
    The $30 million grant program, which closed applications Monday and will begin in May, will provide funds to nonprofits and local governments to help make drug use safer for addicts. Included in the grant, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, are funds for “smoking kits/supplies.” A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and “any illicit substance.”
    
    HHS said the kits aim to reduce the risk of infection when smoking substances with glass pipes, which can lead to infections through cuts and sores. Applicants for the grants are prioritized if they treat a majority of “underserved communities,” including African Americans and “LGBTQ+ persons,” as established under President Joe Biden’s executive order on “advancing racial equity.”

    The comedy comes full circle.

[2] China chip output grew 33% in 2021

China’s integrated circuit (IC) output grew over 33% in 2021, double the growth rate in 2020, reports the South China Morning Post. The country produced 359.4 billion ICs in 2021, from both local companies and foreign-owned factories, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). It marked a significant acceleration from 2020, when China’s IC output rose 16.2% to 261.3 billion units.

While the official data did not provide a breakdown by technology node—China is unable to produce the most advanced ICs—or by company, it highlighted the country’s efforts to boost output amid a protracted chip shortage and Beijing’s push for semiconductor self-sufficiency.

The growth in output also provides fresh evidence that Beijing’s efforts to maintain China’s integration with global supply chains is paying off. A report issued by the US-based Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) earlier this month forecast that China’s semiconductor industry could account for 17.4% of global sales by 2024, up from 9% in 2020, if its current momentum is maintained.

Chinese girl – dancing

Everyone in China loves to dance. From little kids, to 90 year old grandmothers. Everyone dances, and shakes and sings. It’s all part of the culture, and no one cares if you are good, or bad. They only care that you are having a good time while you are doing it.

video

Isn’t she favorable?

Compare that to what the United States is today…

  • FDA Executive Officer on Hidden Camera Reveals Future COVID Policy: ‘Biden Wants To Inoculate As Many People As Possible…Have to Get an Annual Shot’
    “It’ll be recurring fountain of revenue. It might not be that much initially, but it’ll be recurring — if they can — if they can get every person required at an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company.”

    American industry has been destroyed so thoroughly by taxes, unions, regulations, and imposed costs like affirmative action that it has one business model left: get everyone to sign up for a recurring subscription.

    They wanted us all to get flu shots for years, although that seemed to make people more likely to get the flu. The FDA was too willing to play along because FDA bureaucrats take Big Pharma money on a regular basis:

    In the cool refuge of the conference room, advisers politely questioned company scientists and complimented their work. By day’s end, the panel voted seven to one to approve.

FDA, as usual, later signed off.

The drug, ticagrelor, marketed under the name Brilinta, sold rapidly, emerging as a billion-dollar blockbuster. It cuts risk of death from vascular causes, heart attacks, and strokes modestly more than its chief competitor—and currently costs 25 times as much.

Before the Brilinta vote, the agency mentioned no financial conflicts among the voting panelists, who included four physicians. As Brilinta’s sales took off later, however, AstraZeneca and firms selling or developing similar cardiovascular therapies showered the four with money for travel and advice.

For example, those companies paid or reimbursed cardiologist Jonathan Halperin of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City more than $200,000 for accommodations, honoraria, and consulting from 2013 to 2016.

During that period, for example, AstraZeneca says it paid Halperin more than $11,000 in expenses and fees for work on an advisory board, service on a data monitoring committee for a clinical trial of Brilinta led by the University of California, San Francisco, and for his service chairing the data monitoring committee for an AstraZeneca-sponsored multimillion-dollar clinical trial of Brilinta led by Duke University.

Voters love the idea of regulations; lawyers laugh at it. They know that when you give government a power, it gets sold to the highest bidder, whether that is CAIR, CCP, ADL, or AstraZeneca. The voters defeat themselves as usual.

[3] China’s IC industry speeds up advanced chip production: Expert

China’s integrated circuit (IC) industry is transforming from high-speed to high-quality development as more advanced homegrown chip-making processes make inroads across the whole industry chain, an expert said.

In an article published earlier this month at Guancha.cn, a Shanghai-based online news and comments aggregator, Dr. Bao Yungang, vice director of the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), noted that China’s 14 nm and 28 nm chip-making processes are gaining ground and being used for many applications in various fields.

The country’s 14 nm process has navigated many technology difficulties with significant improvements to manufacturing techniques, packaging technologies and key equipment materials, said Bao.

He added that the 14 nm node is the most widely applied chip-making process in fields like high-end consumer electronics, high-speed computing, artificial intelligence and automobiles.

According to statistics, the global semiconductor market made around $200 billion in sales in the first half of 2019. The 14 nm chip-making process accounted for 65% of those sales.

Bao said China now has the capacity to mass produce 28 nm chips as it made important headway in developing some of the critical equipment and materials.

The 28 nm is the dividing line between low-to-mid range and mid-to-high end IC manufacturing, he explained.

Besides chips for central processing units, graphics processing units and artificial intelligence, other mainstream industrial products such as televisions, air conditioners, automobiles, high-speed trains, satellites, industrial robots, elevators and drones are the most common applications for the 28 nm technology process, Bao added.

“China urgently needs to move toward mid-to-high end chip production, and being able to produce 28 nm chips means that it can meet most of the demand for chips without relying on other countries,” said he.

In 2019, IC capacity for leading-edge (<10 nm) processes accounted for only 4.4% of the installed capacity across the industry, while processes above 28 nm accounted for 52% of the overall share, according to the IC Insights’ Global Wafer Capacity 2020-2024.

While the 14 nm and 28 nm chip-making process can meet much of domestic demand, China is eagerly promoting more cutting-edge processes to gradually break away from overseas reliance.

Wen Xiaojun, head of the Electronic Information Institute at the China Center for Information Industry Development (CCID), last month told China’s news portal huanqiu.com that the homegrown 14nm chip-making process is likely to be mass produced by next year.

As the world’s largest semiconductor market, China has been spending aggressively in semiconductor investment, acquisition, and talent recruitment to bolster the chip manufacturing industry and make it equal to those of the world’s top foundries.

A report by Goldman Sachs last year predicted that China may be capable of producing 7nm chips by 2023.

Given the dynamics of the chip production sector, domestic communication operators, equipment suppliers and communication service providers should explore new ways of service while innovating appliance architecture to gain trust from customers and boost technological improvement, noted Bao.

Bao believes that the key for new breakthroughs is to better integrate into the global innovation and collaboration system as the IC industry is truly a global industry and no country should be isolated from the industry chain.

Keep in mind that all these new technical breakthroughs are coming from factories and hard working gals like this gal here…

And for the United States…

  • US nuclear submarine engineer pleads guilty to trying to sell US secrets to a foreign power
    The identity of the foreign power has never been revealed, although it is widely speculated to have been France. Investigators say the Toebbes contacted a friendly foreign power, rather than an adversary, with the information.
    
    Diana Toebbe said her husband only wanted to flee the country because she hated Donald Trump, a court has been told.

    One wonders what their Reddit usernames were.

[4] Market size of the integrated circuit (IC) design industry in China from 2016 to 2020 with an estimate for 2021

It appears that the “Trump and Biden trade wars” had zero effect.

[5] China makes breakthrough in a key step in chip manufacturing

A Chinese company has announced the successful production of an ion implantation machine made entirely with local technologies, marking a breakthrough in a key aspect of chip manufacturing, Xinhua reported on March 17.

China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, which announced the breakthrough, said on Wednesday that its products include ion implanters for medium-beam, high-beam, high-energy, specialty applications, and third-generation semiconductors, covering process segments up to 28nm.

An ion implantation machine is a type of high-pressure mini-accelerator that is widely used in the chip manufacturing process.

It is used for ion implantation of semiconductor materials, large-scale integrated circuits, and devices by obtaining the required ions from an ion source and accelerating it to obtain an ion beam stream of several hundred kilo electron volts energy.

In addition, it can also be used for surface modification of metallic materials and film making.

Ion implantation machines are widely used in doping processes and can meet the requirements of the shallow junction, low temperature, and precise control, and are essential equipment in integrated circuit manufacturing processes.

Last June, China Electronics Technology Group announced the successful development of a million-volt high-energy ion implantation machine with independent intellectual property rights, breaking a decade-long blockade of the technology by other countries.

As essential core equipment in chip manufacturing, China’s ion implantation machines rely heavily on foreign countries, especially the development of extremely difficult million-volt high-energy particle implantation machines.

At present, the most advanced international ion implantation machine is the PRHEI6Me produced by the German chip company Prima, which is the only 6-million-volt high-energy ion implantation machine in the world, and the only 6-million-volt high-energy ion implantation machine in the world that has been successfully commercialized.

Chinese girl – lovely in red

In all this craziness, let’s take a second to appreciate who the heck we are talking about when we are discussing technology, and it’s applications in our lives. As most people are not flying military jets, shooting hellfire missiles, or swimming deep under the sea in submarines. So who are these Chiense who build and use these IC ships?

Let’s have a look shall we?

video

It’s nice to look at beauty when you are being sprayed with distortions, lies, hate and anger out of the United States.

[6] In battle with U.S., China to focus on 7 ‘frontier’ technologies from chips to brain-computer fusion

  • China is looking to boost research into what it calls “frontier technology” as it competes with the U.S. for supremacy in the latest innovations.
  • In its 14th five-year plan, China laid out seven technology areas it will focus research on including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductors and space.
  • Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday that China would increase research and development spending by more than 7% per year between 2021 and 2025, in pursuit of “major breakthroughs” in technology.

GUANGZHOU, China — China is looking to boost research into what it calls “frontier technology” including quantum computing and semiconductors, as it competes with the U.S. for supremacy in the latest innovations.

In its five-year development plan, the 14th of its kind, Beijing said it would make “science and technology self-reliance and self-improvement a strategic pillar for national development,” according to a CNBC translation.

Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday that China would increase research and development spending by more than 7% per year between 2021 and 2025, in pursuit of “major breakthroughs” in technology.

China’s technology champions such as Huawei and SMIC have been targeted by U.S. sanctions as tensions between Beijing and Washington have ramped up in the past few years.

As such, China has concentrated on boosting its domestic expertise in areas it sees as strategically important, such as semiconductors. And now it has laid out seven “frontier technologies” that it will prioritize not just for the next five years, but beyond too.

1) Artificial intelligence (AI)

China plans to focus on specialized chip development for AI applications and developing so-called open source algorithms. Open source technology is usually developed by one entity and licensed by other companies.

There will also be an emphasis on machine learning in areas such as decision making. Machine learning is the development of AI programs trained on vast amounts of data. The program “learns” as it is fed more data.

AI has been a key field for Chinese companies and the central government over the last few years. Major companies such as Alibaba and Baidu have been investing in the technology.

China and the U.S. are competing for AI dominance. A group of experts chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said China could soon replace the U.S. as the world’s “AI superpower.”

2) Quantum information

This is category of technology involves quantum computing. This is a totally different concept from the computers we use today and holds the promise of being able to aid in ambitious feats such as the creation of new medicine.

Quantum computing is seen as another area of competition between the U.S. and China.

3) Integrated circuits or semiconductors

Semiconductors are a critical area for China and one it has invested a lot in over the past few years but the country has struggled to catch up to the U.S., Taiwan and South Korea.

The problem is the complexity of the semiconductor supply chain. Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung are the two most advanced chip manufacturers but they rely on tools from the U.S. and Europe.

Washington has put SMIC, China’s biggest chip manufacturer, on an export blacklist called the Entity List. SMIC cannot get its hands on American technology. And the U.S. has reportedly pushed to stop Dutch company ASML from shipping a key tool that could help SMIC catch up to rivals.

Since China doesn’t have the companies that can design and make the tools that its chip manufacturers require, it relies on companies from other countries. This is something China wants to change.

In its five-year plan, China says it will focus on research and development in integrated circuit design tools, key equipment and key materials.

Chips are incredibly important because they go into many of the devices we use such as smartphones but are also important for other industries.

4) Brain science

China plans to research areas such as how to stop diseases of the brain.

But it also says that it plans to look into “brain-inspired computing” as well as “brain-computer fusion technology,” according to a CNBC translation. The five-year plan did not elaborate on what that could look like.

China laid out seven “frontier” technologies in its 14th Five Year Plan. These are areas that China will focus research on and include semiconductors and brain-computer fusion.

However, such work is already underway in the U.S. at Elon Musk’s company Neuralink. Musk is working on implantable brain-chip interfaces to connect humans and computers.

5) Genomics and biotechnology

With the outbreak of the coronavirus last year, biotechnology has grown in importance.

China says it will focus on “innovative vaccines” and “research on biological security.”

6) Clinical medicine and health

China’s research will concentrate on understanding the progression of cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic diseases.

The government also says that it will research some “cutting-edge” treatment technologies such as regenerative medicine. This involves medicine that can regrow or repair damaged cells, tissues and organs.

China says it will also be looking at key technologies in the prevention and treatment of major transmissible diseases.

7) Deep space, deep earth, deep sea and polar research

Space exploration has been a top priority for China recently. Beijing said it will focus on research into the “origin and evolution of the universe,” exploration of Mars as well as deep sea and polar research.

In December, a Chinese spacecraft returned to Earth carrying rocks from the moon. It was the first time China has launched a spacecraft from an extraterrestrial body and the first time it has collected moon samples.

And in July, China launched a mission to Mars called Tianwen -1.

— CNBC’s Iris Wang contributed to this report.

[7] Chinese chipmaker SMIC makes breakthrough in ‘7nm-like process’

Innosilicon, a Chinese company focusing on customized chip design services, announced it has completed a chip tape-out and testing based on the FinFET N+1 technology of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), China’s largest chipmaker.

A tape-out is the final phase of a chip design process before they are sent for manufacturing.

FinFET N+1, SMIC’s next-generation chip foundry node, is very similar to the advanced 7nm process used by other world leading chipmakers, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung in terms of performance, although it’s still 35 percent inferior, according to SMIC co-CEO Liang Mengsong.

Moreover, the N+1 foundry node may enable SMIC to break its reliance on top-level Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) machine made by Dutch microchip machine maker ASML, according to Liang. ASML is subject to U.S. export control as its products contain American technology.

Innosilicon said on its website that all the IPs are homegrown, and its functionality passed the test in one go following months of collaborative efforts with SMIC, paving the way for volume production of the latest manufacturing node.

The news has been taken as a major breakthrough by SMIC in its home-grown chip manufacturing process, sending its shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange 12.7 percent higher on Monday.

However, a tape-out success only means the technology meets performance targets in the lab. It still takes a lot of data support and repeated testing before it could be put into mass production, which could take a few months to several years, according to chip experts.

Critical time

The N+1 tape-out breakthrough came on the heels of SMIC’s falling onto the U.S.’ export sanctions list, as the latter has been relentlessly cracking down on Chinese high-tech firms.

The chipmaker acknowledged earlier this month that some of its suppliers had been restricted by U.S. export controls, and given the uncertainties in U.S. equipment supplies, its business may be affected.

The U.S. sanctions may disrupt SMIC’s next moves, including purchases of manufacturing equipment and raw materials, but the short-term impact would not be much given the Chinese firm’s inventories, said Ma Jihua, a veteran analyst in the high-tech sector.

Despite being years behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor foundry, SMIC is catching up, based on its reinvention of mature technologies, Ma noted. In comparison, the chip technology used by TSMC has gradually neared its limits.

TSMC is accelerating mass production of the 5-nm process. The higher version of the 5-nm chips will enter mass production in 2021. Its 3-nm process will be in mass production by the second half of 2022.

[8] Chinese firm to deliver 28nm chip manufacturing machine in 2021-2022: reports

Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE) will deliver the first domestic 28nm lithography machine between 2021 to 2022, helping narrowing the gap with the world’s chip-making technology, industry websites said.

The move is a leapfrog breakthrough for China’s semiconductor industry, according to domestic technology website mydrivers.com. Industry website icsmart.cn also reported it is good news for China’s semiconductor industry chain.

The US crackdowns on ZTE and Huawei awakened Chinese companies to explore self-developed lithography equipment, which has underscored the urgency and significance of China to develop advanced chip making ability in a bid to avoid being squeezed by the US amid an escalating tech war.

Xiang Ligang, a veteran industry analyst, told the Global Times on Sunday that once SMEE has the ability to deliver 28nm lithography equipment, it will have the opportunity to move forward to 14nm and 7nm lithography equipment, noting that the breakthrough helps the company “accumulate experience” to manufacture high-end chip-making equipment.

The whole world could take part in the chip-making industry instead of a particular country or particular company, so progress by any single company is valuable, Xiang noted.

Founded in 2002, SMEE is one of the advanced lithography machine makers in China and accounts for about 80 percent of the domestic market share, industry websites said.

Lithography machines are one of the core pieces of equipment in chip manufacturing. Netherlands-based chip equipment maker Advanced Semiconductor Material Lithography (ASML) remained a global team in churning out high-end lithography machines, followed by Nikon and Cano.

Liu Kun, a Beijing-based semiconductor industry analyst noted that even if the core component of the 28nm lithography equipment may not be made in China, it would be a breakthrough for the Chinese company to package such equipment.

It may take three to five years for companies like Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) to make the 28nm equipment by itself and there is still a long way to go, but Chinese companies are ramping up efforts, according to Liu.

Source: https://www.globaltimes.cn/

[9] China Speeds Up Advanced Chip Development

Efforts underway to develop 7nm, DRAM, 3D NAND, and EUV domestically as trade war escalates.

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China is accelerating its efforts to advance its domestic semiconductor industry, amid ongoing trade tensions with the West, in hopes of becoming more self-sufficient.

The country is still behind in IC technology and is nowhere close to being self-reliant, but it is making noticeable progress. Until recently, China’s domestic chipmakers were stuck with mature foundry processes with no presence in memory. Recently, though, a China-based foundry entered the 14nm finFET market, with 7nm in R&D. China also is expanding into memory. And in the fab equipment sector, China is developing its own extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography system, which is a technology that patterns the most advanced features in chips.

It’s unlikely that China will develop its own EUV system in the near term. And for that matter, the nation’s foundry and memory efforts are modest, at least for now. And China won’t overtake multinational chipmakers anytime soon.

Nonetheless, it is developing its domestic IC industry for several reasons. For one thing, China imports most of its chips from foreign suppliers, creating an enormous trade gap. China has a sizeable IC industry, but it isn’t large enough to close the gap. In response, the nation is pouring billions of dollars into its IC sector with plans to manufacture more of its own chips. Simply put, it wants to become less dependent on foreign suppliers.

China recently accelerated those efforts, especially when the U.S. launched a multi-prong trade war with the nation. In just one example, the U.S. has made it more difficult for Huawei to obtain U.S. chips and software. And recently, the U.S. blocked ASML from shipping an EUV scanner to SMIC, China’s largest foundry vendor. China sees these and other actions as a way to hamper its growth, prompting it to speed up the development of its own technologies.

Meanwhile, the U.S. says its trade-related actions are justified, claiming that China is engaged in unfair trade practices and has failed to protect U.S. intellectual-property. China dismisses those claims. Nonetheless, the industry needs to keep an eye on the trade issues as well as China’s progress in semiconductors. They include:

  • SMIC is shipping 14nm finFETs, with a 7nm-like process in R&D.
  • Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) recently entered the 3D NAND market with a 64-layer device. A 128-layer technology is in R&D.
  • ChangXin Memory Technology (CXMT) is shipping its first product, a 19nm DRAM line.
  • China is expanding into compound semis, including gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC).
  • China’s OSATs are developing more advanced packages.

This all sounds impressive, but China is still trailing. “China is spending like crazy. China’s strategy is to be a player in semiconductor manufacturing. It comes from wanting to have a bigger share of its domestic manufacturing capabilities, as well as for security considerations,” said Risto Puhakka, president of VLSI Research. “But China’s share in memory is small. On the logic side, they are behind TSMC. China is far from being self-sufficient from any reasonable aspect.”

Those aren’t the only issues. “There are still many challenges for China, including the need for more talent and IP in semiconductor manufacturing, and the need to further narrow the gap in the leading process technologies,” said Leo Pang, chief product officer at D2S. “The top challenge is the tension between the U.S. and Chinese governments, which is causing uncertainty in the supply of manufacturing equipment and EDA software.”

China’s strategy
China has been involved in the IC industry for decades. In the 1980s, it had several state-run chipmakers with outdated technology. So at the time, China introduced several initiatives to modernize its IC industry. With help from foreign concerns, the country launched several chip ventures in the 1980s and 1990s.

Still, China found itself behind the West in semiconductor technology for several reasons. At the time, the West implemented strict export controls on China. Equipment vendors were prohibited from shipping the most advanced tools to China.

Then in 2000, China launched two new and modern domestic foundry vendors — Grace and SMIC. By then the export controls were relaxed in China. Equipment vendors simply required a license to ship tools to China.

Around that time, China became a large manufacturing base with low labor rates. Demand for chips skyrocketed. Over time, the nation became the world’s largest market for chips.

Starting in the late 2000s, multinational chipmakers began building fabs in China to gain access to the market. Intel, Samsung and SK Hynix built memory fabs in China. TSMC and UMC built foundry fabs there.

By 2014, China consumed $77 billion worth of chips, according to IC Insights, but it imported most of them. Plus, China only manufactured 15.1% of those chips, according to IC Insights. The rest were manufactured outside of China.

In response, and armed with billions of dollars in funding, the Chinese government unveiled a new plan in 2014. The goal was to accelerate China’s efforts in 14nm finFETs, memory and packaging.

Then, in 2015, China launched another initiative, dubbed “Made in China 2025.” The goal is to increase the domestic content of components in 10 areas — IT, robotics, aerospace, shipping, railways, electric vehicles, power equipment, materials, medicine and machinery. In addition, China hopes to become more self-sufficient in ICs and wants to increase its domestic production to 70% by 2025, according to IC Insights.

In 2019, China consumed $125 billion worth of chips, according to IC Insights, but it still imports most of them. China only manufactured 15.7% of those chips, so it’s unlikely the country will reach its production targets by 2025.

China faces other challenges, as well, particularly a shortage of technical talent. “China is still seeking more talent in semiconductor manufacturing,” D2S’ Pang observed. “That is mainly because China is building a dozen new fabs. It has already recruited thousands, if not tens of thousands, of experienced semiconductor engineers from fabs in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and even the U.S. by paying them with very attractive compensation packages.”

On the bright side, China made a quick recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic earlier this year. In the first half of 2020, chip and equipment demand were strong in China and elsewhere. “200mm capacity has continued to be running full with a wide range of end applications. In the 300mm area, this has been a similar situation over this past year,” said Walter Ng, vice president of business development at UMC.

Others see similar trends. “China semiconductor test and packaging markets have been resilient throughout the Covid-19 period,” said Amy Leong, senior vice president at FormFactor. “The demand remains solid, fueled by the combination of the momentum built over the last few years from the ‘Made in China 2025’ initiative, and the recent ‘panic build/buy’ amid China-U.S. tensions. With this said, we are seeing an increasing level of demand uncertainties in China as the fear of a global economic recession mounts.”

The mood is also tense. Starting in 2018, the U.S. launched a trade war with China, slapping tariffs on Chinese-made goods. China has retaliated.

The trade war is escalating. Last year, the U.S. added Huawei and its internal chip unit, HiSilicon, to the “entity list,” saying the companies pose as a security risk. To do business with Huawei, a U.S. company must obtain a license from the U.S. government. Many U.S. vendors have been denied, which impacts their bottom lines.

Then, earlier this year, the U.S. expanded the definition of a “military end user” in China. This is designed to prevent China’s military from obtaining any U.S. technology.

In May, the U.S. moved to stem the flow of chips to Huawei from overseas fabs. “Going forward, an overseas fab must halt sales to Huawei if it meets the following three conditions: A) fab uses U.S. equipment or software to make chips; B) the chip is designed by Huawei; and C) the chipmaker has knowledge the item produced is destined for Huawei,” said Paul Gallant, an analyst with Cowen. “(This requires) foreign chipmakers using U.S. equipment to get a license before selling chips to Huawei. But the language of the new rule may not actually ban such sales. On the upside, the new rule only covers chips actually designed by HiSilicon, not all chips made by overseas fabs being sold to Huawei.”

At some point, TSMC may halt new orders to Huawei. It’s unclear how this will all play out. The rules are fuzzy and could change overnight.

Foundry, EUV efforts
Even before the trade war, China was in the midst of a major fab expansion program. In 2017 and 2018, China had 18 fabs under construction, according to SEMI’s “World Fab Forecast Report.” Eventually, these fabs were built.

China currently has 3 fabs under construction, according to SEMI. “Two of those fabs are for foundry. One is 8-inch and another is 12-inch. There is another one for memory (12-inch). Still on the drawing board are 7 more,” said Christian Dieseldorff, an analyst at SEMI.

The foundry industry makes up a large percentage of China’s fab capacity. China’s foundry industry is split into two categories—domestic and multinational vendors.

TSMC and UMC are among the multinationals. TSMC operates a 200mm fab in Shanghai. In 2018, TSMC began shipping 16nm finFETs in another fab in Nanjing.

UMC is manufacturing chips in a 200mm fab in Suzhou. UMC also has a new 300mm foundry venture in Xiamen, which is shipping 40nm and 28nm.

Meanwhile, China’s domestic foundry vendors, such as ASMC, CS Micro and the Huahong Group, all focus on mature processes. On the leading edge, startup HSMC is developing 14nm and 7nm in R&D.

SMIC, China’s most advanced foundry company, is the world’s fifth largest foundry vendor, behind TSMC, Samsung, GlobalFoundries and UMC, according to TrendForce.

Up until last year, SMIC’s most advanced process was a 28nm planar technology. In comparison, TSMC introduced 28nm a decade ago. Today, TSMC is ramping up 5nm with 3nm in R&D.

This is a sore spot for the Chinese government. Because China is behind, Chinese OEMs must obtain their most advanced chips from foreign suppliers.

On the other hand, there isn’t a gap for mature processes in China. “The technology node gap is not an issue for most fabs, since the majority of chips used in IoT and automotive applications do not require leading-edge nodes,” D2S’ Pang said.

Nonetheless, SMIC is trying to develop advanced processes. In 2015, SMIC, Huawei, Imec and Qualcomm formed a joint R&D chip technology venture in China with plans to develop a 14nm finFET process.

This is a big step. “Moving to finFETs at 14nm is not easy. Everybody struggled with it,” VLSI Research’s Puhakka said. “So did SMIC. It’s difficult what they are trying to do.”

Still, that move is essential to continue scaling. At 20nm, traditional planar transistors run out of steam. This is why in 2011 Intel moved to finFET transistors at 22nm. FinFETs are faster with lower power than planar transistors, but they are also harder and more expensive to manufacture.

Later, GlobalFoundries, Samsung, TSMC and UMC moved to finFETs at 16nm/14nm. (Intel’s 22nm process is roughly equivalent to 16nm/14nm from the foundries.)

Finally, after years of R&D, SMIC in 2019 reached a milestone by shipping China’s first 14nm finFETs. Today, 14nm represents a tiny percentage of SMIC’s sales. “Our customers’ feedback on 14nm is positive. Our 14nm is covering both communications and automotive sectors with applications including low-end application processors, baseband and consumer-related products,” said Zhao Haijun and Liang Mong Song, SMIC’s co-CEOs, in a conference call.

Still, SMIC is late to the party. For example, the application processor is the most advanced chip in a smartphone. Today’s smartphones incorporate application processors based on 7nm. Most other chips in smartphones, such as image sensors and RF, are based on mature nodes.

And 14nm isn’t cost-competitive for the most advanced application processors. “SMIC is starting to do 14nm. But if you look at smartphones, the designs are at 7nm,” said Handel Jones, chief executive of IBS. “If you look at the transistor costs at 7nm, a billion transistors cost from $2.67 to $2.68. A billion transistors at 14nm cost about $3.88. So you have a big cost difference.”

14nm is viable in other markets, though. “14nm technology can be used for low-end 4G and 5G smartphones, but not for mainstream or high-end smartphones. 14nm can be used for 5G infrastructure applications with the appropriate processor and system architectures,” Jones said.

Now, with funding from the government, SMIC is developing 12nm finFETs and what it calls “N+1.” 12nm is a scaled down version of 14nm. Slated by year’s end, N+1 is billed as a 7nm technology.

N+1 isn’t quite what it seems. “SMIC’s N+1 is equivalent to Samsung’s 8nm, which is slightly better than TSMC’s 10nm,” said Samuel Wang, an analyst at Gartner. “SMIC’s N+1 is unlikely for this year. 12nm may become production ready by the end of 2020.”

Once again, SMIC may miss the market window. By the time it ships 8nm in 2021, smartphone OEMs will move to 5nm for the application processor.

That’s not the only issue. SMIC could manufacture 8nm or 7nm using existing fab equipment. Beyond that, the current lithography equipment runs out of steam. So beyond 7nm, chipmakers require EUV, a next-generation lithography technology.

However, the U.S. recently blocked ASML from shipping its EUV scanners to SMIC. If SMIC can’t obtain EUV, the company is stuck at 8nm/7nm. “The U.S. blocked the EUV sale to SMIC (last year) under the Wassenaar agreement. I can’t envision a EUV shipment to China in the foreseeable future. But with 14nm just over 1% of SMIC’s sales, they don’t need EUV technology for a few years,” said Krish Sankar, an analyst at Cowen and Co.

At some point, though, China wants to go beyond 7nm. This is why China is working on its own EUV technology. China hasn’t developed a full-blown EUV scanner—it may never develop one. But work is underway in the arena. The EUV subsystems are being developed at several research institutes. For example, the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) last year described the development of EUV driven by a kilowatt laser. In 2020, researchers from the Institute of Microelectronics of the CAS published a paper on “EUV multilayer defect characterization via cycle-consistent learning.”

“There is a lot of research being done around different components of EUV,” VLSI Research’s Puhakka said. “I don’t think they have advanced to have a manufacturable EUV tool. Developing its own EUV will be a long process. I won’t say never, but it’s a long and hard road.”

Others agreed. “I assume that we see only part of what China is doing. It’s like an iceberg, most is hidden from view. Their academicians publish papers on EUV technology, but the work that I have seen has been mostly theoretical. I assume that there is some underlying hardware,” said Harry Levinson, principal at HJL Lithography.

Memory, non-memory efforts
China, meanwhile, has a huge trade gap in memory, namely DRAM and NAND flash. DRAM is used for main memory in systems, while NAND is used for storage.

China imports most of its memory. Intel, Samsung and SK Hynix operate memory fabs in China, which produce chips for both the domestic and international markets.

To reduce its dependence here, China is developing its domestic memory industry. In 2016, YMTC emerged with plans to enter the 3D NAND business. And CXMT is currently ramping up China’s first home-grown DRAMs.

Both are competitive markets, especially NAND. 3D NAND is the successor to planar NAND flash memory. Unlike planar NAND, which is a 2D structure, 3D NAND resembles a vertical skyscraper in which horizontal layers of memory cells are stacked and then connected using tiny vertical channels.

3D NAND is quantified by the number of layers stacked in a device. As more layers are added, the bit density increases in systems. But the manufacturing challenges escalate as you add more layers.

“There are two big challenges in scaling 3D NAND,” said Rick Gottscho, executive vice president and CTO at Lam Research. “One is the stress in the films that builds up as you deposit more and more layers, which can warp the wafer and distort the patterns. Then, when you go double deck or triple deck, alignment becomes a bigger challenge.”

Meanwhile, YMTC appears to have overcome some of those challenges. Last year, YMTC shipped its first product–a 64-layer 3D NAND device. Now, YMTC is sampling a 128-layer 3D technology.

The company is behind. In comparison, multinational vendors are shipping 92-/96-layer 3D NAND devices. They are also ramping up 112-/128-layer products.

Still, YMTC could become a factor, at least in China. YMTC’s chips are being incorporated in USB cards and SSDs from China-based companies. If Chinese OEMs adopt YMTC’s technology, “it could become a disruptive situation in NAND market share,” said Jeongdong Choe, an analyst with TechInsights.

To be sure, though, China has a long way to go in memory before it becomes a major competitor. “IC Insights remains extremely skeptical whether the country can develop a large competitive indigenous memory industry even over the next 10 years that comes anywhere close to meeting its memory IC needs,” said Bill McClean, president of IC Insights.

The same is true for analog, logic, mixed-signal and RF. “It will take decades for Chinese companies to become competitive in the non-memory IC product segments,” McClean said.

Meanwhile, several China-based GaN and SiC vendors have emerged in China. They appear to be foundry vendors and materials suppliers, but clearly, China is behind in the arena. GaN is used for power semis and RF, while SiC is targeted for power devices.

“The Chinese market represents a significant opportunity in the global power electronics industry, mainly in the automotive and consumer segments,” said Ahmed Ben Slimane, technology and market analyst at Yole Développement. “Driven by the electric-vehicle/hybrid-electric vehicle applications, SiC devices started to be adopted by leading Chinese car makers, such as BYD in its Han EV model. In the power GaN industry, the Chinese smartphone OEMs, such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo and Vivo have opted for GaN in fast charger technology. Driven by strong system makers in China, Chinese wafer and device players are certainly well-positioned in terms of cost-competitiveness and increasing quality given the current context of the U.S.-China conflict.”

This in turn is fueling the development of the ecosystem. “Following the emergence of wideband-gap semiconductors in the power electronics market, China is indeed pushing for innovative technologies and it has started building up its domestic value chain,” said Ezgi Dogmus, technology and market analyst at Yole Développement. “In the Chinese power SiC ecosystem, we see various players getting involved at wafer, epiwafer and device level. This includes players such as Tankeblue and SICC in wafers, Epiworld and TYSiC in epiwafer and Sanan IC in the foundry businesses. Regarding the power GaN market, starting from 2019, we have witnessed entry of competitive GaN device manufacturers such as Innoscience and various system integrators in the domain of fast chargers.”

Packaging plans
China also has big plans in packaging. JCET is China’s largest packaging house. It has several other OSATs as well.

“China’s OSAT technology is quite current to the mainstream industry capability, perceived as a much narrower technology gap compared to front-end wafer fabrication technology. They are capable of supporting nearly all popular package types,” FormFactor’s Leong said. “The emerging 2.5D/3D heterogeneous integration technology is still under development in China, noticeably behind the industry leaders like TSMC, Intel and Samsung.”

Potentially, though, advanced packaging is where China could close the gap. This is not just in packaging, but in semiconductor technology.

Today, for advanced designs, the industry typically develops an ASIC using chip scaling. This is where you shrink different functions at each node and pack them onto a monolithic die. But this approach is becoming more expensive at each node.

The industry is looking for new approaches. Another way to develop a system-level design is to assemble complex dies in an advanced package. “As Moore’s Law slows down, heterogeneous integration with advanced packaging technology represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for China to catch up in semiconductors,” Leong said.

Ah. Here’s a fine screen capture for your consideration. Remember that when we study any issue we must look at EVERYTHING, not just certain parts of the issue. Here is a picture from one of the videos above. Know the people who you are talkign about. Understand the context about what you are discussing.

[10] Lithography machine making technology breakthrough again! 14 nm to 9 nm

by:Transon     2021-01-08
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High-tech enterprises in China is limited by North America after strengthened the demand for domestic supply, for the development of Chinese industry brought $300 billion of investment opportunities. At present, China has nearly 2000 chip design related enterprises, mainly include huawei, purple light show sharp, in accordance with the science and technology, the Chinese chip companies account for 13% of the global chip sales. And pay attention to below there will be a breakthrough, recent Chinese chip is ushered in the three big good news.

Point 1…China is building everything from scratch. China’s memory chip production will amount to 5% of the global accounted in the past five years due to suffer shortage of memory chips, set off an upsurge of memory chips development in China. This year, after unremitting efforts, China continuously made new breakthrough in the field of memory chips. According to Japanese media reports, China’s emerging chip industry production is expected to be at the end of 2020 account for about 5% of the global memory chip output, which accounts for almost zero than last year.

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It is understood that in September this year the Chinese semiconductor companies purple light group, the Yangtze river storage has begun to independent research and development of 64 layer 3 d NAND flash memory chips for mass production. And according to its expected by the end of next year, the investment of $24 billion production of the new factory in wuhan will be increased by two times, reached 60000 pieces per month, accounted for 5% of global production. At the same time, xin long stored in hefei factory built by investing $8 billion production of DRAM chips will be increased by three times, reached 40000 pieces per month, 3% of the world production of DRAM.
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At present, the global production of NAND flash memory and DRAM chips are about 1. 3 million pieces per month. The two markets are dominated by the United States, South Korea and Japan’s manufacturers, such as samsung electronics, SK hynix, micron technology. Though, the Yangtze river and long xin storage added up to 100000 pieces of monthly shipments for big companies seem trivial, but, after the two markets in China are & quot; Zero production & quot; , 100000 pieces of this means that China’s efforts to promote technical self-sufficiency is a major breakthrough, is also a key to break the monopoly of America, Japan.
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Point 2,Chinese 14 nm to 9 nm, domestic printing machine making technology breakthrough again!
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in the general case, chip production process including two link, a link is a design, a link is made. In chip design link in our country, including well-known Chinese technology companies such as huawei haisi have developed 7 nm technological process of the chip, but it still chip manufacturing is the largest Chinese companies, after all is used for manufacturing chip lithography machine is a big problem. In consciousness to the chip manufacturing process after the disadvantages restricted to people will produce a chain, China started in the field of domestic printing machine for the huge investment, and heard the good news.

Now, some time ago, China’s independent research and development of 14 nm lithography has passed the preliminary acceptance and review panel, and after 14 nm process technology, a news came again, domestic printing machine again to achieve the new breakthrough. According to media reports, wuhan photoelectric GanZongSong team at the national center for research, has successfully developed 9 nm technology process of lithography. It is worth mentioning that, unlike traditional lithography machine, the domestic printing machine using two laser beam breakthrough the limitation of the diffraction limit, and this is technology with independent property rights in China.

Of course, it also means that domestic lithography technology difficulty has been breached, breaking the foreign technology blockade of China for a long time and limits, but even if the current domestic lithography breakthrough in 9 nm process technology, and with the Netherlands ASML have 7 nm technology process than there are still some gaps. But of course it is an important milestone in the history of the development of Chinese chip, once the domestic printing machine to realize mass production, we can see the future can break ASML monopoly.

Point 3, China’s semiconductor realize new breakthrough: successful foray into the world’s first 5 nm chip process production line. In addition, in addition to the lithography, etching machine is an indispensable step in the process of semiconductor. We have learned, lithography, etching machine and MOCVD equipment, known as the semiconductor technology along with all the three key equipment. Etching machine as a key equipment in the chip manufacturing, used for micro sculpture on the chip, to a certain extent determines the highest level chip manufacturing. However, little is known, our country domestic etching machines the world had a commanding lead.

Now, according to Moore’s law, the development of Taiwan semiconductor chip process has been developed from 14 nm to 5 nm, and will go into mass production node, and chip process constantly evolving, machining accuracy requirements for equipment also will increase. It is worth mentioning that it has been verified by TSMC, micro semiconductor self-developed 5 nm in plasma etching machine, excellent performance, will be used in the world’s first 5 nm chip process production line.

And micro 5 nm semiconductor etching machine successfully into the supply chain, TSMC means created yet another milestone in China’s semiconductor devices. As you can see, more and more evidence that China’s chip manufacturing is entering a new era, though, is now a line with the world level chip industry in China is still there is a certain gap, but we still should believe: the resistance and long, line will come.

Chinese girl built like a fish

Yes she is. This is known as the “Chinese ideal”.

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Chinese girl at her workstation

Calm, relaxed. Though, I’m not really all that fond of the print on the dress. Personally, I prefer the plain and simple bland colors.

video

 

Bill Gates says…

Not that it really pertains to this particular article, but there's all sorts of strange things going on right now. To this end, I would like to throw out this bit of intel to you all to mull over. I don't know if it is true or not. But it is thought-provoking.

https://www.rt.com/news/549937-bill-gates-omicron-vaccines/

Bill Gates is already on recent record as saying the next plandemic could be smallpox and HIV. Great foreshadowing in the BLPM.

American medical company Merck was recently caught with about 15 vials of smallpox, when it is supposed to be only kept in two high security L-4 biolabs, one in the US and one in Russia. Merck is a proven bioweapon producer.

Luc Montagnier said before he died that if you get the third GMO mRNA shot, to get tested for HIV.

Be Happy!

Take a note that you must accept life as it is, and not as you want it to be. Enjoy life, and savor it. it will be over soon enough. So just enjoy it and accept it as it is. Stop trying to swim upsteam. Embrace it. Live it.

video

party-2022-02-18_21.28.43

Conclusion

I wrote this little piece for the next time I see some “article” about Taiwan and IC chip fabricration in terms of mainland China. The “news” has this ability to omit things, take things out of context and then just hammer lies over and over and over so that the public gets and entirely distorted picture of reality.

Remember…

The only electronics systems that NEED the high-end fabricration technologies inside of Taiwan right now are the American military industrial complex. China doesn’t use them. So they don’t need them.

That’s right.

The only ones all fixiated in a war with China over Taiwan are the Taiwanese oligarchy, and the American military industrial complex.

Don’t get caught up in the distrations.

Live life on YOUR terms.

Live life on YOUR terms.

And as far as the United States (the instigator of all these nuisance distractions) is concerned, well this link tells you all you need to know about it’s health and functionability…

  • Homeland Security torched for letting migrants use arrest warrants as ID
    TSA has argued the arrest warrant, a Form I-200 from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to notify of immigration violations, works because it is a federal form.
    
    But instead of being used to welcome illegal immigrants through TSA checkpoints, critics believe it should be a deportation trigger. These words are at the top of the form: “Warrant for arrest of alien.”

    It is just comedic travesty at this point. But it’s going to end. You can be rest assured of that.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Global Sitrep with heavy Ukraine influence an update for 1MAR22

This is a sitrep for the Russian / Ukranian / Western collapse in coils as of early march 2022. It’s a bit all over the place. It includes fighting updates, control of the media narrative, pretty Chinese girls, jokes from Satan himself and hamburgers. Hamburgers too. Lots and lots, and lots of hamburgers. I hope that you will like it.

We start off with some food porn; the lovely hamburger.

In fact, I will go as far as to proudly state that this article has been brought to you by the lovely hamburger (Well, in this case a cheeseburger.) and I hope that you too end up appreciating the news with a flavor for excitement!

One of the residents of one of the new Republics.

This explains so much! Guy is from one of the new provences, the LDR or the NDR (not specified) that is joyous about Russia stopping the Ukrine shelling of their homes.

“Now I am constantly among the fighters. Many of my colleagues talk about the progress of the liberation of Donbass and Ukraine, so I focus on something else: I talk about the mood of our guys.

I don’t need to say that they are all on the upswing, their morale is high and they are ready to carry out the tasks assigned to them. What is important is that none of them has any bitterness or desire to fight for the sake of war.

For everyone, this battle is a battle for freedom. There are many, many young men in the ranks today from among those who have a home in the territories yet to be liberated. Can this be an invasion? It’s a homecoming, as they themselves say.

There are many volunteers who come without summons, at the call of the heart. And regardless of age, civilian occupation, place of residence – they are all united by the desire to liberate the Republic and Ukraine from Nazism.

This is not a war for the sake of war, this is a war in the name of peace, and the civilians of Ukraine are not enemies to these guys.”

Comic of the year!

1646066453854
1646066453854

American “news”

Heh. Heh.

"Want some comedy? Go take a look at the front page of the Drudge Report. I’ve never seen such mass propaganda in my life. How do they possibly retain a shred of creditability on anything after this. The desperation reeks."

Yeah. The American “news” is all full about the mistake Russia made and how it is now in a disastrous quagmire. Oh No! Here’s the top, highest promoted links on the Drudge Report today. Nothing is balanced. Nothing is accurate. Nothing is a view about the entire situation. It’s all emotionally driven bullshit…

LIONHEART ZELENSKY...
Yeah. The proud, brave man who is taking on Russia all by himself.
'I NEED AMMO'...
Oh. Right. So the reason behind the Russian incursion is to disarm the Ukraine. And that is what the West does not want at all. They want an armed Ukraine, and a long quagmire.
UKRAINIANS RALLY TO DEFEND...
Brave Ukrainians ready to die for their homeland. Actually, the truth is more like Russia stepping in and stabilizing a very unstable place. Anyone who lays down weapons can continue their lives, and return to their roles once the situation stabilizes.
RUSSIAN MEDIA STRUGGLE TO BOLSTER LIES...
Cut out all alternative viewpoints. Subject the Western readership to a cardboard paper cutout; evil villain. 
4,300 dead, 146 tanks smashed...
Massive losses on Russia! What a mistake that Russia made!
Fuel, logistics problems frustrate advance...
What a mistake! It's identical to the "Battle of the Bulge" where the proud Americans won against the evil Nazi Germans.
Soldiers Were Told They Were Going to Drill?
Putin lied to his soldiers. See! You just cannot trust a communist.
Forces attack children's hospital...
Killing and maiming little children! The Russian monster!
Radioactive Waste Facility Struck By Missile...
Oh no! Nuclear war is any minute now!
Kyiv skies glow orange...
Fighting in Kiev right now, and the proud defenders are holding on, but just barely. They need NATO intervention.
Bloody fighting erupts on streets of 2nd largest city Kharkiv...
Fighting in Kharkiv right now, and the proud defenders are holding on, but just barely. They need NATO intervention.
368,000 flee...
Putin started a humaritarian crisis.
Navy seizes 2 boats as war goes to seas...
Russia has taken over two Naval vessels. The NATO alliance needs to sail to the coast and get involved!
CYBER ATTACK HITS KREMLIN...
The West fights back using high-technology abilities that the RUssians have no defense against.
Moscow central bank urges calm amid cash run fears...
Russians are freaking out, and the entire financial well-being of Russia is about to collapse any day now.
Inside the anguished flight from Ukraine as women, children search for safety
Yes. Women and children and displaced people. Yes. It's horrible.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, claims victory against Russia
Brave fighters holding off those dasterdly Communists!

But the truth remains the same; the louder the shrilling, the more obvious the defeat of Western forces is.  Indeed. The more vicious the propaganda gets, the more likely it is that NATO is loosing badly on the ground. Popcorn time.

While in the United States

Yah. It’s a completely different reality. Far removed. Living life. Just bombing the rest of the world to pieces and provoking wars left and right. But in the meantime, just enjoying life. video 4MB

For youse newcomers to MM…

I sprinkle content all over the place. You have to see the big picture, and realize that everythign is connected. When you see the big picture, and break up content MM style, you disable the vault 7 influences imbedded inside of all Western electronic media. Your mind adapts quicker than the vault 7 influence.

Additionally, it serves as an easy check to see if someone ACTUALLY read the article. Hit and run commenters don’t. And if you read the articles, and not comment on the food, pretty girls, or side ventures, then I know that you haven’t read the article. Like this joker…

2022 03 01 16 24
2022 03 01 16 24

Pretty Chinese girl

Let’s lighten up the mood here. video 1MB

Falsehoods in wartime

Historian Anne Morelli has summarized Arthur Ponsonby’s classic book Falsehood in War-Time as this:

  1. We do not want war.
  2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
  3. The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
  4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interests.
  5. The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our mishaps are involuntary.
  6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
  7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
  8. Recognized artists and intellectuals back our cause.
  9. Our cause is sacred.
  10. All who doubt our propaganda are traitors.

Ah. Isn’t that exactly what you are watching on any of the American, Western, UK and Australian “news” media?

Another cute Chinese girl

Here is a fine lady who is caught in the rain without an umbrella. Oh snap! video 3MB

The Situation in the Ukraine: Predictions vs. Reality

By Dmitry Orlov and posted with the author’s permission. 

Last Thursday I reposed my “top ten signs that Russia has invaded the Ukraine” from 8 years ago when the Ukrainian regime change and civil war first started and the West continuously made claims that Russia had invaded. Well, last Thursday Russia did indeed invade.

Russia had the full legal right to invade the Ukraine from several perspectives: to defend its allies in Donetsk and Lugansk;

  • to defend itself against Ukrainian WMDs, which the Ukrainian president threatened to start producing at the Munich Security Conference;
  • and to stop NATO from continuing its advance toward Russian borders in violation of its previous commitment of “not an inch to the east.”

Russia exercised its right of self-defense under article 51 of part 7 of the UN Charter.

  • The Ukraine had forfeited its right to territorial integrity under the 1970 UN Declaration by refusing to honor the rights of its Russian-speaking population.
  • It also refused to renew its Friendship Treaty with Russia and therefore no longer had a defined border with Russia that Russia was obligated to honor.

From a strictly legalistic perspective, claims that “Russia violated the Ukraine’s territorial integrity” or that this is “an act of Russian aggression” is just pure twaddle.

From a moral perspective, the fact that the entire international community idly stood by and ineffectually discussed politics for eight years during which the civilian population of Donetsk and Lugansk was continuously shelled by the Ukrainian “anti-terrorist operation” is utterly shameful.

Shameful.

People who are now speaking out against Russia’s military action in the Ukraine need to answer a simple question: Where have you been for the last eight years while [1] the carnage in Donetsk and Lugansk was going on, while [2] people were being burned alive in Odessa, [3] while the Ukrainian government organized terrorist operations on Russian territory and [4] while the entire Ukrainian population has been forced to kowtow to Americans and to speak Ukrainian, most often against its will?

If your answer is “I didn’t know” then you have forfeited your right to an informed opinion on what’s happening there now. Please keep that in mind and act accordingly.

Now I will go through the 10 predictions I made 8 years ago and see how well they held up in light of events that have unfolded for the past three days.

A reasonable expectation would be that I got them completely wrong; if not, then that’s something of a minor miracle. Please keep that in mind also.

1. Ukrainian artillery fell silent almost immediately. They are no  longer shelling residential districts of Donetsk and Lugansk. This is  because their locations had been pinpointed prior to the operation, and  by Thursday afternoon they were completely wiped out using air attacks,  artillery and ground-based rocket fire, as the first order of business.  Local residents are overjoyed that their horrible ordeal is finally at  an end.

Not quite true. Donetsk and Lugansk is still being shelled sporadically, although most of the firing has been suppressed and as more and more territory is being liberated from the Ukrainian forces by the Donbass militia (with Russian forces playing a supporting role). At the same time, new possibilities for civilian carnage are resulting from the fact that the Ukraine’s Nazi battalions, under guidance from their US/NATO minders, are hiding heavy weapons in residential districts and using civilians as human shields.

2. The look of military activity on the ground in  Donetsk and Lugansk has changed dramatically. Whereas before it involved  small groups of resistance fighters, the Russians operate in battalions  of 400 men and dozens of armored vehicles, followed by convoys of  support vehicles (tanker trucks, communications, field kitchens, field  hospitals and so on). The flow of vehicles in and out is non-stop,  plainly visible on air reconnaissance and satellite photos. Add to that  the relentless radio chatter, all in Russian, which anyone who wants to  can intercept, and the operation becomes impossible to hide.

This is obviously the case. No sane person would now say that there are no Russian forces in the Ukraine. They made their presence about as obvious as they possibly could and the sight of endless columns of Russian military vehicles rolling unhindered through the Ukrainian countryside appears to be effecting a sea change in the mindset of the Ukraine’s population. Throughout history, it has always been quick to switch allegiances as circumstances and battle lines shifted, and this time will probably be no exception.

3. The Ukrainian military has promptly vanished. Soldiers and officers  alike have taken off their uniforms, abandoned their weapons, and are  doing their best to blend in with the locals. Nobody thought the odds of  the Ukrainian army against the Russians were any good. Ukraine’s only  military victory against Russia was at the battle of Konotop in 1659,  but at the time Ukraine was allied with the mighty Khanate of Crimea,  and, you may have noticed, Crimea is not on Ukraine’s side this time  around.

Again, not entirely true. It turns out that there is a hardened Nazi embedded with each and every detachment of Ukrainian forces whose job is to shoot those who try to surrender. Nevertheless, some unknown number of Ukrainian soldiers have surrendered, signed a promise to no longer fight against the Russian army, and have been given some food and sent home. In all, the Ukrainian military is turning out to be no different from other NATO-organized, NATO-trained forces, be they in Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq or elsewhere. All of them immediately turn out to be completely useless as soon as a real military force arrives on the scene, be it the Russians, the Taliban or the Islamic Caliphate. Also notable is the fact that the large quantities of weapons recently supplied to the Ukraine by the US have been shown to be completely useless. The Javelin anti-tank missiles, which helped line the pockets of some of the Pentagon’s top brass, have been worse than useless: by the time they can be set up to fire there is generally nobody left alive to fire them, so the soldiers don’t even bother with them.

4. There are Russian checkpoints everywhere. Local  civilians are allowed through, but anyone associated with a government,  foreign or domestic, is detained for questioning. A filtration system  has been set up to return demobilized Ukrainian army draftees to their  native regions, while the volunteers and the officers are shunted to  pretrial detention centers, to determine whether they had ordered war  crimes to be committed.

Not true at all. The Russian troops are not engaging with the civilians in any way, scrupulously avoiding residential districts and doing their best to see that the delivery of electricity, water and other essentials is not disrupted. As far as denazification, I am still not sure what the plan is, but my hunch at the moment is that this will be left up to the Ukrainians themselves. There is a good chance that once they realize what the Nazis and their Western masters have been doing to their country, they will do their best to round up the Nazis and hang them on streetlights. The Nazis will see this coming (some already do) and will run away to Poland or Slovenia or points further west.

5. Most of Ukraine’s border crossings  are by now under Russian control. Some have been reinforced with air  defense and artillery systems and tank battalions, to dissuade NATO  forces from attempting to stage an invasion. Civilians and humanitarian  goods are allowed through. Businessmen are allowed through once they  fill out the required forms (which are in Russian).

The Ukrainian border guards along the Russian border have abandoned their posts. Some of them walked over to the Russian side and surrendered. The Russian and Belorussian borders are under control from the Russian and Belorussian sides. The western border crossings are crowded from all the people flying to flee.

6. Russia  has imposed a no-fly zone over all of Ukraine. All civilian flights have  been cancelled. There is quite a crowd of US State Department staffers,  CIA and Mossad agents, and Western NGO people stuck at Borispol airport  in Kiev. Some are nervously calling everyone they know on their  satellite phones. Western politicians are demanding that they be  evacuated immediately, but Russian authorities want to hold onto them  until their possible complicity in war crimes has been determined.

Flight radar shows zero flights over all of the Ukraine. In fact, air traffic has been disrupted over much of Europe, with many airspaces closed and lots of new restrictions on traffic. Many vacationers, especially those from the Ukraine, are stuck wherever they are. The ones in Egypt are lucky: the Egyptian government is paying for their hotel stays while they are stuck there. The Westerners, on the other hand, having learned their lesson from the fiasco in Afghanistan, fled the Ukraine ahead of time. Since there is a long list of places for them to get the hell out of before their luck runs out, it’s good that they are getting the knack of it.

7. The usual Ukrainian talking heads, such as president Poroshenko, PM  Yatsenyuk and others, are no longer available to be interviewed by  Western media. Nobody quite knows where they are. There are rumors that  they have already fled the country. Crowds have stormed their abandoned  residences, and were amazed to discover that they were all outfitted  with solid gold toilets. Nor are the Ukrainian oligarchs anywhere to be  found, except for the warlord Igor Kolomoisky, who was found in his  residence, abandoned by his henchmen, dead from a heart attack.  (Contributed by the Saker.)

The number one Ukrainian talking head, the president-cum-comedian Zelensky, is hiding in a bunker in Lvov, Führer-like, surrounded by his Nazi henchmen. His jumbled missives to the faithful appear to have been prerecorded. At the same time, the information war is proceeding apace, with numerous new fake news items arriving daily, too many to keep track of. The real fun will start when the TV channels in Kiev get denazified and Ukrainians stir from their eight-year stupor, figure a few things out for themselves and become extremely angry at those who have been lying to them for eight long years.

8. Some of the over 800,000 Ukrainian refugees are starting to stream back in from Russia. They were  living in tent cities, many of them in the nearby Rostov region, but with the winter coming they are eager to get back home, now that the shelling is over. Along with them, construction crews, cement trucks and  flatbeds stacked with pipe, cable and rebar are streaming in, to repair  the damage from the shelling.

This is yet to start happening. It will be a slow process, given that the number of refugees now, eight years later, is in the millions and scattered over numerous Russian regions.

9. There is all sorts of intense diplomatic and military activity around the world, especially in Europe  and the US. Military forces are on highest alert, diplomats are jetting around and holding conferences. President Obama just held a press  conference to announce that “We don’t have a strategy on Ukraine yet.” His military advisers tell him that his usual strategy of “bomb a little  and see what happens” is not likely to be helpful in this instance.

This is definitely the case. The goal for Western leaders now is to look purposeful and strong while doing nothing of consequence. They keep talking about cutting Russia off from SWIFT bank messaging system, but keep recoiling in horror when they realize what they will mean for their energy prices (which are already dangerously high). The Russian posture vis-à-vis Western sanctions seems to be “Bring them on; we are ready!” Apparently, eight years have been enough for Russia to thoroughly prepare for this event.

10. Kiev has surrendered. There are Russian tanks on the Maidan Square. Russian infantry is mopping up the remains of Ukraine’s National Guard. A curfew has indeed been imposed. The operation to take Kiev resembled “Shock and Awe” in Baghdad: a few loud bangs and then a whimper.

Russian tanks are unlikely to enter the city center; they are concentrated on destroying military installations, demobilizing the Ukrainian military and destroying the Nazi battalions. There is indeed a curfew in effect in Kiev.

One more significant development worth mentioning: Russian forces are taking charge of the Ukraine’s nuclear installations, including the one at Chernobyl, which is now under joint Russian/Ukrainian control. This will reduce the chance that the Ukrainian Nazis will try to blow up one of them on their merry way to hell. The Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors, and since it is virtually out of other sources of energy it has been running all of them flat out. Two of them went off-line recently because of technical issues. Russia is working very hard to make Chernobyl 2.0 less of a possibility.

I am not sure what grade I should give myself for my predictions. Russia’s political and military planners have turned out to be quite a bit smarter than me, but this is not at all a surprise. After all, they have all of the intellectual resources of a huge, powerful country whereas I am just a guy with an office chair and a laptop.

Do I care to make some more predictions about the Ukraine?

Sure, why not!

1. Donetsk and Lugansk regions will continue on their path of closer and closer integration into the Russian Federation. They are already part of the Russian currency space, their educational systems are integrated with Russia’s (same standards and procedures), their defense systems are fully integrated and diplomatically they act as a well-synchronized unit.

2. An area further west, probably encompassing the entire basin of Dnieper River and the Black Sea littoral, from the Belorussian to the Romanian border, will be part of a Russian zone. The regions within this zone will be given political autonomy within a general security and economic framework linked to Russia. The rough outlines of this area can be determined from the following language map. The areas in red and orange—is Russian-speaking and is naturally part of the Russian zone. The only two exceptions will be a Carpatho-Russian enclave (in purple) which will need to be administered separately and a Hungarian enclave (in green) that might as well be absorbed into Hungary.

3. Further west will lie a zone that will be wrapped in fancy paper with ribbons and bows and presented as an extra-special present to the EU to love to cherish and to suffer migraines and aneurisms over. Roughly speaking, the yellow area is Ukrainian-speaking and is an all-you-can-eat (please don’t choke) buffet for the West. It has relatively poor soil and high incidence of iodine deficiency and imbecility in the general population. It is also where Ukrainian nationalism comes from and where the current Ukrainian Nazi plague originated. The Russian stance should be (if I may be so bold as to recommend what the Russian government should do) along the lines of “If you like your Ukrainian Nazis, you can have your Ukrainian Nazis.”

Why the Chinese system works

Here we have a son who has a mental issue. He left home 11 years ago. But in China, everyone is monitored, and it is the duty, the requirement; the responsibility of each local govenrment to know who is in their jurisdiction. So they found this young man. And they used AI to find out who he was, and contacted his family. In this video, the mother and his sister comes to get him and take him home. It is not right for him to live hand-to-mouth on the streets alone.

video 13MB

Some meals of desperation

Sigh. Life happens.

Life is too short not to eat well.

I argue that it is better to drive a distressed automobile but eat extraordinarily well, than you drive a nice car and live off fast food. And you can take that opinion of mine “to the bank“.

Love her belly

I like this girl’s belly. It is appealing. Like a milkshake. video 5MB

Taiwan Leadership argues for a change in alliances

Well, it is obvious to us here, but hidden from the rest of the world. The United States does not care about you or your country, and will abandon you and leave to to rot if it is to their advantage.

Well, it looks like people in Taiwan are watching the events and wondering “what about us”?

Former Taiwan Vice President from the pro Independence Party 民进党 (The people progressive party) openly criticized her own party and current president.  She now promotes discarding alignment with America, and a military buildup. She now is endorsing reunification with China. Wow.
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Use Google to translate.
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Look at the bright side…

For those of you that are worried about all the changes and the onslaught of “news” about this or that, keep in mind what Satan thinks…

Do good works

It doesn’t take much. Just try to add something to your environment. Generate good thoughts. Over time, you will see a big difference.

video

The USA accounted for 81% of all global conflicts

This is obvious to me, but not so for the rest of the world.

‘Never forget the real threat to world’: Amid Ukraine crisis, the Chinese embassy in Russia slams the United States. Among the 248 Armed conflicts that occurred in 153 regions across the world from 1945 to 2001, 201 were initiated by the US, accounting for 81% of the total number.

https://www.firstpost.com/world/never-forget-real-threat-to-world-amid-ukraine-crisis-chinese-embassy-in-russia-slams-us-10413011.html

Be the Rufus

It’s all about community. Participate. Make the world a better place. Be like the Chinese. video 6MB

Austrian Minister of Defence, Klaudier Tanner

According to SD, this might be the person who would launch World War III. Whether it is soon, or far off. This is the face of the person to initiated the nuclear conflagration.

Austrian Minister of Defense, Klaudier Tanner.

Satan has some advice to Americans / EU

Taxi Driver gives a ride for free

He’s a true Rufus. He sees a young girl carrying a baby all alone,a nd stope and gives them a free ride. What a Rufus! video 6MB

Now, let’s talk hamburgers.

This piece of work really speaks to me. You know…

Hamburgers for all.

What do the Chinese think?

Maybe a tiny percentage of netizens are very interested in the situation in Ukraine, following it constantly, but I’d say majority (95%, I guess ?) of Chinese just get on with their life and feel grateful that they can live in a contry where NATO/US & its 5-eyes allies can not come and bomb it.

MSM/some people keep on posting this or that about Chinese/China’s stands on the on-going situation between Russia and Ukraine, it sometimes seems to me like a part of the Western psyop to drive a wedge between Russia and China and their supporters/sympathisers.

-Lulu

Russian SWIFT cutoff

According to the Russian National SWIFT Association, Russia has the second-largest number of users after the US, with some 300 Russian financial institutions in the system, more than half of Russia’s financial institutions.
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This is not the first time US, EU banned Russia from SWIFT. So Putin is not caught by surprise.
Russia is the world second largest exporter of resources, so, by imposing sanction on Russia from using SWIFT (yet again), it will force the world hungry for Russian resources to trade through China in RMB.
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Only this time, the Chinese RMB international transaction system is established and ready to welcome the world with confidence.
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As a result, we can expect the continue rising in value of rmb, this will attract more and more investors using rmb as reserve currency, and will speed up the replacement of US dollar to rmb worldwide.
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There is always good reason behind an inevitable empire collapsed:
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US regimes are basically run by elderly who born in the 1930s and 40s, these are out of touch extreme supremacists. They are self centred, know no consequences, one leg already in the coffin; truly ugly, old folks. Their stupidly and aggression will send their country into poverty, backwardness, and disintegration. Well, it already has, but so far the decay has been hidden from prublic view.
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As the Chinese word 危机 (crisis) suggests; 危 is for danger, and 机 is for opportunity.
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So each time the West creates a crisis for China and others, China will identify the opportunities to turn the crisis into opportunity and make herself stronger.
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Each time, US and Europe push and promote aggression against China, they are actually helping to create an enemy that they cannot defeat.
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Welcome to the coming new world order with more fairness, equality, and freedom from the nasty; nasty American-lead unipolar global dictatorship.

China’s Xinghua News journalist reporting from Ukraine and Belarus

– Journalist at Gomel, Belarus says the safety measure for the negotionation place is extreme high. Police does not journalist to get close the place where negotiation to take place: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av296979724?from=search&seid=13039214469606151791&spm_id_from=333.337.0.0;

– The Russian delegation says they didn’t sleep the whole night while waiting for the arriaval fo the Ukrainian delegation, which delayed/changed due to their logistical issues: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Xu411D777?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0;

– Feb. 28th around 8: 30 local time, the same Chinese businessman of yesterday’s vido I posted, who lives in Kiev suburb, tells Xinhua News that the suburb of Kiev is quiet. It’s safe to stay at home. He also says there’s only one TV channel in Ukraine right now only reporting the war: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ea411h7GX?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0;

He also says bread and water at supermarket are basically gone, lots of empty shelves, and restrict to 2500 Ukrainian hryvnia per purchase: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ga411h7B1?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0.

Hope these videos from Xinhua News give your guy some extra inform that differs from Western MSM’s perspectives.

And also speaking about hamburgers…

I think that all this is making me hungry, but you know… as they say at Burger King, “It takes two hands to handle a whopper”!

He’s got two huge burgers.

Other actions by the United States

Here’s some article in my morning feed. Obviously part of the mighty propaganda machine, just a churning things out left and right and my opinions…

U.S. To Expel 12 Russian Diplomats At UN

Is it even possible? The USA does not run the UN.

Ukraine Seeks To Join EU As Round Of Talks With Russia Ends

If it cannot join NATO then it will try to join the EU. Man will that destory the EU financially. Whoa!

Ruble Dives, Stocks Sink As West Tightens Russia Sanctions

It's all "play money". Don't be so sure about things in global economics. It's an entirely new "ball game".

Russian porn stars banned from OnlyFans amid invasion of Ukraine

The horror!

Biden updates nuclear explosion guidelines to include SOCIAL DISTANCING as Putin readies missiles

It's progressive, don't you know.

US closes embassy in Belarus and threatens more sanctions if it joins Russian invasion of Ukraine

The USA "color revolution" failed.  So the USA now treats Belarus as a Russian state.

Six American special ops veterans join the fight in Ukraine

Many Americans can't wait to kill those pesky commies!

Dan Murphy’s and BWS to pull all Russian vodka from shelves in opposition to invasion of Ukraine

'Merica!

Remember what America has become

No, it is not the image of a “great and wonderful white shinging building on the hill”, but rather a corrupt, third world nation that is falling down into black hole of decay and internal rot at all levels. video 51MB

Why I think that America has been taken over by Satan…

Think Hamburgers

This lass certainly does.

I thought we were reasonably free of Trump and I ignore most of his utterings. But this one – it got to me.

TRUMP: “Under Bush, Russia invaded Georgia. Under Obama, Russia took Crimea. Under Biden, Russia invaded Ukraine.”

“I stand as the only president of the twenty-first century on who’s watch Russia did not invade another country.”

America’s brutalist belief system

No wonder, the bully still thinks it’s 20 years old, muscular and tough. When instead, it’s an old seniale man, with a walker. video 3MB

From the attack dogs’ own mouths—how stupid can these people be?

Why I think that America has been taken over by Satan…

Here’s rifle training in middle school. I wonder what the American school kids learn in schools today. video 3MB

Yeah. Trolls hate me putting up pictures of pretty ladies. Oh, boy oh boy! Do they hate it. It drives them bonker-crazy! But no one has yet to complain about my love for hamburgers.

Here we have a vintage lass hold a fine burger in her hands. Now, what’s wrong about that? Whoops! Mind the nipple flash. I think that it must be a “wardrobe malfunction”.

At the operational level there have been mistakes such as about convoys undefended. At the strategic level things are very much on track. Russian procedure on clearing towns is excellent and was used extensively in Syria.

Step 1 approach the town and assess the chance of their surrender
Step 2 surround the town, cutting off resupply.
Step 3 based on initial recon begin with very targeted strikes weakening defenses
Step 4 send in probes to gain a clearer picture of internal defenses
Step 5 begin degrading them
Step 6 open humanitarian corridors
Step 7 begin probing attacks from different sides 24/7 to disturb and confuse and sleep deprive (your troops can rest)
Step 8 when defenses are sufficiently weakened invade

Chinese Term ‘Wuxin Gongzuo’: Can’t Focus on Work Due to Russia-Ukraine Crisis

Chinese netizens are so focused on the Russian attack on Ukraine that nobody can focus on work (wuxin gongzuo).  From HERE.

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2022 03 01 15 20

A comment

The Grand Chessboard reveals all. 

The purpose of NATO is... 

keep Germany down in Europe, 
keep the USA in control of Europe, 
keep the Russians out. 

With the combined factors of; 

Russia’s rise and dedollarise; 
China’s rise militarily and economically; 
Germany’s pending approval of NS2 to increase Germany’s economic strength; Germany being the dominant economy and country in EU; 

America had to find a way to scare EU and tighten America’s stranglehold on the EU. 

What better way than to provoke a war in a part of Europe not exactly vital to EU? 

Ukraine is going exactly to plan: it’s a win win for USA and Russia. 

Russia knows its LNG sales to other countries, like Japan, will not be targeted. Can you imagine what will happen to Japan if LNG from Sakhalin is removed? The depressive effects will spark a global depression. 

You can bet China is studying this Ukraine conflict very intently. 

We have reached an inflection point. 

The world will shift to a path different from the hegemon’s choosing. Whatever deity you choose to praise, do thank him/her for your salvation.

-Grune

Pretty girl

Here’s one of the popular girls on Douxing in China. She’s impressive. video 3MB

How about some hamburgers?

While all sorts of crazy stuff is going on in the United States, the rest of the world is fine and following plans. So don’t get too worked up about it. how about enjoying a fine hamburger instead.

Elon Musk deploys SpaceX’s Starlink Internet satellites over Ukraine after request from vice PM | Euronews

There seems to be an obvious connection between the United States military / government and Elon Musk. From the attack on the Chinese Space Station to this, it’s obviously suspicious.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/02/27/elon-musk-deploys-spacex-s-starlink-internet-satellites-over-ukraine-after-request-from-vi

Here she is again.

Nice view. She’s a strutting down the street don’t you know. video 3MB

Oh, and don’t forget about the fries!

Sheech! I am so accustomed about eating hamburgers with french fries that I forgot how to eat a burger without them. Usually, I try to substitute potato chips, or potato salad instead.

Americans, Brits and Europeans should stop clapping with glee…

This is the latest comment from Aaron Hawkins (Storm Clouds Gathering):

“ As this war heats up you will see many cheering for one flag or the other; promoting escalations and retaliations. This is a trap. 

Who exactly benefits from a major war that sends millions of young, fighting age men and women to slaughter each other in Eurasia (at the precise moment when civil disobedience with teeth was beginning to spread)? 

And what do you suppose is about to happen to the monetary system now that Russia is being cut from SWIFT? 

Did you consider the fact that not only does Europe depend heavily on Russian gas (that the U.S. cannot even come close to replacing), but Russia and Ukraine also happen to be the world’s two largest wheat exporters comprising approximately 30% of global production? 

All of Ukraine’s exports have been halted, and with Russia cut off from the western banking system all future customers will have to work outside the dollar. 

Even if the physical war were to be contained to Ukraine (spoiler alert: it won’t), the consequences of the cyber and economic warfare already underway will be devastating. Western leaders are setting their populations up for much more than just parabolic price increases. Widespread shortages and famine are on the horizon. This will not be a short term phenomenon."

Five days into the war and the first inkling of truth is presented to Americans

Video 15MB. Well worth the watch.

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2022 03 01 15 33

Alex Rubinstein tweets,

Watch Yevhen Karas the leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi terror gang C14’s speech from Kiev earlier this month. Straight from the horses’ mouth, he dispels the many narratives pushed by the Western governments, the mainstream media and the State Department.
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He claims:
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  • – Ukraine is being armed as pawns of the West because “we have fun killing”
  • – “We have started a war”
  • – “We have the most Javelins on the European continent”
  • – The European family has already collapsed
  • – Maidan would’ve been a “gay parade” if not for Nazi influence

America is pushing all this warfare

Keep in mind the ugly face of what he Hell that everyone is dealing with right now. The United States is NOT a happy, safe, and healthy nation right now. video 3MB

Now that’s a serious whopper!

Wow!

Great Video Speech regarding Ukraine & Russia 2014

Well, worth the watch. I watched it, was going to record it, and then Boom! No longer available in my region. Sigh! I urge everyone to watch it.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZSeTGq816/

Playing the mighty Wurlitzer vs Reality

By Chris Faure

Do people seriously imagine Russia simply blundered into the Ukraine not knowing what the west would do?

You may be surprised to hear that the world is actually still spinning.  All we have to deal with is the mighty Wurlitzer which is an old-style pipe organ for theaters, and also a propaganda instrument.

Allow me a moment to explain:

In 1967 the magazine Ramparts ran an exposé revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency had been secretly funding and managing a wide range of citizen front groups intended to counter communist influence around the world. 

In addition to embarrassing prominent individuals caught up, wittingly or unwittingly, in the secret superpower struggle for hearts and minds, the revelations of 1967 were one of the worst operational disasters in the history of American intelligence and presaged a series of public scandals from which the CIA’s reputation has arguably never recovered.

CIA official Frank Wisner called the operation his “mighty Wurlitzer,” on which he could play any propaganda tune.   

Hugh Wilford provides the first comprehensive account of the clandestine relationship between the CIA and its front organizations. 

Using an unprecedented wealth of sources, he traces the rise and fall of America’s Cold War front network from its origins in the 1940s to its Third World expansion during the 1950s and ultimate collapse in the 1960s.

Covering the intelligence officers who masterminded the CIA’s fronts as well as the involved citizen groups—émigrés, labor, intellectuals, artists, students, women, Catholics, African Americans, and journalists—Wilford provides a surprising analysis of Cold War society that contains valuable lessons for our own age of global conflict.

Now, the Mighty Wurlitzer, exposed during the cold war, has never ended.

We see it in full swing now.

Here are a few snippets, a few items from memory (it has to be from memory as most of the Russian sites are still down, or up or down, in a relentless cyber propaganda war and this cannot be meticulously linked to source).

And you know what, the Ukraine inherited its own theater and mighty Wurlitzer, where they are designing and producing for the common man, theater productions for this current time.

Excepting now, it is all done in studio with breathless journalists playing war and running around in front of green screens.

So, while the tinny and discordant theater music sometimes drowns out even our own ability to think (it is torture, you know!) let’s look at a few realities.

Sanctions.  Big Big Headlines – Russia is sanctioned for this or that and for basically everything, even Vodka.  The latest is SWIFT (but only for a few banks).  Take a good look at the sanctions.  It is paper production for the purpose of paper production.  The German sanctions on Russian banks for example have fine print.  (They all have).  They’re sanctioning Russia from hell, but of course, this does not apply to gas or oil payments.  Those will continue, says the fine print.

Sanctions on Russia are now the latest fashion accessory.  The one that can play that Wurlitzer the loudest is the one who wins.  So what happens if they don’t win?  What happens if they are busy shooting themselves in the heart, and not even in the foot?.  What happens if the fervor to punish Russia simply accelerates their own demise?

Russia is decoupling as fast as what the West is sanctioning.  A headline that comes to mind is: “European Commission: The disconnection of a number of banks from SWIFT “will actually block Russian exports and imports”.

No Einstein, it will hasten de-dollarization.

How about a plate of double cheeseburgers?

I could easily eat all of them up. WHat they do need is a fine strawberry milkshake, don’t you know.

Chinese girl

Let’s take a look at this fine Chinese lass. Here she is inside of her house. I’ll bet she is fun to be with. video 1MB

America’s Anti-Russian “news”…

This morning from Medvedev:

‘Final review’ of Russia’s relations with West now possible – former president

Dmitry Medvedev has dubbed European organizations “meaningless almshouses”.
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Western sanctions could be an “excellent reason for a final review” of Russia’s relations with the nations that have imposed the restrictions, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and former president, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Saturday.

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, which was launched on February 24, has prompted outrage in the West and a new wave of harsh sanctions against Russia. In a lengthy post on the Russian social network VK, Medvedev called the restrictions “a myth, a figment, a figure of speech.”

Sanctions could be an excellent reason for the final review of all relations with those states that have introduced them. Including interruption of the dialogue on strategic stability,” Medvedev wrote.

[sidebar] Take another look at that sentence – why now? It is because most of the western world do not have answers to Russia on strategic stability, so they decided to play that Wurlitzer pretty loud to attempt to hide their inability). 

He added that in principle, it is possible “to renounce everything,” including the New START Treaty.

Yes, and diplomatic relations, in principle, are not particularly needed. It’s time to close the embassies with barn locks. And to continue contacts by examining each other only through binoculars and weapons’ optical systems,” Medvedev said.

Commenting on the decision by the Council of Europe and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to suspend Russia’s membership, the former president said that while this is a “flagrant injustice,” it could still be considered as a good reason “to finally slam the door and forget about these meaningless almshouses forever.”

This development could also be used to “restore a number of important institutions for prevention of especially serious crimes in the country,” he said, such as the “death penalty for the most dangerous criminals, which, by the way, is being actively used in the United States and China.

He has no assets abroad and to the UK sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote:

Neither Putin, nor Lavrov have accounts neither in Britain nor anywhere abroad. Maybe the kingdom’s government got something frozen off rather than it froze something?”

We are in a new world.

A few more:

Russia has just suspended cooperation with NASA on the international space station .. including the launch team which will not be available to the US.  Russia will work with China.

Zap!

Are there any US astronauts there at the moment?  I don’t know, but Elon Musk will have to get them home.

Let’s take a look at few more of Mr Putin’s actions these last days.

Russia’s President Meeting (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67851) with Security Council permanent members

💬 Vladimir Putin: According to available information, and this is confirmed by objective monitoring – we are seeing this; Banderites and neo-Nazis are putting up heavy weapons, including MLRS, right in the central districts of large cities, including Kiev and Kharkov. They plan to force return fire by Russian strike systems vs residential quarters. They are acting in the same way terrorists act all over the world – using people as shields.

It is known for a fact that all this is being done on the recommendations of foreign consultants, primarily American advisors.

❗️ Once again, I am appealing to the military of the armed forces of Ukraine. Do not allow neo-Nazis and Banderites to use your children, wives and elders as a live shield. Take power into your own hands. It seems it will be easier for us to come to terms with you than with this gang of drug addicts & neo-Nazis that have settled in Kiev and that have taken the Ukrainian people.

President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation (https://is.gd/m8pf2L) with President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

The Presidents discussed developments related to the special military operation designed to protect peaceful civilians in Donbass as well as Ukraine’s demilitarisation and denazification.

☝️ Shavkat Mirziyoyev expressed understanding of Russia’s actions.

The Presidents also touched upon certain current issues on the bilateral agenda. They reaffirmed their shared intention to continue the development of the Russian-Uzbek strategic partnership with a focus on implementing specific trade, economic, and humanitarian projects.

President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation (https://is.gd/322XIF) with President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping.

The President of Russia gave the President of China a detailed account of the reasons behind the recognition of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic and the start of a special military operation to protect civilians from genocide and ensure the demilitarisation and denazification of the Ukrainian state. Vladimir Putin also noted that considering the signals received from Kiev he was ready to send a delegation to Minsk to hold talks with representatives of Ukraine.

☝️ Xi Jinping stressed that he respected the actions of the Russian leadership in the current crisis.

The two Leaders assessed the current international situation from a common perspective. They reaffirmed a mutual readiness to closely cooperate and support each other further at the UN and in other multilateral platforms.

Held at Kyrgyzstan’s initiative, the telephone conversation (https://is.gd/Ppnjou) between President Vladimir Putin and President of the Kyrgyz Republic Sadyr Japarov focused on the situation with the special military operation carried out by Russia in Ukraine.

☝️ Sadyr Japarov said that Kiev was responsible for derailing the Minsk agreements and expressed his support for Russia’s decisive actions to protect civilians in Donbass. Vladimir Putin thanked the President of Kyrgyzstan for his principled solidarity.

The two Presidents reaffirmed their mutual commitment to strengthening the strategic partnership and allied relations between Russia and Kyrgyzstan in all areas.

President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation (https://is.gd/oACYDq) with Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan.

The Parties continued their exchange of views on the practical aspects of the implementation of the agreements documented by the November 9, 2020, January 11 and November 26, 2021, tripartite statements by the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia on Nagorno-Karabakh, including efforts to ensure stability and security on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Some items on the current bilateral agenda were also touched upon.

The Ukraine is dancing to the music of the Mighty Wurlitzer.  Don’t you do that too!  Turn the music off. Zone B is way behind Zone A in playing the organ, but way ahead in creating a life friendly to human people, for this planet.Margarita Simonyan focused on the 5th and 6th columns with a devasting phrase:

“If you are now ashamed that you are Russian, do not worry, you are not Russian,” she wrote in her Telegram channel.

And in the event that you are worried about China, they just posted this from their Russian embassy.  They truly understand that this time it is Russia, but for the throw of a set of dice, or a different tune on the Wurlitzer, it could have been China.

Captures

USA’s and UK’s “lethal aid” To Ukraine captured by DPR and Russian forces. SMAW-D & NLAW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk201KFPXJM&ab_channel=PatrickLancaster

It’s about how you look at things

It’s all so easy to get caught up. Don’t. Sit down. Settle down and enjoy life more.

Serious considerations

I imagine at this point President Putin has convened a Stavka and he and the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces are now looking at all thinkable and unthinkable situations that could evolve that would impact the safety and security of the Russian people.

The President of the Russian Federation has to prepare the State apparatus for:

1. Sustained war against Russia
2. Explain to the people what they must do and why they must do it
3. Insure all civil defense structures are ready to house and feed the masses
4. Speak with the clergy to address all military personnel and give them the spiritual confidence to fight hard
5. Seek allies including China and make them all realize they will have to engage their forces now or perish

Russia waited too long and now she will saddle up and ride as fast as possible to meet the enemy head on and at full speed. The time for principled diplomacy has ended; the shashka has been unsheathed and it will cut the beast a thousand times and stab it in its dark heart until it is dead.

Oh, and what about Coronavirus?

Imagine that!

2022 03 01 15 50
2022 03 01 15 50

A fine Chinese lass

EDM. ED. ED. M.

It’s all so pop contemporaneous China. video. 3MB

Report from Russia

Transated from this article –
https://m.vz.ru/society/2022/2/25/1145802.html

The feat of the Russian special forces opened the way to Kiev –

The Russian army entered Kiev on Friday. This happened only on the second day after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, which means that what is happening can be assessed as a grandiose success. However, there is reason to believe that the entire plan of the operation hung in the balance – and everything turned out successfully only thanks to the real feat of the special forces soldiers.

The most important event took place in the north of Ukraine, in the region of Kiev. It was there, at the Gostomel airport, on February 24, that several helicopters landed with Spetsnaz commandos.
https://youtu.be/rorZDGkcd54

In the video, several people, without fussing, set up a firing position on one of the outskirts of the giant Gostomel airfield to the sound of automatic bursts. The pathos of the plot was powerful and straightforward – Russian troops, just a few hours after the start of the operation, found themselves on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. It was unthinkable to imagine something like this the day before.

The Antonov airfield (officially called Gostomel a few years ago) is the “home” airfield of the famous Antonov company. This is an airfield with a huge runway (three and a half thousand meters), covering hundreds of hectares. It operates and is equipped with everything necessary for the takeoff and landing of heavy military transport aircraft.

From a military point of view, Gostomel has a number of advantages over other Kiev airfields (Zhulyany and Boryspil). First of all, it is not used as often, it has much less staff and people in general. It is located on the right bank of the Dnieper, where the main administrative buildings of Kiev are located. It is closest to the city center. And most importantly, it is closest to the Belarusian border (only about 60-70 km), from where the Russian landing force advanced.

Apparently, special forces helicopters covered this distance over the Dnieper, which in these places, from the Belarusian-Ukrainian border to Kiev, is extremely wide. The instant appearance of a division of the Russian Airborne Forces twenty kilometers from the center of the Ukrainian capital means a knife at the heart of the Kiev regime.

Of course, the significance of what was happening was instantly understood in the Kiev military leadership. Throughout the night of February 25, there were reports of an intense battle was going on in the vicinity of Gostomel. The British Minister of Defense even announced that – “the Russian landing near Kiev failed, Russia lost hundreds of fighters.”

However, on the morning of February 25, it turned out that the skirmish in Gostomel did not subside at all – as it should have happened if the special forces had really been destroyed. On the contrary, it intensified. And in the neighborhood of Gostomel, other battles suddenly began. And there were reports of completely different tanks – Russian combat vehicles were found near the village of Vorzel, ten kilometers from the airfield.

It was, apparently, a special aid group made her way all night to the special forces soldiers surrounded at the airfield – and finally released it. Following which, there were reports of other combat groups of the Russian army approaching Kiev.

And a little later came the official message.

“On February 24, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out a successful landing operation in the area of ​​the Gostomel airfield in the suburbs of Kiev. During the capture of the airfield, more than 200 nationalists from the special units of Ukraine were killed,” said the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashenkov. Later it was stated that Russian troops completely blocked Kiev from the west.

We have before us an example of exceptional valor and military skill, shown to all of us in what is called real time.

You must realize why America is pushing this war against Asia…

Fight, fight, fight is all about distract, distract, and distract. The true face of what America is, is NOT pretty. I wonder why these images are not shown on CNN, BBC or FOX “news”?  video

It’s about how you look at things

The end of SWIFT

China’s Cross-Border International Payments System will give Russia a lifeline and accelerate the de-dollarization of the world.

https://asiatimes.com/2022/02/chinas-swift-alternative-may-undercut-us-sanctions/

This Chinese girl is in a purple place

It’s a weird place and state to be in don’t you know. All purple. All the time. Purple. Purple. video 5MB

It’s about how you look at things

France seizes suspected Russian-owned ship in Channel

Russia seeks explanation after ship thought to belong to company targeted by US and EU sanctions is held.

From HERE.

French sea police have seized a ship in the Channel that authorities suspect belongs to a Russian company in one of the first visible displays of the West enforcing sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

The cargo vessel transporting cars, which was headed for St Petersburg, is “strongly suspected of being linked to Russian interests targeted by the sanctions”, said Capt Veronique Magnin, of the French Maritime Prefecture. The ship was diverted to the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France between 3am and 4am local time, Magnin said, adding that checks were being carried out by customs officials and that the ship’s crew was “being cooperative”.

The US Treasury Department has issued blocking sanctions against the vessel saying it was owned by a subsidiary of Russian lender Promsvyazbank, one of the Russian entities hit by US sanctions.

The bank’s CEO, Pyotr Fradkov, is the son of Mikhail Fradkov, a former head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, who also served as prime minister under Vladimir Putin. Pyotr Fradkov was himself included in the latest round of US sanctions. Promsvyazbank, in a comment sent to Reuters, said its subsidiary no longer owns the Baltic Leader, and that it was bought by a different entity before the sanctions were imposed.

The Russian embassy in France is seeking an explanation from authorities over the seizure, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted the embassy as saying. The embassy also said the ship’s crew had been allowed to come ashore and move freely about the port.

The United States, European Union, and other Western states this week imposed extensive new financial and trade sanctions on Russia after it sent military forces into neighbouring Ukraine. The US Treasury said Promsvyazbank was put under sanctions “for operating or having operated in the defence and related materiel and financial services sectors of the Russian Federation economy.” It was also targeted by EU sanctions.

MM comments on this article

  • French sea police have seized a ship
  • The US Treasury Department has issued blocking sanctions
  • The Russian embassy in France is seeking an explanation

Ergo; France is a proxy nation taking orders from the United States.

It’s about how you look at things

Just focus on what is in front of you. One fry at a time.

Chinese girl on a bed

It’s pretty typical. yah. Nice smile. Like she ate a bird. LOL

video 5MB

Build up to Nuclear war?

From everything we see in the news lately about all the attacks against Russia,we may actually be heading for WW3 after all.

If the EU does provide military aircraft to Ukraine, and they allow them to based in NATO countries next door…

…then they emerge from their safe bases in NATO and fly out and attack Russian forces and then scurry back across the border.

There is no way Russia will tolerate that.

What they will do is that they will go across those borders and destroy all those bases, and the weapons there.

If that brings war between Russia and NATO then Europe needs to be sure they have enough nuclear bomb shelters around, because they are going to need them.

I saw on RT that Russia was going to start evacuating their citizens from the EU.

Now just what do we think that says… eh?

An important tweet

I think that Richard Moore, the chief of MI6, certainly revealed a lot when he tweeted this

“With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights. So let’s resume our series of tweets to mark #LGBTHM2022.”

Peter Mann Comments

Not everyone knows the details and background of events happening halfway around the world, even for well educated and smart people. If they sit there and watch the mainstream news, they will obviously be victims to pervasive and well coordinated propaganda.

Confirmation bias is a strong force.

If you’re not careful, whatever you hear first becomes the truth regardless of facts. Even very smart people may be susceptible. Sometimes, arguments ensue. The first part of the comment relates to finding the truth, the second part more specifically on the current armed conflict, with a small prediction for the end game.

No need to argue. Challenge the seeker of truth to find out.
Here is a short clip from Brian Berlectic, an ex-Marine who has been living in Thailand and has done very good work showing his viewers the sources of his information, usually directly from the liar’s mouth. This is very similar to I. F. Stone, who exposed the liars by meticulously digging through information provided by the liars. My first exposure to I. F. Stone was his “The Hidden History of the Korean War.” It is important to know who the liars are, and then never trust anything they say.
How to learn the truth? Stay smart, read widely, read beyond the superficial, read between the lines, read the fine print, learn about the writer/speaker and his organization, get into the head of the author, be careful of false narratives, reject insidious adjectives, learn about deliberate omissions and obfuscations, look in the mirror, question everything, including your own beliefs.
Liars are not hard to expose, yet people prefer to believe in liars who are known to do nothing but lie. Ask yourself why. It’s very difficult if not impossible for a hypocrite to admit that he or she is a hypocrite. Americans like to elect them for a good reason.

 

Here is a clip from an Ukrainian girl Masha who is from Donetsk in the Donbass, about 20 kms from the war zone. She speaks almost perfect Chinese and works as a translator for Chinese businessmen in Kyiv. Her family has been living in the shadow of war for the past 8 years. Masha has done vlogs showing the bombed out areas. American poison has been creating hell for some Ukrainians but the hypocrites do not see it. Who paid for the poison? The American people of course.

There has always been a solution for peace; it’s known as Minsk II. But it’s another lie just like Camp David and Oslo. The Palestinians are weak and divided, so they will suffer what they must. But Russia is the largest country in the world with the most nuclear arms. Its people have destroyed Napoleon’s previously invincible Grande Armee and single-handedly killed over a million German soldiers who dared to invade their country. American lies of how they have saved the world from the Nazis are laughable for people who have read history beyond American propaganda. Why should anyone be so delusional as to believe that the Russians will sit there and be bullied into submission without a fight? The stupidity of these tiny European chihuahua countries like Georgia and Lithuania are so poisoned by the American lie that they really think they want to goad Russia into war. And when they have it, where is their protector overlord?
Ukraine is of course a basketcase. It is just a puppet government installed by the hegemon, and its comedian head of state has been following the American script of forcing Russia into war. All that suits America of course. This war would not have happened if America wanted peace. The war would be easy to avert and it’s not by America imposing the mother of all sanctions on Putin (the false narrative around which the political partisans are fighting; American mainstream media has become a farce). America only has to agree to let Ukraine be a non-military zone. How hard is that? How evil is Russia’s request? Russia’s position has been very clear from Day One. If America won’t agree, then Russia will turn Ukraine into a NMZ. For some reason, many pundits refused to see it. But America does not want peace. America wants wars that Russia will be fighting with its European neighbors. It will let America put its European vassals on a short leash, get Russia and Europe to destroy each other’s economy, and create bad blood for Russia and its neighbors while providing a lot of good propaganda for America, allowing the Empire to maintain its hegemony. It is nefarious as hell. And of course, the morons of America will suddenly decide that the lying politicians and lying mainstream media are telling righteous truths. Evil Russia has out of the blues invaded Ukraine without provocation. The stock market goes up because oil goes up and the Military Industrial Complex expects big contracts. The hegemon wins again, thanks to the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis acting as America’s attack dogs.

Once you cut through the bullshit and understand what’s going on, it’s easy to predict what will happen.

These people and countries acting as attack dogs for the empire must therefore be taught an unforgettable lesson. If you don’t put down the rabid dogs, they will get up and bite you again. Therefore, Russia will not take half measures. They will not stop unless the surrender is total, and punishment for the miscreants dealt out accordingly. Otherwise, this operation will be for naught.
Why argue? There is no morality in politics. If anyone believes there is, then they’re fools. Show me a country willing to crusade for the Palestinians and I’ll show you a moral politician. In geopolitics, one does not own anything one cannot defend. The rest is bullshit and balderdash.
For the same reason, I wrote two years ago that a golden opportunity presented itself for China to summarily reunify with Taiwan without bloodshed. I suspect a well planned operation at the golden moment will only take hours, certainly less than a day. The sooner it happens, the less mayhem America can cause with its poison, paid by American taxpayers of course. The American people will starve and die on the street, but they love a good war, and will spend any amount of money to fight the Russians to the last Ukrainian. How happy they will be to see the Chinese fighting the Chinese!
Peace out!
PM

Putin and Xi Peng

Great video. Video 2MB

How to defeat ‘Bot Trolls

Wow! Since I have incorporated my mix up of multiple subjects in articles, there was a near collapse in troll activity on MM. Of course, youse guys wouldn’t be aware of what’s going on as I don’t publish the majority of comments. But yeah. It’s all way, way down. It drives the algorithms crazy. They cannot handle dialog and it causes them to go zoomy! Whether a person or a ‘bot. They cannot handle mixed content in an article.

Quick update from the talks in Belarus:

Russians and Ukranians are trying to discuss how to end the conflict. The dude in the cap from Ukraine at the talks demands the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the Crimea and Donbass. Russia wants the end of NATO encroachment.

So don’t expect anything from these negotiations.

You will note that the Ukrainian negotiators all have their iPhones laid out on the table so that the US curators can hear every word.

Sovereignty, eh?

It’s about how you look at things

And today. We are looking at hamburgers.

Question everything!

An outstanding video. Very true. video 9MB

2022 03 01 16 00
2022 03 01 16 00

War in Ukrainian: cowardice, lies and chaos

Translated on MM from Russian.
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Shooting at residential buildings, distributing weapons and hunting for "saboteurs" - in war, all means are good
Valentin ALFIMOV
Due to the fact that Ukrainian troops hide their equipment in cities, shells fly right into residential buildings.
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THE PEOPLE ARE THE BEST PROTECTION
“Ukrainian nationalists place armored vehicles and artillery in residential areas of cities, using the population as a “human shield,” said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
It turns out, indeed, that the Ukrainian warriors showed the world “innovative tactics” of combat. With a 100% guarantee, they learned how to take their technique out of the blow. Everything is very simple: you just need to brazenly stick a gun or “Grad” at the school, kindergarten or just under the windows of residential buildings. In other words, hide behind civilians:
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Here in the residential quarter of Severodonetsk, right at the school stadium, there is a calculation of 3 howitzers, a kindergarten was left behind the scenes. Ammunition is laid out next to each, the fighters are at the ready.
In a residential area of ​​Severodonetsk, right at the school stadium, the Armed Forces of Ukraine deployed a crew of 3 howitzers
Here is a military truck on the steps of the Odessa Opera House (an architectural monument, by the way) hiding from Russian intelligence right under the roof.
Military truck on the steps of the Odessa Opera House
Here is a self-propelled gun of the 92nd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine rested its caterpillars on the balconies of house No. 308 in the Solnechny microdistrict of Kharkov.
And there are hundreds of such photos and videos now. The residents of the cities are starting to lose their nerves – in the same Severodonetsk, people went out into the yard to drive away the Ukrainian armored personnel carrier with the words to the soldiers “get out of here, we have a full basement of children.”
But Mariupol is especially affected by this , which was turned into a fortress by the nationalists of the Azov Regiment and the Right Sector (both banned in Russia). They placed mortar crews right on the roofs of high-rise buildings!
In Severodonetsk, people are trying to drive Ukrainian armored personnel carriers away from their homes
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IN YOUR OWN EYE THE LOGS DO NOT SEE
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Due to the fact that Ukrainian troops hide their equipment in cities, shells fly right into residential buildings. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that a Ukrainian Buk missile hit a residential building in Kyiv.
The most striking example is the “Russian missile attack” on a high-rise building in Kyiv – the Zhuliany district. “The Russian aggressor is shooting at residential buildings!” – the news rushed through the Ukrainian propaganda channels and networks.
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The Russian Defense Ministry found out: “At night, there was a failure in the missile guidance system of the Ukrainian Buk-M1 air defense system and the missile hit the corner of a residential building.” And in general, “the Russian army does not strike at cities.” He doesn’t even hit the barracks, so that there are no big casualties. Only at military air bases and warehouses.
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A little later, local residents confirmed that the rocket came from where the Ukrainian units are stationed.
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Under such pressure, even the command of the Ukrainian army surrendered, they admitted that it was their missile.
But the NATO and Ukrainian media are already silent about this. The culprit has been found, but it has already been hammered into people’s heads – “Russians are hitting home.”
The icing on the cake of Ukrainian war tactics was the massive distribution of weapons. Anyone. Who wants. From trucks, machine guns are dumped on the asphalt like potatoes. Come, take it. Kiev set the trend, Kharkiv, Zaporozhye, Odessa joined a little later…
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“Political studies” for Ukrainian women and children
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From the armed people they form detachments of “territorial self-defense”, as under Makhno. These gangs have already begun arbitrariness and looting on the streets. Approximately every first one is seen as a spy. If they notice two, it’s definitely a sabotage group.
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So in Kyiv, a truck of the Ukrainian army and an anti-aircraft gun, which were driving to a shelter, were mistaken for Russian spies and opened fire on them.
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The crew of the truck fell down, and the anti-aircraft gun managed to leave, crushing a civilian car in a panic. A little later, the deputies of the Rada identified all the dead and confirmed that they were all Ukrainian soldiers. But this was already after the crowd had had time to mock the corpses: “So you, Russian saboteurs.”
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In Kyiv, the Strela-10 air defense system ran over a car driving along the road
In the same Kyiv, a family of five people who tried to leave the city were shot right in the car. They were also mistaken for saboteurs. Parents and one child died. Two more children are in critical condition in the hospital.
A family of five was shot dead in a car in Kyiv

The Nazis went wild – in order to get to Kyiv, they demand to correctly pronounce the word “Palyanitsya”. Russian-speaking Ukrainians can easily get shot for just mispronunciation.
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Women with children are trained for the same. “Political classes” are held right in the courtyards, where employees of the Security Service of Ukraine explain to residents: “Whoever has personal weapons at home, you can calmly use them to kill. Quietly, carefully from around the corner – and then dump.
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And the apotheosis of all this was the statement by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine that it was releasing prisoners and distributing weapons to them. Ukraine is rapidly sinking into the Makhnovshchina..
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ACTORS GOT PRISONERS
In general, the fight against saboteurs has been raised to an absolute level, Everyone is looking for them and everything is under suspicion. And they do catch! Packs!
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So in Ukraine, more and more fakes with Russian “captives” are being launched. They are crushed in two counts. But the enthusiasm does not subside.
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So on one video, allegedly a Russian prisoner sits under a yellow-blue flag and lows through force: “Glory to Ukraine.” Only the director of this production grinned like a fool: this “Russian prisoner” turned out to be Panasyuk Yaroslav Fedorovich from Ternopil, a participant in the punitive war in the Donbass. His proud profile has already flashed on Facebook.
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Allegedly, the “Russian prisoner” turned out to be Yaroslav Panasyuk from Ternopil, a participant in the punitive war in the Donbass
Another guy in the video. Users found out that he did not come from Russia, but lives in Kyiv. “Warrior” happened to be handed over by a girl – she already posted pictures with him on her page and never deleted it.
The detainee allegedly “OMON” from Novokuznetsk, turned out to be a member of the military-patriotic club from the Ukrainian Nikolaev.
In the area of ​​the city of Gostoml, where the Russian Airborne Forces fought a hard battle for the airport, the Ukrainians shot down a Ka-52 helicopter, a local resident, Mikhail Pavlushenko, approached him. It was then that the SBU officers took him! And they managed to show in the news to report – “Russian pilot in captivity!”. Only later did it become clear that he was an archpriest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. But at least someone is already interested.
Archpriest Mikhail Pavlushenko was passed off by the Ukrainian media as a “Russian pilot”.
Meanwhile, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko addressed the population and reassured them that there were no Russian troops in the capital. And why then does the hunt for saboteurs among the civilian population continue?
.

U.S. GOVERNMENT ISSUES NUCLEAR BLAST SURVIVAL INSTRUCTIONS

It’s certainly curious timing.

USG Issues NuclearBlastSurvivalInstructions large
USG Issues NuclearBlastSurvivalInstructions large

Hamburger thoughts on a nice sunny day

Ah. But it’s all postering. There is not way that any serious concerns are given to Americans about Nuclear War. It’s all a game of “Chicken”.

Let’s think (instead) about a delicious hamburger!

The evil communists!

Ever since Trump it’s all been a big war against “evil communists”, but sheech! What changed? China is doing well now. Russia is doing well now. The West is turning into a shit hole. video

The 10 Rules of Ikigai

They are:

1. Stay active and don’t retire.
2. Take it slow.
3. Don’t fill your stomach.
4. Surround yourself with good friends.
5. Get in shape for your next birthday.
6. Smile.
7. Reconnect with nature.
8. Give thanks.
9. Live in the moment.
10. Uncover and Follow your Ikigai.

 

2022 03 01 15 53
2022 03 01 15 53


Slowing life down is a mindful and deliberate choice. While not always an easy one, it leads to a greater appreciation for life and a greater level of happiness.

Solid MM advice, don’t you know.

ZIRCONs On The Move — UPDATED 6:30 AM

2022 03 01 15 03
ZIRCON missile.

ZIRCON Hypersonic Nuclear Missiles (Land Attack Missile Version) have been loaded onto tracked, Road-Mobile Launchers, and are presently on rail cars being moved publicly inside Russia.

Prototypes were test-launched from a Tu-22M3 bomber in 2012–2013.

Launches from a ground-based platform followed in 2015, with first success achieved in 2016.

In April 2017, it was reported Zircon had reached a speed of Mach 8 (6,100 mph; 9,800 km/h; 2,700 m/s) during a flight test. Zircon was again test-fired on 3 June 2017, almost a year earlier than had been announced by Russian officials.

In November 2017, Colonel General Viktor Bondarev stated that the missile was already in service. Another flight test reportedly occurred on 10 December 2018, during which the missile demonstrated that it could attain a speed of Mach 8.

On 20 February 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the missile is capable of accelerating up to Mach 9 and destroying both sea and land targets within 1,000 km (540 nmi; 620 mi). By the year’s end, on 24 December 2019, Putin stated that Zircon’s land-based version was in development.

Warhead > 300 HE , > 200 kt tnw nuclear

INVISIBLE TO RADAR

Zircon can travel at a speed of Mach 8 – Mach 9 (6,100–6,900 mph; 9,800–11,000 km/h; 2.7–3.1 km/s). This has led to concerns that it could penetrate existing defense systems. Because it flies at hypersonic speeds within the atmosphere, the air pressure in front of it forms a plasma cloud as it moves, absorbing radio waves and making it practically invisible to active radar systems (Plasma stealth).

The final section of the missile’s trajectory will be overcome in under 10 seconds.  As such, the enemy does not have time to carry out all the necessary procedures needed to even TRY to intercept it.   Moreover, the Zircon exchanges information in flight and can be controlled by commands if necessary to alter course of change target.

Missiles like this could, in theory, be fired from Russia, and hit the Capital cities of NATO member countries bordering Russia.

You know, the Capital cities of countries participating in ejecting Russia from the SWIFT banking system; or other countries supplying weapons or now fighter jets to Ukraine, to be used fighting Russia.    It would happen so fast, and with such Stealth, that the countries being targeted wouldn’t even know the missiles were coming until their Capitals got hit and blown up.

The 200 kiloton warheads would obliterate the cities that were hit. In comparison, the USA blasted Hiroshima with a 15Kiloton warhead.

UPDATE 6:30 AM EST —

From Russian Ministry of Defense:   “In accordance with the order of the President, the duty of the command posts of the Strategic Missile (nuclear) Forces, the Northern and Pacific Fleets, and the Long-Range Aviation Command have begun combat duty with reinforced personnel.”

This means that the order Putin gave earlier, to get them ready, is now being fulfilled and they’re operating in a high alert/readiness mode. Nukes will be armed and prepared & ready to strike — if order given.

7:18 AM EST–

Russia’s top military command has ordered heavy strategic bomber flights in effort to block US and EU military aid from getting to Ukraine, per a defense statement. Russia has tried to “fully destroy” Ukraine’s airfields with missile attacks, per Ukraine MoD -Foreign Policy.

UPDATE 7:22 AM EST —

The “masses, who are asses” (in Kiev) are lining up at . . .  Supermarkets . . . . trying to buy food.   As usual, the overwhelming majority of the general public are so utterly stupid, they make absolutely ZERO plans and take absolutely no action to protect themselves,, even though they’re in Day 4 of an actual shooting war.   Don’t be like these morons – get your preps right now.  Don’t wait.

When the missiles start flying, you don’t want to be like these people.  Oh, and if the missiles start flying, credit/debit cards won’t work because all the computers and communications lines will be out.  No way to get authorization for any purchases.  So you’d better have cash money in your possession before all hell breaks loose!

UPDATE 7:26 AM EST —

Russian Ministry of Defense — Russian Air Force has gained air supremacy over the entire territory of Ukraine as of this morning.

RUSSIA NUKE ALERT CAUSED BY BRITISH!

Kremlin blamed nuclear alert on Liz Truss. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov:

 "There were unacceptable statements about possible conflict situations and even confrontations and clashes between NATO and Russa. I will not name the authors of these statements, although it was the British foreign secretary"

Kiss of Death?

SWISS DEFENCE MINISTER SAYS “WE HAVE CONCLUDED USE OF RUSSIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS RELATIVELY UNLIKELY, POPULATION SHOULD NOT BE AFRAID”

(HT REMARK: When government tells you things are safe, that’s when you panic)

Deliveries of Germany's weapons to Ukraine make us wonder if the process of denazification was completed in Germany itself 

- Russian Foreign Ministry

UH OH!

3:00 PM EST —

BIDEN SAYS AMERICANS SHOULD NOT BE WORRIED ABOUT NUCLEAR WAR

The US State Department said that Washington stands for the defense of the principle of non-nuclear war and does not see the need to increase the level of readiness of its deterrence forces.

Russia has not shown any interest in some sort of deconfliction mechanism with the United States over the Ukraine invasion, Pentagon says.

UKRAINE NEWS@kuringechuwa· At the moment, military pilots from Ukraine are in Poland. Today they receive 29 Polish MiG-29s. With full weapons and electronics.

(HT Remark: So Poland has now become a defacto Ukrainian military base.   This won't end well.   I suspect the very MOMENT those planes take off, Russian fighter jets and surface-to-air-missile batteries will be ordered to target them all and destroy them all as soon as they cross into Ukraine air space.)

No one in government seems to grasp that It’s all bait.

That’s why it’s the OLD Russian tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, trucks and stuff in Ukraine. I suspect it will only be Two or three more days.

Putin will act.  He warned everyone publicly.   He meant what he said.  He WILL act.

I suspect Poland first.

Then US/UK.  — Especially the UK.  I think they’ve been severe trouble makers around the world for decades and I personally believe they need to get absolutely crushed by Russia.  Mercilessly crushed!  It will not surprise me at all if the very first UK strike is against the CITY of LONDON within London itself.  That’s where all the contracts are.  That’s where all the global financial shenanigans get decided.  I hope they glow.

Possibly Germany after that, it seems, from the “de-Nazification” comment reported on this page earlier today.

4:53 PM EST — 

Looks like the ground war in Ukraine is about to turn much darker.  Putin is sending a 17-mile long convoy of artillery and tanks towards Kyiv with intense helicopter support and fighter jets all over it to take out any attackers.

Programming the Retards Has Begun:

2022 03 01 15 14
2022 03 01 15 14

Could A Small Nuclear War Reverse Global Warming?

Ukraine Armed Forces says that if necessary, the planes they’re getting from other NATO countries “will be able to be based on Polish airfields from which Ukrainian pilots will perform combat missions”

BEING SUPPLIED TO UKRAINE, TODAY:

  • Bulgaria  (MiG-29) – 16
  • Bulgaria  (Su-25) – 14
  • Poland  (MiG-29) – 28
  • Slovakia  (MiG-29) – 12

Tomorrow Finland will begin a Parliamentary Discussion to join the NATO Alliance, this could take weeks or only a few hours it just depends on how the Finnish Government is feeling, NATO has already said Finland can be admitted to the Alliance within 24 Hours after a decision.

This will result in only one of two outcomes…

EITHER

[1] Putin feels the overwhelming pressure on his border, takes a win, and slowly works to try and repair the extreme damage that’s been done to his economy…

OR

[2] He’s decided that Russia will no longer cow to the threats posed by NATO and decides everything to the west of his border will be reduced to ashes.

It’s a terribly risky strategy being run by the Europeans…they’ll either wind up looking like heroes and saviors…or like nothing at all and with no one to care.

China nurtures it’s best and brightest

Meanwhile the USA does the exact opposite. School selection is determiend by lottery with attendence optional. Sheech! And all these people are armed with guns! video 3MB

Open letter to TV watching western armchair generals

From the Saker

My dear TV western armchair generals,

I get it, I promise.  I really do!

Your entire life you have been trained to see a successful military operations like so:

    • Begin by bombing the shit of the “hadjis” or “sand niggers” with bombs and missiles, then flatten their town à la Fallujah, then move in with heavy armor and shoot everything which still moves or breathes.
    • Then distribute chewing-gums to a few kids while on video.
    • Then take the city center, drop a statue in front your embedded presstitutes, and then declare victory.
    • Then, after declaring victory, stay another 20 years or so (Blinken was clearly projecting!), ruin it completely, then leave it again and declare another brilliant victory.
    • And don’t forget to declare urbi at orbi that you reserve the “right” to bomb the shit out of them anytime you deem it is needed.  And fuck their sovereignty or anybody else’s while we are at it!
    • Lastly, once home, don’t forget to “thank” your “veterans” for their “service”.

I get it.

Now YOU try, please!!

Now, in spite of this conditioning, please at least try to understand the following points:

First, the Russians do not see Ukrainian as Hadjis but as their own brothers.

Second many/most LDNR soliders have relatives in the Nazi occupied Ukraine.

Third, yes, Russia can turn any Ukrainian city into Fallujah, but who do you think will then have to pay for its reconstruction?

Fourth, please understand that the double goals of 1) denazification and 2) disarmament implies that any person which is not a Nazi or is not armed and hostile is not, repeat, NOT the target of the Russian armed forces.

Fifth,  the Ukie military was 80% defeated on Day 1.  Get that?  It was gone as a coherent fighting force.  THAT is why they are blowing up bridges, distributing weapons and releasing convicted criminals.  NOT because they are winning!  I mean – how stupid are you if you believe that?  Ukie stupid?

Seriously?

Right now you are the object of probably the biggest PSYOP operation in history. If you realize that and treat these PSYOPs as you should, that is as “informational warfare from the bad guys” you will be able to tell your kind and grandkids “I never believed that crap”. Good for you!

But if you don’t, well then, just don’t tell too much about you in 2022 to your kind and grandkids, save yourself the ridicule and embarrassment…

That’s it. My very last attempt to wake you up.  From now on, I will pretend like you don’t exist and instantly ban any comments parroting kind of self-evident nonsense.

Now I will quietly leave your room, switch off the lights, and let you watch your TVs.

Andrei

How is Chinese media reacting to growing tensions in Ukraine? How are Chinese citizens talking about this on social media? 

During the last few days, all the western embassies in China have been releasing a flurry of statements, like never before, with the aim of pressuring the government to distance itself from Russia, and to affect Chinese public opinion on the issue. However, on social media people have been mocking this campaign and questioning why this seems so coordinated, lots of jokes and memes have arisen.

Overall, Chinese people do not see a need to comment on a conflict that isn’t theirs. Until recently, everyone understood this as a western attack on Russia, and now the discussion is about why the west feels the need to play out their conflict on Chinese social media.

I saw one comment saying that the west ‘thinks we can’t see international news because of the firewall, that’s not true’. Above all, China does not want to be involved in any kind of war and always believes in doing everything to avoid war. While the Chinese government maintains that position, the Chinese people will not feel the need to react to these kinds of conflicts.

Hamburger / cheeseburger thoughts

The Winter Olympics are now over, how do Chinese people feel about how the games went? 

I think people are feeling a bit empty now that it’s all over, it was a highly successful event. It has awakened, for the first time, a huge interest in winter sports and people are buying the gear.

China performed well, winning 15 gold medals, placing them in 3rd place [above the US]. This success has been the number one tendency everyday on Chinese social media as people have been able to interact with the games virtually but without disrupting everyday life because the whole games took place within the physical bubble created within Beijing.

The Digital Yuan, a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) was adopted in a big way for the time during these games. What is it like to experience the birth of this CBDC? 

The Digital Yuan was used during the games but it was not the only form of payment permitted. It is a long way from mass adoption within China, it’s being used in some zones where there are trial runs, but not on a mass scale.

China already has multiple venues for digital payments for everything, the country never really saw bank cards, it jumped from a cash economy straight to digital payment through phones etc.

WeChat and Alipay are the most prominent ways to make payments within China, so the government will have to work to promote this CBDC, which is basically a cryptocurrency, and change the habits of consumers.

China banned private cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin firstly for environmental reasons. The country has strict goals for carbon reduction and mining Bitcoin is extremely harmful.

The CBDC was launched with international commerce, rather than domestic commerce, in mind. It is being launched as an alternative to the US dollar, it is very far away from achieving that, but existing as an alternative option to USD for international trade is the aim and so the US sees this as a great threat because they use the power of the dollar to enforce sanctions. For example, the US was able to sanction European companies that were trading with Iran because the trade was in dollars.

Pretty girl in a red halter

I always liked halters. Most women don’t however. They tend to keep sliding down, and so you’ve got to tug and tug and tug to keep them up high. Sheech! video

PM Comments;

Art of War, Sun Tzu. America harms Russia without suffering a single casualty. America doesn’t care about Ukraine. Its just an attack dog.

In a real fight, the attack dogs die first.

But the attack dogs can bite and harm Russia.

What about America having to spend billions to arm Ukraine so the attack dogs will have teeth? Money is nothing to America.

They print their trillions, which come from the people’s debt, while the money created goes to the elite-owned Military Industrial Propaganda Complex. Which a part of which supports the political/technology/media structure which keeps the country in perpetual war and provides unlimited budgets for war. It’s a perfect cyclical economy that supports the capitalist Big Lie that a number on a ledger created out of thin air represents wealth.

Not only that, but the rest of the world eventually helps to pay for the war budget because the USD is the worlds reserve currency.

Anyone who disagrees will be starved or bombed to the Stone Age, except for China and Russia who can defend themselves.

America prints trillions and the world suffers from inflation, not just America.

The elites don’t pay for inflation, as their property holdings will increase in value, the people who pay for groceries, rent, and daily necessities suffer from inflation but who cares.

Not only that, but distant wars actually help the American war-based economy and cause the US Dollar to rise in value against its profligate printing.

In war zones, people tend to hoard US Dollars, taking US Dollars out of circulation.

America also makes it hard for US Dollars to be repatriated.

So the hegemon wins when you are forced to fight a war against your brethren who have been turned into attack dogs for the empire; you’re also paying for it. This is a good lesson for China to not find itself in such a poor strategic situation.

What can Russia hope to achieve from this unwanted war? Russia must from now on be much more influential in the affairs of Ukraine.

  • All de-Russification must be reversed, including the separation of the Orthodox Church.
  • The Russian language will be one of the official languages to be taught at schools.
  • The Neo-Nazis will be deligitimized and their crimes duly prosecuted.
  • Ukraine must have a treaty with Russia and be a member of the federation.
  • Foreign media and NGOs must be licensed (actually best simply kicked out and kept out, as they are mostly disinformation agents and spies.—TGP)
  • There will be Russian bases. Then we’ll have peace.

Alternatively, Russia will employ FOABs (enormous bombs short of nuclear—TGP) which will kill everything within a 300m radius. It will be cruel, but such is war. Learn from Sun Tzu, do not get yourself in that situation.

Hopefully, the Ukraine side will finally come to its senses. When Russia succeeds in their operation, it will be the turn of the three Baltic states to shake in their boots, NATO or no NATO.

—PM

It’s about how you look at things

Conclusion

Look at the big picture, and then relax. The war in the Ukraine is not a sporting event. Rather it’s a catalist forcing the world to choose sides. The aftermath will be a bio-polar world rather than a uni-polar world, and those that stick with the USA are going to be in trouble.

Big picture so far:

[1]  Europe threw itself off the cliff. It is Officially Game Over. All that’s left is the autopsy.

  • RT & news blocked,
  • Cultural, sports & local-carriers air travel to Russia blocked,
  • A separation from financial infrastructure,
  • Open hostility evident through support of Nazis in PsyOps and ostensible but meaningless arms.
  • Everything calculated for a generational rupture and impotent group-hate shriek at Russia..

Predictable results:

  • A near-term loss of existential 50% petroleum products,
  • A loss of 40%+ grain products and the withering away of Europe.
  • Pity. European cost of living will be Biblical come next Dark Winter.. And an exodus to Russia and other sane points likely beforehand.

[2] The “WW3 OR Sanctions” threat by Biden was actually directed at EU. It was the trigger to get the loons to leap off the cliff. How will Russia punish the deceitful USA piper, which has now wrecked the western peninsula of Asia for the next 3+ generations?

US squats, toad-like, pretending to be the whistling innocent bystander at the scene of the epic European ritual suicide. It is in the role of Annatar during the Fall of Númenor – urging the fool King Ar-Pharazôn to sail on the gods themselves.. the Sundering and drowning of Númenor itself is next on the playlist. Someone should send that memo to the AZE; Europe and Anglo-lands are now forever chained together..
https://youtu.be/nL_DcMu2KpU

[3] I saw this amusing movie with Clint Eastwood decades ago, “Every Which Way but Loose (1978).” The operative mission regarding Russia is now, “Weaken Them Every Which Way Possible.” And to destroy the gutless Europeans simultaneously is a bonus treat at the Bonfire of the Vanities.

So current calculations focus on the DAILY $700-750 million Russian export earnings. Much of these daily earnings is to Europe. They do not have time for a war of attrition this time.. It is a cold shut-down.

In part, the group hate and hysteria campaign is to “psych themselves” and convince the sane in West it’s a necessary cost, to hurt themselves to hurt Russia. Cut off your damn nose Frenchie, we have excellent plastic surgeons in the Bayou.

[4] There is no nuclear war on the current cards (Phew!). According to the Kremlin, their action yesterday was in reaction to words from Perfide Albion. They have since been put in their tiny place. Deconfliction is on between Americans and Russians. The relevant issue is the suiciding of Europe, not the longed-for first strike.

[5] China (& India) sit pretty. A 500-year Beast is making a dramatic exit from the stage. Pfizer is doubly doomed – folks are so excited in Zone B, there is no need even for Viagra anymore. What support Russia needs, be it diplomatic, financial, new business arrangements (buying that grain and extra gas), lighting a million candles, are quietly being made.

Half-cocked Korean Rocketman rattled off missiles in his no-longer-pudgy fist, to help the loonies focus fully on their Death March in the heavenly rich black soil of Novorussiya.

Indeed, this is the Last March of the Russia Haters, in commiseration with the Last of the Mohicans. And both shall soon be in the museum with the Dodo. An ongoing flood of Ukie refugees is the cherry on top.  So Russia extracted the necessary concessions from Zone B partners to wield the brass knucklers on behalf of mankind.

It has the depth of support in Asia to see to the necessary dirty task.

Maybe all-in-all, maybe things will go “tits up”, or maybe not. What I do know is that now is the time to relax, regroup, and plow forward in new and exciting directions. Eat some delicious food. have a good time. Play with friends, and by all means; be the Rufus.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
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A further continuation of thoughts and discussions on the changing of Geo-Political powers with Ukraine actions

Ok, so the Russians make a move that they were forced into by the United States. Of course the USA knew what it was doing. Every American knows about the “Cuban Missile Crisis”.

To pretend that it doesn’t is ridiculous.

If you place, or threaten to place, nuclear weapons on the border of a major nation, you can expect CERTAINLY a series of responses.

Plan to attack Russia.

This is exactly what happened, but of course, it’s not being reported this way in the American / British “news”. According to that “news”, the Russians are taking a beating by the proud and brave Ukranians.

Russia facing more resistance than it expected!
Putin's losses now stand at 2,800 troops...
Readies 'father of all bombs'...
Hero Ukrainian soldier blows himself up to destroy bridge...
Chernobyl radiation levels rising...
US intel predicted invasion plans. Did it matter?
More than 50,000 flee in 48 hours...
Jews seek refuge in synagogues...
Europe says it has 'financial nuclear weapon'. But uncertain if it wants to use it...
SKYNEWS LIVE...

And then we have these…

Seven, eh?

So, I go on LinkedIN, and other other mainstream media, and Lordy! It’s all about the brave Ukranians fighting the evil communists. Sheech! Talk about spinning a narrative! So here, we are going to put some perspectives in place and then resume business as usual.

This is a fine meandering article hosting a wide selection of rambling thoughts and interests. Remember, don’t look at one singular issue and study it. Look at the big picture, as that is how everything is actually connected.

First, a look at a map…

Did you know that the Ukraine is the fourth-largest recipient of American equipment and weapons in the world? Imagine that.

Why? Why in Good God’s name, why?

Now, we begin with a statement that The Domain Commander made; “We are striving for little bads, so we can avoid the Big Bads”…

Nuclear Weapons in the Ukraine

Here is the link for the quotes:

.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/president-zelensky-suggests-ukraine-may-pursue-nuclear-weapons-to-counter-russia-putin-responds

President Putin didn’t spark World War III, he just averted it

Now for some very beautiful eyes

Yeah. I get it. Too many cute and beautiful girls. Well, I am in China. I can’t help it. I am surrounded by them. To understand China, is to understand beauty.

video 3MB

Social media giants will be forced to help users block trolls in new clampdown on poisonous posts

  • Users will be able to block anonymous unverified accounts in a new crackdown 
  • These new measures have been added to the upcoming Online Safety Bill
  • Individuals will be allowed to choose whether to join the verification process  

Social media users will be given new powers to control who can interact with them under a major crackdown on hate-filled internet trolls.

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter will by law have to give users the tools to block anonymous unverified accounts.

Users will also be given the option to verify themselves. The onus will be on the firms to find a suitable verification method, but it could range from taking a selfie to providing proof of a passport or driving licence.

The new measures have been added to the upcoming Online Safety Bill, which will impose a duty of care on tech companies to protect users.

However, individuals will be allowed to choose whether to join the verification process – despite calls from some campaigners to make it a requirement.

Ministers were concerned it could jeopardise the safety of vulnerable users. Online anonymity can be crucial for domestic abuse victims, activists living in authoritarian countries and young people exploring their sexuality.

The Government has also announced a measure that will force platforms to provide adult users with tools to block ‘legal but harmful content’ such as racist abuse and Covid disinformation.

This could include allowing users to turn on settings that would stop them receiving recommendations on certain topics or place sensitivity screens over that content.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said the new measures would ‘put more power in the hands’ of social media users by giving them more choice over who they communicate with.

Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries said: ‘Tech firms have a responsibility to stop anonymous trolls polluting their platforms.

‘We have listened to calls for us to strengthen our new online safety laws and are announcing new measures to put greater power in the hands of social media users themselves.

‘People will now have more control over who can contact them and be able to stop the tidal wave of hate served up to them by rogue algorithms.’

It comes after calls from MPs, footballers and celebrities to take action on internet trolls after highlighting the horrific abuse they suffered.

The Government has already announced tougher punishments for trolls, with those found guilty of the worst abuse facing up to five years in prison under the new Bill.

The latest measures will only apply to the biggest social media platforms deemed ‘category one’ such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as they pose the severest risk.

Watchdog Ofcom will be given the power to fine them up to 10 per cent of annual global turnover for any breach or even block the sites from being used in the UK.

A DCMS spokesman said of the new measures: ‘While this will not prevent anonymous trolls posting abusive content in the first place – providing it is legal and does not contravene the platform’s terms and conditions – it will stop victims being exposed to it and give them more control over their online experience.’

The Bill will also force social media giants to remove illegal content such as child sexual abuse imagery, the promotion of suicide, hate crimes and incitement to terrorism.

But there is a growing list of toxic content and behaviour on social media which falls below the threshold of a criminal offence which still causes significant harm.

The spokesman added: ‘Much of this is already expressly forbidden in social networks’ terms and conditions, but too often it is allowed to stay up.’ Firms will have to make tools available that will allow users to block this on news feeds.

Three ways to crack down on hate

New measures added to the Online Safety Bill today will force social media giants like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to ensure users can:

VERIFY THEMSELVES

Users must be given the option of verification. It will be up to the platforms what methods they use, but this could range from uploading a selfie to match their profile picture or providing proof of Government-issued ID like a passport.

BAR ANONYMOUS TROLLS

Tools must be provided to enable individuals to block other users who choose to remain anonymous. These could include ticking a box within settings that allows direct messages or replies to posts to be sent only by verified accounts.

FILTER HARMFUL CONTENT

Users must also be given a way to block content that falls below the criminal threshold but still causes significant harm, such as racist abuse. Tools could include allowing users to alter settings so the site does not recommend certain topics or placing sensitivity screens over such content.

And for MM here…

I am SERIOUSLY considering making everyone apply to comment. I have to verify their email, and I am considering interviewing everyone via skype as well. This should seriously, seriously CUT down on trolls.

And don’t give me that “free speech” speil. There is no “free speech” in MM land. You join a community, and we police that community. If you disfunctional, or sociopathic, we kill you off.

It’s really simple.

Here, we operate like the social clubs of yore. Like the “Polish Falcons”, “The Elks”, “The grand woodsmen”, and others. You apply to join, and you pay membership dues. And the community polices itself.

Why community? Well this is why…

video 11MB

Yes.

You are NOT alone. This is a community. And as members of that community, we all work together as one. Like they do in China. As this video clearly shows what happens to sociopaths and other people with strange mental illnesses.

Video 5MB

Participation in your community is what a Rufus is all about. It is the heart beat a thumping that makes the community, safe, calm, kind, happy and secure. As this next video clearly shows…

video 17MB

A Rufus is not a spectator. It is not a bystander. It is not a passive consumer. A Rufus is a participant in the community.  Watch how this Rufus leave the pack of bystanders and actually does something. What a Rufus!

video 7MB

The mood in the Ukraine

Ah. America and the EU do not look good.

Girl in Shenzhen

I know this mall. It’s Coco park in Shenzhen. Some great restrurants, bars, and clothings shops. She’s nice. One of my favorites. She’s wearing a nice sweater. You can be very sexy and attractive without showing skin, don’t you know. All you need to do is feel relaxed and comfortable, and wear a big massive smile on your face.

video 5MB

About the capturing or destruction of equipment…

This is war, and it is in flux. There are going to be losses on all sides. Whether one side recaptures this, or shoots down that, has no meaning. The end result is what happens when the dust settles.

However, there are those that are trying to keep score. As if war is a tabulated war game. Here is a decent enough site in a flood of websites.

Keep in mind, though, that much of the digital evidence you see online is faked by amateurs. From Gizmodo:

Gizmodo has found at least ten viral photos and videos currently being spread on social media that are completely fake. In some cases, the videos and photos are years old. In others, the images are clearly not from Ukraine. There are even two examples of videos on Twitter today that are actually from war-themed video games.

Then, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Neiman Labs has a list of resources for following the war.

But it hilariously lists Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council’s cut-out to the Intertubes, which is a lot like putting the American Council of Pork Producers in charge of censoring fact-checking information on swine fever.

Finally, some common sense suggestions:

Oh and yeah the @onthemedia user guides to breaking news. Read and obey. They're also more polite than I am. pic.twitter.com/KN0zXSKRAr

— Stilgherrian (@stilgherrian) February 24, 2022

Be careful out there.

Some context…

A Rufus is not a spectator

This is a community. If you are a Rufus, then you participate in it. You just cannot sit by and do nothing. We take action. For we are part of something greater. And for those who have volunteered to the Domain, know exactly what I am talking about.

video 7MB

Biolabs in the Ukraine

Russian operation in the Ukraine – end of day 2

Today was only day two of the Russian military operation.  And yet, what a day it was!!!

First, a quick update on the progress of Russian forces.  Here is a bulletpoint summary for today:

  • Kherson: liberated
  • Nikolaev: fighting taking pace in outskirts
  • Konotop: taken by Russians
  • Chernigov: blocked by all sides by Russian forces
  • Melitopol: surrounded
  • Mariupol: is under attack, street fighting
  • Severodonetsk: under attack
  • Kharkov: very heavy mopping up operation
  • Suma: mopping up operations
  • Kiev: blocked from the West and under attack, the authorities are distributing weapons
  • Gostomel airport has been captured by Russian forces
  • Zaporozhie: Russian forces expected there tomorrow
  • A land corridor from Crimea to Russia should be opened by tomorrow.
  • Odessa: big question mark – so far, not Russian attacks reported (that I know of!)

 

Now about Donetsk and Lugansk:

  • Both cities are still under fire, and that goes to show that the advance of the LDNR forces has been slow, which is hardly surprising considering that the Ukronazis had 7 years to prepare their defenses.  Still, things ARE getting better.  Not only that, but the LDNR air defenses shot down a Ukie Tochka-U missile aimed at Donetsk.  So it sure looks like the long awaited A2/AA “protective cupola” is being extended over the LDNR.
  • That being said, the LDNR forces did break through in at least two directions today, which means that the life left for the Ukie artillery shelling the LDNR will soon come to an end.

But that does not really tell the full story.  So I will try to clarify things a little.

A typical battalion has about 400-600 men, depending on the type.  Let’s also assume that that battalion has 3-4 companies with APCs, a mortar battery, an air defense platoon, an automatic grenade launcher platoon, a signal platoon, supply platoon, and a few smaller more specialized subunits.  If that battalion loses its APCs it has basically lost its most important source of firepower.  If its communications are down (destroyed or jammed), then that battalion cannot operate as part of a bigger force and if its supply routes are cut, then its ability to operate (more or fire) will rapidly dwindle down.  So, on paper this battalion will remain combat capable, but in reality it will have broken up and cannot be considered a truly combat capable battalion anymore.

So, to destroy/incapacitate a battalion only a few precision strikes are needed.  Such strikes though, will leave most of the soldiers alive and quite capable of resistance, but not as a battalion anymore, but more like a typical infantry company or even squads armed with small arms, machine guns, PRG, mines, etc..  They cannot maneuver very much, but they can conduct small hit and run operations against the enemy force.  Which means that specialized infantry/police forces must now be send to find these small forces and deal with them in potentially bloody mopping up operations.

Of course, rather than a few precision strikes, it is much more effective to strike the entire battalion with, say, MLRS strikes which will not only destroy most of the hardware, but which will kill most of the soldiers, especially if they did not prepare and seek cover.  But that means 400-500 dead in one single strike.  That is if this battalion is somewhere in the steppe.  But if it is in downtown Mariupol such a strike will inevitably result in even more scores of dead civilians, especially since the Ukies are very careful to always position their artillery near or even on top of buildings.

Does Russia want that?

Not if there is ANY other option left.

Please keep in mind that Russia has the reconnaissance-fire complexes needed obliterate an entire battalion anywhere in the eastern Ukraine in one single salvo.  They have deliberately NOT done so today (with one possible exception during the very heavy battle for the Gostomel airport, which was taken by Russian special forces and is now secured as a safe bridgehead for Russian Military-Transport aviation right next to Kiev).

Something similar can be seen in urban offensive operations.  It is one thing to get to a city or town’s outskirts, and quite another to penetrate inside the city or town.  If the city is lightly defended by small arms fire, that is one thing, but if the city is well defended, in specially engineered defensive circles, with minefield, IEDs, very strong building used as command posts and if the city’s houses and basements have been prepared by combat engineers, then it is much harder to take.  Again, one option is to send it dedicated urban combat groups while the other is flatten any building which is used by the defenders as a fortress.

The Russian forces have the means to flatten any building anywhere in the Ukraine, including by cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, MLRS with cluster or fuel-air munition or by using howitzers, heavy mortars and even the TOS-1/TOS-1A heavy flamethrower multi-barrel rocket launch systems.

But, again, that can only be done at a major cost in human lives.  Russians won’t hesitate to obliterate some Nazi deathsquads, but to massacre hundreds of regular Ukrainians, irrespective of their personal views, is only and truly a last resort option.

There is a lot of evidence that the Russian forces have moved into the outskirts of many Ukrainian towns, including Kiev, Mariupol and others.  Here is how Russian military practice works:

  • First, approach and try to block or surrender the city
  • Second, suppress the main enemy firing positions
  • Third, make sure that the city is truly blocked (except for a few special corridors, see below)
  • Fourth, hold your position and reconnoiter the outermost enemy lines (by fire when appropriate)
  • Fifth, send in special reconnaissance groups inside the city to observe and coordinate attacks
  • Sixth, once the city is surrounded/blocked and once you get a pretty decent picture of what is inside you take the next decisions which might include any of the following: open corridors for civilians to flee and for military personnel to surrender and cross over, determine the main axes of attack and begin slowly grinding down the opposition with heavy firepower (artillery, air, missiles).
  • Seventh, once the city’s defenses have been sufficiently disorganized, begin a house to house mopping up operation by specialized forces.

Before I go further, I want to remind you that during WWII the Soviet Military freed a whopping 1’200 (one thousand two hundred!) cities from the Nazi forces.  Russians know how to do this better than anybody else.

Furthermore, during both Chechen wars, the Russians always managed to take Grozny, which was extremely heavily fortified and defended by some of the toughest fighters on the planet in spite of the fact that at that time the Russian army was it its lowest and badly disorganized, especially during the first Chechen war!  But even in the first Chechen, the Russian did seize Grozny, twice, admittedly a huge cost (on both sides), but they did.

That was almost three decades ago.

Speaking of the Chechen war, in the first one the Russian military lost a big part of an entire brigade which had quickly entered the city, moved into the city center only to find itself surrounded and cut off, with terrible communications, quasi-non existing reconnaissance capabilities.  That debacle left a very painful memory in the Russian collective memory and if somebody was expecting Russian APCs to reach the Mariupol or Kharkov at full speed with flags and screams of “hurrah!” – they don’t understand what is taking place: the (truly criminal) mistake made by Eltin’s generals during that first Chechen war will never be repeated by modern Russian commanders.

Any defeat is always a terrible tragedy, the only and best thing anybody can do after a defeat is to understand why and how it happened, and never repeat such a (criminal) mistake again.

That is the true reason why today Russians stopped on the outskirts of so many cities.

The bottom line is this.  These are things which the Russians are trying to achieve

  • Destroy the Ukie armed forces but kill the absolute minimum number of Ukrainian soldiers (real Nazi will probably be destroyed no questions asked).  Why?  Because these surviving Ukrainian soldiers and officers are the ones who will play the main role in finally cleaning the Ukraine from the Nazi scum.
  • Get to the outskirts of as many major Ukrainian cities and gradually begin the steps I outlined above.
  • Convince civilians to flee and convince Ukrainian solders to lay down arms
  • Delay any Russian penetration inside the cities until the moment is “just right” (not too early, not too late)

Why?

Because Russia has ZERO intention of occupying or, even less so, rebuild or police the Ukraine, that’s why.  The LDNR (in its legal borders) is as far as the Russians will go (with only a few possible exceptions).

The Kremlin decided that the goal of the operation was to 1) disarm and 2) to denazify the Ukraine.  As soon as these goals are reached, the Russian want to get the hell out of the Ukraine and back into the LDNR and let the Ukrainians fight their own anti-Nazi civil war.  That means that:

  • The Russians now must identify reasonable Ukrainian commanders and/or politicians to negotiate with
  • That Russia needs to offer the leftover Ukrainian ground forces the same deal which the Ukrainian forces which were tasked with the control of the Chernobyl nuclear planet were given today by the Russian forces: let’s secure this facility together and keep it secure together, with no combats of any kind.   The Ukrainians gladly accepted, by the way, and now they are jointly patrolling area.
  • The Russian might also try something which worked well in Chechnia: tell the local town/city authorities that if they guarantee that not a single bullet will be fire from that town/city not a single Russian bullet will fly back and not a single Russian solider will enter the city, unless accompanied by locals and in order to ascertain the reality of the situation.  But if a city is declared “open and peaceful” and then is used to attack Russian forces, it will be simply flattened with artillery.  I call that the “Shamanov ultimatum” and, after a few false starts (and subsequently flattened towns) it worked very well.

The crucial factor is this: during the two Chechen wars or during 08.08.08 the Russians never saw the local people as their enemy and, if anything, they were hoping that the locals would start their own “housecleaning operation” which was a bad joke in the first Chechen war, but worked very well in the second Chechen war, and failed again during 08.08.08.

In military/combat terms the Ukies are much more similar to the Georgians than to the Chechens, so there is a good chance Russia might have to leave unconditionally and let the locals slug it at between each other for as much as they want (which is what Russia did in 08.08.08 even though Russia Airborne units were at the outskirts of Tbilissi).

Which brings me to THE QUESTION for tomorrow: how will the Ukrainian soldiers and civilians behave?

Right now, Ukrainian losses have been minimal (considering the undeniable fact that this is a fullscale strategic offensive), the Russian forces have reached their positions on the outskirts of many towns and tomorrow or the day after will be “decision time”.

I hope and pray that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers find a common language in as many locations as possible.  Those who will chose a heroic stance (hardcore Nazis mostly) will be offered the possibility to die for their ideas.

In that context, “Ze” released a video in which he offered to negotiate directly and unconditionally, even about neutrality and any other topic.  The Russian reply was simple and to the point:

  • Russia is immediately ready to start negotiations after the Armed Forces of Ukraine lay down their arms.
  • The Ukraine must be demilitarized and declared neutral.
  • The Ukraine must be denazified.
  • Russia will no longer allow the Nazis to rule in Ukraine.  Ever.

After that reply, “Ze” and his aides stopped communicating.

I personally doubt that he has any control over anything.  And the fact that a huge amount of weapons has been distributed to whomever wanted one today in Kiev shows that “Ze”‘s handlers have given him the order to make the biggest possible mess and bloodbath before he is evacuated.

This is very sad, and utterly immoral, but there is nothing Russia can do about that: the Ukraine will be flooded by well armed criminals gangs and Nazi insurgents for years to come.

Putin today made a speech in which he suggested that Russia’s beef was only with the Nazis and their deathsquads but that Russia would seek to cooperate with the Ukrainian armed forces (well, what’s left of them, really) should they overthrow the Nazis.  See his full message here.

So, today was “we get to our staging positions” day.

So what did not happen (yet)?

  • The operational envelopment of the Ukrainian forces along the LOC with the LDNR forces has not happened yet, there is still a corridor by which these forces can withdraw.  The Russian could have shut it down already “by maneuver by fire” but, apparently, they want to keep it open for a little longer.
  • The Russian Black Sea fleet has not engaged in any major combat activities (that I know off, so take that with a grain of salt).

Will that happen tomorrow?  Maybe, it all really depends on whether the regular Ukrainian units will agree to surrender or whether they will fight to their last solider.  It also depends on how the Ukrainian civilians will react at the sight of approaching Russian forces.

So what to look for tomorrow?

  • A further penetration of Russian forces deeper inside Ukie territory, with cities bypassed.
  • The gradual penetration of Russian forces into blocked/surrounded cities
  • The intervention of the Black Sea Fleet in combat operations (with maybe Odessa as a strategic target, not necessarily to take, but at least to threaten and weaken).
  • A western false flag (some “Russian atrocity” no doubt)

One more thing:

Western PSYOPs are in “max attack mode” and they are being helped by Russian 5th columnist websites.  For example, I was trying to find a halfway decent map of the combat operations today, and ALL the Russian websites which offered such maps were hardcore 5th element.  Okay, I get it – 5th columnists don’t need any real facts to make their maps, while the real patriots are afraid of both getting it wrong and leaking info.  Still, I remember during the first two wars in the Donbass, there were some pretty decent maps available out there.

Today I see such zero.  If anybody can recommend semi-decent military maps of the combat operations I would be most grateful.

The fact that the Russian 5th column is allowed to continue to operate the way it does really frustrates me.  Could the Kremlin not tell them to “zip it” at least during active combat operations?

I did not even bother checking the output of the 6th column today, I fully expect it to be indistinguishable from the output of the 5th, and so I have no interest in it.

What is certain are two things: the joint efforts 5th and 6th column efforts have had some success, especially in locations where Putin his hated and pro-western views more common than in most of Russia.  The best poll I have seen says “Three-quarters of the respondents rather support the decision of the President of Russia to recognize the independent Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (73%), rather do not support – 16%, and every tenth Russian found it difficult to answer (11%). The majority of Russians – 78% – expressed support for the President’s decision to sign an agreement on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance between Russia and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Rather, 14% of respondents do not support this decision“.  Putin personal rating is at 67,2%. 

My guesstimate that no more than  5% of Russian support the 5th column and not more than 15% support the 6th column. Toss in another 5-10% which is afraid and on the fence. This is only a guess following my readings of the Russian social media, not a precise figure or even one based on serious research!

Next, the main thesis of US PSYOPs today was “the Russian movement is very slow, much slower than expected” hinting at some formidable Ukrainian defense operations.  I hope that while I did not post any maps today, the above will tell you all you need to know to identify this thesis for what it is: western information operations, nothing more.  The problem is that there is no “smartphone confirmation” of any of that, and by tomorrow I expect the main western PSYOPs thesis to change from “no/slow advance” to “Russian atrocities” (the smartphone coverage for that will, of course, be provided by the western press corps).

So, in conclusion, and once more – the “fog of war” is real, and to read through it takes both time and experience.  By tomorrow, I only expect this “fog of war” (powerfully augmented by PSYOPs) to drown us all in all sorts of nonsense, rumors and wild claims.  Again, please don’t post panicked questions such as “is it true that the Ukrainian forces are already on the Red Square in Moscow” or something equally insipid.

Two quick ones just in, then I need to crash (sorry, I am exhausted).

The US decided to impose personal sanctions personally on Putin (and others) which will result in a full termination of any diplomatic relations (as Russians warned the US many times).  Note: such sanctions are entirely symbolic but maximally offensive, so a full break with Russia is what the US wants.

Twelve thousand Chechens will be sent to the LDNR if needed,  so promised Ramzan Kadyrov, the President of Chechnia.  Actually, I think that this is a very good idea, like in Syria, the Chechens should get involved in policing and public security operations.  FYI – when the “toughest” and “NATO trained and equipped” Georgian brigade heard that the Chechen battalion Vostok was approaching, they all ran abandoning all their fancy (and secret) equipment.  Russia then organized exhibits of all that NATO kit.

Today, the LDNR authorities report the seizure of large Ukie weapons depots including the famous Javelins and NLAWs.  This is all very good news.

MM video

I took this video from inside a DD (Chinese version of Uber). It depicts where I live in JiDa in Zhuhai, China. Sure it’s sideways, but well, not too much I can do about that now.

video 35MB

How to train your cat to walk on a leash

It’s crazy it seems, but necessary if you live in an urban area and want to take him / her out into nature. video 35MB

Moscow: War in Ukraine started 8 years ago, Russia is now ending it

RT from HERE

Russia’s Foreign Ministry says it wants to end the 8-year bloodbath in Donbass that both Ukraine and the West turned a blind eye to.

The West spent eight years ignoring the “sea of blood” in Donbass while arming Ukraine, and now claims Moscow is the aggressor when it stepped in to end the conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RT on Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine in the early hours of Thursday, claiming it was necessary to “demilitarize and de-nazify” the neighbor. Kiev accused Russia of aggression, while the US, EU and NATO have called it an “unprovoked” invasion. Moscow insists this is not the case.

In announcing the operation, Putin said the “main objective is to stop the escalation of the war that’s been going on for eight years, and to stop the war,” Zakharova told RT in an exclusive interview.

“Russia did not commit aggression of any kind,” Zakharova insisted. “This did not start yesterday. There’s a sea of blood that’s appeared over the past 8 years,” she added, referring to the conflict in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which Russia on Monday recognized as independent states.

The main aim is to stop the escalation of the war that's been going on for eight years, to stop this war

Donetsk and Lugansk broke away from Ukraine in 2014, after the West-backed coup ousted the democratically elected government in Kiev. Zakharova noted that the two self-proclaimed republics held a referendum eight years ago, saying they did not want to remain in Ukraine, but both Moscow and the West rejected this and tried to put the “broken” country back together.

When asked about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement that Ukraine wanted peace, Zakharova wondered why Ukraine was arming itself and refusing to negotiate with the Donbass.

“If Ukraine wanted peace, why did they get all these weapons” from all over the world, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told RT, adding, “It was clear that these were offensive weapons.  Who were they fighting? Their own people in southeast Ukraine, and spoke often about seizing Crimea.”

The peninsula voted to rejoin Russia in March 2014, but Ukraine and its Western backers have refused to recognize this, calling it an “annexation.”

Zakharova also noted that the top Ukrainian officials have openly and publicly brought up the idea of obtaining nuclear weapons in recent weeks, pointing out this was a fact and not something claimed by Russian intelligence.

Divisions in Ukraine go beyond Donetsk and Lugansk, Zakharova added, accusing armed groups with Nazi-era symbols – such as the notorious Azov Battalion – of having influence over much of the country.

For years, she said, Western media so concerned over human rights in places like South Sudan and Myanmar kept silent on all this, ignoring that more than 13,000 people have died in the Donbass – many of them civilians. While Russia provided them with humanitarian aid, Kiev besieged them by cutting off trade, finance, and even utilities. Zakharova noted that the water canal towards Crimea is now once again operational after Ukraine “criminally” shut it off years ago.

Community

It’s not about individual “freedom” and allowing the sick, evil and malovent to hijack a forum. It’s about community. Community. You have a choice. you can sit behind your computer in a grey cubicle and shout your opinions anomously, or you can participate in a community as an accepted member. It your choice.

Community. Nonexistent in the USA.

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THE BODY LANGUAGE OF THE SPEECH — PUTIN HAS REPUDIATED LENIN, STALIN, GORBACHEV, YELTSIN & MOBILIZED RUSSIA’S DEFENCE AGAINST US ATTACK AS NEVER BEFORE

From HERE.

by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

Not in his entire life has President Vladimir Putin made a speech like Monday’s Donbass address to the Russian people.

Nor has he ever named the Americans to be Russia’s national enemy in such unequivocal Russian terms – American promises worthless, American intentions deadly, American speeches lies, American actions intimidation, extortion, blackmail.

“So I want to ask”, Putin said: “why, why all this, for what? Okay, you don’t want to see us as a friend and ally, but why make us an enemy? There is only one answer: it’s not about our political regime, it’s not about anything else, they just don’t need such a large independent country as Russia. That’s the answer to all the questions. This is the source of traditional American policy towards Russia.”

“The pretext for another sanctions attack will always be found or simply fabricated, regardless of the situation in Ukraine. There is only one goal – to restrain the development of Russia. And they will do it as they did before, even without any formal pretext at all, just because we are and will never give up our sovereignty, national interests and our values.”

Unlike the most famous of English and American mobilization speeches against French, German and Confederate enemies – King Henry’s Agincourt, Winston Churchill’s Dunkirk, and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg speeches – Putin didn’t wave his arms or move significantly his head, neck, shoulders, or right hand.  Putin’s right hand is the operational one.

Watch and listen. The stillness of the body language, the pauses for breathing, the speech pitch, pace and modulation – these mean to all Russians: Do or die — now we do for ourselves or else the Americans will kill us.

Putin spoke for 55 minutes, 48 seconds – Shakespeare’s Henry V spoke for just over two minutes; Lincoln for less than that; Churchill for 20 minutes.

The Pentagon has been using body language and voice techniques to spy on Putin for years. Timothy Colton, the US Naval War College agent doubling as a Harvard professor, was exposed in 2015 after several years of paid secret work; read the details here.

Colton has also been the biographer of Boris Yeltsin, a work celebrated as a “masterpiece”  by the US officials who once controlled Yeltsin. Yeltsin was unnamed in Putin’s speech, but all Russian listeners understand that he was meant in Putin’s accusations of “historic, strategic mistakes”, “pandering to the ambitions of the nationalist elites”; “injustices, lies and outright pillage.”

“Against the backdrop of the superficial and populist rhetoric about democracy and a bright future based either on a market or a planned economy, but amid a true impoverishment of people and widespread shortages, no one among the powers that be was thinking about the inevitable tragic consequences for the country… The collapse of the historical Russia known as the USSR is on their conscience.” For “market” Putin means the Yeltsin group, the two ranking officials who belong to it – Anatoly Chubais and Alexei Kudrin — are still alive, along with the oligarchs they created. For “planned economy” Putin refers to Mikhail Gorbachev whom he has condemned as well. For “conscience” Putin means hypocrisy.

The qualifier: “Of course, we cannot change past events, but we must at least admit them openly and honestly, without any reservations or politicking. Personally, I can add that no political factors, however impressive or profitable they may seem at any given moment, can or may be used as the fundamental principles of statehood. I am not trying to put the blame on anyone.”

Analysis of Putin’s body language and verbal cues on behalf of the secret services by Colton and his colleagues has not discouraged the hospitality which has been shown to Colton by the Valdai Club, the Kremlin-financed platform.  The reason Putin has just announced openly. For the traditional American reason the Russian command believes Colton’s capacity to threaten is limited by his incapacity to comprehend.

Count Putin’s head, neck, and shoulder movements and measure them against the vertical and horizontal axes. Head movements left and right are restricted within 5 degrees of the vertical;  there is almost no kinesis of the head forward or back; no neck rotation;  and apart from a couple of left shrugs, Putin’s shoulders remain immobile and at rest on the horizontal for all 55 minutes. This is an unusually long time.

Movement psychologists diagnose these features as indicating on the one hand a combination of internal control and confidence in what is being said; on the other hand, the commitment to reassure the listener.

Putin does not stumble in speech, mispronounce or misread his teleprompter lines. Speaking without a glass of water for an hour, he clears his throat very rarely. His breathing intakes are short, regular, and without the diaphragmatic discipline of the Stanislavsky stage method; in short, natural. The pitch and modulation of his voice remain steady without many peaks of emphasis or emotion. But the president does something he has exhibited very rarely — he breathes out in audible sighs. This is a display of regret, sadness. For the Russian audience this is attractive because it is human.

For his emphases Putin employs as few of his moving parts as he can. This signifies a high degree of self-control without nervousness. Instead, he uses his hands, the right more than the left, to anchor his body. When he wants to underline a verbal point, there is no agitation of the arms nor tension in the fingers on the table. His gestures – either single-handed or double-handed – illustrate the military threats Putin is discussing from the US, the NATO alliance, and from Ukrainian territory.

Left: “a truly fatal document, the so-called ethnic policy of the party in modern conditions”. 2nd from left: “blackmailing the West to secure preferences by claiming that otherwise Russia would have a bigger influence in Ukraine”. 3rd from left: “we got five waves of NATO enlargement one after another….” 4th from left: “It’s called, rightly, ‘the knife to the throat’”. Right: “they are trying to blackmail us, again threatening us with sanctions, which, by the way, they will still introduce as Russia’s sovereignty strengthens”.

The last time the United States faced an enemy as calm, unmoving, disciplined, and confident was in the Vietnam War. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and deputy Victoria Nuland were less than eight years old at the time; National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had not been born.

Oh, and speaking about Taiwan…

And about China’s defenses regarding Taiwan…

AI controlled  Chinese Robotic bombs are swimming independently all over the South China Sea. Collecting info, and ready to detonate upon command. Video 6MB

Chinese Naval Aviation. I wonder if CNN, BBC, or FOX “news” would ever show these kinds of videos. Video 7MB

How community works

This is what happens inside of China. It is a nation that values community, and that does not tolerate social misfits. And Trolls are mentally ill social misfits. That’s WHY they hide their true names, faces, appearance, and location.

Then (supposedly) hidden they cause saddness, interruptions and sow disgust.

This is unaccceptable inside of China, and China is very strict about putting these misfits out of society. Instead they provide them with meaningful labor, in well structured environments where their social skills are allowed to gorw and mature until one day then can return back into that community.

Community. Without it, you are just a loney, solitary misfit.

video 17MB

That video made me hungry…

Chicken a la King

When was the last time you ate this delicious dish?

My guess is that you must have eaten at least 300 buckets of KFC chicken since then. So much, that you (and the rest of society) has forgotten that there as so many ways to cook chicken, and deep frying it is only one such way.

Chicken a la King took the United States by storm in the middle of the 20th century. But if you try to find it on a dinner menu these days, you probably won’t have much luck.

By embracing this dish, featuring cubed chicken with a cream sauce served over your favorite grain (rice, noodles or bread), you’ll get to taste what made this chicken recipe such a classic and maybe even discover your next favorite meal.

Get the recipe from Taste and Tell.

This girl is so very comfortable

In her own skin, don’t you know. LOL. She does need to smile. I am not overly fond of the “pouty, spoiled teenager” look.

video

Girl inside a Chinese “Wet Market”

Remember the onslaught of lies trying to pin Coronavirus on the Chinaese because of unhealthy habits, filth and dirt at a Wet Market. Yet, no one ever showed images of what a Wet Market looks like. Well, here is what it looks like.

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Russian bear wants justice

by Batko Milacic

Despite possible sanctions and their hard-hitting economic consequences, the hunted Russian bear has got out of the den and is going after the hunters. Until recently, Russians, Ukrainians, and Europeans believed that there would be no war.

What we see now, however, is a full-scale Russian intervention and quite a successful one too. Where are the Russian troops going, and most importantly, why? And where will they stop?

Strengthened since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia was quite content with its new status of a leading regional power, and only verbally recalled its glorious imperial past. During the early 2000s, Russia even mulled the possibility of integrating into NATO and the EU, only to see its natural and legitimate interests repeatedly and shamelessly ignored. Millions of Russian-speakers living in the post-Soviet republics were deprived of their right to use their native language, while the Baltic countries and Ukraine profited from the transit of gas, oil, and raw materials. There was even a new “policy of gas pipelines,” when Russia was pressured into make concessions in exchange for being allowed to build a gas pipeline or simply put a stop to the syphoning off of its pipeline gas.

In fact, a resurgent Russia was gradually being presented as a “potential enemy” for the sake of reiterating NATO’s role as a defender against the imagined Russian threat. All this resulted in the 2013 events in Ukraine where nationalists came to power not without outside help, flatly refusing to safeguard the interests of the country’s Russian-speaking population, primarily in eastern Ukraine. Facing the risk of losing its naval base in Sevastopol (existing there since the 18th century) and wishing to protect the Russian-speaking people living in Ukraine, Russia, with the full support of the local population, re-absorbed Crimea and supported the separatists of Donbass. This was followed by Kiev’s ban on the use of the Russian language in the country (not entirely successful, though, since it was the main spoken language of Ukraine) and police persecution of those who advocated a dialogue with Moscow. In its effort to support Ukraine, the West introduced a series of anti-Russian sanctions, which seriously damaged the Russian economy. Still, for the past eight years, Russia was ready for dialogue. In exchange for autonomy for Russian-speakers and guarantees of non-deployment of a NATO infrastructure in eastern Ukraine, Moscow was prepared to roll back its support for the separatists and, possibly, even hold a new referendum in Crimea on its reunification with Russia.

However, during all these eight years, people continued to die along the disengagement line in Donbass, separating Kiev’s armed forces and the separatists (at the rate of more than 100 a year). Meanwhile, Russia was officially branded by Kiev as an “aggressor,” and those in power in Ukraine started to busily prepare for a big war, demanding military and financial assistance from the EU and Washington. And while President Zelensky’s predecessor, the millionaire Petro Poroshenko, was still able to maintain a dialogue with Moscow with the help of the oligarchs, the current president, who came to power on the strength of promises to seek peace and reconciliation, was trying hard to enter NATO and was threatening Russia with missiles deployed near Chernigov (750 km from Moscow). As for the Kremlin, it has spent the past six months trying to negotiate with Brussels, Washington and Zelensky himself. All that Putin was asking for were security guarantees for Russia. In fact, Moscow never really threatened Ukraine but was still being systematically pushed towards a military solution.

It should be noted that prior to the intervention, Putin explained in great detail to his compatriots what was going on, recalling how the borders of the Soviet republics had been cut and how Russian-speaking territories had been handed over to Ukraine. He also made it clear that one cannot talk about a violation of international law after the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Serbia, the recognition of Kosovo and NATO’s move to the Russian borders.

Let’s be honest: a bear sleeping peacefully in its den was smoked out of there by being poked with a stick, and now they are wondering why it is chasing those who did that. Moscow has been pushed into a corner and is now demonstrating its strength and standing up for its interests. Now Putin will at best be satisfied with a change of guard in Kiev, and at worst, Ukraine as a state will disappear from the map of Europe. Is it possible to justify an aggression that has been provoked for a long time? This is a matter of a lengthy discussion. One thing is clear: 20 years ago, Russia could and wanted to join NATO and united Europe. However, the latter chose to make Russia an enemy…

Pick a side

I have recounted how various “experts” are advising Washington DC to sanction China along with Russia. They argue that since the USA controls the money supply and debt that countries would “of course” choose America over China. I argue otherwise. Where are people going to get things?

And concerning China…

A reminder that China DOES NOT PLAY

Like Russia, China has a ferocious military.  Military training starts in first grade, however, certain kindergarden schools also start the tykes early as well. Marching, rules of organization are taught in first grade. Third grade you have field stripping of firearms, small arms training, and mortar fire.

China has a population of merit driven, determined soldiers of 1.6 billion people. Someone should slap the American neocons ont he side of the head and remind them that both China and Russia are decendents of Genghis Khan.

Little tykes. Video

First Grade training 1. video 9MB

First grade training 2. video 9MB

Fall in love with Chinese girls

This is what it is like for me all the time. It’s so nice living in Mayberry RFD.

Video 4MB

Day 2 of the Russian operation in the Ukraine

Today is a major day in the Russian military operation.  Why?

Because Russian forces are now on the outskirts of many major Ukrainian cities.  If yesterday was “standoff weapons” day, today is the first day when Russian forces can now begin to degrade Ukrainian artillery dispositions, engage Ukie armor and break through Ukrainian fortifications.  Today is also the last day for US PSYOPs to try to present a counter-narrative (Ukies heroically resisting, Russian dying in huge numbers, effective counter-attacks, etc.).

Yet we live in the smartphone with camera era and picture like this one tell the full story:

What you see in this picture are immense traffic jams of folks fleeing not Mariupol or Kramatorsk, but Kiev, the capital.

Here is a quick machine translated news update from Col. Cassad:

1. LDNR – the positional nature of the fighting remains, with attempts by the LDNR armies to advance to the borders of the territories occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

2. The southern direction – the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation retained control over the bridge over the Dnieper at Kherson, repulsing attempts of counterattacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.. Fighting in the Antonovsky Bridge area continues.

A New Kakhovka is also being held. Melitopol was taken this morning and the advance towards Berdyansk began.

3. Kharkiv direction – fighting continues on the near approaches to Kharkov. Both sides are suffering losses in people and equipment.

4. Sumy direction – the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation took Putivl and passing through Sumy (the battle at the airport continued there today), advanced to Konotop, surrounding the city. Today, attempts to take Akhtyrka continued in order to reach Kharkov from the west. There are Russian roadblocks on the Sumy-Kiev highway. There is an advance to Kiev and Chernihiv. (The APU repelled the attack of the Russian Armed Forces in the Chernihiv direction).

5. Kiev – Gostomel airfield is held by paratroopers. The APU could not dislodge them from there. This morning, tank columns of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation broke through to the near approaches to Kiev and are close to establishing direct communication with the landing. The AFU is preparing a counterattack, stating that another landing will be thrown out in the Gostomel area today. The Pentagon says that Kiev will fall in the coming days. After 10 o’clock shooting was heard in the city. Also, according to the statement of the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the landing was thrown to the west of Zhytomyr. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are actively undermining bridges on the approaches, trying to slow down the advance of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,

6. In the morning, strikes continued on military facilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine throughout the territory of Ukraine. A Su-27 of the Ukrainian Air Force was shot down over Kiev – according to one version by the Russian air defense system, according to another – by the Ukrainian ones. The downed “Caliber” fell on a residential building in Kiev, but there were no casualties. During the shelling of Gorlovka, a school was hit – 2 teachers were killed.

7. The AFU launched a missile attack on the Millerovo airfield on the territory of the Russian Federation. Damage is reported at the airfield, but there are no losses in aircraft.

What a Chinese home is like

Yeah. It’s pretty much like this. Only, her house is not nearly as messy and cluttered up as mine. You know, having young kids is a real way to “decorate” your home. Video

And in Taiwan, a lesson for everyone

Ukraine’s crisis comic: note the flags, the texts, and the last picture : how US, UK, and EU farewell the stupid Ukraine president after giving him the weapons.

I love this Taiwan TV current affair channel. The current Taiwan regime ban them, so they go on social media.

Beware of “help” from the West.

Chinese Experts Uncover Details of NSAs Equation Group’s Bvp47 Covert Hacking Tool

It’s a tad too technical, on my side. You all can skim over the article if you want. Essentially, China’s AI systems detected the behavior of the USA’s NSA hacking tool. It mapped it out, and then algorithims figured it all out. The part that is NOT reported in this article is that the Chinese were able to do so as the enire system is transparent. It’s like trying to find a glass stature submerged in ice cube water.

Researchers from China’s Pangu Lab have disclosed details of a “top-tier” backdoor put to use by the Equation Group, an advanced persistent threat (APT) with alleged ties to the cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

Dubbed “Bvp47” owing to numerous references to the string “Bvp” and the numerical value “0x47” used in the encryption algorithm, the backdoor was extracted from Linux systems “during an in-depth forensic investigation of a host in a key domestic department” in 2013.

The defense research group codenamed the attacks involving the deployment of Bvp47 “Operation Telescreen,” with the implant featuring an “advanced covert channel behavior based on TCP SYN packets, code obfuscation, system hiding, and self-destruction design.”

Bvp47 is said to have been used on more than 287 targets in the academia, economic development, military, science, and telecom sectors located in 45 countries, mainly in China, Korea, Japan, Germany, Spain, India, and Mexico, all the while going largely undetected for over a decade.

The elusive backdoor is also equipped with a remote control function that’s protected using an encryption algorithm, activating which requires the attacker’s private key – something the researchers said they found in the leaks published by the Shadow Brokers hacker group in 2016.

Pangu Lab is a research project of Pangu Team, which has a history of jailbreaking Apple iPhones dating all the way back to 2014. At the Tianfu Cup hacking contest last year, the white hat hacking team demonstrated several security flaws that allowed for remotely jailbreaking a fully patched iPhone 13 Pro running iOS 15.

The Shadow Brokers leaks

Equation Group, designated as the “crown creator of cyber espionage” by Russian security firm Kaspersky, is the name assigned to a sophisticated adversary that’s been active since at least 2001 and has used previously undisclosed zero-day exploits to “infect victims, retrieve data and hide activity in an outstandingly professional way,” some of which were later incorporated into Stuxnet.

The attacks have targeted a variety of sectors in no less than 42 countries, counting governments, telecom, aerospace, energy, nuclear research, oil and gas, military, nanotechnology, Islamic activists and scholars, media, transportation, financial institutions, and companies developing encryption technologies.

The group is believed to be linked to the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit, while intrusion activities pertaining to a second collective known as Longhorn (aka The Lamberts) have been attributed to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Equation Group’s malware toolset became public knowledge in 2016 when a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers leaked the entire tranche of exploits used by the elite hacking team, with Kaspersky uncovering code-level similarities between the stolen files and that of samples identified as used by the threat actor.

Bvp47 as a covert backdoor

The incident analyzed by Pangu Lab comprises two internally compromised servers, an email and an enterprise server named V1 and V2 respectively, and an external domain (identified as A), sporting a novel two-way communication mechanism to exfiltrate sensitive data from the systems.

“There is abnormal communication between external host A and the V1 server,” the researchers said. “Specifically, A first sends a SYN packet with a 264-byte payload to port 80 of the V1 server, and then the V1 server immediately initiates an external connection to the high-end port of the A machine and maintains a large amount of exchange data.”

Simultaneously, V1 connects to V2 via the SMB service to perform a number of operations, including logging in to the latter with an administrator account, trying to open terminal services, enumerating directories, and executing PowerShell scripts through scheduled tasks.

V2, for its part, also connects to V1 to retrieve a PowerShell script and an encrypted second-stage payload, the encrypted execution results of which are sent back to V1, which, according to the researchers, “acts as a data transfer between the A machine and the V2 server.”

The Bvp47 backdoor installed on the servers consists of two parts, a loader which is responsible for decoding and loading the actual payload into memory. “Bvp47 generally lives in the Linux operating system in the demilitarized zone that communicates with the Internet,” the researchers said. “It mainly assumes the core control bridge communication role in the overall attack.”

Links to the Equation Group

Pangu Lab’s attribution to Equation Group stems from overlaps with exploits contained in a GPG-encrypted archive file published by the Shadow Brokers – “eqgrp-auction-file.tar.xz.gpg” – as part of a failed auction of the cyber weapons in August 2016.

“In the process of analyzing the ‘eqgrp-auction-file.tar.xz.gpg’ file, it was found that Bvp47 and the attacking tools in the compressed package were technically deterministic, mainly including ‘dewdrops,’ ‘suctionchar_agents,’ ‘tipoffs,’ ‘StoicSurgeon,’ ‘incision’ and other directories,” the researchers explained.

“The ‘tipoffs’ directory contains the RSA asymmetric algorithm private key used in the Bvp47 covert channel [for] command execution and other operations. On this basis, it can be confirmed that Bvp47 is from [the] Equation group.”

The findings mark the second time hitherto undocumented malware developed by the Equation Group has come to light in as many months. In late December 2021, Check Point Research disclosed details of a diagnostic utility called “DoubleFeature” that’s used in conjunction with the DanderSpritz malware framework.

“Judging from the attack tools related to the organization, including Bvp47, Equation group is indeed a first-class hacking group,” the researchers concluded.

“The tool is well-designed, powerful, and widely adapted. Its network attack capability equipped by zero-day vulnerabilities was unstoppable, and its data acquisition under covert control was with little effort. The Equation Group is in a dominant position in national-level cyberspace confrontation.”

A most outstanding Interview

It truly is. Man, oh man. No holding back. This is THE Scott Ritter that was sent to Iraq to find WMD’s and got in all sorts of trouble by the Bush Administration when he couldn’t find any. Man, he lets loose!

This link with Scott Ritter just popped up on moa a little while ago.
I’ve had to listen twice — highly recommended.

I think he is correct — NATO is dead and gone, bar for the funeral.
The European defence process will need to rebuild a less costly, more effective framework for peaceful co-existance with the Slavic world.

And this is a key point about re-alignments at a higher level than simply nation state.
It is at Chinese; Slavic; European; Anglo-American scales — everything else is just “loose ends” from the 20th century past.

Time to wake up, folks, and smell the roses (or the rubbish in the streets) and blame our local political representitives — after all, they ARE our ‘leaders’ (so they keep saying).
Accountability is a bitch ….Lol.

“NATO Too Weak to Face Russia: Scott Ritter on Russian Offensive
17,097 views • Feb 25, 2022 ” [38min]

https://youtu.be/3GkmdCaBECs

Scott Ritter. Video on You-Tube.

KTV scene

This kind of scene is fairly common when you go to a Business KTV. The girls will dance, and feed your food like grapes, strawberries, and drinks. They will hold your arm and be playful with you. video

Be the Rufus

Or be nothing; selfish and alone. video 5MB

Archdukes across Europe hiring extra security details

Better safe than sorry.

By Cobré Commandreé

BRUSSELS — Archdukes across Europe are beefing up their security details following a full-scale Russian attack on Ukraine.

“We’ve seen this picture show before, ahem,” claimed Archduke Peter Von Fishburn-Waldrop III, of County Hampshire, as he took snuff.  “Whenever a world war is about to break out, one of us is inevitably assassinated, ahem.”

Archdukes are contracting mercenaries, hirelings, sell-swords, adventurers-about-town, and various other soldiers of fortune to round out their security details.

“Aye, it be good for business, make no mistake.  Surely none of us wish to see an Archduke what with his life-force pourin’ out of his noggin, but we got bills to pay too, mind you,” said Captain John Ninefingers, leader of the famed Free Company.

Students of history will remember that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand precipitated World War I, called The Great War at the time, fought by various European powers. Archdukes fear that with the Ukrainian crisis, it’s only a matter of time before history repeats itself.

“One day you’re collecting rent from peasants, ahem, or getting promoted in the military despite no accomplishments, and the next day, ahem, you get assassinated by a young upstart who wants freedom from your imperial empire,” muttered Archduke Yannis Belagrovstad, of the Gutenberg Province. “What nerve!  What cheek!”

The motley collection of heirs-apparent is leaving nothing to chance. The finest technologies have been employed to ensure the safety of the Archduke corps throughout Europe.

“We attempted to develop a motorcar that was consistently surrounded by a moat as it traveled, ahem, but the peasants complained that it was too much digging,” mused Archduke Johannes Reberg, of the Kaiserschoten Kaserne.  “And isn’t that just like a peasant?”

When asked for comment, Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, the current leader of the European Commission, said, “The safety of the Archdukes remains our number one priority.  That’s why we’ve diverted troops from Ukraine to stand guard around their four-post beds throughout the night.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a press release Tuesday morning regarding the safety of the Archdukes.

“When it comes to the assassination of Archdukes, it appalls me to think that anyone could be considering such an action,” said Putin, “without me having first ordered it”.

Checkered sweater for the tropics

Here, in the tropics, it’s HOT. Then there’s the “rainy season” which is HOT and STEAMY. So how do these Chinese girls get around wearing sweaters? Is it becuase they stay inside the air conditioning all day? Well, maybe so, but also the clothes in China are designed for the environment. Here is a sweater for the tropics. Cool, eh?

video

MoA – Disarming Ukraine – Day 2

The Russian operations in the Ukraine continue at a moderate pace. Some more troops were committed today. In all the Russian military may have now introduced some 20-40% of its prepared forces.

The Ukrainian military is not so much holding a line but concentrating in and around its bigger cities. It has destroyed some bridges north of Kiev to make an approach more difficult. That will slow down the Russian moves but will not prevent them. Russia’s military is famously good at setting up combat bridges.

So far the Russians have used their artillery sparsely. An exception was last night near Kharkiv in the northeast of Ukraine where a strike by multiple launcher artillery systems (MLRS) hit some area target with yet unknown results.

A 13 minutes long video from a highway drive near Kherson, a city north of Crimea, shows nearly 100 destroyed Ukrainian trucks and tanks. These are likely victims of air attacks.

If this map from a Turkish think tank source is correct the Russian troops did not attempt much deeper strikes today but mostly consolidated their frontline.

This map from Janes shows less progress. But it also has not marked the Donbas area in the southeast which is held by pro-Russian forces.

Russia’s President has called on the Ukrainian military to overthrow its government. I do not think he believes that will happen but it is a possibility so why not call for it.

Facebook now allows to praise Ukrainian Nazi groups like the Azov battalion. This was prohibited with Azov previously being in the same category as ISIS. Now these are ‘our guys’.

There are a lot of discussions of sanctions against Russia and every western country is trying to get as much exemptions for its industries as possible . The U.S. has for example exempted everything that has to do with hydrocarbons from its own sanction package. It will still buy Russian oil and will continue to sell drilling equipment to Russia.

The EU countries are still negotiating with themselves. They should be careful with what they do.

Britain has had the stupidity of sanctioning the Russian air carrier Aeroflot. In a counter move Russia prohibited British Airways from flying over Russian territory. Normally all flights from Britain to the Far East cross Russian airspace. These will now have to be redirected to other routes which will significantly increase their flight time and fuel burn.

Russia has threatened ‘inconvenient’ counter-sanctions to those who sanction it. Overflight rights are only one of the tools it can use.

NATO has said it will continue to deliver weapons, including air defenses, to the Ukraine. NATO does not have any weapons but some NATO countries seem to strive for a larger war. The U.S. seem willing to sacrifice the Ukraine to create a quagmire for Russia.

Syria was also supposed to become a quagmire for Russia when Russia came to its help. It didn’t turn out that way.

Finally, this is how we handle Trolls here on MM

"Once you cut through the bullshit and understand what's going on, it's easy to predict what will happen.

These people and countries acting as attack dogs for the empire must therefore be taught an unforgettable lesson. If you don't put down the rabid dogs, they will get up and bite you again. 

Therefore, Russia will not take half measures. 

They will not stop unless the surrender is total, and punishment for the miscreants dealt out accordingly. Otherwise, this operation will be for naught."

If you don’t understand this video, you must have a mental illness. Truth this.

Video 4MB

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
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The NATO and Russia in Ukraine situation is fluid. Here are some thoughts.

Yeah, if you go on to the Western “news” it’s all bullshit. I really cannot believe that anyone believe anything from these people anymore. They lie so much that their lies are lies of lies regarding lies.

'WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU DOING IN OUR LAND?'
TROOPS RAISE RUSSIAN FLAG IN UKRAINE...
KYIV TO 'FALL BY WEEKEND'...
Chernobyl power plant captured...
Kremlin demands surrender...
Warns West of consequences GREATER THAN ANY IN HISTORY!
Blasts Before Dawn. Rooster's Crow. Then Panic...
Hiding in Basements, Helicopters Overhead...
Many shrugged off predictions of war. Now it's mad dash to leave...
Escape to Poland... Baltics: Are we next?
Biden presented options for massive cyberattacks...
Authorizes additional troops to Germany...
France accelerating deployment in Romania...
SKYNEWS LIVE...

The alternative sites, many of which are not the neocon conservative “gung ho! for ‘Merica” sites, show a great healthy respect for Russia, and some for China. Here’s we are going to throw out some stuff as the fluid situation unfolds.

Keep in mind that this is war. It’s chaotic and confusing, and there are all sorts of misinformation out there.

You can find many such websites that have collected blow-by-blow pictures, videos, and opinions / reports as they come in. I’m not going to do that except, maybe put a few interesting elements in place.

To quote DM…

"...the reposts I am hearing have me absolutely bewildred at the ruthless efficiency of the Russian army. I mean MM hinted at it, but its not until you see it in full swing you can really appreciate it."

In summary, in 24 hours, Russia took over the Ukraine. All the fancy and expensive munitions, weapons, ships, planes (supplied by the USA and NATO) were destroyed. There are some very interesting videos out there regarding this. Paratroop drops, jets blowing up the house that you are in, and the “leadership” scurrying away for safety under the great protective arms of the United States and NATO.

Right now, it’s a mop up operation, while the United States and NATO are still arguing what kind of “tough sanctions” that they will impose… or, more likely, what kind of emotionally driven (by manipulated polls) action that they could take.

My guess, could be a very BAD action, resulting in VERY BAD consequences.

But as it stands today, 25FEB22, most (but not all) of the Ukraine is under Russian control. The vast majority of American-trained (since 2014) Neo-Nazi troops laid down their arms and entered the protective corridors to their families to wait out the situation in peace. So now, we are talking about phase two…

We start with this…

Russia is ready to sit down and talk now that the Ukraine has been suppressed.

Objective and accurate report of the Russian objectives:

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1253171.shtml

However, in the eyes of Putin and most Russians, the latest move serves as a counterstrike against the Western squeezing of Russia’s security room with extreme measures and a relatively large-scale showdown in wrestling with the US, a view that is also shared by the majority of Chinese.

“Circumstances require us to take decisive and immediate action,” Putin’s order read. In an address to the public, the Russian president said he wanted to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine, Russia Today said. Putin further said, “We have no plans to occupy Ukrainian territory.”

“Demilitarize” could be understood to be putting down arms and surrendering, which can also be understood as incapacitating the opponent and rendering them unable to form a threat in a broader sense, Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Thursday.

“As a result, Russia will completely destroy the heavy weapons of Ukrainian troops, including warplanes, tanks and armored troops as well as defense forces, such as air defense missile forces and the navy,” Song said.

Russia announced it has destroyed Ukraine’s airfields, air defenses and control systems just a few hours after it launched the military operations.

“And as we take the measures announced by the president to ensure the security of the country and the Russian people, we will certainly always be ready for a dialogue that will return us to justice and the principles of the UN Charter,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said late on Thursday.

Yury Tavrovsky, head of the “Russian Dream-Chinese Dream” analytics center of the Izborsk Club, told the Global Times that Russia’s military operations in Ukraine are “completely legal.”

Both chambers of Russia’s Duma (parliament) had earlier approved recognition of Donetsk and Lugansk as “independent states.” The Upper Chamber (the Senate) later approved use of armed forces outside the national borders, Tavrovsky explained.

The military operation was launched just one day after the US and Europe unveiled what is believed to be just the first round of sanctions against Russian individuals and institutions in response to Putin’s signing of two decrees recognizing Lugansk and Donetskas independent and sovereign states.

As global markets tumbled steeply over the Ukraine-Russia crisis, some raised questions as to why Russia took this step, how the situation will evolve and whether the US will engage in a direct war with Russia.

Moscow’s motivation

In a phone call with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained the development of the Ukraine situation and Russia’s position, saying that the US and NATO violated their commitments by expanding east, refused to implement the new Minsk Agreements, and violated UN Security Council Resolution 2202, forcing Russia to take necessary measures to safeguard its own rights and interests.

Noting that China has always respected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, Wang said that China recognizes the complex and special historical context of the Ukraine issue and understands Russia’s legitimate security concerns.

China maintains that the Cold War mentality should be completely abandoned and a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism should be finally established through dialogue and negotiation, Wang said.

“China believes there should be mutual cooperation and sustainable security, and the reasonable security concerns of all parties concerned should be respected and solved,” Hua Chunying, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said during a press conference on Thursday.

China hopes all parties will not shut the door on peace, but continue negotiations and try to ease the situation as soon as possible, she said.

Some Chinese observers said the US has continued its intensive containment of Russia, for example, by implementing more sanctions, finally forcing Russia to try to realize its security demands in this drastic way.

Russian elites such as Putin and Deputy Chairman of Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev believe that the Ukraine issue has reached the point where it must be resolved.

“I believe Russia’s military operation is a reaction by Moscow to Western countries’ exertion of pressure on Russia for a long time, showing that Moscow can’t tolerate it anymore,” Yang Jin, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European, and Central Asian Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday.

“As to how the situation will evolve, I think we need to spend more time to observe it. First thing first, we need to focus on the attitude of the US, on whether Washington will launch a direct war against Russia,” he said, noting that everything depends on how NATO and the US will react.

If the entire military operation goes smoothly, Russia could reach its target of fully controlling Ukraine, and what worries NATO most is whether Russia will then carry out further operations again the three Baltic countries, namely Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Li Haidong, a professor from the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

The US and NATO are now observing how the situation evolves. The US and NATO have been training Ukraine troops since 2014, and it’s time to see if they will confront Russian troops and for how long they will fight them. “As long as Russia does not engage in military conflicts with NATO members, there won’t be direct confrontation between NATO and US [on one side] and Russia [on the other],” Li said.

Read in full:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1253171.shtml

Now, keep in mind that this is directly after the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. You know, that one that the United States, the UK, and the Australians decided to sit out of for one concocted reason or the other…

The entire opening ceremony for the 2022 Winter Olympics

It’s DAMN impressive. On You-Tube.

At 2:11:01 is the meaningful symbolic embrace performance that made all the Chinese and some Taiwanese get all emotional. It’s about community and family and inclusion.

Nice hyper-cute Chinese girl

I think that it would be a nice spot to include this fine Chinese lass. My oh my! Look at that terrible communist regime! Look how dirty and polluted it is! Look at how thin she is, it’s obvious that the regime starves her. She must be pining away for freedom™ and democracy™, don’t you know!

video 5MB

That is not all that unlike America in the early 1950s. Here’s a winter scene. It’s in front of a neighborhood gas station. I wonder if they still have these things back in the ‘states. Notice the smiling and happy woman, and the rag-top (or convertible) in the back. Calm. Easy. Fun.

Like China is today.

Calm and fun United States in the 1950s.

From the Black Sea to the East Med, do not poke The Russian Bear

By Pepe Escobar

This is what happens when a bunch of ragged hyenas, jackals and tiny rodents poke The Bear: a new geopolitical order is born in breathtaking speed.

From a dramatic meeting of the Russian Security Council to a history lesson delivered by President Putin and the subsequent birth of the Baby Twins – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – all the way to their appeal to President Putin to intervene militarily to expel the NATO-backed Ukrainian bombing-and-shelling forces from Donbass, it was a seamless process.

The (nuclear) straw that (nearly) broke the Bear’s back – and forced its paws to pounce – was Zelensky the Comedian, back from the Russophobia-drenched Munich Security Conference where he was hailed like a Messiah, saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum should be revised and Ukraine should be nuclear-rearmed.

That would be the equivalent of a nuclear Mexico south of the Hegemon.

Putin immediately turned Responsibility to Protect (R2P) upside down: an American concept invented to launch wars in MENA (remember Libya?) was retrofitted to stop a slow-motion genocide in Donbass.

First came the recognition of the Baby Twins – Putin’s most important foreign policy decision since going to Syria in 2015.

That was the preamble for the next game-changer: a “special military operation (…) aimed at demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”, as Putin defined it.

Up to the last minute, the Kremlin was trying to rely on diplomacy, explaining to Kiev the necessary imperatives to prevent heavy metal thunder:

  • recognition of Crimea as Russian;
  • abandon any plans to join NATO;
  • negotiate directly with the Baby Twins – an anathema for the Americans since 2015;
  • finally, demilitarize and declare Ukraine as neutral.

Kiev’s handlers, predictably, would never accept the package – as they didn’t accept the Master Package that really matters: the Russian demand for “indivisible security”.

The sequence, then, became inevitable.

In a flash, all Ukrainian forces between the so-called line of contact and the original borders of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were boxed in as the occupying force of territories of two Russian allies that Moscow had just sworn to protect.

So it was Get Out – Or Else.

“Or else” came as rolling thunder: the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense were not bluffing.

Timed to the end of Putin’s speech announcing the operation, the Russians decapitated with precision missiles everything that mattered in terms of the Ukrainian military in just one hour: Air Force, Navy, airfields, bridges, command and control centers, the whole Turkish Bayraktar drone fleet.

And it was not only Russian raw power.

It was the artillery of one of the Baby Twins, the DPR, that hit the HQ of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbass, which actually housed the entire Ukrainian military command.

This means that the Ukrainian General Staff instantly lost control of all its troops.

This was Shock and Awe against Iraq, 19 years ago, in reverse: not for conquest, not as a prelude for an invasion and occupation.

The political-military leadership in Kiev did not even have time to declare war.

They froze.

Demoralized troops started deserting.

Total defeat – in one hour.

The water supply to Crimea was instantly re-established.

Humanitarian corridors were set up for the deserters.

“Remnants” now include mostly surviving Azov batallion Nazis, mercenaries trained by the usual Blackwater/Academi suspects, and a bunch of Salafi-jihadis.

Predictably, Western corporate media has already gone totally berserk branding it as the much-awaited Russian “invasion”. (A reminder: when Israel routinely bombs Syria and when the House of One Saudi routinely bombs Yemeni civilians, there is never any peep in NATOstan media.)

As it stands, realpolitik spells out a possible endgame (see Donetsk’s head, Denis Pushilin: “The special operation in Donbass will soon be over and all the cities will be liberated.”)

We could soon witness the birth of an independent Novorossiya – east of the Dnieper, south along Sea of Azov/Black Sea, the way it was when attached to Ukraine by Lenin in 1922. But now totally aligned with Russia, and providing a land bridge to Transnistria.

Ukraine, of course, would lose any access to the Black Sea.

History loves playing tricks: what was a “gift” to Ukraine in 1922 may become a parting gift a hundred years later.

It’s creative destruction time

It will be fascinating to watch what Prof. Sergey Karaganov masterfully described, in detail, as the new Putin doctrine of constructive destruction , and how it will interconnect with West Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean and further on down the Global South road.

President Erdogan, the ceremonial NATO Sultan, branded the recognition of the Baby Twins as “unacceptable”.

No wonder: that definitely smashed all his elaborate plans to pose as privileged mediator between Moscow and Kiev during Putin’s upcoming visit to Ankara. The Kremlin – as well as the Foreign Ministry – don’t waste time talking to NATO minions.

Lavrov, for his part, had a recent, very productive entente with Syrian Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad. Russia, this past weekend, has staged a spectacular strategic missile display, hypersonic and otherwise, featuring Khinzal, Zircon, Kalibr, Yars ICBMs, Iskander and Sineva – irony of ironies, in synch with the Russophobia-fest in Munich.

In parallel, Russian Navy ships of the Pacific, Northern and Black Sea fleets performed a series of submarine search drills in the Mediterranean.

The Putin doctrine privileges the asymmetrical – and that applies to the near abroad and beyond.

Putin’s body language, in his last two crucial interventions, spell out nearly maximum exasperation.

As in realizing, not auspiciously, but rather in resignation, that the only language those neo-con and “humanitarian” imperialist psychos in the Beltway understand is heavy meal thunder (they are definitely deaf, dumb and blind to History, Geography and Diplomacy, for that matter. Not to mention they never accepted their defeat in Syria.)

So we can always game the Russian military, for instance, imposing a no-fly zone in Syria to conduct a series of visits by Mr. Khinzal not only to the Turk-protected shady jihadist umbrella in Idlib but also the jihadists protected by the Americans in Al-Tanf base, near the Syria-Jordan border. After all these specimens are all NATO proxies.

The United States government barks non-stop about “territorial sovereignty”.

So let’s game the Kremlin asking the White House for a road map on getting out of Syria: after all the Americans are illegally occupying a section of Syrian territory and most of all adding extra disaster to the Syrian economy by stealing their oil.

NATO’s stultifying Stoltenberg has announced the alliance is dusting off its “defense plans”: that may include little more than hide behind their expensive Brussels desks. They are as inconsequential in the Black Sea as in the East Med – as the Empire remains quite vulnerable in Syria.

There are now four Russian TU-22M3 strategic bombers in Hymeimim base, each capable of carrying three S-32 anti-ship missiles that fly at supersonic Mach 4.3 with a range of 1,000 km. No Aegis system is able to handle them.

Russian TU-22M3 strategic bomber.

Russia in Syria also has stationed a few Mig-31Ks in Latakia equipped with hypersonic Khinzals – more than enough to sink any kind of US surface group, including aircraft carriers, in the East Med. The US has no air defense mechanism whatsoever with even a minimal chance of intercepting them.

Mig-31K equipped with hypersonic Khinzal missile.

So the rules have changed.

Drastically.

The Hegemon is naked.

The new deal starts with turning the post-Cold War set-up in Eastern Europe completely upside down.

The East Med will be next.

The Bear is back, baby.

Hear him roar.

Well, what about the ruthless, moronic, idiots running the “West”?

And how will the USA respond?

The Americans are obviously in a state of apoplectic rage and anxiety right now.

The American Overlord will likely descend further into insanity and violence, as its sense of imperial entitlement to rule the world just got pimp slapped by the Russian bear.

Oh, no. You can be sure that they do not like what is going on, and you can be sure that they are ready to just toss the boardgame up in the air in defiant frustration.

What is next is anyones guess, but it just cannot be good.

The collective West will be seething – no Black Sea base near Crimea – their dreams up in smoke again.

So impotent with rage – they get out their sanctions manuals and try and find the worst they can possibly find to hurt Russia and have a fleeting feeling of satisfaction and power until they realise inflation is going through the roof, they have no energy to make anything, their industries start failing, can’t grow anything and they can’t heat their homes. And the glutinous fat cats in the EU have nothing to do and wonder how long their jobs will be around as it was their so clever idea to sanction their main energy supplier and now have no fertilizer to grow anything. The peasants will be bellowing outside wanting their pound of flesh.

You would think that they would just do their pontificating, but I would think that the evil “it’s time for the rapture! Let’s bring on MAD nuclear engagement now!” neocon crowd is pressing for a full scale nuclear “response”.

If that happens, the USA will be completely destroyed.

Bad news. You bet.

But, you know, the Commander did say “little bads, not big bads”. So we will see. One thing is for certain; Imperial hubris meets Karma. And it’s a bitch.

I can tell you that the first reactions are out. Here is from the Jewish Democrat alliance

I didn’t copy the whole thing. I just shake my head. Can they actually BELIEVE what they write? Or is their opinion of American people so so that they think that they will believe it?

"...unprovoked invasion."

Nice small cute and adorable girl

Somehow, she reminds me of a very cute little mouse. Maybe it’s the outfit. Anyways, it’s pretty awesome and what a nice tight little outfit she is wearing. I’ll get that she has all the boys chasing her!

video 3MB

Cheeseburger Pie

Cheeseburger pie.

A classic of 1950s Americana, Cheeseburger Pie is the most comforting of weeknight casseroles: sautéed onion and ground beef, baked under a simple batter of flour, baking powder, eggs, and milk and a rich topping of cheddar cheese. Serve it in thick wedges with an easy celery and romaine heart salad.

Cheeseburger pie. Why not?

Cheeseburger pie slice.

US Foreign Policy Is a Cruel Sport

Bear baiting was long ago banned as inhumane. Yet today, a version is being practiced every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale.

From HERE at the Greenville Post. Another excellent article.

In the time of the first Queen Elizabeth, British royal circles enjoyed watching fierce dogs torment a captive bear for the fun of it. The bear had done no harm to anyone, but the dogs were trained to provoke the imprisoned beast and goad it into fighting back. Blood flowing from the excited animals delighted the spectators.

This cruel practice has long since been banned as inhumane.

And yet today, a version of bear baiting is being practiced every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale. It is called United States foreign policy. It has become the regular practice of the absurd international sports club called NATO.

United States leaders, secure in their arrogance as “the indispensable nation,” have no more respect for other countries than the Elizabethans had for the animals they tormented. The list is long of targets of U.S. bear baiting, but Russia stands out as prime example of constant harassment. And this is no accident. The baiting is deliberately and elaborately planned.

As evidence, I call attention to a 2019 report by the RAND corporation to the U.S. Army chief of staff entitled “Extending Russia.” Actually, the RAND study itself is fairly cautious in its recommendations and warns that many perfidious tricks might not work. However, I consider the very existence of this report scandalous, not so much for its content as for the fact that this is what the Pentagon pays its top intellectuals to do: figure out ways to lure other nations into troubles U.S. leaders hope to exploit.

The official U.S. line is that the Kremlin threatens Europe by its aggressive expansionism, but when the strategists talk among themselves the story is very different. Their goal is to use sanctions, propaganda and other measures to provoke Russia into taking the very sort of negative measures (“over-extension”) that the U.S. can exploit to Russia’s detriment.

The RAND study explains its goals:

“We examine a range of nonviolent measures that could exploit Russia’s actual vulnerabilities and anxieties as a way of stressing Russia’s military and economy and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad. 

The steps we examine would not have either defense or deterrence as their prime purpose, although they might contribute to both. 

Rather, these steps are conceived of as elements in a campaign designed to unbalance the adversary, leading Russia to compete in domains or regions where the United States has a competitive advantage, and causing Russia to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.” 

Clearly, in U.S. ruling circles, this is considered “normal” behavior, just as teasing is normal behavior for the schoolyard bully, and sting operations are normal for corrupt FBI agents.

This description perfectly fits U.S. operations in Ukraine, intended to “exploit Russia’s vulnerabilities and anxieties” by advancing a hostile military alliance onto its doorstep, while describing Russia’s totally predictable reactions as gratuitous aggression.

Diplomacy involves understanding the position of the other party.

But verbal bear baiting requires total refusal to understand the other, and constant deliberate misinterpretation of whatever the other party says or does.

What is truly diabolical is that, while constantly accusing the Russian bear of plotting to expand, the whole policy is directed at goading it into expanding!

Because then we can issue punishing sanctions, raise the Pentagon budget a few notches higher and tighten the NATO Protection Racket noose tighter around our precious European “allies.”

For a generation, Russian leaders have made extraordinary efforts to build a peaceful partnership with “the West,” institutionalized as the European Union and above all, NATO.

They truly believed that the end of the artificial Cold War could produce a peace-loving European neighborhood.

But arrogant United States leaders, despite contrary advice from their best experts, rejected treating Russia as the great nation it is, and preferred to treat it as the harassed bear in a circus.

The expansion of NATO was a form of bear-baiting, the clear way to transform a potential friend into an enemy. That was the way chosen by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and following administrations. Moscow had accepted the independence of former members of the Soviet Union. Bear-baiting involved constantly accusing Moscow of plotting to take them back by force.


Russia’s Borderland


Ukraine is a word meaning borderlands, essentially the borderlands between Russia and the territories to the West that were sometimes part of Poland, or Lithuania, or Habsburg lands.

As a part of the U.S.S.R., Ukraine was expanded to include large swaths of both. History had created very contrasting identities on the two extremities, with the result that the independent nation of Ukraine, which came into existence only in 1991, was deeply divided from the start.

And from the start, Washington strategies, in cahoots with a large, hyperactive anti-communist anti-Russian diaspora in the U.S. and Canada, contrived to use the bitterness of Ukraine’s divisions to weaken first the U.S.S.R. and then Russia. Billions of dollars were invested in order to “strengthen democracy” – meaning the pro-Western west of Ukraine against its semi-Russian east.

The 2014 U.S.-backed coup that overthrew President Viktor Yukanovych, solidly supported by the east of the country, brought to power pro-West forces determined to bring Ukraine into NATO, whose designation of Russia as prime enemy had become ever more blatant.

This caused the prospect of an eventual NATO capture of Russia’s major naval base at Sebastopol, on the Crimean peninsula.

Since the Crimean population had never wanted to be part of Ukraine, the peril was averted by organizing a referendum in which an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to return to Russia, from which they had been severed by an autocratic Khrushchev ruling in 1954.

Western propagandists relentlessly denounced this act of self-determination as a “Russian invasion” foreshadowing a program of Russian military conquest of its Western neighbors – a fantasy supported by neither facts nor motivation.

Appalled by the coup overthrowing the president they had voted for, by nationalists threatening to outlaw the Russian language they spoke, the people of the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk declared their independence.

Russia did not support this move, but instead supported the Minsk agreement, signed in February 2015 and endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution.

The gist of the accord was to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine by a federalization process that would return the breakaway republics in return for their local autonomy.

The Minsk agreement set out a few steps to end the internal Ukrainian crisis.

First, Ukraine was supposed to immediately adopt a law granting self-government to eastern regions (in March 2015).

Next, Kiev would negotiate with eastern territories over guidelines for local elections to be held that year under OSCE supervision.

Then Kiev would implement a constitutional reform guaranteeing eastern right.

After the elections, Kiev would take full control of Donetsk and Lugansk, including border with Russia. A general amnesty would cover soldiers on both sides.

However, although it signed the agreement, Kiev has never implemented any of these points and refuses to negotiate with the eastern rebels.

Under the so-called Normandy agreement, France and Germany were expected to put pressure on Kiev to accept this peaceful settlement, but nothing happened.

Instead, the West has accused Russia of failing to implement the agreement, which makes no sense inasmuch as the obligations to implement fall on Kiev, not on Moscow.

Kiev officials regularly reiterate their refusal to negotiate with the rebels, while demanding more and more weaponry from NATO powers in order to deal with the problem in their own way.

Meanwhile, major parties in the Russian Duma and public opinion have long expressed concern for the Russian-speaking population of the eastern provinces, suffering from privations and military attack from the central government for eight years.

This concern is naturally interpreted in the West as a remake of Hitler’s drive to conquest neighboring countries.

However, as usual the inevitable Hitler analogy is baseless. For one thing, Russia is too large to need to conquer Lebensraum.

You Want an Enemy? Now You’ve Got One

Germany has found the perfect formula for Western relations with Russia: Are you or are you not a “Putinversteher,” a “Putin understander?” By Putin they mean Russia, since the standard Western propaganda ploy is to personify the targeted country with the name of its president, Vladimir Putin, necessarily a dictatorial autocrat. If you “understand” Putin, or Russia, then you are under deep suspicion of disloyalty to the West. So, all together now, let us make sure that we DO NOT UNDERSTAND Russia!

Russian leaders claim to feel threatened by members of a huge hostile alliance, holding regular military manoeuvers on their doorstep? They feel uneasy about nuclear missiles aimed at their territory from nearby NATO member states? Why, that’s just paranoia, or a sign of sly, aggressive intentions. There is nothing to understand.

So, the West has treated Russia like a baited bear.

And what it’s getting is a nuclear-armed, militarily powerful adversary nation led by people vastly more thoughtful and intelligent than the mediocre politicians in office in Washington, London and a few other places.

U.S. President Joe Biden and his Deep State never wanted a peaceful solution in Ukraine, because troubled Ukraine acts as a permanent barrier between Russia and Western Europe, ensuring U.S. control over the latter.

They have spent years treating Russia as an adversary, and Russia is now drawing the inevitable conclusion that the West will accept it only as an adversary.

The patience is at an end. And this is a game changer.

First reaction: the West will punish the bear with sanctions! Germany is stopping certification of the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline. Germany thus refuses to buy the Russian gas it needs in order to make sure Russia won’t be able to cut off the gas it needs sometime in the future. Now that’s a clever trick, isn’t it! And meanwhile, with a growing gas shortage and rising prices, Russia will have no trouble selling its gas somewhere else in Asia.

When “our values” include refusal to understand, there is no limit to how much we can fail to understand.

The Fall Of Utopia: Absolutely Amazing Digital Art Works Of Quin Wu

This brutalist interpretation of a McDonald’s in Russia forms part of architect Quin Wu’s artwork series “Big Mac in Snow”, which bridges the gap between two confrontational ideologies—Soviet Russia and the ultra-capitalist fast food franchise.

In his work, Quin Wu gives us a clear understanding of how fragile the balance is in today’s society. And how easy it is today to fall into the abyss between good and evil.

“All images posted here are my personal work. They are computer generated renderings. The architectural themes range from house designs to environment scenes to social critiques.

During the peak of Covid-19 on 2020, I gave it a try to learn some programs that are commonly used in the game industry.

I am a believer that tools are extension of the mind. Gradually polishing skills in modeling, texturing, compositing, rendering etc., I am able to materialize some of my thoughts into actual images. It has been a very fun journey,” he writes.

Here’s another.

And yet another.

Some nonsense from the Western Press

China has lifted restrictions on Russian wheat and barley as of yesterday, the day Russia invaded Ukraine.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is criticising the move

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Meanwhile, Defence Minister Peter Dutton says China could persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the invasion
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Defence Minister Peter Dutton is an idiot.
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RUSSIAN economic sanctions in response to the “Sanctions from Hell” from Biden / NATO

The United States imposed a series of economic sanctions upon Russia this week (last week of February 2022) in response to the recognition by Russia of Luhansk and Donetsk as “Independent states.”

In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry said today “new US sanctions will be met by a ‘strong response’, ‘sensitive for the American side.’

NATO / US sanctions:

The EU imposed sanctions against 351 State Duma deputies who voted for the recognition of the DPR and LPR, as well as against 27 individuals and organizations. Then, EU EXEC. VP DOMBROVSKIS ANNOUNCED: “IF RUSSIAN SOLDIERS ENTER UKRAINE BEYOND SEPARATIST-CONTROLLED, SELF-PROCLAIMED REPUBLICS, THE EU IS PREPARED TO IMPOSE A SECOND SET OF SANCTIONS ON MOSCOW.”

RUSSIAN retalitory sanctions;

Secretary of the General Council of United Russia and Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Andrey Turchak said that Russia is indifferent to the sanctions imposed by the West and their consequences.

When asked what options the Russians might employ against such Sanctions, an Intelligence Analyst source responded in a general manner…

  • Russia could close airspace to civil airlines of the countries that sanction Russia. That would be hugely disruptive to international flights.
  • Russia could declare that Russian exports must now be paid for in Rubles, gold, etc.
  • Russia could stop all sales of anything to USA (space rocket motors and oil especially).
  • Russia could break all contracts with countries that sanction Russia on the grounds that a state of hostility exists. That is, all oil and gas deliveries stop immediately.
  • Russia could announce that no more gas will be shipped to or through Ukraine on the grounds that a state of hostility exists. Russia won’t sanction anyone. They don’t play with gloves. They will stop the natural gas deliveries to Europe, and the entire world economy collapses.
  • Assuming a fantasy best case scenario (fantasy, because it will NEVER happen), Europe’s LNG terminal unloading capacity, even working 100%, 24/7, assuming a non-stop stream of tankers, can only match under 17% of what Russia delivers. Needless to say, European economy goes belly up the next day, and the WESTERN world will follow.
  • And when that happens, countries automatically pivot direct to war. A lot, including the US, get granted war powers that allow the state…
    • to seize the means of production and distribution,
    • set price controls,
    • require civilians to operate and maintain critical infrastructure
    • being drafted/forced into service,
    • set curfew and movement restrictions,
    • suspend constitutions and civil rights,, etc.
  • It can get very draconian very quickly. But will not change the outcome : full economical collapse.
  • Add to that the pure mad-max SHTF when the is no food in the cities. There isn’t much a government can do, TODAY, that can avoid the worst case scenario.
    • We’re NOT in 1916 or 1940, when most of the world lived on country-side, and produced food.
    • We’re not in 1916 or 1940, when the supply chains were extremely short (hell, you could use carriages then to supply the economy and the people).
    • We’re in 2022, after 2 years of constant economic decline, millions of companies that went bankrupt, an inflation that needs just a nudge to go up faster then an hyper-sonic missile, and supply chains that are thousands of miles long. Maters not what government do, it’s going to be the biggest SHTF ever. Most likely the last SHTF.
  • Russia and China would roll out their counter-SWIFT. It’s already in prototype stage, and ready to “turnkey” into operation.
  • They could abandon the “petrodollar” too. That would FUCK everyone in the WEST. Most especially those in Europe and the Untied States because they don’t have any gold. All they have is paper.

Nice Chinese girl with a filter

I guess it is a generational thing, but a lot of the Chiense girls like to use these “filters” and decorate their videos with them. They are really quite awesome, and some are jsut silly while others are funny. Check out the filters on this woman. Watch how they follow her face and movment. The tracting and positioning are exceptional!

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The collapse of Banderastan: tomorrow will be a crucial day

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I am getting emails from all types of sources about Ukrainian cities already being liberated.  The problem is that there are, as predicted, A LOT of fakes out there, including from anti-Putin Russian interests.  So rather than risk getting it wrong and list those cities, I will just offer a few comments and then take a break.

Enormous Operation

I was expecting an operational-level Russian operation, but what I see today this is clearly a strategic operation. This is way bigger than what I expected.

In the eary phases

We are in the very early phases of the operation, but I see all the usual signs of a Ukrainian strategic collapse.  By tomorrow morning we should know a lot more.

The initial strke was very successful

The first strike phase of the operation has been extremely successful and the Ukrainian ground forces are now not only without any kind of cover or support (the Ukie Air Force and Navy passed away today), they are also without orders: not only has the Ukronazi HQ in the Donbass been totally destroyed, the Russians are, no doubt, putting down their EW blanket on the full area of operations.

Operational envelopment to be completed soon

I think that by tomorrow evening the operational envelopment of the Ukie forces in the eastern Ukraine will be completed.  After that, only two types of Ukie soldiers will be left: those who surrendered and the dead.

Major cities are secured

The Russians have either approached or even  surrounded several major Ukrainian cities.  I won’t list them now.  Why?  Because by tomorrow we will have that list confirmed.

Belarus

Belarus is fully backing Russia (Lukashenko was very emphatic about that today), as does Iran.  Our Chinese friends have been rather restrained and proffered only well-intended generalities, let’s see if that changes in the future.

Narrative is out of control

I also suspect that tomorrow will be the last day for the US PSYOPs to try to control the narrative, after that there will be too many cellphones with cameras to conceal the magnitude of the disaster.

For this reason, I still expect a major false flag.

Refugees

The Poles and Hungarians have declared that they fear a massive influx of refugees and that they are therefore deploying more forces to the border to “control the situation”.  These forces could be easily and quickly moved inside the Western Ukraine to seize the Lvov and Ivano-Frankovsk regions.  Best of all (for them) is that they can be pretty sure that the Russians won’t object.  And with all the NATO facilities in the Ukraine being destroyed right now, the Russians can toss this (mostly Nazi) and faraway bone to whoever in the EU who wants it (The Hungarians are probably too smart for that, but the Poles???).  Whatever may be the case, I expect a minor NATO operation into the western Ukraine in the next couple of days.  Frankly, I couldn’t care less.

Major Risks

Another MAJOR risk is the presence in the Ukraine of A LOT of very dangerous part of the civilian infrastructure (including 15 nuclear reactors which barely function)  The Ukies have already blown up at least one (pretty small) damn near Lugansk.  I hope that the Russian and Belarusian special forces will secure these facilities as soon as humanely possible.

Russian Black Sea fleet

Next: watch the Russian Black Sea fleet.  Something tells me that tomorrow we will see it A LOT and, probably, along the entire Ukie coast.

No long-term occupancy

Last but not least.  Iraq has shown that it is one thing to destroy an army, and quite another to deal with an insurgency, even one armed with only small arms and RPGs.  I remain categorically opposed to any Russian mid/long occupation of the Ukraine.  I am confident that Putin will soon declare the end of major combat operations (if only because there won’t be many enemies left) and that many Russian forces will begin a pullback.

But the nightmare of having hundreds of thousands of assault rifles distributed to “the population” but which, in reality, armed what NATO will want to see as a “stay behind insurgency” will begin.  And I want the Ukrainians to fight that battle by themselves, with some Russian help if needed, but not by hiding behind Russian forces.

So A LOT really depends on the people of the Ukraine: the coming days will show us who and what they are.  Now is the time for them to do the right thing.

That’s it.  I wish we had more info, but here we need to stop and wait.

By tomorrow we will know A LOT more.

Goodnight everybody

Andrei

A new American political party…

Here is the statement from the newest political party in the States – The National Justice Party:

The National Justice Party hopes that the situation can be resolved with as little bloodshed as possible on all sides and considers the spilling of any Russian or Ukrainian blood a tragedy. We reject the false and childish narratives about the conflict that are being promoted in Western media and place the lion’s share of blame for the escalation on the shoulders of the US and NATO, who have instigated this crisis from the beginning and cynically lied to their own citizens.

President Biden has vowed to make Russia pay a steep price, but the only people he is capable of making pay anything are Americans and European citizens. Oil and natural gas prices are expected to spike even further as a result of the conflict, placing the burden for US/NATO geopolitical games on ordinary Americans and Europeans who have no interest in a hostile relationship with Russia. On February 22nd the German government, under orders from NATO, revoked the certification for the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, thus putting the project that would alleviate the energy bills of millions of Germans in further jeopardy.

Nice Chinese girl in her home

And she is nice. Why not enjoy a fine cup of coffee while sitting down and listening to mellow jazz?

video

China point fingers at the United States for the Russian operations

https://www.rt.com/russia/550497-china-russia-ukraine-reaction/

China has blamed the US for creating the tensions which led to Thursday’s Russian attack on Ukraine. Beijing further called on the international community to avoid “stoking panic” over the situation.

During a press briefing, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the key question was the role played by the Americans, whom she branded “the [main] culprit of current tensions.

If someone keeps pouring oil on the flames while accusing others of not doing their best to put out the fire, such kind of behavior is clearly irresponsible and immoral,” Hua said. China objects to “any action that hypes up war,” she added.

Chunying accused the US of hypocrisy, asking whether Washington had respected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq and Afghanistan, where she said it had “wantonly killed innocent people.” She called on the US to “take these questions seriously and abandon double standards.”
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Describing the unfolding events as “complex,” the spokeswoman confirmed that Beijing was not providing military support to Russia, and said China was not “jumping to any conclusions” over the situation.

She called on all sides to “work for peace instead of increasing tensions” or “stoking panic.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a military attack on Ukraine on Thursday, which he said was aimed at demilitarizing and “denazifying” the country. He accused the West of flooding Ukraine with advanced weaponry and ramping up the NATO presence in the country, arguing that the Russian “special operation” was necessary to protect the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which Moscow has recognized as sovereign states.

Russia’s military action has prompted an international outcry and threats of new, large-scale sanctions. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Thursday that Kiev had cut diplomatic ties with Moscow.

Nice Caddy

Now, this is one dream car that I would be just proud to drive about in. I love everything about this scene. From the burgandy color of the car, to the fine slacks on that cute blonde next to that lucky man.

Washington, DC

Nice Chinese girl

Well, here in China, you won’t see too many natural blondes, but you will see a lot of fine attractive women. Like this gal, for instance…

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A few disjointed thoughts about the current military situation

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I parsed some info source and I can offer a few quick reactions to what is taking place.  The operation is bigger than what I had predicted.  However, I STILL don’t believe that Russia wants to invade the Ukraine.

Let’s first see what Russia has already done using ONLY HER STANDOFF WEAPONS:

      • The Ukrainian air defenses have ceased to exist
      • The Ukrainian air force has ceased to exist
      • The Ukrainian navy has ceased to exist
      • The Ukrainian command and control are severely disrupted with many command posts destroyed
      • All the military airfields in the Ukraine are now not operational
      • Numerous supply dumps of ammo, petroleum and lubricants have been destroyed.
      • Russia controls the entire Ukie airspace and all the Ukie coastal waters in the Black and Azov seas.

Next, let’s see what LDNR and Russian forces are, apparently, doing right now:

      • The LDNR forces have broken through the Ukie defenses in two locations and have penetrated 7-10km behind the LOC.
      • These forces advanced with fire support from Russia
      • The Ukie forces have built fortifications for 8 years, so the progress against the bulk of the Ukie ground forces is slow.  HOWEVER
      • It appears that the Russian have decided to encircle the entire Ukronazi force on the Donbass by a pincer movement from the north and south

It is my opinion that Russia will encircle the Ukie forces, the entire Ukrainian force along the LOC and then wait for them to surrender thereby minimizing losses on both sides.  In other words, the Russians are trying to lock the Ukies in an operational cauldron and basically remove these forces from the equation.

Second, Putin has clearly stated the Russian goals: demilitarize and denazify the Ukraine.

The first element, disarmament, is already well under way.

The denazification implies some kind of regime change.  There are reports of Russian forces near Kiev and I believe that a “hunt for Nazis” will be conducted in one way or another.

Interestingly, the Russians have totally surrounded the city of Kharkov, but have not moved in (yet).  This makes perfect military sense, but it also signals, or so it seems to me, that Russia wants to avoid as much as can be to get involved in offensive combat operations in big cities and also wants to avoid killing civilians. Mind you, the military which could take Grozny in 2000 can *easily* and *quickly* storm any Ukie city (if only because Ukies and Chechens are almost polar opposites in terms of their combat abilities).  But why do through the bother?

When possible, the Russian will surround the Ukie cities, blockade them and wait for the white flags to appear.

Whether that is possible or not I can’t tell, and what will happen to Mariupol next will be interesting: this time, yes, the city shall be liberated, but it will be interesting to see how much resistance the LDNR/Russian forces will encounter.

BTW – does anybody now about any webcams/geocams for Mariupol?

Intermediate conclusions:

Basically, this 08.08.08 on a much larger scale: move in, disarm, withdraw.

My guesses (not more, it is waaaay too early to tell!) is that:

      • The Ukie forces along the LOC will be surrounded and neutralized.  Once that goal in achieved, most of the Ukrainian ground threat will simply disappear.  True Nazis will be shot, the rest disarmed and sent home.  Their weapons will go to the LDNR.
      • LDNR and Russia forces will advance deep inside the Ukraine, but only to execute specific missions, after which they will be pulled back to the legal border of the LDNR (with a few exception possible for specific, local reasons).
      • The Ukronazi leadership will run away and Kabul like scenes are possible.  Some will be caught.

The Nazi regime in Kiev will be regime changed to some other regime which will accept a Russian ceasefire and the opening of direct negotiations with both the LDNR and Russia.  Eventually, a general ceasefire will be proclaimed.

I still think that a NATO (Polish?) ground operation into the Lvov and Ivano-Frankovsk regions is likely.  Officially to “protect our allies and friends” but in reality with two goals:

      • Save face
      • Establish a mini-Banderastan under Polish control in western Ukraine
      • Feed the hyena of Europe

The Kremlin might think otherwise, but I don’t have a problem with that as long as a semi-civilized and semi-sane regime is put in power in Kiev.

There will be elections, of course, which nobody in the West will initially recognize.  That’s fine.  Nobody in Russia cares about Uncle Shmuel or his Euro-rodents.

Now Biden (I forced myself to listen to him, again!) is aping Obama and promises that sanctions from hell will cripple Russia.  Bernhard, at Moon of Alabama, made an interesting comment today: “The Russian stock market is down but gold, oil and gas are up and Russia has so far lost zero money“.  I am sure that he is correct.

And, yes, in the short to mid term, sanctions will also have some negative effects on some sectors of the Russian economy.  However, in the mid to long term I think that energy costs will provide Russia with a real windfall of money.  At the Russian SC meeting, Mishustin appeared to be fully relaxed, focused and calm.

Besides, as I mentioned yesterday, the recent surge in energy prices over the past month have already refunded Russia all the money invested into NS2, and that is BEFORE the (inevitably upcoming) lawsuits against Germany 🙂

In a recent post I “recognized” both President Biden and Chancellor Scholtz for doing everything in their power to force Russia to intervene.

Today I want to recognize the truly immense contribution of “Ze” himself, and the Nazi nutcases around him.  He was the first to mention that Banderastan wanted to acquire nuclear weapons.  The Nazi nutcases in the Ukie regime and social media immediately picked up this truly “brilliant” idea.

I want to sincerely thank “Ze” specifically for:

      • Forcing the Russian to intervene (Nazi and nukes are a bad combo in any Russian’s mind!)
      • Giving them a legal basis to do so under Art. 51 of the UN Charter

Frankly, “Ze” did a lot for Russia, and I think that Putin should let him flee to the West.  But the one guy I want to see in handcuffs and tried in Odessa is Aleksei Goncharenko.

Yeah, I did say in Odessa, didn’t I?

Which brings me to one more possibility: Russia cannot leave the Ukie Black Sea coast under any kind of Nazi or pro-NATO control.  Hopefully, the next regime in power in Kiev can deal with that, and Russia can help if needed.  But if not, I think that the Black Sea Fleet might have to conduct the operations needed to make sure that no part of the Black Sea coast is ever used to threaten Russia again.

I would MUCH prefer if the Ukrainian people themselves cleaned their own house.  But if they can’t, then, okay, Russia can help as long as her intervention is temporary.

In fact, I would categorically oppose any longterm Russian intervention in the Ukraine beyond the LDNR.  I don’t think that it will happen anyway.  But a short term denazification operation might be unavoidable and I accept that.

Putin had no good option left.  Russia, as a nation, had no good options left.  So they chose the “least bad option” possible.  So far, I like what I see very much.

But while the initial standoff strikes are now mostly over, it will take time to liberate, disarm and stabilize the LDNR and the Ukrainian territories adjacent to it.

Also, I can’t imagine the CIA/MI6/Bellincat/CNN and the rest of them not executing at least ONE major false flag of some kind.  Not because that will change anything, but because that is what they are (kinda) good at.

Last, and very deliberately least, its over for the EU.  The EU was always a US colony, but now it will sink to a new low with Europeans losing any remnants, however tiny, of self-respect they might have retained.  From now on, the EU is Uncle Shmuel’s punkass bitch (forgive the profanity, but that is what fits best in my opinion).  All I can say about that is this: those who have no self-respect cannot expect to be respected by others.

That’s it on my end.

Your turn now.

Cheers

Andrei

American Biolabs in the Ukraine

The US biowarfare labs have been i the back of my mind for a while now. Since they (mostly) seem to be located next to Russian borders (I wonder why?), would it be better to use standoff weapons to incinerate these labs and all the materials inside of them, or capture them and remove or destroy the biowarfare agents very carefully? No easy answers.

Other info was provided.

Apparently Putin is targeting all the bioweapons sites with direct missile hits and destruction.

And now, the Chinese are stepping up to the plate with their own warnings for the out-of-control moronic United States…

PLA general warn US over Taiwan… With the words “or else… “

From HERE and Tiktok.

Or, video on MM.

Some of the latest formal statements

DPR head Pushilin

“The special military operation in Donbass will soon be over and all the cities will be liberated.”

Russian Defense Ministry

“According to intelligence, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ troops and service members are leaving their positions in large numbers, dropping their weapons. No strikes are being carried out on the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ units that have laid down their arms.”

China FM spox accuses US of ‘inciting war’ in Ukraine

Hua Chunying has said the Russia-Ukraine situation reflects a “complex historical background,” after Moscow implemented a “military operation” in Donbass.

The FM spox accused Western media of using the word “invasion” but did not when US military decided to initiate ‘armed actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.’

She continued to lambast Washington for its role – condemning America for ‘hyping up tensions and inciting war, while selling over $1.5BN worth of weapons.’

Peskov

The demilitarization of Ukraine, which is one of the goals of the Russian military operation, means the neutralization of its military potential

Nice Chinese girl

Let’s wrap this all up on a positive note…

Some fine “eye candy”. Keep in mind that according to the American and UK press “news” that the Chinese are terribly malnourshed, starving waif in need of freedom™ and democracy™. They jsut cannot wait to adopt the “American way of life”,  become a transexual and shart a showing some enormous booty!

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Wrapping everything up in my concluding statements

This is a time of enormous change. The balance has recentered and the fulcrum is now in the favor of Asia. The Western “leaders” are scrambling, and theya re in Check Mate. No matter what they do will cause hardship for them. All they can do is quite limited.

  • Flip the table and destroy the world in a MAD nuclear senario.
  • Try to minimize the damage as much as possible.

My guess is the idiots will do something terribly irrational, erratic, and dangerous. (As if they haven’t already.)

Buckle up.

Remain calm.

It’s like jumping into a pool of icy cold water. Once you get over the shock, it becomes rather nice there.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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It is happening

First, "President" Zelensky was widely reported to have FLED Ukraine, now we have VIDEO PROOF of Speaker of the House FLEEING too!   Real "men" these guys!   You see, folks, when I talked about "soy-boy cucks on the radio last night . . . THIS is exactly what I meant.  All these government types are real bad-asses when they talk, but when they get a punch in the face, they run like little girls.  

- Hal Turner Radio Show "WAR" edition

The chess pieces have been moving into place for years now. But the global realignments have been taking place. They have rarely been reported on, and in stealth mode for some time. All the while, American Presidents came and went. Each one adding their own flavor of insanity to the mix as the United States undergoes collapse.

Here, right now, the visible face of “check” leading toward the inevitable “check mate” has roared forth. And we are going to talk about it here.

The United States had a plan.

And has been following that plan for a long time. It has been doing so religiously. Elements of that plan were established early on, back when George Bush Senior was President. And followed in planned stages over the last forty some years.

The architects of that plan are now long dead.

Those that have taken on their reins or responsibilities are simply not capable, and extraordinary inadequate, for realistic and substantive planning and operations of a strategic nature.

And we are all observing this clusterfuck of great incompetence, silliness, danger and extraordinarily folly.

Not just in the United States, but in all their minions, and proxy nations.

But you know, and should realize, that regardless of who the American President has been, and what they have done, both Russia and China have been planning for the eventual collapse of the United States, and how to manage it globally.

Of course, it’s not reported upon.

Real secrets are kept really secret.

So all the time that America; the United States postured itself globally, and ran this project, or that project, the plans by Russia and China have been moving and being implemented. And while the current crop of American “leadership” worries about LGBT fairness, diversity justice, and increasing its military capability…

… a united Asia is unveiling the final touches to a massive and brilliant execution of Global Geo-politics for a global national power realignment.

No. “Check mate” hasn’t been reached yet.

But, it’s close. Only two to three steps away.

Close to Check Mate.

We are going to discuss that. Because these are historical times, and a very risky period where a crazy, insane, out of control thrashing American Military Empire ruled and controlled by egotistic idiots is capable of any, and the most heinous, acts of madness.

America is gone

The first thing that everyone must realize is that America; the United States, is gone.

It no longer exists.

It hasn’t for decades. It is dead. And like the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s” everyone believes that it is still functional, capable, and healthy. Nothing can be further from the truth.

It is dead.

Weekend at Bernie’s.

But, the thing is, that the illusion of power, control and health is being painstakingly maintained by a ruthless and well-funded media megaphone. It has reached a point, that America has become; turned into, a giant “echo chamber”, and Americans, and the Leadership actually believe their illusions.

It’s terrible, actually.

So, yeah. America is thrashing about wildly and acting absolutely insane. And it’s “allies”, it’s surrogates, are in suicidal lock-step as America marches straight into the “check mate” positioning by a united Asia.

The build up towards the final positioning has been accelerating over the last few months. It’s now out in the open and happening fast.

  • The non-ultimatum sent to the United States
  • China and Russia alignment at the 2022 Olympics.
  • Russia recognizing the breakaway regions of the Ukraine.
  • And America following their long-established road map…

A road map that both Russia and China have copies of, and of which they know exactly what America plans to do, when and how.

The birth of the baby twins: Russia’s strategic swing drives NATOstan nuts

Soy-Boy, Beta-Male, Cucks -- that is what serves in government!  And the ones here in the USA are just like this too!   Remember Jan. 6 how they hid in their offices in the Capital, barred the doors with office furniture, and now can't stop whining about the so-called "insurrection?"  Government officials are beta-male, soy-boy, cucks and the sooner we start treating them that way, the sooner we will get our country back under our control. 

-Hal Turner

By Pepe Escobar

(Written this morning in Istanbul, BEFORE Putin buried the Minsk agreements. Everything else – and beyond – stands.)

History will register that the birth of the baby twins – Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics – only a few hours before 2/22/22, was simultaneous to the birth of the real, 21st century multipolar world.

      • Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR)
      • Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR)

As my columns have stressed for a few years now, Vladimir Putin has been carefully nurturing his inner Sun Tzu.

And now it’s all in the open:

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

The thunderbolt was months in the process of being meticulously polished.

To paraphrase Lenin, who “created Ukraine” (copyright Putin), we did live many decades in only these past few days.

      • It all started with the detailed demands of security guarantees sent to the Americans, which Moscow knew would be rejected.  (The so called “non-ultimatum”.)
      • Then there was the Russia-China joint statement at the start of the Winter Olympics – which codifies not only the strategic partnership but also the key tenets of the multipolar world.
      • The culmination was a stunning, nearly one hour-long address to the nation by Putin shortly after the Russian Security Council live session deliberating on the request for independence by the DPR and the LPR (here is a condensed version.)

A few hours later, at an emergency UN Security Council meeting, Russian Permanent Representative Vasily Nebenzya precisely outlined why the recognition of the baby twins does not bury the Minsk agreements.

The baby twins (DPR & LPR) actually declared their independence in May 2014.

In 2015 they signed the Minsk agreements as one of the interested parties.

Theoretically they could even be back within Ukraine if Kiev would ever decide to respect the agreements, (which will never happen because the US has vetoed it since 2015).

Moreover, the people of Donbass do not want to be subjected to a regime harboring neo-Nazis.

As Nebenzya outlined,

“I would like to remind you that at the time of the conclusion of the Minsk agreements, the LPR and DPR had already declared independence. 

The fact that Russia today recognized it does not change the composition of the parties to the Minsk agreements, since Russia is not one (…) 

Another thing is that the Minsk agreements have long been openly sabotaged by Ukraine under the auspices of our Western colleagues. 

Now we see that many colleagues want to sign that the Minsk agreements are dead. 

But this is not the case (…) 

We are still open to diplomacy, but we do not intend to allow a new bloody massacre in the Donbass.”

And here’s the clincher, directly addressing imperial support for the killing of ethnic Russians in Donbass:

“The main task of our decision [on recognizing independence] was to preserve and protect these lives. 

This is more important than all your threats.”

There you go: Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a concept invented by the Americans to launch wars, used by Russia for preventing one.

That certified nullity, German chancellor Scholz, deriding Putin’s characterization of a genocide in Donbass as “laughable”, was a decisive factor in the birth of the baby wins.

Putin, in his address to the nation, especially took time to detail the Odessa massacre:

“We cannot but shudder when we remember about the situation in Odessa, when people were burned alive (…) 

And those criminals who did this, they are not punished (…) 

But we know their names, and we will do everything to punish them (…) and to bring them to justice.”

What about China?

Geopolitically, in Eurasian terms, two huge questions stand out: [1] the role of the CSTO and [2] the response from China.

If we look at the Article 19, Chapter VI of the  CSTO charter, we learn that,

“any state sharing the goals and principles of the Organization and being ready to undertake the obligations containing in this Charter and other international treaties and resolutions effective within the framework of the Organization may become a member of the Organization.”

That would open the door for the baby twins, as soon as they have finalized all the bureaucratic endeavors pertaining to new, independent nations, to request CSTO membership.

Incidentally, CSTO secretary-general Pashinian has already gone to Moscow to discuss this exact issue.

China is a way more complex proposition.

One of the key tenets of Beijing’s foreign policy is the fight against separatism – embedded in the foundation of the SCO.

So Beijing cannot possibly recognize the baby twins, or what would amount to Novorossiya – yes, Putin did pronounce the magic word – before Kiev itself does or, a serious possibility, completely disintegrates.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry so far has been extremely cautious.

Wang Yi has reiterated;

“China’s long-standing position that the legitimate security concerns of all countries must be respected, and the purposes & principles of the UN Charter must be upheld.”

Further on down the road, presumably after some serious exchanges between Wang Yi and Lavrov, China can always find myriad ways to unofficially help the baby twins – including advancing BRI-related connectivity and sustainable development projects.

As for Kiev disintegration, that’s directly linked to Moscow demanding the immediate stop of the mini-blitzkrieg against Donbass, otherwise they will bear full responsibility.

Yes, regime stalwarts will be hunted and punished – complete with a possible War Crimes Tribunal.

Its no wonder all sorts of oligarchic/political rats, big and small, are scurrying away, to Lviv, Poland and the UK.

The Munich effect

The intervention of all 12 members at the Security Council session, combined with Putin’s address to the nation was the stuff of gripping geopolitical drama.

Putin’s body language and the look in his eyes testified to the immense gravity of the moment – and it all came to the forefront when he embarked in a concise history lesson spanning a century.

Barely containing his anger at the countless ways Russia has been vilified by the West, and taking no prisoners when referring to communism, what mostly stood out was the clear-cut rendition of the insurmountable antagonism between the Anglo-American islands and the civilizational Heartland – or the clash between maritime powers and land powers.

That Eurasia classic was the bulk of his exposition: the recognition of the baby twins took less than three minutes.

The Munich Security Conference, this past weekend, had made it all so explicit.

Munich, as terrifying as it was in terms of a congregation of headless chickens posing as eagles, at least confirmed everything is in the open.

      • The enemy is Russia.
      • NATO infinite expansion – to outer space – is against Russia.
      • And then we had a parade of add-on threats:
        • no disarmament in Eastern Europe,
        • cutting off the Russian economy from the EU,
        • end of Nord Stream 2,
        • Ukraine in NATO,
        • world order built on “universal liberal values”.

Munich spelled out No Compromise Whatsoever – which was exactly what Putin, Lavrov, Patrushev and co. expected.

The warmongering rhetoric burying any meaningful discussion of migration, inflation, cyber wars, the European energy crisis.

And, of course, the only thing that matters for the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex, as defined by Ray McGovern):

      • Let’s milk this Eurotrash lot for untold billions in new contracts.
      • Let’s isolate Russia.
      • Let’s destroy Nord Stream 2 to sell them our ultra expensive LNG.
      • Let’s keep them on a leash – forever.

So actually it’s not even war against Russia: the $30 trillion-indebted Empire with a woke military attached simply could not afford it.

Not to mention the certified freak out in case they receive a phone call from Mr. Khinzal and Mr. Zircon : cue to the spectacular Russian display of “military and technical” superiority, hypersonic and otherwise – staged, irony of ironies, in synch with the circus in Munich.

What we have here is so lame: just a lowlife offer-you-can’t-refuse racket to be inflicted on the EU.

The Indivisible Security dance

The rabid Munich “No Compromise” show; the imperially-ordered Ukro crypto-blitzkrieg against Donbass; and the role of the US Lack of Intelligence Community – an Andrei Martyanov-coined howler – altogether sealed the deal for the Security Council deliberations and Putin’s decision.

Considering the ideological stupidity of the current Brussels gang – Stoltenberg, von der Leyen, Borrell –, incapable of understanding even basic economics, the fact remains that the EU without Russian energy is doomed.

Martyanov stresses the algorithm: Russia can afford the break up with Europe. Europe cannot.

The US just wants to collect.

And we’re not even talking about the dire, incoming ramifications of the systemic crisis across NATOstan.

Even as Moscow plays a very long, calculated game, as it stands that does not necessarily mean that Russia will be “winning” the baby twins while “losing” Europe.

Russia’s strategic swing repeatedly baffles the Atlanticist combo.

The US lack of intelligence community was predicting a Russian “aggression” every other day – and still is.

Instead they got the baby twins as the latest independent republics of the Global South.

Even before Munich, the Ukro crypto-blitzkrieg, and the recognition of the baby twins, Moscow had again warned it may respond with “military and technical measures” to ensure its own security after the US and NATO blatantly ignored key points from its proposal for a long-term European security architecture, and instead “cherry-picked” issues from a package deal.

Moscow will not let the Americans run away from the by now notorious 10-page Russian response.

Putin, addressing the Stavka, had already warned

“we are in a situation (…) where we are forced to resolve it.”

Which bring us to what John Helmer niftly qualified as Russia’s black box defense.

The beauty is no one knows what’s inside the black box.

Enter, once again, the “military-technical measures” that will be “reciprocal” (Putin) to what US and NATOstan are already deploying against Russia.

They won’t necessarily be implemented in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, in the airspace above Donbass, even in cyberspace.

It could be anywhere – from the Syrian theater to Latin America. From Brussels to New York City.

Surprise!

That’s what strategic ambivalence, ambiguity, or – let’s get down to the rhythm – swing is all about.

You don’t believe in the principle of indivisible security?

  • Fine.

Now we dictate the security rhythm.

You’re not gonna stop deploying nuclear weapons outside your territory?

  • Fine.

Here’s some reciprocity.

You’re not gonna accept legally binding guarantees of our security?

  • Fine.

Meet our “military-technical” measures.

Now dance, suckers.

Scenes from the Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized a military operation in Ukraine on Thursday 24FEB22 in what appeared to be the start of war in Europe. The reason for this war is that Russia demanded that NATO and the United States agreed to the treaties that they signed. These treaties pledges no NATO’s eastward expansion, and no nuclear weapons placed near Russian boarders.

He’s sending the Russian army into LNR/DNR, or rather a “Special army operation aimed at demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine to protect people against genocide.

His goal is the demilitarization of Ukraine as well as putting those responsible for attacks upon Donetsk and Luhansk on trial.

In his speech, Putin also said…

"I must appeal to the military of Ukraine, you swore an oath to the people, not the junta, I urge you to immediately lay down your arms and go home. All Ukrainian servicemen who lay down their arms will be able to return to their families.”

There are reports that entire groups are following this advice, and putting their weapons down on the spot and fleeing in droves.

Shortly after Putin spoke in a special televised address on Russian state TV, explosions could be heard in the pre-dawn quiet of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Gunfire rattled near the capital’s main airport, the Interfax news agency said.

Explosions also rocked the breakaway eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk and civilian aircraft were warned away as the United States said a major attack by Russia on its neighbor was imminent.

Putin said he had authorized a special military operation in breakaway areas of eastern Ukraine and clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces were only a matter of time.

Hours earlier, pro-Russian separatists issued a plea to Moscow for help to stop alleged Ukrainian aggression.  This was dismissed by the United States as Russian propaganda.

Putin said he had ordered Russian forces to protect the people and demanded Ukrainian forces lay down their arms.

"All responsibility for bloodshed will be on the conscience of the ruling regime in Ukraine," .

He repeated his position that NATO expansion to include Ukraine was unacceptable and said Russia had been left with no choice but to defend itself against what he said were threats emanating from Ukraine.

He ended his speech with remarks that seems to be aimed directly at the US and NATO:

"To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside: if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history. All relevant decisions have been taken. I hope you hear me."

The scope of the Russian military operation was not immediately clear.  However, Russian Strategic Bombers are in the air right now.

Russian Strategic Bomber Voice HF active on 8131 Kilohertz USB at 0215 GMT.

Aircraft are passing short figure messages to ground control. Very busy!

You can monitor the frequency online at the following receiver in Europe. Type in 8131 and click on USB. http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901  Choose USB (Upper Side Band)

Moscow has long denied that it has plans to invade despite massing tens of thousands of troops near its neighbor.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that Moscow had approved an offensive and had not replied to an invitation for talks.

"Today I initiated a telephone conversation with the President of the Russian Federation. The result was silence,"

U.S. President Joe Biden said his prayers were with the people of Ukraine.

In the hours to come Russia will…

  • -conduct strikes on air defense systems
  • – move to cut off Kiev from eastern Ukraine
  • -move to cut off Ukraine’s military forces on the line of contact in the east to prevent them from falling back to defend Kiev.

First Reports

Vlad orders military operations in Ukraine, demands Kyiv forces surrender...
Warns West of consequences greater than any in history if interferes...
Zelenskiy Says Suffered 'Serious Losses' As Air Strikes Hit 25 Cities...
Calls on citizens to fight, promises weapons...
Blasts Before Dawn. Rooster's Crow. Then Panic...
Photos, Video Emerge: 'That's F*cking Missile!'
Horror images of blood-drenched civilians...
Child Among First to be Killed...
Many flee to Poland...
Worst European Crisis of Postwar Era...
Baltics wondering: Are we next?
State TV paints Moscow as savior...
NATO to deploy more troops...
TRUMP: LET'S GO, PUTIN!
China Nods to Russia Interests...
World expresses outrage...
SKYNEWS LIVE...

From Rense

Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2022 14:53
Subject: Ukraine News Update

Russia has destroyed Ukraine’s air force and air defenses. Ukraine’s airports have cars and tractors parked on the runways to prevent Russian transport planes from landing. So Russian VDV (airborn) troops will soon parachute in and remove blocking vehicles. CONFIRMED AND VDV TROOPS HAVE LANDED IN MULTIPLE CITIES.
I have seen messages and photos purportedly from Kiev saying Russian missiles have landed on specific targets there. CONFIRMED

It was reported yesterday that Zelensky has a secret account in a German bank in Latin America totalling $1.2 billion. He was reportedly getting between $12 and $35 million monthly from ukrop billionaire oligarchs Akmetov, Pinchuk and Kolomoisky.

LATEST NEWS FROM HIGHLY RELIABLE SOURCES –

Good morning! There is a total coercion of Ukraine to the WORLD! The morons twitched on the offensive at night on the LDNR. Get it. Sign!

  • The first video footage from Odessa
  • According to preliminary data, Mariupol was liberated
  • Losses of the neo-Nazi regiment “Azov” as a result of a missile and bomb attack reach HUNDREDS of people
  • The footage shows the arrivals of MLRS missiles near Kharkov
  • Units of the LPR began to liberate the Ukrainian-controlled city of Shchastia
  • Zelensky introduces coniferous situation throughout Ukraine
  • ALL Ukrainian Navy destroyed or rendered unusable
  • Russian armed forces seized several checkpoints on the Ukrainian-Russian border in the Sumy region.
  • Missile strikes are carried out on the targets of the tactical aviation brigade near Vasilkov, the main air defense aviation of Ukraine.
  • Russian strategic aviation in the air.
  • Throughout Ukraine, cruise and ballistic missiles are destroying military infrastructure and strategically important facilities.
  • ALL Ukrainian Navy destroyed or rendered unusable
  • Russian armed forces seized several checkpoints on the Ukrainian-Russian border in the Sumy region.
  • Missile strikes are carried out on the targets of the tactical aviation brigade near Vasilkov, the main air defense aviation of Ukraine.
  • Russian strategic aviation in the air.
  • Throughout Ukraine, cruise and ballistic missiles are destroying military infrastructure and strategically important facilities.
  • Explosions near Boryspil airport.
  • A military unit was covered in Kharkov. Just now two explosions were also heard in the vicinity of Dnepropetrovsk.
  • Grads are working along the entire front
  • They report the beginning of landing operations of the Black Sea Fleet in the Sea of Azov.
  • It is reported about the downing of bayraktars located in the sky
  • Land units go to the Dnieper, Mariupol and Kharkov
  • Access to the maritime borders of the Black and Azov Seas is cut off. In the Odessa region, a landing took place from the BDK and helicopter aviation
  • In Dnepropetrovsk, cannonade and battle near the airport
  • CNN correspondent live from Kiev said he heard a series of explosions.
  • The lanes at all closed airports are blocked by tractors to prevent a possible landing of aircraft with troops – information from the field.
  • Attacks on military depots in Odessa are reported. Explosions one after another
  • Ukrop Army fired on central Donetsk during the night, but all is quiet here now.
This is just the beginning of the full liberation and de-nazification of Ukraine, at least as far as Kiev.
Things are unfolding just exactly like I said they would.

The Crusaders are very, very angry. Who cares?

.

I just listened to Biden (here if you have the stomach). Oh he is pissed, badly.  Putin totally and comprehensively ignored him or the USA (one sign of that is that Putin did warn Scholz and Macron but, apparently, nobody told the White House).

Scholz truly scared the Kremlin when he told that he pulled back the certification of NS2 “jetzt” that is “now”.

Okay, he probably misspoke, he meant “no NS2 forever!”.

Scholz is one tough cookie!


I love it when petty flaccid Eurognomes try to scare Russia.

With sanctions, of all things.

This is RUSSIA we are talking about.

Of all people, the Germans ought to know better.

I guess they don’t.

  • Fine, I wish the Germans lots of fun!

Speaking of NS2, two small factoids:

      • gas prices are already up by 10% in the spot markets.
      • Thanks to the increase of the energy prices Gazprom has already paid for the construction of NS2 with that extra windfall (that according to a senior Duma member, Petr Tolstoy).

Where do you think this is headed?

Exactly, me too!

Biden also said something two really interesting in his otherwise totally vapid speed.

First, he asked who the hell Putin thought he was to recognize states in other sovereign nations?

Second, he warned Russia: we shall judge you by your actions.

I think I can help Biden and give him two very simple replies:

  1. Putin is the President of Russia and he does ask for anybody’s approval, least of all – the USA’s.
  2. You don’t get to judge Russia.  That ship has sailed.  If anything, the day will come when Zone B will judge you on a 21st century of the Nuremberg Tribunal.  As Putin said “we have all their names”.

But I also know this: in the minds of the leaders of Zone A both of these replies are literally *unthinkable*.  Ok.

Hence, they will have to be shown that which they currently cannot fathom.

Today the Russian Duma and Federation Council have ratified all the needed documents and given Putin the right to engage Russian forces abroad.

Where exactly was not specified.

Putin was asked about where he would engage the Russian forces and he basically reply “wait and see, we will use them wherever needed and to comply with all our obligations”.

Putin loves to make the western Tabaki-jackals guess his next move.  He is now openly trolling them 🙂

 

Western Crusaders attacking Russia is nothing new.

But in the past, the Crusaders were at least a credible threat (at times, even a very credible one).

But the modern Crusaders are a joke.

Their threats are a joke, their armed forces are a joke and their leaders are a joke.

A good example is Biden sending more of this invincible military forces to the Baltic statelets.

I am sure the Russians are now truly terrified.

What we do know is the the good folks at Commentary Mag are bracing for impact.

Will the people of the USA find out, for the very first time, that the actions of their rulers can actually directly impact them personally?

God willing, they will learn fast and act accordingly.

What about the Ukros?

So far, they have mostly ignored Putin’s warnings to “immediately cease the attacks against the LDNR”.

I don’t know if they are amazingly courageous, very dumb or suicidal.

Either way, I would recommend they heed Putin’s warning, there shall be no more warnings.

True, the know that their western masters don’t give a damn about Russian lives, mass graves, thousands of kidnapped “separatists”, numerous torture centers or open calls to murder.

  • Fine.  So for 8 years the Ukronazis have murdered the Russian by the tens of thousands.

But don’t they understand that their lives will be the next one?

Or do they really think that the western “advisors” will protect them?

Oh well, I guest that, again, they will have to be shown that which they currently cannot fathom.

By the way,

From a legal point of view, until now Russia has insisted that this was an internal Ukrainian civil war and not an international conflict.

Now this has changed.

Now, from the point of view of the Kremlin, this is now an international conflict directly involving Russia.

 

Here I want to use the occasion to congratulate the United West and, especially, the Ukronazis.  For seven years you dreamed about a war involving Russia.

BRAVO! Congrats – now you got what you fought so hard for: the Russian bear has *officially* placed a paw on the LDNR.

Now I want to see who you all will volunteer to make move first to make him remove that paw 🙂

Maybe the US forces in the Baltics?

Or the Poles?

Maybe the Czechs or even the Brits?

Something tells me that “super-pooper sanctions from hell” and hurricanes of hot air are more likely.

Crusaders are not like they used to be.

Good.

Andrei

So what are we actually talking about here?

We are talking about SERIOUS consequences made by idiots who have no concept about what kind of deep-shit that they are in now. They simply do not realize that they are in deep, deep shit.

We are talking about a cocky know-it-all little punk bully threatening a group of  big, burly, mean and nasty hard-core bikers.

The bullet is going to hit the bone.

HERE

I do not know how it will happen, nor, what will happen. I do not know when it will happen, or any of the particulars. But I do know THAT it will happen.

It will be very bad.

Certainly the American media are hyping up war. But they are just treating it like some kind of Baseball game, and not the threat of massive nuclear destruction of the host cities (American, British, NATO) promoting this danger.

To imagine that the United States would remain unscathed after all this provication (not to mention their color revolution that set up the current Neo-Nazi regime in 2014) is unfathonable.

But there you have it. Spin the narrative…

Others, including myself, have suggested that it might include a nuclear first strike. Maybe or maybe not. As I see things, the USA is already half destroyed as it is. Why use a cannon when a slingshot will do?

But seriously, and cautiously, realize that Asia is defining the rules right now. And the expectations of the collective West might as well be thrown out the window. They are as obsolete as a buggy whip.

Putin goes to Siberia

Whoa!

Russia Fires “Warning Shots” at American Navy

Russian ship “Admiral Essen” fires warning shots in front of US ships in the Black Sea.

Russian ship “Admiral Essen”.

The Russians report that the frigate “Admiral Essen” fired warning shots in front of American ships in the Black Sea.

"The appearance of three US Navy ships has forced Russia to show strength to the US military and use radical methods to reassure them of the protection of its borders."

That is why the frigate “Admiral Essen” fired Kalibr cruise missiles in front of American ships.

At the moment we are talking about a practical training ” the Russian media report and emphasize the” for now “while adding:

"All the targets were successfully hit by the Russian cruise missiles, although the exact area and the distance they traveled were not known."
"Russia has successfully completed the launch of the missiles and has shown its readiness to use these weapons against anyone who threatens Russia,"

…said a Russian expert.

[link to 2gtdmthbqrehz3iksvu4arzody-adwhj77lcyoafdy-warnews247-gr.tran​slate.goog (secure)]

Nuclear thoughts…

Look at some “nuclear strike maps”.

Many of the nuclear strike maps were made before Russia and China developed systems to shoot down ICBMs and SLBM missiles. They also reflected an industrial base that disappeared in the 1980s.

In the map below, it suggests that the Russians would hit the underground ICBM silos, knock out Pittsburgh, and Syracuse. My guess that it would be a quite different target map.

And here in this map, the strikes as triangles are most accurate. Though you wouldn’t need to launch all those nuclear bombs to take out the coastal cities. Just generate a huge tidal wave with the Satan 2 standoff weapon.

And here we see that FEMA still ignores the Satan 2, and the irrelevance of the Underground Minuteman silos.

Not a joke

The United States has grown accustomed to picking on nations, sanctioning them, starting “color revolutions”, sabotaging their food supplies and all the rest. Now, both Russia and China told the United States to STOP.

And the United States said no.

And it’s allies agreed with the United States, and also said no

And I really don’t think thay are ready for the consequences of dealing with a very angry and pissed off Asia. As the consequences can end up being most lethal…

 

Conclusions

There’s a major realignment of global power taking place. The fulcrum is now directly under us. And as such the balance of power is now tipping and changing. And like all changes in equilibrium, once the tipping point has been reached, the changes come quick, fast and sudden.

Look at all the things that happened since three months ago. Things are moving fast, and swift.

No need to panic, that is unless you are an avid consumer of Western “news” or are a technology billionaire of some pedigree.

Just stay calm and let the changes manifest. Things will be fine in the afterwards. They really will.

In the meantime, appreciate what you have. Worrying about a future that might not materialize is fruitless. It has been my experience that our fears never happen, but change does.

So enjoy what you have…

A Nice Chinese girl

She looks like she could really use a nice delicious meal. Along with a nice light wine, and some delicious salad.

I love her eyes. They are really big.

video 3MB

Seriously.

Don’t worry too much. Spend time with people, pets and your loves. Food should never be an afterthought, and if you have been putting off drinking because of some health reason, then stop. Start enjoying life while you still can.

Good thoughts.

Good actions, words of kindness and support, and being a contributor to the betterment of your community are the tickets out of the cage of fear that the medica has created for you.

Kick that damn door down.

Get the hell out.

Grab a partner and live life.

Cuddle on the beach.

What are you waiting for?

An invitation?

Tracking the Ukraine offensive

You can follow the Russian suppression of the US-installed puppet regime in the Ukraine here…

  • Hal Turner has a great blow-by-blow real-time running thread HERE.
  • GodLikeProductions has a pretty decent forum HERE.
  • Victoria has a nice Facebook page in great detail HERE.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Rambling thoughts during an extreme period of change

It is happening.

What? You might ask.

Historic times.

Well, it is the big sequence of long overdue change. And this time, it’s not unwinding due to emotion, or traps or public opinion. No. Instead, it is being orchestrated by talented merit-driven leaders with strong consensus and direction from very powerful entities.

No. They are not like this fella…

Florida, 1956

So what we are going to do here is ramble on and discuss s series and sequence of events on the global stage.

And no. It’s not going to be like what is being reported. As what President Putin did is unexpected. He did not invade the Ukraine. But rather recognized that it fractured into separate nations and is supporting the separation via policing it.

All American “news” is now on PAUSE as they figure out how to “spin” these events and concoct a new narrative.

The day Russia’s patience ran out

2022-02-22

Today’s date, commonly written out as 22.02.2022, will be an easy one for future schoolchildren to remember. Various people will remember it in various ways. The residents of Donetsk and Lugansk, the two formerly Ukrainian, now once again Russian cities that have been subjected to conditions bordering on genocide since the US-instigated government overthrow of 2014 will remember jubilantly dancing in the streets, shooting off lots of fireworks, waving Russian flags and hollering the Russian national anthem. For them, this is the day on which new hope arrived that their eight-year nightmare would soon be over and life would finally return to normal.

The badly informed new German chancellor inadvertently helped to resolve the situation by saying that the idea of a Ukrainian-caused genocide in the Donbass is ridiculous. Given the history of the region, the public spectacle of a German leader using the words “genocide” and “ridiculous” in the same sentence made the moment pregnant with possibilities. Here is the information the seemingly rather dim-witted chancellor was missing. There were 9,282 dead on the Donbass side (70% of them civilians) and 114 children. The dead on the Ukrainian side (the Ukrainian troops and various assorted mercenaries that had been attacking and laying siege to the Donbass since 2014) numbered 20,186. This was prior to the renewed Ukrainian shelling of recent days. There were also over two million Donbass refugees in Russia, more than one million in the Ukraine and around 50 thousand in Belarus.

Most Russians will also remember this day with relief as the day their government finally—finally! after eight literally bloody years!—determined that a negotiated settlement in the Ukraine would simply never happen and that there was no point in waiting any further before going ahead and cleaning it up.

The following is BIG news. Real news. Not the fake “manufactured narrative” out of the United States media mills. Pay attention. This is the English translation form the Russian ministry website HERE.

Address by the President of the Russian Federation

The Kremlin, Moscow
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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Citizens of Russia, friends,

My address concerns the events in Ukraine and why this is so important for us, for Russia. Of course, my message is also addressed to our compatriots in Ukraine.

The matter is very serious and needs to be discussed in depth.

The situation in Donbass has reached a critical, acute stage. I am speaking to you directly today not only to explain what is happening but also to inform you of the decisions being made as well as potential further steps.

I would like to emphasise again that Ukraine is not just a neighbouring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space. These are our comrades, those dearest to us – not only colleagues, friends and people who once served together, but also relatives, people bound by blood, by family ties.

Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. This was the case before the 17th century, when a portion of this territory rejoined the Russian state, and after.

It seems to us that, generally speaking, we all know these facts, that this is common knowledge. Still, it is necessary to say at least a few words about the history of this issue in order to understand what is happening today, to explain the motives behind Russia’s actions and what we aim to achieve.

So, I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia – by separating, severing what is historically Russian land. Nobody asked the millions of people living there what they thought.

Then, both before and after the Great Patriotic War, Stalin incorporated in the USSR and transferred to Ukraine some lands that previously belonged to Poland, Romania and Hungary. In the process, he gave Poland part of what was traditionally German land as compensation, and in 1954, Khrushchev took Crimea away from Russia for some reason and also gave it to Ukraine. In effect, this is how the territory of modern Ukraine was formed.

But now I would like to focus attention on the initial period of the USSR’s formation. I believe this is extremely important for us. I will have to approach it from a distance, so to speak.

I will remind you that after the 1917 October Revolution and the subsequent Civil War, the Bolsheviks set about creating a new statehood. They had rather serious disagreements among themselves on this point. In 1922, Stalin occupied the positions of both the General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the People’s Commissar for Ethnic Affairs. He suggested building the country on the principles of autonomisation that is, giving the republics – the future administrative and territorial entities – broad powers upon joining a unified state.

Lenin criticised this plan and suggested making concessions to the nationalists, whom he called “independents” at that time. Lenin’s ideas of what amounted in essence to a confederative state arrangement and a slogan about the right of nations to self-determination, up to secession, were laid in the foundation of Soviet statehood. Initially they were confirmed in the Declaration on the Formation of the USSR in 1922, and later on, after Lenin’s death, were enshrined in the 1924 Soviet Constitution.

This immediately raises many questions. The first is really the main one: why was it necessary to appease the nationalists, to satisfy the ceaselessly growing nationalist ambitions on the outskirts of the former empire? What was the point of transferring to the newly, often arbitrarily formed administrative units – the union republics – vast territories that had nothing to do with them? Let me repeat that these territories were transferred along with the population of what was historically Russia.

Moreover, these administrative units were de facto given the status and form of national state entities. That raises another question: why was it necessary to make such generous gifts, beyond the wildest dreams of the most zealous nationalists and, on top of all that, give the republics the right to secede from the unified state without any conditions?

At first glance, this looks absolutely incomprehensible, even crazy. But only at first glance. There is an explanation. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks’ main goal was to stay in power at all costs, absolutely at all costs. They did everything for this purpose: accepted the humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, although the military and economic situation in Kaiser Germany and its allies was dramatic and the outcome of the First World War was a foregone conclusion, and satisfied any demands and wishes of the nationalists within the country.

When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples, Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Of course, we cannot change past events, but we must at least admit them openly and honestly, without any reservations or politicking. Personally, I can add that no political factors, however impressive or profitable they may seem at any given moment, can or may be used as the fundamental principles of statehood.

I am not trying to put the blame on anyone. The situation in the country at that time, both before and after the Civil War, was extremely complicated; it was critical. The only thing I would like to say today is that this is exactly how it was. It is a historical fact. Actually, as I have already said, Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and can be rightfully called “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.” He was its creator and architect. This is fully and comprehensively corroborated by archival documents, including Lenin’s harsh instructions regarding Donbass, which was actually shoved into Ukraine. And today the “grateful progeny” has overturned monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization.

You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine.

Going back to history, I would like to repeat that the Soviet Union was established in the place of the former Russian Empire in 1922. But practice showed immediately that it was impossible to preserve or govern such a vast and complex territory on the amorphous principles that amounted to confederation. They were far removed from reality and the historical tradition.

It is logical that the Red Terror and a rapid slide into Stalin’s dictatorship, the domination of the communist ideology and the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, nationalisation and the planned economy – all this transformed the formally declared but ineffective principles of government into a mere declaration. In reality, the union republics did not have any sovereign rights, none at all. The practical result was the creation of a tightly centralised and absolutely unitary state.

In fact, what Stalin fully implemented was not Lenin’s but his own principles of government. But he did not make the relevant amendments to the cornerstone documents, to the Constitution, and he did not formally revise Lenin’s principles underlying the Soviet Union. From the look of it, there seemed to be no need for that, because everything seemed to be working well in conditions of the totalitarian regime, and outwardly it looked wonderful, attractive and even super-democratic.

And yet, it is a great pity that the fundamental and formally legal foundations of our state were not promptly cleansed of the odious and utopian fantasies inspired by the revolution, which are absolutely destructive for any normal state. As it often happened in our country before, nobody gave any thought to the future.

It seems that the Communist Party leaders were convinced that they had created a solid system of government and that their policies had settled the ethnic issue for good. But falsification, misconception, and tampering with public opinion have a high cost. The virus of nationalist ambitions is still with us, and the mine laid at the initial stage to destroy state immunity to the disease of nationalism was ticking. As I have already said, the mine was the right of secession from the Soviet Union.

In the mid-1980s, the increasing socioeconomic problems and the apparent crisis of the planned economy aggravated the ethnic issue, which essentially was not based on any expectations or unfulfilled dreams of the Soviet peoples but primarily the growing appetites of the local elites.

However, instead of analysing the situation, taking appropriate measures, first of all in the economy, and gradually transforming the political system and government in a well-considered and balanced manner, the Communist Party leadership only engaged in open doubletalk about the revival of the Leninist principle of national self-determination.

Moreover, in the course of power struggle within the Communist Party itself, each of the opposing sides, in a bid to expand its support base, started to thoughtlessly incite and encourage nationalist sentiments, manipulating them and promising their potential supporters whatever they wished. Against the backdrop of the superficial and populist rhetoric about democracy and a bright future based either on a market or a planned economy, but amid a true impoverishment of people and widespread shortages, no one among the powers that be was thinking about the inevitable tragic consequences for the country.

Next, they entirely embarked on the track beaten at the inception of the USSR and pandering to the ambitions of the nationalist elites nurtured within their own party ranks. But in so doing, they forgot that the CPSU no longer had – thank God – the tools for retaining power and the country itself, tools such as state terror and a Stalinist-type dictatorship, and that the notorious guiding role of the party was disappearing without a trace, like a morning mist, right before their eyes.

And then, the September 1989 plenary session of the CPSU Central Committee approved a truly fatal document, the so-called ethnic policy of the party in modern conditions, the CPSU platform. It included the following provisions, I quote: “The republics of the USSR shall possess all the rights appropriate to their status as sovereign socialist states.”

The next point: “The supreme representative bodies of power of the USSR republics can challenge and suspend the operation of the USSR Government’s resolutions and directives in their territory.”

And finally: “Each republic of the USSR shall have citizenship of its own, which shall apply to all of its residents.”

Wasn’t it clear what these formulas and decisions would lead to?

Now is not the time or place to go into matters pertaining to state or constitutional law, or define the concept of citizenship. But one may wonder: why was it necessary to rock the country even more in that already complicated situation? The facts remain.

Even two years before the collapse of the USSR, its fate was actually predetermined. It is now that radicals and nationalists, including and primarily those in Ukraine, are taking credit for having gained independence. As we can see, this is absolutely wrong. The disintegration of our united country was brought about by the historic, strategic mistakes on the part of the Bolshevik leaders and the CPSU leadership, mistakes committed at different times in state-building and in economic and ethnic policies. The collapse of the historical Russia known as the USSR is on their conscience.

Despite all these injustices, lies and outright pillage of Russia, it was our people who accepted the new geopolitical reality that took shape after the dissolution of the USSR, and recognised the new independent states. Not only did Russia recognise these countries, but helped its CIS partners, even though it faced a very dire situation itself. This included our Ukrainian colleagues, who turned to us for financial support many times from the very moment they declared independence. Our country provided this assistance while respecting Ukraine’s dignity and sovereignty.

According to expert assessments, confirmed by a simple calculation of our energy prices, the subsidised loans Russia provided to Ukraine along with economic and trade preferences, the overall benefit for the Ukrainian budget in the period from 1991 to 2013 amounted to $250 billion.

However, there was more to it than that. By the end of 1991, the USSR owed some $100 billion to other countries and international funds. Initially, there was this idea that all former Soviet republics will pay back these loans together, in the spirit of solidarity and proportionally to their economic potential. However, Russia undertook to pay back all Soviet debts and delivered on this promise by completing this process in 2017.

In exchange for that, the newly independent states had to hand over to Russia part of the Soviet foreign assets. An agreement to this effect was reached with Ukraine in December 1994. However, Kiev failed to ratify these agreements and later simply refused to honour them by making demands for a share of the Diamond Treasury, gold reserves, as well as former USSR property and other assets abroad.

Nevertheless, despite all these challenges, Russia always worked with Ukraine in an open and honest manner and, as I have already said, with respect for its interests. We developed our ties in multiple fields. Thus, in 2011, bilateral trade exceeded $50 billion. Let me note that in 2019, that is before the pandemic, Ukraine’s trade with all EU countries combined was below this indicator.

At the same time, it was striking how the Ukrainian authorities always preferred dealing with Russia in a way that ensured that they enjoy all the rights and privileges while remaining free from any obligations.

The officials in Kiev replaced partnership with a parasitic attitude acting at times in an extremely brash manner. Suffice it to recall the continuous blackmail on energy transits and the fact that they literally stole gas.

I can add that Kiev tried to use dialogue with Russia as a bargaining chip in its relations with the West, using the threat of closer ties with Russia for blackmailing the West to secure preferences by claiming that otherwise Russia would have a bigger influence in Ukraine.

To be continued.

Breaking News Feb 21, 4pm US Central Time: Today the World Changed

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I listened to Putin’s address to the Russian people, indeed, to the entire world, following his meeting with the Security Council. He expressed his sadness that negotiating with the West has taught him complete distrust of Washington, and Putin made it clear that Russia would be prepared for the war that Washington is intent to bring to Russia.

Putin said that for 8 years he had tried to bring peace to the Ukraine situation in a way that would keep the breakaway republics as part of Ukraine, but had been frustrated by Washington. Consequently, he has no alternative but to announce Russia’s recognition of the two republics, something he says should have been done years ago. He signed mutual aid treaties with both republics.

Andrei Martyanov provides in Russian and in English translation Moscow’s demand to Ukraine:

Президент подчеркнул, что Москва требует от киевских властей “незамедлительно прекратить боевые действия, <…> в противном случае, вся ответственность за возможное продолжение кровопролития будет целиком и полностью на совести правящего на территории Украины режима”.

Translation: Moscow demands from Kiev to immediately stop all hostilities, otherwise all responsibility for possible continuation of the bloodshed will be fully on the consciousness of the regime ruling in Ukraine.

Russian armed forces have been issued orders to ensure provision of peace on the territory of the Independent Republics.

https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2022/02/free-free-at-last.html

Of course, this will be described by the presstitutes as a Russian invasion, and the fool in the White House will highlight US impotence by imposing sanctions.

From this time forward, provocations of Russia will become increasingly dangerous.

Russian military systems

Just a review of things that are not reported in the West..
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Now, let’s go to China.

Nice Chinese girl at harvest time

This gal is showing how to pick tea leaves to make the best tea. You know, China is a great land of tea, and there are so many kinds and types of tea to drink and choose from. This great video illustrates her technique and you can easily see the time and effort that goes into making the best blend of tea.

video

Crock-Pot Beef Bourguignon

Watching all these tumultuous changes really builds up an appetite.

This is the kind of food that my mother used to make for me. It’s not made at restrurants. No. You have to make it at home with talent and love. Look at it. It’s awesome.

Beef Bourguignon.

Beef Bourguignon traces its roots back for centuries, and this crockpot version guarantees you can fix up this classic dish with minimum hassle. This rich stew of beef, carrots, onions, and more will make you long for the old country and times past, even if you’ve never tasted it before.

Get the recipe from The View from Great Island.

Major Matt Mason

Now, for an escape to the 1960s. There was a brief time when Americans focused on going into Space instead of fighting wars. And even though there was a Vietnam war, most people just wanted to make love instead of war.

As I said; it was a brief period of time.

This was a toy that I used to play with when I was a boy in the 1960s. I had the white-suited Major Matt Mason, and his basic accessory kit, as well as the Space Station. In truth I was enviouos of my friends who had the tractor, and the other vehicle kits.

I would imagine myself going into space and meeting space aliens and working with them for the good of all humanity.

LOL.

"Major Matt Mason. He was a great astronaut: a full-on, lifelike astronaut, made with rubber and wire, kind of like Gumby. He was bendable and poseable, and I went through a few of them because after a while the wires get all twisted."

-Tom Hanks, when asked "What was your favorite toy as a kid?" by Disney Adventures magazine

1967 was not a good year for America. The military was beginning to get bogged down in the quagmire that was Southeast Asia, though the disastrous Tet Offensive was still a year away.

Hot on the heels of the successful Project Gemini, NASA was dealt a crushing blow on January 27th, 1967, when the crew of Apollo 1 burned alive on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

President Lyndon B. Johnson was so disgusted with his role in the whole state of affairs that he eventually chose not to run for reelection.

Despite troubles at home and abroad, a toy line emerged that hinted at happier, more imaginative times ahead. The toy was Major Matt Mason, “Mattel’s Man in Space”.

Major Matt Mason was a rubber astronaut who stood six inches tall, wore a white space suit and came with a removable space helmet and visor.

His internal wire skeleton allowed him to bend at any joint, and his space suit was based on an actual NASA prototype. The space program was quickly making a comeback from Apollo 1, and with a real lunar landing a mere two years away, Mattel could not have asked for a better time to market a toy based on exploring the moon.

Initially, Mattel had intended to make a simple line of space toys centered on a single astronaut. Major Matt Mason, “the bravest astronaut yet”, was rolled out in the summer of 1967 and gave Mattel a huge hit in the Christmas season of that year.

That first year’s offerings consisted of a carded accessory pack known as the Flight Set, which featured a Major Matt Mason figure, the Jet Pack, the Space Sled, and the flamethrower-like Decontamination Gun.

The Jet Pack could be strapped to a figure and made to travel along a string, giving the illusion of flight. When attached to the Space Sled, that toy could “fly”, too.

Also available were the Space Crawler, the two-story Space Station, and a clunky bell-shaped Moon Suit.

One of the major selling points for the toys was Mattel’s claim that they were based on actual NASA designs, and for the very first toys, this was at least partially true.

Mattel’s Moon Suit toy is a carbon copy of the prototype seen on the cover of the April 27th, 1962 issue of LIFE Magazine, right down to the red stripes and large “3” emblazoned on the front.

Photos have surfaced of an early space suit that features bellows-like joints, just like the space suits of Mattel’s astronauts.

The public’s early naiveté towards lunar conditions carried through to Matt’s tools. Among other items, the Flight Set came with binoculars and a flare gun, two items that would’ve been completely useless on the moon.

Of course, the toys were designed at a time when one of NASA’s prototype lunar landers had astronauts descending to the moon’s surface by way of a knotted rope. (Yes, really.)

Impressed by the line’s sales, Mattel quickly sent more vehicles, astronauts, and aliens to join the lonely Major on the moon.

The Astronauts

First and foremost in the line was Major Matt Mason, who could be purchased individually or on a blister card with various accessories, such as the Talking Rocket Pack or Moon Suit.

Sergeant Storm landed in 1968 clad in a red space suit and was available alone or combined with other toys, just like Matt. Astronauts Doug Davis (wearing a yellow space suit) and Jeff Long (in blue) followed in 1969.

The figures’ packaging denoted Davis as a radiation expert, while Long, in addition to being the only astronaut who’s last name doesn’t form an alliteration with his first, scouted out rocket landing sites.

Unlike Mason and Storm, who could be purchased in a plethora of other sets, Davis was only available by himself or with two other sets, both of them rare. Long, an African-American, was only sold individually and is the least common of the human figures.

The Aliens

Any line of space toys worth its stardust will have an interesting array of aliens; Mattel made no exception with Major Matt Mason’s extraterrestrial friends.

Captain Lazer

I don’t care what anyone says. This was not part of the Major Matt Mason world.

Many collectors speculate that Captain Lazer, a humanoid Martian released in 1968, was actually intended for another toy line altogether.

Besides standing twice the height of the other astronauts, Captain Lazer was made of hard plastic instead of flexible rubber and was so large that he was only compatible with one of the line’s vehicles.

Not that Captain Lazer wanted for cool features…by pressing buttons on the figure’s backpack, his eyes, chest emblem, and lazer gun attachments could all be lit up. Although the Captain Lazer figure is fairly common, his accessories are frequently missing, driving up the cost of loose, complete figures. (A decade later, Captain Lazer’s mold was recycled by Mattel for the large figures in the Battlestar Galactica line.)

Callisto

My brother got this character, but really didn’t like to play with it. So, I acquired it. I thought that it was stupid and ugly, but what are you going to do, eh?

Callisto, the mysterious alien from Jupiter, came out in 1969. Callisto’s translucent green head coincided with his “advanced mental powers”, while his accessory, The Space Sensor, could fire and retract a yellow string to gather samples. Despite his somewhat ominous appearance, the back of the toy’s package made it known that Callisto was an ally and personal friend of the Major’s.

Scorpio

Scorpio, a pink and purple insect-like creature, was released in 1970 and is the rarest of the aliens. Hailing from a desert planet in the Scorpio star cluster, Scorpio realized he had the ability to read minds moments after his hatching and quickly blasted off into space, where he later landed on the moon and met Major Matt Mason.

Scorpio came with snap-on arm and leg shields, as well as a device that strapped onto his chest and fired “search globes”. Although the market has cooled off somewhat in recent years, mint-in-package Scorpio figures have been known to sell for as much as $1,500.

Or from Orion

A fourth alien, dubbed Or from Orion, was to be a tiny blue creature who flew inside the Orbiter, a yellow Frisbee-like disc that could be vertically launched with Or inside. Although Or appeared in Mattel’s 1970 catalog (both as a stand-alone toy and as part of the unproduced “Voyage to Galaxy III” play set), there is no hard evidence to suggest that this toy made it out of the prototype stage.

The Vehicles

The vehicles in Major Matt Mason’s universe were very innovative for the time and nearly all of them featured working lights or motorized features of some type. It is beyond the scope of this node to describe each and every mode of transportation used by the Major and his friends on the moon, but these are some of the more notable ones…

The most distinctive vehicle produced was the Space Crawler, one of the first toys released. The Crawler’s large, four-spoked wheels could conquer any terrain, although the astronaut in the driver’s seat was in for a rather bumpy ride. A winch protruding from the back of the Space Crawler could tow accessories and acted as a crane when the Crawler was attached to the top of the Space Station.

The Firebolt Space Cannon was the only vehicle that could be operated by the oversized Captain Lazer. Basically a large laser cannon mounted on a wheeled platform, the Firebolt’s rotating barrel and control panel flashed as it moved forward. As many as three astronauts (or one Captain Lazer) could operate the Firebolt at once, and it is the only vehicle in the line that could light up and move at the same time.

An especially interesting vehicle was the Star Seeker, which could hold one astronaut under its blue, semi-transparent dome. Beneath the cockpit was a primitive mechanical computer, operated by a series of orange plugs. Inserting (or removing) the plugs in various combinations programmed the Star Seeker to take a specific path; a paper solar system was included so kids could make a spacey obstacle course for the toy.

Owing to the simplicity of 1960’s electronics, many of the Major’s rides can be easily found in working condition today.

The Accessories

Mattel kept their astronauts busy by releasing a number of interesting accessory “paks”, which were relatively inexpensive and were most often packaged on blister cards. Though far too numerous to be systematically described here, the plethora of accessories had many high points.

The largest and most expensive accessory was the somewhat misnamed Space Station. Standing two feet tall when fully assembled and complete with a flashing beacon, large blue windows, and a light-up computer console, the Space Station was Major Matt Mason’s lunar command post.

The Space Station’s interchangeable nature made for hours of play with endless combinations of girders, windows, and the Station’s white honeycomb platforms. The toy’s possibilities were only limited by a child’s imagination, and today the Space Station is fondly remembered.

Due to the abundance of loose Space Station parts floating around, many collectors will assemble a Space Station for their collections by simply buying enough individual parts to piece one together. The Station contained several small, fragile pieces, making original, mint Space Stations somewhat pricey.

Mattel made three different carry cases so kids could take their astronauts on the go. The most common is the Satellite Locker, a colorful vinyl case with three compartments for storing figures or gear.

Coveted by collectors today is the Talking Command Console, which could be opened to resemble the control panel of a space ship, complete with an illuminated star field and chairs for the figures.

Although it was intended as a carry case, the toy also included a pull-string talking mechanism, which said one of five “authentic space sound tracks”. The Rocket Ship Case, a stubby Titan V-like space ship, rounded out the selection of carry cases and is the most uncommon today. Noted for its simple yet fragile construction, this case is usually found in pretty lousy shape.

From 1967 to 1970, Mattel did a fantastic job on a series of “Launcher” accessories. The Satellite Launcher, Rocket Launcher, Space Probe, and Gamma Ray Gard added greatly to the toy line’s playability and were so well built that they’re usually found in working shape today.

The Satellite Launcher sent plastic whirlybird “satellites” spinning into orbit and used Mattel’s Greenie Stik-M-Caps to simulate the mighty roar of liftoff. The Rocket Launcher hurled a single, large projectile into space and also made use of caps for blastoff pyrotechnics. (This is known as the most fragile of the launchers and is usually found with parts broken or missing.)

The Space Probe Launcher fired smaller missile-like probes, while the Gamma Ray Gard launched golden Mylar bolts by way of an ingenious firing mechanism.

Since the Gamma Ray Gard relied on the springy properties of the projectiles to launch themselves, the cannon itself has few moving parts and rarely turns up in nonworking condition these days. The slender, conical torpedoes it fires, however, are easily broken and often missing.

Themes

Even a casual inspection of the toys turns up something interesting: as 1960’s playthings go, they’re pretty liberal.

Aside from the Firebolt Space Cannon, the ray guns included in some early accessory paks, and Captain Lazer’s pistol, there are no weapons for the characters to use. (Although accessories such as the Rocket Launcher and Gamma Ray Gard could be used as weapons, their packaging clearly states they’re meant for zapping dangerous asteroids and repelling harmful gamma rays, respectively.) At a time when many folks looked toward the militarization of space, the astronauts in Major Matt Mason’s universe had an agenda of peaceful exploration.

The human characters work alongside the aliens, all of whom are bizarre-looking, yet friendly. Jeff Long, the blue-suited African-American spaceman, was released at a time when black G.I. Joes came in boxes with a bold NEGRO label. Long’s packaging simply denotes him as a rocketry expert and Major Matt Mason’s “space buddy”. These toys are a product of their times in more ways than one.

Today, forty years after his release, nostalgia buffs, toy collectors, and many children of the era speak fondly of Major Matt Mason, his friends, and equipment.

With collectors of everything from space toys to lunchboxes actively pursuing the line, there is little chance of these unique toys being forgotten anytime soon. The Major’s enduring popularity can probably be attributed to the feelings many people get from the toys.

After all, they hearken back to a different age, a time when the first lunar landing was still in the future, colonizing outer space seemed viable and inevitable, and children across the world could live out their dreams of spaceflight through a diminutive rubber astronaut.

Shepherd’s Pie

Gosh! This all makes me so hungry.

My mother sometimes made this, as well as the school cafeteria. I really loved it, but alas no one cooks it these days. Such a shame.

Shepherd’s Pie.

Shepherd’s pie was once a go-to meal that every family would clamor for. But with such involved preparation, this dish was an easy candidate for falling to the wayside.

These days, it’s easier than ever to whip up this classic casserole, which has found a massive fanbase for good reason. If you’ve never tasted this scrumptious combination of beef and potatoes, now is the time.

Get the recipe from Gimme Some Oven.

So, from Geo-Politics to 1960s toys, to food, and now strange history in England. We are all over the place today…

Glastonbury Tor: The Mysterious British Hill Steeped in History and Legend

There’s all sorts of interesting mysteries all around us. All we need do is look at them with an open mind.

Glastonbury is a small town in Somerset, England, where a very important hill exists known as the Glastonbury Tor. On top of the Tor stands the remains of St. Michael’s Tower, with a strange system of terraces around its sides. In legend, these terraces are said to form a  maze with magical symbolism.

The Tor rises to an elevation of 518 feet (158 meters) and is clearly visible from many miles around. It is formed from rocks dating to the early Jurassic Period. The low-lying ground is known to produce a visual illusion known as Fata Morgana, where the hill appears to rise out of the mist. It occurs due to the bending of rays of light as they pass through layers of air of varying temperatures.

A Rich History

The recovery of Neolithic flint tools from the top of the Tor has revealed that the site has been visited since prehistory. Archaeological investigations show that there was an Iron Age settlement there in about 300-200 BC. Roman pottery, 6 th century Mediterranean amphorae, a Saxon staff, medieval burials and a metalworker’s forge show repeated occupation of the Tor throughout the centuries.

Glastonbury Tor.

During the late Saxon and early medieval period, there were at least four buildings on the summit, which may have been a hermitage. In the 11 th or 12 th century, a timber church dedicated to St Michael was built atop the Tor. It was destroyed by an earthquake in 1275 AD and rebuilt out of sandstone in the 14 th century by the Abbot Adam of Sodbury.

St Michael’s Church survived until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 when it was demolished, except for the three-storey tower which remains on the Tor today.

St Michael’s Tower at the top of Glastonbury Tor.

The Legends of Glastonbury Tor

There are many myths associated with Glastonbury that go back thousands of years to figures like  Joseph of Arimathea  and King Arthur  . Myths about the Tor claim that it was a ‘land of the dead’, a portal, a magic mountain, and a glass hill among many others.

One of the legends mentions that more than two thousand years ago, the Tor was in the middle of the sea, which later became a lake. The old Celtic name of the Tor, according to this legend, was the ‘ Island of Glass’  , known in Welsh as ‘Ynys Gutrin’. During the Roman Empire there are references mentioning the Tor as an island. At this time, the plain was flooded, the isle becoming a peninsula at low tide.

Avalon, Meeting Place for the Dead

One legend attributes the name  Avalon to the Tor, linking it to the Avalon of Arthurian legend. The 12 th century historian Gerald of Wales recounted the discovery of King Arthur’s and Queen Guinevere’s labelled coffins in 1191, which were later moved.

The myths say that Avalon was a meeting place for the dead and that the Tor was the home of the Lord of the Underworld. In these legends, the Tor is the gateway into the land of the dead (Avalon).

The Holy Grail

There is also a Christian legend which mentions that Joseph of Arimathea brought a young Jesus to Glastonbury Tor.

When Joseph came to England, it is said that he established the first Church of England at Glastonbury. Indeed, according to archaeological studies, there may have been a very  early Christian Church at Glastonbury  .

Another Christian legend claims the Holy Grail is buried in Glastonbury. Author Christopher Hodapp asserts that the Tor is one possible location of the grail due to its close proximity to the monastery that housed the Nanteos Cup, a wooden bowl believed to offer a supernatural healing ability, allegedly due it being fashioned from a piece of the True Cross.

Mystery of the Terraces

The sides of the Tor have seven deep, roughly symmetrical terraces, their origins of which remains a mystery to this day. One explanation is that they were made during the Middle Ages to make ploughing for crops easier.

However, this has been largely discounted due to terracing also being on the north side, which would have provided little benefit.

Another explanation includes the construction of defensive ramparts, possibly linked to Ponter’s Ball Dyke, a linear earthwork about 1 mile (1.6 km) east of the Tor. Some historians have alternatively proposed that they are the remains of a “spiral walkway” or labyrinth created for pilgrims to reach the summit.

The terraces that circle the Tor seven times would lead the pilgrim to the church of St Michael. But Celtic legends would say that this maze is the path that would lead you to the entrance of Annwn, the Celtic underworld.

The terraced hillside of Glastonbury Tor.

Glastonbury is immersed in extremely interesting mythology and fascinating legends and is a very special place that is worth a visit.

Now to China…

Nice Chinese girl in a nice yellow miniskirt

That’s one thing that I really love about China. So many people go out and socialize. They love to go out and dress up and have fun. Such as this gal. I really like the cute little outfit, and the environment.

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No answers, just some interesting observations…

UFO watchers stumped by jaw-dropping clear footage of mystery black shape in the sky

Certainly unusual thingy…

Leonie Chao-Fong
Mirror

The unexplained UFO sighting in Chicago, Illinois left mum Aiyana “creeped out” and is just one of several reported in the US in recent weeks.

A woman was left in “total confusion” and “creeped out” after she saw a strange black shape floating in the skies.

Aiyana, who asked that her second name be withheld, recorded the surreal footage from the roof of her home in Chicago, Illinois.

The video shows a long black wishbone shape hanging in the air, with both its wings ending in some sort of sphere.

She said:

"I literally have no idea what it was. There is nothing comparable. 

"It was a ball of some sort with two long strings or belts hanging from it. The strings had knobs in the middle and bottom."

Aiyana and her son said neither of them “had any idea what we were seeing”. She said she stayed watching it until it disappeared from view.

It seemed to just float slowly south east without any other major movement," she said. "It covered a few miles in about 20 minutes. I felt total confusion and a bit creeped out,"

Hoping to find answers, a friend shared Aiyana’s footage with UFO watchers online but no one was able to explain how an object could float so calmly above the famously “windy city”.

One person wrote: “I’ve never seen a balloon just hang still in the open air like that. It should bob, even if just a little. There must be absolutely zero wind there.”

Another person described the sighting as “bizarre”, adding:

"I have no explanation. It looks like something hanging from a helicopter, except there is no helicopter. The shape is too weird for it being a balloon, and I think I can also exclude it being an antenna on top of a building in cloud cover - for this, it is way too clearly defined. I have no idea!"

A third said:
"A balloon usually has some movement. I live in Chicago. Even on a still, calm day, Chicago and the surrounding areas have wind of some sort and would move something in the air."

The unexplained sighting is just one of several in the US in recent weeks.

Another video, captured in Baltimore, Maryland, attracted a deluge of comments revealing identical sightings in numerous states.

In September, a man spotted what appeared to be glowing orange UFOs “flying in formation” when returning home.

When he posted the footage online, social media users recalled similar sightings in Washington DC, Las Vegas, St Louis and Detroit.

Meanwhile in the UK, a woman was left baffled after capturing an image of a possible UFO hovering in the evening sky over St Helens, Merseyside while taking a friend on a late-night drive.

She later told the Liverpool Echo :

"I couldn't see any lights around it or anything, you can just see the blue thing in the sky. I was just taking a picture of the Moon while we were out because I thought it looked nice."
She added:
"We were just like oh, my god, it does look like a UFO. It does look like a ship, it doesn't look like a plane or a light, it looks like a UFO. I sort of believe in them. I'm not a strong believer but I do believe there are aliens out there and stuff like that. It's interesting. You can see it but it was strange. I believe more now I can see it."

Maybe it’s swamp gas, eh?

Nice Chinese girl – Amazingly beautiful

I think that she really is pretty. She reminds me of  something tasty and wonderful. Like a real special dish. You know, like beef wellington.

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Beef Wellington

This is a great dish that housewives used to prepare for their families in the 1950s and 1960s. As the value of the US dollar collapsed due to the constant military adventures, the household unity fell apart. Couples both had to work. And people resorted to easy to cook, fast to make and eat food.

They stopped eating well.

They became machines.

And as machinese, they became easily manipulated.

Beef Wellington.

WWII Redux: the Endpoint of U.S. Policy, from Ukraine to Taiwan

The Threatened Peoples of East Asia and Europe Can Stop the U.S. Drive to Restore its Global Domination.
"This is not going to be a war of Ukraine and Russia. This is going to be a European war, a full-fledged war.” So spoke Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky just days after berating the U.S. for beating the drums of war.

It is not hard to imagine how Zelensky’s words must have fallen on those European ears that were attentive. His warning surely conjured up images of World War II when tens of millions of Europeans and Russians perished.

Zelensky’s words echoed those of Philippine’s President Rodrigo Duterte on the other side of the world at the Eastern edge of the great Eurasian land mass: “When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled flat.” We can be sure that Duterte, like Zelensky, had in mind WWII which also consumed tens of millions of lives in East Asia.

The United States is stoking tensions in both Europe and East Asia, with Ukraine and Taiwan as the current flashpoints on the doorsteps of Russia and China which are the targeted nations. Let us be clear at the outset. As we shall see, the endpoint of this process is not for the U.S. to do battle with Russia or China but to watch China and Russia fight it out with the neighbors to the ruin of both sides. The US is to “lead from behind’ – as safely and remotely as can be arranged.

To make sense of this and react properly, we must be very clear-eyed about the goal of the U.S. Neither Russia nor China has attacked or even threatened the U.S. Nor are they in a position to do so – unless one believes that either is ready to embark on a suicidal nuclear war.

Why should the U.S. Elite and its media pour out a steady stream of anti-China and anti-Russia invective? Why the steady eastward march of NATO since the end of the first Cold War? The goal of the U.S. is crystal clear – it regards itself as the Exceptional Nation and entitled to be the number one power on the planet, eclipsing all others.

This goal is most explicitly stated in the well-known Wolfowitz Doctrine drawn shortly after the end of the first Cold War in 1992. It proclaimed that the U.S.’s “first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet union or elsewhere….” It stated that no regional power must be allowed to emerge with the power and resources “sufficient to generate global power.” It stated frankly “we must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global power.” (Emphasis, jw)

The Wolfowitz Doctrine is but the latest in a series of such proclamations that have proclaimed global domination as the goal of U.S. foreign policy since 1941 the year before the U.S. entered WWII. This lineage is documented clearly in the book by the Quicny Institute’s Stephen Wertheim “Tomorrow, The World: The Birth of US Global Supremacy.

Let us consider China first and then Russia, the foremost target of the U.S., first. China’s economy is number one in terms of PPP-GDP according to the IMF and has been since November, 2014. It is growing faster than the U.S. economy and shows no signs of slowing down. In a sense China has already won by this metric since economic power is the ultimate basis of all power.

But what about a military defeat of China? Can the U.S. with its present vastly superior armed forces bring that about? The historian, Alfred McCoy, answers that question in the way most do these days, with a clear “no”:

“The most volatile flashpoint In Beijing’s grand strategy for breaking Washington’s geopolitical grip over Eurasia lies in the contested waters between China’s coast and the Pacific littoral, which the Chinese call “the first island chain.”

“But China’s clear advantage in any struggle over that first Pacific island chain is simply distance. …The tyranny of distance, in other words, means that the U.S. loss of that first island chain, along with its axial anchor on Eurasia’s Pacific littoral, should only be a matter of time.”

Certainly the U.S. Elite recognizes this problem. Do they have a solution?

Moreover, that is not the end of the “problem” for the U.S. There are other powerful countries, like Japan, or rapidly rising economies in East Asia, easily the most dynamic economic region in the world. These too will become peer competitors, and in the case of Japan, it already has been a competitor both before WWII and during the 1980s.

If we hop over to the Western edge of Eurasia, we see that the U.S. has a similar “problem” when it comes to Russia. Here too the U.S. cannot defeat Russia in a conventional conflict nor have U.S. sanctions been able to bring it down. How can the U.S. surmount this obstacle? And as in the case of East Asia the U.S. faces another economic competitor, Germany, or more accurately, the EU, with Germany at its core. How is the U.S. to deal with this dual threat?

One clue comes in the response of Joe Biden to both the tension over Taiwan and that over Ukraine. Biden has said repeatedly that he will not send U.S. combat troops to fight Russia over Ukraine or to fight China over Taiwan. But it will send materiel and weapons and also “advisors.” And here too the U.S. has other peer competitors most notably Germany which has been the target of U.S. tariffs. The economist Michael Hudson puts it succinctly in a penetrating essay, “America’s real adversaries are its European and other allies: The U.S. aim is to keep them from trading with China and Russia.”

Such “difficulties for the U.S. were solved once before – in WWII. One way of looking at WWII is that it was a combination of two great regional wars, one in East Asia and one in Europe. In Europe the U.S. was minimally involved as Russia, the core of the USSR, battled it out with Germany, sustaining great damage to life and economy. Both Germany and Russia were economic basket cases when the war was over, two countries lying in ruins.

The US provided weapons and materiel to Russia but was minimally involved militarily, only entering late in the game. The same happened in East Asia with Japan in the role of Germany and China in the role of Russia. Both Japan and China were devastated in the same way as were Russia and Europe. This was not an unconscious strategy on the part of the United States. As Harry Truman, then a Senator, declared in 1941: “If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.. . ”

At the end of it all the U.S. emerged as the most powerful economic and military power on the planet. McCoy spells it out:

“Like all past imperial hegemons, U.S. global power has similarly rested on geopolitical dominance over Eurasia, now home to 70% of the world’s population and productivity. After the Axis alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan failed to conquer that vast land mass, the Allied victory in World War II allowed Washington, as historian John Darwin put it, to build its “colossal imperium… on an unprecedented scale,” becoming the first power in history to control the strategic axial points “at both ends of Eurasia.”

“As a critical first step, the U.S. formed the NATO alliance in 1949, establishing major military installations in Germany and naval bases in Italy to ensure control of the western side of Eurasia. After its defeat of Japan, as the new overlord of the world’s largest ocean, the Pacific, Washington dictated the terms of four key mutual-defense pacts in the region with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia and so acquired a vast range of military bases along the Pacific littoral that would secure the eastern end of Eurasia. To tie the two axial ends of that vast land mass into a strategic perimeter, Washington ringed the continent’s southern rim with successive chains of steel, including three navy fleets, hundreds of combat aircraft, and most recently, a string of 60 drone bases stretching from Sicily to the Pacific island of Guam.”

The U.S. was able to become the dominant power on the planet because all peer competitors were left in ruins by the two great regional wars in Europe and East Asia, wars which are grouped under the heading of WWII.

If Europe is plunged into a war of Russia against the EU powers with the U.S. “leading from behind,” with material and weapons, who will benefit? And if East Asia is plunged into a war of China against Japan and and whatever allies it can drum up, with the U.S. “leading from behind,” who will benefit?

It is pretty clear that such a replay of WWII will benefit the U.S. In WWII while Eurasia suffered tens of millions of deaths, the US suffered about 400,000 – a terrible toll certainly but nothing like that seen in Eurasia. And with the economies and territories of Eurasia, East and West, in ruins, the U.S. will emerge on top, in the catbird seat, and able to dictate terms to the world. WWII redux.

But what about the danger of nuclear war growing out of such conflicts? The U.S. has a history of nuclear “brinksmanship,” going back to the earliest post-WWII days. It is a country that has shown itself willing to risk nuclear holocaust.

Are there U.S. policy makers criminal enough to see this policy of provocation through to the end? I will leave that to the reader to answer.

The Peoples of East and West Eurasia are the ones who will suffer most in this scenario. And they are the ones who can stop the madness by living peacefully with Russia and China rather than serving as cannon fodder for the U.S. There are clear signs of dissent from the European “allies” of the U.S., especially Germany but the influence of the U.S. remains powerful. Germany and many other countries are after all occupied by tens of thousands of U.S. troops, their media heavily influenced by the U.S. and with the organization that commands European troops, NATO, under U.S. command. Which way will it go?

In East Asia the situation is the same. Japan is the key but the hatred of China among the Elite is intense. Will the Japanese people and the other peoples of East Asia be able to put the brakes on the drive to war?

Some say that a two-front conflict like this is U.S. overreach. But certainly, if war is raging on or near the territories of both Russia and China, there is little likelihood that one can aid the other.

Given the power of modern weaponry, this impending world war will be much more damaging than WWII by far. The criminality that is on the way to unleashing it is almost beyond comprehension.

Nice Chinese girl

This girl looks like a nice big blue fish. A dlicious and yummy fish, that is.

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Baiting the Bear Is Becoming a Dangerous Game

What the so-called Russian experts and politicians all forget is that the US does not have troops scattered about in Poland, Romania, the Baltic states and other Eastern European late comers to NATO because Washington cares about these countries and feels morally obliged to protect them from Russia, which does not want them. In truth, Washington doesn’t care a hoot about Ukraine, Poland, Romania and neither do Americans.

The reasons for Washington’s presence in Eastern Europe are entirely different. One reason is that Washington wants the countries as locations for missile bases such as Washington has placed in Poland and Romania. These bases are on Russia’s borders leaving no response time to nuclear missiles launched from them. The bases give Washington the advantage in a confrontation to back down Russia.

Another reason is that the NATO countries provide customers for the US armaments industry. Washington keeps pressure on NATO members to “do their part” and spend more on their own defense. So much of the analysis and commentary about the current situation in Ukraine presents Washington and NATO as rescuers on white horses riding to the defense of states threatened by Russia. If Russia really were a threat, Washington and NATO would not be so aggressive.

The Soviet Union had Eastern Europe as a buffer.

Most Russian experts at the time concluded that the Warsaw Pact was a net drain on Soviet resources. Responsibility for these countries today is the last thing Russia wants.

All Russia wants is for the US to get military bases off her doorstep. This is a reasonable demand, and compliance with it would relieve the tensions that otherwise could break out in war. Washington’s aggressive policy seems designed for one reason only: to cause a war.

Few people understand that the US sanctions against Russia are based entirely on lies and are in effect acts of war. That Russia has tolerated them is interpreted by Washington as Russian weakness. The reason Russia gets so much abuse is that she doesn’t do anything about it.

The narrative is that Russia invaded Ukraine by accepting the vote in Crimea to be reunited with Russia. Until 1991, Crimea had been part of Russia since 1783. The vast majority of the people who live there are Russian. Between 1991 and 2014 when the US overthrew the Ukrainian government in a coup, Crimea was occupied by Russia as Russia’s Black Sea naval base is there. The Russian forces were already there, because Russia had a long term lease on the area.

It was the US that invaded Ukraine while the Kremlin was preoccupied with the Sochi Olympics. The US plan was for the puppet government it installed to revoke the lease and kick the Russians out of their naval base. It was an audacious plan that had no chance of success. To prevent Americans from understanding the situation, the narrative was started that Russia invaded Crimea.

There are Americans who pose as Russian experts who maintain that Putin has territorial ambitions to restore the Soviet empire. These people are not experts. They are liars. If Putin has territorial ambitions, why did he not reincorporate Georgia into Russia? Why has he refused for 8 years to honor the vote of the Donbass Russians to be returned to Russia? The Donbass area, like Crimea, is historically part of Russia. Both were transferred to the Ukrainian province of the Soviet Union by the Soviet government, but Russians, not Ukrainians live there.

In US universities and think tanks, researchers’ analyses come to conclusions consistent with the views of those who fund their research. This is why there are no more Stephen Cohens who give an independent objective analysis of the real situation. Indeed, in the US today an objective analysis is considered to be pro-Russian and the author is said to be a Russian agent.

As a result, we get a one-sided story.

The problem with one-sided stories is that the implication is the other side is entirely to blame and hasn’t a leg to stand on. This is the position that Russia finds herself in, and it is the reason that the West doesn’t listen to a word she says. It is very dangerous to ignore Russia when she says she finds the situation intolerable.

Russia seems at times to be masochistic, but sooner or later she will bite back.

Nice Chinese girl in cute confusion

Yes. She’s a tad confused.

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Breaking News: Russia Has Given Up On Negotiations and Will Resolve the Donbass Issue by Recognizing the Independence of the Republics

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As I sit down to write Tass has not yet announced Putin’s decision about Russia’s recognization of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, formerly Russian territory that the Soviet government attached to Ukraine. However, as the decision of the Russian Security Council was unanimous, supported even by the pro-American Atlanticist Integrationist member, Putin will not go against the position of the Security Council. Putin himself was of the same opinion as his statements and questions indicated.

Understand that this is not about reabsorbing Donbass into Russia like Crimea, but merely recognizing the republics as independent countries.

This will give the protection of international law to the republics, and Russia being a stickler for international law, unlike the West, will see that law defends the republics.

I listened to the one hour, 35 minute Security Council meeting during which the various members discussed their eight years of frustrations with negotiating with the US, NATO, EU that never went anywhere. During these eight years many Donbass Russians were killed by Ukrainian forces which have succeeded in occupying some of the territory of the republics.

What is not clear at this point is whether the recognition of the Donbass republics includes all of the territory including those areas occupied by Ukrainian forces and neo-Nazi militias.

If you watch the video of the meeting, which has English translation, you will see for yourself that Russia has tried for eight years to resolve the situation by keeping the Donbass in Ukraine but protected by the Minsk Agreement signed by Ukraine and guaranteed by Germany and France. It is impossible not to admire the patience of the Russians, although it was patience at the expense of the lives of Donbass Russians.

Today the Russian government ran out of patience, and I don’t think they will have much patience with the West in the future.

This is a good thing because it will make Europe less an enabler of Washington’s trouble-making for Russia.

Every European government knows that it is impossible for Washington/NATO to protect them without recourse to nuclear weapons, which of course means their destruction, not their protection. Europe will be more interested in having good relations with Russia.

I would bet that Ukraine President Zelensky, whatever he says, is also relieved. Zelensky has not been able to function as president, because he is caught between Washington and the CIA controlled neo-Nazi militias and is up for reelection. Now that Russia has given recognition to the republics, Zelensky can resist Washington’s push to use Ukraine’s military to attack the Donbass Russians. Zelensky will gain authority from the Kremlin’s decision as the decision will make it more difficult for Washington to use Ukraine against Russia. Of course, Washington won’t stop trying.

We know how this will play out in Washington and in the whore media. The New York Times will be handed a “news report” from the CIA. It will say that the recognition of the republics is a prelude to a Russian invasion. Washington, which is always for “self-determination” but only if “self-determination” is the result of a Washington led coup, will not recognize Donbass independence and will try to foment war between Ukraine and Russia. The New York Times and the rest of the whores will continue to predict “Russian invasion.”

But Europe is now wary, whatever is said publicly, and Ukrainians know that no one is coming to their aid if they are shoved into a war with Russia.

There is a good chance that Washington will lose control of the narrative. If not, it will be Ukraine and Europe that pay the price.

Night time in China.

Oh yeah. This is pretty much what it is like. I’ll tell youse guys that China is day and night, meaning that there’s a entirely different “vibe” at night than there is in the daytime. You see, most people in China are active. They don’t hide inside their homes watching the “news”. Instead they go out and socialize.

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Oh, these Chinese girls are so lovely.

Nice cinnamon toast Chinese girl

Here’s my fine nice cinnamon toast girl. Isn’t she lovely, and look at the day. Can you believe that I have wasted so many beautiful days by sitting infront of a computer monitor working in cubicles all my life, when instead I could have been frolicing with fine attractive and cute ladies like this. Sheech!

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In my dreams, of course, it might resemble something more like this…

Remember, boys and girls, life is what you make of it. Stop dreaming. Start doing. And you start, mind you, with the people near by you that you say “hi” to.

Nice Chinese girl super in the Fall

Or perhaps, something a little different maybe. Like this woman in the crisp air of Fall.

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Nice Chinese Girl

Or maybe a little bit more lively and playful. Like this girl.

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Conclusion

There’s a lot of change going on right now.

It’s impossible to see the entire picture.

Instead, all we see are glimpses, and if you live inside the United States, those glimpses will be terrible distortions of reality.

There are all sorts of people, organizations, companies, and special interests that intentionally distort the visible part of what is going on to manipulate others. Resulting in this bastardization.

Distortion.

And thus, you “feel things”, but it’s impossible to put all the pieces together. This is because your observations do not match your “gut feelings”. They do not fit together, and thus things appear frightening and confusing.

But don’t worry about it too much.

Remember; You cannot control the world. You can only control your little part of it.

  • Be the Rufus.
  • Be prudent and conservative on household supplies and food.
  • Center your mind with Hemi-Sync.
  • Be good, say nothing bad.
  • Consume less.
  • Turn off the “news”.
  • Surround yourself with pets, cats and dogs.
  • Conduct your affirmation campaigns.
  • Monitor your fate forecast daily, follow the advice no matter how strange it might seem.

And that means observe the rambling and chaotic article herein. Individually each item is coherent and sensible, but as a whole they seem disjointed. They seem unconnected. They seem like the ravings of a madman.

They seem…

Yes.

They seem, they appear, it all looks… disjointed.

But…

Quantum physics teaches us that all things are interconnected, and entanglement occurs over impossibly great distances.

Stop THINKING. Listen to your inherent GUT FEELINGS more.

The “news” manipulates your thoughts and emotions, but you have full control over your gut feelings and intuition. Listen to them instead.

A pretty girl, in China, smiling and being nice is more important than any screeching “news” out of your media feeds.  And yes, things ARE going on. But the observed actions are only the “tip of the iceberg” of an event train that has been years (if not decades) in planning.

You do not know the entire story, so don’t worry about it.

Stop THINKING. Listen to your inherent GUT FEELINGS more.

It’s important at this time. Very important.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
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  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Perspective in a world undergoing change; what’s going to happen to all the trolls?

The world is a changing.

During change, somethings die, while other trends are birthed. New starts, and new understandings flavor the lives and lifestyles of the survivors of the change.

I have long argued that many of the on-going bad elements that we have long endured are now starting to come to an end. It’s all about time and good riddance.

I just banned a jackass because a newcomer just simply PISSED ME OFF. I suppose that his voracious reading of my articles should have pleased me, but it did not. I don’t like to hear things like…

"What do these girls have to do with the article title? –It’s just more juvenile objectification of women, and a form of trolling."

I love women. Somehow that’s wrong? What’s the matter with you? And, by the way, how can I troll my own venue?

Don’t go a pulling that SJW shit with me bucko.

I don’t like, nor appreciates these mindless comments, as well as endless snipes, and swipes at myself and what I am doing here. Such as…

(On the subject of trolls and their behaviors)  I stated; “They can take your nice happy and calm, pleasant day, and turn it into a sad stormy day of worry and distress.”

"If this is the case, then I submit that you have ego issues and need to learn to master your emotions."

So, then Trolls make everyone happy. And of course, if you disagree then you have a brused ego?

As well as a long steam of other silly bullshit such as…

Please accept my apologies, as I had to redact large portions of this section. It is not proper that I speak so freely about this at this time.

It cannot be “redacted” if it was never published.

Of course it’s published, you dunderhead. It’s published on the internet, and it’s published in book form. Haven’t read the main index? Obviously not. You can’t possibly be this moronic, this stupid, this foolish, this much of a simpleton.

You know, I waited two full days. Hoping that some other MM influencers would come to my defense, but no one did. I guess I must have expected too much.

“All MAJestic members, are service to others sentience.”

I doubt that far more than I doubt your story.

Sheech!

I don’t like getting up in the morning and checking my feeds to read comments about my life by a jackass. Do you? Do you feel better about yourself by reading those things? Do you think that this “individual” has improved your life, or helped you to understand the dialog or text better?

Rufus he is not.

I will argue that this individual is more sophisticated than most of the trolls and jerk-offs that I encounter. So it took me two entire days before I erased his presence. I will say one thing though, he was plowing though my articles at a prodigious rate.

He sure must have had [1] a lot of time on his hands, and [2] enjoyed the free stuff without appreciation of the effort it represents. Both high-swater-marks of trolling.

So he’s gone. Bye bye.

Well, for youse guys that is. I still have to manually erase him out. If he persists then I’ll give him some things to work out. There’s nothing quite like a cornfield to really occupy your time and give you a dose of “humble pie”.

How about this for a new world-line template?

A template map of the cornfield.

Anyways, on to this article…

This article here is just a mish-mash of stuff that I have lying around and cluttering up my thought streams. It’s all over the place, and that’s fine. I just want to put some things down on paper and then move forward.

First up is a …

Pretty girl and her car

Here’s a photo taken some time around the 1940s. My guess is that she just bought the new car and was proudly photographed near it, being all “dolled up” and all. Looks to be early winter. Maybe Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio or New York.

She’s wearing a fox stole, white gloves, to match her white hat, and a black skirt outfit. The image takes me to a time and a place far away from here. That was not the reason for the photo (in the first place) but it is why I so admire it so.

When white gloves were an everyday fashion accessory for women.

She’s lovely.

Right?

Yes she is. She really is.

Here’s a beautiful Chinese girl…

She’s one of my favorites, don’t you know. (Actually, I think you all do know.) I think she is lovely.

video 4MB

Am I objectifying her?

Yeah. Maybe I am. You all got a problem with that? She’s beautiful. She’s pretty. She’s awesome and when I see her in the video it takes me away to calmer and sweeter states of being. And I love that feeling. I love the images and feelings that she generates inside of me.

The video is an object. But she is a teleporter to a new mental state. She carries me away.

Like a beautiful cat pal. Or, a nice hot fudge sundae. Or, a freshly baked fudge brownie with some nice delicious vanilla icecream on top.

Hot fudge brownie with ice cream on top.

Now, let’s go to something contemporaneous.

I mean, the United States does this all the time, but China (somehow) is a very bad entity for soing so. Right?

Is it legal for the Chinese government to build artificial islands, airfields, and deploy troops in the South China Sea islands?

From my morning email feed…

Just for fun!

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-legal-for-the-Chinese-government-to-build-artificial-islands-airfields-and-deploy-troops-in-the-South-China-Sea-islands/answer/Gavin-McGregor-1?__nsrc__=4&__snid3__=32994900067

It is often claimed that China is breaking international law by building artificial islands in the South China Sea and that it is illegal to militarise those islands.

The short answer is that it is “not illegal” to build an artificial island if it does not conflict with some other nations legal rights that might be defined under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), or other international agreements of which both China and the other nation was a signatory.

Building airfields and deploying troops on those islands is also “not illegal” if you are entitled to build and occupy the islands.

An analogous question might be “Is it legal for warships and aircraft carriers to cast anchor in International waters?”. An anchored aircraft carrier is an artificial island with an airfield and a military presence.

The UNCLOS offers a general protection to a nations territorial waters and exclusive economic zones that extend from baselines derived from recognised land territory’s baselines. However outside those boundaries, in the high seas, any nation is free to construct artificial islands and erect installations that are not otherwise restricted under international law.

The territorial sea extends to a limit of 12 nautical miles from the baseline of a coastal State. Within this zone, the coastal State exercises full sovereignty over the air space above the sea and over the seabed and subsoil. There is also a contagious zone of an additional 12 nautical miles that grants certain rights of legal enforcement.

The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extends no more than 200 nautical miles (370 Km) from the territorial sea baseline and grants exclusive rights to marine resources, including the “exclusive” right to establish artificial islands, structures and installations.

Where zones intersect the zones of other states, the zones default to the median point between the respective baselines.

To be clear, artificial islands cannot acquire territorial rights on their own; they at best obtain a safety exclusion zone. So a nation cannot extend their territorial claims by constructing or extending islands anywhere. Smaller natural islands may be entitled a 12 nautical mile territorial claim but not a 200 nautical mile zones.

Having said that, two or more nations could be in dispute over every aspect outlined above or could be in dispute with the interpretation of international law applying to particular cases. And various interpretations of definitions and determinations could lead to quite different outcomes.

I am not commenting specifically on which islands could or could not be considered legally or illegally constructed or the selective outrage at China’s activities in the area to the exclusion of all others. But consider the following:

In the application of the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling on the status of Taiping Island, currently occupied by the Taiwan, which regards the largest island in the Spratly archipelago as a “rock” with limited maritime rights, and allows the Philippines to extend its EEZ at least as far as the island.

Taiwan, however, has a reasonable case to reject the ruling, and in any event continues to claim full maritime rights.

The Peoples Republic of China, with an overlapping claim to Taiping island can also dispute the ruling, even make a reasonable claim not to be bound by it, and therefore argue the legality of the establishment of an artificial island within Taiping Island’s claimed EEZ at Mischief Reef less than 80 nautical miles from Taiping Island.

And a very nice follow-up commentary…

It’s a well stated commentary rather than a rebuttal.

Answering a lie is to perpetuate it. If you gather all your information about China from the West, you will not get a smidgen of truth. China is not in the habit of engaging in tongue jousting. They simply defend their rights — bloviate all you want but I dare you to touch my cheese. I think they have good reasons to do so, as they are not adept at lying, and the West is a cesspool of lies populated by lying maggots who consume bullshit and regurgitate bullshit and know nothing but bullshit.
 
Here are a few facts that can be found if one makes a bit of effort and look underneath the superficial scum. I read these on the same day the Hague Arbitration Court came out with its decision. I think it’s by a female blogger who seemed to have some knowledge on the issues. The truth is therefore not arcane or hidden, it’s just never spoken in the Western lying machine. I’m doing this from memory but you’re welcome to check. The truth is out there.
 
1. The issue of the South China Sea (SCS) is not UNCLOS but sovereignty. There is overlap of course, but they are two very different issues. To talk only about UNCLOS but not China’s sovereignty claim is Big Lie Number 1. The Nine Dash Lines is China’s claim of sovereignty of the area of the SCS within those lines including all its islands and EEZ. It is a successor claim from the Republic of China (which is why Taiwan, still run by the government of the ROC, must maintain the same claim), as it was not contested by the victorious allies of the Second World War, and was recorded on maps of the era (published by the West). The PRC, which is the globally and UN accepted government of China, has a duty to defend this claim.
 
2. One must defend one’s sovereignty and negotiate for peaceful borders, not rely on third parties to decide your rights, especially not by those which have no jurisdiction and no teeth. The lesson of Munich comes to mind, when France, UK, and Italy decided to cede Czech Republic’s Sudetenland to Germany. That is what happens to countries which cannot defend their sovereignty. The meme that China is the big bully encroaching on its neighbors is laughable. It is Big Lie Number 2. Except for India, China has in fact negotiated stable land borders with all its neighbors including Vietnam and Russia, considering both these countries had land wars with China in recent decades. Even Bhutan, a de facto protectorate of India which had been prevented from reaching a border agreement with China, appears ready to defy its overlord in the near future.
 
3. The Nine Dash Lines and UNCLOS do have overlaps. It is not strange, as almost all neighbors sharing a coastline or are island nations have UNCLOS claims that overlap. UNCLOS has a suggestion for how to settle these disputes. Negotiate or arbitrate. Arbitration is however not a court of law, where one party can sue another based on the jurisdiction and laws of where the court is located. Even this jurisdiction must have some basis of prior agreement or when none is available, some basis in law. It does not get decided by one party of a dispute. Anyone who has any experience in arbitration (a mechanism actually used by many international companies doing business in China) understands that arbitration must be agreed to by both parties of a dispute. They must also agree to the quasi-judiciary organization that holds the hearing and makes the adjudication, share in the costs, and accept the decision with no further recourse. Since China never agreed to the arbitration initiated by the Philippines, never agreed to the jurisdiction of the court, never participated in the hearing, and never paid any costs relating to the one-sided arbitration, it was just a farce and a circus. To answer any questions coming from this comedy is to give substance to fart.
 
With the internet, everyone can have a voice and an opinion. I’ll readily admit that I have no real legal expertise. I have however quite a bit of experience working with top lawyers in Canada on both litigation and quasi-judiciary (Broadcast Commission) matters for well over ten years. For several years, I was also a court appointed receiver manager for the national television station I built. So I’m not speaking out of a vacuum. In fact, some of the cases I was involved in became landmark cases, causing the government to make real changes. While I’m no expert on UNCLOS or sovereignty claims, I usually apply whatever legal ideas I can understand and in most parts commonsense.
.
As I like to say, the First Law of Economics is “you do not own anything you cannot defend.” That is the meaning of sovereignty, the rest is bullshit and balderdash.

A beach beauty….

Looks like the 1960s. I can easily see myself (as a young boy) wearing the same clothes (as those two boys wore) as the folk in the picture. I can see myself there. Enjoying the sun. Listening to the waves crash, and enjoying the late afternoon sun as the beach gets deserted. Nice times.

I see the woman in the back is holding either a set of binoculars, or a purse. It’s difficult to see what it is. I don’t think that it is a purse. She’s also wearing a sleeveless top over her stunning green one-piece swimsuit.

Judging from the cars in the background, I would guess 1963, maybe 1965.

Family outing.

I do love these old photos.

It makes me want to crawl up into some old dusty attic and explore. Who know what I’ll find. Maybe a 1950 Lionel train set, a metal closet with all sorts of 1950’s womans’ hats, or a mason jar full of old pennies, buttons and indian arrow heads.

A beautiful girl showing off a nice pair of jeans

Actually I really like these jeans because they are warm. Today is frosty cold, and I am shivering while I type this. Normally Zhuhai is around 30°C (86° F) and 80% RH. But over the last few weeks it has been cold. 7°C (44°F) and spitting cold drizzle rain. Keep in mind that the homes here in the tropics are not heated. THus her outfit looks mighty appealing to me.

video 50MB

Trying to tie China to the Ukraine debacle

Sheech! Can’t these “people” give it a rest?

It was US & NATO military expansion and deployment to Russia border that caused the current Russia – Ukraine drama.  However, the United States aggression against Russia can not be effective as long as Russia has the support of China.
So, in the past weeks, there are so many imaginary articles and news that link China to the conflict.
Below are 13 links and their headlines from the western media + a piece from the Global Times explaining the Western efforts to smear China. It’s the “Smear China campaign”.
First up, the United States overt propaganda mill; VOA…
China Eyes Risks and Rewards of US-Russia Standoff Over Ukraine
https://www.voanews.com/a/china-eyes-risks-and-rewards-of-us-russia-standoff-over-ukraine/6416467.html
Next, the UK overt propighanda mill; BBC…
.
China: What does it want from the Ukraine crisis with Russia? – BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-60242549
More from the “5 eyes”. Here’s “The Diplomat”…
.
Why China Will Not Support a Russian Invasion of Ukraine – The Diplomat
https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/why-china-will-not-support-a-russian-invasion-of-ukraine/
LOL. Russia is not moving into the Ukraine. Sheech!
.
Analysis: China would back Russia, diplomatically, if it moved on Ukraine | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/china-would-back-russia-diplomatically-if-it-moved-ukraine-2022-02-19/
In all the bone-headed actions of morons, this has to be the most bone-headed of all…
.
The United States’ Russia Sanctions Package Must Include Secondary Sanctions Against China
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/17/russia-ukraine-china-united-states-secondary-sanctions-putin-xi/
And from the massive NBC mouth-piece…
.
China would ‘end up owning some of the costs’ if Russia invades Ukraine, national security adviser warns.
.
In a joint statement with Russia last week, China said it opposed NATO expansion and blamed the U.S. for rising tensions
.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/china-would-end-owning-some-costs-if-russia-invades-ukraine-n1288712
A neocon publication…
.
What China Is Actually Saying About Russia and Ukraine
.
Bits of pro-Russian rhetoric are a far cry from substantive support—or preparations for an invasion of Taiwan.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/02/what-china-actually-saying-about-russia-and-ukraine/361561/
Another neocon publication; “Foreign Affairs”…
.
China’s Ukraine Crisis; What Xi Gains—and Loses—From Backing Putin
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-02-21/chinas-ukraine-crisis
The United States “says” as reported by the rabid anti-China SCMP…
.
US says China ties won’t stop Russian economic ‘catastrophe’ after any Ukraine invasion | South China Morning Post
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3165764/us-says-china-ties-wont-make-consequences-if-russia-invades
The United States warns… (sigh. That’s all they ever do, eh?)
.
U.S. warns Chinese firms not to help Russia avoid potential Ukraine sanctions
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/us-warns-chinese-firms-not-to-help-russia-avoid-potential-ukraine-sanctions.html
More silliness. No. If Russia moves into the Ukraine, it would be a win for the Untied States…
.
Russian war in Ukraine could win for China, Iran, North Korea
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2022/02/17/russian-war-ukraine-winners-china-iran-north-korea/6784820001/
The United States warn some more. This is from a hardline neocon publication…
.
United States Warns China Not to Ignore Sanctions if Russia Invades Ukraine | The National Interest
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/united-states-warns-china-not-ignore-sanctions-if-russia-invades-ukraine-200360
More nonsense…
.
How China could win in Russia-Ukraine row. Potential conflict in Europe highlights ‘deepening ties’ between Beijing and Moscow
https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/china/955616/what-does-china-think-russia-war-ukraine
And let’s put a bow on all of it.
.
US media smearing China-Russia ties on Ukraine issue: foreign ministry – Global Times
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202201/1246802.shtml
Enjoy your leisure reading

Chinese elementary school.

As I have often stated that everyone in China gets military training. It starts in first grade, and it really appeals to me. With disipline and organization, self esteem follows naturally.

Here’s a third grade mortar crew. video 6MB

Nice short girl.

This next Chinese girl is short and so very cute. I just want to run around with her in the wide forest and drink hot coco with her, and eat some buttered cinnamon toast. video 5MB

From my dad’s generation…

This next phot comes from the 1950’s somewhere in the United States.  It’s a couple “making out” (i.e. “smooching”) in the back seat of a station wagon. Notice how the rear window opens up and is held up with a nice strut.

I’ll bet that they were playing some fine 1950s music. Maybe some Fats Domino, Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, or Bobby Darin. Good times.

Young Love.

Those days are gone. But, you know, there are new days here that we can enjoy in a similiar manner.

Have you ever thought about a fine coffeecake and a cup of coffee?

Coffeecake

China High Speed Train

China started making, designing and building their own domestic trains at the same time that the United States announced that it would build a High Speed Train network starting in California. Today, they are all over China and a normal everyday sight. Meanwhile 15 miles of track has been laid down in California. No trains. No stations. America has bumpkis.

video 1 – 4MB

A video from above showing just how many there are. Impressive.

video 2 – 3MB

Here’s the interior of a HST sleeper car. Most HST travel too fast to need a sleeper car, but these sleepers are great for long distance travel.

video 3 – 3MB

Nice Chinese girl in her living room

I actually really like the display console behind her. It’s go these glass cabinets that you can display your treasures inside. Whether it is these cute collectable dolls, or dishes, artwork, or brick-a-brack. I really like it. Of course, I would stain it a dark brown instead of the light color but that’s just me.

You’ll notice that she has a fine oval face. Oval faces really fit the Chinese face and with a nice long black hair, it’s a super nice effect.

video 3MB

A beautiful cat

This is a very beautiful white kitty.

video

Downtown America

If it wasn’t for the styles of the automobiles, you would say that this is pretty much contemporaneous America. Most of America hasn’t changed much. Sure, theres some cell phone and all that, but the Untied States has been spending it’s money destroying mud huts, strafing cows, and bombing cabbage patches. Very little remains for domestic improvements and infrastructure.

And it hasn’t happened yet either, no matter the promises that President Biden made. The federal budget is all about more machines of war, and more efforts to “contain” China.

Philadelphia, 1957

Some pictures of cats

Why not? Right?

I do love my relationships with the kitties and they always really mellow out the place and terrorize the rats and mice. I am a strong believer that every household needs a good mouser.

This cat here reminds me of my first childhood cat; Sedwick. We called his “Sedgie”. He died a ripe old age when I was living in Indiana. He was a good cat.

Sedwick clone.

Cycles of life

So much truth here… perhaps the reason why everyone in China gets military training. Learns how to shoot, fight, and endure.

Video 28MB

Little military soldier in China.

China understands.  Build strong little soldiers for a stong unified nation. This is how it is done. Training starts in first grade. video 3MB

The start of the Playboy Empire

He was a man who had a dream. Then he followed his dream and it took him to many interesting places, along with attractive and interesting people. In this photo below he is in England in 1966. Ah. The “swinging 60s”.

Playboy editor and tycoon Hugh Hefner is greeted by a group of bunny girls from his Playboy Clubs, upon his arrival at London Airport, 1966. (Photo by Dove/Getty Images)

Here’s the cover for the August issue of Playboy in 1966…

Playboy cover.

And a glimpse of what it looked like on the inside… this is the September 1966 issue…

Index page.

And what the advertisements were like. This is the back side of the magazine. Each issue seemed to have either a cigarette ad, or a alcohol advertisement of one sort or the other…

Advertisement.

My guess is that the men-folk would keep the playboy magazines in the bathroom on a low stool with other magazines, and then flip the cover over so that the Mrs’s wouldn’t notice (too much). Thus predominantly displaying the cigaretter or booze ad inside the privacy of the “man’s” bathroom.

Ladies! Get yourself an ugly man.

So funny, but…

video 82MB

A photo before going off to war!

You know, to fight those evil Japanese! Those horrible Germans, and those pesky Communists! We MUST spread freedom™ and democracy™ to the world, don’t you know!

A group poses for a picture at Pier 86, on 46th Street.

This kid below has some wisdom to share…

You can do anything you set your mind to…

This kid is going places. He’s right. I hope, I sincerely hope, that school teachers, and peers don’t beat this inner strength out of him. video 50MB

Russia Has Just Issued An Ultimatum To Ukraine, And The Conditions For War Are Now Set

This is not a game.  As this crisis has been unfolding in Ukraine, I have been seeing people all over the Internet cheer for either side like they would cheer for their favorite football teams.  But these people don’t understand what is at stake.  If World War III erupts in Ukraine, it will very likely lead to nuclear war between the United States and Russia down the road.  So we should all be deeply grieved over what is happening, because we are getting really close to a point of no return.

One of the good things about the Trump years was that President Trump was not interested in messing with Russia.  So the status quo in Ukraine was respected by both sides for four years, and there was relative peace in the region.

But then Joe Biden took power, and he has surrounded himself with an all-star team of warmongers.  National security adviser Jake Sullivan, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are all card-carrying members of the War Party, and they don’t seem interested in finding a way to have peace with Russia at all.

After having his security concerns mocked and laughed at for the past year, Vladimir Putin finally admitted that negotiations are at “a dead end” on Monday.  It would have been so easy to negotiate a peaceful solution with the Russians that would have kept Russia out of Ukraine, but that isn’t what the War Party wanted.

Now Putin has run out of patience, and on Monday he greatly escalated the crisis by formally recognizing the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk and by announcing that he would be sending troops into the two separatist republics…

Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as independent on Monday and ordered the Russian army to launch what Moscow called a peacekeeping operation in the area, upping the ante in a crisis the West fears could unleash a major war. Putin told Russia’s defense ministry to deploy troops into the two breakaway regions to “keep the peace” in a decree issued shortly after he announced recognition for Russia-backed separatists there, drawing US and European vows of new sanctions.

I think that Putin wanted to make a move before the Ukrainians did.  According to one Russian official, there were “almost 60K Ukrainian military personnel concentrated near the borders of the Republics of Lugansk & Donetsk”, and I think that Putin decided that the only way to keep Ukraine from overrunning the two republics was to move his own forces in first.

Hopefully that actually works.

Hopefully the Russians will stay in Donetsk and Luhansk, and hopefully the Ukrainians will stay on their side.

Ukraine crisis assets Showing the area of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine

If that is the end result, there may still be hope of defusing the situation.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

Putin sounds like a man that is convinced that war is coming.  The following comes from a very rough translation of his speech on Monday…

“from those who took power in kiev we demand to stop any and all military actions against donbass. otherwise, the consequences will be on ukraine. i count on the support of all patriotic forces in russia.”

Russia has essentially issued an ultimatum to Ukraine.

If Ukraine invades Donetsk and Luhansk, the Russians will invade Ukraine.

Of course some western media sources are actually using the term “invasion” to describe Russian troop movements into the separatist republics.

If you have bought into that propaganda, let me ask you a question.  Do the people in this video look like they have just been “invaded”?…

Twitter can be a horrible place at times, but tonight’s decision by President Putin to recognise the Donbass republics is the news people there have been looking forward to for 8 years. I’ll sign off tonight with this video from Lenin Square in Donetsk. #Donbass 🇷🇺 pic.twitter.com/l8YJVF84tf

— Dean O’Brien (@DeanoBeano1) February 21, 2022

This would be a good opportunity for both sides to take a deep breath and start backing down.

But that isn’t going to happen.

Western leaders continue to use extremely harsh rhetoric and they continue to insist that a full-blown invasion of Ukraine is imminent.  The following is what Jake Sullivan just told the Today Show

“We believe that any military operation of the size, scope and magnitude of what we believe the Russians are planning will be extremely violent. It will cost the lives of Ukrainians and Russians, civilians and military personnel alike,” Sullivan said during an appearance on NBC’s “Today.”

“But we also have intelligence to suggest that there will be an even greater form of brutality because this will not simply be some conventional war between two armies,” he added. “It will be a war waged by Russia on the Ukrainian people to repress them, to crush them, to harm them.”

And another U.S. official is alleging that Russia has a list of people that they will be specifically targeting once the invasion has been completed…

“Disturbing information recently obtained by the United States that indicates that human rights violations and abuses in the aftermath of a further invasion are being planned,” Ambassador Bathsheba Nell Crocker, the US Representative to the Office of the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, alleges in a letter to Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“These acts, which in past Russian operations have included targeted killings, kidnappings/forced disappearances, unjust detentions, and the use of torture, would likely target those who oppose Russian actions, including Russian and Belarusian dissidents in exile in Ukraine, journalists and anti-corruption activists, and vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons,” reads the letter, which was first reported by The Washington Post and obtained by CNN.

So Russia plans to violently round up dissidents, activists and anyone else that is opposed to their rule?

Oh, you mean that it will be kind of like what just happened in Canada with the full approval of the U.S. government?

If the Biden administration actually cared about human rights, they would be condemning the horrific brutality that we just witnessed in Ottawa.

But of course that will never happen.

Let’s watch and see what happens over in Ukraine during the next several days.  One very alarming sign is that the Russians have just closed off much of the airspace over the Sea of Azov

Russia’s Aeronautical Information Center issued a NOTAM (a Notice to Airmen) on Sunday which will close most of the airspace over the Sea of Azov starting at midnight between Sunday and Monday, as the US continued to warn that Russia intends to invade Ukraine.

I don’t think that this indicates that a full-blown invasion of Ukraine is imminent.

But at this point the conditions for war have been clearly set.

If Ukraine invades Donetsk and Luhansk now, the Russians have made it exceedingly clear that they will invade Ukraine.

So this actually puts a lot of power into the hands of the War Party in Washington.

Joe Biden and his all-star team of warmongers now know exactly what it will take to spark a war.

Will they decide to pull the trigger?

Let us hope not, because once World War III begins nothing will ever be the same again.

Nice Chinese girl

With nice S-shaped body and a rocking red sweater. I like this build. I’ll bet you that she has that kind of smoth “baby bottom” stomach. You know, when you are thin and you feel comfortable in you clothing, and in your skin, everything fits you wonderfully. Like this gal.

video

Salisbury Steak with Mushroom Gravy

Do you know what I haven’t had in a while? Yes. That’s right. Home made Salisbury steak with mushroom gravy.

Salisbury Steak with Mushroom Gravy.

If you have memories of eating the microwave meal version of Salisbury steak, don’t be scared off by this retro favorite. The home-cooked steak pairs excellently with a creamy sauce and when seasoned to perfection redefines what people loved about this classic in the first place. Take a second chance with this meal and it will be your new all-time favorite. It certainly is mine.

And for youse guys who wants to cook this bad boy up, well…

Get the recipe from Tin Eats.

Why there are no internet trolls in China.

It’s true.

All behaviors are monitored by AI. Troll behaviors are observed and then the police come by and evaluate the criminal to set up treatment and punishment on a individual to individual basis.

That is why China is a nation of Rufus’s and many Trolls find themselves spending substantial time in work camps, and re-programming facilities.

Here’s what the world looks like when you imprison the mentally ill, and criminal in society… it becomes a paradise.

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Managerial Menticide

The Monday Taki post is up. The subject of it and today’s post is the new way to look at the system ruling over us. Of course, Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door for those needing audio stimulation. Much of it is about the situation in Europe and the evolving Canadian dictatorship.

One of the problems with the Opposite Rule of Liberalism is that it relies on the old Left-Right dichotomy of American politics. This framing persists despite the fact that it is a vestige of a bygone era that no longer works today.

  • Democrats = Liberals
  • Republicans = Conservatives

It no longer exists.

The political divide is now between those who adhere to the basket of ideas called Western liberalism and those who defend the post-Marxist managerial state. The latter group is made up almost entirely of members of the ruling class.

  • The Haves = The post-Marxist managerial state.
  • The Have-nots = Western liberalism

In other words, we now live in a world divided by those in the system of control that hovers over the West and those who live under it. The Dirt People versus Cloud People framing is a much more honest, if a bit sarcastic, framework for the world.

  • Cloud People = Rulers
  • Dirt People = Serf / slaves

The ruling system is like a miasma that hangs over society, infecting the minds of the people and their relations with one another. We can see the elites at the top, just barely, but the system they control is all around us.

A big part of what ails society is this sense that things are not as they seem, but it is hard to get a read on why.

That noxious miasma that lingers in every aspect of society often leads people to doubt their own senses. Their experience tells them things about the world and people in it, but everywhere they look they are getting messages telling them that what they think they see is not true.

Instead, they are to believe something that is often the opposite of what they experience.

This is where the Opposite Rule continues to work. Those who are aware of the contradictions of daily existence can apply the rule to the information stream that comes from the system, filling the area around them. Whatever is in the air at the moment, start from some version of the opposite, and the truth will be near. The Opposite Rule of Liberalism is best restated as the Opposite Rule of Managerialism. This organic, self-aware system that rules over us is the opposite of truth.

A useful example comes from the daily barrage of “information” from the system about the crisis in Ukraine.

Here is a story from the New York Times headlined, “Russia has been laying groundwork online for a ‘false flag’ operation, misinformation researchers say.” Note that this story is not behind the usual paywall, as they want wide circulation of it. Note also that the writer is one of the infants they employ to copy and paste material into “news reports.”

This news report starts with a news report from a European based group called European Expert Association, which is described as “a research group that focuses on security in Ukraine.”

When you take a look at who these people are, it becomes obvious that they are Ukrainian activists.

These are not neutral observers searching for the truth about the crisis. More important, when you look at their resumes you see all the familiar NGO’s that are pushing for war with Russia.

  • NGO = CIA funded Neocon organization.

Of course, this is the New York Times, the first draft of history and the leader in the American news media. They do not just take this at face value. They hand it to a group called the Global Disinformation Index, a nonprofit “research” group. These are the go-to guys for the Times reports on misinformation and disinformation.

To the shock of no one in the Times offices, the researchers at Global Disinformation Index confirmed everything said the European Expert Association.

The reason the Times was not surprised by what they heard back from the Global Disinformation Index is the person running it is Anne Applebaum. She is a notorious warmonger and neoconservative.

Anne Applebaum.

Here she is advocating for the liquidation of the Afghanis and the Syrians as a “solution” to those problems. Applebaum is a big believer in what Stalin supposedly said about people causing problems for the regime. No man, no problem. Applebaum just scales it up.

Her partner in this enterprise is a Ukrainian activist named Peter Pomerantsev, who is probably on the payroll of a Western intelligence service. His biography does not pass the laugh test. His role in life has been to seed Western media with anti-Russian information dressed up as Ukrainian nationalism. The rest of the staff of the Global Disinformation Index all have an axe to grind with some enemy of the neocons, past, present or in the future.

Peter Pomerantsev.

The point of this walk through the swamps behind the ministry of disinformation is to illustrate how the new rule works;

  • If a media outlet is claiming to root out disinformation, you can be sure they are not doing that.
  • Instead, start with the assumption that they are waging a disinformation campaign.
  • That is what you see in the New York Times story and any story containing the words “Global Disinformation Index.”
  • Then you can begin to figure out what is really going on with the story.

Of course, the entirely new obsession with misinformation and disinformation by government and mass media is a big lie. Since forever, people have known that governments lie all the time.

They have known that the media is partisan, a form of activism more often than not. Yet suddenly we are being told that the media and the government are now declaring war in false information.

Since they are the only possible source of disinformation, this means war on themselves.

The big lie, for those unfamiliar, is a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. This is now the default tactic of the managerial state.

  • They tell us that Eskimo truckers protesting vaccine rules are white supremacists.
  • Then they bring in a “hate expert” to claim that freedom is a form of violence.

These outlandish whoppers are then signed off on by new experts who sagely tell us the moon is made of cheese.

Unlike normal propaganda techniques, this new tactic is not to further a cause, although it can be used that way as we see with Ukraine. The neocons are simply taking advantage of a defense mechanism that has evolved since the Cold War.

By flooding the zone with outlandish nonsense, the system prevents cogent analysis of what it is doing or contradicting it in any way.

It is a form of menticide to paralyze the people by suspending them in a solution of false narratives.

The concept of "menticide" indicates an organized system of judicial perversion and psychological intervention, in which a powerful tyrant transfers his own thoughts and words into the minds and mouths of the victims he plans to destroy or to use for his own propaganda.

-menticide

This is the utility of the Opposite Rule.

It helps clarify the new relationship between the leviathan and the people.

  • Rulers = leviathan
  • People = serf / slaves

Instead of viewing society as a hierarchical structure that is responsive to the will of the people, you see that it is an adversarial relationship between a ruling organism and the people.

This ruling organism is the vast administrative state made up of government, corporations, the academy, non-profits and the mass media.

It is a fully integrated organism.

The endless waves of information, mostly false information, is its primary defense mechanism against what it sees as a threat.

That threat is the people over whom it hovers like a noxious cloud.

The point of the false information is to keep the people in a fog of confusion about who really rules over them.

You cannot rebel against that which you are not even sure exists.

Menticide is the primary defense mechanism of this system of social control we call managerialism.

A nice night in the city

Isn’t she just great? Well, I love her.

One of my favorite things to do is get dressed up a tad and go out for a night in the city. Though it’s mostly a nice meal in a restrurant, followed by a coffee and a snack at one of the bars or coffee houses, I would love to go out and feel the night city air. Great times.

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Chinese J-20

Superior or roughly comparable (depending on who your read) to all the American fighter aircraft. 100% Chinese designed. 100% Chinese avionics. 100% Chinese engines.

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According To The ‘Big Mac Index’, China’s Yuan Is 34% Under-Valued

The Big Mac was created in 1967 by Jim Delligati, a McDonald’s franchise owner in Pennsylvania. It was launched throughout the U.S. the following year, and today you can buy one in more than 70 countries. However, as Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross details below, the price you pay will vary based on where you are, as evidenced by the Big Mac Index.

What Does the Big Mac Index Show?

The Big Mac Index was invented by The Economist in 1986. It is intended to be a lighthearted way to demonstrate the concept of purchasing power parity. In other words, it helps illustrate the idea that market exchange rates between countries may be “out of whack” when compared to the cost of buying the same basket of goods and services in those places.

Given that McDonald’s is one of the biggest companies in the world and the Big Mac is widely available globally, it means that the famous burger can be used as a basic goods comparison between most countries. It also has the advantage of having the same inputs and distribution system, with a few minor modifications (like chicken patties in India instead of beef).

Using the price of a Big Mac in two countries, the index can give an indication as to whether a currency may be over or undervalued. For example, a Big Mac costs ¥24.40 in China and $5.81 in the United States. By comparing the implied exchange rate to the actual exchange rate, we can see whether the Yuan is over or undervalued.

According to the Big Mac Index, the Yuan is undervalued by 34%.

Beyond currency misalignment, the index has other uses. For instance, it shows inflation in burger prices over time. If we compare the price of a Big Mac across countries in the same currency—such as the U.S. dollar—we are also able to see where burgers are cheaper or relatively more expensive.

Burger Costs Around the World

Big Mac prices have been converted from local currency to U.S. dollars based on the actual exchange rate in effect at the time.

Switzerland takes the cake for the priciest Big Mac, followed closely behind by Norway.

Both countries have relatively high price levels but also enjoy higher wages when compared to other OECD countries.

Venezuela has seen the largest jump in burger prices, with the cost of a Big Mac climbing nearly 250% since 2004. The country has been plagued by hyperinflation for years, so it’s no surprise to see large price swings in the country’s data.

While it appears that the price of a Big Mac has decreased in Turkey, this is because the prices are shown in U.S. dollars. The new Turkish lira has depreciated against the U.S. dollar more than 90% since it was introduced in 2005.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Russia has the cheapest Big Mac, reflecting the country’s lower price levels. Labor costs in Russia are roughly a third of those in Switzerland.

The Limitations of Burgernomics

The Big Mac Index is useful for a number of reasons. Investors can use it to measure inflation over time, and compare this to official records. This can help them value bonds and other securities that are sensitive to inflation. The Big Mac Index also indicates whether a currency may be over or undervalued, and investors can place foreign exchange trades accordingly.

Of course, the index does have shortcomings. Here are some that economists have noted.

  • Non-traded services can have different prices across countries. The price of a Big Mac will be influenced by the costs of things like labor, but this is not a reflection of relative currency values. The Economist now releases a GDP-adjusted version of the Big Mac Index to help address this criticism.
  • McDonald’s is not in every country in the world. This means the geographic reach of the Big Mac Index has some limitations, particularly in Africa.
  • The index lacks diversity. The index is made up of one item: the Big Mac. Because of this, it lacks the diversity of other economic metrics such as the Consumer Price Index.

Despite all of these limitations, the Big Mac Index does act as a good starting place for understanding purchasing power parity. Through the simplicity of burgers, complex economic theory is easier to digest.

Walking the rails in the countryside.

Gosh! I’ll bet this woman is so much fun!

She’s one of my favorites and she’s on the tracks. I used to do this don’t you know. We had all these traintracks that ran in and out and though the countryside in Western Pennsylvania. I would go hiking with my friends (when I was a boy) and often we would try walkign on top of the rails. Just like this girl does. So nice. Good memories.

When was the last time that you walked the rails?

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Do you all know what would be good and fun?

How about taking a little short walk down some tracks alone with your cell phone set to OFF.

A reminder of how unified the Chinese are

This is a clip from a movie. It depicts a true event where (during the Korean war) no matter how many times the American military destroyed the bridges, the Chinese rebuilt them and kept on moving forward. True story. Remember that.

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Nice healthy Chinese girl

Gosh she looks good. Doesn’t she?

I really like her lipstick. Personally, I think that many women look great wearing lipstick, but the color and texture selection is critical. Not every color and texture fits every woman. In this case, this red sade really complements her skin complexion and her hair color. Don’t you think?

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Final Thoughts

Do you all know what really pisses off a lot of Trolls?

It’s one of the first things that Trolls disparage.

It’s off-subject meandering. Whether pretty girls. Food. Cats. Personal stories, and all the rest.

It drives them bonkers.

It’s rambling trains of thought. They are unable (due to some kind of mental block, or mental illness) focus on wide-ranging topics. They can handle a singular topic, and get involved in it, but they really, REALLY hate meandering expressions of thoughts, images, senses and pictures of another life in it’s great complexity.

They cannot handle articles like this.

Their tiny minds cannot handle it.

You all know, that I am going to continue on my meandering adventures, for most healthy people can easily handle my topics and how they are presented. I hope that you too (my dear reader) understand why I structure MM the way I do.

There’s an order and a reason behind the “madness”.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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The many types of Internet Troll and Online Provocateurs

I hate trolls. I mean, with a passion. They can take your nice happy and calm, pleasant day, and turn it into a sad stormy day of worry and distress.

They do not belong in your life.

Cut them out of it.

Now, if you’ve ever been the victim of persistent online trolling, then you know exactly how discombobulating it can feel. You might feel mixed emotions that range from confusion and anger to anxiety and sadness. And you wouldn’t be alone.

American Research has shown that roughly four in 10 Americans have personally experienced online harassment and that 62 percent consider it to be a major problem.

Which is probably why China has banned that behavior and will send you to a mental clinic for study and treatment if you engage in it, and why the USA openly allows it to occur.

You might ask: What causes trolling and what can I do about it? Well, before we can get to the psychology, we have to get our definitions in order.

Trolling Defined

Different aspects of the trolling phenomenon have gone by many names: trolling, harassment, cyberbullying, flaming, sh*t-posting, etc.

While these terms are not exactly the same, they do have a common theme: They all describe bad-faith, unwelcoming behavior that occurs online to disrupt conversations, often by parachuting into discussions uninvited.

It’s helpful to think about trolling on a spectrum of intensity and threat level. For example, on one end of the spectrum, there can be infrequent, mildly annoying but ultimately harmless trolling; and on the other end of the spectrum, trolling can bleed into a form that is severe, relentless, and dangerous.

The precise boundary between trolling and harassment is fuzzy. If trolling becomes persistent and targeted, then it might be considered harassment and can enter legal territory.

Trolling also has different styles.

Some trolling is overt and obvious: name-calling, personal attacks, character assassinations, spreading lies, releasing private information (i.e., doxing), complaining to employers, threats, etc.

And sometimes it can be covert and sneaky: social media stalking behind a block, “sealioning,” talking about someone without tagging or naming them (e.g., sub-tweeting), etc.

What Causes Trolling?

Trolling is multi-causal.

This means that it isn’t caused by any one reason, but rather by many reasons that can add up and interact with each other in a perfect storm to produce trolling.

The most helpful way to think about these causes is to divide them into two broad categories:

  • Reasons outside of a person (i.e., environmental factors) and
  • Reasons inside of a person (i.e., individual factors).

Environmental factors that contribute to trolling:

  • The online disinhibition effect: This phenomenon describes an illusion of invincibility and invisibility. A person is more likely to troll from behind a screen than face-to-face due to a false sense of security. Metaphorically, the online environment can produce a sort of mental veil that seems to open a release valve into some of the darker corners of human nature—not unlike the “liquid courage” and disinhibition that alcohol can provide. Unsurprisingly, combining the online disinhibition effect with alcohol use can be a recipe for disaster.
  • Anonymity: If a person engages anonymously online, then it’s like the online disinhibition effect has just taken steroids. It is easier to troll with the illusion of no accountability and no connection to one’s life off-line.
  • Tribalism: The power of the group can add more fuel to the fire. Like a pack of wolves, humans are social creatures and have an innate desire to be part of a group. When many members of a group are trolling a target, a sense of belonging can be achieved by conforming to the group’s behavior.

Individual factors that contribute to trolling:

  • Personality: There are many ways of understanding personality. In essence, personality traits are deeply ingrained patterns of thinking and behaving. One way to understand one particular aspect of personality is to focus on some of the darker sides of human nature, which researchers have called the dark tetrad: sadism, psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. The dark tetrad has been found to be associated with trolling. Within the dark tetrad, sadism has been found to be the strongest predictor of trolling, which describes the tendency to derive pleasure or enjoyment from being cruel or demeaning to others. It is important to recognize that sadism in this sense occurs on a spectrum—people can have more or less sadistic tendencies.
  • Ideologically possessed beliefs: Some people are married to their beliefs and don’t believe in divorce. In other words, some people can rigidly over-identify with particular beliefs (e.g., about health, gender, racism, politics, etc.) to the extent that they might engage in trolling behavior when those beliefs are threatened. People don’t like it when their worldviews are poked and prodded because it can be very upsetting when someone is told that the way in which they understand the world is wrong. It can also feel personal and can result in lashing out for protection. Research has shown that people perceive trolling as more deserved and justified when they perceive that the target has committed an offense.
  • Conditioning: Not everyone finds demeaning people to be rewarding and reinforcing. But this is the experience of people with stronger sadistic tendencies. One framework to help understand trolling is what psychologists call operant and classical conditioning. Operant conditioning is the study of rewards and punishment to influence behavior. For some, this might dredge up images of rats or pigeons dancing for food pebbles. Basically, trolling behavior can feel rewarding in two ways: the pleasure experienced from getting a rise out of a target (positive reinforcement) and in some cases, the pleasure experienced by avoiding or distracting from aspects of life that are uncomfortable (negative reinforcement). Like a slot machine, randomly responding to trolling just strengthens the motivation for it to continue. Simultaneously, there are classical conditioning processes going on—reminiscent of a dog that salivates when you open the cupboard because they know they’re about to eat. A dog salivates because they’ve learned that the cupboard represents food. In the same way, people with sadistic tendencies that engage in trolling may salivate, so to speak, when they learn that their target represents the pleasure that they’ll experience when they troll.

What Can You Do About Trolling?

There isn’t exactly a one-size-fits-all approach to handling trolling because it’s complex, multi-causal, and ranges in severity. But there are surefire ways to cope. I belie that you kill them off quickly. They are toxic individuals that generate a toxic enviroment that everyone must endure. They do not improve the world that they participate in. Instead they destroy it.

It is important to remember that respectful disagreement is not trolling—and at the same time, no one is owed your engagement. It’s a priviledge. Not a Right.

Here is a great article by Michael Nuccitelli, Psy.D. It's well worth the read. Edited to fit this venue and modified by MM slightly to fit this venue.

130+ Types of Internet Troll and Online Provocateurs

Troll, a one-word term defining a highly dysfunctional online user who targets others using cyber harassment, internet defamation, online deception, cyberstalking, disinformation, extortion, duplicity and cyberbullying when the assailant and target are minors.

The Internet Troll and their Troll clones inhabit cyberspace like, “cockroaches hiding behind refrigerators waiting for the lights to be turned off“.

It’s time for Information Age society to exterminate these parasites, preventing them from replicating.

The Troll is the subject of this paper and this writer has compiled an abundant amount of information for the reader describing the Internet Troll, types of Troll and the Internet Troll’s relationship to this writer’s iPredator and Dark Psychology constructs.

As a forensic psychologist having spent the last 20 years working with criminal, addicted, psychopathological and cybercriminal minds, the Internet Troll is a unique and complex profile.

Trolls (aka, Internet Trolls) and the characters they assume, are driven by primitive psychodynamic themes.

One does not have to be a forensic psychologist or criminal profiler to understand how deeply disturbed they are.

The troll relies upon a fragmented unconscious and lives within a fantasy world of being powerful, in control and envied by all others.

They feel completely opposite of what is portrayed to others.

From an intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics standpoint, Trolls are plagued by immense feelings of inferiority, isolation, rage, paranoia and jealousy for peers.

Instead of getting professional help or support from loved ones, Trolls prefer their insignificant virtual world fueled by grandiosity fantasies.

Internet Troll: An Internet Troll is a colloquial expression used to define an online user who uses Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to purposely and actively provoke, defame, anger, tease, flame, or incite other online users.

Often, the Internet Troll does not know the target recipient(s) of their vitriolic statements and behaviors.

Internet Trolls regularly appear in all forms of online mediums ranging from online video gaming gatherings to chatroom and forum discussions.

When the Internet Troll’s inflammatory statements and actions do not include a direct or implied physical threat to the target(s), their behavior is categorizes as cyber harassment.

If the Troll’s verbal assaults include direct or implied physical threats to their target(s), their actions are than defined as cyberstalking.

The motivations for an Internet troll’s provocative, and often, bizarre behaviors are many.

Despite the variations in modus operandi, most trolls are seeking attention, recognition, stimulation pseudo-notoriety and retribution for some unknown perceived injustice.

Although there is no evidence or clinical research validating the psychology of the Internet Troll, it is commonly believed that the “Veil of Anonymity” afforded to every online user inspires some to engage in egregious behaviors.

Those who have begun to investigate the etiology of the Troll suggest that the anonymity of the internet contributes to what has been called, disinhibition effect.

It has been postulated that internet anonymity leads some to behave in asocial ways coupled with a lack of guilt or remorse for the harm they cause not being in the target’s physical presence or even knowing their identity.

Trollosphere

Trollosphere: The Trollosphere is the total of Internet Trolls using cyberspace and digital devices to provoke, judge and defame others.

Trollosphere represents all troll typologies, their jargon and cyber-attack patterns.

Just as the Blogosphere is segmented into blogger niches, the Trollosphere has targets and online environments favored by Trolls.

Trollosphere also includes the thoughts, feelings and perceptions online users’ experience, when alone or in groups, who share similar Troll definitions.

iPredator’s Internet Troll Profile

  • Most often gender male.
  • Spends prolonged periods of time online and likely internet addicted or at risk for becoming internet dependent.
  • Meets all three criteria for being categorized as an iPredator.
  • A self-awareness of causing harm to others, directly or indirectly, using ICT.
  • The usage of ICT to obtain, tamper with, exchange and deliver harmful information.
  • A general understanding of Cyberstealth used to engage in criminal or deviant activities or to profile, identify, locate, stalk and engage a target.
  • Tends to have few offline friends and online friends often engage in the same type of online harassment.
  • Highly susceptible to the states of deindividuation and the disinhibition effect experienced by all online users. For internet trolls, these states are highly influential in their online lives.
  • They are psychopathological in experiencing power and control online fueled by their offline reality of being insignificant, angry and alone.
  • The severity and magnitude of psychological abuse they inflict upon their online targets is directly correlated to their probability of suffering from an Axis I, Axis II or Dual Diagnose mental illness.
  • When online, show a lack of empathy, have minimal capacity to experience shame or guilt and behaves with callousness and a grandiose sense of self.
  • From a psychodynamic standpoint, Internet Trolls create and sustain an intra-psychic myth of power, greatness and domination. Although all humanity is guided through life by internal myths and archetypes, the Internet Troll’s myths and archetypes are highly distorted.
  • They are developmentally immature, tend to be chronically isolated and have had minimal to no intimate relationships.

  • Affected Profundity Troll: “A mutant subspecies of Sophist Trolls, Affected Profundity Trolls post endless pages of pretentious drivel that is intended to appear wise, but which generally makes little sense (if any). Affected Profundity Trolls enjoy asking themselves questions, sometimes answering them and sometimes leaving them hanging, for they believe this looks intelligent and lends an aura of mystery to their incoherent ramblings.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Agenda Troll: “Agenda trolls are those participants who join a forum specifically to pursue an agenda of their own, often a feud or grudge with another member, or perhaps a dispute with some party not participating in that forum. When a flame war erupts on another board, for example, Agenda Trolls will follow their opponents to other forums in order to continue the spat.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Amazon Trolls: “Posts something negative, be it about the story, the writing or even the grammar, whilst the natural instinct is to respond, it is imperative that you avoid the temptation and instead, face the situation and take it on the chin. If you don’t, you potentially open yourself up to a world of pain. For the forums are also home to all kinds of trolls. And literary trolls like nothing than a sniff of a stroppy author. As a result, before you know it you could find yourself under attack and those attacks can be very personal indeed. They can also be relentless as literary trolls hunt in packs.” Doug Brinson, (2013)
  • Argumentative Prick Troll: You see these kinds of people in Facebook Groups. Or even with their own “dedicated” websites committed to attacking people they don’t like. These trolls will argue for the sake of arguing, and they won’t back down. Even if their argument makes no sense or has no real purpose. And in response: they’ll do something stupid (or drastic) to destroy your reputation or spread false rumors out of insecurity.
  • Arrogant Asshole Troll:  You can call this group of trolls “elitists”. They’ve laid out an imaginary red carpet only they can walk on. Putting themselves on a fake pedestal and belittling anyone who sees the world different. These kinds of trolls have their head so far up their ass, they can’t see what’s in-front of them.
  • Artistic Troll: “A higher species of Classic Troll, Artistic Trolls are intelligent individuals who understand the subtle art of trolling, and who do what they do specifically to make others look foolish. Often employing the techniques of Deceptive Trolls, Artistics will string forumites along until some point in time designated by their own desires, at which point they will reveal the ploy, admit that it was a ploy, and laugh at everyone for being stupid enough to fall for it.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Back-Stalker: “This Internet Troll will pour through your archives until he or she finds something you wrote that contradicts something you’ve written more recently. It will be pointed out. Every time you write anything.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Baiter: “A special place in hell could be reserved for The Baiter. This troll has a serious case of superiority, and always an ulterior motive. Whether posting one-off comments or engaging in back-and-forth, the Baiter always wants to bring the discussion back to their wheelhouse. A Political Baiter, such as, will always turn the discussion back to politics, even if the original post is about pandas or the trials of wearing socks with sandals. It could be anything benign, and The Political Baiter will make comments about the “liberal media” or “liberal elite” or “anti-intellectual conservatism” that take the original content to a different (often inappropriate) contextual level.” (Criminal Justice Degree Guide)
  • Bar Friend: “How many times have you met someone who is a friend of a friend at a bar or party, only to come home and see a Facebook friend request sitting in your in-box? You don’t remember their name, and the conversation you had with them was superficial at best. It’s obvious they just want to add you to their growing list of friends and you honestly believe you’ll never see them again.” Don Reisinger, CNET (2008)
  • Big Man: “Driven by ‘Order’ forces. A Big Man does trolling by posting something pleasing to others to support their world view.” (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Bitter Troll: “Bitter Trolls are a curious cross-species. They can be trolls of any breed in their larval stages but become Bitters after their earlier activities are seen for what they were. What sets these trolls apart from other classifications is their behavior after they have been spotted and labeled as trolls. Angry, frustrated, and resentful about being “outed,” the Bitter Troll will wage a campaign of indignant complaints intended to focus attention away from the troll and on whomever is responsible for identifying the creature.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Boomerang: “Different name but posts sound familiar? This troll sets up new accounts to keep posting when blocked.”  Emily Turner, (2013)
  • Bored Hater: “This guy loves to make problems, usually out of sheer boredom. His posts are vile and hideous for no other reason than riling up total strangers. His arsenal includes racism, sexism, homophobia and religious intolerance.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Bustr: “Bustrs are obsessive Bitters by whom you could practically set your watch. A Bustr never forgets, never forgives, and holds a grudge until the day it dies. Also a variant of Agenda trolls, Bustrs typically move from forum to forum complaining about the objects of their ire, often cutting and pasting age-old diatribes that have little meaning to most of their audiences. Most Busters are relatively incoherent, though a few of the more lucid ones are potentially dangerous stalkers.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Cannibal Trolls: “A troll that spends it’s time troll baiting other trolls. Wasting the time of those most intent of wasting the time of others. For instance, a Cannibal Troll could post something like this (“Hi. Does anyone know if it’s possible to use a background that would essentially turn my computer monitor into a mirror? Scanning a mirror doesn’t work”) He would do this purposely to attract trolls and feed of their negative comments. For every troll that pays attention to a Cannibal Troll another innocent bystander go’s unmolested.” (Urban Dictionary)
  • Chatroom Bob: “Driven by ‘Existential’ forces. A chatroom bob takes part in trolling to gain the trust of other members in order to exploit them.” (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Comment Trolls: “We’ve all met the Internet Comment Troll. The delightful little creature who somehow always shows up in the comments section of blogs, websites, and social media services to show off his superior intellect and set the world straight. The Internet Comment Troll is an expert in all matters and always takes pains to spread his wisdom. He particularly loves to dwell in tech-related realms, where he enlightens reviewers and enhances their work with his insights. Were it not for the Internet Comment Troll, online comment sections might actually be a place for meaningful.” JR Raphael, (2014)
  • Concern Troll: “A person who posts on a blog thread, in the guise of “concern,” to disrupt dialogue or undermine morale by pointing out that posters and/or the site may be getting themselves in trouble, usually with an authority or power. They point out problems that don’t really exist. The intent is to derail, stifle, control, the dialogue. It is viewed as insincere and condescending. The VineYard, (2007)
  • Connoisseur Troll: “The Connoisseur Troll is so full of himself that his head is lodged up his ass. A movie critic whose only credential is that he watched Citizen Kane once, a friend who considers himself a wine aficionado for being able to discern the difference between a Franzia Cabernet and a Mike’s Hard Lemonade and the guy who takes it upon himself to note when you mistakenly use “good” instead of “well” in a sentence are all examples of the Connoisseur. The troll will use his supposed “area of expertise” as a weapon to disagree with anyone’s opinion.”  Josh Gross (2013)
  • Contrarian Troll: “A sophisticated breed, Contrarian Trolls frequent boards whose main opinions are contrary to their own. A forum dominated by those who support firearms and knife rights, such as, will invariably be visited by Contrarian Trolls espousing their beliefs in the benefits of gun control.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Copyright Trolls: “A pejorative term for a party that enforces copyrights it owns for purposes of making money through litigation, in a manner considered unduly aggressive or opportunistic, generally without producing or licensing the works it owns for paid distribution. Critics object to the activity because they believe it does not encourage the production of creative works, but instead makes money through the inequities and unintended consequences of high statutory damages provisions in copyright laws intended to encourage creation of such works.” (Wikipedia)
  • Crazy Troll: “This guy just makes no sense. You post something about gardening and he claims that all gardeners are women and all women are soul-sucking incubus. Incubi? Who are only out to lure men into bed so they can marry them, then divorce them and take all their money to buy more tomato plants and meth.” Kristen Lamb (2012)
  • Crybaby: “If someone says something mean to the Crybaby, she’ll become hysterical and swear she’s never coming back to the board. Of course, you’ll see her three days later when she slinks back for more abuse. The Crybaby often tells on you to the mods and swears she’s going to get you banned.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Crybaby: “This Internet Troll likes to take everything anyone says super-seriously and ends discussions by flouncing off. Despite promises he or she will not return, this troll always comes back.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Cryer: “They tend to take everything as a personal assault, and love nothing more than feeling offended. And if they can’t feel offended directly, they also love being offended on other people’s behalves.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Cuckoo Troll: “Like most trolls, cuckoo trolls are tortured by a terrible nagging fear that no one will ever take what they have to say very seriously. This fear is well justified. Cuckoo trolls try to get around this by mimicking the values of their host community. So, for example, they will seek to mislead with comments like “What makes you think I’m a Labor voter?” or “Actually I’m very open-minded on the subject of climate science.” James Delingpole (2011)
  • Dead Kid Troll: “Prior to the Internet, “troll” garnered images of the Scandinavian mythological creature, a garish monster that lives under bridges and bothers the Billy Goats Gruff. And if you’ve heard of The Dead Kid Trolls, it’s not hard to see why the name fits. Alexis Pilkington was a high school girl that committed suicide in 2010, and she was cyberbullied after her death. Friends and relatives had to see comments like, “[s]he was obviously a stupid depressed, who deserved to kill herself. she got what she wanted. These types of trolls are certainly the worst; they’re extremely unsettling and counter to any healthy grieving process for a lost friend or child. Of the wretched trolls, these are the worst.” (Criminal Justice Degree Guide)
  • Debate troll: These are always looking for debate or argument and can never agree to lose even when they know they are in the wrong. They are always determined to have the last word
  • Debbie Downer Troll: “This type of Internet Troll likes to showcase his or her unhappiness with the world by bringing you down.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Deceptive or “Classic” Troll: “More sophisticated but often easily identified and exposed, the Classic Troll gratifies his ego by pretending to be someone or something he or she is not. Classics make up elaborate stories about themselves, sometimes weaving some amounts of truth into their lies. As a web of lies is difficult to build with consistency, however, Classics are often “outed” by other forumites.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Domination Trolls: “This is where the trollers’ strategy extends to the creation and running of apparently bona-fide mailing lists.” Team Technology (Beware the Troll)
  • Domination Trolls: “This is where the troller’s strategy extends to the creation and running of apparently bona-fide mailing lists.” (Net Lingo)
  • Don King Troll: “Related to Affected Profundity Trolls, Don King Trolls spout gibberish in the hope that they’ll either bore or confuse to death those with whom they disagree. The average Don King Troll is “a pursuitist who gromulates his adversarial computerists with height defining formulations to the disinterestingest adjunct.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Done-It-All: “These trolls know and have experienced everything. Their knowledge is paramount and they will drown you in facts and anecdotes until you give up.” Emily Turner, (2013)
  • Downer: “This troll complains about everything: too much information, not enough information, boring posts, it was better last year, someone else does it better and no one listens.”  Emily Turner, (2013)
  • Elder: “Driven by ‘Escape’ forces. An Elder is an out bound member of the community, often engaging in “trolling for newbies”, where they wind up the newer members often without questioning from other members.” (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Emotionally-Charged Troll: “These Internet Mole People pop up, usually in the form of some other type of troll, to make you feel bad by playing on your emotions.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Escalator Troll: Escalators usually share a special trait—anger—with their near-cousin, the Foghorns. But unlike the foghorns, their anger escalates over the course of an electronic exchange, which culminates in a more calculated type of invective. If you respond to their first negative comment, they will ignore your good will by berating you and questioning your character. They are happy to escalate for as long as you will respond. How to combat the Escalator? Once you have identified a commenter as an Escalator, pour an ice-cold Cheerwine© for yourself and ignore his comments. (Or, just for fun, find a way to get him in the crosshairs of a Foghorn.)
  • E-Venger: “Driven by ‘Vengeance’ forces. An E-Venger does trolls in order to trip someone up so that their ‘true colors’ are revealed.” (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Expert: “The Expert knows everything about everything and loves to share his knowledge. He’s a lawyer, a doctor, a senator, a pro-ball player, a historian, an engineer … in reality, of course, he’s an unemployed temp living with his mom.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Failoblog Troll: “Failoblog troll’s dream is to have a blog as successful as the one he trolls. Unfortunately – as you can see for yourself if you’re foolish enough to follow the link he provides to his tragically unread blog, he is incapable of expressing himself coherently, interestingly, or amusingly. His tone is bitter, thwarted, envious: like Iago, only without the quick-wittedness or charm.” James Delingpole (2011)
  • Flamer: “Has no interest in the topics discussed but just wants to cause trouble for their own amusement to lift daily grind boredom.”  Emily Turner, (2013)
  • Flamer: “This Internet Troll likes to cause trouble. Anywhere. With anyone. For any reason. If there’s no trouble to be had? This Troll will cause some. This type of troll is especially fond of using words that aren’t considered PC.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Flirt: “Driven by ‘Social’ forces. A Flirt takes part in trolling to help others be sociable, including through light ’teasing’.”  (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Flooder: “The Flooder tries to break forums by posting the same lame thing (LOL! ROTFL!) over and over and over and over and over and over…” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Foghorn Troll: This subspecies of troll is extraordinarily angry, yet the reasons for the anger may vary. Some Foghorns are angry only when they’re awake, but most Foghorns become inflamed about a single issue. They wander about the electronic forest shouting (figuratively speaking) anytime that one issue is unearthed. Usually, the Foghorn is obssessed more with his own voice than with the person toward which he is shouting. How do you combat the Foghorn? Ignore him. (Or, it has been suggested, steal his “CAPS LOCK” and “!” keys.)
  • Forum Cultist: “Forum cultists are extremely proud of the incredible Internet communities to which they belong. They pride themselves on the exclusivity of those communities and actually believe that “it can’t happen to them”, “it, ” of course, being their own banishment. Forum cultists place a very high premium on groupthink and generally react to differing opinions with outrage, banning all who dare to speak them.”  (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Fraud Troll: “This person, who claims any number of things to gain the sympathy of the world, has none of the problems he or she claims to have.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Fraud: “Also known as the Romance Scammer or the Deposed Nigerian Prince, the fraud takes pleasure in robbing people of their cash or self-respect. If your friends warn you that something seems hinky, PAY ATTENTION!” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Frost Troll: “Like an infantile child who proudly sits in his own shit, the Frost Troll’s social ineptitude makes it nearly invulnerable to any criticism. Its Achilles heel is the rejection it faced as a youth. Maybe it was that rather unfortunately timed “cold sore” outbreak which was forever memorialized in the high school yearbook or that embarrassing first-time experience with the poor girl’s armpit.” Josh Gross (2013)
  • Frost Troll: “Taking its name from the loathsome Skyrim creature, you should tread carefully with the Frost Troll. These are the sort of guys who have convinced themselves that being an asshole qualifies as a legitimate sense of humor. The breed consists of those who blow cigarette smoke into a cancer survivor’s face, or who, even more offensively, wear an Ed Hardy V-neck.
  • Gasbag Troll: The Gasbag is a truly special type of troll, combining in one person two of the most odious skills of trollery. He combines a towering sense of intellectual self-approval with an almost-breathtaking ignorance of social perception. In other words, the Gasbag will spend an inordinate amount of time gracing you with his astute observations, even though his narcissistic logorrhea undermines his desire for the Internet community to respect him.How to respond to the Gasbag? Upon spotting a Gasbag, end the conversation as politely as possible. (Or, if you are especially skillful, you might manage to put him at odds with other Gasbags in the electronic community; in such an instance Gasbags will stand tête–à–tête forever, mooing at one another, ankle-deep in their own effluvia.)
  • Genuinely Funny Troll: “The concept of trolling isn’t necessarily wrong. Sometimes people say stupid things, and they deserve to be gently ribbed. Occasionally you’ll see someone write something you don’t agree with, and of course you have the right to reply. Keep your tongue in your cheek, don’t be cruel, and wonderful things can happen.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Ghost: “Once you’ve become friends with people on Facebook, I think you enter into an agreement of sorts: you both decide to interact with each other and, most importantly, you both decide to use the service. They don’t have a profile picture and the only information that’s filled out in their profile is their name and birth date. They’re a member, but not really.” Don Reisinger, CNET (2008)
  • Grammar Hag: “This Internet Troll chooses only to pop in and out of your life to point out when you’ve misused a particular word, phrase, or used the wrong context. This troll always does so with a very satisfying flourish.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Grammar Nazi: “They’re physically unable to not point out any and every spelling mistake or grammatical error they find on the internet and are under the impression that such mistakes instantly discredit what the writer was trying to say. Basically, their dicks.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Grammar Brit: “If you don’t speak or write in proper Queen’s English, you are an idiot.” They would be far better off just going to the local pub and quaffing a pint.
  • Griefers: “A common type of troll found on forums and on online games, where they take on very different meanings. Griefers exist to cause problems and delight in stirring up large-scale “flame wars” – Griefers are also (though not always) rude, abusive and sometimes downright cruel: many Griefers do this to provoke their victims into a response.” (Villains Wikia)
  • Harasser: “Cross this troll and they will find and post your address, weight and financial information on every platform in existence.”  Emily Turner, (2013)
  • Hate Monger: “One of the most nauseating types of Internet trolls is The Hate Monger. This commenter blasts the Internet, and otherwise civil discussion, with hate speech. Be it sexist, racist, homophobic (“GAY!” is an oft-used trolling one-off), or otherwise, the Hate Monger reflects the ignorant dregs of humanity. You’ll see them everywhere, but particularly virulent is their presence on forums that children can easily read and those aimed at politico/societal discussion.” (Criminal Justice Degree Guide)
  • Hater: “They don’t need a motive, they just move from victim to victim saying not very nice things and making you feel like you’ve done something to deserve it. Which is nice.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Holy Misroller (HM):“Holy Misrollers are those online forum participants who give Christians (or other religious adherents) a bad name. The HM believes himself or herself to be a Christian (etc.) and will generally tell anyone who’ll listen about his or her faith in God and in Jesus. At the same time, however, the HM will display decidedly un-Christian behavior, often making an *** out of him/herself. The HM is often characterized by a great deal of anger and hostility.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Honorable Nitwit: “Honorable Nitwits absolutely love to speak about honor. This breed invokes the concepts of honor, integrity, humility, and other traits straight from the Boy Scout Oath more often than a Klingon warrior on anti-depressants. Honorable nitwits are convinced that everyone around them suffers from a lack of honor, an idea they thoroughly fail to understand in attempting to use its lack to smear others.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Humor Trolls: “One of the more common types of trolls and although often destructive they also tend to be mischievous rather than outright malicious (exceptions do exist). Humor Trolls believe that the act of trolling is comedy and indeed some Humor Trolls can be funny to certain people, the major problem with this troll is the comedy is not always welcome and often disrupts the normal flow of online communities.” (Villains Wikia)
  • I’m Better Than You and You’re a Moron Troll: “This type of troll isn’t out-of-control-crazy, just more condescending and smugger. This troll looks for picky things to criticize as justification for why you are an idiot with the mental capacity of a sea cucumber. These trolls will also take time to spell out specific reasons why they are too good/talented/smart to listen to you.” Kristen Lamb (2012)
  • Iconoclast: “Driven by ‘Destructive’ forces. An Iconoclast takes part in trolling to help others discover ‘the truth’, often by telling them things completely factual, but which may drive them into a state of consternation. They may post links to content that contradicts the worldview of their target.” (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Idiot Troll: “This Internet Troll responds to every post you write with things a blithering idiot (or teenager) would say.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Idiot: “You haven’t seen them since you were 14, and you’re suddenly wondering why you accepted their Facebook friend request. They comment on your pictures of the Eiffel Tower telling you how much they love Blackpool. Hmm. Robin Edds (2013)
  • Insult Troll: These are obsessed with name calling and piling insults on anybody for any emotional response whatsoever. Excessive insulting trolling can be considered cyberbullying.
  • Internet Radio/Media Trolls: “Internet Radio Troll Formal Definition: A variant of Internet Troll describing internet radio show hosts, their networks and listeners who use online media platforms and social sites to defame & humiliate a person, group, cause or belief. Unique to their profile is how they provoke and encourage their listeners to engage in the same vitriolic behaviors. Unlike Internet Trolls who act alone or in small groups, Internet Radio Trolls manipulate as many listeners as possible to join in their cyber-attacks.” Michael Nuccitelli, Psy.D. (2014)
  • Internet Troll: “An Internet Troll is a colloquial expression used to define an online user who uses Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to purposely and actively provoke, defame, anger, tease, flame, or incite other online users. Often, the Internet Troll does not know the target recipient(s) of their vitriolic statements and behaviors. Internet Trolls regularly appear in all forms of online mediums ranging from online video gaming gatherings to chatroom and forum discussions.” Michael Nuccitelli, Psy.D. (2013)
  • Internet Police Troll: I’ve seen these types on Quora, Twitter, and pretty much everywhere online. They’re the ones who say “you can’t say this on Facebook” or – “you can’t have that kind of opinion”. They’re like “fake” vigilantes. Trying to take the law into their own hands, even though they have no “real” authority or power to do anything about it.
  • IRL Troll: “The IRL (that stands for In Real Life to all you AFK people) Troll is the type of person that acts like an Internet bottom-feeder in everyday life. It’s someone that spends too much time in front of a glowing screen, or perhaps it’s just someone who burned their mother’s copy of Emily Post. These are the people that you’re not entirely sure should be at every single dinner party that you go to, and it’s getting a little strange that they’re always there.” (Criminal Justice Degree Guide)
  • “I didn’t read what you said but here’s what I think” Troll. “He doesn’t read your piece. He doesn’t need to: he knows what he thinks already and what he knows is, he hates everything you stand for and you’re wrong and he’s going to say so, every column you write, regardless of the fact that the paucity of recommends he gets prove him to be a total Billy No Mates.” James Delingpole (2011)
  • Just Don’t Get It Troll: “Just Don’t Get It Troll is the feeblest form of troll life. In fact, he hardly qualifies as a troll at all because he doesn’t understand what proper trolling what is about, or indeed the interweb thing is really for, or anything. He’ll often begin his rants with “I can’t believe you get paid for writing this rubbish” or “How disgraceful that a fine newspaper like the Telegraph should allow its reputation to be sullied by such bilge”.” James Delingpole (2011)
  • Know-it-all: “Whatever you know, they know more. They spend a lot of their time attempting to discredit every Guardian article ever written, whilst still claiming it’s their favorite newspaper.” Robin Edds (2013) I’ve had people argue with me about the dumbest shit I’ve heard. Even if the wall is blue, these types of trolls will claim it’s “black” all in the name of “being right”. It’s like they have a complex and don’t want you being the person who’s correct. They’d rather be the person who’s right, for no reason other than their own insecurities.
  • Lame Teenager: “The Lame Teenager responds with clever sayings like, “I know you are, but what am I ?” and “I’m rubber and you’re glue…” Warning: Sometimes the Lame Teenager is really a 40-year-old guy who can’t think of anything better to say.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Let-Me-Hijack-Your-Post-To-Tell-My-Horrible-Story Internet Troll: “These Internet Mole People almost always leave you wondering why they left you the comment at all, except that you’re now probably feeling guilty for being upset about anything, ever.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Liar: “The Liar is the most common troll. He loves to lure in brainless high-school girls by pretending he’s a romantic 20-year-old sensitive poet. The Liar is fairly harmless—as long as you don’t set up an IRL meet-up.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Line Crosser: “In the words of Joey Tribbiani, “You’re so far past the line, you can’t even see the line. The line is a dot to you!”. They hide behind their online persona and think this means the usual rules of society don’t apply.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Lurker: “Driven by ‘Surveillance’ forces. Lurkers make silent calls by accident, etc., clicking on adverts or ‘like’ buttons, using ’referrer spoofers’, reporting posts, modifying opinion polls or user kudos scores.” (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Marketing Genius:“A Marketing Genius is absolutely convinced that you are profiting from your participation in an Internet forum. If you have a link or a graphic block in your signature, the Marketing Genius just knows that this is your subtle attempt to assert your hypnotic powers on other bulletin board participants, luring them with the siren song of your complex and inscrutable advertising of your site.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums , Trolls)
  • Meh Troll: “Easily identified by its complete absence of originality and creativity, the Meh Troll is a common, but minor threat. It relies upon the beating of dead horses and archaic stereotypes when attempting comedy. Consider the guy who cannot help but offer grape soda to his black friend or who depends upon making fun of Justin Bieber and you’ll get the idea. At best, he’ll get a few nervous chuckles.” Josh Gross (2013)
  • MHBFYJenny: “Driven by ‘Forgiveness forces’. A MHBFY Jenny takes part in trolling to help people see the lighter side of life and to help others come to terms with their concerns.” (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Mutt: “Alternatively known as Dogs or Yapping Dogs. Mutts are pack animals characterized by their loud barking – vociferous, repetitive, usually ignorant, and irrational criticism of anything and anyone they do not like. Mutts often become obsessed with a few or even a single poster with whom they disagree, often for purely personal reasons. Like a dog gnawing at a bone, the Mutt will attack the object of its ire over and over, making a fool of itself in the eyes of those who understand such childish behavior for what it is.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Nellie McNeggerson: “Nellie likes to show her displeasure by negging every craigslist post you make, regardless of its content. If you say, “cool!” she’ll neg you. If you say “thanks!” she’ll neg you. She might even create multiple accounts so she can neg you four or five times.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Never-Give-Up, Never-Surrender Troll: “This troll is ALWAYS right and will battle to the death to prove it. There is no point in trying to fight her. If she can’t back something up with reality, she’ll make something up, just to show you how wrong you are.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Never-Gonna-Give-You-Up-Troll: “This Internet Troll is right. Always. And this troll will never, ever, stop telling you why. It doesn’t matter how many times you argue; this troll is right.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • New Service Addict: “They became a friend of yours on MySpace, or maybe even followed you on LiveJournal, and ever since then, they’ve wanted to be your friend on every social network known to man. Sometimes you catch a serious one who signs up for all the newest services before anyone, and they immediately send out invites like they’re passing out candy to kids on Halloween.” Don Reisinger, CNET (2008)
  • Not A Troll, Trolls: “Not everyone expressing a dissenting opinion on your website is an Internet Mole Person.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Off-Topic Trolls: “Unclear as to whether these trolls are actually people or simply spam-bots.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Old Warrior: “The Old Warrior has been there and done that. He has little time to spare for those who have not been there and done that. The Old Warrior has been there and done that to such an extent, in fact, that he is always right. Anyone who disagrees with him, therefore, is wrong by definition and should shut the hell up. Old Warriors place a very high premium on one’s credentials relevant to the subject matter discussed, failing to understand the logical fallacy of appeals to authority.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Old-time Nobody: “Social networks provide a slew of opportunities to connect with old friends, but that doesn’t mean you need to befriend your third-grade buddy Bill, whom you haven’t had a discussion with in 20 years. Usually they mention a time in your life the two of you shared when you were kids. Maybe it’s not the end of the world, but it does get a bit awkward when they remember that time and you don’t.” Don Reisinger, CNET (2008)
  • Overtly Reflective Troll: “If you’ve ever known some tool (usually armed with an acoustic guitar) who speaks in an unnecessarily soft tone and refuses to use any other adjective but “deep” or “meta”, you are familiar with the Overtly Reflective Troll. It will tirelessly comment on the state of our existence and leave your nostrils with the overpowering stench of an overcrowded, but well-fed bullpen. The Overtly Reflective Troll doesn’t really believe its drivel, but just wants to make you look bad in front of the ladies.” Josh Gross (2013)
  • Patent Trolls: “A patent troll uses patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming up with new ideas. Instead, trolls are in the business of litigation (or even just threatening litigation). They often buy up patents cheaply from companies down on their luck who are looking to monetize what resources they have left, such as patents.” (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
  • Peacemaker: “Arguing with a troll is a dangerous game, but it turns out that some internet commenters are in fact normal people with unprecedented levels of common sense.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Pedant Troll: “In his imagination, pedant troll is the very exemplar of reason, balance and moderation. He feels effortlessly superior to the ridiculous, extremist, purblind fool whose blog he haunts, and whom he likes to put down with his killer sarcasm, weapons-grade pedantry and niggling little quibbles masquerading as constructive criticism. If he were really as brilliant as he thinks he is, he would at the very least have a major blog of his own by now, and more likely be King of the World. Strangely, he has yet to achieve either of these things.” James Delingpole (2011)
  • Pedant: “This troll will refuse to listen if “there” and “their” is misused or there is a typo – mistakes automatically invalidate arguments.”  Emily Turner, (2013)
  • Playtime Trolls: “An individual plays a simple, short game. Such trolls are relatively easy to spot because their attack or provocation is fairly blatant, and the persona is fairly two-dimensional.” Team Technology (Beware the Troll)
  • Playtime Trolls: “An individual plays a simple, short game. Such trolls are relatively easy to spot because their attack or provocation is fairly blatant, and the persona is fairly two-dimensional.” (Net Lingo)
  • Point Misser: “The Point Misser lacks the part of the brain that detects humor and loves nothing more than complaining about TV shows they haven’t even seen.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Political Commentator: “Imaginative use of swear words and an ability to twist everything into an argument about misspending the taxpayer’s money is a must.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Preacher: “Whatever the topic, they’ll find some way of turning it into a great theological debate. And all you wanted to do was Instagram a picture of your dinner.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Pretend-novice: “Has an agenda to push but pretends to not to understand arguments against said agenda in order to push the agenda further. By appearing to be a new user, she can get away with combativeness without appearing aggressive or hostile and can always excuse any poor arguments as ignorance or genuine inquiry.”  (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Priggish Grammar Troll: “No matter what the discussion is about, the Priggish Grammar Troll will ignore the argument and pick on the one word you used incorrectly, like “alot” or misuses of “they’re,” “their” and “there.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Profane Screamer: “If someone says something even remotely critical of the Profane Screamer, he’ll TYPE IN ALL CAPS, telling you what a @#$# you are and insulting your mom. The Profane Screamer is often a noob and often turns into The Crybaby.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Psycho Trolls: “These trolls have an unconscious psychological need to feel good by making others feel bad. Such people may use their real names on the internet, and they may not even realize that they are “trolling”. Team Technology (Beware the Troll)
  • Rabid Flamer: “This guy likes to make trouble for his own amusement. If nothing particularly nasty is going on, he’ll whip out his flamethrower and burn everyone in his path, especially denizens of parenting or pets chat rooms.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Ranting Troll: “Ranting troll has an ax to grind and his preferred place to do this is on your blog or in a review of your book. Like Crazy Troll, Ranting Troll makes some sense, though his argument might be very tangential.” Kristen Lamb (2012)
  • Religious Trolls: “These trolls use Bible Verses and religious scripture to justify being mean to others for no real reason.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Rent-A-Mob: “This troll will bring a like-minded troll army with them to fight the cause. Be warned, the army could be just one person in disguise.”  Emily Turner, (2013)
  • Retroactive Stalker: “The Retroactive Stalker will go back in time to find every craigslist post you ever made until he finds something embarrassing you said, even if you posted it three years ago. After that, whenever you post anything new, the Retroactive Stalker will link to the old post(s) in an effort to discredit you.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Ripper: “Driven by ‘Thanatotic’ forces. A Ripper takes part in self-deprecating trolling in order to build a false sense of empathy from others.” (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Rip and Twist Troll: With great force, this species of troll rips your words out of context, and then slaps you around with your own decontextualized words. The Rip-and-Twist-er grazes on a number of different delicacies, but is best known for devouring Politician Poppies and Theologian Thistles because of their visibility and availability. Park Rangers in the Kingdom Come say this species is characterized by the ability to live rent-free well into their mid-40s. How to combat the Rip-and-Twist-er? Ignore. (Or, don’t write anything ever; let all of your thoughts for humanity be off-the-record.)
  • Self-Feeding Troll: “This guy likes to argue, even when everyone else in the fold tells him he’s wrong. Without support from his nonexistent friends, he changes handles or makes up new ones to show the fold how loved he is.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Serial Leaver: “If they can’t get their own way, they threaten to leave forever because of the vile bullying and then return a few days later. Repeat.”  Emily Turner, (2013)
  • Sharing Troll: “Also known as the TOU Violator, this psycho will find out your personal information and post it on message boards when you anger him. For example, when he’s being an ass to someone and you step in to tell him to knock it off, he’ll use your real name or post your address.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Shock Trolls: “Shock Trolls are arguably one of the more malicious trolls and are fairly common in some parts of the internet, Shock Trolls delight in causing offensive and may infect computers with malware “for fun” or hack into sites and vandalize them. Shock Troll tactics often involve the use of disgusting, perverted or controversial imagery or texts and much like the Griefer Shock Trolls may find the resulting chaos to be amusing.” (Villains Wikia)
  • Shouter: “They’re angry. So, so angry. They’re angered by happy people, sad people, other angry people, cats, badgers, themselves, politicians and humus.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Snert: “Driven by ‘Anti-social’ forces. A Snert takes part in trolling to harm others for their own sick entertainment.”  (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Snob: “This troll will just post *yawn*, *slow hand clap* or a rolling eye gif after every post they deem below par.”  Emily Turner, (2013)
  • Sock Puppeteer: “If you’ve got any concept of ROI, you’re clearly not a Sock Puppeteer. These people can’t actually have paying jobs. They’re entirely too busy ruining everyone’s Internet fun and potentially having an extremely odd personality disorder. The Sock Puppeteer is a curious type of troll who creates several alternate, additional accounts on a commenting forum to flank their original trolling comment or argument with support.” (Criminal Justice Degree Guide)
  • Social Justice Troll:  These are some of the worst, most foul creatures on earth. Self-righteous assholes who think they’re “too good” to bow-down to logic and objective facts. That’s why they usually base EVERYTHING on how they feel, and their petty emotions. Even when the truth is staring them in the face. It’s the reason feminism is so toxic, and how the word has lost its meaning. Or how some guys end up in jail because of the bias towards women (even when it’s clear the guy did nothing). In the words of Koko Hekmatyar: “I find the thought that I’m from the same species to be depressing.”
  • Sophist Troll:“Sophist Trolls, or “philotrolls,” fancy themselves Enlightened Philosophers or Learned Experts of the highest order. Often well educated, Philotrolls are capable of speaking intelligently on a number of topics, and when the spirit moves them, they can be worthwhile forum participants. Unfortunately, Sophist Trolls are an extremely hostile and intolerant species.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Spam Troll: “When internet trolls put links into their already annoying long winded posts.
  • Spambot Troll: “Spambot troll is on a mission – quite possibly a paid-for mission to judge by the frequency with which he posts. His job is to sabotage the comments section by filling it with cut-and-paste postings of little relevance to the debate in hand. He was probably sent straight here from CACC – which also sums up the quality of the stuff he writes.” James Delingpole (2011)
  • Spambot Trolls: “Spambot Trolls might not even be people, but they crud up comments of otherwise civil discussions and they do so all over the Internet. They paste text and links into comments that often lead to data mining bugs or dead-ends, and there’s not much rhyme or reason to their names, words, or links. The Spambot Troll is like an automated Baiter; they just waste energy and space, and sometimes provoke a reaction, though it’s hard to imagine that anyone takes their bait.” (Criminal Justice Degree Guide)
  • Spambot Trolls on a mission of destruction: Usually its to flood a forum with so much nonsense that the entire forum has to be deleted to remove the poisonous pollution. Which is what MM did when a spambot troll flooded the China forum (consisting of 30 comments) with 30,000 advertisements for fake college degrees in Australia. 2021.
  • Spoiler: “The Spoiler likes to ruin people’s days. On the film fo, he gives away endings (“He was dead the whole time!”). On sports sites, he posts the final scores.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Stalker Troll: “It takes a fairly sick mentality to want to be a troll. If you were in any way healthy, you would prefer to hang out the blogs of people you agree with, rather than maliciously setting out to disrupt those of people you hate. Stalker troll is the sickest of the lot. He becomes obsessed with every detail of life of the person whose blog he infests, in the hope of gleaning titbits, which he can use against his nemesis. For example, one of the regular trolls on this blog makes frequent sneery references to the fact that I suffer from depression. This is bizarre.” James Delingpole (2011)
  • STD Troll: “As many of you know, a sexually transmitted disease is hard to kick, just like this troll. Even when you think you’ve lost it for good, it comes back for another round. Unless you are a Zen monk, you’ll quickly lose patience with this cretin and reward it with the desired reaction. The best way to fight this troll off is by doing something counterintuitive: agreeing with it (please keep in mind this philosophy only applies to STD trolls, you should really just stick with a good antibiotic for an actual STD). I refer to this as the “roll with the troll” defense.” Josh Gross (2013)
  • Stranger: “It happens to all of us: someone we don’t know tries to be our friend on Facebook. Their profile claims they graduated from the same college and they live in your general area. You know you’ve never met the person and even if you did, it was for a fleeting second and you don’t remember them at all.” Don Reisinger, CNET (2008)
  • Strategic Trolls: “A very serious form of game, involving the production of an overall strategy that can take months or years to develop. It can also involve a number of people acting together in order to invade a list.” (Net Lingo)
  • Strategic Trolls: A very serious form of game, involving the production of an overall strategy that can take months or years to develop. It can also involve a number of people acting together in order to invade a list.” Team Technology (Beware the Troll)
  • Swearer: “If anyone dares to disagree with them, this troll will reply IN CAPS AND WITH LOTS OF SWEARING *@!&. They will also tell you how ugly you and your mum are.”  Emily Turner, (2013)
  • Tactical Trolls: “This is where the troller takes the game more seriously, creates a credible persona to gain confidence of others, and provokes strife in a subtle and invidious way.” Team Technology (Beware the Troll)
  • “This Is My CAUSE” Internet Troll (Internet Mole Person): “Person who defines themselves solely by their “cause,” and spends countless hours blathering on and on about it to anyone on The Twitter, The Facebook and blogs. They have a Google search set and hours each day to devote to blogs and they do that to leave comments about their “cause.” Which no one cares that much about. Or is a one-sided thing and almost always involves emotional manipulation and impassioned catch-phrases to get the very annoying point across.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Troll Behind A Troll Behind A Troll: “This Internet Troll, when he or she cannot summon up the support of others, will invent new screen names, logins, and profiles in order to support him or herself and his or her argument.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Troll: “Driven by ‘Chaos’ forces. A Troll takes part in trolling to entertain others, bringing some fun and mischief to an online community.  (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • Twister: “They take everything you say out of context and use it to make you sound like a douche. The tabloid journalists of the trolling world.” Robin Edds (2013)
  • Vengeful Troll: “The minute you anger the Vengeful Troll, he or she posts your personal information everywhere.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • Vulgar Troll: “These, the crudest of all trolls, make no attempt to hide their species. Often, they make racist comments, or they may post porn and other spam. Vulgars usually confine their comments merely to primitive, profane, off-topic observations. When you log into the Really Profound Serious Philosophical Discussions board and see the post, “I smell my farts,” you’ve spotted the Vulgar Troll. Other species of troll sometimes revert to this form when cornered.”  (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • Vituperator Troll: is also known in some regions as The Hater (Latin, Hayturs-Urgona-Hayt). This species sometimes fixates on one person or issue, but more often seems willing to express aversion toward all humanity or at least toward a large class of humanity. Migrating from savannah to savannah, attacking victim after victim, spraying them with invective, the Vituperator’s object is manipulative: to make the victim believe everything is his fault. This species of troll concentrates on scarring the victim—and not expressing any particular idea. How to combat the Vituperator? Ignore him. (Also, it has been suggested, you may repeat to yourself regularly that perennial philosophical truth: “vituperators gonna vituperate.”)
  • White Knight: “If the White Knight thinks someone hurts someone’s feelings, he’ll put on his shiny armor and joust for honor and goodness … even if the “attacked” person tells him to shut up.” Tamar Love Grande (2010)
  • Wizard: “Driven by ‘Creative’ forces. A Wizard does trolling through making up and sharing content that has humorous effect.” (Crocels Trolling Academy)
  • “WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN” Pseudo-Concern Trolls: “These Internet Trolls are precisely as you’d imagine. They take any instance where there might be an issue of perceived impropriety and exploit it.” (The Band Back Together Project)
  • YerATroll:“YerATrolls are those whining forumites who devote a tremendous amount of time and energy complaining about the tremendous amount of time an energy expended by Troll Bashers and Angry Forumites on the practice of troll-hunting. A self-righteous and hypocritical breed, YerATrolls spend all their time pointing fingers at everyone but trolls, petulantly demanding that their opinions be granted the significance the YerATroll believes they deserve.” (2006 Ubuntu Forums, Trolls)
  • YouTube Commenter: “Are you having a great day? Well, we’ve got the solution for you. YouTube.com is the web’s leading video sharing site and has become a hugely popular search engine. Comments on the videos are those of an open forum, with very little moderation (especially in the pre-YouTube-by-Google days), and are generally a web junkie’s daily reminder that everyone on the Internet (so, pretty much everyone in the world) is grossly ignorant, contributing to global idiocy in scads, and generally sucks really, really hard.” (Criminal Justice Degree Guide)

What challenges do trolls pose?

Trolls can pose some bona fide challenges. A lurking issue is that many trolls are anonymous or, at least, anonymous to us. Who are they? Are they real people who hide as strangers and comment only when they are criticizing? Or real persons operating under false identities? Or electronic robots? A second problem is that they are often uncivil, willing to escalate to comments that are mean-spirited, violent, racist, or pornographic. A third problem arise when trolls inflict psychological harm by targeting your readers and even hijacking a comment chain.

Why are there so many trolls?

Contrary to Scandinavian legends, trolls have an almost ubiquitous presence. Why are there so many? The first and most important answer is the increasingly toxic nature of our public discourse as a whole. Public debate—especially as it centers on politics and/or religion—is increasingly uncivil. It is a symptom revealing our society’s internal sickness. Second, troll-proliferation (or, as some experts prefer, troliferation”) is made easy by the anonymity afforded by the Internet. A troll who might otherwise refrain from socially irritating or repulsive behavior feels free to do so behind a digital curtain. Third, trolling has metastasized because of the accessibility afforded by the Internet. Whereas a troll of yesteryear would have had difficulty in finding an audience, today’s troll has no difficulty whatsoever.

How can we respond (or not respond!) to critical comments on social media?

When one encounters ugly or unfair comments on the internet, one might immediately be tempted to respond in kind. For example, one might want to say, “Thank you for your comment. And may I add that you are cruelly depriving a village somewhere of an idiot?” Or, “I would argue with you, but it seems unfair to enter a battle of wits with such a lightly-armed man.” But such responses exhibit a lack of grace and wisdom.

Rather than mutating into one of many, many trolls, consider these options:

      • Control the comment string. Use old fashioned editorial judgment. If a comment seems to have been written by a troll, don’t approve the comment.
      • Ignore the comment. By ignoring it, you don’t give the troll what he wants, which is to put himself in the spotlight, to humiliate you or make you angry, etc. The big drawback with this option is that you may accidentally overlook a good-willed person with real frustrations, rather than a real troll who thrives on trollery.
      • Respond to the comment. On occasion, you might respond to the troll, usually for the purpose of managing one’s own personal media. On Facebook or a personal blog, for example, there might be a need to correct the troll’s comment for the sake of other friends or readers.
      • Make an end-run around the troll by speaking about him to your audience. “Welp. Looks like there’s a troll trying to attack people on this site and hijack the conversation. My best recommendation is for you to ignore him so that he will go back in his cave.”
      • Use humor. The best use of humor will not be mean-spirited, but instead will be a sort of light-hearted satire on dark arts of trollery: “Thank you for your unique contribution, which refreshes and challenges us all.”
      • Block/Report/Mute/Unfriend. For real trolls, this is the best solution.
      • Send to the Cornfield. Some trolls are too arrogant, or stupid and needs to be taught a lesson. If they persist, kill them with a trip into the cornfield. Let them experience the life that they are trying to create for others.

A Concluding Thought

One final thought. With the exception of bots, we must remember that trolls are human beings. We should treat them civilly even if they themselves are uncivil; in so doing, we contribute to the common project of neutralizing the toxicity of public discourse.

  • You ask them to stop and give them [1] a warning.
  • If they don’t listen, you then, [2] cut them off at the knees. And for 90% of the trolls, that sends them a-packing to “greener pastures”.
  • For the more recalcitrant trolls; [3] send them to the cornfield and forgetaboutit.

Remember, their problems are not yours. You have a responsibility to make the world a better place, and that means to be a Rufus. When you see others behaving badly you respond. Whether it is someone who throws trash out the window of their car, or someone being insulting on a forum, you MUST act and get them the Hell out of your (and others) lives. It’s your responsibility.

Do you want more?

I have more posts like this in my Happiness Index here…

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China and the fiasco in the Ukraine

This is a topical subject. It is something that is going on right now, and the outcome is not determined. The situation is indeterminate.

It is “funny” how the evil regime / military empire operates. Five months of “A war in Taiwan, A war in Taiwan”, followed by three months of non-stop “A war in the Ukraine, A war in the Ukraine”. China didn’t do anything. Russia didn’t do anything. But the facts don’t matter.

Today, the Ukraine started to attack it’s “breakaway” Eastern provinces. The United States fully expects that Russia will get involved, and they are so Hell Bent that Russia would do something, that they can then slap their “sanctions” on Russia and force Germany to abandon the Nordstrom Gas pipeline from Russia.

Why am I so confident that this is what the plan is?

Well, the CIA mouthpiece said so…

Yeah. So this one little article says…

  • USA LP gas exports will increase in 2022…
  • Due to the Northstrom gas pipeline from Russia stopped…
  • Because Germany will adhere to American sanctions…
  • Against Russia …
  • Because Russia invaded the Ukraine.
  • And that Russia will invade because TODAY the Ukranians started to kill their separatist groups in the LDR.

Except that…

  • Russia is not budging. It’s not making any military moves.
  • The Ukrainians must sort out their own issues.
  • Thus, there’s no excuse to sanction Russia.

And thus the entire American plot to seize control of energy into Europe has (so far) failed. I’m sure that they have a “trick or two up their sleeve“, so you cannot say that the situation is fixed in place. It isn’t. The United States evil empire is pushing and pushing and pushing for control of the world. It is flailing and failing everywhere. But it’s still in the ring fighting.

But…

Well…

The USA is mighty strange, don’t you know?

I am not the only one who believes this…

From UNZ

Just after I published my first long article on the likely origins of the Covid outbreak in April 2020, our alternative media website was suddenly deplatformed, being banned from Facebook and with all our pages completely deranked by Google. For almost a decade, my article The Myth of Hispanic Crime had regularly been ranked #2 of some 200 million Google search results on that topic, but it now suddenly disappeared from the public discussion, a development that deeply rankled me.

Being blocked by the two primary gatekeepers of the global Internet has obviously had a serious impact upon our ability to reach potential readers, especially new ones. Nonetheless, our articles do still occasionally strike a spark and go viral, racking up many tens of thousands of pageviews, an encouraging situation. But the massive current media propaganda-bubble promoting an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, which seems to be a ridiculous hoax, has apparently shifted that landscape, creating a huge demand for contrary perspectives.

Last weekend I published Mike Whitney’s piece arguing that the motive behind the sudden war-hysteria was actually to prevent the opening of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, which would have fostered their mutually-beneficial economic cooperation. Such peaceful Eurasian integration might be viewed as a major geopolitical threat by some American strategists, who thereby provoked the sudden war-scare.

The Ukrainian crisis has nothing to do with Ukraine. It’s about Germany and, in particular, a pipeline that connects Germany to Russia called Nord Stream 2. 

Washington sees the pipeline as a threat to its primacy in Europe and has tried to sabotage the project at every turn. 

Even so, Nord Stream has pushed ahead and is now fully-operational and ready-to-go. 

Once German regulators provide the final certification, the gas deliveries will begin. 

German homeowners and businesses will have a reliable source of clean and inexpensive energy while Russia will see a significant boost to their gas revenues. 

It’s a win-win situation for both parties.

The US Foreign Policy establishment is not happy about these developments. 

They don’t want Germany to become more dependent on Russian gas because commerce builds trust and trust leads to the expansion of trade. 

As relations grow warmer, more trade barriers are lifted, regulations are eased, travel and tourism increase, and a new security architecture evolves. 

In a world where Germany and Russia are friends and trading partners, there is no need for US military bases, no need for expensive US-made weapons and missile systems, and no need for NATO. 

There’s also no need to transact energy deals in US Dollars or to stockpile US Treasuries to balance accounts. 

Transactions between business partners can be conducted in their own currencies which is bound to precipitate a sharp decline in the value of the dollar and a dramatic shift in economic power. 

This is why the Biden administration opposes Nord Stream. 

It’s not just a pipeline, it’s a window into the future; a future in which Europe and Asia are drawn closer together into a massive free trade zone that increases their mutual power and prosperity while leaving the US on the outside looking in. 

Warmer relations between Germany and Russia signal an end to the “unipolar” world order the US has overseen for the last 75 years. 

A German-Russo alliance threatens to hasten the decline of the Superpower that is presently inching closer to the abyss. 

This is why Washington is determined to do everything it can to sabotage Nord Stream and keep Germany within its orbit. It’s a matter of survival

Strange American actions

It seems so straight forward, right?

Not so fast.

  • Biden cancelled the US pipeline his first week in office.
  • Now he’s cancelled the Israeli pipeline.
  • But he approved the Russia pipeline, through the Ukraine (no less).

So what the heck is actually going on?

From the American Energy Alliance

Biden Abandons Israeli Pipeline In Favor Of Russian Gas Via Ukraine

President Biden is withdrawing U.S. support for the EastMed pipeline that would bring natural gas from Israel to the European continent.

Europe is currently in an energy crisis with record prices for natural gas and electricity, potential rolling blackouts, low supplies of natural gas, millions of citizens in energy poverty and increasing coal consumption, which the continent has wanted to end.

Increasing reliance on intermittent renewable sources that have not produced to their potential has put pressure on other sources the Europeans have discouraged.

The result of Biden’s most recent decision is making Europe even more dependent on Russia for its natural gas.

Currently, Western Europe gets over 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia via a pipeline that runs through Ukraine.

Russia wants to activate its Nord Stream 2 pipeline that runs under the Baltic so that it can avoid the current route through Ukraine.

Biden gave Russia the go-ahead in July 2021 for the continued construction of Nord Stream 2, which Russia predicted could go on-line by the end of the year.  It is now completed.

Rather than helping an ally, Biden is helping Russia dominate Europe’s energy system and gain economic strength in doing so.

The only explanation that Biden’s administration has given to withdrawing support is: “Washington’s interest is now switching to renewable energy sources.”

While the White House is using its dogged support for the switch to renewable energy to justify its decision, the European Commission drafted legal text that pronounces natural gas and nuclear power as “transitional” green energy sources to be used to bridge countries away from coal toward technologies like wind and solar.

EastMed Gas Pipeline

The EastMed Gas pipeline is a 1,180-mile undersea pipeline project from Israel to southern Europe, set to be completed by 2025, which, when completed will ease Europe’s dependence on Russia and Turkey, which serves as a hub for oil and natural gas.

The pipeline will reach depths of 3 kilometers, and have a capacity of 10 billion cubic meters per year.

Construction of the pipeline is expected to cost approximately €6 billion ($6.86 billion).

The pipeline is being developed by IGI Poseidon S.A., a 50-50 joint venture between the Greek gas utility DEPA and the Italian gas utility Edison.

The EastMed Pipeline accord was signed in Athens by the leaders of Greece, Cyprus, and Israel on January 2, 2020.

Biden’s Political Decision

Biden is not only catering to Russia regarding the EastMed pipeline decision but also to Turkey, who is offended that it was left out of the EastMed pipeline accord.

Turkey believes that it should be part of the pipeline project amid claims over natural gas in the east Mediterranean.

Turkish president Erdogan declared that any future eastern Mediterranean “gas project must include Turkey.

This business cannot be done without Turkey. Because if [gas] is to be transferred to Europe from here, it will only happen through Turkey.”

According to an expert, the Biden administration is “attributing huge significance to Turkey,” and its future after Erdogan.

Biden’s Inconsistencies

MedEast is the second major pipeline that the Biden administration has put a damper on: the first being the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring oil from Canada and North Dakota to the Gulf States.

Canadian oil is heavy oil needed for U.S. refineries that retooled decades ago when U.S. light oil production was declining.

Keystone XL would also provide more oil to the United States from an ally rather than being dependent on OPEC and Russia for oil.

For several months since the pandemic began, Russia was the number 2 supplier of oil to the United States, competing with Mexico for that distinction.

When Biden blocked the Keystone XL pipeline by canceling its Presidential permit, he blocked a project that went over and above existing standards to address issues such as carbon emissions, safety standards, and cooperation with indigenous people impacted by the pipeline.

Biden’s Keystone XL and MedEast pronouncements both overturn decisions made by President Trump.

When Joe Biden agreed to set aside U.S. objections to the controversial Russian undersea Nord Stream 2 pipeline, he reversed former President Trump’s policy of opposing the project due to security concerns.

The 760-mile Baltic Sea pipeline allows direct Russian natural gas supply to Germany and other western European countries and allows Russia to dominate the European energy market, making Putin a power player in continental Europe, where Russia already supplies over 40 percent of its natural gas.

Conclusion

President Biden continues to overturn decisions made by President Trump regarding energy policy.

In the most recent case, he has withdrawn U.S. support for the EastMed gas pipeline project, which would transport natural gas from Israel to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea when completed in 2025.

The project would remove some of the continent’s dependency on Russia for natural gas supplies that Russia has used as a geopolitical tool at times in the past. Biden’s announced reasoning is that the focus in Washington is now on renewable energy, despite the European Commission seeing the necessity to allow natural gas to be deemed a “transitional green energy source”.

Biden has shown huge inconsistency on his pipeline decisions, with one major exception—they all overturn decisions made by President Trump.

What’s going on

It appears that Geo-political concerns and domestic green energy concerns are at odds. Alliances are at odds, and there are competing interests all backed by powerful corportations and individuals with competing interests. Thus making the United States a schizophrenic entity.

Oh, Great! A schizophrenic bully with the largest arsenal of nuclear and bioweapons in the world. What could go wrong?

It seems, to me at least, that the United States is desparately trying to control Europe, and Israel by energy. If you control access to energy, you can control them, and by dishing out access in measured doses, you can use them as pawns to do your bidding.

And that is what I think is going on.

An Evil Empire

Though it does seem rather mish-mash.  Does the hand on the left know what the hand on the right is doing?

Do you want to know why the rest of the world calls it an evil empire?

The big fear right now is that sanctions against Russia will be ineffective. You slap sanctions on Russia and they will not work. Russia is pretty much autonomus.

So what are the American / UK “experts” saying?

Check out this horror…

Argument
An expert's point of view on a current event.

If Russia Invades Ukraine, Sanction China

Putin has found an economic lifeline in Beijing that only Washington can destroy.

By , a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute’s Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies.
.

Faced with the threat of further Western sanctions against Russia if it invades Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been seeking shelter in China.

On Feb. 4, the opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a new strategic partnership between their two countries.

A joint statement described the Chinese-Russian relationship as a “friendship” with “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”

Putin expressed support for China’s opposition to Taiwanese independence, and Xi seconded Russia’s demand that NATO end its eastward expansion.

They also unveiled plans for broader economic cooperation, particularly in the oil and gas sectors.

The timing is no coincidence: At least in the short term, strengthened Chinese-Russian ties provide Putin an opportunity to lessen the blow from potential Western sanctions.

This puts the United States in a serious bind.

If Washington expects to convey a credible deterrent against a Russian invasion of Ukraine using financial and economic sanctions, it will need to signal its resolve to impose secondary sanctions against China in the same breath.

The problem is that the United Kingdom and the European Union, key U.S. allies, do not have the same legal or regulatory frameworks to impose secondary sanctions against Chinese banks or state-owned enterprises.

U.S. secondary sanctions, which target a third-party entity or country for conducting business with the primary subject of sanctions, rely on broad interpretations of jurisdiction.

To put it nicely; a very broad and liberal interpetation of the law; or to put it better; to make up the rules as you see fit. -MM

Most countries adopt some form of a territorial or nationality standard, meaning that its national borders define its jurisdictional reach.

The United States, however, considers its citizens, companies, and property as falling under its jurisdiction even if located abroad.

The United States considers the world to be it's territory. Not its borders.  -MM

Because the U.K. and EU lack this framework to apply secondary sanctions, it leaves Washington alone to flex its extraterritorial muscle against China.

And though the United States is unlikely to suffer any significant domestic economic blowback from imposing broad financial and economic sanctions against Russia, it is a different story with China.


At a Feb. 7 press conference following his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, U.S. President Joe Biden said the United States was coordinating “a strong package of sanctions that are going to clearly demonstrate international resolve and impose swift and severe consequences if Russia violates Ukraine’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity.”

Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a key architect of the U.S. sanctions regime against Iran, is also working on a bipartisan bill that would apply what he described as the “mother of all sanctions” on Russia.

There are still significant disagreements in Washington on when to apply sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany.

Well, you must realize that this is a project between Russia and Germany. The USA is not involved in it in any way, shape or means. -MM

The pipeline is owned by the Russian state-backed energy corporation Gazprom and has become a focal point among NATO allies because of its role in increasing Germany’s energy dependence on Russia.

Democrats, including Menendez and Biden, prefer to wait for Russia to invade Ukraine before putting sanctions in place, while Republicans are in favor of imposing sanctions on the pipeline immediately.

Republicans want to sanction Russia without reason. The Democrats are waiting for an excuse. -MM

Nevertheless, Menendez’s proposed legislation is sweeping and includes options to target Russia’s energy and finance sectors as well as key Russian government officials and even to boot Russia from SWIFT, the global financial messaging system that connects banks around the world.

The pieces for a broader, multilateral approach to sanctions are finally coming together.

This should scare Putin.

Responding to criticism that Germany was not doing enough to bolster Ukraine’s defenses, Scholz provided reassurances during his visit to Washington that Berlin is committed to imposing costs on Russia if it invades Ukraine.

It remains to be seen, however, whether that includes ditching Nord Stream 2.

That is the plan. Do not fool yourselves. -MM

Although Scholz has been vague about the pipeline’s fate if push comes to shove, he did note that Germany was prepared to take “all necessary steps” in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, noting the need for strategic ambiguity to head off an attempt by Russia to preemptively fortify itself against Western sanctions.

European leaders are fearful that an all-out barrage of sanctions against Russia could result in severe economic pain for their own economies.

Sanctions against Russia, whether with Russia alone or with China, will REALLY harm the EU. But the insane psychopaths in Washington DC do not care. -MM

Unlike the United States, many large European banks have close ties to Russia.

Europe’s energy sector is particularly at risk—relying on Russia for more than 40 percent of its imported natural gas.

The United States is trying to prevent a potential energy crisis in Europe should Putin weaponize Russia’s oil and gas exports. Amid already rising energy prices, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been working to assure European leaders that the Biden administration is committed to easing “any disruptions to Europe’s energy supply.”

And so they believe him? -MM

Specifically, he pointed to discussions with governments and major global suppliers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to shore up supply.

The United States has ramped up its LNG exports to Europe as an alternative to Russian gas.

As of January, some 75 percent of U.S. LNG exports were bound for Europe. Last year, that figure stood at only 23 percent.

Meanwhile, this month, Putin unveiled his new oil and gas deal with China, worth more than $117 billion.

The terms of the 30-year contract call for Russia to supply an additional 10 billion cubic meters of gas to China per year via a new pipeline.

The implication is that deepening economic cooperation with China would help Russia absorb some of the shock if the West did impose severe sanctions against its banking and energy sectors. Russia is one of China’s largest oil and gas suppliers.

Russia is nearly and firmly isolated and sanctions of any types will not really affect it. -MM

But although these deepening economic ties might dampen the blow of U.S. sanctions, they are not completely out of reach of secondary U.S. sanctions.


To ensure its threats of sanctions remain credible, Washington needs to pressure Putin’s emerging economic lifelines by signaling that it is prepared to go beyond its standard sanctions package to impose secondary sanctions against Chinese banks and state-owned enterprises if Russia invades Ukraine.

There is precedent for such a move, but times have changed. China has become wise to the reach of U.S. extraterritorial sanctions and developed its own legal frameworks to push back.

In July 2012, the U.S. Treasury Department levied secondary sanctions against China’s Bank of Kunlun for knowingly facilitating transactions on behalf of designated Iranian banks.

This designation caught many experts and industry insiders by surprise, as it was an unprecedented escalation in the use of extraterritorial sanctions against a third party.

Under international UN laws, this action is ILLEGAL. Trust me, the Chinese will not forgive and forget. -MM

A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson chided the United States for “invoking its domestic laws to impose sanctions against the Chinese financial institution” and urged the United States to reverse the sanctions.

The argument is valid. Chinese businesses, citizens, and entities do not full under United States law. Further, neither does their trading partners. -MM

While the designation ruffled Beijing, the two countries avoided any substantial political or economic fallout, with China opting to isolate the small bank from broader financial markets.

Later, in 2017, the United States imposed a $1.19 billion fine against another Chinese entity for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran: China’s largest telecommunications company, ZTE.

In addition to paying the fine, ZTE would also be required to develop internal policies to avoid future sanctions violations and undergo a corporate restructuring, according to a settlement reached with company.

The company settled out of court, even though the pressure was illegally applied. -MM

To force ZTE to comply with the settlement terms, the U.S. Commerce Department threatened to place the company on its Entity List—effectively shutting the company out of U.S. markets.

When ZTE did violate the terms of its settlement, though, the Trump administration opted to issue a waiver despite objections from senior advisors, thereby tossing the company a lifeline and preventing it from going under.

Senior officials means John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. -MM

Although there are differing theories as to why then-President Donald Trump reversed the designation—whether for personal political gain or to entice China to remain engaged in trade negotiations—the cases show the reach of U.S. extraterritorial sanctions policy.

The U.S. dollar accounts for nearly 60 percent of global foreign currency reserves—and the Chinese renminbi does not.

That is true for NOW. And the Chinese realize that. But, as I have reported elsewhere, one day they are going to flick a switch and suddenly a staged withdrawl from the USD will occur and the USD will collapse in value. Like I said, the Chinese do not forget. -MM

China, however, has started to push back against foreign extraterritorial sanctions.

Last year, the country established an anti-sanctions law—similar to the EU’s “blocking statute,” which attempts to curb the extraterritorial application of third-party sanctions by prohibiting compliance with extraterritorial laws.

China’s law notes that the country explicitly opposes “hegemonism and power politics” and “opposes any country’s interference in China’s internal affairs under any pretext and by any means,” giving authorities broad powers to impose penalties against Chinese businesses that adhere to U.S. sanctions policies.

These penalties could include fines and even confiscation of assets.

The Chinese do not play. They could single handly destory the American automotive industry by sanctioning all of their factories inside of China and nationalizing them. Flick of a switch. -MM

Many see the law as putting multinational banks in a quagmire: caught in a legal limbo between violating U.S. sanctions and being held liable for adhering to them.

Large multinational banks comply with U.S. sanctions due to the hegemony of the U.S. dollar in the global financial system.

But that's the only reason. -MM

In 2014, for example, U.S. authorities levied a record $9 billion fine against the French bank BNP Paribas for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, among others.

Although China has yet to use its new anti-sanctions laws against U.S. interests, the opportunity will undoubtedly arise if Washington aims secondary sanctions at China.

In this case, banks may be forced to choose between U.S. fines for violating sanctions and Chinese fines for adhering to them.

So, if Washington is going to impose secondary sanctions against Chinese institutions, it must be prepared for retaliation.

In addition to the potential for putting scores of multinational entities in legal limbo, perhaps even forcing them to choose sides, more than $615 billion worth of bilateral trade will also be put in jeopardy. (China accounts for nearly 19 percent of all U.S. imports.)

By VALUE. Not by volume. 

90 - 95% of all medicines come from CHina. Are you ready to live without aspirin or antibiotics? How do you think your parents and grandparents will do when their blood pressure medicine and heart medicine is no longer available? -MM

Thus far, there have been no indications that Washington is considering specific secondary sanctions against China, beyond mere posturing.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price recently told reporters: “We have an array of tools that we can deploy if we see foreign companies, including those in China, doing their best to backfill U.S. export control actions, to evade them, to get around them.”

Deploying these tools against China will have repercussions for U.S. businesses and economic interests—a burden Washington has thus far not had to grapple with and has instead asked its European allies to bear.

Nonetheless, the United States must be prepared to cut off all avenues for Russia to escape Western sanctions.

This includes preparing to wield secondary sanctions against Chinese institutions as well as working to limit blowback to U.S. interests.

The simple truth is that the U.S. dollar accounts for nearly 60 percent of global foreign currency reserves—and the Chinese renminbi does not. That is a big stick to wield.

So what is this “expert” saying?

Well, the USA has its tenticles in just about every country. They are all in debt to the USA.

That gives the United States power.

Just like in prison. If you owe another inmate something, you must pay it back of become indentured. This technique has been used with great effect by the United States in controlling the world.

If the USA sanctions China, the nations will be forced to choose between [1] China or [2] their debt owed to the United States.

Of course, he argues, they would choose the United States over the “Worlds factory”. Right?

Ah.

Don’t be so sure.

The USA is dependent upon China for everything. And what it does not get directly out of China, it gets from countries that are / do.

  • 90% of medicines come from China. What happens when there are no antibiodics? What about heart medicine? Pain killers?
  • 99% of computers come from China. This includes monitors, IC chips (don’t let the Korean / Taiwan medi fool you otherwise), and all preferials.
  • 80% of the world cellphones and much of their inner workings come from China.
  • 95% of all household items, goods, and appliances come from China.
  • 95% of automotive parts come from China. It doesn’t matter what car you are driving. All the spare parts are made in China.

Sanctioning China would be the most stupid blunder, of all the many stupid blunders to choose from, in all of history.

So let’s talk about China.

Now, China is really not like anyone in the “West” thinks. It’s really something different, and as time moves forward, it looks more and more like a sompletely different society that comes from another galaxy.

Let’s start with a few girls.

Chinese girl in a gym

Take a look at the screens on the wall behind her. Yes, this is normal. You can watch media while you exerise and your exercise stats are projected onto the screens as you exercise.

video

No wonder that the Chinese women are healthy, thin and free of ugly tattoos.

You know, I come from the United States.

Seriously, today, the ideas of beauty in the United States are different than from that inside of China. Darker skin, chubbier and shorter build, bigger asses, and tattoo decorations make for an attractive American woman…

An American beauty.

…or so I have been told.

Personally, I like all women. Short, tall, robust, cute, athletic, big and small. But the ones that I favor all are [1] great talkers with [2] interesting thoughts and opinions, a [3] strong personality, and [4] great personal confidence and a [5] real pride in their actions and apperance.

Which is why, perhaps, I love China so much.

Robust Chinese girl in brown

I do admire a fine “robust” woman. That’s me, and I don’t expect anyone to share my tastes. Here we have a fine woman. This gal is a real “head turner”, and I find her very aluring. Most especially in this dress.

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Houses are for living in

Here’s a clip from the violent anti-China “news” network FOX. They are so very anti-China that they have to preface this report with a disclaimer that they are going to say something positive about China, and that people should not think bad about them for doing so.

The segment is spot on. And yes, China is doing the right thing. Don’t you know.

video

A very casual Chinese girl

Women do not realize just how attractive they are when they are calm, comfortable and confident. Look at the expression on this woman. See the confidence? Man, oh man. What a sexy girl.

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Chinese girls having fun at a bar

This is what it is like. Here you see a typical after dinner drinks with the girls and some dice game, and all that. Very typical China.

video

Chinese clothing model showing off shorts

She’s one of my favorites.

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Chinese model with nice slacks

Here she is with the tan slacks. I do like her boobie movement, as well as the lines on the slacks. They look nice and trip and very comfortable.

video

A Traditional Chinese girl

In many of the upper-class Business KTVs the girls are expected to buy their display uniforms. Many of which are traditional such as what this woman is wearing.

video

Chinese girl in cute blue

There’s no question about this. She is a stunner. Actually, I really love her neck and shoulders. I almost want to get a pencil and a sketch pad and start sketching it out with a light orange wash and some white inking overlay.

video

Chinese girl in the front yard

This video shows the front common area / yard in front of the housing complex individual buildings. Many areas a paved like this, while others are manicured trees, shrubs and flowers.

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Don’t step on a crack Chinese girl

I used to do this when I was in elementry school. I’m glad that the action did not die off and is kept alive inside of rural China.

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No movie jitter

Note how the Huawei camera negates the handheld jitter while jogging and keeps the face and eyes absolutely centered throughout the video. Pretty cool technology.

video

White fashion sweater

In the cities, one of the fashion items is to wear a light topper sweater that fits over the tops of the boobies so that when you walk it accentuates the jiggle movement of the breasts. Personally I like it, but it does look a little bit strange to my older gentlemen sensibilities. Check out the style…

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The Fiasco in the Ukraine

Listen to what the Russians say…

Russian FM site inaccessible, hacked or truly overwhelmed by the fact that the reply to the US reply has been published? In any case Cassad has it in Russian.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7446905.html

Posted by: Paco | Feb 17 2022 17:27 utc | 82
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Yandex translation:
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February 17, 17:46

The Russian Foreign Ministry has published a written response to the American written response to Russian claims on security guarantees in Europe.

Response to response

On February 17, 2022, US Ambassador John Sullivan, invited to the Russian Foreign Ministry, was given the following reaction to the previously received American response on the Russian draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on security guarantees.

TASS publishes the full text of the statement.

General characteristics

We state that the American side did not give a constructive response to the basic elements of the draft security guarantees agreement prepared by the Russian side with the United States.

We are talking about [1] the rejection of further expansion of NATO, [2] the withdrawal of the “Bucharest formula” that [3] “Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO”, and [4] the refusal to create military bases on the territory of states that were previously part of the USSR and are not members of the alliance, including [5] the use of their infrastructure for conducting any military activity, as well as [6] the return of military capabilities, including shock, and NATO infrastructure to the state of 1997, when the Founding Act of Russia — NATO was signed.

These provisions are of fundamental importance for the Russian Federation.

The package nature of Russian proposals has been ignored, from which “convenient” topics have been deliberately chosen, which, in turn, are “twisted” in the direction of creating advantages for the United States and its allies.

This approach, as well as the accompanying rhetoric of American officials, reinforces reasonable doubts that Washington is really committed to correcting the situation in the field of Euro-security.

The growing military activity of the United States and NATO directly at the Russian borders is alarming, while our “red lines” and fundamental security interests, as well as Russia’s sovereign right to protect them, continue to be ignored.

Ultimatum demands to withdraw troops from certain areas on Russian territory, accompanied by threats of tougher sanctions, are unacceptable and undermine the prospects of reaching real agreements.

In the absence of the readiness of the American side to agree on firm, legally binding guarantees of ensuring our security by the United States and its allies, Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of military-technical measures.

In Ukraine

There is no “Russian invasion” of Ukraine, as the United States and its allies have been officially declaring since last autumn, and there are no plans, therefore, statements about “Russia’s responsibility for escalation” cannot be regarded otherwise than as an attempt to exert pressure and devalue Russia’s proposals for security guarantees.

The mention in this context of Russian obligations under the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 has nothing to do with the internal Ukrainian conflict and does not apply to the circumstances resulting from the actions of internal factors there.

The loss of territorial integrity by the Ukrainian state is the result of the processes that took place inside it.

The accusations of Russia contained in the American response that it “occupied Crimea” also do not stand up to any criticism.

In 2014, a coup took place in Kiev, the initiators of which, with the support of the United States and their allies, set a course for the creation of a nationalist state that infringes on the rights of the Russian and Russian-speaking population, as well as other “non-titular” ethnic groups.

It is not surprising that in such a situation, Crimeans voted for reunification with Russia.

The decision of the people of Crimea and Sevastopol to return to the Russian Federation was made by free expression of will in the exercise of the right to self-determination enshrined in the UN Charter.

Force or threat of force was not used. The question of Crimea’s ownership is closed.

If Ukraine is accepted into NATO, there will be a real threat that the regime in Kiev will try to “return” Crimea by force, dragging the United States and its allies, in accordance with Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, into a direct armed conflict with Russia with all the ensuing consequences.

The thesis repeated in the US response that Russia allegedly “ignited the conflict in the Donbas” is untenable.

Its reasons are purely intra-Ukrainian in nature.

The settlement is possible only through the implementation of the Minsk agreements and a set of measures, the priority and responsibility for the implementation of which are clearly spelled out and unanimously confirmed by UN Security Council resolution 2202, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom.

In paragraph 2 of this resolution, Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk are named as parties.

None of these documents mention Russia’s responsibility for the conflict in the Donbas.

Russia, together with the OSCE, plays the role of mediator in the main negotiating format – the contact group – and together with Berlin and Paris – in the “Normandy format”, which formulates recommendations to the parties to the conflict and monitors their implementation.

To de-escalate the situation around Ukraine, it is fundamentally important to take the following steps.

This is forcing Kiev to implement a set of measures, stopping the supply of weapons to Ukraine, withdrawing all Western advisers and instructors from there, the refusal of NATO countries from any joint exercises with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the withdrawal of all foreign weapons previously supplied to Kiev outside Ukrainian territory.

In this regard, we draw attention to the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a press conference following talks in Moscow with French President Emmanuel Macron on February 7, 2022, stressed that we are open to dialogue and urge “to think about stable security conditions for everyone, equal for all participants in international life.”

Force configuration

We note that in their response to the Russian proposals, the United States insists that progress in improving the situation in the field of European security “can only be achieved in terms of de-escalation in relation to Russia’s threatening actions directed against Ukraine,” which, as we understand, implies the requirement to withdraw Russian troops from the borders of Ukraine.

At the same time, the United States is ready to talk only about “mutual obligations … to refrain from deploying permanent-based forces with combat missions on the territory of Ukraine” and “consider discussing the problem of conventional armed forces.”

For the rest, the American side remains silent about our proposals contained in paragraphs 2 of Article 4 and paragraph 1 of Article 5 of the draft bilateral treaty and declares that “the current configuration of the US and NATO forces is limited, proportional and fully complies with the obligations under the NATO-Russia Founding Act.”

We proceed from the fact that the deployment of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on its territory does not and cannot affect the fundamental interests of the United States. We would like to remind you that there are no our forces on the territory of Ukraine.

At the same time, the United States and its allies were advancing their military infrastructure to the east, deploying contingents in the territories of new members.

They circumvented the limitations of the CFE Treaty and interpreted very loosely the provisions of the Russia—NATO Founding Act on the rejection of “additional permanent deployment of substantial combat forces.”

The situation that has developed as a result of these actions is unacceptable.

We insist on the withdrawal of all US armed forces and weapons stationed in CEE, SEE and the Baltic States.

We are convinced that there are quite enough national potentials in these zones.

We are ready to discuss this topic on the basis of art. 4 and 5 of the Russian draft agreement.

The principle of indivisibility of security

We did not see any evidence in the US response that the American side is fully committed to observing the immutable principle of indivisibility of security.

The general statements about the consideration of this postulate by the American side are in direct contradiction with Washington’s unwillingness to abandon a counterproductive and destabilizing course to create advantages for itself and its allies at the expense of Russia’s security interests.

This is precisely what is happening as a result of the unrestrained implementation by the North Atlantic Alliance, with the leading role of the United States, of the policy of unlimited geostrategic and military development of the post-Soviet space, including the territory of Ukraine, which is particularly sensitive for us.

All this is happening directly on the Russian borders.

Thus, our “red lines” and fundamental security interests are ignored, and Russia’s inalienable right to ensure them is rejected.

For us, of course, this is unacceptable.

Additionally, we remind you that this principle is enshrined in the [1]  preamble of the Treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on [2] “Measures for Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms of 2011”, the [3] extension of which for five years [4] without any exceptions was [5] agreed by the parties in February last year, as well as [6] in a number of OSCE and Russia—[7] NATO basic documents adopted at the highest level: [8] in the preamble of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, [9] in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe of 1990, [10] the Founding Act of Russia — [11] NATO of 1997, [12] the Istanbul Charter for European Security of the OSCE of 1999, [13] the Rome Declaration of Russia-[14] NATO of 2002 and the Astana Declaration of the OSCE Summit of 2010.

We note that the response received mentions Washington’s commitment to the concept of indivisibility of security.

But in the text, it boils down to the right of states “to freely choose or change ways to ensure their security, including union treaties.”

This freedom is not absolute and is only half of the well-known formula fixed in the Charter of European Security.

Its second part requires that, when exercising this right, not “… strengthen one’s security at the expense of the security of other States.”

We cannot consider the letter received from NATO dated February 10, 2022 as a response to the message sent by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on January 28, 2022 to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on this issue.

We asked for an answer in a national capacity.

Conclusion

The United States is playing a very dangerous game, and using everything in its power to wrest control of the energy through Europe. The battlefield is the Ukraine, and they are sponsoring the entire fighting and trying and forcing the blame upon Russia.

Russia will not have any of this.

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday endorsed Russia’s nuclear deterrent policy, which allows him to use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional strike targeting the nation’s critical government and military infrastructure.

By including a non-nuclear attack as a possible trigger for Russian nuclear retaliation, the document appears to send a warning signal to the United States. 

The new expanded wording reflects Russian concerns about the development of prospective weapons that could give Washington the capability to knock out key military assets and government facilities without resorting to atomic weapons.

In line with Russian military doctrine, the new document reaffirms that the country could use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or an aggression involving conventional weapons that “threatens the very existence of the state.”

But the policy document now also offers a detailed description of situations that could trigger the use of nuclear weapons. They include the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its allies and an enemy attack with conventional weapons that threatens the country's existence.

In addition to that, the document now states that Russia could use its nuclear arsenals if it gets “reliable information” about the launch of ballistic missiles targeting its territory or its allies and also in the case of ”enemy impact on critically important government or military facilities of the Russian Federation, the incapacitation of which could result in the failure of retaliatory action of nuclear forces."

-Defense News

As a justification, the minions and toadies, and appratus inside the United States “news” are busily justifying their militaristic actions in order to gain popular and military advantage thought the region and now there are “experts” that are arguing that the United States seize the initative that this time, and take out both Russia and China at the same time.

China has warned the United States that it would “strike back” in response to any “reckless” actions, urging Washington to withdraw its recent passing of sanctions targeting people and entities tied to human rights abuses committed by Beijing.

-MSN

This is extraordinarily DANGEROUS.

All sorts of bad things can come of it. As I have stated earlier, of all the blunder-headed, stupid, ignorant, and dangerous foolhardy actions that the American dying empire could perform, this single action could be it’s worst.

But turhtfully, the “leadership” are so ignorant and stupid that they have no idea what the fuck they are doing nor dealing with.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Tipping and turning points as the United States dies

Above Photo: Digging youselves out from under all the lies and bullshit.

Are you getting tired of this geo-political stuff? I sure am.

Sorry to keep bringing it up, but these are historical times that we are living in. It’s exciting, dangerous, fearful and exciting. It’s new, novel and strange. And also everything in between. So please forgive me this latest article.

Ok already!

The United States is a shambles and it’s falling apart. Just die off, and leave me alone.

Will you? Please?

"...Making thing worst, western fake democracy produce low quality, corrupt, and know no consequences politicians who care for no one except their own personal wellbeing."

This article continues with a selction of snapshots of the world relate to the United States. We discuss the rise of Asia, of course. We discuss the fall of the United States. And we also discuss the strange, strange behaviors that it seems to be taking on.

We do this instead of talking about things that matter. Like cats, cheese, wine, and cars. Sheech!

We start with this article.

Where the author is stunned that the American “leadership” and their minions / toadies believe that wars can and will be fought on the same basis as was done one hundred years ago. Let me tell youse guys something, the world is a far different place today.

Yesterday, the press secretary of the Foreign Ministry, Mariya Zakharova, made such a post on FB. 

"A request to the US and British disinformation media Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Sun, etc. - announce the schedule of our "invasions" for the coming year. I would like to plan a vacation."

Here, in the flood of “any day now”, “any hour now” is this churning out nonsesne about Russia invading the Ukraine. Not one is discussing the “why, in the Hell woud they want to do such an idiotic thing?”

And you know, you DO know, that the Internet is an erasible whiteboard. Things come and then in a few years they are gone. Poof! Well, here’s what I am talking about for all youse guys who are reading this in 2030.

Two months of “any day now”. From December 2021 to February 2022. Just about every major headline was about “The Ukraine”. For me, it was a welcome respite from the “any day now China will invade Taiwan” nonsense.

But still, it is tiring…

Um. Sure.

What ever you say Jake.

Here’s another. Thousands of these bullshit articles. All clogging up my media feeds.

Invasion 1 am on Monday.

There are literally thousands of these kinds of articles and they are flooding my feed just like the Anti-China narrative doused me back last year.

All lies.

All distortions.

All fearmongering. All bullshit.

Here’s on at 3am on Wednesday.

The days come and go. The times come and go.

The lies just plow forward.

It’s all been bullshit.

It’s all shrilling nonsense.

Who are these editors? Jane LGBQ diversity-hire; spending time at a nail salon, or a perpetual evil sociopath without a brain, just doing what they are told by some kind of Reptilian evil overlord?

Which pretty much makes people scratch their heads and wonder. Like this article points out…

Next part.

I’m scratching my noggin, don’t you know.

Here’s a bunch of articles that pretty round out the massive and timultious changes that the world is going through right now. If you live inside of the United States, you will probably be only aware of eight out of the ten articles. And you know why, right?

So. Yeah. That being said…

I need a drink.

Some delicious VSOP.

We begin here…

Article 1

Finian Cunningham

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February 12, 2022
© Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis

The infernal danger is that Washington and London are pushing Europe and the world towards the abyss of a nuclear with Russia.

The Anglo-Americans are running a modern-day reworking of Operation Overlord, the June 1944 military invasion plan billed to liberate Western Europe from Nazi Germany.

This time around, the billed objective is to “liberate” the European Union from its “tyrannical” dependency on Russian natural gas.

In reality, the unspoken objective is to maintain U.S. tyrannical control over Europe.

That control is essential for upholding American hegemony and global power.

The ultimate price is economic devastation and even war for Europe which the “noble” American hegemon is all too willing for its peons to pay.

This week, U.S. President Joe Biden showed off his overlord status when he arrogantly spoke for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a White House press conference.

Biden was asked about the fate of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany in the hypothetical event of an invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Biden didn’t skip a beat to consult with the German leader. He peremptorily asserted the gas project would be terminated.

“There will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” said Biden without hesitation. “We will bring an end to it.”

The American president was asked how this could be done given that the functioning of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is nominally under the control of Germany, not the United States.

“We will — I promise you, we’ll be able to do it,” asserted Biden without so much as a hint of seeking any kind of agreement from the German chancellor.

The assuredness of Washington’s presumed ability to over-ride European sovereignty was a revealing and disturbing display of American imperial arrogance.

It was also an excruciating display of American contempt for supposed European “allies”. Scholz, Germany, Europe, was made to look like a nonentity by Biden.

Later press reports indicated that too.

Washington and London have led the ramping up of geopolitical tensions with relentless accusations that Russia is about to invade Ukraine and jeopardize European security.

From the way the Anglo-American propaganda has contrived it, one would think that the scenario is a re-run of Nazi aggression threatening Europe for which they alone are the noble defenders.

Putin is Hitler, the Kremlin is the Third Reich, and diplomacy is appeasement, so the preposterous propaganda goes.

Moscow has repeatedly said it has no intention to invade Ukraine and that in fact it is Russia that is being threatened by the U.S.-led NATO military alliance after year-on-year expansion of the bloc all the way to Russia’s borders.

Ratcheting up the tensions further, Washington and London are demanding that Europe must adopt draconian sanctions against Moscow including the commitment to abandon the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

That pipeline took five years and a €10-billion investment to complete despite constant American objections.

The crisis over Ukraine contrived by Washington and its British flunkey have ensured that the gas supply has been suspended for the past six months despite an energy crunch in Europe.

What the Anglo-American overlords want to see finally is the entire gas project being scrapped. That’s the end-game even if it means European households freezing from un-payable gas bills.

The American overlords don’t care.

That’s why the Americans and the Brits are doing their best to scupper any diplomatic effort to calm the inordinate crisis with Russia over Ukraine.

Hence, Washington and London are funneling weapons to Ukraine and deploying paratroopers to Eastern Europe in a reckless bid to escalate the confrontation.

While visiting the White House this week, Chancellor Scholz was peppered with petulant demands to explicitly state that the Nord Stream 2 project would be axed “if Russia invaded Ukraine”.

Scholz refused to state that, although in an apparent attempt to offer a sop he claimed that Germany and the United States were united in their resolve.

There is a palpable peeved sense among the Americans and British that Berlin is not being sufficiently hostile towards Russia.

Likewise, when French President Emmanuel Macron went to Moscow this week for diplomatic talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin there was also an unmistakable sense of rancor from Washington and London that their militaristic “unanimity” was being undermined.

There’s little doubt that Berlin and Paris know that the Anglo-American bravado is a cynical provocation that is “nobly” signing a suicide note on behalf of Europe in the event of a war with Russia.

Macron’s bitter experience of France being shafted last year by the U.S., Britain and Australia over the €50 billion AUKUS submarine contract has probably helped engender a bit of healthy skepticism too. He’s also got an eye on French presidential elections in April.

The bottomline is that Washington wants to sabotage the strategic partnership between Europe and Russia for energy trade and the general normalization of relations. The objectives are maintaining U.S. hegemony, selling its own more expensive gas to Europe and of course endless sales of weapons for NATO members in a perennially agitated state of insecurity. The Brits as ever are in it for ingratiating with Uncle Sam and serving their usual function of being the geopolitical butler to U.S. imperial power.

Energy analysts know that Germany and Europe cannot survive economically without Russia gas, which accounts for at least 40 percent of the continent’s consumption. Even Biden at the White House press conference could not pretend that the U.S. was able replace Russia’s supply. If Russia’s gas trade to Europe was to be disrupted by conflict or deeper sanctions the repercussions for the European Union’s economies would be devastating. There is no way that Germany, France and the EU could survive without Russian oil and gas. For the U.S. and Britain to demand that Berlin make definitive statements about cancelling Nord Stream 2 is a form of coercion and blackmail. Operation Overlord II.

But the infernal danger is that Washington and London are pushing Europe and the world towards the abyss of a nuclear with Russia. That’s how demonic the failing Anglo-American imperium is.

So, we start off realizing that the entire “song and dance” about the “War in the Ukraine” is to scare Europe into compliance wiht the United States, and stop Germany from trading with Russia (and China).

It’s not successful.

So why is the United States doing this?

Well. It needs a war. It REALLY needs a war.

Every single state, all 50 of them, have enormous military-industrial factories cherning out bombs, guns, and battle gear. They employ millions of people, and without a war, there will be layoffs. And layoff right now, in this economic condition would be devistating.

What economic condition you might ask?

Article 2

The USA is a real fiasco. Sorry to say.

Make sure that your larder is well stocked and that you are part of your community. And when you have a change, just go to the local diner and eat a nice fine pie. Not that it’s the end of the world or anything like that, but rather to enjoy the little things in life.

Delicious cherry pie. Oh, and don’t forget a nice HOT cup of fresh brewed coffee to go with it.

5 New Numbers That Prove That America’s Horrifying Inflation Crisis Is Getting Even Worse

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If you are less than 40 years old, you have never seen inflation like this in the United States.  Despite all the warnings, our politicians in Washington just kept borrowing and spending trillions upon trillions of dollars that we did not have.  And despite all the warnings, the Federal Reserve just kept pumping trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system.  Now we have a giant mess on our hands, and anyone that believes that this is going to be easily fixed is simply being delusional.

Of course most Americans weren’t going to start paying attention to all of this until it started to affect them personally.

Now it is affecting all of us personally, and there are millions of people out there that are becoming increasingly frustrated about the current state of affairs.

Unfortunately, this crisis appears to be just in the early stages.  The following are 5 numbers that indicate that the inflation crisis in the United States continues to get even worse…

#1 The producer price index has risen at a rate of 9.7 percent over the previous 12 months.  According to CNBC, that is close to a brand new record…

The producer price index, which measures final demand goods and services, increased 1% for the month, against the Dow Jones estimate for 0.5%. Over the past 12 months the gauge rose an unadjusted 9.7%, close to a record in data going back to 2010.

Last week we learned that the consumer price index has risen by 7.5 percent over the previous 12 months.  Of course if the consumer price index was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the real number would actually be more than double the official number that we were just given.

#2 Truck trailer prices in January 2022 were 29.6 percent higher than they were in January 2021…

A shortage of parts and labor has sent the prices of truck trailers through the roof.

Truck trailer prices jumped 3.1 percent in January, data from the Department of Labor showed Tuesday. That followed a 3.8 percent increase in December. Compared with 12-months ago, trailer prices are up 29.6 percent, by far the biggest one-year jump in records going back to 1980.

#3 The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is telling us that the price of used vehicles rose by an astounding 40.5 percent from January 2021 to January 2022

According to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday, the consumer price index for used cars and trucks jumped up by 40.5% from January 2021 to January 2022. That means within a year, the average price of used cars and trucks for urban consumers has gone up by 40.5%.

#4 You may have noticed that you are paying a lot more at the pump these days.  If you can believe it, the price of gasoline has actually shot up 40.8 percent since Joe Biden first entered the White House…

Between January 2021 and January 2022–President Joe Biden’s first year in office–the price of unleaded gasoline increased 40.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

#5 The price of lumber has really been surging once again.  According to the National Association of Home Builders, this most recent surge has “added more than $18,600 to the price of a newly built home”

That is adding to the cost of both building a new home and remodeling an older one. The National Association of Home Builders estimated the recent price jump added more than $18,600 to the price of a newly built home. It also added nearly $7,300 to the cost of the average new multifamily home, which translates into households paying $67 a month more to rent a new apartment.

Ouch.

I sure wouldn’t want to be trying to build a new home in this environment.

Pressure has been building on the Federal Reserve to take action, and it is being anticipated that the “geniuses” at the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates by 50 basis points next month…

The hot inflation readings led financial markets to price in a better-than-even chance of a 50 basis points interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve next month.

Inflation is running well above the U.S. central bank’s 2 percent target. Economists are expecting as many as seven rate hikes this year.

Just recently, a reader sent me an email which pointed out that we shouldn’t have a system where an unelected group of bureaucrats gets together and determines what our interest rates are going to be.

And he is exactly right.

In a free market system, interest rates would be determined by the free market.

But we don’t have a free market system anymore.

In fact, we haven’t had one for a long time.

Of course when it comes to the economy, the guy in the White House is going to get more of the credit or more of the blame for what is going on than anyone else.

And a brand new poll that was just released has Joe Biden’s approval rating sitting at just 34 percent

The president’s approval rating nationally sits around 40 percent, according to several tracking averages, but a new CIVIQS poll showed it sitting at 34 percent from the 165,786 respondents surveyed.

That is a shockingly bad number, and what should alarm Democrats even more is how bad Biden’s numbers are in the most important swing states

Swing states of Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin all voted narrowly blue in the 2020 election, but the new poll shows their approval of Biden sits in the low 30 percentages.

Arizona has the biggest split with 32 percent approval to 61 percent disapproval. Georgia sits in second with 31 percent approval to 59 percent disapproval; Pennsylvania’s split is 36 percent to 57 percent; Michigan is 33 percent to 59 percent; and Wisconsin has 36 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval of Biden.

Unfortunately, Biden isn’t going to resign no matter how low his numbers go.

That means that we are going to have at least three more years of either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris running the country.

So we shouldn’t expect any dramatic policy shifts from Washington.

And the “geniuses” at the Fed are undoubtedly going to find even more ways to really mess things up.  They are the ones that are more responsible than anyone else for getting us into this mess, and now many Americans are desperately hoping that they can get us out of it.

If you are waiting for them to fix the economy, you are going to be waiting a really, really long time.

I have been warning for years that the decisions that were being made would have severe consequences, and now those consequences have started to arrive.

We are on a road to national ruin, and those that are running things are even more blind than those that they are supposed to be leading.

Ok so the United States has high inflation. So what?

It’s more than just the price of food and a decrease in the standard of living. It’s  a total collapse of everything and a President that is a bumbling puppet. The Americans are distraught, frustrated, and are waking up that they do not like the govnerment that they have right now, and thus a war of distraction is really needed…

For those of you who are unawares, the United States has been pushing and pushing for a war in the Ukraine, and Russia and the Ukraine said No.

They continued. And still nothing happened.

Now today, President Biden is declaring a “victory” by “forcing” Russia to back down and not invade the Ukraine. Silly. Can’t they see that the United States is now the laughingstock for the entire world?

Article 3

Yes, the United States is acting like a colleciton of ignoarant, mentally deranged jackasses, and has lost all global respect, but you are not part of the USA leadership. So don’t fret. No one, and I do mean NO ONE, is blaming the American people for the faults of the USA federal government. Instead they blame the fact the United States is trapped in an obsolete model of governance that has been taken over by evil and corrput wealthy individuals.

Yeah. It sucks.

But what can you do?

I recommend, a pizza.

A fine, MM approved, pizza.

If I did not know this is for real…

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… I would think that this is some anti-US spoof, based on listening to the most discredited cliches about the USA and the kind of people who run it.  It had everything, frantic flagwaving, hilarious hyperbole, Biden trying to look like Dubya who, himself, was always squinting  his yes à la John Wayne hoping to look like some Sheriff at OK Corral.  It also had all the mantric repetition of mind-numbing concepts like “democracy” and “freedom”, etc.

The best part was when Biden raised his voice and sternly looked at the screen.

I am sure that Putin hid under his bed, to hug a pillow and sob in abject terror before The Great American Sheriff!

Here is the deal.  It’s not just Biden who is brain dead.  Its also the collective “Biden”: all the do is “traffic in hot air” as Lavrov aptly mentioned it today.  What we heard tonight is not just the rambling of a senile, delusional, narcissist.  What we heard was the voice of the US deep state: that is what they “think” and this is how they “think”.

It does not really matter anymore how/why such individuals as Clinton, Dubya, Obama, Trump or Biden came to power or what they promised.  What matters is that these are the type of folks who run the USA (well, not them personally, of course, but the interests they represent).  The same kind of non-entities run the UK, by the way, just in a even more pompous and ridiculous way.

The clueless fellow below, ladies and gentlemen, is the current Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in history, this is the Leader of the Free World and his so-called “values” are shared by millions worldwide.  Or so he thinks (maybe).

Here is a scary thought: there is a good chance that the next clown in the White House might even be worse!  There is zero chance that anybody who could fix this awful mess will be “elected”.  If the past is the best indicator for the future, then we must realize that there is only one way this will ever end: in ridicule, violence and infamy.

That also fully applies to Ze and his “European Banderastan”.

Does anybody still doubt the outcome of this abject slo-mo train wreck?

Yes?

What’s next?

Once this fiasco dies down, the focus with be a war in Taiwan “any day now”. It’s all so silly and so very predictable. I just don’t know when. A few days or a few months, but as sure as the sun rises, a “war” in Taiwan will be next on the United States agenda.

It’s all so very predictable.

It makes me yearn to chill out with a cat, drink a fine relaxing drink and eat something delicious. You know, like this…

Needs a little salt me thinks.

It makes me yearn for a simpler time, and a simpler lifestyle.

It makes me yearn for a time when a man would work, then go home, eat a great home cooked meal of pot roast and mashed potatoes, and drink his cocktail.

A delicious pot roast.

Good times. Times of substance.

City tour bus, San Francisco, California, 1956

Times when a cup of coffee costs ten cents, and was about double the cost of a five cent newspaper. Good times.

Times when there were real, goodness to gracious, families.

Times when the “news” actually reported events, and not based their operations off of payments from the government.

But that’s all changed.

And it changed into something much worse. But do not fear, it’s still changing and still evolving. There are still “adults in the room”, and many of them live in Asia. And they have a plan…

Article 3

Observations on the Russia China Statement

“Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on International Relations Entering a New Era and lobal Sustainable Development” 4 February 2022. (English) (Russian).

This document is the grand strategic manifesto of a new world order and there is much more to be said about it than what follows. I believe that 4 February 2022 will be remembered as the proclamation of a new disposition of world power and relationships.

It is a truly new order of things, not the old “new world order” which was based on US supremacy. And it is most certainly not the so-called Rules-Based International Order in which one side makes up the rules, breaks them when it wants to and orders everyone else to obey. (A perfect example of the mutability of the “rules” is that gay rights are very important in Russia but not at all in Washington’s new “major ally” of Qatar.)

The old “new world order” was always about making them conform to us: “The foremost goal of US strategy should be to cause China’s ruling elites to conclude that it is in China’s best interests to continue operating within the US-led liberal international order…”

The Russian-Chinese document speaks much of “democracy” but it’s a different vision than the one common in the West. The West today is focussed on the process of democracy – was the voting up to acceptable standards?

Did the opposition have a fair chance? were there enough candidates? was the advertising even-handed? were “administrative resources” used to shift the vote? and like questions.

Never mind that the West is often hypocritical in its discussion – microscopes analyse the treatment of dissidents in Russia and but the house arrest and treason charges against opposition figures in Ukraine are ignored – these are the metrics used in the West’s assessment of whether a country is “democratic” or not.

Now it may well be that fifty or sixty years ago concentrating on the process of democracy was appropriate but it is very questionable whether it is today. This one graph, showing the relationship between productivity and wages and compensation shows that all is not well. Up until the late 1970s, the two curves kept step with each other – the “rising tide” was indeed lifting all boats. Afterwards, however, they diverge until today there is a considerable gap between the two “Productivity has grown 3.5x as much as pay”.

The rising tide is floating only a few super yachts.

The richest one percent owned six times as much as the bottom fifty percent in 1989, now it’s 15 times as much. A Princeton University study in 2014 concluded “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose“. These findings suggest that, however good the process may be, the δεμος does not have much κρατος.

The Russian-Chinese document speaks of the results of democracy.

The sides believe that democracy is a means of citizens’ participation in the government of their country with the view to improving the well-being of population and implementing the principle of popular government. 

Note the purpose: “improving the well-being of population”. Whatever one may say about the process of the governance of China or Russia, no one can doubt that the well-being of the population has mightily improved in both countries.

We shall see for the future how this holds up but the document describes a different approach to democracy: don’t concentrate on the process and assume the results will follow – which they are not doing in the USA in particular and the West in general – but instead never mind the process, ask whether the are results desirable? Throughout the document – fifty times – we see the word “development” (“развитие” in the Russian version).

The sides believe that peace, development and cooperation lie at the core of the modern international system. 

A world in which everyone has a chance to get rich. And who can doubt that the government in Beijing knows how to do that? We will see, in the coming world competition of ideas, which approach is more attractive and successful.

A second theme, repeated throughout the document is that all countries are equal and they have their own ways of doing things, it is their right to do this, no one may preach to them and no one may interfere with them.

The sides call for the establishment of a new kind of relationship between world powers on the basis of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation. 

This is what might be called a descriptive take on the world rather than the prescriptive take more common in the West. To explain what I mean, let us consider Soviet-Polish relations.

Although it’s very unfashionable to admit it today, Warsaw, as the first country to form a non-aggression pact with Hitler’s Germany and by its refusal to allow Soviet troops into its territory to fight Germany, played a consequential role in the outbreak of the war.

Poland suffered terribly, losing 20-25% of its population and was liberated by the Soviet Army after immense destruction. Stalin then designed a Poland which, for the first time in its long history, included all of the historical Polish lands and no irredentist minorities.

Then imposed the blessing – or so Moscow saw it – of socialism and transformed Poland into a loyal ally of the USSR. Except that, the moment it became clear that the tanks weren’t coming, Poland quit the alliance, threw off socialism and turned to NATO and the EU.

All the “fraternal, socialist, ally” rhetoric turned out to be empty declarations of people compelled to say them.

In other words, the lesson is that you can’t change a country except temporarily by force or very slowly over a very long time. Moscow has learned this lesson.

Hence my use of the world “descriptive” – countries, quite simply, are what they are and outsiders can’t change them; therefore outsiders have to live with them.

It’s that simple: the prescriptive notion – we have the truth and you should follow it (we must make Beijing follow the “US-led liberal international order”) simply can’t be done.

Therefore, the emphasis throughout the document that countries are as they are and are to be treated as equals is firmly based on reality. You can’t make a particular country go along with your notions of propriety but you still have to deal with it: treat it as it is.

The West has long lost sight of this despite its numerous failures of prescription: even if the Western ideas actually were “better”, you can’t bomb Afghans into accepting them.

Therefore, this position in the document is quite simply realistic and practical.

I have said before that Russia, in the communist days, was an “exceptionalist state” and so was China under Mao.

They then regarded themselves as a pattern for others to follow – a pattern that others should follow – and the USSR imposed that pattern on many of its neighbours.

Both Beijing and Moscow have learned that exceptionalism is a route to failure. Therefore, what I am calling a “descriptive” approach to world variety is the result of the failure of trying a prescriptive approach.

This is not, therefore, a point of view adopted to gull people into acquiescence, it is one that is based on cold, bitter experience. It is a lesson that Washington has not yet learned: exceptionalism is a road to a blind alley, as Putin put it a quarter century ago.

It is, in fact, something the West should remember: “Westphalianism” is the principle of cuius regio, eius religio adopted after Europeans had torn themselves apart trying to impose religion on each other.

Not uniformity, but variety. The China-Russia manifesto is rooted on a truth that not only they, but Europe as a whole, have learned the hard way.

The Chinese-Russia relationship is described as follows:

They reaffirm that the new inter-State relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era. Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ”forbidden“ areas of cooperation, strengthening of bilateral strategic cooperation is neither aimed against third countries nor affected by the changing international environment and circumstantial changes in third countries. 

Time will show just what is meant by this but it is clear that it is a relationship both deep and wide.

A complete commonality of interest which is not uniformity of interest. (It will be amusing to watch Western “experts” fail to get that distinction.) And not one to be easily split apart as some naïve people in Washington think. They trust each other and neither trusts Washington.

Finally, the new world order that they are calling for is described as:

The sides reiterate the need for consolidation, not division of the international community, the need for cooperation, not confrontation. The sides oppose the return of international relations to the state of confrontation between major powers, when the weak fall prey to the strong. The sides intend to resist attempts to substitute universally recognized formats and mechanisms that are consistent with international law for rules elaborated in private by certain nations or blocs of nations… 

A new world order for all, not just those who accept “the better way”.

I would expect, as details are filled in at the “strategic” and “operational” level, that this “grand strategic vision” will prove to be widely attractive across the globe. Washington and its allies will, no doubt, concentrate on the many criticisms of its behaviour, but the manifesto is positive in tone.

People are attracted to success and the West doesn’t project that any more.

Republished from Russia Observer

Remember who you are and whence you came from. It’s important. We all have to keep grounded as the world changes around us.

Don’t get caught up in all the bullshit.

Never forget who you are.

Firefighters in Princeton, New Jersey, 1956

Never forget who you are and where you came from.

We are all unique and we are all special. We really are. We all have stories to tell. Some are fun, some are cute. Some are romantic, and some are terribly embarrassing. But, you know, that’s life.

Don’t worry, though.

There’s always wine, and cheese.

Article 4

Here we take a look at what the Chinese government is economically. In this next article, they call it “Red Capitalism” as there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. As such it deserves a study, as it is truly very efficient, and a light-year improvement over the best of the West.

Red Capitalism

by Observer R for the Saker Blog

INTRODUCTION

This paper is mainly about the Chinese economy, but includes discussion of the Russian and United States (US) economies in order to provide a clearer explanation.

Comparisons

The Chinese economy is the largest in the world according to the latest CIA Fact Book, based on the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) method.

The CIA claims that the PPP is a better method to use than the nominal method (GDP) based on conversion to US dollars.

Many analysts and politicians still use the nominal method, however, which shows the US in first place and China second. (As it is their preference. They msut keep America lookign great and perfect; the “shining house on the hill”.)

China has been continually careful to claim only second place, presumably as part of its long-term strategic decision to keep its head down and not make unnecessary waves.

Second place also fits better with the significantly lower per-capita income in China and the Chinese aim to keep the status of a “developing country” for purposes of climate change response and funding.

Economic Systems

There are many labels used to describe the various economic systems around the world, most ending in “ism.”

Different authors use the same label to describe different systems, making it hard to understand what they are really referring to in real life.

In reality, most economies appear to be a mixture of various systems, as these are defined in the dictionary.

The Chinese economy is no exception.

So for the purpose of this article, it is simply called “Red Capitalism” for want of a better term.

Red Capitalism is an amalgam of many different systems combined with the so-called “Chinese characteristics.”

The first section of this article provides background information about how the various economic systems are defined by Webster’s. These definitions can be kept in mind while reading the rest of the article.

The second section describes the rivalry between two different methods of explaining and managing a national economy, using either engineering or economics, and how this rivalry plays out in practice. The discussion also touches upon issues with computer models and simulations.

The third section deals with booms and busts. These economic and financial events are a notorious problem that seems to defy a long-term solution. Even the cause(s) of economic and financial instability are lacking any agreement. Some suggested readings are provided for those who wish to delve further into the topic.

The fourth section mentions some aspects of national security which are important for analysis, such as culture and economics. The importance of these two factors in the demise of the USSR is touched upon, and whether China can avoid a similar fate.

The fifth section covers competition and monopoly in China and the US, and how the two countries have tried to deal with these issues. It incorporates many of the topics addressed in the preceding sections and applies them to the evolving situation.

Finally, a sixth concluding section points out some of the difficulties in describing a national economy using the common “isms.” National economies contain elements of various systems, as well as varieties within systems. China is no exception.

I. ECONOMIC “ISMS”

A great deal of discussion in various media concerns differing economic structures, including capitalism and socialism.

The problem with these discussions is that these terms are not defined and other types of economic organization, such as mercantilism and imperialism, are overlooked. For example, there are state capitalism, finance capitalism, crony capitalism, and numerous others.

To assure that both readers and authors were clear about what structure was being addressed, for example, the first page of such articles or books could provide a detailed definition of which capitalism is being discussed.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that capitalism is composed of private ownership and private investment decisions, and that prices, production, and distribution are determined by the market.

But there need to be much more detailed descriptions in view of the many different varieties of capitalism.

As for socialism, there is a similar problem of variety.

The dictionary states that socialism is the government ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. That is a start, but what if it is control, but not ownership? Or vice versa?

What about market socialism as promoted by the Swedes versus command socialism theoretically practiced in the USSR?

We could even invent a few new terms: Bankers’ capitalism and bankers’ socialism for a start.

After all, China claims to be socialist but has a central bank and numerous other banks, as do most other countries, including the US. China appears to be following the same economic advice as the US, leading to the same asset bubbles and too-big-to-fail enterprises.

As another example, the dictionary defines mercantilism as the attempt to increase the power and monetary wealth of a nation by government regulation of the economy, usually trying to accumulate gold and promoting a favorable balance of trade.

Mercantilism also supports manufacturing and agricultural development, as well as foreign trading monopolies. The campaign for “Made in China 2025” may be partly viewed in this light.

It is a national strategic plan along the lines of industrial policy to promote manufacturing.

According to some reports, China is the number one gold-producing nation in the world and all the gold produced is purchased by the Chinese government. Imperialism is defined as extending the dominion of a nation by territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other territory.

Imperialism and mercantilism support each other, especially in terms of foreign trade, protecting domestic manufacturing and collecting gold and other rare commodities.

Communism is defined in one version as “a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed.” This definition requires considerable finesse when talking about the Chinese Communist Party.

II. ENGINEERING VS ECONOMICS

Chairman Mao eventually found that he had a problem in keeping control of Chinese politics due to the development of wealthier businessmen and the growing size of the market economy.

His solution was an attempt to return to some of the features of the wartime economy.

These included a semi-drafting of civilians into the army, where they were housed in barracks, clothed in uniform outfits, put on work details in the countryside, fed in the mess hall, and moved about on public transportation.

This was in line with Mao’s experience as a general commanding the Red Army for many years during the civil war in China. This is wartime mobilization, where the generals decide on the final outputs of the economy and the engineers work out the methods to achieve such results.

During war, the civilians are put on rationing and the central plan determines which and what civilian goods will be produced and distributed.

Sort of like Henry Ford’s old adage concerning the some of the Model T cars : “Any customer can have a car painted any colour [sic] so long as it is black.”

Of course, rationing soon becomes unpopular in peacetime.

Mao’s death created a crisis in the Communist Party, with the so-called “Gang of Four” trying to continue his policies, while other officials, led by Deng Xiaoping, called for a different system.

In this system, the economists are supposed to work out the methods to achieve results.

This system could be described as part “market” and part “market socialism” and part “socialism.”

The market part involved privately owned factories and stores producing and selling civilian goods to the public.

The market socialism part involved the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) using army-owned factories to produce civilian goods for sale to the public.

In the socialism part, the PLA-owned factories continued to produce weapons for the military.

The engineering vs economics issue came up in the West at the time of the 1972 Club of Rome report, The Limits to Growth.

This document was based on computer simulations of economic growth which were very pessimistic.

The book was very popular around the world, and it and subsequent reports have been extremely influential in the debates over global warming, climate change, and other policy issues.

The critics, however, claimed the report was based on simplistic scenarios and amateur scholarship.

In essence, the critics said that the report was produced by engineers trying to model the economy without understanding economics.

In addition, the critics pointed out that the computer models did not take into account the changes in price that would come about with scarcity.

The criticism did not seem to deter the Club of Rome in its efforts to remake the world.

Perhaps the members had more confidence in engineers practicing economics, than in economists practicing engineering.

In any event, the same controversy continues to this day concerning the degree to which public policy should rely on computer simulations and models that are sensitive to a few key assumptions.

Computer simulations are well known always to be subject to the “garbage in, garbage out” phenomena, but less well known is that even with good input data, the output can be drastically different with just a few little tweaks in the assumptions.

III. MONEY & CREDIT

China has a problem with asset bubbles and potential busts, as does the US.

China has “ghost cities” and other investments that are symptomatic of malinvestment and too much easy credit.

In the US it was the ill-considered financial enthusiasms of the roaring twenties, the dotcom bubble, the housing bubble, and now the so-called “everything bubble” that have led to recessions and depressions.

There have been scholarly attempts to explain why these episodes keep happening. For example, 100% Money by professor Irving Fisher back in the 1930’s, detailed the problems with fractional reserve banking.

Fisher wrote this with the benefit of hindsight after losing his fortune in the Great Depression.

The book, however, fell on deaf ears.

Much later, in 1983, another book on the subject was published, The Mystery of Banking by Murray N. Rothbard. It had no better success.

In 2016, the former head of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, wrote a book called The End of Alchemy, about the same problem and proposed some solutions.

Nothing much was done.

The gist of these books is that fractional reserve banking is inherently unstable.

Yet this is the system used all over the world.

The national security agencies of China, the US, Russia, and others might benefit from some serious study of these books and the issues with money and banking that they explain, as these issues may be more likely to determine their nations’ economic fate.

In the US, other isolated prophets have explained the mistakes in money and banking policies, yet, again, nothing much has been done, resulting in potentially grim future prospects.

If these books are correct in their analyses of the situation, then the first country to adopt a proper solution would gain significant advantages over other countries.

IV. NATIONAL SECURITY

National security studies and analyses spend a lot of time and effort on competing weapon systems, elections, coups, revolutions, as well as on culture, space, cyber, energy, and psychological warfare.

The studies appear to spend much less effort on education and economic security issues.

Out of all these types of warfare, the USSR turned out to be grossly deficient in two important areas: Culture and economics.

Western commercial culture was simply more attractive to the Soviet public than what they had at home.

As more and more Soviets learned about the difference, the more trouble Moscow had in getting the public to believe in the Soviet system.

The question is whether China will experience the same problem.

It appears that China has plenty of Western commercial culture and its own adaptations, as well as conducting a re-invigoration of its traditional culture that goes back thousands of years.

This may help to immunize China against this aspect of the Soviet problem.

As for economics, the USSR followed a less desirable path.

There are many competing schools of thought concerning what happened, but a basic view is that the planned sector of the USSR economy got into a fight with the unplanned sector and they knocked each other out.

The USSR was not able to come up with a solution to the command vs. market problem that worked.

China studied the USSR disaster and decided to follow a different path.

V. COMPETITION & MONOPOLY

It appears that China is ahead of the US in realizing that certain policies favored by the oligarchs could be dangerous to the economy and the State.

However late to take action, China has recently cracked down on the chiefs of many giant enterprises in a move to curtail their power and influence.

They were beginning to rival the authority of the Communist Party.

There is always a potential for oligarchs to find common cause with oligarchs in other parts of the world and joining in schemes such as the New World Order, thus possibly escaping control by the national governments.

This power struggle in China will have ramifications throughout the world.

In the US, it is not even a struggle—the oligarchs are generally considered to be on the top of the heap and nothing much is even considered in the way of curtailing their power.

Considering former President Trump’s experience with them, they are way ahead in the power game and are also alleged to be behind the curtain as far as President Biden is concerned.

In the past, the US came up with the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act in order to help control monopoly power.

President Theodore Roosevelt campaigned as a trust-buster and the laws were used to break up the Standard Oil Company.

Later on when President Franklin Roosevelt was in office, the US instituted the Glass-Steagall Act to address problems which were said to have contributed to the Great Depression.

The act separated commercial banking from investment banking.

At that time, brokerage houses were a separate feature of the US economy.

These laws were also used to break up some of the concentration in the telephone industry.

However, things went into reverse during the President Clinton era, when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed and banks could combine all forms of banking and brokerage into a single enterprise.

It was not surprising when the resulting conglomerates grew so large that they were termed “too big to fail” and had to be bailed out by the government.

In addition, the anti-trust laws did not seem very useful in controlling the very large tech companies of recent times.

Thus to call the US a “capitalist” or “free market” economy is not very helpful since the economy has had very different features at different times, as well as differing degrees of competition.

Thus a question in analyzing the Chinese economy might be to ask if China has the equivalent of the Sherman, Clayton, and Glass-Seagall Acts, and are they actually used or enforced?

Does China have other laws and regulations that promote competition or manage monopolies in the public interest?

When the Chinese first opened up the economy after Mao, there was relatively little in the way of funding for the military to pay for modernization.

The solution was to allow the military to go into producing civilian goods for sale to the public and then keep the profits to help pay for military goods.

Analysts would need to research whether the military eventually stopped producing its own weapons and purchased them from commercial industrial companies.

How is the military-industrial complex actually structured in modern China?

Who owns the armaments factories?

More recently in China, the central government has encouraged the military to get out of the civilian goods business and stick to the military side.

Again, much more detail is needed in order to comment on the Chinese economic system than to only use the generic terms “capitalism” and “socialism.”

It is even more ineffective to toss about the word “communism.”

Another example of the difficulty in pasting labels on different economies: In Russia it appears that the armament-producing factories and companies are owned by the government.

In early US times, the military arsenals and navy shipyards were also owned by the government.

Pretty much the embodiment of “socialism” in both cases.

Now, however, weapons in the US are produced in factories owned by private or non-government companies.

However, there seems to be very little real or practical competition in much of the US military-industrial complex, so maybe it would be better described as part “mercantilist” or with some other term?

Some experts have claimed that the US has already lost the arms race with Russia, so perhaps the US should try a different tack and return to having the military set up its own factories to produce the exotic weapons needed to compete with Russia?

The US has approximately six arsenals currently operating, but they do not produce the types of weapons that are made in Russia.

Would this partial return to a variety of “socialism” help the generals to get the weapons they really want, instead of the weapons that produce the most profits?

The US Army went back a century to find a design for its latest uniform, maybe the army could consider a return to the old-fashioned arsenals of a century ago.

VI. CONCLUSION

Any discussion of “isms” such as capitalism and socialism cannot shed much light unless more rigorous and detailed definitions are employed, since both “isms” have many varieties.

In addition, any serious discussion should address the extent to which mercantilism and imperialism are part of the mix.

All this gets very complex very rapidly, so it is not surprising that such is seldom done.

In addition, there is little evidence of any current investigation concerning the command versus market issue in national economies, despite its historical importance in China and Russia.

The problems with computer modeling and simulation are well known, but continue to arise in studies of economic growth, climate change, and spread of disease.

This difficulty has serious implications for China as the nation is faced with vast disagreement between engineers and economists in designing computer simulation models.

Finally, the “skeleton in the closet” that almost no one wants to address is the design of the money and credit system for a nation.

Such a look would impinge on the currently politically correct belief in the proper role and nature of commercial banks, investment banks, and central banks.

It is interesting from a national security standpoint that China has seemingly adopted much of the US and UK system of banking, despite centuries of having panics, booms and busts, recessions and depressions in the latter countries.

“Red Capitalism” is an amalgam of many “isms,” with Chinese characteristics. So far, it appears to be relatively successful, certainly more so than the system employed in India.

However, one can see the same maladies creeping into China that currently beset the US: Malinvestment, stock market excesses, interest rate manipulation, real estate speculation, and increasing concentration of wealth.

The question for the world is which country will be the first to find and implement a cure for these maladies.

The point herein is that anyone who refers to China as a “regime”, and that possesses a “Communist” for of governance DOES NOT UNDERSTAND modern, contemporaneous China and their article and opinions whould be ignored as noise of the ignorant.

You can quote me on that.

A rainy evening in New York’s Times Square under the neon lights of the “Black Widow” marquee.

Article 5

Now, that we know that China has developed and improving on their greatly improved model of governance, and has aligned with the Russian powerhouse, what of the United States? Is it just sitting by the sidelines, or is it in great distress, as the “house of cards” collapses all around it?

Speed Wobble

Things are turning, indeed, out there… out in the truck stops and the households fending off repossession and the small businesses struggling desperately for survivial — even in the degenerate halls of government….

Clusterfuck Nation


If the ads on the Superbowl each year are like a Rorschach test for the nation’s mental condition, then this year’s ad-roll was a cavalcade of frantic hallucinations suggesting a near-complete detachment from reality for an audience of ADD-disabled cell phone slaves locked into a Big Tech induced consensus trance. You could barely tell what these advertisers were trying to sell in their commercials, the psychotic dazzle of half-second jump-cuts was so ferocious. One interesting note, though: people of non-color (PONCs) seem to have been magically sucked out of the universe. There, that fixed things for everybody else.

Snoop Dog’s half-time house party — Hollywood’s G-rated version of a BLM riot — heralded a real riot later on in downtown LA after the Rams’ victory. Fans lit-up a metro bus and tagged it with spray-paint. The police moved in… objects were thrown at them. I’m just sorry that Snoop didn’t bring out his friend and sometime co-star Martha Stewart to twerk for the multitudes — while, say, whipping up a pumpkin mousse. That might have brought the country together after all these months of rancor. But, like I said, sorry, PONCs need not apply. Nor did Da Dawg invite onstage my favorite new pop star, Ski Mask the Slump God, composer of the hits “Faucet Failure” and “Foot Fungus.” Maybe next year… if there is a next year….

All this hearty good fellowship marks the journey of our country from a convocation of be-wigged founding fathers wielding quill pens in defense of liberty to a security-and-surveillance state of hebephrenic zombies lurching to a kind of failure that will make the fall of the Roman Empire look like a lawn sale of someone’s dead uncle’s chattels and effects. The drain-pipe beckons… but will America answer that call… or take a different turn?

Things are turning, indeed, out there… out in the truck stops and the households fending off repossession and the small businesses struggling desperately for survival — even in the degenerate halls of government, state-by-state. The armature of Covid-19 tyranny is getting rapidly dismantled by politicians close to running for their very lives. The home-folks have had enough of their insolence and they’re sharpening the tines of their pitchforks. Events also conspire to put the schnitz on the alleged Globalists’ dream of digital tyranny — if there even is such a cabal of Globalists, which I’m not sure about, or just a coterie of feckless hacks swept along by a malefic zeitgeist, Canada’s Justin Trudeau being the poster-boy for that breed.

The timing has gone all awry on them. The Covid-19 hysteria draws to a close against their wishes to drag it on forever. Even the triple-vaccinated are sick of it — and not a few of them are sick because of it. Governments and the corrupt medical establishment won’t touch this info with a stick, but the morticians and insurance execs are hopping up and down about what looks like a supernatural die-off of folks between 18 and 60 generally not susceptible to early death. Kind of worrisome, a little bit. Anybody with half-a-brain left is declining the offer of yet another booster — though Dr. Fauci was still tirelessly selling them last week.

Mainly, though, the window-of-opportunity has closed, in the USA, anyway, for anymore vaccine passport nonsense, and with that goes the dream of roping every last citizen into a corral of total social control, including central bank digital currencies that would turn everyone into a yo-yo to be jerked-around by government.

“Joe Biden” has so far failed to deliver that war with Russia over Ukraine he promised us — which would be like two Craig’s List customers fighting over a twenty-year-old Jeep Wrangler up on blocks with the engine missing. Ukraine president Zelensky is a professional comedian, of course, so one must admire his gag of inviting “Joe Biden” to visit his country, the Gem of Eurasia, “in the coming days,” Mr. Zelensky said, “which will be a powerful signal and contribute to de-escalation.” Plus, all the pierogi and cabbage the US president can eat. All this made National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gnash his teeth for the trouble he has gone to in prepping the sore-beset American people for World War Three.

But Mr. Sullivan has, perhaps, other things to think about. Like… what are all these offstage noises Special Counsel John Durham is making in the grand jury chambers? Something about Hillary Clinton, and the helpmeets surrounding her in the 2016 election (including especially Jake Sullivan), alleged to have fabricated the Russian collusion whopper that deranged the nation for four years and disabled a sitting president. They even managed to enlist the FBI and the CIA in that task. How’d that happen? Could Hillary have been that peevish? Anyway, it looks kind of bad for the National Security Advisor to “Joe Biden” having such an epic political fraud tacked onto his resume, with perhaps an indictment to follow. Standing by on his resignation….

Our NATO allies must be enjoying the rise of natgas prices beyond the level that many middle-class households in Euroland can afford to keep the heat on in the dead middle of winter, since they have to get so much of the stuff from Russia. Maybe jamming Ukraine into NATO, as America’s Deep State has been wishing and hoping to do, wasn’t such a great idea after all. Maybe NATO itself isn’t such a great idea anymore.

If World War Three doesn’t pan out for “JB,” there’s always a global meltdown of financial markets, banks, and currencies waiting in the wings to amuse and distract everybody from the post-Covid call for a long, hard look at what the pandemic was actually about. The story, in all its multiple, gruesome levels, has gotten away from them. So many public officials are standing naked that Washington looks like a nudist colony.

Do You Know, In the year 1951, Libya was the world’s poorest country. Gaddafi made it Africa’s most developed country with $150 billion foreign reserves And zero debt. Under Muammar Gaddafi, Libya had one of the world’s strongest currencies.

1 Libyan Dinar equalled $0.82781 in 2011. Gaddafi wanted to give all African countries the Dinar to strengthen their economies. He also had more than 140 Tonnes of Gold and similar amounts in silver which he wanted to distribute across Africa to be used in trading.

▪️Libya under Gaddafi.

-Free health care
-Free Electricity
-Free housing, owning a house was considered a human right in Libya
-Free medicine
-Free Education in the country including for all Libyan students who were studying abroad.
-Free water, he built a river.
-Interest Free loans
-Newly weds received $50,000
-Mothers received $5,000 on birth on child.
-All citizens received a percentage of all oil sales
-Petrol was $ 0.14 per liter
-Government paid 50% of the price of your car
-Unemployed Libyans received the average salary of their profession.

▪️These were the reasons why so many individuals wanted to travel to Libya for greener pastures, but now, reverse is the case. Thanks to America bombing it into dust…

America used to be a land with so much potential. A “melting pot” of cultures, and of freedom. Why, you could have “bunnies” serving men in the open at bars, and massage parlors and no one said anything. Not today. Try that today. It will never happen.

Bunny Girls taking an order in a club restaurant in London, 11th February 1963.

Yeah. Look at those prices!

I jsut cannot control myself. I really must stare hard to see the prices and the food items in the menu.

Article 6

From MoA

The Big White House Plans Behind Its ‘Russian Invasion’ Scam

As the ‘Russian invasion’ scam reaches new heights it is time to look at the motives behind it.

The noise has become deafening.

> The U.S. intelligence briefing included specific reference to next Wednesday, February 16, as a start date for the ground invasion, three officials — based in Washington, London and Ukraine — told POLITICO. <

‘Could’ is doing a lot of work in those headlines.

Can we get it a bit more precise?

1am or 3am?

Which is it?

And in what timezone?

And 200,000 troops? Yesterday there were only 100,000. How can those have doubled over night?

There is also the question of why.

Why has the Biden administration created an artificial ‘crisis’ about a Russian invasion of Ukraine when such an invasion is neither planned nor likely to happen? Why is it claiming that a Russian invasion of the Ukraine is ‘imminent’ when Russia as well as the Ukraine deny that any will be coming.

Why does it distribute misleading satellite pictures of allegedly deployed tanks when those are directly next to the barracks where they belong? Why does it hype a ‘Russian buildup’ when that is something that is claimed each and every year?

Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the USSR, has one answer:

Maybe I am wrong – tragically wrong – but I cannot dismiss the suspicion that we are witnessing an elaborate charade, grossly magnified by prominent elements of the American media, to serve a domestic political end. Facing rising inflation, the ravages of Omicron, blame (for the most part unfair) for the withdrawal from Afghanistan, plus the failure to get the full support of his own party for the Build Back Better legislation, the Biden administration is staggering under sagging approval ratings just as it gears up for this year’s congressional elections.

Since clear "victories" on the domestic woes seem increasingly unlikely, why not fabricate one by posing as if he prevented the invasion of Ukraine by "standing up to Vladimir Putin"?

Actually, it seems most likely that President Putin’s goals are what he says they are – and as he has been saying since his speech in Munich in 2007. To simplify and paraphrase, I would sum them up as: "Treat us with at least a modicum of respect. We do not threaten you or your allies, why do you refuse us the security you insist for yourself?"

Alastair Crooke points to a different motive:

The authoritative Global Times in an editorial warns that the U.S. is instigating conflict in Ukraine in order to tighten bloc discipline – to corral European States back into the U.S.-led fold. No doubt, China makes the connection that Ukraine provides the perfect pivot for shepherding Europe towards America’s next stage of requiring a united front with the U.S. for the later task of barricading-in China, behind her borders.

In play, therefore, are key decisions that will define Europe for the future. On the one hand, (as Pepe Escobar noted some two years ago), “the goal of Russian and Chinese policy is to recruit Germany into a triple alliance locking together the Eurasian land mass à la Mackinder into the greatest geopolitical alliance in history – switching world power in favour of these three great powers, and against Anglo-Saxon sea power”.

And on the other hand, NATO was conceived, from the outset, as a means of Anglo-American control over Europe and more precisely for keeping Germany ‘down’, and Russia ‘out’ (in that old axiom of western strategists). Lord Hastings (Lionel Ismay), NATO’s first Secretary General, famously said that NATO was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.

This mindset lingers on, but the formula has acquired today a greater import, and a new twist: To keep Germany ‘down and price uncompetitive’ versus U.S. goods; to keep Russia ‘out’ from being Europe’s source of cheap energy; and to keep China ‘fenced out’ from EU–U.S. trade. The aim is to contain Europe firmly within America’s narrowly defined economic orbit and compelled to forgo the benefits of Chinese and Russian technology, finance and trade – thus helping towards achieving the aim of barricading China within its borders.

I find both explanations, the domestic one and the foreign policy one, very plausible and a combination of them is the most likely motive behind the plan for is affair.

The Washington Post explains how the campaign was hashed out and directed from the White House. Its headline though is misleading:

Inside the White House preparations for a Russian invasion
A “Tiger Team” of administration officials has spent the past several months preparing a clear series of responses, gaming out scenarios from cyberattacks and limited intervention to an invasion of Ukraine.

A more correct headline would have been “Inside the White House preparations of the ‘Russian invasion’ scam”.

Lets look into that:

As fears grow of potential Russian aggression against Ukraine, a “Tiger Team” led by the White House is quietly gaming out how the United States would respond to a range of jarring scenarios, from a limited show of force to a full-scale, mass-casualty invasion.

The White House team has staged two multihour tabletop exercises — including one with Cabinet officials — to bring the scenarios to life and assembled a playbook that outlines an array of swift potential responses, starting with Day One and extending through the first two weeks of an envisioned Russian invasion.

The effort, senior administration officials said, has not only helped them anticipate possible complications, but has also prompted them to take actions ahead of time, such as exposing Russian information warfare before it’s carried out to blunt its propaganda power.

The team preplanned their daily propaganda releases step by step:

The “Tiger Team” — a term referring to a diverse group of experts who are tackling a specific problem and that suggests alertness and a readiness to pounce — was created after National Security Council officials last October detected troubling signs of a massive Russian troop buildup on the Ukrainian border.

NSC officials readily admit they may be unable to precisely anticipate the moves of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military leaders. But the exercise and robust planning is still worth it, they said.

“The reality is that what the Russians may end up doing is not likely to be a 100 percent match for any of these scenarios,” [Jonathan Finer, deputy national security adviser to President Biden,] said. “But the goal is for them to be a close enough facsimile of what they end up doing that the plans are useful in terms of reducing the amount of time we need in order to respond effectively. That’s really the whole goal.”

The ‘massive Russian troop buildup on the Ukrainian border’ has never happened in real life. Most of the Russian troops are hundreds of miles away from Ukraine.

It was the Washington Post which on October 30 2021 was the first to publish the claims by ‘anonymous officials’ of a ‘Russian buildup’.

(Side remark: The name ‘Tiger team’ or ‘Tiger squad’ was also used for the Saudi group that killed and hacked up a Washington Post opinion writer Jamal Khashoggi. Funny that the Washington Post piece does not mention that fact.)

Back to the ‘tic toc’ the WaPo provides:

The Tiger Team was officially born in November, when national security adviser Jake Sullivan asked Alex Bick, the NSC director for strategic planning, to lead a planning effort across multiple agencies. Bick has brought in the Departments of Defense, State, Energy, Treasury and Homeland Security, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development to look at a possible humanitarian crisis.

The intelligence community is also involved, gaming out various courses of action the Russians might pursue and the risks and advantages of each, officials said.

While the official launch of the ‘Tiger team’ might have been in November it is clear that the whole operation started earlier when the Ukrainians were asked to take part in the sham:

Simon Shuster @Shustry - 8:29 PM · Feb 14, 2022

Source close to Zelensky told me the U.S. first warned his team of a Russian invasion last fall, putting the chances at 80%. The Ukrainians didn't buy it, but they saw an opportunity -- "more aid, more attention" -- and played along. Now they have regrets. Too much attention.

The CIA has flown paramilitaries from Ukrainian Nazi groups to the U.S. to train them:

While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for the CIA’s Ground Branch — now officially known as Ground Department — was established by the Obama administration after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has further augmented it, said a former senior intelligence official in touch with colleagues in government.

By 2015, as part of this expanded anti-Russia effort, CIA Ground Branch paramilitaries also started traveling to the front in eastern Ukraine to advise their counterparts there, according to a half-dozen former officials.

The multiweek, U.S.-based CIA program has included training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like “cover and move,” intelligence and other areas, according to former officials.

These groups will be the forces to use when the U.S. decides to launch some false flag ‘Russian attacks’ on Ukrainian civilians.

As you watch it consider that every move in this is preplanned:

The playbook itself goes far beyond battlefield scenarios, looking at questions like how to address Ukrainian refugees who might stream into Poland and Romania, how to secure the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, exactly what sort of sanctions to impose on Moscow, and how to fight back against a sophisticated cyberattack.

The playbook — which synthesizes nearly three dozen papers and intelligence assessments commissioned by the team from various agencies — has been distributed to the various officials, including military and civilian leaders at the Pentagon.

The playbook also considers “second order” consequences, such as Russian retaliation for any penalties.

Those ‘sophisticated cyberattacks’ will most likely come from the National Security Agency which is part of the Pentagon. When the White House will claim that it has evidence of a ‘Russian cyberattack’ on Ukraine, which it is likely to do, keep in mind that anyone who claims to be able to find the real source of such an attack is selling snake oil.

Along the playbook the White House also released disinformation which claims that Russia will use such:

Among the Tiger Team’s top concerns is a Russian effort to promote the false narrative that it is Ukraine, aided by the West, that is preparing to launch an offensive in eastern Ukraine, and that Russia is the victim.

In recent weeks, the U.S. government has declassified intelligence about such efforts, including a potential “false flag” plot in which Moscow would stage an explosion that kills ethnic Russians in Ukraine or in Russia itself, and then blame it on Kyiv as a possible pretext for an invasion.

The White House has declassified nothing that anyone was allowed to see. As the NYT correctly remarked:

For all the disclosures, the Biden administration has provided no evidence of the disinformation plots they say they have uncovered.

The ‘Russian invasion’ scamp was approved from the top:

In December, the Tiger Team held two virtual tabletop exercises to road-test various scenarios and responses. The first brought together deputy secretaries and the second involved Cabinet officials. Biden has reviewed the playbook and was briefed on the results, officials said.

“It’s one thing to consider each of these problems — energy, sanctions, military posture — in isolation. It’s quite another to put them all together and execute a plan on all of them,” the NSC official said. “What I saw over the course of this planning exercise was, including at the most senior levels, lightbulbs go on about the way the pieces fit together.

The plan is integrated enough to allow for aims and achievements in multiple fields.

That is why I believe that both, Matlock and Crooke, are right in their guesses of the motives behind the ‘Russian invasion’ scam.

There are domestic aims and there are foreign policy aims and the pieces of the plan fit them together.

But that is only so if the whole thing does not unravel. In real life no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy.

Zelensky’s much criticized unwillingness to play his part of the show may just be one of the elements that will let it all fall apart.

Then there is Russia which is always good at creating real surprises. I bet that its security demands and the draft treaties it provided where not foreseen in the playbook. They already succeeded in pressing Biden into concessions the U.S. had previously been unwilling to make. More surprises in different areas will follow. As soon as the Olympics are over China may also come to play a role in this.

Big plans make for big failures.

So here we are, eh?

Asia has their shit together and the USA is run by “old dinosaurs” that cannot change as they fear that if they do they will lose everythign and have to accept a new lifestyle. So they ae off threatening war…

…everywhere.

I’ll tell you, it make me yearn for the days when America used to stand for something; when it used to represent something. When families mattered.

When people… mattered.

When pets… mattered.

When food… mattered.

When life, family and friends…mattered.

Where has it gone? Well, I tell you that it’s due to the American leadership. And what evil monsters that they have become. Maybe they would act and behave a little bit differently if they had regular, and normal lifestyles. If they acted and behaved normally, and if they participated within their own open and free communities, instead of living like robber barrons on methamphetamines.

Baseball.

Yeah.

I miss the “good old days”…

When you could pull over and have a picnic without have a police car “investigate” what you are doing…

Article 7

I truly need to spend more time with cats.

I miss Leonardo. He was a good kitty.

What does Russia think about all this?

Tim Kirby
February 15, 2022

No progress can be made until the West either sees the Russians as equals or at least fears them enough to create respect like they did in the Cold War, Tim Kirby writes.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s particular take on politics has created many memes on the Russian Internet. His personal frustrations having to negotiate and deal with the West are very relatable to the Russian masses who also want to normalize relations. His crestfallen yet visibly angered words “F’n Morons” have become the stuff of meme legend throughout Russia, although few realize that it was actually said during discussions with the Saudis and not America or Britain as most would assume. But this statement so resonated with the pure frustration that Russians have been feeling, that the populace just sort of shifted the target of his words to the ultimate source of their dismay that started the Maidan Color Revolution in 2014, which has been spiraling downwards ever since. Foreign Minister Lavrov has proved not to be a one hit wonder and his recent trolling of his British counterpart Liz Truss exploded over the Russian internet. This interesting strange moment in the endless and pointless battle of The West vs. Russia is a real microcosm of the nature of how both sides see themselves and the other and demands a full breakdown.

So the situation looks like this, again an annoyed and worn down Lavrov tried to prove a point about how little the West actually understands about the Ukrainian Crisis with some verbal fencing…

MOSCOW, February 10. /TASS/. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss refused to recognize Russia’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov Regions at talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday, a source close to the negotiations told TASS.

After Truss’ statements urging Moscow to move its forces, located on Russia’s soil, away from the border with Ukraine, Lavrov asked his British counterpart if she recognized Russia’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov Regions.

According to the source, Truss insisted that the UK would never recognize Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.

Although the Russian internet was smugly proud of this quippy achievement there is a level of pure honesty in the reaction from the British that most Russians simply are incapable of seeing. The Russians are all laughing at her answer taking it as a literal reaction, but metaphorically she told the God’s honest truth from an Anglo-Saxon perspective.

Truss clearly refused to recognize two regions of Russia as being part of Russia out of willful ignorance. There are fine lines between idiocy, ignorance and willful ignorance, but behind the latter of the three there can often be a very crafty and hateful intelligence. No truth pith-helmeted British colonizer would dare to learn anything about her barbaric adversaries, and in this display of pure willful ignorance she perfectly articulated the view of the West towards Russia – they don’t recognize any of Russia’s concerns, demands, leadership or even statehood as legitimate, nor do they need to justify their positions with facts and knowledge when dealing with Untermenschen.

The reaction of the British Foreign Secretary was an unintended act of pure and total dominance. Can you imagine, just how low she and her colleagues must view the Russians as to be charged with dealing with them and yet know absolutely nothing about their country, their geography and the nature of the Ukrainian Crisis? Discussing a situation that has killed thousands of people yet choosing to learn zero basic information is “alpha-chad” to say the least.

Truss answered like a Roman general forced to lower himself to speaking to unwashed Barbarians, who has zero concern for any details about these subhuman animals and their pathetic pseudoculture. All the Roman needs to know is that the allied Barbarians in Ukraine are right and the enemy ones in Russia are wrong. What town or river is where doesn’t make any difference. This Roman attitude of seeing the world as one of civility vs. barbarity hasn’t gone anywhere, and a true sign of a “civilized person” is having zero knowledge or tolerance for the ways of the backwards.

Although Russians may find tricking Anglo-Saxon counterparts into revealing how ignorant they are as a coping mechanism for losing the Cold War, they forget that the supposedly 80 IQ gender-queer limp-wristed twits on the other side of the line have beaten them time and again. My Russian children, living in Russia, have already asked me numerous LGBT-related questions yet have not once asked anything about Multipolarity, Traditional Values or Orthodox Christianity. Russians may find narcissistic joy in mocking the English-speaking world for being ignorant, but apparently being able to quote Pushkin doesn’t win 21st century info wars now, does it? When you’ve got Hollywood, the entire Mainstream Media, Big Tech and so on, you don’t need to know where anything is on a map. The Anglo-Saxons have plenty of knowledge, they just feel they don’t need to know a damn thing about you Russians. That is the nuance the Russians cannot perceive on their mental radar.

This trolling by Lavrov really shows that the joke is actually on Russia. The Russians continue, after years of failing, to try to reason with those who see them as subhuman animals. Perhaps we are moving towards a Multipolar World due to economics, geography and the West shooting itself in the foot, but as far as cultural/info wars are going if you look at the youth around Moscow you can clearly see who is winning.

Perhaps it is actually Lavrov’s side who is ignorant as to how to deal with the Romans from a Barbarian standpoint, and simply cannot wrap their brains around the fact that no progress can be made until the West either sees the Russians as equals or at least fears them enough to create respect like they did in the Cold War. It would also help if the Russians would wake up to the fact that they are considered Barbarians, the fact that Hitler killed millions of them due to his belief that they are racially inferior, just won’t sink in for some reason.

Russia continues to step on the same rake over and over again by seeing itself as equal to the West and believing that the stress between both sides is caused by some sort of cultural misunderstanding. The real intellectual question the Russians should be asking themselves is by what means could a Germanic Barbarian chief convince a Roman general that they are equals?

How could they make him see the villages and culture of the Rhine as just as human and glorious as Rome? This first step to this particular negotiation is really the necessity for the Russians to hack through layer-upon-layer of Anglo-Saxon cultural superiority that creates the type of willful ignorance displayed unabashedly by Liz Truss. Although it is hard to formulate a winning strategy for this problem, it surely lies in the fact that deep down the Civilized man will always secretly envy the freedom and uncastrated status of the Barbarian, but that is a topic for another day.

Behind all the intensifying huffing and puffing of the US in the geopolitical arena. “More than 60% of all foreign currency reserves in the world are in USD – but there are big changes on the horizon … some of the biggest economies on earth have been making agreements with each other to move away from using the USD in international trade (Image: https://lnkd.in/eAP8tF3B) … [this shift is] going to have massive implications for the US economy.

10 reasons why the reign of the dollar as the world reserve currency [may] come to an end:

#1: China And Japan To Use Own Currencies In Bilateral Trade
The 2nd largest economy (China) and 3rd largest economy (Japan) struck a deal [to] use of their own currencies. This was an incredibly important agreement that was virtually totally ignored by the US media. [Read an extract of the BBC in the article].

#2: The BRICS Plan To Use Own Currencies When Trading
A new agreement will promote the use of their own national currencies when trading with each other. [An extract from a news source in India is in the article].

#3: China and Russia Use Own Currencies In Bilateral Trade
[In fact,] Russia and China have been using their own national currencies when trading with each other for more than a year now.

#4: Use Of Chinese Currency Growing In Africa
In 2009, China became Africa’s biggest trading partner, and is aggressively seeking to expand the use of Chinese currency. At this point, approx. 70,000 Chinese companies are using Yuan in cross-border transactions.

#5: China and UAE To Use Own Currencies In Bilateral Trade
– in oil transactions with each other. The UAE is a fairly small player, but this is definitely a threat to the petrodollar system.

#6: India To Use Gold To Buy Oil From Iran
Iran has been one of the most aggressive nations when it comes to moving away from the USD in international trade.

#7: Saudi Arabia Likely to Abandon Use of Petrodollar in Dealings With China
[China] imports the most oil from Saudi Arabia. [They] have teamed up to construct a massive new oil refinery in Saudi.

#8: The UN Continues to Push For A New World Reserve Currency

#9: The IMF Has Been Pushing For A New World Reserve Currency
– published a series of reports calling for the USD to be replaced.

#10: Most Of The Rest Of The World Hates The US
Global sentiment toward the US has dramatically shifted, and this should not be underestimated.

What will happen if the USD’s reign as the world reserve currency comes to an end? It will bring very undesirable changes to the American lifestyle through:

1. massive inflation,
2. high interest rates on mortgages and cars,
3. substantial increases in the cost of food, clothing and gasoline; and
4. a much harder time financing its debt [$30 trillion and counting].

Under the right conditions, a shift in momentum can become a landslide.”

So stop with cruel sanctions and printing of new US dollars to fund senseless wars.

Read more:
https://lnkd.in/emZkSn4d

Life in Florida when things were affordable, and people could raise families on a single income without having to ascribe to “systems” and pay “fees” in support of “taxes” all to go to a “government” to generate more “wars of distraction”.

Ford Fairlane, 1956

Article 8

I see all of this as late-stage decay, and the beginnigns of a rebirth. Whether or not it will be catastrophic has yet to be seen, but I do remain hopeful.

Democracy Enters Its Endgame

From HERE.

As Plato observed, democracy runs through a life cycle from good feelings at having escaped oligarchy to a semi-oligarchic period until it reaches its final stage, narcissistic mob rule under protection by tyrants.

Then the tyrants import diversity to vote against the majority interest so the tyrants can rule, and then the society collapses into a third world ruin.

Modern people, who understand nothing other than human social intentions, thought the cycle did not apply to them, not realizing that it accurately diagnosed the cause/effect relationships that occur as people react to the precedent of equality.

When democracy enters its endgame, the destroyers have a leg up because they have taken over the institutions that formerly worked for the population and are now seeking to destroy that population so the foreigners can enthrone the tyrant.

As some have mentioned, tyranny is rule for its own sake, or people seeking power for their own benefit at the expense of the interests of the society. Tyrants would rather rule over ashes than be normal people in a healthy society.

Liberalization — the political arm of individualism, or the same “me first at the expense of all else” bourgeois pathology that underscores tyranny — creates inversion that eventually destroys the society.

It begins with liberating individuals by relaxing rules. These rules, derived from reality and culture, restrain individuals from selfishness and self-destructive pathologies. When they are removed, selfishness takes over.

After some time, this proves destructive, so people speak out. The inversion begins: the society bans any criticism of some liberalization, since the critics will upend the “progress” toward a Utopia of equality.

The more time passes, the worse things get and the louder the critics whine, so more stuff gets demonized, made taboo, or outright banned until all that is left are terms that praise the system as it is.

Language has become inverted at that point, as has meaning. Nothing can be said but praise of the inevitable march from Enlightenment™ to Communism, and anyone who wants to be allowed to speak in public must affirm that the “arc of history” leads toward this progress.

Eventually, however, this order inverts. The things that people praise become seen as failing or failed. The terms that were once positive become handy shorthand for describing things which do not work so well. The inverted is in turn inverted.

These civilizations die from disinterest in a wave of combined apathy and anarchy. The system sucks, but no one who says this will be allowed to be anything but desperately poor, so the “experts” form an echo chamber that agrees that things are not failing, but better than ever before!

Then things fall apart. Those who thought they were running a successful society start to see that they are running a failure. They rush to implement their tyranny before the population bails out.

Unfortunately for them, however, they think in terms of enemies only when the real threat to them is lack of belief. Conjectural, messianic, and Utopian (CMU) systems like liberalization require people to believe that things are getting better.

When anyone succeeds without them, people realize belatedly that the whole liberalization project was never needed, and life is in fact better without that overhead of management, bureaucracy, administration, regulation, and wealth transfer taxes.

At this point, no one in the real world believes in the system, but those who depend on it — celebrities, media, minorities, government employees, regulations lawyers, and academics — defend it, fooling most of the people for some time.

Then at some point, that time ends, and the average person starts to see the system as the parasite that it always was. They do not oppose it so much as withdraw their support, sort of like how people stopped watching the NFL or Netflix shows.

Those who know that the system sucks but rationalize it so that they can continue to act out positions that were once important (here, we are speaking of post-Buckley “conservatives”) keep trying to explain the bad as good and failing.

People turn away. They turn toward their homes. They cheat aggressively on taxes and buy everything through the black market. They hide any wealth they have, and most importantly, do only a perfunctory job of their work role.

The would-be tyrants, in response to this loss of faith, crack down on those who visibly protest, in doing so revealing how they have been inverted. The defenders of equality and freedom have now become favoritists and authoritarians.

We are seeing this in real time as Democracy, Inc. prepares to arrest peaceful protesters who pointed out that the COVID-19 lockdown regimen is failing:

“These blockades are illegal, and if you are still participating the time to go home is now,” Trudeau declared after meeting virtually with leaders of the country’s provinces.

Invoking the Emergencies Act would allow the government to declare the Ottawa protest illegal and clear it out by such means as towing vehicles, Wark said. It would also enable the government to make greater use of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the federal police agency.

Over the past weeks, authorities have hesitated to move against the protesters. Local officials cited a lack of police manpower and fears of violence, while provincial and federal authorities disagreed over who had responsibility for quelling the unrest.

If you blow off a summer of burning cities and violence in the name of egalitarian causes, but then crack down on those who merely want you to slow your acceleration of transfer of wealth, power, and status from the naturally talented to the rest of the “equals,” then you reveal that you have been inverted.

The good guys, who made bad=good so that society could liberalize, now have become the bad guys.

Even the numb and slumbering voters realize at this point that now they are in an authoritarian regime. You either obey the dogma and read another “The Conservative Case for Pre-K Transsexual Sodomy” article, or you become an enemy of the State.

Modern society — liberal democracy, civil rights, market socialism, and Keynesian entitlements — took over the world after WWII.

Following the collapse of its erswhile allies in freedom with the fall of the Soviet Union, modernity expanded according to precedent, increasing each one of these things through a world financial network known as globalism.

Now it has become clear that this New World Order has collapsed from within as disorder breaks out across the globe:

Looking back at the past 14 years, it is with some consternation that Wolfgang Ischinger “cannot recall a time when there were so many overlapping crises.” That’s a reference to the challenges posed by Iran, China and the evolving Euro-Atlantic security architecture. A long list that could still encompass many other global hot spots.

Indeed, the extraordinary profusion of unresolved crises is itself the central topic in this year’s MSR.

The report describes a mood of “collective helplessness.” In the same way as ordinary individuals, whole societies can be overcome by a sense that they simply have no answer to the challenges they face.

In other words, people have lost faith in the system and now are reverting to pre-civilization behaviors by acting toward their own personal and civilizational interests without regard to other groups.

This means that not only has democracy failed, but the underlying belief in equality, altruism, pluralism, utilitarianism, and socially-accepted individualism has faded away.

We are seeing a crisis of confidence in that no one is betting on democracy being around much longer. The collapse of American government shows us how little people believe in the goodness of modernity anymore:

In a poll last month, 66 percent of Democrats wanted Clinton questioned, a whopping 22 percentage points higher than how many in her party demanded a probe last October, according to TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics (TIPP) research.

The amount of Republicans demanding answers is also swelling, rising to 91 percent in January from 80 percent last October. Among the independent crowd, those wanting the former secretary of state probed rose to 74 percent from 65 percent.

Clinton, 74, is being accused of hiring a tech term to ‘infiltrate’ servers at Trump Tower and the White House during the 2016 campaign.

Previous generations would have been shocked at this abuse of power, but in the current time, less care for the shared space of civilization seems evident. This seems to be changing.

In particular, for Democrats to know about Clintonian abuses of power — something essentially embargoed by the Left-leaning media and social media — requires them to be reading non-Left leaning sources.

This in turn means that they have already lost faith, even in their own party. The supposedly “good guys” inverted into the “bad guys,” leading people to see this as a systemic problem with the modern system.

I’ll tell youse guys. It all makes me yearn for a simpler time…

Playboy-style “bunny girls” serving a customer with a champagne lunch at Paul Raymond’s Bal Tabarin nightclub in Hanover Square, London, 11th February 1963.

Maybe our grandparents and our parents really knew better than us, with all of our new “progressive” ideas on life and relationships. Eh?

I’ll tell you what, they certainly ate better.

Steak Devine.

And they certainly dressed better. Not only the very attractive women…

Stunners!

But men did as well…

In style.

Sigh.

Article  9

One day, maybe twenty years from now, the United States government will rewrite the narrative and concoct some kind of illusion as to what really is going on now. But let this article stand as a reminder of this historical period of time of great change and the threat of great terror.

The Russians are so grateful!

2022-02-10

You may be aware of the fact that things aren’t going very well for the United States, but you may not know that things are going quite well for the Russian Federation.

You may also think that Russia is an evil force that needs to be contained, or that it is ruled by an evil dictator, or any number of such things while the US is a prosperous democracy and a superpower (whatever that means) but this makes no difference.

If you’ve been following recent events, you may be aware that Russia has recently presented the US with something like an ultimatum—demanding that the US provide it with certain security guarantees.

But you will probably be quite surprised to learn that the granting of these security guarantees will be automatic as the US continues to collapse and retreat into its hollowed-out, bankrupt shell, its rout from Afghanistan being by no means its last.

Nor would you be able to appreciate the fact that the security demands are designed to make America’s retreat from Eurasia maximally humiliating: not only will it retreat, but it will retreat because the Russians ordered it to do so.

Once that retreat takes place, Russia will no doubt be immensely, effusively grateful that America has finally faced up to its responsibilities and did the right thing by getting the hell out of Eurasia, gleefully rubbing salt into America’s wounds.

Russia will then joyfully make mincemeat of the Monroe Doctrine, spreading its influence, hand in hand with China, over the American continent, from Argentina to Mexico, leaving the US (whatever remains of it) sulking in its corner eating a pot of glue.

But there is a lot more gratitude that’s due for what’s already transpired. In fact, Russia should be thanking the US for all it’s done to make Russia a winner and the US a loser at every opportunity.

Continue reading… on Patreon (paywall)

I wonder what kind of false flag operation the USA has for it’s narrative…?

I wouldn’t put anything past the evil United States psychopaths.

Here’s an American conservative radio talk show host that claims that nuclear weapons are being detonated in the Ukraine.

I don’t believe it.

video

But now the American conservative “news” is saying that there is a big war in the Ukraine just like Biden promised…

 

screen capture .

Hum.

They even have a nice detailed map. See…

Why I do not believe this…

If it was a full scale war, there would not be any picures, cell phones or anything. Russia would be saturation bombing the living Hell out of the Ukraine.  And, the NATO forces, and American bases would be under fire as well.

Some people want war so badly. Go to the link (opens in a new tab) and read al the great screeching details about the end-of-the-world, and Russian agression. It’s like a FOX “news” wet dream.

They have no idea what a REAL war is like.

I don’t believe it.

Some glimpses of the future

Let’s take a peek at what the world has in store for all of us if we adapt and embrace the Chinese model…

A RUFUS Does good works . video

A Rufus Being kind and considerate of others. video

Rufus massive rescue. video

Rufus helps out girl with baby video

The Rufus community puts out the fire. video

Rufus Stranger helps a girl on the bus. Video

A Rufus says take my money. Don’t worry. Video

A Rufus serves the people. Video

A Rufus saves all creatures. Video

A Rufus takes action immediately! Video

A Rufus saves a motorcycle.Video

Conclusion

YOUR future is in YOUR hands.

Do not get too caught up.

Spend time with friends and family. Don’t take your cats and dogs for granted. They need you and love you. That is precious, and their thoughts WILL influence your life.

Yes they will.

These are historic times. These are serious times, and these are times of opportunity. Do not allow yourself to be boxed in by the fear-generation mechanisms used to control, but rather rise up from them.

Carve out your own life.

Live it well.

This is a message we need to hear. Gut out the programming, and the rush-rush-rush. Hurry is the enemy of deep work, excellence, health, relationships, and the spiritual life. Period!

Live life well.

And, well, be the best that you can be within it. I beleive in you.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my “New Beginnings 3” Index here…

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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BREAKING NEWS: Russia reacts to an Israel missile attack with directed-beam weapons

No. The Ukraine wasn’t attacked. Are you surprised?

Noam Chomsky was talking about this when he said,

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. 

That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

Russia attacked Israeli air defenses with an unknown heavy-duty electronic warfare system

Russia used a super-powerful electronic warfare system against Israel, which is not officially in service.

It’s an unknown weapon.

Which is the kinds of systems that both Russia and China deploy.

Anyways, a few hours ago, there was an Israeli attempt to attack a group of Russian troops in the port of Latakia.  Additionally, they began to threaten Russian military aircraft. In response, Russia deployed unknown heavy-duty electronic warfare systems.

Taking into account the range of interference, mobile systems of this type do not officially exist in Russia’s arsenal.

However, the situation turned out to be catastrophic for the IDF that Israel’s air defense / missile defense systems.

They were suppressed at a distance of over 300 kilometers, which is unexpected, and unheard of. It was a major surprise, I am sure, to all American, and Western observers.

In addition to that, interruptions in the operation of the global positioning system were observed even at distances of about 400 kilometers.

“The Russian military, during a night attack by the Israeli Air Force on targets near Damascus, allegedly again activated the electronic warfare systems deployed in Syria. As confirmation, data from the FR24 service is provided, where violations are visible in determining the GPS coordinates of aircraft in the area of ​​Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv , ”

-the Military Observer Telegram channel reported.

In the above image, you can actually see that the GPS global positioning systems are seriously disrupted, while all over central and northern Israel, air defense / missile defense systems were automatically activated and rocket fire alarms sounded.

Experts note that if the IDF does not give an adequate explanation for its actions, Russia can constantly use its electronic warfare systems against Israel.

[Source]
Подробнее на: https://lnkd.in/eHtk_qY5

Conclusion and thoughts

I wonder if the Western “news” will report on this. They tend not to, don’t you know. But I told the MM readership that there were other things going on, didn’t I? More to follow. I wanted to throw this news out as soon as it came in.

  • Were you aware that Russia was in the water at the Southern branch of the BRI?
  • Were you aware that Israel was prosecuting against that region in Syria, Iran, and threatening the UAE?
  • Were you aware that there were Russian military forces on station in that region?

Well, as I have repeatedly stated, real secrets are secret and wars… REAL wars are never announced.

Expect more of the same, and a very fluid Geo-political situation.

To include…

An Australian-Chinese dual citizen is being prosecuted under the controversial National Security Law in Hong Kong, the Federal Government has confirmed.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has not identified the man, but told nine.com.au he was arrested in January last year under the sweeping legislation.

He could face life imprisonment if convicted. His arrest comes amid high tensions between Canberra and Beijing.

The man was arrested in the same month authorities detained 47 pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong under the draconian legislation.

"The Australian Consulate-General in Hong Kong was notified by Hong Kong authorities of the arrest of a dual Australian-Chinese citizen under its National Security Law in January 2021," a DFAT spokesperson said.

They also said that Australian officials have been repeatedly refused consular access to the man, because the Hong Kong government no longer recognises dual citizenship.

But Australian officials plan to attend the man's future court hearings.

"We are in regular contact with the individual's lawyers and will continue to attend future court hearings," the DFAT spokesperson said.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/australian-hong-kong-dual-national-arrested-under-national-security-law/289f1226-940d-4a08-8a9b-5235d182b9cc

So don’t get too upset with the “news” that you are being bombarded with. It’s a fake narrative that paints an illusionary image.

Here, on MM, are the REAL stuff.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

Do not buy into all the hype about war in the Ukraine. That is a cover and excuse to hide the actual events.

While I have talked a lot about what it is like to attack and push, and push, and push both China and Russia, the IDIOTS in the United States government are not listening. They are still playing their games, and they are still fucking around with “a massive conventional war in the Ukraine”, and a “massive conventional war over Taiwan”, soon to be followed by a “massive conventional war over the Uighurs”, and then a “massive conventional war over Tibet”.

Let me tell you something.

Putin and Xi Peng are playing the American “leadership” as the stupid dunces that they are.

Don’t be afraid of anything.

It’s all going to plan. And the Russians and the Chinese are manipulating the United States. Remember, as the Domain Commander stated. I showed it clearly in the video.

Here is a parable of how the combined forces of merit-driven leadership is manipulating the idiotic selfish, moronic Western “leadership”…

Big thanks from Phil at Busted Knuckles. Video 20MB

Real Working Dogs-scene-2022-02-07_14.43.01

With that video in mind, please read on…

It’s all running according to plan. Like a big, massive game of chess.

Chess pieces are moving in place.  And the USA media is still promoting the idea that Russia is going to attack the Ukraine. But just read this following article and ignore the disinfo.

Russia and China are not playing local regional “games”.

They are after the “big chicken”.

From HERE.

Russia Deploys Nuclear “Kinzhal” Missiles on Fighter Jets to Kaliningrad

After a very tense and, by most accounts, failed, meeting between French President Macron and Russian President Putin, Russia began deploying MiG-31K fighter jets ARMED WITH NUCLEAR KINZHAL MISSILES, to Kaliningrad.  Those planes and those missiles are NOT routinely stationed there.

With tensions between NATO and Russia hitting all-time highs over the Ukraine situation, French President Emanuel Macron met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow today. By all accounts, the meeting was extremely tense and ended with almost ZERO good results.

At issue is Ukraine and it’s stated intention to join NATO, thereby allowing US missile “defenses” to be placed on Ukraine soil.

If Ukraine enters NATO, the very first order of business is to place US missile defenses on Ukraine soil. Ukraine said it, the U.S. said it, NATO said it.

This intention has been public knowledge since at least 2014 when the European Union (EU) and the US fomented, incited, and paid for, the forcible, violent, overthrow of Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich.

US missile defenses – if launched from inside Ukraine – can hit Moscow within five (5) minutes of launch. They can hit Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Missile Silos within about 7 minutes.

Those US missiles can be retrofitted with offensive nuclear warheads within about one (1) hour. The retrofit can be done while the missiles are in their launchers, so no one would even know the warheads had been changed from DEFENSIVE (conventional) to OFFENSIVE (nuclear) warheads.

Russia cannot defend itself from missiles that have a five minute flight time to Moscow or a seven minute flight time to Russia’s strategic silos.

Thus, this has become an existential threat to Russia. Literally, their actual existence is at stake.

Russia is doing today, exactly what US President John F. Kennedy did in 1963 when the then-Soviet Union place medium range and intermediate range NUCLEAR missiles in Cuba.

There was no argument about Cuba’s sovereign right to align itself with whomever they wanted. Kennedy made clear, either those missiles go or the US will invade Cuba and destroy them.

Here we are, fifty+ years later, and the situation is now reversed; the US is doing it to Russia. Russia is having the exact same reaction today that President Kennedy had in 1963.  They simply cannot — and will not — allow American missiles with a five minute flight time to Moscow, to be placed in Ukraine.

It was hoped that a meeting today between French President Macron and Russian President Putin, would serve to come to some peaceful resolution of the issues.  That did not happen.  NATO is still moving troops and equipment into eastern Europe because, they say, Russia has moved 100,000+ troops inside its own country, but near Ukraine.

No one ever bothers to mention that BEFORE Russia began moving its troops, Ukraine moved fifty percent (50%) of its Army to the outskirts of the Ukraine states of Luhansk and Donetsk.  Both those states are Russian-speaking populations and want to breakaway from Ukraine and become part of Russia.  Ukraine says “no” and moved the army to stop it by force.

This began in 2014 after the EU and US overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine and installed a puppet government favorable to the west.  Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and return to Russia.  Luhansk and Donetsk wanted to do that too.

We in the US are the aggressors here. We fomented, incited, and paid for, the overthrow of Ukraine’s government in 2014 to install a new government, favorable to the West, which would allow placement of US missiles in Ukraine.

Russia knows this. They also know that if we’re brazen enough to forcibly overthrow a government on Russia’s border, we’re also brazen enough to strike Russia first. Russia is not going to allow it.

President Putin made remarks today, saying “Ukraine joining NATO or trying to take Crimea by force would result in NATO being dragged into a war with Russia that no one can win.”  By using the phrase “a war no one can win” Putin made clear it means nuclear war. Period. Full stop.  (Full Story and Video HERE)

After the meeting with the French President, which we previously reported did not go well, MiG-31K fighter jets started arriving in Kaliningrad.  They were armed with KINZHAL Ballistic Missiles!   Here’s video of one landing.  The missile is clearly visible as the plane crosses the head of a man in front of the video camera, and the missile tip can be seen in the center of the belly of the plane, if the video is paused there.

It’s all running according to plan. Like a big, massive game of chess.

From HERE.

Putin Press Conference Makes Nuclear War Clear: If Ukraine Joins NATO or anyone tries to take Crimea by force.

After a five-hour meeting with French President Macron over the Ukraine military situation, both Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a press conference.

At that event, Putin was asked how Russia could deal with NATO’s superior conventional forces.

Putin responded…

"Yes, NATO's conventional forces are more than Russia's.  But Russia is the top NUCLEAR power. If Ukraine joins NATO or anyone tries to take Crimea by force, NATO will be dragged into a war that no one will win."

Most rational people agree that a nuclear war “cannot be won and must never be fought.’ Yet President Putin explicitly said NATO would be dragged into a war that “no one will win.”

That means nuclear.  No other interpretation is possible.

Another translation puts it this way:

"If Ukraine joins NATO and tries to take back Crimea by force, then NATO member states will be dragged into a war with Russia! And there will be no victors."

Russia will not allow an attempt by Ukraine to return Crimea militarily, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

Why is the possible admission of Ukraine (to NATO – ed.) so dangerous? There is a problem: European countries, including France, believe that Crimea, let’s say, is Ukraine, while we believe it is part of the Russian Federation.

And if attempts are made to change this situation militarily, and Ukraine’s doctrinal documents spell out that:

        • Russia is the enemy,
        • the return of Crimea by military means is possible.

Imagine that Ukraine is a member of NATO, the fifth article has not been repealed, on the contrary, Mr. Biden recently said that the fifth article is absolutely imperative and will be enforced.

So there will be a military confrontation between Russia and NATO..

“…do we have to go to war with NATO?” – Putin said at a news conference after talks with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The Russian president added that there is a second part to the question,

"Do you want to go to war with Russia?"

So the world now knows the real stakes of the troubles taking place in Ukraine: nuclear war.

It came directly from the mouth of the Russian president.

It’s all running according to plan. Like a big, massive game of chess.

Let me remind everyone here on MM that ALL the Russian nuclear “boomer” subs left port over a month ago and now are positioned around the massive global trouble-maker (the United States) that has been threatening and attacking and prodding Asia for all these years.

That most all the fleets are in position and all sorts of activities are taking place THAT ARE NOT BEING REPORTED in the American “news’.

You saw the reactions of Putin and Xi Peng in Beijing. They both looked supremely confident and very sure of themselves. They have the United States, and it’s “leadership” just where they want them.

In one place.

All together in one fixed geographic region.

As planned.

It’s all running according to plan. Like a big, massive game of chess.

It seems that the Chinese and the Russian united Chinese forces have really “spooked” the American “leadership”. At least that is what some observers believe…

Intense Activities Around Ukraine Prompt US Military Air Shuttles — DC to Colorado Springs! Officials Going to . . .

…Bunkers???

 

Special Air Mission flights are now shuttling high-ranking officials from Washington, DC to Colorado Springs, CO . . .multiple flights are underway.

The United States Air Force “Special Air Mission (SAM)” provides air transportation for the president of the United States (POTUS), vice president of the United States (VPOTUS), first lady of the United States (FLOTUS), presidential Cabinet, U.S. congressional delegations (CODELs), and other high-ranking American and foreign dignitaries.

The Special Air Mission is under the cognizance of the Air Mobility Command (AMC) and executed by the 89th Airlift Wing (89 AW) based at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.

On Sunday night, shuttling began in earnest by SAM flights from Washington, DC to Colorado Springs. . .

And back…

and back again. . .

Colorado Springs is home to: NORAD and its protective Bunkers.

The Cheyenne Mountain Complex is a Space Force installation and defensive bunker located in unincorporated El Paso County, Colorado, next to the city of Colorado Springs, at the Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station, which hosts the activities of several tenant units. Also located in Colorado Springs is Peterson Space Force Base, where the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) headquarters are located.

Formerly the center for the United States Space Command and NORAD, the Complex monitored the airspace of Canada and the United States for missiles, space systems, and foreign aircraft through its worldwide early-warning system. Since 2008, NORAD and the United States Space Command have been based at Peterson Space Force Base and the complex, re-designated as an air force station, is used for crew training and as a back-up command center if required.

The military complex has included, in the past, many units of NORAD, U.S. Space Command, Aerospace Defense Command (ADCOM), Air Force Systems Command, Air Weather Service, and Federal Emergency Management (FEMA). The complex’s communication center is also used by the nearby U.S. Civil Defense Warning Center.

So . . .

Why are shuttles carrying high ranking officials to NORAD in Colorado Springs?

Well, this morning, a “Constant Phoenix” aircraft took off from the UK and is on task in the Mediterranean off Syria and Israel.

This plane is a . . .  Nuke sniffer.

The WC-135 Constant Phoenix is a special-purpose aircraft derived from the Boeing C-135 Stratolifter and used by the United States Air Force. Its mission is to collect samples from the atmosphere for the purpose of detecting and identifying nuclear explosions. It is also informally referred to as the “weather bird” or “the sniffer” by workers on the program and international media respectively.

In addition, another specialized aircraft, a RIVET JOINT is also engaged in heavy Signals Intelligence (SigInt) all around Ukraine:

These are planes with very specific military purposes and they are engaged in actual taskings in a region where military conflict is now LIKELY to take place.

When you put two and two together, a nuke sniffer and a signals intel aircraft, plus shuttles of high ranking people from Washington, DC to Colorado Springs (NORAD/Bunkers) it isn’t too hard to see massive trouble on the horizon.

It’s all running according to plan. Like a big, massive game of chess.

Ah. Don’t be too worried.

If it was REAL, all the plane transponders would be turned OFF. Remember, boys and girls, real secrets are SECRET.

It appears to me that the American “Leadership” are trying to telegraph a message to Asia, as this is the America response to the 6000 word joint agreement between Russia and China just a few days earlier.

  • A massive American US Naval Presence of five flotillas in the South China Sea off the coast of China.
  • Movement of American leadership to bunkers. (Or the appearance of movement.)
  • Lots of “chatter” about a war in the Ukraine that makes absolutely NO sense.
  • The joint agreement between Russia and China for a united Asia.
  • An intentional engineered slowdown in global trade.
  • The USA demanding that the EU get involved in it’s proxy wars.
  • An accelerated rise in United States inflation.

See things as they are actually. Not as the US govenrment controlled-media wants you to believe.

I am HIGHLY skeptical of any conflict in the Ukraine.

Instead this is all something else.

Conclusion

It’s so easy to get all caught up in the nonsense spewing forth from the American and British “news”. Do not.

Other things are going on.

It’s a massive Geo-Poltiical chess board, and the “news” has no part in it. So do not believe any of it.

Relax.

The Domain Commander states that Aisa is at 96% readiness. This is about as ready as one can be, and it is “stable”. Things are going ahead to plan, and I can guarantee you all that whatever happens, the Domain will not allow a deviance from their husbandry of this Earth Prison Complex. The lives and value of the “Lost battalion” are at stake.

So Relax.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
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A war with China! What a great idea!

This article is yet another in a series trying to document the peaking collapse of the United States in all of it’s myrid ways. And it is kind of tiring, don’t you know. I’d rather just do other things with my time, but we; everyone of us, are now in the mist of one of the most monumental shakeups in the world. It’s really very stunning. We are living history right now.

So how about getting yourself a nice beer, and grabbing some toasted Italian or French crusty bread, and placing some cheese, onions, tomatoes, and olive oil and sit down and read this article. The world seems to be going down into the gutter, but that’s an illusion.

It’s only the United States, and those foolish nations that chain themselves to it.

Yum!

 

War with China! Another Bright Idea from the Yankee Capital

Discussions of war with China over Taiwan often assume a short, regional war won by superior American technology, after which things go on approximately as before.

A few observations:

Overconfidence

First, overconfidence is an occupational disease of militaries and militarists. Wars very often fail to proceed according to the expectations of the aggressors and not infrequently end in catastrophe.

The American Civil War was expected to be over in an afternoon at First Manassas; wrong by four years and 630,000 dead, equivalent to over six million today.

When Napoleon invaded Russia, he did not foresee Russian troops marching in Paris, which is what happened.

When Germany invaded France in 1914, it expected a short, victorious war of movement, and got four years of a losing attrition war.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, GIs sleeping with their daughters in Tokyo was not among their war aims, but it is what happened.

When the French went back into Vietnam after WW II, being catastrophically defeated by les jaunes at Dien Bien Phu was not a strategic objective.

When America invaded Vietnam, Washington did not expect a panicked flight from atop the Embassy.

When Hitler invaded Russia, GIs in Berlin were not in his plans.

When Russia invaded Afghanistan, it did not expect the same outcome that the Americans should have expected, but didn’t, when they did exactly the same thing.

The list could be extended. Caution often is a wiser plan than martial enthusiasm.

Overestimation of ability

Second, America starts its wars by [1] overestimating its own capacities, [2] underestimating the enemy, and [3] misunderstanding the nature of the war it is getting into.

There is probably a manual on this.

Usually the US has no end game and no “what if” plan in case the unforeseen occurs. These traits are clear in America’s wars since Korea.

The reason for this curious behavior is that war is only tangentially a rational endeavor, being chiefly a limbic, instinctually driven habit probably of genetic provenance.

War is just what men do, tribe against tribe, country against country, empire against empire, world without end. War is a major, perhaps the major, focus of human endeavor.

A glance at history reveals it to be chiefly a tapestry of war. The literature of civilizations reflects this: The Gilgamesh Epic, the Iliad, the Aeneid, El Cid, Orlando Furioso, Lord of the Rings.

Taiwan

Does America have a clear reason for defending Taiwan? It is not of vital importance to America, and arguably not even of minor importance.

The fact is, that very few Americans know quite where it is, and few can distinguish it from Thailand.

If it became part of China almost no one would notice.

Before getting into an unpredictable war with a massively populous nuclear power of formidable economic and military resources on the other side of the world, it might be wise to answer the question, “Why? What do we gain? How do we get out of said war?”

Regarding war in Chinese waters:

The US fleet has not been in combat since 1945, over seventy-five years ago.

American pilots have not flown against a competent enemy since 1973, almost half a century ago.

People’s Liberation Army Navy J-15 “Flying Shark” fighters parked about the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning

Enormous changes in technology and armament have occurred in the intervening years.

Nobody really knows what a battle of naval forces against modern antiship missiles would look like. Those who can guess are not sanguine.

Most warships today lack armor.

Anyone looking at what a couple of French Exocet missiles did to the USS Stark in 1987 would not bet on equally unarmored Ticos or Arleigh Burkes.

An aircraft carrier is a large bladder of aviation fuel wrapped around high explosives.

Look at the accidental launch in 1967 of one Zuni five-inch ground-attack missile aboard the USS Forrestal, igniting raging fires, cooking off bombs, killing 134 sailors and putting the ship in the repair yard for many months.

Militaries grow slack in extended periods of peace.

Training decreases to save money. War stocks of tank treads are cannibalized for training and aren’t there when war comes; the company that made them has gone out of business. Supplies of critical parts dwindle as budgets go to procurement of future hardware.

After all, nobody really expects war. Rapid mobilization, it turns out, is impossible.

Conscription?

If the war was not won as quickly and decisively as hoped, as it very likely would not be, would an American public already under severe economic stress support the heavy cost of a war having no obvious end point or relevance to their lives? Conscription?

Beltway thinking

Within the Washington Beltway many seem to think that China is Cambodia with more people.

Some in Washington harbor a residual belief that America is militarily supreme, that its mere entrance into war seals the outcome.

Think again, carefully.

Rand has wargamed regional war in the Strait and South China Sea and concluded that America has a very good chance of losing.

The Chinese are smart, and excellent engineers.

Chinese students dominate America’s best technical universities and the elite high schools. CalTech and MIT, for example.

Look at the Chinese space program, the upcoming 360 mph maglev trains using high-temperature superconductivity.

The Chinese are not little-leaguers. They have put many resources into antiship missiles specifically designed for US carriers. These, note, greatly outrange carrier aviation.

Iraq was predicted to be a “cakewalk.” China won’t be.

Japan

Allies? In naval circles there is much talk about the First Island Chain and an assumption that Japan will join a war against China to protect Taiwan, or at least let its bases be used by American forces.

Are we sure?

Japan is well within missile and air range of China.

Japan is within missile and air range of China.

All of its petroleum arrives by sea, and China has pretty decent submarines. Japan’s trade mostly moves by sea.

China is a crucial trading partner whose elimination in a war would devastate the Japanese economy.

Japan is close to China.

America is not.

Tokyo might worry that America would grow weary of the war and go home, as it usually does, and leave Japan, all alone, in a shooting war with China.

How would that end?

What stake does Japan have in the independence of Taiwan?

Today it trades with both Taiwan and China. If China absorbed the island, Japan would continue trading with both. Only the letterhead would change. Are we quite, quite sure Tokyo would want any part of this?

South Korea

South Korea?

Its cities and entire economy are within missile range of China. Does it really want to get into a shooting war with its huge neighbor, which has a land border with the peninsula, to maintain American hegemony in the Pacific?

Having gotten into a war, how would it get out?

The Koreans may have thought of this.

Wars as imagined inside the Beltway often seem to assume that the enemy will just lie there and be bombed without doing anything untoward or unexpected.

Are we sure?

The United States has 28,000 troops and their families within range of Chinese weaponry, the killing of whom would force Washington into desperate measures.

Could China encourage North Korea to attack southward, creating a two-front war far beyond Washington’s ability to handle? Or Kim to think he saw a chance and attack on his own initiative?

Might China annex Myanmar? Perhaps this is farfetched. Perhaps it isn’t. Remember that nobody expected China’s entry into the Korean war.

Taiwan

One might suspect that Taipei, seeing overwhelming forces arrayed against it across the Strait, will one day cut the best deal it can with Beijing rather than be devastated first and then have to accept whatever conditions Beijing chose to impose.

It could get a sweetheart deal as Beijing would much prefer this to invading with all of its risks.

Here is a factor I am not competent to judge, but that might be worth judging: The Chinese, as I knew them long ago when I lived in Taiwan, are (very) racially aware and nationalistic.

The Taiwanese are Chinese.

You can bet they know of the Legations, the Opium Wars, the Boxers, the burning of the Summer Palace, the Korean War.

As I write, the most popular movie on the mainland is about a Chinese victory over Americans in the Korean War.

What might a Chinese attack on Taiwan look like?

The Chinese general staff mysteriously does not confide in me, but a good guess is easy. The Chinese often do beach-assault exercises on their side of the strait, obviously practice for the genuine assault.

One of these turns suddenly into the real thing. Ballistic missiles crater Taiwan’s military runways, missiles in large numbers hit air defenses.

Troop ships head for Taiwan, getting there in eight hours at fifteen knots, helicopters and paratroops in less.

China’s large and reasonably good air force bombs and bombs and bombs.

After twenty-four hours, the US is still trying to decide what is happening, talking to the JCS, asking the President what to do.

Victory

Nathan Bedford Forrest, the talented Confederate general, is said to have said that the secret of victory is to “git thar fustest with the mostest.”

In the event of a surprise attack, how long would it take—in the real world, not in PowerPoint slides—for America to get there with how much of what?

If the Chinese got substantial forces ashore, it would be the end of the story.

Keeping troops out of an island is one thing, getting them out quite another. Not even John Bolton—perhaps not even John Bolton—can imagine that America could win a land war with China in Asia.

Selling the American public on a large war over things in which it has no interest would be difficult.

Under these circumstances, the chances are nonnegligible that the US would make loud noises, huff and puff, save face as best it could, and do nothing.

What would REALLY happen?

But let us assume that Washington fought and lost the regional war, Taiwan perhaps surrendering after the U.S. lost a dozen ships and a carrier was disabled.

What would Washington do after such a humiliation?

Never underestimate the influence of vanity on world affairs.

The hawks in DC have elevated titles and, sometimes, considerable ability, but they also have the same hormones and egos as patrons in Joe’s Bar in Chicago. A Chinese victory in the style of Tsushima Strait would end the world’s view of America as an invincible hegemon.

The fernbar Napoleons might well decide to up the ante and turn a regional into a world war.

This it would win.

“Win.”

Perhaps by blocking the Strait of Malacca and threatening the Three Gorges Dam. The expectation in the Pentagon would likely be that Beijing would see the futility of resistance and surrender.

But if it did not?

The REAL facts

America’s trade with China in goods in 2020 was $660 billion, $120 billion of that being exports, making it America’s largest trading partner…

Cutting this off would wreck the American economy.

This is far more than a matter of iPhones and cheap plastic buckets for Walmart. Though most may not know it, America is an economic dependency of China.

The US gets from China countless things it cannot make but cannot do without.

For example, cars require computers to control their ignition and transmissions. Where do we think these are made?

Companies like Boeing sound American but many vital assemblies come from China.

High-end semiconductors, crucial to today’s economies, come predominantly from East Asian companies, notably Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung, both of which would be hostage to Chinese attack.

The great majority of rare earths, critical to the manufacture of chips, come from China.

Similar considerations exist for industry after industry.

While America has the technology to make most of the things it gets from China, it does not have the manufacturing capacity, and would need years to develop it.

Has anyone in Washington checked industry by industry to see what the effects of the end of imports would actually be?

Further, China is the largest trading partner of most of the world, Germany and the European Union for example, and close with most of the rest.

If an American war took China out of the global supply chain, [1] the resulting depression would make 1929 look like the height of prosperity, [2] turn the entire earth against the US, and likely [3] lead to the lynching of everyone in Washington.

Never mentioned is that America is trying, with considerable success, to block China’s economic progress by preventing its acquisition of advanced semiconductors.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest and most advanced manufacturer of chips, is in Taiwan. Reunification of Taiwan with China would solve this critical problem. Beijing has probably thought of this.

Considering the costs, risks, and benefits if any of such a war, the question may be, “How bright an idea is this?”

China’s missiles could dust the US military in minutes — here’s what would happen if they tried

Alex Lockie, Business Insider US
 Apr 02, 2019, 10:38 AM
  • China’s massive missile forces could savage US air and naval forces in the Pacific, lighting up ports and airfields, and blowing up F-35s, F-22s, and possibly aircraft carriers before they could respond.
  • War-gaming experts point to this as a persistent problem with US forces in the Pacific, but it’s far from a clear-cut win for China.
  • The US has a number of ways it can predict, prevent, or blunt a missile attack, and once the US military and its allies kick into gear, China will face a mighty wrath.

Experts at the cutting edge of simulated warfare have spoken: China would handily defeat the US military in the Pacific with quick bursts of missile fired at air bases.

The exact phrasing was that the US was getting “its ass handed to it” in those simulations, Breaking Defense reported the RAND analyst David Ochmanek as saying earlier in March.

“In every case I know of,” Robert Work, a former deputy secretary of defence, said, “the F-35 rules the sky when it’s in the sky, but it gets killed on the ground in large numbers.”

Against China, which has emerged as the US’s most formidable rival, this problem becomes more acute. China’s vast, mountainous territory gives it millions of square kilometres in which to hide its extensive fleet of mobile long-, medium-, and short-range missiles.

In the opening minutes of a battle against the US, Beijing could unleash a barrage of missiles that would nail US forces in Guam, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and possibly Australia. With China’s growing anti-ship capability, even US aircraft carriers in the region would likely come under intense fire.

For the US, this would be the feared attack in which F-35s and F-22s, fifth-generation aircraft and envy of the world, are blown apart in their hangars, runways are cratered, and ships are sunk in ports.

The remaining US forces in this case would be insufficient to back down China’s air and sea forces, which could then easily scoop up a prize such as Taiwan.

Additionally, the US can’t counter many of China’s most relevant missile systems because of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty it signed with Russia, which prohibits missiles with ranges between 500 kilometres and 5,470 kilometres – the type it would need to hold Chinese targets at equal risk. (The US is withdrawing from that treaty.)

So given China’s clear advantage in missile forces and the great incentive to knock out the best military with a sucker punch, why doesn’t it try?

Politics

China could light up much of the Pacific with a blistering salvo of missiles and do great harm to US ships and planes, but they likely won’t because it would start World War III.

China wouldn’t just be attacking the US. It would be attacking Japan and South Korea at a minimum. Whatever advantage China gained by kicking off a fight this way would have to balance against a combined response from the US and its allies.

The US is aware of the sucker-punch problem. In the event that tensions rise enough that a strike is likely, the US would simply spread its forces out among its bases and harden important structures, such as hangars, so they could absorb more punishment from missiles.

Potential targets China needed to strike would multiply, and the deployment of electronic and physical decoys would further complicate things for Beijing. For US ships at sea, the use of electronic decoys and onboard missile defenses would demand China throw tremendous numbers of missiles at the platforms, increasing the cost of such a strike.

Key US military bases will also have ballistic-missile defences, which could blunt the attack somewhat.

The US also monitors the skies for ballistic missiles, which would give it some warning time. Alert units could scramble their aircraft and be bearing down on China’s airspace just after the first missiles hit.

Justin Bronk, a military-aviation expert at the Royal United Service Institute, pointed out at the institute’s Combat Air Survivability conference that when the US hit Syria’s Al Shayrat air base with 58 cruise missiles, planes were taking off from the base again within 24 hours.

Payback is a … consideration

Missiles brigades that just fired and revealed their positions would be sitting ducks for retaliation by the US or its allies.

Japan, which will soon have 100 F-35s, some of which will be tied into US Navy targeting networks, would jump into the fight swiftly.

China would have to mobilize a tremendous number of aircraft and naval assets to address that retaliatory strike. That mobilization, in addition to the preparations for the initial strike, may tip Beijing’s hand, telegraphing the sucker punch and blunting its damage on US forces.

While China’s missile forces pose a huge threat to the US, one punch isn’t enough to knock out the world’s best military, but it is enough to wake it up.

Now consider this…

It is not ONLY China. It’s fighting China + Russia together.

Together.

If all the studies point to massive defeats against China alone, imagine the horror when fighting a paired Russia and China together.

It is a suicide move.

Consider this.

Losing in a war is never a pleasant experience. I am sure that many generals throughout history can attest to this fact.

Consider what happened to the entire Nazi German Sixth Army when it was surrounded and trapped inside Stalingrad…

How German Field Marshal Paulus was taken prisoner

From Russian Insider. All credit observed.

Gaunt, pale and emaciated, the commander of the Wehrmacht’s 6th Army looked like a hunted animal to the Soviet military commanders.
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On the night of January 31, 1943, units of the 64th Army’s 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade broke through to the department store building in the center of Stalingrad, sealing it off from all sides. According to captured Germans, it was there that the headquarters of Friedrich Paulus’s 6th Army was stationed. The Soviet ‘Operation Koltso’ (Ring) to defeat the enemy grouping encircled in the city was approaching its finale…

The “beast’s lair”

After the Soviet troops opened intensive fire from machine guns and mortars on the building at about six o’clock in the morning, the shooting from the German side stopped. White flags appeared from the ground and second floors. The enemy wanted to start negotiations.

On the order of the brigade commander, Colonel Ivan Burmakov, a group of negotiators led by Senior Lieutenant Fyodor Ilchenko headed for the department store building. A German officer who met the Soviet soldiers told them through an interpreter: “Our top commander wants to talk to your top commander.” To that, Ilchenko retorted: “Well, our top commander has many other things to attend to. He is not here. You’ll have to talk to me.”.

Ignoring the German officer’s halfhearted request to hand over their weapons, the Soviet negotiators started going down to the basement where Friedrich Paulus had his HQ. “The basement was literally packed with soldiers – there were hundreds of them here. Worse than a tram! They were all unwashed and hungry and they smelt to high heaven! They all looked desperately frightened. They had huddled here to hide from the mortar fire,” recalled the senior lieutenant. Hearing the sound of gunfire, Ilchenko made a grab for his holster, but it only turned out to be suicides.

The negotiators were met by the commander of the Wehrmacht’s 71st Infantry Division, Maj-Gen Friedrich Roske, and the 6th Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Arthur Schmidt. They led the Soviet soldiers to Paulus’s room. “The Field Marshal was lying on an iron bed without a uniform, in just his shirt,” recalled Ilchenko. “A candle-end was burning on the table, illuminating an accordion lying on the couch. Paulus didn’t greet us but he sat up. He had the appearance of a sick and physically exhausted man and his face was twitching in a nervous tic.”

Negotiations

An ordinary lieutenant could not accept the capitulation of the German commander and, gradually, representatives of the senior and top-level Red Army command started arriving at the department store. Several hours later, accompanied by several colonels and lieutenant-colonels, Maj-Gen Ivan Laskin, chief of staff of the 64th Army, came down to the basement. In an attempt to distance himself in every possible way from the capitulation, Paulus delegated the right to negotiate to Roske and Schmidt.

While the Field Marshal was “tidying himself up” in the room next door, the Soviet negotiators presented his generals with an ultimatum: The encircled grouping must immediately stop any resistance, lay down its weapons and surrender to the Soviet troops in an orderly manner.

Tired of waiting for Friedrich Paulus himself to finally appear, the Soviet commanders went into his room. The German commander, according to Laskin’s recollections, greeted the members of the delegation with a sentence in broken Russian: “Field Marshal of the German Army Paulus renders himself prisoner to the Red Army.” He apologized that, since his new rank had only been conferred on him on January 30, his new uniform wasn’t ready and he was compelled to appear in his colonel-general’s uniform. “And anyway, my new uniform will hardly be of any use to me now,” the commander added with a wry smile. 

At that point in time, the 6th Army in Stalingrad was cut into two groupings isolated from each other. As a result of the talks, the southern pocket of German troops, commanded by General Roske, was to capitulate. At the same time, Paulus declined to order the northern pocket to surrender on the grounds that, since January 30, its commander, Col-Gen Karl Strecker, was directly accountable to Hitler.

Inglorious end

Street fighting was still under way in the center of Stalingrad when German officers, accompanied by Soviet commanding officers, set off in vehicles to order their units to cease firing.

After all the formalities had been settled and the Field Marshal had received guarantees of his personal safety, he was led out of the basement, along with his staff officers. The area around the department store had by then come under the full control of Soviet infantry and Wehrmacht soldiers were clearing sectors that had been mined.

“Soviet and German soldiers who just a few hours earlier had been firing on each other stood calmly next to one another in the courtyard holding their guns in their hands or slung on their shoulder. But how shockingly different their external appearance was!” recalled Wilhelm Adam, adjutant to the 6th Army commander. “The German soldiers – ragged, in thin greatcoats over threadbare uniforms, as thin as skeletons – presented emaciated figures exhausted half to death, with sunken, unshaved features. The Red Army soldiers were well nourished, full of vigor and dressed in fine winter uniforms… I was deeply moved by something else. Our soldiers were not beaten, let alone shot. Amidst the ruins of their city which the Germans had destroyed, Soviet soldiers would pull a piece of bread or cigarettes or tobacco out of their pocket and offer them to the weary, half-starved German soldiers.” 

Sergeant Pyotr Alkhutov was present when the German commander was taken prisoner: “Paulus was haggard and clearly ill. He attempted to conduct himself in a suitably dignified manner, but in his condition it was difficult for him to manage. On that frosty morning in Stalingrad, it dawned on all the men of the Red Army and the overwhelming majority of the German soldiers that this was the beginning of the end for them and the start of our Victory.”

A car to the neighboring village of Beketovka, where the 64th Army HQ was stationed, awaited the Field Marshal. There, he would be interrogated by the Army commander Lt-Gen Mikhail Shumilov and the Don Front commander Lt-Gen Konstantin Rokossovsky. Ahead for Friedrich Paulus lay Soviet camps, work in the anti-fascist National Committee for a Free Germany and life in the GDR for the short time left to him…

On its way to the HQ, the car caught up with columns of German prisoners dragging themselves along the road. Unwashed, with unkempt beards, they wore comical-looking makeshift snow boots and were wrapped in towels and women’s headscarves.

Laskin gave the driver a sign to slow down to allow the German commander to observe them closely and thoroughly. “It’s appalling…” pronounced Paulus somberly. “A shameful capitulation, the terrible tragedy of the soldiers. And, until now, the 6th Army was regarded as the best field army in the Wehrmacht…” 

The rest of the story…

By February 1943, Russian troops had retaken Stalingrad and captured nearly 100,000 German soldiers, though pockets of resistance continued to fight in the city until early March.

Most of the captured soldiers died in Russian prison camps, either as a result of disease or starvation.

The loss at Stalingrad was the first failure of the war to be publicly acknowledged by Hitler. It put Hitler and the Axis powers on the defensive, and boosted Russian confidence as it continued to do battle on the Eastern Front in World War II.

In the end, many historians believe the Battle at Stalingrad marked a major turning point in the conflict. It was the beginning of the march toward victory for the Allied forces of Russia, Britain, France and the United States.

MM Comments

There is no doubt that the people inside of Washington DC are desirous of a war with China, and Russia. That is so obvious as to defy any statements to the contrary.

The big question is why?

When presented with this question, we are given the following excuses…

  • Insanity of the leadership.
  • The Leadership is in a dangerous “echo chamber”.
  • There is no leadership and the nation is on “autopilot” following instructions laid down thirty years ago.
  • Alien creatures took over the minds of the Leadership.
  • The Leadership are “Old Empire” entities.
  • The Leadership would rather die than take second place in the global stage.
  • A need to unify a fractured United States though war.

I don’t know the real answers.

I have my thoughts and opinions on this and I have discussed these previously.

What I am going to say here is that when anyone talks about a war, any war, but most especially one involving both Chian and Russia, you MUST also talk about what happens when you lose the war.

You MUST discuss what happens afterwards. Because I can tell you, it is impossible for the United States to win against any war against a unified Asia. Every single study, think tank, war game and analysis has verified this.

So ponder that thought.

Because the stage is set.

The American Leadership wants a war against Asia and it will lose. So what will happen afterwards?

Think about it.

What happens NEXT…

What ever remains of the United States will be quite different. It will be a complete blank sheet of paper and the victors will rewrite what will happen.

Completely.

It’s going to be very distasteful inside of a collapsed, ruined, and conquered United States. It will be very harsh.

The best thing that you can do is to be part of a local community and provide benefit to that community in every way possible. You shouldn’t wait until that day and that need occurs, but rather start now by laying a strong foundation in relationships with those around you.

And do your affirmations, and all the rest.

Be the Rufus.

Now let’s talk about something near and dear to my heart…

Goulash.

Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices. Originating in Hungary, goulash is a common meal predominantly eaten in Central Europe but also in other parts of Europe. It is one of the national dishes of Hungary and a symbol of the country.

My mother used to make it a couple of times a month, but I haven’t had it in years. None of my wives knew how to make it. You cannot get it in restrurants, and there’s no frozen versions of it anywhere in the supermarkets.

I am thus forced to day dream about it here.

Goulash.

Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to make, don’t you think?

Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices.

There are different flavors and styles of this dish. All of them look delicious.

Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices.

Some have a nice hearty soup broth, with others are simply flavored meats like this…

Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices.

Well, no matter how you look at it, it certainly looks great, and would go well with some crusty bread, or rice. Oh, yeah, a nice salad or fruit plate, and don’t foget pairing it with a nice wine. Yum!

Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices.

Do you know what would be nice?

Go invite some friends over. Tell them that you are experimenting with Hungarian Goulash and would like them tom come over, eat a nice meal with wine, listen to some tunes, and play some cards. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

I really think that it would.

Goulash with a spoonful of sour crème on top.

Imagine the meal.

A nice loaf of bread. Some wine, maybe a chardonnay or a light red. Some kind of vegitable side. Maybe snow peas with garlic and spring onions. Or some slaw. The aroma fills the air.

Authentic goulash.

Just imagine it.

Big chunks of beef, potatoes, parsnips and carrots in a paprika riddled broth. Hot and steaming with crusty pieces of bread for dipping.

Really good paprika is the key to an authentic Hungarian Goulash ,or Gulyas. It is to be found everywhere in Budapest and it would be a good idea to try the different versions, both sweet and hot. There are good paprikas from Hungary found in most large supermarkets in the USA as well as online sources.

The goulash experience inside of Hungary…

Goulash.

Here’s a recepie…

And keep in mind and remember, the idea is a was to share your life with others in colorful, fun, tasty and interesting ways. I just cannot help but think that Hungarian Goulash might be a very good vehicle to achieve this.

Have fun together.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

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Things are very serious now

Well, we all have been dealing with a host of disturbing Geo-Political actions originating out of the USA for decades. And over the last few years they have become more brazen, more outrageous and more daring. It’s been building up to a crescendo.

This build-up has triggered actions from the rest of the world, and the most notable being Russia, and China.

China and Russia has laid down “Red Lines”.

The United States ignored them.

The United States Has no idea…

Alex Krainer:

Western powers seem to have largely lost institutional brakes on waging war.

Someone cries “human rights,” and we seem prepared to obliterate entire nations with hardly any debate, discussion, or any long-term plan.

The consent for war, or “kinetic action”, is simply contrived by myriad think-tanks, often directly or indirectly funded by the military-industrial complex.

With unhindered access to the media, these organizations produce rhetoric that rationalizes hostility, demonization of targeted adversaries and justifications for war.

Today, as tensions with Russia have escalated to a boiling point, some of them draw historical parallels between today’s Russia and Nazi Germany. Among others, Victoria Nuland and Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger have recently invoked Britain’s 1938 policy of appeasement that caused the destruction of Czechoslovakia and empowered Hitler.

The insinuation is that today, Ukraine is Czechoslovakia, Donbas is Sudetenland and that Vladimir Putin is Hitler.

If the parallels were valid, they would imply that we should pay almost any price to avoid repeating Neville Chamberlain’s errors of judgment that plunged Europe into the tragedy of World War II.

Of course, the parallels are entirely false, but unfortunately, this is not widely understood.

Things are serious now…

Then Russia forced the United States to comply and answer their concerns in [1] writing and [2] in public about placement of nuclear weapons on the Russian border.

When it did get an “answer”, it was told to keep it secret. Which fell outside the Russian “demands”.

The content of the US response on security guarantees allows you to count on a serious conversation, but on secondary topics."

"There is no answer to the most important question – about the non-expansion of NATO to the east.”

“Our President will now decide on the next steps.”

-Lavrov

You know, over the last two months, the expression on the faces of Lavrov and Putin remind me of a scene from “The Sopranos”.

It’s very serious.

Pictures

For some perspective…

And his counterpart in the Ukraine that NATO and the USA embrace…

And now, let’s look at the military…

And here is what you have in the Ukraine…

And the NATO troops that will take on Russia…

The course of action

A “white tent” was set up and ignored.

Now the “red tents” are up.

From now on in, things are going to get very ugly. It is no wonder that all of Asia is very somber and serious right now.

They remember history. They know what needs to occur…

I won’t let what happened to my father happen to me.

The Sopranos

As I said, the expressions on the faces of Putin, Lavrov, and the generals are very serious. The color is drained out of their faces, and they seem gripped with steeling determination and dangerous determination. It well reminds me of a scene from the television show “The Sopranos”.

The Sopranos crew.

In it, the (mob boss) Tony had to kill a beloved cousin, and a long time childhood friend to prevent a massive gang war. He didn’t want to do it at all, but he knew that if he didn’t, many people would die.

This was the death of Tony Blundetto (Buscemi).

In that case, Blundetto killed Joey “Peeps” from the Leotardo crew (a different mob).

This was really a very, very bad thing to do and very serious.

Since Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) was intent on making Blundetto’s death the most painful event in recorded history, Tony did him a favor by making it quick.

In the blink of an eye — and the blast of a shotgun — Tony spared his cousin the torture he would have received in Leotardo’s hands.

So reluctantly, but determined, he got his shotgun and killed his childhood friend. Then he called the other mob boss where to find the body.

He hastened the death of his cousin, and prevented his long-drawn-out torture. He also prevented a long ongoing mob war.

You Tube

 

Scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9lbju1WpsQ

Scene on MM here

video 22MB

Tony Blundetto Dead – The Sopranos HD-2022-01-28_06.50.32

Conclusions

I am absolutely convinced that what ever “leadership” is directing things behind the scenes in the United States and in Europe, they have no fucking idea what they are dealing with.

Maybe it’s the notorious American “echo chambers” where they believe their own propaganda.

Or maybe it’s all the power, wealth and drugs that got into their heads.

Or, as late John Kenneth Galbraith noted,

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage”.

 

Whatever the root cause…

…It doesn’t matter. It’s now too late. The “white tents” were rejected. And the “red tents” are out.

Well…

This isn’t what anyone thinks it is, and judging from the American “news”, all the collective West are setting themselves up for some horrible things. Maybe America will endure. Maybe America will survive. Maybe America will emerge unscathed as the rest of the world burns. Maybe Jesus will come forth and protect all Americans because of their inherent worthiness…

But I will tell you this…

When cold-blooded killers believe that they need to hurt you, and hurt you bad, you need to RUN

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Well, it appears that the Great Inflection Point of massive Geo-Political change has arrived!

I hope that I am not alone in being sick and tired of this pathetic, tiresome attempt to throw up a smokescreen and hide the inevitable reality of what is about to unfold. 

In case it isn’t completely clear to you yet, I would like to spell it all out. 

I am normally more cautious when making specific predictions, but in this case our immediate future has been carefully plotted out for us by Russia and China, with the US and its assorted puppets reduced to the status of non-playable characters in a video game who can only do one thing: hide behind a dense smokescreen of risible lies.

-A Short-Term Geopolitical Forecast

Well, we all have been dealing with a host of disturbing Geo-Political actions originating out of the USA for decades. And over the last few years they have become more brazen, more outrageous and more daring. It’s been building up to a crescendo.

This build-up has triggered actions from the rest of the world, and the most notable being Russia, and China.

During the last year, both Russia and China have established FIRM “red lines” that are absolute and that WILL result in very negative consequences for the United States if they are not treated seriously.

And they have not been taken seriously.

Well, the great point of inflection has been reached. The pivot point of Geo-political alignments and strengths is tripping RIGHT NOW.

Some “tell-tails”…

Black Operations 101;

Secrets are actually secret. Anything “leaked” in the news is a distraction and not an actual secret. Anything and everything you read in the American and Western Bloc “news” are intentional distractions. Real significant events are never reported on, and if so, it is long, long after the fact.

Thus, the purpose of the “news” media is a barometer. It’s a measure of what distractions are being put in place. The bigger; the more enormous the hyped up distraction, the more significant the actual events are.

And there is one major, significant,  distraction going on right now. It’s the “so-called” Russian build-up to invade the Ukraine.

In fact, it is so frenzied and hysterical that it is like a flashing neon red light and howling siren to all of us who have ever worked for the US Government. It tells us that “something big is up”, and to look for other things. These other things that are not being reported.

The lack of news coverage on these other things is an indicator of what is really going on.

Distractions are not what are happening. Their purpose is to take your focus away from the real events.

Do not focus on the distraction.

What is not being reported?

Let’s “cut to the chase“.

The largest American Navy build up in the history of America, and indeed the history of the earth. That’s what.

For some (only) God knows reason, the United States has decided to deploy most all of its massive naval forces off the Chinese coast. This includes five separate flotillas. Each one consisting of multiple aircraft and VTOL carriers, submarines and cruisers, destroyers and support vessels.

Along with that are elements of MAC (the Air Force Military Airlift Command) ferrying troops and munitions and arms to the Pacific. To include Korea, Japan, and other bases throughout the Pacific.

This is comparable to the build up for the Normandy Invasion of “D Day”.

In short, the largest concentration of United States Naval and Marine forces are now concentrated off the coast of China. And it is not being made public.

What’s going on?

What’s going on?

Within a few weeks, maybe days, Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi Peng will attend the Winter Olympics. During the event, they will formalize and make a number of significant and strategic Geo-Political policy announcements to the world.

No one knows what they will be.

What we do know is that they will be significant responses to a series of the United States malevolent actions, ignorance, and responses to its failure to take the “red lines” of both China, and Russia seriously.

Huh? You might ask.

What are the “Red Lines”?

Russia told the United States to [1] stop CIA backed “color revolutions” in and around the borders of its nation. (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, etc.) And, [2] to stop the placement of nuclear-capable missiles and munitions on its borders.

When it did get an “answer”, it was told to keep it secret. Which fell outside the Russian “demands”.

The content of the US response on security guarantees allows you to count on a serious conversation, but on secondary topics."

"There is no answer to the most important question – about the non-expansion of NATO to the east.”

“Our President will now decide on the next steps.”

-Lavrov

China told the United States to also [1] stop CIA backed “color revolutions” in and around the borders of its nation. [2] To stop the placement of nuclear-capable missiles and munitions on its borders, and in its neighbors. It also [3] told the United States to STAY OUT of Chinese domestic affairs. Which means Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and the Uighurs. All of which are internal domestic matters.

China never received any answers.

Both China and Russia told the United States to stop attacking the BRI trade routes in all the many flavors of hybrid-war that it has been engaging in.

So the USA ignored the “red lines”

The United States simply continued its actions.

Failure to show serious actions to avoid conflict, shows little respect for that national sovereignty of both nations. And is strongly suggestive that the United States plans to engage in a kinetic war with Asia.

Both nations are tired of the games, and “bullshit”.

They put up  their “white tents”, and offered branches of peace, and the United States ignored them.

So what is next, will be announced during the Winter Olympics.

Possible Consequences…

I can devote all sorts of speculations on what can occur. The top speculations are…

Formal Military Treaty between China and Russia. Not really needed, the relationship is far closer than any treaty, and both militaries train with each other. They share technology together, and have military liaisons in all of their military headquarters. It seems silly that this relationship would be formalized on a scrap of parchment. This would crush the hopes and dreams of the American neocon block.

Formal announcement of extraction from SWIFT. China and Russia might tell the rest of the world that if they want to buy goods made in China, and materials out of Russia, that they cannot use the US Dollar. This would send the US economy in a tail-spin.

Sanctions against America. This is taking a “page out of the United States playbook“, and giving the USA a “dose of its own medicine“. This would stop all trade between the USA and Asia, and any nation that wants Chinese products from Chinese factories will be punished and sanctioned if they trade with the USA. This would completely collapse the USA society.

Nationalization of American businesses and products. No longer any copyright protections. No more Coke, Microsoft, Ford, GM, McDonald’s. All their enormous profits inside of China will fall to zero, and replacement companies will take their place. This would create an economic depression, societal disruption, and political chaos like no other.

And more…

Conclusions

Of course, there are all sorts of other things that can happen. But we will find out soon enough what is going to happen. So there’s no point in too much speculation.

I don’t think that it will be “World War III”, though I can tell the reader that both China and Russia have knives at the throat of the United States right now, and if it tries and “funny business” there would be lethal consequences.

Let’s just wait and see.

But remember, boys and girls, don’t focus on the distraction. Focus on what is not being reported upon.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
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  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Russian commentaries on the collapsing United States part 5

This is part five.

Lavrov said Russia is hoping for a written response in within a week. 

Olympics begin in about a week and a half. 

Martyanov and Orlov have suggested the possibility military alliance between Russia and China being signed in the meetings that will occur then. 

Formal alliance or not, I would think a joint strategy or ensuring Russia's and China's separate strategies complement each other will occur.

Russia with its security proposal,rather starting high, have started at the bare minimum they require which is a buffer zone in the age of hypersonic missiles.

This is how Pepe Escobar puts it. 

"In fact, whether U.S. and NATO functionaries like it or not, what’s really happening in the realpolitk realm is Russia dictating new terms from a position of power. In a nutshell: you may learn the new game in town in a peaceful manner, civilized dialogue included, or you will learn the hard way via a dialogue with Mr. Iskandr, Mr. Kalibr, Mr. Khinzal and Mr. Zircon."

In that article from 25th December his view on the Russia China partnership vs the US "Incidentally: any possible, future “counter threats” will be coordinated between Russia and China."

Dugin: Having Pulled the Gun Russia Must Shoot or Lose

Dugin applies "street-fighting" lessons to...the fate of millions

Let’s consider how the “pandemic” is changing the world

From an interview with Noam Chomsky, found HERE.

Q. What about the pandemic? You mentioned the Great Depression, and the effect that had on the US and Europe, but can the pandemic play a similar role in the sense of “We can do this together?”

A. It should. And there are some signs of it. So when you get to the local level, you do find people cooperating with one another, helping each other. In many poor places around much of the world, local groups have just gotten together to help people in need, sometimes in remarkable ways. The favelas in Brazil are among the most miserable slums in the world. I’ve seen them. They’re run by biker gangs, drug cartels. The police are also extremely violent. Well, what’s happened during the pandemic is that the gangs, the criminal gangs that have been terrorizing the favelas have been organizing people to deal with the crisis. In the favelas, plenty of people don’t even have water. They’re working to help people at least have access to water, to have access to vaccines, to help each other in need. If there’s somebody, an old man stuck in an apartment who can’t get food, they bring him food, things like that are happening on the ground. Now, go to the leadership level. What are they doing? They’re monopolizing vaccines for themselves. They are demanding that the huge pharmaceutical corporations, which are super rich, should maintain control of the exorbitant patent rights that were given to them by the neoliberal regime, a regime which is radically opposed to free trade.

And his thoughts about the changing workplace…

Q. What about work?

A. What’s a job? A job, for most people, is spending most of your waking hours following orders from a master, who is a totalitarian master. They can give orders of a kind that Stalin couldn’t have dreamt of. Stalin couldn’t have told people that you’re allowed to take a five-minute bathroom break or that you’re not allowed to talk to that person next to you. And maybe your master is kind enough to allow you the leeway, but it’s the master’s decision. That’s called getting a job. Today, most people think that’s the norm. They react like my grandmother did, and would, if you’d asked her if she was oppressed. That wasn’t always true. To go back to the early Industrial Revolution of working people, bitterly opposed this form of autocracy, which was taking away their dignity, their rights and keeps reviving today. Plenty of people are saying the same thing. In fact, many of the people who are just refusing to go back to work, the so-called Great Resignation, are saying it in their own way.

UKRAINE CRISIS: US ‘Toolboxes’ Are Empty

The toolbox is empty. Russia knows this. Biden knows this. Blinken knows this. CNN knows this. The only ones who aren’t aware of this are the American people, says Scott Ritter.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in a hastily scheduled, 90-minute summit in Geneva yesterday, after which both sides lauded the meeting as worthwhile because it kept the door open for a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. What “keeping the door open” entails, however, represents two completely different realities.

For Blinken, the important thing appears to be process, continuing a dialogue which, by its very essence, creates the impression of progress, with progress being measured in increments of time, as opposed to results.

A results-oriented outcome was not in the books for Blinken and his entourage; the U.S. was supposed to submit a written response to Russia’s demands for security guarantees as spelled out in a pair of draft treaties presented to the U.S. and NATO in December. Instead, Blinken told Lavrov the written submission would be provided next week.

In the meantime, Blinken primed the pump of expected outcomes by highlighting the possibility of future negotiations that addressed Russian concerns (on a reciprocal basis) regarding intermediate-range missiles and NATO military exercises.

But under no circumstances, Blinken said, would the U.S. be responding to Russian demands against NATO expanding to Ukraine and Georgia, and for the redeployment of NATO forces inside the territory of NATO as it existed in 1997.

Blinken also spent a considerable amount of time harping on the danger of a imminent military invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces said to be massing along the Ukraine-Russian border. He pointed out that any military incursion by Russia, not matter what size, that violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, would be viewed as a continuation of the Russian “aggression” of 2014 and, as such, trigger “massive consequences” which would be damaging to Russia.

Blinken’s restatement of a position he has pontificated on incessantly for more than a month now was not done for the benefit of Lavrov and the Russian government, but rather for an American and European audience which had been left scratching their collective heads over comments made the day before by President Joe Biden which suggested that the U.S. had a range of options it would consider depending on the size of a Russian incursion.

“My guess is he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] will move in, he has to do something,” Biden said during a press briefing on Wednesday. While presenting a Russian invasion as inevitable, Biden went on to note that Putin “will be held accountable” and has “never have seen sanctions like the ones I promised will be imposed” if Russia were, in fact, to move against Ukraine. Biden spoke of deploying additional U.S. military forces to eastern Europe, as well as unspecified economic sanctions.

Biden then, however, hedged his remarks, noting that the scope and scale of any U.S. response would depend on what Russia did. “It’s one thing,” Biden said, “if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do.”

Almost immediately the Washington establishment went into overdrive to correct what everyone said was a “misstatement” by Biden, with Biden himself making a new statement the next day, declaring that he had been “absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding, any, any assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion,” and that there should be “no doubt at all that if Putin makes this choice, Russia will pay a heavy price.”

And just in case the President was not clear enough, Blinken reiterated that point following his Friday meeting with Lavrov.

Immutable

The U.S. narrative about Russia and Ukraine was immutable; Russia was hell bent on invading, and there would be massive consequences if Russia acted out on its intent. This was no idle threat, Blinken said, but rather represented the unified position of the United States and its allies and partners.

Or was it? In a telling admission, CNN’s White House correspondent, John Harwood, stated that the “minor incursions” statement by Biden was harmless, because (Harwood said) Putin already knew through sources that this was, in fact, the U.S. position. As for Europe and Ukraine, their collective confusion and outrage was merely an act, a posture they had to take for public consumption, since the optics of Biden’s statement “sounds bad.”

In short, the lack of an agreed-upon strategy on how to deal with a Russian incursion/invasion of Ukraine was an open secret for everyone except the U.S. and European publics, who being fed a line of horse manure to assuage domestic political concerns over being seen as surrendering to Russian demands.

Biden and his administration are old hands at lying to the American public when it comes to matters of national security. One only need look to Biden’s July 23, 2021, phone call with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for a clear precedent into this inability to speak openly and honestly about reality on the ground. “I need not tell you,” Biden told Ghani, “the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there is a need,” Biden added, “whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”

This, in a nutshell, is the essence of the posture taken by the Biden administration on Ukraine. Blinken has indicated that the U.S. has a toolbox filled with options that will deliver “massive consequences” to Russia should Russia invade Ukraine. These “tools” include military options, such as the reinforcement of NATO’s eastern flank with additional U.S. troops, and economic options, such as shutting down the NordStream 2 pipeline and cutting Russia off from the SWIFT banking system. All these options, Blinken notes, have the undivided support of U.S. European allies and partners.

The toolbox is everywhere, it seems—Biden has referred to it, as has White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. Blinken has alluded to it on numerous occasions.

There’s only one problem—the toolbox, it turns out, is empty.

While the Pentagon is reportedly working on a series of military options to reinforce the existing U.S. military presence in eastern Europe, the actual implementation of these options would neither be timely nor even possible. One option is to move forces already in Europe; the U.S. Army maintains one heavy armored brigade in Europe on a rotational basis and has a light armored vehicle brigade and an artillery brigade stationed in Germany. Along with some helicopter and logistics support, that’s it.

Flooding these units into Poland would be for display purposes only—they represent an unsustainable combat force that would be destroyed within hours, if not days, in any large-scale ground combat against a Russian threat.

The U.S. can deploy a second heavy armored brigade to Poland which would fall in on prepositioned equipment already warehoused on Polish soil. This brigade would suffer a similar fate if matched up against the Russian army. The U.S. can also deploy an airborne brigade. They, too, would die.

There are no other options available to deploy additional U.S. heavy forces to Europe on a scale and in a timeframe that would be meaningful. The problem isn’t just the deployment of forces from their bases in the U.S. (something that would takes months to prepare for), but the sustainability of these forces once they arrived on the ground in Europe. Food, ammunition, water, fuel—the logistics of war is complicated, and not resolved overnight.

In short, there is no viable military option, and Biden knows this.

Empty Sanctions Too

The U.S. has no sanctions plan that can survive initial contact with the enemy, which in this case is the collective weakness of the post-pandemic economies of both Europe and the U.S.; the over-reliance of Europe on Russian-sourced energy, and the vulnerability of democratically elected leaders to the whim of a consumer-based constituency. Russia can survive the impact of any sanctions regime the U.S. is able to scrape together—even those targeting the Russian banking system—far longer than Europe can survive without access to Russian energy.

This is a reality that Europe lives with, and while U.S. policy makers might think hard-hitting sanctions look good on paper, the reality is that whatever passes for U.S.-European unity today would collapse in rapid order when the Russian pipelines were shut down. The pain would not just be limited to Europe, either—the U.S. economy would suffer as well, with sky-high fuel prices and a stock market collapse that would put the U.S. into an economic recession, if not outright depression.

The political cost that would be incurred by Biden and, by extension, the Democrats, would be fatal to any hope that might remain for holding onto either house of Congress in 2022, or the White House in 2024. It would be one thing if Biden and his national security team were honest and forthright about the real consequences of declaring the equivalent of economic war on Russia. It is another thing altogether to speak only of the pain sanctions would cause Russia, with little thought, if any, to the real consequences that will be paid on the home front.

Americans should never forget that Russia has been laboring under severe U.S. sanctions since 2014, with zero effect. Russia knows what could be coming and has prepared. The American people wallow in their ignorance, believing at face value what they are told by the Biden administration, and echoed by a compliant mainstream media.

Propaganda About ‘Propaganda’

One of the great ironies of the current crisis is that, on the eve of the Blinken-Lavrov meeting in Geneva, the U.S. State Department published a report on Russian propaganda, decrying the role played by state-funded outlets such as RT and Sputnik in shaping public opinion in the United States and the West (in the interest of full disclosure, RT is one of the outlets that I write for.)

The fact that the State Department would publish such a report on the eve of a meeting which is all about propagating the big lie—that the U.S. has a plan for deterring “irresponsible Russian aggression”—while ignoring the hard truth: this is a crisis derived solely from the irresponsible policies of the U.S. and NATO over the past 30 years.

While a compliant mainstream American media unthinkingly repeated every warning and threat issued by Biden and Blinken to Russia over the course of the past few days, the Russian position has been largely ignored. Here’s a reminder of where Russia stands on its demands for security guarantees: “We are talking about the withdrawal of foreign forces, equipment, and weapons, as well as taking other steps to return to the set-up we had in 1997 in non-NATO countries,” the Russian Foreign Ministry declared in a bulletin published after the Lavrov-Blinken meeting. “This includes Bulgaria and Romania.”

Blinken has already said the U.S. will reject this.

The toolbox is empty. Russia knows this. Biden knows this. Blinken knows this. CNN knows this. The only ones who aren’t aware of this are the American people.

The consequences of a U.S. rejection of Russia’s demands will more than likely be war.

If you think the American people are ready to bear the burden of a war with Russia, think again.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.

China Has Edged Ahead of Russia in Air vs Air Capabilities (With Russian Help)

The Chinese are amazing at tech

Editor’s note: The caveat is that Russia does not intend to fight pure air vs air battles. Russian doctrine envisages fighters and ground anti-air working together as a part of a whole. Nonetheless, purely looking at fighters China is now in the lead. Russia is still a little ahead in engines, but China has more advanced radars and better munitions. [— Russia still hasn’t managed to field an AESA radar.]

The old formulation that in the Sino-Russian alliance the Chinese are the economic superpower and the Russians the military superpower is one that will increasingly have to be amended. The Chinese are already the equals in military tech and may eventually pull ahead.

The text below is an abstract. For the entire 60-page report click here: Link.


The Soviet Union, and latterly Russia, have been the source of both aerial and ground-based pacing threats to Western airpower since the end of the Second World War. However, from a position of dependency on Russian aircraft and weapons, China has developed an advanced indigenous combat aircraft, sensor and weapons industry that is outstripping Russia’s. As a result, for the first time since 1945, the likely source of the most significant aerial threats to Western air capabilities is shifting.

Modern air combat is primarily decided by the balance of advantage in situational awareness. Given broadly comparable numbers, the force which can provide its aircrew with superior awareness of enemy position, track and identity will have a major advantage in any clash. In scenarios where situational awareness is relatively equal, missile reach and seeker performance, crew experience, aircraft performance, electronic warfare (EW) and countermeasures systems all contribute to the likely outcome.

Russia and China currently field superficially similar combat aircraft fleets. Both rely heavily on the Su-27/30 ‘Flanker’ family of combat aircraft and their various derivatives. They have also both pursued a fighter with low-observable (LO) – also known as stealthy – features, alongside increased multirole capability for their main fighter fleets. However, a clear Chinese lead is now emerging over Russia in most technical aspects of combat aircraft development.

The Flanker family of combat aircraft share: a large radar, optical and heat signature; potent kinematic performance; a relatively long range on internal fuel; and the ability to carry heavy ordinance loads of air-to-air or air-to-ground weapons. This makes them comparatively easy to detect and, in the case of Russian Flanker types, the lack of a modern active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar restricts them to relatively ‘brute force’ tactics using powerful but easy-to-detect radars and missiles which are outranged by their Western counterparts.

China has developed J-11 and J-16 series Flanker derivatives featuring AESA radars, new datalinks, improved EW systems and increased use of composites, which give them a superior level of overall combat capability to the latest Russian Flanker, the Su-35S. 

This advantage is increased by Chinese advances in both within-visual-range (WVR) and beyond-visual-range (BVR) air-to-air missiles. Unlike the latest Russian R-73M, the PL-10 features an imaging infrared seeker, improving resistance to countermeasures. More significantly, the PL-15 features a miniature AESA seeker head and outranges the US-made AIM-120C/D AMRAAM series. China is also testing a very-long-range air-to-air missile, known as PL-X or PL-17, which has a 400-km class range, multimode seeker and appears to have been designed to attack US big-wing ISTAR and tanker aircraft.

China has developed and introduced into service the first credible non-US-made LO, or fifth-generation, fighter in the form of the J-20A ‘Mighty Dragon’. Subsequent developments are likely to increase its LO characteristics and sensor capabilities, as well as engine performance, with construction of the first production prototypes of the J-20B having begun in 2020.

Overall, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and People’s Liberation Army Navy are rapidly improving their combat air capabilities, including a focus on the sensors, platforms, network connectivity and weapons needed to compete with the US in cutting-edge, predominantly passive-sensor air combat tactics.

The Russian Su-57 Felon is assessed as not yet having matured into a credible frontline weapons system, and as lacking the basic design features required for true LO signature. However, it does offer the potential to correct many of the Flanker family weaknesses with greatly reduced signature and an AESA radar, while improving the already superb agility and performance of the Flanker series. [The Su-57 doesn’t need to be as stealthy from the side and rear because unlike the Chinese very-long-range J-20 it’s not supposed to venture outside the air defense bubble. That said it is true that so far the Chinese have demonstrated more “stealth” tech than the Russians — and in much greater numbers.]

The Russian Air Force (VKS) does not currently field targeting pods for its ground-attack and multirole fleets. This limits the ground-attack aircraft to internal equivalents with inferior field of view and tactical flexibility, and the multirole fighters to reliance on either pre-briefed GPS/GLONASS target coordinates, radar-guided weapons or target acquisition using fixed seekers on the weapons themselves. This limits VKS fixed-wing capabilities against dynamic battlefield targets compared to Western or Chinese equivalents.

China is actively pursuing unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) designs with multiple programmes at various stages of development. Detailed assessment is hindered by tight control of information leaks by the Chinese Communist Party. Of those known to be in development, the GJ-11 subsonic attack UCAV appears the most advanced.

Russia is also pursuing UCAV-style technologies and has produced the Su-70 ‘Okhotnik-B’ technology demonstrator. However, it is not yet clear what degree of practical operational capability the Russian aircraft industry will be able to develop through the Su-70, especially given the demands for significant levels of in-flight autonomy inherent in UCAVs designed for state-on-state warfare in heavy EW conditions.

China’s advanced and efficient Flanker derivatives, as well as lightweight multirole fighters in the shape of the J-10B/C series and potentially a developmental FC-31 LO fighter programme, are likely to provide the leading source of non-Western combat aircraft from the mid-2020s onwards. Likewise, their air-launched munitions will increasingly outcompete Russian equivalents on the export market. As such, the development of Chinese capabilities should be closely monitored even by air forces which do not include the PLAAF in their direct threat assessments.

The possibility of technology transfer from China to Russia in the combat air domain could potentially increase the threat level posed to NATO by Russian airpower in the longer term, should such a dynamic emerge.

Source: The Royal United Services Institute

Petty

The US summarised:

ISS crews train in the US and Russia to understand the US and Russian parts of the station, if only for emergency evacuation procedures. The US has just cancelled the visa of a Russian cosmonaut due to visit the US for his USS-ISS training sessions.

How totally pathetic and spiteful.

This Is One of the Most Important Essays You Will Ever Read

“I passionately wanted to take a machine gun and cross the damned nine-story building in a long burst”

 

Editor’s note: Alexander Lebed was a Soviet soldier and general, a challenger of Yeltsin, the protector of Russians and Ukrainians on left-bank Dniestr, and of the Russian-Ukrainian state, the rebel Pridnestrovie (Transnistria) they had founded.

He was also the person who cut the Gordian Knot and delivered Russia peace from Yeltsin’s Chechen War after the latter handed him the negotiations as a poisoned chalice that he resolutely accepted knowing fully what it was.

He was the son of a Gulag survivor and participated in internal Soviet peacekeeping (in the late 1980s) in Azerbaijan, on the basis of which he wrote this important essay presented below.


“On the evening of the 7th, the “Time” program announced a huge earthquake in Armenia… The exact number of victims was unknown, but preliminarily, they were estimated to be huge – tens of thousands of people.

The announcer switched to another topic, but no one would listen to him. Moreover, someone turned the TV off. An oppressive silence hung in the lobby. Suddenly, a strangle sound burst into this silence – or rather, a gamut of sounds merged into a single, general, triumphant joyful howl that would become more and more intense.

In seconds, everything became clear. On the opposite side of the street, in front of the building of the district executive committee, there was a large residential nine-story building. Every window without exception was illuminated, and on every balcony, people were yelling, hooting, and laughing wildly. Empty bottles, lighted paper, and some other objects were being thrown down.

This nine-story building was not alone in displaying its cannibalistic enthusiasm. A similar pattern was observed in all nearby houses.

The area was shining and howling ecstatically. People who considered themselves civilized; to one degree or another brought up and educated; many, presumably, believers professing the commandments of the Koran – all these people in a unanimous impulse were indecently, barbarously celebrating the colossal alien human grief.

I passionately wanted to take a machine gun and cross the damned nine-story building in a long burst and somehow make the people who have fallen to the level of monkeys return to their human form again.

How many kind, cheerful, intelligent, welcoming people I have met among Azerbaijanis! What passionate, convincing speeches many of them gave to me! Where did they go, all reasonable and kind, how was it possible that they all disappeared in this foam and succumbed to the rush whose degree of infamy is difficult to determine?”


Editor’s note: Should a day come when we find ourselves in danger of falling down to the level of beast or ape we can only pray there might be an Alexander Lebed with a machinegun nearby to get us to snap out of it.

From Lebed’s memoirs, translated by Vigen Avetisyan at Art-A-Tsolum.

The 1988 Armenian earthquake killed 25,000-50,000 people. 

Is there a deal being prepared behind the scenes?

I have to admit that when I heard that the US has no intention of giving the Russians anything in writing I began wondering whether it even made sense for Lavrov to fly to Geneva.  Yet, Lavrov thought otherwise and flew to the Swiss city.  The outcome?  Meh…

The US wants another week to prepare a written reply.  Okay, that is some kind of result and I suppose that, considering what is at stake, waiting yet another week is okay.  Frankly, the Russians are acutely aware of two things:

  • US diplomats and experts are, at best, clueless amateurs
  • The War Party is in full-blow hysterics mode

So they decided to give “Biden” another week.  Like a teacher who agrees to give a particularly dumb student a few extra days to turn in his assignment.

What else?

Well, there is this: remember the rather weird words by Biden about a “minor incursion“? (since then, both Biden himself and Blinken has declared that Biden was misunderstood).

Today former ambassador McFaul, a true russophobic nutcase and certified imbecile, said that if the Russian soldiers go as far as Kiev this would trigger a full-scale response from the US and its allies.

Wait! What?

Since when do the Russian have to get their soldiers as far as Kiev to get sanctioned???

Before continuing, a few absolutely CRUCIAL reminders:

  • Russia neither wants nor has any reason at all to invade country 404, with all its intellectuals already long gone (most of them in Russia, low qualified refugees when to clean EU toilets), its deindustrialized wastelands, its many neo-Nazis and zero natural resources (they already sold it all).  In fact, most Russians are categorically opposed to any such intervention.
  • The only thing which could force Russia to use her ground forces would be a successful (and rather unlikely) Ukrainian invasion of the LDNR.  Russia currently does have the forces needed for such a counter-attack in her western regions.  She does not have the size of force needed to occupy the Ukraine.
  • Russia has the means to defang the Ukie military using only standoff weapons, Russian military experts believe that such an operation would take a week or even less.

In other words, the notion of a Russian ground operation to take Kiev is total, hallucinatory, nonsense. Ditto for the idiotic idea that Russia must invade in February before the frozen ground turns into dirt (Russian ground forces have no problems operating or fighting with dirt, snowmelts or any other natural phenomenon between -50C to +50C).  That is exactly the kind of crap McFaul always spews (with this uniquely paranoid eyes and freaked-out facial expression).  But the fact that McFaul is a drooling idiot does not mean that he does not have access to what is going on behind the scenes (Blinken is just as dumb, and he is in charge of the entire US diplomacy).

So what gave him this truly weird idea?

First Biden with his “minor incursion”.

Now McFaul with his “no Russian soldiers in Kiev”.

I can offer three possible explanations for that:

  1. The Biden Admin is doing a “April Glaspie” operation on Russia: tell the Russians that the US will do little or nothing as long as Russia only liberates some areas (presumably in the eastern and/or southern Ukraine) only to then take that as a pretext and declare some kind of war (probably not military, but political and economic for sure).
  2. The Biden Admin is really trying to get rid of the Ukie suitcase and wants to break up this monstrosity into smaller, much more manageable, successor states.  If so, I like the idea.
  3. The Biden Admin is ready to let the LDNR break-away and move under the protection of Russia.  Officially, of course, the USA will never agree to that, but they can present that as a problem they did not create and they could not solve alone either (or something else along similar PR lines).

Now, like I always repeat, there is a HUGE difference between “possible” and “likely”.  The explanations above are only *possible* explanations for the weird language coming out of Biden and McFaul.

I also hasten to add that I don’t think that Russia will accept any such terms because they only refer to the Ukraine and not to a new international world order with a new international security framework, which is really what the Russians are after.  And we are talking about verifiable, binding, security guarantees – not written, or even less so, oral, assurances.

However, if these proposals are made as one part of a much broader package of ideas, then they would be worth at least considering.

I have to tell you that my feeling is that the US has already at least partially lost control of the Ukraine and possibly even the EU.

Remember how I always write that when the US President is weak (which all of them since Bush Sr. have been) then the various branches of government and administrations begin doing their own thing, having a semi-official foreign policy of their own: one by the CIA, another one by the Pentagon, another one by Foggy Bottom, etc.?

Well, the same applies to US colonies: when the colonial master is weak and in deep crisis, the colonies begin feeling that they can act more independently.  For example, the 3B+PU gang are now clearly setting the agenda in the EU, and the old Europeans à la Germany of France have become quasi irrelevant.  Likewise, I am not confident at all that the real, hardcore, Ukronazis give a damn about what the US has to say, especially since the said Ukronazis seem to have the solid backing of the EU and parts of the Ukie government: just look at how Ze was unable to deal with Poroshenko – that will tell you a lot about the real correlation of forces in Banderastan.

This is the “tail wags the dog” thing on an international level.

All that is to say that I don’t find it likely that some big deal is being worked on behind the scenes.

But I do find it possible.

We shall find out soon, in one week or less according to the US side.

In the meantime the Ukies are massing a very large force right across the line of contact.  I think of these Ukie forces like I think of folks driving motorcycles without a helmet: organ donors.  Should the Ukies use that force to actually attack, the Russians will destroy that force in 24 hours or less.  The problem is that Ukronazis are 1) rather stupid 2) totally fanaticized and 3) utterly unaware of the realities of modern warfare.

By the way, from a purely US point of view having the Ukronazis wiped out by Russian strikes is not a bad outcome as it would get rid of loads of truly crazy and unsavory characters.

I think of it as a “de-nazification by Russia” (along the lines of the expression “suicide by cop”).

One more thing: remember the rumors about the Russian evacuating their diplomatic personnel from Kiev?  Turns out that it ain’t Russia, but the US and EU representations which are being evacuated (at least partially).

In the meantime, Stoltenberg wants Sweden and Finland to join NATO while many EU countries are now sending (small) forces into various locations in Eastern Europe.  The worst of them all, the Baltic statelets, are now shipping Stinger MANPADs to the Ukies.  Knowing how many Takfiris and neo-Nazis nutcases there are in Banderastan, this is absolutely, totally and terminally irresponsible!  Yet those demented idiots are doing it.  Typical.

I wish everybody a peaceful and great week-end!

Andrei

A comment

From Dennis Dennis

I must admit sadly that it s hard to find a wise and intellectual thinking American, therefore first I want to congratulate you for your wise and thoughtful ideas.

I am from Germany and in all discussions with americans I feel a taste of superiority and superficial thinking.

I am astonished about their neglect that russia is nuclear armed superpower which can in war end life on earth as we know.

If you talk all the time your opponent as unimportant and not to take serious than you got the public opinion easily that you do not be afraid about russia but we should all take russia serious when there is conflict with russia.

So first we must take russia demands for it s security very serious to have our security !

War is no option with russia and that must be clear to any fool !

Ukraine was not and will not be our main interest.

hat s the spehre of interest of russia and let it be. We can no have all regions in the world in our sphere of interest. We must differ between important and not so important.

And honestly europe did never want ukraine be part of europe and nato because we want to avoid conflict with russia at the very beginning and it s wise to do so.

The US must stop thinking it can control every country and region.

Simply said: avoid russia and try not to be close to russia for our own sake

Whats Next?

Tarik in the Vineyard for the Saker Blog

I’m not sure even a NATO mosquito could cross the Russian border unmolested. And when a bear is lethally threatened, it doesn’t posture; it charges in a mighty roar. So why the Russian ultimatum? There are many plausible motives, many of which are not mutually exclusive. I’d like to focus on an aspect that hasn’t been discussed yet.

The last ten to twenty years could be characterized as a rivalry between China’s desire to re-balance the world’s economy, and the US’s effort to maintain the Dollar’s supremacy. China rose on the back of Western consumerism. There is only that much the West economy can absorb of China’s growing production, and that limit has clearly been exceeded. If China is to pursue its economic development, it needs additional “advanced” export markets to sustain its growing middle class. This is the Chinese necessity underlying the BRI, it cannot grow without the world growing with it.

Until recently it was content with a simple strategy: Enter several disparate countries at a time and start economic projects. Soon enough the US intervened to discipline the offenders; but they cannot strike all at once, choices must be made. Meanwhile, China approaches another bunch with still more economic projects. The US gets slowly overwhelmed, while the projects advance two steps forward, one step backward. On paper, it looks like an expensive proposition, but that is the beauty of it, it’s all paid for with US paper, while gold is accumulated. This entire period is comparable to the early and middle stages of a Go game

There is a point however when all these mini economic hubs must consolidate into a unified stream of connections to realize their full potential. That means no more US military interference and economic/financial disruptions. It seems we are now entering the late stage when “eyes” must be locked and linked.

There is little question the latest Russian move was long prepared and discussed with China. We may assume a common goal, and that none of the recent events are coincidences.

China and Russia favor and promote inter-currency settlement of trades. The Digital Yuan (E-CNY, electronic China Yuan) is designed for this purpose and has just completed successfully its live trials. It is reasonable to expect its official announcement in the near future. There are rumors this will be done during Putin’s visit to the Olympics. Regardless of the exact launch date, preparation must be made against the predictably harshest US resistance to its international deployment. There’s little doubt in my mind that many, if not most of East Asia will readily incorporate the new crypto iteration of the Yuan. However the Kazakhstan events, which were clearly foreseen with great precision, essentially opened up the entire Central Asian economies to its eventual use. With the recent 400bn commitment to Iran and the ongoing Pakistani projects, one may merrily add them to the bunch. India is free to join whenever they deem it in their best interest. This brings us right to the doorsteps of the Middle East.

Let’s now briefly revisit the US’ choices taken during the middle stage game. Since East Asia was growing to displace the US and EU as China’s main trading partner, Washington initiated their “pivot East” strategy to disrupt their momentum. Because of the sorry state of both their economy and military, they had to “delegate” the task of containing Russia on its western border to the EU. The Ukraine, in this context, can be seen as the “pretext” for the EU to activate NATO in Eastern Europe. However, as “pivot East” was floundering, they further needed to draw on their middle east assets (it’s becoming increasingly difficult not to laugh at what I must write). To this effect, they devised the Abraham Accords to similarly delegate the task of containing the “Shiite Axis” to Israel and the Golf States. The first “casualty” of these infamous Accords was probably Pakistan’s definite defection to the BRI, which further precipitated the Afghani debacle. To correct that mistake they then tried another formation with India, Japan, and a few others, followed by AUKUS, which both turned into flops, guided by the same imperative to relieve the strain on their military in an attempt to remain relevant on all fronts.

To control the Middle East, the US needs control of Europe, if only to secure their supply line. And to influence Central Asia they must control the Middle East. Until now Washington was essentially calling the shots, while Russia and China adapted their plans to whatever was thrown their way. By submitting their security demands, Russia is signaling unequivocally it is now taking the initiative. While the reinforcement of the Ukrainian Army was first designed to pressure some Russian reaction so as to increase the European nations’ commitment to toe the anti Russia line, the resulting Russian built-up of forces and large scale exercises have effectively reversed the pressure. The bulk of NATO forces are now bogged down on the eastern European front in a self induced paranoia, severely restricting their possible redeployment elsewhere.

With the Russian ultimatum the US is now basically faced with the following choices. Sign the documents, which by extension will mean the Minsk agreement and opening of NS2, but would free NATO reinforcement to the Middle East, no matter how futile this would ultimately prove. Because if this happens Europe will quickly “organically” link to the Asian network and recover most of its sovereignty from the US. At that moment, the Middle East is lost.

By not signing, the choice becomes loosing the middle East or release the pressure in East Asia, in both cases China wins.

If they don’t reinforce the Middle East, Pakistan is soon to be followed by the entire region. Though there could be some fireworks in the process, once the dust settles the BRI will be staring straight at Africa, throwing its full weight at European and American interests on that continent. If that happens, Europe falls.

Finally if they do “save” the Middle East at the detriment of East Asia, the Asian power house will become such that no one will escape its gravitational pull for long.

It is not very difficult to see, in this context, that whichever region the US decides to forsake, it’s only a matter of time before they lose the rest. Of course, this all assumes they don’t first crumble under the weight of their debts. Will they turn nuts and try blow it all up? I can only attest that the one thing greater than their evil idiocy, is their cowardice.

“Russia plans to engage its nuclear weapons not against those countries where it was launched against Russia, but against the mastermind cities where the decisions were made. To be exact, it is Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other American cities. Please fully understand, in case American nuclear weapons are launched from, eg. Taiwan, or Poland, the response will hit New York or Washington.”  

-Russian Duma deputy, Yevgeny Fyodorov.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Koreans come to grips with the Chinese Ticktock videos

Ah.

I just read that wine is bad for you. It’s all over the Western “news” media. My guess is that soon there will be a temperance movement to rival the anti-smoking movement. For the “children” don’t you know.

It’s all so silly.

I really don’t think I want to live in a place that bans drinking wine.

Wine and cheese.

I mean, really! Wine is bad, but lard burgers deep fried are good. Sheech!

You know, the longer I stay outside the “West” the more insane it appears.

Dionysus cat agrees!

Dionysus cat.

It’s been accepted that the Western Bloc (in defiance of Donald Trump’s executive orders to the contrary) pretty much uses Tictok as an Application to make and share movies. It’s a division of the Chinese version known as Douxing. It is NOT the same thing.

In fact, most of the videos posted inside of China are banned by the non-Chinese versions.

Thus, because of that, the presentation of what China actually is; is withheld from the global readership. (It’s something that I do not fully understand why, but it offers strong hints of Geo-political manipulation for domestic consumption purposes on a regional basis.)

To get around this limitation, you must have a Chinese cellphone and install Douxing on it while you are in China.

Now, with that awkward introduction, let’s get to the meat of this article. Here is a South Korean group of video-blogers that take various Chinese Douxing videos and comment on them. I find that it is interesting, and amusing and telling on how the Korean society reacts to the Chinese society. Because, after all, they are both of the Han race.

Please enjoy this great peer into cross society insights.

2021 Overview

We start with this video.

At the end of 2021 were a bunch of videos that summarized the events of 2021. Some are actually quite good. Of course, most of the world outside of China has no idea what has been going on inside of China. Their government (especially if you are an America or Brit) won’t allow it. Here, the Koreans get to watch some of the videos and comment on them.

video 33MB

Chinese minorities on display

The Chinese honor, fund and keep the traditions and societies of all the minorities within China alive and prospering. Here is a selection of the various videos in this category.

The PRC officially recognizes 55 ethnic minority groups within China in addition to the Han majority. 

As of 2010, the combined population of officially-recognized minority groups comprised 8.49% of the population of mainland China. 

In addition to these officially-recognized ethnic minority groups, there are Chinese nationals who privately classify themselves as members of unrecognized ethnic groups, such as the very small Chinese Jewish, Tuvan, and Ili Turki communities, as well as the much larger Oirat and Japanese communities. 

-Wikipedia

video 40MB

CN Military

Of course, there are all sorts of videos about the Chinese military. Here, the Koreans get their first look at some fan, and government videos…

video 13MB

China VR

Chinese virtual reality similar to “Google Glass” is getting to be popular in the first tiered cities. video 38MB

Dancing to pop music done in traditional style

The song is from Jay Chou, but done traditionally. And the people dance to it in a traditional manner. video 14MB

Different personalities

This is a common theme inside Chinese culture. That you can have many different “faces” or side to your personalities. video 21MB

Girl Actor

A very famous girl actor. Perhaps you have heard of her or seen her in some movies, perhaps? video 10MB

Girl singing group

Here’s a group of girls that love to dress up and sing traditional Chinese opera. It’s kind of cool. video 10MB

Good vs Bad

It’s all about the Yin and the Yang. video 23MB

Gung Fu

What’s not to love? This is the real deal, with many Shaolin monks participating. video 26MB

Han Clothing

Very popular. On display here for thoughts and comments. video 13MB

Han Cosplay

These are videos of people dressed in Han Clothing and meeting in cosplay events and fashion shows. video 14MB

Honoring the family

This is a big thing. Not only does China have a firm belief in the importance of the traditional family life and culture, but it funds videos that are sprinkled in with all the other videos to remind people of the importance of family and community. It’s sort of how the LGBT “news” and “issues” are all being driven in the United States today. It’s a very big part of what China is all about. When was the last time that you saw a video or a commercial stressing the importance of family, community and care for others in America? video 14MB

I love how this scene mesmerized the movie critics.

Honoring the Rufus firefighters

In praise of Rufus. You just don’t see this kind of stuff in the West. video 14MB

In another time

In another time. Sigh. It reminds us, through these videos, that  while times, clothing and society has changed, we are still the same. We are still people who work, earn a living, have a family and participate within society. video 20MB

Little gung fu master

Great little guy! I love it. Video 29.5MB

Martial arts for morning exercises

I see this every morning. The people do these exercises all the time and everywhere starting at 5am. Here are some videos of them doing so. Great.

video 31MB

Stage dancing

Dancing and moves on the stage as part of opera and other venues. video 22MB

Sword dance

Sword dance. It’s a great way to limber up, and start the day, as well as manage a very good defensive posture in a battle. video 45MB

Sword exercise

Another group of sword exercises. Quite well done. video 24MB

Transformations

It’s all about change. Good stuff. video 11MB

Uighur Culture

And of course, the Chinese promote the Uighur culture and Xinjiang. And oh baby! The USA hates that. Great video 17MB

One last thought…

Dionysus is strongly associated with the satyrs, centaurs and sileni. He is often shown riding a leopard, wearing a leopard skin, or in a chariot drawn by panthers and has been called the god of cats and savagery. He may be recognized by the thyrsus he carries. 

-Dionysus - Crystalinks

Do you want more?

I have more posts like this in my China Music Index here…

CN Music

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Russian commentaries on the collapsing United States (with some MM commentary as well) part 4

This is part four.

The situation is very weird. America has a President who is essentially a shit-stain in the seat of his expensive blue suit. So at least publicly, America is being governed by a shit-stain. America is just going to collapse. Not that this would be a bad thing.

America is devolving into an open rancid sewer along all the dimensions that constitute a Society…Americans are escaping into drug use and Fantasy Football-and into Fantasy in general….I can’t wait for that apex of American Civilization known as the Super Bowl half-time show in five weeks…

To para-phrase the tune Officer Kumpke from the 1961 Blockbuster Westside Story:We are doomed…We are doomed…We are doomed….followed by a young Russ Tamblyn doing a back flip into the septic tank-know as America….

-War for Blair Mountain

It is inconceivable…

For the USA to maintain global domance. Video 4MB

Completely Outplayed by Russia’s Diplomacy and Sabotaged by its Own Actions, The Outlaw US Empire is Now Having a Temper Tantrum

Since Russia issued its Security Demands which are listed in my previous articles, a number of excellent essays were published that filled in some important holes in the historical record that the narrative associated with the security demands omit.

The first is by Tarik Cyril Amar, “Russia is right: The West promised not to enlarge NATO & these promises were broken,” and details the two crucial promises made by the Americans that were subsequently broken, which constitute two of the Aces in Russia’s diplomatic poker hand.

The second excellent article is by Glenn Diesen, “How the EU found itself excluded from talks on deciding Europe’s future,” wherein he provides an answer to the following truism:

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In advance of the talks last week, Washington rhetorically agreed that European security cannot be decided over the heads of the EU and Ukraine, before then simply going ahead with the bilateral US-Russia format. Simply put, Washington cannot do diplomacy with Eurocrats in the room.

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But the most crucial cards Russia held were three additional Aces–The Three Cardinal OSCE Collective Security Treaties, The Charter for European Security, Istanbul 1999; The EU-Russia Common Spaces Agreement in 2005, signed in Moscow; and the latest, The “Astana Commemorative Declaration Towards a Security Community,” 2010.

Russia thus has a hand of 5 Aces, which are the two separate and later broken promises made regarding Germany’s reunification and Warsaw Pact’s decommissioning combined with no Eastern NATO movement, and the three separate OSCE Treaties on Collective European Security that all essentially say that no nation or group of nations can secure its/their security while making another nation insecure.

Either the Outlaw US Empire apologizes for its wrongdoings, or it breaks the three treaties atop the other two promises it’s already broken. Aside from overturning the card table, those are the only two possible outcomes. Russia has played its diplomatic hand superbly and has already won. The Anglo’s problem is which choice to make in reply.

What Blinken and NATO are doing is what sore losers and outlaws do when they’re caught-out–they draw their 6-gun. Clearly, the Outlaw US Empire can’t admit it was outplayed diplomatically, nor can it admit its dishonesty and issue an apology. It’s acting like a juvenile delinquent by throwing a temper tantrum.

China is in control of the automotive market

video 15MB

A Chinese-Russian Christmas tale ?

From HERE.

I spend my time, retreated from society, writing thinking and image-making. I’m presently writing a volume about Modernity. My perception is thus necessarily the long haul. Unfortunately these last few days the anti-system bloggers, who constitute my first source of information, were overtaken by too much fantasy for my taste.
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To console myself in this period of the Year I hereafter share a Geopolitical Christmas tale that is rooted in the last episodes of actuality.

As a preamble…

Power in today’s world is far more complex than a matter of military dominance. Moscow, Beijing and Washington have furthermore an acute understanding that the present Geopolitical contradictions can’t be solved by a world war which would simply cut the escape of their societies and plunge their citizens in a Berezina.

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In that sense Geopolitics has now to be viewed as the systemic complexity of the interactions between the open societal fields (internal and external) of all nations on earth.
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The present Geopolitical moment is a very special moment indeed. .

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    1. Two trends have been solidifying over the centuries of Western Modernity: On one side the center of gravity of the economy-world has been shifting, away from the West, toward East-Asia and more particularly toward China :
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        • This is the 8th such a shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world over the entire span of Modernity… What is different this time is that the center of gravity is leaving the territorial area of the Western civilization which explains the madness that has overtaken Western capitals

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      • On the other hand Western countries have been accumulating a multitude of side-effects over the last centuries of Modernity. The nature of these side-effects is double :  – damages to the habitat of living species (nature) through different forms of pollution – damages to the societal organization of the human species through the pollution of ever more individualism that is concluding presently with the cancer that is societal atomization.

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  1. The present moment is more particularly characterized by “The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity” :
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      • The convergence, within Western societies, of Neo-liberalism and Postmodernism has unleashed a superficial globalization of Western Modernity to the 4 corners of the world while internally this convergence has forced Western societies into – societal inequality – pauperism – hyper-individualism – a complete loss of meaning – an individual feeling of isolation – and so many more unfortunate facts that are all aspects of societal atomization which means that such societies are no longer united entities and in that sense successful collective undertakings are no longer in their reach (no shared worldview left to glue the individuals in a unified societal whole).

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      • The convergence, within nature, of a multitude of side-effects, that resulted from “the reason that is at work within the transformation of money into capital”,  were called “externalities” because capital refused to pay for eliminating their life disrupting character. These side-effects have thus been left to freely disrupt the equilibrium that has ensured the abundance of flora and fauna and more particularly the stability that ensured an ever increasing complexity of human societal life over the last 10,000 years.

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      • Lately the effects of these disruptions, within Western societies and within nature, have started to converge and are forcing humanity to face its predicament : “what now ?”. Most of us are oblivious to this predicament. But most scientists and some public decision-makers, a rarity in the West, are well aware of this situation… Those of us who listen carefully know for a fact that Beijing and Moscow are realist and are thus well aware of the extreme complexity of the present situation :

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        • An acute awareness has emerged in the minds of the realists that to face the predicament of humanity it is indispensable, first and foremost and also urgently, to solve 1.1. which basically calls for a new world order in which the West is forced to play by the new rules of the game that the community of nation decides upon.

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      • The United Nations’ effort to combat climate change has taught a few important lessons :
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        ***  the West will never contribute in an adequate manner for the bulk of externalities that it is directly responsible for
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        *** climate change is merely a symptom of the larger problem which is that the side-effects of Modernity are destroying the habitat of living species

A Geopolitical Christmas Tale…

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Moscow and Beijing are well aware of the disintegration of the cultural, social, and economic realities in the West that I sketched in 1.2. and in 2.  and they have patiently been waiting for the most propitious moment to initiate a strategy to placate the West. It so happens that their forecasting services alerted them to an exceptional convergence of factors that would culminate with the Beijing Winter Olympics.
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Whatever the Western propaganda might be trying to force in the minds, of the people of this earth, the fact of the matter is that Western countries, in 2020, have entered the greatest depression in the whole of Modernity and this depression is bound to last, at least 10 years but most probably more, creating massive poverty and misery while disintegrating the sickest among Western societies.
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Covid like a pin first deflated the Western financial bubble in 2020. The FED’s response was the shuffling of uncounted trillions of dollars of paper around the economy in the hope of igniting the animal spirits on Wall Street. This was realized, among other, by :

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—   Cutting Federal funds rate to a range of 0% to 0.25%
—   Purchasing massive amounts of debt securities with a questionable value
—   Colossal amounts of low interest rate loans to the largest primary dealers
—  Lending to banks against collateral in IOUs or commercial paper
—   Funneling cash to overnight repo-markets
—   Expansion of International swap lines
—   Massive amounts of funding to foreign central banks without swap lines
—   Cash to the banks against questionable paper collateral at the discount window
—   Support of the flow of credit to U.S. corporations
—   Lending to corporations through the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF)
—   Lending to households, consumers, and small businesses against asset-backed securities
—   Backstopping municipal and state borrowing
—   Etc…
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The result of this financial largess became visible in the second part of 2021. An ever increasing inflation sows misery in the poorest families and people resist this inflation by claiming higher wages which results in the multiplication of social conflicts.
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We furthermore recently discovered that all this would be topped this winter by a new wave of Covid infections. The forecasts indicate that the Omicron surge could push the number of infections to their highest level yet. The UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin projects that by the end of January, more than 500,000 people could catch the virus every day on average … with and estimated 3,876 deaths per day on average…
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In sum the West is confronted with :  societal disintegration + the greatest of all depressions + hyperinflation + social conflicts + a new Covid wave that could be worse than the earlier ones. The least we can say is that this is going to fatally weaken the US and the same can be said of Europe.
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And then came the following…

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2021-12-07 : Putin and Biden have a 2 hour video-talk about the Ukraine crisis.

2021-12-07 : President Biden says that putting American troops on the ground in Ukraine to deter a potential Russian invasion is “not on the table” and that he hoped there would be an announcement by Friday 9th of high-level meetings with Russia and major NATO allies to discuss Moscow’s “concerns relative to NATO writ large” and the possibility of “bringing down the temperature along the eastern front.”
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2021-12-15 :  Putin and Xi have a video call and discuss tensions in Europe and the “aggressive” U.S. and NATO rhetoric. Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, answered the following to a reporter who asked him what was the outcome of this video-call :
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“The world is witnessing the combined forces of changes and a pandemic both unseen in a century against the backdrop of complex and profound changes in the international and regional landscape. We believe that China and Russia, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, take on an important mission in defending regional peace and stability and promoting development and the revitalization of all countries.

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For some time, certain countries have been drawing ideological lines, building new military blocs and stoking regional tensions, which have all brought grave threats and challenges to regional peace and stability and global strategic stability. China and Russia firmly reject this.
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We will continue to follow the two leaders’ consensus, take up responsibility, unite all forces that love peace and support peace, and make active contribution to realizing sustained, universal and common security in the region and the wider world.”.There was no way for China to assert more clearly that it is siding with Russia in its demands…  but everyone seems to have missed the seriousness of the Chinese side ……except for M. K. Bhadrakumar who is one of the most lucid observers out there.Few people understand the meaning of the expression “the two leaders’ consensus”.  This expression relates to the will of their countries to see these two leaders in place for the long haul during the stabilization of the post-Western world order.Both countries, not in their unanimity but certainly in their large majority, have sensed since some years already that they have someone unique in  their present president. A person who outshines the other decision-makers around them in term of their stamina and their mental clarity. How is it possible, that the West does not get this, is beyond my understanding ?.2021-12-17 : Moscow releases the texts of two documents in the form of two draft treaties that many interpreted as an ultimatum of Russia to the West.2021-12-17 : Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg asserts the alliance’s prerogative to intervene in Ukraine and bluntly rejects Moscow’s notions that it could have a say on the alliance’s future expansion plans.2021-12-19 :  Christine Lambrecht, German Minister of Defense, Asserts that NATO was willing to discuss Moscow’s demands but would not allow Moscow to “dictate” to the alliance or its partners.By the 20th of December Western media were littered with articles belittling the partnership between China and Russia as “still having an artificial flavor” and suggesting that China would never fight the US along Russia.
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Ultimately, they proclaim, Russia will join the West in defeating China.
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But this is the propaganda of a rear guard of Western ideologues who are bluffing their way trying to force their madness on all nations that refuse to submit to their unilateral order.
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The Russian treaty/ultimatum has to be understood as a first act in a wider strategy that is being played out, in concert by Russia and China, in order to provoke the financial and economic fall of the US.
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But why pushing the US to fall precisely now ?

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Well the present context offers a unique opportunity. The Chinese sages never tired to repeat that if you are forced to fight you do it when your enemy is at its weakest !  And the present Geopolitical context announces the coming of the peak bacterial catalysis infesting Western wounds. This is why pushing the US to fall precisely now has the best chances to succeed.
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Now about China. It is without any doubt an a-religious country.

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Its early-power society grew, as the outcome of the cultural unification of its tribes, sometimes between 6000 and 5000 years ago. And thereafter it constantly actualized animism with present changing trends by topping it with add-ons in the same way as open-source software integrates innovations from the community… Now animism was a highly pragmatic knowledge formation approach that is rooted in observation over the very long haul that led to the induction of abstract principles from this observation. Animism remains in application today in its appellation of “Chinese Traditional Culture” which is  a form of animism+.
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This means that China is — a-religious — highly pragmatic — and a reserved nation with reserved individuals.
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What this means is that the Chinese thinking is not driven by ideology and is not experiencing the need to impose itself on others. Having said that the Chinese have been observing the vile racist aggression coming out of the West over the last few years. They have spoken little. They have observed and have been thinking hard. And now they are at the end of their strategic patience. Chinese leaders know darn well that they have not much of a history in diplomacy which means, if I may say so, that their practice has not had the time yet to grow into a perfectly polished whole. That is why China, in all humility, openly recognizes Russia’s ‘panache’ in the diplomatic field and now relies on it to position its own.
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So it was only natural for China to let Russia publicly initiate the decisive movement forward in their common play for a new world order. China publicly sided with Russia when it announced its treaty-proposal/ultimatum and what is most important is that China detains the weapon of last resort which is the termination of US dollar payments for the delivery of its goods and services. ;
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Fast forward…

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Russian leaders have informed their Western counterparts that if they do not start to negotiate soon they will take the necessary technical measures to make them understand that they are deadly serious. It seems that Westerners have understood this part of Russia’s argument. Russian leaders even went further and informed very publicly that if the West was participating in negotiations in order to drag them down they would use their technical means to awake Western attention.
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The latest news is now that negotiations will start in the beginning of January 2022. In the eyes of the Russians one month is amply sufficient to reach an agreement and if there is no agreement by the end of the month they say that they will act.
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Coincidentally President Putin and President Xi will meet in Beijing to open the Winter Olympics on the 4th  of February 2022 at Beijing National Stadium.  The Russian timing of the conclusion of its negotiations with the US and Nato coincides thus with the very public and media relayed meeting of President Putin and President Xi !  Ho ho…
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Now the fact is that the discourse of Russian leaders leaves no place for a 3rd alternative as a possible outcome of these talks. From what we hear it is  —  or “we have a deal” and the West accepts a retreat to its posture before the fall of the Soviet Union  —  or “we have no deal” and China and Russia, on the 4th of February, announce their further game-plan to the world.
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Some Russian officials have already announced that one of the measures that they could take if there is no agreement is to refuse payment in dollars for any goods they export…

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And the fact is that China’s Digital Yuan is ready for use by the Chinese public at large. By October there were already 140 million people who had opened “wallets” and remember that this digital yuan has been designed, over the last 7 years, to act as a new technical payment system for international exchanges that will thus for the first time be free of Swift’s intervention and Washington’s judicial long arm…
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This Digital Yuan will also be connected to block-chains that will handle  the currency exchange between Yuan and local currency, the final payment as well as tax matters, transportation matters,… all this promises to erase the hefty bank commissions and lengthy bureaucratic delays which should catch the attention of the buyers of Chinese goods while reducing the volume of exchanges in US dollars.
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To get a sense of how the digital Yuan is going to impact the world watch these 2 interviews of Richard Turrin who is one of the most knowledgeable English speakers about the subject.

Excuse my bluntness…

You tell ’em! Video. 15MB

Humanity’s fate will most probably be decided in this first quarter of 2022

The first quarter of 2022 will most probably be remembered, for a long time to come, for having decided humanity’s model of collective response to “the Great Convergence of Late-Modernity“. If I’m proven right then what happens in this month of January will be determinant for the future of humanity.
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So how best can we summarize the situation ?

1.  The general context of the 2020’s

To understand what is humanity’s present situation we have first to comprehend the context in which the nations on this earth are interacting today.
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1.1. The countering of Western hubris

After the fall of the Soviet-Union the West got caught up in a bout of hubris that completely detached it from reality. It thought that its liberal world order had triumphed, that history was coming to an end, and that it got crowned master of humanity. But the nature of reality is a bitch. It always finishes by erasing what goes against its way.
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So how is the nature of reality countering Western ways  ?
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1.1.1. The relations between nations are conditioned by the realities of their internal situations

    • societal cohesion glues the minds of the individual citizens in a collective entity that acts as one entity.    The fact of the matter is that Russia, China, and other non-Western countries are strong and cohesive societies.

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    • societal atomization un-glues the minds and makes it impossible for a nation to continue to act as one national entity.   The fact is that Western nations have engaged on an individualist path since many centuries and over the last 50 years they have atomized in a mass of self-centered egos who can no longer act as one nation.

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  • the fact of the matter is that societally atomized nations, in all circumstances, lose to societally cohesive nations

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1.1.2. Reactions to a Western centric International order

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Confronted to Western centric International organizations, that one-sidedly protect Western interests while their governance systems are one-sidedly being kept in the hands of Western countries, China and the bulk of the world population are creating new International institutions that better cater to their interests :  — the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)   — the Belt and roads (new Silk Roads) —  and the next institution that will dethrone the dollar of its world monetary reserve status could very well be on its way…
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Such new institutions are the sole defense mechanisms against Western non-democratic practices within the present international order. See for yourself.

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Europe has 2 representatives in the Security Council of the United Nations while India, Africa, the Tri-Continental-Area, and Latin-America have no representatives.
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This gives the West a majority in the Security-Council with a veto power while it barely representsely 10% of the world population.
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The same kind of hegemonic domineering is at work at the world Bank where the US has 15.56 % of the voting rights. Japan has 7.31 %. China has 5.42%. Germany has 4.17 %. The United-Kingdom has 4.05 %. France has 4.05 %,  India has 3.16%. Russia has 2.87%. Canada has 2.82 %. etc…
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Now the fact is that the deeper, the existing Western order is being countered by new institutions, the weaker that order becomes and the more pressing is the agreement, of all countries on this earth, about the structuring of a new system of world governance that could take on the predicament of humanity.
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Conscious of this China and Russia think that the time has come to confront the West to the realities of the present context.

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1.1.3. Fiat money is an instrument of exchange that is ruled by two First Principles

    • Contrary to what ideologies are peddling the money in circulation must be sufficient but may not surpass the exchanging needs of society. In other words, within the realm of the economic rules of the game, the economic actors need to have access to money in order to practice their exchanges. If the money in circulation does not satisfy their needs then the value of that money starts to increase and prices start to fall bringing about an era of deflation. But when the money in circulation surpasses their needs that money starts to lose its value and prices start to increase bringing an era of inflation.
      .
      The US has without a shred of a doubt engaged in monetary hubris over the last decades and more particularly over the last 3 years when the volume of dollars in circulation abruptly increased by nearly 50% while the economic activity of the country was flat at a near 0% growth rate !  In this context it is not surprising that reality would slowly be re-imposing its way. As a consequence the value of the dollar started to decrease and US citizens are confronted to increasing prices. Seen the canyon full of recent dollar creation there is no escaping its rout in value. US citizens will thus be forced to confront hyper-inflation while foreign exporters to the US will not escape the necessity to increase their prices. Some might even soon refuse to be paid in US dollars all together.
      .
      These realities are inescapable and the most important question that nobody dares to ask is “what happens when China refuses dollars as payment for its exports ?”.

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  • To use a fiat currency it is imperative that the citizens and the International community trust the emitter of that fiat currency. A dwindling trust in the emitter comes at the cost of the value of its currency and the citizens as well as the International community start to look for alternatives.
    .
    US citizens have visibly lost trust in the emitter of the dollar and those who are awake to the nature of monetary realities are converting their dollars in all kinds of other instruments among which cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are the most visible. But citizens are also converting their fiat dollars in many other items like : art works, antiques, real estate, farming land, raw materials and all kinds of “real non-perishable goods”.  The International community has also taken notice and is reducing its holdings of US paper instruments while converting those in “real non-perishable goods”. Another avenue that the International community has been exploring is  — the replacement of Swift as the exclusive intermediary of International transfers of US dollars  — the replacement of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. China and Russia have created their own swift and China’s digital Yuan is available to import and export companies from China or working with China. If interested to understand how the system works watch these 2 interviews of Richard Turrin who is one of the most knowledgeable English speakers about the subject.
    China’s Central Bank Digital Currency by Fat Tail Investment Research
    Big Tech in China and the Digital Yuan by Oriol Caudevilla

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1.1.4. The military is a tool of last resort

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In a last resort the nation with the most potent military always comes out of the conflict as a winner takes all and it then automatically becomes the architect of the next cycle of International relations.

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2.  The present situation

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Russia feels cornered its back against a wall and it has had enough of all the bullying by Western nations.

2.1. The first round

In the words of President Putin Russia has no margin left to take a step back against the Western encirclement and it wants written guarantees about the principles of a level playing field that will give all parties confidence in their security. To that effect Russia proposed 2 treaties between itself and the West and its military-wing Nato. It also informed the West and the world that the negotiations needed to be short and to the point and that the treaties need to be signed immediately. If these conditions are not respected President Putin and others in his administration have informed that Russia would take appropriate military and technical actions to protect itself against what they describe is the naked aggression by the West against Russia’s sovereignty..

2.2. The 2nd round

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Some Western representatives rejected any compromise with Russia and in the footsteps of this news a propaganda campaign was launched against the imminent attack of Ukraine by Russia. Russia repeatedly denied this accusation and gave the West a time limit to answer its treaty proposals in writing. If no answer is forthcoming Russia promises to act. The West then proposed a meeting between the US Secretary of State and the Russian Foreign Minister. This proposal seems to have been accepted by Russia which shows that its answer would be so grave that it prefers to try once more the diplomatic card. But by the end of this week, by the 22nd or 23rd of January, Russia will need an answer on the table or its credibility will be tested indeed and so it will be forced to act.

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2.3. The US plays the madman

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The United-States are playing the role of the madman that President Richard Nixon had initiated against the Soviet Union in the nineteen-sixties and they are betting that the Russians will not dare to confront them. But the fact is that President Putin would never engage in a dog-fight that he knew he could not win.

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3.  Without a deal Russia will move to shell-shock the USA back into reality

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In matter of fact only a very profound shock will awake Western big capital holders, and their servants the American and European public decision-makers, to the reality that their countries are cornered and have lost their military superiority.
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What kind of action could this be ?

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Military experts are without any doubt better equipped than I’m to answer this question. But it nevertheless seems to me that, in today’s web addicted world what will be determinant in Russia’s action will be to gain the world’s attention to the fact that the USA has been duly informed about the superiority of Russian missiles. In consequence Russian actions will be limited; sparing lives but destroying US and Nato most crucial infrastructure.
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This vision gambles on the following facts :

    • Russia has assurances from China that it stands ready to act

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    • the minds of US and European decision-makers are very deeply embroiled in ideology and can thus no longer think straight along the lines of reality

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    • to be shocked back into reality will unmistakably be sobering the minds of Western populations

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    • the minds of US old male decision-makers are still emotionally attached to the future fate of their grand-kids

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  • all this should unleash sufficient pressure in the minds of US decision-makers to stand back and try to find a face-saving solution that the Russians and the Chinese can agree with.
However one looks at today’s situation the fact of the matter is that not acting now equals to further submit the world to Western diktats that become more egregious by the day. This would necessarily lead to an outcome that is far worse than whatever would be the outcome of the Russian-Chinese gamble that I have tried to describe.
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USA policy is for the wealthy only

video 4MB

We’ve Seen the Ultimatum, What Is the “or Else”?

We are making it clear that we are ready to talk about changing from a military or a military-technical scenario to a political process that really will strengthen the military security… of all the countries in the OCSE, Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian space. We’ve told them that if that doesn’t work out, we will create counter-threats; then it will be too late to ask us why we made such decisions and positioned such weapons systems. 

Мы как раз даем понять, что мы готовы разговаривать о том, чтобы военный сценарий или военно-технический сценарий перевести в некий политический процесс, который реально укрепит военную безопасность <…> всех государств на пространстве ОБСЕ, Евроатлантики, Евразии. А если этого не получится, то мы уже обозначили им (НАТО – прим. ТАСС), тогда мы тоже перейдем в вот этот режим создания контругроз, но тогда будет поздно нас спрашивать, почему мы приняли такие решения, почему мы разместили такие системы. 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko quoted by TASS

Moscow has issued an ultimatum to USA/NATO. It is this: seriously negotiate on the issues laid out here and here. Some of them are non-negotiable.

Ultimatums always have an “Or Else” clause. What is the “or else” in this case? I don’t know but I’ve been thinking and reading other peoples’ thoughts and some ideas/guesses/suppositions follow. They are the order that they occurred to me. Whether Moscow has such a list in front of it or not, it certainly has many “counter-threats” it can use.

Why now? Two possible answers, each of which may be true. US/NATO have been using “salami tactics” against Russia for years; Moscow has decided that a second Ukraine crisis in one year is one thin slice too many. Second: Moscow may judge that, in the USA’s precipitous decline, this will be the last chance that there will be sufficient central authority to form a genuine agreement; an agreement that will avoid a catastrophic war. (The so-called Thucydides Trap).

Of course I don’t know what Putin & Co will do and we do have to factor in the existence of a new international player: Putin, Xi and Partners. Xi has just made it clear that Beijing supports Moscow’s “core interests”. It is likely that any “counter-threats” will be coordinated. The Tabaquis have responded as expected but maybe (let’s hope so) Washington is taking it more seriously.

Other commentaries I think are worth reading: Martyanov, Bernhard, Saker, Doctorow. The Western media is worthless as a source of independent thinking (typical clichéfest from the BBC – bolstered by The Misquotation) but maybe the WaPo shows that the wind is starting to blow from a different quarter: “The Cold War is over. Why do we still treat Russia like the Evil Empire?

To my CSIS readers: the world is at a grave inflection point and the West had better concentrate its attention. Moscow and Beijing don’t depend on me for advice and I’m not talking to them: regard this as one of the briefing notes that I used to write. Moscow is serious and it does have real “counter-threats”.

MILITARY MEASURES

  • Moscow could publish a list of targets in NATO countries that can and will be hit by nuclear or non-nuclear standoff weapons in the event of hostilities. These would likely include headquarters, airbases, port facilities, logistics facilities, ammunition dumps, military bases, munitions factories and so on.
  • Moscow could station medium and short-range nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad and Belarus. The latter requires agreement from Minsk but Belarus President Lukashenka has hinted that it will be granted. Moscow could then make it clear that they are aimed at NATO targets.
  • Moscow could station Iskanders and have lots of aircraft in the air with Kinzhals and let it be known that they are aimed at NATO targets.
  • Moscow could make a sudden strike by stand-off weapons and special forces that destroys the Azov Battalion in Eastern Ukraine. Moscow would see two advantages: 1) it would remove the principal threat to the LDNR and 2) it would change the correlation of forces in Kiev. It would also be a live demonstration of Russia’s tremendous military power.
  • Moscow could remind the West of the meaning of Soviet Marshal Ogarkov’s observation that precision weapons have, to a degree, made nuclear weapons obsolete. A prescient remark, somewhat ahead of its time 35 years ago, but realised now by Russia’s arsenal of hypersonic precision missiles.
  • The Russian Navy operates the quietest submarines in the world; Moscow could could make and publish a movie of the movements of some NATO ship as seen through the periscope.
  • I believe (suspect/guess) that the Russian Armed Forces have the capability to blind Aegis-equipped ships. Moscow could do so in public in a way that cannot be denied. Without Aegis, the US surface navy is just targets. Objection: this is a war-winning secret and should not be lightly used. Unless, of course, the Russian Armed Forces have something even more effective.
  • Russia has large and very powerful airborne forces – much stronger than the light infantry of other countries, they are capable of seizing and holding territory against all but heavy armoured attacks. And they’re being increased. Moscow could demonstrate their capability in an exercise showing a sudden seizing of key enemy facilities like a port or major airfield, inviting NATO representatives to watch from the target area.
  • The Russian Armed Forces could do some obvious targetting of the next NATO element to come close to Russia’s borders; they could aggressively ping ships and aircraft that get too close and publicise it.
  • Moscow could make a public demonstration of what Poseidons can do and show in a convincing way that they are at sea off the US coast. Ditto with Burevestnik. In short Moscow could directly threaten the US mainland with non-nuclear weapons. Something that no one has been able to do since 1814.
  • Does the Club-K Container Missile System actually exist? (If so, Moscow could give a public demonstration, if not pretend that it does). Either way, Moscow could publicly state that they will be all over the place and sell them to countries threatened by USA/NATO.

DIPLOMATIC/INTERNATIONAL MEASURES

  • Moscow could publicly transfer some key military technologies to China with licence to build them there.
  • Moscow could make a formal military treaty with China with an “Article 5” provision.
  • Moscow could make a formal military treaty with Belarus including significant stationed strike forces.
  • Moscow could station forces in Central Asian neighbours.
  • Russia and Chinese warships accompanied by long-range strike aircraft could do a “freedom of navigation” cruise in the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Moscow could recall ambassadors, reduce foreign missions, restrict movement of diplomats in Russia.
  • Moscow could ban all foreign NGOs immediately without going through the present process.
  • Moscow could recognise LDNR and sign defence treaties.
  • Moscow could work on Turkey, Hungary and other dissident EU/NATO members.
  • Moscow could give military aid to or station weapons in Western Hemisphere countries.
  • Beijing could do something in its part of the world to show its agreement and coordination with Moscow raising the threat of a two front conflict.

ECONOMIC MEASURES

  • Moscow could close airspace to civil airlines of the countries that sanction Russia.
  • Moscow could declare that Russian exports must now be paid for in Rubles, gold, Renminbi or Euros (Euros? It depends).
  • Moscow could announce that Nord Stream 2 will be abandoned if certification if delayed past a certain date. (Personally, I am amused by how many people think that shutting it down would cause more harm to Russia than to Germany: for the first it’s only money and Russia has plenty of that; for the second….)
  • Moscow could stop all sales of anything to USA (rocket motors and oil especially).
  • Moscow could announce that no more gas contracts to countries that sanction it will be made after the current ones end. This is a first step. See below.
  • As a second and more severe step, Moscow could break all contracts with countries that sanction Russia on the grounds that a state of hostility exists. That is, all oil and gas deliveries stop immediately.
  • Moscow could announce that no more gas will be shipped to or through Ukraine on the grounds that a state of hostility exists.
  • Russia and China could roll out their counter-SWIFT ASAP.

SUBVERSIVE MEASURES

  • Moscow could stir up trouble in eastern Ukraine (Novorossiya) supporting secession movements.
  • Moscow could order special forces to attack key nazi organisations throughout Ukraine.
  • Moscow could order special forces to attack military facilities throughout Ukraine.

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But I’m sure that whatever “counter-threats” Moscow comes up with will be powerful and surprise the West. My recommendation is that USA/NATO take the ultimatums seriously.

After all, the Russian proposals really are mutually beneficial – their theme is that nobody should threaten anybody and if anybody should feel threatened, there should be serious talks to resolve the issue.

Security is mutual:

if all feel secure, then all are secure;

if one feels insecure, then none is secure.

As we now see: when Russia feels threatened by what USA/NATO do, it can threaten back. Better to live in a world in which nobody is threatening anybody and everybody feels secure.

George Kennan foresaw this a quarter of a century ago:

I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. 

Some great marching

You know, I’ve never really paid attention to the “goose step” march. But when I came to China I learned taht it is realy just a part of what is a much more interesting march. It’s worh the watch. video 17MB

CAN THEY LEARN? ANOTHER US WARGAME DEFEAT

 

First published Strategic Culture Foundation. picked up by ZeroHedge, Verity Weekly, scottadamsshow, usanewsguru, invest.smola.com, alltopcash.com, patriotnews, financial world, in Spanish,

(Note: by tradition, going back to the first Prussian Kriegsspiel, your side is “Blue”, the other side is “Red”. Soviets did it the other way round.)

According to David Halberstam, when Washington was considering escalating its presence in Vietnam, a wargame was held to test options. More bombing aircraft were put into airfields in Vietnam; Red attacked the airfields. Blue brought in more troops to guard the airfields; Red started attacking the supply lines for those troops. More troops to guard the supply lines; more attacks on their support systems. And so on: everything the American side thought up was quickly and easily countered by the Vietnam team. The results were ignored: only a game, not really real.

Forward to 2002 and a very large and complicated exercise simulating a US attack on – not named, but obviously – Iran. The retired USMC general playing Red – a no-nonsense experienced soldier who didn’t believe technology was the answer to everything (especially the projected wonders that the wargame granted to the American side), scorned business-school buzzwords like “network-centric” – thought outside the box and used low-tech weaponry. When the US high-tech took out his communications, as he knew they would, he went silent – his communications were by motorcycle dispatch riders, coded messages in Friday prayers and similar old-school techniques. He fired more missiles that the Blue side could handle and sank most of the invasion force and finished off the rest with swarms of small boats. “The whole thing was over in five, maybe ten minutes“. The invasion force was brought back to life, the rules were modified to reduce the defenders’ abilities – the Red force commander was on the point of destroying the reconstituted landing forces – and the US side “won”. He walked out when he decided that the game was too rigged for him to bother doing anything; as he said in a report: “this whole thing was prostituted; it was a sham intended to prove what they wanted to prove“.

Each of these wargames was supposed to be a learning and testing experience. The first was testing what to do and how to do it in Vietnam, the second, more ambitious, was supposed to test the whole package of the new US military in every aspect – it is said to have cost a quarter of a billion dollars and involved 13,000 participants. What was learned from the two? Certainly nothing was learned from the Vietnam wargame – Washington went ahead and put troops in – just a few at first but rising to an incredible 500,000 at the height and dropped a fantastic number of bombs; corners were turned, light was seen at the end of the tunnel but everyone knew it was a lost cause and no one wanted to say so. The enemy countered and endured everything and, at the end, the US went home defeated. The war game turned out to be a rather accurate predictor of the future. And it doesn’t appear that the US military have learned anything from the 2002 experience either. Certainly nothing in Washington’s behaviour towards Iran gives the impression that the US leadership imagines it could be defeated if it attacks Iran.

Nor, come to think of it, is there evidence that it learned anything much from the Vietnam reality either. Afghanistan was, in many respects, a replay of Vietnam: a determined low-tech force countered everything the US military could think up. In 2018, Les Gelb, the compiler of the Pentagon Papers said:

You know, we get involved in these wars and we don’t know a damn thing about those countries, the culture, the history, the politics, people on top and even down below. And, my heavens, these are not wars like World War II and World War I, where you have battalions fighting battalions. These are wars that depend on knowledge of who the people are, with the culture is like. And we jumped into them without knowing. That’s the damned essential message of the Pentagon Papers.

And now we move forward two decades. Last October another wargame simulated a US defence of Taiwan against a Chinese attack. Another test of some high-falutin war-fighting concept. (One might parenthetically ask how many of these concepts are actually business-school ideas given the predilection of US generals for MBAs. Probably the worst imaginable preparation for what our USMC “Iranian” commander called a “terrible, uncertain, chaotic, bloody business“.) General John Hyten, Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman, and MBA, reported on the wargame:

Without overstating the issue, [Blue force] failed miserably. An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us. They knew exactly what we’re going to do before we did it.

The first thing that went wrong for the Blue force was that it suddenly lost all its communicationsas I have been saying (and the Chinese and Russians surely know) one of the fundamental assumptions of the US style in war-fighting is constant, reliable, assured communications. All its “smart” weapons need to be “talking” to their controllers all the time: stop the “talking” and they become immediately “stupid”. Then the US force was hit with wave after wave of missiles. And the rear areas were hit with waves of missiles. And that was that. And, in another wargame in 2020, Poland was annihilated by the Russians: Warsaw was surrounded in five days.

What stood out for me in Hyten’s refreshingly honest presentation was this: “studying the United States for the last 20 years”. Washington officials are not noted for their ability to see things from the other side’s point of view, but he certainly got that one right. China (and Russia and Iran) know that they are on Washington’s hitlist. They have been watching Washington fight wars for two or three decades (winning none of them, despite the hype); they know how Washington fights; they know its strengths and weaknesses. They have put a lot of thought into it. One might also observe that, while Washington fights its wars safely overseas, China, Russia and Iran have very strong memories of wars fought on their own territory. This gives them, as Andrei Martyanov is always pointing out, a rather different view of war – it’s not some affair of choice far away over there, it’s a horrible, deadly, bloody, immensely destructive process in your own home.

The United States has zero historic experience with defending the US proper against powerful and brutal enemies. It is a cultural difference, a profound one and it manifests itself across the whole spectrum of activities, not just the respective military-industrial complexes. In other words, Russians MUST build top of the line weaponry, because the safety of Russia depends on it.

Losing for them is not the American way of losing – no walking away, explaining away and forgetting away: it’s life or death. They take war seriously and they put the effort into thinking about how to defend themselves against an American attack. They know that air superiority and assured communications are the necessities of the American way of war; they know the US military expects to accumulate huge forces undisturbed. They haven’t used these years idly; they won’t wait for the Americans to leisurely assemble the force to bomb them. That’s why they have concentrated on EW and lots of missiles. The US won’t have secure communications, free air power or safe bases: Beijing. Moscow and Tehran, if they have to fight, will fight to win. And do whatever it takes; no umpire will appear to “call foul” and re-float the fleet.

In the real world, Ukraine’s “de-occupation” boasting was silenced in two weeks by a huge Russian mobilisation. Surely somebody in the Pentagon noticed that. HMS Defender’s adventure off Crimea (incidently the only one of the six ships of its class actually fit for sea – not, in itself, a very impressive performance) may also have taught some lessons about the consequences of silly gestures.

Nothing was learned from the Vietnam or Iran wargames, what about this one? General Hyten said:

the U.S. has reevaluated the joint warfighting concept. He said the new strategy being developed is “not quite a clean-sheet approach, because you can never take a clean sheet of paper if you want to get between now and 2030, you have to start with what you have.”

That sounds good – “clean-sheet” – but you know that nothing will really change. Vietnam was supposed to teach a lesson (and the US Army certainly did improve) but, essentially, it did the same things all over again in Afghanistan. For twice as long. I doubt that this exercise will cause the full-scale change that he’s talking about. Complacency will probably return.

Even so, one would like to be a fly on the wall when US senior military brief the President: “failed miserably”, Afghanistan defeat (coming soon to Iraq and Syria), Russian and Chinese military power, hypersonic manoeuvring missiles, EW, layered air defence. The briefings can’t be too upbeat, can they? Could this be why the big exercise in the Black Sea ended so quietly? Could this be in the background of the decision to stop trying to block Nord Stream? Could this be a reason why Biden asked to meet with Putin? The couch-warriors will never understand this of course, but perhaps one can hope that the generals will – Hyten seems to have but, just as American wars are a sequence of one-year wars because each commander kicks the failure down the road for his successor to worry about, his replacement may return to the complacency of being at the top of “the greatest military in the history of the world“.

But, one can hope they’ll learn a little humility.

A reality check on American “democracy”

Video 5MB

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 20 JANUARY 2022 by Patrick Armstrong

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ULTIMATUM. The EU is not in the picture – too weak and the US won’t fight for it; NATO ditto. Do Berlin and Paris start to see reality? London has invited Shoygu but is shipping PAWs to Ukraine. Russia keeps up the pressure – a not-very-reliable source says a nuke boat surfaced off the US coast. Lots of exercises – Guards Tank Army, social media videos of military equipment moving around. Live firing of the formidable Iskanders. Lost submarines in the Med. A representative tough-guy piece from a couch warrior (she of we have good int on Russia fame). It is now clear the US/EU/NATO are not going to fight for Ukraine – empty threats and futile sanctions are all Kiev can expect. But the SWIFT threat would be a big shot to the foot. Somebody notices that Russia is pretty sanction proof (Googlish from INOSMI). In short, Russia pretty much has the hammer. We see the fruits of Putin & Co’s long game.

DONBASS. It should be understood that the official position in Moscow at present is that the rebel areas are part of Ukraine and the Minsk Agreement provides a method for resolving grievances. (Note, BTW, given the constant refrain that Moscow must “comply”, that it has no obligation). But this position could suddenly change given that Kiev has never fulfilled any part (especially No 4) and that Kiev’s “allies” haven’t tried to make it. One of the many possible “Or Elses“.

GUNS. Improved Pantsir AD system coming. Completely modernised White Swan makes maiden flight. Three new subs this year. China-Russia-Iran naval drills start tomorrow.

TALK SHOWS. Russian TV loves long talk shows – Doctorow has an interesting piece on one of the most important. “Russian elites talk WAR: ‘Evening with Vladimir Solovyov,’”

PEDOPHILES. The Duma has passed a bill providing for life imprisonment for serial pedophiles.

HACKERS. Russian security is arresting members of the REvil hacking group at Washington’s request. They are thought to be behind the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline last year.

COVID. The Duma has postponed a bill requiring QR code proof of vaccination. There is a good deal of resistance to this in Russia.

NAVALIY. Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov, close allies of Navalniy, have been added to the state register of extremists. Neither is in Russia.

RUSSIAN DOLPHINS OFF US COAST. For your amusement.

CIA TRAINING. We learn that the CIA has been running training programs in Ukraine since 2014. Moscow has a good deal of experience of dealing with Washington-supported nazi resistance in Ukraine.

GALICIA. Anybody know why Ioseb Bissarionis-dze decided to put it in the Ukrainian SSR rather than giving it back to Poland in 1945? An important decision as it’s turned out.

KAZAKHSTAN. That didn’t take long, did it? All the CSTO troops are back home. They say at least 225 (including 19 police and soldiers) died, about 4500 injured. A lot of people in the security organs have been arrested, starting with Masimov, the head of the National Security Committee, some defenestrated; so the plot ran deep. (Here’s a photo of Masimov with – of all people – Hunter and Joe). If this were an attempt by some part of the US deep state to answer Moscow, it only shows how profoundly out of touch they are. Nazarbayev appears, everything’s calm. Interesting take on what it was all about here.

LESSONS LEARNED. Little countries often try to play off the big guys against each other. But Kazakhstan and Belarus have just learned that this isn’t possible today because Washington wants total control. Others will learn from these examples.

NUGGETS FROM THE STUPIDITY MINE. I don’t remember Soviet propagandists assuming their consumers to be as stupid as the creators of this do. Ummm – you told us that Putin tried to kill him, he’s completely in his power now: shouldn’t you at least spend a little effort coming up with some explanation for why he’s still alive to give interviews to you?

THE EMPTINESS OF FORMER FLAPS. ICAO supports Minsk on the Ryanair grounding last year – a few inconsistencies but no “air piracy“. And “Havana syndrome” bites the dust. Ah well, on to the next…

RUSSIA-IRAN. The two Presidents are meeting. The beginning of something big. Very Mackinderish.

SWEDEN. This week drones, last week the Russians were going to snatch Gotland. Years ago somebody in the Swedish security apparatus told me that these stories – “submarine sightings” in those days – were faked up by the people in the Swedish security organs who want it to join NATO.

A treaty with Washington isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. That’s just how I see it, surely saner and smarter men have also noticed this.

-Baxter

American Homeless

video 63MB

What War With Russia Would Look Like

Wendy Sherman thinks her aim in talks with Russian officials starting Monday is to lecture them on the cost of hubris. Instead she’s set to lead the U.S., NATO, and Europe down a path of ruin, warns Scott Ritter.
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If ever a critical diplomatic negotiation was doomed to fail from the start, the discussions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine and Russian security guarantees is it.

The two sides can’t even agree on an agenda.

From the Russian perspective, the situation is clear:

“The Russian side came here [to Geneva] with a clear position that contains a number of elements that, to my mind, are understandable and have been so clearly formulated—including at a high level—that deviating from our approaches simply is not possible,”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the press after a pre-meeting dinner on Sunday hosted by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who is leading the U.S. delegation.

Ryabkov was referring Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands to U.S. President Joe Biden in early December regarding Russian security guarantees, which were then laid out by Moscow in detail in the form of two draft treaties, one a Russian-U.S. security treaty, the other a security agreement between Russia and NATO.

The latter would bar Ukraine from joining NATO and rule out any eastward expansion by the trans-Atlantic military alliance. At the time, Ryabkov tersely noted that the U.S. should immediately begin to address the proposed drafts with an eye to finalizing something when the two sides meet. Now, with the meeting beginning on Monday, it doesn’t appear as if the U.S. has done any such thing.

“[T]he talks are going to be difficult,” Ryabkov told reporters after the dinner meeting. “They cannot be easy. They will be business-like. I think we won’t waste our time tomorrow.”

When asked if Russia was ready to compromise, Ryabkov tersely responded, “The Americans should get ready to reach a compromise.”

All the U.S. has been willing to do, it seems, is to remind Russia of so-called “serious consequences” should Russia invade Ukraine, something the U.S. and NATO fear is imminent, given the scope and scale of recent Russian military exercises in the region involving tens of thousands of troops. This threat was made by Biden to Putin on several occasions, including a phone call initiated by Putin last week to help frame the upcoming talks.

Yet on the eve of the Ryabkov-Sherman meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken simply reiterated these threats, declaring that Russia would face “massive consequences” if it invaded Ukraine.

“It’s clear that we’ve offered him two paths forward,” Blinken said, speaking of Putin. “One is through diplomacy and dialogue; the other is through deterrence and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression against Ukraine. And we’re about to test the proposition of which path President Putin wants to take this week.”

Lessons of History

It is as if both Biden and Blinken are deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to reading Russia.

Ryabkov has alluded to a fact already made clear by the Russians—there will be no compromise when it comes to Russia’s legitimate national security interests. And if the U.S. cannot understand how the accumulation of military power encompassed in a military alliance which views Russia as a singular, existential threat to its members’ security is seen by Russia as threatening, then there is no comprehension of how the events of June 22, 1941 have shaped the present -day Russian psyche, why Russia will never again allow such a situation to occur, and why the talks are doomed before they even begin.

As for the American threats, Russia has given its response—any effort to sanction Russia would result, as Putin told Biden last month, in a “complete rupture of relations” between Russia and those countries attempting sanctions. One need not be a student of history to comprehend that the next logical step following a “complete rupture of relations” between two parties that are at loggerheads over matters pertaining to existential threats to the national security of one or both is not the peaceful resumption of relations, but war.

There is no mealy-mouthed posturing by Foggy Bottom peacocks taking place in Moscow, but rather a cold, hard, statement of fact—ignore Russia’s demands at you own peril. The U.S., it seems, believes that the worst-case scenario is one where Russia invades Ukraine, only to wilt under the sustained pressure of economic sanctions and military threats.

Russia’s worse-case scenario is one where it engages in armed conflict with NATO.

Generally speaking, the side that is most prepared for the reality of armed conflict will prevail.

Russia has been preparing for this possibility for more than a year. It has repeatedly shown a capability to rapidly mobilize 100,000-plus combat-ready forces in short order. NATO has shown an ability to mobilize 30,000 after six-to-nine-months of extensive preparations.

The Shape of War

What would a conflict between Russia and NATO look like? In short, not like anything NATO has prepared for. Time is the friend of NATO in any such conflict—time to let sanctions weaken the Russian economy, and time to allow NATO to build up sufficient military power to be able to match Russia’s conventional military strength.

Russia knows this, and as such, any Russian move will be designed to be both swift and decisive.

First and foremost, if it comes to it, when Russia decides to move on Ukraine, it will do so with a plan of action that has been well-thought out and which sufficient resources have been allocated for its successful completion. Russia will not get involved in a military misadventure in Ukraine that has the potential of dragging on and on, like the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia has studied an earlier U.S. military campaign—Operation Desert Storm, of Gulf War I—and has taken to heart the lessons of that conflict.

One does not need to occupy the territory of a foe in order to destroy it. A strategic air campaign designed to nullify specific aspects of a nations’ capability, whether it be economic, political, military, or all the above, coupled with a focused ground campaign designed to destroy an enemy’s army as opposed to occupy its territory, is the likely course of action.

Given the overwhelming supremacy Russia has both in terms of the ability to project air power backed by precision missile attacks, a strategic air campaign against Ukraine would accomplish in days what the U.S. took more than a month to do against Iraq in 1991.

On the ground, the destruction of Ukraine’s Army is all but guaranteed. Simply put, the Ukrainian military is neither equipped nor trained to engage in large-scale ground combat. It would be destroyed piecemeal, and the Russians would more than likely spend more time processing Ukrainian prisoners of war than killing Ukrainian defenders.

For any Russian military campaign against Ukraine to be effective in a larger conflict with NATO, however, two things must occur—Ukraine must cease to exist as a modern nation state, and the defeat of the Ukrainian military must be massively one-sided and quick. If Russia is able to accomplish these two objectives, then it is well positioned to move on to the next phase of its overall strategic posturing vis-à-vis NATO—intimidation.

While the U.S., NATO, the EU, and the G7 have all promised “unprecedented sanctions,” sanctions only matter if the other side cares. Russia, by rupturing relations with the West, no longer would care about sanctions. Moreover, it is a simple acknowledgement of reality that Russia can survive being blocked from SWIFT transactions longer than Europe can survive without Russian energy. Any rupturing of relations between Russia and the West will result in the complete embargoing of Russian gas and oil to European customers.

There is no European Plan B. Europe will suffer, and because Europe is composed of erstwhile democracies, politicians will pay the price. All those politicians who followed the U.S. blindly into a confrontation with Russia will now have to answer to their respective constituents why they committed economic suicide on behalf of a Nazi-worshipping, thoroughly corrupt nation (Ukraine) which has nothing in common with the rest of Europe. It will be a short conversation.

NATO’s Fix

If the U.S. tries to build up NATO forces on Russia’s western frontiers in the aftermath of any Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia will then present Europe with a fait accompli in the form of what would now be known as the “Ukrainian model.” In short, Russia will guarantee that the Ukrainian treatment will be applied to the Baltics, Poland, and even Finland, should it be foolish enough to pursue NATO membership.

Russia won’t wait until the U.S. has had time to accumulate sufficient military power, either. Russia will simply destroy the offending party through the combination of an air campaign designed to degrade the economic function of the targeted nation, and a ground campaign designed to annihilate the ability to wage war. Russia does not need to occupy the territory of NATO for any lengthy period—just enough to destroy whatever military power has been accumulated by NATO near its borders.

And—here’s the kicker—short of employing nuclear weapons, there’s nothing NATO can do to prevent this outcome. Militarily, NATO is but a shadow of its former self. The once great armies of Europe have had to cannibalize their combat formations to assemble battalion-sized “combat groups” in the Baltics and Poland. Russia, on the other hand, has reconstituted two army-size formations—the 1st Guards Tank Army and the 20th Combined Arms Army—from the Cold War-era which specialize in deep offensive military action.

Even Vegas wouldn’t offer odds on this one.

Sherman will face off against Ryabkov in Geneva, with the fate of Europe in her hands. The sad thing is, she doesn’t see it that way. Thanks to Biden, Blinken and the host of Russophobes who populate the U.S. national security state today, Sherman thinks she is there to simply communicate the consequences of diplomatic failure to Russia. To threaten. With mere words.

What Sherman, Biden, Blinken, and the others have yet to comprehend is that Russia has already weighed the consequences and is apparently willing to accept them. And respond. With action.

One wonders if Sherman, Biden, Blinken, and the others have thought this through. Odds are, they have not, and the consequences for Europe will be dire.

Iran, China, Russia to kick off joint naval drills in Indian Ocean on January 21 — media

The drills will practice various maneuvers, in particular, rescuing a ship swept by fire, releasing a captured vessel and firing against targets.

TEHRAN, January 20. /TASS/. The Iranian, Chinese and Russian navies will begin joint naval maneuvers in the northern Indian Ocean waters on January 21, the ISNA news agency reported on Thursday, citing the Iranian army’s press office.

The drills will practice various maneuvers, in particular, rescuing a ship swept by fire, releasing a captured vessel and firing against targets. The drills are aimed at strengthening the security of international sea routes, fighting piracy and maritime terrorism and exchanging experience, the news agency reported.

Russia’s Pacific Fleet reported on January 18 that the Fleet’s naval group made up of the Guards Order of Nakhimov missile cruiser Varyag, the large anti-submarine warfare ship Admiral Tributs and the large sea tanker Boris Butoma had arrived at the Iranian port of Chabahar for the joint drills of the Russian, Iranian and Chinese navies.

The Pacific Fleet’s naval task force departed from Vladivostok and embarked on its long-distance deployment several days before the new year 2022.

America has big hurtles in front of it

video 5MB

A Short-Term Geopolitical Forecast

By Dmitry Orlov

Ever since Putin announced his demands for security guarantees from the US and NATO (in brief, stop NATO’s eastward expansion, have NATO retreat to its positions of 1997 and remove offensive weapons from Russia’s immediate vicinity) we have been subjected to a barrage of irrelevancies from Western press:

• Are these security guarantees an ultimatum or a negotiating tool?

• Will the US and NATO agree to them or reject them?

• Will Putin invade the Ukraine or will he be stopped in his tracks through the judicious and timely use of frowning, head-shaking, finger-wagging and tisk-tisking by sundry and assorted Western luminaries?

• If Putin does invade the Ukraine, does this mean that World War III is finally upon us and we shall all surely die?

I hope that I am not alone in being sick and tired of this pathetic, tiresome attempt to throw up a smokescreen and hide the inevitable reality of what is about to unfold. In case it isn’t completely clear to you yet, I would like to spell it all out. I am normally more cautious when making specific predictions, but in this case our immediate future has been carefully plotted out for us by Russia and China, with the US and its assorted puppets reduced to the status of non-playable characters in a video game who can only do one thing: hide behind a dense smokescreen of risible lies.

First, Russian security guarantee demands are not ultimatums. An ultimatum is an “or else” sort of thing, offering a choice between compliance and consequences, whereas in this case both the noncompliance and the consequences will follow automatically. The West and NATO are, for well understood internal political reasons, unable to sign these guarantees; therefore, the consequences will unfold in due course.

Russia has demanded that both the US and NATO put their refusal to agree to the security guarantees in writing; these pieces of paper will be important moving forward. To understand why, we need to take on board the fact that everything within these security guarantees has already been agreed to by the West; namely, the “not an inch to the east” guarantee given to the Russians by the US 30 years ago and the collective security principle agreed to by all members of the OSCE. By signing a document in which they declare their refusal to abide by what they previously agreed to, the US and NATO would essentially declare themselves to be apostates from international law and order. This, in turn, would imply that their own security needs can be disregarded and that instead they deserve to be humiliated and punished.

Further, by putting their refusal in writing, the US and NATO would declare the collective security principle itself—specifically with respect to the US and NATO—to be null and void, meaning that if, for instance, the Bahamas, a sovereign nation since July 10, 1973, decides to reinforce its sovereignty by hosting a Russian missile battery pointed across the Gulf Stream at Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the US would have no say in the matter, and if the US did try to speak up, they’d get beat up with this very piece of paper they signed. “Do you feel threatened now?” the Russians would ask; “Well, maybe you should have thought of that when you threatened us by putting your missiles in Poland and Romania.”

The initial stated purpose of the two installations of Aegis Ashore in Poland and Romania was to shoot down Iranian missiles, which didn’t exist then, don’t exist now, and never would have taken a giant detour and fly over Poland or Romania in any case. Although the stated purpose of these systems was for missile defense, their launch platforms can also be used to launch offensive strategic weapons: Tomahawk cruise missiles with nuclear payloads. These Tomahawks are obsolete and the Russians know how to shoot them down extremely well (as they demonstrated in Syria) but this is still very annoying, plus seeding the Russian countryside with pulverized American plutonium would not be good for anyone’s health.

Thus, we should expect bad things to happen to these installations, but we should expect to remain rather ill-informed about the details. While the non-negotiations over the Russian security guarantee demands will be as public as possible (in spite of Western plaintive cries asking that they be held in private) the “technical-military means” which Russia will use to deal with Western noncompliance will not be widely publicized. The Romanian installation might become inoperative due to a newly discovered small volcano nearby; the Polish one might succumb of a freak swamp gas explosion.

A further series of unfortunate accidents may cause the US and NATO to become shy and reticent about encroaching on Russia’s borders. NATO troops stationed in the Baltics, a stone’s throw from St. Petersburg, which is Russia’s second-largest city, might complain of repeatedly hearing the word “Thud!” clearly and loudly annunciated, causing them all to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and evacuated. A US spy plane might experience a slight GPS malfunction causing it to blunder into Russian airspace, get shot down, and have its catapulted pilot sentenced to many years of teaching English to kindergarteners in Syktyvkar or Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. US Navy and NATO vessels, already prone to collisions with each other, underwater mountains and barges, might suffer an unusually large number of such mishaps in proximity to the Russian coastline, causing them to shy away from it. A large number of such events, most out of them transpiring out of sight of the public, news of them suppressed in Western press and social media, would force the mighty US military to confront an uncomfortable existential question: “Are the Russians still afraid of us, or are we just jerking each other off here?” Their response will be to go into denial and to jerk each other off harder and faster than ever before.

But if they are indeed just jerking each other off, then what about their policy of containment? What’s to contain Russia and keep it from recreating USSR 2.0?—other than the fact that the Russians aren’t stupid, learned their lesson the first time around, and Mother Russia will no longer allow a bunch of useless non-Russian ingrates to suckle at her ample bosom. “But when is Russia going to invade the Ukraine?” inquiring minds demand to know, especially those who have been paying attention to Western news sources claiming that Russia has amassed 100090 troops on the Ukrainian border (it hasn’t).

The latest theory is that what is preventing Russia from invading is the warm weather. Apparently, it has been unusually warm since 2014, which is why Russian troops haven’t rolled across the Ukrainian border yet. What have they been waiting for? The next ice age that’s due any millennium now? Instead, Russia just got the bits of the Ukraine it wanted—Crimea, the Donbass and a couple of millions of highly trained Russian-speaking professionals—all without staging an invasion, and is now waiting for the rest of the Ukraine to degenerate into its end state as an ethnic theme park and nature preserve. The only thing that’s not going well with this plan is that the Ukraine needs to be demilitarized, as required by Russia’s recent security guarantee demands.

But what if Russia’s security guarantees aren’t met and US/NATO continue stuffing the Ukraine full of weapons, sending in trainers and establishing bases? Well, then, those will need to be destroyed. This can be done by launching some rockets from small ships sailing around in the Caspian Sea, as was done to destroy ISIS bases in Syria; no ground force invasion needed. It won’t take much to prompt US/NATO to evacuate the Ukraine in a panic, seeing as they have already worked out plans for doing so and have announced that they won’t fight to defend it.

If that’s what unfolds, what do you think will happen next? Will the US start a nuclear war over the Ukraine? Umm… how about “NO!!!” Will the US impose “sanctions from hell”? Perhaps, but you have to understand that at this point in time the US and other Western economies can be accurately caricatured as a crystal vase full of excrement parked on the very edge of a high shelf over a hard marble floor. The hope is that nobody is going to sneeze because the sound pressure might cause it to go over the edge. Sanctions from hell do sound like they could cause a bit of a sneeze. Needless to say, the US will continue to talk about sanctions from hell and maybe even pass some legislation so titled, and claim to have sent “a strong message,” but to no effect.

Will Russia act immediately upon acceptance in writing the West’s refusal to provide it with the requested security guarantees? No, there is bound to be a delay. You see, February 4th is barely two weeks away, and that’s just not enough time to start and finish a military action. What’s on February 4th? Why, the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, of course, at which Putin will be the guest of honor while US dignitaries weren’t even invited.

At the Olympics Putin and Xi will be signing a raft of major agreements, one of which may transform the already very strong relationship between China and Russia into an actual military alliance. The tripartite world order announced by Gen. Milley, in which the US, Russia and China figure as equals, will have lasted all of three months. With Russia and China acting as a unit, the SCO, which by now includes almost all of Eurasia, becomes more than just a geopolitical pole. In comparison, the US and the 29 dwarves of NATO do not quite add up to a geopolitical pole and the world once again becomes unipolar but with the polarity flipped.

And so we should not expect any military action to take place between February 4th and February 20th. Should any military mischief occur during the Olympics, which is traditionally a time of peace in the world, it is sure to be a Western provocation, since the Olympics are a traditional time of Western provocations (Georgia during the Beijing Olympics in 2008; the Ukraine during the Russian Olympics in Sochi in 2014). We can be sure that everyone is very much prepared for this provocation and that it will be dealt with very harshly.

The worst kind of provocation would be if NATO advisers actually succeed in goading the hapless and demoralized Ukrainian troops into invading the Donbass. If that happens, there will be two steps to that operation. The first will involve confusing the Ukrainians into walking into a trap. The second will be to threaten to destroy them using Russian long-range artillery from across the Russian border. When that happened previously, the Ukrainian government in Kiev was forced to sign the Minsk agreements that required the Ukrainian military to pull back and the Kiev government to grant autonomy to the Donbass by amending the Ukraine’s constitution.

But since the government in Kiev has shown no intention of fulfilling the terms of these agreements during the intervening years and instead has done its utmost to sabotage them, there is no reason to expect a new round of Minsk agreements to be signed. Instead, it will be the end of the road for Ukrainian statehood. Putin has promised exactly that. NATO advisers are likely to be frustrated in their efforts to cause the Ukrainians to attack: it is preferable for them to sit there being poked and prodded by their NATO handlers and nagged by US/EU officials and spies than to have their best and brightest obliterated by Russian artillery or to face a final round of national humiliation.

After February 20th, however, we should expect some new and interesting domestic distraction. It could have to do with Western financial house of cards/pyramid scheme finally pancaking, or it could be a fun new virus, or natural gas running out and causing a huge humanitarian emergency. Or it could be a combination of these: the virus can be blamed on China, the gas emergency on Russia, and the financial collapse on both. While everyone is distracted, an aircraft carrier or two might go missing, the Aegis Ashore installation in Poland might get totaled by freak swamp gas explosion and so on and so forth. But then nobody would take notice.

There will still be the major existential question nagging the US military/industrial complex: “Are Russia and China still afraid of us or are we just jerking each other off?” I think I know what answer Russia and China would offer: “Don’t worry about us. Just go on jerking each other off.”

Finally…

 

End of Part 4

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Comparison between American subways and Chinese subways

This article reproduces a very interesting discussion by an expat living in China named Jason. He, like MM here, is married to a Chinese woman and has a young child. He lives in a fifth-tier city in the hinterland, sort of like MM does, and he relates his experiences on you-tube for the world to see.

As a result, he has come under attack by both the BBC and CNN with their famous “gray filter” making his videos of bright and shiny China look gray and dingy.

In this series of videos, he compares the top American subway system in the top American city (New York City) with that of his fifth-tier “backwards” Chinese smaller city located in the middle of nowhere. It’s a great series. Reproduced in full and all credit to him, his wife and his child for providing it to us to view.

Video 1

He starts off going through the local Chinese subway stations, and the subway trains. It’s very interesting. Video 125MB

Video 2

Now, Jason finishes up in the Chinese subways and starts filming the New York Subway system. Amazing. video 86MB

The Complaints

I have noticed (since I posted this on LinkedIN) that many people defend the squalor in New York City. They say things like “China’s subways are new, while that of New York are old”. They argue that the comparison just “isn’t fair”.

The idea and the implication are simple. The argument is that you just shouldn’t compare new and old. You have to use the same metric.

Well, the metric is the same.

It actually is.

They are both subways, and they are maintained and operated within their own individual cultures. What the difference is between the different societies and the different governments.

Society

  • China = Social, family and community oriented.
  • United States = Individual, selfish, self-centered.

Government

  • China = merit based, and policed against corruption.
  • United States = Rampant corruption at all levels, oligarchy run.

Now, as far as the argument goes that the New York Subway system is old, it is a lame excuse. Yeah.

Well, so are the subways in Moscow.

They are old too.

But they are not in the same kind of disrepair as what we see inside of America. It has to do with funding maintenance, and a society of people who care about their surroundings.

Here’s the old subway system in Moscow.

Moscow subway.

And here is the old subway in Tehran, Iran…

Iranian subway.

And so, let’s also look at the old subway in North Korea.

North Korea’s marble-clad subway isn’t the image that might first spring to mind when thinking about a commute in North Korea. Taking the trip on the subway in Pyongyang comes cheap, and a ticket can cost just 5 Won ($0.004 USD).

North Korea.

Why is the United States infrastructure so decrepit?

Why?

You ask, why?

(MM turns and spits on the ground.)

Because the wealthy oligarchy has hoarded all the money for themselves, and left nothing for the rest of us. Did you know that New York City is the home for most of the billionaires in the United States.

Yeah.

Money to burn.

Not for you.

Billionaire goes into space.

What can be done?

The primary difference between the United States and China can boil down to two factors.

  • The Society
  • The Government

I do not advocate changing one’s society. If anything, I advise in strengthening it along traditional values and belief systems. Not changing it, and certainly not through massive programs of social reengineering.

That only leaves the way the government operates.

So, it is obvious that the United States form of government must change, the funding priorities must change, the control of society must change, and the financial arrangements must change as well as the type and extent of corruption.

… If the United States is to catch up with the rest of the world, that is galloping ahead full speed.

All must change…

…if America and its people want to catch up with the rest of the world. And live life in calm peace, traditions, and participate in meaningful roles within society.

If not…

…well, expect more of the same, only much worse.

Do you want more?

I have more posts like this in my China Comparison index here…

CN-USA Comparisons

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Russian commentaries on the collapsing United States (with some MM commentary as well) 3 of 3

This is part three of a three part series.

We pick up with the final comments on part two…

Russia is well-prepared for an all-out war with the west because they know that the American empire will not quit until they submit to Washington’s demands.  

Russia is ready, they learned a long-time ago when they were the former Soviet Union during World War II when more than 27 million Russian civilians and soldiers lost their lives fighting Nazi Germany within their borders.  

Washington is backing Ukraine’s aggressive behavior which will bring them closer to war with Russia.  

Although I believe cooler heads will prevail, anything at this point in time can happen with an out of control empire worried about losing their control over the planet.  

The US has its back against the wall, the question is what will they do knowing that Russia and China have the military capabilities including their new hypersonic missiles that can hit the US mainland at anytime.

The US-NATO forces would not prevail on a multi-front war with Russia and China, they should have learned a lesson in Afghanistan with the Taliban who had by far, a less-developed fighting force than Russia or China but had managed to defeat US-NATO forces after 20 years of conflict.  Washington and the Pentagon knows deep down that defeating Russia, China and the rest of their adversaries will be a difficult mission, but it seems that the psychopaths in Washington and Brussels live in a fantasy land and believe they can win this coming war.  

Let’s hope it don’t get that far because it would be disastrous for the entire world.

Pretty heavy stuff. It makes me think of food.

Good hearty and delicious foods, especially soups. Like a nice thick creamy soup. Maybe a cream of asparagus, or cream of broccoli. Don’t you know.

Thick cream of broccoli soup.

Ok. Let’s continue…

Dear America – You Are Delusional, and Failing at Everything You Undertake

Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia sanctions –  “All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly.”

“Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.”

This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017

Back in the days when I was still trying to do the corporate thing, I regularly found myself in a bit of a tight spot simply by failing to keep my mouth shut.

I seem to carry some sort of gene that makes me naturally irrepressible. I can keep my mouth shut for only so long before I have to blurt out what I really think, and in a corporate setting, where thinking isn’t really allowed, this causes no end of trouble. It didn’t matter that I often turned out to be right. It didn’t matter what I thought; it only mattered that I thought.

American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.

Of all the thoughts you aren’t allowed to think, perhaps the most offensive one is adequately expressed by a single short phrase: “That’s not gonna work.”

The end is near …
.

Suppose there is a meeting to unveil a great new initiative, with PowerPoint presentations complete with fancy graphics, org charts, timelines, proposed budgets, yadda-yadda, and everything is going great until this curmudgeonly Russian opens his mouth and says “That’s not gonna work.”

And when it is patiently explained to him (doing one’s best to hide one’s extreme irritation) that it absolutely has to work because Senior Management would like it to, that furthermore it is his job to make it work and that failure is not an option, he opens his mouth again and says “That’s not gonna work either.” And then it’s time to avoid acting flustered while ignoring him and to think up some face-saving excuse to adjourn the meeting early and regroup.

I lasted for as long as I did in that world because once in a while I would instead say “Sure, that’ll work, let’s do it.” And then, sure enough, it did work, the company had a banner year or two, with lots of bonuses and atta-boy (and atta-girl) certificates handed out to those not at all responsible for any of it. Flushed with victory, they, in turn, would think up more harebrained schemes for me to rain on, and the cycle would repeat.

America seems to be blissfully unaware of how it comes across to the rest of the world
.

It is probably one of the main saving graces of corporations that they do sometimes (mainly by mistake) allow some thought to leak through. The mistake in question is a staffing error in promoting those constitutionally incapable of keeping their mouths shut or shutting off their brains. Such errors create chinks in the monolithic phalanxes of corporate yes-men and yes-women.

Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.

The likelihood of such mistakes increases with the agony of defeat, which causes attrition among the ranks of qualified yes-sayers, creating holes that can only be plugged by promoting a few non-yes-sayers. However, this only seems to work in the smaller, hungrier corporations; the larger, better-fed ones seem to be able to avoid experiencing the agony of defeat for a very long time by moving the goal posts, outlawing any discussion of said defeat or other similar tactics. Eventually the entire organization goes over the cliff, but by then it is of no benefit to anyone to attempt to inform them of their folly.

It is much the same with governments, except here the situation is even worse. While the smaller, hungrier governments, and those blessed with a fresh institutional memory of extreme pain, do not have the luxury of lying to themselves, the larger political agglomerations—the USSR, the EU, the USA—have the ability to keep themselves completely immunized against the truth for historically significant periods of time.

The USSR clung to the fiction of great socialist progress even when it was clear to all that the cupboard was bare and there were rats gnawing through the rafters. The EU has been able to ignore the fact that its entire scheme is one of enriching Germany while impoverishing and depopulating eastern and southern Europe, neglecting the interests of the native populations throughout. And the amount of self-delusion that is still currently in effect in the USA makes it a rather large subject.

Regardless of how great the lies are and how forcefully they are defended, a moment always comes when the phalanx of truth-blocking yes-men and yes-women stops marching, turns and runs. This event results in a tremendous loss of face and confidence for all involved.

It is the crisis of confidence, more than anything else, that precipitates the going-off-a-cliff phenomenon that we could so readily observe in the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s. I have a very strong hunch that similar cliff-diving exercises are coming up for the EU and the USA.

But for the time being I am just another disembodied voice on the internet, watching from the sidelines and periodically saying the unfashionable thing, which is: “This isn’t gonna work.” However, I’ve said this a number of times over the years, on the record and more or less forcefully, and I feel vindicated most of the time.

Internationally, for example:

Carving the Ukraine away from Russia, having it join the EU and NATO and building a NATO naval base in Crimea “wasn’t gonna work.” The Ukraine is a part of Russia, the Ukrainians are Russian, and the Ukrainian ethnic identity is a Bolshevik concoction. Look for a reversion to norm in a decade or two.

Destroying and partitioning Syria with the help of Wahhabi extremists and foreign mercenaries supported by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel while Russia, Iran, Turkey and China stand idly by “wasn’t gonna work”; and so it hasn’t.

Giving Afghanistan “freedom and democracy” and turning it into a stable pro-Western regime with the help of invading NATO troops “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. Western involvement in Afghanistan can go on, but the results it can achieve are limited to further enhancing the heroin trade.

Destroying the Russian economy using sanctions “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. The sanctions have helped Russia regroup internally and achieve a great deal of self-sufficiency in energy production and other forms of technology, in food and in numerous other sectors.

All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly. Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.

In the meantime, the world isn’t waiting for the US to shake itself out of its stupor.

The fulcrum of American influence in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia and the petrodollar. In turn, Saudi Arabia rests on three pillars: the Saudi monarchy, Wahhabi Islam and the petrodollar. As I write this, the next king, Mohammed bin Salman, is busy hacking away at all three: robbing, imprisoning and torturing his fellow-princes, working to replace the Wahhabi clerics with moderate ones and embracing the petro-yuan instead of the now very tired petrodollar.

Not that any of these three pillars were in good shape in any case: the defeat of ISIS in Syria was a defeat for the Saudi monarchy which supported it, for the Wahhabi clerics who inspired it and, consequently, for the petrodollar as well, because Saudi Arabia was until now its greatest defender.

The new guarantors of peace in the region are Russia, Iran and Turkey, with China watching carefully in the wings. American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.

And so here’s my latest prediction: Trump’s goal of “making America great” “isn’t gonna work” either.

The country is so far gone that just taking the first step—of allowing the truth of its condition to leak through the media filters—will undermine public confidence to such an extent that a subsequent cliff-dive will become unavoidable. It’s a nice slogan as slogans go, but Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.

Perhaps he will succeed in making America great… big piles of feces, but I wouldn’t expect much more than that.

I Found this…

American insanity.

The USA is Cracking Up Just Like the USSR Did – In Fact, They Are Related

“You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, …  We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality.”

“And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so.”

This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It caused a lot of death and destruction, which I won’t go into because you can read all about it elsewhere. It also caused a great outpouring of new art, literature, architecture and culture in general, putting the previously somewhat stodgy Russia securely in the world’s avant-garde.

It also resulted in a tremendous surge of industrialization, rapidly transforming a previously mostly agrarian, though gradually industrializing nation into a global industrial powerhouse (at great human cost). But perhaps most importantly, the revolution destroyed all of the previously dominant institutions of privilege based on heredity, class and wealth and replaced them with an egalitarian social model centered on the working class.

And it demonstrated (as much through propaganda as by actual example) how this new model was more competitive: while the West wallowed in the Great Depression, the USSR surged ahead both economically and socially.

For all of its many failings, the USSR did serve as a shining city on the hill to the downtrodden millions around the world, including in the USA, fermenting rebellion, so that even there the one-percent ownership class eventually had to stop and think.

Reluctantly, they decided to stop trying to destroy organized labor movements, introduced state old-age pensions (misnamed “Social Security”) and declared a euphemistic “war on poverty.” And with that a “middle class” was created—so called because it was literally in the middle, having risen out of poverty but still safely walled off from the one-percent ownership class. But as we shall see this effect was temporary.

Eventually the USSR evaporated, as artificial, synthetic political entities often do. The reasons for this disappearing act are too numerous to mention, but one of the main ones was that the Soviet political elite turned itself into a much-hated, privileged caste, and then failed to reproduce, turning into a moribund gerontocracy.

When the old cadres finally started dying out, the new generation that came in included plenty of traitors who did their best to destroy the system and grab a piece for themselves. This effect was plain to see, but was it the root cause? When a complex system collapses, every part of it is touched to one extent or another, and it becomes impossible to say which one played the key role in precipitating the collapse.

With the USSR gone, the owners of the USA had no one to compete against and were no longer under any sort of pressure to maintain the illusion of an equitable and egalitarian society. Instead, they concentrated on two projects, one ideological, the other economic.

The ideological project involved wrecking what was left of the USSR to the greatest extent possible in order to paint a convincing picture of the horrible consequences of communism or socialism and to herd everyone toward wholeheartedly embracing unfettered capitalism. The economic project involved eviscerating the American middle class—a process that by now has largely run its course.

Since the creation of the middle class was a multigenerational project, so is its destruction. But the effects of this process on society are already plain to see: there is an overhang of still relatively well-off retirees while their children and grandchildren have greatly diminished economic and social prospects.

Meanwhile, the hastily erected scaffolding that created the appearance of egalitarianism has been knocked out. Organized labor is all but finished. Borders have been thrown open to foreign labor and cheap imports.

Entry into the middle class has been blocked through a variety of measures including the relentless dumbing down of public education, the equally relentless overpricing of higher education, the health care extortion scheme, the rationing of justice based on wealth and privilege, wealth confiscation using a succession of artificial real estate market bubbles and so on.

Overall, the former middle class is being whittled down to nothing the same way that the Chinese “coolies” were dealt with once the railroads had been built: don’t feed them much but give them plenty of opium (now being grown in Afghanistan under the watchful eye of Western troops). To sum it up: if you aren’t happy with the way things are going in the US, you have a choice.

You can of course blame Russia—for getting rid of the USSR. Or you can blame your owners—your one percent—who have owned you ever since the King of England appointed the Lords Proprietors.

Within Russia itself the commemoration of the October Revolution is no longer a public holiday. But there was a sort of commemoration held on the vast Palace Square in St. Petersburg, which I attended with my five-year-old son on my shoulders. It was his first time in a crowd of 35,000, and he was duly impressed. It was a light-and-sound extravaganza consisting of two shows which played in alternation.

On the vast semicircular facade of the General Staff building was broadcast a multimedia retrospective of the October Revolution that included the reading of historical documents (such as the abdication of Nicholas II) and works of poetry. It ended on an upbeat note—yes, many horrible events took place, but Russia is now reborn—with the General Staff’s façade painted in the Russian tricolor.

After the show, as we filtered out of the Palace Square and walked home along the Palace Embankment, my five-year-old son asked some good questions that he had formulated while watching the show. “Did a lot of people die?” (Yes.) “But Russia was then and is now?” (Yes, Russia has been around for a 1000 years and will probably be around for 1000 years more.) “Why do people have to die?” (Because otherwise we we would be full-up with useless old people and there wouldn’t be enough room for young people.) And then the obvious follow-up: “Why are we full-up with useless old people anyway?” (???) And finally: “Why do we bury dead people?” (Because they smell really bad.) “Ah…” A rather unsentimental youth, wouldn’t you say? But he was only one of the thousands of quite similar-minded ones who were in attendance that day, riding on their fathers’ shoulders or marching along. Welcome to Russia…One of the reasons why the USSR failed was because the idiocy of the ideology of Soviet communism became too painful to tolerate. In a sense, this was inevitable. You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, making “intellectual idiocy” something of an oxymoron. We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality. And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so.

By now most thinking people realize that capitalism has failed just has communism had. We can only hope that one day the US will do with its capitalist legacy what Russia has done with its communist one: turn it into a festive art installation that both children and adults can enjoy.

EPIC FAIL: Why Most US Weapons Systems Are Worse than Russia’s

Two reasons: complexity, and too much money

This article from our archives was first published on RI in April 2018

The F-35: Insanely expensive, its costs keep soaring – and it’s worse than Russian planes which cost 20 times less.
.

Lately we have seen some good analysis on the limits and vulnerabilities of the American military in light of events in the former Ukraine and especially Russia’s demonstrated competence in Syria.

So we have the “what” of the issue, but how about the “why”?

As a U.S. Army veteran and a longtime resident of the Beltway—including four-and-a-half years living on Crystal Drive in Arlington, Virginia, which has probably the densest concentration of “defense” contractors anywhere in America—I think I understand what is fundamentally wrong with the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC.)

First and foremost, the MIC has long been incapable of producing durable, efficient, versatile weapons.

We don’t even have to look to the F-35 on this one.

(America’s latest fighter which has turned into a spectacular technical failure and massive  ($1.5 trillion!) expense  – see our super-popular article about how this plane stacks up against the Russian competition- edit)

Just consider the most basic item, the M-16.

The M-16 Assault Rifle

My field experience with this piece of junk is that it runs into problems in the presence of even a small amount of sand. When enough sand gets in to the chamber and mixes with the lube oil on the bolt assembly, the grit thus formed results in up to every second round misloading.

God forbid you should brush an oiled open breach against the side of your foxhole—you are out of commission.  In the absence of air or artillery support or sheer overwhelming numbers on your side, you are dead meat against anyone with a gun that functions in a sandy environment.  And why?  Because, as I was told in boot camp (whether it’s true or not), this thing is perfectly built to have zero fault tolerance.

Supposedly, just about every metal component in the M-16 is cast and/or machined to perfection rather than stamped.  Contrast this with Russian or Chinese weapons that are said to be built like can openers to spray lead under any conditions.  In other words, the M-16 is so sophisticated that it doesn’t work well.

It is now acknowledged that the M-16 with its 5.56mm rounds is insufficiently lethal beyond a couple of hundred meters, making it unsuited to long-distance firefights over open terrain (again those deserts, or perhaps shootouts between mountain ridges.)

The M-1 Abrams tank

Another great example – this can be a real dog.  The engine is a gas turbine, like with an aircraft, except that it is being driven around in deserts and even sandstorms, making it extremely finicky and high-maintenance.  (Would you fly your Boeing into a sandstorm?)  Of course, the Abrams was designed to fight in Germany where sand is not an issue.  But during the Iraq adventure, sand so tore up the turbine fans (or whatever) that over 1000 of these million-dollar “power packs” had to be removed and sent up for depot-level maintenance or refurbishment stateside.

Yes, that’s right—these things cannot even be fixed in the field.  All you can do is pull them out with a crane and ship them back to the civilians at enormous expense.  At the height of the Iraq adventure, around 2007, the maintenance backlog was so bad that even the national media got wind of it.

Of course, when you have the world’s reserve currency, you can afford all that and more—the entire world is paying for your wars.

But the waste and inefficiency are a fact.

The Basic Problem :  Excessive Complexity

I think the problem here is that American war planners and logisticians prefer originality, complexity, and/or expense-for-the-hell-of-it over versatility and ease of use and maintenance.  This is no surprise given America’s wealth and the longtime generous funding of its armed forces.  After all, every military reflects its own society.

Unfortunately for Uncle Sam, what he gets is equipment that may work very well in one environment but not another.

But so much for American equipment per se.  Let’s talk about Crystal Drive (a neighborhood in suburban Washington where many defense contractors have offices – edit.) —or more broadly, the MIC.

The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is failing on a massive scale

It is clear now that the MIC cannot build anything for less than 200 percent of its original planned budget (and that’s being extremely conservative.)  Nor can anything it cranks out nowadays meet performance or survivability expectations.  Besides the never-ending supersonic train wreck known as the F-35, we have other boondoggle failures such as the Littoral Combat Ship, which by all accounts is less capable and more vulnerable than the 20 to 30 year-old vessels it was supposed to replace.

Or, going back a few years, we see the Army’s “Commanche” helicopter, an intended replacement for the Apache, which blew through $6.9 billion—in 1983-2004 dollars, probably over $10 billion today—before the entire program was scrapped.  That’s right, over $10 billion for nothing—not one Commanche was ever delivered for permanent use to an Army operational unit!

Where did that money go, if they didn’t actually manufacture anything besides a few prototypes?  Did they spend $10 billion on PowerPoint presentations?

My brain cannot even wrap around this.  Can you imagine what Russia or China could do for $10 billion?

However, even that pales before the Army’s cancelled Future Combat Systems program, which burned through an estimated (no one knows exactly) $20 billion from 2003 to somewhere between 2012 and 2014 (depending on what termination milestone you go by), with almost nothing to show beyond a few prototypes, a lot of concept art, and a 29-pound toy robot made by iRobot of “Roomba” vacuum cleaner fame.  In fact, I can’t think of one big new U.S. weapons system that has succeeded in the last 25 years, other than perhaps the Stryker armored car (though some have argued that point, and I just don’t know enough about it.)

As pointed out by many other observers, part of the blame lies with our political system, where MIC corporations buy politicians and then receive favors in the form of contracts, whether or not the contracts make any sense. However, I think this is not the only problem, nor even necessarily the biggest.

Fundamentally what I think we have is systemic over-complexity resulting in nothing getting done, or done well anyway.

US intelligence agencies have the same problem

This is akin to the deep systemic crisis in Uncle Sam’s intelligence agencies, where from 9/11 to the Arab Spring to Crimea to the ISIS conquest of Mosul to Russia in Syria, the word is always “we didn’t expect…”  In this case, we have numerous agencies—some of them with overlapping functions—that are drowning in paperwork and garbage data (or too much data) and are almost totally useless.

As some readers will remember, it got so bad that in April 2014 the State Department released a photo collage aiming to prove that (among other things) a bearded Chechen battalion commander going by the name Hamza, who appeared in Russian TV footage of the 2008 Olympic War, was none other than the bearded, overweight Slaviansk militiaman going by the call-sign “Babai”—in other words, Russian special forces have invaded the Donbass.  (The New York Times ran with this and was then oh-so-vaguely and gently reproached by its own ombudsman.)

Shouldn’t this awful joke have been prevented by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is supposed to promote info-sharing among agencies and centrally vet all claims and conclusions—especially those being trumpeted on the State Department’s website or at its briefings?  Apparently not!

Bureaucratic bloat

On the other hand, what the U.S. lack-of-intelligence complex is very good at—besides hiring way too many buxom, flirty young things straight out of college and with no language skills or any experience at all (DIA and NGA, you know your ex-military managers like to beautify their offices)—is providing employment for tens of thousands of its own staff as well as tens of thousands of grotesquely-overpaid contractors, including those who build and run billion-dollar eavesdropping centers that have proven incapable of picking up anything useful, perhaps because when you try to listen to everything, you end up hearing nothing.

The lesson here is that the more offices and agencies, the more managers and political appointees who will seek to justify and expand their turf and budgets by shoveling out as much money on as many contracts as possible, as quickly as possible, in many cases even paying contractors to do little more than just sit around (sometimes at home) waiting for the next contract.  (I have seen this many times in Washington.)

Then you get so big that people simply trip over each other and the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

The US MIC worked great 50 years ago because less money and people were involved

So I think this is what’s going on not only in the intelligence apparatus, but in the MIC as a whole.  We have hundreds of thousands of staff and contractors as well as military officers assigned to liaise with them, all kinds of project managers and “six-sigma black belts” and other buzzwords, juggling millions of PowerPoints across the river from Washington and throughout the country, and they can’t field a helicopter after spending $10 billion on it.

Really?  How did this great country ever defeat the Japanese Empire?

Go to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington; you will see the most amazing things—e.g. generators designed to operate on the surface of the Moon, drawing electricity from the heat of plutonium decay—that were developed when there was no Crystal Drive, no Tysons Corner, etc.

Then go to the museum’s extension near Dulles airport and check out the SR-71 “Blackbird”, the fastest and highest-flying airplane ever built (this was about 50 years ago.)

How did they do it?

Although there were more men in uniform back then, the MIC itself (or should I say the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Homeland-Insecurity-Complex (MIIHIC)) – had but a fraction of today’s civilian workforce.  Luckily, most of those paper-pushing “systems integrators” and PowerPoint rangers did not exist.  Blueprints were drafted with pencil and paper.

Today, Uncle Sam can’t even build a heavy rocket engine, not to mention a good helmet or ejection seat for his F-35.

No hope for change going forward

So it seems that as a technical civilization we are degenerating.

Sure, there are constant advancements in microelectronics (a.k.a. integrated circuits) and the programs they allow, but in terms of heavy engineering—of which the MIIHIC and other government initiatives like the space program were at the forefront since WWII—it seems that the U.S. is tapped out.

And you know what?  Throwing more money at it is just going to make it worse.

The organizations with their budgets and their perfectly reasonable-sounding arguments for ever-greater budgets will grow, their workforces will grow, the contracting sector will grow, more shiny office buildings will go up, but the result will be an ever-increasingly-negative marginal return.

John McCain and all the other broken records in and out of the Pentagon will say we still don’t have enough funds to counter a pointless Russian invasion of parasitic, inconsequential Lithuania (currently headed by a longtime communist) or any other 1990s-era speculative wargame training scenario that somehow carried over into the public consciousness and morphed into the Greatest Threat to World Peace.

Of course, as long as the U.S. has the money to send gazillion-dollar armies and armadas against illiterate natives armed with sharp sticks and coconuts, this may not visibly threaten its hegemony.  Almost any problem or mistake can be papered over with money, for a long time anyway.

But eventually, even if the money spigot does not constrict, we will get to the point where the military really can’t be used as anything more than a façade or a gunboat road-show, hoping no one calls the bluff, because the stuff just doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, or else is too vulnerable (witness the evacuation of the U.S. aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf after Uncle Sam found out that Russia has cruise missiles with a range of at least 1500km, or the ridiculous sail-around of China’s little islands which had the sense to infringe only very slightly and briefly on that country’s imaginary territorial waters), or the natives can devise their own countermeasures.

In fact, I would say we are at that point already.  Not to mention, the U.S. Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs are still so tapped-out after Iraq and Afghanistan that another major ground operation is unthinkable.  (At this point, Washington is more likely to launch nukes at somebody than risk another ground war.)

So you can anticipate a lot of hand-wringing and a lot more money being thrown into the breach.  That’s simply what the machine does; there is no chance to reform it, nor will the Hegemony dissipate willingly (although lately it’s done a good job of dissipating unwillingly.)

But all that money may as well be flushed down the can.

The threshold has been reached and it’s all downhill from here.

A Novice’s Guide to Drinking With Russians

If you find yourself in Russia, you will have to drink with Russians, one way or another. Follow this handy guide for advice on how to survive the experience

This article from our archives was first published on RI in October 2016

Contrary to popular belief, Russians are not alcoholics, and they do not drink just for the sake of doing so. However, Russians are happy to raise a glass to practically any occasion — a new job, a new car, Friday…but especially for a wedding.

As a rule, you have time to prepare for a bender, but sometimes trouble sneaks up on you. Say you get home from work on a Tuesday night having met a friend you had not seen for a long time in the subway. Isn’t this a significant event?

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Always be on the alert. There will likely be times when you will have to drink on a weekday evening or in the middle of the night. And definitely on Friday. And most likely on Wednesday: because everybody in Russia knows that Wednesday is a little Friday.

Russians drink other things besides vodka. But of course they do drink vodka. You should be aware that a Russian party is structured differently from parties in other parts of the world.

First, the alcohol is usually bought by the host. This solves two problems at once: at first the guests do not have to know that they will have to drink and then they do not have to regret that they were unable to switch to something else after wine ran out because they did not bring it. The table full of drinks is for all, so drink whatever you want. Just do not overdo it.

Brush up on your knowledge of all key events in world history, religion, politics, sports and arts, and make sure to form an opinion on all current issues, whether or not they seem important to you.

First off, when drinking, Russians are sure to start a conversation about lofty matters. If you do not take part in these discussions, you will run the risk of simply falling asleep at the table – or drinking more to avoid having to talk. Secondly, such knowledge is simply useful. Do not be afraid of expressing your opinion. All conversations and disagreements that take place while drinking will not be held against you — no one will remember them in the morning.

Around 11 p.m., there is unprecedented level of activity in Moscow supermarkets and convenience stores. In Russia, there is a law that says alcoholic beverages cannot be sold later than a certain time, although the time varies. In Moscow, it is 11 p.m., while in St. Petersburg, it is 10 p.m.

Russians like to make lengthy toasts. Of course, the toast depends on the circumstances, but the more solemn and important the event, the longer the toast. It is customary to take a glass in your hand at the beginning of the speech and not lower it until the speaker has finished. You should train yourself to keep your hand raised for a long time. After the toast, you must clink your glass against the glasses of all those present at the table. If you are a single girl, keep in mind that an old Russian superstition holds that the last person you clink glasses with should be an unmarried man – then you will marry soon.

In the West, it is perfectly fine to take a drink and put a half-full glass back on the table before you take another drink. In Russia, however, you have to drink everything in the glass at once, otherwise people will think that you disagree with a person who delivered the toast — for which he likely rehearsed for a week before the event.

The toast “Na zdorovye!” or “to your health,” which foreigners for some reason consider to be the most popular and appropriate toast to make in Russia, is not used by anyone. Ever.

To really prepare for drinking with Russians, watch the classic Soviet film “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath.” This movie is always shown on New Year’s Eve, and everyone knows it. Even if you watch it before your visit, you are likely to have to watch it again. But besides being a classic Soviet movie everyone should know and the source of 95 percent of the references made by your Russian friends, it shows clearly how not to drink — and what can happen to you if your visit to a banya with your friends goes wrong.

To drink with Russians is an art and, like any other, you will not be able to master it at once. But you will never be bored drinking with Russians, and if you can endure the first few times, you may even grow to like this process. Probably you will. And, upon returning home, you will look differently at the wildest parties thrown by your friends, thinking to yourself “That’s nothing; in Russia, they call it ‘propustit po stakanchiku’ (to grab a drink).”

A video interlude…

Rufus bartender saves a girl from getting a roofie. video 11MB

China military are motivated, well trained and use state of the art equipment. video 7MB

The BRI is about helping the Chinese people domestically. video 5MB

The US Has Become Too Big, Too Diverse, and Too Corrupt to Survive

“Foreign malcontents can never be successfully integrated into a civilized society because they don’t even intend to try; they intend to conquer their host instead. … we have a much harder row to hoe than Old Europe because our own “invaders” are well entrenched and have been for decades, all the way up to the highest levels of government.”

This article from our archives was first published on RI in October 2018

We’re getting close to the end now. Can you feel it?  I do.

It’s in the news, on the streets, and in your face every day. You can’t tune it out anymore, even if you wanted to.

Where once there was civil debate in the court of public opinion, we now have censorshipmonopolyscreaminginsultsdemonization, and, finally, the use of force to silence the opposition. There is no turning back now. The political extremes are going to war, and you will be dragged into it even if you consider yourself apolitical.

There are great pivot points in history, and we’ve arrived at one. The United States, ruptured by a thousand grievance groups, torn by shadowy agencies drunk on a gross excess of powerrobbed blind by oligarchs and their treasonous henchmen and decimated by frivolous wars of choice, has finally come to a point where the end begins in earnest.

The center isn’t holding… indeed, finding a center is no longer even conceivable. We are the schizophrenic nation, bound by no societal norms, constrained by no religion, with no shared sense of history, myth, language, art, philosophy, music, or culture, rushing toward an uncertain future fueled by nothing more than easy money, hubris, and sheer momentum.

There comes a time when hard choices must be made…when it is no longer possible to remain aloof or amused, because the barbarians have arrived at the gate. Indeed, they are here now, and they often look a whole lot like deracinated, conflicted, yet bellicose fellow Americans, certain of only one thing, and that is that they possess “rights”, even though they could scarcely form an intelligible sentence explaining exactly what those rights secure or how they came into being.

But that isn’t necessary, from their point of view, you see. All they need is a “voice” and membership in an approved victim class to enrich themselves at someone else’s expense. If you are thinking to yourself right now that this does not describe you, then guess what? The joke’s on you, and you are going to be expected to pay the bill…that “someone else” is you.

In reality, though, who can blame the minions, when the elites have their hand in the till as well? In fact, they are even more hostile to reasoned discourse than Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, or Antifa. Witness the complete meltdown of the privileged classes when President Trump mildly suggested that perhaps our “intelligence community” isn’t to be trusted, which is after all a fairly sober assessment when one considers the track record of the CIAFBINSA, BATF, and the other assorted Stasi agencies.

Burning cop cars or bum-rushing the odd Trump supporter seems kind of tame in comparison to the weeping and gnashing of teeth when that hoary old MIC “intelligence” vampire was dragged screaming into the light. Yet Trump did not drive a stake into its heart, nor at this point likely can anyone…and that is exactly the point. We are now Thelma and Louise writ large.

We are on cruise control, happily speeding towards the cliff, and few seem to notice that our not so distant future involves bankruptcy, totalitarianism, and/or nuclear annihilation. Even though most of us couldn’t identify the band, we nonetheless surely live the lyrics of the Grass Roots: “Live for today, and don’t worry about tomorrow.”

The “Defense” Department, “Homeland” Security, big pharma, big oil, big education, civil rights groups, blacks, Indians, Jews, the Deep State, government workers, labor unions, Neocons, Populists, fundamentalist Christians, atheists, pro life and pro death advocates, environmentalists, lawyers, homosexuals, women, Millenials, Baby Boomers, blue collar/white collar, illegal aliens…the list goes on and on, but the point is that the conflicting agendas of these disparate groups have been irreconcilable for some time.

The difference today is that we are de facto at war with each other, and whether it is a war of words or of actual combat doesn’t matter at the moment. What matters is that we no longer communicate, and when that happens it is easy to demonize the other side. Violence is never far behind ignorance.

I am writing this from the bar at the Intercontinental Hotel in Vienna, Austria. I have seen with my own eyes the inundation of Europe with an influx of hostile aliens bent on the destruction of Old Christendom, yet I have some hope for the eastern European countries because they have finally recognized the threat and are working to neutralize it.

Foreign malcontents can never be successfully integrated into a civilized society because they don’t even intend to try; they intend to conquer their host instead. Yet even though our own discontents are domestic for the most part, we have a much harder row to hoe than Old Europe because our own “invaders” are well entrenched and have been for decades, all the way up to the highest levels of government.

That there are signs Austria is finally waking up is a good thing, but it serves to illustrate the folly of expecting the hostile cultures within our own country to get along with each other without rupturing the republic. Indeed, that republic died long ago, and it has been replaced by a metastasizing mass of amorphous humanity called the American Empire, and it is at war with itself and consuming itself from within.

Long ago, we once knew that as American citizens each of us had a great responsibility. We were expected to work hard, play fair, do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and serve our country when called upon to do so. Today, we don’t speak of duty, except in so much as a slogan to promote war, but we certainly do speak of benefits for ourselves and our “group” of entitled peeps. We will fail because of our greed and avarice.

The United States of Empire has become quite simply too big, too diverse, and too “exceptional” to survive.

Video Interlude…

Rufus saves a lost little girl and reunites her with her parents. video 6MB

A beautiful Chinese girl. video 4MB

Western democracies are ONLY for rich people and corporations. They have and provide very little benefit to the work man, or the citizenry. That’s just the way things are. video 4MB

AMERICA: A Gigantic Clown Car Being Driven Into a Ditch

“This homework assignment should be given to the Democratic members of congress, since they are otherwise preoccupied only with hunting for Russian gremlins and discovering new sexual abnormalities to protect and defend.”

This article from our archives was first published on RI in September 2017

Poor old Karl Marx, tortured by boils and phantoms, was right about one thing: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Thus, I give you the Roman Empire and now the United States of America. Rome surrendered to time and entropy. Our method is to drive a gigantic clown car into a ditch.

Is anyone out there interested in redemption? I have an idea for the political party out of power, the Democrats, sunk in its special Okefenokee Swamp of identity politics and Russia paranoia: make an effort to legislate the Citizens United calamity out of existence. Who knows, a handful of Republicans may be shamed into going along with it. For those of you who have been mentally vacationing on Mars with Elon Musk, Citizens United was a Supreme Court decision — Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 558 U.S. 310 (2010) — which determined that corporations had the right, as hypothetical “persons,” to give as much money as they liked to political candidates.

We’ve made important contributions to world culture…
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This “right” devolved from the First Amendment of the constitution, the 5-4 majority opinion said — giving money to political candidates and causes amounts to “freedom of speech.” The Citizens United ruling opened the door for unlimited election spending by corporations and enormous mischief in our national life. Then-President Obama — a constitutional law professor before his career in politics — complained bitterly about the opinion days later in his State of the Union address, saying that the court had “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.”

And for the next seven years he did absolutely nothing about it, nor did the Democratic Party majority in congress. Rather, they vacuumed in as much corporate campaign money as possible from every hokey political action committee (PAC) from sea to shining sea, especially in the 2016 presidential election starring Hillary “It’s My Turn” Clinton. It turned out to not be her turn in large part because the voters noticed the stench of corruption wafting off this toxic flow of corporate money, which Hillary was using to vastly outspend her billionaire opponent, troll that he was.

It’s been a heck of a ride, and it’s coming to an end …
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Of course, corporations have not always been what they are deemed to be today. They evolved with the increasingly complex activities of industrial economies. Along the way — in Great Britain first, actually — they were deemed to exist as the equivalent of legal persons, to establish that the liabilities of the company were separate and distinct from those of its owners. In the USA, forming a corporation usually required an act of legislation until the late 19th century. After that, they merely had to register with the states. Then congress had to sort out the additional problems of giant “trusts” and holding companies (hence, anti-trust laws, now generally ignored).

In short, the definition of what a corporation is and what it has a right to do is in a pretty constant state of change as economies evolve. And insofar as the current economy is sinking like the USS Titanic — and our republic as a mode of governance with it — surely the time has come to redefine in legislation the role and existential nature of a corporation in this polity. This homework assignment should be given to the Democratic members of congress, since they are otherwise preoccupied only with hunting for Russian gremlins and discovering new sexual abnormalities to protect and defend.

The crux of the argument is that corporations cannot be said to be entirely and altogether the equivalent of persons for all legal purposes. In law, corporations have duties, obligations, and responsibilities to their shareholders first, and only after that to the public interest or the common good, and only then by pretty strict legal prescription. It may be assumed that the interests of corporations and their shareholders are in opposition to, and in conflict with, the public interest. And insofar as elections are fundamentally matters of the public interest, corporations must be prohibited from efforts to influence the outcome of elections.

That’s your assignment Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership. Get serious. Show a little initiative. Do something useful. Draw up some legislation.

Get behind something real that might make a difference in this decrepitating country.

Or get out of the way and let a new party do the job.

Videos…

Rufus rescues a girl who jumps overboard. video 6MB

Rufus rescues a man carried away by a flowing stream. video 11mb

The US Outspends Russia 10X On Military, But They Are Equals. Why?

Another brilliant essay from Orlov in which he addresses the incredible bumbling incompetence of the US in contrast to Russia’s intelligent competence – Orlov is spot on.

This article from our archives was first published on RI in May 2018

“Russia is ready to respond to any provocation, but the last thing the Russians want is another war. And that, if you like good news, is the best news you are going to hear.”

A whiff of World War III hangs in the air. In the US, Cold War 2.0 is on, and the anti-Russian rhetoric emanating from the Clinton campaign, echoed by the mass media, hearkens back to McCarthyism and the red scare. In response, many people are starting to think that Armageddon might be nigh—an all-out nuclear exchange, followed by nuclear winter and human extinction. It seems that many people in the US like to think that way. Goodness gracious!

The curtain is falling on a country in serious trouble


But, you know, this is hardly unreasonable of them. The US is spiraling down into financial, economic and political collapse, losing its standing in the world and turning into a continent-sized ghetto full of drug abuse, violence and decaying infrastructure, its population vice-ridden, poisoned with genetically modified food, morbidly obese, exploited by predatory police departments and city halls, plus a wide assortment of rackets, from medicine to education to real estate… That we know.

We also know how painful it is to realize that the US is damaged beyond repair, or to acquiesce to the fact that most of the damage is self-inflicted: the endless, useless wars, the limitless corruption of money politics, the toxic culture and gender wars, and the imperial hubris and willful ignorance that underlies it all… This level of disconnect between the expected and the observed certainly hurts, but the pain can be avoided, for a time, through mass delusion.

This sort of downward spiral does not automatically spell “Apocalypse,” but the specifics of the state cult of the US—an old-time religiosity overlaid with the secular religion of progress—are such that there can be no other options: either we are on our way up to build colonies on Mars, or we perish in a ball of flame. Since the humiliation of having to ask the Russians for permission to fly the Soyuz to the International Space Station makes the prospect of American space colonies seem dubious, it’s Plan B: balls of flame here we come!

And so, most of the recent American warmongering toward Russia can be explained by the desire to find anyone but oneself to blame for one’s unfolding demise. This is a well-understood psychological move—projecting the shadow—where one takes everything one hates but can’t admit to about oneself and projects it onto another. On a subconscious level (and, in the case of some very stupid people, even a conscious one) the Americans would like to nuke Russia until it glows, but can’t do so because Russia would nuke them right back. But the Americans can project that same desire onto Russia, and since they have to believe that they are good while Russia is evil, this makes the Armageddon scenario appear much more likely.

But this way of thinking involves a break with reality. There is exactly one nation in the world that nukes other countries, and that would be the United States. It gratuitously nuked Japan, which was ready to surrender anyway, just because it could. It prepared to nuke Russia at the start of the Cold War, but was prevented from doing so by a lack of a sufficiently large number of nuclear bombs at the time. And it attempted to render Russia defenseless against nuclear attack, abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, but has been prevented from doing so by Russia’s new weapons. These include, among others, long-range supersonic cruise missiles (Kalibr), and suborbital intercontinental missiles carrying multiple nuclear payloads capable of evasive maneuvers as they approach their targets (Sarmat). All of these new weapons are impossible to intercept using any conceivable defensive technology. At the same time, Russia has also developed its own defensive capabilities, and its latest S-500 system will effectively seal off Russia’s airspace, being able to intercept targets both close to the ground and in low Earth orbit.

In the meantime, the US has squandered a fantastic sum of money fattening up its notoriously corrupt defense establishment with various versions of “Star Wars,” but none of that money has been particularly well spent. The two installations in Europe of Aegis Ashore (completed in Romania, planned in Poland) won’t help against Kalibr missiles launched from submarines or small ships in the Pacific or the Atlantic, close to US shores, or against intercontinental missiles that can fly around them. The THAAD installation currently going into South Korea (which the locals are currently protesting by shaving their heads) won’t change the picture either.

There is exactly one nuclear aggressor nation on the planet, and it isn’t Russia. But this shouldn’t matter. In spite of American efforts to undermine it, the logic of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) remains in effect. The probability of a nuclear exchange is determined not by anyone’s policy but by the likelihood of it happening by accident. Since there is no winning strategy in a nuclear war, nobody has any reason to try to start one. Under no circumstances is the US ever going to be able to dictate its terms to Russia by threatening it with nuclear annihilation.

If a nuclear war is not in the cards, how about a conventional one? The US has been sabre-rattling by stationing troops and holding drills in the Baltics, right on Russia’s western border, installing ABM systems in Romania, Poland and South Korea, supporting anti-Russian Ukrainian Nazis, etc. All of this seems quite provocative; can it result in a war?

And what would that war look like?

Here, we have to look at how Russia has responded to previous provocations. These are all the facts that we know, and can use to predict what will happen, as opposed to purely fictional, conjectural statements unrelated to known facts.

When the US or its proxies attack an enclave of Russian citizens outside of Russia’s borders, here are the types of responses that we have been able to observe so far:

1.

The example of Georgia. During the Summer Olympics in Beijing (a traditional time of peace), the Georgian military, armed and trained by the US and Israel, invaded South Ossetia. This region was part of Georgia in name only, being mostly inhabited by Russian speakers and passport-holders. Georgian troops started shelling its capital, Tskhinval, killing some Russian peacekeeping troops stationed in the region and causing civilian casualties. In response, Russian troops rolled into Georgia, within hours completely eliminating Georgia’s war-making capability. They announced that South Ossetia was de facto no longer part of Georgia, throwing in Abkhazia (another disputed Russian enclave) for good measure, and withdrew. Georgia’s warmongering president Saakashvili was pronounced a “political corpse” and left to molder in place. Eventually he was forced to flee Georgia, where he has been declared a fugitive from justice. The US State Department recently gave him a new job, as Governor of Odessa in the Ukraine. Recently, Russian-Georgian relations have been on the mend.

2.

The example of Crimea. During the Winter Olympics in Sochi, in Russia (a traditional time of peace) there occurred an illegal, violent overthrow of the elected, constitutional government of the Ukraine, followed by the installation of a US-picked puppet administration. In response, the overwhelmingly Russian population of the autonomous region of Crimea held a referendum. Some 95% of them voted to secede from the Ukraine and to once again become part of Russia, which they had been for centuries and until very recently. The Russians then used their troops already stationed in the region under an international agreement to make sure that the results of the referendum were duly enacted. Not a single shot was fired during this perfectly peaceful exercise in direct democracy.

3.

The example of Crimea again. During the Summer Olympics in Rio (a traditional time of peace) a number of Ukrainian operatives stormed the Crimean border and were swiftly apprehended by Russia’s Federal Security Service, together with a cache of weapons and explosives. A number of them were killed in the process, along with two Russians. The survivors immediately confessed to planning to organize terrorist attacks at the ferry terminal that links Crimea with the Russian mainland and a railway station. The ringleader of the group confessed to being promised the princely sum of $140 for carrying out these attacks. All of them are very much looking forward to a warm, dry bunk and three square meals of day, care of the Russian government, which must seem like a slice of heaven compared to the violence, chaos, destitution and desolation that characterizes life in present-day Ukraine. In response, the government in Kiev protested against “Russian provocation,” and put its troops on alert to prepare against “Russian invasion.” Perhaps the next shipment of US aid to the Ukraine should include a supply of chlorpromazine or some other high-potency antipsychotic medication.

Note the constant refrain of “during the Olympics.” This is not a coincidence but is indicative of a certain American modus operandi. Yes, waging war during a traditional time of peace is both cynical and stupid. But the American motto seems to be “If we try something repeatedly and it still doesn’t work, then we just aren’t trying hard enough.” In the minds of those who plan these events, the reason they never work right can’t possibly have anything to do with it being stupid. This is known as “Level III Stupid”: stupidity so profound that it is unable to comprehend its own stupidity.

4.

The example of Donbass. After the events described in point 2 above, this populous, industrialized region, which was part of Russia until well into the 20th century and is linguistically and culturally Russian, went into political turmoil, because most of the locals wanted nothing to do with the government that had been installed in Kiev, which they saw as illegitimate. The Kiev government proceeded to make things worse, first by enacting laws infringing on the rights of Russian-speakers, then by actually attacking the region with the army, which they continue to do to this day, with three unsuccessful invasions and continuous shelling of both residential and industrial areas, in the course of which over ten thousand civilians have been murdered and many more wounded. In response, Russia assisted with establishing a local resistance movement supported by a capable military contingent formed of local volunteers. This was done by Russian volunteers, acting in an unofficial capacity, and by Russian private citizens donating money to the cause. In spite of Western hysteria over “Russian invasion” and “Russian aggression,” no evidence of it exists. Instead, the Russian government has done just three things: it refused to interfere with the work of its citizens coming to the aid of Donbass; it pursued a diplomatic strategy for resolving the conflict; and it has provided numerous convoys of humanitarian aid to the residents of Donbass. Russia’s diplomatic initiative resulted in two international agreements—Minsk I and Minsk II—which compelled both Kiev and Donbass to pursue a strategy of political resolution of the conflict through cessation of hostilities and the granting to Donbass of full autonomy. Kiev has steadfastly refused to fulfill its obligations under these agreements. The conflict is now frozen, but continuing to bleed because of Ukrainian shelling, waiting for the Ukrainian puppet government to collapse.

To complete the picture, let us include Russia’s recent military action in Syria, where it came to the defense of the embattled Syrian government and quickly demolished a large part of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Islamic Caliphate, along with various other terrorist organizations active in the region. The rationale for this action is that Russia saw a foreign-funded terrorist nest in Syria as a direct threat to Russia’s security. Two other notable facts here are that Russia acted in accordance with international law, having been invited by Syria’s legitimate, internationally recognized government and that the military action was scaled back as soon as it seemed possible for all of the legitimate (non-terrorist) parties to the conflict to return to the negotiating table. These three elements—using military force as a reactive security measure, scrupulous adherence to international law, and seeing military action as being in the service of diplomacy—are very important to understanding Russia’s methods and ambitions.

Turning now to US military/diplomatic adventures, we see a situation that is quite different. US military spending is responsible for over half of all federal discretionary spending, dwarfing most other vitally important sectors, such as infrastructure, public medicine and public education. It serves several objectives. Most importantly, it is a public jobs program: a way of employing people who are not employable in any actually productive capacity due to lack of intelligence, education and training. Second, it is a way for politicians and defense contractors to synergistically enrich themselves and each other at the public’s expense. Third, it is an advertising program for weapons sales, the US being the top purveyor of lethal technology in the world. Last of all, it is a way of projecting force around the world, bombing into submission any country that dares oppose Washington’s global hegemonic ambitions, often in total disregard of international law. Nowhere on this list is the actual goal of defending the US.

None of these justifications works vis-à-vis Russia. In dollar terms, the US outspends Russia on defense hands down. However, viewed in terms of purchasing parity, Russia manages to buy as much as ten times more defensive capability per unit national wealth than the US, largely negating this advantage. Also, what the US gets for its money is inferior: the Russian military gets the weapons it wants; the US military gets what the corrupt political establishment and their accomplices in the military-industrial complex want in order to enrich themselves. In terms of being an advertising campaign for weapons sales, watching Russian weaponry in action in Syria, effectively wiping out terrorists in short order through a relentless bombing campaign using scant resources, then seeing US weaponry used by the Saudis in Yemen, with much support and advice from the US, being continuously defeated by lightly armed insurgents, is unlikely to generate too many additional sales leads. Lastly, the project of maintaining US global hegemony seems to be on the rocks as well. Russia and China are now in a de facto military union. Russia’s superior weaponry, coupled with China’s almost infinitely huge infantry, make it an undefeatable combination. Russia now has a permanent air base in Syria, has made a deal with Iran to use Iranian military bases, and is in the process of prying Turkey away from NATO. As the US military, with its numerous useless bases around the world and piles of useless gadgets, turns into an international embarrassment, it remains, for the time being, a public jobs program for employing incompetents, and a rich source of graft.

In all, it is important to understand how actually circumscribed American military capabilities are. The US is very good at attacking vastly inferior adversaries. The action against Nazi Germany only succeeded because it was by then effectively defeated by the Red Army—all except for the final mop-up, which is when the US came out of its timid isolation and joined the fray. Even North Korea and Vietnam proved too tough for it, and even there its poor performance would have been much poorer were it not for the draft, which had the effect of adding non-incompetents to the ranks, but produced the unpleasant side-effect of enlisted men shooting their incompetent officers—a much underreported chapter of American military history. And now, with the addition of LGBTQ people to the ranks, the US military is on its way to becoming an international laughing stock. Previously, terms like “faggot” and “pussy” were in widespread use in the US military’s basic training. Drill sergeants used such terminology to exhort the “numb-nuts” placed in their charge to start acting like men. I wonder what words drill sergeants use now that they’ve been tasked with training those they previously referred to as “faggots” and “pussies”? The comedic potential of this nuance isn’t lost on Russia’s military men.

This comedy can continue as long as the US military continues to shy away from attacking any serious adversary, because if it did, comedy would turn to tragedy rather quickly.

  • If, for instance, US forces tried to attack Russian territory by lobbing missiles across the border, they would be neutralized in instantaneous retaliation by Russia’s vastly superior artillery.
  • If Americans or their proxies provoked Russians living outside of Russia (and there are millions of them) to the point of open rebellion, Russian volunteers, acting in an unofficial capacity and using private funds, would quickly train, outfit and arm them, creating a popular insurgency that would continue for years, if necessary, until Americans and their proxies capitulate.
  • If the Americans do the ultimately foolish thing and invade Russian territory, they would be kettled and annihilated, as repeatedly happened to the Ukrainian forces in Donbass.
  • Any attempt to attack Russia using the US aircraft carrier fleet would result in its instantaneous sinking using any of several weapons: ballistic anti-ship missiles, supercavitating torpedos or supersonic cruise missiles.
  • Strategic bombers, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles would be eliminated by Russia’s advanced new air defense systems.

So much for attack; but what about defense? Well it turns out that there is an entire separate dimension to engaging Russia militarily. You see, Russia lost a huge number of civilian lives while fighting off Nazi Germany. Many people, including old people, women and children, died of starvation and disease, or from German shelling, or from the abuse they suffered at the hands of German soldiers. On the other hand, Soviet military casualties were on par with those of the Germans. This incredible calamity befell Russia because it had been invaded, and it has conditioned Russian military thinking ever since. The next large-scale war, if there ever is one, will be fought on enemy territory. Thus, if the US attacks Russia, Russia will counterattack the US mainland. Keeping in mind that the US hasn’t fought a war on its own territory in over 150 years, this would come as quite a shock.

Of course, this would be done in ways that are consistent with Russian military thinking. Most importantly, the attack must be such that the possibility of triggering a nuclear exchange remains minimized. Second, the use of force would be kept to the minimum required to secure a cessation of hostilities and a return to the negotiating table on terms favorable to Russia. Third, every effort would be made to make good use of internal popular revolts to create long-lasting insurgencies, letting volunteers provide the necessary arms and training. Lastly, winning the peace is just as important as winning the war, and every effort would be made to inform the American public that what they are experiencing is just retribution for certain illegal acts. From a diplomatic perspective, it would be much more tidy to treat the problem of war criminals running the US as an internal, American political problem, to be solved by Americans themselves, with an absolute minimum of outside help. This would best be accomplished through a bit of friendly, neighborly intelligence-sharing, letting all interested parties within the US know who exactly should be held responsible for these war crimes, what they and their family members look like, and where they live.

The question then is, What is the absolute minimum of military action—what I am calling “a thousand balls of fire,” named after George Bush Senior’s “a thousand points of light”—to restore peace on terms favorable to Russia? It seems to me that 1000 “balls of fire” is just about the right number. These would be smallish explosions—enough to demolish a building or an industrial installation, with almost no casualties. This last point is extremely important, because the goal is to destroy the system without actually directly hurting any of the people. It wouldn’t be anyone else’s fault if people in the US suffer because they refuse to do as their own FEMA asks them to do: stockpile a month’s worth of food and water and put together an emergency evacuation plan. In addition, given the direction in which the US is heading, getting a second passport, expatriating your savings, and getting some firearms training just in case you end up sticking around are all good ideas.

The reason it is very important for this military action to not kill anyone is this: there are some three million Russians currently residing in the US, and killing any of them is definitely not on strategy. There is an even larger number of people from populous countries friendly to Russia, such as China and India, who should also remain unharmed. Thus, a strategy that would result in massive loss of life would simply not be acceptable. A much better scenario would involve producing a crisis that would quickly convince the Russians living in the US (along with all the other foreign nationals and first-generation immigrants, and quite a few of the second-generation immigrants too) that the US is no longer a good place to live. Then all of these people could be repatriated—a process that would no doubt take a few years. Currently, Russia is the number three destination worldwide for people looking for a better place to live, after the US and Germany. Germany is now on the verge of open revolt against Angela Merkel’s insane pro-immigration policies. The US is not far behind, and won’t remain an attractive destination for much longer. And that leaves Russia as the number one go-to place on the whole planet. That’s a lot of pressure, even for a country that is 11 time zones wide and has plenty of everything except tropical fruit and people.

We must also keep in mind that Israel—which is, let’s face it, a US protectorate temporarily parked on Palestinian land—wouldn’t last long without massive US support. Fully a third of Israeli population happens to be Russian. The moment Project Israel starts looking defunct, most of these Russian Jews, clever people that they are, will no doubt decide to stage an exodus and go right back to Russia, as is their right. This will create quite a headache for Russia’s Federal Migration Service, because it will have to sift through them all, letting in all the normal Russian Jews while keeping out the Zionist zealots, the war criminals and the ultra-religious nutcases. This will also take considerable time.

But actions that risk major loss of life also turn out to be entirely unnecessary, because an effective alternative strategy is available: destroy key pieces of government and corporate infrastructure, then fold your arms and wait for the other side to crawl back to the negotiating table waving a white rag. You see, there are just a few magic ingredients that allow the US to continue to exist as a stable, developed country capable of projecting military force overseas. They are: the electric grid; the financial system; the interstate highway system; rail and ocean freight; the airlines; and oil and gas pipelines. Disable all of the above, and it’s pretty much game over. How many “balls of flame” would that take? Probably well under a thousand.

Disabling the electric grid is almost ridiculously easy, because the system is very highly integrated and interdependent, consisting of just three sub-grids, called “interconnects”: western, eastern and Texas. The most vulnerable parts of the system are the Large Power Transformers (LPTs) which step up voltages to millions of volts for transmission, and step them down again for distribution. These units are big as houses, custom-built, cost millions of dollars and a few years to replace, and are mostly manufactured outside the US. Also, along with the rest of the infrastructure in the US, most of them are quite old and prone to failure. There are several thousand of these key pieces of equipment, but because the electric grid in the US is working at close to capacity, with several critical choke points, it would be completely disabled if even a handful of the particularly strategic LPTs were destroyed. In the US, any extended power outage in any of the larger urban centers automatically triggers large-scale looting and mayhem. Some estimate that just a two week long outage would push the situation to a point of no return, where the damage would become too extensive to ever be repaired.

Disabling the financial system is likewise relatively trivial. There are just a few choke points, including the Federal Reserve, a few major banks, debit and credit card company data centers, etc. They can be disabled using a variety of methods, such as a cruise missile strike, a cyberattack, electric supply disruption or even civil unrest. It bears noting that the financial system in the US is rigged to blow even without foreign intervention. The combination of runaway debt, a gigantic bond bubble, the Federal Reserve trapped into ever-lower interest rates, underfunded pensions and other obligations, hugely overpriced real estate and a ridiculously frothy stock market will eventually detonate it from the inside.

A few more surgical strikes can take out the oil and gas pipelines, import terminals, highway bridges and tunnels, railroads and airlines. A few months without access to money and financial services, electricity, gasoline, diesel, natural gas, air transport or imported spare parts needed to repair the damage should be enough to force the US to capitulate. If it makes any efforts to restore any of these services, an additional strike or two would quickly negate them.

The number of “balls of flame” can be optimized by taking advantage of destructive synergies: a GPS jammer deployed near the site of an attack can prevent responders from navigating to it; taking out a supply depot together with the facility it serves, coupled with transportation system disruptions, can delay repairs by many months; a simple bomb threat can immobilize a transportation hub, making it a sitting duck instead of a large number of moving targets; etc.

You may think that executing such a fine-tuned attack would require a great deal of intelligence, which would be difficult to gather, but this is not the case. First, a great deal of tactically useful information is constantly being leaked by insiders, who often consider themselves “patriots.” Second, what hasn’t been leaked can be hacked, because of the pitiable state of cybersecurity in the US. Remember, Russia is where anti-virus software is made—and a few of the viruses too. The National Security Agency was recently hacked, and its crown jewels stolen; if it can be hacked, what about all those whose security it supposedly protects?

You might also think that the US, if attacked in this manner, could effectively retaliate in kind, but this scenario is rather difficult to imagine. Many Russians don’t find English too difficult, are generally familiar with the US through exposure to US media, and the specialists among them, especially those who have studied or taught at universities in the US, can navigate their field of expertise in the US almost as easily as in Russia. Most Americans, on the other hand, can barely find Russia on a map, can’t get past the Cyrillic alphabet and find Russian utterly incomprehensible.

Also consider that Russia’s defense establishment is mainly focused on… defense. Offending people in foreign lands is not generally seen as strategically important. “A hundred friends is better than a hundred rubles” is a popular saying. And so Russia manages to be friends with India and Pakistan at the same time, and with China and Vietnam. In the Middle East, it maintains cordial relations with Turkey, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Iran, also all at the same time. Russian diplomats are required to keep channels of communication open with friends and adversaries alike, at all times. Yes, being inexplicably adversarial toward Russia can be excruciatingly painful, but you can make it stop any time! All it takes is a phone call.

Add to this the fact that the vicissitudes of Russian history have conditioned Russia’s population to expect the worst, and simply deal with it. “They can’t kill us all!” is another favorite saying. If Americans manage to make them suffer, the Russian people would no doubt find great solace in the fact they are making the Americans suffer even worse, and many among them would think that this achievement, in itself, is already a victory. Nor will they remain without help; it is no accident that Russia’s Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, previously ran the Emergencies Ministry, and his performance at his job there won him much adulation and praise. In short, if attacked, the Russians will simply take their lumps—as they always have—and then go on to conquer and win, as they always have.

It doesn’t help matters that most of what little Americans have been told about Russia by their political leaders and mass media is almost entirely wrong. They keep hearing about Putin and the “Russian bear,” and so they are probably imagining Russia to be a vast wasteland where Vladimir Putin keeps company with a chess-playing, internet server-hacking, nuclear physicist, rocket scientist, Ebola vaccine-inventing, polyglot, polymath bear. Bears are wonderful, Russians love bears, but let’s not overstate things. Yes, Russian bears can ride bicycles and are sometimes even good with children, but they are still just wild animals and/or pets (many Russians can’t draw that distinction). And so when the Americans growl about the “Russian bear,” the Russians wonder, Which one?

In short, Russia is to most Americans a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and there simply isn’t a large enough pool of intelligent Americans with good knowledge of Russia to draw upon, whereas to many Russians the US is an open book. As far as the actual American “intelligence” and “security” services, they are all bloated bureaucratic boondoggles mired in political opportunism and groupthink that excel at just two things: unquestioningly following idiotic procedures, and creatively fitting the facts to the politics du jour. “Proving” that Iraq has “weapons of mass destruction”—no problem! Telling Islamist terrorists apart from elderly midwestern grandmothers at an airport security checkpoint—no can do!

Russia will not resort to military measures against the US unless sorely provoked. Time and patience are on Russia’s side. With each passing year, the US grows weaker and loses friends and allies, while Russia grows stronger and gains friends and allies. The US, with its political dysfunction, runaway debt, decaying infrastructure and spreading civil unrest, is a dead nation walking. It will take time for each of the United States to neatly demolish themselves into their own footprints, like those three New York skyscrapers did on 9/11 (WTC #1, #2 and #7) but Russia is very patient. Russia is ready to respond to any provocation, but the last thing the Russians want is another war. And that, if you like good news, is the best news you are going to hear. But if you still think that there is going to be a war with Russia, don’t think “Armageddon”; think “a thousand balls of flame,” and then—crickets!

Passerby  on December 29, 2021  ·  at 4:42 pm EST/EDT 

The German army has it’s first trans officer, Anastasia Biefang, who is on record as saying “I love being taken in dark rooms”.

In 2014 the Belgian army discarded its Leopard tanks, as a cost saving measure.

I interpret this as: the West has been busy creating an army that corresponds to a political vision, not to military requirements.

And when I look at the Russian proposals, I don’t get an impression of an ultimatum. Rather, the impression is one of “checkmate”: the West can move any piece it wants, they are all losing moves.

Video…

A service-to-self sentience shows his real self and behaviors. video 2MB

China has developed mobile laser weapon based on Dongfeng EQ2050 4×4 tactical vehicle


According to a picture published on the Twitter account of @sugar_wsnbn on December 28, 2021, the Defense Industry of China has developed a mobile laser weapon system based on a modified Dongfeng EQ2050 nicknamed Mengshi, 4×4 light tactical vehicle.


Citing a U.S. Government report, China’s energy laser weapons program has a breadth and intensity that should greatly concern American and Allied defense planners. Some Chinese military experts expect that energy weapons will become more prevalent in 10 to 20 years and will dominate the battlefield in 30 years.

At the edition 2014 of Zhuhai Airshow, the China Academy of Engineering Physics displayed its “Low-Level Guard-1,” a 10-kilowatt electric-powered fiber optic laser. This fixed device consisted of a power module and an equipment module housing the laser and optical guidance/tracking systems. This apparently became the basis for the 30 kilowatts Low-Altitude Laser Defending System (LASS) first displayed by the Poly arms marketing company at a September 2016 military exhibit in South Africa. It claims to have a 4-kilometer range at the 30-kilowatt power level and is useful mainly for defeating swarms of small plastic drones.

According to our first analysis, the original crew compartment of the Dongfeng EQ2050 4×4 light tactical vehicle has been modified with a two doors crew cabin at the front and a fully enclosed compartment located in the middle of the chassis. The laser weapon system is integrated on a turret and can be lowered inside the vehicle in road position.

According to a Chinese source, the whole system is able to track and detect drones at a maximum range of 3 km and the laser weapon will be used to destroy UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) after detection.

The Mengshi or Dongfeng EQ2050 is a Chinese-made light tactical vehicle based on the design of the American Humvee, manufactured for government use by the Dongfeng Motor Group. In 2004 a total of 57 EQ2050 vehicles were sent to the PLA for trials and evaluation. The vehicle is now in service with Bangladesh, Belarus, Central African Republic, China, Gabon, Laos, Mali, Tajikistan,, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

The Dongfeng EQ2050 is powered Cummins EQB150-20 turbocharged diesel developing 150 hp coupled to a 5-speed gearbox. The vehicle can run at a maximum road speed of 120 km with a cruising range of over 500 km.

END OF PART 3

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The Western Bloc’s ruling class are really delusional psychopathic lunatics who are deluded by obvious drug abuse

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Hum. Do you think the title is too soft? Maybe I should tell everyone what I REALLY think, huh?

Hum.

Yeah, today, one of my comments on LinkedIN was banned and erased because it was identified as “Disinformation”. I guess that I am now a “source of disinformation”. I’m bad news, you all.

Sigh.

I said that China was beautiful and that the skies are pretty much blue all the time, and that the pollution problem is pretty much going away.

I guess that this first-hand OPINION of mine is classified as “disinformation” and thus I lose my First Amendment Rights because the Tech Oligarchy says that Rights no longer apply to citizens using their platform.

Well, I can see and understand moderation of comments. I do it, don’t you know. No insults. No stuff about the Jews-Jews-Jews. No stuff about how great and exceptional the USA is. No stuff about how everything is going to change when Candidate XXXXX replaces President YYYYY in the United States.

But that’s just me.

But don’t call an opinion something else. Say what it is.

It is a comment that disagrees with the opinions of the owner of the website. Period. That’s all. Speak your mind. Look people in the eye (or in the cam) and speak your peace.

Sigh.

Hey! Does anyone still believe that America is free?

Banning speech is NOT FREEDOM. It’s something else. So why should the United States exist at all, if it does not represent what it says it represents? Why not call it as it actually is; A military dictatorship disguised as an oligarchy that operates a miltiary empire and is served by serf / slaves controlled by electronic means and fear.

This is all so silly. It makes me yearn for a simpler time….

A simpler time.

Simpler.

Well, maybe not THAT simple.

Maybe simpler like this…

A far simpler time.

Oh Baby!

Yeah. The age of big rail, and comfort. I love those ashtrays in the observation car. I can easily see myself drinking a cocktail, maybe a whiskey sour, and reading a newspaper. Perhaps checking out the prices on Stetson hats.

A cute dame besides me. Smelling like spring flowers, and wearing an lovely hat. Maybe a perfumed hankerchief with her phone number in red lipstick…

An Easier time…

A time when geeks were just regular (if shunned) people, not psychopathic megalomaniacs.

A time when geeks were just regular (if shunned) people, not psychopathic megalomaniacs.

A Nicer time…

…when women had a greater variety of color choices to select from. When women wore bigger earrings. When women would put their hair up when they went out, but put their hair down when they were behind closed doors…

Now, don’t they just look nice?

I like that everyone is holding a cocktail. I’ll bet the men-folk became used car salesmen, eh?

A Pleasanter time. A time when things were peaceful and easy going. Like Petticoat Junction, the Walton’s, or Mayberry RFD…

Cast of Petticoat Junction. There’s uncle Joe there. He almost served as a role model for me.

Oh, by the way, it’s easy to see why I had such a crush on the girls, don’t you know. Thin and trim. Lovely. Sweet, and kind. Nice eyes and great lips.

They were so fine

The girls were lovely, don’t you know.

One was a red head. One was a blonde, and the other was a brunette. They really covered all the bases in that family. I wonder the true story of their fathers. As I recall, it was never brought up.

It was a Cheaper time…

Twenty five cent fries at Burger Shef.

More comfortable.

I get a distinctive Peter Frampton vibe from this picture…

I get a distinctive Peter Frampton vibe from this picture.

A Happier time. No one is going to tell you what you can do, or say, or think. No one is going to get into your face for smoking a pipe, or having a beer…

A long-lost freedom.

It was our generation that made all the big and nasty weapons that the lunitic government leadership so proudly threatens the rest of the world with. We all should have jsut stayed one, gone fishing and smoked weed in joints.

And Safer… too.

A safer time.

Yes, I do miss all that. And sometimes, I feel that I was born just a half a decade too late. It’s an odd feeling…

This car’s a beaut, eh? Too bad I haven’t a clue as to what it is. (I do love the awnings over the windows in the house in the background.)

I missed out in this by just a few years.

Well, let’s jump back to reality.

The world seems to be going down the drain. It’s not. It just seems to be because all the United States is collapsing at all levels. Have you seen the boarded up downtowns in the cities, the mob riots in the malls and shopping areas, the police shoot-outs and gun downs, and of course the train swarms where gangs of pack urban society strip a train completely bare?

The USA is falling to pieces.

Why?

Because it is run by idiots.

The West’s ruling “elites” truly *are* stupid!

First, check this out:

American insanity.

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I would just add that to think that the Russian winter can prevent the Russian military from fighting is simply breathtakingly stupid.  However, since The Telegraph can post such nonsense, this goes to show that the general public in the West has also been stupidified beyond rescue and can be fed any bullcrap without batting an eye.

While the leaders of the (already dead) Empire are consulting meteorologists (or even astrologists?), they are completely missing the basic reality of modern warfare.  These seem to be especially unaware of three basic facts:

  • Modern warfare is primarily conducted with long range, standoff, weapons and this makes maneuver by fire far more important than maneuver by forces.
  • Modern warfare places a huge importance on integrated air defenses working together under automated battle management systems.  Modern air defense missiles can shoot down targets several hundred of kilometers away.  No western air defense system can stop hypersonic weapons.
  • Modern warfare is primarily non-linear, that is to say that it is more like soccer than like US football: each player (say a battalion tactical group)  “follows/opposes” another player rather than trying to hold a line and defend territory.

Those who think that Putin is preparing a WWII style attack simply don’t understand modern warfare at all.

I want to conclude with two small notes:

Strategic vs operational/tactical mobility

The US can very quickly deploy a military force pretty much anywhere on the planet were modern air defenses are absent.  This means that in terms of strategic mobility, the USA remains the leader in the deployment of a light force very far away from home.

Russian mobile forces are much much heavier than their US counterparts.  A Russian Airborne Division is fully mechanized, and comes with its own artillery, armor, EW, etc..  This weight makes it impossible for the Russian to use, say, IL-76s or An-124s to deploy such an Airborne Division (or brigade or even battalion) somewhere in faraway African or Latin America.  However, by this sacrifice of strategy mobility Russia achieves a operational/tactical mobility which US/NATO countries can only dream of.  Simply put, Russia does not have the means to deploy a full infantry battalion somewhere in distant Paraguay, but she does have the means to transport a major Airborne Force (up to several divisions) anywhere inside Russia (this especially applies to forces designated as the “reserve of the commander in chief”) or, very roughly, within about 1000km from the Russian border.  Once landed, that force will not only have a firepower mobile western forces can’t even begin to hope to acquire one day, they can also quickly relocate being, as I mentioned, totally mechanized (the move of the Rusbat from Bosnia to Pristina is a good illustration of this type of capability).

All of the above is to show how utterly stupid all the discussions about Russian forces being 100, 200 or even 400km away from the Ukie border.  If needed, Russia could easily move a very large force (again, fully mechanized) to the Ukie border or even into the Nazi-controlled Ukraine.  I do NOT believe that they have such plans (as Russia has much better options) but Russia definitely has the possibility to very quickly augment the 100k soldiers allegedly currently within 400km of the Ukie border.

Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, etc.

I hear a lot of speculations about Russian missiles (or forces) being deployed “Cuban Missile Crisis” -style to either Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua or other friendly nations in Latin America.  I would never say never (Putin loves to surprise), but in my opinion other than a reopening of the Russian intel basis in Lourdes, Russia will not actually deploy missiles in any of those countries.  There are a couple of reasons for that:

  • Russia has no need to move her missiles anywhere because she now has the means to strike at the entire continental United States with a wide array of long range standoff weapons.
  • These countries are all unstable to some degree, and the issue of protecting advanced Russian weapons systems (or forces) from possible political turmoil is a headache nobody in Russia needs.
  • Deploying weapon systems of forces in a sovereign country require close consultations and negotiations with the host country (including a so-called SOFA).  Why go through these headaches we Russian can act unilaterally without consulting with anybody?

Finally, not only can Russia threaten the continental United States without involving any third country, Russia can threaten US interests were they are the most vulnerable: abroad (especially in CENTCOM and in Far East Asia and Pacific region).  Personally, I very much hope to see some truly major Russian weapon systems deliveries to both Iran and China.  That being said, assisting Latin American counties like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Chile or any other country struggling for its sovereignty would be a very good idea.  Cuba would especially benefit from modern Russian air defenses and EW capabilities.

For the time being, let’s hear more about “sanctions from hell” and even “personal sanctions against Putin” or how the Russian tanks cannot deal with snow (or mud) in the exact same location where the USSR defeated the united Europe under Hitler in WWII or, before that, the united Europe under Napoleon.

Frankly, it appears to me that the 3B+PU crazies have totally taken over the Empire, and history shows how well that ends every time these “geniuses” and “hyenas” get involved in international politics.

And, finally, I really hope that Russia manages to finally protect the LDNR from the Ukronazis but WITHOUT any direct military intervention in the Ukraine (I have no problems with deniable, indirect, efforts to assist the LDNR).  Such a non-invasion would be the ultimate AngloZionist nightmare and I sure hope they get it!

Andrei

Conclusion

Well, it’s being run by idiots. That’s not your problem though. Their idiocy is running through everything. But you can use a filter to control the flow of bullshit in your life.

Do so.

Aim and strive to re-manifest the joys of life that have been bleached away from you over the last few decades. Strive to get them back.

Start small. Add affirmations. Concentrate on the pleasant memories that matter to you.

Whether dancing at the beach…

Dancing at the beach.

Driving a “real” car again…

Driving a real car again.

Having a family “sit down” dinner at the table, as a daily event… a very big THING. It’s very, very fundamental to having a good, happy and calm life.

According to Jill Castle, RD and founder of The Nourished Child, research about family meals concludes that they play an important role in children's growth, development and health. "Not only do kids who eat meals with their families eat healthier, they are more likely to get good grades, have higher self-esteem and lower rates of mental health concerns," she tells PEOPLE.

It can be challenging for any family to make time together as a unit, yet alone to do it on a consistent basis, but it’s these experiences that create a strong bond among family members, especially when children are involved.

"They are a huge help in modeling routines and behavior to our kids, for exposing them to a wide variety of food that we want them to eat, and for reconnecting after periods of being apart," Amy Palanjian, creator of Yummytoddlerfood.com and author of Busy Little Hands: Food Play! Activities for Preschoolersexplains to PEOPLE. 

"It's not always possible for everyone in a family to eat together due to schedules, and sometimes an adult may not be ready for a meal at the same time as a child and they may choose to have something like a glass of wine and a small snack while their child eats.

"It's the focus, conversation, and sitting down together without distractions that really matter—and it's okay if that looks different from a 'family meal,' " Palanjian adds. 

Experts talk to us about the significance of these family meal experiences, for both parents and children, and how effective they can be no matter how 'traditional' they are or aren't.

-People

Family sit down meal at the table.

Eating a meal with loved ones and freinds is the FIRST MOST IMPORTANT step in generating a safe, and calm environment for you and your loved ones. It is critical.

Oh, and by the way. Always remember…

You can have the last beer. You can have the last slice of pizza. You can’t have both.

Or having a fun picnic with friends and family. Drinking wine. Eating fresh bread and cheese. Enjoying the day and nature…

Having a fun picnic with friends and family.

Maybe eating some vintage food made by your grandparents. Dig out that old recipe book.

Dig it out.

Dust it off.

Decompile your grandmothers script writing…

Here is a loaf of Italian bread with an Italian seasoned meat loaf concoction, baked in an oven in aluminum foil and covered in melted cheese.

Yum.

No one makes thes things any longer. I guess it’s just too easy to go and eat at “Olive Garden” instead.

A wonderful concoction.

Vintage dinner recipe: Savory supper on a bread slice – Horseradish and tomato version

Look at these ingredients! OMG. Yum!

Ingredients

2/3 cup (small can) undiluted evaporated milk
1-1/2 pounds ground beef
1/2 cup cracker meal
1 egg
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon Morton salt
3/4 teaspoon Ajinomoto (MSG)
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 cups (8 ounces) grated process-type American cheese
3 7-inch loaves French bread
Heavy-duty aluminum foil
2 medium-sized tomatoes (each cut in 6 wedges)
12 strips of cheese for garnish

Directions

Combine first twelve ingredients. Cut bread loaves in half lengthwise. Spread meat mixture evenly over cut surface of each half. Wrap heavy-duty aluminum foil around crust side of bread, leaving top uncovered. Place on cookie sheet.

Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees) 25-30 minutes. Garnish with tomato wedges and strips of cheese. Bake 5 minutes longer. To serve, cut slices across or diagonally.

Serves 6 (Or two hungry American men.)

Or, you know… being a Rufus. Change your life for the better.

video. 19MB

And one final word…

Be good. Be kind. And you all will be allright.

Love kitty.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

.

 

China has achieved the crown of substantive quantum supremacy

For those of you who worry about Taiwan, and the collapsing US Empire taking over or suppressing integrated chip manufacture. Take note.

China already holds the undisputed leadership in quantum supremacy with not one, but two complete separate computers. One using light and the other superconducting circuits, performing computational feats unattainable for traditional computing.

China has developed two different quantum computers, one that uses light and the other superconducting circuits, and obtained a computing power unattainable for traditional computing, as explained in two articles published in Physical Review Letters.

That means that this dual system of quantum computing gives China the ability to solve practical problems that can not be implemented on conventional computers, stands to respect PhysicsWorld.

With this result, China is already much more than an economic power: together with its energy developments with the artificial sun, it has also entered the “space race” of the 21st century with force, with different projects oriented to Mars and the Moon.

Except... that it is the ONLY nation in this race. The rest of the world are arguing whether to drive to the racetrack or walk.

Pioneers in quantum information

The new quantum computers have been developed by two groups from the Hefei National Laboratory of Physical Sciences, China University of Science and Technology, led by Professor Jian-Wei Pan, whose work has been highlighted in the past, both by the journal Nature and Science, as a pioneer in experimental quantum information science.

The National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory is one of two national labs at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province, July 11, 2019. [Photo by XU MINHAO/FOR CHINA DAILY]
Last July, China announced that it had achieved quantum supremacy with a supercomputer called the Zuchongzhi, capable of performing operations much, much, MUCH faster than Google’s quantum computer.

Zuchongzhi completed a complex calculation in just over an hour, doing it about 60,000 times faster than a classic computer: Using 56 qubits, he solved in just 1.2 hours a task that would take a classic supercomputer eight years.

China leads in quantum supercomputer design, technology, manufacturing, research, applications, components, robotics and AI controls .

Two new quantum computers

China now emerges with a new quantum computer, which it calls Zuchongzhi 2.1 , which uses 66 qubits and is 10 million times faster than the current fastest supercomputer: its computational complexity is more than 1 million times greater than the Sycamore processor. of Google.

It also emerges with another quantum supercomputer, which it calls Jiuzhang 2.0 , that uses light to process information, rather than the superconducting circuits that underpin Zuchongzhi 2.1. “Jiuzhang 2.0”, with 113 photons transmitting qubits, is a septillion times more powerful: it can solve in a millisecond an operation that the fastest computer in the world would take 30 billion years.

This second development also represents quite a feat over the previous version of this same quantum computing system based on light, the “Jiuzhang”, presented at the end of 2020 and with which 76 qubit transmitting photons were used.

Quantum supremacy

With these developments, China consolidates its global quantum advantage and confirms that quantum computers are much more powerful and efficient than classical computers in solving critical problems.

Classical computers are based on the binary system, in which each symbol constitutes a bit, the minimum unit of information in this system, which can only have two values ​​(zero or one).

Binary Computer.

These classic computers have managed to increase their power through supercomputers, which appeared in the 70s of the last century.

These supercomputers, better known as high-performance computers , base their extraordinary capabilities (measured in petaflops) on the sum of powerful binary computers linked together to increase their working power and performance.

Another universe

Quantum computing belongs to another universe: it uses a completely different and superior basic unit of information called the qubit.

The qubit, unlike the bit, can take several values ​​at the same time, that is, it manifests a quantum system with two simultaneous eigen states.

The qubit with two simultaneous eigen states.

While the bit takes on values ​​of 0 or 1 in groups of 8,16,32 or 64 bits, the measurement in qubits can be in both states of 0 and 1 simultaneously, giving you the ability to perform unreachable operations to binary computing.

Quantum supremacy is achieved when it is shown that a qubit-based computer can solve something that is not available to binary computers, even if they are very sophisticated.

Double supremacy

Although it has been claimed in the past that quantum supremacy has already been achieved, and became a battleground between IBM and Google, China has overtaken both with far more powerful developments that, according to Physics magazine, give it no place. to doubt the real and verified quantum supremacy.

And not only that, but it has achieved it by following two different and parallel paths that fortify its supremacy: that of light and that of superconducting circuits.

Physics highlights that it is very difficult for classical algorithms and computers to improve China’s quantum advantages, so we can say that the debate on whether quantum supremacy really exists has concluded.

Useful Supremacy?

And the magazine concludes: Given that quantum machines solve such large and impressive problems in a way that far surpasses classical simulators, could we use these quantum computers to solve useful computational problems?

Researchers have claimed that these quantum computers can tackle important problems, particularly in the field of quantum chemistry, but no convincing experimental demonstration has yet been reported in the West.

You can rest assured that it is ongoing, or has already been conduced, inside of China.

References

Don’t believe me?

Strong Quantum Computational Advantage Using a Superconducting Quantum Processor. Yulin Wu et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 180501. DOI: https: //doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.180501

Phase-Programmable Gaussian Boson Sampling Using Stimulated Squeezed Light . Han-Sen Zhong et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 180502. DOI: https: //doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.180502

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

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Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Russian commentaries on the collapsing United States (with some MM commentary as well) 2 of 3

In the first part, we concluded with an article how the Chinese decapitated the CIA and NED assets inside of China. China identified who the spies were, captured them and executed them immediately. This occurred when President Trump and Mike Pompeo / John Bolton were trying to start a pro-democracy movement in HK, unleash bio-weapons to kill livestock, and try to coordinate saboteurs inside the Chinese mainland.

Here we continue.

But before we do, I would like to say that nothing is better on a long cold day than a hot bowl of soup that has been cooking all afternoon. Especially when it is served with a nice crunchy bread. Don’t you think so? I love the smells and aromas of a good pot of soup or a hearty stew.

A hearty stew.

Ok, let’s continue.

Let’s remember what America actually is today… Everyone in the world believes it is a cluster fuck

Face the facts, the United States is a cluster fuck, and it is pure idiocy to believe that it can act as a unified force to take on Asia. It’s truly mind-boggling. video 2.4MB

Let’s remember who really won the “Korean War” . video 6MB

The United States is in a state of crisis. video 2MB

A comment…

Yes.

Idiocrates  on December 29, 2021  ·  at 3:37 pm EST/EDT 

For me its more than a feeling. The US has a proven track record of not being able to negotiate. Their posture has been to ‘appear’ mad, insane to scare the enemy into submission. Its human nature: a normal person is usually afraid of a madman and what he might do.

However, now, the US not only appears to be insane, they ARE insane, after practicing it for so long.

Another point is that I think it is not enough for Russia to neutralize Ukraine, to remove it as a source of insecurity.
Without clear and present danger to the US homeland, without a serious and unambiguous threat to Uncle Shmuels digs all Russian action will be meaningless. The yanks don't give 2 shits about anyone i.e EU, Ukraine and even Israel (yes moneybags notwithstanding).
If Russian does not scare the Dejesus out of normal and decent Americans, none of the ruling elites will get the message.
Clearly time for words has passed.

Dear American ‘Liberals’: Everything You Think You Know About Russia Is Wrong

Russia is actually ahead of the United States on many issues championed by the American Left

This article from our archives was first published on RI in June 2015

We all know what it feels like to log onto the Newsweek-owned Daily Beast, or the puerile random listicle generator known as  Buzzfeed, and peruse the invective-laden anti-Russian, anti-Putin screeds contained therein. These hysterical publications serve a function; that function is to convince members of the American public who might balk at militarism that today’s Russia is a dangerous, dirty, backward, evil place, and its leader is some amalgamation of Dr. Evil and Emperor Palpatine.

Unlike during the lead-up to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the left took the lead in opposing the Bush administration’s reckless Middle East policy, American liberals have more or less given Obama a free hand in his dealings with Russia and the Evil Putin. Liberals opposed the Iraq War, and spent many an hour arguing with Bushies about the errors of his foreign policy. It just so happens that these individuals turned out to be right, but their insistence on facts, logic, and commitment to the truth have gone out the proverbial window when it comes to Russia and Ukraine. “Putin is just like Stalin,” my earnest, well-educated, liberal friends tell me. “His next target is Moldova and he hates gay people and Pussy Riot and now he wants to use prison labor to build the World Cup venues and he hates all women and doesn’t support women’s rights. I don’t understand why you are so pro-Russian.” I am pro-Russian because I can tell the difference between right and wrong. I can also realize when a country and a leader are being demonized to further an American geopolitical agenda. Furthermore, I can see that the more the United States tries to create some philosophical difference between the U.S. and Russia as existed during the Cold War, the more the former opens itself up to critique.

I guess it comes as no surprise when the U.S. mainstream media spends pages of copy wringing its hands over the deaths of con artists like Boris Nemtsov, but can’t find a smidgen of space to tell the story of innocent victims like Vanya – who suffered horrific injuries as the result of Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation.” I would like to point out to the well-meaning urban hipsters who may be reading this that they are siding with people like John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and are being duped into supporting a neo-conservative war agenda. American liberals may not be on the same page with Vladimir Putin on many issues, which is great for them, because American liberals are not required to live in Russia. However, it must be pointed out that, in many ways, Russia is actually ahead of the United States on issues that tend to be dear to liberals’ hearts. Due to the constant deluge of invective on Russia’s “backward” slide, when I am aware of the precise extent and stench of America’s dirty laundry, these sanctimonious moral lectures from Americans on “human rights” don’t exactly gel with me.

Capital Punishment

Rather than getting its panties in a twist about a piece of legislation that a foreign country has merely proposed, perhaps the NYT would prefer it if Russia followed America’s lead and started executing its prisoners instead of asking them to repay their debt to society. Capital punishment in Russia has been indefinitely suspended – in contrast to the U.S.’s busy death chambers. Since 1976, the U.S. has executed 1,408 individuals. Thus far in 2015, 14 prisoners have been executed. Texas and Oklahoma alone are responsible for 637 executions. Even for those who support capital punishment, it cannot be denied that America’s death chambers have likely put innocent people to death. By contrast, when Russia entered the Council of Europe in 1996, Boris Yeltsin bumbled his way into abolishing the practice.

Capital punishment has not been reinstated under the administrations of Dmitri Medvedev or Vladimir Putin. In 2008, the UN took a vote on passing a moratorium on the death penalty. Russia was one of the 106 nations that voted in favor; the U.S was among the 46 that voted against. Despite the objections of countries such as the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Iran, the measure was approved. Not only does the U.S. far outpace Russia in use of the death penalty, America executes individuals who would not be eligible for the death penalty in Russia. Women, children, and the mentally disabled are exempt from capital punishment. The last person executed in Russia was Sergey Golovkin, a convicted serial killer. In fact, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has spoken out against the death penalty.

Rates of Incarceration

Perhaps the Russians do not need to clear out their prisons through the use of a barbaric and outdated punishment simply because they don’t have as many individuals in prison. Think Progress reports that the U.S. has the largest prison population in the developed world. Additionally, minority American men are more likely than their white counterparts to land in prison.

According to this chart, the incarceration rate in Russia lands somewhere between the U.S. states of Washington and Utah. You read that correctly. The entirety of the Russian Federation has a smaller percentage of its population in prison than the state of Washington. Washington has approximately 7 million residents; Russia has 143 million people. While Russia, China, and the United States overall have the highest prison rates per 100,000 people, the United States has 707; Russia has 470; and China has somewhere between 124 and 172. I wonder when I will see the New York Times gleefully trumpeting this fact as part of a smug commentary on the U.S.’s backward slide.

I also wonder how many World Cup venues could be built with just the population of the Louisiana penal system.

Recognition of Palestine

According to a Gallup poll, Democrats are slowly withdrawing their support for Israel. The left-wing Slate writes of the importance of Palestinian independence. Slate’s Josh Keating mentions naughty Russia in passing because they are unlikely to recognize Kosovo, but neglects to tell its readership that the Soviet Union voted to acknowledge Palestine in 1988. It’s safe to say that this is a cause for concern for many Western liberals, as the Guardian became rather worked up over the firing of an American professor because of his pro-Palestinian stance.

Gun Control

In spite of The New Republic’s dire warnings about drunken redneck Russians shooting anyone who looks at them cross-eyed, even with the new regulations, Russian gun laws are still considered to be restrictive. Even a cursory glance at Russia’s gun policy would make many GOP voters explode with rage.

Russia places limits on the types and number of firearms citizens can own – a very significant distinction from America’s “anything goes” gun policies. Possession of shotguns and other firearms is regulated by law, and gun owners must provide documentation and a “statement from a territorial police officer that weapons can be safely kept at the applicant’s residence” to their local police department.

Russian gun owners must also obtain a gun license. Gun licenses are valid for five years and have to be renewed. Russia also does not allow the controversial practice of open carry, which most American liberals oppose. Additionally, the Russian government requires that citizens who acquire a gun for the first time not only attend firearm safety classes and pass a federal safety exam, but they must also pass a background check. Sensible gun legislation. What a backward sewer!

Of course, perhaps I am being too hard on the United States. Russia doesn’t have the National Rifle Association buying off every politician from dog catcher to members of Congress.

Abortion

It’s been brought to my attention that Russian ladies need Western feminism. I disagree. Acquiring access to family planning is central tenet of mainstream feminism. American feminists have been trying for years to get conservative Republican politicians to stop trying to restrict their access to birth control and abortion. I am not here to argue for or against abortion. I am here to tell you that abortion is free and legal in Russia, and has been for quite some time. So what would the appeal of Western feminism be for Russian women? Are they going to give them something they already have? American feminists can’t even get free abortion and they can? So Russian women need feminism for what, exactly?

While abortion has been legal in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade, individual states have passed legislation placing limits on abortion. While legislators in the Russian Duma have proposed a bill that would limit access to abortion, the proposal seeks to limit state insurance payments for abortions. This is still more generous than American abortion practices, where no public money goes to pay for abortions. As of right now, abortions are available to women over the age of 16 up to the 12th week of pregnancy. No Russian woman seeking an abortion under her government’s health plan is required to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound.

Maternity Leave

Yes, Russian women have it rough without the vicissitudes of feminism. If only they lived in the more advanced and civilized United States, they could give up their maternity leave benefits. In fact, the United States is so far ahead of the curve in their lack of same that they are the only industrialized nation in the world that does not guarantee paid maternity leave for new mothers.

Educational Attainment

Russia has led the world in citizens with college degrees. A 2011 report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation found that 53.5% of Russian adults held a degree. Even though Russian women are not getting on board with feminism do not support FEMEN’s cultural appropriation of African protest, some of these college graduates (maybe as many as half) actually have ovaries.

Health Care

Health care continues to be a contentious issue in the U.S. Although Obamacare has lowered the percentage of uninsured adults, there are still 42 million Americans without health care. Russia, like many developed nations around the world, has universal health coverage. No, it is not perfect. Most systems like Russia’s face problems such as coverage gaps and budget shortfalls, but it is a system that Russia has had in place since Soviet times, and is a guarantee that it gives to all of its citizens. Also, did I mention there is free abortion?

Admittedly, I do not know much about the Russian health care system. They are protesting their right to hang onto their Soviet-style health care system. Although the Western media gleefully reported that Russians protested cuts in health care due to sanctions and low oil prices, I am pretty certain that citizens taking to the streets to express their displeasure with their government’s policy is a sign of a healthy democracy. Furthermore, taking sick pleasure in other people having a hard time because you don’t happen to like their leader isn’t what I would call progressive. It also doesn’t make America’s health care system any better.

The Down & Dirty

Since Russia will hopefully still be hosting the World Cup in 2018, it’s safe to assume that the Western press will continue to beat the same very dead horses they banged on about during Sochi – gay rights and Pussy Riot – because these issues take precedence over the humanitarian tragedy occurring right now in Ukraine.

Let me take my American liberal friends on a little tour, and show them why the focus on these issues is actually war propaganda. It’s very cleverly disguised war propaganda, but war propaganda nonetheless.

Gay Rights

Americans are exceptional. We know that. They are exceptionally specious when it comes to the issue of the LGBT community in Russia.

During the lead-up to the Sochi Olympics, we heard day after day after day how the “gay propaganda” law in Russia would soon lead to gay people being rounded up in cattle cars and shipped off to concentration camps in Siberia. The blame for all of this was laid at the feet of one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who calmly and rationally explains his views on the subject here. Despite the fact that Putin actually does not hate gay people, the Western press forged ahead painting a picture of a Russia where homosexuals are “hunted” with the full support of the Russian public and its demonic leader. In fact, when Russia jailed anti-gay nationalist Maxim Martinskovich for his crimes, it wasn’t good enough for the Daily Beast and CNN tried to take the credit, even though Martinskovich had been on the Russian government’s radar for a while and had actually been jailed in 2007. CNN even tried to claim that before his arrest, Putin was refusing to arrest Martinskovich, conveniently leaving out the fact that Martinskovich had fled to Cuba.

Facts continue to be pesky things for the U.S.’s campaign to vilify Russia over its LGBT record. The United States does not own the patent on LGBT equality. Far from it. Several U.S. States have “no promo homo”laws that are similar to the one passed in Russia. So I guess no Olympics for Utah. Oh, wait.

The existing laws alone would make the United States look hypocritical, but the number of states proposing anti-gay laws continues to increase. Twenty-eight states have proposed laws that range from religious refusals to anti-transgender laws. Indiana infamously passed a “religious freedom” bill earlier this year, and Michigan is moving forward with an anti-gay adoption law. Michigan already has a “right to bully” law, passed in 2011. As a matter of fact, Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law is nothing compared to the laws that exist in 79 countries – some of which are U.S. allies. Here are the countries where you can die for being gay. Please note that Russia is not among them – but Saudi Arabia is. Israel restricts same-sex couples from using surrogates. Likewise, the democratic and peace-loving Ukraine is the most homophobic country in Europe. And EU candidate Georgia isn’t much better.

One doesn’t have to agree with Putin’s views on the subject, nor do they have to be particularly supportive of Russia in general to see that it is being singled out and demonized

for a policy that was passed through a democratic process. To my knowledge, the U.S. has never changed a domestic policy simply because a foreign press was whining about how unfair it was, so I am uncertain why Russia is expected to do so.

Pussy Riot

You guys cannot be serious with this. How is walking into a church, interrupting a service, going into a sacred area of said church, dancing around like five-year-olds, and scaring a bunch of little old Russian ladies brave? Or a protest? Seriously? I am all for freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but if they wanted to protest Putin I am sure they could have found a service that he actually attended. Even then, I am doubtful that he would have cared. I am not religious myself, but I believe there is such a thing as freedom of religion, and people have a right to worship in peace.

Pussy Riot calls itself a “feminist punk band.” First of all, there is nothing feminist about Pussy Riot. They are grown women in their mid-20s who don’t mind men twice their age referring to them  as “girls.” Western Feminism 101 will tell you that calling grown woman a girl is degrading. Secondly, there is nothing “punk” about them. Punk is about being real, and challenging the status quo. If Pussy Riot is about being real, why did they change their name from the Russian “Bойна” to the English “Pussy Riot”? Perhaps because their intended audience is actually outside Russia?

Then there is the matter of their chosen venue. The original Cathedral of Christ the Savior was demolished by Joseph Stalin in 1931 and was rebuilt only after the fall of the Soviet Union. Considering that this church symbolizes the utter hatred of religion that was par for the course during Soviet times, it is little wonder that today’s Russians were so offended. Not only does the church have symbolic value, but the Romanovs were canonized there in 2000. It is where Yeltsin lay in state after he finally keeled over from heart failure in 2007. What exactly made them this angry that they chose this church for their protest? Were they murdered for their beliefs by Stalin? Were they shot and bayoneted to death for being the daughter of a tsar? Is this challenging status quo? Protesting in a cathedral that is charged with the weight of sad chapters in Russia’s history? Is that challenging the status quo, or being an insensitive brat?

And what exactly has the Russian Orthodox Church done to incur this ire? There have been no abuse cover-ups. There have been no sex scandals. There have been no Orthodox Christians with reality shows on TLC who pretend that their son isn’t molesting his sisters (and who maintain the support of prominent politicians). There was nothing”brave” or”heroic” about their performance, just like there was nothing brave or heroic about them throwing live stray cats at McDonald’s workers to “protest capitalism.” Personally I think they should have gone to jail for animal cruelty.

American liberals like to pretend this “song” was about Putin. There are only a couple of lines in the song that actually refer to Putin and the Patriarch. Most Western media claims they were arrested for “hooliganism” when they were charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. Read that last part very carefully.  The rest is about how backward they think the Orthodox church is. That’s fine if they feel that way, but I am pretty sure there is no law in Russia that demands that you join.

Americans were outraged! How dare they? How dare they what? Employ their own laws? Prosecute crimes and hand out punishment i in a manner in which they see fit? And what if this had happened in the United States? You’re telling me that the country that lost its damn mind when Miley Cyrus gesticulated with a foam finger at the”sacred” VMAs would have looked the other way if someone protested in this manner at the National Cathedral in D.C. or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC? How about you go to Boston and interrupt Sunday mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross? I’m sure everyone would have been totally calm. Just like everyone stayed calm when Seth MacFarlane had a potty mouth at the”solemn” Academy Awards. Or how like nobody cared when someone spray painted graffiti at a national park.

I suppose I am not an arbiter of what is and what is not acceptable speech, and what is and is not a challenge to the status quo. But I do know that, had Pussy Riot not been little white girls, maybe the American media would have called them thugs.

I know Russia isn’t perfect, and that’s not the point. But whatever issues Russia has, I feel it is always better to let a country sort these sorts of things out for themselves. Take it from me, the U.S. has plenty of problems of its own. If anything, Russia should take the U.S.’s constant nagging as a compliment. After all, this is the same country that called Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

The United States talks all the time about winning “hearts and minds.” Through the sheer preponderance of facts in their favor, Russia has won my mind. I have freely given it my heart.

A video interlude…

Life in America 1. To understand the entire picture, you have to see the ENTIRE picture, and it is not pretty.  video 9MB

Life in America 2. The American government has failed it’s citizenry. It’s all one big pile of shit.  video 8MB

Life in America 3. Crime is rampant and it’s every man for himself. video 1MB

 

China Will Overtake the US In the Course of the Next Ten Years: Max Parry

 The US is faced with a long list of hot-spots and tensions.  Beginning with the situation in Iraq, where the Parliament has asked the US troops to leave.  However, the US has refused a withdrawal, and instead has announced the 2,500 soldiers will be kept on the ground, but in a support mission, not combat.
The tensions between the US and Russia are at the boiling point as Washington threatens, but President Putin replies, “We didn’t come to the US or UK borders, no, they came to ours,” he said recently.

Presidents of the US and China held a virtual meeting, but did not make headway in resolving lingering US-China trade war disputes.  Trump started a trade war in 2018 which has resulted in both nations paying higher taxes to bring in goods from the opposing country.

The US and other western powers have been meeting with Iranian officials concerning renewal of the Iran nuclear deal cancelled by Trump.  Iran says the removal of sanctions is a fundamental priority, and it is not clear if the US will accept those terms.

Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Max Parry to gain some insight into these situations which are headlines in the international news.

Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst based in New York.  His writing has appeared widely in alternative media, including the Center for Research on Globalization, the Unz Review, Dissident Voice, and the Greanville Post where he serves as an associate editor.  He frequently appears as a political commentator for Sputnik News and Press TV.

1.  Steven Sahiounie (SS):  The US military is pulling out of Iraq. In your opinion, is the Iraqi military capable of preventing an ISIS resurgence?

Max Parry (MP):  First of all, the timetable for the expected drawdown of coalition troops from Iraq is still up in the air.  Until now apparently, the resolution passed by the Iraqi parliament following the Soleimani assassination was completely disregarded by Washington.

Initially, the ostensible reason for the protracted reentry of foreign forces in the country was to combat Daesh (editor’s note ISIS) and that pretext for the US-led combat mission expired nearly four years ago, yet coalition forces still remain.  Given the historical precedent set by American foreign policy, part of me tends to agree with the pessimistic fears that the announcement by senior US and Iraqi officials of the transition to an “advisory role” is likely just another cosmetic facelift for a continued U.S. occupation. While to some extent I am cynical that Washington has any real intention of withdrawing, the recent developments in Afghanistan arguably marked a turning point for waning US influence in the region so perhaps it is a real pullout of boots on the ground in Iraq after all.

I would note that the resurgence of Daesh, which had been mostly eliminated at the hands of the Iraqi PMU in the areas under its control unlike the former caliphate territory under U.S. occupation, began shortly after the inauguration of Joe Biden earlier this year. It also seems like whenever there is any inkling the US is going to leave the country, an ISIS terrorist attack conveniently occurs (never against the US bases though curiously) and gives the perfect excuse for Washington to remain.

Meanwhile, the U.S. frequently serves as the air force on behalf of the remnants of Daesh by targeting the PMU even as they are fighting ISIS across the border in Syria. At the end of the day, the U.S. uses Daesh as a strategic asset in the region to dominate countries like Iraq and the only hope for ISIS to be eliminated lies with the PMU, not al-Kadhimi and the Iraqi government which essentially allowed the U.S. to murder Soleimani and al-Muhandis on its territory and continuously provokes the Popular Mobilization Forces.

2.  SS:  The US/EU political pressure on Russia is increasing. In your opinion, how will Moscow react to this pressure?

MP:  The source of the tensions between the US/EU and Moscow is the absence of a security guarantee rightfully demanded by the latter from the West, Ukraine and NATO which are leaving Russia with little choice but to take a hard line against their provocations. It is Washington which has continuously withdrawn from arms reduction treaties and NATO that has enlarged eastward despite informal pledges not to expand made to the Kremlin at the end of the Cold War. Russia has no choice but to interpret this encirclement and unfriendly course of action as hostile.

I think we could see in Ukraine what we saw in Georgia back in 2008, one of the shortest conflicts in the history of warfare, where US and Israeli-backed Georgia provoked Russia by shelling civilians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  I believe the same kind of war crimes could occur in Donbass with Ukraine provoking Russia by escalating the conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk.  After all, the Russian troop buildup on its border was triggered by Ukrainian President Zelensky’s decree stating Kiev’s intentions to retake Crimea from Russia and Donbass from the Russian-speaking separatists.  I do not believe NATO is suicidal enough to directly attack Russia but I do see a potential hot war brewing between Ukraine and Russia with the West using Kiev as a cat’s paw for imperialism against Moscow.

3.  SS:  The Biden administration is in an economic war with China. How will this economic tension reflect on the world economy?

MP:  Fundamentally, if you take a close look at Biden’s Built Back Better initiative and legislation, on a geopolitical level it is basically a counter to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project.

For example, its framework weaponizes the issue of climate change as means to single out China and the New Silk Roads to be punished by economic warfare, namely in the form of sanctions. The U.S. geostrategy is clearly dead set on containing China’s infrastructure development and investment of the global south. Meanwhile, at the G7, the World Economic Forum, and these other Western financial institutions we’ve seen them adopt this “Build Back Better” slogan in coordinated unison for the so-called “Great Reset” or Fourth Industrial Revolution, as some call it, in the wake of the pandemic.

We can see how the US-China trade war is playing out in the realm of big tech, with the success of TikTok and U.S. attempts to designate it a threat to national security.  Not to mention, there were the sanctions on Huawei. This is because China is on pace to overtake the U.S. as the preeminent country in the world not just economically but geopolitically in the next ten years and this conflict is taking shape in every aspect of the world economy.  The U.S. is desperate to halt the rise of Beijing in the global arena because while it has depleted trillions from the Treasury on endless wars and wasteful military spending, domestically it has been de-industrialized and outsourced virtually all of its manufacturing overseas since the 1970s. We are truly witnessing the emergence of a multipolar world and I believe these efforts by the U.S. to keep pace with China were not made soon enough to make any difference.

4.  SS:  Will the Zionist Lobby in the US be successful in preventing a new nuclear deal with Iran?

MP:  I don’t believe the United States is committed to a return to the JCPOA under Biden.  Iran has made it abundantly clear the U.S. must lift all sanctions imposed since 2018 after the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the agreement.  Biden has been in office nearly a year and has had ample time to make good on his campaign pledge, the ball has been in his court. Instead, we’ve only seen Washington demand further concessions from Iran regarding ballistic missiles, for example, if the agreement is to be re-implemented.

The Zionist lobby tried to sabotage the non-proliferation framework from being adopted and was instrumental in Trump’s move to kill the deal in total violation of international law. While AIPAC’s powerful influence over Washington obviously remains under the Democrats, Biden seems more concerned with using the abandonment of the JCPOA as a political football to score points against Trump and the GOP rather than follow through on returning to what was considered a foreign policy victory under Obama. I foresee a crisis coming to a head between the US and Israel which has become a pariah and total PR disaster for the U.S. where the tide of public opinion domestically is starting to turn against the Zionist entity. That said, I think we are still some ways away from any South Africa-like moment for the Palestinians, unfortunately.

5.  SS:  Is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project operational?  How is this affecting the relationship between Russia and the EU?

MP:  Construction of the pipeline was completed but it is not yet operational, awaiting certification from Germany’s energy regulator.  This has huge implications for EU-Russia relations and for the Ukraine crisis, as Ukraine is a transit country economically reliant on gas transit feeds the new pipeline would bypass.  The US would also be impacted because its economic foothold in Europe would be reduced.  In the midst of this, the EU and US are accusing Russia of using the pipeline and its supply of natural gas to Europe to its advantage.  These factors are all behind what is driving the crisis in Ukraine and the NATO provocations in the Black Sea against Russia.

Video Interlude…

American homeless. This is NORMAL inside of America. video 8MB

American homeless 2. This is NORMAL inside of America. video 6MB

American homeless 3. This is NORMAL inside of America. video 7MB

Empires Fall. Now It’s America’s Turn, and Russia Will Make It Happen

Russia is allowing the US to overextend before the cauldron collapses around it

This article from our archives was first published on RI in June 2018

It’s important for bullies to always win.  Because once their weakness is exposed they can no longer be bullies.

Empires don’t start out as bullies.  They start out as the reaction to the last Empire which became a bully after embracing hubris over humility.

Empires have to resort to bullying near the end because they are fundamentally weak.  They all over-extend themselves through currency debasement which, in turn, degrades the cultural advantage the society had over the previous Empire.

Donald Trump knows how to bully with the best of them.  I go back and forth about his status as a bully, however.  He is a mercurial figure whose unpredictability is predictable.

I see him more as Loki than the typical bully.  In other words, it’s probably fair to say that to Trump bullying is just another tactic.

So, as the head of the U.S., an Empire in the early stages of collapse, fundamentally weakened by two generations of empire building after the failure of Bretton Woods, Trump will bully his opposition because he knows that an Empire that is not feared is one that will soon be laughed at.

And when that happens, it’s game over.

Trump understands that the U.S. can no longer afford to pay for the post-WWII institutional order.  Europe’s been rebuilt but the EU is in the process of tearing it down for the sake of globalism.

And Germany is the one benefiting on our dime.

So, if you are opposed to the Empire, regardless of your politics, seeing Trump take it to the G-7 and, in particular, Germany should be welcomed.

Where you should be worried however, is how that same bullying is being turned on Russia and Iran.  In my latest article for Strategic Culture Foundation I remind everyone that none other than Mr. Realpolitik, Henry Kissinger, was advising Trump on Ukraine and Crimea in early 2017.

And after looking at the way Trump is prosecuting our relationship with Russia it’s clear to me now Kissinger had a stronger influence on Trump than anyone thought.

As the Kremlin Turns

The Left still screaming about Russia collusion are themselves delusional.  Trump hasn’t been secretly doing nice things for Putin behind everyone’s back.  There’s no coordination of policy between them.

I spent most of 2017 arguing with MAGA folks convinced that Trump and Putin were waging a secret war on the Deep State and the Neocons.  4-D chess arguments abounded.

When the reality was that while Trump and Putin keep in touch to ensure little direct conflict between the U.S. and Russian forces in Syria takes place, that is not evidence that Trump is soft on Russia in any way.

Not provoking a nuclear-armed country is not evidence of collusion, just functional brain cells.  A statement I can’t make about most of Trump’s critics this week.

This is an operating principle which governed this week’s summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as well.  Trump was smart to meet with Kim, who did outmaneuver the U.S. over the past five years, by achieving nuclear-armed status.

It forced the U.S. to the table and Trump, smartly, took the opportunity to save face and choose peace.

The same thing is not on the horizon with Russia today.

The Kremlin has moved on.  It would like a better relationship with Washington but it has no illusions about it happening.  To Putin’s credit he has not ruled out speaking with Trump, but as Alistair Crooke points out today, there’s little good reason for him doing so.

Trump has crossed so many lines with his Kissinger-inspired policy to force Russia to abandon its relationship with China through economic and political aggression that there’s little to be gained by chatting about anything other than the weather.

Beware the Cauldron

To beat a bully you have to let him over-extend himself.  He has to feel confident of your passivity in the face of his aggression.  That means if you slap him in the face, he turns the other cheek.

If you attack his friends, he doesn’t attack you.

For more than a year we’ve seen these things play out around the world vis a vis Russia in Syria and in Europe.  The attacks are both military, Syria and Ukraine, and financial, the Nordstream 2 pipeline.

I’ve detailed all of this at length over the past year.  Putin has taken so many shots to the chin that U.S. / Russian relations bear a great resemblance to the “Rumble in the Jungle” where Mohammed Ali let George Foreman punish him for round after round, expending himself in a futile attempt to knock Ali out.

And once Foreman’s arms felt like lead and his legs like Jello, Ali struck so hard and so fast that he stunned the world.

Russian military strategy is dominated by this type of thinking.  Lure your opponent in. Create a weak spot and allow him to attack it over and over.  Invite the chaos.  Allow him to think he is winning.

So here’s where we are today:

  1. If Trump is successful in getting Germany to cower before his sanctions regime that will, in turn, put Iran under heavy pressure financially and socially.
  2. That may yet lead to a formal withdrawal of IRGC Quds forces from Syria.  Yet another win.
  3. But, it will only happen if the U.S. leaves the border crossing at Al-Tanf.  Small pirce to pay.
  4. Germany’s government is on increasingly shaky grounds as AfD are making her life miserable in the Bundestag and her partner Horst Seehofer of the CSU, as Interior Minister is openly defying her over migrant policy.  
  5. The U.S. negotiates a deal with Turkey to control Manbij, possibly to undermine Russia’s relationship with Erdogan, keeping the Turks in Syria to complicate peace talks.
  6. Military conflict in Ukraine likely in the next few weeks with the UAF attacking the Donbass and an incident in the Sea of Azov.
  7. This supports a failing Poroshenko government in trouble before the election and sucker Putin into direct support which can justify more sanctions and keeping the EU on board because of “Russian Aggression” and “Not supporting the Minsk process.”
  8. Trump is openly tying sanctions and trade normalization with the Nordstream 2 pipeline in brazen mafia-style negotiating tactics further complicating Merkel’s life.
  9. Five more Russian companies were sanctioned this week over ‘cyber attacks.’
  10. He’s openly threatening major multinationals who do business in the U.S. for being a part of Nordstream 2.

I think you get the point.  I could go on for another page or two.

Closing the Trap

The point is that this is classic bullying behavior.  Trump is pot-committed, as poker-players say, to this policy.

Once you start with sanctions and threats, you can’t stop.  It’s go all the way or have your bluff called.  With Europe Trump holds aces.  They are dependent on the U.S. and their weakness will be the U.S.’s gain over the next year or two.  Europe’s sovereign debt crisis will explode and the U.S. will see massive foreign in-flows.

It’ll be a massive win but it won’t be the win.  And in winning over Europe it sets him up for the big loss; the fight for the Middle East and Eurasian integration.

His gambit with Russia and Iran becoming an all-or-nothing proposition.  Trump has just about pushed all-in.  Russia/Iran/China’s passivity has emboldened him. The fecklessness of the Obama administration creating dumpster fires in Ukraine and Syria, however, handed him bad cards and a dwindling stack.

He hasn’t won a hand in the Middle East yet.  Sure he’s made headlines but Putin, Rouhani, Nasrallah and Assad have won all the skirmishes that matter.  Any wins Trump has gotten were easy ones to pick up.  The framework for a deal has always been the same.  And no amount of Kissinger-style complications were going to change them.

Iran no more wants to stay in Syria than Putin wants to intervene in The Donbass. So, getting Iran out of Syria is easy.  All Trump has to do is leave.  Israel won’t like it, but it won’t be their decision.  Putin made that clear to Netanyahu when he visited Moscow.

The Kurds are the ones to make that decision for Trump, now that they are openly negotiating with Damascus after Trump backstabbed them over Manbij.

Without the support of the Kurds, the U.S. cannot stay in Syria at all.

So, when we reach the showdown hand Trump won’t have aces.  And the classic Russian cauldron will collapse in around him.  And losing there will be the end of the U.S. empire abroad.

And the world will rejoice.

Russia’s New Nukes Check-Mate a War-Happy US, Make the World Safer

Now that its aircraft carrier fleet, global ABM systems, and NATO has been rendered useless, the US can get on with dismantling its entire bloated, over-stretched, global network of military bases.

This article from our archives was first published on RI in March 2018
A lot of people seem to have lost the thread when it comes to nuclear weapons. They think that nuclear weapons are like other weapons, and are designed to be used in war. But this is pure mental inertia.
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According to all the evidence available, nuclear weapons are anti-weapons, designed to prevent weapons, nuclear or otherwise, from being used. In essence, if used correctly, nuclear weapons are war suppression devices. Of course, if used incorrectly, they pose a grave risk to all life on Earth. There are other risks to all life on Earth as well, such as runaway global warming from unconstrained burning of hydrocarbons; perhaps we need to invent a weapon or two to prevent that as well.

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Some people feel that the mere existence of nuclear weapons guarantees that they will be used as various nuclear-armed countries find themselves financially, economically and politically in extremis.

As “proof” of this, they trot out the dramaturgical principle of Chekhov’s Gun.

Anton Chekhov wrote: “Если вы говорите в первой главе, что на стене висит ружье, во второй или третьей главе оно должно непременно выстрелить. А если не будет стрелять, не должно и висеть.»” [“If you say in Act I that there is a gun hanging on the wall, then it is a must that in Act II or III it be fired. And if it won’t be fired, it shouldn’t have been hung there in the first place.”]

And if you point out that we are talking about military strategy and geopolitics, not theater, they then quote Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances…” and believe that it is QED. Now, I happen to agree wholeheartedly with Chekhov, when it comes to dramaturgy, and I agree with the Bard as well, provided we define “the world” as “the world of theater,” from which the worlds of geopolitics and nuclear physics are both dramatically different.

Let me explain it in terms that a drama major would understand. If there is a nuclear bomb hanging on the wall in Act I, then, chances are, it will still be hanging on that wall during the final curtain call. In the meantime, no matter how many other weapons are present on stage during the play, you can be sure that none of them would be used. Or maybe they will be, but then the entire audience would be dead, in which case you should definitely ask for your money back because this was billed as a family-friendly show.

Back in the real world, it is hard to argue that nukes haven’t been useful as deterrents against both conventional and nuclear war. When the Americans dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they only did this because they could do so with complete impunity. Had Japan, or an ally of Japan, possessed nuclear weapons at the time, these attacks would not have taken place. There is a considerable body of opinion that the Americans didn’t nuke Japan in order to secure a victory (the Japanese would have surrendered regardless) but to send a message to Joseph Stalin. Stalin got the message, and Soviet scientists and engineers got cracking.

There was an uncomfortable period, before the USSR successfully tested their first atomic bomb, when the Americans were seriously planning to destroy all major Soviet cities using a nuclear strike, but they set these plans aside because they calculated that they didn’t have enough nukes at the time to keep the Red Army from conquering all of Western Europe in retaliation. But in August 29, 1949, when the USSR tested its first atomic bomb, these plans were set aside—not quite permanently, it would later turn out—because even a singular nuclear detonation as a result of a Soviet response to an American first strike, wiping out, say, New York or Washington, would have been too high a price to pay for destroying Russia.

Since then—continuously except for a period between 2002 and two days ago—the ability of nuclear weapons to deter military aggression has remained unquestioned. There were some challenges along the way, but they were dealt with. The Americans saw it fit to threaten the USSR by placing nuclear missiles in Turkey; in response, the USSR placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Americans didn’t think that was fair, and the result was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Eventually the Americans were prevailed upon to stand down in Turkey, and the Soviets stood down in Cuba. Another threat to the deterrent power of nuclear weapons was the development of anti-ballistic weapons that could shoot down nuclear-tipped missiles (just the ballistic ones; more on that later). But this was widely recognized to be a bad thing, and a major breakthrough came in 1972, when the USA and the USSR signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Over this entire period, the principle that kept the peace was Mutual Assured Destruction: neither side would provoke the other to the point of launching a nuclear strike, because such a move was guaranteed to be suicidal. The two sides were reduced to fighting a series of proxy wars in various countries around the world, which were so much the worse for it, but there was no danger of these proxy conflicts erupting into a full-scale nuclear conflagration.

In the meantime, everybody tried to oppose nuclear proliferation, preventing more countries from obtaining access to nuclear weapons technology—with limited success. The cases where these efforts failed testify to the effective deterrent value of nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein of Iraq didn’t have any “weapons of mass destruction” and ended up hung. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya voluntarily gave up his nuclear program, and ended up tortured to death.

But Pakistan managed to acquire nuclear weapons, and as a result its relations with its traditional nemesis India have become much more polite and cooperative, to the point that in June of 2017 both became full members of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, along with China, Russia and other Eurasian nations. And then North Korea has made some breakthroughs with regard to nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, and as a result of that the US has been reduced to posturing and futile threats against it while South Korea has expressed some newfound respect for its northern neighbor and is now seeking rapprochement.

In 2002 the prospect of continued nuclear deterrence was set a major setback when the US pulled out of the ABM treaty. Russia protested this move, and promised an asymmetrical response. American officials ignored this protest, incorrectly thinking that Russia was finished as a nuclear power. Since then, the Americans spent prodigious amounts of money—well into the trillions of dollars—building a ballistic missile defense system. Their goal was simple: make it possible to launch a first strike on Russia, destroying much of its nuclear arsenal; then use the new American ABM systems to destroy whatever Russia does manage to launch in response. On February 2, 2018 the Americans decided that they were ready, and issued a Nuclear Posture Review in which they explicitly reserved the right to use nuclear weapons to prevent Russia from using its nuclear deterrent.

And then, two days ago, all of that came to a happy end when Vladimir Putin gave a speech in which he unveiled several new weapons systems that completely negate the value of US missile defense shield—among other things. That was the response the Russians promised to deliver when the US pulled out of the ABM treaty in 2002. Now, 16 years later, they are done. Russia has rearmed with new weapons that have rendered the ABM treaty entirely irrelevant.

The ABM treaty was about ballistic missiles—once that are propelled by rockets that boost the missile to close to escape velocity. After that the missile follows a ballistic trajectory—just like an artillery shell or a bullet. That makes its path easy to calculate and the missile easy to intercept. The US missile defense systems rely on the ability to see the missile on radar, calculate its position, direction and velocity, and to launch a missile in response in such a way that the two trajectories intersect. When they cross, the interceptor missile is detonated, knocking out the attacking missile.

None of the new Russian weapons follow ballistic trajectories. The new Sarmat is an ICBM minus the “B”—it maneuvers throughout its flight path and can fly through the atmosphere rather than popping up above it. It has a short boost phase, making it difficult to intercept after launch. It has the range to fly arbitrary paths around the planet—over the south pole, for instance—to reach any point on Earth. And it carries multiple maneuverable hypersonic nuclear-armed reentry vehicles which no existing or planned missile defense system can intercept.

Among other new weapons unveiled two days ago was a nuclear-powered cruise missile which has virtually unlimited range and goes faster than Mach 10, and a nuclear-powered drone submarine which can descend to much larger depths than any existing submarine and moves faster than any existing vessel. There was also a mobile laser cannon in the show, of which very little is known, but they are likely to come in handy when it comes to frying military satellites. All of these are based on physical principles that have never been used before. All of these have passed testing and are going into production; one of them is already being used on active combat duty in the Russian armed forces.

The Russians are now duly proud of their scientists, engineers and soldiers. Their country is safe again; Americans have been stopped in their tracks, their new Nuclear Posture now looking like a severe case of lordosis. This sort of pride is more important than it would seem. Advanced nuclear weapons systems are a bit like secondary sexual characteristics of animals: like the peacock’s tail or the deer’s antlers or the lion’s mane, they are indicative of the health and vigor of a specimen that has plenty of spare energy to expend on showy accessories.

In order to be able to field a hypersonic nuclear-powered cruise missile with unlimited range, a country has to have a healthy scientific community, lots of high-powered engineers, a highly trained professional military and a competent security establishment that can keep the whole thing secret, along with an industrial economy powerful and diverse enough to supply all of the necessary materials, processes and components with zero reliance on imports. Now that the arms race is over, this new confidence and competence can be turned to civilian purposes.

So far, the Western reaction to Putin’s speech has closely followed the illogic of dreams which Sigmund Freud explained using the following joke:

1. I never borrowed a kettle from you
2. I returned it to you unbroken
3. It was already broken when I borrowed it from you.

A more common example is a child’s excuse for not having done her homework: I lost it; my dog ate it; I didn’t know it was assigned.

In this case, Western commentators have offered us the following:

1. There are no such weapons; Putin is bluffing
2. These weapons exist but they don’t really work
3. These weapons work and this is the beginning of a new nuclear arms race

Taking these one at a time:

1. Putin is not known to bluff; he is known for doing exactly what he says he will do. He announced that Russia will deliver an asymmetric response to the US pulling out of the ABM treaty; and now it has.

2. These weapons are a continuation of developments that already existed in the USSR 30 years ago but had been mothballed until 2002. What has changed since then was the development of new materials, which make it possible to build vehicles that fly at above Mach 10, with their skin heating up to 2000ºC, and, of course, dramatic improvements in microelectronics, communications and artificial intelligence. Putin’s statement that the new weapons systems are going into production is an order: they are going into production.

3. Most of Putin’s speech wasn’t about military matters at all. It was about such things as pay increases, roads, hospitals and clinics, kindergartens, nurseries, boosting retirements, providing housing to young families, streamlining the regulation of small businesses, etc. That is the focus of the Russian government for the next six years: dramatically improving the standard of living of the population. The military problem has already been resolved, the arms race has been won, and Russia’s defense budget is being reduced, not increased.

Another line of thought in the West was that Putin unveiled these new weapons, which have been in development for 16 years at least, as part of his reelection campaign (the vote is on March 18). This is absurd. Putin is assured of victory because the vast majority of Russians approve of his leadership. The elections have been about jockeying for a second place position between the Liberal Democrats, led by the old war horse Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the Communists, who have nominated a non-communist oligarch businessman Pavel Grudinin, who has promptly disqualified himself by failing to disclose foreign bank accounts and other improprieties and now appears to have gone into hiding. Thus, the Communists, who were previously slated for second place, have burned themselves down and Zhirinovsky will probably come in second. If Americans don’t like Putin, then they definitely wouldn’t like Zhirinovsky. Putin is practical and ambivalent about “our Western partners,” as he likes to call them. Zhirinovsky, on the other hand, is rather revenge-minded, and seems to want to inflict pain on them.

At the same time, there is now a committee, composed of very serious-looking men and women, who are charged with monitoring and thwarting American meddling in Russian politics. It seems unlikely that the CIA, the US State Department and the usual culprits will be able to get away with much in Russia. The age of color revolutions is over, and the regime change train has sailed… all the way back to Washington, where Trump stands a chance of getting dethroned Ukrainian-style.

Another way to look at the Western reaction to Russia’s new weapons is using Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief. We already saw denial (Putin is bluffing; weapons don’t work) and the start of anger (new arms race). We should expect a bit more anger before moving on to bargaining (you can have the Ukraine if you stop building Sarmat). Once the response comes back (“You broke the Ukraine; you pay to get it fixed”) we move on to depression (“The Russians just don’t love us any more!”) and, finally, acceptance. Once the stage of acceptance is reached, here is what the Americans can usefully do in response to Russia’s new weapons systems.

First of all, Americans can scrap their ABM systems because they are now useless. Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had this to say about it: «То, что сегодня создаётся в Польше и Румынии, создаётся на Аляске и предполагается к созданию в Южной Корее и Японии — этот “зонтик” противоракетной обороны, получается, “дырявый”. И не знаю, зачем за такие деньги теперь этот “зонтик” им приобретать.» [“What is being built in Poland and Romania, and in Alaska, and is planned in South Korea and Japan—this missile defense ‘umbrella’—turns out to be riddled with holes. I don’t know why they should now buy this ‘umbrella’ for so much money.”]

Secondly, Americans can scrap their aircraft carrier fleet. All it’s useful now for now is threatening defenseless nations, but there are much cheaper ways to threaten defenseless nations. If Americans are still planning to use them to dominate sea lanes and control world trade, then the existence of hypersonic cruise missiles with unlimited range and drone submarines that can lurk at great ocean depths for years make the world’s oceans off-limits for American navy’s battle groups in the event of any major (non-nuclear) escalation because now Russia can destroy them from an arbitrary distance without putting any of their assets or personnel at risk.

Lastly, Americans can pull out of NATO, which has now been shown to be completely useless, dismantle their thousand military bases around the world, and repatriate the troops stationed there. It’s not as if, in light of these new developments, American security guarantees are going to be worth much to anyone, and America’s “allies” will be quick to realize that. As far as Russian security guarantees, there is a lot on offer: unlike the US, which is increasingly seen as a rogue state—and an ineffectual and blundering one at that—Russia has been scrupulous in adhering to its international agreements and international law. In developing and deploying its new weapons systems, Russia has not violated any international agreements, treaties or laws. And Russia has no aggressive plans towards anyone except terrorists. As Putin put it during his speech, «Мы ни на кого не собираемся нападать и что-то отнимать. У нас у самих всё есть.» [“We are not planning to attack anyone or take over anywhere. We have everything we need.”]

I hope that the US doesn’t plan to attack anyone either, because, given its recent history, this won’t work. Threatening the whole planet and forcing it to use the US dollar in international trade (and destroying countries, such as Iraq and Libya, when they refuse); running huge trade deficits with virtually the entire world and forcing reserve banks around the world to buy up US government debt; leveraging that debt to run up colossal budget deficits (now around a trillion dollars a year); and robbing the entire planet by printing money and spending it on various corrupt schemes—that, my friends, has been America’s business plan since around the 1970s. And it is unraveling before our eyes.

I have the audacity to hope that the dismantling of the American Empire will proceed as copacetically as the dismantling of the Soviet Empire did. (This is not to say that it won’t be humiliating or impoverishing, or that it won’t be accompanied by a huge increase in morbidity and mortality.) One of my greatest fears over the past decade was that Russia wouldn’t take the US and NATO seriously enough and just try to wait them out. After all, what is there to really to fear from a nation that has over a 100 trillion dollars in unfunded entitlements, that’s full of opioid addicts, with 100 million working-age people permanently out of work, with decrepit infrastructure and poisoned national politics? And as far as NATO, there is, of course, Germany, which is busy rewriting “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles” to be gender-neutral. What are they supposed to do next? March on Moscow under a rainbow banner and hope that the Russians die laughing? Oh, and there’s also NATO’s largest Eurasian asset, Turkey, which is currently busy slaughtering America’s Kurdish assets in Northern Syria.

But simply waiting them out would have been a gamble, because in its death throes the American Empire could have lashed out in unpredictable ways. I am glad that Russia chose not to gamble with its national security. Now that the US has been safely checkmated using the new Russian weapons systems, I feel that the world is in a much better place. If you like peace, then it seems like your best option is to also like nukes—the best ones possible, ones against which no deterrent exists, and wielded by peaceful, law-abiding nations that have no evil designs on the rest of the planet.

A video interlude again…

Video of American shuttered stores. video 36MB

China does innovate. That’s a fact. Video 28MB

The Future is with China. Video 3MB

Poking the Russian Bear: US-NATO Aggression and Russia’s Red Line

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On November 30th, a report published by Reuters ‘Putin warns Russia will act if NATO crosses its red lines in Ukraine’ said that Putin mentioned what is at stake if NATO expands eastward while they deployed the Aegis Ashore missile defense systems in Poland and Romania:
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The Russian leader, who questioned why NATO had ignored repeated Russian warnings and expanded its military infrastructure eastwards, singled out the deployment in Poland and Romania of the Aegis Ashore missile defence system.  He made it clear he did not want to see the same launch MK41 systems, which Russia has long complained can be used to also launch offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles, in Ukraine.

“Creating such threats (in Ukraine) would be red lines for us. But I hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope that a sense of common sense, responsibility for both our countries and the world community will prevail,” said Putin

To make matters worse, US senators from the Republican party submitted a bill that calls for $450 million in military aid to the Ukraine with new sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 project. The bill will also label Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” according to a December 18th report from rt.com, Russia reacts to US ‘state sponsor of terrorism threat’:

On Wednesday, eight American Republican party senators submitted a bill, speculatively titled the ‘GUARD Act’, containing a range of measures designed to support Kiev. The proposed legislation would authorize an additional $450 million in military aid and impose new sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the recently constructed pipeline that will bring Russian gas to Europe through the Baltic Sea, which Ukraine and the US have strongly opposed.

The bill would also officially designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” if Moscow advances militarily on its eastern European neighbor. In recent weeks, American and Ukrainian intelligence services have accused the Kremlin of “aggressive actions” on the border with Ukraine, including troop buildup, and said they suspected a Russian invasion could be in the works

Another important article from rt.com ‘China & Russia are ready to end US dominance of global finance’said that Russia and China are on the way to bypass the US dollar:

A financial partnership between China and Russia, the world’s largest energy importer and the world’s largest energy exporter, is an indispensable instrument for dethroning the petrodollar. In 2015, approximately 90% of trade between Russia and China was settled in dollars, and by 2020, dollar-denominated trade between the two Eurasian giants had almost reduced by half, with only 46% of trade in dollars. Russia has also been leading the way in cutting the share of US dollars in its foreign reserves. The mechanisms for de-dollarizing China-Russia trade are also used to end the use of the greenback with third parties – with advancements being seen in places such as Latin America, Turkey, Iran, India, etc. The US has been pumping out dollars to the entire world for decades, and at some point, the tide will change as the sea of dollars return home with increasingly diminished value

Russia and China has also been working on alternatives to the SWIFT system:

The SWIFT system for financial transactions between banks worldwide was previously the only system for international payments. This central role for SWIFT began to erode when the US used it as a political weapon. The Americans first expelled Iran and North Korea, and in 2014, Washington began threatening to expel Russia from the system as well. Over the past few weeks, the threat of using SWIFT as a weapon against Russia has intensified. 

China has responded by creating CIPS and Russia developed SPFS, both being alternatives to SWIFT. Even several other European countries have banded together with an alternative to SWIFT to curb Washington’s extra-territorial jurisdiction and thus continue trading with Iran. A new China-Russia financial architecture should integrate CIPS and SPFS, and make them more available to third parties. If the US expels Russia, then the decoupling from SWIFT would intensify further 

The US wants its dollar to remain king by any means necessary. One of the main reasons Washington went to war with Iraq was not only about oil, it was because Saddam Hussein had switched from selling oil in US dollars to accepting payments in Euros as retribution for US sanctions. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and murdered by US-backed forces because he was creating an alternative currency which was a gold-backed African  dinar to replace U.S. dollars and Euros in the African continent.

A recent press conference, the US president and liberal war hawk, Joe Biden was asked about what consequences Russia would face if they invaded Ukraine’s territory. The liberal cheerleaders for war at CNN have been reporting what US and European leaders have been up to in regards to planning harsh sanctions on Russia because it’s President, Vladimir Putin  is misbehaving, therefore punishment must be served by the American empire, So how dare you Vlad for wanting to protect your country!, “the kinds of costs the US and European allies are discussing for Russia are “designed to be implemented very, very fast,” the official said, without detailing what those measures would be. “That is partly why we have chosen the measures that we are working on.” One of their actions is most likely to cut Russia off the Swift payment system since the US dollar is still the world’s reserve currency for the moment.  “The Biden administration has repeatedly said there will be severe economic consequences. Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan also made clear last week there will be further US defensive military support for Ukraine as well as US support for NATO countries on the eastern flank of Russia invades Ukraine”, continued:

I’ve made it absolutely clear to President Putin,” Biden said. “If he moves on Ukraine, the economic consequences for his economy are going to be devastating. Devastating, number one. Number two, we will find it required that we’ll have to send more American and NATO troops into the Eastern Flank, the (Bucharest) 9, all those NATO countries where we have a sacred obligation to defend them against any attack by Russia. And number three, the impact of all of that on Russia and his attitude, the rest of the world, his view of Russia would change markedly. He’ll pay a terrible price

In early December, rt.com also has been documenting what’s been happening with the Ukraine’s decision to recklessly build-up its troop levels in the Donbass region which is a clear threat to Russia’s security concerns:

Ukraine has now stationed well over 100,000 troops and large quantities of hardware in the war-torn Donbass region, the Russian Foreign Ministry alleged on Wednesday morning, amid rising tensions.  Speaking at a briefing on Wednesday, diplomatic spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that “the Armed Forces of Ukraine are increasing [their] military force, pulling heavy equipment and personnel.”

“According to some reports, the number of troops… in the conflict zone already reaches 125,000 people, and this, if anyone does not know, is half of the entire composition of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” she said.  Zakharova also condemned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for submitting a bill to the national parliament that would allow units from foreign armed forces to enter the country as part of multinational exercises next year.  According to her, such a move directly contradicts the Minsk agreement, signed in 2014 in a bid to end the fighting between Kiev’s forces and troops loyal to two self-declared breakaway republics

What’s even more dangerous is the talk of a first-strike option with nuclear weapons against Russia by Mississippi’s high-ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker as reported by FOX news:

Sen. Wicker made the startling comment during an on-air interview where he was asked about the escalating situation abroad. Wicker, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he is ruling nothing out as a potential response to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty against Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin.  “I would not rule out American troops on the ground,” Wicker said, adding, that “We don’t rule out first-use nuclear action”

Let’s make something clear, if the US and Europe are considering a war against Russia through Ukraine, it can escalate into another nuclear standoff reminiscent of the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis.

Russia is well-prepared for an all-out war with the west because they know that the American empire will not quit until they submit to Washington’s demands.  Russia is ready, they learned a long-time ago when they were the former Soviet Union during World War II when more than 27 million Russian civilians and soldiers lost their lives fighting Nazi Germany within their borders.  Washington is backing Ukraine’s aggressive behavior which will bring them closer to war with Russia.  Although I believe cooler heads will prevail, anything at this point in time can happen with an out of control empire worried about losing their control over the planet.  The US has its back against the wall, the question is what will they do knowing that Russia and China have the military capabilities including their new hypersonic missiles that can hit the US mainland at anytime.

The US-NATO forces would not prevail on a multi-front war with Russia and China, they should have learned a lesson in Afghanistan with the Taliban who had by far, a less-developed fighting force than Russia or China but had managed to defeat US-NATO forces after 20 years of conflict.  Washington and the Pentagon knows deep down that defeating Russia, China and the rest of their adversaries will be a difficult mission, but it seems that the psychopaths in Washington and Brussels live in a fantasy land and believe they can win this coming war.  Let’s hope it don’t get that far because it would be disastrous for the entire world.

END OF PART 2

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

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Russian commentaries on the collapsing United States (with some MM commentary as well) 1 of 3

One of the things that I really love about China is the speed and convenience of everything. Facial recognition, QR scans and payments, instant thermal scans and observation, not to mention the zero fees on all financial transactions. It’s really a fiscal paradise.

By big treat is to open up wechat, scan my local supermarket for sales on wine, and then face scan to pay and in ten minutes it’s delivered to my door stop. That would NEVER happen in the USA. Never.

But I do miss some things. Don’t you know.

I will tell you all that I truly miss an original “New York Style” pizza. You just cannot get it anywhere outside of the USA. And when I read the sad, sad news that the price of a slice is going to increase, well I must tell you, it caused a dark pit to form in my stomach.

Such is change.

What’s the matter with the moronic “leadership” in Washington DC today? Can’t they “get it”? You spend like crazy and eventually you and your families are substantially devalued. Your lifestyle decreases, and the value of the cash in your wallet turns to dust. Or maybe slime. Ooozy slime.

Pizza.

What’s the matter with these morons?

New York style pizza slice.

Long time MM readers will understand about the current Geo-political situation. As of December 2021, both Russia and China has had enough of the United States efforts to start world War III, and so they laid down terms.

China was first with “red lines” which America pretty much ignored, followed by Russia which laid down ultimatums.

People (!) facts need to be stated. Russia and China would not do this unless they had a firm “check mate” on the tarmac and ready to go.

Yikes!

This article consists of a bunch of articles from China and Russia concerning the Geo-political scene. It consists of some articles dating as far back as 2017 (at the start of the Trump presidency) and  includes others that are more recent.

This is part 1 of three parts.

All in all, you can plainly see that the rest of the world considers the collapsing American government to be ruled by absolute idiots that need to be “put to sleep” (which is a eutheism that means killed humanely) lest a global conflagration engulfs the world and destroys everything.

I post it here because of some insanity comments out of the United States on MM here.  Somehow one or two of my articles got passed around some American Conservative websites that the comments reflected a Hal Turner, Rush Limbaugh (dead) and FOX “news” viewpoint. Totally unaware of where they are, or what this site represents. They just skim read, skim comment, and depart.

The mind control apparatus is really in full swing there. And the people are just spouting insane nonsense.

So here is what the rest of the world is saying about the USA. No “America is not back” It’s dying…

The U.S. doesn’t have diplomats any more. Their foreign policy is “steal it, kill those who resist”. 

Of course there will be no negotiation. 

In any meeting they will do what they do best: use many words and try to confuse whoever is in the room, all the while watching for an opportunity to steal something.

Russia knows this. I’ve got my popcorn ready.

-Patrick

But before we get to the Geo-political nonsense, let’s talk about pizza.

I mean to say, I wonder if the “leadership” of the United States, in their quest to (so called) defend “democracy” actually eating pizza. I suspect that they are way too busy having their servants cook healthy and delicious foods such as steak and caviar for them instead of eating the kinds of food that us “normal’s” eat.

I just cannot picture Blinkedin eating a Big Mac. Can you?

Here’s a homemade attempt at a New York Style pizza. ‘ll bet that the elites in Washington DC doesn’t even know what this actually is…

Well, I’ll tell you what…

These Jack-asses in the “leadership” roles inside of the “United States” are morons and are so disconnected from reality that I sincerely and truly doubt that they know the difference between a Big Mac and a Whopper. As I really doubt it. Truth this!

Big Mac

And a whopper…

Whopper

Sigh.

They are probably too busy drinking their Chardonnay and eating their escargot to worry about how their actions influence the rest of the world. Well, boys and girls, a day of reckoning is fast approaching. Don’t you all know.

Washington Prepares to Fail in Ukraine

This chapter will not end well for President Biden or Washington’s political class.

It’s an indisputable fact: Washington leads the world in self-delusion.

Washington’s political class is poised to march into a hurricane of its own making in Ukraine, a perfect storm of foreign- and defense-policy blunders likely to plunge the American people into future crises and conflicts. Having refused to acknowledge Russia’s vital strategic interest in Ukraine, Washington now wants to subject Ukraine and the NATO alliance to a dangerous and unnecessary test by confronting Russian conventional military power. In turn, Washington and its allies now face a test—one that they could have avoided but are now likely to fail. First, the facts.

The Biden administration is spending $768.2 billion for national defense. Russia spends only $42.1 billion, less than the $48 billion spent by the Republic of Korea. Yet Russian ground forces are superior in capability and striking power to the U.S. Army and Marines, even if both countries’ ground forces were able to deploy to Ukraine.

Russia’s conventional-ground-force superiority stems, in part, from the strategic advantage of fighting close to Russia. Its potency is also a reflection of President Vladimir Putin’s insistence on fundamental defense reform and reorganization. The reform process involved years of struggle to expel old generals who resisted change and install new, resolute fighting forces, composed of young, single men with a profound sense of Russian patriotism and toughness. The policy has resulted in an operationally flexible grouping of smaller capability-based Russian fighting formations, designed to ruthlessly exploit the striking power of Russia’s rocket artillery, tactical ballistic missiles, and loitering munitions.

Far to the west and behind the Polish border sits an awkward collection of U.S. Army and NATO Ground Forces that, despite decades of cooperation, are still challenged to fight effectively as one force. In the last 20 years of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of America’s allies seldom had anything to contribute to our efforts, save a flag and inexperienced troops who were forced to operate under political restrictions. Thus, like the U.S. Army that leads them, the allied ground forces cling to the illusion that NATO can fight future conflicts on land the way Anglo-American allies did during World War II—with large, densely packed divisions, corps, and armies. These are lucrative targets for Russian strike formations.

Additionally, institutional policies to impose diversity and inclusion on the U.S. Armed Forces at the expense of demonstrated character, competence, and intelligence, demoralize our troops. As a result, the dedication, cohesion, and pride of achievement required to sustain America’s professional fighting force have been seriously damaged.

The implications are clear: A U.S.-Russian confrontation in Eastern Ukraine could easily resemble the 1940 Anglo-French experience, with the Wehrmacht provoking a serious backlash at home. Supply-chain bottlenecks, consumer-goods inflation, and soaring energy costs could all worsen if events in Ukraine spiral out of control. As more and more Americans wake up to falling standards of living, how will they react to yet another war for suspicious aims that have absolutely nothing to do with their own vital strategic interests, and make their daily lives even harder?

Reality is sitting on Ukraine’s eastern border, not in the South China Sea or in the strait of Taiwan, and there is ostensibly nothing Washington can do about it. The questions that should concern Washington’s political class are: Will NATO survive its ignominious retreat in the face of superior Russian military power? And, why is Washington conducting policy not from strength, but from weakness—a weakness thus far disguised by the outward show of military power against weak opponents without armies, air defenses, or air forces?

Nietzsche said, “War makes the victor stupid.” After 1991, America’s senior military and political leaders found many reasons to spend enormous sums on defense, but no reason to change the way U.S. forces fight, or to devise a national military strategy tied to tangible, concrete interests and the preservation of American national power.

As John Kenneth Galbraith warned, “People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right.”

Washington’s corrupt and morally bankrupt leaders are walking into a minefield. If they embroil U.S. and allied forces in Ukraine, extraordinary discontent at home and abroad awaits them. However, like so many privileged classes before them, the Biden administration may prefer “complete destruction” rather than acknowledge that its most cherished beliefs are utter delusions. It’s safe to say that whatever happens in Ukraine, this chapter will not end well for President Biden or Washington’s political class.

Here’s a video!

America’s spending priorities are all fucked up! video 8MB

Insanity.
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And it is, don’t you know.
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Let’s talk about reality…

While the American elite oligarchy are busy eating their fine delicious foods, indulging in fun pursuits, the rest of America suffers. Their solution? To destroy the rest of the world for personal profit. And let the American citizens waste away in what ever conditions that remain. video 3MB.

The TRUE face of America.

As a German I am not happy at all. 

The MSM here is fiercely propagating the “Russia,China-bad, EU/USA/UK-good” narrative. 

They employ the usual agitprop techniques: the enemy has to be personified and then demonized, the ally generalized and blessed. And thus it’s almost always Putin, and almost always the USA, the EU etc.
Other techniques include not telling full stories, of which Ukraine is the best example. There is ZERO mentioning of UKR being a de-facto Neonazi Junta.
And so on and forth.
I am actually deeply afraid that our leaders gave “simply gone insane” and believe that the usual MO will continue forever. 

That is exploitation and gradual erosion of other countries to supply the locust-capitalism of the USA-dominated world. My parents believed in socialism of the GDR. It’s good that they are dead already. 

-Darkmoon

Sad. So sad.

Shocking facts and statistics about how corrupt the US economy has become.

This article from our archives was first published on RI in December 2018

Editor's Note: This is manifestly true in telecommunications as amply demonstrated in Thursday's article: Russia: $10/Month for Superfast Broadband, in US $70 for Slower Speeds - Survey of 195 Countries. At America's tech leader and having the biggest economy, cellular and internet access should be the cheapest in the world, instead it is the most expensive, and it doesn't work as well. Another article the same day addresses the problem from a different perspective - Conservatives have swallowed the (((free trade))) ideology hook, line, and sinker: Conservatives' Obsession With Free Markets Is Foolish, and Not at all Conservative.

Vibrant competition is absolutely essential in order for a capitalist economic system to function effectively.  Unfortunately, in the United States today we are witnessing the death of competition in industry after industry as the biggest corporations increasingly gobble up all of their competitors.

John D. Rockefeller famously once said that “competition is a sin”, and he was one of America’s very first oligopolists.  According to Google, an oligopoly is “a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers”, and that is a perfect description of the current state of affairs in many major industries.  In early America, corporations were greatly limited in scope, and in most instances they were only supposed to exist temporarily.  But today the largest corporations have become so huge that they literally dominate our entire society, and that is not good for any of us.

Just look at what is happening in the airline industry.  When I was growing up, there were literally dozens of airlines, but now four major corporations control everything and they have been making gigantic profits

AMERICA’S airlines used to be famous for two things: terrible service and worse finances. Today flyers still endure hidden fees, late flights, bruised knees, clapped-out fittings and sub-par food. Yet airlines now make juicy profits. Scheduled passenger airlines reported an after-tax net profit of $15.5bn in 2017, up from $14bn in 2016.

What is true of the airline industry is increasingly true of America’s economy. Profits have risen in most rich countries over the past ten years but the increase has been biggest for American firms. Coupled with an increasing concentration of ownership, this means the fruits of economic growth are being monopolised.

If you don’t like how an airline is treating you, in some cases you can choose to fly with someone else next time.

But as a recent Bloomberg article pointed out, that is becoming increasingly difficult to do…

United, for example, dominates many of the country’s largest airports. In Houston, United has around a 60 percent market share, in Newark 51 percent, in Washington Dulles 43 percent, in San Francisco 38 percent and in Chicago 31 percent. This situation is even more skewed for other airlines. For example, Delta has an 80 percent market share in Atlanta. For many routes, you simply have no choice.

And of course the airline industry is far from alone.  In sector after sector, economic power is becoming concentrated in just a few hands.

For a moment, I would like you to consider these numbers

  • Five banks control about half of the nation’s banking assets.
  • Many states have health insurance markets where the top two insurers have an 80 percent to 90 percent market share. For example, in Alabama one company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, has an 84 percent market share and in Hawaii it has 65 percent market share.
  • When it comes to high-speed Internet access, almost all markets are local monopolies; over 75 percent of households have no choice with only one provider.
  • Four players control the entire U.S. beef market and have carved up the country.

    After two mergers this year, three companies will control 70 percent of the world’s pesticide market and 80 percent of the U.S. corn-seed market.

I knew that things were bad, but I didn’t know that they were that bad.

Capitalism works best when competition is maximized.

In socialist systems, the government itself becomes a major player in the game, and that is never a desirable outcome.  Instead, what we want is for the government to serve as a “referee” that enforces rules that encourage free and fair competition.  Jonathan Tepper, the author of “The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition”, made this point very well in an excerpt from his new book

Capitalism is a game where competitors play by rules on which everyone agrees. The government is the referee, and just as you need a referee and a set of agreed rules for a good basketball game, you need rules to promote competition in the economy.

Left to their own devices, firms will use any available means to crush their rivals. Today, the state, as referee, has not enforced rules that would increase competition, and through regulatory capture has created rules that limit competition.

Our founders were very suspicious of large concentrations of power.  That is why they wanted a very limited federal government, and that is also why they put substantial restrictions on corporate entities.

When power is greatly concentrated, most of the rewards tend to flow to the very top of the pyramid, and that is precisely what we have been witnessing.  The following comes from the New York Times

Even when economic growth has been decent, as it is now, most of the bounty has flowed to the top. Median weekly earnings have grown a miserly 0.1 percent a year since 1979. The typical American family today has a lower net worththan the typical family did 20 years ago. Life expectancy, shockingly, has fallen this decade.

So what is the solution?

Well, one of the big things that we need to do is to stop crushing small business.

In America today, the rate of small business creation has been hovering near all-time lows and the percentage of Americans that are working for themselves has been hovering near all-time lows.

In order for more competition to exist, we need more competitors to enter the marketplace, but instead we have been crushing “the little guy” with mountains of regulations and deeply oppressive taxes.

And you know what?

Many of the big corporations actually like all of the red tape because they know that they can handle it much easier than their much smaller competitors can.  That gives them a competitive advantage, and it creates a barrier to entry that is difficult to overcome.

When I was in school, I was taught that one of the reasons why the U.S. system was so much better than communist systems was because we had so many more choices.

But today our choices are very limited in industry after industry, and the gigantic corporate entities that dominate everything don’t really care if we like it or not.

We can do so much better than this, but in order to do so we must return to the values and principles that this nation was originally founded upon.

My suggestion is give the US 8 hours to evacuate Diego Garcia and then turn it to glass.
.
Two birds with one stone.Its vital for the Empire who displaced the natives and far from any population centers. 

-Winston

Yah. More American fiasco…

Video 4.2mB

Yuppur. No question about that.

Laurent  on December 29, 2021  ·  at 3:20 pm EST/EDT 

Too many people in the west simply can not grasp the reality of the current world and simply refuse to negociate and to find an acceptable compromise.
Western rulers greatly overestimate their strength. This wrong assessment create two main problems: firstly they think Russia China Iran are bluffing (in their minds nobody is ready to fight them because of how strong they think they are) and if they are not bluffing then they are strong enough to win in any scenario (again because of how strong they think they are).

Ukraine is saying they and the west are ready to confront Russia militarily (words from the ukrainian ambassador to the US). The EU is saying that russian proposals are unacceptable and the pentagon deployed an aircraft carrier to deter Russia. It’s laughable but the pentagon did it anyway. It’s hard to expect something rational from people so detached from reality. Just look at the energy policy in the EU. It’s a catastrophe but they implement their policy anyway no matter the consequences. Now the EU wants to simply forbid any long term gas contract with Gazprom which means things are going te become even worse soon because Gazprom can not deliver enough gas without long term contracts which means without predictability.

We are basically in the scenario I talked about a few days ago: confronting Russia to regime change or break the country with “sanctions from hell” or worse to isolate China to then to start confronting China even more with Iran somewhere in between. I think that’s how the western hardliners decided to proceed. Their plan is based on the false assumption that first Russia has a weak economy and second that Russia is bluffing. I even think that when Russia will start to act unilaterally turning on the “pain dial” instead of getting the hardliners back to their senses the hardliners will go crazy talking about “Russian threat” and “Russian aggression” and they will use that to escalate more quickly. The war propaganda from western MSM will play a key role here.

Their are only two positive news. Firstly biden and putin will have a phone call tomorrow. Maybe things are not as bad as I think they are and a reasonable compromise will be achieved. I think anyone with a rational mind supports this scenario. Secondly the new S-550 mobile strategic missile defense system seems ready for deployment much sooner than expected and the system should be capable of striking spacecraft, warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic targets.

Do you know what this all reminds me of…

Yuppur.

No question about it at all. Roller Disco.

Roller Disco.

Roller Disco.

Don’t ask me why.

Is should be obvious to most aware and thinking people. Who understand Jimmy Carter and the “Russian Menace”. Roller Disco was popular during the Sunset years of the Russian Empire. Just like Tictok is popular during the Sunset Years of the American Empire.

Which brings me up to…

US and NATO Nuclear Lunacy Still Raving

While Civil Society and a global movement work steadfastly across dozens of fields for the abolition of nuclear weapons, planning, preparations, and rehearsals for attacks using deployed H-bombs and nuclear missiles are routine in the US military and NATO. Two years ago, the US Joint Chief of Staff published online, then quickly deleted, its thermonuclear mass destruction titled “Nuclear Operations, Joint Publication 3-72.”

Before the Joint Chiefs took it down, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists managed to preserve a copy. The manual relies on abstractions and euphemism to depict the unthinkable. It says,

“The employment of nuclear weapons could have a significant influence on ground operations.”

Of course “employment” means detonation, and “significant influence” means searing fireballs, vaporized victims, blast and shock-wave devastation, demolished hospitals and schools, vast firestorms, and permanent radioactive contamination of water, soil, and the food chain.

The manual explains that nuclear attacks create “conditions” without describing them.

It says,

“Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability.”

Then, as if US presidents had never said,

“Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,”
the report pretends it can and should. 

“[T]he use of a nuclear weapon will…create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.”

US nuclear war practice takes place routinely with allied European militaries. “Steadfast Noon” is NATO’s code name for its annual nuclear attack practice, and Hans Kristensen reports for the Federation of American Scientists that,

 “This is the exercise that practices NATO’s nuclear strike mission with the B61 … nuclear bombs the US deploys in Europe.”

Jan Merička wrote in European Security Journal News Oct. 19, 2017, that Steadfast Noon is designed

“to simulate nuclear strikes…and was conducted from the Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium and Büchel Air Base in Germany, where US B61 thermonuclear bombs with the force of up to 340 kilotons of TNT are stored.” (FYI: Hiroshima was incinerated with a 15 kiloton US bomb.)

To illustrate the Pentagon’s ho-hum acceptance of mass destruction, it recently opened in Omaha its new, $1.3 billion Strategic Command headquarters for supervising and targeting the nuclear arsenal, and it named the building after General Curtis LeMay, who, the Omaha World Herald reported, designed and conducted the incendiary bombing of 60 Japanese cities at the end of WWII, bombing that “incinerated entire cities” killing as many as 900,000 civilians.

General LeMay’s motto and that of Strategic Command used to be “Death from Above,” but after the war it was changed to “Peace is Our Profession.”

In Germany, readiness for attacks with nuclear weapons is maintained by the USAF 702nd Munitions Support Squadron, which tends to Germany’s 33rd Fighter-Bomber Wing at Büchel Air Force Base.

Headlines from last October’s bombing “theater” included, and …

  • “NATO Holds Secret Nuclear War Exercises in Germany,”
  • “German Air Force training for nuclear war as part of NATO;”

And from 2017,

  • “NATO nuclear weapons exercise unusually open”;

And in 2015,

  • “NATO nuclear weapons exercise Steadfast Noon in Büchel.”

While the uninitiated might be aghast, the US military plans and prepares all year round for nuclear attacks at its far-flung “Defense Nuclear Weapons School” of the Air Force Nuclear College.

According to the school’s website, one branch (of “Armageddon Academy”) is at the Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, the largest US military base outside the country. Other branches are in New Mexico, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio. Outlines for this school’s ghoulish courses can been read online. (The site may have been altered since I first reported on it in last June.) For example, the school says boastfully that it…

“is responsible for delivering, sustaining and supporting air-delivered nuclear weapon systems for our warfighters … every day.”

Course outlines on the website include,

“Theater Nuclear Operations, a 4.5-day course that provides training for planners, support staff, targeteers, and staff nuclear planners for joint operations and targeting. 

The course provides an overview of nuclear weapon design, capabilities, and effects…. 

Objectives: …Understand the US nuclear planning and execution process; 

Understand the targeting effects of nuclear weapon employment.” 

Another class is, “Integrated Munitions Effects Assessment … a five-day course that provides students … proficiency in creating target models, developing attack plans using … nuclear weapons….” 

Students “will be able to import, edit, and modify target sites”, “Calculate probabilistic attacks against predefined targets; [and] develop attack plans using … nuclear weapons.…”

I am of the mind that setting the stage for nuclear attacks is both criminal and insane. Luckily, millions of people are involved in the newly invigorated movement to rid the world of such madness, via the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Read it sometime. At least you will have, unlike the American “leadership”..

Jose Garcia  on December 29, 2021  ·  at 2:54 pm EST/EDT 

I’ve seen better clown shows when I went to a PT Barnum and Bailey circus. This is beyond ridiculous. It’s more a symptom of insanity than anything else

A video interlude…

Did you all realize that throughout China, the school children are being trained on how to handle mass causalities, provide CPR and perform field triage? Yes, it is so, these are extra courses in additional to the military training that all school children get. video 36MB

The only language Americans really understand is this: to get a taste of their own medicine.

Until Americans are fearful of being bombed back to the Stone Age--just as America routinely bombs other nations around the world--the United Snakes of America will continue to do what it does best: lie, cheat, steal, exploit, bomb, invade, rape, and colonize with impunity as it has done since 1776.

Posted by: ak74 | Dec 30 2021 18:31 utc | 10

The West Resembles a Decapitated Rooster, Wings Still Flapping, Barely Flying

"Democratic elections are but a recent innovation, and a most uncertain one. For instance, during the 2016 election in the US, the establishment trotted out an entire array of craven, feckless, corrupt opportunists, and Trump knocked them all out with a feather ..."
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2018

When I was five and spending the summer in a small village a couple of time zones east of Moscow I witnessed the execution of a rooster. My brother and I walked over to a neighbor’s house to pick up some eggs. Just as we arrived the neighbor finally caught the rooster and chopped his head of.

The now headless rooster then put on quite an aerobatic performance that was quite amazing. After doing an unlimited takeoff he repeatedly soared and plummeted, executed several touch-and-gos (more like crash-and-goes, actually) and was undeterred by what previously would have been head-on collisions. I was by then quite familiar with the poor aerodynamic qualities of barnyard fowl and was duly impressed with the energetic and breathtakingly erratic behavior of a bird liberated from the mental straitjacket of its brain. Unfortunately, the performance only lasted for a minute or so. A word to the wise: I later learned that it is possible to prolong the show, should the need ever arise, by heating up the hatchet so as to cauterize the severed neck. More recently, I have learned that such sans-têteaerobatics are not restricted to chickens.

Figurative birds, of the mechanical variety, can exhibit something similar. A prime example is the greatest boondoggle in the history of military aviation, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It too is liable to losing its head, in the sense of the pilot blacking out. In addition to being ridiculously expensive (over $1.5 trillion in projected project costs) and plagued with problems (only half of the built planes are considered ready for any sort of mission and there are over a thousand known defects that haven’t been fixed, including ones that make it useless for air-to-air combat or ground support) F-35 pilots often report feeling sick and there have been many incidents where they lost consciousness, probably due to oxygen starvation and circulation problems.

In response, the fatally flawed jet’s maker Lockheed Martin, whose motto seems to be “One boondoggle deserves another,” has decided to add a subsystem. Called Auto-GCAS (for Ground Collision Avoidance System), it takes over automatically if it detects the danger of ground collision and the pilot fails to respond to the alarm and take corrective action. Auto-GCAS then throttles up and directs the plane upward, pulling a maximum of five g’s. What does that do to a pilot who is already feeling sick or is unconscious? Once a safe altitude is reached, the plane levels out and Auto-GCAS shuts off. If the pilot happens to be offline for good, the process repeats until the plane runs out of fuel and crashes. I hope that you are impressed with the sheer brilliance of the plan. A show designed to impress was recently staged at an airfield in Utah, where 35 F-35s took off, one right after the other. It has not been independently verified how many of them landed. Auto-GCAS is slated to be ready for use by 2024, but Pentagon’s planners are hoping to accelerate the process.

All of this made me wonder about the general behavior to be expected of hierarchically organized, centrally controlled systems once they are deprived of their control module. Auto-GCAS is by no means the worst case. For instance, there is the Russian Perimetr system, a.k.a. Dead Hand. If it detects that the Russian military leadership has been incapacitated by a nuclear strike, it will launch an all-out nuclear attack, obliterating the aggressor. This may seem like a really bad plan, but then attacking Russia is a really bad plan too, and one bad plan deserves another.

What makes this plan bad is that it doesn’t elicit the right response. The right response is: “Oh, we see, attacking Russia is sheer suicide, so let’s not do that.” But where’s the money in not planning to attack Russia? And so instead the “One boondoggle deserves another” crew sets forth to build anti-ballistic missile systems (which don’t work) and deep underground bomb shelters stocked with years’ worth of supplies (which is gold-plating; a large shallow grave to jump into when the time comes would work just as well).

And yet as far as planning for decapitation goes, Dead Hand is state of the art. Most other large-scale centrally controlled systems are woefully unprepared for the loss of their command modules. For instance, look at finance. After the financial collapse of 2008 it quickly became obvious that nobody competent or responsible was in charge.

The “solution” was for central banks to start blowing financial bubbles by zeroing out interest rates and flooding the world with new debt. Debt that expands much faster than the economy is garbage debt, and it gave rise to various other kinds of garbage: garbage energy from shale and tar sands, garbage money in the form of cryptocurrencies, garbage real estate investment schemes, garbage corporate balance sheets bloated with debt used up in stock buybacks, a large crop of garbage oligarchs gorging themselves on all of this garbage “wealth” and much else. Things look good while all this garbage is packaged up in financial bubbles, but once they pop (and as all children know all bubbles pop eventually) everyone will end up wearing the garbage.

There are plenty of examples of political auto-decapitation as well. In the US, Trump realized that he can become president simply by insulting all of his competitors (who richly deserved such treatment) and so he did. But now the hive mind of Washington is deeply at odds with the bumblebee-mind of Trump, and neither qualifies as any sort of a head, except perhaps in a strictly symbolic sense. Things are no better in Europe. In the UK, an anti-Brexit team is in charge of negotiating Brexit, struggling to make it as anti-Brexit a Brexit as possible.

That doesn’t seem like any sort of “headedness.” In Germany, Merkel is on her way out, and her replacement has the unenviable task of hammering together a governing coalition out of parties that are too busy knocking heads with each other. The multi-headed bureaucratic hydra in Brussels is not exactly popular with anyone. What is the recourse? Emperor Macron of France, perhaps? Is Europe ready to be headed by a diacritical character? (A macron is a horizontal line you place over vowel letters to represent a long vowel: Mācron.)

There are systems that are properly headless: flocks of birds, schools of fish, communes of anarchists, etc. They are anarchically structured and individuals within them take on temporary, task-based leadership roles as the situation demands and can only expect to be obeyed in accordance with their competence in executing the tasks.

But most of the human systems we have are hierarchically structured and require to be headed by someone. Democratic elections are but a recent innovation, and a most uncertain one. For instance, during the 2016 election in the US, the establishment trotted out an entire array of craven, feckless, corrupt opportunists, and Trump knocked them all out with a feather, not because he is any sort of proper leader, but because it was so easy.

For an even more amazing example of democratic failure, look at today’s Ukraine—the most recent experiment in Western democracy. There, a constitutionally elected, though remarkably corrupt and indecisive president was violently overthrown in 2014 in a US-managed coup and replaced with an American puppet so unpopular that yesterday he was forced to introduce martial law—just in order to be able to cancel the elections scheduled in three months and to remain in office de facto.

To produce a rationale for declaring martial law he sent some small boats on a truly idiotic mission. The boats sailed into a Russian-controlled high traffic zone in the Black Sea, refused to respond when hailed and then pointed weapons at Russian border patrol. For this they were duly arrested and hauled off to jail, and their boats confiscated. Previously, an ongoing civil war instigated by this same president resulted in some fifty thousand casualties, but no martial law was ever deemed necessary. What’s different now? Oh, the elections, of course!

If these are the fruits of democracy, perhaps the Ukrainians should consider going back to a monarchy. Dynastic succession has worked much better and for much longer periods of time. For instance, at the time of its annexation by Russia in 1783, Crimea was ruled by Shahin Girei, a descendant of Genghis Khan who was born around 1155.

That one dynasty, spanning 628 years, ruled the largest empire that ever was. At one point it included all of China, most of Russia, Korea, Persia and India, plus many lands in between. Genghis had decreed that no part of the Mongol Empire could be ruled by anyone who wasn’t a direct descendant of his, and so it was.

The Mongol Empire ended peacefully, with Shahin Girei abdicating his throne and accepting protection from Catherine the Great. Maybe that’s the plan, then: install a Ukrainian Emperor and immediately have him abdicate his throne and accept protection from Putin the Great. Then Putin will turn the heat and the hot water back on, the armed thugs will be marched off to someplace safe for disarming and de-thugging, and the nuke plants will stop breaking down.

Since we seem to be headed (no pun intended) for unstable and disrupted times, it bears pointing out that while democracy may be very nice when everything is going along according to plan, it is not particularly resilient in the face of severe disruption. And what is the plan now—in the US, or in the EU (or what will be left of it)?

We have some truly ghastly examples of the fruits of democracy in the form of the Weimar Republic in Germany or the Interim Government between February and October of 1917 in Russia. If you don’t fancy being ruled by headless chickens, consider picking a leader using whatever ad hoc procedure that works.

The idea is to avoid any more Robespierrian Reigns of Terror, Reichstag fires or October Revolutions—because we already know what those are like.

Another video interlude…

China is not Afghanistan. Any one who thinks so is a fucking idiot. video 3.2MB

China is not Syria. Anyone who thinks so is a fucking idiot. video 4MB

I have been watching the shitshow since Kosovo, more intensely so since Libya. I did my time in the US Marines in the early to mid 1980´s (helos) and was mentored by people with trigger time since WWII in various places around the world. They served both as enlisted and as officers, in different branches of service. I can offer a few perspectives, as somebody who just watched it all pass by, without any affiliation to current people whom are official. I kind of like it that way, because I learn about what is going on through a process which seems to be natural and holisitic, cheerleadering for no one side out of hand. Overall, I want more peace and less absolutely useless violence.

The Russians: in a nutshell they are very tightly wired. Their comportment during the heavy fighting in Syria said it all. They were absolutely professional, orderly and courageous. I could not believe what I was observing upon watching footage of Russian attack helicopter pilots engaging heavily defended targets, at extremely close range, over and over again. Their officers fought and died over there while leading, with barely a whimper. There is a reason why people fear the Russian military now and it is a sound position and appreciation of them in my book. They are not playing. This is also reflected in their political leardership at this point, which is exceptionally clear eyed.

The U.S.: The officer corps is a mess, thinking it is just a career path. They never tell it straight, are almost always worried about appearances and they ability to drive ships in the 7th fleet is a good place to start with for examples of this. The personnel themselves can be formidable but, the politics has probably made that completely impossible. Political leadership, coupled with extremely poor intelligence capacity and outright conceit at the decision making level has lead to one surprize after another. Weapons development and procurement has been used as if it´s only purpose was large scale theft. The biggest problems by far are they act as if nobody has any idea what they are doing or just can´t see where the are going …….. while at the same time relying on plans and direction from people who are cowards and are not prepared to sustain a good old fashioned paper cut.

You know, backing off and picking a new direction could be good for everybody. peace can help. Punks like Gloria and Hillary and that ilk in general are dragging us into an inferno. Russia will start removing pieces from the chess board with lighting speed and very soon, if they are not heeded. The party is over, the police are on the scene, my advice is go home and give it a rest. Fix our shcools and road systems, it is much safer and beneficial.

My take, thank you for letting me post it.

-John

Another video interlude…

China is not Vietnam. Anyone who thinks it is is an idiot. video 2MB

China is not Yemen. Anyone who thinks so is an idiot. video 3.4MB

NATO Preparing for Large-scale, High-intensity Armed Conflict with Russia?

 

We are at a Dangerous Crossroads in the History of Humanity.  

Rick Rozoff provides us with a selection of excerpts from major Russian media sources pertaining to the Russia- US/NATO confrontation on Russia’s Western border with Ukraine.

 The objective is to inform Western readers on how the official Russian media views and analyses this ongoing crisis which could lead the World into a World War III Scenario. 

The excerpts include statements by Russia’s Defense Ministry

***

Emphasis added

1. Russian Information Agency Novosti.

Graphics supplied by Anti-Bellum

Defense Ministry: NATO is preparing for a large-scale armed conflict with Russia

“NATO is preparing for an armed conflict with Russia , Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said at a briefing for military attachés and representatives of foreign embassies accredited in Moscow.

“The military construction of the bloc has been completely redirected to prepare for a large-scale, high-intensity armed conflict with Russia,” the colonel-general said.

He explained that the North Atlantic Alliance in its documents, including the military strategy of 2019, directly calls our country the main source of “threats to coalition security.”

At the same time, Fomin noted, the Rome Declaration is still in force, which states that Russia and NATO do not consider each other as adversaries. The parties confirmed this at the 2010 summit in Lisbon. [At which Dmitry Medvedev became the first and to date only Russian or Soviet head of state to participate in a NATO summit – RR]

Targeted provocations by NATO near the Russian borders are highly likely to lead to an armed conflict, the Deputy Defense Minister emphasized. As an example, he cited the attempt of the British destroyer Defender in June of this year to penetrate the territorial waters of Russia off the coast of Crimea. At the same time, the actions of the British Navy ship were provided by the American strategic reconnaissance aircraft RC-135.

As Fomin pointed out, the intensity of such flights in the Black Sea region increased by more than 60 percent compared to 2020, the number of sorties increased from 436 to 710. Strategic bombers B-IB and B-52H of the US Air Force flew 92 times against 78 in 2020 in the airspace of the Black Sea region with access to the conditional line of using weapons. To the west of Crimea, the planes flew up to the Russian borders at a distance of 15 kilometers.

“In total, this year, the command of the NATO Joint Armed Forces conducted 15 exercises in the Black Sea. In 2020, there were eight,” the Deputy Defense Minister continued.

The presence of ships and auxiliary vessels from non-regional NATO states “has become virtually permanent.”

“From January to December of this year, 30 calls of NATO ships were made, in 2020 there were 23 of them. The total duration of stay was more than 400 days, in 2020 – 359,” Fomin said.

Activity in the Baltic region

In the Baltic zone, aircraft of NATO countries made more than 1,200 sorties, and more than 50 warships went out for naval reconnaissance. More than 20 exercises were held in the region in 2021.

“At the same time, neutral states and our closest neighbors: Finland and Sweden are actively involved in coalition activities ,” the colonel-general noted.

He also stressed that after the US withdrew from the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, NATO actually ignored Vladimir Putin ‘s initiative to impose a moratorium on the deployment of new intermediate and shorter-range missiles in Europe and the possibility of developing reciprocal measures to remove existing fears.

“Every year, the NATO bloc conducts 30 major exercises, during which scenarios for conducting military operations against Russia are being worked out. Within the framework of combat training events, special attention is paid to the creation of strike groups near the borders of our country. In particular, a series of Defender exercises were held in May-June of this year. Europe-2021 with the transfer from the United States of America and Western Europe to the “eastern flank” of reinforcement troops of up to 40 thousand people,” Fomin said.”

***

At the same time, a contingent of about 13 thousand troops from the non-regional states of the bloc is constantly present in Eastern Europe. It has about 200 tanks, 400 armored vehicles, 50 guns and three dozen aircraft and helicopters.

====

2. From Sputnik News

Russian Defence Ministry: NATO Preparing for Large-scale High-intensity Conflict With Moscow

Moscow has expressed concerns about the concentration of Western alliance missile systems, troops, warships and aircraft near Russia’s borders, and NATO’s decades’ long eastward expansion. This month, the Russian Foreign Ministry formally signalled that it considers Ukraine to be a ‘red line’ for Moscow which NATO is strongly advised not to cross.

NATO is preparing for a large-scale armed conflict with Russia, in contravention of the Rome Declaration of 2002, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin has said.

***

From Drang nach Osten “Push Eastwards”

[Russia’s] deputy defence minister warned that NATO’s efforts to expand and strengthen its military infrastructure on its eastern flank have had a negative impact on the security architecture of the entire European continent, but are only one of multiple actions taken by the alliance over the decades to do so.

“In 1999, a military operation which was not approved by the United Nations was carried out in Yugoslavia. The bombing of Belgrade killed innocent civilians, and the country’s economy was disrupted. The disintegration of Yugoslavia led to a new round expansion of the bloc and the incorporation of Albania, Croatia and Montenegro, and after that Northern Macedonia,” Fomin said.

At the same time, he noted, the ‘Western partners’ continued to assure Moscow “of the absence of aggressive designs against Russia,” and that Russia believed these assurances, notwithstanding the freezing of interaction with NATO in 1999 in connection with the Yugoslav crisis.

Fomin recalled that the most significant expansion of NATO eastward took place in 2004, when the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the bloc.

This and other waves of expansion significantly increasing the alliance’s military potential on its eastern flank, he said, pointing out that NATO’s borders have moved over 1,000 km eastward, providing it with opportunities to use non-strategic weapons to strike targets inside Russia.

“For example, the minimum flight time from air bases in Estonia to St. Petersburg has been reduced to several minutes. Most of Kaliningrad region is within striking range of artillery systems alone….A significant number of pieces of infrastructure have been transferred to NATO’s disposal, expanding the possibility for the deployment and transfer of troops,” Fomin said.

The reference to Lakenheath is outdated.
.

The officer added that the bloc’s arsenal was beefed up considerably by weapons, vehicles and personnel of the former Warsaw Pact members, plus new ports in the Baltic and Black Seas, and an expansion of NATO’s naval forces.

From TASS

Russian Defense Ministry says NATO aims to deter, not engage with Russia

NATO has focused on the military deterrence of Russia while it used to prefer engaging in joint projects, said Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin.

“The current deplorable state of relations between Russia and NATO can be explained by the fact that the alliance has often resorted to using hybrid methods to contain Russia, combining dialogue with a build-up of military preparations,” Fomin said on Monday….

He said that the deterioration of relations between Russia and NATO began earlier than 2014.

“After the end of the Cold War, the Russian Federation has repeatedly made attempts to find new forms of engagement with NATO, to create a stable, equal system of European security for all,” Fomin said. “It would be wrong to believe that the deterioration of Russia-NATO relations began in 2014.”

“The declared goals of equal cooperation by the alliance were not fulfilled much earlier, in fact, immediately after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact,” he went on to say. “At the same time, Russia was then unprecedentedly open to constructive partnership with the West and carried out a voluntary demilitarization of the country on its western borders.”

Russia also withdrew its troops from the Warsaw Pact countries, the deputy minister said.

The CIA falsely believed it was ‘invincible’ in China — here’s how its spies were reportedly discovered and killed in one of the biggest blows to the agency

END OF PART 1

Do you want more?

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Orders from Washington DC; When China Does Great things you must Question Its Cost in all articles

"I didn't graduate from the 7th grade to put up with this shit!" 

-Chef, "Apocalypse Now"

When I was growing up, my parents raised me on a steady diet of television. Back then in the early 1960’s my favorite shows were “Diver Dan”, “The Jetsons”, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, “Get Smart” and “I dream of Genie”. These shows influenced me as I grew up. It was all about adventure, space and fighting those dastardly communists. Yikes!

Watching TV with mom.

I used to love Saturday mornings.

it would be a morning full of cartoons. I would go get a bowl of sugary cereal, add milk and even more sugar, and sit there in front of the television screen absorbing all the great child entertainment. My favorite cereals from those years were “Froot Loops”, “Coco puffs”, and “Rice Krispies”. I was, I tell youse guys, just a normal kid.

Watching the shows.

In those days, mind control via electronic media was unheard of. It had to be introduced and perfected, which it was indeed, over the next two to three decades.

Now we have very advanced systems to control the minds of people, and they do work. But every now and then, the absurdity of it all becomes so glaringly obvious. And it’s laughable. Really.

If it wasn’t so absolutely sad.

From MoA. Classic.

There seem to be general meme directives for ‘western’ outlets with regards to official enemies.

Russia is said to weaponize everything. The position of China is not (yet) seen as in military terms. The emphasis is on economic competition. Any undeniable Chinese achievement must be declared to have been a bad investment. The directive thus reads:

"When writing about China's achievements - question their costs."

The results:

Yah. There’s also an obsessed foreign policy subset of “weak/declining” china …

I read a few articles on China’s high speed train system, and in the most recent the cost versus revenue was a worry/criticism, even though it would be easy to argue or at least discuss about positive externalities worthy of subsidies.

Similar cost related criticism was laid on the huge program to develop new gas fields in Eastern Siberia and connect them with pipelines to China. It seems to be true that the long term contracts signed with China when the natural gas prices were very depressed were not best possible, but since those projects have to be considered in 20-50 year time frame, it was silly even then. Now the concerns about profitability of delivering natural gas to China in the future look hilarious.

There is an objective aspect in some “cost/global” articles. China is dominating so many commodity markets that decisions impacting import and export of China have tremendous impact on importers and exporters alike.

Most glaring is the lack of “at what cost” questions concerning the West. EU delays approval of North Stream II, but at what cost? Technocrats decreased investments in fossil fuels in EU and reliance on so-called clean fuels, but at what cost?

Both are phenomenal.

Madam Baerbock speaks her mind, but at what cost? This girl sends markets to panic which is not a part of her job description.

Ukraine “decreases reliance on Russia”, but at what cost?

Some estimate that the resulting losses are many times larger than gains from “western orientation”, western commentators do not attempt any such calculations. Freedom is worth every price if someone else pays for it (USA likes when the cost is born by EU, and EU likes when Ukrainians hold the short end of the stick).

Some thoughts…

Now I know to read any title that contains ‘China’ and ‘at what cost’ because it threatens the cult of U.S. hegemony.

1. Articles about environment: After skimming these articles, I agree, the ‘at what cost’ was so inappropriate for the content, it does look like it was planted, ‘will they succeed’ would have been more natural for these articles. Air quality has previously been notoriously bad in China, ongoing efforts to improve it was a very good thing.

2. articles about AI: ‘threatened by U.S.’ would be most accurate or some suitable alternative. This group of headlines says that China is vulnerable in the chip area. There is a condescending tone because it says, ML (Machine Learning) is data sets and processing power, and not so much about innovation, this is true. But I would not discount China’s ability to innovate. In using AI to implement a police state, ‘at what cost’, is appropriate here, as it conjures up everyone’s worst fears, even for our own govt. Pointing out how ML can be abused by a govt is a good thing. But even better is pointing out how it has eliminated rapes, kidnapping, child abductions, and fraud by leaderships inside of China is a great thing.

3. I can see how ‘at what cost’ can be used for the other categories but agree that the repetitious use wreaks of information war.

Infographic

Global Times provides this excellent infographic aimed directly at BigLie media’s propaganda meme as it’s titled, “China’s commitment to the world in 2021.”

Number two…

Number three…

Number four…

I am “chomping at the bit” in anticipation to see the United States versions of these meme’s.

Here’s an article out of Laos…

Laos.

‘The country that bombed you is your friend. The one that built your new railway is your enemy’

Major bridge across the Yuanjiang River along the China-Laos railway in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. Xinhua

Tom Fowdy / RT
 

This is the Western media’s bizarre messaging to the people of Laos, a nation that was carpet bombed by America, and which is now being vilified for accepting a new $6 billion railway line paid for by China.

Thursday was National Day in Laos, a celebration marking 46 years since the landlocked Southeast Asian nation deposed its monarchy and became a revolutionary communist state, an effort which was supported by Vietnam.

This year, the anniversary had added significance, as it saw the opening of a major new project, an electrified high-speed and freight railway system connecting the capital city, Vientiane with its northern neighbour, China.

The $6 billion project is part of the Belt and Road Initiative, and has been hailed as one of its flagship achievements. It is the first commercial and industrial railway in Laos, which, given its geography and the fact it is surrounded by mountainous terrain, has not previously had many options to expand its exports and generate economic growth.

Now, though, it has a direct rapid link into the world’s second largest economy and the world’s largest consumer market by population, and a connection to the booming ports of Guangdong. In terms of what it will bring to Laos, it is a game changer. So, what’s not to like about it?

To nobody’s surprise, the mainstream media have responded to the railway with the usual anti-China negativity. A plethora of articles sought to paint the project as a ‘debt trap’, promoting the accusation that Beijing loans countries money for projects they cannot afford and then exerts political leverage over it.

The Financial Times, for one, ran with a cynical article headlined ‘Laos to open Chinese-built railway amid fears of Beijing’s influence’. It implied that somehow Laos feels threatened or fears the construction of this very pioneering railway project (which the country’s own leader made sure he was the first to travel on). This suggestion of ‘fears of Chinese influence’ has become a common feature on such stories, which seek to cast doubt over anything positive China may be achieving or doing.

A common Twitter meme among pro-China users which has followed from stories like this asks: “but at what cost?” highlighting the frequency of such negative coverage.

And if you Google “China, but at what cost?” you can find a great many examples of articles published in major outlets. In producing such pieces, the broader intention is to depict Beijing’s actions as unwanted, threatening and constantly facing opposition. In the case of the Laos railway project, the ‘problem’ is it was financed by debt, and therefore it is not a positive step.

Yet this argument is as insulting as it is outright insensitive to Laos’ contemporary history. Anyone who knows anything about Laos’ relatively recent past will be well aware that China is not the country to fear, but the United States – the nation that dropped over 260 million cluster bombs on Laos and completely devastated the country as an extension of the Vietnam War, making it the most single bombed nation in history and claiming over 50,000 lives.

Many of these bombs remain unexploded and litter the countryside of Laos, continuing to kill civilians. In constructing the new railway, workers first had to clear the unexploded ordnance. How is it that the world and the mainstream media remain indifferent to this atrocity? And how, by any stretch of the imagination, can they claim that China is the true threat to Laos, and that the US and its allies act in the true interests of the country?

Herein lies the problem. Such a mindset symbolizes the elitism, chauvinism and self-righteousness of the countries of the West, which are ideologically inclined to believe that they stand for the ‘true interests’ of the ordinary people in the countries they profess to liberate.

Western politics peddles the assumption that through countries’ adherence to liberal democracy, they exclusively hold a single, universal, impartial and moralistic truth, derived from the ontological legacy of Christianity, and they have an obligation to introduce it to others. The West always acts truthfully and in good faith, while its enemies do not. And therefore, so the logic goes, any policy the US or its allies direct towards Laos is motivated by sincere intent and goodwill for its interests, and in turn, anything that China does is bad-faith, expansionist and power-hungry behaviour motivated by a desire to influence or control the country.

This creates the bizarre scenario whereby Beijing is depicted as evil and sinister for building a railway to connect to its neighbour – but we should forget America dropping millions of bombs on the country because it was done in the name of ‘freedom’. I’m sure you can imagine how the media would react if China did the latter.

Those who push this narrative predictably omit any insight into how Laos itself thinks about the situation. Another piece which took a similar stance, published in The Diplomat, was titled ‘Laos-China Railway inaugurated amid mounting debt concerns’.

But like the ‘fears of Beijing influence’ expressed in the FT, who are these ‘concerns’ from? The report cites the “Washington-based Center for Global Development” and what it merely describes as a “US based analyst” as sources who push the ‘debt trap’ narrative. But nowhere in any of these articles is there an actual voice direct from Laos who raises any fear of China, or objects to the railway’s existence.

Instead, they simply talk on the country’s behalf, obscuring the reality that a communist state which suffered from extreme levels of aggression from the US probably does not see its northern neighbour – and its most important economic partner – as a threat to its regime. With many more articles running variations of the same theme, there is minimal effort given to the consideration that the railway will help the country rapidly expand its exports, sustain greater growth and help Laos pay for the project.

The Laos-China railway has provided a textbook example of how the media can distort a story in order to fortify an incriminating narrative, while brushing aside brutal realities. We are shown a lopsided world, where the travesty of a country being bombed into oblivion with consequences lasting decades is ignored, and the preference is to try to convince us how that same country’s first commercial railway line is, in fact, what it should really be scared of.

It is a demonstration of how the power of the English-language, pro-US media distorts reality itself and how they can blow up an issue, yet hide the truth, by professing to care dearly about the wellbeing and interests of a country which the West poured death, destruction and carnage upon in the name of freedom.

Here’s an article out of Cambodia…

Cambodia

 

Cambodia-US Relations: Cambodia is not the enemy of the US

Two U.S. Air Force Boeing B-52D Stratofortress bombers over Cambodia, 1970. Original description: “Aerial bombing of Cambodia: Operation Menu”. Wikipedia

 

America believes that Cambodia is China’s vassal state. And it does everything to solidify that belief. At the end, they justify their sanctions against Cambodia for being too friendly with China whom the US considers as the “malign actor” and “revisionist state” to the hegemonic order with the US at the top.

But then how much is called overdependent? How much sanction is considered enough against the alleged malign actor?

Americans warn Cambodians to beware of lucrative interactions with China. But Cambodia’s trade and investment with China is less than 10% of the whole of Southeast Asia. Statistically speaking, countries that are close with the US such as Singapore and Vietnam are in fact the highest beneficiaries from trade and investments with China.

Media that are anti-China can lie about Cambodia’s overdependence on China but numbers don’t lie. Impartial academics should look into those number by themselves and make comparison to the whole region to verify and question their established prejudice. The so-called independent minds should not become the trash collectors of all bad press about Cambodia with many hyperlinks to the anti-Cambodia puppet media and organizations.

Cambodia is currently the most sanctioned country in Southeast Asia, even more than the military junta in Myanmar, and the fact is that there is no sanction at all against  communist Vietnam, who has no freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression. What does anyone say to these? None at all.

What does democracy mean to America when Cambodia is being treated this way by the American government and congress on the aspect of democracy and human rights?

Cambodia is among the few countries in Southeast Asia that has regular multi-parties election.

Cambodia is among the few countries where press, both domestic and foreign, operate freely, and some of the US’ affiliates like the Voice of America, the Voice of Democracy, and Radio Free Asia, bombards daily with verbal diarrhea against Cambodia as if Cambodian people are living in hell. Nothing can be seen positive from the point of view. And they still say that Cambodia has no freedom of expression.

Facebook operates freely in Cambodia. Internet freedom is among the fullest compared to countries in the region. Cambodian people are addicted to Facebook freedom. They really enjoy it. So long as they don’t defame, libel, slander, promote uprising, treason and the toppling of government, they are free to say anything.

Cambodia is hosting more than 5,000 civil society organisations but human right groups in Cambodia, funded by foreign governments, still has liberty to say that Cambodia lacks freedom of association as compared to Viet Nam which has only one state union. In the US, these organisations would have been banned or classified as “foreign agents”. According to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), passed in 1938, it is required that agents representing the interests of foreign powers in a “political or quasi-political capacity” disclose their relationship with the foreign government and information about related activities and finances.

But such kind of civil society organisations in Cambodia are hiding behind protection of their foreign embassies crying foul that Cambodia’s Law on NGO (LANGO) is too restrictive because they simply cannot disclose their finance and activities that are fundamentally foreign-owned, foreign-initiated and foreign-led.

What does America want from Cambodia? Does it want Cambodia to become the enemy of China and to fight China on America’s behalf? Where does Cambodia’s national interest stand in supporting the US and in making China its enemy? Where is the right to self-determination of Cambodia that the US often says that it respects fully? Does the US want Cambodia to commit suicide to express its sincerity in wanting friendship with the US?

Cambodia is considered as “gold-standard” in terms of cooperation with the US in area such as POW/MIA. Cambodia even accepted 300 Afghan refugees when only a few countries in the region are willing to do so.

But what does Cambodia receive in return? The US cut off scholarship for military students who are already in the US. The US imposed visa sanctions against high-ranking officials in the whole Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

They are sanctioning the very individuals that act as the main bridge of friendship and relations between Cambodia and the US.

This is too cruel a treatment from a friend. The US is treating Cambodia like an enemy.

While the US says that it stands with Cambodian people for its independence and march towards stable and peaceful democracy, Cambodia is in fact one of the most sanctioned countries in Southeast Asia, even worst than the so-called US enemies.

People might probably say sometimes, frankness is needed among sincere friends. But a friend should not express solidarity through piles of sanctions like what the US is doing towards Cambodia right now.

How could a friend be so cruel to treat another friend that way? What does friendship mean for the American government and congressmen?

Is this the best treatment that the American government can afford to Cambodia, which is the last beacon of hope of democracy in the Mekong region? Which country in the Mekong region that fares better than Cambodia in terms of democracy and human rights?

Cambodian people like America; they like American democracy; they aspire to have American democracy.

It is totally unfair for Cambodia that it needs to sacrifice its national interest to befriend with the US. Why is it so hard to befriend with the US?

The US should reconsider its relations with Cambodia from the heart, not from the brain of geopolitical strategy. The brightest brain like Henry Kissinger that was behind the dropping of millions of bombs on Cambodian people is not a friend of Cambodia. He is nothing but a war criminal. He should not be the one to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What does peace prize mean for an individual that was behind the killings of hundreds of thousands of Cambodian people?

Which US congressman and policy-maker want to become the next Henry Kissinger, the war criminal that won a Nobel Peace Prize?

An American B-52 aircraft is not smart to distinguish between the Viet Cong and Cambodian civilians. The fact is that they killed more civilians than the Viet Cong that the US considered as US’ enemies.

There is no better definition than “war crime” and “crime against humanity” considering the US’ acts against Cambodia during the 1970s. America should never forget that. American government, American people, American policy-makers, American congressmen should never forget that. America should remember their atrocity against Cambodian people during the 1970s. Cambodian civilians and government are not US’ enemy.

And another article…

China’s Belt and Road rail services booming despite Covid-19

A train carrying 33 refrigerated containers departs from the Tengjun International Land Port in Kunming, capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, for Laos. Xinhua

 

Beijing has inked more than 200 cooperation documents for the joint construction of the Belt and Road with 145 countries and 32 international organizations


Xinhua – Though the world remains haunted by the still ravaging COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2021, the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has seen a boom in promoting world connectivity.

Under the BRI framework, railway construction is expanding across the global landscape. The iconic China-Europe Railway Express, the China-Laos railway and the railway line in Tanzania have all recorded milestone achievements over the past year.

These important railway projects provide important pillars for the BRI, and also contribute their due share to improving the global supply chain and the COVID-19 fight.

LINE OF HEALTH AND GIFTS

During days just before Christmas, when people in Western countries are worrying that they may not be able to receive their Christmas gifts on time due to clogged shipping lanes, China-Europe trains from different regions were sending products to Europe without delay.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of China-Europe freight trains. By the end of October, the China-Europe freight trains plying along 73 routes have reached 175 cities in 23 European countries with more than 50,000 kinds of goods.

Amid the pandemic, the number of China-Europe express trains as well as the volume of freight have continued to break new records.

Data from China’s National Development and Reform Commission shows that during the January-November period, the railway service linking the two sides operated 13,817 trains, carrying 1.332 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), an increase of 23 percent and 30 percent respectively compared with the year 2020.

At the end of November, the cumulative number of anti-epidemic equipment transported by the China-Europe freight trains reached 13.43 million pieces and 103,000 tons.

“China is very important for the global supply chain. And in most cases it’s faster (than the ocean shipping). Therefore, it’s a useful alternative to use the train, and it’s reliable,” said Axel Mattern, joint chief executive officer of Port of Hamburg Marketing.

According to global logistics company MEDILINK, the initial freight rate of the China-Europe rail network is often two-thirds higher than that of sea freight, but the current price is very competitive.

The current freight rates of the China-Europe freight trains are basically the same as those of sea freight, but it only takes nearly half the time, said Logistics industry insiders.

KEY FOR TRANS-ASIAN CONNECTIVITY

On Dec. 3, the China-Laos Railway officially started operation. It marks a crucial step for the trans-Asian railway network, which has been brewing for more than half a century. Since then, the journey from Vientiane to the border with China has been reduced from 2 days to 3 hours, and the journey to Kunming, capital of China’s Yunnan Province, can be made in a day.

“The China-Laos railway is conducive to promoting the development of areas that are located along the line. Countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion, including Thailand, Laos and China, will benefit from trade, agricultural products, consumer products, investment and tourism,” said Pichet Kunadhamraks, deputy director-general of the Department of Rail Transport under the Thai Ministry of Transport, in an interview with Xinhua.

The railway is expected to reduce transport costs between Vientiane and Kunming by 40 to 50 percent, said a World Bank report, noting transport costs from Thailand’s Laem Chabang port to Kunming are expected to fall by at least 32 percent.

It is estimated that by 2030, the annual volume of commercial goods in transit through the Laos section of the China-Laos Railway will reach 3.9 million tons, it added.

This year coincides with the 30th anniversary of the establishment of China-ASEAN dialogue relations, and the two sides are advancing the BRI and the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025.

On Jan. 1, 2022, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will officially enter into force. Experts believe that the BRI will lead to the construction of the trans-Asian rail network and promote regional connectivity.

ROAD OF DEVELOPMENT

In mid-June this year, a ceremony was held to launch the Ithaca-Mwanza section of the Standard Gauge Railway of Tanzania’s Central Line, the construction of which is undertaken by a Chinese company.

After the completion of this project, it will become an important route connecting Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and other countries, providing a pathway to the Indian Ocean. It is of great importance for promoting the economic development of the countries in the region and improving the living conditions of the people.

From the Tanzania-Zambia railway built in the 1970s, to the Djibouti-Ethiopia and Mombasa-Nairobi railways, and the Standard Gauge Railway of Tanzania’s Central Line, the joint efforts of China and Africa have created jobs, trade opportunities and a better investment environment, thereby contributing to local prosperity as well as to the improvement of the living conditions of the local residents.

As of Dec. 16, China has signed more than 200 cooperation documents for the joint construction of the Belt and Road with 145 countries and 32 international organizations, and financial institutions such as China-proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Silk Road Fund have expanded financing channels for infrastructure construction.

According to Bambang Suryono, chairman of Indonesian think tank Asia Innovation Study Center, for many countries, a major obstacle to escape poverty is the weakness of transport infrastructure, and in this regard, China’s success can set an example.

Conclusion

When you measure everything against the cost structure imposed by western capitalism, everything China does inevitably looks costly.

Totally absent from the analysis is the question of benefits.

The west thinks only of profits. China thinks of the benefits not only to China and the Chinese people, but to the countries and peoples with whom they do business.

The West = Personal Profit
China = Benefits for Groups of People

The long term superiority of such a strategy is blindingly obvious to any open minded observer. It’s the reason why China and Russia will eventually pass through this contentious period of change, and prevail in a new better world.

Many other nations see this, and they do remember how the United States treated / treats them. When the shit hits the fan, and it will, the United States will be broke, penniless, scorned and friendless.

No matter how you spin it, it will not a good situation to be in.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

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What if the largest experiment on human beings in history is a failure?

I have been directed to post this article.

I usually have tried to refrain from injections and Vaxx subjects, but this one is special. And during a Q&A with the Domain, yet to be published, I was instructed to send this out.

Here is the entire segment from the Q&A…

"Already systems are in place to suppress the desire to generate a major conflict against China. 

Within a year or two, a conflict will be the last thing in the minds of the United States leadership. 

Everyone will notice that something is amiss by the end of this year (2022), and it will be quite obvious by the end of the next (2023). 

Most sensible humans would come to the conclusion that a war would be ill advised. 

You will write about it tomorrow."

Here is the article. Complete.

What if the largest experiment on human beings in history is a failure?

Robert W Malone MD, MS

A seasoned stock analyst colleague texted me a link today, and when I clicked it open, I could hardly believe what I was reading.  What a headline.  “Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64”.  This headline is a nuclear truth bomb masquerading as an insurance agent’s dry manila envelope full of actuarial tables.

People frequently write to Jill and myself. People we have never met.  They call, they arrive at the farm by appointment or unannounced, they fill our email in boxes with their inquiries. They all want something; time, attention, an interview.  Many want to tell us about their fear, illness, nightmares, or (what often seems like) outright paranoid conspiracies.  And then, over time, these fears and “conspiracies” keep getting confirmed.  As Jan Jekielek (a senior editor with The Epoch Times) recently said to me, it is getting harder and harder to tell which ones are mere conspiracy theories and which are true reality.

One farm visitor told me of his foreshadowing massive numbers of deaths within three years consequent to the genetic vaccines, and that this was all about the “Great Reset” and the depopulation agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF).  I tried to reassure him that, in my opinion, this was highly unlikely- while privately thinking about how easily people fall into this type of conspiracy ideation, and how I need to be careful to avoid going there when confronting so many public health decisions that appear either incompetent or nefarious.

At the time, I only knew of the WEF as the host of a big annual party in Davos Switzerland where the uber rich and the hoi oligoi of the Western nations went to watch Ted talks, drink the best wine, see and be seen.  Silly me.  What a long, strange trip this has been.  I doubt that even Hunter S. Thompson could have imagined it in his most drug and booze addled state.  Suffice to say, I nominate Ralph Steadman as official illustrator of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.  Or a resurrected Hieronymus Bosch.

But I am wandering from a point that I am afraid to clearly state…

Uh oh

It is starting to look to me like the largest experiment on human beings in recorded history has failed.

And, if this rather dry report from a senior Indiana life insurance executive holds true, then Reiner Fuellmich’s “Crimes against Humanity” push for convening new Nuremberg trials starts to look a lot less quixotic and a lot more prophetic.

Here is what lit me up in this report from The Center Square contributor Margaret Menge.

“The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people.

“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”

OneAmerica is a $100 billion insurance company that has had its headquarters in Indianapolis since 1877. The company has approximately 2,400 employees and sells life insurance, including group life insurance to employers in the state.

Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.

“And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said.

“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.””

So, what is driving this unprecedented surge in all-cause mortality?

Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths,

“What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.””

Take a moment to read the entire article.  Now.  Then let’s continue on, assuming that you have.

About the article

AT A MINIMUM, based on my reading, one has to conclude that if this report holds and is confirmed by others in the dry world of life insurance actuaries, we have both a huge human tragedy and a profound public policy failure of the US Government and US HHS system to serve and protect the citizens that pay for this “service”.

IF this holds true, then the genetic mRNC vaccines so aggressively promoted have failed, and the clear federal campaign to prevent early treatment with lifesaving drugs has contributed to a massive, avoidable loss of life.

AT WORST, this report implies that the federal workplace vaccine mandates have driven what appear to be a true crime against humanity.  Massive loss of life in (presumably) workers that have been forced to accept a toxic vaccine at higher frequency relative to the general population of Indiana.

The problem is the mRNA vaccines themselves

FURTHERMORE, we have also been living through the most massive, globally coordinated propaganda and censorship campaign in the history of the human race.  All major mass media and the social media technology companies have coordinated to stifle and suppress any discussion of the risks of the genetic  mRNA vaccines AND/OR alternative early treatments.

IF this report holds true, there must be accountability.  We are not just talking about running over the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States and grinding it into the mud with an army of artificial intelligence-powered heavy infantry.

This article reads like a dry description of an avoidable mass casualty event caused by a mandated experimental medical procedure. One for which all opportunities for the victims to have become self-informed about the potential risks have been methodically erased from both the internet and public awareness by an international corrupt cabal operating under the flag of the “Trusted News Initiative”.

George Orwell must be spinning in his grave.

MM Thoughts

I posted it as told.

It appears to indicate something odd is going on inside of the United States, and since the media is completely controlled by the government, no one really knows what is going on. However, if you look elsewhere there seems to be some alarming trends.

Taking the fact that I was told to post this article, and it was used in conjunction with a discussion of a situation that would dissuade the United States government from getting involved in a war with China, I think that it is significant.

The author is confirming that the actuarial tables (associated with Life Insurance policies) are clearly showing an unheard of association between an increase in deaths and the mRNA vaccines. There is apparently a direct correlation between the two.

Further, he accuses the media, the government and big business of a massive conspiracy. Whether it is part of some kind of depopulation agenda, a profit-motive, or just being malevolent, is not stated.

He suggests rallying up and demanding “Rights” and “accountability” fully oblivious that the United States is a Military empire and he is living in a Police State where he has no voice, no control, no power and no future.

Obviously the United States is a toxic place. But I wasn’t aware that it was this toxic. A 40% increase in a death rate is very concerning.

It’s a stealth SHTF event.

Obviously, if these trends continue or get worse, then the Deagel report will be vindicated, and there will not be enough people left alive in the United States to wage a war against China, let alone run the country.

Frightening stuff.

Special Considerations

There are MANY MM readers that might be shell-shocked from this information. I want to tell you all NOT TO WORRY. From what I understand, the human body adapts to the mRNA changes. You (if you have had an mRNA injection) will need to adapt to prevent what is apparently a potential bad series of side effects.

I do not understand it, but your body will require more oxygenation to prevent any adverse side effects.

This can be obtained via vitamin supplements, more exercise, walks outside in nature, and a reduction in super-processed food like sugary breakfast cereals, deep fried pig skins, and a reduction in fast food to perhaps once a week instead of five times a week.

It has been clearly relayed that once you obtain the mRNA injection, your body needs oxygenation at a greater level than what we all have come to live with. So you must alter your lifestyle with some vitamins, walks and a reduction in super-processed food intakes.

The article above suggests that people who do not alter their lifestyle behaviors towards more oxygenation, will start to see some health complications.

PissedLizard Comments

From an email communication... -MM
Absolutely. I am very familiar with Dr. Malone and the article referenced. I know what I am going to write goes against the narrative, but literally pick up a high school biology book and it’s right there.

The mRNA is from stem cells derived from fetal tissue.
So you are taking another human beings mRNA, mixing it with others, THEN running it thru CRISPR – which tells the mRNA in the vax to make spike proteins.
The thought is that if you naturally make the spike protein that Corona has, you will always have be able to produce anti- antibodies to the spike protein.
Sounds good in theory but you aren’t supposed to make virus spike protein. Although the HUMAN mRNA is programmed to make spike proteins – it could be programmed for anything – and that’s the boosters – but the spike proteins are getting thrown everywhere. They are sticking to the inside of the heart and irritating the blood supply of the middle “muscle” layer of the heart (myocarditis).
This is messed up. It has been from day 1. And for them – all blame goes to Trump. It’s “his vaccine”.
mRNA translates instructions from the nucleus to make a protein – which is basically almost every thing in you.
And all of these miscarriages and sterilizations – yeah. Of course… it’s fucking FETAL TISSUE. Of course mon is going to react. It usually isn’t overt but when you have billions getting the shots – as you see in other articles elsewhere – deaths in the USA up 40 – 60 percent and all non Covid. This shit is designed to kill.
And don’t be fooled about the sinovax either – follow that money for yourself to see EXACTLY what this shit is.
<redacted>
I hope this helps! If not or any other questions – let me know.
The spike proteins get lodged in capillary beds – that’s probably the “get oxygenated” thing though.

Final MM comments

Everyone in China is taking the “dead-host” vaccine. MM myself have taken two injections and am scheduled for a booster late February.

I have altered my lifestyle to accommodate.

I have severely cut down on my super-processed foods. I am trying (not quite as successfully as I would like) for more outside fresh air and exercise. And taking a daily vitamin supplement. The impression that I have is that this would be enough to compensate for any ill-adaptations as a result of the injections.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
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Why is Space-X trying to ram the Chinese Space Station? Why did the US Space Military Command approve the flight trajectory?

I have been musing about eating a fine delicious ice cream cone. I know, I know, youse guys eat it all the time. but I really don’t. Ever since I put in my verbal affirmation that “I eat healthy, delicious, and nutritious food“, somehow the sugar laden icy deliciousness of the Ice cream cone has since eluded me. Sigh.

Now that it is getting old, I have been fantasizing about hot fudge sundaes, upside down banana splits, and Carmel sundaes.  Maybe substituting blueberries on a strawberry shortcake, or having an extra heaping scoop on a five scoop ice cream surprise.

Ice Cream Sundae.

It’s not my normal fare. Don’t you know. Sigh.

Everything is a trade off.

Though, it (a hot fudge sundae) would probably go great with a nice whiskey.

Today

So I am going though my normal routine. Checking out the laughingly pathetic “news” out of America, and the “real” news out of Russia and tiny. tiny real alternative outlets. When I came across an article that is not being covered at all in the American “news”.

Apparently two satellites had a trajectory that sent them flying toward the Chinese space station on a collision course.

Two.

T.W.O.

– 2 times –

Not a coincidence.

Accidents do not happen twice in a row, just like it is extraordinarily rare for lightening to strike twice.

One of the missions of the (newly established) American Military Space Command is to approve all space flight trajectories originating out of the United States. For some odd reason, they approved a collision course of a SpaceX satellite on not one, but two occasions to collide with the Chinese space station. Since this is an impossible flight vector… as space is far too huge. It is a deliberate attempt to ram and destroy the Chinese space station.

Let’s investigate further…

The initial write up.

Pulled from MoA.

“…So Elon Musk attempted two acts of terrorism against the Chinese space station (while it was occupied by human-beings). These acts, which expose the true purpose of SpaceX, have gone entirely unreported in media, mainstream or otherwise. I don’t remember it getting a mention at MoA or anywhere else.

Below is the complaint China wrote to the UN which details how the space station had to carry out emergency evasive maneuvers on two separate occasions….

Information furnished in conformity with the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies

Note verbale dated 3 December 2021 from the Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations (Vienna) addressed to the Secretary-General

The Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations (Vienna) presents its compliments to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and has the honour to refer to article V of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies 1 (the Outer Space Treaty), which provides that “States Parties to the Treaty shall immediately inform the other States Parties to the Treaty or the Secretary-General of the United Nations of any phenomena they discover in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, which could constitute a danger to the life or health of astronauts”. In accordance with the above-mentioned article, China hereby informs the Secretary-General of the following phenomena which constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station.

The China Manned Space Programme completed five launch missions in 2021, with the successful launching into orbit of the Tianhe core module of the China Space Station, the Tianzhou-II and Tianzhou-III cargo spacecraft and the Shenzhou-XII and Shenzhou-XIII crewed spacecraft. The China Space Station has travelled stably in a near-circular orbit at an altitude of around 390 km on an orbital inclination of about 41.5 degrees.

During this period, Starlink satellites launched by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) of the United States of America have had two close encounters with the China Space Station. For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control on 1 July and 21 October 2021, respectively.

1. The first collision avoidance

As from 19 April 2020, the Starlink-1095 satellite had been traveling stably in orbit at an average altitude of around 555 km. 

Between 16 May and 24 June 2021, the Starlink-1095 satellite maneuvered continuously to a precise orbit of around 382 km, and then stayed in that orbit. Even though the orbit trajectory took it on a collision course with the Chinese space station. 

A close encounter occurred between the Starlink-1095 satellite and the China Space Station on 1 July 2021. For safety reasons, the China Space Station took the initiative to conduct an evasive maneuver in the evening of that day to avoid a potential collision between the two spacecraft.

2. The second collision avoidance

On 21 October 2021, the Starlink-2305 satellite had a subsequent close encounter with the China Space Station. 

As the satellite was continuously maneuvering, the maneuver strategy was unknown and orbital errors were hard to be assessed, there was thus a collision risk between the Starlink-2305 satellite and the China Space Station. 

To ensure the safety and lives of in-orbit astronauts, the China Space Station performed an evasive maneuver again on the same day to avoid a potential collision between the two spacecraft.

In view of the foregoing, China wishes to request the Secretary-General of the United Nations to circulate the above-mentioned information to all States parties to the Outer Space Treaty and bring to their attention that, in accordance with article VI of the Treaty...

“States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty.”

Chinese space station.

Decent article…

China Space Station: Collision Avoidance Control Maneuvers

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China’s in-progress space station has performed preventive collision avoidance control to avoid being struck by SpaceX Starlink satellites. China has informed the United Nations Secretary-General of the issue.

In a document posted by the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space dated December 6, 2021, there is notification by China under Article V of the Outer Space Treaty concerning preventive collision avoidance between the China Space Station (international designation 2021-035A) and United States’ Starlink-1095 (international designation 2020-001BK) and Starlink-2305 (international designation 2021-024N) satellites.

Dangers to astronauts

“The China Manned Space Program completed five launch missions in 2021, with the successful launching into orbit of the Tianhe core module of the China Space Station, the Tianzhou-II and Tianzhou-III cargo spacecraft and the Shenzhou-XII and Shenzhou-XIII crewed spacecraft. The China Space Station has travelled stably in a near-circular orbit at an altitude of around 390 km on an orbital inclination of about 41.5 degrees,” the document points out.

“During this period, Starlink satellites launched by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) of the United States of America have had two close encounters with the China Space Station. For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control on 1 July and 21 October 2021, respectively.”

“China hereby informs the Secretary-General of the following phenomena which constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station,” the document states.

The incident was first flagged by the U.K.’s Express as well as Reuters news agency.

The UN document can be read at:

New EVAs

Meanwhile, China astronauts have just wrapped up about six hours of EVAs.

China’s taikonauts, Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu, safely returned to the Tianhe space station core module. Female astronaut Wang Yaping stayed inside the module, supporting the spacewalking duo, including operation of the station’s robotic arm.

This was the fourth time for Chinese astronauts to conduct EVAs during the construction of the country’s space station and the second by the Shenzhou-13 crew.

Zhai and Ye completed such tasks as adjusting a panoramic camera, tested goods transport, installed hardware for future use and evaluated the EVA spacesuits.

Accumulated experience

Yang Yanbo, deputy commander of space mission team, Beijing Aerospace Control Center told China Central Television (CCTV):

“We have made proper arrangements for the extravehicular activities such as readjusting settings of mechanical arm’s movement and the platform, which allowed astronauts to operate equipment and mechanical arm simultaneously, thus improving the efficiency of extravehicular activities.”

Zhu Guangchen, deputy chief designer of the space station system at the China Academy of Space Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said:

“The extravehicular activities have further tested designs of the core module airlock module, the mechanical arm and the extravehicular suit, and assessed the coordination between space and Earth, which will accumulate experience for the future assembly and construction tasks.”

Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China’s manned space program, told CCTV:

“All the tasks have been performed smoothly so far, with key construction technologies tested. All indicators show that the functions and performance of our space station meet the requirements, and some of them are even far better than what we had expected, this laying a solid foundation for the future space station construction and operation.”

Step-by-step

China’s space program has successfully completed five launches, five rendezvous and docking missions, and four EVAs since the Tianhe space station core module was sent into Earth orbit on April 29, 2021.

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) noted that extravehicular operations are becoming the normal work of the space station flight missions. Chinese astronauts will carry out more and complicated EVAs to provide support for the completion of the construction and the stable operation of the space station.

The orbiting outpost is to be completed by the end of 2022.

Six-month mission

China launched the trio of Shenzhou-13 taikonauts on October 16. The crew is on a six-month mission to construct China’s space station.

The Shenzhou-13 crew will continue their in-orbit work to greet the coming new year. This is also the first time that Chinese astronauts to greet a new year in space, the CMSA added.

The CMSA noted that extravehicular operations are becoming the normal work of the space station flight missions. Chinese astronauts will carry out more and complicated EVAs to provide strong support for the successful completion of the construction and the stable operation of the space station.

The Tianhe core module is the first and main component of the in-construction China space station, informally known as Tiangong (Heavenly Palace).

Next year, China is to loft new segments of the station.

To view newly-issued videos regarding the completed 2nd EVAs go to:

Not enough? Here’s More…

China said its space station deployed prevention collision avoidance control measures in July and October and called on the US to ‘bear responsibility’
Rhoda Kwan in Taipei

Mon 27 Dec 2021 20.17 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/dec/28/china-complains-to-un-after-space-station-is-forced-to-move-to-avoid-starlink-satellites
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Elon Musk sparks China fury as space station takes emergency measures to avoid collision

Chinese citizens lashed out against the tech billionaire’s space ambitions on Monday after satellites from Starlink Internet Services, a division of Musk’s SpaceX aerospace company, had two “close encounters” with the Chinese space station. According to a document submitted by China to the UN space agency, the incidents occurred on July 1 and October 21.

In the papers, Beijing complained about how the near-miss incident “constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station”.

It said: “During this period, Starlink satellites launched by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) of the United States of America have had two close encounters with the China Space Station.

“For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control on 1 July and 21 October 2021, respectively.

“For safety reasons, the China Space Station took the initiative to conduct an evasive manoeuvre in the evening of that day to avoid a potential collision between the two spacecraft.”

China also cited article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, which was signed by all the space-faring nations of the world and forms the basis of international space law.

Article VI stated: “States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty.”

Social media users erupted on Weibo, which is a Chinese alternative to Twitter.

One user described Starlink’s satellites as “just a pile of space junk,” while another accused them of being “American space warfare weapons”.

In an anti-satellite (ASAT) rocket test last month, the Kremlin fired a missile into space to deliberately blow up a redundant satellite.

However, the debris from the explosion began to hurtle through space towards the ISS, which caused astronauts to take emergency measures.
Because of this debris, NASA also halted its planned activities as astronauts waited for the storm of debris to pass.

Playing with FIRE.

What is the matter with these lunatics?

I do not believe Elon Musk planned this flight path alone. I believe that it is an intentionally directed trajectory.

Why do I know? Well, maybe it’s my role in MAJestic. Or, maybe it’s because I studied Astrophysics. In any event the odds of this being an accident is very, very tiny.

Plus, it is a FACT that ALL American orbital trajectories are monitored and approved by the United States Military USSPACECOM. Space Command. So either the US Military Space Command made a vital and unusual highly-unlikely mistake, or it is intentional.

So what is going on?

Is that it?

China is just going to lodge and register another complaint in the UN that will not be reported anywhere else? Like the Coronavirus being a bio-weapon, eh?

Hum.

Don’t be so sure…

Subject: The countdown has started. China has disabled tracking systems for its ships and aircraft

https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5de7d75a989309354ca25103/poshel-obratnyi-otschet-kitai-otkliuchil-sistemy-otslejivaniia-svoih-morskih-i-vozdushnyh-sudov-61c88da8d6de7d6389691d92?&

The countdown has started. China has disabled tracking systems for its ships and aircraft

Yesterday
134 K reads
The Chinese navy – both merchant and military – suddenly disappeared. This happened while all the world’s attention is focused on Russia. And her proposals to the United States to withdraw NATO troops away from its borders. Meanwhile, China is taking concrete steps to camouflage thousands of its ships.

It’s all about the automatic identification system (AIS). This system allows ships to send information for the general use – position, speed, course and name. It is very convenient for tracing global trade chains by market players, increasing the efficiency of their business planning.

So, according to information from the global provider of shipping data VesselsValue, the number of Chinese vessels sending signals has recently decreased by almost 90% (about a thousand remained in sight).

It’s all about the new laws of the PRC on the protection of information. Their appearance is very important, as it is an example of the priority of politics over the economy.

After all, it is obvious that this law interferes with the image of Chinese suppliers. With the winter holidays approaching, the loss of information from China, where six of the top 10 container ports in the world are located, creates additional problems for the economy.CNN Business ).

But this is not so important for the Chinese leadership now. The fact is that it is the massive gathering of Chinese merchant ships that can peacefully block the island of Taiwan. Isolate the rebellious province from the world. And Western military aid. Now the conditions have been created for such a gathering to be unexpected for everyone.

But that’s not all. China plans to carry out a similar operation with aircraft. China has banned the download of the Flightradar24 app, claiming its operation poses a threat to military aircraft. The special services seized the relevant equipment. Flightradar24 is a public web service (and application) that allows real-time monitoring of aircraft position, trajectory, altitude and speed.

I don’t know about Russia, but China is clearly preparing something.

Yes they are getting ready for something. They are also, among other commodities hoarding grain in unprecedented quantities. Alas, the drums of war…

But wait… there’s more…

What do you think about this?
https://zen.yandex.ru/media/kremlin_whisper/blinken-nazval-konflikt-ssha-s-kitaem-katastrofoi-chto-on-mog-imet-vvidu-i-kakovy-mogut-byt-posledstviia-dlia-ssha-i-kitaia-61b8ff1123760e0db2fe021b?&
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Blinken called the US conflict with China a disaster. What could he have meant and what could be the consequences for the US and China?

December 15th
5 thousand reads
The US is gradually leading itself into a dead end. This was recently confirmed by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken himself, calling a possible conflict with China a disaster. But at the same time, it is almost impossible to avoid such a conflict – there are too many contradictions and very strong competition. What kind of catastrophe will this conflict turn out to be for the United States and China?
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The main reason for the conflict between the United States and China is Taiwan. An island that China considers its own. And the United States supports its independence. Just like with Ukraine, very similar. Also, the United States and China are direct competitors for hegemony and markets for their goods – the States really do not like that China, instead of collecting iPhones for a bowl of rice, makes its own smartphones – Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, etc. And many other things besides them.

There is no need to talk about friendship and cooperation in such conditions. On the contrary, recently the United States and other Western countries announced a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. And if it really comes to a conflict, then for the United States it will really turn out to be a disaster, despite the military superiority. First of all, a catastrophe in the economy and hegemony.

The fact is that the US already has big problems with the economy. There is not enough money, as before, even for the maintenance of military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, so the United States withdrew its troops from there. The withdrawal of troops from Iraq ends on December 31. A conflict with China will only make the situation worse.

China is a leader in the extraction and reserves of rare earth metals, which are used in almost all high-tech products-from iPhones to drones. In the event of a conflict, of course, China will take advantage of this advantage and cut off supplies.

This will lead to the fact that in the United States there will be factories for the production of high-tech products, without the necessary elements for production. And U.S.-owned factories in China and Taiwan can be nationalized as compensation for the costs of the conflict with the United States. Then the United States will be left without factories at all.

And the US GDP already consists of only 20% of manufacturing, and 80% of services. And without rare earth metals, even the remaining ones will stand up.

There will be no factories and no profits – we will have to withdraw troops and close military bases in other countries. After all, US military spending exceeds $ 700 billion a year. And the lion’s share of these expenses is the maintenance of military bases. If they are closed, then the United States ceases to be the hegemon of the planet, and becomes an ordinary regional power on its continent.

Now about the struggle for the island of Taiwan. China is very close to it:

And the US is on the other side of the world. Can you imagine how much fuel you will have to buy from Russia in order to fit warships there and ensure regular supplies in the event of a conflict? And it is not known whether Russia will even help the United States with fuel in the event of a conflict with China.

The path is not close and expensive
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Also, the Americans will immediately be left with empty shelves, just like it was in the USSR. Because it is China that is the main trading partner of the United States, which supplies almost everything to America-from underwear to smartphones.

According to the results of 2020, the trade turnover between the United States and China amounted to 582 billion dollars. The Chinese themselves will somehow survive a break in trade ties with the United States. There are 1.4 billion of them. That’s 4.2 times the population of the United States.

So you can reorient your production to the huge domestic market. But what will the Americans do if they are left with empty shelves? Not otherwise, they will storm the Capitol again.

“Will get” and the US allies. For example, in Europe. It also trades with China ($586 billion). euro) and with the United States ($631 billion). euro). If China takes American production on its territory as compensation, then the United States will simply have nothing to trade with Europe.

And it will be very difficult for Europe to trade with China because of the military actions. European businesses and production facilities also largely depend on the supply of components from China. It is not in the European interest to break supply chains and suffer losses.

This, in turn, will lead to the fact that the US allies will start to “run away” from where to where – some will turn to face Russia, others to China. Because who wants to lose profit because of the desire of the weakening US to prove something to China? We were friends with the United States only as long as they were strong.

Finally, the most valuable asset that the US still has – the dollar-will lose its status. Who would want the currency of a country whose economy would collapse like a house of cards in the event of a real conflict with China?

So it turns out that in the event of such a conflict, the United States loses everything – the dollar, production, allies, hegemony, goods on the shelves of its stores, and ultimately its country. We survived the 90’s, and the Americans are left without iPhones, grandeur and toilet paper, it is unlikely to endure.

China, of course, will also suffer some losses. Especially in technology, because many Chinese products are just copies of Western ones. But in recent years, the Chinese have also learned to develop their own technologies, so they will somehow adapt. And if something goes wrong, they have nuclear weapons, the use of which will cause unacceptable damage to the United States. That’s why Blinken called it a disaster.

And a comment from <redacted>

I loved reading this. -MM

That’s gigantic news !

The KFC-AZAEL (Kakistocratic Feudal Conglomerate of the Anglo-Zio-American EstabLishment) knows that their window of opportunity is narrowing or even closing. Now that their clumsy & laughable maneuvers to destroy the Sino-Russian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination for a New Era obviously failed, they’ll have to do something big and probably utterly stupid. Two years ago, I still thought the window of opportunity for them is about a decade… Of course, I might have been brainwashed by the ravings of Stratfor (“Strategic forecast” & al) “predicting” or rather “predictively programming” people to believe that World War III will most probably happen in the 2030s…

But now, it’s not far-fetched to say it’s in the order of 2-3 years, 5 years max. After that, the process of Integration of the World Island will simply be too relentless to do anything humanly conceivable to stop it. Even now, I dare say it’s too late for the KFC-AZAEL. Xinjiang is perfectly under control, their little terrorists have been neutered.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has a permanent RATS (Regional Anti-Terrorists Structure) Executive Committee based in Tashkent. The Air Base just north of Kabul abandoned by the US since August 15 this year. Power of Siberia 2 going through Mongolia as the Chinese wanted to keep the Mongols interested by what the SCO can offer them, is there to stay. Russia & India will from now on settle their commerce in rubles and rupees. Russia & China in rubles and yuan (renminbi, RMB). The Russian SPFS (System for Transfert of Financial Messages) & the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System) will replace the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) if needed. Under the aegis of President Hu Jintao & President Xi Jinping, the Chinese decapitated the CIA network in Mainland China between 2010 and 2015 essentially. Peace is restored in Hong-Kong since the Law on National Security (July 2020), the color Revolution (Yellow Umbrella) an utter failure.

THAT CHINA COULD ATTEMPT SOMETHING IN THE NEXT WEEKS/MONTHS IS NOT FAR-FETCHED GIVEN THE INTERNATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND BOTH THE RUSSIAN AND THE CHINESE LEADERSHIPS CONCLUDED THAT THEY CAN NO LONGER SEE THE PEOPLE IN D.C. AS HONORABLE RATIONAL AGENTS AND IT’S TIME TO ACT.

And I strongly suggest that this time, the Russian & Chinese moves are coordinated even if there are no glaring signs. Putin & Xi talked on December 15 as everyone in this group knows… They will talk again in person, face to face, in about 5 weeks and nothing prevents them to talk by phone meantime. I wish the KFC-AZAEL is mad enough to start a suicidal double move on Ukraine & Taiwan…It would be a dazzling “SUEZ MOMENT” for all to watch…

Ushakov & Ryabkov from the Russian MOFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) were quite assertive in their speeches to NATO on RUSSIAN RED LINES. They are fed up, they are autonomous for food, they have the Asian market for oil and gas, they have hypersonic weapons & the unwavering and enlightened Chinese backing.

China, usually so “sotto voce” in the international landscape, declared firmly & clearly that Russia has her support for Ukraine & the gas imbroglio with the EU or as I call them with affection, the Euro-Noodles…

Yes, Blinken is right to say that the conflict with China is a disaster and the article elaborating on it is crystal clear  with the facts it offered. The US recent!y went back on the diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games and asked for 40 visas instead of 18 for US officials (diplomatic farce or plans of sabotage once in China?)

I believe our distinguished colleague Metallic Man was in the right when he wrote so precisely on the attempts to destroy China by multiple pathogens attacks during the last 4 to 5 years. BUT WHY CAN’T THEY OFFER SOMETHING A LITTLE BIT RATIONAL IN ORDER TO IMPROVE THINGS ??? WELL, OLD HABITS DIE HARD… Too simplistic an explanation ? Maybe not so simplistic but at the heart of plutocratic/oligarchical/closed mindset…

People having bullied without any consequences the weak, the poor and the downtrodden for centuries cannot TRULY IMAGINE they might lose this time. It’s not wired in their brains. PSYCHOPATHS HAVE DIFFERENTS BRAINS (ANATOMICALLY AT THE MICROSCOPIC LEVEL AND PHYSIOLOGICALLY) in term of emotivo-rational integration for decision-making and action compared to the normal people, so they’re much more prone to stay in their usual ruts than the average man and will NOT take note of the danger signals. I imagine Putin & Xi scratching their heads and asking to themselves, what to do and with the least “collateral damages” possible on the global stage ?

Just read History, dying empires always fell into the trap of hubris & over-reach and the rest is…History…

Sometimes, taking into account the decisions coming from the US government, in my feverish imagination & wishful thinking, I fantasize some Chinese agents must be present at the White House…

The easiest and most probable explanation for me can be given in one word : HUBRIS.

SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY THINK ” THE UNIPOLAR MOMENT” IS STILL A REALITY.

And let’s not forget this lesson coming from the Ancient Greeks :
WHOM THE GODS WANT TO DESTROY, THEY FIRST MADE MAD…

The KFC-AZAEL wants a New World Order ? A Reset ? They will get one but maybe not the one they wished for…

But, as they say in French : l’homme propose & Dieu dispose…
Qui vivra verra…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

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Oh my God what have the American neocons dragged the United States into

Yup. The American neocons, started with the John Bolton / Donald Trump “tag team”, and passed on via Mike Pompeo to the puppet-in-chief; Joe Biden has woken up a very, very dangerous dragon. Just like Biblo Baggens did in “The Hobbit” with Smaug, this dragon is now woke. And it is not going back to sleep. You fools!

You crazy, dangerous, idiotic fools!

Yet, the American neocon’s and their rabid (well meaning, but geopolitically clueless) followers have no idea what a cluster-fuck they are walking into. And I do mean cluster-FUCK.

I am talking about Genghis Khan levels of devastation, rape, ruin and rapture.

But you cannot speak sense into their brains of mush. They have watched “Rambo”, and read the “news” about the American successes in the Middle East, and they believe it all. Everything. As if special effects and actors represent what really happens in real life.

Ok. Enough of that.

In 2019, Trump was getting ready to win is second term as President.

But he and John Bolton were frustrated. The eight (8x) strains of bio-weapons directed at farm food and produce failed (by drones no less!). The Hong Kong “color revolution” under the guise of “Pro-Democracy Movement” failed. The “Free Tibet movement” failed spectacularly. The effort to cause a collapse of the BRI via the Uighur people in Xinjiang failed, and the hybrid-war (in all of it’s many flavors) was simply pissing off the Chinese people and unifying them together as one very angry and very pissed off nation.

So what to do?

Hum?

Launch a Bio-weapon on the most important Chinese holiday of the year, in the most populous area of China, where all the high-speed trains converge for maximum spread and maximum damage.

That’s what they did.

Brilliant, huh?

Hey! How’s it all working out for you? Great huh?

It too failed in China. As did, the second bio-weapon attack, the death by vomiting virus, and the third bio-weapon attack, the death by shitting virus.

All spectacular failures.

Obviously, the United States needed to be “hit on the head” to realize that they cannot fuck with China any longer. But No. No. No. They are way too clueless. Far too gone. Far too stupid.

This neocon believes that China has mind control weapons that are poisoning the minds of Americans. And that China is at fault for the collapse of American society!

Stupidity.

You just cannot argue with mental retards. FACT.

China, always one for subtleties, decided to display OPERATIONAL military systems as a warning to the blundering, bumbling, idiocy that somehow, by fraud and deceit, run the United States today.

They showed these systems on parade.

This was nearly three years ago…do you think that the American leadership payed attention? No.  Idiots are idiots, no matter what their business card says.

The following is from MOA

China’s Anniversary Parade Reveals New Weapons That Will Influence U.S. Strategies

October 1, 2019

The People’s Republic of China held a great parade (3h video, shorter version with comments) to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its founding. Some interesting new weapons were on display that are of strategic significance.

China has, like Russia and Iran, used the decades the U.S. military wasted with counter insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan to build strength where the U.S. military has weaknesses. Those weaknesses are most visible in the Navy:

New classes of quiet diesel submarines and new developments in mine and torpedo technology make operations close to tense coastlines far more dangerous today than in the past. As a result, U.S. aircraft carriers are no longer immune from risk when entering waters within range of enemy forces.

More serious still is the deployment of Russian and Chinese area denial systems, like the so-called carrier killer DF-21 antiship missile developed in the last decade by China. Its range of over 1,000 miles far outstrips the range of any warplane on U.S. flight decks today. Sailing a U.S. carrier strike force through the Taiwan Strait these days—in a show of support for pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong, for instance—would risk catastrophe.

Iran does not yet possess anything as sophisticated as China’s DF-21. However, its domestically produced Noor antiship missile (itself a reverse-engineered rip-off of an earlier Chinese cruise missile) is dangerous at over 100 miles. [...] The combination of these missiles and Iran’s fleet of fast and cheap patrol boats has been enough to keep the USS Lincoln out of the Persian Gulf as tensions between Iran and the United States increased this summer.

The carrier killer DF-21 is no longer China’s top weapon. It is a ballistic missile and a U.S. carrier group may be able to use its missile defenses to take it down. China used the last years to exceed its capabilities.

AP reports of today’s parade:

One closely-watched weapon unveiled Tuesday was the Dongfeng-17, a glider capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Foreign analysts say is designed to maneuver at high speed to evade anti-missile defenses.

Another missile displayed, the Dongfeng-41, is believed to have a range of up to 15,000 kilometers (9,400 miles), which would make it world’s longest-range military missile. Analysts say it may be able to carry as many as 10 warheads to hit separate targets.

Here are some screenshots from the parade video.

First up is the DF-17 hyper-velocity, AI controlled, nuclear weapon. Designed to decimate complete carrier groups, islands and cities. Row after row, after row after row of these vehicles were paraded.

A number of neocon publications have claimed that these must be dummy mock-ups. That no nation could build so many, in such a short period of time. If America, with the “best manufacturing in the world” cannot do it, then no one can.

The DF-41 is a road mobile beast. The 8 axle vehicle can transport, erect and launch the missile. The DF-41 is supposedly a solid fuel missile. That means that it only requires a very short time to deploy and launch. It will be difficult to interdict while it is still on the ground. There were a total of 16 of these monsters in the parade. The DF-41 has a 9400. mile reach, making it a serious entry in the intercontinental class.

This seems to be a communication relay drone. It can be used to communicate with, and steer, another drone from the ground even when the second one is over the horizon looking for U.S. ships. It makes Chinese drones independent of satellite communications.

ABOVE: The HSU-001s are also drones but they do not fly but dive. These are likely to be used as reconnaissance vehicles against U.S. submarines and ships. They could also be useful for secretly mining an enemy harbor.

And WAS used to disable the USS Connecticut in 2021.

ABOVE: This unmanned thingy is interesting. It looks fast and stealthy and has two liquid fueled engines. While it has an undercarriage the two suspension lugs on its top insinuate that it can be launched from another plane. It looks fast and stealthy but is confusing. Is it a bomber that returns to an airport? It looks a bit too flimsy for that. Is the thing itself a “suicide drone” i.e. the warhead that hits the target? Why then does it need an undercarriage? It might be for reconnaissance but it has no visible optic systems.

Next to several thousand marching soldiers there was a number of upgraded tanks, missile systems, shore launched anti-ship missiles and lots of drones. China’s equivalent of the Russian S-300 was on display and several large and very modern early warning radars. There were also dozens of mid-range missile that are, in the case of a conflict, probably supposed to end the U.S. base on Guam.

And possibly the entire island itself…

Nearly all the systems shown were road-mobile. That means that China can easily deploy even the big ones to its islands and reefs in the South China Sea. During a crisis or conflict the U.S. Navy would have to avoid the whole area or prepare for a very bad day.

In 2001 then President George W. Bush said the U.S. would do “whatever it takes” to defend Taiwan should China insist on a forced reunion. In 2006 the U.S. operation plan on how to do that was revealed:

"The Pacific command developed a new `strategic concept' for the Taiwan contingency in December 2002, and an updated plan was produced in July 2003. Last year, based upon new 2004 guidance from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff ... a final Taiwan defense plan was published," Arkin wrote.

The plan now includes "air, naval, ground amphibious, and missile defense forces and `excursions' to defend Taiwan. Options include maritime intercept operations in the Taiwan straits [sic], attacks on Chinese targets on the mainland, information warfare and `non-kinetic' options, even the potential use of American nuclear weapons," Arkin wrote.

Air operations in support of Taiwan will be difficult when U.S. carriers can no longer dare to go near China. Maritime intercept operations in the Taiwan straits are becoming wishful thinking. Taiwan has changed its defense strategy in sight of these new circumstances:

Taiwan’s new defense concept employs an asymmetric defense strategy, where Taiwan maximizes its defense advantages, and targets an invading force when it is at its weakest. Whereas Taiwan’s previous strategy focused on fighting across the entire Taiwan Strait and defeating the enemy through attrition, the new concept divides Taiwan’s defense operations into two phases, both closer to Taiwan’s shores where the lines of communication are short and Taiwan’s forces can benefit from land-based air denial and more effective surveillance and reconnaissance.

The U.S. strategy has for decades been based on air-superiority and sea control. It has yet to adopt to the new situation in which anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) weapons prohibit the use of most of its (very expensive) offensive systems.

The lack of U.S. capabilities extend to its defense systems. Hypersonic vehicles make U.S. missile defenses largely useless. Saudi Arabia recently learned that the U.S. has no air defense system that is readily capable of defeating cruise missiles and drones. While the Saudis had spent billions of dollars on U.S. air defense systems the Houthi could use those rather simple and effective weapons to attack one of its largest oil installations. It is no wonder then that the Saudis are now filing for peace:

Saudi Arabia has given a green light to Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to arrange a meeting with Iran as a first step towards de-escalating tensions in the region, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Abbas al-Hasnawi, an official in the prime minister's office, told MEE on Tuesday that Abdul Mahdi was mediating between the leaderships in Riyadh and Tehran and had communicated each side's conditions for talks to the other.

The Saudis still set some dumb conditions for talks but a few more Houthi attacks on its oil infrastructure will convince them that those are unnecessary.

The Saudis have to climb down because the superpower that once protected them is no longer able to do so. At least not as easily as it used to do.

Andrei Martyanov and others have long predicted that the moment would come where the U.S. would lose its supremacy. We no longer have to wait for it. The moment is here.

SELECT COMMENTS. (ORIGINAL THREAD)

WZ-8
Why then does it need an undercarriage? It might be for reconnaisance but it has no visible optic systems.

I haven't seen the videos, but I don't see any undercarriage in the stills. Isn't that just a mounting on the trucks, that can be seen?

Posted by: BM | Oct 1 2019 18:28 utc | 1

There are now pictures in better resolution than my screen grabs.

Posted by: b | Oct 1 2019 18:45 utc | 4

Thanks for the posting b....I'm impressed and hope the US MIC is as well

This is what can be done when you don't have profit as the primary motivation because you think you are invincible.

If we go the extinction route in this WWIII that the world is in, the path looks to be quite short. I hope the elite of the West love their children more than they love hegemony of the global private finance cult.

I did read a Reuters posting that I think fits here and is included below
"
GENEVA (Reuters) - The international community must confront America’s hostile approach, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday as tensions have spiked between the Islamic Republic and the United States.

“The international community must confront America’s hostile and unilateralist approach by taking a definitive decision and effective actions,” Rouhani said at a speech at a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union in Armenia, according to the official IRNA news agency."

America/Western empire is not going to attack Iran and get away with it. It is time for the Western empire bullies to stand down and a multi-polar world to stand up as China is showing can be done.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Oct 1 2019 19:10 utc | 6

b: Air operations in support of Taiwan will be difficult when U.S. carriers can no longer dare to go near China

Yes, a major factor causing a decrease in US naval power (unrecognized by Navy) is the obsolescence of the aircraft carrier. 

• First, carriers are generally unavailable because they are much more complex and require significant maintenance. Currently, of eleven carriers only two are deployed here, which is common. And the new carriers now cost about $13 billion, plus the accompanying ships in a carrier force, plus 5,000 crew personnel etc.  
• Just as the aircraft carrier obsoleted the battleship a century ago because aircraft range exceeded gunfire range, so now the carriers' aircraft range (shorter than ever) is exceeded by missile range. It's difficult to sink a huge ship like a carrier, but any strike on the deck or on the deck island would incapacitate a carrier for some time, perhaps permanently. That's just one explosive missile, and there is no shortage of missiles.

What's the effect of this? No jet fighter air cover would doom any serious attempt by the US Navy to hinder whatever it is that China decides to do militarily in its area of operations. On top of this, the US Marine Corps is currently going through an identity crisis. What could they do? Sit on some islands? The US Army, looking for a raison d'etrebesides the "Russia threat" is proposing long range artillery on some islands somewhere -- grasping at straws. US Air Force?--out of it, given China air defenses.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Oct 1 2019 19:21 utc | 7

It's becoming more and more likely that the US with arrogantly launch an small attack on Russia, Iran, Syria or China confident that they will back meekly down, only to get a rude discovery when they strike back. I've heard that the US military is more "realistic" in their own internal assessments of the dangers of a conflict with China and Russia, but US politicians are increasingly talking themselves into a corner vs the rest of the world

Posted by: Kadath | Oct 1 2019 19:21 utc | 8

So what is going to happen…

If the USA tries to fight China or Russia for “democracy”?

This…

Ouch!

Some video fun…

Here’s some videos of Chinese military. Fun stuff, showing a large, modern and motivated military.

Video 1 6MB

Video 2 2MB

Video 3 3.4MB

Video 4 2.5MB

Video 5 3.2MB

Video 6 3.6MB

Video 7 6.3MB

Video 8 4.1MB

Video 9 3.4MB

Video 10 4MB

Video 11 3MB

Video 12 3MB

Conclusion

This was three years ago. Since then, if you can possibly believe it, China has become much more aggressive in R&D development of weapons systems, and manufacturing and mass producing weapons systems. Today is is more than just a peer equal militarily with the Untied States. It is superior to it. And coupled whit Russia, the entire Asia is ready to PUT THEIR FOOT DOWN and stop this rampant misbehavior by the US insanity-run government.

In 2022, both Russia and China will stop using SWIFT. This will cause a massive disruption in the flow of “free money” into the USA, and will expose the value of the US Dollar to what it’s actual value is. This will create economic shocks and turmoil inside the United States.

How will the USA handle it? Well, there is a faction that still believes that they can somehow rescue the situation by blaming their ineptness on a war; and thus create the “mother of all wars”. China and Russia will not allow that.

We will see what will happen.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
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Nuclear armed B-2 bombers with escort wings to be based inside of Australia to “counter” China for American “democracy”

It’s a never ending onslaught of war preparation, war provocation, and war stockpiling being generated out of the United States. There is ZERO talk about deescalation. I tire of all of this. It seems like the United States is driving the world to war and they aren’t stopping for shit.

There’s no real need for this.

China is minding their own business. Not harming anyone. Sure they make all the products, and are making them better, cheaper and faster than the bloat-ware that is found in the USA. But that is not a reason to kill them. It is a reason to copy them.

Sheech!

And every evil deed is Chinas fault. And China is doing this and that - it’s fucking bad news. My buddy - this past weekend emails me an article about the Chinese military doing something - the article was 7 years old. No matter. It makes China look bad - plaster it all over the news and blame China.

When the media - in America - and THIS I know to be true - because I fucking SEEN it - as soon as our media starts showing how the shelves are bare here - because they blame China - but what’s going to happen is right when it gets bad - they are going to show bare shelves here and stocked shelves in China. It’s to anger everyone - I say this specifically because the mass rage that is coming towards Asians is coming - fast. It’s the quickest way to take out an internal threat. Let the CITIZENS do it. -PL

And Russia; what’s the beef with them? It’s not like there are Russian and Chinese aircraft carriers in Boston Harbor are there?

Biden - in HIS infinite wisdom - decides he is going to play Russian Roulette - WITH RUSSIA - they named a suicidal game after the Russians! Again, the irony. So NOW - and let me be very clear - VERY. clear. The average person - people I know throughout the country - and I ask - alllllll know - the ONLY reason we are about to start lobbing nukes at ANYONE is because we all know the money laundering the Biden’s Clinton’s and Obama’s have been doing in Ukraine. It’s been their evil little washing machine AND AMERICA KNOWS IT. So now - people are even more antsy. -PL

Why all this bullshit?

To distract from the reality?

American reality

The thing is - to me - I am amazed by the psychology of it all. And the stupidity - holy shit dude - it’s like everyone is slowly becoming retarded. Like mad cow or something. -PL

video 38.6MB

First; who are the evil Russian communists?

They are people just like you and I. But the United States wants to engage in a war to distract Americans, and Russia and China are the enemies chosen for this event. Here’s modern Russia. Video 8MB

Canada Goose

Double arc.

Canada Goose puts spotlight on double standards against Chinese consumers

Canada Goose is feeling the wrath of Chinese consumers after their physical flagship store in Shanghai refused to refund a customer.

She tried to return a jacket the same day she bought it because the embroidering of the logo had an extra arc in the sun. The store refused, citing the company’s return policy for China: “No refunds.”

Netizens quickly pointed out that they have a 30-day return policy for Canada, US and UK. Now Canada Goose is under fire for their double standard.

With all this bad press, Canada Goose decided to refund the customer. But not before sparking a major discussion about brands discriminating against Chinese consumers.

Now LV and Gucci have also become targets as consumers quickly pointed out they have the same difference in return policies across countries.

You’re sick of me saying it but here it is again: The Chinese are the smartest consumers on the planet. They’ll find any discrepancies you have in your offers. And they have high standards.

Doing business here is not cheap. You need to account for dealing with the returns process. Cutting corners will get you in trouble.

What do you think? Are the companies justified in having different return policies for each country, or is this discrimination?

Now, let’s check out this little jewel;

Cockroach robot armies!

You betya!

Yikes!

Ok. Let’s see about the first amendment; “Freedom of Speech”. Does it still exist in America today? Nope. Not in the least…

US Government Threatens Writers With Heavy Fines if They Continue To Write for Sanctioned Russian Outlet

Freedom of the press - American style.
Natylie BaldwinDecember 07, 2021

Establishment institutions usually start their implementation of censorship and the throttling of press freedom by going after individuals and outlets that are small and/or not well liked by a cross-section of the public. The obscurity or general unpalatable nature of the target ensures the success of setting the precedent.

Most Americans have probably never heard of Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF) and many would be unsympathetic once they learn that the U.S. government claims it is a think tank and journal associated with Russian military intelligence, although no evidence is offered to back up this assertion, and SCF denies it has ties to the Russian government.

But years of anti-Russia sentiment in the political sphere and in most American media ensures that the claim alone will suffice to tar any Americans associated with Strategic Culture Foundation with a black brush.

I have confirmed that two American writers for SCF have received letters from the US Treasury Department in recent weeks warning them of fines of over $300,000 if they continue to write for the journal.

These threats are in response to alleged Russian interference in the 2020 US election and part of the US government’s enforcement of Executive Order 13848 signed by President Donald Trump in September of 2018 which sought to ascertain foreign interference in any future elections in the US and to punish those deemed guilty.

Threats to US elections included not only tampering with actual voting and its supporting infrastructure but “covert distribution of propaganda and disinformation.”

According to the Treasury Department’s April 15, 2021 press release in connection with the designation of SCF and other Russian entities to be sanctioned pursuant to the executive order, the US government stated its intent to target those they see as Russia’s enablers on behalf of its alleged program to interfere in US elections:

"Treasury will target Russian leaders, officials, intelligence services, and their proxies that attempt to interfere in the US electoral process or subvert US democracy," said Secretary Janet L. Yellen. "This is the start of a new US campaign against Russian malign behavior." (emphasis added)

The release also accuses SCF specifically, without evidence, of being directed by Russian military intelligence and that its articles spread “disinformation” – which appears to mean opinion and analysis that the US government doesn’t like:

The Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF) is an online journal registered in Russia that is directed by the SVR and closely affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. SCF is controlled by the SVR’s Directorate MS (Active Measures) and created false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning US officials involved in the 2020 US presidential election. It publishes conspiracy theorists, giving them a broader platform to spread disinformation, while trying to obscure the Russian origins of the journal so that readers may be more likely to trust the sourcing…

…Treasury designated…the Strategic Culture Foundation pursuant to E.O. 13848 for having engaged in foreign interference in the US 2020 presidential election.

The ordeal started for the two American writers in July of 2020 when they each received a visit at their home from FBI agents inquiring about SCF and its connections to Russia. Daniel Lazare, an author and journalist told Finian Cunningham recently that the agents wanted to know about alleged links of SCF to Russian intelligence:

"I replied that I wasn’t interested because I regard the entire avenue of inquiry as bogus and a product of the anti-Moscow hysteria that’s running rampant in Washington. So the agents left. Everything was polite and low-keyed, and the entire exchange took no more than four or five minutes."

Similarly, Michael Averko, who had written for SCF since 2015, stated that two FBI agents came to his home in July of 2020 and asked about SCF ties to the Russian government. They told him at the time that he wasn’t in any trouble and didn’t have to answer their questions, but Averko was hesitant to say much, recalling what had happened to Michael Flynn:

"The only question I answered was on whether the SCF has any ties to Russian military intelligence. I answered by saying I can’t say for sure and doubt it. I added that my impression is that the SCF comprises politically interested Russians, who want to be involved with the issues they cover."

It wasn’t until November of this year that Lazare and Averko both received letters dated October 15, 2021 from the Treasury Department, delivered personally by the FBI. The letters advised that they were in violation of sanctions against SCF per executive order 13848 and were potentially subject to fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars if they did not stop contributing articles to SCF:

"[P]ursuant to Executive Order 13848 of September 12, 2018…all property and interests in property of SCF that are subject to US jurisdiction are blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them…[E]ach violation… is subject to a statutory maximum civil monetary penalty of up to the greater of $311,562 or twice the value of the underlying transaction."

When asked whether he thought this would set a troubling precedent for Americans who write for foreign media outlets, Lazare said he believed it would:

"Absolutely. Why not ban RT, formerly known as Russia Today? If the government is pissed off against Emmanuel Macron, why not go after Agence France-Presse? The US complains when Russia harasses western news outlets, yet it’s guilty of precisely the same activities at home. As far as I’m concerned, threatening US journalists with fines for writing for a Russian press outlet is a flagrant assault on freedom of the press."

Averko was a bit more circumspect and thinks the government believes because SCF is a relatively small outlet, it can more easily get away with sanctioning it:

"The SCF and its US based American writers are (in the overall comparative scheme of things) small potatoes and an easier target to beat up on."

Both writers say they know of other US contributors to the outlet who have received the same letter and are intimidated. Lazare stated:

"While I have no particular concerns in my own case, other journalists are so frightened that they’ve not only stopped writing, but don’t even want to speak about their experience with other reporters. No one wants to mess with the federal government because they know the feds can make your life a misery if they’re so motivated. So they’ve clammed up. If you’ve ever wondered what “chilling effect” means, this is it."

While US officials may be unlikely to go after major foreign media, it’s very possible this could be a precedent to go after smaller outlets with unsubstantiated accusations of foreign interference and spreading of “disinformation.”

Lazare is in the process of seeking legal advice about the government threats. Averko said he was considering it and believes it would probably be best for all SCF contributors who received the letter to work together on any possible legal claim, though he’s aware of at least one who is unwilling to do so.

This is another example of the US undermining its own purported democratic values, which it touts to the rest of the world, in order to punish those who associate with the latest bogeyman country while providing no evidence that this outlet is even guilty of what they assert. After WMD’s and Russiagate, it would be foolish to take US government claims at face value as we are again being asked to do.

Natylie Baldwin is the author of The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia Relations, available on Amazon. Her writing has appeared in various publications including Consortium News, RT, OpEd News, The Globe Post, Antiwar.com, The New York Journal of Books, and Dissident Voice.

Let’s dive in and begin this discussion with this subject; Nuclear armed B-2 bombers with escort wings to be based inside of Australia to “counter” China.

Scheech!  How about a role reversal;

 "Mexico and Canada to base Chinese and Russian nuclear stealth aircraft to counter America."

Wouldn’t you think that would be enough to start a war, eh?

OK. First up. A lamb to the slaughter. The USA is turning Australia into a battle zone and a sacrificial lamb for “American interests”. Whoo woo!

From here:      https://www.the-sun.com/news/4175667/us-stealth-bombers-fighter-jets-australia-china-north-korea/

GEARING UP

US sends B2 stealth bombers & fleet of fighter jets to Australia as military threats from China & North Korea grow

And what about Taiwan having all the IC manufacturing capability?

Nope. China is getting it.

  • Foxconn new factory in Qingdao using 46 made by China lithography machines to produce chip (decoupling from the US and Europe technology)
    Foxconn has laid a new milestone for both its semiconductor business and China’s semiconductor ambition. Together with China’s Rongkong Group, a state-owned enterprise, Foxconn has invested in an advanced chip packaging facility in China’s costal city Qingdao. Through two intermediaries, Foxconn has a combined 27.5% share in the new facility, while Rongkong Group has a 46.85% share. Volume production will start in December, and by 2025 the plant is scheduled to reach its full capacity of 360,000 wafers per year.
    Currently, Foxconn has two chip packaging businesses under its wing. The first of them is ShunSin Technoogy, and the other is Foxconn’s own semiconductor division which oversights the Qingdao-based packaging facility.
    Notably, the packaging facility also serves China’s semiconductor industrial policy by using the country’s domestically produced lithography machines. The new packaging facility has reportedly purchased 46 lithography machines from SMEE to support advanced packaging technologies such as Flip Chip, Fan-In WLP, Fan-Out WLP, and 2.5D/3D.
    Shanghai Microelectronics Equipment Co. (SMEE), founded in 2002, is expected by the Chinese government to be its answer to ASML, the Dutch lithography machine maker that has dominated the lithography market. Earlier, SMEE only produces 90nm lithography machines. However, SMEE once announced that it would deliver China’s first 28nm lithography machines between 2021 and 2022. Even Huawei has indirectly cooperated with SMEE to solve the EUV chokepoint that has been derailing…

    https://techtaiwan.com/20210729/foxconns-new-chip-facility-what-does-it-mean-for-chinese-semiconductor-policy/

American military nuclear forces 101

Infographic…

America’s plan to destroy the world!

And who are all these terrible bombs and planes going to kill and destroy?

People like you and me. And some very pretty innocent girls. All for American “freedom” and “democracy”! Video 1.1MB

 

And what is specifically the plan to “Defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression”?

You can’t make this stuff up.

The following paper illustrates the kinds of options U.S. war planners are toying with when strategizing on how to “defend Taiwan”.

Recommendations that appear in the winter issue of Parameters, a quarterly publication from the U.S. Army War College include:

[1] The United States should lay plans for a targeted scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan unattractive to China by utterly destroying its most valuable industrial infrastructure, including destroying facilities belonging to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

[2] Fomenting social unrest by destroying Taiwan’s economy and arming insurgents for long-term guerrilla warfare on the island.

In other words, U.S. war planners think the best way to “defend Taiwan” is to raze it to the ground.

Just do great things…

Sigh. Remember…

Do your best. Be kind. Be fair. Try to work with people, and help people. You are not in a race to make the most money. You are in a situation called “life” and that means participation in your community.

Hate – Hate – Hate spews forth from American “news”

And the anti-China propaganda is really thick and heavy too. Check out this nonsense…

HIDDEN STRIKE

China feared to be hiding missiles in shipping containers for Trojan Horse-style plan to launch attack ANYWHERE in world

Disguised as a regular shipping containers, they can be sneaked on board a vessel to blend in seamlessly with the hundreds of others on board.

The sheer number of container ships in the world makes them harder to pinpoint than warships in the event of war.

Each ship could hide hundreds of dangerous ICBM nuclear missiles…

A dangerous hidden threat!

Like the fabled Trojan Horse, the missiles would be quietly smuggled into or near an enemy port on a civilian vessel before being unleashed in a surprise attack.

Rick Fisher, senior fellow in Asian military affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, told The Sun Online while Chinese have not officially confirmed they have the missiles – it is likely they have them.

And the it was warned in a study by Stockton Center for International Law that the weapons could violate naval laws.

Meanwhile, retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell, a former Pacific Fleet intelligence chief, previously said a containerized anti-ship missile would add a significant threat to the US Navy.

It comes amid a new wave of tensions between the US and China as the Communist giant challenges Washington’s status as the world’s top superpower.

China is known to be aggressively developing its military and is squaring up to the US – expanding its reach around the world, such as in Africa.

A mock-up of the missiles first appeared at an arms fair in 2016 and since then there has been speculation since they may now be in service with China’s armed forces.

Mr Fisher believes the weapon fits with the Beijing’s military strategy and likely would be used as an offensive capability against their enemies – potentially being smuggled into foreign ports anywhere in the world.

Mr Fisher told The Sun Online “Chinese strategic preferences for surprise would strongly argue for acquisition” of the missiles.

These would be fitted to “nondescript small Chinese ships in order to mount surprise missile raids against shore defences to assist follow on amphibious or airborne invasion forces”.

Fisher said shipping container missile launchers can be smuggled through ports or via highway ports of entry

They could then be stored for years in a climate-controlled building within range of US military bases, and taken out when needed for military operations.

Mr Fisher said the containerised missiles would “offer China’s leadership a wide array of options”.

Washington would be in chaos, would not know against whom to retaliate
-Jick Fisher

This includes

“using larger container ships, thousands of fishing ships or stored containers in ports, to undertake military or terror mission strikes in a manner that can be denied if desired”.

“The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is fully capable of using containerized missiles to sow chaos when desired,” he insisted.

For example Chinese missile launching containers could be stored near the Port of Seattle.

The Chinese would wait for the day they can launch an electromagnetic pulse warhead-armed missiles over the nearby nuclear ballistic missile submarine base Fisher said.

"The EMP blast might take out electronics on the [submarines] and all over the base without having to launch a nuclear missile from China,” he said.
“Washington would be in chaos, would not know against whom to retaliate, and perhaps China uses American distraction to begin its real objective, the military conquest of Taiwan."

According to US officials, the weapons deployed in the containers are an advanced anti-ship missile called the YJ-18C, which is a version of the Russian Club-K weapon.

The missiles fit into a standard 8 feet wide by 8.5 feet high by 20 feet or 40 feet long standard shipping container.

An online animation showing how the Club-K can be fitted into a container shows how the top comes off to reveal the missile with the front making away for the guidance system.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the missile has speed of up to Mach 3 –  three times the speed of sound or 2,300mph.

While not in the league of China’s hypersonic missiles, which can reach speeds of Mach 10, analysts believe they can still pack a punch.

So far the only record of missile being fired from a container ship is a picture of a test carried out by Israel.

A large number Chinese container ships enter US ports on the west and east coast making them well within range of the vast majority of the US fleet.

"If this capability is confirmed, it will require a completely new screening regime for all PRC flagged commercial ships bound for U.S. ports," Fanell said.

The Stockton Center’s study concluded that loading weapons on civilian vessels clandestinely could violate international law.

It wrote:

"Failure to comply with the law of armed conflict by surreptitiously incorporating merchant vessels into China’s warfighting/war-sustaining effort endangers civilian seafarers and puts all civilian ships at risk that may be operating in the area of hostilities."

POWER GAME

China is perceived as directly challenging the West for status as the world attempts to recover from the pandemic.

Beijing is making moves to establish a foothold in the Atlantic Ocean with a new series of naval bases on the west coast of Africa.

The country’s first overseas naval base was built years ago in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and it is steadily increasing its capacity.

And for some time, many have thought that China was working to establish a naval base in Tanzania, a country on Africa’s eastern coast that has a strong, long-standing military relationship with Beijing.

Meanwhile, China is also seen to have taken the lead in the next stage of the global arms race as it flew a nuke-capable missile around the world.

Hypersonic missiles are a game changer because unlike ballistic missiles, which fly into space before returning on steep trajectories, they zoom in on targets at lower altitudes.

China – followed closely by Russia – were already regarded as having the most potent hypersonic missile arsenals pouring billions into them but others had been seen as catching up.

But the shocking revelations of their missile test back in August has sent shockwaves through Western intelligence who fear they actually underestimated Beijing.

US intelligence and military officials were reportedly left stunned after China launched a rocket in space carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle which circled the globe before before speeding towards its target.

Just who are these evil communists that must be killed?

You know for “The American way” of “freedom” and “democracy”! Video 1MB

And now the USA is equipping all the F-16’s and F-35 fighter jets with the ability to drop nuclear bombs. Are they out of their fucking minds????

Well, you know, YES they ARE.

China and Russia BOTH treat any weapon system that can deliver nuclear munitions as de facto launching those missiles.

A good look at what America wants to destroy and kill

Soak up the reality. The United States is trying to get everyone to hate – hate – hate so that these people shown in this video will be killed. All for the greedy psychopaths to continue to rule. video 18MB

U.S. assembled the first B61-12 nuclear bomb for F-35A and F-15E

According to the report, the B61-12 bomb modernization project lasted more than nine years – such a long period was required for the design, development, qualification, and production of components.

Full-scale mass production of these bombs is scheduled to begin in May 2022. In total, the program is expected to produce more than four hundred bombs by the end of 2026. In total, the project should cost about $ 12 billion.

According to the US National Nuclear Security Administration, the modernization will keep the bomb in operation for another 20 years and “will continue to ensure the safety and effectiveness of weapons.”

It is known that B61-12 should replace other tactical versions of this bomb [-3, -4, and -7] and will probably be stored at US and NATO bases in Europe. The main carriers of this bomb will be F-35A and F-15E fighters.

What is a B61-12 thermonuclear bomb?

The B61-12 thermonuclear bomb belongs to the B61 family. B61 is the main thermonuclear gravitational bomb of the United States, actively developed amid the Cold War with the Eastern blog close to the USSR.

According to the characteristics known to the general public, B61 has the possibility of a complete explosion, ie. a full range of ignition and delivery options, whether by air or ground. The B61 is capable of reaching supersonic flight speeds. The dimensions of the thermonuclear bomb are 3.56 m long, 33 cm in diameter, and a total weight of about 320 kg. Military experts say that depending on the B61 version, the weight can vary.

The latest modification of the B61 is the B61 Mod 12 or B61-12. One of the tests of the B61 Mod 12 at the very beginning of its development showed that this thermonuclear bomb can penetrate underground and reach an equivalent ability to explode on the surface of weapons from 750 kilotons to 1.25 megatons.

Experts say that “underground penetration” was not planned, but it is good news, as B61 Mod 12 could become a successful replacement for B61 Mod 11, whose main function is underground penetration. The B61 Mod 11 is expected to be decommissioned by the end of 2030.

***

So who are these bombs going to kill?

Well, one thing that is omitted PURPOSEFULLY in American media is showing any humanity with the targeted enemies. there are no pictures that show Russians or Chinese people being human. Just these evil narratives, ugly narratives, and fear mongering dangerous narratives. Not here on MM. We are being blunt. These are the people that your government is trying to kill. video. 4MB

Why? Why kill the nice, cute and hard working people of the world?

For this “freedom”, “liberty”, and “democracy”? Are you out of your FUCKING MIND? video 29MB

So, who are these bombs, missiles and war machines going to protect?

Are they going to protect you from the “red menace”? Nope. It is just a way to maintain the status quo and keep the evil greedy in positions of incredible wealth and power. video 14.3MB

Sigh. Here’s Phobos.

Hell, you have to leave the earth to escape this madness.

Marian moon; Phobos.

And let’s not forget about the moon.

China sends lunar rover to probe object on far side of moon

My goodness.

Question: what is the longest time US roller exploring the moon or Mars?
Dose this mean that China roller is more advanced than the USA:
China’s Yutu 2 rover discovered the curious cube on the horizon in the Von Kármán crater in November. The solar-powered rover, which first landed on the moon almost three years ago, has now been tasked to spend the next two to three months investigating the object.

https://www.9news.com.au/world/chinese-rover-yutu-2-spots-mystery-house-on-the-moon/b3fcc9b4-d14e-4382-986f-af883b4f1952

America Today

Sigh. Be kind.

“Over the summer while working a DUI shift, I stopped out at a local gas station to grab a drink. While waiting in line, the lady in line ahead of me offered to purchase my drink. I kindly declined the offer and stated I’d get it but thanked her. The kind lady then politely grabbed the drink out of my hand and set it on the counter to purchase.

It’s it very common in my city for a citizen to purchase food or drinks for police officers. These kind acts do not go unnoticed and I feel blessed to work for a community that proudly supports law enforcement. Building community relationships goes a long way.”

Rufus

With all the bad news being thrown at you, how about some good news to offset it all and find stability in your heart; your mind and your soul? video

Sigh. Make a difference!

Sometimes following in your father’s footsteps can lead you to the most beautiful corners of the world .

Daddy’s big girl now.

Why the CIA is so frustrated with China…

Here’s what the Chinese AI social credit scoring system works. No wonder the CIA and the NED are all upset. Their agent saboteurs cannot do anything. Which is why all the CIA agents in Hong Kong were found, rounded up and  either deported or are spending long prison terms in China. video 24MB

 

Rufus tales

Be the Rufus like this bus driver that gives up his coat to warm up a high school girl on his bus. Video 12MB

Yu Beng Village(雨崩村), Deqing, Yunnan Province, China

China is big. It looks a lot like Switzerland in many places.

AI! I am getting off track…

So what is my point? News out the “West” is fear-hate-fear-hate.

But is that really helping you?

I say that instead, it is making you ill. It is hurting you mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially, and all the rest. Know that there is a great life here for all of us to live and the answer lies in community. Whether world war III occurs, or the United States and the rest of the world just melts down, or the Prison Planet restructures itself is of no consequence…

…if you always do your best, work as part of a community of others, and do great things. Be the best you can be and be the Rufus that would make your grandmother proud.

Be that kind of person. Be that kind of Rufus.

video 22MB

A Final message for MM readership

Trust your gut instincts…

In 1981, a clairvoyant contacted British Rail to warn depot employees that she’d been having a recurring vision of a fatal train crash. In her vision, one of their blue engines hauling oil tankers crashed with devastating consequences. 

She also saw that the train number was 47216.

Managers took the warning seriously, as they were aware that the clairvoyant had assisted police on several occasions. They applied to have the number of the particular train changed to 47299.

In December 1983, the 47299 train was hauling an oil train when it collided with a DMU at Wrawby Junction. One person died, and it was concluded that a combination of equipment failure and human error was to blame.[6]
.
Afterward, the accident was referred to as an “amazing coincidence.”

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

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Why isn’t Russia and China responding directly to America’s hybrid wars, clandestine wars, and military provocations?

It’s a never ending onslaught of war preparation, war provocation, and war stockpiling being generated out of the United States. There is ZERO talk about deescalation. I tire of all of this. It seems like the United States is driving the world to war and they aren’t stopping for shit.

A top US general gave a stark warning about the risk of deteriorating ties with the two giant states. 

Vice Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General John E. Hyten told a think-tank meeting that conflict could easily spiral out of control. 

“We never fought the Soviet Union,” he said. “As for the great powers, our goal is to never go to war with China and Russia.” 

According to Hyten, such an event would “destroy the world and the global economy. It will be bad for everyone, and we have to ensure that we do not go down that path.”

And so everyone is asking these questions.

Why is the United States so fucking hell-bent on creating a major war? And, why isn’t Russia and China responding directly to America’s hybrid wars, clandestine wars, and military provocations?

The Greenville Post suggests…

An excellent read, by the way.

Observing the mounting provocations by Washington and its NATO puppet, many people in Russia (and abroad) think that Putin's response to the West has been weak, misguided and inordinately accommodationist, a form—in their eyes—of appeasement. 

They argue—as does Paul Craig Roberts—that Washington needs to be confronted far more clearly and decisively, with force if necessary, the way one confronts a depraved bully with a long list of crimes to its name. 

I have a great deal of sympathy for this point of view, as do many people who don't like seeing an arch-criminal get away with his ever-expanding reign of terror and intimidation. 

But, folks, this is a soup with some flies in it, and we need to pay more attention. 

While in a non-nuclear world that kind of thinking—giving a bully what he deserves— makes perfect sense, in a nuclearised world the cost/advantage calculus is far more complicated and the right response almost impossible to pin down. 

For it is certain that, at this point, an all-out nuclear war between the great powers, a war, mind you, precipitated by the United States and its vassals, besides its unprecedented horrors, is a war guaranteed to have no winners. 

This is not the kind of decision that any rational leader would like to make. 

So what is Putin or Xi to do? 

They face a ruling class that appears to be either technically insane or terminally cynical. Inhabiting a huge bubble of hypocrisy of their own making, drenched in the supremacist myths of US exceptionalism, US elites flail about the world impervious to reality or morality, while wiping their plutocratic asses in the UN charter governing the civilised behaviour of all nations.

Under such circumstances, hubris may blind them to the great risks inherent in their constant warmongering. 

But are they really blind and indifferent to the horrific costs, or—as Kissinger and Nixon once supposedly admitted—this is just a bluff to keep the enemy off balance?

Clearly, the Russians and the Chinese, led by rational and competent people, don't want to be forced to find out. 

A war between the great nuclear powers is a war with no winners in which the totality of the human race stands to be wiped out. 

They know war up, close, and personal in a way that is simply alien to most Americans, and seemingly forgotten by the idiotised vassal nations in what passes for a free Europe. 

Well, Russia and China haven't forgotten. 

The Soviet Union lost more than 27 million people in WW2, and thousands of towns and cities, plus almost 70% of its hard-won infrastructure and industrial base in her struggle to overcome the Nazi assault. 

China chalked up almost 30 million lives in casualties, an enormous figure even in a nation of over one billion inhabitants. 

In their eyes, it probably makes sense not to provoke the bully into a fight. 

Plus, there are powerful historical reasons for avoiding a shooting war as long as possible.  As demonstrated by the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact, avoiding war while growing stronger with each passing day is not a bad strategy when confronting a monstrous war machine led by deluded and unstable people. 

The USSR, despite its many problems, was a much stronger and more resilient nation in 1941 than in 1939. Those two years allowed her to safeguard and reposition the assets she needed to survive the Nazi attack, and she did. (See for ex. OPERATION BARBAROSSA: MYTHS AND REALITY). 

The same can be said for the truly vertiginous development of Russia's modern military in slightly over a decade: the Russia of 2008 (when it had to subdue a NATO-prodded Georgia into some stupid adventurism) and that of today can't be compared from a military standpoint. 

Military-naval analyst Andrei Martyanov agrees: "Russia and her Armed Forces of 2021 and of 2008 are separated not just by 13 years, but by two generations of weapon systems and C4ISR."  

Let that sink in for a minute. 

In sheer speed and effectiveness, Russia's capacity for strategic development is second to none in the world, and is not to be matched or surpassed by the Pentagon in the foreseeable future,  no matter how many trillions it wastes on such pursuit. 

It's actually a systemic and cultural question not subject to a quick resolution. Ditto with China. Could that be the reason why Putin can afford to look "weak" and calm and non-confrontational toward Washington, despite a non-stop cascade of provocations and vituperations? 

Keep these things in mind as you read Paul Craig Roberts' persuasive indictment of the Kremlin posture. —PG

Paul Craig Robert thoughts on this matter…

I can't see Putin trusting any US agreement.

When Russi/Putin acts, it is sudden, swift, and WITHOUT WARNING

So why the PR, the meetings with Biden, Lavrov's diplomatic whirlwind??

Methinks it is to get domestic opinion firmly on his side, a rooted we-back-you-at-any-cost kind of grim determination. Polls show he is half way there. What's the magic #?? 66%?? I would think it in that range.

If this is the case, we have a grim scenario awaiting us in February.

-Les7

While US Whore Media and Whore “scientists” dependent on Fauci-controlled NIH and Big Pharma grants whip up fear over a relatively harmless “Omicron variant,” a real dangerous situation that I have anticipated for seven years is raising its deadly head.

The arrogant fools in Washington lost in their own hubris have been practicing nuclear attacks on Russia within 20 kilometers of Russia’s borders. 

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Washington’s operation  Global Thunder rehearsed launching nuclear weapons against Russia from both western and eastern directions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Washington was not taking seriously Moscow’s warning not to cross Russia’s red lines.

Putin is correct.  But it is the Kremlin’s fault.

The only decisive action the Kremlin has taken in response to intense provocations from Washington and NATO was the Kremlin’s decision to accept the overwhelming vote of the people in Crimea to be reincorporated into Russia where the territory had resided for 300 years.  The Kremlin’s alternative was to lose Russia’s Black Sea navy base.

In a strategic blunder of the first magnitude, the Kremlin refused the same plea from the Russian people in the  Donetsk and Luhansk republics, territories that also had been part of Russia for centuries.  By refusing to honor the vote of the Donbass Russians to again be a part of Russia, the Kremlin subjected them to war and destruction by the Ukrainian army and various neo-nazi Ukrainian militias.  If the Kremlin had accepted the vote of the Donbass Russians to be returned to Russia, the conflict would have ended as Ukraine would not destroy itself by attacking Russian territory.  Without the ongoing conflict, Washington would have been unable to continue its machinations against Russia in Ukraine.

In an effort to salvage the situation, the Kremlin put together the “Minsk Agreement,” which Western powers were to support, but didn’t.  Thus, the conflict has continued to smolder since 2014, providing Washington with 7 years to use anti-Russian propaganda to define the narrative.

The Kremlin’s passivity and attempt to rely on agreements with the US and NATO to resolve a Ukrainian situation that Washington most certainly does not want resolved has convinced Washington and NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg that there is no fight in Russia, thus producing the situation that I have feared:  Washington has concluded that Russia’s red lines are merely rhetoric.

Many other Kremlin failures have contributed to this dangerous outcome.  The Kremlin still permits Israel to attack Syrian territory when one telephone call from Putin is sufficient to halt the attacks.  The Kremlin still permits the occupation of a small part of Syria by US troops and CIA Arab mercenaries hostile to the Syrian state.  The Kremlin receives massive insults to the Russian president and still refers to those insulting Russia as “our Western partners.”

These are not responses that create the impression that there is any force behind the Kremlin’s red line.

The Kremlin has also failed miserably in anticipating Washington’s moves, indicating an incompetent intelligence service or a willing disbelief in the Kremlin of Russian intelligence reports.  Despite its obviousness, the Kremlin failed to anticipate the invasion of South Ossetia in 2008 by a US and Israeli-trained and equipped Georgian army.  Putin was at the summer Olympics in Beijing.  The Kremlin failed to anticipate Washington’s obvious overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine and the replacement of a Russia-friendly regime with a neo-nazi regime. Putin was at the Sochi Olympics.

Washington simply will not take seriously a government incapable of paying attention to what is happening to its interests in its own backyard.

One might think that the Kremlin would learn by experience, but apparently not. With reports that half of the Ukrainian army is in the Donbass region threatening the Russian inhabitants, US Secretary of State Blinken threatens Russia with “serious consequences” if Russia protects the Donbass Russians.

Imagine, a cipher like Blinken, a person of no ability or accomplishments, a representative of a second-rate military power that discriminates against its own white troops, issuing threats to the world’s dominant military force. 

This is hubris run amuck, hubris encouraged by years of Kremlin low-key response to major provocations. 

As I have warned, the low-key Russian response, despite its good intention, encourages more provocations, and sooner or later Washington will go too far and cross a red line that will force a Russian military response.  My fear of nuclear war is the reason for my warning that Russia needs to put a strong foot down in order to stop the progression of provocations that can only end in war.

Why has the Kremlin been so meek in response to insults and provocations?  I have no inside information.  The speculations are that (1) the Kremlin wants the Donbass Russians to remain in Ukraine in order to water down the influence of anti-Russian attitudes in Western Ukraine;  (2) the Kremlin did not want to confirm Washington’s propaganda that Russia was rebuilding the Soviet Empire by reabsorbing the Donbass Russians in addition to Crimea;  (3) westernized Russian intellectuals have more confidence in the West than in their government;  (4) the Atlanticist Integrationists desire to be part of the West than to be allied with China;  (5) the Kremlin thinks that by continuing to be low-key and open to cooperation with the West all difficulties will be resolved;  (6) Russia knows the horrors of war and wants to avoid war at all costs;  (7) Russian billionaire oligarchs want the West as a haven for their stolen wealth.

All of these are sound reasons as far as they go. 

The problem is that all of these reasons ignore that Russia is Washington’s enemy of choice.  Russia is the enemy that justifies the $1,000 billion annual budget of the US military/security complex.  Russia is the enemy that strengthens Washington’s hold on NATO and Washington’s European empire. Russia is the enemy that keeps the Washington-abused American population loyal to the government that is destroying American liberty.  Russia is the enemy that can be blamed, along with China, for every failure of Washington.  How can the Kremlin forget that the hostility of the American Elite to Russia is so overwhelming that President Trump was confronted with a CIA/FBI/Justice Department orchestrated “Russiagate” for simply stating that he intended to restore normal relations with Russia?

Normal relations with Russia are impermissible to the extent that a President of the United States was removed from office in a stolen election after trumped-up “Russiagate” and “Impeachgate” attempts failed.  To complete the lesson to all future presidents that normal relations with Russia are impermissible, Trump supporters are being prosecuted for attending a rally in support of Trump, a rally now known as “the Trump Insurrection.”  Six hundred innocent people are held in prison in violation of habeas corpus and First Amendment rights.  Not even the US Constitution can protect them.

And this is a government that the Kremlin thinks it can reach an accommodation with!

God help the Russians and all of us as Washington’s provocations continue their march to war.

In a visit to Beijing in March, Moscow’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said that “the US has declared its mission is to limit the technological development opportunities of both the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China.”

Tarik in the Vineyard for the Saker Blog comments…

Putin claimed that ties between Moscow and Beijing “have reached the highest level in history,” while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi insisted both countries “have always been the pillars of peace and stability in the world.” According to him, “the more unstable and turbulent the world is, the more decisive cooperation between China and Russia will become.”

Why Russia didn’t shoot anything down yet?

If Russia shot down a NATO bomber or ship flying or sailing where it shouldn’t be (or even a US one), who would dare respond in kind?

It begs the next question: Why Russia didn’t shoot anything down yet?

Things need to be put in perspective. So here is a third question: Why is the West and the US in particular, so dead set on confronting Russia and China at every corner, short of direct military attack?

It is not because they want to cut Russian gas to Europe (it would terminally break the EU economy and destroy its ability to store increasing dollar reserves), or repatriate jobs from China (systemically incompatible with dollar hegemony) , or even prevent the implementation of the BRI per se (because the matter of fact is that potentially it could become a huge new, and very much needed pit for excess dollars to find their home; if only it were done the “right” way).

When Kissinger invited China into the western world economy, it was understood that it would eternally accumulate dollar trade surpluses, and over time, become another EU or Japan.

In the case of the EU, the US had NATO, and for Japan they had their military bases to make sure these two would dutifully stockpile every dollar that comes their way. But nothing of the sort existed for China.

To make a story short; in the early nineties they took over the largest stash of natural resources that is Russia. With that in hand they thought they now held China on a tight leash.

Late nineties the Asian economic crisis hit; Beijing was livid. 2000 Putin takes over Russia’s natural resources, unleashing China.

The later enters a global buying spree of natural resources through its huge accumulated dollar reserves. Commodities’ prices shoot up, interest rates follow suit and triggers the subprime implosion and all its aftermath.

For all practical purpose, intentional or not, this was an unofficial war declaration. No doubt every central banker on the planet worth his salt understood a new player entered town. It meant business, and was to be reckoned with. US responds with an “epidemic” of color revolution everywhere China was laying the ground work for what was to become the BRI, and dramatically increases the pressure on Russia to force it back into the US$ fold.

Neither China nor Russia blinked. Instead the former announced to the world the official launch of BRI, and the latter openly challenged US military supremacy in Syria, and soon after started in earnest the distribution of S400s (almost as good as the atomic bomb, in diplomatic terms) to the world.

For those holding reservations about the above interpretation of events, please consider: the price of gold went from under 300 US$/ounce in the late 90’s to 1900 US$ by the end of the first decade, bear in mind that this in a market hated by all. To this day less than 1% of global private wealth is held in gold.

In 5000 years of history never did this ratio fall below 5%, even under the most exuberant times. Who was buying? While the western bullion banks acted as “sellers of last resort” with unlimited fictitious supplies on the Futures market to keep the price under cap, so did Beijing act as “buyer of last resort” on the spot market with unlimited dollar supplies from their trade surpluses, thus uncapping the price. The relevance of this is apparent when juxtaposed to the BRI project.

It is estimated tens of thousands tons of gold were disappeared in China; that enters the border but never show up; neither in retails nor official reserves records, but instead just somehow vanish in thin air. At the minimum it shows they’re preparing for a post dollar economy. Then again the BRI makes no secret that it intends to make use of local currencies worldwide.

There are two ways only to have any currency accepted. Either it is backed by the most powerful military, or alternatively it is referenced to gold. Anything else (eg. Petrodollar, Eurodollar…) is military backing under the guise of… and the BRI has also admitted its preferred option for trade account settlements.

Such monetary arrangement (no matter the exact actual architecture) would in short order annihilate any form of western prevalence and privilege on the global scene.

In itself it would just be an ego bruise, but when added to the staggering debt levels, it translates to guaranteed decades of servitude. That my friends is the crux of the matter, the unfathomable horror the west is facing. It is what keeps their elite awake at night, while the population imperfectly senses a looming day of reckoning whether under the traits of a yellow slit eyed giant dragon, a monstrous growling bear, a flood of melted ice, or an amorphous unforgiving pestilence, when instead they should really fear Shylock’s lurking specter and past due pounds of flesh.

Now that the real motive for the Big Boys’ quarrels has been defined, how would a war with Russia or China, even if only through a proxy (Ukraine or whatever) fit in this equation.

First of all the West or the US today is not comparable to say Napoleon’s France or Hitler’s Germany which “benefited” from industrial and military supremacy. It is those specific advantages that allowed them the privilege to make fools of themselves.

Without them, neither Napoleon nor Hitler would have ever thought of heading East. And I might add, nor would have the US embarked on the last 50 years of hegemonic delusions.

Today the latter has lost both trump cards, and with them, one might presume, the luxury to fantasize a swift military solution.

This leaves us with only a proxy war scenario. If realized, that option can only yield very short lived dividends that could never alter the natural course of the empire’s demise.

After all once the Ukrainian army is spent, that card is gone. In fact the Ukraine holds value as long as the status quo last, once the situation is resolved (which ever way that may be) it looses any bargaining stock.

The same holds true for the JCPOA, Syria, North Korea, Taiwan, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and so many others. And what bargaining may I be referring to? Well hold on tight: the West pushes for terms of a new partitioning of the world, while Russia and China expect its terms of surrender.

Sure, until say around 2018, all these pressure points were meant to force China and Russia reconsider the dollar’s role in the BRI and related projects. But then in March of that faithful year (if I remember well) Putin casually announced a panoply of hyper-sonic toys. If the subprime event was a “Wazari”, March 2018 was the “Ipon Seonage”, or basically a “checkmate”.

No doubt every general worth his salt must have raised an eyebrow or two, and every central banker realized the dollar was now naked, with neither gold nor the most powerful military on the planet to enforce it.

All the while Putin was giving his speech, the list of nations that were rejoining the BRI since its official launch and their commitment, were about to dramatically increase.

The practical effect was a gradual and ongoing abandonment of dollars in cross border regional settlement of trades, particularly in South-East Asia were the doomed currency is now considered almost a dirty word among regional players.

Consequently local currencies reserves are displacing US$, which are increasingly being spent on the acquisition of raw materials on the international market for infrastructure projects.

If it sounds like “déjà vu” it’s because it is.

The resulting inflationary pressure on the commodities’ market would again spill over to the interest rate market, triggering the September 2919 REPO event. Because of its brevity, I suppose, few realize how defining that moment was to what came next.

First the Fed met the burst from 0% to 10% on the overnight REPO rate with a 700+ billion US$ barrage within a matter of days to literally drown those darn, messy, uncooperative interest rates. Ever since that market requires a monthly 120 billion allowance just so banks may trust each other and perpetuate the myth of solvency. As the global economy stopped accumulating, or even off-loaded dollar reserves, the greenback’s velocity increased and soon will feel like hot potatoes. A rarely mentioned consequence of this phenomenon (at least I never came across it anywhere), is the severe restriction it imposes on newly printed dollar deployment outside US financial markets, lest it turns the already established price inflation into hyperinflation. Thus it renders the dollar useless as a tool for influencing foreign actors. Those loose dollars must be neutralized. A few months later COVID strikes in China.

Was it just one more sorry attempt to oblige China to reverse its “dollar policy” or whatever favorite narrative one may subscribe, isn’t as relevant as Beijing’s response was remarkable.

There were several instances in the last 20 years when China had to suffer some suspicious biological outbreaks, yet none of the measures taken ever even registered in import/export figures, GDP, or in any other major economic indicator.

Now suddenly under the pretext of one insipid flu-like germ, precisely when the West is shown at its most fragile financially, they decide to entirely shut down one major world industrial production hub.

Again, regardless of one’s view on that epidemic, there’s not a point in the entire space/time continuum where Xi and his team didn’t foresee the consequences of such measures, both on their economy and those of the West respectively.

The West was totally taken off-guard; no point in calling China, the damage was already done, trillions would be needed to absorb the shock, and thus they took the path of least resistance.

They doubled down on the COVID song, proactively shut down their economies to force unanimous political support for direct monetary support of the economy and markets. That the pandemic narrative also served as convenient cover for population movement control, was an extra bonus in an environment ripe for social unrest.

A few months later China unlocks and its economic indicators quickly resume to pre-pandemic levels, all while the US and Europe were still mired in frozen economies.

This showed the world economy did not depend any longer on Western lead. In fact the world can now perfectly do without the West all together.

Now it may still be early to assess with any certainty how the game is being played at this very moment, but based on the evidence over the last 2 to 3 years, here is a proposition which hopefully might offer an answer to our starting questions.

The earlier Putin “checkmate” referred specifically to global dollar dominance. Preserving regional dominion for a little while longer however seems still possible, at least in the minds of the western elites.

However such a region must be isolated from areas that do not submit to the dollar “order” (or whatever new cryptocurrency denomination they may come up with to implement their reset), since direct competition would instantly reveal the currency fraud that it is.

Hence the necessary world partition. In this new context, those pressure points whose main purpose was originally directed against China and Russia, can easily be repurposed to mainly close the ranks in the “salvageable” portion of the world.

That explains nicely the increased hysteria surrounding those sour points; not as means to strike fear in the hearts of Russians and Chinese (which is a ridiculous proposition when considering the ground facts), but to dig it as deeply as possible into their vassals’ hearts instead, with what military and economic might they still muster.

Then in order to preserve their currency’s “credibility”, at least within the remaining sphere of dominion, they need a replacement for the loss of those Central “dollar sinkhole” Banks and respective economies that are escaping to the multi-polar world.

So they “repurposed” (or just upgraded, I’m not sure which) a favorite of theirs: Global Warming, from an obstacle to the BRI momentum, to a black hole for infinite currency issuance.

The basic idea, apart from its green energy infrastructure component which at least is comprehensible to the mind, is to, through the carbon credit market, “financialize” various ecosystems’ contribution to decarbonization. Shares would be available for “investments”.

It’s not clear who or how the book value of these shares would be calculated, but one can be excused for assuming that value will prove as flexible as a COVID infection count.

I suppose the underlying logic goes something like this: ecosystems remove CO2 from the atmosphere, which saves our lives.

Since we can all agree that our lives are infinitely precious, no amount of investments can possibly realize the full valuation of those shares. Et voilàààà, the inflationary dilemma once and for all, forever and ever, eternally and for perpetuity finally solved!

Is it delusional? Of course it is. But as some real wise man said: People rarely think what they must, instead they tend to think what they need to think, when they need to think it.

Obviously the “Grand absurdity” in which their “Great Reset” is being implemented is the sure sign of their impending capitulation. Hence Russia and China patiently awaiting their acceptable terms, which probably means unconditional rendition.

The piper will be paid.

It doesn’t mean they want to destroy, humiliate, or otherwise submit to the West. It’s about facing responsibilities, and within this frame, figure out a convenient, or win-win agreement.

In such an environment a war makes little sense because there is no military threat against western leadership, only military containment.

In typical “Go” fashion, US and NATO bases that were previously seen as power projections enveloping the world, can increasingly be viewed as the boundaries of a shrinking space.

Funny thing is, Russia and China did try really hard to avoid this sorry state; the downright self-inflicted humiliation the West is facing.

Ever since the 1997 Asian crisis, Beijing tried real hard to convince the US to a strategy to solve the Dollar’s paradox in world trades.

During the first decade of the century as preparation for the BRI, they started heavily investing in global natural resources extraction.

Aside from the obvious practical reasons (BRI would require humongous amounts of resources), there was also a financial/monetary aspect.

The commodities sector was suffering from decades of under investments due to price suppression schemes by the usual suspects, in line with the gold price policies.

The idea then was to increase production so that the manipulative Future’s shorts could be gradually unloaded without triggering the typical inflationary bomb and the ensuing interest rate response, and thus freeing the Western banks from exposure at no loss.

At which point international dollar reserves could gradually be unloaded unto an increasing supply of commodities to the BRI, with also minimal (or at least manageable) inflationary disturbance.

Of course it implied a parallel incremental retirement of international dollars to a level commensurate to the US’ economy true size, probably through a series of devaluations against mainly gold. That was China’s plan. Not a bad empire retirement plan when considering where the West stands now.

Just as funny, had the US been agreeable to China’s and Russia’s proposal, better yet had they taken the lead after the USSR collapsed, to “resize” the dollar, neither of the Bear nor the Dragon would have developed their armed forces, instead dedicating their resources strictly to the economy.

The US could have retained Military supremacy and acted as a true policing force of the world, with all the benefits and honors attached to this function, and the eternal gratitude and support of all.

What a monumental waste those last thirty years indeed.

Okay, maybe all wouldn’t have been as rosy, so let’s just say it could have been a great opportunity for a beautiful dream…

MM answers

And kids, this is how World Wars gets started....

However, my fear is that the US and Israel will double down and not go quietly. Instead of upsetting the table and waking away when losing; they will flip the table over and rip open their shirt to reveal a suicide vest....

-A.L.

There are two possible reasons why the United States is acting like such a dick-head bully and Asia is failing to engage…

[1] America is dying. Let it die. When a person is dying, you allow him to go through the death thrall and stay out of the fray. America will be dead soon enough. There’s no rush to do anything. Russia and China know this and see this. They are watching in real time. Obviously they are guarded and concerned, but their projections obviously show a complete national collapse within the decades, if not much sooner.

[2] Asia is ready to put an end to it all. The death thralls of the empire is getting dangerous. But neither Russia or China will allow these matters to destroy them. If things become unmanageable, they will take the first steps, on their timetable in accordance with their rules. Both Russia and China are ready to take down the Untied States is such a way that the USA will not be able to launch a retaliatory strike. The complexity of such a mission is enormous, and so they are spending the time to make sure that retaliation would be impossible.

To a lesser extent are some other explanations. But I (personally) do not believe that they are valid.

[3] Wishful thinking. Both Russia and China independently believe that the ruling leadership of America will come to their senses and stop all this war-mongering nonsense. Just one or two more elections and it will all be over and change.

[4] Incompetence in Russian and Chinese leadership. Both the Russians and the Chinese are not competent, and have determined that the best actions are ones in which America is permitted to define the rules of engagement and the behaviors during conflict.

What is obvious is that both Russia and China have the ability, the technology and the capability to hurt the United States substantially. But they are not making any overt mores in this regard. The reasoning behind this is many, but I really see the options as I described coming to the forefront.

We will find out soon enough.

And so … the very next day after I wrote those comments…

Ukraine – Russia Makes Serious Demands, Warns Of ‘Confrontation’

From MoA

Following unfounded U.S. claims of an imminent Russian invasion of the Ukraine U.S. President Joe Biden and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin have held a virtual summit. Little has been released about its real content but the Russian follow up shows that the issues they talked about were deadly serious.

On December 10 the Russian Foreign Ministry published a statement that not only sounds like an ultimatum but seems to be meant as one:

We note US President Joseph Biden’s readiness expressed at the December 7, 2021 talks with President Vladimir Putin to establish a serious dialogue on issues related to ensuring the security of the Russian Federation. Such a dialogue is urgently needed today when the relations between Russia and the collective West continue to decay and have approached a critical line. At the same time, numerous loose interpretations of our position have emerged in recent days. In this connection we feel it is necessary to once again clarify the following.

Escalating a confrontation with our country is absolutely unacceptable. As a pretext, the West is using the situation in Ukraine, where it embarked on encouraging Russophobia and justifying the actions of the Kiev regime to undermine the Minsk agreements and prepare for a military scenario in Donbass.

Instead of reigning in their Ukrainian protégés, NATO countries are pushing Kiev towards aggressive steps. There can be no alternative interpretation of the increasing number of unplanned exercises by the United States and its allies in the Black Sea. NATO members’ aircraft, including strategic bombers, regularly make provocative flights and dangerous manoeuvres in close proximity to Russia’s borders. The militarisation of Ukraine’s territory and pumping it with weapons are ongoing.

The course has been chosen of drawing Ukraine into NATO, which is fraught with the deployment of strike missile systems there with a minimal flight time to Central Russia, and other destabilising weapons. Such irresponsible behaviour creates grave military risks for all parties involved, up to and including a large-scale conflict in Europe.

All the NATO action mentioned above directly endangers Russia’s security. It has to cease. Some of the steps taken must be reversed and Russia will have to be given guarantees that certain measures will not be taken. The statement includes this list of demands:

  • No more NATO expansion towards Russia’s borders. Retraction of the 2008 NATO invitation to Ukraine and Georgia.
  • Legally binding guarantee that no strike systems which could target Moscow will be deployed in countries next to Russia.
  • No NATO or equivalent (UK, U.S., Pl.) ‘exercises’ near Russian borders.
  • NATO ships, planes to keep certain distances from Russian borders.
  • Regular military-to-military talks.
  • No intermediate-range nukes in Europe.

That the above is not a “pretty please” wishlist has since been emphasized by several Russian authorities:

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Monday warned of confrontation should the United States and NATO fail to give Russia security guarantees concerning its eastern expansion, the RIA news agency reported.

President Vladimir Putin has demanded legally binding security guarantees that NATO will not expand further east or place its weapons close to Russian territory; Washington has repeatedly said no country can veto Ukraine's NATO hopes.

The confrontation Ryabkov talks about would not be verbal if Russia’s red lines get crossed:

We have openly pointed out that there are red lines which we will not allow anyone to cross, and we also have certain requirements, which have been formulated exceedingly clearly.

Russia can of course veto the Ukraine’s entry into NATO. It can destroy the Ukrainian military, take the regions of Ukraine where a majority speaks Russian and create a new sovereign state from them.

The remaining agricultural Banderastan would be left for Poland and Romania to feast on. This would give Russia the strategic depth it needs and it would limit the NATO friendly coastline in the Black Sea to the south western parts.

A Russian attack on the Ukraine is however what western weapon producers and their adjunct think tanks, ‘experts’ and political hawks, mainly in the U.S., deeply wish for. It would isolate Russia, increase the U.S. role in Europe, justify increasing military budgets and end the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and other Russian export routes.

And that is the reason why Russia will not attack and use alternative measures.

Unless, of course, …

In a phone call with Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson Putin repeated the demands and explained his reasoning:

Like other Western leaders, Boris Johnson expressed concern about Russia’s alleged large-scale troop movements near the Ukrainian border. In this regard, Vladimir Putin provided in-depth and principled assessments of the current situation in Ukraine.

Specific examples of Kiev's destructive course on derailing the Minsk agreements, which are the only viable path towards resolving the internal Ukraine crisis, were given. It was also pointed out that the Ukrainian authorities are purposefully aggravating the situation on the line of contact and are using heavy weapons and attack drones, which are prohibited by the Minsk Package of Measures in the conflict zone. Ukraine’s policy of discrimination against Russian-speaking people was pointed out as well.

It was emphasised that all this is happening amid the active military “exploration” of Ukraine’s territory by NATO, something that poses a direct threat to Russia’s security.

With this in mind, Vladimir Putin stated the need to immediately begin talks in order to develop clear international legal agreements that can preclude NATO’s further eastward advance and the deployment of weapons that pose a threat to Russia in neighbouring states, primarily Ukraine. Russia will present draft documents to this end.

The NATO countries which push for further moves against Russia, mostly the Baltic 3 and Poland, see all their dreams endangered. They will resist any move towards a fulfillment of Russia’s demands. They are however not the ones that count.

It is the U.S., Germany and France that Russia is counting on to get some senses. The upcoming winter, which is predicted to be somewhat harsh, is a good opportunity to apply a little pressure to Europe and to show that it is Russia, not the U.S., which provides Europe energy security. The new Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer understands that:

In an interview published on Tuesday in the German newspaper Die Welt, Nehammer, who was elected chancellor earlier this month, was asked if the Austrian government will continue to support Nord Stream 2. He replied, “Of course,” adding that he expects the pipeline to begin operating soon.

“I don’t consider it necessary to connect Nord Stream 2 with Russia’s behavior in Ukraine,” he went on, referencing a recent political standoff between Moscow and Kiev. “The EU can only hurt itself by doing so. Nord Stream 2 doesn’t only serve Russia’s interests – Germany, Austria, and other EU countries will profit from it. Nord Stream 2 is a European project, which shouldn’t be used as a tool to pressure Moscow.”

This winter Russia will use its market power to press for a fulfillment of its demands. Russia has stopped to provide natural gas to the European spot markets. It continues to deliver in full to customers who have long term contracts. This will squeeze Poland and a few others who depend on the spot market in times of peak demand. Russia hopes that those countries learn that their excessive hostility towards it can have serious consequences.

As Russia has no direct tool to squeeze the U.S. it will need a different strategy to push Biden to change course. The current main foreign policy concern in the U.S. is China. Russia is therefore coordinating its strategy with it:

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will discuss "aggressive" language from the U.S. and NATO during their virtual meeting later this week, according to the Kremlin.

"The situation in international affairs, especially on the European continent, is very, very tense right now and requires discussion between allies," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, according to a Reuters report. "We see very, very aggressive rhetoric on the NATO and U.S. side, and this requires discussion between us and the Chinese."

Notice Peskov’s use of the word “allies”. This is, as far as I know, new. There is no formal treaty between Russia and China that makes them ‘allies’ so the use of the word is highly significant.

This is a concern for an Asia pundit who fears that any Russian move on Ukraine would be accompanied by a Chinese move on Taiwan. To prevent that she urges the U.S. to end the endless confrontation with Russia and to concentrate on the far east.

We can only hope that Biden understands such reasoning, finally shuts up the Russia hawks and ends the conflict with Moscow.

Otherwise we will all be in for some interesting times.

Yes. The USA is marching straight towards war!

And it’s going to be horrific. Imagine DEMANDING Russia do this, and DEMANDING China do that. These demands will be met with extreme force. And I do mean EXTREME.

All of this reminds me of the scenes from the UK movie about the build-up to Nuclear war called “Threads”.

Threads.

Never a More Unsettling Strategic Landscape

From HERE.

It is the first time that others are dictating to the West rather than being instructed on how to conform to American red lines.

There was an almost audible sigh of relief echoing around western corridors. Though there were no breakthroughs in the Team Biden-Putin virtual meeting, the talks not surprisingly, were heavily focussed on the matter of immediate concern: Ukraine – amid widespread fears that the Ukrainian volcano might irrupt at any moment.

At the meeting: Agreed was the proposal to initiate ‘lower-level’ government-to-government discussion of Russia’s red lines and any halt to NATO expansion eastwards. Jake Sullivan, however, spilt a little cold water over that when he firmly emphasised that the U.S. had given no commitments on either issue. Biden (as advertised in advance), warned of strong economic and other measures should Russia intervene in Ukraine.

What was more notable however, was that the U.S. is ‘only’ threatening to sanction Russia, or to move more troops into the region, as opposed to posing explicit western and NATO militarily intervention in Ukraine. In earlier statements, Biden and other U.S. officials have been vague about what Washington’s response to a Russian invasion would be: warning repeatedly of ‘consequences’, even as it re-committed to Ukraine’s sovereignty.

So, should we all begin to breathe again? Actually, no. In fact, the immediacy of the Ukraine issue was always something of a red-herring: Russia has no desire to wade into the thick, cloying mud of a regional quagmire, however much some in the West would ‘love it’. And the Kiev forces are tired, bedraggled and demoralised from sitting in cold trenches along the Contact Line for months. They have little appetite to take on the Donbass militias (unless aided from the outside).

Nothing was resolved about what to do about the wider dark dystopia that is Ukraine – in all its various manifestations. President Putin raised the Minsk Accord, but nobody, it seems, was biting; the fishing line remained limp. Nor was anything agreed about what to do with the accumulating debris of what once was called U.S.-Russian ‘diplomatic relations’. The latter term (diplomatic relations) is now but a poor joke.

Celebration therefore, is not in order. The viscerally anti-Putin factions in U.S. and Kiev are furious: A U.S. Republican Senator, Roger Wicker has warned that in any stand-off over Ukraine, “I would not rule out military action. I think we start making a mistake when we take options off the table, so I would hope the president keeps that option on the table”. Asked what military action against Russia would comprise, Wicker said it could mean “that we stand off, with our ships in the Black Sea – and we rain destruction on Russian military capability”, adding that the U.S. also shouldn’t “rule out first-use nuclear action” against Russia.

So Ukraine festers on. If we are now to have a lull, then it is just that – ‘a lull’. The ‘hawks’ in U.S. and Europe have not raised the white flag: Ukraine is too good a weapon for their needs, to be tossed lightly aside.

This focus on the Ukraine crisis however, is to ‘see the trees, yet miss the wood’: We have three – not one – ticking landmines, ready to ignite. Three ‘fronts’: Each are distinct, yet closely inter-related, and are now threaded by unknown levels of strategic aims and synchronicity: Ukraine, Taiwan, and the faltering JCPOA Accord – which is now sparking untold angst in Tel Aviv.

The wood not seen for these three trees lies with the unresolved issue of European security architecture; Middle East security architecture; and indeed, of global security architecture. The existing rules-based order has passed its sell-by date: It provides neither security, nor does it reflect the reality of today’s Great Power balances. It has become a pathogen. Simply put, it is too fossilised in the post-WW2 lietkultur.

In a recent CNN interview, Fareed Zakaria, asked Jake Sullivan, Biden’s Security Adviser:

So what is it, after all your ‘tough talk’, that you have been able to agree with China; what has been negotiated? ‘

Wrong question’ was Sullivan’s sharp retort. “Wrong metric”, he said flatly: Don’t ask about bilateral agreements – ask about what else we have secured. The right way to think about this, he said, is:

Have we set the terms of an effective competition where the U.S. is in a position to defend its values and advance its interests – not just in the Indo-Pacific, but around the world…”. 
“We want to create the circumstance in which two major powers will operate in an international system for the foreseeable future – and we want the terms of that system to be favorable to American interests and values: It is rather, a favorable disposition in which the U.S. and its allies can shape the international rules of the road on the sorts of issues that are fundamentally going to matter to the people of our country [America] and to the people everywhere … “.

It is this maximalist lietkultur which is leading us to a point where these three explosive issues together risk a fundamental convulsion of the global order.

You have to go back a long way to find a moment when our world was as vulnerable to a sudden change in fortunes – what Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Telegraph terms, “The West’s nightmare: a war on three fronts”.

What is going on?

Well, it is certainly something very far-reaching.

And why the U.S. insistence on such an absolute stance for the global order – according to which other Great Powers get no right to set their own security red lines?

Well, it is because … the ‘four horsemen’ of the Great Transitions:

  • The Pandemic – leading into a global health regulatory system;
  • the Climate Emergency – leading to a global CO2 regime of credits and debits;
  • the tech and AI revolution – leading us into a global era of automation and ‘bots’ (and job losses); and fourthly,
  • the Transition from classical economics to that of global Modern Monetary Theory that requires a global re-set of the world’s mountain of debt that will never be repaid.

Sullivan’s vision of the ‘foreseeable future’ is essentially conceived around this ‘higher order’ project: The preservation of global ‘rules of the road’, framed to reflect U.S. and allied interests’, as the base from which the clutch of ‘transitions’ – health, climate change, managerial and monetary technocracy – can be levered from the national parliamentary prerogative, up to a supra-national level of business and tech managerial collectives of ‘expertise’ (devoid of accountability to national parliamentary oversight).

Separated in this way into such spheres as health precautions, climate recovery, fostering tech ‘miracles’, and money issuance severed from taxation – they sound non-ideological, and somehow almost utopian.

It was well understood that all these transitions would overturn long-standing human ways of life that are ancient and deeply rooted, and inevitably would trigger dissidence – which is why new forms of social ‘discipline’, and the usurpation of control from national accountability, to the supranational plane, is so important. It certainly isn’t making people “happy”, (as per Davos).

Hmmm! … the ideological underbelly to this ‘higher order’ re-set may be obscured from view, as non-partisan, but it is he who decides the international standards, the protocols, the metrics, and the rules for these transitions, who is Sovereign – as Carl Schmitt once noted.

Sullivan at least has the integrity to be frank about the unseen ideology to the re-set:

“We want the terms of that system to be favourable to American interests and values: It is rather, a favourable disposition in which the U.S. and its allies can shape the international rules of the road on the sorts of issues that are fundamentally going to matter to the people of our country [America] and to the people everywhere …”.

We are talking here of something which clearly goes well beyond the scope of the Biden summits with Xi and Putin, and the Vienna JCPOA talks.

President Putin has warned that any encroachment of NATO infrastructure or forces into Ukraine would not be permitted.

And that Russia would decisively act to prevent it.

Similarly, Iran has stated explicitly that any Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities will not be tolerated. It would result in the Iranian destruction of Israeli vital infrastructure across the full territory.

And Iran’ and Russia’s stance is identical with that of China in respect to Taiwan: President Xi made that plain in the virtual summit that he held with Biden on 15 November.

Xi warned that any move by Taiwan to secede is not permitted, and would be met by a military response.

In Vienna, Iran simply stated its ‘red lines’:

  • No discussion of Iran’s ballistic missiles;
  • no discussion of Iran’s regional role; and
  • no freezing of enrichment – as long as the mechanism for lifting sanctions and ensuring their non-recurrence is not agreed upon – effectively calling for a return to the original framework of the 2015 accord.

Iran demands binding guarantees that sanctions will not arbitrarily be re-imposed; that trade normalisation will not be informally hobbled again contrary to the terms of the accord, as happened under Obama (the U.S. Treasury Department pursued its own anti-trade policy, at variance with that of the White House); and that all sanctions must be lifted.

What should be noted here is the context: Note that the Iranian position is almost identical in content to that enunciated by Russia, vis à vis the U.S., in respect to Ukraine: Putin’s demand to Washington is that Russian interests and ‘red lines’ be formally acknowledged and accepted; that legally binding agreements be made in respect to Russia’s security in eastern Europe; and the absolute demand for no further NATO encroachment to the East, and a veto on any NATO infrastructure exported to Ukraine.

This is very new – in geo-politics, co-incidences of this nature don’t just spontaneously happen.

It is evident that the three powers are strategically co-ordinated, politically and likely militarily, too.

Western states are stunned: It is the first time that others are dictating to them – setting out their red lines – rather than being instructed on how to conform to American red lines.

They are disconcerted, and unsure what to do next.

And, as Anatol Lieven astutely notes, some actions would have grave strategic consequences:

“quite apart from the global economic damage that would result from a war in Ukraine, and the ways in which China would take advantage of such a crisis, the West has a very strong reason indeed to avoid a new war: the West would lose”.

Lieven continues:

“This would also risk becoming a world war; for it is virtually certain that China would exploit a war between the United States and Russia, thereby threatening the United States with the risk of two wars simultaneously – and defeat in both”.

For now, the U.S. and its allies repeat the usual bromides about ‘all options being on the table’; of crippling sanctions, and of an international coalition being formed to pressure and oppose such non-compliance.

For, without competitor compliance (or these states’ effective political isolation and condemnation), the higher project of raising these seemingly ‘non-ideological’ transitions to a supra-national sphere whose standards, protocols, etcetera (‘terms of the system’ in Sullivan’s words) will not be achieved.

It will not prove possible to upload a ‘Washington Consensus’ software update when these three states simply refuse Sullivan’s ‘rules’.

A strategic reset however will not come easily.

The west is embedded in meme-warfare, which makes a strategic order partition all the harder.

Any compromise on the narrative that Russia cannot have its own red lines; cannot dictate whether not Ukraine joins NATO; nor determine where NATO sites its missiles and nukes, risks Biden being seen as weak.

Republicans already pre-emptively have blamed what they call Biden’s ‘weakness’ for having encouraged ‘dangerous adventurism’ from Moscow.

Then again, perhaps these two summits – together with Iran’s stance in Vienna – represent the beginning of the end to the West’s Rules-Based Order, and a countdown to a new geo-strategic balance between the two axis – and ultimately therefore, to peace or war.

Meanwhile…

US bans UAE from hosting Chinese navy

So the UAE is not a sovereign nation? It is a vassal state under the thumb of America? From HERE.

During a conference call on 15 November 2021, President Joe Biden assured his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that his country was not seeking war with China, but only loyal competition. As for China, it rejects any form of rivalry and aims to establish “win-win” relations.

However, according to the Wall Street Journal, back in September the CIA had spotted construction activity for what appeared to be a Chinese naval military facility in Abu Dhabi.

That same month, National Security Secretary Jake Sullivan together with his Coordinator for the Greater Middle East, Brett McGurk, were dispatched to the Emirates.

The two American men presented Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (“MBZ”) with satellite photos, ordering him to stop the construction immediately or face “consequences”.

China currently boasts the most powerful navy in the world, outdistancing the United States. She built a naval base in Djibouti in 2017 to grapple (efficiently) with the threat of Somali pirates, then signed a secret agreement in 2019 to establish a base in Cambodia. In addition, she set up civilian naval bases in Pakistan and Sri Lanka which could quickly be repurposed for military use.

The United Arab Emirates are home to a large US naval base and, in order to safeguard their independence, also host a French base.

And the UAE response?

UAE threatens to pull out of massive military deal with US

From HERE.

The United Arab Emirates has reportedly threatened to quit a $23-billion military deal with the US over Washington’s tough requirements meant to shield the weapons against what the Americans call “Chinese espionage.”

The deal was made during former US president Donald Trump’s twilight days in office. On paper, it enables the Emirates to acquire American-made F-35 aircraft, Reaper drones, and other advanced munitions.

On Tuesday, however, The Wall Street Journal cited an Emirati official as saying,

“The UAE has informed the US that it will suspend discussions to acquire the F-35.”

“Technical requirements, sovereign operational restrictions, and the cost/benefit analysis led to the reassessment,”

The source added.

The Journal considered the development to be equal to

“a significant shake-up between two longtime allies.”

It tried to attribute the Emirati snub to Abu Dhabi’s partnership with Beijing and the latter’s growing influence in the region.

“The collapse of the deal would fuel perceptions within the Middle East and elsewhere that America’s decades-long role as security provider of choice in the region is diminishing,”

It wrote.

Among other things, the paper said, the US has long been concerned about Abu Dhabi’s economic ties with Beijing and its involvement with the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co.

Huawei provides the Emirates with its communications infrastructure. US officials and members of Congress allege, though, that the company is a national-security threat. The company and the Chinese government have denied such allegations.

An important comment

As one who played “duck, cover & kiss your sweet a*s good-bye” in my fourth grade grammar school during the Cuban/Turkish Missile Crisis, I still think that a repeat of such a memorable event is more probable than a European conflict.

The reasons are as follows:

1) As pointed out by many in this drinking establishment, the Russian leadership is pretty miffed that the Americans get to hide behind an ocean and Europe while the latter plays “Russian Roulette” with the crispness of Eurasia region. Methinks the Russians would prefer the Americans get to feel the heat for a change. At the same time, strategically, its better PR with the locals to threaten the Americans rather than their European cannon fodder.

2) The Russians have already given an indirect threat of moving mobile missile launchers into the Western Hemisphere. Read below in Sputnik. In that article the authors claimed that the Chinese have the capability of moving mobile launchers anywhere in the world inside shipping containers. This article was published the same day as Blinken’s assertion that Russia has no right to drawing red lines, and was picked up by Global Security, the Sun, and others.

https://sputniknews.com/20211207/china-hides-secret-missile-systems-in-cargo-containers-for-surprise-attack-anywhere—report-1091301280.html

Overlooked is a reference in Wikipedia, posted by who knows who, which describes just that with the the Club K Kalibr cruise missile. The article was posted a number of years ago, and is complete with a photo in a container launching platform and a reference to a 2011 showing at the MAKS 2011 Air Show. I’m sure US intelligence is aware of this fact, as it was also covered in navyrecognition.com in 2019. As I stated in the open thread when I first posted it, the Neo-cons are not that bright and need to be hit over the head emotionally to have that “ah-ha” experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M-54_Kalibr

3) One of the biggest televised events in the original stand-off was the blockade of Cuba by the US Navy. This is interesting in two respects. First, that maneuver is much more difficult due to much better aircraft transport and smaller rockets, and secondly it will be seen as hypocritical to a possible blockade by the Chinese of Taiwan and American stated “Freedom of Self Defense”, and “Freedom of Navigation”. It therefore underlines the notion of “spheres of influence” at a visceral level.

It’s getting to be a very, very interesting world.

-Michael.j

Putting all the pieces together…

Now I know it's serious.

-Keith Granger

[1] America has established who their allies are. (With the “Summit for democracy”.)

[2] It has promised financial outlays for their version of “democracy” to all the nations that will side with them. (Just look at the financial budgets out of Washington DC.)

[3] It is really pushing towards war with the nations that are not part of their coalition. (Russia, China, Iran, and any other nation that shows any kind of independence.) They are making bold demands, and pushing, pushing, and pushing for a response. They do not expect anything other than a localized strike, where they can then retaliate with the full force of their military currently in place.

To me, it is obvious. The United States has determined to wage war. Not just against China but against the entire rest of the world, and is now trying to determine who it’s friends and enemies are.

They are pushing for their “enemies” to “make the first move”. Then they will act, with systems already put in place and ready to launch.

No wonder China is building nuke swarm hyper-velocity missiles like there’s no tomorrow.

Maybe it’s because maybe there isn’t going to be one.

We will all be in for gruesome times. No need to play with words here.

-Pnyx

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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America is a dead man walking, it needs to finally die so that it can be reborn anew.

Well it’s official, the “great experiment” in a utopian government is over. The United States is DEAD. It just doesn’t know it yet. Now it’s time to figure out what to replace it with.

"There are two kinds of people in this world; those with loaded guns and those who dig." 

-- Blondie.

Yah.

The wealthy took over the United States and looted it completely.

Do you think that I am exaggerating?

Let’s open up with a little blurb.

Massive Emerald discovered

That’s a mighty big rock.

The massive emerald, which weighs 794 pounds and stands around 4.3 feet high was unearthed a month ago, 200 meters deep inside the Carnaiba Mine in Brazil

The Laos – China High Speed Rail line opened up.

From Gordon Dumoulin…

The high financial risks or another example of the debt trap diplomacy?
China to Laos HST
 
The official opening of the high speed train route from China’s Kunming to Vientiane, capital of Laos was major news in both countries. “From land-locked to high speed land-linked” as I wrote a few weeks ago:
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https://lnkd.in/gprAmyRT
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Not headline news in Europe or USA, understandably in today’s Covid tense circumstances but having read several major news sites on this event, it ranged from considerations between Laos economic developments and the risks of loans to China to a straightforward example of another Chinese ‘debt trap diplomacy’.
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I have not yet come across any article in US or European media which did not mention the risks and increasing dependence of Laos to China in the light of the rail connection. Imagine that!
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Few other perspectives from this week;
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First perspective. Several news items in the West quote an AIDDATA report “Banking on the Belt and Road” citing that Laos has the highest debt of all countries to China. I did not read this 166-page report yet. I did though quickly check who or what is AIDDATA.
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CIA!
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It is a research lab at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute in Williamsburg, VA. Directly funded by among others the US Secretaries of State and Defense and in close collaboration with the National Endowment of Democracy, an ‘overt’ arm of the CIA as some might call it.
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While not disputing the content of the report as I have not read it yet, should the nature of ‘independence’ of this report not raise questions by at least a few journalists for further research ?
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A second perspective related to the so-called Chinese debt trap diplomacy. Yes criticism is definitely healthy but a balance (in criticism) not less important. The news this week that Deborah Bräutigam, Director of the China Africa Research Institute at John Hopkins University was framed by the BBC.
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She is well-known for having denounced the Chinese debt trap diplomacy in several reports/books by facts and numbers. Her telephone interview with the BBC was cut in such a way that it seemed she supports the debt trap diplomacy narrative… to her own horror.
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A third perspective; unexploded US cluster bombs in Laos had to be removed before being able to build this high speed railway. Over 260 million US cluster bombs were dropped on Laos from 1964-1973 (more than all bombs on Europe during WWII), making Laos by far the most heavily bombed country in global history. 30% of those bombs remained unexploded and is still daily reality for many people in Laos. Historical perspectives.   
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American bombs all over Laos.

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Not intending to judge content or painting black-white angles, let us all just strive to broaden perspectives and balance. And most of all, hope that this high speed railway (which is definitely a fact) will bring a brighter, inter-connected future for the people from Laos and China, peacefully, economically and socially.
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Remember that if tiny, tiny Laos can have a high-quality high-speed train line, why can the mighty exceptional America as well?
 

Jordi Comments…

The China-Laos Railway, a landmark project of high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, started operation on Friday.

The electrified passenger and freight railway runs 1,035 kilometers, including 422 kilometers in Laos, from the city of Kunming, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, to Lao capital Vientiane.

The architecture style of the railway stations is designed to feature local culture.

Sleek bullet trains will travel at a speed of 160 kilometers per hour, through mountains and valleys.

High Speed Train.



Construction of the Laos section started in December 2016, and construction of the China part linking Yuxi and the border town of Mohan started in December 2015.

A total of 167 tunnels and 301 bridges were built along the new sections stretching over 900 kilometers, after builders overcame many technical difficulties.

As a docking project between the Belt and Road Initiative and Laos’ strategy to convert itself from a landlocked country to a land-linked one, the line will slash the travel time between Kunming to Vientiane to about 10 hours.

The railway could potentially increase aggregate income in Laos by up to 21 percent over the long term, the World Bank said in a report last year.

David BK Tan comments…

Actually the significance of #China-#Laos railway is that it is a dual-purpose HSR i.e. it can transport cargoes or passengers across borders. This would bring a disruption to shipping industry as companies can opt for the intermodal transportation i.e. moving large-sized goods in the same steel-based containers through two or more modes of transport. In other words, using a mix of truck-rail-ship for the purposes of turnaround efficiency and cost effectiveness.

If you look at European and Japanese HSR, they are meant to ferry passengers only and so HSR does not disrupt the shipping industry which is dominated by European shippers.

But the benefits brought about by intermodal transportation via HSR are significant when one looks at China-Laos railway. Below video is an example.

The train from China departed for Laos on Dec 4 from Kunming loaded with Yunnan's specialty vegetables. Specialty products of Laos and Thailand are expected to be delivered at the Kunming Tengjun international land port in Kunming on the return trip, which will further be transported to cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing, via the land port. The train is expected to reach Laos's Vientiane South station on Dec 5.

Hence it is a fast mode of transport using HSR since if you use shippers, you have to wait for the ships to load and unload at various ports of call, the use of land transport after the goods are received, the time involved in the administrative paperwork etc.

What Laos has, but America doesn’t

A High speed train! Thanks to China’s BRI.

Video 3.4MB

What Pakistan has by the USA doesn’t…

A High speed train. Thanks to China’s BRI. I guess the USA is too focused on wars around the world. Video Check it out. 131MB

Debit Trap!!!!!

Yada. Yada. Yada.

Debit Trap.

From TC Khoo…

“The reality is that the US and 300 years of Western imperialism strives to control, oppress, and steal the resources of developing countries. A century later not much is changed and the millions living in developing countries [remain] trapped in a cycle of poverty and exploitation, through policies implemented by the IMF and the World Bank. The Euro-centric West over-looks the legacy of its ‘development policies’ which are the cause of half of humanity living below the poverty line.
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While western aid agencies put out adverts asking money .. they omit the fact that Africa is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources and turned into a ‘begging bowl’ a result of West’s debt-traps and perpetual wars.
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·        The real DEBT TRAP – Paul Craig Roberts, author of The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism outlines how the west has looted third world countries and how IMF plays a lead role in this ..

“the gullible” governments are offered “foreign loans to implement a Western-presented development plan” 

.. in reality the country becomes indebted .. Unable to pay back the loan, the creditors send in IMF to lend it money to pay its bank creditors. Now IMF is in a controlling position it will apply austerity measures cutting back public services, public pensions, and sell national resources to foreigners .. the exploitation doesn’t stop there, but rather the West pushes a “policy on Third World countries of abandoning food self-sufficiency and producing one or two crops for export earnings. This policy makes Third World populations dependent on food imports from the West. Thus, self-sufficiency is transformed into indebtedness”.
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Such policies have hindered the development in third-world debt-ridden countries for decades. Nick Dearden Director of ‘Global Justice Now’ argues that even before “we had even heard of COVID-19″ the IMF warned that 34 countries were at risk of debt distress and this was a conservative estimate .. more than 60 countries cannot build a basic health system because the “world’s poorest countries are repaying vast sums year on year to rich countries, international “anti-poverty” funds – public bodies such as the IMF – and major banks is a damning indictment on our global economy.”
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While the US propagates the debt-trap narrative, the biggest worry for the West is that China’s BRI offers a much-needed alternative for the global South.
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Washington is not interested in facts that contradict their narrative, rather US officials and the vast media propaganda machine are continuing to repeat the debt-trap accusations with an aim to discredit BRI [but] there has never been a Western proposal for continental-scale infrastructure building … It was the Chinese who sought to build a road, rail and maritime infrastructure network to link Africa’s economies with the rest of the world”, with the debt trap allegations against China debunked again and again.  
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read more at – https://www.gwadarpro.pk/

Ecosystem

In 1960, David Latimer planted a tiny garden inside of a large glass bottle and sealed it shut. He opened the bottle 12 years later in 1972 to add some water and then sealed it for good. The self contained ecosystem has flourished for nearly 60 years.

For those who are wondering how this is even possible: the garden is a perfectly balanced and self-sufficient ecosystem. The bacteria in the compost eats the dead plants and breaks down the oxygen that is released by the plants, turning it into carbon dioxide, which is needed for photosynthesis. The bottle is essentially a microcosm of earth.

Miniature ecosystem.

In Tanzania…

The world moves on. Free of the worry of being bombed to oblivion by the United States.

From Dr. Tomor…

Have you seen a stone arch bridge being built? I was in Tanzania this week and saw several being built. I found top quality workmanship creating impressive bridges.

Bridge construction.


Where does the story begin? The Belgian Development Agency (#ENABEL) together with the Tanzania Rural and Urban Roads Agency (#TARURA) are building 70 stone bridges in small villages around Kigoma to help people get to markets.

Bridge construction.


This fascinating project, located deep in the Tanzanian countryside, has much to teach the developed world. For embracing decarbonisation, stone bridges offer an ultra low emission alternative to concrete and steel with minimal maintenance costs.

Bridge construction.


As digital technology is incorporated into stone construction there is a compelling case for reviving this incredibly long-lasting material.

Bridge construction.

 

People wondered about the HK-Macau Bridge…

“It’s impressive, but a big black hole to throw money into” says the jealous British reporter. It wasn’t even announced or reported on in the United States. But I can tell youse guys that it is really impressive, and it lands right at my doorstep. Literally. I go out of my back door, and there’s the road from the bridge!

But why was it built? For people to travel back and forth from HK to the Casinos?

The bridge to my doorstep.

Now we know. China wants to turn Macau from a casino den into a tech base for the Greater Bay Area.

When I first read this, I had a little giggle in my head.

Wait a moment …

I realized how much I judge a thing based on a commonly held belief or opinion. Vegas is the most sinful place while Sedona Arizona is the most spiritual place.

Is that true?

Or is that based on the experience of a person carrying out certain activities in that place?

Can you be spiritual in Vegas? Absolutely yes if you want to.

Is there a totally “bad” or “good” place on earth?
Or is it just our experience or our perception of that place being “bad” or “good”?

To take this to another level, is democracy absolutely good and authoritarian absolutely bad?  Is freedom totally good and control totally bad?

Good and bad ideologies have been instilled in the minds of people so that we can fight to be right and fight to “survive”, the lowest level of human consciousness.

What if we can go beyond the “survival” to the plane of co-creation?

Chinese government’s intervention in economics and businesses is much larger than what one is used to in the west. But that’s just how it is. China is much larger than anything that the West can possibly comprehend.



Is it totally bad? Or is it just the perception of being bad because it’s not consistent with what one expects in the west based on the beliefs and values where one is raised.

Now back to the topic of Macau …

Half of Macau’s GDP comes from casino revenue. Gambling represents 80% of the government’s tax revenue. An 80 per cent drop in gambling revenue last year led to a 50 per cent decline in GDP.

In Beijing’s plan, Macau is being encouraged to develop integrated circuits, new energy projects, and artificial intelligence (AI), among other tech sectors, and to establish a supply chain for chips, from design to testing.

For China’s tech firms, the city is also proving a testing ground for new products and solutions. Tencent, Huawei and SenseTime are all involved in the city’s digitalization and smart city projects.

Lu Gang, director of the Macao Technology General Association, said …

“Although it’s small in size, Macau is an international platform connecting the mainland to the world and can help Chinese companies venture abroad.”

Transforming a city from a casino den to a tech innovation base is quite a huge effort, but China thinks long term. No wonder Zhuhai, and the Guangzhou corridor is literally on a building spree and all those skyscrapers are everywhere.

And of course, the CIA tried to stop all this…

The CIA / NED embeds in Hong Kong tried all sorts of things to top the Chinese construction in the Bay area… this is from 2011. WWF is a NED front organization.

Coronavirus in Shanghai

From Joe Z… 6DEC21

Yesterday 4pm, one family of this city found Covid positive (after 20 months of zero case), as the man was traveling back from Shanghai. 

8am this morning, 50 testing sites are ready in that suburb, 40k+ people will be tested quickly, 100+ medical workers are mobilized, people are informed via phones and medias, schools are temporarily closed for 1 day.

Everyone is busy doing their part to minimize the impact and wants to get back to normal as soon as possible.

Western media can call that whatever they want: human rights violation, brainwashing, communism, no freedom, collectivism, overreacting, whatever accusation that can express their hatred.

We who live here care more about our health and work. We respect our medical workers and volunteers.

Hater's opinion is irrelevant to us.

China and Africa

From Sebastian Ibold…

Africa-#China cooperation and trade deepened in recent years.

In particular the "Forum on China-#Africa Cooperation" (#FOCAC), a tri-annual forum between China and African countries, is a platform for the alignment of cooperation and development goals of the Sino-African strategic partnership.

A week ago, the 8th edition of the FOCAC, the 2021 summit, was held from 29 to 30 November in Dakar bringing together foreign ministers and high-level attendees from African countries, the African Union and China (first summit held in 2006 in Beijing).

The 2021 summit adopted 4 resolutions: 1. Dakar Action Plan (2022–24), 2. China-Africa Cooperation Vision 2035, 3. Sino-African Declaration on Climate Change and 4. Declaration of the Eighth Ministerial Conference of FOCAC.

In particular the China-Africa Cooperation Vision 2035 is of strategic importance. According to the first 3-year plan of the vision, China will:

send 1,500 medical personnel and public health experts and provide 1 billion doses of #COVID19 vaccines to Africa.

⚒undertake 10 poverty reduction and agricultural projects and send 500 agricultural experts to Africa.

import goods worth EUR 247 billion over the next 3 years (in recent years, bilateral trade stood at about EUR 165 billion per year, with China's imports from and exports to Africa each reaching about EUR 80 billion).

provide EUR 8 billion of trade financing to support African export, provide credit facilities of EUR 8 billion to African financial institutions, channel to African countries EUR 8 billion from its share of the IMF’s new allocation of Special Drawing Rights and encourage Chinese businesses to invest no less than EUR 8 billion in Africa in the next 3 years.

exempt African LDCs from debt incurred in the form of interest-free Chinese government loans due by the end of 2021.

establish a platform for China-Africa private investment promotion and support the development of African SMEs (indicating a shift from traditional infrastructure and construction investment-focus to a more local development approach)

establish a China-Africa cross-border RMB center.

undertake 10 digital economy projects in Africa.

undertake 10 green development, environmental protection and climate action projects for Africa ("actively promote solar, wind and other sources of renewable energy, work for effective implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change and keep strengthening our capacity for sustainable development").

build in Africa "centers of excellence on low-carbon development and climate change adaptation".

encourage Chinese companies in Africa to create at least 800,000 jobs in Africa.

undertake 10 peace and security projects for Africa.

Side fact: One of the commonly used world maps, the Mercator Projection, depicts Greenland and Africa as being roughly the same size. In reality, Africa with 30 million sqkm is 14 times larger (see last graphic, true size of countries)

In Japan: “Bread & Roses: Pandemic Drives Women into “Nighttime Work””

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SNA (Tokyo) — On November 16, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced the disciplinary dismissal of a 28-year-old school nurse for moonlighting as a sex worker for more than a year.

Tokyo officials interrogated her after receiving an anonymous tip about her after-hours work. The primary and middle school nurse said she wanted to save enough money to live on her own in the city. The officials used the word menshoku (removal/dismissal from office) rather than kaiko (dismissal from employment) since she was a local government civil servant.

Japanese labor law grants employers the right to dismiss an employee (kaikoken), but that right cannot be abused (ranyo). In reality, you need a damn good reason (goriteki-katsu shakaiteki sotosei ga aru = reasonable and sufficient according to social norms) to fire somebody. The hurdle for disciplinary dismissal is even higher, requiring malicious behavior that causes considerable damage to the workplace with little prospect for recovery from the loss of “confidence” (shinrai).

The media has kept mum about the details of this case, but we can suss out quite a bit. The available information does not make it obvious whether she was fired for having a second job or for the nature of that second job. Local government civil servants cannot, in principle (though with exceptions), work side gigs without prior approval, according to the Local Public Service Act.

A violation can lead to a disciplinary dismissal, according to a strict reading of Article 38. And yet, countless incidents injurious to others, including teachers driving without a license, driving under the influence, groping on public trains (chikan), and lewd acts with students, do not lead to disciplinary dismissals. Most of those cases lead to lighter punishments, such as three-months forced leave or pay cuts. This school nurse injured nobody, yet she was hit with the ultimate employment penalty.

It’s easy to imagine that the reason for the differential treatment lay in the nature of her side gig. Very few sex workers in our society feel confident enough to declare their occupation openly. The dismissal perhaps relates to the fact that the job of teacher (which includes school nurse in Japan) is often called a “sacred profession” (seishoku) and is held up as a model occupation for the children they teach. The Tokyo government likely feared an adverse impact on children’s education and demands from angry parents for the immediate firing of a teacher who also works at a sex establishment.

However, the reaction on social media to this case has been overwhelmingly sympathetic to the school nurse. The following quotes encapsulate many comments I have found in my research.

Personally, I feel a disciplinary removal from office is too severe. It means she loses her teaching license. She surely had financial reasons for doing this, and I cannot accept that her mistake was so grave. Her next job hunt will be a nightmare. I worry about her future.

Disciplinary dismissal just for having a side gig? It’s a victimless crime. Even if it was a sex establishment, it’s odd for her to be dismissed like this just for having another job.

Such expressions of sympathy and solidarity reflect the  desperate impoverishment of women during this pandemic. The word yorushoku (nightwork) is increasingly common in Japan to refer to sex workers, in distinction to hirushoku (daytime work), such as administrative or sales work.

Even in pre-Covid times, women earned less than men and had far more precarious jobs. The pandemic has aggravated this situation, leading to many women being fired, having their contracts non-renewed, or losing work and income on zero-hour contracts. This has driven many women into yorushoku, and some even to working both day and night with little time to sleep.

In the past, the nighttime profession was considered a separate world inhabited only by professionals and experts–a world hard to enter and one that filled office workers with fear and trepidation. But the pandemic has robbed women of jobs, devastated their personal incomes, and aggravated the gender gap, as the Japan Research Institute reported this past April. Female suicides have jumped since the start of the pandemic, totaling 7,026 in 2020, according to the National Police Agency.

Although we don’t know the life circumstances of this particular school nurse, it’s not hard to imagine she suffered serious financial hardship. Public perception considers local government servants to enjoy secure employment throughout their careers. But a skyrocketing number of people work in public education on one-year part-time contracts. Her previous situation may have been precarious indeed.

It should be noted that yorushoku covers a broad range of sex work, from more hardcore services that include penetration to more softcore work such as drinking and chatting with customers at a hostess bar. Pay grows the more hardcore the work is–to a level higher than desk workers can imagine. It’s easy to understand why some women suffering financial hardship are being drawn to such high-paid work, when so few other opportunities are available to them.

The popularity of the word yorushoku has itself to some degree normalized this kind of work, enabling advertisers and recruiters to lower the psychological hurdle that many women feel about doing such work and drawing them in with the high pay.

But why are conditions for day jobs so precarious and miserable in the first place, particularly for women? Normalizing nighttime work while ignoring the issue of lousy daytime jobs misses the point. On top of that, sex work entails many risks, as well as the possibility for major mental and physical harm.

Why did the school nurse feel compelled to work at a sex establishment? This is a question for all workers living in Japanese society.

I concur 100% with the Japan Communist Party’s pledge to create a society in which people work eight hours a day and live a life worthy of a human being. It’s time the government reformed its labor policy to ensure that for all workers, regardless of gender.

For breaking news, follow on Twitter @ShingetsuNews

China creates its own democracy instead of duplicating Western models: white paper

Xinhua | Updated: 2021-12-04 12:08

BEIJING – China did not duplicate Western models of democracy, but created its own, according to a white paper released Saturday.

Titled “China: Democracy That Works,” the white paper was released by the State Council Information Office.

The original aspiration of China’s democracy was to ensure the people’s status as masters of the country, said the white paper.

China has created and developed whole-process people’s democracy in line with its national conditions. This is a form of democracy with distinctive Chinese features which at the same time reflects humanity’s universal desire for democracy, said the white paper.

Whole-process people’s democracy has fueled the development of the country and driven the revitalization of the nation. It has contributed a new model to the international political spectrum, said the white paper.

China must devise the most suitable form of democracy in accordance with its characteristics and realities. This is a basic principle China adheres to for developing democracy, said the white paper.

To develop its democracy, China has always drawn wisdom and strength from its 5,000-year-old culture and fine traditions, said the white paper.

Humanity’s quest for and experiments with greater democracy will never end, it said.

The true barrier to democracy lies not in different models of democracy, but in arrogance, prejudice and hostility towards other countries’ attempts to explore their own paths to democracy, and in assumed superiority and the determination to impose one’s own model of democracy on others, it added.

The World is changing

You can plainly see this on the polls that reflect the thoughts and belief of American workers.

Local Innovation

The owner of this electric car has done something that no electric car manufacturer has ever done.

Auto-recharging.



I’ve always wondered why these machines aren’t designed for the energy that generates wheels to charge the car’s batteries.

This guy did it at home.

What you see in the frame is the current-generating generator that charges the batteries.

There is no longer a need to stop to charge batteries at charging stations or to charge them at home at night.

The machine charges the batteries while it’s running.

It’s as simple as that..

The Saker

 

This article is a reprint from a great article found on The Saker. I edited it for clarity, simplicity, and to fit this venue. All credit to the author. It is well worth the read as it describes the need for the USA to “ok, so die already”. Any American will be well familiar to the ideas, concepts and situations as described herein.

Despite the running assumption in Washington for some time that democratic backslides are linked to perceived adversaries such as Russia and China, the data actually seems to point back to the United States itself. 

Of all places, the news of this democratic decline was recently reported in the New York Times. According to data from V-Dem, the US and its allies (defined as countries with a formal or implied mutual defense commitment) have accounted for only 5% of worldwide increases in democracy in the 2010s while having 36% of the decreases. 

In fact, it states, US-allied countries saw their democracies decline by nearly double the rate of non-allies. 

This obviously raises the question: why? 

Answering this is quite a tall order for even the most astute political scientists, but it’s obviously not as simple as blaming Trump. Let’s look at some of the possible reasons. 

First of all, contrary to a long-running assumption, American influence does not actually lead to countries wanting to be like America. A Pew Research Center study from November 1 found that only 17% of people in their survey countries viewed US democracy as worth emulating, against 23% who said it was never a good example. Why is this? 

Well, US democracy sucks. 

If democracy means that public opinion is supposed to decide policies, then the US is an abject failure. 

Public opinion actually means next to nothing, considering the US is a functioning plutocracy – a government of, by, and for the wealthy. 

- Mirna Miranda

The author kind of goes off the “deep end” offering his opinions on race and social differences, and I personally found that repugnant. Never the less, he does have some good points and I tried to mediate his work so not to be offensive to the MM readership and myself. Part of accepting change is to listen to the opinions of others. I do hope that you enjoy this.

America Must Die—So That the People Can Live

 
America resembles an old house.

When you live in a 200-year-old house, you would do well to give it a thorough inspection every few years. Rap on the walls, pull down some old wallpaper, climb into the attic, and get down into the crawl space. Check the roofing, check the exterior walls, check the foundation. You are looking for signs of rot: decay, mold, insects, rodents, or just plain aging.

With luck, you find one or two small problems, you patch them up, and all is well.

Unfortunately, sometimes all is not well. Sometimes, you find signs of major and irreparable decay. In those cases, and as painful as it may be, you must be prepared to tear the house down and start anew. Anything less would be a lost cause, an act of utter futility.

America today.

America today is a 245-year-old house—a grand mansion with many rooms, situated on a wonderfully vast and glorious estate.

From the outside, from a distance, it still looks nice: glitzy, glamorous, wealthy, powerful, exciting. It still carries much from its well-intentioned (if flawed) beginnings.

But our inspection proves otherwise. When we rap on the walls, or get up in the ceiling, or crawl down to the foundations, we are shocked to find signs of widespread and irreparable decay.

The main timbers supporting the building are rife with termites; the roof is leaking; the foundation is cracked, the sands beneath are eroding, and all manner of vermin are running wild, both above and below.

In short, it is a horrible mess.

We try to plaster over holes here and there, and slap on some new paint once in a while, but the rot inevitably shows through. By any reasonable accounting, the building is on the verge of collapse. It may come down on its own, or we can be proactive and take it down, but down it will come.

America is starting to fall apart and crumble down.

Any viable nation is not only an edifice; it is a living entity.

It lives and breathes with the people in it. Our house is a living house; but sadly, it is terminally ill.

A combination of old age, disease, neglect, and poor hygiene have put it in a terrible state, one that is evidently beyond any hope of recovery or repair. The house must come down; America must die—in order for a new house, a new nation, to arise.

Such is life.

An Inspection Report on the USA “House”

It is worthwhile, then, to review my brief ‘inspection report’ of the American nation, and to diagnose the ailments that we are currently enduring.

If I am able to get down to root causes, this will naturally lead to some prescribed courses of action that we can take, both near-term and for the longer haul.

No one wants to live in a rotting house.

No one wants to live in a decaying nation. No one wants their children and grandchildren to grow up in such conditions.

We have better options.

At the highest level, my inspection report finds two major, and related, areas of concern: (1) a false notion of human equality, and (2) misplaced faith in the doctrine of democracy.

Further analysis shows that these two aspects have been ruthlessly and malevolently exploited by a potent selfish lobby to maximize benefit to themselves.

In what follows, I will attempt to outline the nature of this far-reaching and deep-rooted crisis, and to suggest some ways forward.

The False and Destructive Concept of “Equality”

In 1927, and four years before he penned Brave New World, famed writer, thinker, and “casual anti-Semite” Aldous Huxley published a compelling little book called Proper Studies.

It opens with an essay titled “The Idea of Equality.”

The very first line reads as follows:

That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent. (p.1) 

Doctors, editors, bureaucrats—any person, in any walk of life, displays evident and obvious inequalities, says Huxley.

People are different in every way imaginable: skills, abilities, interests, intelligence, appearance, character.

Everyone acknowledges this, and yet at the same time they also want to insist on the essential and intrinsic equality of humans.

Hence does Huxley write of the human mind’s “almost infinite capacity for being inconsistent.”

He then describes the basic axiom at work:

Politicians and political philosophers have often talked about the equality of man as though it were a necessary and unavoidable idea, an idea which human beings must believe in, just as they must, from the very nature of their physical and mental constitution, believe in such notions as weight, heat, and light. 

Man is “by nature free, equal, and independent,” says Locke,[1] with the calm assurance of one who knows he cannot be contradicted. 

It would be possible to quote literally thousands of similar pronouncements. (p.2) 

He identifies the original source of this fallacy in Aristotle, whose metaphysical assumption of a human essence (as “the rational animal”; Nicomachean Ethics I.8, 13) implies a sort of equality among the human species.

Against Huxley, we can argue that this does not quite follow; the existence of a common and distinctive quality of all humans need not imply their social, political, or existential equality, any more than the fact that all material objects have mass imply that they all have the same weight.[2]

Huxley also fixes some blame on Descartes, but again, this is perhaps an exaggerated claim.

In Discourse on Method (1637), Descartes writes:

Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world. … 

It indicates that the power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false—which is what we properly call ‘good sense’ or ‘reason’—is naturally equal in all men. … [A]s regards reason or sense, since it is the only thing that makes us men and distinguishes us from the beasts, I am inclined to believe that it exists whole and complete in each of us.[3] 

Even if we allow that reason is equal in all—a highly dubious assertion, to say the least—it still does not imply political, social, or moral equality.

More to the point, Huxley cites Christian doctrine and the position of the Church.

Even granting a “brotherhood of men” under Christ, “the brotherhood of men does not imply their equality.”

He continues:

“Neither does men’s equality before God imply their equality as among themselves.”

Even if God, from his divine and lofty standpoint, views us all as equals, any putative inter-human equality “is entirely irrelevant”.[4] It is rather like us viewing all ants or mice as identical when in fact they all recognize and acknowledge vast differences among themselves.

All this bodes ill for the “religion of democracy,” says Huxley (and as I will elaborate).

Its “primary assumption” is that “all men are substantially equal.” If the equality falls, so too falls democracy.

A most profound observation, worthy of repeating. "Democracy" is ONLY valid and a just form of governance, when everyone one is equal in ability, thought, social standing, and contribution. 

Otherwise, "democracy" is a failure. 

-MM

He summarizes concisely:

 The historical and psychological researches of the past century have rendered the theory which lies behind the practice of modern democracy entirely untenable. Reason is not the same in all men; human beings belong to a variety of psychological types separated from one another by irreducible differences. (p. 12) 

Science, anthropology, philosophy, and common sense all come to the same conclusion: human equality is a fallacy, and any political ideology based on that notion is doomed to failure.

Huxley, of course, was hardly alone in his condemnation of a claimed human equality.

Nietzsche viewed the idea with greater contempt and wrote in more scathing terms.

We find, especially in Beyond Good and Evil, a stunning repudiation of the concept.

His elaborations on the “order of rank” among men, the “instinct for rank,” the “noble soul,” and the necessity for human greatness, pervade the work.

A few examples will have to suffice:

Men, not noble enough to see the abysmally different order of rank, the chasm of rank, between man and man—such men have so far held sway over the fate of Europe, with their “equal before God,” until finally a smaller, almost ridiculous type, a herd animal, something eager to please, sickly, and mediocre has been bred, the European of today. (sec. 62)

The highest and strongest drives, when they break out passionately and drive the individual far above the average and the flats of the herd conscience, wreck the self-confidence of the community, its faith in itself, and it is as if its spine snapped. Hence just these drives are branded and slandered most. High and independent spirituality, the will to stand alone, even a powerful reason are experienced as dangers; everything that elevates an individual above the herd and intimidates the neighbor is henceforth called evil; and the fair, modest, submissive, conforming mentality, the mediocrity of desires attains moral designations and honors. (sec. 201)

Every enhancement of the type ‘man’ has so far been the work of an aristocratic society—a society that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man. (sec. 257) 

The concept of equality is ultimately destructive because it declares, not only that no one is worse than anyone else, but more importantly that no one is better than anyone else—yes, that no one can be better.

True self-betterment and self-enhancement become impossible if we are all equal.

No matter what you do, you will still be only, and always, equal to the very least among men.

This doctrine is not merely false; it is utterly contemptible and destructive of higher aims and goals.

It means the death of humanity. Where we do not ascend, we decline; this is Nietzsche’s basic outlook.

Sadly, it conforms to the actual world in which we live today.

In the final passage above, Nietzsche points to a central fact and thus to a possible solution.

If every improvement to humanity and to society has occurred in aristocratic societies—that is, rule by the best—then we ought logically to use those as our model.

Societies that are capable of sorting men into lesser and greater types, and to do so effectively, are the drivers of human evolution.

They strive for greatness, and they create greatness.

Even the smallest steps in that direction—such as were taken by Hitler in his National Socialist Germany—would be such an improvement over the present day that any nation even attempting it would likely flourish spectacularly; and in fact, this is precisely what happened in Germany, beginning in 1933.

The rest of the equality-obsessed, oligarch-inspired world was so aghast that they were compelled to drive the remaining industrial nations against Hitler and to destroy him, so fearsome was the prospect of his success.

Still, entrenched myths die hard.

We in the US have our treasured Declaration of Independence, which declares as “self-evident”—with the calm assurance of those who know they cannot be contradicted—that “all men are created equal.”

As we know, this was disingenuous at best.

For one, they indeed meant ‘men,’ given that women could neither vote nor hold office.

And they meant ‘White men,’ given that all the Founders were White Anglo-Saxons, and many were slaveholders or otherwise endorsed slavery.

Hence that famous phrase really meant “all White males are created equal”—though even that is demonstrably untrue, as I have argued.

Original Democracy

Huxley had it exactly right: support for modern democracy is in fact more of a belief system, or even a faith, than something grounded in history, reason, and philosophy.

Like many other religions, democracy derives from a core of historical truth—here, in ancient Greece—that was then altered beyond recognition by an accretion of layers of myth, lie, and corruption.

Today we have the belief, the faith, by all sides, “left” and “right” alike,[5] that democracy is an unquestioned virtue, that it must be defended at all costs, and that it must be spread to the world, even at the point of a gun.

This is a fundamental political error, founded on an erroneous and detrimental conception of human equality; it must be overcome if we are to survive in the long run.

Democracy wasn’t always a religion.

At one time, at the beginning, it was a rational and effective (though not unproblematic) means of self-government.

Let’s take a minute to examine the original democracy of ancient Greece to see what worked and what did not.

The original democracy of ancient Greece

Athenian democracy was a remarkable institution, and remarkably different than what passes for democracy today.

To begin with, the population of the state (or polis) was small—it constituted only some 300,000 people at its peak, which included many slaves and foreigners.

By modern standards, this seems tiny but, for the time, it was extremely large.

Of this number, the only formal citizens were the adult native-born males, numbering perhaps 30,000, or just 10 percent of the population.

These citizens—the demos, the people—were the formal basis of political power, rather than some ruling wealthy elite (also known as oligarchs or plutocrats), or some tyrannical dictator, as could be found in other Greek states.

The democratic system, inaugurated by Cleisthenes around 500 BC, functioned in a very different way than we might expect.

For one, there were no elections; all leadership positions (apart from the military) were chosen by lot, at random, from among the citizens who had put forth their names.

This included even the leader of the Assembly—the collected body of citizens—who was effectively the president of the nation, though without much formal power.

The Greeks had invented a device called a kleroterion into which names were randomly inserted on small tokens; colored dice were then deployed to select names randomly and fairly from among the various tribes or families.

The system had several virtues: immediate results, no costly or corrupted election campaigns, fairness, transparency, and an equal involvement of all concerned.

The Greeks clearly had to be nice to all their fellow (Athenian male) citizens, any one of whom could someday have a position of prominence.

Secondly, there were no representatives.

Athens was a famously direct democracy.

All interested citizens gathered on a large open hilltop, called the Pnyx, roughly once per month, to listen to the issues of the day.

When the time came for decisions, a very public show of hands determined the outcome.

Even the gravest of matters, such as going to war, were decided this way.

This is all the more striking when we consider that the army was composed of the very men who had themselves just voted for war.

In other words, when you voted for war, you personally went to war.

And many never returned.

We can only imagine a similar situation in America today: that the Congressmen and women who support the next illegal and unjust foreign war[6] would be compelled to be on the first combat plane into the warzone. I suspect that we would have very few wars indeed.

I would love to see Mike Pompeo and Tom Cotton try to invade China. It would be a hoot. -MM

In sum, Athenian democracy was small, direct, accountable, and transparent.

The wealthy elite had very little power to steer events in their favor.

The citizenry comprised only native men; foreigners had literally no voice in the state, even though they outnumbered the actual citizens by a factor of two or three.

Greek democracy was thus a racial (White European), ethnic (Athenian), and gendered (men only) system of rule.

And it worked incredibly well; it produced and sustained the brilliant Athenian culture that we know today.

Two Famous Critics

For all that, the system had some harsh and prominent critics—notably, Plato and Aristotle.

Plato had two main complaints against democracy:

Voting

Voting. First, he asked, why should all the citizens get to vote on key decisions? Why are they all treated as equals, one vote per man? This is illogical and counterproductive. Even in Athens, they had their share of dunces, dimwits, and degenerates. Why let these men vote? Why not let only the best, the wisest, vote? For that matter, why have votes at all? Why not just determine who are your wisest few, and let them rule?

This was Plato’s vision of an aristocracy, the optimal form of government. It is, at least in theory, far superior to anything like a democracy.

Freedom

Freedom. Plato’s second concern was, ironically, with freedom itself. In a democracy, since “the people” rule, anything goes. Whatever the people want, the people get. And the people—the masses—rarely want the kinds of things that they should want, namely, virtue and discipline. Rather, they want to have fun: they want to do one thing one day, and something else the next, as it suits their fancy. They are ‘free,’ after all. They want to play games, engage in various petty amusements, fill their bellies, get drunk, and so on. As it was then, so it is now; human nature has scarcely changed in two millennia.

Plato is scalding in his attack. The “democratic man” is inundated by all manner of trivial and detrimental desires. True and deep thoughts are driven from his soul, and “false and boastful conceits and phrases mount upwards and take their place” (Republic Bk 8; 560c):

And so the young man returns to the country of the [pleasure-seeking] lotus-eaters, and takes up his dwelling there in the face of all men. … 

There is a battle and [the false and boastful words] gain the day, and then modesty, which they call ‘silliness’, is ignominiously thrust into exile by them, and temperance, which they nickname ‘unmanliness’, is trampled in the mire and cast forth. 

They persuade men that moderation and frugal spending are vulgarity and meanness, and so, by the help of a rabble of evil appetites, they drive them out.

And when they have emptied and swept clean the soul of him who is now in their power and who is being initiated by them in great mysteries, the next thing is to bring back to their house insolence and anarchy and waste and impudence in bright array, having garlands on their heads, and a great company with them, hymning their praises and calling them by sweet names. 

Arrogance they term ‘good-breeding’, and anarchy ‘freedom’, and waste ‘magnificence’, and impudence ‘courage’. 

And so the young man passes out of his original nature, which was trained in the school of necessity, into the freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary pleasures. (560d-e) 

And if wiser thoughts come calling, and if they struggle for predominance in his soul, he becomes confused; “he shakes his head and says that they are all alike, and that one is as good as another.”

He has lost the ability to judge and to discriminate, which degrades his entire life:

 His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms ‘joy’ and ‘bliss’ and ‘freedom’; and so he goes on… [H]e is all ‘freedom’ and ‘equality.’ 

Hence the democratic man.

His precious freedom, given unrestrained license and lack of discipline, devolves into mindless and confused pleasure-seeking.

He believes he has freedom, and he believes in equality—but this is a sham; it is a false equality and the freedom of a shallow and vapid libertine.

Plato sums up the situation on democracy with one of the most striking sentences in the Republic:

These and other kindred characteristics are proper to democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. (558c) 

“Charming” and “disordered” democracy, so “fair and spangled,” is all show and no substance.

It encourages undisciplined, unvirtuous lives of hedonistic pleasure.

And most importantly, it “dispenses a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.”

Such a democracy, he says, can only lead in turn to the lowest form of government, tyranny.

I haven’t the space to elaborate, but in short, Aristotle basically agreed with this analysis.

He identified three primary forms of government, each of which had good and bad versions.

In descending order, the three good systems are monarchy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by a small and wise few), and a ‘constitution’ (conditional rule by many).

The distorted or bad forms of each of these are tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.[7]

In this sense, for Aristotle, democracy is literally ‘the worst of the worst.’ It is rule by the poor and needy masses, not the best or noblest few.

Industrial Democracy

What, then, of democracy in the world today?

We have variations on the democratic theme that are so remote from the Athenian original that they hardly deserve the same name.

They have lost all the virtues of the original but retained all the vices.

Democracy today has devolved into a crude perversion that I like to call industrial democracy.

Its primary characteristics are these:

1) Representative (parliamentarian) system—no direct participation. 2) Universal suffrage—all adults can vote. 3) Multiracial—all races can vote. 4) Unlimited population size. 5) Financially corrupt—moneyed interests hold great sway.

On every point, this is opposed to the Athenian model.

We vote, but typically only for a handful of pre-determined candidates or on a very limited number of referenda.

Our representation is scaled down by a factor of thousands or millions; a state as large as California, with almost 40 million people, gets all of two senators.[8] And every half-witted, uneducated ignoramus gets his or her vote—people who vastly outnumber the educated and the wise. (And we wonder why the intellectual level of political campaigns is so low.)

People of every balkanized race can vote, and they often do so in their own racial interest, thus guaranteeing a divided and conflicted government.

Perhaps most critically, the original small size of the Athenian citizen body, some 30,000 individuals, now numbers almost 250 million—the number of eligible American adults.

The vast size and scale of representation ensures that billions of corrupting dollars flow through the system, distorting even the most virtuous lawmaker, and guaranteeing a flood of media confusion, propaganda, and “fake news.”

Industrial democracy is rule by money: those with the most money, and the will to spend it, rule.

In America, we know who leads this race: the oligarch lobby, which contributes at least 50% of Democratic campaign funds and at least 25% of Republican funds.

Wealthy American oligarchs spend literally hundreds of millions on campaigns, ads, donations, and various other activities, all to influence the outcome in their favored direction.[9]

The situation is comparable in the UK, Canada, France, and Australia, all of which have relatively large and wealthy oligarch populations.[10]

The ancient Greeks—most of them, at least—would be appalled to see what their cherished democracy has come to.

As it is, we now have that which Plato predicted: democracy on the brink of degenerating into tyranny of various forms.

We have tyrannies of the rich, tyrannies of the oligarchy, and tyrannies of Big Tech, all vying for power, and all cooperating as needed to ensure that nothing like transparent and accountable government ever comes to pass.

The main objective of the rich is to stay rich.

As well as to maintain or grow the wealth gap between themselves and the masses; the larger the disparity, the more relative power they hold.

The main objective of the power-elite, is to weaken and damage the national psyche sufficiently.

As well as to diversify and deplete the nation genetically, so that they can maintain maximum control without completely destroying the wealth-producing capacity of the economy.

Under industrial democracy, the future is grim indeed.

America, sadly, has been completely subsumed by this pernicious and insidious form of government.

The country is ruled by the lowest, most depraved, most incompetent individuals imaginable.

At the same time, it is being flooded by the virtual scum of humanity—in July 2021 alone, over 212,000 arrests (“encounters”, in the government’s euphemistic propaganda) occurred at the southern border.[11]

How many more evaded “encounter” and entered the country illegally, we do not know.

And to these numbers we must add the “legal” immigration of large numbers of non-European, non-educated individuals who inevitably change the character of the nation seemingly for the worse.

The combined effect is dramatic.

A recent study stated that the US now has an astonishing 44 million people who were foreign-born, of which about 75% are legal and 25% are illegal.[12]

Nearly half of these millions were born in just five countries: Mexico, China, India, Philippines, and El Salvador.

Surely not more than a percent or two of these 44 million are from wealthy, educated nations. The grand edifice that is America is collapsing as we speak.

Therefore, it is time to accept reality and give up America for lost.

Put away your flags, your pins, and all your red-white-and-blue paraphernalia.

Toss out your MAGA hats; America will never be “great again.”

Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar or a fool.

The country is rotting from above and below.

Vermin are calling the shots from on high, and human detritus washes in over the borders.

This was precisely how Ancient Rome fell. Such is the terminal stage of many an empire.

Looking Ahead

If this report on the fatal condition of America is close to the mark, it also suggests corrective actions that must be taken to regain a sane and stable civic life.

Well, at least for the historical Americans who established and ran the country for most of its existence.

The necessary actions are hardly a secret.

The basic ideas are already floating around the Internet. Andrew Anglin, for one, was right on the mark in his recent essay on immigration. His conclusion:

The only way we are going to fix this [immigration] problem is through a two-fold solution: 1) Redrawing the borders of the country, and 2) Physically removing tens of millions of people. There is no situation where both of those things are not going to be necessary in the future. 

He is absolutely right.[13]

Those are two necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for the restoration of rational government among the population today.

More specifically, my above analysis suggests the following steps:

(a) Break up the existing United States into smaller, more cohesive, more homogenous, and more manageable units.

I do NOT suggest a return to the geographic borders of the individual states, but rather upon social clusters of similar interests, society, and unity. -MM

(b) In these new units, encourage all non-assimulated individuals to emigrate as soon as possible.

(c) Discard the pernicious concept of human equality and replace it by a celebration of the higher, the nobler, and the best.

(d) Replace industrial democracy with something like an aristocracy.

Closure

Let me close by offering a few words of elaboration on each.

More and more people these days seem to be recognizing the desirability and the inevitability of secession of portions of the US, and the establishment of new, independent nation-states.

In fact, as the nation continues to disintegrate, at some point people will have no choice; thus, it is better to plan now than to wait for some chaotic future breakdown.

Some of the current talk on secession has the right intent but is woefully weak and misguided.

One can find articles like “Is America still our country?” and “The separation,” but these are pathetically half-hearted.

Breaking up existing states but staying within America is a wholly insufficient form of secession.

The “6 Californias” idea is very weak; “Greater Idaho” is well-intentioned but falls way short of the mark.

None of these explicitly advocates breaking away from the US and forming new nations. Only full-blown secession can hope to get to the root of the problem. The reigning oligarchy knows this, which is why they do everything in their power to discredit the idea.

Point (b) is mandatory for restoring effective and rational governance.

Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Jews, Europeans all have countries of origin; they need to return there with all due haste.

Far-fetched, and irrational, but I allow him to rant on. -MM

After a short period of voluntary compliance, increasing pressure will need to be applied until they comply.

Yes, Europeans could theoretically return to Europe, except that Europeans created and built up the present civilization (such as it is) of the USA, and thus have earned a right to stay and to evict the interlopers.[14]

Native Americans were of course here before the White Europeans, and that precedence needs to be respected, such as via truly autonomous homelands.

And since Blacks were forcibly brought here from Africa [15], I would have no issue with assisting their return to Africa with subsidized travel arrangements, a small one-time cash payment, or with the use of political leverage in Africa to aid their repatriation.

We can ease the transition, but out they all must go.

The hardest to deal with will of course be the oligarchy of every race. With their political clout, wealth, and bull-headed tenacity, they will be very hard to root out.

The task is made all the more difficult because of the inability of our supposedly “conservative Right” to address this in a meaningful way.

Most all prominent rightwing individuals and organizations flee from the Question like the devil from holy water.

As I have noted elsewhere, Fox News and crew—Carlson, Hannity, et al—never explicitly mention the oligarchy, never out them, and never criticize them in any way; Hannity in fact bends over backward to curry favor.

Alex Jones never criticizes or outs any of the oligarchy. Same with Jared Taylor. American Renaissance won’t deal with them in a serious way. Breitbart at least discusses them, but always in a neutral or positive light.

The real critics are, sadly, few and far between; to reiterate what I wrote recently, we need to be extremely grateful for The Occidental Observer, Unz.com, National Vanguard, and people like Anglin, all of whom are willing to speak the hard truth on the history and control of these long-duration oligarchs that run the United States..

Point (c) obviously follows from the above discussion. We must drop all talk of human equality and replace it with a promotion and celebration of human uniqueness and human greatness. This needs to be made explicit in common discourse, media, and school curricula.

We need to celebrate and praise human genius while emphasizing the fact that most people are not geniuses and will never achieve greatness, but who can nonetheless have meaningful and valuable lives.

When it is understood that humans never were, and never will be, equal, then all become free to achieve their full potential and, for those who succeed in bettering themselves, to reap the rewards of exceptional development.

In a just society, exceptional individuals will earn additional rights, but they will also bear additional duties, compared to the lesser. “Equal” performance for the various subgroups of people—as distinguished by gender, age, socio-economic status, ethnicity, etc.—will never be expected or mandated. “Racial equality” will be a nonissue.

Industrial Democracy must die

On the final point, it is clear that the hopelessly corrupt industrial democracy must go.

We can also be confident that something like an aristocracy would be a vast (if imperfect) improvement, even as there is much leeway in the specific details.

If we allow that “rule by the wiser” is superior to “rule by the masses,” then we have many ways to realize such a system.

At the simplest level, we could retain elections for officeholders but permit only the wiser—smarter, more educated, more accomplished—individuals to vote.

It could be very basic: require that voters earn a college degree, for example; or score above average on an IQ test; or distinguish themselves in some other relevant way (an exceptional athlete, by contrast, earns no right to a voice on political issues).

The disenfranchised would not be made to feel inferior; rather, they would come to accept such a system as in the best interests of all.

The Chinese have adopted this system and the successes of China are amazing. You can read about how the Chinese has adopted this system HERE. 

-MM

At a more sophisticated level, we might move to adopt something like a Platonic education system, as laid out in the Republic.

There he sketches a 50-year training program involving age-appropriate schooling, skills training, physical fitness, and practical experience that both educates the masses and serves as a filtering process to determine who the truly wisest and most capable leaders are.

Again, The Chinese have adopted this system and the successes of China are amazing. You can read about how the Chinese has adopted this system HERE. 

-MM

A series of pass-fail criteria progressively reduce the pool of eligible candidates, leaving, at the end, a mere handful of individuals who have repeatedly proven themselves under pressure. In a future aristocracy, a small pool of “the best” could be added annually to a kind of ruling congress who would then be unconditionally empowered to make and enforce all laws and policies.

After a fixed term of governance, each individual would be compelled to retire in turn. Again, this is just one way of realizing such a system.

Variations might include finding ways to identify and empower the truly exceptional individuals—or perhaps a single individual—and give them correspondingly exceptional powers to rule.

In any case, the system would need to be recognized by the vast majority of people as an effective and desirable solution. In this sense, it would retain a small flavor of traditional democracy. “Consent of the governed” can work, as long as the population is not too large and as long as we do not have to contend with competing racial minorities or Jewish financial corruption. But such consent is a far cry from universal suffrage or rule by the masses, which can never work, and which always degenerates.

Such is my basic outline of a path forward. Obviously, much more needs to be said. But it is a start, one that addresses the root causes of our present crisis.[16]

Final Thoughts

I close with this thought: To the extent that America ever was great, this is because, at the start, it was roughly modeled on the Athenian original.

The early American government was gendered, racial, and ethnic European  males of a predominantly north European stock.

And it stayed that way for nearly 100 years.[17]

The celebrated American “diversity” at the beginning was a diversity among Whites: English, Scots, Irish, Dutch, Germans, and Scandinavians all would have been represented in those early years.

Yes, America had significant numbers of Blacks and Jews from the 1600s, but they had limited or no political influence.

Religion was of secondary importance.

Yes, it was nominally a “Christian nation” at the start, but few among the Founders were deeply religious—Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and John Jay being the exceptions—and most were skeptical believers or deists, if not functional atheists.

Hence, early America prospered and flourished in spite of, not because of, Christianity; in spite of, not because of, Blacks and Jews; and in spite of, not because of, the principle of equality.

Blacks, Asians, Jews, “equality,” and Christianity were millstones around the young nation’s neck. It is a testament to our initially gendered and racial governance that we accomplished so much in those early years, with such huge burdens to bear.

Two centuries later, those millstones proved to be our ruination.

America is dying a slow and painful death. Let us euthanize the long-suffering nation, redraw the boundaries, rethink the guiding principles, and begin again.

Final MM Comments

Obviously I edited out the distasteful elements and sanitized the article for general distribution. People in echo chambers forget how they often appear to others who lie outside that echo chamber.
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There is no need to bring race, or ethnic DNA points of origination in an article about changes in governance, but they are one and the same in this author’s mind. I cannot extract those thoughts without destroying the beneficial points being presented.

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Personally, I do not care who the oligarchy is, what race they are, where they originally came from, or what food they eat for breakfast. All I care about is removing them from any areas of control, in any way, from MY life. Thus the point in this article. I hope that you all enjoyed it.

Mr. Deng said it best. “I don’t care what color the cat is. All I care about is whether or not it can catch mice.”

Now about China

From an email…
Today, wokeism has killed education in the West, particularly America. There is zero chance for a reversal and even if by some miracle it was reversed, the ship has sailed. Too late to play catch up.

A phrased I particularly remember was "In America it would be a miracle if I could fill a hall with young PhD engineers but in China, it would be very easy to fill a stadium with the same".

At this transition period of global supremacy, I would still advice students from third world country to study a Bachelor degree in the West (UK, Europe, maybe Australia) but afterwards, to study post graduate in China. Some Post graduate degrees in China can be in English but it's still best to have rudimentary spoken Mandarin to get around while studying in China. Have seen Western students who actually are studying Post Graduate degree in Mandarin, which requires a proficiency in both written and spoken Mandarin. Hats off to them.

As I've mentioned to Guy From Africa, learn Mandarin. It will be the future language of business. It won't be the sole language of science and technology but will be on paper with English in the future.

Anglo-Saxons Americans, Brits, Australian find it astonishing that other people are bi lingual, where they can't begin to fathom the usefulness of another language besides English (a by product of the arrogance of British Empire). Europeans in general are bi lingual. South East Asians are bi, tri, tetra or even penta lingual (at the very least bi lingual but tri lingual is especially common. A friend of mine is penta lingual, yes, 5 languages.) To be able to communicate is key & speaking more than 1 language is advantageous.
Anyways, the below opinion piece in WSJ is interesting, to say the least. As a Chinese doctoral student raising a young son in the U.S., I am mystified by how American elementary schools coddle students. In China, schools are run like boot camps. What do the therapeutic comforts America showers on its youth portend for a growing competition with China? video 6MB
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I recently registered my son in the third grade at a New Jersey public school. Hattie had recently finished two years of elementary school in Chengdu, China, where he trotted off to school each day with a backpack stuffed with thick textbooks and materials for practices and quizzes. .
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Here he leaves for school with little in his backpack other than a required “healthy snack.” The first day he came home with a sheet of math homework: 35 addition problems. He finished in about a minute. On the second day, he was asked to write 328 in different configurations.
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He first wrote down 300+20+8, following the prompt, and then 164×2, 82×4 and 656÷2. My son is not a genius, but he started studying math at an early age. When he was 5, I taught him fractions.
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Two years later, I introduced him to algebra. It is a core belief in Chinese society that talent can be trained, so schools should be tough on children. Chinese students score at the top of international math and science tests. This is not a philosophy shared by American schools.
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On Friday night my son came home announcing in bewilderment that he didn’t have any homework. In China students tend to receive twice as much homework on the weekend, given the two days to complete it. Video 25MB
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How will America compete with a China determined to train the best mathematicians, scientists and engineers? Unfolding now are two Maoist cultural revolutions, one in the East and the other in the West. The former is a jingoistic nationalism enforced by party loyalties and ubiquitous secret police.
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The latter is an anti-Americanism enforced by progressive mobs seeking to defund the police. Both are about limiting expression, controlling thought and regulating behavior. Xi Jinping has been cracking down on everything from finance to entertainment to whip his country through a “national rejuvenation.”
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China’s nationalism is explicitly anchored in Maoism, with Mr. Xi representing the new cult of personality. Meanwhile, woke America—which, consciously or not, deploys Maoist tactics—is destroying the core traditions of Western civilization with identity politics.
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In both countries, control must extend to the very young to mold them in the image of the official ideology. In fall 2021 Chinese pupils returned to school with a new requirement to study “Xi Jinping Thought.” Schools must “plant the seeds of loving the party, the country, and socialism in young hearts,” a government announcement declares.
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Across the ocean, American pupils are taught that white America is inherently racist, regardless of individual intention or action. Chinese education pushes the young in directions that serve the party and the state. Youth are trained to be skilled laborers ready to endure hard work and brutal competition.
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Such political indoctrination is taught side by side with math and science. American education is supposed to be about opening minds but appears not to fill them with much.
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Worse, young Americans are not prepared for the demands of being an adult. This phenomenon started in higher education. For years attending American universities, I have been disturbed to watch colleges fabricate “anxiety” and “depression” in students who are not mentally ill. Administrators have used grossly exaggerated terms such as “trauma,” and melodramatic expressions such as “I cannot begin to imagine what you have suffered,” to turn into a catastrophe what is best described as disappointment.
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This creates a culture of victimization. The absurdity peaked after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Students from elite universities claimed existential despair, finding comfort in cocoa, coloring books and therapy dogs.
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Classes were canceled and exams postponed, all in the name of soothing 20-somethings who need to be learning how to adapt to reality as adults. Chinese citizens enjoy mocking the Western “snowflakes.”
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Less amusing is what this trend means for the U.S. as China no longer hides its enmity for America.
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Ms. Zhang is a doctoral student in political science.

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And don’t be so sure that all China makes is cheap plastic toys…

China tested a hypersonic vehicle in July that was able to fire off its own missile over the South China Sea while traveling at five times the speed of sound, in a physics-defying display of technology that no other country has demonstrated, according to a new report.
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The Financial Times on Sunday revealed fresh details of Beijing’s hypersonic weapons test earlier this year, which saw a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle circle the globe in low orbit before landing. United States intelligence officials were reportedly alarmed by the test as it demonstrated a brand-new weapons capability that government scientists were struggling to understand, with one source earlier telling the newspaper the achievement appeared “to defy the laws of physics”.
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According to the Sunday report, the specific technological advance that caught Pentagon scientists off guard was the ability of the glide vehicle – a maneuverable spacecraft – to fire off its own missile mid-flight. https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/china-fired-missile-from-hypersonic-weapon-over-south-china-sea/news-story/1f59425888dcba5e2835115e1a4483bb

And you must realize that China is a democracy

Yeah. It’s something that the frenzied media mouthpiece never talks about.

China follows “whole-process people’s democracy”, which is based on a deeper understanding of democracy. China’s socialist whole-process people’s democracy can be understood as “from the people, to the people, with the people, for the people”.

Whole-process people’s democracy covers the whole process of election, decision-making, management and supervision, in order to meet people’s needs and solve people’s real problems. Only such a democracy can be real democracy.

Different from Western-style democracy, China practices real democracy, because it believes the “people are the masters of the country”.

In the West, people with little or no political experience can become national leaders by winning an election.

In contrast, Chinese leaders at all levels must have the experience of working at the grassroots level to be eligible for selection through many elections before becoming high-level officials.

https://lnkd.in/g8aRrY9s

And a good comment…

“…However, yes, there’s definitely the problem of a mistake/miscalculation being made–that’s why the Russian’s have emphasized so much and often that any missile launch from a known dual-use launcher will be treated as if it’s a nuclear warhead, and have pleaded with the Outlaw US Empire/NATO not to emplace such launchers that close to Russia’s borders or in Europe/Asia at all.

Russia is far more rational in its analysis of a post-nuclear war future–Who wants to live in a future without Russia.

IMO, the world can be absolutely certain that if Russia or China–possibly even Iran–is attacked directly by the Outlaw US Empire/NATO or one of its surrogates, most of North America, all of Europe, and any place any Western Oligarch might attempt to hide will be utterly devastated, while those poor souls remaining will deal with the ensuing Nuclear Winter.”

Finally,

Whether or not the USA is sinking should not matter to you. What SHOULD matter is what you do with your life, right here, and right now. I say “Be the Rufus”. We do not know when the calling will come. However, when it calls, you must take action. It will not make you wealthy, rich, famous, or attractive. But, it will make a difference when you are judged upon death. Be the Rufus. Make a difference. Help others. It’s our highest calling.
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What? You might ask. And to that I will give examples of other people. People who are just like you who act as a Rufus in times of need. Dogs, as great as they are, sometimes need help. The smarter dogs know that trying to cross a street is dangerous. So what are they going to do? Well, good thing that there is a Rufus near by to help. Video  

Notes

[1] Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690), chapter 8, section 95.

[2] And in fact, Aristotle’s later discussion of the “great-souled man” (Nicomachean Ethics IV.3) demonstrates conclusively that he believed in vast difference among men.

[3] The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, volume one, Cambridge University Press (1985), pp. 111-112.

[4] Indeed, explicit human equality exists nowhere in the Bible. Paul claims in Galatians (3:28) that “there is neither Jew nor Greek” under Jesus and that “we are all one in Christ Jesus.” But this only says that all are welcome into his nascent universalist church; it does not support the idea that all are equal. And more importantly, there are very good reasons for believing that Paul held to the most obnoxious form of Jewish supremacism, and thus did not believe in human equality in the least; see my essays “Christianity: The great Jewish hoax” and “Nietzsche and the origins of Christianity.”

[5] Though, as I have recently argued in “The problem with leftism,” both the Left and the Right are “fakes,” which explains why they both adhere to similar nonsense, and why they both supplicate to the Jewish Lobby.

[6] Actually, in America we don’t have wars anymore; we have “authorized uses of military force” or AUMFs. This is Congress’ cowardly way to kill others on behalf of their lobbyists and patrons without having to vote for an actual war.

[7] Politics III.7.

[8] It does get 53 federal representatives, but even here, each represents the interests of an average of 750,000 very diverse individuals.

[9] See my elaborations in “The problem with leftism” and “Confronting the Judeocracy.”

[10] <removed>

[11] Of course, not all illegal immigrants are scum. But from everything we know, a very high proportion of them are from the lowest, least intelligent, and most criminal segments of humanity. And since virtually all of them are non-White, even the best will alter the nature of our traditionally White society.

[12] Though the actual number of illegals could be much higher than the presumed 11 million. One recent study argued that the true figure could be as high as 29 million.

[13] <removed>

[14] Yes, Black African slaves and Chinese coolies “built” portions of the early US. But they provided only the low-end brute labor, not the organizational or intellectual basis for the nation. To give them credit for building America would be akin to giving credit to the oxen and draft horses of the early pioneers.

[15] See Louis Farrakhan’s book The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews (3 volumes).

[16] Elsewhere I have argued that Hitler’s National Socialism can also be a model going forward. His nationalism created an ethnic-based sense of unity and purpose that far exceeded mindless patriotism, and his socialism served as an antidote to unrestrained finance capitalism. There are many good lessons to be learned there. Interested readers should start with my recent edition of Mein Kampf, and with my newly-reworked edition of Alfred Rosenberg’s classic, The Myth of the 20th Century.

[17] Black males were granted the right to vote in 1866, and women (of all races) in 1920.

(Republished from The Occidental Observer by permission of author or representative)

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What do I mean when I say “sending to the cornfield”

This little article is for those who are not clear on what this statement means or what it implies.

Fundamentally, this is an American Idiom. It comes from the spoiled kid in the famous “Twilight Zone” episode, “It’s A Good Life.”

In that episode, a six-year-old kid prone to temper tantrums and getting his own way rules with absolute power over his parents and the townfolk of “Peaksville.”. You see this boy has the power to change reality. He can change people into anything he wants, and being a young six year old, what he wants is quite capricious.

And everyone goes along with it.

If they do not, well, then, bad things happen to them.

Since this kid has the ability to bend reality, he can change them into hideous beasts, monsters, retarded brainless oafs or anything that a six year old that watches cartoons can dream of.

And in every case, when this affects others, the results are not pleasant.

Bad man!

There is a cornfield at the edge of his town, and when there is someone who he does not like, the teleports them into that cornfield where very bad things happen to them.

In most conversation, when you use this idiom, it is assumed that you mean that you will do something very bad to the person. Such as firing a person, hurting them in some way, or damaging them to the point of death. And this is how most people understand this idiom.

However, this is NOT how MM uses this idiom.

MM has a skill. It is a very strong and powerful skill. It is a skill that is so advanced that most humans are unaware that it exists. MM’s role in MAJestic was to anchor world-lines. MM can target a person, and alter their world-line, anchor it to that alteration, and force a person to live the life so created.

This skill has been used for benevolent purposes. However, there are those that which to hurt, disparage or just be a trolling pest to MM and the work herein.

In these instances, MM actually DOES send the person to “the cornfield”.

You’re a bad man; a very bad man.

It is a lot of work, and it is a hassle, but for those deserving of it (as determined by MM) time and effort will be allocated to send this targeted individual “to the cornfield” for the rest of their physical life. It IS a life sentence.

How this is accomplished…

Technique 1

MM takes your pre-birth world-line template. Then, amplifies the Y coordinate that refers to heights of the mountains. Inserts the target individual back on that template, and then locks it in place; or to use MM parlance… anchors it in place.

Y modification on the template gain.

The end result is that everything would appear to be the same for that person, but everything will be much harder to accomplish.

As an example; When once it was easy to drive to a gas station and fill your car up with gas, now your car would run out of gas in the middle of a busy intersection with everyone directing hate at you and honking their horns. When you walk the 15 Km to the gas station, you would find out that it was being robbed and the police tell you to walk another 30 Km to the next nearest station. There, while you are filling up the tank, the hose springs a leak and the police come and arrest you for vandalism…

…and so on and so forth.

Technique 2

Here, MM switches your template completely.

You get sent on a nice long slide to a very different world-line template, and there it is locked into place.

This template, is of course, not a pleasant one.

A very busy and difficult terrain to live upon.

And the person so locked in will find that everything is bad luck (compared to their previous world-line template), and all sorts of *new* and disturbing experiences will manifest in their life.

Not sent to the cornfield, but might well have been.

Technique 3

Here, the world-line template itself does not change. Just the skin-suit that occupies that reality.

So everything else would stay the same, but the skin-suit would change.

Maybe the person would end up with AIDS, or discover that they no longer had arms and legs, or perhaps they could not see. Maybe they would end up in the body of the different sex, or even different species. Maybe they might be of a different skin color, or have a different head of hair.

But more often than not, the easiest thing to do is change the size of various portions of the body. To make them colossal, or extra tiny, tiny, tiny.

What a discovery! Such a nice little tiny thing!

You know, anything is possible in the MWI.

It’s goes without saying that when I say that trolls to MM have small dicks, I am being literal and not figurative.

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Images from a nation in freefall

Doesn’t it seem that every single thing that the United States accuses China of, it manifests inside America? It’s almost like this big; enormous wish-machine was turned on it’s head and starts attacking it’s creator. Yeah. It’s like the science fiction movie where a mad scientist creates a robot, and then the robot turns on it’s creator.

Today I saw the horrific images of an African-American Rapper who drove an SUV at high speed through a children’s parade killing and maiming scores of children. He’s a “rapper” who spouts hate and disgust from his urban enclave. It’s all very disturbing. My God! He was out on bail for running over another woman with his SUV. Insanity. Pure insanity.

Why is this happening in America? What is going on?

The answer is simple

America has collapsed. It is dead, it’s just that the people don’t really realize it yet.

When there is no longer a “rule of law”, and “justice” becomes a tiered game of money laundering, society is over. It’s all a simple matter of the rats scurrying from ship mast, to ship mast, and trying to jump on some pieces of wood floating in the water. It’s just the middle of a long, drawn out scramble of survival.

The ship of America has sunk.

Over.

Dead.

Throw some dirt on top of the grave and move on.

Oh sure, the bow of the ship is riding high. Lights are still blazing in the portholes. The band is still playing on the deck, and the Captain is still at the helm. But the ship is no longer seaworthy.

Some realize this. That is why you see mass looting of stores all over the cites in America, those shootings in the suburbs and on the highways, and the crazy behavior of the American leadership. They are all Jack-shit crazy and the world is falling apart all around them.

Here in this article I am going to prove my point by presenting short videos of the freefall collapse of the United States.

Please keep in mind that what you see on the “news” and social media is only a small percentage of what is actually going on. It is actually far worse than what is being depicted.

The real bad things are not being reported on.

China

Keep in mind that while the shit-show known as the United States “democracy” collapses, China moves on. It is a merit driven society that teaches military discipline to everyone from first grade onward.

Here’s a first grade class reporting for military training. Video 5MB

And a nation that is merit driven, unified, and run by STEM (science, technology, engineering and manufacturing) educated people who volunteer for that role is naturally going to overwhelm the fucking clown-show that the “blue blood” oligarchy operates. Fucking FIRE (Fiance, Insurance, Real Estate) folk haven’t a clue how to run a nation.

Here’s a locally produced, 100% all Chinese design and manufactured, Chinese fighter aircraft. video. 5MB

The Chinese do not play. They are a serious, serious nation. And they take their roles seriously. Here is a video of a Corruption Police raid on a kidnapping operation. I like how they rescued the little girl at the end.

You do not mess with China.

But since the USA is in a state of collapse, those in the West cannot see the shit show that they are living inside of. They need to start comparing their world to the rest of the world outside.

Like with China… on REAL terms. video 7MB

Here’s a funny video of a hysterical American screaming that America is not China.

It’s funny because China is so very much better than America in every way imaginable, but the dumbed down poverty serfs have no clue about how impoverished they actually are.

So, anyways, this video has been circulating all over China, and getting a ton load of snickers and giggles.

The guy probably hasn’t a clue as to why all the Chinese are laughing at him. video. 4MB

Clueless. Stupid. manipulated. Ignorant serf that services the billionaire class. Yeah, your fucking silly world is collapsing all around you, and you want to blame China.

Blame China? How about blaming yourself.

China has endured horrors that you have no fucking about. Thousands of years of fighting, and then Japans takeover and horrors followed by massive poverty, and abuse.

China will not forget what they had to endue. Do not push them. video 6MB

China is not a pushover.

China will retaliate if you all threaten them, and the United States is in no state to attack anyone. Hell, it can’t even build a simple fence on it’s borders.

It’s a helpless big lazy blob. So put everything in context. Understand what is going on and what the stakes are. video. 4MB

Videos of the United States in collapse

They are everywhere. Here’s looting and damage in a McDonald’s in the suburbs. video. 2MB

American nighttime roadblock.

Full militarized armored cars, full automatic assault rifles, sidearms, flack vests, and other military paraphernalia show that this is a domestic military road block and not a police action.

Common in America today. video. 8.6MB

Shootings, riots, mobs, organized crime and daring store break-ins are now common throughout the Untied States today.

This is not a lonely, singular, isolated event.

It is common throughout most of the major cities inside of America today. video. 2MB

Shoplifter at Walmart.

And so the guy drives off and the security guard shoots at him. Just another normal day inside of America. But now people are starting to die…

Police said the suspect - dressed in all black with a black mask - attempted to steal unspecified merchandise and, when confronted by the store worker in the parking lot, pulled out a firearm.

The loss prevention officer, who has a concealed carry permit, then shot the armed suspect two or three times at close range, he told police.

The suspect fled the scene and was later detained at a home near 5th and Olympia in Kennewick without incident.

-Ferguson Walmart Shooting

People! This is not an image of a healthy society. video

And while hard crime rages… Guns are being purchased, and used.

People are dying, the government enacts draconian laws, rules and clamps down on the Police State, well-meaning folk try to change things for the better.

But they are not going after the serious issues. They are addressing the trivial. Video. 7MB

Meanwhile in China…

China has face recognition technology, and a completely wired nation that tracks your movements, and permits law abiding people free reign, while snagging the evil, the selfish, the dangerous and those CIA inspired (NED) “bad actors”.

Video. 7MB

While the American wealthy is trying to steal everything on paper, and the serf citizenry are trying to haul away everything not nailed down, China is building, growing, developing.

China is, and stands, in stark contrast to the cluster fuck that America is today. video 8MB

What is China like?

China is a merit driven nation and it strives to be the best home for it’s people.

It spent time working on the basics. It spent time developing things, and it took time to do so. And the Chinese philosophy is summed up in this little video here. video. 2MB

Back to the American meltdown

Crime is rampant all over the United States.

It’s a consequence of multiple failures on multiple levels and the situation is getting worse, much worse. the society has broken down. There is rampant lawlessness throughout the urban areas. video 5MB

And another robbery inside of America. These are so common these days. Honest citizens hide inside their homes and peer through drawn curtains. they hope that everything will go away and change.

video. 4MB

No consequences.

People just watch stunned.

It’s a complete breakdown of society and it’s every man for himself, with zero protections under the law, and zero policing. video. 7MB

This is what it looks like when society collapses. It’s every man for himself.

Mobs rule. Gangs rule. Society fractures, and the wealthy scurry to their enclaves for safety.

What America resembles today is what happened during the Fall of Saigon. video. 43MB

People are out and just being really brazen in their crimes.

They don’t care.

Nothing matters these days inside of America. Here is a guy that hijacked a complete tractor trailer rig and it’s cargo and is in a high speed chase down the highway. Jeeze! video. 28MB

America as it really exists

Consider the reality. Why must the current mess that the United States is, be allowed or permitted to exist. It does not serve it’s people. It’s a war empire that causes destruction all over the world, it rapes and pillages, and is run but a small handful of evil greedy oligarchs. Why?

Why is it important that the world become like America? VIDEO

Video of City life inside of America.

Here’s some roadside rage. It’s about to get really ugly, really soon. video 6MB

Still not convinced, well lets go to a DIFFERENT city… VIDEO

Video

Still not convinced, it is EVERYWHERE in America. Ok, well lets go to a third DIFFERENT city… VIDEO

Video

Hey! Do you want to know why there are NO homeless in China?

Let this Chinese girl living in America explain it to you. For all of my Chinese friends, they are just flabbergasted at the lack of care and concern the US government has for it’s people.

video 96MB

The world will breathe a sigh of relief when the United States is finally broken up

Yes. The rest of the world will.

Look, if you are not aware of the collapse of America then you are delusional. The fact is pretty clear America is collapsing and it is up to the rest of the world to manage how their own individual nations handle that event. Most will be just fine.

It’s not that I want it to happen, in so much as I want the scales of justice to balance.

For far too long the crimes and the injustices have been propagated for far too long. It is a time of reckoning, and if you are smart you will align yourself with justice, truth and freedom . If you are a fool, then you will align yourself with the United States. It’s your choice.

I however, advise running away and hiding. Go to somewhere safer, and better. Like Uganda…video 7MB

Look at all the very beautiful women in the audience. Jeeze!

What am I doing wasting my time in China? video 1MB

Well, there’s only one of me, and so many interesting and beautiful and smiling people everywhere. So much food to eat. So many interesting people to meet and chat with. So many nice restaurants to eat in. So many great things to do.  Sigh.

I love it when a woman cooks food. It just really drives me absolutely crazy! And Chinese food is so very delicious!!!!

Oh, and you know, I do love to go out girl watching. There’s something great about women shopping in the malls, looking great in their outfits, nice makeup and just bouncing about. In America they all rush off to their cars, and then speed away. Not enough time for me to watch their poetry as they walk. video 5MB

5MB

Here’s a funny RAP… video 43MB

Out of the ruins of America…

Out of the ruins of America new societies will develop. The key is to create societies where everyone has the choice to participate, but only ONLY those that participate, and make the society a good place to live can have any say in government.

It’s a Rufus philosophy. And it is crucial to good governance.

Be the Rufus. Only allow other Rufus’s to control the government. They do it for others, not themselves. video. 16MB

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A glimpse at the post-American world

You know, all these actions by the United States against China, and Against Russia remind me of this following meme…

Here is a reprint of a translated Russian article regarding the collapse of the United States, and the dragging of it’s client “Western nations” into the black hole with it.

And the USA is actually collapsing.

Actually.

In fact, it has collapsed quite a bit, but it still has a long way to go yet. It will not be over until a new nation rises like a phoenix from the ashes of the former.

It’s a good read, though I had to conduct some serious editing to make it readable for English native readers.

I do hope that you enjoy it.

Despite the running assumption in Washington for some time that democratic backslides are linked to perceived adversaries such as Russia and China, the data actually seems to point back to the United States itself. 

Of all places, the news of this democratic decline was recently reported in the New York Times. According to data from V-Dem, the US and its allies (defined as countries with a formal or implied mutual defense commitment) have accounted for only 5% of worldwide increases in democracy in the 2010s while having 36% of the decreases.

In fact, it states, US-allied countries saw their democracies decline by nearly double the rate of non-allies.

This obviously raises the question: why?

Answering this is quite a tall order for even the most astute political scientists, but it’s obviously not as simple as blaming Trump. Let’s look at some of the possible reasons. 

First of all, contrary to a long-running assumption, American influence does not actually lead to countries wanting to be like America. A Pew Research Center study from November 1 found that only 17% of people in their survey countries viewed US democracy as worth emulating, against 23% who said it was never a good example. Why is this?

Well, US democracy sucks.

If democracy means that public opinion is supposed to decide policies, then the US is an abject failure.

Public opinion actually means next to nothing, considering the US is a functioning plutocracy – a government of, by, and for the wealthy.


- Mirna Miranda

Post-American world

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Rostislav Ishchenko develops his theme first posted here: Russian World as a global project into global multipolarity and covers why and how the West ran into a dead end, and where the multipolar situation may lead.

Please note it is a machine translation with some human assistance, and it is not a perfect document.  It however makes his points clear enough, for the discussion on this massive global change.

Today we are in a unique situation – for the first time in the history of mankind, a global empire is breaking up.

Humanity is constantly living in an era of decay. At the same time, humanity is constantly living in an era of centralization.

The dialectic of history works simply: the centers of disintegration and centralization are constantly changing places both horizontally (some states are weakening, others are strengthening) and vertically (against the background of a weakening center, power in the shires is always strengthening, and the weakness of the regions leads to the strengthening of the center).

The art of leading a state is to correctly determine its internal and external state.

Accordingly, you need to move the control center of gravity from the regional level to the central level and back.

In the field of foreign policy, in an era of weakness, try not to be too active in order to suffer as few losses as possible (and it is better not to lose anything at all), while at the time of strength, try to carefully acquire additional resources.

Depending on the era, this resource can be nominated in terms of land, people, industrial power, market access, ideological leadership, information superiority, and other resources.

As a rule, several interrelated factors from among the above play an important role.

The Empire of the Collective West

Today we are in a unique situation. This has never happened before in the history of mankind.

For the first time, a global empire is breaking up.

We used to call it the American world, because after the collapse of the USSR, the United States remained the only superpower for twenty or twenty – five years (who thinks so) and became a symbol of Western dominance.

But in reality, it was the empire of the collective West.

The United States did not share the profits made by robbing the rest of humanity with Canada and Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, Japan and the EU out of a love of art or an innate desire for charity. It’s just that without the support of these vassal regimes, Washington was unable to manage the globalized world.

And, as has been known since classical feudalism, the vassal owes the master exactly the same amount as the master owes the vassal.

If a prince or duke does not dress his retinue luxuriously, does not provide it with expensive horses and weapons, does not feed it to the brim and does not drink it to the point of drunkenness, then the retinue has every right to abandon such a leader and look for a new master (the right to leave).

In politics, these relations are expressed in a change of allies.

For example, when the USSR could no longer provide Eastern Europe with an influx of additional resources (at the expense of its own population) The ATS and COMECON instantly disappeared in time and space, and their yesterday’s members lined up in NATO and the EU.

Next in line were the Union republics, which fled the Union in full confidence that they were feeding Russia and would live better on their own.

At the same time, the republics did not really think about any independence either. They took the queue “to the West” for Eastern Europeans, fully confident that they only need to join the EU and NATO and everything will be like in the USSR, only even more satisfying and better.

Some managed to join, some did not, but everyone was disappointed.

And not at all because, as some think, the West did not want to feed freeloaders.

The EU and the US were well aware of their responsibilities to their vassal countries, and they also understood that spending on their “weapons, horses, clothing, food and drink” would pay off by strengthening Western dominance around the world.

The annexation of Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet states (except for Russia and the Asian republics) was supposed to significantly improve the geopolitical position of the West, strengthen its military capabilities and make its political and economic dictates insurmountable.

When the West overestimated its strength

At first, it worked that way.

The costs of maintaining Poland and demonstrating the success of the Baltic Tigers were more than repaid by predatory exploitation of Russia.

 (in the 1990s, the West established direct or indirect control over most of Russia’s resources through local oligarchs) and outright piracy in the rest of the world (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and after it Serbia).

Economically booming, China was unable to stand up to the collective West militarily. Russia seemed completely destroyed and only temporarily preserved the appearance of unity. At this point, the West overestimated its strength.

In any society, there are always different groups that see the purpose and meaning of existence and the direction of development of the corresponding society in different ways. And as long as there is an obvious external danger, these groups reject internal contradictions, rallying against the external enemy. If, for some reason, the authorities lose the ability to reconcile and balance internal contradictions, a catastrophe of the 1917 model occurs.

In the 1990s, the collective West believed in the “end of history”, that the world is forever Westernized, that the roles of governors and governed are assigned to different countries forever.

Being in a state of euphoria, the Western left liberals launched an ideological offensive not only on the external front, but also on the internal one, trying to make their “tolerant new world” mandatory for everyone, not only in the conquered countries, but also among those who, in their opinion, “won the Third world war (cold war).”

As long as the leftists did not dig in, the resistance to their expansion in Western society was provided by certain marginal groups of conservatives, who were branded fascists by the” new left”.

Broad strata of Western society were virtually untouched by the confrontation between these groups until the mid-noughties of the third millennium.

Moreover, the main ideological expansion of the West was aimed at the development of “conquered territories”.

It was there that the most “advanced” “public organizations” were created, spreading the propaganda of equality of norm and perversion to Western grants, even the advantages of perversion over the norm, because it “suffered for a long time”.

There, on the” new lands”, the” Soros funds ” and their many similarities worked. And left-liberal ideas, having fallen into the post-communist ideological void accustomed to the presence of a” leading and guiding ” people, were in the greatest demand. The additional appeal of these ideas was given by the fact that their local adherents, due to the support of Western funds, instantly became super-successful people against the background of the rapidly impoverished (in the 1990s) post-Soviet society.

It is difficult to say how all this would have ended if the West had had the wit and patience to wait, not to immediately cut the post-Soviet “chicken”, but to give the liberals the opportunity to demonstrate at least some success.

Then it was inexpensive.

But, having invested in a thin layer of people temporarily in power, the West decided that all the problems were solved.

The elites will cope with educating the masses.

And it was seriously mistaken.

Split in the Western family

I don’t know if Russia and China would have had a chance to stand up to the united West, which by the end of the 1990s was totally superior to them in all indicators, except for Chinese industrial growth (but it is not enough to grow quickly, you need to have time to grow), if the expansion of Western neolithic ideas would have remained exclusively external.

But the left-wing liberals, sensing that they had significantly strengthened their positions due to external expansion, launched an offensive against conservatives inside the West.

This was the beginning of the end, for” Every kingdom divided against itself will become desolate; and every city or house divided against itself will not stand ” (Matthew 12: 25).

The West faced several divisions at once. First, there were divisions between conservatives and liberals within each individual country. Second, there is a split between conservative Eastern Europe and liberal Western Europe within the EU. Third, a split has emerged between the European bureaucracy and national Governments.

Moreover, since the European bureaucracy came out from radical left-liberal positions, in the fight against it, even liberal national governments were forced to seek the support of conservatives, which weakened the position of liberals in each individual country.

An increasing amount of Western resources began to be directed not to maintain the hegemony of the West, but to the internal struggle of liberals for an ideological monopoly.

The West has lost the ability to control planetary processes, but, being in euphoria, on the wave of success, it did not immediately notice this.

When it noticed, it was too late.

The divided Western society could no longer unite and was increasingly slipping into a state of cold, and then almost hot, civil war.

The struggle between liberals and conservatives, like any struggle of roughly equal forces, began to devour almost all available resources, and the West began to feel resource hunger.

Since the opportunity to pay off the resource shortage at the expense of Russia and/or China was lost (the West thought it was temporary, but in fact it turned out to be forever), cannibalism had to be engaged: the stronger countries of the West began to redirect resources that had previously been used to support weaker and poorer countries in their favor.

Immediately, the internal split deepened.

In Europe, in addition to the division into West and East, there was a problem of “rich North” and “poor South”. These two parts of the EU had different views not only on the prospects of economic and financial policy of the European Union, but also set different foreign policy goals for themselves.

Divisions between the US and the EU, the US and Israel, the US and Turkey, Turkey and Israel, Israel and the EU, and the EU and Turkey have emerged and begun to deepen.

Washington’s position began to weaken even in the traditionally loyal monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula.

Political laws are inexorable

The West is still trying to present a united front.

In particular, the United States is forming an all-Western coalition against China and is trying to bind Russia’s forces in the European direction by forming a single pan-European anti-Russian front.

In the statements of government officials, on the paper of signed agreements and according to the estimates of expert offices funded from Western budgets, it seems to work, but not so much in terms of the self-perception of the population of Western countries, which the press is increasingly forced to reflect with minimal objectivity.

The collective West still retains a sense of civilizational unity, but in the face of growing resource scarcity, this cannot help it in any way.

Still, the strong, in order to survive, is forced to withdraw resources from the weak.

At the same time, even if the weak does not rebel, but allows themselves to be robbed to the end, the weakening of the West will progress at an increasing pace.

On the example of Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, and the former “Baltic tigers”, we see that sooner or later there comes a time when the robbed statehood loses the ability to support itself.

Starting from this period, it is necessary either to pump additional resources into it just for the sake of preserving it, or to accept that it will de facto disappear, first as an economic unit, and then as a political one, which will reduce the amount of available resources, respectively aggravating the problem.

Today, the West is already clearly divided into three clusters: the American one (the main one, torn apart in the United States by the struggle of right-wing conservative Trumpists and left-wing radical Bidenites); the European one (whose economic interests require cooperation with Russia, but the ruling elites of most countries are afraid that they will not be able to retain power if they leave the American umbrella); and the Asia-Pacific one (which has already fallen into the sphere of Chinese economic influence, but does not want to admit it for the same reason that modern Europe does not want to break with America).

Historical experience shows that political laws are inexorable.

If you try to slow down the development of natural processes, then the longer you delay, the more terrible the final catastrophe will be.

In the 1990s, the West could still win, in the noughties conclude a compromise peace, being in a favorable position, in the tenth it was still possible to talk about a compromise, but the main bonuses were already received by Russia and China.

At this stage, the West can only count on a complete and unconditional surrender. Further delay will lead to the fact that there will be no one to capitulate. People, houses and cities will remain, but the western system will disappear.

Yet the United States is trying to continue playing the game of victory, and its allies have no strength to step out of the American shadow.

Further decisions should be made in the next three to five years. Either the United States will risk starting a war against China (then it should be started as early as possible, since it may be too late), or they will have to admit defeat in the global confrontation.

For the collective West, this will be a greater shock than the one that shook the Soviet sphere of influence during the collapse of the USSR.

The wreckage of the collective West in the form of junior partners of the United States will start looking for new patrons even more frantically than the post-socialist countries did in the 1990s.

At this point, the question will arise: where is the new assemblage point, around whom will the new centralization take place?

The square trinomial and its political roots

So far, we believe that such an assemblage point can be the Russian-Chinese Eurasia based on the SCO, the EAEU, the CSTO and other structures created and being created by Russia and China.

However, China, which is trying to protect itself against a sudden (but more than likely) collapse of Western markets, has recently taken several cautious steps to establish its own control over the Trans-Eurasian trade routes under Russian control.

A possible clash of interests is in Africa and Latin America, where both powers are actively increasing their economic expansion.

Finally, while not yet obvious, but in the long run, the most dangerous contradiction is that the fragments of the collective West that fall into the Chinese sphere of influence (the Republic of Korea, Australia, and New Zealand), along with the Southeast Asian states already located there, have interests diametrically opposed to the interests of Europe that potentially falls into the Russian sphere of influence.

Plus, India and Japan are too big a prize for Beijing and Moscow to allow each other’s sole influence there.

These contradictions are objective, and whether they can be overcome depends on the collective will of Russia and China.

Today, we cannot say unequivocally that this will be achieved, if only because we do not know in what geopolitical conditions we will have to move on to building a “beautiful new world”.

One thing is clear: Washington’s belated recognition of multipolarity in the form of a statement that there are three centers of power in today’s world (Russia, the United States, and China), although formally true, cannot satisfy anyone, because the dynamics of global processes are negative for the United States, and they will still try to change it, which means that the three-member structure will not be stable due to American opportunism.

In general, [1] today the crisis is developing, [2] the catastrophe of the collective West seems inevitable, but [3] the subsequent catharsis does not promise peace.

Conclusions

What may come, may come. But don’t lose sleep over it. If you can still enjoy a fine pizza, then do so. If you can still go out and watch a funny movie then go do so. If you can go outside and play with your critters, please do so. And remember… Always be the Rufus. video. 130MB

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Sitrep China at the starting gate

Ah. I do love a good meal. I consider steak, done medium rare to be a fine delicious meal. Don’t you? Oh, and do not forget the dipping sauce or gravy. Don’t you know. It’s all around a taste treat.

A delicious steak. I like mine medium rare.

Especially with some alcohol. Most especially some fine tasty Shiraz. I like shiraz. It’s fruity, sweet, easy to drink and goes great with everything from peanuts to lasagna.

Wine. Nicely decanted. Served with fresh baked Italian or French bread.

You guys know that I have never ate so well as I am doing inside of China. This place is great. But judging from some of the comments when I post on LinkedIN, the rest of the world instead believe the hate-China fantasy.

Such as this guy…

China is short on energy, food supply and raw materials. It's fixed capital need overseas markets to break even. By geography, it is hemmed on all sides. It will suffer incredible loss of wealth and the regime will lose any credibility it may have left. 

-London Desa

He’s clueless.

Just absolutely clueless.

One of the things that is going on with myself (MM for you readers) is that my meals have taken a decidedly up-tick swing in food quality.

A few “affirmation campaigns” ago, I had an affirmation that went like this…

I eat healthy, delicious and tasty foods daily.

Well, without my knowledge, my wife has this great idea to take 10,000 RMB and get a VIP account in a local high-class vegetarian restaurant. Her idea was to feed our two year old with a selection of healthy food, prepared with cleanliness, and with an eye of being tasty. This all was the direct result of a rash that broke out on my daughter after we ate some Sichuan food a few weeks ago. (All is well, by the way.)

So now, I am eating healthy, delicious and tasty food daily.

What do you know…

Ah, it’s funny how those affirmation campaigns work. Now, I long to eat some meat. You know, I am a guy. A steak lover. A carnivore. But anyways, I am fine, the kid is finally eating, and I am actually feeling much healthier than before. You would be amazed how you feel once you change your diet.

Ma Po Dou Fu

Like the one follower (Alice) who wanted youthful skin like when she was young, and ended up having zits and acne breakout. Ask her about it some time.

LOL.

Anyways, life is what you make it. If you are thinking one thing… “China is bad, people are starving, child labor”… so on and so forth it will start to manifest in your life. Well, goodness! Don’t allow that.

Think good stuff.

Here’s a cute kitten. She’s napping. Shucch!

Life is hard, then you nap.

Think good stuff.

Here’s a classic car. I always wanted one of these beasts once I watched the 1980’s comedy Adventures in Babysitting. I remember watching it while I was in training at China Lake. Did you know that it snowed that year? Yes. One inch of dusty snow on the evaporate cooler in the middle of the High Desert. Who would figure?

Think good stuff.

1950 Cadillac Series 62.

Think good stuff.

Here’s a craftsman home. It’s one of my favorite designs. I really love the nice interiors. It’s sort of a post-modern art-deco version of a “Hobbit hole”.

Laurelhurst 1912 Craftsman living room

Christmas is coming. Well, after Thanksgiving, that is. Are you ready for it? I am. MM has his tree up and little mm has her presents all wrapped up and hidden awaiting the “big day”. Though Ms. Mm can’t help herself and unwraps one every few days or so. Sigh.

Think good thoughts.

Goldie Hawn & Kurt Russell
The Christmas Chronicles 2.

Think good thoughts.

Oh, maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I really think, and believe that what you think about affects the life that you live. And thus to that end, you all need to…

…think good thoughts.

Bread done right.

This post is all about China, and it is a situation report or “sitrep” for short. Since the entire Western “news” is simply the propaganda outlet for the Washington DC monied interests, we have to perform our own investigations and sleuthing.

Not that it matters though. Our non-compliance with the approved media narratives tend to get our works banned, shadow banned, or completely cut off. But not here in MM land.

The following comes from The Saker, and it was edited for the tender sensibilities of the MM readership. As well as my “superior” editing ability. LOL. All credit to the author, the source, and the venue. I hope you all like it and appreciate it.

 

Here Comes China: Xi Jinping’s speech, Major geo-political events, Joint naval patrol, Shangri-La was a novel

by Amarynth for the Saker Blog

There has been a slight pause in these sitreps. This writing became overshadowed with current events, fully covered in the Saker Blog by other writers.  Because of the length, we will upgrade this one today from sitrep to guest analysis.

A shortlisting of four major events since the Sitrep paused:

1

Meng Wanzhou’s triumphant return to China and a win against the Long Arm of the Law.  Meng is back at work this morning.  https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202110/1237211.shtml

2

The failed visit (yes another failed diplomatic visit) which resulted in this comical and humorous tweet from Escobar

@RealPepeEscobar

US-CHINA IN 30 SECONDS

Jake Sullivan – “We wanna talk about Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights.”
Yang Jiechi – “No.”
Jake Sullivan – “Climate change.”
Yang Jiechi – “No.” “Maybe. If you listen.”
Jake Sullivan – “So we’re coming after you big time.”
Yang Jiechi – “Bring it on.”

Uhm, how did that climate change maybe thing work out?

Well it turns out not so well. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are among several world leaders who will not be attending the big climate summit COP26 scheduled to begin this week in Britain. The two leaders will not even give it a pretense of legitimacy.

Now, that is how to give a perfect diplomatic snub!  Or is it only a diplomatic snub? 

I think both China and Russia are expressing that any attempt to do productive work with a naked insane emperor is now futile. 

We will probably see light speed changes from now on into multipolarity to hopefully gain a world that is now insisting on decent human values and most of all, peaceful resolution of differences.     

3

 

The other big event was the forming of Aukus, obviously in an attempt to create a mini-NATO against first China and Russia.

AUSTRALIAN SUBMARINES are indicative of the way our wonderful country is being governed. 

CANBERRA is dysfunctional with the state governments nationally and that is just a start.

Department of Defence (DoD) is clearly not thinking with logic but rather with the influence of the government of the day.

DoD appears to be doing national defence planning with votes in mind and not our national security.

From the very beginning, our submarines are a dud resource.

We were going to spend $220,000,000,000.00--- YES $220 BILLION on 12 submarines that were designed to be nuclear and we insisted they be designed backwards to be diesel.
That was bad enough.

Then we discover that of the 4 submarines we have now we only have CREW for 2 in 2021???

If we can only get crew for 2 now, why are we buying 12 and who will crew them in 20 years time when they are built?

NOW
We have nuclear subs from the US and UK at an undisclosed price, no plans and no idea when we will see them.

FRANCE needs CHINA a lot more than FRANCE needs AUSTRALIA so I am not surprised by France sidling up to China.

France and China have a number of daily trains from stations in France to Stations in China.

Last year there were 11,000 trains between the EU and China. That is one every 45 minutes.

That daily business is a lot more important to a nation in a pandemic than some subs half-built in Australia and half-built in France in 20 years time.

Back to the DoD in Australia.
They need an UPPERCUT for the pathetic way they are showing themselves to the world via CANBERRA.

They "appear" like they could not organise a sausage sizzle at Bunnings

What do you think of this mess?

How could it have been handled better?

Will submarines be relevant in 20 years time especially with NO CREWS?

-Peter Fennel

4

At the height of all of these were and are still the Taiwan issues and we will take a look at Xi Jinping’s speech a little later in this writing.

One soon finds that it becomes almost impossible to approach China from a generalist perspective. But, we have help.

On the economics side, we have Michael Hudson.

On the historical side, we have writers such as Godfree Roberts, Jeff J Browne and many others.

On the anti-China propaganda side, we have me and a number of reliable commentators on the Saker Blog and on the social, community.

On the humanity side, we have a host of excellent bloggers, documentary makers, and distributors of information as if one is walking in the streets and in the countryside with your own feet.

And of course, China is now taking its rightful place in the world as a leader and has improved markedly in information dissemination; they are taking their place on the world stage as wolf warriors, (Uhm, no, I did not mean to write that, of course, I meant to write ..) diplomats.

Sidebar:

China is a massive country and in landmass second only to Russia. But even in this simple measurement, the West tries its quibbling (and belittling) techniques. 

Read it and weep.

China is only second but Canada is bigger if we measure waterways. And really, China is really smaller than the US. Take a look at the quibble: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/largest-countries-in-the-world

A little story

This is from Jim Nelson that I found in my LinkedIN feed…

It was really a precious time in China in 1991. I taught English in Bengbu, Anhui for two years before deciding teaching English was not my career. Just the same, I treasure that time. 

The picture below is for the first party that the students had. They invited me and my teaching partner. They were freshman who had just finished newly instituted military training.  

Coming from America, I had some preconceived notions of what a college party could be like. The event I arrived at was beyond my imagination.

They had pushed desks to the side of the room to make space in the center. There were no decorations at all. They had no alcohol. If you look closely at the picture, we had one bottle of Huang Shan Cola each and a handful of pumpkin seeds. That is the whole story on the food and drink.

Who can remember Huang Shan Cola (translated that would be Yellow Mountain Cola.) It was a local Anhui Cola, and I do not know if it could ever be found outside of Anhui. Within 4 years, this cola could no longer be found as had been bought out by Coca Cola. It was a good soda. I would never have asked for Coca Cola.

The pumpkin seeds. Oh my, I was not even a sun flower seed eater in the US, so had no idea what to do with the pumpkin seeds. I saw the students open them and eat the seed inside. I awkwardly did the same. They were completely forgettable. I have never since tried to eat pumpkin seeds.
The planned activity was 3-step ballroom dancing with old style Western classical 3-step dancing music.  

The girls were glad to teach me how. Once I got the basic hang of it, one girl I danced with said I danced like a soldier, 1,2,3 1,2,3 by the numbers. She was completely right. It was a sweet and innocent event so different than the US that I can never forget it.

Man. China has really changed since that date.

100 Year Anniversary

In this year, the year of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, we experience an almost complete restatement and refinement of China’s goals in our world.

We see internal nomenclature such as…

  • “national rejuvenation”,
  • “a modern socialist country”, and
  • “continual reformation with comprehensive plans and strategy”,
  • and a “peaceful and united domestic environment”.

Toward the world, we see phrases such as…

  • “maintaining a revolutionary spirit”,
  • “the courage to carry out a great struggle with contemporary features”,
  • “courage, and skill”,
  • “safeguard sovereignty”, and
  • “protect security and development interests”.

We hear that China intends to assume a greater role in and for the world. 

Aggression and hegemony are not in the blood of the Chinese people and they will strive for a human community with a shared future. There are specific goals set out.

China will:

  • endeavor to improve the global governance system
  • engender peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom
  • work to strengthen solidarity of people of all other countries
  • engage in all efforts to oppose hegemony and power politics

What is the difference between Putin’s Optimistic Reasonable Conservatism and Xi’s Human Community with a Shared Future and moderately prosperous society

I cannot see too big of a difference. As the qualitative values expressed are similar although the civilizational socialization is different. 

As Putin expressed his non-acceptance of woke ‘values’ in his Valdai speech, so China in the last few months took real action

  • China threw the feminine men out of their television programs. 
The feminine men is an inheritance from Japan to a lesser degree and Korea, to a larger degree.  
  • China does not want girly men to become role models for their children.   
  • They pulled the rug out from underneath expensive additional schools, acting as funnels to expensive university programs, and tutoring that basically burdened the Chinese children. 
  • They have strengthened the Chinese schools to offer all additional education necessary, in order to have consistent educational standards. 
  • They simply stopped computer games for younger children and limited this to no more than 3 hours per week. 
  • They increased physical programs and education to get the kids out and about with healthy activities. 
  • And in stark contrast to the western sphere who wants to control the kids, China just put the responsibility by law, properly and correctly in the parents’ hands. 
“On Saturday, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee adopted a new law stating that China’s parents are responsible for family education.”

Taiwan

On Taiwan, we see Xi Jinping expressing the following:

“The Taiwan question arose from weakness and chaos and will be resolved with national reunification, the one-China principle, and 1992 resolution”.

Regarding military action; we see even Putin expressing that Xi Jinping does not need to take military action.  The verbose threats come from the US and Australia.

There are three aspects that Putin and Xi Jinping express as in one voice.

  • We are in a time of momentous changes in the world.
  • Both Russia and China are prepared and can ride the waves of change in a manner that is helpful, peaceful, and supportive in and for the world. 
  • The UN (and it has been said a number of times that it needs to be updated) is still the only venue where world problems can be discussed.  From Russia, our Law is the UN Charter and this is expressed by China as well.  The rules-based concept does not feature whatsoever.

These concepts are fully supported by Putin’s speech at Valdai, and Xi Jinping’s speech at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of China’s formal joining of the United Nations.

During the years since the cold war, another momentous alliance grew almost from a grassroots level.

This is the Russia / China treaty of Good Neighborliness.

Here, with subtitles is what the Chinese office of foreign affairs thinks of this treaty at its 20th anniversary.

China and Russia are not allies, but far, far closer than allies ever could be:

'China and Russia are not allies but closer than allies' 
– Spokesperson on Putin's remarks pic.twitter.com/uePzp2epIf


— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) October 22, 2021

50th Anniversary of China’s seat in the UN

In this atmosphere of global chaos, Xi Jinping delivered a speech this morning at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of restoration of People’s Republic of China’s lawful seat in the UN:

(Translation)

Speech by H.E. Xi Jinping

President of the People’s Republic of China

At the Conference Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Restoration Of the Lawful Seat of the People’s Republic of China

In the United Nations

25 October 2021

Your Excellency Secretary-General António Guterres,

Your Excellencies Diplomatic Envoys and Representatives of International Organizations,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Friends,

Comrades,

Fifty years ago today, the 26th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted, with an overwhelming majority, Resolution 2758, and the decision was made to restore all rights of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations and to recognize the representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations. It was a victory for the Chinese people and a victory for people of the world.

Today, on this special date, we are here to review the past history and look to the future, and that makes our gathering all the more significant.

The restoration of New China’s lawful seat in the United Nations was a momentous event for the world and the United Nations. It came as the result of joint efforts of all peace-loving countries that stood up for justice in the world. It marked the return of the Chinese people, or one-fourth of the world’s population, back to the UN stage. The importance was significant and far-reaching for both China and the wider world.

On this occasion, I wish to express, on behalf of the Chinese government and the Chinese people, heartfelt gratitude to all countries that co-sponsored and supported UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, and to pay high tribute to all countries and people that stand on the side of justice.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Friends,

Comrades,

The past five decades since New China restored its lawful seat in the United Nations have witnessed China’s peaceful development and its commitment and dedication to the welfare of all humanity.

For these 50 years, the Chinese people have demonstrated an untiring spirit and kept to the right direction of China’s development amidst changing circumstances, thus writing an epic chapter in the development of China and humanity. Building on achievements in national construction and development since the founding of New China, the Chinese people have started the new historical era of reform and opening-up, and successfully initiated and developed socialism with Chinese characteristics. We have continued to unleash and develop productivity and raise living standards, and achieved a historic breakthrough of leaping from a country with relatively low productivity to the second largest economy in the world. Through much hard work, the Chinese people have attained the goal of fully building a moderately prosperous society on the vast land of China, and won the battle against poverty, thus securing a historic success in eradicating absolute poverty. We have now embarked on a new journey toward fully building a modern socialist country and opened up bright prospects for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

For these 50 years, the Chinese people have stood in solidarity and cooperation with people around the world and upheld international equity and justice, contributing significantly to world peace and development. The Chinese people are peace-loving people and know well the value of peace and stability. We have unswervingly followed an independent foreign policy of peace, stood firm for fairness and justice, and resolutely opposed hegemony and power politics. The Chinese people are a strong supporter of other developing countries in their just struggle to safeguard sovereignty, security and development interests. The Chinese people are committed to achieving common development. From the Tazara Railway to the Belt and Road Initiative, we have done what we could to help other developing countries, and have offered the world new opportunities through our own development. During the trying times of the COVID-19 pandemic, China has been active in sharing COVID response experience with the world, and has sent large quantities of supplies, vaccines and medicines to other countries, and deeply engaged in science-based cooperation on COVID-19 origins tracing, all in a sincere and proactive effort to contribute to humanity’s final victory over the pandemic.

For these 50 years, the Chinese people have upheld the authority and sanctity of the United Nations and practiced multilateralism, and China’s cooperation with the United Nations has deepened steadily. China has faithfully fulfilled its responsibility and mission as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, stayed true to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and upheld the central role of the United Nations in international affairs. China has stood actively for political settlement of disputes through peaceful means. It has sent over 50,000 peacekeepers to UN peacekeeping operations, and is now the second largest financial contributor to both the United Nations and UN peacekeeping operations. China has been among the first of countries to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals. It has taken the lead in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, accounting for over 70 percent of global poverty reduction. China has acted by the spirit of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and earnestly applied the universality of human rights in the Chinese context. It has blazed a path of human rights development that is consistent with the trend of the times and carries distinct Chinese features, thus making major contribution to human rights progress in China and the international human rights cause.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Friends,

Comrades,

The trend of the world, vast and mighty, prospers those who follow it and perishes those who go against it. Over the last 50 years, for all the vicissitudes in the international landscape, the world has remained stable as a whole, thanks to the concerted efforts of people of all countries. The world economy has grown rapidly, and innovation in science and technology has kept breaking new ground. A large number of developing countries have grown stronger, over a billion people have walked out of poverty, and a population of several billion are moving toward modernization.

In the world today, changes unseen in a century are accelerating, and the force for peace, development and progress has continued to grow. It falls upon us to follow the prevailing trend of history, and choose cooperation over confrontation, openness over seclusion, and mutual benefit over zero-sum games. We shall be firm in opposing all forms of hegemony and power politics, as well as all forms of unilateralism and protectionism.

We should vigorously advocate peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, which are the common values of humanity, and work together to provide the right guiding philosophy for building a better world. Peace and development are our common cause, equity and justice our common aspiration, and democracy and freedom our common pursuit. The world we live in is diverse and colorful. Diversity makes human civilization what it is, and provides a constant source of vitality and driving force for world development. As a Chinese saying goes, “Without achieving the good of one hundred various schools, the uniqueness of one individual cannot be achieved.” No civilization in the world is superior to others; every civilization is special and unique to its own region. Civilizations can achieve harmony only through communication, and can make progress only through harmonization. Whether a country’s path of development works is judged, first and foremost, by whether it fits the country’s conditions; whether it follows the development trend of the times; whether it brings about economic growth, social advancement, better livelihoods and social stability; whether it has the people’s endorsement and support; and whether it contributes to the progressive cause of humanity.

We should jointly promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, and work together to build an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security and common prosperity. The human race is an integral community and Earth is our common homeland. No person or country can thrive in isolation. Humanity should overcome difficulties in solidarity and pursue common development in harmony. We should keep moving toward a community with a shared future for mankind, and jointly create a better future. To build a community with a shared future for mankind is not to replace one system or civilization with another. Instead, it is about countries with different social systems, ideologies, histories, cultures and levels of development coming together for shared interests, shared rights and shared responsibilities in global affairs, and creating the greatest synergy for building a better world.

We should stay committed to mutual benefit and win-win results, and work together to promote economic and social development for the greater benefit of our people. As ancient Chinese observed, “The essence of governance is livelihood; and the essence of livelihood is adequacy. Development and happy lives are the common aspirations of people in all countries. Development is meaningful only when it is for the people’s interest, and can sustain only when it is motivated by the people. Countries should put their people front and center, and strive to realize development with a higher level of quality, efficiency, equity, sustainability and security. It is important to resolve the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development, and make development more balanced, coordinated and inclusive. It is also important to strengthen the peoples capacity for development, foster a development environment where everyone takes part and has a share, and create a development paradigm where its outcome benefits every person in every country more directly and fairly. Not long ago, at the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly, I proposed a Global Development Initiative with the hope that countries will work together to overcome impacts of COVID-19 on global development, accelerate implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and build a global community of development with a shared future.

We should step up cooperation, and work together to address the various challenges and global issues facing humanity. The international community is confronted by regional disputes as well as global issues such as terrorism, climate change, cybersecurity and biosecurity. Only with more inclusive global governance, more effective multilateral mechanisms and more active regional cooperation, can these issues be addressed effectively. Climate change is Natures alarm bell to humanity. Countries need to take concrete actions to protect Mother Nature. We need to encourage green recovery, green production and green consumption, promote a civilized and healthy lifestyle, foster harmony between man and Nature, and let a sound ecology and environment be the inexhaustible source of sustainable development.

We should resolutely uphold the authority and standing of the United Nations, and work together to practice true multilateralism. Building a community with a shared future for mankind requires a strong United Nations and reform and development of the global governance system. Countries should uphold the international system with the United Nations at its core, the international order underpinned by international law and the basic norms of international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. International rules can only be made by the 193 UN Member States together, and not decided by individual countries or blocs of countries. International rules should be observed by the 193 UN Member States, and there is and should be no exception. Countries should respect the United Nations, take good care of the UN family, refrain from exploiting the Organization, still less abandoning it at one’s will, and make sure that the United Nations plays an even more positive role in advancing humanitys noble cause of peace and development. China will be happy to work with all countries under the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits to explore new ideas and new models of cooperation and keep enriching the practice of multilateralism under new circumstances.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Friends,

Comrades,

A review of the past can light the way forward. Standing at a new historical starting point, China will stay committed to the path of peaceful development and always be a builder of world peace. China will stay committed to the path of reform and opening-up and always be a contributor to global development. China will stay committed to the path of multilateralism and always be a defender of the international order.

As an ancient Chinese poem reads, Green hills immerse in the same cloud and rain. The same moon lights up towns however far away. Let us join hands, stand on the right side of history and the side of human progress, and work tirelessly for the lasting and peaceful development of the world and for building a community with a shared future for mankind!

Thank you.

http://www.news.cn/english/2021-10/25/c_1310267311.htm

China, Russia and Japan…

To my great surprise, Xi Jinping did not say one word about Taiwan, but sketched out the past as a harbinger of the future while cementing the legal status of China, which is not the legal status of Taiwan. 

I guess he feels that the contretemps with Taiwan is not important enough.

On the speeches, we may say that those are lofty ideals. But we also see practical and real interaction between China and Russia.

The two countries just completed a first joint naval patrol in waters of the West Pacific,  between October 17th to the 23rd, according to the Chinese Ministry of Defense. The patrol was held right after China and Russia wrapped up a joint naval exercise in the Sea of Japan from October 14th to 17th.

5 Chinese vessels and 5 Russian destroyers and frigates accompanied by six carrier-based helicopters made passage through the Tsugaru Strait (which caused Japan to run for the Prozac).

Yet this Strait is not territorial waters, and warships from any country have the right to transit, which means the transit of the Chinese and Russian vessels was in line with international law.

The Tsugaru Strait is narrow, only 12 miles wide at its narrowest point from the Sea of Japan to the Pacific Ocean.  This RT link has the photography and videos:  https://www.rt.com/news/538265-russia-china-pacific-patrol/

What is also very interesting is that it is said that the sea lane between these two islands is specifically maintained for quick access of US submarines to the Pacific Ocean. 

A Chinese expert opined as follows:

Encircling Japan, particularly sailing to the east side of Japan, is of significance because many key military installations are located on that side, including the US Navy base in Yokosuka, a Chinese military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times.

Many US military provocations on China in places like the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea were launched from these bases, the expert said, noting that the joint patrol by Chinese and Russian vessels could be seen as a warning to the US and Japan, which have been rallying up to confront China and Russia, serves the goals of US hegemony, and undermines regional peace and stability.

“The joint maritime patrol is aimed at further developing the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era, elevating the joint action capabilities of both nations and jointly maintaining international and regional strategic stability. It’s a part of the annual cooperation plan between the two nations …”

In bold are the most important words, and this is not a lofty ideal, but a very hard challenge to the western powers and of course Japan.

Also, if one looks at that area with a strategic eye, it breaks up the supposed ‘ring of fire’ to keep China contained.

American war-mongering neocon “wet dream” plan on “containing” China.

In addition, it is also a warning for Japan, which has been dragging its feet to come to an agreement with Russia on islands further North in the island chain.

So, we have to ask, was this a threat?

No, not at all on the surface of it, but it was a stark reminder that the so-called freedom of navigation game that has been constant in the South China Sea and the Straight of Taiwan can be played by more than one player. Not just the United States. It’s a new world and everyone must play by the same rules.

It is also notable that from 2019, air forces from China and Russia have conducted annual joint strategic air patrols over the East China Sea and Sea of Japan.

We are now seeing very visibly one of the aspects of the development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era.

Did you see that coming?

Did you see the evolution of the Russia / China treaty of Good Neighborliness to the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership?

Chinese GDP expansion

As is usual, we look at a few of the China data points and I want to remind that you the Chinese governance is always refining, always testing, and prototyping new methods and systems across the spectrum of modern life, and always this is done on a grassroots level.

"China is in trouble, clapped-out economically, and is going to bring the west down with it."

This is the message that we see with monotonous regularity. 

The reality is different.  

Chinese GDP expanded a whopping 9.8% in the first three quarters of 2021, and major indicators are within a reasonable range.

Evergrande

Evergrande – caused by poor management and that is all and the Chinese government will both let them burn, and also make them take responsibility to Chinese people first. 

There will be no monopolies or other behemoth-type business structures in China that can challenge the state. 

The Chinese people come first.  

(Evergrande has no option but to resume work and they did so today on 10 projects.  There is no quick bankruptcy for them, and certainly no bail-out).

China’s Strong Economy

Chinese banks have foreign-currency deposits of $1 trillion for the first time, an opportunity for Beijing to liberalize the country’s capital account.

A resilient economy and strengthening currency have attracted record foreign purchases of bonds and stocks while surging demand for goods meant exporters brought back more dollars.

The pace of the influx has tested the authorities’ tolerance for a strengthening yuan, with the currency now near a five-year high against a basket of its peers.

China’s exports grew 20%!

Exports grew 20% in September, up from 15.7% in August. September’s gain was higher than the median estimate of 13.3% in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Growth in imports slowed to 11% in September from 23.1% in the previous month.

Korean IC Chip Manufacturers building factories in China

China-Korea semiconductor industrial complex starts construction amid Beijing’s push for tech self-reliance. The municipal government of Wuxi and memory chip giant SK Hynix have teamed up to develop the China-Korea Integrated Circuit Industrial Park. 

The city is expected to become home to 19 new semiconductor-related projects with a combined investment of US$4.7 billion.

A Herbal solution for Coronavirus

A Chinese herbal formula for coronavirus patients is undergoing clinical trials in the US for possible approval for people with mild-to-moderate symptoms of the disease. Qingfei Paidu, most commonly called QFPD, is a 21-herb formula whose name literally means lung cleansing and detoxification.

Zero-tolerance to COVID remains in place

China, which pioneered controlling Covid-19 with lockdown orders and tight border rules, will  “wait and see” about adjusting its zero-tolerance policy.

“We are discussing about the new strategy in China … everything is dynamic. We are ready for any possible reassessment”.  

(Please do not consider this comment and the previous as an open sesame to start discussing Covid on the Saker Blog.  You all know the blog policy).

Chinese getting taller

Between 1985 – 2019, the average height of a 19-year-old Chinese increased 3.5 inches, or 9 cm, supporting President Xi Jinping’s declaration in July that the country had achieved its goal of establishing a “moderately prosperous society” in time for the Party’s centenary.  This is a result of a relentless project to bring the Chinese people out of abject poverty.

Vehicular KTV

An important question in auto showrooms: Can I sing karaoke in this car? The only acceptable answer is yes, as Nio and XPeng know well. Western rivals are scrambling, “We’ve identified this as a challenge,” said BMW’s Christoph Grote, “Chinese consumers are the most demanding when it comes to digital technology in the car.”

Social Credit System

The dreaded Social Credit System which is abhorred in the West by most that do not have an idea what it is about.

China’s social credit system is more of a bureaucratic interface for existing legal and regulatory systems.

It is not the widespread Western perception of a dystopian algorithm that uses “big-data collection and analysis to monitor, shape, and rate individual’s behavior”.

Social credit includes new enforcement mechanisms.

However, it is but an extension of the law rather than an independent rule-making authority, and all data collection and penalties require a legal basis.

USA Universities moving to China

This was mentioned before but as a reminder.

When the Chinese students started being hunted and haunted specifically in the US, all the major universities opened campuses in China (they could not afford to lose the Chinese money).

For Harvard, it did not take too long to become part of the propaganda war on China and they are moving their Chinese language program from Beijing to National Taiwan University, replacing a partnership with Beijing Language and Culture University.

Harvard’s Jennifer Liu said the decision was made because of a perceived lack of friendliness from the host institution, Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU).

Just a taste

This gives a taste of what is happening in China and now we need to give the regular shout-out to Godfree Roberts’ Here Comes China newsletter that supplies these data points. Subscribe here – it is worth it!: https://www.herecomeschina.com/#subscribe

In the next few China Sitreps, I will post a selection of documentaries and information on those aspects of China’s history that remain western talking points, whether correct or not.

This is Tibet, Tiananmen, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the border skirmishes with India as a shortlist. Today we start with Tibet.

Tibet

Tibet – if you have the romantic western mindset about Tibet, let’s revise that. Your knowledge most certainly comes from a book, movies, and a whole Shangri-La industry spawned in the wake.

.

Tibet was a dramatically brutal theocratic serfdom and never-ending debt peonage. Under the Dalai Lama in Tibet before China’s takeover:

  • 98% of the population were serfs or slaves or kept in debt peonage.
  • Disobedient serfs endured torture
  • The 14th Dalai Lama’s family owned 6,000 serfs
  • 95% of the population were illiterate
  • In 2015: 0.52% were illiterate
  • And in 2020: extreme poverty was eliminated in Tibet

From this documentary, you will learn that Tibetan Buddhism was not the sweet, and romantic Buddhist religion based on peace and high ideals and spinning colorful prayer wheels and praying in monasteries.

It was based on the Indian Caste System where an extreme minority controlled the vast majority and kept them in abject poverty.

You will also learn why, on the death of a Dalai Lama (meaning God on earth), the successor, the soul boy was always found and appointed from a very poor family, in order to avoid any power struggles between the very few rich families. 

The connection with the Roman Catholic Pope will astound you.

And then you will see brutal sights of religious and shamanic powers whipped into inhumane forces.

You will learn that Dalai Lamas regularly fled Tibet, sometimes to flee British Forces.

Tibet was the first lever that was used by at that time British forces, and this lever was seamlessly taken over by the rest of the west, to break up China, even after some territory had to be given to Japan and some even to Korea.

You will learn how the Brits just simply carved out pieces of Chinese land from the Indian side.

This effort to break up China is still in full swing today, by the current hegemon in its frenzied dying attempts to own the whole world using weapons, war, lawfare, internal destabilization, the appointment of external presidents, propaganda, kidnapping of high officials, outright assassinations, drugs, biological substances, and poison.

Of course from the 1950s, CIA involvement around Tibet is well documented even to training ethnic Tibetans in Colorado for a planned Tibetan revolution.

You will also see one of the reasons why China will not let itself be hegemonized today, specifically with its history of never fighting a war of conquest in its 4,000 years of existence.

The population stands firm and resolute.

Never aired footage in the west will have you take part in the joy when religions serfdom and debt peonage was abolished in 1959 and the Tibetan Religious Serfs could burn their debt peonage documents.

If your stance in life is ‘Free Tibet’, which mine was, once upon a time before I did my homework, consider if you were romanticized by the CIA and a novel called Lost Horizon (1933) by English writer James Hilton.

Two movies followed (Frank Capra directing one), a Broadway play, and the world’s first mass-produced paperback, all called Lost Horizon, set in a fictional utopian lamasery called Shangri-La, high in the mountains of Tibet.

‘Free Tibet’ for you may just as wll be based on the fiction of Shangri-La.

Conclusion

Think good thoughts. Here’s a video 31MB

Be the Rufus

Be the Rufus. Get the most out of your life. video.

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Why are Chinese skies so pristine blue all the time? What happened to all the air pollution?

When I first came to China back in the 1980’s, China was a poor land. The roads were dirt, and the cities looked very disorganized, dirty, and poor. it was very primitive. Public restrooms were horrible, the people were rural, even in the cities, and the police looked like some cross between Mad Max and a Mongolian mountain guide. And as I traveled back and forth from the USA to China and back, I saw first hand how it developed, changed and improved. It has been amazing.

Today China is simply amazing. It really is. This is true on oh, so many levels. And today we are going to talk about one of those things that no one ever addresses in a visceral way; the deep blue skies of China.

What? You might ask.

According to all the “experts”, China is a polluted wasteland of child workers, trash, poor unsanitary facilities, and gloom. Well it is not. It’s a merit-driven nation of hard workers, a harmonious culture, and society, and an enormous land with a deep and impressive culture and history.

But that doesn’t stop the Western media from continuing to bash it so relentlessly.

Do a Google search on China pollution, and you get millions of articles (all out of America and the UK) about how terrible and polluted China is. So, judging from the great magnitude of articles, it must be true. Right?

Image search “skies of China”.

CNN takes a picture of a dust storm in Beijing and claims that it’s pollution. FOX takes a picture of China in the early 1990’s and provides the impression that it is contemporaneous. Yahoo “news” bans any comments out of China to their China-hate articles. The BBC takes clips from an expat blog, uses photoshop to colorize it into greys and dark hues to give the illusion of a dirty, oily, filthy place.

And the articles. Jeeze!

And then they make all these graphs, and maps to show pollution quality. Giving the reader the perspective that the air must just be fucking awful.

China air pollution from the American company “Listverse”.

Western “news” is simply manipulated propaganda for the domestic audience. Those of us who know better shouldn’t read it. It provides zero benefit to us.

Today, we are going to compare apples with other apples. We are going to compare orange with other oranges. And we are going to compare pizza with other pizza. These days of deception, half truths and manipulation are OVER.

Well, here we are going to chat about something that had to be pointed out to me. I have grown so accustomed to the blue skies here, that I take them for granted, when I shouldn’t.  And with that as an introductory lead in, I will [1] address the fact that Chinese skies tend to be pristine, and then [2] how this all came about.

China has tamed air pollution in all of it’s forms, and China today has absolutely stunning skies.

Background

It all began when I posted this article HERE about a factory business trip that I took.I went to an industrial area, and visited some hard manufacturing factories.

People couldn’t get over how pristine blue the sky was, as that was not at all the impression that they had of China. They asked “where’s all the pollution”, “where’s the smog”, the “plumes of industrial clouds, and the forever white eye-burning skies? They asked where are the vapor plumes of the airline flights that create a network of white lines in the skies?

And that got me thinking.

As many times that I have mentioned over and over, and over that China has “cracked down” severely on pollution and enforces it with a very special of police known as the “corruption police”, people don’t get it. They don’t understand.

There are results as a consequence of these actions.

China does things, and then there are measurable and visceral results.

So when I take a drive up to visit a factory, I am used to the pristine blue skies, the brilliant and fresh green trees, the clear colors and razor sharp images. But others, who do not live inside of China aren’t.

What started this discussion

Here’s the videos and images that started this entire discussion…

In the following videos, please check out these embedded videos or their associated links to get the “full” experience. It’s almost as good as sitting in the car with MM getting there. video 46MB

All of rural China looks like this. It’s an entire nation of skyscrapers. This, believe it or not, is just a tiny, tiny village. video. 69 MB.

And this is what it is like. The factory sits on the edge of the tiny village, and so we just pulled in and went up to the front gate. Video. 32MB

But you know, it’s not just a trip to a factory. It’s not confined to the rural sections of China. It’s everywhere.

And I do live in Zhuhai

I know it is nice here. But I am not talking about only my city. I am talking about all of China. Video of Zhuhai. 1MB

But Zhuhai isn’t unusual. We are right outside of Hong Kong. Shenzhen is right across the bay. Combined, over 20 million people live within ten miles of my house. Which is a lot. New York City is only 6 million people! Yet, look at the skies here….

Near my house. Video 2MB

Downtown Gongbei Zhuhai at sunset. Video 2MB

Video Again. 2MB

But then again, let’s be real.

There’s rain, cloudy days, snow, squalls, fog, dust storms and other weather events that will turn the sky different than the pristine blue skies that I seem to encounter most of the time. video 16.7MB

Shanghai, and Hong Kong see a lot of fog. Overcast skies and fog seem to be the norm there. Shenzhen gets a lot of the overcast from the geographical wedging from the fog of Hong Kong and the mountains inland.

Beijing deals with dust storms.

And so on and so forth.

Some examples

Examples of blue skies, free of smog, pollution or aircraft vapor trails are everywhere. Just go onto the Chinese social media and watch the videos. Blue skies are everywhere. Seriously.

  • It’s like those High Speed Trains. They are common and everyday events. No one notices them.
  • It’s like those police drones in the sky, they are everywhere and no one notices them.
  • It’s like those thermal scans at all the entrance ways. No one cares or gives them any notice any longer.
  • It’s like paying using WeChat. It’s common and no one thinks about it at all.

But you know, we do need to take notice, and pay attention. The rest of the world do not have these kind of skies. Their cities have a dome of haze. Their suburbs are criss-crossed by airplane vapor trails. Their industrial areas have eye stinging smog and glare.

And I, for one, am going to point it out and celebrate it.

Here’s someone else driving in Hunan, China. video. 2MB

Here’s my ride in the DD. video

Here’s a cute BABY girl in the front of her house. Video 6MB

Here’s a ride taken yesterday from my house. I just filmed the ride as we pulled out of the building complex. video. 53MB

Here’s a nice girl being filmed at dusk video. 3MB

This looks like the mountains near Longgong, North of Shenzhen, China. video 4MB

Here’s a nice video showing the first graders getting their red scarves as part of the Pioneers. Everyone in China gets mandatory military trainings, and it all starts in first grade. video. 5MB

Here’s the Hong Kong, Macao and Zhuhai bridge. Video. 4MB

This girl is posing all over the city. I love these compilations with a pretty girl showing what China is like. Video. 10MB

Here’s another nice girl. Notice the sky and clarity of the air all around her. video. 4MB

Here’s a movie taken in front of my office. Video 14MB

Here’s another nice girl. video. 6MB

I took this video as I walked to my office in the morning. video 10MB

And another nice woman outside. video 3MB

Here’s the park outside the bridge near my house. video. 7MB

And, yet another girl. video. 4MB

The Chinese are so patriotic too. All of them trust their government, and the government really has earned their respect. Here’s a Pioneer. You can tell with the red scarve. video. 2MB

 

Let’s be real

Video 6MB

Yeah, it’s a non-stop hate fest against China, and while China changes, cleans up and moves forward the lies just keep a running. And the West, already ignorant, is really completely uneducated on the true and real state of things.

The crack down on pollution

China has made enormous strides in cracking down on pollution. Though you would NEVER read about that in the Western “news”. It’s all the continuing non-stop fantasy of China being the world’s polluter. If so, then why are Chinese skies so blue? Eh?

Here’s some articles about the Chinese efforts to stop, contain and eliminate pollution of all types.

Yeah, you probably saw these articles, but didn’t think too much about them. Maybe you should have read them, eh?

Yeah.

Pay some attention to the world around you and note who is doing all the complaining, and who is actually physically doing things; taking corrective measures, and actually making the world a better place. Eh?

When China says that it is going to do something, well you should take note. They actually do things. And when they say they are going to clean up China, and make it a healthy and clean place they do so.

China is very beautiful

YaoYao showing how beautiful Hunan, China is. Video 3MB

Video taken at a busy intersection waiting on our DD. Video. 12MB

Chinese first graders going through their military training exam. Everyone in China MUST take military training through their entire education system. It starts at first grade. Here’ is the first “final exam” where they are rate in their ability to compete an obstacle course. These kids are 6 years old. video. 9MB

Here’s a nice girl walking in one of the many, many parks here in China. She is wearing black. video. 3MB

 

Airplane vapor trails

Air Pollution Control Air pollution is arguably the most egregious environmental problem plaguing China. The central government has placed improving air quality as a priority on its agenda for the next several years, with China’s Premier Xi Peng pledging in March 2017 tobring back blue skies” and work faster to address air pollution. 

- China - Environmental Technology

But why no vapor trails in the sky above? Well it appears that the Chinese government has placed pollution controls on all the domestic airlines, and this has really caused a great deal of consternation on the international airlines that want to operate inside of China domestically.

It costs too much money, they say, and they can’t earn the kinds of profits that they need to please their shareholders. They argue that they MUST make a profit because they must answer to their owners who demand profits.

Meanwhile, China reports that the role of the government is to provide affordable, food, clothing, shelter transportation and a comfortable standard of living to it’s people. The government should not be a for-profit enterprise.

Because the foreign airlines cannot meet the tough environmental, and pricing requirements that China provides for it’s citizenry, the airlines had a fit. They then worked with the United States to “crowbar” and “strong arm” China to change it’s polices so that foreign companies can profit off the Chinese citizenry inside of China.

Blue skies everywhere

This girl is skateboarding near my house. The building in the background is the Zhuhai Opera House. Video. 10MB

You can actually see the Opera House from my living room. Here’s a video that I took not too long ago. Video. 26MB

Here’s one of our photoshoots. This one took place at around 5:00 in one of the parks down the street. Video. 21MB

 

Conclusions

96 percent of Chinese people owned their own residence. More than 50 percent of the Chinese people grow their own food and produce. They do not need to pay any property tax and any insurance. 

They do not need a car in their lives. They do not pay homeowners' association fees, the fire department fees, the police protections and so on and on. Of the fifty percent of the Chinese rural population, they do not use cash that much.

Three of my sisters in China have been laid off workers of state owned enterprises for the last thirty years. Their income is only a couple thousand yuan from the state pensions every. But they all have their own houses, and have savings over one million Chinese yuan.

They eat better than I do in the USA as a professor struggling to pay for my mortgage. I have to pay out of my pocket medical care, dental insurance, home insurance, property taxes, home owners association fees, all of which the Chinese do not have.

My sisters all grow their own vegetables in their own yard. I have to buy everything from the supermarkets.

There are too much loose holes in the calculation of GDP, which is simply meaningless.

When I was growing up during the Mao era, we grew everything we ate organically, and everything was fresh. We did not have much cash income, but we had everything we needed. By comparison, how many people in the world could have organically grown fresh produce everyday in the world free of all kinds pollutants.

The Chinese people's per capita income was very low during the Mao era, about a hundred dolar a year. But Chinese people life expectancy grew from 32 years in 1949 to 69 years in 1976, more than doubled in less than thirty years.

GDP as a measurement of well being is simply a trick created by the capitalist west to cover up their management failure, with a high GDP but many homeless and hungry people.

-Dongpin

After all this, it should be clear that China is really doing things and making things happen. There’s so much bullshit and lies about China, but I will tell you what, if you come to China, you WILL SEE the blues skies. You will see the HIGH TECHNOLOGY. You will see the flower and the trees, and the relaxed pace of life. And you will see that it’s because it is a nation government by merit and people who care.

China treats those who want to change things for “democracy”, and “rule by the wealthy”, and the greedy as evil and dangerous people. They are locked up and kept away from the levers of power.

China is doing things RIGHT.

A billion Chinese have applied for membership in the Communist Party of China since 2001. 907 million of them were rejected, mostly on moral grounds. It seems that most Chinese adults would take the Party oath, to endure the people’s ordeals first and enjoy their fruits last, subject themselves to constant scrutiny, and be held to higher ethical and legal standards than non-members. Adultery is cause for dismissal. Rape is cause for execution. Nonetheless, ninety-four million members are honoring their oath pretty well. 

-UNZ

China is a nation of Rufus’s…

We don’t want even one politically unqualified person sneaking into the Party, fishing for personal gain. 

-Xi Jinping.

And here’s a great image of a roadside rest area. Check it out.

A highway rest area. This one is in Inner Mongolia, Northern China. 41.5MB Video

Other possible reasons

There are a host of other possible contributors for the blue skies. May I suggest that other things can add to the overall effect experienced within China today…

  • A decline in domestic air flights because of the enormous network of high speed trains.
  • A decline in international air flights to and from China.
  • A severe curtailing of all factories that do not have, or plan to add, air scrubbing pollution control equipment.
  • A movement of the simple, labor intensive, and crude manufacturing out of China to South East Asia.
  • Intentional power rationing to selected geographical regions and specific targeted regions.

All in all, while China has indeed set forth impressive air pollution standards, and have implemented such, a number of other effects contributed synergistically to make the air of China noteworthy and pristine.

Oh, and a note to all the people who just stumble on MM and this article and want to shit on it…

Yes. And I do actually mean “to shit” on it.

Keep in mind that this information is going to go against your Western media brainwashing. It’s comfortable to believe the lies that face the TRUTH.

So don’t give me the normal bullshit, I delete those comments. If I wanted to read a regurgitation of FOX “news”, or the BBC, I’d read them directly myself. Though I do keep a few prize examples of stupidity for use in other articles.

Like these two comments (that I deleted from other articles that made China look better than the non-stop hate-China narrative spewing forth from the media megaphones)…

...the lies and propaganda concocted by CCP. For example, the title claims China has democracy at bottom, which is fabricated by CCP to fool people. In fact, CCP uses all of its power to crush any thing associated with democracy as it cruelly did in Hong Kong last year. CCP made it very clear that it will destroy any buds of democracy movement in China mercilessly as it did 32 year ago in Tiananmen massacre in which thousands of pro-democracy students and Beijing residents were killed by machine gun fires and crushed by army's main battle tanks. 

And…

This is essentially a person staying up all night, and fantasizing about how China might be if all the consultative channels that China has erected were ACTUALLY HOW CHINA WAS GOVERNED. But they are not. Modest consultative measures might indeed help an authoritarian regime operate better, and that it probably part of China's success. But that doesn't mean, as the author seems to think, that a group of ordinary citizens makes the final decision about China's laws. It's laughable. Don't waste you time on this, and ask yourself why it is being heavily promoted. 

I’m telling you what it is like.

You can absorb it in, or you can believe the nonsense being spewed at you by billions of dollars in manipulation and funding. Your choice.

But here, is the REAL deal. It’s what is going on right now. Soak it in.

And finally…

Be the Rufus

Are you making the place a little bit nicer when you leave it? Do you pick up after yourself? Do you make people smile when you are in public? Do free-ranging dogs and cats welcome you?

Are those around you comfortable that you are nearby in case anything goes wrong?

Do not be ashamed of who you are, or what you do. You are NOT your job. You are NOT what others say you are. You are unique and very, very special. Stand up for who you are and serve justice, and help those in your society. It’s your highest calling. video. 2MB

Please, be the Rufus. Not for personal profit. Not for fame, or glory. Just do it because you are a decent person and you want to make your tiny part of the world a better place to live in.

Video 2MB

And after the explosion, the Rufus runs back into the flames to rescue others trapped inside. Video. 2MB

The world is not a bad terrible place. Spread the love around. Be a Rufus. Just be nice, give things away for free just to make people feel happy, wanted and included. It won’t cost you that much, and you will really help make the world a much better place. Be the Rufus. Like this guy does… video 5MB

Or this. Use your talents and make the world a better place. Video. 6MB

Do you want more?

I have more posts like this in my China index here…

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You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
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A very abbreviated summary of the China-Taiwan relationship, and why the United States is risking global thermonuclear war over it

You know, the anti-China media hysteria has reached new lows and levels of insanity that is truly difficult to fathom.

I mean, who in their right mind would believe this nonsense? Wait for it?

…Dumbed down Western media consumers.

I do tire of all the “War with China over Taiwan is imminent” bullshit.

It’s not.

Unfortunately, the Republicans are equally locked into an adversarial mode when it comes to Russia and China. Ex-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, is now calling for economic war against Beijing. Some might conclude that everything in contemporary Washington comes down to a latter-day opera buffa in which an assortment of comic characters parade for a moment only to be replaced by the next bumbler sporting an equally ridiculous message.

Russia aside, witness the recent wave of China bashing, begun by Barack Obama with his pivot to Asia, continued under Donald Trump with his China virus rants, and endorsed by Joe Biden’s team which persists in labeling Beijing as enemy number one. 

No one steps back and considers even for a moment that the US is China’s largest market and that the US in turn relies on Chinese manufactured products to fill its Walmarts. 

(Not true. The USA represents only 2% of Chinese exports. It was 11% in 2019 when COVID hit. The largest export market for Chinese products is Japan. Please get your info correct. -MM)

If ever two nations had good reasons not to go to war, it would be China and the United States, yet the US desire to confront the “Red Menace” to include defending Taiwan continues to drive policy.

-UNZ

Here’s another post that you simply will not find anywhere else on the Internet. American “news” has become a sewer of noise, horrible lies and distortions. And, you know, it’s going to get people killed. I tire of it all. To understand what is really going on you need to study the issues, and then you look for what is not being reported and stay alert for distractions.

I’ll drink to that.

A time for wine.

Anyways, a long story (made) short; I received an email from my brother who was petrified that World War III was going to explode “any minute” and that I had to flee China immediately.

Well, I wrote about this in another post HERE, and I told him that I was going to stay in China. After all, it is the safest location on the planet.

Anyways, my brother is so very convinced that Taiwan is it’s own singular nation and that it is in need of defending by America for “democracy”. And that because of the “evil regime” in China, and the “gross overreach”, and “saber rattling” of the horrible communists, that a war is soon to explode.

China is a “democracy” for Pete’s sake! (Head slap!)

Pretty strange for a certified “tax protestor”, who had his passport seized by Uncle Sam to talk about “freedom” and “liberty” when he himself is restricted in travel due to not having a vaccination. But then again, that’s the USA for you.

All talk, no substance. Or, as we used to say in Texas; “All hat. No cattle”.

Well, this bullshit about Taiwan being an “independent” nation is simply not true, and I am going to explain why.

What is the relationship between Taiwan and China?

History need not be difficult to understand, but you do need to know the basics. Here’s my simplistic abridged version. And YES, I do know that I have omitted a lot of details…

History is actually interesting.

Between 1945 and 1949, China experienced a massive civil war. It was more massive than the American Civil War, and many, many people died.

Eventually, towards the Fall of 1949, the Communists under Mao Zedong won the war. They set up their capital in Beijing, and on 1 October 1949 declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

The losers; the “Chinese Nationalists” fled the Chinese mainland.

They looted all the museums, and using lorries, trucks, and other conveyances hauled their booty to the coasts where they loaded them on  boats. The major staging area was in the Xiamen coastal region. As the laden boats began to depart, the communists began shelling the vessels and  so the retreating rebels landed on the island of Taiwan and fortified themselves in.

They had no where else to go. They spent years fighting the Japanese, and they couldn’t go there. Korea was too risky, as the Chinese communists had well secured that area, and heading south towards the South China Sea was the only remaining option.

So they hunkered down, and fortified their positions and made Taiwan their base of resistance to the Chinese mainland. Since that time, these rebels have declared themselves to be the “true” heir to the Chinese nation, and they have enlisted help from the United States to conduct “color revolutions” and other black operations in an attempt to regain their power back.

This effort continues to this day.

Over the last 70 years

The rebels in Taiwan, with all the looted gold and valuables, left the mainland destitute, poor and agrarian.

In the tiny Taiwan island, they used their money to construct huge enormous palaces for themselves and their families, and then used the rest of the loot to set up business as factories that would cater to the West.

And they were successful.

Over the decades “Made in Taiwan” dominated much of the world’s manufacturing concerns.

While mainland China had to work hard, step by step to become the economic powerhouse that it is today. They went from sub-zero to the very top and the very best.

It only took them 70 years.

Today, we see an eclipsing of economic power between Taiwan and China, and the oligarchy that rules Taiwan is literally scared shitless.

For the wrath of China will not be kind to them.

So they have been funding, in terms of billions of dollars, the American Senate, and American neocons, to get American intervention regarding mainland China. And the greedy, psychopathic American leadership are just lapping it all up. Yum!

The Hate China narrative, paid for by Taiwanese billionaires.

Many things has occurred over the last 70 years, but one thing is certain, China will once again be unified as one nation. Both Taiwan, and mainland China expect it.

Is Taiwan and China separate nations?

No.

  • China says that they are the same nation.
  • Taiwan says that they are the same nation.
  • The United Nations (UN) says that they are the same nation.

All Taiwanese citizens have Chinese residency. This is something that the American media NEVER reports.

The only nation that doesn’t accept the one-China solution is the United States. Which is thanks to the many billions of dollars that the Taiwanese billionaires have been throwing at Washington DC over the last few decades.

Now the current ruling “political party” in Taiwan is pushing for a “two nation” solution, and want the United States to force this situation into being.

Which, you know,  seems to be a severe death wish, and delusions of dying in a full scale nuclear holocaust.

Haven’t they seen what America looks like today?

I guess not. It’s “exceptional” don’t you know!

Size Comparisons

I shouldn’t need to do this, but since most Americans are dumbed down to the knowledge of a retarded snail, I am afraid that I have to speak in pre-school terms to get the message across.

Since, China and the United States are roughly the same size. You can compare how big Taiwan is relatively. Taiwan is roughly the size of Rhode Island comparatively.

Size of Rhode Island shown on a map of the United States.

In case you don’t believe me, here’s a map of China. Taiwan is pretty small.

Map of China showing Taiwan.

Taiwan is a tiny, tiny island that sits right off the coast of China. It has been part of China for thousands of years, and still is recognized as part of China. And all the millions of dollars in saying otherwise will not change that fact.

Why is Taiwan important to the United States?

According to all the literature on the subject, all American battle plans against China originate from a fortified staging area inside of Taiwan.

American war-mongering neocon “wet dream” plan on “containing” China.

Thus it is critically important for the United States to place enormous quantities of war and military munitions and equipment on Taiwan in preparation for a landing inside of China.

Obviously this is myopic, short sighted and stupid.

China would have Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Houston in radioactive ruins long before the first landing wave touches the shoreline. And if you think that China will allow Taiwan to have active American military bases there, you are delusional.

Crazy.

Idiotic.

Insanely delusional. Foolhardy idiotic.

Mind-numbingly stupid.

A handful of technical advisors is one thing, but a full scale military presence is a war-move.

WAR

INSTIGATOR

But I have covered all the actual and real reasons why all the fuss is over Taiwan right now. It’s the billionaire oligarchy inside of Taiwan that want something done. And they are in a state of panic.

Names, dates, places, and facts. Here…

New Beginnings 2

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So what is going to happen?

Chinese Z-20 Helicopter.

Well, if you listen to the bullshit blaring American media microphone, war is imminent. But you know, that’s just a song for the Americans to dance to. Hype up war. Create a context and then strike preemptively on some kind of false-flag bullshit excuse.

It’s the American way, don’t you know.

Provoke China to fight. And then America “plays China like a fiddle”.

Will China attack Taiwan?

It can.

It certainly has the ability. But it won’t. China is far smarter than that. It will do so if the “red lines” are crossed. They are not crossed, so China will do nothing.

Countercurrents against peaceful reunification must be curbed. General Secretary Xi Jinping stated categorically that nothing can change the fact that people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are Chinese with the same national identity, and nothing can stop the trend toward reunification of the Chinese nation. 

Taiwan independence goes against this unstoppable trend and will eventually be crushed by the wheels of history. 

Chinese must not fight against Chinese, and for this purpose we have made the greatest efforts for peaceful reunification with the utmost sincerity. 

However, we do not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures to prepare for possible interference by external forces and separatist activities by a handful of "Taiwan independence" separatists. 

Such measures would certainly not be targeted at the people of Taiwan.

-QStheory

Though they really can.

China really does love their missiles…

Impressive video this. video.

Another video of some of the Chinese military systems. video.

Oh, and by the way, China is decades ahead of the USA in laser beam weapon systems

I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Well, you know, any real good things about China are suppressed. You probably think that all of China is polluted, filthy full of bat eating, floor spitting, tiny brown people riding bikes, huh? video.

There’s a lot of things in play right now. And I am going to do you all a favor and simplify things for you all.

An overview of China Military

Well, since no one is going to do this, I will. There’s a two minute overview of just how formidable the Chinese military is right now.  It’s a great little short video, and if you are still thinking that China can be attacked, or that China is just some bunch of untrained peasants with AK47 clones, you are sadly, and dangerously mistaken. The PLA will attack and be very, very nasty about it. You haven’t seen shit yet. DO NOT POKE THE PANDA. video.

And what China can do to Taiwan, right now!

Just a reminder on how close Taiwan is to the mainland. Just in case you didn’t get that fact while listening to CNN, FOX “news” or the Drudge Report. Check out what China can do to Taiwan right now. video. This can happen from inside of mainland China to the tiny, tiny island of Taiwan.

Watch the video.

Learn a thing or two.

Because China can do what is shown on this video without even putting a foot on the ground. China just pressed a button, and all of Taiwan is on fire. Watch and Learn. video.

What to expect… the nightmare scenario.

This is what would happen if the billionaires get their way…

Russia and China are tired of the buildup to war, and preemptively strike America with a bone-crushing nuclear salvo, while simultaneously destroying all naval carrier groups, boomer subs, and major Naval bases. Additionally, Australia suffers massive destruction, as does Japan and Korea.

Massive, in that the top ten cities of Japan, and Australia are all radioactive rubble.

American command centers are all black  blank screens all comms are down. Satellites malfunction, or fall out of orbit. Alt communication goes black.

The ass-kissing diversity officers, and the trans-gen military leadership start freaking out in the command bunkers and they desperately try to warn the American leadership to fly to safety, but before they can pick up a cellphone, they themselves are gone in a shooch! of bright light and dust.

The largest city surviving is Picayune Louisiana.

But, you know it's tough, as they are trying to cope with a massive flood of armed, ethnic-urban-youth, radioactive refugees streaming out from the blackened remains of smoldering New Orleans. Big thick oily black clouds fill the air with soot.

The United States government collapses. It's not hard. Long in coming. But with Washington DC a water filled crater, I mean, what are you gonna do? 

All American supply lines completely collapse. Hordes of hungry starving urban ethnic youth stream into the suburbs. They raid the "McMansions", the small towns, and the communities, and they take over all of the highways and transport routes. Oh, sure there's a few "freedom patriots" that shoot back.

Not many.

It's "every man for himself".

Many die, overwhelmed by the millions of angry, hungry, pissed off hordes. People who hate. Hate. Hate. HATE.

Balkanized battles are common. White people are hung screaming and crying from the top of McDonald's "golden arches" signs. Asians are tied to chairs inside of Starbucks and set on fire. Mexicans are  attacked, but they shoot back, and the "good ol' boys" try to hop into their trucks to join the fray, but they are immobilized as an EMP burst fried all automotive electronics.

The first major storm of Winter hits. 

All the homes freeze as there isn't any heat, and all the pipe crack and break as CPVC isn't as strong as cast iron. To make matters worse, they needed secondary booster shots of the mRNA Vaxx are not available. People start dying of the common cold. Many nine year olds die from heart attacks.

A sniffle becomes the mark of the plague. 

Starvation, sickness, gunshot wounds, and poor sanitary conditions prevail.

The most frustrated transgens start to freak out as their hormones start altering, and their sex-change medicine is no longer available to them. They become enraged angry maniacs and the cities become true horror scenes.

In the midst of all this turmoil, the second American civil war starts. Texas, and California break away to become their own nations. Others follow.

Virginia organizes.

Armed enclaves set up in Georgia.

Mississippi monitors all road traffic with lethal consequence. Many a dead person sways in the breeze.

Snipers slow all movement in the desert to a standstill.

And you have all those guns in the hands of all those civilians shooting everyone.  Organized State armies, using all those fancy tanks and high tech weapons developed by the military-industrial union turn on the people and serve their own needs. National guard patrol the major cities, but are overwhelmed by organized armed rebellion.

Killings, rapes, torture, and looting are commonplace.

The interim federal government in exile flies to New Zealand and tries to coordinate control over the collapsed United States out of a survivalist bunker, but is unsuccessful. They try to coordinate but are unsuccessful. They too start to worry as their own supplies of drugs and sustaining medication are quickly being depleted.

Eventually, they surrender, and the United States is carved up into tiny, tiny fiefdoms.

The rest of the world moves on. 

America? What's an america?

North America is listed as a quarantine zone, and is isolated from the rest of the world. Millions die. The survivors become hardier, but no longer speak English. The Southern "new" nations speak Spanish, and the rest have their own various regional accents. With ghetto ubonics betting the most common.

Most white, Asian, and Spanish Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line are killed in mass.

Fifty years later, some of those fiefdoms are recognized as independent countries and are permitted to attend the UN meetings in "observer" status.

Pretty nasty, huh?

You bet.

I hope that I frightened you. It’s not a pretty sight. I think we have to be reminded that the things that we do have consequences, and we must always hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

What’s more than likely is this…

In Taiwan, a number of the hard-core separatist nationalists start dying off of old age, coronavirus, and car accidents. 

Rapprochements by the traditionalist factions inside of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland government come to a workable solution for reunification.

The United States military is kicked out of Taiwan, as all the USA weapons systems that they have (billions  and billions of dollars worth) are boxed up and shipped off to Iran as a "good will" gesture.

The Iranians welcome the many shipments of high end fighter jets, missiles, and equipment.

The United States has a fit. News media screams! And the rest of the world continue as if nothing has happened. 

A new American election looms on the horizon. 

The candidates scream to do "something" about China, and the dumbed down apathetic sheeple go eat their McFat burgers and slurp their mega-Coka sodas. 

All continues in the land of the dumb, fat, and ignorant.

Anyways, keep in mind that what you see on the “news” is for regional consumption. The rest of the world doesn’t really care.

Remember. China has friends.

Something that is somehow omitted in all the hate – hate – hate dialog flooding the media. China has friends, and the “West” is increasingly becoming more and more isolated every day.

China has friends.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning 2. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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What would happen to a war with China (and Russia) and America lost?

Again, yet again, MM here addresses the things that no one ever talks about. And in this case we are taking up the real whale; the massive, titanic-sized “elephant in the room”. While just virtually all of the American media press is gung-ho for a war against China (and assumes that China will be alone), no one is talking about the consequences of such a war.

Nothing surprises me, the more successful China becomes the greater the lies. 

-Roger

As the clueless media and their readership assumes that the United States will win any war that it starts in Asia. (Or actually, that it will be a long decades long war, and life would go on without any impact on their own lives.) No one talks about the rightful consequences of a war effort gone terribly wrong…

But we will.

The United States will lose.

And it will lose BIGLY.

And, it’s not just me saying this. It’s RAND, Heritage Foundation, the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and every single one of the military war games (for the last 18 years), the military think tanks, and the “big buck” experts in Washington DC. As well as all of the generals in charge of the American military.

America would lose.

I have discussed over and over, and over again, why the United States would lose. Don’t want to hear this, do you? Well, tough cookies. Here, we talk about things as they actually are, not as we want them to be. If you are a new comer to MM, you might want to take a refresher course in actual current affairs here…

New Beginnings 2

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What do I mean about “could lose” a war?

According to US analysts, by 2025 the USA won’t be able to win a war against China. 

Frankly, I think that this ship has already sailed a long, long, LONG time ago.  

However, that semi-admission is a desperate attempt to create the political climate to circle the wagons before China officially becomes the second nation the USA cannot defeat.

The first one being, obviously, Russia (I would even include Iran and the DPRK is that list). 

Hence all the current Anglo posturing in the Black Sea (which is even far more dangerous for US/NATO ships than the China Seas) is just that: posturing. 

The main risk here is that I am not at all convinced by the notion that “Biden” can rein in the Brits or the Poles, especially since the latter are both NATO members who would sincerely expect NATO to protect them (they should ask Erdogan about that). 

But, of course, there really is no such thing as “NATO”: all there is the US and its vassal states in Europe. 

Should the two wannabe empires trigger a real, shooting war, all it would take is a single Russian conventional missile strike somewhere deep inside the continental USA (even in a desert location) to convince the White House, the Pentagon or the CIA “get with the program” and seek a negotiated solution, leaving the Brits and the Poles utterly disgusted and looking foolish. 

I don’t think anything else can bring those two countries back to a sense of reality. 

-Andrei

From The Saker;

Why concentrate on hybrid/unlimited war instead of an outright nuclear or conventional military conflict between the US and China and/or Russia?

That is because both conventional and nuclear military conflict between any of these three nations is an insane, suicidal choice, while those in charge of defining military strategy are specifically not selected for their suicidal tendencies.

Neither Russia nor China are known for their wars of aggression, and while the US is extremely well known for its homicidal, violent tendencies (having carried out 32 bombing campaigns on 24 countries since World War II), it is fundamentally a bully, only picking on weak countries that pose no threat.

And… it (because of the non-stop demonetization of China) thinks that China is weak enough to pick on.

Based on publicly available information, both Russia and China are now quite far ahead of the US in weapons development, to a point where any possible direct US attack on either of them would be [1] self-disarming at best and [2] suicidal at worst.

Its like when the schoolyard bully realizes he can't bully you anymore, so now he just throws slurs and insults instead of punches. After a while he loses all credibility and starts being ignored. A couple of decades later you go to a school reunion and he is the loser that no one wants to talk to. That reunion was sweet ....

Posted by: Roger | Nov 19 2021 17:20 utc | 16

[1] In the best case scenario, the US launches an attack which is successfully repelled: bombers and rockets shot down, ships sunk, US military bases and port facilities destroyed, possibly US command and control centers also destroyed, as quite pointedly promised by Putin.

The US then lays prostrate and at the mercy of its opponents.

If its cooperation still leaves something to be desired, some combination of deplorables, despicables, imponderables and indecipherables will be organized just enough to make a bloody mess of what’s left of US government structures and power elites, which will then be replaced with an international peacekeeping force (as an optimistic case) or just left to persist in durable disorder, misery and international isolation.

[2] The worst case scenario is the tired old mutual assured destruction, nuclear winter and end of life on Earth, but it is unlikely for a number of reasons.

First, of the US nuclear deterrent triad only the submarine component remains viable, and even it is quite tired.

Aside from a single Minuteman missile launch test most hasn’t been tested in decades, and these are ballistic missiles which, once the boost phase is over, follow a perfectly predictable inertial trajectory.

This makes them easy targets for Russia’s and China’s new air defense systems.

Of the Minutemen that manage to get out of their silos and launch in the general direction of Russia or China, it is unknown how many of their nuclear payloads would actually detonate since these are all quite old and haven’t been tested in a long time either.

The US no longer has the ability to make new nuclear charges, having lost the recipe for making the high explosive needed to make them detonate. But that may be a moot point, since at this point no ICBM is likely to be able to penetrate Russian air defenses. Both Russia and China have state of the art formidable anti-ICBM systems. video

As far as Chinese air defenses, it is notable that Russia and China have integrated their early warning systems and China now has four divisions of Russian S-400 Triumph air defense systems and is planning to add more. video

Turning to the airborne part of the US nuclear triad, its mainstay is still the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, the youngest of which is almost 60 years old. It cruises at 260 knots at an altitude of 34000 feet and is the opposite of stealthy, making it easy to shoot down at a stand-off distance of several hundred kilometers. Since this makes it perfectly useless for dropping bombs, all that remains is cruise missiles, which fly at a positively poky 0.65 Mach, again making them easy targets for modern air defenses.

There are also some newer stealth bombers—very few and, it has turned out, not too stealthy, putting them essentially in the same category as the Stratofortress, and the cruise missiles they can launch are also those same old subsonic ones.

Lastly, there are the strategic nuclear submarines, which are the only part of the US nuclear triad that is still viable. They remain effective as a deterrent, and they do have the ability to get up close to launch a sneak attack with a good chance that at least a few of the missiles will get through the air defenses, but they can’t possibly hope to get around the inevitability of retaliation which will cause unacceptable, fatal damage to the continental US. This makes them useless as an offensive weapon.

The uncloaking, and damage to the USS Connecticut, is worth a good study in this regard. HERE.

Add to this Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine, according to which any attack against Russian sovereign territory or Russian sovereign interests, whether conventional or nuclear, would open the door to a nuclear retaliation, launched upon warning, and Putin’s solemn promise to counterattack not just against the locations from which a strike is launched but against the centers of decision-making.

Considering that Russian missiles are hypersonic and will reach their targets before those of the US reach theirs, and that Russia has the means to shoot down US missiles while the US is unable to shoot down Russian ones, if the US were to launch an attack, those who launched it would be dead before they could find out whether their attack succeeded in causing any damage at all or whether they had just suicided themselves for nothing.

The “Punch Line”

All of this adds up to an inevitable conclusion: under no circumstances will the US attack either Russia or China, using either conventional or nuclear weapons. To do so would result in nuclear annihilation. And for a weakened nation such as the United States is today, it’s wouldn’t take too much to throw it into absolute chaos.

Only an idiot would consider such an action.

However, there are experts who are of the opinion that a world war could spontaneously erupt at any moment without anyone wishing it to do so, just as the world slid into World War I due to a confluence of unhappy accidents. But there is a big difference: the military and civilian leaderships of the warring sides in World War I did not have hypersonic missiles pointed directly at their heads.

They thought that the war would be fought far away from their palaces, headquarters and stately mansions. They were, in some cases, quite wrong, but that was their thought originally: why not test our industrial prowess while sacrificing the lives of several million useless peasants?

Now the situation is quite different: any substantial provocation is an automatic self-destruct trigger and all sides know this.

Especially against Asia.

Pilger is bouncing a few examples of Western anti-China drivel off a Chinese historian. The historian gets a bit impatient and says (words to the effect):

"Look, China doesn't want to take over the world or tell other countries how to behave. In fact we built the Great Wall to keep the barbarians OUT!"

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Nov 19 2021 18:24 utc | 23

Of course, there will be minor provocations such as the US Navy steaming around in the Taiwan Strait or the Black Sea close to the shores of Crimea, but then they do have to earn their keep somehow.

In turn, the Russians and the Chinese will periodically up the ante a little bit by shooing them away with a harshly worded radio message or a few shots fired across their bows. But both sides know just how careful they have to be because any serious error will require immediate deescalation and may entail major loss of face.

And that, as the saying goes, would be worse than a crime: it would be a vast mistake.

The USA Leadership are idiots

And at that, we can see that no matter how much we can parse the issues; no matter how many times we can study the calculus; no matter how many times we can say “nah, no one would be that stupid to risk a war”, we see the United States doing just that.

All part of the required reverberations for the "drum beat of war".

Making the public recognize and demonize an enemy is a requirement! Step by step, little by little.

Don't think there is a war on the way? Just look around at the chaos, misinformation and pursuit of control.

Don't think others hear the drum beat? Read here: https://thesaker.is/russian-options-in-a-world-headed-for-war/
Posted by: James Cook | Nov 19 2021 17:04 utc | 5

The provocations against China are getting more and more outrageous, outlandish and dangerous. This is intentional, and it is not going to end up well.

The calculus so far assumes reasonable people would be in charge of the Leadership of the West. But that variable is “thrown out the window”, the United States and their proxy nations are all run by imbeciles and they are dancing on top of nuclear armageddon.

The Chinese military is dangerous

Here’s a training exercise. Hey! Do you see any cheap AK-47 / SKS clones here? Do you see uneducated peasants? Do you see any starving people that was all that delicious freedom and democracy out of America? VIDEO

And they start training in first grade. Military discipline is part of their lives.

Listen to me. They will not be nice. VIDEO.

Video

Here’s some third grade students showing first grade students how to assemble and handle rifles, and weapons. VIDEO. It’s a long video at 83MB, but WELL worth the watch. I recorded it while watching my little girls, so sorry about the chit-chat in the background.

Please pay attention to what is going on. Third grade students doing this. 9 years old. We see them teaching the first and second graders in basic squad movement and behaviors. VIDEO.

Video

We will discuss the consequences of the loss of the United States to Asia

In this article we will assume the following…

  • The United States is successful in triggering a war with China. After all, it has been non-stop provocations for years now. It’s not like China has an aircraft carrier off Boston harbor. Sooner or later there WILL be a response. And it won’t be a subtle hint like the USS Connecticut affair, either.

And, what is omitted from American media (and Conservative) articles and discussions on this subject…

  • Russia and China work together to fight the USA as they said they would.
  • Nuclear weapons would be used as they said they would.
  • The “war” would be short and devastating. Per war game results.
  • The “war” would be on Asian terms, not defined by America. Per war game results.
  • First use of nuclear weapons occurs. Per Russian military doctrine.

We will also ignore the ruin and destruction in the rest of the world. This article is not about Israel, Europe, the Ukraine, China, or Japan. This article is about what would happen to the United States once it lost a war.

It would be a first.

And, it would be painful.

Some history…

To understand this article you have to understand history.

America has never lost in a war. The closest to losing a war is what the Confederate States experienced when the South lost the American Civil War. And using that as a template, as well as the pain and anguish that both Russia and China has experienced over the last ten centuries or so, we can compile up a pretty comprehensive picture of what to expect.

So don’t yell at me.

You all should have read a history book or two while you were in school. None of this should be new. The only difference here is that I am providing a reminder that YOU are right now, living in a historical moment. And that moment can have enormous consequences.

We are teetering on the very sharp edge of a very thin line, with a deep abyss on both side.

And using this history, we can compile a listing of potential things to expect to occur once America loses World War III.

Brace yourself…

New borders

Every losing nation ends up having it’s geographical boarders redrawn. For a large nation such as the United States, we would see the entire nation carved up into separate “Protectorates.”

  • Hawaii would be it’s own Protectorate.
  • Alaska might be returned to Russia.
  • Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands will become a Protectorate.
  • Texas would be carved up. Part would go to Mexico. The other half would be a Protectorate.
  • California would be carved up. Part would go to Mexico. The remaining sections carved up into protectorates.
  • The remaining states on the continental United States would be reshaped into ten to 25 individual protectorates.

No existing State would be permitted to retain it’s borders.

Think about what happened to Poland after World War I, and then again after World War II. Think about what happened to Africa when the British colonial power left it. Thank about what happened when the “White Settlers” colonized North America.

The State of Louisiana cut up into regions by cultural and social lines. This could very well be the fate of the entirety of America.

Protectorate laws

As a “Protectorate” the region would function under the rules and laws of the conquering nation. This would vary from protectorate to protectorate. But some things will be constant.

  • A protectorate can ONLY trade with it’s physical neighbor.
  • A protectorate cannot have a standing army, navy, air force, space forces.
  • A protectorate must pay tribute to the conquering nation. This historically consists of a lump sum, plus a very high annual tax born by the inhabitants.
  • A protectorate would do anything the conquering nation demands.

New Government

The federal United States government would be crushed, destroyed, and any mention of any former leaders retaining power would be harshly suppressed.

A small taste of what is to come.

For a new world out of the old, all old and former government influences are to be extinguished. Buildings would be destroyed, historical monuments raised, and all history rewritten. This is not just on the Federal level, but on the state and local levels as well. Everything would be raised and then altered beyond recognition, and a new command and control government structure rebuilt upon the ashes of the former.

Each protectorate will be told (by the conquering nation) what government it shall have. Some will become theocracies. Such as the “Bible Belt States”. Others will become quaizi-republics. Still others will be dictatorships, and others will simply be socialist based government structures.

All will use the police forces to enforce their new laws, rules and regulations.

The new rulers will use what ever systems are in place to enforce complete obedience.

New laws

There will be new laws. All of the old laws will be discarded. This will be everything from divorce law to business law, to patent law and criminal law. The laws specified by the protectorate will be determined by the conquering nation. You can expect a very harsh social credit scoring system, and the harshest penalties for non-compliance.

Sentenced to being stoned to death for admitting to being raped.

They can be arbitrary, vindictive, and capricious.

  • Loss of a leg for drinking alcohol.
  • Beheading for jay-walking.
  • Death for showing disrespect.
  • Penis removal for wearing shoes on Sunday.

Non-compliance is often death.

The process of stoning a person to death.

Ownership will change drastically

You may suddenly discover that the home you live in has been seized for “public housing”, a “museum”, or a barracks. That your factory where you work is now under new management and everything is being disassembled and shipped elsewhere, or that the apartment complex that you rent out of is now being turned into hospital.

What’s more, you might be granted 24 hours to gather your belongings and leave… if you are lucky.

Ownership takes on a new meaning when the world is turned upside down, and you are on the losing side. And now you will have to obey your new masters. Imagine that these people were now YOUR local government authority…

Progressive liberal democrat thugs
It is people like these that will be pressed into an anti-white frenzy and will hurt, attack, and torture you before they rape and kill you. These people will become pawns of the new conquering nation.

Quality of life will plunge

Sure, you might have three cars, two motorcycles and live in a McMansion. But all that means nothing when you have a social credit score so low that you are not authorized to drive, purchase gasoline, or use electricity.

What are you going to do? Hide in your house for months?

Many people will find themselves plunged from “Middle Class” into the world of the sub-slave. Today, the United States is a stratified, balkanized society with nine social classes. After conquest, many will find themselves at the lower “bottom feeder” social classes.

9 Social Classes

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And let’s not even talk about the lifestyle changes for those who expect running water, electricity, access to a cell phone and radio. All these things can, and probably will, be subject to the whims of the new protectorate government.

The USD will collapse and be replaced

One of the first casualties of any war will be the total and complete collapse of the “house of cards” known as the United States Dollar. It’s kept alive on vapor, dreams, hope and frantic, fanatical spending. During a war, and afterwards, these pieces of paper will have zero value.

And unless you have something tangible, and not other vapor-currency like bit-coin, you will suddenly become penniless. Then what are you going to use for trade and commerce when your stomach is growling, and you need heat, water, electricity and a meal in your gut?

The USD is going to become absolutely worthless.

What are you going to barter with?

An x-box when there is no electricity? A car when there’s no access to gasoline? Your collection of Pokemon cards?

More than likely it will be a service that you, or your family can provide to others. Do they have the necessary training? Or will they need to receive on-the-job training to meet the needs of others during a SHTF scenario?

Think sex, manual labor, or other undesirable activities.

Rights become zero

Forget about the “Bill of Rights”.

You will be a slave. Slaves have no Rights. It’s a historical norm.

Photographed before being killed.
Cambodian soldier who turned in weapons as directed by his commander when the Marxists took power. Once disarmed, he was tied up and bound. Still in his army uniform. Photographed before being killed. This is the price you pay for not qualifying to live in a Marxist paradise. He was demonized for his “privilege”, attacked for his social irresponsibility, and tortured, well… because it was fun. He was then photographed and killed.
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Sure it is pretty much meaningless today, but in this scenario, it not only doesn’t exist, but it would be ignored BY LAW. If you think that you have the right to think, speak, dream or practice your religion… then think again.

It will be OVER. And non-compliance would mean death. It’s a historical norm.

Conquered people do not have Rights. They are slaves, servants, or chattel.

Deal with this historical fact.

Rape and pillage in the Ukraine
In the Ukraine, the woman were forced to strip in the fields while the drunken soldiers, political squads, and other progressives raped them. Then, when they were finished, they simply lined them up and killed them all.

Places will be renamed

The water-filled crater formerly known as New York City will be renamed “Commode”. Washington DC will become “Fresh Vomit”, and San Francisco will become “Fagland”.

This means different things to different people. But with the renaming of places will come with an entire different understanding of geography. Maps will all be different, and along with it will be the associated perceptions.

Places will be renamed by the victors.

Restrictions become many

There will be all sorts of restrictions on everything. The inhabitants of the conquered territories will need to ask permission to do anything and everything. Failure to get the correct permissions, permits, or pay the necessary fees will result in the harshest measures possible.

Lead to their grave.
Once disarmed, the people will be collected in the cities. They will be segregated into groups. Then they will all be killed, if not used for slaves. This is a historical norm. This is what always happens.
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Driving a car. Traveling. Ownership of a bicycle, access to a bridge. Crossing a border will all be illegal.

And that’s just for movement.

Think about food, clothing and shelter. All will be restricted access. You will be told where to live, what to eat, how to behave, how to dress, what to do, and whether or not you are paid for your labors.

History will be rewritten

Typically all history books and records are burned, destroyed and eliminated. The teachers killed, and a new history constructed to fit the needs of the new ruler class.

Think about the reeducation camps for the teachers and intellectuals in South Vietnam when the North Vietnam took over Saigon (now, Ho Chi Men city.) Think about what happened in Cambodia with the “killing fields”. Think about what happened to the Polish in the Katyn Forest massacre.

The Katyn massacre, also known as the zbrodnia katyńska ('Katyń crime'), was a mass execution of Polish POW officers and citizens ordered by the Soviet authorities in 1940. The most widely accepted estimate of the number of dead is about 22,000. The victims were murdered in the Katyn forest, Kalinin ( Tver) and Kharkiv prisons, and elsewhere. 

-Katyń

Prison camps / rape camps / mass torture complexes

There will be segregation of people into locations. Then new jobs, activities, and tasks will be assigned to them depending on their utility.

Captured female slaves
Here is a truck parading captured, and “handed over” females to be either given to the soldiers, or sold off in the public square as slaves. This is from Syria, and the girls were most likely handed over to the “police” to spare their lives. The “police” then processed them and set them off to the market for their future roles within the community; sex slaves.
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Men typically are used either for fertilizer (killed outright in mass graves) or as slaves.It is very rare for a male to survive within a conquered land. They are viewed as a viable threat vector and eliminated in mass. Though, exceptions can occur based on their skills or knowledge.

Women are almost always earmarked as sex toys. Historically the women that manage to survive in this role age from 12/14 to up to 30. Older than that, then they are killed.

All of the women will be dehumanized, raped and sent off to “collection centers”. There they will be provided dehumanizing clothing and attire, and raped until they are of no further use.

Captured women in Germany.
German Nationalist Socialists (Nazi’s) collected Jewish women. Stripped them, and provided them a roughly hewn sackcloth to wear, and a scarf to cover their head with. An uncovered woman is considered to be a threat. And used them as they felt necessary.
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Everyone, and every moment will be documented to excess. It doesn’t matter if it was the Nazi’s with the Jews, the Soviets with other Soviets, the Khmer Rouge with their fellow citizens, or Americans against Americans. Each person will be interviewed, indexed, photographed, sheared, and categorized prior to execution.

Know your history.

Children are typically killed. Older people are also typically killed. Pets tend to be eaten.

Protected children.
Children rounded up in Syria by the occupation forces. The parents gave them up because the new government promised to protect them and keep them out of harm’s way while the war raged. As a result they were sold and abused. many died.

Schools will change

Historically schools are eliminated, and then when they do reappear, access is severely curtailed and limited. The subjects and information taught in the schools also change as well.

As the schools change, so will the people.

Know your history.

It’s not all boring you know.

Assimilation.

Important cities will be erased

If a city manages to survive the war, and the attacks, it will not be spared when the occupation forces arrive.

The Japanese “rape of Nanjing” in China is one such example.

Nanjing was “occupied” by the Japanese when Japan conquered the region. Then then decided to torture and kill every single person in that entire city.

The entire city was rounded up, tortured and killed by the Japanese occupation forces. Many such examples of this occur throughout history.

Have you ever wondered what happened to the American Indians that lived in such places as Kittanning, PA, or Oswego, NY? All erased from history. Their cities plowed under and now exist as State Game Lands, farm land or parking lots.

The Japanese attack China with the “rape of Nanjing”

Cultural landmarks will be destroyed

Expect such landmarks as Mount Rushmore to be dynamited, The statue of liberty to be torn down and used as scrap metal, the San Francisco bridge to be destroyed, and the iconic White House to be leveled into dust.

Landmarks will be destroyed.

A new “privileged class” will arise

Those “bottom feeders” in society, who have obtained power and control over groups of people, such as urban ghetto enclaves will often be granted special powers and abilities. They will use these powers to control people, places and things in the new protectorates.

Urban groups will seize control of the cities.

Urban groups will seize control of the cities.

Drug gangs will seize entire geographical areas.

Drug gangs will seize entire geographical areas.

Restrictions on movement, attire, and activity

Seemingly random restrictions will appear and will be mandatory. Such as not being allowed to wear camouflaged clothing, shoes, use a cell phone or use a cigarette lighter. Certain areas may forbid the use of automobiles, and the access of grains, apples, seeds, or corn could mean a death sentence.

American police today. It would not be difficult to turn them into an occupation force.

Conclusion

Pretty terrible, huh?

Well then, WHY THE FUCK IS THE UNITED STATES TRYING TO PROVOKE A WAR with both China and Russia simultaneously? Are they out of their minds? Because sooner or later, when you poke a lion it will snap back.

Sooner…

…or, later.

So here is what you all have to look forward to unless things change. You cannot continue to act like a bully when you walk into a gang of Hell’s Angels (hard core bikers). They will not be nice.

The United States had best stop acting like a bully, or else some very mean people are going to take care of the issue.

Summary

Once a war starts, it will only be a matter of time before the United States collapses and is occupied by the rest of the world. During that time, the nation will be broken up, tortured, abused, redefined, purged, and the lives of Americans will be worth nothing.

That’s what you get when your government is corrupt and your leaders are dysfunctional.

The ONLY way to prevent this nightmare scenario is for America to stop trying to provoke a war with Asia, and start trying to reform itself. Though to expect that to actually happen is very, very unlikely.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

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Articles & Links

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MM factory trip into the heartland of China November 2021 (Real deal reporting)

According to all the “experts”, China is a polluted wasteland of child workers, trash, poor unsanitary facilities, and gloom. Well it is not. I had to take a business trip into a heavily industrial zone in the Guangzhou industrial corridor, and here’s my story and pictures. So this is just going to be another quick article on MM life, banging around some factories on a day trip. I think you all might find it interesting.

About the “Nay Sayers”

About two weeks ago, we had a jerk-off place a comment here confirming / stating the nonsense that China is ugly, filthy and corrupt. He provided his “expert” status by prefacing his comment that he taught in medical universities for ten years, twenty years ago.

Ah, that standard boiler plate; “being an “expert” because he was teaching in China for ten years”.

He’s not the first, and won’t be the last. You can make good money having a small “cottage industry” churning out hate-China articles. They pay $1000 per article as of this year. Just follow the template. But you know, I saw through all that.It’s “easy pleasy, lemon squeezy”. So simple a child could do it.

Three reasons…

  • Six month changes. Anyone who has lived in China KNOWS that it changes every six months. I mean it. It changes so friggin’ fast here it is amazing. If you are gone for ten years, then you are clueless about  what it is now today. Heck, ten years ago people still used paper money. There weren’t any drone police, robot scanning didn’t exist, no one knew what a QR access was, and no one conducted thermal scans!!!!!
If we compare China’s 31 provinces with the 214 sovereign states that compose the “international community”, every Chinese region has experienced the fastest economic growth rates in the world. -UNZ
  • Talking Points. Don’t give me all the hate-China talking points. The comment read like something from the “National Review”. Mix it up some. Don’t regurgitate talking points. After all I am HERE, inside of China reading you trying to convince me of things that I can verify by sticking my head out the window.
  • Lonely guy. Anyone who has lived in China for ten years and didn’t find a partner and get married is a truly miserable person indeed. It’s not impossible, just highly unlikely. Which says something about your personality, personal body care,  hygiene, and social skills. If you cannot build a relationship in China, after one year, you have a problem. At ten years; you just have to be one Hell of a seriously disgusting person. Especially when you are SURROUNDED by attractive marriage age university women.

The trip overview

I had to visit the factory as it is a “new” factory that replaces our normal factory for a New Zealand customer. This factory needed to be instructed on what quality points and checks needed to take place to make the part.A day trip was in order. Drive up, visit the factory and have lunch, drive back. The distance was roughly comparable to driving from Boston to Albany, New York. Not close, but not too far either. The factory was near Shaoguan. You can see it at the top of the map below…

Factory location.

The ride up to the factory

"You must live on the coast, the inland is terribly polluted."

The trip itself was pretty uneventual. We traveled for about four hours. We rode up major highways, crossed massive bridges and went through long tunnels to reach our destination. In all cases, please check out these embedded videos or their associated links to get the “full” experience. It’s almost as good as sitting in the car with MM getting there. video 46MB

Arrival into the tiny village

All of rural China looks like this. It’s an entire nation of skyscrapers. This, believe it or not, is just a tiny, tiny village. video. 69 MB.

Arrival at the factory

And this is what it is like. The factory sits on the edge of the tiny village, and so we just pulled in and went up to the front gate. Video. 32MB

What the factory does

The factory is a casting and machining operation. They cast the part out of stainless steel, then they machine it, and finally check for quality and box and ship. Casting operations are typically dirty everywhere. It doesn’t matter where you are; the United States, China, Afghanistan… a casting factory is hot, dusty, dirty and greasy. Here’s an American casting factory in Cincinnati, Ohio…

American casting factory in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Machining operations are better, but not by much. Usually they include polishing operations and the like that typically result in dust and grime everywhere. These are hard core, basic operations, that made cities like Pittsburgh and Detroit famous. But we are not in America. We are in China. And, you know, things are different here.

Out of the car and into the factory

So we parked outside the gate, and met the factory boss at the gate who did the mandatory Coronavirus QR scans, the GPS positioning history, the temperature checks, and supplied us with fresh face masks and we went inside. video

Frenzied pace at the factory

" China employs slave labor, child labor, and indentured poverty stricken people who are yearning for freedom and democracy to unchain them from their shackles..."

Here’s a video that I took from outside the QC building. Sorry it’s kind of boring, but it illustrates the pace of life here. It shows that people are not upset, worried or working a frenzied pace. They are not afraid of losing their jobs on a layoff on Friday, or having to scramble to make ends meet. The factory, by law, must provide them with three free meals a day, free housing, free wifi and television access, and free transportation to and from town. Do they look like they are all yearning for American “freedom and democracy”? video. 14MB

This and that

While my engineer took care of the details, I hung out in the office, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. We had a nice lunch, and then continued on our work. We ended up inspecting all of the parts, and then then left satisfied for lunch.

Dimensional fit checks.

Of course, I would check in with him from time to time.

All parts must meet the specifications on the drawing, but not all the customer requirements are listed in the specifications.

Lunch

"...starvation and famine are rampant inside of China. It's just that the evil CCP regime won't allow people to see the truth."

We broke for lunch. As always, the factory hosted us and we ate in a private room (which is normal in China). I had a few beers. They wanted to give me a bottle of red wine or 52° white wine for myself, but I declined. Ugh! Then about half way though the meal, I remembered to take some pictures. Because, after all, I did want to record this visit for MM. So I took pictures of the food mid-meal. We ate well…

Shellfish.
Local steamed fish in a nice peanut / ginger sauce. It’s eyes are covered by the garnish.
Greens.
Pigeon. Tasty little buggers, but hardly any meat.
Shrimp and snow peas with sweet cashews and sesame. A real favorite of mine. The white leafy things are lotus, not onion.

Inspections

"Child and slave labor is rampant all over China."

We spent the rest of the day inspecting the product. As you can see the factory workers were inspecting and packaging the product for shipment.

Rework and inspection.
Rejected parts.

Final packaging

"China only makes cheap Wal-mart junk. We don't need their bullshit."

The approved parts were recorded, marked and packaged by the ladies int he factory. Everything was 100% inspected to print from the customer. Here’s what that looked like…

Finishing up.
Packing the parts.

Conclusions

After all this, we hopped into the car and drove home. I arrived home, and immediately found my home to be in the kind of chaotic shambles that only a two-year old can accomplish. So I helped feed her, clean up, bathe her and put her to bed, then I churned out a post on Affirmation Campaigns. And this was my day. When I woke up, I opened up my normal news feeds to discover that Yahoo! would not longer be accessible inside of China, but used my indexes to see what articles they were pushing. And low and behold it was non-stop hate-China fest. I guess they wanted a piece of that 300 million dollars from the United States federal budget to push that narrative. Whores for money. Sheech! But you know, there are better things in this world. Like this Rufus doggie that saves his master… video 4MB

Do you want more?

I have more posts like this in my China index here… China .

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You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
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What REALLY happened with the collision of the USS Connecticut in the South China Sea

Important note: Image above is NOT of the USS Connecticut. It is of the USS San Francisco that rammed into an undersea mountain in 2005.

Let’s get right to the point.

The official American story is that the USS Connecticut rammed into an unmarked undersea mountain.

Since the Navy revealed this week that the fast-attack submarine Connecticut struck an undersea mountain in early October while operating in the South China Sea, one question springs to mind: how could this happen?

How could a $3 billion Seawolf-class boat, considered one of the Navy’s most formidable and advanced, crash into an undersea landmass?

-NavyTimes

Which is pretty strange as the locations of all undersea mountains has been well mapped for decades. You can see them on Google Earth for goodness sakes!

Bathymetric map of the South China sea.

It’s a very questionable conclusion.

And you know, what makes it even more questionable is that the United States navy has been flying their radiation detection aircraft all over where the USS Connecticut was running operations. Which is abnormal.

Radiation detection aircraft flight path…

Searching for something.

But then if you couple the United States silence to the Chinese inquiries as to whether or not nuclear payloads, equipment, and fissionable materials entered Chinese waters.

There are absolutely zero answers from the United States government to very serious questions asked by China.

The official Chinese story is something else. Here we will tell the Chinese side of the story.

Believe it or not. It’s up to you.

Here’s another post that you simply will not find anywhere else on the Internet. And, you know, I tire of my own sluggishness in trying to understand the great failure of the American “free media”.

Even I realize that there is no such thing as actual “news” in the West, but really guys it’s not too FUCKING DIFFICULT.

  • Beware of any “news” that you WANT to believe.
  • Look for what IS NOT being reported in the mainstream or conservative media.
  • Take particular note when the official narrative is absurd.
  • Be especially cautious of “seeded“ narratives that you get in emails, or in alternative websites.

That being said, let’s dive in…

The Seawolf class overview

Seawolf

From my email 17NOV21

I had a little message from one of my friends regarding the Connecticut incident. FYI, it seems the following message was approved by Beijing so I will just tack it on here.
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It has been translated from Chinese, with some clarifications to the machine translations by MM.

The Chinese military authorizes the disclosure of the truth about the accident of the Seawolf class nuclear submarine on the USS Connecticut.

16 November 2021

How the Chinese People’s Liberation Army hunted and sunk the (state of the art) USS Connecticut Seawolf-class attack nuclear submarine in the South China Sea.

 -October 2-
The British aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, the American aircraft carrier Nimitz, the American aircraft carrier Roosevelt, and the Japanese aircraft carrier Izumo entered Chinese waters. It dis so with 17 other warships. They hailed from the United States, Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia. This 4 aircraft carrier armada represented the Western power of six nations.
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The South China Sea armada begins to conduct large-scale military exercises against China. This was done off the Chinese coast and within Chinese territorial waters.
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Trying to push China into a war.

 -October 2 to 4-
The People’s Liberation Army dispatched a large number of military aircraft to the South China Sea to conduct simulated attack exercises against these uninvited warships.
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The armada came from six countries. they were the United States, Britain, Japan, Holland, Canada and Australia. These nations all participated in conducting simulated invasions, attacks, and destruction of China, the Chinese nation, and Chinese sea lanes.
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Chinese J-20 aircraft.

 -October 2-
China’s Guanlan Marine Science Guard observed the approximate position and depth of the USS Connnecticut Seawolf class nuclear submarine when it entered the South China Sea.
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It followed it as it approached the South China Sea, and conducted operations South of Taiwan. It then observed it creep up the coast and operated near the Chinese shoreline and conduct surreptitious and illegal operations (inside of Chinese territorial waters as defined by the UN) of an unknown nature.
.
The Guanlan satellite sent the data to the Super Measurement Center in Jinan to estimate the position of the Connecticut.
.

Guanlan satellite.

 -China’s special detection device captured the ultra-low frequency sonar from the bow of the Connecticut spherical boat and transmitted the data to the Sonar Analysis Center in Shanghai to accurately locate the position and depth of the Connecticut. It was operating at 1500  meters [?] making and conducting obvious operations and drills inside of the Chinese coastline.
 -The Type 927 underwater acoustic detection ship stationed on Yongshou Island and the anti-submarine helicopter stationed on Yongxing Island are dispatched for detection.
.

Type 927 underwater acoustic detection ship.

 -The Yun-8 military plane took off from the Hainan Air Force Base and carried out a “sonic bomb” on the Connecticut.
.
This technology (a “sonic bomb”) causes the submarine’s personnel to be extremely uncomfortable due to the sonic shock. It does not injure or kill anyone. It simply makes all their pain receptors ignite on their bodies.
I am told it feels like being burned alive while frenzied hordes of cocaine-addicted rats gnaw at your eyes, gonads and fingers. And insects borrow deep inside your skin, biting, chewing and clawing all over your body. -MM
.
This terror and discomfort forced the submarine to try to escape from the targeting cone of effect.
.

Yun-8 military plane.

 -While it was trying to exit the cone of effect, the AI controlled robotic Chinese HSU001 unmanned submarine slipped silently to the nuclear submarine Connecticut. Where it attached itself to the bow of the ship.
.
This was an intentional placement. This locations was as far away as possible from the nuclear power plant for a close local directed-explosion attack.
.
It was then ignited,  and ended up causing serious damage to the bow of the boat and a complete loss of sonar sensing ability.
Translation confusion. I do not know if it placed weapons charges, or if the entire robot detonated itself. -MM
.
The navigation capabilities and the nuclear power plants were not affected, preventing nuclear leaks from polluting the fishing waters off the Chinese coast.
.

Chinese HSU001 unmanned submarine.

 -The Connecticut nuclear submarine, which lost its underwater submarine capability, was forced to float up and surrender. The Chinese military forced the submarine to float up and surrender.
.
As the submarine broke the surface, it was met with Chinese PLA Naval vessels who took no overt action.
.
Due to the close surveillance of the navy and air force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the military aircraft and ships from the six countries of the United States, Japan, Britain, Australia, Holland, and Canada dared not come to rescue the submarine during the South China Sea exercise.
.

If the Allied American force were to engage, world war III would become a reality.

.
The submarine was “escorted” by the Chinese Navy and Air Force while in the South China Sea and the submarine was directed to follow the ships to docking facilities on the Chinese mainland.
Translation misunderstanding. It is unknown if the damaged submarine was actually escorted by the Naval Vessels, or if it then immediately submerged when given the opportunity. -MM
.
Where it then again submerged. Further contact with the submarine was then lost.
 -October 7th-
The United States announced the Connecticut accident by the United States.
 -October 7-
The Chinese Foreign Ministry frantically questioned the ins and outs of the USS Connecticut incident to the Biden administration, but did not obtain any answers or explanations.
 -October 22-
The Chinese monitoring system detected a US nuclear submarine entering the South China Sea again near Huangyan Island.
.

Damaged submarine surfaces.

A final update by the source

The PLAN would be messing around with USN at this point. 

1500 meter depth misinfo probably planted deliberately to taunt them because if the Drone sub did find the Connecticut, they definitely knew the actual depth it was running.

From the questions subsequently posed by the Chinese, it does seem they knew there was no nuclear leak.

China is playing around but It's like a cat with a mouse it caught.

The whole thing has Donald Cook vibes. Morale can't be good atm.

Added youtu.be link. You might like. https://youtu.be/VeJLwUfLcEU.

A comment on the destruction

The picture used above is a Los Angles class submarine.  It is the Nuclear Submarine USS San Francisco which struck an undersea mountain in 2005. It is NOT a seawolf class. So do not read too much into the imagery that I used to open this article with. It’s for illustration purposes only.

These pictures are all over the internet and I snagged one for use here.

Unfortunately the damage to the seawolf is not well photographed anywhere that I could find. Obviously the damage is a secure matter and the USN will not disseminate any pictures of it. Which is exactly what you would do to prevent an enemy from ascertaining knowledge on how effective their weapons systems were against you.

You do not do that with undersea mountain collisions. As the hundreds of USN released photos attest to. In previous mountain collisions, the USN was quick in the dissemination of information.

  • All photos depicting “combat damage” are classified as secret.
  • All photos depicting “accidental damage” are classified as “confidential” and released as the USN permits.

By all indications the damage to the seawolf is much more substantive than what everyone is led to believe. It is far more extensive than the collision damage indicated in the article featured image photo above.

Bow of a seawolf…

Bow of a seawolf class submarine.

A Los Angeles submarine bow…

The bow of a Los Angeles submarine bow.

This is the only photo that I have been able to obtain on the actual submarine in drydock and the damage involved. This is from THE DRIVE.

You can clearly see that the entire bow of the submarine is GONE. This fact alone shows that the damage is far more substantive than what is illustrated in the collision photo used as the header above.

Additionally, please note the orange ventilation tube, and the three access points where the tubes pump air into the front bow of the ship..

It appears that the entire front of the submarine forward of the conning tower is seeping water. And thus, needs to be pressurized to keep the water out.

This implies hull breaches at numerous points in the front one third of the submarine. This is NOT damage indicative of a forward collision. It is indicative of an explosion.

Seawolf sub in drydock.

From the photos it appears that the entire bow sonar array is GONE.

This is not a crushed impact. The array does not disintegrate upon collision. Some event completely eviscerated the entire front of the bow. Then punctured the hull in numerous points up to the conning tower.

Air is being pumped into the entire weapon storage and handling area aft of the forward navigation section.

Conclusions

Interesting version of events.
.
This certainly makes far more sense that “accidentally” hit an “unmarked mountain”. But whether or not it is actually true is unknown and will stay that way forever.
.
So, I do not know how true it is. We must always be aware of propaganda consisting of what we want to believe. The aspects of this particular narrative that makes sense is that it is in alignment with current Chinese technology and military doctrine.
.
What I DO KNOW, is that right after the damage to the submarine was ascertained, and the crew debriefed, a close family friend of ours who is “connected” with the USN at a high level chatted with my brother. (A man who had gone “X-ray” from me for the last year or so) And contacted me telling me to leave China immediately that there would be a massive dangerous war and he couldn’t help me. I wrote about this elsewhere.
.
This event train, along with the [1] quick rearming and [2] secret payload installation on numerous submarines at that time, fits well with this Chinese narrative. And not with the “crashed into a mountain” narrative.
.

That all being said, it is obvious that the Chinese do not want radioactive waters near the Chinese coast, so they only damaged the sub, not sunk it completely. For after all it is a nuclear sub carrying nuclear torpedoes. But we cannot expect this behavior and “safety rules” to continue with the pushing by the United States towards war. This is an aspect of war that I hadn’t thought about previously, but makes complete sense. This is why New Zealand absolutely refuses any nuclear vessels in and near it’s waters.

Yet nothing else about this incident is available anywhere. Very curious. Very, very curious. I presume there is video footage of the sub surfacing and it’s surrender. The PLA Navy seem to be toying around with the US navy like a cat would with a mouse. Seeing this video footage would greatly substantiate this narrative, but as in all things Chinese PLA, access and dissemination are tightly controlled.

It’s difficult for me to accept the American narrative that the submarine not only collided with an uncharted mountain, but that the Chinese just stood by and did nothing while a four aircraft carrier armada conducted missile drills simulating an attack on China. There are NO uncharted undersea mountains in the South China Sea. Hasn’t anyone watched the 1980’s Tom Clancy movie “Red October”? The entire ocean has been mapped.

It is also difficult for me to believe that the Chinese with all their advances and lead in military technology are thwarted by the American Navy. It just doesn’t stand up to the “sniff test”. At least not to us “technology wonks“. The Chinese have surpassed the United States military in a number of very new and novel technologies and the USA will take decades trying to counter them.

Overall, the Chinese seemed to intentionally want to disable the submarine, force it to surface, and then acquire it in a fully functional state. Whether this is for Geo-political purposes, or to reverse engineer it is unknown. My guess is the later, as they really don’t give a rat’s ass what anyone else thinks. When your reputation is shit, who cares if someone says something bad about you.

True or not, you can rest assured that this release of this information would have been war gamed and factored into the AI computations that will figure predominantly in the events of the future. The Chinese do not play around. They are a very serious nation, run on merit, and lead with capable leaders.
.
If the provocations continue, we can expect China to sink the submarines completely. The impression that I have is that they are “being gentle” at this moment in time. After all, they could have sunk the 3 billion 6 billion dollar nuclear submarine and killed the entire crew of 140 seamen. It is a top of the line, best of the best, American “prize” of the fleet. But they did not.
.
This particular Seawolf type of submarine is an offensive weapon that is designed to sneak into enemy waters, and destroy ships, shipping, and facilities. The fact that it was tracked inside Chinese territorial waters clearly indicated it’s intentions. Aside from a violation of the national sovereignty of China, it was a violation of the UN code of behaviors in the South China Sea. Sinking the ship off the Coast of China would prove to the world that the USA is a dangerous aggressor, but that would not matter, as World War III would have been ignited.
.
All in all, it took a remarkable amount of restraint not to completely sink the submarine and kill all the crew. The Chinese played this incident adroitly. They [1] demonstrated their abilities and capabilities for the world to see, and [2] showed that they have restraint. They [3] indicated that they desire peace and not war.
.
It is unfortunate that the United States cannot take these subtle hints at face value. The American government leadership tend to over-estimate their abilities, and severely under-estimate the abilities of their foes.
This was a warning. There will NOT be a second one.
.
Let’s see what happens next.
.
Given the idiots that run the United States today, I fully expect the United States government to “double down” and send their ships and submarines into harms way knowing full well that they risk the lives of all involved. I cannot see that it would matter inside the Washington DC beltway.
.
Interesting read never the less.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

Military Index

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Articles & Links

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News and stuff a collection of tidbits

Well, here’s some stuff for thought. I’m going to be all over the place here. With Scotland, China, the United States, food, girls, and being a Rufus all thrown together to make a disjointed point about being a human and showing humanity. So enjoy my ramblings and take a nice stroll in MM land here today. I hope you all enjoy it.

We start off with America

America’s Judges Are Putting My Life on the Line

Sara Nelson [New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 11-12-2021]

America needs more judges who understand and support the rights of workers. For too long, the courts have sided with corporations over labor, fundamentally and perniciously reshaping American law, life and liberty. Today, they are doing their part to unravel the American dream — and the social contract that has been in place since the 1940s, offering the working class a good life if they spend 40 hours on the job, the means to enjoy it in off hours and a secure retirement.

In one stark example, a judge in Alabama in October barred union mineworkers from picketing within 300 yards of mine entrances, even as the authorities there have failed to charge the drivers of vehicles that struck lawful picketers. In a more common infringement of free speech, a judge in Iowa limited United Auto Workers picket lines outside a John Deere plant in Davenport last month to just four people at each entrance to the plant….

This didn’t happen by accident. Republican presidents have stacked the federal courts with judges who hail from elite law schools, white-shoe law firms and corporate boardrooms. (More than a quarter of all federal judges on the bench in January had been appointed by Donald Trump.) As a result, the corporate win rate in American courts is sky-high.

This is especially true in cases heard by the Supreme Court, which has sided with the Chamber of Commerce 70 percent of the time since 2006. A study published in 2013 ranked Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas among the five most-corporate-friendly members of the court since 1946, and the pro-corporate voting rate of its conservative wing is only growing. According to one recent report, the court agrees with the Chamber of Commerce more now than it had at any other time in recent history….

This isn’t just an academic question, or even an economic one — it’s often a matter of life and death. Before he joined the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, as a judge on the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, voted to allow the firing of an employee who abandoned an unheated company truck in a blizzard to avoid freezing to death. This is just one example of the judicial callousness toward workers that has put our livelihoods and lives in real danger.

How Other Nations Pay for Child Care. The U.S. Is an Outlier.

[New York Times, October 6, 2021, via The Big Picture 11-7-2021]

Rich countries contribute an average of $14,000 per year for a toddler’s care, compared with $500 in the U.S.

GRAPH

The truth HURTS. Exceptional, my ass!

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

Yves Smith, November 10, 2021 [Naked Capitalism]

Broken chain of supply

We chartered a boat with a logistics expert to look at port congestion up close and saw how American greed is leading to shortages and empty shelves

[Business Insider, via The Big Picture 11-7-2021]

A second tour of the The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. “‘I blame 150 years of supply chain optimization,’ Nathan Strang, Flexport’s director of ocean trade lane management, told Insider of why ships are still steaming towards Los Angeles and Long Beach. ‘It’s a sign of their success, that’s causing the congestion.’”

….the ports can’t just stack up the containers until a driver comes to pick them up: “There’s no space,” Rice said…. “A lot of the congestion is due to the fact that there’s nowhere to put the empty containers.” Flexport’s Strang said. “Having some way to get those empties stored and off the chassis so that we can pick up live containers, that would actually go very far.”

American GREED. Stop blaming China.

How American leaders failed to help workers survive the ‘China Shock’

[NPR, via The Big Picture 11-7-2021]

But most economists, like most American leaders, had believed that workers would adapt somewhat smoothly to economic change and that they would find solid places to work in other sectors. “We had this notion that the American economy is this incredibly dynamic place,” says Hanson, an economist at Harvard Kennedy School. “We create millions of jobs every year, and we destroy millions of jobs every year. 

We thought we could handle moving a couple of million manufacturing workers from one sector to another.”

Autor, Dorn and Hanson’s first peer-reviewed papers from their China Shock saga were published in 2013. The economists found that between 1990 and 2007, trade with China killed about 1.5 million American manufacturing jobs, or about a quarter of all manufacturing jobs lost during that period. 

But what was even more startling: These losses were heavily concentrated in small- and medium-size communities dotting America’s heartland — and workers who lost their jobs in those areas struggled to find other work. The China Shock created what looked like miniature Great Depressions in these places.

Standard economic theory said that the non-college-educated workers who lost their jobs would move or retrain and find work in other places or sectors. But they didn’t. 

Most stayed put and were never fully employed again. “It ended up creating these pockets of distress,” Hanson says. “That was the surprising part. That’s what we economists didn’t know was going to happen.”

As Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1791: 

Experience teaches, that men are often so much governed by what they are accustomed to see and practice, that the simplest and most obvious improvements, in the [most] ordinary occupations, are adopted with hesitation, reluctance and by slow gradations … To produce the desirable changes, as early as may be expedient, may therefore require the incitement and patronage of government…

Too bad Hamilton is not required reading for economics students…

Bill Mitchell — When labour shortages just signal management caprice

[via Mike Norman Economics 11-9-2021]

I have been researching the so-called labor shortage that business types are talking about relentlessly as part of their on-going strategy to undermine the conditions of work and make more profit. 

In the course of that inquiry, I came across an interesting juxtaposition between two US companies that illustrate a lot of what we have known about for years but have allowed this relentless, neoliberal, race-to-the-bottom to obscure. 

Well-paid workers with job security, work better and are happy workers. 

Companies that pursue the ‘race-to-the-bottom’ strategy and seek to build profits by trashing the conditions they offer workers eventually struggle to prosper because their bad reputation undermines their ability to attract productive workers. 

In the case we discuss today, the so-called ‘labor shortage’ is really just a signal of management caprice. 

Rather than being a shortage of workers, there is a shortage of workers who will tolerate the indignity of low wages, onerous conditions and capricious management. 

It is also a union versus non-union type of discussion where the unionised work places generate high productivity and worker attachment, while the non-unionised workplaces find it hard to attract reliable staff and blame it all on ‘labor shortages’….

It’s all over the “West”. The capitalist democracies are all falling apart.

They’re not capitalists – they’re a criminal predatory class

[International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, via Mike Norman Economics 11-10-2021]

No shit! Dick Tracy.

David Dayen, November 12, 2021 [The American Prospect]

A new report identifies 20 major corporate recidivists, with rap sheets that should be in the sights of the Justice Department’s new approach to white-collar crime.

Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 12, 2021 [Wall Street on Parade]

Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 10, 2021 [Wall Street on Parade]

Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 9, 2021 [Wall Street on Parade]

As for leverage at hedge funds, yesterday’s Fed report had this to share:

“Hedge fund leverage remained somewhat higher than its historical average in the first quarter of 2021, according to the most comprehensive available measures. On-balance-sheet leverage at hedge funds, based on confidential data collected by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), decreased in the first quarter to a level close to its historical average. Gross leverage at hedge funds—based on the same source but including off-balance-sheet derivatives exposures—continued to be above its historical average in the first quarter.”

One needs to carefully parse the above paragraph. Why does the Federal Reserve, which has bank examiners in every mega bank that owns a trading house on Wall Street, need to ask the SEC for data about hedge fund leverage? The prime brokerage operations of those mega banks are the ones making those highly leveraged loans to hedge funds. (See our report: Archegos: Wall Street Was Effectively Giving 85 Percent Margin Loans on Concentrated Stock Positions – Thwarting the Fed’s Reg T and Its Own Margin Rules.)

Climate and environmental crises

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-12-2021]

Take a look at who actually emits the most carbon. And take a look at how much rich people in the US emit, compared to absolutely anyone else https://t.co/XGjRhj1OKE pic.twitter.com/UbNjGlx9Ld

— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) November 8, 2021

Yeah blame China, instead of looking at yourselves.

[Financial Times, via Tweet above]

The fight to protect the planet is shifting in ways that could soon exacerbate conflicts within countries, particularly between social classes. Or, to put it bluntly, between the rich and the rest. The top 1 per cent by income of the world’s population account for about 15 per cent of emissions, according to UN data. That is more than double the share of the bottom 50 per cent.

[Digg, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2021]

[Slate, via The Big Picture 11-10-2021]

The challenge is not identifying the solutions, but rolling them out with great speed.

[South China Morning Post, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-11-2021]

“The Iceland plant, called Orca, is the largest such facility in the world, capturing about 4,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. But compared to what the planet needs, the amount is tiny. Experts say 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide must be removed annually by mid-century…. Leading scientific agencies including the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say that even if the world manages to stop producing harmful emissions, that still won’t be enough to avert a climate catastrophe. They say we need to suck massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air and put it back underground – yielding what some call “negative emissions”… As dire warnings have accelerated, technology to vacuum carbon dioxide from the air has advanced. Currently, a handful of companies operate such plants on a commercial scale, including Climeworks, which built the Orca plant in Iceland, and Carbon Engineering, which built a different type of direct air capture plant in British Columbia. And now that the technology has been proven, both companies have ambitions for major expansion. At Climeworks’ Orca plant near Reykjavik, fans suck air into big, black collection boxes where the carbon dioxide accumulates on a filter. Then it’s heated with geothermal energy and is combined with water and pumped deep underground into basalt rock formations. Within a few years, Climeworks says, the carbon dioxide turns into stone.”

[Pro Publica, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-11-2021]

“ProPublica’s analysis of five years of modeled EPA data identified more than 1,000 toxic hot spots across the country and found that an estimated 250,000 people living in them may be exposed to levels of excess cancer risk that the EPA deems unacceptable. The agency has long collected the information on which our analysis is based. Thousands of facilities nationwide that are considered large sources of toxic air pollution submit a report to the government each year on their chemical emissions. But the agency has never released this data in a way that allows the public to understand the risks of breathing the air where they live. Using the reports submitted between 2014 and 2018, we calculated the estimated excess cancer risk from industrial sources across the entire country and mapped it all.”

Creating new economic potential – science and technology

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 11-9-2021]

[MIT Technology Review, via Naked Capitalism 11-11-2021]

[Brighter Side, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2021]

  • Information Age Dystopia

Securing your digital life, part one: The basics

[ars technica, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2021]

Collapse of Independent News Media

David Sirota [The Daily Poster, November 8, 2021]

This morning, the New York Times published a screed from pollster Mark Penn and former New York City lawmaker Andrew Stein demanding Democrats abandon their promised agenda ahead of the midterm elections. The massive 1,500 word op-ed — designed to define the political news cycle for the coming week — echoes a house editorial from the newspaper making much the same argument, and it mirrors previous Penn diatribes that the Times has platformed in the past.

In the process, this essay offers a rare glimpse of how corporate media imperceptibly puts its thumb on the scale for a particular ideology that is decidedly neither centrist nor objective.

The Times’ original headline on Monday’s piece (which has since been changed) read “A Way Forward for Biden and the Dems in 2022 & 2024.” It argues that President Biden should “listen to centrists (and) push back on the left” and insists Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema “are in fact the very heart of the Democratic Party.”

It’s a hot take that might be mildly interesting, if it came from voices who genuinely had the Democratic Party’s best interests in mind. However, the Times decided to not tell readers that Penn is a private equity mogul with myriad connections to the corporate world that’s looking to kill the Democratic legislative agenda that the op-ed seeks to curtail. The paper doesn’t mention Penn’s ties to No Labels, a dark money group funded by big donors that’s been vilifying Democrats’ reconciliation bill. The paper also declines to mention that Penn advised President Donald Trump during his first impeachment, nor does it mention that Stein is the guy who

The Windows XP wallpaper is now a vineyard

Who would figure?

Ammonia-based fertilizers

Ammonia-based fertilizers are made from nitrogen (it’s most of our air, so never in short supply) and natural gas or methane (CH4), and make up almost 70% of all fertilizers used world-wide to support major agriculture crops such as wheat, corn, rice and even coffee. As natural gas prices have soared by anywhere from 300% to 500% over the past months, this has had a devastating impact on world fertilizer production, where some 80% of the cost of making ammonia fertilizers is due to the natural gas cost.

What’s more, big Ammonia plants in many countries are now closing (for how long?), and  China, who is said to make 30% of the world supply of ammonia, has just banned its export.  (Check to verify).  Early next year this will all become very evident.  First hit will be animal feed so it looks like meat eating will diminish greatly.  I don’t see any way it won’t happen.

https://journal-neo.org/2021/11/12/now-the-organized-takedown-of-global-fertilizer-supply/

Here’s Guangzhou, China.

It’s a very middle class city. Full of factories and just blue-collar Chinese people. Check it out. Video.

“Where’s Waldo” Beach addition for warmer wallpaper weather!

Some stuff on China

From the Daily Stormer

Since Biden has taken over, there have been nonstop threats against China, and US warplanes and warships are racing in and out of their territories. Biden’s Secretary of Defense flew to Japan to demand that they sign a blood pact to defend Taiwan. Most of the US military activity is not much reported on in the American media (I usually read about it on RT), but we are hearing rising nonsense about the poor and pitiful Moslems, and the importance of Americans devoting their military to defending the sacred democracy of the very important nation of Taiwan.

What is incredible to me is that both the right and the left are so easily manipulated into thinking conflict with China is a good idea. For the left, I guess it makes sense. As we’ve mentioned before, the Antifa type neo-socialists who have been so heavily force-memed on social media as the Democrat Party’s internet defense force (Vaush, for example) spend a lot of time talking about how China is a “fascist state.”

For the right, the support for anti-China sentiment makes no real sense, and is mostly based on stupidity and a lack of information. Republican leaders are openly saying that they need to protect Antifa in Hong Kong, Islamic terrorists in Xinjiang, and gay marriage in Taiwan. But Sean Hannity and Mark Levin continue to talk about “the threat of Chinese communism.”

As I’ve written about before, China is not a “communist country.” The average Chinese person knows nothing about Marxism. They have a very free market (much more free than America’s), where small business is encouraged.

As I’ve written before, the fact that it is even called “The Communist Party” in English is sort of deceitful, and an exploitation of the fact that Westerners know nothing about China or its culture, including the total difference of the nature of their language. “中国共产党” is translated as “communist party” consistently, yet a direct translation, as it would be spoken in Chinese, would be something like “The Party of People Working Together to be Productive.”

That’s how Chinese people view it.

Even with their supposed “communist” connections to Southeast Asian countries, they frame it as a historical cultural connection, rather than one based on a political system designed by a German Jew in London in the 19th century.

If you asked a working class Chinese person why China, Laos, and Vietnam all use the hammer and sickle, they would say something like: “this is the symbol of Asia people,” and laugh and point at their eyes, then say “eat rice, eat noodle,” and laugh again. A more educated Chinese person might be vaguely aware of the history, but would claim that no foreigner ever influenced China in any way, ever, in all of history: “we make a big, strong wall. Cannot allow.”

Under Emperor Xi, China has become increasingly more traditional, and backing away from the kind of modernism that had been encroaching. He is attempting to reestablish a form of Confucianism.

The Chinese are effectively the opposite of everything the modern West stands for:

  • Extreme ethno-nationalists
  • Patriarchal
  • Anti-feminist
  • Anti-gay
  • Pro-family
  • Pro-middle class and anti-elitism
  • Meritocratic
  • Militaristic in individual discipline

The Chinese government recently announced a program to build masculinity among boys, as they recognize that the school environment (which was largely imported from the West) is too feminizing, that the high tech environment itself is feminizing, and they recognize masculinity as a foundation of society.

In February, the Chinese government published “The Proposal to Prevent the Feminisation of Male Adolescents,” and said that they would use sports to toughen boys up.

The Western media outright declared this to be evil. (You might not have noticed, but at some point between 2018 and 2020, the media made the jump from talking about “toxic masculinity” as a social evil to simply referring to “masculinity” as a social evil. When they began talking about “toxic masculinity,” I noted that they were playing a terminology game, and that “toxic masculinity” just meant “masculinity.”)

Chinese cultural values are virtually a direct inversion of the modern Western values created and promoted by the Jews. But it is simply the basic order of nature they are promoting. No one in any society anywhere in history before the development of the modern West could have imagined a reality in which instilling masculinity in boys or discouraging family-destroying feminist ideology was a negative thing.

Most of us still living are not old enough to even be able to imagine a situation in which a Western government encouraged masculinity or discouraged feminism. So it’s hard to say how a right-winger in America can look at Joe Biden’s government, then look at the Chinese government, and say “yes, Joe, I agree – these people are so evil that we need to put our own nation’s problems on hold and use our military to defend the Taiwanese secessionist movement from this encroaching communism or fascism or whatever.”

The only thing right-wingers can ever say about the Chinese is that they are “too authoritarian.” Generally, that person will then immediately move to “muh social credit system.”…

…Conversation falls apart…

No “Where’s Waldo” Wallpaper? Couldn’t be me.

And about the US and Taiwan…

From HERE.

…the possibility of conflict between China and Taiwan, between whom tensions have been steadily rising.

Most members of the Blob, as the foreign policy establishment is called, believe the U.S. should be ready to go to war with China over the island, which escaped the Chinese Communist Party when Chiang Kai-shek and his defeated Nationalists fled there after their defeat on the mainland.

Indeed, U.S. analysts have been debating the idea of dropping Washington’s currently ambiguous stance—refusing to say yes or no—and making a clear commitment. Although the idea of not going to war is almost entirely absent in the capital, most analysts have convinced themselves that talking tough would be enough to scare off the Chinese.

"Scare the Chinese". Fools. 

-MM

However, Taiwan is the final Chinese territory stolen away during the “Century of Humiliation,” and even younger Chinese back their government’s claim. In such a contest angry nationalism commonly trumps good sense, as in America’s Civil War.

Americans who believe Beijing will yield its claim to Taiwan without a fight risk sleepwalking into a major war, as have so many other self-assured fools throughout history.

In any case, the president recently went off-script and declared that America would fight.

His aides quickly corrected the record, so to speak, as did President George W. Bush after making a similar promise in 2001. Nevertheless, Beijing has seen more than enough continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations toward China and assume the worst, irrespective of Washington’s verbal legerdemain.

So if the People’s Republic of China decides war is necessary and believes the U.S. will fight, the People’s Liberation Army will act swiftly and brutally, hoping to win before the U.S.—nearly 8000 miles away—can interfere.

War with China would be even worse than with Russia.

The PRC would have more at stake in the fight, local superiority, a couple score bases on the mainland roughly 100 miles away, and a victim that so far has shown little inclination to defend itself.

In combat the U.S. would have little choice but to strike the mainland, which would trigger escalation, with no obvious endpoint.

Indeed, Washington, attempting to fight from half a world away, has done poorly in wargames.

It is far easier for Beijing to deter the U.S. than for America to project sufficient power to defeat the PRC. And even a U.S. victory would probably be just the first round, as a nationalistic Chinese public prepared for round two. How much is Taiwan worth to the U.S.?

Worse, imagine if Washington faced simultaneous crises, perhaps with Iran, Russia, and China at once. While most of America’s allies discovered that they were busy, very busy, but nevertheless wished the U.S. well. Indeed, they would make a very strong statement as the bullets and missiles started flying.

President Biden has always seen himself as an internationalist. That doesn’t mean he should start a war, however. Indeed, he is one of the few policymakers who today understands the reality of war. He entered public life about the same time that the Nixon administration was pulling the last U.S. troops out of Vietnam. It has been almost a half century since America fought a conflict with heavy casualties, extended ground combat, heavy air action, and mass protest at home.

However, all could return if the administration managed to stumble into one or more major wars. At least a conflict with Russia or China would make the American people forget Biden’s ragged exit from Afghanistan. However, if he wants to be reelected—and, more important, to be a good president, however long he serves—then he should concentrate on avoiding real war with real opponents, and especially multiple conflicts at once.

It’s never a good thing.

Do something to make others happy

Like this subway artist. This gal was obviously having a bad day, but the emotion on her face says it all. video.

Oh, and don’t even think about starting a war with China or Russia

"Should there be any loss of life in the US as a result of a conflict the US federal government would disintegrate. Immediately as in ungovernable. Russia as a country has strength in the solidarity of it's people. The US and Europe not so much. A price to be paid for letting the ruling class and it's masters destroy the poor and the middle class."
-So | Nov 12 2021 20:27 utc | 15

A Brief History of the Cheez-It

From HERE.

Dayton’s historic Edgemont neighborhood is cocooned inside a crook in the Great Miami River, a winding waterway that snakes through the heart of southwest Ohio. Two miles from downtown, with its air of industry, the community hearkens to a time when Dayton was hailed “The City of A Thousand Factories.”

Cheez-It crackers.

In the early 20th century, inside a foregone factory on the corner of Concord and Cincinnati Streets, Green & Green cracker company cooked up its Edgemont product line, a collection of grahams, crackers and gingersnaps that were shipped across the region. But of the company’s four Edgemont products, only one, in particular, a flaky one-by-one-inch cheese cracker, would revolutionize snack time. On May 23, 1921, when Green & Green decided to trademark the tasty treat’s unique name, the Cheez-It was born.

“In 1921, Cheez-It didn’t mean anything, so Green & Green marketed the cracker as a ‘baked rarebit,’ ” says Brady Kress, president & CEO of Dayton’s Carillon Historical Park, a nationally recognized open-air museum centered on the city’s history of innovation. (Inside Carillon Brewing Company, a fully operating 1850s brewery at the park, costumed interpreters still bake crackers over an open hearth.) “People were familiar with rarebit, a sort of melted cheddar beer cheese spread over toast. Cheez-It offered the same great taste, only baked down into a cracker that will last.”

Cheez-It’s 11-month shelf life is impressive, but so is the company’s history. In May 2021, America’s iconic orange cracker turned 100. But the Cheez-It story stretches even further back than that.

In 1841, Dr. William W. Wolf moved to Dayton to practice homeopathy, a branch of alternative medicine that believes in the healing power of food. Hailed Dayton’s “Cracker King,” Wolf concocted the Wolf Cracker, a curious hard-butter snack made for medicinal purposes.

“In the 19th century, crackers were linked to Christian physiology and sectarian medical practitioners,” says Lisa Haushofer, a senior research associate at the University of Zurich’s Institute for Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine. “Christian physiologists like Sylvester Graham, of Graham Cracker fame, were concerned about a modern diet that contained too many stimulating substances.” (In addition to being a cracker evangelist, Graham was also a pro-temperance Presbyterian minister who preached a vegetarian diet). Wolf echoed Graham’s concerns that food was far too rousing (though Graham also dubiously believed his crackers could cure licentiousness), so he launched the Wolf Cracker Bakery to churn out his wholesome snacks.

“They believed there was too much nourishment per food unit in modern bread, too much excitement,” says Haushofer. “So they recommended grain products made from coarse flour, which, they believed, contained a more natural ratio of nourishing and non-nourishing parts. Crackers were considered health food.”

Cheez-It

According to Haushofer, homeopaths at the time were also concerned about digestibility, and since they believed heating food aided digestion, baked Wolf Crackers were just what the doctor ordered. But Wolf’s patients weren’t the only ones after his crackers. What started as a medical remedy soon became a sought-after treat.

In the 1870s, while living on the barren plains of North Dakota, Dayton natives J.W. and Weston Green often longed for a taste of home. “In those days food supplies were both expensive and scarce in that region,” wrote the Dayton Journal Herald in its October 31, 1907, edition, “and the father and son regularly sent back to their old home city, Dayton[,] for those necessities that could not be obtained there. ‘Invariably,’ Mr. Green says, ‘we would include in that order a good supply of … the ‘Wolfe Cracker’ [sic].”

J.W. Green never forgot the savory, buttery, nut-like flavor of Wolf Crackers. In 1897, when Wolf died, Green purchased the Wolf Bakery Company, then enlisted his son, Weston Green, to join him in business. The Greens renamed the enterprise Green & Green Company, and while Wolf’s recipe remained the same, they rebranded the doctor’s famous treat as the “Dayton Cracker.”

By the turn of the 20th century, Dayton held more patents, per capita, than any U.S. city; surrounded by this innovative environment, Green & Green flourished, expanding its operations to nearby Springfield and Lima, and delivering baked goods across southwest Ohio. But soon, the company’s crackers became more than a regional concern. During World War I, Green & Green fired up its ovens for the war effort.

“All our facilities but one little oven that can’t be used for Hard Bread will be speeded up to keep two car loads a day going by express,” read a Green & Green ad in the Dayton Daily News’s July 14, 1918, edition … “that OUR BOYS at the front may have their Fighting Bread.”

Cheez-It

Though far less tasty than the Dayton Cracker, Dayton’s Fighting Bread sustained countless soldiers during the Great War. Typically made from salt, flour and water, Hard Bread—also known as hardtack, teeth dullers or jawbreakers—was often soaked in water before being served. If stored improperly, weevils and maggots made Hard Bread their home, prompting soldiers to dub the wartime ration “worm castles.”

“We are mighty glad and proud to be a cog in the big machine that will win the war,” read Green & Green’s ad. However, Doughboys weren’t the only ones helping win the war. “P.S. We could still use a few more women in the packing of Hard Bread.”

After World War I, Green & Green Company sidelined Hard Bread in favor of more flavorful fare. By Armistice Day, the Dayton Cracker (still made with Wolf’s original recipe) had been baked in Dayton for nearly 80 years. But while the hard butter-cracker was a local treasure, customers yearned for a delicate, flakier treat. Soon, Green & Green launched its Edgemont line, and in 1921, unveiled the “baked rarebit,” known as the Cheez-It.

“Welsh Rarebit, at its most basic form, is essentially a cheese sauce spread on toast,” says Rachael Spears, a living history specialist at Dayton’s Carillon Historical Park. “Some 19th-century English recipes specifically call for cheddar cheese. To this day, Cheez-It still advertises 100 percent real cheese, which draws a connection to its rarebit roots.”

But in 1921, Americans needed more than a novel snack. Following the Great War, the global economy dipped, and American wallets were increasingly thin. “Rarebit is a lesson in frugality,” says Kress. “It’s a nutritious dish that doesn’t cost a lot of money. When it’s baked down into a Cheez-It, it becomes a tasty treat. And just like hardtack, if you store it correctly, it will stay for a very long time. You don’t run the risk of it growing weevils.”

Cheez-It

In 1915, one pound of Green & Green crackers sold for 10 cents, roughly $2.65 in 2021 dollars. “When Uncle Sam picked men for his army overseas,” read a June 1920 Green & Green ad, “he also picked foods that would keep those picked men robust and healthy—fit for the strenuous duties ahead of them. Just as the crackers for our soldiers kept sweet and fresh in tins, so Edgemont Crackers … keep crisp and creamy in the Family Tin. Ask mother to keep a tin in her pantry.”

Cheez-Its kept Americans fed during the post-war recession, throughout the Roaring Twenties, and at the onset of the Great Depression. But by 1932, Green & Green packed up its last Family Tin and sold the business to Kansas City’s Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company.

In 1947, the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company became the Sunshine Biscuit Company; in 1996, Keebler acquired Sunshine; and in 2001, Kellogg acquired Keebler.

“The Cheez-It name has accompanied the baked cracker since its creation in 1921,” says Jeff Delonis, senior director of marketing for Cheez-It. “The original Cheez-It packaging was green and white. In the 1930s, red was introduced into the brand logo, and by the 1940s, the box included the iconic red and yellow-orange colors that remain today. The general shape and look of the cracker has largely stayed the same.”

Cheez-Its may still look the same, but the cracker’s production has soared. Once baked on the corner of Concord and Cincinnati Streets in Dayton’s Edgemont neighborhood, then shipped to regional grocers, Cheez-It sold more than 400 million packages in the U.S. alone in 2020.

Scene from Ghostbusters. Cheez-It crackers and bud beer.

“It’s super fun to think about all the cities around the country that were producing foods for local audiences,” says Kress. “Every city had them. Here’s an idea that came out of Dayton, Ohio.”

But “baked rarebit,” once a prevalent idiom used to describe an obscure cracker, has since faded, replaced by the now-ubiquitous term, Cheez-It.

“When you bake a cracker, you roll the dough out thin, kind of like a pie crust,” says Spears. “But at the heart, it’s like a thin, crispy biscuit. When you bite into a Cheez-It, you get those nice layers. Those are the layers that form if you cook it a bit.”

Like the Cheez-It itself, we need only bite into the snack’s history to uncover countless compelling layers.

“Cheez-It is a survivor from a bygone time,” says Kress.

Why I like Chinese girls…

A big smile. Happy times. Food. video.

A local Chinese girl shows you her life…

Sure, I make a couple of videos, but there are other people who are more photogenic than myself, and easier on the eyes. They show their life, and their food, and their homes.

Here’s one such girl. A friend. video.

American “democracy”…

China slams the US:

“The electoral democracy of Western countries are actually democracy ruled by the capital, and they are a game of the rich, not real democracy.

I would gladly ignore this and write it off as Soviet style propaganda, were it not for some shocking statistics from Pew research poll that supports the thesis.

According to a new Pew survey published last week, many American’s seem to share concerns about the direction of the US’s democracy. The survey can be found here: (https://cnb.cx/3ooDsKw)

“Americans largely share the view that their democracy is no longer a model: 72% say U.S. democracy used to be a good example for others to follow but has not been recently.”

Frankly, I thought the number was shocking and perhaps reveals a nation tired of covid and legislative gridlock.

Pew continues with more stunning statistics from polling in 17 advanced economies:

“Few believe U.S. democracy, at least in its current state, serves as a good model for other nations. A median of just 17% say democracy in the U.S. is a good example for others to follow, while 57% think it used to be a good example but has not been in recent years. Another 23% do not believe it has ever been a good example.”

For the record I am not agitating for a change in government, nor professing undying love for China’s communism. Some will undoubtedly make these accusations.

I present this because I think it is important to acknowledge that the US’s “global brand” has been severely tarnished. Covid, Afghanistan and an assault on the nation’s capital among others are taking their toll on the US across the globe.

If it takes harsh critique from China to get the US to pay attention so be it. And it does seem to have hit a nerve , as this article is No 1 in google news search for “China” 24 hrs running.  That’s why I’m running it.

China isn’t making this critique up out of the blue, they are going for the jugular and calling out a problem at least roughly supported by global sentiment. Interestingly, they don’t often criticize the US so this inflammatory rhetoric is a bit of a departure especially after progress with the climate deal.

You can see the influences of large banks or techs on the American government. Money has created enormous lobbying groups that make Banks and large industry unassailable. Big tech seems impossible to control. Whistleblowers from Meta, election interference, and consumers asking for privacy don’t seem to count for much.

Lest I get comments that I am “paid by China.”  This isn’t about China but about a the real problem of money’s influence in government.

If the US’s economic rival China, sees the problem, as do American citizens, why doesn’t anyone in Washington?

Hum?

China schools compared to American schools…

Check out this little dialog. video.

And this followup. Also good. video

And, thus how it manifests for a typical Chinese family. Video.

Data Testing Julian Cope’s Dunnideer Hill Alignments Theory

A great adventure in Scotland.

It’s the story or tale of how one person took the time and effort to investigate ancient ruins in his own backyard. I applaud him, and you should too. -MM

From HERE.

In his popular guidebook to British prehistoric monuments, The Modern Antiquaria n, rock musician and poet Julian Cope proposed that a distinctive Aberdeenshire hill in Scotland, the 264 meter (866 ft) high Dunnideer Hill, formed a visual focal point of reference in the landscape in relation to the positioning of ten nearby Scottish Recumbent Stone Circles (RSCs).

Notably, no physical survey data was presented by Cope so I can only assume his comments were intuitively based, undoubtedly after physically visiting each circle and seeing for himself their collective inter-visibility with Dunnideer Hill (Figure 1). A reasonable assumption, but as an archaeologist I have to be careful when accepting such intuitively based information. More so given the fact that he used emotive language such as “Mother Earth Hill” to describe it. However, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and test his “inter-visible-theory” by conducting a quantifiable survey using GPS technology .

Figure 1. Dunnideer Hill. The remains of the hill’s medieval Chapel enhances its visibility amongst the surrounding landscape. (Author provided)

Recumbent Stone Circles (RSCs) Surrounding Dunnideer Hill

The stone circles surrounding Dunnideer Hill belong to a greater class of stone rings known as Recumbent Stones Circles (RSCs). A distinctive class of prehistoric circles which were confined to North-east Scotland.

Their architecture was consistent, set out in a ring, they often contained between ten or eleven standing stones plus an outlandishly large recumbent stone that was deliberately laid flat in the southern quadrant of the respective circle – hence their name (Figure 2). Amazingly 156 of these monuments were built across the entire landscape of Aberdeenshire.

Regrettably, only 71 of them survive today.

Carbon dating places their construction to the Late Neolithic, circa 2500 BC. The original purpose for building these stone circles remains unknown but what we can say with certainty is that no human burials have been found in any of their primary contexts.

I have already written about these RSCs in a previous article published on Ancient Origins . In that paper I proposed that a single specialist was responsible for designing every one of these RSCs.

As I also mentioned in that article, these RSCs were positioned across the landscape so that they were astronomically aligned towards each other forming clusters of circles within their respective landscape settings.

See the first of my freely available YouTube videos here explaining more about how these alignments work at the circles.

Although I had suspected that these clusters of circles were deliberately aligned towards natural features of the landscape, such as hilltop summits, I did not have any survey data to prove it.

So here was an opportunity to not only test the extent of stone circle alignments towards natural hills but also see if Julian Cope was correct.

Figure 2. The distinctive architecture of an RSC. A ring of standing stones plus its recumbent stone as seen at the Strichen House RSC. (Author provided)

The Ancient History of Dunnideer Hill

Of course my starting point was Dunnideer Hill. Located close to the small town of Inch, Aberdeenshire, this hill possesses its own long archaeological history.

Unfortunately, if ever a stone circle stood on the summit of this hill then whatever evidence for it is now lost.

Nevertheless, some 440 meters (1,443 ft) downslope, north-west of the summit, are the remains of the Dunnideer RSC (B), indicating that the hill was at least known to the Neolithic communities as far back as 2500 BC.

Survey Method Used at Dunnideer Hill

To survey the alignments between the Dunnideer Hill and its surrounding cluster of ten stone circles , I utilized GPS technology in the following manner. Standing on the summit of Dunnideer Hill, the GPS plotted my precise position on the ground.

This information was then relayed back to me via a positional coordinate for where I was standing.

Then systematically moving to each of the surrounding RSCs, the GPS plotted my successive positions, each time providing me with the corresponding coordinates. Using the “go to” facility on the GPS, I could then obtain the distance and direction travelled between each coordinate.

After completion I was able to cross-reference the combined GPS data to produce the maps discussed here.

What I was particularly looking for with the GPS data was to search for astronomical alignments between the hill and the surrounding ten stone circles .

Now, if I know the angle of the ecliptic (between the Sun and Earth) at around 2500 BC, I can divide that angle by the exact latitude for the hill and whichever stone circle I was standing at.

This “scientific calculation” then gives me the directions of where the Sun rose or set on the days of midwinter and midsummer for Aberdeenshire around 2500 BC.

With some adjusting (to cater for the angle of the moon’s orbit around the Earth), I could also determine similar positions for the Moon as well. After obtaining this scientific calculation I was ready to start.

The Dunnideer summit has been subjected to many alterations and much disturbance since that time. For instance, during the British Iron Age, a hill fort (circa 700 – 500 BC), was dug out across its summit. 1,500 years later, a medieval Chapel with both solid stone flooring and walling was built above the foundations of the fort, destroying anything below it.

Still, the views from the top of Dunnideer Hill are amazing (and well recommended – despite the short climb). Certainly, I could imagine the Neolithic specialist builder standing here some 4,500 years ago, viewing the landscape below, pondering where to position the ten stone circles in relation to those areas of land below being opened up for domestication and cultivation.

Figure 3. The ten RSCs selected for survey that are also inter-visible with Dunnideer Hill. (Dr. John Hill)

Dunnideer Hill Survey Results

I had established with my GPS an arbitrary distance equal to a radius of 6 km (3.72 mi.) circumnavigating Dunnideer Hill.

This radius immediately captured the ten RSCs (Figure 3). The logic behind this arbitrary distance being that (at the most) it would take an hour to walk from the farthest RSC to the hill. Secondly, all ten circles were physically inter-visible with good views of Dunnideer Hill.

Incidentally, another interesting observation uniting this cluster of circles is that they all shared similar oval-shaped large but thin recumbent stones – usually these recumbent stones are very broad and thick (Figure 4).

Possibly, these thin recumbent stones signified a specific local identity associated with this particular cluster surrounding the Dunnideer Hill.

Figure 4. Three examples of the thin, oval-shaped recumbent stones. 1 = Dunnideer RSC; 2 = Wantonwells RSC; 3 = Stonehead RSC. (Author provided)

After compiling the GPS data from Dunnideer Hill, the rock musician’s theory of it being a focal point for the surrounding stone circles was proving to be disappointing. I could not find any data that would indicate that the hill possessed any astronomical correspondences towards the surrounding ten circles other than them being inter-visible with the summit.

Incidentally, Dunnideer Hill is not the only hill in this landscape, there are other hills which could have acted as alternative focal points. Nonetheless, I wanted to give Cope the benefit of the doubt, so I continued to collect GPS data from the surrounding stone circles.

As I visited each of the stone circles I needed to re-compute my original scientific calculation. When I was standing on top of Dunnideer Hill’s summit I was looking downward towards the directions of the surrounding stone circles, so the altitude factor (within my first equation) did not matter with regard to the astronomical data I collected.

Now, standing at the circles, I was looking upward, towards the summit of the hill, so I had to make the necessary adjustments for the “upward” angle of altitude.

Having made these adjustments to my second equation the results I was anticipating began to materialize but not in the manner I expected. Yes, Dunnideer Hill was important to the astronomical alignments connected with the ten circles, but it was not the single focal point as I thought it would be.

Rather than being a single point of reference in the landscape for any one of its surrounding RSCs, the data suggests that Dunnideer Hill appears to have acted like an axis mundi around which the rising and setting of both the Sun and Moon would be seen to rotate during the seasons.

And it all depended on when and where one was standing in order to see the corresponding astronomical event at each of the respective stone circles. Indeed, one would have to follow a circular route around the hill, visiting each circle at different seasons to appreciate how the Neolithic communities organized their agricultural and ceremonial calendars.

In short, they were using the hill as a gigantic beacon in the landscape to monitor the movements of the Sun and Moon. Or rather, the cosmos above revolved around the earthen-hill below, with the hill acting as the axis mundi .

Let me explain further.

In Figure 5 we see an alignment between Ardlair RSC (A), Dunnideer Hill and Old Rayne RSC (F). Taking into account the altitude factor for the hill, then the alignment runs due east / west. So let us imagine that we are standing at Ardlair RSC, looking eastward, and watching the Sun as it appears to rise behind the eastern summit of Dunnideer Hill. When the Sun appears to rise in this direction then we have an astronomical alignment between the two circles (and the hill between them).

Now, this is the alignment that would only occur on the morning of either the spring, Vernal (21st March), or autumn equinox (21st September). And vice versa, standing at the Old Rayne RSC, looking westward we can watch the equinox sunsets, setting behind the hill in the direction of the Ardlair RSC. Thus, the two circles and the hill align with the equinoxes and as such we have an ingenious method of predicting the times in the agricultural calendar for sowing (i.e. spring) and harvesting (i.e. autumn).

Figure 5. The equinox alignments between two RSCs and Dunnideer Hill. (Dr John Hill)

Similarly, in Figure 6, we can see an alignment between Wantonwells RSC (G) and Dunnideer RSC (B), with Dunnideer Hill again positioned in the middle of the two circles. The axis of this alignment corresponds to the direction of the summer solstice sunset (21st June) and vice versa the direction of the winter solstice sunrise (21st December). So if we were to stand at Wantonwells RSC and watching the sunset behind the hill then we would be looking in the direction of both north-west and the Dunnideer RSC (at the time of midsummer sunset). Such an observation might have been a cue for the Neolithic farmers to move their cattle northward, during the warm summer months, to the higher pastures around the Candle Hill RSC (D).

Alternatively, standing behind Dunnideer RSC and watching the sunrise behind Dunnideer Hill in the direction of Wantonwells RSC, then we would be looking towards the direction of the midwinter sunrise. Seeing the sunrise in this direction may have been the cue for the Neolithic communities to commence the culling of their surplus livestock which would have provided them with plenty of meat for the cold winter months.

The GPS also provided data to support the statement that the Neolithic communities were also using Dunnideer Hill as a means to monitor the movements of the Moon. For instance, the alignment between Wantonwells RSC (G), the hill and the Stonehead RSC (C) captures the setting position of the midwinter full moon at its most southerly position on the distant horizon. In effect, by using Dunnideer Hill as an axis mund i, the Neolithic communities could operate (albeit a basic) solar-lunar calendar.

Figure 6. Solar and lunar alignments revolving around the axis mundi of Dunnideer Hill. (Dr John Hill)

I did not want to bombard the reader with too much of the astronomy in this article, so the above examples are just a sample of the alignments I have obtained for this particular cluster of stone circles. For sure, there are many more alignments that I could have discussed here. Of course, the reader may question as to how these astronomical alignments were achieved when their inter-visibility between the stone circles mentioned here was blocked by Dunnideer Hill.

Certainly, this is an important question and in in my recent book The Recumbent Stone Circles of Aberdeenshire I propose a number of solutions. But for now, I would ask the reader to view my second freely available video which demonstrates how the geometry used to construct these circles and captured the symbolism associated with the astronomical alignments across the landscape: Ancient knowledge, Sacred geometry at the Loanhead of Daviot stone circle .

But here is another one of my solutions. That is the people were using “smoke signals” across the landscape in order to set out their stone circles in alignments (Figure 7). We have good archaeological evidence that fires were regularly set alight before, during and even after these RSCs were constructed. Although whatever the reasons for these fires remains conjectural, I can reasonably propose that they were a sure way for the Neolithic communities to set out their stone circles in straight lines across the landscape, especially when their visibility was blocked by natural hills such as Dunnideer Hill.

Figure 7. The Neolithic communities used smoke signals to set out accurate alignments across the landscape. (Dr John Hill)

Dunnideer Hill as Axis Mundi

As well as acting as a visible focal point in the landscape, Dunnideer Hill also operated as an axis mundi for the local Neolithic communities to organize their agricultural activities. Of course, I have so far interpreted the GPS data within the practical terms of farming and there is no reason why sacred explanations could not also be offered. Social ceremonies such as weddings or funerals could have been scheduled around the hill in accordance to the relative positions of the Sun and Moon.

Indeed, at certain times of the year the solar and lunar orbs may have even been invited guests to visit the stone circles. An ethnographic analogy springs to mind here with the ancient Japanese, shamanistic religion of Shinto, which was populated by kami-spirits who lived on the summits of certain sacred hills across the Nippon landscape. The Shinto-shamans would place special stones and rocks at the bases of such hills in order to entice the benevolent spirits to come down from their summits and enjoy both the seasonal gatherings and offerings left by the people in exchange for good fortune and productive harvests.

Finally, I should thank Julian Cope for his intuitive observations. Had he not written about his ideas about the “inter-visibility-theory” between Dunnideer Hill and its surrounding stone circles then I would not have undertaken this GPS survey nor written this report.

MM video riding in the taxi on tuesday

Here’s what it’s like in my “neck of the woods”…video

I do love watching people who love their jobs…

We should all be doing what we love.

And more about China from the Daily Stormer…

“Jewish conservatives” and shill conservatives in general have a script to inject China into everything, despite the fact that China is not running Western governments. This is partially a way to protect the people who are running our governments, by offering the distraction of a foreign enemy, but also a way to pump up anti-Chinese sentiment so that people will support conflict with them.

My goal is first and foremost to simply tell the truth. My goal is not to defend every aspect of Chinese society and culture. Politically, however, I am opposed to a war with the Chinese. Even more than that, I am against this obsession with the Chinese, which is so obviously a result of the fact that they are not on board with the globalist agenda. If you go around talking about China all the time, the only thing you are doing is shifting blame from our own leaders and feeding this drive for world government.

To the extent that I am a Chinese shill, this is the thing: as long as China is standing as an independent country, this world government cannot exist. Therefore, I am “pro-CCP” in that I am against this lunatic plan for a global tyrannical government. I also admire their strength as a people, nation, and race. How could I not admire them, when they’re the only thing standing between me and a brutal hell on earth? Furthermore, the Chinese haven’t ever done anything to me. Well, I take that back. One time I was staying at a hotel in Bangkok, and a group of Chinese tourists checked in, and they were spitting in the hallways and the elevator, so I had to switch to a different hotel. Eventually, in Bangkok, you learn that there are hotels that do not allow Chinese tourists.

But even with the spitting/yelling/cigarette-flicking – you can uncover something admirable about the Chinese. The reason that so many Chinese tourists behave in ways that we consider crude is that the overwhelming majority of the Chinese middle class are the children of literal rice farmers, who grew up in fields without electricity. Now, in one generation, their children are rich, living in a futuristic society.

China’s social credit system is a result of something called “being Asian.” The Asian social contract is totally different than the white one. No one in China other than criminals and CIA cults opposes the social credit system.

Everyone has seen this clip (regularly used by Ezra Levant), and talked about how terrible it is.

‘Social Credit Score System China’ … and how it works! 😡 pic.twitter.com/vOzt0lZphf
— daisymay4263 (@daisymay4263) October 1, 2021

But in the clip, the Chinese all say they support social credit scores. The response is “oh they’re scared not to say that.” Okay, well, we don’t see Chinese diaspora around the world opposing this system.

You can disagree with that, and I certainly would not want a social credit system in America, but nations should have self-determination.

Whining about the social credit system and supporting anti-CCP policy because of it is no different than saying that you support the war in Afghanistan because you’re against Sharia Law.

All of this stuff about how America is becoming like China is totally nonsensical.

I have a few simple questions for conservatives making these claims:

  • Where are my masculinity classes for young boys? Where is my program to discourage feminism?
  • Where is my nonstop propaganda about the superiority of my race, culture, and nation?
  • Where is my economic program to strengthen the middle class?
  • Where are my low taxes for family businesses and high taxes for large corporations?
  • Where are my anti-trust laws?

Comparing the Chinese social credit system to the attempts to force this vax pass thing in the West is apples to Doritos. “We’re becoming more like China because of the vaccine passport being like the social credit system” is a shallow, stupid take aimed at people who have low IQs or are just uninformed about the world.

It’s like saying America is becoming like Afghanistan because women have to cover their faces in public because of the virus.

It’s moronic on par with Dinesh D’Souza saying that Black Lives Matter is inspired by Adolf Hitler.

The only reason someone would make an argument so obviously dumb is if they were trying to manipulate you.

I will say again that I have no specific desire to defend everything the Chinese government does. I will certainly not defend everything they have done since the revolution.

However, while I do not agree with it, the “one child policy” is very overstated by Western critics. Westerners generally have no idea at all how Asian culture works. And they shouldn’t be expected to.

I personally find it interesting, but outside of that, no one in America should be under any obligation to understand the dynamics of Chinese culture.

Unless of course, they are making judgements about them – which apparently everyone in the West feels compelled to do now.

There are many things that Westerners simply could not possibly ever understand about Asia, no matter how much information they had, simply because the historical development of the culture, and the genetics behind it, are too different.

The role of law and the concept of law enforcement is an example of something no white person is ever going to grasp.

Here’s a big think for you: during most of 2020, Christians in America were banned from attending church, while Chinese Christians were not.

In Australia, the number two country which claims to be fighting against China to create freedom, Christians are still banned from attending church.

It’s again just utterly dishonest and slimy to have these publications that express open hatred for Christianity claim that the Chinese government is at war with Christianity, while the CIA is using these home churches to incite revolution against the government.

It’s like if the CIA were using hamburger stands to traffic guns into China and the Chinese government arrested them and the New York Times ran the headline “Inside China’s Brutal Crackdown on Hamburgers” – of course, right next to “You Must Eat Bugs: Americans Have Only One Week to Stop Eating Burgers Before Cow Farts Cause Deadly Earthquake.”

By pointing to “authoritarianism,” people who are trying to demonize China can make a superficial surface level critique without any context and leap to “China is the model for the New World Order.”

The attacks on China are disorganized and weird, but they are working very well.

Frankly, I’m the only person I’m aware of that is offering meaningful analysis of the China situation in the English language, aside from a few white guys who live in China.

China is a closed society, due not to communism, but to the massive language and cultural gap.

Food cubes – Can you name them all?

Food cubes.

And some more stuff from the Stormer…

Though it is clear that the globalist agenda hinges on regime change in China…

… that rampant anti-Chinese propaganda abounds…

… and that the entire political and military apparatus in Washington supports using the military to “defend Taiwan,” ….

… the US plan to destroy the CCP is completely unclear.

Right now, China is finally standing up and pushing back against this bullying.

If they decided to “invade” Taiwan, the Taiwanese military would put up less of a fight than the Afghan military.

Americans have no idea what is going on in Taiwan.

I would be surprised if even one soldier fired a shot if the CCP military landed in Taipei, and at least 40% of the people would openly greet them as liberators.

The people who are still against reunification in theory would just shrug, and carry on with their day.

No one in Taiwan even understands the concept of the mainland “taking their freedoms.”

No one thinks that anything substantial that affects them personally would change, other than gays and maybe some feminist women.

A lot of people want the CCP to come in and ban gay marriage.

The US forcing the gay marriage thing really rustled a lot of Taiwanese people.

Imagine the internet being flooded with videos of PRC troops landing in Taiwan and people either smiling and waving or just going about their business.

Imagine the female president of Taiwan giving a public statement apologizing to the Chinese people for “disrespectful behaviors and mean-spirited actions.”

Chuck Schumer and Ben Sasse could call a bipartisan press conference to release secret satellite photos of buildings in Taiwan that look shockingly similar to the infamous Hitler steam chambers.

They could bring in the daughter of the Taiwanese ambassador to cry and say she saw CCP soldiers eating babies.

But the jig would be up.

Seriously: what is the US going to do if China takes Taiwan? They’re going to start World War III?

I guess?

Every US military simulation about defending Taiwan from an “invasion” shows China winning, meaning the only option would be for the US to escalate.

China has consistently said they are going to fire nukes.

So we’re going to go to nuclear war for gay sex in Taiwan?

I sure looks like it.

How prepared is the US for nuclear war?

Who has been running the strategy on that front for the last two decades or so?

Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin?

Do what you can to help others.

Again, this subway artist strikes again. video.

Mysterious Carved Stone Balls Found in Scottish Isle Tomb

There’s a lot of interesting history in Scotland. Like this very curious article.

From HERE.

A 5,500-year-old tomb discovered on a Scottish island will soon be reclaimed by the sea. Archaeologists racing to excavate the site, “before it’s lost forever,” have discovered two enigmatic carved stone balls at the site.

Over the last two centuries archaeologists in Scotland have only discovered about 500 of these mysterious balls.

Dating back to between 3500 BC and 1500 BC, most carved stone balls measure around 3 inches (7.6 cm) in diameter, therefore, fitting easily into the palm of a closed hand. A 2017 Ancient Origins article explored a range of possible purposes for these stone balls.

While some archaeologists maintain they were hunting projectiles and fishing weights, others point out that most are flawless, and suggest they were sacred artifacts passed down from generation to generation.

The Press and Journal article reported that Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark, senior curator of prehistory (Paleolithic – Neolithic) at National Museum of Scotland, posted about the discovery of the two balls on Twitter.

He pointed out that only about 20 carved stone balls dating to the Neolithic have ever been found on Orkney.

The two balls recently discovered on Orkney were described by Dr Anderson-Whymark as a “cracking find from the tomb.”

The researcher described one of the balls as “size of a cricket ball,” and that it was “perfectly spherical and beautifully finished.”

The second carved stone ball found in the Neolithic tomb site at the edge of the sea at Tres Ness, Sanday, Orkney, Scotland. ( University of Central Lancashire )

The Rare Carved Stone Balls Of Scotland: Purpose Unknown!

Carved from both hard and soft stones, most carved stone balls have six projections (knobs) but they have been discovered with as many as 160. In 1876, J. Alexander Smith suggested that when bound to wooden handles the balls would have made efficient “ axe-like weapons .”

However, in the 1970s Dorothy N. Marshall pointed out that most of the balls are nearly flawless, and that ancient people wouldn’t have spent that much time and effort on spherical accuracy for a weapon.

The most recently discovered stone balls were found on what is, arguably, the most astoundingly beautiful of the many spectacular beaches in Orkney .

Tres Ness, on the island of Sanday, is according to Orkney.com “a special place.”

The website says you will often be the only people on the beach, “soaking up the ancient scenery as if you’re on a deserted island.”

However, for the last few years the prevailing silence has been disturbed by the chinking and chipping sounds of archaeologist trowels resounding from one of the island’s Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement that is about to fall into the sea forever.

Changes Times, Changing Coast Lines

The two Orkney stone balls were discovered within a Neolithic burial tomb. According to a report in Press and Journal the tomb on Tres Ness is formally known as “a stalled cairn” where the burial space was compartmentalized.

Dating back to around 3,500 BC the burial structure represents one of the oldest remaining buildings in Scotland and it was here that a team of archaeologists found the two rare stone balls. And luckily too, as the site is quickly being clawed away by the encroaching sea .

Professor Vicki Cummings is a reader in archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire.

She speculates that the tomb at Tres Ness was probably associated with the Neolithic settlement at the Cata Sand archaeological site.

Located about a mile-and-a-half away from the Tres Ness tomb, Cummings said that both sites and the beautiful beach at Tres Ness are under immediate threat from coastal erosion .

Another view of the Neolithic cliffside tomb side on Sanday. The left edge of the tomb is a seaside cliff that is eroding quickly. (University of Central Lancashire)

Sadly, The Sanday Orkney Site Is Vanishing Into The Sea

In the early Neolithic period both sites would have been located on a headland high above the coastline overlooking the sea from the distance and from above.

However, like sugary drinks working away at the roots of teeth, over time, the headland has been eaten away leaving the sites on the edge of a new, super-erosive, tidal coastline.

Cummings added that one major factor for the rapidly changing environment is the lack of trees, whereas in the Neolithic the entire area was wooded.

Cummings said, “sadly the site is vanishing into the sea,” so the focus of the site archaeologists is to extract as much information as possible “before it is basically lost forever.”

The discovery of the two rare carved stone balls really is what Dr Anderson-Whymark said, “a cracking find from the tomb.”

More from the Stormer…

Who is even running the US government?

Where are the adults?

The people running the US government are going around trying to force vax everyone, turn children into trannies as part of a program to normalize sex with children, and claiming that there’s a secret QAnon terrorist group planning to overthrow the government.

Then behind those freaks you’ve got freaks like Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab planning to turn themselves into genetically-engineered cyborg immortals.

Everything that is going on in the Western world is just as absurd and unserious as it is sickening and evil.

Here’s a thing which is happening: people – probably most of you reading this – are confusing the total power of the current US government for competence.

This is very natural, psychologically – it makes fundamental sense that people with absurd amounts of power would have to have competence.

But, if we break down the fact that these people inherited this power structure, then you might look at it like the logic of assuming a guy driving a Lamborghini must be rich, before you find out it was stolen.

It took me a long while to process it myself, and I definitely didn’t have a full understanding of it until Joe Biden took over as our overlord, but these people are not competent.

Upon closer inspection, we realize they are actual morons.

As a thought experiment: try to think of one single thing that the Democrats have done since assuming total domination of America that is indicative of competence.

The only thing you will likely be able to think of is the fact that they’ve managed to keep this virus thingy rolling, but that is obviously virtually entirely managed by the media.

And the success of the project is entirely dependent on the docility of the American people.

Same people, ten years later

MM home video

I took a minute to record what China is like. I was on my way to my office, and the contract of what China is compared to the crazy insanity that America is is breathtaking. It’s calm here. It’s nice and pleasant here. It’s clean, safe, relaxed, and healthy. video.

K-pop dance studios

As I have repeatedly stated in previous other articles, There’s three k-pop studios in my office building, and I often do down to watch the girls dance, make some friends, and find an opportunity to “pal around” with all the pretty girls there.

Here’s a gal performing vibrato by Stellar. video.

Some fine butt action there. LOL.

Some more from the Stormer…

China is understandably tired of having their country surrounded by the US military…

They are tired of being threatened and bullied.

And they’re tired of the humiliation of not being able to control their own internationally recognized national borders.

Yes, even the US recognizes Taiwan as a part of China…

…I guess people apparently don’t even know that.

Maybe the US will go to war, maybe they won’t – I have no way of predicting that.

I think it’s impossible to predict, given that there is no real order to the decisions being made by the people running the US government, other than that they are following this “New World Order” plot that was laid out by people who are already dead.

Most likely, if China took Taiwan, the leaders of the US would flinch, and that would signal the end of US global supremacy.

The empire would then enter into rapid decline, as without US military supremacy, there is no logic to the dollar as global reserve currency.

This would be a total tailspin, and America would look like the opening of that Dawn of the Dead remake.

It’s going to be a rough scene.

The best thing for you in such a situation would be if you – wait for it – lived in a rural community.

There will be serious rioting and all of the Walking Dead type stuff.

The blacks will probably form cannibal gangs pretty early on, but they’ll just end up eating each other. After eating his last remaining lieutenant, the last cannibal warlord in any given city will be totally alone, and his last words before he starves to death will be: “muffuggen wite ppl did dis.”

What will not happen: the Chinese will not invade America to enslave people in communism with their social credit system.

If you think that the Chinese want to invade America and enslave people, then you basically need to accept that you just don’t really have any idea what is going on.

Why would the Chinese want to invade and enslave Americans?

Just to be mean?

Do Chinese people strike you as that emotional, that they would waste huge amounts of resources in order to engage in an act of geopolitical meanness?

The entire Chinese mindset, and their entire marketing strategy as a superpower, is that they don’t invade countries, and instead trade with countries and invest in countries’ infrastructure.

There are all of these books published by Western universities over the last five years talking about how the US strategy of trying to convince countries to side with them over the Chinese was failing, and that all the countries who had made economic pacts with the Chinese were generally happy with the results.

China’s strategy has been to basically portray the US as a country of violent lunatics trying to enslave the planet with their military and their debt economic system.

And they are 100% accurate. -MM

Anthony Blinken was apparently chosen as Secretary of State because, along with being a Jewish Zionist, he’d given a bunch of speeches about the need for a new strategy to confront China in order to maintain US dominance.

It turns out he does’t have any such strategy, but he’s adamant that there needs to be a new one, which is more than the other candidates for Secretary of State were able to offer, apparently.

During his March meeting with Chinese adults, his first and thus far only major appearance on the global stage, Blinken brought a woman with purple hair and channeled Holden Caulfield when the Chinese “phonies” said that Americans need to start applying themselves to their job of maintaining world order.

America is viewed as weak by the rest of the world under the Biden administration. 
Putin is challenging Biden with live debate. 
And at the Alaska Summit, China told Blinken how he views America. ⬇️⬇️⬇️

pic.twitter.com/dNvSHFa0GN

— Rob Stark (@starkrob21) March 19, 2021

It’s rumored that during his interview for the job, Blinken did a pretty decent rendition of “Stairway to Heaven,” which Biden’s wife and caretaker “Doctor” Biden found “so dreamy.”

(Yes, Blinken actually was in a band and has admitted that his first choice for a career was “pop star.” Yes, he really had a single called “Lip Service,” which he wrote for Kamala Harris. Yes, that last part is a joke. I mean the Kamala Harris part. He really did release a single called “Lip Service,” which is on Spotify. This is going to go down in history alongside Caligula marrying his horse.)

Yes, after the total collapse, if you survive, then in 2050, there’s a high likelihood you will have a Chinese landlord.

Except maybe not, because if you survive the meltdown, it probably means you own rural land.

The point is: everything is probably all going to work out.

The ZOG empire is going to collapse, and the world is going to then be controlled by a Chinese merchant network, where the concept of “empire” is based on trade rather than military strength.

People will be fine in such a situation.

Certainly a lot better than we are now, under these guys.

In the Chinese version of Star Wars, Darth Vader has a pet triceratops.

Also, instead of blowing up Alderaan, he blows up the Kennedy Space Center.

Furthermore, Obi-Wan rides a motorcycle and wears a knight’s armor.

Han Solo is heavily grizzled, but he wears a heart locket.

Ask yourself: wouldn’t the new Star Wars movies have been better if instead of being about feminism and race-mixing, they explored Darth Vader’s relationship with his triceratops?

I rest my case.

Built like a fish.

In China, the idea of the perfect shape is one that resembles the smooth thin lines of a fish. Much like this girl does. video.

Or this woman who is shaped like a fish…

Nice bouncy Chinese woman. My guess is that she had implants, and the only way you can achieve such an aggressive bouncy softness is with the Motiva Ergomax implants. video. Yeah, these sixth generation implants are truly something.

It makes me want to play with her boobies. Jiggle. Jiggle. Jiggle.

China infrastructure projects.

It’s all totally under reported in the West.

video

Delivery guy stops and becomes a Rufus…

Just an ordinary guy, doing ordinary things, when he sees a boy drowning. In a split second he make the decision to dive in and save the boy. video

How to make authentic Pepper-pork

Here’s how you do it. It’s so easy, and OMG so very, very delicious. Give it a try, you will not regret it. video.

What it is like leaving the KTV going to the hotel…

Ah. For those of you who are not aware. This is what it is like leaving the business KTV hostess and having an evening of fun. It’s riding in the car to the hotel for the final enjoyment of the evening.

It was a fun evening. video.

Finally, Be the Rufus!

Imagine a world where everyone is nice to each other. Where families can live without worries, fear or threats. Imagine a place where everyone is helpful. Well, you don’t have to wait. You can start doing it now. Today. Just go forth and do some random acts of kindness. Smile at people. Go out of your way to be nice. Just put a little bit of sunshine in the lives of others. Be the Rufus. video.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

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A no nonsense comparison between the USA and China

There’s all sort of idiocy on the internet today, as well as very powerful forces that are trying to convince people of this ideology, or that ideology. Well, here we are going to cut through all the nonsense and spell things out plainly and clearly. And it is going to make some people very upset. But I don’t care. Truth hurts. Deal with it, and move on.

This article deals with things as they are. Not what we want them to be. It also deals with the truth as it manifests, not what we want, but what actually exists today.

This article compares China and the USA. If you cannot handle it, then leave. Your tender sensibilities are of no concern to me.

Governance

China is a meritocracy. America is a kakistocracy.

And that is the way it is. China is not communist “regime”. America is not a “free” republic, nor a democracy “on a shining hill”. And both nations are functionally different from their labels. So let’s look at what they functionally operate as.

The United States

There is a lot of bullshit floating about. When I grew up in the United States, I was taught that America was a republic, but when I asked my teacher why everyone called it a democracy, he told me that it was changed by amendment into a democracy by mandating popular elections. Republics don’t do that. Later on, in university, when studying history, I learned that all democracies evolve.

Here’s the evolutionary stages for a democracy. This is not my opinion. It is history. If you cannot handle history, then leave.

  • Democracy evolves to an oligarchy.
  • And if the oligarchy isn’t destroyed by popular revolt, it evolves into a Military dictatorship.
  • If unchecked, a military dictatorship evolves into a military empire.
  • And all military empires devolve into a kakistocracy.
  • And historically a kakistocracy always collapses one way, or the other.

This is where America is today. There is not a person who is alive who can deny this today.

kakistocracy = a government of a state by its most stupid, ignorant, least qualified and unprincipled citizens in power.

Now, let’s look at China.

China

Contemporaneous China was established by Chairman Mao as a Communist nation.

This changed upon his death, and there were various factions fighting for power. Eventually, under Mr. Deng, China embraced capitalism, and democracy, while maintaining a single party rule. Thus it became a “Social Democracy”.

Over the years, boundaries and limits have been placed on which elements of socialism fit the Chinese culture, as well as which elements of capitalism fit the Chinese culture.

Today, we have a unique government style, very reminiscent of the government described by Robert Heinlein in Starship Troopers. (My article on this subject is an important read. Click on the link for more.)

Government participation is voluntary. To join the government (the communist party) you must contribute to society without any profit motives. As they said in Starship Troopers, “Service guarantees citizenship”.

So, if you want to vote in China’s democracy, you must first volunteer for the military, or any other volunteer government agencies. Then you must apply, and your membership is reviewed by your merit. There is a strict grading system, and your sponsor into the communist party is held personally responsible for any failings or errors you may make.

Up the chain of command, every step toward leadership roles are though merit driven avenues. Further there are police; known as the “corruption police” that root out, and punish any communist party members that take bribes, involved in graft, do bad or poor behaviors, and they are punished MOST severely.

There is nothing like this anywhere else in the world. And nothing like this ever in history.

China is an absolute meritocracy.

So to recap;

  • China is a meritocracy; a society governed by people selected according to merit.
  • America is a kakistocracy; government by the least suitable or competent.

Middle Class

Both America and China have different cultures, and different societies. But I like to judge the benefits of one society over the other by the size of it’s middle class.

In this case, we will extract the size of the middle class in a binary fashion. Saying that aside from the top 0.01%, the society can be broken down into two categories.

There is the poor. And there is the middle class.

Where within the middle class are stratified levels or layers.

But as long as you are in this middle range, you are doing well. Sure, you might not own your own private jet, but you won’t be starving either. An idealized nation will have everyone living without want or need; they would all be middle class. They would own their own home, always have enough food, medical care, and a role in society.

Now keeping things real, “Middle class” is not a measure of how many houses, or cars that you own. It’s a measure of whether or not you need the government to assist you in meeting basic needs of food, shelter, and medical care.

Using published information…

Freedom and Responsibility

The “talking heads” on all the media talks up a “great game” about how America has “freedom!” as if it actually existed. Freedom is not just words on a piece of paper that can be taken away by legislation, hello!, it’s something that you live with. And since it is something that you live with, comes responsibility.

America and China differ substantially in this regard.

America is a land of “anything goes” freedom with zero responsibility. The boundaries on the use of that freedom are defined by law. Limitations on what laws can exist is supposed to be met under the terms of the Bill of Rights, but that document has been riddled with so many exceptions that it no longer is a functional document. Thus you have a society where people can do anything, just as long as they are not caught by the police in breaking a law.

China, on the other hand, treats freedom as something precious that is dished out in measured amounts to those who are responsible. This is measured by the “Social Scoring” system. If you are responsible, you are permitted great deal of freedom. If not, then you have your “wings clipped” and live a more restricted life.

  • America = All freedom. No responsibility, can act within the confines of law.
  • China = Freedom and responsibility are intertwined, and measured for compliance.

Community

I also like to measure society buy it’s communities. This measurement comes in many forms, but fundamentally it is a complex mixture of safety, social interaction with others, access to basic transportation, quality of life, costs of groceries, access to parts and public areas, and friendships.

This is all very difficult to measure. So we are going to look at this in a broader sense. We will look at the most popular community structures in China and America and then compare them.

In China, most people live in these housing complexes. These are enormous skyscrapers that are surrounded by a wall, and is secured by security police known as BaoAn’s. Within that complex is at least one park, multiple recreation areas, kindergarten and elementary schools, a police and local government administration office, a post office, and individual parking.

While homes can be rented in these complex’s, most people buy a house. Thus securing a long term residence that allow direct participation with all their neighbors. Additionally, people in the building complexes are all on social media and share thoughts, stories, issues and needs in real time, as they develop.

It is not at all unusual to see evenings filled with children playing in the open areas, the parks and the buildings. Old people walk on the sidewalks and walkways, and BaoAn’s mingle with the residence. This is normal China.

In America, most people yearn for a home. They buy a home in the country, or suburb, and (if they are rich enough) a home / apartment in a city. In all cases, they are isolated from each other. If they want to be part of the community, they must make an effort to do so. It is not automatic, and thus many people tend to stay inside and isolate. The suburbs in America are some of the quietest and loneliest places on the earth.

  • China = An active community of participation.
  • America = A nice home in isolation with little community participation.

Now, I could go on and on…

I can site facts and figures. Like the percentage of people who drive, or the percentage of people who are employed, or the effort it takes in literacy. But that’s an easy and a silly way to measure things. You just cannot take things in isolation and measure them. You need to provide a “level playing field” and then measure from there.

People use GDP, for instance. But GDP is flawed. And I will repeat my often used example…

  • Sally has one dollar and can buy two apples with it.
  • Tom has ten dollars, but can only buy one apple with it.

According to GDP, Tom is more successful than Sally.

We all need to measure our lives by our happiness. As well as by our purpose, and our relationships with the community.

If you are not happy, but instead working for money; if you don’t have a purpose other than to make money; and if you have no sense of community, then you are very likely to be living in the United States.

And of course, if you are happy, and you work as part of a community for the betterment of all, then you are probably living in China.

Reality Check

Of course, not everyone in America lives in suburbs, or in their own homes. And not everyone in China lives in these huge mega apartment complexes. And not everyone in America is isolated, and not everyone in China is part of the community. But the point is that the vast bulk of them are.

And that is what we are talking about here. As America is balkanized, you will have an occasional little oasis of community, and one of prosperity and safety. But those numbers are dwindling. And China is a homogenized nation. Everyone speaks one language, and no one is hyphenated.  You won’t hear any Chinese calling themselves Hunan-Chinese, or Xinjiang Chinese.

As I have said before, we have to see things as they really exist. Not as we want them to be.

Personally

Personally I think it is a good idea to have a choice in how you can live your life in different societies. It’s like being able to choose between steak or dog food for dinner. And if you are tired of dog food, you can smell that delicious steak and eventually go to a place where there is steak every day. Yum!

Some people like to eat dog food. They eat it day in and day out. They are told that dog food is good, and that everyone knows that dog food is the best.

Me; I like steak.

Judging from the billions of pro-America articles out in internet-land, so many people love living inside of America. They have this thing called “democracy” and “freedom”. Though what it actually is, is really hard to nail down. If you ask them if the election systems actually work, most would say no. If you ask them if their representatives will represent them, they would also say no. And if you ask them if the bill of Rights is being followed, they would also say no.

So, perhaps, America is just floating along on this vaporous cloud of ignorance and hope.

Meanwhile China has “been there and done that”. They went through the changes and have arrived at a stable place. They carved out a life and made it stable, and rock solid.

America is the land of the 0.1% of people. If you can become one of them, then this place is for you. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation toils to one day be able to reach that point. Maybe you too can be come a billionaire and fly into space!

China is the land of the 90% of people. Everyone can get a decent life. Some better than others, but all within a fine band of comfort. And you know, it is possible, that one day, you will be able to fly into space. If not you, then your kids. But it is really possible.

Today in the United States, the only think keeping the masses of people from revolting and hanging the government is the free welfare checks, and the television / internet. To me, it reminds me of Rome, where the rulers provided their citizens with bread and circuses.

In China, as I have repeatedly tried to relate, it is calm and peaceful. No stress at all. None. Kids play, people talk. Nothing is frantic. Nothing is fast paced. The skies are blue. The trees are green. Flowers are everywhere. Malls are open, stores are bright and cheerful This is throughout China, not “only on the coast” as one supposed China expat said in a comment.

Now for some videos…

With this in mind, let’s look at a few videos that serve to illustrate these points.

In a MERIT DRIVEN SOCIETY such as CHINA, everyone tries to do their best and excel. They work together. They study hard. They strive. (Video)

video

Yes they do, and this idea to be the best you can be, to be kind and to be helpful comes from how you are raised. Check out this next video. This is a Chinese preschool. (video).

video

In a SOCIETY DRIVEN BY GREED such as AMERICA, it’s every man for himself. And thus you have all sorts of crime and events related to fraud and deception. (Video)

video

“Is that your bike? No.”

And so what does this guy do? He films it and does nothing. Not a community. It is just every man for himself. (Video)

video

But it doesn’t have to be this way…

If you grew up in a land with a thousand tiny hands in your wallet, a leadership that are idiots, and where every person is scrambling for a “piece of the pie”, you can change that.

No. I am not talking about revolution. Nor am I talking about leaving the nation that you are part of for somewhere else. I am instead talking about what you can do to make the world around you a little bit better.

Participate.

Meet your neighbors. Say hi. Smile. Buy coffee for coworkers. Clean up the trash on the street. Feed the dogs and cats. Make your home open, welcome and friendly.

Use the “porch light system” for invitations. Tell everyone you meet in your community that when the porch light is on, that it is a welcome for them to come on over and have a cup of coffee and to chill out with you.

Be the Rufus. (video)

I love this Rufus doggie.

video

Be the Rufus!

You can make the world a better place. Just help others. (Video)

If everyone thought about others, their community, their purpose, and in making their little tiny part better, than we all will live a better life. Stop being alone and isolated. Reach out. Help others. Make friends. You will be surprised how much your quality of life will improve. Just participate in life.

Video

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

 

 

What it is like living in China the real-life “Twilight Zone” episode

Here, let’s just talk about some odds and ends for a change.

What it is like living in China the real-life “Twilight Zone” episode

I swear the disconnect between what is reported in the “news” in the West and what is actually occurring is so different it is mind blowing. And to underline; to underscore this, I am going to give a few examples on just how much bullshit if being fed to the cattle in the United States and Britain. It’s pretty enormous.

Elections in China

Now, you know, China is a Social Democracy that refers to it’s self as “Communist with Chinese Characteristics”. Just like Americans call themselves a “free Republic”. So anyways, there’s been elections this week. And in China that is a big deal. Wholly automated, Use QR codes and connect to the election system by your cell phone. Of course, it is efficient and quick, but only Communist Party members can vote. Like I said in my article about China being like the movie “Starship Troopers”. Service gives citizenship. So if you want to vote, you must volunteer to participate in society.

So anyways, it’s really different from the clown show of elections in the West.

Is it being reported? No. Not one single American or Western news organization is reporting on the elections inside China. Why?

Banned news item on LinkedIN

Well, the banned comments on LinkedIN tell the entire story. There are certain subjects that the American government FORBIDS to be discussed on any American internet platform. And one of those is elections inside of China.

Which is probably why you won’t find any “news” about this in Western media. It’s erased as if it doesn’t exist, and the readership of those “news” articles continue to believe that China is a single party communist dictatorship. That doesn’t have elections.

The United States censors anything that shows China to be a democracy.

WiFi Dongle

Well, long time MM readers will know of my struggles with Microsoft. Finally when I purchased the entire Windows 10 package and installed it complete on my laptop… it stopped working. Told me to purchase yet ANOTHER authentic Microsoft windows OS, and disabled most of my functionality on the system. I said “fuck this”, and installed Lunix on my new computer.

And it is “cherry”. It works beautifully.

Well, only one problem, though. The company that makes the chipset core in my computer is a company owned by Microsoft; Realtek. And they do not have official Microsoft approved drivers to run the wifi. SoI have to manually install third party drivers for the blasted wifi. Which is a real pain in the ass.

I have been Learning Lunix commands and tying all sorts of work-arounds. Finally using a Ethernet dongle connected to my 5G router. And it seems to work, but it is a pain in the ass to be manually wired to systems when you carry a laptop. I need mobility.

So I devised a plan.

I would buy a Ethernet USB adapter and use it. I would use one that would be plug and play compatible with my Lunix system. So I went on the Internet and searched for “best internet wifi adapters 2021”, and ended up HERE after I selected the top pick.

And here’s the item. Cost is $44 USD or 286 RMB.

Amazon.com Wifi adapter for Lunix

Well, the delivery time from the USA is around one to two months, It will arrive in early December, but Customs will need to clear it, and that will be another two weeks easy. So this is what I did…

I went on Alibaba and looked up the factories that make the “guts”; the electronics of these gadgets. As you can see there are a bunch of them.

Factories in China that make Wifi adapters

And then I asked one of my engineers to search for the factory that make this particular “Made in America” product. Because, after all, according to Amazon.com this product is made inside of America with American know-how, American skills, and American everything. But, you know, I have been doing international trade for many decades. Politics aside, it’s all made overseas. So we went a looking.

The bottom line is that we found the manufacturer that makes the guts for this “American product”. They are in Shenzhen.

And we talked directly one-on-one with the engineer there.

They have been manufacturing the inner workings for this “American product” for years now. Generally they started as an OEM supplier, and now they do their own design and their own products.

And he told us that while they could give us the exact product that is sold in America, it would be a mistake for us to use it. The American product has special chipset modifications required by the United States government in the core PCB. He didn’t know what they were, but suspected they were “back door” access of all the signals going to and from the adapter.

So instead, he would sell us the exact module without the American chipset addons. It’s all good, it’s just a different chip and different add on (parts delete) on the board. I said “sounds good to me”.

Cost was $6 USD or under 40 RMB with local shipping.

The United States has electronic access via “backdoors” in all American wifi products.

Taiwan

"There is almost no scenario in which the United States can successfully intervene in a war between China and Taiwan that will not leave our country in far worse shape than it is right now; in a worst-case scenario, American territory could be struck by nuclear missiles." 

-Business Insider

US officials who are ready to fight China over Taiwan don’t understand how much is at stake

Many of America’s leading military and political figures have issued increasingly alarmist warnings in recent days about the potential for conflict with China, especially related to issues surrounding Taiwan.

But before the US gets into a crisis that brings it to the threshold of war — or finds itself stumbling into one — policymakers and military leaders need to address some hard realities.

There is almost no scenario in which the United States can successfully intervene in a war between China and Taiwan that will not leave our country in far worse shape than it is right now; in a worst-case scenario, American territory could be struck by nuclear missiles.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of US forces in the Indo-Pacific, warned that Chinese military developments looked to him like a nation planning for a war.

Davidson added that he believed China would attempt to forcibly reunify Taiwan “in the next six years.” To guard against this possibility, Davidson asked Congress to provide a whopping $27 billion in additional funding over the current defense budget.

One of the featured programs for this increase is the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. Last year Congress allocated $2.1 billion for the initiative. This year Davidson is asking for more than double that amount, to $4.6 billion.

The PDI’s main objectives will be to increase the number of ground-based cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and hypersonic missiles in areas closer to Chinese territory. That effort is already well underway.

In October the US Marine Corps completed construction on its first new permanent base in the Indo-Pacific area since 1952. The Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force have additional plans to establish new bases or expand existing ones at Tinian Island, Palau, Guam, and Australia — all along the so-called “first island chain” near China’s coastline.

The expansion is designed to enhance US’ ability to conduct “island-hopping” operations and create the ability to rapidly construct military airfields in austere environments.

The reason for this expansion, Davidson said, was to reduce or eliminate the time necessary for American military forces to engage Chinese targets.

The admiral said that right now it would take US forces on the West Coast more than three weeks to get within range of China and troops from Alaska 17 days. But the “perfect speed,” Davidson concluded, was “being there.”

Almost entirely absent from the hearing was any explanation of what’s driving the United States to elevate the risk of war by increasing the number of troops near the Chinese coast.

As a freedom-loving democracy, the United States is a strong advocate for the independence and freedom of any people, including those in Taiwan. But to that laudable belief must be added a willingness to assess the world in a realistic way.

Right now, both the United States and China are in a spiral in which one side expands its capabilities for war, citing rising threats from the other — which each then offers as justification for yet more military spending and preparation for war.

China is building infrastructure to project its power westward to the first island chain at the same time US forces are moving infrastructure eastward toward the first island chain and Chinese coast. Every day increases the chance of an accident or miscalculation leading to war.

Both the United States and China say they don’t want war, but both sides are accelerating and expanding their preparation for war.

If the United States were to one day fight China for anything other than an unprovoked attack, we would be choosing a course which would — in the best-case scenario — cause extraordinary harm to our military and markedly degrade our national security; in the worst-case, we could lose a war, putting at risk our very freedom.

It is crucial to understand that for China, the Taiwan issue is not merely a core interest, but an emotionally charged one. They are far more willing to pay extraordinary costs, sacrifice many men, and could risk it all to eventually compel unification with Taiwan.

The issue does not directly affect our national security unless we get involved.

If we eventually choose war with China over Taiwan, we will at best suffer egregious losses in ships, aircraft, and troops; in a worst-case, the war could deteriorate into a nuclear exchange in which American cities are turned into nuclear wastelands, killing millions.

America should never take such risks unless our security and freedom are directly threatened. Fighting China for any reason short of that would be a foolish gamble of the highest order.

If the USA gets involved in a war with China over Taiwan, the USA would lose. The magnitude of the loss is the only outcome in question.

Poverty

Two days ago, I received this comment from someone who read my article  “You must leave China now. China is not safe. America will destroy it completely and I will not be able to help you out”…

He said;

You keep pounding on points that no one disputes but which are irrelevant. What are you trying to convince Americans to do? Admire China? Be demoralized? Why would the Chinese care what we think of them? How is insulting America going to make us admire them, anyway? If it is to demoralize, then that, too is foolish — attacking your best potential ally while leaving everyone’s real enemy untouched.

Butt-hurt because America is performing so poorly on all fronts. And all I have to say about this is that America has failed in taking care of the social issues that are fundamental to a functioning society. American is becoming more like Bangladesh than a “free and prosperous” nation.

The MM readership will know that I was homeless for a period of time between when I left the Navy and then obtained my training at NAS China Lake. During this period of time, the general treatment of homeless people all over the country was to escort you out of the town, and if they cannot do that, then lock you up in jail until a social service can take you in.

Do you want to know what they do in China?

Everyone in China has an identity. They have a card, but also biometrics. When ever a beggar is found on the streets or a homeless person, the duty of the citizens are to contact the police who will then come to the beggar / homeless person.

The police will then escort them to the local social services office. They will be immediately provided with a shower, clean clothes, a meal (or two as needed), a physical examination to include mental health, and an interview.

During that interview they will determine if that person can stay or needs to return to their home town. You see, every ID card is associated with a local “home town” government. That government is wholly responsible for that person.

If the person is mentally unstable, looking for work, transient but having difficulties, or whatever the issue, the interviewer will make the necessary arrangements to get the person help.

Typically, in many cases, but not all, the person would be escorted to their home town and handed over to the local government there. They will immediately provide them with long-term housing, food, showers, and a simple but useful job. The person then need not worry about health care, housing, food, or being alone.

This is how China takes care of it’s citizens.

America just locks them up in prison / mental hospital / or allows them to be preyed upon in the wilds of urban streets.

America has FAILED in providing to the needs of it’s citizens, while China has been able to handle and take care of it’s citizenry.

Yahoo!

The Internet empire Yahoo! has decided to close off China from all of it’s services. No reason is given, but I cannot help but assume that it is political in nature.

Ah, yet another wall to isolate China from the Western World.

My Grandfather’s House

My fathers’ father lived on “Polish Hill” which is a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This is a hilly area, and all the houses are built on the sides of very steep hills, many actually being full cliff faces. Thus, when you enter the house, you would have a “ground floor” which consists of the living room and kitchen, a second floor which has a bathroom and bedrooms, and two to four basements.

In my Grandfather’s house, there were two basements. A “main basement” which opened up to the “laundry room” with the mandatory (middle of the room) commode (ah, it’s a Pittsburgh thing) and his workshop.

Now, tucked away in his workshop was this tiny “broom closet” sized door tucked away in the far corner. His workshop was filled with all sorts of electrical appliances and televisions that he would repair and work on, and old magazines and documents for the electronics world that he was a part of. He also had quite a large collection of pocket watches that he tried to repair, and various mechanisms that he would fix for a few bucks (money) here and there.

But when you opened up that tiny broom closet door, you would find yourself at a old rickety wooden spiral staircase going down into the sub-basement grotto. There was a pile of old hardwood that was too valuable to discard, shelves of very dusty brick-a-brack, and other long forgotten treasures that a boy of ten would find absolutely fascinating.

And I was ten when I discovered all these adventures.

Yes, I would explore those dingy and dark areas with the radio playing “Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon”, wearing bell-bottom pants, while my mother and grandmother watched Laurence Welk on the television show, upstairs.

Now, fast forward from the early 1970’s to 1981. I am living with my grandmother as I worked at a job in one of the steel mills there. I stayed with her for about three months until I could afford my own apartment.

And She was cleaning out that subbasement. She was hauling away everything. Too much junk, worthless garbage and clutter, she said.

I had picked up this dusty old mason jar (an old canning jar for home made preserves) and was looking inside of it. There were a few pennies from the 1920’s, a old faded scrap of paper with some unintelligible writing on it (in Polish no less), two or three old buttons, a few military pins, and a hand made key to some kind of a closet or drawer.

When I showed it to my grandmother, she exclaimed “So THAT’s where that key was!”

Apparently there was a drawer in one of the pieces of furniture in the second bedroom that has been locked for decades! So, my grandmother and I went upstairs and used the key and opened up the drawer.

Inside was a bunch of jewelry / bracelets, and a couple of old coins. There was a couple of combs, a couple of old straight razors for shaving, and some silk handkerchiefs.  As well as a few old letters. There was a a very old and small diary and my grand mother picked it up and started to leaf though it, and then set it aside as we continued our explorations. There were some really old pictures of people that I did not know, and a really cool coin purse.

Now this coin purse was all metal. It was a metal bag like thingy like chain metal armor, with a cool 1920’s era design. And it had this cure little chain and it would open by a clasp. She gave it to me and I actually thought it was really cool. Inside of it, was a few more old coins. Which included pennies with faces of Indians on them, and a nickel with an Indian on the coin!

OK.

Now for part two.

Well, there was a penny in the purse, and I was messing around with my friends one weekend. And my brother had this metal (cast iron, actually) little bank mechanism thingy. You would put this penny in this part of the contraption (a representative of a guy holding a gun) and then press the latch and the mechanism would actuate a spring that would “shoot” the penny into a slot in the metal bank.

And so, on that fateful day, I lost the penny that was in the purse that I found at the grotto under the sub-basement of my grandmother’s house.

I never did get that penny back. I soon moved away after being laid off, and my life took on another direction. And somewhere, someone, took that bank that had perhaps ten or fifteen pennies, and opened it up and obtained that precious memory of when my grandmother and I discovered the key to her memories.

Why China is building more nuclear missiles…

From the article above…

One of the featured programs for this increase is the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. Last year Congress allocated $2.1 billion for the initiative. This year Davidson is asking for more than double that amount, to $4.6 billion.

The PDI's main objectives will be to increase the number of ground-based cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and hypersonic missiles in areas closer to Chinese territory. 

That effort is already well underway...

Well, it should be obvious, for every new location where the USA places it’s missiles to attack China, China now needs to arm a nuclear salvo to rubble and glass-over those weapons sites so that they are impotent in a war scenario.

Good going, Congress!

Do not be under the impression that all the weapons are for the areas right next door to China, you God damn morons. It’s for YOU. It’s for YOUR homes. It’s for YOUR cities. It’s for YOUR country.

China is NOT reactionary. They provide reactions on a event by event basis until it become clear that it is an all or nothing situation. Then, they take the necessary step to extinguish all enemy leadership and their support networks immediately.

Jews! Jews! Jews!

Lordy! One of my posts from 2019 hit the internet recently, and landed in the lap of some hard-right folks.  Aside from slowing my servers to a crawl, MM now came up (yet again) on American “watch lists”. Which is a headache in itself.

Sigh.

I have been getting a lot of comments about how “wrong” I am. And that Jews are the cause of everything! Jews started communism. Jews created Ebola. Jews are the reason homosexuality exists. Jews cause all wars. Jews, Jews, Jews!

Sheech!

I hope all this ruckus dies down soon. Because now a subgroup of “Chinese 5G is a plan to brainwash Americans to take vaccinations for a hoax virus” is starting to make the rounds. Who knows? Maybe the next thing will be “Donald Trump will win the next Presidential Election, and the China issue will be settled once and for all“.

I need a beer.

I am making more enemies than friends, it seems…

You know, in my last Q&A I post an eight part question by a contributor. And the Domain Commander didn’t answer it, and this was at a time where everyone was sending me questions to ask the Commander. So I just took one of the smaller lists and tried to ask it. And the results were posted.

Now the fellow who asked the question is upset, and doesn’t want me to throw him to the cornfield. Understandable, and now he fears that I have ill intent or beliefs about his intent.

Sigh.

Guys, Please understand that I had maybe 15 to 25 people throwing all sorts of multiple part questions at me to ask. I did not realize that I would become so famous. Some were very sincere. But some were just busy work.

Now put yourself in my shoes. You get questions, you cut and paste them into a MS Word file, and the list grows and grows.

Then you start the tasking. And it wears you out.

Imagine ten people asking 15 questions. That’s 150 questions!

Which ones are sincere? Which ones are critical? Which ones are important? Which ones are just busy work? I really don’t know.

So what I did, was I got a group from the top of the question list, and started my “flight plan”, and I printed the result in the Q&A.

Everyone, please I really sincerely want to make a difference in this world, and I sincerely want to answer your questions. If you have something pressing, please send to me at the laobanGBH@163.com email address, along with some background on the one singular question. I need to know why it is important to you personally.

As to those that asked questions that I did not answer, please wait. I am still a human, though I have many faults and cracks in my personality. Do not be offended. I just need to set up systems to handle the huge influx of questions, participants, and “noise” that is being directed at me right now.

Though, I will really get angry if someone sends me a tabulated spreadsheet of 200 multiple part questions like …

“Question 145, part 7, subpart 4, section B”

Which actually DID happen. Jeeze!

I responded back to him, but I guess he used a throw-away email address. I haven’t heard back from him.

Vaxx Stuff

For all youse guys who are into the anti-mRNA vaccination protocols, might find this article of value. The title speaks for itself…

https://www.conservativebeaver.com/2021/11/05/ceo-of-pfizer-arrested-charged-with-fraud-media-blackout/

I don’t know if it is legit or not.

System collapse

All internet traffic to MM reached an unusually huge level and over taxed the system. Points of origination came from inside the United States, and I also received multiple DOS attacks. My system shut down, a secondary group of attacks came out of Hong Kong and overwhelmed my normal local internet as well.

Thus the two locations Metallicman…

  • Hosting Servers inside of America
  • Point of origin servers inside of China.

Have BOTH been simultaneously attacked by numerous DOS attacks. All on top of an abnormally large traffic stream.

My guess that it isn’t about my fine taste in cheeseburgers. I’ll be willing to bet that it is about my predictions, and the Commander’s confirmation, that the USA is planning a first strike nuclear salvo against China. Can’t allow the rest of the world to know. Heh. Heh.

I guess I am big stuff.

You all know that I have been battling with getting the systems up and running, but right now, I am unable to do anything. All internet access is overwhelmed locally, and I am simply helpless.

Well, as my cat taught me, “life is hard, then you nap”.

Well, no need to fret about it all. I’m just going to get some beer and chill out. It’s a nice day out. Blue skies. Pleasant temperatures. Fresh air.

So, as soon as a window of opportunity opens up, I will do what I can to get things back up and running again.

-MM

Have a good day you all and remember…

You, I, we… we all are a community. Never forget that.

We are all part of something much bigger.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

 

 

Silent Sound Demo schematics, circuit and operational theory documents

The following is extracted from “the Silent Sound Demo for the mind control machinery”. This come from the time (around 2000) when the patent was first granted and the inventor was trying to sell his device. It is extracted from historical archives and is useful in helping us design our own systems to conduct affirmations prayer campaigns.

This entire article lists the schematics, parts list and construction blueprints of a demo device that shows the principles of the Silent Sound Technology that is now in use by almost all of the United States government agencies, the mainstream media and advertisement companies.

This is for those who want to DIY their own system, or who want to experiment themselves. I am afraid that it is a bit technical, but I am a geek and this kind of stuff excites me so much.

It’s like a pretty girl wearing an awesome dress (with cute earrings, and a really nice set of high heels), some tasty shraz wine, and a super delicious pizza all together for a night of magic.

But that’s just me. I am such a sucker for a girl wearing a dress, high heels and really cute earrings. Not to mention pizza and shraz wine.

For those of you who are not geeks, please just skim the article and realize that it exists. Future articles will build upon the information provided here and make it very easy to hack into your own brain and biological systems so that YOU have control over your body and your MWI.

Great stuff actually. But sorry for the technical opacification.

The Schematic

Here’s a nice overview summary of the circuit schematic. Obviously, it is not an overly complex device; Four IC chips, a handful of capacitors and resistors and a transistor.

Silent Sound Demo schematic

Use Chip Sockets

Do not go all in for hard-wiring and soldering everything. Use male and female connectors and attach using this convention. And Lordy, please refrain from wire wrapping.

An IC socket, also known as a chip socket, or a DIP IC socket is an electrical connector used in the field of electronic engineer. The pins of the integrated circuit (IC) connect into the socket making a robust electrical connection without the requirement of soldering.

-DIP IC Sockets - Peter Vis
Examples of various sizes of chip sockets.

The Drawings

The several Corel Draw 3 .CDR drawings referenced below will NOT display in most browsers. The idea is that you SAVE TO YOUR LOCAL HARD DRIVE each one, then print from a compatible graphics package. This method gives the clearest quality prints.
I HAVE ALSO INCLUDED .GIF DRAWINGS, HOWEVER, DUE TO THE COARSE RESOLUTION OF MY GRAPHICS SOFTWARE, THESE MAY OR MAY NOT PRINT TO MEET YOUR NEEDS.
An office services shop should be able to print the .CDRs – BE SURE THEY SELECT “FIT TO PAGE”. (Note that this instruction packet is dated from 2001. – MM) Most recent full featured graphics packages can read and print a Corel Draw 3 (VECTOR) drawing. The entire set of .CDR files will fit on one EMPTY 1.44 MB floppy diskette. (Thus dating this article. LOL.) Here are the clickable references, sizes, and paper orientation.

The Documents for the Large Version

The Documents for the Small Version

SMALLER PERF BOARD VERSION – NO BOARD CUTTING REQUIRED ** >> DRAWINGS ABOVE ARE SUFFICIENT FOR SOMEONE WHO CAN DESIGN THEIR OWN CASE AND PANEL

Questions and Answers

Q: Are the items in question expensive? I MIGHT be interested in paying for a demo unit. How large and heavy is it when finished
.
A: I estimate it could be done for about $200 US (year 2000 prices), though this would vary upwards if you had to purchase a tape recorder, say, or a frequency meter along with it. Tape recorder, a small one, is necessary. A frequency meter is not, subject to conditions below. With the largest Radio Shack plastic project box, it’s 8″ x 6″ x 3″. With the 12-volt gel cell inside, it weighs perhaps 3 lbs.
.
Q: Could you briefly describe how you demo it to curious onlookers?
.
A: I keep a tape recorder with sample ordinary voice with the unit, so I can demonstrate both the 1,500 Hertz normal speech center freq. then raise the center frequency up until it is not audible. At that point, the visitor is hearing “silent sound” carrying speech, using FM rather than nature’s AM.
.
I also unplug the attenuator / patch cable from the “earphone” jack on the tape recorder, which allows the visitor to hear the ordinary voice on the tape, which is AM (amplitude modulation). Also at that point, the brain is using “slope tuning” to recover the normal voice from the inaudible signal.
.
I tell them this is an unclassified device which can hypontize SILENTLY, show them the label with the U.S. patent #5,159,703, and tell them a unit like this was used in the 1991 Gulf War by the U.S. Army Psychological Warfare branch to persuade, silently, all those Iraqi troops to surrender so quickly.
.
That was DOCUMENTED on ITV, and you should have for your reference (one copy, not to hand out – it’s too long) the Judy Wall article at this link: http://www.raven1.net/silsoun2.htm.
.
I go on to tell them that this device gets it’s REAL destructive power when connected to a voice to skull transmitter, one of which is under construction here in Ontario. It can beam hypnosis silently into someone’s skull for years and they won’t be aware.
.
Q: Can you monitor the output?
.
A: You CAN use the Radio Shack sound level meter to show, when the frequency setting is high, that sound is coming out of the tweeter even though they can’t hear it. Due to having to use the bus, I’m restricted on how much I can carry, so I haven’t used this but once. (Doesn’t seem to be required, actually.) However, there are a couple of important caveats if you want to use a sound level meter:

.

  • Radio Shack’s sound level meters are calibrated to match the human ear response.
  • Since the demo unit can easily tune the center frequency up above 20 kHz (the meter’s upper limit) you must have a FREQUENCY COUNTER with you or your sound level meter may miss your then-ultrasound signal.
  • This demo unit, in order to pump out any kind of signal near the high end of human hearing (around 15 kHz) uses a small PIEZO tweeter, 2 inches dia.
  • The readily available, simple, LM386 audio amplifier chip will handle this frequency, but without much power to spare, so the actual amplitude is not great at 14.5 kHz, the Lowery patent specification.
  • Therefore, especially OUTDOORS, a demo to use a sound level meter needs an ADDITIONAL STAGE of amplification. That could be added on to the circuit board, but room is a problem with the 276-158 board, or, an amplified speaker, like the Radio Shack 21-541 would be needed for a reliably convincing sound level meter demo. (The 21-541 should also have it’s low-frequency speaker replaced with a 30,000 Hz PIEZO tweeter.)
The GOOD news is that so far, the sound level meter demo does NOT seem to be necessary, though I do have the equipment should that be necessary. The full demo would probably be used for a pre-arranged meeting with a group.

Demonstration Spiel for Silent Sound Demo Device September 28, 2000

DEMONSTRATION PROCEDURES THOROUGHLY go through the setup procedures first. You need to be completely familiar with the unit before attempting to demonstrate it to the public. Be sure your battery has been charged overnight.

Setup procedures Shortly before the demo, refresh yourself on: – U.S. Govt (NSA) admission mind control exists nsa1.gif – unclassified and commercial mind-weapons-capable devices uncom.htm – MKULTRA and the successful lawsuit against the CIA anat-1.htm

MATERIALS.

You need, when dealing with the public:

  • A printout of THIS SET OF INSTRUCTIONS
  • A printout of hypno2s.gif (see other below)
  • A printout of mkcover.gif (OPTIONAL)
  • ! picket sign (if outdoors without a pre-arranged meeting with visitors)
  • Some handouts, one sheet of which MUST be nsa1.gif (This has proven very compelling to those who read it)
  • For YOUR reference, a printout of Judy Wall’s article on silent sound, including Gulf War use, silsoun2.htm
  • ! copy of these instructions and spiel script
  • A small flip-nozzle container of water for your voice and perhaps throat lozenges
  • Sunscreen and sun hat if outdoors
  • A small tape recorder with a voice-ONLY cassette, normal sound
  • A patch cord between the “ear” jack on the recorder and the MONO 1/8″ jack on the demo unit (keep volume low or use an attenuator from Radio Shack. Excess volume results in garble.)

Some may find this image explaining silent sound WITHOUT the extra clutter from the voice-to-skull attachment easier to use:

  • A printout of voicefm.gif (OPTIONAL) Some may wish to hand out schematics. I recommend this schematic and matching solder-side component placement image:
  • vfmckt3.gif, schematic
  • kitbotm3.gif, solder-side layout

Components

Here’s some info on the components. And forgive me, but I am fundamentally a geek at heart.

LM386

This is a standard part.

 

 

And here's another pinout.

Lot's more in the PDF.

XR2206

This is a well known, if not standard, part.

Of course, there are complete modules that you can buy that makes construction of the units so much easier. Such as this one…

 

ICE-BREAKER.

Mine is a picket sign that carries this message: “GOVT-MEDIA TELL THE PUBLIC ABOUT ELECTRONIC MIND WEAPONS” poster9.gif

SPIEL.

The words below VARY according to the person I’m talking with, and for best effectiveness you will need to judge just how interested the visitor is. I’ve had SHORT visits like:

VISITOR: What is this? (Pointing to the demo unit)

DEMONSTRATOR: This is a device which takes ordinary human speaking voice and does two things to it: – converts it from natural AM (amplitude modulation) to FM (frequency modulation); this garbles the voice – raises the average frequency from around 1,500 Hertz, which is normal, to around 15,000 Hertz.

At 15,000 Hertz, young people with good hearing can hear a slight “ringing in the ears” from this device, while many adults hear nothing at all. But the brain CAN HEAR THE WORDS, even though the ear cannot.

This allows a hypnotist to program an individual over months and years without the target being aware. There is no resistance to the hypnosis because the target doesn’t hear it.

This can be beneficial, but it can also do severe damage to a person’s well being. This is why our group is out here demonstrating. We want government to earn their salaries and perks by placing controls on who can possess such devices and what can be legally done with them.

VISITOR: Thank you (and leaves.) LONG visits start out as above. If questions keep coming, you will need to answer them. Below are some typical questions and answers:

DEMONSTRATOR: (Continuing from the “short” spiel above) ** AT THIS POINT, YOU MAY WANT TO DROP DOWN THIS SCRIPT TO ITEM #6, THE ACTUAL PHYSICAL DEMO OF THE UNIT. I HAVE FOUND THAT A GREAT MANY VISITORS DO NOT WANT TO HEAR THE UNIT. I NEVER PRESS THAT ISSUE WITH THEM, AND ONLY START IT UP WHEN ASKED.

This device as it is here is harmless, unless used on someone who has already been programmed with trigger words or phrases. It becomes very invasive and dangerous, though, if connected to a voice-to-skull projector.

A voice-to-skull projector is a modified radar transmitter in which the human voice controls how close together the radar pulses occur.

In 1974, Dr. Joseph Sharp, of the Walter Reed Army Institute of research, announced his successful transmission of speech directly into the human skull with no receiving device.

By connecting this “silent sound” device to a voice-to-skull transmitter, it is possible to transmit hypnotic phrases silently into a target’s bedroom, every night, for years, without the target’s being aware.

By programming enough “Pavlovian triggers” into an individual, that individual’s personality can be changed substantially. Using pre-programmed trigger phrases, a “handler” of that individual can literally use him or her as a “living robot”, in cases where the individual has high susceptibility to hypnosis.

The process of programming enough triggers into an individual for purposes of control is called “creating a Manchurian Candidate”, after two books of that title. The formal program of the CIA, begun in the 1950s, started out as 149 separate experiments, and was in response to cold war fears and the apparent “brainwashing” of Allied POWs in Korea. This group of “behavior modification” experiments bore the code name MKULTRA.

MKULTRA did include electronic mind control devices, but the best known electronic mind control device of the early days was the Russian LIDA machine. The LIDA, one of which is in possession of Veterans’ Administration researcher Dr. Ross Adey, “entrained” or electronically coerced a target in the path of it’s signal to be relaxed and more susceptible to hypnosis.

A few Korean War vets claimed to have seen the LIDA in use at the POW camps. The MKULTRA code name ceased in the late 1970s when the U.S. Senate’s Frank Church Committee investigated MKULTRA experiments and found that serious atrocities had been committed on people in the military, prisons, or in mental hospitals.

However, not one single perpetrator from the MKULTRA programs was ever brought up on charges. We know that electronic mind control experimentation did not cease, and this “silent sound” technology was used in actual military combat in the 1991 Gulf War.

The United States Army connected a silent sound voice converter like this one to an FM broadcast transmitter, broadcasting on a frequency of 100 Megahertz, and the silent hypnotic commands were carried right on top of normal voice in the Iraqi language.

The normal voice carried confusing information, while the SILENT component re-inforced a sense of despair by hypnotic suggestion. This was documented on Britain’s ITV network, but not shown in the U.S. or Canada.

The successful use by the U.S. Army clearly shows that this technology does work. Through-the-wall voice-to-skull technology makes it almost inescapable.

Our group hopes that eventually the public will learn enough about the invasive privacy destroying electronic mind control weapons available today to demand that government report on these devices to the people, and make their use and possession matters of ongoing PUBLIC record.

Electronic mind control devices have been under development for 50 years, and our group knows only the unclassified and commercial versions. The time for public input and control of all such technologies is LONG overdue.

ACTUAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE UNIT ITSELF.

Put a tape with VOICE (not music) into your demo tape recorder. Connect a patch cable between the “ear” jack on the recorder and the INPUT jack on the demo unit. If you have an attenuator, use it, but if not, remember to keep the volume setting on the recorder quite low.

Excess volume garbles the speech making for an un- convincing demo. Switch on the demo unit. Adjust the tone near the lower end of the frequency knob’s travel.

The Input Level should be around one third of it’s way up from it’s lowest position.

Push PLAY on the recorder. You should hear speech “mixed” in with the demo unit’s tone.

This demonstrates to a visitor what simply converting natural human voice, which is AM or amplitude modulation to FM or frequency modulation sounds like.

Near the low end of the frequency knob’s travel, the frequencies of the voice are still about at their natural values, but the mode is now FM, as opposed to AM.

THE VISITOR CAN HEAR THIS IS GARBLED. Now slowly increase the frequency knob until the audible sound is as HIGH as you and your visitor can just hear. If you are both adults, this point is approximately where the brain can start to convert this inaudible sound BACK TO WORDS.

The process is called “slope tuning”.

You can move the IN-OFF-OUT switch back to IN to show the visitor that voice is actually being fed into the unit. vfmslopd.gif, shows how the brain recovers the inaudible words using the process of “slope detection” or “slope tuning” – worth having a few of these for technical folks who are interested in how it works.

If you have a frequency counter or meter, connect it to the two binding posts, one red, one black, on the front panel.

During a demo adjust frequency somewhere between 14.5 and 14.8 kHz (14,500 Hertz to 14,800 Hertz.) This is the range where both the Lowery patent (5,159,703) and the New Zealand Altered States company operate at to produce brain-understandable silent sound.

SEE ITEM 4 BELOW UNDER SETUP FOR COMMENTS ABOUT USING AN AUDIO LEVEL METER TO ENHANCE YOUR DEMONSTRATION.

SETUP PROCEDURES

vfmtest.gif, shows what the scope trace should look like when proper frequency modulation by voice is applied. vfmslopd.gif, shows how the brain recovers the inaudible words using the process of “slope detection” or “slope tuning” – worth having a few of these for technical folks who are interested in how it works.

1

You will need a small voltmeter to monitor battery charge state. This must be a small meter that reads out VOLTS, and *NOT* a “battery OK” meter with red and green scales.

It is necessary to know voltages for communications by email or phone with people who can offer technical help.

A convenient meter is the Radio Shack 22-802, for around $30, which has a folding case fully containing the two probes and their cable.

The only trick with any meter is TO REMEMBER TO SHUT IT OFF WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED. Almost all of today’s voltmeters have digital displays and have their own small internal battery. (Pick up and carry a spare battery.)

2

First job is to charge the internal 12-volt gel cell. The charger supplied with units purchased from Eleanor White is a simple “wall mount” style 12-volt power supply, with a cable that cannot be connected with the wrong polarity.

Measure the voltage by touching the positive (red lead) screw on the terminal strip with the red probe, and the negative (black lead) screw on the terminal strip with the black probe.

You should get “13 something” volts if the battery is reasonably well charged. If you get zero volts, it is likely that one of the 3/4 amp fuses is blown.

Check both fuses to be sure. (You can check a fuse visually, but 3/4 amp size is hard to see. Instead, switch your meter to K-ohms and put the probes on either end of the glass fuse. The fuse should show zero or very close to zero if it is good.

The fuses are 5 MILLIMETER and you may need to go to Radio Shack to get replacements. !!!!! SWITCH YOUR METER OFF OR BACK TO VOLTS WHEN FINISHED !!!!!

Now remove the probes and connect your charger. Put the probes back on their screws and note the voltage reading.

If charging is in progress, you should see “14 something” volts and perhaps as high as 15 volts. If you don’t, something is wrong – see the paragraph on blown fuses above, or be sure the charger is plugged in, or be sure the outlet has power. If your “wall mount” power supply has a SLIDE SWITCH TO CHANGE VOLTAGE, be sure it is set to “12”.

3

Switch the unit on. You should see the LED on the panel lit up. If not, check the fuses. Switch the IN-OFF-OUT switch to OUT. Turn the frequency control to the lower part of its travel. Be sure the Output Level knob is at least 1/4 of the way up. You should hear a steady tone.

Test that the frequency control can raise the tone high enough that you can no longer hear it, then bring it back down low.

Switch the IN-OFF-OUT switch to IN. Raise the Input Level to full scale.

If you get a squeal, as sometimes happens with PA systems, you need to make a mental note of where that occurs and not go above that point with INPUT level.

4

4. Put a tape with VOICE (not music) into your demo tape recorder. >> COMMENTS ABOUT AUDIO LEVEL METER DEMOS ARE AT THE END OF THIS ITEM.

Connect a patch cable between the “ear” jack on the recorder and the INPUT jack on the demo unit. If you have an attenuator, use it, but if not, remember to keep the volume setting on the recorder quite low. Excess volume garbles the speech making for an un- convincing demo.

Switch on the demo unit. Adjust the tone near the lower end of the frequency knob’s travel. The Input Level should be around one third of it’s way up from it’s lowest position. Push PLAY on the recorder.

You should hear speech “mixed” in with the demo unit’s tone. This demonstrates to a visitor what simply converting natural human voice, which is AM or amplitude modulation to FM or frequency modulation sounds like.

Near the low end of the frequency knob’s travel, the frequencies of the voice are still about at their natural values, but the mode is now FM, as opposed to AM.

The visitor can hear this is garbled.

Now slowly increase the frequency knob until the audible sound is as HIGH as you and your visitor can just barely hear. If you are both adults, this point is approximately where the brain can start to convert this inaudible sound BACK TO WORDS. The process is called “slope tuning”. You can move the IN-OFF-OUT switch back to IN to show the visitor that voice is actually being fed into the unit.

If you have a frequency counter or meter, connect it to the two binding posts, one red, one black, on the front panel. During a demo adjust frequency somewhere between 14.5 and 14.8 kHz (14,500 Hertz to 14,800 Hertz.)

This is the range where both the Lowery patent (5,159,703) and the New Zealand Altered States company operate at to produce brain-understandable silent sound.

If you have an AUDIO LEVEL METER, it can be used to show that sound is coming out at 14.5 kHz even though it is inaudible. !!!!! BUT BEWARE !!!! Some audio meters like Radio Shack’s CUT OFF AT OR NEAR 20 kHz. You need to do considerable testing in private before you attempt audio meter proof in front of visitors.

It is quite easy to get the frequency too high, in which case the audio level meter will show nothing at all. To be practical, you really would need a frequency meter connected to the binding posts to assure yourself you were in the 14.5-14.8 range.

Furthermore, the piezo tweeter is good at high end frequencies, but the common audio chips in the unit are not really strong at these high-end frequencies.

If you plan to use an audio level meter, I’d recommend something like the Radio Shack amplified speaker, catalogue #21-541, requiring it’s own separate 12-volt source (the demo unit’s can be tapped by someone with electronic assembly skills.

This will shorten the charge life of the demo unit’s battery but may be worth doing anyway.) If you do use an external amplifier, be SURE it gets it’s normal voice coil speaker replaced with a PIEZO unit or the high frequency sound won’t get through well enough for the audio level meter to detect.

Conclusion

This is a complete reprint of the archived information regarding Silent Sound. It is very difficult to come across today. The information provided can help the DIY inclined person develop their own system or copy this one to achieve the same results.

Part 3 is next.

There we will discuss the voice-to-skull projector. Stay tuned.

Do you want more?

I have more posts related to this in my Affirmation Campaign index here… Intention Campaigns .

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“You must leave China now. China is not safe. America will destroy it completely and I will not be able to help you out”

This article addresses the disconnect from reality that many American readers of media seem to have regarding China. They are correct, a war is going to happen. the USA is at a fever pitch right now and very desirous of it. But what I say here is be VERY careful of what you wish for. You might not be able to handle the result.

Important note. To truly get the most out of this article, you MUST watch these short (15 second to 1 minute) video clips. Watch. Learn. Understand. Also note that a number of the videos are banned in the United States. So, maybe you might have to destroy your computer after watching the videos. LOL.

Ok. Brace yourself. I’m telling you all what you are dealing with, and what the real situation actually is. You can agree or disagree. Remember, knowledge is a tool. It is up to you to use it or not.

How this came about…

Today I received my second email from my brother. It was a sad and disturbing letter. Again, he pleaded for me to leave China and return back to the United States “where it will be safe”.

But you know, that is not going to happen. I love China.

I love everything about China, and I have family that I love. I have Chinese friends that I cherish and love dearly. I have homes, businesses, and a lifestyle that I am not going to leave. I love the culture in China. I love the food. I love the work relationships, and I even love stinky tofu.

Once you live in China and see (with your own experiences) how wonderful it is, you will never go back to the cesspool that the United States has become.

I am also retired. I no longer am involved in the world of black operations, top secret SAP programs, spooky stuff, and all that. I am retired. I retired to a calm place, a clean place; a good place. I retired to Mayberry RFD. If you would like to know what it is like here in China.

Never the less, all of the “news” out of the United States is war-war-war-war-WAR! and I have lived long enough inside of America to know what is next. It’s clear and plain as the nose on my face.

I’ve seen this all before. Not just as an American citizen reading the “news”, but also as one of those people who “make things happen”. I know precisely what is going on, and why.

So my email, from my brother, was disturbing. He knows who I am and what I did. Yet, he regurgitated the hate-narrative, pro-war narrative, when he should know better.

In it, he reiterated that I leave China. That it is not safe. And that the bellicose saber rattling, and hostile actions by the evil communists will be stopped by the incredible might of the massive American military forces. His words. Not mine.

He went on and on about how China didn’t have a chance, and that while China might have a few hundred nuclear warheads, that is nothing to the 6,500 nuclear weapons that America has.

He further elaborated that he KNOWS (we have mutual boyhood friends in high level military operations) that traps have been sprung; safeties are off, and it’s just a matter of time… and not long either… when China will finally be punished for all of it’s evil misdeeds.

He said that I am in great danger.

He said that China will be “hit hard” and he KNOWS that China will stand alone and take the most incredible beating ever seen by man. He said that every nation either despises China or is afraid of it, but when the “call goes out” the entire rest of the world will swarm to kick China into a beaten pulp.

He proudly talked about how America has very strong nuclear capabilities and that the generals are not afraid to use them. New orders have been issued, and “everyone knows” that there will be a hot kinetic war soon.

He said that the tiny independent nation of Taiwan (?) has some “tricks up it’s sleeve” and that the USA and China has been at war for years now and I should see the “writing on the wall” and recognize that the time to leave my “third world shit-hole” is fast coming to an end. There is only a short “window of opportunity” remaining and that I should take it.

He said other things also, but…

But this really gets to me.

He knows nothing. And I find his ignorance of what China is astoundingly insulting. And he’s a smart man. I an only just imagine what others might say; those that only get their information from the government controlled “news” media.

China is NOT what is portrayed. He should know better as he has seem my lifestyle; my family, and what it is like. Yet, for some odd reason, he thinks that it is terminally dingy, grey skies, and full of evil selfish people. Jeeze! It isn’t. This is what China actually is. VIDEO.

Video

But he has provided me with some critical Intel about what Americans think. And it is what I have been saying all along. I spent 40 years of my life in the United States and 20 in China. I know how it works.

  • America is on a “war footing”.
  • Americans are desirous of a nice solid hot war, and they will get it.
  • The “ball is rolling” and it cannot be stopped.
  • That this long war will be intended to be in the far-away South China Sea.
  • The war will enjoy the support of a vast majority of Americans who all now despise all Chinese.

He argued that it’s only a matter or time that China will make a mistake, and when it does, “all Hell will break loose“.

And that China doesn’t have a chance.

Key points are omitted by all those wanting war

You know, each and every time I come across these arguments, the “elephant in the room” is always omitted. And it’s funny and odd. Very important points are ignored as if they are meaningless. And when I bring up these points, they are ignored. And what is amazing is that even the most intelligent people in the United States are falling for this narrative.

These points are always left out and ignored. What points you might ask?

How about, for starters…

  • It will be a war inside of America. Any war with China will be on American soil, and personal. It will not be off in a far away South China Sea.

Let that point sink in. Not far away. But will hit “home”. China will make FUCKING SURE that America feels what it is like to be attacked. This is a fact. Deal with it.

  • Taiwan is not an “independent” nation. Both Taiwan and Mainland China mutually agree that there is only one China. Not two separate nations.

Let that point register. Taiwan is NOT a separate nation. The UN doesn’t think so. China doesn’t think so, and even Taiwan doesn’t think so. But for some crazy insane reason, the United States thinks so.

For those of you who are still not convinced, here’s the President of the United States telling you that Taiwan is China. That China owns Taiwan.

  • A war against all of Asia. Russia and China are military allies and will fight together.

Like I said, this is something NO ONE is talking about. They just gloss over it as if it is unimportant.

  • China is dangerous. China is a merit driven society that is very smart.

America is an oligarchy ruled military empire that is in a free-fall decline right now. And China is a nation of merit where everyone starting at six years old gets military training.

  • Costly does not equate to best. American weapons and personnel relies too much on systems that are easily compromised.

Now, be advised, that there is no question that there will be massive destruction and casualties all over the world. China will take some enormous losses, and some of the beautiful cities will be erased from the earth. I lament that.

But obviously, thinking that America will be “safe” just shows how ignorant and delusional these people are. The United States will be the LAST place you would want to be when the missiles start flying.

As I wrote in my other postings, China and Russia use AI controlled swarm nukes in shotgun saturation’s. They just don’t hit strategic targets, they glass over entire regions. They are very messy with their weapons.

America would be the worst place to be.

For all sorts of reasons.

General points of understanding

Here’s some general points that I want to underline, and then I follow up with the American (and Brit and Australian) beliefs and compare that to what is actually going on.

So, with all this in mind, check out some key points.

Point #1 – Chinese leadership

Capable. Tough. Pragmatic. Peaceful, but don’t fuck with them.

American Disinfo:

Xi Peng is a tyrant, who runs a mafia-like organization out of Beijing. He and his cronies are despised, and once they are killed off, China would collapse.

The disinfo has saturated the dialog.

The truth is that the Chinese leadership is there through merit and hard work, and are supported by an amazing group of other merit driven experts. There are no “diversity hires” here. No positions through Nepotism. No LGBT, or quota driven “experts”. No political appointees. No back-room dealings with union organizers, community organizations or religious figures. They got to power through merit and sacrifice.

These people are all carefully vetted, talented, aggressive, and strategic.

They are savvy and very well attuned to the problems of the world. They will make hard and tough decisions and they will make the right ones, and they will follow through on those decisions without politics or fear.

Chinese leadership.

Were a war to occur, it would be a battle of wits between the global leadership.

If you believe that Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo, or Joe Biden can out maneuver the Chinese on strategy, then you are wholly delusional.

Point #2 – Chinese Manufacturing

Elaborate, and extensive. Cutting edge technology making the latest in gadgets and devices. Now supplies Germany, Japan and Korea with all their gadgets.

American Disinfo:

China only makes cheap, inexpensive junk. They cannot innovate, and at best operate using slave, and child labor in 19th century sweatshops.

There is this ongoing theme in the American (and Western) “news” media that China only makes “junk” and that if America stopped buying things from China, all of China would collapse. It permeates all American media. Which is Made in China means junk.

There’s also another deception; which is that America is the largest customer of Chinese made products, and that if the USA stops sourcing from China, China would collapse.

It’s not even remotely true.

  • In 2018, American products accounted for just under 1`1% of all Chinese exports.
  • Today, in late 2021, the number is actually around 2%.

China hasn’t collapsed.

If you were to really simplify all the issues regarding this singular point you would see that much of what China makes is shipped to other nations for resale under different names. Those high end German cameras are all made in China. They are shipped to Germany. But in boxes and proudly says “Made in Germany” on the box. Then Germany sells those cameras to the United States who mistakenly believe that they are buying a German manufactured product.

I know because I am active in that industry. That’s the way it is done.

This is the same with Korea, Japan, and Australia as well. Most of the real cheap stuff has been off-shored to much poorer nations so that the retailers can maintain their profit margins.

For shits and giggles, here’s a comparison between the US Spacestation and the Chinese spacestation. VIDEO here.

Video

Now, let’s pause and consider two issues were a war to erupt.

  • All exports of goods out of China would end. Which thus means that the export of all products would thus completely end.
  • China would continue to manufacture things, for Chinese use. Whether rubber duckies, or nuclear warheads. And they would do so with ruthless precision, speed and quality.

The United States, would be unable to complete because most of the industrial parks all over the nation don’t make things. They are just nice office buildings that house accountants, lawyers, HR, diversity officers, and some supply line experts.

Those that exist have large boxy pole-frame buildings that house the warehouses from the items obtained from overseas, but the actual floor and manufacturing lines are not present. You can identify those structures by rectangle buildings with many windows for lighting.

American industrial park. Many warehouses. Not one single assembly factory. You can see the office building and all the warehouses, but nothing is physically being made here in this “factory”.

Look at an aerial view of a typical American “Industrial park”. Where’s the rail lines, the loading bays and the warehouses to store the manufactured products at? These are warehouse distribution points.

Not manufacturing facilities.

Were a war to occur, America would soon run out of tangible things. Not just war material, but also the things that the American citizenry have come to expect in their life.

Like medicine. Like automotive computers. Like tools. Like appliances.

Not China. They make things and have an enormous infrastructure to support industry. Video here.

Video

Point #3 – Chinese Weapons systems

Chinese weapons systems are state of the art, available in massive quantities, operated by motivated and skilled soldiers that are fighting for the right to exist.

American Disinfo:
China's military consists of conscripts using cheaply made soviet-era copies, and supplemented with antiquated former Soviet Union equipment.

The Shenyang FC/J-31 and the Chengdu J-20 of the top line Chinese aircraft in use today.

I often see articles (in the Western press) praising the great high technology systems of the grand American military. And their specifications are truly spectacular. It seems like every plane is a “race car”, every device has the latest in graphical interface and exotic technology.

But they all need to be based, repaired and serviced.

When supply lines break down, many of these great systems are simply junk. Aside from the fact that no matter how great a plane is, it does need to land. And if you are fighting China, there will not be any place to land.

The Chinese have perfected some very advanced systems that are decades ahead of anything that America has. Do not be so sure that invading China would be another Iraq. It will not be.

Point #4 – Chinese Size

China is a huge nation, with an enormous population. In fact there are more Chinese that speak English (as a second language) than Americans in the entire world.

American Disinfo:
China is like Bangladesh or India, only much larger.

Couple that with the absolute ignorance of Americans. They have no idea about this. Or much as anything else for that matter.

Most Americans are clueless about geography. I don’t mean just a little bit ignorant, I mean absolutely and positively ignorant. Check out this VIDEO to show you what I am talking about…

Clueless video.

Pretty astounding, huh?

True America…

1. *AT&T fired President John Walter after nine months, saying he lacked intellectual leadership. He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it's not Walter who's lacking the intelligence

2. *WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS: Police in Oakland, CA spent two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them in the police line, shouting, 'Please come out and give yourself up.'

3. *WHAT WAS PLAN B? An Illinois man, pretending to have a gun, kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines, wherein the kidnapper proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank accounts.

4. *THE GETAWAY! A man walked into a Topeka, Kansas Kwik Stop and asked for all the money in the cash drawer. Apparently, the take was too small, so he tied up the store clerk and worked the counter himself for three hours until police showed up and grabbed him.

5. *DID I SAY THAT? Police in Los Angeles had good luck with a robbery suspect who just couldn't control himself during a lineup. When detectives asked each man in the lineup to repeat the words: 'Give me all your money or I'll shoot', the man shouted, 'that's not what I said!'

6. *ARE WE COMMUNICATING? A man spoke frantically into the phone: 'My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart'. 'Is this her first child?' the doctor asked. 'No!' the man shouted, 'This is her husband!'

7. *NOT THE SHARPEST TOOL IN THE SHED! In Modesto, CA, Steven Richard King was arrested for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch without a weapon. King used a thumb and a finger to simulate a gun. Unfortunately, he failed to keep his hand in his pocket. (hellooooooo...!!!)

8. *THE GRAND FINALE!

Last summer, down on Lake Isabella, located in the high desert, an hour east of Bakersfield, CA, some folks, new to boating, were having a problem. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't get their brand new 22 foot boat, going. It was very sluggish in almost every maneuver, no matter how much power they applied. After about an hour of trying to make it go, they putted into a nearby marina, thinking someone there may be able to tell them what was wrong. A thorough topside check revealed everything in perfect working condition. The engine ran fine, the out-drive went up and down, and the propeller was the correct size and pitch. So, one of the marina guys jumped in the water to check underneath. He came up choking on water, he was laughing so hard. Under the boat, still strapped securely in place, was the trailer!

*Now remember, these are all true stories and these people vote and have children

Heck, they have been dumbed down to such a point that they can’t even find Africa on a map! With this is an understanding about how enormous China actually is. In America, New York city is considered to be the largest city. While in China, there are a few hundred cities that are much, much larger.

Just a small “fishing village”.

Being such an enormous nation with such enormous resources makes it a very formidable foe. Everyone knows that you do not poke a stick at a tiger, as it will lunge at your and kill you swiftly, but that is exactly what the United States is doing today.

Point #5 – Chinese International standing

American Disinfo:

The entire world despises and hates China, and they are isolated, and scorned.

China is not isolated. It is not universally hated, and it is not considered to be demonic.

The world realizes that the United States is collapsing, and the Asia (Russia and China) are on the rise. They are looking towards the future. And that means to be on the “good side” of the nations of the future.

There are exceptions such as the Australians, and the Brits, but for the most part the nations are pragmatic and are looking at staying out of any conflict with the American military Empire, and the very powerful Russia / China block. VIDEO

Russia and China are very close allies. If you don’t believe me, then read what XI Peng, and Putin’s comments on this subject.

Point #6 – The Chinese are serious

American Disinfo:

China is run by corrupt insiders who got there though graft, crime and corruption. They are simply stooges that do whatever it takes to maintain power.

One of the biggest mistakes that Americans make (at all levels) is to misinterpret the Chinese. They play politics, they cater to the media, they perform rude actions, and they goad the Chinese. You do not do this and not expect consequences.

Just because the tiger is sleeping does not mean that it is not aware, that it’s fangs are not sharp and that it is not ready to tear you from limb to the other limb.

Consider the tit-for-tat VTOL carrier shoot-ups in 2020…

Chinese new carrier type-075 catches fire in Shanghai. April 2020. Mysterious fire causes massive damage.

Look what happened to the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) after the fire broke out on the Type-075 carrier. It was totaled and hauled off to the scrap yard.

Two months later, the American carrier USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6). Junked. July 2020.

I have often made the statement that the Chinese are a serious, serious nation that does not play. But it’s very true.

Point #7 – Military culture

American Disinfo:

China is a nation of pacifists, and they will never use nuclear weapons, nor respond to United States provocations. 

The Chinese haven't fought any wars in such a long time that they don't how to. And when the fighting starts, most of the military will crumble.

China is not a military empire. The United States is.

However, China is a merit driven society that demands doing one’s best as part of a group and everyone receives military training.

There is this belief that somehow Australian, Canadian and American forces can land inside of China and take over cities, communities and critical infrastructure and China would allow it, or fight back in crude disorganized manners. This is far from the truth.

China would fight as if their very existence was at stake, because it would be. China will never, absolutely NEVER, allow another “rape of Nanjing”.

Everyone would fight. From 6 year old “Pioneers” to retired 90 year olds. No passive passivists here. They are ready to kill and die for their home.

Here’s a video what first grade looks like in CHINA. When did you learn combat training? How to hold and clean a gun? How to form squads and lead them? These kids are only six years old.  VIDEO here.

VIDEO

This video is great!

In China, military training is mandatory and begins in first grade. It continues until the students graduate from high school.

China has over 6000 years of continuous, in-your-face fighting. They are the descendants of the armies of Genghis Khan. I would strongly suggest not fucking with them.

Point #8 – China is a unified society

This canard that America loves the Chinese but hates the Chinese leadership is ingrained in the American “news” media. It’s a lie. And it shows just how ignorant America is of the reality. China is homogenized, and a unified force.

American Disinfo:

China is a fractured country of dissatisfied poverty-ridden peasants. When offered an opportunity for freedom and democracy, they would revolt and break away from the iron-grip hold of Beijing.

When you kill one leader, the others just automatically take it’s place. This system is like water, you can take out a spoonful, and the water would flow back in place. In America, where there is a two tiered society that is balkanized, there isn’t any unity, no cohesiveness, and so transitions in leadership. It’s all a scripted fiasco. As any observer of modern contemporaneous America can clearly show.

This hospital was built in ten days. All by volunteers. All meals gas, equipment, and hospital equipment and building materials were all either loaned or given freely. This aspect of how the community works together in a crisis was NEVER reported in the West.

The premise is that America must be number #1

We hear this all the time on CNN, FOX and the rest of American media. No one asks what makes America so special. Because if you actually compare America to the rest of the world, it ranks rather poorly on a wide selection of attributes. In many of the attributes at the very rock-bottom of the lists.

America has FAILED to provide for it’s citizenry. Health care is a for-profit joke. Transportation is expensive, as is food, housing, and education. The government does not serve the people, and it is a police state oligarchy that operates as a military empire. It’s a true mess.

So tell me,  why MUST America be the boss of planet Earth?

No one can answer why.

Why must the current mess that the United States is, be allowed or permitted to exist. It does not serve it’s people. It’s a war empire that causes destruction all over the world, it rapes and pillages, and is run but a small handful of evil greedy oligarchs. Why?

Why is it important that the world become like America? VIDEO

Video of City life inside of America.

Still not convinced, well lets go to a DIFFERENT city… VIDEO

Video

Still not convinced, it is EVERYWHERE in America. Ok, well lets go to a third DIFFERENT city… VIDEO

Video

The War is on-going

My brother does have a point however. There is a war going on. It’s just that the United States is pushing, pushing, pushing and China is just sitting back and taking it.

Here’s a video showing how the Air Force and the Navy aviation pilots train so that they can shoot down and kill Chinese aircraft over China.

Training to kill Chinese.

Chinese team with Russia to warn Japan from aligning with the United States

Here’s something that hasn’t been reported in the American “news”.

This is a bit of a forceful move since diplomacy hasn’t worked. And the Brits and the Americans are flabbergasted that Russia would even dare sail with China. They argue that China has no rights to sail at will in international waters as it is a provocation, but America can and it is not a provocation if America does it. Video here.

Video

Chinese can build things at a pace that is difficult to comprehend

This is a very important point.

Oh, it’s not just two hospitals in ten days, or 35 submarines in one year, or 2000 nuclear ICBMS in six months. It’s everything. China can out manufacture anyone, out repair anything, and do it quickly, carefully and with decent quality. None of which is reported in the West. None of it is. VIDEO. So friggin’ amazing!

Video.

This reminds me of the Star Trek franchise where you have this race of creatures called the “Borg”. When their “cube” space ships are damaged, the damage is repaired with such speed that it looks like it is self healing before your very eyes. This, my friends, is China today.

The Chinese military is dangerous

Here’s a training exercise. Hey! Do you see any cheap AK-47 / SKS clones here? Do you see uneducated peasants? Do you see any starving people that was all that delicious freedom and democracy out of America? VIDEO

Video

China is a force to be afraid of…

Comparisons

It’s easy to find “armchair generals” and Conservative websites making comparisons between China and America.

As if it is actually possible.

They point out that America has a military and gun culture. That America is technically advanced, and it has the largest military in history with bases literally everywhere, and a huge and enormous and nearly unlimited amount of military weapons and hardware.

Which is pretty much what my brother was doing.

It’s so easy to look at one tiny little aspect and not see the entire picture.

Like looking at the number of nuclear warheads, for instance, like my brother did.

A comparison of nuclear armed submarines. China looks like the “little guy”. It looks so pathetic compared to the advanced developed systems of other navies.

But the true story is something quite different.

The Chinese military is not designed for force projection, invasion or remote operations. It is designed for up, in-your-face hard and severe defensive actions. The United States will not be able to take 100% of it’s military to fight on the Chinese shores in the South China Sea…

…but China can.

What Americans expect from a war with China.

You can disagree with my calculus, but those in America expect something quite different than what I expect.

Americans expect “A” to happen while I, a ex-spook with knowledge of a host of information, expect “B”.

Which is pretty much why my brother and I disagree so much.

It doesn’t mean that I don’t love him.

It just means that I get my information from different sources then him, and that I have a different perspective simply because I have both feet in both worlds. I know America. I know China. So thus, my understanding is that the result will be “B”.

I think that it’s not just that it’s non-stop “hate China” 24/7, but also that the pulsed thought control mechanisms have been working “overtime” to drum in all this hatred. I wrote about this before, and it was validated by vault 7. Americans are not just thought controlled, but are actually brainwashed. And so they believe “A”.

As a result of all this, American, and other “western” nations that follow the “news” media have these assumptions about what a war with China would look like. It all presents a very detailed picture of “A”.

And ignoring the facts that will make the reality actually be “B”.

These next key bullet points are what Americans expect to happen with a war with China. These are all the “givens” that “everyone knows” will occur with a war between the USA and China, and why.

First up is one of the TOP big assumptions that all Americans, Brits, and Australians believe…

1 – China is alone.

It will be a war against China, and China would be alone and isolated.

China is so evil and predatory that no one would stand by China. Already there have been numerous articles that say that Russia would abandon China, and that China would be alone with no friends. It is a fabricated narrative, but the American public just loves to read this fantasy.

Some examples of these kinds of articles…

Absolutely and positively there is not one single article or conservative publication that says otherwise.

No one is talking about other nations joining China to stand up to America. Not one. Since no one is looking at this issue, it is automatically assumed that any war with China, will have China alone and isolated where it can be pummeled by the USA relentlessly.

Look at every single map used by “armchair strategists” when describing a war / blockade / event with China. the image sure makes China look alone and isolated.

First and second island chain QUAD containment strategy.

They NEVER show China’s military allies.

Never.

Ever.

N-E-V-E-R.

Google it. Maps showing Chinese allies are nowhere to be found. Yet, we know that the SEC and BRICS+ are chock-full of them.

Further, in all the previous wars that America has fought, no other nations came to the aid of the attacked nation. Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan all were alone, isolated and “on their own” while America attacked them. It is natural for Americans to expect this exact same kind of behavior with a war with China.

Notice how all the maps drawing about “China containment” leave out the Russians and other Chinese allies. In the map below, notice how Russia and Iran, North Korea, and the Philippines are all either neutral or listed as American allies. Which are not true at all.

In the map below…

[1] Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and the Philippines should be pink. In fact, most of the nations shown on the map would be allied with China, and that includes most of Africa and the middle east.

[2] Iran should be shown as pink as well as Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

[3] Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand and Vietnam would be pink.

[4] Taiwan is pink, but the leadership is green. Don’t be so sure that it is a SOLID green.

[5] Philippines is pink.

[6] North Korea is pink.

[7] Indonesia is pink.

In fact, the entire map would be pink except for Japan, Australia and South Korea. The reality differs substantially from what is pictured and presented to the American audience.

The planned “ring of containment”.

2 – American allies will die for the USA.

Most of the fighting will be borne by American allies under the leadership of American forces. (Britain, Japan, Australia and Korea).

Some examples of these kinds of articles…

The American leadership knows that huge death rates are very bad for career politicians. They lose elections. So they do not want to a war where there are huge American casualties.

The “containment nations”; the QUAD meets for discussions on how to host American military in their countries, and the absorption of huge quantities of invasion supplies.

Instead, of this, they want American troops to be safe inside of bases, running remote drone strikes, or flying stealth aircraft that cannot be hit.

After the announcement of the QUAD, it has become clear that America expects Australia, Japan and Britain to do most of the dying.

3 – A just war against evil.

It will be a “just war” against an evil empire. The brave and just Americans will “fight for democracy” and liberate those oppressed by communism.

No one wants to think of themselves as evil, and Americans will always refer to themselves as “exceptional democracy” instead of the oligarchy run military empire that it actually is.

The non-stop villainization of China has been relentless and constant. Ergo: China is evil. It needs to be destroyed.

As a result, most Americans have a very unfavorable opinion of China.

But you know, the world is really tired of this never ending drum-beat about a nation before the United States invades it. Watch this VIDEO at how the rest of the world reacts to the American claims of mistreatment in China…

No one believes the USA any longer.

Some examples of these kinds of articles…

You can see this in the “concentration camp” narrative of Xingjiang, and the stories of rape, torture, and predatory saber rattling, etc, etc.

But you know, it’s all a lie.

Here’s the truth. This fellow is the EU representative who is telling the United States and the rest of the UN why the EU is breaking away from partnering with the United States to “contain” China.

Note that this (and his other speeches) were never broadcast in the United States. Americans have no clue that most of the EU has allied with China.  VIDEO.

Video

4 – The war will be conventional using the most advanced high-tech weapons.

The war will be conventional.

Though the USA could use some precise micro nukes, no one would dare risk nuclear annihilation in fighting back. As my brother so clearly said; China has a few paltry nukes while America can destroy the world thousands of times over.

China wouldn’t DARE attack the Untied States mainland.

It will be conventional because that is how America fights it’s long string of wars. Always with conventional forces after a softening up of anti-nation propaganda.

Some examples of these kinds of articles…

This is so ingrained in American culture that it is a profound given.

America would “never” start a war, and just as certainly would “never” use weapons of mass destruction. This is because America has the “technical advantage” and is able to conduct ‘surgical strikes” with accuracy and precision.

5 – China is far weaker than it appears.

China would be a “pushover” nation using cheaply made rifles and fielding many illiterate peasants.

Some examples of these kinds of articles…

This just shows how ignorant Americans are. But still they believe it. Since there simply isn’t ANY positive news about China, the assumptions made by Americans are always of the worst possible image.

In this case, poorly trained conscripts, reluctant to fight a war, handed cheap AK-47 clones, and told to throw themselves at the proud American occupation forces. Not true.

  • The real face of China is never presented to the West or to Americans.

The Chinese are a tough people. They are not “pushovers”.

Here’s a VIDEO where the Americans who fought the Chinese in Korea relate what it was like, and the over all quality of the soldiers, even though they were over-matched by the superior weight and quantity of American overwhelming military superiority….

They did not fear death.

All Chinese are trained to kill.

There are no conscious objectors. Training starts in first grade. Six year old children; boys and girls. Yeah. No shit. First grade. There is mandatory boot camp in middle school, and everyone spends two years in the armed forces. VIDEO.

Oh, and by the way… that’s 1.6 billion people that can fight. Remember, America only has 330 million people tops.

Video

Middle school training.

Over the last five years, the training program for all students has been revamped. It has become more rigorous, more militarily focused, with a great emphasis on tactics, weapons training, and endurance.

The video below shows  school children in a massive weekend training exercise. VIDEO.

6 – The war would be far away

The war would last for decades, and be in China, and far away.

It would NEVER hit American states; American cities, American ports, or American industry. Never.

Most Americans assume that the next war will be like the last. And since America has been fighting eight simultaneous wars for decades, they naturally assume that China will just be the same-oh, same-oh.

The general characteristics of American wars are that they are far away, fighting evil terrorists (who deserve it) and that Americans are always and forever safe in their homes and in their communities.

Some examples of these kinds of articles…

7 – Made for television

The war would be televised and presented on all the social media.

It would become a hobby for a bored, unemployed, drug addicted nation to view. It would be the equivalent of “bread and circuses” in ancient Rome. Facebook and Twitter would carry news about the latest successes, death counts and pictures of proud Americans waving the flag while the adoring Chinese clamor for all their freedom and democracy.

Some examples of these kinds of articles…

 

    • American soldiers spreading democracy.

8 – America would remain at peace

America would be spared. No fighting would occur inside of America.

America has fought war after war, after war. And in every instance no one ever brought the war to America. Sure there was a bombing of the Hawaii naval base at Pearl harbor, and 9-11 but those were incidents. Not war.

Since modern America has never experienced war, Americans assume that it never will. Many SHTF people are planning for domestic war, terror, and societal breakdowns. None are expecting the collapse of the United States, and a proxy / Vichy  government set up to service the needs of the Asian block.

9 – The USA would unify

While the war is going on, American domestic problems would end, and a new “renaissance” would occur inside of America.

All of America, on both sides of the ideological spectrum, are filled with a hatred off all things Chinese.

There’s this belief that “things must change”, and something harsh and televised like a war will make Americans proud again, and rally them towards a cause. This rally point will unify the balkanized nation and bring it together, and in the process would be a great healing and repair of all the many neglected and broken systems that abound throughout the nation.

10 – Manageable casualties

No excessive American casualties. There would be causalities, and maybe a ship or two might be sunk and a few aircraft downed. But nothing excessive.

Most Americans, and I do mean MOST, are extremely ignorant. They mistakenly believe that China is not a dangerous nation, and that it will just be a larger Yemen, or Syria. Americans realize that people die in wars, as many of the anti-China crowd has watched Rambo movies, but they believe that only the bad guys die. Not the brave strong American forces. Sure, one or two might die, but whole scale destruction will never happen.

11 – Taiwan needs American rescue

Taiwan is a nation in need of rescue.

The non-stop description of what Taiwan is, compared to the reality is so in variance that it has taken me many articles to untangle the lies and distortions. You all can believe what ever you want. Just recognize that the American image of what Taiwan is is wholly  that of a poor struggling democracy that is shivering in place under the harsh thumb of oppressive communism. LOL!

So much for the American fantasy.

Now lets talk about the real things that will happen

Well, that’s what most Americans think. And judging from the pro-war Brits and Australians, it’s what the allies believe as well.

Australians in Afghanistan working for the American military.

Here, let’s look at what both the Chinese and the Russians EXPECT will happen with a war with America over some “Chinese or Russian” issues. They do not read MSN, FOX “news”, Zero Hedge, Hall Turner, or the Drudge Report. They have their own experts, sources of intel, and strategic planners.

Now, let’s look at what I know, and what is not being presented to the American people. Here is the REALITY that WILL OCCUR.

Here’s some things that are real things that will really happen if the US wages war against China…

1 – A war against an SEO member would be a war against a unified Asia.

China will NOT be alone. Russia would fight alongside China. And Iran would join the fray. All of Asia will fight as one.

SEO joint exercises.

Please forgive me if my words betray my frustration. That is because I have been saying the same thing for years and it seems to me that almost no-one has “connected the dots.”

As many of us know, the nuclear armed nations of the world agreed decades ago that no one nation would initiate a nuclear first strike against another nation, because they realized that the consequence of such an action would be the end of human life on earth. That realization cooled the nuclear arms race down to everyone’s relief.

Then in the first week of April, 2014, the President of the United States, Barrack Obama, announced publicly that the nuclear weapons strategy of the US has changed: the US is now willing to make a first strike on China with nuclear weapons.

Needless to say that public statement freaked out 1 – 2 billion Chinese people around the globe. Understandably, the President of the Republic of China, Xi Jinping, announced publicly that he ordered China’s nuclear armed submarine fleet to go immediately to the US west coast. He also reassured the Chinese people that Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles could travel over the North Pole and destroy major cities and other targets in the eastern US.

One or two days later a Chinese envoy arrived at the Kremlin in the Federation of Russia with an envelope for Vladimir Putin, President of the Federation of Russia. The contents of the envelope initiated Article 9 of the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation Between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. 

Article 9 states: 

“When a situation arises in which one of the contracting parties deems that peace is being threatened and undermined or its security interests are involved or when it is confronted with the threat of aggression, the contracting parties shall immediately hold contacts and consultations in order to eliminate such threats.”

Let us stop for a moment and recap the events. 

[1] The President of the US declared publicly that the US was willing to conduct a nuclear first strike on China. 

[2] The Chinese people freaked out. 
[3] The president of China took defensive measures including asking Russia for help with this unforeseen mess.

The Russians responded, as they must and feel obligated to do after they make an agreement with China. After all, the Russians are “agreement capable.”

[4] The Russian move was truly brilliant. 

Enter the USS Donald Cook incident. (DC for short) The videos of the DC incident were so widespread, and so many people made copies of the video that “they” could not possibly scrub the video off the Internet. However, they are trying to change the date of the incident.

Anyway, a day or two after the Chinese envoy arrived at the Kremlin and invoked Article 9 of the aforementioned Treaty, the Russians made a move.

The USS Donald Cook is the most advanced Aegis class missile destroyers in the US navy. The DC was in the Black Sea at this time and the Russians make their move. 

Two Russian fighter jets approached the DC; one with advanced electronic warfare hardware, and one as an escort. The DC electronics, computers, radar, and all electronics crashed, leaving the DC “dead in the water.” Then the Russian jet escort made twelve mock attack runs on the DC. And you probably already know about the Russian helicopter crew videotaping the commotion onboard the DC.

That is not my point. 

My point is the Chinese invoked Article 9 of the “Treaty” and the Russian response was twofold. 

Firstly, the Russians showed the Chinese that the Russians will honor their promises, and secondly, the Russians showed the US that Russians are not to be underestimated.

What does this mean?

2 – From the very start, nuclear weapons will be used.

Nuclear weapons will be used at the start. There would not be any escalation from conventional to nuclear arms.

  • This is Chinese doctrine (against a nation that attacks its soil).
  • This is Russian doctrine (against a hostile nuclear power).

Here’s a fine nuclear explosion to remind you what we are talking about here. VIDEO here.

Video

And since the United States has been so God awfully Hell bent on starting a war, China has been mass producing missiles and nuclear weapons at an outrageous pace.

It’s like making bushels of paper lanterns.

China does not play.

And, of course…

3 – All American bases everywhere will come under fire.

American bases will be attacked. Any nations supporting American troops in any way will be attacked. When I say “attacked” I mean erased, vaporized, glassed over, and gone.

Nuclear bang-bang.

Guam… no more.

Major American military facilities in the area around China.

Say good bye to Guam.

Same goes for all of Honolulu, Hawaii.

San Diego, Diego Garcia, Korean and Japanese bases…

To the American military bases in Australia, and the city of Perth. Say good bye to the bases anywhere close to China.

Bye Bye.

Hawaii will become a series of tiny, tiny radioactive shoals and islands.

All American military bases would be flattened.

There is a strategy that the United States can spread out it’s bases in the South China Sea. Instead of having eight major hubs, they can turn it into thirty smaller military logistical and launch hubs. I am here to tell you that that will not work.

  • Eight bases = eight nuclear detonations.
  • 35 Bases = 35 nuclear detonations.

It doesn’t matter.

4 – American cities will be nuked.

America will be hit with nuclear warheads, and cities will be destroyed.

I do not think that Russia and China are stupid.

Washington DC will be gone, that’s a fact. And I hate to break the news to you, but probably LA, New York, Chicago, Huston, Boston, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Seattle as well. In fact, you can expect all urban areas in America to be erased, and their inhabitants flooding the countryside…

…armed, pissed off, sick, hungry and radioactive. As they carry biological warfare plagues and pustule sores on their tattooed urban bodies. Good luck with your precious “democracy” and “freedom” then. Suckers!

And it will be China and Russia, not the USA, that will determine when and how to deal with this war.

And yes, the USA will be able to go MAD with the huge substantial and dangerous American nuclear arsenal… … provided the communication lines are up, the satellite links are up, and the computers still work.

 

And just in case you are brain dead, here’s some videos of nuclear explosions to show the kind of power that China currently has. The last three are Chinese nukes just in case you are convinced that they don’t have any.  VIDEO.

Video

Remember, a nuclear hit on Mono Lake will render the entire water supply for the entire West Coast of America… radioactive.

Remember, a nuclear hit on the San Andres fault line will generate earthquakes up and down the West Coast.

Remember, that a submerged underwater nuclear detonation would take out all of inhabited Virginia, as well as one off the coast of Florida would totally erase that state.

5 – All trade would stop.

All trade would stop. All of it. At least all sea trade.

Inland Asia routes would remain intact. So trade would continue throughout Asia. But the trade to the Americas would end. And they would be on their own until the Untied States could rebuild up it’s industries, train its workers, and find enough remaining local metals and resources to fire up those new factories.

Most Americans (Brits and Australians) have no idea just how vulnerable the world is with trade. To use aluminum as an example, sure America can run aluminum extrusion factories, but they can’t make anything because all the alloy metals are from China.

As are 95% of all drugs.

And so on and so forth.

And with the end of trade comes breakdowns in society. Hospitals will not be able to treat people. Factories will shut down (well the few that exist will). Fast food restaurants will start to open on short hours.

There isn’t anything made in the United States today that is 100% sourced domestically. NOTHING.

6 – The USD, and thus the American economy would collapse.

The United States Dollar will collapse.

Long overdue, but it will happen and there is nothing better to accelerate the demise than a war. Were a war to occur, the value of the USD would equate to zero.

Zero.

As in absolutely nothing.

Here is video that describes how China bailed out two recent economic emergencies that the USA found itself in. The first was in 2008, and China bought up trillions in useless American debt, and the second was by raising the credit limits. With the way the USA is behaving right now, China will no longer help out and the USA must fend for itself. Watch this mind-blowing VIDEO.

Video

With the trillions of dollars in spending over the last few years, the USA economic scene resembles something out of “The Outer Limits” or “The Twilight Zone”. And China will no longer help such an openly hostile nation.

You can only pay the blackmail amounts only so long.

It’s over.

Other systems would need to be put in place to handle the chaos that would result. It would be a very testy time, and do not be under the mistaken impression that Asia would allow America to time and resources to deal with the resulting domestic discord.

They would instead aggravate it and allow the American people to eat each other alive. Which they most certainly will.

Here’s a VIDEO where the Singapore foreign minister talks about how the USA strong-armed them to accept American debt and the USD and what the consequences will be.

Video

7 – America would fracture.

America, which is balkanized, would fracture into fiefdoms.

That’s the good news. Some smaller government will be the result of all this. Federal leadership would disappear. Mobs, gangs, militias would all start to appear, and it would be a scramble for power that would be very brutal.

Here’s a balkanized America where the states would keep many of their original territorial lines.

Suggested new nations assuming local state capitals are spared nuclear destruction.

And here’s one based on great cultural and societal upheavals…

Domestic upheaval fractured state.

Why would there be social upheavals? Well it is easy to see. The capitalist system, and the government operations are out of touch with the vast bulk of Americans. It’s no only not working, but it is beyond repair. It is broken, seriously broken. VIDEO.

Video

8 – It would take many decades for America to rebuild.

America would not be able to rebuild, but China and Russia would be able to move into complete ready to use, new cities almost immediately.

America is in it’s prime, and it can’t build worth shit. How is this situation going to improve with the general collapse of the entire society? The truth is that it cannot, and when there is no media to tell everyone that everything is fine, it will be the harsh slap of realty that will not be at all comfortable.

The people who will rebuild the United States.

9 – GBP and PPP would be altered throughout the West.

The standard of living for many nations would change. America would change severely, and the survivors inside of America would not survive this new reality well.

Most of this is due to the great fragility of the West. The decades of looting, and the artificially inflated worth and value of everything will start crashing down to actual values. But now, with serious structural and domestic problems, and destroyed cities, major governmental structural change will be necessary. if they do not happen, the collapse will be far worse, but even if attempts were made to get a handle on the collapse, it will still result in great swaths of destitution throughout society.

10 – Destruction all over the globe.

Every nation will experience massive destruction. Some will be much worse than others.

Read my Deagel Report.

Deagel Forecast

.

Deagel 2020 revision to the original 2012 Deagel Forecast

The Deagel forecast was a CIA exercise to remote view 2025. The results were horrific.

BlueNarwhal:
Forecast disclaimer revision in 2020:

In 2014 we published a disclaimer about the forecast. In six years the scenario has changed dramatically. This new disclaimer is meant to single out the situation from 2020 on-wards.

Talking about the United States and the European Union as separated entities no longer makes sense. Both are the Western block, keep printing money and will share the same fate.

After COVID we can draw two major conclusions:

  • The Western world (success model) has been built over societies with no resilience. They can barely withstand any hardship, even a low intensity one. It was assumed but now we’ve got the full hard confirmation beyond any doubt. They are weak to the point of a decapitated cripple.
  • The COVID crisis will be used to extend the life of this dying economic system through the so called “Great Reset.”

The Great Reset;

Like the climate change, extinction rebellion, planetary crisis, green revolution, shale oil (…) hoaxes promoted by the system; is another attempt to slow down dramatically the consumption of natural resources and therefore extend the lifetime of the current system.

It can be effective for awhile but finally won’t address the bottom-line problem and will only delay the inevitable. The core ruling elites hope to stay in power which is in effect the only thing that really worries them.

Collapse of the USD Financial Banking System

The collapse of the Western financial system – and ultimately the Western civilization – has been the major driver in the 2012 forecast along with a confluence of crisis with a devastating outcome.

Progressive Multiculturalism failures

As COVID has proven Western societies embracing multiculturalism and extreme liberalism are unable to deal with any real hardship.

Coronavirus Pandemic

The Spanish flu one century ago represented the death of 40-50 million people. Today the world’s population is four times greater with air travel in full swing which is by definition a super spreader. The death casualties in today’s World would represent 160 to 200 million in relative terms but more likely 300-400 million taking into consideration the air travel factor that did not exist one century ago. So far, COVID death toll is roughly 1 million people.

Economic crisis due to forced lock-downs

It is quite likely that the economic crisis due to the lock-downs will cause more deaths than the virus worldwide. The Soviet system was less able to deliver goodies to the people than the Western one. Nevertheless Soviet society was more compact and resilient under an authoritarian regime. That in mind, the collapse of the Soviet system wiped out 10 percent of the population.

The stark reality of diverse and multicultural Western societies is that a collapse will have a toll of 50 to 80 percent depending on several factors. But in general terms the most diverse, multicultural, indebted and wealthy (highest standard of living) will suffer the highest toll.

Life-Support Systems

The only glue that keeps united such aberrant collage from falling apart is over-consumption with heavy doses of bottomless degeneracy disguised as virtue. Nevertheless the widespread censorship, hate laws and contradictory signals mean that even that glue is not working any more.

The Predictions

Not everybody has to die. Migration (out from America, the West, etc.) can also play a positive role in this.

Second and Third World Nations

The formerly (known as) second and third world nations are an unknown at this point. Their fate will depend upon the decisions they take in the future.

Western powers are not going to take over them as they did in the past because these (Western) countries won’t be able to control their very own cities let alone those countries that are far away.

If they remain tied to the former World Order they will go down along with the Western powers. However, they won’t experience the same kind of brutal decline that the Western powers will experience so brazenly. This is partially because they are poorer and (obviously) not diverse enough. Instead they are stronger than the Western powers because they are actually quite homogeneous. This is their advantage. And that they are used to deal with some sort of hardship. Though,  not precisely the one that is coming.

If they switch to China they can get a chance to stabilize but will need to depend upon the management of their own resources. We expected this situation to unfold and actually is unfolding right now.

American Election Consequences

With the November election triggering a major bomb if Trump is re-elected. (Did not happen.)  If Biden is elected there will very bad consequences as well.

There is a lot of bad blood in the Western societies and the protests, demonstrations, rioting and looting are only the first symptoms of what is coming.

Geo-Political Changes

However a new trend is taking place overshadowing this one. The situation between the three great powers has changed dramatically.

The only relevant achievement of the Western powers during the past decade has been the formation of a strategic alliance, both military and economic, between Russia and China.

Russia and China are a united Asia.

Right now the potential partnership between Russia and the European Union (EU) is dead with Russia turning definitively towards China. That was from the beginning the most likely outcome. Great VIDEO of Chinese weapon systems…

Video

The European Union is on it’s own.

Airbus never tried to establish a real partnership but rather a strategy to fade away the Russian aerospace industry. Actually Russia and China have formed a new alliance to build a long haul airliner.

Western Europe (not to mention the United States) was never interested in the development of Russia or forming anything other than a master slave relationship with Russia providing raw materials and toeing the line of the West.

It was clear then and today is a fact.

Preparations for war

Russia has been preparing for a major war since 2008 and China has been increasing her military capabilities for the last 20 years. Today China is not a second tier power compared with the United States. Both in military and economic terms China is at the same level and in some specific areas are far ahead.

Chinese Technology is state of the art.

In the domain of high-tech 5G has been a success in the commercial realm but the Type 055 destroyer is also another breakthrough with the US gaining a similar capability (DDG 51 Flight IIII) by mid of this decade (more likely by 2030).

Nanchang, the lead ship of the Type 055 class, was commissioned amid the pandemic and lock down in China.

Potential for open war hostilities

Six years ago the likelihood of a major war was tiny.

Since then it has grown steadily and dramatically and today is by far the most likely major event in the 2020s.

The ultimate conflict can come from two ways.

[1] A conventional conflict involving at least two major powers that escalates into an open nuclear war. Most likely initiated by the United States, with a nuclear retaliatory salvo of impressive destructive magnitude.

[2] A second scenario is possible in the 2025-2030 time-frame. A Russian (with possibly China) sneak first strike against the United States and its allies with the new S-500, strategic missile defenses, Yasen-M submarines, INF Zircon and Kalibr missiles and some new space asset playing the key role.

The sneaky first strike would involve all Russian missile strategic forces branches (bombers and ground-based missiles) at the different stages of such attack that would be strategic translation of what was seen in Syria in November 2015.

Massive failures in Western Intelligence Agencies

There was no report that the Russian had such a capability of launching a high precision, multiple, combined arms attack at targets 2,000+ kilometers away.

Western intelligence had no clue.

Brainwashed Moral Superiority

The irony is that since the end of the Cold War the United States has been maneuvering through NATO to achieve a position to be able to execute a first strike (nuclear) over Russia and now it seems that the first strike may still occur but the country finished would be the United States.

Another particularity of the Western system is that its individuals have been brainwashed to the point that the majority accept their moral high ground and technological edge as a given. This has given the rise of the supremacy of the emotional arguments over the rational ones which are ignored or deprecated.

That mindset can play a key role in the upcoming catastrophic events.

At least in the Soviet system the silent majority of the people were aware of the fallacies they were fed up.

We can see the United States claims about 5G being stolen from them by China or hypersonic technology being stolen by Russia as the evidence that the Western elites are also infected by that hubris. Over the next decade it will become obvious that the West is falling behind the Russia-China block and the malaise might grow into desperation.

Why go to war?

Going to war might seem a quick and easy solution to restore the lost hegemony to finally find them into a France 1940 moment. Back then France did not have nuclear weapons to turn a defeat into a victory. The West might try that swap because the unpleasant prospect of not being Mars and Venus but rather a bully and his dirty bitch running away in fear while the rest of the world is laughing at them.

If there is not a dramatic change of course the world is going to witness the first nuclear war.

The Western block collapse may come before, during or after the war. It does not matter. The West will completely collapse. It is fragile. It will be unable to recover from even the slightest societal disruption.

A nuclear war is a game with billions of casualties and the collapse plays in the hundreds of millions.

He Concludes…

This website is non-profit, built on spare time and we provide our information and services AS IS without further explanations and/or guarantees. We are not linked to any government. Take into account that the forecast is nothing more than a game of numbers whether flawed or correct based upon some speculative assumptions. - Friday, September 25th, 2020

11 – Japan will be hurt very badly

Japan erased. If Japan sides with the United States, it will be pulverized into oblivion through nuclear scrubbing. China has never forgotten the “rape of Nanjing” and the failure of Japan to apologize.VIDEO.

VIDEO

Chinese retribution would be swift, lethal and merciless.

The Rape of Nanjing.

Russia and China sailed a flotilla of armed ships around Japan in October 2021. This was a direct result of agreements that japan made with the United States pertaining to QUAD Chinese containment.

The message was clear.

If Japan agrees to work with the United States in any war, Both Russia and China would render Japan impotent. VIDEO here.

Video.

12 – China has already fielded military systems that the West can only dream of.

Video here. We start off with tiny robot grenades, and move from there. Enjoy this look at what is not being reported in the American “news”.

Video.

13 – China has been practicing emergency missile launches.

Here’s a nice video where a Chinese submarine launches all of it’s ballistic nuclear warhead SLBM missiles within one minute one right after the other. America has NEVER done that. The reason being that it is very difficult to keep a submarine stable during subsequent SLBM launchings. But China has mastered it.

I’ll bet you never read about these drills in Zero Hedge, FOX “news” or CNN have you? VIDEO.

Video.

China has been practicing and drilling over and over and over and over.

Anyone who welcomes a War with China (and Russia) is a fucking idiot. VIDEO.

Video

China trains, drills, trains again, drills some more.

It is ruthless.

No breaks. No rests. No apologies. No one is exempt. VIDEO.

Video

Practice, practice, practice. VIDEO.

These are LIVE FIRE exercises and training. Note how they work together and file in groups of other soldiers. So many chances of accidents. It’s dangerous training, as the weapons are all HOT and LIVE…VIDEO.

Video

14 – All Chinese school children are indoctrinated as warriors

Chinese elementary students are ready to fight.

Every single one of them, all throughout China, has been trained to use small arms, and the basics in squad military tactics.

They are all ready to reverse the “century of humiliation”, and the “Rape of China” all by European forces and their surrogates.

Listen to me. They will not be nice. VIDEO.

Video

Here’s some third grade students showing first grade students how to assemble and handle rifles, and weapons. VIDEO. It’s a long video at 83MB, but WELL worth the watch.

I recorded it while watching my little girls, so sorry about the chit-chat in the background.

Please pay attention to what is going on. Third grade students doing this. 9 years old. We see them teaching the first and second graders in basic squad movement and behaviors. VIDEO.

Video

15 – China does everything in huge quantities at enormous scales

You won’t have one of two tanks, a plane or two, of maybe two squads lunging at you. You will have massed armies all pissed off and charging at you in wave, after wave, after wave, after wave using peer-capable weapons systems. VIDEO.

Video

15 – The European Union is being forced to choose sides.

The EU is moving to closer relations with China. The United States is forcing the EU to choose between the USA or China.

As it stands right now, the EU is moving towards greater relationships with China and are shunning and abandoning the USA. VIDEO of the spokesperson for the EU.

Video

Conclusion

Here is an email I got from a reader. I’ll give it to you straight:

Living in Southeast Asia, I sometimes worry about China’s encroachment on my life and the way of life of many others in the region. Then, I read another of your columns. I do not want American values to win out in the world; I do not want them in the country of my residence.

I dislike Chinese authoritarianism. I dislike American authoritarianism and cultural terrorism more. The Chinese retain a more meritocratic system. They maintain a respect for their traditions. I’ve yet to meet someone from China who is ashamed  of being Chinese.

For the sake of civilization and human advancement, I prefer China over the U.S., which seems entirely to be ruled and taught by the mentally ill. Soon, we will need to choose between the two. 

Now there’s food for thought.

While I have been shaken by the words my brother said, I am not going to leave China. I love it here. It is the safest place on the planet, and I have homes, family, friends, and a life here that I am not going to throw away.

Especially not because some Taiwan billionaire is afraid that China will seize his fiefdom. (I wrote about who wants the war and why they are funding it elsewhere.)

A war would hurt me tremendously, if not kill me outright, and trust me, I am not ready to be at “ground zero” for a nuclear strike. But I must tell you all this; I don’t think that it will be China that will the focus of war like everyone thinks. It will be the United States, and it’s allies.

I am willing to BET MY LIFE on it.

That is how strongly I believe in the Intel that I am providing here.

America has no end game in a war with China. Only the hope and desire that it can be “suppressed” so that America can remain the most dominant nation on the planet.

Of those few who consider a long term strategy, they would consider making the Taiwan government rule over the Chinese mainland. This is a wholly ridiculous notion and it would never happen.

Let’s hope that this period of hostilities ends soon.

This sums up what to expect from China…

Shock them.

 

A final comment

I think we shall hold true to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s Two Rules of War:

  • Rule One—Don’t invade Russia.
  • Rule Two—Don’t invade China.

I do agree with my reader when he says that the U.S.A. has succumbed to government by the mentally ill. Well-nigh every news story I read about the doings of our federal government confirms it.

Random headline from this week’s news: Biden releases “gender equity” plan that calls for eliminating cash bail, by Michael Lee, Fox News, October 27, 2021.

I tried to read the story that followed, but couldn’t make much sense of it. Yes, it’s like listening to the babble of a lunatic.

War is not a game that you play or read about in the news feeds. It’s a serious serious business, and Russia and China are about ready to send America into the bronze age. You all had best calm down and take a deep breath and figure how you will handle the exodus of radioactive urban youth, hungry, pissed off, and armed as they enter you nice communities, walk on your fine lawns and break into your fine homes.

China should be the last fucking thing on your God damn mind. VIDEO.

China should be the last fucking thing on your God damn mind.

Videos

The embeds are far too slow loading. Enjoy related you-tube videos…

https://youtu.be/aXDK3hCNAVE

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 2

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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Unreported Western military “chess moves” going on in and around the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Oct21

The level of rising international tension is extremely concerning yet most people are unconcerned. And unaware.

China

As I have reported previously, it is obvious that the United States is leading “the West” towards a major confrontation with China.

From SOTT…

In a recent article by Prof. James Petras, he sees this "lashing out" taking the form of investment barriers against China. The land of "free trade" ideology will now stop at nothing to restrict China's freedom in international markets. The warmongering in the South China Sea, her traditionally significant trade routes, is just one of the more obnoxious and dangerous. 

He writes,

"The Anglo-American and German empires are on the defensive. They increasingly cannot compete economically with China, even in defending their own innovative industries. In large part this is the result of their failed policies. Western economic elite have increasingly relied on short-term speculation in finance, real estate and insurance, while neglecting their industrial base."

Led by the US, their reliance on military conquests (militaristic empire-building) absorb public resources, while China has directed its domestic resources toward innovative and advanced technology (Petras, 2016).

Few realize that the Trans Pacific Partnership excludes China from much of its North American investment plans. However, outside of war, no one will alter their reliance on Chinese markets and products. Walls will be ineffective. This might suggest the bellicose nature of the broke US empire in Asia. 

China's political model is generally social nationalist. It has outperformed all others over the last generation. China's recent heavy investment in robotics and nanotechnology almost guarantee the bankrupt USA will be forced to reply on warfare. This, in itself, as Petras suggests, shows exactly why Peking wins while Washington drowns. 

One of the most outlandish admissions as to American ill-will in the area is the Council on Foreign Relations' "Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China." One of its complaints is that the Chinese seek to "cast doubt on the US economic model" as part of their agenda. Here is a key passage:

"The fundamental conclusion for the United States, therefore, is that China does not see its interests served by becoming just another "trading state," no matter how constructive an outcome that might be for resolving the larger tensions between its economic and geopolitical strategies. Instead, China will continue along the path to becoming a conventional great power with the full panoply of political and military capabilities, all oriented toward realizing the goal of recovering from the United States the primacy it once enjoyed in Asia as a prelude to exerting global influence in the future (Blackwill and Tellis, 2015)"

The assumption throughout is that the US has an inherent right to dominate the globe. And other power that seeks to supplant this dominance is an enemy. 

China does nothing that the US has not already done. 

The reality is that the US has no business at all in Asia and China certainly has no desire to harm the United States economically. They are quite dependent on the American market for now, though that is changing as American consumer debt will continue to suppress any recovery. As American companies rely on foreign sales for profitability, economic recovery is clearly not happening. 

Since the CFR has for its members the elite in economics, finance, industry, government and academia, it is the "ruling class." Therefore, its publications can be considered the official doctrine of this class. Therefore, this report's recommendations of "[intensifying] a consistent U.S. naval and air presence in the South and East China Seas" are now American policy. 

The report, in many places, speaks of increasing US military capabilities on China's doorstep and using these as threats to force China out of the world stage in any way that "casts doubt on the US economic model." 

Japan's military forces are also to be expanded greatly and the famous Constitutional provision preventing her projection abroad should be abandoned. The US wrote their Constitution and forced it upon them, they certainly can rewrite it now. 

World War II began when FDR restricted Japan's access to its critical supplies of steel and oil. Japan never threatened the US and only wanted positive trade relations as she did to Asia what the US did to North America. This policy of restriction forced Tokyo to eventually take a hostile posture towards Washington. 

We read in this official report:

"The United States should encourage these countries to develop a coordinated approach to constrict China's access to all technologies, including dual use, that can inflict "high leverage strategic harm." To establish a new technology regime toward China, Washington should enter into an immediate discussion with allies and friends with the aim of tightening restrictions on the sales of militarily critical technologies to China, including dual use technologies. This will obviously not be easy to accomplish, but the effort should get under way immediately (25)."

So much of this is fantasy since so many nations are dependent on China. 

The same nations see the US as too indebted to have much freedom of action. There is no future in the West as the EU continues to sink into poverty and oligarchy. 

The CFR here, unsurprisingly, states that the TPP is essential to their goals. The demand of the ruling class is to force the Chinese to abandon all hopes of great power status and to admit the US as the only legitimate arbiter of important political decisions in the region. Apart from the rationale behind this, Peking, believing its long earned its rise to power, will certainly not accept it - nor should they. 

Ideology also plays a role. Fighting the US is to fight the "liberal international system." They write, "China has sought to integrate both its Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) partners and its regional neighbors into economic ventures that rival those of the liberal international system. . . ." (16). To "cast doubt on the US economy model" is seen by the ruling class as identical with casting doubt on international financial liberalism. 

That China's meteoric rise to power was done without a liberal order does not impress the authors. Perhaps, that's the root of the problem.

To that end, it has been prodding, and poking China with all kinds of sticks and goading it to take action. This process is accelerating, and each day it is getting worse and worse.

What the (American) ruling class is presently doing is attacking China in every way but open war. 

China has no interests according to the regime, only the US empire does (or "financial liberalism"). The US is in no position to get itself into a war of attrition with a nuclear armed power. There is no support for any war in the US, nor is there money. In the report cited above, no mention is made of the billions and billions of dollars owned by the Chinese or the results of their flooding the market with them. This might suggest why the Rothschilds and Rockefellers are buying so much gold. China is being encircled and threatened, they have every moral right to rectify this situation militarily if necessary.

-SOTT

China has laid down “red lines” that will trigger armed conflict, and there the USA is (right now) dancing right on top of those “red lines” saying “nah nah nah” and sticking out it’s (figurative) tongue and making “raspberry sounds”.

Nah nah nah!

It is obvious, but I will spell it out.

Some very big and very bad things are being set up to occur with China. Very big. Very bad. And it will be very uncomfortable for all of us.

Russia

Meanwhile, you also have Russia.

Russia, and China are both aligned on many, many levels with the fundamental arrangements part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. There are those that disagree that China and Russia are conjoined twins. When I argue my points the opposing viewpoint has nothing to say. They haven’t encountered the information that I provide. they only spout off the Western media talking points; which is really just a fantasy world.

But Russia, you know, they too were being poked at and prodded with. And Russia moved up all of it’s forces and was “this close” to getting into a hot kinetic war. This was late last year into this one. The “West” pulled back. It disengaged, but did not stop. Instead billions of dollars in military equipment and supplies started to fly into the Ukraine and related areas all aimed towards Russia.

It is obvious, but I will spell it out.

Some very big and very bad things are being set up to occur with Russia.

China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

From SOTT

There is no getting out of the present American Depression. Private sector debt is fast approaching $20 trillion, not including the massive interest to be added over the foreseeable future. Given that war with either Russia or China would be suicidal for the US – let alone both together – the only rational reading of the Regime’s provocation on both fronts is to unify the country for the sake of economic recovery.

I beg to differ. There's another reading. They are insane, don't know what they are doing, and / or are part of a death cult waiting for "the rapture". -MM

FDR did the same in 1941 against a stubborn Depression. Unfortunately, FDR had a unified nation, a basically moral people and a national, civic will. The national leadership was overwhelmingly seen as legitimate. Yes, it was abused and manipulated, ultimately destroying it, but it is something that the US today has none of.

The people of the US has no interest in a war with anyone, and certainly should not have any military presence in south Asia or the Baltics. These countries are more than willing to trade with the US, so the actual purpose can only be for exploitation.

Exploitation so to protect the massive investments ultimately destroying the US economy. This is corporate welfare of the worst kind.

The Americans, further, have no interest in who controls the South China Sea in the same way as she has no interest in the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere.

 Japan's rise to power after 1900 made her the natural leader of East Asia. China is in the same position now. There's no moral issue one way or another with a regional hegemon.

Recently, The Philippines took China to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea over the issue. Any college sophomore should know that Manila would never take such a provocative action.

Sure enough, it was the US masquerading as the Philippines, suing China though the agency of Paul Reichler of the Boston law firm of Foley Hoag.

Of course, the American press took the State Department at its word as always. Since China sits on the Security Council, the “Philippine” victory was of no interest to them.

The UN has no authority in the area or anywhere else, so the “legal” defeat was ignored.

More recently, American arrogance towards President Duterte forced a rapprochement between China and the Philippines, showing yet against the irrationality of American foreign policy.

The Council on Foreign relations opined:

Because the American effort to 'integrate' China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to U.S. primacy in Asia—and could result in a consequential challenge to American power globally.

Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy (quoted from Cartalucci, 2016).

It’s difficult to decide which absurdity to tackle first.

It is, as Cartalucci says, “an open, modern proclamation of imperialism.”

This sort of domination is not about protecting sea lanes and ensuring open trade. That was and will never be an issue. It is about exploiting the region directly.

The problem is that China is not Iraq.

China is a first world power more than willing and able to defeat a demoralized, broke and military overstretched US.

To put it crudely, China is becoming, along with Russia, a huge part of the resistance against western imperialism in the area.

They seek to negotiate with the US and western banks as equals, not suppliants.

But, alas, the US responds with even greater threats.

Today, the heroic President Duterte of The Philippines has won his drug war. China has sought an alliance with him, one that he has granted. The mask was off when the US violently condemned his victory against a war that US has never sought to win.

Like ISIS, the West supports the drug trade while pretending to (very poorly) fight it. Very rapidly, the China-Filipino alliance has taken the moral high ground on these issues.

More concretely, China’s power and economic might make her claim to the sea a matter of de facto right.

She is already in the process of developing the islands at issue, already granting her sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratley chains.

Doing so is no threat to the US or anyone else, unless of course, the agenda is to maintain a colonial empire there.

China’s territorial claim

Comment: Duterte's shift towards China makes geopolitical sense. The Philippines is tired of being under the Empire's boot. Friendship between the two countries solves many trade and defense headaches for both. No doubt Duterte's actions will eventually embolden other oppressed countries.

Suddenly, the US tried to be allies with Vietnam – who China had fought in the region twice in the 1970s and 1980s – and engages in naval drills with Japan.

Update: Vietnam is neutral and will not join the USA in any conflict with it's neighbor. -MM

The Philippines were a willing participant of these naval drills just last year, but Duterte has learned his lesson. The majority of the American navy is now engaged in the South China Sea.

It is highly doubtful that Australia and the Philippines want war with the Chinese.

Vietnam is no longer in any position to challenge Beijing as it was in the 1980s. For no clear US interest, the USA regime is demanding war with China.

This process is Identical with what happened in 1940 and most of 1941 against Japan, the US is in the process of cutting off China’s raw materials shipments. Yet, the foe they will face is not a small regional hegemon facing a unified industrial giant.

It is a major (if not THE major) world power facing a dying and collapsing empire.

The ultimate purpose is to weaken the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Before World War I, the British eyes Berlin and Petrograd with a jealous rage. They and they alone have the right to rule the world. In the 1930s, London had the temerity to condemn Japan’s invasion of Manchuria as an attack on national sovereignty, a statement bordering on the insanely and outrageously funny. Joachim Hagopian writes presciently:

Empire's naked neocolonial aggression involves exploiting unlimited energy resources anywhere in the world while neutralizing key enemies as America's predatory, vested self-interest (or more accurately the parasitic ruling elite's self-interest only, clearly neither America's nor Americans' nor any Asian countries'). Because the world's only superpower has gotten away with raping and pillaging the planet at will for decades, Empire is banking on its retaining its global unipolar dominance for years to come by more of the same tactics (Hagopian,2016).

One of the more absurd and contemptible statements was made by Mark Morris of the US National War College. This plan to isolate and destroy China is at least as old as 2013. He writes long before these events: wrote in November 2013:

War starts and the United States and its allies begin offshore controlling. 

Chinese seaborne imports and exports are reduced drastically. Factory production drops and millions of workers are laid off; soon the numbers soar to tens of millions and perhaps a hundred million. . . 

When jobs are not found, they start protesting. . . 

Now the Chinese Communist Party is faced with tens of millions of unemployed protesters. It will try to blame some enemy that can't be seen. . . 

Not believing the party, discontent grows and protests increase. 

The Chinese Communist Party orders the People's Liberation Army to break the blockade, but the People's Liberation Army-Navy replies that China doesn't have the right type of Navy for that and are unable to comply with the orders. 

Discontent grows and protests become more worrisome to party leaders. 

The Chinese Communist Party declares that it has taught the foreign dog a lesson and seeks a [peace] conference at Geneva. (Morris, 2013)

The level of sophomoric arrogance and simplified analysis is astounding, though not surprising.

All China has to do is dump American dollars and refuse to finance American debt.

Without cheap Chinese goods, WalMart is finished.

Ok. This author is getting some things really wrong. 

China exports to the world. Not just to the USA. 

Exports to the USA pre-Covid were at 11%. Now they are in the 4 to 5% range. 

Further, the really cheap goods are made in Mexico and SE Asia. Not in China. China makes the high tech and high quality goods for Korea, Japan, and Germany. -MM

That the Chinese population would not blame the west for instigating this war is not even mentioned.

The above “analysis” is merely a fantasy, a world where everyone has the same assumptions; it is a world made up of minds as isolated from reality and opposition as his own. The problem is if this fantasy is mistaken for political analysis.

Ukraine has been taken from an industrial powerhouse and turned into a fourth-world backwater through the deliberate engineering of liberal western imperialism.

Unfortunately for Washington, there are plenty of places quite unwilling to become minor, impoverished cog’s in New York’s great machine.

As the West cannot sell its own industrial goods (and other commodities), such competition seems to it wasteful. It places more downward pressure on prices and greater competition for resources.

Today, major capitalist enterprises have set up shop abroad and use cheaper labor to boost profits by “importing” those back into the US. This means the same mechanisms of protection the system offers domestically must be extended overseas.

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh writes that globalization

...tend[s] to deprive the outsourcing countries of production and employment at home, they also bring the economic structure of host countries under the rules and regulations of neoliberal economics. 

Entrenchment of neoliberal economics on a global scale, however, requires more than the traditional armies or military forces of imperialism. Perhaps more importantly, it also requires new, metaphorical soldiers or armies such as WTO, the IMF, central banks, credit rating agencies, and the like—hence, the new imperialism: imperialism based on universal or generalized dispossession (Hossein-Zadeh, 2016).

The total globalization of production and distribution means that the highest possibly profits can be earned when all transaction costs have been minimized.

Now, the assumptions of that statement are many, but it is the underlying axiom of globalization in general. It implies, however, that states must have their place in the new order and retain that place. One piece out of place can bring the edifice to crisis.

That gets worse if that piece is the size of China.

More generally, he writes, this irrational sort of militarization derives from what he terms “parasitic imperialism.” Its marks are that it

Redistributes national income or resources in favor of the wealthy; (2) undermines the formation of public capital (both physical and human); (3) weakens national defenses against natural disasters; (4) accumulates national debt and threatens economic/financial stability; (5) spoils external or foreign markets for non-military U.S. transnational capital; (6) undermines civil liberties and democratic values; and (7) fosters a dependence on or addiction to military spending and, therefore, leads to an spiraling vicious circle of war and militarism (Hossein-Zadeh, 2007).

“Parasitic imperialism” is the result of a world that has, at least for now, made its peace with dependency.

Local elites are required to promote the ideologies favored by finance capital, invariably liberal democracy with a strong focus on squashing non-liberal dissent.

This is quite consistent with liberalism, as the French Revolution and all its bastard children have shown.

Jacobinism is the mother of (modern) imperialism since it enshrines self-interest and ontological nominalism as the center of all things. Self-interest justifies the financial oligarchy’s ability to outbid smaller rivals for near-zero interest rates.

With this tremendous advantage, oligarchy is assured, since smaller borrowers now must borrow at much higher rates from those at the top of the pyramid.

Buying assets, especially troubled ones, is much easier for oligarchy and, with the taxpayers forced to bail them out, rational decision-making is not important.

Irrationality aside, “free markets,” based on self-interest, have no ideological means to oppose the purchase of the government or monetary policy by private actors.

Building a financial structure that uses debt to leverage more debt – that is, until the chances of repayment become quite thin – is also rational for those with the ability to profit from it.

Over time, the bad loans and the assets to which they are attached become the property of the regime and those failing to make their payments are conveniently labeled as failures.

More importantly, it represents short term profit unrelated to actual production.

Most profits of the Regime’s billionaires comes from debt and speculation, not on creation.

It is, as Paul Craig Roberts terms it, the “looting phrase” of modern capitalism.

Beyond profit that derives from the expropriation of surplus labor, another, increasingly more important source of profit is the result of mass leveraging of assets.

Americans are forced to borrow constantly to maintain even a basic standard of living.

This means that a part of their income – possibly a substantial part – is then transferred to finance capital (Hossein-Zadeh, 2016a).

But what does this have to do with the US navy in the South China Sea?

This analysis is really the foundation for imperial parasitism, overstretch and endless war. Ukraine was colonized as a means to a) ensure the transfer of her assets to the west as debt service; b) to encircle and threaten Russia and c) to deindustrialize the country, rendering Ukraine a raw materials producer for the regime.

As the US economy sinks deeper into Depression (despite the laughably phony statistics from Washington), war and imperial exploitation are the only means to create “value.” What the western bankers have done in Ukraine can, in theory, be done in the US.

Combining public and private sector debt means that the entire American economic grid can be sold off and still not pay the principle. Soon, China’s control over America’s debt, her growing population, military sophistication and expansion into Central Asia and Africa will dethrone the US as the “world’s only superpower.”

Russian gold reserves from early 2013 increased by almost 150%.

By Fall of 2015, Russia owned 1352 tons of gold. China now owns nearly 2000 tons, radically increasing their holdings starting in early 2015. This is an important sign that de-dollarization is around the corner.

Warfare, at present, is likely the only means for the Regime to stop this trend.

The very existence of a drive to de-dollarization might be sufficient to cause a run on this weakened institution.

The New Silk Road project, as many have said recently, is a radical restructuring of the globe’s economy.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the most significant political organization in the East, is not mentioned in the mindless “presidential election debates” in the US because it is the organization of most of the world’s population against US imperialism.

China is building its own financial infrastructure, creating a new banking regime without western and Jewish interest. They are offering credit to Africa without the demands and political ideology of the west.

Like a wounded animal, the US elite will lash out…

Iran

Meanwhile,  there are events going on regarding the “West” with Iran.

Now, Iran is also part of the “Shanghai Cooperation Organization”, and we can see that the events with Russia, China and Iran are all directed to attack this SCO and destroy it in warfare.

Perhaps a map might help explain things better.

Here’s an out of date map that I pulled off the internet. The key point is that Iran is no longer “observer status” but is actually a full “member” of the SCO.

Iran has been upgraded to permanent member status in the Eurasian alliance, of which Turkey is also a partner. Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/09/iran-joins-china-russia-shanghai-cooperation-organization#ixzz7Avk2UJUF

Shanghai Cooperation Organization

And I want everyone to keep this image in mind.

In this article, we will discuss some of the troop buildups and movements toward Iran. And this is important because, if you look at the BIG picture, you can clearly see a pattern emerging.

The Pattern that is emerging.

The United States is planning to attack the SEO; which is the vast bulk of Asia.

It’s an insane, dick move.

It’s pure folly to take on Russia alone. Intense idiocy to take on China alone. And sheer madness to take on a war against Iran.

But there you have it. The monkeys that “pull the levers” in Washington DC are all crazed psychopaths, and they want to seemingly start a war that will destroy everything and everything with it. Fools!

Let’s talk about Iran

This is a comment off of Saker.  I guess it comes from someone’s Twitter feed.

Almost none of these incidents and “chess moves” have been reported by Western media. Reading all this, does it feel like the approach to the WW3 Event horizon is escalating??

Is some of this true?  What do you think of it? 

White Whale on October 29, 2021  ·  at 2:54 am EST/EDT
  • It seems chess pieces are being moved everywhere….. so much is happening at the Azerbaijan Armenia Iran Turkey border areas.
  • Syria is still in play.
  • And Israel has strengthened ties with Azerbaijan (and Saudi).

Look at what happened in October 2021…

One month at the Iran, Azerbaijan and Armenian border.
(Includes a side serve of Turkey ~Syria)
As told in tweets by Kiev located

“proud Cossack”
Fuat @lilygrutcher

Sept 28
Israel delivered $2 billion worth of new weapons and munitions to Azerbaijan in the last two months.
Most of them are now deployed at the Iranian border.

Sept 30
Turkish-Ukrainian agreement on construction of Bayraktar TB2 center in Kyiv is signed. (Pic Includes Zelensky)
>Former Armenian defence minister David Tonoyan arrested in Yerevan
>Turkish Army is clearing mines near Iranian border in order to facilitate the deployment of Turkish troops at Iranian border.
Three Turkish TB2’s are in the air right now near Iranian border.
>Iranian military say Baku is in the range of Iranian artillery deployed at Azeri border.
>Iranian air defence systems put on high alert.
>High rank IRGC official Mahmoud Gazizi calls Azeris “Zionist prostitutes.”
>7 or 8 Iranian Airforce helicopters deployed at Azeri border
>16th Army of Iran (Qazvin Army) on their way to Nakhijevan borders. Nakhijevan is an Azeri enclave between Turkey, Iran and Armenia
>Iranian Army to start another huge drills near Azeri borders tomorrow.
>Iran is creating and financing pro-Iranian military Husayniun group (“Islamic Resistance of Azerbaijan”) in Azerbaijan.
Azeri government should act quickly and toughly if they don’t want their own Azeri Hezbollah.

Oct 1
The length of Iranian Army convoy (tanks, armored vehicles, artillery guns) deployed near Azerbaijan for tomorrow’s drills reaches 8 km. Biggest Iranian drills in the last 20 years.

>Turkey and Aze are keen to create a Zangezur corridor through Armenian territory which would connect mainland Azerbaijan to its enclave Nakhijevan.
This corridor would be enormously profitable for both Turkey and Azerbaijan, and even for Armenia.

§§§. teshub1 @teshub12: replies:
the corridor would not be profitable for Armenia at all.
It would literally be a highway through Armenian territory, connecting Nakh. to Az. but ceded to Azerbaijan.
This was not part of the agreement signed last year by AZ, AR, and RU. A highway under Russian control was.

>Fuat:
Meanwhile Armenia, bound to centuries-long dogmas, so far refuses to authorize this project.

@teshub1 replies:
§§§. You’re a total fool if you think Armenia literally ceding territory in its most strategically important but geographically insecure region to its two main geopolitical rivals would be good for Armenia.

Fuat:
Iran fears that, sooner or later, Armenia will bow to Turkish pressure and agree for the corridor.
If constructed, this corridor would cut Iran from direct routes to Caucasus and Europe. That’s what makes them so nervous.

Oct 1:
UNCONFIRMED reports of first clashes between Iranian and Azeri troops on the border about 2 hrs ago. 1 Iranian and 2 Azeri soldiers wounded.
>Now reports come that the Azeris pull their troops back from near the border.
>6 Iranian armed drones flying over Azeri border.(vid)
>Massive transfer of Iranian troops by A400M’s to Azeri border, these minutes.
>All IRGC units in north-west Iran are put on high alert.
>Iranian airbases in Tehran and Hamadan in standby mode.

>Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan George Deek.(video) announcement of project to promote and preserve Jewish heritage. American Ambassador to Azerbaijan and head of USAID program also attend.
*Deek States Azerbaijan has largest Jewish population in Muslim world.
>Including pic of “Mountain Jews Museum” official opening.

Oct 2
UNCONFIRMED.
Azeris shot down Iranian drone, about 4 hrs ago
>Deputy chief of staff of Armenia arrested in Yerevan.

Oct 3:
Azeri Army put on high alert.
>Reports of blast in Iranian military base in the west of Tehran, this afternoon.

>|Algeria recalled its ambassador from France for consultations.

>Reports that Iranian AH-1 Super Cobra mistakenly fired at Iranian troops during the ongoing drills near Azeri border. Three Iranian soldiers killed.
>Armenia opens its airspace for Iranian drones
>Armenia and Iran discuss the establishment of Iranian military bases on Armenian territory.

>|Algeria closes its airspace for French warplanes.

Oct 4
Who said Turkey is withdrawing from Idlib?
Quite the opposite: more and more Turkish Army convoys are entering Idlib every day. (Pic of convoy)

>Rebels captured Muhaberat (Assadite intelligence) agent in South Idlib.
>Rebel sniper killed a pro-Iranian militant in Jabel, West Aleppo.
>Turkish troops in Idlib are ordered to be ready to repel any attack by Assadite forces.

>Iranian parliament resolution, 2 hrs ago: “Inviolability of borders of our neighbors is Iran’s red line. If somebody tries to cross this line, Iran will act immediately.”

>Pro-Khamenei daily Vatan-e Emrooz decyphers the resolution adopted by the Iranian parliament: if Ankara and Baku invade Armenia, Iran will do the same immediately.

>Iranian drills finished. Troops retreat.
>Turkish-Azeri joint drills in Nakhijevan announced for 5-8 October.
>Newest and most advanced Israeli air defence system Arrow 3 to be delivered to Azerbaijan soon.
Iran snubbed again.
>Mass arrests of pro-Iranian elements in Baku.

Oct 5
IRGC deploys about 4,000 speed boats in the seaport of Ashtar near Azeri border.
>Turkish-Azeri-Georgian tripartite drills “Eternity” started in Georgia (country). Turkish and Azeri troops are arriving in Tbilisi.

>Israeli National Security Council warns of possible terrorist attacks on Israeli and Jewish objects across Azerbaijan.

>Georgia bans Iranian citizens and vehicles from entering its territory. Reason unknown so far.
Hundreds of Iranian trucks are currently stuck at Armenian-Georgian border.

>Mossad kidnapped an Iranian general in Syria to get info about Ron Arad, Israeli pilot captured by terrorists in 1986.
Waiting for details.

>Iran closes its border with Turkey in Kapikoy, East Turkey.
>Iranian pro-Khamenei center in Baku closed by local authorities without any explanation.
>Iran closes its airspace for Azeri warplanes going to Azeri enclave Nakhijevan.
>4 Turkish military cargo planes have arrived in Azerbaijan since this morning.
>Iranian agents’ attempt to blast a car of an Israeli embassy official in Baku, foiled by Azeri authorities.

Oct 6
President Aliyev poses with Israeli drone Harop.(pic)
>Saudi media say two Israeli Arrow 3 air defence systems are already deployed in Azerbaijan.
>Israel is ready to send its F-35s to Azerbaijan to help this country in case of Iranian military aggression.
(Israeli media)
>Arrow 3 is an only air defense system in the world capable of hitting targets in stratosphere, even low-orbit satellites.
Its missiles cost $2.2 million each.
>Pro-Iranian Huseiniyye mosque in Ganja, West Azerbaijan, closed by Azeri authorities.
>Azeri government starts monitoring all Iran-financed mosques in Azerbaijan
>General Aviv Kochavi, chief of general staff of IDF: “We will continue eliminating key figures of Iran and destroying its key military objects anywhere in Iran.”
>Turkish FM calls on NATO to give full membership for Ukraine and Georgia
>Iranian drone shot down over South Idlib.
>Biggest Turkish-Azeri joint drills announced for coming days.
Turkey considers sending S-400 missile systems and F-16s to Azerbaijan to help this country against the possible Iranian aggression.
>Azerbaijan bans potatoes import from Iran.
>Turkish and Azeri warplanes flying very close to Iranian border during joint drills in Nakhijevan.

Oct 7
Armenia in the shock of news that Baku-Nakhijevan flight passed throuh Armenian air space this morning.
>Most probably, Iran is more shocked than Armenia is.

>Turkey closes four border checkpoints for Iranian vehicles.
(Includes map)
>Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are holding joint naval drills in the Gulf of Oman, not far from Iranian coasts.

>Ukrainian TB2 spotted last night over Iraq near Iranian border.
Is Ukraine joining anti-Iran coalition?

>Pakistan deploying troops near Iranian border after gunmen from Iranian side killed Pakistani soldier.

>Khamenei’s official representative left Baku this morning.

Oct 8
Turkish source reports of assasination attempt on Karabakhi president Arayik Haroutyunyan, 1 hr ago.
Haroutyunyan is reportedly wounded.

>Russian media say Turkish drones delivered to Ukraine are ready to be used against Donbass separatists, and Russia still has nothing to oppose them.

>Azerbaijan denied entry visa for Iranian co-president of joint Azeri-Iranian Trade Chamber.

>9 border checkpoints are closed for Iranian trucks in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia

>Iranian FM requested his Turkish counterpart for a meeting.
Iran steps back.

>UK-based Elaph news agency says two Israeli Airforce F-35s have arrived in Azerbijan.

>Azerbaijan to open its embassy in Israel very soon

>Commander of the 3rd Turkish Army arrived in Azeri enclave Nakhijevan.

>The chairman of the Turkiah-Iranian Chamber of Commerce says Turkey stopped all kinds of trade with Iran in view of ongoing threats from Iran against Azerbaijan.

Oct 9
Another Turkish Army convoy entered Idlib.
>Turkish FM: “Ukraine’s application for observer status in Turcic Council will be considered on November 12.”
>Iranian FM Abdollahian now calls to his Azeri counterpart to arrange a meeting.

>Israeli air attack on T-4 airbase in Homs, 3 hrs ago.
>Four Israeli Airforce Il-76s landed in Baku since this morning.
>6 Russian spies arrested by Turkish police in Istanbul and Antalya this morning.
>Abolhassan Banisadr, Iran’s first president after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, died this morning in Paris at the age of 88.
>One of Russian-made S-200’s used by Syrian air defence to repel yesterday’s air attack on T-4 base landed in Iraq.

Oct 10
Turkish police arrested the head of Afghan mafia in Istanbul.
>Turkey is working on first laser drones.
>Armenian source says Azeri sniper killed a Karabakhi civilian in Martakert.
Armenia is furious that nearby Russian peacekeepers did nothing to prevent the killing of civilian.

Oct 14
Three huge blasts in Ganja, West Azerbaijan, this morning.
>8 Iranian agents arrested by Turkish security forces in Van, East Turkey.
>Israeli air attack on pro-Assad positions near Palmyra, these minutes.
US and Uzbekistan to discuss deployment of US troops in Uzbekistan soon
>High ranking Taliban delegation arrived in Ankara.

Oct 17
Fierce clashes between Syrian Kurds and pro-Turkish rebels in Azaz, these minutes. 6 Kurds killed so far.
>Turkish drones monitoring Syrian border, these minutes.
>Turkish aircrafts throwing leaflets down to the town of Tel Rifaat calling the civilians to leave the place or to stay away from Kurdish positions.
>Pro-Assad positions south-west of Raqqa attacked about 3 hrs ago. Over 10 killed.

Oct 18
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to visit Ukraine and Georgia next week.
>Turkish Army ready for biggest operation in its history.
>Akinci drones probably in the air over Syrian border, these minutes.
This kind of drones have been never used in battle before. Their ammunition is thrice as much as that of TB2.

Oct 19
French ambassador to Belarus DEPORTED by Lukashenko.
Amother humiliation for Macron.

Oct 20
IRGC Headquarters in Homeyn, West Iran, attacked by unknown gunmen, Oct. 16. The commander of the headquarters killed.
>Two more high ranking Iranian spies arrested in Azerbaijan.
Iran’s spy netwotk in this country is crushed every day.
>Azeri source says Israeli instructors train Azeri military to handle newest Israeli drones in Ismailliyah, North Azerbaijan.
>Massive arrests of pro-Iranian agents continue across Azerbaijan.
4 local Hezbollah members arrested this morning.
US granted access to 4 four more military bases in Greece.
US has a total of 8 military bases in Greece now.

Oct21
Another Turkish Army convoy entered Idlib 30 min ago.

Oct 22
48 pro-Iranian elements arrested in Baku this morning.

Oct 23
Avigdor Liberman says the war with Iran is inevitable and not too far.
>Armed Azeri soldiers stole 150 sheeps from Armenian farmers today in Syunik, South Armenia, Armenian ombudsman says.
>Massive arrival of US troops in Alexandroupolis, North-East Greece.
>Massive fire in a power station in Bandar Abbas, South Iran.

Oct 25
Coup in Sudan

Oct 26
First NATO airbase opened in Latvia, yesterday.
>Education minister of Armenia says they do not plan to open Russian schools in the country.
In neighboring Georgia too, there is no public Russian school anymore.

Oct 27
President Erdogan arrived in Baku.
>Iran’s gas station system completely paralyzed by hacker attack.
>Reports that Ukrainian Army started to use TB2 drones against pro-Russian separatists in Donbass.(drone footage)
>Russian Army convoy attacked in Syria.

§§§ Mike Schiebel
@mike_schiebel… Who would be suspect to attacking Russia?
Fuat: Pro-Turkish rebels.

>Ukrainian military say they need at least 50 Bayraktar drones to completely destroy separatists in Russian-occupied Donbass.
>Iranian officials say today’s cyber attack against National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company “was conducted by a foreign country”.
UAE ready to allow Israel to use their airbases to attack Iran.
>Azeri officials say Zangezur corridor through Armenian territory to connect mainland Azerbaijan to Turkey will be ready in 2023.
>President Erdogan: “One day you will just get in your car in Baku and drive straight to Istanbul through Zangezur corridor.”
>Pro-Iranian Hashdi-Shaabi headquarter attacked by IS in Diyala, Iraq. 14 killed.
>Huge Turkish Army convoy of 130 armored vehicles entered Idlib, 3 hrs ago.
>In total, three Turkish Army convoys of over 400 armored vehicles entered Idlib in the last 6 hours.(videos)
>Arizona-born Rep. Jeff Flake, 58, appointed new US Ambassador to Turkey.
>Reports that Ukranian artillery units are redeploying closer to the frontline in Donbass.

Oct 28
First Israeli plane landed in Saudi Arabia, yesterday.
>Ukrainian Bayraktars in the air again.
>Air attack sirens in Russian-occupied Donbass.
>Taiwanese President confirms the presence of US troops in Taiwan.
>China to open its second military base in Tajikistan.

Oct 29
Huge deployment of Turkish troops in North Syria.
>Fierce clashes in Donbass, these minutes.
>Intense flight of Turkish drones over M4 road, these minutes.

Putting it all together

It’s all “chess pieces”. And the USA / “The West” all seem to be playing an oppressive role in it.

America to fight Iran / Russia / China (The SCO block).

Americans are at a fever pitch right now, and the window of opportunity can only be maintained for a year or two tops.

Now, instead of chatting up a storm and throwing out facts and figures, I am just going to lay down a map. Let’s see where all these provocations and “chess moves” are taking place.

This is what the United States is doing right now…

Red arrows indicate the provocation vectors. Yellow arrows indicate provocation vectors that have ended or been suppressed.

So what do you think will be the end result of all this? Are you all going to tell me that China, Russia or Iran are “saber rattling”? What the FUCK does all this look like?

Do you think that everything will “blow over” and things will be “ok”?

Do you think that Russia, China, Iran and the rest of Asia will continue to “sit by” and do nothing?

Russia and China are very close allies. If you don’t believe me, then read what XI Peng, and Putin’s comments on this subject.

Or, perhaps you think that America has every right to poke China; every right to poke Russia; every right to poke Iran? As Communism is bad, and democracy is good? Right?

Just like the “news” media says…

No they didn't. 

They made a formal declaration at the United Nations and claimed that it was a bio-weapon launched by John Bolton and the Trump administration on the most important Chinese holiday of the year. 

They also provided videos and biopsy reports of the military personnel at Wuhan doing all sorts of strange things. Like spitting in fish tanks. Rubbing their hands all over cucumbers, eggplant, apples, corn, lettuce, and mangoes.

Not a single event was reported inside of America.

But of course this screen capture is from FOX “news”.

This is the big picture. Soak it up. And drink it in. Soon, there will be a very HARSH slap back.

I would not advise anyone to be inside a large American city next year.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
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The entry director for reincarnation on the Prison Planet

This is an interesting read. I think that many MM readers will enjoy this article. In it, a remote viewer, investigated some of the administrative and entry processing centers for General Population programming and egress. Very intersting.

Honoring Bruce Moen – Afterlife Explorer and Pioneer

Bruce has completed this leg of his journey and has made his transition to the world of spirit on November 14, 2017.

From HERE.

In February 1996 I attended the first of two Exploration 27 programs at The Monroe Institute, a program in which participants explore specific areas of Focus 27 called “Centers”.

My third book, Voyages Into the Afterlife: Charting Unknown Territory contains very detailed descriptions of many of these Centers revealing much about the inner workings of this Afterlife area.

The following excerpt is taken from an exploration of a portion of the Reception Center called “the Reentry Station”, the place in Focus 27 human beings pass through on their way to lifetimes in the physical world.

CHAPTER 5: THE ENTRY DIRECTOR

Copyright: Bruce A. Moen, All Rights Reserved
.
During our next program tape exercise our task was to explore how human beings move from Focus 27 into physical lifetimes on the earth.

I arrived first at my place in Focus 27, noticing the hanging canvas chairs were occupied as usual by people who were always there waiting.

After talking with them about the insights I’d gained during the previous exercise examining the chair and playing with the clover, it was time to leave and meet up with my group of fellow explorers at the crystal.

Bob and Ed were there waiting again when I arrived, motioning for me come over to where they were standing.

“That clover of yours was an interesting creation,” Bob remarked.
“Sure left me with some questions!”
“Good! A little something for that curiosity of yours to play with,” Bob laughed.
“Maybe somewhere along the way you’ll find some answers,” Ed casually remarked.

Then it was time to leave for my encounter with the Entry Directory (ED), the guy who supposedly knew about how humans entered lifetimes on the earth.

After taking on a charge of energy from the crystal with the rest of the group, I placed my intent to find the ED.

I shot straight up through the roof and into blackness.

After a brief sense of movement the tower I’d seen earlier, with the two bell shapes, came into view.

Very tall, it looked like a radio antenna tower with two huge bell shaped objects at the top.

The small ends of the bell shapes joined together and appeared to be fastened, horizontally, to the tower at its very top.

Stopping to look more closely, I became aware of someone standing behind me.

“Are you the Entry Director I’m supposed to talk to?” I thought out to the presence behind me.

“Well, let’s just say I’m one of many who attend to the operation of the Reentry Station and I can probably answer your questions.”

“I’m a member of a group in a program called Exploration 27 at The Monroe Institute back on earth. We’re all here to learn about the inner workings of Focus 27.”

“Yes, I know. Your buddy, Bob Monroe, told us your group would be coming for a tour of the place. How can I be of assistance?”

“Is this thing I’m looking at, the tower with the bell shapes at the top, is that the Reentry Station?”

“Yep.”

“What does it do and how does it work?”

“Look closely around the big open end of the bell shape at the left and tell me what you see,” the ED suggested.

“I see a flow of something entering the open end of the bell shape,” I described.

“Direct your attention to that flow and tell me what you see there,” the ED continued.

“I see a cylindrical flow of little bits of yellowish-gold light, all moving together into the bell shape.”

“Look closely at the bits of light.”

I moved closer to the flow to get a better look.

“They all have generally the same size and shape, and they’re emitting light. They look a little like cocktail shrimp after they’ve been cooked and peeled, kind of the shape of little cheese curls.

I’ve seen these things before in a place I call the Flying Fuzzy Zone.

These curls look the same, but in the Flying Fuzzy Zone they fly all around like moths buzzing a bright light. What are these things?”

“Focus your attention on them, what do they feel like?”

After gazing at them for several moments I got the precept, “I’ll be a son of a . . . those curls are people! Each one is a separate human being!”

“And?”

“They seem to be in some kind of ‘dormant’ state. Not too much activity going on in them, not much thinking. More like they’re asleep and waiting. Why are they like that, and why are they entering the bell shape of the Reentry Station?”

“Come on, follow me,” the ED replied, “we’ll go inside the station so you can take a look.”

There was a quick feeling of movement and then I was standing at the center the of the area where the small ends of the two bells joined. I could plainly see the flow of curls being compressed as it passed through this area.

“This part of the station is called the constriction,” the ED volunteered.

“This section seems to be putting the curls under pressure. Why?” I asked.

“Preparation for entry into physical world reality. The awareness of each curl is compressed here to help hold it together and stay focused in one place long enough to make the transition.”

“I’m getting the sense that compression also closes down its conscious awareness of nonphysical reality in general, including awareness of nonphysical aspects of itself. Is that a result of compressing a curl’s conscious awareness?”

“Yes. Physical world reality is a pretty crowded place. By compressing the curl’s awareness into one place, it’s more concentrated. It’s better able to focus, concentrate if you like, on its tasks and purposes once its in the physical world. Less apt to be distracted by input overload from the high level, M-band noise pressure.”

“Input overload? High level M-band noise pressure?”

“At the level of physical world reality there are presently over five billion human inhabitants packed onto a very small place called earth. Everyone living there is constantly broadcasting their thoughts and feelings into that close quarters environment. They’re like five billion little radio stations all broadcasting their own, unique talk shows into the airwaves at the same time. Those thoughts and feelings are what we call M-band noise. There are so many people broadcasting at once, all pushing their thoughts and feelings out into the environment, we call it high level, M-band noise pressure.”

“Does closing down a curl’s level of awareness by compression in the constriction section have something to do with limiting the effect of that M-band noise?” I asked, responding to impressions I was getting as I watched the curls pass through.

“It limits the curl’s ability to sense things in the nonphysical environment, doesn’t it.”

“Yes it does. You see, if a curl’s conscious awareness remained fully expanded to its normal size during and after entry into physical world reality it couldn’t function. It’s being constantly bombarded by a great percentage of the M-band noise. Finding its own memories and thoughts amongst that blaring jumble would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. At its normal level the curl’s awareness would be in a constant state of complete and utter chaos, as a result of the input overload. Such overload would make progress on a curl’s purpose for being in physical world reality impossible. The compression step of the reentry process concentrates the curl’s awareness into a very small area, allowing it to be less aware of M-band noise.”

“So compression reduces conscious awareness of nonphysical reality. But doesn’t that also make it so the curl has no memory of what happened to it or decisions about its purpose made before entry into the physical world?”

“Well, yes, sort of. Memory of those decisions and contact with the Greater Self, your Disk or Monroe’s I/There, is also almost completely blocked by the compression. You see, compression works on the level of the curl’s conscious awareness. That doesn’t mean those memories and contacts are removed or totally inaccessible, they’re just compressed into the subconscious. They are fully accessible, but ordinarily only at the curl’s subconscious levels.

“Wouldn’t be better to let curls decide whether they want this to happen or not?”

“They do decide, Bruce. Each curl understands and agrees to this as part of the reentry process. It’s not a rule imposed upon the curl by anyone, it’s part of the preparation necessary for survival in the environment. You could think of it like the old fashion, deep sea diving suits. You know, the ones with the big heavy helmet and air hose hooked to a pump on the surface. To withstand the pressure and survive while exploring the ocean bottom in the old days, divers had to wear the suit. Compression at the Reentry Station is where the curl puts on that suit.”

“I’m getting that M-band noise is somehow similar to the water pressure at the bottom of the ocean in your metaphor,” I said, responding to incoming impressions.

“Very good! M-band noise IS like the water of the ocean. As you go deeper toward the ocean bottom, physical world reality, M-band noise pressure becomes greater. Once a curl reaches physical world reality M-band noise pressure actually helps maintain compression of its conscious awareness within the limits of its physical body.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember, we are talking about conscious awareness of the curl. If the diver, in my metaphor, tries to expand himself at the bottom of the ocean he has to push outward against the surrounding water pressure. If a curl attempts to extend its conscious awareness beyond the confines of its body it encounters the M-band noise of all the other inhabitants.

Just like a diver extending himself beyond his suit and feeling the water, a curl extending its awareness beyond its body becomes aware of the blaring jumble of the M-band noise. The thoughts and feelings of the other inhabitants begin to come into the curl’s awareness.

It’s such a jumble it tends to breakup the concentration and focus required to further extend its awareness. Prolonged contact with the surrounding M-band noise leads to wandering thought trains that jump from one track to another as thoughts and feelings of others flood into the curl’s thus triggering memory associations.

After a while, curls generally stop trying to expand their awareness, since they so easily lose the train of thought necessary to do so. That’s how M-band noise pressure tends to maintain compression of conscious awareness. Some curls continuing trying to expand their awareness into the M-band noise and some of the successful ones are often labeled psychotic.”

“How can curls safely get through the M-band noise to expand their awareness?” I wondered out loud.

“By learning to focus their attention not through the M-band noise, but beyond it. If the curl learns to focus its awareness at a level of consciousness where the M-band noise is attenuated or nonexistent, expansion is much easier. Meditation is an useful, time tested method and the one you’re using seems to work pretty well.”

“The method I’m using?” I asked, puzzled.

“You learned to focus your attention beyond the M-band noise using the sound patterns of hemi-sync. Remember something in the advertising about coherent brain wave states. You learned to maintain your focus and avoid the jumble by shifting your conscious awareness past M-band noise and into states you call Focus levels. Focus 10, Focus 21 and so on are levels of human consciousness with greatly reduced M-band noise.”

“I see what you mean. The hemi-sync the tool I stumbled upon allowed me to remain in a coherent, focused state as I expanded my awareness past the M-band noise and into states beyond it!”

“You sound surprised! Hemi-sync is an adaptation of a long known technique. As for stumbling upon it, later you might want to check for filament of awareness connections between yourself and the guy who introduced that system. For right now let’s get back to the to the purpose of your tour,” the ED said cryptically.

“Okay. I’m getting that compression also causes the curls to lose memory of where they came from. It’s the reason so few have any past life memories or awareness of anything that exists beyond their present physical world.”

“Yes, that’s a byproduct of the compression. Again, compression pushes these memories into the curl’s subconscious, by definition that means the curl is not consciously aware of them. Typically, they are unable to extend their conscious awareness through the M-band noise to access ‘outside’ sources of the information either. These, so called, outside sources of information exist in awareness levels adjacent to the physical. Past life memories, the focus levels you’re aware of, lots of information sources exist in these adjacent levels of awareness. Of course the information is carried inside the curl too, but few learn to focus inward to find it there. Curl’s, compressed as they are have little if any conscious awareness of that information stored within themselves, and the M-band noise tends to cut off access to adjacent sources. Of course there are some exceptions, in fact, here comes one now,” the ED said, as he directed my attention to the incoming flow of curls.

Focusing my attention to where he pointed, I saw what my Tour Guide was referring to. In amongst all the other little curls in the flow was one at least ten times their size. It stood out as the biggest, brightest curl in view.

Big Fish, we call them,” the Tour Guide said. “What do you get from that one?”
Reaching out to sense the Big Fish, it seemed more awake and active then the other curls. I watched as it moved through the constriction and then exited off to my right.

“Seems to be more aware and active then the others. It knew about the compression process it was going to go through and maintained its awareness while passing through it. I get that it remembered most of what it entered with after passing through the constriction,” I replied, relating my impressions.

“Big Fish have developed the ability to be consciously aware of far greater ‘volumes’ of information. They pass through the constriction losing very little of their multidimensional awareness. They’re exceptionally well suited to bringing awareness of adjacent realities, and of human existence in them, into the physical world. Many live lives in which they share their multidimensional awareness with others living in physical world reality who are lacking it. By doing so they help others become Big Fish,” the ED said, with a wistful pride.

While pondering the implications of little curls and Big Fish, something else in the flow caught my eye. There were four curls, a little above average size, that appeared to be connected together along some kind of lighted filament. They looked like shrimp on a string with two, close together, leading the way, followed by two others spaced close together, further along the string.

“Could be a family of four, or just four curls planning to act on a common purpose,” the ED Tour Guide explained before I could ask the question. When we see them strung together like that, we know they have a prior agreement about something that requires they pop into the physical world in a certain time sequence.”

“So if it was a family of four, the two in the lead are probably the parents and the next two will be their kids?”

“Yeah. And if it’s not an actual family, with parents and children, it could be just that those four have to arrive in a specific time sequence.”

That phrase, specific time sequence triggered a question, “Is that group headed for Focus 15?”

“Of course, every curl goes to 15 after they finish compression. I don’t have time right now to go into all the details of what happens from then on, so don’t ask.

That will all be covered later in your tour,” the ED said, cutting off the whole line of questions I was forming. “Groups like those four are usually tied into a cooperative effort aimed at carrying out individual and group purposes.”

“Like?”

“Like, maybe those first two have to bring a discovery into physical world awareness that the second two will later utilize. In the case of that specific group, the second curl will be traipsing through a jungle when he meets the first one, a native medicine man, a local shaman. Their combined knowledge of drugs and diseases will uncover the healing properties of a certain plant. Years later, the second two curls will meet when they each deliver research papers at the same medical conference. They’ll discover they’ve both been working independently to bring the use of the plant’s properties, discovered by the other two, into practical use. They’ll join forces to carry on their work together as man and wife. That’s when they’ll start working on the most important joint purpose for the entire group’s entry.”

“Most important purpose?”

“With the inflated egos those two have it’s going to be quite a challenge for them to learn to love through each other,” the ED said, with concern in his voice. “At least they’re got their love of humanity bonding them together. Working toward practical use of the that plant’s properties for the good of mankind is a real plus in that department.”

“How do you know all that, or are you just making it up?” I asked inquisitively.

“I’m not making it up, I know because I can read curl, and because my awareness extends beyond what you’re used to.”

“Who decided what their purpose was and what they were going to do to accomplish it? Sounds like predestination, like they have no choice.”

“Those curls made all those choices for themselves. You could call it predestination I suppose, as long as you remember they made all the decisions effecting their destinies and agreed to work as a group before they came to the Reentry Station.”

“So there is predestination!”

“Of course! They decided what they were going to do, and now they’re going to go do it. You can call it predestination if you like, as long as you remember who made the decisions,” the ED stated flatly.

“I want to know more about that string that connects them and what it has to do with when they arrive in the physical world?”

“That string, as you call it, is a filament of awareness that connects them now and will remain in place throughout their lives. You could also call it a section of a time/event line. The string is part of the process of insertion into time frames in the physical world and the Big Clock gets used as part of that process.”

“What are time/event lines and what’s the Big Clock?” I asked excitedly, hoping to learn more about the Focus 15 angle.

“I’d suggest you save those questions for your visit to The Planning Center. They can explain it better in the context of what they do there.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll make a mental note to do that.”

“Don’t worry. If you don’t remember I’m sure your Tour Guide there will have gotten the word to remind you.”

“Thanks.”

“Take a close look a the curls in the flow again. Pick out a group on a string and look real close at the filament of awareness associated with them. Here comes a group of three now, check out the area directly behind the group.”

“I don’t see anything other than that they’re connected together by a fine bright filament. . . Wait a sec . . . There’s an even finer filament trailing them. In fact, now that I can see that one, I see all the other curls in the flow have the finer filament trailing them too. Didn’t notice it before, what is that?”

“Do you remember the story of Curiosity you wrote in your first book? Do you remember Curiosity’s Probes?”

“Yes, why?”
As I waited for the Tour Guide’s answer, it hit me like a forty foot wave crashing into a sea wall and I caught insights in the spray.

“Those are Probes! Those filaments trailing each curl are their connection to their Disks, the things Monroe called I/There! Those filaments are what provide transfers of awareness between the Probe and its Disk! I saw my filament and followed it back to my Disk during a vision in the mid 1970’s. That’s how I became aware of the my Greater Self, my Disk, my I/There!”

“Glad you caught on to that, Bruce, As you continue your tour of Focus 27 during your program, I’d like to suggest you be open to learning more about who and what you really are. There’s more to learn.”

Looking closely at the filaments trailing the curls again I noticed something odd. “That group of three I saw had only one filament trailing it. Some of the other groups I see have more than one filament trailing them. Why is that?”

The ED just stood there looking at me, waiting for me to get the answer on my own. Then it hit me! “Those three curls with the single filament are all from the same Disk, aren’t they!”

“And the ones with more than one trailing filament?” the ED asked.

“Not all the curls on the connecting string are from the same Disk!”, I blurted out.

“What are the implications of that?” I asked.

“Like I said, there’s more to learn, but that’s one you’ll have to explore and discover for yourself.”

For several moments I floated in silence, trying to get more insight into what my Tour Guide seemed to be alluding to. Not getting much I decided to pursue something else.

“I’m puzzled by something.”

“Shoot.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if all curls who reentered physical reality lifetimes carried more of their memories in their conscious awareness? Wouldn’t I have a better shot at carrying out my purpose in life if I knew what it was? Couldn’t the compression process of the Reentry Station be modified to allow that to happen?”

“In some cases, like Big Fish, much of such memory remains intact and easily accessible. And there are things that can be done to help a curl move toward Big Fish awareness levels. Part of that process is the curl learning to feel what’s going on inside its awareness, becoming aware of what’s stored within it’s subconscious. That process also involves becoming aware of what’s available in adjacent levels of awareness. That’s an internal learning process all curls go through as they make progress towards becoming Big Fish. But to do that within the M-band noise of physical reality, one must utilize the emotional charge and emotional impact of events in physical world reality. Emotional impact is part of the earth school training system, part of learning to feel and become a Big Fish.”
“So remembering too much would interfere with learning, Big Fish training if you will?”

“It tends to reduce the emotional impact of events which normally help a curl learn to feel what’s inside itself. Think of it this way, if someone told you all the details of a suspense thriller you were planning to see at the theater, including the climactic ending, what would it do to a movie’s emotional impact on you?”

“If I knew everything ahead of time, including how the movie ended, most of the emotional impact would be gone.”

“And you might experience less or weaker feelings in response to what happened on the screen?”

“I see what you mean, emotional impact helps us learn to feel and so we curls don’t remember our purpose in life because it might spoil our movie?”

“Something like that. There’s also learning to use the filament connection to consider.”

“What’s the filament of awareness connection got to do with becoming a Big Fish,” I asked, not seeing any possibilities.

“Becoming aware of that connection can lead to awareness of your Disk. That in turn can lead to an accelerated opening of awareness by virtue of the information available via that connection to the Greater Self. Surely, you of all people, can see the possibilities in that!” the ED said, like I really ought to have figured it out already.

“Oh . . . you mean my vision of the Disk way back in the middle ’70’s. I see what you mean! Once I had some limited awareness of my Greater Self, and my connection to it, the pace of my growing opening picked up. Gee, you mean I’m in training to become a Big Fish?” I questioned proudly.

“Bruce, all curls are in training to become Big Fish,” he said, taking a little wind out of my sails.

Dar’s voice startled me when it cut into my conversation with the Tour Guide at the Reentry Station, suggesting it was time to return to the crystal at TMI There.

“That’s my signal to go back to physical world reality, I got so involved in our conversation I forgot this is just a tape exercise in a program. Seems like there’s a lot left unanswered.”

“As you continue your tour you’re free to keep asking questions of anyone you meet and of course, let that curiosity of yours have free rein. Feel free to come back and visit me whenever you like.”

“Before I leave, since you read curl and all, can you give me anything on my purpose during my present lifetime?”

“Sure,” he said as he flipped me a thought ball, “but you already know most of it, so nothing in this one should come as any big surprise.”

“Thanks, ED, you put on quite a tour, and thanks for this,” I said, holding up the thought ball.

“Anytime.”

On my way back to the crystal, moving through blackness, I excitedly opened the thought ball, anticipating some great revelation. It said: “You entered this lifetime as a retrieving type to recover many of yourselves and those with other Disks of origin. Most of all, you wanted to learn more about the energy called Love. Beyond telling you that, I wouldn’t want to spoil your movie!” It was signed, “ED, Entry Director.”

Conclusion

This is a fascinating look at a remote viewing session. It opens up all sorts of new terms and ideas that are new to me. I would like to find out more, investigate other books and works and so on and so forth. If any one has some links or suggestions I will incorporate what we can gather in MM so that all of us might learn and benefit.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…

The Domain

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Articles & Links

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The USA is planning something BIG that will be a surprise to the world (uh oh alert)

Yes. There is something “big” in the works on the USA side. I am getting multiple confirmations from my resources. No one is saying anything tangible. And when you are in the “black world” (American special access programs – being a “spook”), this absence of Intel speaks  volumes. Something “big” is planned. And the components and pieces are moving into place.

Head’s up everyone.

This is coming from numerous sources.

Including my own brother.

Scooby Doo

Today I was pleasantly surprised by an email from my brother. I was surprised because I haven’t heard from him in about a year, and he never answered my emails, skype messages or anything like that. It was just “dead air”. After a while, you know, you just stop and think “well, he’s lying low key” and let him be.

He’s gone “X ray”.

His email was interesting. He said that the reason why he wasn’t writing or answering any of my “pings” was because he was “too busy”.

People(!) no one is more busier than I am, and look at all that I churn out.

Anyways, I just let that all roll off my shoulders and read the content of the email.

  • He just came back from a visit with a mutual boyhood friend of ours. Who is now in San Diego and while he works in civilian government he is still directly tied to the US Navy and the submarine basing forces there.
  • Right after he chatted, and came back home, he told me that he had to send me an email.

He just “had” to send me an email.

The content reads…

  • It’s not “safe” in China.
  • I should get the next flight to the USA where it is “safe”.
  • Leave immediately, he said. Do not put it off. Leave THIS week.

Oh my!

Well, seeing that I have businesses, homes, not to mention a family with wife and children, and friends, and all of that, it seems rather strange for him to insist that I “bug out”. Leave my wife, and my children behind. Abandon my homes. My jobs. My lifestyle and my society for what ever the hell the United States is collapsing towards.

Especially since his ideas and impressions of what is safe and what isn’t doesn’t resemble anything that I experience. So maybe he is talking about world war III. Ah. If America cannot be number one, then no one can.

Anyways, there’s nothing in the USA for me. But it’s worse than that, the USA is collapsing head over heels.

Now, I don’t know what kind of “news” is popular in the United States today, I pretty must assume that it’s the same old repackaged lies of “China is collapsing”, “war is any moment now”, and all of that horse rot. But I am not falling for it, though it seems that everyone inside the United States is.

I don’t know what they all discussed on their visit, but I’ll be willing to wager that it is based on some absurd impressions from the “news”, and some observations from talking with other all of the same mindset. Like maybe this…

Anyways, I replied. I told him…

  • China is doing good. All is great here.
  • China and Russia are aligned militarily, and war against China will include Russia. And it will be nuclear.
  • Were a war to happen, the USA would be completely devastated. It would lose, and lose very badly.

Now, I am sure that he doesn’t want to hear that, but that’s the way it is.

He did say that he is now locked inside of the USA because the State Department sill not issue him a new replacement passport because the IRS has alerted the government that he is a “Tax Protestor”.

Funny that a person that is stuck inside the USA gulag wants me to join him. Misery loves company, perhaps?

This article

We all know this; the USA is pushing, pushing, and pushing in all levels of provocation to force a war with China. The American people are primed for this war. The military is ready, and the Washington DC folk are as excited as young children on Christmas eve. War is gonna happen, and the USA has special “tricks” that will make it happen.

Hoyeru says:
October 28, 2021 at 4:52 am GMT • 9.3 hours ago 

(This is a) strange column that somehow manages to miss the obvious. 

So i will add it: The US is so pissed and upset about china winning, they are willing to destroy the whole earth including themselves. 

If they can't control the world, nobody else will. 

It's pure spite.

We will start off with this great article I pulled from Ron’s operation…

Bumbling Menace Blinken Says Taiwan Should Join the UN

 

Like every individual in the Biden Administration, the bumbling menace Antony Blinken stumbles from weird event to ensuing weird event.

His latest strange and confounding behavior is asserting the claim that the false country of Taiwan should join the UN.

What the Biden Administration is doing is the equivalent of poking China with a stick.

RT:

After the US secretary of state claimed Taipei’s accession to the UN would be pragmatic, Beijing hit back, reiterating that Taiwan should not be granted permission to join the body because the island was part of China.

Speaking on Wednesday, Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing told reporters the UN was an international governmental organization made up of sovereign states – and Taiwan wasn’t one.

“Taiwan is a part of China,” Ma stated, adding, “Taiwan has no right to join the United Nations.”

The spokesman’s comments came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Tuesday marking 50 years since the UN General Assembly voted to replace Taipei’s seat with Beijing’s that he regretted Taiwan’s absence.

Blinken said the reason the island’s participation in the UN would be welcomed was not political but pragmatic. “As the international community faces an unprecedented number of complex and global issues, it is critical for all stakeholders to help address these problems. This includes the 24 million people who live in Taiwan.” 

The statement is not political or pragmatic – it’s a provocation.

This is what the plan is, apparently: the Biden plan to “contain China” is a bullying harassment campaign.

Instead of just declaring war, they do things to attempt to publicly humiliate China.

The concept of “face”

It’s worth noting that decades ago, the West was trying to understand China and became fixated on the concept of “face.” They talked so much about it that we actually have the loan idiom from the Chinese language – “saving face.”

The Chinese – and general Asian – concept of “face” is similar to honor, but more complicated. It is also related to what we would call “prestige.”

It includes honor, just like our idea of honor: being a good member of the community and nation, who is respected and viewed as being morally righteous, and willing to sacrifice for others and the good of the community or nation.

But ” building face” also includes wearing certain clothing styles (now associated with brands), driving certain cars, living in certain areas, going on vacations, and other things we associate with prestige.

Another aspect, which I guess we would just call “power” or “authority,” is the ability of an individual to exercise his will in society, and to make things happen. (Just for example, if you ask someone to get you tickets to a sold out event and they deliver, that person would be “building face” as someone capable of making things happen.) All of this is combined to create a person’s “face,” which is his persona as seen by the world.

(For the record, the concept of “face” is also the basis of the social credit system, which is why virtually all Chinese people support the social credit system – it’s built on a foundational element of their society.)

Anyway, this is what the boomers who analyzed Chinese culture in the 1970s determined was the driving force behind Chinese psychology.

I think that is more or less true.

The United States is following a plan that is no longer viable, but doing so blindly out of ignorance.

As I explained in my very long piece about China a couple weeks ago, the current regime in America is clearly acting on plans laid by more competent men who are mostly dead.

So, when I see something like Blinken coming out and saying “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if Taiwan joined the UN?”, I am able to see that this is part of a very shoddy attempt to cause the Chinese authorities to “lose face.”

It’s very vulgar behavior, and it is intended to appear vulgar. What Blinken is attempting to do – more likely, what his advisors are attempting to do – is insult the Chinese authorities and make them look inept and incapable.

What isn’t clear is what exactly the goal of this is. It would make sense in the context of attempting to:

  • Humiliate the Chinese leadership to the point that the regime collapses (this isn’t possible, and the US authorities really should understand that by now), or
  • Try to bait the Chinese into doing something stupid to “save face” (Xi is not ever going to do anything he doesn’t mean to do, so this also doesn’t make sense)

Really, all I’m able to do personally is just observe.

America has no goals with China

I do not understand the goals of the US State Department and Department of Defense with regards to China, beyond the fact that they are fixated on regime change.

I’m not an expert on military strategy, and I’m highly skeptical of anyone who claims to understand how a war would unfold in this third decade of this third millennium after Christ.

However, given what I understand about the current social situation inside China, I am quite certain that there is no possibility of doing a Ukraine-style color revolution. It’s just not happening.

The Chinese people love Xi like they loved Mao, and just do a little bit of research on what the Chinese people tolerated from Mao.

I am completely unclear on how well the Washington establishment understands China, but having seen their actions, I would say not very well.

That’s why it looks to me as if Blinken’s team simply read some book talking about “face” and decided to attempt to humiliate them.

Mike Pompeo and the Deep State

We should also note that Mike Pompeo took a very similar approach, and that he is still planning State Department strategy at the Hudson Institute, where he is billed as an expert on foreign policy and China.

The State Department is one organization in the US government that is very obviously “deep state” in that it never changes from administration to administration. Whether officials are appointed by Republicans or Democrats, they move in and out of these same think tanks, which active government officials consult with so habitually that they are effectively extensions of the state.

Pompeo’s big play was to incite an Antifa revolution in Hong Kong.

I still do not understand what the purpose of that was, exactly. In theory, it would have been to cause Xi Jinping to lose face, to make it look like he was unable to control the city, and maybe to attempt to stir up discontent in the mainland.

Again, this shows a total lack of understanding of the situation.

The end result of the violence in Hong Kong was that Beijing closed the city down, and started banning all of the State Department’s schools for indoctrinating youth into revolutionary liberal ideology. If I had planned the strategy, I would not have wanted to have sacrificed the ability to influence Hong Kong so recklessly.

By fomenting those strange riots, the State Department gain literally nothing, and in fact they severely damaged their own image, and hardened the Chinese in all territories against the US.

Hilariously, the right-wing in Taiwan now cites the Hong Kong riots as a reason not to trust the West.

Chinese people are all very aware that these riots were incited by the West, and this is viewed as distasteful in the extreme, and also mystifying.

(In general, there is an overwhelming sense of confusion among the Chinese as to the intentions of the United States, but there is a certain amount of natural good will based on a positive perception of Hollywood and certain American companies, such as Apple. Instead of using that good will for definite ends, the State Department has pissed it away recklessly, and continues to do so.)

Clueless America

Obviously, the average American has literally no idea what is going on.

Even Americans who are semi-engaged with politics think that Taiwan is somehow a real country, that it is independent from China, and that China is planning to invade it.

In fact, Taiwan is not a country. It is a part of China.

Because it is an island, a separate revolutionary entity opposed to the CCP fled there during the 1940s. The Kuomintang had failed as China’s government and been overthrown by Mao’s forces, but the West protected them as they fled to the island. To this day, the “Republic of China” still claims to be the real government of China, despite the fact that it is nearly a century since they lost control of China in the 1930s.

At the end of World War II, just as the US quickly turned against their war ally the USSR, and established West Berlin, they also turned against their former ally the CCP, and established Taiwan. Modern Taiwan is as much of a relic of the post-war era as East Germany, it is simply that Taiwan still exists, because unlike the USSR, China was well-managed and did not collapse.

Illogical American leadership

The logical conclusion of any thinking person would be that the conflict between the East and West is over, and we should all just move on with our lives.

The US should negotiate a peaceful Chinese reunification, get a lot out of the deal in terms of reasonable Chinese concessions, and be done with it.

But that obvious thing cannot happen, because the regime that controls the United States – which, for a lack of a better term, can be referred to as “ZOG” (Zionist Occupation Government), is hellbent on creating a global government, and it is impossible to do that while China remains standing as an independent, traditionalist, nationalistic state.

So at this point, the purpose of Taiwan is to use it as a battering ram against the government of mainland China.

But there is no clear chink in the Chinese armor wherein to jam that battering ram. Thus, the State Department is instead opting for irate harassment and bullying.

Real Options

This is obviously not a long-term strategy, and given that the CIA has completely failed to create any significant fifth column inside of China, their only real option is to start a full on war with the Chinese and I guess just hope it works out.

If you understand all of this, it is really crazy to watch.

Apparently, they want to manipulate China into drawing first blood.

But then what happens?

What is step two?

The United States is going to have a nuclear war with China?

A nuclear war?

It’s unlikely that the US could win that war.

Frankly, the mere suggestion that people like Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin are going to successfully manage a war against China is both laughable and viscerally offensive.

It could be massively destructive, resulting in hundreds of millions of dead.

But a decisive victory by the US just doesn’t seem possible.

What’s more, there is no possibility of negotiation, given that the Chinese are so nationalistic, and have more or less zero interest in being part of the “international community” beyond selling people high quality products at reasonable prices.

What’s more, they are basically holding all the cards.

If you game out any potential outcome of this conflict, China wins.

Maybe the US could land a few nukes and wipe out some people, but if there’s one thing China has a lot of, it’s people. And unlike the US, the Chinese would be able to deal with being nuked.

The destruction of one or more major US cities, on the other hand, would completely obliterate the psyche of the American population.

You also have the fact that funding the war machine would be virtually impossible. The dollar as global reserve currency could not survive very much war, and it would come down to sheer raw productivity.

All previous wars have been won based on who had the bigger production output capacity, and the Chinese beat the US on that front, probably by an order of magnitude in real terms.

If the American leadership were smart…

If the people in Washington were smart, they would back off, and try to regroup. The problem is, they don’t have anything to regroup.

They’ve already gone all in on “diversity and inclusion,” putting what should be their most capable human capital on fentanyl or labeling them domestic terrorists.

If I was running this show, I would have skipped this moronic virus hoax and allowed Trump to remain in office on the condition that he start a war with the Chinese.

It still would have been a long shot, but it would have been within the realm of possibility. You could have stirred up the competent segments of American society with patriotic war energy, and used that to reestablish a production base in the United States.

But they didn’t do that.

They did something totally insane.

They stole the election for Joe Biden, who is probably the single least popular leader the country has ever had, with a plan to replace him with the much less popular Kamala Harris.

Then they effectively declared war on the native population of the country, labeling them domestic terrorists.

They are now attempting to force vaccinate the entire population, and they are willing to cripple the country’s productivity in order to force through this inexplicable gene therapy agenda.

Complete cluster fuck

If I had to guess, I would say that you have very little communication and possibly even very little awareness between whoever is running this plan for a war against China and whoever is running this domestic war against the domestic population.

The whole thing just looks totally chaotic and demented.

The bottom line is this: I do not think there is any possible way that the World Economic Forum’s “Agenda 2030” is going to come to fruition in 2030, or ever.

If the US were to back off of this push for conflict with Russia and China, they would simply end up totally crushed economically by China as they put their own population into extreme austerity using bizarre technological tyranny.

What is likely going to happen is that the US (and to various extents the rest of the West) is going to get increasingly brutal and weird, while China continues to advance economically, technologically and militarily.

You’re going to have a situation where the United States is just an utter mess, where no one really even understands what the goals or agendas are, and eventually the dollar is going to collapse, and that will be the end of the American Empire.

The end of the American Empire will be the beginning of the end of our tribulations.

For the American people, I do not think there is any solution to what is happening now, political or otherwise.

The only logical thing for an individual to do is try to stay out of the way while this lumbering beast staggers and eventually collapses.

After it collapses, we can reassess, and figure out how to build something new from the ashes.

The exciting part is that those of us who make it through this time of such trouble alive will probably live to see the other side. I’m as optimistic about the mid-to-late 2030s as I am pessimistic about the next decade.

So says one person

The truth is that no one really knows what lies in store in all of our futures. But we do know a couple of things. These are as obvious as the keyboard in front of my hands.

  • The USA “leadership” are following a script mindlessly.
  • The script is out of date.
  • The USA has numerous “bubbles” that are about to pop.
  • In a move that reeks of desperation, the USA is aggressively pushing and pushing and pushing for war.
  • The only way for these trends to be mitigated is for the USA to get on with it, and collapse already.

Now, there are many, many aspects of issues all tied in in regards to this. The next article looks at the IC, AI and supercomputing realms…

China has already reached exascale computing

From HERE.

US is trying to kneecap China AI and Supercomputing by hitting it at the lower stacks (semiconductor fabs) but its in Chinese interest to reclaim its rogue provinence sooner than later…

Right now US is forcing Taiwan TSMC to cut ties with mainland Chinese firms yet prioritizing chip making for US origin firms like Intel, Apple, GM, Boeing etc…

The conflict between US and China is an economic conflict, not a political one.

The economic conflict arises exlusively from the the unnatural and unsustainable state and position of the US economy which operates as a global rent-seeker.

The US’ primary export good is the US dollar which is sold globally with the threat of force backing the sale. Officially the arrangement operates as follows: the US provides security – typically against a third party – and the “protected” countries in turn buy dollars. Unofficially the US uses direct threat – typically in an an indirect attack against the country’s economy and destabilization of its security – to facilitate USD sales.

This is in particular true of the so called “allies” – most importantly Germany and Japan in the 80s and 90s.

Though it might seem as a “security arrangement with a subscription fee payable in USD” in reality it is the exact opposite – and arguably always has been for any money producer throughout history.

The military establishment rarely seeks to expand its power as numerous examples of military dictatorships demonstrate. Military dictatorships tend to expand only as means of reinforcing their internal power structure. Consistently throughout history the primary driving force for war and imperialistic expansion are the banks.

Not the industry – as the industry has ways to compete for foreign markets through innovation or currency devaluation.

The banks however have only one product – money – and its value is entirely dependent on its unit of account and its purchasing power. What is also important it is the banks and fiat currencies that operate exactly on the principle of economic exploitation.

Marx was wrong about this being a general principle of “capitalist” mode of production and the 20th century provided evidence for that.

However when applied to the description of for profit production of money it necessarily works along the principles of exploitation since the nature of the good/product (money) makes it extremely inflexible in terms of deriving profits.

They can only be achieved through devaluation of purchasing power – which leads the users to abandon currency – or through increased demand. Money is literally a “unit of account”. There is no room for optimization. You either take it as it is or leave it as it is.

The only way to enhance money as a product is to package it with another basket of goods. Germany and the EU package the Euro with the access to highly valuable markets or export goods.

The US used to do so early in the history of the global dollar system (early after WW2) when the US had 40% of world’s industrial production, 60% o the world’s oil, a majority of the world’s food production and the world’s most potent military.

However this position was ruined by predatory behavior of American ruling class and currently the US offers very little in terms of voluntary transaction. Even the most dynamic industry – IT – operates on the basis of the theft of value (data) rather than the provision of it.

The problem arises from the mutually supporting structures of US global financial cartel and its military machine.

The financial cartel finances the military machine and the military machine enables the financial cartel.

One can’t exist without each other and the weakening of each will result in the necessary weakening of the other.

Here’s a short run-down of US vulnerability.

In nominal terms the US economy currently constitutes approximately 24,5% of world’s GDP. In comparison the Euro area constitutes approximately 15% of the world’s GDP. China in nominal terms, measured at the current artificially lowered exchange rate, has approximately 17,5% of world’s GDP.

In PPP terms the US economy is actually slightly smaller (due to the overvaluation of the USD), while Eurozone is slightly larger, and China is substantially larger.

Now compare it to the share of global currency reserves – the USD constitutes 59% of global reserves, the EUR constitutes 21% of reserves and the RMB constitutes 2% of reserves having been listed only since 2016.

This is crucial to understand American vulnerability.

The Euro

If Euro takes a hit on international markets it retains its natural ability to resist since its loss of value will improve the attractiveness of Eurozone exports which are the main source of demand for Euro. Even if Euro loses some of its demand it can be absorbed internally by the Eurozone.

In fact, this has been precisely the case since the Eurozone crisis which started a few years after 2008.

The vulnerability of the Euro is political (hence America’s attempts to destabilize the EU) and not economic.

Furthermore if the Eurozone was dissolved it would lead to the creation of a stronger currency – since Euro is the German Mark weighed down by various weak currencies like the Franc, Lira, Peso etc – that could take comparatively greater share of world reserves just like it was the case in the 80s.

The Chinese RMB

If Renminbi takes a hit on international markets it has almost no consequence at this point.

The US Dollar

If the US takes a hit on international markets then this hit will be translated through the magnitude of the global dollar reserves which are circa 140% greater than America’s share of the global economy at present moment.

The dollar reserves are helping to increase the nominal size of the US economy so any loss of demand will necessarily lead to smaller economy i.e. a death spiral since the US has largely deindustrialized and its industry is incapable of supporting its currency.

Therefore the dollar depends on the US military power and its ability to continue enabling forcible sales of USD.

The moment American “security” no longer is has value it results in loss of demand for USD.

How does American “security” loses value?

It has to be credibly challenged and made impotent.

This applies anywhere on the globe so if US is engaged in a protracted large conflict with China it means it can’t provide “security” anywhere else.

Remember that the UK won the WW2 and still lost the empire simply because they were not able to match supply of Sterling with the demand for it since they no longer provided global security for trade.

This means two things:

Any conflict over Taiwan is advantageous to China in the long term regardless of the outcome in the short term.

Any conflict over Taiwan is disadvantageous to America in the long term regardless of the outcome in the short term.

And this means that the conflict over Taiwan is not a real conflict in its own right, but a tool for something greater.

It is a tool for America’s attempt to physical separate its rent-generating properties from the globalized world which no longer allows them to retain their advantage in perpetuity.

America established a global economy under its hegemony because it was the global American empire with USD as its currency.

Now that the position of USD and the hegemon is vulnerable it wants to dissolve the empire and establish a new one, which will be then followed by inflationary escape from external debt (Weimar solution) and establishing of a “new dollar” backed by American military power.

In other words the US wants to return to the days of the cold war where “1st world is American sphere of influence” , “2nd world is China sphere of influence” and “3rd world” is the contested area.

Taiwan does not matter.

The US wants to change the rules of capital movement through state action so that the new rules continue to benefit its ruling class.

This is why

This is why they instigate tensions in Europe with Russia and push their European vassals to recognize Taiwan. It is all about decoupling the Eurozone from Russia and China and reinstating American military power as solution to “Russian threat” and “Chinese threat” as the foundation of its money production and rent-seeking.

And this explains also the psyop relating to Hongkong, Xinjiang and attacks at Chinese investments and commercial activities.

Not to mention Covid the covert CIA biovirus that carpet bombed the economies of the developing world.

It is not about attacking China since the US knows it is impossible.

It is about tearing the current global economy apart to protect its position.

American ruling class is attempting to secede from the international system to protect its position much in the same way as the ruling class of the American South seceded from the Union it created to protect its position.

Similarly the ruling class of United Kingdom seceded from the EU to protect its money-laundering and tax-evading industry.

An interesting perspective…

Both of these perspectives show reasons and observations. And they all seem to be pretty “spot on”.

Both argues that the USA is collapsing, and it is thrashing out of an ignorant leadership to pull back and regain or maintain some of it’s control. This is true whether it is military or economic, or social. I can understand that.

Now, let’s look at a third perspective.

Taiwan Demonstrates that the American Empire is a Paper Tiger

Taiwan has long been the rationale for meddling in China’s affairs but the latest interference poses great danger for “paper tiger” nation.

Mao Zedong often referred to U.S. imperialism as a paper tiger. This is truer today than it was in the mid-20th century when Mao frequently employed the phrase. No matter how bellicose the American empire becomes, its strength is more appearance than fact. Brutal violence and exploitation are thus signs of weakness, not legitimacy or credibility. The U.S.’s recent military maneuvers around the issue of Taiwan clearly signal a growth in the decay of the American Empire.

Taiwan has been a topic of conversation in the U.S. corporate media throughout the month of October. Headlines have circulated that claim China has escalated military tensions by flying military aircraft over Taiwan’s so-called Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). The ADIZ was created by the United States after World War II and isn’t recognized by international law. In fact, Taiwan’s so-called ADIZ includes large portions of mainland China. This hasn’t stopped the U.S. media from beating the drums of war with China.

The U.S. Department of Defense under Joe Biden has affirmed its commitment to threatening war with China over Taiwan. Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby has warned China that its so-called “pressure campaign” on Taiwan requires the United States to step up efforts to “protect” the island from “danger.” Just days after Kirby’s speech, U.S. and Canadian warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait in a show of joint military force not seen since the U.S. normalized relations with China in 1979. This blatant intensification of military aggression came just a week after reports surfaced that the U.S. had spent the last year secretly deploying special forces to Taiwan.

The American empire has a long history of using Taiwan to meddle in China’s affairs. After pouring heavy financial and military support into the Kuomintang’s (KMT) brutal war against the Communist-led revolution of 1949, the U.S. supported the KMT’s exile to Taiwan. The U.S. heavily militarized Taiwan and even threatened to use nuclear weapons in an attempt to undermine the Chinese revolution. More than two decades would pass before the U.S. cease the prevention of the People’s Republic of China to gain full recognition at the United Nations in place of the “Republic of China” government located in Taiwan. In 1972, the U.S. signed the Shanghai Communiqué —a document that stipulates U.S. recognition of Taiwan as part of China and clearly articulates that the U.S. will cease all attempts to military intervene in its affairs.

That Taiwan is part of China is not controversial outside of the parasitic lens of U.S. and Western imperialism. Taiwan has experienced centuries of colonial incursions. This includes a half-century of Japanese colonialism that ended only after Chinese resistance forces sacrificed more than fifteen million people to win historic victories against fascism in World War II. The return of Taiwan to China is thus an important victory for the anti-colonial movement. And it is this victory that the United States is currently working hard to reverse.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden have provided staunch support to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the separatist political party ruling in Taiwan. In 2019, Trump signed the TAIPEI Act into law which encourages the U.S. to facilitate deeper ties between international organizations and Taiwan’s separatist-led government. This blatant violation of the One-China policy has been followed up with billions worth in military arms deals to Taiwan. After Trump approved $1.8 billion in arms sales to Taiwan to end his administration, Biden signed off on $750 million more in military weapons transfers to Taiwan which included 40 M109A6 Medium Self-Propelled Howitzer Systems. These maneuvers bolster the Western-oriented government in Taiwan led by President Tsai Ing-wen, a devout separatist who has openly called Taiwan “vibrantly democratic and Western.”

U.S. interference in China’s relations with Taiwan has made a profound impact on U.S. public opinion. More than half of Americans now support U.S. military intervention in Taiwan . Of course, the poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs added “if China invades” to the question for added anti-China effect. That the poll would promote the propaganda that China could invade its own province should come as no surprise. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is funded in large part by the Pritzker Foundation . The Pritzker family’s enormous wealth derives not only the from the Hyatt hotel but also from its deep connections to war profiteering and the CIA.

Taiwan is the clearest expression of the U.S.’s agenda to reassert neocolonialism in the Asia Pacific as a means to counter China’s rise. However, attempts to bully China over Taiwan have no legitimate end goal. China will not bow down to the claims that Taiwan is an “independent country” since no such thing is acknowledged by international law. The United States must think long and hard about escalating militarily with China. Despite an enormous shift of U.S. military resources to the Indo-Pacific Command, war strategists and profiteers alike would face heavy casualties in a direct conflict with China’s high-tech military armed with a nuclear deterrence.

Unlike the first Cold War, the American Empire is in precipitous decline. Economic immiseration is all the American Empire has to offer the vast majority of humanity. U.S. military policy only facilitates death, destruction, and displacement. U.S. domestic politics are mired in stagnation and lack the capacity to address any fundamental problem facing working class and oppressed people. The paper tiger of American Empire is being ripped apart by its own contradictions. Crisis is the only stable feature left remaining of the American Empire’s so-called dominance.

China does not possess such problems. China’s government has shown consistent respect for international law with regard to Taiwan. China’s stable, prospering socialist economy has eliminated extreme poverty and contained COVID-19. These achievements alone have gained China’s socialist model immense prestige both with the Chinese people and the people of the Global South. Still, the American Empire remains dangerous precisely because its desperation requires the escalation of a New Cold War that threatens to bring about a confrontation between two nuclear powers.

Taiwan is but one piece on a chessboard designed by the United States to undermine China and thus the world from charting a course of history free of imperialist domination.

Anyone who calls themselves “the Left” would be foolish to follow the imperialist paper tiger into a trap of its own making with regard to Taiwan or any other feature of the U.S.’s New Cold War against China.

Yet this is exactly what has happened.

Most of the “left” has abdicated its responsibility to oppose U.S. imperialism and therefore shares responsibility with the right for the U.S.’s hostilities toward China.

U.S. interference in China’s affairs regarding Taiwan should thus be seen as an opportunity to reverse this dangerous course and place the demand for the U.S. to respect international law at the forefront of the movement.

Now, for my point…

I think all of these points are valid. But, I want to throw something else (a “monkey wrench”) into the mix.

Suppose that those who “lead” the United States, whether it is President Biden, political factions, the military or the oligarchy, are actually crazy psychopathic personalities. Perhaps they did not get to their positions through merit, but some other means, and they have a view of the world that we “normals” have a difficult time understanding.

American “leadership”.

And while we can point at the various strange actions of the United States leadership with our ideas, our historical or economic references, they do not address the frightening possibility that irrational people are in control of a very large and powerful nation with lots of nuclear bombs.

The entire globalist elite having devolved into a decadent and dumb state is the single explanation that explains everything that is going on right now, and does not require any kind of ridiculous leap in logic to mush everything together in a coherent way.

Now, I argue that the deafening silence on my black world contacts are screaming “Big Event” is on the way.

Heads down, alert up.

I hope to hell that I am wrong, but for all practical purposes, it appears that the USA is planning a first strike action against China and IT WILL be nuclear.

There is some degree of confidence in their ability to carry it though. Whether or not it is really well thought out or not is immaterial.

The fact is that the USA is going to do something very bad, very big, and it will change the global social economic calculus for centuries hence.

I believe that the USA is planning a first-strike nuclear sneak-attack against China.

From a MM contributor who is also a spook like myself…

I checked some old BBS's: Silent. I know my reasons why I have maintained radiosilence, but there is only one reason why other spooks have; something big is afoot.

What if the idiots are planning a 1st strike move on China?

Ran into this idiotic piece just now: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-nuclear-weapons-electronic-sensors-accuracy/2021/10/28/79533ff0-34cc-11ec-9bc4-86107e7b0ab1_story.html

Let’s see what happens. Remember that seriously mentally deficient people are running the US government today. They do not “have all their marbles.”

Here’s a thing which is happening: people – probably most of you reading this – are confusing the total power of the current US government for competence. 

This is very natural, psychologically – it makes fundamental sense that people with absurd amounts of power would have to have competence. 

But, if we break down the fact that these people inherited this power structure, then you might look at it like the logic of assuming a guy driving a Lamborghini must be rich, before you find out it was stolen. 

It took me a long while to process it myself, and I definitely didn’t have a full understanding of it until Joe Biden took over as our overlord, but these people are not competent. 

Upon closer inspection, we realize they are actual morons.

As a thought experiment: try to think of one single thing that the Democrats have done since assuming total domination of America that is indicative of competence. 

The only thing you will likely be able to think of is the fact that they’ve managed to keep this virus hoax rolling, but that is obviously virtually entirely managed by the media. And the success of the project is entirely dependent on the docility of the American people.

Prolog –  Why I say that this might as well be the case.

For two decades I was married to a woman with a severe mental illness. It’s schizoaffective. And one of the things you learn, as a caregiver, is that they think and believe that they are making valid and good decisions, but in reality their decisions were terrible, based on all sorts of things, and off the wall.

I once asked her what the idiom “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” meant. She, in all seriousness, told me that the idiom meant that glass breaks and has sharp edges.

...people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones Those who themselves are open to criticism or vulnerable to attack should not attack others. 

This proverb dates from the time of Chaucer, who used a version of it in Troilus and Criseyde (ca. 1374).

-People who live in glass houses - Idiom

I am convinced that the American leadership, no matter who it is, is wildly dysfunctional and dangerous. They do not know that they are ill, and they have surrounded themselves with similar people who are equally crazy.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Construction of a device to assist in affirmation prayer campaigns (part 1)

This article is about the creation of a mechanical / electrical device that will help you conduct affirmation prayer campaigns. What it will do is [1] scrub your mind form the electromagnetic waves trying to manipulate you and [2] replace it with affirmations, direction and MWI navigation channels of your own design. Huh? What am I talking about?

Scrub what?

From John Whitehead

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.” 

— They Live

We are living in an age of mayhem, madness and monsters. Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government. What we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.

You will conform.

Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, disease, drug traffickingsex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

We have let the government’s evil-doing and abuses go on for too long. We have bought into the illusion and refused to grasp the truth. We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality. We’re living in two worlds: the world we see (or are made to see) and the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing; pandemic lockdowns (both mental and physical), real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation; and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shootersbombers, disease, etc.). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats. Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.

Obey. Resistance is futile.

Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.

In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.

They live.

In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.

Not only do you have to be rich—or beholden to the rich—to get elected these days, but getting elected is also a surefire way to get rich.

As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.”

In denouncing this blatant corruption of America’s political system, former president Jimmy Carter blasted the process of getting elected—to the White House, governor’s mansion, Congress or state legislatures—as “unlimited political bribery… a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over.”

Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia.

Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply.

Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes. Sound familiar?

Our Rulers

Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests. We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism. Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be.

It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime?

Fear

The answer is the same in every age: fear. Fear makes people stupid. Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on. The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.

Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power. As the Bearded Man warns in John Carpenter’s film They Live:

“They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”

We are living the movie

In this regard, we’re not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live, which was released more than 30 years ago, and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age or Carpenter’s other dystopian films.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”

And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.

The true power

When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.

Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.”

A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”

When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.

They Live.

This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.

A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.

In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”

From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good.

The truth is far different. Despite the truth staring us in the face, we have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.

We are manipulated zombies

We live in a perpetual state of denial, insulated from the painful reality of the American police state by wall-to-wall entertainment news and screen devices.

They Live.

Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re crossing the street.

Families sit in restaurants with their heads down, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what’s going on around them.

Young people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away.

Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens—that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on.

In fact, a Nielsen study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high. For example, the average American watches approximately 151 hours of television per month. The question, of course, is what effect does such screen consumption have on one’s mind?

Media consumption

Psychologically it is similar to drug addiction. Researchers found that “almost immediately after turning on the TV, subjects reported feeling more relaxed, and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a lack of tension.”

Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers’ brain waves slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, nonresistant state. Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. “

Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and counseling, more and more prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet,” according to Newsweek.

Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels controlled by six mega corporations, what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so on a large scale.

If we’re watching, we’re not doing. The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech:

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.

They live.

When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent.

They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness.

We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”

We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Injustice is growing. Inequality is growing. Human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.

They live.

Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.

So where does that leave us?

The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight. Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.

When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hyno-transmitter in They Live, he delivers a wake-up call for freedom. As Nada memorably declares,

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum.”

In other words: we need to get active. Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.

The real battle between freedom and tyranny is taking place right in front of our eyes, if we would only open them. All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight. Wake up, America. If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.

The solution

Yah. You can’t change the world. But you change your little part of it.

This article describes the theory and the schematics for a device that will be useful in assisting people to control their mind.

It is based on mind control patents released to the public in the 1970’s. It is not for casual use, and nor should it ever be used to control others without their knowledge.

It will scrub your mind of the programming of others, and it will enable you to self program your mind, for your own purposes. This particular device is based on “Silent Sound” technology. You might be aware of this by the very well passed around graphic meme…

Silent Sound.

It’s an interesting technology.

Silent Sound

The Sound of Silence is a military-intelligence code word for certain psychotronic weapons of mass mind-control tested in the mid-1950s, perfected during the 70s, and used extensively by the “modern” US military in the early 90s, despite the opposition and warnings issued by men such as Dwight David Eisenhower.

-Digital TV, H.A.A.R.P., GWEN Towers, Silent Sound & Mind 

The Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (S.S.S.S.),
sometimes called “Squad” or “Squad”.
It was developed by Dr. Oliver Lowery, of Norcross, Georgia, and is described in U.S. Patent # 5,159,703,
“SILENT SUBLIMINAL PRESENTATION SYSTEM”,
Dated October 27, 1992.


The abstract for the patent reads:

“A silent communications system in which nonaural carriers, in the very low or very high audio frequency range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum are amplitudeor frequency modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain, typically through the use of loudspeakers, earphones or piezoelectric transducers. The modulated carriers may be transmitted directly in real time or may be conveniently recorded and stored on mechanical, magnetic, or optical media for delayed or repeated transmission to the listener.”

According to literature by Silent Sounds, Inc., it is now possible, using supercomputers, to analyze human emotional EEG patterns and replicate them, then store these “emotion signature clusters” on another computer and, at will, silently induce and change the emotional state in a human being.”

And of course, being so influential, the government would use it to control people…

…and they do.

And they have. And it is everywhere, and being implemented by every other person, company, media or government. Americans, and those in many nations of the West are terribly irradiated and manipulated.

People speak out

“My name is Trevor Constantine. I am, or was, a psychologist working for the military.

I had to quit.

I had no choice.

Not when I realized what I was part of. The American people have been kept in the dark about the true scientific progress of this country. Technologies of mass control exist that the public would never dream of. I know because I helped develop them.

They call it Psychotronic Warfare.

It’s a research program dealing with Mind Control. These bastards have finally decoded the human brain. Every emotion you have, every thought that we experience, they produce evoked intentional little electrical impulses firing in the brain. These forces have developed a weapon that can lock onto those thoughts, read them and then control them remotely.

They can control everything a person does.

Voices. That’s how they get you. The Spooks have developed a technology called Synthetic Telepathy.

They beam a frequency at you and let your skeleton conduct the voices like an antenna. It sounds like ghosts inside of you. They’ve targeted individuals for experimentation.” (audio)

Silent Sounds, Inc. states it is only interested in positive emotions, but the military is not so limited. That this is a U.S. Department of Defense project is obvious. Edward Tilton, President of Silent Sounds, Inc, says this about Squad in a letter dated December 13, 1996:

“All schematics, however, have been classified by the U.S. government and we are not allowed to reveal the exact details . . . . we make tapes and CDs for the German government, even the former Soviet Union countries! All with the permission of the U.S. State Department, of course . . . . the system was used all throughout Operation Desert Storm (Iraq) quite successfully.”

Ugh. Talk about a black hole…

This is one of those subjects that once you get involved in it, it sucks you in and takes you down, down, down into a morass of misdirection, emotionally charged literature, and technical papers. Ugh! Such as this…

Therapeutic "Behavioral Modification" program, compliance monitoring and feedback system
https://www.google.com/patents/US6039688


Electric fringe field generator for manipulating nervous systems
https://www.google.com/patents/US6081744


Brain wave inducing system (Creates, anger, depression, anxiety, etc)
https://www.google.com/patents/US5954629


Brain wave inducing apparatus
https://www.google.com/patents/US5330414


Method and apparatus for analyzing neurological response to emotion-inducing stimuli
https://www.google.com/patents/US6292688


Multi-user remote health monitoring system with biometrics support (DNA is an antenna)
https://www.google.com/patents/US8407063


Method and system for altering consciousness
https://www.google.com/patents/US5123899


Subliminal acoustic manipulation of the Nervous System
https://www.google.com/patents/US6017302


Method and apparatus for introducing subliminal changes to audio stimuli
https://www.google.com/patents/US5215468


Apparatus for electric stimulation of auditory nerves of a human being
https://www.google.com/patents/US5922016


Method and recording for producing sounds and messages to achieve Alpha and Theta brainwave states and positive emotional states in humans
https://www.google.com/patents/US5586967


Method of inducing harmonious states of being  (creates negative states as well)
https://www.google.com/patents/US6135944


Ultrasonic speech translator and communications system (Beamed voices into head)
https://www.google.com/patents/US5539705


Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors
https://www.google.com/patents/US6506148


Apparatus particularly for use in the determination of the condition of the vegetative part of the nervous system
https://www.google.com/patents/US5522386


Method of inducing mental, emotional and physical states of consciousness, including specific mental activity, in human beings
https://www.google.com/patents/US5213562


FM Theta-inducing audible sound, and method, device and recorded medium
to generate the same
https://www.google.com/patents/US5954630


Method and apparatus for inducing and establishing a changed state of consciousness
https://www.google.com/patents/US5151080


Method and apparatus of varying the brain state of a person by means of an audio signal
https://www.google.com/patents/US5135468


Method and apparatus for changing brain wave frequency (Create negative emotions)
https://www.google.com/patents/US5036858


Multi-channel system for and a multifactorial method of controlling the 
nervous system of a living organism
https://www.google.com/patents/US3967616


Method of inducing and maintaining various stages of sleep in the human being
https://www.google.com/patents/US3884218


System and method for controlling the nervous system of a living organism
https://www.google.com/patents/US3837331


Apparatus for the treatment of neuropsychic and somatic diseases with heat, light, sound and VHF electromagnetic radiation
https://www.google.com/patents/US3773049


Hearing aid for producing sensations in the brain
https://www.google.com/patents/US3766331


Electronic system for the stimulation of biological systems(Can create stimulation for riots)
https://www.google.com/patents/US3727616


Art of transmitting electrical energy through the Natural medium patent
https://www.google.com/patents/US787412


Dual use RF directed energy weapon and imager(Beamed pain ray to victims) 
https://www.google.com/patents/US8049173?dq=directed+energy+weapon&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjiwbr90KrUAhXDTCYKHUkWA64Q6AEILTAB


Outer space laser-microwave gun Tiangong satellite  (Even while flying)
https://www.google.com/patents/CN103373478A?cl=en&dq=microwave+weapon&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjN286M16rUAhUGMSYKHbhjA60Q6AEIMjAC


Systems and methods for altering brain and body functions and for treating conditions and diseases of the same (Brainwaves can be negatively altered)
https://www.google.com/patents/US20090312817?dq=darpa+brain&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwio4dfp8qrUAhXI7SYKHSA3CbsQ6AEIKTAB


Self-Focusing Antenna System (DNA is a Fractal Antenna used for 24/7/365 tracking)
https://www.google.com/patents/US3174150


Solid-state non-lethal directed energy weapon (Covert torture of tissue and organs)
https://www.google.com/patents/US7784390?dq=directed+energy+weapon&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjK2peQz6rUAhVJJCYKHfZkC_sQ6AEIOzAD


Nervous system excitation device (Can create community political riots)
https://www.google.com/patents/US3393279


Sleep-inducting method and arrangement using modulated sound and sight
https://www.google.com/patents/US3576185


Method for stimulating the falling asleep and/or relaxing behavior of a person and an arrangement therefore  (A knockout beam)
https://www.google.com/patents/US4573449


Method and apparatus for producing swept frequency-modulated audio signal patterns for inducing sleep
https://www.google.com/patents/US3712292


Noise Generator and Transmitter  (Creates noises of someone in home or doorbell ringing)
https://www.google.com/patents/US4034741


Shadow Generating Apparatus (Illusion that someone has entered your home to kill you
https://www.google.ch/patents/US4508105


Method and apparatus for translating the EEG into music to induce and control various psychological and physiological states and to control a musical instrument (Used to create anxiety and agitation, etc., while listening to music.)
https://prepareforchange.net/2015/09/15/the-voice-of-god-weaponized-mind-control-frequency-technology/

Some interesting patents

Yeah. More and more and more. It’s no wonder that everyone in the ‘States feel stressed. They are constantly being manipulated and beamed at with all sorts of manipulative wave forms…

U.S. Patent, #5,123,899. June 23, 1992
DESCRIPTION: A system for stimulating the brain to exhibit specific brain wave rhythms and thereby altering the subjects’ state of consciousness.

U.S. Patent, #5,289,438. February 22, 1994
DESCRIPTION: A system for the simultaneous application of multiple stimuli (usually aural) with different frequencies and waveforms. Electro Magnetic Field (EMF) monitoring / interference is one of the most insidious and secretive of all methods used by the agencies. Similarly, EEG cloning feeds back the results of EMF monitoring in an attempt to induce emotional responses (e.g. fear, anger, even sleep, etc.)

US Patent # 4,777,529 (October 11, 1988)
Auditory Subliminal Programming System, Schultz, Richard M., et al.  
Abstract --- An auditory subliminal programming system includes a subliminal message encoder that generates fixed frequency security tones and combines them with a subliminal message signal to produce an encoded subliminal message signal which is recorded on audio tape or the like. A corresponding subliminal decoder/mixer is connected as part of a user's conventional stereo system and receives as inputs an audio program selected by the user and the encoded subliminal message. The decoder/mixer filters the security tones, if present, from the subliminal message and combines the message signals with selected low frequency signals associated with enhanced relaxation and concentration to produce a composite auditory subliminal signal. The decoder/mixer combines the composite subliminal signal with the selected audio program signals to form composite signals only if it detects the presence of the security tones in the subliminal message signal. The decoder/mixer outputs the composite signal to the audio inputs of a conventional audio amplifier where it is amplified and broadcast by conventional audio speakers.

US Patent # 4,858,612 (August 22, 1989)
Hearing Device,Stocklin, Philip L. 
Abstract --- A method and apparatus for stimulation of hearing in mammals by introduction of a plurality of microwaves into the region of the auditory cortex is shown and described. A microphone is used to transform sound signals into electrical signals which are in turn analyzed and processed to provide controls for generating a plurality of microwave signals at different frequencies. The multi-frequency microwaves are then applied to the brain in the region of the auditory cortex. By this method sounds are perceived by the mammals which are representative of the original sound received by the microphone.

US Patent # 4,877,027 (October 31, 1989)
Hearing System, Brunkan, Wayne B. 

Abstract --- Sound is induced in the head of a person by radiating the head with microwaves in the range of 100 megahertz to 10,000 megahertz that are modulated with a particular waveform. The waveform consists of frequency modulated bursts. Each burst is made up of 10 to 20 uniformly spaced pulses grouped tightly together. The burst width is between 500 nanoseconds and 100 microseconds. The pulse width is in the range of 10 nanoseconds to 1 microsecond. The bursts are frequency modulated by the audio input to create the sensation of hearing in the person whose head is irradiated.

US Patent # 3,393,279 (July 16, 1968)
Nervous System Excitation Device, Flanagan, Giles P. 
Abstract --- A method of transmitting audio information via a radio frequency signal modulated with the audio info through electrodes placed on the subject's skin, causing the sensation of hearing the audio information in the brain.

US Patent # 3,629,521 (January 8, 1970)
Hearing Systems, Puharich, Henry K.
Abstract --- The present invention relates to the stimulation of the sensation of hearing in persons of impaired hearing abilities or in certain cases persons totally deaf utilizing RF energy. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for imparting synchronous AF or "acoustic" signals and so-called "transdermal" or RF signals. Hearing and improved speech discrimination, in accordance with one aspect of the present invention, is stimulated by the application of an AF acoustical signal to the "ear system" conventional bio-mechanism of hearing, which is delivered to the brain through the "normal" channels of hearing and a separate transdermal RF electrical signal which is applied to the "facial nerve system" and is detectable as a sensation of hearing. Vastly improved and enhanced hearing may be achieved.

PSYCHO Acoustic Projector 
U.S. Patent, #3,566,347, February 23, 1971
DESCRIPTION: A high directional beam radiated from a number of transducers and modulated by a speech, code, or noise beat signal. It may take the form of a radiator mounted on a vehicle, aircraft or satellite. PURPOSE: To produce aural/psychological disturbances and partial deafness.

US Patent # 3,576,185 (April 27, 1971)
Sleep-Inducing Method & Arrangement using Modulated Sound & Light, Meseck, Oscar & Schulz, Hans R. 
Abstract --- N/A

US Patent # 3,568,347 (February 23, 1971)
Psycho-Acoustic Projector, Flanders, Andrew 
Abstract --- A system for producing aural psychological disturbances and partial deafness in the enemy during combat situations.

US Patent # 3,647,970 (March 7, 1972) Method and System for Simplifying Speech Waveforms, Flanagan, G. Patrick
Abstract --- A complex speech waveform is simplified so that it can be transmitted directly through earth or water as a waveform and understood directly or after amplification.

US Patent # 3,773,049 (November 20, 1973)
Apparatus for Treatment of Neuropsychic & Somatic Diseases with Heat, Light, Sound & VHF Electromagnetic Radiation, L. Y. Rabichev, et al. 
Abstract --- N/A

US Patent # 3,766,331 (October 16, 1973)
Hearing Aid for Producing Sensations in the Brain, Zink, Henry R.
Abstract --- A pulsed oscillator or transmitter supplies energy to a pair of insulated electrodes mounted on a person's neck. The transmitter produces pulses of intensity greater than a predetermined threshold value and of a width and rate so as to produce the sensation of hearing without the use of the auditory canal, thereby producing a hearing system enabling otherwise deaf people to hear.

US Patent # 3,727,616 (March 17, 1973)
Electronic System for Stimulation of Biological Systems, Lenskes, H.
Abstract --- A receiver totally implanted within a living body is inductively coupled by two associated receiving coils to a physically unattached external transmitter which transmits two signals of different frequencies to the receiver via two associated transmitting coils. One of the signals from the transmitter provides the implanted receiver with precise control or stimulating signals which are demodulated and processed in a signal processor network in the receiver and then used by the body for stimulation of a nerve, for example, while the other signal provides the receiver with a continuous wave power signal which is rectified in the receiver to provide a source of electrical operating power for the receiver circuitry without need for an implanted battery.

US Patent # 3,712,292 (January 23, 1973)
Method & Apparatus for Producing Swept FM Audio Signal Patterns for Inducing Sleep, Zentmeyer, J. 
Abstract --- A method of producing sound signals for inducing sleep in a human being, and apparatus therefor together with representations thereof in recorded form, wherein an audio signal is generated representing a familiar, pleasing, repetitive sound, modulated by continuously sweeping frequencies in two selected frequency ranges having the dominant frequencies which occur in electrical wave patterns of the human brain during certain states of sleep. The volume of the audio signal is adjusted to mask the ambient noise and the subject can select any of several familiar, repetitive sounds most pleasing to him.

US Patent # 3,837,331 (September 24, 1974)
System & Method for Controlling the Nervous System of a Living Organism, Ross, S. 
Abstract --- A novel method for controlling the nervous system of a living organism for therapeutic and research purposes, among other applications, and an electronic system utilized in, and enabling the practice of the invented method. Bioelectrical signals generated in specific topological areas of the organism's nervous system, typically areas of the brain, are processed by the invented system so as to produce an output signal which is in some way an analog of selected characteristics detected in the bioelectrical signal. The output of the system, typically an audio or visual signal, is fed back to the organism as a stimulus. Responding to the stimulus, the organism can be trained to control the waveform pattern of the bioelectrical signal generated in its own nervous system.

US Patent # 3,835,833 (September 17, 1974)
Method for ObtainingNeurophysiological Effects, Limoge, A.
Abstract --- A method and apparatus for obtaining neurophysiological effects on the central and/or peripheral systems of a patient. Electrodes are suitably positioned on the body of the patient and a composite electric signal is applied at the electrodes. The composite signal is formed by the super positioning of two signals: a first signal which is a rectified high-frequency carrier modulated in amplitude to about 100 percent by substantially square-shaped pulses whose duration, amplitude and frequency are chosen according to the neurophysiological effects desired, and a second signal which has a relatively white noise spectrum. The mean value of the first electric signal has a predetermined sign which is opposite the sign of the mean value of the second electric signal.

US Patent # 3,884,218 (May 20, 1975)
Method of Inducing& Maintaining Various Stages of Sleep in the Human Being, Monroe, Robert A.
Abstract --- A method of inducing sleepin a human being wherein an audio signal is generated comprising a familiar pleasing repetitive sound modulated by an EEG sleep pattern. The volume of the audio signal is adjusted to overcome the ambient noise and a subject can select a familiar repetitive sound most pleasing to himself.

Malech's Remote Brainwave-Altering Machine
US Patent Number 3,951,134 (April, 1976)  - Represents an invention by Robert G. Malech  Apparatus and method for remotely monitoring and altering brain waves
Abstract -- Apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject whereby electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are simultaneously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which the signals interfere with one another to yield a waveform which is modulated by the subject's brain waves. The interference waveform which is representative of the brain wave activity is re-transmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demodulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is then displayed for visual viewing and routed to a computer for further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveform also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein.

The Demo device

The electronics and the functional board layout isn’t all that difficult. ANy one with the most basic soldering skills can make their own device. As this image clearly shows…

But do not freak out.

Technology is a tool. It can be used for good purposes or bad. In this case we will use this technology for our own purposes which would be to improve and enhance our ability to navigate the MWI.

Other systems

And this…

What we are going to do…

Now, where this technology was promoted, and used to control others. We are going to take this technology to construct a machine that we can use on ourselves to help us reprogram our own minds away from other influences. And so let’s look at the basic outline of our intentions. What we will do is…

Create a steady tone

We will create a steady tone on the high end of the hearing range. The normal human hearing range of a healthy individual is usually in-between 20Hz and 20KHz with the higher frequencies gradually fading during a lifetime. Below 20Hz are called infrasounds and above 20000Hz are called ultrasounds. This is easily done. You take a cheap 555 IC chip, add some resistors and capacitors and attach it to a battery and you have a tone.

Create a custom affirmation campaign

We will create a custom affirmation campaign or document just for this device, and record the audio track in MP3 format. In so doing we will read it from the FIRST PERSON perspective.

  • I am calm, cool and collected.
  • I have a great life and I am very satisfied with it.
  • I am healthy and eat good, healthy and delicious food often.

Etc. Etc. We will then record this as an MP3 file format.

Construct a voice modulator circuit

We will construct a voice modulator circuit. With it, the two signals would be merged together as one singular signal. Thus the reading of the affirmations would be overlaid over the carrier tone. It’s a common and normal well-used circuit. Here’s one with transistors… Here’s one with ICs…

The overlaid signal

From that voice modulator circuit will be an overlay of the steady carrier tone and the affirmation campaign. This is the signal that will be the primary driver for the system.

Compress the signal

[5] We will then compress that signal. Then we will pulse it at a target frequency. There are multiple brainwave frequencies or patterns of brain activity. Most of the recorded information the the brain is received through the senses and is encoded in electrical impulses. All parts of the brain communicate with each other, and this is done through a vast array of nerve cells – the neurons – which work like small “electrical” stations. Their membrane presents an electrochemical charge on the external surface, releasing it again and again in the form of what is called cyclical electrical potential. This is what is commonly known as brain waves. These waves then travel along neural protrusions called axons and dendrites to other neurons. The nerve cells act in unison to generate thoughts, movements, and information that spread through very fine networks, between the various parts of the brain and the organs of action.

Target Frequencies

With the following be the different target frequencies that we can utilize; Alpha Waves: 8 Hz – 12 Hz In the alpha wave state, you’ll most likely feel awake but also simultaneously quite relaxed and without a loss of brain function like you would if you were very tired. When you get up in the morning and just before you fall asleep, you are naturally in this state. It’s interesting to note that when you close your eyes your brain naturally starts producing more alpha waves, however there are varying degrees of the alpha wave state and when you really drop in deep it’s far more powerful and profound than what you might feel or experience just from closing your eyes. Deep alpha wave states are frequently seen in and experienced by meditators. Alpha activity also heightens your imagination, visualization, memory, learning and concentration and is correlated with a decrease in stress and anxiety. Beta Waves: 12 Hz – 27 Hz In the beta state you are essentially wide awake. Beta brainwaves are associated with normal waking consciousness and a heightened state of alertness, logic and critical reasoning. This is the dominant mental state most people are in during the day and the majority of their waking lives. Although this state tends to be uneventful, don’t underestimate its importance. Many people who lack sufficient beta activity may experience mental or emotional disorders such as depression or ADHD, and low SMR production (a sub-range of beta at 12-15 Hz) may be related to insomnia. While Beta brainwaves are important for effective functioning throughout the day, they also can translate into stress, anxiety and restlessness. The voice of beta can be described as being that nagging little inner critic that gets louder the higher you go into the range. On the other hand, stimulating beta waves in under active individuals can improve energy levels, concentration, attentiveness and emotional stability, however, most people notice more benefit from shifting their brainwaves into other less frequently experienced states such as alpha, delta, theta and gamma. Delta Waves: 0.2 Hz – 3 Hz Delta is the slowest band of brainwaves and is experienced in deep, Stage 4, dreamless sleep. When your brain is in a full delta wave state, your body is healing and repairing itself and resetting its internal clocks. You don’t actually dream in this state and are more or less completely unconscious. Delta has also been seen in very deep states of meditation as well. Gamma Waves: 27 Hz and up The Gamma wave state is associated with expanded awareness, creativity, activation of the pineal gland, heightened intuition, enhanced mental clarity and focus, deep feelings of peace, joy and oneness, formation of ideas, language and memory processing, and various types of learning. As such, this is generally a highly desirable state to be in. Unsurprisingly, Gamma waves have been identified as a characteristic brainwave pattern of regular meditators and monks and are present when we are dreaming, although they can arise in normal waking consciousness as well. However, research has shown that by practicing forms of meditation and mindfulness regularly, you can literally rewire your brain to experience Gamma waves more frequently. Theta Waves: 3 Hz – 8 Hz Theta brainwaves are present during deep meditation, relaxation and light sleep, including the dream state. Theta has been shown to be a very receptive brainwave state that has proven useful for hypnotherapy, as well as self-hypnosis using recorded affirmations and suggestions. They are also strongly correlated with bursts of creativity, inspiration and vivid daydreams and visualizations. According to brainwave experts, it is at the Alpha-Theta border, from 7 Hz to 8 Hz, where the optimal range for visualization, mind programming and using the creative power of your mind begins. Clearly there are great benefits to be had by shifting your brainwaves into highly specific states, allowing your consciousness to experience reality through different ‘lenses’ that help it focus in positive, expansive and often times deeply healing ways. The exercises, technologies and nutraceuticals below have all been proven to shift brainwave patterns and improve trans-hemispheric communication in the brain, allowing for an expanded experience of consciousness.

Using the target frequencies.

The pulse of the “message” carrier wave must match that of the target frequencies of the person listening. For instance if you know that you will be awake and alert, mowing the grass or washing dishes, then your target wave would be in the Alpha range. If, however, you were meditating or resting, it would be in the beta wave range.

Guarantee of hitting the precise target range

There are two techniques to guarantee that the target frequencies are matching that of the “message” carrier wave. [A] Broadcast the signal in all target frequencies simultaneously. or, [B] Have a bio-feedback loop that measures your brain frequencies and then adjusts the pulse width of your message carrier wave.

Down slope control of the voice wave

We process the signal so that the pulse width is controlled by the down-wave trigger.

We utilize calming music to overlay over the system

Instead of simply having what amounts to “white noise” beamed into your headphones, we will add a soundtrack of calming and soothing sounds. Perhaps hemi-sync.

Output is a set of headphones

The output would ideally be a set of headphones, but a set of speakers can be employed as well. However, if you use speakers, anyone who hears the sounds form the speakers will be influenced by the embedded carrier waves and affirmation pulses.

Conclusion

I know that the vast bulk of the readership doesn’t even understand the schematics. But don’t worry about that. This is just a preliminary introduction article. This is a rudimentary discussion on the creation of a device that will automatically program your mind based upon whatever you want it to be programmed to. It relies on the beaming of audio frequencies that will reprogram your brain. In future articles, I [1] will prove a DIY do-it-yourself instructions on how to make one. Further, [2] I will also provide a kit with all the parts, and later on still, [3] I will provide already assembled devices for purchase. I hope that this all will be beneficial to you all.

Do you want more?

I have more posts related to this in my Affirmation Campaign index here… Intention Campaigns

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More Q&A to The Domain Commander using my EBP

I have these EBP things in my body. In August or September 2021, I discovered that I could open up a comm link using them to their owners; The Domain. I was surprised when they communicated back. After a short while we honed the process and now I have a mechanism where I can ask questions and get answers. This is part of the various Q&A sessions that I have had with them. This one occurred in October 2021.

Here’s some additional questions that I have asked.

Are any members of the Domain’s “Lost Battalion” part of the MM readership?

This might be a curiosity to some, and important to others. It was asked in a question on 18OCT21. Here is the response.

Yes.

And talk about being terse! Jeeze. That’s about as helpful as knowing that there are worms in your backyard grass.

So I asked for elaboration.

It is best if the members of the "Lost Battalion" do not realize who they are at this time. 

Those that view / read /respect /search for answers are on the path towards rehabilitation. But many are not ready for the answers and truth yet. Their conditioning has been far too invasive, distressing and thorough. 

By their very nature they will fight against anything new or different. They will appear gruff and cantankerous at times for after all, their life on the Prison Planet has not been kind to them. As well as that is part of their very nature.

Enough said.

What do you regard as their highest truth? If there is a master key to the puzzle that we are all missing that will make the universe make sense?

Again, quick. Faster than what I was ready for.

Yes there are truths, and then there are TRUTHS. What we would regard as a "truth" would hold a completely different meaning to an person (inmate) within an artificial reality.

Humans on the earth, as well as many other creatures, are inmates. 

Imagine a fish tank full of fish. There are big fish, small fish, crabs, a frog, all types of things. To them, their entire universe is that fish tank, and while they can peer through the glass, the objects in the distance are identifiable to them, but not understood by them. They are recognizable shapes, but they have no understanding of them.

That telephone on the table is just a rectangular shaped object. That light that comes on and off at times is a "natural rhythm". They don't understand them. They don't understand that the telephone is the "Bees Knees". They just don't understand.

Now, let's suppose the lady of the house waltzes in the room. She smiles like she always does, and feeds the fish with the fish food nearby, and then walks away with her gams in rhythmic motion. The fish would assume that she is part of the nature of things. That she is reliable, and dependable and that their existence depends on her. To them, she appears as a swanky goddess. To them, the "truth" is that they are part of her daily routine. It's a natural world.

But the actual TRUTH is something entirely different.

The fishbowl is a construct. The lady, as beautiful and kind as she is, is their keeper. And their very life depends on her. The fishbowl lies within a much larger universe, and there are so many things that they just do not understand about it. In fact, you can say that outside the fishbowl is a much different world. There is no stable bubbling oxygenation of water, no thermoclines, no gravel at the bottom, and no algae on the sides of the tank walls.

And if you told them this, what would it matter?

Are any of the fish going to jump out of the tank, and try to make it to the front door in the living room?

Truth is a relative thing. It depends on the person asking the question.

For the questioner...

... the truth is simple. You are in a prison. The "universe" that you see that lies outside beyond the prison, but what you observe is not what actually exists. It's something else entirely. You are not going to take a rocket ship and travel the "vast gulf of space" to another star like you think you are able. It will not be like Star Trek, or Flash Gordon. It is similar to what you observe (from afar), but decidedly and functionally different. As the universe that you view is not what it actually is. This is not hokum.

Outside the prison walls is a universe that does not at all resemble what you think it does. That's a truth that you must accept.

I have been having these images of what I once was. A Mades Escapleon. Are these perceptions correct?

Again, a personal question.

My images are a comically gnome / dwarfish / kind of lizardly elfin figure with a big belly and a kind of green and white Santa Claus style outfit. Pretty bizarre eh?

Your mind constructs images that you have encountered during this life. The constructs an image of what you would expect yourself to be. That is the case right now.

There are multiple species in co-habitation in the "Old Empire". Many resemble the images of faeries, goblins, dwarves, and so on and so forth. However the images and the presentation of what you have in popular media and literature is not the real and actual depictions of these archetypes nor is it a depiction of the societies that they occupy. 

Mades Escapleon was not a human archetype. He became one when he entered General Population in fear to escape The Domain when we took over the local command and control facilities at the administration center. Your depiction of him, however comical, is actually pretty close to his (garbled. interruption. Not clear.). You would not recognize him as storybook fable type of character. But rather as a smallish, ugly businessman with an abrupt manner, and a sneering demeanor.

The administration and command and control operation for the earth planet within this prison planet is inside the moon in a large void that resides adjacent to the offset metallic hot core. We (The Domain) have taken over this facility and now use this region for our own purposes. However there are many members of the "Old Empire" that did not egress into the General Population when we seized the administration complex. they still live there inside the cavity. To you, they might appear as those fairy tale book characters.

Your office was large, and was in the most predominant structures within the void. Keep in mind that Mades Escapleon was just a singular (series of) incarnations that you maintained as a (not clear) role for his majesty (not clear / garbled / not important). You need not get too upset or worry about your past. The incarnations in the general population of the Prison planet system has changed you.

Consider these thoughts just echoes of a former life that no longer has any importance to who you are today.

The Lost Battalion living in human form. Do the Mantids interact with them?

From my previous Q&A…

“Unfortunately most humans are prevented from configuring their “stage upwards / higher form / above non-physical” bodies. This is a Mantid (sic.) directive. This is why inmates are quickly shuttled off to “Heaven”. So they cannot shape change their “migration paths / attunement centers / organ clusters” to fit other forms.”

The Lost Battalion living in human form. Do the Mantids interact with them? Or are they outside of the Mantids’ directives/supervision? I believe the Mantids supervise every human or at least monitor them at death.  If so, then that suggests the Mantids know where the members of the Lost Battalion are. This drills down into some inconvenient questions, which I assume both you and the Commander is very much aware of.

The answer came in the form of sliding events, which I really don’t want to describe right now, as I am tired. And I need to get some sleep.

Think of it is a kind of layered deck of cards that you push to the side and draw off the top card, and then another appears and so on and so forth….

Yes. The Mantids (sic.) interact with all inmates in General Population. There are Mantid(s) (sic.) associated with every human (or mammal) form as this is an artificial construct that needs to be maintained while in the Prison Complex. 

The forms that the Domain "Lost Battalion" were in when they were captured are not the forms that they are inhabiting now. These forms are not "doll bodies". But rather, they are specially constructed "skin suits" for use within the General Population chambers in the Prison Complex. Some are human, some are in other mammal bodies. Each "skin suit" has an associated Mantid (sic.) to maintain it, operate it, and make sure that it follows the pre-birth world-line template (sic.)

Since the Domain interacts and communicates with the Mantids (sic.) we are able to identify where the elements of the "Lost Battalion" are. We know where they exist within the Prison Complex at any moment, and we work with the Mantids (sic.) as necessary towards our end goals and directives.

The Mantids (sic.) control the "skin suits". They maintain and help follow the progression of life events along the pre-birth world-line template (sic.). 

But these Mantids (sic.) are not the same as the creatures (Mantids Prime) that occupy roles within the "Heaven" that was constructed as part of this Prison Complex.

Both the Mantids (sic.) and Mantids Prime (sic.) that occupy heaven are of the same genetic classification, however they are totally different in their operational parameters. 

[1]  The Mantids Prime (sic.) continue to follow the "Old Empire" directives and operate within "Heaven" as if the Domain does not exist. 

[2]  While the Mantids within the Prison Complex work with us and are aligned with our end goals.

We of The Domain do not venture within the "Heaven" constructed sub-universe. To do so would require us to go through the electromagnetic washing of our very being and souls. So we have never visited the "Heaven" constructs. Thus we have never communicated with the Mantid Primes (sic.)

Thus, when a member of the "Lost Battalion" dies it is immediately shuttled off to the "Tunnel of Light", enters "Heaven" and is met by Mantid Prime (sic.) caretakers that have a directive to immediately recycle back with a pre-defined (nasty) pre-birth world-line template. 

Then upon the General Population in the Prison Complex, "our" Mantids (sic.) take over and work with us to our end goals.

How are cats not part of the inmates!?

From my previous Q&A…

“Felines follow the same general behavior rules as humans do. Except that felines are not inmates in the Prison Planet Complex.”

How are cats not part of the inmates!? Are they visitors from elsewhere? This suggests that they are pretty advanced. In fact by my limited interaction with my feral cats, in some respects they display more human behavior than most humans. I actually learnt kindness and trust in ways which surprised me.

This was an interesting response.

(Pause.) I have to get back to you on this.

So, what will happen is that the Commander will go off and do his / her / it research or communication, and get back with me. Probably at an odd point in time.

Four weeks later. His response…

Felines, not only ordinary house cats, have a quantum makeup that differ substantially from that of the inmate archetypes that were developed when the Prison Complex was first established. You can think of it as oil vs. water, or Windows computer operating system, and the Lunix operating system. Or you can think of it as an electrical heater as opposed to a kerosene heater. It's completely different.

But it is more than that.

The feline archetype did not approve of making any inmate version archetypes. Every time an attempt was made to create a feline prison suit, it was thwarted and blocked. Not only because it was much, much harder to do, but also become the felines themselves did not want that to happen. 

You cannot contain or constrain a cat. They are their own free entities, and they value this aspect of their lives in the must fundamental manner. They actually view most other forms of physical manifested life as "below them". They would not permit a "lower" species to create a genetic manipulation of their archetype.

So it did not happen.

When the first efforts were undertaken to do so, there were all sorts of problems and issues.  Eventually, the engineers and researchers of the "Old Domain" gave up. They "shelved" the feline project and excluded it from the catalog of inmate skin suits. 

Now, initially, they did report these issues to their superiors. Each and every time their superiors demanded that they work harder. Eventually, they decided not to say anything and the Prison Complex was opened up without feline archetype modification.

There were side projects in which archetypes were developed and failed. Eventually, the researchers told their superiors that it was not advisable as the felines would find a way to escape from the Prison Complex. This was an excuse that the upper management accepted, and so all research was filed away and forgotten. And you now have this situation that persists to this day.

Your point about trans species migrations.

Dogs and elephants etc may be equally intelligent as humans, just limited by their containers. So a dog when in a human behavior has all the same emotional and mental intelligence when freed from the limits so imposed. This suggests that emotions and intelligence is similar across specie across the worlds.

If true then many characteristics are cultural or biological. (I’m thinking your Commander can absorb the culture of humans because he has access to ALL of your memories lol. But this rabbit hole I will leave to you. For me it’s more benign than it looks.)

Trans-species migrations happen all the time. It's fairly common outside of the Prison Complex universe. However, there are limitations, and favoritism in the body selection and group quantum clusters that make a favorite type of incarnation more desirable than others.

In the Prison Planet environment, however, it is a completely different situation. The mantids in Heaven (mantid prime) make the decisions and give permissions or not to allow or not this kind of inter-specie transfer experience. Individual IS-BE's have very little say in the outcome of that request.

One of the problems that can arise is when one species, say a predatory insect species, inhabits a modified human skin suit for the General Population in the Prison Complex. Their personality will stay the same, but will adapt to the new skin suit and environment. 

These old previous species behaviors, while natural in other environment could end up being toxic in the human environment. Thus it is one of the reasons why we (The Domain) put a stop to other civilizations dumping their undesirables into the Prison Complex for administrative punishment.

Does your ownership of planet Earth come from right of conquest? Some sort of Terra Nullius?

Continuing on the Q&A. This particular question was asked late at night after I finally got my young daughter to sleep. I then sat down and started the process.

We created the master universe that the Prison Complexes and it's pocket universe inhabits. We established the creatures, the plants, the planets, the stars and the entire operation of everything. At that time, The Domain was an earlier incarnation, and we all were learning and establishing fundamentals and boundaries for the universe.

We let general chaos expand, and as a result the master universe became something that we do not like to see. We held a series of meeting in this regard and decided to secure all errant elements and maintain a most basic and fundamental foundational aspect of control.

What is going on with your "Milkyway galaxy" is that we are suppressing the unstable elements in favor of unified control according to our most basic principles.

Rather than a territorial expansion and seizure of this galaxy, we are instead working behind the scenes where possible to stabilize errant civilizations. When we cannot do so, we secure the civilizations by force. This is what we did with the "old empire". 

In all cases the civilizations are then scrubbed of the negative attributes and problematic behaviors and permitted to operate within a very broad set of guidelines that will prevent a relapse of dangerous behaviors.

If Earthlings are in the position of native Americans who faced annilation at the hands of the Great White Father, what do we do?

Morning inquiry.

Fear is the problem. Certainly there is reason to be concerned, as earth history is rife with stories of conquest. But the earth is a unique environment peopled with many vicious and malevolent / selfish / profiteering entities. This is NOT (there was a great vibrational rocking with this particular word. Almost like a earthquake) the norm in the "master universe".

This Prison Complex was derived and came from a particularly unique culture of war-like entities that formed a society that we refer to as the "Old Empire". So this war-like, profiteering society took their worst (and their best) citizenry and locked them up inside this prison complex. The lives that you have experienced here, and the histories that you have experienced here are excessive and extreme.

That being said, the "Old Empire" being warlike and aggressive is in itself an extreme manifestation. It's not the normal.

These extreme manifestations of society crop up throughout the universe, and that is what The Domain is active in suppressing. There are approximately  two to three really problematic civilizations per galaxy, and the larger galaxies such as yours might hold from seven to twelve (or fourteen) such societies.

Your fears are rational because they are based on your known histories.

This is what you can expect;

[1] The "Old Empire" has been purged of it's "darkest" elements. It is now on the mend and is turning into a calmer, quieter and more peaceful society. Though certain elements of that society had to be forcefully amputated. 

[2] By the time the Prison Complex is fully actuated under The Domain control, many trapped IS-BE's will be able to return to their former relationships and lives in the "Old Empire" or elsewhere as the need be.

[3] Prior to this happening, however, there has to occur numerous events prior to the release of the inmates.

[3A] Sentience sorting. We cannot permit those sentience's that are prone to dangerous behaviors to exist outside of a monitored area on their own. Instead they will be granted supervised parole, and observed and watched so that they cannot unduly influence their surroundings negatively.

[3B] Scrubbing of the skin suits. The attire of the entities will all have to be remanufactured to fit their natural archetypes. Obviously STS , DIS, and SFA entities (under parole) would posses "parole" skin suits, while STO entities would possess natural archetype skin suits.

STO = Service to others
STS = Service to Self
SFA = Service for another
DIS = Disjointed

[3C] Memory re-injection. We will attempt (and succeed) in the restoration of all memories.

[3D] Phased release. The members of the lost battalion will be the first major group to be released. Followed by STO individuals. Then a phased system of SFA individual consciousnesses. The last would be the very dangerous STS and DIS consciousnesses.

[3E] The Most dangerous. The most problematic entities and the highest probability of disruption / destructive abilities / and borderline evil entities would be either recycled or banished. 

[3E-1] Those banished would be sent to the pocket universe known as "Heaven" which is a pocket universe within the pocket universe of the Prison Complex. There they would be locked in place and stay there until a sufficient method can be arranged to rehabilitate them.

[3E-2] Those recycled would be reduced to basic components through a system resembling the "tunnel of light" until they are rendered inert.

The questioner need not fear any of this. The questioner is slated for a phased release, after memory restoration.

If things are less dark, then how do we work or trade together?

I assume that this concerns what is presently going on earth-side and the question relates to the next few years. As such, I queried it that way. Morning probe at 9am.

The fears abound. But things will return to normal sea lane shipping, and normal levels of commerce. However, there will be a decrease in the volume of the products, the type and mixture of products, as well as the relative utility and life of those products. 

This is something that is well documented on our side. 

We see and anticipate a "new normal" after a seven year (or so) adjustment period. 

Some nations will be impacted the most. Such as the United States, the UK and parts of Europe. Others, many others, will not be. And they will continue their lives as if the disruption was a trivial matter.

Those nations or societies that will be impacted the most will undergo severe and abrupt societal readjustments. Mostly it will be triggered by energy utility, currency or the inflation related to, and inherent and intentional balkanization of the citizenry.

Next group of questions – Some important points

If I cannot understand the question, I cannot communicate to the Commander. Further, I need to be able to understand what he is communicating. Anything that lies outside of my knowledge or experience is impossible to communicate with. We have to have a common frame of reference, and then be able to use that reference to form a basis of understanding.

This next bath of questions took me back.

  • Heavy in technical jargon.
  • A large number of multi-part questions.
  • Coming from a non-influencer who didn’t even bother with a singular donation.
  • A disregard to the effort all this takes.

As they did not at all follow my request that only one question be asked and that it be put in a clear and easy way for me to communicate to. This was the question…

Here are some late & difficult but revolution-assisting questions:

*Are Clifford Algebras with real-value coefficients a serviceable mathematical format for representation for reality? 

*Is there a better type of math to use? If so, what? Otherwise:

*What is the sign aka signature (+ or -) of the squares of the basis vectors of the spatial dimensions? 

*Is this a convention or is it physically significant?

*Are there other such dimensions with the same signature, e.g. “proper time”?

*How many such space-like dimensions are there?

*and what is their significance?

*How many dimensions of opposite signature to the spatial ones are there, e.g. relativistic time and other time-like dimensions?

*What can be said about their role – e.g. do they concern nuclear reactions or allow for branching time-lines?

*Are there effectively null-square (zero-square) dimensions formed from the sum and differences of pairs of + and – signature dimensions, e.g. light-cones or “conformal” projective dimensions? 

*Are there null-square dimensions independent of the + and – square dimensions? 

*Are null-square dimensions your home environment? 

*Are there applications of null-square dimensions, e.g. portals between realms or amnesia devices?

*Does thermodynamic entropy create “Akashic records”? 

*What principles relate thermodynamic entropy (heat diffusion) and information from physical histories (wave equation); are they analogous to exchanging a + square for a – square dimension, (or relativistic time for proper time, or time (t) for imaginary time (it)), 

*...and if so, can this “Wick rotation” be done in both directions so as to allow passing from our physical realm to the “afterlife” and back?

16 fucking technical specialized questions! Are you fucking kidding me?

Now you know, this son of a bitch did not give me a donation, nor did he add anything to MM aside from saying that the posted art was beautiful. So what? It’s beautiful. I know that.

Duh!

Now, for these questions, I had to do some research. Then I had to understand it. Finally, I had to communicate it to the Commander in the “easily digestible form”.

  • Understand the language.
  • Understand the physics involved.
  • Phrase it so that I understood the questions when I read it.
  • Query question by question to the Commander.
  • Communicate that query.
  • Transcribe the answer.
  • Double check the answers for uniformity.

All in all, I figure months of dedicated study, if not years. Then weeks, to months of asking these questions.

That’s one FUCK of a lot of work.

So, I sent an email to this clown.

I said.

Listen guy, let me make something perfectly clear. If I cannot understand the questions, then it cannot be communicated properly to the Commander. Some of these questions I can ask.

And another thing. I am doing this for free. 

Look at the God damn bulk of questions you asked. Do you have any god damn idea what stress I go through in this procedure. Have some fucking compassion, or at least throw a donation my way. Jeeze!

To respond to this query, I need to fully understand the question.

Remember. With information comes responsibility. You are now responsible in the dissemination of this information.

He responded.

Frankly, by all indications it seemed like you were a whole team getting paid by the word by some Chinese intelligence agency, so I gave you some of the best open-source intel I could – that 300-reference COVID origin paper on unz.com and the rexresearch.com technology archive. 

I have also tried to suggest ways you might increase your rhetorical effectiveness, though it’s often hard to point such things out without giving offense. 

I don’t get paid for anything myself, I’m still recovering from repeated heatstroke from labor in a SE US sweatshop and don’t have funds to spare, unfortunately. I wasn’t aware how your link depends on your understanding or the effort required, my apologies.

That’s an apology? By insulting me? And still he’s not even going to toss me money for a cup of coffee for the seven months it would take to answer his questions?

He continued…

Nevertheless, the topics of my questions could yield very important intelligence, understanding of principles behind advanced technology and even the nature of reality. 

I have found them worth spending many years of study, but for the same reason it is not easy to briefly summarize them. Here’s an attempt, still too long:

***
http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2012/07/28/transrealism-interview-with-leon-marvell/#comment-50789
[Notes on Cabbalistic significance of the whirling double cone in projecting between higher and lower worlds]
“the double-cone’s vortex form can be made by swinging a rod by its center point so that the ends describe circles” [doing so associated with sudden destructive tornado]

“Another instance of a form similar to the double-cone occurs in Bruce Moen’s exploration of what the Monroe Institute calls “Focus 27”, though the cones are more like bells or hyperboloids. He describes a large, antenna-like, horizontal structure of this double-cone form whose function is to compress souls (which he says look like cocktail shrimp or cheese curls) so that they can reincarnate without excess awareness, which would lead to sensory overload.” [expanding the center point of a double-cone into a circle results in a hyperboloid]

“Yeats had a more interesting vision of the importance of the double-cone – he saw helical gyres on the surface of the cones as tracing out the history of every mind… ‘The mind … has a precise movement … this form is the gyre.’ This was the origin of the famous lines: ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; ….” [The poet W.B. Yeats was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the most influential group in the development of modern occultism.]

***

Geometric Algebra (GA, real-valued Clifford Algebras, a.k.a. hypercomplex numbers) gives the only mostly-comprehensible-to-me account not only of higher spatial / temporal dimensions, but of physics in general. One of the best things about it is that nearly every paper using GA explains it from first principles before going on to use it for physics or computer science. Most physics papers in other fields seem to take a positive joy in obscure math and impenetrable jargon. I’ll try here to give an even less mathematically difficult account of some of GAs implications than most GA papers.

Given a set of n mutually orthogonal basis vectors, one vector for each independent dimension, a space of 2^n quantities results from considering all possible combinations of these basis vectors multiplied together. For instance taking pairs of vectors from a 5D space gives 10 possible planes of rotation, 4D space 6 planes of rotation, while in 3D there are only 3 independent planes of rotation. (The numbers of other combinations for n dimensions go as the n-th row of Pascals triangle or binomial.) For orthogonal vectors such as the basis vectors of a space, the order of multiplication determines the sign of the result, so: d1 d2 = -d2 d1. This can be interpreted as being a rotation in the plane defined by the two vectors, either in one direction (d1 -> d2) or the other, “negative” direction (d2 -> d1).

Sums of all the 2^n elements, each weighted by a different scale factor give “multivectors”, which are generalizations of complex numbers.

Each of the basis vectors will have a positive or negative square. (Vectors’ squares are always scalars, that is, real numbers.) In conventional relativity the basis vectors squares’ signs, also called “signatures” are (+ – – – ) or (+ + + -), with the different sign from the others belonging to time. When plugging into the Pythagorean theorem, the square of time can cancel out the squares of the spatial dimensions, giving a distance of zero when the spatial distance equals the time interval (time multiplied by c to give all units in meters). This happens for anything moving at the speed of light. The zero interval is the amount of perceived or “proper” time for a light wave traveling between any two points. This light-speed type of path is also called a “null geodesic”. For any given point in space and time, there is a “past light cone” of places that could be seen from that point, called a “cone” because it spreads out as one goes back further in time. Likewise, for each point at a given time there is a “future light cone” of places from which an event at that place and time can be seen. The “cone” terminology comes from looking at 2D plus time, each cross section of the cone is then a 2D circle of points. (It’s easier to imagine the future light cone as pond ripples spreading out from a dropped pebble. The past light cone is like reversing the film so the ripples converge to throw the pebble out of the pond. In 3D, it looks sort of like glass onions turning inside-out. Placehoder: Transactional Interpretation of QM, Carver Mead’s Collective Electrodynamics) Mathematiclly the points on the past light cone are defined by the spatial separation, r, and the time-times-lightspeed, ct, so: (ct)^2 = r^2 .

Now it is possible and actually quite useful for computer graphics to add a pair of dimensions with signature (+ -) to the usual spatial ones (+ + +). The sum and difference of the extra dimensions give an alternate basis for these two dimensions, but with the basis vectors squaring to zero (0 0). These “null dimensions” are called “origin” and “infinity”. A projection from this augmented space down to 3D allows many other structures besides points and directions to be represented by vectors in the 5D space. For instance, multiplying 3 points gives a circle passing through those points, 4 points gives a sphere. If one of those points is the point at infinity, then the product is a line or a plane respectively. The other advantages of this way of doing things are too many to list here. This “conformal” scheme is actually quite easy to visualize and learn to use without getting into abstruse math by using the free GAViewer visualization software and its tutorials.

An interesting thing about the ( +++, +- ) signature algebra is that it is the same as one that has been <a href=”http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0601194″> proposed</a> by José B. Almeida as an extension of the usual 3D+t (+++-) “Minkowsi space” of relativity, augmenting the usual external time (-) with a second sort of time having positive square and describing internal or “proper time”, (which in relativity will be measured differently by a moving external observer). But if it is assumed that everything in the universe is about the same age, then they have comparable proper time coordinates, so proper time can be used as a universal coordinate corresponding to the universe’s temporal radius. This gives a sort of preferred reference frame for the universe, which is ordinarily considered impossible. In this 5D scheme, not just light but also massive particles follow null geodesics, and from that single assumption can be deduced relativity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and in addition dark matter, the big bang and the spatial expansion of the universe seem to be illusions.

The math is also easier than the usual warped-space general relativity, instead using flat euclidean space and having light, etc. move more slowly near mass, that is, treating gravitational fields as being regions of higher refractive index than regular space.

Quantum mechanics is also much much easier to visualize using GA. For instance, the behavior of the electron can be described fully by treating it as a point charge moving in a tight helix at light speed around its average path (a “jittery motion”, or in German: “zitterbewegung”). The handedness of the helix is the electron spin, the curvature of the helix is the mass, the angle of the particle around the helix is the phase.

Geometric Algebra is useful in all areas of physics and computer modeling of physics. GA has been successfully applied to robot path planning, electromagnetic field simulation, image processing for object recognition and simulation, signal processing, rigid body dynamics, chained rotations in general and many other applications. It gives very clear, terse and generally applicable, practically useful descriptions in diverse areas using a single notation and body of techniques.

Basic Geometric Algebra (GA) visual introduction:
https://slehar.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/clifford-algebra-a-visual-introduction/

Interactive visualization software, includes 5D (3+2D) Conformal Geometric Algebra (CGA)
https://geometricalgebra.org/gaviewer_download.html

Tutorial for CGA using GAviewer software:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265065144_GABLE_A_GAViewer_Tutorial_for_Geometric_Algebra

Thorough math/physics intro:
https://www.av8n.com/physics/clifford-intro.htm

Good old intro from the top GA study group:
http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~clifford/pages/introduction.htm

***

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wick_rotation
replacing inverse temperature, kT (Boltzmann’s constant times temperature) in thermodynamic equations with: -i f hbar (negative imaginary unit (square root of [-1]) times frequency times Planck’s constant divided by 2 pi) (both of which have dimensions of energy), converts the heat diffusion equation to Schrodinger’s wave equation (the fundamental equation of quantum mechanics). Frequency and time are inverses of each other; Wick rotation is more often expressed using imaginary time than imaginary frequency. My research shows that frequency should be regarded as primary and time should be seen as being derived from frequency.

* entropy= heat, and entropy=information: they are the same thing. Therefore since entropy always increases (2nd law of thermodynamics), information always increases and accumulates in the universe, giving a very scrambled record of the history of the universe. This can potentially be unscrambled using a Wick rotation

***
https://www.specularium.org/
Peter Carroll, noted as the originator of “Chaos Magic”, has for some years been working on physics rather than magic, in particular a scheme that uses three dimensions of time. I corresponded with him over a few months last year regarding some of the relations to GA, in particular the possibility that each spatial-temporal dimension pair would form an alternate basis with two null-square dimensions. I can’t say I understand his hypersphere cosmology or 3D time theories, but they certainly do resonate with my intuition.

*

Anyway, I hope that’s more interesting, edifying & enlightening than burdensome — you owe me nothing, of course, but perhaps it may lead to some profit for you down the line.

Just a bunch of cut and paste from the internet. Supposedly, I guess to give the impression that he knows something.

Christ. This information has to be USED. I am not some novelty for your own God Damn personal comfort and queries. I fully expect you to USE this information and make GOOD USE of it, disseminate it, and do good works with it.

I am not a novelty.

I am not some yokel that goes round and round in a hamster cage, just for some novelty questions.

I am NOT doing this easily and for fun.

It’s a labor.

It’s also painful, physically exhausting, and a chore. Thus I get angry when people treat me, and what I am doing trivially. You WILL respect me. You WILL show respect to The Domain, and you WILL behave when you visit MM. Or I will fucking get rid of you, and if you still persist, I will make it a permanent stay in the corn field.

Are Clifford Algebras with real-value coefficients a serviceable mathematical format for representation for reality?

Is there a better type of math to use? If so, what?

And the answer…

This is an insincere request made by a malevolent entity. They do not seek an answer, but rather are desirous in trying to "trip you up", "run snipe hunts" to occupy your time and labor. Any information provided will not even be read. Nor will it be disseminated or used.

Future associations with it will be problematic. It is advisable to sever all communication channels and avoid them.

So on Monday 25OCT21 I severed all communication with this person. I sent him a response to his comment and gave him 45 minutes to respond. I was being generous.

I am a contributor to both the UNZ and The Saker. This you should know. 

You should also understand who I am and why I am doing this. Obviously you do not. 

Long time readers will recognize what an insult it is to say that I work for the Chinese government. That alone is enough to send you to the cornfield. 

But I am not going to do that. I think you are trivially intelligent but have the social skills of a goat.

KNOW WHO YOU ARE DEALING WITH.

Your lack of perception, veiled insults, and general garrulousness is irritating to me. I am too old for this bullshit. Therefore you are banned. Good bye.

Then I went and blocked his entire city from accessing MM. Not just him alone. Then another MM follower Ultan responded…

Mr Man. You are very much loved and respected by those of us out here who have been reading and listening to you for years, and have actually taken the time to read and think about your experiences while comparing / contrasting those experiences with our own. Rather than, say, trying to fit your narrative into our narrative, or what we think we know about reality.

And in the case of this character above, failing very badly. But a classic example of wooden thinking if ever there were. And let’s not even get into the subtle hints about you being a paid liar. Or other contributors for that matter. I mean, for all the errrr, intellectual nitty gritty (for want of a better expression), he doesn’t even know anything about free energy and the plasma-fusion core.

Good call, IMHO.

And please do not let these guys get you down– there’s a lot of messed up people out there looking for answers. You’ve placed the pearls for all who have eyes to see, some of us have scooped them up; let the herd blunder on toward the intellectual abattoir.

My response…

A big thank you for the uplifting response.

You know that I hate banning people, but if I find myself feeling bad by something that someone said, I do not analyze it. I just throw them into the gutter.

MM is not for everyone. It is not for the general population to visit and ohh and ahh at. It is only for a few very special people.

People like you, the guy from Ohio, Florida, Australia, South America, Northern Europe and Israel as well as the guy from Africa. There’s women from France and the Caribbean, and Georgia that mean the world to me. And it’s for you guys that I keep pumping this stuff out day in and day out. You guys are so very, very special to me. So special. You have no idea.

Lately when I see people get on my forum, on my site, and lay down insults about what I say, write or report. They lay down insults about me and why I do what I do, it hurts. And honestly the world would be a much better place if we all see that when we are hurt it’s a real thing. It’s just like that video of the dish breaking.

The dish is gone. You had a dish. Now you don’t. So good bye.

Who them responded back to me with…

All part of the ‘demonisation and dehumanisation of the other’ phenomena that’s accelerated thanks to ‘social media’ over the past few years, Mr Man. And by design, of course.

Folks entrapped emotionally in a circle-jerk by these very advanced algorithms tend to forget that on a cyber-forum you are dealing with another human being– that’s what the word ‘forum’ means! A place to gather and discuss anything and everything; and just like in the real forums of old– insult anybody or try and force your own peculiar views on others in that forum and you’d be laughed out of the atrium, at best, or kicked out on your ear with a dagger in your arse, at worst. 

Folks, free men, knew how to behave, back then. And ‘natural selection’, let’s say, did away with the socially retarded. (Check out what woulda happened to you in ancient Sparta if you insulted another person or his views in a disrespectful manner. And that was just the warriors/free-men, alone– men and women.)

But in cyberspace it’s easy to remain anonymous and dismiss opposing views to yours no matter how rationally put or well-intended with the utmost disrespect– or get angry when your views aren’t upheld in a way that you’d like; shills, bots, NPCs, non-humans; trolls; paid disinfo; and much worse….we’ve seen it all before. Such is what passes for ‘discourse’ in cyberspace. Again, all by very clever design.
So keep ’em coming, IMHO– and if one day you decide to pull the plug, I at least have downloaded your classics to keep forever and reread at my leisure.

So thanks again for that.

And I commented…

It’s always a pleasure to hear your kind words and support. FYI, I didn’t just ban this guy. I banned his entire city. Chinese-style. Anyone in his city now gets a notice when they try to visit MM. 

It says “Your geographic region has been banned from accessing this site by the site administrator.”

And this was the response.

😂, oh man, blocking the regional I.P. address? F that; why don’t you call up your Domain contact, fire up his or her doomsday device, and plough the furrows in the remains of that dump with salt while you’re at it, Scipio Africanus style.

How’s that for polite debate! Respect the Metallicman and you can live and let live; disrespect him, however, and the Rods of God are a-comin your way.

Duck, you sucker, 😂.

Ah.

Don’t piss me off.

Never the less, I did actually ask the question.

It took me days to present, unpack, translate, transcribe and review. Here it is.

Keep in mind, that I still don’t understand the question. To me it is a question on the tools of a methodology related to utilization of a system that could be used to describe the nature of a universe. And thus I presented it as such.

Here’s the result.

The use of mathematics to describe the universe that the prison complex is part of makes sense from the point of view of the inmates. However, it is a very awkward and feeble methodology. The better methodology is a simpler pictorial representation.

The prison complex operates in a pocket universe that exists inside a general "master" universe. With in this pocket universe are secondary universes known collectively as "Heavens". Each universe possesses different rules, different environments, and different ways of operating.

Here we must assume that the question is in regards to whether Clifford Algebra can help describe the nature of the "physical universe", which is functionally different in operation from the "master" universe that is resides within.

(Now, I hope that I get this transcribed properly. It was parsed out slowly and carefully for me, and I really still do not understand it.)

The problem with using this methodology to describe the prison universe; the "pocket" universe that resides inside the "master" universe is that it relies on the notion that time does exist. 

Here, time is the scalar component of a Clifford space. In Clifford Space geometry, "time" results from properties of space itself. This comes about when one properly uses the higher dimensional formalism afforded by Clifford’s geometric algebra.

At that, it can be viewed as an intrinsic geometric property of three-dimensional space without the need for the specific addition of a fourth dimension. (As people tend to do, referring "time" as the fourth dimension.) Thus, it is quite attractive to those seeking mathematical solutions to the geometry of the artificial prison universe.

Clifford algebra is a unification of real and complex numbers, (quaternion and vector algebra) which reflects the intrinsic properties of space-time. 

(I wrote down "qu-an-er-non", as I try to phonically assemble words that are new to me, but the closest apparently useful word is quaternion.)

The reason why Clifford algebra is attractive is because it provides a unified, standard, elegant and open language and tool for numerous complex mathematical and physical theories. By using it, engineering principles can be devised to provide solutions within the prison planet universe.

If you base everything / mathematics / physics / engineering on the four basic principles and Clifford algebra, all basic physical equations within the prison planet universe can be derived.

And it stopped there! Talk about being maddening.

I really haven’t a clue as to what he is talking about, or whether or not the question was actually answered. So I “prodded” for “more”. (Don’t force me to explain. It’s a way that I communicate using the EBP.) And the result was more “forceful”, and “stronger”.

The logical relations between equations can all be reconstructed using Clifford Algebra. 

Additionally all of the solutions of the more typical equations can be solved. 

This system does explain the concepts of space-time and quantum theory. 

As such, it is a useful, by some, methodology to help better understand the nature of the prison complex pocket universe.

The queried answer is; Yes.

Clifford Algebra, using real value coefficients CAN (there was a syllabic emphasis in the forth tone) be used AS A serviceable (used as an italicized image) solution to a mathematical representation of the reality as experienced by the inmates within the prison complex pocket universe.

At this point, I really wanted to get some specific details. So after I transcribed the answers, I parsed them out for detail.

Q: You said “The logical relations between equations can all be reconstructed using Clifford Algebra.” Do you mean “most”, or can I use the word “all”?

The proper term is "all". However, there are some mathematical "tricks" that need to be employed on some of the solutions. Not every "trick" or technique is well known. This is an esoteric avenue for the specialists in this field. 

This should not be your concern.

Q: You said “…all of the solutions of the more typical equations can be solved. ” Again do you mean “all” or “most”, and why did you use the adjective “typical”?

The more accurate translation is "most of the functional equations can be solved, and those that cannot can be 'bridged' using mathematical 'work-arounds'". 

Again, this is not your realm of expertise. Those with the necessary skills and expertise now possess the understanding that they are on the right track and moving in the proper direction. In truth, there are some valid and appreciate work in this field by those of that interest and skill level. 

It need not be your concern.

The questioner also put up this part 2 of the question. It is, rather, if the Clifford Algebra cannot explain the nature of the reality universe, what can? And the questions ran like this…

Otherwise:

*What is the sign aka signature (+ or -) of the squares of the basis vectors of the spatial dimensions? Is this a convention or is it physically significant?

Are there other such dimensions with the same signature, e.g. “proper time”?

How many such space-like dimensions are there, and what is their significance?

*How many dimensions of opposite signature to the spatial ones are there, e.g. relativistic time and other time-like dimensions?

What can be said about their role – e.g. do they concern nuclear reactions or allow for branching time-lines?

*Are there effectively null-square (zero-square) dimensions formed from the sum and differences of pairs of + and – signature dimensions, e.g. light-cones or “conformal” projective dimensions?

Are there null-square dimensions independent of the + and – square dimensions?

Are null-square dimensions your home environment? Are there applications of null-square dimensions, e.g. portals between realms or amnesia devices?

*Does thermodynamic entropy create “Akashic records”? What principles relate thermodynamic entropy (heat diffusion) and information from physical histories (wave equation); are they analogous to exchanging a + square for a – square dimension, (or relativistic time for proper time, or time (t) for imaginary time (it)), and if so, can this “Wick rotation” be done in both directions so as to allow passing from our physical realm to the “afterlife” and back?

Because the answer was substantive in the first part of the question, I did not proceed with the second part.

However, I think that the Commander wasn’t clear enough to meet the precise needs of the questioner. So I wanted to get some much better answers and some “meat” that I could provide herein. So I got myself a quiet spot, and a cup full of warm water. And started transcribing. And it does not make sense to me, but here it is…

Q: In Unified Field Theory, how does this Clifford Algebra fit?

And you know, that I am shoot wildly in the dark. I haven’t a clue as to what I am asking or how it would all fit together.

Many are trying to understand the nature of the pocket universe that surrounds the prison complex. The unified field theory is one such mechanism.There is Way-Al scale invariant (?) methodology, Kal-uze-al five dimensional space time, Hamilton Formalism and the gauge unified field theory. Each one has it's pluses and minuses in utility.

Clifford Algebra is a methodology used to help resolve numerous paradoxes. These include the Twins, Effer-Fest, and the ladder paradoxes.

There are other scientists on other prison planets within the entire prison complex that are proceeding on their versions of these theories. Which is why we are very aware of the questions that you ask.

The strongest attribute / characteristic of the Clifford Algebra methodology is the utilization of the Nonlinear Spinor Equation. There is the Nonlinear Dark field, the electromagnetic Interaction field and the interactions with classical mechanics and with the Lorentz Transformation. All of these show usefulness and utility. The key to understanding the use of Clifford Algebra is the use of Spinor property utility.

You need the Inter-grable Conditions of the Eli-Gen Equation, and the Curvilinear Coordinate System solution. 

Q: Are these hints or directions for the mathematical solutions using Clifford Algebra geometry for unified theory and space-time resolution?

Yes.

The way to proceed is to develop Inter-grable Conditions for the Dir-Ack, and the Pauli equations.You will then develop a "New Model" for Strong Interactions. Then, with a strong understanding of the Light-Cone Coordinate System, you can then begin the simplification of Einstein Tensor.  

From there, you would then work on the Linearization of Einstein Field Equation. (He said it twice as if it was important.) Linearization of Einstein Field Equation. Then work on the dynamics of observed stars and all should be obvious to the researcher. 

It looks like a “road map” for flushing out unresolved aspects of the Clifford Algebraic solution.

Honestly guys. I don’t know if he is “pulling my leg”, or just messing with me. This is just a bunch of disjointed statements that I just cannot figure out heads or tails over. I only hope that someone in the MM audience can understand it. In words that are new to me I used phonics to spell them out.

And that’s it. I am spent. I feel like an empty shell casing after completing final exams during my university years.

The next morning I asked this question;

Was I too harsh in perma-banning the questioner?

No.

The questioner is a DIS sentience. He would do nothing with the information. He would fail to disseminate it. He would only nod with a smirk that you fell for his "trap" / ploy / snare / amusement. 

By allowing him to continue to visit MM, you would be empowering his sickness / illness / distortion of self. 

It would be akin to allowing a family alcoholic member a bottle of whiskey a day just to keep him sedated and out of harms way. When the real solution would be to push him out of the house and lock the doors so that he cannot come in.

Note to the readers that it was my decision to ban him. I was not ordered to do so.

In the late 1940’s one of your vehicles were downed in Roswell New Mexico. From this event we obtained the document “Alien Interview”. Can you please tell us what downed your vehicle?

At that time we believed that it was downed by a disruption of it's operational field by natural energy discharge / lightning discharge. We learned however, that it was more complex than that. The real reason was the radar equipment that was being tested at the Roswell base.

The captured (Nazi) German radars Flakleit G, Freya, Mammut and Wassermann were being used and studied at the American Roswell, NM base at the time of the crash. 

We are unsure which particular radar was the actual culprit at this time, but that is immaterial, as all the radars possess interference properties that we have since had to counter.

During the crash, the two (minor) officers lost their doll bodies immediately and they returned to their operational staging locations. The Commander was captured and secured, and you know what happened after that.

Regarding the document titled “Domain Expeditionary Force Rescue Mission.”. Is this document really from Matilda? Does Airl have knowledge of it?

I posted this question. And I was told…

Read the book, and then ask the question again.

Sheech!

What does this mean?  Does that mean that they obtain all my impressions, and sensory input, and then use that to base their answers on?  Or do they rely on my impressions and then alter my opinions in how I transcribe? It’s all so confusing.  I am pretty much convinced that they need my thoughts and impressions, for whatever reason, to come to a conclusive answer. It explains so much, but also opens up some questions as well.

So I need to read the document. So ok. No problem. I’ll respond to this question later on after I read the document.

What happened to me when my EBP was installed? Where did I go, and have I met your expectations?

Well, I want to know.

We do not question your loyalty to the Domain nor your dedication to responsible service. In fact, these characteristics were carefully vetted prior to us presenting the opportunity to you.

We know that you want to entertain the idea that you went to some exotic location. Any of the moons of gas giants would cause biological disruptions due to the radiation belts inherent within their planetary fields.

You went to a medical facility within the moon. There is no need to venture further away to achieve the procedure that we conducted.

You have correctly surmised that it was not a vehicle, and that it was upon a planetary body. What you might not be clear on is that it occurred deep inside the moon, well under the planetary surface.

The idea that it occurred on Mars is a romantic assumption on your part.

If Heather is now occupying the human body of <redacted>, how is this possible as all human bodies are inmate skin suits, and cats transcend those limitations?

It’s a persistent question.

Heather (FYI, Heater was a previous cat from 30 years ago) isn't really occupying a human body, but is rather sharing it. Felines have the ability to co-inhabit bodies of all sorts of creatures. This is especially pronounced in the Prison Complex environment. This is exactly what is going on.

From your point of view <redacted> is a "shadow person" (sic.), but your cat Heather occupies it with you as your "traverse the MWI" (sic.). Thus both of you share the same experiences together. When you die, your cat will leave the co-inhabited body. It's a natural process.

Conclusion

This is just some personal questions that I have asked using my EBP. I’ve had these things in my head for decades, but only recently realized that two-way communication could be achieved with them.

There are numerous MM readers and commenters that had a role in this selection of questions and all in all, it was a big positive. So thank you for all of your nudges, and questions and concerns.

In the future, I will open up the EBP for more questions and you all can ask some more questions. This was just my own personal ones, and I must apologize if my questions were banal or boring.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…

The Domain

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The changing of the nuclear WMD status quo

It's worth noting that the Chinese Orbital Hypersonic Missile development means the UK is not geographically invulnerable in a conflict scenario with China. It might want to rethink the assumption it can just prod at China in the Pacific from a distance...

— Tom Fowdy (@Tom_Fowdy) October 17, 2021

This is going to be a long article.

I have taken various highlighted articles of interest and strung them together into a unified whole to give the reader the MOST ACCURATE picture concerning what is going on with all this flood of “hate China”, and “War is good” stuff spewing out of the United States today.

Well, if not China, how about invading Russia?

Russia says NO!

And if not invade Russia, then how about invading Australia?

Yes. these people are seriously off their trolleys.

Do you really want to know what is going on? Are the Chinese going to siphon off your “vital bodily” fluids and gobble up the world? And why are you forced to endure lies and distortions in favor of war?

It is a distraction, as MM as repeatedly stated, or is it something more?

What is going on?

Introduction

Ok, I’m minding my own business. I have just made myself a cup of coffee and went to my study and fired up both of my computers. (One, my active computer is running Lunix and I am doing driver installation activities. While the other is my “old computer” and it is limping along with a malware saturated Chinese OS.)

I fire up those “puppies” (computers) and “right off the bat“, this is what I see…

The War Is on With China | GOPUSA

With each passing week, it looks like World War III — between America and China — is coming sooner than we think. It’s not going to be fought with bullets or aircraft carriers, although the Chinese are building up their military in an aggressive and threatening way.

This will more likely be an all-out economic war for global supremacy. The yuan versus the dollar. The Nasdaq versus the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Meanwhile, America is asleep at the switch — at least, the Biden administration is. This is the worst possible time to be raising tax rates on American companies (Our business tax rates would be higher than China’s under President Joe Biden’s plan!), dismantling American energy (at a time when China is running 1,000 dirty coal plants with dozens more in construction), and running up the national debt (with China a major purchaser of the bonds).

Love Donald Trump or hate him, he was a president who put America first and recognized the predatory nature of the Chinese regime. He got tough with President Xi Jinping and overturned one-sided trade deals. His strategy was to do what former President Ronald Reagan did to win the Cold War: Make America tremendously prosperous by building up our strategic industries in a way that the Soviet Union or China couldn’t compete with.

The danger is that we now have a president in Biden who thinks that climate change is a bigger threat to the world than the Maoists in Beijing.

And make no mistake about it; the communists are back in charge in China. Jinping has basically announced himself to be president for life, as democracy and free elections fly out the window. China is also sprinting back to command and control fascist government and industry “cooperation.” That’s a model that will eventually implode, but as we learned from the Soviet menace, they can do a lot of damage to peace and prosperity in the meantime.

It’s no accident that China’s economy and stock market are faltering. In the last year, as the U.S. stock market has risen by about 20% (thanks to Operation Warp Speed), China’s Shanghai stock market went down 15%. They are sprinting toward socialism faster than we are… for now.

The Chinese stock market jitters reflect global investors’ irritation with the more frequent political interventions in business affairs. As Foreign Affairs magazine recently put it regarding these iron-fisted interferences into the business activities of its largest companies: “Xi has placed China on a risky trajectory, one that threatens the (free market) achievements of his predecessors.”

In short, events of recent months both militarily and economically confirm that the modern Maoists are firmly entrenched in Beijing, and capitalism is losing. Jinping’s administration simply doesn’t get what George H.W. Bush once so eloquently described as “that freedom thing.” Militant social controls and restraints on individual liberty are now being matched with economic controls on Chinese megacorporations that are trying to vie for industry supremacy in technology, biology, manufacturing and transportation. Is all of this reminiscent of Japan circa 1939?

What is the Biden administration’s response to these threats? The massive $5 trillion spend, tax and borrow bill he is steamrolling through Congress will impair American economic supremacy almost overnight. Under Trump, tax rate reductions led to a $1 trillion infusion of capital from around the world, coming back to these shores to build up our industrial might. Biden’s tax policies will have the reverse effect: deindustrialization.

We are, as a nation, now back to importing tens of billions of dollars of energy from OPEC and Russia instead of selling the hundreds of years’ worth of oil, gas and coal. Do the progressives who now run Washington really believe we are going to defeat the rising Communist China threat by building windmills? Do they think that redistributing income and wealth makes more sense than creating it?

Will we be in any economic shape to repel China’s militaristic advances in the South China Sea, in India, in Africa and perhaps on to the shores of Taiwan with the policies in place in Washington today? Doubtful.

The war with China is on. Right now, only one country is fighting — China. Let’s not let another Afghanistan catastrophe happen in Asia.

Sigh.

Right. Rigggghhhhht.

Only China is fighting. China’s economy is collapsing. China is taking over American industries with an iron-fist. The failures of America are all China’s fault. Yada. Yada. Yada.

Sure.

In your dreams.

In my nightmares, but in these assholes dreams.

They haven’t a clue as to what they are dealing with. These money grabbing, politically sensitive nitwits are leading the United States towards certain destruction. But you all have heard that before.

Right?

Notice how the author weaves politics with the global economic weight of the rest of the world. Nope you dunder-heads. Politics is meaningless, useless and dangerous when mixed with anything outside of it’s natural venue. Or haven’t you ever tried to discuss politics at the Thanksgiving table with strangers? Huh?

China doesn’t play politics.

China plays HARD-BALL.

Be careful for what you wish for. If China really wanted to fight instead of the dance-moves that it is currently engaged in, it would gallop at full “break neck” speed, and Lordy! You do not want to be in their way.

I’ll tell you what.

Understanding the world 101

I constantly tell my interns that Business = Relationships.

And it is very, very true. The most successful businesses have been built upon strong foundational relationships.

In a like way, Politics = Money.

When anyone is so enraptured about Politics you know that they are talking about money. And in particular, how THEY get money, keep money, acquire money, save money or manipulate money.

With this in mind, we can see that the author of the previous article was mixing Geo-Politics with China. And that tells us all we need to know. All this hate-China narrative is all about money.

And all this Drumbeat of hate-China is all about…

Money!

And what to they wish for?

War!

Idiotic fools.

If you pay any attention to history, wars ALWAYS, and without exception, originate from the wealthy class. In general, the wealthier the individuals are, the more expansive, brutal and awful the wars they generate, will be.

So who is driving the narrative for the USA to fight China in a war?

Meet the billionaires that got us to this point

From HERE. All credit to the author.

At MintPress, we have been at the forefront of exposing how Middle Eastern dictatorships and weapons contractors have been funneling money into think tanks and political action committees, keeping up a steady drumbeat for more war and conflict around the world. Yet one little-discussed nation that punches well above its weight in spending cash in Washington is Taiwan.

By studying Taiwan’s financial reports, MintPress has ascertained that the semi-autonomous island of 23 million people has, in recent years, given out millions of dollars to many of the largest and most influential think tanks in the United States. This has coincided with a strong upsurge in anti-China rhetoric in Washington, with report after report warning of China’s economic rise and demanding that the U.S. intervene more in China-Taiwan disputes.

These think tanks are filled with prominent figures from both parties and have the ears of the most powerful politicians in Washington. It is in their offices that specialists draw up papers and incubate ideas that become tomorrow’s policies. They also churn out experts who appear in agenda-setting media, helping to shape and control the public debate on political and economic issues.

Twenty years ago, a group of neoconservative think tanks like the Project for a New American Century, funded by foreign governments and weapons manufacturers, used their power to push for disastrous wars in the Middle East. Now, a new set of think tanks, staffed with many of those same experts who provided the intellectual basis for those invasions, is working hard to convince Americans that there is a new existential threat: China.

A fistful of dollars

In 2019, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO) — for all intents and purposes, the Taiwanese embassy — donated between $250,000 and $499,999 to the Brookings Institute, commonly identified as the world’s most influential think tank. Taiwanese tech companies have also given large sums to the organization. In turn, Brookings Institute staff like Richard C. Bush (a former member of the National Intelligence Council and a U.S. national intelligence officer for East Asia) vociferously champion the cause of Taiwanese nationalists and routinely condemn Beijing’s attempts to bring the island more closely under control.

Last week, Brookings held an event called “Taiwan’s quest for security and the good life,” which began with the statement that “Taiwan is rightly praised for its democracy. Elections are free, fair, and competitive; civil and political rights are protected.” It went on to warn that the “most consequential” challenge to the island’s liberty and prosperity is “China’s ambition to end Taiwan’s separate existence.”

According to another organization’s latest financial disclosure, TECRO also gave a six-figure sum to the Atlantic Council, a think tank closely associated with NATO. It is unclear what the Atlantic Council did with that money, but what is certain is that they gave a senior fellowship to Chang-Ching Tu, an academic employed by the Taiwanese military to teach at the country’s National Defense University. In turn, Tu authored Atlantic Council reports describing his country as a “champion [of] global democracy,” and stating that “democracy, freedom and human rights are Taiwan’s core values.” A menacing China, however, is increasing its military threats, so Taiwan must “accelerate its deterrence forces and strengthen its self-defense capabilities.” Thus he advises that the U.S. must work far more closely with Taiwan’s military, conducting joint exercises and moving towards a more formal military alliance. In 2020, the U.S. sold $5.9 billion worth of arms to the island, making it the fifth-largest recipient of American weaponry last year.

Other Taiwan-employed academics have chided the West on the pages of the Council’s website for its insufficient zeal in “deter[ring] Chinese aggression” against the island. “A decision by the United States to back down” — wrote Philip Anstrén, a Swedish recipient of a fellowship from the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs — “could damage the credibility of U.S. defense guarantees and signal that Washington’s will to defend its allies is weak.” Anstrén also insisted that “Europe’s future is on the line in the Taiwan Strait.” “Western democratic nations have moral obligations vis-à-vis Taiwan,” he added on his blog, “and Western democracies have a duty to ensure that [Taiwan] not only survives but also thrives.”

The reason this is important is that the Atlantic Council is an enormously influential think tank. Its board of directors is a who’s-who in foreign policy statecraft, featuring no fewer than seven former CIA directors. Also on the board are many of the architects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and James Baker. When organizations like this begin beating the war drums, everybody should take note.

Perhaps the most strongly anti-Beijing think tank in Washington is the conservative Hudson Institute, an organization frequented by many of the Republican Party’s most influential figures, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice-President Mike Pence and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. The words “China” or “Chinese” appear 137 times in Hudson’s latest annual report, so focused on the Asian nation are they. Indeed, reading their output, it often appears they care about little else but ramping up tensions with Beijing, condemning it for its treatment of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Uyghur Muslims, and warning of the economic and military threat of a rising China.

Over the years, Hudson’s efforts have been sustained by huge donations from TECRO. The Hudson Institute does not disclose the exact donations any sources give, but their annual reports show that TECRO has been on the highest tier of donors ($100,000+) every year since they began divulging their sponsors in 2015. In February, Hudson Senior Fellow Thomas J. Duesterberg wrote an op-ed for Forbes entitled “The Economic Case for Prioritizing a U.S.-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement,” in which he extolled Taiwan’s economy as modern and dynamic and portrayed securing closer economic ties with it as a no-brainer. Hudson employees have also traveled to Taiwan to meet and hold events with leading foreign ministry officials there.

The Hudson Institute also recently partnered with the more liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) to host an event with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who took the opportunity to make a great number of inflammatory statements about the “ever more challenging threats to free and democratic societies” China poses; applaud the U.S.’ actions on Hong Kong; and talk about how Taiwan honors and celebrates those who died at the Tiananmen Square massacre. TECRO gave the CAP between $50,000 and $100,000 last year.

It is the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), however, that appears to receive the most Taiwanese money. According to its donor list, Taiwan gives as much money to it as the United States does — at least $500,000 last year alone. Yet all of the Taiwanese government money is put into CSIS’s regional studies (i.e., Asia) program. Like Hudson employees, the CSIS calls for a free trade agreement with Taiwan and has lavished praise on the nation for its approach to tackling disinformation, describing it as a “thriving democracy and a cultural powerhouse.” Although acknowledging that the reports were paid for by TECRO, CSIS insists that “all opinions expressed herein should be understood to be solely those of the authors and are not influenced in any way by any donation.” In December, the CSIS also held a debate suggesting that “[w]ithin the next five years, China will use significant military force against a country on its periphery,” exploring what the U.S. response to such an action should be.

Like the Atlantic Council, the CSIS organization is stacked with senior officials from the national security state. Its president and CEO is former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, while Henry Kissinger — former secretary of state and the architect of the Vietnam War — also serves on its council.

The CSIS accepts money from the Global Taiwan Institute and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) as well. The former is a rather shadowy pro-Taiwanese group that appears not to disclose its funding sources. The latter is a government-funded organization headed by former Taiwanese President You Si-kun. Every year, the TFD publishes a human rights report on China, the latest of which claims that “the Chinese Communist Party knows no bounds when it comes to committing serious human rights violations” — accusing it of “taking the initiative” in “promoting a new Cold War over the issue of human rights” and trying to “replace the universal standing of human rights values around the world.” Ultimately, the report concludes, China “constitutes a major challenge to democracy and freedom in the world.”

The TFD has also been a major funder of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a far-right pressure group that insists that Communism has killed over 100 million people worldwide. Last year, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation added all global COVID-19 fatalities to the list of Communist-caused deaths on the basis that the virus started in China. The Foundation also employs Adrian Zenz, a German evangelical theologian who is the unlikely source of many of the most controversial and contested claims about Chinese repression in Xinjiang province.

In the past 12 months, TECRO has also donated six-figure sums to many other prominent think tanks, including the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Center for a New American Security, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. MintPress reached out to a number of these think tanks for comment but has not received any response.

“It would be naive to believe that Taiwan’s funding of think tanks is not pushing them to take pro-Taiwan or anti-China positions,” Ben Freeman, the director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, told MintPress, adding:

After all, why would Taiwan keep funding think tanks that are critical of Taiwan? There’s a Darwinian element to foreign funding of think tanks that pushes foreign government funding to think tanks that write what that foreign government wants them to write. Taiwan is no exception to this rule.”

TECRO is not just sponsoring American think tanks, however. It has also given funds to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a hawkish and controversial group described as “the think tank behind Australia’s changing view of China.” The country’s former ambassador in Beijing described ASPI as “the architect of the China threat theory in Australia” while Senator Kim Carr of Victoria denounced them as working hand-in-hand with Washington to push “a new Cold War with China.” ASPI was behind Twitter’s decision last year to purge more than 170,000 accounts sympathetic to Beijing from its platform.

“We must be ready to fight our corner as Taiwan tensions rise,” ASPI wrote in January, having previously castigated the West for being “no longer willing to defend Taiwan.”

ASPI — like Brookings, the Atlantic Council and others — are directly funded by weapons manufacturers, all of whom also have a direct interest in promoting more wars around the world. Thus, if the public is not careful, certain special interests might be helping move the United States towards yet another international conflict.

While the situation outlined above is concerning enough, the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative’s research has shown that around one-third of think tanks still do not provide any information whatsoever about their funding, and very few are completely open about their finances. Freeman maintains that, while there is nothing inherently wrong with foreign governments funding Western think tanks, the lack of transparency is seriously problematic, explaining:

This raises a lot of questions about the work they’re doing. Are their secret funders saying what the think tank can do in a pay-for-play scheme? Are the funders buying the think tanks silence on sensitive issues? Without knowing the think tank’s funders, policymakers and the public have no idea if the think tank’s work is objective research or simply the talking points of a foreign government.”

Freeman’s study of the Taiwanese lobby found that seven organizations registered as Taiwan’s foreign agents in the U.S. Those organizations, in turn, contacted 476 Members of Congress (including almost 90% of the House), as well as five congressional committees. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was their most frequent contact, the Californian being contacted 34 times by Taiwanese agents. Pelosi has been a great supporter of Taiwanese nationalists, successfully promoting pro-Taiwan legislation and proudly announcing that the U.S. “stands with Taiwan.”

Foreign agents working on behalf of Taiwan also made 143 political contributions to U.S. politicians, with former Alabama Senator Doug Jones the lead recipient (Pelosi was third).

Losing China, regaining Taiwan?

The reports listed above understand the dispute as purely a matter of Chinese belligerence against Taiwan and certainly do not consider U.S. military actions in the South China Sea as aggressive in themselves. That is because the world of think tanks and war planners sees the United States as owning the planet and having a remit to act anywhere on the globe at any time.

To this day, U.S. planners bemoan the “loss of China” in 1949 (a phrase that presupposes the United States owned the country). After a long and bloody Second World War, Communist resistance forces under Mao Tse-tung managed to both expel the Japanese occupation and overcome the U.S.-backed Kuomintang (nationalist) force led by Chang Kai-shek. The United States actually invaded China in 1945, with 50,000 troops working with the Kuomintang and even Japanese forces in an attempt to suppress the Communists. However, by 1949, Mao’s army was victorious; the United States evacuated and Chang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan.

The Kuomintang ruled the island for 40 years as a one-party state and remains one of the two major political groups to this day. The war between the Communists and the Kuomintang never formally ended, and Taiwan has now lived through 70 years of estrangement from the mainland. Polls show a majority of Taiwanese now favor full independence, although a large majority still personally identify as Chinese.

While many Taiwanese welcome an increased U.S. presence in the region, Beijing certainly does not. In 2012, President Barack Obama announced the U.S.’ new “Pivot to Asia” strategy, moving forces from the Middle East towards China. Today, over 400 American military bases encircle it.

In recent months, the United States has also taken a number of provocative military actions on China’s doorstep. In July, it conducted naval exercises in the South China Sea, with warships and naval aircraft spotted just 41 nautical miles from the coastal megacity of Shanghai, intent on probing China’s coastal defenses. And in December, it flew nuclear bombers over Chinese vessels close to Hainan Island. Earlier this year, the head of Strategic Command made his intentions clear, stating that there was a “very real possibility” of war against China over a regional conflict like Taiwan. China, for its part, has also increased its forces in the region, carrying out military exercises and staking claims to a number of disputed islands.

A new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) report notes that China is the U.S.’ “unparalleled priority,” claiming that Beijing is making a “push for global power.” “We expect that friction will grow as Beijing steps up attempts to portray Taipei as internationally isolated and dependent on the mainland for economic prosperity, and as China continues to increase military activity around the island,” it concludes.

In an effort to stop this, Washington has recruited allies into the conflict. Australian media are reporting that their military is currently readying for war in an effort to force China to back down, while last week President Joe Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to shore up a united front against Beijing vis-a-vis Taiwan.

In February, the Atlantic Council penned an anonymous 26,000-word report advising Biden to draw a number of red lines around China, beyond which a response — presumably military — is necessary. These included any military action or even a cyber attack against Taiwan. Any backing down from this stance, the council states, would result in national “humiliation” for the United States.

Perhaps most notably, however, the report also envisages what a successful American China policy would look like by 2050:

[T]he United States and its major allies continue to dominate the regional and global balance of power across all the major indices of power;… [and head of state Xi Jinping] has been replaced by a more moderate party leadership; and … the Chinese people themselves have come to question and challenge the Communist Party’s century-long proposition that China’s ancient civilization is forever destined to an authoritarian future.”

In other words, that China has been broken and that some sort of regime change has occurred.

Throughout all this, the United States has been careful to stress that it still does not recognize Taiwan and that their relationship is entirely “unofficial,” despite claiming that its commitment to the island remains “rock solid.” Indeed, only 14 countries formally recognize Taiwan, the largest and most powerful of which is Paraguay.

Along with a military conflict brewing, Washington has also been prosecuting an information and trade war against China on the world stage. Attempts to block the rise of major Chinese companies like Huawei, TikTok and Xiaomi are examples of this. Others in Washington have advised the Pentagon to carry out an under-the-table culture war against Beijing. This would include commissioning “Taiwanese Tom Clancy” novels that would “weaponize” China’s one-child policy against it, bombarding citizens with stories about how their only children will die in a war over Taiwan.

Republicans and Democrats constantly accuse each other of being in President Xi’s pocket, attempting to outdo each other in their jingoistic fervor. Last year, Florida Senator Rick Scott went so far as to announce that every Chinese national in the U.S. was a Communist spy and should be treated with extreme suspicion. As a result, the American public’s view of China has crashed to an all-time low. Only three years ago, the majority of Americans held a positive opinion of China. But today, that number is only 20%. Asian-Americans of all backgrounds have reported a rise in hate crimes against them.

Cash rules everything around me

How much of the United States’ aggressive stance towards China can be attributed to Taiwanese money influencing politics? It is difficult to say. Certainly, the United States has its own policy goals in East Asia outside of Taiwan. But Freeman believes that the answer is not zero. The Taiwan lobby “absolutely has an impact on U.S. foreign policy,” he said, adding:

At one level, it creates an echo-chamber in D.C. that makes it taboo to question U.S. military ties with Taiwan. While I, personally, think there are good strategic reasons for the U.S. to support this democratic ally — and it’s clearly in Taiwan’s interest to keep the U.S. fully entangled in their security — it’s troubling that the D.C. policy community can’t have an honest conversation about what U.S. interests are. But, Taiwan’s lobby in D.C. and their funding of think tanks both work to stifle this conversation and, frankly, they’ve been highly effective.”

Other national lobbies affect U.S. policy. The Cuban lobby helps ensure that the American stance towards its southern neighbor remains as antagonistic as possible. Meanwhile, the Israel lobby helps ensure continuing U.S. support for Israeli actions in the Middle East. Yet more ominously with Taiwan, its representatives are helping push the U.S. closer towards a confrontation with a nuclear power.

While Taiwanese money appears to have convinced many in Washington, it is doubtful that ordinary Americans will be willing to risk a war over an island barely larger than Hawaii, only 80 miles off the coast of mainland China.

Who specifically are these Taiwan billionaires?

From Forbes HERE.

Rank Name Net Worth Age Source
#1 Zhang Congyuan $13.8 B 73 shoes
#2 Tsai Hong-tu & Cheng-ta $9.2 B finance
#3 Daniel & Richard Tsai $7.9 B finance
#4 Wei Ing-chou, Ying-chiao, Yin-chun & Yin-heng $7.8 B food
#5 Jason & Richard Chang $7.2 B semiconductors
#6 Terry Gou $7.1 B 71 electronics
#7 Tsai Eng-meng $6.1 B 64 food, beverages
#8 Barry Lam $5.8 B 72 electronics
#9 Pierre Chen $5 B 65 electronics
#10 Lin Shu-hong $4.8 B 93 petrochemicals
#11 Samuel Yin $4.3 B 71 retail
#12 Andre Koo, Sr. $3.8 B 54 financial services
#13 Tsai Ming-kai $3.3 B 71 semiconductors
#14 Rudy Ma $3.25 B 81 finance
#15 Morris Chang $2.8 B 90 semiconductors
#16 Douglas Hsu $2.7 B 79 diversified
#17 Tseng Cheng & Sing-ai $2.65 B petrochemicals
#18 Lin Ming-hsiung $2.5 B 71 supermarkets
#19 K.C. Liu $2.47 B 67 manufacturing
#20 Bruce Cheng $2.42 B 85 electronics
#21 T.Y. Tsai $2.4 B 68 finance
#22 Wang Chou-hsiong $2.23 B 80 footwear
#23 Lin Chen-hai $2.2 B 74 real estate
#24 Scott Lin $2.05 B 88 optical components
#25 Chin Jong Hwa $2 B 63 auto parts
#26 Chen Tei-fu $1.9 B 73 herbal products
#27 Chao Teng-hsiung $1.8 B 77 real estate
#28 William & Wilfred Wang $1.79 B plastics
#29 Shi Wen-long $1.78 B 93 plastics
#30 Luo Ming-han & Tsai-jen Lo $1.75 B tires
#31 Xie Weitong $1.7 B 64 cobalt
#32 Chen Yung-tai $1.67 B 85 real estate
#33 Tony Chen $1.6 B 72 electronics
#34 Thomas Wu $1.57 B 71 finance
#35 Cho Jyh-jer $1.56 B semiconductors
#36 Archie Hwang $1.4 B 69 semiconductors
#37 Yeh Kuo-I $1.32 B 80 manufacturing
#38 Shirley Kao $1.31 B 65 food & beverage retailing
#39 Eugene Wu $1.3 B 76 finance
#40 Wang Ren-sheng $1.2 B 89 retail
#41 Wu Chung-yi $1.12 B 66 manufacturing
#42 Tsai Chi-jui $1.11 B 81 shoes
#43 Allen Horng & Tien-Szu Hung $1.1 B electronics
#44 Wu Li-gann $1 B 80 electronic components
#45 Tsao Ter-fung $880 M 74 food
#46 Lee Tien-tsai $870 M 83 beverages
#47 Quintin Wu $840 M plastic
#48 Yeh Min-yuen $830 M cybersecurity
#49 Huang Chung Sheng $810 M 64 recycling
#50 Ho Kuang-chi $740 M 58 restaurants

Meet their enablers that are pushing – pushing for war with China

So these billionaires are throwing money to American “think tanks” and political operatives. Where does this money go to? Who are the enablers of their desires?

So who are the enablers? Who is on the receiving ends of all this cash, money, gold, and jewels…

Neoconservatives (NeoCon)

President Donald Trump has hijacked the slogan “America First.” 

Once upon a time, it stood for nonintervention in foreign wars, now it stands for neocon intervention and forever war. 

The Trump presidency has embraced the neocon ethos of murder and “creative destruction,” based on the teachings of an arcane philosopher, Leo Strauss. 

The German Jewish emigre believed deception and permanent war are the foundation of the state, a state led by a sociopathic elite. 

Strauss believed, as Thomas Hobbes before him, that humans are inherently aggressive. He said this aggressiveness should be channeled into hostility and war against other people and nations. 

The neocons as of yet do not have a direct role in a Trump executive, but they are influencing the Trump administration through their foundations and think tanks, most notably the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. 

Donald Trump is a man with zero guiding or animating principles, but for one: the pursuit of adulation. 

The neocons, or some of them at least, gave him the praise he so desperately needs after he bombed Syria, canned the Iran nuke deal, loudly and abusively confronted North Korea and its eccentric hereditary leader, and has slowly but surely moved into the camp that believes China is a threat to America. 

The neocons are behind the scenes pulling strings that result in forever war and a body count now surpassing a million and a half souls. 

-Neocons: who they are and why they matter

From HERE.

The Washington Post has a reputation as liberal and even left-of-center, although its editorial pages are dominated by neoconservatives who support the idea of American exceptionalism and the extreme operational tempo of America’s military.

In the past week, we have been treated to a series of oped essays that are supportive of expanded American military power and a political, if not military, confrontation with China.

U.S. national media generally have been lazy in their treatment of our military—pandering to the military itself and resorting to retired general officers, such as Generals David Petraeus and Jack Keane, as spokesmen.  The media typically defend bloated defense budgets and fail to challenge the dangerous militarization of national security decision making.

The Washington Post is particularly supportive of a more militarized national security policy, including a possible “hot” military confrontation with China.

A Hot Shooting war with China!

A group of their oped writers, particularly Michael Gerson, David Ignatius, and George Will, argue that the United States needs to increase defense spending to “protect the country from a full range of global disasters.”

Ignatius, a long-time apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency, conceded the need for restoring the “right civilian-military alignment,” but offered former secretary of defense Robert Gates as his model because Gates “could be ruthless” with aides to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  Gates was, in fact, a captive of the uniformed military.

War in Space!

David Ignatius beats the drums for the just created U.S. Space Force, which inherits 86 space warriors graduating from the Air Force Academy.  War in space would be a catastrophe, and even Air Force chief of staff General David Goldfein concedes that in every war game that involves space, we “never come out winning.”

David Ignatius

(During my years at the National War College, China prevailed in every war game that revolved around Taiwan.)

This year’s defense budget appropriates more than $15 billion for space systems, when we should be looking for ways to demilitarize the space frontier—and not promoting another arms race.  No country is as dependent economically as the United States on access to space.

War in the South China Sea!

George Will wants a modernized and more lethal Marine Corps at a time when our most dangerous adversaries have developed “high volume, extended-range missile warfare” to deal with threats from the sea.  There is a reason why the Marines have not resorted to an amphibious landing since the first months of the Korean War, and that is the high risk and great difficulty of such operations.

George Will

President Harry S. Truman recognized the island-hopping success of the Marines in the Second World War, but he was right for wanting to abolish the Marine Corps at war’s end.  Chinese cruise missile technology already has made it certain that U.S. naval ships, including aircraft carriers, will not be able to get close enough to the Chinese Mainland to be effective, and the idea of island-hopping against China is pure fantasy.

Invade the Chinese mainland!

Michael Gerson, the leading speechwriter for President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” speech in 2002 that prepared the way for the invasion of Iraq, regularly refers to an “increasingly belligerent China.”  He believes that Biden would do well to recruit unnamed defense and foreign policy advisers from the Bush administration.  Does this mean Biden should bring back Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Bob Gates, and Condi Rice who are responsible for policies that have brought the longest period of continuous U.S. war fighting in our history?

Michael Gerson

Gerson even believes that Biden “should be actively persuading…respected military and intelligence figures who served in the Trump administration to publicly support him.”  Gerson’s usual suspects are not the answer.

An aggressive military policy against China!

On April 30, the Washington Post carried two additional opeds that endorsed an aggressive policy toward China, pointing to “superior force” as the “surest road to peace.”  Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2017-2018, argued that “superior Western economic, diplomatic, and military power” defeated the Soviet Union, and that the current challenge from the “Chinese Communists must be seen the same way.”

Nikki Haley

George Will believes that Joe Biden is great because he is willing to “stand up to China, and encourages Biden to “associate himself” with Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), who endorses the conspiratorial theory regarding the responsibility of the research laboratory in Wuhan for the viral outbreak there.  Cotton, the Cold War warrior, wrote in the Post on May 3 that the “Chinese Communist Party is our enemy.  It aims to displace the United States as the world’s preeminent economic and military power.”

Bio-Warfare is all China’s fault!

Another Washington Post oped writer, Josh Rogin is ignoring efforts of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to link the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic to the Wuhan laboratory.  In an oped on May 1, Rogin falsely credited Pompeo with calling for “depoliticizing” the issue of China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.  Pompeo prevented a communique at a recent G-7 meeting because he couldn’t get any of the European representatives to support his polemical accusations.  Nevertheless, Rogin cited Pompeo’s specious urgings that the issue of Beijing’s handling of the virus should not become “partisan.  It’s too serious a matter.”

Josh Rogin

Pompeo, the leading cheerleader in this campaign, has charged his hand-picked director of the CIA, Gina Haspel, with finding evidence implicating the research lab, according to the New York Times,.  However, there is evidence to suggest that Haspel will not accommodate her old boss.  Haspel has stood up to the White House on sensitive issues such as the role of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman in the sadistic killing of a dissident journalist; Russian hacking in the U.S. electoral process; and the origin of the Covid-19 virus.

Haspel’s intelligence analysts could inform Pompeo that it is counterproductive to maintain that the United States and its allies must keep China in “its proper place.” On the other hand, the Defense Intelligence Agency, well known for its willingness to politicize intelligence, recently changed its analytical position in order to accommodate the view that a research lab in Wuhan was the origin of the new pathogen.

Haspel has even protected the job and personal security of the CIA whistleblower whose report led directly to the impeachment process.

No time for diplomacy!

At a time when the Sino-American relationship is central to stabilizing the international arena, we are getting no discussion of the importance of mutual military disengagement in the area of the South China Sea and the need for smart diplomacy.  Washington and Beijing are compatible on important strategic issues that deal with the Korean peninsula; the importance of North Korean denuclearization; and the necessity of toning down the risk-taking proclivities of Kim Jong On.  In view of the continued uncertainty in North Korea, it is essential that Washington and Beijing have programmatic diplomatic discussions.

A diplomatic dialogue between Washington and Beijing on Korean issues could lead to possibilities for stabilizing the naval rivalry in the South China Sea as well as creating less friction over the issue of Taiwan.

We could send fewer guided-missile cruisers into the South China Sea; China could stop its provocative circumnavigation of Taiwan with fighters and strategic bombers.  Even a modest improvement in Sino-American relations would be advantageous, making the strengthened Sino-Russian relationship less threatening to the United States.

It makes no sense for the editorial pages of the Washington Post to assist the efforts of the military-industrial complex to strengthen its case for greater defense spending by exaggerating the so-called threat from China.

Every American president from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama has endorsed a policy of engagement toward China, but Washington’s obsession with trade deficits has created the worst political and economic friction between Washington and Beijing since the first years of the Vietnam War.

And their hate-China narrative…

Why Do Editors Seek ‘Dark Sides’ Of China?

The dark side of China.

There seems to be an inflationary fascination with supposedly ‘dark sides’ of China:

The ‘dark sides’ of China meme did not only start after China had send the goddess Chang’e and Yutu the jade rabbit to the far side of the moon to look for the elixir of life.

There are quite a number of previous occurrences.

One wonders how such ‘dark side’ and ‘weaponizing’ memes happen …

The global media is owned by only 24 people

That’s how!

A new in-depth study has revealed that just 24 companies own the majority of the world’s biggest news outlets. Tech website AddictiveTips conducted the study to find out just consolidated media companies really are in The United States, The United Kingdom and Australia. While the results not be surprising, the study gives a fascinating insight into just how little variety there really is.

Tech blog AddicitveTips have conducted an extremely in-depth and detailed study into the ownership of the world’s media outlets. Their findings show that just 24 companies own the majority of the world’s most powerful news outlets.

The Study

AddictiveTips press release states that the purpose of their study is to;

“uncover the powerful companies and CEOs who control the bulk of today’s news – and present the findings in a tangible way.”

Digital media has become the main driver of news in recent years. Hardcopy newspaper distribution is in free fall, so the battle to control the narrative has moved online.

Rather than turning on the TV at 10pm for the news, you’re more likely to be watching Vox Pops online or seeing mainstream journalists revealing their big “scoop” directly on Twitter. Although the latter has come in for criticism recently, as the “scoop culture” has led to less fact checking so as to get the accolade.

Regardless of who you go to, it is highly likely that many of the outlets you use are connected by one thing; their owner. This study shows who chair the relevant companies. For example News Corp, owners of titles such as The S*n and The Times, are chaired by Australian Robert Thomson. In reality, we all know that the true owner is Rupert Murdoch.

Needless to say, this is a well conducted and researched study.

Methodology

To determine the companies and individuals that own the top news sites in the world, AddictiveTips identified the top owners of the news sites with the most monthly traffic as of September 2019. Data on average visitor traffic for the past one to three months and the relative rank of each news site came from Alexa, an Amazon company, and market intelligence provider SimilarWeb.

They identified the owners of the top 50 news sites globally, in the United States, in the U.K., and in Australia, respectively, using financial filings, corporate press announcements, and other public sources. They then isolated the 20 companies with the most visited sites in each geography, as well as other newsworthy media companies, and identified all of the properties in their online media portfolios, as well as the name of their highest-level owners, using financial filings, corporate press announcements, and other public sources.

  • For news sites that are owned by investment firms with a majority stake, the CEO or director of the investment firm was listed as the highest-level owner.
  • For news sites that are owned or directly (or indirectly) controlled
    by the government (as is the case of the BBC, who since 2017 has had its board members selected by the UK government), the head of government was listed as the highest-level owner.

A Changing Landscape

Several names are synonymous with media domination around the world: News Corp in the United States, the U.K., and Australia. Globo in Brazil & Yomiuri Shimbun in Japan.

While many of the oldest media conglomerates are as powerful as ever and still growing, the emergence of digital news has substantially altered the media landscape and allowed new companies to emerge as major players in the news industry.

Tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, as well as telecommunications conglomerates such as Verizon and AT&T, now rank among the top owners of the world’s media.

Asset Firms

In recent years, asset management firms and private investors have increasingly bought majority stakes in legacy newspapers and have come to dominate the list of the top media owners worldwide. In April 2019, for example, private equity firm Great Hill Partners acquired the Gizmodo Media Group and The Onion, and combined their digital news assets, which include Gizmodo, Jezebel, and The A.V. Club, into a new company named G/O Media Inc.

In August 2019, American investment firm KKR purchased the largest stake in Axel Springer SE, a German media group whose assets include Business Insider and Rolling Stone.

State Controlled or Owned

A significant share of the world’s media is owned by national governments. Through outlets such as PBS and NPR, the BBC, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the governments of the United States, the U.K., and Australia all have significant media holdings. State ownership of media in English-speaking countries is dwarfed, however, by the Government of China’s media holdings.

Who Owns UK News?

As can be seen above, online news media in the U.K. is still dominated by publishers of traditional print media, such as The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Guardian.

Tabloid newspapers such as the Daily Mail, The S*n, and the Daily Mirror have a significant online presence in Britain. Several London-based news sites, such as The Economist and the Financial Times, have substantial readership outside of the U.K.

Murdoch’s News Corp, through News Corp UK, The Daily Mail and General Trust plc own many of the largest national news sites in the U.K. This web of companies can make it confusing for some to understand ownership.

Murdoch’s UK empire includes; The Time and the S*n to name a few. The control of so many outlets by so few leads to editors at supposed competing papers actually working in unison to control how a story runs.

Regional Proxies

Through its subsidiary Local World Holdings Ltd. Reach plc owns more than five dozen regional newspapers and their corresponding websites. The mass ownership of regional newspapers by media giants has led to a steep decline in actual local reporting. Instead, outlets copy and paste an article from a sister paper and run it under a different byline. This has created a network of regional proxies all parroting the same story with no local connection.

While the hard copy papers still run a majority of local stories. their corresponding websites run clickbait titles so as to gain advertising revenue; the only thing that keeps the UK online media alive.

The Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust Limited, which it claims exists solely to control the finances of the Guardian and ensure its editorial independence.

The US Media

Online news in the United States is still dominated by publishers and broadcasters of traditional print and television news such as CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times.

Online-only news sites that have a major presence in the U.S. include Yahoo!, Huffington Post, and Reddit. Reddit is a majorly underestimated source of news, so much so that the leaked US/UK Trade Talk Papers sat on the site for two months before being noticed.

Some of the top media owners in the U.S. have dominated the news landscape for over a century, and continue to grow in the era of digital news. The Hearst name, for example, first appeared on a newspaper masthead in 1887. Today Hearst Communications owns dozens of newspapers and magazines throughout the country, each with a significant online presence.

Advance Publications, which was founded by Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr. in 1922 and is still family-owned today, has a portfolio that includes Reddit, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and American City Business Journals.

However, as noted above, there have been new entries to the US news world. Amazon owner Jeff Bezos purchased the influential Wall Street Journal – WSJ, much to the annoyance of President Trump.

Disney are a major player in the US having purchased Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox in March 2019, it now holds titles such as Fox News, abc and has a stake in the above mentioned Hearst Newspaper group.

Australian News Ownership

From 1987 to 2006, Australia had specific legislation limiting foreign ownership of media companies on the continent, as well as restrictions on cross-ownership of media companies meant to preserve the diversity of news media.

Despite these restrictions, today Australia has a relatively high degree of media concentration. National online news media in Australia is essentially controlled by two companies: News Corp, through News Corp Australia, and Nine. Rural news media is largely dominated by Australian Community Media, whose portfolio includes over 170 regional newspapers and their corresponding websites.

Seven West Media also has a substantial news media portfolio that includes traditional newspapers, online-only news sites, magazines, and radio. The Conversation is one of the only major online news sites in Australia that is independently owned.

Australian media appears to have even less diversity than its UK and US counterparts.

Media Ownership Conclusions

As the concentration of online news has increased, so has public distrust in mass media. A recent Gallup poll shows that Americans remain largely mistrustful of the mass media, with just 41% currently having “a great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.”

In the UK, media trust is poor at best. Just 32% of adults in the UK say they trust the news media at least somewhat. 48% say their news media do a good job of getting the facts right, 46% say they provide coverage independent of corporate influence and 37% say their news coverage is politically neutral. When it comes to covering important topics like immigration, 44% of British adults say that the media is doing a good job. These are not exactly glowing figures for the UK mainstream media. They don’t seem to be able to get close to 50% trust in many cases.

Owners should be asking themselves questions with results like this, but they don’t, and they won’t. The fact is, people still visit their websites and generate profits through advertising, as long as the profits keep coming, they couldn’t care less about trust levels.

That is why at least in the UK, the media and press need to be majorly overhauled. Regional outlets need given back their independence, conglomerates controlling an entire narrative needs to end and the BBC needs a complete overhaul. The number of incidents in the 2019 General Election campaign of “inaccuracies” by the BBC is alarming. They are still the most visited and viewed news platform in the UK. If they are peddling blatant lies, something obviously needs to change.

Independence in the news is at an all time low. Profits for investors take precedent over good quality news. That needs to change. Perhaps you can start by visiting supporting other Independent News sites like this one.

OK. Where are we so far.

Well, we know who wants a war with China.

We also know how they are trying to provoke one, and where they are throwing their money towards.

We also know who their enablers are; they who take that money and run the media printing presses and make policy decisions for a war.

Finally we have seen how they, in turn, manipulate the media that they control. As well as examples of the uniformity of their onslaught.

So what?

So what if America, the United States, wants to launch an “incident” or two? What’s the worst to happen? A down turn in trade? Higher prices at the gas pumps? An increase in war related movies and news? So what?

Well…

It is not going to be like that at all. It won’t be a “pretend war”, it will be a serious, gut wrenching, lethal, lethal war at your front door.

Chinese MIRV

Keep in mind…

All military “war games” against China indicates the USA would lose…

…Very, very badly.

In fact, there isn’t a single war simulation, not one, that has the USA the victor or even a close draw. Each and every simulation for the last 18 years has had the United States defeated in a war with China.

But no worries.

China is a peaceful, prosperous nation that views Taiwan as it’s brothers and sister. No matter what bullshit the main-stream Western media is throwing at you…

Xi Jinping promises peaceful Taiwan reunification

Chinese leader says unity in the best interests of the people of the mainland and of the breakaway island. He’s right.
.
From HERE.
China’s President Xi Jinping said Saturday “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan “will be and can be realized”, days after Chinese warplanes made record incursions into the air defense zone of the democratically ruled island.

Self-governed Taiwan, which has never formally declared independence, lives under the constant threat of invasion by China, which views the island as its territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary.

“Realising national reunification by peaceful means best serves the interests of the nation as a whole including our brethren in Taiwan,” Xi said in a speech marking the 110th anniversary of a revolution that ended millennia of imperial rule and led to the founding of the Republic of China.

“Taiwan independence is the biggest obstacle to the reunification of the motherland and a serious hidden danger,” Xi warned.

A large portrait of Sun Yat-sen, a Western-educated doctor who led the 1911 revolution that toppled the Qing empire, towered over the stage as Xi spoke.

Sun founded the Republic of China, which remains the formal name of Taiwan, where defeated Nationalists fled after Mao Zedong’s Communist forces won the Chinese civil war in 1949 and established the People’s Republic.

“The complete reunification of our country will be and can be realised,” Xi said.

He also warned against foreign interference in Taiwan after a Pentagon official confirmed US special operations forces have been quietly training Taiwanese troops for months.

Did you read that?

Pretty simple.

Pretty clear.

Straightforward and direct.

Now, read how this speech was reported in the American Media. You know, the media that is controlled by only five people, and whom most are neocons…

China, Taiwan tensions spark debate inside Biden admin as Democrats push for more forceful response

CNN. From HERE.

Washington (CNN)The Biden administration is grappling with how to respond to China’s ramped-up aggression against Taiwan without accidentally starting a war, as bipartisan lawmakers pressure the President to get tougher on Beijing — and fast.

Huh?

Internally, assessments differ over how imminent the threat to Taiwan really is.

The Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command has watched with increasing concern as China has rapidly modernized its military and improved its training with an eye to Taiwan, sources say. But State Department officials are wary of taking a more aggressive approach, and intelligence officials have seen little evidence that China is preparing to invade.

Tensions have risen sharply in the region recently, however, and administration officials were caught off guard when China’s air force dramatically ramped up its incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone earlier this month.

Even before the most recent incursion, the Biden administration had discussed with Taiwanese officials the possibility of expediting the delivery of American-made F-16s to Taiwan, according to Taiwanese and US officials familiar with the talks. The sale of the 66 fighter jets was approved in 2019, but Taiwan hopes to speed up the actual delivery time—which normally can take up to 10 years—particularly in light of the recent Chinese provocations.

The stakes are high for President Joe Biden, who has made human rights and democracy a key part of his foreign policy agenda but who has also been determined to keep the US out of foreign conflicts. For decades, Washington has embraced the concept of “strategic ambiguity” in dealing with Taiwan, in which the US remains deliberately vague about whether it would come to the island’s defense in the event of an attack by China.

But the recent escalation by Beijing marked a major challenge to that posture and has led some Biden administration officials and lawmakers to reconsider that approach, all as the President has been trying to pivot his foreign policy priorities to the Indo-Pacific region.

It’s also led some in Congress to ratchet up pressure on the White House to change its posture.

“The time for strategic ambiguity is long past,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide. “In light of the clear and present danger Beijing poses to Taiwan’s vibrant democracy, the United States must be crystal clear in our intent — with both our words and our actions. In our current context, ambiguity has invited miscalculation and risk, and an effective deterrence posture can only come from clarity.”

The aide added that the Senate is exploring additional steps to provide Taiwan with “the security, economic and diplomatic support essential for our new era of strategic competition.”

In response, a senior administration official said that “U.S. support for Taiwan remains strong, principled, and bipartisan and we will continue to engage with Congress on these important matters.”

Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski, who served as the State Department’s top human rights official under the Obama administration, also favors a tougher approach, and said it would be an error to think of Xi Jinping as bluffing in his threatening rhetoric. The Chinese leader has vowed to “smash” any attempts by Taiwan to declare independence, and said in a speech this month that “the historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland must be fulfilled, and will definitely be fulfilled.”

Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski

“It is a consistent mistake of American foreign policy that we project our own pragmatic reasonableness onto others and assume that they don’t mean what they say,” Malinowski said.

Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, a retired Navy commander, has gone even further, arguing for Congress to give more leeway to the President to launch military operations abroad to defend Taiwan if necessary.

Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria

“The legal limitations on a president’s ability to respond quickly could all but ensure a Chinese fait accompli,” Luria wrote in an October 11 Washington Post op-ed, referring to the limits imposed by the War Powers Act. “My Republican colleagues introduced the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act in February to grant the president the authority to act against an invasion of Taiwan and prevent a fait accompli. This act is a good starting point to address a legal dilemma.”

‘Nothing suggests’ an invasion

Still, that political pressure has run up against a degree of wariness from the State Department and intelligence community. Intelligence officials have not yet seen anything to suggest that China is readying a military offensive, according to people familiar with the intelligence assessments.

“It was certainly a dramatic escalation,” said one of the people, referring to the 56 Chinese aircraft that flew into Taiwan’s defense zone on October 4, the largest-ever incursion. “But nothing suggests that China is preparing for an invasion of Taiwan.”

Officials in the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, meanwhile, are leery of taking a much more aggressive posture toward China over the Taiwan issue than the strategically ambiguous status quo.

Former deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, who was dispatched by Biden to Taiwan in April as part of an unofficial delegation aimed at showing support for the island, called the current situation “very dangerous” and said that ending the strategic ambiguity policy would only embolden Beijing further.

“All bets would be off,” he said, because China would see the shift as a “fundamental breach” of the agreements in place for decades.

“It is important for us to reassure Taiwan, but there are ways to do that and to enhance deterrence without sticking our finger in Beijing’s eye,” Steinberg added.

Biden himself has long been opposed to publicly declaring definitive US support for the island democracy in the event of a Chinese attack.

“The president should not cede to Taiwan, much less to China, the ability automatically to draw us into a war across the Taiwan Strait,” then-Senator Biden wrote in a 2001 op-ed. His 24-page national security strategy devotes one vague line to Taiwan, reading: “We will support Taiwan, a leading democracy and a critical economic and security partner, in line with longstanding American commitments.”

The senior administration official emphasized that the US “has an abiding interest in peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” and “will continue to oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo.”

“President Biden voted for the Taiwan Relations Act himself and remains firmly committed to the principles therein,” the official said, “including that the United States will continue to assist Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability; and that the United States would regard any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific and of grave concern to the United States.”

Eyes on 2027

American defense officials said they see 2027 — the 100th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army and the final year of Xi Jinping’s third presidential term — as a key year in which Beijing could try to take Taiwan by force if peaceful unification has not yet been achieved.

Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng predicted earlier this month that China would actually have the “full ability” to invade even sooner, by 2025.

While Xi struck a more conciliatory tone in a speech last week, vowing a “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan, it is unlikely that Taiwan would ever voluntarily give up their relative autonomy; Taiwan’s foreign minister last week said the island was prepared to “fight to the end” in the event of a war with China.

One defense official noted that for China, reuniting with Taiwan “is a matter of national pride.” But Steinberg, the former deputy secretary of state, said he believes that “China would like to avoid the use of force, because it would be counterproductive and risky to its interests.”

Danny Russel, who served as Deputy Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs until 2017, echoed that assessment.

"The Chinese foreign policy and propaganda community certainly wants to sow doubt in American resolve and convince Taiwan that America won't be there for them," he said. "But that is very different from whether Xi Jinping has the stomach for a fight with the U.S., an immensely capable nuclear power, and its allies."

That doesn’t mean things can’t spiral out of control, Steinberg cautioned. The region right now is a tinderbox, as the different sides try to leverage alliances and show off military prowess. The British-led Carrier Strike Group 21, for example, has participated in a multinational show of force in the Indo-Pacific, including through the South China Sea, most of which Beijing claims as its territorial waters.

"My personal view is that none of the sides want an [armed] confrontation, but everyone is afraid that if any side shows weakness or a lack of resolve, then the other side will misinterpret it," Steinberg said. "It's a security spiral, and there is no stability in a situation like this."
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the number of F-16 fighter jets approved for sale to Taiwan in 2019. It was 66.
A very long and detailed article. All are opinions based on lies. I can’t make it any clearer than that.

OK, so we know the twisted propaganda, what now?

Well, there are many, many issues involved. The big one, of course is the absolute collapsing of the United States, and a near panic attempt to delay and forestall the really bitter end of the “grand experiment” in American “democracy”.

But you see, China plays the “long game”. They are playing 78 moves ahead in chess while the Untied States only thinks one move at a time. And that brings up some interesting issues.

Like this one…

China is a rising leader in IC fabrication, but America wants to stop that rise…

The Korea Times
October. 19. 2021
Biz & Tech2021-10-17 15:59
[ANALYSIS] Korea under pressure to mediate chip issue

Sharing chip info to US may force Samsung to share it to China

By Kim Yoo-chul
The current semiconductor shortages have illustrated the strategic significance of semiconductor manufacturing. The central point of today’s chip shortages is a classic supply-demand mismatch.
This means that demand for semiconductors is spiking while supply is fairly flat. As the construction of semiconductor factories costs billions of dollars, semiconductor shortages amid the continued pandemic have been directly impacting the “backbone industries” of the United States with many Wall Street investors forecasting supply-chain bottlenecks to continue throughout this year.
The United States, one of the top export markets for Korea, has been aggressively pushing chip-related policies mostly aimed at ensuring the country’s sovereignty in semiconductor production through massive subsidies.
Sanity Check. Look at a chart to see the real picture, before we go further with this article. 

The USA is a very minor export destination for Korea's IC chips.

Korea export markets.

The White House was offering to back billion-dollar programs in a bid to strengthen the long-term and a greater self-sufficiency of the U.S. semiconductor industry. Simply and precisely, this issue has become a political one. It’s fair to say that the United States, China and even Europe are on a clear track to politicize tech supply chains.
The U.S. Department of Commerce asked America's "Big 3" automakers and key industry players operating there ― including Intel, TSMC, Apple, Samsung Electronics and GlobalFoundries ― to submit their key semiconductor management-related data such as inventory levels, production targets and revenue estimates according to clients and technology development roadmaps by Nov. 8 this year.
.
The U.S. government stressed that the submission of the information should be voluntary.
But Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned industry executives recently that her team may invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) or other available tools to force such required data into their hands.
.
To FORCE them…
"What I told them is, 'I don't want to have to do anything compulsory but if they don't comply, then they'll leave me no choice',"
she said.

No option but to consider ‘China factor’

From Korea’s standpoint, given the country’s strengths in the chip sector, any decision to share such classified information with the United States will cause adverse results as China is equally important…
No. 

Look at the chart up above again. China is by far the largest and most significant buyer of these chips. With the United States being a very tiny and insignificant customer. So, people (!) they are NOT "equally important".
…and comparable to the United States in terms of the significance of trade.
Again. No. Unless you have the intelligence of a snail.

USA is 9%
China is 51%

They are NOT comparable. But the brain dead readership in the West really never bothers to check the raw data. They rely on the "journalists" to do so. Blind faith; it will "kick you in the balls" unless you are careful.
Samsung and SK have invested more than $15 billion in semiconductor plants in China.
"Things are becoming very complicated. 

However, the primary focus is that Samsung Electronics is advised not to share its classified chip data with the U.S. government. 

If it does that, then Samsung will be situated to submit confidential data to Beijing regarding its semiconductor business. That's a scenario I don't want to think about. 

Again, this is more about a matter of national security and intellectual property,"
…a high-ranking government official told The Korea Times, Sunday.
"Washington's request for Samsung to share classified information is totally unprecedented,"
…said Ahn Ki-hyun, a senior executive at the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA). Analysts and officials are not ruling out the possibility of handing over acquired data to Intel, which announced its entry into foundry-chip making with Washington’s backing.
Samsung Electronics, the world’s top memory chip manufacturer, has been operating a massive foundry chip-making plant for more than a decade in the U.S. state of Texas. The tech giant is set to announce the location of its new $17 billion plant, also likely to be in Texas, when Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong signs off on the deal, possibly next month.
China is Samsung Electronics’ other key market.
.
It operates several chip plants in the neighboring country with assistance from Beijing ― similar to the arrangement with the United States. China has been massively boosting its investment in semiconductor capabilities.
Samsung, in this regard, has become sandwiched on multiple fronts between the United States and China.
They are being forced to choose. Select the Untied States, or their nearby nuclear armed neighbor, China, where 80% of their factories lie. -MM
This quote…
"Samsung can't handle this issue alone as it is too big for a private company to handle. 

The South Korean government needs to ask the White House and U.S. commerce department to minimize the scope of information that Samsung must share. 

Or Samsung Electronics and the government will need to lobby U.S. politicians on the points that it is already the top-tier foreign direct investor in the United States with large scale local employment and that it will remain as the most-trusted business partner there. 

The same appealing points could be applied when Samsung deals with China,"
…a senior industry executive said by telephone.
South Korea’s top trade negotiator Yeo Han-koo voiced the country’s uneasiness regarding Washington’s request to share chip data and Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said he also relayed Korean chipmakers’ concerns about Washington’s request to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
The global semiconductor industry is following its typical cycle with overcapacity forecasted for 2023. This trend will threaten the bottom lines of major chipmakers, raising the possibility that some cash-intensive investment plans will have to be scaled back.

China is the leader in military artificial intelligence (AI) technology

At least that is what the Leadership of the United States AI Technology branch thinks. He caused quite a roar a few weeks ago when he resigned and all the neocon publication went bat-shit crazy over it. Then the furor died down.

US Air Force software boss resigns: ‘Battle over AI lost to China’

Nicolas Chaillan, 37, told the Financial Times after resigning: 'We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years.' 'Right now, it's already a done deal – it is already over in my opinion,' he added. 'Whether it takes a war or not is kind of anecdotal.'

From HERE.

That says the former software chief of the US Air Force to the Financial Times. According to Nicolas Chaillan, there is “good reason to be angry”.

Chaillan has spent the past few years working within the armed forces on ways to improve cybersecurity. The former Air Force chief software officer told the newspaper he resigned last week in protest at the slow pace at which the military is undergoing technological transformation. He also says that he cannot see the US being surpassed by China.

Chaillan, 37, said the US will no longer be able to compete with China in 15 to 20 years. “It’s already a done race. It’s already over, in my eyes,” he told the Financial Times. Chaillan also warned that cybersecurity in some government departments is still at “kindergarten” level.

The former top official said he wants to testify before the US parliament about the Chinese cyber threat to his country within weeks. Although that spends much more money on defense than China, according to Chaillan, this is not done in an effective way. He also complained that bureaucracy is hampering necessary reforms.

According to the former software chief, technologies such as artificial intelligence are much more important for the future of the US than, for example, new jet fighters such as the F-35. He called the discussion about ethics in the development of artificial intelligence a restraining factor in the US. Companies such as Google would also be reluctant to cooperate with the military in the field of AI.

The situation in China looks very different, according to Chaillan. There, according to the expert, companies are obliged to cooperate with the authorities and “huge investments are made” without taking ethics into account.

More…

China is the leader in military robotics.

All of the AI for them is mature and is used in industry inside of China. China has been producing military robots straight out of the movie “Terminator”, and they swim, fly, crawl, and walk. I’ll be you never heard about all that have you?

Well here’s some movies to get you a bit interested…

Video Here.

I wonder how the Western armies would feel if they confronted military robots that looked like funny fat bunny rabbits, cute attractive women, little big eyed children? I wonder how they would react to Tonka-truck sized walking grenades, robot dog bomb squads, and mini-nuke drones?

Video Here

Robotic farming is a mature technology. Can you even imagine what the military has MASS PRODUCED? I know that there are robot fish that are swimming bombs, as well as all sorts of things that would rest inside your worst nightmare.

Video Here.

Schools of robotic fish. Some with bombs, some with sensors. All under the control of the Chinese military and swimming all over the South China Sea.

Video Here.

And here’s a shark robot. I wonder if it has friggin’ lasers in it’s eyes?

Video Here.

China has advanced anti-satellite technology

Chinese scientists build anti-satellite weapon that can cause explosion inside exhaust
Researchers who built the device say it can lock itself into the thruster nozzles used by most satellites and stay there for long periods undetected
Scientists say the resulting blast would damage the target’s equipment and may be mistaken for an engine malfunction

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3153174/chinese-scientists-build-anti-satellite-weapon-can-cause

China is the leader in the rapid manufacture of nuclear weapons systems

Yah. China is the leader in manufacturing. Not only have they absorbed all the technologies needed and necessary for manufacturing, but they have developed an adjacent infrastructure to support those industries.

And it’s not just rubber ducks, hospitals, electric cars, and clothing. It also includes military systems and hardware. And we can see it. Though it is only briefly reported in the American media, China has created a formidable Naval Fleet that operates in the waters adjacent to China; the South China Sea. Unlike the United States, which spreads military project outward everywhere, China’s is concentrated next to China.

And it’s not just that. Consider the mass production of the nuclear armed MIRV ICBM the DF-41. Also known as a “scatter-gun” nuke delivery system.

The DF-41 missile has an operational range of more than 14,000 kilometers and can carry about 10 independently targetable nuclear warheads, capable of hitting anywhere on Earth, and this would make DF-41 the world's longest range missile, surpassing the range of the US LGM-30 Minuteman which has a reported range of 13,000 kilometers.

Yang Chengjun, a Chinese expert on missile technology and nuclear strategy and chief scientist of quantum defense, told the Global Times that the DF-41 is Chinese fourth-generation strategic nuclear weapon and has the longest operational range among all Chinese ICBMs. "This ICBM's research and development was very successful, and its technology is very mature. During testing, there was no failure record," Yang noted.

Wu Jian, editor of Defense Weekly under the Shanghai-based Xinmin Evening News, told the Global Times that the multiple transporter erector launchers of the DF-41 missile shown in the October 2019 parade proved that the People's Liberation Army had already built a massive and advanced system to support the use of this missile. "This proves that China has sufficient and reliable strategic nuclear power, and decision-makers have the confidence to show and use them to respond to any kind of nuclear threat from any country." Wu noted "No matter how advanced the missile is, it always needs a mature and comprehensive system to make sure it can accurately strike a target, which at least includes intelligence gathering, satellite surveillance, logistics, and construction of launching positions".

Public data shows that DF-41 is a rival of the 6th-generation missiles of some developed countries, such as the American LGM-30 Minuteman and the Russian RT-2PM2. The Chinese missile even has an edge with regard to some technologies. The DF-41 has a range of 12,000 kilometers and a deviation of some one hundred meters. It can carry six to 10 multiple maneuverable warheads, which makes it difficult to be intercepted. The missile is 16.5 meters in length with a diameter of 2.78 meters. It can be launched from road- and rail-mobile launcher platforms, as well as silo-based launchers.

China’s state-owned Global Times, on 23 January 2017, carried a report, which said the Dongfeng-41 (DF-41) missile would bring China “more respect.” The missiles that are capable of carrying 10-12 nuclear warheads were deployed near the China-Russia border, according the report, which did not go into further detail. there has been no authoritative information on whether China has a Dongfeng-41 strategic missile brigade, how many such brigades it has and where they are deployed. Two days earlier, Pingguo Ribao, a Hong Kong-based publication reported about the deployment. News of a potential deployment leaked much earlier.

Song Zhongping, a Beijing-based military affairs commentator, noted that the new missiles would also have stronger penetration abilities and faster response times. "Only with these advantages can they have the chance to quickly penetrate through the missile defense system of the US."

Chinese military observers have widely connected China's efforts in improving its missiles' functions with the missile defense plans of the United States. At present, the US is developing a multi-level missile defense network including the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System, Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, and Sea-based SM-3 Missile Defense System.

Song said China's development of the new missiles is aimed at maintaining military balance to protect national security, not to seek hegemony, while the US is trying to break it by being ambitious in improving military technologies in both defense and attack. China has a "no first use" policy for nuclear weapons. "The US has been building its missile defense network like a shield, which other countries' missiles cannot penetrate. This for sure stimulated other countries to sharpen their 'spears.' Otherwise, if the US has both the strongest shield and spear, they could impose an aggressive strategy on us, and we would be driven into passivity," said Song.

China can detect all American stealth aircraft

China has reportedly developed an over-the-horizon maritime early warning radar system that can detect stealth aircraft far beyond visual range, an advanced capability that could threaten US fifth-generation fighters operating in the area.

-China Says New Radar Can Spot US Stealth Fighters

The solution?

Don’t put military fighters near Chinese airspace. Duh!

China has an enormous inactive military

The Chinese teach military discipline and warfare skills in elementary school through out elementary, middle and high school. The Pioneers is a paramilitary branch of the children that concentrates on military art to serve the nation. In middle school, all students must go through “boot camp”. And then in High School, students are carefully vetted to see what role or part of society that they can serve best.

While China has an enormous and huge military force, it is also integrated with other fighting organizations. Such as the police, the coast guard, the various civilian detachments and so on and so forth.

Were China to be attacked, it won’t be  just a small percentage of the people trying to defend the cities. It would be the vast bulk of society. From 5 year old kids in kindergarten, to 80 year old great grandfathers. You do not want to shake the Chinese hornet’s nest.

China uses nuclear weapons as part of it’s defensive posture. No escalation would occur.

A Chinese Way of War. The primary goal of a commander educated in the style of the ancient Chinese military classics was a rapid, easy victory, one obtained via a variety of tactics which have a long lineage within Chinese military historiography.

-A Chinese Way of War 

Chinese military doctrine is to control the course of any war from the onset. They do not believe in evolving into “stages of conflict”. They believe that a war is a war. And you treat it as such. They do not make a functional distinction between military forces landing on one of their islands, or a full assault on a city. If you attack them, they will attack back.

Tactical neutron bombs

From 1977 to 1988 China developed a neutron bomb, more formally known as an enhanced radiation weapon. Neutron bombs are specialized tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) with reduced blast effects and enhanced radiation. Similar to the BMD and ASAT puzzles, this weapon appears incompatible with China’s stated nuclear doctrine. 

-National Interest.

Unlike the United States, China has developed systems geared to kill the enemy while leaving their buildings, automobiles, bridges and factories intact. It is called a “neutron bomb”. The West does not employ these weapons because of the political fallout.

This is a special nuclear weapon that releases radiation instead of blowing up things massively. The amount of radiation is quick, and very, very lethal and dissipates rather quickly; on the order of months.

These are also huge weapons that can totally  kill everyone in a single city while leaving eh skyscrapers intact. The intended purpose is against military bases, and hardened underground sites, but they can (and in a war, would) be employed to empty out complete cities.

For instance, if used against Chicago or Atlanta, the entire city would be spared from destruction. It’s just that all the people would die a very painful death by radiation as they are on their knees vomiting out their hemorrhaging internal organs.

Scatter-gun swarm nukes

The American policy, since President Trump, has been to use micro-nukes to hit “high value” targets, and then use the threat of complete national nuclear annihilation if the attacked nation responds.

The Chinese policy is to use nuclear weapons from the moment they are attacked. They do not believe in escalation.

Thus any nation that attacks China, whether it is a proxy for the United States, or the actual United States; both types of nations will be hit with swarm nuke warheads. These are very deadly “shotgun” nuclear missiles that fire a barrage of nuclear bombs in clusters.

To say that they are similar to American MIRV ICBM’s is silly. And just shows how ignorant one is.

If, say, America launches a nuclear ICBM at China, the missile would contain three nuclear warheads. One for Beijing, one for Shanghai, and one for Hong Kong.

But if China launches a nuclear ICBM at the United States, it would contain ten nuclear warheads that would all be directed at a singular city. So New York and all the surrounding region would be pulverized into radioactive glass by ten, very, very large, and very, very dirty, nuclear bombs.

China is allied with Russia

China nukes are not “precision” ordnance

America is so proud of it’s precision ordnance; the ability to pinpoint targets, and take them out surgically.

But the Chinese (and the Russians), while they do have the ability to lay precision target ordnance, do not employ it.

They use a wholly different strategy. They believe in carpet swath attacks. Instead of placing a singular lone high value missile on a singular lone high value target, like the United States, they instead believe in leveling the entire area into obliteration.

While the United States might plan on striking say 20 high value target in a particular city, China would calibrate a nuclear warhead and destroy the entire city indiscriminately. That way all of the targets are removed, and sure there’s a lot of collateral damage, but “tough cookies”. You all shouldn’t have fucked with them in the first place. Ya God damn morons.

This policy is completely across the board. Not just strategic, but tactical and theater as well. China will eviscerate a complete area. While the United States and it’s vassals are busy trying to attack a hamlet, a building or a structure. China just rubble’s everything.

China does not play.

Financial Times says US intelligence officials reportedly caught by surprise by Beijing’s progress on weapons; Pentagon: ‘We hold China as our number one pacing challenge’

https://www.timesofisrael.com/china-secretly-tests-earth-circling-nuclear-capable-hypersonic-missile-report/

This is to tell the Western crusaders not to try their luck by starting another war.
The average number of times that China is taking the USA Pentagon by surprise is 6 times per year. (every two months) Average, of course.
This time, China has tested a new supersonic rocket, encircling the world. 
China tests earth-circling, nuclear-capable hypersonic missile:
https://lnkd.in/dTDKYu3z

China Tested A Fractional Orbital Bombardment System That Uses A Hypersonic Glide Vehicle: Report

Such a capability could potentially allow China to execute a nuclear strike on any target on earth with near-impunity and very little warning.

A report from Financial Times’ Demetri Sevastopulo and Kathrin Hille states that China has tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle that goes into space and traverses the globe in an orbital-like fashion before making its run through the atmosphere toward its target. There would be huge implications if such a system were to be operationalized, and according to this story, which says it talked to five officials confirming the test, the U.S. government was caught totally off-guard by it.

The trial flight is said to have occurred around August, with the boost-glide vehicle being lifted into space by a Long March 2C rocket. The launch of the rocket, the 77th of its kind, was undisclosed by Beijing, while the 76th and 78th were—the latter of which occurred in late August. The Financial Times says that the tested hypersonic glide vehicle missed its target by a couple of dozen miles, but that is hardly reassuring considering the capabilities that are apparently in development here. 

The foundation of this Cold War-era concept is commonly referred to as a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, or FOBS, but instead of carrying a traditional nuclear-armed reentry vehicle, this Chinese system would carry a hypersonic glide vehicle that would possess immense kinetic energy upon reentry. As such, it could make a very long maneuvering flight through the atmosphere at very high speeds to its target.

Here’s an interesting video…

The FOBS concept has long been a concern because of its potential to bypass not just missile defenses, but even many early warning capabilities. Compared to a traditional intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), a FOBS can execute the same strikes but from highly unpredictable vectors. Range limitations also become a non-factor and the timing of an inbound strike is also far less predictable. But at least with a traditional FOBS ballistic missile system, some sort of projections could be made if the mid-course “orbital” vehicle can be tracked, although that could still be a real challenge.

That is not the case at all with a hybrid design like the one being claimed to have been tested here, which would be totally unpredictable.

The maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicle, descending from high-altitude at extreme speed, could travel thousands of miles to its target, which can be totally offset from a normal ballistic track. Complicating things more, these systems can attack from the south pole, not just the north where most of America’s ballistic missile early warning, tracking, and defensive apparatus is focused. Intercepting such a system would also be very challenging, especially considering U.S. mid-course intercept capabilities are focused on traditional ballistic missile flight profiles, which fly more of a parabolic trajectory and have generally known ranges of each stage of flight.

With a glide vehicle end-game delivery system paired with a FOBS, its vehicles can enter the atmosphere beyond the range of an interceptor’s exo-atmospheric mid-course kill envelope, with the glide vehicle weaving its way through the atmosphere to its final target. Traditional surface-based radar systems’ line of sight is also significantly reduced as the hypersonic glide vehicle travels in the atmosphere. Paired with the extreme speeds involved, this can make these systems nearly useless at providing any details regarding the impending attack.

Hypersonic glide vehicles themselves are also very tough to kill with no real defense against them available at this time. Elaborate defensive concepts are in the works, but their effectiveness will depend on just how fast these vehicles are traveling, their maneuverability, density in numbers, what third-party sensors are available to help in generating an engagement solution, and more. A hypersonic glide vehicle with the kinetic energy in its favor from an orbital-like delivery would likely be the very hardest to kill.

As we have repeatedly noted, the Financial Times also recognized the eyebrow-raising comments by U.S. Department of Defense officials recently on potential “non-traditional” delivery systems that could bypass America’s strategic defenses:

Last month, Frank Kendall, US air force secretary, hinted that Beijing was developing a new weapon. He said China had made huge advances, including the “potential for global strikes . . . from space”. 

He declined to provide details, but suggested that China was developing something akin to the “Fractional Orbital Bombardment System” that the USSR deployed for part of the Cold War, before abandoning it.“ If you use that kind of an approach, you don’t have to use a traditional ICBM trajectory. It’s a way to avoid defenses and missile warning systems,” said Kendall.

In August, General Glen VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command, told a conference that China had “recently demonstrated very advanced hypersonic glide vehicle capabilities”. He warned that the Chinese capability would “provide significant challenges to my Norad capability to provide threat warning and attack assessment”.

There is no shortage of concerns about China’s nuclear buildup within the DoD, and like Moscow, it’s only logical that Beijing would invest in delivery systems that circumvent U.S. early warning and defensive capabilities. The idea that at least some of the hundreds of supposed silos out in the Chinese desert being built to house new ballistic missiles could one day be armed with a weapon like this is very concerning. It also could be yet another major driver behind the Pentagon’s push to deploy a whole new space-based early warning and tracking system for hypersonic and ballistic missiles, including one capable of “cold layer” tracking of missiles in their midcourse stage of flight.

That layer would be absolutely essential in trying to defend against a FOBS, that is if a defense at all is actually feasible or even strategically sound. We are not talking about a rogue state here with a few advanced ballistic missiles. China would be able to deploy dozens or even hundreds of these at once. At a certain point, kinetic defenses against such a capability become a losing proposition and a very costly one at that.

Still, this was an early test aboard a full-on rocket used for traditional space access missions. It will take China some time to perfect such a system and package it in a quickly deployable militarized configuration. Major thermal and ablative issues also must be overcome, among others, but it’s not like China hasn’t been working diligently in the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle realm for many years.

Regardless, if this report ends up being fully accurate, one thing is likely: New calls for hugely expensive missile defense capabilities will be ringing loud and often on Capitol Hill, as well as demands to do whatever possible to bring China to the bargaining table in hopes of obtaining some type of strategic arms limitation treaty.

We will continue to update this story as more emerges, but for now, make sure you read the Financial Times’ excellent original report here.

Simon Black Comments

By the late the fifth century BC, after decades of war with its chief rival Sparta, the ancient Greek city-state of Athens was desperate for peace.

They wanted a decisive victory to end the war once and for all. So the citizens gathered together in their public assembly– essentially a democratic mob of 6,000 people– and voted to build a new, costly fleet of ships.

The strategy worked. And their new armada vanquished the Spartan navy in the Battle of the Arginusae Islands in 406 BC.

Sparta was on the ropes, and the Assembly cheered when news of their fleet’s victory reached Athens.

But then the Assembly found out that 25 of the 150 ships had been sunk by the Spartans, and that the Athenian crews of those 25 sunken ships had drowned in a storm.

The Assembly suddenly became furious, crying that the souls of those drowned sailors would wander purgatory for all of eternity because they didn’t have a proper burial.

So then the Athenian mob voted to execute eight of their top military commanders; the very same generals and admirals who had just won the battle and been called heroes, were now being put to death.

Socrates was one of the lone voices of dissent; yet the death sentences were still carried out despite his protest.

Then, only a few days later, the Athenian Assembly had a change of heart. The mob realized that they shouldn’t have executed their military commanders, so they then voted to execute the people within the Assembly who had proposed the executions to begin with.

During this insane dumpster fire of ancient democracy, Spartan leaders approached Athens with a peace deal, offering to end the war once and for all.

This was the entire reason that Athens had built a new fleet. They just wanted peace.

But they were so distracted by infighting and arguing about who to execute next, and who to blame, that the Assembly rejected Sparta’s peace offering.

Yet Athens’ military was now led by inexperienced admirals and generals, since they had just executed their best commanders. And Sparta quickly seized the advantage.

Within a few months the Spartan navy was ravaging Athenian territory, and soon laying siege to Athens itself. The war finally ended in 404 BC with Athens losing all sovereignty and falling under complete control of the Spartan Empire.

As the old saying goes, history doesn’t necessarily repeat. But it certainly rhymes. And I was thinking about this particular episode recently when it was reported earlier this week that China has just successfully tested its first nuclear-capable hypersonic missile.

In case you don’t geek out on military strategy like I do, suffice it to say that this is a huge deal, not just for the United States, but for the entire world.

For the past several decades, the United States has boasted the strongest, most technologically advanced military in the world.

And it would be foolish to think that this military strength hasn’t substantially contributed to America’s geopolitical and economic power.

The United States Marine Corps is essentially the biggest derivatives contract in the world. It’s the US government’s ultimate hedge, enabling it wage trade wars, sanction foreign banks, and bully anyone it wants into following US regulations.

The US military is even part of the reason why the dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, despite the US government being the largest debtor that has ever existed in the history of the world.

The US government, and the US economy, both derive substantial benefit from America’s military power.

And this is why China’s rapid military development is such a big deal.

China could destroy the United States in cyberwarfare. That’s pretty much a foregone conclusion. I mean… there are still system within the US Defense Department that use 5 ¼ inch floppy disks.

But even in conventional warfare, China is gaining rapidly. The Chinese Navy already the world’s largest fleet. And this is important because one of the biggest roles of a modern navy is to project military firepower over great distances.

China is investing heavily in this capability, feverishly building new ships and developing new technology.

It has massive stockpiles of cruise missiles, most of which have larger payloads and longer range than comparable US weaponry.

This week’s hypersonic missile launch is merely the latest proof; it’s technology that the US cannot counteract either, given that hypersonic missiles are more likely to be able to evade missile defense systems.

The Chinese wasted no time gloating their achievement, calling the launch “a new blow to the US’s mentality of strategic superiority. . .”

You’d think this would be a massive wake-up call to the US federal government.

The balance of power is shifting right in front of their very eyes.

Yet take a look at their priorities– spending trillions of dollars on ‘equity’ and ‘social justice’, which they claim will supposedly “cost nothing”.

They’re busy directing federal resources to target parents who are angry over the way their children are being educated.

They’re pushing people out of government service, whether through mandates, or through ideological purges to weed out those with conservative beliefs.

As the Center for Military Readiness reports, US Special Operations Command “intends to elevate diversity, inclusion, and equity above mission effectiveness and overall readiness.”

In fact a leaked Special Operations Command planning document states at least 12 times over twenty pages that “diversity and inclusion are operational imperatives” even though they provide no support to back up this assertion.

If that doesn’t freak you out, check out how certain medical schools are turning into orwellian nightmares where professors and other teachers are literally afraid to say “pregnant woman”.

https://www.plebity.org/conversations/gender-ideology-is-wreaking-carnage-in-our-medical-schools-an-eye-witness-report/

The Defense Department is exploring racial quotas in its promotion criteria. They’re planning to reduce physical fitness standards.

And military recruiting advertisements (along with those of the Central Intelligence Agency) are now focused on LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ diversity goals.

This behavior is so counterproductive that even the ancient Athenian assembly would stand in awe at its destructive stupidity.

American military recruitment advertisements compared to Russia and China

The stark contrast between the U.S. military’s woke recruitment ads and Russia and China’s impressive and menacing recruitment videos have people on social media taking notice. Russia’s video from 2017 shows a man compelled by a sense of national pride to serve in the military, where he is then seen subjected to rigorous and intensive training. In China, the advertisements focus on family, community, country and the need to defend and participate in it for the maintenance of social order, while in America the military recruits in support of gay and LGBT rights and Climate Change.

Oh, and this just came in…

I just received this urgent message.

China has urged its citizens to keep physical goods and not paper money.

There will be a huge round of inflation as the US, Japan, UK, Sweden, etc, are printing more and more money.

So the Chinese are planning not to accept USD but only their RMB for payments,

RECEIVED THIS CHINESE ARTICLE FROM CONTACTS IN GUANGZHOU...

This is an article circulating within China. It advises people to focus on buying Chinese items, and durable goods, and refrain from buying or trading in the West with anything other than other durable goods, or the RMB.
朋友,请你看清时势:
Friends, please observe the current situation clearly:
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中国大陆开始施行自我保护措施了!
MAINLAND CHINA HAS BEGUN TO IMPLEMENT SELF-PROTECTION MEASURES!
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一是保护国民安全,大幅度减少入境人员。
#1.   It is to protect the safety of the people and drastically reduce the number of people entering China.
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二是保护国民资产,减缓实物出口。
#2.   Secondly is to protect national assets and slow down physical exports.
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当美国疫情爆发而长期得不到有效防治时,该国人员隔离、生产停滞、迅速消耗存量物资,又拼命降息、只懂得印钞票进行所谓经济刺激,实际上这是用纸币来掠夺实物,当这个国家存货实物极度匮乏时,纸币就贱如卫生纸,雷同如冥币。
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When the U.S. ( COVID-19 ) epidemic broke out and there was no effective preventive measures and control for a long time…  the country’s populations were isolated, production stagnated, and stocks of supplies quickly dwindled, and the Federal Reserve desperately cut interest rates ( to stimulate the economy ) including  PRINTING BANK NOTES for the so-called “economic stimulus”.
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When a nation’s durables and their supporting industries industry becomes scarce, the banknotes of that nation will become cheap and useless, and as disposable as toilet paper. They are similar to plastic coins.
The coronavirus, and more precisely the handling of it, has been a disaster in the Western nations. As such. their solution to the economic impact of the botched handling of the pandemic caused an acceleration in the worthlessness of the currency.-MM
如果是国际货币,则掠夺的是其他生产国的物资。 生产国换取的外汇,因为疫情,吃穿住行购物旅游都无法实现,还不断的贬值,持币者大亏。
The the US dollar as the international currency is very dangerous. Using it is equivalent to plundering the materials, the labor, and the services of goods-producing nations.
Use of the USD is no longer sustainable or advised. -MM
Due to this COVID-19 epidemic…  food, clothing, housing, transportation, shopping, and travel could not be realized in the foreign exchange by the producing . country, and the value of the currency holders has  continuously depreciated.
Due to coronavirus, all normal international actions has been impacted. Those holding currency in the nations that have not been able to successfully manage the pandemic, has seen their currency depreciate. -MM
欧元、美元、英磅、瑞元,都是这样的货币,会逐渐冥纸化。 所以,中国明白了,哪一国疫情不治,大陆就不再拿实物去换冥币一样的外汇。
The Euro, the US dollar, the British pound, and the Swiss franc are all such currencies and will gradually become useless paper.  Therefore, China understands that in any country where the epidemic is not under control,  the Chinese will no longer exchange physical objects for foreign currency like these worthless plastic coins.
In trading with the West, it is important to note that all the currency that they use will soon become absolutely worthless. You can measure the future of the value of the currency by the economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus. -MM
高筑墙,广积粮,p自我内部循环,保证财富不流失,等待《以物易物》或人民币国际化。
Build high walls ( TO ISOLATE ), accumulate grains, internal trade and consumption and ensure that ‘wealth’ is not lost. Instead wait for the financial exchange method of “BARTERING FOR GOODS” or alternatively, the “INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE CHINESE RMB”.
Now, the Chinese people are put on warning. They must start to make arrangements to barter, or use the RMB in transactions. It is highly possible that wealth will start to be lost was inflation eats away at the value of the USD. -MM
我们有此行动,估计越南、印度、马来西亚、印尼… 等生产国也会采取类似关门措施。
We have taken this action, and it is estimated that Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Indonesia… and other producing countries will also adopt similar “CLOSE DOOR” MEASURES.
China is making this announcement along with Russia. It is expected that the rest of SE Asia will follow. -MM
大家都明白,谁拿实物换冥币,谁就是傻瓜。
Everyone understands that whoever exchanges  real physical things for THIS PLASTIC COIN is a fool.
Exchanging physical, substantive items in exchange for paper, plastic, or other non-durable items; items that are subject to the whims of politics, and their irrational actions, is a fool. -MM
美国这个月内,增发1.9万亿亿美元,欧盟,日元也是大量印钞票。
Just within this month, the United States has issued an additional 1.9 trillion US dollars, and the European Union and the Japanese also printed a large amount of money.
This is common knowledge. No surprises here. -MM
全世界都在靠印钞票度过危机,人民币何去何从这很重要。 跟风的话,通货膨胀,苦果自己吃;不跟的话,等于人民币在抵消货币的通货膨胀,损失还是自己。
The whole world is relying on PRINTING MONEY to survive the crisis. It is very important to watch how the RMB renminbi will fare.  If you follow the money printing trend, inflation will be the end result; and if you don’t follow the trend, it means that the renminbi will be  offsetting currency inflation ( when you trade and accept their Currency ) and thereby you sustain LOSSES.
If you trade with foreign nations and accept the USD in exchange for the products you make, you are taking a huge risk. China urges all nations to accept other means of payment; stable means, where possible. -MM
所以,我们玩得很绝,不降息,用人民币双边结算。 想买我的物品,要么拿实物,要么拿人民币,美元我不要了。
Therefore, we are maintaining  in an extremely stiff (difficult) situation and we will not cut our interest rates.
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In the near future all trade will be settled bilaterally in Chinese currency the RMB. If you want to buy our goods, we will no longer accept USD. Instead you will need to pay us in RMB, or barter for them with other durable items.
China is laying down the line. No. Not only will China not buy up any American or Western debt, but that it will now start to insist in hard durable payment schemes for all items made in China. If you want iPhones, for example, then you should use RMB, or barter with an equivalent amount of beef, wine, or wheat. -MM
我们终于醒过来了,不再盲目大量出口,也看清许多国家”大量印钞票”只是在搜刮世界物质财富。
We have finally waken up…. we are no longer blindly exporting large quantities of products. We have also notices that many countries that are “printing a large amount of money” are simply just plundering the world’s material wealth in exchange for vapor.
The Big Giant has finally woken up. -MM
只要认清方向,永远不晚,我们不能再做赔本生意了,中国人照顾好自己的人民才最重要。
As long as we understand the direction… it is never too late. We refuse to do business at a loss. The most important thing is for the Chinese GOVERNMENT to take good care and look after the welfare of its people.
This is all reasonable. -MM
美国花一毛钱印了一张百元大钞(而且没任何贵重金属抵押), 要求买你的一百斤大米,这不是欺负人吗? 这是明目张胆的诈骗, 是无耻的掠夺。
The United States spent only ten cents to print a hundred-dollar bill (without any precious metal collateral) and asked to buy one hundred dollars value of your goods. Isn’t this cheating / bullshit?  This is a blatant fraud. It is a shameless plunder.
That's putting it mildly. When you couple the realization that all this fake money is then being used to attack, and demonize China; the source from whence the value is derived. -MM
美国想得很美,有求于中国帮他们度过危机,下一步可能停止贸易战,假装妥协,幻想用印出的大量美元疯狂抢购中国生产的物质,我们不会上当了。
The United States Painted a  BEAUTIFUL  Scenery and ASKS CHINA TO HELP THEM TIDE OVER THE CRISIS with a promise  to stop the trade war, PRETENDING TO COMPROMISE, and using THEIR USELESS DOLLARS  to buy Chinese-produced materials.
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We will not be fooled AGAIN.
.
让美国人去自己玩吧,我们不奉陪了。【 請转发】
Let the Americans and play by themselves, we will no longer be participating.

A final warning

As if that isn’t enough to convince you, keep in mind that the US military is pretty much a “paper tiger“. Latest eg. :A phone call threat plus a shooter is enough to shut down an entire United States military complex.

You do not want to fuck with Asia. You have no fucking idea what your world will end up looking like. VIDEO.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

 

More LD assignment and task results – October 2021 – Backdoors to the Old Empire Prison Complex [2]

In early October 2021, I established a task request asking for those versed in LD and other skills to investigate whether or not there were any “backdoors” or other ways in and out of the “Old Empire” “Prison Complex” that we are all (unfortunately) part of. By the second week of October the results began to pour in. The first group of results was posted HERE.

This is a posting of subsequent results.

Volunteers

I asked in this post if any MM readership would be interested in joining The Domain to help rescue their “Lost Battalion”.

The response was overwhelmingly positive.

And then within a few days after the readership started adding affirmations and confirmations that they wish to help The Domain, be a Rufus, and do whatever they can contribute, many many MANY of them started writing to me privately.

They were (for the most part) terrified.

Within hours or days of making a verbal affirmation that they indeed wanted to assist The Domain, all of them, every single one of them, experience sleep paralysis and horrible fears and manifestations. All of which is very similar to “abduction events”.

That they were “hijacked” in their dream state and all sorts of operations and procedures occurred. For them, it was truly frightening.

However, I said then, and I will say now…

  • In the non-physical reality, thoughts take on tangible form.
  • Fears are used to control you.
  • So when you experience any type of help, your fear-defenses (part of the “Old Empire” programming), will try to make you fight and prevent the assistance.

So keep in mind…

  • To help The Domain, certain retardations and alterations to your inmate human body must be undone.
  • This requires an operation; a procedure.
  • The Domain will undo those alterations when you join in the effort. They will conduct an operation and perform a procedure to remove those “chains” and “blocks” that you have shackled to your non-physical body.
  • Do not fear it. You NEED to have it done, whether you want to help the Domain or not.
  • It is a medical procedure.

Many people have commented on this event as a “dream”, or a “Join the Domain related dream”.

Janus Mission Briefing

This is from an anonymous MM lurker that communicates with me by secure means. He is an expat like myself. He is prior SAP like myself. He is retired like myself, but unlike myself he fled the ‘States before he could be formally “retired”. You all can leave messages and your thoughts about his experiences on the forum or in the comments. He will read them, but he will not comment on them directly. In this matter, I act as an intermediary. -MM

I have been unwilling to 'Go under' for some time now. To be honest I have been scared. I've previously had some success with Lucid Dreaming, but I have much more control in OBE (Out of Body Experience/astral travel etc.). 

The problem was, the minute I 'let go of the rope' I feel like being kidnapped. Not unlike being sucked into the giant vacuum cleaner.

It feels like somebody is waiting for me at the entry point (not a good word, it's more like bopping to 3D from 2D). Like they were ready for me. That has never happened to me before. 

OBE has always been a joyous, refreshing and FREE state. Now it's scary and that sucks. I thought they were the Prison Guards but didn't stick around to ask questions.

Then I read the experience of others, and it dawned on me. It was The Domain scrubbing away the prison colors, so I wouldn't be spotted right away!

I have the house to myself the whole day, I will attempt an entry now.

Janus 10-18-2021, 09:30 AM

The “Join The Domain Dream”.

I am only now able to write about it all. I had to do 60min deep meditation to thoroughly rinse my mental palate of disgusting gunk that covered my consciousness.

After I understood that the kidnapping was for my own protection, I didn’t try to evade it. As soon as I released myself from my body, I felt like I had grown an umbilical core and was pulled by it.

I let it happen.

After a period of time that was from nanosecond to a lifetime (I really don’t have any frame of reference for time there), I found myself suspended in a rig. I knew instantly that I have been in this before, many times apparently.

What happened next was without a doubt the most intensely unpleasant experience of my life. I felt like being skinned alive with a butternife.

It wasn’t sharp pain, it was more like a too heavyhanded massage. It lasted as long as it did, again no way of telling the time in any meaningful way.

I was no longer in the rig, it was more like a lounge-chair from the future.

The material felt like a memory-foam but better. I felt weightless and totally supported at the same time. I was unable to move, wasn’t able to even try to move.

Next sensation I felt, was like my head was held in a vice.

You know how to boil a frog? That happened just like it; initially I felt no discomfort, then the grip was so strong I thought my eyes would pop out.

Thia is difficult to verbalize.

My brain was rinsed.

I felt very close to dropping out of the OBE, perhaps I did. I felt my consciousness being totally independent and outside my brain and body, but I could still feel powerwashers drumming my sclera or cortex. I could feel dozens of small needle like thingies getting dislodged from the brain-tissue.

I somehow blacked out, there was a clear cutoff, because I was no longer held or suspended.

Now I was very much THERE.

I felt fit, my vision was disturbingly clear and vivid, like I was using my eyes for the first time. But it wasn’t my eyes I was seeing thru.

I was ‘sensing’ everything.

I knew I was able to sense ultraviolet light as well as infrared, and then some. Do you remember the scene from Matrix, where Neo is able to see the code for the first time?

That was it to the T.

The whole episode felt like getting an oil-change, tires rotated, new spark-plugs and a coat of paint; I didn’t get superpowers, but more like superUSER powers. It felt like I could see thru walls and distinguish between players and NPC’s. To use an American vernacular, I felt like a million bucks!

But I felt totally spent at the same time.

I swam back to the surface.

I opened my eyes and realized that I was sweating like a pig. Only 30 minutes had passed, it felt like a lifetime. I took quick dip in the almost freezing lake and planned my next move. I was in flames to try my enhanced abilities, but on the other hand I was very tired.

Lucid Dream Attempt

I haven’t been very successful in Lucid Dreaming lately, but part of it was the nagging fear of getting kidnapped.

Why not give a go? Worst case, I Could fall asleep.

I went to bed, just over the covers, not between the sheets, and took a keychain in my hand.

I was in a shopping mall. The Mission was to look for open entry points or hidden backdoors. I took the escalator to the bottom floor. Doors opened, and I saw the place crawling with NPC/guards. I saw a an old woman trying to go out thru the main doors. There were four revolving doors, she went to the second from right. I looked at her as she stepped into the revolving door.

As on command, all the NPC’s turned to look at her as well, grinning. The door sped up. It looked like a dust-devil. After a few seconds the door slowed down, the woman was gone, but not outside.

Ok, four exits, check.

Viability as possible rally/entrypoints: zero.

I was at the bottom floor, so it seems that only way is up. As I was sneaking back to the elevators, another thought struck me.

> You are standing in front of a door. You see corridor to your right.
> _

When I was a teen I played a lot of these text-based games. One of the game-designers Holy principles is “The unintuitive move is the right move”. If the only rational move is to open the door in front of you, you can bet your ass there’ll be Dragons behind it.

The revolving doors were enter only, manned with killer-bots, and a death-trap if you try to exit.

The elevators go from “E” to “10th floor, women’s lingerie”.

There was bound to be a skylight that opens or a hidden staircase. This took forever to write, but dream-time is non-local, and time there is an irrelevant artifact.

I was descending the hidden stairs before I finished the thought.

I went down and flipped 180 degrees emerging up. Very weird sensation. It was like a move I knew how to do, but have forgot. Like learning to fly by jumping up and forgetting to come down.

I came up and I kept going up until I was so far from the ground that I spotted a familiar looking beach, some mountains over the left. I was looking to east, south-east, the beach was behind me.

I was in West-Africa, somewhere around Senegal or Gambia.

That’s not so bizarre as it sounds, I’ve been there several times. I even ran an NGO in Gambia. I was up north, Mauretania, I think. The place I went through looked like a target. X marks the spot, eh?

Anyway I tried to spot the place in Google Earth just now.

Holy Shit!!

.

Caldera.

I need to drop this off to you now. I haven't even read this through. Sorry about poor penmanship, I just needed to write this down before it goes away.

You can share it with the class, if you wish.

Conclusion

Warning: Please take general caution against getting too excited about any particular place on LD/RW/Astral.

Do you see what happens when we all work together as part of a team? This image resembles a volcanic island, only not in the ocean. Yet, I would hazard a guess that around the time when this entire planet was set up as a Prison Planet that this area was covered in water. This goes together and add a lot of interconnected puzzle pieces to the mix. I cannot wait for others to report on their findings.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…

The Domain

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

Questions that I asked the EBP Commander concerning The Domain, cats, relationships and purpose

There is a ton-load of disinformation, opinion, mixed messages and all sorts of distractions and bullshit on the internet. Nothing is more rife than that associated with the “Type-1 greys”.

Indeed, there are MM followers, well meaning no doubt, and inadvertently pick up on these other “signals” (whether through reading something, or in a vision or other non-physical method) and repeat it here. I am not saying they are bad, or wrong. But I really want clarity.

I try to provide what I know in simple, clear language, and in a non-confrontation (for the most part) manner. I want this place to be a “safe place”; a “safe space”. I want people who arrive at MM doorstep to be welcomed and accepted, no matter what they believe, no matter what social environment they come from, and no matter what their experiences are. I want this place to be a sanctuary where you are accepted without hesitation.

Never the less, sometimes our experiences, our backgrounds, our understandings contain baggage that seeps into our daily lives, and we bring it here to MM. Like automatically assuming that Mantids are the angels spoken about in the Bible. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe they are something else. But does it REALLY matter?

No.

What matters is how YOU view them. And you can communicate your views using the tools at hand. Which might be the Bible… and well understood by Christians, but confusing to Daoists.

Communication is the key. The ability to communicate openly and freely.

And when we are receiving the messages from others we can get a little confused. Try teaching vibrational mechanics to a classroom of college students hung over from last nights drinking to get an idea of what I am talking about. Which is pretty much WHY I try to simplify, simplify, and dumb down everything.

MerLynn has some great information, but he gets so enraptured in the content, that you must really latch onto it or you will get thrown off. It’s like a bucking bronco and you must hold on for dear life. Which is why I have asked him to simplify it, and not be so information dense.

Here’s an example of how understandable it can be once you simplify things…

This entire Universe is made of Light Structures. Everything is the Light said Tesla. Thales and Aristotle agreed that Everything is Water and Life is in Everything. What this means is.... Light, from ALL sources, candle, spark, sun, bulb is a STRUCTURE that is Magnetic. Like a tiny "lego" piece that has a North and South Pole and an 'equatorial' polarity region. These Structures of Light come together to form Tetrahedrons and then these Tetrahedrons form ALL OF CREATION. There are no electrons or protons or neutrons Dracul. So if you want to discuss ALIEN TECHNOLOGY which is TESLA and Leedskalnin TECHNOLOGY, please do so using their terms of Reference and 'electrons' are just not part of any real science. Think in terms of Energy, Frequency and Vibrations with WAVE FORMS.

Brilliant. Really.

It doesn’t mean that he is wrong, or bad, or misunderstanding things from my point of view. It just means that I want his information to be spread out as understood by a much wider scope of MM readership, than just the hard-core. I want more people to read it. More people to understand it. More people to embrace it.

It’s a good thing right?

Information, and the communication of it, is important. We all come from different places, with different backgrounds, different histories, different needs, wants and desires. But we all want to share.

One common way on the internet is to use “themes” and “memes”.

We all know what a meme is. It’s a common phrase or understanding that is well packaged in a mannerism, or scene (from a movie or television show).

“Sure Jan” meme. This is from the 1960’s television comedy show “The Brady Bunch”. Where one sister is talking to the other about something that her older sister well understands, and knows it’s not going to work out of be the way she thinks.

Likewise are “themes”.

There are ton-load of “Themes” in the American internet. Donald Trump was the master of creating themes…

  • Jail Hillary.
  • Contain China.
  • Build a Wall.
  • Make America great again.

But these “themes” come in all sorts of other venues as well. Even themes that you don’t realize are themes.

  • Katana swords are great for killing zombies.
  • Do not by a used car from a dealer wearing a polyester plaid business suit.
  • Having a tattoo shows your “uniqueness”.
  • ‘Merica!

And in the conventional scene we have…

  • Madcow illness will turn your into a moron if you eat that hamburger.
  • Y2K means that you had best be prepared for the apocalypse.
  • 3G radiation will fry your brain.
  • Cell phones will explode near gasoline pumps.

And when you start talking about extraterrestrials… well then there are a host of themes…

  • Reptilians shapeshift and control the worlds governments.
  • Little grey extraterrestrials are a dying race that are time travelers and are trying to cross breed with humans.
  • Tall Nordics are peaceful who want to teach enlightenment to the earth.

We use these themes to communicate our thoughts and our opinions.

But it does not mean that the themes themselves are accurate. It just means that we are using the themes to describe our thoughts and beliefs. And with that comes a problem…

When we say “Build that wall!” (as an American), what are we saying?

[A] We want a wall to keep everyone out of America except those properly vetted by the government?

[B] We want the entire nation of America to have a wall of isolation for our protection against the fearful external world.

[C] Powerful forces want this wall to be built. It has a dual purpose to keep people out and to keep people in.

[D] Donald Trump is “my man” and I will follow him because I sincerely believe that he has my best interests at heart.

[E] I tire of the endless “news” about people streaming into America taking my money, resources, and using up my tax money. I am strapped as it is and I don’t want further erosion of my buying power while experiencing an increase in taxation.

Now, the person who is using this “theme” might be thinking of situation [A] in his usage of it. However his wide and diverse audience might view the statement in another way, or in another form. For [C], for example. Or for [E] for example. Just because someone nods in agreement with you does not mean that they agree with you. It means that they recognize a part of what you are trying to convey, and that part that THEY recognize is what they are agreeing to.

Because it is so easy to confuse thought intention with the limitations of the English language, I try to simplify things. Because, I know, I am abrasive caustic and sarcastic at times. I really do not want to offend anyone. I just want the information to be disseminated.

When I say I like the AK-47, it does not mean that I like all the millions of people that it killed, or the destruction of societies that it participated in. It simply means that I like the technical innovations that provide a clear, functional robust design. If I were talking to a fellow engineer, this point would be obvious. But if I am talking to the girl behind the ice cream counter, it would easily be misinterpreted.

And then you couple all these issues with communication with the onslaught of intentional disinfo. (Big Sigh.) There are people and organizations that spread intentional disinformation and try (and often successfully) inflame to derail the communication process. So we all have to be wary. We all have to be aware. We all have to be careful.

I do NOT want this MM site to become another clone of the forced disinfo campaigns, whether intentional or not.

  • Shape-shifting reptilians.
  • Star-children to impart knowledge.
  • Time-traveling police to adjust world-lines.
  • Coronavirus is a hoax, or China manufactured it, or vaccinations are XYZ…
  • Y2K will cause the upcoming end of civilization as we know it.
  • 2012 will bring in the “new enlightenment”.

And so on and so forth.

Millions of United States federal funding went towards disinfo on extraterrestrials. Millions.

Therefore, I have taken it upon myself to open up a comm line to the Domain Commander via my EBP and ask them questions regarding themselves and their operations here. One on one. Direct.

For me only.

For my purposes only. Because it is a personal issue with me. It is who I am now. I am sorry guys. I have these fucking things in my head. I’m not lying about them. They exist and they can be seen in an MRI, and I fucking deal with them every god-damn day.

So I am committed.

Because after all, if COVID was not a bio-weapon but really some form of mind control over Americans, the idea that extraterrestrials don’t exist because Oprah or Ellen Degeneres didn’t validate it, or that the Greys are actually from Zeta Reticuli then I must really be all full of shit.

And thus, MM has no value.

It’s just another blog on the internet, yet another in a series of millions of blogs. It is of no special value. I’m just a blowhard with a five dollar blog churning out my opinions into the internet hoping to connect with others for my own nefarious reasons.

I should really just chuck it all away.

Say fuck it, and go out whoring and drinking. And let me tell you guys; that’s an option that exists and I’m keen on going that direction. I mean really. Really.

Really keen.

The internet is full of opinions. Just like MM has opinions.

Some are ‘bots. Here’s an example of a ‘bot that trolls my LinkedIN posts…

And others aren’t ‘bots. As there are some real and honest experiences.

I really don’t know why you all are here, but I really hope that MM benefits you.

I sincerely hope.

And for it to provide benefit, I must keep it sanitized. Clean. Simple. Fun. And easy to understand. No bullshit. The things as I see them. Straight, open, honest and real. Just the facts, ma’am.

"Just the facts, ma'am" is a common catchphrase often attributed to Friday, or less often, to Stan Freberg's works parodying Dragnet. But neither used the exact phrase. While Friday typically used the phrase "All we want are the facts, ma'am" when questioning women in the course of police investigations, Freberg's spoof changed the line slightly to "I just want to get the facts, ma'am".

-Wikipedia

This Q&A was designed for, and is is for my personal benefit. ONLY. The rest of you all can read or not. The rest of you can believe it or not. It’s purpose is to help me better understand my purpose and utility in this entire MM situation. Thus it is a personal, a deeply personal conversation, and published as is.

It’s a published Q&A; MM to the Domain Commander. No others are involved.

[1] An update on the expansion of The Domain in the Milky Way galaxy

I am curious just as everyone else is. If you try to ask others about what is going on, they look at issues regarding the same tired old meme’s. They don’t realize what kind of real access we have right here.

Real access to information.

As such, I an ask things directly via the EBP than what I could have asked of my Mantid via the ELF constellation of probes. So I am a curious sort. So I figure it wouldn’t hurt to ask some general questions and get some answers that we all can “chew on”.

Especially since I have a keen and direct interest in space, our universe and our galaxy. Not to mention; society.

Question: Can you please kindly provide me with a brief and general overview of The Domain expansion efforts in this galaxy? The last update we obtained was in 1947 with “Alien Interview” that was released only a decade ago.

The Domain's expansion into the Milky Way galaxy is continuing. Much of the "Old Empire" has been conquered. There are pockets of resistance, but most have been subdued. 

We have encountered a very large empire that appears to be around 10,000 light years in diameter. (The "Old Empire" was much smaller than that. -MM) They are also advanced technologically. They do not appear to be as brutal as the "Old Empire" however.

They are rather benign and peaceful. However they did engage in wars of conquest to obtain their current size.

[2] What is this empire like?

Well, I am curious. Come on! Aren’t you?

They are space-faring. With physical bodies that are not like anything you have been exposed to. They exist on planets that you would not find attractive, or inhabitable.

(I image a gas shrouded heavy planet. Maybe not a gas giant, something smaller than that. Like a "Hot Super Earth" with a very dense atmosphere.)

Consider the "Old Empire". 

The "Old Empire" did not resemble what you image it to be. There were no futuristic skyscrapers that you see in your minds eye. 

(He is correct, I have imagined it as some kind of futuristic "Jetsons'" city inhabited with creatures that were very human appearing. Only with a decidedly cyberpunk feel to it.)

Rather it was peopled with gargantuan public constructions, and  a society of smaller more diminutive people which were probably the source of your stories about dwarves, elves, faeries, trolls and goblins. They use technology that you would consider to be akin to magic spells, hexes and alchemy / occult practice.

The same is true for this other empire. 

Only instead of planets that resembled a more Springlike earth, these planets and systems that they inhabit are very, very different in atmosphere, weather, lifeforms and in just about every criteria. You would have a difficult time recognizing the civilization for what it is because your biases are so profoundly in error.

I pictured (when this information was being conveyed) something on the order of  a “hot super-terran” to a sub-sized “Hot mini Neptunian”. That is the impression that I have. I guess that the planets would be from 5Me to 15Me (Mass of Earth where 1 Me = earth size) and all located in the “hot zone” of a parent star. All under a very dense and heavy atmosphere.

Here is a good chart of the characterization of the “recognized” world types that have viewed over the last few decades. The impression that I have is that the kinds of world that my Commander refers to sits in the top row between the “superterrans” and the “neptunians”.  Let’s give it an MM name; the “superterran-subneptunians”.

Further, in the interests of clarity, and (my personal joy in classification), lets use this accepted exo-planetary chart to help us…

And from the impression that I have, these planets are in the “Class T” range. Just for your interest and curiosity. Certainly this civilization would not seemingly be of any interest to contemporaneous humans.

[3] What is your procedure for domination?

I mean is it like Genghis Khan, or more like the American Empire? Or is it “hands off” and live and let live? This is a direct question. After all, The Domain is trying to control the “Master Universe”. So why not ask?

Question: When you take over an existing society or empire, what changes do you make, if any? Do you wipe them all out and destroy everything, or do you do something else? What is the procedure in the case of the “Old Empire”?

IS-BEs who enter this "Master Universe" that we created  must behave in certain ways that do not [1] harm the planets that they are on, [2] disrupt the ecosystem that we have created, [3] create hardship or distress to other IS-BEs.

Those societies that do so are corrected / adjusted / modified / controlled in whatever manner we deem appropriate.

In the case of the "Old Empire" there had to be a regression of technology, a correcting of society behaviors, and a change in the patterning of the incarnation process. These were done through a process of occupancy of the leadership, and then wholesale readjustments of the structure to approved archetypes for that selection of species and for that particular environments.

We avoid dangerous destruction of societies and cultures, but we do perform cultural amputations, social reconstruction, and personality readjustment. We have entire divisions / battalions / armies devoted to these efforts. Our end goal is to make the conquered empire a more stable place to exist in.

.No harm to the planets that they occupy or control.
.No disruption of the ecosystem of those planets and systems.
.No hardship, torture (for amusement), or distress to other IS-BEs.

[4] Is The Domain a “dying race”?

A number of MM commenters on the site and forum are repeating the idea that the “Greys are a dying race”. These comments come from people who I love and respect. Their thoughts and their opinions matter to me.

I have to listen to them. What they say; everything that they say has weight, meaning and importance.

When a three year old goes up to you and says “You have stinky-poo poo breath” you believe them. Right? You know that they are being honest with you. So when people suggest things to me and are trying to be open and honest with me, I want to “do my homework”.

And I don’t want to be the duped guy who is broke, penniless on a sidewalk while others drink their Starbucks coffee and snicker “I told you so.”

Seriously.

I’ve been fucked over way too many times not to sit up, take notice, and peer a little more “squint eyed” towards those that I seem to be so enraptured with. I mean, why not? A second or third, or fourth look is always good. As I have explained to my staff; “The more eyeballs that look at something, the easier it is to find mistakes.”

And if I am in error, what then?

After all, then what the fuck and I messing around with them then? Am I brainwashed? If The Domain is a dying race, and the Mantids are really the Angels that the Bible says, the possibility exists that maybe I am the one in error. Maybe I am the one who is wrong about everything. That maybe I am the fool for believing everything that I encounter.

So I asked them.

Question: Is The Domain a dying race?

No. Absolutely not. 

The Domain is a social structure of IS_BE entities that choose to spend the vast bulk of their time in the timeless state. This is different from the many, many IS-BE's that enjoy the "Master Universe" as physical entities in one degree or the other.

IS-BE's are without physical form, and live outside of time and space. All came into being trillions of years ago, and we will continue to live for trillions of years hence.

None of us "dies".

The Domain structure may or might not change during that period of time. However, the system in place; a merit driven system based upon the desires of the participants work well for the vast numbers of Domain membership. It has for trillions of years, and we clearly intend it to work for trillions of years in the future.

Any and all Domain members may easily obtain physical bodies to experience physical experiences at will. However, we are involved in some rather serious undertakings that involve moving the entire state of ALL-THERE-IS to BEYOND-THAT. 

To get to that state we need to "tame" the populated universe down to a state before we "buggered it up" back billions of years ago. this was a mistake that we inadvertently unleashed and created the fracturing and discordant social systems to develop as they have. This is discord, and it is not bettering any IS-BE. Just providing enjoyments and pleasures.

The IS-BE's that comprise The Domain are not dying.

The Domain itself; it's organizational structure and society is not dying either.

Those IS-BE's that desire to leave the Domain are welcome to do so and either set up their own societies, or adapt to other existing ones are welcome to do so. There is a small leakage of membership in this regard, however the egress tends to be small, short lived, and trivial. Once you have purpose, as The Domain clearly has, you will not be easily swayed by physical pleasures and the beauty of the physical environment.

Of course they would say this. But doubts still linger.

I have been duped and tricked so many times in my past. I just don’t think that I could take such a fundamental shock to my system. Remember people; I am fully committed.

You do know the difference between "committed" and being a participant?

In a plate of bacon and eggs, the chicken was a participant, but the pig was committed.

[5] Does The Domain possess physical societies on planets like the Earth or elsewhere?

Along with this idea that the Domain is a dying race is the idea that they have physical cities, physical societies and structures that are collapsing. This narrative can be found all over the internet. Which various sub-plots where they come to earth to cross-breed, or extract “precious bodily fluids” and so on and so forth to keep their species alive?

Let’s cut to the chase then.

Question: Does the Domain possess physical societies on planets like the Earth or elsewhere?

The Domain has structured environments. However they do not really resemble what your would consider to be societies. They lie outside of the physical time and space environment.

However, we do have communities that exist within the "Master Universe". Such as the bases here in "your" solar system. When we interact within these communities we utilize "doll bodies". You would consider these facilities to be barren and spartan. 

Never the less, the vast bulk of our time is spent in a non-physical state, with forays in and out of the non-physical worlds, the physical worlds and other universes as we see fit.

No. We do not have a society that resembles anything upon the earth, whether in the physical realm or the non-physical realm. You simply cannot compare what The Domain is to anything you know and understand.

[6] If The Domain is primarily part of the timeless “Master Universe” then why bother conquering any nations of it?

I am sorry guys. But it doesn’t make any sense to me. If The Domain exists outside of the physical portion of the “Master Universe”…

…then why is it so busy in capturing and absorbing the civilizations and societies in this universe? Hum?

Question: Why is a society (The Domain) who only visits the “Master Universe” as needed, so interested in conquering and controlling the societies that inhabit it?

"You got me there." (He actually transmitted this statement. Can you fucking believe it?)

We created the vast bulk of the "Master Universe". Over time we improved upon it, and created planets, lifeforms, societies and the environment that you see within it.

Other universes with other IS-BE's entered and merged with it over time.

These new ideas and thoughts and ways of doing things merged with ours and changed them. The "Master Universe" became a stew of all sorts of exciting changes, interesting possibilities and constructions.

All very good. All very exciting. All very wonderful.

But, along with that came negative behaviors, and negative structures and destructive systems that started to undone the good works that we started. 

These new system's, and many of the hybrid systems that developed afterwards started to run amok and started to unleash a torrent and cascade of changes that really damaged the universe. Indeed, entire civilizations were destroyed, hurt, and the IS-BEs deformed and altered into new undesirable forms.

This is not just catastrophic wars with gargantuan and colossal weapons of destruction, but the entire structure; the fabric of the universe started to be altered in really irreparable and dangerous ways. Think of a fine silk dress with a tear. OR maybe some pantyhose, if there is a snag, you must do something about it, or the entire article of clothing will be ruined beyond repair.

The Domain is tasked with preventing these "tears". Then "smoothing out the wrinkles" in the fabric of the universe. Finally with all the most worrisome attributes subdued, we can focus on the NEXT-BIG-THING.

[7] Are the Domain, or their craft from the future?

One of the on-going sub-plots in the entire grey extraterrestrial disinformation campaign is the idea that they are actually not extraterrestrials at all. But rather that they are humans from the future and they have come back to “warn us”, “alter history” or some other related purpose.

So, let’s ask them directly.

Are the Domain, or their craft, or their crews from the future; specifically the earth’s future?

The Domain exists in a timeless, dimensionless condition. It is part of he "Master Universe" but not of it. Because there are great misunderstandings what time actually is, it is nonsensical to claim that the Domain come from the future.

Many humans have trouble with this.

The easiest way to imagine what The Domain is, is to imagine a society of spirits. Each one has no body. Each one lives in a place without time. Each one goes about their own individual business with other spirits. This society created the place; this "Master Universe". And the spirits (IS-BE) visit it from time to time in groups and clusters. Always for a purpose. Always working toward a goal.

If you call these spirits "IS-BE". And, if you fully understand how the "Master Universe" differs from the "Physical Universe" (that is the MWI with world-lines) then you can see that the answer is not what you expect, but is actually clearer than what you would expect.

The Domain can enter the MWI in the "Reality Universe" at any point in "time". And thus we are "time travelers" in that sense. In a similar manner the IS-BE "spirits" can enter the "Master Universe" at any point in time. 

Like both universes, this ability to enter and leave at different time periods is "time travel".

However, the popular narrative that you are referring to is incorrect. The Domain are not evolved humans from the far-far future that have come back to the "past" to change things. That is absurd.

[8] Cats, humans and IS-BE’s

I have long wanted to write more information regarding cats, and felines. However I am limited as to until I have been contacting the Domain directly, I had to rely on the Mantids to provide me information.

  • ELF = MAJestic and Mantid Comm Link.
  • EBP = The Domain / Type-1 Grey Comm Link.

And the Mantids, well, they have been very unhelpful regarding felines. It’s not that they do not want to help, it’s that they cannot. Felines are not part of their charter and so they know very little about them.

So I have wanted to collect some data on felines from The Domain and see if the Commander can help me.

Question: There are many MM members who are cat lovers and who have close friends that are cats. Can you please provide insight on the IS-BE’s that become felines and their relationships with humans?

You guessed correctly. All living entities (as you call them) consist of shells within the MWI "Reality Universe". Some are (as you refer to them) "shadow people" and some are inhabited with a consciousness.

Felines follow the same general behavior rules as humans do. Except that felines are not inmates in the Prison Planet Complex. They can come and go in and out of the "reality universe" (MWI) and the "Master Universe" at will.

They never suffer amnesia or map out pre-birth world-line templates (sic.) for themselves.

Instead, they prefer to "latch onto" a friend / buddy / pal / companion that is "riding" / following / exploring the MWI "reality universe" and so attached, they experience the same kinds of ups and downs as the host human goes through.

Being a free IS-BE they can come and go at will. They can enter bodies at will. They can enter and leave a body at will. In many, many ways they are far, far freer than any inmate in the Prison Complex.

When a feline is sleeping or resting (they are two different states) the IS-BE consciousness segments and they are off traveling in other places doing other things. For many (felines) it is close to the physical reality, but moving about in the non-physical reality. You might refer to this as "feline lucid dreaming".

Cats can come and go as they please. So if there is a special bond between a human and a cat, all that is needed is for the cat (if it dies, for instance) to find a highest probability body for it to occupy that you will meet. And then your "feelings" or "intuition" or "gut feeling" will be drawn to it. And if you two get to meet, and stay together it is all good. The feline IS-BE will adapt to the physical limitations of the new inhabited body and that will result in some personality changes. But you two will be together.

If you two meet up, but something happens and you are not able to be together, the cat will try again. And again. And again. Each time in different bodies until you two are together again.

If you really want to speed up this process, all you need to do is focus your thoughts (through verbal affirmations) and it will manifest quickly.

In general, felines consider humans to be rather slow, retarded (but lovable) companions that can't hunt for shit. (!) They love being around humans, especially one that they have bonded with, and will try to find (if possible) other bodies to occupy that is of the same shape, color or some other attribute that might trigger the human to recognize that it is a "reincarnation" event.

But that is very difficult to trigger.

Most of the time, they select bodies that are available. And then try to emulate "attraction thoughts" to help cement a new bond between the human and the new cat body.This is why you might bond with a cat that "feels" close to you, but it will look different, act a little different, and behave a little differently than your former (but now dead) friend.

[9] Why won’t the Mantids discuss the feline and human relationship?

I am very curious about this issue. Obviously they know a lot, as human and feline interaction is common and an important part of human society. It also figures predominantly in the pre-birth world-line template generation. Why are the Mantids so reluctant to discuss feline to human interaction with me?

As you have surmised, the Mantids (sic.) are a hybrid-construct based on a local dominant earth-centrist body form. This "Old Empire" DNA and biological alteration was one that focused all their energies towards herding humans within the Prison Complex system. Very little thought was given towards outside or relationships, forms or shapes. The Mantids (sic.) are very human-centrist. (Includes the other dominant inmate forms; pigs, horses, dolphins, elephants, etc.)

Not feline.

The Mantids (sic.) possess a basic understanding of felines. They possess a basic understanding of soul and consciousness construction (sic.). They understand the basics of the human-feline dynamic. And that is the extent of their knowledge in this matter.

In general, the Mantids (sic.) are bred to be very focused on "helping humans" endure strife and then be rewarded afterwards. 

They are so focused on this aspect, that event though they have a very strong awareness of their own IS-BE state, they ignore that state in everything else. They are elitist in that way, and when they encounter a human, for example, that is aware they treat that person as a special oddity and follow very special protocols in how to interact with that person.

When they encounter a feline (or any other creature for that matter) that shows or indicates strong IS-BE non-amnesia characteristics they simply ignore it. They cannot understand it. Nor do they try.

In hindsight, I have absolutely zero memories, connections, feelings or associations with Mantids and any of my cats in any way, shape or form. Not even in my dreams!

[10] Trans-species migration of IS-BE’s

I often wonder why an IS-BE would go from one human life, into another and then again into yet another. Why always a human? I know from Dr. Newton that there is trans-species migration, but all of them seem to evolve into similar types of creatures.

My question is this; If an human dies, and is a pure IS-BE, could it not become a feline and then escape the entire Prison Planet system?

Physical bodes are not blobs of flesh. They are complicated mechanisms. Likewise, the non-physical bodies are not blobs of non-physical flesh. They are also complicated mechanisms. And the IS-BE that chooses to enter a specific body, must alter it's form / shape / composition / operation / energy / vibrations to do so.

Alteration of an IS-BE form is easy to do...

...if you are outside of the Prison Planet Complex. 

Unfortunately most humans are prevented from configuring their "stage upwards / higher form / above non-physical" bodies. This is a Mantid (sic.) directive. This is why inmates are quickly shuttled off to "Heaven". So they cannot shape change their "migration paths / attunement centers / organ clusters" to fit other forms.

Thus humans, and dogs, and elephants, and dolphins, and horses, and pigs  (and a few others) are prevented from migrating out of this Prison Complex environment. This is one of the layers of control.

However, IS-BE's that are not configured in their inmate form (inmate clothing such as humans in this Prison Planet) can naturally shape their "migration paths" to reconfigure to be a human, or a dog, or a feline.

Which is why you have felines entering and leaving the Prison Planet complex at will.

Further, cats (using felines as an example) can decide to enter a unmodified human body [a "shadow person" (sic.)] and inhabit it, free of the Prison Complex restrictions on IS-BE movement. And then leave at will.

In your case, your cat Heather (this is a cat that I owned when I lived in Indiana back in the late 1980's) is now your [redacted for very personal reasons]. This kind of hybrid movement of IS-BE into human bodies is illustrated in the movie "A dog's Purpose" (2017).

On a side note, if you haven’t watched either of these movies you must. The first “A Dog’s Journey” is a tale of reincarnation from a dog’s point of view. And the second “A Dog’s Purpose” talks about trans-species reincarnation. Both are very emotionally moving movies. Have tissue nearby.

[11] Why me?

I have been a little down on myself lately. We all have ups and downs. But sometimes I feel like I am a sucker; a fool to take on this responsibility. I have read some MM comments about those who wish to assist the Domain, but don’t want to have any further association with them. They argue that it is dangerous to trust those that … well, look at what The Domain has admitted to.

Why trust them, and as being so trusting, why was I selected, and why am I running MM instead of cavorting with pretty girls, gorging myself on delicious food, and quaffing down some fine red wine.

Question; Why me?

There is a great deal of angst and frustration in your life right now, but this is what you have agreed to endure in your pre-birth agreement. The [redacted].

I can tell you that things will become clearer over time, and that your work is significant on many levels and that you have changed others for the better. There's [redacted], and they will see their great works in [redacted].

When to start to compare yourself, and that is what you are doing now, it will only serve to cause distress. You can never be the illusions that others present. It is not in your makeup.

You are correct on many, many levels but are surrounded by others that do not posses your insights. You worry too much about [redacted] and part of the reason behind that is [redacted]. Remember what [redacted] therefore, when you start to notice the [redacted] you should [redacted].

[Redacted].

[Redacted].

We made you this way. It had to be this way.

Sorry about that guys. Too much personal stuff to the internet community. Nothing really important concerning you all has been redacted, it’s just that some things I want to keep private. You understand right?

[12] Why did you alter me?

He made some statements about my alterations in all of my bodies (physical and non-physical, etc) and that got me thinking.

We needed to alter you to carry out your mission parameters. This included both your physical and non-physical bodies. When we installed the EBP (sic) we changed things. 

You had diseases inside your body that we removed. You know which ones. (Yes, I do, but I only suspected the "hidden time-bombs".) You had trackers in your body that we removed. You had  "holes" in your make up that we filled in. You had damage to your structure that needed to be repaired.

Your life is what it is today because of the changes that we made, as well as your ability to direct and focus your thoughts so that your consciousness can engage in directed target assignments.

What I did not include in the above dialog is a very detailed piece on how pre-birth world-line templates can have areas of “DO NOT CHANGE” established in them. GuyFromAfrica knows what I am talking about, and these had to be removed.

Of course, he did not use my terminology. But that is what he was talking about.

[13] What will happen to me after I die?

I am very selfish. I want to know. I really want to know if I will die and then kind of waft around like some kind of disheveled spirit in the wind, while the world changes but I just remain a specter.

You will not be discarded. That is your fear, no?

You have a role, and we are cultivating and rehabilitating your IS-BE body to better adapt to the changes that lie outside of the Prison Planet Environment. We picture a great role for you, and a rewarding and personally significant role for you after your physical death.

Your physical death means nothing as your non-physical being will still be interacting with us long, long after your body decays.

You will continue to help others. You will continue to have an interesting, colorful, and adventuresome life, only that it would involve a greater part of you and you will experience the great satisfaction of helping others. This is just the first beginnings my friend. Do not fear.

He did not promise me any kind of great military post, rank or mission / position. He simply promised me a spot in the society where I will have a meaningful and purposeful life. And that sounds good to me. Thank you.

[14] Am I a former member of The Domain’s “Lost Battalion”?

I don’t think that I am. But, you know, I figure, why not ask?

No. You are not.

[15] The idea that I am Mades Escaplion is repulsive to me. I ask again. It is who I am?

I just want a double confirmation. That’s all.

(Being kind.) It is a role and a personality that you had during a phase in your soul experience track. You will note that this experience has been useful to us in unraveling the entire network of traps and snares that exist in the Prison Complex. You serve a great role and hold great purpose. Do not be discouraged.

In truth, the image that you hold of Mades Escaplion is wrong. He was a functionary. He was a minister. He held an administration role. He was neither cruel nor evil. He was a "cog in the machine".

Your role was part ceremonial, and part functionally administrative. You spent much of your time in meetings (or the equivalent of) and in discussions with the various architects of the on-going array of systems that were implemented one on top of the other.

So you need not fear. You were not repulsive nor evil. You were just an entity doing it's job. You were the perfect little civil servant. You were uninspired, did what you were told, and had no desires to "buck the system".

When we (The Domain) destroyed the remains of the "Old Empire" space fleet in the region you disappeared. We tracked you down by personality signature (sic.) We (at the time we found you) were working with the Mantids (sic.) and made arrangements to set you on this life path that you have now.

It has been beneficial for all.

[16] (Last minute addon) Who are you, and what is my role?

The following is / was a request for clarity on my role in this “thing” with The Domain and who I am “talking to”. I just want to know “pecking order” on a pyramidal organization structure. Funny thing is that I did not need to verbalize it, but I formed the thoughts and boom! the answer materialized.

It makes me wonder if this was an implanted question.

I am "the unit Commander" for all Domain operations in this region of geographical space. 

You (referring to myself) are my I/O. You are my direct “hands / fingers /sensory inputs / ears / senses". You have a critical role. Without you, I am unable to perceive the contemporaneous events going on in the earth environment.

There are thousands of implanted individuals (sic.). Only a handful were carefully vetted. You are one of the "special" ones. You have provided the most useful information and sensory experiences for us. You are continuing in other equally important roles right now. Your impressions of the world around you establishes the groundwork / foundation for our implementation of the planetary changes that will / have been / going to be established in the future.

Most of what you do or see are bland in your eyes but are crucial and significant in ours. It is a pleasure to work with you sir!

Conclusion

This is just some personal questions that I have asked using my EBP. I’ve had these things in my head for decades, but only recently realized that two-way communication could be achieved with them.

There are numerous MM readers and commenters that had a role in this selection of questions and all in all, it was a big positive. So thank you for all of your nudges, and questions and concerns.

In the future, I will open up the EBP for more questions and you all can ask some more questions. This was just my own personal ones, and I must apologize if my questions were banal or boring.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…

The Domain

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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LD assignment and task results – October 2021 – Backdoors to the Old Empire Prison Complex

In early October 2021, I established a task request asking for those versed in LD and other skills to investigate whether or not there were any “backdoors” or other ways in and out of the “Old Empire” “Prison Complex” that we are all (unfortunately) part of. By the second week of October the results began to pour in.

This is a posting of the results.

Volunteers

I asked in this post if any MM readership would be interested in joining The Domain to help rescue their “Lost Battalion”.

The response was overwhelmingly positive.

And then within a few days after the readership started adding affirmations and confirmations that they wish to help The Domain, be a Rufus, and do whatever they can contribute, many many MANY of them started writing to me privately.

They were (for the most part) terrified.

Within hours or days of making a verbal affirmation that they indeed wanted to assist The Domain, all of them, every single one of them, experience sleep paralysis and horrible fears and manifestations. All of which is very similar to “abduction events”.

That they were “hijacked” in their dream state and all sorts of operations and procedures occurred. For them, it was truly frightening.

However, I said then, and I will say now…

  • In the non-physical reality, thoughts take on tangible form.
  • Fears are used to control you.
  • So when you experience any type of help, your fear-defenses (part of the “Old Empire” programming), will try to make you fight and prevent the assistance.

So keep in mind…

  • To help The Domain, certain retardations and alterations to your inmate human body must be undone.
  • This requires an operation; a procedure.
  • The Domain will undo those alterations when you join in the effort. They will conduct an operation and perform a procedure to remove those “chains” and “blocks” that you have shackled to your non-physical body.
  • Do not fear it. You NEED to have it done, whether you want to help the Domain or not.
  • It is a medical procedure.

Many people have commented on this event as a “dream”, or a “Join the Domain related dream”.

Perhaps one of the best explanations of what goes on is from GuyFromAfrica…

GuyFromAfrica comments

So I got the “Join the Domain Dream”.

I could “see” the Type-1. He was somewhere seated.

Then There was MM. I guess as an intermediary.

They didn’t speak literally but I could hear their voice and understand what they were saying. He said (The Type-1) that I would have to make a decision and because they knew who I was (my attributes, character and more) that I was the only one who could do it and see it to the end.

I also [1] got the paralysis and I literally could not move in the dream. someone had to drag me out. ( In the physical too.) Damn weird man. I just laid on the bed half asleep unable to move.

All this happened after I decided to join the domain but coz am still on my pause I had to wait till at least next month. (I think it was due to my thoughts.) [2]

They have [3] helped in suppressing somethings that were really disturbing that’s what they said and showed me. (Actually true. Never gonna go back.)

I just hope that shit doesn’t go down. NO FEAR. JUST CONCERNED. [4]

MM Comments on GuyFromAfrica

[1] This is what really freaks people out. Don’t be afraid. This is necessary. Your consciousness must be removed from your physical and non-physical bodies for the operation to occur.

[2] You do not have to be in a campaign or out of it to have this happen. The moment you “think” and make up your mind to help The Domain, you telegraph a message to them. They monitor all activity on MM. You all should be well aware of this.

[3] One of the things that they will do, provided that you are not too freaked out and trembling in fear or anger, will show you why they are doing it, and how it will personally benefit you. In the case of GuyFromAfrica, they showed him the impediments from his life that they are removing.

[4] He was able to discuss this clearly simply because he held his fear in check. Everyone, GuyFromAfrica is certainly a leader in this. Learn from him.

Freaking out folk

So many dear MM readers have been completely freaked out with the speed, and the unexpectedness of having themselves paralyzed and filled with their worst fears. Images of harm, terrible things, violence to their children were (are) commonplace. It’s really terrible fears. Your worst fears. Everything thrown at you to freak you our royally.

It’s all part of the “Old Empire” programming.

As an inmate you are not permitted to change your physical and non-physical bodies. You are inmates. These changes will permit you to “go through” the fence. These changes will allow changes to your world-line templates. These changes will seriously and substantially reduce the conflict and turmoil in your life.

Which is why the “Old Empire” put up these “trigger blocks” to force you to go primal, filled with fear, and resist changes to your physical and non-physical bodies.

If you make a commitment to be a Rufus and assist The Domain in what ever capacity that your have (and most people have absolutely no idea of their abilities), the Domain will undo your chains.

They will “change your out of the inmate uniform”. They will give you an “access pass” to “go through the fence”. They will scrub tracking information, and erase pre-life behavior settings that you have lived with.

It’s all so frightening.

But ah, so exciting.

If you haven’t committed, but want to, and you are sincere and serious. it will be done. Just remember not to freak out. The fears are all part of “Old Empire” programming. They need to be culled and removed. That’s your job to keep those fears of yours in check.

The Task at hand

The specific task call out was posted in THIS ARTICLE.

This is what I asked for…

To be brutally honest, this is an OFFICIAL REQUEST for a volunteer. It is direct request via EBP from The Domain.

As I understand it, it is only something that can be done by an inmate with a strong ability to this end. And that this specific type of mission WILL encounter unknowns and if the person encounters any kinds of dangers, they are to retreat and regroup.

It’s just a “fact finding” mission.

And, for what ever it is worth, they have certain people in mind for this action, and consider them to be very important and valuable assets that must be protected at all costs. (I am to repeat and underline this last sentence.) They are very important and must be protected at all costs.

Background – Backdoors

I argued that something must have happened since the “Old Empire” collapsed. Then with the battles and destruction within this solar system, obviously there was a corruption of the (formerly pristine) Prison Complex.

  • The Prison Administration “bailed out”, and left.
  • The Prison System has been taken over, and corrupted by very malevolent entities.

It seems to me that there MUST be some kind of “backdoor” that enables these self-serving for-profit entities to corrupt the Prison System for their own purposes.

In cybersecurity, a backdoor is anything that can allow an outside user into your device without your knowledge or permission. Backdoors can be installed in two different parts of your system:

Hardware/firmware. Physical alterations that provide remote access to your device.

Software. Malware files that hide their tracks so your operating system doesn’t know that another user is accessing your device.

A backdoor can be installed by software and hardware developers for remote tech support purposes, but in most cases, backdoors are installed either by cybercriminals or intrusive governments (like the United States) to help them gain access to a device, a network, or a software application.

Any malware that provides hackers access to your device can be considered a backdoor — this includes rootkits, trojans, spyware, cryptojackers, keyloggers, worms, and even ransomware.

If there is a “backdoor”, then we can come to the conclusion that the “backdoor” was put there intentionally by one or more of…

  • The architects  of the “Prison Complex”.
  • The administration of the “Prison Complex”.
  • A technologically advanced society (not the “Old Empire”) that exploited the prison system intentionally.
  • Some kind of dimensional / universe malware.

Background – The advantages of LD talent

Those that have the important ability to LD (Lucid Dream) are in a unique position to reconnoiter towards this end.

It would be a reconnaissance mission.

In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. 

Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmishers, long-range reconnaissance patrol, U.S. Army Rangers, cavalry scouts, or military intelligence specialists), ships or submarines, manned or unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, satellites, or by setting up observation posts. 

Espionage is usually considered to be different from reconnaissance, as it is performed by non-uniformed personnel operating behind enemy lines.

-Wikipedia

And if you want to be specific, it is purely espionage. As the LD asset is an inmate in general population.

I can tell you that doing so is very important, and would be greatly appreciated by The Domain.  Though, I must caution everyone that LD travel is not to be taken lightly. Dangers abound. I also do not know what the LD asset would discover, or what surprises await them. But I am ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that they would like some talented assets to volunteer for this task.

To be brutally honest, this is an OFFICIAL REQUEST for a volunteer. It is direct request via EBP from The Domain.

As I understand it, it is only something that can be done by an inmate with a strong ability to this end. And that this specific type of mission WILL encounter unknowns and if the person encounters any kinds of dangers, they are to retreat and regroup.

It’s just a “fact finding” mission.

And, for what ever it is worth, they have certain people in mind for this action, and consider them to be very important and valuable assets that must be protected at all costs. (I am to repeat and underline this last sentence.) They are very important and must be protected at all costs.

Background – Mission parameters

For starters…

  • This is a volunteer activity, and there is no dishonor in refusal.

And then,

  • You absolutely not reveal who you are or what you are doing.
  • You must not engage any subject entities that you encounter. You observe.

The specific tasks are…

  • You must identify [1] if there are others, who are not part of the “old empire” prison complex, that are involved in selection of pre-birth world-line template selection and layout.
  • You must identify [2] if there are others, who are not part of the “old empire” prison complex, that are using the collected memories or records of memories of other humans for anything other than the original stated purposes.

Reporting and dissemination.

  • No matter what your opinions are, you must report what you experience.
  • You are to report your findings, no matter how disjointed or confused, and include your associations and thoughts and ideas regarding them. (Some results might be disturbing or distasteful, but you must report everything.)
  • MM will publish your findings.

Finally,

  • You must vocalize permissions to allow The Domain to observe your operations. You may place restrictions on how they observe and time limitations or windows if that is your desire.

Please kindly know and realize that possession of a EBP would “blow your cover” and thus it is impossible for you to be implanted at this time for this role. Thus this request follows this procedural venue. Finally, there is no dishonor in refusal. The Domain realizes just how seriously dangerous this mission activity is.

Collection of the data

Everyone is different. We all have different abilities and different strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, our experiences, whether in dreams, LD, or any other format are very personal things.

For instance, when I get messages and comm in my channels in either the ELF or EBP implants the results are very difficult to explain. Most especially how I discern between a message and my own internal thoughts, and external clutter. It’s not easy and takes practice, and when I try to explain it just opens up an entire long train of question after question. The bottom line is you either KNOW that you experienced X, or your BELIEVE you experienced X, or you SUSPECT you experience X.

Each elemental wording has a different degree of validity.

Each elemental wording has a different degree of validity.

As of late, I have been mercifully been granted physical confirmation “pings” to confirm that I am not letting my imagination get the better of me, but this is not always possible with others.

For me, the “pings” are a rush of endorphins, a physical reaction to my body while simultaneously obtaining a brief message confirmation.

Most people have some “keys” of understanding that will allow them to unlock what they experience. And with this in mind, let’s look at this first report. Here, the tasked agent had a very active dream of significance, and it is mighty confusing…

Task Results – fifth.eschaton

Oct 8th (Directly after reading the Task callout article)

Oh shit. I accidentally saw behind the curtain.

I walked in on an intimate celebrity workshop class led by… you guessed it… Chuck Norris!?

Chuck Norris

Joe Rogan was there too.

Joe Rogan

I understood (in a meta-dream analysis sense) that these actors were not specifically important or accurate. They were stand-ins for people of power gaining insights from older mentors.

  • Joe Rogan represented XXXXXXX
  • Chuck Norris represented YYYYYYYY

There were barrels on the stage and participants had to strip naked, get in the barrel, and pee on each other. The point of the ritual was humiliation.

  • A ritual involving humiliation.

Utterly bizarre… I didn’t want to watch but I was told, in no uncertain terms, “THAT’S THE POINT.” Now you’ll remember. They were utterly beyond the pale, but that’s the programmable zone.

  • Humiliation is the point.

Any inputs and suggestions from Chuck (bless his soul) were immediately followed, because the decency line had already been crossed.

  • Once the person completes the humiliation they are listened to / respected.

They were being programmed with a trauma feedback loop. “We’re doing it, we’ve done it, and now we can do anything.”

  • The humiliation sequence is a purging experience to create a new kind of person.

Then, a blonde woman joined the scene. She got in a barrel too, and I got the impression that it was completely upsetting the programming. This is when I saw them. Men were standing behind a red curtain off to the side where I hadn’t noticed.

  • A different kind of entity enters the programming environment and upsets the entire process.

Joe, in his programmable state, was beginning to lose his compliance. The woman was totally upsetting the psychodynamic balance in the room.

  • Those that had previously accepted the programming now question it.

She said, “My favorite thing in the world is baking pain au chocolat.” The incredibly strange juxtaposition of this statement in a room full of naked men peeing on each other was…. odd.

(I'm so sorry forum readers. Nothing about this was sexual, and couldn't be further from my idea of a fantasy. I'm just presenting my dream as-is. Hope someone has a laugh at least.)

It was a trigger phrase and Joe snapped out of it.

  • A trigger phrase or event occurred and the participants were released from their programming.

Programmers are pissed. I’m being ejected.

  • The Programmers are upset and the observer is ejected.

Woke up with incredible back pain. Can’t turn my head all day. I have lasting impressions of similarities to L. Ron Hubbard and Tom Cruise. There’s a significant link between his religion and the programming of celebrities.

I also realized that the men behind the red curtain were like a mix of metaphors from Twin Peaks and Wizard of Oz.

Scene of the “man behind the curtain” in the movie “The Wizard of Oz”.

Takeaways:

  • Investigate L. Ron Hubbard and what he knew.
  • Investigate Scientology as it relates to the prison system.
  • Investigate actors as favored “clients.”
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger was clear in my mind (Sorry, I personally like the dude).
  • I’m so sorry – just following orders:
"You are to report your findings, no matter how disjointed or confused, and include your associations and thoughts and ideas regarding them. (Some results might be disturbing or distasteful, but you must report everything.)"

Recon Mission Undertaken at the Request of the Domain Commander: The Volcanic Prison

Notes; 

DM authorized involvement with The Domain, and specifically approved of them observing his activities and helping them. 

The Domain altered his non-physical body and he experienced all the paralysis that I have written about above. 

When he provided this information to me, I was a little taken back that the Domain didn't witness the events themselves, and instead relies on MM here to transcribe and translate for them. It's a mystery to me. But apparently the transcription is very important for them to use the information. 

Never the less, the feeling that I get is that these espionage activities are something that must be taken very carefully and that there must be absolutely no association with The Domain in so conducting them.

In the report below, I have taken the time to parse every nugget of information that DM has provided. I only hope that it serves some benefit.

By [Daegonmagus] compiled 10OCT21.

Introduction:

I think I have something for the Domain Commander. I wasn’t lucid but I am fairly certain this was a good intel hit; though it did come after deliberately trying to enter a lucid state. I have been here before, several times, I am certain of it.

Interested in hearing yours and the Commander’s opinion. There is some concerning things in it regards to rape camps, not sure if you want to delete this part before publishing; it is entirely up to you. I am curious to know if the name I got rings any bells.

Summary:

I come to on some volcanic island. I am not lucid, but operating on “autopilot”.

Not a Lucid Dream. But is a "special" dream. Knowing what I know of DM, I would classify this event as "high quality" Intel.

I have been here before.

This location is one that is familiar to him. in either dreams, LD , memories or all of the above.

A prison has been built into the crater. There are hundreds of people being kept here against their will. These are people’s energetic bodies. I recognize some of them from school.

It is a prison. It is in a confined area.

Many people are in the prison against their will; means that they were there either through [1] a corrupted judicial system, [2] got there by bypassing a legal system, or [3] were born into it without any say in the matter.

In prison, there are many people who believe that they goat a bad deal. But there is a world of difference between...

[A] I was committing crimes, but you know the punishment was way, way beyond what I deserved. It's unfair. Its unjust.

And...

[B] I didn't commit any crimes at all. I was "railroaded" by a corrupt system, and now "blackballed" for life.

The impression that I get from DM is that many of the inmates fell under category "B".

I materialize here.

Other people can’t phase in and out of this place like I do.

DM describes that he has a special affinity for this "place", and special abilities to enter and leave at will.

To begin with, I blend in with the crowd and pretend to be a guard. This gives me the ability to tour some parts of this prison system. I have definitely been here many times before…

This is a familiar place to DM, and perhaps had other missions / adventures associated with it. It is not new to him.

… and there is something very strange going on, sort of like a breakout or a riot.

As he enters it, this time, he notices something unusual and strange going on. To him it appears to be a breakout or a riot. Both of these events describe a situation where the inmates override the protection rules and systems. And in both situations, it is the corrections officers tend to be ill prepared and typically follow procedures and retreat while awaiting backup.

The cells are cut into the rim of the crater, all around it.

I believe this might be a reality brainwashing facility.

This is an important comment. DM suggests that the purpose of this particular structural object / place is a "brainwashing" facility. Which would imply that it is where the amnesia (that we all unfortunately live with) takes place.

The prison complex goes inside the crater, like a good deal of rock has been carved out and the network extends into this rock and underground.

There are green trees inside the crater; it actually looks like a decent island paradise apart from the prison.

The physical details can represent things or not. But what I take from this is that this is a singular place. Like a zit on your face, or a wart on your arm, or a volcano in the middle of the ocean, or an island. It is a singular place.

He also says that it appears to be a nice place. Like a calm island, or a well taken cared for campus, or a well up-kept neighborhood.

So I am in this room pretending to be one of the guards and the riot breaks out.

The mind creates the visualization. The information is transferred.

I take the opportunity to go for a bit of tour while the rest of the guards are preoccupied.

DM conducts his espionage activities when he has the opportunity to do so.

I penetrate deep into the network; this thing goes several stories beneath the bottom of the crater.

DM explores deep into the complex. He recognizes that it is an extensive facility and goes very, very deep. It must be enormous.

It would be ideal if he could have somehow explored the administration and see what he might discern. However, this kind of exploration is fraught with danger. So it might not be a good thing to do during this particular event.

He goes into the lowest levels of the facility trying to find the darkest and deepest secrets.

These subterranean rooms are where they do all the bad shit, torture, reality brainwashing, breeding programs etc whatever it is this island is being used for.

DM finds the ugly activities, etc. All of it is not pleasant.

I have memories of being down here in a similar riot.

Curious statement. I get the impression that these "riots" have been an on-going thing over the many years.

Something happens – I don’t know what exactly – but the volcano is now about to erupt.

Referring specifically to this particular event, it appears that the build-up is reaching a critical juncture; an inflection point of substantive change. Like a volcano.

I decide to head back to surface.

I come across several panicked guards – helmets covering their faces, and khaki colored coveralls, fairly short maybe 5ish feet tall, who are shocked to see me.

Everything is chaos; the six or so guards are trying to evacuate.

This is a representative scene. There is a panic in the corrections officer cadre. There is chaos. And the corrections officers are trying to retreat and disengage.

These guards try to apprehend me, drawing these guns that shoot photon beams or something similar but I annihilate them with a flick of my hand – I am not lucid, but this is a left over reaction from my lucidity expeditions. It is a natural reaction that happens without me even thinking of it when I am threatened.

Thoughts are powerful. Whether in LD state or in dreams. If you believe that you can do something, the chances are that you actually can.

The guards disappear, and I make it to the surface.

One of the prisoners asks me for help, so I decide to help them figuring I can get more information on who is in charge of the place.

It's a scene from one of the Mission Impossible movies, where the one agent is trying to escape from a Russian Prison. Never the less, the root breakdown is that DM assisted in the breakout, and was led on how to make it happen by another inmate.

Within minutes everyone is freed from their cells.

I am now leading a group of about 20 to 30 of these people through these metal lined rooms, over scaffolding, and bitumised pathways that wrap up the edge of the crater.

DM is leading a cluster, or a group of inmates, towards freedom. Not all of them. Just a group of the ones associated with the particular individual that he helped.

They are are going upward Z-axis.

Downward Z-axis is the horrible torture pits and structures.

For some reason they think getting to the top will solve their problems; I don’t tell them the only way out is through portals they don’t have access to.

I have a vague recollection of coming here via one.

This is important. Everyone believes that the way out; the exit is the opposite of the depths of the structure. But they are wrong. The exit is not the opposite of the obvious. It is something else.

A few more guards appear here and there, but I extinguish them like the others.

Soon it is just me and the prisoners, everyone else has left.

The volcano is raging; there is a definite time constraint we are working against.

It is a race against time.  To leave now is preferable than to wait until the entire system collapses.

Scene from Joe vs. the Volcano.

Regardless, we stop for a breather about half way in a sort of courtyard that has been built upon the scaffolding and under overhanging rock.

There is a woman I know her from school as being Tegan.

One of the guys makes a snide remark about her having sex with someone – possibly him -, basically calling her a slut. I roll my eyes; this is the last shit we need. I feel like punching this guy in the face. It was typical bullshit school children politics.

Tegan is clearly upset and distressed and tries to explain there was a different side of the story and she didn’t want to go into it right then and there, but this guy persists. Tegan eventually ends up replying saying it was not consensual and this guy had raped her. The one calling her a slut goes red, now there is a fucking fight amongst the inmates. Great.

Control mechanisms. "Old Empire" utilizes fear, emotion, anger to side-track inmates and delay them into a maze of other issues instead of focusing on what is directly important. (This must be a characteristic of inhabiting a human body.)

I am angered, but some how keep my composure – was this a trick to turn my attention away from what I was here for?

Yes. It was.

Did Tegan mean this took place at school, or in this prison? I got the impression she meant it was in the prison. I have knowledge of other “rape camps” in these non physical planes, where men are doped with a drug that affects their conscious before being hypnotised to rape women against their will, though that knowledge is not based on my own experiences.

This is a side issue that we might explore in the future.

Until now I have no memory of ever being in one.

It’s an argument I really don’t want to get involved in so I walk off and leave the others fighting.

I remember I am supposed to be finding someone who can tell me who is in charge of this place.

This is the mission and I am glad the DM is keeping focus.

I come back and find an older woman.

Her face is really distinct, very monkey like, old, withered, and dark tanned. If I had to guess, I would say she was from a southern American tribe of some sort.

She had a really long face, her chin was very angled and she had raised cheekbones. She was wearing what appeared to be a very grubby and ripped shirt – you could see one of her breasts poking through it and a definite tribal skirt.

She was the “mother” of the place; you could tell by the way everyone looked up to her and the younger girls that looked after her fragile body; helping her get up and helping her walk etc.

DM is directed to the entity that is in charge of this amnesia facility. Aside from the appearance, it is an old entity that is very knowledgeable and has been involved in this system for many, many years.

It is not clear if she is a revered inmate, or an administrator. My guess is that she is an inmate.

She started telling me a story – I cant quite remember the details of it, maybe it was how she got captured I don’t know – but I remember it finished with her trying to pronounce a name that she couldn’t properly pronounce.

She is from the earliest days of the first group of inmates to the facility. She has been here in the prison facility the longest.

She said the name was like sasquatch but with a “D” sound at the start and “ahuwy” or “ahuty” at the end Dasquachahuwy Dasquachahuty or something.

This name was in relation to the main antagonist in her story.

I got the impression it was the same one in charge of the volcano facility.

The impression is that the name of the administrator fo the amnesia machinery facility goes by the name Dasquachahuty.

Da-squach-ah-uty

I wondered if she meant Thoth, whose other name is Tahuty.

The eruption all of sudden got much worse. The people seemed to remember what was going on, stopped fighting and started panicking, looking to me for help.

I apologized, telling them I had to leave. Shortly thereafter I woke up.

My previous memories of this place:

Some background information.

I have a memory of coming here and having to infiltrate it via the top of the volcano.

There is some kind of rappelling system that takes you to the top of the rock.

Suggestive of others that have tried to manually infiltrate the facility.

It is a mountain of sorts that is very barren and of a black rock that stretches for miles in every direction.

It is very similar to Mordor out of the Lord of the Rings movies.

The trees don’t become apparent until you get to closer to the crater.

It is very, very large.

At the top of the crater, in this particular experience, it is heavily guarded and there is some sort of machinery littered about; it feels very similar to a mine site.

Heavily guarded is indicative of prior incursions being monitored, noted and the area reinforced with guards and corrections officers.

I remember watching a line of people being marched down from the rappelling system into the crater by the guards in a single file. The diameter of the crater is several kilometres across.

It is a big facility, and there is a manual entrance-way. Inmates and others can enter via this methodology rather than just using a portal.

I can’t remember if it was this experience or another one, but I have also explored the same subterranean network before.

There is a lift that takes you most of the way down.

Intel.

You come out in what appears to be a natural lava tube/ cave tunnel. There are concrete steps and a concrete pathway that are built into the ground to make walking around easier.

There are a myriad of steel doors several feet thick that slide open from the middle.

I am fairly certain at the end of this tunnel is a stargate like portal – different to the ones I used to gain access which are spherical and summoned through my own mind.

I believe this is how proper access to this place is gained.

This is serious Intel.

In this past experience I am headed towards this portal, after a similar riot breaks out.

Another recent dream…

I also recently had another dream which I believe is connected to an area close to this place that I think is relevant.

In this dream weird things were going on – I cannot adequately describe it but these weird things are usually a tell for me that I am not having a standard dream.

I was in a train/ mono rail type carriage that would snake around this island, but it would do so by going in and out of different non physical planes.

So in the span of what equated to about 500 meters of train track, you’d go through 5 or 6 different planes.

This suggests ...

[1] A manual "rappelling from the top" access method.
[2] A portal that is special and designed specially. (Perhaps the egress portion of the "tunnel of light".)
[3] This multi-portal dimensional "train". Perhaps this is the "egress portion of the tunnel of light".

As well as...

[5] The portal technique DM has been using now and previously.

I remember talking to someone “important” on this train.

They were talking very specifically about when the “simulation is turned off and what to expect”; everyone on earth would be given a special  “document” that would brief them on the next part of the operation.

I could not tell if this was a good or bad thing.

From my particular vantage point I could see the volcano Island in the background separated by a few kilometers of water. There seemed to be some sort of glass like structure erected around it which I believe was used for cloaking purposes. This glass structure consisted of many rectangular panels that had been arranged at oblique angles to each other. It could very well have been an entirely separate building at the edge of the island.

Sort of like the island in the movie "Free Guy" eh?

Scene from “Free Guy”. The area shielded from view.

Conclusions

Breaking down as follows…

We see that DM has observed the “amnesia complex”.

  • There are four entrances that DM identified.
  • One of which is probably the egress section from the “Tunnel of Light”.
  •  DM met one of the first people who be imprisoned at the facility.
  • She game him a “key”; a “name”, or a “clue”.
  • This “key” is Da-squach-ah-uty.
  • The fact that there is a torture area in the deepest levels of the facility suggests either…
    • That there is a “Hell” or “Pugatory” awaiting certain visitors through the egress portal. This is a planned portion of the entire prison reincarnation system.
    • Or, the deeper levels were “add ons” to the complex at a later time, implying that others have taken the system and modified it for their own personal amusements.
  • This area is still functioning. However, it is having operational problems.
  • The operational problems could be catastrophic.
  • The corrections officers are on station, but the administration functions seem to be “off line” or “elsewhere”.

 fifth.eschaton related comments

  • Joe Rogan represented XXXXXXX
  • Chuck Norris represented YYYYYYYY
  • A ritual involving humiliation.
  • Humiliation is the point.
  • Once the person completes the humiliation they are listened to / respected.
  • The humiliation sequence is a purging experience to create a new kind of person.
  • A different kind of entity enters the programming environment and upsets the entire process.
  • Those that had previously accepted the programming now question it.
  • A trigger phrase or event occurred and the participants were released from their programming.
  • The Programmers are upset and the observer is ejected.

As I read this, it appears that the Prison system has become some kind of “system of change” of the entities. The inmates accept the changes and go along with the changes.

Then a new entity enters the picture. This is unexpected and upsets the previous status quo. They change everything. An event or trigger phrase occurs and the programming is interrupted.

Those that control the programming are angry and eject the observer.

Combined comparisons

Both Intel suggest that there is a long established system. That it is undergoing change due to an interruption. The purpose of this system is established as part of the “Prison Complex” methodology of Punishment/reward.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…

The Domain

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
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Task callout related to the “Old Empire”, the “Prison Complex”, and the behaviors of evil, greedy and selfish individuals.

One thing that I have learned over the decades was the interpretation of  signals from the EBP and ELF constellation. While I am functionally retired from MAJestic, The Domain considers me a forever active asset and I pretty much get a near constant stream of sensory input or data. While there are special events like when I was able to open up dedicated channels to the Commander, most of the signals a “quieter”, not so assaultive on my personal sensibilities.

These “softer” and “quieter” signals are in three “packets” or “groups”.

And I have organized these “groups” into projects, and thus, I have a number of on-going “themes” or projects that I am (supposed) to be working on, I have a regular life and things have to go at my pace. I am a human, not a machine. Anyways, the projects that I am going to launch consist of the following…

  • An article on possible “back doors” to the ‘Prison Planet” established by the “Old Empire”. (That is this article. As well as the request at the end of it.)
  • A series of articles that consist of plans to create a “wish machine” that will beam signals to your mind and greatly accelerate the manifestation of affirmation prayer campaigns. (Basic electrical design engineering based upon some existing “mind control” patents.)
  • A fabrication of the above machine for sale on this MM site. (I’ll design it, I’ll make it. I’ll sell it.) Maybe I will be able to sell three or four units. LOL!

Personally, I am a bit nervous of the creation of a “wish machine”. As it could be dangerous in the “wrong hands” and be used to affect the thinking of others. As long as it is just provided here on this site, and the vast majority of the MM readership are STO sentience, I feel relatively comfortable that it will not be used for ill or selfish intent.

Let’s start with this Article – Profiting from the Prison Planet system

Given the nature of the “Old Empire” as described in “Alien Interview”, it seems obvious that there would be entities / individuals there who would have tried to profit from the “Prison Complex” system. Just like there are many, many people who are profiting from the various prison complexes in the United States today.

For instance,  in the American prison system, you have wealthy oligarchs that profit from…

  • Being the sole supplier for commissary supplies.
  • Corrections officers stealing supplies, using trucks for personal use etc.
  • Corrections officers supplying contraband goods to the inmates.
  • Free labor at work-shops and factories.
  • Free labor by the Hard Labor Squads.

And so on and so forth.

We know, from “Alien Interview”, that the “Old Empire” was corrupt and practiced cannibalism, and held “gladiator style” sports. It would not be unreasonable to expect that some of these attributes of “pleasures” could somehow be used in part of the massive “Prison Complex”.

Granted that this is a very large kind of prison and it has a completely unique system, I would have to argue that the systems used to profit from this “Prison Complex” would somehow revolve around the torturing and amusement of the inmates, or in the selling of “vacation packages” to wealthy individuals.

Trigger article

This train of thought was inspired by an MM reader who submitted this following article for perusal. Key trigger phrases are in BLUE.

From HERE.

Some of you may be familiar with the interview I conducted with a man I met who experienced a Demiurge during his near death experience.

Here is some very interesting feedback I received from a woman who also had a near death experience. She claims to be able to access the akashic records and verifies what he is saying. This is from the email I received on December 16, 2017:

"Dear Mr. Bush, 

Good day!

Just this morning, whilst seeking an IANDS group which might meet closer to me than Culver City, CA.I happened upon your Interview.

I see you have a website: Tricked By The Light.  I have not read it as yet.

Although I concur!  I have been putting up installments of my most unusual phalanx of paranormal and hideous experiences on Wattpad - just to leave some sort of record, in case I wound up "disappeared."

Indeed, my hard drive was stolen - and once my friend's son gave me a laptop and downloaded the contents of an external hard drive I had hidden behind my bookcase - (unnoticed by the thieves), said laptop went Kerplooey.    So my friend's son worked for weeks to salvage the contents of my original desktop and did so, most admirably.

The only other stories I have read which in many ways reflect my own experiences in my home at 1926 Parksley Ave, Baltimore, MD are the books of Reverend Bill Bean ("Dark Force") and Bill Scott ("When Satan Came Calling").

While it is easy to attribute the terrifying events of the last 14 years to "ghosts" and "haunting" and "demons" - alas, there were also some ex-Military persons involved - one of whom I met.  You may, or may not know MANY Satanists and Occultists routinely interface with Lower Astral Entities (demons) and enslave them, as well. This is ancient knowledge.

All that to say - your Guest who saw a Demiurge was telling the truth. I know him by another name.

Due to my unexpected and certainly astonishing experiences, I began to research anything and anyone and read all articles, web pages, books et al, which might have helped me. I was disabled, nearly bedridden and out of my mind with fear. My children all lived in other states, trying to work and raise children. No one believed me. So I stopped at nothing to arrive at the truth.

I was a plain, old-fashioned Lutheran Grandmother - nada special about me.

I knew absolutely nothing about Souls, God Source, Karmic Contracts, "heaven/hell" - Karma, Life Reviews, Earth School, Reincarnation, Life Movies, etc.

Zero.

Suddenly, in the middle of the horror, my memories of Near Death Experience(s) returned.

I prayed for death daily, anyway, so ghastly were my experiences, I certainly did NOT need those memories - and all the "gifts with a razor blade attachment" Aftereffects an NDE can provide.

So now - I see Past, Present and Future Lives, Life Before and Between Lives, Souls creating the films for their "Lives,"  Discussing and rehearsing "roles" (which Soul is going to play which "part") "taste-testing" Karmic Intersections (they can actually jump in and out of their character at important Karmic Intersections (US being the "characters") so they'll remember them, going to the Programming Center for their "Programmed Prompts" (sometimes called Guideposts) and I see these as movies - snapshots, trailers - and indeed, when people asked me where I got the ideas for my stories and paintings, I told them all I had to do was watch the "little movie" and copy it.


My art class friend patted me on the shoulder and said, "Guin, no one else sees the little movies."

I was aghast! I've seen all that Programmed CRAP all my so-called Human Life!

I've read Dr. Newton's books, Dr. Weiss's books and everything else you can imagine. At least I got SOME relief and assistance from PMH Atwater, herself a triple NDEr.

They are all partly programmed to spread propaganda.

I live EVERY DAY with a transparent-appearing overlay - as I had it explained to me - a side effect of an open Third Eye.  This overlay is more of the "Game Plan" and "Life Lessons" and even film clips of WHO'S COMING NEXT in my "life movie.” This is on top of what my normal human eyes see. 

I became clairvoyant, clairsentient, clairaudient - a MOST reluctant medium. However, unless the person is involved in my life, I won't know anything about them.  I try to ignore ANY medium crap. I hate it.

My children asked me NOT to tell them what I see about their lives.

My life is HELL.  Hell. It is hard to function when you can SEE your future! And it plays out as you can see it!

You are right on the money, m'friend. We have ALL been deceived.  Souls care nothing for us - some Light Beings, eh? They call us "Host Bodies and Host Vehicles” and program and manipulate the woo hoo out of us!

Stewart Swerdlow was a Lot of help to me. I am one of MANY school children chosen for Mind Control Experiments back in the 60s. We are usually killed off when the Mind Control begins to fragment or wear off - around age 50.

So that is what happened to me- almost.

I am still alive and telling my tale. SO glad to find your website.

I remember "Class" and "Teacher-Guides" and "Soulmates" and the entire shebang. Don't buy that Lesson crap. We are HUMAN and don’t need but one lesson - we have the Body and Human Brain and we can cancel those "Life Contracts" . . . "Life Plans" whatever.

Trust me, what happened at my former home should NEVER happen to ANY being, human or nonhuman.

Because I did not die - my phone, cell, computer, snail mail were all hacked. No one ever got my phone calls. Or emails. They were all answered by hired folk who probably had no idea why they were being paid to do so. I've had people I did NOT know walk up to me in a grocery store and talk about the very subjects I'd just discussed with one of my few friends the day before - on the PHONE.

Excuses about Karma don't move me. I am a nice person and most people are. Souls don't like us and many don't even know how to operate us. I am disgusted that not one Guide will come down here and console me for what occurred . . . and explain it, or show me love or consideration.

Here is how it works: They are told it is a School or Game. The Game on The Limitation Plane.  Earth School. One-third of our lives WE are asleep. They are not veiled and that is play time, the creeps.

We are NOT Souls. Only part of our consciousness is their consciousness. I found my Soul to be unlike me and set up a rather vengeful retaliation program. Gotta love the Programming part, eh? What a crock!  Well, we can also undo a lot of that programming, Stewart Swerdlow tries to help people do that all the time.

The Demiurge in fact DOES have to do what he does - I know him all too well. There is a balance which MUST be kept, It IS his Game. It was never meant to be.  

He has copies of Akashic Records, which can be taken out JUST LIKE NETFLIX and he sticks poor Souls in various characters and THEY are forced to lead lives of HELL, not to mention he puts some of his "demons" (negative polarity beings) in the roles of people who were supposed to be Helpful, or a Soulmate or a Friend or a Karmic Intersection meant to allow us to teach a lesson, etc.  

Just the opposite will occur.  Those intersections will be terrible. Mine were obvious! I just deconstructed my entire Life Plan in Baltmore.

The Game has been hacked, in other words.  Akashic Records are NOT safe and inviolate.  

The Demiurge's name is "Maratona."  Call him that. He HATES it.  Maratona's Armada!  (Satan's Army)

You know what they call us? "Marionette Amore!"  "Love Puppets."

He can mess with us any which way he pleases. Yes, we can cancel the contracts ALL SOULS MUST MAKE WITH HIM or they cannot Game here. Think Holo-video Game. We already have this coming in the Human World. 

Why doubt it exists? The entire world is a Holographic Universe (Universal Games) and "Source" is NOT "All That Is.”  Those Hollywood movies are SO obvious, too!

Souls trapped in one of those "Games" are in a Life Movie already lived by other Souls. They claim they are using those Lives as Video Instructions. B.S.  

They get ENERGY out of OUR SUFFERING.  Period! 

The poor human "characters" have NO CLUE why "life sucks and then you die," "most men live lives of quiet desperation."  Guess why!

I pray for DEATH, I tell you. Rod Sterling cannot beat THIS story. Your Soul is your WORST enemy!  The Light is only a frequency of vibration which FEELS GOOD to Souls, so they are taught that is “love” and Souls are often Firefly Entities. Why would they care about us?

was one.  They are impossible to understand.  And I am pretty darn good at communicating with them!

We cannot think the way they do.  It is not possible. We have short lives!

Man has been messed with for ages. Now they have the Internet. Our lives are ALL scripted, filmed, rehearsed, reviewed, previewed, you-name-it.

We can break the Game. I keep trying. Everything is MIND. All of it. 

I HATE "The Light" - because they OWE me an explanation of what happened to me at my legally owned home - so awful and malevolent and sadistic I had to move and auction off all my stuff! If it were not for my daughter I'd be dead now.

I was dead. Dead. Dead for good.  Not a true NDE. Dead.

I went back to a Space Station and watched The Life Review. All Aliens. Stewart thought they might be Andromedans. "I" was infuriated because I did not finish a painting of my daughters.  (American Beauties)

There was a meeting at an oval table. A bunch of beings were present. Each had a copy of the new Script. Many Beings did NOT want my Soul to return. She argued with them, LOUDLY.  

She must have won - I see she is sitting with a Military HUMAN man and working on her Lesson Plan. He spent a lot of time with her.

She got back into my body - problem!  Time had passed. Since I keep detailed diaries, I knew something was not right!  I don’t know how much time had passed. There is NO TIME, as we perceive it.

Our lives and all Timeline Options and Possible/Probables are filmed. That is the Labyrinth your Guest called by another name.  If you marry June instead of Andrea, THIS AND THIS will manifest. And so on.

Guess what? I SEE THOSE MOVIES, TOO! All the time, every day.  The good side is my ability to do so has saved my life a couple of times!

I feel like I have lived this entire life before. I can tell you, the chances are very good that I have, or some other Soul has “played” me. No way to tell.

I recognize entire neighborhoods, tell you what I was, used to do, who lived where. When I look up those houses on Zillow, they are in pre-foreclosures or Foreclosure! There is literally NO ONE to ask if I am correct or the time period in question. Definitely another life.

Before 2006 I did NOT believe in Reincarnation.

I HATE The Light. I HATE their Game. I HATE their “God.” Love and Light? NOT EVEN. NOT FOR MANKIND!

I can see Astral Activity, including how Guides let Souls know the next series of “Prompts” for their Game!  I have learned to discern just about any Being, and it all is soooooo not who I am!!

I always knew what I wanted to do with my life. And winding up a Lab Rat for the Dark Military was NOT on MY human agenda.

A human man not only programmed me, I can see he teaches the Dark Energy entities in some sort of Grade School out in the Astral. Light Beings are simply taught on a different frequency domain.

How ungodly AWFUL can this get???

Maratona is actually a monster - (Satanists describe him very well. He manifests as a 30-ish Blond, Curly-headed Angelic Man, VERY tall, not old and white-haired) - I harass him all the time. I don’t care one whit if they kill me. I am afraid ONLY that the military men involved, who know I am well aware they are hooked into the Astral via an antenna (the military has worked on that for YEARS) and one of them is the Interface for human/alien relations, not to mention a rapist, torturer, Satanist and murderer, will get their mitts on my human bod!  Torture is their specialty.

Aliens? Craft? I can tell you boodles about them. EVERYWHERE.  

Mankind can only perceive on a VERY limited “channel” if you will.

Yes, DRAMA!  Maratona means “Marathon.”  

Stewart once suggested it was like SURVIVOR. That is right! And a Reality TV show!

A Production Company! That is what those Akashic Records are! Like Netflix!

I kid thee not!  Souls do not sleep. They live in a place of No Time, No Space. They LOVE computer Games! I mean LOVE them!  Some part of Ourselves is up there, jacking us around like Avatars.

I have been doing drawings for years. I even drew a chessboard which has some meaning for Souls- and which I never understood.  It is disgusting.

Souls don’t have to go back to The Light, but they’d better be nimble, better be quick. If you die that Guide is RIGHT THERE.

If Maratona wasn’t such a booger I’d stay with him. He does not make you incarnate!  Master Guides LOVE to torture Souls in a human body!  The human body HURTS.  It is how they punish and punish and punish for every little infraction!

Man, you name it - it has been done to me. A regular old Grammy with 7 Grandchildren. That’s all there is to me.

There are Angels!  Incredible Beings! Thank Someone!

My understanding is Yahweh is the Principal of the School and Developer of the Game.  There are many, many Souls who can design planets, even worlds.

Any American School kid can halfway design an Avatar and World, for Goodness’ sake!

This is a piece of my ghastly story. My heart went out to your Guest.

This is Satan’s Game. Absolutely.  I go bother him (in Spirit) all the time.  We called him Satan because he was such a BRAT when he was young.

Enki nothing!  That is Marduk! And the Anunnaki were nothing more than PEOPLE from another Dimension trying to help Mankind. Just people! They had longer lives but they died like everyone else.

I can teach you how to view one of Enki’s programs, if you like.

I tell everyone my name. I am not hiding behind any Mask! 

I’ll tell you who the Military men are and the Spiritual Guru (*rolls Eyes*) who actually programs Human Beings to do the will of Souls - they try to over-ride our brains all the time!  I’ll just put their names in another email.

The emotion-laden text threw out some very interesting concepts that I highlighted in BLUE. Which suggested that there are those that use the “Prison Complex” as some sort of GAME. Or who also use it like recreational MOVIES.

I do NOT think that this “Prison Complex” was intended to be a GAME or a source of amusement like MOVIES. But I do believe that over the centuries that a kind of illegal “black market” arose and that others have been using the “Prison Complex” to do exactly that.

Systems used to profit from

As best as I can figure, there are those, whether part of the “Old Empire” or from somewhere else that have constructed some kinds of systems inside the “Prison Complex” from which to profit from. And as far as I can see these systems fall into one or two general categories;

  • A “First Person Shooter” GAME. Where an entity pays for the privilege to live on the Earth as a human and experience all the sensory pleasures or discomfort that goes along with that experience.
  • A torture MOVIE. Here, the entities have somehow hijacked the pre-birth world-line template creation system. They establish one to fit the desires and fantasies of the entities that pay for a “good show”, and the hapless consciousness is convinced that it must experience the pains and the sorrows laid out for them. The entities that paid for this pre-birth world-line template then sit and watch the events unfold for the sorry human that is convinced that it must endure these disruptions and horrors.

Backdoors

Unless something happened…

  • The Prison Administration “bailed out”, and left.
  • The Prison System has been taken over, and corrupted by very malevolent entities.

It seems to me that there MUST be some kind of “backdoor” that enables these self-serving for-profit entities to corrupt the Prison System for their own purposes.

In cybersecurity, a backdoor is anything that can allow an outside user into your device without your knowledge or permission. Backdoors can be installed in two different parts of your system:

Hardware/firmware. Physical alterations that provide remote access to your device.

Software. Malware files that hide their tracks so your operating system doesn’t know that another user is accessing your device.

A backdoor can be installed by software and hardware developers for remote tech support purposes, but in most cases, backdoors are installed either by cybercriminals or intrusive governments (like the United States) to help them gain access to a device, a network, or a software application.

Any malware that provides hackers access to your device can be considered a backdoor — this includes rootkits, trojans, spyware, cryptojackers, keyloggers, worms, and even ransomware.

If there is a “backdoor”, then we can come to the conclusion that the “backdoor” was put there intentionally by one or more of…

  • The architects  of the “Prison Complex”.
  • The administration of the “Prison Complex”.
  • A technologically advanced society (not the “Old Empire”) that exploited the prison system intentionally.
  • Some kind of dimensional / universe malware.

The advantages of LD talent

Those that have the important ability to LD (Lucid Dream) are in a unique position to reconnoiter towards this end.

It would be a reconnaissance mission.

In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. 

Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmishers, long-range reconnaissance patrol, U.S. Army Rangers, cavalry scouts, or military intelligence specialists), ships or submarines, manned or unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, satellites, or by setting up observation posts. 

Espionage is usually considered to be different from reconnaissance, as it is performed by non-uniformed personnel operating behind enemy lines.

-Wikipedia

And if you want to be specific, it is purely espionage. As the LD asset is an inmate in general population.

I can tell you that doing so is very important, and would be greatly appreciated by The Domain.  Though, I must caution everyone that LD travel is not to be taken lightly. Dangers abound. I also do not know what the LD asset would discover, or what surprises await them. But I am ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that they would like some talented assets to volunteer for this task.

To be brutally honest, this is an OFFICIAL REQUEST for a volunteer. It is direct request via EBP from The Domain.

As I understand it, it is only something that can be done by an inmate with a strong ability to this end. And that this specific type of mission WILL encounter unknowns and if the person encounters any kinds of dangers, they are to retreat and regroup.

It’s just a “fact finding” mission.

And, for what ever it is worth, they have certain people in mind for this action, and consider them to be very important and valuable assets that must be protected at all costs. (I am to repeat and underline this last sentence.) They are very important and must be protected at all costs.

Mission parameters

For starters…

  • This is a volunteer activity, and there is no dishonor in refusal.

And then,

  • You absolutely not reveal who you are or what you are doing.
  • You must not engage any subject entities that you encounter. You observe.

The specific tasks are…

  • You must identify [1] if there are others, who are not part of the “old empire” prison complex, that are involved in selection of pre-birth world-line template selection and layout.
  • You must identify [2] if there are others, who are not part of the “old empire” prison complex, that are using the collected memories or records of memories of other humans for anything other than the original stated purposes.

Reporting and dissemination.

  • No matter what your opinions are, you must report what you experience.
  • You are to report your findings, no matter how disjointed or confused, and include your associations and thoughts and ideas regarding them. (Some results might be disturbing or distasteful, but you must report everything.)
  • MM will publish your findings.

Finally,

  • You must vocalize permissions to allow The Domain to observe your operations. You may place restrictions on how they observe and time limitations or windows if that is your desire.

Please kindly know and realize that possession of a EBP would “blow your cover” and thus it is impossible for you to be implanted at this time for this role. Thus this request follows this procedural venue. Finally, there is no dishonor in refusal. The Domain realizes just how seriously dangerous this mission activity is.

Conclusion

It seems that there must be “backdoors” to the “Prison Complex”.  Exploiting those backdoors would enable some rapid transformation of this sentience nursery from a Prison Planet to something else and far easier to manage.

The only people who can find out the details of such a system are talented LD assets, and in asking them to do so, they must deal with entities that have access to all of their memories and are not handicapped by amnesia.

I do not think that any of them (those using the backdoors) are anticipating espionage but the request to view this aspect of the Prison Complex is very important and comes direct from the administrator of the operation charged with the clearing of the Prison System field.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…

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Why the “Old Empire” Prison system is like a massive geode and where do we all fit in regarding it

This article consists of my explanation of what our “universe”; the “Reality universe” otherwise known and the MWI, actually is. And while in many ways, it resembles the science fiction movie “The Matrix” it is far more cunning, with far more serious implications. And this article discusses those implications. For here, we will get into the basic overlying general construction of this Prison Complex.

Those of you who are long time readers of MM know what I am talking about about. New comers, well, you’ll probably get lost fairly early on. Sorry about that. this is an advanced subject.

The basic construction of everything

We live inside of an artificial construct.

Being inside of this “thing”; this environment distorts our understanding of reality. It distorts our thinking and our ability to fully comprehend what is actually going on.

We call this place where we live as “our universe”.

And inside of it, we describe the operation of it as “the MWI”. Or multiple world theory.

And that is all we know. We know nothing about what lies outside of our reality. We do not know what lies outside of our universe.

Then it is “The Matrix”?

Well, kind of.

When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth--the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.

Most MM readers will know what “The Matrix” is. It is a science fiction movie that says that all of what we know of, see and believe, is an elaborate computer simulation, and we are “plugged into it”.

An overly LARGE Synopsis for those who never watched the movie (they do exist, you know) …

The Matrix begins with a squad of police officers surrounding a building where they believe a computer hacker by the name of Trinity is currently hiding. A mysterious group of “agents” show up and chastise the police commander for not waiting for them before entering the building, due to the dangerous nature of their suspect.

We then jump inside where Trinity takes down a squad of police officers before going on the run from the “agents”, across the roof tops of the mysterious city. Trinity eventually makes it to a phone booth, seconds before the phone booth is plowed over by a Mack truck driven by one of the “agents”. When the “agents” examine the wreckage, they do not find Trinity’s body and state that she has escaped, but that they have found the one she is looking for.

The film then jump cuts to Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer by day and a computer hacker by night who goes by the name of Neo. Anderson is played by Keanu Reeves in all his Keanu glory. Neo is receiving mysterious computer messages that tell him to “follow the white rabbit”. After encountering someone with a white rabbit tattoo on her body, he follows her to a techno club where he meets a very much alive Trinity.

Trinity tells him that Morpheus, an infamous terrorist hacker, wants to meet Neo, and the young hacker is very interested. However, before that meeting can take place, Neo is arrested at work the next day and interrogated/tortured by agents. Fortunately, the agents release Neo (along with a little electronic bug), and Neo is able to keep his date with Morpheus.

Morpheus tells Neo that he is living in a dream world, and he can choose to leave it, if Neo so wishes it. Choosing to continue to follow the rabbit hole, Neo takes a red pill, and his reality begins to disintegrate. Neo awakens, naked and weak, in a liquid-filled pod, with cables attached all over his body. He sees thousands of similar tubes all around him before a machine comes down and disconnects him from the pod. Neo is then flushed out with the refuse where he is eventually picked up and brought aboard Morpheus’ hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar.

Once there, Morpheus begins to explain what the Matrix is. Neo is told that in the 21st century, that the humans of the planet fought a war with machines that had become self aware. As part of this war, the humans had blocked the skies, to prevent the machines from using solar energy. As such, the machines had to find alternative means for the power that they needed to survive, so they created the Matrix. The Matrix is a cyber reality that allows the machines to use human beings as an energy source, or a battery as it is explained in the movie.

In the Matrix, humans believe that they are living in the year 1999, and that they are in control of their lives, with no memory of the human/machine world. Morpheus explains that he is responsible for “unplugging” enslaved humans, and returning them to the real world. Morpheus further explains that there is a prophecy that one such freed person will end the war with the machines, and that he believes that Neo is that person.

The film then goes into the education of Neo for his adventures in the Matrix world. Because the Matrix is a computer program, Neo is told that they have the ability to do superhuman feats since they can bend the physical laws. However, if a person is killed in the Matrix, they will die in the real world as well. Neo is also warned that everyone who has ever taken on an agent has been killed.

Ultimately, Neo is taken by Morpheus to see the Oracle, who will, in theory, confirm whether Neo is indeed the Christ figure of this film. The bad news is that the Oracle tells Neo he is not the one. The worse news is that she tells Neo that Morpheus will die to protect Neo because of his beliefs, unless Neo sacrifices his life for Morpheus.

The good news…Neo gets a delicious cookie. As Morpheus’ crew heads back to the extraction point, they are met by policeman and agents, who have been tipped to the crew’s Matrix-world arrival by their own personal Judas, Cypher. Everyone but Morpheus escapes, but Cypher makes it back to the real world hovercraft first. There he begins killing the other members of the crew by unplugging them while their minds are trapped in the Matrix. Before he can kill Trinity or Neo, a computer monitor by the name of Tanks kills Cypher and saves the duo.

Morpheus is taken to the agents’ headquarters, where they plan to torture him and interrogate him in order to get the access codes to the mainframe computer in Zion, the humans’ last stronghold in the real world. Neo decides to go back into the Matrix in order to save Morpheus, and Trinity tags along for the ride. The duo encounter overwhelming numbers, but they manage to free Morpheus and make their escape. Morpheus and Trinity are able to make their escape from the Matrix, but Neo becomes trapped when Agent Smith destroys his exit. Neo thinks about running from the agent, but he begins to believe in the prophecy and finds confidence in his abilities.

Neo and Agent Smith fight. Spectacularly. But ultimately, Neo has to get out of the Matrix, so he goes on the run trying to find another exit while being pursued by three agents. Tank attempts to lead Neo to an exit and safety, but Agent Smith cuts him off and places several bullets into Neo’s chest, killing the hacker.

However, as the agents begin to walk away, Neo resurrects and is now completely aware of his abilities and his power. He stops the bullets from the agents’ guns with a wave of his hand, and destroys Agent Smith by jumping into his “code” and blowing him up. Neo makes his escape from the Matrix, returning to the real world just in time before the hovercraft crew blows up an EMP that would have killed Neo if he had stayed in the Matrix.

The film ends with Neo making a call to the Matrix, stating that he knows that they are afraid now. Neo tells them that he will show their human prisoners “a world where anything is possible” before hanging up the phone. Neo then Superman’s off the screen, essentially creating the first cyber-world super hero.

The idea is valid.

Yes. We exist inside of an elaborate simulation.

The Matrix.

Except that instead of it being a computer simulation, it is far, far more than that. It is a completely separate and unique “universe” of sorts. The entities that built this simulation did so intentionally and used technologies that appear “God Like” to us.

They created a unique “universe” which is a “bubble” within a much larger universe.

Important Note

And important note: this is NOT a universe that lies outside of the “larger universe”. This is a “bubble universe” that lies inside of the “larger universe”.

As this statement clearly explains (from “Alien Interview”)…

"The Domain exists in such a universe, as well as in the physical universe."

How universes come into being

I’ll let “Alien Interview” explain…

"Before you can understand the subject of history, you must first understand the subject of time.  Time is simply an arbitrary measurement of the motion of objects through space.

Space is not linear.  Space is determined by the point of view of an IS-BE when viewing an object. The distance between an IS-BE and the object being viewed is called "space".

Objects, or energy masses, in space do not necessarily move in a linear fashion.     In this universe, objects tend to move randomly or in a curving or cyclical pattern, or as determined by agreed upon rules.

History is not only a linear record of events, as many authors of Earth history books imply, because it is not a string that can be stretched out and marked like a measuring tool. History is a subjective observation of the movement of objects through space, recorded from the point of view of a survivor, rather than of those who succumbed.   

Events occur interactively and concurrently, just as the biological body has a heart that pumps blood, while the lungs provide oxygen to the cells, which reproduce, using energy from the sun and chemicals from plants, at the same time as the liver strains toxic wastes from the blood, and eliminates them through the bladder and the bowels.

All of these interactions are concurrent and simultaneous.  Although time runs consecutively, events do not happen in an independent, linear stream.               

In order to view and understand the history or reality of the past, one must view all events as part of an interactive whole. Time can also be sensed as a vibration which is uniform throughout the entire physical universe.

Airl explained that IS-BEs have been around since before the beginning of the universe. The reason they are called "immortal", is because a "spirit" is not born and cannot die, but exists in a personally postulated perception of "is - will be". She was careful to explain that every spirit is not the same. Each is completely unique in identity, power, awareness and ability.

The difference between an IS-BE like Airl and most of the IS-BEs inhabiting bodies on Earth, is that Airl can enter and depart from her "doll" at will.    She can perceive at selective depths through matter. Airl and other officers of The Domain can communicate   telepathically. Since an IS-BE is not a physical universe entity it has no location in space or time.

An IS-BE is literally, "immaterial". They can span great distances of space instantly.

They can experience sensations, more intensely than a biological body, without the use of physical sensory mechanisms.  An IS-BE can exclude pain from their perception.   Airl can also remember her "identity", so to speak, all the way back into the dim mists of time, for trillions of years!

She says that the existing collection of suns in this immediate vicinity of the universe have been burning for the last 200 trillion years. The age of the physical universe is nearly infinitely old, but probably at least four quadrillion years since its earliest beginnings.

Time is a difficult factor to measure as it depends on the subjective memory of IS-BEs and there has been no uniform record of events throughout the physical universe since it began. As on Earth, there are many different time measurement systems, defined by various cultures, which use cycles of motion, and points of origin to establish age and duration.

The physical universe itself is formed from the convergence and amalgamation of many other individual universes, each one of which were created by an IS-BE or group of IS-BEs.    

The collision of these illusory universes commingled and coalesced and were solidified to form a mutually created universe.   Because it is agreed that energy and forms can be created, but not destroyed, this creative process has continued to form an ever-expanding universe of nearly infinite physical proportions.

Before the formation of the physical universe there was a vast period during which universes were not solid, but wholly illusionary.   You might say that the universe was a universe of magical illusions which were made to appear and vanish at the will of the magician.  In every case, the "magician" was one or more IS-BEs. Many IS-BEs on Earth can still recall vague images from that period. Tales of magic, sorcery and enchantment, fairy tales and mythology speak of such things, although in very crude terms.

Each IS-BE entered into the physical universe when they lost their own, "home" universe. That is, when an IS-BE's "home" universe was overwhelmed by the physical universe, or when the IS-BE joined with other IS-BEs to create or conquer the physical universe.

On Earth, the ability to determine when an IS- BE entered the physical universe is difficult for two reasons:    

1) the memory of IS-BEs on Earth have been erased, and 

2) IS-BEs arrival or invasion into the physical universe took place at different times, some 60 trillion years ago, and others only 3 trillion.

Immortal Spiritual Beings, which I refer to as "IS-BEs", for the sake of convenience, are the source and creators of illusions.  Each one, individually and collectively, in their original, unfettered state of being, are an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing entity.

IS-BEs create space by imagining a location. The intervening distance between themselves and the imagined location is what we call space.

An IS-BE can perceive the space and objects created by other IS-BEs.

IS-BEs are not physical universe entities.  They are a source of energy and illusion.  IS- BEs are not located in space or time, but can create space, place particles in space, create energy, and shape particles into various forms, cause the motion of forms, and animate forms. Any form that is animated by an IS-BE is called life.

An IS-BE can decide to agree that they are located in space or time, and that they, themselves, are an object, or any other manner of illusion created by themselves or another or other IS-BEs.

The disadvantage of creating an illusion is that an illusion must be continually created. If not continually created, it disappears. Continual creation of an illusion requires incessant attention to every detail of the illusion in order to sustain it.

A common denominator of IS-BEs seems to be the desire to avoid boredom.         

A spirit only, without interaction with other IS-BEs, and the unpredictable motion, drama, and unanticipated intentions and illusions being created by other IS-BEs, is easily bored.

What if you could imagine anything, perceive everything, and cause anything to happen, at will?   What if you couldn't do anything else? What if you always knew the outcome of every game and the answer to every question?                

Would you get bored?

The entire back time track of IS-BEs is immeasurable, nearly infinite in terms of physical universe time.    

There is no measurable "beginning" or "end" for an IS-BE.   

They simply exist in an everlasting now.

Another common denominator of IS-BEs is that admiration of one's own illusions by others is very desirable.   

If the desired admiration is not forthcoming, the IS-BE will keep creating the illusion in an attempt to get admiration. One could say that the entire physical universe is made of unadmired illusions.

The origins of this universe began with the creation of individual, illusionary spaces. These were the "home" of the IS-BE.   

Sometimes a universe is a collaborative creation of illusions by two or more IS-BEs.    A proliferation of IS-BEs, and the universes they create, sometimes collide or become commingled or merge to an extent that many IS-BEs shared in the co-creation of a universe.

IS-BEs diminish their ability in order to have a game to play.  IS-BEs think that any game is better than no game.  

They will endure pain, suffering, stupidity, privation, and all manner of unnecessary and undesirable conditions, just to play a game.  Pretending that one does not know all, see all and cause all, is a way to create the conditions necessary for playing a game:   unknowns, freedoms, barriers and/or opponents and goals.  Ultimately, playing a game solves the problem of boredom.

In this fashion, all of the space, galaxies, suns, planets, and physical phenomena of this universe, including life forms, places, and events have been created by IS-BEs and sustained by mutual agreement that these things exist.

There are as many universes as there are IS-BEs to imagine, build and perceive them, each existing concurrently within its own continuum. Each universe is created using its own unique set of rules, as imagined, altered, preserved or destroyed by one or more IS-BEs who created it. Time, energy, objects and space, as defined in terms of the physical universe, may or may not exist in other universes. The Domain exists in such a universe, as well as in the physical universe.

One of the rules of the physical universe is that energy can be created, but not destroyed. So, the universe will keep expanding as long as IS-BEs keep adding more new energy into it. It is nearly infinite. It is like an automobile assembly line that never stops running and none of the cars are ever destroyed.

Every IS-BE is basically good.  

Therefore, an IS-BE does not enjoy doing things to other IS- BEs which they themselves do not want to experience.  For an IS-BE there is no inherent standard for what is good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful.  These ideas are all based on the opinion of each individual IS-BE.

The closest concept that human beings have to describe an IS-BE is as a god:   all-knowing, all-powerful, infinite. So, how does a god stop being a god?               

They  pretend NOT to know. How can you play a game of "hide and seek" if you always know where the other person is hiding?

You pretend NOT to know where the other players are hiding, so you can go off to "seek" them. This is how games are created.  You have forgotten that you are just "pretending".  In so doing, IS-BEs become entrapped and enslaved inside a maze of their own devising.

How does one create a cage, lock one's own self inside the cage, throw away the key, and forget there is a key or a cage, and forget there is an "inside" or "outside", and even forget there is a self? Create the illusion that there is no illusion: the entire universe is real, and that no other universe exists or can be created.

On Earth, the propaganda taught and agreed upon is that the gods are responsible, and that human beings are not responsible.   You are taught that only a god can create universes. So, the responsibility for every action is assigned to another IS-BE or god. Never oneself.

No human being ever assumes personal responsibility for the fact that they, themselves -- individually and collectively -- are gods.   This fact alone is the source of entrapment for every IS-BE.

And let’s look at this one statement in detail…

[1] There are as many universes as there are IS-BEs to imagine, build and perceive them, each existing concurrently within its own continuum. 

[2] Each universe is created using its own unique set of rules, as imagined, altered, preserved or destroyed by one or more IS-BEs who created it. Time, energy, objects and space, as defined in terms of the physical universe, may or may not exist in other universes. 

[3] The Domain exists in such a universe, as well as in the physical universe.

[1] IS-BE’s create universes at will.

[2] They are complete separate entities that exist within it’s own set of laws, rules and continuum.

[3] The Domain exists in one such universe, AS WELL as “The Physical Universe”.

Since, the Domain Commander was discussing the situation at Roswell he was making s simplification statement that has been pretty much glossed over by most everyone who reads the “Alien Interview” document.

  • There is the BIG “parent” universe. This is where The Domain exists. As well as where the “Old Empire” existed.

And there is …

  • The Physical Universe. This is a smaller “pocket universe” that sits inside the “BIG parent universe”. It is what we see. It is everything that we physically see, and sense. But it is not the totality of everything. Because this “Physical Universe”; the MWI is the “Old Domain” “Prison Complex”.

The creation of a “artificial” universe within a universe

So this “Prison Planet” is more than just a singular planet with a “fence” around it.  It is a planet within it’s own “pocket universe”.

And I can tell you, from MAJestic, that Earth is not the only planet within this “pocket universe”. But there are perhaps four to five other solar systems involved. (Five if you include “our” solar system.)

So it is a very special “pocket universe” within a much larger BIG universe.

This is a very unique universe

Furthermore, there is an elaborate structure that makes this “Prison Complex” unique.  It is much more than a simple “electric fence”.

There is a system of recycling IS-BE consciousness’s back and forth from “Prison” to “Parole”. We know this system as …

  • Birth
  • Living on the earth
  • Death
  • Going into the light
  • Heaven
  • Reincarnation

The “Punishment” aspect of our incarceration is in BROWN. The “Parole” / rehabilitation aspect of our incarceration is in BLUE.

Thus we have something else.

We have [1] a huge complex that handles the “punishment” aspect of our incarceration. We call this the “physical reality”, or the MWI. And we have have [2] a massive complex for the “parole” / rehabilitation aspect of our incarceration. This goes by the name of “Heaven”.

There are two massive complexes involved in this “Prison Complex”.

Our “Pocket universe” contains multiple universes

For every imprisoned IS-BE consciousness species, there is an equivalent “Heaven”. And there are many. It’s not only humans. There are horses, elephants, dolphins just to name a few. Each “Heaven” is a universe.

So looking from the outside, you can see that this “pocket universe” is segmented into other universes, and the entire complex, or cluster, of universes is one grand “Prison Complex” that is administered by a complete and ruthless system of control.

Why it is like a geode

A geode is a geological secondary formation within sedimentary and volcanic rocks. Geodes are hollow, vaguely spherical rocks, in which masses of mineral matter (which may include crystals) are secluded.

Geode.

The crystals are formed by the filling of vesicles in volcanic and sub-volcanic rocks by minerals deposited from hydrothermal fluids; or by the dissolution of syn-genetic concretions and partial filling by the same, or other, minerals precipitated from water, groundwater or hydrothermal fluids.

In our case, the creation of a universe within a universe was a very special construction. In fact, I might argue that it would have been far easier to create a universe outside of our universe, but apparently the rulers of the “Old Empire” as technologically advanced as they were, wanted to create a system that would permanently imprison FOREVER those that they condemned…

…within their universe, and within their geographic territory.

So they FORCED the artificial construction of a unique static “pocket universe” with very strict MWI world-line behaviors. And were any inmate to escape, at the very worst they would escape to geographic terrain of the “Old Empire”. This would not be something that would be possible with a completely separate universe that would lie outside that of the “parent universe”.

And in so escaping, they would be going from a “reality universe” where the laws and rules are one thing, and to a “parent universe” where they are something else entirely different. With a complete amnesia, it would be extremely difficult for an inmate to successfully escape.

What does this understanding provide to us?

This provides us with a great deal of insight regarding the technology of the “Old Empire” and what they could and could not do.

  • They could create a “pocket universe”.
  • They could not create a total self-contained universe to exile others to.

Thus it is not wonder that The Domain was able to vanquish the “Old Empire”. As members of The Domain are fundamentally IS-BE’s with a class structure that prohibits memory amnesia when occupying a physical body. While the “Old Empire” (apparently) was a societal structure where the occupancy of a physical body allowed or forced memory amnesia.

It also tells us why it is difficult for The Domain to reverse engineer this “Prison Complex”. As this is not a separate universe, but rather a “pocket universe” construction that lies within a “parent universe”.

Where do we inmates fit into the picture?

This region, this “Prison Complex” appears to be just like the “Parent Universe”. So much so, that The Domain entered it, set up a base of operations inside of the “reality universe” totally and completely unaware that it was within a spawned “pocket universe”.

I am confident that The Domain has learned many, many things over the decades and centuries. But I do not believe that mastery of this “pocket universe” can be obtained in the next few years. It might take longer than that. Thus the track that The Domain is on is quite reasonable.

  • Set up a system for sentience sorting and rehabilitation.
  • Enlist the Mantids towards this goal.
  • Assist the”conditional release” of inmates as they acquire “exit visas”.
  • Regain control of the entire “Prison Complex” through mastery of the “Pocket Universe”.
  • Administer care to the inmates…

With the goals of rescue of the Lost Battalion, and recovery of all memories of all IS-BE’s so incarcerated.

Conclusion

One of the most important fundamentals that an inmate must understand when trying to escape a prison, is the layout of that prison. Well known “prison breaks” all required an understanding of the prison layout, the routines of the guards, and an understanding on what needs to occur; step by step, prior to a successful break-out.

While there are many  who are tying to escape one way or the other,  I argue that it will be very difficult to do so unless the inmate have a good understanding of the environment where he is incarcerated within.

Given the nature of this “Prison Planet”, it seems reasonable to conclude that a map or an understanding of a path must be laid out for the inmate to extract themselves out of the general population environment. This will not only list the various traps, snares, and  tricks that lie along the way, but also the boundaries and mechanisms for the other associated “pocket universes” that lie within this “Prison Complex”. Such as the various heavens, and the very detailed snares.

This article might not seem like much, but it establishes a most fundamental understanding of the limits and the geography of the “Prison Complex”.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…

The Domain

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Answers from The Domain from questions generated 24SEP21

This article consists of answers from The Domain to questions collected by the MM audience. This is the second of (hopefully) many such events. Though, I must admit that it is really a lot of work to do.

I collected the questions from the last week of September 2021, and tried to contact with the Domain via the EBP in fits and starts over this period. I was successful, and unsuccessful. Some times the connection was strong while at other times it was weak. All having to do with my various situation at the time.

An Important note

I asked a question. A very personal question at the end of this article, and obtained an answer.

It is very disturbing, and I am very upset by it.

I decided to put it in and let you all know what was stated. This goes against my “better judgement”, but we will see what happens.

What this is all about

On 17SEP21 I posted an article that related the fact that The Domain opened up a dedicated channel to me via the EBP. As always, it was one-sided, and detailed. But during the conversation, I had no real mental ability. I was in a receiving and reporting state. I was really unable to think for myself. I just queried what I was told to ask and recorded the answers.

You can read this article HERE, if you are confused with what is going on.

Some Background

Most people are aware that the work titled “Alien Interview” is a transcript of a Commander of The Domain when it’s vehicle crashed in 1947. What most people do not know is that this event spawned an American  top secret agency known as MAJestic that fell under the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence).

This waved, unacknowledged special access program handled (and still handles) all extraterrestrial events, technologies and interactions with the United States government. I was a unique part of that organization prior to being retired.

I have numerous devices installed in my body. The seven ELF probes are for MAJestic, with the EBP system is of Domain manufacture and utility.

Terminology

  • EBP – A hardwired device that connects MM to The Domain.
  • ELF – A hardwired device that connected MM to MAJestic through a Mantid intermediary. Now deactivated.
  • The Domain – The name of the species / civilization that the type-1 greys belong to.
  • Old Empire” – A term used to describe a vanquished civilization that used to be in control of this section of the galaxy.
  • Comm channel – A link to the MM “handler” or Commander. Rank and position is unknown except that it is a senior being. This is a channel though the EBP system.
  • Prison Planet – Earth and the surrounding solar system.
  • Prison Complex – Our solar system with four to five other solar systems together.
  • Warden – Chief administrator for the Earth.
  • Corrections Officers – Police that work for the Warden.

Questions

This is the SECOND collection of Q&A from The Domain.

Here are the questions with the answers. We start off with one of MY questions to get the ol’ ball rolling…

[1] Who is Madesescapalion? Is this just a name out of my imagination, or something that I need pay attention to?

In an odd event, this name suddenly popped into my head, and stayed in my head for hours. Just banging around and around and around, and around. Jeeze!.

It’s really annoying.

Someone is addressing in a formal form like you would a officer, or the head of the FBI or something like that.

So I wrote it down. Then for the next four hours or so it still kept banging around in my skull until I wrote this question down. And then, oh, for Goodness Sakes! This popped out…

Who is Madesescapalion?

Madesescapalion (sic) is the name  / a name of / one of the names of the Chief Administrator / High Authority of the Earth-centric portion of this Prison Complex. He is the local de facto head of this facility.

He was a (preferential form) human who has injected himself into the prison complex as a means of escaping / avoiding / hiding from The Domain.

He conducted this “donning of prison attire” when the Domain defeated the forces of the “Old Empire” sometime between 1135 - 1230 AD during the destruction of the local “Old Domain” space fleet in this region.

He has been cycling in and out of “general population” in the Prison Complex ever since.

He has systems in place that detect our movements and alert him, and when we get near to him he dies and goes into “Heaven” where we have difficulty following. Once he is safe, he then re-injects himself in the general population again. He is very cunning. He is very skillful. He holds many answers regarding the systems and the control attributes of this Prison Complex.

Scene from the movie Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp.

(I wonder if there is some kind of message in the movie Dark Shadows concerning this administrator.)

I don’t know if this is the right spelling. I just wrote it as it appeared to me.

Ma - des - escapa - li - on

It could also be read as “Ma-des Escapa-Li-on”, as in “Warden Escapa-Li-on”. Tht’s my thinking of this. I don’t know if it is true or not.

Warden Escapalion

Administrator of the “Old Empire”. In charge of this Prison Complex. Went into hiding (inside the prison General Population) when The Domain took over.

Update; Maybe I wrote it wrong. 
The pronunciation is not "lion" but rather "leon". 

- MM

[2] What is the relationship between the Domain and the Mantids. Why won’t the Domain ask the Mantids for help?

This issue has been bothering people for some time. It’s a valid concern and there are many questions regarding it. For some people, the Mantids represent angels, while the Domain represent demons. Now they see things in a new light and are concerned.

Personally, I was afraid to ask this as there are some MAJestic prohibitions on Mantid disclosures. But, I just didn’t think about it. I just got comfortable and read and waited for a response. There was a pause of a few minutes and then this flowed out.

Domain & Mantid relationship.

The Mantids (sic) are a species that has their own civilization and culture. They have accepted The Domain jurisdiction in this geographical area. They are also neutral in regards to territory, administration, and other encumbrances of physical life.

They have transcended those interests.

They maintain their roles within the Prison Complex “Heaven” and are satisfied with whatever might or might not happen in the future. Our relations with them are cordial. And if we ask them for support and assistance, they provide it. They have accepted our administration over this area and Prison Complex, and are willing to work with us in whatever way that we deem fit.

Do you have any thoughts about this answer?

[3] There is a group that you are working with that I am unfamiliar with. So I refer to them as <redacted>. Who are they and what do they do?

This is one of my questions that I would like to see answered better than what I would normally call out. You see my interpretation of direct data from the EBP differs substantially from this around-about method of collecting answers. And so I wanted to see what kind of answers that I would get.

This <redacted> is a new group that was first brought up when the Domain had its first direct communication with me. I would like a name and some background on them, please.

Who are the <redacted>?

They are a species that you have never encountered before, and is rare in this section of the universe. Their society / empire / housing cluster are from a very distant galaxy and have been involved in large massive complexes, works and systems not unlike that of the “Prison Complex” here. 

They are helping us decode and unlock the systems that we encounter and develop new devices and mechanisms for detection of traps and snares. 

They have a name, but it would not serve you to understand something that you could not pronounce let along write. They do not physically resemble humanoids or insects. They resemble something else entirely alien to the earth experience as they are not from the same kind of planet or sun that the Prison Complex has. (The image that I get is a very large maggot or caterpillar about the size of a sofa.)

You may refer to them as “helpers” like the little people in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory, the “oompa loompas”, or the “Minons” from “Despicable Me”.

Note: I will refer to this group as “Technical helpers” from now on. –MM

[4] Are there any catastrophic events due in the next few years?

I was able to get answers to this question but it was full of “stops”, hesitations, pauses, and “drag-ons”. If you all can understand what I am trying to say.

Everyone in the United States are fearful of the future. Indeed it seems like the entire nation is a broken down car skidding all over the place and being run by drunken raging maniacs. The passengers are terrified. What’s ahead is unknown, and everyone wants to know what is after that “bend in the road”.

Catastrophic Events

“The [physical] earth has undeniably gone through catastrophic events… cyclically and continuously. If I recall correctly, the most common recurring event(s) are at about 25,000 year increments or so… pole-shift, crustal displacement – stuff like that. Of course other things cause destruction as well – and I presume some are NOT natural. Anyway, my current best information says that such an event is likely to happen again – SOON – VERY soon (before 2025, but maybe even next calendar year). Can you comment on this?

There are a number of clusters of time-lines (of large size) that are on a vector route towards a catastrophic purging of life and civilization elements within certain specific societies. What will happen depends on the trajectory of those clusters. The drivers behind their movement are well-established “Old Empire” forces that intentionally manifest results that (the MM readership) you would find distasteful.

Thoughts can result in many manifestations. Not only in the movement of large numbers of people towards catastrophic results like lemmings, but also in the turmoil of natural processes. These thoughts can result in natural disasters, fiascos of unexpected intensity, and horrific results that will be unexpected. In many ways it is like an infant playing with a loaded gun. You must not allow horrific consequences whether “natural” or “manmade” to include all sorts of thought-induced reactions to manifest if you can avoid them.

In the Prison Planet environment is an MWI configuration that permits world-line changes and alterations. There are various individual IS-BE’s imprisoned within the complex that have the ability to conduct mechanized world-line travel to different locations and different periods. After all, and you must remember, the MWI within the Prison Complex is an artificial construct. And thus, there are people who can create turmoil on certain world-line templates (sic) and then escape to safer havens.

This is what is apparently going on. If you were to capture one of these IS-BE inmates and ask them what they are doing they would come up with all kinds of stories and excuses, but none will admit that they are participating in a relative “looting” of certain templates (sic) so that they can enjoy the fruits of their labors in other templates (sic).

The good thing is that the “future” is never guaranteed. Being in such an artificial construct as the Prison Complex is, guarantees that those that can control their thoughts, and that understand how the Prison System works can “ride out” any crises or turmoil that might “boil up to the surface” with the confluence of multiple anchored clusters vectoring straight to catastrophic event scenarios. 

Do not fear the future. Control your thoughts and you will control your destiny. Worrying about others is a fine passion but will not benefit you as your future will be under the fabric of your creation via your thoughts.

If you can control your thoughts, even if your local environment undergoes horrific events, you will be able to endure it relative comfort.

I immediate thought that this was NOT the kind of answer that the questioner wanted.

After all, I myself, have been warning about catastrophic events in the future. I say this as a nod to the Deagal Report.

His questioner wanted a yes or a no answer and some details.

And the following came though…

Yes. There will be difficult times ahead.

It will be on a scale that many people will be unfamiliar and uncomfortable with.

It will not be something that you can point to and say "here it is". It will be a growth, a growing, an amassing of a state. Then it will achieve a critical tipping point. Then, it will be very uncomfortable.

It will not be televised, or reported on. Any information that the average person obtains will be lies, distractions or manipulations. No one will know what is going on. This will continue into the "main heat" of the event cycle. 

(A list was provided in laconic fashion like someone reading from a handout.)

Treasuries will be emptied.
Resources will be stolen and carted off.
Secret military engagements will take place with death and destruction.
Back-stabbing, betrayals, and and "under hand" actions will be common.
Agreements will be torn-up or ignored.
New secret agreements will be written between unlikely participants.

(Fourth tone emphasis on the last syllable of the end word in each sentence.)
No one will know any of this. Many people will continue to be *oblivious* to what is going on even after millions of people are dead. So much will not be reported.

Significant event will pass into history unknown and unrecorded. 

There are numerous clusters heading towards numerous scenarios. The most worrisome are being mitigated and controlled by the Domain. Yet, the large quantity and diversity of the various participants suggest that some kind of event will happen one way or the other. 

However, please note that it will happen without anyone realizing it happening until afterwards.

There is an over reliance on electronic manipulative media. Many people believe that they know everything that is going on simply by the massive scope of the size of the media. That is a dangerous illusion. Nothing truthful will be displayed. Then when cracks and fissures in the news starts to point to some disturbing things, it will be all over and past the point of no-return.

However you can control how those difficult times affect your life. If you control your thoughts, you will control the range / extent of those influences on your life. Do not allow others to control your thoughts.

Keep in mind that the Domain is monitoring this situation very closely, and will not permit substantive destruction of the environment. However the mass concentration of evil and distorted IS-BE inmates have other ideas. And there are numerous scenarios where bad catastrophic events might still be able to occur no matter how hard the Domain tries to prevent them. Such as what happened with your World War I.

Many Americans and Western governments, such as those in Europe, and Asian-Pacific nations that have “hitched a ride with Uncle Sam” are witnessing a collapse of everything that they believed in.

But you see, all nations rise and fall.

I have discussed this over and over before. And they follow a normal progression of birth to death. What this questioner is worried about can be summed up in one simple graph here…

Do you have any thoughts about this answer?

[5] Why are the Mantids so keen on helping humans when they know that our memories will be erased later?

Well, why do they keep doing what they are doing. And what are they doing exactly?

Mantids and Memory Erasure

“There is something also bugging me about the mantids involvement on earth (and when I was talking to my husband about it, the PC started doing it’s own thing…weird!) I’m having a hard time articulating it, but maybe someone else can grab it. So here we go: Why do the mantids stay with us our whole lives and reviewing it in the end, when there comes the amnesia and everything we learned is forgotten? Don’t they know about the amnesia? Are they also kind of trapped on earth and cannot escape? Or do they profit somehow from being our wardens?”

The Mantids are not Wardens. They are corrections officers / archivists / medical practitioners and they are bred for their role. They differ from specific Prison Planet to Prison Planet. 

A form (originally native) to the particular Prison Planet (within the Prison Complex) is elevated and provided with a duty and a role, then their success within that role is determined by that duty. The other four or so systems in the Prison Complex each has their own version of these helpers.

In the case of the Mantids, this form is found throughout the universe just like humans are, but this form has been on the earth much longer than any humans have. They call it their home and treat the humans as “adopted children” from their nest. 

As transdimensional creatures they are particularly suited as the caretakers of individual human consciousnesses.

They believe that it is important for them to help and guide the human species from the general population segment of the Prison Planet into “Heaven” and help them grow. They also believe that strife, experiences, and conflict make humans into better beings. 

This seemingly conflicting belief is not native to their original archetype. 

Like humans within the confines of the prison planet, they too have been modified. Both humans and mantids have been modified to live, work and stay within this prison complex and never leave it.

The Mantids are absolutely convinced of their need to help humans in the prison grow through pain and suffering and then reward them with a rest-period in “Heaven”.

This belief was cultivated / manufactured / genetically forced into them by the “Old Empire” when this particular Prison Planet was first established. Thus they, like the inmates that they tend to, are both hybridized archetype forms dedicated to specific roles within this Prison Complex. 

They believe that they are involved in great compassionate works by providing great suffering to human inmates and then rewarding them with a “Heaven” afterwards.

Jesus! – MM

[6] Is enlightenment a benefit or a distraction?

A good question from someone who is not taking the answers from the Domain at face value. Worthy of consideration.

Again, the query was calm, easy and the response was immediate.

Enlightenment

“The bit about enlightenment is highly confusing. I’m guessing because it is poorly defined/undefinable. The Domain officer said that those who managed to escape the prison mechanism were able to control their thoughts to a high degree. That’s exactly what I would expect from someone on “the way” to enlightenment (Never a final destination either). Those who point to the way also advocate self-knowledge. Isn’t this in parallel with what the Domain advises? Any clarification here would be appreciated.”

Enlightenment is a tool that is used by religions as part of a control mechanism. The individual components used to achieve an enlightened state, such as meditation, focus, mantras, and all the rest are useful components for the control of one’s thoughts. Control of one’s thoughts is THE (THE – emphasized twice) most important skill set that a IS-BE consciousness can develop.

If the intention of using these components (mediation / breathing / focus / etc.) is to achieve a state of nirvana (and consider it as enlightenment) it is a “dead end”. 

What you are doing is using the proper tools, but not building anything of worth or value. You are moving forward doing everything correct, and then parking the results in a great nothingness of no practical utility.

You must use the exact same skills that you use to achieve enlightenment towards functional outcomes. 

“Enlightenment” in of itself is NOT a functional outcome. (The Domain officer is getting rather worked up.) 

Religions have taken the skills originally taught to inmates to help them leave this Prison Planet and put them on “snipe hunts” that lead nowhere. Thousands of very well skilled and talented individuals were so very close to escaping the clutches of this inmate population, only to be sidetracked. They died and believed that the tunnel of light was the enlightenment that they seek. 

No. It’s just a trap. Avoid that trap. Do not try to become enlightened. Never try to become enlightened. Use the same skills for enlightenment to control your thoughts and focus your abilities.

I had to break from this for a spell. I have never experienced such a strong impassioned response before. (Not that I have many of these kinds of responses, but they all tend to be friendly – neutral. Not so…emotional.)

[7] Enlightenment and being service to self

Is enlightenment considered Service to Self?

Yes. It is a selfish action.

“There’s also the concept of the Bodhisattva who attains a high degree of self-mastery such that they could transcend, but choose not to in order to help others along the way. Such examples might be Christ or the Buddha in various incarnations.”

You do not need to obtain enlightenment, mastery or perfection in order to help others. You simply help them regardless of your current situation. 

As it is functionally used, irregardless of what other potential it might possess, enlightenment is a means of tricking IS-BE's of high potential into the "Tunnel of Light" so that their memories can be erased, and they can be sent back to start all over again.

Enlightenment has never freed anyone from the Prison Complex. You must be aware of that reality.

After this response, I “felt the need” to put up this picture…

Robin Williams giving helpful advice to a fast food worker on her situation. A day or two later, he killed himself. You do not need to be enlightened in order to help others.

You do not need to be enlightened to help people.

[8] Why not just break the WHOLE machine?

“A great way to ruin the “harvest” would be to poison the crop, or break the machine. Perhaps the “elites” driving us toward destruction might be altruistic if they are trying to end all life on earth and throw a wrench in the gears. Why not destroy the entire earth system so that life here is not possible? Wouldn’t that free all IS-BEs?”

A fast and stunning response shot back to me most clearly…

This solution would be catastrophic for trillions of IS-BE's. All would have no memories except their current incarnation at the time of destruction. 

They wouldn't know what to do. 

Eventually a flood of (multiple) armies of the deranged evil IS-BE's could engulf this section of the galaxy with horrific consequences. 

The neutral to good inmates would easily fall under their control. It would become a runaway train / domino effect / cascading of catastrophes that would run as a toxic cancer. It would envelope entire civilizations and societies and then run unchecked, one galaxy after the other.

And so I added…

In the movie Ghostbusters, bad or malevolent spirits and ghosts are captured and stored in a “containment grid” which was a device that held all the spirits in place. It was a field of electromagnetic energy that the spirits and ghosts could not break through.

Containment machine.

However there were forces that wanted to shut off the containment machinery. And, when the power was shut off from the containment grid, all of the stored spirits escaped and flew into New York City in mass…

Escaping spirits from Ghost-busters.

As they did so they created all sorts of problems.

The Governor of New York called up the the leadership and the National Guard, calling it a National Emergency of Biblical Proportions.

A National Emergency of Biblical Proportions.

Why not? Is he correct?

[9] Other extraction agents?

“Is there an official title for the robed Elders who have upwards of 20 000 other consciousnesses posted in the prison to act as extraction agents? Can this organization be considered as the same entourage of consciousnesses that are associated with either the IS-BE known as Sanat Kumara or the IS-BE known as Aetherius?”

The answer to this hit me quite fast and was unexpected. I didn’t even read the entire paragraph. I just skimmed over it. In fact, I wasn’t even fully ready to transcribe anything. I had to put my sandwich down and start typing away. I know that no one understands, but that’s what happened here.

There are all kinds of official titles for all the places, locations, people, operations, and positions of everyone. The titles are not in English. And there is no need to generate translations of titles for your use when your own names are already quite sufficient.

Remember who you are. You are IS-BE. You define your world, your reality, and how you interact with it. You are GOD. You are the highest most important consciousness in everything.

(Pause. Then a continuation.)

There are numerous organizations that you refer to as "robed elders". 

Each one has a niche role in this Prison Environment. 

(Then he starts listing. When listing, there is a sort of emphasis at the first syllable of the first word, so that I know that it is a new list item. I added numbers to help with the absorption of this information. The numbers were not provided in the transmission, but added by myself later on.)

[1] Some have been around for centuries and were initially established by Domain agents (in their spare time) as a pastime. We put an end to the unauthorized efforts around 1955. There are currently authorized efforts only, and it is a part of our overall grand strategy.

[2] While other organizations were established by mischievous outsiders who find it enjoyable to play games with the inmates here. For them, it's like putting a leaf in a cage with a bored kitten. They find pleasure and enjoyment "toying" with the more active non-physical components of inmates. It's an activity of theirs. 

[3] Some have been established by well-meaning inmates that wanted to set up anti-Prison Operations, as a sort of like a form of warfare. It started out as a way to figure out what was going on and then evolved into something rather serious. Some of these kinds of "elders" have been around for many, many thousands of years. They have purpose. The questioner asked about one such organization.

[4] Some were established by physical occult organizations from within the Prison population and has taken on a life of their own. These kinds of organizations are many. Some were created by accident. And some were created on purpose. One of the most famous (and prolific) occult leaders in your modern era was a man named Aleister Crowley and he was very active in creating some of these organizations in the non-physical worlds. Some spawned others, and some fractured and grew.

[5] Some are part of the traps and snares that were established by the administration of the Prison Complex.These ones are very devious. They are run by Prison Correction Officers. Often autonomously. 

[6] Some are the result of prayer and meditation leading up to quasi religious sponsored organizations that them "took on a life of their own". And operate with the highest intentions, often in ignorance, and suffering from the chains of dogma. 

Each one goes by a name or group of names depending on who is dealing with them and why. 

Their overall mix of intention is roughly...

14% Sincere
11% Mischievous
24% Impassioned / religious
22% Run by the Prison Complex as a snare / trap
19% Accidentally spawned or grown on it's own.
03% Initially set up by the Domain
07% Misc

The numbers are REALLY difficult for me to nail down. So what I did was write them down as transmitted.

Then I discovered that they did not add up so I rounded them downwards to get numbers that made sense. I think that the commander was just pitching vague rough figures for illustrative purposes. The readers should not take these numbers as solid figures but as a guide to get a general feel for the kinds of organizations that are around, and the chances of one encountering one or the other.

We urge caution in dealing with all non-physical organizations. 

There are many tricks and side-tracks that are purposely designed to put you in a dangerous situation. Then if you fail, you are then recycled, and your physical body dies in it's sleep. If you pass, then you go on to harder more aggressive "tests" and combat arenas. Eventually ALL IS-BE's return back to the "Tunnel of Light" and are recycled in this manner.

This system is one of the most common ones used by the Prison Planet to trap those inmates with advanced skills for travel in the non-physical worlds.

All IS-BE's should be very, very careful when dealing in the non-physical realm that lies inside of the Prison Confines. There are very dangerous and very complex traps purposely designed to snare the unprepared.

Then, out of the blue, about two days later this comes in.

The questioner has been involved in multiple groups. This is true even though it might appear to be a singular group authority. 

At least one of them was a Corrections Officer sponsored group. 

Often the "Old Empire" Corrections Officer groups disguise themselves (it's easy to do) and pretend to be another group. 

As such they convince the IS-BE that they are what the IS-BE wishes / desires / wants /expects. Then they set up snare scenarios to trap the inmate. It is easy to trap such an inmate, as they are often singular and working alone.

Every caution must be taken. One should never perform dangerous actions or efforts in isolation. The risks are far too great.

Thoughts?

[10] Non-physical base monitoring traffic in and out of the Prison Complex?

“Is there an official title for the organization who maintain a permanent station in the non physical domain who are tasked with monitoring all inter-dimensional traffic coming into and out of the earth prison?”

Answers came quick. Clean.

There are multiple organizations, all working independently. The Domain, of course is one. The others are set up for their own purposes. You might think of them as regulatory agencies rather than customs officials.

Obviously the Domain has started monitoring the traffic when the fencing and monitoring mechanisms were damaged.

Some of the civilizations that (have been) dropping off their riff-raff to this environment have set up monitoring stations and platforms.

There is also a kind of constellation / data network / records system / archivist operation that monitors everything regarding this Prison Complex.

Additionally, note that even though the fencing surround this entire Prison Complex has been damaged it has not been obliterated. There are self-aware autonomous Prison systems still working, still monitoring, and still in communication with Mantids and Corrections Officers. (There are other creatures that are Corrections Officers as well as Mantids.)

Thoughts?

[11] Domain approved process for reporting targets …

“What is the Domain approved process for lucid dreamers to report targets they suspect with 100% surety as being part of the amnesia machinery when they are unable to provide exact coordinates?”

This one is complicated and I got a headache just trying to sort through all the inrush of data and stuff. I am still trying to sort it out in any kind of meaningful way. A big jumble and mess of data, concepts and information that I haven’t much experience on and cannot speak about clearly. So I will greatly simplify.

The EBP handles tracking and comm with the physical components of an IS-BE when they are attired in inmate "clothing". That is the primary purpose of the EBP. It is to completely monitor the physical person.

The non-physical comm and monitoring is another system completely. It is completely different.

Part of the Domain operations on the non-physical bodies is to release the chains of control by the Prison Administration. (Greatly simplified.) But part is something else as well. Depending on the person, other systems can be added or subtracted from the non-physical body of a given inmate.

One of the more substantive and comprehensive operations is a very complex procedure that permits tracking and recording abilities associated with a given non-physical body. Because of it's in-depth / invasive / critical infrastructure changes /alterations /dangers it is only used on the most important or critical non-physical bodies (A lot of things that I have no idea of. Simplified the response.) that have a need to be observed and monitored.

This procedure is given to those that are active in "Lucid Dreaming" activities and related movements in the non-physical world that ALSO wish to participate with the Domain as a volunteer. If this occurs then the individual would experience a very strange "experience" (a bunch of concepts that I am at a loss to explain.) that would not appear to be like their normal "Lucid Dreaming" events. Instead they would be having operations performed on them, and then released. 

Then for the most part, their normal activities would continue as before, though they might start to get "nudges" or messages or directions. Which would be "coaching" / requests / advisement from the Domain handler to them. Their ability to understand what is going on takes time and there is no set training period for this activity.

Afterwards they would not need to report anything. Their experiences would be monitored tracked, observed and noted.

This is a unique procedure for unique assets. For most volunteers this is not necessary.

Is this reasonable?

[12] Suggestions or messages for escapees from the Prison Complex

“Are there any messages for those who have escaped the prison through lucid dreaming and retain much of their memories as an immortal consciousness ie as an IS-BE?”

Again this is quick and surprisingly short.

Keep in mind that as long as your physical body is alive, your consciousness will still be connected to it. The only way that you can escape this Prison Complex is to physical die within it.

Yet, when the physical body is dead, your IS-BE consciousness will still be connected to the non-physical body. For many, they will appear to be one and the same.

At that point, there are a small number of IS-BE's that [might] possess the skills to actually leave the Prison Complex. If they have that ability, we suggest that they request assistance from The Domain.

The Domain is the highest authority in this region. By requesting assistance, it is no different from calling the Fire Department, calling for an ambulance, or calling for the police. The IS-BE consciousness should have no fears or qualms about asking for support and assistance ever. 

Call for help. That is what you must do, and wait for us to arrive.

What are your thoughts?

[13] Black-hole anomaly reference

“Do the Domain know about a black hole like “anomaly” that permeates through both physical and non physical worlds and has the potential to “decompose” such worlds”? This is hard to describe in Earth based language. From outside the prison it would be appear as a dark void that encompasses many of these non physical and physical worlds simultaneously.”

When I read this I got the impression of the Commander / handler sighing and looking up and thinking. Not that it actually happened, mind you, but that was the impression that I had.

And then this…

Ask this question later.

So then I waited… I waited all afternoon, had dinner and then I asked again. The response was like a tired old kindly grandfather or cherished uncle that only wants the best for you.

There are many things in space and the surrounding area that are unknown to the human inmates. This is in both the physical and the non-physical realms. 

Some resemble a black-hole as you consider it. Others are something else entirely different. There are voids, and areas of occluded thought transference. There are many, many areas, and many such objects.

I would advise staying away from any objects or situations that you do not understand. This is for your own safety and to prevent you from being engulfed in a snare of the "old empire".

What are your thoughts?

[14] Any “consciousness” doping facilities?

“Are the Domain aware of “consciousness” doping facilities within the non physical planes where hypnotic commands for reality brainwashing are uploaded to the IS – BE via a type of screen?”

This was an interesting response. It was dismissive. And you all shouldn’t be taken aback by it. It’s just a response.

Yes. The Domain is aware of everything.

I am sure that this isn’t what the questioner wanted to hear. But this is all that I’ve got. Simple. Are you bothered by it?

[15] The “Wet Room”?

“Is the Domain familiar with a device known as “the Wet Room” which has the ability to “spin” a consciousness through multiple non physical worlds simultaneously and is used specifically to torture/ disorientate an IS-BE traveling outside their physical body?”

I had to read some writing on this and then re-read the question. The answer was slow in coming. Maybe too general. It was hesitating and sluggish.

IS-BE's can create anything by thought. It is common to create entire universes. But those that are inmates have forgotten this ability and the Prison Correction Officers use all sorts of devices and systems to control those in the non-physical environment. 

This "wet room" is one such system. There are many, many more. Some are truly awful. You do not want to get involved in any of these traps, snare or devices if you can avoid them.

Additionally, evil people use the lack of understanding and knowledge of the IS-BE inmates to throw them into these devices of torture. Then they gleefully enjoy the agony, fear, pain and suffering that they witness.

One of the problems with this kind of third party communication is that the receiver” myself can only communicate ideas, thoughts, images and concepts that I am familiar with.

I had a very strong feeling that the Commander knew what was being asked, but was frustrated in that he couldn’t provide meaningful answers to me personally.

I suppose that were he talking to the principal questioner, he would be able to transmit ideas and answers much more readily. The Wet Room.

[16] Other escapees?

“Are the Domain aware of any IS – BEs, apart from their Officers mentioned in Alien Interview who were caught in one of the electronic traps and were able to escape?”

There was a kind of frustration in the “tone” to this response.

Others have escaped. This is true. 

However, today it is very uncommon event. 

Each time that there is an escape, the Warden (or his surrogates) creates a new system of preventative measures so that it will not happen again. 

Many of the escapes occurred early on after the system was built, and over time, with the addition of more snares, traps and systems, they became fewer and fewer.

Any escapes are highly unlikely to occur without Domain assistance.

(Intentional pause. Then he continued...)

It is worth noting that when the first escapes began, at the start of the Prison Complex, the "Old Empire" needed to locate a militarized police force to patrol the region around the complex. And it was this arm of their space forces that we first battled when we entered this solar system. (Clear image of other actual military forces coming later.)

When the escapees were captured, they were re-injected into the Prison Complex and treated as "escaping offenders". This gave them "special treatment" by the Mantids. They were earmarked for tougher-than-usual difficulty in mapping out the pre-birth world-line template (sic) and much shorter cycling in reincarnation events. (Shorter lives on the earth, followed by a special "Hell" area located in "Heaven" made just for them and other escapees.)

This is a standard procedure by the (Mantid) Corrections Officers. The closer an inmate gets toward escaping, the more difficult his / her next reincarnated life will be. This is controlled by the Corrections Officers in "Heaven".

Today the space surrounding all Prison Complexes, both the physical and the non-physical environments are filled with a minefield of traps and snares. They are multi-layered. We have begun cleaning out large swaths of "space" (sic. I don't know why he wanted me to add this notation.) with systems that we have developed just for this purpose, and it is a tedious and time consuming process.

Part of the reason for this is that the traps and snares react only to inmates. Not to normal humans and other species.

What are your thoughts on this?

[17] How can an average Joe communicate with them? (Aside from communicating via MM)

I put this question out, and then sat by waiting for a response with my cup of coffee. As it is the way that I deal with these things. I then wait. While I was on another task (my personal journal) I felt the rising hair on the back of my neck (well, it’s like rising hair on the back of my neck. Not actually the same thing.) and switched over to record it.

I vocalized it again and then typed the response.

There is no need for an "average person" to contact us. We have everything under control and in place.

It might appear to be cold and heartless, it's just our efficiency. If we need to contract you, you will be contacted. 

What is important is that everyone who works with us follows the rules and obeys the procedures. The Domain works as a unified whole and a "well oiled" organism. We need people who wish to be part of this unified whole, and not a bunch of college hooligans out for a Saturday lark. (I get the strong image of a box of kittens running all over the carpet.)

(Followed by an equally strong image of a group of college students riding in a distressed model "A" with words written all over the car, and the guys wearing strange white and black shoes, striped long sleeve sweaters with sewn on letters, and the girls wearing skirts and holding triangular pennants. I get the impression that the Domain Officer must have spent some time on the Earth in the "Roaring 20's".)

If and when you are contacted by, need to communicate with, or participate in any kind of interaction with us, it is important that you remain calm. 

Do not allow your thoughts to take you to bad places. 

These are fears set up by the many many layers of the Prison Planet system of control. You will find that working with us is very efficient and satisfying, and that we will be able to assist you in the recovery of so many things that you have lost.

(I think that he was talking to the questioner directly in this response. Not in generalities though me.)

Interesting.

[18] How can I detect and possibly circumvent the Old Empire aesthetic mechanisms to keep us enslaved to the physical environment?

I felt that this was a good question, and the Domain Commander agreed. The answer came forth readily without hesitation.

The typical consciousness will easily be drawn into the snares and the traps. This is far truer today than say 20 or even 40 years ago. Most inmates have become accustomed to manipulation to such a degree that they cannot recognize what is going on. This is on all levels, from the physical to the non-physical.

The best equipped to avoid the snares are those with the ability to control their thoughts, and who are very cautious and focused on end goals. Those that are not easily distracted, or manipulated by strange new events will be those best able to  avoid the traps.

That being said, the traps and snares are very devious and cunning. It is unlikely that anyone can avoid them without help and assistance.

That is why there are numerous non-physical organizations. Such as "elders", "leaders", "Prophets", and the like occupying roles in the non-physical reality. The purpose of these organizations is to assist and muster groups of IS-BE consciousnesses to fundamentally fight, or avoid the traps set up by the "Old Empire" prison administrators.

Unfortunately, many of the organizations are not effective enough. Their efforts have had a very minor impact on the entrapment mechanisms of the Prison Complex.

We ask everyone who works with us to focus on controlling your thoughts. Avoiding areas of danger. And helping others in need. When the time comes for your egress from the prison system, we will be there assisting you. All you need to do is call for us.

Could it be that some of the inventions of the last few decades have become traps and snares themselves? Like social media?

[19] Can they teach us how is to live and work as citizens of the Domain?

I only just glanced at this question and got a definite answer.

Yes. Absolutely.

All imprisoned IS-BE's once they regain their memories will desire to return to people, places and things that they know. 

For many of them, not all, but a high percentage of them, this will mean returning to the geographic confines of the (former) "Old Empire".

But they will be quite different (from what they once were, and from their former friends) given their experiences in the Prison Complex.

We will always be willing to accept rehabilitated prison inmates of this harsh environment into The Domain. And to this end we are working on rehabilitation plans and systems just for this express purpose. 

Rehabilitation is necessary, first to reacquire an IS-BE identity, and secondary to re-enter the IS-BE community as a whole. All inmates will have been damaged by their relentless tortures in the Hell that is the Prison Complex.

(Message addendum.)

Keep in mind that the (former) "Old Empire" is now the De Facto territory of The Domain. So that makes any released inmates automatically members of The Domain.

However this is not what the questioner asked. They wanted to know if they will be able to have a substantive ROLE as an ACTIVE member of The Domain rather than just a citizen under it's authority. And the question is, of course, yes.

What are your thoughts on this?

[20] How dangerous are the traps that surround the Prison Complex?

I know that they are pretty dangerous. But I figured that I would ask just how dangerous. You know, maybe just thrown back in, or perhaps something very lethal to IS-BE’s right? So I thought that I would ask.

This is the answer.

Check your cell phone.

WTF?

I turned it on, and when my Douxing (Chinese version of TicTok) turned on and opened up. This is the first video that it displayed. An interesting coincidence.

It’s pretty amazing how this coincidence came up.

[21] Anchoring to a time-line?

This was asked while I was very busy with personal issues. So, I plopped it down and then left it be until I could get around to it. When I had a chance I got straight to it. Tuning in was calm, smooth and easy. Though I really didn’t understand the question well-enough, the answers just flowed forth.

“Not sure if you’ll read this as it’s an old post. I got hit by a car, “died”, and got shunted into this almost perfectly similar reality except for a few changes. Mandela effects flip flopped for a while.”

Would The Domain be able to explain what technology/process is involved in anchoring us to a body & timeline?

Mandela effects, anchoring, world-line cross overs, and all other aspects of these strange events are unique to the prison environment that you inhabit. You refer to it as the MWI. It is an artificial construct. It is not the way the true universe works, only the universe that you live in.

The creation of this universe is very detailed and very complex, and it is unique to the understanding of the group of IS-BE's that created it. They obviously spent much time working on it, developing it, and honing it to a degree of perfection.

Usually, IS-BE's are so enraptured with the pleasures of the physical body that they lose contact with their "spiritual" (sic) side in the non-physical and they forget what abilities that they have. Obviously this was not the case during the fabrication, construction and design of this prison facility. Some mighty (major) skill sets were called into being (use).

The Domain is in the process of studying this system. Each day are new surprises. We have been working with the [technical helpers] to discover it's operation and design. From which we would be able to extract any traps, snare, or problems that lie hidden.

Anchoring to a time-line, world-line interactions, and everything associated with it is unique to this prison environment. Certainly we understand the need to anchor groups of consciousnesses. It's like herding cattle. You cannot have them all over the place and clumping up. And this was a technique that we developed over time as we became familiar with this environment. It is not totally well understood.

Anchoring is one of the containment systems used by the administration of this Prison Complex. They use it to herd inmates. Thus they can control them, and move them towards wars and conflicts that will result in the inmates expending all of their energies on wasted endeavors. Thus, and such that they will be unable to concentrate on anything else. 

Remember that the entire Prison Complex is designed to have war, after war, after war. It's designed to be a Hell. Where the inmates are tortured over and over. Then forget everything, are re-injected, and then relive the same kinds of events.

The Domain is using this system to avoid wars, conflicts and turmoil. Though, there are many, many strong forces inside the Prison Complex pushing towards this goal aggressively.

MM uses the visualization method of a three-dimensional map. It is extremely helpful, but not wholly accurate. 

The actual environment is like a hot cauldron full of all sorts of things. (Food, stew, meat, eggs, tentacles, etc.) Anchoring is similar to turning the knob on the temperature control.

Anchoring to avoid conflict is similar to turning down the heat on the cauldron. All of the items settle. Some sink to the bottom, while others float to the top.

Anchoring to create conflict is similar to turning up the heat on the cauldron. All the items start to toss and turn as the mixture boils. During this period, there is a lot of steam, and smoke and evaporation. And the volume of the cauldron decreases.

If you think of the volume to be the prison population inside of the Prison Complex, then you can see that the anchoring towards wars will decrease the actual prison population inside of the physical realm. Many will die off. And thus got to "Heaven" to be forgiven, forget their memories, and "rewarded" with a break. Then the cycle begins again.

This is why The Domain has had operatives anchor world lines. They acted as a method of controlling the temperature of that cauldron.

(Pause)

Anchoring to a world-line template is of a different scope than group anchoring efforts. Much of what the Domain has been involved in has been group anchoring efforts to control "the temperature" of the "cauldron stew".

What you are asking about is what happens when you are following a normal progression on a world-line template. Then there is an "event" where somehow your IS-BE consciousness "skips" and slides to a totally different template. Then, perhaps, skips and slides to another one, and then again, and maybe again, and again.

This is a big subject...

I needed to take a break and a breather. I had the impression that I was about to get a massive dose of information.

So I said “tone it down please”.

And got up, went downstairs and got my self a coke from the vending machine.

If you use the 3D template map concept that MM promotes then the best way to visualize this as a railroad line going from one world-line to the next. It's currently visualized as a plain and simple line. But if you visualize it as a railroad line it might be easier to understand.

While the topographic surface is the strongest likelihood of movement, it is not all the options available. There's "tracks" going up and above, and "tracks" going down below.

These are equivalent to "nearby slides".

If you can imagine world-line template maps stacked upon each other like a layered cake, and that an event occurs that has you make you slide up or down into a different layer in that cake, that is what is going on. 

Sometimes the "event" is so traumatic that you slide to a different world-line template. One near by, of course, but not exactly the same as the one proceeding it.

In effect, you are not just simply moving from world-lien to world-line, but you are actually sliding up or down on the Z-axis as well.

In general, if this happens, the chances are that you momentarily slid to a pre-birth (default) world-line template when the "event" occurred. As you must have somehow altered your existing template in your past and have been riding it for some time on your own autonomously. 

Then, when your "components" tried to latch on to the the highest probability relationship items / components /vectors it threw you off, and you ended up on a different template, and again and again, until the "components" resettled with highest-probability fits based on the thoughts associated with you at the moment of the "event".

I have no idea what the last part is about. I have to reread it a couple of times to figure it out. I think that the “components” of our consciousness ties us to the templates that we inhabit.

And thus the selection of the pre-birth world-line template must somehow tie our IS-BE consciousness with a particular world-line.

Thus, when an “event” happens, that connection can be disrupted… until it resettles.

Not every “event” is physical only. Non-physical events happen and scar our non-physical bodies.

[22] Why/how is our awareness prevented from carrying through to the dreamworld?

“I know the body is checking for movement and thoughts and will not enter sleep until the mind has blanked out, it’s an obvious “feature” built in for control.”

This is an intentionally engineered "interrupting" feature of the inmate prison body and how it differs from that of a "normal" human archetype body that lies outside of the Prison Complex.

The physical body is intentionally designed to NOT communicate or travel when sleeping. 

However, this is a developing function. It does not appear immediately. It is a feature that "grows" over time. It's an intelligent feature.

This function acquires experiences, and sensory input as the IS-BE is born in the physical reality. 

Then over time, this intelligent biological alteration manifests. By the time the entity is five to seven years old, most of the population will be unable to communicate with the "dreamworld" (sic).

However, it is not a perfect system.

Certain IS-BE's of strong character and ability, as well as strong environments that foster the belief of the spirit-world as a familial norm, can avoid this biological and non-physical layer of interruption. The entity as a person can learn to be able to have "Lucid Dreams", and "Astral Projection" as well as many other skills that are denied the vast humanity that is imprisoned.

Since this is a developed "growth" that is acquired over time, it is possible to destroy that "growth", alter it's composition or destroy it entirely. This can occur by directed thought, skilled intention, and practice.

Since the vast majority of inmates do not have this ability, this system of control is effective in the Prison Complex.

What are your thoughts on this?

[23] Why is astral projection hard to achieve while awake?

Strangely this response happened very quickly. I don’t even think I got a chance to take a breath.

It’s really a lot of work doing this you know. I feel very “speedy” (a LSD reference for your children of the 70’s and 80’s). My body and hair are getting exhausted from being so electrified, and my body temperature is running rather hot. I am bathed in sweat.

Sensory overload. Your engineering physical body is unable to partition out multiple consciousnesses like the IS-BE can. Thus, you must rely on a singular consciousness to manifest events. 

If you want to conduct astral projection then you will need to be able to separate your physical senses from your non-physical sensing ability.

This is a normal feature of all physical human bodies, and is not an engineered feature of the inmate prison body.

What are your thoughts on this question and answer?

[24] Why do memories from astral/dreams not carry over easily?

He continues. And my keyboard is getting slippery with all the sweat from my fingers.

Memories are stored outside of the physical body. When a physical body accesses the memories they access what can be be described as RAM. It's the everyday use memories. 

This varies from person to person. Some have an easier time accessing the day to day memories. Other have a difficult time, and still others with a photographic memory remember everything.

You can remember what you had for breakfast today simply because you are using local memory. Your inmate container allows this random access of everyday memories.

The same is true with your memories of what happened one year ago. 

All these memories are stored on (something similar to the computer memory system known as) "RAM".

Normally, all "normal" (unmodifed) human bodies permit access to a central repository of memories. This is equivalent to a "hard drive".

Not inmates however.

The engineered inmate bodies have blocked access to the "hard drive" that contains all of the memories that you as a IS-BE has. 

This ability was not only erased by the "brain washing" efforts upon entry to the Prison Planet, but access to it is not physically possible in the physical inmate (engineered) body. The entire access circuitry is ripped out.

When you, as an IS-BE exist as consciousness from the physical reality to the non-physical reality, your memories (and experiences) are being recorded and they go straight to the "hard drive".

But when you are in the physical body, they go into RAM and the "hard drive".

Inmates are never permitted to access the "hard drive" memory circuitry. Only RAM. It's biologically engineered into all inmates.

However, when an inmate "dies" and leaves the physical "general population" and gets rewarded with a "Heaven", he or she can access these "hard drive" memories by permission. A Corrections Officer (usually a Mantid) will accompany you to a "viewing area" where certain memories will be presented to you to observe.

However, that is only for inmates.

All unmodified humans do not have this problem and can access both types of memories in real time with no problem whether they are in a physical body or not.

So, in a way, you can access some of your memories. So it’s not all bad.

[25] Is this related to the memory wipe that our memories are so poor now, or biology/soul interaction?

And this came fast as well…

It is engineered in all inmate bodies.

“With the timeline I’m sure we can shift to a completely alternate reality with a new history but I’m unsure of the process involved. And yeah, thought dump sorry, I just see these bodies are actively designed to stop us leaving in soul form.”

You can only use the skills associated with world-line , time -line travel to MWI events within the prison universe; the Prison Complex. Your thoughts will not take you out of the Prison Complex alone. That is why the entire complex is constructed as it is today.

It is unlikely that you can create a universe (via a alternative reality slide) within a universe that controls the construction of your being.

The science fiction movie “Inception” comes to mind.

(A bunch of "chatter" and a confusing mix about stuff related to "time travel" to a point in time before the construction of the Prison Planet, and other things that I am having a bunch of time understanding. I think that I a just getting tired.)

Guys, I appreciate all this input, but really.  Please don’t pull a “Back to school” Rodney Dangerfield on me.

These last five questions by one person just about killed me.

It makes me just want to stop and end MM completely. Have a heart and some compassion here. Please everyone, one or two questions only. These five to eight questions in a single go is not tenable. It is not something that I want to do and it is personally very, very difficult for me to handle. To give you all an idea what it is like, then do this; Grab a screwdriver and stick it in a power outlet. Now, keep putting it in that outlet for six hours.

That’s what it’s like.

When I refer to Rodney Dangerfield, “Back to School”, I am referring to a singular scene. Where the one professor gives him one singular question.

It’s just that it has these massive 64 parts.  Poor Rodney answers, “concerning part 63b, subpart d, section R-12, part 14″…

It’s tiring and takes a lot out of me. Christ. I need a drink!

Back to school.

[26] There must be flaws in the system where we can throw that anchor off somehow?

The questions continue…

Yes, there are flaws, but they are very difficult to locate, and even harder to exploit.

Enough! I’m toast. No more questions. This is more than enough for one person.

After a break of two days, I sat down and added these questions from someone else…

[27] My question is why the “caste system”.

“Why do the type-1 have different roles, ranks, bodies, and even abilities. Unlike the mantids they use physical bodies and are limited to the limits of time and space. STO all have the same soul structure from my understanding which are different from STS. Why this? Could you please clarify.”

Everyone is an IS-BE. Everyone is thus capable of any position within any society. That includes the Domain.

The members of the Domain have roles within society based upon their abilities, and capabilities. We have a very rigorous method of merit that determines where an IS-BE "fits" within our society.

Certainly anyone can rise to become whatever class they want. It is not a rigid caste structure. It is a hybrid class structure. The only limitations are those of the IS-BE itself.

A goose cannot swim under the water, but with practice it can take longer and longer periods of time under water as needed. By practice, the goose can indeed start to swim somewhat under water. It just takes effort and drive and ambition. However, most geese do not try to swim under the water to their roles are locked in, like a caste, to floating on the water and flying. That is what they prefer.

Now, to achieve the class rating that they want, the IS-BE must get to that position through hard work, determination and merit. In the case of the goose, it must try and try and practice and practice. It must do this over and over again until it is adept at swimming under the water.

With each class are certain "benefits" or "allowances" granted to the IS-BE. Such as the ability to use certain doll bodies and so on and so forth.

(New subject.)

Note that all members of The Domain are inherently neutral in sentience. 

However the accumulation of experiences manifests in the desire to serve the society; The Domain, to the best of one's ability. 

This is because of the way the society is structured. In societies that grant roles based on effort, then all efforts (in all societies) eventually evolve into Service to Others sentience. 

Those societies that are not based on merit, hard work, community, or effort tend to evolve into Service to Self sentience's. The more corruption, graft, crime, corruption, the more selfish the society becomes.

Thus, because of this, the vast majority of IS-BE's in The Domain are Service for Others sentience.

Any thoughts on this answer?

[28] And volunteering to work with the domain?

Would this mean a harder life (experiences) or what would you really be doing?

No. In many ways it could be much easier.

The questioner is dealing with many non-physical issues that reflect how his reality manifests. By working with The Domain, many of those non-physical issues can be suppressed or even completely eliminated.

Every action that one takes has tradeoffs.

For many inmates, joining the Domain adds an extra layer of effort that one might not desire. Such as MM here.

However, for those, such as the questioner, the benefits of working with the Domain far outweigh any of the negative issues. It is all about tradeoffs.

Any thoughts on this?

Some final thoughts leading up to question [29]

You know, these answers bring up so many questions for me personally.

You see, I as MM was in MAJestic and in my interactions I fully came to understand the topography of the MWI Prison Complex.

  • I came to understand how the Prison Planet works in great detail.

However, from these answers, it is clear that this kind of knowledge is not available to The Domain. They are having a great deal of difficulty in figuring out all the layers, the traps the systems and so on and so forth.

  • The Domain captured this geographic region. However, they do not know how the Prison Planet works.

From the answers (here and before) it appears that it is possible that I know (perhaps, and I am only saying) more than The Domain does about this Prison Planet.

I understand how it works and the many, many layers and how to navigate inside of it, and so much more. Right? Are these things that I just casually picked up in all my slides and adventures?  What are these “things” that I somehow understand in great clarity?

Well, whatever they are, these are things that are unique to The Prison Planet.

Not to The Domain.

Not to the universe outside of the Prison Planet. Only inside the Prison Planet.

The Commander and all the workers in The Domain know many, many things. But they DO NOT know the structure and the architecture of this complex. They need to know it in order to turn off the suppression and monitoring equipment. And so they are enlisting me to help them.

Why ME?

Was it just that I had the right education and the right background and the right place and time and coincidentally it all fell into place when I joined the United States Navy? As this is what I have believed all these years. But then again… there is no such thing as coincidences.

Do you see what I am saying?

Perhaps my involvement in MAJestic goes far deeper than what I had been made aware of.

Perhaps I, myself an a reincarnated  kind of aide or assistant, or architect or something or the other. Maybe I am somehow tied with some “Old Empire” skills, knowledge.

Maybe, you know…

… it was like what happened in the Ancient China. When an Emperor had his treasure tomb built, he then killed all the workers who built it, and then buried his architects in the tomb with him so that the secrets of the tomb will never see the light of day.

Maybe that is what happened.

I am not saying that I am this person or something like that. Not at all.

But it does seem really odd to me, and as these Q&A responses flush out I find myself asking these questions more and more often. Why do I know so much more about the inner workings of the Prison Planet MWI than The Domain Commander assigned to this area?

From the movie “The Matrix”; The Architect is a highly specialized, humorless program of the Machine world as well as the creator of the Matrix. As the chief administrator of the system, he is possibly a collective manifestation, or at the very least a virtual representation of the entire Machine mainframe.

What is the story?

And so, it’s really one of those moments “of truth”. You know.

What the Hell is going on?

I put it off for a day, but I just couldn’t wait.  I had to ask.

On Sunday 26SEP21 after I had a bowl or home-made chicken noodle soup, I asked the question.

[29] Who am I? Who is MM?

And the answer came back swift and clear.

Mades Escapalion

Thoughts?

Do you want more?

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The engineering of a inmate body from that of a normal human so that it can never leave the Prison Planet arena

How about that for a subject title? Jeeze!

This article deals with one of the most important fundamental aspects of the fence that surround this “Prison Planet” environment. Which is the idea that the inmates reside within specially modified bodies that are designed in such a way that they can never leave the fenced in prison compound.

Basic fundamentals

The earth is a Prison Planet.

The Domain is trying to change that role to that of a rehabilitation area instead. Which I have repeatedly referred to as a “Sentience Nursery“.

This is what DM said about this…

...the Grand Elder told me that people stuck on earth (ie those who were not evil service to self oriented) would be flicked over to a “buffer” rehabilitation “reality” specifically to detox them from all the virtual reality (brainwashing) dependancies they had come to rely on whilst under the control of the Cabal (Old Empire).

All of this information (regarding this) has been detailed elsewhere on MM.

Now, due to it’s excessive size, complexity and length, it’s best that if you do not understand what is going on…

… it might be best for you to leave and go elsewhere. This article is likely to be way, way over your head.

Key principles

Actually, the idea that the earth (along with it’s solar system and four / five other solar systems) are all part of a Prison Complex should not be too difficult to understand.

The earth.

Additionally, the idea that the entire Prison Complex is much like the artificial-reality that is described within the movie The Matrix shouldn’t be that difficult to understand either.

What we think of as “reality” is in fact, an artificial construct that we think is real.

The key idea being that there is the true and actual reality, and at some point in time, a society known as “The Old Empire” created a Prison system for it’s criminals. This prison system is an artificial reality. Just like in the movie The Matrix.

This prison system is an artificial reality.

Where in the movie “The Matrix” the people can move in and out of the artificial reality by a system of electronics (such as a phone call that simulates a change in electronic manipulation)…

Moving in and out of the matrix.

…it is different in this Prison Complex.

The differences…

All and any IS-BE consciousness can enter the electro-magnetic force field at will. They can also leave it at will as well.

After all, there are many vehicles from The Domain and others that come in this Prison Environment all the time and they are able to come and go at will.

All manner of extraterrestrials can come and go in and out of this prison environment at will. Why not the inmates?

But…

…once you are designated as an inmate, your entire “self” is erased, and you are provided with a new body (system) to inhabit.

And this new body has been modified in such a way that it cannot leave the Prison Complex ever. It is sort of like having a product or software with certain features blanked out.

Appliance manufacturers make feature-omitted versions of their products to differentiate for product placement in stores.

Since you have a new body that is unable to act, behave and respond like the old body did, you are not trapped in a feature-reduced or retarded body. As such, the warden and the prison system controls everything that you have.

Everything.

In the movie the Matrix, the character Neo is shown that the system can control his actions and movements at well. This include preventing him from yelling for help or screaming.

This article talks about the differences between the “normal” human body, and the body used by inmates. We also discuss the different types or levels of a body, and what The Domain is doing to them for the irregular volunteers.

Human bodies are all over the universe

The first thing that you all must remember is that there is no such thing as evolution.

The Domain (or whatever preceded it) manufactured every type of creature that we know of.

And humans, as one such creature, is a dominant biological template that lies everywhere all over the universe. (Not THE dominant template, but one of the more common templates for a “Sun Type 12, Class 7 planet”.)

The following are extracts from “Alien Interview parsing of comments deemed trillions of years old”  HERE

"The origins of this universe and life on Earth, as discussed in the textbooks I have read, are very inaccurate. Since you serve your government as a medical personnel, your duties require that you understand biological entities. So, I am sure that you will appreciate the value of the material I will share with you today.

The text of books I have been given on subjects related to the function of life forms contain information that is based on false memories, inaccurate observation, missing data, unproven theories, and superstition.

The correct information about the origins of biological entities has been erased from your mind, as well as from the minds of your mentors.  In order to help you regain your own memory, I will share with you some factual material concerning the origin of biological entities.

I asked Airl if she was referring to the subject of evolution. Airl said, "No, not exactly".

You will find "evolution" mentioned in the ancient Vedic Hymns. The Vedic texts are like folk tales or common wisdoms and superstitions gathered throughout the systems of The Domain. These were compiled into verses, like a book of rhymes.  For every statement of truth, the verses contain as many half-truths, reversals of truth and fanciful imaginings, blended without qualification or distinction.

The theory of evolution assumes that the motivational source of energy that animates every life form does not exist.   It assumes that an inanimate object or a chemical concoction can suddenly become "alive" or animate accidentally or spontaneously.   

Or, perhaps an electrical discharge into a pool of chemical ooze will magically spawn a self- animated entity.

There is no evidence whatsoever that this is true, simply because it is not true.   Dr. Frankenstein did not really resurrect the dead into a marauding monster, except in the imagination of the IS-BE who wrote a fictitious story one dark and stormy night.

No Western scientist ever stopped to consider who, what, where, when or how this animation happens.  Complete ignorance, denial or unawareness of the spirit as the source of life force required to animate inanimate objects or cellular tissue is the sole cause of failures in Western medicine.

In addition, evolution does not occur accidentally. It requires a great deal of technology which must be manipulated under the careful supervision of IS-BEs.  Very simple examples are seen in the modification of farm animals or in the breeding of dogs.  However, the notion that human biological organisms evolved naturally from earlier ape-like forms is incorrect.     No physical evidence will ever be uncovered to substantiate the notion that modern humanoid bodies evolved on this planet.

The reason is simple: the idea that human bodies evolved spontaneously from the primordial ooze of chemical interactivity in the dim mists of time is nothing more than a hypnotic lie instilled by the amnesia operation to prevent your recollection of the true origins of Mankind.   Factually, humanoid bodies have existed in various forms throughout the universe for trillions of years.

The following are extracts from Alien Interview deemed billions of years old from HERE

I can relate part of this history from personal experience:

Many billions of years ago I was a member of a very large biological laboratory in a galaxy far from this one.  It was called the "Arcadia Regeneration Company". I was a biological engineer working with a large staff of technicians.   It was our business to manufacture and supply new life forms to uninhabited planets.   There were millions of star systems with millions of inhabitable planets in the region at that time.

There were many other biological laboratory companies at that time also.       Each of them specialized in producing different kinds of life forms, depending on the "class" of the planet being populated.  Over a long span of time these laboratories developed a vast catalogue of species throughout the galaxies. The majority of basic genetic material is common to all species of life. Therefore, most of their work was concerned with manipulating alterations of the basic genetic pattern to produce variations of life forms that would be suitable inhabitants for various planetary classes.

The "Arcadia Regeneration Company" specialized in mammals for forested areas and birds for tropical regions.  Our marketing staff negotiated contracts with various planetary governments and independent buyers from all over the universe.   The technicians created animals that were compatible with the variations in climate, atmospheric and terrestrial density and chemical content.  In addition we were paid to integrate our specimens with biological organisms engineered by other companies already living on a planet.

In order to do this our staff was in communication with other companies who created life forms.     There were industry trade shows, publications and a variety of other information supplied through an association that coordinated related projects.

As you can imagine, our research required a great deal of interstellar travel to conduct planetary surveys.   This is when I learned my skills as a pilot.  The data gathered was accumulated in huge computer databases and evaluated by biological engineers.

A computer is an electronic device that serves as an artificial "brain" or complex calculating machine.   It is capable of storing information, making computations, solving problems and performing mechanical functions. In most of the galactic systems of the universe, very large computers are commonly used to run the routine administration, mechanical services and maintenance activities of an entire planet or planetary system.

Based on the survey data gathered, designs and artistic renderings were made for new creatures. Some designs were sold to the highest bidder. Other life forms were created to meet the customized requests of our clients.

The design and technical specifications were passed along an assembly line through a series of cellular, chemical, and mechanical engineers to solve the various problems.  It was their job to integrate all of the component factors into a workable, functional and aesthetic finished product.

Prototypes of these creatures were then produced and tested in artificially created environments.  Imperfections were worked out, modifications made and eventually the new life form was "endowed" or "animated" with a life force or spiritual energy before being introduced into the actual planetary environment for final testing.

After a new life form was introduced, we monitored the interaction of these biological organisms with the planetary environment and with other indigenous life-forms. Conflicts resulting from the interaction between incompatible organisms were resolved through negotiation between ourselves and other companies.  The negotiations usually resulted in compromises requiring further modification to our creatures or to theirs or both.    This is part of a science or art you call "Eugenics".

In some cases changes were made in the planetary environment, but not often, as planet building is much more complex than making changes to an individual life form.

What you see now on Earth is the huge variety of life forms left behind.   Your scientists believe that the fallacious "theory of evolution" is an explanation for the existence of all the life forms here.  The truth is that all life forms on this and any other planet in this universe were created by companies like ours.

How else can you explain the millions of completely divergent and unrelated species of life on the land and in the oceans of this planet?     How else can you explain the source of spiritual animation which defines every living creature?   To say it is the work of "god", is  far too broad.  Every IS-BE has many names and faces in many times and places.   Every IS-BE is a god. When they inhabit a physical object they are the source of Life.

For example, there are millions of species of insects.  About 350,000 of these are species of beetles. There may be as many as 100 million species of life forms on Earth at any given time.     In addition, there are many times more extinct species of life on Earth than there are living life forms.     Some of these will be rediscovered in the fossil or geological records of Earth.

The current "theory of evolution" of life forms on Earth does not consider the phenomena of biological diversity. Evolution by natural selection is science fiction.   One species does not accidentally, or randomly evolve to become another species, as the Earth textbooks indicate, without manipulation of genetic material by an IS-BE.

Factually, some organisms on Earth, such as Proteobacteria, are modifications of a Phylum designed primarily for "Star Type 3, Class C" planets.    In other words, The Domain designation for a planet with an anaerobic atmosphere nearest a large, intensely hot blue star, such as those in the constellation of Orion's Belt in this galaxy.

Creating life forms is very complex, highly technical work for IS-BEs who specialize in this field.  Genetic anomalies are very baffling to Earth biologists who have had their memory erased.   Unfortunately, the false memory implantations of the "Old Empire" prevent Earth scientists from observing obvious anomalies.

The greatest technical challenge of biological organisms  was the invention of self- regeneration, or sexual reproduction. It was invented as the solution to the problem of having to continually manufacture replacement creatures for those that had been destroyed and eaten by other creatures.   Planetary governments did not want to keep buying replacement animals.

The idea was contrived trillions of years ago as a result of a conference held to resolve arguments between the disputing vested interests within the biotechnology industry. The infamous "Council of Yuhmi-Krum" was responsible for coordinating creature production.

A compromise was reached, after certain members of the Council were strategically bribed or murdered, to author an agreement which resulted in the biological phenomenon which we now call the "food chain".

The idea that a creature would need to consume the body of another life form as an energy source was offered as a solution by one of the biggest companies in the biological engineering business.  They specialized in creating insects and flowering plants.

The connection between the two is obvious. Nearly every flowering plant requires a symbiotic relationship with an insect in order to propagate.  The reason is obvious: both the bugs and the flowers were created by the same company.  Unfortunately, this same company also had a division which created parasites and bacteria.

The name of the company roughly translated into English would be "Bugs & Blossoms" .   They wanted to justify the fact that the only valid purpose of the parasitic creatures they manufactured was to aid the decomposition of organic material.  There was a very limited market for such creatures at that time.

In order to expand their business they hired a big public relations firm and a powerful group of political lobbyists to glorify the idea that life forms should feed from other life forms. They invented a "scientific theory" to use as a promotion gimmick.  The theory was that all creatures needed to have "food" as a source of energy. Before that, none of the life forms being manufactured required any external energy.  Animals did not eat other animals for food, but consumed sunlight, minerals or vegetable matter only.

Of course, "Bugs & Blossoms" went into the business of designing and manufacturing carnivores.  Before long, so many animals were being eaten as food that the problem of replenishing them became very difficult.  As a 'solution', "Bugs & Blossoms" proposed, with the help of some strategically placed bribes in high places, that other companies begin using 'sexual reproduction' as the basis for replenishing life-forms.  "Bugs & Blossoms" was the first company to develop blueprints for sexual reproduction, of course.

As expected, the patent licenses for the biological engineering process required to implant stimulus-response mating, cellular division and pre-programmed growth patterns for self-regenerating animals were owned by "Bugs & Blossoms" too.

Through the next few million years laws were passed that required that these programs be purchased by the other biological technology companies.      These were required to be imprinted into the cellular design of all existing life- forms. It became a very expensive undertaking for other biotechnology companies to make such an awkward, and impractical idea work.

This led to the corruption and downfall of the entire industry.  Ultimately, the 'food and sex' idea completely ruined the bio-technology industry, including "Bugs & Blossoms".  The entire industry faded away as the market for manufactured life forms disappeared. Consequently, when a species became extinct, there is no way to replace them because the technology of creating new life forms has been lost.  Obviously, none of this technology was ever known on Earth, and probably never will be.

There are still computer files on some planets far from here which record the procedures for biological engineering. Possibly the laboratories and computers still exist somewhere.   However, there is no one around doing anything with them. Therefore, you can understand why it is so important for The Domain to protect the dwindling number of creatures left on Earth.

The core concept behind 'sexual reproduction' technology was the invention of a chemical/electronic interaction called "cyclical stimulus-response generators". This is an programmed genetic mechanism which causes a seemingly spontaneous, recurring impulse to reproduce. The same technique was later adapted and applied to biological flesh bodies, including Homo Sapiens.

Another important mechanism used in the reproductive process, especially with Homo Sapiens type bodies, is the implantation of a "chemical-electrical trigger" mechanism in the body.      The "trigger" which attracts IS-BEs to inhabit a human body, or any kind of "flesh body", is the use of an artificially imprinted electronic wave which uses "aesthetic pain" to attract the IS-BE.

Every trap in the universe, including those used to capture IS-BEs who remain free, is "baited" with an aesthetic electronic wave.

The sensations caused by the aesthetic wavelength are more attractive to an IS-BE than any other sensation.  When the electronic waves of pain and beauty are combined together, this causes the IS-BE to get "stuck" in the body.

The "reproductive trigger" used for lesser life forms, such as cattle and other mammals, is triggered by chemicals emitted from the scent glands, combined with reproductive chemical- electrical impulses stimulated by testosterone, or estrogen.

These are also interactive with nutrition levels which cause the life form to reproduce more when deprived of food sources. Starvation promotes reproductive activity as a means of perpetuating survival through future regenerations, when the current organism fails to survive.     These fundamental principles have been applied throughout all species of life.

The debilitating impact and addiction to the "sexual aesthetic-pain" electronic wave is the reason that the ruling class of The Domain do not inhabit flesh bodies.  This is also why officers of The Domain Forces only use doll bodies. This wave has proven to be the most effective trapping device ever created in the history of the universe, as far as I know.

The civilizations of The Domain and the "Old Empire" both  depend on this device to "recruit" and maintain a work force of IS-BEs who inhabit flesh bodies on planets and installations.  These IS-BEs are the "working class" beings who do all of the slavish, manual, undesirable work on planets.

Thus, the human archetype is a creation of The Domain, or a precursor to it. And it is located throughout the universe.You will find people who look like “everyday” humans, big and old, fat and thin, beautiful and ugly, all over the universe.

Various IS-BE’s can control humans by exposing them to the addiction of the “sexual aesthetic-pain” desires of the human form.

Earth Prison Complex Bodies are unique

However, while the “sexual aesthetic-pain” desires can snare and entangle a given IS-BE…

…a different system must be employed to keep them tethered to a specific geographic region.

Much like clipping off the wings of a bird, or foot binding of attractive wives, or a chain around a slaves neck would do. This Prison Complex utilizes a very special kind of fence. One that ONLY reacts to the movement of inmates.

The Prison Planet has a very special fence that surrounds it.

Apparently that is what happened in the creation of this “Prison Complex”.

There were alterations to the human (and other species that also serve as prison vehicles) that prevent them from ever leaving the Prison Complex. I argue that the alterations revolve around all elements of a human body. And this includes the physical body as well as the non-physical bodies.

The make up of a body

If you study any of the oriental religions, you will discover discussions and studies of the “planes of existence” where different elements of yourself reside. On each “plane of existence” you have an associated body.

Thee bodies radiate outward, with the coarsest body being the Physical body. And as you move further away from that body (not necessarily in a Geo-position sense, but rather in an energy sense) your bodies get “finer”, “lighter” and “more energetic with higher energies”.

Or so I have read.

But I am a simple guy, and we really do not need to get involved in all those details. I have the distinct impression that many of the writings on this subject are only confluence of religious dogma rather than any practical application. Or, to put it in a better way…

… “who cares about the name of the 3rd level of the casual plane, if you cannot use that information to improve your life?”

We are going to keep things here on an elementary level. If  you wish to study the religious teachings / new age / spiritual teachings there are tons of websites all over the internet that you can refer to. But for now, we are going to keep things really simple.

[1] Your consciousness (IS-BE) resides within a container.

Your IS-BE consciousness is inside a body constructed for you by the Prison Complex.

[2] This container exists within a Prison Complex as a “human-shaped inmate”.

We are surrounded by other inmates that seem much like us.

[3] The “human-shaped inmate” form is derived from the human form that is common all over the universe.

The difference being that it has been modified to exist only within a Prison Complex.

“Normal people” talking to inmates using the video conference software without needing to pass through the gates to get in the prison.

[4] This modification is complete and affects both the physical body, but the non-physical body as well

Female inmates of the ADC.

Simplification

So, because of this we will consider all those various “light bodies” that reside on all those other “planes of existence” as one singular “combined body” that is the non-physical body.

Thus, this simplification for the “human inmate body” is actually…

  • A physical body.
  • A non-physical body.

The Physical Body

It is impossible for the physical body to cross the electromagnetic “fence” that surrounds the Prison Complex. The technology of the inmates is not at the level that will permit them to build a spacecraft that will be able to cross the fence. Nor will the system ever permit the prison inmates ever obtain the kind of technology needed to build a space-traveling vehicle that can breech the fence line.

One must remember that the ONLY reason why earth’s technology is so high presently is because the mental suppression technology (or at least one of the mechanisms) was destroyed by The Domain around 1150AD. Prior to that, it was anticipated that most of the inhabitants of the Prison Complex, would at best, be living in a primitive early iron-age culture for hundreds of thousands of years.

Thus, the system of constant wars, destruction, and collapse of civilizations and technology on earth is designed to prevent any kinds of space travel or advanced propulsion techniques that might allow one to escape from the prison complex.

The non-physical body

The non-physical body can move about all over. It is not constrained by technology or manufacturing ability.

It’s the power of thought. An IS-BE who can remember a specific location or memory outside of the Prison Complex can visualize it and propel themself outside of the Prison Complex.

Thus it is imperative that all memories be suppressed. Without any idea of where to go, people to meet, places to visit, the inmate is forced to be tethered to the Prison Complex.

No memories.

However, what if something reminds an inmate of some distant memory. While every action has been taken to prevent the occurrence of memories, the fact remains that one singular memory, no matter how faint or brief can be used by an IS-BE to “latch on to” and “home into” and thus go through the electronic fence that surrounds the Prison Complex.

Thus it is of particular interest that the non-physical body be modified so that it cannot go through the electromagnetic fence line surrounding the Prison Complex.

How the Domain alters the body to avoid the force screens

The “Old Empire” has designed a system where the only way out of the Prison Complex is through use of a “normal” non-physical body. And inmates have a modified body that prevents them from leaving the Prison Complex.

Once in, you are never going to leave.

It is much like the scene in The Matrix Revolutions where Neo is trapped in a subway.

The final installment in the Matrix trilogy finds an unconscious Neo trapped in a subway station in a zone between the Matrix and the machine world. Inside the Matrix, Neo is trapped in a subway station named Mobil Ave (an anagram for limbo), a transition zone between the Matrix and the Machine City. He meets a "family" of programs, including a girl named Sati. The "father" tells Neo the subway is controlled by the Trainman, a program loyal to the Merovingian.

The modification to the non-physical body snares the escaping inmate so that they cannot cross the fence threshold, and perhaps even alerts the warden and his administration to retrieve the errant IS-BE.

The modifications necessary to do this

I cannot state explicitly enough what the modifications are to the non-physical body, nor can I even begin to comprehend what the non-physical body is like. I once observed my non-physical body being worked on and it was really colorful, chaotic and detailed. And way, way beyond my comprehension.

It’s a medical procedure.

Once you understand that, and calm down all your fears you will see it in fine comforting images that provide answers and insight instead of fearful images of horror and terror.

It is ONLY a medical procedure. You will be surrounded by trained professionals. You need not fear anything.

What I do know is that the non-physical body must go through a number of procedures to be able to suppress or eliminate the mechanisms associated with this Prison Complex. The changes made to YOUR body must be undone. And it must be undone BEFORE you are tricked into going back into the “Tunnel of light”.

The Procedure and consciousness extraction

I will relate a little story that occurred to me.

Around 1984-5, before I was compelled to go to China Lake NWC, I had an (intense) urge to visit the North Carolina seacoast. At that time, my wife and I were living in the hills not so far from Nashville, NC. 

And so, out of the blue, my wife and I traveled a eight hour drive to go to this tiny bath-house on the beach. 

It was around 8 or 9 at night when we arrived. The area was deserted (aside from one other car) and We both got out of the van and walked towards the bath house. 

There, we met to other people. One, a woman took my wife by the elbow and led her back to our van where they chatted up a storm on the road, and the man took me towards the bath-house.

Suddenly I was inside this lounge of sorts, and he led me down to sit. So I sat down on this sofa. A pleasant woman came up to us. She reminded me of an airline stewardess. Everyone was “normal” looking. She smiled and placed a greenish box on the counter of the coffee table in front of me. Then she did something. I’m not quite sure what. 

The upshot is that my consciousness went into that box. And I was unable to feel any movement of my body. It felt like I was completely paralyzed all over. It was like "sleep paralysis" except that I wasn't asleep.

A few hours passed.

The next thing I knew, I was waving goodbye to the man and the woman. They stood there near the bath-house on that deserted stretch of road, and we drove home. I never recounted what happened. I never discussed it with anyone. Nor did my wife. 

The only thing that my wife said “That was weird”. And we rode home in silence, and didn’t say anything else. 

We arrived back in the early morning.

This is kind of how it is done.

When The Domain wants to modify your non-physical body, the take you to an operating room and then place your consciousness in a containment field; or box, or container. It is possible for you to watch what they are doing, were it to be suggested to you.

And that is it.

Warnings about the non-physical reality

The non-physical world is very, very hyper sensitive to thoughts.

So if you are afraid when your consciousness enters the containment field, your fears will conjure up all sorts of nasty images and terrible things that will occupy your surroundings. It’s really awful.

So you must remain calm.

HERE is an article that describes a “Lucid dream” where I was extracted to a Domain medical facility, and my consciousness put into a containment field where I would experience “sleep paralysis”.

Evil people realize they are in a prison and make the best of it

In many prisons you have groups of inmates that form gangs and societies.

They band together and use their strengths to carve out a life for themselves under the harsh prison environment. There is no reason why this isn’t occurring here today.

We see that Washington DC is the psychopath center for the entire planet.

Have you ever wondered why?

Scene from the movie Goodfellas. The mafia were very powerful and when they were arrested and sentenced to prison, they used their contacts, wealth and connections to make a good life for themselves inside the prison walls.

When the Mantids tell you to make a future life for yourself, and they help guide you to lay out a pre-birth world-line template, why do you listen to them? They show care, concern and compassion. They are loving and caring.

But the evil self-centered IS-BE’s go their own way and set forth pre-birth world-line templates of power, lust, greed and physical pleasures and ignore the advice of the Mantids.

And when they die, and return back to “Heaven” it’s all forgiven and forgotten.

What a gig!

Many service to self people have constructed their pre-birth world-line template in defiance of the Mantid advice and instead live a life of ease and comfort on the earth Prison Planet.

While all the rest of us have all these prohibitions on how we live our lives and what we can and cannot do, and when we are hurt, we are told to forgive those that hurt us.

And we all go to Heaven together.

And then they (the ones that hurt us) make the next-life arrangements to return to a star-studded life full of sensory pleasures and wealth.

And we, the dumb fools we are, we listen to our loving Mantids who tell us to suffer and experience pain… to make us better.

What a gig!

We live a life chosen for us from help by the Mantids.

Prison administrators escaped by going into “General Population” but are not using a prison-body

I would like to take a moment to underline an aspect that haunts me. I cannot shake it. But apparently, the administrators and operators of this Prison Complex escaped The Domain. And the method of escape was to throw themselves into the Prison itself.

After all, we know that there are agents or “operators” that work inside the Prison Complex itself…

"Old Empire" operatives act as an unseen influence on  international bankers. The banks are operated covertly as a non-combatant provocateur to covertly promote and finance weapons and warfare between the nations of Earth.        

Warfare is an internal mechanism of control over the inmate population.

These individual IS-BE’s that operate within the prison “walls” must have some sort of key /pass /badge /fob /or knowledge that enables them to control the environment like they do. And thus, it is not unreasonable to expect the administration to have access to this knowledge.

Keep in mind that only thing that is specialty that that they know how the prison system works. So they are in this prison complex; on this earth… walking around near us, nearby. All the time with the knowledge in their heads of how to turn off the many, many systems and avoid the electromagnetic containment fence.

The administrators are hiding inside this Prison Complex somewhere. They have the keys, the knowledge and the skills to shut down or control this environment.

They live within the prison complex living a nice comfortable life of ease. They are somewhere. And some how, if they can be located, and brought to the officers and personnel of the Domain, many of the mysteries of the Prison Complex can be resolved.

Summary

For most humans, the body that you have is prison attire. (Or as we used to say in the ADC; “State Issue”.)  This is a special uniform that makes it easy to identify who you are and what your role is. Once you put on the clothing and don the attire you cannot leave the prison grounds. This attire is ONLY for use on prison property.

If a guard sees you wearing this clothing and you enter a sally port or gate, they will draw their weapon and alert the prison for someone to come and take you back inside. It is a fundamental aspect of prison life.

“State Issue” of the Arkansas department of Corrections.

In a similar manner, every human within this Prison Complex wears his “State Issue”. This is similar to that of American prisons. But instead of clothing that a person wears, it’s a physical (and non-physical body) that the consciousness dons when it enters the MWI reality universe (from the Prison “Heaven”).

The body that you have prevents you from crossing the electromagnetic force field fence. And if you ever want to egress from the Prison Complex, you will need to [1] have your body altered so that you can pass through it.

Or…

[2] You can wait. Lifetime after lifetime, until (on day) the force-field fence is turned off and everyone can (line up) leave this Prison Complex together.

Prison Complex.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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Answers from The Domain from questions generated 18SEP21

This article consists of answers from The Domain to questions collected by the MM audience. This is the first of (hopefully) many such events.

I collected the questions over the third week of September 2021, and tried to contact with the Domain via the EBP in fits and starts over this period. I was successful, and unsuccessful. Some times the connection was strong while at other times it was weak. All having to do with my various situation at the time.

I am trying to provide a description on how it worked out, and the relative issues or feelings involved. Some of it might seem confusing but there just isn’t the vocabulary to describe my experiences.

What this is all about

On 17SEP21 I posted an article that related the fact that The Domain opened up a dedicated channel to me via the EBP. As always, it was one-sided, and detailed. But during the conversation, I had no real mental ability. I was in a receiving and reporting state. I was really unable to think for myself. I just queried what I was told to ask and recorded the answers.

You can read this article HERE, if you are confused with what is going on.

Some Background

Most people are aware that the work titled “Alien Interview” is a transcript of a Commander of The Domain when it’s vehicle crashed in 1947. What most people do not know is that this event spawned an American  top secret agency known as MAJestic that fell under the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence).

This waved, unacknowledged special access program handled (and still handles) all extraterrestrial events, technologies and interactions with the United States government. I was a unique part of that organization prior to being retired.

I have numerous devices installed in my body. The seven ELF probes are for MAJestic, with the EBP system is of Domain manufacture and utility.

Terminology

  • EBP – A hardwired device that connects MM to The Domain.
  • ELF – A hardwired device that connected MM to MAJestic through a Mantid intermediary. Now deactivated.
  • The Domain – The name of the species / civilization that the type-1 greys belong to.
  • “Old Empire” – A term used to describe a vanquished civilization that used to be in control of this section of the galaxy.
  • Comm channel – A link to the MM “handler” or Commander. Rank and position is unknown except that it is a senior being. This is a channel though the EBP system.

This project / system

I know, and I am absolutely convinced that The Domain wants to do this. They are sort of waiting for me to set the incident(s) in place, and then will direct it as they see fit.

It's kind of like how a microwave keeps flashing after it finishes cooking the food, or how a washing machine has the display beeping after it finished washing a load. This flashing / beeping is still present. (Though... it's something different.)

My initial idea was to collect questions, and then ask them. I did this knowing full well that they may or may not answer them.

In all cases the comm channel is a dedicated channel via my EBP.

I will admit that the type-1 grey commander of The Domain that has been helping answer these questions is not at all comfortable with the system I set up.

Let it be well understood that they prefer to communicate in a very different manner. Which is; “They speak and we respond.”

In this effort, we ask questions and request answers. And, they have a real problem with this format.

They are very uncomfortable with this, and it is not how they communicate.

So in order to facilitate this effort, what I did was post the questions as a subject. Then placed the asked questions as secondary information to each subject. I then read the text out loud, and then repeated the subject.

I then paused for input.

They seem to categorize by subject. Then take the questions as subsequent data, and then discuss the subject relative to the question. I hope this makes sense. It’s much like I described a scenario or event and asked them to comment on the statement event (meaning the entire situation involving the person asking the question and his / her mental process and situation at that time) instead of commenting on the details of the question.

When I did this, the system seemed to work much better.

The Questions and Answers (Group 1)

This is exactly how I began. I read the subject title, then the question, then the subject title. I did so reading without understanding. If that makes any sense. Like reading a dishwasher repair manual out loud. Then when the comm opened up, I wrote what came to me.

Enlightenment & Lost Battalion

  • Are IS-BEs who attain what is often called “Enlightenment” while in a physical body free from the amnesia machinery in death?
No. Absolute answer.
  • Are they useful to the Domain’s efforts and should we work to become “Enlightened” as a way of being useful to the Domain?
No. “Enlightenment” has no bearing at all on extraction from this prison mechanism. It is part of the “Old Empire” system of conditioned control and brainwashing. Enlightenment is another path that leads one into the tunnel of light.
  • *I understand “working” or “doing” anything to become “Enlightened” is technically incorrect but it’s hard to describe such things in duality.
Understood, but we know what you are referring to.
  • Thank you for this.
My pleasure.

The next group of questions happened about three hours later. At that time I asked the channel (whether or not anyone was listening) to lower the amplitude so that I wasn’t thrown into turmoil for the rest of the day. This occurred and things really mellowed out, but the comm channel was much fainter. So it was a trade off.

So as long as I was able to receive, all was well.

The Questions and Answers (Group 2)

This group of questions got no or null responses. I had to try and retry numerous times. Finally on my fifth or so attempt, I started to get some responses. I actually think that the problem was not the questions but the Commander (or their representative) was on other tasks at the time, and could not respond.

Lucid Dreaming & Lost Battalion Rescue

  • How can those with astral projection and lucid dreaming abilities be properly coordinated to attack the amnesia traps from the inside?
This is a dangerous request. 

When The Domain decides to solve a problem, we research it in great detail, then we come up with possible solutions, each one with both positive and negative scenarios. We then weigh the pros and the cons. In this effort we use concentrated forces with strategic aims and tactical strike against specific traps and snares.

Individual IS-BE's should never attempt to engage in attacks against any "Old Empire" traps. Instead they should be marked for extraction, and the Domain notified of their existence in the exact form that they were encountered in.

A person with the ability to conduct “lucid dreaming” has a special and unique skill set that enables them to be a mission critical asset. However, this kind of asset should not be meaninglessly squandered, but rather should be briefed on a specific target and then act in coordination with other unified forces to achieve a very specific outcome.

Those that have this skill set will be (interviewed / selected) for a specific task and then allow to lie dormant until the moment occurs. Then the asset will perform their function in coordination with other (specifically trained) Domain forces.
  • Are there any specific locations that are proving difficult for the Domain to dismantle that those who are already in the “prison” may have a better chance at reaching.
Yes. 

There are numerous systems that are problematic at this time. None, however, are impossible to dissemble. 

The <redacted> (a species and cluster that MM is unaware of) are providing technical assistance in this matter. 

While it was not specifically asked in the question, the implied question is would we provide you (the questioner) the information or coordinates of such processes or traps. The answer is no, at this time. Consider it a confidential need to know matter.

Your disappointment (in this matter) is for the greater good.
  • Are there any specific “Domain approved” frequencies or modulation techniques that infrastructure can be built around to provide a physical communication pathway so that messages may be more readily received by those without EBP. This extends to frequencies that can be tuned into via “lucid and astral based telepathy”.
Yes. There are many, or more properly specified / explained there are groupings or dances of frequencies that act as system keys or codes.

When we negate or suppress a system we utilize these techniques along with various types of electromagnetic cannon in the non-physical realms that are tuned to such intricacies.
  • Can electronic infrastructure found within the prison be constructed to aid in the “astral body” DNA change, or to break the amnesia as a whole?
Yes, in a way, and only partially. 

The entire system has both physical and non-physical components. 

The bodies of humans and certain animals have had their DNA and mRNA modified to assist in the imprisonment of IS-BE’s. 

By correcting this physical biological component to the universal norm, numerous existent amnesia systems will fail to work.
  • If so what sort of technologies should be focused on.?
Biological magnetism, electromagnetic frequencies at large voltages, and DNA and mRNA alterations.

The Questions and Answers (Group 3)

This group was quick to answer and very clear. I had no trouble getting or obtaining answers or information. All this makes me wonder if this (Domain) individual is a dedicated handler.

Technology & Prison Planet

  • Have the Atlan hybrids who were experimented on under Project Prometheus, began their reunion in the astral planes?
There is nothing to say about this. Null.
  • Is there any technology present within the prison that may be able to aid in healing those who have been targeted by the Old Empire to have debilitating illnesses to put them off carrying out their astral based assignments?
There is technology all over the physical solar system, and the non-physical solar system. 

The issue is to recognize what it is, identify how it can be used, and then trained to use it properly.  

While the <redacted> are using their expertise in this matter, they have a long way to go in discovering and uncovering what lies within these layers upon layers, upon layers of complex traps. 

Needless to say, they are complex and far too dangerous for the casual, but enthusiastic IS-BE, to discharge.

There are many traps and snares, and one of which is a special mechanism that seeks out certain thought patterns, personalities and actions and targets it for illness or debilitating fiascos. 

These systems roam the non-physical reality and the Domain destroys them when found. 

But many still exist, and many are expertly camouflaged. 

Those that travel the non-physical realms need to be extra cautious and understand that superior technologies, honed by billions of years, engulf the non-physical prison environment around the earth and snare, and harm the unprepared. 

Luckily, most IS-BE’s that are self-actuated are aware that they are immortal, and cannot be harmed, but if the IS-BE is tethered to the prison environment, they can be damaged and returned to the amnesia process in a very harmful way. Care and caution needs to be observed.

The Questions and Answers (Group 4)

This group was also relatively quick to answer, and the “signal” came in rather strong and clear. It was like a kite on a nice fresh Spring Day. I attribute this to the Domain Officer on the other die of the Comm Channel.

Location and Rescue

  • Are the 3000 in one physical location and if not are they aware of each other’s presence?
The members of the “Lost Battalion” are scattered all over the world. 

They occupy different bodies, and species. Many are human, but not all of them. 

They have no recollection of who they are, nor their history. 

They are isolated, and the “Old Empire” has created a system that immediately throws these IS-BE consciousness’s back to the earth environment immediately. 

They do not even get to “rest” in the established “Heaven” that the “Old Empire” has set up for them. 

Many (but not all) are living in a life of extreme poverty, confusion, fear and hopelessness’. And this system is specifically designed to foster this environment upon them. 

They are not aware of any others from their Battalion and live very singular, lonely, isolated lives for the most part.

In general, almost all of the Lost Battalion are occupying bodies / situations / forms that are lower to middle to average social stratification. Of that, the weighed average is trending to the lower social strata.
  • Was the location in the Himalayas the ONLY location the 3000 stayed?
The Himalaya facility was the primary base of operations. Obviously they traveled as need be throughout the local physical environment, and there were “camps” in other locations that they would occupy and visit. However, the base was new, and there wasn't much time to develop other locations before they were attacked.
  • Were there any defectors and have they been located.
Aside from the few that were mentioned in the “Alien Interview”, there has not been any successful escapees. 

The kind of IS-BE needed to escape is very special indeed. Not every IS-BE can reach this level of capability and ability. Those in the “Lost Battalion”, while very capable, were of a caliber that was not as flexible to reality manipulation as some of the leadership was / are.

Most of them were of military / service corps caliber. They were highly skilled and trained, and very aggressive, but they did not have the skills required to escape the Prison Planet configuration. Their strengths have been used against them. Like the "Chinese finger trap".
  • Are the 3000 still together or in “cells” scattered around the world?
No. They are homogenized throughout the planet, and rarely ever meet another imprisoned member.

None are in holding cells or other facilities. They are in "general population" throughout the globe.

The "holding cells" are used for officers and higher level Domain personnel. The Domain maintains a class system. Each class has it's own advantages, strengths, weaknesses and privileges. Those in the various levels of leadership possess much greater abilities of an exponential nature than the class directly below them.
Blank Slate Technology is a singular part of the many mechanisms used to generate an effective amnesia system. There are many systems involved. This is just another name for the wider-scope term “Brain Washing”. Keep in mind that this is a stratified system of control with many layers.
In the MWI there are multiple histories and multiple futures. 

There are futures where this theory is embraced and futures where it is not. 

What is important is that the trapped Battalion regain memories and skills for egress from the environment that is fencing them in. 

Unfortunately, there isn’t a critical mass of “insight” or “understanding” that will “lift up” Battalion members out of their situation. 

They (intentionally) have extra systems and controls that tie them down, isolate them, fill them with fear, and force them to try to act alone if ever.

The Questions and Answers (Group 5)

This set of queries were odd in that there was a noticeable pause of hick-up (if that makes sense) during the process. I was just about ready to get up out of the chair, it was so long, when the responses came back.

Freeing of Lost Battalion

  • How may we recognize members of the Lost Battalion should we meet them?
You will not be able to recognize them unless we specifically point them out to you. 

They have no overt markers, characteristics or any other feature or attribute that sets them apart from the rest of society. 

You will not be able to sense them either. 

Those with heightened and trained abilities might be able to determine a general (touch / wisp / characteristic) but that is about it.
  • What actions are recommended should we recognize a member of the Lost Battalion?
Take no action unless specifically directed to. 

You are not to get involved in their affairs unless specifically tasked to do so. While we appreciate your sympathies we must allow only overt actions where benefits can be tangibly manifested per our goals and plans.

The Amnesia Machinery

  • Upon death, when we perceive the “tunnel of light”. Is it recommended that we enter it?
No. We will send someone to retrieve you.
  • What are the pros and cons (of entering the light)?
If you enter the tunnel of light you will go straight into the reprogramming machinery. 

There you will find yourself in “Heaven”, which is a special universe constructed for this Prison Planet realm. 

Going through the tunnel adds your earth experiences in the last incarnation to that already collected in prior reincarnations (while in prison). You will have no knowledge of anything that transpired before that. All the trillions of years of events prior to your arrest and incarceration will be denied you.

However, you cannot access these Prison Planet memories directly. You will need a guide (a warden) to assist you. They will then carefully measure out previous memories to give you the illusion of control and remembrances of your past. 

You will be permitted to attend “schools” in this Heaven construct, and then you will be provided with a new “mission” from which you will then be (again) injected into the earth Prison Environment. And subsequently lose all memories and start out all over again.

...

If you fail to enter the tunnel of light, then you will be a non-physical consciousness that is still trapped within the electromagnetic containment field, but you would still be permitted to move about at will. 

You will need to seek out help and assistance to find your rightful place in the universe. 

Unfortunately many IS-BE’s that try to do this find out that they are on their own. And are thus easily tricked by other malevolent non-physical entities that are also trapped within the confines of the Prison Environment. Many, not knowing any better will return to what they know; the loving warmth of the tunnel of light, and the calls of their loved ones.

...

You can think of going “into the light” as entering the main prison building, and Psych ward. Where, not going “into the light” sends you into the prison yard. In both cases, you need to make contact with someone who has the keys to the front gate to help you leave.
  • If we choose not to enter into the tunnel, is it a simple freewill decision on our part not to enter, enough to escape it?
To enter or not is the decision of the IS-BE. 

The IS-BE always has free will, and decisions are based upon logic diagrams. 

As long as the facts, and data are correct and extensive, most IS-BE’s will make correct and valid decisions. 

However, one of the layers of the prison incarceration system is to distract, and mislead the inmates. This will cause them to make invalid and erroneous decisions.
  • Should we choose not to enter into the tunnel, what is (a) recommended place that we should next go to?
If any IS-BE decides not to go into the tunnel, they can remain in the non-physical realm associated with their body upon death. They can move about and explore. 

Those who work with The Domain will be acquired in short order and taken to a holding facility for processing, debriefing and next steps. 

Those that are just “normal” and regular people should start shouting out for help and assistance.  The problem with doing this is that it will attract all sorts of entities and they will have all sorts of (desires / interests / plans) which may or may not be in the best interests of the IS-BE. 

The best thing to do is to call out for a Domain Officer to come and pick you up. You do this through thought visualization. Much the same way that people call out for Ganesha, or Jesus.

Destruction of other Traps

  • If the universe is malleable and responds to our Intentions, is it sufficient to use intention to free ourselves from or destroy these traps?
The universe is malleable to a point. And the use of thoughts and intentions is how you are able to control it. 

However, the ability to manipulate the universe and realities is a function of skill level, and skills are an acquired mastery. 

This is the major problem with the amnesia fence, it is difficult to use the skills that you acquire if you constant forget what they are.
  • Is the Domain supervised by a higher power? If so please describe this higher power.
The Domain is the highest power. The Domain does not report to or serve under any other power.

The Questions and Answers (Group 6)

This group was a quick call out and a very quick response. At this point, I felt like we were “on a roll.

The Domain & Service to Others Sentience

  • How can you be STO sentience and invade other IS-BE etc. Is this like a preemptive strike so protect your freedom? Or is this like, we make contact and see if we can work together, and if not we go to war?
Imagine you have a very healthy body. You exercise it, eat well. You take care of it. But there is a cancer that develops in it.

The healthy body was here first.

The cancer attacks the body with distortions that disrupt the function of the body and will eventually destroy the body completely.

Being a STO sentience, should you live and let live the cancer that is running on a rampage? Or should you protect the weak and helpless healthy cells before the dangerous cancer cells take over.

The Domain was established at the very start of everything. We created universes, worlds, plant and animal lives. We watched as fellow IS-BE's occupy those bodies and started to corrupt the creations that we built. At a certain level, it becomes necessary to prevent the creation of dangerous civilizations, and structures that will disrupt and destroy the whole. Such as with the "Old Empire".

Service to others sentience performs actions for the greater good.

However, often we discover that Service to Self individuals tend to appear when they experience the physical pleasures of beauty in the physical reality.

It is the duty of "service to others" sentience to protect others from the malevolence of "service to self" societies.

The Questions and Answers (Group 7)

The communication for this group f questions were clear, crisp, and laconic.

Freeing of Lost Battalion

  • Can you provide step by step instructions for helping freeing the Lost Battalion?
No. This task is too large for any one IS-BE no matter how well-intentioned. The entire procedure is an enormous undertaking and requires a coordinated and precise group collaborative effort. 

Imprisoned IS-BE's who wish to participate need only vocalize that intention as per the MM Prayer system, and focus on guidance though their observations, emotions and ("intuition" / gut feelings) and dreams.

The use of directed thought from inside the Prison Planet will enable a number of non-physical events to materialize. Then, coupled with specific training or skills that will will provide in the non-physical realms to those IS-BE's (who will notice happening while in their dream state), they will become active and valuable members of this entire effort.

Destruction (Escape) of the Amnesia Machinery

  • Can you provide clear instructions in order to minimize/ avoid the effects of this Machinery?
Yes we can.

We have had Domain Officers escape from this system and avoid the machinery without mRNA or DNA changes to their physical bodies, and material physical destruction of the systems. However, they were able to gain control of their thoughts to an exacting amount.

The key is the ability to control one's thoughts and alter the machinery of this reality by your thoughts.

What MM is pointing out here is that the entire system of visualization of world-line templates on the MWI is a description of the Prison Planet system. It is a machine; a machinery that controls the inmates.

It is NOT a description of the ultimate reality outside of the prison. 

MM has laid out a map and an understanding on how to control and navigate in and out of the prison while mastering the control of this reality machinery.

By controlling your thoughts, not only can you alter your reality, but you can egress out and away from the control of the entire Prison Planet system.

Destruction of other Traps

  • Are religious systems part of the traps installed here?
Yes. From the earliest records that we know of, the "Old Empire" designated and crated religious systems to control the population. This served to objectives. First to erase the idea that IS-BE's are themselves God, and second to create a fearful environment for non-compliance with the Prison Rules.
  • If not, do religious practices provide an escape from amnesia? please detail which ones.
Null.

The Questions and Answers (Group 8)

I did not understand the question at all. But I read it out and got a lightening quick response that actually startled me. The “being on a roll” continued.

The evil entities within the Prison system.

  • How to clean the infected is be that corrupt the world, mostly as members of secret societies, and have dispersed everywhere technologies and 5G and satellites to control and tax everything and beings.
All of the systems that exist in the world today are derivatives of the "Old Empire" and set in place by intentional malevolent beings who have reincarnated intentionally to positions of power. This is a core function of the Heaven universe that is tethered and directly adjacent to the physical worldly realm. 

In addition, you have "Old Empire" wardens that intentionally escaped and egressed into the system, fully understanding how it works, placing themselves into positions of power and control, and living a comfortable life of ease and wealth. We suspect, but haven't fully investigated this situation, but they seem to have "rigged the game" in their favor so that they (the wardens and elite members of the "Old Empire") can reincarnate over and over again and still retain memories. It's like they posses special keys and abilities.This is one of the tasks that we need to extract from them. 

Unfortunately, they are slippery folk. As soon as they sense we are going to get them, they die and are immediately taken to the Heaven construct though the "tunnel of light" that erases all memories (except theirs), and if we follow them, we too would become trapped into this Prison Planet system.

The very nature of the Prison Planet is to create a Hellish existence where IS-BE's would relive events over and over again, and make it so that each life that they live is one of fear, terror, fright, sadness and disgust.

Technology is not evil. Much of what people experience is fear of technology which is one of the controls that the Prison Planet uses. A true and actuated IS-BE has no fear. In the world today, many evil and corrupt individuals use fear to gain control and achieve emotional satisfaction.

Currently The Domain needs to rescue the Lost Battalion. Then assist in the release of all the service to others sentience's trapped in this earth-centrist Prison Planet.

For the record, these communications are relatively easy for me (personally) to engage in. My problem is receiving the contacts without the background noise. If the “amplitude” of the connection is turned up, the messages are very clear. But I end up shaking like a leaf, am very dehydrated, an emotional ball, and spend the next eight hours or so “bouncing off the walls”. To control this, I asked to tone down the amplitude, and I have begun to listen more closely without the bothersome side effects.

The Questions and Answers (Group 9)

Again, I don’t fully understand the question but posted it anyways. I didn’t get much of anything for a while. Just a bunch of “dead air” if that means anything. Then a few bursts of information. Then silence.

Then the comm link opened on the other side and here’s the responses.

Affirmation Campaigns and The Domain

  • Will affirmation campaigns geared toward nullifying all contracts unwittingly taken out on our souls/astral bodies help in breaking the through the amnesia?
Yes. They are the most powerful tool for those you are unable to remove their preconditioning, programming and set baseline biases and social constructs. It's a method of thought control. They best and only way for an IS-BE inmate to self-actuate is by thought control.
  • If we don’t agree any of the hypnosis will this help?
Anything that focuses on control of the mind will help. But the focus must be without fear of consequences, fear of society, or any other fears as these get into the way of processing the thoughts. 

The mechanisms in place take those fears and use them to bend the thought waves. As now distorted vectors they end up going in other locations and the helpless inmate is forced to experience life in coils. Over and over and over again. Fear controls it all.

Be cautious of all sources of fear generation. This includes religion media, politics, friends, rumors, society, and every other thing that makes you question your actions (whether taken or not).

The Questions and Answers (Group 10)

Short simple questions. Easy to conceptualize, and transmit. I tried to get answers but nothing happened. Null. Tried again. Null. Then on the third try I received some answers.

I have to tell you that the answers made me sit back and wonder WTF. Because they are not in agreement with my understandings of history and events.

Destruction of the amnesia machinery.

  • Does any of the machinery still exist in the physical reality on Earth?
We suspect that yes; some self-actuated autonomous systems do still exist on the earth surface in the physical reality. 

However we have not been able to locate the machinery. They have been expertly concealed and their "footprints" are difficult to track if you do not know what to look for. Those elements that reside in the non-physical realities are far easier to locate. 

The best way to track these mechanisms is to track the comm channels when the physical machinery interacts with the non-physical machinery. All of which required <redacted> support, analysis and disarming.
  • If so, how can we recognize it should we come across any machinery?
You would not be able to recognize it. Even if you could, it would be far too dangerous for you to disarm or attempt to disarm. The last earth-side (physical event) took place in 1908 in Tunguska. A major mechanism was destroyed completely. It had been hidden under a "force shield".

We believed that this facility was a remaining "Old Empire" logistics and storage facility. (Which seemed to have some control over thought processes. At that time we were unaware of the true extent of the systems.) This is because we were unaware of an electronic fence surrounding the region or the true purpose and nature of the region.

We thought, at that time that that was the last of the systems remaining. But we were wrong. There was an entire fully operational base staffed with "Old Empire" personnel operating and in existence.

Unaware of this, and under the impression that we cleared out the systems, we began an operation to attempt to bring peace and stability to the earth at that time.

It was an operation that enabled a Domain Officer to occupy the body of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. The plan was to suppress a build up towards war by restoring Austro-Russian relations while maintaining an alliance with Germany. 
  • How do we notify the Domain so it can be deactivated and removed safely?
All IS-BE's that wish to work with the Domain, need only vocalize that they volunteer to be part of The Domain. Then, over time, various systems will enable instantaneous monitoring of all experiences of the IS-BE so involved.

The Questions and Answers (Group 11)

This was really strange. I just copied the text from the comment without reading it, and plopped it down in the wordpress, and the channel burst out laughing. Which was really a weird feeling. It’s sort of like having a vibrator in your skull. The answers came smoothly. Like hot syrup.

Why Now?

  • My first issue is that the original timeline was pushed forward 5000 years. This implies that something really big happened and they need a new plan of action. Did something unexpected happen that caught them by surprise?
Yes. It was unexpected that the inmates in the Prison Planet would be desirous of working with The Domain. Of course, they had ulterior motives. They wanted power, technology, knowledge and skills that they could use to lord over others, and obtain more power.

We established lines of communication and engaged in technology transfer activities (of a minor nature) in exchange for assistance in monitoring the environment, society, trends, and in helping us to start shutting down the prison mechanism apparatus. 

Once we applied for and obtained approval from our leadership, resources were allocated and a staff was increased to help mitigate the situation here and help recover and restore the "Lost Battalion". A major colony was set up in the moon, which MM has written about.

Early on we began collecting members of the "Lost Battalion" and implanted EBP (sic) systems to help track and monitor them. They typically are unruly to the extreme in regards to this effort. We have also identified key individual IS-BE's that seem to be close to having the necessary skills (independently) to leave this Prison Planet environment. Finally, there are a handful of MAJestic members, such as MM, which have a special role in this entire project.

There have been remarkable advances since the Roswell event. And since MAJestic was initiated, the assistance from earth-side has been invaluable. Since then, we have independently contacted other governments and entities in the world and have other groups working with us in this effort.

These organizations are diverse and all are secretive. None advertises their work, process or recruitment drives. There are formal organizations in modern day Russia, India, China, Bangladesh, as well as in South America and Africa. Each organization has a certain role.

Certainly the American MAJestic organization has been quite busy, but the other (names redacted intentionally by MM) organizations are invaluable. Most especially at this particular time.
  • Certainly there are all sorts of seriously bad consciousnesses and IS-BE’s that are in positions of power and control. They seem to be driving the world to the brink of extinction. What is going on? What can we do?”
You are in a Prison Environment. There are many bad people along you.

There is a high percentage of very evil people in this Prison Planet environment and they have created systems over systems over systems that reflect their desires. Eventually the entire system will explode in a major collapse, and then society will need to rebuild up all over again. It is what happens when you have a certain threshold of evil people in positions of power in society.

The good news is that The Domain have agents (now) occupying the bodies of key individuals and they will not "push the red button", or engage in war, no matter what their evil and vile crazed leaders might want them to do.

You need not worry about this. The Domain will not allow a repeat of World War I. However, a smaller, more localized event might still occur even though we are doing everything in our power to prevent it from occurring. Some events like tidal waves and typhoons and hurricanes can be prepared for, but you cannot stop them. They need to run their course.
  • To make it short, is there anything they should disclose to us humans or the participants? (bearing in mind, we humans can be pretty altruistic. And if things impact humanity, we still need to have some good faith disclosure).
No. There is no need for any disclosure that might generate fear. 

Fear distracts from the thoughts, and thoughts affect reality. All one needs to know is that all of the situations involving the earth Prison Planet are monitored and observed and resources have been moved into place to mitigate any catastrophic events from happening.
  • If we have a possibly limited window to communicate , then we should focus on priorities for humanity and the Dominion.
Yes. This is correct. Thank you for understanding.
  • My instincts tell me we need to understand why they turn to us. In any deal, we have to know the dynamics.
This event with MM was planned at the start of MAJestic and occurred before the birth of MM. Everything now is following the steps laid down by The Domain. The plan is well thought out and methodical.

MM is not the only operative resource that we put in place. Others are working in other capabilities, and all have varying degrees of success.

The Questions and Answers (Group 12)

This train of thought continues with another batch of questions from another person. And like the preceding batch of questions the results and answers were fluid and easy.

Reasoning behind comm at this time

  • What was the reasoning for asking for our help at this time? Is there an urgency that we should be aware of?
All is on schedule. We (The Domain) anticipated enlisting General Population participation in the 2021 time-frame.

This is exactly 40 years from the date MM joined MAJestic. -MM

  • What skills, talents, or perceptions do we as imprisoned IS-BE’s possess that would assist in this mission?
The inmates that wish to assist The Domain possess a Service-to-self others sentience which is different from the Service-to-self sentience of the MAjestic and other government organizations. 

We need [1] selfless devotion to a cause, and [2] directed thought that [3] emulates from within the Prison Planet confines.

In case there is any confusion as to what is expected of a Service to others sentience, consider this video that was brought to my attention this morning.

A young Pioneer (a Chinese version of the cub scouts / girl scouts) shows us what a Service to Others life is all about.

  • Is there anything in the physical world we should be doing, either in regards to the Lost Battalion or the traps and machinery of the “Old Empire”, or will our efforts concentrate on the spiritual realm and Intention campaigns?
The most important aspect of participation is anchoring efforts as part of intention campaigns. This is crucial to this phase in the effort. In addition, we might ask certain individuals with other advanced skills to participate in other ways, and we might ask a few to accept a EBP (sic) modification.
  • What should we be most wary of, and should we expect to be part of this operation for multiple lifetimes?
Every IS-BE is different. Ideally, this would be the last cycle of reincarnation for the participants with The Domain. 

However, fear is a strong driver, and not everyone who wants to be a service-to-others sentience actually is.  Thus, there are those that may choose to assist with the Domain and then upon death cycle back into the "Heaven universe" associated with this Prison Planet and begin all over again.
  • What plans do you have for the rehabilitation of your imprisoned IS-BE’s and the release of other favorable IS-BE’s?
We are currently working on systems to do this, and this requires a number of helpers that are and would be considered to be very strange to your sensibilities. But the rehabilitation systems are being developed right now and are on schedule.

The Questions and Answers (Group 13)

This was an interesting reaction. Odd. Surprisingly quick. Like how a father would speak to a young child who just lost their puppy. It was a very curious feeling.

Existing comm with the Domain.

  • Some of us are highly aware and actively engaged in our contracts through the Domain, but have become aware of a breech in communication efforts.the interference does not seem like CMEs etc, but rather are terrestrial satellite interference’s. will we be able to reopen our channels soon? or is this too great of a security threat at this time? has anyone else questioned why we feel ” forced into solitary confinement” and silence?
(Long Pause.) There are authorized and unauthorized contacts. There are also frauds and hoaxes. MM and members of his project cell are the only MAJestic-authorized direct contacts. 

We once permitted ad hoc communication of Domain officers in the Prison Environment, such as with Nikola Tesla. That ended by directive when we decided to implement efforts to recover this solar system. There are no longer any unauthorized communication efforts. 

Yes. There are contacts through some other organizations. 

We do not authorize individual communication without a physical EBP installed in the physical body. You will know if you have it. It happens in the physical body. It is not easily dismissed or forgotten.

Communication through the EBP is impervious to all external interference and interruption. It is a direct comm link to (a handler, local to this region in) The Domain.

We do make changes to the non-physical bodies, and the individual IS-BE's so modified will have a disturbing dream, a frozen in place feeling, or a very lucid dream that they cannot control. Most will retain a memory of it. Many misinterpret this as an "Alien Abduction Event". But these changes to the non-physical body do not permit ease of communication. They serve another purpose.

If you are experiencing anything other than direct communication efforts then ... (Intentionally trailed off.)

(I do not know what happened.)

These contacts and communication channels are not trivial things. The channels are for assignments, tasks and collaborate collection in Intel. Nothing else. (The phrase "nothing else", echoed like in a long hallway.)

I am aware of every communication effort with the inmates in this region. If you want to open a dialog, strengthen your... (again, long pause), or understand your relationship with the Domain, you need to focus your thoughts to that end. You need to focus on the needs of The Domain if you wish to communicate with us.

(Then, I could picture a kind smile, like what a vet would give me when my beloved cat was very ill.)

I tried to offer some additional suggested text and hit a blank wall, and nothing. This is a final word.

The Questions and Answers (Group 14)

This next group comes piggy-back, back to back with the one preceding it. I actually have the impression that the Commander was a little snarky in the previous chat. No. Snarky is not the right word, maybe humorously aggressive in a Boston-Friendly sort of way.

Kind. Very kind. But also very fatherly.

And the “feeling” was “switch from A to B”, or go from “color green to bright yellow”. If that makes any sense. I felt a distinct serious and fatherly tone.

Time and world-lines

  • Am I right in assuming, that the ‘help’ we can offer is limited to this particular timeline, timeline being understood as linear progression of time from this point forward?
Yes. You are correct from your point of view.

(There are a series of in-depth and advanced information garbles that I cannot make heads or tails out of. The Commander is obviously trying to submit information. I just cannot catch it.)

(I have snatches that I understand. Clustering. Anchoring. Progression forward. Soul / consciousness "beam-walking".)

The impression that I get is that there is much that can be said and the Commander wants to transmit valuable information here, but I am not up to the task. I am sorry.

  • Am I right in assuming that our activities should be limited spatially to this particular instantiation of ‘planet earth’?
No. Earth is one of numerous solar systems caught up in the Prison Planet force field. And the entire MWI slices involved... (Again, much information. Too much to sort out. I am failing and flailing here.)

(Commander backs off.)

Focus on your IS-BE consciousness at your moment of time and work from there. You not worry about all the other aspects of it. You, in particular (directed at the person who asked the question), will see the clarity of the entire situation once you exit the physical reality. Just don't go back into the (that) tunnel.

(Wants to transmit more information.)

(Good will. Right track. Positive glee.)
  • If one should gain insight into the life/lives of this current Soul/Sentience. -combination, is that information/insight still valid in this timeline?
Yes. Everything is valid. The issue is remembering it all, then recompiling it at the end of the lifetime and reusing that information to build upon and grow.

The Questions and Answers (Group 15)

When I got this group of questions I just shook my head. And “felt a smile”, and a memory flooded my mind clear as day. When I lived in Indiana we would often have lots of cats, and litters of kittens. Often from nearby feral cats that would have a bunch of kittens.

Once I had maybe eight kittens in a tall cardboard box. They were mostly orange and white in different patterns. But one was a cute nearly all black kitten with a white and orange stripe on it’s head. And while the other kittens were all content to romp and play inside the box, this one; this black one, was constantly trying to climb out of the box and run away.

One day he climbed out, ran across the street and was hit by a car and died.

This memory and image came up clear as day when I read this following cluster of questions.

Answers are not specific enough.

  • Still not specific enough. What facilities do they not know the location of?
(Snark response.) What non-physical entities are you NOT aware of that occupy the 3Km diameter region centered from your bathroom?
  • What do they suspect the traps are and how do they need assistance in disabling them?
Null response.

(There is an answer to this question above.)
  • What is the power source for the equipment being used to suppress memories?
(Snark response.)

The standard local power sources that all the traps use. Duh! (Yes, as really strange as it seems he actually went "Duh!" with an overlay of Homer Simpson.)
  • Will they commit more resources in the short term if assistance is offered?
We have everything we need right now. If there is a need for more resources then we will apply for them, and obtain them. This is not an issue that you need be concerned about.
  • You’ve said in other posts that the Greys are like the Borg from Star Trek, and that someone in the know likely tipped Paramount productions off about the real aliens as inspiration for that idea. I’m a ‘Love thy enemy like yourself’ sort of person. Help can be offered, still there is risk. Will they promise not to harm humanity if their battalion is freed?
All entities of this geographic and spatial region are under the ownership and control of the Dominion. No harm will come to anyone. You are all under our jurisdiction. Please keep in mind that IS-BE's cannot be destroyed. However there are other awful futures that can be contemplated for the malevolent.

I read the Alien interview closely when you published it. Any more specifics other that what was already mentioned in the alien interview are better than none. Surely if they contact you again they can offer a tidbit more than what we already have or they wouldn’t have contacted you and your audience in this fashion.

This is the purpose of this dialog, human.

The Questions and Answers (Group 16)

I tackled this Q&A with the feeling of “ready, let’s do this”. And the answers flowed forth. It was all very matter-of-fact, on point and direct.

Amnesia Trap

  • Does the amnesia trap have a physical size or range of effectiveness in physical space?
Yes it does. It is limited to a small geographical area that contains five inhabited solar systems. Not every inhabited system contains planets like the Sun Type 12, Class 7 that the earth is. 

This region is ovoid in shape with a oval X axis, and oval, X axis, and an oval Z axis. (3 dimensional football-like shape. -MM)

About 70 million years ago a great war devastated many of the solar systems in this geographic region of the galaxy. This occurred long before the "Old Empire" came into existence. During the recovery period a number of colonies were established on the planets in this region, but not of them grew to be major hubs of trade or commerce.

Around 208,000 years ago the "Old Empire" established dominance, and took over this geographical region. They ascertained that this section of the galaxy was a "junk yard" / rubbish / "of no use" and decided to turn it into a big Prison System. They destroyed what ever colonies or civilizations existed in the systems around 75,000 years ago, and created the Prison Complex that exists today.
  • It seems that since IS-BEs need to be brought to Earth for imprisonment, there might be a region or volume in which the trap is effective. If it does have a finite size, what would happen to humans who travel beyond it’s edge?
The entity would be free of the Prison environment and all the traps that exist. The IS-BE would be able to explore and travel anywhere. 

However, the felon would not have any memories aside from the singular last lifetime on the Prison Planet environment. 

All the trillions of years prior to their arrest and incarceration would be missing, as well as the memories associated from the hundreds to thousands of lives that they lived cycling in and out through the Prison "Heaven" would all be gone.
  • What would happen if a human were to die while beyond the edge?
Humans are IS-BE. IS-BE's never die. There is a fundamental vested interest of the "Old Empire" prison system to prevent you from seeing who you actually are. They fear that you will identify (by using your own memory) the slave masters who keep you imprisoned.

The Questions and Answers (Group 17)

This next question is in regards to communication between MM readership and The Domain. I guess that the intention is on an individual basis. I asked after I ate lunch, and settled down. I had a period of nothing. No responses. Then the comm opened up.

Communication

  • What can we do to support and improve communications?
The best way to communicate with The Domain is to use the EBP. If you do not possess one, then the second best way is to use someone that has as an intermediary. 

Individual inmates that are of service-to-others sentience, and who sincerely wish to provide supporting roles with The Domain can volunteer. 

To do this, [1] you modify your affirmation prayer campaigns (sic) to specifying (your) acceptance of volunteering and assisting The Domain in our efforts what ever they may be. (I have script code to add to your prayer affirmations to accomplish this. -MM)

Over time, some quicker than others, an [2] opportunity will arise where you are contacted in the non-physical body. It is very rare to be contacted in the physical body.

[3] The perceptions of this event will differ from person to person. Some "feel" this event. Some witness this event. Some remember this event as a very strange dream. This "contact" will take different forms for different people, and it depends on many things. Some people might feel a vibrational attachment (of some sort), while others might witness a medical procedure. Still others might experience a very lucid but completely strange dream. Some will feel like they are frozen and unable to move, and the fear of that will cause all sorts of terrible manifestations. Some will feel like they are under water, and unable to breathe, and others will feel both big and small and very very disoriented. It will be horrific. But it's all perceptions colored by fear.

How it appears will depend on many things. 

It will be strange. It will be unusual. It will be difficult to describe. But it will feel absolutely real.

However, take and make an important note [4], if you believe, or feel, that this event occurred then it actually did occur. (All emphasis is from the Domain Officer, not MM.)

The over all purpose of this communication is to gather up a group of volunteer inmates to assist in efforts of The Domain. If you accept this recruitment effort by MM, then follow the steps outlined above.

Note that every task will be a personal task, and will not really be anything that will make sense to others outside of your operational cell. We would truly love for your participation with us. (Smile.)

On a personal note, I think that I am getting better at this. I think that this comm system is working out.

Additional comments from the officer

The following are follow-up comments from the Domain officer(s)…

19SEP21 15:49
There are numerous individuals that are (now) experiencing things; events, situations and are confused. You need not be. Everything is proceeding to plan. Some of you will be assigned some dangerous tasks, but nothing that you will not survive out of, nor will you operate alone. You will always be supported.

(Garbled / unclear.)
Trust in yourself, and follow MM. Perform your exercises. Be of good heart.

My own personal questions

I mean, I can do this right? So I asked.

  • A number (more than just a few) of MM followers are reporting “sleep paralysis”. What is going on?
In every case, those that experience this sensation have agreed to support the efforts of The Domain and have volunteered to join our local irregulars. 

What they are experiencing is an operation (of sorts) [like a medical procedure] that alters their non-physical body. These alterations serve to sever numerous well known chains /tethers /controls /traps set up by the "Old Empire" and the warden(s) in this environment. 

Some will need to experience only one procedure. Some might experience multiple procedures. No one need be fearful, but if you are unaware of what is going on, it will be a natural fear response and your thoughts will conjure up all sorts of terrors. They are not real. Everyone must remain calm and realize what is going on.

These procedures are not the installation of EBP (sic). These are something completely different and varies from IS-BE to IS-BE. It will make it easier for the IS-BE to work with The Domain, and be able to move about the non-physical environs as well as be able to leave this entire region all together.

Everyone will experience the procedure differently. One of the most common effects is feeling like you are in a state of paralysis. What is actually going on is that the consciousness is placed in a holding chamber / facility / stasis state while the non-physical body is being operated on. For many this is a first-time experience, and is entirely new and strange. They naturally panic, and the fears generate nightmares in the thought-sensitive operating chamber.

My message to all is to remain calm. We are not harming anyone. We are altering your body so that you can work alongside The Domain. If things become too terrifying for you, you need only relax. You are in the midst of friends.

Conclusions

Some of the responses were surprising. There was a latent humanity that I was not expecting. Some were aggressive and it was intended for me to transfer that aggressiveness in my report. I hope that you all benefited from this.

I know that some will not be satisfied with the answers; claiming them to be too general. While others will be satisfied. While still others, maybe a little frustrated or angry. As we used to say in corporate America; “Don’t shoot the messenger”.

I do hope that everyone has benefited in some way over this. Have a great day.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Piecing together the final months of the Trump Presidency while China prepared for World War III

Well, things are coming in in isolation; in drips and dabs. But we are slowly piecing together a picture of what transpired during 2020 when President Trump and his army of neocons threw everything (minus the kitchen sink) at China. And it all failed.

In October, leading up into the November elections, was a desperate time. And President Trump was increasingly frustrated with the turn of events that he set in motion.

We know now, that in February 2020, China went DEFCON ONE and blamed the United States for unleashing a bio-weapon on China during it’s most important holiday. We also know that they stayed at military readiness throughout the year, and successfully stopped hybrid-war efforts on all fronts. The NED sponsored “Color Revolutions” in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang all collapsed.

In October, the largest flotilla of aircraft carriers ever assembled in the history of the world sailed home without incident from the South China Sea, and immediately Donald Trump fired his military leadership. Right then, and there. No explanation was given, and the mainstream media were all perplexed, and quickly forgot about the incident.

What happened after this defeat without a shot being fired is unknown, but now a general is speaking out and what he reports is horrific.

This is what happened immediately after the Naval Flotilla returned home without incident, and the top military leadership was fired…

The “news” reports

Top general was so fearful Trump might spark war that he made secret calls to his Chinese counterpart, new book says

From the Washington Post.

Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country’s top military officer was so fearful that the president’s actions might spark a war with China that he moved urgently to avert armed conflict.

In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa.

One call took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election that unseated President Donald Trump, and the other on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol siege carried out by his supporters in a quest to cancel the vote.

The first call was prompted by Milley’s review of intelligence suggesting the Chinese believed the United States was preparing to attack. That belief, the authors write, was based on tensions over military exercises in the South China Sea, and deepened by Trump’s belligerent rhetoric toward China.

“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”

In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”

Li took the chairman at his word, the authors write in the book, “Peril,” which is set to be released next week.

In the second call, placed to address Chinese fears about the events of Jan. 6, Li wasn’t as easily assuaged, even after Milley promised him, “We are 100 percent steady. Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.”

Li remained rattled, and Milley, who did not relay the conversation to Trump, according to the book, understood why. The chairman, 62 at the time and chosen by Trump in 2018, believed the president had suffered a mental decline after the election, the authors write, a view he communicated to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a phone call on Jan. 8. He agreed with her evaluation that Trump was unstable, according to a call transcript obtained by the authors.

Believing that China could lash out if it felt at risk from an unpredictable and vengeful American president, Milley took action. The same day, he called the admiral overseeing the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the military unit responsible for Asia and the Pacific region, and recommended postponing the military exercises, according to the book. The admiral complied.

Milley also summoned senior officers to review the procedures for launching nuclear weapons, saying the president alone could give the order — but, crucially, that he, Milley, also had to be involved. Looking each in the eye, Milley asked the officers to affirm that they had understood, the authors write, in what he considered an “oath.”

The chairman knew that he was “pulling a Schlesinger,” the authors write, resorting to measures resembling the ones taken in August 1974 by James R. Schlesinger, the defense secretary at the time. Schlesinger told military officials to check with him and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs before carrying out orders from President Richard M. Nixon, who was facing impeachment at the time.

Though Milley went furthest in seeking to stave off a national security crisis, his alarm was shared throughout the highest ranks of the administration, the authors reveal. CIA Director Gina Haspel, for instance, reportedly told Milley, “We are on the way to a right-wing coup.”

The book’s revelations quickly made Milley a target of GOP ire.

Trump, speaking Tuesday evening on the conservative television network Newsmax, labeled the chairman’s reported actions “treason” and said, “I did not ever think of attacking China.”

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to President Biden. Urging him to dismiss the Joint Chiefs chairman, saying he had undermined the commander in chief and “contemplated a treasonous leak of classified information to the Chinese Communist Party in advance of a potential armed conflict …”

A White House spokeswoman earlier Tuesday declined to comment on the book. Milley’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

“Peril” also provides new reporting on Biden’s 2020 campaign — waged to unseat a man he told a top adviser “isn’t really an American president” — and his early struggle to govern. During a March 5 phone call to discuss Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, his first major legislative undertaking, the president reportedly told Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va), “if you don’t come along, you’re really f—ing me.” The measure ultimately cleared the Senate through an elaborate sequencing of amendments designed to satisfy the centrist Democrat.

The president’s frustration with Manchin is matched only by his debt to House Majority Whip Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, whose endorsement before that state’s primary propelled Biden to the nomination and gave rise to promises about how he would govern.

When Clyburn offered his endorsement in February 2020, it came with conditions, according to the book. One was that Biden would commit to naming a Black woman to the Supreme Court, if given the opportunity. During a debate two days later, Clyburn went backstage during a break to urge Biden to reveal his intentions for the Supreme Court that night. Biden issued the pledge in his final answer, and the congressman endorsed him the next day.

“Peril,” the authors say, is based on interviews with more than 200 people, conducted on the condition they not be named as sources.

Exact quotations or conclusions are drawn from the participant in the described event, a colleague with direct knowledge or relevant documents, according to an author’s note. Trump and Biden declined to be interviewed.

On Afghanistan, the book examines how Biden’s experience as vice president shaped his approach to the withdrawal. Convinced that President Barack Obama had been manipulated by his own commanders, Biden vowed privately in 2009, “The military doesn’t f— around with me.”

“Peril” also documents how Biden’s top advisers spent the spring weighing, but ultimately rejecting, alternatives to a full withdrawal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin returned from a NATO meeting in March envisioning ways to extend the mission, including through a “gated” withdrawal seeking diplomatic leverage. But they came to see that meaningful leverage would require a more expansive commitment, and instead came back around to a full exit.

Milley, for his part, took what the authors describe as a deferential approach to Biden on Afghanistan, in contrast to his earlier efforts to constrain Trump. The book reveals recent remarks the chairman delivered to the Joint Chiefs in which he said, “Here’s a couple of rules of the road here that we’re going to follow. One is you never, ever ever box in a president of the United States. You always give him decision space.” Referring to Biden, he said, “You’re dealing with a seasoned politician here who has been in Washington, D.C., 50 years, whatever it is.”

His decision just months earlier to place himself between Trump and potential war was triggered by several important events — a phone call, a photo op and a refusal to rule out war with another adversary, Iran.

The immediate motivation, according to the book, was the Jan. 8 call from Pelosi, who demanded to know, “What precautions are available to prevent an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or from accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike?” Milley assured her that there were “a lot of checks in the system.”

The call transcript obtained by the authors shows Pelosi telling Milley, referring to Trump, “He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. … He’s crazy and what he did yesterday is further evidence of his craziness.” Milley replied, “I agree with you on everything.”

Milley’s resolve was deepened by the events of June 1, 2020, when he felt Trump had used him as part of a photo op in his walk across Lafayette Square during protests that began after the killing of George Floyd. The chairman came to see his role as ensuring that, “We’re not going to turn our guns on the American people and we’re not going to have a ‘Wag the Dog’ scenario overseas,” the authors quote him saying privately.

Trump’s posture, not just to China but also to Iran, tested that promise. In discussions about Iran’s nuclear program, Trump declined to rule out striking the country, at times even displaying curiosity about the prospect, according to the book. Haspel was so alarmed after a meeting in November that she called Milley to say, “This is a highly dangerous situation. We are going to lash out for his ego?”

Trump’s fragile ego drove many decisions by the nation’s leaders, from lawmakers to the vice president, according to the book. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was so worried that a call from President-elect Biden would send Trump into a fury that the then-Majority Leader used a backchannel to fend off Biden. He asked Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, formerly the No. 2 Senate Republican, to ask Sen. Christopher A. Coons, the Democrat of Delaware and close Biden ally, to tell Biden not to call him.

So intent was Pence on being Trump’s loyal second-in-command — and potential successor — that he asked confidants if there were ways he could accede to Trump’s demands and avoid certifying the results of the election on Jan. 6. In late December, the authors reveal, Pence called Dan Quayle, a former vice president and fellow Indiana Republican, for advice.

Quayle was adamant, according to the authors. “Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,” he said.

But Pence pressed him, the authors write, asking if there were any grounds to pause the certification because of ongoing legal challenges. Quayle was unmoved, and Pence ultimately agreed, according to the book.

When Pence said he planned to certify the results, the president lashed out. In the Oval Office on Jan. 5, the authors write, Pence told Trump he could not thwart the process, that his role was simply to “open the envelopes.”

“I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this,” Trump replied, according to the book, later telling his vice president, “You’ve betrayed us. I made you. You were nothing.”

Within days, Trump was out of office, his governing power reduced to nothing. But if stability had returned to Washington, Milley feared it would be short-lived, the authors write.

The general saw parallels between Jan. 6 and the 1905 Russian Revolution, which set off unrest throughout the Russian Empire and, though it failed, helped create the conditions for the October Revolution of 1917, in which the Bolsheviks executed a successful coup that set up the world’s first communist state. Vladimir Lenin, who led the revolution, called 1905 a “dress rehearsal.”

A similar logic could apply with Jan. 6, Milley thought as he wrestled with the meaning of that day, telling senior staff:

“What you might have seen was a precursor to something far worse down the road.”

MM Comments

Here on MM we have long documented all the events listed herein. I have a couple indexes on it all. We discussed the covert, overt, and “black sides” of a war with China. We discussed the 11 biological attacks, and the various military operations. We discussed everything from drones spraying bio-weapons to devastate livestock, to political bullshit. We also discussed the idea that the United States would conduct a first-use of nuclear weapons against China.

And people laughed at us.

And it turns out that we were correct.

President trump and his army of neocons were indeed planning first strike attacks upon China. And that, we now know, would have resulted in a retaliatory Chinese nuclear salvo against the top 40 American cities.

City Rank Pop. 2019 2010 Growth
New York, NY 1 8,419,316 8,078,471 4.2%
Los Angeles, CA 2 3,966,936 3,772,486 5.2%
Chicago, IL 3 2,709,534 2,703,466 0.2%
Houston, TX 4 2,310,432 2,068,026 11.7%
Phoenix, AZ 5 1,633,017 1,450,206 12.6%
Philadelphia, PA 6 1,579,075 1,504,950 4.9%
San Antonio, TX 7 1,508,083 1,290,196 16.9%
San Diego, CA 8 1,409,573 1,282,800 9.9%
Dallas, TX 9 1,330,612 1,187,285 12.1%
San Jose, CA 10 1,027,690 925,300 11.1%
Austin, TX 11 950,807 764,129 24.4%
Jacksonville, FL 12 890,467 811,833 9.7%
Columbus, OH 13 878,553 770,407 14.0%
San Francisco, CA 14 874,961 789,172 10.9%
Fort Worth, TX 15 874,401 705,349 24.0%
Indianapolis, IN 16 864,447 809,804 6.7%
Charlotte, NC 17 857,425 705,896 21.5%
Seattle, WA 18 724,305 595,240 21.7%
Denver, CO 19 705,576 578,087 22.1%
Boston, MA 20 684,379 602,609 13.6%
El Paso, TX 21 679,813 628,923 8.1%
Detroit, MI 22 674,841 759,340 -11.1%
Nashville, TN 23 663,750 587,790 12.9%
Memphis, TN 24 651,932 654,876 -0.4%
Portland, OR 25 645,291 566,686 13.9%
Oklahoma City, OK 26 643,692 563,571 14.2%
Las Vegas, NV 27 634,773 579,786 9.5%
Louisville, KY 28 617,790 586,994 5.2%
Baltimore, MD 29 609,032 620,538 -1.9%
Milwaukee, WI 30 594,548 589,697 0.8%
Albuquerque, NM 31 559,374 531,403 5.3%
Tucson, AZ 32 541,482 518,457 4.4%
Fresno, CA 33 525,010 484,008 8.5%
Sacramento, CA 34 500,930 459,511 9.0%
Mesa, AZ 35 499,720 439,639 13.7%
Atlanta, GA 36 488,800 413,462 18.2%
Kansas City, MO 37 486,404 454,876 6.9%
Omaha, NE 38 475,862 407,334 16.8%
Long Beach, CA 39 466,776 461,823 1.1%
Colorado Springs, CO 40 464,871 403,983 15.1%

Quick Recap

President trump and his cabal of neocons declared war on China in 2016. When he became president, he immediately put neocons in charge of all the strategy positions relative for war. Such as John Bolton in charge of the Bio-Weapons systems. He then waged a “hybrid-war” against China.

Aside from all the public efforts; tariffs, Huawei, 5G, QUAD, Australia, etc, he also engaged in aggressive “black operations” that included “color revolutions“, as well as trying to induce starvation through bio-weapons.

All efforts failed.

By 2019, and during the lead up towards elections, Donald Trump wanted to step up his anti-China campaign. His reelection to a second term depended on his ability to be a “war President”.  So starting in mid 2019 he launched an “inoculation strain” of COVID in the USA and all of it’s allies. And then in late 2019, he released the “lethal B” strain against China, Iran and North Korea.

All of 2020 was fought with biological weapons.

Simultaneously with the Chinese people collapsing due to seizures due to the lethal B strain, an enormous “fire hose” of anti-China disinformation was unleashed. And for a while it worked.

But not as planned.

The strains mutated, and the “inoculation strain” did not protect Americans.

Then, in March 2020 he decided to go Kinetic and launched two more very serious bio-weapons against China. (For a total of three lethal bio-weapons.)

And yet again, China survived, and thrived.

So, he got together the largest Naval flotilla in the history of the world and set sail for China. But no incidents occurred, and he fired his top military leadership as a result. We now know why.  Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper because he did not engage in a “hot” kinetic war with China.

And Donald Trump was COUNTING on that war to be initiated during elections. And always, historically, there are insanely positive polling results for a President during the initial weeks of a war.

So then President Trump went to his generals, and as we now know, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was afraid that Donald Trump would order him to conduct a “hot” kinetic war with China.

Now, China, after four years of “hybird-war”, and full knowledge about the bio-weapons attacks and the “color revolutions”…

After all, China shares Intel with Russia, and has all of Hong Kong wired up in audio and video... as well as all those CIA / NED "assets" on the mainland, now filled with pro-china patriotic fervor turning themselves in and working with the PLA...

Knew full well what was going on.

After all, China was at DEFCON ONE all year. (And still is, by the way.) And appreciated the candor of the American military leadership, but do not trust any Americans any longer. Which is why they are refusing to talk with Biden, or having a US Ambassador inside of China. (As of right now at the time of this article.)

And now, the Chinese leadership is very “closed” to the United States.

As I have discussed HERE; the United States is a Military Empire with a puppet figurehead and has a “President” in title only.

And China realizes it.

What does this mean?

We know that President Biden has been inside of China and understands that a war with China would devastate the United States. And it would. Let’s not fool ourselves.

But, President Bidden is a figurehead only.

The United States is a Military Empire, and the military-industrial establishment and neocon K-street are “calling the shots”. They run things. They control budgets, and they control the Military. They control the State Department (as the entire world observed during the April 2021 Anchorage meeting), and they control the American people though advanced media manipulation.

This knowledge of what China is, and what it capable of is useless, as the people who control the reins of power think otherwise. All the war provocations seem to originate out for the bureaucracy and industrial self-interest rather than top-down directed orders.

No matter how harsh the United States might be against China today, it is nothing compared to what would happen were another neocon to become President in 2024.

  • Tom Cotton
  • Mike Pompeo
  • Marco Rubio

Heaven help us all.

Dangerous people.

In expectation of a bad situation going “tits up” both Russia and China have prepared first-strike (nuclear) scenarios to counter any possibility of the intentional American nightmare unleashed upon the world.

Make no mistake that they are in place and being studied for every contingency.

The Chinese plan for every contingency.

The Chinese and the Russians are not fools. And as I have said over and over and over.

China. Does. Not. Play.

Which means that they are a serious, serious, merit driven nation. And when they do decide to do something, they do it with precision and ruthlessness. You might not want to hear it, you might want to believe that democracy is on “God’s side”, or that Chinese are just “copy-cats” who cannot innovate. You can believe whatever you want.

Expect full-on Asian (China & Russia) readiness to be in place right now today.

They are ready to hurt others really, really bad. China is mass producing nuclear warheads like they used to make rubber ducky’s. The assembly lines and production lines are running hot. Much like the printing presses in America are turning red hot printing US “greenback” dollars.

Not only that, but on all levels they have mustered and created a unified Asia.

And a word to the wise. They do not believe in “surgical strikes”. They believe in pounding cities into oblivion. They have their own history as a template.

Maybe payback time for the rape of Nanjing…

Hopefully level heads will persist at the highest levels of government in Washington DC for the next decade or so. But do not count on it. We can hope, but must be realistic.

But if the world can tone down the insanity that the United States has become, then the rest of the world will be able to take a breather and the entire world can move forward in peace.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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A call out for questions to ask The Domain using the EBP channel via MM

This article is a request for the MM audience to collect questions for me to ask The Domain via my EBP. If you all don’t know what I am talking about, then you can probably skip this article.

On 17SEP21 I posted an article that related the fact that The Domain opened up a dedicated channel to me via the EBP. As always, it was one-sided, and detailed. But during the conversation, I had no real mental ability. I was in a receiving and reporting state. I was really unable to think for myself. I just queried what I was told to ask and recorded the answers.

You can read this article HERE, if you are confused with what is going on.

Some Background

Most people are aware that the work titled “Alien Interview” is a transcript of a Commander of The Domain when it’s vehicle crashed in 1947. What most people do not know is that this event spawned an American  top secret agency known as MAJestic that fell under the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence).

This waved, unacknowledged special access program handled (and still handles) all extraterrestrial events, technologies and interactions with the United States government. I was a unique part of that organization prior to being retired.

I do know that MAJestic works intimately with the Domain. And that it has acquired technology, information and understandings from The Domain. Obviously further more exacting information came forth and was accumulated in the 75 or so years since the formation of MAJestic.

This project

I know, and I am absolutely convinced that The Domain wants to do this. They are sort of waiting for me to set the incident(s) in place, and then will direct it as they see fit.

It’s kind of like how a microwave keeps flashing after it finishes cooking the food, or how a washing machine has the display beeping after it finished washing a load. This flashing / beeping is still present. (Though… it’s something different.)

My idea is to collect questions. Know full well that they may or may not answer them. But I will go read the questions and then record the answers if available. If they do not answer, I will respond as such.

People (!) this is your first, maybe ONLY chance, to ask questions to an extraterrestrial.

My impression is that this is an officer or an approved liaison that is associated with my EBP implants. I am also under the impression, most strongly, that this is an approved effort. And that it is somehow associated with my Majestic role. To this end, there is a channel that is open and dedicated to this purpose.

I know it is open. I can fucking feel it.

I do not know how long it will remain open. Hours. Months, Years. I just do not know.

I have the impression that they WANT to do this, and that they WANT actual inmate involvement in their efforts in this region of geographical space. I believe that they NEED and / or require our participation in some way.

What are the interests of The Domain on Earth?

This EBP channel is not for popular trivia.

Nor is it for questions about our worries or fears. It is for queries on how we, as inmate humans, can help and participate with the Type-1 extraterrestrials of The Domain. That’s it.

It’s for Rufus’s to ask questions so that we can learn how to be able to assist the Type-1 greys of The Domain.

I get the distinct impression that they really want for us to participate in their objectives, and they are willing to provide a diversity of answers to help alleviate our fears and concerns. But in all cases keep in mind that they will only answer what they want to answer.

Thus, any questions that you might conceive of, MUST be directed towards [1] The Domain and [2] their role and mission in this earth regional environment.

Their interests are…

  • Freeing the 3000 members of the “Lost Battalion”.
  • Control and destruction or control of the amnesia machinery that surrounds the earth.
  • Destruction of the various traps, systems, and mechanisms that entrap consciousness in this environment.
  • Preservation of the earth’s environment and prevention of nuclear, biological or climatic destruction.
  • Patrol and policing of this region from “dropping off” more consciousnesses into this Prison Planet.
  • Establishment of a rehabilitation plan for the inmates in this environment.
  • Support of the sentience sorting efforts so that the “good” inmates may be freed from this environment.
  • Freeing of IS-BE’s that are worthy of leaving this Prison Environment.

Because these are the interests of The Domain at this time, in our region, these are the topic areas that we would be able to obtain answers regarding.

Some notes on how this open channel affects me

It is like electricity.

Normally, with the ELF probes active, and the EBP it was like a normal life, just “very active”. Everything was like a car engine running at full speed.

Then when I was retired, and the ELF probes were shut off, everything went quiet. It was a state of calmness that I hadn’t felt for decades. It was like calm still water, while before it was like being tied to an electric chair with 30,000 volts surging through my body.

But the EBP was still active.

And yet, as a result of this, I would have a channel in the EBP open and get chit-chat from time to time. Always one sided. Always directed. Always functional. Always on a passive station but ready for my responsive actions.

Then when I received the communication from a Commander of The Domain,  it’s like “multiple channels”, or a bandwidth increase. Much better data transfer and sensory input.

I’m not used to it.

It’s not bad, it’s not horrible. It’s just that it’s unlike what I have been exposed to and pretty fierce.

It’s like plugging in a fan, as opposed to letting the fan sit in the corner of the room inert and alone.

As a result, I have a very clear comm channel.

When I say that they are open to answering sincere questions, then they will do so. And that when I say that they want us to work with them, believe me. That is the situation.

So be the Rufus, and posit some decent questions.

Question format and queries

What I plan on doing is collecting any and all questions that might result from this article. Then simplifying them, and placing them in a Q&A format. And seeing what happens.

If nothing happens, then so be it.

But if something does, then you might be surprised at the answers. As you can tell, they answer things very clearly and directly with a great deal of detail. It’s very similar to what was found in The Alien Interview.

Please ask questions that fall under these categories, and when you ask a question, please specify what category that it falls under.

  • Freeing the “Lost Battalion”.

Ask questions on what we can do to free the “Lost Battalion”. Or what problems or issues seem to be stopping their release. Ask what we can do to help, or anything related to freeing inmates.

  • Destruction of the amnesia machinery.

You should ask questions related to this machinery and how an inmate might be able to assist in the destruction of this equipment.  Maybe we, as insiders, have a benefit, or skill or strategic advantage that we can offer. We should ask.

  • Aside from the amnesia machinery, the destruction of other systems or traps.

It’s not only the amnesia machinery that needs to be destroyed, but the layers and layers of other systems, in all forms. From the various social constructions, religious constructs, and even the environmental constructs, what can we do or how can we help.

  • Preservation of the earth’s environment.

I know that the type-1 greys are very keen on preserving the earth. This entire region has experienced galactic wide wars of great destruction and the ruins of many a civilization litter this region. This is more than just climate change.

  • Prevention of nuclear and biological destruction of the biosphere.

Certainly there are all sorts of seriously bad consciousnesses and IS-BE’s that are in positions of power and control. They seem to be driving the world to the brink of extinction. What is going on? What can we do?

  • Patrol and policing of this region from “dropping off” more consciousnesses into this Prison Planet.

When The Domain destroyed the “Old Empire” units and bases in this region they inadvertently opened up a “Wild West”. For the last few thousand years, all the nearby galactic civilizations have been dropping off their criminal elements here to imprison them. What of it?

  • Establishment of a rehabilitation plan for the inmates in this environment.

This is a big issue, and we are up close and up front. We can ask questions regarding this plan or systems or programs that are being considered.

  • Support of the sentience sorting efforts so that the “good” inmates may be freed from this environment.

Release of everyone immediately would be catastrophic for the galaxy. As there are many, many very terrible consciousnesses in our region. The universe doesn’t need a new Khan Running around.

  • Freeing of IS-BE’s that are worthy of leaving this Prison Environment.

What of the “average joes? The artists, and the creators that somehow found their way here in this environment and imprisoned improperly? We can ask questions about them, and how they can be distinguished between the really bad and nasty folk.

Procedure.

Put your questions in the comments of this article. I will collect them in another article and run a request up-stream. Let’s see what happens.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

A Rescue Mission for the 3,000 members of The Domain “lost Battalion”

I have presented a great and wide diverse selection of articles to the MM audience. And I do hope that you all appreciate them, enjoy them, learn from them, and I most certainly hope that they will all better your life in some way. This article is going to be a little different.

This article kicks off a project that I believe is important. It is something that I want to do.

Instead of being an informative article, this article asks all those Rufus’s in the MM audience to help the Type-1 greys of The Domain. They have a “Lost Battalion” that is imprisoned here on the Earth with us. And we should do what ever we can to help rescue them.

MM Role

I have no recollection of ever being in The Domain, or being a Type-1 grey or anything like that. I was in MAJestic and I dedicated my life to helping others and being part of something larger. I want to help them. I do not expect riches, wealth or some kind of trans-species reward or anything like that. I just want to help them.

If there are Rufus’s in the MM audience that are so inclined to join me, then please do so. Let’s give something back. Let’s make the Earth a better place, and lets all work together to bypass the memory suppression technology that surrounds this Earth Environment, and help free the “Lost Battalion” and enable them to recover their memories.

What I am asking the Rufus’s to do…

It is my personal “gut” feeling that the members of the Domain’s “Lost Battalion” 3,000 have some very strong erasure protocols installed in their world-line templates. Stronger than say, the rest of us.

When the Types-1 greys try to conduct medical or other procedures on the soldiers, they fight and resist aggressively.

I’ve been thinking that the best thing for us to do is lay down “suppressive fire” that will alter all of our templates in favor of these imprisoned soldiers.

It will not cause damage to our goals or anything, but we will start to anchor our world-line clusters in favor of the imprisoned Domain members, and make it much easier for them to break out of their confining electro-magnetic prisons and suppressive brain-washing.

The task…

For those Rufus’s that are so inclined, and only if you are so inclined, I suggest adding some special lines of code to your affirmation prayer campaigns.

Lines of code from the movie “The Matrix”.

These lines of code will help anchor your world-lines to that of a group cluster that focuses in rescuing the trapped Domain soldiers in the Earth Prison Planet.

Here are the lines of code

From a contributor…

  • I volunteer and support “The Domain” in their mission to rehabilitate the IS-BEs on Earth.
  • I allow an officer from “The Domain” to enlist me and alter my non-physical body to allow for communication and collaboration.
  • I am being trained in techniques to assist my assigned role in this mission.
  • My participation in this mission will not affect me and my family negatively in the physical reality.

And my suggestions…

  • Any and all members of The Domain’ “Lost Battalion” are no longer imprisoned in this “Old Empire” containment facility.
  • All of these IS-BE entities are in recovery and rehabilitation.
  • They are all on the way to recovering their memories and regaining a role within their society.

Just add the lines of code, and the next time that you start your next campaign, just read off these lines with the rest of your affirmations.

You might also want to add this line as well…

  • I, as an IS-BE have recovered all of my memories, and now have the necessary skills to be freed from the Earth Prison Planet environment.

Rewards…

There are no rewards. So do not do it in the expectation of any kind of benefit.

What is all this about?

Not everyone reading this article will understand what is going on. MM has many “one article stands” where someone stumbles on the site, skim reads and then leaves. But if you stay around and read the articles you will see what is going on.

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true.

In the transcript the extraterrestrial jumps all over. And in many instances he seems to reflect normal regular human feelings and attitudes about issues (such as the platypus) and you can read it and miss many things as it is a dated document translated by a nurse in 1947. In order to best sort it out, to a frame of reference that we can all understand, I am now (in this series of articles) going to separate the “Alien Interview” document into sections categorized by dates.

The key text segments…

"What would you like to say, Airl?", I asked. "I have been a part of the Domain Expeditionary Force in this sector of space for several thousand years.  However, I have not personally had intimate contact with beings on Earth since 5,965 BCE.   It is not my primary function to interact with inhabitants of planets within The Domain.   I am an Officer, Pilot and Engineer, with many duties to perform. Nonetheless, although I am fluent in 347 other languages within The Domain, I have not been exposed to your English language.

The last Earth language with which I was conversant was the Sanskrit language of the Vedic Hymns. At that time I was a member of a mission sent to investigate the loss of a Domain base located in the Himalaya Mountains. An entire battalion of officers, pilots, communications and administrative personnel disappeared and the base destroyed.

One of my duties involved interrogation of the human population that inhabited the adjoining area at that time.  Many of the people in that region reported sighting "vimanas" or space craft in the area.

Following the logical extension of evidence, testimony, observation, as well as the absence of certain evidence, I led my team to the discovery that there were still "Old Empire" ships and well-hidden "Old Empire" installations in this solar system of which we had been completely unaware.

"Airl described the abilities of an IS-BE officer of The Domain to me, and she demonstrated one to me when she contacted -- telepathically -- a communications officer of The Domain who is stationed in the asteroid belt.

The asteroid belt is composed of thousands of broken up pieces of a planet that once existed between Mars and Jupiter.    It serves as a good low-gravity jumping off point for incoming space craft traveling toward the center of our galaxy.

She requested that this officer consult information stored in the "files" of The Domain, concerning the history of Earth.     She asked the communications officer to "feed" this information to Airl. The communications officer immediately complied with the request. Based on the information stored in the files of The Domain, Airl was able to give me a brief overview or "history lesson".  This is what Airl told me that The Domain had observed about the history of Earth:

She told me that The Domain Expeditionary Force first entered into the Milky Way galaxy very recently -- only about 10,000 years ago.  Their first action was to conquer the home planets of the "Old Empire" (this is not the official name, but a nick-name given to the conquered civilization by The Domain Forces) that served as the seat of central government for this galaxy, and other adjoining regions of space. These planets are  located in the star systems in the tail of the Big Dipper constellation. She did not mention which stars, exactly.

About 1,500 years later The Domain began the installation bases for their own forces along the path of invasion which leads toward the center of this galaxy and beyond.   About 8,200 years ago The Domain forces set up a base on Earth in the Himalaya Mountains near the border of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan.   This was a base for a battalion of The Domain Expeditionary Force, which included about 3,000 members.

They set up a base under or inside the top of a mountain.  The mountain top was drilled into and made hollow to create an area large enough to house the ships and personnel of that force. An electronic illusion of the mountain top was then created to hide the base by projecting a false image from inside the mountain against a "force screen".    The ships could then enter and exit through the force screen, yet remain unseen by homo sapiens.

Shortly after they settled there the base was surprised by an attack from a remnant of the military forces of the "Old Empire". Unbeknownst to The Domain, a hidden, underground base on Mars, operated by the "Old Empire", had existed for a very long time.  The Domain base was wiped out by a military attack from the Mars base and the IS-BEs of The Domain Expeditionary Force were captured.

You can imagine that The Domain was very upset about losing such a large force of officers and crew, so they sent other crews to Earth to look for them. Those crews were also attacked.   

The captured IS-BEs from The Domain Forces were handled in the same fashion as all other IS-BEs who have been sent to Earth. They were each given amnesia, had their memories replaced with false pictures and hypnotic commands and sent to Earth to inhabit biological bodies. They are still a part of the human population today.

After a very persistent and extensive investigation into the loss of their crews, The Domain discovered that "Old Empire" has been operating a very extensive, and very carefully hidden, base of operations in this part of the galaxy for millions of years.   No one knows exactly how long.  Eventually, the space craft of the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain engaged each other in open combat in the space of the solar system.

According to Airl, there was a running battle between the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain until about 1235 AD, when The Domain forces finally destroyed the last of the space craft of the "Old Empire" force in this area.   The Domain Expeditionary Force lost many of its own ships in this area during that time also.

About 1,000 years later the "Old Empire" base was discovered by accident in the spring of 1914 AD. The discovery was made when the body of the Archduke of Austria   was "taken over" by an officer of The Domain Expeditionary Force. This officer, who was stationed in the asteroid belt, was sent to Earth on a routine mission to gather reconnaissance.

The purpose of this "take over" was to use the body as a "disguise" through which to infiltrate human society in order to gather information about current events on Earth.  he officer, as an IS-BE, having greater power than the being inhabiting the body of the Archduke, simply "pushed" the being out and took over control of the body.

However, this officer did not realize how much the Hapsburgs were hated by feuding factions in the country, so he was caught off guard when the body of the Archduke  was assassinated by a Bosnian student.  The officer, or IS-BE, was suddenly "knocked out" of the body when it was shot by the assassin.         Disoriented, the IS-BE inadvertently penetrated one of the "amnesia force screens" and was captured.

Eventually The Domain discovered that a wide area of space is monitored by an "electronic force field" which controls all of the IS-BEs in this end of the galaxy, including Earth.  The electronic force screen is designed to detect IS-BEs and prevent them from leaving the area.

If any IS-BE attempts to penetrate the force screen, it "captures" them in a kind of "electronic net".   The result is that the captured IS-BE is subjected to a very severe "brainwashing" treatment which erases the memory of the IS-BE.  This process uses a tremendous electrical shock, just like Earth psychiatrists use "electric shock therapy" to erase the memory and personality of a "patient" and to make them more "cooperative".

On Earth this "therapy" uses only a few hundred volts of electricity.    However, the electrical voltage used by the "Old Empire" operation against IS-BEs is on the order of magnitude of billions of volts!  This tremendous shock completely wipes out all the memory of the IS- BE.  The memory erasure is not just for one life or one body.  It wipes out all of the accumulated experiences of a nearly infinite past, as well as the identity of the IS-BE!

The shock is intended to make it impossible for the IS-BE to remember who they are, where they came from, their knowledge or skills, their memory of the past, and ability to function as a spiritual entity.   They are overwhelmed into becoming a mindless, robotic non-entity.

After the shock a series of post hypnotic suggestions are used to install false memories, and a false time orientation in each IS-BE. This includes the command to "return" to the base after the body dies, so that the same kind of shock and hypnosis can be done again, and again, again -- forever.  The hypnotic command also tells the "patient" to forget to remember.

What The Domain learned from the experience of this officer is that the "Old Empire" has been using Earth as a "prison planet" for a very long time -- exactly how long is unknown -- perhaps millions of years.

So, when the body of the IS-BE dies they depart from the body. They are detected by the "force screen", they are captured and   "ordered" by hypnotic command to "return to the light".   The idea of "heaven" and the "afterlife" are part of the hypnotic suggestion -- a part of the treachery that makes the whole mechanism work.

After the IS-BE has been shocked and hypnotized to erase the memory of the life just lived,  the IS-BE is immediately "commanded", hypnotically, to "report" back to Earth, as though they were on a secret mission, to inhabit a new body.  Each IS-BE is told that they have a special purpose for being on Earth. But, of course there is no purpose for being in a prison -- at least not for the prisoner.

Any undesirable IS-BEs who are sentenced to Earth were classified as "untouchable" by the "Old Empire".  This included anyone that the "Old Empire" judged to be criminals who are too vicious to be reformed or subdued, as well as other criminals such as sexual perverts, or beings unwilling to do any productive work.

An "untouchable" classification of IS-BEs also includes a wide variety of "political prisoners".   This includes IS-BEs who are considered to be noncompliant "free thinkers" or "revolutionaries" who make trouble for the governments of the various planets of the "Old Empire". Of course, anyone with a previous military record against the "Old Empire" is also shipped off to Earth.

A list of "untouchables" include artists, painters, singers, musicians, writers, actors, and performers of every kind.   For this reason Earth has more artists per capita than any other planet in the "Old Empire".

"Untouchables" also include intellectuals, inventors and geniuses in almost every field. Since everything the "Old Empire" considers valuable has long since been invented or created over the last few trillion years, they have no further use for such beings. This includes skilled managers also, which are not needed in a society of obedient, robotic citizens.

Anyone who is not willing or able to submit to mindless  economic, political and religious servitude as a tax-paying worker in the class system of the "Old Empire" are "untouchable" and sentenced to receive memory wipe-out and permanent imprisonment on Earth.

The net result is that an IS-BE is unable to escape because they can't remember who they are, where they came from, where they are. They have been hypnotized to think they are someone, something, sometime, and somewhere other than where they really are.

The Domain officer who was "assassinated" while in the body of Archduke of Austria was, likewise, captured by the "Old Empire" force. Because this particular officer was a high powered IS-BE, compared to most, he was taken away to a secret "Old Empire" base under the surface of the planet Mars.  They put him into a special electronic prison cell and held him there.

Fortunately, this Domain officer was able to escape from the underground base after 27 years in captivity.   When he escaped from the "Old Empire" base, he returned immediately to his own base in the asteroid belt.   His commanding officer ordered that a battle cruiser be dispatched to the coordinates of the base provided by this officer and to destroy that base completely. This "Old Empire" base was located a few hundred miles north of the equator on Mars in the Cydonia region.

Although the military base of the "Old Empire" was destroyed, unfortunately, much of the vast machinery of the IS-BE force screens, the electroshock / amnesia / hypnosis machinery continues to function in other undiscovered locations right up to the present moment.  The main base or control center for this "mind control prison" operation has never been found. So, the influences of this base, or bases, are still in effect.

The Domain has observed that since the "Old Empire" space forces were destroyed there is no one left to actively prevent other planetary systems from bringing their own "untouchable" IS-BEs to Earth from all over this galaxy, and from other galaxies nearby.    Therefore, Earth has become a universal dumping ground for this entire region of space.

This, in part, explains the very unusual mix of races, cultures, languages, moral codes, religious and political influences among the IS-BE population on Earth.  The number and variety of heterogeneous societies on Earth are extremely unusual on a normal planet.   Most "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planets are inhabited by only one humanoid body type or race, if any.

In addition, most of the ancient civilizations of Earth, and many of the events of Earth have been heavily influenced by the hidden, hypnotic operation of the "Old Empire" base.  So far, no one has figured out exactly where and how this operation is run, or by whom because it is so heavily protected by screens and traps.

Furthermore, there has been no operation undertaken to seek out, discover and destroy the vast and ancient network of electronics machinery that create the IS-BE force screens at this end of the galaxy. Until this has been done, we are not able to prevent or interrupt the electric shock operation, hypnosis and remote thought control of the "Old Empire" prison planet.

Of course all of the crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force now remain aware of this phenomena at all times while operating in this solar system space so as to prevent detection and the capture by "Old Empire" traps."

And, the very unusual combination of "inmates" on Earth - criminals, perverts, artists, revolutionaries and geniuses - is the cause of a very restive and tumultuous environment.   The purpose of the prison planet is to keep IS-BEs on Earth, forever. Promoting ignorance, superstition, and war between IS-BEs helps to keep the prison population crippled and trapped behind "the wall" of electronic force screens.

IS-BEs have been dumped on Earth from all over the galaxy, adjoining galaxies, and from planetary systems all over the "Old Empire", like Sirius, Aldebaron, the Pleiades, Orion, Draconis, and countless others. 

There are IS- BEs on Earth from unnamed races, civilizations, cultural backgrounds, and planetary environments. 

Each of the various IS-BE populations have their own languages, belief systems, moral values, religious beliefs, training and unknown and untold histories.

These IS-BEs are mixed together with earlier inhabitants of Earth who came from another star system more than 400,000 years ago to establish the civilizations of Atlanta and Lemuria.   Those civilizations vanished beneath the tidal waves caused by a planetary "polar shift", many thousands of years before the current "prison" population started to arrive.  Apparently, the IS-BEs from those star systems were the source of the original, oriental races of Earth, beginning in Australia.

On the other hand, the civilizations set up on Earth by the "Old Empire" prison system were very different from the civilization of the "Old Empire" itself, which is an electronic space opera, atomic powered conglomeration of earlier civilizations that were conquered with nuclear weapons and colonized by IS-BEs from another galaxy.

The bureaucracy that controlled the former "Old Empire" was from an ancient space opera society, run by a totalitarian confederation of planetary governments, regulated by a brutal social, economic, and political hierarchy, with a royal monarch as its figurehead.

This type of government emerges with regularity on planets where the citizens abandon personal responsibility for autonomous, self-regulation. They frequently lose their freedom to demented IS-BEs who suffer from an overwhelming paranoia that every other IS-BE is their enemy who must be controlled or destroyed. Their closest friends and allies, whom they espouse to love and cherish, are literally "loved to death" by them.

Because such IS-BEs exist, The Domain has learned that freedom must be won and maintained through eternal vigilance and the ability to use defensive force to maintain it.

As a result, The Domain has already conquered the governing planet of the "Old Empire".  The civilization of The Domain, although considerably younger and smaller in size, is already more powerful, better organized, and united by an egalitarian esprit de corps never known in the history of the "Old Empire".

The recently despoiled German totalitarian state on Earth was similar to the "Old Empire", but not nearly as brutal, and about ten thousand times less powerful. Many of the IS- BEs on Earth are here because they are violently opposed to totalitarian government, or because they were so psychotically vicious that they could not be controlled by "Old Empire" government.

Consequently, the population of Earth is disproportionately comprised of a very high percentage of such beings.  The conflicting cultural and ethical moral codes of the IS-BEs on Earth is unusual in the extreme.

The Domain conquest of the central "Old Empire" planets was fought with electronic cannon. The citizens of the planets forming the core of government for the "Old Empire" are a filthy, degraded, slave society of mindless, tax-paying workers, who practice cannibalism. Violent automotive race tracks and bloody, Roman circus type entertainments are their only amusements.

Regardless of any reasonable justification we may have had for using atomic weapons to vanquish the planets of the "Old Empire", The Domain is careful not to ruin the resources of those planets by using weapons of crude, radioactive force.

The government of the "Old Empire", before being supplanted by The Domain, was comprised of beings who possessed a very craven intelligence, very much like the Axis powers during your recent world war.    Those beings manifested precisely the same behavior as the galactic government that exiled them to eternal imprisonment on Earth.  They were a gruesome reminder of the ageless maxim that an IS-BE will often manifest the treatment they have received from others.

Kindness fosters kindness. Cruelty begets cruelty.   One must be able and willing to use force, tempered with intelligence, to prevent harm to the innocent. However, extraordinary understanding, self- discipline and courage are required to effectively prevent brutality, without being overwhelmed by the malice that motivated the brutality.

Only a demonic, self-serving government would employ a "logic" or "science" to conceive that an "ultimate solution" to any problem is to murder and permanently erase the memory of every artist, genius, skilled manager, and inventor, and cast them into a planetary prison together with political opponents, killers, thieves, perverts, and disabled beings of an entire galaxy!

Once the IS-BEs expelled from the "Old Empire" arrived on Earth, they were given amnesia, and hypnotically tricked into thinking that something else had happened to them. The next step was to implant the IS-BEs into biological bodies on Earth.   The bodies became the human populations of "false civilizations" which were designed and installed in the minds of IS-BEs to look completely unlike the "Old Empire".

All of the IS-BEs of India, Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Medieval Europe were guided to pattern and build the cultural elements of these societies based on standard patterns developed by the IS-BEs of many earlier, similar civilizations on "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planets that have existed for trillions of years throughout the universe.

In the earliest times the IS-BEs sent to prison Earth lived in India.        

They gradually spread into Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, Achaea, Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, and to the New World.  They were hypnotically "commanded" to follow the pattern of a given civilization by the "Old Empire" prison operators.   

This is an effective mechanism to disguise the actual time and location from the IS-BEs imprisoned on Earth.  The languages, costumes and culture of each false civilization are intended to reinforce amnesia because they do not remind the IS-BEs on Earth of the original "Old Empire" planets from which they were deported.

On the very far back-track of time these types of civilizations tended to repeat themselves over and over because the IS-BEs who created them become familiar with certain patterns and styles, and stayed with them.  It is a lot of work to invent an entire civilization, complete with culture, architecture, language, customs, mathematics, moral values, and so forth. It is much easier to replicate a copy based on a familiar and successful pattern.

A "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planet is the designation given to a planet inhabited by carbon-oxygen based life forms.  The class of the planet is based on the size and radiation intensity of the star, the distance of the planetary orbit from the star, and the size, density, gravity, and chemical composition of the planet.

Likewise, flora and fauna are designated and identified according to the star type and class of planet they inhabit.

On the average, the percentage of planets in the physical universe with a breathable atmosphere is relatively small. Most planets do not have an atmosphere upon which life-forms "feed", as on Earth, where the chemical composition of the atmosphere provides nutrition to plants, and other organisms, which in turn support other life forms.

When the Domain Force brought the Vedic Hymns to the Himalayas region 8,200 years ago, some human societies already existed. The Aryan people invaded and conquered India , bringing the Vedic Hymns to the area.

The Vedas were learned by them, memorized and carried forward verbally for 7,000 years before being committed to written form. During that span of time one of the officers of The Domain Expeditionary Force was incarnated on Earth as "Vishnu".   

He is described many times in the Rig-Veda.  He is still considered to be a god by the Hindus.   Vishnu fought in the religious wars against the "Old Empire" forces. He is a very able and aggressive IS-BE as well as a highly effective officer, who has since been reassigned to other duties in The Domain.

This entire episode was orchestrated as an attack and revolt against the Egyptian pantheon installed by "Old Empire" administrators.  The conflict was intended to help free humankind from implanted elements of the false civilization that focused attention on many "gods" and superstitious ritual worship demanded by the priests who "managed" them.  It is all part of the mental manipulation by the "Old Empire" to hide their criminal actions against the IS-BEs on Earth.

A priesthood, or prison guards, were used to help reinforce the idea that an individual is only a biological body and is not an Immortal Spiritual Being. The individual has no identity. The individuals have no past lives.

The individual has no power.   Only the gods have power. And, the gods are a contrivance of the priests who intercede between men and the gods they serve. Men are slaves to the dictates of the priests who threaten eternal spiritual punishment if men do not obey them.

What else would one expect on a prison planet where all prisoners have amnesia, and the priests themselves are prisoners?

The intervention of The Domain Force on Earth has not been entirely successful due to the secret mind-control operation of the "Old Empire" that still continues to operate.

A battle was waged between the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain through religious conquest. Between 1500 BCE and about 1200 BCE, The Domain Forces attempted to teach the concept of an individual, Immortal Spiritual Being, to several influential beings on Earth.

One such instance resulted in a very tragic misunderstanding, misinterpretation and misapplication of the concept.   The idea was perverted and applied to mean that there is only one IS-BE, instead of the truth that everyone is an IS-BE!  Obviously, this was a gross incomprehension and an utter unwillingness to take responsibility for one's own power.

The "Old Empire" priests managed to corrupt the concept of individual immortality into the idea that there is only one, all-powerful IS-BE, and that no one else is or is allowed to be an IS- BE. Obviously, this is the work of the "Old Empire" amnesia operation.

It is easy to teach this altered notion to beings who do not want to be responsible for their own lives.  Slaves are such beings.  As long as one chooses to assign responsibility for creation, existence and personal accountability for one's own thoughts and actions to others, one is a slave.

As a result, the concept of a single monotheistic "god" resulted and was promoted by many self-proclaimed prophets, such as the Jewish slave leader -- Moses -- who grew up in the household of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, as well as his son Tutankhamen.

The attempt to teach certain beings on Earth the truth that they are, themselves, IS-BEs, was part of a plan to overthrow the fictional, metaphorical, anthropomorphic panoply of gods created by the "Old Empire" mystery cult called "The Brothers of The Serpent" known in Egypt as the Priests of Amun. They were a very ancient, secret society within the "Old Empire".

The Pharaoh Akhenaten was not a very intelligent being, and was heavily influenced by his personal ambition for self- glorification.     He altered the concept of the individual spiritual being and embodied the concept in the sun god, Aten.     

His pitiful existence was soon ended.  

He was assassinated by Maya and Parennefer, two of the Priests of Amun, or "Amen", which the Christians still say, who represented the interests of the "Old Empire" forces.

The idea of "One God" was perpetuated by the Hebrew leader Moses while he was in Egypt. He left Egypt with his adopted people, the Jewish slaves.         

While they were crossing the desert, Moses was intercepted by an operative of the "Old Empire" near Mt. Sinai. Moses was tricked into believing that this operative was "the" One God through the use of hypnotic commands, as well as technical and aesthetic tricks which are commonly used by the "Old Empire" to trap IS-BEs.       

Thereafter, the Jewish slaves, who trusted the word of Moses implicitly, have worshiped a single god they call "Yaweh".

The name "Yaweh" means "anonymous", as the IS- BE who "worked with" Moses could not use an actual name or anything that would identify himself, or blow the cover of the amnesia / prison operation. The last thing the covert amnesia / hypnosis / prison system wants to do is to reveal themselves openly to the IS-BEs on Earth.  They feel that this would restore the inmates memories!

This is the reason that all traces of physical encounters between operatives of space civilizations and humans is very carefully hidden, disguised, covered-up, denied or misdirected.

This "Old Empire" operative contacted Moses on a desert mountain top and delivered the "Ten Hypnotic Commands" to him.   These commands are very forcefully worded, and compel an IS-BE into utter subservience to the will of the operator.   These hypnotic commands are still in effect and influence the thought patterns of millions of IS-BEs thousands of years later!

Incidentally, we later discovered that the so- called "Yaweh" also wrote, programmed and encoded the text of the Torah, which when it is read literally, or in its decoded, form, will provide a great deal more false information to those who read it.

Ultimately, the Vedic Hymns became the source of nearly all of Eastern the religions and were the philosophical source of the ideas common to Buddha, Laozi, Zoroaster, and other philosophers. The civilizing influences of these philosophies eventually replaced the brutal idolatry of the "Old Empire" religions and were the true genesis of kindness and compassion.

You asked me earlier why The Domain, and other space civilizations do not land on Earth or make their presence known.

Land on Earth?  

Do you think we are crazy or want to be crazy?

It takes a very brave IS-BE to come down through the atmosphere and land on Earth, because this is a prison planet, with a very uncontrolled, psychotic population.  And, no IS-BE is entirely proof against the risk of entrapment, as with the members of The Domain Expeditionary Force who were captured in the Himalayas 8,200 years ago.

No one knows what IS-BEs on Earth are going to do.

We are not scheduled to invest the resources of The Domain to take total control of all the space surrounding the area at this time.    

This will occur in the not-too-distant future -- about 5,000 Earth years -- according to the time schedule of The Domain.  At this time we do not prevent transports from other planetary systems or galaxies from continuing to drop IS-BEs into the amnesia force screen area. Eventually, this will change.

In addition, Earth, inherently, is a highly unstable planet. It is not suitable for settlement or permanent habitation for any sustainable civilization.     This is part of the reason why it is being used as a prison planet. No one else would seriously consider living here for a variety of simple and compelling reasons:

The continental land masses of Earth are floating on a sea of molten lava beneath the surface which causes the land masses to crack, crumble and drift

Because of the liquid nature of the core, the planet is largely volcanic and subject to earthquakes and volcanic explosion

The magnetic poles of the planet shift radically about once every 20,000 years. This causes a greater or lesser degree of devastation as a result of tidal waves, and climatic

Earth is very distant from the center of the galaxy and from any other significant galactic civilization. This isolation makes it unsuitable for use, except as a "pit stop" or jumping off point along the way between galaxies.  The moon and asteroids are far more suitable for this purpose because they do not have any significant gravity.

Earth is a heavy gravity planet, with heavy metallic soil and a dense atmosphere. This makes it treacherous for navigational That fact that I am in this room, as the result of an in flight accident, in spite of the technology of my craft and my extensive expertise as a pilot, are proof of these facts.

There are approximately sixty billion Earth- like (Sun Type 12, Class 7) planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, not to mention the vast expanses of The Domain, and the territories we will claim in the future. It is difficult to stretch our resources to do much more than a periodic reconnaissance of Earth. Especially when there are no immediate advantages to invest resources

On Earth most beings are not aware that they are IS-BEs, or that there are spirits of any kind. Many other beings are aware of this, but nearly everyone has a very limited understanding of themselves as an IS-BE.

One of the reasons for this is that IS-BEs have been waging war against each other since the beginning of time.  The purpose of these wars have always been to establish domination by one IS-BE or group of IS-BEs over another. Since an IS-BE cannot be "killed", the objective has been to capture and immobilize IS-BEs.This has been done in an nearly unlimited variety of ways. The most basic method to capture and immobilize an IS-BE is through the use of various kinds of "traps".

IS-BE traps have been made and put in place by many invading societies, such as the one that established the "Old Empire", beginning about sixty-four trillion years ago.  Traps are often set up in the "territory" of the IS-BEs being attacked.Usually a trap is set with the electronic wave of "beauty" to attract the interest and attention of the IS-BE. When the IS-BE moves toward the source of the aesthetic wave, such as a beautiful building or beautiful music, the trap is activated by the energy put out by the IS-BE.

One of the most common trap mechanism uses the IS-BE's own thought energy output when the IS- BE tries to attack or fight back against the trap. The trap is activated and energized by the IS-BE's own thought energy. The harder the IS-BE fights against the trap, the more it pulls the IBS toward it and keeps them "stuck" in the trap.

Throughout the entire history of this physical universe, vast areas of space have been taken over and colonized by IS-BE societies who invade and take over new areas of space in this fashion.   In the past, these invasions have always shared common elements:

(1) the overwhelming use of force of arms, usually with nuclear or electronic mind control of the IS-BEs in the invaded area through the use of electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, erasure of memory and the implantation of false memory or false information intended to subjugate and enslave the local IS-BE

(2) takeover of natural resources by the invading IS-BEs.

(3) political, economic and social slavery of the local population.

These activities continue in present time.   All of the IS-BEs on Earth have been members of one or more of these activities in the past, both as an invader, or as part of the population being invaded.  There are no "saints" in this universe.   Very few have avoided or been exempted from warfare between IS-BEs.

IS-BEs on Earth are still the victims of this activity at this very moment.   The between- lives amnesia administered to IS-BEs is one of the mechanisms of an elaborate system of "Old Empire" IS-BE traps, that  prevent an IS-BE from escaping.

This operation is managed by an illicit, renegade secret police force of the "Old Empire", using false provocation operations to disguise their activities in order to prevent detection by their own government, The Domain and by the victims of their activities. 

They are mind-control methods developed by government psychiatrists.

Earth is a "ghetto" planet.  It is the result of an intergalactic "Holocaust". IS-BEs have been sentenced to Earth either because:

They are too viciously insane or perverse to function as part of any civilization, no matter how degraded or

Or, they are a revolutionary threat to the social, economic and political caste system that has been so carefully built and brutally enforced in the "Old Empire". Biological bodies are specifically designed and designated as the lowest order of entity in the "Old Empire" caste system.   When an IS-BE is sent to Earth, and then tricked or coerced into operating in a biological body, they are actually in a prison, inside a...

In an effort to permanently and irreversibly rid the "Old Empire" of such "untouchables", the eternal identity, memory, and abilities of every IS-BE is   forcefully erased.    This "final solution" was conceived and carried out by the psychopathic criminals who are controlled by the "Old Empire".

The mass extermination of "untouchables" and prison camps created by Germany during World War II were recently revealed. Likewise, the IS-BEs of Earth are the victims of spiritual eradication and eternal slavery inside frail, biological bodies, inspired by the same kind of craven hatred in the "Old Empire".

The kind and creative inmates of Earth are continuously tortured by butchers and lunatics who are controlled by the "Old Empire" prison operators. The so-called "civilizations" of Earth, from the age of useless pyramids to the age of nuclear holocaust, have been a colossal waste of natural resources, a perverted use of intelligence, and an overt oppression of the spiritual essence of every single IS-BE on the planet.

If The Domain sent ships to every corner of the universe in search of "Hell", their quest could end on Earth. What greater brutality can be inflicted on anyone than to erase the spiritual awareness, identity,  ability, and memory that is the essence of oneself?

The Domain has, as yet, been unable to rescue the 3,000 IS-BEs of the Expeditionary Force Battalion either.  

They are forced to inhabit biological bodies on Earth.  

We have been able to recognize and track most of them for the past 8,000 years. However, our attempts to communicate with them are usually futile, as they are unable to remember their true identity.

The majority of lost members of The Domain force have followed the general progression of Western civilization from India, into the Middle East, then to Chaldea, and Babylon, into Egypt, through Achaia, Greece, Rome, into Europe, to the Western Hemisphere, and then all around the world.

The members of the lost Battalion and many other IS-BEs on Earth, could be valuable citizens of The Domain, not including those who are vicious criminals or perverts. Unfortunately, there has been no workable method conceived to emancipate the IS-BEs from Earth.

Therefore, as a matter of common logic, as well as the official policy of The Domain, it is safer and more sensible to avoid contact with the IS-BE population of Earth until such time as the proper resources can be allocated to locate and destroy the "Old Empire" force screen and amnesia machinery and develop a therapy to restore the memory of an IS-BE."

Summary and conclusion

We can all use our special abilities to help others in need. It’s fine to read about Alien Interview, or participate in MAJestic, but it is something else entirely to go forth and devote time and thoughts to helping our benefactors. Here I ask and call upon all Rufus’s in the MM sphere to add some rescue code to their prayer affirmation campaigns to help the trapped Domain Battalion.  Participation is optional, but it would b nice if others would join me in this effort.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

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A message to MM readers from “The Domain” via the EBP communication channel

This is a big special treat for the MM audience. Boy oh boy! Straight from the “horse’s mouth”. Oh baby!

Most people are aware that the work titled “Alien Interview” is a transcript of a Commander of The Domain when it’s vehicle crashed in 1947. What most people do not know is that this event spawned an American  top secret agency known as MAJestic that fell under the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence).

This waved, unacknowledged special access program handled (and still handles) all extraterrestrial events, technologies and interactions with the United States government. I was a unique part of that organization prior to being retired.

I do know that MAJestic works intimately with the Domain. And that it has acquired technology, information and understandings from The Domain. Obviously further more exacting information came forth and was accumulated in the 75 or so years since the formation of MAJestic.

This article is my attempt to further flush out some points (in addition to) the Alien Interview. Fill in the blanks, so to say.

Here’s where it gets strange…

You plan on one thing happening, and something entirely different transpires…

Background

Initially I had planned to disgorge what I knew of these matters though my involvement with MAJestic, and then redact everything that was questionable. But, you know, it didn’t work out that way. Not at all.

Something else happened.

As always, I set up a new “post” based on a wordpress format that I established. I cleared the wordpress, and started typing. I wrote the two paragraph introduction, fully planning to discuss what I could piece together based on my four decades of involvement, and just as I was about to start…

…I had to jump up. And then pace in my office. I actually paced. Kind of shuttered a bit to the left and almost walked out of the office to the hallway, but didn’t and went back in.

I kind of bounced around from the corner plant to the sofa, and back to the credenza.

I sat down. Cleared my desk, and took a sip of coffee, and started to type. And well, nothing came out. You know. I started to type, but (you know) I was not able to write anything down at all. I couldn’t do anything.

Blank.

So I leaned back. Perplexed.

I couldn’t even think. Blank.

I took a sip of coffee, and tried again. Still blank.

Blank.

Blank.

And then, I got goosebumps all over my arms. No shit. And right then and there, truly, something unique, and very special happened. Listen closely. Pay attention.

An officer of The Domain opened up a channel and talked to me directly.

No Bullshit

And make no mistake I am directed to do this with excitement / urgency (expediency).

It’s a real thing.

I am not blowing smoke up your ass. Not like Jerry Falwell getting a message from Jesus that he needs a million dollars before Tuesday or Satan will take over, or any bullshit like that. This is a real fucking thing, with real physical effects.

Communication through the EBP is always subtle and one way. I listen and then respond.

  • EBP Task Directive / question.
  • MM Do and confirm.

However, in this case, the system worked like this…

  • EBP– They prompt for a specific question.
  • MM– I ask / verbalize the question.
  • EBP– Get answer.
  • MM– I record the answer.
  • EBP– Next query…

I am forced (it’s the only way that I can do this at this time) to lay it out in Question and Answer format. And what I know or conscious of is a direct function of what I am allowed or permitted to disclose. Nothing more.

My questions and the officer’s answers…

The Disclosure

As of today, how close is The Domain able to shut down the amnesia-force-field and associated “Prison Planet” technology?

The Domain has established a task team to work on this problem.

They are working with MAJestic, as well as a number of other earth organizations to accomplish this.

The earth environment is a "battlefield" of all sorts of "traps" and "snares". Many of which are independent, individual, self-autonomous in nature. 

The Domain has located and tracked our missing battalion. We work with their non-physical bodies in various efforts to release them.

As of this date, most of the battalion are still imprisoned.

However, serious and strong steps have been taken to root out and shutdown and suppress the machinery and systems that many of the mechanisms that the snares operate under.

These actions have laid down a foundation for further more successful subsequent efforts to take place.

Most of the equipment and systems are in the non-physical realms.

Any efforts towards directed thought will be most helpful.

What is the time-line for the completion of this effort?

From the start it was anticipated that the project can begin in 5,000 years. This date has been advanced, and is in process now.

We do not have a realistic time-table for completion.

This entire effort is a staged, and built-upon, effort. And it takes time. It will take many human life-times.

Sentience sorting is the methodology that will be used to select and release IS-BE's from this environment.

We anticipate the reestablishment of containment control (to stop other species from dumping their riff-raff in), and simultaneously building upon control over thought process suppression. Meanwhile snares, traps and tricks will continue to be rooted out and destroyed.

Once those most basic steps are secure, then the modification of the (physical) human biology can advance with mRNA and DNA alterations making it easier to release the non-physical bodies from the non-physical environment that surrounds this region.

We are active in modifying the non-physical bodies of many imprisoned IS-BE's. But because there are so many, it is a herculean task. Our priority is to save the Domain Battalion, and all MAJestic members that work with us (and other organizations that work with us as well). We physically change their non-physical bodies to assist in suppression of the effects of the field that surrounds this region.

We also work with other special IS-BE's that show a preference to assist us in this task. This includes both imprisoned IS-BE's as well as other IS-BE's from outside this region who volunteer to help.

How do you select or prioritize those IS-BE’s that can leave this Earth Prison Planet region?

We sort by sentience.

We have prioritized The Domain IS-BE members first. They are our most important asset in this entire effort. They hold the "keys" to "unlock" the fences.

We also work with <redacted>. You do not know them. (Referring to MM here.)

Why are you having trouble freeing the “Lost Battalion”?

They are mostly specialized "troops" that you would consider to be of military caliber. Their nature is to fight aggressively. 

Additionally, they have had special "chains" or "processes" that make their recovery so much more difficult than your typical inmate.

What about other species?

Humans are not the only enslaved and imprisoned species here. Other species include dolphins, and horses.

We are working to free all IS-BE's in the regions irregardless to what physical form they inhabit and what associated Heaven they are associated with.

What can I do to help?

(Directed at MM) You are just doing great. Follow your intuition. 

I think that while it was directed at me personally, I strongly think that this applies to all MM readership as well. I strongly have the "message" that it is specifically directed to some certain MM followers, but no names are being given to tell youse guys who.

What about prayer affirmation campaigns and the other things that are listed here?

(Directed at MM readership) All the tools you need to find are here. Keep in mind that the techniques are conceptual and can be modified by your own mental utility to fit your needs, do not believe in absolute solutions, as it is your thoughts that modify your reality.

Is this “channeling”?

This is "EBP stuff" as you call (refer to) it.

I want to really be a bridge between The Domain and the MM followers here. What can I do to participate in this?

(Directed at me.) Perhaps we can provide more of this in the future. It will depend on the mindset and desires of your audience. It will develop.

Is there anything else that I can ask or that you want to say?

No. Message sent. Do not worry too much (directed at the MM audience). The physical saturation of discomfort is under our (the Domain) control (observation and manipulation as necessary), and the tools that MM provides.

Conclusion

Wow!

You are welcome.

References

This communication occurred between 9:45am and 10:39am on 16SEP21. It is a direct EBP channel direct from the Type-1 greys of The Domain to me personally. It is exactly as sent. And I am personally stunned as it never happened this way before.

Final Comments

There are so many questions that I want to ask, but I was unable to gather my thoughts and ask them. That is not how you deal with these entities. I was only able to ask what they told me to ask. Though, I did have some degree of freedom on how to phrase the questions, and then post-edit some parts of the answers.

This is big stuff for me personally. If you don’t understand you can leave. I am now filled with emotion and actually my physical body is shaking with “goosebumps” all over it. Chills running back and forth.

It took me about 8 hours to cool down.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Random meandering wandering thoughts in regards to world-lines, engineering humans, freedom and sentience

Some thoughts. A bunch of “stuff” flooded my brain this morning, and so I want to spew this stuff on paper and move on with my other projects and activities. So just let me go a spewing. And as I spew forth on this beautiful morning let’s all keep in mind to have a lovely day.

Shall we go a spewing?

Coffee, freshly brewed in the morning, tastes great.

Perhaps we take what we commonly consume for granted. I watched one of those “cop shooting videos” where this guy threatens a police officer to shoot him. He said “go shoot me!”. And the police tell him “lay down your weapon.” And so he lunges out at the officer, and is shot dead. I think he was dead before he hit the ground.

Ugh.

In one year no one will remember his name, what he did for a living, or really care.

And you know what?

That cup of coffee that he had in the morning was his last.

He probably didn’t savor it either. He probably poured himself a cup, gulped it down without a thought and read the “news” about “Presidents says this…”, or “Rich oligarch flies into space because he can. And fuck the rest of youse guys”

Or better yet “Coronavirus is worst ever!”. Or “new strain attacks people left and right!” Or, maybe “new leaked evidence about US funding, and Coronavirus development in China”.

Or perhaps, “Australia alarmed”, or “Japan Alarmed”, or “Refugees pour in from Afghanistan”. Yada. Yada. Yada.

Sheech! Enjoy what you have.

Morning coffee.

Do you smell the coffee when it is brewing? Do you have the opportunity to drink it in the early morning with some “me” time? Do you eat something along with it?

Like eat a bagel.

Or hang out with your little buddies.

NOW.

Engineering of humans for this “Prison Planet” environment.

As I understand it, the “normal” and default biological life-form is fully capable of simultaneous co-habitation in both the physical world and the non-physical world.Most creatures naturally go back and forth between the two realities quite easily.

Yet humans do not have this ability.

For us (Earth bound) humans, we can only see the physical reality, and have no ability to see the non-physical reality, and what’s worse, not even able to remember it.

The reasoning behind this is described in the work “Alien Interview”.

I suggest that this implies that the human species (for this earth environment) was specifically modified (or retarded) to prevent this ability. And this belief is confirmed in the “Alien Interview”.

Alien 3 movie – A prison planet.

If we can determine what the alterations are, we can reverse this aspect of the damage.

I argue that the Type-1 greys are physically modifying the non-physical reality bodies to correct these and other issues, and all that nonsense about abductions are just fears manifested from ignorance. Now, to prevent me from going into stuff that I just cannot state, I will suggest that the “other” humans that sometimes attend these events are not from our “Sentience Nursery Region / Prison Planet”. Instead they are from “outside” of it.

Their bodies are not “retarded” Prison-bodies that we are all so entwined with in this realm that we are in.

The key then is “containerizing” our consciousness outside of the physical body, as it seems to have been devised (or modified) as a physical cage.

Indeed this “Prison Planet” has many, many levels.

Body selection for the truly evil

I think that those souls that developed into truly evil and vile consciousnesses needed to be put into a secure holding facility; a “Prison Planet”. The problem is that as the “Old Empire” got old and corrupt itself, everyone was thrown into this environment. And it is thus and environment that we share together.

Good. Bad. Evil. Disjointed.

Earlier I wrote about CJ, the beauty model that I lived with. She was amazingly beautiful, but inside she was like a horrible demon. At times, when her “real” side came out, I considered her to be an actual evil demon-like entity.

I wonder…

If you were evil and vile and you were in Heaven, and it was time for you to construct your time on earth, what kinds of bodies would you inhabit?

I think that most evil and vile people would inhabit the bodies that would give them…

  • Large amounts of Power.
  • Unlimited sex with whomever they wanted.
  • Control over others, domination.
  • Wealth in copious and ridiculous amounts.

Thus, is it any wonder that we see such a concentration of evil and vile people in Washington DC, or in the leadership of smaller African, and South American nations today?

And thus we see an outrageously beautiful person who is a real evil vile person inside.

Alien Interview placed many concepts, now accepted as real, decades before scientific acknowledgement of them.

For instance “continental drift”. “Chariots of the Gods”. The “12th Planet”. “Pole Shifts”. The ability to clone and design creatures with DNA. The list goes on and on.

It is so easy for us to read “Alien Interview” with the eyes of a contemporaneous person from 2021 instead of a person from 1947.

We have to keep that in mind.

In 1947, the “new age” movement did not exist. It did not occur until the late 1960’s. Most Americans believed the Bible was the de facto history of the world. And while Darwinism was taught in the universities, most people focused on the principle subjects of reading, writing and arithmetic.

For the “leadership” of America at that time, it all must have come as a great shock. The idea of “not to follow the tunnel of light”, and that there is no “Heaven” or “Hell”, and that memories are not ever supposed to be erased.

All in all, it was obvious from the reading of the narrative in support of “Alien Interview”, that leading scientists and capable people at that time were pulled in for their thoughts and commentaries. And after much deliberation, I am positive that they HAD to conceive of a secret organization to deal with this species and all of what it talked about.

That is how MAJestic came about. And no, it wasn’t JUST because one singular “flying saucer” was captured. It was EVERYTHING associated with it.

Some cat quotes

I found these humorous.

Does McDonald’s i(outside of China) still have those little white plastic stir-sticks? What about those little metal foil ash-trays? Or those cute kitty-sized little milk creamers?

This is so relatable.

Indeed. They seem to be immune to the earth as a “Prison Planet”.

They come and go from non-physical to physical and back again as if it were nothing.

Poor kitty.

And…

Yeah. I hear ya bud.

And…

Fact. Jack.

Japanese press is hyping up a war with China

American influence no doubt. But it’s all nonsense. A lot of words, and posturing. And it ignores the serious, serious open wounds that fester inside of China.

But let me tell you all, and any Chinese in the MM audience can confirm this statement as true.

"If Japan makes ANY military move against China, China will start nuking that fucking little island like there is no tomorrow. Fuck their military. It will be their cities and people who will all die God Damn it!"

For the last 75 years every single person in China has been exposed to the horrific tragedies and rape of China by the Japanese and the hatred is visceral. I, as an American, am shaken to the core when I see the Chinese react to any of this Japanese nonsense. Believe me. They will fucking bludgeon Japan into a bloody pulp.

Believe me.

Japans had best hide from China, and not do anything that the USA wants. Mind My Words. Video

The Japanese were brutal against the Chinese, and China wants PAYBACK in the worst way.

Things have changed.

This was then. Now look at today. If you want to fuck with China you had best get ready for a real bludgeoning. Video.

If you want to fuck with China you had best get ready for a real bludgeoning.

Greek Breakfast foods

Every now and then I come across a Greek restaurant. I love the food there. And I think that it would be great to try some of their breakfast foods.

Feta, Veggies and Eggs

Whether they’re scrambled or served omelette style, you can’t go wrong with topping eggs with Feta. Try adding chopped onion, a bit of garlic, veggies of choice (zucchini, bell peppers and tomatoes are great in this dish). Sprinkle in some coarse salt and freshly ground pepper. Toss in a splash of milk, and whip together in a bowl. Cook the eggs either omelet or scrambled style, adding the Feta, when the eggs are almost finished. Delicious Greek breakfast food!

A fine Greek Breakfast.

Eliopsomo: Greek Olive Bread

You can pick up this wonderful, traditional bread at a Greek bakery or cafe, as well as many specialty grocery stores. While it’s delicious simply toasted and served with your morning cup of coffee, try switching it up a bit by topping the bread with a good Greek cheese.

Eliopsomo.

Spanakopita

Who doesn’t love Spanakopita?  But, remember, it’s not just for lunch and dinner. Why not warm a slice and serve it on a plate with your morning cup of coffee? It’s a great alternative to the everyday breakfasts you’re likely tired of eating.

Spanakopita

PLA expels U.S. destroyer from China’s territorial waters off Nansha Islands

Not reported in the American “news” media.

CGTN

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) said Wednesday it had expelled a U.S. guided-missile destroyer that trespassed in China's territorial waters near the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea.

PLA Southern Theater Command spokesperson Tian Junli said in a statement that the U.S. military's act had seriously undermined China's sovereignty and security interests.

Calling Washington "a risk maker" to the security of the South China Sea and the "biggest destroyer" of the region's safety and stability, Tian warned that the theater command will "remain on high alert."

"We will resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and security, as well as peace and stability in the region," he said.

I expect more belligerent actions by the US Navy in the coming months. And expect China to tire of the “cat and mouse games” after a while.

Snow Leopard: The National Animal of Afghanistan

With all the new a talking about Afghanistan, no one is talking about this little tidbit of treasure. The national animal of Afghanistan is Snow Leopard.

The Snow Leopard is a big cat who lives on a high altitude and preys on Argali wild sheeps, Ibex, Pikas and rabbits etc.

A snow leopard.

Snow Leopard are very rare and are only found in 12 countries like China, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Russia, Afghanistan etc. Snow Leopards are so rare that they  estimate that there are only 3500 of these creatures left.

China has the 60% of the population of these majestic cats.

These white big patched cats love to live between an altitude of 10,000 meters – 18,000 meters. The gestation period is 3 and half months. An astonishing there here is that their limbs are extremely powerful, even they can hop up to 30 feet which is 6 times their body length, extremely strong limbs huh?.

A snow leopard.

Another specialty of these Snow Leopards is that it have a gray or light green eyes rather than a yellow or gold like the other big cats. The Snow Leopard was thought to be extinct in Afghanistan, however, 100 are still out there somewhere.

There is no specified reason why Snow Leopard is opted as the national animal, but some says as the people Afghanistan are well known for their brave character and this majestic cat, however, reflects the very same ideology. And you know, the Afghanistan people are not as the USA media pictures them. They are something else entirely. I think the Snow Leopard fits their psyche.

Changes in the geography of the basic world-line template that many people use

Changes are happening, and the templates are changing. No, not the anchoring effects, but the general master templates themselves. To do this is very, very, VERY powerful.

I was once asked how powerful the extraterrestrial benefactors were. They asked if they had weapons powerful enough to destroy cities. I responded that they had the ability to move the earth from it’s orbit. Put it inside the Sun for five minutes. Let it bake good and well, and then place it back in orbit. That is how powerful they are.

I see that there are some events that are changing. Future life-track world-lines seem to be adjusting to new templates, and these templates are … peculiar.

Peculiar.

You heard it here first.

Bob Odenkirk back on ‘Better Call Saul’ set after heart attack

I enjoy “Better call Saul”. It’s a great show. But you all gotta follow it for a while to figure out what is going on. I think it’s great. But them I was surprised to discover the actor who plays Saul Goodman had a heart attack. It bummed me out.

Better call Saul.

58 years old. Had a heart attack and blockage. Major bummer. I am glad that he’s back on his feet again. You all must take care with your body. As you get older heart attacks become real threats.

I’ve had two of the fuckers.

The first time was in a high-stress work environment, while dealing with a high-stress mentally ill wife. I was in the machine shop and had a serious heart attack. Good thing that I was young. 36 years old or so. I was able to pick my self up from the floor and get to the doctor. The second time was last year when I was adjusting to new blood pressure medicine.

Eat well. Watch your health. You never know.

What is “freedom”?

I know, I know, I know. I have gone on and on endlessly about this subject. But “freedom” is NOT the ability to vote in a democracy™. It’s something else. It’s entirely something else.

Some things that need to be underlined

  • Freedom to be left alone.
  • Freedom to disappear.
  • Freedom of complete privacy.

Any nation that does not allow these freedoms is just a prison.

Facebook pays contractors to read your ‘encrypted’ WhatsApp messages, shares info with prosecutors – reports — RT World News

Obviously this is an ideal, but I do have to tell you’se guys that if your nation isn’t allowing it’s citizenry these freedoms then it is not DOING ITS JOB. Nations have a duty to their citizenry.

All nations in the world today violate these aspects of life to one degree or the other. I argue that this also includes China…

…but, China is far better protecting the massive onslaught against the individual by aggressive interests than the United States is. The freedom to be left alone is a major issue, don’t you think?

Some thoughts on democratic voting balancing

I have long given up on the belief that a democracy is the best way (or even a way) of running a nation. But others haven’t. Here’s some thoughts by RM on how the American democracy could be improved to better serve it’s people.

What we are not seeing at the city and county level is this:


USA balancing act.

Rural farming areas and downstaters are screwed when there is a big city in their state.
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Their vote is continuously cancelled and it does not count toward the results that they want. 
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States are like a giant gerrymandering. I have often thought that states should have a series of county referendums or whatever legal path they could find and redraw their boundaries.  For instance here is Greater Idaho, which they are currently working on:

Changing the lines of control.

Then groups of these newly defined states could make coalitions in Congress.
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  • Create cooperative zones for building their economies.
  • Cooperate on state banking and mutual credits for home and industry.
  • Support common problems of pollution or agriculture development.
  • Have an Environmental protection that does not stop at state borders.
  • Combine their national guard forces.  (This one is important.)
  • Maybe make tax free zones and trade concessions.
  • Well, they should do everything to grab more power from the Feds.
  • Even change the US tax structure.
I believe that in the US they would have to find a better way to consolidate interests into bigger factions, to wrest governance away from the present power structures.  This could be a way, without disruptive protest or armed rebellion.
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Is it too late? Or is the process just getting started?

Just some kids playing

In America they banned toy guns “for the children”. In China, all kids get to play with toy guns, and they all receive real military training on how to use them in the Pioneers and Scouts. Not to mention the mandatory Middle School mandatory boot camp. Video.

Kids playing.

FOX “news” praises China!

Are pigs flying in the skies above the United States these days? Did Hell freeze over?

The famous China-hater Carlson says China does a few things right:

  • Houses are for people to live in, not for speculation;
  • Children are to limit their gaming time to three hours in the weekend;
  • Celebrities are not to be worshiped; he should add: young men are not to wear make-up to look like women.

Short Video here…

The YouTube version can be found here:

https://youtu.be/NYeiHLNtluk

The differences in the relative importance of sex to women as opposed to men

Men and women are different.

Men have testosterone flowing through their veins and women have progesterone flowing through their veins. Both hormones greatly affect our social interactions with others, as well as our drive to succeed, make friends, form businesses, and establish long-lasting relationships.

Both levels fluctuate over the life-time. And thus both males and females experience different phases of life.

Testosterone levels for men and women during a life-span.

For Women… the progesterone levels fluctuate on a cycle. This reflects the ability to have children. As the levels fluctuate, moods, emotions, and physical appearances all change. I am sure that all MM readers realize this.

Now, you notice that after a period of time, this cycling stops. And thus we have this graph…

And my point is this…

Both women and men change biologically through their lives. For women, they tend to cycle faster on a more or less monthly basis, while men are fairly constant. Then at around 35 years old everything changes.

And the reason why I bring this up is that physical cosmetic changes in transgender surgery might help a person’s ego and self-esteem, but it will not change their biology. No matter what amount of dosages of hormones that they take.

When a 50 year old man goes into transgender surgery to become a woman, the only changes will be external appearance, and perhaps personal ego. It will not change their internal biology. For the rest of their lives they will be tethered to external hormonal treatments just to maintain their state of mind. The moment that you decide to go transgender, you become addicted to big-pharma, and at the mercy of what ever they demand of you.

If you stop, intentionally or unintentionally (such as a societal collapse, war, or inaccessibly of hormonal treatments) your biological regression could become a living Hell for you.

Do you think that I am being mean or cruel to point this out?

If people want to do something, I say do it! But, please do so with balance. If you are proud to be a transgender person, then tell your story. Firstly for those who need hope, but also for those that don’t understand. However, don’t paint a 100% rosy picture either.

Life is about tradeoffs. You all need to discuss those tradeoffs realistically and openly.

If you are in your late 40’s and wish to be a transgender woman then you must realize that the lifestyle that you are moving towards will have consequences.

American military transgender people speaking out about their decisions.

Some Chinese food

I eat a lot of food in China that you simply cannot get anywhere else. All those “Chinese” restaurants only sell pre-packaged “Chinese fast food” that has been Americanized, or Westernized to some extent. Here’s some short videos. Please check them out…

XianXi Potato, Beef and noodle soup.

Potato, Beef and noodle soup.

XianXi Pepper-Beef.

So very good. When you cook the hot peppers they mellow out and are not so spicy. Yum!

XianXi Eggplant with string beans.

Always a delicious pleasure.

XianXi breaded chicken tenders.

This is the “real deal”. Not the pale processed meat patty things that you get in fast food restaurants.

XianXi chicken tenders.

The ONE problem that I have with these delicious foods is the glossiness. All that gloss and shine is caused by heavy quantities of MSG. Ugh!

Facing a Harsh Future With the Wisdom of the Past

Ah. It’s a very American-centrist article. Very myopic. However the conclusion is critical. Americans MUST take a good hard look at what America is TODAY, and work on a NEW WAY to govern, deal with a great diverse citizenry, and function properly.

But before we get to the article, lets note what was said about the former Soviet Union. One observer described this as follows.

As the state and economy collapsed, their money worthless, their jobs evaporating, with crime, disorder, and corruption rampant, life expectancy plummeted in post-Soviet Russia. The longstanding Russian curse, alcoholism, became an endemic phenomenon in Russian life. Abortions substantially exceeded births, suicides soared, and the state apparatus and law enforcement collapsed along with the unkept utopian promises of a failed system.

Well…

Can’t you describe the United States this way today?

As the state and economy collapsed, their money worthless, their jobs evaporating, with crime, disorder, and corruption rampant, life expectancy plummeted in the United States. 

Alcoholism, and drug abuse (both legal and illegal) became an endemic phenomenon in American life. 

Abortions substantially exceeded births, suicides soared, and the state apparatus and law enforcement collapsed along with the unkept utopian promises of a failed system.

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By tradition Americans are an optimistic people. As the saying goes, we are imbued with an “indomitable spirit” in times of hardship at home and major crises abroad.  These qualities contribute to our sense of national unity.  We view ourselves as a country defined by, but not imprisoned in, the past. We eagerly await future opportunities that will make our lives better and more fulfilled.  We don’t fear what is to come — we welcome challenges of all sorts.

Throughout our history, we have bonded together when necessary to overcome barriers to our development as a nation.  We have tamed an entire continent and fought wars abroad in support of freedom. We have survived economic failures, massive political unrest, and other threats to our sovereignty.

However, in light of recent events and civil disruptions, the cohesiveness of times past — “our indomitable spirit” — is no longer as firmly embedded in our national consciousness as before.  Other countries are challenging our scientific dominance in many areas.

Our role as a leading world power is being questioned if not discredited.

China and Russia are expanding their influence throughout the globe with impunity. Obsessed with domestic unrest, the COVID pandemic, and immigration, we have not yet fashioned a coherent policy to deal with their aggressive strategies.

In spite of this shift in priorities, we tend to fall back on old ways of viewing our national goals and international commitments. Rapidly shifting conditions have created the need for a reevaluation of our relationship with allies and adversaries.

Once again, we have reverted to what I call the basic fallacies in the way we negotiate issues of national and international importance.  Our optimism and pioneer spirit, as mentioned above, have a decided effect on the following observations:

The first fallacy is minimizing the impact of radical change: believing that successful measures should stay the same.

Our nation was founded on the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Many political scientists and judges are classified as “constructionists”: they believe that these two documents are “sacred” in nature and cannot be changed as written; others, on the other hand, are “organic life” specialists who conceive of these same documents as broad-stroked guides to political governance.

As a result, they should be interpreted according to the exigencies or dynamics of the times.  Conservatives, in this debate, wish to preserve the integrity of past legislation and its precedents; liberals seek a flexible, malleable Constitution that can be interpreted as conditions warrant.

Conservative and liberal scholars both admit that adjusting to societal needs is the purpose of Constitutional amendments (27 overall to date); however, from a conservative perspective, why should legislators modify its basic framework at the same time?

We cannot project current trends with any accuracy into the future. For more than 234 years our republic has been well served by the wisdom of the founding fathers.

Resistance to change is normal but the refusal to change or alter our strategies can be very costly in the political arena. In general, cautious flexibility in judgment should always prevail to avoid the fallacy of expecting similar results over time.

The second fallacy is that good-hearted people, guided by compassion, will always determine political outcomes.

Laws, as well as wars, are rarely decided by well-intentioned government agencies.  War is ended through defeat or surrender, in most instances without conditions.

Compassion has nothing to do with how the enemy is treated during the occupation of their land.  Expediency and collaboration serve as principles of conduct for most Western powers.  Countries in the Far East have long ruled their conquests by sheer force, terror, and indoctrination.

Western laws are legislated with mutual interests in mind, not compassion.

They are the end product of hard-nosed compromises in republican governments.  Under dictatorial rule, laws are enacted by representatives who are subject only to the will of a tyrant. As Louis XIV of France famously said” “L”Etat c’est moi!” (“I am the State”)

The third fallacy is that democratic or republican government will always be preferred to autocracies that suppress individualism and freedom.

The United States has tried repeatedly to impose democratic rule on countries they have conquered.  Without a foreign military presence and forcible adoption of republican-like governments, these nations would most likely have reverted to an autocratic form of leadership that meets the needs and expectations of native or tribal leaders (e.g. Afghanistan and Iraq).  Autocracy–if administered with a full understanding of the people and culture–can be very effective: to wit, the despotism of Saddam Hussein in Iraq that held warring tribes together (the Sunni vs. Shia).

Countries in the Middle East have been governed by monarchies, emirates, and dictatorships for many years.  Democracy and its emphasis on individual rights are for the most part incompatible with these cultures.

Lacking the oversight of American military forces, Afghanistan will quickly return to tribal governance; extremists (i.e., the Taliban) will enforce Islamic laws that are detrimental to women and young girls. More than twenty years of warfare have forced us to admit that the Islamic world has hierarchical gender customs that are unacceptable to Western sensibilities.

The fourth fallacy is that, in times of crisis, America will always protect the rights of the individual as dictated by law.

LOL. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

This fallacy is a product of Western thinking and political expectations.  In the Far East, with the exception of South Korea and Japan (“conquered” nations with an active American military presence decades after the end of hostilities), in times of crisis the individual will always be sacrificed to the welfare of the group or nation.

In the United States, there would be a hue and cry of protest if individual rights were not protected, even during the worst of times.

Dictatorial or autocratic governments see little benefit in making an entire nation suffer to improve the life of an individual or a small group of citizens.  This attitude reflects the culture’s view on human life and its relative value to society as a whole.

The fallacy of assuming that all cultures will accept our interpretation of human rights is the basis for multiple conflicts abroad, especially in the Middle East and China.

The subcontinent of India, with its rapidly increasing population, seems to be the exception to autocratic or monarchical Far Eastern regimes.  Its republican government comes from the Raj or British colonial rule.  Within a relatively short period of time, demographers project that India’s population will surpass that of China, thus making it the most populous country in the world.  With multiple ethnic groups, religions, and languages, one wonders just how long India’s national unity will endure under the stress of these social and sectarian divisions.

In spite of many attempts to do so, we cannot impose our political style of governance on conquered nations (“nation-building”).

The American concept of local or state sovereignty, allied with the federal government on issues of national importance, is unknown in many nations around the globe.

Our system of government is successful because most citizens accept its efficacy.

Once that cooperative spirit and support are disparaged, our belief in the necessity of collective action will eventually disappear.  If this should occur, our democracy, in its current form, could not survive.

Given the widespread diversity that now characterizes the American population, how can we preserve the willingness to accept electoral results?  When voting procedures are litigated and broadly challenged, the seeds of discord are planted.

The outcomes of future elections will be viewed with suspicion.

Voter acceptance will be weakened and outcomes subjected to excessive scrutiny.  We are quickly moving toward a more tribalistic form of governance as identity politics and interest groups take priority over concerns of national stability. The progressive movement to rewrite history in favor of “disadvantaged” minorities will undermine our sense of national unity.  The wokeism of modern politics will have disastrous consequences in the years to come.

Our recent celebration of the Fourth of July (2021) with fireworks and the traditional appeals to unity rang a little hollow.

Many liberal extremists now view the American flag as a symbol of white domination, not national unity. Radicalized athletes “take a knee” in protest against racial injustices of the past. In a few decades, if this anti-American trend continues in our schools and social media, what will the cohesive theme of the Independence Day celebrations be?  Will we continue to show the same enthusiasm about our country and its uniqueness?

This divisive mood was evident in the singing of the “Black national anthem” together with the “The Star Spangled Banner.”

If Blacks can impose their will on authorities at this event that celebrates national unity, we should expect Hispanic or Vietnamese music at next year’s festivities to emphasize their growing national influence.  An hour-long special on the evils and repercussions of slavery would also be appropriate. This would encourage Whites to reflect on their “privilege” and need for atonement, not on the common traits that join our diverse ethnic groups into a functioning whole.

Do not expect, however, an in-depth documentary on the “root causes” of Black-on-Black crime in the bloodbath of Chicago’s ghettos.  Blacks who shoot other Blacks are considered collateral damage (if not commonplace) and not worthy of media attention since they do not conform to the “progressive narrative.”  Blacks are important only if they are perceived as victims of white neglect or violence.  More than anything, a White police officer who shoots an “unarmed” Black merits national media coverage of a prolonged nature.

A statue of George Floyd (“I can’t breathe”) — a five-time convicted felon, counterfeiter,  drug dealer and addict — is emblematic of this racial disparity.  In a sense, his monument places a minor-league Black criminal on an equal footing with the statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Washington D. C. which is a focal point for racial justice and peaceful compromise.

In summary, we tend to reason in ways that reflect our personal experiences and biases .  The fallacies we have discussed pertain to national habits and attitudes which offer reassurance that most problems, no matter how difficult, can be solved by good-will diplomacy and relentless hard work.  In a word, it is the “American way.”

In another context, this fallacious approach to domestic issues will  have a negative impact on our national security and future solidarity.  The questions that we should address in discussing our current political crises are many.  The following are only a few examples among the most critical:

The Left’s recent promotion of “systemic White racism” as an intrinsic quality of being White; race is deemed a form of social destiny if not a “disease” that must be eradicated.  The celebration of  Project 1619, now being taught in many schools and Juneteenth (the arrival in America of the first shipment of slaves and its adoption as a national holiday); the introduction of “critical race theory” into the classroom (our country was founded on slavery and the continuous oppression of Blacks up to the present day; history must reflect this reality as an innate and permanent evil of white leadership.); social progressivism and its narrative: the Marxist ambition to remake America into a socialist state. To wit, laws enacted by white legislators have no relevance in the wokist community and are consequently illegitimate in their eyes.  Rioting in the name of woke political causes is effective and morally justified, no matter what the results may be.  As the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin once stated, to make an omelet you must first break some eggs. Unrestricted immigration is not so much a demographic issue for Americans but a means of achieving the long-term dominance of the Democratic Party.

We must also remember that to remain silent in the face of this dystopian turmoil is a sign of assent.  The Biden-Harris regime is using the full power of the federal government to enforce its agenda.  The COVID pandemic and its variants will be the stalking horse for the implementation of draconian measures related to gun control, “white supremacists” and their insurrection, climate issues, and the radical socialization of American politics.  President Biden is now touting “human infrastructure” in his efforts to promote child care and parental subsidies that have nothing to do with the rebuilding of bridges and roadways. COVID vaccinations will become mandatory in spite of legitimate objections to their application on a national scale. Ideology is promoting vast changes in the way we relate to others.

The America First of the Trump era is becoming a radicalized new country in its political aspirations toward equity and inclusion of minorities in all facets of government, regardless of true merit.

If we remain as we are now — diverse, quasi-socialist, egalitarian, and democratic — we have no reason to expect that this trajectory will change.

That means, that for the first time, we must reconsider our assumptions about what America is, and look instead to what it must be in order to survive our bad decisions as a democracy up to the present date.

And one of the reasons why you won’t find anything positive about China in the USA media or literary sections…

Sad, but true. I guess that a 98% satisfaction rate with their Chinese government isn’t good enough.

And in the WTF department…

Can someone please explain…

Messed up.

China’s August exports defy reality and surprise many

When 150 million wealthy Chinese tourists travel and spend domestically:
.
150 million people = 33 times the size of New York City
The western sanctions and aggressiveness against Chinese businesses (The “Hybrid war on China”) resulted in a reciprocal response from China. This response allowed Chinese businesses to take back their native markets from the barbarian big brands….
.
… all working together as one.
Along with the completion of many infrastructure projects. Both domestically and internationally via the BRI (the belts and roads strategy). The Chinese economy is now completely independent from the Western “crusader” markets.
.
The outcome is:
.
China’s exports grew by 25.6 % in August compared with a year earlier, up from 19.3 per cent growth in July
China’s imports grew by 33.1 % last month, year on year, up from 28.1 per cent growth in the previous month

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3147815/chinas-august-trade-surprises-imports-and-exports-defy

Welcome to the new world order without the (Anchorage, Alaska April 2021) style bullying by the Western nations.

The situation in the USA is madness

Well it is. You simply cannot deny it. Video HERE.

What is the true situation in Russia today?

From “Amorphous Anonymous” .

We talk a lot about the Soviet Union, but how does this relate to modern Russia?  I don’t know the answer, consider this as a question.  (Socialism I suppose?)

A) The transformation of the city of Ivanovo and seven others.

Video blogger, Студия Позитивчик, named “Studio Positive”, has made 8 before/after videos comparing the last 9 years of development within 8 Russian cities. The video links are on his home page:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqQfIypDWVn2-IjkFWJojBQ

  • Naberezhnye Chelny,  400 km east Moscow
  • Ivanovo,  254 km NE Moscow
  • Sochi,  NE coast of Black Sea
  • Gelendzhik, NE coast Black Sea 150 km up from Sochi
  • Veliky Novgorad,  125 km south of St Petersburg on road to Moscow (about 450 km from Moscow)
  • Ryazan,  200 km SE Moscow
  • Saratov,  On the Volga, about 850 km SE Moscow
  • Tyumen,  East of Ural mountains, about 8-900 km east Moscow
  • Naberezhnye Chelny, in Tatarstan, about 600 km east of Moscow

What do you see when you scan through these video records?  Well, you see modern Russian architecture, which is very interesting just for that.  Eight cities are developing, growing, being renewed.  I ask “How is this being done”?  You can identify several different kinds of projects.

  • Renewed streets and landscaped parks and waterfronts.  This is all local government financed obviously.
  • Commercial activity, strip malls, restaurants, shopping malls.  I am thinking this is all private investment, it must be capitalism, for the wide variety of it.
  • Some large residential complexes?  I don’t know, is there social ownership in living spaces?  Or is it capitalism again?
  • Many old residential complexes (ragged looking in the 2011 before photos), are renewed with white walls and brightly colored balconies and the accent of architectural touches.  Would a private owner put money into building aesthetics?  Would they get any more rent out of it?  Has it changed hands and the new owner is upgrading?  Maybe it is old communal residences with community financing doing the work?
  • Also there are some stadiums and other large structures.  What is the ownership status of these complexes and who are the investors?

These are questions that I don’t have the answers to.  Who are the city planners, and how much do they have a say about city development?

B) An understanding of Russia’s Future

We try to get a better understanding of Russia’s future by going to some websites that are purported to have expertise on Russia, and run by Russian speakers.  These are like the Saker, Dmitry Orlov, Andrei Martyanov, Charles Bausman, John Helmer, Vsevolod Pulya, Patrick Armstrong, Alexander Mercouris, Marko Marjanović,   I think that there are others that I have left out.

What do they say?

Lots are concerned with geo-politics and military science.  Then we are led to believe that

"Putin’s successes are anchored in a powerful energy sector, along with a vigorous science-technical and arms sector, which are also under direct state control". 

Russia must be doing pretty good, right?  Or are we getting a correct picture from these new “Hypersonic missiles”, gas pipelines, super weapons, and atomic Ice-breakers?

Plus now lately, we are told that Russia will build 5 new cities from scratch in Siberia, and the order is signed and the money is available.  (Let them start with one.)

Will this happen?  Is this a full and correct picture of modern day Russia?  The 8 videos above show developmental progress in some important cities.  If this is the general picture it should show up in all phases of Russian technical, scientific, educational, and commercial activity.

But lets’ try to take an honest look with a 2017 survey of Russia’s achievements.

B.1) Russia is number 12.

In a listing of published scientific articles by country, Russia is number 12, with only 10% by numbers, of the articles published in the USA.  I won’t discuss the quality of the articles, which some do. the 2021 figures are here:

https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php

You can also divide the papers up by what Russia is good at, like mathematics and astronomy, but still the standing is very poor.

B.2) Russian foreign studies

Russia has a very poor standing in studies of foreign countries. For example China has at least an order of magnitude more people studying about Russia than Russia has studying in the universities about China. That being said, it is the global norm. The amount of American studies of other nations is practically zero.

Russian salaries in 2012,

  • $500/month for a Research Fellow,
  • $900/month for a senior researcher at the Institute of the Far East RAS.
  • $1,000/month for an Assistant Professor,
  • $1,500/month for a full Professor at Moscow State University’s (MSU) Institute of Asian and African Country Studies. (2012)

The $ exchange rate has more than doubled since then, so do scholars survive on those same old ruble rates, or have they gotten a raise?  (Admittedly their expenses are in rubles, not in dollars.)  But if it was too low they may leave the country.

B.3) Salaries for R&D

Salaries for R&D are some of the lowest in the top 50 countries.  I could put up a chart, but Russia is at the bottom.

B.4) Technical equipment is gutted and sold off

R&D equipment is missing, in 2017 Russia had 3 supercomputers, China had 202, US 143. Russia is 18th in the list.

B.5) DNA

It is hard to come up with the number of Russian “high throughput DNA sequencers” for biotechnology research.  But I think it is minuscule compared to the rest of the world.  Some (older) sources said only 8, but let’s give it 25. 2013-14.  Back then there were 250 in China and over 900 in the USA.  Europe is loaded too.

B.6) Patent Applications

Russia is 6th in patent application in 2017, 30,000 compared to 1 million in China, 300,000 in US and 250,000 in Japan.

B.7) Venture Capital

In 2016 Venture Capital funding in Russia was 300,000 Euros, about the level of (less than) Ireland, or Finland, and more than in Italy.  All of Europe $14 billion, US $72 billion, China $49 billion, India $8 billion.  Russia is 6% of China, Russia 4% of US.

B.8) Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence startups in 2017, Europe 409, US more than 1000, Russia only 12. Equal to Sweden, Finland or Switzerland each with 10% of Russia’s population.

B.9) Industrial Robots

Russia had an operational stock of around 1,771 multipurpose industrial robots as of 2012. America 200,000, China 100,000, Japan 300,000, ROC Korea 138,000, Germany 162,000. Poland 4,500.

The absurdly low levels of robotization in industry raise serious questions about Russia’s political economy and its economic future.   Low wages preclude automation, and low automation preclude greater productivity and higher wages?

B.10) Tooling and machining

2014-2015 Russia is 17th in machine tool companies, 485 companies producing machine tools in Russia (Canada just ahead, Thailand just behind).

  • China 22,000 companies,
  • Japan 13,000,
  • German 12,000.
  • Italy 5000,
  • Korea ROC 4,600,
  • USA 4,500.

The problems holding Russia back are severe, and possibly intractable.  There are strong financial and ultimately institutional barriers to unlocking Russia’s scientific potential.

(Russia does consume around 2.7% of the world’s machine tools – it is, after all, the world’s eighth (or so) manufacturing power.)

A solid start would be to look at these statistics and acknowledge that a very big problem exists, which if unresolved, will continue to degrade Russia’s economic, industrial, and eventually military competitiveness.  Where is the money and where is the resolve to tackle these problems?  That is what I am asking, to anybody that might know.

Who are the true friends of Russia?  Those that sound this alarm, or he who says “don’t say things that our western sworn enemies are always saying”?  To me the answer is obvious.

Of course I have sources for all of this data.  It comes from Karlin on Unz.  He’s got all the charts and 5000 words of commentary. 2017. You can check them yourself.  https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russias-technological-backwardness/  If there is a newer study, of course I would love to see it.

You don’t hear much about Russia these days, and thus Americans and most of Europe are kept intentionally ignorant about both China and Russia. As I see it, the rest of the world is growing and sorting itself out the tangled monstrosity that the United States has become. And unless the USA starts taking time to improve its piss-poor domestic state, it will be doomed to become a modern day Portugal.

Media Trust

Trust in U.S. media is at a record low:

The United States ranks last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries, a report released Wednesday found. That’s worse than Poland, worse than the Philippines, worse than Peru. (Finland leads at 65%.)

One reason is that U.S. media are either not reporting important events, are misreporting them, or are very late in covering twisted plots that even a lowly blogger can get right just as they happen.

It’s 4:30 PM in China. A very mellow time.

It is a mellow time. It’s peaceful and calm. China (outside of the big cities) has a much slower pace of life, and lifestyle than what the hyper West has. And it is refreshing as “get out”. Check out the video below.

Note that even though China is very safe and isolates any virus outbreaks immediately, everyone still wears masks, and is a heightened level of security and safety.

Also note that all my life, walking and enjoying life at 4:30p, was denied to me. I was usually at my desk or in a meeting in a sterile workplace technical corporate environment. Being outside that bullshit is refreshing to me. Video.

4:30pm mellowness.

Actually this is a big issue, and I need to devote a few articles to this subject. Do you all “get” what I am trying to say in this matter?

A great article from UNZ…

A Military Solution to a Commercial Problem

It Probably Ain’t Gonna Work Much Longer

I’ve seen this look before

This expression is one that I have seen time and time again. A foreigner visits China for the very first time, and he /she has been her for maybe a week… and this is the expression that they get on their faces. It’s precious.

Watch the short video here.

Shanghai, China.

Conclusion

This is the start of a series of short thoughts and articles that I just want to clump into a new category of article. What do you guys think? Do you think it’s fine, or would you like me to continue to write long in-depth articles on singular topics? Any preferences?

Do you want more?

You can find more such articles in my “Rambling Thoughts” Index which is currently in my massive Happiness Index…

Life & Happiness

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

Why the Earth is no longer a Prison Planet, and why it is a Sentience Sorting Nursery operation instead

This article discusses why the Earth (and a number of other solar systems in our region of physical space) is known as a “prison planet” and why it is now morphing into what I refer to as a “Sentience Nursery”. It’s a rather detailed, and strange look (I guess) at the world we all share in light of the events of MAJestic and the “Alien Interview” disclosure.

Now, let it be well understood that throughout my entire time in MAJestic, I was told that the earth was a “sentience nursery” for the evolution and sorting of the consciousnesses here. But when I encountered the disclosure “Alien Interview”, which I am wholly and positively convinced that it is authentic, they referred to the earth (and nearby solar systems) as “Prison Planets”.

This did NOT change the fact that the earth and it’s environs are “Sentience nurseries”, instead, if provided a background that helped me (personally) flush out the events leading up to what is going on today.

Alien Interview – 1947

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. It was released in 2007. There is a lot of good stuff there, and now I am convinced that everything is in agreement with what was presented to me in MAJestic.

A quick reminder

In graphic form. A picture tells more than two encyclopedias.

Key events of The Domain occupation plotted against Humankind technical advancement.

Here’s the pertinent section…

The Domain enters the Milky Way galaxy

She told me that The Domain Expeditionary Force first entered into the Milky Way galaxy very recently — only about 10,000 years ago.

The Domain conquers the Old Empire

Their first action was to conquer the home planets of the “Old Empire” (this is not the official name, but a nick-name given to the conquered civilization by The Domain Forces) that served as the seat of central government for this galaxy, and other adjoining regions of space. These planets are located in the star systems in the tail of the Big Dipper constellation. She did not mention which stars, exactly.

The Domain installs bases inside the Milkyway Galaxy

About 1,500 years later The Domain began the installation bases for their own forces along  the path of invasion which leads toward the center of this galaxy and beyond.

The Domain sets up a base on Earth

About 8,200 years ago The Domain forces set up a base on Earth in the Himalaya Mountains near the border of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was a base for a battalion of The Domain Expeditionary Force, which included about 3,000 members.

They set up a base under or inside the top of a mountain. The mountain top was drilled into and made hollow to create an area large enough to house the ships and personnel of that force.

An electronic illusion of the mountain top was then created to hide the base by projecting a false image from inside the mountain against a “force screen”. The ships could then enter and exit through the force screen, yet remain unseen by homo sapiens.

The Old Empire attacks the Domain base on Earth

Shortly after they settled there the base was surprised by an attack from a remnant of the military forces of the “Old Empire”.

Unbeknownst to The Domain, a hidden, underground base on Mars, operated by the “Old Empire”, had existed for a very long time. The Domain base was wiped out by a military attack from the Mars base and the IS-BEs of The Domain Expeditionary Force were captured.

You can imagine that The Domain was very upset about losing such a large force of officers and crew, so they sent other crews to Earth to look for them. Those crews were also attacked.

The unusual handling of the capture Domain forces

The captured IS-BEs from The Domain Forces were handled in the same fashion as all other IS-BEs who have been sent to Earth. They were each given amnesia, had their memories replaced with false pictures and hypnotic commands and sent to Earth to inhabit biological bodies. They are still a part of the human population today.

After a very persistent and extensive investigation into the loss of their crews, The Domain discovered that “Old Empire” has been operating a very extensive, and very carefully hidden, base of operations in this part of the galaxy for millions of years.

No one knows exactly how long.

Final destruction of the Old Empire in this region

Eventually, the space craft of the “Old Empire” forces and The Domain engaged each other in open combat in the space of the solar system. According to Airl, there was a running battle between the “Old Empire” forces and The Domain until about 1235 AD, when The Domain forces finally destroyed the last of the space craft of the “Old Empire” force in this area. The Domain Expeditionary Force lost many of its own ships in this area during that time also.

A hidden Old Empire base in our area

About 1,000 years later the “Old Empire” base was discovered by accident in the spring of 1914 AD.

The discovery was made when the body of the Archduke of Austria was “taken over” by an officer of The Domain Expeditionary Force. This officer, who was stationed in the asteroid belt, was sent to Earth on a routine mission to gather reconnaissance.

A “electric fence” surrounds this area

Eventually The Domain discovered that a wide area of space is monitored by an “electronic force field” which controls all of the IS-BEs in this end of the galaxy, including Earth.

The electronic force screen is designed to detect IS-BEs and prevent them from leaving the area.

Snare, capture and make compliant

If any IS-BE attempts to penetrate the force screen, it “captures” them in a kind of “electronic net”.

The result is that the captured IS-BE is subjected to a very severe “brainwashing” treatment which erases the memory of the IS-BE.

This process uses a tremendous electrical shock, just like Earth psychiatrists use “electric shock therapy” to erase the memory and personality of a “patient” and to make them more “cooperative”.

On Earth this “therapy” uses only a few hundred volts of electricity. However, the electrical voltage used by the “Old Empire” operation against IS-BEs is on the order of magnitude of billions of volts! This tremendous shock completely wipes out all the memory of the IS-BE. The memory erasure is not just for one life or one body. It wipes out all of the accumulated experiences of a nearly infinite past, as well as the identity of the IS-BE!

The shock is intended to make it impossible for the IS-BE to remember who they are, where they came from, their knowledge or skills, their memory of the past, and ability to function as a spiritual entity.

They are overwhelmed into becoming a mindless, robotic non-entity.

Reprogramming and return back to prison

After the shock a series of post hypnotic suggestions are used to install false memories, and a false time orientation in each IS-BE.

This includes [1] the command to “return” to the base after the body dies, so that the same kind of shock and hypnosis can be done again, and again, again — forever.

The hypnotic command also tells [2] the “patient” to forget to remember.

The Old Empire was using Earth as a Prison Planet

What The Domain learned from the experience of this officer (in the body of the Archduke of Austria) is that the “Old Empire” has been using Earth as a “prison planet” for a very long time — exactly how long is unknown — perhaps millions of years.

So, when the body of the IS-BE dies they depart from the body.

They are detected by the “force screen”, they are captured and “ordered” by hypnotic command to “return to the light”.

The idea of “heaven” and the “afterlife” are part of the hypnotic suggestion — a part of the treachery that makes the whole mechanism work.

After the IS-BE has been shocked and hypnotized to erase the memory of the life just lived, the IS-BE is immediately “commanded”, hypnotically, to “report” back to Earth, as though they were on a secret mission, to inhabit a new body.

Each IS-BE is told that they have a special purpose for being on Earth. But, of course there is no purpose for being in a prison — at least not for the prisoner.

Who are the inmates in prison?

Any undesirable IS-BEs who are sentenced to Earth were classified as “untouchable” by the “Old Empire”.

The worst of the worst were sent to the Earth Prison Planet.

This included anyone that the “Old Empire” judged to be criminals who are too vicious to be reformed or subdued, as well as other criminals such as sexual perverts, or beings unwilling to do any productive work.

An “untouchable” classification of IS-BEs also includes a wide variety of “political prisoners”.

This includes IS-BEs who are considered to be non-compliant “free thinkers” or “revolutionaries” who make trouble for the governments of the various planets of the “Old Empire”.

Of course, anyone with a previous military record against the “Old Empire” is also shipped off to Earth.

A list of “untouchables” include artists, painters, singers, musicians, writers, actors, and performers of every kind. For this reason Earth has more artists per capita than any other planet in the “Old Empire”. “Untouchables” also include intellectuals, inventors and geniuses in almost every field.

Since everything the “Old Empire” considers valuable has long since been invented or created over the last few trillion years, they have no further use for such beings. This includes skilled managers also, which are not needed in a society of obedient, robotic citizens. Anyone who is not willing or able to submit to mindless economic, political and religious servitude as a tax-paying worker in the class system of the “Old Empire” are “untouchable” and sentenced to receive memory wipe-out and permanent imprisonment on Earth. The net result is that an IS-BE is unable to escape because they can’t remember who they are, where they came from, where they are.

They have been hypnotized to think they are someone, something, sometime, and somewhere other than where they really are.

The Domain Officer unravels this entire scheme

The Domain officer who was “assassinated” while in the body of Archduke of Austria was, likewise, captured by the “Old Empire” force.

Because this particular officer was a high powered IS-BE, compared to most, he was taken away to a secret “Old Empire” base under the surface of the planet Mars. They put him into a special electronic prison cell and held him there.

Fortunately, this Domain officer was able to escape from the underground base after 27 years in captivity.

When he escaped from the “Old Empire” base, he returned immediately to his own base in the asteroid belt. His commanding officer ordered that a battle cruiser be dispatched to the coordinates of the base provided by this officer and to destroy that base completely. This “Old Empire” base was located a few hundred miles north of the equator on Mars in the Cydonia region.

The “fence” and snare and return continued to function in 1947

Although the military base of the “Old Empire” was destroyed, unfortunately, much of the vast machinery of [1] the IS-BE force screens, [2] the electroshock / amnesia / hypnosis machinery continues to function in other undiscovered locations right up to the present moment.

The main base or control center for this “mind control prison” operation has never been found.

So, the influences of this base, or bases, are still in effect.

Earth has become a “dumping ground” of misfits

The Domain has observed that since the “Old Empire” space forces were destroyed there is no one left to actively prevent other planetary systems from bringing their own “untouchable” IS-BEs to Earth from all over this galaxy, and from other galaxies nearby.

Therefore, Earth has become a universal dumping ground for this entire region of space.

This, in part, explains the very unusual mix of races, cultures, languages, moral codes, religious and political influences among the IS-BE population on Earth.

The number and variety of heterogeneous societies on Earth are extremely unusual on a normal planet. Most “Sun Type 12, Class 7” planets are inhabited by
only one humanoid body type or race, if any.

In addition, most of the ancient civilizations of Earth, and many of the events of Earth have been heavily influenced by the hidden, hypnotic operation of the “Old Empire” base.

So far, no one has figured out exactly where and how this operation is run, or by whom because it is so heavily protected by screens and traps.

Furthermore, there has been no operation undertaken to seek out, discover and destroy the vast and ancient network of electronics machinery that create the ISBE force screens at this end of the galaxy. Until this has been done, we are not able to prevent or interrupt the electric shock operation, hypnosis and remote thought control of the “Old Empireprison planet. Of course all of the crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force now remain aware of this phenomena at all times while operating in this solar system space so as to prevent detection and the capture by “Old Empire” traps.”

MAJestic – 1947

The “Majestic12″ committee, was organized by President Harry Truman shortly after the Roswell incident in 1947.  And this created the SAP known as the MAJestic organization.

MM and the MAJestic Narrative

I joined MAJestic as a Naval Aviator / (Astrophysicist & Aerospace Engineer) in May 1981. After thirty years of active participation in the organization, I was retired in May 2006. My “active retirement” lasted five years and ended in 2011. I am now a discarded MAJestic operator.

EBP insertion and non-physical training began in 1981. My training, and calibration of the ELF probes happened a number of years after that. All exposure that I have to knowledge, understanding and skills comes from the entanglement of our benefactors.

My primary and functional duty was “anchoring” of consciousnesses in this region to prevent catastrophic events from occurring. (Whatever those catastrophic events were, I haven’t a clue.) This meant world-line travel and consciousness  manipulation were my primary tools.

I was involved in…

  • Manipulation of consciousness
  • World-line travel
  • Anchoring of clustered world-line behaviors.

As strange as this might appear and sound, if you look at what the events and operational projects entailed, you can clearly see that they were involved in the control and manipulation of world-line alterations as a function of consciousness mass-manipulation.

Not protecting the earth from those pesky Reptilians as part of the great marine space fleet. LOL! I had to throw this bunch of popular fiction in, don't you know!

If you consider that each consciousness was “retarded” in access to their memories, then…

… my actions were all in alignment with rehabilitative services within  a restorative clinic or hospital environment.

So, obviously Earth is a “sentience nursery”. Just as what has been described to me all these years within MAJestic.

So, please most kindly take notes. Today the earth is not considered to be a “Prison Planet”. It is considered and treated as a rehabilitation complex. And all those “abductions” and “probing” and “procedures” are good things designed to alter your prison (non-physical) bodies into a (operation gown) bodies for rehabilitation purposes.

But what happened? What changed?

Think people.

If you manage to destroy a sizable number of the systems and facilities (the walls and the guard towers) of a prison, what are you going to do with all the inmates? Are you going to release them “Ghostbusters” style all at once (like what happened in the Ghostbusters movie)?

All the spirits were released in Ghostbusters all at once.

No.

There are all kinds of people in the Earth Prison Planet Environment.

Some are really innocent. Some just got caught up and imprisoned here. Others were political prisoners who were sent here. Some are terribly creative individuals who were sent here, and some are truly evil, and selfish creatures.

So how you do sort them all out?

And you do need to sort them all out. If you don’t you would end up polluting the entire galaxy with hordes of very evil and dangerous entities.

You sort them.

You sort them by sentience.

The criteria

So if you are going to sort consciousness by sentience, you need to filter out what you keep, what you allow to leave, and what you keep an eye on as they are almost ready to leave, just not totally there yet.

As far as I understand, the sentience of human beings fall into the following categories…

  • Service to self (being selfish and greedy).
  • Service to another (a follower, a believer, a NPC).
  • Service to others (a member of a group of people putting them first).
  • Disjointed, confused, or emotionally, mentally sick.

Service to Self sentience sub-types

As best as I can tell, the subcategories of a Service to Self person are…

  • Psychopath
  • Sociopath
  • Selfish
  • Greedy
  • Narcissistic

They get to stay in the “Sentience Nursery” / “Prison Planet” environment simply because they are too dangerous to unleash on the rest of the universe.

Service to Another sentience sub-types

These consciousnesses are not ready to leave yet, but they are on the way and almost ready to go. I would guess that their progression in sentience would depend on many things, most importantly is their position in any of the subcategories of this type of sentience.

And the subcategories of a Service to other person are…

1. Sycophants

These are very close (if not the same as) a Service to Self sentience.

Also known as a toady, a sycophant follower knows nothing but an advantage. All that is in his mind is nothing but a strategic plan to keep on holding on or following till he gets what he really wants or keep on maintaining the advantage he wants.

More often than not the sycophant follower seems to be self-seeking and behaves like a parasite: gives nothing, yet takes.

2. Critics

Critics are also close to being Service to Self sentience entities.

They are annoying, they are also motivating. The critic followers will always post, comment or say unfavorable opinions concerning a person or an organization or a political party at all times. For others it may be a very annoying process yet for some it is a learning point and adjusting method for future reference.

3. Realists

These are sentience’s that are caught up in the material world. They are not necessarily bad, but they still have much to learn. They need a few more cycles of “reincarnation” to straighten out their sentience.

Here are the philosophers. The realist followers are so aware of reality and they have to let you accept it. The realist followers are always on the side of the truth, the naked truth. They will always accept the physical and most evident of circumstances and issues and they will always let the world know, and to the person or thing or group, they might be following.

4. Loyalists

These are close to Service to Others sentience, but not all the way there. They, for the most part, are but one reincarnation away from a Service to Others sentience.

They are the best kind of followers, the loyalist followers. They are as loyal as dogs can be. You will likely never be disappointed by a loyal follower for they are as true and as honest. No mischief in them or cunning activities. They are loyal almost to a fault.

5. Traitors

These are Service to self individualists in disguise.

Traitors are another bunch of followers that are the complete opposite of the loyal followers. These are the Judases that will betray Jesus from time to time.

Traitor followers will stick by you; follow up with you as long as the weather seems as conducive to continue being with you, not forever but till that time when the first drop of rain falls and the going gets tough, then they will betray you.

6. Spectators

These are Service to self individualists in disguise.

The spectator followers are always on the sideline and surely enough are careful enough not to cross it and only do so when the excitement gets too much. The spectator followers are never in the game but will make sure that you get your support.

They will give you all deserving praises and belief then let you walk into the battlefield all alone.

7. Opportunists

These are Service to self individualists in disguise.

They have not much of a difference from the sycophant followers or traitor followers. The opportunist follower will have no other reason for starting following other than for an advantage at some point.

He or she does not have upmost loyalty. They are like a soaring eagle in the sky keenly eyeing and falling indistinctively with an end goal to capture an unaware fish or mouse.

8. Sheep

These sentience’s are on the path, but they need a few more cycles of reincarnation to sort out the sentience better.

The common myths and facts suggest that sheep are the dumbest of all animals following without question or doubt, keenly observant to only beck at its master’s call and commands. And so is the sheep follower.

They follow with no question, they seem so loyal, and they might be. More often than not, the sheep followers would rather follow other than making an informed and independent decision.

Many associate those that blindly follow government rules or elected officials without any questions as sheep.

9. “Yes” People

They need a few more reincarnations to straighten out their sentience direction. They are actually “sitting on the fence” in the over all scheme of sentience selection.

The ‘yes’ followers simply want to avoid confrontation and pleasing people is their number one priority. The ‘yes’ people follower will always find themselves in uncalled for situations since they do not take their time to think through the yes responses that they give.

They are a often resentful types of people which makes them end up having following what they do not even believe in.

10. Alienated

They are almost at a Service to Self sentience.

The alienated type of follower will always strive to make you feel indifferent and rather hostile. They really know how to pick their words and actions to fit well with their aim and purpose.

11. Survivor

These kind of sentience’s are closer to the Service to Other’s sentience, but need some time to sort things out a little better.

Survivor followers are the most prevailing as they stick by you through hard moments and also stick by you through the good times. The survivor followers have a strong belief in you.

12. Effective

They are almost at a Service to Self sentience. Almost “one foot in the door”.

Here are the kinds of followers that just really know which decisions to make in the order for you reach your intended goal. The effective followers not only follow you but also have a really good impact on your success.

13. The Isolate(d)

A person who is strongly leaning to a Service to Self sentience.

The isolate(d) follower needs no cushioning. He or she acts on their own and most seemingly enjoys the following solo. He does not like crowds. The isolate follower is a lone wolf.

14. The Bystander

This person is solidly in the Service to another realm, and needs a few cycles to sort things out.

The bystander follower seems like the spectator follower. He too does not necessarily take part in the course of action. In his following, he becomes the keen observant from a distance.

15. The Participant

This person is almost a Service to others sentience, and might end up being one entirely within this lifetime.

Here is the jack of all spades. The participant follower is active and vibrant. He is very present and would even go the extra mile for you. He is also the type to bring fun along.

16. The Activist

Almost a full Service to Others sentience in this life.

The activist follower is not just the average follower. He is the one that always follows and cares to bring about change and in most cases, the popular good is his aim.

17. The Diehard

Almost a full Service to Others sentience in this life.

The diehard follower is very instinctive. Like a viper, he is ready to strike and will go down even to the bottomless pit for you. If there is one who can die for you then it is the diehard follower. Fans of the Lord of the Rings franchise would quickly identify Sam Gamgee as the diehard follower of Frodo.

Who gets to leave and who needs to stay?

As I understand it, the ability to leave the “Sentience Nursery” is a function of what your consciousness is.

A service to others sentience gets to leave. At least that is how I understand it today. Obviously when the Old Empire controlled this area, no one ever got to leave it. But things are quite different now.

A service to self sentience gets to stay. They get to relive their time in the earth habitat over and over, and over, and over until they start to feel compassion towards others and their sentience changes.

A service to another sentience stays but is monitored. They are not yet fully developed enough to leave, but not really ready to be released. You can consider this sentience to be on various states of parole.

Disjointed, confused, or non-settled sentience’s stays. Until they straighten out one way or the other, they must stay in this realm under supervision.

Summary and conclusion

The earth realm, both physical and non-physical, is a Sentience Nursery. it was initially set up as a Prison, but that has changed since the Domain started working with MAJestic. The ability to leave this environment depends on your true nature, and this is determined by your sentience.

If you watch Rufus videos and in your heart, you think that they are suckers, idiots, or fools; then you are probably a Service to Self sentience.

If you watch Rufus videos and in your heart, you feel emotion, joy and wish to be a helpful person, then you are a Service to Others sentience.

If you watch a few Rufus videos but are quickly bored and find no interest in them, then you are a Service to Another sentience.

If you watch Rufus videos and wonder about them, are curious about them, but cannot relate to the Rufus in the video, nor the people needing help, you are a disjointed sentience.

Are you ready to take the test?

Watch the video below. Measure your feelings and thoughts after viewing it, and use it to see what sentience that you are “leaning towards”. Sentience is not something that you can hide. It is a resonance point that is affiliated with your consciousness.

There are no right or wrong answers. It’s a method to determine where you are at in regards to sentience and whether or now you need to reincarnate over and over again on the earth, or if you are worthy to be “altered” to permit “escape velocity” from this region.

The sentience test.

Grading

If you think that She is brave and the embodiment of what a person should be, then you are a Service to Others Sentience.

If you think that she is stupid for not trying to steal the guys wallet, then you are most certainly a Service to Self Sentience.

If you think that she should have stood by and called the police, as she is too old, and the accident is too serious, then you are a Service to Another Sentience.

If you don’t think anything other than this is a “stupid” and silly movie, and a waste of your time, then you are a Disjointed Sentience.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
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The mystery of the missing “Black Operations” submarines off the Chinese Taiwan coasts

Here’s another post that you simply will not find anywhere else on the Internet. And, you know, I tire of my own sluggishness in trying to understand the great failure of the American “free media”. Even I realize that there is no such thing as actual “news” in the West, but really guys it’s not too FUCKING DIFFICULT. You look for what is not being reported and stay alert for distractions.

What’s the biggest distraction this August 2021?

Why it is the fucked up, terribly botched evacuation of American military out of Kabul, Afghanistan. That’s ONE FUCK of a distraction.

Ok, then, let’s scour the “news” for oddities and pieces that might point to a major event that the United States government might want to hide, or distract others from looking into.

And, whoa…

But first a major comment from Singapore.

Turn up your speaker and listen to these wise words. And if you don’t understand them, play them over and over (on repeat) until it sinks into your fucking skull. Deprogram your mind God damn it. Click on the picture and watch the video until you tire of the simple, simple message.

A missing special operations submarine in the South China Sea

There have been substantive black operations in and around Taiwan since 2019. In all, the Untied States Navy has been doing all sorts of things in the area along the coasts of China and Taiwan. And after the April 2021 Anchorage, Alaska “meeting”, China laid down the line. They established “Red Lines” that WILL result in military conflict if they are ignored.

Of course, the brain dead people (are they actually people?) in Washington DC dismiss these threats as simple “posturing” and rhetoric.

There is every evidence to suggest that the United States has been conducting illegal and sensitive black operations inside of Chinese and Taiwan territories, and that China took aggressive military action against them. Or in other words, sank the submarines and set the hundreds of sailors and SEALs to their deaths in steel coffins in the deep dark seas.

American Submarines break cover

The U.S. Navy rarely publicizes even the routine operations of its own submarines. Stealth, both tactical and operational, is the Silent Service’s greatest strength, after all. But the Americans made a series of exceptions in June as new Chinese and Russian subs surfaced.

The Navy posted photos of the Washington-based USS Seawolf sailing alongside the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson off Hawaii on June 22, 2021 the same time a Russian naval task force was exercising near the island.

The 353-foot-long, nuclear-powered Seawolf is the lead vessel in a three-ship class that also includes USS Jimmy Carter, the U.S. fleet’s secretive special-mission submarine. Jimmy Carter also made a rare appearance when an airline-passenger photographed the boat sailing from San Diego towards Hawaii on June 8, 2021.

Seawolf and her sister USS Connecticut are bigger and faster than the newer Virginia-class attack boats are and, in many ways, represent the future of undersea warfare more than the Virginias do.

The Navy optimized the Virginias for land-attack missions with Tomahawk cruise missiles, at the expense of their anti-submarine capabilities. But with the Chinese and Russian sub fleets steadily growing more powerful—the new Type 039 and Belgorod are exhibits A and B—the Americans want their next attack boat to be fast and heavily-armed with greater numbers of torpedoes and mines.

In other words, more like a Seawolf. Not coincidentally, the Navy also released a photo of sailors in Crete loading Mark 67 mines on the Los Angeles-class attack sub USS Montpelier on June 22.

Amid a wider collapse in U.S. long-range naval planning, the administration of U.S. president Joe Biden remains committed to spending as much as half of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget—around $20 billion annually—on attack submarines, including the next-generation SSN(X).

“The recent uptick in submarine images released by the U.S. Navy is quite noticeable,” tweeted Chris Cavas, host of the CavasShips Podcast. “Remembering that submarine have pride-of-place in Department of the Navy budget calculations.”

So, we know that the US Navy is all over the South China Sea

But it is more than that.

We notice and are paying attending to what they are actually doing. Their movements are all recorded in great detail. With the most obvious being the surface ships, and the aircraft. Not so well known are the movements of the “Black Operations” submarines.

All 2021 has been stories about major Naval Operations in the South Pacific Sea.

The “excuse” has always been to protect the freedom of navigation in those waters off the Chinese coast. But that excuse is just that.

A fucking excuse.

Any person with half a brain cell and who knows what a globe looks like can easily see that the USN is up to no good. But Americans have been dumbed down so terribly that they are lucky to be able to hold a spoon, let alone calculate how to count to ten.

Think people!

Think!

And we know that ALL of the “Special Operations” submarines are in operation all around Taiwan

How do we know?

It’s by deduction. Duh!

We know that the submarines work work in covert operations and carry SEAL teams. While they perform such tasks as tapping into fiber optic undersea cables and the like, they are all equipped with landing bays that carry “miniature troop insertion submarines” designed to carry SEAL teams close to the coastlines for insertion into “enemy territory”.

And they are all rotating in and around Hawaii. Are they planning to invade Bora Bora? Performing secretive missions around Tahiti? Going to lay secret operations in Pago Pago?

Nope. It’s all China.

Special Operations submarines showing the landing bays for the SEAL secretive assault troops.

The four converted ballistic missile submarines are so much more than Tomahawk slingers and transports for Navy SEALs.

Today, the U.S. Navy’s quartet of converted Ohio class nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines, or SSGNs, are among America’s most powerful, in-demand, and flexible weapons. These giant and secretive submarines are known for their ability to carry up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles and dozens of special operations frogmen into contested territory to ply their quiet trade, but really, they are much, much more than that.

A decade and a half ago, the U.S. Navy was testing incredible new capabilities that it would subsequently integrate into its four yet to be converted SSGNs, including one highly elaborate, but obscure proof of concept exercise that solidified the SSGN concept for the seagoing service. Here is the story of how these vessels came to be and the highly unique, if not exotic capabilities, from drone mothership to command and control center, they possess.

The Genesis of the Ohio SSGN

The decision to covert Ohio class SSBNs into SSGNs originated with the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review, which determined that only 14 of the 18 Ohio class boats were necessary to meet the United States’ nuclear deterrence needs. Eight years later, the Navy began actually converting the four oldest Ohio class submarines – USS Florida, USS Georgia, USS Michigan, and USS Ohio – into the new configuration.

The Navy had considered a number of potential configuration options for the new SSGNs. The concept that the service finally settled on retained 22 of the 24 missile tubes found on Ohio SSBNs, but modified them so that they were unable to fire Trident D5 nuclear-tipped submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Instead, each one would be able to launch up to seven BGM-109 Tomahawks using a Multiple All-Up-Round Canister (MAC) adapter. The SLBM fire control systems were similarly replaced with ones for the Tomahawk.

Tubes one and two on each of the four SSGNs would be completely replaced with lockout chambers so combat divers and Navy SEALs could enter and exit the submarine underwater. Personnel could also install a Dry Deck Shelter (DDS) to the top of the hull linked to either one of these modified tubes, or both if required, which could accommodate swimmer delivery vehicle (SDV) mini-submarines. As the name suggests, the DDS provides a fully enclosed, dry space to work in on the submarine’s deck, even while it is underwater.

The abortive Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) was supposed to have been able to directly dock with either one of these lockout chambers, as well. The Navy canceled the ASDS program in 2009 after cost overruns and other major setbacks, including a fire that had destroyed the original prototype the year before.

With a DDS installed, a number of additional tubes on the SSGNs would also be blocked off, so the Navy decided to make tubes three through 10 reconfigurable into storage space, if necessary. A dedicated berthing area for a typical contingent of 66 special operators, with a surge capacity of up 102 personnel, was added in the reconfigured missile compartment, as well.

More recent reporting has indicated that a typical load for these submarines is around 100 Tomahawks. This most likely represents between 14 and 16 fully loaded tubes, which would equate to between 98 and 112 missiles in total. This would leave between six and eight tubes available for storage or other purposes, something we will come back to later on in the story.

Beyond that, the SSGN configuration had an all-new a dedicated special operations mission control center and associated mission planning spaces.

It also included additional and improved sensor and communications antenna masts on the sail.

Other modifications that would allow these submarines to better operate in shallower waters closer to shore, were also likely involved with the conversion.

An intelligence nerve center

It’s hard to overstate how significant the intelligence fusion capabilities demonstrated during Silent Hammer were. For the experiment, Georgia had an embarked joint service command team onboard, who used modified spaces in the submarine to run a forward operations center that controlled other assets under the waves, riding on the surface, in the air, and on land. This was intended to reflect the capabilities that the submarine would have after going through the SSGN conversion, which would create new, more robust mission spaces for command and control elements and intelligence gathering personnel, among others.

This was the first time the Navy had ever done this as part of the development of the SSGN concept of operations and it put the operational commanders right in the thick of things in a whole new way. Unlike traditional surface command ships, such as the USS Blue Ridge, the Georgia was allowing these officers and their staff to direct forward operations while sailing concealed below the surface of the ocean. The submarine’s command center was linked to rear command centers, and their intelligence networks, via satellite. It also had direct data-link feeds from a number of other sources.

In the air, these included the Pelican, a highly modified, pilot-optional Cessna 337 propeller-driven aircraft, and a specially configured Sabreliner twin-engine business jet. The Pelican belonged to the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Interdisciplinary Remotely-Piloted Aircraft Studies (CIRPAS) and was configured at the time in a way that matched the capabilities of the MQ-1 Predator drone.

The Lincoln Lab also had their heavily modified Boeing 707 airliner, nicknamed Hannah, a well-known cutting-edge communications and sensor testbed, in the air playing the role of a airborne radar with synthetic aperture and ground-moving-target indicator capabilities. This effectively made it, in part, a surrogate for a U.S. Air Force E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) battlefield management command and control aircraft.

Navy EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare planes and EP-3E Aries II intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft also took part in Trident Warrior and fed information into this network of information sources.

Down below, Georgia was networked together with other vessels taking part in Trident Warrior, including two Los Angeles class fast attack submarines, the USS La Jolla and USS Pittsburgh. In addition, members of the Silent Hammer experiment team were on board the first in class amphibious assault ship USS Tarawa and the Wasp class USS Bonhomme Richard, which were also taking part in the larger exercise.

Ashore, U.S. Navy SEALs, along with other unspecified attached special operators, likely including U.S. Air Force Joint Tactical Air Controllers (JTAC), were in direct contact with Georgia. They emplaced their own “unattended” sensors to monitor for potential hostile activity and otherwise fed even more data back to the submarine.

We also know that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) supplied unspecified payloads, as well as sensor systems for the exercise. Georgia itself demonstrated how she might launch unmanned aircraft and an unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) during the exercise to support intelligence collection efforts.

The very same intelligence collection aircraft are operating in the airspace around Taiwan RIGHT NOW

Imagine that!

Just a coincidence, don’t you know!

More than 700 patrols were conducted by US vessels and aircraft in the South China Sea region in the past year, according to a report by the National Institute for South China Sea Studies (NISCSS). As the US never ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), its claims of protecting "freedom of navigation" is rather hollow. 

-ChinaPlus

Of course, you will never read about this in CNN, FOX “news”, Hall Turner, or Forbes. Those just provide bullshit for a dumbed down citizenry. Real secrets are secret.

But all over Chinese media are reports of these intelligence gathering aircraft, with videos of their interactions.

Reported that Davidson, by video link, to the U.S. think tank American enterprise research institute (AEI) talks. He declared that the Indo-Pacific region is one of the most critical regions in the world and will face many challenges between now and 2026.

Davidson spent much of his time describing the Pentagon's Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which he said was one of the priorities of the Department's annual budget. 

The U.S. Army India-Pacific Command has reported to Congress that it will increase the program's budget from $2.2 billion in fiscal year 2021 to $4.6 billion in fiscal year 2022 and plans to spend $27.3 billion over the next five years, the report said.

-美印太司令部宣称“助台增强防御力、持续对台军售”,网友讽刺:台湾保护费要涨了!

But there is something very interesting going on…

These aircraft are not “loitering” as part of operations so much as flying “search and rescue” scans in the deep ocean South of the Taiwan Coast.

What are they looking for?

What is going on? Check out the video.

Searching for something.

This is not a “loitering” SEAL support protocol. It’s all over the place in a limited geographical region.

Not deploying sonar buoys.

Doing something else.

Other curious events…

The timing of all these unusual intelligent gathering aircraft in “searching and recovery” flight paths occurred at the SAME TIME as the US Navy, broke all diplomatic protocol to land on Taiwan and deliver a “package” containing a “message” to the Military Representative in Taiwan.

Yes. It must have been one fuck of an important package to risk getting shot down and starting world war III in the process.

Much of the anti-China stuff is just noise…

The actual war is stealthy.

What you read is just hype.

Matt Drudge, ever the neocon (or whatever neocon interns he has running his site for him these days), is perhaps the biggest offender on this type of fake news. Right now if you go to his site, just the main page (drudgereport.com) you'll see *HUGE* red emblazoned text about "Marines in China!" and a giant picture of what looks like some sort of seafaring battalion of US troooooops getting ready to storm some shore or the other. He's worse than CNN, WaPo, WSJ or the NYT (of course he often links to those sources).

Interestingly, on actual left-leaning sites, there's nothing to be seen on the non-topic, but instead moooooore stories about Trump (they just can't stop themselves), the abortion bills and COVID related stuff.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Oct 7 2021 21:41 utc | 32

Another day, same hype…

But what about proof?

Well, we all know that America is the most transparent and least secretive nation on the planet. It’s got that thing called “freedom”, and there is nothing more important than a “free press”. Right? So if they don’t report anything, that simply means that nothing is going on. Right?

Yada. Yada. Yada.

American view of themselves.

The United States is laying the foundations for a war.

That’s what is going on.

China realizes this and is getting mightily pissed. I can tell you that secret operations that go “tits up” are never recognized as an event. it is just hidden and compromised with other excuses.

When a submarine goes off the grid, the hundreds of sailors are quietly written off, and records state that they died in accidents.

The submarine itself is quietly “retired”, and nothing further is spoken of it.

Maybe one of these days the SEAL “Special Operations” submarines will sail into port without incidence.

You know like the broken and busted up Seawolf submarine that limped into Hawaii for “repairs” and urgent medical treatment for it’s crew when it had an incident in the South China Sea during “Mission 7”.

Ah, but what do I know…

And then we have this on 13SEP21

Conclusion

America will continue to wage a secretive war against China hidden away from public scrutiny up until nuclear weapons are detonated. Then we all won’t know what is going on, but we will know that America will be a radioactive wasteland no matter what happens in the rest of the world.

I told you all that the war would not be televised.

And it isn’t.

There are numerous missing submarines in the United States Navy. Not just the ones listed here, but attack submarines, and maybe even a “boomer”. All nuclear. And they are “sitting ducks” in the shallow South China Sea.

There’s a secret, silent war of stealth going on. If it goes visually kinetic, then it risks destroying the American economy “house of cards”. So this “war” must be hidden, quiet and done in stealth.

Most submarines are either sunk or “heavily damaged”. Those that are not sunk sail home “heavily damaged”. So far, we haven’t seem too many sail home damaged. But we will.

I would STRONGLY suggest you all watch the movie “Threads” to see the frightening similarities between this 1980’s movie and what is going on right now.

Oh…

And the mainstream press finally decides to report something….

8OCT21

U.S. Nuke Attack Submarine Suffers Underwater Collision…

Several sailors injured…

South China Sea mystery…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Subliminal Seduction; subconscious programming using subsonic sounds and radiation

Hum… Have you noticed that Americans are so very serious when compared to others from the rest of the world?

Well, I’ve been monitoring the Afghanistan situation in the “news”. It looks pretty calm and collected. Mostly it’s people going about their business, shops open, trade going on, food markets selling produce and the like. Apparently the new government has retained all the public servants and are not making any radical changes, instead trying to establish a solid and decent enough government.

Afghanistan.

But, Christ All-mighty! If you read what the “news” out of America and the UK has to say, it’s all screeching bat-shit crazy hysterics!

My Lordy!

Someone needs to give these folks some Quaaludes and get them strapped to a gurney and carted off to the rubber-padded room.

It seems and appears to me that most of the people in both the USA and the UK are way-way-way too “high strung”.

What’s going on?

Why are they so “out there” and “in orbit”?

Well, that’s what this article is all about.

Most Americans really need to calm down.

Don’t freak out folks. But this article is going to take you into uncomfortable spaces.

Lately a number of MM participants have commented that they seem to “feel” electrified or odd in regards to being inside the United States. (Let’s call this Observation “A”.) It is like there is a very uncomfortable “wave going through everyone” simultaneously with this feeling of impending doom.

Meanwhile, there’s observation “B”, where others have commented that maybe the debacle in Afghanistan was not a sign of collapse, but was actually an intentional event concocted by those that control the United States for Geo-political and domestic advantage. Bo Chen offered a compelling argument for this, and I will post it later on.

I cannot say one way of other other related to observations “A” and “B” above. However, I will like to release this article that (again) I am being “lightly” pestered to write and release.

“Lightly” pestered.

Not hysterically pestered like the Deagel article from last week. The mere fact that I am suddenly getting “pestered” tells me that “something is afoot“.

So let’s try to consider Observation A and B in light of this article.

Again. Take what you read in an easy relaxed format. Don't get too caught up in the information. I'm going to talk about something very uncomfortable for most people to grasp. Ok?

The use of electronic mechanisms to broadcast thoughts, influence actions, alter the operation of the human body, or interact with it remotely is mature technology.It’s well known, well used, with decades of experience and operation.

Just because it is not common knowledge, or dismissed as “tin foil hat” fringe conspiracy science is meaningless. Those that control nations and societies have been using this technology for decades.

The United States is (almost) wholly controlled using these kinds of technologies. Not only on the mass scale for the intentional herding of American society, but for the control of specific people, and the obtainment of specific social-economic and Geo-political objectives.

The MetallicMan Experience

I can personally vouch that multiple personalities came out from MM during my “retirement” within the secure ADC Pine Bluff facility.

I can tell you that I was unaware that I had these personalities, abilities, skills or behaviors. I lived with them, and they laid dormant for much of my career within MAJestic.

I can also tell you that when my brain was unlocked, they had to absolutely make sure that I was in a very secure “padded room” when I “un-wound”.

For those of you who haven't read my MAJestic Index, there are multiple instances in my narrative that included...

[1] Physical cranial implants of three specific types (EBP, ELF1, ELF2), 
[2] a shut-down sequence of the ELF implants, 
[3] activation of memories, skills and personalities that I was unaware of, and 
[4] behavior variations that can only be associated by radiative induction.

The technologies that was used on me personally were developed and were quite mature in 1981.

For me, personally, the technologies were developed in the sub-project 119 of Project MKUltra.

There are a myriad of technologies that can do this, and there are all sorts of tangential sciences and operations regarding them.

This article will just cover a few that I personally consider to be “main-stream” in continuous daily operation by those with the ability and the interest in using them.

Behavioral Control Background

American interest in the hypnosis – EMR [electromagnetic radiation] interaction was still strong as of 1974, when a research plan was filed to develop useful techniques in human volunteers.

The experimenter, J.F. Schapitz, stated:

“In this investigation it will be shown that the spoken word of the hypnotist may also be conveyed by modulated electromagnetic energy directly into the subconscious parts of the human brain.

That is, without employing any technical devices for receiving or transcoding the messages.

And without the person exposed to such influence having a chance to control the information input consciously”. 

Although our modern electronic age has been in existence only since the turn of this century, individuals have claimed that their minds were being remotely influenced and controlled by machines for at least two centuries.

Recorded way back in 1810 is the case of James Tilly Matthews, a London tea broker.

He claimed his mind was being controlled by a gang operating a machine he called an “Air Loom” which sent out invisible, magnetic rays from a London cellar.

Matthews believed machines like the Air Loom were also controlling the minds of members of the British Parliament.

He wrote letters to the MPs warning them about the machines and the conspiracy behind it.

This kind of information, was not taken seriously at all. Instead,it was treated as delusional. And Matthews was committed to Bethlem Hospital as being insane.

It might be easy to dismiss Matthews’ claims of a machine that can control one’s mind because of the early date. However, his is by no means an isolated case.

In 1994 Ronald K. Siegel, a Associate Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Bio-behavioral Sciences at UCLA, wrote “Whispers: The Voices of Paranoia.”

Whispers

Whispers is a collection of case histories of mind control, (or ‘paranoia’ as he calls it) that he studied and compiled.

One case concerned a man named Tolman.

He believed his mind was being controlled by computers via a satellite system named POSSE (Personal Orbiting Satellite for Surveillance and Enforcement).

Interestingly, author Dorothy Burdick, in her 1982 book Such Things Are Known described what she claimed was her mind control harassment by computers via satellites.

She names Siegel as being the inventor of a device named FOCUS (Flexible Optical Control Unit Simulator) which can project hallucinations directly onto the retina so the subjects can’t distinguish the images from reality.

In Siegel’s book Tolman claims images are being directly transmitted into his brain.

Siegel says,

“You mean to tell me that here are machines capable of sending visual images directly into the brain?”

In 1968 Siegel published a professional paper titled “A Device for Chronically Controlled Visual Input”. This paper was a very detailed description of a device he developed to project images directly into the brain. He developed the techniques and system on experimental animals via their optic nerves.

He suggests further experimentation be

“conducted on neonates (kittens) which have their total visual stimulation controlled from the time they open their eyes.”

Thirty years later a team of US scientists wired a computer to a cat’s brain and created videos of what the cat was seeing.

One of the scientists working on the project, Garret Stanley of Harvard University, predicted machines with brain interfaces. We can only imagine how far such technology has advanced in the secret research laboratories of the US government and the military/industrial complex.

Today there is a wealth of documentation confirming how government agencies and research centers have been developing these technologies and methods.

These technologies involve elements of psychology, hypnosis, political conspiracies, and even devices that emit “rays” to control the behavior of others without their knowledge or consent.

Project MKUltra

Project MKUltra is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, some of which were illegal.
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Experiments on humans were intended to develop procedures and identify drugs such as LSD to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.
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The project was organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. Other code names for drug-related experiments were Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke.
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MKULTRA, as well as projects BLUEBIRD, ARTI-CHOKE, CHATTER, CASTI-GATE, MKDELTA, MKNAOMI, THIRD CHANCE, MKSEARCH, MKOFTEN, etc., were covert CIA projects involving many prominent members and institutions of the medical and scientific communities to investigate and experiment with various forms of behavior modification and control using, in many cases, unwitting human subjects.

In was in operation from the late 1940’s until the early 1970’s, they delved into everything from drugs to hypnosis to electronics.

Then, when Congress began to investigate the activity, the head of the program (illegally) destroyed all records. He gathered up every single record, and burned all of them. He did this in direct defiance of the law. Obviously, there were some very damning things in those records that the public should never be exposed to.

And the few that remain are just minor evidence of the full extent of a very invasive program conducted without Congressional oversight against the American people.

Sigh.

Trying to bring up this subject in any forums would get your canned, scoffed at or perma-banned. It’s “tin foil hat” conspiracy shit. Don’t you know…

…And then, one day, a bunch of boxes of Project MKUltra documents were discovered…

  • REORGANIZATION OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

    Our recent discovery of seven boxes of documents related to Project MKULTRA, a closely held CIA project ... conducted from 1953-1964. 
    
    As you may recall, MKULTRA was an "umbrella project" under which certain ... 
    
    MKULTRA prepared by the Inspector General's- office in. 1963. Asa result of that report's ...

New Vistas

In 1996, the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board published a 14-volume study of future developments in weapons called “New World Vistas.”

Tucked away on page 89 of an ancillary 15th volume are some hair-raising insights into the future ‘coupling’ of man and machine in a section dealing with ‘Biological Process Control’. The author refers to an ‘explosion’ of knowledge in the field of neuroscience, adding, ominously:

One can envision the development of electromagnetic energy sources, the output of which can be pulsed, shaped, and focused, that can couple with the human body in a fashion that will allow one to prevent voluntary muscular movements, control emotions (and thus actions), produce sleep, transmit suggestions, interfere with both short-term and long-term memory, produce an experience set, and delete an experience set.

Translating the words ‘experience set’ from military jargon into plain English, this means, simply, that they envisage the ability to erase your life’s memories and substitute a new, fictitious set.

Imagine that.

Oh, what fun.

By projecting such developments into the future, the authors of “New Vistas” are camouflaging present day capabilities.

The Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflict Short of War

A similar futuristic scenario with many references to mind manipulation is described in “The Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflict Short of War (US Army War College, 1994)”.

Authors Steven Metz and James Kievit declare:

“Behavior modification is a key component of peace enforcement” 

and 

“The advantage of [using] directed energy systems is deniability.” 

The authors ask: 

“Against whom is such deniability aimed?” The direct answer is “the American people”.

Set in the year 2010, Metz and Kievit write of “perception molding” and “advanced psycho-technologies” to avoid irksome public protest, but that is just the beginning.

The major obstacle, they believe, is that “traditional American ethics [are] a major hindrance.”

My goodness!

And thus they continue to point out that

“old-fashioned notions of personal privacy and national sovereignty [are to be] changed.”

The future presented by Metz and Kievit sounds like a mixture of George Orwell’s 1984 and the movie “The Matrix”.

Individuals unwilling to go along with the revolutionary changes are…

 “identified using comprehensive inter-agency integrated databases.”

They will then be “categorized.”

And “sophisticated computerized personality simulations” will be used “to develop, tailor and focus psychological campaigns for each.”

Jeeze Louise!

Other techniques to be used in association with these new mind weapons include ‘morphing’, a present-day ability that controls the distortion of TV images.

So, if you are lucky enough not to have your brain electronically scrambled or erased, the electronic news media will be manipulated especially for you!

And such, it will be presenting convincing near-real-life visual images through your combined TV set-cum-internet interface. Woo! Woo!

Silent Sounds

The Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (SSSS) technology, also known as “S-quad”, was developed by Dr. Oliver Lowery of Georgia, USA, and is described in US Patent #5,159,703 as “Silent Subliminal Presentation System.”

The abstract for the patent reads:

A silent communications system in which nonaural carriers, in the very low or very high audio-frequency range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum are amplitude-or frequency-modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain, typically through the use of loudspeakers, earphones, or piezoelectric transducers. 

The modulated carriers may be transmitted directly in real time or may be conveniently recorded and stored on mechanical, magnetic or optical media for delayed or repeated transmission to the listener.

According to literature by Silent Sounds, Inc., it is now possible, using supercomputers, to analyze human emotional EEG patterns and replicate them.

Then store these“emotion signature clusters” on another computer.

Thus, afterwards, one can, at will,

“silently induce and change the emotional state in a human being.”

Judy Wall, writing in Nexus (October-November 1990, says

“Silent Sounds, Inc. states that it is interested only in positive emotions, but the military is not so limited. That this is a US Department of Defense project is obvious.”

Edward Tilton, President of Silent Sounds Inc., says this about S-quad in a letter dated 13 December, 1996:

All schematics, however,have been classified by the US Government and we are not allowed to reveal the exact details… 

We make tapes and CDs for the German Government, even the former Soviet Union countries! All with the permission of the US State Department, of course… 

The system was used throughout Operation Desert Storm (Iraq) quite successfully.

By using these computer-enhanced EEGs, scientists can identify and isolate the brain’s low-amplitude “emotion signature clusters”, synthesize them and store them on another computer.

In other words, by studying the subtle characteristic brainwave patterns that occur when a subject experiences a particular emotion, scientists have been able to identify the concomitant brainwave pattern and can now duplicate it.

“These clusters are then placed on the Silent Sound carrier frequencies and will silently trigger the occurrence of the same basic emotion in another human being!”

So, let’s suppose that you are holding your beloved pet and stoking them. You feel relaxed and content. Well, your brain could be imaged and a “snap shot” of your feelings can be recorded. This is known as an “emotion signature cluster”. And the United States have an entire library of these that they can identify, and impose on others.

Some examples…

  • Blind uncontrollable rage and anger.
  • Hunger.
  • Soothing comfort and calmness.
  • Love.
  • Attraction and interest.
  • Organism / ejaculation.
  • Infatuation with another.
  • OCD behaviors.
  • Stomach pain / bowel movements.
  • Being terribly horny and desiring of sex.
  • Missing something or someone.
  • Headache.
  • Loss and grief.

This technology was used on me during my MAJestic operations, and I can tell you that they were able to use it on me because my entire “emotion signature cluster” for me personally was imaged and recorded at NAMI at NAS, NASC Pensacola, Florida in 1981.

This technology could also be applied to the public at large, but I do not believe that to be the case. It wouldn’t be that effective for large groups of people.

Unless things have changed (and they actually could, don’t you know) there are better technologies to induce corralling of herds of humans via electromagnetic means.

This “Silent Sounds” technology is most useful for specifically targeted persons.

Now, there does seem to be elements of human crowd control taking place all over the United States. Instead of the Silent-Sounds technology, there are other, better suited candidates for these kinds of indiscriminate herding activities…

Synthetic Telepathy

Synthetic telepathy is a term used to describe the beaming of words, thoughts, or ideas into a person’s mind.

This is done by a type of electromagnetic transmitter, similar to a radio or television broadcast, operating in the microwave frequency band.

In recent years thousands of people have come forward claiming to be victims of this technology.  However, the first officially reported scientific experiment documenting a case of synthetic telepathy cannot be found in any of the academic literature because of the highly secretive nature of the research.

In 1961 Allen Frey, a freelance biophysicist and engineering psychologist, reported that a human can hear microwaves.

However, this discovery was dismissed by most United States scientists as being the result of artifact (outside noise). The more technical description of the experiment is described by James C. Linn.

It turns out that Frey discovered that human subjects exposed to 1310 MHz and 2982 MHz microwaves at average power densities of 0.4 to 2 mW/cm2 perceived auditory sensations described as buzzing or knocking sounds (also described as clicks or chirps).

The peak power densities were on the order of 200 to 300 mW/cm2 and the pulse repetition frequencies varied from 200 to 400 Hz.

Frey referred to this auditory phenomenon as the RF (radio frequency) sound.

The sensation occurred instantaneously at average incident power densities well below that necessary for known biological damage and appeared to originate from within or near the back of the head.

Further testing revealed that two requirements were necessary for the subject to hear the microwave induced sound:

“...good bone conduction and the ability to hear acoustic energy above 5 kHz...”

By 1975 the introduction to a paper by A.W. Guy and others begins,

“One of the most widely observed and accepted biologic effects of low average power electromagnetic (EM) energy is the auditory sensation evoked in man when exposed to pulsed microwaves.”

Today, the US Government use of synthetic telepathy was described in the October-November 1994 issue of Nexus:

Directed-energy weapons currently being deployed include, for example, a micro-wave weapon manufactured by Lockheed-Sanders and used for a process known as ‘Voice Synthesis’ which is remote beaming of audio (i.e., voices or other audible signals) directly into the brain of any selected human target. This process is also known within the US Government as ‘Synthetic Telepathy’.

Microwave “Zapping”

Much of the work done with microwaves was developed by Project Pandora.

This project was put into place by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

It was initially set up to study the effects of microwaves that were being beamed into the American Embassy in Moscow by the Soviet Union.

Some of the findings of the scientists involved with Pandora are quite disturbing.

Dr. Joseph C. Sharp and engineer Mark Grove were able to hear and distinguish one-syllable words by pulse-modulated microwaves.

Microwaves can also alter the permeability of the body’s blood-brain barrier. This characteristic can synergistically increase the effects of drugs.

“Using relatively low-level RFR, it may be possible to sensitize large military groups to extremely dispersed amounts of biological or chemical agents to which the unirradiated population would be immune.”

Sound can be transmitted even easier through the use of implants.

As fans of Rush Limbaugh can attest to, cochlear implants, implants that send electrical signals into the fluid of the inner ear can effectively transmit sounds.

Additionally implants that transmit sound vibrations via bone conduction, such as the cases of dental fillings picking up audible radio signals.

Implanted Stimoceiver

The stimoceiver, invented by Dr. Jose Delgado, consists of wires running from strategic points in the brain to a radio receiver/transmitter located entirely under the skin.

Through this device, Delgado was able to stimulate raw emotions such as sexual arousal, anxiety, and aggression with the turn of a knob.

Of course, secret research by the US Government into microwaves and synthetic telepathy has moved on considerably since the 1980’s.

McVeigh: Manchurian Candidate?

Among the many telemetry instruments being used today, are miniature radio transmitters that can be swallowed, carried externally, or surgically implanted.... They permit the simultaneous study of behavior and physiological functioning.

—Dr. Stuart Mackay, Bio-Medical Telemetry (textbook), 1968

While visiting friends in Decker, Michigan, Timothy McVeigh complained that the Army had implanted him with a microchip. He said that it was a miniature subcutaneous transponder, so that they could keep track of him.

He complained that it left an unexplained scar on his buttocks and was painful to sit on.

Of course, we all know that McVeigh was convicted of the 1995 bombing of a US Government building in Oklahoma City.

Miniaturized telemetrics have been part of an ongoing project by the military and the various intelligence agencies to test the effectiveness of tracking soldiers on the battlefield.

The miniature implantable telemetric device was declassified long ago.

According to Dr. Carl Sanders, the developer of the Intelligence Manned Interface (IMI) biochip,

“We used this with military personnel in the Iraq War where they were actually tracked using this particular type of device.”

It is also interesting to note that the Calspan Advanced Technology Center in Buffalo, NY (Calspan ATC), where McVeigh worked, is engaged in microscopic electronic engineering of the kind applicable to telemetrics.

Calspan was founded in 1946 as Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory.

And funded in part by the “Fund for the Study of Human Ecology,” a CIA financing conduit for mind control experiments.

This operation was set up by emigre Nazi scientists and others under the direction of CIA doctors Sidney Gottlieb, Ewen Cameron, and Louis Jolyn West.

According to mind control researcher Alex Constantine,

“Calspan places much research emphasis on bioengineering and artificial intelligence (Calspan pioneered the field in the 1950s).”

Human tracking and monitoring technology are well within Calspan’s sphere of pursuits.

The company is instrumental in REDCAP, an Air Force electronic warfare system that winds through every Department of Defense facility in the country.

A Pentagon release explains that REDCAP…

“is used to evaluate the effectiveness of electronic-combat hardware, techniques, tactics and concepts.”

The system …

“includes closed-loop radar and datalinks at RF manned data fusion and weapons control posts.”

One computer news board reported that a disembodied, rumbling, low-frequency hum had been heard across the country the week of the [Oklahoma] bombing.

Similiar hums in Taos, New Mexico, Eugene and Medford, Oregon, Timmons, Ontario and Bristol, England were most definitely (despite specious official denials) attuned to the brain’s auditory pathways.

The Air Force is among Calspan’s leading clients, and Eglin AFB has farmed key personnel to the company.

The grating irony (recalling McVeigh’s contention he’d been implanted with a telemetry chip) is that the Instrumentation Technology Branch of Eglin Air Force Base is currently engaged in the tracking of mammals with subminiature telemetry devices.

According to an Air Force press release, the biotelemetry chip transmits on the upper S-band (2318 to 2398 MHz), with up to 120 digital channels.

There is nothing secret about the biotelemetry chip.

Ads for commercial versions of the device have appeared in national publications. Time magazine ran an ad for an implantable pet transponder in its 26 June, 1995 issue—ironically enough—opposite an article about a militia leader who was warning about the coming New World Order.

While monitoring animals has been an unclassified scientific pursuit for decades, the monitoring of humans has been a highly classified project that is but a subset of the Pentagon’s “nonlethal” arsenal.

As Constantine notes,

“the dystopian implications were explored by Defense News for 20 March, 1995:

Naval Research Lab Attempts To Meld Neurons And Chips: Studies May Produce Army of ‘Zombies.’

Future battles could be waged with genetically engineered organisms, such as rodents, whose minds are controlled by computer chips engineered with living brain cells….

The research, called Hippo-campal Neuron Patterning, grows live neurons on computer chips.

“This technology that alters neurons could potentially be used on people to create zombie armies,”

Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said.

“It’s conceivable given the current state of the electronic mind control art, a biocybernetic Oz over the black budget rainbow, that McVeigh had been drawn into an experimental project, that the device was the real McCoy.”

Timothy McVeigh may have unknowningly been an Army/CIA guinea pig involved in a classified telemetric/mind-control project—a “Manchurian Candidate.”

Or not.

Whatever, the technology does exist, and it is mature. Only a fool would think that it is not being used.

But I don’t think that it is being used on a large scale.

If you wanted to do this on a large scale you would to alter one’s DNA or mRNA for person-to-person Hippo-campal neural patterning. But, again, unless large segments of the population are being injected with small mind-control devices, this technique isn’t very useful to corral large numbers of people

Other systems must be employed…

Soviet Research

A highly secretive battle was being waged behind the scenes during the Cold War in the area of EM weapons (sometimes described as psychotronics) to control and influence the minds of people.

It’s only now that some of this research has emerged, but much of it remains hidden and classified. In fact, we know more about Soviet research into this area because it was the Soviet Union that collapsed.

A 1975 issue of the Soviet publication International Life, discussing electronic mind control developments, stated that atmospheric electricity can be used “to suppress the mental activity” of large groups of people.

The Soviet journal said that a sonic generator, tuned to an infrasound (below the hearing level) frequency, could create “feelings of depression, fear, panic, terror, and despair.”

In 1977, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) declassified a report describing how advances in Soviet psychotronic technology can create the ultimate big brother society.

The DIA stated that by using electronic mind control against populations to implant ideas and thoughts into the heads of unsuspecting victims:

“Sounds and possibly even words, which appear to be originating intracranially (within one’s own head), can be induced by signal modification at very low average power densities.”

The DIA report also said that the Soviets discovered that secret microwave radiation can be used to induce in unsuspecting victims:

“Headache, fatigue, perspiring, dizziness, menstrual disorders, irritability, agitation, tension, drowsiness, sleeplessness, depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, and the lack of concentration.”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union (in a maneuver identical to Operation Paperclip in World War II) Western intelligence agencies obtained all the Soviet research and recruited key personnel working in this sensitive area.

Russian research has now all but stopped due to economic crises.

A report in Defense Electronics in the early 1990s said that a Richmond, Virginia firm, Psychotechnologies (believed to be closely tied to the CIA and the FBI) purchased the American rights to Soviet mind control devices.

Defense Electronics described a spring, 1993 meeting between Clinton Administration officials and Soviet psychotronics experts, including Dr. Igor Smirnov.

Amongst the US agencies represented at the meetings with Smirnov were the FBI, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Advance Research Projects Research Agency.

Clinton Administration officials wanted…

“...to determine whether psycho-correction... programs could be undertaken by the US Government. These devices could be used to affect judgment or opinion of decision-makers, key personnel or populaces.”

Clinton defense officials expressed interest that the psychotronic devices could be used “in non-violently” clearing areas of potential enemies, snipers, etc.

On the domestic front, psychotronic devices could be used to suppress political dissidents, and any other potential threats to the government.

Also meeting with the Soviet experts were officials from giant international corporations, such as General Motors, and researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health.

The 22 August, 1994 Newsweek magazine reported on a secret Arlington, Virginia meeting between experts from the FBI’s Counter-Terrorism Centre and Dr. Smirnov, whose work was described in the publication:

...Using electroencephalographs, Smirnov measures brain waves, then uses computers to create a map of the subconscious and various human impulses, such as anger or the sex drive. 

Then through taped subliminal messages, he claims to physically alter the landscape with the power of suggestion.

Psychotronic Weapons Research

One man’s name has become synonymous with the field of non-lethal weapons development.

Col. John Alexander first became known to the public through his December, 1980 Military Review article titled, “The New Mental Battlefield.”

This article clearly describes the lethal nature of many of the so-called “non-lethal” weapons now being developed to control civilian populations.

Alexander noted:

Psychotronics may be described as the interaction of mind and matter… The possibility for employment as weaponry has been explored. To be more specific, there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated.

Describing Soviet development of psychotronic weapons, Alexander stated:

“The ability to... cause death can be transmitted over distances, thus inducing illness or death for no apparent reason.”

These…

“weapons would be able to induce illness or death at little or no risk to the operator... The psychotronic weapon would be silent (and) difficult to detect...”

Powerful elite insiders have long known how electromagnetic weapons can be effectively utilized to wage mind control against the population, specifically targeting political dissidents and troublemakers.

What of the numerous political activists and investigative journalists who died under mysterious circumstances, many from rare forms of cancer?

Could they have been ‘taken out’ by psychotronic weapons? We can only imagine how advanced this technology is today.

President Lyndon Johnson’s Science Adviser, Dr. Gordon J.F. MacDonald wrote the 1968 book, “Unless Peace Comes, A Scientific Forecast Of New Weapons.”

MacDonald described how man-made changes in the electrical earth ionosphere can be used for mass behavior control.

He said that low frequency electromagnetic oscillations can attack the low frequency electromagnetic brain waves in human beings.

He stated,

“Perturbation of the environment (by geophysical warfare) can produce changes in behavioral patterns.”

In his 1970 book, Between Two Ages, Zbigniew Brezezinski (a long-time Establishment strategist) described “weather control” as a “new weapon” that is a “key element of strategy.”

He added:

Technology will make available, to leaders of major nations, a variety of techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need to be appraised.

Brzezinski predicted the exact types of electromagnetic psychotronic weapons that the US Administration now has for the mass behavior control of citizens.

He stated:

It is possible—and tempting—to exploit, for strategic-political purposes, the fruits of research on the brain and on human behavior... 

Accurately timed, artificially excited electronic strokes could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the earth... 

In this way, one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of a very large population in selected regions, over an extended period.

Available Electronic Harassment Technologies:

Five Available Electronic Harassment Technologies.

There are five older technologies capable of extreme destruction of the ability to earn a living, and the quality of life of a target, listed below.

None of these technologies require implants, and all can be transmitted silently, through walls, and leave no trace evidence.

All have been available for decades.

Since few targets will acquire the correct detection equipment, destruction of a target’s life even using these older technologies is a perfect crime under the American “justice system”.

Here is the list:

[1] Weaponized microwave oven weapon

A simple microwave oven, door removed, with the door interlock switch bypassed, and held against the bedroom wall of a target in an apartment building or semi-detached house. This device can cause a variety of disabling medical symptoms. (Google “Dr. Reinhard Munzert”.)

[2] Dr. James C. Lin’s pulsed microwave transmitter

Joseph Sharp’s voice to skull success was replicated with Dr. James C. Lin’s pulsed microwave transmitter.

This was publicly announced in 1974 at the University of Utah.

This device produces audible sound transmitted directly into a target’s skull, through a target’s wall.

Of course, this can drive the through-the-wall target crazy, and if the target complains, the target will be immediately diagnosed as mentally ill.

U.S. patent 6,587,729 was issued based on Dr. Joseph Sharp’s voice to skull success.

[3] Silent Sound

Lowery’s “Silent Sound,” patent 5,159,703, has been used for self-help subliminal hypnosis tapes and CDs.

It has also used by the U.S. Army in Gulf War One (1991).

It is currently used for shoplifting prevention in some countries.

Together with Sharp’s voice to skull technology, Silent Sound projected through a bedroom wall can hypnotize a target in their bed with the target being unaware.

Unaware hypnosis is CLEARLY extreme electronic harassment.

A target’s personality can be severely interfered with, and the target will not know why this is happening.

Concept diagram, combined voice to skull and Silent Sound

[4] Lida Signal

This is a half-century-old medical device, the Russian-built Lida machine, a pulsed 40 watt, 40 MHz radio transmitter.

Russian-built Lida machine.

It can be used to make a target exhausted on the job when pulsing at the rate consistent with sleep.

If you perform a pulse rate increase, it will deprive the target of sleep as well.

Certain ham radio transmitters can be configured so as to duplicate the Lida signal.

U.S. Patent 3,773,049 describes the Lida operating principle. And you can buy one here below…

[5] EPIC

Named EPIC, a through wall coordination/balance disruption weapon is an active technology being used today.

Electronic harassment targets have reported suddenly having their balance and coordination disrupted.

Here’s a quote from a May 21, 2007 article about the EPIC weapon:

http://www.myfoxhouston.com 

Local Company Developing 'Less than Lethal' Weapon 'EPIC' by Invocon is being developed as a 'Less than Lethal' Weapon. 

How do you disable bad guys in a crowd without killing them or causing permanent damage? 

It’s a problem faced by troops in urban combat and by local law enforcement. 

Now, a local company called Invocon may have the answer, and the solution may be a weapon code named "Epic." 

The company is developing a weapon they hope someday will be able to shoot through a wall and stun people on the other side of the wall. ...

Conclusion

In the United States today, the official unemployment rate is supposed to be a wonderful 3.68%.

U.S. unemployment rate for 2019 was 3.68%, a 0.21% decline from 2018. 
U.S. unemployment rate for 2018 was 3.90%, a 0.46% decline from 2017.

Declining every year. Getting better and better. Wonderful right?

Yet, 61% of Americans were so poor that they didn’t pay any Federal taxes. And that’s pretty bad, as Americans are taxed for everything.

These two numbers do not fit together.

How can [1] most Americans be working AND [2] being so poor that they are not being able to pay their taxes?

So? What the reasoning? If both numbers are correct, then what is going on is frightening. For either…

  • The American government has failed everyone on a grand scale.
  • The United States system of “exceptional democracy” has failed everyone on a grand scale.
  • Or, if one of figures is a fabrication or manipulation, then the government is lying to cover-up something very serious and very bad.

I argue that no matter how you look at this situation, something inside of the American society and the American government is severely “off the rails”.

Off the rails - Idiom

In an abnormal or malfunctioning condition, as in Her political campaign has been off the rails for months. The phrase occurs commonly with go, as in Once the superintendent resigned, the effort to reform the school system went off the rails . 

This idiom alludes to the rails on which trains run; if a train goes off the rails, it stops or crashes.

The ONLY way that the government can control the situation is to control the people.

Which is why…

[1] American people and population is being irradiated constantly and covertly with narratives and control algorithms to corral their behaviors. This is non-stop all over America.

[2] Manipulation of Social Media and other avenues are used to herd the people into balkanized enclaves of thought; “echo chambers”.

[3] Vault 7 clearly states that Operating Systems out of the United States are designed to control the minds of those using it.

So if you feel that the world seems to be spinning out of control, and that there is a overriding feeling of dread and terror, perhaps it is the ongoing operation and a side effect for decades of intentional mind control. Rather than it “just being you”.

Air China plane.

I can tell you that once I left the United States, and got on board the Air China flight that I felt an absolute calmness and safety. Initially, I believed that it was that I was finally putting that nightmare of the last few decades behind me.

  • No more prison.
  • My “retirement” ended.
  • No more bullshit and reporting nonsense.
  • No more life as a slave in a gulag.

However, now (in hindsight) it appears that I (along with everyone else) was living inside an irradiated torture chamber, and it was only once I left that I could experience the kinds of freedom and feelings that I grew up with in the 1960’s.

And make no mistake…

…you can absolutely FEEL the calmness once you leave the United States.

What leaving the United States is like.

And I want to remind everyone that there are options out there; places that DO NOT irradiate you with radiation to control your thoughts, monitor your actions, and arrest you if you get out of line. You have REAL freedom. Not the kind of faux “freedom” that what most Americans suffer though.

The rest of the world is just great. Really, really great.

Real freedom.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my MAJestic Index here…

MAJestic

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Someone Else is on The Moon by George Leonard (Full text in PDF)

The following is the full text of the late 1970’s paperback book titled “Someone else is on the moon”, by George Leonard. It is provided here for free in PDF format.

Few people noticed the secret codewords used by our astronauts to describe the moon. Until now, few knew about the strange moving lights they reported.

George H. Leonard, former NASA scientist, fought through the official veil of secrecy and studied thousands of NASA photographs, spoke candidly with dozens of NASA officials, and listened to hours and hours of astronauts' tapes.

Here, Leonard presents the stunning and inescapable evidence discovered during his in-depth investigation:

-Immense mechanical rigs, some over a mile long, working the lunar surface.

-Strange geometric ground markings and symbols.

-Lunar constructions several times higher than anything built on Earth.

-Vehicles, tracks, towers, pipes, conduits, and conveyor belts running in and across moon craters.

Somebody else is indeed on the Moon, and engaged in activities on a massive scale. Our space agencies, and many of the world's top scientists, have known for years that there is intelligent life on the moon.

"An extremely convincing case the moon has life on it - an intelligent race that probably moved in from outside the solar system..." -UFO Report

"Leonard's photos are truly mind-boggling..." -Publisher's Weekly

This is an interesting book. I can tell you that. I believe that I read it back when I was in College. Not that I was assigned books to read, like the rest of my friends. My courses were all heavy mathematics and physics. So to unwind, I would read all sorts of paper-books. And this was one such book.

It’s a great fun read, and he’s a searcher who has stumbled across some uncomfortable truths got got him ridiculed. Well, so what?

To download the book click on the link below…

I am going to put this article in my Type-1 Greys sub index because I really don’t know where else to put it.

To can visit that Index here…

Type-1 Grey

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

 

The Götterdämmerung of the United States

Definition of Götterdämmerungfc
: a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder 

In the 243 years since American independence in 1776, America has been at war in 225 of those years.

Yet, it’s been centuries since anyone even tried to invade the United States.

So why is America off gallivanting all over the world and fighting in wars if there isn’t a need to defend the territorial integrity of the United States?

No one can provide an answer for this.

Or to put it another way, for 92.5 percent of the time since 1776, the Americans have been at war, either of their own making like the annexation of the Philippines in 1899, as an intervening force in other wars like the Vietnam conflict or simply initiating regime change wars against those they dislike by covertly fermenting insurrections in South America using groups like the Contras.

It's not a record that sits well with the mythology of a peace-loving America upholding the global world order or liberal values. America has been described by former U.S. President Carter and others as the most warlike nation on Earth and it's a description that is backed by the historical record.

No answers are ever provided.

Instead, they say things like freedom™, liberty™, and democracy™. They interject it along with other sentences equally impotent.  Like “Plants love Brando because it’s got electrolytes”. And along with some grunts, and sneers are phrases like “you know…”, and “Wht?”

And then pull off their tops, stand on top of their pickup trucks and wave the United States flag shouting “Exceptionalism!” and “We’re the best!”

Woo Hoo!

It is the American elites who made deals with China at the expense of American workers. It’s not China that has failed to meet its obligations to American people: it has none.

American elites have made these deals. They did so at the expense of standards of living for American workers.

And small business owners. They did so even at the expense of national security and stability.

It is these very elites that failed to modernize the ancient, decrepit infrastructure. They failed to repair the road and bridges, and they ignored the plight of millions of Americans.

Americans as they fell into despair, and all the resulting addictions that result from it.

And they needed help. They cried for help. They pleaded for help. They demanded help.

Real serious help.

They need community. They need leadership. They need meaningful, purposeful employment. they need reasonable costs, abundant food at reasonable prices. Affordable housing, and basic no-frills or politically motivated education. They need their leadership to stop crime. Support them instead of wasting the precious resources that America used to have in abundance.

They need real representation.

They needed people who would do real WORK. People who would demolish the ruined failed systems, and put in brand new, well funded, and expertly run systems.

They need the basics. They need the fundamentals.

  • Affordable and healthy food.
  • Meaningful employment providing goods or services.
  • Affordable housing.
  • Low or no taxes, regulation, or rules.
  • A safe and secure environment free of crime, but not a police state.
  • They need to see a sizable amount of the tax money seized from them reinvested in their own lives.

And they do not see this.

And as a result the entire domestic interior of America is imploding upon itself in spectacular fashion. Today, you cannot tell the difference between Detroit and Damascus. Today, you cannot distinguish between an American “leader” from a poverty stricken banana republic dictator.

Aside from the clothing their actions, attitudes, and behaviors are identical.

Out of touch Government

Just how out of touch are the elites in Washington DC from the people? It’s pretty damn astounding.

Making U.S. Foreign Policy Work Better for the Middle Class is a sort of bipartisan report guiding the current, bewildered Crash Test Dummy administration. 

One of the 11 writers involved is none other than National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. 

The notion that a global imperial strategy and – in this case – a deeply impoverished and enraged middle class share the same interests does not even qualify as a lousy joke. 

With “thinkers” like these, the Hegemon does not even need Eurasian “threats”.

In case you all haven’t been paying attention, most American pay around 30% of their income to the Federal government, and an additional 16% (8 + 8) to it for “Social Security” promises. In exchange for this looting (46% of their paycheck) the American government has done nothing for them.

Not now.

Not in decades.

It’s just been squandering it off in far-away lands, and blowing up mud huts, machine gunning sheep, and loudly proclaiming to be doing it all for freedom™ and democracy™.

Yoo Hoo!

China may be many things, but it was the corruption and misleadership of American leadership (not Chinese) that led to the destruction of the middle-class and the imbalances in bilateral trade.

And there we have it.

At the expense of the American citizenry, the American elites are trying to rule the entire world. Not like before. But this time, they will “Build Back Better” so that no other nation dare opposes their rule.

Their plan is as clear as day, and their demands are astounding in their arrogance.

“Obey us!” they order.

“Follow our ‘rules based order’. The UN is useless and kneel before the great and almighty shining house on the hill.” they sneer.

Of course, after the last debacle in July 2020, I was truly surprised. I was surprised at the calm and composed stoniness of the Chinese.

If it was me, I would have sent the heads of those Jackasses back to the USA in a box. Genghis Khan style.

Washington trying to rule the world!

Are geopolitical analysts in the west seriously delusional enough to believe that Russia and China can be undermined?

It was only one month ago that the world found itself trapped on a fast track to nuclear war between NATO powers and Russia over tensions that had been brought to a boil in Ukraine.

Of course, it wasn’t only a Nazi-ridden Ukraine that was being used as a trigger for a major showdown, as evidence of Belarus regime change and even assassination attempts became publicized and MI6-Bellingcat antics were justifying new waves of anti-Russian sanctions across the trans Atlantic community.

These antics even led to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from the Czech Republic, media psyops attempting to lay blame on the Kremlin for cyber attacks on American pipelines.

Additionally, a zero-tolerance policy towards the completion of the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline appeared to be a non-negotiable red line for Washington up until recently.

No matter where you looked, the spectre of nuclear war abounded for all to see and only companies specializing in the sale of bomb shelters were content with the direction of world events.

And then something changed.

Life is a drag when the (global) free lunch is over and on top of it you need to face not only the emergence of a “peer competitor” in Eurasia (copyright Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski) but a comprehensive strategic partnership. You fear that China is eating your lunch – and dinner, and nightcap – but still you need Moscow as the designated enemy of choice, because that’s what legitimizes NATO.

Call The Three Stooges! Let’s send the Europeans to patrol the South China Sea! Let’s get those Baltic nullities plus pathetic Poles to enforce the New Iron Curtain! And let’s deploy Russophobic Britannia Rules the Waves on both fronts!

Control Europe – or bust. Hence the Brave New NATO World: white man’s burden revisited – against Russia-China.

So far, Russia-China had been exhibiting infinite Daoist patience in dealing with those clowns. 

But not anymore.

Indeed. Something changed.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that certain power brokers among the Great Resetting crowd of the west realized that a smoldering earth of radioactive decay was not one they wished to rule over (or under).

Perhaps they realized that Russia had no intention of backing down in the game of nuclear chicken then being played.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Russia’s advanced hypersonic nuclear missile delivery systems were not a part of the game theory-based computer models which war game scenario planners had based their military engagements on.

And all that full spectrum dominance encirclement of Russia for the past 20 years was ineffective.

Yeah.

While a “limited nuclear war” sounded like an acceptable risk decades ago, it isn’t so today.

There’s no such thing as this fantasy.

Use one nuclear weapon, and your entire nation is engulfed in nuclear carpet bombing.

It appears, from direct statements made by President Biden and Jan Psaki in July 2021, that the decision to pull back from the precipice of nuclear oblivion was a reappraisal of the situation.

The geniuses in the Washington DC think tanks came up with an alternative method to bring both Russia and China to heel.

This new strategic equation rests on two wildly foolish assumptions:

  • The belief that the foundations of the Russian-Chinese alliance contains fatal fissures which can be exploited by savvy American diplomatic maneuvering. And since everyone in Washington DC are experts, and capable, there wouldn’t be any problem doing this.

And…

  • The belief that Russia somehow really desires to be popular and rejoin the “cool kids” of the G7 leading the international liberal order. After all, everyone in Washington DC is this way. So obviously everyone else int he world is like this. It’s “common sense” don’t you know!

For these two assumptions to shape the calculus of western logicians playing on a “great game”show just out of touch from reality these Washington elites actually are.

After all, it is believed by these ignorant sycophants that Russia, who shares a 2600 mile border with China, must certainly feel threatened by China’s “global ambitions”

Biden stated on June 16:

“Russia is in a very very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China. They want to desperately remain a major power. They desperately want to be relevant.”

It is thus assumed that Russia may yet be swayed into joining a real power block capable of countering China’s imperial Belt and Road Initiative.

Oh…

…brother!

Americans can see though this farce…

They have learned, over the years, decades and even centuries that the American government has little concern for them. For their ideals. For their culture. For their needs.

The key players in the Heartland have clearly seen through the imperial propaganda fog; it will be a long and winding road, but the horizon will eventually unveil a Germany-Russia-China-Iran alliance rebalancing the global chessboard.

This is the ultimate Imperial Night of the Living Dead nightmare – hence these lowly American emissaries frantically scurrying around multiple latitudes trying to keep the satrapies in line.

Americans are ripe to start the lynchings of the elites.

We are QUICKLY going downhill. The state of Florida may be the one that secedes first. There is not one person in my neck of the woods that isn’t seriously SERIOUSLY getting ready. All you hear at night is fully automatic gunfire - not the average - let me practice with my 9mm in the back, but full auto. And I know what it sounds like versus fireworks.

...

The vibe - it’s about to fucking hit the fan - Seriously.

So look at what you have.

A nation ruled by mad-men.

A nation ruled by mad-men.

A pissed off and angry citizenry that are ready to go feral and unleash bloody Hell against the entire nation.

An entrenched group of vampires living inside of Washington DC that act like leeches and who have sucked the life-blood of America dry. And now, like some kind of parasite are looking to start a long war of “distraction” for their personal profit and (possibly) enjoyment.

And…

And…

It’s getting intolerable.

China and Russia are united against the out of control American madness

Ah.

But it won’t be a long, drawn out war of “distraction”. It will not be another Syria. It will not be another Yemen. It will not be another Panama. It will not be another Afghanistan.

As an expat in China. I can tell you that not only is China a serious, serious nation, but Lord Help you if you piss them off…

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, China-Russia build submarines like there’s no tomorrow equipped with state of the art missiles – and Su-57s invite wise guys to a close conversation with a hypersonic Mr. Kinzhal.

Sergey Lavrov, like an aristocratic Grand Seigneur, took the trouble of enlightening the clowns with a between rule of law and their self-defined “rules-based international order”.

That’s too much for their collective IQ. Perhaps what they will register is that the Russian-Chinese Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship, and Cooperation, initially signed on July 16, 2001, has just been extended for five years by Presidents Putin and Xi.

Oh…

So far, the Washington elites think of war as some kind of remote video game. They believe that it can be fought remotely with drones, cruse missiles and though use of others. While the America military is used as an occupation force on the conquered lands.

They can’t possibly imagine what the FUCK WOULD HAPPEN if the roles were reversed and both China and Russia would start doing the same thing to America…

  • Paying and having assassination squads against the American leadership.
  • Inciting riots, and blowing up American hospitals, ports, infrastructure, bridges, train stations, and warehouses.
  • Moving battle groups off the coast of New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Newport Beach, Washington DC, Boston, and Miami.

And that’s just for starters…

…don’t even get me fired up about carpet bombing the USA with biological weapons, kidnapping industry leaders, and inciting riots in major cities. Heck! If America can get away with it, then it is “on the table” for Chinese use.

But…

But…

Somehow, the Washington elites think that they can open up “Pandora’s Box” and be completely safe from the consequences.

Metropolis

As I said before…

American “leadership” is bat shit crazy.

Easy sailing in Asia, but the West is a major fuck-up

America today is “ready to pop”. It is ready to explode. And I am not talking about “Black anger”. I am talking about “White fury”. Not at the blacks or other races. But directed at the tier after tier , after tier of corrupted criminal “leadership” of Washington DC.

Only this time, it won’t be a few Trump “patriots” walking into the Whitehouse on a lark. It will be something much darker.

As the Empire of Chaos is incrementally and inexorably expelled from the Heartland, Russia-China are jointly managing Central Asian affairs.

In the Central and South Asia connectivity conference in Tashkent, Lavrov detailed how Russia is driving “the Greater Eurasian Partnership, a unifying and integrational outline between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans that is as free for the movement of goods, capital, labor and services as possible and which is open to every country of the common continent of Eurasia and the integration unions created here.”

Then there’s the updated Russian National Security Strategy, which clearly outlines that building a partnership with the US and hitting win-win cooperation with the EU is an uphill struggle: “The contradictions between Russia and the West are serious and are hard to solve.” 

By contrast, strategic cooperation with China and India will be expanded.

New global realignments are forming. The world is growing and getting better, and that evil military empire; the United States, the scourge of the world for nearly a century is imploding.

How that implosion will occur…

…no one knows.

But it wouldn’t take much to set it off.

We all saw what happened when New Orleans levy collapsed. Imagine that happening in every single city simultaneously, and all transport routes for food, gas, and staples all collapse.

It would be really bad.

So it appears that America is really trying to start a war of “distractions”, and China is viewed to be the villain to demonize.

China said ENOUGH!

Yup.

Any meetings where America comes and continues the same old litany of bullshit will not be fruitful. So China won’t have any part of them. The door is closed. Forgetaboutit.

Yet the defining geopolitical breakthrough in the second year of the  may well be China telling the Empire, “That’s enough”.

It started over two months ago in Anchorage, when the formidable Yang Jiechi out of the helpless American delegation. The piece de resistance came this week in Tianjin, where Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng and his boss Wang Yi reduced mediocre imperial bureaucrat Wendy Sherman to stale dumpling status.

This searing analysis by a Chinese think tank reviewed all the key issues. Here are the highlights.

– The Americans wanted to ensure that “guardrails and boundaries” are established to avoid a deterioration of U.S.-China relations in order to “manage” the relationship responsibly. That did not work, because their approach was “terrible”.

– “Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng hit the nail on the head when he said that the U.S. “competition, cooperation and confrontation” triad is a “blindfold” to contain and suppress China. Confrontation and containment are essential, cooperation is expedient, and competition is a discourse trap. The U.S. demands cooperation when it is in need of China, but in areas where it thinks it has an advantage, it decouples and cuts off supplies, blocks and sanctions, and is willing to clash and confront China in order to contain it.”

– Xie Feng “also presented two lists to the U.S. side, a list of 16 items requesting the U.S. side to correct its wrong policies and words and deeds toward China, and a list of 10 priority cases of China’s concern (…) if these anti-China issues caused by the U.S. side’s bent are not resolved, what is there to talk about between China and the U.S.?”

And while all this is going on, Biden wants to drive a wedge between China and Russia so that China can be left alone and vulnerable. And to this end, he treats President Vladimir Putin as “another one of him”.

With Biden stating:

“Russia doesn’t want to be known as the upper Volta with nuclear weapons’. It matters. And I found it matters to almost every world leader-no matter where they’re from- how they’re perceived, their standing in the world. It matters to them.”

To understand the thinking behind this second statement, it must be understood that a fundamental belief among all behaviorists (of which Biden is no exception being ruled by teams of them and being little more than a synthetic shell himself of impulses devoid of any actual substance himself), is that one of the fundamental drives of all soulless/blank-slates is the desire to be popular.

Being popular and adapting to the force of popular opinions works in all anarchist mobs, school yards and especially politics (which is seen as the ultimate game of popularity for any substance-free rhetorician).

The force of popular opinion will thus cause anyone to modify their beliefs, opinions, and behavior in conformity to whatever “norms” shape their environment.

While one would think it obvious that Putin was NOT the sort of individual to fall prey to this shallow definition of “practical” human nature, Biden and his handlers appear to think otherwise.

White House spokeswoman Jan Psaki amplified this view saying:

“I think the president’s view is that Russia is on the outside of the global community in many respects… what the president is offering is a bridge back. And so, certainly he believes its in their interests to take him up on the offer.”

So while the outcome of the Putin-Biden meeting resulted in some inarguably positive steps towards the creation of mechanisms to avoid blowing up the world….

Such as re-activating START, and committing to solid rules of engagement in the Arctic and other Russian border regions.

China has become the new primary target of western ire.

Of course, China is not going to stand for this.

Where Russia is defined as one among many authoritarian regimes capable of abrasive disturbances but ultimately controllable in the long run, the Chinese have been labelled a much greater threat to western unipolar hegemony.

And China is not going to accept this.

Why Russia would feel “squeezed” by this fact is an absurdity beyond belief.

After all, China is not the one who has lit fires across Russia’s underbelly, promoted a decade of shock therapy, Balkanization, NATO expansion, funded color revolutionary tactics, or corralled the world community to impose sanctions onto her.

The fact is that Russia and China enjoy a vastly increasing rate of trade now topping $100 billion annually (compared to the mere $20 billion of US-Russian trade).

Both are de-dollarizing at accelerating speeds.

Both are working on a common strategic philosophical concept of self-interest and economic value,

These facts that unite both great nations in a solid unassailable partnership are what is keeping the oligarchs up at night.

In his NBC Interview with Keir Simmons before meeting Biden, this is what Putin said of the Russian-Chinese relationships:

“Can I be completely honest? 

We can see attempts at destroying the relationship between Russia and China. 

We can see that those attempts are being made in practical policies. 

And your questions, too, have to do with it… 

We (China and Russia) are neighboring countries. 

One does not choose one’s neighbors. 

We are pleased with the unprecedentedly high level of our relationship as it has evolved over the last few decades, and we cherish it, just like our Chinese friends cherish it, which we can see.”

And the message has been clear.

The point has been made: “The Chinese have long had enough of American arrogance, and the time when the U.S. tried to bully the Chinese is long gone.”

Wang Yi’s three bottom lines to Washington. In a nutshell:

The BRI
“The United States must not challenge, denigrate or even attempt to subvert the socialist road and system with Chinese characteristics. China’s road and system are the choice of history and the choice of the people, and they concern the long-term welfare of 1.4 billion Chinese people and the future destiny of the Chinese nation, which is the core interest that China must adhere to.”

[ FYI; in May 2021, the U.S. Senate pledged up to $300 million to spread information on the "negative impact" of China's Belt and Road Initiative, and develop "anti-Chinese influence" programs and a scheme to "train journalists" with the goal of censoring Beijing's successes from world view.]

Chinese domestic growth.
“The United States must not try to obstruct or even interrupt China’s development process. The Chinese people certainly have the right to a better life, and China also has the right to modernization, which is not the monopoly of the United States and involves the basic conscience of mankind and international justice. China urges the U.S. side to expeditiously lift all unilateral sanctions, high tariffs, long-arm jurisdiction and the science and technology blockade imposed on China.”

[The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was based on a carefully constructed false narrative, something that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and later U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, acknowledged decades later.

It is this consistent background that makes it essential that political leaders pause and independently fully evaluate the claims made by the United States and the secretive intelligence services who advise the U.S. decision makers. America's allies need to acknowledge that it has a history of violence and of the glorification of violence as a means of resolving problems.]

China is a nation. Not a territory of the USA.
“The United States must not infringe on China’s national sovereignty, let alone undermine China’s territorial integrity. The issues related to Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong are never about human rights or democracy, but rather about the major rights and wrongs of fighting against “Xinjiang independence”, “Tibet independence” and “Hong Kong independence”. No country will allow its sovereign security to be compromised. As for the Taiwan issue, it is a top priority (…) If “Taiwan independence” dares to provoke, China has the right to take any means needed to stop it.”

[There is certainly evidence that China wants to protect its borders and maintain its sovereignty. This need has become more urgent as the pace of China threat rhetoric has increased. Despite the constant drip-feed of off-the-record security briefings generating China-scare stories in the Western media, there is scant genuine evidence that China wants to expand its borders. Unlike the United States, there is not a historical record of Chinese expansion or aggression.]

And while all this has been going on in the International sphere, let’s not forget the turmoil that is brewing inside of America right now…

We are the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority.

This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government: from the power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities and corporations.

We are ruled by an elite class of individuals who are completely out of touch with the travails of the average American.

We are viewed as relatively expendable in the eyes of government: faceless numbers of individuals who serve one purpose, which is to keep the government machine running through our labor and our tax dollars. Those in power aren’t losing any sleep over the indignities we are being made to suffer or the possible risks to our health. All they seem to care about are power and control.

We are being made to suffer countless abuses at the government’s hands.

We have little protection against standing armies (domestic and military), invasive surveillance, marauding SWAT teams, an overwhelming government arsenal of assault vehicles and firepower, and a barrage of laws that criminalize everything from vegetable gardens to lemonade stands.

In the name of national security, we’re being subjected to government agencies such as the NSA, FBI and others listening in on our phone calls, reading our mail, monitoring our emails, and carrying out warrantless “black bag” searches of our homes. Adding to the abuse, we have to deal with surveillance cameras mounted on street corners and in traffic lights, weather satellites co-opted for use as spy cameras from space, and thermal sensory imaging devices that can detect heat and movement through the walls of our homes.

That doesn’t even begin to touch on the many ways in which our Fourth Amendment rights are trampled upon by militarized police and SWAT teams empowered to act as laws unto themselves.

In other words, freedom—or what’s left of it—is threatened from every direction.

The predators of the police state are wreaking havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t listen to the citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our rule of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers are shooting unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—are being armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies are fleecing taxpayers. Government technicians are spying on our emails and phone calls. Government contractors are making a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

-John Whitehead

Yes.

To all my international readers, you have no idea just how messed up America has become.

Really messed up.

Slow motion train wreck

I think most Americans are either [1] oblivious to what is going on, [2] worried as can be, or [3] just waiting for the “blow to hit”.

And we can gauge this by looking at society.

And that means American movies and media…

Five Films About Post-Modern America

Be forewarned, these five hit hard and cover nearly everything: rape, miscegenation, drugs, abuse, you name it. But they do accurately reflect the Current Year in all its misery.

They are all depressing, disgusting, and upsetting. So I am not posting any links for further investigation. If you want to watch them, then you are on your own. Personally, I think all you need to realize is that there is a sizable Western population who’s lives resemble these expressions of video antagonism.

Climax (2018)

What might happen if you took a bunch of directionless, hedonistic, oversexed twenty-somethings, trapped them in a building, and gave them way too much acid?

Nights and Weekends (2008)

Nights and Weekends (2008)

Long-distance relationships are unbearable, and truly unique to our time. This Joe Swanberg indie hit covers the phenomenon with unbearable accuracy.

Storytelling (2002)

Storytelling (2002)

The best depiction yet of the horror of college and the misery of suburbia.

Ken Park (2002)

Ken Park (2002)

It’s relentless in its depiction of degeneracy, but as critic Lee Marshall noted, “In a weird way this is a moral film.”

The Decline of Western Civilization Part III (1998)

The Decline of Western Civilization Part III (1998)

Wonder what environments birth antifa?

Conclusion

Ok, there’s change going on.

The “West” led by either the USA or the UK, and influenced by banking interests are steering this massive colossal cultural-industrial-military-and-bureaucratic fiefdom towards conflict. The handling of it is so profoundly inept and transparent, that only the most manipulated and ignorant fail to see it.

Stuck on this massive block of rot and ruin are many innocents and good people. And due to their situation, and their knowledge their ability to change things is not really possible…

…except…

…in what they can do in their immediate reality This is their immediate area and zone of control.

Please hang on. There are other forces and interests that see this situation as it has been presented and will not allow this ruin to become the rest of the world, nor will they allow it to continue for too much longer. So hold on tight. perform your centering and prayer campaigns. Be good. Do your best, and help others in your community. You all will get through this.

Have some faith.

Alright?

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

Why the United States Leadership has such crazy ideas about China

Here, in this article I argue that the United States leadership is bat-shit-crazy. And their dealings with China confirms this. With each instance of interaction between the USA and China we see absolute ignorance, rudeness and irritating bluster that makes the entire world cringe. Why is this? Well, we will look at that right now.

Background

From MoA. The article discusses the second group of talks between the USA and China. This time taking place in China in July 2021. It was a second fiasco.

U.S. – China Talks Point To A Longer Conflict

The U.S. wants to slice and dice its approach to China. It will use all means to take advantage of China where it can, while restricting China in those fields were it can no longer compete with it.

The Chinese reject that approach.

The U.S., they say, should not see China as an enemy. It should stop lecturing China, accept it as an equal and cooperate with it in all fields.

The U.S. is unwilling to do that.

The USA is unwilling to accept China as an equal.

Its media-military-industrial complex is already primed for a cold war with China. Trillions of dollars are to be made from it.

China on the other side is ready to play hardball if it must.

Today U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman held talks with the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Feng, She also meet with Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The later meeting, demanded to be the main event by the U.S., had already led to some squabble. Wang Yi is beyond Sherman’s rank and her main discussion, the Chinese insisted, should be with a person on her own level:

The State Department emphasized Sherman will have “senior-level” communications but a statement from China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry emphasized that Sherman “will hold talks” with Xie and after that Foreign Minister Wang will “meet her.”

Let me elaborate…

The Department of State announced that Ms. Sherman is going to meet with State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and others in Tianjin. However, a spokesperson from China’s Foreign Ministry made clear on Friday that Ms. Sherman is to negotiate with Mr. Xie, while Mr. Wang will receive her afterward. ( “会见”)

For anyone who appreciates the richness of the Chinese language, “会见” can mean a meeting, but only in the context of gracing an inferior. This is the approach taken by the Foreign Ministry in the case of Wang’s meeting with Sherman. 

When asked about Sherman’s visit on July 24, H.E. Wang remarked that China and the international community as a whole bear the responsibility to teach the US a lesson if the US has not learned to treat others as equals.

Accenting Sherman’s visit is China’s sanctioning of prominent US figures, including former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. The action serves as both a retaliation in the face of US warnings over Hong Kong and as a heads-up for the upcoming Tianjin talks.

From the Chinese perspective, Sherman’s Asia tour is assertive overall, as it seeks to solidify the encirclement of China. 

But the Tianjin meeting will move ahead in [1] the context of China as an equal to the US; [2] that Chinese are not to be offended, and [3] the US cannot conduct foreign policy from a position of strength. 

Professor Shirley Ze Yu's editors prepared a most insightful commentary ahead of Deputy Secretary of State Sherman's meeting with her counterparts ( or not) in Tianjin.

Please check out their commentary here https://lnkd.in/enBjf4i

On Saturday two ‘senior U.S. administration officials’ gave a preview of the talks:

As Secretary Blinken has said, the U.S. relationship with China will be collaborative where it can be, competitive where it should be, and adversarial where it must be. 

And we expect all dimensions of the relationship will be on the table for discussion during Wendy’s meetings.
...
In Tianjin, [Sherman is] going to make clear while we welcome stiff and sustained competition with the PRC, everyone needs to play by the same rules and on the level – on a level playing field.

She’s going to underscore that we do not want that stiff and sustained competition to veer into conflict. 

This is why the U.S. wants to ensure that there are guard rails and parameters in place to responsibly manage the relationship.

The second official added:

So let me also put this meeting into the context of the administration’s broader China policy effort. 

Since President Biden took office, we’ve put a lot of focus on strengthening our own competitive hand vis-a-vis China through many actions that we’ve taken domestically, investing in ourselves at home. 

We’ve also rallied our allies and partners, including to advance an affirmative vision of the rules-based international order. 

And we’ve confronted China when they’ve acted against our interests and values while working to cooperate with China on areas like climate change and nonproliferation.

We know we’re stronger when we work with our allies. We know this makes us more effective when dealing with Beijing. 

We aren’t seeking an anti-China coalition in our work with allies and partners, but rather trying to work together in a multilateral fashion to uphold the international rules-based order.

...
With all of those actions underway, we’re entering this engagement from a position of strength and of solidarity.
...
Even as we meet with our Chinese counterparts, we will also continue to hold China accountable. 

These things are not mutually exclusive, and it should be clear that we are not afraid to impose costs for China’s behavior that undermines international norms.

Yup.

This describes how the rest of the world views the American position…

My opinion is…

As Peter Lee commented with his usual snark:

chinahand @chinahand - 16:43 UTC · Jul 24, 2021
"We're going to keep kicking your ass. Don't kick back, 'kay?" Our fate now that dime store Machiavellis, excuse me, generational talents, run the FP show.

The emphasized words were not welcome in China.

On Sunday Foreign Minister Wang Yi responded in an interview with an attack on U.S. exceptionalism:

“The United States always wants to exert pressure on other countries by virtue of its own strength, thinking that it is superior to others,” 

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday.

“However, I would like to tell the US side clearly that there has never been a country in this world that is superior to others, nor should there be, and China will not accept any country claiming to be superior to others.
“If the United States has not learned how to get along with other countries on an equal footing by now, then it is our responsibility, together with the international community, to give the US a good tutorial in this regard.

Today, after the talk between Sherman and Xie, the Foreign Ministry published a series of strong response snippets by Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Feng:

I especially like the one about the ‘rules based international order’:

On 26 July, during his talks with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng made the comment that the U.S. side's so-called “rules-based international order” is an effort by the United States and a few other Western countries to frame their own rules as international rules and impose them on other countries. 

The United States has abandoned the universally-recognized international law and order and damaged the international system it has helped to build. 

And it is trying to replace it with a so-called “rules-based international order”. 

The purpose is to resort to the tactic of changing the rules to make life easy for itself and hard for others.

As well as to introduce “the law of the jungle" where might is right and the big bully the small.

The SCMP summerizes this situation…

China has for the first time given the US a list of red lines and remedial action it must take to repair relations.

Including [1] lifting sanctions and [2] dropping its extradition request for Huawei financial chief Meng Wanzhou.

Chinese foreign vice-minister Xie Feng told US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman on Monday morning that...

... US-China relations had reached a “stalemate”...

... and faced “serious consequences”.

According to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.
“The foundational reason is that some people in the US are treating China as an ‘imagined enemy’,” it quoted Xie as saying.
After the meeting, Xie said China gave two lists to the US.

[1] One with one remedial action for Washington to take towards China.
[2] And the other a series of Beijing’s key concerns.
...
Xie said the Chinese side also “expressed its strong dissatisfaction towards the wrong remarks and actions of the US” in relation to...

... investigations into [1] the origins of Covid-19, [2] Taiwan, [3] Xinjiang, [4] Hong Kong and [5] the South China Sea.
“We urge the United States not to underestimate...

...the strong determination, 
...firm will and 
...strong ability 

of the 1.4 billion Chinese people to...

...safeguard national sovereignty, 
...security and 
...development interests,” 

The state news agency Xinhua quoted him as saying.

In its summary of the talks the Associated Press points to the basic difference in the approaches:

High-level face-to-face talks between U.S. and Chinese diplomats on Monday highlighted sharp differences between the sides.

Although the tone appeared somewhat less contentious than at their last meeting.

...

Xie said China wants to [1] seek common ground while [2] shelving differences.

This highlights a divide in the basic approach to their relationship. 

The Biden administration has said it will cooperate in areas [1] such as climate.  But it will [2] confront China in others such as human rights. He described the relationship as collaborative, competitive and adversarial (at the same time).

As the U.S. is for now rejecting the Chinese offer for burying the hatchet…

… China will have to play hardball.

It will not be cooperative in the fields where the U.S. wants it to be cooperative (Iran, North Korea, etc.).

It will also be adversarial in fields where the U.S. has little ability to push back (rare earth exports, Boeing 737MAX re-certification).

The U.S. hopes that it can find and press ‘allies’ into confronting China. But Europe already rejected that. (Not happening.)

To others, especially in Asia, the U.S. looks like a declining power because it is a declining power and the economic interests of most nations now favor China.

Under these circumstances I for one fail to see how the U.S. could win in a longer cold conflict.

How long then will it take until the U.S. recognizes that and steps down from its illusion of supremacy?

You do know…

America has been very public in saying that the Chinese leadership will be assassinated. That military forces are being trained to invade China and the outlying islands. That secret hidden forces are being trained to perform dangerous secretive work to sabotage China. And that every action that China does that is positive, that America will try to undo it.

And somehow, the American people are just fine with this.

Ok! China won’t fight back you know. No worries. No problem.

Right?

Crazy!

From what I see today…

…never.

The entire American leadership suffers from some kind of mental illness. They are so sick that they are beyond repair.

Today, on the Chinese television and in social media everyone is playing the clip with the government authorities have stated that America is no longer reliable, believable and worthy of interaction with.

That means…

…all negotiations from now on are zero-sum efforts. They are not possible and cannot exist.

I argue that this idea of natural superior to the Chinese derives from decades of constant reinforcement of what the Chinese are.  Over time, this reinforcement gets crazier, and crazier, until today it is unrecognizable from reality.

Here is a movie that I believe represents the type of Hollywood movie fare that has shaped the political class in Washington DC today. You might read it and think “oh goodness! No one could possibly be that deluded as to believe such nonsense!”

To which I counter…

…you haven’t been to the USA lately have you?

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH

A Chinese general goes berserk and has a system of tunnels dug all the way from China to USA, under the Pacific Ocean. The man who has discovered this is locked up because they think he is insane. US Navy soldiers go underground to repel the invaders.

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH

The picture concerns upon Chinese communists (leader is Martin Benson as general goes berserk and who places atomic bombs) trying to destroy United States via some continued series of underground tunnels , made all the way from China under the Pacific Ocean , but some US Navy soldiers , scientists , military (Kerwin Mathews , Al Mulok , Ed Bishop) and a gorgeous geologist (Vivienne Ventura) discover the scheme and go underground to repel the invaders .

It's a pulp movie of science-fiction genre in which there are noisy action , suspense , intrigue , tension and results to be quite bemusing . 

The history deals with nasty Chinese people and American patriots who fight strongly to vanquish them . 

In spite of lack luster and budget is quite agreeable and fun . 

The plot is almost ridiculous and senseless but it's developed in fast moving and numerous surprises and that's why it is amusing . 

The movie has precedent in those films of the 30s with Fumanchu (by Sax Rohmer) and Boris Karloff as heinous starring and nearest the series of the 60s (produced by Harry Alan Towers with Christopher Lee as the Chinese baddie) in which the ¨yellow danger¨ was a fearful enemy . 

The motion picture takes part of a genre which in the 80s attained splendor , thus : ¨Red Dawn¨ (by John Milius with Patrick Swayze) , ¨Invasion USA ¨ (by Joseph Zito with Chuck Norris) and ¨Amerika¨ (by Donald Wyre with Kris Kristofferson) where the communists -Russkies generally- execute invasion on America . 

Rating : Average but entertaining .

Evil Communist Chinese woman using a powerful mind ray to seduce our young American hero.

The Characters:

  • Cmdr. Shaw – His experimental underwater laboratory imploded, so he is assigned as senior testing official, U.S. Navy Forces Out to Pasture, Ashore.
  • Tila Yung – I bet she gets tired of servicemen asking what a pretty girl like her is doing in a hole like this.
  • Dr. Arnold Kramer – Part anteater, part scientist, and all-American. He’s also mad as a hatter, though I doubt he’s ever worn a felt hat and presumably has enough sense to avoid drinking quicksilver.
  • SgtMaj. Mulberry – “Sir, if you call me ‘sergeant’ one more time, I am going to get Bataan on your a**.”
  • Cmdr. Cassidy – Computer technician who flies a desk. Because this is 1967, his computer is so big that it dwarfs his house.
  • Dr. Kengh Lee – You look just about as Chinese as Tony Randall.
  • Gen. Chan Lu – You look more like Tony Randall than a Chinese person.
So many opportunities to laugh at this film. Where does one begin? European actors in "yellowface" playing the bad guy renegade Chinese army. (Let's see here -- the bad guy in his lair always has an eccentric pet with him -- okay the guy has a parrot! Check that off the list!)

A film obviously made in Britain pretending to be a Hollywood film, which takes place in Las Vegas (unconvincing cardboard set inside a sound stage, plus some actual second unit stock footage), San Diego (England), Oregon (England again) and Hawaii (more stock footage, plus various underground tunnels (more paper mache sets in a sound stage).

Comically fake nuclear bombs. Laser guns mounted on bulldozers. Giant spinning tape reel computer banks...no wait, those were real at that time.

Bad directing, jump cuts, dropped frames, one establishing shot where the camera drops off the tripod. Awkward staging. Hokey dialog. The whole plot totally ridiculous. Well, it is like a live action comic book. So why should I take any bit of it seriously? Well, the characters seem to be dead serious about the whole enterprise. (That's good. True camp does not work if you give a "nod and a wink" to the audience...though that one scene with the slot machines in the mental hospital was perhaps a bit over the line...)

Yes, fans of The Batman or Green Hornet TV shows of this time period will be right at home here. Plenty of bright primary colors, swish pan transitions, and blaring cool-daddyo-jazz soundtrack. It's all here for the fan of 1960's camp and Cold War pop culture kitsch to treasure as an endemic artifact of its time, the likes of which we may never see again.

Thank goodness.

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH

The Plot:

As the film begins, Las Vegas’ finest (meaning the police, not strippers, showgirls, or escorts) are called to the site of a disturbance. They find Dr. Arnold Kramer, eminent scientist, with his ear to the sidewalk, yelling about something digging underneath their feet. Arnold is not half as crazy as he appears to be. There are not giant ants making a nest under Las Vegas, even though I would happily pay money to see a movie about giant ants. What is slowly crawling below the Earth of free America is much more insidous.

Hold on, I’ll tell you what it is in a minute.

What is that sound under the ground? Dastardly Communists destroying the bedrock of society?

Elsewhere, Commander Shaw is not enjoying his reassignment to shore duty following an accident of undetermined nature that destroyed his pet project, SeaLab VII, and killed twenty-seven men. Instead of actual research or having a ship to command, the Commander finds himself testing pipes. It’s not exactly rewarding work for one of the brightest minds in the U.S. Navy, but at least he is not a guest at one of the military’s correctional facilities, peeling potatoes next to mother stabbers and father rapers. Nor is he experiencing the hospitality of a state mental institution, like Mr. Kramer. He goes to visit Arnold, because the two have known each other for years. The visit causes Shaw to think that his old buddy is as crazy as the psychiatrists say.

Later on, a random news report about a tragedy at a deep mine in Oregon gets Shaw to thinking. He takes a trip to personally investigate the mine collapse and discovers something fantastic: a mysterious medallion and an unexplained tunnel with smooth sides. Taking some samples back to the Navy lab only creates more questions. To find out what is really going on, the Commander leads two squads of Marines down into the hole. They discover a room filled with Chinese and atomic bombs! The Marines attack and easily defeat the Chinese in a decidedly one-side battle. The outcome is not surprising, since most of the Chinese are technicians who are only armed with clipboards.

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH

What is surprising is that the Marines quickly set to work rendering the atomic weapons unusable. All of the bombs look like stainless steel milk tanks turned on their sides. Making them inert involves uncapping one end and reaching in to remove a small cylinder that is resting in a cradle. The cylinders appear to be 9 oz CO2 tanks. My trouble is knowing what they are, but not what they are supposed to be. They cannot simply be the fuse, because that would be easy to replace. Perhaps the cylinders are supposed to be the plutonium or tritium. If that is the case, then those Marines should not be handling the cylinders with their bare hands.

Deactivating an atomic bomb is not the sort of thing that you should rush. Unfortunately, the return of a Chinese tunnel-making machine means that the Marines are out of luck and out of time. Commander Shaw and his compatriots finish removing the tritium cylinders from the bombs, but then have to deal with the tunnel-making machine. While not a military vehicle, it is not the sort of thing that a Marine wants to run into in a dark tunnel. It does not have a huge drill on the front, because the tunnels are created with a super boring laser thingamajig. So, the Chinese tunneling machines look like armored zambonis. The Marines do what Marines always do when faced with armored vehicles: they throw grenades at it until it explodes.

Actually, that only happens in video games. When Marine infantry is forced to engage enemy armor, we like to use just about everything besides grenades. This makes everybody happy, except the crew of the armored vehicle. Especially thankful are the 0352 TOW gunners who finally get a chance to expend one of the missiles they have always wanted to shoot, but which are too expensive to use for training.

Battle beneath the Earth.

After conducting a tactical retreat from the Chinese tunnel, Commander Shaw returns to the laboratory so he and the other brass can plan their next move against the subterranean red menace. Gentlemen, this is not a matter for discussion. There is a Red Chinese tunnel under the United States! You should divert the Colorado River into it or else send in a lot of Marines to clear the artificial cave system room by room. Imagine how much fun a battalion of Marines would have in the Underdark. Well, except for encountering all sorts of weird creatures that could only be dreamed up by nerds with too much time. Having my skin turned into slime by an aboleth or my brain puréed by an illithid would suck (yea, mightily). On the other hand, a movie about a squad of Marines fighting beholders and cave fishers would be a lot of fun.

I know that the SyFy folks read the site, so consider the suggestion officially submitted. It will probably be made, get turned into a series, become extremely popular with a group of hardcore fans, and then get cancelled after the first season. That’s just the way the SyFy cookie crumbles. To be honest, that’s the way that every SyFy cookie crumbles.

Brave American hero easily takes over the unsuspecting evil Chinese soldiers.

Anyway.

While the Americans scramble to figure out what is going on under the purple mountains and fruited plains, the Chinese continue their tunneling activities. General Lu and Doctor Lee are only mildly concerned that the United States has finally discovered their tunnels. They are nearly ready to proceed with the final phase of their plan. The thermonuclear weapons are, of course, intended to be detonated below every major American city and military installation. I would guess that the Chinese intend to dig upwards and leave their little present inside someone’s basement, then set the timer and retreat to a safe distance until the “All’s Destroyed” signal. After the bombs are detonated, the Chinese are prepared to conduct a military invasion to overpower what is left of America’s military forces.

This tunnel stretches all the way from China to the United States. Where are they getting their fresh air? Heck, where are they getting the genuine imitation Chinese restaurant decor?

The Chinese might be master in technology, but are not a match for the American freedom and democracy!

There is one huge, glaring problem with this movie. No, it is not the general premise. Nor is it the Marines (even the Private) all looking like they reached retirement age ten years ago. It’s not even the idea that the Chinese use big vacuum tube capsules like the ones you see in a bank’s drive-through to get from one end of the tunnel to the other. The biggest problem with “Battle Beneath the Earth” is that the Chinese do not look Chinese; not even by my standards. I am talking about the two main characters, Lee and Lu. The job that makeup did on the two actors makes it appear that they are old men who have had way too much cosmetic surgery. They look more Botox than Chinese.

Battle beneath the earth.

General Lu’s second in command does look Chinese, but the general shoots him for incompetence. Meaning that we’re right back to square one. Hrumpf!

Back at the American lab, Dr. Kramer and the others are making good progress is replicating the Chinese tunneling technology. What they are having a problem doing is finding the existing tunnels. Even using the giant government computer, with its reels of magnetic tape and army of support technicians, proves fruitless. There is too much extra noise going on to pinpoint the relatively silent Chinese tunneling machines. What the scientists finally do is order the entire country to be quiet for ten minutes so the computers can listen for the Chinese moles.

Dangerous underground Communist Chinese cars!

Amazingly, it works. Mass transit grinds to a halt, construction workers stop jackhammering, farmers stop plowing, and rednecks stop fishing with dynamite. The last state to go quiet is Texas, which is probably on account of some idiot out in bumf**k digging out a stump. Stop digging for ten minutes, ya durn fool. The Chinese are coming! Nobody cares about that stupid stump. It’s almost time for supper anyhow.

The moments of silence work. The computer maps out the network of Chinese tunnels under the ocean and the United States. Commander Shaw and Doctor Kramer know where the Chinese are at, meaning that our national foundation has a fighting chance. Hooray for American ingenuity! Hooray for the big-a** computer! Hooray for all the female employees in white blouses and gray skirts!

Brave American soldiers hiding from the evil Chinese army.

Remember when science was all about big rolls of magnetic tape, pretty women in tastefully fitting skirts, and beeps? Man, I miss those beeps.

With the location of the Chinese tunnels mapped out, the Americans are finally ready to go on the offensive. Using a prototype tunneling machine built by Dr. Kramer using bits and pieces of the destroyed Chinese vehicle, the American forces intend to disrupt the tunnel at it’s most vulnerable point near Hawaii. I can hear the Marines now, “What? We have to go TAD to Hawaii? Oh, no!” Unfortunately, once the Americans descend into the tunnels things go terribly wrong. The small strike force is ambushed by Chinese troops and either killed or taken prisoner. In the end, it is up to the main characters to escape from their cell, hijack an underground atomic bomb train, and destroy the Chinese tunnel system.

Oh, and Commander Shaw hooks up with Dr. Yung, because she is hot.

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH

Things I Learned From This Movie:

  • Never, ever follow any advice that you get from the sidewalks in Vegas.
  • The Department of the Navy has jurisdiction over all military operations that take place below sea level.
  • Marines are trained to defuse nuclear bombs while they are at Boot Camp.
  • The space race was a Red Chinese herring.
  • Both paper and halogen headlights beat rock.
  • The only tool needed to arm or disarm a nuclear weapon is a 5.5mm allen wrench.
  • If a Chinese person and an elf conceived a child it would look exactly like Mr. Spock.
  • Atomic bombs make a ticking sound when they are about to explode.
  • Radioactive fallout causes the most beautiful sunsets.

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH

Stuff To Watch For:

  • 19 mins – It’s a genuine Fu Manchu belt buckle with decoder ring! I got one of those in a box of Count Chocula cereal when I was a kid.
  • 26 mins – “Oh, don’t shoot them.”
  • 38 mins – Paint cans filled with soy sauce. How diabolical!
  • 47 mins – You’d think that they would have unrolled a spool of comm wire as they went.
  • 56 mins – Ah, back when the Air Force was so poor they couldn’t even afford paint for their aircraft.
  • 61 mins – I would have died laughing if she replied that she had a doctorate in home economics.
  • 68 mins – Their handheld fan technology is years ahead of our own!
  • 82 mins – You just passed those same guys, with that same cart, a few minutes ago.

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH

Sheech!

Where the American Diplomats Learned about China…

All evidence that they picked up their knowledge from either B-grade budget movies made during the “cold war” or they found something stuck up their ass that they pulled out.

This is the university that taught American “diplomats” how to act with the Chinese.

Ok. Ok. I know it’s a bit of a stretch…

But if someone else can posit why the American diplomats are not acting like diplomats, and instead like power-crazed bullies being rude and bellicose, I will listen. Right now I am of the mind that it must be a combination of mass psychosis, insanity, massive quantities of mind altering drugs, greed, and nonsensical illusions of their real power and ability.

Or…

The American government WANTS the Chinese to get angry. They WANT to provoke a conflict. They WANT to have a war.

American illusions are shaped by fantastical notions that have no bearing on reality.

Why would they possible want that?

There are many reasons.

  • There’s no other options available. A war is the only remaining option in the American “playbook” to maintain a hope of survival. The future of America is bleak and an economic bubble is going to pop, and it might be any day now.
  • Maybe the USA has a “secret weapon” that they will engage once China falls and takes the “bait”.
  • Maybe America ACTUALLY IS stronger than it appears to us. Maybe all this weakness domestically and socially will magically end once a full-scale war is initiated.
  • Maybe America is convinced that China can be isolated and alone, and America can gather the rest of the world together and fight it as the leading superpower.
  • Maybe America is ruled by an aged senile passive figurehead, and the powers that control everything wants a war because their days of economic supremacy is over unless the Chinese banking system is extinguished.

I do not know.

What I do know, is that from the “front row seat” it seems like the United States government is just fucking useless, and that the only way for America to survive is to completely and totally scrap it’s form of governance and regress back to state control without a federal government.

China is not weak. Nor is it alone.

The rest of the world is not at all like it is portrayed in the American media.

You only live twice…

Well…

I wish. For most of us, it’s thousands and thousands of recycled events. But that doesn’t refer to us as much to an old 007 James Bond movie. “You only live twice.”

You only live twice.

.

The way that America was able to drag the entire nation into a war with Vietnam, and then again towards fighting country after country was because it maintained an artificial illusion of what the world is / was for the American population to consume.

This is the primary driver why CNN, FOX, BBC and all the rest doctor the pictures to make China look like a dirty shithole, and the “news” always describe China (and the rest of the world as really terrible places to be.).

But all in all, America is so absolutely mind-numbingly incompetent that it just doesn’t realize that it’s “too late”. China surpassed the United States in capability (full spectrum) decades ago.

Decades.

And now, America looks like some mangy old toothless dog snarling and snapping at a sleek, huge panther, that is deciding what to do with this piece of shit.

America is so hopeless.

Meanwhile…

Here’s a delicious Chinese fish.

Appreciate the good things in life.

Delicious fish.

OK, so what…?

Something is seriously WRONG.

I do not know what is wrong, but something is. The United States is treating China as if it is some minor small nation, and that American is going to “kick some ass” and “bust down some doors”. And I know China. China will blast the top 50 American cities into uninhabitable rubble as a result. Why can’t the United States leadership see this?

Are they that stupid. crazy, idiotic, or insane? What is their GOD DAMN MALFUNCTION?

Listen to me. It will not be like before. Everyone has learned.

 

CHINA and Russia will blast the United States into the bronze age.

I mean. They will REALLY do this.

Really.

But first they will collapse the American economy.

Then they will isolate it politically, globally and through trade.

Then they set fire to all the domestic problems, and then…

… then if the results are not satisfactory they will light the fuse to the gunpowder.

We cannot control the crazy.

No we cannot.

We can control our reality.

We can only run our prayers, our affirmations and our campaigns.

Death wishes by police is increasingly common in the United States today.

We can be kind to others and control our immediate reality; our neighborhood.

Never forget there is strength in numbers. Remember the rule of three.

And you will be just fine. And let the crazies try to engage in a world that is increasingly hostile to them and their crazy selfish ideas.

Never forget the rule of three.

It just boggles the mind!

The United States can’t make anything. Aside from some basic fabrication and some high-tech aircraft for military use, that’s about it. (And they source just about everything out of the country.) And yet they want to destroy the world’s factory.

What is their malfunction?

You cannot “bite the hand that feeds you”, nor should you pretend that you can make the parts in West-bumfuck USA at the same price and quality. It ain’t gonna happen.

Maybe…

Just maybe if you set up a plan, and work on the plan… perhaps in five years you can start getting some semblance of a kind of manufacturing capability. But the first products out of that factory will have incoherent quality, and all sorts of problems. I would suggest starting with rubber duckys, then work your way up to consumer appliances.

Really?

America is a nation for the wealthy and their fellow psychopaths.

America is “top heavy” in government “leadership” and severely lacking in manufacturing ability. And yet it really wants to destroy it’s source of products, and yet… and yet… it doesn’t realize that it can’t get that ability back easily. Somehow it believe s that it “grow on trees” and factories and workers are easy to come by.

What kind of deluded folk think like that?

I only met one person like that.

He was in a mental hospital in Rhode Island. He had other strange beliefs. Like he was the king of the world, and that God granted him unlimited power, and that he could not be destroyed or hurt because he was an agent for God. He was a crazy, childish, ignorant son of a bitch.

Sigh.

Seriously, I do not know what will happen in the future. I really don’t. But what I do know is that (increasingly) the United State looks like a crazy person that is going to run in front of the police and say “kill me… kill me!” and the police will not want to, but in the end, they will shrug their shoulders and simply shoot the mad man dead.

Sad.

But accurate.

What’s Next

I would brace for some non-violent retaliatory actions designed to suppress some of the bellicose nature that the American leadership seems to possess. If that fails, then expect a serious , SERIOUS “bitch slap” in your backyard. Sometimes the way to deal with a crazy, out of control child, is to paddle it’s butt so that it will never, ever, again “act up”.

China, and Russia both realize this. Do not expect half-baked measures. Brace for well thought-out next actions.

If the American “leadership” (and at this stage who can serious say that America has ANY kind of leadership) doesn’t listen to all the alarm bells, flashing lights, sirens and screaming hysterical people running for their lives…

…then a “kill shot” will be necessary.

One last thought

Never forget.

The rule of three.

The ONLY way that you are going to survive this crazy period of time, and handle an insane world seemly run by imbeciles is to help others, be the best that you can be, and do great works…

Do great works.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Glimpses of Chinese life during the nice slow Summer

This little article is a collection of images, videos, glimpses and thoughts of China this July 2021.  Like all of my articles, you won’t see any of these glimpses outside of China. Instead you will get the same pre-manufactured agenda of hate and fear.

For us as a people, as a species, as humans we have to be able to communicate, experience things together and share.  And that requires unrestricted, unbiased, glimpses into the totality of other cultures. And given the absolute strangle-hold that American and Western governments have over global media, that is a Herculean task.

This article is my little tiny contribution. I wish for all of us to better understand each other. I want us to see things as they are, and not be manipulated by others with evil corrupted intent.

Soon, a newly funded barrage of Anti-China media will be launched. (As if we aren’t soaked already) And this one, funded to the tune of millions of United States (freshly minted) dollars will interject hateful lies in just about every article coming out of the West. It will be all inclusive.

Here’s a short video of how the BBC “doctored” up one of an expats videos depicting China to make it look ugly, cold and grey. You MUST view this…

Not just simply lies and distortions, but intentional interjections of specific terms used to vilify China. Of course, the purpose is to “suppress” China, but it is also “setting the table” for a major war with China. Well, at least that is what the Washington K-street neocons desire.

I watch all of this in horror.

But, I can’t do much about it. All that I can do is open up some lines of communication and insight. As in all of my articles, click on the pictures to see the short movie. (All are very short, but gives a great overview of what is going on.)

First up…

Henan floods

The past week saw days of continuous heavy rainfall in central China’s Henan province.

According to the National Meteorological Center, the accumulated rainfall reached 622.7 millimeters in the provincial capital, Zhengzhou, between 2 a.m. Tuesday and 2 a.m. Wednesday, more than double the 24-hour threshold of 250 millimeters for extremely heavy rainfall.

Several factors, including atmospheric pressure, a typhoon and topography of the region, have contributed to the unusual downpour.

Working together during a crisis.

There have been numerous stories of how people helped each other out during the floods. Rufus’s engaged, and people working together as one. It is truly uplifting. More than 100,000 people had been evacuated by Thursday morning.

Rufus to the rescue!

This massive effort was helped by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Armed Police Force dispatching their servicemen and equipment to assist local police and firefighters in emergency rescue and relief work.

Firemen to the rescue!

Do you see all those people running up to cheer on the fire and rescue staff? No, it’s not Hollywood. It’s what China is really like. You have no idea just how proud and patriotic the Chinese are.

Here we have the PLA mobilized and ready to help. One thing you learn when you are in China is how quickly China can mobilize and get things done.

PLA to the rescue.

And here’s another video. All in all, I find it particularly impressive.

The PLA on the move.

From Richard Turrin

I have been following Richard Turrin on LinkedIN. He's a scholar and an author of numerous books and he has some very insightful and profound articles and points of view. His takes on issues within China are worth reading. Here is one of his introductions to an article from the economist. Which is a really strong pro-USA, anti-China screed.

This article dances around the edges of the recent tech crack-down in China. Calling out China’s efforts to reel in its tech companies while glossing over the details.

First, let’s broach something cultural, that should be evident by now. China’s regulators could care less about disturbing the short-term stock market value of their tech sector. That may strike many as shocking but it’s a fundamentally different take on their job. Compare it to regulators in the West who do everything possible not to disturb markets.

No better example of this can be found than yesterday’s hammering of education sector stocks following announcements affecting curriculum and profit status for after-hours private schooling.

Is it better, to have such disruptive regulators? No, not necessarily, but it suits China. China is changing at a pace that most in the West cannot conceive of. This is where I think this article goes wrong. Without these fast-acting regulatory circuit breakers, a fast-moving country like China would simply be out of control.

China’s regulators are fundamentally concerned about the direction tech is taking society and act decisively though not always swiftly to counter imbalances. China’s after-hours school programs are an example as they were causing disturbances and inequalities in the educational system.

Should they have caught it earlier? Certainly, and the same argument might be made for Ant. I talk about this in Cashless.

The Economist article raises an absurd issue of changing tech’s business models. For both the edutech sector and Ant a strong argument can be made that their business plans were contrary to the public good.  Edutech stripping teachers from the classroom, Ant providing credit without limit. Changing tech’s business models is a good thing, if they are causing harm. Perhaps someone should take a look at Facebook.

Facebook is the US government.

As far as Didi seeking protection in the courts, we’ll have to wait to see whether this is warranted. Didi appears to have been advised to call off its IPO in a fashion similar to Ant. Certainly, a last-minute pull-back would have warranted howls, but in the end, both Didi and investors would have been better served.

It’s not a question of whether China’s system is better than the West’s at dealing with BigTech. China’s system works best for China, there is little likelihood its decisiveness will be exported.

That may be unfortunate, as big tech in the West appears beyond regulation regardless of the damage it causes. For all of the cries of foul in the markets, China is setting itself up for a better digital future while the West does nothing.

I know markets prefer the West’s approach, but society just might be better served by China’s.

Some Chinese food – Chinese / Vietnamese

Well, I tend to eat a lot of delicious Chinese food. I believe that the reason is because It is delicious. And it is cheap. And it is all around me. And… oh, all the pretty girls eat Chinese food. Well, at least in China they do.

Here is the interior of a local chain restaurant in a local mall. This one serves Chinese / Vietnamese food. If you read the BBC, CNN, or FOX “news” you might be under the impression that everyone in China is starving and just waiting to be “liberated” for democracy™ and freedom™. Not true. Not even remotely true.

Here’s the interior of the restaurant.

Inside the Chinese / Vietnamese restaurant.

And here’s some of what I ate.

The first thing that came to the table was this delicious fish. Instead of steamed, deboned, and served with lemon which is common in the states, this fish was gutted, filled with spices and baked. Then served with lime and some seasonings that you dip the tasty morsels into.

Delicious fish.

The next thing that was brought to the table was some curried meat. I said in the video that it was beef. No. It was chicken. Still quite tasty. Not everyone likes curried foods. But I do. It’s rich and thick broth is oh, so flavorful.

Our meal, was a typical Guangzhou style meal. One creature that swims, one that flies (or tries to), and one that walks on all fours. Which is the next dish brought up…

Delicious Curried Chicken.

And then they brought out this pork meal. The pork is cut up in tiny, tiny morsels and mixed with green beans and spices. You then place a spoonful in the lettuce and you eat it like a taco. It’s a “finger food”, which is generally uncharacteristic of China. But it’s good, and goes well with the wine that we were drinking.

Pork lettuce wrap thingys.

It was a great meal.

What’s up next?

Well, long time MM readers will recognize that I always associate delicious food with beautiful women. The two go hand in hand. Like Turkey and stuffing, or a cell phone and APPs. Or, perhaps a car and tires.

Some pretty Chinese Ladies…

On Tictok (Douxing) are all sorts of filters that work with AI to “enhance” your movie postings. One of the popular ones, for the attractive ladies, is for the face to be all messed up and colored and smeared with blue paint. Personally, I don’t really “get it”, but then again, I am from a different generation. In “my day” we were sensible with fads and fashion. We had “pet rocks“, “earth shoes“, and “Choker collars“.

Acting beautiful with a face smeared in blue.

And then we have this nice lass. She reminds me of a “Southern Fish Fry”, which is a kind of BBQ that you have in the South-East of the United States. She’s got all those “charms” that I find so personally attractive.

Southern Fish Fry.

This girl here is most certainly a pizza-pie-lass. When I look at her, I can’t help but think of steamy hot pizza, right out of the oven, a nice tossed salad, some bread-sticks with a saucy dip, and lots of salt and hot peppers. I know, I know, you might argue that she is more of a bread with sausage called Focaccia con Salsiccia (in Italian) kind of girl. But let’s not quibble over these minor points.

A pizza pie lass.

This next girl is completely delicious. We see her in her house, probably her bedroom. And I can’t help myself. I just want to share a nice chicken soup, and a light bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich with her. And you know, what else? That’s right. A fine iced tea with some orange and mint.

She’s an afternoon, luncheon kind of girl.

An afternoon, luncheon kind of girl.

This next girl is certainly a “Horn of Plenty” kind of girl.

China, like anywhere else, has people in all shapes and sizes. This is a more robust girl. She is a full meal. And While I have referred to her as a “Horn of Plenty” kind of woman, there is no question that she is as hearty as a pot roast with wine, and a round steak served with mashed potatoes.

A Horn of Plenty kind of girl.

Here’ a nice chocolate fudge kind of girl.

I really like fudge, but piping hot chocolate fudge on a nice tasty vanilla ice cream is one of my little pleasures in life. That and cats. Anyways, here’s a nice chocolate fudge kind of girl.

A chocolate fudge kind of girl.

And a “stop traffic” kind of girl…

Though, I would refer to her as a chocolate Fudgsicle kind of girl myself. You know, the kind of girl that teleports you to your childhood when you were at the pool on a hot, hot Summer day. And you had this particular crush on one of the young lifeguards at the pool…

Fudgsicle kind of girl.

Fudgsicle kind of girl.

Temporary Ferry Building

Much of what you see in China are temporary constructions. These nice, clean and spartan structures are all going to be torn down in a year or two. As the new enormous structures are being built. It’s amazing, and unheard of in the United States.

Temporary Ferry Building.

What a difference 15 years makes…

China has devoted time, and energy to clean up it’s environment on every level. From enforcing change with the Corruption Police, to enacting clean standards, to planting plants everywhere, including on urban bridges, to a massive reforestation effort nationwide. An you can actually see the results.

It’s astounding.

It’s astounding.

Just like America is sinking millions of dollars in anti-China propaganda, China is putting money in promotion of being conservators of the environment. It’s everywhere. Take care of the world. Take care of the environment. take care of others. And then everyone can have a great life together.

You see this everywhere.

In a mall.

China’s war on poverty

We hear the headlines about how China has lifted over a billion people out of poverty. And we look at the stats, and we look at the results. And it is truly impressive. But that’s only a small part of the story. China is uniting. Everyone is contributing. Everyone is working together, and everyone is doing their part.

Like this singer…

We see glimpses of people on the lower social tiers eating a big heaping bowl of plain rice because that is all they can afford. Or an old man trying to sell some apples with a colostomy bag hanging on his back. We see the frustration and the trials and the strife of those who haven’t eaten in weeks, or who are going though strife and turmoil.

China, the people of China’s message to everyone, is “we will not abandon you”. You are not alone. The entire nation is coming together to the betterment of all.

China is a nation of Rufus.

Going on the defense…

With all the pro-war unity that is gathering in the United States for a war with China, don’t eve be under the impression that China is not aware of it. They are, and have been very busy strengthening their own military. And it is nothing like what is presented within the American (Western) media. It’s strong, powerful, ENORMOUS, and lethal.

China is not a nation to trifle with.

And here’s another…

China’s military is strong, powerful, ENORMOUS, and lethal.

And here’s another…

Anyone who thinks that they can take on China militarily, on Chinese soil, is delusional.

Robots… robots… robots…

China leads the world in the development and production of robots. And since China is always cost sensitive, these expansive machines keep on going down in price. Here’s a nice video of a local ping-pong hall. It’s sort of like how we have “Pool halls” out in the United States. Check out the robots.

Some Dim Sum

Originally a custom in Cantonese cuisine, dim sum is inextricably linked to the Chinese tradition of yum cha or drinking tea. Teahouses sprung up to accommodate weary travelers journeying along the famous Silk Road.

Dim Sum restaurant.

Dim sum is an umbrella category for small Chinese dishes. Typical examples of this food are small dumplings, wrapped foods such as won tons and egg rolls, and other foods. In general, individual portions of dim sum are small, so that numerous dishes can be ordered and sampled by the table.

Dim sum is a large range of small Chinese dishes that are traditionally enjoyed in restaurants for breakfast and lunch. Most modern dim sum dishes originated in Guangzhou in southern China and are commonly associated with Cantonese cuisine. In the tenth century, when the city of Guangzhou began to experience an increase in commercial travel, travelers concurrently began to frequent teahouses for small-portion meals with tea called yum cha, or "drink tea" meals. Yum cha includes two related concepts. The first is "yat jung leung gin", which translates literally as "one cup, two pieces". This refers to the custom of serving teahouse customers two pieces of delicately made food items, savory or sweet, to complement their tea. The second is dim sum and translates literally to "touching heart", the term used to designate the small food items that accompanied the tea drinking.

-Wikipedia

Some pork served in a Dim Sum establishment.

And this is a Chinese salad.

No, it doesn’t look anything like the chunk of iceberg lettuce, one tomato wedge and a big dab of salad dressing that you find in most American restaurants. Oh, use, of course you can order a “cob salad”, or a “caesar salad”, or any other kind of specialized salads in the United States. But in general, if you order a meal, and it comes with a “salad”, all that “salad” is is just a chunk of iceberg lettuce.

Chinese salad.

And here’s one of my favorite dishes in China. It’s eggplant.

I know. It doesn’t look anything like the way eggplant is cooked in the West. It also doesn’t taste anything like it either. it is great, and I only wish that you could smell the aroma.

Eggplant.

And one of my top favorites…

This is called Shao Long Bao. And it is just delicious. Xiao long bao is the most delicate Chinese dim sum on earth. It has a delicate skin with the savory meat filling and a high umami soup holding within the pleated pouch. You will be amazed by the treasure elixir oozing from the paper-thin skin when you poke it gently with the chopsticks.

Xiao long bao.

High Speed Trains

America doesn’t have anything even approaching this. In fact, it just seems to me that all America is doing is just *nothing*. It’s a lot of talk, and churning out tons and tons of money that it manufactures out of thin air. Anyways, the trains are awesome!

Buying American Debt

The big news on the economic front last week was the frantic calls from America to China. At least four times China refused, and flatly refused, to buy any American debt. They are not stupid. America has a history of forcing, frightening, manipulating, or doing “dirty tricks” to get another nation to buy it’s debt. And then after a few years, America “pulls the rug out from under that nation” and their economy collapses.

China will not allow that to happen.

And since the debt is so astronomically enormous right now, everyone knows that it is impossible to ever pay back. So buying it is like chaining yourself to a heavy rock and throwing yourself into the ocean. China won’t have anything to do with it.

So what’s left for America?

Not much.

  • Raise the interest rates. If it does, it will severely cut in it’s ability to spend. Inflation would immediate skyrocket, and the stock markets would take some serious hits.
  • Cut back on everything; all forms of government programs at an extreme level. Military. Social. Basic services. Everything.
  • Start a war. Convince Americans to pay attention to it, and in the distraction reduce their quality of life. Then loot the losing nation. The American leadership avoids the guillotine, and a war in a far-away land with generate endless piles of money for defense contractors.

Given the funding priorities, which option do you believe will be taken?

“U.S. political leadership has doubled down on the status quo rather than adapt to the needs of the people. 

Instead of following through on widely supported policies such as universal healthcare, student debt relief and a living wage, the Biden administration has increased the military budget. 

Instead of reducing the prison population, the Biden administration has increased weapons transfers from the Pentagon to local police departments. 

It should come as no surprise that U.S. presidents struggle to maintain favorability ratings above 45 percent while Congress generally hovers at around half of such support. 

Change is hard to come by, even when such change is desired by most of the population and is required to preserve human life itself in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

China does not have such a problem. 

The Communist Party of China (CPC) maintains popular support because adaptation is a key pillar of its governance model. 

Many in the U.S. and the West have been taught that the CPC does not allow criticism, both inside and outside of the organization. This is categorically false.”

Bus stops in China

Listen to my narrative on a comparison between Chinese bus stops and American city bus stops. There really is a big difference. In America having an enclosed bus stop costs money, as does adding a bench, or a trash can. These are too expensive for most cities to accept. Not so in China.

Bus stop.

On a ferry

Here’s a little video that I took on a Chinese ferry. Boy oh, boy does it show just how astoundingly different Chinese ferries are from their crappy-old American counterparts. Anyone who has been to China can see the difference. It is stark.

Chinese ferry.

Fishing in China

One of the things that I love to do… when I encounter a “know it all” rabid anti-China fellow American… When they start to lecture me on all the prepackaged propaganda phrases that they regurgitate…

…I ask them…

“What you you think about the toll roads in China?”

And they look at me, like a deer in the middle of a road staring at the headlights of an approaching car.

Or, I ask them “tell me about what you don’t like about fishing in China”.

And they have no idea what to say, because both of those items are never mentioned in the propaganda barrage that controls the mindless slave-serfs.

This is what fishing in China looks like…

Fishing in China.

 

Some Chinese songs by 胡66

Hu 66, whose real name is Hu Rui, was born in 1998 in Fuyang County, Jiangsu Province, Chinese mainland female singer and network anchor.

胡66

In October 2017, she joined Cool Dog Live as a contracted network anchor.

In December 2017, the release of the song “Empty As Well” officially entered the acting world, in April, the release of the first single “Innately Difficult to Guess” , and in June, the release of the song “The Waveman” , with which the song won the Pop Music Annual Audience Favorite Singles of the Year Award on May 6, 2019

I hope you enjoy these two songs as much as I do.

Finally…

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

A look at the report “alien interview” by MM parsing items deemed thousands of years old

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

In the transcript the extraterrestrial jumps all over. And in many instances he seems to reflect normal regular human feelings and attitudes about issues (such as the platypus) and you can read it and miss many things as it is a dated document translated by a nurse in 1947. In order to best sort it out, to a frame of reference that we can all understand, I am now (in this series of articles) going to separate the “Alien Interview” document into sections categorized by dates.

The extraterrestrial discussed period of time in…

  • Trillions of years. (Birth of consciousness, universe creation.)
  • Billions of years. (Galaxy creation, and early civilizations.)
  • Millions of years. (Local events in our region, and mankind.)
  • Thousands of years. (A scope most important to humans.)

In this article we will discuss the time scope of thousands of years.

Because the text will be taken out of the document, there might be some discontinuity in the text. In any case, I would advise reading the entire full document for a better understanding of context. Further, keep in mind that the purpose of this particular post / article is to separate the transcript into wide categories depending on the span of times discussed. I fear that the extraterrestrial was talking about a few thousand years in the past, then jumped to trillions of years ago, jumps to millions of years ago, jumps to decades, and then back to billions of years ago. This effort is to help sort things out chronologically.

The text segments…

"What would you like to say, Airl?", I asked. "I have been a part of the Domain Expeditionary Force in this sector of space for several thousand years.  However, I have not personally had intimate contact with beings on Earth since 5,965 BCE.   It is not my primary function to interact with inhabitants of planets within The Domain.   I am an Officer, Pilot and Engineer, with many duties to perform. Nonetheless, although I am fluent in 347 other languages within The Domain, I have not been exposed to your English language.

The last Earth language with which I was conversant was the Sanskrit language of the Vedic Hymns. At that time I was a member of a mission sent to investigate the loss of a Domain base located in the Himalaya Mountains. An entire battalion of officers, pilots, communications and administrative personnel disappeared and the base destroyed.

One of my duties involved interrogation of the human population that inhabited the adjoining area at that time.  Many of the people in that region reported sighting "vimanas" or space craft in the area.

Following the logical extension of evidence, testimony, observation, as well as the absence of certain evidence, I led my team to the discovery that there were still "Old Empire" ships and well-hidden "Old Empire" installations in this solar system of which we had been completely unaware.

"Airl told me her reasons for coming to Earth and for being in the area of the 509th Bomber Squadron. She was sent by her superior officers to investigate the explosions of nuclear weapons which have been tested in New Mexico. Her superiors ordered her to gather information from the atmosphere that could be used to determine the extent of radiation and potential harm this might cause to the environment. During her mission, the space craft was struck by a lighting, which caused her to lose control and crash.

Airl was, and still is, an officer, pilot and engineer in an expeditionary force which is part of a space opera civilization which refers to itself as "The Domain".  This civilization controls a vast number of galaxies, stars, planets, moons and asteroids throughout an area of space that is approximately one-fourth of the entire physical universe!    The continuing mission of her organization is to "Secure, control and expand the territory and resources of The Domain".

Airl pointed out that their own activities were very similar in many ways to the European explorers who "discovered" and "claimed" the New World for The Holy Father, The Pope and for the kings of Spain, Portugal and later, Holland, England, France and so forth. Europe benefited from the property "acquired" from the native inhabitants.  However, the native inhabitants were never consulted with or asked for their permission to become a part of the "domain" of European nations and the soldiers and priests they sent to acquire territory and wealth in order to advance their interests.

Airl said she read in a history book that the Spanish king regretted the brutal treatment of the native inhabitants by his soldiers.   He feared retribution from the gods he worshipped, as described in the various testaments of the Bible.   He asked the Pope to prepare a statement called "The Requirement" which was supposed to be read to each of the newly encountered native inhabitants.

The king hoped that the statement, whether it was accepted or rejected by the natives, would absolve the King of all responsibility for the resulting slaughter and enslavement of these people. He used this statement as justification to confiscate their lands and possessions by his soldiers and the Pope's priests.    Apparently, the Pope, personally, did not have any feelings of guilt or responsibility in the matter.

Airl thought that such actions were those of a coward and that it is no surprise that the territory of Spain was diminished so quickly. Only a few years later the king was dead and his empire had been assimilated by other nations.

Airl said that this sort of  behavior does not occur in The Domain.   Their leaders assume full responsibility for the actions of The Domain, and would not denigrate themselves in this fashion.   Nor do they fear any gods or have any regret for their actions. This idea reinforces my earlier suggestion that Airl and her people are probably atheists.

In the case of the acquisition of Earth by The Domain, the rulers of The Domain have chosen not to openly reveal this intention to the "native inhabitants" of Earth until a later time when it may, or may not, suit their interests to reveal themselves.   For the present time, it is not strategically necessary to make the presence of The Domain Expeditionary Force known to Mankind.                          In fact, until now, it has been very aggressively hidden, for reasons that will be revealed later.

The asteroid belt near Earth is a very small, but important location for The Domain in this part of space.   Actually, some of the objects in our solar system are very valuable for use as low-gravity "space stations".     They are interested primarily in the low gravity satellites in this solar system which consists mainly of the side of the moon facing away from Earth and the asteroid belt, which was a planet that was destroyed billions of years ago, and to a lesser degree, Mars and Venus.   Domed structures synthesized from gypsum or underground bases covered by electromagnetic force screens are easily constructed to house the Domain forces.

Once an area of space is acquired by The Domain and becomes a part of the territory under its control, it is treated as the "property" of The Domain.  The space station near the planet Earth is important only because it lay along a path of The Domain expansion route toward the center of the Milky Way galaxy and beyond.    Of course, everyone in The Domain is aware of this -- except for the people of Earth."

"Airl described the abilities of an IS-BE officer of The Domain to me, and she demonstrated one to me when she contacted -- telepathically -- a communications officer of The Domain who is stationed in the asteroid belt.

The asteroid belt is composed of thousands of broken up pieces of a planet that once existed between Mars and Jupiter.    It serves as a good low-gravity jumping off point for incoming space craft traveling toward the center of our galaxy.

She requested that this officer consult information stored in the "files" of The Domain, concerning the history of Earth.     She asked the communications officer to "feed" this information to Airl. The communications officer immediately complied with the request. Based on the information stored in the files of The Domain, Airl was able to give me a brief overview or "history lesson".  This is what Airl told me that The Domain had observed about the history of Earth:

She told me that The Domain Expeditionary Force first entered into the Milky Way galaxy very recently -- only about 10,000 years ago.  Their first action was to conquer the home planets of the "Old Empire" (this is not the official name, but a nick-name given to the conquered civilization by The Domain Forces) that served as the seat of central government for this galaxy, and other adjoining regions of space. These planets are  located in the star systems in the tail of the Big Dipper constellation. She did not mention which stars, exactly.

About 1,500 years later The Domain began the installation bases for their own forces along the path of invasion which leads toward the center of this galaxy and beyond.   About 8,200 years ago The Domain forces set up a base on Earth in the Himalaya Mountains near the border of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan.   This was a base for a battalion of The Domain Expeditionary Force, which included about 3,000 members.

They set up a base under or inside the top of a mountain.  The mountain top was drilled into and made hollow to create an area large enough to house the ships and personnel of that force. An electronic illusion of the mountain top was then created to hide the base by projecting a false image from inside the mountain against a "force screen".    The ships could then enter and exit through the force screen, yet remain unseen by homo sapiens.

Shortly after they settled there the base was surprised by an attack from a remnant of the military forces of the "Old Empire". Unbeknownst to The Domain, a hidden, underground base on Mars, operated by the "Old Empire", had existed for a very long time.  The Domain base was wiped out by a military attack from the Mars base and the IS-BEs of The Domain Expeditionary Force were captured.

You can imagine that The Domain was very upset about losing such a large force of officers and crew, so they sent other crews to Earth to look for them. Those crews were also attacked.   The captured IS-BEs from The Domain Forces were handled in the same fashion as all other IS-BEs who have been sent to Earth. They were each given amnesia, had their memories replaced with false pictures and hypnotic commands and sent to Earth to inhabit biological bodies. They are still a part of the human population today.

After a very persistent and extensive investigation into the loss of their crews, The Domain discovered that "Old Empire" has been operating a very extensive, and very carefully hidden, base of operations in this part of the galaxy for millions of years.   No one knows exactly how long.  Eventually, the space craft of the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain engaged each other in open combat in the space of the solar system.

According to Airl, there was a running battle between the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain until about 1235 AD, when The Domain forces finally destroyed the last of the space craft of the "Old Empire" force in this area.   The Domain Expeditionary Force lost many of its own ships in this area during that time also.

About 1,000 years later the "Old Empire" base was discovered by accident in the spring of 1914 AD. The discovery was made when the body of the Archduke of Austria   was "taken over" by an officer of The Domain Expeditionary Force. This officer, who was stationed in the asteroid belt, was sent to Earth on a routine mission to gather reconnaissance.

The purpose of this "take over" was to use the body as a "disguise" through which to infiltrate human society in order to gather information about current events on Earth.  he officer, as an IS-BE, having greater power than the being inhabiting the body of the Archduke, simply "pushed" the being out and took over control of the body.

However, this officer did not realize how much the Hapsburgs were hated by feuding factions in the country, so he was caught off guard when the body of the Archduke  was assassinated by a Bosnian student.  The officer, or IS-BE, was suddenly "knocked out" of the body when it was shot by the assassin.         Disoriented, the IS-BE inadvertently penetrated one of the "amnesia force screens" and was captured.

Eventually The Domain discovered that a wide area of space is monitored by an "electronic force field" which controls all of the IS-BEs in this end of the galaxy, including Earth.  The electronic force screen is designed to detect IS-BEs and prevent them from leaving the area.

If any IS-BE attempts to penetrate the force screen, it "captures" them in a kind of "electronic net".   The result is that the captured IS-BE is subjected to a very severe "brainwashing" treatment which erases the memory of the IS-BE.  This process uses a tremendous electrical shock, just like Earth psychiatrists use "electric shock therapy" to erase the memory and personality of a "patient" and to make them more "cooperative".

On Earth this "therapy" uses only a few hundred volts of electricity.    However, the electrical voltage used by the "Old Empire" operation against IS-BEs is on the order of magnitude of billions of volts!  This tremendous shock completely wipes out all the memory of the IS- BE.  The memory erasure is not just for one life or one body.  It wipes out all of the accumulated experiences of a nearly infinite past, as well as the identity of the IS-BE!

The shock is intended to make it impossible for the IS-BE to remember who they are, where they came from, their knowledge or skills, their memory of the past, and ability to function as a spiritual entity.   They are overwhelmed into becoming a mindless, robotic non-entity.

After the shock a series of post hypnotic suggestions are used to install false memories, and a false time orientation in each IS-BE. This includes the command to "return" to the base after the body dies, so that the same kind of shock and hypnosis can be done again, and again, again -- forever.  The hypnotic command also tells the "patient" to forget to remember.

What The Domain learned from the experience of this officer is that the "Old Empire" has been using Earth as a "prison planet" for a very long time -- exactly how long is unknown -- perhaps millions of years.

So, when the body of the IS-BE dies they depart from the body. They are detected by the "force screen", they are captured and   "ordered" by hypnotic command to "return to the light".   The idea of "heaven" and the "afterlife" are part of the hypnotic suggestion -- a part of the treachery that makes the whole mechanism work.

After the IS-BE has been shocked and hypnotized to erase the memory of the life just lived,  the IS-BE is immediately "commanded", hypnotically, to "report" back to Earth, as though they were on a secret mission, to inhabit a new body.  Each IS-BE is told that they have a special purpose for being on Earth. But, of course there is no purpose for being in a prison -- at least not for the prisoner.

Any undesirable IS-BEs who are sentenced to Earth were classified as "untouchable" by the "Old Empire".  This included anyone that the "Old Empire" judged to be criminals who are too vicious to be reformed or subdued, as well as other criminals such as sexual perverts, or beings unwilling to do any productive work.

An "untouchable" classification of IS-BEs also includes a wide variety of "political prisoners".   This includes IS-BEs who are considered to be noncompliant "free thinkers" or "revolutionaries" who make trouble for the governments of the various planets of the "Old Empire". Of course, anyone with a previous military record against the "Old Empire" is also shipped off to Earth.

A list of "untouchables" include artists, painters, singers, musicians, writers, actors, and performers of every kind.   For this reason Earth has more artists per capita than any other planet in the "Old Empire".

"Untouchables" also include intellectuals, inventors and geniuses in almost every field. Since everything the "Old Empire" considers valuable has long since been invented or created over the last few trillion years, they have no further use for such beings. This includes skilled managers also, which are not needed in a society of obedient, robotic citizens.

Anyone who is not willing or able to submit to mindless  economic, political and religious servitude as a tax-paying worker in the class system of the "Old Empire" are "untouchable" and sentenced to receive memory wipe-out and permanent imprisonment on Earth.

The net result is that an IS-BE is unable to escape because they can't remember who they are, where they came from, where they are. They have been hypnotized to think they are someone, something, sometime, and somewhere other than where they really are.

The Domain officer who was "assassinated" while in the body of Archduke of Austria was, likewise, captured by the "Old Empire" force. Because this particular officer was a high powered IS-BE, compared to most, he was taken away to a secret "Old Empire" base under the surface of the planet Mars.  They put him into a special electronic prison cell and held him there.

Fortunately, this Domain officer was able to escape from the underground base after 27 years in captivity.   When he escaped from the "Old Empire" base, he returned immediately to his own base in the asteroid belt.   His commanding officer ordered that a battle cruiser be dispatched to the coordinates of the base provided by this officer and to destroy that base completely. This "Old Empire" base was located a few hundred miles north of the equator on Mars in the Cydonia region.

Although the military base of the "Old Empire" was destroyed, unfortunately, much of the vast machinery of the IS-BE force screens, the electroshock / amnesia / hypnosis machinery continues to function in other undiscovered locations right up to the present moment.  The main base or control center for this "mind control prison" operation has never been found. So, the influences of this base, or bases, are still in effect.

The Domain has observed that since the "Old Empire" space forces were destroyed there is no one left to actively prevent other planetary systems from bringing their own "untouchable" IS-BEs to Earth from all over this galaxy, and from other galaxies nearby.    Therefore, Earth has become a universal dumping ground for this entire region of space.

This, in part, explains the very unusual mix of races, cultures, languages, moral codes, religious and political influences among the IS-BE population on Earth.  The number and variety of heterogeneous societies on Earth are extremely unusual on a normal planet.   Most "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planets are inhabited by only one humanoid body type or race, if any.

In addition, most of the ancient civilizations of Earth, and many of the events of Earth have been heavily influenced by the hidden, hypnotic operation of the "Old Empire" base.  So far, no one has figured out exactly where and how this operation is run, or by whom because it is so heavily protected by screens and traps.

Furthermore, there has been no operation undertaken to seek out, discover and destroy the vast and ancient network of electronics machinery that create the IS-BE force screens at this end of the galaxy. Until this has been done, we are not able to prevent or interrupt the electric shock operation, hypnosis and remote thought control of the "Old Empire" prison planet.

Of course all of the crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force now remain aware of this phenomena at all times while operating in this solar system space so as to prevent detection and the capture by "Old Empire" traps."

"The Domain Expeditionary Force has observed a resurgence in science and culture of the Western world since 1150 AD when the remaining remnants of the space fleet of the "Old Empire" in this solar system were destroyed.

The influence of the remote control hypnosis operation diminished slightly after that time, but still remains largely in force.

Apparently a small amount of damage was done to the "Old Empire" remote mind control operation which resulted in a small decrease in the power of this mechanism.

As a result, some memory of technologies that IS-BEs already knew before they came to Earth started to be remembered. Thereafter the oppression of knowledge that is called the "Dark Ages" in Europe began to diminish after that time.

Since then knowledge of the basic laws of physics and electricity have revolutionized Earth culture virtually overnight.

The ability to remember technology by many of the geniuses in the IS-BE population of Earth was partially restored, when not so actively suppressed as it was before 1150 AD. Sir Isaac Newton, is one of the best examples of this. In only a few decades he single-handedly reinvented several major and fundamental scientific and mathematical disciplines.

The men who "remembered" these sciences already knew them before they were sent to Earth. Ordinarily, no one would ever observe or discover as much about science and mathematics in a single life-time, or even in a few hundred life-times.    These subjects have taken civilizations billions and billions of years to create!

IS-BEs on Earth have only just begun to remember small fragments of all the technologies that exist throughout the universe.   Theoretically, if the amnesia mechanisms being used against Earth could be broken entirely, IS-BEs would regain all of their memory!

Unfortunately, similar advances have not been seen in the humanities as the IS-BEs of Earth continue to behave very badly toward each other.  This behavior, however, is heavily influenced by the "hypnotic commands" given to each IS-BE between lifetimes.

And, the very unusual combination of "inmates" on Earth - criminals, perverts, artists, revolutionaries and geniuses - is the cause of a very restive and tumultuous environment.   The purpose of the prison planet is to keep IS-BEs on Earth, forever. Promoting ignorance, superstition, and war between IS-BEs helps to keep the prison population crippled and trapped behind "the wall" of electronic force screens.

IS-BEs have been dumped on Earth from all over the galaxy, adjoining galaxies, and from planetary systems all over the "Old Empire", like Sirius, Aldebaron, the Pleiades, Orion, Draconis, and countless others. There are IS- BEs on Earth from unnamed races, civilizations, cultural backgrounds, and planetary environments. Each of the various IS-BE populations have their own languages, belief systems, moral values, religious beliefs, training and unknown and untold histories.

These IS-BEs are mixed together with earlier inhabitants of Earth who came from another star system more than 400,000 years ago to establish the civilizations of Atlanta and Lemuria.   Those civilizations vanished beneath the tidal waves caused by a planetary "polar shift", many thousands of years before the current "prison" population started to arrive.  Apparently, the IS-BEs from those star systems were the source of the original, oriental races of Earth, beginning in Australia.

On the other hand, the civilizations set up on Earth by the "Old Empire" prison system were very different from the civilization of the "Old Empire" itself, which is an electronic space opera, atomic powered conglomeration of earlier civilizations that were conquered with nuclear weapons and colonized by IS-BEs from another galaxy.

The bureaucracy that controlled the former "Old Empire" was from an ancient space opera society, run by a totalitarian confederation of planetary governments, regulated by a brutal social, economic, and political hierarchy, with a royal monarch as its figurehead.

This type of government emerges with regularity on planets where the citizens abandon personal responsibility for autonomous, self-regulation. They frequently lose their freedom to demented IS-BEs who suffer from an overwhelming paranoia that every other IS-BE is their enemy who must be controlled or destroyed. Their closest friends and allies, whom they espouse to love and cherish, are literally "loved to death" by them.

Because such IS-BEs exist, The Domain has learned that freedom must be won and maintained through eternal vigilance and the ability to use defensive force to maintain it.

As a result, The Domain has already conquered the governing planet of the "Old Empire".  The civilization of The Domain, although considerably younger and smaller in size, is already more powerful, better organized, and united by an egalitarian esprit de corps never known in the history of the "Old Empire".

The recently despoiled German totalitarian state on Earth was similar to the "Old Empire", but not nearly as brutal, and about ten thousand times less powerful. Many of the IS- BEs on Earth are here because they are violently opposed to totalitarian government, or because they were so psychotically vicious that they could not be controlled by "Old Empire" government.

Consequently, the population of Earth is disproportionately comprised of a very high percentage of such beings.  The conflicting cultural and ethical moral codes of the IS-BEs on Earth is unusual in the extreme.

The Domain conquest of the central "Old Empire" planets was fought with electronic cannon. The citizens of the planets forming the core of government for the "Old Empire" are a filthy, degraded, slave society of mindless, tax-paying workers, who practice cannibalism. Violent automotive race tracks and bloody, Roman circus type entertainments are their only amusements.

Regardless of any reasonable justification we may have had for using atomic weapons to vanquish the planets of the "Old Empire", The Domain is careful not to ruin the resources of those planets by using weapons of crude, radioactive force.

The government of the "Old Empire", before being supplanted by The Domain, was comprised of beings who possessed a very craven intelligence, very much like the Axis powers during your recent world war.    Those beings manifested precisely the same behavior as the galactic government that exiled them to eternal imprisonment on Earth.  They were a gruesome reminder of the ageless maxim that an IS-BE will often manifest the treatment they have received from others.

Kindness fosters kindness. Cruelty begets cruelty.   One must be able and willing to use force, tempered with intelligence, to prevent harm to the innocent. However, extraordinary understanding, self- discipline and courage are required to effectively prevent brutality, without being overwhelmed by the malice that motivated the brutality.

Only a demonic, self-serving government would employ a "logic" or "science" to conceive that an "ultimate solution" to any problem is to murder and permanently erase the memory of every artist, genius, skilled manager, and inventor, and cast them into a planetary prison together with political opponents, killers, thieves, perverts, and disabled beings of an entire galaxy!

Once the IS-BEs expelled from the "Old Empire" arrived on Earth, they were given amnesia, and hypnotically tricked into thinking that something else had happened to them. The next step was to implant the IS-BEs into biological bodies on Earth.   The bodies became the human populations of "false civilizations" which were designed and installed in the minds of IS-BEs to look completely unlike the "Old Empire".

All of the IS-BEs of India, Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Medieval Europe were guided to pattern and build the cultural elements of these societies based on standard patterns developed by the IS-BEs of many earlier, similar civilizations on "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planets that have existed for trillions of years throughout the universe.

In the earliest times the IS-BEs sent to prison Earth lived in India.        They gradually spread into Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, Achaea, Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, and to the New World.  They were hypnotically "commanded" to follow the pattern of a given civilization by the "Old Empire" prison operators.   This is an effective mechanism to disguise the actual time and location from the IS-BEs imprisoned on Earth.  The languages, costumes and culture of each false civilization are intended to reinforce amnesia because they do not remind the IS-BEs on Earth of the original "Old Empire" planets from which they were deported.

On the very far back-track of time these types of civilizations tended to repeat themselves over and over because the IS-BEs who created them become familiar with certain patterns and styles, and stayed with them.  It is a lot of work to invent an entire civilization, complete with culture, architecture, language, customs, mathematics, moral values, and so forth. It is much easier to replicate a copy based on a familiar and successful pattern.

A "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planet is the designation given to a planet inhabited by carbon-oxygen based life forms.  The class of the planet is based on the size and radiation intensity of the star, the distance of the planetary orbit from the star, and the size, density, gravity, and chemical composition of the planet.

Likewise, flora and fauna are designated and identified according to the star type and class of planet they inhabit.

On the average, the percentage of planets in the physical universe with a breathable atmosphere is relatively small. Most planets do not have an atmosphere upon which life-forms "feed", as on Earth, where the chemical composition of the atmosphere provides nutrition to plants, and other organisms, which in turn support other life forms.

When the Domain Force brought the Vedic Hymns to the Himalayas region 8,200 years ago, some human societies already existed. The Aryan people invaded and conquered India , bringing the Vedic Hymns to the area.

The Vedas were learned by them, memorized and carried forward verbally for 7,000 years before being committed to written form. During that span of time one of the officers of The Domain Expeditionary Force was incarnated on Earth as "Vishnu".   He is described many times in the Rig-Veda.  He is still considered to be a god by the Hindus.   Vishnu fought in the religious wars against the "Old Empire" forces. He is a very able and aggressive IS-BE as well as a highly effective officer, who has since been reassigned to other duties in The Domain.

This entire episode was orchestrated as an attack and revolt against the Egyptian pantheon installed by "Old Empire" administrators.  The conflict was intended to help free humankind from implanted elements of the false civilization that focused attention on many "gods" and superstitious ritual worship demanded by the priests who "managed" them.  It is all part of the mental manipulation by the "Old Empire" to hide their criminal actions against the IS-BEs on Earth.

A priesthood, or prison guards, were used to help reinforce the idea that an individual is only a biological body and is not an Immortal Spiritual Being. The individual has no identity. The individuals have no past lives.

The individual has no power.   Only the gods have power. And, the gods are a contrivance of the priests who intercede between men and the gods they serve. Men are slaves to the dictates of the priests who threaten eternal spiritual punishment if men do not obey them.

What else would one expect on a prison planet where all prisoners have amnesia, and the priests themselves are prisoners?

The intervention of The Domain Force on Earth has not been entirely successful due to the secret mind-control operation of the "Old Empire" that still continues to operate.

A battle was waged between the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain through religious conquest. Between 1500 BCE and about 1200 BCE, The Domain Forces attempted to teach the concept of an individual, Immortal Spiritual Being, to several influential beings on Earth.

One such instance resulted in a very tragic misunderstanding, misinterpretation and misapplication of the concept.   The idea was perverted and applied to mean that there is only one IS-BE, instead of the truth that everyone is an IS-BE!  Obviously, this was a gross incomprehension and an utter unwillingness to take responsibility for one's own power.

The "Old Empire" priests managed to corrupt the concept of individual immortality into the idea that there is only one, all-powerful IS-BE, and that no one else is or is allowed to be an IS- BE. Obviously, this is the work of the "Old Empire" amnesia operation.

It is easy to teach this altered notion to beings who do not want to be responsible for their own lives.  Slaves are such beings.  As long as one chooses to assign responsibility for creation, existence and personal accountability for one's own thoughts and actions to others, one is a slave.

As a result, the concept of a single monotheistic "god" resulted and was promoted by many self-proclaimed prophets, such as the Jewish slave leader -- Moses -- who grew up in the household of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, as well as his son Tutankhamen.

The attempt to teach certain beings on Earth the truth that they are, themselves, IS-BEs, was part of a plan to overthrow the fictional, metaphorical, anthropomorphic panoply of gods created by the "Old Empire" mystery cult called "The Brothers of The Serpent" known in Egypt as the Priests of Amun. They were a very ancient, secret society within the "Old Empire".

The Pharaoh Akhenaten was not a very intelligent being, and was heavily influenced by his personal ambition for self- glorification.     He altered the concept of the individual spiritual being and embodied the concept in the sun god, Aten.     His pitiful existence was soon ended.  He was assassinated by Maya and Parennefer, two of the Priests of Amun, or "Amen", which the Christians still say, who represented the interests of the "Old Empire" forces.

The idea of "One God" was perpetuated by the Hebrew leader Moses while he was in Egypt. He left Egypt with his adopted people, the Jewish slaves.         While they were crossing the desert, Moses was intercepted by an operative of the "Old Empire" near Mt. Sinai. Moses was tricked into believing that this operative was "the" One God through the use of hypnotic commands, as well as technical and aesthetic tricks which are commonly used by the "Old Empire" to trap IS-BEs.       Thereafter, the Jewish slaves, who trusted the word of Moses implicitly, have worshiped a single god they call "Yaweh".

The name "Yaweh" means "anonymous", as the IS- BE who "worked with" Moses could not use an actual name or anything that would identify himself, or blow the cover of the amnesia / prison operation. The last thing the covert amnesia / hypnosis / prison system wants to do is to reveal themselves openly to the IS-BEs on Earth.  They feel that this would restore the inmates memories!

This is the reason that all traces of physical encounters between operatives of space civilizations and humans is very carefully hidden, disguised, covered-up, denied or misdirected.

This "Old Empire" operative contacted Moses on a desert mountain top and delivered the "Ten Hypnotic Commands" to him.   These commands are very forcefully worded, and compel an IS-BE into utter subservience to the will of the operator.   These hypnotic commands are still in effect and influence the thought patterns of millions of IS-BEs thousands of years later!

Incidentally, we later discovered that the so- called "Yaweh" also wrote, programmed and encoded the text of the Torah, which when it is read literally, or in its decoded, form, will provide a great deal more false information to those who read it.

Ultimately, the Vedic Hymns became the source of nearly all of Eastern the religions and were the philosophical source of the ideas common to Buddha, Laozi, Zoroaster, and other philosophers. The civilizing influences of these philosophies eventually replaced the brutal idolatry of the "Old Empire" religions and were the true genesis of kindness and compassion.

You asked me earlier why The Domain, and other space civilizations do not land on Earth or make their presence known.

Land on Earth?  Do you think we are crazy or want to be crazy?

It takes a very brave IS-BE to come down through the atmosphere and land on Earth, because this is a prison planet, with a very uncontrolled, psychotic population.  And, no IS-BE is entirely proof against the risk of entrapment, as with the members of The Domain Expeditionary Force who were captured in the Himalayas 8,200 years ago.

No one knows what IS-BEs on Earth are going to do.

We are not scheduled to invest the resources of The Domain to take total control of all the space surrounding the area at this time.    This will occur in the not-too-distant future -- about 5,000 Earth years -- according to the time schedule of The Domain.  At this time we do not prevent transports from other planetary systems or galaxies from continuing to drop IS-BEs into the amnesia force screen area. Eventually, this will change.

In addition, Earth, inherently, is a highly unstable planet. It is not suitable for settlement or permanent habitation for any sustainable civilization.     This is part of the reason why it is being used as a prison planet. No one else would seriously consider living here for a variety of simple and compelling reasons:

The continental land masses of Earth are floating on a sea of molten lava beneath the surface which causes the land masses to crack, crumble and drift

Because of the liquid nature of the core, the planet is largely volcanic and subject to earthquakes and volcanic explosion

The magnetic poles of the planet shift radically about once every 20,000 years. This causes a greater or lesser degree of devastation as a result of tidal waves, and climatic

Earth is very distant from the center of the galaxy and from any other significant galactic civilization. This isolation makes it unsuitable for use, except as a "pit stop" or jumping off point along the way between galaxies.  The moon and asteroids are far more suitable for this purpose because they do not have any significant gravity.

Earth is a heavy gravity planet, with heavy metallic soil and a dense atmosphere. This makes it treacherous for navigational That fact that I am in this room, as the result of an in flight accident, in spite of the technology of my craft and my extensive expertise as a pilot, are proof of these facts.

There are approximately sixty billion Earth- like (Sun Type 12, Class 7) planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, not to mention the vast expanses of The Domain, and the territories we will claim in the future. It is difficult to stretch our resources to do much more than a periodic reconnaissance of Earth. Especially when there are no immediate advantages to invest resources

On Earth most beings are not aware that they are IS-BEs, or that there are spirits of any kind. Many other beings are aware of this, but nearly everyone has a very limited understanding of themselves as an IS-BE.

One of the reasons for this is that IS-BEs have been waging war against each other since the beginning of time.  The purpose of these wars have always been to establish domination by one IS-BE or group of IS-BEs over another. Since an IS-BE cannot be "killed", the objective has been to capture and immobilize IS-BEs.This has been done in an nearly unlimited variety of ways. The most basic method to capture and immobilize an IS-BE is through the use of various kinds of "traps".

IS-BE traps have been made and put in place by many invading societies, such as the one that established the "Old Empire", beginning about sixty-four trillion years ago.  Traps are often set up in the "territory" of the IS-BEs being attacked.Usually a trap is set with the electronic wave of "beauty" to attract the interest and attention of the IS-BE. When the IS-BE moves toward the source of the aesthetic wave, such as a beautiful building or beautiful music, the trap is activated by the energy put out by the IS-BE.

One of the most common trap mechanism uses the IS-BE's own thought energy output when the IS- BE tries to attack or fight back against the trap. The trap is activated and energized by the IS-BE's own thought energy. The harder the IS-BE fights against the trap, the more it pulls the IBS toward it and keeps them "stuck" in the trap.

Throughout the entire history of this physical universe, vast areas of space have been taken over and colonized by IS-BE societies who invade and take over new areas of space in this fashion.   In the past, these invasions have always shared common elements:

(1) the overwhelming use of force of arms, usually with nuclear or electronic mind control of the IS-BEs in the invaded area through the use of electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, erasure of memory and the implantation of false memory or false information intended to subjugate and enslave the local IS-BE

(2) takeover of natural resources by the invading IS-BEs.

(3) political, economic and social slavery of the local population.

These activities continue in present time.   All of the IS-BEs on Earth have been members of one or more of these activities in the past, both as an invader, or as part of the population being invaded.  There are no "saints" in this universe.   Very few have avoided or been exempted from warfare between IS-BEs.

IS-BEs on Earth are still the victims of this activity at this very moment.   The between- lives amnesia administered to IS-BEs is one of the mechanisms of an elaborate system of "Old Empire" IS-BE traps, that  prevent an IS-BE from escaping.

This operation is managed by an illicit, renegade secret police force of the "Old Empire", using false provocation operations to disguise their activities in order to prevent detection by their own government, The Domain and by the victims of their activities. 

They are mind-control methods developed by government psychiatrists.

Earth is a "ghetto" planet.  It is the result of an intergalactic "Holocaust". IS-BEs have been sentenced to Earth either because:

They are too viciously insane or perverse to function as part of any civilization, no matter how degraded or

Or, they are a revolutionary threat to the social, economic and political caste system that has been so carefully built and brutally enforced in the "Old Empire". Biological bodies are specifically designed and designated as the lowest order of entity in the "Old Empire" caste system.   When an IS-BE is sent to Earth, and then tricked or coerced into operating in a biological body, they are actually in a prison, inside a...

In an effort to permanently and irreversibly rid the "Old Empire" of such "untouchables", the eternal identity, memory, and abilities of every IS-BE is   forcefully erased.    This "final solution" was conceived and carried out by the psychopathic criminals who are controlled by the "Old Empire".

The mass extermination of "untouchables" and prison camps created by Germany during World War II were recently revealed. Likewise, the IS-BEs of Earth are the victims of spiritual eradication and eternal slavery inside frail, biological bodies, inspired by the same kind of craven hatred in the "Old Empire".

The kind and creative inmates of Earth are continuously tortured by butchers and lunatics who are controlled by the "Old Empire" prison operators. The so-called "civilizations" of Earth, from the age of useless pyramids to the age of nuclear holocaust, have been a colossal waste of natural resources, a perverted use of intelligence, and an overt oppression of the spiritual essence of every single IS-BE on the planet.

If The Domain sent ships to every corner of the universe in search of "Hell", their quest could end on Earth. What greater brutality can be inflicted on anyone than to erase the spiritual awareness, identity,  ability, and memory that is the essence of oneself?

The Domain has, as yet, been unable to rescue the 3,000 IS-BEs of the Expeditionary Force Battalion either.  

They are forced to inhabit biological bodies on Earth.  We have been able to recognize and track most of them for the past 8,000 years. However, our attempts to communicate with them are usually futile, as they are unable to remember their true identity.

The majority of lost members of The Domain force have followed the general progression of Western civilization from India, into the Middle East, then to Chaldea, and Babylon, into Egypt, through Achaia, Greece, Rome, into Europe, to the Western Hemisphere, and then all around the world.

The members of the lost Battalion and many other IS-BEs on Earth, could be valuable citizens of The Domain, not including those who are vicious criminals or perverts. Unfortunately, there has been no workable method conceived to emancipate the IS-BEs from Earth.

Therefore, as a matter of common logic, as well as the official policy of The Domain, it is safer and more sensible to avoid contact with the IS-BE population of Earth until such time as the proper resources can be allocated to locate and destroy the "Old Empire" force screen and amnesia machinery and develop a therapy to restore the memory of an IS-BE."

"The actual history of Earth is very bizarre. It is so nonsensical that is it is incredible to anyone on Earth who attempts to investigate it. A myriad of vital information is missing from it. A huge conglomeration of non sequitur relics and mythology has been arbitrarily introduced into it.  The volatile nature of the Earth itself cyclically covers, drowns, mixes and shreds physical evidence.

These factors, combined with amnesia and post- hypnotic suggestions, false facades and covert manipulation make  a reconstruction of the factual origins and history of Earth civilizations virtually indecipherable.    Any investigator, no matter how brilliant, is doomed to wallow in a quagmire of inconclusive assumptions, unworkable hypotheses, and perpetual mystery.

Since The Domain does not suffer these afflictions, having the advantage of memory, longevity and an exterior point of view, I will add some clarification to your fragmentary knowledge of the history of Earth.

These are some of the dates and events that are not mentioned in Earth history textbooks.

These dates are significant because they provide some information concerning the influences of the "Old Empire" and of The Domain on Earth.

Although I have attended several briefings by our mission control personnel on the general background of Earth within the past few hundred years, I will rely principally on data gathered from records captured after our invasion of the "Old Empire" planetary headquarters.  Since that time The Domain Expeditionary Force has tracked the general progress of events on Earth.

As I mentioned, in some cases The Domain has chosen to intervene in certain affairs on Earth in order to ensure the success of our long term expansion plans.  Although The Domain has no interest in Earth, per se, or in the population of IS-BEs on this planet, it does serve our interests to ensure that the resources of Earth are not destroyed or spoiled. To that end, certain officers of The Domain have been sent to Earth on reconnaissance missions from time to time to gather information.

However, the following dates and events have been extrapolated from the accumulated information in the data files of The Domain -- at least those that are accessible to me through the space station communications center.

208,000 BCE --

The establishment of the "Old Empire", whose headquarters were located near one of the "tail stars" in the Ursa Major (Big Dipper) Constellation of this galaxy.  The "Old Empire" invasion force conquered the area with nuclear weapons sometime earlier.  After the radioactivity subsided and the clean-up and restoration were completed, it received the immigration of beings from another galaxy into this galaxy.  Those beings set up a society that kept going until about 10,000 years ago when it was superseded by The Domain.

Very recently Earth civilization has come to resemble aspects of that civilization, now that it has fallen out of its immediate control.  In particular, the appearance and technology of transportation such as planes, trains, ships, fire engines, and automobiles, as well as what you consider to be "modern" or "futuristic" architecture, which emulate the design of buildings in the major cities of the "Old Empire".

Before 75,000 BCE --

The Domain records contain very little information about the civilizations on the continental land masses of Atlanta and Lemur, except to note that they did coexist on Earth at more or less the same time.  Apparently, both civilizations were founded by remnants of electronic, space opera cultures who fled from their native planetary systems to escape political or religious persecution.

The Domain knows that a long-standing edict of the "Old Empire" prohibits unauthorized colonization of planets.   Therefore, it is possible that their destruction was caused by police or military forces who pursued the colonists as criminals and destroyed them. Although this seems a likely supposition, no conclusive evidence exists that explains the complete destruction and disappearance of two entire electronic civilizations.

Another possibility is that a massive submarine volcanic eruption in the region of Lake Toba, in Sumatra and Mt. Krakatoa in Java caused the destruction of Lemur. The flood waters caused by the eruption overwhelmed all the land masses, including the highest mountains. Survivors of the destruction of the civilization, the Lemurians, are the earliest ancestors of the Chinese.  Australia and the ocean areas to the north were the center of the Lemurian civilization and are the source of Oriental races.    Both civilizations possessed electronics, flight and similar technologies of space opera cultures.

Apparently, the volcanic eruption expelled such a significant mass of molten rock that the resulting vacuum beneath the crust of Earth caused great areas of the land masses to sink below the oceans.  The continental areas occupied by both civilizations were covered with volcanic matter, and then submerged, leaving very little evidence that they ever existed except for legends of a global flood which prevail in every culture of the Earth, and for survivors who are the genus of oriental races and cultures.

That kind of colossal volcanic explosion fills the stratosphere with toxic gases which are carried around the whole planet. The usual refuse of these volcanic eruptions can easily cause a rain that lasts for "40 days and 40 nights" due to atmospheric pollution as well as an extensive period during which radiation from the sun is deflected back into space, and cause global cooling. Certainly such an event would cause an ice age, extinctions of life forms and many other relatively long-term changes lasting thousands of years.

Due to the myriad types of naturally occurring global cataclysmic events which are indigenous to Earth, it is not a suitable planet for habitation by IS-BEs.  In addition there have been occasional global cataclysms caused by IS- BEs such as the one that destroyed the  dinosaurs more than 70 million years ago.   That destruction was caused by intergalactic warfare during which time Earth, and many other neighboring moons and planets, were bombarded  by atomic weapons. Atomic explosions cause atmospheric fallout much like that of volcanic eruptions. Most of the planets in this sector of the galaxy have been uninhabitable deserts  since then.

Earth is undesirable for many other reasons: heavy gravity and dense atmosphere, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, polar shifts, continental drift, meteor impacts, atmospheric and climatic changes, to name a few. What kind of lasting civilization could any sophisticated culture propose to develop in such an environment?

In addition, Earth is a small planet of a "rim star" of a galaxy.  This makes Earth very isolated geographically from the more concentrated planetary civilizations which exist toward the center of the galaxy. These obvious facts have made Earth suitable for use only as a zoological or botanical garden, or for its current use as a prison -- but not much else.

Before 30,000 BCE --

Earth started being used as a dumping ground and prison for IS-BEs who were judged "untouchable", meaning criminal or non- conformists. IS-BEs were captured, encapsulated in electronic traps and transported to Earth from various parts of the "Old Empire".  Underground "amnesia stations" were set up on Mars and on Earth in the Rwenzori Mountains in Africa, in the Pyrenees Mountains of Portugal, and in steppes of Mongolia.

These electronic monitoring points create force screens designed to detect and capture IS-BEs, when the IS-BE departs the body at death.  IS- BEs are brainwashed using extreme electronic force in order to maintain Earth's population in state of perpetual amnesia.   Further population controls are installed through the use of long range electronic thought control mechanisms.

These stations are still in operation and they are extremely difficult to attack or destroy, even for The Domain, which will not maintain a significant military force in this area until a later date.

The pyramid civilizations were intentionally created as part of the IS-BE prison system on Earth. The pyramid is alleged to be the symbol for "wisdom".        However, the "wisdom" of the "Old Empire" on planet Earth is intended to operate as part of the elaborate amnesia "trap" consisting of MASS, MEANING and MYSTERY.   These are opposite to the qualities of an Immortal Spiritual Being which have no mass, or meaning. An IS-BE "is" solely because it thinks that it "is".

MASS represents the physical universe, including objects such as stars, planets, gases, liquids, energy particles and tea cups. The Pyramids were very, very solid objects, as were all of the structures created by the "Old Empire".  Heavy, massive, dense, solid objects create the illusion of eternity.    Dead bodies wrapped in linen, soaked in resin, placed inside engraved golden coffins and entombed with Earthly possessions amid cryptic symbols create an illusion of eternal life.   However, dense, heavy physical universe symbols are the exact opposite of an IS-BE. An IS-BE has no mass or time.  Objects do not endure forever. An IS-BE "is" forever.

MEANING:  False meanings prevent knowledge of the truth.

The pyramid cultures of Earth are a fabricated illusion.  They are nothing more than "false civilizations" contrived by the "Old Empire" mystery cult called the Brothers of the Serpent.    False meanings were invented to create the illusion of a false society to further reinforce the amnesia mechanism among the intimates in the Earth prison system.

MYSTERY is built of lies and half-truths.

Lies cause persistence because they alter facts which are comprised of exact dates, places and events.     When truth is known, a lie no longer persists.   If the exact truth is revealed, it   is no longer a mystery.

All of the pyramid civilizations of Earth were carefully contrived of layer upon layer of lies, skillfully combined with a few truths. The priest cult of the "Old Empire" combined sophisticated mathematics and space opera technology, with theatrical metaphors and symbolism.  All of these are complete fabrications of truth, baited with the allure of aesthetics and mystery.

The intricate rituals, astronomical alignments, secret rites, massive monuments, marvelous architecture, artistically rendered hieroglyphs and man-animal "gods" were designed to create a unsolvable mystery for the IS-BE prison population on Earth.

The mystery diverts attention away from the truth that IS-BEs have been captured, given amnesia and imprisoned on a planet far, far away from their home.

The truth is that every single IS-BE on Earth came to Earth from some other planetary system. Not one person on Earth is a "native" inhabitant.    Human beings did not "evolve" on Earth.

In the past, Egyptian society was run by the prison administrators or priests, who, in turn, manipulated a Pharaoh, controlled the treasury and kept the inmate population enslaved physically and spiritually. In modern times, the priests have changed, but the function is the same. However, now the priests are prisoners too.

Mystery reinforces the walls of the prison.  The "Old Empire" feared that the IS-BEs on Earth might regain their memory.  Therefore, one of the primary functions of The "Old Empire" priesthood is to prevent IS-BEs on Earth from remembering who they really are, how they came to Earth, where they came from.

The "Old Empire" operators of the prison system, and their superiors, do not want IS-BEs to remember who murdered them, captured them, stole all of their possessions, sent them to Earth, gave them amnesia and condemned them to eternal imprisonment!

Imagine what might happen if all of the inmates in the prison suddenly remembered that they have the right to be free!  What if they suddenly realized that they have been falsely imprisoned and rise up as one against the guards?

They are afraid to reveal anything that looks like the civilization of the inmates home planets.    A body, a piece of clothing, a symbol, a space ship, an advanced electronics device, or any other remnant of civilization from a home planet could "remind" a being and rekindle his memory.

Sophisticated technologies of entrapment and enslavement,  which were developed over millions of years in the "Old Empire", have been applied to the IS-BEs on Earth with the intention to create a false facade for the prison.     These facades were installed on Earth in totality, all at once.     Every piece is a fully integrated part of the prison system.

This includes a religion of mumbo-jumbo double- speak. Every pyramid civilization uses this as part of a control mechanism to keep the population enslaved by force, by fear and by ignorance. The indecipherable muddle of irrelevant information, geometric designs, mathematical calculation, astronomical alignments, are part of a false spirituality based on solid objects, rather than immortal spirits, in order to confuse and disorient the IS-BEs on Earth.

When the body of a person died they were buried with their Earthly possessions, including their former body wrapped in linen, to sustain their "soul" or "Ka" after death.  An IS-BE does not "have" as soul.  An IS-BE is a soul.

On the home planet of an IS-BE their material possessions were not lost, stolen or forgotten when the being died or left the body.

An IS-BE could return and claim the possessions. However, if the IS-BE has amnesia, they will not remember that they had any possession.

So, governments, insurance companies, bankers, family members and other vultures can pick their possessions clean without fear of retribution from the deceased.

The only reason for these false meanings is to instill the idea that an IS-BE is NOT a spirit, but a physical object!  This is a lie.  It is a trap for an IS-BE.

Countless people have spent endless hours attempting to solve the jig-saw puzzle of Egypt and other "Old Empire" civilizations. They are puzzles made of pieces that do not fit.  A question states its own answer.  What is the mystery of Egypt and other pyramid cultures? Mystery!

circa 15,000 BCE --

The "Old Empire" forces supervised the construction of a hydraulic mining operation in the Andes Mountains in present day Bolivia near Lake Titicaca (Lake of Tin Stones) at Tiahuanaco including construction of the massive stone complex of carved stone buildings known as Kalasasaya and its "Gate of the Sun" at an elevation of nearly 14,000 feet.

11,600 BCE --

The Polar Axis of Earth shifted to a sea area. The last Ice Age came to an end abruptly as the polar ice caps melted and the level of the ocean rose to submerge large sections of the land masses of Earth. The last remaining vestiges of Atlantis and Lemuria were covered by water. Massive extinctions of animals occurred in the Americas, Australia and the Artic Regions due to the shift of the poles.

10,450 BCE --

Plans were made by the "Old Empire" IS-BE called Thoth for construction of a Great Pyramid of Giza.   The 4 "air shafts" of the pyramid point precisely to key stars in the "Old Empire" as seen from Giza in this year. The alignment of the Pyramids of Giza on the ground matches perfectly the alignment of the constellation of Orion as seen in the sky from Giza relative to the Nile as the earthly representation of the Milky Way in the sky.

10,400 BCE --

According to the Earth historian, Herodotus, records from the ruined civilization of Atlantis, containing electronic technology and other technology of that society, were buried in a vault beneath the paws of The Sphinx.  The Greek historian wrote that he was told this by some of his friends who were Priests of Anu, the Sumerian god, at the Egyptian city of Heliopolis. However, it is highly unlikely that any traces of an electronic civilization would be allowed to be left intact on Earth by the "Old Empire" prison system administrators.

8,212 BCE --

The Veda or Vedic hymns are a set of religious hymns that were introduced into the societies of Earth.  They came forward in spoken tradition, memorized, from generation to generation.   "The Hymn to the Dawn Child'' includes an idea called the "cycle of the physical universe": the creation, growth, conservation, decay and death or destruction of energy and matter in a space.  These cycles produce time. The same set of hymns describes the "theory of evolution". Here is a tremendous body of knowledge which contains a great deal of spiritual truth.

Unfortunately, it has been incorrectly evaluated by humans and altered with lies and reversals of fact by priests which are a booby trap to prevent anyone from using the wisdom to discover a way to escape from the prison planet.

8,050 BCE --

Destruction of the "Old Empire" home planet government in this galaxy.             This was the end of the "Old Empire" as a political entity in the galaxy.         However, the vast size of the "Old Empire" will take many thousands of years for The Domain to conquer completely.  The inertia of the political, economic and cultural systems of the "Old Empire" will remain in place for some time to come.

However, remnants of the "Old Empire" space fleet in the solar system of Earth were finally destroyed in 1,230 AD. In addition to operatives of the "Old Empire" who run the Earth prison operation, there were other beings from the "Old Empire" who came to Earth.

Since Earth was no longer under the control of the "Old Empire" after their defeat by The Domain Forces, there was no police force to control military renegades, space pirates, miners, merchants and entrepreneurs who came to Earth to exploit the resources of the planet for personal gain, and many other nefarious reasons.

For example, the history of Earth, according to the Jewish people, describes the "Nephilim". Chapter 6 of The Book of Genesis, describes the origin of the "Nephilim" :

"Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the "sons of God" saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown."

The ancient Jewish people who wrote the history book called the Old Testament were slaves, herders and gatherers. Any modern technology, even a simple flashlight, would seem astounding and miraculous to them. They attributed any unexplainable phenomenon or technology to the workings of a "god".           Unfortunately, this behavior is universal among all IS-BEs who have been given amnesia, and cannot remember their own experiences, training, technology, personality or identity.

Obviously, if these were men, and they mated with Earth women, they were not "sons of god". They were IS-BEs who inhabited biological bodies in order to take advantage of the political situation in the "Old Empire", or simply to indulge in physical sensation. They set up small colonies of their own on Earth beyond the reach of the police and tax authorities.

Coincidentally, one of the most serious crimes an IS-BE could commit in the "Old Empire" was to violate income tax regulations. Income taxes were used as a slavery mechanism and as a punishment in the "Old Empire". The slightest error in a tax report made an IS-BE "untouchable", followed by imprisonment on Earth.

6,750 BCE --

Other Pyramid civilizations were set up by the "Old Empire" on Earth.  These were established in Babylon, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica. The Mesopotamian area provided service facilities, communication stations, space ports, and stone quarry operations for these false civilizations.

Ptah was the name given to the first in a succession of administrators from the "Old Empire" who represented themselves to the Earth population as "divine" rulers.

Ptah's importance may be understood when one learns that the word "Egypt" is a Greek corruption of the phrase "Het-Ka-Ptah," or "House of the Spirit of Ptah".  Ptah, was nick- named "The Developer". He was a construction engineer. His high priest was given the title 'Great Leader of Craftsmen'.

Ptah was also the god of reincarnation in Egypt. He originated the "opening of the mouth ceremony" which was performed by priests at funerals to "release souls" from their corpses. Of course, when the "souls" were released, they were captured, given amnesia, and returned to Earth again.

The so-called "Devine" rulers who followed Ptah on Earth were called "Ntr", meaning "Guardians or Watchers" by the Egyptians. Their symbol was the Serpent, or Dragon which represented a secret priesthood of the "Old Empire" called the "Brothers of the Serpent".

"Old Empire" engineers used cutting tools of highly concentrated light waves to quickly carve and excavate stone blocks. They also used force fields and space craft to lift and transport blocks of stone weighing hundred or thousands of tons each. The placement on the ground of some of these structures will be found to have geodetic or astronomical significance relative to various stars in this galactic region.

The buildings are crude and impractical, compared to building standards on most planets. As an engineer of The Domain, I can attest that make-shift structures like these would never pass inspection on a planet in The Domain. Stone blocks such as those used in the pyramid civilizations can still be seen, partially excavated, in the stone quarries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Most of the structures were hastily built "props", much like the false facades of a western town on the set of a motion picture. They appear to be real, and to have some use or value, however, they have no value. They have no useful purpose.   The pyramids and all of the other stone monuments erected by the "Old Empire" could be called "mystery monuments". For what reason would anyone waste so many resources to construct so many useless buildings?  To create a mysterious illusion.

The fact of the matter is that each one of the "divine rulers" were IS-BEs who served as operatives of the "Old Empire".  They were certainly not "divine", although they were IS- BEs.

6248 BCE --

The beginning of active warfare between The Domain Space Command and the surviving remnants of the "Old Empire" space fleet in this solar system that lasted nearly 7,500 years.   It began when an installation was established in the Himalaya mountains by a battalion of the 3,000 officers and crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force.  The installation was not fortified as The Domain was not aware that the "Old Empire" maintained Earth as a prison planet.

The Domain installation was attacked and destroyed by space forces of the "Old Empire" who continued to operate in the solar system of Earth. IS-BEs of The Domain battalion were captured, taken to Mars, given amnesia, and sent back to Earth to inhabit human biological bodies.  They are still on Earth.

5,965 BCE --

Investigations into the disappearance of Domain forces in this solar system led to the discovery of "Old Empire" bases on Mars and elsewhere.  The Domain took over the planet Venus as a defensive position against the space forces of the "Old Empire". The Domain Expeditionary Force also monitors life forms on Venus which has a very dense, hot and heavy atmosphere of sulfuric acid clouds.        There are a few life forms on Earth that can endure an atmospheric environment like Venus.

The Domain also established secret installations or space stations in the Earth solar system.   This solar system has a planet that is broken up -- the asteroid belt. It provides a very useful low-gravity platform for take off and landing of space craft.    It is used as a "galactic jump" between the Milky Way and adjoining galaxies. There aren't any planets at this end of the galaxy that can serve as a good galactic entering spot for incoming transport, and other ships.  But this broken up planet makes a very ideal space station. As a result of our war against the "Old Empire", this area of the solar system is now a valuable possession of The Domain.

3,450 - 3,100 BCE --

The intervention into the affairs on Earth by the "Old Empire" operatives or "divine gods" was disrupted at this time by The Domain Forces.  They were forced to replace themselves with human rulers.    The First Dynasty of human Pharaohs who united Upper and Lower Egypt began with the rule of a Pharaoh who, coincidentally, was named "MEN". He established the capital city called Men-Nefer, "The Beauty of Men" in Egypt.  This started the first succession of 10 human Pharaohs and a period of 350 years of chaos that followed in the administrative ranks of the "Old Empire".

3,200 BCE --

As I mentioned earlier, Earth was under attack between The Domain and the "Old Empire" forces during this period. Of course this does not make any sense to archaeologists or historians on Earth, because the Egyptian period is a space opera era period. Since Earth historians have amnesia, they assume that this was only a religious period.

Further, because the technology and civilizations installed on Earth during this period were "pre-packaged", they did not "evolve" on Earth.  Of course, there is no evidence anywhere on Earth of an evolutionary transition which resulted in sophisticated mathematics, language, writing, religion, architecture, cultural traditions in Egypt or any of the pyramid civilizations. These cultures, complete with all of the details of racial body types, hair-styles, facial make-up, rituals, moral codes and so forth, just "appeared" as complete integrated packages.

The physical evidence suggests that all evidence of the intervention of The Domain or "Old Empire" Forces, or any other extraterrestrial activity, has been carefully "cleaned up", so as not to create suspicion. The "Old Empire" force does not want the IS-BEs of Earth to suspect that they have been captured, transplanted to Earth and brainwashed.

So, Earth historians continue to assume that Egyptian priests were not supposed to have "ray guns" or other technology of the "Old Empire". And, they suppose that there was nothing going on, on Earth, except some priests walking around saying 'Amen', which the Christians still say.

3,172 BCE --

Layout of the astronomical grid that joins the key mining sites and astronomical buildings of 'the gods' in the Andes Mountains such as Tiahuanaco, Cuzco, Quito, the cities of Ollantaytambu, Machupiccu and Pachacamac for the mining of rare metals, including tin for use in making bronze.  Metals were the property of "the gods", of course.

A great variety of entrepreneurial mining was done on Earth at that time due to the war between the "Old Empire" force and The Domain. These miners did carve a few sculptures of themselves. They are seen wearing mining helmets. The Ponce Stela sculpture in the sunken courtyard of the Kalasasaya temple is a crude rendering of a stone worker using an electronic, light-wave emitting stone cutter and carving tools, held in a holster.

The "Old Empire" has also maintained mining operations on planets throughout the galaxy for a very long time.  The mineral resources of Earth are now a property of The Domain.

2,450 BCE --

The "great" pyramid and complex of pyramids near Cairo were completed. An inscription created by the "Old Empire" administrators can be seen in the so-called Pyramid texts. The texts say that the pyramid was built under the direction of Thoth, Son of Ptah. Of course there was never a King buried in the chamber, since the pyramids were never intended to be used as a burial chamber.

The great pyramid was located precisely at the exact center of all of the land masses of Earth, as viewed from space. Obviously such precise measurements require aerial perspective and a view of the land masses of Earth from space.     Purely mathematical calculations of the geodetic center of the continents of Earth could not be made otherwise.

Shafts were constructed inside the pyramid to align with the configuration of stars in the constellation of Orion, Canus Majora, and specifically Sirius. The shafts are also aligned to the Big Dipper, where the home planet of the "Old Empire" existed.    Also, Ainitak, Alpha Draconis and Beta Ursa Minor. These stars are each one of the key systems in the "Old Empire" from which IS-BEs were brought to Earth and dumped, as unwanted merchandise.

The configuration of all the pyramids of the Giza Plateau was intended to create a "mirror image", on Earth of the solar system and certain constellations within the "Old Empire".

2,181 BCE --

MIN, became the God of Fertility of Egypt. The IS-BE, also known as Pan, was also a Greek god. Min or Pan, was an IS-BE who somehow managed to escape from the "Old Empire" amnesia system.

2,160 - 2040 BCE --

One of the results of the intensifying battle between The Domain Forces and the "Old Empire" forces was that the control of the "divine rulers", was broken at this time.  They finally left Egypt and returned to the "heavens", so to speak, in defeat.   Human beings took over the ruling role as Pharaohs.  The first human pharaoh moved the Capital city of Egypt from Memphis to Heracleopolis.

1,500 BCE --

This is the date for the destruction of Atlantis given by the Egyptian high-priests, Psenophis of Heliopolis, and Sonchis of Sais, to the Greek sage Solon. The Priests of Anu recorded that the Mediterranean area was invaded by "Atlantean" people about this time. Of course, these people were not from the ancient continent of Atlanta, in the Atlantic Ocean, which existed more than 70,000 years earlier.

These were refugees from the Minoan civilization on Crete escaping from the volcanic eruption and tidal waves of Mt. Thera that destroyed their civilization.

Plato's references to Atlantis were borrowed from the writings of the Greek philosopher Solon, who was given the information by the Egyptian priest who called Atlantis "Kepchu", which also happens to be the Egyptian name for the people of Crete. Some of the survivors of the Minoan volcanic disaster asked Egypt for help, since they were the only other civilization with high culture in the Mediterranean area at the time.

1351 BCE - 1337 BCE --

The Domain Expeditionary Force actively waged a war of religious conquest against the Egyptian mystery cult called the Priest of Amun, also known as the "Old Empire" Brothers of The Serpent. During this time the Pharaoh Akhenaten abolished the priesthood of Amun, and moved the capital of Egypt from Thebes to the new location at Amarna, at the exact geodetic center of Egypt. However, this plot to overthrow the "Old Empire" religious control was quickly spoiled.

1,193 BCE --

In the Near East and Achaea, the Greeks and Trojans fought for supremacy, which ended in the destruction of Troy as the finale of the Trojan War. During this same time, war was being fought out in the space of the solar system between two forces for control of the "space stations" surrounding Earth.   That period of 300 years was a very violent resistance to The Domain Forces by the remnants of the "Old Empire" forces. It did not last long however, as it is futile to resist The Domain.

850 BCE --

Homer, the blind Greek poet, wrote the stories 'the gods' as borrowed and modified from earlier sources in Vedic texts, Sumerian texts, Babylonian and Egyptian mythology.  His poems, as well as many other "myths" of the ancient world are very accurate descriptions of the exploits of IS-BE's on Earth who were able to avoid the "Old Empire amnesia operation and operate without biological bodies.

700 BCE --

The Vedic Hymns were first translated in the Greek language.  This was the beginning of a cultural revolution in Western civilization that transformed       crude and brutal tribal cultures into democratic republics based on more reasonable conduct.

638 - 559 BCE --

Solon, a wise man from Greece, reported the existence of Atlantis.  This was information he received from the "Old Empire" high-priests, Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Sais, with whom he studied in Egypt.

630 BCE --

Zoroaster created religious practices in Persia around an IS-BE called Ahura Mazda. This was yet another of the growing number of "monotheistic" gods put in place by operatives of The Domain to displace a panoply of "Old Empire" gods.

604 BCE --

Laozi, a philosopher who wrote a small book called "The Way", was an IS-BE of great wisdom, who overcame the effects of the "Old Empire" amnesia / hypnosis machinery and escaped from Earth.  His understanding of the nature of an IS-BE must have been very good to accomplish this.

According to the common legend, his last lifetime as a human was lived in a small village in China. He contemplated the essence of his own life. Like Guatama Siddhartha, he confronted his own thoughts, and past lives. In so doing, he recovered some of his own memory, ability and immortality.

As an old man, he decided to leave the village and go to the forest to depart the body. The village gatekeeper stopped him and begged him to write down his personal philosophy before leaving. Here is a small piece of advice he gave about "the way" he rediscovered his own spirit:

"He who looks will not see it; He who listens will not hear it; He who gropes will not grasp it. The formless nonentity, the motionless source of motion. The infinite essence of the spirit is the source of life. Spirit is self. Walls form and support a room, yet the space between them is most important. A pot is formed of clay, yet the space formed therein is most useful. Action is caused by the force of nothing on something, just as the nothing of spirit is the source of all form.

One suffers great afflictions because one has a body. Without a body what afflictions could one suffer? When one cares more for the body than for his own spirit, One becomes the body and looses the way of the spirit. The self, the spirit, creates illusion. The delusion of Man is that reality is not an illusion. One who creates illusions and makes them more real than reality, follows the path of the spirit and finds the way of heaven".

593 BCE --

The Genesis story written by the Jewish people describe  "angels" or "sons of god" mating with women of Earth, who bore them children.  These were probably renegades from the "Old Empire". They may also have been space pirates or merchants from a system outside the galaxy who came to steal mineral resources, or smuggle drugs.

The Domain has observed that there are many visitors to Earth from neighboring planets and galaxies, but they rarely stop and live here. What kind of beings would live on a prison planet if they were not forced to do so?

The same book also reports the story of a human named Ezekiel who witnessed a spacecraft or aircraft landing near Chebar River in Chaldea. His description of the craft uses very archaic language, technically, but is nevertheless, quite an accurate description of an "Old Empire" saucer or scout craft. It is similar to the sighting of "vimanas" by the people in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Their Genesis story also mentions that "Yahweh" designed biological bodies to live for 120 years on Earth.  Biological bodies on most "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planets are usually engineered to last for an average of about 150 years.     Human bodies on Earth last only about one half as long.     We suspect this is because  the prison administrators have altered the biological material of human bodies on Earth to die more frequently so that the IS-BEs who inhabit them will recycle through the amnesia mechanism more frequently.

It should be noted that much of the "Old Testament" was written during the captivity of the Jews who were enslaved in Babylon, which was very heavily controlled by priests of the "Old Empire". The book introduces a false sense of time and a false concept of the origin of the creation.

The serpent is the symbol of the "Old Empire". It appears in the beginning of their creation story, or as the Greeks say, "Genesis", and causes the spiritual destruction of the first human beings, who are metaphorically represented by Adam and Eve.

The Old Testament, clearly influenced by the "Old Empire" Forces, gives a detailed description of the IS-BEs being induced into biological bodies on Earth.  This book also describes many of the "Old Empire" brainwashing activities, including the installation of false memories, lies, superstitions, commands to "forget" and all manner of tricks and traps designed to keep IS-BEs on Earth.    Most importantly, it destroys the awareness that humans are Immortal Spiritual Beings.

580 BCE --

The Oracle at Delphi was one temple in a network of many oracle temples.         Each temple was a communication center.  The "Old Empire" priests designated a local "god" for each temple. Each of the temples in this network were located at precisely 5 degrees of latitude intervals from the capital city of Thebes throughout the Mediterranean area as far north as the Baltic Sea.

The shrines served, among other things, as a grid, housing electronic beacons, later called "Omphalus Stones". The grid arrangement of Oracle sites can only be seen from miles above the Earth.  The original network of electronic communications beacons were disabled when the priesthood was dispersed, and were replaced by carved stones.

The symbol of the "Old Empire" priesthood is a Python, dragon or serpent.          It was called the "earth-dragon" at Delphi, which is always represented in sculpture and vase-paintings as a serpent.

In Greek mythology the guardian of the Omphalus Stone at the temple at Delphi was an oracle whose name was Python, the serpent. She was an IS-BE, who was conquered by a "god" named Apollo.    He buried her under the Omphalos stone. This is a case of one "god" setting up his temple on the grave of another.   This is a very accurate euphemism for The Domain Force that detected and disabled the "Old Empire" temple network on Earth. It was one of the fatal blows to the "Old Empire" Force in the solar system of Earth.

559 BCE --

The Commanding Officer of The Domain Battalion who was lost in 5,965 BCE was detected and located by a search party sent to Earth from The Domain Expeditionary Force. He was incarnated as Cyrus II of Persia during this time.

A unique system of organization was used by Cyrus II and the members of that Battalion who followed him from India through his progression of human lives on Earth.  In part, it enabled them to build the largest empire in the history of the Earth to that date.

The Domain Search Party who located him traveled around the Earth searching for the lost Battalion for several thousand years.   The party consisted of 900 officers of The Domain, divided into teams of 300 each.  One team searched the land, another team search the oceans and the third team searched the space surrounding Earth.

There are many reports made in various human civilizations concerning their activities, which humans did not understand, of course.

The Domain Search Party devised a wide variety of electronic detection devices needed to track the electronic signature or wavelength of each of the missing members of the Battalion.   Some were used in space, others on land, and special devices were invented to detect IS-BEs under water.

One of these electronic detection devices is referred to as a "tree of life". The device is literally a tool designed to detect the presence of life, which is an IS-BE. This was a large electronic screen generator designed to permeate wide areas.  To the ancient humans on Earth it resembled a sort of tree, since is consists of an interwoven lattice of electronic field generators and receivers. The electronic field detects the presence of IS-BEs, whether the IS-BE is occupying a body, or if they are outside a body.

A portable version of this detection device was carried by each of the members of The Domain Search Party.  Stone carvings in Sumeria show winged beings using pinecone-shaped instruments to scan the bodies of human beings.  They are also shown carrying the power unit for the scanner which are depicted as stylized baskets or water buckets, being carried by eagle- headed, winged beings.

Members of the aerial unit of The Domain Search Party, led by Ahura Mazda, were often called "winged gods" in human interpretations. Throughout the Persian civilization there are a great many stone relief carvings that depict winged space craft, that they called a "faravahar".

Members of the Aquatic Unit of The Domain Search Party were called "Oannes" by local humans. Stone carvings of the so-called Oannes are shown wearing silver diving suits.    They lived in the sea and appeared to the human population to be men dressed to look like fish. Some members of the lost Battalion were found in the oceans inhabiting the bodies of dolphins or whales.

On land, The Domain Search Party members were referred to as "Annunaki" by the Sumerians, and "Nephilim", in the Bible.   Of course, their true mission and activities were never disclosed to homo sapiens.   heir activities have been purposefully disguised.    Therefore, the human stories and legends about the Annunaki, and the other members of The Domain Search Party have not been understood and were badly misinterpreted.

In the absence of complete and accurate data, anyone observing a phenomenon will assume or hypothesize explanations in an attempt to make sense of the data.  Therefore, although mythology and history may be based on factual events, they are likewise full of misunderstood and misinterpreted evaluations of the data, and embellished with assumptions, theories and hypotheses which are false.

The space unit of The Domain Expeditionary Force are shown flying in a "Winged-Disc". This is an allusion to the spiritual power of the IS-BEs, as well as to the space craft used by The Domain Search Party.

The Commander of the lost Battalion, as Cyrus II, was an IS-BE who was regarded as a messiah on Earth by both the Jews, and the Muslims.   In less than 50 years he established a highly ethical, and humanitarian philosophy which pervaded all of Western Civilization.

His territorial conquests, organization of people and monumental building projects were unprecedented before or since.   Such sweeping accomplishments in a short period of time could only have been achieved by a leader and a team of trained officers, pilots, engineers and crew members of a unit of The Domain, acting as a team, who had been trained and worked together for thousands of years.

Although we have discovered the location of many of the IS-BEs in the lost Battalion, The Domain has been unable to restore their memory and return them to active duty as yet.

Of course we cannot transport IS-BEs who are inhabiting biological bodies to the space stations of The Domain since there is no oxygen in our space craft.  Also we do not maintain life support facilities for biological entities there.   Our only hope has been to locate and rekindle the awareness, memory and identity of the IS-BEs of the Lost Battalion.   One day they will be capable of rejoining us.

200 BCE --

The last remnant of the "Old Empire" pyramid civilization is at "Teotihuacán".      The Aztec name means “place of the gods” or “where men were transformed into gods”.   Like the astronomical configuration of the Giza pyramids in Egypt,  the entire complex is a precise scale-model of the solar system that accurately reflects the orbital distances of the inner planets, the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,  Neptune, and Pluto.  Since the planet Uranus  had only been "discovered" with modern Earth telescopes in 1787, and Pluto not until 1930,  it is apparent that the builders had  information from "other sources".

A common element of the Pyramid Civilizations around the Earth is the constant use of the image of the snake, dragon, or serpent.

This is because the beings who planted these civilizations here want to create an illusion that the "gods" are reptilian.  This is also a part of an illusion designed to perpetuate amnesia.     

The beings who placed false civilizations on Earth are IS-BEs, just like you.        Many of the biological bodies inhabited by IS-BEs in the "Old Empire" are very similar in appearance to the bodies on Earth. The "gods" are not reptiles, although they often behave like snakes.

1,034 - 1,124 AD --

The entire Arab world was enslaved by one man: Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah ,   the Old Man of the Mountain. He established the Hashshashin who operated a part of Mohammedanism which controlled by terror and fear much of India, Asia Minor and most of the Mediterranean Basin. They became a priesthood that used an extremely effective mind-control mechanism and extortion tool that enabled the "Assassins" to control the civilized world for several hundred years.

Their method was simple.  Young men were kidnapped and knocked unconscious with hashish. They were taken to a garden filled with beautiful black-eyed houris in a harem decorated with rivers of milk and honey.   The young men were told that they were in paradise. They were promised they could return and live there forever if they sacrificed themselves as an assassin of whomever they were commanded to kill.      The men were knocked out again, and shoved out into the world to carry out the assassination mission.

Meanwhile, the Old Man of the Mountain sent a messenger to the caliph or, whatever wealthy ruler from whom they demanded payment, demanding camel-loads of gold, spices, incense or other valuables.   If payment did not arrive on time, the assassin would be sent to kill the offending party. There was virtually no defense against the unknown assailant who wanted nothing more than to carry out his mission, be killed and return to "heaven".

This is a very crude example of how simple and effective a brainwashing and mind-control operation can be when it is used skillfully, and forcefully.                 It is a small scale demonstration of how the amnesia mind-control operation is used against the entire IS-BE population of Earth by the "Old Empire".

1119  AD --

The Knights Templar was established as a Christian military unit after the First Crusade but quickly transformed into the basis for the international banking system to accumulate money to conduct the agenda of operatives for vestiges of the "Old Empire" on Earth.

1135 - 1230 AD --

The Domain Expeditionary Force completed the annihilation of the remaining remnants of the "Old Empire" space fleet operating in the solar system around Earth.  Unfortunately, their long established thought control operation remains largely intact.

1307 AD --

The Knights Templar was disbanded by King Philip IV of France, who was deeply in debt to the Order. He pressured Pope Clement V to condemn the Order's members, have them arrested, tortured them into giving false confessions, and burned them at the stake in an effort to erase his debt by seizing all of their wealth.

A majority of the Templars fled to Switzerland where they established an international banking system which secretly controls the economy of Earth.

"Old Empire" operatives act as an unseen influence on  international bankers. The banks are operated covertly as a non-combatant provocateur to covertly promote and finance weapons and warfare between the nations of Earth.        Warfare is an internal mechanism of control over the inmate population.

The purpose of the senseless genocide and carnage of wars financed by these international banks is to prevent the IS- BEs of Earth from sharing open communication, cooperate together in activities that might enable IS-BEs to prosper, become enlightened, and escape their imprisonment."

This was compounded by the fact that The Vedic Hymns were brought to Earth 8,200 years ago by The Domain Expeditionary Force. While they were based in the Himalaya Mountains, the verses were taught to some of the local humans who memorized them.  However, I should note that this was not an authorized activity for the crew of The Domain installation, although I am sure it seemed like an innocent diversion for them at the time.

The verses were passed along verbally from one generation to the next for thousands of years in the foothills and eventually spread throughout India.           No one in The Domain credits any of the material in the Vedic Hymns as factual material, any more than you would use "Grimm's Fairy Tales" as a guide for rearing children.     However, on a planet where all of the IS-BEs have had their memory erased, one can understand how these tales and fantasies could be taken seriously.

Unfortunately, the humans who learned the Vedic verses passed them along to others saying that they came from "the gods".  Eventually, the content of the verses were adopted verbatim as "truth".    The euphemistic and metaphorical content of the Veda were accepted and practiced as dogmatic fact. The philosophy of the verses were ignored and the verses became the genesis of nearly every religious practice on the planet, especially Hinduism.

As an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain, I must always assume a very pragmatic point of view.   I could not be effective or accomplish my missions if I were to use philosophical dogma or rhetoric as my operations manual.         Therefore, our discussion of history is based on actual events that occurred long before any IS-BEs arrived on Earth, and long before the "Old Empire” came into power.

Coincidentally, a friend and engineer with whom I used to work with at the Arcadia Regeneration Company -- a long time after I left the company -- told me that one of the projects they contracted to do, in more recent times, was to deliver life forms to Earth to replenish them after a war in this region of the galaxy devastated most of the life on the planets in this region of space.   This would have been about seventy million years ago.

The skill required to modify the planet into an ecologically interactive environment that will support billions of diverse species was an immense undertaking.  Specialized consultants from nearly every biotechnology company in the galaxy were brought in to help with the project.

"Today Airl told me about some very technical things.  I took a few notes to remind myself, so I can repeat what she said as closely as possible. She began with an analogy about scientific knowledge:

Can you imagine how much progress could have been made on Earth if people like Johannes Gutenberg, Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, Nicola Tesla, Jonas Salk, and Richard Trevithick, and many thousands of similar geniuses and inventors were living today?

Image what technical accomplishments might have been developed if men like these never died? What if they were never given amnesia and made to forget everything they knew? What if they continued to learn and work forever?

What level of technology and civilization could be attained if Immortal Spiritual Beings like these were allowed to continue to create -- in the same place and at the same time -- for billions or trillions of years?

Essentially, The Domain is one civilization that has existed for trillions of years with relatively uninterrupted progress.   Knowledge has been accumulated, refined, and improved upon in nearly every field of study imaginable

-- and beyond imagining.

Originally, the interaction of IS-BE illusions or inventions created the very fabric of the physical universe -- the microcosm and the macrocosm. Every single particle of the universe has been imagined and brought into existence by an IS-BE. Everything created from an idea -- a thought with no weight or size or location in space.

Every speck of dust in space, from the size of the tiniest subatomic particle, to the size of a sun or a magelantic cloud the size of many galaxies, was created from the nothingness of a thought.    Even the tiniest, individual cells were contrived and coordinated to enable a microbial entity to sense, and navigate through infinitesimally small spaces. These also came from an idea thought up by an IS-BE.

You, and every IS-BE on Earth, have participated in the creation of this universe. Even though you are now confined to a fragile body made of flesh; you live for only 65 short rotations of your planet around a star; you have been given overwhelming electric shock treatments to wipe out your memory; you must learn everything all over again each lifetime; in spite of all these circumstances, you are who you are and will always be.   And, deep down, you still know that you are and what you know.  You are still the essence of you.

How else can one understand the child prodigy? An IS-BE who plays concertos on a piano at three years of age, without formal training? Impossible, if they did not simply remember what they have already learned from thousands of lives spent in front of a keyboard in times untold, or on planets far away.    They may not know how they know.   They just know.

Humankind has developed more technology in the past 100 years than in the previous 2,000 years. Why?  The answer is simple: the influence of the "Old Empire" over the mind and over the affairs of Mankind has been diminished by The Domain.

A renaissance of invention on Earth began in 1,250 AD with the destruction of the "Old Empire" space fleet in the solar system.  During the next 500 years, Earth may have the potential to regain autonomy and independence, but only to the degree that humankind can apply the concentrated genius of the IS-BEs on Earth to solve the amnesia problem.

However, on a cautionary note, the inventive potential of the IS-BEs who have been exiled to this planet is severely compromised by the criminal elements of the Earth population. Specifically, politicians, war-mongers and irresponsible physicists who create   unlimited weapons such as nuclear bombs, chemicals, diseases and social chaos.  These have the potential to extinguish all life forms on Earth, forever.

Even the relatively small explosions that were tested and used in the past two years on Earth have the potential to destroy all of life, if deployed in sufficient quantities. Larger weapons could consume all of the oxygen in the global atmosphere in a single explosion!

Therefore, the most fundamental problems that must be solved in order to ensure that Earth will not be destroyed by technology, are social and humanitarian problems.   The greatest scientific minds of Earth, in spite of mathematical or mechanical genius, have never addressed these problems.

Therefore, do not look to scientists to save Earth or the future of humanity.            Any so-called "science" that is solely based on the paradigm that existence is composed only of energy and objects moving through space is not a science. Such beings utterly ignore the creative spark originated by an individual IS-BE and collective work of the IS-BEs who continually create the physical universe and all universes. Every science will remain relatively ineffective or destructive to the degree that it omits or devaluates the relative importance of the spiritual spark that ignites all of creation and life.

Unfortunately this ignorance has been very carefully and forcefully instilled in human beings by the "Old Empire"  to ensure that IS- BEs on this planet will not be able to recover their innate ability to create space, energy, matter and time, or any other component part of universes. As long as awareness of the immortal, powerful, spiritual "self" is ignored, humanity will remain imprisoned until the day of its own, self-destruction and oblivion.

Do not rely on the dogma of physical sciences to master the fundamental forces of creation any more than you would trust the chanted incantations of an incense-burning shaman. The net result of both of these is entrapment and oblivion.  Scientists pretend to observe, but they only suppose that they see, and call it fact.    Like the blind man, a scientist can not learn to see until he realizes that he is blind.    The "facts" of Earth science do not include the source of creation. They include only the result, or byproducts of creation.

The "facts" of science to not include any memory of the nearly infinite past experience of existence.

The essence of creation and existence cannot be found through the lens of a microscope or telescope or by any other measurement of the physical universe.  One cannot comprehend the perfume of a flower or the pain felt by an abandoned lover with meters and calipers.

Everything you will ever know about the creative force and ability of a god can be found within you -- an Immortal Spiritual Being.

How can a blind man teach others to see the nearly infinite gradients that comprise the spectrum of light?   The notion that one can understand the universe without understanding the nature of an IS-BE is as absurd as conceiving that an artist is a speck of paint on his own canvas. Or, that the lace on a ballet shoe is the choreographer's vision, or the grace of a dancer, or the electric excitement of opening night.

Study of the spirit has been booby-trapped by the thought control operation through religious superstitions they instill in the minds of men. Conversely, the study of the spirit and the mind have been prohibited by science which eliminates anything that is not measurable in the physical universe.            Science is the religion of matter.   It worships matter.

The paradigm of science is that creation is all, and the creator is nothing.            Religion says the creator is all, and the creation is nothing.     These two extremes are the bars of a prison cell. They prevent observation of all phenomenon as an interactive whole.

Study of creation without knowing the IS-BE, the source of creation, is futile.  When you sail to the edge of a universe conceived by science, you fall off the end into an abyss of dark, dispassionate space and lifeless, unrelenting force.     On Earth, you have been convinced that the oceans of the mind and spirit are filled with gruesome, ghoulish monsters that will eat you alive if you dare to venture beyond the breakwater of superstition.

The vested interest of the "Old Empire" prison system is to prevent you from looking at your own soul. They fear that you will see in your own memory the slave masters who keep you imprisoned.  The prison is made of shadows in your mind.   The shadows are made of lies, and pain, and loss, and fear.

The true geniuses of civilization are those IS- BEs who will enable other IS-BEs to recover their memory and regain self-realization and self-determination.  This issue is not solved through enforcing moral regulation on behavior, or through the control of beings through mystery, faith, drugs, guns or any other dogma of a slave society.  And certainly not through the use of electric shock and hypnotic commands!

The survival of Earth and every being on it depends on the ability to recover the memory of skills you have accrued through the trillenia; to recover the essence of yourself. Such an art, science, or technology has never been conceived in the "Old Empire".   Otherwise, they would not have resorted to the "solution" that brought you to your current condition on Earth.

Neither has such technology ever been developed by The Domain.  Until recently, the necessity   of rehabilitating an IS-BE with amnesia has not been needed.       Therefore, no one has ever worked on solving this problem.  So far, unfortunately, The Domain has no solution to offer.

A few officers of The Domain Expeditionary Force have taken it upon themselves to provide technology to Earth during their off duty time. These officers leave their "doll" at the space station and, as an IS-BE, assume or take over a biological body on Earth.  In some cases an officer can remain on duty while they inhabit and control other bodies at the same time.

This is a very dangerous and adventurous undertaking.  It requires a very able IS-BE to accomplish such a mission, and return to base successfully.  One officer who did this recently, while continuing to attend to his official duties, was known on Earth as the electronics inventor, Nicola Tesla.

It is my intention, although is not a part of my mission orders, to assist you in your efforts to advance scientific and humanitarian progress on Earth. My intention is to help other IS-BEs to help themselves. In order to solve the amnesia problem on Earth you will need much more advanced technology, as well as social stability to allow enough time for research and development of techniques to free the IS-BE from the body, and to free the mind of the IS-BE from amnesia.

Although The Domain has a long term interest in maintaining Earth as a useful planet, it has no particular interest in the human population of Earth, other than its own personnel here.  We are interested in preventing destruction, as well as accelerating the development of technologies that will sustain the infrastructures of the global biosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere.

To this end, you will discover, on very careful and thorough examination, that my space craft contains a wide assortment of technology that does not yet exist on Earth.   If you distribute pieces of this craft to various scientists for study, they will be able to reverse engineer some of the technology to the extent that Earth has the raw materials required to replicate these components.

Some features will be indecipherable. Other features cannot be duplicated as Earth does not have the natural resources required to replicate them. This is especially true of the metals used to construct the craft.   Not only do these metals not exist on Earth, the refining process required to produce these metals took billions of years to develop.

It is also true of the navigation system which requires an IS-BE whose own personal wavelength has been specifically attuned to the "neural network" of the craft. The pilot of the craft must possess a very high order of energy volition, discipline, training and intelligence to manipulate such a craft.    IS-BEs on Earth are incapable of this expertise because it requires the use of an artificial body specifically created for this purpose.

Certain individual Earth scientists, some of whom are among the most brilliant minds in the history of the universe, will have their memory of this technology jogged when they examine the craft components.   Just as some of the scientists and physicists on Earth have been able to "remember" how to recreate electric generators, internal combustion and steam locomotion, refrigeration, aircraft, antibiotics, and other tools of your civilization, they will also rediscover other vital technology in my craft.

The following are the specific systems embodied in my craft that contain useful components:

There is an assortment of microscopic wiring or fibers within the walls of the craft that control such things as communications, information storage, computer function, and automatic navigation.

The same wiring is used for light, sub- light and ultra-light spectrum detection and vision.

The fabrics of the interior of the craft are far superior to any on Earth at this time and have hundreds or thousands of applications.

You will also find mechanisms for creating, amplifying and channeling light particles or waves as a form of...

As an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain Forces, I am not at liberty to discuss or convey the detailed operation or construction of the craft in any way, other than what I have just disclosed. However, I am confident that there are many competent engineers on Earth who will develop useful technology with these resources.

I am providing these details to you in the hope that the greater good of The Domain will be served."
...

Although The Domain will not hesitate to destroy any active vestiges of the "Old Empire" operations where ever they are discovered this is not our primary mission in this galaxy.   I am sure that the "Old Empire" mind-control mechanisms can be deactivated and destroyed eventually. However, it is not possible to estimate how long this make take, as we do not understand the extent of this operation at this time.

We do know that the "Old Empire" force screen is vast enough to cover this end of the galaxy, at least.  We also know from experience that each force generator and trapping device is very difficult to detect, locate and destroy. Also, it is not the current mission of The Domain Expeditionary Force to commit resources to this endeavor.

The eventual destruction of these devices may make it possible for your memory to be restored, simply by virtue of not having it erased after each lifetime.         Fortunately, the memory of an IS-BE cannot be permanently erased.

There are many other active space civilizations who maintain various nefarious operations in this area...

... not the least of which is dumping unwanted IS-BEs on Earth.          

None of these craft are hostile or in violent opposition to The Domain Forces.    They know better than to challenge us!

For the most part The Domain ignores Earth and its inhabitants, except to ensure that the resources of the planet itself are not permanently spoiled.   This sector of the galaxy was annexed by The Domain and is the possession of The Domain, to do with or dispose of as it deems best.     

The moon of Earth and the asteroid belt have become a permanent base of operations for The Domain Forces.

Needless to say, any attempt by humans or others to interfere in the activities of The Domain in this solar system -- even if it were possible, which it definitely is not -- will be terminated swiftly. This is not a serious concern, as I mentioned earlier, since homo sapiens cannot operate in open space.

Of course we will continue with the next steps of The Domain Expansion Plan which has remained on schedule for billions of years.   Over the next 5,000 years there will be increasing traffic and activity of The Domain Forces as we progress toward the center of this galaxy and beyond to spread our civilization through the universe.

If humanity is to survive, it must cooperate to find effective solutions to the difficult conditions of your existence on Earth.  Humanity must rise above its human form and discover where they are, and that they are IS- BEs, and who they really are as IS-BEs in order to  transcend the notion that they are merely biological bodies.  Once these realizations have been made, it may be possible to escape your current imprisonment.       Otherwise, there will be no future for the IS-BEs on Earth.

Although there are no active battles or war being waged between The Domain and the "Old Empire",    there still exists the covert actions of the "Old Empire" taken against Earth through their thought control operation.

When one knows that these activities exist, the effects can be observed clearly. The most obvious examples of these actions against the human race can be seen as incidents of sudden, inexplicable behavior. A very recent instance of this occurred in the United States military just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Just three days before the attack, someone in authority ordered all the ships in Pearl Harbor to go into port and secure for inspection.   The ships were ordered to take all the ammunition out of their magazines, and store it below.  On the afternoon before attack all of the admirals and generals were attending parties, even though two Japanese aircraft carriers were discovered standing right off Pearl Harbor.

The obvious action to take would have been to contact Pearl Harbor by telephone to warn them of the danger of a fight starting and to put the ammunition back and order the ships to get out of port into open sea.

About six hours before the Japanese attack began, a U.S. navy ship sank a small Japanese submarine right outside the harbor.  Instead of contacting Pearl Harbor by telephone to report the incident, a warning message was put into top secret code, which took about two hours to encode, and then it took another two hours to decode.     The word of warning to Pearl Harbor did not arrive until 10:00 AM Pearl Harbor time, Sunday -- two hours after the Japanese attack destroyed the U.S. fleet.

How do things like this happen?

If the men who were responsible for these obviously disastrous errors were stood up and asked bluntly to justify their actions and intentions you would find out that they were quite sincere in their jobs.  Ordinarily, they do the very best they can do for people and nations.    However, all of a sudden,   from some completely unknown and undetectable source enters these wild, unexplainable situations that just 'can't exist'.

The "Old Empire" thought control operation is run by a small group of old "baboons" with very small minds.   They are playing insidious games with no purpose and no goal other than to control and destroy IS-BEs who could otherwise manage themselves perfectly well, if left alone.

These types of artificially created incidents are being forced upon the human race by the operators of the mind-control prison system. The prison guards will always promote and support oppressive or totalitarian activities of IS-BEs on Earth. Why not keep the inmates fighting between themselves?    Why not empower madmen to run the governments of Earth?    The men who run the criminal governments of Earth mirror the commands given them by covert thought-controllers of the "Old Empire".

The human race will continue to shadow box with this for a long time -- as long as it remains the human race.

Until then, the IS-BEs on Earth will continue to live a series of consecutive lives, over and over and over. The same IS-BEs who lived during the rise and fall of civilizations in India, China, Mesepotamia, Greece, and Rome are inhabiting bodies in the present time in America, France, Russia, Africa, and around the world.

In between each lifetime an IS-BE is sent back again, to begin all over, as though the new life was the only life they had ever lived. They begin anew in pain, in misery, and mystery.

Some IS-BEs have been transported to Earth more recently than others.  Some IS-BEs have been on Earth only a few hundred years, so they have no personal experiences with the earlier civilizations of Earth.   They have no  experiences of having lived on Earth, so could not remember a previous existence here, even if their memory was restored.   They might, however, remember lives they lived elsewhere on other planets and in other times.

Others have been here since the first days of Lemuria. In any case, the IS-BEs of Earth are here forever, until they can break the amnesia cycle, conquer the electronic traps set up by their captors and free themselves.

Because The Domain has three thousand of their own IS-BEs in captivity on Earth also, they have an interest in solving this problem.  This problem has never been encountered or effectively solved before in the universe, as far as they know.   They will continue their efforts to free those IS-BEs from Earth, where and when it is possible, but it will require time to develop an   unprecedented technology and the diligence to do so.'

Summary and conclusion

The vast bulk of the narrative in the “Alien Interview” contained references and information relative to the conventional situation. When a need to elaborate on certain points occurred, the extraterrestrial used personal stories and data to “flush it out” so as to clarify the situations involved.

This article contains the vast bulk of the narrative as it pertains to contemporaneous humans on Earth devoid of any older historical references.

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  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

A look at the report “alien interview” by MM parsing items deemed trillions of years old

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

In the transcript the extraterrestrial jumps all over. And in many instances he seems to reflect normal regular human feelings and attitudes about issues (such as the platypus) and you can read it and miss many things as it is a dated document translated by a nurse in 1947. In order to best sort it out, to a frame of reference that we can all understand, I am now (in this series of articles) going to separate the “Alien Interview” document into sections categorized by dates.

The extraterrestrial discussed period of time in…

  • Trillions of years. (Birth of consciousness, universe creation.)
  • Billions of years. (Galaxy creation, and early civilizations.)
  • Millions of years. (Local events in our region, and mankind.)
  • Thousands of years. (A scope most important to humans.)

In this article we will discuss the largest and most alien time scope; trillions of years.

Because the text will be taken out of the document, there might be some discontinuity in the text. In any case, I would advise reading the entire full document for a better understanding of context. Further, keep in mind that the purpose of this particular post / article is to separate the transcript into wide categories depending on the span of times discussed. I fear that the extraterrestrial was talking about a few thousand years in the past, then jumped to trillions of years ago, jumps to millions of years ago, jumps to decades, and then back to billions of years ago. This effort is to help sort things out chronologically.

The text segments…

"Personally, it is my conviction that all sentient beings are immortal spiritual beings. This includes human beings.  For the sake of accuracy and simplicity I will use a made-up word: "IS-BE".   

Because the primary nature of an immortal being is that they live in a timeless state of "is", and the only reason for their existence is that they decide to "be".

No matter how lowly their station in a society, every IS-BE deserves the respect and treatment that I myself would like to receive from others.    Each person on Earth continues to be an IS-BE whether they are aware of the fact or not."

"Before you can understand the subject of history, you must first understand the subject of time.  Time is simply an arbitrary measurement of the motion of objects through space.

Space is not linear.  Space is determined by the point of view of an IS-BE when viewing an object. The distance between an IS-BE and the object being viewed is called "space".

Objects, or energy masses, in space do not necessarily move in a linear fashion.     In this universe, objects tend to move randomly or in a curving or cyclical pattern, or as determined by agreed upon rules.

History is not only a linear record of events, as many authors of Earth history books imply, because it is not a string that can be stretched out and marked like a measuring tool. History is a subjective observation of the movement of objects through space, recorded from the point of view of a survivor, rather than of those who succumbed.   

Events occur interactively and concurrently, just as the biological body has a heart that pumps blood, while the lungs provide oxygen to the cells, which reproduce, using energy from the sun and chemicals from plants, at the same time as the liver strains toxic wastes from the blood, and eliminates them through the bladder and the bowels.

All of these interactions are concurrent and simultaneous.  Although time runs consecutively, events do not happen in an independent, linear stream.               

In order to view and understand the history or reality of the past, one must view all events as part of an interactive whole. Time can also be sensed as a vibration which is uniform throughout the entire physical universe.

Airl explained that IS-BEs have been around since before the beginning of the universe. The reason they are called "immortal", is because a "spirit" is not born and cannot die, but exists in a personally postulated perception of "is - will be". She was careful to explain that every spirit is not the same. Each is completely unique in identity, power, awareness and ability.

The difference between an IS-BE like Airl and most of the IS-BEs inhabiting bodies on Earth, is that Airl can enter and depart from her "doll" at will.    She can perceive at selective depths through matter. Airl and other officers of The Domain can communicate   telepathically. Since an IS-BE is not a physical universe entity it has no location in space or time.

An IS-BE is literally, "immaterial". They can span great distances of space instantly.

They can experience sensations, more intensely than a biological body, without the use of physical sensory mechanisms.  An IS-BE can exclude pain from their perception.   Airl can also remember her "identity", so to speak, all the way back into the dim mists of time, for trillions of years!

She says that the existing collection of suns in this immediate vicinity of the universe have been burning for the last 200 trillion years. The age of the physical universe is nearly infinitely old, but probably at least four quadrillion years since its earliest beginnings.

Time is a difficult factor to measure as it depends on the subjective memory of IS-BEs and there has been no uniform record of events throughout the physical universe since it began. As on Earth, there are many different time measurement systems, defined by various cultures, which use cycles of motion, and points of origin to establish age and duration.

The physical universe itself is formed from the convergence and amalgamation of many other individual universes, each one of which were created by an IS-BE or group of IS-BEs.    

The collision of these illusory universes commingled and coalesced and were solidified to form a mutually created universe.   Because it is agreed that energy and forms can be created, but not destroyed, this creative process has continued to form an ever-expanding universe of nearly infinite physical proportions.

Before the formation of the physical universe there was a vast period during which universes were not solid, but wholly illusionary.   You might say that the universe was a universe of magical illusions which were made to appear and vanish at the will of the magician.  In every case, the "magician" was one or more IS-BEs. Many IS-BEs on Earth can still recall vague images from that period. Tales of magic, sorcery and enchantment, fairy tales and mythology speak of such things, although in very crude terms.

Each IS-BE entered into the physical universe when they lost their own, "home" universe. That is, when an IS-BE's "home" universe was overwhelmed by the physical universe, or when the IS-BE joined with other IS-BEs to create or conquer the physical universe.

On Earth, the ability to determine when an IS- BE entered the physical universe is difficult for two reasons:    

1) the memory of IS-BEs on Earth have been erased, and 

2) IS-BEs arrival or invasion into the physical universe took place at different times, some 60 trillion years ago, and others only 3 trillion.

The Domain has conducted a periodic survey of the galaxies in this sector of the universe since it developed space travel technologies about 80 trillion years ago.    

A review of changes in the complexion of Earth reveal that mountain ranges rise and fall, continents change location, the poles of the planet shift, ice caps come and go, oceans appear and disappear, rivers, valleys and canyons change. In all cases, the matter is the same. It is always the same sand.                  

Every form and substance is made of the same basic material, which never deteriorates.

"The origins of this universe and life on Earth, as discussed in the textbooks I have read, are very inaccurate. Since you serve your government as a medical personnel, your duties require that you understand biological entities. So, I am sure that you will appreciate the value of the material I will share with you today.

The text of books I have been given on subjects related to the function of life forms contain information that is based on false memories, inaccurate observation, missing data, unproven theories, and superstition.

The correct information about the origins of biological entities has been erased from your mind, as well as from the minds of your mentors.  In order to help you regain your own memory, I will share with you some factual material concerning the origin of biological entities.

I asked Airl if she was referring to the subject of evolution. Airl said, "No, not exactly".

You will find "evolution" mentioned in the ancient Vedic Hymns. The Vedic texts are like folk tales or common wisdoms and superstitions gathered throughout the systems of The Domain. These were compiled into verses, like a book of rhymes.  For every statement of truth, the verses contain as many half-truths, reversals of truth and fanciful imaginings, blended without qualification or distinction.

The theory of evolution assumes that the motivational source of energy that animates every life form does not exist.   It assumes that an inanimate object or a chemical concoction can suddenly become "alive" or animate accidentally or spontaneously.   

Or, perhaps an electrical discharge into a pool of chemical ooze will magically spawn a self- animated entity.

There is no evidence whatsoever that this is true, simply because it is not true.   Dr. Frankenstein did not really resurrect the dead into a marauding monster, except in the imagination of the IS-BE who wrote a fictitious story one dark and stormy night.

No Western scientist ever stopped to consider who, what, where, when or how this animation happens.  Complete ignorance, denial or unawareness of the spirit as the source of life force required to animate inanimate objects or cellular tissue is the sole cause of failures in Western medicine.

In addition, evolution does not occur accidentally. It requires a great deal of technology which must be manipulated under the careful supervision of IS-BEs.  Very simple examples are seen in the modification of farm animals or in the breeding of dogs.  However, the notion that human biological organisms evolved naturally from earlier ape-like forms is incorrect.     No physical evidence will ever be uncovered to substantiate the notion that modern humanoid bodies evolved on this planet.

The reason is simple: the idea that human bodies evolved spontaneously from the primordial ooze of chemical interactivity in the dim mists of time is nothing more than a hypnotic lie instilled by the amnesia operation to prevent your recollection of the true origins of Mankind.   Factually, humanoid bodies have existed in various forms throughout the universe for trillions of years.

Immortal Spiritual Beings, which I refer to as "IS-BEs", for the sake of convenience, are the source and creators of illusions.  Each one, individually and collectively, in their original, unfettered state of being, are an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing entity.

IS-BEs create space by imagining a location. The intervening distance between themselves and the imagined location is what we call space.

An IS-BE can perceive the space and objects created by other IS-BEs.

IS-BEs are not physical universe entities.  They are a source of energy and illusion.  IS- BEs are not located in space or time, but can create space, place particles in space, create energy, and shape particles into various forms, cause the motion of forms, and animate forms. Any form that is animated by an IS-BE is called life.

An IS-BE can decide to agree that they are located in space or time, and that they, themselves, are an object, or any other manner of illusion created by themselves or another or other IS-BEs.

The disadvantage of creating an illusion is that an illusion must be continually created. If not continually created, it disappears. Continual creation of an illusion requires incessant attention to every detail of the illusion in order to sustain it.

A common denominator of IS-BEs seems to be the desire to avoid boredom.         

A spirit only, without interaction with other IS-BEs, and the unpredictable motion, drama, and unanticipated intentions and illusions being created by other IS-BEs, is easily bored.

What if you could imagine anything, perceive everything, and cause anything to happen, at will?   What if you couldn't do anything else? What if you always knew the outcome of every game and the answer to every question?                

Would you get bored?

The entire back time track of IS-BEs is immeasurable, nearly infinite in terms of physical universe time.    

There is no measurable "beginning" or "end" for an IS-BE.   

They simply exist in an everlasting now.

Another common denominator of IS-BEs is that admiration of one's own illusions by others is very desirable.   

If the desired admiration is not forthcoming, the IS-BE will keep creating the illusion in an attempt to get admiration. One could say that the entire physical universe is made of unadmired illusions.

The origins of this universe began with the creation of individual, illusionary spaces. These were the "home" of the IS-BE.   

Sometimes a universe is a collaborative creation of illusions by two or more IS-BEs.    A proliferation of IS-BEs, and the universes they create, sometimes collide or become commingled or merge to an extent that many IS-BEs shared in the co-creation of a universe.

IS-BEs diminish their ability in order to have a game to play.  IS-BEs think that any game is better than no game.  

They will endure pain, suffering, stupidity, privation, and all manner of unnecessary and undesirable conditions, just to play a game.  Pretending that one does not know all, see all and cause all, is a way to create the conditions necessary for playing a game:   unknowns, freedoms, barriers and/or opponents and goals.  Ultimately, playing a game solves the problem of boredom.

In this fashion, all of the space, galaxies, suns, planets, and physical phenomena of this universe, including life forms, places, and events have been created by IS-BEs and sustained by mutual agreement that these things exist.

There are as many universes as there are IS-BEs to imagine, build and perceive them, each existing concurrently within its own continuum. Each universe is created using its own unique set of rules, as imagined, altered, preserved or destroyed by one or more IS-BEs who created it. Time, energy, objects and space, as defined in terms of the physical universe, may or may not exist in other universes. The Domain exists in such a universe, as well as in the physical universe.

One of the rules of the physical universe is that energy can be created, but not destroyed. So, the universe will keep expanding as long as IS-BEs keep adding more new energy into it. It is nearly infinite. It is like an automobile assembly line that never stops running and none of the cars are ever destroyed.

Every IS-BE is basically good.  

Therefore, an IS-BE does not enjoy doing things to other IS- BEs which they themselves do not want to experience.  For an IS-BE there is no inherent standard for what is good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful.  These ideas are all based on the opinion of each individual IS-BE.

The closest concept that human beings have to describe an IS-BE is as a god:   all-knowing, all-powerful, infinite. So, how does a god stop being a god?               

They  pretend NOT to know. How can you play a game of "hide and seek" if you always know where the other person is hiding?

You pretend NOT to know where the other players are hiding, so you can go off to "seek" them. This is how games are created.  You have forgotten that you are just "pretending".  In so doing, IS-BEs become entrapped and enslaved inside a maze of their own devising.

How does one create a cage, lock one's own self inside the cage, throw away the key, and forget there is a key or a cage, and forget there is an "inside" or "outside", and even forget there is a self? Create the illusion that there is no illusion: the entire universe is real, and that no other universe exists or can be created.

On Earth, the propaganda taught and agreed upon is that the gods are responsible, and that human beings are not responsible.   You are taught that only a god can create universes. So, the responsibility for every action is assigned to another IS-BE or god. Never oneself.

No human being ever assumes personal responsibility for the fact that they, themselves -- individually and collectively -- are gods.   This fact alone is the source of entrapment for every IS-BE.

Some comments on this.

These discussions, and text narratives, refer to a time where our universe (via the “Big Bang”) was not yet created. And in that land of no time (yet the extraterrestrial refers to time…?) and no space, the IS-BE consciousness existed. And this is what it was like.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

A look at the report “alien interview” by MM parsing items deemed billions of years old

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

In the transcript the extraterrestrial jumps all over. And in many instances he seems to reflect normal regular human feelings and attitudes about issues (such as the platypus) and you can read it and miss many things as it is a dated document translated by a nurse in 1947. In order to best sort it out, to a frame of reference that we can all understand, I am now (in this series of articles) going to separate the “Alien Interview” document into sections categorized by dates.

The extraterrestrial discussed period of time in…

  • Trillions of years. (Birth of consciousness, universe creation.)
  • Billions of years. (Galaxy creation, and early civilizations.)
  • Millions of years. (Local events in our region, and mankind.)
  • Thousands of years. (A scope most important to humans.)

In this article we will discuss the time scope of billions of years.

Because the text will be taken out of the document, there might be some discontinuity in the text. In any case, I would advise reading the entire full document for a better understanding of context. Further, keep in mind that the purpose of this particular post / article is to separate the transcript into wide categories depending on the span of times discussed. I fear that the extraterrestrial was talking about a few thousand years in the past, then jumped to trillions of years ago, jumps to millions of years ago, jumps to decades, and then back to billions of years ago. This effort is to help sort things out chronologically.

Perspective

According to the learned “experts” the “big bang” hit around 14 – 15 billion years ago. Eventually forming our galaxy which absorbed other galaxies in the process. Based on the composition of stars, they have estimated that most stars in our universe today are fourth or fifth generation.

Our solar system is around 4 – 5 billion years old.

The text segments

Every once in a short while, a few million years, an area or planet will be taken over by another group of IS-BEs entering into the area.

Sometimes they will capture other IS-BEs as slaves. They will be forced to inhabit bodies to perform menial, or manual work -- especially mining mineral ores on heavy-gravity planets, such as Earth.

Airl says that, when she became a pilot for a biological survey mission which included occasional visits to Earth.   She can remember her entire career there, and for a very long time before that.

She told me that Earth scientists do not have an accurate measuring system to gauge the age of matter.   They assume that because certain types of materials seem to deteriorate rather quickly, such as organic or carbon-based matter, that there is a deterioration of matter.     It is not accurate to measure the age of stone, based on the measurement of the age of wood or bone.   This is a fundamental error. Factually, matter does not deteriorate. It cannot be destroyed.      Matter may be altered in form, but it is never truly destroyed.

I can relate part of this history from personal experience:

Many billions of years ago I was a member of a very large biological laboratory in a galaxy far from this one.  It was called the "Arcadia Regeneration Company". I was a biological engineer working with a large staff of technicians.   It was our business to manufacture and supply new life forms to uninhabited planets.   There were millions of star systems with millions of inhabitable planets in the region at that time.

There were many other biological laboratory companies at that time also.       Each of them specialized in producing different kinds of life forms, depending on the "class" of the planet being populated.  Over a long span of time these laboratories developed a vast catalogue of species throughout the galaxies. The majority of basic genetic material is common to all species of life. Therefore, most of their work was concerned with manipulating alterations of the basic genetic pattern to produce variations of life forms that would be suitable inhabitants for various planetary classes.

The "Arcadia Regeneration Company" specialized in mammals for forested areas and birds for tropical regions.  Our marketing staff negotiated contracts with various planetary governments and independent buyers from all over the universe.   The technicians created animals that were compatible with the variations in climate, atmospheric and terrestrial density and chemical content.  In addition we were paid to integrate our specimens with biological organisms engineered by other companies already living on a planet.

In order to do this our staff was in communication with other companies who created life forms.     There were industry trade shows, publications and a variety of other information supplied through an association that coordinated related projects.

As you can imagine, our research required a great deal of interstellar travel to conduct planetary surveys.   This is when I learned my skills as a pilot.  The data gathered was accumulated in huge computer databases and evaluated by biological engineers.

A computer is an electronic device that serves as an artificial "brain" or complex calculating machine.   It is capable of storing information, making computations, solving problems and performing mechanical functions. In most of the galactic systems of the universe, very large computers are commonly used to run the routine administration, mechanical services and maintenance activities of an entire planet or planetary system.

Based on the survey data gathered, designs and artistic renderings were made for new creatures. Some designs were sold to the highest bidder. Other life forms were created to meet the customized requests of our clients.

The design and technical specifications were passed along an assembly line through a series of cellular, chemical, and mechanical engineers to solve the various problems.  It was their job to integrate all of the component factors into a workable, functional and aesthetic finished product.

Prototypes of these creatures were then produced and tested in artificially created environments.  Imperfections were worked out, modifications made and eventually the new life form was "endowed" or "animated" with a life force or spiritual energy before being introduced into the actual planetary environment for final testing.

After a new life form was introduced, we monitored the interaction of these biological organisms with the planetary environment and with other indigenous life-forms. Conflicts resulting from the interaction between incompatible organisms were resolved through negotiation between ourselves and other companies.  The negotiations usually resulted in compromises requiring further modification to our creatures or to theirs or both.    This is part of a science or art you call "Eugenics".

In some cases changes were made in the planetary environment, but not often, as planet building is much more complex than making changes to an individual life form.

What you see now on Earth is the huge variety of life forms left behind.   Your scientists believe that the fallacious "theory of evolution" is an explanation for the existence of all the life forms here.  The truth is that all life forms on this and any other planet in this universe were created by companies like ours.

How else can you explain the millions of completely divergent and unrelated species of life on the land and in the oceans of this planet?     How else can you explain the source of spiritual animation which defines every living creature?   To say it is the work of "god", is  far too broad.  Every IS-BE has many names and faces in many times and places.   Every IS-BE is a god. When they inhabit a physical object they are the source of Life.

For example, there are millions of species of insects.  About 350,000 of these are species of beetles. There may be as many as 100 million species of life forms on Earth at any given time.     In addition, there are many times more extinct species of life on Earth than there are living life forms.     Some of these will be rediscovered in the fossil or geological records of Earth.

The current "theory of evolution" of life forms on Earth does not consider the phenomena of biological diversity. Evolution by natural selection is science fiction.   One species does not accidentally, or randomly evolve to become another species, as the Earth textbooks indicate, without manipulation of genetic material by an IS-BE.

Factually, some organisms on Earth, such as Proteobacteria, are modifications of a Phylum designed primarily for "Star Type 3, Class C" planets.    In other words, The Domain designation for a planet with an anaerobic atmosphere nearest a large, intensely hot blue star, such as those in the constellation of Orion's Belt in this galaxy.

Creating life forms is very complex, highly technical work for IS-BEs who specialize in this field.  Genetic anomalies are very baffling to Earth biologists who have had their memory erased.   Unfortunately, the false memory implantations of the "Old Empire" prevent Earth scientists from observing obvious anomalies.

The greatest technical challenge of biological organisms  was the invention of self- regeneration, or sexual reproduction. It was invented as the solution to the problem of having to continually manufacture replacement creatures for those that had been destroyed and eaten by other creatures.   Planetary governments did not want to keep buying replacement animals.

The idea was contrived trillions of years ago as a result of a conference held to resolve arguments between the disputing vested interests within the biotechnology industry. The infamous "Council of Yuhmi-Krum" was responsible for coordinating creature production.

A compromise was reached, after certain members of the Council were strategically bribed or murdered, to author an agreement which resulted in the biological phenomenon which we now call the "food chain".

The idea that a creature would need to consume the body of another life form as an energy source was offered as a solution by one of the biggest companies in the biological engineering business.  They specialized in creating insects and flowering plants.

The connection between the two is obvious. Nearly every flowering plant requires a symbiotic relationship with an insect in order to propagate.  The reason is obvious: both the bugs and the flowers were created by the same company.  Unfortunately, this same company also had a division which created parasites and bacteria.

The name of the company roughly translated into English would be "Bugs & Blossoms" .   They wanted to justify the fact that the only valid purpose of the parasitic creatures they manufactured was to aid the decomposition of organic material.  There was a very limited market for such creatures at that time.

In order to expand their business they hired a big public relations firm and a powerful group of political lobbyists to glorify the idea that life forms should feed from other life forms. They invented a "scientific theory" to use as a promotion gimmick.  The theory was that all creatures needed to have "food" as a source of energy. Before that, none of the life forms being manufactured required any external energy.  Animals did not eat other animals for food, but consumed sunlight, minerals or vegetable matter only.

Of course, "Bugs & Blossoms" went into the business of designing and manufacturing carnivores.  Before long, so many animals were being eaten as food that the problem of replenishing them became very difficult.  As a 'solution', "Bugs & Blossoms" proposed, with the help of some strategically placed bribes in high places, that other companies begin using 'sexual reproduction' as the basis for replenishing life-forms.  "Bugs & Blossoms" was the first company to           develop blueprints for sexual reproduction, of course.

As expected, the patent licenses for the biological engineering process required to implant stimulus-response mating, cellular division and pre-programmed growth patterns for self-regenerating animals were owned by "Bugs & Blossoms" too.

Through the next few million years laws were passed that required that these programs be purchased by the other biological technology companies.      These were required to be imprinted into the cellular design of all existing life- forms. It became a very expensive undertaking for other biotechnology companies to make such an awkward, and impractical idea work.

This led to the corruption and downfall of the entire industry.  Ultimately, the 'food and sex' idea completely ruined the bio-technology industry, including "Bugs & Blossoms".  The entire industry faded away as the market for manufactured life forms disappeared. Consequently, when a species became extinct, there is no way to replace them because the technology of creating new life forms has been lost.  Obviously, none of this technology was ever known on Earth, and probably never will be.

There are still computer files on some planets far from here which record the procedures for biological engineering. Possibly the laboratories and computers still exist somewhere.   However, there is no one around doing anything with them. Therefore, you can understand why it is so important for The Domain to protect the dwindling number of creatures left on Earth.

The core concept behind 'sexual reproduction' technology was the invention of a chemical/electronic interaction called "cyclical stimulus-response generators". This is an programmed genetic mechanism which causes a seemingly spontaneous, recurring impulse to reproduce. The same technique was later adapted and applied to biological flesh bodies, including Homo Sapiens.

Another important mechanism used in the reproductive process, especially with Homo Sapiens type bodies, is the implantation of a "chemical-electrical trigger" mechanism in the body.      The "trigger" which attracts IS-BEs to inhabit a human body, or any kind of "flesh body", is the use of an artificially imprinted electronic wave which uses "aesthetic pain" to attract the IS-BE.

Every trap in the universe, including those used to capture IS-BEs who remain free, is "baited" with an aesthetic electronic wave.

The sensations caused by the aesthetic wavelength are more attractive to an IS-BE than any other sensation.  When the electronic waves of pain and beauty are combined together, this causes the IS-BE to get "stuck" in the body.

The "reproductive trigger" used for lesser life forms, such as cattle and other mammals, is triggered by chemicals emitted from the scent glands, combined with reproductive chemical- electrical impulses stimulated by testosterone, or estrogen.

These are also interactive with nutrition levels which cause the life form to reproduce more when deprived of food sources. Starvation promotes reproductive activity as a means of perpetuating survival through future regenerations, when the current organism fails to survive.     These fundamental principles have been applied throughout all species of life.

The debilitating impact and addiction to the "sexual aesthetic-pain" electronic wave is the reason that the ruling class of The Domain do not inhabit flesh bodies.  This is also why officers of The Domain Forces only use doll bodies. This wave has proven to be the most effective trapping device ever created in the history of the universe, as far as I know.

The civilizations of The Domain and the "Old Empire" both  depend on this device to "recruit" and maintain a work force of IS-BEs who inhabit flesh bodies on planets and installations.  These IS-BEs are the "working class" beings who do all of the slavish, manual, undesirable work on planets.

As I mentioned, there is a very highly regimented and fixed hierarchy or "class system" for all IS-BEs throughout the "Old Empire", and The Domain, as follows:

The highest class are "free" IS-BEs.   That is, they are not restricted to the use of any type of body and may come and go at will, provided that they do not destroy or interfere with the social, economic or political structure.

Below this class are many strata of "limited" IS-BEs who may or may not use a body from time to time.  Limitations are imposed on each IS-BE regarding range of power, ability and mobility they can exercise.

Below these are the "doll body" classes, to which I belong.  Nearly all space officers and crew members of space craft are required to travel through intergalactic space.    Therefore, they are each equipped with a body manufactured from lightweight, durable materials.  Various body types have been designed to facilitate specialized functions. Some bodies have accessories, such as interchangeable tools or apparatus for activities such as maintenance, mining, chemical management, navigation, and so forth. There are many gradations of this body type which also serve as an "insignia" of rank.

Below these are the soldier class.  The soldiers are equipped with a myriad of weapons, and specialized armaments designed to detect, combat and overwhelm any imaginable foe.   Some soldiers are issued mechanical bodies. Most soldiers are merely remote controlled robots with no class designation.

The lower classes are limited to "flesh bodies". Of course, it is not possible for these to travel through space for obvious reasons. Fundamentally, flesh bodies are far too fragile to endure the stresses of gravity, temperature extremes, radiation exposure, atmospheric chemicals and the vacuum of space. There are also the obvious logistical inconveniences of food, defecation, sleep, atmospheric elements, and air pressure required by flesh bodies, that doll bodies do not require.

Most flesh bodies will suffocate in only a few minutes without a specific combination of atmospheric chemicals.  After 2 or 3 days the bacteria which live internally and externally on the body cause severe odors to be emitted. Odors of any kind are not acceptable in a space vessel.

Flesh can tolerate only a very limited spectrum of temperatures, whereas in space the contrast of temperatures may vary hundreds of degrees within seconds.  Of course flesh bodies are utterly useless for military duty.   A single shot from a hand-held, electronic blast gun instantly turns a flesh body into a noxious vapor cloud.

IS-BEs who inhabit flesh bodies have lost much of their native ability and power.      Although it is theoretically possible to regain or rehabilitate these abilities, no practical means has been discovered or authorized by The Domain.

Even though space craft of The Domain travel trillions of "light years" in a single day, the time required to traverse the space between galaxies is significant, not to mention the length of time to complete just one set of mission orders, which may require thousands of years.    Biological flesh bodies live for only a very short time -- only 60 to 150 years, at most -- whereas doll bodies can be re-used and repaired almost indefinitely.

The first development of biological bodies began in this universe about seventy-four trillion years ago.  It rapidly became a fad for IS-BEs to create and inhabit various types of bodies for an assortment of nefarious reasons: especially for amusement, this is to experience various physical sensations vicariously through the body.

Since that time there has been a continuing "de-evolution" in the relationship of IS-BEs to bodies. As IS-BEs continued to play around with these bodies, certain tricks were introduced to cause IS-BEs to get trapped inside a body so they were unable to leave again.

This was done primarily by making bodies that appeared sturdy, but were actually very fragile.   An IS-BE, using their natural power to create energy, accidentally injured a body when contacting it.  The IS-BE was remorseful about having injured this fragile body.  The next time they encountered a body they began to be "careful" with them.  In so doing, the IS-BE would withdraw or minimize their own power so as not to injure the body.  A very long and treacherous history of this kind of trickery, combined with similar misadventures eventually resulted in a large number of IS-BEs becoming permanently trapped in bodies.

Of course this became a profitable enterprise for some IS-BEs who took advantage of this situation to make slaves of others. The resulting enslavement progressed over trillions of years, and continues today.    Ultimately the dwindling ability of IS-BEs to maintain a personal state of operational freedom and ability to create energy resulted in the vast and carefully guarded hierarchy or class system.   Using bodies as a symbol of each class is used throughout the "Old Empire", as well as The Domain.

The vast majority of IS-BEs throughout the galaxies of this universe inhabit some form of flesh body.   The structure, appearance, operation and habitat of these bodies vary according to the gravity, atmosphere, and climatic conditions of the planet they inhabit. Body types are predetermined largely by the type and size of the star around which the planet revolves, the distance from the star, the geological, as well as the atmospheric components of the planet.

On the average, these stars and planets fall into gradients of classification which are fairly standard throughout the universe.   For example, Earth is identified, roughly, as a "Sun Type 12, Class 7 planet".  That is a heavy gravity, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere planet, with biological life-forms, in proximity to a single, yellow, medium-size, low-radiation sun or "Type 12 star". The proper designations are difficult to translate accurately due to the extreme limitations of astronomical nomenclature in the English language.

There are as many varieties of life forms as there are grains of sands on the beach. You can imagine how many different creatures and types of bodies have been manufactured by the millions of companies such as "Bugs & Blossoms" for all of the myriad planetary systems during the course of seventy-four trillion years!"

As Airl mentioned previously, a very rigid and distinctive hierarchy of social, economic and cultural classes exists throughout The Domain which has remained unvaried and inviolate for many millennia.  The body type and function assigned to an IS-BE officer varies specifically according to the rank, class, longevity, training level, command level, service record, and meritorious citations earned by each individual IS-BE, as with any other military insignia.

The body used by Airl is specifically designed for an officer, pilot and engineer of her rank and class.   The bodies of her companions, which were destroyed in the crash, were not of the same rank or class, but of a junior rank. Therefore, the appearance, features, composition and functionality of those bodies were specialized, and limited to the requirements of their duties.

The junior officers whose bodies were damaged in the crash have left their bodies and returned to their duties on the space station. The damage suffered by their bodies was due primarily to the fact that they were officers of lower rank. They used bodies which were partially biological and therefore far less durable and resilient than hers.

Some thoughts

In general, we can consider these selected text extracts to represent the time period from when the “Big Bang” happened to the early years in the formation of our solar system.

You can see that The Domain (or what ever it called itself then) was very busy creating life templates or systems, or archetypes for our universe. And most of the discussions during this period involved this activity. You can also see that it had created organizations that had similar names to what we refer to as companies, groups, marketing and scientists.

All in all it is very interesting. And in many ways is near equal to my understanding of this time period.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

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A look at the report “alien interview” by MM parsing items deemed millions of years old

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

In the transcript the extraterrestrial jumps all over. And in many instances he seems to reflect normal regular human feelings and attitudes about issues (such as the platypus) and you can read it and miss many things as it is a dated document translated by a nurse in 1947. In order to best sort it out, to a frame of reference that we can all understand, I am now (in this series of articles) going to separate the “Alien Interview” document into sections categorized by dates.

The extraterrestrial discussed period of time in…

  • Trillions of years. (Birth of consciousness, universe creation.)
  • Billions of years. (Galaxy creation, and early civilizations.)
  • Millions of years. (Local events in our region, and mankind.)
  • Thousands of years. (A scope most important to humans.)

In this article we will discuss the time scope of millions of years.

Because the text will be taken out of the document, there might be some discontinuity in the text. In any case, I would advise reading the entire full document for a better understanding of context. Further, keep in mind that the purpose of this particular post / article is to separate the transcript into wide categories depending on the span of times discussed. I fear that the extraterrestrial was talking about a few thousand years in the past, then jumped to trillions of years ago, jumps to millions of years ago, jumps to decades, and then back to billions of years ago. This effort is to help sort things out chronologically.

Millions of years ago.

Our solar system is around 4 – 5 billion years old (according to the “experts”). And our planet Earth really wasn’t much of anything worthwhile up until the last one billion years. Up until around 800 million years ago or so, it was just a hot smoggy mess.

Most Earth humans cannot picture a span of time in the millions of years. But to put things in context, you can use this handy guide…

Most of the stars and planets that we can see through our telescopes were pretty much also visible millions of years ago. Though many had changed and gone through “life cycles” in the process.

On the Earth, life fit into these broad categories…

  • 800m – 500m Early life
  • 500m – 70m Dinosaurs
  • 70m – 10m Mammals
  • 10m – 3m Proto-apes
  • 3m – present Humans

Now there are all sorts of ways to splice and dice these categories up, so I’m not gonna want to hear your arguments one way or the other. This is just a very rough (ROUGH) rule of thumb to put things into context when you are reading the text extracted from the “Alien Interview” document.

The following text  refers to stories, experiences, and narratives that took place when the world was rather young. As the extraterrestrial entity narrates, please keep in mind that the earth at this particular time was primitive. If it had life, the chances were that the life was dinosaurs or something similar.

The text segments

Several million years ago I was trained and served as an Investigation, Data Evaluation and Program Development Officer for The Domain. Because I was experienced in that technology, I was sent to Earth as part of the search team. (around 8,000 years ago.)

A simple example of IS-BE intervention is the selective breeding of a species on Earth. Within the past few hundred years several hundred dog breeds and hundreds of varieties of pigeons and dozens of Koi fish have been "evolved" in just a few years, beginning with only one original breed.    Without active intervention by IS-BEs, biological organisms rarely change.

The development of an animal like the 'duck- billed platypus' required a lot of very clever engineering to combine the body of a beaver with the bill of a duck and make a mammal that lays eggs.  Undoubtedly, some wealthy client placed a "special order" for it as a gift or curious amusement.  I am sure the laboratory of some biotechnical company worked on it for years to make it a self-replicating life form!

The notion that the creation of any life form could have resulted from a coincidental chemical interaction moldering up from some primordial ooze is beyond absurdity!

Thoughts and conclusions

This article discusses extracted quotes relating to a period of time on the order of millions of earth years. Roughly 100 million to 1 million years ago.

The extraterrestrial did not mention much about this period of time. There were only two separate instances that include dates in this time frame.

What we do know, or can infer, is that during this period of time that [1] “The Domain” existed. And that this particular extraterrestrial was involved in various roles to include [2] “training”, “working” and “learning”.

Do you want more?

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  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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A breakdown of the report “alien interview” by MM from a MAJ perspective (part 8)

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

This is part 8.

This is part eight of the parsing of this document

You can view part 1 HERE.

ALIEN INTERVIEW, 31. 7. 1947, 1st Session

“It is my personal belief that the truth should not be sacrificed on the altar of political, religious or economic expediency.

As an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain it is my duty to protect the greater good of The Domain and its possessions.

However, we cannot defend ourselves against forces of which we are not aware.

The extraterrestrial wants to discuss truths as it understands them, but realizes that there are limitations on what it can say, and barriers in understanding what is related.

The isolation of Earth from the rest of civilization prevents me from discussing many subjects with you at this time.

The forced isolated of Earth, makes it very difficult to discuss matters of importance. Most of what would be discussed would be new, strange or incomprehensible to humans.

Security and protocol prevent me from revealing any but the broadest, general statements about the plans and activities of The Domain.

It is a military officer in an organization with limitations are requirements that it must meet.

However, I can give you some information that you may find useful.

But, and never the less, some information can be provided that will be useful.

I must return to my assigned duties on the “space station” now.

This "Alien interview" was a distraction. Not a major event. It it time for the extraterrestrial to return to it's normal duties.

I have provided as much help as I feel ethically able to offer, given the requirements and constraints of my duties as an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain Forces. Therefore, I will depart, as an IS-BE, from Earth within the next 24 hours.’

It is time for it to leave.

Notes

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following several paragraphs appear to be personal comments made by Matilda to the stenographer regarding her interview with Airl.)

What this means is that Airl will leave her “doll” with us, as her craft is damaged beyond repair. We can examine, dissect and study the body at our leisure. She does not have any further use for it, nor does she have any personal feelings or attachments to it as others are readily available for her use.

Airl does not recommend that there is any technology in the body that Earth scientists will find useful, however. The technology of the body is simple, yet vastly beyond the reckoning of our current ability to analyze or reverse engineer any facet of it. The body is neither biological or mechanical, but a unique fabrication a materials and ancient technologies not found on any Earth-type planet.

As Airl mentioned previously, a very rigid and distinctive hierarchy of social, economic and cultural classes exists throughout The Domain which has remained unvaried and inviolate for many millennia. The body type and function assigned to an IS-BE officer varies specifically according to the rank, class, longevity, training level, command level, service record, and meritorious citations earned by each individual IS-BE, as with any other military insignia.

The body used by Airl is specifically designed for an officer, pilot and engineer of her rank and class. The bodies of her companions, which were destroyed in the crash, were not of the same rank or class, but of a junior rank. Therefore, the appearance, features, composition and functionality of those bodies were specialized, and limited to the requirements of their duties.

The junior officers whose bodies were damaged in the crash have left their bodies and returned to their duties on the space station. The damage suffered by their bodies was due primarily to the fact that they were officers of lower rank. They used bodies which were partially biological and therefore far less durable and resilient than hers.

Transcript resumes

(EDITOR'S NOTE: At this point, the transcript appears to resume with statements made by Airl.)

Although The Domain will not hesitate to destroy any active vestiges of the “Old Empire” operations where ever they are discovered this is not our primary mission in this galaxy.

The Domain primary mission is something else. It will destroy "Old Empire" remnants where ever it finds them.

I am sure that the “Old Empire” mind-control mechanisms can be deactivated and destroyed eventually.

I agree with this.

However, it is not possible to estimate how long this make take, as we do not understand the extent of this operation at this time.

I also agree with this, though I do believe that things has changed substantially with MAJestic assistance from the 1960's to present.

We do know that the “Old Empire” force screen is vast enough to cover this end of the galaxy, at least.

It is not limited to the Earth. Nor is it limited to the solar system. But it extends much further than that and includes a region of space with numerous solar systems. I can tell you that there are at least five "sentience nurseries" or recovering "prison planets" in this neighborhood.

We also know from experience that each force generator and trapping device is very difficult to detect, locate and destroy.

Not a good thing.

Also, it is not the current mission of The Domain Expeditionary Force to commit resources to this endeavor.

Not a good thing.

The eventual destruction of these devices may make it possible for your memory to be restored, simply by virtue of not having it erased after each lifetime.

The destruction of the devices will probably and likely prevent the erasure of memories. But it will not be able to recover previously lost memories unfortunately.

Fortunately, the memory of an IS-BE cannot be permanently erased.

So, the memories will still be dormant, sitting there. They just will not be easily recovered.

There are many other active space civilizations who maintain various nefarious operations in this area, not the least of which is dumping unwanted IS-BEs on Earth.

There are many other space civilizations similar to the "Old Empire" that acts in this geographic area of our solar system.

None of these craft are hostile or in violent opposition to The Domain Forces. They know better than to challenge us!

They are war-mongering with evil intent, but they are afraid of the Domain. Which is probably why the Type-1 greys are so dominant in the solar system with MAJestic.

For the most part The Domain ignores Earth and its inhabitants, except to ensure that the resources of the planet itself are not permanently spoiled.

They do not want the earth to be radioactive, or swamped with incurable biological weapons.

This sector of the galaxy was annexed by The Domain and is the possession of The Domain, to do with or dispose of as it deems best.

This entire region, including the Earth is the property of The Domain.

The moon of Earth and the asteroid belt have become a permanent base of operations for The Domain Forces.

Permanent bases of operations for the Domain exist on the moon and in the asteroid belt. You all might want to read my article on The Hollow Moon.

Needless to say, any attempt by humans or others to interfere in the activities of The Domain in this solar system – even if it were possible, which it definitely is not – will be terminated swiftly.

Up front warning to the military leadership at Roswell.

This is not a serious concern, as I mentioned earlier, since homo sapiens cannot operate in open space.

Still the warning is there.

Of course we will continue with the next steps of The Domain Expansion Plan which has remained on schedule for billions of years. Over the next 5,000 years there will be increasing traffic and activity of The Domain Forces as we progress toward the center of this galaxy and beyond to spread our civilization through the universe.

This region of space will see more type-1 grey activities and will become more important as time moves on.

If humanity is to survive, it must cooperate to find effective solutions to the difficult conditions of your existence on Earth.

Humanity must cooperate with the Domain. Which is probably why MAJestic was established.

Humanity must rise above its human form and discover where they are, and that they are IS-BEs, and who they really are as IS-BEs in order to transcend the notion that they are merely biological bodies.

Once these realizations have been made, it may be possible to escape your current imprisonment.

Otherwise, there will be no future for the IS-BEs on Earth.

Thus anyone or anything that dwells on the carnal things of the flesh and the physical takes away from the notion of consciousness and purpose. Be the Rufus, or try to become filthy rich and popular like the media says. there is no in between.

Although there are no active battles or war being waged between The Domain and the “Old Empire”, there still exists the covert actions of the “Old Empire” taken against Earth through their thought control operation.

Covert actions are engaged on the earth.

When one knows that these these activities exist, the effects can be observed clearly.

The most obvious examples of these actions against the human race can be seen as incidents of sudden, inexplicable behavior.

A very recent instance of this occurred in the United States military just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Such as carpet bombing China with bio-weapons, and the Coronavirus, and the strange behaviors of American and British Naval vessels.

Just three days before the attack, someone in authority ordered all the ships in Pearl Harbor to go into port and secure for inspection. The ships were ordered to take all the ammunition out of their magazines, and store it below. On the afternoon before attack all of the admirals and generals were attending parties, even though two Japanese aircraft carriers were discovered standing right off Pearl Harbor.

The obvious action to take would have been to contact Pearl Harbor by telephone to warn them of the danger of a fight starting and to put the ammunition back and order the ships to get out of port into open sea.

About six hours before the Japanese attack began, a U.S. navy ship sank a small Japanese submarine right outside the harbor. Instead of contacting Pearl Harbor by telephone to report the incident, a warning message was put into top secret code, which took about two hours to encode, and then it took another two hours to decode.

The word of warning to Pearl Harbor did not arrive until 10:00 AM Pearl Harbor time, Sunday – two hours after the Japanese attack destroyed the U.S. fleet.

How do things like this happen?

If the men who were responsible for these obviously disastrous errors were stood up and asked bluntly to justify their actions and intentions you would find out that they were quite sincere in their jobs. Ordinarily, they do the very best they can do for people and nations. However, all of a sudden, from some completely unknown and undetectable source enters these wild, unexplainable situations that just ‘can’t exist’.

Such unexplainable actions by otherwise sensible people can and will occur.

The “Old Empire” thought control operation is run by a small group of old “baboons” with very small minds. They are playing insidious games with no purpose and no goal other than to control and destroy IS-BEs who could otherwise manage themselves perfectly well, if left alone.

It's an apt description of a very low mental state of humanoid.

These types of artificially created incidents (as recently) are being forced upon the human race by the operators of the mind-control prison system. The prison guards will always promote and support oppressive or totalitarian activities of IS-BEs on Earth.

Think of America today, and South Africa.

Why not keep the inmates fighting between themselves?

Why not empower madmen to run the governments of Earth?

The men who run the criminal governments of Earth mirror the commands given them by covert thought-controllers of the “Old Empire”.

Directions from their controllers who are well hidden and dispersed throughout the Old Empire. Even though it is in ruin, they still work their roles.

The human race will continue to shadow box with this for a long time – as long as it remains the human race. Until then, the IS-BEs on Earth will continue to live a series of consecutive lives, over and over and over. The same IS-BEs who lived during the rise and fall of civilizations in India, China, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome are inhabiting bodies in the present time in America, France, Russia, Africa, and around the world.

Sigh. This sucks.

In between each lifetime an IS-BE is sent back again, to begin all over, as though the new life was the only life they had ever lived. They begin anew in pain, in misery, and mystery.

Sigh. This sucks.

Some IS-BEs have been transported to Earth more recently than others. Some IS-BEs have been on Earth only a few hundred years, so they have no personal experiences with the earlier civilizations of Earth. They have no experiences of having lived on Earth, so could not remember a previous existence here, even if their memory was restored. They might, however, remember lives they lived elsewhere on other planets and in other times.

A very interesting statement. If the person had a life on another planet and was then transported to earth and had the memories erased, the memories of the prior planet might still exist and be easier to acquire.

Others have been here since the first days of Lemuria.

In any case, the IS-BEs of Earth are here forever, until they can break the amnesia cycle, conquer the electronic traps set up by their captors and free themselves.

It is a four step plan on what to do.

[1] Break the amnesia cycle.
[2] Conquer the electronic traps.
[3] free themselves from this region.

Because The Domain has three thousand of their own IS-BEs in captivity on Earth also, they have an interest in solving this problem.

This problem has never been encountered or effectively solved before in the universe, as far as they know.

It is a new problem as of 1947.

They will continue their efforts to free those IS-BEs from Earth, where and when it is possible, but it will require time to develop an unprecedented technology and the diligence to do so.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The following statement is a comment by Matilda.)

I think it is Airl’s sincere desire, as one IS-BE to another, that the rest of our eternity will be as pleasant as possible.”

End of Part eight

It’s all a pretty interesting discussion. What’s up? Well, now I am going to parse this entire document all over, but in a format for us contemporary humans to understand. Actually the “Alien Interview” as well written and narrated as it is, is actually “all over the place” and jumps back and froth from great swaths of time and situations. My next series of articles will correct this uncomfortable situation.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

A breakdown of the report “alien interview” by MM from a MAJ perspective (part 7)

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

This is part 6.

This is part seven of the parsing of this document

You can view part 1 HERE.

ALIEN INTERVIEW, 30. 7. 1947, 1st Session

Immortal Spiritual Beings, which I refer to as “IS-BEs”, for the sake of convenience, are the source and creators of illusions. Each one, individually and collectively, in their original, unfettered state of being, are an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing entity.

IS-BEs create space by imagining a location. The intervening distance between themselves and the imagined location is what we call space. An IS-BE can perceive the space and objects created by other IS-BEs.

IS-BEs are not physical universe entities. They are a source of energy and illusion. IS-BEs are not located in space or time, but can create space, place particles in space, create energy, and shape particles into various forms, cause the motion of forms, and animate forms. Any form that is animated by an IS-BE is called life.

I have no problem with this. Though I do realize just how difficult it is to understand.

An IS-BE can decide to agree that they are located in space or time, and that they, themselves, are an object, or any other manner of illusion created by themselves or another or other IS-BEs.

I have no problem with this.

The disadvantage of creating an illusion is that an illusion must be continually created. If not continually created, it disappears. Continual creation
of an illusion requires incessant attention to every detail of the illusion in order to sustain it.

Indeed. Entire books can be written on this subject.

A common denominator of IS-BEs seems to be the desire to avoid boredom. A spirit only, without interaction with other IS-BEs, and the unpredictable motion, drama, and unanticipated intentions and illusions being created by other IS-BEs, is easily bored.

This is a deep statement, and I guess, that it is wholly above the heads and minds of the Roswell military leadership present at the facility at that time.

What if you could imagine anything, perceive everything, and cause anything to happen, at will?

What if you couldn’t do anything else?

What if you always knew the outcome of every game and the answer to every question?

Would you get bored?

Yes. You would.

The entire back time track of IS-BEs is immeasurable, nearly infinite in terms of physical universe time. There is no measurable “beginning” or “end” for an IS-BE. They simply exist in an everlasting now.

Yes. I have no problems with this statement.

Another common denominator of IS-BEs is that admiration of one’s own illusions by others is very desirable.

If the desired admiration is not forthcoming, the IS-BE will keep creating the illusion in an attempt to get admiration.

One could say that the entire physical universe is made of unadmired illusions.

This is so very deep that it deserves complete indexes of articles to investigate further.

The origins of this universe began with the creation of individual, illusionary spaces.

Also known as the "Big Bang".

These were the “home” of the IS-BE.

Sometimes a universe is a collaborative creation of illusions by two or more IS-BEs.

A proliferation of IS-BEs, and the universes they create, sometimes collide or become commingled or merge to an extent that many IS-BEs shared in the co-creation of a universe.

Here we are discussing the creation of heavens and universes. And most strangely, I have dim recollections of events similar to what is described. Dim, curious, "memories" of a "something else".

IS-BEs diminish their ability in order to have a game to play.

Of course. You give up omnipotence for physical sensation.

IS-BEs think that any game is better than no game.

They will endure pain, suffering, stupidity, privation, and all manner of unnecessary and undesirable conditions, just to play a game.

Pretending that one does not know all, see all and cause all, is a way to create the conditions necessary for playing a game: unknowns, freedoms, barriers and/or opponents and goals.

Ultimately, playing a game solves the problem of boredom.

Reincarnation as a mortal being solves the problem of boredom. If you don't know what he is talking about, then perhaps a re-watching of the old Sean Connery movie "Zardoz" is in order.

In this fashion, all of the space, galaxies, suns, planets, and physical phenomena of this universe, including life forms, places, and events that have been created by IS-BEs…

…and sustained by mutual agreement that these things exist.

Sustained by mutual agreement.

There are as many universes as there are IS-BEs to imagine, build and perceive them, each existing concurrently within its own continuum.

Each universe is created using its own, unique set of rules, as imagined, altered, preserved or destroyed by one or more IS-BEs who created it.

This idea has been adopted by the scientific community as a given concerning "bubble universes".

Time, energy, objects and space, as defined in terms of the physical universe, may or may not exist in other universes.

Very true, and this is something that MM has stated repeatedly.

The Domain exists in such a universe, as well as in the physical universe.

Big stuff here. The Domain exists within a non-physical universe, and the physical universe as well.

One of the rules of the physical universe is that energy can be created, but not destroyed.

E=mc2

So, the universe will keep expanding as long as IS-BEs keep adding more new energy into it.

This physical universe is ever expanding.

It is nearly infinite. It is like an automobile assembly line that never stops running and none of the cars are ever destroyed.

Every IS-BE is basically good.

Therefore, an IS-BE does not enjoy doing things to other IS-BEs which they themselves do not want to experience.

A consciousness does not enjoy doing things to others which they do not want to experience. Hum. Unless, they have no recollection of their past.

For an IS-BE there is no inherent standard for what is good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful. These ideas are all based on the opinion of each individual IS-BE.

Beauty is in the beholder. Good and bad is as determined by the consciousness.

The closest concept that human beings have to describe an IS-BE is as a god: all-knowing, all-powerful, infinite. So, how does a god stop being a god? They pretend NOT to know.

How can you play a game of “hide and seek” if you always know where the other person is hiding?

You pretend NOT to know where the other players are hiding, so you can go off to “seek” them.

This is how games are created.

You have forgotten that you are just “pretending”.

In so doing, IS-BEs become entrapped and enslaved inside a maze of their own devising.

All of this is very deep and a very in-depth discussion and conversation that must have been way, way above the heads of the Roswell military leadership at that time.

How does one create a cage, lock one’s own self inside the cage, throw away the key, and forget there is a key or a cage, and forget there is an “inside” or “outside”, and even forget there is a self?

How to do this?

Create the illusion.

As in the Earth Sphere.

On Earth, the propaganda taught and agreed upon is that the gods are responsible, and that human beings are not responsible. You are taught that only a god can create universes. So, the responsibility for every action is assigned to another IS-BE or god.

Never oneself.

No human being ever assumes personal responsibility for the fact that they, themselves – individually and collectively – are gods. This fact alone is the source of entrapment for every IS-BE.

Thus, as I have repeatedly stated in MM, it's all your life and soul and consciousness and pre-birth world-line template. And you have the means and the ability to define your life, your future and your happiness. You do. No others.

End of Part seven

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The reason why the United States is pulling back from engaging China in it’s backyard

After four solid years (the Trump / Pompeo years) of beating the war-drums against China, and a fever-pitch of anti-China propaganda, along with Taiwanese nationalists clamoring for a War on Taiwanese soil (to be defended by the United States), and the Australian (Morrison) government demanding that Australia fight China with every effort…

…it all came to a screeching end.

Why?

Did they all come to their senses? Did they realize that any war with China will be a war that is unwinnable? Did they finally realize that starting a nuclear war will hurt their chances of reelection? What is going on?

Here’s a number of articles that might provide some insight.

The first article is a an American neocon publication. 
It essentially says that...

[1] Any war with China will be conventional. 

[2] That it will be fought either inside of China or in the neighboring lands next to China. 

[3] That American military cannot fight it at this time. It needs from five to ten years to prepare. 

[4] Preparation will require an enormous outlay of cash. 

[6] The cash would be used to upgrade the forces and weapons to "take on China". 

[7] And in five to ten years, the United States would be much stronger politically, militarily, socially, and culturally and thus a war would be welcomed by the American people.

[8] That the USA and it's allies will take on China, who will stand alone without any neighbor support.

I call bullshit on all these thoughts.

Well, for one thing, a war with China has been fought using Weapons of Mass destruction since 2016 when John Bolton launched the carpet bombing of China with Bio-weapons, and the BRI was attacked with a micro-nuke in Beirut by America using Israel by proxy.

So keeping the war conventional is off the table.

And the idea that American allies will want to battle China, their neighbor, is also a “pipe dream”. An the USA will not be fighting China alone. They will be fighting both China and Russia who share military treaties, and who have staff in both military headquarters.

I also must say that the “big elephant in the room” is completely and totally omitted from this dialog. Which is, of course, that China has forcefully and clearly stated (over and over again) that any attack on China; it’s people, it’s territories, and it’s borders will be considered an act of war, and will be responded to with the HARSHEST and MOST DANGEROUS MEANS available. And that means nuclear weapons.

Which is why China is now mass producing unstoppable MIRV warhead hyper-velocity ICBMs, with artificial Intelligence, and which are designed to blast America cities into glass and debris.

But, you know, just ignore the warnings… right?

But you do need to get into the minds of these people. And notice what they omit from their calculus, the assumptions that they make, and the published reactions to their madness on their internet platforms.

[1] Gradually and Then Suddenly: Explaining the Navy’s Strategic Bankruptcy

“How did this happen to a force that, as recently as two decades ago, dominated the world’s oceans to a degree perhaps unequalled in human history?”

Empire Woes

Christopher Dougherty 

11 https://anti-empire.com/gradually-and-then-suddenly-explaining-the-navys-strategic-bankruptcy/

The U.S. Navy is on the verge of strategic bankruptcy. Its fleet isn’t large enough to meet global day-to-day demands for naval forces. Due to repeated deployments and maintenance backlogs, the fleet also isn’t ready enough to meet these demands safelynor can it quickly surge in an emergency. Finally, the fleet isn’t capable enough to meet the challenges posed by China’s increasingly modern and aggressive People’s Liberation Army Navy. How did this happen to a force that, as recently as two decades ago, dominated the world’s oceans to a degree perhaps unequalled in human history?

The answer is gradually and then suddenly.

Myriad authors have responded to the Biden administration’s Fiscal Year 2022 defense budget request with a mix of confusion and consternation. Critics have directed their ire, in particular, at the budget’s treatment of the Navy, given the administration’s purported focus on China as a strategic competitor. However, the issues noted by critics aren’t limited to this budget, but reflect a persistent trend since at least the FY2019 request, which was the first defense budget request to prioritize China as a strategic competitor. Despite the need for “urgent change at significant scale” to meet the Chinese military challenge, the last four budget requests have offered only measured change at moderate scale.

Why is that?

The stock response is usually a mix of bureaucratic inertiaservice parochialism, and congressional obstruction. Inertia and parochialism are powerful forces, but hardly insurmountable ones, especially when facing a clear and pressing challenge. While Congress certainly determines the final shape of the authorized and appropriated budget, it has less influence on the executive branch’s initial budget request. Moreover, the bureaucracy, the services, and key components of Congress all generally agree on the core precepts of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. Specifically, they recognize that China is the most pressing military challenge facing the United States; the U.S. military response should focus on deterring Chinese aggression against U.S. allies, partners, and vital interests in the Indo-Pacific region; deterring China rests on a credible ability to defeat its aggression or deny China its objectives; and that this form of deterrence will require new methods of fighting wars backed by modernized air and naval forces.

The real impediments to urgent change are a lack of consensus on the risks posed by Chinaa lack of a shared vision for the future of the fleet, and limited options for implementing a new vision. Even if the Pentagon and Congress could reach consensus on these questions, the U.S. military lacks mature defense programs and the industrial capacity to build them at scale. These gaps aren’t unique to the Navy, but it serves as a useful example for the rest of the Defense Department because its gaps are so glaring in the context of the current strategic environment.

Lack of Consensus

While the U.S. defense community mostly agrees that China is the “pacing challenge” for the Department of Defense, there is much less consensus on what kind of threat China poses, or when the risk of conflict will be most acute. Some analysts believe that China poses an immediate threat.

This position usually, but not always, correlates with a belief that competition below the threshold of war — like seizing unoccupied features in the South China Sea — represents a greater concern than the possibility of conventional war, such as over Taiwan.

Others are more concerned with America’s medium-term vulnerability due to China’s rapid military modernization and the increasing age of the U.S. Navy fleet.

This perspective tends to correspond with a belief that conventional war in five to 10 years is the most pressing risk.

Still others are most worried that Chinese investments in AI and quantum computing could allow it to “leapfrog” the United States in the long-term military-technical competition, thereby establishing itself as the world’s foremost military power.

Lack of a Shared Vision

Any strategist’s view of what the Navy should look like will be shaped by how that strategist assesses the challenges posed by China and the distribution of risk across time.

Someone focused on near-term day-to-day competition will tend to prioritize a large, highly ready fleet to maintain naval forces in key waters like the South China Sea.

Someone concerned about the risk of conventional war in the next five to 10 years would sacrifice some near-term readiness and capacity to build a force capable of winning a future conflict with China.

A defense planner or strategist who prioritized the long-term military-technical competition would eschew near-term investments in order to go all-in on next-generation systems with game-changing technologies that maintain the Navy’s technological advantage over the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

Further complicating this picture is the way that these risk assessments and future visions tend to correlate with different groups within the defense community.

Traditional Navy advocates tend to fall into the “near-term group,” as it aligns most closely with their strategic vision of the Navy as a force that sustains the global order and ensures peace through forward presence. In this view, the fundamental purpose of the Navy is to be “haze gray and underway,” showing the flag across the world’s oceans. Persistently maintaining this overt forward presence demands large numbers of highly visible surface vessels like frigates and destroyers.

Pentagon force planners, programmers, and analysts tend to worry about conflict in the medium term because that coincides with the five-year Future Years Defense Program, and conflict scenarios are a critical benchmark for the ability of the force to execute the defense strategy. From their perspective, a bigger fleet isn’t helpful if it lacks the capability to intervene directly in a war with China because it’s too heavily weighted toward surface vessels that are vulnerable to China’s arsenal of long-range missiles.

Meanwhile, the research and development community, technologists, and horizon-scanning organizations like the Office of Net Assessment typically fret about the long-term military-technical competition. From their perspective, the traditional navalists and force planners are dangerously shortsighted. Every outdated, non-upgradeable piece of equipment acquired today or in the near future could become a white elephant that the department can’t divest quickly enough when AI and other technologies transform warfare.

The competition between these visions plays out yearly with each program review and budget submission and is partly responsible for a raft of recent studies and white papers on the future of the fleet. In these debates, near-term navalists advocate for increased readiness spending and acquiring more small surface combatants to reach the Navy’s goal of 355 ships and increase its ability to meet the demands of the geographic combatant commands.

Mid-term force planners push for platform upgradesadditional munitions, more submarines and undersea systems, and longer-range carrier aircraft. Long-term technologists argue for greater research and development spending and investments in leap-ahead unmanned and autonomous systems to create a radical new fleet architecture comprising large numbers of unmanned and autonomous systems.

The result of this competition between perspectives is usually an unsatisfying compromise that creates a fleet that’s not big enough for navalists, not capable enough for joint force planners, and not farsighted enough for the futurists.

Some believe that the 2020 future naval force study represents a shared vision for the future fleet. Developed cooperatively by the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense — particularly the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation — this document presents a 30-year shipbuilding plan with purportedly realistic cost estimates.

There are reasons for skepticism, however. First, this plan was developed under the last administration, and it’s likely that the new team is closely reviewing its assumptions and analysis, especially regarding the budget and costs.

Second, the Navy has released countless “realistic” 30-year shipbuilding plans over the last 30 years, and none of them has ever come close to fruition.

Finally, the study doesn’t clearly articulate a vision of the future Navy, but instead lays out an overstuffed buffet of future forces with something for everyone. Navalists see a return to the glory years of Secretary John Lehmanthe 600-ship Navy, and the 1980s maritime strategy.

The force planners get excited about the huge growth in undersea systems and the Combat Logistics Force — both of which would be critical in any conflict with China — and are sanguine about the possibility of a more distributed and resilient fleet architecture.

The futurists look at the huge investments in unmanned systems and have hope that the Navy has finally “gotten religion” about the disruptive potential of advanced technologies. The problem is that the Navy will never build all of these ships because the plan rests on overly optimistic budget assumptions and would require 30 years in which no major event intervenes to shift U.S. defense spending priorities.

Determining what gets cut when the budget axe inevitably falls depends a lot on the initial assumptions about risk and the overarching vision of the future Navy.

Lack of Options

The Navy’s FY2022 request suggests that the Biden administration will pursue a mix of the medium-term and long-term approaches, given its emphasis on advanced munitions and research and development alongside cuts to the legacy surface combatant fleet.

These proposed ship cuts, combined with the lack of replacements in the budget, are yet another shoal barring the Navy’s path to a fleet of more than 300 ships. It is the failure to address this persistent shortfall that has truly aggravated the Navy community.

Blake Herzinger summed up this position perfectly in War on the Rocks, writing that “The Biden administration’s Fiscal Year 2022 defense budget was an opportunity to arrest the Navy’s decline and recapitalize the fleet to address this uncertain future. Instead, its authors elected to perpetuate a status quo that would see the fleet continue to wither, while the competition surges ahead.”

The problem with this line of reasoning is that there are few credible short-term options to recapitalize the fleet. The Navy has been trying to retire its aging Ticonderoga cruisers for years without a proper replacement in the works since the cancellation of the next-generation cruiser (CG-X) program.

The proposed retirement of four littoral combat ships in the 2022 budget request seems to indicate that the Navy may have belatedly recognized that it is unsuited to the demands of competition and conflict with China. And yet the Constellation class frigate isn’t ready to swap out for littoral combat ships and won’t be a one-for-one replacement given its higher cost.

The lack of options becomes painfully acute if one ascribes to the mid- or long-term perspectives of the China threat. Further upgrades to the Arleigh Burke destroyers and Virginia submarines that comprise the backbone of today’s fleet will require new clean-sheet designs that are at least a decade away or more.

Unmanned surface vessels offer a way to increase the Navy’s capacity within reasonable budget constraints, but current ships are immature, as are the concepts and analysis needed to integrate them into the fleet. They simply aren’t a viable near-term option to backfill proposed cuts to the surface fleet. The Navy has become like a sports team filled with aging superstars. It knows change is needed, but its choices are limited to proven systems with long-term limitations, or immature systems with significant technical and conceptual risks.

Even in areas where mature designs exist, like the BurkesVirginias, and Constellations, there isn’t enough capacity at the shipyards to enable a rapid fleet recapitalization or sustain a larger fleet. This reflects a longstanding trend to consolidate and rationalize the defense industrial base in search of efficiency.

The downside is a lack of slack capacity and the flexibility it enables. To his credit, Herzinger notes this limitation in his article, and other navalists such as Jerry Hendrix have frequently decried the state of the U.S. shipbuilding.

Still, the reality is that aggressive fleet recapitalization isn’t possible without major up-front investments in industry that would require additional time and money. From industry’s perspective, these investments require predictability — there’s no sense in building new facilities and hiring and training thousands of workers without an unambiguous long-term demand signal from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.

Such predictability is impossible without a common perception of risk and a shared vision of the future fleet.

As though all of these hurdles weren’t enough, the Navy’s shipbuilding budget is hamstrung by the need to recapitalize the nuclear ballistic missile submarine (Columbia-class) fleet and the decision to purchase a “block” of two Ford-class aircraft carriers.

For nearly a decade, Navy budget observers have sounded the alarm that the Columbia would punch a huge hole in the Navy’s budget when it shifted from development to procurement. The block buy of the Fords saved the Navy money but arguably exacerbated this problem by committing so much of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget up-front.

The Heart of the Matter

A series of decisions (and indecisions) decades in the making have backed the Navy into a budget and force-planning corner. Even if the Navy were to receive a larger share of the defense budget — which Herzinger and others suggest — there simply is no way to build a bigger fleet quickly, and any attempt to do so might burden the Navy with ships of limited utility in the long-term strategic competition with China.

While perhaps unsatisfying, the Navy’s 2022 budget request is a product of these constraints. It prioritizes the ballistic missile submarines, munitions, auxiliary ships, and mature combatant designs, and divests older or less-capable ships.

At the same time, the budget attempts to rebuild readiness (again) and invest in research and development to accelerate next-generation capabilities like unmanned surface and undersea vessels.

It doesn’t rapidly grow the fleet for the same reasons that no budget request has rapidly grown the fleet in decades: There is no widespread agreement on why the fleet should grow; or how it should grow; and the underlying ideas, designs, and infrastructure needed for rapid growth have all withered.

The problems facing the Navy weren’t created in a single budget, and they won’t be fixed in a single budget. To get the Navy out of its force-planning doldrums, the next National Defense Strategy should clarify its assessment of the China challenge and serve as a forcing function to create a shared vision of the future Navy.

The 2018 defense strategy tried to prioritize modernizing the Navy to deter future war with China over building near-term fleet capacity to supply ships to service geographic combatant command requests for forward forces.

This prioritization got lost in implementation, as “Dynamic Force Employment” became shorthand for running the Navy ragged with repeated deployments, often to tertiary theaters like U.S. Central Command.

A clear assessment of the China challenge and a shared vision for the future fleet would help improve the gap between strategy and implementation that plagued the 2018 strategy.

Perhaps more importantly, it would enable Navy and department leadership to work with, rather than against, Congress to undertake a long-term program to rebuild the Navy and reinvigorate the maritime industrial base on which the Navy and the nation depend.

Achieving consensus on this won’t be easy, as there are good reasons why China observers vary in their assessments of the risk of conflict and why U.S. naval and defense strategists differ on their visions of the future fleet.

However, without this consensus and a concerted effort to reverse decades of drift, the Navy will continue its gradual slide toward strategic bankruptcy, and the risk of its debts coming due suddenly (and perhaps violently) will increase.

Source: War on the Rocks

Comments:

GMC

US Ships on top of the water and thousands of miles away from the mainland are for show or for attacking defenseless countries.Subs are where it is – I’d say. Plus the US Navy is into the space scene and that will scarf up all the monies. Even at 1.5 Trillion bucks a year , the US Military isn’t satisfied – Greed rules.
.
I sense a cosmic event in the near future that the NWO is aware of – and they are preparing for it – They are preparing for – Not we are preparing for – big difference. Gut feeling .

Wilson Keep

The US has 800 military bases around the world, all need maintaining, all need McDonald’s vans and non-military operations funded out of the military budget. Policing an entire planet is very very expensive, and the US is running a massive budget deficit and its national debt is about to reach a critical tipping point. 

Compare that to Russia that has a military budget a tenth that of the USA but has no empire to police or maintain, most of the Russian money goes into military equipment & research. That is why the S400 and coming 500 missile defence systems make the US Patriot System look like a sling shot, and why it has hypersonic ICBMs, whilst the US is still failing or launch one successful hypersonic test missile. Add to that the USA’s failure to switch to their own service rockets for the ISS, humiliatingly still tethered to the Russians rockets who they are applying economic sanctions to. 

On top of this, you can add the strategic incompetence of the US spending $10 billion on huge aircraft carriers as the Chinese and Russians look-on with glee, at their new target practice opportunities. 

Then you realise that the US is slowly decaying as a military power. The worst thing that can happen now is that they engage in a serious war against a first world military, if they do, the whole edifice will be exposed for the knackered rust bucket it is.

Oilman

Reply to  Wilson Keep Compare that to Russia that has a military budget a tenth that of the USA” … True but, for every dollar, the US spends on equipment, the Russian cost for the same stuff is around 0.15c 

ken

 “Some analysts believe that China poses an immediate threat.”

This is sort of like those covid con ‘experts’ telling us a 99.87% recovery rate is an immediate threat!

Here’s the skinny…. Remember all those production jobs? Remember all the products made in the USA? Remember nickel candy bars when the dollar had value?

Well, your selected parasites allowed the corporations to give all your jobs and production to the Chinese for more profits. Didn’t bother gov at first,,, they could just borrow (print) more currency to offset their losses.

You however went from a manufacturing economy to a service economy basically mowing each others lawns and maxing out credit cards.

All the while the Chinese were getting better and better at manufacturing. The produce some of the finest equipment in the world now. While their ‘knowhow’ was increasing the USA ‘knowhow’ was crashing. The last productive generation is retiring and dying out leaving behind younger generations of unskilled and uneducated Americans on the dole.

Bottom line,,, your government and its corporations is the cause of your poverty and is the cause of China’s advancement. You were sold out….

When you read about trade deficits you don’t hear that it is entirely caused by American corporations importing goods they produce in China.

Because we are no longer a manufacturing nation we can no longer afford the huge military nor do we have the expertise to maintain older equipment or design new equipment.

Don’t blame China,,, they took the ball Washington gave them and ran with it. So the ones to blame are the thieving bastards in government and corporations.

Raptar Driver

Navy’s are obsolete!

Oilman

In the past 25 years, the US spent huge amounts on trying to keep its air superiority while Russia and China were spending money to take away that superiority and Navy one by developing missiles to destroy them both and from a long and safe distance away.

Today, if a war broke out between the US and China, to repeat what RAND already stated, “the US would get their asses handed to them”.

The US dominance is over and they know it. The only thing that keeps them alive today is the dollar as a world currency. Saying that, with countries slowly getting rid of their dollars, it will come a time where it will become worthless hence replaced with either the Euro or the Chinese Yuan.

No empire lives forever. The US is falling and it’s because of their greed and bought and paid for politicians by big corporations. Same old story, same old result.

mijj

maintaining international military thuggery is expensive.

Ultrafart the Brave

There’s clearly something irrational about a country which is so addicted to its Navy’s ability to harass countries on the other side of the world, that it’s seemingly determined to bankrupt itself to continue doing so.

Some sort of a wakeup call might be needed to help them reassess their priorities.

A rude awakening, so to speak.

Dale F

Why not spend the money on America’s Infrastructure and make peace and not war with China and Russia?

edwardi

The author makes the same faulty assumptions as does the Naval planners, all that force projection onto other countries to attack them (at home or in their waters and shores), are futile, stupid and Imperialistic. And so will never happen.

Not to mention that game is over, period. 

The new missile technology has made surface ships irrelevant except for transportation in a non combat environment. 

China just test fired one of the new super fast ship killers from an airplane, thus extending it’s range of self defense to not the previous 1400 kilometers, 900 miles, but a much longer range now of 2,500 MILES. 

Game over. 

The US needs to focus on defense of it’s shores, and it’s only real remaining asset, submarines. 

The newly formed alliance/partnership of Russia/China is another game changer quickly improving all Chinese systems, the US is at least 10 years behind now, and that is assuming Russia stands still for 10 years, which won’t happen. 

It is game over, for Imperialism, time to bring our militaries home from everywhere and tell Uncle Sam to Please Shut His Trap ( his big mouth ) .
saoirse52
The problem with the US is the lack of intelligence in their political caste. In dumbimg down their own population, they’ve infected themselves with the same injudicious lethargic thought process. 

The US is never going to rival China, nor Russia, nor contain them nor be superior to them, militarily or otherwise. 

Their incoherent and disjointed thinking of being exceptional or indispensable has led to their moral and financal bankruptcy and unless they hastily beat a worldwide retreat from all their military bases and their illegal psychopathic war-mongering, they’ll face a total and excruciatingly humiliating collapse into ignominy

And there you have it…

As I said earlier, the neocons want to fight a war on Chinese soil and they want it BIG. And somehow they believe that it will be an “Afghanistan on steroids”, where a long remote war can be fought, they will get rich in the process, and the American people won’t know any better. They believe that the next war will be like all the last wars of the last one hundred years… fought far away, on American terms.

No.

It won’t be like that.

And everyone is trying to breech those high walls of the Ivory Towers that these morons live in on K-street. But they just aren’t listening. In their minds, the ARE the Powers-that-be, and they can do anything they want and no one will stop them. But bits and pieces, chunks and knocking can be heard on the walls of this “tower”, and so, we have articles like this coming about…

[2] Russian General Concludes China May Have More Nukes Than America And They Could Reach The US In Less Than One Hour!

By Dr. Peter Vincent Pry – All News Pipeline
.

I would say within five minutes from a SLBM launched MIRV. - MM

Fiona Cunningham is to be commended for her report “Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications Systems of the People’s Republic of China” (Nautilus July 18, 2019).

Ms. Cunningham relies on unclassified sources to provide a well-researched summary of the mainstream view of academics, China scholars and even many military professionals of the PRC’s nuclear doctrine and C3 arrangements.

Unfortunately, this show that the mainstream [media and neocon view] is almost certainly wrong.

Western analysts consistently fail to understand that, for both Beijing and Moscow, nuclear war plans and C3 to execute those plans are national security “crown jewels” . Important aspects that they protect and try to conceal behind a bodyguard of lies and disinformation.

Trusting open sources and commentary — especially when they are intended to cast nuclear doctrine and C3 in the most benign possible way — is a BIG mistake.

For example, during the Cold War the USSR went to extraordinary lengths to disinform Western policymakers and the public that Moscow had a nuclear “No First Use” doctrine. This was intended to conceal their real nuclear war plans — that we now know entailed a massive nuclear first strike early in a conflict. The NFU disinformation campaign was also intended to mobilize Western anti-nuclear activists, in and out of government, to constrain U.S. nuclear programs and operational plans.

NFU = Nuclear First Use Doctrine

China’s alleged nuclear NFU doctrine, like the USSR’s during the Cold War, is almost certainly disinformation.

NFU for China does not withstand the test of common sense.

No conservative military planner would adopt NFU when, as Ms. Cunningham correctly observes, China lacks BMEWS and satellite early warning systems that would enable China to launch on tactical warning.

NFU would doom China’s nuclear deterrent to certain destruction by a U.S. or Russian conventional or nuclear first strike, or to a nuclear first strike by India.

China’s nuclear posture, especially the lack of early warning radars and satellites, is “use it or lose it” which logically should drive PRC military planners toward nuclear first use — indeed toward surprise first use early in a crisis or conflict, based on strategic warning.

To put it another way. China is set up strategically. 

The defense weapons are set up so that when it appears that a war with a major power is involved (the United States), China will go NFU. Simply because they are not investing any technology for detection of incoming missile attacks.

Thus they have a policy of simultaneous use of nuclear and conventional weapons to defend against aggression.

Regardless of the PRC’s declaratory NFU policy, it strains credulity Beijing’s political leaders would adhere to NFU if confronted with compelling political and military intelligence of an imminent U.S. attack.

Such strategic warning was the basis for the former USSR’s secret plans for a disarming nuclear first strike under their VRYAN (Surprise Nuclear Missile Attack) intelligence program, that nearly resulted in a nuclear apocalypse during NATO’s theater nuclear exercise ABLE ARCHER-83.

Just as Ms. Cunningham’s report would have benefited from greater skepticism about NFU, greater humility about what we know, and don’t know, about China’s nuclear posture is also advisable.

  • For example, how do we really know that China’s nuclear warheads are in storage, not mounted on missiles?

This would be a very grave vulnerability. China’s ICBMs and IRBMs are in cold launch canisters — we cannot see if they are armed, or not.

China’s DF-41 hyper-velocity, AI controlled, MIRV armed ICBM.

Ms. Cunningham seriously proposes that China gives such high priority to safeguarding against unauthorized nuclear use that their very costly ballistic missile submarine fleet may, in peacetime, carry no SLBMs.

  • All of the Chinese boomer subs are empty of SLBM’s? Really?

Perhaps she means they would carry no SLBM nuclear warheads. In either case, this defies common sense as it would render useless China’s SSBN fleet as a deterrent against surprise attack.

Chinese “carrier killer” hyper-velocity nuclear warhead missiles that the K-street neocons say would never be used. That China would instead try to attack American naval forces with conventional weapons.

The SSBNs would also become an escalatory liability in a crisis or conflict, as the process of uploading missiles or warheads would be very lengthy, highly visible, and so provocative as to invite a disarming first strike.

Undoubtedly, China will operate its SSBNs in peacetime as they are being tested now — loaded for bear, with SLBMs armed with nuclear warheads aboard.

  • For decades, Western analysts have almost certainly grossly underestimated China’s number of nuclear weapons as about 300 (compared to about 1,500 operational strategic nuclear weapons for the U.S. and Russia, or five times as many). This seems based more on wishful thinking than a realistic appraisal of China’s nuclear capabilities.

Russian Gen. Viktor Yesin, former commander in chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces, provided a more realistic estimate of China’s nuclear capabilities in an article published seven years ago “Third After the United States and Russia: On China’s Nuclear Capabilities Without Understatement or Exaggeration” (April 30, 2012).

China’s nuclear weapons are design to completely destroy cities. yet, American military doctrine believes that they would never be used, or if they were, the war zone would be confined to China and that these weapons would be used against Chinese cities, not American ones. I think that the entire group of neocons in Washington DC need lobotomities.

Gen. Yesin calculates China could have “10,000 nuclear munitions” based on the PRC’s estimated production of “up to 40 tons of weapons uranium” and “about 10 tons of weapons-grade plutonium” manufactured “as of 2011.

However, based on China’s strategic and tactical delivery systems, Gen. Yesin concludes “there may be up to 1,800 warheads in China’s nuclear arsenal.

Chinese nuclear and weapon technology is acknowledged to be ten years ahead of that of the United States. I argue that this in an underestimation and that it is more like twenty five years more advanced.

Contrary to the title of Gen. Yesin’s article, this would make China, with 1,800 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, the second most heavily armed nuclear power, after Russia (3,500 operational strategic and tactical nuclear weapons) but before the U.S. (1,700 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons).

China’s nuclear capabilities are clearly underestimated…

significantly higher than commonly believed in the Western expert community,”

- concludes Russian Gen. Yesin.

As the New Cold War heats up in the Pacific — the United States had better not bet its security on China’s “No First Use” pledge and a presumed five-to-one U.S. advantage in nuclear weapons.

This story was originally published here. Dr. Peter Vincent Pry served as chief of staff of the congressional EMP Commission and in the CIA. 

Well some sanity…

I have to agree. All the assumptions made by American planners are really ignorant. Ignorant of the facts, ignorant of China, ignorant of history, ignorant of Intel, ignorant of American weapons capability, and shrouded in wishful thinking, greed, psychopathic personalities, visions of grandeur and illusions.

So maybe some of this is starting to filter out to the American mindless masses…

The following article [3] discusses neocon war-mongering religious nutcase Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton and his slow realization that maybe now is not the time to fight China….

…yeah, Ya don’t think?

He is being discussed on FOX News which is the Alt-Right conservative “news” media that spouts the government point of view  to appeal to American conservatives.

[3] US Senator Cotton Casts Doubt on US Navy’s Ability to ‘Fight and Defeat’ China

© REUTERS / OCTAVIO JONES

by Daria Bedenkohttps://sputniknews.com/us/202107141083380272-us-senator-cotton-casts-doubt-on-us-navys-ability-to-fight-and-defeat-china/

The US military has seen criticism from lawmakers in the recent past: for example, Republican Senator Ted Cruz happened to share a video comparing the American army and the Russian Army, suggesting that the American military is “woke” and “emasculated”.

Republican US Senator Tom Cotton in a Tuesday interview to Fox News voiced doubt about whether the US Navy is capable of defeating China in battle, pointing at how the American military has, in his opinion, shifted away from warfighting.

"Obviously, the Navy has a big and complex task, but the single most important thing we have our surface Navy for is to be ready to fight and defeat the Chinese Navy",

Cotton said.

"And right now, I have real problems -- real doubts – the Navy has instilled the kind of warfighting mentality that would allow us to accomplish that goal."

He also referred to a recent military report delivered to members of Congress that, according to Cotton’s earlier statement,

"found that a staggering 94% of sailors interviewed believe that the surface Navy suffers from a crisis of leadership and culture."
"It's coming from sailors, it's coming from the sailors and their chiefs and their junior officers, and in some cases, commanding officers who have lost confidence that the Navy's surface warfare component is ready to fight and win tonight",

Cotton told Fox News.

The senator asserted that the United States

"allowed China to steal a march on us that relates especially shipbuilding",

pointing at a

"massive shipbuilding campaign"

by Beijing and suggesting that Washington should follow their lead. He also said that changes are needed in the way sailors and officers are trained, noting that, according to the military report,

"in some cases" the soldiers are handed DVDs to watch in their spare time to train."
"We would never do that to a Navy aviator, we would never do it to a Navy nuclear engineer", Cotton argued. "We shouldn't be doing it to our surface warfare officers either. They deserve a lot better, and the sailors they lead deserve a lot better as well."

The delivery of “A Report on the Fighting Culture of the United States Navy’s Surface Fleet” was ordered by Cotton and some of his House counterparts, including GOP Representatives Jim Banks, Dan Crenshaw, and Mike Gallagher.

This is not the first time Republican lawmakers have questioned the readiness of the American military, the world’s largest by a significant margin. Many conservatives blast the US military for being “woke” and “emasculated”, particularly Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz, who shared a video in which he compared the US military with the Russian army.

Some observers have criticized the American military for their rollout of so-called ‘woke’ ad videos or offering Zodiac horoscopes for soldiers, arguing that the focus should be on professionalism and not sexual orientation, gender, race, or even astrological aspects.

The sentiment, however, does not appear to be shared by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who noted in late May that he would not “lose one minute of sleep” over what Russia or China say about the US military, which he deemed “the best” in the world today.

Comments

Sy.Gunson.NZ

It is time China established a naval base in Cuba. Then the Americans will retreat from the South China Sea

Sy.Gunson.NZ

China sent one warship to the Coral Sea, then the Australian navy scurried back from the South China Sea

4Justice

So, a trillion dollar per year "defense" budget and hundreds of military bases around the globe aren't enough. Interesting how Russia and China, who spend 10 times less and have only a few external bases between them scare the US so much. They not only defend their countries adequately, but are also major threats offensively for 10 times less than what the US spends. I suppose the US answer to this will be to increase spending and build more bases.

NthrnNYker59

China's ships FAR outnumber fascist amerika's total number of ships that span all 7 seas....there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY the fascists can compete versus China in a regional battle or even war.

pepa in reply toSy.Gunson.NZ

@Sy.Gunson.NZ, 

I'm afraid he's only saying this in a drive to increase the navy budget...

Erikao

Translation we want more money. Oh and Mr. Austin since you are so confident wouldn't that mean that these countries do not actually pose a threat and we can stop bullying them?

Terranian

That's what ALL Pentagon simulations + assessments etc. say....but the total demented fascist psychopathic Neocons give a *F*, they would rather scorch the earth than giving up their lunatic wet dream...the result of their 'American Exceptionalism' Braindamages + Delusions of Grandeur and they are keeping on looting robbing plundering the taxpayer country + society blind.

Sy.Gunson.NZ

Truth is, that China has no real interest in fighting anybody, unless provoked. Watching USA hype itself up for war is like watching a kitten chasing its own tail

OUTLANDER1968

Major General Smedley Butler told the Senate Arms Committee in 1935 - that - WAR IS A RACKET. And saying - what Al Capon was trying to do in 3 districts in Chicago - He was doing it on 3 continents (Asia, Africa, and South America, plus Mexico) - for the western mafia corporations. And it hasn't change. 

Check out the movie - The Pentagon Wars. 

Plus the latest report from the U.S Air Force regarding the F-35 joint fighter jet: The F-35 $1.7 trillion project has failed to meet expectations. And lets not forget about the 911 BS event, when the Senate Arms Committee was investigating the Pentagon for misplacing $2.3 trillion in 1999 and $1.1 trillion in 2000, and interesting that The ARMY/NAVY Financial Analyst Office was the office destroyed on that day, just like World Trade Center Building #7. ------ Pull My Finger, cause it speaks the same BS language.

Sy.Gunson.NZ

CHINA is building a base on the Moon. soon USA will have to retreat from space too

KOURSK

it is sure that the big mafia and its NATO dependencies lose ground geostrategically *** 

it is excellent news if the billionaires who reign in Washington and Brussels can no longer impose their particular interests on the whole of the planet *** 

the rise of states and the Russian and Chinese public sphere, geostrategically and economically is not conquering *** 

it simply allows cooperation and development to countries which were subject to plunder when they were under the yoke of organized crime in Washington and Brussels *** 

Russia and china bring peace

Terranianin reply toSy.Gunson.NZ

@Sy.Gunson.NZ, 

Russia will join them as well, as on their Space Station because the ISS reach their End-Of-Life...

and in contrast to the US who blocked + excluded them from the ISS against the wishes of their partners, the Chinese welcome anyone to join them in cooperation as 'equals'. 

It's like with their ginormous FAST telescope, they literally invited scientist from all over the world and the US let their Arecibo telescope rot and decay and collapse because of neglect and ignorance.

keyboardcosmetics

It is ludicrous to even think that a mixed-race impoverished United States routed by Afghan tribesmen with rifles could offer any kind of threat other than bluster at a powerful armed to the teeth modern nation with a population at least 6 times greater than that of the US. What are those mulattos on?

BUY HUAWEI

hahhaha, the best in the world today? Defeated by Taliban with slingshot,

kohems

America. Military best in the world? Even the Taliban have defeated it and lost to the Vietnamese ragtag army. America can never defeat China or Russia in any war and they know that. The world will never support America and its allies in any with China or Russia.

mandrake

Sure, the morons been living in a bubble believing they are invincible, which they are not. 

First lesson they have failed to learn from is that wars fought in far away places against indigenous people are unwinnable. 

China would be such far away theater and they just wouldn’t stand a chance!

richard1950

After all its failed wars in the MiddleEast, and now being kicked out of Afghanistan, the Cowboys are now thinking of trying another war. 

This time they want to start a war in Asia, taking on the Chinese in their own backyard. 

Are these Cowboys nuts?

Hugo Boss

Don't you know that the Cabal is playing both sides: weakening the US and strengthening China, so that both may destroy each other and the Tribe rules?

Some Chinese Military Videos

I really do not know how much this can contribute tot he discussion, but I don’t think that it will hurt. Here’s some videos of Chinese military weapons and systems. I hope that they are interesting to you.

Download the video HERE.

And this one…

And the video HERE.

And this one…

And the video HERE.

And this video…

And the video HERE.

And here…

And the video HERE.

Conclusion

With every conceivable step pushing for war in place, it appears that the United States is starting to fall back and regain some sensibility.

It appears.

And I hope that it is true.

But if there is one thing that I do know, is that as nuts and crazy as the United States leadership are, they are crafty.

Crafty. Sneaky, Astute. Powerful. Dangerous.

And as an American I DO NOT TRUST THEM ONE BIT.

While it appears that the USA is pulling back from the brink of World War III, it just might just be another illusion. And instead, we could easily see a…

*** SNAP ***

And the entire world is engulfed in nuclear, flames, the worst biological weapons, and war on all theaters and in every conceivable way.

So…

Do not let your guard down.

Keep up on your affirmation prayers, and remain guarded and vigilant.

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind that America is a Police State domestically. A Military Empire Internationally. It’s government is an Oligarchy, and it’s people are dumbed down serf-slaves (roughly 60% serf / 25% felon slaves). The government controls everything inside of America, and wants to extend that reach internationally. This will not disappear, no matter what it appears to be.

America is a police state. Here are some police in a subway in New York City.

America is not the leadership. There are good people, capable people, and still intact systems that are capable of designing, working and building things. The only problem is that the government is so big, is so enormous, that it controls everything, and makes it difficult to get anything done, and impossible to enact change.

America is changing, and the military forces are wearing new uniforms and new systems. They are being prepared to fight a major war. No matter what you read otherwise.

America’s new battle armor.

America has new weapons systems too. And is developing more every day, and they do look impressive.

America’s new jeep.

So with all this in mind, please take what ever you read in the American “news” cautiously. Be wary.

New US Army helicopter.

History has shown that the United States government lies, and is deceptive, and never moves away from it’s voracious appetite for power, control and domination. Never let up our guard.

And by the way, keep in mind that the American people are being manipulated and led by these psychopaths to behave in fearful and dangerous ways.

Check out this American woman, in Hong Kong of all places, yelling at a Chinese man. Telling him to get back to China “where you belong”. And he replies “You’re in China (now)”.

Full video HERE.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Peach cobbler, hobos, and the story of the old railroad spur

Today, I am going to present a follow up article to my earlier post titled the “MM blue plate special”.  Here we are going to follow the same format, with articles, photos and short videos depicting various things in no particular order. I hope that you all enjoy it.

We will start with…

A lasagna girl

And boy oh boy is she ever! This is the kind of girl that you would spend the day browsing the malls, looking at dogs and cats, and then going home to a nice home-cooked lasagna with a plain, but simple, dry red Cabernet wine. (Oh, and a nice side of fresh crunchy bread with some soft spreadable cheese and well-salted butter.)

I can see us talking on a bridge, and just being playful under the trees. She’s just delicious!

And the sad thing is that she has no idea. And I am not nearby to tell her.

If she only knew. If she only knew.

A fine lasagna.

Seriously! Who would not want to eat this, drink some dry wine, and have a nice fun conversation with a friend or a member of the opposite sex?

Can you possibly believe that some people just do not enjoy lasagna? I know I know. But what can I say?

A fine lasagna.

Night life in China

America is so very quiet. Canada is so very quiet. Everyone is inside alone, watching televisions, playing on the computer or doing their own things. Meanwhile, China which is a very social nation, everyone is out and about. This is a pretty good video depiction of what it’s all pretty much like.

Night time China.

This is America

Well, Americans are so numb to what America is today, that the images are just “ho hum”, but when I show them to other people they are in shock. They say “What? Where is this? Syria? The Middle East? Nope. Just another average day in a typical American city.

The USA has a death wish

An American Naval Vessel is trying to provoke a war between the Philippines and China, and trigger USA involved.

From Daniel…

From Global times, July 12th :”The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces expelled a US Navy destroyer that trespassed into Chinese territorial waters in the South China Sea on Monday, the day that coincided with the fifth anniversary of the so-called South China Sea Arbitration ruling.

..Without authorization from the Chinese government, the US guided missile destroyer USS Benfold illegally trespassed into China’s territorial waters of Xisha on Monday, and the PLA Southern Theater Command organized maritime and aerial forces to track and monitor it and warned it away, Senior Colonel Tian Junli, spokesperson of the command, said in a statement released on the same day..

The Xisha Islands are inherent territory of China, and the US military’s move seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security, damaged peace and stability in the South China Sea, and violated international law and international relations norm, Tian said, noting that this marks another irrefutable evidence of US’ militarization in the region with navigational hegemony.”

The name of the ship ringed a bell, USS Benfold, It is named after a war hero, I think they even made a movie about him ,that was during the, drums please … the Korean War. Maybe it has a significance, maybe not.

I think and really believe that the USA is so out of control that it is going to really provoke a major catastrophic event that will be difficult to unravel.

This is what is going on from the Chinese point of view. Click on the picture for the video…

Here we have a BBC camera crew filming inside of America

America is on it’s death throes. It is thrashing around terribly, and the world needs calm and cool heads to prevail. First a provocation aimed at Russia. Didn’t happen. Then a provocation aimed at China. Didn’t happen. To me it seems that a major “False Flag” is in the works…

…only this time, if America tries this nonsense, both Russia and China will hit them hard. Look at the wasteland of what constitutes America today…

What happened to America?

Evil, self-centered, service-to-self psychopathic personalities took over. And they molded and reshaped the nation into their idea of utopia. Today it is a place where fear abounds, and people believe that they are doing well because the alternatives are far worse. It is a place where everything has a price, and no one ever has enough money because of a thousand little hands in your wallet.

Americans need to wake up to the reality that it’s all a big, big lie. Yes. America is a big, big lie. Check out this video…

The big lie.

Why? Intentional control of the minds of Americans

A 70-Year War on ‘Propaganda’ Built by the CIA
Cynthia Chung

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here”
– William Shakespeare (The Tempest Act 1 Scene 2)

War has always depended on a reliable system to spread its propaganda. The Arthashastra written by Chankya (350-283 BCE) who was chief advisor to the Emperor Chandragupta (the first ruler of the Mauryan Empire) discusses propaganda and how to disperse and apply it in warfare. It is one of the oldest accounts of the essentialism of propaganda in warfare.

Propaganda is vital in times of war because it is absolutely imperative that the people, who often need to make the greatest sacrifices and suffer the most, believe that such a war is justified and that such a war will provide them security. To the degree that they believe this to be true, the greater the degree of sacrifice and suffering they are willing to submit themselves for said “promised security”.

It is crucial that when the people look at the “enemy” they see something sub-human, for if they recognise that said “enemy” has in fact humanity, the jig is up so to speak.

And thus we are bombarded day after day, hour after hour of reminders as to why the “enemy” is not human like us, not compassionate like us, not patient, just and wise like us.

No doubt, war has been a necessary response when tyranny has formed an army to fight for its cause, but I would put forth that most wars have been rather unnecessary and downright manipulated for the design of a small group of people.

During WWI, on Dec 25th 1914, something rather unexpected occurred and a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front took place between the French/British soldiers and the German soldiers. Some even ventured into “no man’s land”, given its name since none left it alive, to mingle with the “enemy” and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps. A game of football took place as well. It is said that these truces were not unique to the Christmas period but that they were much more widespread during the holiday season.

These fraternisations would understandably make it quite difficult to return to combat against one another…for no apparently good reason. Some units needed to be relocated since they had developed friendships with the opposing side and now refused to fight them.

The lesson was quickly learned and propaganda was heavily pumped down the throats of the Allied countries, and by the course of just a few years, they no longer viewed the Germans as human.

The CIA’s Family Jewels and Operation Mockingbird

For us to understand the implications of modern propaganda and how it is used in warfare today, our story starts post-WWII with Churchill’s announcement of the “Iron Curtain” which launched the Cold War and has kept the East and West divided to this day.

Quickly after the Cold War was announced by Churchill, it was necessary to create a fervor of fear and paranoia amongst the American people in order to have them quickly forget the fact that the Russians were their greatest allies during both WWI and WWII, and to replace it with the image of a ghoulish race of boogeymen.

If Americans were to remember that the Russians had fought valiantly during WWII and had paid by far the largest sacrifice to the cause, that they had in fact been their comrades in arms against the brutality of fascism, if this were remembered then the Cold War division could never occur, and that was something that could not be tolerated by Churchill and the Empire. Thus terror was unleashed on the American people and McCarthyism was given precedence over the people’s right to question and form conclusions for themselves. That sort of thing could not be tolerated when the “enemy” could be anywhere; they could be your neighbour, your child’s teacher, your co-worker…your partner.

In order to combat the “threat” of Soviet “propaganda” entering the U.S. and seducing Americans, Operation Mockingbird was created as a form of “control” over information dissemination during the period of McCarthyism. Operation Mockingbird was an “alleged” CIA program that was started in the early 1950s in order to control the narrative of the news. Though this role has never been confirmed entirely, in the CIA Family Jewels report compiled in the mid-1970s, it is confirmed that Project Mockingbird did exist as a CIA operation and that it was guilty of wire-tapping journalists in Washington.

At the helm of this project was none other than CIA Director Allen Dulles, an enemy of JFK, who by the early 1950s “allegedly” oversaw the media network and had major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. Its function was to have the CIA write reports that would be used by a network of cooperating “credible” reporters. By these “credible” reporters spreading the CIA dictated narrative, it would be parroted by unwitting reporters (mockingbirds) and a successful echo chamber would be created across the world.

The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), originally named Office of Special Projects but that was thought to conspicuous, was a covert operation wing of the CIA and was created by the United States National Security Council (NSC). For those who are unfamiliar with the origins of the NSC and its close relationship with the CIA, who was born on the same day, refer to my paper on the subject.

According to Deborah Davis’ biography of Katherine Graham (the owner of Washington Post), the OPC created Operation Mockingbird in response to addressing Soviet propaganda and included as part of its CIA contingency respected members from Washington PostThe New York TimesNewsweekCBS and others.

The Family Jewels report was an investigation made by the CIA to investigate…the CIA, spurred in response to the Watergate Scandal and the CIA’s unconstitutional role in the whole affair. The investigation of the CIA would include any other actions that were deemed illegal or inappropriate spanning from the 1950s-mid 1970s.

We are told “most” of the report was declassified on June 25, 2007 (30 years later) hoping that people would have lost interest in the whole brouhaha. Along with the release of the redacted report was included a six-page summary with the following introduction:

“The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s.”

The most extensive investigation of the CIA relations with news media was conducted by the Church Committee, a U.S. Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated the abuses committed by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS. The Church Committee report confirmed abundant CIA ties in both foreign and domestic news media.

It is very useful that there exists an official recognition that false news was not only being encouraged by the CIA under the overseeing of the NSC during the Cold War period, but that the CIA was complicit in actually detailing the specific narrative that they wanted disseminated, and often going so far as to write the narrative and have a “credible” reporter’s name stamped on it.

But the question begs, “Did the Cold War ever end?” and if not, why should we believe that the CIA’s involvement in such activities is buried in its past and that it has “reformed” its old ways?

Western Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys News

In order to answer this question, let us visit the sad case of Udo Ulfkotte. Udo Ulfkotte is a well-known German journalist and author of numerous books. He worked for 25 years as a journalist, 17 of which were for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), including his role as editor. In his 2014 book “Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys News” Ulfkotte goes over how the CIA along with German Intelligence (BND) were guilty of bribing journalists to write articles that either spun the truth or were completely fictitious in order to promote a pro-western, pro-NATO bent, and that he was one of those bought journalists.

In an interview, Ulfkotte describes how he finally built up the nerve to publish the book, after years of it collecting dust, in response to the erupting crisis in Ukraine stating

I felt that the right time had come to finish it and publish it, because I am deeply worried about the Ukrainian crisis and the possible devastating consequences for all of Europe and all of us…I am not at all pro-Russia, but it is clear that many journalists blindly follow and publish whatever the NATO press office provides. And this type of information and reports are completely one-sided”.

In another interview Ulfkotte stated:

it is clear as daylight that the agents of various Services were in the central offices of the FAZ, the place where I worked for 17 years. The articles appeared under my name several times, but they were not my intellectual product. I was once approached by someone from German Intelligence and the CIA, who told me that I should write about Gaddafi and report how he was trying to secretly build a chemical weapons factory in Libya. I had no information on any of this, but they showed me various documents, I just had to put my name on the article. Do you think this can be called journalism? I don’t think so.

Ulfkotte has publicly stated:

I am ashamed of it. The people I worked for knew from the get-go everything I did. And the truth must come out. It’s not just about FAZ, this is the whole system that’s corrupt all the way.

Udo Ulfkotte has since passed away. He died January 2017, found dead in his home, it is said by a hear t attack. His body was quickly after cremated and thus prevented any possibility of an autopsy occurring.

You Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks

(Note: This article was published March 14, 2020) The Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act is a bipartisan bill that was passed into law in December 2016, it was initially called Countering Information Warfare Act. It was included together with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This bill was brought into effect just weeks before Trump was to enter office….hmmm, foreshadowing much?

Soon after the 2016 U.S. election, the Washington Post led the charge asserting that it was due to Russian propaganda that the U.S. elections turned out the way it did, that is, that Hillary had somehow, inconceivably, lost to Donald Trump and that the American people had been turned against her like a child caught in the middle of a messy divorce case. But there is no need here to set the record straight on Hillary, when Hillary herself has done suffice damage to any illusion of credibility she once had. That ultimately not even Hillary could hide the fact that her closet full of skeletons turned out to be the size of a catacomb.

But we are told that citizens do not know what is best for one’s self. That they cannot be trusted with “sensitive” information and in accordance act in a “responsible” manner, that is, to have a strong enough stomach to do what is “best” for their country.

And therefore, fear not subjects of the land, for the Global Engagement Center (GEC) is here to make those hard decisions for you. Don’t know what to think about a complicated subject? GEC will tell you the right way!

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would allow for the Secretary of State to collaborate with the Secretary of Defense, and other Federal agencies in the year 2017 to create the Global Engagement Center (GEC). The GEC’s purpose in life is to fight propaganda from foreign governments and publicize the nature of ongoing foreign propaganda and disinformation operations against the U.S. and other countries.

Let us all take a moment to thank the GEC for such a massive task in the cause for justice all around the world.

The GEC had a very slow start in its first year, however, it has been gaining momentum in the last year under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who seems especially excited over the hiring of Lea Gabrielle as special envoy and coordinator of GEC.

Mike Pompeo was the CIA Director from 2017-2018. On April 15, 2019, Pompeo participated in a discussion at the Texas A&M University where he voluntarily offered the admission that though West Points’ cadet motto is “You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.”, his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating “I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses. (long pause) It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment”.

This is apparently the man for the job of dealing with matters of “truth” and “justice”.

Lea Gabrielle was approved for her position by Mike Pompeo, what are her “qualifications”? Well, Gabrielle is also CIA trained, and while assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), she “directed and conducted global clandestine strategic intelligence collection operations.” Gabrielle also “deployed in tactical anti-terrorist operations in hostile environments”. After 12 years of active duty service, Lea Gabrielle became a television news journalist, who worked at NBC and FOX News.

Noticing a pattern?

The CIA really does not have the best track record for their role in “managing” foreign wars and counter-insurgency activities. In fact, they have been caught rather red handed in fueling such crisis situations. And these are the people who are deciding what information is fit for the American public, and western public in general, and what is not fit for their ears.

Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil

On March 5, 2020, Lea Gabrielle testified on the role of GEC in countering state-sponsored and non-state propaganda and disinformation. Gabrielle states: “We have the full support of Secretary Pompeo who is committed to deploying a broad suite of tools to stop America’s adversaries from using disinformation, malign propaganda, and other tools to undermine free societies.” She goes on to acknowledge that the hearing is focused on countering Russian government and CCP disinformation and propaganda. She then goes on to outline her criticisms of both governments with no factual detail or evidence but rather generalised accusations and criticisms, obviously pulling from her experience as a news journalist for NBC.

Following this, Gabrielle proceeds to outline her “rules of engagement” in countering this offensive with what seems to be the beginnings of McCarthyism 2.0, amounting to a threat to anyone who dares not take a hard stance against Russia and China, that such a person will be considered complicit in essentially committing treason.

Gabrielle concludes,

Both the Russian government and the CCP view censorship, media manipulation, and propaganda as appropriate tools to control public opinion. Both exploit open, democratic societies to further their own ends while tightening controls around their own countries.”

Don’t worry, the CIA will eventually admit that they are elbow deep in all of the above, it just won’t be released until 30 years from now…In the meantime, I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspaper to stoke the fires for another war.

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

And to reinforce this narrative …

Just this morning, right out from Billionaire Bloomberg…

Sure…

The West refuses to see just how sick they are.

Instead of seeing the reality, the “West”, insists on believing the carefully constructed fantasy world that it has created and that it promotes on the MSM (Main Stream Media). It holds China up as an example of a big, bag evil empires, when it is nothing of the sort, and holds itself up as the “great beacon of light on the shining hill”; a fantasy that never actually existed.

Until these fantasies are destroyed, the “West” will continue it’s long, drawn out decay and destruction. Check out this video…

The West is collapsing.

Thinking Long Term…

China uses more concrete in a single year than all the concrete ever used by America in all of it’s history. 2021. Look at the stats. Period. China is growing and is a serious, serious nation. It’s engineering and manufacturing capabilities are formidable. And to discount this, or ignore it, is a mistake.

America cannot not simply flick a “light switch” and suddenly the American manufacturing system will roar into life. The spark of creativity has been extinguished in America. The drive to work, to produce, to contribute are all gone. The relationships between design, and fabrication are missing, and the regulations and laws are too corrupt, too stifling, and out of date.

When you look at the “so called” American Industry, you will see a lot of nice shiny office buildings staffed with planners, finance folk, accountants, and legal teams supporting Marketing. But very little in the way of hard, dirty, assembly machinery. The opposite is true in China.

Watch this video…

Meanwhile, What’s the news about in the USA?

When you watch American “news” it’s really quite different from what you would see in the rest of the world. Shootings, murders, kidnaps, rapes are so common place that they are hardly ever reported. The big news tends to revolve around plans for more taxes, higher regulation entities, and “think tanks” proposing renaming a new holiday or tearing down a statue.

However, sometimes the “news” can be funny. As this video attests…

Lancaster Pennsylvania

The last time I was in Lancaster Pennsylvania I pulled into a roadside restaurant and got myself a club sandwich, with fries, cole slaw, and a (bottomless) cup of coffee. Of course that was years ago. I wonder if you can still get that in the USA today. As I recall, I think it cost me about $3.50 or so.

A typical club sandwich.

Learning how to make my first sandwich

You know, I first learned how to make a sandwich when I was four years old. My girlfriend at the time; a beautiful lass named Mary, who was much older than me. She was five. Brought me into her house, up the stairs and hid me in her bed room. But being the good hostess that she was, she ran downstairs and brought up a bottle of ketchup and some slices of bread. She then showed me how to make my first sandwich.

As we were sitting there on her bed smunching, and chatting, her mother burst into the room shouting “Mary, why do you keep bringing up boys into your room?” and Scooted me away.

Sigh.

She was a bit of a rascally girl, don’t you know.

She also taught me how to steal from the candy store. But that is another story for another time. Right now I want to talk about sandwiches.

My first real sandwich was part of an exercise to obtain a “badge” as part of being in the cub scouts. It was there where I learned how to cut a tomato, get slices of cold cuts, cheese, lettuce, and how to add mayonnaise to it. I learned how to do it in my “den”, and my “den mother” taught me how to make the sandwich. Afterwards, we all sat down and ate the sandwiches with a bottle of orange Fresca.

A den of cub scouts.

About the Cub Scouts

The following excerpt is from HERE.

Cubbing, as it was first know, started in the United States in 1930.  However, it was in 1916 when Baden-Powell published The Wolf Cub Handbook that Cubbing became an official part of scouting in England and endorsements for the program began in the United States.  At that time, James E. West, BSA Chief Executive, felt that this new program might take adult leadership away from the Boy Scouts so initially he opposed the program.

It is interesting to note that in the beginning, each Cub den was led by a Boy Scout Den Chief.  It wasn’t until 1936 that the position of Den Mother was added as an optional position even though Den Mothers had been helping since 1932.  Still, that position was to provide support for the Den Chief. It was not until the late 1940’s to mid 1950’s that the Den Mother assumed full control of the den.

Dens were formed by age until 1986 when the phase in for grade level began, lasting until 1991.  In the beginning, Wolfs were 9 year olds, Bears were 10 years old and Lions were 11 years old.  They could enter Boy Scouts when they turned 12.  Until 1942, when a boy joined, he would start with the Wolf rank after completing his Bobcat requirements and work his way up regardless of his age.  During these early years, he could only wear his current rank and associated arrow points.

A fine painting by Norman Rockwell.

Speaking about food

As I have explained, I always associate food with pretty women. I don’t know why, but that is me. I think that it has something to do with the saying “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”. All the pretty girls were always trying to keep me well fed and satisfied.

And they are everywhere in China.

This woman is definitely a “Shepherd’s Pie” kind of girl. Check out her video…

While this girl is definitely spaghetti and garlic bread

This slim lady is all about the well stocked larder, the warm bread in the oven, and the spaghetti sauce that has been cooking all day on the stove. She’s the kind of woman that will insist that you have a clean napkin near you when you eat, and a glass of water with your meal whether you wanted it or not.

Check out the video.

This girl is a YUM!

And let’s not forget about the Summer time foods…

This beauty, with the well done eyebrows, and the big eyes is all about cut up watermelon, cantaloupe, and strawberries. She’s exactly the kind of girl that you would want to go out and have a nice light dessert, and then walk along the night city streets doing some window shopping and chatting.

These Chinese women are just lovely.

Peach Cobbler

What could be a more perfect ending to a summertime meal than peach cobbler? Savor the flavors of summer with sliced fresh peaches cooking away with butter and spices.

Peach Cobbler topped with French Vanilla Ice Cream.

The topping can made from pantry ingredients you have on hand and peaches can easily be substituted with any fruit you have depending on the time of year. The tang of the lemon juice paired with the sweetness of the peaches is perfectly balanced with the crisp topping. Want to make dessert even better? A dollop of fresh whipped cream or cold vanilla ice cream truly makes it the perfect way to end a summer night.

I must say that as much as I love this great and wonderful dish, it was not a staple in my home when I grew up. My mother never made peach cobbler. I never had the house fill with the delicious aroma of baked peaches. I never had that pleasure.

The trees of New Iberia, Louisiana.

But…

When I moved to Louisiana, I came to know the wonderful world of Creole Cooking , and the local folk in New Iberia that would make a most luscious peach cobbler that was “to die for”.

You can go on line and find a zillion recipes on how to make this most delicious dish.It’s so easy to make! It makes me wonder why my mother never made it. For the life of me, I just cannot recall her ever making it. Not even during peach season, and certainly not with canned peaches.

It’s easy to make.

I mean in “super dooper” easy to make!

One thing I do know is that I can tell you that it is best enjoyed when it is made in your home kitchen by friends or family, and where the aroma fills the house and you get a big monster sized bowl of peach cobbler topped with delicious French Vanilla ice cream.

I would take it to the porch, and sit on the rocking chair and eat while the sun set and the gathering dusk enveloped the large trees covered with Spanish moss.

Spanish Moss hanging from the huge trees of New Iberia, Louisiana.

Of course, no one wants to hear an old foggy guy talking about his past…

Right? I mean to say that my past doesn’t even resemble anything that you see today. It’s so different that it boggles the mind and astounds the cockles. As this video clearly shows…

How do you handle failure?

Some of those zoom and skype videos are cute and funny, but more serious things can and do occur. So what do you do? And how do you handle the trials in life? Will your blood Pressure go ballistic like Metallicman’s, or will you just relax and grab some Wise Potato chips and a cold beer instead?

Check out this video…

Fear is what is trapping many people into their slave-serf existence

You are being manipulated by fear. You are being lied to, and manipulated, and massaged until you run about like scared rabbits. And when a real emergency occurs, like an American bio-weapon, you think that the government is just doing “just another one” of it’s many many manipulative techniques.

Even though there are real and good valid reasons for strong and preventative actions. Like this video describes why China told everyone that the entire nation of 1.6 billion people, over four times the population of the United States, must all wear face masks in public…

Again, what is China really like?

Yeah. This is what China is really like, and narrated by a Vblogger who was condemned by Yahoo! as a member of the “Communist disinformation network” LOL. I mean the bullshit of the United States is so very think these days, you just cannot make it up!

A Fried Chicken kind of girl

When I see this beauty I cannot help but think of  fried chicken. Especially with a fine crunchy exterior served with hot steaming biscuits, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, coleslaw, and extra butter. this girl is the kind of gal that you would go into a restaurant with, the kind with a red and white checkered table cloth, a small flower in a vase, and a circular table with a window seat.

Strangely I don’t picture drinking wine, beer, or even Coke with her. I picture a locally brewed ginger beer. Oh, the fun we could have! Smunching, and eating. Drinking and talking. Looking good, feeling good, with the scent of her perfume wafting near me, and the fine crunchy feeling when you bit into that delicious chicken.

I tell you that I would pick those bones clean! I tell you what!

P.S. Look at her eyebrows! Aren’t they lovely?

Any day now…

Sure. Any day now, America will overtake China and remain the “king of the hill” and sit atop of the money heap!

The problem is that America is devolving.

What the wealthy oligarchy has created is a civilization filled with a rulership of “service to self people” that has manipulated a large swath of the population to be “service for another” people. When the entire nation should be “service for others”. Here’s a funny video about devolution.

Hyper-velocity nuclear tipped MIRV ICBM’s

Ever since Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump set their eyes on invading and attacking China, China has sprinted to catch up with America in nuclear warheads. Not just those old fashioned ICBM’s like America has, but the impossible to stop hyper-velocity, MIRV weapons carrying 10 to 15 warheads each about 1000 times more powerful than what destroyed Hiroshima.

Of course, you will never will hear about this in the Western press. To most Americans, China is a backwards third-world nation.

So you wanna “poke the panda” eh?

China is mass producing enough nuclear bombs to destroy every community in America larger than 1000 people. China is a serious, serious nation, and they DO NOT BLUFF.

But Hey! Enough of that shit…

Let’s talk about people, and our normal day to day battles with life. And I want you all to know that everyone has a story, and many have a library of stories that they could share. Here is one from a famous “little guy” actor. And his words ring true.

This is my call out to assholes…

The world is filled with them. They are self-centered, hurtful and cause great pain to all of us. People (!) if you have nothing good to say, then say nothing. The world needs good, kind and helpful people. Not war-mongering, evil sociopaths and wealthy psychopaths. We need to help others. Not to constantly keep tearing them down.

These bad thoughts and evil words hurt. And they can result in bad things happening. We need to undo their damage in what ever way possible.

Delicious yum!

This is something I have been missing…

Hobos

There’s some good write ups about hobos. In America today, many are becoming Hobo’s out of necessity. America is such a mess that all the social contracts are broken, society, culture, and the government have all become absolute failures. The people, now terribly in debt have taken to a homeless, nomadic lifestyle to survive. It might appear to be temporary, but knowing what I know about the value of money, and endless fiat currency, it looks more like the beginning of the end, rather than a temporary lapse in the economy.

As long as man has organized into society, there have been those on the fringe. These were people who, for one reason or another, just didn’t fit into polite society.

Such were the hobos of our nation’s past. We tend to think of hobos as bums who stole rides on trains and lived in shanty towns. But in some cases, they were traveling workers who would go where there was work and move on when the job was done.

Building this country required a huge amount of manpower, especially when you consider that much was built by human hands rather than power equipment. Projects like the Transcontinental Railroad and the Hoover Dam required workforces numbering in the thousands, and hard-working men who came and went with the job. They lived in shanty towns, because that’s all there was at the end of the tracks and they carried little with them, because they knew they’d be moving on.

These were tough men, accustomed to backbreaking work and long hours. They survived and endured, becoming a forgotten part of our country’s history. Yet the work that they did has often survived and become part of making our country what it is today.

-Off the grid news

Historically, many people have been forced into becoming hobos because of circumstances where jobs are so scarce that they have no choice but to travel from place to place in search of work.

There are many theories of the origin of the word hobo, ranging from a contraction of the words “Hoe Boys” to one from the words “Homeward Bound”.

In any case, the American Heritage Dictionary defines a hobo as “one who wanders from place to place without a permanent home or a means of livelihood.”

Every hobo has a moniker, a nickname grounded in habit or origin or appearance, like Redbird or Frisco Jack or Bookworm. Not every hobo wants to share his or her real name with the straights and the Square Johns.  A few, the ones trying to outrun something, won’t even talk to anyone new or strange.

But the dawn of the Internet and increased dissatisfaction with the 9-to-5 routine have led more and more people to wonder if earning a living while on the road is a viable alternative to the daily grind.

If you’re thinking about becoming an opportunistic and resourceful transient worker, keeping your costs low, your responsibilities simple, and your freedom intact, here are the questions you’ll need to ask yourself—and the preparations you’ll need to make.

[1] Remember the differences between hobos, tramps, and bums: hobos are people who travel and look for work, tramps are people who travel and don’t look for work, bums are people who neither travel nor look for work.
In a society of citizen consumers, to have nothing, to own nothing, by choice, might be the most radical politics of all. And it’s worth mentioning here that not every homeless person is a hobo. And as the hobo fades from the American scene—except as a visual or literary cliché—there’s more and more confusion on the matter. A hobo is homeless by choice. Even then, not every hobo is completely homeless. Most these days have a semi-permanent address somewhere for the winter. Especially the older hoppers.

[2] Take stock of your skills and experience. Historically, hobos have made their living from manual labor, but that doesn’t always have to be the case. Any skill that is in wide demand and does not require an extended time commitment can be useful to a hobo. As long as you can advertise your services and earn people’s trust (ideally through references), you can do anything. Some pursuits that lend themselves to this lifestyle are:

  • Landscaping and construction – Many migrant workers who cross international borders find work in this area, as it is the least demanding in terms of language barriers. Having experience is essential, however, as you’d be required to work with potentially dangerous equipment and machinery.
  • Farm hand – If you’ve ever thought about becoming a farmer, there are internships all over the world that offer housing, food, a stipend, and experience, in exchange for getting your hands dirty. You can follow harvest seasons around the country or around the globe. Progressive farms tend to provide better circumstances.
  • Fishing – Serve as a deckhand, cook, or fisherman as you travel the high seas.
  • Any web-based service such as writing, editing or programming.

[3] Establish Plan B. This is a serious, life-altering decision. Don’t abandon everything suddenly and disappear. You need something to come back to if your life on the road doesn’t work out. Make sure all your debts are paid and responsibilities are handled before departure. If possible, have some savings set aside before you go, that you can access while you’re on the road, if need be. Emergencies happen, and they cost money.

Hobo slang can be intuitive, or impenetrable, but it’s always colorful. For example, the “jungle” is just the communal hobo camp, usually near the railroad yard. Your “bindle” is your bedroll. Your “poke” is your wallet. “Hundred on a plate” is a can of beans, and the jungle kitchen is run by the “Crumb Boss.” The “bulls” are the railroad police. “Flyers” and “hotshots” and “redballs” are all fast freights. “Catching out” means hopping the train. To die is to “catch the westbound.” And understand this, above all else: A “hobo” is an itinerant worker; someone who travels and finds work. A “tramp” travels, but mostly does not work. A “bum” neither travels nor works.

And of course the whole thing runs on talk, endless talk. Because talk’s free; because even if you give away everything you own, or they take away everything you have, you still have your stories. And every story here begins as the same story.

[4] Be prepared. You may like the romantic idea of leaving with nothing but the clothes on your back and whatever is in your wallet, but that is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. You must assume that you will be sleeping, cooking, traveling, and essentially living outdoors, unless you decide to drive a car.

  • How will you get from place to place? Hobos are often associated with train-hopping, because this is what many hobos during the Great Depression did. A car can double as transportation and sleeping quarters, but keep in mind that gas is expensive, and upkeep on a vehicle is a major expense and if the expense bothers you, hitch-hiking is a good option since it’s free. Some hobos prefer bicycles, but this will limit your range (to warm weather regions) and limit how much you can carry. A motorcycle can get you where you’re going faster, but has maintenance requirements similar to those of a car, though not to the same degree. Buses are also an option: Greyhound, in the US at least, offers steep discounts when you purchase tickets a week in advance, and even more for still earlier purchases. Buy tickets at the station for the best deals; web purchases have an extra $3 or $4 tagged on whether the tickets are mailed or “on call”.
  • Where will you sleep? Unless the place you work can offer housing, you will have to sleep in your car (if you have one), urban camp, squat in an abandoned building, or stay in hostels or motels. Another option is using the Communities Directory online to find urban co-ops, land trusts, and other alternative housing arrangements, which often welcome guests. See directory.ic.org. Yet another option is a traveler’s network such as couchsurfing.com or globalfreeloaders.com, which offer free lodging to those who intend to contribute (in kind, or in other ways). Consider the costs and dangers associated with each.
  • Where will you take showers? Some campsites have showers, but many don’t, so you may consider purchasing portable shower equipment. You can also obtain a membership to a national gym chain and use the showers there (provided you actually work out and maintain your appearance).
  • How will you defend yourself? A nomadic lifestyle can be a dangerous one because you’re constantly putting yourself in unfamiliar situations, and you’re probably alone—both of which can make you a target for theft and assault. You’ll need to outline some precautions you can take, such as always letting people know where you are, carrying a cell phone – and only going places where there’s a reliable signal, having an alert system or weapon on you, etc. In addition, always know where you are so when you call for help you will be able to give them a location.

[5] Make a list of connections. Look at maps of the areas in which you’ll be traveling, and determine whether or not there’s anyone you know, directly or indirectly, who lives there. Ask your Aunt Sally if your great uncle Billy still lives in that cabin in the woods. Ask your friend if his cousin still works at the car dealership in Utah. Most important of all, ask them if it’s okay if you can get in touch with those people in case of an emergency. Some people might offer to make arrangements so that you can actually visit, which is always nice. (Just be a good house guest!)

I did a lot of hitchhiking right after high school. And one time my brother was out hitchhiking in California, and some tramps got a hold of him and told him ride the trains instead of hitchhiking, and so he rode trains. They came back, and that was in 1973. They were talking in a bar about riding out to see Evel Knievel jump the Snake River Canyon, and I started to listening to it, and I worked seasonal and stuff. I had some freedom there. I was in. And so my older brother....There was 11 of us gone out of St. Cloud and hopping freights, and I fell in love with it right away. I mean, I like hitchhiking because you get to meet a lot of different people, but the freight-train riding was like the freedom, you know? —Ricardo

Vintage hobo life.

[6] Make an itinerary based on the type of work you plan to do, the connections you have in place, and the places you’d like to see. Do as much research as you can beforehand. Make a list of places you can stay, eat, shower, camp, etc. It’s also wise to look up churches and shelters and any other services that are offered to the homeless. The more prepared you are, the more you’ll enjoy your travels.

My father was a hobo, born in 1898 in Frog Level, North Carolina. Ran away from home when he was 12 or 13, rode freights for about 17 years. He’s a wonderful storyteller, musician, singer. He was always the one to tuck me in bed at night. He would say, Two songs, one story. You get to choose one song, and I’ll choose one. I always chose Cocaine Jubilee, because he learned it out in the opium dens and it was a funny song. Then he would sing one, and he’d tell me one of his adventure stories. 

I remember when he’d leave every night, I’d think, I can’t wait until I’m old enough to do that. I started hitchhiking right out of high school and eventually was a student at Indiana University. I had the honor of doing a directed writing course which I could choose the professor. He said, You need to choose a good topic. And I chose hobos, and I said, Because I grew up with it.Gypsy Moon

[7] Learn the hobo code. Historically hobos relied on a shared system of symbols that let fellow travelers know more about their current environment.The symbols can vary from place to place and may no longer be used in many areas. Here are some symbols to get you started:

  • spearhead – defend yourself
  • circle with two parallel arrows – get out fast, hobos not welcome
  • wavy line (signifying water) above an X – fresh water and a campsite nearby
  • three diagonal lines – not a safe place.
  • cross – “angel food,” (food served to hobos after a party)

[8] Hit the road! Leave your roots behind. Find a place to live and work from day to day. See the sights of each new place you visit. Make interesting friends (you never know when they might lend a helping hand). Life on the road means that every moment is your own. With no schedule and no responsibilities (except keeping yourself healthy), you must decide how to best use your time to achieve a balance between work, travel, relaxation, and entertainment. Enjoy the variety that each day has to offer…you’re earning it.

When I was a really young kid, I lived in a neighborhood in Houston close to a big train yard. It’s had a hobo jungle there for a long, long time. I had a buddy named Dusty, and me and Dusty used to sneak out there in the field and watch the hobos. We used to watch guys get on and off the trains all the time, so we kind of knew how it all worked.

Dusty and I did catch a train, to Galveston. We just got on the train in the dark. We got down there, and we’re like, “We’re 60 miles from home, how are we going to get back?” 

Maybe half an hour later, there was a train going the other way, rolling real slow. We saw empties. We caught a train going the other way, and by sheer luck, it went right back to the same place we were at. We were just really lucky. —K-Bar

[9] Don’t hesitate to dumpster dive. You wouldn’t believe the amount of free undamaged food that is thrown away all the time. For the best results check behind smaller grocery stores and fruit markets, as they usually don’t invest money in a sealed garbage compactor (although these can sometimes be opened as well)—just be careful. Fast food chains are also usually good, but more traditional restaurants generally don’t waste nearly as much food—although if you are really hungry you can usually find at least something there.

The history of the hobo is the history of modern America. Starts right after the Civil War and the building of America’s great railroads. There had always been a small floating population of agrarian workers, but they were limited by geography and technology. They were regional. Local. Language historians and etymologists aren’t sure, but the word “hobo” may come from this original population of farmworkers: “hoe boys.”

The railroads change all that. After the war there’s an expanding displaced population available to ride—and help build—a transportation network running from coast to coast. As this is happening, America is industrializing too, and the need for a mobile work force, willing, adaptable and relatively inexpensive to transport, becomes evident. The hobo.

[10] Be tough. Physical toughness is essential for surviving in adverse circumstances. A lot of us in the survival  movement aren’t as physically fit as we need to be (me included). But toughness goes beyond just being physically fit. A boxer learns to take blows, just as he learns how to give them. Strength and agility allow him to give them, but toughness allows him to take them. If you’re not tough, you’re not going to be able to take the blows that life gives you; you’ll fold and just wait to die.

There are two types of toughness: physical and mental. Of the two, mental toughness can be harder to develop than physical. If your mind can’t take the blows and bounce back, you are at a disadvantage. Your mind has to be able to accept the changing reality of a crisis situation or a disaster, quickly overcome the grief, and move into survival mode. This is all about training. The better trained you are, the better you can adapt. Training also gives you confidence, so that you know you’re able to survive.

Don’t romanticize it. Empty your pockets. Empty your heart. There’s only what you carry on your back. There’s whatever you’re chasing and whatever’s chasing you. Maybe there’s some grace to be won in the burdens you bear, or in your swiftness, but at moments like this it feels like the price of your freedom is an unimaginable loneliness.

[11] Learn a variety of useful kills. Hobos did whatever the job called for. While they may not have been experts in any one trade, they were capable of working in a number of them. One month they might be busting broncos and the next swinging a double jack in a mine.

Today’s society has become so specialized that in some cases one engineer can only work on one part of a project. He’s lost when he looks at the rest. But in Henry Ford’s day, the guy who designed the engine could also design the body.

In a survival situation, you need to have a wide variety of skills. If your home is damaged by a hurricane and you need to make it safe to sleep in, you don’t have to be a master carpenter. But you will probably need to be able to cut boards and nail them together. You’re probably also going to need to know a little plumbing and electrical work.

[12] Develop a minimalist lifestyle. When you’re on the go, you can’t take a lot of extra baggage with you. You’ve got to cut things down to what you really need. Our modern lifestyle is so cluttered with stuff that we’d need a backpack the size of a semi-trailer to bug out.

In passing you’ll hear that “Dutch owns the boxcar,” and it won’t matter if they mean this literally or figuratively. The boxcar is a fixture in the Britt jungle, permanent. Long off the main line and set here years ago, it is a meeting place and a memorial, an antique keepsake and a hideout. Dutch sits with his gear at the north end of the car. Everything he owns fits in a knapsack. Heaviest thing he carries are his memories. Folks come and go, talking. The Dutchman is a focused listener. Intense, even at rest. As often as not, he’s up there with the younger ’bos, the newer riders, answering questions and giving tips. (For insight into this next generation of gutter punks and crusties and dirty kids, the postmodern hobos, search out the stunning photography of Mike Brodie.)

Learn what you need and then cut down to that point. If you’ve got stuff in your house that you never use, then why do you have it? Really, if you haven’t used it in a year or two, you probably won’t. So, pass it on to someone who can use it and make room in your life for what you need. You have to limit yourself to what was important, and if something wasn’t important, you need to let it go.

[13] Community is important for survival.

Hobos typically gathered together in communities, wherever they were working. That way they could help each other out. Cooking for 10 people is easier than cooking for one, and by doing so, everyone doesn’t have to carry a pot around with them. One would bring the pot and the others would bring the ingredients.

No one rides with the hobos, so let them ride.

When you’re part of a community you also tend to watch out for each other. If you’re by yourself, you might not see what’s happening to you. For example, hypothermia can set in in such a subtle way that you freeze to death, without even realizing what’s happening to you. But if other people are around, they’ll likely notice you’re not well and help.

[14] Learn to live off the land. Most hobos could recognize edible plants and those which could serve as medicines. While they bought food, they augmented what they bought with what they found. Knowing what you can eat can mean the difference between a full belly and starving to death. Knowing what you can use for medicine can also save your life. God has provided a wide range of foods and medicines in nature around us. But you’ve got to know what to use and how to use it. When you’re living that minimalist lifestyle, you really need that knowledge.

“It’s a hard life in a lot of ways. It probably shouldn’t be romanticized the way that it is. You get yourselves out there, and it’s cold, wet, and the steel is hard. It’s very dangerous. There are people out there that aren’t very nice. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It takes a lot. I’m a man of few words.

[15] Nothing is beneath you. Throughout history, there have been people out of jobs because they wouldn’t take one that’s beneath them. While I can understand that to some extent, that pride can be deadly. When things go bad, such as in a financial collapse, we’re all going to have to do whatever we can, no matter how much education we have or what we did before. There’s no room for pride when it comes to surviving a crisis.

“Everything I’ve owned, and everything I want in life, fits in this house [points to his knapsack], right in my pack. Anything that doesn’t fit in my pack, I can’t carry with me. I don’t want it. I can’t have it. It all gets left behind. It makes me a different kind of person. It’s given me something special in life. I’m not attached to anything. I wander with the winds. I know that a lot of people wish they could do the same.

[16] Quit worrying and do what you can

Part of the reason that hobos are seen as lazy and shiftless is that they weren’t worriers. They did what they could and left the rest up to divine providence. We could all learn from that. Yes, there is always a part that we are to do. If we don’t work, we’re not going to eat. But on the other hand, worrying never added a day to anyone’s life. When you’ve done what you can, just hope and pray it’s enough. The rest is beyond your capability.

Worry causes incredible health problems. High blood pressure is caused more by worry, than by any other reason. Why do you think they call it “hypertension?” That literally means, “too much tension” or “too much stress.” Quit stressing out and get to work. Do your part and then follow the example of the hobos, putting the rest in God’s hands.

You might need to become a hobo…

America is really in that bad of a state. Consider this video below. It’s not staged. It’s real Americans “on the street”. This is what happens when you intentionally dumb down an entire society of people.

This is not just worrisome, it is scary.

There are 62 million illiterate people in the USA, that is 39 million more than in China.

In the USA with its overwhelming military power, 1/5 of the population is illiterate. And all these people vote.

Kitty Anxiety

Poor kitty. Don’t worry, she’ll be back. Don’t worry. The girl was gone for ten days, and left the cat alone! God! That cat was probably worrying it’s little heart out! People never do this! At least get a house sitter, or someone to check on your cats, if you cannot afford to take them to the pet hotel.

Ten days!

 

A cat’s life in China

It’s sort of like this. And due to the urban situation, many people have cat backpacks and strollers that they take their cats with them with. That way they can go into establishments, and eat and drink and have a good time.

Which country has a better human rights situation?

If you watch the American “news” you would be inclined to believe that America has the best human rights. Which is strange as less than 13% of American trust their government. So how can you possibly have strong human rights and such a pitiful trust in government? Well, you just cannot.

Another beautiful Chinese girl

This girl is just a classic plate of over easy side eggs, with a side of rye toast and baked beans (erp. I mean grilled potatoes) with a tall glass of orange juice, a fine cup of coffee and a short stack of “flap jacks”. She’s a morning dew kind of girl, with perfection in her clothing, and sunniness in her smiles. check out the video.

A breakfast kind of girl.

Chinese Aviation

China has some serious cutting-edge aviation. These are all home designed, locally manufactured aircraft produced in mass quantities. Here’s a video to give you an idea of the extent and scope of Chinese aviation. Click on the picture to watch the video.

Chinese aviation.

Vibrato

This is a K-pop song performed by Stellar which is a Korean organization. Their membership is about one half Korean, and the other half Chinese. All are Han Chinese ethnically.

This particular song was released back a few years ago, but I must tell you all that the dance troupes in my office building (for a long period of time) would always practice this particular dance and the related moves.

All the girls love to dance it, and I would stand outside in the hallway, and watch them dance through the floor to ceiling glass walls. I must admit that I loved watching them all dance. Eye candy, so they say.

One dance practice was so inspirational to me that I just walked into the studio after a dance and invited all of them out to a dinner and KTV. I can tell you that we all had a great time afterwards. You just go in with a big smile and tell everyone how fantastic they were and how it would be personally important if you could buy them a meal and have some fun at a KTV.

Easy-peasy. Lemon-squeezy.

Click on the picture to watch the amazing dance video.

Vibrato by Stellar.

A fine baked potato girl

This fine woman is a “baked potato girl”. When I see her, I think of baked potatoes with creme cheese, and cut up bacon, spring onions, and olives. Not to mention the side of strip steak, and buttered green beans. When I see her, I think of a nice dinner, together. Talking. Just having fun.

A nice leek and eggs kind of girl

Here is a thin Chinese girl. She reminds me of a scrambled eggs and leek dish that is so delicious. I like to eat it with a side of hot peppers in oil (a very Hunan Chinese dish) and wash it down with some gulps of white wine. Of course, eating in a nice family-style Chinese restaurant.

Spaghetti and meatballs

One of the things that is difficult to get in China is Spaghetti and meatballs. You need to make it by scratch. And in China, a land without ground beef, you really need to get the meat, and grind it up yourself. Some fast and convenient American foods aren’t really all the accessible in China. Sigh.

One of the things that is difficult to get in China is Spaghetti and meatballs.

The old railroad spur

Just some cool pictures taken with a railroad theme. I love this theme. I hope that you all do as well.

Colorado circa 1900. “Mining camp at Chattanooga on Mineral Creek.” 8×10 glass negative by William Henry Jackson, Detroit Publishing Co.

Chattanooga thrived as a staging point for ore and supplies passing between Silverton and Ouray. The arrival of the Silverton Railroad in 1888 eliminated that need. The following year an avalanche wiped out most of the town and it was not rebuilt.

There’s plenty of slide evidence in this photo. Today, the BLM uses howitzer rounds nearby to trigger controlled avalanches. The Million Dollar Highway passes through.

This is one of the few Colorado photos by William Henry Jackson in the LOC. Most ended up with, I believe, the Colorado Historical Society.

April 1939. “Jersey City and Manhattan skyline.” 35mm nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration.

The intersection at the far left right above the trains is Jersey Avenue & 10th Street. The park is Hamilton Park. The building with the columns is not there any longer. Nor is the building with the kind of cupola adjacent to the park. But you can make out Harborside Financial Center in the distance, that was the key. Most the other industrial buildings in the distance are gone. Photo probably taken from the roof of the Erie warehouse bounded by Coles, 11th, Monmouth, and 12th.

Jersey City has always been a dense, gritty city with its share of slums. However, it was a pretty safe city until the 1960s, when things started to deteriorate. My grandfather, who lived in the Greenville section, used to say “Jersey City is getting so bad, the muggers are mugging the muggers.” He wasn’t far off. While it’s a little safer today, there are still many parts of the city where you don’t want to be walking at night. And the majority of the buildings date from the late 19th and early 20th century. Fortunately, the misguided highrise public housing projects are coming down (Currie’s Woods, Montgomery Gardens), and the JC waterfront is being built up to the point where its skyline has overtaken Newark’s as the best in the state. The spillover from Manhattan that started in the ’80s to escape the high cost & taxes continues today.

Syracuse, N.Y., circa 1905. “New York Central Railroad depot.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company.

Oh, and what do you all think of this?

This came out of Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990’s. I don’t know if it is fake or real or what it is, however it sure is interesting.

Video 1

Video 2

If anyone has some further information or thoughts, please please tell me. I’d appreciate it.

And never forget to be the RUFUS!

Just because you are in Jail for tax evasion, crossing the street when you aren’t supposed to, or got in a fight and are in jail. The person you are is not what others say your are. Your worth is your ability to help others, be good, and to help improve the lives of all those around you. Be the Rufus!

Be the Rufus!

Chinese Air, Sea Rescue

A nice video showing something that you would NEVER see in the Western media. This is one of the Chinese Air, Sea, Rescue helicopters that are used to rescue people from the sea. I found it very interesting.

Chinese air, sea rescue.

Feels Like Summer

Shawn the Sheep is a great series of fun movies and videos. I have always enjoyed them. They had a movie and this following song was featured in the movie. It’s an up-beat happy, peppy tune that is Springtime and Summer, and ice cream all rolled into one. I hope you enjoy it.

Click on the picture to watch the video.

Feels like summer.

It’s time to turn in and chill out

MM needs some Me Me time. So there’s a bottle of cheap red wine, some slices of fruit, and peanuts waiting for me. I hope you all enjoyed this.

From MM’s home to yours; have a great evening.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

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The Ganymede Hypothesis

MM offers this book free to the interested searcher. 
You can contact the author here;

Theodore A Holden: theodoreholden@yahoo.com
Troy D. McLachlan: troydmclachlan@yahoo.co.uk

The new book, ” The Ganymede Hypothesis” is meant as a replacement for the earlier “Cosmos in Collision”, beginning with the .PDF/download edition.  The new book is substantially better organized then the earlier book, flows better, is easier to read, contains updated material, and a number of better images.

"The experience of the last few years has cured me of wanting to deal with ebooks or the companies involved in the e-book business. Those have acted like anchors to prevent the earlier book from going anywhere and the ideas involved in this work are too important to allow that to go on.

Moreover, ebooks are difficult for users to deal with both to read and to copy from for quoting, while anybody with any kind of a Computing device at all can easily manage and deal with .PDF files.  The Ganymede Hypothesis is thus being released as a free download from this site."

Paperback and/or hardbound copies will be available as time and conditions permit.

The download is in the form of a .zip file since having large numbers of people trying to read the document itself in a web browser could crash goDaddy and this website.  The idea is to download the file, unzip it, and read it in a normal pdf reader such as Adobe Acrobat

I have known Theodore A Holden for years, and he has the most amazing resource on information that would be of interest to MM searchers. I highly recommend that everyone take a look at his website HERE.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

The bottom just dropped out from the neocon pro-war faction that want a war over Taiwan

For those of you who are unaware, the k-street neocons (in Washington DC) have been promoting a war with China for over four years now. They started with [1] a war over “democracy” in Hong Kong, and when that failed, they started [2] with a war over Tibet with India, and when that failed, they started [3] with a war over the Uighur Muslims though Afghanistan, and that failed as well. The last group of beating drums has been [4] a war over Taiwan.

“Leaked” nonsense articles discussing Chinese plans to invade Taiwan are all over the Western press. Of course, if you go to the source of this Intel, you will see a glossy supermarket tabloid devoid of facts. Never the less, the drum beats have been a booming. And the neocons in Washington has even started laying out “tweets” using official Whitehouse websites…

…and Biden put a complete end to all this immediately.

Have you noticed how all the “fire hose” of media against China regarding Taiwan has ended? When was the last time you saw an article promoting American involvement in a war over Taiwan?

Why is this?

This is why…

Yup. This goes 100% against everything that Mike Pompeo and the rest of that ghoulish neocon cabal are saying.

What’s Next?

Well, the Morrison regime is still pushing for a war with China. Maybe they will try to perform amphibious landings on the coast of Shenzhen. Who knows? These people are that “bat shit crazy”!

This is a short article, but the content is significant.

America will stand down, and not get involved with any conflict over Taiwan. All those folk who are promoting war, more military spending and all other factors regarding a war with China over Taiwan has got their “wings clipped”.

Notice how none of this is being reported in any American “news”. The only way that you can tell that anything is going on is the lack of coverage regarding Taiwan.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

A breakdown of the report “alien interview” by MM from a MAJ perspective (part 6)

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

This is part 6.

This is part six of the parsing of this document

You can view part 1 HERE.

SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 29. 7. 1947, 1st Session

“Today Airl told me about some very technical things. I took a few notes to remind myself, so I can repeat what she said as closely as possible. She began with an analogy about scientific knowledge:

Can you imagine how much progress could have been made on Earth if people like Johannes Gutenberg , Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, Nicola Tesla, Jonas Salk, and Richard Trevithick, and many thousands of similar geniuses and inventors were living today?

Image what technical accomplishments might have been developed if men like these never died? What if they were never given amnesia and made to forget everything they knew? What if they continued to learn and work forever?

What level of technology and civilization could be attained if Immortal Spiritual Beings like these were allowed to continue to create – in the same place and at the same time – for billions or trillions of years?

Essentially, The Domain is one civilization that has existed for trillions of years with relatively uninterrupted progress.

This is TRUE.

Knowledge has been accumulated, refined, and improved upon in nearly every field of study imaginable – and beyond imagining.

This is TRUE.

Originally, the interaction of IS-BE illusions or inventions created the very fabric of the physical universe – the microcosm and the macrocosm. Every single particle of the universe has been imagined and brought into existence by an IS-BE. Everything created from an idea – a thought with no weight or size or location in space.

This is MM language. Consciousness can do only ONE singular thing; think. This is all it can do in wave form.

Every speck of dust in space, from the size of the tiniest subatomic particle, to the size of a sun or a magelantic cloud the size of many galaxies, was created from the nothingness of a thought.

This is TRUE.

Even the tiniest, individual cells were contrived and coordinated to enable a microbial entity to sense, and navigate through infinitesimally small spaces. These also came from an idea thought up by an IS-BE.

This is TRUE.

You, and every IS-BE on Earth, have participated in the creation of this universe. Even though you are now confined to a fragile body made of flesh; you live for only 65 short rotations of your planet around a star; you have been given overwhelming electric shock treatments to wipe out your memory; you must learn everything all over again each lifetime; in spite of all these circumstances, you are who you are and will always be. And, deep down, you still know that your are and what you know. You are still the essence of you.

This is TRUE.

How else can one understand the child prodigy? An IS-BE who plays concertos on a piano at three years of age, without formal training?

Impossible, if they did not simply remember what they have already learned from thousands of lives spent in front of a keyboard in times untold, or on planets far away.

They may not know how they know. They just know.

This is TRUE.

Humankind has developed more technology in the past 100 years than in the previous 2,000 years. Why? The answer is simple: the influence of the “Old Empire” over the mind and over the affairs of Mankind has been diminished by The Domain.

This appears to certainly be the case. It's like shackles have been removed, and people are allowed to grow; to fly, to develop and to grow.

A renaissance of invention on Earth began in 1,250 AD with the destruction of the “Old Empire” space fleet in the solar system.

A major encounter. It had great influences throughout our solar system.

During the next 500 years, Earth may have the potential to regain autonomy and independence, but only to the degree that humankind can apply the concentrated genius of the IS-BEs on Earth to solve the amnesia problem.

Starting in 1947, the next 500 years has the potential to be astounding.

However, on a cautionary note…

… the inventive potential of the IS-BEs who have been exiled to this planet is severely compromised by the criminal elements of the Earth population.

All you need to do is look at the United States today to see how true this is.

Specifically, politicians, warmongers and irresponsible physicists who create unlimited weapons such as nuclear bombs, chemicals, diseases and social chaos. These have the potential to extinguish all life forms on Earth, forever.

Oh, and aren't we facing these three threats right here, right now?

Even the relatively small explosions that were tested and used in the past two years on Earth have the potential to destroy all of life, if deployed in sufficient quantities. Larger weapons could consume all of the oxygen in the global atmosphere in a single explosion!

No reasonable person wants nuclear war. The problem is that America is run by idiotic psychopaths.

Therefore, the most fundamental problems that must be solved in order to ensure that Earth will not be destroyed by technology, are social and humanitarian problems.

And which nation is handling the social and humanitarian problems?

United States - War, money, power, rich oligarch greed.
China - Social systems, reduction of poverty, humanitarian issues.

The greatest scientific minds of Earth, in spite of mathematical or mechanical genius, have never addressed these problems.

Not in 1947. But they are being addressed by China from 1980 to the present.

Therefore, do not look to scientists to save Earth or the future of humanity. Any so-called “science” that is solely based on the paradigm that existence is composed only of energy and objects moving through space is not a science.

"Science" without a understanding of how quantum consciousness animates the physical is just voodoo-woo-doo.

Such beings utterly ignore the creative spark originated by an individual IS-BE and collective work of the IS-BEs who continually create the physical universe and all universes.

You cannot ignore the quantum consciousness.

Every science will remain relatively ineffective or destructive to the degree that it omits or devaluates the relative importance of the spiritual spark that ignites all of creation and life.

This is TRUE. 

So anyone who has ideas or wants to promote the information that they obtain from "their handlers" or contacts as they try to disseminate the information MUST REALIZE that unless they include the aspects germane to the mechanism of consciousness within their calculus, they are heading down the road to a dead end.

Unfortunately this ignorance has been very carefully and forcefully instilled in human beings by the “Old Empire”.

(This is) to ensure that IS-BEs on this planet will not be able to recover their innate ability to create space, energy, matter and time, or any other component part of universes.

As long as awareness of the immortal, powerful, spiritual “self” is ignored, humanity will remain imprisoned until the day of its own, self-destruction and oblivion.

It's a dangerous destructive cycle. And we are watching it in "real time" with a "front row seat".

Do not rely on the dogma of physical sciences to master the fundamental forces of creation any more than you would trust the chanted incantations of an incense-burning shaman.

Any "science" that does not include the spark of consciousness is just mumbo-jumbo.

The net result of both of these is entrapment and oblivion.

Which is the way that the "prison planet" operates.

Scientists pretend to observe, but they only suppose that they see, and call it fact.

I have argued this point for years.

Like the blind man, a scientist can not learn to see until he realizes that he is blind.

The “facts” of Earth science do not include the source of creation. They include only the result, or byproducts of creation.

The “facts” of science to not include any memory of the nearly infinite past experience of existence.

These omissions are serious ones. It's like have a beautiful nice car, but without an engine, transmission, radio, air conditioning, or electrical system.

The essence of creation and existence cannot be found through the lens of a microscope or telescope or by any other measurement of the physical universe.

It cannot be discerned through observation, which is the technique used by science through all these centuries. As you cannot observe thought. You cannot observe soul. You cannot observe emotions or feelings. You cannot observe attachments.

One cannot comprehend the perfume of a flower or the pain felt by an abandoned lover with meters and calipers.

As I have said.

Everything you will ever know about the creative force and ability of a god can be found within you – an Immortal Spiritual Being.

It's all inside of you.

But you are unaware of it. This is by design and intent. And by evil destructive people. It is a horrible situation.

How can a blind man teach others to see the nearly infinite gradients that comprise the spectrum of light?

The notion that one can understand the universe without understanding the nature of an IS-BE is as absurd as conceiving that an artist is a speck of paint on his own canvas.

Or, that the lace on a ballet shoe is the choreographer’s vision, or the grace of a dancer, or the electric excitement of opening night.

Study of the spirit has been booby-trapped by the thought control operation through religious superstitions they instill in the minds of men.

A very true statement and worthy of discussion off-line.

Conversely, the study of the spirit and the mind have been prohibited by science which eliminates anything that is not measurable in the physical universe. Science is the religion of matter. It worships matter.

So very TRUE. It is the study of the observation of physical matter. Anything that happens in the non-physical simply does not exist according to science.

The paradigm of science is that creation is all, and the creator is nothing.

Religion says the creator is all, and the creation is nothing.

These two extremes are the bars of a prison cell. They prevent observation of all phenomenon as an interactive whole.

This is a point raised in the movie "What the bleep do we know".

Study of creation without knowing the IS-BE, the source of creation, is futile.

When you sail to the edge of a universe conceived by science, you fall off the end into an abyss of dark, dispassionate space and lifeless, unrelenting force.

On Earth, you have been convinced that the oceans of the mind and spirit are filled with gruesome, ghoulish monsters that will eat you alive if you dare to venture beyond the breakwater of superstition.

This is true.

The vested interest of the “Old Empire” prison system is to prevent you from looking at your own soul.

This is true.

They fear that you will see in your own memory the slave masters who keep you imprisoned.

This is true. Just like the oligarchy in Washington DC are all afraid of the vast bulk of American citizens who have had enough with the mindless game of around-and-around-and-around.

The prison is made of shadows in your mind. The shadows are made of lies, and pain, and loss, and fear.

This is true.

The true geniuses of civilization are those IS-BEs who will enable other IS-BEs to recover their memory and regain self-realization and self-determination.

I hope that I am able to live up to this standard. -MM

This issue is not solved through enforcing moral regulation on behavior, or through the control of beings through mystery, faith, drugs, guns or any other dogma of a slave society.

Moral regulation, or the regulation of morals, is a characteristic of a slave society.

And certainly not through the use of electric shock and hypnotic commands!

Indeed.

The survival of Earth and every being on it depends on the ability to recover the memory of skills you have accrued through the trillenia; to recover the essence of yourself.

The survival of the Earth is up to us. We must all do our part, no matter how small. 

Do not be confused by the lies in the "news" media. You do not need to be a millionaire oligarch to enact change, nor some kind of crazed radical protestor. You just need to be yourself, be helpful, and be the Rufus.

Such an art, science, or technology has never been conceived in the “Old Empire”. Otherwise, they would not have resorted to the “solution” that brought you to your current condition on Earth.

Very True.

Neither has such technology ever been developed by The Domain.

This technology about mind-wipe, and shocks, and erasure amnesia, has never been developed by the Domain; the type-1 greys.

Until recently, the necessity of rehabilitating an IS-BE with amnesia has not been needed.

Until 1947.

Therefore, no one has ever worked on solving this problem. So far, unfortunately, The Domain has no solution to offer.

In 1947.

A few officers of The Domain Expeditionary Force have taken it upon themselves to provide technology to Earth during their off duty time.

These officers leave their “doll” at the space station and, as an IS-BE, assume or take over a biological body on Earth. In some cases an officer can remain on duty while they inhabit and control other bodies at the same time.

This is understood.

This is a very dangerous and adventurous undertaking.

Yes it is.

It requires a very able IS-BE to accomplish such a mission, and return to base successfully.

It is extremely dangerous.

One officer who did this recently, while continuing to attend to his official duties, was known on Earth as the electronics inventor, Nicola Tesla.

Interesting.

It is my intention, although is not a part of my mission orders, to assist you in your efforts to advance scientific and humanitarian progress on Earth.

It's intention, but not it's orders.

My intention is to help other IS-BEs to help themselves.

The purpose of MM is to give everyone the tools to better your lives, and to free yourself to what ever level or degree that you desire.

In order to solve the amnesia problem on Earth you will need much more advanced technology, as well as social stability to allow enough time for research and development of techniques to free the IS-BE from the body, and to free the mind of the IS-BE from amnesia.

From the point of view from the type-1 grey commander in 1947, the task to free the trapped IS-BE's on Earth is herculean.

It requires...

[1] Much more advanced technology.
[2] Social stability.
[3] Time to develop the necessary R&D baselines.

Although The Domain has a long term interest in maintaining Earth as a useful planet, it has no particular interest in the human population of Earth, other than its own personnel here.

The Domain has it's own issues and directives to follow. The situation on Earth, as bad as it is, is rally not of critical importance to the Domain.

We are interested in preventing destruction, as well as accelerating the development of technologies that will sustain the infrastructures of the global biosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere.

It can offer, as a Domain officer,...

...technologies that can prevent destruction of the world. As well as technologies that can sustain the infrastructures of the global environment.

To this end, you will discover, on very careful and thorough examination, that my space craft contains a wide assortment of technology that does not yet exist on Earth.

If you distribute pieces of this craft to various scientists for study, they will be able to reverse engineer  some of the technology to the extent that Earth has the raw materials required to replicate these components.

Some of the components. Not all.

Some features will be indecipherable.

Other features cannot be duplicated as Earth does not have the natural resources required to replicate them.

This is especially true of the metals used to construct the craft.

Not only do these metals not exist on Earth, the refining process required to produce these metals took billions of years to develop.

This is true. But I can tell you that MAJesic has been working on these technologies for years now. Decades, even.

It is also true of the navigation system which requires an IS-BE whose own personal wavelength has been specifically attuned to the “neural network” of the craft.  The pilot of the craft must possess a very high order of energy volition, discipline, training and intelligence to manipulate such a craft.

Understood.

IS-BEs on Earth are incapable of this expertise because it requires the use of an artificial body specifically created for this purpose.

Understood.

Certain individual Earth scientists, some of whom are among the most brilliant minds in the history of the universe, will have their memory of this technology jogged when they examine the craft components.

Just as some of the scientists and physicists on Earth have been able to “remember” how to recreate electric generators, internal combustion and steam locomotion, refrigeration, aircraft, antibiotics, and other tools of your civilization, they will also rediscover other vital technology in my craft.

And they are. All over the place.

I posit that there are members of the "Old Empire", either formally, or of like mind, embedded within the Earth civilian population. They control the West. They control Washington DC. And in this control, they have purposely created a world of fiat paper money, and a destruction of science, technology and manufacturing.

And we see this in real time.

The following are the specific systems embodied in my craft that contain useful components:

1) There is an assortment of microscopic wiring or fibers within the walls of the craft that control such things as communications, information storage, computer function, and automatic navigation.
2) The same wiring is used for light, sub-light and ultra-light spectrum detection and vision.
3) The fabrics of the interior of the craft are far superior to any on Earth at this time and have hundreds or thousands of applications.
4) You will also find mechanisms for creating, amplifying and channeling light particles or waves as a form of energy.

As an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain Forces, I am not at liberty to discuss or convey the detailed operation or construction of the craft in any way, other than what I have just disclosed.

Understood. We all have our limitations.

However, I am confident that there are many competent engineers on Earth who will develop useful technology with these resources.

I am providing these details to you in the hope that the greater good of The Domain will be served.”

Provided so that the Earth will be maintained, and not be destroyed, and that eventually, the imprisoned IS-BE's on Earth will be able to free themselves.

Conclusion

As I parse though this entire document, sentence by sentence, I have come to revise some of my beliefs and understandings. I have obtained numerous “Eureka!” moments where events and experiences fall into place and explain things. Yes, I can honestly say. Everything herein is accurate and is exactly what has occurred.

End of Part six

You can visit part seven HERE.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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A breakdown of the report “alien interview” by MM from a MAJ perspective (part 5)

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

This is part 5.

Key point – Document appears to be genuine

And I can tell you all that the more that I parse this document, the clearer it is (to me) that it is genuine.It is exactly what it says it is. And the extraterrestrial is actually telling the truth, so far.

Key point – Errors

However, there are some errors in translation, and confusion in the interpretation of what is being stated. Anything concerning “time” and the translation of dates seems to have some errors. The translator was having difficulty with those areas.

Humans think of time as “shared” and “linear”.

The type-1 greys think of time as circular and repeating. As in, consciousness enters and exits different world lines” and if you graph that movement of consciousness you will see a “corkscrew” movement through the MWI. Which is what it was referring to. All of which was WAY beyond the concepts of anyone in Roswell at that time.

Therefore all dates and time, and anything associated with these characteristics might in error.  If you are having trouble in these areas, treat them as non-resolved issues and can be ignored.

Key point – This document predates MAJestic

Also take note that this document pre-dates MAJestic, and it is crystal clear to me now, that my role was, and still is, in the rehabilitation aspects of moving the Earth from a Hellish “Prison Planet” to that of a “sentience nursery”.

This document has (for me, personally) helped to clarify elements and aspects of my role that were “blurred” and obscured from me. To that I am eternally grateful.

Look at the dates on my articles, and look at what I covered. You will see that they match up nearly perfectly with this “Alien Interview” transcript. And this is the first time that I have ever heard of this document. The timing was transcendental.

This is part five of the parsing of this document

You can view part 1 HERE.

ALIEN INTERVIEW, 28. 7. 1947, 1st Session

“The origins of this universe and life on Earth, as discussed in the textbooks I have read, are very inaccurate.

I have no problem with this statement.

Since you serve your government as a medical personnel, your duties require that you understand biological entities. So, I am sure that you will appreciate the value of the material I will share with you today.

I have no problem with this statement.

The text of books I have been given on subjects related to the function of life forms contain information that is based on…

  • false memories,
  • inaccurate observation,
  • missing data,
  • unproven theories,
  • and superstition.

For example, just a few hundred years ago your physicians practiced bloodletting as a means to release supposed ill-humors from the body in an attempt to relieve or heal a wide variety of physical and mental afflictions.

Although this has been corrected somewhat, many barbarisms are still being practiced in the name of medical science.

In addition to the application of incorrect theories concerning biological engineering, many primary errors that Earth scientists make are the result of an ignorance of the nature and relative importance of IS-BEs as the source of energy and intelligence which animate every life form.

No medical textbook includes the relationship between consciousness and the body and how they interact.

Although it is not a priority of The Domain to intervene in the affairs of Earth, The Domain Communications Office has authorized me to provide you with some information.

(It is) in an effort to provide a more accurate and complete understanding of these things and thereby enable you to discover more effective solutions to the unique problems you face on Earth.

I have no problems with these statements.

The correct information about the origins of biological entities has been erased from your mind.

As well as from the minds of your mentors.

In order to help you regain your own memory, I will share with you some factual material concerning the origin of biological entities.

I have no problem with these statements.

I asked Airl if she was referring to the subject of evolution. Airl said, “No, not exactly”.

You will find “evolution” mentioned in the ancient Vedic Hymns.

The Vedic texts are like folk tales or common wisdoms and superstitions gathered throughout the systems of The Domain.

Hum. This makes me want to add the Vedic Texts to MM.

These were compiled into verses, like a book of rhymes. For every statement of truth, the verses contain as many half-truths, reversals of truth and fanciful imaginings, blended without qualification or distinction.

Unfortunately.

The theory of evolution assumes that the motivational source of energy that animates every life form does not exist.

It assumes that an inanimate object or a chemical concoction can suddenly become “alive” or animate accidentally or spontaneously.

Or, perhaps an electrical discharge into a pool of chemical ooze will magically spawn a self-animated entity.

There is no evidence whatsoever that this is true, simply because it is not true.

Dr. Frankenstein did not really resurrect the dead into a marauding monster, except in the imagination of the IS-BE who wrote a fictitious story one dark and stormy night.

This extraterrestrial did have quite the word power.

No Western scientist ever stopped to consider who, what, where, when or how this animation happens.

Complete ignorance, denial or unawareness of the spirit as the source of life force required to animate inanimate objects or cellular tissue is the sole cause of failures in Western medicine.

Obviously, as I have stated herein throughout MM. The physical (body and world-line(s)) are just physical containers. It is the consciousness that animates them.

In addition, evolution does not occur accidentally.

It requires a great deal of technology which must be manipulated under the careful supervision of IS-BEs.

Evolution does not occur naturally. It requires a consciousness to make it happen and form into place.

So, for example, you are desirous of a new kind of frog. One that is yellow with horns, then a consciousness must work over long swaths of time to manifest the changes to create such a creature. This is what evolution is.

Very simple examples are seen in the modification of farm animals or in the breeding of dogs.

However, the notion that human biological organisms evolved naturally from earlier ape-like forms is incorrect.

No physical evidence will ever be uncovered to substantiate the notion that modern humanoid bodies evolved on this planet.

Humans DID NOT evolve on Earth. Nor did they evolve from primates as is the current belief.

The reason is simple: the idea that human bodies evolved spontaneously from the primordial ooze of chemical interactivity in the dim mists of time…

…is nothing more than a hypnotic lie…

…instilled by the amnesia operation…

….to prevent your recollection of the true origins of Mankind.

I have no problem with this statement, no matter how ungainly wordy it is.

Factually, humanoid bodies have existed in various forms throughout the universe for trillions of years.

The human form is an archetype. But the issue of consciousness and sentience makes the utility of that archetype vary. 

So there are "people" that look like humans all over the universe, and in every corner of the galaxy.

This was compounded by the fact that The Vedic Hymns were brought to Earth 8,200 years ago by The Domain Expeditionary Force.

The Vedic Hymns originated from the type-1 greys.

While they were based in the Himalaya Mountains, the verses were taught to some of the local humans who memorized them.

However, I should note that this was not an authorized activity for the crew of The Domain installation, although I am sure it seemed like an innocent diversion for them at the time.

This is the second time it mentioned this. The Domain has a policy of non-intervention, but some of the Domain information activity was passed down as part of a kind of recreational pastime.

The verses were passed along verbally from one generation to the next for thousands of years in the foothills and eventually spread throughout India.

No one in The Domain credits any of the material in the Vedic Hymns as factual material, any more than you would use “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” as a guide for rearing children.

However, on a planet where all of the IS-BEs have had their memory erased, one can understand how these tales and fantasies could be taken seriously.

Unfortunately, the humans who learned the Vedic verses passed them along to others saying that they came from “the gods”.

Eventually, the content of the verses were adopted verbatim as “truth”.

The euphemistic and metaphorical content of the Veda were accepted and practiced as dogmatic fact.

The philosophy of the verses were ignored and the verses became the genesis of nearly every religion practice on the planet, especially Hinduism.

The philosophy of the Vedic verses are what is important. Not the content.

As an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain, I must always assume a very pragmatic point of view.

I could not be effective or accomplish my missions if I were to use philosophical dogma or rhetoric as my operations manual.

The extraterrestrial begins to discuss very ancient history that predates the "Old Empire", and certainly pre-dates humans on the Earth.

Therefore, our discussion of history is based on actual events that occurred long before any IS-BEs arrived on Earth, and long before the “Old Empire” came into power.

I can relate part of this history from personal experience:

Many billions of years ago I was a member of a very large biological laboratory in a galaxy far from this one.

It was called the “Arcadia Regeneration Company”.

I was a biological engineer working with a large staff of technicians.

It was our business to manufacture and supply new life forms to uninhabited planets.

There were millions of star systems with millions of inhabitable planets in the region at that time.

The creation of lifeforms to inhabit worlds and planets that have no life, but will potentially be able to thrive with custom made life.

There were many other biological laboratory companies at that time also.

Each of them specialized in producing different kinds of life forms, depending on the “class” of the planet being populated.

Over a long span of time these laboratories developed a vast catalogue of species throughout the galaxies.

Also known as approved archetypes.

The majority of basic genetic material is common to all species of life.

Therefore, most of their work was concerned with manipulating alterations of the basic genetic pattern to produce variations of life forms that would be suitable inhabitants for various planetary classes.

You take a basic form, and then you modify it to fill a unique and specialized planetary environment.

The “Arcadia Regeneration Company” specialized in mammals for forested areas and birds for tropical regions.

Our marketing staff negotiated contracts with various planetary governments and independent buyers from all over the universe.

The technicians created animals that were compatible with the variations in climate, atmospheric and terrestrial density and chemical content.

There are many worlds that are similar, but have variations that run from the comfortable to the uncomfortable. This effort produced animals and creatures that were stable and able to thrive in a very broad and diverse range of planetary environments.

In addition we were paid to integrate our specimens with biological organisms engineered by other companies already living on a planet.

You take local organism "A", then you integrate specific changes taken from a catalog of "attributes" and you end up with an organism "A++".

In order to do this our staff was in communication with other companies who created life forms.

There were industry trade shows, publications and a variety of other information supplied through an association that coordinated related projects.

As you can imagine, our research required a great deal of interstellar travel to conduct planetary surveys.

This is when I learned my skills as a pilot.

The data gathered was accumulated in huge computer databases and evaluated by biological engineers.

All this happened billions of years ago. Could the Domain be the same thing as the progenitors?

Mind BLOWN!

A computer is an electronic device that serves as an artificial “brain” or complex calculating machine.

It is capable of storing information, making computations, solving problems and performing mechanical functions.

In most of the galactic systems of the universe, very large computers are commonly used to run the routine administration, mechanical services and maintenance activities of an entire planet or planetary system.

Based on the survey data gathered, designs and artistic renderings were made for new creatures.

Some designs were sold to the highest bidder. Other life forms were created to meet the customized requests of our clients.

The design and technical specifications were passed along an assembly line through a series of cellular, chemical, and mechanical engineers to solve the various problems.

It was their job to integrate all of the component factors into a workable, functional and aesthetic finished product.

Prototypes of these creatures were then produced and tested in artificially created environments.

Imperfections were worked out, modifications made and eventually the new life form was “endowed” or “animated” with a life force or spiritual energy before being introduced into the actual planetary environment for final testing.

This is the basic procedure. Can you just imagine the shock on the faces of the Roswell military leadership?

After a new life form was introduced, we monitored the interaction of these biological organisms with the planetary environment and with other indigenous life-forms.

Obviously, sometimes things didn't work out so well.

Conflicts resulting from the interaction between incompatible organisms were resolved through negotiation between ourselves and other companies.

The negotiations usually resulted in compromises requiring further modification to our creatures or to theirs or both.

This is part of a science or art you call “Eugenics”.

In some cases changes were made in the planetary environment, but not often, as planet building is much more complex than making changes to an individual life form.

This is understandable.

Coincidentally, a friend and engineer with whom I used to work with at the Arcadia Regeneration Company – a long time after I left the company – told me that one of the projects they contracted to do, in more recent times, was to deliver life forms to Earth to replenish them after a war in this region of the galaxy devastated most of the life on the planets in this region of space. This would have been about seventy million years ago.

About 70 million years ago was a major war in our region of space and many solar systems were affected. Many planets were devastated beyond casual repair, and efforts were made to not only replace the lost life forms, but also to improve and add new forms.

"One of the planet’s largest extinctions, which wiped out non-flying dinosaurs and most other species 66 million years ago, was caused by a “one-two punch” of volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts, a new reconstruction of Antarctic Ocean temperatures suggests."

-From HERE.

The skill required to modify the planet into an ecologically interactive environment that will support billions of diverse species was an immense undertaking.

Specialized consultants from nearly every biotechnology company in the galaxy were brought in to help with the project.

For this region, or for the Earth proper? I wonder.

What you see now on Earth is the huge variety of life forms left behind.

Your scientists believe that the fallacious “theory of evolution” is an explanation for the existence of all the life forms here.

The truth is that all life forms on this and any other planet in this universe were created by companies like ours.

Now this is just a "kick in the teeth" for evolutionary theory.

How else can you explain the millions of completely divergent and unrelated species of life on the land and in the oceans of this planet?

How else can you explain the source of spiritual animation which defines every living creature?

To say it is the work of “god”, is far too broad.

Every IS-BE has many names and faces in many times and places. Every IS-BE is a god. When they inhabit a physical object they are the source of Life.

For example, there are millions of species of insects.

About 350,000 of these are species of beetles.

There may be as many as 100 million species of life forms on Earth at any given time.

In addition, there are many times more extinct species of life on Earth than there are living life forms. Some of these will be rediscovered in the fossil or geological records of Earth.

The current “theory of evolution” of life forms on Earth does not consider the phenomena of biological diversity.

Evolution by natural selection is science fiction.

One species does not accidentally, or randomly evolve to become another species, as the Earth textbooks indicate, without manipulation of genetic material by an IS-BE.

Consciousness creation of life is what animates it.

Fundamental.

A simple example of IS-BE intervention is the selective breeding of a species on Earth. Within the past few hundred years several hundred dog breeds and hundreds of varieties of pigeons and dozens of Koi fish have been “evolved” in just a few years, beginning with only one original breed.

Without active intervention by IS-BEs, biological organisms rarely change.

The development of an animal like the ‘duck-billed platypus’ required a lot of very clever engineering to combine the body of a beaver with the bill of a duck and make a mammal that lays eggs.

Undoubtedly, some wealthy client placed a “special order” for it as a gift or curious amusement.

I am sure the laboratory of some biotechnical company worked on it for years to make it a self-replicating life form!

This "cracks me up"!

The notion that the creation of any life form could have resulted from a coincidental chemical interaction moldering up from some primordial ooze is beyond absurdity!

Factually, some organisms on Earth, such as Proteobacteria,  are modifications of a Phylum  designed primarily for “Star Type 3, Class C” planets.

This differs from our solar system which is a "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planet.

In other words, The Domain designation for a planet with an anaerobic atmosphere nearest a large, intensely hot blue star, such as those in the constellation of Orion’s Belt in this galaxy.

The three bright stars that form the Orion’s Belt are Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. The stars are believed to have formed from the same nebula in Orion constellation, and they are roughly the same age. 

Creating life forms is very complex, highly technical work for IS-BEs who specialize in this field.

Genetic anomalies are very baffling to Earth biologists who have had their memory erased.

Unfortunately, the false memory implantations of the “Old Empire” prevent Earth scientists from observing obvious anomalies.

This is the core, underlying theme, of the extraterrestrial.

The greatest technical challenge of biological organisms was the invention of self-regeneration, or sexual reproduction.

It was invented as the solution to the problem of having to continually manufacture replacement creatures for those that had been destroyed and eaten by other creatures.

Planetary governments did not want to keep buying replacement animals.

The idea was contrived trillions of years ago as a result of a conference held to resolve arguments between the disputing vested interests within the biotechnology industry.

The infamous “Council of Yuhmi-Krum” was responsible for coordinating creature production.

Such a story. I am just positive the the Roswell military leadership were besides themselves in incredulity.

A compromise was reached, after certain members of the Council were strategically bribed or murdered, to author an agreement which resulted in the biological phenomenon which we now call the “food chain”.

The idea that a creature would need to consume the body of another life form as an energy source was offered as a solution by one of the biggest companies in the biological engineering business. They specialized in creating insects and flowering plants.

The connection between the two is obvious. Nearly every flowering plant requires a symbiotic relationship with an insect in order to propagate. The reason is obvious: both the bugs and the flowers were created by the same company. Unfortunately, this same company also had a division which created parasites and bacteria.

Hum...

The name of the company roughly translated into English would be “Bugs & Blossoms”.

Hum...

They wanted to justify the fact that the only valid purpose of the parasitic creatures they manufactured was to aid the decomposition of organic material. There was a very limited market for such creatures at that time.

Interesting.

In order to expand their business they hired a big public relations firm and a powerful group of political lobbyists to glorify the idea that life forms should feed from other life forms.

They invented a “scientific theory” to use as a promotion gimmick.

The theory was that all creatures needed to have “food” as a source of energy.

Before that, none of the life forms being manufactured required any external energy.

Animals did not eat other animals for food, but consumed sunlight, minerals or vegetable matter only.

Very, very interesting.

Of course, “Bugs & Blossoms” went into the business of designing and manufacturing carnivores.

Before long, so many animals were being eaten as food that the problem of replenishing them became very difficult.

As a ‘solution’, “Bugs & Blossoms” proposed, with the help of some strategically placed bribes in high places, that other companies begin using ‘sexual reproduction’ as the basis for replenishing life-forms.

“Bugs & Blossoms” was the first company to develop blueprints for sexual reproduction, of course.

Curious, and fascinating.

As expected, the patent licenses for the biological engineering process required to implant stimulus-response mating, cellular division and preprogrammed growth patterns for self-regenerating animals were owned by “Bugs & Blossoms” too.

Of course.

Through the next few million years laws were passed that required that these programs be purchased by the other biological technology companies.

These were required to be imprinted into the cellular design of all existing life-forms.

It became a very expensive undertaking for other biotechnology companies to make such an awkward, and impractical idea work.

This led to the corruption and downfall of the entire industry.

Ultimately, the ‘food and sex’ idea completely ruined the bio-technology industry, including “Bugs & Blossoms”.

The entire industry faded away as the market for manufactured life forms disappeared.

Consequently, when a species became extinct, there is no way to replace them because the technology of creating new life forms has been lost.

Here we are talking about the "worlds and the realities of the Gods".

Obviously, none of this technology was ever known on Earth, and probably never will be.

There are still computer files on some planets far from here which record the procedures for biological engineering. Possibly the laboratories and computers still exist somewhere. However, there is no one around doing anything with them. Therefore, you can understand why it is so important for The Domain to protect the dwindling number of creatures left on Earth.

Understandable.

The core concept behind ‘sexual reproduction’ technology was the invention of a chemical/electronic interaction called “cyclical stimulus-response generators”.

This is very interesting. It is what drives humans to reproduce.

This is an programmed genetic mechanism which causes a seemingly spontaneous, recurring impulse to reproduce. The same technique was later adapted and applied to biological flesh bodies, including Homo Sapiens.

Also known as "going into heat". It cause the female to go into a Lordosis posture.

Another important mechanism used in the reproductive process, especially with Homo Sapiens type bodies, is the implantation of a “chemical-electrical trigger” mechanism in the body.

The “trigger” which attracts IS-BEs to inhabit a human body, or any kind of “flesh body”, is the use of an artificially imprinted electronic wave which uses “aesthetic pain” to attract the IS-BE.

An "artificially imprinted electronic wave" used to attract a consciousness to inhabit a physical body.

Every trap in the universe, including those used to capture IS-BEs who remain free, is “baited” with an aesthetic electronic wave.

Very interesting.

The sensations caused by the aesthetic wavelength are more attractive to an IS-BE than any other sensation. When the electronic waves of pain and beauty are combined together, this causes the IS-BE to get “stuck” in the body.

Avoid them if you want to be free.

The “reproductive trigger” used for lesser life forms, such as cattle and other mammals, is triggered by chemicals emitted from the scent glands, combined with reproductive chemical-electrical impulses stimulated by testosterone, or estrogen.

Well understood.

These are also interactive with nutrition levels which cause the life form to reproduce more when deprived of food sources.

Interesting. China's population sky-rocketed during famines. As did India's.

Starvation promoted reproductive activity as a means of perpetuating survival through future regenerations, when the current organism fails to survive. These fundamental principles have been applied throughout all species of life.

All species of life.

The debilitating impact and addiction to the “sexual aesthetic-pain” electronic wave  is the reason that the ruling class of The Domain do not inhabit flesh bodies.

This is also why officers of The Domain Forces only use doll bodies.

This wave has proven to be the most effective trapping device ever created in the history of the universe, as far as I know.

It is the MOST effective trapping snare in the universe.

The civilizations of The Domain and the “Old Empire” both depend on this device to “recruit” and maintain a work force of IS-BEs who inhabit flesh bodies on planets and installations.

These IS-BEs are the “working class” beings who do all of the slavish, manual, undesirable work on planets.

Class System

As I mentioned, there is a very highly regimented and fixed hierarchy or “class system” for all IS-BEs throughout the “Old Empire”, and The Domain, as follows:

  • The highest class are “free” IS-BEs. That is, they are not restricted to the use of any type of body and may come and go at will, provided that they do not destroy or interfere with the social, economic or political structure.
  • Below this class are many strata of “limited” IS-BEs who may or may not use a body from time to time. Limitations are imposed on each IS-BE regarding range of power, ability and mobility they can exercise.
  • Below these are the “doll body” classes, to which I belong. Nearly all space officers and crew members of space craft are required to travel through intergalactic space. Therefore, they are each equipped with a body manufactured from light weight, durable materials. Various body types have been designed to facilitate specialized functions. Some bodies have accessories, such as interchangeable tools or apparatus for activities such as maintenance, mining, chemical management, navigation, and so forth. There are many gradations of this body type which also serve as an “insignia” of rank.
  • Below these are the soldier class. The soldiers are equipped with a myriad of weapons, and specialized armaments designed to detect, combat and overwhelm any imaginable foe. Some soldiers are issued mechanical bodies. Most soldiers are merely remote controlled robots with no class designation.
  • The lower classes are limited to “flesh bodies”. Of course, it is not possible for these to travel through space for obvious reasons. Fundamentally, flesh bodies are far too fragile to endure the stresses of gravity, temperature extremes, radiation exposure, atmospheric chemicals and the vacuum of space. There are also the obvious logistical inconveniences of food, defecation, sleep, atmospheric elements, and air pressure required by flesh bodies, that doll bodies do not require.

Flesh Bodies

Most flesh bodies will suffocate in only a few minutes without a specific combination of atmospheric chemicals.

After 2 or 3 days the bacteria which live internally and externally on the body cause severe odors to be emitted. Odors of any kind are not acceptable in a space vessel.

Flesh can tolerate only a very limited spectrum of temperatures, whereas in space the contrast of temperatures may vary hundreds of degrees within seconds. Of course flesh bodies are utterly useless for military duty. A single shot from a hand-held, electronic blast gun instantly turns a flesh body into a noxious vapor cloud.

IS-BEs who inhabit flesh bodies have lost much of their native ability and power. Although it is theoretically possible to regain or rehabilitate these abilities, no practical means has been discovered or authorized by The Domain.

Even though space craft of The Domain travel trillions of “light years” in a single day,  the time required to traverse the space between galaxies is significant, not to mention the length of time to complete just one set of mission orders, which may require thousands of years.

Biological flesh bodies live for only a very short time – only 60 to 150 years, at most – whereas doll bodies can be re-used and repaired almost indefinitely.

Development of biological bodies

The first development of biological bodies began in this universe about seventy-four trillion years ago.

It rapidly became a fad for IS-BEs to create and inhabit various types of bodies for an assortment of nefarious reasons: especially for amusement, this is to experience various physical sensations vicariously through the body.

Since that time there has been a continuing “de-evolution” in the relationship of IS-BEs to bodies.

As IS-BEs continued to play around with these bodies, certain tricks were introduced to cause IS-BEs to get trapped inside a body so they were unable to leave again.

Very interesting.

This was done primarily by making bodies that appeared sturdy, but were actually very fragile. An IS-BE, using their natural power to create energy, accidentally injured a body when contacting it. The IS-BE was remorseful about having injured this fragile body. The next time they encountered a body they began to be “careful” with them. In so doing, the IS-BE would withdraw or minimize their own power so as not to injure the body. A very long and treacherous history of this kind of trickery, combined with similar misadventures eventually resulted in a large number of IS-BEs becoming permanently trapped in bodies.

Now, who would think of such a thing?

Of course this became a profitable enterprise for some IS-BEs who took advantage of this situation to make slaves of others.

The resulting enslavement progressed over trillions of years, and continues today.

Ultimately the dwindling ability of IS-BEs to maintain a personal state of operational freedom and ability to create energy resulted in the vast and carefully guarded hierarchy or class system.

Sigh.

Using bodies as a symbol of each class is used throughout the “Old Empire”, as well as The Domain.

Sigh.

The vast majority of IS-BEs throughout the galaxies of this universe inhabit some form of flesh body.

The structure, appearance, operation and habitat of these bodies vary according to the gravity, atmosphere, and climatic conditions of the planet they inhabit.

Body types are predetermined largely by the type and size of the star around which the planet revolves, the distance from the star, the geological, as well as the atmospheric components of the planet.

All well understood parameters now. But at that time must have been enlightening and shocking.

On the average, these stars and planets fall into gradients of classification which are fairly standard throughout the universe.

Archetypes.

For example, Earth is identified, roughly, as a “Sun Type 12, Class 7 planet”. That is a heavy gravity, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere planet,  with biological life-forms, in proximity to a single, yellow, medium-size, low-radiation sun or “Type 12 star”.

The proper designations are difficult to translate accurately due to the extreme limitations of astronomical nomenclature in the English language.

Understood.

There are as many varieties of life forms as there are grains of sands on the beach. You can imagine how many different creatures and types of bodies have been manufactured by the millions of companies such as “Bugs & Blossoms” for all of the myriad planetary systems during the course of seventy-four trillion years!”

(MATILDA O’DONNELL MACELROY PERSONAL NOTE)

“When Airl finished telling me this “story”, there was a long, silent pause while I muddled through all this in my mind. Had Airl been reading science fiction books and fantasy stories during the night? Why would she tell me something so incredibly far-fetched?

The science fiction stories of the pulp magazines of that day wouldn't even begin to consider the things this extraterrestrial was saying.

If there had not been a 40 inch tall alien, with gray “skin”, and three fingers on each hand and foot sitting directly across from me, I would not have believed a single word of it!

In retrospect, over the 60 years since Airl gave me this information, Earth doctors have begun to develop some of the biological engineering technology that Airl told me about right here on Earth. Heart bypasses, cloning, test tube babies, organ transplants, plastic surgery, genes, chromosomes, and so forth.

One thing is very sure: I have never looked at a bug or flower the same way since then, not to mention my religious belief in Genesis.”

Conclusion

As I parse though this entire document, sentence by sentence, I have come to revise some of my beliefs and understandings. I have obtained numerous “Eureka!” moments where events and experiences fall into place and explain things. Yes, I can honestly say. Everything herein is accurate and is exactly what has occurred.

End of Part five

You can visit part six HERE.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

MM Ghetto Blasters and Stardust Funk

Today, I am going to present a follow up article to my earlier post titled the “MM blue plate special”.  Here we are going to follow the same format, with articles, photos and short videos depicting various things in no particular order. I hope that you all enjoy it.

We will start with…

Philly Cheese-steak Sandwich

The cheesesteak sandwich is made up of thinly sliced steak that served hot with melted cheese in a long, crusty Italian roll. Peppers, onions and mushrooms are optional, but highly recommended (by me). It’s a popular street-cart food, with its origins coming from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Philly Cheese-steak Sandwich.

Chinese boy and girl scout “Jamboree”

In China, most things are co-ed, so there really isn’t a boy scouts,  or a girl scouts. It’s just “The Scouts”. Here we see the Chinese equivalent of a Scout Jamboree. It’s a really short video, but a lot of fun. Check it out.

Chinese Scout Jamboree.

Helping an old man cross the street

Oh, I know. It’s so “boy scout”. But really! Where is your humanity? We all need each other. We really do. No one is alone. We all all connected, and if we start treating each other as part of our family, then maybe… just maybe the world will be a better place.

Getting Married in Beirut

In 2020, Israel fired two Air to ground Thermobaric weapon to the Beirut port. This devastated one of the key ports for the Chinese BRI, Belt and Road Initiative. Initially, the American media heavily promoted the excuse that it was just accidentally self-ignited fertilizer, but when photos of the actual missiles were produced, the narrative quickly changed to birds and crows being misidentified.

Afterwards, (then) Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gleefully announced that there was “substantial progress” in stopping the Chinese BRI in the Mediterranean.  You all can put two plus two together and realize what is going on. You don’t need a degree in Geo-political international politics to figure it out.

The following is a woman, on her wedding day, getting married in Beirut when the United States destroyed the Port of Beruit, via proxy using Israeli aircraft.

Cool video.
Getting Married in Beirut

Bathers at Atlantic City.

The Jersey Shore circa 1910. “Bathers at Atlantic City.” Many of them gamely striking a pose for the camera as they peer into the existential void. 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.

Bathers at Atlantic City.

Did women wear corsets under their swimming suits back then? They all seem to have very slender waists.

Be the Rufus!

Man gets horrible news and lunges towards a high speed train!  Only a real Rufus can save him! Be the Rufus! It’s our highest calling!

Be the Rufus! It’s our highest calling.

Metal detecting

Ponder this…

Nice finds.

A typical park in China

In China the purpose of the government is to support and enrich the standard of living for the Chinese citizenry. It is not to make the richest people wealthier. Thus money, time and effort goes into making parks, improving infrastructure, and improving every aspect of the lives of the Chinese.

Here’s a typical park.

Mom Making A Kettle Of Apple Butter

Making a kettle of apple butter.

When I was growing up, one of my least favorite tasks was helping make apple butter. It seemed like it took forever, and it did indeed take the better part of an entire day – usually on a beautiful fall day that God must surely have provided for the sole purpose of running around and playing in the woods. But there I was, helping make apple butter while the precious daylight hours wasted away!

Yes, in the opinion of most any little boy, a day spent making apple butter is a day thoroughly wasted. First, you have to peel, cut up and wash about a million apples.

Then you have to gather a mountain of firewood and keep the flame burning nice and hot for hours on end…all the while stirring the smoldering apple butter non-stop until you’re old enough to begin sprouting facial hair. Of course about every six minutes throughout the day I would annoy mom just a little bit more by asking her if the apple butter was “almost done”…

And finally, after having asked for about the 10,000th time, she would say the two most beautiful words in the English language: “just about“.

Shortly after that she would break out the “cans” and start filling them up with the precious concoction that we had just spent such a large portion of our lifetimes making.

Finally, after all the pint and quart jars were filled, an amazing thing would happen: mom would give several jars of it away! I remember thinking “What are you doing, mom? After all we went through to make that stuff you’re gonna hand it out for free?

But that was mom, always being generous and sharing with others regardless of how hard she had to work to get something.

Reflecting back on those years, I now understand why mom did so much work for what seemed to me to be such a small “payout” – she had to. She had a large family to feed and little extra money with which to do it, and we kids had to do our part to help put food on the table. And now that I think about it, those were some of the best times of my life.

Saved by a Rufus!

A truck is out of control. The driver is unconscious, and it’s a treacherous mountain road. What are you going to do? Well, if you are a Rufus, then you know exactly what you should do!

Saved by a Rufus.

周杰伦、费玉清 – 千里之外 (Live)

One of the most famous Pop songs in China. Performed live of one of the Chinese talent shows by the original singers.

周杰伦、费玉清 – 千里之外 (Live).

Being silenced by the war-loving neocon cabal

All of us who live in China are used to this kind of bullshit.  Ignorant fucks accuse us for being paid to say good things about China. Why? because they read about it on their “news”. But what is “news”? Today, it’s a fully paid arm of the government, and if the government wants to demonize China, and you say “Whoa! That’s wrong.” then they will demonize you too.

I try to stay out of the fray. But it affects all of us here.

Watch and learn.

Being silenced by the war-loving neocon cabal.

Traveleze: 1959

This 35mm Kodachrome found in a thrift store is dated August 1959 and bears the notation “Jim, Bristlecone.” The color-coordinated Chevrolet truck and Traveleze trailer are a nice late-Fifties touch.

Nice. 1959. I was a baby at the time.

Where else could one stumble on something like this, nicely blown up for close viewing? 

I drove one of these pickups up in the Colorado Rockies with the Forest Service for two summers back in the mid '60s. Four on the floor (with a super-low stump-yanker first gear, good only for hauling heavy loads up 4% grades--most of the time you started in 2nd if you wanted to make progress), and yes, mine was two-tone as well. 

The rest of the stable included a '58 Ford F100, also two tone, and a couple of shiny new Dodge Ram V8s that were all-green, and two Jeeps, a Wagoneer and a CJ5. 

It was a joy and a privilege to motor around in such a beautiful mountain setting (much like in this shot) in such a cool vehicle. Thanks for the memory!

-DougR

季彦霖 – 选择失忆

Here is a typical Chinese MV. This is the kind of song that the chicks in the KTV would sing their hearts out to. I hope that you all like it.

季彦霖 – 选择失忆.

Meanwhile In Hawaii

There is a movement inside of Hawaii calling for separation away form the United States Federal Government. I am sure that many people on the mainland also feel this way about their own States. After all, if you get rid of the Federal government, automatically your taxes are slashed, and your income increase an easy 30%, not to mention Social Security, and forget about all those wars in far off and distant lands.

Heck! If Kentucky want’s to fight Kenya, go for it. But let those in Kentucky decide, not some rich oligarchy psychopath in Washington DC.

Ah. But you know, nah it will never happen. But it’s nice to see something that the mainstream, and the alternative will refuse to cover.

 

Ghetto Blaster

70s Ghetto blasters and boomboxes in the 80s existed long before pocket-sized radios were a possibility. Part of the era before the iPod, the MP3 player, and even the Walkman in some cases, people needed a way to take the clunky tech of an audio system with them outside.

Ghetto Blaster

The ghetto blaster sprang to life in 1969, introducing a large, yet still (somewhat) portable machine with multiple loud speakers. The Philips company was the first to discover the tech required to make audio “portable”.

In the early days, most people referred to these products as boomboxes. The name, in part, referred to the heavy, box-like design of the machine. Plus, most boombox radios also came with a bass-enhancing codec, which meant you got plenty of boom.

Margherita Pizza

Margherita pizza is a special variety of pizza that originates in Naples, Italy. In Italy, this pizza is a protected food, meaning that it must be prepared in a certain way to bear the “pizza Margherita” label, and the Italian government actually certifies bakeries that produce it.

This pizza is very simple, placing an emphasis on fresh, wholesome ingredients and high quality bread dough. It is also the basis for many pizzas served around the world; most people can probably obtain a version of it from a local pizza establishment, and cooks can also make it at home.

Margherita pizza.

A man collapses in a hospital

You go to a hospital when you are not feeling well. Well, what if you were delayed, and you are really in a bad state? Well, don’t worry, there will always be a Rufus nearby to help you when you need it most.

Be the Rufus!

Be the Rufus!

Another pretty Chinese woman

I do love to look at pretty women.

A pretty Chinese woman.

So, what is a ghetto blaster?

The name alone is enough to conjure an image of one of these products. In the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, most ghetto blasters were large, angular (box-shaped) devices.

Ghetto Blaster gone mobile.

While the features available from a ghetto blaster have changed over the years, they usually include:

  • An amplifier (with extra bass support)
  • Two loudspeakers (volume is a must)
  • A radio tuner (AM, FM, and sometimes DAB)
  • A cassette or CD player
  • A handle for portability

The cassette tape and CD player components of the modern ghetto blaster are quickly being phased out. Although you can find a new ghetto blaster with CD player components these days, it’s more common to simply play your music collection via Bluetooth.

A Ghetto Blaster is also known as a “boom box”.

Ghetto blasters need to be loud, versatile, and portable. In the past, designers used to slap a handle on a blocky machine and leave customers to figure out the rest.

This frequently led to people carrying ghetto blasters on their shoulders to make managing the weight a bit easier.

Today, more modern ghetto blasters from companies like JBL and Sony are a little more ergonomic. Some products come with straps so you can carry your radio like a backpack.

A Ghetto Blaster is also known as a “boom box”.

Others feature unique designs that make carrying the machine on your shoulder more comfortable.

A “Mexican” Plate

I happen to really like Mexican food, but unfortunately, I just can’t get it in China. Sigh. But no matter, Here we have some refried beans, some burritos, lots of cheese and rice. It’s really mouth-watering.

A “Mexican” Plate.

Street walkers in Vietnam

There are some interesting sights and sounds in Vietnam. Here’s a short clip of some “street walkers” in one of the main (foreigner) areas of Ho Chi Min city.

Street walkers in Vietnam. Be careful! They might be “Lady Boys”.

A New York Style Pizza

This is a type of American pizza known as a “New York Style” Pizza. It has a very thing crust, is long, and has piping hot cheese on the top of it. Us “locals” like to curve up the ends of it when we eat it.

New York Style Pizza.

80s ghetto blasters and the identity of an era

While Ghetto blasters in the 70s and 60s were available, it wasn’t until the 1980s when popularity surged. The ghetto blaster became the icon of a generation, acting as both a practical tool, and a status symbol.

A young man sits on his bicycle with his boombox. Cairo, Illinois. 1985.

Today, we still see boomboxes as a component of the 80s and early 90s aesthetic. Many leading artists use ghetto blasters in their music videos. Just look at “Hung Up” by Madonna, or “Just Dance” by Lady Gaga.

So, why did the ghetto blaster suddenly surge into the mainstream in the 1980s? There are a few answers to this question.

In the 80s, cassette ghetto blaster products were often associated with urban society. African American and Hispanic youths frequently carried ghetto blasters with them wherever they went.

Rapper LL Cool J holds a boombox outside of a concert. 1986.

In fact, the popularity that boomboxes had in this environment is what helped them to earn their new term “ghetto blaster”.

What to do if you have some fresh Italian bread and some tomatoes…

A nice idea. Especially nice if you add some friends and a few bottles of wine. Hint. Hint.

Are you getting hungry?

And how you do it / make it…

Something like this…

What a steak!

Now this is my idea of a steak!

How about this for a steak?

How mothers bathed their babies in the 1950’s

It’s a joke! But it does seem kind of funny how the mother is posing next to her new washing machine.

How mothers bathed their babies in the 1950’s.

Boomboxes start community bans

The problem with the boomboxes is that they play LOUD, and everyone can hear the “music”.

As is often the case when music incites a community, cities began to ban boomboxes from public places. Unlike standard radio sets, governments didn’t have complete control over what people listened to on their ghetto blasters.

It was just as easy to listen to your own cassettes and CDs as it was to tune into Kiss FM.

Young men and their boombox. Newark, New Jersey. 1987.

Ghetto blasters in the 80s grew in popularity as a versatile way to listen to all kinds of music. Some groups even started using these portable players to create music.

The boombox became instrumental to the rise of hip hop music. Curb-side rap battles often included a number of ghetto blasters. The fact that ghetto blasters could deliver more bass and volume than a standard speaker made it perfect for the rise of a new genre.

A young man poses with his boombox on a sidewalk in Brooklyn. 1985.

Aside from providing the soundtrack to many urban music battles, ghetto blasters also became a status symbol. The Beastie Boys embraced the ghetto blaster as a signature of their “rebellious” nature. The Clash always seemed to have a boombox with them.

Elsewhere, the devices appeared frequently in shows and movies. Just think of Fame, in the 1980s, or Flash dance, for instance.

Even the National Museum of American History once created an exhibition around ghetto blasters. The event, titled “Hip-Hop won’t stop” featured an insight into the impact boomboxes had on the urban underground.

Bruce Springsteen fans have a picnic with a boombox in the trunk. Location unspecified. 1985.

A pretty girl from China

From one of my “pretty girls of China” collections.

Chicago Pizza

This is what we call a “Chicago Deep Dish Pizza”. It’s sort of like a Pizza Soup and it is so very delicious.

Chicago Pizza.

I really like this picture

I don’t really know why. I think and believe that it teleports me to a different time; a quieter time and a more peaceful time. I think that it is lovely.

A nicer time.

Comfort food

For me, one of my favorite comfort foods is a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. My wife, who is Chinese, has a different comfort food. She likes snails, and shellfish. And my friend Mike, who is also Chinese, prefers noodles. Lots and lots of hot noodles.

We are all different. This is my “comfort food”…

Grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup.

Guess the movie?

Can you guess which 1960’s American movie that these quotes came from? Hint: a song about “burning bridges” from the movie become a top pop hit.

A “star studded” cast.

What happened to ghetto blasters in the 1990s?

As ghetto blasters earned more popularity around the world, they also became more complex in functionality and design. By the end of the 80s, ghetto blasters frequently came with separate high/low-frequency speakers.

You could also access secondary tape decks so that you could record off the radio and other music systems.

Over the years, manufacturers introduced a host of new features, from balance adjusters and equalisers, to Dolby noise reduction tools, LED sound gauges, and CD players. Despite all of this extra functionality, ghetto blasters in the 1990s weren’t as popular as they used to be.

Teddy Boys in Tokyo’s Harajaku Park. 1986.

The problem wasn’t with the technology of ghetto blaster boomboxes. Rather, customers didn’t see the objects as capturing as much soul as their predecessors. Sometimes, when things in our history go “mainstream”, their impact can feel a little watered down.

Manufacturers jumped to add new bells and whistles to their systems to ensure that customers could have the latest and greatest tech. Unfortunately, the old-fashioned feel of the ghetto blaster wasn’t there.

On top of that, in the 2000s, when the ghetto blaster started to take on more high-tech functionality, it seemed to lose its retro appeal.

Breakdancers on 5th Avenue in New York. 1981.

The popularity of 80s ghetto blasters was about more than just what these systems could do. People loved the portability and impact of the boombox. However, it was the stigma attached to the device that really made having a boombox exciting.

People felt less inclined to risk the issues of carrying a boombox in public. After all, you could have all your music on the go with a Walkman, and you didn’t need to spend as much. In the 90s, an appreciation of music became a more personal, inward experience.

People weren’t as keen to blast their music in public places. We started to think of radio, CDs, and other audio experiences as more personal affairs.

A young man in roller skates and a pith helmet in New York City. 1970.

Even some of the more popular modern ghetto blasters available on the market today are equipped with headphone jacks for that very purpose.

Chinese military

You never see anything at all about the Chinese military in American (or Western press). It is always depicted as some kind of third world group of starving, illiterate peasants that are fielding hand-me-down Russian AK-47 clones. Not true. Here’s a nice video showing some of the weapons that China has developed on their own and field right now.

Chinese weapons.

Problems in America

All over the West are problems with kids and their parents who never had to deal with the consequences of their actions. Why? Because it’s “forgive and forget”. Well, maybe the judicial authorities are easy to “forgive and forget”, but not the victim and the perpetrators. So imagine my surprise in reading this…

A Pleasant life

You could say that this was me when I was on Parole and living in Erie, PA. Of course, at that time I was forbidden to have a computer, or a phone, or to watch movies. But I did have a cat, and a simple apartment where I lived alone. But I had a dream and a goal and my affirmations.

You all too will be able to move to more meaningful lives. Just use the time that you have now. Start making friends, and savor the elements of life more. Smell tomatoes in the store. Go to a bakery when it opens in the morning. Take a new walk down a street that you never walked on before. Make a point of smiling to one person and complementing them.

Your life will improve. I promise you.

Moving towards more…

Rejected by the editors

For some reason.

Girls being girls

And why not? Well, I love the dresses, and you will note that they are all having a great time together.

Girls being girls.

Guys being guys

And why not? To me they look like they are having a good time.

Guys being guys.

Guys and girls together

And why not?

It looks like fun, though I do think that the turkey is a “bit too much” for a picnic.

Guys and girls together.

Yet another Rufus saves someone

It’s up to us; me and you, to make the world a better place. Stop waiting on the sidelines. Stop waiting for the “perfect moment”. Stop dreaming and start doing. Once you be the Rufus all sorts of things enter in your life. You will be stunned. So stop being an observer, and start being a participant. Be the Rufus. Nothing else is worthy of you.

Helping others is our highest calling.

Barber Chair

I think these things are beautiful.

The rise of the modern ghetto blaster

The ghetto blaster of days gone by is often regarded a relic of history today. Think back to the 80s, and you’re sure to have an image in your mind of a ghetto blaster with cassette player functionality and a unique chrome trim.

While many people still have a place in their heart for old-fashioned boomboxes, it’s safe to say that the older models did have their issues.

Equaliser settings seemed to make absolutely no difference to the sound quality. The chunky and blocky design meant carrying your ghetto blaster was a real headache. That’s particularly true if you had extra cassette recorders and speakers to think about.

Man with a boombox walking among a crowd at the Taste of Chicago festival. July 3, 1988.

On top of all that, ghetto blasters also had a major problem with battery life. These portable devices often required a huge number of batteries. Filling a device full of 10-12 D batteries could leave it weighing anywhere up to 26 pounds.

Many of the updates appearing in the new ghetto blaster market come with a focus on correcting the key issues of days gone by. As society continues to embrace the idea of “public music” again, ghetto blasters are seeing a resurgence.

However, today’s consumers don’t want to deal with the old gripes of their parents.

UK Fresh Hip Hop event in Wembley, London. 1986.

Cassettes might have been the perfect way to store and carry music back in the 70s and 80s when they were small and cheap – but they’re not going to have the same impact now.

People want the freedom to stream their music digitally through USB sticks and Bluetooth connections instead.

A group of young men pose with a boombox on a subway platform. New York. 1983.

You may occasionally encounter a CD ghetto blaster which gives you the option to play older audio formats. However, it’s more common to find a portable device that looks more like a massive speaker than a CD player these days.

The modern ghetto blaster combines radio and Bluetooth to introduce something more portable than anything we had in the past.

艾热 – 风语画江湖

Here’s what some Chinese RAP music looks like. Enjoy.

艾热 – 风语画江湖

Rescue the babies!

A car carrying children falls into a pond. The mother cannot get out! What is to be done? You need a Rufus nearby. That is what you need. For a Rufus will help you. A Rufus will provide support. A Rufus will set things right! Be the Rufus!

Be the Rufus!

New York, July 5, 1921. “Lanier Hotel restaurant.”

Fried kidney only 20 cents. Note the sleeping mousers. What’s all that stuff on the floor? Sawdust?

Young girls on roller skates

This takes me back. I used to have a pair of skates like this. Obviously this pre-dates roller blades. It was a simpler time.

Young girls on roller skates.

Acts of kindness in India

The world needs more Rufus’s. Look what is going on in India! It doesn’t take much. But you too can help others. You too can make a difference. You too can be the Rufus.

Acts of kindness in India.

Washington, D.C., 1920. “Suffragettes voting.”

Well, I don’t know about you all, but I do love the place where they are at.

Washington, D.C., 1920. “Suffragettes voting.”

A hungry man sits down at a table in a restaurant…

And starts to eat the left over food that was left behind by the people who were eating there. He’s eating the few remaining table scraps when a Rufus comes and throws away the dirty food, and gives him is own brand new meal. It doesn’t cost much. But a Rufus participates. A Rufus helps. A Rufus makes the world a better place.

Be that Rufus!

Be the Rufus.

Summer is here

For me, nothing says “Summer” than a nice fire in the woods. Especially at dusk when the air chills a bit, the dusk glooms, and the insects start making those night-time noises that they often do. It’s a time of reflection, companionship, drinking and hotdogs. Never forget the food.

In most cases, it’s cheaper to buy a pack of hotdogs and buns than it is to buy some Doritos. So cut down the costs, and have more get-togethers. Spend some time with others. Have a good time. And talk. Just talk.

Make a campfire.

A Rufus participates in his community

It is very, VERY important that a Rufus be part of his / her community. You be helpful. You smile, and you be that light that others look forward to seeing every day. And when things go “South”, the Rufus is always there to “pick up the slack”; to make the world a better place. Maybe in a small way…

…but if everyone was a Rufus, well, there would be a lot less trouble and discomfort in this world. Be the Rufus, anything less is a disservice.

Be the Rufus, anything less is a disservice.

A Rufus is helpful

Not everyone needs to save someone in crisis. But it does not matter. A real Rufus is helpful. A real Rufus is considerate and caring. A real Rufus shows humanity.

Be the Rufus.

A Rufus is helpful.

John Ross says

Well, he said this truth.

John Ross says.

Why are Americans so fat?

Well, there are multiple reasons, but this chart summarizes the most critical ones.

For those of you that are trying alternative campaign ideas…

I have laid out a methodology on how to navigate the MWI through world-line travel. And the key to this is affirmation campaigns. But others might not like the discipline that it requires. If you want to try something easier, might I suggest this…

It’s up to us

It’s not up to the “elected” officials to make rules, laws and budgets. It’s up to us to make meaningful change. We need it. Do not be in denial.  We all need each other, and we need to step up to the plate, put away our fears and start making the world a better place to live in. We cannot control the entire world, or the country. But we can make a difference in our town and in our community.

Be the Rufus. Don’t be the spectator.

Be the Rufus. Don’t be the spectator.

Oh No!

What must this tiger be thinking?

Oh No!

Death Wish USA

As an American, I am often asked (innocently) what the heck the USA is doing? I mean it is behind an event trying to cause World War III with the Russians, it is trying to provoke World War III with Taiwan, and it is being so very cocky and dangerous at just about every level internationally.

I respond that America is desperate.

The American leadership has squandered everything it has and run the nation into the ground.

Now the people are starting to get really upset and angry. Their only answer is to point elsewhere…

"It's not Washington's fault... it's Russia!"

Or, of course…

"It's not Washington's fault... it's China!"

And you know what, the USA military knows, and the rest of the world knows, that the USA is in absolutely no state to pick fights with anyone. Not at all. America is not a nation of Rambo’s. It’s become something else.

So what the heck is going on?

I argue that the next video describes WHY the USA is acting so brazenly crazy…

Here’s a guy so desperate, so unhappy, so fed up with his life that he wants to commit suicide by police officer. And you know what? This is becoming more and more common throughout the Untied States.

Americas video highlight.
An attempt at suicide by police officer.

Van life 1960’s

Today, in 2021, many Americans now live in their cars. The failure of society, of culture, and of government has been colossal. And their solution? To have world war III with both Russia and China simultaneously. I think that they have a true death wish.

Van life 1960’s

A considerate Rufus

Notice how these Chinese Rufus street sweepers handle the spray nozzles when confronting pedestrians and motor bike riders. A Rufus is considerate. A Rufus makes the world a better place.

A place to get away from it all.

There is something about Ireland and Scotland that shouts peace and tranquility. At least in my mind anyways. And this picture of a “man’s castle” is the image of a nice place where a person can go to just be left alone. And you know what? Everyone needs to be left alone from time to time, don’t you know.

A “man’s castle”.

Be the Rufus!

Are you happy with the way the world is now? If not, do you want to change it? What about your life?

The first step in making meaningful change is to recognize that all change is local.

It starts with you.

Not by writing a letter to your Congress-person, or by waving a banner and staging a protest. It begins with you taking part in your community. Be a helping hand. Make a difference. this world of ours needs people that will help change it.

You can be that person.

Start small. Start simple.

Smile more. Be kind. Go out of the way to make friends. Complement another person.

DO YOUR PRAYER AFFIRMATION CAMPAIGNS.

I believe in you.

Be that catalyst for good, meaningful change. Be the Rufus!

Be that catalyst for good, meaningful change. Be the Rufus!

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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A breakdown of the report “alien interview” by MM from a MAJ perspective (part 4)

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and a lot of things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

This is part 4.

Key point – Document appears to be genuine

And I can tell you all that the more that I parse this document, the clearer it is (to me) that it is genuine.It is exactly what it says it is. And the extraterrestrial is actually telling the truth, so far.

Key point – Errors

However, there are some errors in translation, and confusion in the interpretation of what is being stated. Anything concerning “time” and the translation of dates seems to have some errors. The translator was having difficulty with those areas.

Humans think of time as “shared” and “linear”.

The type-1 greys think of time as circular and repeating. As in, consciousness enters and exits different world lines” and if you graph that movement of consciousness you will see a “corkscrew” movement through the MWI. Which is what it was referring to. All of which was WAY beyond the concepts of anyone in Roswell at that time.

Therefore all dates and time, and anything associated with these characteristics might in error.  If you are having trouble in these areas, treat them as non-resolved issues and can be ignored.

Key point – This document predates MAJestic

Also take note that this document pre-dates MAJestic, and it is crystal clear to me now, that my role was, and still is, in the rehabilitation aspects of moving the Earth from a Hellish “Prison Planet” to that of a “sentience nursery”.

This document has (for me, personally) helped to clarify elements and aspects of my role that were “blurred” and obscured from me. To that I am eternally grateful.

Look at the dates on my articles, and look at what I covered. You will see that they match up nearly perfectly with this “Alien Interview” transcript. And this is the first time that I have ever heard of this document. The timing was transcendental.

This is part four of the parsing of this document

You can view part 1 HERE.

SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 27. 7. 1947, 1st Session

“The actual history of Earth is very bizarre. It is so nonsensical that is it is incredible to anyone on Earth who attempts to investigate it. A myriad of vital information is missing from it. A huge conglomeration of non sequitur relics and mythology has been arbitrarily introduced into it. The volatile nature of the Earth itself cyclically covers, drowns, mixes and shreds physical evidence.

I have no problem with this.

These factors, combined with amnesia and post-hypnotic suggestions, false facades and covert manipulation make a reconstruction of the factual origins and history of Earth civilizations virtually indecipherable.

I have no problem with this.

Any investigator, no matter how brilliant, is doomed to wallow in a quagmire of inconclusive assumptions, unworkable hypotheses, and perpetual mystery.

I have no problem with this.

Since The Domain does not suffer these afflictions, having the advantage of memory, longevity and an exterior point of view, I will add some clarification to your fragmentary knowledge of the history of Earth.

Stand by for clarification of our fragmentary knowledge.

These are some of the dates and events that are not mentioned in Earth history textbooks.

These are significant dates. All of which are not mentioned in any of the history books that were provided to the extraterrestrial.

These dates are significant because they provide some information concerning the influences of the “Old Empire” and of The Domain on Earth.

They are significant as they introduce the role of both the "Old Empire" and the "Domain" regarding Earth.

Although I have attended several briefings by our mission control personnel on the general background of Earth within the past few hundred years, I will rely principally on data gathered from records captured after our invasion of the “Old Empire” planetary headquarters. Since that time The Domain Expeditionary Force has tracked the general progress of events on Earth.

"The Domain" was unaware of Earth and what was going on. This all changed when "The Domain" conquered "The Old Empire".  When "The Domain" took over the main capital, they acquired substantive documents regarding Earth. Most of what the extraterrestrial is relaying is in regards to what the records of the "Old Empire" has recorded.

As I mentioned, in some cases The Domain has chosen to intervene in certain affairs on Earth in order to ensure the success of our long term expansion plans.

I have no problem with this statement.

Although The Domain has no interest in Earth, per se, or in the population of IS-BEs on this planet, it does serve our interests to ensure that the resources of Earth are not destroyed or spoiled.

Important points;

"The Domain" has [1] no interest in the Earth or the population of IS-BE on the planet.

[2] However, they do not want to see the Earth destroyed as a result of uncontrolled activity of it's population. They want to see a "green" planet that takes care of it's environment, and does not destroy the world in a global wide nuclear holocaust.

For those of you who are wondering where some of these media narratives come from, perhaps you all should be looking at a grand strategy to turn the Earth into a Sentience Nursery.

To that end, certain officers of The Domain have been sent to Earth on reconnaissance missions from time to time to gather information.

I have no problem with this.

However, Moreover, the following dates and events have been extrapolated from the accumulated information in the data files of The Domain – at least those that are accessible to me through the space station communications center.

208,000 BCE — Old Empire Established

The establishment of the “Old Empire”, whose headquarters were located near one of the “tail stars” in the Ursa Major (Big Dipper) Constellation of this galaxy. The “Old Empire” invasion force conquered the area with nuclear weapons sometime earlier.

From the point of view of humans on the earth, this statement is loaded with information. 

[1] We know that the Earth was seeded way, way a long time ago by the progenitors.

[2] We also know that intelligent sentient beings, native to earth, grew and developed and either died out or changed.

[3] We know that (according to this extraterrestrial) that there were large colonies of humanoid extraterrestrials that established the colonies of Lemuria, and Atlantis, around 400,000 years ago.

[4] We know that proto-humans started to develop at that time, with the earliest monkey-like creatures two million years earlier. And tool-making humanoids around 200,000 years ago.

This statement then says that after the extraterrestrial colonies of Atlantis and Lemuria were long gone, and proto-humans were starting to use tools, the "Old Empire" came to power. Their base of power, or primary settlement, is at a cluster of stars that we identify as the "tail stars" in the Ursa Major (Big Dipper) Constellation.

It does not mean that the huge enormous O, B, and A stars were the ones that harbored the civilization seat. But rather that this was the geographic region for the planets, where ever their existed or orbited.

They were brutal in conquering the previous civilizations and nuclear weapons and other very dangerous weapons of destruction were utilized, and we can well imagine that they completely devastated the civilizations that they encountered in severe "space opera" style.

After the radioactivity subsided and the clean-up and restoration were completed, it received the immigration of beings from another galaxy into this galaxy. Those beings set up a society that kept going until about 10,000 years ago when it was superseded by The Domain.

Again, this is just full of information. We don't know what the "Old Empire" was. But what we do know is that right after they had conquered the major civilizations in this section of our galaxy, they started to import or migrate other species from another galaxy to here.

This "other group of immigrants" were either of the same type, species, or sentience of the "Old Empire" and thus were able to occupy the conquered worlds of that empire.

This continued for 10,000 years.

Then the "Domain" entered the region, and took over, and conquered them. We know from (part 3) that they did not use nuclear weapons, but rather highly powerful disruptive beans that affected the IS-BE consciousnesses directly.

Very recently Earth civilization has come to resemble aspects of that civilization, now that it has fallen out of its immediate control.

I personally find this statement alluring. This was 1947. This was right before the 1950's and the 1960's in America. What he is referring to is the creation of central-power governments that controlled all else.

Hitler and the Nazi Germans out of Berlin.
Mao and China out of Beijing.
Stalin and Russia out of Moscow.
The United States out of Washington DC
A central European "block".

From this we can extrapolate that the central power model with very little control locally represents the fundamental structural elements of the "Old Empire".

In particular, the appearance and technology of transportation such as planes, trains, ships, fire engines, and automobiles, as well as what you consider to be “modern” or “futuristic” architecture, which emulate the design of buildings in the major cities of the “Old Empire”.

Again, very interesting. It is saying that all the "modern" advancements of technology resemble those which defined the "Old Empire".

Before 75,000 BCE — Colonies on Earth

The Domain records contain very little information about the civilizations on the continental land masses of Atlanta and Lemur, except to note that they did coexist on Earth at more or less the same time.

The records of the "Domain" were just cursory reviews of the solar system as a whole. And between 400,000 and 75,000 years ago, both Atlantis and Lemuria colonies  existed at that time.

Apparently, both civilizations were founded by remnants of electronic, space opera cultures who fled from their native planetary systems to escape political or religious persecution.

So we can well imagine a solid science-fiction narrative where an escaping group of settlers leave a harsh "space opera" galactic empire. Where they fled to an out-of-the-way planet, in a generally not well traveled part of the galaxy.

The Domain knows that a long-standing edict of the “Old Empire” prohibits unauthorized colonization of planets.

At this time of the founding of the "Old Empire" was the same time as the colonies of Atlantis and Lemuria came into being. Since the "Old Empire" did not authorize these colonies, they must have been illegal.

We can imagine that when the "Old Empire" came into being, that some of the people or creatures that they conquered, fled the ruins and devastation and came to earth to start a new life.

And apparently, for many years they had good, prosperous societies upon the earth. But eventually we know that both were destroyed suddenly and with a complete violence that left very little remaining.

Therefore, it is possible that their destruction was caused by police or military forces who pursued the colonists as criminals and destroyed them.

The extraterrestrial hypothesise that the destruction of the "renegade" colonies was conducted by the "Old Empire".

Although this seems a likely supposition, no conclusive evidence exists that explains the complete destruction and disappearance of two entire electronic civilizations.

It's just a hypothesis. There isn't any proof for it. What is interesting is that both civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria were both "entire electronic civilizations" which would be well understood to be similar to what exists around the world today.

Another possibility is that a massive submarine volcanic eruption in the region of Lake Toba, in Sumatra and Mt. Krakatoa in Java caused the destruction of Lemur.

The flood waters caused by the eruption overwhelmed all the land masses, including the highest mountains.

Survivors of the destruction of the civilization, the Lemurians, are the earliest ancestors of the Chinese.

This is very interesting. The Chinese race then are descended from the survivors of the Lemuria colony, which were survivors of a previous civilization that was conquered by the "Old Empire", and who thus fled to Earth.

Australia and the ocean areas to the north were the center of the Lemurian civilization and are the source of Oriental races. Both civilizations possessed electronics, flight and similar technologies of space opera cultures.

Both of the colonies of Atlantis, and Lemuria were fully modern and electronic civilizations possessing great technology.

Now, aside from the idea that the "Old Empire" eradicated and destroyed the colonies of those that fled when the "Old Empire" took over, the extraterrestrial posits that there might be another explanation. The loss of the colonies could be the result of natural geologic forces...

Apparently, the volcanic eruption expelled such a significant mass of molten rock that the resulting vacuum beneath the crust of Earth caused great areas of the land masses to sink below the oceans.

The continental areas occupied by both civilizations were covered with volcanic matter, and then submerged, leaving very little evidence that they ever existed except for legends of a global flood which prevail in every culture of the Earth, and for survivors who are the genus of oriental races and cultures.

That kind of colossal volcanic explosion fills the stratosphere with toxic gases which are carried around the whole planet. The usual refuse of these volcanic eruptions can easily cause a rain that lasts for “40 days and 40 nights” due to atmospheric pollution as well as an extensive period during which radiation from the sun is deflected back into space, and cause global cooling.

Certainly such an event would cause an ice age, extinctions of life forms and many other relatively long-term changes lasting thousands of years.

The extraterrestrial states that aside from [1] the systematic destruction of the two colonies by the "Old Empire", the only remaining potential cause for the destruction is [2] a natural event, and in this case, it offers the idea of a global wide volcanic eruption of significant magnitude and duration.

Due to the myriad types of naturally occurring global cataclysmic events which are indigenous to Earth, it is not a suitable planet for habitation by IS-BEs.

The Earth is not a suitable environment for IS-BE's. This is because of natural events. And that these natural events can cause global cataclysmic calamities.

In addition there have been occasional global cataclysms caused by IS-BEs such as the one that destroyed the dinosaurs more than 70 million years ago.

This extraterrestrial states that the Cretaceous–Paleogene Extinction was not a natural event, but rather an intentional event made by IS-BE's. 

About 66 million years ago, 75% of species became extinct during the Cretaceous–Paleogene Extinction. Rates of extinction broadly swept the land, sea, and air. 

In the oceans, ammonites disappeared. All non-avian dinosaurs became extinct. But avian dinosaurs survived because it was birds that descended from theropod dinosaurs. Eventually, mammals emerged as dominant large land animals. 

It is believed that the cause of this extinction event was from an asteroid impact which left an impact called the Chicxulub Crater. Also, giant floor basalts aggravated called Deccan Traps.

That destruction was caused by intergalactic warfare during which time Earth, and many other neighboring moons and planets, were bombarded by atomic weapons.

This is also an interesting statement. So in the extraterrestrials' narrative, which is talking about the "Old Empire" from 400,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE.

Now, the narrative suddenly jumps to a point in time, long before the period of discussion.

At this point in time, 66 - 70 million years ago, long before the "Old Empire", and "The Domain", there was a terrible war in our solar system. It is not mentioned who were involved in this war, or why.

Atomic explosions cause atmospheric fallout much like that of volcanic eruptions. Most of the planets in this sector of the galaxy have been uninhabitable deserts since then.

Another interesting point. This war of 66 - 70 million years ago was not limited to our solar system, but rather involved multiple star systems. It also was devastating. Many otherwise habitable planets were turned into wasteland and barren deserts as a result of it.

An old 3D map showing the many of the stars in a 20 light year radius from our solar system. Since this graphic map was made substantial numbers of very cool brown dwarfs have been discovered that makes this map obsolete. Never the less, we can assume that many of the (once inhabitable) stars are shown on this map.

Earth is undesirable for many other reasons: heavy gravity and dense atmosphere, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, polar shifts, continental drift, meteor impacts, atmospheric and climatic changes, to name a few.

An interesting point, and something that I have stated elsewhere.

[1] heavy gravity 
[2] dense atmosphere, 
[3] floods, 
[4] earthquakes, 
[5] volcanoes, 
[6] polar shifts, 
[7] continental drift, 
[8] meteor impacts, 
[9] atmospheric and climatic changes, 

The changes that greatly affect the Earth for many thousands of years after the event are shown in bold.

What kind of lasting civilization could any sophisticated culture propose to develop in such an environment?

Good point. I have no problem with this.

In addition, Earth is a small planet of a “rim star” of a galaxy.

Not really true; geographically. The solar system is smack dab in one of the major "arms" of the galaxy geographically. You can see this on a map.

Location in our galaxy.

However, if you look at the statement from the point of view of the population centers of the galaxy in our region, then you can find some answers. 

The extraterrestrial stated that an enormous war took place in our section of the galaxy 70 million years ago and it resulted in many neighboring solar system to lose what ever habitable worlds that existed.

Imagine that in all that devastation, nothing much remains, and the Earth solar system is one of the few "oasis" in a sea of death, destruction and wasteland.

This makes Earth very isolated geographically from the more concentrated planetary civilizations which exist toward the center of the galaxy.

These obvious facts have made Earth suitable for use only as a zoological or botanical garden, or for it’s current use as a prison – but not much else.

Which is also something that I have stated in my previous articles.

Before 30,000 BCE — Misfits started arriving to the Earth

I can tell you that I have long known about the presence of "federation" craft in and around our Earth at 30,000 years ago. Its just that I assumed that they were type-1 grey vehicles. This disclosure clarifies my information. It states that the visitations to the earth at 30,000 BCE were "Old Empire" vehicles performing specific activities in and around the Earth.

Earth started being used a dumping ground and prison for IS-BEs who were judged “untouchable”, meaning criminal or non-conformists.

IS-BEs were captured, encapsulated in electronic traps and transported to Earth from various parts of the “Old Empire”.

Underground “amnesia stations” were set up on Mars…

…and on Earth in the Rwenzori Mountains in Africa…

… in the Pyrenees Mountains of Portugal…

Pyrenees Mountains of Portugal.

… and in steppes of Mongolia.

Mongolian Mountains.

These electronic monitoring points create force screens designed to detect and capture IS-BEs, when the IS-BE departs the body at death.

The way these devices work is it [1] senses when a person dies, and the consciousness departs the body at death. Then, [2] it attracts, snares or captures that consciousness.

IS-BEs are brainwashed using extreme electronic force in order to maintain Earth’s population in state of perpetual amnesia.

A high enough, or powerful enough, electronic force can do anything. This then provides amnesia for the consciousness.

However, there is evidence that it no longer is wholly functional.

You see, according to the extraterrestrial, the devices (the electronic amnesia screens) only work when the person departs the body as consciousness, they lose all memories and then are reshuffled back to the Earth.

Yet, we know, that through various techniques (such as hypnosis) we can recover these memories of time before lives, and within other lives. 

I have copied complete books of Robert Newton in this regard. You can see my articles here;

Thus the works by the great Doctor Michael Newton who studied the geography of Heaven through regression hypnosis. It might be something that most people would discount as "tin foil hat" nonsense, but his works absolutely and accurately describe what I have observed personally in my MAJestic dealings.

Though, please take note that he did not understand the MWI, and some of his assumptions are in error. What he did was try to map out what Heaven was from the basis of what "time" and "reality" is. Still the best reads out there.

The first book is considered “ground breaking”, I however thought that it was rather elementary. Thus, I strongly urge any reader to read this book first before you tackle the second…

The Geography of Heaven; Journey of Souls (full text) by Michael Newton

Unfortunately, this first book has all kinds of “new age” things inside of it that pretty much “turned off” my readership. It also had some misconceptions. So I went ahead and annotated the book and explained things so that my base readership would understand what is going on, relative to MAJestic and the entire universe. Here are the posts broken down for easy reading and study…

The Geography of Heaven; Journey of Souls (full text) by Michael Newton (part 1a) with world-line (MWI) annotations.

The Geography of Heaven; Journey of Souls (full text) by Michael Newton (part 1b) with world-line (MWI) annotations.

https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/the-geography-of-heaven-journey-of-souls-full-text-by-michael-newton-part-1c-with-world-line-mwi-annotations/

 

https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/the-geography-of-heaven-journey-of-souls-full-text-by-michael-newton-part-1d-with-world-line-mwi-annotations/

 

The Geography of Heaven; Journey of Souls (full text) by Michael Newton (part 1e) with world-line (MWI) annotations.

The second book is full of “red meat” and is just packed with information. However, most readers will not be able to understand it unless they read the first book. This book, due to the size and complexity has been broken down into three posts. A lot of good stuff is here.

Again, realize that he and his patents did not understand what “time”, “realities” and the concept of “quantum shadows”. Please take his misconceptions into account when you read his works.

A detailed look into the topography of Heaven; The Destiny of Souls (full text) by Michael Newton. (Part 1)

https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/a-detailed-look-into-the-topography-of-heaven-the-destiny-of-souls-full-text-by-michael-newton-part-2/

 

https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/a-detailed-look-into-the-topography-of-heaven-the-destiny-of-souls-full-text-by-michael-newton-part-3/

 

So in summary, my point is that [1] things have certainly changed since 1947. And that [2] during the 1970's all sorts of discoveries were starting to be made regarding regaining memories of past lives, and the interim period between lives.

Combined, this offers [3] the suggestion that efforts of MAJestic and the Domain extraterrestrials have been successful in greatly reducing the influences of these force screens.

Yet, some questions remain.

[4] Being able to recall past lives, that occurred before 10,000 years ago suggests that the shield amnesia effect is not permanent.

[5] However, most human subjects that I have read in the Dr. Newton studies suggest that their memories are more recent than that. Which suggests that it was only after the shield was turned off that they were able to remember memories that happened after 10,000 years.

But,

I can tell you that MM has partial memory retention, and that MM memories date back to around 250,000 years.

What does this mean?

[6] I have a EBP that (perhaps) assists in memory retention.

[7] If the memory can be recalled under hypnosis earlier than 1150AD (the destruction of a major "old Empire" base), it means that your memory amnesia is not permanent.

[8] If your memory can be recalled under hypnosis earlier than 8,000 BCE, it means that you are probably not part of the 3,000 domain expeditionary forces that had complete memory wipes. For they had a complete and permanent wipe that was (at 1947) unrecoverable.

Obviously there are many unanswered questions.

Could it be lying, or could things have changed substantially since 1947 and with MAJestic support and assistance starting one year later in 1948? I personally believe that things have changed, and I also believe that the world-line clustering, slides to anchor world-lines were very effective in the support of bringing about a recovery of memories.

But that is just me.

Further population controls are installed through the use of long range electronic thought control mechanisms.

So it is not just one or two facilities or bases that run these devices, but an entire constellation of them, with many located far away geographically.

These stations are still in operation and they are extremely difficult to attack or destroy, even for The Domain, which will not maintain a significant military force in this area until a later date.

That later date may have already happened. Most certainly things have changed substantially since 1947.

The pyramid civilizations were intentionally created as part of the IS-BE prison system on Earth.

Interesting. The Egyptian pyramids are part of the prison structure? Tell me more.

The pyramid is alleged to be the symbol for “wisdom”. However, the “wisdom” of the “Old Empire” on planet Earth is intended to operate as part of the elaborate amnesia “trap” consisting of MASS, MEANING and MYSTERY.

These are opposite to the qualities of an Immortal Spiritual Being which have no mass, or meaning. An IS-BE “is” solely because it thinks that it “is”.

A consciousness consists of:

[1] Thoughts. Not physical mass.
[2] Formlessness. Not tangible meaning.
[3] Clarity. Not mystery.

MASS: represents the physical universe, including objects such as stars, planets, gases, liquids, energy particles and tea cups. The Pyramids were very, very solid objects, as were all of the structures created by the “Old Empire”. Heavy, massive, dense, solid objects create the illusion of eternity.

Dead bodies wrapped in linen, soaked in resin, placed inside engraved golden coffins and entombed with Earthly possessions amid cryptic symbols create an illusion of eternal life.

However, dense, heavy physical universe symbols are the exact opposite of an IS-BE. An IS-BE has no mass or time. Objects do not endure forever. An IS-BE “is” forever.

I have absolutely no problem with these statements.

MEANING: False meanings prevent knowledge of the truth. The pyramid cultures of Earth are a fabricated illusion. They are nothing more than “false civilizations” contrived by the “Old Empire” mystery cult called the Brothers of the Serpent.

False meanings were invented to create the illusion of a false society to further reinforce the amnesia mechanism among the intimates in the Earth prison system.

I have absolutely no problem with these statements.

MYSTERY: is built of lies and half-truths. Lies cause persistence because they alter facts which are comprised of exact dates, places and events. When truth is known, a lie no longer persists. If the exact truth is revealed, it is no longer a mystery.

I have absolutely no problem with these statements.

All of the pyramid civilizations of Earth were carefully contrived of layer upon layer of lies, skillfully combined with a few truths. The priest cult of the “Old Empire” combined sophisticated mathematics and space opera technology, with theatrical metaphors and symbolism. All of these are complete fabrications of truth, baited with the allure of aesthetics and mystery.

I have absolutely no problem with these statements.

The intricate rituals, astronomical alignments, secret rites, massive monuments, marvelous architecture, artistically rendered hieroglyphs and man-animal “gods” were designed to create an unsolvable mystery for the IS-BE prison population on Earth. The mystery diverts attention away from the truth that IS-BEs have been captured, given amnesia and imprisoned on a planet far, far away from their home.

I have absolutely no problem with these statements. It is the common misdirection technique deployed by black program, and the American media mechanism today.

The truth is that every single IS-BE on Earth came to Earth from some other planetary system.

This is very curious. Every single person... every single human on Earth is an immigrant or a descendant of an immigrant.

Not one person on Earth is a “native” inhabitant. Human beings did not “evolve” on Earth.

Humans did not evolve from primates. 

Primates evolved, and went into various "dead ends". 

But the humans that existed upon the earth were transplants. None of them evolved per the common belief that everyone holds. Monkeys did not eventual evolve into humans.

In the past, Egyptian society was run by the prison administrators or priests, who, in turn, manipulated a Pharaoh, controlled the treasury and kept the inmate population enslaved physically and spiritually. In modern times, the priests have changed, but the function is the same. However, now the priest are prisoners too.

This system of religion controlling the leadership is an on-going theme throughout the human cultures and societies, and it has only been most recently that this has changed.

Mystery reinforces the walls of the prison. The “Old Empire” feared that the IS-BEs on Earth might regain their memory. Therefore, one of the primary functions of The “Old Empire” priesthood is to prevent IS-BEs on Earth from remembering who they really are, how they came to Earth, where they came from.

And so they destroyed the mere idea of reincarnation...

The “Old Empire” operators of the prison system, and their superiors, do not want IS-BEs to remember who murdered them, captured them, stole all of their possessions, sent them to Earth, gave them amnesia and condemned them to eternal imprisonment!

Well, of course not!

Imagine what might happen if all of the inmates in the prison suddenly remembered that they have the right to be free! What if they suddenly realized that they have been falsely imprisoned and rise up as one against the guards?

Yikes!

They are afraid to reveal anything that looks like the civilization of the inmates home planets. A body, a piece of clothing, a symbol, a space ship, an advanced electronics device, or any other remnant of civilization from a home planet could “remind” a being and rekindle his memory.

So they did everything in their power to keep everyone primitive. When Greece started to advance, it was destroyed. When Persia started to advance, it was destroyed. When Rome started to advance it was destroyed. When the Chinese kingdoms advanced, they were destroyed. But it all came to an end, more or less around 1150 ad.

Sophisticated technologies of entrapment and enslavement, which were developed over millions of years in the “Old Empire”, have been applied to the IS-BEs on Earth with the intention to create a false facade for the prison. These facades were installed on Earth in totality, all at once. Every piece is a fully integrated part of the prison system.

This idea that everything was established all at once is highly suggestive of a pre-designed system of prison construction. This goes along with my strong belief that there are five "sentience nurseries" in this region of space. 

All of which occupy the formerly ruined worlds of the catastrophic space wars of 66 million years ago.

This includes a religion of mumbo-jumbo double-speak.

Every pyramid civilization uses this as part of a control mechanism to keep the population enslaved by force, by fear and by ignorance.

The indecipherable muddle of irrelevant information, geometric designs, mathematical calculation, astronomical alignments, are part of a false spirituality based on solid objects, rather than immortal spirits, in order to confuse and disorient the IS-BEs on Earth.

I have no problem with these statements.

When the body of a person died they were buried with their Earthly possessions, including their former body wrapped in linen, to sustain their “soul” or “Ka” after death. An IS-BE does not “have” as soul. An IS-BE is a soul.

I agree.

On the home planet of an IS-BE their material possessions were not lost, stolen or forgotten when the being died or left the body. An IS-BE could return and claim the possessions.

Nothing is ever lost in our universe it only changes shape.

However, if the IS-BE has amnesia, they will not remember that they had any possessions. So, governments, insurance companies, bankers, family members and other vultures can pick their possessions clean without fear of retribution from the deceased.

This is something that the Roswell leadership could well understand. And something that I too understand most perfectly.

The only reason for these false meanings is to instill the idea that an IS-BE is NOT a spirit, but a physical object!

This is a lie.

It is a trap for an IS-BE.

And, isn't that exactly what is taught in schools and religions?

Countless people have spent endless hours attempting to solve the jig-saw puzzle of Egypt and other “Old Empire” civilizations. They are puzzles made of pieces that do not fit. A question states its own answer.

Everything is an intentional "dead end".

What is the mystery of Egypt and other pyramid cultures? Mystery!

circa 15,000 BCE – Bolivia mining operations

The “Old Empire” forces supervised the construction of a hydraulic mining operations in the Andes Mountains in present day Bolivia near Lake Titicaca (Lake of Tin Stones) at Tiahuanaco including construction of the massive stone complex of carved stone buildings known as Kalasasaya and its “Gate of the Sun” at an elevation of nearly 14,000 feet.

No problem with this.

11,600 BCE – Polar Axis Shift

The Polar Axis of Earth shifted to a sea area. The last Ice Age came to an end abruptly as the polar ice caps melted and the level of the ocean rose to submerge large sections of the land masses of Earth. The last remaining vestiges of Atlantis and Lemuria were covered by water. Massive extinctions of animals occurred in the Americas, Australia and the Arctic Regions due to the shift of the poles.

Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky, Immanuel. 

10,450 BCE — Plans for the Great Pryramid were created.

Plans were made by the “Old Empire” IS-BE called Thoth for construction of a Great Pyramid of Giza. The 4 “air shafts” of the pyramid point precisely to key stars in the “Old Empire” as seen from Giza in this year. The alignment of the Pyramids of Giza on the ground matches perfectly the alignment of the constellation of Orion as seen in the sky from Giza relative to the Nile as the earthly representation of the Milky Way in the sky.

No problem with this. This date is in alignment with Graham Hancock. Like the Cayce Association, he continues to argue for a 10,500 B.C. "origin" of the Great Pyramid and Giza Plateau.

10,400 BCE – Herodotus records that Atlantis records are buried under the Sphinx.

According to the Earth historian, Herodotus, records from the ruined civilization of Atlantis, containing electronic technology and other technology of that society, were buried in a vault beneath the paws of The Sphinx.

The Greek historian wrote that he was told this by some of his friends who were Priests of Anu, the Sumerian god, at the Egyptian city of Heliopolis.

However, it is highly unlikely that any traces of an electronic civilization would be allowed to be left intact on Earth by the “old empire” prison system administrators.

No problem with this.

8,212 BCE — Veda Hymns created.

The Veda or Vedic hymns are a set of religious hymns that were introduced into the societies of Earth. They came forward in spoken tradition, memorized, from generation to generation. “The Hymn to the Dawn Child” includes an idea called the “cycle of the physical universe”: the creation, growth, conservation, decay and death or destruction of energy and matter in a space. These cycles produce time. The same set of hymns describes the “theory of evolution”.

Here is a tremendous body of knowledge which contains a great deal of spiritual truth. Unfortunately, it has been incorrectly evaluated by humans and altered with lies and reversals of fact by priests which are a booby trap to prevent anyone from using the wisdom to discover a way to escape from the prison planet.

No problem with this.

8,050 BCE — Old Empire Home Planet is conquered and destroyed.

Destruction of the “Old Empire” home planet government in this galaxy.

This was the end of the “Old Empire” as a political entity in the galaxy.

However, the vast size of the “Old Empire” will take many thousands of years for The Domain to conquer completely.

The inertia of the political, economic and cultural systems of the “Old Empire” will remain in place for some time to come.

No problem with this.

However, remnants of the “Old Empire” space fleet in the solar system of Earth were finally destroyed in 1,230 AD.

Massive destruction in the solar system at 1230 AD. Meanwhile on Earth everyone was fighting everyone else. See HERE.

In addition to operatives of the “Old Empire” who run the Earth prison operation, there were other beings from the “Old Empire” who came to Earth.

Since Earth was no longer under the control of the “Old Empire” after their defeat by The Domain Forces, there was no police force to control military renegades, space pirates, miners, merchants and entrepreneurs who came to Earth to exploit the resources of the planet for personal gain, and many other nefarious reasons.

No problem with this. After the government collapsed, everyone came to take advantage of the situation, loot and acquire power.

For example, the history of Earth, according to the Jewish people, describes the “Nephilim“. Chapter 6 of The Book of Genesis, describes the origin of the “Nephilim” :

“Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the “sons of God” saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”

We would call these people "carpetbaggers".

The ancient Jewish people who wrote the history book called the Old Testament were slaves, herders and gatherers. Any modern technology, even a simple flashlight, would seem astounding and miraculous to them. They attributed any unexplainable phenomenon or technology to the workings of a “god”.

This is Eric Von Daniken stuff. He wrote about this three decades later in the 1970's.

Unfortunately, this behavior is universal among all IS-BEs who have been given amnesia, and cannot remember their own experiences, training, technology, personality or identity.

Obviously, if these were men, and they mated with Earth women, they were not “sons of god”.

They were humans that mated with human Earth women who had no recollections of their true nature.

They were IS-BEs who inhabited biological bodies in order to take advantage of the political situation in the “Old Empire”, or simply to indulge in physical sensation.

They set up small colonies of their own on Earth beyond the reach of the police and tax authorities.

I am sure... all over the world.

Coincidentally, one of the most serious crimes an IS-BE could commit in the “Old Empire” was to violate income tax regulations. Income taxes were used as a slavery mechanism and as a punishment in the “Old Empire”. The slightest error in a tax report made an IS-BE “untouchable”, followed by imprisonment on Earth.

It sounds so much like America today.

6,750 BCE — Other “Pyramid Civilizations” set up.

Other Pyramid civilizations were set up by the “Old Empire” on Earth.

These were established in Babylon, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica. The Mesopotamian area provided service facilities, communication stations, space ports, and stone quarry operations for these false civilizations.

Ptah was the name given to the first in a succession of administrators from the “Old Empire” who represented themselves to the Earth population as “divine” rulers.

Ptah’s importance may be understood when one learns that the word “Egypt” is a Greek corruption of the phrase “Het-Ka-Ptah,” or “House of the Spirit of Ptah”. Ptah, was nick-named “The Developer”. He was a construction engineer. His high priest was given the title ‘Great Leader of Craftsmen’.

Ptah was also the god of reincarnation in Egypt. He originated the “opening of the mouth ceremony” which was performed by priests at funerals to “release souls” from their corpses. Of course, when the “souls” were released, they were captured, given amnesia, and returned to Earth again.

The so-called “Devine” rulers who followed Ptah on Earth were called “Ntr”, meaning “Guardians or Watchers” by the Egyptians. Their symbol was the Serpent, or Dragon which represented a secret priesthood of the “Old Empire” called the “Brothers of the Serpent”.

“Old Empire” engineers used cutting tools of highly concentrated light waves to quickly carve and excavate stone blocks. They also used force fields and space craft to lift and transport blocks of stone weighing hundred or thousands of tons each. The placement on the ground of some of these structures will be found to have geodetic or astronomical significance relative to various stars in this galactic region.

The buildings are crude and impractical, compared to building standards on most planets.

As an engineer of The Domain, I can attest that make-shift structures like these would never pass inspection on a planet in The Domain. Stone blocks such as those used in the pyramid civilizations can still be seen, partially excavated, in the stone quarries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Most of the structures were hastily built “props”, much like the false facades of a western town on the set of a motion picture. They appear to be real, and to have some use or value however, they have no value. They have no useful purpose. The pyramids and all of the other stone monuments erected by the “Old Empire” could be called “mystery monuments”.

Good points. Why create these enormous stone structures unless to support some kind of an illusion of power? The people lived in wood structures. Why make these big stone creations that apparently served no functional purpose?

Most of these discussions sound very familiar as the "alternative history" of the world. People point to the alternative "historians" as the folk that started these beliefs, but aside from the Edgar Cayce narratives, everything actually began at this "Alien Interview". And it was kept secret from the general population for decades.

For what reason would anyone waste so many resources to construct so many useless buildings? To create a mysterious illusion.

The fact of the matter is that each one of the “divine rulers” were IS-BEs who served as operatives of the “Old Empire”. They were certainly not “divine”, although they were IS-BEs.

6248 BCE – Battles for the Solar System

The beginning of active warfare between The Domain Space Command and the surviving remnants of the “Old Empire” space fleet in this solar system that lasted nearly 7,500 years.

So for the firm dates, we can say that the warfare began in 6278 BCE, and ended in 1150 AD. Or roughly 7500 years.

It began when an installation was established in the Himalaya mountains by a battalion of the 3,000 officers and crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force. The installation was not fortified as The Domain was not aware that the “Old Empire” maintained Earth as a prison planet.

So the Domain set up a undefended base. And it was destroyed and the members imprisoned.

The Domain installation was attacked and destroyed by space forces of the “Old Empire” who continued to operate in the solar system of Earth.

IS-BEs of The Domain battalion were captured, taken to Mars, given amnesia, and sent back to Earth to inhabit human biological bodies. They are still on Earth.

5,965 BCE — Dominion bases on Venus set up to fight the Old Empire forces

Investigations into the disappearance of Domain forces in this solar system led to the discovery of “Old Empire” bases on Mars and elsewhere.

The Domain took over the planet Venus as a defensive position against the space forces of the “Old Empire”.

When the warfare began, the Domain set up defensive positions on Venus.

The Domain Expeditionary Force also monitors life forms on Venus which has a very dense, hot and heavy atmosphere of sulfuric acid clouds. There are a few life forms on Earth that can endure an atmospheric environment like Venus.

This provided them protection from the "Old Empire" forces, which were, after all, all humans.

The Domain also established secret installations or space stations in the (Earth) solar system.

This solar system has a planet that is broken up – the asteroid belt. It provides a very useful low-gravity platform for take off and landing of space craft. It is used as a “galactic jump” between the Milky Way and adjoining galaxies.

This asteroid belt is in the "frost zone" and planetary formation in this area is not stable.

There aren’t any planets at this end of the galaxy that can serve as a good galactic entering spot for incoming transport, and other ships. But this broken up planet makes a very ideal space station.

As a result of our war against the “Old Empire”, this area of the solar system is now a valuable possession of The Domain.

So as a side effect of cleaning out the "rat's nest" that was the "Old Empire" was the ability to set up staging locations for on-ward progress towards the more populated sections of the galaxy.

3,450 – 3,100 BCE — The Domain interrupts Prison Planet Management

The intervention into the affairs on Earth by the “Old Empire” operatives or “divine gods” was disrupted at this time by The Domain Forces.

They were forced to replace themselves with human rulers.

The Warden(s) for the "Prison planet" of Earth now had to leave. They could no longer maintain their roles and their positions. If they did, the Domain, would secure them, and remove them. So the roles were taken over by the "inmates".

The First Dynasty of human Pharaohs who united Upper and Lower Egypt began with the rule of a Pharaoh who, coincidentally, was named “MEN”. He established the capital city called Men-Nefer, “The Beauty of Men” in Egypt.

This started the first succession of 10 human Pharaohs and a period of 350 years of chaos that followed in the administrative ranks of the “Old Empire”.

I have no problem with this statement.

3,200 BCE — Open war between the Domain and the Old Empire on Earth

As I mentioned earlier, Earth was under attack between The Domain and the “Old Empire” forces during this period.

Of course this does not make any sense to archaeologists or historians on Earth, because the Egyptian period is a space opera era period. Since Earth historians have amnesia, they assume that this was only a religious period.

Archaeologists who study ancient Egypt assume all the writings are not technical or historical. Instead they view it as religious and superstitious.

Further, because the technology and civilizations installed on Earth during this period were “prepackaged”, they did not “evolve” on Earth.

Of course, there is no evidence anywhere on Earth of an evolutionary transition which resulted in sophisticated mathematics, language, writing, religion, architecture, cultural traditions in Egypt or any of the pyramid civilizations.

These cultures, complete with all of the details of racial body types, hair-styles, facial makeup, rituals, moral codes and so forth, just “appeared” as complete integrated packages.

This is something that I too have commented about.

The physical evidence suggests that all evidence of the intervention of The Domain or “Old Empire” Forces, or any other extraterrestrial activity, has been carefully “cleaned up”, so as not to create suspicion.

I would agree with this as well.

The “Old Empire” force does not want the IS-BEs of Earth to suspect that they have been captured, transplanted to Earth and brainwashed.

I have no problem with this statement.

So, Earth historians continue to assume that Egyptian priests were not supposed to have “ray guns” or other technology of the “Old Empire”. And, they suppose that there was nothing going on, on Earth, except some priests walking around saying ‘Amen’, which the Christians still say.

3,172 BCE – Astronomical grid layout

Layout of the astronomical grid that joins the key mining sites and astronomical buildings of ‘the gods’ in the Andes Mountains such as Tiahuanaco, Cuzco, Quito, the cities of Ollantaytambu, Machu Picchu and for the mining of rare metals, including tin for use in making bronze.

Metals were the property of “the gods”, of course.

Graham Hancock  discussed this in one of his books.

A great variety of entrepreneurial mining was done on Earth at that time due to the war between the “Old Empire” force and The Domain.

These miners did carve a few sculptures of themselves.

They are seen wearing mining helmets.

The Ponce stela sculpture in the sunken courtyard of the Kalasasaya temple is a crude rendering of a stone worker using an electronic, light-wave emitting stone cutter and carving tools, held in a holster.

Ponce stela sculpture.

The “Old Empire” has also maintained mining operations on planets throughout the galaxy for a very long time. The mineral resources of Earth are now a property of The Domain.

2,450 BCE — Great pyramid complex finished

The “great” pyramid and complex of pyramids near Cairo were completed.

I am a little bit confused with this. 

Earlier he started talking or discussing the creation of pyramids in Egypt at around 10,000 BCE. Now he is saying that they were completed at 2450 BCE, which is about 7,500 years later.

An inscription created by the “Old Empire” administrators can be seen in the so-called Pyramid texts.

The pyramid texts inscription.

The texts say that the pyramid was built under the direction of Thoth, Son of Ptah.

Of course there was never a King buried in the chamber, since the pyramids were never intended to be used as a burial chamber.

The great pyramid was located precisely at the exact center of all of the land masses of Earth, as viewed from space.

Obviously such precise measurements require aerial perspective and a view of the land masses of Earth from space. Purely mathematical calculations of the geodetic center of the continents of Earth could not be made otherwise.

Of course. This is one of the many arguments made by alternative historians.

Shafts were constructed inside the pyramid to align with the configuration of stars in the constellation of Orion, Canus Majora, and specifically Sirius.

The shafts are also aligned to the Big Dipper, where the home planet of the “Old Empire” existed.

Also, Ainitak, Alpha Draconis and Beta Ursa Minor. These stars are each one of the key systems in the “Old Empire” from which IS-BEs were brought to Earth and dumped, as unwanted merchandise.

Well, now another point of confusion. All the stars listed are huge, hot, short lived and energetic stars. Certainly not the kind of a place that one could assume humans would live. But I will pause my incredulity, and make the statement that there is much that we do not know about stars, and the technological abilities of the "Old Empire".

I am now going to diverge a small bit from the narrative to take a closer look at the stars that the extraterrestrial mentioned.

I have color coded the information to make it easier to understand.
Orion Constellation
Great Pyramid alignment

The constellation of Orion is among the oldest recognized constellations in the world. Among the earliest known depictions of Orion lies in a prehistoric Aurignacian mammoth ivory carving dated to be between 32,000 to 38,000 years old. The constellation of Orion is probably the most prominent, and amongst the oldest constellations in the night sky, hosting numerous bright stars, nebulae, clusters, and more.

The distinctive pattern of Orion is recognized in several cultures around the world, and thus many myths and legends are associated with it.
Canis Major
Great pyramid alignment

(Latin: “Greater Dog”) constellation in the southern sky, at about 7 hours right ascension and 20° south in declination. The brightest star in Canis Major is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky and the fifth nearest to Earth, at a distance of 8.6 light-years. This constellation is also home to the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, which at a distance of 25,000 light-years is the closest galaxy to Earth. Because of its proximity to Orion, the constellation was identified as one of Orion’s hunting dogs. Canis Major was also thought to represent other dogs in Greek mythology, such as one of the hounds of Actaeon.
Sirius System Summary
Great pyramid alignment

Also known as Alpha Canis Majoris, Sirius is the fifth closest system to Sol, at 8.6 light-years (ly) away. It is located in the north central part (06:45:08.92-16:42:58.02, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Canis Major, the Larger Dog. Sirius is also the lower left member of the "Winter Triangle" of first magnitude stars, whose other components are Procyon (Alpha Canis Minoris) at upper left and Betegeuse (Alpha Orionis) at right center.

The bright star is the title member of the Sirius stellar moving group (also known as the Sirius Super Cluster or Ursa Major star stream), which include all five stars of the Great Dipper as well as Gemma and are mostly around 490 million years old and all moving towards the galactic center.

Although Ejnar Hertzsprung (1873-1967) claimed that Sirius was a likely member of the Ursa Major moving group as early as 1909, a 2003 study of possible moving group members using HIPPARCOS' parallax data led by Jeremy King was not able to confirm the system's membership (Ken Croswell, Astronomy.com, March 2005), and the Sirius system appears to be too young, only about half the apparent age of the Ursa Major star stream (Liebert et al, 2005; and Ken Croswell, 2005).
And now for the systems that the extraterrestrial says were home solar systems for the various "Old Empire" citizenry.
Alnitak 3
This star is one of the key systems in the "Old Empire" from which IS-BEs were brought to Earth and dumped, as unwanted merchandise.

Once thought to be around 1,500 to 1,600 light-years (ly) away, the Alnitak, or Zeta Orionis, system is now estimated to be located around 820 +/- 170 ly from Sol (based on a HIPPARCOS Plx= 3.99 +/- e_Plx= 0.79 mas).

It lies in the south central part (5:40:45.5-1:56:34 for Stars Aab, J2000, or 5:40:45.5-1:56:33.3, ICRS 2000) of Constellation Orion (see chart and labelled photo), the Hunter.

There, Alnitak can be found at: left or immediately southeast of the neighboring belt stars of Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis) and Mintaka (Delta Orionis); southwest of Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis), northeast of Rigel, and northwest of Saiph (Kappa Orionis).

In addition to wide binary companion Star B, Alnitak's primary also has a close stellar companion Ab, (USNO press release). However, the star (sometimes called "C") that has a separation of around 57.6" away is thought to be a optical companion.

Alnitak lies in a region crowded with several dusty clouds of interstellar gas actively forming new stars, including the famous "Horsehead Nebula" to the south. The system is a member of the "Orion OB1 Association," where massive young objects with over 10 times the Sol's mass can be found in abundance (more on OB associations and stellar nurseries).
Zeta Orionis A or Aa
Detailed information.

Alnitak Aa is a blue supergiant star of spectral and luminosity type O9.7 Ibe (with "peculiar" emission lines), where O-type stars are the hottest stars in the spectral sequence excluding white dwarfs. The star may have as much as 28 times Sol's mass (Hummel et al, 2000, in pdf), perhaps 20 times Sol's diameter (Remie and Lamers, 1982, page 87; as reported in Pasinetti-Fracassini et al, 2001), and around 100,000 times its bolometric luminosity, which is much greater than its visual luminosity of around 10,500 times Solar.

The European Space Agency's astrometry satellite HIPPARCOS has measured Zeta Orionis Aab's distance from Earth to be around 820 light years, giving it an absolute visual magnitude of -5.25 (based on a HIPPARCOS Vmag= 1.74), somewhat under-luminous for stars of its class; however, these measurements may have been significantly affected by the presence of the recently discovered, dimmer close stellar companion Ab (described below). Even so, Alnitak Aa is the brightest O-type star in Earth's night sky (according to Professor Jim Kaler's excellent Stars' web page on Alnitak). Its 31,000-degree-Kelvin surface, however, radiates mostly ultraviolet wavelengths that are invisible to Human eyes.

Type-O supergiants show strong stellar winds that produce optical spectral emission lines and thermal radio and X-ray emissions. How these stars produce high-energy X-rays, however, is still subject to intense research because they lack significant magnetic fields and are not sufficiently hot despite their very high surface temperatures.

Alnitak Aa seems to generate and maintain magnetic loops like Sol, which is difficult for astronomers to explain. Although O-type stars have inner convection zones in their core, they are believed to lack outer convection zones, which astronomers considered necessary to create the hot and energetic plasmas confined in magnetic loops. Convection zones are internal regions where most of the energy is transported by fluid motions from hotter regions to cooler ones.

Without such zones located near a star's surface, astronomers are currently unable to explain how high-density knots of X-rays could exist. On the other hand, shock waves created in the turbulent stellar wind flow are an important part of current theories. Like all O stars, Alnitak Aa's X-rays may come from a wind that blows from its surface at nearly 2,000 km (1,200 miles) per second, which produces x-rays when blobs of gas in the wind crash violently into one another (Donati et al, 2002; Waldron and Cassinelli, 2001, and 2000 in pdf; and CXC press release, 10/18/2000).

Massive stars use their fuel quickly and do not live very long. Although Alnitak Aa may only be around six million years old, hydrogen fusion may already have ceased at its core. The star will eventually become a red supergiant somewhat like Betelgeuse and will probably explode as a supernova. Useful catalogue numbers and designations for the star include: Zet Ori A, 50 Ori A, HR 1948/9, HIP 26727, HD 37742, BD-02 1338, SAO 132444, STF 774 A, and ADS 4263 A.

In a wide orbit around the primary is a 4th magnitude visual companion, a B-type giant star that is currently separated by about 2.3 arcseconds (USNO press release, 4/15/1998). The pair orbits each other with a period estimated around 1,500 years long. According to old calculations (from J. Hopmann in 1967) cited in the Sixth Catalog of Orbits of Visual Binaries, Star "B" is separated on average from the primary by around 680 AUs (a semi-major axis of a= 2.728" at a distance of 817 ly), with an estimated orbital period of 1,508.6 years. Their highly circular orbit (e= 0.07) is inclined 72.0° from the perspective of an observer from Earth.

In 1998, Star A was found to have a close stellar companion ("Ab") only around 11 AUs away (0.042" in February and March 1998 at a distance of 820 ly). The close companion is only two magnitudes fainter and would be easily visible to the naked eye from Earth if it was farther from its brighter neighbor. The relative motion of the inner stellar pair has been detected, which was "most likely due to their being gravitationaly bound with an orbital period of only a few years" (Hummel et al, 2000, in pdf; and USNO press release).

The distance from the star pair Aab where an Earth-type planet would be "comfortable" with liquid water is at least 300 AUs -- over seven times the orbital of Pluto in the Solar System. Given that the stars are only a few million years old, however, they are too probably young for any forming planets to have cooled off sufficiently to have much surface water instead of superheated steam. Astronomers would find it very difficult to detect an Earth-sized planet around this star using present methods.
Zeta Orionis Ab
Detailed information

As Star Ab has a high visual magnitude (around 4) and a presumably youthful age of a few million years shared with the primary, it may be a late O-type main sequence dwarf (Hummel et al, 2000, in pdf). Hence, it should have a much greater mass (e.g., 23 times Solar), diameter, and visual luminosity (over 1,300 times Solar) than Sol.

According to the Yale Bright Star Catalogue, 1991 5th Revised Edition notes entry for HR 1948 and 1949, Star B is a blue-white giant star of spectral and luminosity type B2 III. It may have 14 times Sol's mass, a much larger diameter, and around 1,100 times its visual luminosity, based on an apparent magnitude of 4.2 with an even greater bolometric luminosity due to the high ultraviolet emission of its spectral type (Hummel et al, 2000, in pdf).

As with the inner star pair Aab, the orbit of an Earth-like planet (with liquid water) around Star B would be centered beyond the orbital distance of Pluto in the Solar System. Given the youth of the host star (which should be similar to that of the primary), moreover, such a planet is unlikely to have cooled sufficiently to have much surface water instead of steamon its surface. Useful catalogue numbers and designations for the star include: Zet Ori B, 50 Leo B, HD 17743, and ADS 4263 B.
Thuban (α Draconis) Facts
This star is one of the key systems in the "Old Empire" from which IS-BEs were brought to Earth and dumped, as unwanted merchandise.

Thuban is a relatively inconspicuous star in the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere, located at around 305 light-years away from the Sun. Thuban, also designated as Alpha Draconis, is a double star system located in the constellation of Draco. Thuban is historically significant since it was the north pole star from the 4th to 2nd millennium BCE. Based upon it metallicity, the interstellar medium from which Thuban formed, was somewhat metal-poor. Thuban’s exact age is uncertain. However, it has ceased hydrogen fusion in its core, and it is no longer in the main-sequence.
Distance, Size, and Mass

Thuban is located at around 303 light-years / 93 parsecs away from the Sun. The primary component star is both more massive and several times bigger than our Sun.

Thuban has 2.8 solar masses, or 280% of the Sun’s mass, and a radius of 3.4 solar radii, or 340% of the Sun’s radius. Based upon its radius, Thuban should be around six times, or more, bigger than our Sun. Thuban’s companion star has 2.6 solar masses or 260% of our Sun’s mass.
Other Characteristics

Thuban is a white giant star of spectral class A0III, indicating similarities to Vega in temperature and spectrum, but more luminous and massive.

Thuban has been used as an MK spectral standard for the A0III type. It has ceased hydrogen fusion in its core and started to expand. It has an apparent magnitude of 3.6 and an absolute magnitude of -1.20.

Thuban is 479 times brighter than our Sun and has average surface temperatures of around 10,100 K, or 1.7 times hotter than our Sun.

Thuban’s companion, Alpha Draconis B, is 40 times brighter than our Sun, being 1.83 magnitudes fainter than the primary star. Not much is known about the companion, though it is speculated that it is a main-sequence star slightly cooler than Thuban, and possibly of spectral type A2.
Stellar System

The Thuban / Alpha Draconis star system is a single-lined spectroscopic binary star system, which means that only the spectral liens of the primary component are visible.

The two stars orbit each other once every 51.5 days and have an orbital eccentricity of 0.43. The two components are separated from one another by about 0.46 AU.

This system is an eclipsing binary star system. The eclipses displayed are only partial, with an inclination of slightly less than 90 degrees, with depths of 9% and 2%. These eclipses last for only six hours.

Thuban is one of the stars that take turns as the North Star during the Earth’s precession cycle. Thuban was the Pole Star from 3942 BCE to 1793 BCE, during the creation of some of Egypt’s largest pyramids.

Thuban was closest to the pole in 2830 BCE, coming closest to the north celestial pole out of all the other pole stars. However, Thuban was among the faintest pole stars.

In comparison, the current pole star, Polaris, comes within 0.5 degrees of the north celestial pole and has an apparent magnitude of 1.98.

As the North Star, Thuban was preceded by Edasich (Iota Draconis) and succeeded by the brighter Kochab (Beta Ursae Minoris), one of the stars of the Little Dipper, and the fainter Kappa Draconis. Thuban has slowly drifted away from true north over the last 4,800 years.
Location

Thuban is located in the constellation of Draco, the eighth largest constellation in the sky and the fourth largest northern constellation, occupying an area of 1,083 square degrees.

Thuban is easy to spot though, from light-polluted areas, this can become a challenge. Thuban lies about halfway between Mizar, the middle star of the Big Dipper’s handle, and Kochab and Pherkad, the stars that form the outer side of the Little Dipper’s Bowl.
44 Boötis System Summary
This star system is one of the key systems in the "Old Empire" from which IS-BEs were brought to Earth and dumped, as unwanted merchandise.

This triple star system is located about 41.6 light-years (ly) away from our Sun, Sol. It lies in the northwestern part (15:3:47.3+47:39:14.6, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Boötes, the Herdsman or Bear Driver -- north of Nekkar (Beta Boötis), east of Lamda Boötis, northeast of Seginus (Gamma Boötis), southwest of Edasich (Iota Draconis), southeast of Theta Boötis and Alkaid (Eta Ursae Majoris), and west of Tau and Nu Herculis. 

The "star" was noted to be variable in 1785 by Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), who was born Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel. According to Robert Burnham, Jr. (1931-93), the system was confirmed to be a visual binary in 1832 by Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve (1793-1864). 

In 1926, the fainter component itself was found to be an eclipsing binary by Jan Schilt by photographic observations, which had already been suspected from a spectrum that showed rotationally broadened absorption lines. 

The system has the variable star designation i Boötis and is often confused with Iota Boötis, a Delta-Scuti-type variable star of spectral and luminosity type A9 V.

All three stars of the 44 Boötis system are similar to Sol in size, brightness, and color. The annual proper motion of the system is about 40" in PA 274°, and it's radial velocity is around 24 km per second (15 miles per second) in approach. It is visible to the naked eye. All three are believed to be more than a billion years old (Alan Hale, 1994, pp. 312 and 314).

44 (i) Boötis A

This star is a yellowish main sequence dwarf star of spectral and luminosity type F5-G1 Vn (Nikolic et al, 1997; based on Frans van't Veer, 1971; and Kurpinska and van't Veer, 1970; versus Hill et al, 1989, page 89). It may be as massive as (or slightly more so than) Sol, with about the same diameter -- 1.03 to 1.05 percent Solar (Johnson and Wright, 1983, page 683; and Hill et al, 1989) and around 1.14 times its luminosity. Useful star catalogue numbers and designations for 44 Boötis A include: 44 Boo, i Boo, 44i Boo, HR 5618*, Gl 575 A, Hip 73695, HD 133640, BD+48 2259, SAO 45357, Struve 1909 A, and ADS 9494 A.

From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the orbit of Star A and the BC tight binary pair exhibit a very elongated and narrow ellipse whose separation has varied from 4.7" in 1880 to less than 0.4" in 1969 (Kaj Aage Gunnar Strand, 1937; A. Gennaro, 1940; L. Bennendijk, 1955; Worley and Heintz, 1983; and Wulff Dieter Heintz, 1963 to 1997; among others). According to new measurements (Staffan Soderhjelm, 1999) found in the new Sixth Catalog of Visual Orbits of Binary Stars, Stars A and B are separated by an "average distance" of about 48.5 AUs (semi-major axis of 3.8" with a HIPPARCOS distance estimate of 41.6 ly), or more than the average of orbital distance of Pluto in the Solar System. They move in a highly elliptical orbit (e= 0.55) that takes about 206 years to complete. Their orbit is inclined about 84° from the perspective of an observer on Earth. These elements are similar to Heintz's 1997 elements of: P=220.0 years; a=3.70"; e= 0.451; and i=83.7 (Wulff Dieter Heintz, 1997). (See an animation of the orbits of Stars A, B, and C and their potentially habitable zones, with a table of basic orbital and physical characteristics.)

44 (i) Boötis B

This star is a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of spectral and luminosity type G2 V (Nikolic et al, 1997; and Hill et al, 1989). This star may have around the same mass as Sol, 87 to 89 percent of its diameter (Johnson and Wright, 1983, page 683; and Hill et al, 1989), and as little as 54 percent of its luminosity. Useful catalogue numbers for the star include: Gl 575 B, Struve 1909 B, and ADS 9494 B.

44 Boötis is classified as an eclipsing variable of W Ursae Majoris type (that also resembles U Pegasi) because Star B has a double-lined, spectroscopic companion that is close enough to be considered a (weak thermal) shallow contact binary (Hill et al, 1989, page 96; and Jan Schilt, 1926). Since the outer gas envelopes of the stars are in contact (overflowing their Roche lobes), they essentially share a common photosphere despite having two distinct nuclear-burning cores. Indeed, Stars B and C are separated by only some 0.008 AU, around three quarters of a million miles (more than one million km) or about three times the distance between the Earth and its Moon. They are revolving in a highly circular orbit (e~ 0) that takes only 6.427 hours to complete. Moreover, from the perspective of an observer on Earth, Stars B and C eclipse each other twice at every revolution (every three hours). (See an animation of the orbits of Stars A, B, and C and their potentially habitable zones, with a table of basic orbital and physical characteristics.)

X-ray emission from stellar coronal material has been observed around Stars B and C with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (press release; Brickhouse et al, 2001; and Nikolic et al, 1997; among others). According to the Yale Bright Star Catalogue's notes entry for HR 5618, a variation in the light curve for this close spectroscopic binary pair appears to be caused by mass transfer, which is supported by observations of gaseous streams between the stars. Eclipsing variables of this type may develop into eruptive "dwarf novae" similar to U Geminorum and SS Cygni, and U Pegasi has been observed to exhibit flares or eruptions of small amplitude that may presage more violent activity at a later stage of evolution. (More discussion on W Ursae Majoris type binaries is available from: Maceroni and van't Veer, 1996.)

44 (i) Boötis C

This star is a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of possibly spectral and luminosity type G V (Nikolic et al, 1997; and Hill et al, 1989), or later spectral type. This star probably has less mass than Sol, as little as 66 percent of its diameter (Hill et al, 1989), and significantly lower luminosity than Star B. Useful catalogue numbers for the star include Gl 575 C and NS 1503+4739 C.

Hunt for Substellar Companions

Since at least one of the stars of 44 Boötis is fairly similar to our Sun, some speculate whether the system might contain planets that harbor life. The distance from Star A where an Earth-type planet would be "comfortable" with liquid water is centered around 1.07 AU -- just beyond the orbital distances of Earth in the Solar System, with an orbital period of more than an Earth year. For close-orbiting Stars B and C, the liquid water zone may be centered around 0.73 AU -- between the orbital distances of Venus and Earth, with an orbital period around half a year. Astronomers would find it very difficult to detect an Earth-type planet around either of these stars using present methods.
Sorry for the detailed stellar data, but I couldn't help myself. Let's get back to the extraterrestrial narrative.

The configuration of all the pyramids of the Giza Plateau was intended to create a “mirror image”, on Earth of the solar system and certain constellations within the “Old Empire”.

2,181 BCE — Some manage to escape

MIN, became the God of Fertility of Egypt. The IS-BE, also known as Pan, was also a Greek god. Min or Pan, was an IS-BE who somehow managed to escape from the “Old Empire” amnesia system.

2,160 – 2040 BCE — Old Empire Rulers left

One of the results of the intensifying battle between The Domain Forces and the “Old Empire” forces was that the control of the “divine rulers”, was broken at this time.

They finally left Egypt and returned to the “heavens”, so to speak, in defeat.

Human beings took over the ruling role as Pharaohs. The first human pharaoh moved the Capital city of Egypt from Memphis to Heracleopolis.

I have no problem with this.

1,500 BCE – Destruction of Crete

This is the date for the destruction of Atlantis given by the Egyptian high-priests, Psenophis of Heliopolis, and Sonchis of Sais, to the Greek sage Solon.

This is the date of the destruction of the colony of Atlantis provided by the Egyptians. It differs from that provided by the extraterrestrial, who stated that Atlantis was destroyed.

While the extraterrestrial stated that between 400,000 and 75,000 years ago, both Atlantis and Lemuria colonies existed.

The Priests of Anu recorded that the Mediterranean area was invaded by “Atlantean” people about this time. Of course, these people were not from the ancient continent of Atlanta, in the Atlantic Ocean, which existed more than 70,000 years earlier.

These were refugees from the Minoan civilization on Crete escaping from the volcanic eruption and tidal waves of Mt. Thera that destroyed their civilization.

Here, the extraterrestrial clarifies the discrepancy.

Plato’s references to Atlantis were borrowed from the writings of the Greek philosopher Solon, who was given the information by the Egyptian priest who called Atlantis “Kepchu”, which also happens to be the Egyptian name for the people of Crete.

Nicely clarified.

Some of the survivors of the Minoan volcanic disaster asked Egypt for help, since they were the only other civilization with high culture in the Mediterranean area at the time.

1351 BCE – 1337 BCE — Earth Warfare

The Domain Expeditionary Force actively waged a war of religious conquest against the Egyptian mystery cult called the Priest of Amun, also known as the “Old Empire” Brothers of The Serpent.

While the space fleet of the "Old Empire" was destroyed in the solar system much earlier. We can say that the warfare began in 6278 BCE, and ended in 1150 AD. Or roughly 7500 years.

The "Old Empire" IS-BE's maintained occupancy in the human bodies on Earth. 

As the leaders were removed, one by one, their cohorts formed "fifth column activities and "secret societies" that needed to be rooted out and eliminated.

During this time the Pharaoh Akhenaten abolished the priesthood of Amun, and moved the capital of Egypt from Thebes to the new location at Amarna, at the exact geodetic center of Egypt. However, this plot to overthrow the “Old Empire” religious control was quickly spoiled.

1,193 BCE — Greek wars / battle for control of space stations

In the Near East and Achaea, the Greeks and Trojans fought for supremacy, which ended in the destruction of Troy as the finale of the Trojan War.

During this same time, war was being fought out in the space of the solar system between two forces for control of the “space stations” surrounding Earth.

That period of 300 years was a very violent resistance to The Domain Forces by the remnants of the “Old Empire” forces. It did not last long however, as it is futile to resist The Domain.

I have no problem with this.

850 BCE — Homer wrote about IS-BE’s

Homer, the blind Greek poet, wrote the stories ‘the gods’ as borrowed and modified from earlier sources in Vedic texts, Sumerian texts, Babylonian and Egyptian mythology.

His poems, as well as many other “myths” of the ancient world are very accurate descriptions of the exploits of IS-BE’s on Earth who were able to avoid the “Old Empire amnesia operation and operate without biological bodies.

Interesting. Homer wrote stories about IS-BE's that escaped the amnesia operations. They were accurate descriptions. And so it was absolutely possible to undo the Empire amnesia operations.

700 BCE – Vedic Hymns translated into Greek

The Vedic Hymns were first translated in the Greek language. This was the beginning of a cultural revolution in Western civilization that transformed crude and brutal tribal cultures into democratic republics based on more reasonable conduct.

638 – 559 BCE — Atlantis reported to exist

Solon, a wise man from Greece, reported the existence of Atlantis. This was information he received from the “Old Empire” high-priests, Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Sais, with whom he studied in Egypt.

630 BCE – Domain replacements for Old Empire religions

Zoroaster  created religious practices in Persia around an IS-BE called Ahura Mazda.  This was yet another of the growing number of “monotheistic” gods put in place by operatives of The Domain to displace a panoply of “Old Empire” gods.

604 BCE -Laozi

Laozi, a philosopher who wrote a small book called “The Way”,  was an IS-BE of great wisdom, who overcame the effects of the “Old Empire” amnesia/hypnosis machinery and escaped from Earth. His understanding of the nature of an IS-BE must have been very good to accomplish this.

According to the common legend, his last lifetime as a human was lived in a small village in China. He contemplated the essence of his own life. Like Gautama Siddhartha, he confronted his own thoughts, and past lives. In so doing, he recovered some of his own memory, ability and immortality.

As an old man, he decided to leave the village and go to the forest to depart the body. The village gatekeeper stopped him and begged him to write down his personal philosophy before leaving.

Here is a small piece of advice he gave about “the way” he rediscovered his own spirit:

"He who looks will not see it;

He who listens will not hear it;

He who gropes will not grasp it.
The formless nonentity,

the motionless source of motion.

The infinite essence of the spirit is the source of life.
Spirit is self.
Walls form and support a room,
yet the space between them is most important.

A pot is formed of clay,
yet the space formed therein is most useful.
Action is caused by the force of nothing on something,
just as the nothing of spirit is the source of all form.
One suffers great afflictions because one has a body.

Without a body what afflictions could one suffer?

When one cares more for the body than for his own spirit,
One becomes the body and looses the way of the spirit.

The self, the spirit, creates illusion.
The delusion of Man is that reality is not an illusion.

One who creates illusions and makes them more real than reality,

follows the path of the spirit and finds the way of heaven".

593 BCE – Genesis Story

The Genesis story written by the Jewish people describe “angels” or “sons of god” mating with women of Earth, who bore them children. These were probably renegades from the “Old Empire”. They may also have been space pirates or merchants from a system outside the galaxy who came to steal mineral resources, or smuggle drugs.

The Domain has observed that there are many visitors to Earth from neighboring planets and galaxies, but they rarely stop and live here. What kind of beings would live on a prison planet if they were not forced to do so?

The same book also reports the story of a human named Ezekiel who witnessed a spacecraft or aircraft landing near Chebar River in Chaldea. His description of the craft uses very archaic language, technically, but is nevertheless, quite an accurate description of an “Old Empire” saucer or scout craft. It is similar to the sighting of “vimanas” by the people in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Their Genesis story also mentions that “Yahweh” designed biological bodies to live for 120 years on Earth. Biological bodies on most “Sun Type 12, Class 7” planets are usually engineered to last for an average of about 150 years.

Human bodies on Earth last only about one half as long.

We suspect this is because the prison administrators have altered the biological material of human bodies on Earth to die more frequently so that the
IS-BEs who inhabit them will recycle through the amnesia mechanism more frequently.

It should be noted that much of the “Old Testament” was written during the captivity of the Jews who were enslaved in Babylon, which was very heavily controlled by priests of the “Old Empire”. The book introduces a false sense of time and a false concept of the origin of the creation.

The serpent is the symbol of the “Old Empire“. It appears in the beginning of their creation story, or as the Greeks say, “Genesis”, and causes the spiritual destruction of the first human beings, who are metaphorically represented by Adam and Eve.

The Old Testament, clearly influenced by the “Old Empire” Forces, gives a detailed description of the IS-BEs being induced into biological bodies on Earth.

This book also describes many of the “Old Empire” brainwashing activities, including the installation of false memories, lies, superstitions, commands to “forget” and all manner of tricks and traps designed to keep IS-BEs on Earth. Most importantly, it destroys the awareness that humans are Immortal Spiritual Beings.

I have no problem at all with these statements.

580 BCE — Communication centers

The Oracle at Delphi was one temple in a network of many oracle temples. Each temple was a communication center.

The “Old Empire” priests designated a local “god” for each temple.

Each of the temples in this network were located at precisely 5 degrees of latitude intervals from the capital city of Thebes throughout the Mediterranean area as far north as the Baltic Sea.

The shrines served, among other things, as a grid, housing electronic beacons, later called “Omphalus Stones”.  The grid arrangement of Oracle sites can only be seen from miles above the Earth.

An Omphalus Stone

The original network of electronic communications beacons were disabled when the priesthood was dispersed, and were replaced by carved stones.

Very interesting. The original network of electronic communications beacons were disabled when the priesthood was dispersed, and were replaced by carved stones.

The symbol of the “Old Empire” priesthood is a Python, dragon or serpent. It was called the “earth-dragon” at Delphi, which is always represented in sculpture and vase-paintings as a serpent.

In Greek mythology the guardian of the Omphalus Stone at the temple at Delphi was an oracle whose name was Python, the serpent.

She was an IS-BE, who was conquered by a “god” named Apollo.

He buried her under the Omphalos stone.

This is a case of one “god” setting up his temple on the grave of another. This is a very accurate euphemism for The Domain Force that detected and disabled the “Old Empire” temple network on Earth.

It was one of the fatal blows to the “Old Empire” Force in the solar system of Earth.

As I parse this document, I find more and more tidbits of extreme interest. You must keep in mind that all of this was recorded after ten days in captivity and after scanning some books.

559 BCE – Lost Commander of The Domain Battalion was rediscovered

The Commanding Officer of The Domain Battalion who was lost in 5,965 BCE was detected and located by a search party sent to Earth from The Domain Expeditionary Force.

He was incarnated as Cyrus II of Persia during this time.

A unique system of organization was used by Cyrus II  and the members of that Battalion who followed him from India through his progression of human lives on Earth.

In part, it enabled them to build the largest empire in the history of the Earth to that date.

The Domain Search Party who located him traveled around the Earth searching for the lost Battalion for several thousand years.

The party consisted of 900 officers of The Domain, divided into teams of 300 each.

One team searched the land, another team search the oceans and the third team searched the space surrounding Earth.

There are many reports made in various human civilizations concerning their activities, which humans did not understand, of course.

The Domain Search Party devised a wide variety of electronic detection devices needed to track the electronic signature or wavelength of each of the missing members of the Battalion.

Some were used in space, others on land, and special devices were invented to detect IS-BEs under water.

One of these electronic detection devices is referred to as a “tree of life”.

The device is literally a tool designed to detect the presence of life, which is an IS-BE. This was a large electronic screen generator designed to permeate wide areas.

To the ancient humans on Earth it resembled a sort of tree, since is consists of an interwoven lattice of electronic field generators and receivers.

The electronic field detects the presence of IS-BEs, whether the IS-BE is occupying a body, or if they are outside a body.

A portable version of this detection device was carried by each of the members of The Domain Search Party.

Stone carvings in Sumeria show winged beings using pinecone-shaped instruments to scan the bodies of human beings. They are also shown carrying the power unit for the scanner which are depicted as stylized baskets or water buckets, being carried by eagle-headed, winged beings.

Stone carvings in Sumeria show winged beings using pinecone-shaped instruments to scan the bodies of human beings.

Members of the aerial unit of The Domain Search Party, led by Ahura Mazda, were often called “winged gods” in human interpretations.

Throughout the Persian civilization there are a great many stone relief carving that depict winged space craft, that they called a “faravahar”.

A faravahar.

Members of the Aquatic Unit of The Domain Search Party were called “Oannes” by local humans.

Stone carvings of the so-called Oannes are shown wearing silver diving suits. They lived in the sea and appeared to the human population to be men dressed to look like fish. Some members of the lost Battalion were found in the oceans inhabiting the bodies of dolphins or whales.

Stone carvings of the so-called Oannes.

Very interesting stuff.

Therefore, although mythology and history may be based on factual events, they are likewise full of misunderstood and misinterpreted evaluations of the data, and embellished with assumptions, theories and hypotheses which are false.

The space unit of The Domain Expeditionary Force are shown flying in a “Winged-Disc”. This is an allusion to the spiritual power of the IS-BEs, as well as to the space craft used by The Domain Search Party.

I have no problem with this statement.

The Commander of the lost Battalion, as Cyrus II, was an IS-BE who was regarded as a messiah on Earth by both the Jews, and the Muslims. In less than 50 years he established a highly ethical, and humanitarian philosophy which pervaded all of Western Civilization.

Be the Rufus!

His territorial conquests, organization of people and monumental building projects were unprecedented before or since. Such sweeping accomplishments in a short period of time could only have been achieved by a leader and a team of trained officers, pilots, engineers and crew members of a unit of The Domain, acting as a team, who had been trained and worked together for thousands of years.

Although we have discovered the location of many of the IS-BEs in the lost Battalion, The Domain has been unable to restore their memory and return them to active duty as yet.

Of course we cannot transport IS-BEs who are inhabiting biological bodies to the space stations of The Domain since there is no oxygen in our space craft.

Also we do not maintain life support facilities for biological entities there.

Our only hope has been to locate and rekindle the awareness, memory and identity of the IS-BEs of the Lost Battalion. One day they will be capable of rejoining us.

So this differs from what many "more conventionally minded" readers might think. The Domain cannot ever rescue or recover a amnesiac IS-BE member that is in the human form. They have to find other methods to recover their memories, and then extract them from the prison system that exists. Or that did exist in 1947.

200 BCE — Teotihuacan

The last remnant of the “Old Empire” pyramid civilization is at “Teotihuacan“. The Aztec name means “place of the gods” or “where men were transformed into gods”.

Like the astronomical configuration of the Giza pyramids in Egypt, the entire complex is a precise scale-model of the solar system that accurately reflects the orbital distances of the inner planets, the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

Since the planet Uranus had only been “discovered” with modern Earth telescopes in 1787, and Pluto not until 1930, it is apparent that the builders had information from “other sources”.

A common element of the Pyramid Civilizations around the Earth is the constant use of the image of the snake, dragon, or serpent. This is because the beings who planted these civilizations here want to create an illusion that the “gods” are reptilian.

This is also a part of an illusion designed to perpetuate amnesia.

The beings who placed false civilizations on Earth are IS-BEs, just like you. Many of the biological bodies inhabited by IS-BEs in the “Old Empire” are very similar in appearance to the bodies on Earth.

The “gods” are not reptiles, although they often behave like snakes.

I have no problem with these statements.

1,034 – 1,124 AD – Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah

The entire Arab world was enslaved by one man: Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain. He established the Hashshashin who operated a part of Mohammedanism which controlled by terror and fear much of India, Asia Minor and most of the Mediterranean Basin. They became a priesthood that used an extremely effective mind-control mechanism and extortion tool that enabled the “Assassins” to control the civilized world for several hundred years.

Their method was simple. Young men were kidnapped and knocked unconscious with hashish. They were taken to a garden filled with beautiful black-eyed houris in a harem decorated with rivers of milk and honey.

The young men were told that they were in paradise.

They were promised they could return and live there forever if they sacrificed themselves as an assassin of whomever they were commanded to kill. The men were knocked out again, and shoved out into the world to carry out the assassination mission.

Meanwhile, the Old Man of the Mountain sent a messenger to the caliph or, whatever wealthy ruler from whom they demanded payment, demanding camel-loads of gold, spices, incense or other valuables.

If payment did not arrive on time, the assassin would be sent to kill the offending party.

There was virtually no defense against the unknown assailant who wanted nothing more than to carry out his mission, be killed and return to “heaven”.

This is a very crude example of how simple and effective a brainwashing and mind-control operation can be when it is used skillfully, and forcefully. It is a small scale demonstration of how the amnesia mind-control operation is used against the entire IS-BE population of Earth by the “Old Empire”.

Very interesting.

1119 AD — The Knights Templar

The Knights Templar was established as a Christian military unit after the First Crusade.

But (it) quickly transformed into the basis for the international banking system to accumulate money.

(With a purpose of) conducting funding the agenda of operatives for vestiges of the “Old Empire” on Earth.

I have no problem with this.

1135 – 1230 AD – Old Empire Space Fleet completely removed from the solar system

The Domain Expeditionary Force completed the annihilation of the remaining remnants of the “Old Empire” space fleet operating in the solar system around Earth.

Unfortunately, their long established thought control operation remains largely intact.

I have no problem with this. Just keep in mind that it was narrated back in 1947.

1307 AD – Knights Templar disbanded

The Knights Templar was disbanded by King Philip IV of France, who was deeply in debt to the Order.  He pressured Pope Clement V to condemn the Order’s members, have them arrested, tortured them into giving false confessions, and burned them at the stake in an effort to erase his debt by seizing all of their wealth.

A majority of the Templars fled to Switzerland where they established an international banking system which secretly controls the economy of Earth.

“Old Empire” operatives act as an unseen influence on international bankers.

The "traditional" West banking system, that controls the US dollar, and all that fiat currency, isn't so much as controlled by "Jews" as it is controlled by elements of the "Old Empire" that need to fund their efforts and activities.

It is no wonder that the "Old Empire" operatives are scared shitless with the advent of e-yuan and all those electronic currency options now being implemented.

The banks are operated covertly as a on-combatant provocateur.

(It is designed) to covertly promote and finance weapons and warfare between the nations of Earth.

Warfare is an internal mechanism of control over the inmate population.

This was written in 1947, and most people today in 2021 realize this with the crazy shit coming out of America today.

The purpose of the senseless genocide and carnage of wars financed by these international banks is to prevent the IS-BEs of Earth from sharing open communication, cooperate together in activities that might enable IS-BEs to prosper, become enlightened, and escape their imprisonment.”

I have no problem with these statements.

End of part 4

Sure, there are miss-translations on time, confusions in regard to galaxies and universes, and a mish-mash of confusion between consciousness+, humans, and some confusion regarding galactic “ownership” and “power projection” between different species, however this is the real deal. It fits in perfectly with everything that I know about MAJestic.

The more I parse it in detail, the clearer to me that this is exactly what it is claimed to be.

I will admit that I was unaware of the “Old Empire”, and the role that the Earth had as a “prison planet” for it. I am also unaware of the details regarding it.

But as I compare what I know, and what I have experienced with what I have parsed, I have been able to “open doors” so to speak, and suddenly mysteries that I have been part of have now been explained. I can tell you that this document has really been a real benefit to me personally.

Please do NOT read the document without reading my parsing. I think my parsing will help you all move foreword with this.

Key Points

Never the less, I believe the following to be true in regards to this parsing of this section of the book…

  • Everything here is true.
  • Earth is no longer a “prison planet”
  • Earth is now a “sentience nursery”.
  • Fear not an “abduction”. It’s actually a good thing. Not a bad thing.
  • Type-1 greys of “the Domain” are service-for-others sentience.
  • MAJestic is changing everything, hand in hand with the Type-1 greys.

In regards to much of this “historical data” it is very interesting, and rings true to those of us who have read the alternative-histories that abound in the books and the internet.  Yet, we must always keep in mind that this document was recorded from an extraterrestrial that had only ten or so days in interrogation, and this is it’s statement made in 1947.

Part five

You can visit part five HERE.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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MM blue plate special

Today, I am going to present something which I hope will become a periodic feature in MM. It is the “MM blue plate special”. My intention is to model it after my very popular “Holiday extravaganza” post that I made on 4 July 2021. Here, I would just place interesting tidbits and stuff. With no particular order.

What is a “Blue Plate Special”?

Throughout the decades of the 1920’s – 1950’s, a popular restaurant promotion was the “blue plate special.”  Served mostly at dinners and other simple eateries, the blue plate special was a reduced cost meal consisting of some kind of meat, (beef, pork, chicken, fish etc.), with a number of vegetables side dishes.

Meatloaf blue plate special.

It appears to have gleaned its name from the actual plates it was presented on.  Solid blue, or sporting a blue pattern, the plates were also divided into sections, a large one for the protein, and smaller segments for the vegetables.  Typically the items were pre-cooked and held at serving temperature.

Because they were not made on the spot, they tended to be a little “over cooked”. This allowed for alacritous service and more efficient turnover.

Over time, the blue plates got broken or disappeared. Today, there just isn’t any special plates that tend to be used.

I guess that the big thing about this meal was that the one plate meal saved time and money on dish washing.  This was very important at a time when people washed dishes by hand, and there was no such thing as disposable plates.

An American Diner.

While the “blue plate” sobriquet has all but faded from use, many modern restaurants still offer “specials.”  However, daily specials are no longer the sole domain of workaday eateries but rather unique meals where the cook makes up a batch of unusual food that they can serve on that day.  When I worked as a short-order-breakfast-chef in San Louis Obispo, California a “Blue Plate Special” might be something like “Stuffed Peppers”, “Cabbage rolls”, “Beef tips on rice”, or a gourmet omelet such as “Blue cheese and prosciutto ham omelet”.

How expats in China make their coffee

Not me. Someone else. But so very relatable. The white bottle that he is pouring in is called Baijiu . It is typically 53% alcohol.

Baijiu is a clear distilled liquor, which can be regarded as the national drink of the People's Republic of China. Its name translates as "white wine" but it is, in fact, a high-alcohol spirit. Chinese people will generally drink Baijiu with food, rather than on its own.

Click on the picture to watch the video.

A video of a man drinking coffee.
How expats drink their coffee.

America is collapsing and needs to blame someone…

America is collapsing all over, in so many ways. And part of it is a system that is unstable; this idea of “democracy”, but part of it is the evil psychopaths that run the country, and part of it is the dumbed down, balkanized population. But what ever the reason, it is a mess, and the United States desperately wants to point the finger elsewhere… to blame someone else.

Because if they can’t find a person to blame, the entire population of a America is going to rise up and lynch everyone in Washington DC on scaffolding.

Click on the picture to watch the video.

A video about why China is being villified.
A discussion on why America is vilifying China right now.

Riding on a Chinese High Speed Train

Personally, I love these things. Big and roomy. Easy and quiet. Cheap. Convenient. No hassles like at an airport. The Chinese have them everywhere. I wrote about them in a couple of posts, and here is just a quick blurb by a English expat on board one of the trains.

Some history. President Obama announced that he would establish a massive High Speed Train Network in America and funded it with billions of dollars. That same time, so did China. Today, America has nothing, while China has the most dynamic, largest and most elaborate high speed trains system in the world.

To catch up, President Biden announced that he is going to build a HST system that will be bigger and better than what the Chinese has done. And he is funding it lavishly. If you were to bet, how successful do you think that it will be?

Click on the picture to see the movie.

High speed train video.
Inside a Chinese High Speed Train.

This is how you eat dumplings in China

The dumplings are something that is truly unique, and you just cannot get them in America or the West. You get sort of a “fast food” version, and you certainly are not provided with all sorts of dipping sauces. Dumplings are one of my favorite foods in China, and I made this video below to show you why I love it so much…

Video on Chiense dumplings.
How to eat dumplings in China.

Riding a Subway in Shenzhen

This is a video that I took when I went to Shenzhen to deal with some matters. Everything in China is brand new, clean and very well maintained. You just have to compare this to the piss-poor pathetic subway systems in the West. If you aren’t comparing then you must be brain-dead. America doesn’t have anything even remotely resembling this.

Cool video taken by MM.
Subway in Shenzhen, China.

Family Dinner: 1952

From Shorpy HERE.

A family diner 1952.

The comments are just precious.

Mother's Swiss-dot curtains are torn on the left panel; her drain rack for her dishes is in its place by the drainboard. 

She normally uses her table for her counter space, but since the table is set for dinner, she's using her sink drainboard for her Sunbeam Mixmaster which whipped up the frosting. 

Ah, yes, that tiny black spray nozzle on the sink. 

Is that grated cheese in the cheese shaker or do they use a lot of salt? 

The younger daughter has her eyes on the boiled frosting cake, as would be mine as well. 

Father and the boy are eying the fried chicken. 

Deviled eggs on a side plate with lettuce? 

There are sweater 'pills' on the older daughter's sweater, at the farthest point West. 

Nice white bread, hard to find nowadays with all the nutritious breads forced on us in our stores. 

Father's hair is combed in a 'combover' on his bald spot. 

Bet any money that Mother's wrist watch is a Bulova. 

Mother ironed and 'starched' the tablecloth, so it must be Sunday. 

Father's shirt is ironed, older daughter's sweater is ironed, younger daughter's dress is ironed, younger son's t-shirt is ripped with holes. 

The plant at the window is a 'Wandering Jew.' 

The tin pots and pans are surely much lighter to lift than my All-Clad set today. 

All in all, the scene resembled by own childhood in 1952, right down to the floral design on the linoleum on the floor.

And then you have this…

In my grandma's kitchen was the soup ladle hanging above the stove. 

Having come from a Pennsylvania coal miner grandfather, my 'take' on this picture is that it was staged, posed and fully planned in advance (unless this was on a Sunday when they would have their best meal of the week). 

The other six week-night suppers were mostly home-made soup and bread, every kind of soup imaginable, more than Campbells could ever come up with. 

Having a large family, my mom said there was nothing else that could satisfy seven or eight hungry, hard-working people as a filling, hot and inexpensive meal like soup and fresh bread & butter. 

She was a master soup cook too, taught by her mother, and I was pretty much raised on soup, some heartier than others, but never disappointing. 

It can be time-consuming to prepare but I've never felt deprived and it really stretches your meat to feed any number of people. (If someone got a big chunk of chicken or beef in their soup, or too many clams in their clam chowder, we used to say "the string must have broke").

And yet another precious comment…

The logo in front of the sink is from Youngstown Kitchens. Yup, I grew up with them.

Yes. I really love Shorpy.

And all the negative “news” about China…

It’s all “hate China”, all the time. And if you believe it then you are sheeple. There simply isn’t any good news about China int he Western press; the Western “news”. During the last two weeks, China had an 8 hour spacewalk, a 100 year anniversary, the recording of sounds on Mars, a new joint moon-base plans, and an expansion of the BRI into Pakistan. What “news” did America report?

A quick video blurb about this strange behavior…

Hate China all the time. It’s what the American “news” media does.

Getting a ferry ticket at AI kiosks

Here is a short video that I took. It depicts what it is like to get a ferry in Shekou. These are the automated ferry kiosks, and you just scan your bio-metics and pay by QR. So fast, so easy. It’s really cool and very relaxed an unhurried.

Nice video that I made.
Getting a ferry in Shekou.

Trying to kidnap a middle school girl

Kidnapping and bad crimes still happen in China, but they are getting to be less and less frequent. Here is a favorite video of mine when a group of guys on a motorcycle tries to kidnap a middle school girl on her way home from school.

It’s one of my favorite videos.

Nice video.
Trying to kidnap a middle school girl.

Chinese military protecting the Uighur Muslims from American-backed terrorism

If you read the neocon publications out of America such as the National Review, you would get the impression that the Chinese military is a third world group of conscripts armed with cheap AK-47 clones. Not even remotely true. The Chinese are a serious, serious nation that DOES NOT PLAY.

Here’s a video (I posted this before) showing a group of Chinese forces that fight the American-backed Uighur “pro-democracy” terrorists out of Afghanistan. They protect the BRI which is the land route that bypasses the threat of American Naval blockade as part of the “QUAD”.

Good video.
Chinese military forces in Xinjiang.

Beach Road

This stretch of road is just two blocks from my house and it is named “Lovers Road”. I filmed it as I was riding home on a bus. You can see the statue of the “Fisher Girl” which is a major tourist attraction.

Right now this entire area is under massive renovation. New parks are sprouting up everywhere and all sorts of malls and waling areas are being developed. China has designated this area as an economic corridor for AI, robotics and IoT technologies and along with the influx of industry comes an equal investment into the supporting parks, green areas, public spaces and transportation hubs. In China the two go hand-in-hand.

Video while going home.
Road near my home.

Advertising Jeans

One of the trends in China today is to make your own designer clothing. You design it, and then you work with factories to make them, and finally you advertise it on Chinese media to sell. These videos are great where the owners or their models wear their uniquely designed clothing and promote them.

In this video, which was taken outside a woman’s bathroom, you can see this gal showing off her nice pair of jeans.

Nice jeans.
Advertising your own brand of clothing.

The New American Army

There has been a lot of talk about how Presidents Trump, Obama and Biden have revamped and reorganized the Army. It’s an “Army of one”; a transgender, a polite and kinder Army. You read about it, and you hear about it. But nothing says more than watching the proud fighting troops sing cadences as they perform drills in front of their barracks…

Check out the video.

The new American military.

Chinese Boy / Girl scouts

The American boy scouts and girl scouts have changed to reflect a softer, squishier and gentler America. Not so in China. Boy and girl scouts are co-ed and they are taught to fight, be the best they can be and endure.

Great video.
Chinese boy and girl scouts.

An Amazing Landing

I am sure that the pilot was well shaken up after this. I’ll bet that he went to the local “watering hole” (bar or pub) and got totally smashed. OMG! Check out the video…

What a landing!
An amazing landing.

Pre-Avatar: 1982

Found on Shorpy HERE.

Watching television 1982.

From the text…

A friend of mine and I "enjoy" 3-D on television in 1982, when there was a boomlet of local stations showing 3-D films such as "Creature from the Black Lagoon" using the anaglyph method.

This method used red and blue lenses to separate the images rather than the polarized system originally used in the theaters thirty years earlier. 

I say "enjoy" because the effect was problematic. 

If you had your color adjusted correctly it was possible to get a moderate dimensional effect out of the blur. With my never-rectified amblyopia, I could get it mostly when things were flying at the camera.

We're watching it on my Advent VideoBeam, no longer in the basement of my folks' house, but in my new digs in Petaluma. 

Fans of the yellow lamp will notice that it's already starting to deteriorate, the hinge holding the middle shade being secured with duct tape. 

Another indication of the absence of parental caregiving is the burst cushion of my red chair. 

Other necessary video room adjuncts visible are Ritz Crackers, a TV Guide (is that Farrah Fawcett?) and shelves full of Betamax tapes. 

Oh, and under my chair a metal file box storing my card catalog of said tapes. The blue binder contains a hand-typed list of just the cartoons. 

Computerization of the collection was still four years in the future.

Afghanistan – U.S. Sneaks Out At Night – Taliban Take Multiple Districts Per Day

This is awkward:

The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said. 

...

“We (heard) some rumor that the Americans had left Bagram ... and finally by seven o’clock in the morning, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram,” Gen. Mir Asadullah Kohistani, Bagram’s new commander said. 

...

Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield about an hour’s drive from the Afghan capital Kabul, it was invaded by a small army of looters, who ransacked barrack after barrack and rummaged through giant storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan military officials.

“At first we thought maybe they were Taliban,” said Abdul Raouf, a soldier of 10 years. He said the the U.S. called from the Kabul airport and said “we are here at the airport in Kabul.”

There is video from the empty base. Hundreds of cars were left behind. The network equipment in the headquarter was ripped out but the base hospital seems to have been left intact. There are even some useful medical supplies stocked there.

Meanwhile the Taliban continue their blitz operation to take over the country. They snatch up district after district especially in the north.

Taliban control.

The Taliban have probably some 3-4,000 fighters in the north-eastern Badakhshan province but they managed to take 90% of it in just 4 days, 14 of its districts fell in the last 48 hours. Some 1,500 Afghan government soldiers stationed there have fled to Tajikistan. The province capital Faizabad is now isolated and the only place that is still under government control.

Where Afghanistan borders China.

Something is quite curious with this. Badakhshan was a stronghold of the Northern Alliance which in the late 1990s fought against the Taliban. It is the home of the Jamiat-e Islami party which consists mostly of ethnic Tajiks and has its own militia. The leader of Jamiat-e Islami is Salahuddin Rabbani who is now also the chair of the government’s Afghan High Peace Council which negotiates with the Taliban.

The mountainous province has 1 million inhabitants. But here are 4 Taliban showing up in a car in the remote Wakhan district. They are not opposed by local militia but are welcomed by the local (male) population.

It is inconceivable that a brigade size Taliban force can seize Badakhshan in a few days and at little cost without having a deal with the militia of the dominant local party. Something must have happened behind the curtains that the media is not aware of.

Americans leave so much behind.

This is good news as a fast Taliban victory in the north will make a new civil war less likely. The neoconservative Long War Journal is aghast as it explains:

Afghanistan is at risk of complete collapse after the Taliban has made dramatic gains in recent days, striking at the heart of the Afghan government’s base of power in the north while seizing control of large areas of the country – often unopposed by government forces. 

...

Much of the Taliban gains have occurred in the north. The importance of the Taliban’s northern thrust cannot be understated. The Taliban is taking the fight directly to the home of Afghanistan’s elite power brokers and government officials.

If the Taliban can deny Afghanistan’s government and its backers their base of power, Afghanistan is effectively lost. The government could not possibly keep its tenuous footholds in the south, east, west, and even in central Afghanistan if the north is lost. If the Afghan government loses the north, the Taliban could take the population centers in the south, east, and west without a fight, and begin its siege of Kabul.

I currently do not think that there will be a long ‘siege of Kabul’ but a negotiated transfer of power.

The events of the last weeks show a more or less controlled retreat or defeat of demoralized government forces and a systematic takeover of most of the countryside and district centers by well prepared Taliban forces. Only the bigger province capitals have not yet fallen though some think that Mazar i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province, will fall tonight.

It seems that there is a willingness of at least certain parts of Afghanistan’s current government to let the Taliban take over the country without much of a fight.

That gives me hope that a further long conflict will be avoided. After more than 42 years of war Afghanistan needs peace. While the Taliban rule is harsh it is also somewhat just and certainly less corrupt than the U.S. imposed structures. Afghanistan must be given time to find a new balance from which it can then develop in a way that fits the local circumstances and the local peoples’ tradition and morality.

The last 42 years have shown that nothing else will work.

Chinese military concentration

Since Trump’s and Biden’s budgets have just “blown away” all records for military spending, China has taken notice, and has been mass producing nuclear hyper-velocity warheads, missiles and launch systems at a frantic pace. These weapons are impossible to stop, have artificial intelligence, incapable of being jammed, and uses stealth while traveling at hyper-velocities. They are decades ahead of anything the United States fields.

And China is churning them out like buttons from a button making machine.

Great video.
China is beefing up it’s self-defense forces like “there’s no tomorrow”.

A typical day in America

When I say that America is really “out of control” and in a bad state, it refers to behaviors and events that should not be occurring. What you see in the below video is NOT freedom. It is what happens when you live inside of ghetto that is treated as a prison-fortress.

Shootout video.
Life in America.

Pittsburgh

From where I grew up (well, at least where my parents and grandparents lived)…

January 1941. “Mill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Long stairway in a working class section.”

Talking about freedom in China

Here is a UK expat who has lived in China talking about “freedom” inside of China. It’s pretty good stuff, and he reflects the view of about 99.999% of us who actually live inside of China.

Of course, you would NEVER see this in the West. And it is censored and shadow-banned on Twitter, Google, Facebook, and You-tube. So go ahead and watch what is forbidden to you to observe…

A video about feedom in China.
Freedom in China.

Wife delivers a birthday meal to a fireman husband in China

Firemen eat in mess halls and live in barracks. Two weeks on, then two weeks off. (Depending on the location.) Here is a guy’s birthday and his wife and child came to visit him and brought him a special birthday meal (or other special occasion, I’m not so sure as my Chinese isn’t that good.) Great video.

Be the Rufus. Make a difference!

A special meal for a special person.

China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty

I remember talking about this fact with my brother, and he was like “yeah. I get it. China has helped some of it’s people”.

No. He didn’t get it.

The population of the United States of America is 330 million people.  In the fifty or so years on the American War on Poverty” hardly anyone was lifted out of poverty. In fact, today, a full half of the United States is in poverty and lives off welfare.

China not only produced results where America did nothing, but did it for nearly three times the amount of people. This is amazing!

Check out the video…

Video on lifting people out of poverty.
An amazing accomplishment.

What it is like to get a vaccination for COVID in China

This is a pretty good video, and it shows the organization and structure of how this is being handled in China. I will tell you that my experience is pretty much nearly identical to this. Of course, it was in a different geographical area, and a different building. This was in Zhongshan, I believe. Mine was in tiny Zhuhai. I actually own a home in Zhongshan.

It’s nice, but I love Zhuhai.

Nice video about getting a vaccination.
Getting a coronavirus vaccination in China.

Chinese Airport Security

Well, the Chinese are very understanding and humane about how they handle people They do not treat them as some kind of object.  Like the American TSA does. Check out this video.

Meanwhile in America

America is a God Damn cluster fuck. Doing “your own thing”.

Police killing a man in America.
America is one enormous cluster fuck.

A very interesting para-military video from China

You might think that this is a video about the Chinese PLA. But no it isn’t. This is a police detachment. Specifically the “corruption police”. Their job is to find and arrest powerful people who use their power, whether in government, or in industry to thwart the law. In China people like Trump, Jeff Bezos, and Nancy Polaski would never make it.

China. Does. Not. Play.

Great video here.
Chinese corruption police.

A great outfit

From Shorpy HERE.

A great outfit for certain.

The site says…

From the collection of film and 4x5 glass negatives I recently purchased that seem to have been taken in upstate New York about 1912. This is from a film negative that has been bent, hence the flare on the right side. The lady's dress is spectacular, and she is coordinated with gloves and white shoes. I don't think this was an inexpensive outfit.

The comments are great…

My wife and I have done historical costuming for years. The fabric of this dress is almost certainly worsted wool. It's surface smoothness looks like worsted and the folds and drapes are too full to be even heavy linen. The dress she's wearing in the first photo posted (the eyelet lace dress) is either linen or cotton or possibly even a blend of the two.

As to colors, that's harder to determine than you might think. Early black and white films didn't respond to colors in quite the way we expect nowadays. Silver halide is most responsive to the blue end of the spectrum. Colors from the other end often wound up overly dark. With glass plate negatives, special dies and filters could be used to produce a more accurate tonal map of the colors, but those didn't work with film at this time.

It wouldn't surprise me if the dress was actually bright blue with bright yellow collar and cuffs or something like that. Wool takes die especially well and so was often very brightly colored (particularly after the invention of aniline dyes in the 1850s).

And I do agree with this comment…

I know nobody cares what I think and I know many people who would never allow themselves to crack a smile in their posed pictures because it may not be "cool" or sophisticated, but this elegant lady would look a million times better, younger and healthier if only she would have smiled or at least put on a pleasant face. Instead she has a dour expression in both of the photos we've seen that makes her look gloomy and judgmental, with a superior attitude. Even Mona Lisa looks more approachable. Perhaps we will see a happy picture of her in the future. (That's my story and I'm stickin' to it).

The new Chinese fighter aircraft

After decades of being the second and third tier suppliers for American, French, German, and Russian aviation, China has developed and designed their own fighter aircraft, and by all accounts is cheaper, better, faster, more maneuverable, and superior that the top line American counterparts. Whether or not this is true depends on who you ask. Certainly K-street believes that American weapons systems are invincible.

Never the less, this is a great video of Chinese military aviation.

I most especially like the little Artificial Intelligence bee-sized hand-grenade that the Army uses.

A great video.
A great video of Chinese military aviation.

Being a Rufus

Just being kind to others is all you need to do to be a Rufus. Just some some compassion. Show some kindness. Show some understanding. Emote and help others. It’s our highest calling.

Watch the video.

Be the Rufus. It’s our highest calling.

A cool car

“1950 Nash experimental NXI.” The Nash Experimental International, basis for the Nash Metropolitan, piloted by Nash-Kelvinator Chairman George Mason with VP George Romney (Mitt’s dad) riding shotgun.

What it is like to travel on a Chinese High Speed Train

Here you can see why I love it. China and Russia are linked by rail , and a new High Speed Line is being established inside of Russia. Russia and China have a great relationship and as time moves forward it keeps getting better and better with each day.

Great Video
Going to Russia on Chinese High Speed Rail.

New wording inside of all Chinese passports

Ever since the neocons in America have been openly being hostile to China, and Chinese citizens, the Chinese have implemented changes and training and advice sessions to Chinese citizens who wish to travel abroad. One of the changes in policy is the text placed inside of each passport issued to citizens of China.

See the video below…

How a Rufus springs into action

This woman is wearing a red vest, which means that she is a volunteer. She is working in her community. Often older, these people play a valuable role and in this particular instance, I think that she was trying to perform some gardening, clean up of landscaping. And she collapsed. Instead of just standing round and filming it, a real Rufus springs into action.

Great video
A Rufus springs into action.

An American school

This was filmed in an American school. I do not know if it was a university or a High School (it appears to be an American university), but I can tell you that this kind of behavior shows a complete lack of control and discipline.  People ask me why I don’t give American citizenship to my daughter. Why?

I don’t want her anywhere near these piss-ant pampered, cocky moronic idiots. Watch this college student “doing his own thing”.

Some background; this young man is the END RESULT of the fire-hose of HATE directed at the Chinese, and the ONLY reason why he is being so God-damn rude is because the professor is Chinese. Thank you FOX news, Bloomberg, Hal Turner, and all the rest.

Video taken inside an American school.
An American school.

What America, the UK and Australia have planned for China…

Most people in the West have absolutely no concept of how poorly and malevolently the Western powers treated the Chinese. Whether it was getting hundreds of millions addicted to Opium, creating and forcing starvation, looting the land and it’s people, it was brazen and astounding in scope and depth. Here’s a little video of some of the rich Victorian ladies throwing rice onto the streets and the starving Chinese people running to collect it.

And this… watch it closely… is what America wants to happen again.

Watch the video.

A video that you will never see in America.
Throwing rice to the starving Chinese.

Cute Robot Dogs

These robot dogs are all so very cute. They were designed to be mass produced into a disposable “throw away” configuration, and are in production for the Chinese military. I can well imagine, about 20,000 of these cute little robots swarming a military base, and then detonating when their AI detects that it is near a target.

Video
Cute Chinese AI dog.

Notable American actors visit the North Korea DMZ

In some kind of silly, suicidal move, some very famous American actors decide to visit the DMZ border to South Korea. You can see Mike Tyson, and Henry Winkler, and William Shatner there. And they are just playing around, joking.

The Asians are a very serious people.

And the idiotic Americans are delirious and have no concept about how dangerous they are playing and dancing with death. This video, seems to have been forgotten, but this attitude has not changed. And I see this attitude being replicated, time and time again in regards to China, and Russia.

Watch the video.

North Korean soldier who will shoot to kill.

Rufus saves a woman and her cat

Nothing makes me feel better than to watch a true and real Rufus in action. A Rufus is a Service to others person, and when they leap into action, I feel so much pride in their actions. It gives me hope for the human species. Because right now, most especially in America, it’s every-man-for-himself, dog-eat-dog world of service-for-self psychopaths.

Great rescue video.
Rufus to the rescue.

Thank you for your smile. It made me see her again.

Sometimes, as we age, we lose those who matter to us. We lose lovers, family, friends. Daughters.

This old man hasn’t seen his daughter since she died so long ago, but this girl has the same smile that his daughter had…

A great video.
Thank you for your smile. It made me see her again.

A Rufus cares about others

There are all kinds of people in this world. Some, well many, have their own issues, demons and problems. We must do what we can within our community. In the video below we have a man who is known in the community as having “problems”. He’s not a bad person. Just has issues.

Unlike the USA, he isn’t shunned and told to lie on cardboard under a bridge, or sleep in a car, or shelter under a tree in a poncho. The community all pitches in and takes care of “one of their own”. having this sense of community is important. You are never alone. You are part of something bigger than yourself.

Be the Rufus. Everything else is a waste of your life.

Great video.
Be the Rufus. Everything else is a waste of your life.

Conclusion

I do hope that you enjoyed the “Blue Plate Special” article / post. Tell me what you think. If you found it enjoyable, interesting or beneficial, I’ll post more of them. If you don’t then I will stop. If you don’t care, well then, I’ll add that to my calculus.

The future is becoming more and more clear with each passing day.  Continue to protect your personal life. Make sure that you run your affirmation prayers, and make sure that they protect you and your loved ones from any strange behaviors on the part of the out of control American empire.

There’s a future ahead. By being aware of what’s going on the the rest of the world we can determine what our part in that world will be.

Keep focused.

Be the Rufus.

Our relationships with others will make our affirmations manifest. Nurture them. Protect them. become a meaningful person in your small group of friends and family.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

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A breakdown of the report “alien interview” by MM from a MAJ perspective (part 3)

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and a lot of things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

This is part 3.

Document appears to be genuine

And I can tell you all that the more that I parse this document, the clearer it is (to me) that it is genuine.It is exactly what it says it is. And the extraterrestrial is actually telling the truth, so far.

Errors

However, there are errors in translation, and confusion in the interpretation of what is being stated. Anything concerning “time” and the translation of dates are all wrong.

Humans think of time as “shared” and “linear”.

The type-1 greys think of time as circular and repeating. As in, consciousness enters and exits different world lines” and if you graph that movement of consciousness you will see a “corkscrew” movement through the MWI. Which is what it was referring to. All of which was WAY beyond the concepts of anyone in Roswell at that time.

Therefore all dates and time, and anything associated with these characteristics are in error, and can be ignored.

This document predates MAJestic

Also take note that this document pre-dates MAJestic, and it is crystal clear to me now, that my role was, and still is, in the rehabilitation aspects of moving the Earth from a Hellish “Prison Planet” to that of a “sentience nursery”.

This document has (for me, personally) helped to clarify elements and aspects of my role that were “blurred” and obscured from me. To that I am eternally grateful.

Look at the dates on my articles, and look at what I covered. You will see that they match up nearly perfectly with this “Alien Interview” transcript. And this is the first time that I have ever heard of this document. The timing was transcendental.

This is part three of the parsing of this document

You can view part 1 HERE.

SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 26. 7. 1947, 1st Session

“The Domain Expeditionary Force has observed a resurgence in science and culture of the Western world since 1150 AD when the remaining remnants of the space fleet of the “Old Empire” in this solar system were destroyed.

No problem with this.

The influence of the remote control hypnosis operation diminished slightly after that time, but still remains largely in force.

By removing the local leadership, the impact on the "electromagnetic force projection field" wasn't really affected. It still remained in place as of 1948. Therefore, there must have been other systems, facilities, bases, and operations scattered in and around the Earth that were still functional.

Apparently a small amount of damage was done to the “Old Empire” remote mind control operation which resulted in a small decrease in the power of this mechanism.

This offered a clue as to the techniques and methodologies involved, but at the time of the interview little else was understood.

As a result, some memory of technologies that IS-BEs already knew before they came to Earth started to be remembered.

It appears to me that the methodology seemed to be stratified. And by taking out the leadership, a great deal of the suppression system disappeared.

Thereafter the oppression of knowledge that is called the “Dark Ages” in Europe began to diminish after that time.


Since then knowledge of the basic laws of physics and electricity have revolutionized Earth culture virtually overnight.

No problem with this.

The ability to remember technology by many of the geniuses in the IS-BE population of Earth was partially restored, when not so actively suppressed as it was before 1150 AD. Sir Isaac Newton, is one of the best examples of this. In only a few decades he single-handedly reinvented several major and fundamental scientific and mathematical disciplines.

The men who “remembered” these sciences already knew them before they were sent to Earth.

No problem with this.

Ordinarily, no one would ever observe or discover as much about science and mathematics in a single life-time, or even in a few hundred life-times. These subjects have taken civilizations billions and billions of years to create!

No problem with this. Genius level skills and abilities point to much deeper understandings and connections. Much the same way that I discuss world-line travel int he MWI. I did not "invent" it. It's knowledge that lies all around us, it's just that the suppression field keeps this knowledge from us.

IS-BEs on Earth have only just begun to remember small fragments of all the technologies that exist throughout the universe. Theoretically, if the amnesia mechanisms being used against Earth could be broken entirely, IS-BEs would regain all of their memory!

We can only hope! But it will take time, and it cannot happen too quickly, as the result would be catastrophic. So things need to be nurtured into place.

Unfortunately, similar advances have not been seen in the humanities as the IS-BEs of Earth continue to behave very badly toward each other.

I have no problem with this statement.

This behavior, however, is heavily influenced by the “hypnotic commands” given to each IS-BE between lifetimes.

I have no problem with this. The pre-birth world-line template is what he is talking about. Though in different terms, adjusted to the mindset of Roswell military leadership in 1948. Specifically, he is referring the the consciousness components that are established and associated with the pre-birth world-line template.

And, the very unusual combination of “inmates” on Earth – criminals, perverts, artists, revolutionaries and geniuses – is the cause of a very restive and tumultuous environment.

No problem with this.

The purpose of the prison planet is to keep IS-BEs on Earth, forever.

I have no problem with this.

Promoting ignorance, superstition, and war between IS-BEs helps to keep the prison population crippled and trapped behind “the wall” of electronic force screens.

I have no problem with this.

IS-BEs have been dumped on Earth from all over the galaxy, adjoining galaxies, and from planetary systems all over the “Old Empire”, like Sirius, Aldebaran, the Pleiades, Orion, Draconis, and countless others.

I am sure that he is referring to star names that the pitiful astronomic knowledge of the Roswell military leadership would recognize. In truth, most civilizations are around much cooler, older, and stable stars. Not the short lived, blazing, and highly transitory stars that he specifically named.

There are IS-BEs on Earth from unnamed races, civilizations, cultural backgrounds, and planetary environments. Each of the various IS-BE populations have their own languages, belief systems, moral values, religious beliefs, training and unknown and untold histories.

I have no problem with this.

These IS-BEs are mixed together with earlier inhabitants of Earth who came from another star system more than 400,000 years ago to establish the civilizations of Atlanta and Lemuria.

Do not get too caught up in the conventional narratives about "Atlantis" and "Lemuria". That is sure as Hell a route to send you all down into a black hole that you will have a difficult time extracting yourself from.

All evidence, all over the world, points to tool making humanoids around 400,000 years ago. This predates the normally accepted histories of the rise and evolution of man.

The sudden appearance of these humanoid civilizations at 400,000 BCE is clearly indicative of transplanted civilizations.

The size, magnitude and locations of their communities are (as of now) lost in time. Do not get too worked up about the details. Just realize the most basic history.

Those civilizations vanished beneath the tidal waves caused by a planetary “polar shift”, many thousands of years before the current “prison” population started to arrive.

Important points here. 

Humanoid colonies were established on the Earth. These eventually were destroyed or collapsed by natural events. 

Following that destruction was the rise of native proto-humans. 

It was during that period came the creation of the Earth as  "Prison Planet" as part of the "Old Empire".

Apparently, the IS-BEs from those star systems were the source of the original, oriental races of Earth, beginning in Australia.

The "oriental races", such as the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, and the Indians were all descended from the pre-deluge colonies.

On the other hand, the civilizations set up on Earth by the “Old Empire” prison system were very different from the civilization of the “Old Empire” itself.

I have no problem with this statement.

Which is an electronic space opera, atomic powered conglomeration of earlier civilizations that were conquered with nuclear weapons and colonized by IS-BEs from another galaxy.

The civilizations set up on Earth differed from the "Old Empire". They are "artificial" and retarded societies. 

This was intentional.

The idea (I am sure) was to create a place of perpetual hardship and torture. A place where everyone was constantly fighting, where starvation, and hardship was normal.

The Earth was set up to be a perpetual prison where the inmates were trapped to relive Hell over and over again.

The bureaucracy that controlled the former “Old Empire” was from an ancient space opera society, run by a totalitarian confederation of planetary governments, regulated by a brutal social, economic, and political hierarchy, with a royal monarch as its figurehead.

It appears to me that this is exactly the kinds of societies that have been setup throughout human history, with the most advanced and strongest manifestations being the current United States, and Western Europe.

Were I to be an administrator of the "Old Empire" that was in charge of this Earth "Prison Plant", and realized that "The Domain" has invaded and taken control, I would flee. But where to? It seems to me that the most likely location would be on Earth itself and to occupy the bodies of the ruling classes. There I could live a life as I have become accustomed to living.

This type of government emerges with regularity on planets where the citizens abandon personal responsibility for autonomous, self-regulation.

I have no problem with this statement.

They frequently lose their freedom to demented IS-BEs who suffer from an overwhelming paranoia that every other IS-BE is their enemy who must be controlled or destroyed.

I have no problem with this statement.

Their closest friends and allies, whom they espouse to love and cherish, are literally “loved to death” by them.

I have no problem with this statement.

Because such IS-BEs exist, The Domain has learned that freedom must be won and maintained through eternal vigilance and the ability to use defensive force to maintain it.

I have no problem with this statement. Additionally, I believe that the military leadership at Roswell, would have agreed with this comment as well.

As a result, The Domain has already conquered the governing planet of the “Old Empire”.

I was unaware about any of the information regarding the "Old Empire", but I do believe what is being stated.

The civilization of The Domain, although considerably younger and smaller in size, is already more powerful, better organized, and united by a egalitarian esprit de corps never known in the history of the “Old Empire”.

I have no problem with this, and I am sure that the Roswell military leadership would recognize this as well.

The recently despoiled German totalitarian state on Earth was similar to the “Old Empire”, but not nearly as brutal, and about ten thousand times less powerful.

This statement is directly directed to the Roswell military leadership.

Many of the IS-BEs on Earth are here because they are violently opposed to totalitarian government, or because they were so psychotically vicious that they could not be controlled by “Old Empire” government.

Which tends to be the case in most American prisons today.

Consequently, the population of Earth is disproportionately comprised of a very high percentage of such beings. The conflicting cultural and ethical moral codes of the IS-BEs on Earth is unusual in the extreme.

I have no problem with this statement.

The Domain conquest of the central “Old Empire” planets was fought with electronic cannon.

I think that many readers will not understand. They will probably think of some "new" type of weapon, or a weaponized ray gun based on Nikola Tesla technology. 

This is wrong. 

What he is actually talking about is a weapon that disrupts the consciousness+ in much the same way that the "electromagnetic force screen" disrupted the lives of the consciousnesses on Earth. This type of weapon would be very powerful against consciousness, but do little damage to physical structures.

The citizens of the planets forming the core of government for the “Old Empire” are a filthy, degraded, slave society of mindless, tax-paying workers, who practice cannibalism. Violent automotive race tracks and bloody, Roman circus type entertainments are their only amusements.

Pretty much sounds like America today.

America today.

Regardless of any reasonable justification we may have had for using atomic weapons to vanquish the planets of the “Old Empire”, The Domain is careful not to ruin the resources of those planets by using weapons of crude, radioactive force.

The Domain did not use massive weapons like we would associate with war. 

They used disruptive electromagnetically designed beam weapons that upset the consciousness stability in the physical realms.

The current U.S. civilization is beginning to mimic some of the trappings of that civilization, especially in the design of airplanes, automobiles, ships, trains, and telephones. Likewise, buildings in the cities of Earth are thought to be “modern” or “futuristic” if their design resembles the architecture of the “Old Empire”.

Yes. I believe this. And this statement was made in 1947.

The government of the “Old Empire”, before being supplanted by The Domain, was comprised of beings who possessed a very craven intelligence, very much like the Axis powers during your recent world war. Those beings manifested precisely the same behavior as the galactic government that exiled them to eternal imprisonment on Earth.

A bit confused wording. 

The ruling class of the "Old Empire" very much resembled Nazi Germany. 

And the Nazi Germans exhibited the same behaviors that the leadership of the "Old Empire" maintained. 

I can see this information resonating with the Roswell generals and leadership in 1947.

They were a gruesome reminder of the ageless maxim that an IS-BE will often manifest the treatment they have received from others. Kindness fosters kindness. Cruelty begets cruelty.

No problem with this.

One must be able and willing to use force, tempered with intelligence, to prevent harm to the innocent.

No problem with this.

However, extraordinary understanding, self-discipline and courage are required to effectively prevent brutality, without being overwhelmed by the malice that motivated the brutality.

It takes a special kind of sentience to rise above the brutality that you suffered through. Not necessarily to find and giver forgiveness, but to prevent it from ever happening again.

Only a demonic, self-serving government would employ a “logic” or “science” to conceive that an “ultimate solution” to any problem is to murder and permanently erase the memory of every artist, genius, skilled manager, and inventor, and cast them into a planetary prison together with political opponents, killers, thieves, perverts, and disabled beings of an entire galaxy!

"Tell me about it."

Oh how well I know this! If you have any doubts about my experience on this, read about how I was "retired" from MAJestic.

Once the IS-BEs expelled from the “Old Empire” arrived on Earth, they were given amnesia, and hypnotically tricked into thinking that something else had happened to them.

It discusses the process. I have no problem with this.

The next step was to implant the IS-BEs into biological bodies on Earth. The bodies became the human populations of “false civilizations” which were designed and installed in the minds of IS-BEs to look completely unlike the “Old Empire”.

I have no problem with this. It's a logical extension.

All of the IS-BEs of India, Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Medieval Europe were guided to pattern and build the cultural elements of these societies based on standard patterns developed by the IS-BEs of many earlier, similar civilizations on “Sun Type 12, Class 7” planets that have existed for trillions of years throughout the universe.

I have no problems with this. The civilization archetypes are quite standard.

In the earliest times the IS-BEs sent to prison Earth lived in India.

When Earth was used as a "Prison Planet", the very first convicts were sent to ancient India. At that time, my guess is that this was the most populated, or densely populated area on the Earth. Certainly not like it is today, but more populated than say Africa, or Europe.

They gradually spread into Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, Achaea, Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, and to the New World.

It stated that the migration and expansion of the prison population moved Westward not East. Eventually moving into the  Mediterranean Sea, and associated civilizations there. Into Europe, and then into the Americas.

They did not move into the East, as these areas had descendants of prior civilizations (Atlantis and Lemuria) which maintained the Asian genetic code.

They were hypnotically “commanded” to follow the pattern of a given civilization by the “Old Empire” prison operators.

This would be pre-structuring, or "front-loading" the pre-birth world-line template by consciousness component attributes.

This is an effective mechanism to disguise the actual time and location from the IS-BEs imprisoned on Earth. The languages, costumes and culture of each false civilization are intended to reinforce amnesia because they do not remind the IS-BEs on Earth of the original “Old Empire” planets from which they were deported.

This make sense. You remove anything that might trigger a memory. You make everything, new, different and contentious.

On the very far back-track of time these types of civilizations tended to repeat themselves over and over because the IS-BEs who created them become familiar with certain patterns and styles, and stayed with them.

I have no problem with this.

It is a lot of work to invent an entire civilization, complete with culture, architecture, language, customs, mathematics, moral values, and so forth. It is much easier to replicate a copy based on a familiar and successful pattern.

I have no problem with this.

A “Sun Type 12, Class 7” planet is the designation given to a planet inhabited by carbon-oxygen based life forms.

This is in 1947. Long, long before the television series "Star Trek". No one ever thought like this back then. Not even in the wildest dreams of the scientists of the day, no one ever thought like this.

The class of the planet is based on the size and radiation intensity of the star, the distance of the planetary orbit from the star, and the size, density, gravity, and chemical composition of the planet. Likewise, flora and fauna are designated and identified according to the star type and class of planet they inhabit.

I have no problem with this.

On the average, the percentage of planets in the physical universe with a breathable atmosphere is relatively small.

I have no problem with this. While life abounds in the universe, the idea that there are lifeforms identical to what we have on the Earth isn't as common as we would hope for.

Most planets do not have an atmosphere upon which life-forms “feed”, as on Earth, where the chemical composition of the atmosphere provides nutrition to plants, and other organisms, which in turn support other life forms.

I have no problem with this. 

Though, when it was addressing the Roswell leadership it was speaking in terms that they could understand, such as human-like creatures and intelligence's. Today, we would widen up the scope a bit, and include all types of microbes and other bacterial forms.

When the Domain Force brought the Vedic Hymns to the Himalayas region 8,200 years ago, some human societies already existed. The Aryan people invaded and conquered India, bringing the Vedic Hymns to the area.

What was discussed by the Type-1 extraterrestrial in 1947 is common knowledge today.

Population migration out of India.

The Vedas were learned by them, memorized and carried forward verbally for 7,000 years before being committed to written form.

During that span of time one of the officers of The Domain Expeditionary Force was incarnated on Earth as “Vishnu”. He is described many times in the Rig-Veda. He is still considered to be a god by the Hindus.

Vishnu fought in the religious wars against the “Old Empire” forces. He is a very able and aggressive IS-BE as well as a highly effective officer, who has since been reassigned to other duties in The Domain.

This Domain officer inhabited a human body and was involved in the teaching and changing the conditions of the human civilization at that time. It was never erased, and never sentenced to the "Prison Planet" and is now performing other duties within the Domain.

This entire episode was orchestrated as an attack and revolt against the Egyptian pantheon installed by “Old Empire” administrators.

The type-1 greys planned and orchestrated this and other series of battles and Geo-political posturings to help break the grip of the "electro-magnetic force screen" that had so completely incarcerated them.

The conflict was intended to help free humankind from implanted elements of the false civilization that focused attention on many “gods” and superstitious ritual worship demanded by the priests who “managed” them. It is all part of the mental manipulation by the “Old Empire” to hide their criminal actions against the IS-BEs on Earth.

I have no problem with this.

A priesthood, or prison guards, were used to help reinforce the idea that an individual, is only a biological body, and is not an Immortal Spiritual Being. The individual has no identity. The individuals have no past lives. The individual has no power. Only the gods have power. And, the gods are a contrivance of the priests who intercede between men and the gods they serve.

It's a power control mechanism,. I have no problem with this.

Men are slaves to the dictates of the priests who threaten eternal spiritual punishment if men do not obey them.

I have no problem with this. This is a theme that has been repeated over, and over, and over again. From the Americas, to Europe, to Egypt, to Rome, to today inside of America, and televangelists.

What else would one expect on a prison planet where all prisoners have amnesia, and the priests themselves are prisoners?

I have no problem with this.

The intervention of The Domain Force on Earth has not been entirely successful due to the secret mind-control operation of the “Old Empire” that still continues to operate.

As of 1947, the Dominion has not been all that successful erasing the programming and changing the destructive paths that mankind was set upon.

A battle was waged between the “Old Empire” forces and The Domain through religious conquest.

The attempts to change the planetary system began around 8,000 BCE, and wasn't really all that successful.

Between 1500 BCE and about 1200 BCE, The Domain Forces attempted to teach the concept of an individual, Immortal Spiritual Being to several influential beings on Earth.

A new avenue, or methodology was attempted during a 300 year span of time. It started around 1500 BCE.

One such instance resulted in a very tragic misunderstanding, misinterpretation and misapplication of the concept. The idea was perverted and applied to mean that there is only one IS-BE, instead of the truth that everyone is an IS-BE! Obviously, this was a gross incomprehension and an utter unwillingness to take responsibility for one’s own power.

What a fiasco!

The “Old Empire” priests managed to corrupt the concept of individual immortality into the idea that there is only one, all-powerful IS-BE, and that no one else is or is allowed to be an IS-BE. Obviously, this is the work of the “Old Empire” amnesia operation.

I have no problem with this statement.

It is easy to teach this altered notion to beings who do not want to be responsible for their own lives. Slaves are such beings. As long as one chooses to assign responsibility for creation, existence and personal accountability for one’s own thoughts and actions to others, one is a slave.

Which is a major issue going on inside the United States today.

As a result, the concept of a single monotheistic “god” resulted and was promoted by many self-proclaimed prophets, such as the Jewish slave leaderMoses -who grew up in the household of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, as well as his son Tutankhamen.

I am not well versed in the lineages of Ancient Egypt. However, I can see how this could take place.

The attempt to teach certain beings on Earth the truth that they are, themselves, IS-BEs, was part of a plan to overthrow the fictional, metaphorical, anthropomorphic panoply of gods created by the “Old Empire” mystery cult called “The Brothers of The Serpent” known in Egypt as the Priests of Amun.

News to me, but I can see it happening.

They were a very ancient, secret society within the “Old Empire”.

I have no problem with this statement.

The Pharaoh Akhenaten was not a very intelligent being, and was heavily influenced by his personal ambition for self-glorification. He altered the concept of the individual spiritual being and embodied the concept in the sun god, Aten. His pitiful existence was soon ended. He was assassinated by Maya and Parennefer, two of the Priests of Amun, or “Amen”, which the Christians still say, who represented the interests of the “Old Empire” forces.

I am not well versed in Ancient Egyptian history, but this does make sense and could very well have happened.

The idea of “One God” was perpetuated by the Hebrew leader Moses while he was in Egypt. He left Egypt with his adopted people, the Jewish slaves. While they were crossing the desert, Moses was intercepted by an operative of the “Old Empire” near Mt. Sinai. Moses was tricked into believing that this operative was “the” One God through the use of hypnotic commands, as well as technical and aesthetic tricks which are commonly used by the “Old Empire” to trap IS-BEs.

I have no problem with this statement.

Thereafter, the Jewish slaves, who trusted the word of Moses implicitly, have worshiped a single god they call “Yaweh“.

I have no problem with this statement.

The name “Yaweh” means “anonymous”, as the IS-BE who “worked with” Moses could not use an actual name or anything that would identify himself, or blow the cover of the amnesia/prison operation. The last thing the covert amnesia/hypnosis/prison system wants to do is to reveal themselves openly to the IS-BEs on Earth. They feel that this would restore the inmates memories!

I have no problem with this statement.

This is the reason that all traces of physical encounters between operatives of space civilizations and humans is very carefully hidden, disguised, covered-up, denied or misdirected.

I have no problem with this statement.

This “Old Empire” operative contacted Moses on a desert mountain top and delivered the “Ten Hypnotic Commands” to him. These commands are very forcefully worded, and compel an IS-BE into utter subservience to the will of the operator. These hypnotic commands are still in effect and influence the thought patterns of millions of IS-BEs thousands of years later!

So, and if you read this exactly as written. It states that any of the ten commandments trigger hypnotic commands. And thus are used by the "Old Empire" to influence the will of the people who thus believe them. Petty powerful, and yes, even dangerous stuff. 

Is it true or not? I do not know.

Incidentally, we later discovered that the so-called “Yaweh” also wrote, programmed and encoded the text of the Torah, which when it is read literally, or in its decoded, form, will provide a great deal more false information to those who read it.

The type-1 extraterrestrial is saying that all of the major religions at that time spouted writings which were trigger hypnotic commands, and thus influenced all the people who read or listened to them.

Ultimately, the Vedic Hymns became the source of nearly all of Eastern the religions and were the philosophical source of the ideas common to Buddha, Laozi, Zoroaster , and other philosophers.

So it spread throughout the world...

The civilizing influences of these philosophies eventually replaced the brutal idolatry of the “Old Empire” religions and were the true genesis of kindness and compassion.

You asked me earlier why The Domain, and other space civilizations do not land on Earth or make their presence known. Land on Earth? Do you think we are crazy or want to be crazy?

Obviously, it knew very well how to respond to the questions poised by the Roswell military leadership.

It takes a very brave IS-BE to come down through the atmosphere and land on Earth, because this is a prison planet, with a very uncontrolled, psychotic population.

Well stated, and factually correct.

And, no IS-BE is entirely proof against the risk of entrapment, as with the members of The Domain Expeditionary Force who were captured in the Himalayas 8,200 years ago.

As powerful as the type-1 greys of the Dominion are, they can be hurt and harmed. And they need to be very cautious when they are in dangerous situations and dangerous people.

No one knows what IS-BEs on Earth are going to do.

I think that is is a very accurate statement.

We are not scheduled to invest the resources of The Domain to take total control of all the space surrounding the area at this time.

This should be well understood.

This will occur in the not-to-distant future – about 5,000 Earth years – according to the time schedule of The Domain.

I believe that this time-line has sped up substantially with the formation of MAJestic, and with people such as MM, and Sebastian providing "boots on the ground" and performing various "anchoring" activities.

At this time we do not prevent transports from other planetary systems or galaxies from continuing to drop IS-BEs into the amnesia force screen area.

A couple of points here.

[1] In 1947, the Domain did not prevent interstellar "drop offs". I do know that that policy changed when I was active in MAJestic.

[2] The "amnesia force screen area" is a specific region. It is not infinite. It has geographic boundaries, and limits.

Eventually, this will change.

In addition, Earth, inherently, is a highly unstable planet. It is not suitable for settlement or permanent habitation for any sustainable civilization. This is part of the reason why it is being used as a prison planet.

This is a serious point that no one, in any analysis that I have read really understands. Contrary to the other statements about O, B and A stars, (Those were proximity locations for civilization anchors, not the homes of specific species themselves) most civilizations prefer the cooler, longer life, K, M and drown dwarfs for civilization stability.

The next point(s) are all very important and you all should read them, and pay attention to them.

No one else would seriously consider living here for a variety of simple and compelling reasons:

  • The continental land masses of Earth are floating on a sea of molten lava beneath the surface which causes the land masses to crack, crumble and drift continually.
  • Because of the liquid nature of the core, the planet is largely volcanic and subject to earthquakes and volcanic explosions.
  • The magnetic poles of the planet shift radically about once every 20, 000 years.  This causes a greater or lesser degree of devastation as a result of tidal waves, and climatic changes.
This was written long before "Worlds in Collision".
  • Earth is very distant from the center of the galaxy and from any other significant galactic civilization. This isolation makes it unsuitable for use, except as a “pit stop” or jumping off point along the way between galaxies. The moon and asteroids are far more suitable for this purpose because they do not have any significant gravity.
Our solar system is in a relatively "rural area" in our galaxy. Though, the center of our galaxy is rather dangerous for us humans, it isn't for other species that have adapted to that environment.
  • Earth is a heavy gravity planet, with heavy metallic soil and a dense atmosphere. This makes it treacherous for navigational purposes. That fact that I am in this room, as the result of an in flight accident, in spite of the technology of my craft and my extensive expertise as a pilot, are proof of these facts.
  • There are approximately sixty billion Earth-like (Sun Type 12, Class 7) planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, not to mention the vast expanses of The Domain, and the territories we will claim in the future. It is difficult to stretch our resources to do much more than a periodic reconnaissance of Earth. Especially when there are no immediate advantages to invest resources here.
  • On Earth most beings are not aware that they are IS-BEs, or that there are spirits of any kind. Many other beings are aware of this, but nearly everyone has a very limited understanding of themselves as an IS-BE.

One of the reasons for this is that IS-BEs have been waging war against each other since the beginning of time.

I have no problem with this.

The purpose of these wars have always been to establish domination by one IS-BE or group of IS-BEs over another. Since an IS-BE cannot be “killed”, the objective has been to capture and immobilize IS-BEs. This has been done in an nearly unlimited variety of ways. The most basic method to capture and immobilize an IS-BE is through the use of various kinds of “traps”.

I prefer the use of the term "snare" instead. But I am sure that the point was made in the communication narrative.

IS-BE traps have been made and put in place by many invading societies, such as the one that established the “Old Empire”, beginning about sixty-four trillion years ago.

Again, ignore the dates and time. They are wholly messed up and incomprehensible to the translator and the Roswell military leadership audience.

Traps are often set up in the “territory” of the IS-BEs being attacked. Usually a trap is set with the electronic wave of “beauty” to attract the interest and attention of the IS-BE. When the IS-BE moves toward the source of the aesthetic wave, such as a beautiful building or beautiful music, the trap is activated by the energy put out by the IS-BE.

A trap or snare of beauty, or attractiveness. Yikes!

One of the most common trap mechanism uses the IS-BE’s own thought energy output when the IS-BE tries to attack or fight back against the trap. The trap is activated and energized by the IS-BE’s own thought energy. The harder the IS-BE fights against the trap, the more it pulls the IBS toward it and keeps them “stuck” in the trap.

It's like trying to stop smoking, by just smoking the last pack instead of throwing it away.

Throughout the entire history of this physical universe, vast areas of space have been taken over and colonized by IS-BE societies who invade and take over new areas of space in this fashion.

Not just the "Old Empire", but many others. The universe has a history of consciousness dominance.

In the past, these invasions have always shared common elements:

  • the overwhelming use of force of arms, usually with nuclear or electronic weapons.
  • mind control of the IS-BEs in the invaded area through the use of electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, erasure of memory and the implantation of false memory or false information intended to subjugate and enslave the local IS-BE population.
  • take over of natural resources by the invading IS-BEs.
  • political, economic and social slavery of the local population.

These activities continue in present time.

I have no problem with these statements.

All of the IS-BEs on Earth have been members of one or more of these activities in the past, both as an invader, or as part of the population being invaded. There are no “saints” in this universe. Very few have avoided or been exempted from warfare between IS-BEs.

I have no problem with these statements.

IS-BEs on Earth are still the victims of this activity at this very moment. The between-lives amnesia administered to IS-BEs is one on the mechanisms of an elaborate system of “Old Empire” IS-BE traps, that prevent an IS-BE from escaping.

I have no problem with these statements.

This operation is managed by an illicit, renegade secret police force of the “Old Empire”, using false provocation operations to disguise their activities in order to prevent detection by their own government, The Domain and by the victims of their activities.

All this is news to me, but it does explain the fear and concern that the Type-1 grey has when dealing with humans. I can tell you that things have improved significantly once MAJestic became involved. And movement with the type-1 greys and other species proceeded unhindered and unmolested.

They are mind-control methods developed by government psychiatrists.

Of course. I have no problem with this statement.

Earth is a “ghetto” planet. It is the result of an intergalactic “Holocaust”.

This is news to me, but I can see it happening by a very big, very corrupt and very powerful "Old Empire".

IS-BEs have been sentenced to Earth either because:

  • They are too viciously insane or perverse to function as part of any civilization, no matter how degraded or corrupt.
  • Or, they are a revolutionary threat to the social, economic and political caste system that has been so carefully built and brutally enforced in the “Old Empire”. Biological bodies are specifically designed and designated as the lowest order of entity in the “Old Empire” caste system. When an IS-BE is sent to Earth, and then tricked or coerced into operating in a biological body, they are actually in a prison, inside a prison.
  • In an effort to permanently and irreversibly rid the “Old Empire” of such “untouchables”, the eternal identity, memory, and abilities of every IS-BE is forcefully erased. This “final solution”  was conceived and carried out by the psychopathic criminals who are controlled by the “Old Empire”.
I have no problem with these statements.

The mass extermination of “untouchables” and prison camps created by Germany during World War II were recently revealed. Likewise, the IS-BEs of Earth are the victims of spiritual eradication and eternal slavery inside frail, biological bodies, inspired by the same kind of craven hatred in the “Old Empire”.

I have no problem with these statements.

The kind and creative inmates of Earth are continuously tortured by butchers and lunatics who are controlled by the “Old Empire” prison operators. The so-called “civilizations” of Earth, from the age of useless pyramids to the age of nuclear holocaust, have been a colossal waste of natural resources, a perverted use of intelligence, and an overt oppression of the spiritual essence of every single IS-BE on the planet.

I have no problem with these statements.

If The Domain sent ships to every corner of the universe in search of “Hell”, their quest could end on Earth. What greater brutality can be inflicted on anyone than to erase the spiritual awareness, identity, ability, and memory that is the essence of oneself?

I have no problem with these statements.

The Domain has, as yet, been unable to rescue the 3,000 IS-BEs of the Expeditionary Force Battalion either. They are forced to inhabit biological bodies on Earth. We have been able to recognize and track most of them for the past 8,000 years. However, our attempts to communicate with them are usually futile, as they are unable to remember their true identity.

I have no problem with these statements. However, I do know that there is a program with "abductees" who are taken to type-1 grey facilities and undergo biological monitoring, cleansing techniques, and other procedures designed to rehabilitate them.

MAJestic members (such as myself) participate in various ways. Sometimes assisting, sometimes providing <redacted> and sometimes being part of the procedure ourselves.

I myself have taken part in these rehabilitation procedures, and I even wrote up about one. I think I wrote about it last year or so.

Wouldn't it truly be something if I was one of the lost legion!

Anyways, all this stuff about "abductions" are misinterpretations of important efforts made to take care of the consciousnesses+ that inhabit this Earth wide region.

The majority of lost members of The Domain force have followed the general progression of Western civilization from India, into the Middle East, then to Chaldea, and Babylon, into Egypt, through Achaia, Greece, Rome, into Europe, to the Western Hemisphere, and then all around the world.

I can tell you that all MAJestic members must be of service-to-others sentience, and that is the sentience that all of the Type-1 greys that I have encountered possessed. I cannot help but to believe that any members of the lost members of the Domain would also possess this sentience.

The members of the lost Battalion and many other IS-BEs on Earth, could be valuable citizens of The Domain, not including those who are vicious criminals or perverts. Unfortunately, there has been no workable method conceived to emancipate the IS-BEs from Earth.

As of 1947. I believe that this situation has changed somewhat. I can tell you that <redacted>.

Therefore, as a matter of common logic, as well as the official policy of The Domain, it is safer and more sensible to avoid contact with the IS-BE population of Earth until such time as the proper resources can be allocated to locate and destroy the “Old Empire” force screen and amnesia machinery and develop a therapy to restore the memory of an IS-BE.”

I agree with this, and I personally believe that this situation changed one year later when MAJestic was formed. And that substantial strides and changes were made and implemented throughout the 1980's and 1990's up until my retirement as well as the mass retirement of everyone within my cluster of cells.

End of part 3

Sure, there are miss-translations on time, confusions in regard to galaxies and universes, and a mish-mash of confusion between consciousness+, humans, and some confusion regarding galactic “ownership” and “power projection” between different species, however this is the real deal. It fits in perfectly with everything that I know about MAJestic.

The more I parse it in detail, the clearer to me that this is exactly what it is claimed to be.

I will admit that I was unaware of the “Old Empire”, and the role that the Earth had as a “prison planet” for it. I am also unaware of the details regarding it.

But as I compare what I know, and what I have experienced with what I have parsed, I have been able to “open doors” so to speak, and suddenly mysteries that I have been part of have now been explained. I can tell you that this document has really been a real benefit to me personally. I have seen and read many, many, MANY faked bullshit nonsense on the internet. But folks, this is the real deal. It has been able to unlock some things that only I know, and open them and suddenly all sorts of puzzle pieces that I have participated in, like <redacted> and the time that <redacted> with the particular <redacted> explains the ancient <redacted> and the especial oddity that I encountered when dealing with the Oxia Palus <redacted>.

I well remember an event that I had regarding a world-line slide, and it really was a mystery to me. Most of the time, I would just brush them off as just odd things that I had to endure, but on one occasion it seemed to me that they all fit together, and when <redacted> which brought me to the understanding of the anchoring process for world-line groupings, and at this time the <redacted> along with a type-1 grey were involved in <redacted> and it clearly showed to me that there MUST have been a previous or prior Empire or federation” of some sort, or of some type that were involved in <redacted> to such an extent. All requiring some kind of “work around” to accomplish specific goals and changes. Now I know.

The solution to the reversal of the amnesia was tied to the “world-line” anchoring that I have been so painfully involved in these last three decades. And with that, and the understanding that the <redacted> of the various attributes <redacted> fit in the consciousness <redacted> collaboration <redacted> reconfiguration by region, time, and <redacted>.

I just cannot express myself in any way that you can understand. Guys! This is the missing cypher.

Please do NOT read the document without reading my parsing. I think my parsing will help you all move foreword with this.

Key Points

Never the less, I believe the following to be true in regards to this parsing of this section of the book…

  • Everything here is true.
  • Earth is no longer a “prison planet”
  • Earth is now a “sentience nursery”.
  • Fear not an “abduction”. It’s actually a good thing. Not a bad thing.
  • Type-1 greys of “the Domain” are service-for-others sentience.
  • MAJestic is changing everything, hand in hand with the Type-1 greys.

Part four

You can visit part four HERE.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

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Articles & Links

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A breakdown of the report “alien interview” by MM from a MAJ perspective (part 2)

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and a lot of things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

This is part 2.

You can view part 1 HERE.

SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 25. 7. 1947, 1st Session

“Before you can understand the subject of history, you must first understand the subject of time. Time is simply an arbitrary measurement of the motion of objects through space.

No problem with this.

Space is not linear. Space is determined by the point of view of an IS-BE when viewing a object. The distance between an IS-BE and the object being viewed is called “space”.

No problem with this.

Objects, or energy masses, in space do not necessarily move in a linear fashion. In this universe, objects tend to move randomly or in a curving or cyclical pattern, or as determined by agreed upon rules.

No problem with this.

History is not only a linear record of events, as many authors of Earth history books imply, because it is not a string that can be stretched out and marked like a measuring tool. History is a subjective observation of the movement of objects through space, recorded from the point of view of a survivor, rather than of those who succumbed.

No problem with this.

Events occur interactively and concurrently, just as the biological body has a heart that pumps blood, while the lungs provide oxygen to the cells, which reproduce, using energy from the sun and chemicals from plants, at the same time as the liver strains toxic wastes from the blood, and eliminates them through the bladder and the bowels.

All of these interactions are concurrent and simultaneous. Although time runs consecutively, events do not happen in an independent, linear stream. In order to view and understand the history or reality of the past, one must view all events as part of an interactive whole. Time can also be sensed as a vibration which is uniform throughout the entire physical universe.

No problem with this.

Airl explained that IS-BEs have been around since before the beginning of the universe. The reason they are called “immortal”, is because a “spirit” is not born and cannot die, but exists in a personally postulated perception of “is – will be”. She was careful to explain that every spirit is not the same. Each is completely unique in identity, power, awareness and ability.

No problem with this.

The difference between an IS-BE like Airl and most of the IS-BEs inhabiting bodies on Earth, is that Airl can enter and depart from her “doll” at will. She can perceive at selective depths through matter. Airl and other officers of The Domain can communicate telepathically. Since an IS-BE is not a physical universe entity it has no location in space or time. An IS-BE is literally, “immaterial”.

No problem with this.

They can span great distances of space instantly.

No problem with this.

They can experience sensations, more intensely than a biological body, without the use of physical sensory mechanisms. An IS-BE can exclude pain from their perception. Airl can also remember her “identity”, so to speak, all the way back into the dim mists of time, for trillions of years!

No problem with this.

She says that the existing collection of suns in this immediate vicinity of the universe have been burning for the last 200 trillion years. The age of the physical universe is nearly infinitely old, but probably at least four quadrillion years since its earliest beginnings.

Not true. 

You can calculate the age of a star based upon how long it takes to burn. A star is like this big tureen of fuel, that is on fire. The fire will burn and burn until all the fuel is gone. There is a relationship between the mass of the star, the size of the star, and it's longevity. 

The oldest stars in our Milky Way galaxy are 13.4 billion years, give or take 800 million years. This is somewhat close to what the age of the Universe is (which hovers around 13.7 billion years).

Personally, I believe that this paragraph is an error in understanding by the translator.

All the statements leading up to this point discussed consciousness+. And then suddenly "out of the blue" comes this discussion about physical stars. It is totally and completely out of place, and out of context to the thought stream. Thus, I believe that the translator miss-translated it.

My best guess is that the extraterrestrial was trying to continue on this statement...

"Airl can also remember her "identity", so to speak, all the way back into the dim mists of time, for trillions of years!"

In which case the proper translation should have been...

"She says that the existing collection of consciousness+ in this (particular) immediate vicinity of the universe have been in existence for the last 200 trillion years."

It far out-dates the physical universe. Which is something that I agree with.

Time is a difficult factor to measure as it depends on the subjective memory of IS-BEs and there has been no uniform record of events throughout the physical universe since it began.

No problem with this.

As on Earth, there are many different time measurement systems, defined by various cultures, which use cycles of motion, and points of origin to establish age and duration.

No problem with this.

The physical universe itself is formed from the convergence and amalgamation of many other individual universes, each one of which were created by an IS-BE or group of IS-BEs.

No problem with this. A universe is created as a tool by a consciousness, or a group of consciousnesses.

The collision of these illusory universes commingled and coalesced and were solidified to form a mutually created universe.

No problem with this.

Because it is agreed that energy and forms can be created, but not destroyed, this creative process has continued to form an ever-expanding universe of nearly infinite physical proportions.

No problem with this.

Before the formation of the physical universe there was a vast period during which universes were not solid, but wholly illusionary. You might say that the universe was a universe of magical illusions which were made to appear and vanish at the will of the magician.

No problem with this. There was a point in time where the only thing that existed was thoughts and consciousnesses. Then over time, the consciousnesses began to construct physical realities as tools to obtain experiences within, and thus further their individual growth.

In every case, the “magician” was one or more IS-BEs. Many IS-BEs on Earth can still recall vague images from that period. Tales of magic, sorcery and enchantment, fairy tales and mythology speak of such things, although in very crude terms.

No problem with this.

Each IS-BE entered into the physical universe when they lost their own, “home” universe. That is, when an IS-BE’s “home” universe was overwhelmed by the physical universe, or when the IS-BE joined with other IS-BEs to create or conquer the physical universe.

This understanding differs from mine. But only slightly. I was always under the impression that a physical universe (bubble) was a stable and constant thing. This extraterrestrial says that once the consciousness+ leaves that physical universe that it ceases to exist.

As I see it, a "soul" anchors itself in the original physical universe, then creates a consciousness+ that migrates from that universe to another one to obtain experiences in. Since the consciousness+ and the soul are still connected by quantum entanglement, both physical universes exist simultaneously.

On Earth, the ability to determine when an IS-BE entered the physical universe is difficult for two reasons:

  1. the memory of IS-BEs on Earth have been erased, and
  2. IS-BEs arrival or invasion into the physical universe took place at different times, some 60 trillion years ago, and others only 3 trillion. Every once in a short while, a few million years, an area or planet will be taken over by another group of IS-BEs entering into the area.
At this point, the extraterrestrial is discussing the injection of consciousness+ into the bodies of creatures in the Earth sphere of influence.

What we can gather from this discussion is that...

[1] Entry point for consciousness+ injection into physical bodies in and around the Earth is difficult to determine both geographically, and by date and time.

[2] Consciousness+ injections in this region came in waves from different points and from different locations in geographical location and in time.

Sometimes they will capture other IS-BEs as slaves. They will be forced to inhabit bodies to perform menial, or manual work – especially mining mineral ores on heavy-gravity planets, such as Earth.

No problem with this. I work about this is a similar vein regarding "farming sentience's".

Airl says that she has been a member of The Domain Expeditionary Force for more than 625 million years, when she became a pilot for a biological survey mission which included occasional visits to Earth. She can remember her entire career there, and for a very long time before that.

No problem with this. For a non-corporal being the enormous spans of time involved are given and expected.

She told me that Earth scientists do not have an accurate measuring system to gauge the age of matter. They assume that because certain types of materials seem to deteriorate rather quickly, such as organic or carbon-based matter, that there is a deterioration of matter. It is not accurate to measure the age of stone, based on the measurement of the age of wood or bone.

No problem with this. In all of this, I see a fundamental difference in dating things from the point of view of a non-corporal entity, and that of cycling biological creatures.

This is a fundamental error. Factually, matter does not deteriorate. It cannot be destroyed. Matter may be altered in form, but it is never truly destroyed.

No problem with this. Einstein E=mc2.

The Domain has conducted a periodic survey of the galaxies in this sector of the universe since it developed space travel technologies about 80 trillion years ago.

Actually it should be written as: 

"The Domain has conducted periodic surveys of this sector of the universe. It has done so ever since it first developed space travel technologies."

A review of changes in the complexion of Earth reveal that mountain ranges rise and fall, continents change location, the poles of the planet shift, ice caps come and go, oceans appear and disappear, rivers, valleys and canyons change. In all cases, the matter is the same. It is always the same sand.

Every form and substance is made of the same basic material, which never deteriorates.

I have no problem with this.

“Airl described the abilities of an IS-BE officer of The Domain to me, and she demonstrated one to me when she contacted – telepathically – a communications officer of The Domain who is stationed in the asteroid belt.

No problem.

The asteroid belt is composed of thousands of broken up pieces of a planet that once existed between Mars and Jupiter. It serves as a good low-gravity jumping off point for incoming space craft traveling toward the center of our galaxy.

No problem. Sure the asteroid belt is a region of the "frost line" in our solar system, and rocky planets are not stable there. They tend to break up.

She requested that this officer consult information stored in the “files” of The Domain, concerning the history of Earth. She asked the communications officer to “feed” this information to Airl. The communications officer immediately complied with the request. Based on the information stored in the files of The Domain, Airl was able to give me a brief overview or “history lesson”.

No problem with this.

This is what Airl told me that The Domain had observed about the history of Earth:

She told me that The Domain Expeditionary Force first entered into the Milky Way galaxy very recently – only about 10,000 years ago.

This does not match my understanding. 

As I understand things, the type-1 greys have been around for much longer than that. And as far as Earth goes, they have been around for at least 30,000 years.

From the human point of view, there has been observations and contacts with space vehicles, and their crews for all of human history. Whether or not they are Type-1 greys, members of the "Old Empire", or something else is unknown.

Their first action was to conquer the home planets of the “Old Empire” (this is not the official name, but a nick-name given to the conquered civilization by The Domain Forces) that served as the seat of central government for this galaxy, and other adjoining regions of space.

As I interpret this, the extraterrestrial is saying that they are from outside of the Milky Way Galaxy. When they entered our galaxy, the first thing that they needed to do was conquer the ruling "federation" or national communities on this side of the galaxy first.  That this "federation" was the seat of the central government of our galaxy, and nearby regions of space.

This idea of conquering a region of space, and becoming the ruler of that area is something that the military leadership in Roswell New Mexico would well understand. After all, they just finished a long war with the Nazi Germans and the Japanese.

Yet, it makes no sense.

These extraterrestrials are non-corporal creatures. They exist as waves and inhabit manufactured bodies as they desire. They do not need to "claim" any geographic region for any purpose.

My "gut instinct" is that there is a very complicated and complex relationship of governance between different species, and the physical and non-physical realms. Whether this results in "space opera" type galactic battles or not is hard to say, but my guess, unlikely. 

At least "unlikely" as described by this entity in how it was depicted to the Roswell military leadership. 

I suspect other situations, truths and considerations were in play. And this entire detailed bit of narrative was just simply to evoke specific reactions from the military leadership.

To me, it appears that the extraterrestrial wanted to make some strong points apparent to the Roswell Military members...

[1] It is an officer of a large and powerful military empire.
[2] This military empire is so powerful that it completely broke and took over the massive galactic empire that ruled this section of space.

These planets are located in the stars systems in the tail of the Big Dipper constellation. She did not mention which stars, exactly.

"Within Ursa Major the stars of the Big Dipper have Bayer designations in consecutive Greek alphabetical order from the bowl to the handle.
Proper
Name
Bayer
Designation
Apparent
Magnitude
Distance
(L Yrs)
  Dubhe     α UMa       1.8    124
  Merak     β UMa       2.4      79
  Phecda     γ UMa       2.4      84
  Megrez     δ UMa       3.3      81
  Alioth     ε UMa       1.8      81
  Mizar     ζ UMa       2.1      78
  Alkaid     η UMa       1.9     101
Near Mizar is a star called Alcorr and together they are informally known as the Horse and Rider. At magnitude 4.1, Alcor would normally be relatively easy to see with the unaided eye, but its proximity to Mizar renders it more difficult to resolve, and it has served as a traditional test of sight. In the 17th century, Mizar itself was discovered to be a binary star system — the first telescopic binary found.

 The component stars are known as Mizar A and Mizar B. In 1889, Mizar A was discovered to in fact be a binary as well, the first spectroscopic binary discovered, and with the subsequent discovery that Mizar B itself is also a binary, in total Mizar currently is known to be at least a quadruple star system."

About 1,500 years later The Domain began the installation bases for their own forces along the path of invasion which leads toward the center of this galaxy and beyond.

Based on what is being stated, I made up this simple drawing of our physical galaxy; The Milky Way.  On it, I located the solar system, and  the purported movement of the invasion forces.

Invasion path.

If this is the true case, and what he said is correct, then the dominance of the galaxy by his "federation" would look something like this...

About 8,200 years ago The Domain forces set up a base on Earth in the Himalaya Mountains near the border of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was a base for a battalion of The Domain Expeditionary Force, which included about 3,000 members.

So this base would be inside of China in the Tibet (XiZang) autonomous region.

Regions of China.

They set up a base under or inside the top of a mountain. The mountain top was drilled into and made hollow to create an area large enough to house the ships and personnel of that force. An electronic illusion of the mountain top was then created to hide the base by projecting a false image from inside the mountain against a “force screen”.

The ships could then enter and exit through the force screen, yet remain unseen by homo sapiens.

This is standard, well known, Type-1 grey technology.

Shortly after they settled there the base was surprised by an attack from a remnant of the military forces of the “Old Empire”. Unbeknownst to The Domain, a hidden, underground base on Mars, operated by the “Old Empire”, had existed for a very long time. The Domain base was wiped out by a military attack from the Mars base and the IS-BEs of The Domain Expeditionary Force were captured.

You can imagine that The Domain was very upset about losing such a large force of officers and crew, so they sent other crews to Earth to look for them. Those crews were also attacked.

This is most certainly an interesting story. But whether or not it is true is something else entirely.

On one hand, the story does nothing aside from provide background information on a battle between two groups of opposing forces, and establishes a narrative in support of the reasoning behind the presence of Type-1 greys in this section of the galaxy.

On the other hand, it could be a delicious fiction that would be accepted and acknowledged by the Roswell military leadership at the base at that time.

The captured IS-BEs from The Domain Forces were handled in the same fashion as all other IS-BEs who have been sent to Earth. They were each given amnesia, had their memories replaced with false pictures and hypnotic commands and sent to Earth to inhabit biological bodies. They are still a part of the human population today.

Here we see that the "Old Empire" has constructed systems (in this region of Earth) to interrupt the the ability of consciousness+ to easily migrate in and out of world-lines, and an established life-line.

After a very persistent and extensive investigation into the loss of their crews, The Domain discovered that “Old Empire” has been operating a very extensive, and very carefully hidden, base of operations in this part of the galaxy for millions of years.

No one knows exactly how long.

Eventually, the space craft of the “Old Empire” forces and The Domain engaged each other in open combat in the space of the solar system.

No problem with this. If the story about this war is true, this is the logical conclusion that you can expect.

According to Airl, there was a running battle between the “Old Empire” forces and The Domain until about 1235 AD, when The Domain forces finally destroyed the last of the space craft of the “Old Empire” force in this area. The Domain Expeditionary Force lost many of its own ships in this area during that time also.

About 1,000 years later the “Old Empire” base was discovered by accident in the spring of 1914 AD.

The dates and all of the matters regarding "time" are suspect as they do not make any sense. 1235AD + 1000 = 2235AD. Not 1914AD.

The discovery was made when the body of the Archduke of Austria, was “taken over” by an officer of The Domain Expeditionary Force. This officer, who was stationed in the asteroid belt, was sent to Earth on a routine mission to gather reconnaissance.

The extraterrestrial goes into some detail how a non-corporal entity can take over the body of a physical person. I am quite sure that this astounded, and "blew the minds" of the military leadership at the Roswell base.

The purpose of this “take over” was to use the body as a “disguise” through which to infiltrate human society in order to gather information about current events on Earth. The officer, as an IS-BE, having greater power than the being inhabiting the body of the Archduke, simply “pushed” the being out and took over control of the body.

No problem with this. Though it might have scared the living Dejesus out of the Roswell leadership at that time.

However, this officer did not realize how much the Hapsburgs were hated by feuding factions in the country, so he was caught off guard when the body of the Archduke was assassinated by a Bosnian student. The officer, or IS-BE, was suddenly “knocked out” of the body when it was shot by the assassin. Disoriented, the IS-BE inadvertently penetrated one of the “amnesia force screens” and was captured.

And that is how this species learned about the "electronic force field" that prevents wave form data transfer, consciousness+ movement, and all other associated elements.

"Franz Ferdinand (December 18, 1863 - June 28, 1914) was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Prince Imperial of Austria and Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia, and from 1896 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated the Austrian declaration of war. This caused countries allied with Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers) and countries allied with Serbia (the Entente Powers) to declare war on each other, starting World War I.

In 1889, Franz Ferdinand's life changed dramatically. His cousin Crown Prince Rudolf committed suicide at his hunting lodge in Mayerling, leaving Franz Ferdinand's father, Archduke Karl Ludwig, as first in line to the throne. However his father renounced his succession rights a few days after the Crown Prince's death. Henceforth, Franz Ferdinand was groomed to succeed.

On June 28, 1914, at approximately 11:15 am, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia and one of several (a few) assassins organized by The Black Hand (UpHa pyKa/Tsrna Ruka). The event, known as the Assassination in Sarajevo, triggered World War I.

Franz and Sophie had previously been attacked when a bomb was thrown at their car. It missed them, but many civilians were injured. Franz and Sophie both insisted on going to see all those injured at the hospital. As a result of this, Princip saw them and shot Sophie in the abdomen. Franz was shot in the jugular and was still alive when witnesses arrived to his aid, but it was too late; he died within minutes.

The assassinations, along with the arms race, nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and the alliance system all contributed to the beginning of World War I, which began less than two months after Franz Ferdinand's death, with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia."

Eventually The Domain discovered that a wide area of space is monitored by an “electronic force field” which controls all of the IS-BEs in this end of the galaxy, including Earth. The electronic force screen is designed to detect IS-BEs and prevent them from leaving the area.

Using the prison analogy, you can liken it to walls, barbed wire, and search lights.

If any IS-BE attempts to penetrate the force screen, it “captures” them in a kind of “electronic net”. The result is that the captured IS-BE is subjected to a very severe “brainwashing” treatment which erases the memory of the IS-BE.

No problem with this.

This process uses a tremendous electrical shock, just like Earth psychiatrists use “electric shock therapy” to erase the memory and personality of a “patient” and to make them more “cooperative”.

"The story of electric shock began in 1938, when Italian psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti visited a Rome slaughterhouse to see what could be learned from the method that was employed to butcher hogs. In Cerletti's own words, "As soon as the hogs were clamped by the [electric] tongs, they fell unconscious, stiffened, then after a few seconds they were shaken by convulsions.... During this period of unconsciousness (epileptic coma), the butcher stabbed and bled the animals without difficulty

"At this point I felt we could venture to experiment on man, and I instructed my assistants to be on the alert for the selection of a suitable subject."

Cerletti's first victim was provided by the local police - a man described by Cerletti as "lucid and well-oriented." After surviving the first blast without losing consciousness, the victim overheard Cerletti discussing a second application with a higher voltage. He begged Cerletti, "Non una seconda! Mortifierel" ("Not another one! It will kill me!")

Ignoring the objections of his assistants, Cerletti increased the voltage and duration and fired again. With the "successful" electrically induced convulsion of his victim, Ugo Cerletti brought about the application of hog-slaughtering skills to humans, creating one of the most brutal techniques of psychiatry.

'Electric shock is also called electro-convulsive "therapy" or treatment (ECT), electroshock therapy or electric shock treatment (EST), electrostimulation, and electrolytic therapy (ELT). All are euphemistic terms for the same process: sending a searing blast of electricity through the brain in order to alter behavior."

(Reference: http://www.sntp.net/ect/ect3.htm)

Today Electroshock therapy (ECT) is most often used as a treatment for severe major depression which has not responded to other treatment, and is also used in the treatment of mania, catatonia, schizophrenia and other disorders. It first gained widespread use as a form of treatment in the 1940s and 50s. Today, an estimated 1 million people worldwide receive ECT every year, usually in a course of 6-12 treatments administered 2 or 3 times a week.

Electroconvulsive therapy has "side-effects" which include confusion and memory loss for events around the time period of treatment. ECT have been shown to cause persistent memory loss. It is the effects of ECT on long-term memory that give rise to much of the concern surrounding its use. The acute effects of ECT include amnesia.

Registered nurse Barbara C. Cody reports in a letter to the Washington Post that her life "was forever changed by 13 outpatient ECTs I received in 1983. Shock 'therapy' totally and permanently disabled me. "EEGs [electroencephalograms] verify the extensive damage shock did to my brain. Fifteen to 20 years of my life were simply erased; only small bits and pieces have returned. I was also left with short-term memory impairment and serious cognitive deficits. "Shock 'therapy' took my past, my college education, my musical abilities, even the knowledge that my children were, in fact, my children."

Ernest Hemingway, American author, committed suicide shortly after Electric Shock treatment at the Menninger Clinic in 1961. He is reported to have said to his biographer, "Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient...."

On Earth this “therapy” uses only a few hundred volts of electricity. However, the electrical voltage used by the “Old Empire” operation against IS-BEs is on the order of magnitude of billions of volts!

"The general public may consider household mains circuits (100-250 V AC), which carry the highest voltages they normally encounter, to be high voltage. For example, an installer of heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment may be licensed to install 24 Volt control circuits, but may not be permitted to connect the 240 volt power circuits of the equipment.

Voltages over approximately 50 volts can usually cause dangerous amounts of current to flow through a human being touching two points of a circuit.

Voltages of greater than 50 V are capable of producing heart fibrillation if they produce electric currents in body tissues which happen to pass through the chest area. The electrocution danger is mostly determined by the low conductivity of dry human skin. If skin is wet, or if there are wounds, or if the voltage is applied to electrodes which penetrate the skin, then even voltage sources below 40 V can be lethal if contacted."

This tremendous shock completely wipes out all the memory of the IS-BE. The memory erasure is not just for one life or one body. It wipes out the all of the accumulated experiences of a nearly infinite past, as well as the identity of the IS-BE!

I wrote about this before. This is how you take subjects, and "farm them", and then capture their experiences. Then erase and then send them back to relive the experiences.

The shock is intended to make it impossible for the IS-BE to remember who they are, where they came from, their knowledge or skills, their memory of the past, and ability to function as a spiritual entity. They are overwhelmed into becoming a mindless, robotic nonentity.

No problem with this.

After the shock a series of post hypnotic suggestions are used to install false memories, and a false time orientation in each IS-BE.

"The ability of a human to be induced into a form of behavior or thinking pattern after coming out of the hypnotic state. Post hypnotic suggestions are administered by the hypnotist and may optionally include a time scope. An altered sense of perception or behavioral pattern may be "programmed" into the person under hypnosis. Certain sequences of events may be set as triggers to enter or exit the post-hypnotic pattern. The behavior patterns resemble conditioned reflexes, though administered without classical behavior alteration techniques.

Examples:

Any number, color, object, etc. may be induced to be ignored by the patient after full consciousness. A certain keyword starts the suggestion and a different word ends it. The patient will not know nor use the item to be ignored. He/she may state that the sea is colored red, if suggested to ignore the color blue. A count of eleven may be achieved if asked to count ones fingers if a number -say 5- is suggested to be ignored. Thus the patient counts 1-2-3-4-6-7-8-9-10-11

Different type of behavior patterns may be induced such as forcing the patient to recite a certain sentence whenever anyone says out loud the special keyword. The patient is fully aware of the conditioned action but it is very difficult, if not impossible, to restrain from doing it. Sweating, loss of coordination and full lack of concentration plagues the patient until he/she performs the programmed action.

An object may be set to be perceived as invisible and it will be fully ignored and evaded during the period of suggestion. Experiments may be performed with a coffee mug, induced to be invisible. If the mug is put on top of a page with writing, the patient will only read the parts not covered by the mug. Even though the sentences may make no sense, nothing is seemingly wrong to the suspected. It is difficult to suggest an object be invisible, yet stay tactile. Usually the object is completely ignored by all senses. Thus, the mug in the example will reportedly not exist, even when the patient is touching it.

Stage hypnotists will sometimes perform shows in which they hypnotize participants to think they are some celebrity and behave exactly like them. John Mohl, stage hypnotist and member of The National Guild of Hypnotists, says that he has often hypnotized people to become someone else! Mohl noticed that adults often became a celebrity while Middle or High School students usually become something much more creative or imaginative."

What I find most interesting about this is that this concept of "brain washing" and suggestion to control others was NEW information provided to the Roswell military leadership in 1947.

From it, was spawned Monarch programming.

I can clearly see a straight line  military development from this interrogation, to the Monarch mind control program. And since I do, it lends credibility to this entire disclosure.

This includes the command to “return” to the base after the body dies, so that the same kind of shock and hypnosis can be done again, and again, again – forever. The hypnotic command also tells the “patient” to forget to remember.

No problem with this.

What The Domain learned from the experience of this officer is that the “Old Empire” has been using Earth as a “prison planet” for a very long time – exactly how long is unknown – perhaps millions of years.

This is not what I understand. I think that "Prison Planet" is much too strong a term. I prefer the term "sentience nursery".

Aside from a completely different connotation, it helps us to understand that this area is a place for growth and development. While the idea of a "prison planet" is one of isolation and punishment.

It is very important that the reader  understand the difference, between these two, and the relationship and role that thy have here in this life that they are living. While it might be true that this earth once might have been a "prison plant", today it is in the process of being reformed, and the Type-1 greys are working with other entities to make sure that this happens.

In fact, I am 100% convinced that the Earth being a "sentience nursery" is the recovery effort initiated by the Type-1 greys to rehabilitate the human species and get them out from under this horrible "electromagnetic force field". Which is why the Mantids are involved in dealing on a person-to-person, consciousness-to-consciousness basis.

So, when the body of the IS-BE dies they depart from the body. They are detected by the “force screen”, they are captured and “ordered” by hypnotic command to “return to the light“.

No problem with this.

The idea of “heaven” and the “afterlife” are part of the hypnotic suggestion – a part of the treachery that makes the whole mechanism work.

(Read “The Invisible CollegeWar in Heaven – A Completely New And Revolutionary Conception of The Nature of Spiritual Reality”).

After the IS-BE has been shocked and hypnotized to erase the memory of the life just lived, the IS-BE is immediately “commanded”, hypnotically, to “report” back to Earth, as though they were on a secret mission, to inhabit a new body. Each IS-BE is told that they have a special purpose for being on Earth. But, of course there is no purpose for being in a prison – at least not for the prisoner.

No problem with this.

Any undesirable IS-BEs who are sentenced to Earth were classified as “untouchable” by the “Old Empire”.

"In the Indian caste system, a Dalit, often called an untouchable, or an outcaste, is a person who according to traditional Hindu belief does not have any 'varnas". Varna refers to the Hindu belief that most humans were supposedly created from different parts of the body of the divinity Purusha.

The part from which a varna was supposedly created defines a person's social status with regard to issues such as whom they may marry and which professions they may hold. Dalits fall outside the varnas system and have historically been prevented from doing any but the most menial jobs. (However, a distinction must be made between lower-caste people and Pariahs.) Included are leather-workers (called chamar), carcass handlers (called mahar), poor farmers and landless labourers, night soil scavengers (called bhangi or chura), street handicrafters, folk artists, street cleaners, dhobi, etc.

Traditionally, they were treated as pariahs in South Asian society and isolated in their own communities, to the point that even their shadows were avoided by the upper castes.

Discrimination against Dalits still exists in rural areas in the private sphere, in ritual matters such as access to eating places and water sources. It has largely disappeared, however, in urban areas and in the public sphere, in rights of movement and access to schools. The earliest rejection of discrimination, at least in spiritual matters, was made as far back as the Bhagavada Gita, which says that no person, no matter what, is barred from enlightenment There are an estimated 160 million Dalits in India."
Reference: Wikipedia.org

"Human rights abuses against these people, known as Dalits, are legion. A random sampling of headlines in mainstream Indian newspapers tells their story: "Dalit boy beaten to death for plucking flowers"; "Dalit tortured by cops for three days"; "Dalit 'witch' paraded naked in Bihar"; "Dalit killed in lock-up at Kurnool"; '7 Dalits burnt alive in caste clash"; "5 Dalits lynched in Haryana"; "Dalit woman gang-raped, paraded naked"; "Police egged on mob to lynch Dalits".

"Dalits are not allowed to drink from the same wells, attend the same temples, wear shoes in the presence of an upper caste, or drink from the same cups in tea stalls," said Smita Narula, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, and author of Broken People: Caste Violence Against India's "Untouchables." Human Rights Watch is a worldwide activist organization based in New York. India's Untouchables are relegated to the lowest jobs, and live in constant fear of being publicly humiliated, paraded naked, beaten, and raped with impunity by upper-caste Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking through an upper-caste neighborhood is a life-threatening offense. Nearly 90 percent of all the poor Indians and 95 percent of all the illiterate Indians are Dalits."
Reference: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0602_030602_untouchables.html

This included anyone that the “Old Empire” judged to be criminals who are too vicious to be reformed or subdued, as well as other criminals such as sexual perverts, or beings unwilling to do any productive work.

No problem with this.

An “untouchable” classification of IS-BEs also includes a wide variety of “political prisoners”.

"A political prisoner is someone held in prison or otherwise detained, perhaps under house arrest, for his/her involvement in political activity.
political prisoners are arrested and tried with a veneer of legality, where false criminal charges, manufactured evidence, and unfair trials are used to disguise the fact that an individual is a political prisoner. This is common in situations which may otherwise be decried nationally and internationally as a human rights violation and suppression of a political dissident. A political prisoner can also be someone that has been denied bail unfairly, denied parole when it would reasonably have been given to a prisoner charged with a comparable crime, or special powers may be invoked by the judiciary.

Particularly in this latter situation, whether an individual is regarded as a political prisoner may depend upon subjective political perspective or interpretation of the evidence. Governments typically reject assertions that they hold political prisoners.
Examples:

In the Soviet Union, dubious psychiatric diagnoses were sometimes used to confine political prisoners. In Nazi Germany, "Night and Fog"prisoners were among the first victims of fascist repression. In North Korea, entire families are jailed if one family member is suspected of anti-government sentiments."
-- Reference: Wikipedia.org

This includes IS-BEs who are considered to be noncompliant “free thinkers” or “revolutionaries” who make trouble for the governments of the various planets of the “Old Empire”. Of course, anyone with a previous military record against the “Old Empire” is also shipped off to Earth.

No problem with this.

A list of “untouchables” include artists, painters, singers, musicians, writers, actors, and performers of every kind. For this reason Earth has more artists per capita than any other planet in the “Old Empire”.

No problem with this.

“Untouchables” also include intellectuals, inventors and geniuses in almost every field. Since everything the “Old Empire” considers valuable has long since been invented or created over the last few trillion years, they have no further use for such beings. This includes skilled managers also, which are not needed in a society of obedient, robotic citizens.

No problem with this.

Anyone who is not willing or able to submit to mindless economic, political and religious servitude as a tax-paying worker in the class system of the “Old Empire” are “untouchable” and sentenced to receive memory wipe-out and permanent imprisonment on Earth.

Is it just me? But it just seems like the United States is trying to replicate The "Old Empire".

The net result is that an IS-BE is unable to escape because they can’t remember who they are, where they came from, where they are. They have been hypnotized to think they are someone, something, sometime, and somewhere other than were they really are.

No problem with this.

The Domain officer who was “assassinated” while in the body of Archduke of Austria was, likewise, captured by the “Old Empire” force. Because this particular officer was a high powered IS-BE, compared to most, he was taken away to a secret “Old Empire” base under the surface of the planet Mars. They put him into a special electronic prison cell and held him there.

No problem with this.

Fortunately, this Domain officer was able to escape from the underground base after 27 years in captivity. When he escaped from the “Old Empire” base, he returned immediately to his own base in the asteroid belt.

No problem with this.

His commanding officer ordered that a battle cruiser be dispatched to the coordinates of the base, provided by this officer, and to destroy that base completely.

No problem with this.

This “Old Empire” base was located a few hundred miles north of the equator on Mars in the Cydonia region.

(The following internet links shows maps of a complex of artificial looking structures which some people have referred to a the "Pyramid Complex, The Face on Mars, and other geological features that are strikingly similar to symbols and architecture found in Mesoamerican and Egyptian pyramid civilizations. Notice how the "pyramids and face structures look as though they have been partially destroyed! Had there been an "Old Empire" base at this location, which was destroyed by a cruiser attack from The Domain Force, it base would have been significantly damaged.)
http://www.greatdreams.com/cydonia.htm
http://www.qtm.net/~geibdan/cydonia.html

"In addition, a team of scientists from the United States Geological Survey reported at the recent annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, that images taken by NASA s Mars-orbiting spacecraft Mars Odyssey show what appear to be cave entrances where primitive life forms - "past or present microbial life" - could have been sheltered, and where water could exist in liquid form.

A more detailed perusal of the report reveals that the spacecraft actually photographed, in both visual and infrared, puzzling dark circular structures associated with these caves -structures ranging in size from 100 to 250 meters (330 to 825 feet). Picking up the hardly-noticed story in its June 2007 issue, the prestigious journal Scientific American has now provided additional information: Seven such "football size" caverns were identified; they are 425 feet deep. "

Although the military base of the “Old Empire” was destroyed, unfortunately, much of the vast machinery of the IS-BE force screens, the electroshock / amnesia / hypnosis machinery continues to function in other undiscovered locations right up to the present moment. The main base or control center for this “mind control prison” operation has never been found. So, the influences of this base, or bases, are still in effect.

No problem with this.

The Domain has observed that since the “Old Empire” space forces were destroyed there is no one left to actively prevent other planetary systems from bringing their own “untouchable” IS-BEs to Earth from all over this galaxy, and from other galaxies nearby.

Therefore, Earth has become a universal dumping ground for this entire region of space.

Well, maybe, but who really knows?

This, in part, explains the very unusual mix of races, cultures, languages, moral codes, religious and political influences among the IS-BE population on Earth. The number and variety of heterogeneous societies on Earth are extremely unusual on a normal planet. Most “Sun Type 12, Class 7” planets are inhabited by only one humanoid body type or race, if any.

No problem with this.

In addition, most of the ancient civilizations of Earth, and many of the events of Earth have been heavily influenced by the hidden, hypnotic operation of the “Old Empire” base. So far, no one has figured out exactly where and how this operation is run, or by whom because it is so heavily protected by screens and traps.

No problem with this.

Furthermore, there has been no operation undertaken to seek out, discover and destroy the vast and ancient network of electronics machinery that create the IS-BE force screens at this end of the galaxy.

No problem with this.

Until this has been done, we are not able to prevent or interrupt the electric shock operation, hypnosis and remote thought control of the “Old Empire” prison planet.

No problem with this.

Of course all of the crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force now remain aware of this phenomena at all times while operating in this solar system space so as to prevent detection and the capture by “Old Empire” traps.”

End of part 2

There are miss-translations on time, confusions in regard to galaxies and universes, and a mish-mash of confusion between consciousness+, humans, and some confusion regarding galactic “ownership” and “power projection” between different species.

The more I parse it in detail, the clearer to me that this is exactly what it is claimed to be.

Key Points

Never the less, I believe the following to be true in regards to this parsing of this section of the book…

  • Most of what was stated was factually accurate… provided that the war between the “Dominion” and the “Old Empire” is correct. But this has never been a key knowledge base for my role, and thus I know nothing at all about it.
  • The information about “time” is also correct. It is wholly misunderstood by most humans.
  • Since the 1980’s MAJestic has taken a major role in working with this species and <redacted>, <redacted> and the Mantids towards the maintenance and development of this “Prison Planet” into a “Sentience Nursery”.
  • The Roswell leadership should be able to understand and relate to the military aspects of the narrative.
  • The aspects regarding consciousness+ movement would probably simply terrify the Roswell leadership, and confuse them. But they are really actually very accurate.
  • So far, in parsing this document, I see no reason to describe it as a fictional work. It appears to be exactly what it said it is.
  • Apparently the writings about “Mind Control” ended up spawning American covert effort in the Monarch Program.
  • There is no reason for the Type-1 grey extraterrestrial to lie. None.
  • The information provided had / has a purpose. It appears that the background information is truthful, but tailored to the limitations of the target audience, and worded to appeal to their understandings.

And finally…

  • Because MAJestic was established, and my role involved strong interaction with this species, and you all in MM land can see the content and the direction of my articles, it should be obvious that [1] MAJestic believed what the extraterrestrial said, and [2] my role is part of this reconstruction effort.

Part three

You can visit part three HERE.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

A breakdown of the report “alien interview” by MM from a MAJ perspective (part 1)

I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and a lot of things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.

Website

There is a website devoted to this book. You can visit it HERE.

They seem to make posts based of passages from the book, and then delve into greater detail from there.

I do not (personally) believe that this is warranted. From what I know of the Type-1 greys they tell us what we want to hear, for the most part. And if you look at the content of the book, you can easily see fraudulent elements that were remnants of the popular culture at the time.

Never the less I believe the transcript to be authentic.

Links

  • A free PDF provided HERE in an MM article.
  • The bibliotecapleyades on-line version of the book. HERE.

Introduction

A Mrs. MacElroy presented an envelope of transcripts to a publisher in 2007. In the envelope and over the phone she asked the publisher to do what he could to get them to be published. She claimed to be the duty nurse at the Roswell Army base in New Mexico in 1947. And further, she claimed that she was the sole interpreter / translator of the sole surviving extraterrestrial fro the wreckage.

The content of this book is primarily excerpted from the letter, interview transcripts and personal notes I received from the late Matilda O'Donnell MacElroy. Her letter to me asserts that this material is based on her recollection of communication with an alien being, who "spoke" with her telepathically.

During July and August of 1947 she interviewed an extraterrestrial being who she identifies as "Airl", and whom she claims was and continues to be an officer, pilot and engineer who was recovered from a flyer saucer that crashed near Roswell, New Mexico on July 8th, 1947.

She was late in age and was ready to die. This, apparently, was her effort to make sure that the experience that she had would not be forgotten.

The initial letter from Mrs. MacElroy was received on September 14th, 2007, together with a package of documents. The package contained three types of documents:

  • Hand-written notes in cursive on ordinary, lined, 8 1/2″ X 11″school notebook paper, which I assume had been written personally by Mrs. MacElroy.
  • Notes typed on a manual typewriter on plain, white 20 lb. bond paper, which I am assume were prepared personally by her. At least both had the appearance of having been written in the same hand writing, and / or typed on the same typewriter consistently throughout. The writing in the notes I received also appeared to be the same as the writing on the address and return address of the manila envelope I received from Navan, Ireland, which was postmarked on 3 September, 2007. Since I am not a forensic expert, or handwriting analyst, my opinion in these matter is not a professionally qualified judgment.
  • Many pages of typewritten transcriptions of her interview with the alien. These were obviously typed on a different typewriter. These pages were typed on a different type of paper and showed apparent signs of age and repeated handling.

There is a lot, especially in the front 1/3 of the document, that seems credible to me an MAJestic “operator”. There is also quite a lot that is alien to me, and a substantial amount that does not match what I know to be the truth.

Thus, I must rightfully conclude that a large bulk of the information follows the type-1 grey MAJestic warning:

They tell you what you want to believe, not necessarily the truth.“.

All in all, I think that [1] the truth is this is that these are actual transcripts from the Roswell event. However, [2] the content is tailored to the interpreter and her superiors. Thus, [3] most of it’s content is inaccurate, or misleading to us reading it 70 years later.

I have first-hand experience with these type-1 greys. I have worked with them. I have been at their facilities. I have interacted them in both the physical and the non-physical. So I do have more than just a little bit of knowledge concerning this subject.

However, my EBP entanglement was with another species known as the Mantids, and they view things quite differently. Though, truthfully, it was THIS species that manufactured the EBP, installed it inside my skull (off world), and laid out the “training” that I had at NAS, NASC China Lake.

From the MM point of view, this [4] entire exercise offers us a great “spring board” for investigation, and I would like to use what I know to sort out this document and turn it into something that is useful for all of us to learn from.

Finally, [5] there are errors in understanding of a 1948 nurse and terminology and lexicon, that I will try to resolve here.

Limitations

I am not going to reprint the entire book here. The same does for the notes by the nurse, and the various supporting documents held within the PDF.

That is available provided HERE.

Instead, I am going to parse the  transcript of what the type-1 grey had to say. I will do so based on my role in MAJestic, and what I know through the EBP entanglements.

SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 9. 7. 1947

QUESTION – “Are you injured?”
ANSWER -NO

QUESTION – “What medical assistance do you require?”
ANSWER -NONE

QUESTION – “Do need food or water or other sustenance?”
ANSWER -NO

QUESTION – “Do you have any special environmental needs, such as air temperature, atmospheric chemical content, air pressure, or waste elimination?”
ANSWER – NO. I AM NOT A BIOLOGICAL BEING.

At this point, early on in the interview we see that the body is a construct used by a being in wave form. It does not require any of the support equipment needed by biological creatures.

QUESTION – “Does your body or space craft carry any germs or contamination that may be harmful to humans or other Earth life forms?”
ANSWER -NO GERMS IN SPACE.

QUESTION – “Does your government know you are here?”
ANSWER – NOT AT THIS TIME

QUESTION – “Are others of your kind going to come looking for you?”
ANSWER – YES

QUESTION – “What is the weapons capability of your people?”
ANSWER – VERY DESTRUCTIVE.

QUESTION – “Why did your space craft crash?”

ANSWER – IT WAS STRUCK BY AN ELECTRICAL DISCHARGE FROM THE ATMOSPHERE WHICH CAUSED US TO LOSE CONTROL.

This differs from my understanding. I was told that radar technology developed by the Germans during World War II were being tested in New Mexico, and they are what brought the vehicle down. Aircraft getting hit by lightening is a common event and rarely causes the crash of a vehicle.

QUESTION – “Why was your space craft in this area?”
ANSWER – INVESTIGATION OF “BURNING CLOUDS” / RADIATION /
EXPLOSIONS

The first test of a nuclear weapon was in the atmosphere on July 16, 1945, in a remote part of New Mexico on what was then the Alamogordo Bombing Range, and is now the White Sands Missile Range. The site is 55 miles northwest of Alamogordo, New Mexico.

QUESTION – “How does your space craft fly?”

ANSWER -IT IS CONTROLLED THROUGH “MIND”. RESPONDS TO “THOUGHT COMMANDS”.

QUESTION – “How do your people communicate with each other?”
ANSWER –
THROUGH MIND /THOUGHT.

QUESTION – “Do you have a written language or symbols for communication?”
ANSWER -YES

QUESTION – “What planet are you from?”

ANSWER – THE HOME / BIRTHPLACE WORLD OF THE DOMAIN

QUESTION – “Will your government send representatives to meet with our leaders?”
ANSWER -NO

QUESTION – “What are your intentions concerning
Earth?”

ANSWER -PRESERVE / PROTECT PROPERTY OF THE DOMAIN

QUESTION – “What have you learned about Earth governments and military installations?”
ANSWER – POOR / SMALL. DESTROY PLANET.

Earth governments are "poor" and "small", but they have the power to destroy the entire planet.

QUESTION – “Why haven’t your people made your existence known to the people of Earth?”
ANSWER – WATCH / OBSERVE. NO CONTACT.

QUESTION – “Have your people visited Earth’s previously?”
ANSWER – PERIODIC / REPEATING OBSERVATIONS.

QUESTION – “How long have you known about Earth?”
ANSWER – LONG BEFORE HUMANS.

Pre-historic humanoids date back to 400,000 years. At that time they were tool making, cart making creatures that seemed to have an appreciation of music, speaking, and society. Though no written language. Proto-humans date back even further, going back 2 million years. This knowledge will be useful to explain other statements made later on.

QUESTION – “What do you know about the history of civilization on Earth?”
ANSWER – SMALL INTEREST / ATTENTION. SMALL TIME.

QUESTION – “Can you describe your home world to us?”
ANSWER – PLACE OF CIVILIZATION / CULTURE / HISTORY. LARGE PLANET. WEALTH / RESOURCES ALWAYS. ORDER. POWER.
KNOWLEDGE / WISDOM. TWO STARS. THREE MOONS.

QUESTION – “What is the state of development of your civilization?”
ANSWER – ANCIENT. TRILLIONS OF YEARS. ALWAYS. ABOVE ALL OTHERS. PLAN. SCHEDULE. PROGRESS. WIN. HIGH GOALS / IDEAS.

Our universe is roughly 14 billion years old. While a soul and consciousness can be much older than that, I take the term "trillions" to mean "an unfathomably long period of time".

QUESTION – “Do you believe in God?”
ANSWER – WE THINK. IT IS. MAKE IT CONTINUE. ALWAYS.

QUESTION – “What type of society do you have?”
ANSWER – ORDER. POWER. FUTURE ALWAYS. CONTROL. GROW.

QUESTION – “Are there other intelligent life forms besides yourself in the universe?”
ANSWER – EVERYWHERE. WE ARE GREATEST / HIGHEST OF ALL.

Thoughts from the first interview

Obviously the book has the notes hand written on the paper that pretty much helped explain her thoughts and impressions. I left those out.

As you can see, not much was gleaned from the first interview.

But as it was, it was very productive. At that time, the entire Army base was abuzz with soldiers all of which just finished fighting a bloody global war with fanatical Nazi’s and Japanese. Their mind-set was militaristic, aggressive, defensive, protective, and nationalistic. It was a hostile environment for an extraterrestrial species to enter.

The extraterrestrial pilot, who like all type-1 greys, can read the non-physical world about it, fully understood the situation and was actively reading and absorbing the thoughts of everyone around it. And like all type-1 greys, assimilated the knowledge, and made the appropriate physical actions.

Which was do nothing. Wait in the room.

The next day…

SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 10. 7. 1947

“QUESTION – “Why have you stopped communicating?”
ANSWER -NO STOP. OTHERS. HIDDEN / COVERED. SECRET FEAR.

SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 11. 7. 1947

“QUESTION – Can you read or write any Earth languages?
ANSWER -NO.

QUESTION – Do you understand numbers or mathematics?
ANSWER – YES. I AM OFFICER / PILOT / ENGINEER

QUESTION – Can you write or draw symbols or pictures that we may be able to translate into our own language?
ANSWER –UNCERTAIN

QUESTION – Are there any other signs or means of communication you can use to help us understand your thoughts more clearly?
ANSWER -NO.”

SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 11. 7. 1947, 2nd Session

QUESTION – Can you show us on a map of the stars which is the star of your home planet?
ANSWER -NO.

As discussed, this question is based on the assumption that there is one singular planet that the species departed, and that is it's "home planet". Which is false, and if you understand that this species is a non-physical species that creates physical bodies for use in physical space, you can recognize what an impossible question this is to answer. 

This species is part of a wide organization, with many, many regions that they inhabit. This includes both the physical and non-physical. Most of which 99.999% were unknown to the military and scientists at that time. In fact, at that time, they didn't know about brown dwarfs, or even if there were planets around stars. And many thought that the earth was the center of the universe.

QUESTION – How long will it take your people to locate you here?
ANSWER -UNKNOWN.

QUESTION – How long would it take your people to travel here to rescue you?
ANSWER – MINUTES OR HOURS.

QUESTION – How can we make them understand that we do not intend to harm you?
ANSWER – INTENTIONS ARE CLEAR. SEE IN YOUR MIND / IMAGES /FEELINGS.

At this point, the more astute should realize that they were absolutely transparent to this being. And that their plans, thoughts, secrets and desires were open and presented to it and they had no defense against it.

QUESTION – If you are not a biological entity, why do you refer to yourself as feminine?
ANSWER – I AM A CREATOR. MOTHER. SOURCE.”

SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 11. 7. 1947, 3rd Session

“QUESTION – “What assurance or proof do you require from us that will make you feel safe enough to answer our questions.”
ANSWER – ONLY SHE SPEAKS. ONLY SHE HEARS. ONLY SHE QUESTIONS. NO OTHERS. MUST LEARN / KNOW / UNDERSTAND.”

There it is.  The type-1 grey defines who, what, when, why, how and where. No one else.

Then, according to the notes;

“On the afternoon of the 16th day Airl and I sat next to each other as she read. She closed the last page of a book she was reading and placed it aside. I was about to hand her the next book from a large pile waiting to be read, when she turned and said or “thought” to me, “I am ready to speak now”. At first I was a little confused by the remark. I gestured for her to continue and she began to teach me my first lesson.

Up to this point, everything was very matter-of-fact, clear, cut and dry. Now we enter “the twilight zone” and start getting into the real “meat” of the interview. And it is this part that REALLY NEEDS to be sorted out and put into context.

SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 24. 7. 1947, 1st Session

“What would you like to say, Airl?”, I asked.

“I have been a part of the Domain Expeditionary Force in this sector of space for several thousand years. However, I have not personally had intimate contact with beings on Earth since 5,965 BCE. It is not my primary function to interact with inhabitants of planets within The Domain. I am an Officer, Pilot and Engineer, with many duties to perform. Nonetheless, although I am fluent in 347 other languages within The Domain, I have not been exposed to your English language.

Said very interestingly. However, let's parse this statement to it's basics. 

This officer 

[1] has been assigned to this region for a long stretch of time (from a human perspective). 
[2] Hasn't interacted with humans for roughly 8,000 years. 
[3] Is an officer, a pilot, and an engineer. 
[4] Is fluent in numerous languages spoken within their "nation" / "federation". 
[5] Does not speak English until now.

The last Earth language with which I was conversant was the Sanskrit language of the Vedic Hymns. At that time I was a member of a mission sent to investigate the loss of a Domain base located in the Himalaya Mountains. An entire battalion of officers, pilots, communications and administrative personnel disappeared and the base destroyed.

This officer learned the local Earth language when investigating the loss of one of their outposts. This was in the Himalaya mountains, and at that time 8,000 years ago, the locals spoke Sanskrit. It was a large outpost.

Knowing what I know, I can tell you that this was a sizable installation. It was large, and it maintained a large contingent of personnel, and they were active in doing what ever they were active in doing. A facility this size has a purpose. And what it was, or what it was doing, is not specified.

Several million years ago I was trained and served as an Investigation, Data Evaluation and Program Development Officer for The Domain. Because I was experienced in that technology, I was sent to Earth as part of the search team.

Again, do not get all caught up on the specific numbers and terms. Just look at the basics what it was saying.

The type-1 extraterrestrial had training in the specialties needed to investigate the mystery of the lost outpost. So it was sent down to the area to investigate.

One of my duties involved interrogation of the human population that inhabited the adjoining area at that time.  Many of the people in that region reported sighting “vimanas” or space craft in the area.

Thus the reason why the "non-contact" protocols were breached. The local humans needed to be interviewed, and they needed to be understood. So it learned the local language at that time.

In interviewing them (not specified how), the humans reported seeing spaceships and vehicles in the area. Which was telling. As the type-1 greys have a "non-contact" / "non-interference" policy and all their ships are hidden from view (cloaked).

This means that they were observing space vehicles of another nation / civilization / species.

Following the logical extension of evidence, testimony, observation, as well as the absence of certain evidence, I led my team to the discovery that there were still “Old Empire” ships and well-hidden “Old Empire” installations in this solar system of which we had been completely unaware.

It makes reference to an "old empire". This is entirely plausible, however, it does seem to be contrived to fit the mind-set of the military at the facility at that time. 

For all of military at the base (at that time) had just spent the last few years fighting the Nazi Germans and the Japanese empires. It seems logical to me that the Type-1 grey would carefully construct a narrative that the human base commanders would relate to, accept and understand.

You and I were unable to communicate in your language because I, personally, have not been exposed to your language. However, now that I have scanned the books and material you provided me this data has been relayed to our space station in this region and processed by our communications officer through our computers. It has been translated into my own language and relayed back to me in a context that I can think with. I have also received additional information from the files stored in our computers about the English language and Domain records concerning Earth civilization.”

It obtained the books. Scanned the content. Relayed it to "the cloud" at the base. Massaged it, cross-indexed it with known available records, and now is able to converse in English at a more professional level.

“Now I am prepared to give you certain information that I feel will be of great value to you.

Up until this point in time, I believe that all the information was wholly accurate, and truthful to the understanding of the people in the Roswell facility.

It is at this juncture, that it decides to "give certain information" that might benefit humans.

I will tell you the truth. Although truth is relative to all other truth, I wish to share with you as honestly and accurately as possible, truth as I see it, within the boundaries of my integrity to myself, to my race and without violating my obligations to the organization I serve and have sworn to uphold and protect”.

The key phrase is "truth is relative to other truths". And that is the KEY to unlocking and understanding all which was stated. 

It is [1] providing a mixture of information that [2] will be believable to the military leadership at the base, all intended to convey [3] various points that it wants to establish.

Knowing what I know, the points that it wanted to establish were...

[A] The Type-1 greys are a old, advanced species.
[B] The Type-1 greys own the Earth and everything surrounding it.
[C] The Type-1 greys are very strong militarily.
[D] Avenues for further communication will be made possible but on the terms established by the Type-1 greys.

Everything else is clouded in a mish-mash of mercurial and seemingly unrelated, but highly detailed (trigger) subjects designed to evoke a certain degree of emotional and mental reactions from the military staff at the facility.

“OK”, I thought. “Will you answer questions from the gallery now?”

“No. I will not answer questions. I will provide information to you that I think will be beneficial to the well-being of the immortal spiritual beings who comprise humanity, and that will foster the survival of all the myriad life forms and the environment of Earth, as it is a part of my mission to ensure the preservation of Earth.

As part of it's role and mission to ensure the preservation of the Earth, it will provide a narrative. This narrative will provide "information" which will eventually be beneficial to the souls of the humans that exist on the Earth.

“Personally, it is my conviction that all sentient beings are immortal spiritual beings. This includes human beings. For the sake of accuracy and simplicity I will use a made-up word: “IS-BE“. Because the primary nature of an immortal being is that they live in a timeless state of “is”, and the only reason for their existence is that they decide to “be”.

What it is talking about is "individual consciousness" which is a creation of soul. 

This term "IS-BE" is confusing. For our purposes here, we will simply refer to it as "consciousness+". 

It describes consciousness as it has decided to enter various life-lines through various world-lines. Of course, this understanding was well-beyond the military minded folk right after world war 2. So it made up it's own term.

No matter how lowly their station in a society, every IS-BE deserves the respect and treatment that I myself would like to receive from others. Each person on Earth continues to be an IS-BE whether they are aware of the fact or not.”

Continued, and with personal notes from the interpreter.

“Airl told me her reasons for coming to Earth and for being in the area of the 509th Bomber Squadron. She was sent by her superior officers to investigate the explosions of nuclear weapons which have been tested in New Mexico. Her superiors ordered her to gather information from the atmosphere that could be used to determine the extent of radiation and potential harm this might cause to the environment. During her mission, the space craft was struck by a lighting which caused her to lose control and crash.

This was covered earlier (above).

While investigating nuclear detonations in the New Mexico region, the vehicle experienced some kind of wave frequency / electro-magnetic interference. The type-1 extraterrestrial believed that it was due to natural weather irregularities. But, within two years, they will realize that it was due to radar interference with their electrical control systems.

The space craft is operated by IS-BEs who use “doll bodies” in much the same way that an actor wears a mask and costume. It is a like a mechanical tool through which to operate in the physical world. She, as well as all of the other IS-BEs of the officer class and their superiors, inhabit these “doll bodies” when they are on duty in space. When they are not on duty, they “leave” the body and operate, think, communicate, travel, and exist without the use of a body.

Not stated in the transcripts, but in the personal notes of the nurse is the understanding that these constructed bodies are just like suits of clothing that the type-1 grey extraterrestrial entities wear.

The bodies are constructed of synthetic materials, including a very sensitive electrical nervous system, to which each IS-BE adjusts themselves or “tune in” to an electronic wave length that is matched uniquely to the wavelength or frequency emitted by each IS-BE.

Each IS-BE is capable of creating a unique wave frequency which identifies them, much like a radio signal frequency. This serves, in part, as identification like a finger print. The doll body acts like a radio receiver for the IS-BE. No two frequencies or doll bodies are exactly the same.

The bodies of each IS-BE crew member are likewise tuned into and connected to the “nervous system” built into the space craft. The space craft is built in much the same way as the doll body. It is adjusted specifically to the frequency of each IS-BE crew member. Therefore, the craft can be operated by the “thoughts” or energy emitted by the IS-BE. It is really a very simple, direct control system. So, there are no complicated controls or navigation equipment on board the space craft. They operate as an extension of the IS-BE.

When the lightning bolt struck the space craft this caused a short circuit and consequently “disconnected” them from the control of the ship momentarily which resulted in the crash.

Again, the belief is that the default explanation for the crash was a natural phenomenon based upon assumption. 

Were the type-1 greys to investigate the crash and wreckage, they would (and eventually will) identify the root cause failure. Which was a real surprise to them, I am sure. And resulted in changes to the control systems of the spacecraft.

Airl was, and still is, an officer, pilot and engineer in an expeditionary force which is part of a space opera civilization which refers to itself as “The Domain”.

I have no problem calling the type-1 greys part of a "space opera civilization". 

Firstly [1] because they are one of the dominant species in our region. Secondly [2] that the military leadership at Roswell would easily understand this reference. And thirdly [3] all the subsequent information provided illustrates this point most clearly.

This civilization controls a vast number of galaxies, stars, planets, moons and asteroids throughout an area of space that is approximately one-fourth of the entire physical universe!

It could be. Or it could not. No one really actually knows.

My understanding from this differs substantially. 

As I understand it, this species can travel the universe, and has control over regions of space in other galaxies. But as far as our galaxy is concerned, it's control is about 25% of it, and our solar system is somewhere off to the side of the central area of control. The are expanding inward towards the center from the outer rim.

This nurse, is making a common mistake associating "the universe" with "the galaxy".

The continuing mission of her organization is to “Secure, control and expand the territory and resources of The Domain”.

Airl pointed out that their own activities were very similar in many ways to the European explorers who “discovered” and “claimed” the New World for The Holy Father, The Pope and for the kings of Spain, Portugal and later, Holland, England, France and so forth.

Europe benefited from the property “acquired” from the native inhabitants. However, the native inhabitants were never consulted with or asked for their permission to become a part of the “domain” of European nations and the soldiers and priests they sent to acquire territory and wealth in order to advance their interests.

Airl said she read in a history book that the Spanish king regretted the brutal treatment of the native inhabitants by his soldiers. He feared retribution from the gods he worshiped, as described in the various testaments of the Bible. He asked the Pope to prepare a statement called “The Requirement” which was supposed to be read to each of the newly encountered native inhabitants.

The king hoped that the statement, whether it was accepted or rejected by the natives, would absolve the King of all responsibility for the resulting slaughter and enslavement of these people. He used this statement as justification to confiscate their lands and possessions by his soldiers and the Pope’s priests. Apparently, the Pope, personally, did not have any feelings of guilt or responsibility in the matter.

Airl thought that such actions were those of a coward and that it is no surprise that the territory of Spain was diminished so quickly. Only a few years later the king was dead and his empire had been assimilated by other nations.

While this entire narrative and story was not included in the interview transcripts, I do not doubt that it occurred in silent unspoken communication between the two.

Souls are constructed and grow from the experiences that consciousness generates.

If your consciousness (in whatever form you take) creates destructive, unwarranted and unfair actions, tumult, pain, sadness, and emotional and physical strife...

...this creation will reside upon all your works, and your soul construct no matter how pleasant and beautiful you (and your works) look on the outside.

Eventually, it will try to find a point of lowest energy potential and all will manifest and come down hard on your "great works". It is no surprise that the type-1 grey talked in these terms.

Airl said that this sort of behavior does not occur in The Domain. Their leaders assume full responsibility for the actions of The Domain, and would not denigrate themselves in this fashion. Nor do they fear any gods or have any regret for their actions.

This idea reinforces my earlier suggestion that Airl and her people are probably atheists.

Missing the point.

Say that you kidnapped someone when you were in your 20's. You raped them, then you killed them, you hid the body, and no one knew anything at all about it. 

For sixty years you raised a family, went to church, and worked at your job and got your gold watch at retirement. 

On your death bed, you made a last confession. You told the priest about the murder, and he "absolved you of all your sins", and you died and expected to go into Heaven.

What's next?

A mantid (angel) comes and you go in front of a committee and they review your life. They see the good works, the bad works, and the terrible works.

Are your sins absolved? 

No. They are not.

Buy doing those terrible things, you have "hoisted a huge grand piano, with a strong hemp rope, a full 80 stories above your head". 

(This is a figurative illustration that suggests that you have created a very dangerous situation and now lie under the threat of this situation that you created.)

Until you resolve your deeds, you will have that danger with you always, and it attracts people who have sharp knives and who love to cut ropes.

(Again, figuratively, you will attract to you events, and things that will trigger a release of that danger that you created.)

You will need to resolve that, and the best way is a role reversal in your next life. The second best, is to take on a positive and helpful role doing good deeds and making great things happen. A third way is to accept it, and allow the piano to fall on you as that is the consequence for your actions.

Now all of this would have been totally alien to the military leadership at Roswell at that time.

In the case of the acquisition of Earth by The Domain, the rulers of The Domain have chosen not to openly reveal this intention to the “native inhabitants” of Earth until a later time when it may, or may not, suit their interests to reveal themselves. For the present time, it is not strategically necessary to make the presence of The Domain Expeditionary Force known to Mankind. In fact, until now, it has been very aggressively hidden, for reasons that will be revealed later.

Simple. The Earth is owned by the type-1 greys. There is no need to tell any of the Earth inhabitants of this truth. Maybe sometime in the future, the Type-1 greys will work and communicate with humans in various nations of the world, but not in 1948.

I can tell you that this occurred with the United States in the 1970's and MAJestic was formed as a result of this level of communication.

I can also tell you that both China, and Russia have also been in contact with the Type-1 greys. But I cannot elaborate on the extent of that communication.

The asteroid belt near Earth is a very small, but important location for The Domain in this part of space. Actually, some of the objects in our solar system are very valuable for use as low-gravity “space stations”. They are interested primarily in the low gravity satellites in this solar system which consists mainly of the side of the moon facing away from Earth and the asteroid belt, which was a planet that was destroyed billions of years ago, and to a lesser degree, Mars and Venus.

Nothing new here. The Type-1 greys are interested in the asteroid belt, and the moon (on the "far side").

Doom Domed structures synthesized from gypsum or underground bases covered by electromagnetic force screens are easily constructed to house the Domain forces.

Bases and facilities are easily created in this solar system. They consist of domed structures, or underground facilities hidden by electromagnetic force screens.

Once an area of space is acquired by The Domain and becomes a part of the territory under its control, it is treated as the “property” of The Domain. The space station near the planet Earth is important only because it lay along a path of The Domain expansion route toward the center of the Milky Way galaxy and beyond.

Nothing new. And this information can be well understood by the Roswell military at that time.

End of part 1

So far there is NOTHING in this transcript that I can find fault with.

There’s some minor errors in translation, and misconceptions, but most of what is going on is what you would expect. In this first part, there wasn’t any intentional misdirection, falsehoods, or deceptions that I can identify.

Of course, this information would have been an absolute SHOCK to the world at that time. And no one was ready for the idea that [1] there were other species in universe, or that [2] they owned us lock, stock and barrel.

In this article, I tried to put things into perspective with what I know, and added some insight. I also purposefully omitted much of the opinions, thoughts and clutter that the book has. I just wanted to “get to the meat” of it.

The next section(s) describe some very difficult things to absorb. Mostly because you (and most MM readers) do not have the mind-set of a 1947 military officer. And THAT was the target audience for the narrative presented.

We will continue with a parsing of this document / book in part 2.

Key Points

  • The Roswell military event that acquired a UFO is not a fiction.
  • A Type-1 grey extraterrestrial craft crashed and was recovered by military personnel.
  • One creature was captured and interrogated.
  • The person who was able to ask him questions and record the answers was an Army nurse.
  • She kept all records of the event, including the actual transcripts, and disclosed them on her death-bed.
  • The creature was a construct and the species wore the animated creature like we would wear clothing.
  • The creature claims to be very ancient, and that they own the Earth, and their role is to protect it and make sure that it is maintained
  • There is another extraterrestrial group. This group is referred to as the “old empire” and it has been administrating this region of space for a long time.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Alien Interview by Lawrence Spencer

A type 1 grey extraterrestrial was acquired from the vehicle wreckage in Roswell, New Mexico. One Army nurse was able to interview it. When the nurse was in her 80’s she moved to England and got ready to die, and left behind this document that describes her encounter with this creature, and all of her interrogations with it.

I was exposed to this document on the fourth of July, 2021, and when I read the book I was astounded how much matched MAJestic knowledge and understanding, and how much matched what I was exposed to through entanglement. I would say that it’s a solid 98% match.

For me, personally, it reaffirms (from a secondary source) the validity of my experiences, purpose and writings today.

Some notes

Sometimes, when the nurse refers to "the universe", I think she actually means "our galaxy". When you look at the writings, in this light, many things come into focus.

Other times, when she refers to "the universe", she is referring to the entire "universe" as we know it to be.

Dating is confusing. Enormous dates like "trillions of years" is again meaningless as we humans are not using the same "yard stick" for comparative measurement.

The "old empire" is a service-for-self species that farms the sentience on Earth. The way it is presented is more accurate than anything that I have said.

Both MM and this document, when combined together, establishes a solid framework towards understanding our place in this universe and YOUR ultimate role in it. I am presenting it here in PDF form.

I hope that you enjoy it as much as I have. And answers the questions that I have been unable to answer for you.

Do you want more?

You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…

ET Species

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Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

The West has created an imaginary, evil China for its people to hate and fear – and it’s working

This is another reprint. This one from RT. I suppose you can agree with the American media that it is Russian propaganda. But after all, isn’t that what American “news” is to begin with? Ugh. All this is a royal PAIN IN THE ASS, I’ll tell you what.

The American “news” has become the largest pile of steaming dog shit that I have ever had the unfortunate experience to encounter. There is absolutely ZERO redeeming qualities remaining in what passes for “news” out of America these days.

But you all know that, now, don’t you?

When I was a boy, maybe 13 or 14 years old, I went with my family to Florida to go to Disney Land. It was quite the adventure for me. And yes, on numerous levels. It was my first experience with real science fiction. As we rode int he long, long drive to  central Florida, my father gave me a paperback book full of short science fiction stories, and I read away. I was amazed and loved every moment of it. The car ride passed by so quickly, and by the time we arrived at the park, I was refreshed and changed… ever so slightly.

Books can do that to a person.

Don’t you know.

While the ride was long, hot and boring, I was engrossed in a world that I did not know existed. I voraciously read every story, and after each one, I would put the book down and glance upwards and think about the twisty ending and what it meant to me. It was all so very profound.

You know, I did not expect to be so influenced, or changed by what I read. It was just a paper book that my father carelessly handed over to me to occupy my time in the car. He also provided me with a small puzzle game, and a game of dice and equations, both of which that I didn’t really do much of anything with. But it was the book that made all the difference in the world to me.

Sometimes the apparently non-essential aspects of our experiences can have the greatest impact in our lives.

The following is a reprint from RT. All the usual disclaimers follow. Please enjoy and contemplate.

The West has created an imaginary, evil China for its people to hate and fear – and it’s working

Western regimes are brainwashing their people with Sinophobia.
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They want them to both hate and fear China to manufacture consent for anti-China aggression. A fictional, Mordor-like China has been created to achieve this aim.
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If an alien landed on Earth today and read Western media reports on China, they would reach an unambiguous conclusion: China is a comprehensively and uniquely evil nation.

It [1] jails and kills civilians for no reason, [2] commits all sorts of atrocities on its people (who are apparently also filthy and spread diseases), [3] commits genocide on ethnic minorities, [4] obsessively controls people’s thoughts, [5] unleashes deadly plagues upon the world, [6] bullies other nations and traps them in debt, and [7] is a nation whose evil leaders are all fanatics, obsessed with power and bent on destroying the world.

The aliens could be forgiven for assuming that all evil on this planet is because of China…

…(and perhaps Russia and Iran thrown in for good measure)…

… and the US, while not perfect, is nevertheless a force for good, a global guardian angel, the benevolent superpower keeping the world together.

It is the sole driver of world peace and international solidarity, the solitary bulwark against the evil Chinese communist hordes.

Manufacturing powerhouse vs manufacturing consent

Ever since Chinese economic reforms began and China started ‘rising’, Western media has unleashed a massive propaganda campaign against it.

Every single Chinese action is scrutinized to death, every wrong deed or mistake criticized endlessly, and every achievement mostly ignored or downplayed.

Two factors help explain this Sinophobic hate campaign.

The first is the standard policy to ‘manufacture consent’ and manufacture hatred – the purpose of Western journalism, especially against the only nation on Earth that can counter US hegemony.

The second is plain-old racism – the core pillar of Western culture.

The middle kingdom

The US sees itself as the center of the universe, with other nations merely orbiting around it and paying homage.

America treats many of them like its minions, or “allies” and “partners”, to use the popular – if inaccurate – terminology.

Maintaining global and racial hegemony remains central to US foreign policy.

Any successful development model that doesn’t obey Western norms cannot be tolerated.

Thus, today, when the US sees another successful power center emerging, its Pavlovian response is to violently push back.

Since China is too successful, it has to be suppressed.

A non-allied nation that is not a Western-style “democracy” cannot be allowed to develop – whether technologically or financially, and certainly not militarily.

And since China is not even a white-majority nation, it needs to be crushed even more.

However, there is one small problem: China is not like America.

It [1] does not kill millions on false pretexts, it [2] does not bomb nations and their hospitals and schools, [3] it does not launch drone strikes against civilians, [4] it does not violate international law repeatedly while lecturing others to follow it, [5] it does not have an imperial empire for stealing and hoarding other nations’ wealth…

… it does none of the things that has made the West rich and prosperous.

China became rich largely without doing any of the above.

Dr. China and Mr. Hyde

Since China is not as evil as the West, an alternate, evil version of China has to be created – a mirror image in an alternate reality.

The West can then project anything they want into this imaginary China.

It can be accused of any evil in the world – based on equally imaginary evidence.

This alternate China requires massive doses of propaganda and lies to construct – and the lapdog Western media is all too willing to oblige.

After all, the US can’t openly say that it wants to destroy China in order to maintain US hegemony.

Thus, they lie through their teeth and spread conspiracy theories.

People can then be successfully brainwashed to hate and fear China.

In America, we refer to these manipulated people as "sheeple".

For example, when the US regime sanctions Chinese companies, it does so with the aim of preserving the dominance of Western companies that are unable to compete fairly.

However, this cannot be said out loud, since it goes against “free market” principles the US regularly espouses.

Thus, a strawman needs to be manufactured: that Chinese companies are a “threat to national security” or have “backdoors” in them that allow the evil Chinese to snoop on you.

Of course, this needs no evidence; the media will amplify US rhetoric without proof.

After all, in the West, freedom of the press includes the freedom to lie.

Freedom of the press includes the freedom to lie.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative is another glaring example.

Western loans from the IMF or World Bank are brutal and predatory in nature, and frequently impose tough repayment terms and severe austerity measures on host nations, often causing downright bankruptcy.

Recipient nations are required to privatize parts of their economy and surrender natural resources.

Thus, in the topsy-turvy, Catch-22 world of Western propaganda, China is accused of predatory lending and ‘debt-trap diplomacy’.

Even human lives are not spared.

Pfizer, a wicked US pharma firm, allegedly demanded that South American nations surrender their sovereign assets as collateral in exchange for life-saving Covid-19 vaccines.

Thus, as if on cue, China is accused of deploying “vaccine diplomacy” and taking advantage of smaller nations.

A superpower race – with a different race

Once a justification is created that China is evil…

…and that every action China commits is an act of evil …

… the US can paint itself as the good, benevolent superpower acting in the world’s best interests.

This ‘Good v Evil’ binary is constantly reinforced through stereotypical Sinophobic tropes.

The template is applied to every single story about China, from Hong Kong to Huawei.

Enter racism.

The way the West sees it, China is the proverbial “Other” – essentially a different civilization with different standards – almost a different type of human.

As the bigoted Rudy Giuliani, “America’s mayor” and a former Trump adviser once said, human life “doesn’t mean the same thing” to the Chinese as it does to the West.

Few Americans criticized his remarks.

Many agreed with him, secretly pleased that he said out loud what they couldn’t.

This is not an aberration.

Racism is central to US society, and Sinophobia is deeply ingrained in US culture and policy-making.

The former US president himself kept dog whistling “China virus” endlessly to anyone who would listen.

His cronies were no better.

Kiron Skinner (who is ironically black; Sinophobia in America transcends racial boundaries), the then-director of policy planning at the State Department, said openly that this is “the first time that we will have a great-power competitor that is not Caucasian,” and that the previous Cold War with the Soviet Union was at least “a fight within the Western family.”

Unsurprisingly, the Western corporate media largely ignored her remarks.

FBI Director Christopher Wray recently declared China a threat that requires a “whole-of-societyresponse.

This was an almost exact replication of 19th-century propaganda portraying Chinese people as evil hordes coming over to infiltrate and destroy the pure, innocent Western societies.

When COVID-19 stuck, western media openly blamed China for the disease.

The more conservative outlets pounced at the ‘lab-leak theory’ and defended the use of the phrase “China virus”, while the more liberal ones focused on the tried-and-trusted ‘Chinese authoritarianism’ trope.

The New York Times accused China’s “old habits” of “secrecy” and “controlling the narrative” of slowing the response.

It pinned the blame on China and tried to deflect from western countries’ own criminal neglect in controlling their outbreaks.

Yet, had the ‘democratic’ West adopted China’s ‘authoritarian’ methods, they wouldn’t have been on their knees today, struggling with recurrent waves.

Blaming China was a coping mechanism; today, more people have died from COVID-19 just in Orange county in California, US than in the whole of China.

So much for democracy.

Combine all this with the regular Sinophobic reporting, and a steady picture begins to emerge: Barbaric China is an existential threat to our enlightened Western civilization. The Communist Party of China is just a modern-day Fu Manchu, that will stop at nothing to take our “freedoms.”

After the Soviets and Muslims, it is now China’s turn to fill the role of the villain.

Such imaginary rogues are useful to the US regime to distract the proles from domestic problems.

A world without war

And herein lies the real reason why they hate China.

The West is prosperous today not because of hard work or perseverance, but because of centuries of imperialism, colonialism, and wealth hoarding.

China, though, is on the path to becoming a superpower without committing such atrocities.

This is what really riles them up; after all, jealousy is the root of most hatred.

China’s rise shows that an alternative, multi-polar world is possible, a world not besieged by endless wars and genocidal sanctions, a world where poverty and hunger are distant memories – a world where people can live happily without being afraid that a superpower from across the planet may bomb them into oblivion because they have something it wants.

And the US cannot allow that.

Conclusion

Ai!

I know you all realize this. Most MM readers are of the intelligence to be receptive to narratives that lie outside the normal government channels; Alt-Right, Alt-Let and mainstream. that’s not to say that any of us are perfect, we are all learning, and our thoughts and opinions change daily. So let’s not get too caught up on new ideas or different ways of doing things.

Just accept the differences. Relish in them, and move on.

Just what ever you do, don’t believe anything that the American media says. It’s all lies.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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And more and more anti-China propaganda is heading your way. Weee! Here’s how to identify what is going on.

They are all maniacs you see. Maniacs. Pure maniacs.

A propaganda barrage always comes before an American war.

The bigger the target; the enemy is, then the longer and harsher the propaganda barrage.

So, after four and a half long years of HATE – HATE – HATE China related media, only a fool would assume that a war isn’t imminent.

But that is just wishful thinking.

History tells us otherwise…

10 ways to recognize war propaganda in western media

A Handy checklist

The ten rules of war propaganda were set forth by the historian Anne Morelli in her book The Principles of War Propaganda. Well, let’s look at these rules.

In doing so, we will see that our mainstream media follow them exactly.

Anyone who follows the media reports in the West must realize that our German media, free, objective, and critical, are engaged in war propaganda.

There are 10 fundamental well-known rules of American war propaganda that are easy to verify.

Rule 1: We don’t want war

Fun fact: Every war that American has been in for the last seventy five years involved a discussion with the (eventual) enemy where the United States made the statement (word for word) exactly stated "We don't want war". 

It's so obvious that it has become the "Calling Card of America".

The West supposedly never wants wars. Even so, the West wages more wars than all other states put together. Germany is fighting in Mali to supply the French nuclear power plants with uranium (officially against terrorists, of course). Germany fought in Afghanistan for 20 years, so long that most have already forgotten what it was all about. Germany has been militarily active in Kosovo for over 20 years to build democracy, but the Albanian mafia still rules there under the protection of the Bundeswehr. And so on.

All of these – and also the other – wars of the US-dominated West in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and on, all have one thing in common: Of course, the West did not want them at all, but was forced to war by the evil rulers. This is the official reading every time, and none of the “rulers” has ever attacked a country in the West.

It was always the other way around, the West attacked.

“We don’t want war”

If you want a fun activity, read the transcript of the March 2021 meeting in Anchorage Alaska between the United States and China. Look for the announcement statement “We don’t want war” coming from the American side.

That is how the rest of the world knows that American has decided to wage a hot war, soon to become world war III, nuclear style with China.

Look for the specific wording.

That’s exactly how you know that America plans to attack China under some kind of excuse and that a propaganda barrage to justify that attack is being conducted.

Rule 2: The opposing camp is solely responsible for the war

It's all their fault.

See point one.

Assad is allegedly responsible for the war in Syria, although the media in the West consistently keep silent about the CIA operation “Timber Sycamore” with which the CIA started the war. If this is new to you, it’s no wonder. Der Spiegel, for example, has never reported on how you can find the term “Timber Sycamore” when you search the Spiegel archive. The relevant documents of the CIA were published in Washington years ago. If this is new to you, check it out.

It is always done that way. So it was with Iraq, Libya and all other wars in which the West is fighting. The blame was placed on the other side, concealing that the West started the wars itself.

Rule 3: The leader of the opposing camp has the face of the devil

This is the classic. The choice of words is crucial. Putin, Assad and whoever are “potentates”, “autocrats”, “dictators” who commit all the deadly sins of the world. When a war is imminent, the media bring – in order to make the population ready for war – the inevitable formulations of the “Second Hitler”, from whom the world must be saved.

Of course, the enemies do not have “governments”, they are “regimes”. With all these formulations the “enemy” is dehumanized, the public should feel hatred and be ready to overthrow such an evil person, even at the cost of thousands of lives.

Anti-China bullshit from the American media.

This is what is called “hatespeech” in modern German and what the same media, that use this hate propaganda against unloved heads of government, always find very bad.

.

"America doesn't hate the Chinese people, just the Chinese government."

Rule 4: We defend a good cause and not special interests

Of course, the US wanted to bring human rights, democracy and prosperity to Iraq. Of course, it wasn’t about the oil wells that US corporations have secured for themselves. Not even in Libya, where France (one of the driving forces in the war) has secured many oil wells. And Mali is about the fight against terrorism, not the uranium on which the French nuclear industry depends. And of course Syria is not about oil or the only Russian naval base in the Mediterranean, it is only about democracy, human rights and prosperity.

Wherever a government is critical of the West and where there are also natural resources (or where one of the main enemies China and Russia can be harmed), the West finds democracy and human rights very important. But if a government is pro-Western and allows the West access to natural resources, such as the absolutist Saudi dictatorship, then democracy and human rights are not so important.

Regime change in China The last major policy shift in China caught many off guard; we are at another such turning point. For the past ten years or so, bad news in China was usually good news. Growth shocks triggered sizable stimuli, leading to asset price rebounds in China, emerging markets and the world more broadly.

-China regime change 

Incidentally, this is the key to understanding why Russia, which was a political friend under Yeltsin, has become enemy number one again under Putin: Under Yeltsin, Western corporations had secured control of Russian oil and gas. Putin ended that by 2003, and suddenly he was the number one villain. It doesn’t say that in the “quality media”, but it was actually so banal.

Rule 5: The enemy commits atrocities deliberately; on the other hand, when we cross the line, it is unintentional

We experience this one all the time. If the US is undoubtedly bombing a hospital in Afghanistan, then that is “collateral damage” and it was an accident. Nobody is punished, the “quality media” quickly forget it and do not ask for clarification.

On the other hand, it is enough if someone claims without evidence that Russia or Syria bombed a hospital and the media in the West are reporting not only for days, but also afterwards, so that the public does not forget who it must hate.

.

Rule 6: The enemy uses illegal weapons

That is also a classic.

We have all heard many times that Assad uses “barrel bombs”. Nobody really knows what that actually is, but it sounds pretty nasty. The USA constantly uses barrel bombs, except they are called “cluster bombs” and the “quality media” are almost always shyly silent about them, because these weapons are internationally banned.

Whether Assad uses this weapon has not been proven at all, but as a precaution the media have come up with a separate word for it so that the readers don’t even get the idea that the West could also use such weapons. ‘But he does that all the time.

Rule 7: We suffer only slight losses; the enemy’s losses are enormous

This rule only applies when the war has entered its critical phase. Before the war it was the other way around. Before the war it was reported that the enemy was aggressive and, for example, had killed so many of “our” soldiers again when violating a ceasefire. This is to prepare the public for a war.

We have been seeing this in Ukraine for years. The “quality media” always report when it gets “hotter” there that the rebels have killed so many Ukrainian soldiers. In doing so, they keep silent about the fact that the mostly Ukrainian shelling of residential areas preceded them, in which civilians were killed.

But you don’t find out about that from the “quality media”, you have to read the reports of the OSCE. The “quality media” did not consider the fact that the OSCE presented a report in November 2020 in which it stated that almost 75 percent of civilian casualties in Donbass were due to the Ukrainian armed forces.

Rule 8: The artists and intellectuals support our cause

Notice how often celebrities have their say in the media who think the Western wars are good for moral reasons. Celebs have spoken out against Assad, Gaddafi, and Saddam in recent years. This is particularly evident in the American media.

John Wayne fights the demon heathen communists in Vietnam in the movie The Green Berets.

In 2019 a prominent “benefit concert” for Venezuela took place in the Colombian border town of Cucuta. Famous artists appeared in the middle of the jungle to sing against Maduro. Conveniently right next to the US military base there.

And for Navalny, for example, Western celebrities wrote an open letter to Putin in April 2021. It did not contain any truths and probably hardly anyone has read it. It was just important to be able to name the celebrities in the headlines of the media who are against Putin.

There are innumerable examples of this method of war propaganda.

But none of this has anything to do with politics, after all, what politician is interested in a singer’s opinion? These reports only have the purpose of giving the public the feeling that the position of the West is morally correct and thus the fans of the stars are to be influenced accordingly and to follow their idol. It’s all about emotions, not the actuality.

Rule 9: Our concern is something sacred

Of course, after all, it is supposedly about the “holy” values ​​of the West, that is to say about democracy and human rights. You can also kill people for this.

This is probably the oldest means of war propaganda in world history. In ancient Rome one had to bring civilization to the barbarians, of course it was not about the enrichment of the generals. Caesar moved to Gaul as a practically bankrupt man and came back very rich.

Later the Spaniards had to bring the “savages” in America the right faith so that they would not burn in the hell to which the Spaniards sent them on the occasion. It wasn’t about the gold, of course. And the British Empire wanted to bring civilization back to the “backward” colonies, because the poor, backward people in the colonies couldn’t rule themselves.

What I am writing here so ironically is true. You can read it in the documents from the corresponding periods. There was always a “sacred” reason for urgently going to war.

And today the “holy” concerns are democracy, human rights, women’s rights and so on. It’s still the same principle as in antiquity, only the “sacred” concern changes every now and then.

Rule 10: Anyone who questions our propaganda is a traitor

Today the word “traitor” is out of date.

Today you can choose to say “Putin understanders”, “Kremlin trolls”, “conspiracy theorists”, “anti-Americans” and whatever other names are currently circulating.

Anyone who disagrees is demonized and marginalized.

But all of these terms have one thing in common: They identify the named person as an opponent of “Western values” or democracy.

Ergo: it’s a traitor.

It’s shocking, but the German media is actually doing war propaganda like in the darkest times in history. And not just since yesterday, it happened in 1991 in the First Gulf War with the incubator lie and has not been less since then, on the contrary, it has become more, and the techniques have been refined more and more.

Do you think it is a coincidence that the media works exactly according to the propaganda textbook?

The Conclusion

The United States has already decided to wage war with China.

The initial attempts, have all failed, resulting in (as best as I can determine) five HOT-level Assaults…

  • Carpet bombing using 8 bio-weapons to destroy livestock 2016 through 2020.
  • A hard attack using the COVID19 B-strain “death by brain seizure” during CNY 2020, with herd immunity for US allies using the inoculation A-strain . The “three day sniffles” variant.
  • A follow up (two punch) “desperation” (vindictive) bio-weapon attack(s) targeted on Beijing using the “death by vomiting” virus known as the Jingmen tick virus (JMTV), and the “death by diarrhea” virus. Which is itself being a human version of (ASF version of the H1N1) people transmittable Swine-flu 2020 virus. Also (curiously) disseminated by “criminal elements” using drones to spray the virus all over China. Good thing for China that the CIA assets turned themselves into the authorities.
  • The “tit-for-tat” minor assault carrier fires. China’s first big-deck amphibious assault ship, a type 075; a huge vessel that was built in a miraculously short amount of time, mysteriously caught fire on Saturday, April 11th, 2020. And then the gutting of the U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard.
  • And the enormous late Summer US Navy armada that sailed to the South China Sea in 2020. And the return back to the USA with their “tail between their legs”. The USA was unprepared to to deal with the kinds of defensive capabilities that the Chinese had arrayed in the South China Sea.

Additionally, there are failures in collapse of particular cities, and Chinese efforts…

  • Color Revolution in Hong Kong.
  • Color Revolution in Tibet.
  • Turn XinJIang and the Uighur Muslims into a Syria-like battlefield.

The attempts to destabilize Chinese allies are a mixed bag…

  • Myanmar “regime change” to a pro-American anti-China nation.
  • Thailand “regime change” to a pro-American anti-China nation.
  • Chinese BRI construction in the Beirut port (destroyed by missiles).

And so on and so forth.

It’s a big effort, with the blocking the Suez canal, and mysterious fires in IC factories, and the like…

The propaganda is still in full active attack mode.

Which pretty much means that more, and worse events are scheduled to occur.

I think that the United States should realize that China is NOT a nation that is an easy target and that it would be in the best interests for America to work with China rather than try to destroy it. But what else can I say? America is run by idiots.

That’s the only thing that you can conclude.

They are all maniacs you see. Maniacs. Pure maniacs.

Do you want more?

This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.

The Buildup

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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A Post-USA Ruled World; Yes, the rest of the world can develop new technology

I have decided to devote some time to a new series of posts / articles. These articles discuss the transition from a United States Military Empire led world reality, to a world governed by merit out of Asia. This is one such post.

In this post, we tear down one of the fundamental lies that the ginormous American propaganda machine spews out; That America is the machine, and the driver for all the success in the rest of the world, and that without America the rest of the world would be one big “shit hole”.

And along with this narrative comes the belief that Germany is nothing without American “rebuilding”.

Japan is nothing without American “rebuilding”.

That Korea is nothing without American “rebuilding”…

… and that any success that China has… is the result of American “rebuilding” in one form or the other.

This is false.

This is a lie.

The following article tears apart this lie, and discusses from whence the Chinese technological, and engineering success came from. It’s a good read. And whether or not you want to continue to believe the lies issued forth out of the American lie machine or not, it does give one pause to think… to contemplate… and to ponder.

Because…

And with a nation that is capable of all this home-grown independent research, development and engineering, is most certainly capable of many more great things.

For after all 5G is a wholly Chinese invention, and the USA is trying to play “catch up”. The same goes for AI, and while there are American innovations in robotics, the primary groundwork has been developed by Chinese researchers on American visas. Hyper-glide technology, swarm drone technology, digital financial transactions, and room-temperature vaccines for Covid are all Chinese innovations.

"I understand now why the Chinese like to travel to Western countries. It's so that they can travel back to the stone age."

And what is going on NOW…

Seriously this is what China is right NOW!

It’s like a scene from a cyber-punk anime cartoon, and it’s real.

And the rest of the world sees this and wants to join China, Russia and the rest of Asia to become prosperous and successful.

They no longer want the criminally corrupt psychopathic evil that is what the United States represents today.

Check out the video.

Click HERE to watch the reality of what Chinese is right now.

The following is from Gmachine, and copied as found with all credit to the author. It was edited to fit this venue.

Why Chinese do not owe anything to America for their success

In response to https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2021/05/three-thousand-years-and-115.html

The biggest lie obstructing Chinese-American repatriation to China is that Chinese somehow owe America for their success.

Chinese haven’t even gotten all that much from America.

Sure, some Chinese studied in America, including in STEM, before 1949. People like Qian Xuesen. Also humanities people like Hu Shih and Soong Mei-ling (Chiang’s wife) and Hsiang-Hsi Kung.

That class of humanities graduated people from Ivy League who entered higher echelons of KMT eventually lost the war and fled to Taiwan or America.

Also, for STEM, Europe was much better (to learn from and be educated in) than America especially in the early 1900s.

Chinese students would have benefited much more from studying STEM in Europe at that time. Unfortunately, it was the situation that arose after the suppression of the Boxer Uprising in 1900 (by Eight-Nation Alliance) that resulted in the Chinese studying in America over studying in Europe.

Modern China, especially the practical aspect of it, was far more influenced by USSR and Japan.

PRC had its industrial base in it’s Northeast region simply because the invading colonized Japanese colonized and industrialized it. It did so during it’s over 14 years of occupation.

As far as the military goes, the PRC’s military technology is based upon the very generous Soviet transfers in 1950s. And then again by the Russian ones in 1990s.

China also acquired some basic high speed rail technology from Japan and Germany in 2000s.

And most of the Chinese chemical industry technology came from Western Europe back in the 1970s.

There is little in terms of concrete practical high tech that China has gotten from America.

I think it’s without doubt that even though people like Qian Xuesen, Guo Yonghuai, and Deng Jiaxian (who were leaders of PRC’s nuclear and missile programs) had American PhDs, the Soviet influence on technology was substantially greater.

After all, USSR transferred to the PRC a missile that was an upgrade of V-2 in the late 1950s.

Without that, even with all those top talents in aerodynamics who had been professors or postdocs in America, it would have taken much much longer for PRC to develop its own missile program.

In contrast, if not for those top American returnees…

… as long as Soviets transferred the base technology…

… the other smart people in China, who never set foot in America, would have sooner or later figured it out too.

Provided, of course that the Chinese government made the decision to invest in that technology, (which I believe Qian influenced substantially).

I believe Qian after returning to China did not actually directly work at the “nuts and bolts” details level.

He was more of a strategist and administrator.

As well as the primary decision maker with respect to the PRC missile/rocket/space program.

He convinced the PRC political elites to invest in missiles instead of fighter aircraft.

And in hindsight, was an extremely important and correct decision.

And done at a time when the future of China was still uncertain.

The guy who actually most qualifies as the pure technical leader of PRC missile/rocket/space program goes by the name of Sun Jiadong. And he graduated from a Soviet university in the 1950s.

The thing is that those Chinese educated in America would have been just as good had they done their PhD or masters in Europe or Soviet Union.

Only that pre-1949 at that time, American graduate schools had more spots for Chinese students than European schools.

What China needed the most then was practical technology, and in this area, America did not really have any direct effect.

Actually, it was more like a negative effect.

This is because of the American embargo after the Korean War.

There were a few Chinese who studied in America who had actually did serious work in the American industry.

There were few Chinese who did not settle in America, and who ended up returning to China. And these precious few did not make any major contributions to Chinese technology. The historical record is quite clear on this.

However, after they returned to China, they obviously had to work from a much lower technology base to work with. And as such they ended up adapting their expertise and experience obtained in America for China.

There were certain things that could easily be done in America…

… a much richer country then…

… that was not really practically feasible in China due to lack of resources.

The Chinese who studied in Europe and USSR pretty much all returned.

While perhaps most of the Chinese who studied STEM in America pre-1949 stayed there instead of returning back to China.

China at that time, when STEM human capital was very important and needed, the government basically wasted a bunch of money and resources giving those “best and brightest” a higher education. They left China. They went to America. they learned technical skills. They obtained work, and they stayed there.

So I have a good reason to believe that America’s net effect on China in 20th century was rather negative.

I won’t even go into all the ideological and cultural “garbage” that America exports to the world.

Modern America.

Also, doing a higher degree abroad is not necessarily to great work in STEM in China.

Even during WWII, China already had some top or at least very good theoretical mathematicians, fluid dynamicists, or theoretical physicists.

The guy most responsible for PRC’s hydrogen bomb, Yu Min, never went abroad until he was pretty much retired.

As I’ve said, what China needed most then was the practical, industrial technology.

The difference between theoretical and practical uses in technology.

There were many top-notch theoretical brains. For the theoretical stuff, you need a top brain, access to books and journals, and an environment that let’s you concentrate on that stuff.

The practical stuff, on the other hand, despite being less g-loaded, is in practice much harder.

For China, America was more of an obstruction in that regard.

The difference between theoretical and practical uses in technology.

America enforced the embargo on PRC the most after the Korean War.

In contrast, in the 1950s and 1960s, while China could not get any help or technology from America, they were still able to obtain technology from Japan and Europe.

Unfortunately, so many people see the American PhD as a symbol of being technically top-notch.

It’s a fallacy.

It’s a legacy of America’s having been default destination for study abroad from 1900s on.

Many also studied in Japan, and there were good number of Japanese educated people who made it to the elite of CPC.

But, take particular note, there were no American educated ones.

The CPC simply cannot trust any American educated Chinese to any position of political decision making power.

They are considered to be contaminated by far too much cultural and ideological toxin.

Conclusion

And what is America right now? What happens when there is no longer any nations to loot? Any people to subjugate? What happens when the “house of cards” all falls down?

A house of cards is a structure created by stacking playing cards on top of each other, often in the shape of a pyramid. "House of cards" is also an expression that dates back to 1645 meaning a structure or argument built on a shaky foundation or one that will collapse if a necessary element is removed. Structures built by layering in this way, such as Stonehenge, are referred to as "house of cards architecture", which dates back to the Cyclopean and Megalithic ages.

-House of Cards, Wikipedia

What we are all witnessing in America today is the exact opposite from what is happening in China. And thus, it is no wonder that the American oligarchy-ruled Military Empire wants to cripple, suppress or otherwise destroy the Chinese rise.

It is nice to believe the lie, the fantasy that the rest of the world is nothing without American guidance, American culture, American technology, and American “know how”. But it’s not true.

And the rest of the world is growing up.

They no longer believe in the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus, or in other fabled childhood dreams.

And while it was nice to occasionally get a present or two under the tree, the rest of the world has realized that they are far better off with making their own way in the world unencumbered by the thousands of tiny American government hands in their wallets, and the millions of rules and regulations that limit their access to self determination. It’s not normal, and they are saying enough is enough.

As the world slowly adapts to the new reality of a sun-setted America, the sky looks clearer, better and frostier. There’s a feeling in the air. There is a lightness of being and a kind of anything is possible excitement that wasn’t possible under the oppressive yoke of the American oligarchy ruled military empire.

Obviously the United States is not taking this change in roles quietly, and there are all sorts of subterfuge and behind the scenes efforts going on to sabotage the global future so that the 0.0001 who rule the West can stay relevant.

But that too is doomed to fail.

Meanwhile, in the West…

They publish a “report” that the USA leads the world in innovation, and that China cannot innovate,  which is total rubbish, but is targeted for the uneducated population to read.

Here’s a rebuttal to the technology growth in China, with a “Innovation index”. Which claims that there are so many western countries still ahead of China! What a rubbish.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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Is it really possible that a hot war, instigated by the US, would occur between China and Taiwan?

I think that is important to address the issue of Taiwan and China. I believe that I need to do so because the USA is trying to start a war there. The drums for war are beating loudly. Really, really loudly. What the HELL is going on?

America is a military empire and it needs a war to exist. It’s always wanted one, two or three, as well well know. Right now the USA is involved in eight simultaneous wars, which could be reduced to seven if the (so called Afghanistan pull out) actually occurs.

But yeah. All evidence is that the United States is “throwing it’s weight around” trying to provoke a mighty World War.

(To) throw one's weight around, to To use one’s wealth or standing to manipulate others; to act officiously. 

This expression dates from the early twentieth century and uses weight in the sense of “authority.” John P. Marquand had it in H. M. Pulham, Esquire (1941): “Bo-jo was a bastard, a big bastard.

-Throw weight around - Idioms by The Free Dictionary

All you need to do is read the slant of the “news” out of America. Such as this piece of reprehensible trash…

Really?

Seriously?

Are you fucking kidding me?

I will admit that the anti-China articles have improved in their “sneakiness”. All you need to do is read the text to pull out the “boiler plate” anti-China screeds. Like this one from my Tech channels…

And the source for all this information? Why it’s the “United States Government”. That’s it. No other information on names or actual validation channels. Jeeze!

So the USA is busily running their anti-China screed, and they are still poking the Panda. But will it result in a hot war over Taiwan?

We should look into this. Here we tie together some most excellent articles and then weave them together for a better, more comprehensive picture about what is going on, why and who the culprits are.

We will start with this, it is one of the better articles on the subject. Edited to fit in this venue and all credit to the author.

Taiwan Strait: A Shooting War Involving China, Taiwan and the US?

Washington’s Arms Sales to Taiwan

We are witnessing the fourth Cross-Strait Crises. Chinese and American armed forces are undertaking dangerous, spectacular and threatening show of military might. What makes the present crisis different from the previous ones is the fact that it happened during and after the mutual cold-war declaration by Washington and Beijing in Anchorage, Alaska on March 18-19, 2021

The world is wondering how far this military show will go. Many are afraid of a shooting war involving China, Taiwan and the U.S.  Indeed, many are even afraid of the possibility of the third world war which will kill us all.

However, I do not share such pessimistic views. My view is that the inter-China cold war is likely to remain cold, not hot, because none of the three actors involved in the conflict – two Chinas and the U.S.- will gain from the shooting war.

The Sino-American shooting war – if there will be one – will be ignited somewhere else.

Summary

My argument may be summarized as follows.

First, the U.S. does not want the inter-China hot war, because through its ambiguous Taiwan policy, it can continue to sell weapons to Taiwan and, at the same time, keep Taiwan as the primary outpost of its China containment policy.

Second, China is not eager to declare a hot war with Taiwan, because Taiwan has not provided the reasons for China’s Taiwan invasion.

What would force an invasion of Taiwan by China?

There are four reasons for China’s Taiwan invasion including [1] the declaration of Taiwan independence, [2] internal turmoil inside of Taiwan, [2] military alliance with another country, [3] acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and [4] negotiations under the violation of the 1992 Consensus for “one-China”.

None of these conditions are present.

Therefore, China has no reason to invade Taiwan.

Taiwan does not want a war with China

Third, Taiwan does not want the hot war with China for the reason that it will be most likely defeated. As well as the cost of such defeat will be too high in terms of economic development and the loss of its identity. In fact, if and when China wins, it is extremely likely that both of the two China’s will be united under the banner of PRC.

The U.S. does not want inter-China hot War

To understand Washington’s role in the inter-China conflict, it is important to understand its Taiwan policy.

Washington’s Taiwan policy is based on [1] the three joint communiqués, [2] the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 (TRA) and [3] the Six Assurances imposed by Ronald Reagan in 1982.

The followings are the contents of the three Communiqués, TRA and the Six Assurances.

The First China-U.S. Communiqué (28 February 1972)

  • The U.S. Government acknowledges (not accept or recognize) that all Chinese in either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but One China
  • Taiwan is a part of China
  • The U.S. Government does not challenge this position
  • . It reaffirms its interest in peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by Chinese themselves
  • With this prospect in mind, it affirms its ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all the U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan.

The Second China-U.S. Communiqué (January 1, 1979)

  • Neither should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region or any other region of the world.
  • Each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony
  • The government of the USA acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China
  • PRC is the sole legal government of China

Third China-U.S. Communiqué (August 17, 1982)

  • The U.S. Government attaches great importance to its relation with China.
  • It has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity or interfering in China’s internal affairs or pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan.’
  • The U.S. Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan
  • Its arms sale to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms the level of those supplied in recent years
  • It intends to reduce gradually its sales of arms to Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final solution.
  • The U.S. Taiwan policy cannot be changed by the president and requires the consent of the Congress.

The Taiwan Relations Act (enacted by the U.S. Congress on April 10, 1979)

The principal contents of the Act is in Section 2 of the Act

  • Taiwan is treated as a country, a nation or a state as sub sovereign nation
  • Informal diplomatic relations are carried out by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT)
  • The U.S. Government normalizes its diplomatic relations with PRC (Beijing) under the condition that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.
  • Any efforts to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means including by boycotts, or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific are grave concern to the U.S.
  • The Sino (Taiwan)-U.S. Mutual Defence Treaty is terminated.
  • The U.S. Government does not intervene in case of invasion by People’s Republic of China (PRC)
  • The U.S. Government provides arms of defensive character and maintains the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan
  • The decision related to the quantity and the quality of defence articles and services is determined by the Congress and the president.

The Six Assurances

The administration of Ronald Reagan unilaterally added in 1982 “Six Assurances” to the TRA and this has become the mains part of the U.S. Taiwan policy

  • The U.S. Government has not agreed to set a date of the termination of its arms sale to Taiwan.
  • The U.S. Government has not agreed to consult with PRC (China) or ROC (Taiwan) for arms sales to Taiwan.
  • The U.S. Government does not perform the mediation role between ROC and PRC
  • The U.S. Government has not agreed to revise the TRA
  • The U.S. Government has not revised its position regarding the sovereignty of Taiwan
  • The U.S. Government will not exercise pressure on Taiwan to enter into negotiation with PRC.

The positive aspect of Washington’s Taiwan policy is the termination of the bloody civil war between ROC and PRC which caused the two cross-strait crises (1954 and 1958); the civil war lasted until 1979.

But, the end of the inter-China civil war was also desirable for Washington as well, because Washington badly needed China to counter the aggressive assertiveness of the Soviet Union in Asia.

So, Washington and Beijing were strange bed fellows with different dreams. Another possible reason for the U.S. initiative to end the inter-China civil war was the fear of Beijing’s victory over Taipei, which means the loss of a lucrative American arms market and reliable outpost of China containment strategy.

On the other hand, Washington’s Taiwan policy is characterized by the amazing ambiguity of Washington’s perception of the cross-strait problems and tactics which was most likely designed to maximize the American interests at the expense of China’s interests.

What comes out of the three communiqués, the TRA and the six assurances may be summarized in terms of the issue of regional hegemony, the legal status of Taiwan and the American arms sales.

Regional ambiguity

In the second communiqué of 1979, there are items preventing China from becoming a hegemonic power in the region. Neither the U.S. nor China should seek for hegemonic power in Asia. But the U.S was already the hegemonic power there.

The second feature of Washington’s Taiwan policy is its contradictory and ambiguous position regarding the legal status of Taiwan.

In the joint communiqués, the U.S. acknowledges that China is one and Taiwan is a part of China and that Beijing is the sole legal government of China. But this should mean that since Taiwan is a part of China, Beijing should also govern Taiwan.

But, in the Taiwan Relations Act, Taiwan is given the status of a de facto sovereign country.

China can argue that Washington did not respect the contents of the joint communiqués. But Washington can say this: “We have never accepted one-China regime, we said we acknowledged the regime”. Here, we see the strategic political ambiguity of Washington.

In fact, in the TRA, it says that Taiwan is treated as a nation of sub sovereignty. The U.S. has established de facto diplomatic relations with Taiwan conducted through the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT).

Here, Washington’s position regarding the sovereignty of Taiwan is not clear. The hidden purpose of the U.S. could be to make the sovereignty issue ambiguous so that it can change its position in function of needs.

Washington’s Arms Sales to Taiwan

Now, as for the issues of arms sales to Taiwan, the U. S. is even more ambiguous.

In the third communiqué, the U.S. says that it has no long-run plan of arms sales to Taiwan.

Yet in the same communiqué, the U.S. says that it will reduce arms sales, which contradicts each other.

In the TRA, the Sino (ROC)-U.S. defence Treaty is terminated.

This is a very, very important point. One that is purposely being left out of all media communication originating out of the United States. The TRA ended Taiwan as a US Protectorate.

Therefore, Washington should not intervene militarily if and when Taiwan is in armed conflict with Beijing.

But, already, in media, the US intervention in case of PRC’s Taiwan invasion is openly discussed.

One wonders what the reliability of the joint communiqués, the TRA and the Six Assurances is. It’s as if the United States simply ignores inconvenient rules, treaties, and agreements that it has signed.

Now, in the Six Assurances, it is written that the U.S. has no date for the ending of its arms sales to Taiwan. The U.S. is not obliged to consult PRC or ROC for its arms sales to Taiwan. So, Washington has absolute freehand in handling the arms sales to Taiwan.

In short, the U.S. Taiwan policy is so confusing and so ambiguous that it has useful flexibility for the sales of arms to Taiwan. The following table shows the pattern of American arms sales to Taiwan.

Table: Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan by U.S. Presidents

The table above allows these observations.

  • Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan has increased over the years, which is contrary to what the U.S. Government had promised.
  • The Trump administration spent as much as US$ 4.45 billion per year which represents as much as 30% of Taiwan’s annual defense budget of $15 billion
  • By and large, the Republican Party sells more than the Democrats.
  • Washington sells more when the anti-Beijing liberal party of Taiwan, the Democratic and Progressive Parry (DPP) is in power, that is, under the DPP government of Chen Shui-bian (2000-2008) and under the DPP government of Tsai Ying-wen (2016-2021)

This has an important meaning.

Remember that the DPP is the party which seeks independence of Taiwan.

Hence, the data can be interpreted as Washington’s strategy of encouraging the independence movement leading to ROC-PRC tension and more U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

So the United States is actively encouraging an armed conflict between Taiwan and China. Though everyone realizes that ultimately Taiwan would be absorbed into China as a result of the conflict.

So, Does the USA want a Hot War over the Taiwan strait?

Now, coming back to the question of whether the U.S. wishes hot war over the Taiwan Strait, the answer is that it will not want the hot war.

The USA does not really want a Hot War, even though it is provoking one.

The reason is because, the hot war means the unification of China and Taiwan will no longer be able to play the role of Washington’s primary China-containment outpost and its function of being the lucrative market of American military equipment’s.

Neither PRC (People’s Republic of China) nor ROC (Republic of China-Taiwan) wants the hot War. 

Are Taiwan and China enemies as described in the Western media?

When we discuss Taiwan and China, it is important to remember that they once were enemies. This was around fifty years ago.

The army of the ROC was defeated in 1949 and Chiang Kai-sek fled to Taiwan and continued the Republic of China which was created in 1912 by Sun Yat-sen. The civil war between ROC and PRC continued until 1979.

Even though the civil war was terminated, the ROC and PRC relations have not been smooth partly because of the past history and partly because of different political and economic regimes. In other words, there are always the possibilities of hostility in the cross-strait relations.

However, they have established viable relations which have been beneficial to both through political and economic cooperation.

The Risk of full Taiwan Independence from China

Aside from the American and British media harping on the desire for Taiwan to be free of the “oppressive yoke” of the “brutal Communist Dictatorship”,  the real truth is something else entirely.

The evolution of the Taiwanese political orientation may be measured in terms of the way in which its presidents consider the legal status of Taiwan vis-à-vis PRC.

The evolution of Taiwanese political leaders’ perceptions of Taipei-Beijing political relations is shown below. By and large, such relations have evolved by the following periods.

  • The civil war period (1949-1979)
  • The period of good relations (1979-1998)
  • The period of hostility (1998-2008)
  • The resumption of high level dialogue period (2008-2016)
  • The frozen relation period (2016-2021)

The period of civil war (1949-1979) was characterized by two cross-strait crises and never ending armed conflict between two Chinas.

During the friendly relation period (1979-1998), Deng Xiaoping met frequently the head of the Nationalist Party, Kuomintang (KMT) in order to develop cooperative relations.

President Chiang Ching-kuo (1980-1988) of KMT, son of Chiang Kai-shek, declared the three NOs:

      • No declaration of independence,
      • No unification of Chinas and
      • No use of force between the two Chinas.

On July 9, 1999, President Lee Teng-hui (1988-2000) of KMT defined the ROC-PRC relation as “country to country relations.” So, there is no need for the independence declaration.

However, Lee’s visit to the Cornel University Alumni in 1995 alarmed Beijing and it led to the 1996 show of military might of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of  PRC.

This was, in fact, the third Taiwan Strait crisis.

During the period of hostility (1998-2008), President Chen Shui-bian (2000-2008) of the anti-PRC party, DPP, changed the name of “Chunghwa Post Co.” to “Taiwan Post Co.” He changed also the name of “China Petroleum Corporation” to “Taiwan Petroleum Corporation.”

But, under KMT president Ma Yong-Jeou (2008-2016), the old names came back. This episode shows how Taiwanese people are sensitive about the identity of Taiwan vis-à-vis China of main land.

In 2008, Ma Ying-Jeou of KMT (2008-2016) took over the power and the friendly relations across the Strait were resumed.

The year 2008 was marked by the efforts of PRCs president Hu Jintao to improve the bilateral relations across the Taiwan Strait. On March 26, 2008, he talked to President G.W. Bush, who endorsed the 1992 consensus on “One China”..

President Hu Jintao also met the Chairman of the KMT, Wu Po-hsing, who also accepted the 1992 Consensus.

As for President Ma, he defined the bilateral relations as “One Country on each side” or “two states in the same nation.”

In 2016 began the current period of contention. The power went back to DPP and Tsai Ying-wen became President. Tsai’s perception of Taiwan’s legal status was not more certain than those of other Taiwan presidents.

Her victory has put Beijing in even uncomfortable position. In 2016, Beijing cut all communications with ROC.

But, in the same year, some leaders in Taiwan being aware of the deteriorating cross-strait relations formed a Taiwanese delegation composed of eight magistrates and city mayors went to Beijing to improve the relations.

However, the cross-strait relations were not peaceful. In 2018, PLA conducted military exercises which surely alarmed Taiwan.

In 2019, Xi Jinping reaffirmed his position in favor of “one China, two systems.”

President Tsai Ying-wen refused Xi Jinping’s idea.

To the surprise of the world, in 2020 Tsai Ying-wen won the election again; the world was expecting that she would take more radical position regarding Taiwan’s independence.

True, her victory has encouraged the independence movement in Taiwan and pro-independence political parties and civic organizations asked for a referendum on independence.

However, Tsai maintained her position that since Taiwan is already independent country, there is no need for the declaration of independence.”

To sum up, none of the presidents of the major parties, the KMT and the DPP, opted for the declaration of Taiwan’s independence.

True, there are some pro-independence parties such as The Taiwan Independence Party, the Taiwan Solidarity and the Formosa Alliance, but they have no electoral support.

Thus, the danger of Taiwan’s declaration of independence seems nonexistent and therefore, Beijing has no reason to invade for now.

Taiwan People’s Perception

What has intrigued me is the Taiwanese people’s perceptions regarding Taiwan’s legal or political status. There are four public opinion polls which are meaningful.

In the poll of 2008 by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) no less than76% of the respondents rejected the idea of “one China, two systems.”

In the 2017 poll by MAC, 85% of the respondents said that the future of Taiwan should be determined by the Taiwanese themselves.

In the 2019 poll by MAC, 75% of the respondents rejected the 1992 Consensus (There is only one China which should be governed by PRC).

In the 2020 poll by the Academia Sinica, one finds very interesting phenomena.

  • 73% of the respondents identified themselves as Taiwanese.
  • 27.5% of them identified themselves as Chinese-Taiwanese
  • 2.4% of them identified themselves as Chinese
  • 52.3% of them would prefer the postponement of the question of Taiwan independence and keep the status quo
  • 35.1% of them prefer immediate independence
  • 5.5% of them would prefer immediate or eventual unification of China.

In the Poll of MAC, 90% of the respondents refused PLA’s military threats.

To sum up, the Taiwanese are eager to greater autonomy, even independence, but they seem to avoid military confrontation by postponing the solution of the independence issue.

In short, Taiwan does not want a shooting war with China.

Economic Cooperation

There is another reason why the ROC-PRC hot war will not take place. It is the cross-strait economic cooperation.

Taiwan has achieved a remarkable success in economic development.

In the 1960s, the per capita GDP was as low as $60. Now, in 2020, its GDP (nominal) was $730 billion USD and the per capita GDP was $32,000. This is, in fact, the miraculous achievements of the Taiwanese people.

The information industries account for 35 % of the country’s industrial production. The semi-conductor producers such as Taiwan Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and the United Microelectronic Corporation (UMC) are world leaders. Taiwan is the 13th largest producer of steel; its steel products are exported to 130 countries. The most spectacular entrepreneurial performance has been shown by the SMEs accounting for 85% of industrial outputs.

Such achievement has been possible because of the courage, the innovative entrepreneurial spirit, the productivity and, especially the hard work of the Taiwanese.

However, Washington’s economic aid, its imports of Taiwanese products and technology transfer have all contributed. In addition, we should not forget the cooperation between Mainland China and Taiwan.

Under President Chiang Ching-kuo (1978-1988), two important semi-official organizations were was established: the Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) under ROC’s Mainland Affairs Council and the Association of Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) under PRCs Taiwanese Affairs Office.

These two organizations have been the center of bilateral political and economic cooperation. They have initiated the three links: postal services, transportation and trade.

The Taiwan’s Investment Guidelines and similar measures taken by ROC have led to mutual business investments.

In fact, 40 % of Taiwan’s outbound FDI stock went to Mainland China. Chinese tourists contribute to more than 40% of ROCs tourist industry. The Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement of 2010 is another mechanism of the bilateral economic relations.

Above all, Taiwan depends heavily on China for trade. In 2020, the value of Taiwan’s total exports was $ 345 billion of which 29.7% went to China. In the same year, the value of Taiwan’s total imports was $ 286 billion of which 22% came from China.

It is true that the RCO-PRC relations are not peaceful. But these economic relations are beneficial enough to keep the status quo as long as possible.

The conclusion of my analysis is that none of the three actors involved in the cross-strait drama wants shooting war.

      • China doesn’t
      • Taiwan doesn’t
      • The United States doesn’t.

The United States. The U.S. does not want the hot war because it will mean [1] the unification of China, [2] the loss of Taiwan as the primary China-containment outpost and [3] the loss of the lucrative arms market.

Taiwan. Taiwan does not want the shooting war, because it will mean the complete destruction of its economy, and the loss of its autonomy becoming one of the Chinese provinces.

China. China does not risk the hot war because [1] Taiwan prefers the status quo; [2] it has no intention of getting weapons of mass destruction; [3] there is no internal turmoil; [4] it does not seek military alliances.

But the United States wants high stress and tension

However, even without the shooting war, as long as the Sino-U.S. cold war continues, the cross-strait tension will continue.

Washington will sell more military equipment and services and Taiwan will have to play the dangerous role of Washington’s the primary outpost of China containment strategy and that of main buyer of American military weapons.

I wish to add this.

The bilateral conflict between two Chinas like all other major bilateral conflicts is an integral part of Washington’s strategy of global hegemony. One of the most productive components of the American global hegemony is the proxy war, that is, some member country of Washington’s alliances will fight for the U.S.

Japan might be asked to play this role, because Japan is the best qualified for such task; it is a world class military power and it has the ambition of dominating Asia again; to do so, Japan has to destroy China. I hope I am wrong in thinking such an awful thing.

Finally, I would like add this too…

Taiwan is a country which has achieved an amazing economic miracle of which all Chinese should be proud. Taiwan has established viable democracy under very challenging conditions; this is a regime which will surely contribute to the further advancement of China’s socio-political system.

Well, perhaps it is the Taiwan oligarchy that is pushing this issue. Not the Taiwanese government, and not the American government. Perhaps it is the oligarchy inside of Taiwan, and the greedy evil neocons in America that is driving up the stress levels in the Taiwan strait.

Because if Taiwan, China and the USA doesn’t want a war, then why are we talking about this?

Tanks and Think Tanks: How Taiwanese Cash Is Funding the Push to War with China

 

Twenty years ago, a group of neoconservative think tanks used their power to push for disastrous wars in the Middle East. Now, a new set of think tanks staffed with many of the same experts and funded by Taiwanese money is working hard to convince Americans that there is a new existential threat: China.

At MintPress, we have been at the forefront of exposing how Middle Eastern dictatorships and weapons contractors have been funneling money into think tanks and political action committees, keeping up a steady drumbeat for more war and conflict around the world.

Yet one little-discussed nation that punches well above its weight in spending cash in Washington is Taiwan.

By studying Taiwan’s financial reports, MintPress has ascertained that the semi-autonomous island of 23 million people has, in recent years, given out millions of dollars to many of the largest and most influential think tanks in the United States.

This has coincided with a strong upsurge in anti-China rhetoric in Washington, with report after report warning of China’s economic rise and demanding that the U.S. intervene more in China-Taiwan disputes.

These think tanks are filled with prominent figures from both parties and have the ears of the most powerful politicians in Washington.

It is in their offices that specialists draw up papers and incubate ideas that become tomorrow’s policies.

They also churn out experts who appear in agenda-setting media, helping to shape and control the public debate on political and economic issues.

Twenty years ago, a group of neoconservative think tanks like the Project for a New American Century, funded by foreign governments and weapons manufacturers, used their power to push for disastrous wars in the Middle East.

Now, a new set of think tanks, staffed with many of those same experts who provided the intellectual basis for those invasions, is working hard to convince Americans that there is a new existential threat: China.

The Brookings Institute

In 2019, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO) — for all intents and purposes, the Taiwanese embassy — donated between $250,000 and $499,999 to the Brookings Institute, commonly identified as the world’s most influential think tank.

Taiwanese tech companies have also given large sums to the organization.

In turn, Brookings Institute staff like Richard C. Bush (a former member of the National Intelligence Council and a U.S. national intelligence officer for East Asia) vociferously champion the cause of Taiwanese nationalists and routinely condemn Beijing’s attempts to bring the island more closely under control.

 

TECRO featured prominently among myriad defense interests on the donor rolls for both the Atlantic Council, left, and Brookings Institute

In mid-April 2021, Brookings held an event called “Taiwan’s quest for security and the good life,” which began with the statement that…

“Taiwan is rightly praised for its democracy. Elections are free, fair, and competitive; civil and political rights are protected.” 

...

“most consequential” challenge to the island’s liberty and prosperity is “China’s ambition to end Taiwan’s separate existence.”

According to another organization’s latest financial disclosure, TECRO also gave a six-figure sum to the Atlantic Council, a think tank closely associated with NATO.

The Atlantic Council

It is unclear what the Atlantic Council did with that money, but what is certain is that they gave a senior fellowship to Chang-Ching Tu, an academic employed by the Taiwanese military to teach at the country’s National Defense University.

In turn, Tu authored Atlantic Council reports describing his country as a “champion [of] global democracy,” and stating that “democracy, freedom and human rights are Taiwan’s core values.”

A menacing China, however, is increasing its military threats, so Taiwan must “accelerate its deterrence forces and strengthen its self-defense capabilities.”

Thus he advises that the U.S. must work far more closely with Taiwan’s military, conducting joint exercises and moving towards a more formal military alliance.

In 2020, the U.S. sold $5.9 billion worth of arms to the island, making it the fifth-largest recipient of American weaponry last year.

Other Taiwan-employed academics have chided the West on the pages of the Council’s website for its insufficient zeal in “deter[ring] Chinese aggression” against the island. “A decision by the United States to back down” — wrote Philip Anstrén, a Swedish recipient of a fellowship from the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs — “could damage the credibility of U.S. defense guarantees and signal that Washington’s will to defend its allies is weak.”

Anstrén also insisted that “Europe’s future is on the line in the Taiwan Strait.” “Western democratic nations have moral obligations vis-à-vis Taiwan,” he added on his blog, “and Western democracies have a duty to ensure that [Taiwan] not only survives but also thrives.”

The reason this is important is that the Atlantic Council is an enormously influential think tank.

Its board of directors is a who’s-who in foreign policy statecraft, featuring no fewer than seven former CIA directors.

Also on the board are many of the architects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and James Baker. When organizations like this begin beating the war drums, everybody should take note.

The Hudson Institute

Perhaps the most strongly anti-Beijing think tank in Washington is the conservative Hudson Institute, an organization frequented by many of the Republican Party’s most influential figures, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice-President Mike Pence and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton.

The words “China” or “Chinese” appear 137 times in Hudson’s latest annual report, so focused on the Asian nation are they. Indeed, reading their output, it often appears they care about little else but ramping up tensions with Beijing, condemning it for its treatment of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Uyghur Muslims, and warning of the economic and military threat of a rising China.

Over the years, Hudson’s efforts have been sustained by huge donations from TECRO.

The Hudson Institute does not disclose the exact donations any sources give, but their annual reports show that TECRO has been on the highest tier of donors ($100,000+) every year since they began divulging their sponsors in 2015. In February, Hudson Senior Fellow Thomas J. Duesterberg wrote an op-ed for Forbes entitled “The Economic Case for Prioritizing a U.S.-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement,” in which he extolled Taiwan’s economy as modern and dynamic and portrayed securing closer economic ties with it as a no-brainer. Hudson employees have also traveled to Taiwan to meet and hold events with leading foreign ministry officials there.

The Hudson Institute also recently partnered with the more liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) to host an event with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who took the opportunity to make a great number of inflammatory statements about the “ever more challenging threats to free and democratic societies” China poses; applaud the U.S.’ actions on Hong Kong; and talk about how Taiwan honors and celebrates those who died at the Tiananmen Square massacre. TECRO gave the CAP between $50,000 and $100,000 last year.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

It is the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), however, that appears to receive the most Taiwanese money.

According to its donor list, Taiwan gives as much money to it as the United States does — at least $500,000 last year alone.

Yet all of the Taiwanese government money is put into CSIS’s regional studies (i.e., Asia) program. Like Hudson employees, the CSIS calls for a free trade agreement with Taiwan and has lavished praise on the nation for its approach to tackling disinformation, describing it as a “thriving democracy and a cultural powerhouse.”

Although acknowledging that the reports were paid for by TECRO, CSIS insists that “all opinions expressed herein should be understood to be solely those of the authors and are not influenced in any way by any donation.”

In December, the CSIS also held a debatesuggesting that “[w]ithin the next five years, China will use significant military force against a country on its periphery,” exploring what the U.S. response to such an action should be.

Like the Atlantic Council, the CSIS organization is stacked with senior officials from the national security state. Its president and CEO is former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, while Henry Kissinger — former secretary of state and the architect of the Vietnam War — also serves on its council.

The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD)

The CSIS accepts money from the Global Taiwan Institute and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) as well. The former is a rather shadowy pro-Taiwanese group that appears not to disclose its funding sources.

The latter is a government-funded organization headed by former Taiwanese President You Si-kun.

Every year, the TFD publishes a human rights report on China, the latest of which claims that “the Chinese Communist Party knows no bounds when it comes to committing serious human rights violations” — accusing it of “taking the initiative” in “promoting a new Cold War over the issue of human rights” and trying to “replace the universal standing of human rights values around the world.”

Ultimately, the report concludes, China “constitutes a major challenge to democracy and freedom in the world.”

 

Joseph Hwang of The War College in Taiwan speaks at a CSIS about how Taiwan acts a buffer to protect US data infrastructure from China

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation

The TFD has also been a major funder of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a far-right pressure group that insists that Communism has killed over 100 million people worldwide.

Last year, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation added all global COVID-19 fatalities to the list of Communist-caused deaths on the basis that the virus started in China.

The Foundation also employs Adrian Zenz, a German evangelical theologian who is the unlikely source of many of the most controversial and contested claims about Chinese repression in Xinjiang province.

Other funded anti-China Think-Tanks

In the past 12 months, TECRO has also donated six-figure sums to many other prominent think tanks, including…

MintPress reached out to a number of these think tanks for comment but has not received any response.

“It would be naive to believe that Taiwan’s funding of think tanks is not pushing them to take pro-Taiwan or anti-China positions,” Ben Freeman, the director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, told MintPress, adding:

After all, why would Taiwan keep funding think tanks that are critical of Taiwan? There’s a Darwinian element to foreign funding of think tanks that pushes foreign government funding to think tanks that write what that foreign government wants them to write. Taiwan is no exception to this rule.”

TECRO is not just sponsoring American think tanks, however.

the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)

It has also given funds to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a hawkish and controversial group described as “the think tank behind Australia’s changing view of China.” The country’s former ambassador in Beijing described ASPI as “the architect of the China threat theory in Australia” while Senator Kim Carr of Victoria denounced them as working hand-in-hand with Washington to push “a new Cold War with China.”

ASPI was behind Twitter’s decision last year to purge more than 170,000 accounts sympathetic to Beijing from its platform.

“We must be ready to fight our corner as Taiwan tensions rise,” ASPI wrote in January, having previously castigated the West for being “no longer willing to defend Taiwan.”

Who is behind all this money, ultimately?

ASPI — like Brookings, the Atlantic Council and others — are directly funded by weapons manufacturers, all of whom also have a direct interest in promoting more wars around the world.

Thus, if the public is not careful, certain special interests might be helping move the United States towards yet another international conflict.

While the situation outlined above is concerning enough, the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative’s research has shown that around one-third of think tanks still do not provide any information whatsoever about their funding, and very few are completely open about their finances.

Freeman maintains that, while there is nothing inherently wrong with foreign governments funding Western think tanks, the lack of transparency is seriously problematic, explaining:

This raises a lot of questions about the work they’re doing. Are their secret funders saying what the think tank can do in a pay-for-play scheme? Are the funders buying the think tanks silence on sensitive issues? Without knowing the think tank’s funders, policymakers and the public have no idea if the think tank’s work is objective research or simply the talking points of a foreign government.”

Freeman’s study of the Taiwanese lobby found that seven organizations registered as Taiwan’s foreign agents in the U.S.

Those organizations, in turn, contacted 476 Members of Congress (including almost 90% of the House), as well as five congressional committees.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was their most frequent contact, the Californian being contacted 34 times by Taiwanese agents. Pelosi has been a great supporter of Taiwanese nationalists, successfully promoting pro-Taiwan legislation and proudly announcing that the U.S. “stands with Taiwan.”

Foreign agents working on behalf of Taiwan also made 143 political contributions to U.S. politicians, with former Alabama Senator Doug Jones the lead recipient (Pelosi was third).

Losing China, regaining Taiwan?

The reports listed above understand the dispute as purely a matter of Chinese belligerence against Taiwan and certainly do not consider U.S. military actions in the South China Sea as aggressive in themselves.

That is because the world of think tanks and war planners sees the United States as owning the planet.

America has the right to go and do anything that it desires anywhere on the globe at any time.

To this day, U.S. planners bemoan the “loss of China” in 1949 (a phrase that presupposes the United States owned the country).

After a long and bloody Second World War, Communist resistance forces under Mao Tse-tung managed to both expel the Japanese occupation and overcome the U.S.-backed Kuomintang (nationalist) force led by Chang Kai-shek. The United States actually invaded China in 1945, with 50,000 troops working with the Kuomintang and even Japanese forces in an attempt to suppress the Communists. However, by 1949, Mao’s army was victorious; the United States evacuated and Chang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan.

The Kuomintang ruled the island for 40 years as a one-party state and remains one of the two major political groups to this day.

The war between the Communists and the Kuomintang never formally ended, and Taiwan has now lived through 70 years of estrangement from the mainland. Polls show a majority of Taiwanese now favor full independence, although a large majority still personally identify as Chinese.

While many Taiwanese welcome an increased U.S. presence in the region, Beijing certainly does not.

American military is getting ready for a war

In 2012, President Barack Obama announced the U.S.’ new “Pivot to Asia” strategy, moving forces from the Middle East towards China. Today, over 400 American military bases encircle China.

In recent months, the United States has also taken a number of provocative military actions on China’s doorstep.

In July, it conducted naval exercises in the South China Sea, with warships and naval aircraft spotted just 41 nautical miles from the coastal megacity of Shanghai, intent on probing China’s coastal defenses.

And in December, it flew nuclear bombers over Chinese vessels close to Hainan Island.

Earlier this year, the head of Strategic Command made his intentions clear, stating that there was a “very real possibility” of war against China over a regional conflict like Taiwan.

China, for its part, has also increased its forces in the region, carrying out military exercises and staking claims to a number of disputed islands.

A new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) report notes that China is the U.S.’ “unparalleled priority,” claiming that Beijing is making a “push for global power.” “We expect that friction will grow as Beijing steps up attempts to portray Taipei as internationally isolated and dependent on the mainland for economic prosperity, and as China continues to increase military activity around the island,” it concludes.

In an effort to stop this, Washington has recruited allies into the conflict. Australian media are reporting that their military is currently readying for war in an effort to force China to back down, while in late April 2021 President Joe Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to shore up a united front against Beijing vis-a-vis Taiwan.

In February, the Atlantic Council penned an anonymous 26,000-word report advising Biden to draw a number of red lines around China, beyond which a response — presumably military — is necessary. These included any military action or even a cyber attack against Taiwan. Any backing down from this stance, the council states, would result in national “humiliation” for the United States.

American fantasy dreams

Perhaps most notably, however, the report also envisages what a successful American China policy would look like by 2050:

[T]he United States and its major allies continue to dominate the regional and global balance of power across all the major indices of power;… [and head of state Xi Jinping] has been replaced by a more moderate party leadership; and … the Chinese people themselves have come to question and challenge the Communist Party’s century-long proposition that China’s ancient civilization is forever destined to an authoritarian future.”

In other words, that China has been broken and that some sort of regime change has occurred.

Forked tongue speak

Throughout all this, the United States has been careful to stress that it still does not recognize Taiwan and that their relationship is entirely “unofficial,” despite claiming that its commitment to the island remains “rock solid.”

Indeed, only 14 countries formally recognize Taiwan, the largest and most powerful of which is Paraguay.

Along with a military conflict brewing, Washington has also been prosecuting an information and trade war against China on the world stage.

  • Attempts to block the rise of major Chinese companies like Huawei, TikTok and Xiaomi are examples of this.
  • Others in Washington have advised the Pentagon to carry out an under-the-table culture war against Beijing.
  • This would include commissioning “Taiwanese Tom Clancy” novels that would “weaponize” China’s one-child policy against it.
  • And, bombarding citizens with stories about how their only children will die in a war over Taiwan.

Republicans and Democrats constantly accuse each other of being in President Xi’s pocket, attempting to outdo each other in their jingoistic fervor.

Last year, in 2020, Florida Senator Rick Scottwent so far as to announce that every Chinese national in the U.S. was a Communist spy and should be treated with extreme suspicion.

As a result, the American public’s view of China has crashed to an all-time low.

Only three years ago, the majority of Americans held a positive opinion of China. But today, that number is only 20%. Asian-Americans of all backgrounds have reported a rise in hate crimes against them.

Cash rules everything around me

How much of the United States’ aggressive stance towards China can be attributed to Taiwanese money influencing politics?

It is difficult to say.

Certainly, the United States has its own policy goals in East Asia outside of Taiwan.

But Freeman believes that the answer is not zero. The Taiwan lobby “absolutely has an impact on U.S. foreign policy,” he said, adding:

At one level, it creates an echo-chamber in D.C. that makes it taboo to question U.S. military ties with Taiwan. 

While I, personally, think there are good strategic reasons for the U.S. to support this democratic ally — and it’s clearly in Taiwan’s interest to keep the U.S. fully entangled in their security — it’s troubling that the D.C. policy community can’t have an honest conversation about what U.S. interests are. 

But, Taiwan’s lobby in D.C. and their funding of think tanks both work to stifle this conversation and, frankly, they’ve been highly effective.”

Other national lobbies affect U.S. policy.

The Cuban lobby helps ensure that the American stance towards its southern neighbor remains as antagonistic as possible.

Meanwhile, the Israel lobby helps ensure continuing U.S. support for Israeli actions in the Middle East.

Yet more ominously with Taiwan, its representatives are helping push the U.S. closer towards a confrontation with a nuclear power.

While Taiwanese money appears to have convinced many in Washington, it is doubtful that ordinary Americans will be willing to risk a war over an island barely larger than Hawaii, only 80 miles off the coast of mainland China.

You would think…

But now, I’m not so sure…

US Seeks South China Sea Conflict

 

Despite hopes by some that with Joe Biden a new US foreign policy will follow – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reaffirmed Washington’s committment to seeking conflict in the South China Sea under the guise of “standing with Southeast Asian claimants.”
Reuters in their article, “US stands with SE Asian countries against China pressure, Blinken say”  would claim:
.
Secretary Blinken pledged to stand with Southeast Asian claimants in the face of PRC pressure,” it said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
China claims almost all of the energy-rich South China Sea, which is also a major trade route. The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have overlapping claims.
The United States has accused China of taking advantage of the distraction of the coronavirus pandemic to advance its presence in the South China Sea.

The US announcement confirms that a confrontational posture toward China will continue regardless of who occupies the White House – as US tensions with China are rooted in unelected  Western special interests and their desire to remove China as a competitor and potential usurper in what US policy papers themselves call “US primacy in Asia.”

US Primacy in Asia

One such paper titled, “Revising US Grand Strategy Toward China,”…

published by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2015…

…not only spelled out the US desire to maintain that primacy in Asia vis-a-vis China…

… but also how it would use overlapping claims in the South China Sea as a pretext to justify….

…an expanded military presence in the region and as a common cause to pressure China’s neighbors into a united front against Beijing.

The paper would note specific US goals of militarizing Southeast Asia and integrating the region into a common US-led defense architecture against China.

It is a policy built upon the US “pivot to Asia” unveiled as early as 2011 and a policy that has been built upon in turn during the last four years under the Trump administration – demonstrating the continuity of agenda that permeates US foreign policy.

Turning Disputes into Conflict 

Maritime disputes are common throughout the world – even in the West.

Just at the end of last year, the Guardian in an article titled, “Four navy ships to help protect fishing waters in case of no-deal Brexit,” would report:

Four Royal Navy patrol ships will be ready from 1 January to help the UK protect its fishing waters in the event of a no-deal Brexit, in a deployment evoking memories of the “cod wars” in the 1970s.

The 80-metre-long armed vessels would have the power to halt, inspect and impound all EU fishing boats operating within the UK’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which can extend 200 miles from shore.

In terms of such disputes, the waters of the South China Sea are no exception.

Not only does China have overlapping claims with the nations mentioned in the Reuters article – each nation listed has overlapping claims with one another.

This results in sporadic disputes between all of these nations – occasionally resulting in the seizing of  vessels and the temporary detaining of boat crews.

However – these disputes are regularly settled through bilateral methods – including disputes between Southeast Asian nations and China itself.

A high-profile example of this unfolded in 2015 where a US-led legal case was brought to the Hague on behalf of the Philippines regarding Chinese claims over the South China Sea.

While the Hague ruled in the Philippines’ favor – Manila declined to use the ruling as leverage against Beijing or to seek Washington’s assistance – and instead pursued bilateral talks with Beijing directly on its own.

It is a case that demonstrates the desire by Washington to escalate what are ordinary maritime disputes, into a regional or even international crisis – not unlike the US’ strategy in the Middle East which it uses to justify its perpetual military occupation there.

More recently the issue of the South China Sea has come up at ASEAN Summits.

Al Jazeera in its article, “ASEAN summit: South China Sea, coronavirus pandemic cast a shadow,” would cite Malaysia’s take on the issue, noting:

“The South China Sea issue must be managed and resolved in a rational manner,” Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told the meeting. “We must all refrain from undertaking activities that would complicate matters in the South China Sea. We have to look at all avenues, all approaches to ensure our region is not complicated further by other powers.”

While the US poses a champion for Southeast Asia – it is clear that its efforts are unwelcome and viewed instead as a source of instability – not a path toward resolution.

It is almost certain that it is Washington the Malaysian foreign minister was referring to when he mentioned “other powers.”

Just as the US nominated itself as protector of European “energy security” in its bid to obstruct the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline – the US has inserted itself into relatively routine maritime disputes in the South China Sea – not to “stand with” the nations of the region, but to serve as an excuse to impose its “primacy” over them.

The nations of Southeast Asia count China among their largest trade partners, sources of tourism, and for several – a key military and infrastructure partner.

The prospect of a regionally destabilizing conflict originating over long-standing disputes in the South China Sea benefits no one actually located in Asia – and only serves the interests of those beyond Asia seeking to divide and reassert their rule over it.

Who are these people?

Who are these Taiwan Oligarchs that want to start World War III? Most are old men. The youngest is in their 60’s. Most are in their mid to late 70’s and much older. What are they trying to do, and why? Are they so fixated in what happened fifty years ago that they cannot see what is going on right now, and what a bright future lies ahead for them?

MM is providing their names right here for you all to see.

Zhang Congyuan shoes
Tsai Hong-tu & Cheng-ta finance
Daniel & Richard Tsai finance
Wei Ing-chou, Ying-chiao, Yin-chun & Yin-heng food
Jason & Richard Chang semiconductors
Terry Gou electronics
Tsai Eng-meng food, beverages
Barry Lam electronics
Pierre Chen electronics
Lin Shu-hong petrochemicals
Samuel Yin retail
Andre Koo, Sr. financial services
Tsai Ming-kai semiconductors
Rudy Ma finance
Morris Chang semiconductors
Douglas Hsu diversified
Tseng Cheng & Sing-ai petrochemicals
Lin Ming-hsiung supermarkets
K.C. Liu manufacturing
Bruce Cheng electronics
T.Y. Tsai finance
Wang Chou-hsiong footwear
Lin Chen-hai real estate
Scott Lin optical components
Chin Jong Hwa auto parts
Chen Tei-fu herbal products
Chao Teng-hsiung real estate
William & Wilfred Wang plastics
Shi Wen-long plastics
Luo Ming-han & Tsai-jen Lo tires
Xie Weitong cobalt
Chen Yung-tai real estate
Tony Chen electronics
Thomas Wu finance
Cho Jyh-jer semiconductors
Archie Hwang semiconductors
Yeh Kuo-I manufacturing
Shirley Kao food & beverage retailing
Eugene Wu finance
Wang Ren-sheng retail
Wu Chung-yi manufacturing
Tsai Chi-jui shoes
Allen Horng & Tien-Szu Hung electronics
Wu Li-gann electronic components
Tsao Ter-fung food
Lee Tien-tsai beverages
Quintin Wu plastic
Yeh Min-yuen cybersecurity
Huang Chung Sheng recycling
Ho Kuang-chi restaurants

Yeah. I wonder how much of a shame it would be for these people to suddenly stop provoking a war beacause of other issues that they need to deal with.

Conclusion to all of this

The governments do not want wars or conflict in the South China Sea, but the oligarchs do.

They are pushing, and pushing, and pushing for a war.

And “red lines” have been established.

  • For China to invade Taiwan.
  • For China to attack American cities.
  • For Taiwan to get involved with the United States.

And the wealthy oligarchy are pushing these limits.

And this is what is going on right now.

How successful will the oligarchy be? It’s a matter up to the government leadership.

A final word…

It’s propaganda that is pushing the world towards world war III. And this propaganda is very devious and very destructive.

The following is from the US defense department. It shows the nuclear delivery systems of American, China and Russia compared. Imagine that, the only nuclear delivery systems that America has according to the media are airborne!

From the US Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review.

Do you believe it?

You shouldn’t. It’s false; it’s a lie.

But many do believe it. And that why there is an inherent danger in all these oligarchs pushing the world towards world war III.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my China Index here…

USA / China

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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Some of the new “stuff” and developments that the Chinese are working on from a technology and gadget perspective.

China has been exploding with all sorts of new things, products and innovations. Most of which has yet to catch on in the West. There are many reasons for that, but the biggest one is regulation. People who possess new things; new products; new ideas, must get permission to use them. And in the West (especially inside America) this takes time.

For instance, in the 1990’s I was the Principal Engineer for a company that was leading the world in LED technology for automobiles. We were working on tail-lights, head-lights, and courtesy lights. We were pretty cutting edge for the time. And our products were great, and worked well.

The thing was that they could not be used in cars or trucks because the regulations that existed defined the characteristics of the lighting mechanism itself – an incandescent bulb, and not the end result; the ability to have a lighted area at a specific distance.

So in order to put our new, cheap and reliable system on the market we need to get around this “roadblock”. We had to petition to change the regulations to accept results-based measurement criteria as opposed to design-based measurement criteria. And when we started to do that, boy oh boy, did we “open up a can of worms”.

No one was happy.

It’s a long story and maybe I’ll get into it some other time. Anyways, LED technology did eventually enter the automobile market, and today it’s actually rare to see incandescent bulbs being used with the same kind of commonality that used to exist.

You must understand. Over the many years, the evil and corrupt, have corrupted business, technology and society and bent them to do THEIR bidding. And it was fine and well when no one noticed what was going on…

…and China has shown the way. Where big and small, everyone can live their lives and make, grow and innovate free of government interference’s. And while it is all possible that RAH! RAH! American exceptionalism will shine through…

…the fact is that it won’t.

Not until all those millions and millions of tiny little hands are out of your wallet. Sure, you can allocate 500 million dollars to a new hospital system. And you know what you will get? A bunch of reports “evaluating” the various studies on building the hospital system. You will not get a hospital.

All these little hands are put in place by decades of crime and corruption by the oligarchy. And they are not going away.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about this…

Yeah. You can buy a complete box of 20 for under $1 at the local store.

Crime and corruption has ruining America. And because the government has done absolutely nothing about it, it will not matter what pity saying the leadership says, what speeches that they make, what money they allocate. Because nothing will actually get done.

Look at this example…

Video HERE.

Innovation is really more than just a trivial interest of mine. My non-MAJestic career spanned four decades of R&D, NPD and new emerging technologies all across the board.

Not only was I dealing with what ever the fuck I was dealing with in MAJestic, but also I held my “day job” which was involved in R&D, and NPD.

And today…

America is clueless. Absolutely clueless.

Stuff that America hasn’t a clue about.

Stuff that when America innovates that it uses Chinese interns, and Chinese immigrants on visas to design, make and develop. They work inside an American company. And it is the American company that gets the credit. Not the Chinese engineers and scientists.

Look at the winners of the World Mathematics Competition; it’s America!

Woo! Woo! America is number one! Yee-Hawwww!

But look closely…

Here we are going to talk about some of the “cool” things in China now.

I can have thousands of videos as the Chinese are “out of control” in innovation, engineering and design. Some of which is silly, some of which is awkward, and some of which is just… hum. But I picked some of the more interesting technologies in this post. I hope that you enjoy them.

This is a video dense article. Please allow time for the videos to load. For the most part, they are worth it.

5G AI Flooring

Lighted floors with movies and animation isn’t new in China. They have been around for at least a decade now and are semi-common in movie theaters, malls and KTV venues. But the latest designs are really very cool as they have motion sensors in the floor panels and 5G AI responses. The result is really interesting. As in this video…

Video can be accessed HERE.

As you move, the tiles light up and react to you.

I can see some great applications on dance floors and other venues of a similar nature.

Interesting applications for the tiles

Actually, these panels are really cool. They can sense a person on them, and near them as well as what you are doing. And as such they react appropriately. LOL!

Each panel has it’s own little micro-computer. And can work independently or as part of a cluster of times.

Video HERE.

Wall based AI

And, of course, what can go on the floor can also go on the wall. As this video clearly shows. Again, kind of nice. But the applications can be astounding. Think of advertising boards where you can touch the advertisement and interact it in language (any) or where it could link up with your cell phone.

Video HERE.

Drone jellyfish

Here’s a new type of drone. It’s based on jellyfish, and uses a bladder filled with a lighter than air gas…

Video HERE.

I can see cluster of jellyfish drones are working together in a swarm…

…silently, quietly and stealthily. All performing non-invasive tasks where no one takes notice.

Debit Card Technology

One way foreigners will use #CBDC in China during the 2022 Olympics will be with a CBDC card and automatic exchange machine!

Banks are going all-in on CBDC as it represents their return from payment irrelevance and are showing their latest tech at the China Digital Summit. 

Bank of China just revealed an automated exchange machine that looks like it will see use at the 2022 Olympics. 

“Overseas nationals with valid passports can put foreign banknotes into the machine, which will issue a physical e-CNY card based on the exchange rate. The card looks similar to the card-based digital yuan hardware wallet that was seen back in January.” 

“The prototype of the e-CNY card for foreigners also has a small screen that shows the available balance of the hardware wallet and can be used in shops that have an e-CNY payment terminal.” 

The same machine will also likely take foreign ATM cards according to patent filings I saw months back. 

I'm certain a bank sponsored e-CNY app will also be available for the Olympics as foreign cards are now accepted for tourists on #Alipay and #WeChat Pay. 

Fun to see the new developments! 

-The Block Crypto

In China, the debit cards show just how much money that you have in the account in real time…

Video HERE.

Add and delete money easily with no fees

And here’s another video showing how you can add or delete money to the account. Note that there are no fees to do this like in the USA. In fact, everything is fee-free and so easy and instantaneous.

Video HERE.

Recharging remotely

Of course, in China everyone uses electronic payments and banking. So it makes sense for you to recharge the card as necessary from your cell phone.

Video HERE.

Not that having a card is necessary. Most people no longer carry cards. They just carry their cell phone and that is it. But having a card is really handy for other purposes, like to give a gift to children, or to allocate a budget for the purchase of a particular item.

Next year most Westerners will experience this card during the Olympics.

Huawei Ring Innovation

”The U.S. embassy in Denmark threatening to cancel its subscription with a local newspaper if it used Chinese telecommunications equipment is an example of "coercive diplomacy," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday.”

“The Danish newspaper Politiken revealed on April 25 that it received an email from the U.S. diplomatic mission in the country asking it to verify whether it uses electronic devices, including routers, modems, and electronic communications equipment, from five Chinese companies, namely Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua and their subsidiaries and affiliates.” CGTN on Twitter.

-LinkedIN

Speaking of cell phones. Here’s a ring that you can use to control your cell phone with. Apparently it is an option on all the new Huawei phones.

Video HERE.

Huawei Automobile Innovation

Speaking of Huawei. You know Huawei hasn’t stopped with cell phones either. They have developed all sorts of really cool things for the automobiles. Not American automobiles, of course. For the Chinese automobiles. Like this…

Video HERE.

Granted many of the technologies are cool, but I don’t know how practical. Like this trunk opener. Maybe it’s all “Gee Wiz”, but do you really need it?

Video HERE.

Electronic window tinting

However, this next bit of technology is really cool. It’s self-tinting windows. Now available on Chinese cars. But, of course, it will takes years to be approved in America as you would have to run the SAE gauntlet as the various state agencies that regulate the innovation adaptation in automobiles. But in the rest of the world, it’s really cool.

Video HERE.

Swarm Drone Technology

Drones are “old news”. But what people don’t realize is that they are a Chinese technology with most of the commercial drones being made in China. And they are constantly innovating. The swarm drone technology is pretty much mature, and China has been using this for at least five years that I know of. What is really interesting is that the drones can create three dimensional images that your cellphone can scan in real time and link up with on the internet.

Video HERE.

Goopy Shit

Here’s some sticky goop for rodent, and crowd control. I’d hate to have to clean it up afterwards!

The direct video can be accessed HERE.

Fraken-camera

Here’s a Fraken-camera. It’s cool, and for a photography buff would probably be the “cat’s meow”, but gosh almighty it does seem like over kill, doesn’t it?

The video can be found HERE if it fails to load.

But you never see this in the American Media…

You NEVER read about Chinese innovation. So you assume that because you don’t see anything that China just is unable to innovate.

And with all the anti-China propaganda, this is what most American believe. Such as these quotes…

China doesn't innovate (central planning is incapable of innovation because creation/innovation requires market competitiveness and front-line payout/incentive).But central planning-based countries can cheat and steal. And that is what China does. 

-6 posted on 7/28/2019, 10:44:53 AM by RoosterRedux
Another sheeple on Free Republic chimes in…
Innovative my ass. Have yet to see anything innovative from the Chinese that they didn’t steal from us. That’s why they won’t fold to Trumps trade war. They know they would be screwed without their thievery.

-14 posted on 7/28/2019, 11:19:28 AM by Bommer

This is what Americans and the Western allied block think about China, but it is actually not true at all.

China can and does innovate. China has been the leader in innovation for a decade already. In fact, many people gloss over all the “tell tales” of innovation such as China lock on all the 5G patents, and it’s command of the patents on Artificial Intelligence, robotics, and manufacturing.

China today, is the leader in innovation.

You do not hear about innovation.

Instead all you hear about is how dangerous and evil China is.

And you know that this statement is true. The American media would rather die than say anything good about China. But what do you expect? America is a Military Empire, and it demands absolute servitude.

This too is very true.

In fact, this was so very obvious when you watched the absolutely arrogant Biden Administration layout it’s terms to a stunned Chinese audience in Alaska in April 2021.

Perhaps some clarity is needed WHY the American military Empire is so pissed that the Chinese isn’t backing down, and instead standing up to the Arrogant American bullies.

China knows what is at stake. It’s a merit-driven leadership that has read history, and know what to expect from America. So they have readied themselves against the huge dragon the snarls, spits fire, and eats up others in it’s never-ending appetite for gold, oil and riches.

China has prepared.

And America does not like it.

Not one bit.

I love this video. I posted it on another post, as this is a military unit stationed in XinJiang. But it’s an absolutely awesome video. And worth a look. China does not play.

I mean it.

China will use every method at their disposal to stop, and destroy radical CIA-backed terrorists from doing damage, and then they will go after their sources of funding, their training and their “safe” and “distant” handlers. As China grows, so does it’s muscle. If Turkey is involved, or if the United States is involved, you will see China establish covert and secretive units to take out the instigation elements (read: key people) in their homes in far away safe suburbs. It’s a new world.

Perhaps that is why America is starting to “shake in it’s boots”.

Let's see how safe AR Senator Tom Cotton, Neocon feels in his rural home in the mountains of Arkansas, or John Bolton, or Mike Pompeo. They might no longer be holding office, but they are still "pulling the strings and levers of power". China will put a complete end to all of this nonsense.

And it's war. Right?

This is what all these neocon jackasses have been saying. Read all their writings. Go ahead read the White House report when Trump left office, read the "Long Telegraph". They want to kill and remove the Chinese national leadership and replace them with Vichy people who will be puppets for their American global objectives. Of course China knows what the fuck is going on.

And it's fair game, eh?

You want to attack China. Well, it will fight back. With real, real claws. They have no fucking idea what kind of a "hornet's nest" they are kicking off the tree.

Watch the video.

This very cool video can be obtained directly HERE.

This is just a small picture of the vast array of defensive military that China has amassed to prevent any idiotic American dreams of another Syria, Yemen, or Iraq invasion for “democracy“, and to “rescue the Uighur’s“.

This entire video was filmed inside of Xinjiang.

Keep in mind that not only is the military presence large, but they are well-trained, run by merit, and utilize well maintained, state of the art equipment.

The idea that American troops can go into Xinjiang and “rescue the imprisoned Muslims from the concentration camps” is never going to happen.

Video can be obtained directly HERE.

But that’s exactly why the American propaganda machine is in full gear right now. To make it seem that China is one thing, that it really isn’t.

And we can see this is the comments on American Neocon websites…

“The PLA’s great weaknesses:”
I think you can add:

- Their recruitment pool has been halved by a government imposed one child policy that was maintained years after being understood as destructive by a government that can never admit mistakes.

- Their economy relying on resources (especially oil) that must be imported by sea along sea lanes that cross territory closer to and controlled by their enemies.

- Their economy relying on export markets made up of their major potential enemies.

- Their work force demographics currently transitioning from having a vast majority of highly experienced workers (those in the 45 - 65 age group) to having that group being retired.

-39 posted on 5/1/2021, 5:15:53 PM by conejo99
Obviously the commenters have never been to China, know nothing of China and repeat the neocon narratives as if they are factual.
.
And, you know, that’s why they are called  “sheeple”.  They have strong emotions about something that they have never experienced first-hand. Only from what they read. And so they respond out of extreme ignorance like this…
The PLA’s great weaknesses:

- They have no institutional knowledge on how to maintain force cohesion under fire that is HITTING.

- They cannot prevent strikes by a modern military against their homeland.

- Many of their new weapons systems are cartoon images of the real thing. (their stealth does not work)

- Their logistical infrastructure for manufacturing these new weapons is hopelessly corrupt.

- They STILL cannot manufacture a decent jet engine in numbers.

- You can hear their submarines leaving Hainan Island from Pearl Harbor.

How crushing it will be to them when they are handed their ass.

13 posted on 5/1/2021, 8:30:22 AM by Mariner
It used to be an operational assumption that the rigid, doctrinaire command structure of conscript Warsaw Pact and Chicom forces would result in disarray when key leaders were lost on the battlefield, and by contrast, US forces consisted of individual soldiers ready to step up and take initiative and assume leadership roles when situations demanded. From what I read and hear, I'm not sure those distinctions are as clear as they once were. 

-23 posted on 5/1/2021, 9:44:11 AM by Joe 6-pack
I have been reading these China is going to collapse anytime now stories for 20 years. They have only gotten more powerful.

- 31 posted on 5/1/2021, 10:24:34 AM by setter
They can't do logistics - they have never had to move lots of men and material under pressure. Something the US military is VERY good at (sometimes to our detriment). 

-32 posted on 5/1/2021, 10:25:42 AM by Psalm 73
I have to laugh at this one. “China cannot do logistics“.
.
It is always the same garbage narrative. China is an evil authoritarian regime and the people are huddled ignorant masses and they need rescuing from their evil overlords. Yada. Yada. Yada.
.
The Civil Police publicly beat and incarcerate people daily, and sometimes torture and kill - its no secret except from the West. Filming is rare because of the plainclothes cops are everywhere and will stop and destroy the camera/phone - as are the ubiquitous State cameras watching for people filming.

-42 posted on 5/1/2021, 7:56:47 PM by PIF
Again, the illusions that these people have are comically insane.
.
The only people on the forum that doesn’t agree with the neocon narrative are people who have actually been to China, or to Asia. And they say some sane things, but they are obviously in the minority.
.
No China did not ‘lie about’ their Covid totals, at least for the most case.

I am in Vietnam now. Some similarities between China, and Vietnam. And some BIG differences as well (like I don’t see Vietnam as a threat to America)

There have been a grand total of 35 deaths due to Covid.

Really.

Thirty five.

-48 posted on 5/1/2021, 11:15:04 PM by cba123

They are lone voices, often drowned out by the loud and the ignorant.

China does innovate. There are many technical devices that are made there that are not made here. Hell, you can't even find decent documentation for devices I use because no American companies neither design or make this stuff.

And of course there are some good comments.

America is the place where innovation is dying. How can we expect to produce engineers if there aren't jobs for them here?

26 posted on 7/28/2019, 10:17:45 PM by GingisK

He also responds to one of the sheeple’s comments…

..Have yet to see anything innovative from the Chinese that they didn’t steal from us...

Try to find something like an ESP32 that was made here first. Try to find a Bluetooth Low Energy transceiver on an XBee carrier that was made here first.

Those devices were both made in China. The ICs are made in the USA; however, there seems to be nobody here who will innovate products from them. Crap, people here can't get beyond Arduinos using peripherals that are created in China.

Few people understand how deep the damage to American innovation and engineering goes.

28 posted on 7/28/2019, 10:26:39 PM by GingisK

And this particular post addresses all the “Gung Ho” Sheeple that live off the illusion that the American media propaganda is correct…

... Few people understand how deep the damage to American innovation and engineering goes...
 
That's why I get so annoyed with the "Puff the Magic Tariff" brigades here on FR. Tariffs can work tactically if you have industries left to protect, otherwise they equate to putting expensive doors on an empty barn....while your horses are already grazing in the next county. A massive reduction in the Cost of Liberalism is the most important task to focus on.

30 posted on 7/29/2019, 4:45:36 AM by Mr. Jeeves

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